Lauren. 27. 18+ ONLY! If you are a bairn, come back when you're grown! Fueled by spite, hugs, music and smut. Crazy in the cool way. I am a Veteran of the Porn Purge. For reasons only I know, I am a Duck, and you are my minions. Go forth and wreak havoc.
✦︎ — SUMMARY. Bucky finds your romance novel. Bucky reads the highlighted part. Bucky discovers you've both been silently wanting the same thing. Bucky proves he’s incapable of acting normal about this information.
WARNINGS. established relationship, MDNI, 18+, porn no plot, Bucky has a raging breeding kink, soft smut, unprotected pnv, creampie, cumplay, mentions of lactation kink, domestic intimacy, no use of y/n.
NOTES. scheduled post bc your girl is on a break. also thank you for 4000 followers, what the hell 🥹
The only good thing about a mission was that it ended. And when it ended, Bucky can come home to you.
The door clicked behind him. He exhaled properly, maybe for the first time in three days, and let the quiet settle over him. He shed his jacket, his boots, and followed the strip of warm light under the bedroom door without thinking. Muscle memory by now, this particular walk.
You were on your stomach, one leg bent, cheek soft against the pillow, mouth barely open the way it only went when you were properly under. Completely gone. One hand curled slack beside a book lying pages-down on the bed, spine cracked, the way books shouldn't be left if you cared about them.
He'd seen this exact scene before — you falling asleep mid-read, the lamp still on — and his move was always the same: turn the light off, climb in behind you, sleep for ten hours.
He almost did.
His hand reached for the book to set it aside when his eyes caught the open page. He sat down slowly on the edge of the mattress because his legs stopped cooperating.
The prose wasn't fancy. It didn't need to be, it was blunt about what it was describing. A man with both hands pressed to his girl's lower belly while he worked himself deep, telling her she was going to take every drop, that he wasn't stopping until he'd filled her up past overflowing. That's it, pretty girl, take my cum, let me breed this tight little cunt till it takes, want you so full of me you can't think, wanna see your belly swollen with my babies. The woman in the story was begging for it, wet and completely broken, while he kept his palm flat over her stomach.
Bucky's hand tightened around the spine until the cover bent.
He turned the page and found a star drawn in pencil in the margin. Your handwriting. Neat and small, beside the passage where the man pulled back just enough to watch his cum leak from her before pressing it back inside — not wasting a drop, gorgeous, every bit of it stays right here where it belongs.
A star.
He sat with that for a moment. Two moments. Maybe a full minute of just sitting there with the lamp warm on his hands and your soft breathing behind him.
He knew this want. He'd been sitting on it for months — the need to just stay, every time he was buried inside you and the pull of it got so loud it took actual effort to talk himself back. The responsible thing. The right thing. Pull out. Don't push it. Don't put that on her. And then watching the mess of it on your skin and thinking about what it would mean to not. To keep it all where it was supposed to go. How many showers he'd stood in thinking about your belly. What you'd look like. How soft you'd go. How it would feel to press his palm there and know.
To him, this wasn’t some random story anymore. Apparently his girl has been falling asleep to fantasies of getting claimed and filled until she carried his baby, the same urges he’d been swallowing down every time he pulled out and spilled across your skin instead, not wanting to push too far and scare away that sweet softness you always seem to give him.
He turned another page. Found another star, this one beside the line where the man cradled his girl's tits as he asked about nursing from her.
He closed the book and looked at you. All the love he felt towards you multiplied with the awakened hunger, hands itching to wake you right then, to show you how perfectly those pages matched the way he wanted to ruin you for anyone else. He stood up, stripped down. Shirt, pants, everything. He was not getting into bed in three-day mission clothes, even if his brain was only half working.
He looked down at himself. Already half-hard, his cock thick against his thigh, wet at the tip just from reading. He'd been on missions that didn't break him this fast. He wrapped his hand around himself slowly, hissed at his own slickness smearing his palm and stroked just to get a handle on it.
He put his hand on your hip. "Baby." He shook you gently. "Wake up for me."
The sound you made was small and personally offended by the concept of consciousness. You burrowed deeper.
"Baby." He rubbed your hip. "Open your eyes."
Slowly, you did, blinking like a deer caught, as you found him in the warm lamplight and your face just opened. All of it, the sleep-blur gone in a second, replaced by that warmth, that automatic reaching, your arms coming up before you'd even finished registering what you were looking at. Like some part of you knew it was him before your eyes did, and your whole body moved toward him on instinct.
He gathered you in. He would never in his life stop being leveled by this, the way you reached for him like that, all open and unguarded, not one defensive thing in you when you saw him. He tucked his face into your hair and breathed.
"You're home," you mumbled against his neck. No matter what, the images from the book spilled over, now all he saw was you and him, those dirty promises echoing.
"I'm home." His lips found your temple. "Came home and found you sleeping like you haven't got a single bad thought in your pretty head." He felt your breath catching, your fingers going still in his shirt. "Left your book right out here for me."
"It's just a book." You spoke into his skin, pressing closer into him, fingers digging into his shoulders with a restless energy, soft sounds vibrating through you that only made him harder
"Pages worn soft from reading it."
"Bucky —"
"Little pencil stars in the margins." He pulled back just enough to look at your face. The flush was already climbing your throat, your eyes sliding sideways from his. He could see you trying to determine exactly how much he'd read. "My sweet girl." He shook his head slowly, as he watched you bite your lip. "Sleeping like an angel… with her breeding kink book on the nightstand."
A mortified sound left you as you tried to press back into his chest. He let you, his mouth curving, his arms pulling you in. "Don't," you said, muffled by him.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're laughing at me."
"I'm not laughing." He really was, a little. He pressed his lips to your hair to hide it. "I would never." He rubbed your back, felt you slowly start to relax against him. "I've been pulling out," he said, into your hair. "This whole time."
You went completely still.
"Every single time," he continued. "Being responsible. Doing right by you. While you've been in here starring passages about being filled up and bred." He felt your fingers curl in his shirt. "I've been pulling out for nothin', baby."
A long pause where you just nuzzled again and breathed. Then very quietly your voice came. "I didn't think you'd want —"
"I think about it every time I'm inside you." He said it simply. Just the plain truth of it sitting between you. "Just — thought it would scare you. Thought I'd push you away." He pressed his lips to your forehead.
He continued when you didn't reply, "so here we both were, keeping our mouths shut like absolute idiots."
You looked up at him with an expression he could never quite name, somewhere between wanting and completely undone. He kissed you before either of you could ruin the moment with more words. Slow and thorough, hands cupping your face. You made a soft sound against his mouth that had always gone straight through him.
Clothes came off fast, what little you had on was gone, and he was already bare. He settled between your thighs and looked at you properly.
Your cunt was weeping before he'd even touched you. Slick and swollen, soaking the sheets, and he dragged two fingers through your folds and brought them to his mouth while holding your gaze the entire time. "You were dreamin' about it." He could still taste you on his tongue. "Weren't you? Dreaming about me filling up this tight little pussy."
A broken whimper came as you turned your face into the pillow.
"Baby." He tapped your thigh gently. "Look at me." Reluctantly, you met his eyes, warmth spreading to your ears. He circled your entrance without pushing in, felt you clench around nothing, as he listened to the sound it pulled out of you. "Don't get shy now, sweetheart. Tell me what you want."
"Please —"
"Please what baby?"
"Fill me up. Please, Bucky, please just fill me up, I need it —" Your hand raised to hide your face, which he softly pulled away.
Bucky pushed in slowly. Your nails found his biceps before he was halfway there, digging crescents into the thick muscle. He worked into your dripping cunt inch by inch, feeling every clench and flutter, the wet sounds of it loud in the quiet room.
When he got himself fully seated, he held there, both of you just breathing each other in.
His palm pressed flat to your lower belly. "Feel that?" He pressed down gently and watched your eyes go soft. "That's me, baby. Right here." He pressed a little firmer and your breath punched out. "That's where it's staying. Every load, from now on." He pulled back slowly and drove in, as he watched your mouth fall open. "Never pulling out. Not wasting a drop. Gonna fill this pretty pussy up and keep her that way."
"Bucky —"
"I know, baby." He started moving, finding a rhythm. "I know. We've been idiots."
You came apart under his hands easily, wound up and desperate, scratching at his back, your thighs locking around his waist. Your cunt was soaking him, drooling around his cock with every thrust, the slick sounds of it filling the room.
"I know you love swallowing." You made a soft, small sound when he said that. "And I love watching you do it. Love seeing my cum on your stomach, on your tits." He palmed your breast, taking your nipple between his thumb and pointer finger, feeling you jolt under him. He did it slower the second time, watching your face. "But that's done. From now on every single load goes right here." He ground his palm down over your lower belly. "Load after load, until you're round with my babies and everyone can see what we've been doing."
"Yes — please —"
"These tits." He thumbed your nipple again and your back bowed off the mattress. He felt you gush around him. "They're gonna fill up, you know that? Get so heavy and full." He kept his palm there, felt your pulse jumping under your skin. "Gonna let me drink from them." His thumb dragged slowly across your nipple again and your whole body shuddered in a shock. "Aren't you?"
A gasp spilled from your lips, barely a sound.
"Aren't you, baby?"
"Yes," you gasped. "Yes, god, yes, anything you want —"
"Atta girl." He sucked a mark into your throat and felt your cunt clench and flood around him, soaking him straight down his thighs. He kept his palm on your belly. Couldn't stop touching you there, the soft warm plane of it, the thought of it round and full of him. "Gonna put a baby right here." He spread his fingers wide. "Take such good care of you. You and our baby both, I promise you that."
"More — please — Bucky—"
He hooked your knee higher and drove in harder, making you cry and scratch at his skin.
His metal hand reached up, curving gently under the back of your neck and tilted you forward. "Look how good you're taking me."
You looked down. He watched your face while you watched his cock move in and out of your puffy, soaked cunt, the slick mess of you coating every inch of him. Your thighs were dark and wet, your pussy drooling around each thrust and clinging to him when he drew back. He could see the drag and pull of it from here. Watch the way your cunt stretched open and tried to keep him every time he moved.
"Look at her," he marveled. "See how she takes me? Sucking me in like she's been starving." He drove in to the hilt and held himself there, watching your head drop back. "Did I starve her? Hm?"
"Bucky —"
"Tell me." He rocked into you, slow enough to be punishing. "Did I keep her empty when she wanted to be full?"
You whined in response, clinging to his arm. He pulled back slowly, and pushed back in. "That's done, babygirl."
Your sounds had gone to pieces, his name breaking apart in your mouth. He worked you harder and felt you winding up, getting impossibly tight around him.
"You'd make such a good momma." The words fell out of him without planning. He pressed his face into the curve of your neck. "Gonna make this belly round and take care of you through every bit of it. Every part. I mean that. You want that, sweet girl?" The headboard rattled at his pace, as you openly scratched at him harder, head lolling to one side, soft mewling sounds threading through each exhale.
"Say it baby. Come on, sweetheart."
"Please — I'm so close —"
"I know, baby… I know. Say it first."
"Make me a mommy —" It tore out of you. "Please, Bucky, please — make me a mommy—"
That pushed him to the edge, and he came, hard and sudden, hips slamming forward and holding while his cock pulsed in long thick ropes inside you. You came apart with him, cunt clenching in tight rippling waves, whole body shaking, a broken sob of his name leaving your mouth. He felt you your pussy milking every last drop, as he kept grinding in, palm pressed hard to your lower belly, like if he just kept his hand there
"Take it — take all of it — every drop, baby —"
He was still rocking into you in slow, sloppy thrusts when he felt himself going soft, working the last of it out. You were limp and shaking underneath him, hands slack in his hair. He pressed his face to your neck and breathed until he could.
He lay there with his softening cock still inside you, palm warm over your belly. You nuzzled your face against his jaw. The room smelled like sex. He pressed his lips to your cheekbone, your temple, the side of your mouth, anywhere he could reach. Told you between each one how good you were, how beautiful you'd be, how he'd meant every word.
When he finally slipped free, it was reluctant, genuinely, physically reluctant, a resistance he had to push against. As he looked down, slow, thick stream of his cum leaked from your swollen, puffy cunt, running down your inner thighs.
He pressed two fingers gently at your entrance before he'd even made a decision about it.
Your whole body twitched. "Bucky."
"Shh." He pushed it back inside, slow but thorough, and pressed his fingers there when he was done. Just held it there. Keeping the warmth of you against his palm, plugging you, not letting any more of it go.
"I know what you're doing," you said.
"I know you do." He didn't move his hand though.
A small, helpless sound slipped out of you. You pressed closer into his chest, as he brought his other hand over your shoulders to rest on your lower belly. Both of them just stayed there — one cupping you from below, one warm and flat on your stomach.
He nuzzled into your hair. Pressed his lips to your forehead. He's wanted this for so long, and he's going to be good at this no matter what.
"You're not moving your hands," you said eventually, voice drowsy, sated, barely there.
"No," he said.
"Either one."
"No."
You made a sound that was too tired to be an objection and pressed your face into his chest. His thumb drew a slow circle on your belly and didn't move.
What's everyone's favourite flowers that aren't like. The normal ones. Like everyone's a fan of roses and sunflowers what's a more niche one. One you don't get in gift sets. Mine's sweet peas
Summary: You and your brother Bucky have always shared a deep love for space. Now your relationship takes a heavy turn when you both realize that the feelings binding you together run deeper than blood.
Pairing: Brother!Bucky Barnes x Older Sister!Reader
Series word count: 13,7k (updated as the series goes on)
Warnings: DDDNE (dead dove: do not eat); incest; siblingcest (brother/sister); age gap (reader is 4 years older than Bucky, both are over 18+); inexperienced Bucky Barnes; Space Cuties (both Bucky & Reader are space nerds); Porn with Plot & Feelings; Yearning; It Burns but Not Slowly; no use of Y/N (updated as the series goes on)
reblogging because i have slightly revamped the look of this masterlist 💙let's see it as a celebration of the new chapter coming very, very soon....... 😊
I don’t think I have an Attention Deficit. I think I have an Attention Surplus. Attention is pointing Everywhere and frankly whatever you wrote in your email is not as captivating as That Radom Noise I’m Hearing
Not to sound like a decrepit, rambling corpse about it, but back in my day Word used to be a pre installed program that came with your computer, if you were running Windows.
No subscription. Just program.
On your computer. You got to use it forever and ever and never had to worry about it going away.
Because it was physically on your computer. As a program. That you actually owned. Not because you got it separately, but because it was a standard inclusion with your computer.
I'm sorry but I'll just never get over it. I remember when companies cared about their products being usable out of the box. I remember when our things belonged to us.
Old man shaking fist at cloud, wherein the cloud is the background of the Windows 98 logo.
-Dean and Y/N have a rough working relationship/friendship. They bicker constantly over the small things, bitch loudly at the big things, and literally shove each other out of the way when necessary. It's not exactly what you'd call a romantic relationship. Still, there's always been something underneath it all and it takes a little angelic fuckery to bring it out into the open...-
Starring Dean Winchester x Reader, The Angel Gabriel
With Special Appearances by Sam Winchester, Castiel, Paul Rudd,
17,177 Words, 7 Chapters
SFW, (C7 NSFW) Friends to Lovers, Annoyed Crushes to Loves, Strategic and horrible abuse of classic romantic comedies and dramas, Magical and Angelic Fuckery, Too Too Many Pop-Culture References
-Dean and Y/N have a rough working relationship/friendship. They bicker constantly over the small things, bitch loudly at the big things, and literally shove each other out of the way when necessary. It's not exactly what you'd call a romantic relationship. Still, there's always been something underneath it all and it takes a little angelic fuckery to bring it out into the open...-
Starring Dean Winchester x Reader, The Angel Gabriel
With Special Appearances by Sam Winchester, Castiel, Paul Rudd,
17,177 Words, 7 Chapters
SFW, (C7 NSFW) Friends to Lovers, Annoyed Crushes to Loves, Strategic and horrible abuse of classic romantic comedies and dramas, Magical and Angelic Fuckery, Too Too Many Pop-Culture References
it wasn’t supposed to be anything more than sex. you barely even liked each other as friends. frank uses you, and you use him. but somewhere along the way, the lines got blurred.
warnings/tags: mdni, smut and implied smut, themes of addiction and recovery, emotional constipation from reader, vague references to prior relationships and trauma, coworkers with benefits to lovers, some angst and some fluff, oblivious idiots in love, frank is divorced, reader has a niece, takes place sometime after season 2, pov switches, reader is afab, resident reader, no use of y/n
author’s note: i needed to torture frank langdon, just a little bit, but i promise it’s a happy ending. also as always shoutout to my girl @fru1t4fr0gs for letting me virtually yap her ear off about this
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Frank’s therapist had cautioned him about replacing one addiction with another.
He hadn’t thought much of it at the time. He’s never been a smoker, but if he were, would that really be worse than being addicted to benzos? It’s not like American Spirits or cotton candy flavored vapes would drive him to steal from his job.
Yeah, yeah. Cancer. Lung cancer, esophageal cancer, all the cancers. Gum disease and tooth decay. He is still a doctor, even if it took him a long time to start feeling like one again. He knows the risks. And that is exactly why he hasn’t tried filling the void with nicotine.
He works out just enough to be able to say that he does and it not be a complete lie, but he’s never understood how people can get addicted to exercising. He understands the science behind it, but every time he steps on a treadmill, it just feels like an opportunity to think too much about every mistake he’s made in the last few years.
Video games have never really been his thing. He’s still paying off his stint in rehab, so betting and gambling are off the table. Alcohol, of course, is out of the question for obvious reasons.
When he hit one hundred days of sobriety, he really thought he was in the fucking clear. He let himself breathe a little for the first time in a long time, thinking he had finally learned his lesson.
Never did it cross his mind that he could become addicted to a person. Least of all one that he isn’t even supposed to like.
Least of all you.
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“This is a really fucking bad idea.”
Frank grunts, bottoming out as he fills you so full of him that it takes your breath away.
He stills, looking down at you in the glow of your living room television. His hands were on you the second your apartment door clicked shut - the two of you didn’t even make it down the hallway to your bedroom before you were pulling him onto the couch by the collar of his scrubs, his lips chasing yours with a degree of desperation that you might have found laughable if it weren’t for the fact that you had to bite back a moan the second that his tongue slipped between your lips.
He huffs a half breathless laugh. “We can stop if you want to, but I’m already inside you, so it’s a little late to realize this is a bad idea.”
You wiggle your hips, grinding down where his body meets yours. His eyes roll shut at the sensation, his muscles tensing beneath where your fingers grip his biceps.
“Didn’t say that I wanna stop,” you breathe. “Just said this is a bad idea. It’s called an observation.”
Frank snorts, retaliating by hiking one of your legs over his hip to deepen the angle. You hiss, your walls clenching around him. “You didn’t seem to think it was a bad idea when you were drenching my face a few seconds ago.”
You aren’t surprised in the least that his argumentative nature carries over into sex, but the dirty mouth on him does take you by surprise.
“So, what?” You hum, part challenge and part genuine curiosity. “You don’t think this is a bad idea?”
He shakes his head. He snakes a hand between your bodies, his thumb finding the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of your folds. “It’s definitely a bad idea. I’m just finding it really hard to give a shit right now.”
You whimper at it all - the rough timbre of his voice, the the soft pad of his thumb brushing over your clit, the way he somehow still smells like musk and allspice even after working a full twelve hours in the emergency department and how his kiss-swollen lips glisten from his time spent between your thighs.
Come morning, you’ll regret this. Twelve hours from now, when you can’t concentrate on a routine intubation because you’re having flashbacks of pretty cerulean eyes peeking up at you as he brought you to climax with only his tongue, you’ll regret this. When you can’t take two steps tomorrow without the ache between your thighs reminding you where he’d been, you’ll regret this.
Probably should’ve thought about that before deciding that the best way to cope with stress of an exceptionally shitty day was by kissing him in the empty parking garage and inviting him back to your place, but you’ll deal with the aftermath of that when he’s no longer buried half a foot inside you.
You take his chin in your hand, stilling his face in front of yours. “Just so we are clear, this is a one time thing.”
Frank looks like he’s fighting the urge to laugh, a familiar, cocky smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You know you’re the one who kissed me and practically ripped my clothes off, right?”
Your hands ghost over the planes of his shoulders and up his neck before settling at the base of his skull where your fingers thread through the short locks of his hair. “Don’t let it get to your head. You were the closest conventionally attractive man I could find after that shitshow of a shift. Don’t confuse convenience with desire.”
He cocks a brow. “What I’m hearing is that you think I’m attractive.”
You roll your eyes, pulling your hands away from his hair and playfully shoving his shoulders. You don’t bother denying it, though. He is attractive. Annoyingly, irritatingly, frustratingly attractive.
“I’m serious. One time, Langdon.”
He doesn’t verbally respond right away. Instead, he leans down, closing the space between your lips and his. You taste yourself on him, sweet and salty with a hint of the gum he had been chewing when you first kissed him in the parking garage. It’s slower than the first time, and the second, and the third, making heat bloom where he’s hard inside you.
He pulls back just enough to murmur the words against your lips.
“One time.”
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Two months ago, Frank Langdon kissed you and swore that he was only going to fuck you one time.
Two months ago, he lied through his teeth.
The good news is that you’re as big of a liar as he is.
Because one time turned to two, and two to three, and now the Pittsburgh winter has turned to spring and he’s forgotten all about that broken promise.
He knew before the words had fully left his lips that they were bullshit. How could he mean them when your kiss tasted like watermelon lip gloss and being bare inside you made him feel the best he’s felt since he got sober?
But still, he tried. For a whopping seven days, he tried his hardest.
One week. That’s all it took for him to feel like he was going to lose his fucking mind if he didn’t touch and taste you again.
Then, in a moment of weakness - the kids were at Abby’s, he’d spent his day off cleaning his entire apartment in an attempt to keep himself busy, he’d already gone to an NA meeting earlier that afternoon, and he couldn’t get this one specific sound you had made when he nipped at the column of your throat out of his head - he did something he’s never done before.
He texted you.
Are you off work yet?
Short and vague, but you’re far from being dumb. He was confident that you could read between the lines without him having to spell it out for you.
Much to his relief, you replied before he could overthink the simple text message.
Keeping track of my work schedule now?
He scoffed to himself, smirking down at his phone. As if you haven’t worked the same set schedule the entire time he’s known you. At least, that was his excuse for knowing you’d be leaving work at approximately that time.
You replied fast. I take it that you are off?
He stared down at the screen as you typed, grateful that technology doesn’t allow you to see him waiting for your response in real time.
Leaving now. But if you’re about to say what I think you’re going to say, then you should know that I have been both puked and peed on today.
That should have deterred him, but it didn’t. In fact, it only further encouraged him, because you didn’t immediately tell him to fuck off like he halfway expected you to.
I happen to have a shower.
Then, before you can type a rebuttal, he sends a second text with his address.
You didn’t even reply, but twenty-three minutes later you knocked on his front door.
(It goes without saying that yes, you insisted on showering, and yes, he insisted on joining you, and yes, he ate you out until your legs turned to jelly and he had to help hold you up).
After both of you were thoroughly spent, he expected you to say something similar to the first time - when he had you pinned to your couch, balls deep inside you, and you told him that it would be a one time thing. He expected you to insist that what just happened would not be happening again, that it was a mistake for you to come over, and that he should lose your number entirely.
So it took him by surprise when you got out of his bed, put your clothes back on, and said, “it goes without saying that this stays between us, right? If this is going to be a thing, the last thing I want is Perlah and Princess spreading it all over the hospital.”
“Please,” Frank had scoffed, pulling his own t-shirt over his head. “Like I want the entire emergency department making a bunch of ridiculous bets about us. Trust me, this stays between us.”
And that was that. There was no further discussion of what exactly this is, but Frank knows.
He knows what it is, and he knows what it isn’t. For two months now, you’ve been on the same page. He comes to your place, or occasionally, you’ll go to his. One time, you even rode him in the backseat of his dad mobile, as you had referred to the midsize SUV.
But work is off limits. You have made that abundantly clear by acting indifferent to his existence anytime a coworker or patient is within ten feet of you, which happens to be damn near always. When the two of you are at work, he pretends like he doesn’t know that you clench around him every time he tells you how well you’re taking him or where your birthmark is located.
As soon as he walks out of those hospital doors, though, all the pretending comes to a stop.
It most often happens after long shifts, when one or both of you needs to decompress and not think of whatever horrors had been witnessed that day. But every now and then, like that day you and Frank both broke the initial agreement of this being a one time thing, he’ll find himself alone with thoughts of you that are a little too loud and unrelenting.
So instead of only thinking about the way your breathy, fucked out voice sounds saying his name when you’re on the verge of coming apart, he calls and hopes that you answer.
And, for some reason that Frank refuses to let himself dwell on, you always do. He knows that there will inevitably come a day that you don’t.
But he doesn’t let himself dwell on that, either.
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“Meet me in the empty on-call room in fifteen minutes.”
The words are murmured low enough for only him to hear. He glances up from his charting, utter disbelief on his face. He opens his mouth to question you, but you’re already walking away.
You’re weak. Spineless as a damn jellyfish, really.
And it’s all Frank Langdon’s fault.
If he didn’t kiss you like you’re the air he needs to breathe, go down on you like you’re the last thing he’s ever going to taste, and fuck you like he’s trying to ruin all other men for you, then it wouldn’t be so embarrassingly easy for you to go back on your word.
But here you are. Going back on your word. Again.
The first time it happened - when he texted you his address a little over two months ago and you wasted no time driving to his apartment even after telling him and yourself that you would not be hooking up with him again - you forgave yourself. You allowed yourself the small comfort of knowing it was him that reached out. It was him who caved first, even if you had thought about doing so every day since you first slept together.
But this time? Telling him to meet you in an empty on-call room in the middle of the day at work? Where any of your coworkers could potentially catch you? This boundary being crossed is all on you.
You must have a competence kink. That’s the only logical explanation for why you’re willing to let this happen right here, right now.
Your watch reads 2:17. He’s two minutes late.
Two more minutes. If he isn’t here in two minutes, then you’re leaving this room and forgetting that you ever even considered doing this.
The door creaks open and he slips in with only twenty seconds to spare.
“Wasn’t sure if you were actually going to come,” you hum from where you’re perched on the edge of the mattress.
Frank locks the door behind him. He still looks as confused as he did when you first told him to meet you here, but there’s now a hint of amusement on his features, too.
“Sorry,” he huffs a laugh, slowly walking towards you with his hands shoved in his scrub pockets. “I came as quickly as I could. My patient in Central 14 pulled up WebMD on his phone to try to argue about his diagnosis so I got a little tied up with that.”
You snort. “Don’t you love when they do that?”
“So…” he drawls, eyes glancing around the small room, empty save for the two of you. He comes to a stop directly in front of where you sit on the bed. “You gonna tell me what we’re doing in here right now?”
You look up at him from beneath your lashes. “What do you think?” Then, before he can answer, your hands go to the waistband of his pants. You don’t look away from his face, blue eyes dilating and pretty lips parted in surprise.
“Seriously?” He breathes, looking around the room again as if there’s anyone around to catch you in the act. “Here?”
You shrug, tugging his pants down just enough to expose the soft patch of dark curls below the waistband. “What can I say? Watching you perform that closed cervical reduction really did something to me.”
He blushes. Even with the curtains closed and only a small bedside table lamp illuminating the room, you can see pink bloom across the apples of his cheeks.
“That’s all it takes to make you stop avoiding me like the plague while we’re here?” He scoffs low. “A closed cervical reduction?”
You hum a laugh. “Sorry, does it hurt your feelings that I don’t spend my shifts fawning over you like every early-to-mid twenties female that walks into this place?”
Frank chuckles lowly. “Not quite.” He cups your face in his hands, thumbs brushing against your cheekbones as he leans down far enough that his lips hover just above yours. “You might not fawn over me, but you’re the one who got me alone just so you can give me head.”
Under normal circumstances, you’d keep going until you get the last word. But right now, you have a list of patients who need tending to and a boss who has already been on your ass about patient satisfaction scores today.
And as much as it physically pains you to admit, he isn’t wrong.
“Mm-hm,” you hum in agreement. “I did. Now are you going to let me or not?”
With your fingers still hooked into the waistband of his pants and boxers, you pause. It’s not like he’s ever said no to receiving head from you before - and the unmistakable bulge behind the fabric of his scrubs would normally be enough of an answer - but he is just now finding his way back into Robby’s good graces, so the risks here may outweigh the reward.
He exhales a shaky laugh, his nose brushing against yours as he nods slightly. “If I ever say no to that, page neurology, because something is very wrong with me.”
You roll your eyes, pretending you aren’t slightly charmed by the dorky remark. “Sit down, then.”
The two of you trade places. He lowers himself onto the edge of the mattress, and with help from you, his scrubs and boxers fall to a puddle at his feet. You spread his thighs gently with your palms, nestling yourself between them. You take his hard length in your hand, giving a few languid strokes as you look up at him.
“I mean it, you know,” you murmur, voice uncharacteristically earnest. For a moment, you drop the sarcastic facade. “The closed cervical reduction was very impressive. You were incredible.”
He swallows thickly, his cock twitching in your hand as he stares down at you in the dim lighting. Despite the truth to your words, you expect him to brush the compliment off with a cocky grin and smartass retort that undercuts the rare instance of genuinity between you.
Instead, he leans forward without a word, takes your face in his hands, and crushes his lips against yours. He tilts your head slightly, sweeping his tongue across your bottom lip to encourage you to open up for him. You can’t help but lose yourself in the effortless familiarity of his kiss that you’ve grown to crave more than you ever thought possible.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t release the careful hold on your face. “Thank you,” he murmurs, his breath warm against your lips. “Means a lot coming from you.”
For one impossibly long second, the two of you stare at each other until the sincerity of the moment starts to feel suffocating.
And because you don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do with that, you swallow it down and do what you came here for.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
Frank sees you before he finishes parking his car next to the ball fields.
At first, he thinks he’s seeing things. It must be someone who looks like you - someone with the same hair color and skin tone as you, who just so happens to be roughly the same height - because it couldn’t possibly actually be you.
Why the hell would you be at a Pee Wee soccer game bright and early on a Saturday morning?
He knows exactly why he’s here - it’s one of Penny’s last games of the season and between a pain in the ass custody arrangement and an even bigger pain in the ass work schedule, Frank has only been able to attend a few of his daughter’s soccer games this spring season. He would have missed today’s game, too, if Robby hadn’t agreed to him switching a couple shifts around and Abby hadn’t been willing to let him take Penny for the day during her week with the kids.
You don’t have children, though. He’s sure enough of that. There’s no way you wouldn’t have said something about having a kid at some point during your time spent together these last few months. He’s been over to your place enough times to have noticed toys scattered around the living room or sippy cups in the sink or tiny clothes left lying on the bathroom floor.
But as Penny sprints ahead to join the rest of her teammates and Frank crosses the field to where all of the player’s families sit in lawn chairs, he realizes that his eyes are not playing tricks on him.
Even from behind, he knows it’s you. He’s spent enough collective hours memorizing the curves of your body to recognize you anywhere - even wearing something so different than what he normally sees you in: scrubs or nothing.
He comes to a stop a couple feet behind you to take you in. It’s an unseasonably warm day, with temperatures already in the mid 70s before nine o’clock in the morning, and you’re dressed to match the weather. His gaze trails from your polished toes that peek out of your sandals and up the expanse of your legs before settling on the sun-kissed skin of your shoulders.
You’ve yet to notice his presence as you wave to a kid in the distance as all of the players start to take their positions on the field. “Good luck, Holly!”
He smirks, his eyes darting back and forth between you and the little girl with curly pigtails.
“Who’s Holly?”
You jump as if you had been electrocuted, your head snapping to look in his direction. He can’t see your eyes well because of your sunglasses, but he can clearly picture the look of surprise on your face.
“Jesus, Frank. What are you doing here?”
He snorts, coming to stand beside you, as he brushes off the fact that you called him Frank instead of Langdon. “My daughter is playing. What are you doing here?”
“My niece is playing.”
He looks back out to the field - your niece, Holly, you had called her - is standing right beside Penny. They’re wearing matching jerseys. Same team.
“Huh. I didn’t know that you have a niece.”
Now it’s your turn to snort. You cross your arms over your chest with a shrug. “We don’t exactly spend very much time talking about our personal lives, do we?” You glance around, seemingly looking for something - or someone. “Where’s Abby?”
“Oh,” Frank clears his throat, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants just so he has something to do with them. “It’s Abby’s week with the kids, but she let me take Penny for the day. She’s uh…she’s not here. She’s spending some quality time with Tanner today.”
You nod, your posture relaxing slightly. He isn’t sure if he’s just imagining things, but he can’t help but think you look a little relieved to hear that his ex wife isn’t here.
Not that he’d blame you for not wanting to see the ex wife of the man you’ve been casually fucking on a regular basis for months now. He definitely wouldn’t want that, either, and feels extremely relieved himself that Abby isn’t here to witness this interaction.
“That was very nice of her,” you say after a beat of silence with a small smile. “I’m sure Penny is happy that you’re here with her.”
Frank glances around now. You had been standing alone when he approached you, and you don’t seem to be here with anyone else. “So, is Holly your sister’s…or brother’s…kid?”
He mentally curses how fucking awkward he sounds. He knows what the most intimate parts of you taste like, knows what you sound like when you come for a third time in a row because of him, but he doesn’t know how to ask you a straight forward question about your personal life.
But he wants to. He shouldn’t, but he does. He wants to know if you have siblings, and how many, and if you have other nieces or possibly nephews. He wants to learn things about you because he asks and you answer or because you volunteer the information freely.
He wants to know what you do after a hard day at work, when you aren’t doing him after a hard day at work. He wants to know things because you want him to know things. Not just the shit that he observes at work (like how you take your coffee) or during the ten minutes that he lays in your bed after finishing inside you (like that you have a white noise machine that is basically always on).
“She’s my brother’s,” you answer, looking away from him to watch as Holly, Penny, and a few other girls all sprint after the soccer ball. For a second, he thinks you’re going to leave it at that, but then you continue. “He and Holly’s mom are going through a pretty nasty breakup. He only has Holly on weekends right now, and he works a lot, so…I’m just trying to help him out a little.”
“Ah,” Frank hums, surprised by the answer for more reasons than one. “Yeah, that’s tough. I know firsthand how…messy that kind of thing can get.”
“Yeah,” you agree with a sigh. “It sucks. But it’s probably for the best. They weren’t good together. I’m just hoping they can learn to co-parent for Holly’s sake.” You pause, eyes cutting back to him. “Seems like you and Abby do a pretty decent job with that.”
He has to refrain from laughing at that. He exhales slowly through his nose, gaze drifting back to the field. There’s a lot he could say in response to that - about lawyers and custody hearings and the same arguments that he doesn’t know if he and Abby will ever stop having - but if he starts then he might not stop, and he highly doubts you care to hear all of that. You’re here to watch your niece play soccer. Not listen to your fuck buddy trauma dump about his divorce.
“We try,” he settles on instead. “It’s still a work in progress, but we’re figuring it out.” Then, so you don’t feel pressured to respond in any particular way, he glances down at the lawn chair that he brought, still folded and tucked between his arm and side. “You uh - you want to sit? I brought a chair.”
He unfolds the chair, not giving you the opportunity to object as he takes a seat on the still slightly dewy grass right next to the chair.
The rest of the game continues with the two of you sitting side by side, watching the girls in an unfamiliar but not uncomfortable kind of companionship. He cheers for Holly, and you cheer for his daughter just as much.
You even introduce herself to her when Penny runs over to where Frank sits for a sip of water. As his coworker, of course. Because that’s what you are, even if the relationship title rubs him the wrong way for reasons he won’t let him think about for long enough to have to be honest with himself.
Still. It’s nice. Much different than how time with you is normally spent - working together to save someone from a pulmonary embolism, or naked between bedsheets - but this doesn’t feel wrong. It’s unexpected but pleasant, Frank thinks.
He tries not to think about how you feel about it, instead focusing on Penny chasing and kicking the soccer ball (sometimes in the wrong direction, but she’s four, so it’s cute).
When the final whistle blows, the swarm of four and five year olds erupts into excited shrieks. Penny and Holly spot the two of you at the same time and sprint over - Penny with her white tube socks stained green with grass and Holly with hair falling out of her pigtails.
Holly reaches you first, practically launching herself into your lap. “We won! We won! Did you see how far the ball went when I kicked it?”
“Of course I did,” you answer cheerfully. “You were amazing. I’m so proud of you. You did so great too, Penny.”
Before he has a chance to recover from the way the softness in your voice made his chest tighten, Penny starts jumping up and down, chanting daddy, daddy, daddy.
“Daddy, can Holly go with us to get ice cream?”
Oh. That’s right. He had promised his daughter ice cream after the game.
“Uh—” Frank hesitates, just for a second, glancing over at you. With your sunglasses now resting on the top of your head, he can see your wide, slightly panicked eyes. “We…we don’t know if Holly and her aunt already have plans, sweetie,” he says gently, not wanting to disappoint her but also giving you the out that he’s almost certain you’ll take.
But Holly is already looking up at you with pleading eyes. “Please, please, please can we go get ice cream?”
You let out a small laugh, eyes darting between Holly and Frank. He offers a small smile of his own, shrugging as if to say the ball’s in your court.
“Why not?” You sigh. “Sure. Ice cream sounds good to me.”
Frank might not show it in the same way that the girls do - with wild cheers and shrieks of laughter - but he’s just as pleased that you said yes.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
More and more often, you find yourself wishing that you met Frank Langdon when you were younger.
Not because you wish you met him before he got married or before he had children or before he fell into addiction. None of that deters you, actually.
Maybe it should. It probably should. But it doesn’t.
No, you wish you met him when you were still an optimist. When you still welcomed love with open arms and wore your heart on your sleeve and believed that everyone you met had as good of intentions as you do.
You wish you met him before your past tainted the mere idea of relationships and romance and trust.
You know it’s irrational. Things are the way that they are for a reason. If you had met him in med school, you probably would’ve thought he’s such a douche that you never would have even entertained the idea of kissing him.
But sometimes you still can’t help but wonder…
If you had met him at a different time, would there be more days like today? Early morning sunshine and soccer games and ice cream instead of late night booty calls that turn into mornings where you still wake up all alone, breathing in the scent he leaves behind on your pillow?
It’s fun to imagine that things could be different.
Then you remember the hurt and the heartbreak that comes with loving, and you shut those thoughts down. Back to sporadic, unplanned hook-ups and the illusion of control that they give you.
You suppose you can still allow yourself to sniff the scent of him that lingers after he leaves your bed, though.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
There’s a gradual shift in your and Frank’s dynamic over the weeks following Holly and Penny’s soccer game and the subsequent ice cream date that somehow ended in you and Frank sharing a chocolate soft serve.
It’s so subtle that at first, the changes don’t register as out of the ordinary.
You’re a little more reluctant to put your clothes back on and leave his place after sex. You stop ignoring each other at work, even exchanging jokes at the nurse’s station. He compliments you openly when you do something impressive with a case, not caring who might overhear the praise. When it’s his day off, you’ll randomly text him to tell him about something crazy that he missed at work. He starts opening up more - about his recovery, about his divorce, about his children. Not all at once. Just little pieces of his life bit by bit that you weren’t privy to before.
And you open up to him, too. Without realizing it. Without even meaning to.
It slips out by accident. You can’t even recall exactly what you’d been talking about at the time, but you tell him that he’s the first person you’ve slept with since your ex.
Your ex that you broke up with nearly two years ago.
He’d looked surprised when you revealed that. But he didn’t laugh, or say anything to tease you. He just turned to lie on his side, propped his head in his hand, looked down at you lying beside him, and asked you the same question that you’ve asked yourself on more than one question but have never answered.
“Why me, then? If you waited that long to…be with someone again. What made you kiss me in the parking garage that night?”
You stare up at him for a moment before answering, your fingers teasing his chest hair. “I’m not really sure,” you answer honestly. “Maybe I thought you were having as shitty of a day as I was, and that you looked like you needed someone as badly as I did. Maybe I thought it would be a good thing for both of us.” You pause. “Or maybe I just thought you looked like you’d be good in bed.”
He exhales a shaky laugh. One hand rests on your hip, fingers drawing lazy circles across your skin. It’s too dark to tell with only the moonlight from your open curtains illuminating the room, but if you had to guess, you would say that he’s blushing. It takes practically nothing to make him blush, a fact that you often take full advantage of because you think he looks pretty when he blushes.
“And were you right?”
“About which part?” You murmur, your hand stilling against his chest.
He gives a half shrug, hesitating just long enough for you to know exactly what he’s asking without him saying it. “The part about me being good in bed,” he says instead, with no trace of his normal humor in his voice.
“Frank.” You cup his face in your hand, swallowing down the answer to the question he won’t ask. “You know you are.”
It wasn’t a lie. He’s more than good. He’s the best you’ve ever had, and that’s exactly why you’re blind to the most damning way the lines begin to blur.
What started as stress relief, as a coping mechanism for a shit day, turned into something that started to feel less like an escape from reality and more like something that feels terrifyingly like love.
Just coworkers with benefits turned friends with benefits don’t stare into each other’s eyes during sex like they’re trying to see into each other’s souls. They don’t touch you, hold you, and kiss you like you’re their lifeline. Like you’re the air they need to breathe.
They definitely don’t call you baby when they’re telling you to come for them.
But then Frank goes and does just that.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
Frank’s hips slam into yours, repeatedly hitting that sweet spot deep inside you that makes you croon his name against the sweat-slicked skin of his throat.
You weren’t supposed to come over tonight. He had come to your place last night, and the two of you have never hooked up two nights in a row before.
You’ve also never hooked up when his children are sleeping in their bedrooms just down the hallway.
But he called you, right as you were leaving the hospital, and told you that he wants to see you. That he misses you. He even said please in a low, sleepy voice that made heat bloom down your spine.
And you pictured him - skin flushed and dewy from his shower and dark gray sweats hanging low on his hips - and then next thing you knew, you were driving the route to his apartment that has become as familiar as the route to your own.
He noticed you were tired as soon as you walked in. Laid you down in his bed, undressed you, and kissed down your body until stopping between your thighs, where he spent even more time than he usually does - so much time, in fact, that your legs were shaking around his head when you pulled him up to you by the tops of his arms and all but begged him to fuck you.
And he did. Is.
Sounds of flesh on flesh and his bed frame creaking fill the room as your nails scrape down the skin of his back and his teeth dig into the meat of your shoulder, the familiar fiery coil in your core dangerously close to snapping again.
“Frank,” you breathe, voice unrecognizable. “Fuck, I’m close. I need - I’m gonna—”
He gently shushes your incoherent babbling, slanting his lips over yours with a sloppy, open mouth kiss that makes you cry into his mouth.
“I know,” he grunts low and breathless when he pulls away. Skilled, slender fingers find the swollen bundle between your folds, coaxing you to climax. “I can feel it. Squeezing me so fuckin’ tight. You’re so close, just let go for me, baby.”
The foreign pet name falls from his lips so effortlessly that it sends you over the edge - warms you from head to toe, white-hot pleasure coursing through you as he fucks you through your orgasm and his own.
Baby, baby, baby.
You barely register the fact that he pulls out and collapses beside you on his mattress, his thigh brushing against yours.
Every nerve in your body vibrates with the typical post-coital blend of oxytocin and serotonin but the bliss is background noise to the word he’d murmured so pretty against your skin.
It flashes in your mind like a neon sign. Baby.
Suddenly, everything leading up to this moment begins to play like a highlight reel.
The touches that linger for a split-second too long, the random texts throughout the day, the just because kisses that don’t necessarily lead to sex, your favorite vending machine snack randomly appearing on your desk at work when you’re having a hard day, how you know his go-to take-out order by heart, baby, baby, baby—
You bolt upright, cutting Frank off in the middle of a sentence that you hadn’t registered a single syllable of. You throw your legs over the side of the bed, reaching down to pick your underwear and scrubs up off the floor.
“Uh—” He lets out a soft, confused laugh. “You okay?”
You pull your shirt over your head, unable to bring yourself to look at him. “Yeah,” you say, your voice unnaturally high. “It’s just late. I’ve got work in the morning, so I should get going.”
“O…kay,” he draws the word out, obviously unconvinced. “You sure that’s all it is?”
You jump up, yanking your pants into place. “Yep. Just tired.”
He’s silent for a moment, as if trying to gauge the sudden shift in your demeanor. Then, he clears his throat. “I mean, if you’re tired, you can sleep here. Probably shouldn’t drive—”
“What the hell are we doing, Frank?”
He pushes himself up on one elbow, eyebrows knitting together. “What are we doing?” He repeats. “Same thing we’ve been doing for the last few months, I thought.”
You’re shaking your head before he can finish the sentence.
“It’s not the same. It’s not the same and you know it.”
He sits up straighter, blue eyes boring into you like he’s trying to read your mind. It feels like an eternity before he speaks again, and when he does, his voice is low and restrained. “Where is this coming from?”
You make a vague, exasperated gesture with your hands. “It’s coming from…all of it. You call two nights in a row and I come running. People at work are starting to talk because we barely even try to hide it. Your kids are sleeping right down the hall and you’re offering to let me spend the night—”
“Okay, okay,” he interrupts gently. He exhales slowly, dragging a hand through his hair. “Okay. You’re right,” he admits. “Things aren’t exactly the same. Haven’t been for a while now.” He pauses, the intensity of his stare keeping you glued to the spot where you stand next to his bed. “I just don’t see why that’s a bad thing.”
Your chest constricts at the way he doesn’t try to argue. Doesn’t get defensive, just wants to understand.
“Because it was never supposed to be…this.” Your gaze drops to the floor. “It was supposed to be casual. No strings attached. No feelings. But now?” You look back up to find him still staring at you, jaw clenched. You mentally will your voice to stay level, but emotion still slips through. “Cuddling all night then having breakfast with your children in the morning? Calling me baby like I’m yours? That’s not casual, Frank. That’s—”
He cuts you off with an incredulous laugh. “That’s what this is about?” He pushes the covers off of him, grabbing his underwear as he jumps out of bed to yank them on. “Me calling you baby?”
You’re silent as he walks over to you, stopping when his still bare chest is just inches from yours. He looks at you, unblinking, as he waits for you to answer.
You stare up at him, offering a small shrug. “Tell me it didn’t mean anything. Tell me it just slipped out and meant nothing and I’ll let this go.”
He lets out a breathy, humorless laugh and shakes his head. “I’m not going to lie so you can stay in your comfort zone,” he says, voice dangerously low. “It wasn’t just a slip. I called you baby because that’s what you are to me. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear, but at least be honest with yourself about why it upsets you.”
His words hit you square in the chest, knocking the air from your lungs and causing you to take a small, involuntary step back. “And why exactly do you think it upsets me?”
He leans in slightly, his eyes darkening. “Let me ask you this. Are you really that pissed off that I called you baby? Or are you upset that me calling you baby made you come harder than I’ve ever felt you come?”
You laugh at that. Cackle, really. Louder than you probably should at this hour when his children are sleeping with only walls in between you.
“Wow,” you exhale. “Okay.” You nod. “You’re a dick, and I am leaving.”
You don’t wait for a response before you’re grabbing your tennis shoes and bag off of his floor, not even bothering to put the shoes on your feet before storming out of the bedroom and making a beeline for the front door.
You’re aware of footsteps trailing after you, of Frank calling your name in a desperate whisper-shout, but you don’t stop. You aren’t thinking, you aren’t processing what just transpired, you just want to go back to your place, scream into a pillow, and hope that when you wake up in the morning, your heart is no longer doing gymnastics in your fucking ribcage.
“Please,” he breathes, his hand blanketing yours over the doorknob when you go to turn it. “Hear me out for just a second, okay?”
You don’t look up. His palm feels like wildfire against your skin and your brain is screaming at you to yank your hand away but you’re frozen in place.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he starts, voice a notch above a whisper. “If you want to leave, you can leave. But I can’t let you walk out of here thinking that this is still just sex to me. It was at first. I don’t know exactly when that changed for me, but it did. And I think it did for you, too.”
You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. All of the words that you know you should probably say pile up in your throat.
I can’t be what you want me to be. I don’t know how.
I’m scared of hurting you. I’m scared of getting hurt.
It’s easier for me to shut down than to admit how I really feel.
I don’t remember how to let someone in. I wish I could.
For you, I wish I could.
You swallow them all down.
But you don’t tell him he’s wrong, either.
“I’ll see you at work, Frank.”
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
Though the cravings have yet to subside, Frank is now a month sober from the exact thing his therapist had warned him about in the earliest days of his recovery.
Unlike when he got clean from benzos, this specific brand of newfound sobriety isn’t his choice. It’s yours.
He would never choose this for himself.
But still, he has surprised himself. Hasn’t reached out, no matter how much he has wanted to. Hasn’t texted you, no matter how many drafts he’s typed and deleted. Hasn’t called, even though it has killed him inside to watch your name get lower and lower in his call history. He’s given you space at work and has only talked to you when it pertains directly to a case.
He’s hated every fucking second of it, but he can officially say that he is thirty days clean. If the past thirty days have taught him anything, though, it’s this: he’d happily fall back into old habits, if only you’d give him the chance.
Because it isn’t the sex that he misses most. The sex doesn’t even crack the top ten things he thinks about when he’s trying to fall asleep at night.
It’s the way you’d occasionally forget a hair clip or chapstick on his bedside table and he’d find little pieces of you when you weren’t around and smile. It’s the way he’d get a text from you when he least expected it. It’s the way you’d ask about his children, and make a point to celebrate his recovery milestones even when he didn’t.
And now he’s here, thirty days without you, and one thing has become abundantly clear to him: he didn’t fall back into addiction, he fell in love.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
The news comes on a random Tuesday.
Temple University Hospital. Philadelphia. An internal medicine based fellowship you had impulsively applied for the night after you slept with Frank for the last time.
You had already made peace with the fact you weren’t going to get it. Didn’t think you even stood a chance, really, and you were okay with that. You had already been offered a pediatrics fellowship here in Pittsburgh, anyway.
Then the email appears in your inbox on a random Tuesday morning while you’re at work.
Suddenly, you have what most doctors approaching the end of their residencies don’t have: options.
And because you can’t talk to the one person you most (selfishly) want to talk to about it all, you talk to Cassie, instead.
“Wait. Temple?” She exclaims. “As in Philadelphia? I didn’t even know you had applied! What happened to pediatrics here in Pittsburgh?”
You sigh, taking a seat on the concrete curb in the ambulance bay. “It was really last minute. I didn’t say anything because I really didn’t think I’d get it. And as for the peds fellowship…” You shrug. “I don’t know what I’ll do now.”
“Oh my god,” she laughs, sitting down beside you. “That’s amazing. Do you know how hard it is to get into that program? They’re crazy selective.”
You force a smile. “I know.”
Cassie’s smile falters into concern. “Why does it seem like you aren’t thrilled about this?”
“I am,” you answer way too quickly, hugging your knees. “I’m just…surprised, that’s all. It’s big news.”
She stares at you as if you’re a patient who’s lying to her about how much pain they’re in. “You sure that’s all?”
Before you can bullshit a response, the automatic doors to the hospital slide open, and the very reason that you find it impossible to jump for joy right now steps outside.
He’s saying something to an EMS worker, completely oblivious to you watching him from across the bay, but the mere sight of him makes your heartbeat stutter and palms go clammy.
“I’m sure,” you force out, your eyes still glued to Frank. “It’s just…”
“Just…?” Cassie prompts, then follows your gaze. A few seconds of heavy silence pass between you before the pieces click into place. “Oh.”
You nod slowly, your throat tightening. “Yeah. Oh.”
She clicks her tongue. “So that’s why you submitted a last minute application for a fellowship in Philly.”
You can’t deny it. Not when you know she’s right. Not when you’re staring right at him with every feeling you’ve been trying to bury since the very first time you kissed him bubbling to the surface.
“I really fucked things up, Cass.”
You finally look away from him, your eyes burning with the threat of all of the unshed tears that you’ve refused to let spill for the last month.
“Between you and Langdon?” She asks gently.
You let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. I completely shut down the second things started to get real. He told me how he felt and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I feel the same. I just ran like I always do and…”
“And now you’re thinking about running to Philadelphia.”
Again, you can’t even deny it. Not in any way that would be halfway convincing.
“Temple would be a great opportunity,” you mumble instead, looking down at your shoe.
Cassie purses her lips. “It would be,” she agrees. “But moving five hours away isn’t going to magically erase your feelings. You have great opportunities here, too. And I don’t just mean peds.”
She nods in Frank’s direction. You glance back over to where he still stands chatting with the EMS worker. At the same moment, he looks up and his blue eyes meet yours.
You exhale, hoping that he doesn’t have a hidden talent for reading lips. “I don’t know if he even wants to talk to me at this point.”
She snorts. “Please. If the way he’s been moping around like a dejected puppy for the last month means anything, then you have nothing to worry about.” She pauses. “Look, if you really want to go to Philly, then I’ll help you pack. But if you’re gonna go, go for the right reasons. Not because facing your feelings scares you more than the thought of moving three hundred miles away.”
You hate that she’s right. But not as much as you hate the fact that you know she’s right, and still might take the easy way out, anyway.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
What hurts Frank more than anything is that he doesn’t hear the news directly from you.
He isn’t supposed to hear it at all, actually. He only finds out because he happens to be standing a few feet away at the nurse’s station, and Victoria’s voice carries.
“I heard about your fellowship offer from Temple,” Victoria practically sings. “That’s amazing. I’m so happy for you. Internal medicine, right?”
Frank doesn’t even look up from his tablet at first. He isn’t sure who Victoria is talking to, but he has no reason to believe it’s you. You didn’t apply to any fellowships in internal medicine. You’ve always been interested in going into emergency pediatrics—
“Oh—” Your nervous laugh causes Frank’s eyes to shoot up. Your back is to him, so he can’t see your facial expression. “Yeah, thanks,” you tell Victoria, your voice an octave higher than it typically is.
He doesn’t register the rest of the conversation because of a shrill ringing in his ears that makes him bolt to the restroom.
It’s been one month since his last legitimate conversation with you, and now you’re moving to Philadelphia? For a fellowship in internal medicine, which you’ve never expressed interest in during all the years you’ve worked together or months you slept together?
And you didn’t even tell him yourself. He heard it from Victoria talking so loudly that patients in fucking triage probably heard the news.
Not that you owe him anything. Of course you don’t have to run your life decisions by him. He was just blindsided is all.
Blindsided, and more devastated than he probably has any right to be.
He wishes he could be as happy for you as Victoria is. But no matter how much Frank works on himself, no matter how much time he spends in therapy or how many self-help books he reads, he’s always been a selfish man when he’s in love.
But you aren’t his to be selfish over. He knows this. He’s painfully aware of it every time he sees you at work and every time he feels your absence when he’s alone at night.
So when he sees you walking to your car in the parking garage after work that night, he tries to do the right thing even though it feels wrong.
“So, Philly?”
You come to a halt beside your car, slowly turning around to face him. You purse your lips in the way that Frank knows that you normally do when you’re nervous, adjusting your bag over your shoulder.
“You heard about that, huh?”
Frank stops a couple feet away from you, one hand on the strap of his backpack and one crammed in his pants pocket. “Yeah, Javadi doesn’t exactly whisper.”
“Ah,” you breathe. Then, with a small laugh, “No, I suppose she doesn’t.”
An awkward beat of silence passes between you as it dawns on Frank that this is damn near exactly where he stood months ago when you first kissed him. The realization makes his gaze flash to your lips.
God, what the hell is he doing?
He clears his throat and starts to take a step back. “Well, I just wanted to say congratulations. Temple will be really lucky to have you—”
“I haven’t decided anything yet,” you interject quickly, the words nearly running together. “I just found out yesterday so I…I don’t really know what I’m going to do yet.”
Frank hopes that his face doesn’t show the sudden relief he feels to hear of your indecision.
“But I’m sorry you found out that way,” you add in a smaller voice, not meeting his eye. “I was going to tell you, once I made a decision.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he says softly. “You don’t owe me anything. I just want you to be happy. Even if it’s not here.” He pauses and adds the words that taste like bile when they leave his mouth. “Even if it’s not with me.”
But goddamn, do I wish it was, he thinks.
A storm of different emotions flicker across your face in the span of about two seconds. For one of them, Frank thinks you might step toward him.
But it’s just wishful thinking, or maybe the shitty parking garage lighting.
“Thank you, Frank.”
Anything else he could possibly say would be solely for his own benefit, so he nods.
And he doesn’t want to risk ruining the moment, knowing there’s a chance that he may not have many more with you.
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The words on the screens in front of you bleed together.
The email you received yesterday morning from Temple University Hospital is open on your laptop screen. The iPad in your hands displays UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s website.
You’ve scanned and scrolled as if the answer you’re searching for will appear in bold letters across one of the screens, but since you got home from work a few hours ago, the only decision you’ve succeeded in making is chamomile over peppermint tea.
You thought taking a hot shower might help you clear your mind. All that resulted in was remembering all of the times that you ended up at Frank’s or he ended up at yours after work and you’d shower together, washing off the long day with your hands and lips on each other the entire time.
After cutting your shower short, you figured eating something other than a protein bar would help you gain at least a little mental clarity - but then you opened your fridge to see leftover takeout from the Italian place down the road that you know Frank likes, and completely lost your appetite.
The following hours weren’t much different.
Put on body lotion - remembered how much Frank loved the smell of it. Turned on music - the first fucking song that played on shuffle was by an artist that Frank introduced you to. Searched through a pile of laundry for a cardigan - found a t-shirt Frank accidentally left at your place over a month ago that you can’t bring yourself to give back to him.
He’s still everywhere. It’s been a month and he’s still occupying spaces that he hasn’t been in weeks. In your apartment and in your brain and in your heart.
And to top it all off, the words that he had said to you in the parking garage tonight won’t stop replaying in your head.
I just want you to be happy. Even if it’s not here. Even if it’s not with me.
But what if it is? What if it is here? What if it is with him?
You sigh, rubbing your eyes, but it does little to improve the quality of the words on the screens in front of you. Maybe, if you put on your reading glasses, everything will become clear to—
Your hand freezes on a piece of paper in your bedside table drawer as you’re searching for your glasses.
A bright blue, wrinkled sticky note. You don’t even have to flip it over to remember what it says but you do, anyway.
Stop overthinking. You made the right call. You always do.
Also, stop scowling.
Frank’s handwriting. He’d scribbled the words, crumpled the paper up, and flicked it at you across your desks while charting after a particularly brutal trauma that he knew you were beating yourself up over.
It had been the first thing to make you smile that whole day. It was a reminder that you desperately needed at that moment. And it was from Frank. Of course you kept it.
And now here it is. At the exact moment you so desperately need that reminder once again.
Stop overthinking.
So that’s exactly what you do. You stop overthinking, and do what you should have done a long time ago.
He’s probably already asleep, but you put on your shoes.
There’s a voice in the back of your mind telling you that you’re probably too late, but you grab your car keys and make the short drive to his place.
And there’s a tight ball of anxiety in the pit of your stomach that begs you to turn around, but you raise your hand and knock on his front door.
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
Frank is convinced that he must be dreaming.
He didn’t actually hear a knock and open his front door to you standing outside at midnight.
There’s no way this isn’t his subconscious playing some cruel joke on him. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve appeared in his dreams, but it is by far the most realistic he’s had. He can feel the chill of the night wind as it blows the familiar scent of your body lotion in his direction and it is all so, so lifelike.
It doesn’t register that he is very much awake and you are very much here until you speak.
“Shit.”
It’s the first word out of your mouth.
“I’m sorry,” you huff. “Are the kids here right now? I hope I didn’t wake them up. I didn’t really think this through. I just got in my car and drove here before I could chicken out because I’m tired of chickening out and—”
“Hey, hey,” he soothes, stepping over the threshold of his doorway. He almost reaches out and touches you, but stops himself at the last second.
You’re here. You’re actually fucking here right now. It’s the middle of the night and you’re in your pajamas and slippers and he has no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re here.
“What’s going on?” He asks gently, unable to keep obvious concern from his tone. “It’s…after midnight. Is everything okay?”
You nod. “Everything is fine. I’m sorry to freak you out. I just…I told you that I was going to tell you whenever I came to a decision.”
Frank stares at you, his mouth slightly agape. You did say that…approximately five hours ago.
The shock and the hope he had initially felt upon realizing that you’re standing on his front porch is quickly replaced with dread at what you might say next.
He swallows, his voice rough. “So…you made a decision, then? About Philadelphia?”
Another nod, followed by a smile that he can’t quite read. “Philly sounds great. I mean…the Eagles, the Liberty Bell…cheesesteaks.” Your shoulders lift in a small shrug. “And the internal medicine program at Temple would be a really great opportunity.”
Frank drops your gaze, bracing for what surely comes next.
“But Philadelphia does not have the guy that I love.”
His eyes shoot back up. You’re staring at him, eyes wide and closer to tears than he thinks he’s ever seen from you. Before he can speak, you take a step closer and he forgets how to breathe.
“It doesn’t have you.”
Frank knows it defies all science and logic, but he swears the entire city freezes around you two right then and there.
“I’m sorry,” you blurt before his brain has a chance to catch up. “Frank, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have walked out on you like I did. I shouldn’t have shut you out, I shouldn’t have taken this long to get my head out of my ass—”
“Hey—” he tries gently, but you’re on a roll now.
“—and I should have told you that you were right. It wasn’t just sex to me, either. I don’t think it ever really was. And I get it if I’m too late. I get it if you can’t give me another chance. But I’m not going anywhere, I’m done running away from what I feel, and if I have to prove every day that I love—”
That’s it. He won’t listen to another word.
Not that he doesn’t love the sound of them coming from your lips because goddamn, he does. Every word, every apology, every promise you’re willing to give, Frank will take.
But he can’t just stand here and watch the way your hands are starting to shake and listen to your voice begin to tremble when every part of him that has missed you for the last month screams at him to pull you close, so that’s exactly what he does.
It only takes a fraction of a second for you to process that his lips are moving against yours.
Your hands fly to his hair, his own dropping from your face to your waist to pull you flush against him. You gasp into his mouth, a pretty noise that Frank is happy to swallow down. It takes no time at all for the kiss to turn fervent, a clash of tongue and teeth that makes him grateful that it’s the dead of night and all of his neighbors are asleep.
“—you,” you finish when you reluctantly break apart, your breath warm against his lips. “I love you.”
The three words are everything he’s been waiting to hear since the first night you kissed him. He just didn’t know it at the time.
“I love you, too, baby,” he murmurs low. A smirk forms on his kiss-swollen lips. “It is okay that I call you that now, right?”
You let out a sound that is half laugh, half sob at the words. You grab his face in your hands and pull him down again for one more kiss, this one shorter but just as sweet.
“Please,” you sigh, smiling up at him. “Because you weren’t wrong about the effect it has on me.”
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thank you so much for reading. if you comment/reblog i love you forever n ever 💗💗💗
no pressure tags for those who were interested/asked to be tagged ~ @thatcorporategirlie @cherryblossom-barnes @elixirfromthestars @highlandhour @mistressofallthingsgeeky @0syd-the-squid0
BRO WHY ARE PEOPLE SO FUCKIN’ HYPERSEXUAL OVER Bucky Barnes?!?!
You’ve turned him into a motherfucking sex object. (Imma rant, he means a lot to me.)
The way I’ve seen some of these people write him and talk about him is actually fucking insane!!!
No, he would NOT fuck your brains out like a madman, would NOT choke you, would NOT throw you around like a ragdoll, or hit you, or yank your hair, or be super rough, violent, aggressive, and feral.
He was literally the fucking Winter Soldier. He has fucking trauma, he would NOT be violent towards his lover. It’s not in his nature.
We literally see him interact with women romantically and he’s so sweet and gentle the entire time. He’s the gentleman type of guy. We literally see that shit on screen, it’s canon. He’s a lover. A serious, traumatized touch-starved, yet sweet gentleman.
I can see him being very loving, intense, and passionate as fuck but nothing more.
Some of you people have turned him into a daddy dom human sex doll or some shit, and that’s it. He has no depth, no in-character personality, just sex, dirty talk, sex, and more sex. That’s not what he is.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that still actually loves him and understands his complex character instead of just lusting.
Every time I see bullshit about women never EVER being able to beat men in any sport, I think about how in martial arts classes I, a cis woman, 5' 8" and 145 pounds, regularly beat the tar out of 6' 2" 230 pound cis dude weightlifters. One guy ragequit class. He came in cocky as hell and talking the standard bs line about how a woman simply never could beat a man in a fight because they're physically weaker and our instructor was like. Okay. Put the pads on you're sparring her. Yes, her, the one 4" shorter and 100 pounds lighter than you.
It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.
And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.
I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.
Anyway, don't ever fall for it, ladies, and there's absolutely no goddamn reason to get your knickers in a twist about trans people in sports.
While a counterexample does disprove an absolute rule I think the fact of sex/gender physical differences does still apply in general
I udnerstand that in fight sports a smaller person might be able to get their opponent to shift their bulk disadvantageously and that bodybuilders might have great muscle definition but not as much practical strength, that a trained women might beat an inexpert man even though the expert man would still win against the expert woman
If this argument was real, we would not need two different categories at the Olympics, on golf courses, or in professional team sports. Why have a WNBA, or a Women's World Cup, except for the tacit admission that women cannot physically compete with me at the sport? Why don't the underpaid WNBA players ditch their league and demand to play in the one with better salaries? Why doesn't the women's national soccer team challenge their male counterparts to a match or series of matches to prove they deserve to be paid as much, or demand to compete for the real World Cup to show how much further they can take the US in the tournament, and claim the appropriate compensation? Why is the only example anyone can cite a tennis match where a woman in her 20s beat a man in his 50s? Why did that woman go on to help found a female tennis league, instead of using her win as a wedge to get into the higher-paid men's tour?
Because the men's leagues won't accept those challenges.
Major league baseball stopped allowing women to sign after Jackie Mitchell, a talented pitcher and 17 year old girl, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. They terminated her contract and she ended up working as a dental assistant instead. No woman has been allowed to play against the men since in baseball, and it ain't because we couldn't hack it.
That is one singular example off the top of my head.
I was in MMA classes until I was 14. I’m a cis woman. I was 5’8, 125 pounds soaking wet. But I was strong. I always sparred with the older, bigger guys in my class, one day my favorite sparring buddy told me to actually hit him, just once. So I hit him. Body cross to the gut. He doubled over and said, yup, got it, never gonna underestimate you again. He never knew I’d still pulled the punch.
Men might be bigger than me, and they might take me out but I will be damned if I don’t go out fighting. They will be bleeding. Because if it comes down to me or them I’m giving myself the best damn chance I’ve got.
I know OP was talking about controlled situations in a class, but I’d rather a man underestimate me. It gives me a tactical advantage if he tries to pull some shit.
Nobody expects the marshmallow girl wearing glasses to know how to fight. And I like it that way.
Pairing: Frontiersman!Bucky Barnes x Female Reader
Tags: Western AU. Shotgun Wedding. Strangers to Lovers. Slight Angst. Comfort. Domestic Fluff. Slow Burn. Smut.
Warnings: Reader has Heterochromia. Loss of Virginity. Period-Typical Gender Roles and Expectations.
Summary: She came to White Creek for a teaching position that didn't exist. He needed a wife but never expected to find one like this.
Word Count: 7.7k
Previous Chapter - Masterlist
He guided her toward the cleared space where couples were beginning to form lines: two rows facing each other, men on one side, women on the other.
"It's simple," he said as they walked, his hand still at her back. "The caller shouts the figures, you follow along. Everyone's facin’ their partner most of the time, so keep your eyes on me."
"Figures?" she repeated.
"Moves. Dosido, allemande, swing… You ain’t need to worry about the names. Just watch what everyone else does and follow my lead when we're together."
They reached the lines, and he positioned her across from him in the women's row. The space between them was maybe six feet, close enough that she could see the way his eyes tracked her, the slight curve of his mouth.
Around them, other couples were settling into place. She recognized Nell and Tom a few positions down, Sarah and her husband closer to the front. Even some of the older couples had joined, Carl and Agnes Hayes among them.
A man with a fiddle stood near the corner. Someone else, one of the loggers she didn't know by name, called out, "Everyone ready?"
A chorus of affirmatives rose from the group.
"Alright then," the caller said, raising his voice to carry over the chatter. "We'll start with an easy one for the newcomers. 'Petronella'. Everyone knows it?"
Most people nodded or called out agreement. She stayed quiet, her heart beating faster.
The fiddle started, a lively, bouncing tune that made her want to tap her foot even before anyone moved.
"Forward and back!" the caller shouted.
The lines surged toward each other, then retreated. She followed a half-beat late, watching the women around her.
"Forward and back again!"
This time she moved with them, stepping forward until she was close enough to see the amusement in Bucky's eyes, then back again.
"Dosido your partner!"
She hesitated -what the hell was a dosido?- but Bucky was already moving toward her. He circled around her right side, his shoulder passing close to hers, then around her back. She turned instinctively, following the motion, and ended up facing him again from the same spot.
"Good," he said, just loud enough for her to hear over the music.
"Right-hand star!" the caller shouted.
The couples moved into groups of four, her and Bucky with the pair beside them. Everyone extended their right hands to the center, forming a star shape, and began walking in a circle.
She focused on keeping her footing, on not stepping on anyone's skirts or boots, on trying to anticipate what came next.
The figures kept coming: swing your partner, promenade, ladies chain. She stumbled more than once, turned the wrong direction during an allemande, and completely missed a move she didn't catch the name of.
But Bucky was always there. Guiding her with a hand at her waist, a look, a subtle gesture. And when she got it wrong, he just grinned and pulled her back into position.
Around them, people were laughing. Not at her, she realized, but just... enjoying themselves. The music, the movement, the chaos of so many bodies trying to stay in sync.
And she was laughing too.
Eventually, the caller shouted, "Swing your neighbor!"
Before she could process what that meant, Tom Johnson was there, catching her hand and spinning her in a quick circle. She caught a glimpse of Nell being spun by the man on her other side, laughing at something he'd said.
And then she was back in line, slightly breathless, and Tom was grinning at her before returning to his own partner.
The music kept going, relentless and cheerful.
"Down the line!"
The top couple -the pair at the head of the formation- joined hands and skipped down between the two rows while everyone else clapped. When they reached the bottom, they formed an arch with their arms, and the next couple ducked under and repeated the pattern.
She watched, trying to memorize the sequence, and realized with growing certainty that eventually, it would be her and Bucky's turn.
"Progression!" the caller shouted.
The lines changed. She moved up one position, and suddenly the couple she was facing wasn't Bucky anymore; it was a man she didn't know, one of the other loggers, with a weathered face and a friendly gap-toothed smile.
Her stomach dropped.
It was irrational. She knew it was irrational.
"Forward and back!"
She moved automatically, but her eyes searched for Bucky. Found him one position down, now facing a woman she recognized from the food tables. Younger, maybe her age, with dark hair and a bright smile.
He caught her gaze for a brief second and gave her a small nod.
You're fine. Keep going.
She forced herself to look away, to focus on her own partner.
"Dosido your partner!"
She circled the stranger, keeping her expression neutral, trying not to think about how different it felt to move around someone who wasn't Bucky.
The man was polite. His hands, when they touched hers during the star, were dry and work-roughened, impersonal. He smelled like tobacco and woodsmoke.
Not Bucky.
The figures continued, right hand star, left hand star, swing your partner.
When the stranger's hand settled at her waist for the swing, it felt all wrong. Too light. Too careful. As if she were made of glass instead of flesh and bone.
The stranger spun her competently, released her right on time, and she ended up back in her spot in line.
She counted the steps in her head, willing the progression to come faster.
Around her, people were laughing, enjoying themselves. The music played on, relentless and cheerful.
She didn't look down the line. Didn't want to see Bucky's hands on that woman's waist, even in something as innocent as contradance.
One more figure, she told herself. Maybe two.
"Dosido your corner!"
She circled the woman beside her -Sarah, she realized- and Sarah gave her a quick, sympathetic smile. Did it show on her face? How much she wanted to be back across from her own husband?
"Progression!"
The lines shifted again, and she was back across from Bucky.
His eyes found hers instantly, and something in his expression, maybe the flatness of his stare, suggested he hadn't enjoyed the last progression any more than she had.
"Miss me?" he asked, just loud enough for her to hear as they stepped forward and back.
"Terribly," she said, and she meant it more than he probably realized.
His expression changed, something possessive and serious flickered across his face before smoothing into a grin. But she'd seen it. That flash of... what? Satisfaction? Relief?
"Good," he said, and there was an edge to his voice that made her stomach flip.
"Swing your partner!"
He caught her around the waist and spun her, and the difference was immediate.
Faster than the stranger had moved her. Closer. Close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through all the layers of fabric between them. His hand at her waist was firm and sure, pulling her into the turn with confidence that made her head spin.
She laughed as the room blurred around them.
This. This was right.
His hand, and the way he moved her, like he knew exactly how her body would respond. When they stopped, she was dizzy. Not from the spinning… or not just from the spinning.
She wanted to say something, but the music was already moving into the next figure, and the caller's voice rose above the noise.
"Down the line!"
Bucky squeezed her hand once before they separated to let the top couple skip through.
But she felt that squeeze all the way through the rest of the dance.
----
The contradance ran several more rounds until the fiddle player finally lowered his instrument with a flourish as the last notes faded. The room erupted in applause and laughter, people fanning themselves, reaching for water, catching their breath.
She was breathing hard, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead despite the cold outside. Her face felt warm. From the exertion, from the punch still in her system, from the way Bucky had been looking at her every time they'd come back together in the line.
"Well done," he said, appearing at her elbow with a cup of water. "For someone who ain't know what a dosido was an hour ago."
She took the water gratefully, drinking half of it in one go. "I stepped on at least three people's feet."
"Maybe four," he corrected, grinning. "But who's countin’?"
She swatted his arm lightly, and he caught her hand, holding it for just a moment longer than necessary before letting go.
She felt that small touch like a spark.
Around them, people were milling about, some heading outside for air, others clustering near the drink table. The fiddle player was conferring with someone about the next set.
Then a voice rose from near the front of the room. Clear, refined, and just a touch condescending.
"Perhaps we might try something a bit more... refined? A waltz, maybe?"
She turned to see the mayor's wife standing with the banker's wife, both of them looking perfectly composed despite the heat of the room. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in their fine dresses.
There was a beat of silence.
Then someone -one of the loggers- let out a low whistle. "Ooh, fancy."
Laughter rippled through the crowd, but it wasn't mean-spirited. More like amusement at the incongruity of it, waltzing in a frontier town hall after contradance.
"I think that's a fine idea," Agnes Hayes said, her tone diplomatic but with a hint of mischief. "If the fiddle player knows one."
The fiddle player shrugged. "I know a few."
"Well then," Carl Hayes said, offering his arm to Agnes with exaggerated formality. "Shall we, my dear?"
More laughter. But people were starting to pair off, couples moving back toward the cleared space. The atmosphere had changed, less raucous, more curious. Like they were all in on the joke but willing to play along.
Bucky turned to her. "You know how to waltz?"
"I do," she said. "Do you?"
"Enough to get by." He held out his hand. "Come on."
She took it, and he led her back onto the floor.
The space felt different now. More intimate, even with all the other couples gathering around them.
The fiddle started a slower, lilting melody.
Bucky's hand pressed at her waist, and she placed hers on his shoulder. Their other hands joined, held at a proper height.
Appropriate. Exactly the way she'd been taught.
But it didn't feel proper.
Not when it was him.
"Ready?" he asked quietly.
She nodded, and then they were moving.
It was completely different from the contradance.
No shouted instructions. No changing partners every few bars. No chaos of bodies moving in patterns around them.
Just the two of them, turning in slow circles, her skirts brushing against his legs with each step. She'd forgotten what this felt like. The waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three, the rhythm so ingrained she didn't have to think about it.
But she'd never done it like this.
Back home, the few times she'd danced at all with instructors, they had kept her at arm's length. Maintained the proper distance. Looked over her shoulder or past her, never quite meeting her gaze.
Because looking at her meant seeing her eyes. Meant acknowledging the girl with the devil's mark.
But Bucky was looking right at her.
His hand at her waist was warm and solid. Not tentative or careful like the lessons. Not performatively correct like the rare partner who'd been obligated to dance with her.
The room moved around them. Other couples turning, the fiddle playing, voices low, and occasional laughter.
But it all felt distant. Muffled, like there was a bubble around just the two of them.
"You've done this a lot?" she asked quietly.
"Once or twice." His hand at her waist pressed slightly more firmly, guiding her through a turn. "You're good at this."
"I had lessons," she admitted. "My parents thought it was important."
"For findin’ a husband?" There was no judgment in his voice, just curiosity.
She felt something twist in her chest.
"For being... acceptable. Refined." She met his eyes, saw him watching her carefully. "They thought if I could dance well enough, carry myself properly, be accomplished in all the right ways, maybe someone would overlook... the rest."
She didn't need to specify what "the rest" was.
"Not that it mattered much in the end," she added, trying to keep her voice light.
His expression changed, a shadow passing over his face. His hand tightened almost imperceptibly at her waist.
"Their loss," he said, and there was an edge to his voice.
Like she was something worth having. Worth wanting.
"Hey," he said quietly, and she realized she'd missed a step.
She forced herself to focus. One-two-three. Follow his lead. Don't think about-
"You alright?" he asked.
"Yes," she managed. "Just... thank you. For saying that."
"It's true," he said simply. "Anyone who couldn't see that you were worth knowin’ was a damn fool."
She blinked hard, once, and concentrated very carefully on the next turn.
Around them, other couples were dancing. Some with skill, others fumbling through the steps. Carl and Agnes were surprisingly graceful. Tom and Nell were arguing quietly about whose fault it was that they kept going off-count, but both were smiling.
And somewhere in the crowd, she caught a glimpse of Mary Collins watching them with a certain assessment that made her want to stand up straighter. Made her hyperaware of every imperfection, the way her hair was probably coming loose from its pins, the fact that her dress, while nice, was nothing compared to what some of the wealthier women wore.
Her shoulders tensed.
"Don't," Bucky said quietly.
She looked up at him. "Don't what?"
"Worry about what she thinks."
His thumb brushed against her waist. Just once, barely perceptible through all the layers of fabric and boning. But she felt it. Felt the deliberate pressure of it, the casual possessiveness.
"You're doin’ fine," he continued, his voice low enough that only she could hear.
"I wasn't-"
"You were." He turned them smoothly, and she had to focus to keep the count, to not stumble when her heart had just kicked up for reasons that had nothing to do with the dance. "And for the record, you look better in that dress than she does in hers. Even with the torture device underneath."
A surprised laugh escaped her before she could stop it. "Bucky."
"What? It's true." His eyes held hers, steady and warm. "You think I ain’t noticed you could barely breathe at lunch?"
"It's not that bad."
"It's ridiculous," he said flatly. "But you look beautiful anyway."
Beautiful.
He'd said it out loud, where anyone could hear.
Her foot faltered -just barely- and she felt herself lose the rhythm.
His hand at her waist tightened, pulling her back into the count without missing a beat.
One-two-three. One-two-three.
She forced herself to keep moving, to keep her feet following the pattern even though her mind had gone completely blank.
When was the last time someone had called her that? Had anyone ever called her that?
Her mother had called her ‘handsome’ once. A diplomatic word. A word that meant ‘presentable enough.’
Her brother had never commented on her appearance at all, except to remind her to keep her hair neat, her posture straight, her expression neutral. "Don't draw attention," he'd said.
And the men back home -the few who'd been forced into her company at social gatherings- had looked everywhere but at her face.
But Bucky was looking.
And he'd called her beautiful.
"Thank you," she managed.
The music swelled, and he turned them again, the movement bringing her marginally closer. Still proper, still acceptable by any standard.
But it felt intimate anyway.
"You're welcome," he said, his voice low, meant only for her.
Then, after a pause, quieter still: "Though if I'm bein’ honest, watchin’ you dance with others earlier made me want to end the whole damn thing."
Her eyes snapped to his.
He was watching her with a mix of amusement and frustration and something darker.
"Jealous?" she asked, testing the word.
His jaw worked for a moment, like he was deciding whether to admit it.
"Concerned," he said finally. Then, with a slight grimace, "And yeah. Maybe a little jealous."
The admission chased away the last remnants of nervousness about being here, about being watched, about what people thought.
"It's just contradance," she said, but she was smiling now. "Everyone dances with everyone."
"I know that." His hand flexed slightly at her waist. "Didn't make it easier to watch."
She wanted to say something. What, she wasn't sure. Something about how wrong it had felt to dance with anyone else. How she'd counted every second until the progression brought her back to him.
But the words stuck in her throat.
The music began to wind down, and when it ended, they stood there for a moment, still holding each other, neither quite ready to let go.
His hand was still at her waist. Hers still on his shoulder.
She could feel his breath, see the rise and fall of his chest, and the way he was looking at her.
Then someone started clapping, and the spell broke.
He stepped back, releasing her waist but keeping hold of her hand as they moved off the floor with the other couples.
But his thumb traced a small circle against her palm before he let go.
"Ready to head home?" he asked quietly.
She glanced around the room, at the people still laughing and talking, at the fiddle player tuning up for another set, at the warmth and noise and life of it all.
Then she looked back at him.
"Yes," she said. "I'm ready."
----
They made their way toward the door, weaving through clusters of people still talking, laughing, showing no signs of slowing down. The fiddle had started up again -another contradance by the sound of it- and she could hear the caller's voice rising over the music.
Near the food tables, she spotted Nell and Sarah gathering their empty dishes. They didn’t waltz, it seemed.
"We're heading out," she said, catching Nell's attention.
"Already?" Nell glanced toward the dance floor, then back at her with a knowing look. "Party's still going."
"Bucky has work tomorrow," she said. "He could use the extra rest."
Nell's eyebrow rose slightly, but she didn't push. "Of course."
"Actually," Sarah said, "we were just saying we should all meet up in town sometime. Make a day of it, errands and such."
"That sounds lovely," she said, genuinely pleased at the idea. "When were you thinking?"
"Maybe Thursday?" Nell suggested. "We could do our shopping, then grab something at the ‘hotel’ dining room. They've got decent coffee."
"Thursday works," she agreed. "I'll be there."
"Good." Nell squeezed her arm briefly. "It was nice having you here today. Really."
"Thank you," she said. "For everything."
Nell just smiled, and the meaning was clear: don't mention it.
They said their goodbyes, collected their now-empty crate and clothes from where they'd left them, and headed outside.
The afternoon air was cold, the sun already low on the horizon. Late November meant the days were short, and they'd be racing the sunset to get home before full dark.
She pulled her winter cloak around herself while Bucky shrugged into his coat.
The street was quieter now than it'd been at midday, most people still inside the hall. A few men stood outside the saloon, smoking and talking in low voices.
Bucky helped her up onto the wagon seat, his hand steady at her elbow even though she didn't really need the assistance. Her legs were tired from dancing, but she was steady enough.
He swung up beside her and gathered the reins, clicking his tongue to get the horse moving.
----
The sun was low, maybe two hours of good light left. They'd make it home before full dark if they kept a decent pace. No reason to rush…
Except he wanted to.
Had wanted to since the moment she'd pinned that brooch to her dress this morning and smiled at him like he'd given her something precious instead of a piece of cheap white copper from a camp peddler.
Maybe since before that. Since she'd stood in their cabin in nothing but her chemise and asked him to lace up that damned corset, and he'd had to keep his hands steady and impersonal when all he'd wanted was to do something else.
Two months. He'd waited two months.
He could wait another hour.
The road stretched ahead, familiar and rutted. He kept his attention on it, on the horse, on anything other than the woman sitting beside him.
She was quiet. Watching the landscape, her hands folded in her lap. The brooch caught the late afternoon light every time she shifted.
He'd been watching her all day. Couldn't seem to help it.
Watching her navigate the food tables with the other women, her shoulders straight and her chin up, even though he knew she'd been nervous. Watching her laugh with Nell Johnson and Sarah Calhoun like she'd known them for years instead of hours. Watching her move through the contradance, stumbling sometimes but trying, always trying.
Watching her dance with Tom Johnson during that partner swap, and feeling something ugly and possessive in his gut.
She was his wife. His.
And some rational part of his brain knew that was the whole point of contradance: everyone danced with everyone, it didn't mean anything.
But the irrational part, the part that had spent two months sleeping next to her and touching her and learning what made her gasp and arch against him, that part had wanted to walk across the floor and pull her back to his side of the line where she belonged.
He'd managed not to.
And then the waltz.
He'd danced before, enough to know the steps, enough to not embarrass himself. But he'd never danced with her. Had never had to reconcile the woman in his arms in public with the woman who came apart under his hands in private.
The way she'd looked up at him when he'd called her beautiful…
He shifted on the seat, adjusting his grip on the reins.
Focus. Road. Horse. Home.
Behind the seat, the wool blanket was folded where he'd stashed it that morning. The temperature had dropped since they'd left town, and it would only get colder as the sun set.
He glanced at her. She'd pulled her cloak tighter, but her hands were hidden under the fabric. Cold, probably.
"Hold these a second," he said, passing her the reins.
She took them without question, and he twisted around to grab the blanket. Shook it out and put it over both their laps, securing it around her legs.
His hand lingered on her thigh.
He told himself it was to make sure the blanket was firm. That the weight of his palm pressing through her skirt and petticoat was purely practical.
He let his hand rest there for a moment before he took the reins back and focused on the road again.
But he'd felt her reaction. The way she'd gone very still. The slight hitch in her breathing.
He didn't examine why he'd done it. Didn't want to admit, that every time she looked at him today with those mismatched eyes, it got a little harder to remember why he was waiting.
The wagon hit a rut, jostling them both.
She winced, her hand going to her side.
He glanced at her. "You alright?"
"Fine," she said. "Just this damned corset."
Damned corset was right.
He'd watched her struggle with it all day. The way she'd shifted in her seat during lunch, trying to find a position that didn't dig the boning into her more than necessary. The way she'd taken shallow breaths during the waltz, the tight lacing restricting her.
"That thing's coming off the second we get home," he said.
It was a practical statement. She'd been uncomfortable all day, and he'd get her out of it as soon as they were through the door. Help her unlace, let her breathe properly again.
That was all he meant.
But then, in a voice carefully neutral, she murmured, "I thought you were tired."
He turned to look at her and blinked.
Her expression was composed. Almost innocent. But her eyes…
She knew exactly what she was saying, knew exactly what she was implying.
And she wasn't drunk. He'd made sure of that back at the hall, which meant this wasn't the punch talking, this was her.
That something in him that had been held carefully in check all this time finally snapped.
"I ain’t tired."
He saw her swallow. Saw the way her fingers tightened slightly in the folds of her skirt under the blanket.
"Oh," she said, and it came out breathier than she probably meant.
He turned his attention back to the road, but his hands were tight on the reins.
The cabin was still twenty minutes away. Maybe less if he pushed the horse a bit.
Twenty minutes.
He could manage that.
----
The cabin came into view as the last light faded from the sky.
Bucky brought the wagon to a stop near the door, setting the brake before climbing down. He moved around to her side and offered his hand.
She took it, letting him help her down. Her legs were stiff from sitting, and she was acutely aware of how quiet everything was out here compared to the noise and warmth of the town hall.
Just the two of them now.
No music. No voices. No crowd to buffer the tension that had been building between them since they'd left town.
"I'll get the horse settled," he said, his voice low. "Get the fire goin’."
She nodded, not trusting her voice, and headed for the door.
Inside, the cabin was cold and dark. They'd put out the fire before leaving that morning, and now the chill was everywhere.
She moved by memory more than sight, finding the tinderbox on the mantle and kneeling by the hearth. Her hands were steady as she arranged the kindling and struck the flint.
Steady hands. That was good. That was important.
Even if the rest of her felt like it was vibrating with nervousness.
The spark caught. A small flame, then growing, casting light across the room.
She added larger pieces of wood, watching the fire build, feeling the first hints of warmth beginning to push back the cold.
I thought you were tired.
I ain’t tired.
The words replayed in her mind, his voice rough and certain in a way that had made her stomach drop and heat pool low in her belly all at once.
She'd started this. On the wagon. With that comment about the corset, maybe earlier in the hall. And now-
Behind her, she heard the door open and close. Bucky's footsteps, slow and deliberate, crossed the floor.
She didn't turn around.
Just stayed there, kneeling by the fire, watching the flames, very aware that her heart was beating faster than it should. That her palms were damp despite the cold. That every nerve in her body seemed to be standing at attention, waiting.
The warmth she felt on her back wasn't from the fire. Then, his hand was on her shoulder.
The touch was light, almost gentle. But she felt the weight of intent behind it.
"Stand up," he said quietly.
She rose slowly, brushing her hands against her skirt, and turned to face him.
The firelight cast shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his stubbled jaw, the way his gaze held hers.
Not like he'd looked at her during the waltz, warm and admiring.
This was different, darker. Hungrier.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. She could hear her own breathing. Could hear his.
Then his hands came up to the clasp of her cloak.
His fingers worked the fastening, and she realized her hands were hanging uselessly at her sides. Should she be helping? Doing something?
But before she could move, he pushed the heavy fabric off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor behind her with a soft whump.
One layer gone.
His eyes tracked down her body -taking in the dress, the brooch still pinned at her collar, the way the firelight played across the dark fabric- before coming back to her face.
"Turn around," he said, his voice rough, and she complied slowly.
She felt him step closer still, close enough that when he exhaled, she felt it against the back of her neck.
Then his hands came around her from behind, reaching for the front of her bodice.
She stood very still.
The brooch came first. His fingers found the clasp, worked it open with surprising gentleness. She heard it, the soft sound of metal on wood as he set it on the shelf above the fireplace. Then his fingers returned to the top button, and she felt him work it free carefully.
Then the next button.
And the next.
He moved down her bodice slowly, each button releasing with a soft pop of fabric. She could feel his fingers brushing against her chest through the dress with each one, could feel the way his breath warmed the exposed skin at the back of her neck.
The dress began to loosen, falling open down the front.
She wanted to say something. Do something. But her voice had abandoned her, and all she could do was stand there and feel.
Feel his hands, his proximity. The way her body was already responding to nothing more than his fingers working buttons.
When he reached the last one at her waist, his hands went to her shoulders, and he pushed the dress down her arms in one smooth motion.
The fabric slid away, catching briefly at her elbows before falling past her wrists. It pooled at her waist where the skirt was still fastened, leaving her upper body in nothing but the corset and her chemise beneath it.
The cool air hit her bare arms, raising goosebumps.
Or maybe that was just him.
His hands moved to the ties at her waist, and she felt the skirt loosen, felt its weight slide down her hips, and then the whole thing was falling to the floor in a heap of dark fabric around her feet.
She stepped out of it instinctively, and he kicked it aside without ceremony.
Now she was standing in her corset, chemise, petticoat, and stockings.
Still mostly covered.
But it felt like being naked.
His hands came to rest on her waist, and she felt his thumbs press against the boning through the fabric.
"This thing," he said, his voice low and rough near her ear, "has been drivin’ me mad all day."
She didn't know what to say to that.
Then his hands moved to the laces at her back.
They loosened with swift, deliberate tugs, so different from the careful tightening she'd asked him to do that morning. Each pull released more pressure, let her body expand a little more, let air flow a little easier.
She felt the exact moment the corset went from "tight" to "loose."
Felt herself able to draw a full breath for the first time since dawn.
The relief was immediate and overwhelming.
"Better?" he asked, his voice close to her ear, his hands still working the laces.
"Yes," she managed.
The laces went slack, and his hands slid to her waist, and he pulled the corset away from her body entirely.
She heard it hit the floor somewhere behind them.
Now there was just the thin cotton of her chemise between his hands and her skin.
Just one layer.
She could feel the heat of his palms through it. Could feel the way his fingers spread across her sides, spanning her waist.
"All day," he said quietly, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, "I've been watchin’ you in that thing."
His hands tightened slightly.
"Watchin’ you barely able to breathe. Watchin’ you try to hide how uncomfortable you were." His thumbs traced upward along her sides, a slow, deliberate path. "Watchin’ other men lookin’ at you."
Oh.
"And all I could think about," he continued, his voice dropping lower, rougher, "was getting you home and gettin’ you out of it."
His hands slid higher, brushing the underside of her breasts through the chemise.
"Gettin’ you under me."
Heat flooded through her, sharp and overwhelming and so intense she felt dizzy with it.
Her hands came up instinctively, gripping his forearms where they crossed in front of her. Needing something to hold onto. Needing to ground herself.
She felt the muscle shift beneath her fingers. Felt the strength in him, barely leashed.
"Bucky-" Her voice came out thin.
She tried to turn in his arms -wanted to see his face, needed to- but he held her still, keeping her facing away from him.
"Not yet," he murmured against her ear. "I'm not done."
His hands left her sides, and she heard the rustle of fabric behind her.
Then she felt his fingers at the ties of her petticoat.
The knot came free easily, and the weight of the fabric loosened around her hips. He pushed it down, letting it fall to pool around her feet.
She stepped out of it, and he kicked that aside too.
Now she was down to her chemise, drawers, and stockings.
His hands came back to her waist, but this time they didn't stop there.
They slid upward, slowly, deliberately.
Her pulse was pounding now. In her throat. In her wrists. Between her legs.
His hands cupped her breasts through the chemise, and a sound escaped her lips. Small, involuntary.
Evidence that she was still breathing. Still present. Still capable of response.
"You know what you did to me today?" he asked, his voice rough against her ear.
She couldn't answer. Couldn't form words.
His thumbs brushed over her nipples, and they hardened instantly against the fabric, sensitive and aching.
"Tellin’ me I look good," he continued, his hands working her slowly, deliberately. "Askin’ if I'm uncomfortable with the unexpected."
Another brush of his thumbs, circling, more deliberate this time, and she felt her knees go weak.
"Dancin’ with me like that." His mouth moved to her neck, pressing a kiss just below her ear that made her shiver. "Lookin’ at me like you wanted me to drag you out of there and take you home right then."
Had she looked at him like that?
Yes, she had.
"And then," his voice dropped even lower, "you went and taunted me on the way back."
I thought you were tired.
She'd known what she was doing when she said it. Had seen his reaction. Had felt the change in the air between them.
Had wanted it.
"I told you," he said, his mouth moving along the curve of her neck, his hands still working her breasts with maddening slowness, "that if you kept sayin’ things like that, I'd stop bein’ patient."
He turned her then -finally- spinning her to face him with his hands on her shoulders.
The firelight caught in his eyes, and what she saw there made her stomach drop and heat spike through her all at once.
Want. Raw and undisguised, and so intense it was almost frightening.
"I'm done bein’ patient," he said quietly.
Then he kissed her.
Nothing like they'd shared in the dark over the past two months. The slow and deep ones where he'd let her set the pace, let her pull back when she needed to.
This was different.
This was him unleashing everything he'd been holding back.
His hand came up to cup the back of her head, probably dislodging what few pins had survived the dancing, and he angled her where he wanted her.
His mouth moved against hers with a hunger that made her knees genuinely weak. His tongue slid past her lips, tasting her, claiming her, and she felt the full force of two months of restraint finally breaking.
She grabbed onto his shoulders -partly for balance, partly because she needed something solid to hold onto- and felt the muscle shift beneath his shirt.
He was still fully dressed.
Coat, shirt, suspenders, trousers, boots.
Every layer intact.
While she stood there in nothing but her chemise and drawers.
The disparity should have made her self-conscious. Should have made her want to cover herself, to hide.
Instead, it made her feel... like he couldn't wait long enough to undress himself. Like getting his hands on her was more important than anything else.
He assaulted her with deep, demanding kisses that left no room for thought. Just sensation. Just the slide of his tongue against hers, the press of his body, the way his hand tightened in her hair when she made a small sound against his mouth.
She felt him move, felt his other hand slide to her hip, and then he was walking her backward.
She went willingly, blindly, trusting him to guide her even though she had no idea where they were going.
Her rear hit something solid.
The kitchen table.
His hands went to her waist, and then he lifted her and set her on the surface.
The height brought them closer to level, and he stepped between her legs without breaking the kiss, his hands resting on her thighs.
The chemise rode up slightly. She could feel the rough fabric of his trousers against the inside of her knees, could feel how close he was, how little separated them now.
He finally pulled back, but only far enough to drag his mouth down her jaw, her neck, the hollow of her throat.
She tilted her head back, giving him access, and tried to catch her breath.
Failed.
"Bucky-" His name came out ragged.
"Still too many damn clothes," he muttered against her skin, his hands finding the hem of her chemise and pulling it up.
She lifted her arms automatically, and the thin cotton slid up her body, and he tossed it aside without looking.
The cool air hit her bare skin, and suddenly she was acutely, overwhelmingly aware that she was sitting on their kitchen table.
Topless.
In nothing but her drawers and stockings.
His hands came up to cup her breasts, palms warm, slightly rough, achingly gentle despite the hunger in his eyes.
Her hands fell to grip the edge of the table, needing something to hold onto.
His thumbs brushed over her nipples, and the sensation shot straight through her. They were sensitive. Had been sensitive since he'd touched them through the chemise, but now with nothing between his hands and her skin, it was almost overwhelming.
She made a sound -small, desperate- and his eyes flicked up to her face.
"That's it," he said quietly. "I wanna hear you."
Then his head dipped, and his mouth closed over one nipple.
The heat, the wet slide of his tongue, the firm suckles, made her back arch involuntarily. Her hand flew to his hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands.
He'd done this before. Many times over the past two months. Had learned exactly how she liked to be touched, how much pressure to use, what made her gasp, and what made her squirm.
But it felt different now.
More urgent. Less restrained.
Like he'd finally stopped measuring every touch. Stopped holding himself back.
His mouth worked her deliberately, while his hand cupped her other breast. Then he switched, giving the same attention to the other side, and she felt her head fall back, felt her eyes close.
Felt herself stop thinking entirely.
His mouth moved lower.
When he reached her stomach, she felt a flash of self-consciousness cut through the haze of sensation.
Her belly wasn’t perfect.
But he didn't seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn't care.
Just kept kissing his way down, his hands sliding to her thighs, spreading them wider.
Wait.
Wait.
"Bucky," she managed, her voice shaky. "We- we eat here."
He lifted his head just enough to look at her. The heat in his eyes made her clench between her legs.
"Yeah," he said, his voice rough and dark and full of promise. "And I'm about to."
Before she could process that, his hands were hooking into the waistband of her drawers.
"Lift up," he said.
She did, automatically, and he pulled the fabric down and off, taking her stockings with them in one motion. And then she was completely bare.
Sitting on their kitchen table.
It wasn’t the first time he'd done this, not even close. But always before it had been in bed, almost in the dark or the early morning light. Horizontal.
This was different.
She was exposed. The firelight played across every inch of her skin, and she could see everything: his hands on her thighs, his shoulders between her legs, the intent in his eyes as he looked up at her.
"Bucky, this is-"
"Relax," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh. "Let me."
One hand stayed on her thigh, warm and grounding. The other moved upward, and she felt his thumb brush through the soft curls between her legs. A slow, deliberate touch. Not quite where she ached for it, but close enough to make her tense.
He did it again, then his thumb pressed lower, parting her, opening her to his gaze. She made a sound -half protest, half something else entirely- but he was already leaning in, and any coherent thought became impossible.
The angle was different like this. Better. He didn't have to hunch or strain the way he did in bed. Could kneel there comfortably, with better access to every part of her.
And he was taking full advantage of it.
His tongue worked against her deliberately, finding all the places he'd learned over the time together. The spots that made her gasp. Made her hips try to shift closer even though there was nowhere closer to go.
"Stay still," he murmured against her, and she felt the vibration of his voice as much as heard it.
She tried. She really did.
But then his fingers joined his mouth -one sliding inside her, then another- and she couldn't help the way her body arched. Couldn't help the way her hand flew to his hair, gripping tight.
"Easy," he said, his voice rough with satisfaction. "Need you ready for me."
The words cut through the haze.
Ready for me.
Not just for this. Not just his mouth and hands.
Something more.
His fingers moved inside her in a slow, maddening rhythm, curling, stroking, finding spots that made her whole body tighten. His mouth stayed focused on that bundle of nerves that made her see stars.
She was already close. Could feel the pressure building, that familiar tightening low in her belly.
But he pulled back.
Not completely. Just enough to look up at her, his eyes dark and intent, his mouth wet.
"This time," he said, his fingers still moving inside her in that slow, devastating way, "I'm not stoppin’ here."
Her brain struggled to process the words through the haze of sensation.
Not stopping here.
"You understand?" he asked, curling his fingers inside her in a way that made her whole body jolt.
She understood. She'd known, really. Since the wagon. Since he'd said I'm not tired in that rough, certain voice.
This was it.
Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears.
"Say you understand," he repeated, and there was something almost gentle in his voice despite the hunger in his eyes.
Like he needed to hear her say it. Needed to know she knew what was happening.
That she wanted this.
"I-" Her voice came out thin. She swallowed and tried again. "Yes. I understand."
Something changed in his expression. Relief, maybe. Or satisfaction.
"Good," he murmured.
Then his mouth was back on her, lips closing around her sensitive bud, tongue working deliberately while his fingers moved deeper, faster inside her.
She tried to hold still as he'd told her. Tried to keep quiet even though sounds kept escaping her, small gasps and broken moans that she couldn't suppress.
Her thighs were shaking. Her whole body tensed, balanced on the edge of something overwhelming.
"Let go," he said against her.
As if she had a choice.
As if she could do anything else.
One last suckle and it hit her like a wave, sudden and complete and so intense she forgot where she was. Forgot everything except the sensation crashing through her, the way her body clenched around his fingers, the sound that tore from her throat.
He worked her through it, his mouth gentling but not stopping until the aftershocks faded and she was left trembling, boneless, utterly undone.
Then he pulled back, pressing a kiss on her mound before rising to his feet.
She was still trying to remember how to breathe when his hands came to her waist.
"Come on," he said quietly, helping her down from the table.
Her legs were unsteady -actually unsteady, not just weak-kneed- and she had to grip his arms for balance.
He held her steady, patiently, waiting until she found her footing.
Then his hand slid down to take hers, and he turned toward the bed.
"Go on," he said, his voice low and rough. "I'll be right there."
She went, crossing the short distance on shaky legs, hyperaware of her nakedness. Of the cool air on her skin.
Behind her, she heard the thud of his boots hitting the floor.
One. Then the other.
The sound of his coat hitting the floor. The slide of suspenders being pushed off his shoulders.
The rustle of fabric as he pulled his shirt over his head.
She reached the bed and turned around, unable to help herself. Needing to see.
He was down to just his trousers now, the firelight playing across his bare chest, his shoulders, his stomach.
All that "more" of him she'd complimented that morning.
And the way he was looking at her made her forget everything except the fact that she wanted this.
Wanted him.
Next Chapter
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BROTHER’S BEST FRIEND BUCKY X F!READER (college au)
SUMMARY. Being Steve Rogers’ sister meant years of boys looking at you like a warning sign. Now that you’re in college, your lack of experience becomes a major problem. So you ask your brother’s best friend to teach you everything. What starts as lessons becomes something neither of you have a name for yet.
WORD COUNT. 11.7K
WARNINGS. college au, brother’s best friend trope, MDNI, inexperienced reader, smut, tit play, handjob, dick pronouns, pussy inspection, pussy pronouns, oral (f and m receiving), an attempt at teabagging, cum swallowing, vaginal fingering, dry humping, bucky cums in his pants. No use of Y/N.
NOTES. You can imagine reader as Steve’s adopted sister, there will be no physical descriptions. One might argue this part is just porn without plot. One would be partially right.
Main Masterlist || Series Masterlist || 1 ~ 2 ~ 3
READ ON AO3
A week goes by, and you kiss him twice more.
Once on his couch on Wednesday, which starts because you sit down close enough that the intent is pretty clear. The second time is Thursday, at his door when you’re leaving, which starts because you turn around and he’s right there.
You’re getting better at it. More confident, less in your own head, less managing the moment and more just in it.
Tonight is Friday, and you’re back on his couch.
“Can I try something?”
There's no version of him that would say no to your question. “Yeah.”
“I want to — I want to start it this time.”
He doesn’t ask what, because he already knows. He settles back slightly, like he’s making room. “Alright.”
So you close the gap and kiss him. The kiss in itself isn’t any different. But it feels different when it’s yours to start. You bring one hand up to his jaw the way he always does to you, and you feel him still like the contact surprised him. That small victory does wonders for your nerves.
He kisses you back slowly, letting you lead, his hand coming to rest at your waist with a patience that you are choosing not to read too much into. You shift closer and his grip tightens, fractionally, like some reflex he’s only barely managing.
When you finally pull back, his eyes open. His thumb makes one slow pass over your hip. “That was good.”
“You could be more specific.”
“You didn’t hesitate.” His thumb again, same slow drag. “That’s the main thing.”
You’re close enough that you can see the detail of him. The line where his jaw meets his throat, the soft stubble that’s absolutely not helping right now. The lamp behind him is the only light and it’s warm and doing nothing to help you think straight.
“What’s next?”
He looks at you for a moment, like he’s reading something. Then he stands up. Before you’ve quite registered what’s happening, his hands are at your waist and you’re being lifted. Foot-off-the-ground-lifted. He’s walking toward the bedroom with your face against his jaw, his mouth pressed to your temple.
You don’t say anything. You’re not sure you could.
Thing is, you've been in his bedroom before. But this is entirely different. You’ve been there to to grab something, just passing through. You know the where the bookshelf is, you know he has a photo of you and Steve, you know he has a lamp that sits in the corner.
But one of that prepared you for being carried into it. The fact that it's Bucky carrying you.
He lays you down on his bed and looks at you. There’s something in how he does it, that makes your whole chest tighten up.
“I’m going to take your shirt off.” You realise he’s telling you so you know what’s coming, giving you time to say no before he does anything. “Along with the rest of your clothes. And then I’m going to put my mouth on you.” He watches your face process this. “Questions?”
“That’s — that’s a lot of steps.”
“It’s really not.” He reaches down and gets the hem of your shirt in both hands. You sit up to let him pull it over your head. When you’re back down, his eyes move over you in a way that makes you want to simultaneously stay very still and also disappear.
His mouth finds your collarbone and works down slowly, hands mapping out the territory of your ribs, your waist, learning you, inch by inch.
He moves like he has a plan and also like the plan isn't the point. Like the point is every single inch of the way there.
But he doesn’t rush past your breasts. He cups one fully in his palm, thumb brushing slow circles over the nipple until it’s tight and aching under his touch. “These are sensitive,” his breath is warm against your skin. “We’re gonna take our time right here so you figure out exactly what you like. Tell me if it’s too much or if you want it harder.”
His lips close over your nipple and he sucks. Slow at first, then deeper, pulling the peak into his mouth that makes your toes curl. It’s nothing like the quick graze you expected.
This is hungry, his tongue swirling around it while he holds the suction. You arch hard, a shaky sound ripping out of you with his name. He switches to the other breast without breaking contact, sucking just as thoroughly, letting you feel every pull, every flick, until both nipples are swollen and slick and throbbing in the cool air.
You hadn't known it would feel like this. You'd thought that it would feel good, fine, whatever. You hadn't accounted for the quality of his attention. The way he's watching your face while he does it, checking, adjusting, reading you. It’s with the same focus he brought to explaining what made a good first date. It's the same focus and it's directed entirely at you. And you don't know what to do with that so you just make the sound his mouth is pulling out of you and try not to think.
When he finally releases them with a soft pop, he murmurs “you like that?” His dark eyes go over your face and decides it himself. “Yeah, you do. What about this?” He grazes his teeth over one sensitive bud, then bites down lightly, just enough pressure to sting in the best way. Your hips jerk and you moan outright, louder than you’ve ever let yourself be. He soothes the bite instantly with his tongue, then sucks again, harder this time, alternating between both breasts like he’s memorizing every reaction.
It feels like he's building a map of you for himself. For some purpose you haven't named yet. And won't name right now, because you can't think right now. Also because naming it would be a problem.
His mouth stays on you longer than you thought it would, sucking and licking and testing until your chest is heaving and your thighs are trembling around nothing.When you press them close together, he says against your chest, “don’t do that.”
“Do what—”
“Squeeze your thighs.” His hand slides between your knees and parts them easily. “Keep them open.”
Something about being told that with his mouth still on your breast rearranges your brain chemistry entirely.
He makes his way down your stomach, mouth and hands both, leaving heat everywhere they go. His stubble drags across your ribs, raising goosebumps. It's a small thing, the scrap of his beard on skin.
It shouldn't be a significant thing.
It is, though.
His fingers find the waistband of your underwear and tug them down your legs and off.
Then he just looks. Both hands on your inner thighs, spreading you open under the warm light of his bedroom, studying your pussy with an attention that makes your face go absolutely warm, sweat beading at your temples.
“Bucky—”
“Give me a second.”
“You’re staring.”
“You’re so wet.” He runs his thumb, a sliver of a touch, through your folds, and your hips jerk. His words aren’t quite to you, more like something he’s noting down for personal records.
“Why are you apologising?” He looks offended almost.
“Because it’s — it’s a lot.”
“Yeah.” He looks up at you, the blue of his eyes now only a ring. “It is. That’s good.” His thumb again, the same barely-there stroke, and you make a sound you weren’t planning on making. “That’s very good, actually.”
It’s the voice he uses when something matters to him. You've heard that voice applied to other things over the years. An arguement with Steve, the conversation with Jaxon before it got physical. It’s the serious kind of voice, the one that inevitably says ‘this matters to me.’
The fact that it's being applied to this, to you, like this, makes it harder to breathe.
He keeps your thighs spread open with his hands, and his voice is warm like he’s walking you through something just for the two of you. “That’s just your body showing me exactly what it wants. Nothing to be sorry about. I’m gonna touch you right here so you can feel what feels best for you. Just let me hear whatever comes out, okay? I want to know.”
His thumb strokes slowly through your folds, spreading the slick. He hums softly, when your breath hitches. “Breathe for me.” Then his thumb finds your clit and circles it once. It's soft, light and careful and your whole body jerks.
“Bucky—”
Eyes move to look at your face now. “Feels good?”
You make a sound that's both a gasp and a hum. He keeps the slow circles, then brushes over it with the lightest flick of his thumb. You gasp again, softer this time.
Bucky pulls the hood back just enough with one finger, gentle as anything, then circles again with a touch more pressure. Your thighs tremble under his palms and another soft moan slips out.
“Good girl. See how much wetter you’re getting?”
Does he realise you're not in any position to answer him…
His forefinger circles your entrance, for one small moment, you wonder if he's going inside. But he just collects the slick and brings it back to your clit in slow, patient strokes.
Just when you think you're used to what he's doing, he shifts down between your thighs and you feel his breath against your skin. That’s when you understand. When he'd said he's gonna put his mouth on you, he didn't only mean your tits.
“Wait — Are you — are you going to—”
“Yes.”
“With your — your mouth.”
“That’s generally how it works.”
“I know how it works, I’ve watched porn, I just —” You try to think of useful words, the verge of failing. “I didn’t think you’d actually —”
He looks up at you from between your thighs with the patient expression of a man who has all night. “You didn’t think I’d what?”
“I mean. It’s not — you don’t have to. Like it can’t be that enjoyable for you, it’s—”
“I want to.”
“But—”
“I want to.” He says it the second time like the first time didn’t register, which it didn’t, which he can tell. The second want is more enunciated, letting you know its value. “That’s not a polite offer. I want to put my mouth on your pussy. Are you gonna let me?”
The framing of that sentence evaporates any ability to construct a counter-argument. “Okay… yeah. Okay.”
“Now, relax.” He turns his head and presses a kiss to your inner thigh.
“Why’d you start with your mouth?” You question, mostly just to be saying something, because silence right now seems like more than you can manage. “I thought — I figured you’d use your fingers first. Mouth seems more—”
“More what?”
“Intimate? I don’t know. I thought fingers came first.”
He looks up at you again. “Before I put anything inside you, I want your body to know what pleasure feels like. I want you to know what it feels like to want more before I give you more.” He holds your gaze. “Does that make sense?”
Your mouth is very dry. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” And with that, his mouth meets your cunt. He exhales into you like he didn't mean to, this warm, involuntary breath, and it hits you that he wants this. He wants this specifically, not as the next step in the curriculum.
Because the sound he made when his mouth first touched you is not a teaching sound.
If you’d thought kissing him was breathtaking, this was on a whole another level. You decide to constantly remind yourself to breathe, because he sure as hell isn’t helping.
The first sensation your register is heat of it. Just that, just warmth and the soft press of his lips against your core. His tongue drags slowly through your folds and your hand shoots to his hair of its own accord.
He licks into you like he’s learning you, cataloguing every place that makes you twitch and keeps coming back to it.
You've watched enough of him to know the difference between him going through motions and him when he’s actually into what he’s doing.
Now, he’s into what he’s doing. The sounds coming from him are laced with want. They aren’t even pointed at you. It seems to escape him rather than come from him. Like he forgot he was supposed to be in control of this. Like you're the one doing something to him.
When his lips close around your clit, you make a noise that could only be described as a cry. Only reassurance after that mortifying ordeal is that he makes a sound back.
His lips close around your clit again, and you have to consciously bite down to not let another noise out.
Like he’s sensed your dilemma, he says against you. “You can be loud. No one’s going to hear you.”
“I’m not—” you start to object, but then he sucks and the rest of that sentence ceases to exist.
Your hand tightens in his hair without you deciding to. He actually groans at that, a vibration against your clit that shoots straight through you, and you loosen your grip immediately.
“Sorry—”
He comes off you just enough to speak. “Don’t apologise.” He looks up the length of your body at you. “You can pull it. You can do whatever you want with my hair. Grip it, pull it, push me where you want — however feels good. It’s for you.” A pause. “Yeah?”
He says it's for you. Like he wants to make sure you understand that. Like it matters to him that you understand that.
Only when you nod, and say yeah, does he go down.
He eats you with with an attention, learning what you respond to and using it, building pressure with his tongue against your clit while his hands hold your hips steady when they try to roll up into him.
At some point one hand leaves your hip and slides up your stomach to your breast, his thumb rolling over your nipple, and the moan that comes out of you at the combination is loud enough that you’re briefly grateful for thick walls.
“Bucky—”
A hum against your clit but he keeps going.
He hums like he's satisfied. Like that sound you just made is something he wanted.
Your hand is in his hair and you can feel him, how present he is in this, how little of him is elsewhere.
Nobody has ever been this entirely here with you before. Not that anyone has been with you before.
But even in the small ways like conversations, attention, the general experience of being in a room with people, you've always felt the slight elsewhere quality of other people's focus.
He doesn't have that. He's completely, entirely here. And not just now.
You know it isn’t something you should be analysing right this moment, but what he’s doing to you isn’t just physical.
Finally, your hand fists in his hair, the way he said you could. The sound he makes is something you’re going to be thinking about for a while. You know he’d said it was for you, but the way he’s responding, it’s hard not to think there’s a little something in it for him too.
You feel the tension building, coiling tighter with every stroke of his tongue, your thighs shaking either side of his head.
“Don’t stop,” you manage, “don’t — please—”
He doesn’t stop. His tongue works your clit in tight circles, his hand flexing into your hip. Everything tightens to a single unbearable point and then snaps. A sound tears out of your throat that you’ve never heard yourself make, your pussy clenching around nothing while he works you through every shuddering wave of it, slower now, softer. He draws it out until your legs are trembling and your hand in his hair has gone slack.
A kiss is pressed to your inner thigh. Then your hip. He’s moving back up your body and settling beside you. You try to remember what your name is.
“That was— I need a minute.”
“Take your time.”
You turn your head to look at him. His mouth is wet, his hair is a disaster from your hands, and he looks… he looks like someone who thoroughly enjoyed himself. There's something open in his expression, something that isn't quite contained, and you look at it for a second before he notices you looking and rearranges slightly.
You saw it. You aren’t in any condition to process it though.
“In porn,” you start and pause to catch your breath.
“Mm.”
“They make it look sort of — performative. Like they’re doing it but they’re also sort of doing it at the camera. That was nothing like that.”
“No.”
“That was—” You don’t have the word. “Better.”
He looks at you for a second with something in his face that he keeps mostly to himself. “I’m glad it was.”
He disappears for a minute and comes back with a glass of water and a washcloth warm from the tap. Sitting on the edge of the bed beside you, he hands you the water first. His hand stays on your knee while you drink.
When you’re done, he’s gentle with the washcloth, so careful, taking care of you like it’s just the next thing he wants to do and not a task he’s ticking off. Your face is warm and you try not to feel too much about the fact that someone is doing this, that he’s doing this, without being asked.
You wonder if this is part of the curriculum or entirely something else.
When he’s done he sets everything aside and looks at you. “You need anything else? Hungry, or—”
“No. Can — Can we just lie down for a bit?”
“Yeah, ‘course.”
He moves up the bed, and you roll toward him. That’s when you realise that he’s still in his sweats and his t-shirt. Entirely, fully dressed. And you are wearing nothing at all, which strikes you as a profound injustice.
“You’re still dressed.” Before he can say anything, you’re talking again. “That’s not fair.”
His eyes slowly drag over your body, which feels like a touch in itself. During the thorough once-over, he also appears to be giving this the serious consideration it deserves.
Without another word, he reaches back and pulls his t-shirt over his head in that one-handed way that shouldn’t be as effortless as it is. “Lift up.”
As you straighten up, he puts it on you himself, guides your arms through, smooths it down over you.
His face tips forward to press a kiss to your temple, just his mouth at your hairline for a moment. Your whole chest does something you’re going to deal with later.
He pulls the comforter up over you both. “Better?”
You hum. Find the space against his side that your body has apparently already decided belongs to you, your cheek against his shoulder, his arm settling around you.
He’s warm, too warm almost. It’s way too comfortable not to fall asleep.
You’re not going to fall asleep though. You’re just lying here, that’s all, with his t-shirt pooled around your thighs and the smell of him close enough to be a problem and his heartbeat doing something steady under your cheek.
There’s nothing to do and nowhere to be and his hand keeps moving, up and down, up and down.
This is nice.
He’s nice.
You close your eyes.
It's morning.
You can tell Bucky's awake because the arm around you is too still. Sleeping people don't hold that kind of stillness, it's a different quality entirely. He's doing a very convincing impression of someone unconscious and you're doing a very convincing impression of someone who isn't lying here thinking about his mouth.
Neither of you are particularly committed to either bit.
"You awake?" he asks after a while.
"No."
The sound he makes is almost a laugh. His thumb moves once over your shoulder. "How do you feel?"
You turn your head and he's already looking at you. The blueness of his eyes startle you in this grey light sweeping through the windows.
There's something underneath the casual delivery of his question that is very much not casual.
"I'm fine, Buck."
"First time's a lot. Even when it goes well."
The fact that he says 'even when it goes well' like he's genuinely leaving the door open. Like he'd sit there and hear it if you say, ‘actually, I have a few notes.’ You don’t say that. You have no notes.
"It went well. Quite well, actually. I'd go as far as really well."
"Yeah?"
"You were there."
"I was. Wanted to hear you say it."
That thing that's been quietly building since last night stirs again and you decide not to look at it directly. The part of your brain that is always oriented toward the next thing clears its throat. "I want to learn the other part."
He doesn't answer immediately. You fill the gap yourself. "How to touch someone. A guy. I want to know how to do it properly."
A breath. "Yeah. Okay."
"Should I … start with my mouth? Like you did?"
"No." He shakes his head once. "That's different."
"How?"
He's quiet for a second. You can tell he's actually thinking about how to say it rather than just saying something. "When I did that with you, it was because it was your first time. Even fingers can be a lot the first time. Guys don't need that. It's not the equivalent."
You think about it. It makes sense. The way he explains things always makes sense.
"Also, hands is easier to start. You'll know what you're doing before you're, you know. Down there."
"Right. And you don't need—"
Unlike you, it's not his first time. Any of this. You knew that going in, it was the entire point of coming to him, it was why you knocked on his door almost two weeks ago. And still there's a small stupid pang, that you are absolutely not going to mention.
He doesn't seem to notice. "So. Hands."
"Hands."
The covers shift to reveal his torso. There’s an intense urge to reach out and touch the plane of muscle. You don’t.
"Whenever you're ready."
You shuffle forward on your knees across the mattress until you're close enough that your body is almost touching his. He watches you with his hands loose at his sides, giving you the room.
He's still in his sweatpants. You get your hands to the waistband and he lifts his hips slightly to help, cooperating without making it a whole thing.
You look.
For a full second, maybe two.
Because your brain is constitutionally incapable of silence, you say, "hi."
Bucky closes his eyes briefly, the expression of a man asking for patience from a higher power. "You don't have to greet it."
"I wasn't greeting, I was — it was a general hi." You look up at him. He looks back down at you. "He's really pretty."
Something happens to Bucky's face that he was not prepared for. His mouth does a thing, not quite a laugh, but also not not one. "He’s — That's not — people don't usually—"
"I’m just being honest." You look up at him and then back down. "He's also big."
"Okay."
"No, I mean significantly." You're doing the math and the math is concerning. He's not even fully hard yet. "How is he going to fit?"
"It'll fit."
"That's not an explanation."
"You don’t have to worry about that now. I'll make it fit.” There's a pull at the corner of his mouth, the effort of keeping his expression neutral while you sit there conducting what is essentially a full appraisal. "Are you going to touch it, or..."
The first contact is just your fingertips. Light, just along the length of him. He pulls in a breath and his hips shift, barely.
"You're so soft." You mean it genuinely. The skin of him is warm and smooth, absolutely not what you'd expected at all. "Like the skin. I didn't think it'd feel like that."
"Yeah." His voice has gone slightly strained.
You wrap your hand around him loosely. More curious than purposeful. He goes very still, the kind of still that takes effort.
Your thumb drifts up to the tip. There's a bead of precum there, you touch it. The sound Bucky makes is quiet and completely wrecked, his head dropping back for one unguarded moment before he pulls it back together.
You did that. Your thumb did that.
You swipe your thumb over the head again and he hisses through his teeth. "Keep doing that. And this is going to be a very short lesson."
So naturally, you do that again.
"Fuck — okay. I — I'm gonna move your hand."
He takes your hand in his and adjusts everything. The grip, the angle, the pressure, and wraps your fingers around his cock properly. His hand over yours. "Not that tight — Just like that. You feel the difference?"
"Uh-huh."
He does one slow stroke with your hand inside his, all the way up. His jaw goes tight. And he does it again. On the third one, he lets go of your hand, and drops his to the sheet.
You do it on your own. Same grip. "Like that?"
"Exactly like—" He stops as you do it again, his whole body jerking once. "Yeah. Yeah, that's—" His hand tightens its grip on the sheet. "Good."
You find the rhythm easier than you expected.
Bucky is quiet in a way that's the opposite of silence. His breathing changes, his throat moves when he swallows, and the hand that isn't gripping the sheet finds your knee and holds it. Like he needs something to hold onto and your knee was there.
You shouldn't be this focused on how he looks right now. You are. The flush starting at the base of his throat. The way his jaw has gone slightly loose.
You've seen Bucky composed in every situation you can think of. Watching that composure come apart because of your hand is doing something to you that has nothing to do with learning anything.
"Is this okay?"
"More than." He gets it out with some effort. His eyes are on you and they've gone dark, most of the blue gone.
"You can talk to me." You glance up to his half lidded eyes. "I told you things."
"That's different."
"How is it different?"
He opens his mouth, closes it. You get the impression the answer to that question is more complicated than right now warrants. So you let it go and keep your hand moving.
When you twist your wrist slightly at the top, the noise he makes is involuntary. His hand comes off the sheet to catch your wrist.
"Where did you—"
"I was paying attention."
He stares at you. There are about four things happening in his expression at once and none of them are teacher friendly. He lets go of your wrist.
The sounds he makes are quieter than yours were. Held back, like he's rationed himself. But they're there. His hips move into the drag of your hand, just slightly, small involuntary pushes he's not entirely winning against.
Warm puffs of breath are on your neck, as he drops his forehead to your shoulder.
You've had his attention directed at you for two weeks but this feels different. This is him needing something to lean on and choosing you as destination.
His hips buck up, once, fully. Immediately, he pulls back fast. "Fuck — sorry—"
You want to tell him not to apologise, that watching him lose his composure is doing something to you. You don't say any of that.
He's close. You know it before he says anything, from the way his thighs have gone rigid and his breathing's come apart entirely.
"I'm almost — Stop." His hand closes around your wrist.
You let go and drop your hand back to your own knee. You knew what was coming but you didn't quite anticipate it. He exhales deeply and spills across his own stomach, his grip on the sheets going white for a moment, a low groan working out of his chest before his whole body goes loose.
Before anything sensible catches up with you, you reach out one finger and drag it slowly through the mess on his stomach.
There’s no lesson in curriculum that says you have to touch his release. You don’t care about it at this moment.
You're curious, is all. You've been curious about him in increments for the past two weeks and this is just the latest increment.
The sound Bucky makes comes from somewhere very deep and takes his whole body with it. At once, his hand snaps up and catches your wrist.
"Don't." His voice is completely wrecked. He looks it too. Undone in a way you haven't seen him before, fighting hard against something that might be a laugh and losing to both at once. "Do not."
"Why not?"
"Because." Completely black pupils gaze over you. "Because I just came and you're going to — Fuck. Why are you like this?"
"I was curious."
"Of course you were." He drops his head back against your shoulder and laughs.
You feel the laugh through his whole chest. You feel it against your shoulder and through your arm and somewhere behind your ribs. It's the kind of laugh that makes you want to make him laugh again.
His hand is still loosely around your wrist. He hasn't let go.
"Was that okay? Genuinely. Tell me if I did something wrong."
He lifts his head to look at you. "You did nothing wrong."
"The wrist thing—"
"Was very much not wrong." His voice is strained, but also a little offended, like you're being ridiculous. "Where did you even pick that up?”
"I told you. I was paying attention. Do I get a grade?"
"You're not getting a grade."
"Feedback then?"
"The feedback is that you're going to be a problem."
You don’t know what he means by that. You don’t ask.
Two dates happen, but you are very intent on calling them lessons.
The first one is a bookshop and coffee after, which Bucky picks because he remembered you mentioning it three years ago. You tell yourself normal people hold onto information like that. After all, you remember his favourite author too.
He buys the book before you can get your wallet out. When you open your mouth, he says it's part of the curriculum, with a completely straight-face. You tell him that's a stretch. He shrugs and holds the door open.
The second one is harder to explain away.
He cooks. Which was not on any syllabus you'd agreed to. You sit on his kitchen counter and talk for two hours before the food is even on the table.
You're calling them lessons. That’s easier.
But why’s it becoming harder?
The next time you see Bucky it's a Thursday, and the word lesson doesn't come up at all.
What does come up, eventually, is his mouth on your clavicle. The fact that there’s a movie playing matters less now than it did five minutes ago. Somehow, you've ended up horizontal with his weight half over you. His lips trail up to your throat. Tipping your head back, you give him more space to work with.
But there’s one specific thing in your mind that needs attention right now. That’s been lying dormant for a week. "Teach me something."
"I am teaching you." There’s no attempt on his part to untangle from you. In fact, he moves, rucking your shirt as he goes. His mouth takes in your pebbles nipple, and you make a sound you hadn't planned on, your hand going to his hair. He does it again, the slow suction almost pulling your body off the couch.
"That's not teaching me anything," you manage.
"Sure it is." He doesn't look up. "You're learning what you like."
"That's not—" He does it again and and you lose your train of thought.
There’s no point in being logical about this, you let him play with your tits however he pleases.
After what feels like a lifetime, he surfaces. His face still rests on your torso as he looks up to you.
"Can you please show me the next thing?"
"There’s a next thing?" His crooked lips tell you he’s messing with you.
"You know what I mean."
"No, I don’t."
"Bucky."
“If you want it that bad, you can say it.”
Trying to glare at him from this angle not only proves to be a minor exercise, but also futile because he just smirks. “Fine. Blowjob. I wanna know how."
He holds your gaze. Then he sits up, which means you sit up too. He's doing that thing where he actually thinks before he opens his mouth. The fact that it’s rarer in people makes you like him a little more. If that’s even possible.
"Okay.”
"Just okay?"
"Did you want a longer answer?"
"Well, for starters, I want to know how to actually do it."
His hand comes to the back of your neck. Before you've worked out what's happening, he's pulling you in. His other hand rests warm on your bare waist as he kisses you. "Sure you want to switch right now?" he asks against your mouth.
"Yes. I've been thinking about it since the handjob."
Something happens to his expression that he doesn't manage to contain. "Have you now?"
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird." He sits back. You feel the absence of his warmth immediately. "Honest explanation or the polished version?"
"Honest, obviously."
"See what gets you a reaction, what doesn't. Same as everything."
"Teeth," you say immediately. "And I don't know what to do with my hands. And how do I even breathe?"
"Don’t forget you have teeth."
"I’m sorry, what?"
"No, I just mean, if you’re just conscious of it — like keep it in the back of your mind, it's gonna be okay. Breathe through your nose. If you need air, just pull off, it’s not a big deal.”
“And what about hands?”
"Base of the cock, whatever you can't reach with your mouth. Or thighs. Both. Whatever feels right." A pause. "It’s okay if you can’t take all of it."
"What if I want to?"
"Then you'll gag and we'll deal with it."
A checklist forms inside your head as he speaks. "Okay but I have a genuine question. It's called a blowjob. But literally no one is blowing anything in the videos I’ve watched. So what is actually happening?"
His mouth opens, and then closes. Then the laugh comes out of him, a real one, helpless, the kind that takes his whole face. Your chest does something embarrassing at that sight.
Framing your face with both hands, the softest kiss is planted on your lips. "You're" kiss "so" kiss "adorable" kiss "y’know" kiss "that?"
Oh God. You’re melting. You’re losing it all. Physically, you can hear your heart melt. But you take his face in your hands right back, mirroring him.
"I" kiss "know."
He grins against your mouth and kisses you properly this time, both thumbs drawing circles at your cheeks.
"Suction," he says when he pulls back. "That's the answer. Suction and tongue. The name's just a name."
"But why is it called that?"
"I — genuinely don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I've never thought about it."
"How have you never thought about it?"
"Because it's never mattered before."
The way he’s tilting his head tells you he’s at least mildly curious about it. Proving you right, he pulls out his phone.
"Buck. No. Don't google it."
"I have to."
"Bucky—"
He's already reading. His expression cycles between certainty and not quite confusion. "Okay so apparently, there are several competing theories."
"Of course there are."
"One is that it comes from a slang term for the act that has nothing to do with the literal — "
There’s nothing else to do but indulge him. "I don't want competing theories. I want one answer."
"Etymology is rarely that simple."
"Oh my god." You reach over and take the phone out of his hand. He lets you. "You just googled the etymology of blowjob."
"You asked."
"I didn't ask you to do it with that level of academic commitment." You set the phone face-down on the cushion. "Forget it. Never mind."
He's still smiling when he stands up. But the heat has returned, to him, and to you.
What you don’t understand is why he’s standing. “I need you to sit.”
“Why? This’ll be more comfortable for you.”
“I just — I wanna kneel.”
"You don't have to kneel."
"I want to."
"You can do it just as well sitting down, it's easier on your—"
"Buck." You look at him. "I want to kneel."
An exasperated but equally fond sigh leaves him. He reaches back and picks up the throw pillow from the other end of the couch without another word, setting it on the floor in front of where he’ll be sitting.
"Floor's hard," he says.
You don't say anything about that. You just kneel on the pillow and he sits on the edge of the couch. You're struck, not for the first time, by how completely not-strange this is. How it's just him. How that seems to be doing a lot of quiet heavy lifting lately.
When you tug at his sweats, he lifts to make it easier for you. You stare at his dick. His dick stares back at you.
This is also the time you can show him that you’ve indeed learnt something. You start with the grip you know he likes, watching him thicken and pulse under your fingers until he’s rock-hard and leaking.
When you lean in and run your tongue, on the tip, through the slit once, his breath shifts immediately.
His hand immediately flies to your head. You lick the tip again, slower this time, savoring the salty bead that wells up, then drag your tongue along the thick underside, tracing every throbbing vein from root to tip. The weight of him on your tongue feels perfect.
When his hand presses gently at the back of your head, you close your lips over the tip of him and suck, carefully. A whole body jerk accompanies an involuntary sound that he desperately tries to swallow back. You take a little more, tongue working the underside the way he’d said.
As you try to take more, your jaw strains with it. If he’d felt bigger in your hand before, he’s an entirely different story in your mouth. The stretch catches you off guard.
He sees you struggling to take him, and he adjusts your fingers around his length. "Your hand — Whatever your mouth can't cover. That's what it's for."
Mouth on the upper half, hand at the base, you finally find the thing that makes his breath change. The slow drag of your tongue and suction combined makes him shudder, you notice. You do it again. Though they’re held back, the sounds coming out of him make it very difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.
“Atta girl.” It slips out quiet, almost hard to catch.
The words hit low in your belly and you feel yourself clench around nothing. You almost lose your rhythm from merely two words. Chiding yourself, you try to recover. His hips twitch like the praise cost him the last scrap of control he had left.
The idea that you could make him forget himself, make him slip like that, make him say something he wasn't planning on saying.
You want more of that. You want all of that.
As you work him deeper, tongue dragging slow and wet along the underside with every suck, your eyes flick lower without meaning to. His balls are heavy and tight just below where your hand grips the base, skin flushed and drawn up.
It is impossible to ignore now. You pull off.
He makes a sound of protest that is thoroughly undignified.
You glance up at him, lips shiny and breathing hard. “What about… those?” Sucking cock has your voice strained. “Do I — should I do something?”
“You don’t have to,” he says, reading it immediately, breath still ragged.
“But I should know, right?”
“It’s — if you want to, cup them first. Get a sense of it.”
He stands up without a word, feet planted wide in front of the couch, cock jutting out heavy and slick right at eye level. The new angle gives you everything you need.
His balls are warm and soft in your palm, making him go very still. You drag your tongue over them experimentally, feeling them draw tight under the wet heat. “Like this?” you murmur against the sensitive skin.
“God, yeah — fuck,” he breathes, thighs trembling. A raw and surprised groan rips out of him when you take one carefully into your mouth and gently suck. His hand fists tight in your hair and releases. “Christ.”
You switch to the other, licking and sucking with growing confidence, tongue swirling as his breath turns ragged. “You’re gonna make me lose it already,” he mutters. “If you don’t want me to blow already, you should come off.”
Satisfied with the way he’s shaking, you reach up and wrap your hand around his cock at the same time, stroking him slowly while your mouth stays sealed around his balls.
His hips jerk hard against your mouth. “Shit — wait—” His fingers slide into your hair and tug you off gently but firmly. “If you keep sucking my balls and jerking me off like that I’m gonna — fuck — cum way too fucking soon. Slow down. Please.”
You pull off from his balls to gently shove him back to the couch. He lands with a soft thud and a groan, and you immediately come back to his cock, lips closing over the head.
This time you don't hold back. You want more of that. More of everything. The sounds of him, the way his control keeps slipping in these small visible ways.
Wet sounds fill the room alongside his ragged breathing. You stop being self-conscious about any of this entirely. Spit on your chin. His hand gripping your hair. You try to take him deeper than you have and it makes you gag, eyes watering. It’s a mess when you do pull off, coughing with tears pricking the corners.
Without a word, his thumb comes to your chin to wipe it. "What did I say?"
"I almost had it."
"You didn't have it."
"I was so close."
"Take me back in your mouth. And stop competing with yourself."
Mouth sliding back down, you take what you can and work what you have. His hips buck upward involuntarily, shoving deeper into your throat for one dizzy second before he catches himself. "Shit — sorry." He forces his ass back down. But the control slips again seconds later, another helpless roll that has you moaning around his cock.
You’re doing this to him.
His hand in your hair is gripping properly now. He says your name and it comes out rough.
Till this time, you were so concentrated on him, you didn’t realise you were dripping wet. Those panties sure are soaked by now.
"Come up." His hand migrates to your shoulder. "Come on, come up."
You don't. You remember his he pulled your hand during the handjob, and you don’t want that to fallen again.
"Baby." The hand tightens. "I mean it — come up —"
It slips out. Just the once, just that word, clearly not planned. You stay where you are and look up at him through your lashes. He forces his eyes to stay open, to keep his gaze on you, but his jaw goes tight and his head drops back. The swear that comes out of him is helpless as his whole body goes rigid and still.
The first hot, thick rope of cum hits the back of your throat, salty and bitter and so fucking him. You swallow it down greedily, sucking harder through every pulsing spurt until he’s shaking and empty.
The taste of him is all over your tongue. "Fuck," his voice is wrecked.
He is a sight as you sit back on your heels.
His chest is heaving. There's a flush across his face and throat. He's looking at you from somewhere between wrecked and something else, something that's been showing up on his face more lately.
"First time, you don't usually swallow. You don't know if you'll like the taste — that's why I was trying to—" He pauses to take a breath. "You should've let me pull you off."
Both of your hands go to his jaw. "Buck." You make him look at you. "I liked it. Very much. Can we do it again?"
Droopy eyes stare back at you, and you generously add, “not right now, obviously."
Something gives in his face and he laughs. His hand comes up to cover both of yours where they're resting on him. Turning his head, he presses his mouth to your palm, warmth transferring from his lips. "Twenty minutes," he says into your hand.
"Fifteen."
"Twenty." A kiss to your palm.
"Seventeen and that's my final offer."
"We can go straight to your cock. I'm ready."
Bucky looks at you. "No, you're not."
"I literally just—"
"Lie down."
There's no room in his voice for the conversation you were about to have. Because you know him well enough, you know that tone means he's already thought about this more than you have. It's annoying. You've gotten used to it. You lie down.
He comes down beside you, and his mouth finds the side of your neck first, and then your jaw. "Have you done this before?"
The audacity of this man. “I’m sorry — If I'd done this before. Why would I be here?"
His lips press somewhere near your ear. "With yourself. Have you touched yourself?"
Oh.
"Yes. Obviously." You didn't mean for the ‘obviously’ to come out quite so defensive.
"This'll be different."
The audacity again. "Yeah, you’re gonna be better —"
"No, I just meant — my fingers are bigger."
Right. You take a breath. He's right, you know he's right. The size, and when you add his experience to the mix... "Okay."
"I want you to show me something first." When you turn to look at him he's already looking at you. He proposes it like it's simple. "How you do it. What you do when you're alone."
The heat that climbs your throat is immediate. "Bucky."
"You don't have to. But it'd be nice if you did."
"No I just —" You press your lips together. It's not that you don't want to. It's just that there's a difference between doing something and doing something with him watching your face for your reaction. "You'll literally be right there."
"That’s kind of the point." A quiet fact.
Working up whatever nerve that requires, you slide your hand beneath the waistband of your underwear.
For the first few seconds you're almost entirely in your own head about it, hyperaware of him, of his attention. But your body doesn't especially care about that. It knows what this is. And gradually, the weight of being watched tips over into something else. The sound that comes out of you is not measured.
That’s when you register a movement without fully tracking it. You feel his breath against your inner thigh, you understand he's not beside you anymore, he's between your legs. Right there, watching up close as your hand moves under the thin fabric.
That is a lot of new information at once.
"Take these off." His hand is at the edge of your underwear.
To make it easier, you lift your hips. He drags them down and off in one slow pull and drops them somewhere behind him. The cool air hits your slick folds. But the most striking part of it all is that he's just looking, eyes dark and fixed on the way you're already glistening, the lips of your pussy flushed and wet from your own fingers. “God, I missed her.” The words slip out before he can stop them.
"Did you — did you just call my pussy 'her'?" The question comes out breathless though you're trying to sound sharp. You can't help picking at him even when your thighs are trembling under his hands.
He doesn't answer, so you naturally continue, "you wouldn't let me call your cock 'him'. But now you're out here naming mine like she's an old friend? That's rich." You manage to get the words out, but your voice cracks halfway through, the heat of his stare making it hard to keep the brat in check.
"That was different." The corner of his mouth twitches like he's fighting a smile. "But, you can do whatever you want, gorgeous."
Did he just — did he just call you gorgeous and send your nervous system into an overdrive? Or did he call your pussy gorgeous? Sometimes it’s hard to keep track, especially when you’re inches away from losing it.
You try for a comeback, but there’s none, the words dissolve into a shaky moan before they’re even formed. Partly because his thumbs are already spreading you open again, exposing every slick inch to the cool air and his hungry gaze.
“Don’t stop on my account.” He urges your fingers to continue their motion, and you find your clit to work the slow circle you know. His hands stay spread open on your outer lips.
His breath is warm against you and it is genuinely insane how much that alone is doing to you. You can feel yourself getting wetter under his gaze, which is embarrassing, and also apparently fine. Because when he notices, he makes a soft involuntary sound that vibrates right through your core. "Put your finger in for me."
For him.
After a short shaky breath, you work one finger in. The stretch is small and familiar but the sound you make is not.
"Just like that… fuck, look at you." You can feel him looking. Not at your face. "Leave it right there."
His thumbs, on either side of your lips, spread you open gently, slightly more. To look at you, at where your finger disappears inside your dripping pussy, at all of it, up close.
"She's soaking wet already." His thumb sweeps through your folds in one slow drag, collecting the slick until it shines on his skin. "Look at her pulsing for me."
A soft whimper leaves you as you try to keep pumping in and out of you.
“Fingers out.” There’s an urgency to his voice now, eclipsing all softness there was there before.
You draw your hand back, and you're about to just keep going, bring them up, towards you. But his hand closes lightly around your wrist. Redirecting you.
He brings your fingers to his mouth, his lips closing around them, his eyes up and on yours while he sucks. He hums like this is a perfectly normal thing to be doing.
The second he releases your hand, his face descends to your inviting cunt, sealing his mouth over your clit. Your hand goes straight to his hair.
He groans at that, a sound that vibrates all the way through you, and his grip on your thighs tightens in response.
The pain of it, just that slight pull of his hair under your fist, makes him groan again. You save this particular information in the box that’s been filing everything about him for almost many years now.
He licks around your entrance, just teasing, testing, then goes back to your clit. You find yourself trying to grind up into him because your hips seem to have their own agenda now. When you roll up, he adjusts, tilts his head, his hands steady on your thighs, not stopping you.
He looks up at you. Actually holds eye contact while his tongue moves against your clit, which is an absolutely unreasonable thing to do to a person. Your hand tightens in his hair. He makes that sound again.
Mouth wet, he surfaces to rest his chin on your inner thigh for a second. "I'm going to use my fingers now."
"Yes," you say immediately. "Please."
His hand traces down your stomach, two fingers this time, slow through your folds. "Breathe."
"I'm breathing." You’re, in fact, not breathing.
"Are you?"
It’s the second time you’re swallowing your words today. Because he decides to slide one finger through your entrance, no further, just to the first knuckle, and stops.
"You okay?"
The stretch is different from your own. He's right about the size of it. But it's not too much, it's just new, it's just a presence you have to get used to. "Yeah, that's — yeah."
He pushes in slowly and it's very different now. The angle, the size, the fact that it's him and not you and that he's watching your face while he does it, which you are acutely aware of. When he's in fully, he stays there for a moment, unmoving. His thumb brushes over your clit, giving your body something else to focus on.
"Doing so good," he murmurs, as he curls his finger, just slightly, and your back bows off the bed. He does it again, finding the same spot, watching your face with that look of his. Patient. Like he has all the information he needs and is simply using it.
"Bucky—"
"I've got you, baby. You’re so good."
It’s the seventh time he’s called you 'baby'. You’ve tried not counting, but everytime it slips out of him without his knowing, it gets lodged into your brain.
His thumb keeps its steady circles and his finger moves in a slow drag. This is the point at which your body stops taking notes entirely and just exists in what he's doing to it. You pull his hair. He just hisses and keeps going.
"More. Buck — please."
"Yeah? You can take me?"
"Yeah — please—"
He adds the second finger. The stretch makes you grip the sheets, makes a sound come out of you that breaks in the middle. He stills immediately. "Too much?"
"No." The word is out before you've finished thinking it. "No, don't stop."
He works them slowly, both fingers, curling and dragging while his mouth reattaches to your clit. Now, that and doing this at the same time is a lot. It splits your attention in a way that eventually gives up trying to split anything and just becomes one overwhelming thing.
There’s no warning this time, it happens suddenly without any notice, you come with your hand fisted in his hair and your face pressed to his pillow, sound muffled. His mouth works you through it slowly, drawing it out until your thighs are shaking.
When he finally slides his fingers free, you feel their absence immediately.
His lips press a soft kiss to your inner thigh, your pubic bone, and then just below your navel. Your whole body is doing something between boneless and stunned.
When he comes to rest besides you, his mouth finds yours. You can taste yourself on his lips and that is also a sentence you're going to need a moment with.
"You did so good for me," he murmurs against your mouth, and the way he says it is so straightforward. Something behind your sternum goes a little weak. His thumb moves over your cheekbone once. He pulls back to look at you.
You lie there and just try to breathe. He's propped beside you, his hand resting on your stomach, moving with the rise and fall of it.
The lamp in the corner is doing something to the room, making it amber and small.
"You know — you can’t just — just say ‘she’s pretty’ okay? That’s not — it’s not—"
"Mm." He hums to let you fumble through your sentence.
You do. You fumble. "That — that was an incredibly unfair thing to say."
"Was it?"
"Yes!" Then, calming yourself down, "yes."
He laughs, a proper one, and you feel it through his ribcage where your arm is pressed against him. "I'll keep that in mind."
Your heart does something it's been doing more frequently around him lately. It’s a problem you’re currently not equipped to take a closer look at.
Shifting away from his grip, you turn yourself to look at him. The thought that's been in the back of your head for the last twenty minutes makes itself known again. "Please give me your cock."
The remainder of his laugh doesn’t come out.
"Bucky."
"I heard you."
"So—"
Taking your hand, he presses your palm flat against the front of his sweats. Where he’s hard. Properly hard. The heat and the shape of him is undeniable under your touch. "It's all yours."
The air leaves your body. The words leave your brain. All the blood in your entire cardiovascular system reroutes to your face in a single catastrophic second and you stare at his chest because you cannot currently look at him.
"I—" Nothing. You have nothing. Completely blank.
He doesn't move your hand away. If anything, he tightens his grip, just lets it sit there under his, while you attempt to reconstruct language.
"That's—" The warmth of him through the fabric is not helping. "You're—"
"Yeah." You don’t know what you were about to say, so you don’t know what he’s actually agreeing to. But he doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.
The smugness is radiating off him, and your voice comes out appropriately three times higher than usual, "I wasn't — I wasn't ready for that."
"You asked."
"I know I asked." Your face is genuinely so warm right now. "I asked and you—" You make a vague gesture with your free hand. "You can’t just — just do that ‘cause I asked."
The completely insufferable almost-smile at the corner of his mouth could power a city. He is enjoying every second of this.
"Stop looking at me like that," you tell his clavicle, because you still cannot bring yourself to look at him. Especially since your hand is enveloping his crotch, both enveloped by his own hand.
"I'm not doing anything."
You risk looking at his face, which is a mistake, because the expression on it is fond in a way that completely destroys you. You bring yourself to look back at his clavicle.
His thumb makes one small stroke over your knuckles, where your hand is still pressed to him, still warm, and you feel it in your whole chest.
The gesture is less reassuring than it should be.
Before you can process what’s happening, he shifts. Sits up properly, back against the headboard. His arm goes around your waist.
One smooth pull, barely any effort in it, and you're up — actually off the mattress for half a second — and then you're over him, knees sinking into the sheets on either side of his hips.
The logistics of it take a moment to catch up with your brain. You're straddling him. You're bare from the waist down and he's still in his sweats and you're straddling him.
You’re also not fully dropping your weight on him, just hovering, thighs tight with the effort of not fully sitting.
"Sit down." His hands rest at your hips, thumbs at the crease where thigh meets the curve of your ass.
"Bucky, I — I'm going to crush him."
Bucky sighs like a patient man, who’s tired of hearing the same thing for the hundredth time. "You're not going to crush him."
"I'm serious, Bucky—"
"So am I. Sit."
You try. That's the thing, you genuinely try. You shift your weight, start to lower yourself, and then the thick line of him presses up against you, the fear of crushing little Bucky surfaces again. You can feel him there, right there, even through the fabric, even from an inch away, and your nervous system is having a full board meeting about the implications of closing that distance. What if you actually crush him?
"Still hovering," he observes.
"I'm trying."
"You're not going to crush me."
"You don't know that."
"I do, in fact, know that. I’m the experienced one, remember?"
Let there be a single moment where he doesn’t remind you of his sexual escapades. You almost consider retaliating by putting all of your weight on him in one go, but you need this guy, you need his cock.
"Shut — shut up."
"Sit down."
"Bucky."
"Sit."
You make an undignified noise at him. He looks back at you like he’s content to simply wait, which he will, indefinitely, and you both know it.
But like everything with Bucky, he surprises you. One slow slide of his hand, down between your bodies, and his thumb finds your clit. It’s one light flick, barely anything. But your hips betray you completely. Your knees buckle and you drop fully.
The sound you make when you land on him is not something you'll be repeating in polite company.
The rough fabric of his sweats drags through your folds and presses flush against you. Your brain, which had been managing perfectly well up until thirty seconds ago, simply stops.
His cock is right there, thick and hard under the thin cotton, pressed directly against your clit, and you are bare, not to mention wet and sitting on him.
The moan that comes out of you has his name in it and very little else.
"Good girl. There you go."
You grab his shoulders. Mostly for something to hold onto, partly because the alternative is floating off the bed entirely.
"Bucky—"
"Feel that?"
You feel absolutely nothing but that, actually. The pressure alone is making your thoughts go sideways. Your hips twitch, chasing it without permission.
His jaw goes tight and he tips his head back against the headboard for one unguarded moment before he levels out again.
His mouth finds your neck immediately. Open, dragging up toward your jaw and back down while one hand palms your breast, thumb working your nipple in slow circles until it aches. You press into his lap, just slightly, and feel him exhale through his nose.
"What are you—" Your own voice comes out strange. "Bucky, if you don't stop—"
"Don't stop what?" He says it against your throat.
"That. All of — just. Don't stop."
He laughs, low, the sound vibrating against your skin. "You want me to stop or not?"
"I want — stop asking me questions."
"Alright." He switches to the other side of your neck and you stop being able to track the conversation.
The thing is, every tiny shift you make drags your pussy across the front of his sweats. The friction is wet and warm and you are not entirely in control of your hips anymore. You rock forward, without even deciding to, and the pressure catches your clit just right and makes your teeth snap shut.
"Let's try something," he says.
You're mostly liquid at this point. "What?" It comes out slurred, half a word, because his cock is pressing exactly where it shouldn't be. He's also got his mouth on the underside of your jaw and your nipple is between his fingers. It's just a lot of ongoing information for your head to process.
He looks at you. His cheeks are already flushed and his eyes have gone the dark kind of blue. "Grind on me."
What?
You just stare at him, hoping he’d give you something more than that.
"Like this." His hands settle on your hips, guiding you. Forward, then back. Your clit drags across the ridge of him, making you bury your face in his neck. "Bucky—"
"Again." His hands repeat it. The same rhythm, forward and back. The fabric is already damp from you and the drag of it is obscene. "You feel that?"
You feel it fucking everywhere. "Yes."
"Just like that."
He keeps his hands on your hips for a few more strokes, setting the pace. Then lets go, one of them migrating to your nipple, the other to your back. Which means you have to do this yourself, in front of him, consciously.
But soon enough, your hips find the drag again and the self-consciousness evaporates.
"There it is.”
The sounds you’re making are nowhere in your control. Small and helpless but rhythmic with your hips. And you can't locate any part of yourself that cares. His hand at your back presses you closer, and the extra pressure makes your breath hitch.
"You're soaking through my sweats," he says into your hair. He sounds ruined by this. "D'you know that? Can feel you through the fabric."
The fact that he's saying this out loud makes you grind harder and your moan is muffled against his neck.
"That's good, yeah." His voice has shed several layers of composure. "Keep going."
His breathing has changed underneath you, shorter, less controlled. With his chest rising and falling faster, you understand you’re taking him apart the same way he's been taking you apart this whole time.
There was some point where his attention, his hands, his mouth, all of it were directed at you, for you to learn. But it’s changed now. It definitely goes both ways. You can feel that now under your hips, in the way his hands are gripping you, grabbing your skin for more. It’s becoming less and less like a teacher.
It’s more like a person who is losing his grip on something. On several somethings.
An urgency finds you now, pace picking up solely because you need to see him as flustered as you are.
"Fuck—" His voice is strangled. "Slow—"
You don't slow down. Your hips have their own agenda now, chasing something that's pulling tight and urgent in your stomach. Bucky's hands flex at your waist but they don't actually stop you, just hold on.
You're close. You know you're close because the friction has gone from good to unbearable in the space of about thirty seconds and your thighs are shaking and his name keeps coming out of you between breaths like punctuation.
"Bucky — I'm — don't—"
"I'm not going anywhere." Still ragged. His hand moves up your back, into your hair, just holding. "Cum for me."
Stuttering, your hips grind down one last time as your orgasm crashes through in waves. You feel him shudder underneath you, his grip tightening, his whole body going rigid.
Breathing his name into his shoulder, you both stay in a limbo.
When you finally manage to open your eyes and lift your head, he's flushed. His neck and his cheeks and the top of his chest. Hair stuck to his forehead, lips parted, he’s breathing like he’s run across the campus.
Something clicks when your gaze travels between his face and the dark, obvious wet patch spreading across his sweats.
"Did you—"
His ears go pink. That alone is enough to confirm it.
"Bucky. Did you just—"
"Yeah." He scrubs a hand over his face. "I did." The tips of his ears are genuinely red and you've never seen this on him before. "I came in my sweats, yes, you don't have to—"
"You came in your sweats."
"I'm aware of what happened."
"Without me even—" You gesture at the general situation. "I was just sitting there."
"You were not just sitting there," he says, slightly pained. "You were. Doing all of that. For quite a while. And you're — " He stops himself, something crossing his face that he seems to decide against finishing.
The laugh starts somewhere in your chest and works its way up before you can stop it. Helpless, falling out of you. You press your hand to your mouth but it's already too late.
"Go on. Get it out." He says dryly.
"I'm not—" You're laughing properly now, shoulders shaking. You can hear him hiss when you shift, your hips rolling just a fraction with the laugh, because your body hasn’t figured out how to stay still yet. The sound he makes is raw, like it got dragged out of him against his will.
“Fuck — give me a minute, baby, please,” he breathes, one hand clamping down on your hip to hold you there. Freezing you in place. His eyes are squeezed shut now.
“Shit, sorry—” the laughter dies in your throat.
“Don’t be.” He exhales, eyes cracking open again. They’re still glassy, that post-cum haze making the blue look almost black. “I’m just… over-sensitive right now. You moved and it’s—” Another small hiss when you breathe too hard. “Yeah. That.”
You bite your lip, trying not to smile again even though the whole thing is kind of hilarious and kind of hot at the same time.
His thumbs stroke slow circles on your hips. You feel the way his cock is still half-hard underneath all that mess, twitching every time your weight settles.
You trace a finger along the side of his neck, right where his pulse is jumping. “Can I… give you a hickey? Just one. Or two.”
His head tips back against the headboard so he can look at you properly. The corner of his mouth lifts, tired but fond. “Hickey?”
“Yeah… I’ve always wanted to…” you trail off.
“Have at it,” he makes space for your mouth, titling his head to one side.
Immediately, you lean in and press your mouth to the spot just under his jaw, sucking slowly at first, letting your tongue drag over the skin until you feel him swallow hard. He tastes like salt and musk. Pulling back just enough, you see the little red bloom starting, then move lower, right where his neck meets his shoulder, and do it again. Teeth grazing just enough to make him hiss through his teeth in a completely different way.
His hand slides up your back, fingers threading into your hair. “Mark me up, gorgeous.”
So, you are gorgeous.
Main Masterlist || Series Masterlist || Next Part
EXTRAS. Thank you for reading. Hope that wasn’t just porn without plot. Last part will be up next Thursday.
BROTHER’S BEST FRIEND BUCKY X F!READER (college au)
SUMMARY. Being Steve Rogers’ sister meant years of boys looking at you like a warning sign. Now that you’re in college, your lack of experience becomes a major problem. So you ask your brother’s best friend to teach you everything. What starts as lessons becomes something neither of you have a name for yet.
WORD COUNT. 11.7K
WARNINGS. college au, brother’s best friend trope, MDNI, inexperienced reader, smut, tit play, handjob, dick pronouns, pussy inspection, pussy pronouns, oral (f and m receiving), an attempt at teabagging, cum swallowing, vaginal fingering, dry humping, bucky cums in his pants. No use of Y/N.
NOTES. You can imagine reader as Steve’s adopted sister, there will be no physical descriptions. One might argue this part is just porn without plot. One would be partially right.
Main Masterlist || Series Masterlist || 1 ~ 2 ~ 3
READ ON AO3
A week goes by, and you kiss him twice more.
Once on his couch on Wednesday, which starts because you sit down close enough that the intent is pretty clear. The second time is Thursday, at his door when you’re leaving, which starts because you turn around and he’s right there.
You’re getting better at it. More confident, less in your own head, less managing the moment and more just in it.
Tonight is Friday, and you’re back on his couch.
“Can I try something?”
There's no version of him that would say no to your question. “Yeah.”
“I want to — I want to start it this time.”
He doesn’t ask what, because he already knows. He settles back slightly, like he’s making room. “Alright.”
So you close the gap and kiss him. The kiss in itself isn’t any different. But it feels different when it’s yours to start. You bring one hand up to his jaw the way he always does to you, and you feel him still like the contact surprised him. That small victory does wonders for your nerves.
He kisses you back slowly, letting you lead, his hand coming to rest at your waist with a patience that you are choosing not to read too much into. You shift closer and his grip tightens, fractionally, like some reflex he’s only barely managing.
When you finally pull back, his eyes open. His thumb makes one slow pass over your hip. “That was good.”
“You could be more specific.”
“You didn’t hesitate.” His thumb again, same slow drag. “That’s the main thing.”
You’re close enough that you can see the detail of him. The line where his jaw meets his throat, the soft stubble that’s absolutely not helping right now. The lamp behind him is the only light and it’s warm and doing nothing to help you think straight.
“What’s next?”
He looks at you for a moment, like he’s reading something. Then he stands up. Before you’ve quite registered what’s happening, his hands are at your waist and you’re being lifted. Foot-off-the-ground-lifted. He’s walking toward the bedroom with your face against his jaw, his mouth pressed to your temple.
You don’t say anything. You’re not sure you could.
Thing is, you've been in his bedroom before. But this is entirely different. You’ve been there to to grab something, just passing through. You know the where the bookshelf is, you know he has a photo of you and Steve, you know he has a lamp that sits in the corner.
But one of that prepared you for being carried into it. The fact that it's Bucky carrying you.
He lays you down on his bed and looks at you. There’s something in how he does it, that makes your whole chest tighten up.
“I’m going to take your shirt off.” You realise he’s telling you so you know what’s coming, giving you time to say no before he does anything. “Along with the rest of your clothes. And then I’m going to put my mouth on you.” He watches your face process this. “Questions?”
“That’s — that’s a lot of steps.”
“It’s really not.” He reaches down and gets the hem of your shirt in both hands. You sit up to let him pull it over your head. When you’re back down, his eyes move over you in a way that makes you want to simultaneously stay very still and also disappear.
His mouth finds your collarbone and works down slowly, hands mapping out the territory of your ribs, your waist, learning you, inch by inch.
He moves like he has a plan and also like the plan isn't the point. Like the point is every single inch of the way there.
But he doesn’t rush past your breasts. He cups one fully in his palm, thumb brushing slow circles over the nipple until it’s tight and aching under his touch. “These are sensitive,” his breath is warm against your skin. “We’re gonna take our time right here so you figure out exactly what you like. Tell me if it’s too much or if you want it harder.”
His lips close over your nipple and he sucks. Slow at first, then deeper, pulling the peak into his mouth that makes your toes curl. It’s nothing like the quick graze you expected.
This is hungry, his tongue swirling around it while he holds the suction. You arch hard, a shaky sound ripping out of you with his name. He switches to the other breast without breaking contact, sucking just as thoroughly, letting you feel every pull, every flick, until both nipples are swollen and slick and throbbing in the cool air.
You hadn't known it would feel like this. You'd thought that it would feel good, fine, whatever. You hadn't accounted for the quality of his attention. The way he's watching your face while he does it, checking, adjusting, reading you. It’s with the same focus he brought to explaining what made a good first date. It's the same focus and it's directed entirely at you. And you don't know what to do with that so you just make the sound his mouth is pulling out of you and try not to think.
When he finally releases them with a soft pop, he murmurs “you like that?” His dark eyes go over your face and decides it himself. “Yeah, you do. What about this?” He grazes his teeth over one sensitive bud, then bites down lightly, just enough pressure to sting in the best way. Your hips jerk and you moan outright, louder than you’ve ever let yourself be. He soothes the bite instantly with his tongue, then sucks again, harder this time, alternating between both breasts like he’s memorizing every reaction.
It feels like he's building a map of you for himself. For some purpose you haven't named yet. And won't name right now, because you can't think right now. Also because naming it would be a problem.
His mouth stays on you longer than you thought it would, sucking and licking and testing until your chest is heaving and your thighs are trembling around nothing.When you press them close together, he says against your chest, “don’t do that.”
“Do what—”
“Squeeze your thighs.” His hand slides between your knees and parts them easily. “Keep them open.”
Something about being told that with his mouth still on your breast rearranges your brain chemistry entirely.
He makes his way down your stomach, mouth and hands both, leaving heat everywhere they go. His stubble drags across your ribs, raising goosebumps. It's a small thing, the scrap of his beard on skin.
It shouldn't be a significant thing.
It is, though.
His fingers find the waistband of your underwear and tug them down your legs and off.
Then he just looks. Both hands on your inner thighs, spreading you open under the warm light of his bedroom, studying your pussy with an attention that makes your face go absolutely warm, sweat beading at your temples.
“Bucky—”
“Give me a second.”
“You’re staring.”
“You’re so wet.” He runs his thumb, a sliver of a touch, through your folds, and your hips jerk. His words aren’t quite to you, more like something he’s noting down for personal records.
“Why are you apologising?” He looks offended almost.
“Because it’s — it’s a lot.”
“Yeah.” He looks up at you, the blue of his eyes now only a ring. “It is. That’s good.” His thumb again, the same barely-there stroke, and you make a sound you weren’t planning on making. “That’s very good, actually.”
It’s the voice he uses when something matters to him. You've heard that voice applied to other things over the years. An arguement with Steve, the conversation with Jaxon before it got physical. It’s the serious kind of voice, the one that inevitably says ‘this matters to me.’
The fact that it's being applied to this, to you, like this, makes it harder to breathe.
He keeps your thighs spread open with his hands, and his voice is warm like he’s walking you through something just for the two of you. “That’s just your body showing me exactly what it wants. Nothing to be sorry about. I’m gonna touch you right here so you can feel what feels best for you. Just let me hear whatever comes out, okay? I want to know.”
His thumb strokes slowly through your folds, spreading the slick. He hums softly, when your breath hitches. “Breathe for me.” Then his thumb finds your clit and circles it once. It's soft, light and careful and your whole body jerks.
“Bucky—”
Eyes move to look at your face now. “Feels good?”
You make a sound that's both a gasp and a hum. He keeps the slow circles, then brushes over it with the lightest flick of his thumb. You gasp again, softer this time.
Bucky pulls the hood back just enough with one finger, gentle as anything, then circles again with a touch more pressure. Your thighs tremble under his palms and another soft moan slips out.
“Good girl. See how much wetter you’re getting?”
Does he realise you're not in any position to answer him…
His forefinger circles your entrance, for one small moment, you wonder if he's going inside. But he just collects the slick and brings it back to your clit in slow, patient strokes.
Just when you think you're used to what he's doing, he shifts down between your thighs and you feel his breath against your skin. That’s when you understand. When he'd said he's gonna put his mouth on you, he didn't only mean your tits.
“Wait — Are you — are you going to—”
“Yes.”
“With your — your mouth.”
“That’s generally how it works.”
“I know how it works, I’ve watched porn, I just —” You try to think of useful words, the verge of failing. “I didn’t think you’d actually —”
He looks up at you from between your thighs with the patient expression of a man who has all night. “You didn’t think I’d what?”
“I mean. It’s not — you don’t have to. Like it can’t be that enjoyable for you, it’s—”
“I want to.”
“But—”
“I want to.” He says it the second time like the first time didn’t register, which it didn’t, which he can tell. The second want is more enunciated, letting you know its value. “That’s not a polite offer. I want to put my mouth on your pussy. Are you gonna let me?”
The framing of that sentence evaporates any ability to construct a counter-argument. “Okay… yeah. Okay.”
“Now, relax.” He turns his head and presses a kiss to your inner thigh.
“Why’d you start with your mouth?” You question, mostly just to be saying something, because silence right now seems like more than you can manage. “I thought — I figured you’d use your fingers first. Mouth seems more—”
“More what?”
“Intimate? I don’t know. I thought fingers came first.”
He looks up at you again. “Before I put anything inside you, I want your body to know what pleasure feels like. I want you to know what it feels like to want more before I give you more.” He holds your gaze. “Does that make sense?”
Your mouth is very dry. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” And with that, his mouth meets your cunt. He exhales into you like he didn't mean to, this warm, involuntary breath, and it hits you that he wants this. He wants this specifically, not as the next step in the curriculum.
Because the sound he made when his mouth first touched you is not a teaching sound.
If you’d thought kissing him was breathtaking, this was on a whole another level. You decide to constantly remind yourself to breathe, because he sure as hell isn’t helping.
The first sensation your register is heat of it. Just that, just warmth and the soft press of his lips against your core. His tongue drags slowly through your folds and your hand shoots to his hair of its own accord.
He licks into you like he’s learning you, cataloguing every place that makes you twitch and keeps coming back to it.
You've watched enough of him to know the difference between him going through motions and him when he’s actually into what he’s doing.
Now, he’s into what he’s doing. The sounds coming from him are laced with want. They aren’t even pointed at you. It seems to escape him rather than come from him. Like he forgot he was supposed to be in control of this. Like you're the one doing something to him.
When his lips close around your clit, you make a noise that could only be described as a cry. Only reassurance after that mortifying ordeal is that he makes a sound back.
His lips close around your clit again, and you have to consciously bite down to not let another noise out.
Like he’s sensed your dilemma, he says against you. “You can be loud. No one’s going to hear you.”
“I’m not—” you start to object, but then he sucks and the rest of that sentence ceases to exist.
Your hand tightens in his hair without you deciding to. He actually groans at that, a vibration against your clit that shoots straight through you, and you loosen your grip immediately.
“Sorry—”
He comes off you just enough to speak. “Don’t apologise.” He looks up the length of your body at you. “You can pull it. You can do whatever you want with my hair. Grip it, pull it, push me where you want — however feels good. It’s for you.” A pause. “Yeah?”
He says it's for you. Like he wants to make sure you understand that. Like it matters to him that you understand that.
Only when you nod, and say yeah, does he go down.
He eats you with with an attention, learning what you respond to and using it, building pressure with his tongue against your clit while his hands hold your hips steady when they try to roll up into him.
At some point one hand leaves your hip and slides up your stomach to your breast, his thumb rolling over your nipple, and the moan that comes out of you at the combination is loud enough that you’re briefly grateful for thick walls.
“Bucky—”
A hum against your clit but he keeps going.
He hums like he's satisfied. Like that sound you just made is something he wanted.
Your hand is in his hair and you can feel him, how present he is in this, how little of him is elsewhere.
Nobody has ever been this entirely here with you before. Not that anyone has been with you before.
But even in the small ways like conversations, attention, the general experience of being in a room with people, you've always felt the slight elsewhere quality of other people's focus.
He doesn't have that. He's completely, entirely here. And not just now.
You know it isn’t something you should be analysing right this moment, but what he’s doing to you isn’t just physical.
Finally, your hand fists in his hair, the way he said you could. The sound he makes is something you’re going to be thinking about for a while. You know he’d said it was for you, but the way he’s responding, it’s hard not to think there’s a little something in it for him too.
You feel the tension building, coiling tighter with every stroke of his tongue, your thighs shaking either side of his head.
“Don’t stop,” you manage, “don’t — please—”
He doesn’t stop. His tongue works your clit in tight circles, his hand flexing into your hip. Everything tightens to a single unbearable point and then snaps. A sound tears out of your throat that you’ve never heard yourself make, your pussy clenching around nothing while he works you through every shuddering wave of it, slower now, softer. He draws it out until your legs are trembling and your hand in his hair has gone slack.
A kiss is pressed to your inner thigh. Then your hip. He’s moving back up your body and settling beside you. You try to remember what your name is.
“That was— I need a minute.”
“Take your time.”
You turn your head to look at him. His mouth is wet, his hair is a disaster from your hands, and he looks… he looks like someone who thoroughly enjoyed himself. There's something open in his expression, something that isn't quite contained, and you look at it for a second before he notices you looking and rearranges slightly.
You saw it. You aren’t in any condition to process it though.
“In porn,” you start and pause to catch your breath.
“Mm.”
“They make it look sort of — performative. Like they’re doing it but they’re also sort of doing it at the camera. That was nothing like that.”
“No.”
“That was—” You don’t have the word. “Better.”
He looks at you for a second with something in his face that he keeps mostly to himself. “I’m glad it was.”
He disappears for a minute and comes back with a glass of water and a washcloth warm from the tap. Sitting on the edge of the bed beside you, he hands you the water first. His hand stays on your knee while you drink.
When you’re done, he’s gentle with the washcloth, so careful, taking care of you like it’s just the next thing he wants to do and not a task he’s ticking off. Your face is warm and you try not to feel too much about the fact that someone is doing this, that he’s doing this, without being asked.
You wonder if this is part of the curriculum or entirely something else.
When he’s done he sets everything aside and looks at you. “You need anything else? Hungry, or—”
“No. Can — Can we just lie down for a bit?”
“Yeah, ‘course.”
He moves up the bed, and you roll toward him. That’s when you realise that he’s still in his sweats and his t-shirt. Entirely, fully dressed. And you are wearing nothing at all, which strikes you as a profound injustice.
“You’re still dressed.” Before he can say anything, you’re talking again. “That’s not fair.”
His eyes slowly drag over your body, which feels like a touch in itself. During the thorough once-over, he also appears to be giving this the serious consideration it deserves.
Without another word, he reaches back and pulls his t-shirt over his head in that one-handed way that shouldn’t be as effortless as it is. “Lift up.”
As you straighten up, he puts it on you himself, guides your arms through, smooths it down over you.
His face tips forward to press a kiss to your temple, just his mouth at your hairline for a moment. Your whole chest does something you’re going to deal with later.
He pulls the comforter up over you both. “Better?”
You hum. Find the space against his side that your body has apparently already decided belongs to you, your cheek against his shoulder, his arm settling around you.
He’s warm, too warm almost. It’s way too comfortable not to fall asleep.
You’re not going to fall asleep though. You’re just lying here, that’s all, with his t-shirt pooled around your thighs and the smell of him close enough to be a problem and his heartbeat doing something steady under your cheek.
There’s nothing to do and nowhere to be and his hand keeps moving, up and down, up and down.
This is nice.
He’s nice.
You close your eyes.
It's morning.
You can tell Bucky's awake because the arm around you is too still. Sleeping people don't hold that kind of stillness, it's a different quality entirely. He's doing a very convincing impression of someone unconscious and you're doing a very convincing impression of someone who isn't lying here thinking about his mouth.
Neither of you are particularly committed to either bit.
"You awake?" he asks after a while.
"No."
The sound he makes is almost a laugh. His thumb moves once over your shoulder. "How do you feel?"
You turn your head and he's already looking at you. The blueness of his eyes startle you in this grey light sweeping through the windows.
There's something underneath the casual delivery of his question that is very much not casual.
"I'm fine, Buck."
"First time's a lot. Even when it goes well."
The fact that he says 'even when it goes well' like he's genuinely leaving the door open. Like he'd sit there and hear it if you say, ‘actually, I have a few notes.’ You don’t say that. You have no notes.
"It went well. Quite well, actually. I'd go as far as really well."
"Yeah?"
"You were there."
"I was. Wanted to hear you say it."
That thing that's been quietly building since last night stirs again and you decide not to look at it directly. The part of your brain that is always oriented toward the next thing clears its throat. "I want to learn the other part."
He doesn't answer immediately. You fill the gap yourself. "How to touch someone. A guy. I want to know how to do it properly."
A breath. "Yeah. Okay."
"Should I … start with my mouth? Like you did?"
"No." He shakes his head once. "That's different."
"How?"
He's quiet for a second. You can tell he's actually thinking about how to say it rather than just saying something. "When I did that with you, it was because it was your first time. Even fingers can be a lot the first time. Guys don't need that. It's not the equivalent."
You think about it. It makes sense. The way he explains things always makes sense.
"Also, hands is easier to start. You'll know what you're doing before you're, you know. Down there."
"Right. And you don't need—"
Unlike you, it's not his first time. Any of this. You knew that going in, it was the entire point of coming to him, it was why you knocked on his door almost two weeks ago. And still there's a small stupid pang, that you are absolutely not going to mention.
He doesn't seem to notice. "So. Hands."
"Hands."
The covers shift to reveal his torso. There’s an intense urge to reach out and touch the plane of muscle. You don’t.
"Whenever you're ready."
You shuffle forward on your knees across the mattress until you're close enough that your body is almost touching his. He watches you with his hands loose at his sides, giving you the room.
He's still in his sweatpants. You get your hands to the waistband and he lifts his hips slightly to help, cooperating without making it a whole thing.
You look.
For a full second, maybe two.
Because your brain is constitutionally incapable of silence, you say, "hi."
Bucky closes his eyes briefly, the expression of a man asking for patience from a higher power. "You don't have to greet it."
"I wasn't greeting, I was — it was a general hi." You look up at him. He looks back down at you. "He's really pretty."
Something happens to Bucky's face that he was not prepared for. His mouth does a thing, not quite a laugh, but also not not one. "He’s — That's not — people don't usually—"
"I’m just being honest." You look up at him and then back down. "He's also big."
"Okay."
"No, I mean significantly." You're doing the math and the math is concerning. He's not even fully hard yet. "How is he going to fit?"
"It'll fit."
"That's not an explanation."
"You don’t have to worry about that now. I'll make it fit.” There's a pull at the corner of his mouth, the effort of keeping his expression neutral while you sit there conducting what is essentially a full appraisal. "Are you going to touch it, or..."
The first contact is just your fingertips. Light, just along the length of him. He pulls in a breath and his hips shift, barely.
"You're so soft." You mean it genuinely. The skin of him is warm and smooth, absolutely not what you'd expected at all. "Like the skin. I didn't think it'd feel like that."
"Yeah." His voice has gone slightly strained.
You wrap your hand around him loosely. More curious than purposeful. He goes very still, the kind of still that takes effort.
Your thumb drifts up to the tip. There's a bead of precum there, you touch it. The sound Bucky makes is quiet and completely wrecked, his head dropping back for one unguarded moment before he pulls it back together.
You did that. Your thumb did that.
You swipe your thumb over the head again and he hisses through his teeth. "Keep doing that. And this is going to be a very short lesson."
So naturally, you do that again.
"Fuck — okay. I — I'm gonna move your hand."
He takes your hand in his and adjusts everything. The grip, the angle, the pressure, and wraps your fingers around his cock properly. His hand over yours. "Not that tight — Just like that. You feel the difference?"
"Uh-huh."
He does one slow stroke with your hand inside his, all the way up. His jaw goes tight. And he does it again. On the third one, he lets go of your hand, and drops his to the sheet.
You do it on your own. Same grip. "Like that?"
"Exactly like—" He stops as you do it again, his whole body jerking once. "Yeah. Yeah, that's—" His hand tightens its grip on the sheet. "Good."
You find the rhythm easier than you expected.
Bucky is quiet in a way that's the opposite of silence. His breathing changes, his throat moves when he swallows, and the hand that isn't gripping the sheet finds your knee and holds it. Like he needs something to hold onto and your knee was there.
You shouldn't be this focused on how he looks right now. You are. The flush starting at the base of his throat. The way his jaw has gone slightly loose.
You've seen Bucky composed in every situation you can think of. Watching that composure come apart because of your hand is doing something to you that has nothing to do with learning anything.
"Is this okay?"
"More than." He gets it out with some effort. His eyes are on you and they've gone dark, most of the blue gone.
"You can talk to me." You glance up to his half lidded eyes. "I told you things."
"That's different."
"How is it different?"
He opens his mouth, closes it. You get the impression the answer to that question is more complicated than right now warrants. So you let it go and keep your hand moving.
When you twist your wrist slightly at the top, the noise he makes is involuntary. His hand comes off the sheet to catch your wrist.
"Where did you—"
"I was paying attention."
He stares at you. There are about four things happening in his expression at once and none of them are teacher friendly. He lets go of your wrist.
The sounds he makes are quieter than yours were. Held back, like he's rationed himself. But they're there. His hips move into the drag of your hand, just slightly, small involuntary pushes he's not entirely winning against.
Warm puffs of breath are on your neck, as he drops his forehead to your shoulder.
You've had his attention directed at you for two weeks but this feels different. This is him needing something to lean on and choosing you as destination.
His hips buck up, once, fully. Immediately, he pulls back fast. "Fuck — sorry—"
You want to tell him not to apologise, that watching him lose his composure is doing something to you. You don't say any of that.
He's close. You know it before he says anything, from the way his thighs have gone rigid and his breathing's come apart entirely.
"I'm almost — Stop." His hand closes around your wrist.
You let go and drop your hand back to your own knee. You knew what was coming but you didn't quite anticipate it. He exhales deeply and spills across his own stomach, his grip on the sheets going white for a moment, a low groan working out of his chest before his whole body goes loose.
Before anything sensible catches up with you, you reach out one finger and drag it slowly through the mess on his stomach.
There’s no lesson in curriculum that says you have to touch his release. You don’t care about it at this moment.
You're curious, is all. You've been curious about him in increments for the past two weeks and this is just the latest increment.
The sound Bucky makes comes from somewhere very deep and takes his whole body with it. At once, his hand snaps up and catches your wrist.
"Don't." His voice is completely wrecked. He looks it too. Undone in a way you haven't seen him before, fighting hard against something that might be a laugh and losing to both at once. "Do not."
"Why not?"
"Because." Completely black pupils gaze over you. "Because I just came and you're going to — Fuck. Why are you like this?"
"I was curious."
"Of course you were." He drops his head back against your shoulder and laughs.
You feel the laugh through his whole chest. You feel it against your shoulder and through your arm and somewhere behind your ribs. It's the kind of laugh that makes you want to make him laugh again.
His hand is still loosely around your wrist. He hasn't let go.
"Was that okay? Genuinely. Tell me if I did something wrong."
He lifts his head to look at you. "You did nothing wrong."
"The wrist thing—"
"Was very much not wrong." His voice is strained, but also a little offended, like you're being ridiculous. "Where did you even pick that up?”
"I told you. I was paying attention. Do I get a grade?"
"You're not getting a grade."
"Feedback then?"
"The feedback is that you're going to be a problem."
You don’t know what he means by that. You don’t ask.
Two dates happen, but you are very intent on calling them lessons.
The first one is a bookshop and coffee after, which Bucky picks because he remembered you mentioning it three years ago. You tell yourself normal people hold onto information like that. After all, you remember his favourite author too.
He buys the book before you can get your wallet out. When you open your mouth, he says it's part of the curriculum, with a completely straight-face. You tell him that's a stretch. He shrugs and holds the door open.
The second one is harder to explain away.
He cooks. Which was not on any syllabus you'd agreed to. You sit on his kitchen counter and talk for two hours before the food is even on the table.
You're calling them lessons. That’s easier.
But why’s it becoming harder?
The next time you see Bucky it's a Thursday, and the word lesson doesn't come up at all.
What does come up, eventually, is his mouth on your clavicle. The fact that there’s a movie playing matters less now than it did five minutes ago. Somehow, you've ended up horizontal with his weight half over you. His lips trail up to your throat. Tipping your head back, you give him more space to work with.
But there’s one specific thing in your mind that needs attention right now. That’s been lying dormant for a week. "Teach me something."
"I am teaching you." There’s no attempt on his part to untangle from you. In fact, he moves, rucking your shirt as he goes. His mouth takes in your pebbles nipple, and you make a sound you hadn't planned on, your hand going to his hair. He does it again, the slow suction almost pulling your body off the couch.
"That's not teaching me anything," you manage.
"Sure it is." He doesn't look up. "You're learning what you like."
"That's not—" He does it again and and you lose your train of thought.
There’s no point in being logical about this, you let him play with your tits however he pleases.
After what feels like a lifetime, he surfaces. His face still rests on your torso as he looks up to you.
"Can you please show me the next thing?"
"There’s a next thing?" His crooked lips tell you he’s messing with you.
"You know what I mean."
"No, I don’t."
"Bucky."
“If you want it that bad, you can say it.”
Trying to glare at him from this angle not only proves to be a minor exercise, but also futile because he just smirks. “Fine. Blowjob. I wanna know how."
He holds your gaze. Then he sits up, which means you sit up too. He's doing that thing where he actually thinks before he opens his mouth. The fact that it’s rarer in people makes you like him a little more. If that’s even possible.
"Okay.”
"Just okay?"
"Did you want a longer answer?"
"Well, for starters, I want to know how to actually do it."
His hand comes to the back of your neck. Before you've worked out what's happening, he's pulling you in. His other hand rests warm on your bare waist as he kisses you. "Sure you want to switch right now?" he asks against your mouth.
"Yes. I've been thinking about it since the handjob."
Something happens to his expression that he doesn't manage to contain. "Have you now?"
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird." He sits back. You feel the absence of his warmth immediately. "Honest explanation or the polished version?"
"Honest, obviously."
"See what gets you a reaction, what doesn't. Same as everything."
"Teeth," you say immediately. "And I don't know what to do with my hands. And how do I even breathe?"
"Don’t forget you have teeth."
"I’m sorry, what?"
"No, I just mean, if you’re just conscious of it — like keep it in the back of your mind, it's gonna be okay. Breathe through your nose. If you need air, just pull off, it’s not a big deal.”
“And what about hands?”
"Base of the cock, whatever you can't reach with your mouth. Or thighs. Both. Whatever feels right." A pause. "It’s okay if you can’t take all of it."
"What if I want to?"
"Then you'll gag and we'll deal with it."
A checklist forms inside your head as he speaks. "Okay but I have a genuine question. It's called a blowjob. But literally no one is blowing anything in the videos I’ve watched. So what is actually happening?"
His mouth opens, and then closes. Then the laugh comes out of him, a real one, helpless, the kind that takes his whole face. Your chest does something embarrassing at that sight.
Framing your face with both hands, the softest kiss is planted on your lips. "You're" kiss "so" kiss "adorable" kiss "y’know" kiss "that?"
Oh God. You’re melting. You’re losing it all. Physically, you can hear your heart melt. But you take his face in your hands right back, mirroring him.
"I" kiss "know."
He grins against your mouth and kisses you properly this time, both thumbs drawing circles at your cheeks.
"Suction," he says when he pulls back. "That's the answer. Suction and tongue. The name's just a name."
"But why is it called that?"
"I — genuinely don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I've never thought about it."
"How have you never thought about it?"
"Because it's never mattered before."
The way he’s tilting his head tells you he’s at least mildly curious about it. Proving you right, he pulls out his phone.
"Buck. No. Don't google it."
"I have to."
"Bucky—"
He's already reading. His expression cycles between certainty and not quite confusion. "Okay so apparently, there are several competing theories."
"Of course there are."
"One is that it comes from a slang term for the act that has nothing to do with the literal — "
There’s nothing else to do but indulge him. "I don't want competing theories. I want one answer."
"Etymology is rarely that simple."
"Oh my god." You reach over and take the phone out of his hand. He lets you. "You just googled the etymology of blowjob."
"You asked."
"I didn't ask you to do it with that level of academic commitment." You set the phone face-down on the cushion. "Forget it. Never mind."
He's still smiling when he stands up. But the heat has returned, to him, and to you.
What you don’t understand is why he’s standing. “I need you to sit.”
“Why? This’ll be more comfortable for you.”
“I just — I wanna kneel.”
"You don't have to kneel."
"I want to."
"You can do it just as well sitting down, it's easier on your—"
"Buck." You look at him. "I want to kneel."
An exasperated but equally fond sigh leaves him. He reaches back and picks up the throw pillow from the other end of the couch without another word, setting it on the floor in front of where he’ll be sitting.
"Floor's hard," he says.
You don't say anything about that. You just kneel on the pillow and he sits on the edge of the couch. You're struck, not for the first time, by how completely not-strange this is. How it's just him. How that seems to be doing a lot of quiet heavy lifting lately.
When you tug at his sweats, he lifts to make it easier for you. You stare at his dick. His dick stares back at you.
This is also the time you can show him that you’ve indeed learnt something. You start with the grip you know he likes, watching him thicken and pulse under your fingers until he’s rock-hard and leaking.
When you lean in and run your tongue, on the tip, through the slit once, his breath shifts immediately.
His hand immediately flies to your head. You lick the tip again, slower this time, savoring the salty bead that wells up, then drag your tongue along the thick underside, tracing every throbbing vein from root to tip. The weight of him on your tongue feels perfect.
When his hand presses gently at the back of your head, you close your lips over the tip of him and suck, carefully. A whole body jerk accompanies an involuntary sound that he desperately tries to swallow back. You take a little more, tongue working the underside the way he’d said.
As you try to take more, your jaw strains with it. If he’d felt bigger in your hand before, he’s an entirely different story in your mouth. The stretch catches you off guard.
He sees you struggling to take him, and he adjusts your fingers around his length. "Your hand — Whatever your mouth can't cover. That's what it's for."
Mouth on the upper half, hand at the base, you finally find the thing that makes his breath change. The slow drag of your tongue and suction combined makes him shudder, you notice. You do it again. Though they’re held back, the sounds coming out of him make it very difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.
“Atta girl.” It slips out quiet, almost hard to catch.
The words hit low in your belly and you feel yourself clench around nothing. You almost lose your rhythm from merely two words. Chiding yourself, you try to recover. His hips twitch like the praise cost him the last scrap of control he had left.
The idea that you could make him forget himself, make him slip like that, make him say something he wasn't planning on saying.
You want more of that. You want all of that.
As you work him deeper, tongue dragging slow and wet along the underside with every suck, your eyes flick lower without meaning to. His balls are heavy and tight just below where your hand grips the base, skin flushed and drawn up.
It is impossible to ignore now. You pull off.
He makes a sound of protest that is thoroughly undignified.
You glance up at him, lips shiny and breathing hard. “What about… those?” Sucking cock has your voice strained. “Do I — should I do something?”
“You don’t have to,” he says, reading it immediately, breath still ragged.
“But I should know, right?”
“It’s — if you want to, cup them first. Get a sense of it.”
He stands up without a word, feet planted wide in front of the couch, cock jutting out heavy and slick right at eye level. The new angle gives you everything you need.
His balls are warm and soft in your palm, making him go very still. You drag your tongue over them experimentally, feeling them draw tight under the wet heat. “Like this?” you murmur against the sensitive skin.
“God, yeah — fuck,” he breathes, thighs trembling. A raw and surprised groan rips out of him when you take one carefully into your mouth and gently suck. His hand fists tight in your hair and releases. “Christ.”
You switch to the other, licking and sucking with growing confidence, tongue swirling as his breath turns ragged. “You’re gonna make me lose it already,” he mutters. “If you don’t want me to blow already, you should come off.”
Satisfied with the way he’s shaking, you reach up and wrap your hand around his cock at the same time, stroking him slowly while your mouth stays sealed around his balls.
His hips jerk hard against your mouth. “Shit — wait—” His fingers slide into your hair and tug you off gently but firmly. “If you keep sucking my balls and jerking me off like that I’m gonna — fuck — cum way too fucking soon. Slow down. Please.”
You pull off from his balls to gently shove him back to the couch. He lands with a soft thud and a groan, and you immediately come back to his cock, lips closing over the head.
This time you don't hold back. You want more of that. More of everything. The sounds of him, the way his control keeps slipping in these small visible ways.
Wet sounds fill the room alongside his ragged breathing. You stop being self-conscious about any of this entirely. Spit on your chin. His hand gripping your hair. You try to take him deeper than you have and it makes you gag, eyes watering. It’s a mess when you do pull off, coughing with tears pricking the corners.
Without a word, his thumb comes to your chin to wipe it. "What did I say?"
"I almost had it."
"You didn't have it."
"I was so close."
"Take me back in your mouth. And stop competing with yourself."
Mouth sliding back down, you take what you can and work what you have. His hips buck upward involuntarily, shoving deeper into your throat for one dizzy second before he catches himself. "Shit — sorry." He forces his ass back down. But the control slips again seconds later, another helpless roll that has you moaning around his cock.
You’re doing this to him.
His hand in your hair is gripping properly now. He says your name and it comes out rough.
Till this time, you were so concentrated on him, you didn’t realise you were dripping wet. Those panties sure are soaked by now.
"Come up." His hand migrates to your shoulder. "Come on, come up."
You don't. You remember his he pulled your hand during the handjob, and you don’t want that to fallen again.
"Baby." The hand tightens. "I mean it — come up —"
It slips out. Just the once, just that word, clearly not planned. You stay where you are and look up at him through your lashes. He forces his eyes to stay open, to keep his gaze on you, but his jaw goes tight and his head drops back. The swear that comes out of him is helpless as his whole body goes rigid and still.
The first hot, thick rope of cum hits the back of your throat, salty and bitter and so fucking him. You swallow it down greedily, sucking harder through every pulsing spurt until he’s shaking and empty.
The taste of him is all over your tongue. "Fuck," his voice is wrecked.
He is a sight as you sit back on your heels.
His chest is heaving. There's a flush across his face and throat. He's looking at you from somewhere between wrecked and something else, something that's been showing up on his face more lately.
"First time, you don't usually swallow. You don't know if you'll like the taste — that's why I was trying to—" He pauses to take a breath. "You should've let me pull you off."
Both of your hands go to his jaw. "Buck." You make him look at you. "I liked it. Very much. Can we do it again?"
Droopy eyes stare back at you, and you generously add, “not right now, obviously."
Something gives in his face and he laughs. His hand comes up to cover both of yours where they're resting on him. Turning his head, he presses his mouth to your palm, warmth transferring from his lips. "Twenty minutes," he says into your hand.
"Fifteen."
"Twenty." A kiss to your palm.
"Seventeen and that's my final offer."
"We can go straight to your cock. I'm ready."
Bucky looks at you. "No, you're not."
"I literally just—"
"Lie down."
There's no room in his voice for the conversation you were about to have. Because you know him well enough, you know that tone means he's already thought about this more than you have. It's annoying. You've gotten used to it. You lie down.
He comes down beside you, and his mouth finds the side of your neck first, and then your jaw. "Have you done this before?"
The audacity of this man. “I’m sorry — If I'd done this before. Why would I be here?"
His lips press somewhere near your ear. "With yourself. Have you touched yourself?"
Oh.
"Yes. Obviously." You didn't mean for the ‘obviously’ to come out quite so defensive.
"This'll be different."
The audacity again. "Yeah, you’re gonna be better —"
"No, I just meant — my fingers are bigger."
Right. You take a breath. He's right, you know he's right. The size, and when you add his experience to the mix... "Okay."
"I want you to show me something first." When you turn to look at him he's already looking at you. He proposes it like it's simple. "How you do it. What you do when you're alone."
The heat that climbs your throat is immediate. "Bucky."
"You don't have to. But it'd be nice if you did."
"No I just —" You press your lips together. It's not that you don't want to. It's just that there's a difference between doing something and doing something with him watching your face for your reaction. "You'll literally be right there."
"That’s kind of the point." A quiet fact.
Working up whatever nerve that requires, you slide your hand beneath the waistband of your underwear.
For the first few seconds you're almost entirely in your own head about it, hyperaware of him, of his attention. But your body doesn't especially care about that. It knows what this is. And gradually, the weight of being watched tips over into something else. The sound that comes out of you is not measured.
That’s when you register a movement without fully tracking it. You feel his breath against your inner thigh, you understand he's not beside you anymore, he's between your legs. Right there, watching up close as your hand moves under the thin fabric.
That is a lot of new information at once.
"Take these off." His hand is at the edge of your underwear.
To make it easier, you lift your hips. He drags them down and off in one slow pull and drops them somewhere behind him. The cool air hits your slick folds. But the most striking part of it all is that he's just looking, eyes dark and fixed on the way you're already glistening, the lips of your pussy flushed and wet from your own fingers. “God, I missed her.” The words slip out before he can stop them.
"Did you — did you just call my pussy 'her'?" The question comes out breathless though you're trying to sound sharp. You can't help picking at him even when your thighs are trembling under his hands.
He doesn't answer, so you naturally continue, "you wouldn't let me call your cock 'him'. But now you're out here naming mine like she's an old friend? That's rich." You manage to get the words out, but your voice cracks halfway through, the heat of his stare making it hard to keep the brat in check.
"That was different." The corner of his mouth twitches like he's fighting a smile. "But, you can do whatever you want, gorgeous."
Did he just — did he just call you gorgeous and send your nervous system into an overdrive? Or did he call your pussy gorgeous? Sometimes it’s hard to keep track, especially when you’re inches away from losing it.
You try for a comeback, but there’s none, the words dissolve into a shaky moan before they’re even formed. Partly because his thumbs are already spreading you open again, exposing every slick inch to the cool air and his hungry gaze.
“Don’t stop on my account.” He urges your fingers to continue their motion, and you find your clit to work the slow circle you know. His hands stay spread open on your outer lips.
His breath is warm against you and it is genuinely insane how much that alone is doing to you. You can feel yourself getting wetter under his gaze, which is embarrassing, and also apparently fine. Because when he notices, he makes a soft involuntary sound that vibrates right through your core. "Put your finger in for me."
For him.
After a short shaky breath, you work one finger in. The stretch is small and familiar but the sound you make is not.
"Just like that… fuck, look at you." You can feel him looking. Not at your face. "Leave it right there."
His thumbs, on either side of your lips, spread you open gently, slightly more. To look at you, at where your finger disappears inside your dripping pussy, at all of it, up close.
"She's soaking wet already." His thumb sweeps through your folds in one slow drag, collecting the slick until it shines on his skin. "Look at her pulsing for me."
A soft whimper leaves you as you try to keep pumping in and out of you.
“Fingers out.” There’s an urgency to his voice now, eclipsing all softness there was there before.
You draw your hand back, and you're about to just keep going, bring them up, towards you. But his hand closes lightly around your wrist. Redirecting you.
He brings your fingers to his mouth, his lips closing around them, his eyes up and on yours while he sucks. He hums like this is a perfectly normal thing to be doing.
The second he releases your hand, his face descends to your inviting cunt, sealing his mouth over your clit. Your hand goes straight to his hair.
He groans at that, a sound that vibrates all the way through you, and his grip on your thighs tightens in response.
The pain of it, just that slight pull of his hair under your fist, makes him groan again. You save this particular information in the box that’s been filing everything about him for almost many years now.
He licks around your entrance, just teasing, testing, then goes back to your clit. You find yourself trying to grind up into him because your hips seem to have their own agenda now. When you roll up, he adjusts, tilts his head, his hands steady on your thighs, not stopping you.
He looks up at you. Actually holds eye contact while his tongue moves against your clit, which is an absolutely unreasonable thing to do to a person. Your hand tightens in his hair. He makes that sound again.
Mouth wet, he surfaces to rest his chin on your inner thigh for a second. "I'm going to use my fingers now."
"Yes," you say immediately. "Please."
His hand traces down your stomach, two fingers this time, slow through your folds. "Breathe."
"I'm breathing." You’re, in fact, not breathing.
"Are you?"
It’s the second time you’re swallowing your words today. Because he decides to slide one finger through your entrance, no further, just to the first knuckle, and stops.
"You okay?"
The stretch is different from your own. He's right about the size of it. But it's not too much, it's just new, it's just a presence you have to get used to. "Yeah, that's — yeah."
He pushes in slowly and it's very different now. The angle, the size, the fact that it's him and not you and that he's watching your face while he does it, which you are acutely aware of. When he's in fully, he stays there for a moment, unmoving. His thumb brushes over your clit, giving your body something else to focus on.
"Doing so good," he murmurs, as he curls his finger, just slightly, and your back bows off the bed. He does it again, finding the same spot, watching your face with that look of his. Patient. Like he has all the information he needs and is simply using it.
"Bucky—"
"I've got you, baby. You’re so good."
It’s the seventh time he’s called you 'baby'. You’ve tried not counting, but everytime it slips out of him without his knowing, it gets lodged into your brain.
His thumb keeps its steady circles and his finger moves in a slow drag. This is the point at which your body stops taking notes entirely and just exists in what he's doing to it. You pull his hair. He just hisses and keeps going.
"More. Buck — please."
"Yeah? You can take me?"
"Yeah — please—"
He adds the second finger. The stretch makes you grip the sheets, makes a sound come out of you that breaks in the middle. He stills immediately. "Too much?"
"No." The word is out before you've finished thinking it. "No, don't stop."
He works them slowly, both fingers, curling and dragging while his mouth reattaches to your clit. Now, that and doing this at the same time is a lot. It splits your attention in a way that eventually gives up trying to split anything and just becomes one overwhelming thing.
There’s no warning this time, it happens suddenly without any notice, you come with your hand fisted in his hair and your face pressed to his pillow, sound muffled. His mouth works you through it slowly, drawing it out until your thighs are shaking.
When he finally slides his fingers free, you feel their absence immediately.
His lips press a soft kiss to your inner thigh, your pubic bone, and then just below your navel. Your whole body is doing something between boneless and stunned.
When he comes to rest besides you, his mouth finds yours. You can taste yourself on his lips and that is also a sentence you're going to need a moment with.
"You did so good for me," he murmurs against your mouth, and the way he says it is so straightforward. Something behind your sternum goes a little weak. His thumb moves over your cheekbone once. He pulls back to look at you.
You lie there and just try to breathe. He's propped beside you, his hand resting on your stomach, moving with the rise and fall of it.
The lamp in the corner is doing something to the room, making it amber and small.
"You know — you can’t just — just say ‘she’s pretty’ okay? That’s not — it’s not—"
"Mm." He hums to let you fumble through your sentence.
You do. You fumble. "That — that was an incredibly unfair thing to say."
"Was it?"
"Yes!" Then, calming yourself down, "yes."
He laughs, a proper one, and you feel it through his ribcage where your arm is pressed against him. "I'll keep that in mind."
Your heart does something it's been doing more frequently around him lately. It’s a problem you’re currently not equipped to take a closer look at.
Shifting away from his grip, you turn yourself to look at him. The thought that's been in the back of your head for the last twenty minutes makes itself known again. "Please give me your cock."
The remainder of his laugh doesn’t come out.
"Bucky."
"I heard you."
"So—"
Taking your hand, he presses your palm flat against the front of his sweats. Where he’s hard. Properly hard. The heat and the shape of him is undeniable under your touch. "It's all yours."
The air leaves your body. The words leave your brain. All the blood in your entire cardiovascular system reroutes to your face in a single catastrophic second and you stare at his chest because you cannot currently look at him.
"I—" Nothing. You have nothing. Completely blank.
He doesn't move your hand away. If anything, he tightens his grip, just lets it sit there under his, while you attempt to reconstruct language.
"That's—" The warmth of him through the fabric is not helping. "You're—"
"Yeah." You don’t know what you were about to say, so you don’t know what he’s actually agreeing to. But he doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.
The smugness is radiating off him, and your voice comes out appropriately three times higher than usual, "I wasn't — I wasn't ready for that."
"You asked."
"I know I asked." Your face is genuinely so warm right now. "I asked and you—" You make a vague gesture with your free hand. "You can’t just — just do that ‘cause I asked."
The completely insufferable almost-smile at the corner of his mouth could power a city. He is enjoying every second of this.
"Stop looking at me like that," you tell his clavicle, because you still cannot bring yourself to look at him. Especially since your hand is enveloping his crotch, both enveloped by his own hand.
"I'm not doing anything."
You risk looking at his face, which is a mistake, because the expression on it is fond in a way that completely destroys you. You bring yourself to look back at his clavicle.
His thumb makes one small stroke over your knuckles, where your hand is still pressed to him, still warm, and you feel it in your whole chest.
The gesture is less reassuring than it should be.
Before you can process what’s happening, he shifts. Sits up properly, back against the headboard. His arm goes around your waist.
One smooth pull, barely any effort in it, and you're up — actually off the mattress for half a second — and then you're over him, knees sinking into the sheets on either side of his hips.
The logistics of it take a moment to catch up with your brain. You're straddling him. You're bare from the waist down and he's still in his sweats and you're straddling him.
You’re also not fully dropping your weight on him, just hovering, thighs tight with the effort of not fully sitting.
"Sit down." His hands rest at your hips, thumbs at the crease where thigh meets the curve of your ass.
"Bucky, I — I'm going to crush him."
Bucky sighs like a patient man, who’s tired of hearing the same thing for the hundredth time. "You're not going to crush him."
"I'm serious, Bucky—"
"So am I. Sit."
You try. That's the thing, you genuinely try. You shift your weight, start to lower yourself, and then the thick line of him presses up against you, the fear of crushing little Bucky surfaces again. You can feel him there, right there, even through the fabric, even from an inch away, and your nervous system is having a full board meeting about the implications of closing that distance. What if you actually crush him?
"Still hovering," he observes.
"I'm trying."
"You're not going to crush me."
"You don't know that."
"I do, in fact, know that. I’m the experienced one, remember?"
Let there be a single moment where he doesn’t remind you of his sexual escapades. You almost consider retaliating by putting all of your weight on him in one go, but you need this guy, you need his cock.
"Shut — shut up."
"Sit down."
"Bucky."
"Sit."
You make an undignified noise at him. He looks back at you like he’s content to simply wait, which he will, indefinitely, and you both know it.
But like everything with Bucky, he surprises you. One slow slide of his hand, down between your bodies, and his thumb finds your clit. It’s one light flick, barely anything. But your hips betray you completely. Your knees buckle and you drop fully.
The sound you make when you land on him is not something you'll be repeating in polite company.
The rough fabric of his sweats drags through your folds and presses flush against you. Your brain, which had been managing perfectly well up until thirty seconds ago, simply stops.
His cock is right there, thick and hard under the thin cotton, pressed directly against your clit, and you are bare, not to mention wet and sitting on him.
The moan that comes out of you has his name in it and very little else.
"Good girl. There you go."
You grab his shoulders. Mostly for something to hold onto, partly because the alternative is floating off the bed entirely.
"Bucky—"
"Feel that?"
You feel absolutely nothing but that, actually. The pressure alone is making your thoughts go sideways. Your hips twitch, chasing it without permission.
His jaw goes tight and he tips his head back against the headboard for one unguarded moment before he levels out again.
His mouth finds your neck immediately. Open, dragging up toward your jaw and back down while one hand palms your breast, thumb working your nipple in slow circles until it aches. You press into his lap, just slightly, and feel him exhale through his nose.
"What are you—" Your own voice comes out strange. "Bucky, if you don't stop—"
"Don't stop what?" He says it against your throat.
"That. All of — just. Don't stop."
He laughs, low, the sound vibrating against your skin. "You want me to stop or not?"
"I want — stop asking me questions."
"Alright." He switches to the other side of your neck and you stop being able to track the conversation.
The thing is, every tiny shift you make drags your pussy across the front of his sweats. The friction is wet and warm and you are not entirely in control of your hips anymore. You rock forward, without even deciding to, and the pressure catches your clit just right and makes your teeth snap shut.
"Let's try something," he says.
You're mostly liquid at this point. "What?" It comes out slurred, half a word, because his cock is pressing exactly where it shouldn't be. He's also got his mouth on the underside of your jaw and your nipple is between his fingers. It's just a lot of ongoing information for your head to process.
He looks at you. His cheeks are already flushed and his eyes have gone the dark kind of blue. "Grind on me."
What?
You just stare at him, hoping he’d give you something more than that.
"Like this." His hands settle on your hips, guiding you. Forward, then back. Your clit drags across the ridge of him, making you bury your face in his neck. "Bucky—"
"Again." His hands repeat it. The same rhythm, forward and back. The fabric is already damp from you and the drag of it is obscene. "You feel that?"
You feel it fucking everywhere. "Yes."
"Just like that."
He keeps his hands on your hips for a few more strokes, setting the pace. Then lets go, one of them migrating to your nipple, the other to your back. Which means you have to do this yourself, in front of him, consciously.
But soon enough, your hips find the drag again and the self-consciousness evaporates.
"There it is.”
The sounds you’re making are nowhere in your control. Small and helpless but rhythmic with your hips. And you can't locate any part of yourself that cares. His hand at your back presses you closer, and the extra pressure makes your breath hitch.
"You're soaking through my sweats," he says into your hair. He sounds ruined by this. "D'you know that? Can feel you through the fabric."
The fact that he's saying this out loud makes you grind harder and your moan is muffled against his neck.
"That's good, yeah." His voice has shed several layers of composure. "Keep going."
His breathing has changed underneath you, shorter, less controlled. With his chest rising and falling faster, you understand you’re taking him apart the same way he's been taking you apart this whole time.
There was some point where his attention, his hands, his mouth, all of it were directed at you, for you to learn. But it’s changed now. It definitely goes both ways. You can feel that now under your hips, in the way his hands are gripping you, grabbing your skin for more. It’s becoming less and less like a teacher.
It’s more like a person who is losing his grip on something. On several somethings.
An urgency finds you now, pace picking up solely because you need to see him as flustered as you are.
"Fuck—" His voice is strangled. "Slow—"
You don't slow down. Your hips have their own agenda now, chasing something that's pulling tight and urgent in your stomach. Bucky's hands flex at your waist but they don't actually stop you, just hold on.
You're close. You know you're close because the friction has gone from good to unbearable in the space of about thirty seconds and your thighs are shaking and his name keeps coming out of you between breaths like punctuation.
"Bucky — I'm — don't—"
"I'm not going anywhere." Still ragged. His hand moves up your back, into your hair, just holding. "Cum for me."
Stuttering, your hips grind down one last time as your orgasm crashes through in waves. You feel him shudder underneath you, his grip tightening, his whole body going rigid.
Breathing his name into his shoulder, you both stay in a limbo.
When you finally manage to open your eyes and lift your head, he's flushed. His neck and his cheeks and the top of his chest. Hair stuck to his forehead, lips parted, he’s breathing like he’s run across the campus.
Something clicks when your gaze travels between his face and the dark, obvious wet patch spreading across his sweats.
"Did you—"
His ears go pink. That alone is enough to confirm it.
"Bucky. Did you just—"
"Yeah." He scrubs a hand over his face. "I did." The tips of his ears are genuinely red and you've never seen this on him before. "I came in my sweats, yes, you don't have to—"
"You came in your sweats."
"I'm aware of what happened."
"Without me even—" You gesture at the general situation. "I was just sitting there."
"You were not just sitting there," he says, slightly pained. "You were. Doing all of that. For quite a while. And you're — " He stops himself, something crossing his face that he seems to decide against finishing.
The laugh starts somewhere in your chest and works its way up before you can stop it. Helpless, falling out of you. You press your hand to your mouth but it's already too late.
"Go on. Get it out." He says dryly.
"I'm not—" You're laughing properly now, shoulders shaking. You can hear him hiss when you shift, your hips rolling just a fraction with the laugh, because your body hasn’t figured out how to stay still yet. The sound he makes is raw, like it got dragged out of him against his will.
“Fuck — give me a minute, baby, please,” he breathes, one hand clamping down on your hip to hold you there. Freezing you in place. His eyes are squeezed shut now.
“Shit, sorry—” the laughter dies in your throat.
“Don’t be.” He exhales, eyes cracking open again. They’re still glassy, that post-cum haze making the blue look almost black. “I’m just… over-sensitive right now. You moved and it’s—” Another small hiss when you breathe too hard. “Yeah. That.”
You bite your lip, trying not to smile again even though the whole thing is kind of hilarious and kind of hot at the same time.
His thumbs stroke slow circles on your hips. You feel the way his cock is still half-hard underneath all that mess, twitching every time your weight settles.
You trace a finger along the side of his neck, right where his pulse is jumping. “Can I… give you a hickey? Just one. Or two.”
His head tips back against the headboard so he can look at you properly. The corner of his mouth lifts, tired but fond. “Hickey?”
“Yeah… I’ve always wanted to…” you trail off.
“Have at it,” he makes space for your mouth, titling his head to one side.
Immediately, you lean in and press your mouth to the spot just under his jaw, sucking slowly at first, letting your tongue drag over the skin until you feel him swallow hard. He tastes like salt and musk. Pulling back just enough, you see the little red bloom starting, then move lower, right where his neck meets his shoulder, and do it again. Teeth grazing just enough to make him hiss through his teeth in a completely different way.
His hand slides up your back, fingers threading into your hair. “Mark me up, gorgeous.”
So, you are gorgeous.
Main Masterlist || Series Masterlist || Next Part
EXTRAS. Thank you for reading. Hope that wasn’t just porn without plot. Last part will be up next Thursday.
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