(this is a list of informative sources, materials, stores, charities, books, documentaries etc to better help Palestinians, learn about the Palestinian struggle, and educate yourselves on us as a people. This list will be added on to with more links as they are recommended to me.)
Introduction to Palestine:
Decolonize Palestine:
Palestine 101
Rainbow washing
Frequently asked questions
Myths
Al-Nakba (documentary)
The Question of Palestine (book)
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (book)
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (book)
IMEU (Institute for Middle East Understanding):
Quick Facts - The Palestinian Nakba
The Nakba and Palestinian Refugees
The Gaza Strip
The Nakba did not start or end in 1948 (Article)
Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948? (article)
Donations and charities:
Al-Shabaka
Electronic Intifada
Adalah Justice Project
IMEU Fundraiser
Medical Aid for Palestinians
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
Addameer
Muslim Aid
Palestine Red Crescent
Gaza Mutual Aid Patreon
Books:
A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine
The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge
Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean
The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique
From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948
Captive Revolution - Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics
Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of The Palestinians 1876-1948
The Battle for Justice in Palestine Paperback
Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom
Palestine Rising: How I survived the 1948 Deir Yasin Massacre
The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians 1949-1996
The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples
Where Now for Palestine?: The Demise of the Two-State Solution
Terrorist Assemblages - Homonationalism in Queer Times
Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East
The one-state solution: A breakthrough for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock
The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians
Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians
The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine
Ten myths about Israel
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, New and Revised Edition
Israel and its Palestinian Citizens - Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State
Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy
Palestinian Culture:
Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture
Palestinian Costume
Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution
Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora
Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing (Oriental Institute Museum Publications)
The Palestinian Table (Authentic Palestinan Recipes)
Falastin: A Cookbook
Palestine on a Plate: Memories from My Mother’s Kitchen
Palestinian Social Customs and Traditions
Palestinian Culture before the Nakba
Tatreez & Tea (Website)
The Traditional Clothing of Palestine
The Palestinian thobe: A creative expression of national identity
Embroidering Identities:A Century of Palestinian Clothing
Palestine Traditional Costumes
Palestine Family
Palestinian Costume
Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, v5: Volume 5: Central and Southwest Asia
Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:
Jenin, Jenin
Born in Gaza
GAZA
Wedding in Galilee
Omar
5 Broken Cameras
OBAIDA
Indigeneity, Indigenous Liberation, and Settler Colonialism (not entirely about Palestine, but an important watch for indigenous struggles worldwide - including Palestine)
Edward Said - Reflections on Exile and Other Essays
Palestine Remix:
AL NAKBA
Gaza Lives On
Gaza we are coming
Lost cities of Palestine
Stories from the Intifada
Last Shepards of the Valley
Organizations and News
Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS)
Defense for Children in Palestine
Palestine Legal
United Nations relief and works for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA)
summary: Every psychic and every tarot deck tells the same story: love isn't meant for you. Every reading ends the same way—until one skeptical customer pulls three cards that were never meant to belong to him. Suddenly, the future you've spent years trying to outrun refuses to leave you alone.
word count: 11.3 k
warnings: sort of enemies to friends to lovers, meet ugly, tarot, soulmates, slow burn, mutual pining, hurt/comfort, fluff, happy ending.
a/n: based on The Prophecy by Taylor Swift, been 7 weeks stuck in my drafts, I hope you like the outcome as much as I liked writing it for you! Beta read by @kileyking & @buckysdecaflove ❤︎ | dividers by @strangergraphics
read on AO3
Your family doesn't mean to hurt you. They just do.
It's the same every reunion, somebody's hand landing warm on your shoulder. When are you going to bring someone for us to meet? Are you ever gonna get married? That boat's sailed, hon. You missed your shot.
And their newest addition, just now: So, when's your turn? We really thought you'd be the next one walking down the aisle.
You're in your thirties now. Two cats, an apartment that's exactly how you want it, and you learned a long time ago to deflect, to laugh, to change the subject before anyone got too invested in your answer.
But those words stung.
Because god knows you've tried dating. You wanted the thing everyone kept asking you about, but you couldn't seem to hold onto it. Somewhere along the way you accepted that maybe you weren't meant to, just like the cards said once.
When the answer your cards gave you wasn't good enough, you tried something else: the oracle, rune-casting, pendulum, palmistry. You even ran the extra mile and paid someone to read your matrix destiny, but the answer remained the same: Not for you.
Apparently, the person meant for you was born over a hundred years ago, it wasn't meant to be in this life. Or at least, that's what the woman interpreted for you, it wasn't your line of work, but that night you pulled the cards alone and they confirmed it.
Your mom leans over, snapping you out of your thoughts. "They want you to say something."
You already knew this, you prepared days ago sitting in your apartment with your cats. You wrote and rewrote on your phone, trying to keep your words light and genuine.
"I've known Sarah since we were kids," you say. "She was always the one who knew exactly what she wanted. Not confused like the rest of us, not second-guessing. She just knew."
You can see her smiling, David's hand rest on her shoulder. You take a breath, your eyes are swelling with tears, but that's fine. That's normal at weddings.
"Sarah, David… you deserve each other, and you deserve the whole beautiful future you're about to have together. I hope you know how lucky you are, how blessed you are." Your voice wavers just slightly on that word. "Not everyone gets this, not everyone finds someone who loves them the way you love each other."
You're looking at Sarah and you mean every single word, even though it's cutting into you.
You raise your glass, trying to keep your hand steady despite the awful feeling sitting on your stomach. "To Sarah and David, and the future you deserve."
Later, when you're home at the outskirts of the city, with your cats curled on either side of you, you let yourself cry. Not angry tears, just the deep kind that come from watching someone else get the thing you've accepted you never will.
You think about the cards, about the woman who read your destiny and the words that have chased you since you were seventeen: The person meant for you was born out of time.
And your cousin's husband was born exactly at the right moment, in the right place, in the right life.
You're happy for her, you really are.
You're just so tired of helping everyone else find the life the cards promised would never belong to you.
The fair comes to the edge of your small town every spring, and you've been here for three years now. Your shop is small—just enough room for a folding table, two chairs, and the cards that you've been reading since you've been a teenager and decided to expand the gift you've inherited from your great grandmother.
The bell above the shop door chimes on a slow afternoon, and you look up from the velvet cloth you're arranging to find a couple standing in the doorway. The woman sees your altar in the corner, the crystals and the candles and her face lights up.
"Oh, this is perfect," she says, turning to him. "See? I told you we'd find someone authentic."
The man—dark hair, broad-shouldered, pierced-blue eyes and a very defined jawline— gives you a polite, slightly uncomfortable smile.
"Hey," he says. "She's been talking about you for weeks."
"Come in," you say, standing. You wipe your hands on your skirt. "Welcome to The Velvet Oracle, do you have an appointment?"
"I called yesterday," the woman says, stepping forward, hand extended. "I'm Hazel, this is Bucky. I want a couple's reading, we've been dating for four months and I just thought, you know, let's see what the future holds for us."
You gesture to the chairs across from you. "Sit, let's see what the cards have to say."
Hazel settles in, leans forward eagerly. Bucky sits back with his arms crossed. You don't let yourself look at him too long, because every time you do it you feel your stomach dropping, like when you miss a step in the dark.
You shuffle the deck, the familiar worn edges of the cards grounding you against your palms.
"Alright," you start. "For a couple's reading, I usually pull a few cards for each person individually, and then we'll look at the relationship as a whole. Sound good?"
Hazel nods enthusiastically, but Bucky's expression is somewhere between polite discomfort and outright skepticism.
"I gotta be honest," he says, glancing around the tent at the crystals and candles, "this isn't really my thing."
"I know, baby, but it'll be fun." Hazel tugs at his sleeve until he relents, uncrossing his arms. "Just let her do the reading, okay? For me."
He doesn't look convinced, but he nods and his expression softens for her. You don't know why, but that somehow makes you wanna cry.
You focus on Hazel, spreading the deck in a smooth arc across the velvet. "Go ahead and pull three cards when you're ready."
She leans forward, her fingers hovering dramatically before selecting. The first card makes you nod slowly—the Ace of Pentacles. A seed planted in rich soil. The second is the Empress, all abundance and growth. The third one is the World.
"Completion, fulfillment, a cycle coming to a close in the best possible way."
Hazel beams. "That's good, right?"
"Very good," you gesture at the Ace of Pentacles. "Pentacles are earth energy—practical, grounded, built to last. This is a new beginning with a solid foundation. The Empress suggests growth and nurturing, maybe even family, and the World is a major arcana card of fulfillment. Whatever you're building toward, the universe is supporting it."
"I'm a Taurus!" Hazel claps her hand together. "That's an earth sign. This is so accurate, oh my god! Earth energy for an earth sign, that has to mean something."
"It suggests alignment," you say carefully, because you've learned not to over-promise."The path you're on has stability written into it."
Hazel turns to Bucky with bright eyes. "See? I told you she was the real deal."
Bucky shifts in his chair, unmoved. "Great, so what about the rest of it?"
"Your turn," you say, trying to keep your voice light. "Three cards, same as before."
He looks at the deck like it might bite him. "I don't really believe in this stuff."
"It's just cards," you say. "They only have the power you give them."
Something shifts in his expression—not quite interest, but maybe a grudging willingness. Hazel nudges him with her elbow. "Just do it, Bucky. For me."
He sighs, leans forward and taps three cards with a soldier's precision. One, two, three. No hesitation, like he wants it over with.
You turn the first card: The Lovers.
Your breath catches. You force yourself to keep your expression neutral, but your fingers have gone cold against the velvet.
"The Lovers," you say, and your voice comes out steady, despite the static in your ears. "This card is about significant choices. A crossroad in a relationship or a deep connection that requires a decision."
Hazel practically squeals with excitement. "That's us! A deep connection!"
Bucky doesn't react. His eyes are on the card, but his face gives nothing away.
You turn the second card. The High Priestess.
The card you've pulled for yourself more times than you can count since you were seventeen. Intuition. The veil between worlds. The woman in the card stares at you from the table, and for a disorienting second you swear the woman on the card has your eyes.
"The High Priestess represents hidden knowledge," you manage. "Things beneath the surface, secrets, intuition… the parts of ourselves we don't fully understand yet."
"What does that have to do with Bucky?" Hazel asks, frowning slightly.
"I'm not sure yet," you lie, because you're suddenly horribly sure of exactly what's happening, and you want to sweep the cards off the table and pretend you never touched them.
You flip the third card with a trembling hand. The Ace of Cups.
The card of new love, emotional awakening. The beginning of something that fills the heart. It's the same card that you've always pulled up reversed for yourself every single time you ask the universe if there's anyone out there for you.
Now here it is, on his spread… along with your arcana.
"A new emotional beginning," you say after a moment of silence. "The Ace of Cups is the start of something in matters of the heart. It's a very powerful, personal card."
Hazel turns to Bucky, her earlier enthusiasm dimming. "Is that about us? Wait— water and earth complement each other, right? Bucky's a Pisces, that's a water sign, I'm earth. That's good isn't it? They balance."
"Water and earth can be very nurturing together," you say, because it's true, even if the cards aren't saying that. "But these cards feel more like a personal message for Bucky, something individual, not necessarily about the relationship."
You don't remember what you say after that. Something about water signs and intuition, something about the cards reflecting individual journeys within partnerships. You're very good at small talk, at telling people something they might want to hear while the cards tell you something else entirely.
Hazel pays you in cash, and she leaves with her hand tucked into Bucky's elbow, already chattering about dinner reservations. He lingers in the doorway for half a second, looking back at you with an expression you can't read. Then the bell chimes, and they're gone.
You sit in silence for a long time, staring at the three cards, still laid out on the velvet. You gather them up with shaking hands and slip them back into the deck, but you can feel them there, warm against the others, like embers buried in ash.
That night, you pull your own cards for the first time in months. You stopped asking about love a year ago, because the answer never changed—the reversed Ace of Cups, Ten of Swords, the Tower. But tonight, you need to know if you imagined it, if the shop was too warm, if you simply wanted something so badly your mind bent the cards to fit.
You shuffle the deck until your fingers ache and cut the deck three times before pulling: The Lovers. The High Priestess. The Ace of Cups.
Exactly the same spread from earlier.
You throw the deck across your kitchen table and watch the cards scatter like birds. You don't read them, you don't need to.
The dreams start three nights later.
You're in the shop, but once you pay enough attention you realize it's not your shop—it's larger, older, with windows that look out onto a street you've never seen, snow falling in thick, silent curtains. Bucky is there, sitting across from you, but he's different. Younger, somehow, though you can't explain how you know that. He's smiling at you, and he reaches across the table to take your hand.
You wake up gasping, your sheets are twisted around your legs, your heart hammering against your ribs.
The second time you dream of him, you're dancing. You're not able to see if it's anywhere specific. It's a dark room, there is music playing from somewhere distant, his hand on your waist, his cheek pressed against your temple. He smells like cedar and leather. You can feel the calluses on his fingers through the fabric of your dress. When you wake up, you can still feel them.
You start drinking chamomile tea before bed. You burn sage. You place an amethyst under your pillow and a black tourmaline at your door, but nothing works. The dreams continue, threading themselves through your sleep like a second life you're living in parallel, and in every single one, he seems like the answer to a question you've been asking for a very long time.
You don't tell anyone. Who would believe you? What would you even tell them? I had a tarot reading go wrong and now I'm psychically stalking my client's boyfriend in my dreams. You'd sound insane. Worse, you'd sound desperate.
You don't hear from Hazel or him again. You tell yourself it's a good thing. You tell yourself the dreams will fade, that the thread between you dissolves with distance and time… except they don't fade, they get worse.
In your dreams you're now in Brooklyn, walking down streets lined with brownstones, and he's beside you, close enough that your shoulders brush. He's telling you about his day, about his past, and you listen until his words start to fade. When you wake up, you can smell his cologne in the air.
You start taking walks in the afternoon, though you don't know why. You pull your cards again, desperate for something—anything—to change.
The Tower. The Star. The World.
Disaster, then hope, then completion. The cycle you've been trapped in for years, except this time the Tower doesn't feel like another heartbreak waiting to happen. It feels like change—the kind you can't stop even if you wanted to.
You don't sleep that night. You sit on your kitchen floor with your cats weaving between your legs, and you rearrange the cards in every configuration you know: Celtic cross, three card spread, relationship spread, past-present-future. Every single time, the same arc emerges: something is ending, something is beginning. And whatever comes next will leave you irrevocably changed.
Your aunt Margaret—Maggie, as you've called her since you were little—tells the family that she has broken her hip on the cellar stairs, that the surgery went fine, but she doesn't want a nurse or a help aide. She wants someone from the family who can come stay with her or she'll manage alone.
The call gets passed down through the entire family, but nobody offers to go take care of her. Your cousins have husbands, kids, mortgages, school pickups… Meanwhile, you have two cats and a tarot shop you can shutter for a season, and nobody says it out loud, but everybody means it: you're the one with nothing to leave behind.
You arrive on a Tuesday with your two cat carriers, three suitcases and the deck wrapped in a scarf at the bottom of your tote. Maggie is waiting in the front room of the brownstone, sat in a wingback chair with a cane across her knees.
"There she is, I knew you would come," she says. "Come kiss me."
You oblige before setting the carriers on the floor and opening them to let your cats wander around and recognize the place you'd be staying for a few weeks.
"I got two rules," Maggie starts, taking off her reading glasses. "The thermostat stays where I put it, and no cards in my house."
"Maggie—"
"I know what you carry around, I have enough ghosts in this old apartment, so there's no way I'm letting you welcome more through…that."
"They're just cards."
"Then it won't kill you to leave them in the bag," she settles back into the chair and picks her crossword up off the side table, and that is the end of it. "The kettle's on, you can take the room at the top of the stairs."
You know arguing with her would be useless, so you go and install yourself in that cramped old room and decide you'll read when she's asleep.
It becomes a ritual within the first week: you wait for the apartment to go quiet, wait for her snoring to even out and you sit at the kitchen table with the deck and a single candle as if you were a teenager sneaking cigarettes. Your cats take turns supervising from the counter, but you keep one ear on the ceiling the whole time, just in case.
Every single time, the same cards you pull at your shop with Bucky keep coming.
The Lovers. The High Priestess. The Ace of Cups.
The dreams don't fade with the distance from home, they sharpen. Now the businesses have names, because you've walked past it every time you go run errands for your aunt Maggie. The stoop where he sat beside you, close enough that your shoulders touched, you know it. You've seen the exact iron railing, three blocks east. In one dream he laughs at something, and you wake up missing something you haven't even seen in real life.
You try to build a reasonable conclusion: You've been here previously, you know this neighborhood. You just did one reading to a ridiculous handsome man eight months ago and your lonely, overworked brain latched on, and now it's trying to dress a crush in destiny because it's something you've been trying to change your whole life. That's all this is. A simple crush and a reader's block. It happens sometimes to some people, right?
At least that's what Reddit said last time you checked.
You've almost convinced yourself by the third Saturday in October, which is when you see him at the green market, standing at a fruit stall with a paper bag in one gloved hand. You stop so fast a woman with a stroller clips your heel.
Eight months and four hundred miles, and he's right here, wearing a canvas jacket with his hair shorter than you remember, frowning at the fruit, and your first coherent thought is run, but your feet are refusing to move.
He must've felt your eyes on him, because he looks up.
"You," he says it flat.
"Hi," your voice comes out steadier than you expect, and you silently thank god, the universe and every existent deity. "Bucky, right?"
He crosses the few feet between you, and up close you notice a tension in him that you don't remember from the shop. "What are you doing here?"
"Buying some groceries." You lift the bag as evidence. "I'm here taking care of my aunt and—"
"Right, so now your aunt happens to live here. Funny."
"You can come with me and check if you don't believe me," the bite gets into your voice before you can stop it. "Is there a problem?"
He laughs once, but there's no humor in it. "Is there a problem, you ask? Why don't you pull your cards and figure it out?"
"Okay—"
"Hazel broke up with me," he watches your face while he says it. "Three weeks after that reading, you want to know why?"
The market noise keeps going around you, crates and gulls and a vendor calling out prices, but everything is reducing to background noise while you feel the cold coming up from through your boots.
"She couldn't let it go," he continues. "You said something about a new beginning, some big personal message and she turned it over until there was nothing left. Every conversation we had circled back to it, who is she? When did it start? The cards don't lie. Four months, gone, because you laid out three stupid pieces of laminated paper and made it sound like some stupid prophecy."
"That isn't what I said— "
"Well, it's what she heard."
"I told her those cards were about you, individually. I was careful—"
"You were vague," he says, "which is the whole trick, isn't it? Say something soft enough to fit any shape, take the cash, let people destroy themselves filling in the blanks… there's a word for that." He shifts the bag of groceries to his other hand. "You're a fraud. The polite version is intuitive, a fraud with esoteric words."
You should let it go. He's a stranger, he's grieving a relationship, the market is crowded and you have other things to do, but you don't let it go.
"I didn't make those cards come up." You step in instead of back, and something flickers across his face—surprise, maybe, that you didn't fold. "I shuffled, you pulled three cards, it was your own hands, no hesitation. I read what was on the table and I softened it more than I should have, for her sake. What she did with it afterward isn't mine to carry, and neither is what you do with it."
A muscle moves in his jaw. For a second neither of you says anything, and you notice—stupidly, uselessly—that his eyes are exactly the color they are in your dreams.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry about Hazel."
"Yeah, you sure do." He steps around you. "Enjoy Brooklyn and stay the hell away from me."
You stand there with your own groceries until your hands stop shaking.
That night you don't pull cards. You lie awake instead, replaying it, building better arguments hours too late, and when you finally sleep, he's there—sitting across a kitchen table that doesn't exist, pushing a cup of coffee toward you, smiling at you the way he has never smiled once in real life.
You wake up furious at your own mind.
The radiator in the front room dies the last week of October, the same week the temperature does.
You find Maggie in her wingback with a blanket over her knees and the phone already against her ear. "It's the front one again," she's saying. "It clanks like the devil and gives nothing… No, don't be silly, after lunch is fine. You'll eat here anyway." She hangs up before whoever it is can argue.
"I could've called someone," you say. "There's a service the pharmacy recommends—"
"A service?" She huffs a laugh, like you've said something completely irrational. "I have James, he does the whole block—the Russo's gutters, Mrs. Ferreira's stairs… he won't take a dime, but I tuck it in his jacket when he isn't looking."
"James," you repeat.
"You'll like him," she says, returning to her crossword. "He's a serious boy, it's good with hands, single…"
The doorbell rings at one. You open the door and there he is, on your aunt's stoop, a tool bag over his shoulder, and you watch the exact moment his face goes through the market all over again.
"You gotta be shitting me," he mutters.
"Yeah, well, I'm not excited either, but I told you I was taking care of my aunt."
From the front room, your aunt's voice: "James! Don't let the heat out, it's the one radiator still working in here!"
You look at each other and there's a long moment where you genuinely cannot tell whether he's going to turn around and walk back down the steps, and then he exhales through his nose and crosses the threshold, being painfully obvious at avoiding brushing your shoulder in the narrow hall.
What follows is the strangest two hours of your autumn. Because the man at the market and the shop doesn't appear. With your aunt, he's somebody else entirely—patient, dry, gentle in an odd way for the way he's treated you. He kneels on the floor and bleeds the radiator and lets her direct him with her cane without complaining. Asks about her hip, and actually listens to the answer.
You stay in the kitchen, mostly. You make the coffee she orders you to make and when you bring it in, Nova—the bolder of your two cats—has installed herself on the tool bag, paws tucked underneath him, supervising, and for your surprise, Bucky is working around her rather than moving her.
He glances up when you set the cup down near him, just out of his way.
"Thanks," it's dry, but it's not nothing.
"You take your coffee black, right?" you say, and then bite your own tongue off, because you don't know that. You've been dreaming of that.
He pauses with the wrench mid-turn. "Lucky guess."
"Well, you look like a man who likes to keep it simple." You say it lightly and walk away before your face can do anything stupid, and behind you, Maggie says something about you reading people, and then you hear the small clank of metal as something in his hands slips.
He doesn't stay to eat, despite your aunt's best efforts. At the door, shrugging the tool bag back up, he stops with his hand on the frame. He doesn't quite look at you.
"Her hip," he murmurs. "If she needs anything lifted, or any errands to run, whatever… Maggie has my number."
"Okay."
"For her," he clarifies.
"I understood you the first time," you say sweetly and shut the door on whatever his face does next.
In the front room, Maggie has watched this entire exchange over her glasses.
"You didn't tell me you know James."
"Barely."
"Mm." She picks up her pen. "It seemed like more than barely to me. But if that's how you treat men no wonder why you're still single."
You gasped audibly and she winked an eye at you before going back to her crossword.
You start running into him in an almost daily basis. The neighborhood is small—twenty thousand people and somehow the same six faces every single day— and now that you know he's in it, he's everywhere. Outside the hardware store with a length of pipe over his shoulder. At the pharmacy counter, when you go pick up Maggie's medications and he's talking to an Asian man. Across the green market, where you both pretend with great commitment that the other one is invisible.
But there's no real conversation until now.
You've misjudged the sky and the distance, so you're hauling two grocery bags and a sack of cat litter up Pierrepont when the cold drizzle turns serious. You stop under sycamore to redistribute everything you're carrying, water running off the end of your nose, and a shadow falls over you. You lift your gaze and he's there, hood up, his hand already out reaching for you.
"What? Your cards didn't tell you there would be a storm?"
"Ha-ha. Very funny."
"Give me the litter."
"I've got it."
"You're going to put your shoulder out being stubborn. I said give me the damn litter."
You could protest, but you know it's pointless to fight with him, so you give him the litter and walk the last two blocks side by side without speaking, rain hissing on the pavement, his boots and your boots out of step.
He sets the sack on the second stair of your aunt's gate, but he doesn't leave immediately.
"At the market," he murmurs, to the gate rather than to you. "When I— when I said those things to you… I was out of line."
"You were rude."
"I was out of line," he repeats.
"You called me a fraud, and you said my intuition was exactly that, a fraud with esoteric words."
"Well, if you were so intuitive, wouldn't you have known about the rain?" It takes you a second to hear it, the dry shift under the flat delivery, and you laugh before you decide to. He looks surprised, like he wasn't expecting the sound either.
"Go home, Bucky," you say. "You'll catch a cold."
"Is that a prediction?"
You rolled your eyes. "There's no need for that, it's logical."
"Tell Maggie I left the wrench in the bin by the door… for the sink." He's already turning. "Don't let her do the sink herself, she'll try."
"I know my aunt."
"Then you know she'll try." And he's gone into the rain, shoulders up, and you stand at the gate watching him go for longer than you should.
That night you dream of him again, except the dream is just this: the two of you under a sycamore, rain coming down, but this time he's laughing—really laughing, head tipped, the whole architecture of his face rearranged by it— at something you can't hear yourself say.
You wake before dawn with your heart going hard and the echo of his laugh still in your ears.
It's a crush, you remind yourself staring at the ceiling.
Then why does your heart feel so heavy?
By November, your aunt has invented a maintenance schedule that no brownstone in history has ever required. The storm windows, the cellar light, a cabinet hinge you're fairly sure she loosened herself, because you watched her test it with her cane the day before she called him.
"You're matchmaking," you accuse, setting her tea down.
"I'm maintaining my property." She doesn't look up from the crossword. "Seven across, six letters. Foreseen by the stars."
"Fated."
"That's five."
"Destined is eight. Fated is five." You count it on your fingers. "What's six?"
Maggie hums thoughtfully and writes something down where you can't see it.
Bucky comes back on Thursday to check the storm windows. It's the fourth time, not that you're counting, and something has shifted in the dynamic between you—the hostility has burned down to a kind of wariness, and that wariness keep springing leaks.
He lets you hold the frame steady while he drives the screws, close enough that you can smell the cedar on his jacket. He answers your aunt's interrogation about his week in actual sentences. When Nova bolts for the open window, Bucky catches her one-handed without looking, absorbs the betrayed yowl and deposits her on the sofa with a flat "No". You expect retaliation, but Nova—who has never once obeyed you—stays.
"Traitor," you tell the cat.
"She respects the chain of command."
Maggie goes up for her nap at three with a theatrical yawning that should embarrass her. Bucky's packing up the drill in the kitchen and you're making coffee because it's cold and the radio on the counter—her ancient radio, permanently tuned to an AM station that plays classics—is murmuring under everything.
And you go still.
It takes you a moment to realize, and another to find why: he's humming. Barely, under his breath, and the song sounds pretty familiar.
The mug slips, you catch it against the counter, there's coffee slopping over your knuckles, and the burn makes you realize that song was playing in the dream where he danced with you in a dark room. You've never heard it awake in your life until right now. You don't know its name either, you only knew the next three notes after he hummed them.
"You okay?" He's looking at you now.
"It's nothing," you run your hand under the tap. "Just… wanted to heat my hands a little bit."
It's just an old song, it's an old radio station. Men hum old songs; it's logical. You repeat it in your head twice but your hands don't believe any of it. And god forbid you, you neither.
When you turn around, he's leaning against the counter, watching you with an expression you can't quite read.
"I've been meaning to ask you," he starts. "About the cards. Why do you do it? And I don't want the speech, I want the real answer."
You dry your hands slowly, deciding how much truth he's earned.
"My great grandmother read cards," you start, leaning against the counter across from him. "She read for people in her village back in the old country. My mom said she could look at someone and see the shape of their life, like… like they were made of glass. She tried to teach my mother, but the gift skipped her and landed on me instead."
You take a pause, watching the radio, the floor, anything but him.
"I was seven the first time I saw something I couldn't explain. I touched my grandmother's deck and I knew things about her neighbor who was sitting at the kitchen table. That she'd lost a baby the year before, that her husband was sleeping with her sister, that she was going to leave him by spring." You swallow. "I said all of it out loud, like an idiot child, because I didn't know you weren't supposed to just say those things."
Bucky's quiet. You can feel him listening, like he's cataloguing every word.
"My mother was horrified. My grandmother on the other hand wasn't. She said the cards chose me, and that I should learn to read them properly so I'd stop blurting out unfiltered truth at dinner parties." A small, humorless laugh leaves you. "So I learned. By the time I was a teenager, I was pulling cards for friends, for strangers, for anyone who asked. And most of the time, it's just… pattern recognition and intuition working together. The cards are a tool, not a magic trick, but sometimes—"
"Sometimes what?"
"Sometimes they show you something that doesn't fit any pattern you know. And you have to decide whether to believe what you're seeing or pretend you didn't see it."
The radio changes songs.
"Is that what happened with my reading?" he asks quietly.
No, you think. It's worse than that.
"I read what was on the table," you say instead, because it's the truth, even if it's not all of it. "I didn't make it up, Bucky. I've never fabricated a reading in my life. The cards that came up for you were clear… unusually clear. And I softened them because Hazel was sitting right there and I didn't want to hurt her, but I didn't lie."
He studies you for a long moment, and you can see the war happening behind his eyes—the part of him that wants to believe you fighting the part that needs to think you're a con artist, because the alternative is harder.
"Okay," he says finally.
"O—Okay?"
"I'm not saying I believe in it. I'm saying I believe you believe it, and that's… different."
It's the most generous thing he's said to you since the market, and it lands somewhere under your ribs.
It's a Tuesday in late November, and Maggie has sent him to fix a leak under the kitchen sink that you both suspect she caused by hitting the pipe with her cane. He's on his back under the counter and you're handling him tools, trying not to notice the way his shirt rides up when he reaches for the wrench.
When he slides out, wiping his hands on a rag, he looks at you for a while.
"There's a place two blocks over. They make decent coffee, if you're done pretending you don't need a break."
"That's the worst invitation I've ever heard. You're just observing that I look tired."
"You do look tired."
"Wow, thank you. A true gentleman."
His mouth twitches. "Do you want coffee or not?"
You want to say no, because saying yes feels too much like stepping off a cliff, but the word comes out before you can stop it. "Fine, but only because you're paying."
Maggie, from the front room calls out: "Take your time! I'm perfectly fine!"
You both know she's been listening to every word.
The walk to the café is silent.
The place looks cozy—it's small, warm and smells like cinnamon and cardamom. He orders black coffee and you order a latte and a slice of walnut cake. You sit t a table by the window where the afternoon light comes in, and for a few minutes neither of you says anything.
It should be awkward, being here without Maggie or your cats between you, but it isn't.
"Would you mind if I ask you something?"
"You're going to ask whether I say yes or not."
"Smart man." You turn the cup slowly. "Why do you do this? The handyman thing… Maggie says you work for the whole block. But you don't charge, you won't take money—"
"I take money, I just don't like to ask for it, besides, Maggie always invites me to eat."
"She tucks money in your jacket while you're not seeing."
"She's not as subtle as she thinks." He takes a sip of his coffee and ten looks at you. "I like fixing things, always have. When something's broken, there's a right way to fix it, and when it's done, it's done, it's done. You can see the result, it's not…"
"Ambiguous?"
"Yeah, exactly. It's not ambiguous."
You understand suddenly why he hated the reading and everything related to it. You gave him a puzzle with no solution, a fix with no steps… you made him sit with something unfixable.
The conversation moves easier after that. He tells you about the neighborhood, about Mrs. Ferreira, about Yori—the Asian man you saw the other day who feeds pigeons from his window, about the old man on the fourth who swears at everyone in Italian. You tell him about your shop, about your cats—Nova and Salem, about the time you accidentally read cards for a man who turned out to be an undercover cop investigating a psychic scam two towns over, and how you spent forty-five minutes proving your cards weren't marked.
You see him laughing, not the polite sound from always, but a real one. You drink your coffee and eat your cake and try to not think about the dreams.
It becomes a thing. He finishes a repair at Maggie's or passes by to eat and you end up at the café, or walking the two blocks to the park where the benches face the water, or simply sitting on her stoop in the last cold light of the afternoon while you both drink coffee.
You learn things about him in pieces. He's from Brooklyn—born and raised, he says, but the tone on his voice tells you it's partly a lie. He has a best friend named Sam who's a pain in the ass. He doesn't talk about his family, but you don't push. He served in the military, a long time ago.
He learns things about you too, like the fact you talk with your hands when you're passionate about something, or that you hum when you're thinking and that hum is always off-key. He learns about your habit of reading strangers on the street and narrating your observations under your breath.
The first week of December arrives with an ugly wind that rattles Maggie's windows and makes your cats burrow under the blankets. Maggie has graduated from the cane to limping short distances without it, which means she's mobile enough to meddle full-time.
Bucky comes by Wednesday to check a draft Maggie swears she can feel coming from the baseboards. You both know there's no draft, but he comes by anyway.
You open the door and he's standing on the stoop with his hands in his jacket pockets, his tool bag over one shoulder, and there's snow in his hair—not much, just dust, but it's there, melting against the dark of it—and your heart does something complicated because of how good he looks.
"Maggie's napping," you say.
His hand comes out of his pocket. He's holding a folded napkin, and he holds it out to you like it's a wrench.
"I made reservations," he murmurs. "At Valentino's, this Friday, seven o'clock."
You stare at the napkin. "Did you just… write it on a napkin?"
"I didn't have a paper." He shifts his weight. "Sam says you're supposed to give the person a specific time and place, so… there it is."
"You asked your friend how to ask someone on a date?"
"Well, he tells me a lot of things, more of it is useless." He's looking at the doorframe while he speaks, then he glances at you. "This part seemed right."
You unfold the napkin. His handwriting is surprisingly neat—small, precise letters. Friday, 7 pm- Valentino's on Henry St. —B
"Is this because Maggie put you up to it?" you ask, because if this is charity or pity or Maggie's matchmaking you'd rather know now and bleed later.
"No. She might take credit for it, but no. I was going to ask you at the café last week, but then you started reading people and I lost my nerve."
Bucky lost his nerve.
"So, Friday… at seven."
"Is that a yes?"
"That's a yes."
He nods once, and you can see his shoulders drop half an inch. You want to laugh, or cry, or both, so you just fold the napkin carefully and put it in your pocket.
"Are you going to come in and check the nonexistent draft, or…?"
"Might as well, just to keep the appearances."
He brushes past you in the doorway, and unlike the first time, he doesn't avoid your shoulder.
When Friday night comes, you don't understand why you're so damn nervous, but here you are, changing your outfit twice before settling with a blue dress and a pair of boots that Maggie claims make your legs look like they go on forever. You're halfway down the stairs when the doorbell rings.
He cleans up well. That's the first thought you have when you open the door. He's wearing a dark jacket over a sweater, and his hair is pulled back in a way that shows the sharp lines of his face, and he smells so good you have to resist the urge to lean closer and breathe him in again.
"You look nice," he says when you open the door.
"You too." You grab your coat from the hook. "Don't wait up, Maggie."
"Go. Don't come back before ten, I have a television program."
"We're going to dinner, Maggie, not—"
"Door will be locked before ten o'clock," she insists, and shuts the door on your face before you can answer, letting you at the bottom of the stairs.
You turn to face Bucky and the way he looks at you makes you forget every argument you've ever had with yourself about why this is a bad idea.
"Ready?" he asks.
"It depends. Are you going to accuse me of fraud tonight?"
"Not tonight."
"Then I'm ready."
Valentino's is tucked between a laundromat and a bookshop. The hostess greets Bucky by name and leads you to a corner booth where the candlelight flickers against the red-checkered tablecloth.
"Fancy," you tease.
"I said it wasn't fancy."
"Exactly," you unfold your napkin and look around—warm brick walls, fairy lights strung along the ceiling, and and old man at the bar arguing with the bartender about baseball. "I like it."
He orders wine for the table without asking, but it's the good kind, the kind that tastes likes blackberries, and when he catches you watching him over the rim of your glass, he doesn't look away.
You're talking about the shop—what you'll do when you go back, whether you'll reopen at all—when he leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath. "I want to ask you something, but I don't want to fight."
"That's a promising start."
"Why do you believe in it? The cards, destiny, all of it. You're smart. You read people like they're open books. How do you also believe that pieces of cardboard can tell the future?"
It's not hostile. It's genuine curiosity, and that's worse, because you owe him a real answer. You down the rest of your wine for a bit of liquid courage.
"When I was seventeen," you start, and your voice is careful, like you're walking on ice, " my great grandmother died. She'd been sick for a while, and when I went to see her in the hospital she… she told me she'd been reading my cards since I was born. That she'd asked about my future every year on my birthday, the way she did for everyone in the family. And every year, the same cards came up."
The restaurant noise fills the silence—the clink of glasses, a murmur of conversation from the next table—but you're hyper aware of him.
"She said love wasn't meant for me." You trace the rim of your glass with your finger. "I didn't believe her, I was seventeen, I thought she was a dramatic old woman who loved tragedy, or that maybe she was way too high on her meds. So I started reading for myself, I pulled my own cards every week, every month, every time I met someone I thought could be something. And every single time, the same answer. Reversed Ace of Cups. Ten of Swords. The Tower. Not for you, not in this life."
You laugh, but it comes out humorless.
"I even paid a woman to read my destiny matrix, I tried runes, I tried everything because I wanted so badly for the answer to be different; but it never was. I tried dating, I did. I wanted so bad to be loved. Apparently, the person meant for me was born over a hundred years ago, and I was born now, so the timing was wrong, and that's it."
Bucky is very still across the table. He hasn't moved, hasn't reached for his glass, hasn't done anything except listen with an intensity that makes your skin prickle. The silence between you stretches. He's looking at you with an expression you can't decode.
"Bucky?"
He exhales slowly, and his jaw works twice. Then he leans forward, resting both forearms on the table. "You don't have any idea of who I am?"
"Should I?" you ask, confused.
He stares at you for a long moment like he's looking for some sign that you're joking. "You really don't."
"Bucky, you're freaking me out a little. Are you in the mob? A famous musician? Because I have to be honest, I don't really follow the news, and history was never my strong subject. I know the major stuff, but—"
He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, sliding something across the table toward you.
It's his driver's license. You pick it up, squinting at the tiny photo—he looks exactly the same, of course he does, that hot bastard—and then your eyes drop to the birth date.
March 10, 1917.
You read it three times, but the numbers don't change. You look up at him, and he's watching at you with an expression you can't read.
"I was born in 1917," he says quietly. "Here in Brooklyn. I went to war in '43 and… I didn't come back the way I left. They did things to me, changed me. I don't age the way normal people do, and there's a lot of years in between that I'd rather not talk about in a restaurant."
Your hands are shaking. You set the license down on the table between you like it might burn you.
"The matrix destiny," you whisper. "It said a hundred years ago. You were born a hundred years ago."
"Yeah." He leans forward. "And here's the thing. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in stars writing our stories for us, because if I did—" His voice breaks, just slightly, and he catches it. "If I did, then I'd have to believe that what happened to me was determined. That the things that I did, the things that were done to me, they were written in stone before I was even born. And that's too cruel, that's a crueler god than I'm willing to worship."
He's breathing harder now, and you realize with a start that he's scared. Bucky Barnes, who caught your cat mid-air and argued with you in the rain, is scared of what you might say next.
"But you," he continues, softer now. "You showed up in my neighborhood reading cards and talking about things you shouldn't know. And I kept seeing you everywhere, and I kept telling myself it was a coincidence, that Brooklyn is small and you were just… there. But there's something here. I feel it every time I'm in the same room as you, and I don't know if that's fate or if it's just—" He stops, running a hand over his face. "I don't know what it is. But I know I haven't wanted to spend time with someone like this in a long time. And if that means the stars finally decided to do something kind for once, then maybe… maybe I'm not as angry at them as I thought."
You don't know what to say. The pasta arrives and sits cooling between you, forgotten. You think about every card you've ever pulled, every spread that ended in the same lonely answer, every time you accepted that love wasn't meant for you. And now, he's sitting across from you, born in 1917, a hundred-year-old soul in a young man's body, and the math is so simple it makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.
"You're quiet," he says.
"I'm not quiet," you manage, but your voice sounds like it's coming from very far away. "I'm just… I don't know what to say. You don't— you don't just drop 'I was born in 1917' into a conversation and expect someone to have a response ready."
The corner of his mouth twitches. "Fair."
"You fought in World War II."
"Yeah."
"And you're telling me you don't believe in fate, but you just handed me proof that the answer I've been getting my whole life wasn't wrong."
"I'm telling you that I don't care what the cards said," he reaches across the table, his hand hovering over yours for a moment before he covers your fingers with his palm. His skin is warm, calloused, and you feel it everywhere. "I care that you're here, right now. And I'm here. That's enough for me."
You look down at your hand under his, at the candlelight pooling in the hollow of his palm, and you think about the High Priestess card, the one you've pulled for yourself a hundred times. Hidden knowledge, the veil between worlds, secrets.
Maybe the secret was that you weren't waiting for a ghost after all.
You eat eventually, though you barely taste it. He tells you about Sam, about the boat they worked on together, about the neighborhood changing and staying the same all at once. You tell him about your cats, about the way Maggie pretends to be asleep every time he comes over so you'll have to answer the door alone.
But mostly, you sit in the candlelight and let yourself have this. Whatever this is.
He insists on walking you home. It's not far—five blocks, maybe six—and the December air is sharp enough to make you tuck your hands into your coat pockets. He walks on the outside of the sidewalk, closest to the street, the way men used to do when he was young, and something about that makes your chest ache.
"You okay?" he asks as you turn onto Maggie's block.
"Yeah." But you're not, not really. You're overwhelmed, full of things you don't know how to say. You want to tell him that you've dreamed about him, that you've known the shape of his laugh before you ever heard it, that you pulled his cards in your kitchen and you threw the deck across the room because it was too much to believe. You want to ask him if he feels it too, this gravity, this sense of falling into something you never expected to find.
But you don't say any of that. You just walk beside him in the dark, and when you reach Maggie's stoop, you turn to face him.
The streetlamp behind him casts a halo around his shoulders. You think about all the years he's lived, all the winters he's seen, and you can't believe any of them led him here. To you. To this moment in your aunt's cracked concrete steps.
"I had a good time," he says.
"Me too."
He steps closer. You can smell the wine on his breath, the cedar of his jacket, the cold night air clinging to his air. He's close enough that you have to tilt your head back to look at him, and his eyes are darker in the shadows.
“Are you going to pull your cards tonight?”
"I don't think I need to." Your voice is barely above a whisper. "I think I already know how this goes."
"Yeah?" His hand finds your waist, tentative, asking permission. "How's it go?"
And then he kisses you.
It's soft at first, careful, like he's giving you time to pull away. But you don't pull away. You reach up and curl your fingers into the front of his jacket, and he makes a sound against your mouth before deepening the kiss. His hand slides to the small of your back, pulling you closer, and you can feel the warmth of him through every layer between you that suddenly feels like too many.
He tastes like red wine, and his jaw is rough under your palm, and when you break apart you're both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together.
"Okay," you whisper. "Okay."
"Okay," he repeats, and he sounds almost drunk with it. He kisses you again, lighter this time, on the corner of your mouth, your cheek, your temple. His lips brush your ear as he murmurs, "I don't care about fate. But if you want to tell me what the stars said, I'll listen."
You laugh, a little watery, and push at his chest. "Go home, Bucky. It's cold."
"I know." But he doesn't move. He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers lingering against your jaw. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
He finally steps back, down one step, then two. He's smiling, the kind that reaches his eyes and rearranges his whole face into something boyish and new. "Night, then."
"Night."
You watch him walk down the block, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders relaxed in a way you haven't seen before. You watch until he turns the corner and disappears, and you stand there for a long moment with your fingers pressed to your mouth, trying to remember how to breathe.
The front door opens behind you.
"You're welcome," Maggie says.
You jump so hard you nearly fall off the stoop. "Jesus, Maggie!"
She's standing in the doorway in her robe and slippers, her crossword in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. She looks entirely too pleased with herself.
"You were watching!" You accuse.
"I was observing, there's a difference." She steps back to let you in. "I told you he was a good boy, serious, good with his hands." She winks. "And now you know for sure."
"Maggie!"
"Don't 'Maggie' me. I didn't raise you to be ungrateful." She shuffles toward the stairs. "You can thank me properly at breakfast. And don't think I didn't notice you sneaking cards at my kitchen table for three months straight. I may be old, but I'm not blind."
You stand in the hallway, coat still on, cheeks burning, and listen to her cackle all the way up the stairs.
Your cats appear from the front room, twining around your ankles, and you bend down to scoop Nova up, burying your face in her fur. She purrs, loud and indignant, and you laugh against her soft orange head.
"Okay," you whisper to him, to the empty hallway, to no one in particular. "Okay."
You don't know what happens next. You don't know how any of this works, a tarot reader and a century-old soldier, two people the universe apparently decided to throw together just to see what would happen.
But as you climb the stairs to your cramped little room, you think about the spread you pulled the night before you left for Brooklyn. The Tower. The Star. The World.
Disaster, then hope, then completion.
Maybe The Tower wasn't heartbreak after all. Maybe it was just the world rearranging itself to make room for something you never dared to ask for.
You fall asleep that night without pulling any cards, without any dreams at all, and when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you hear is Bucky's voice downstairs, asking Maggie if she takes one sugar or two, and the sound it's better than any spread you've ever read.
June.
The summer breeze at Coney Island smells like salt and fried dough, and you were wearing the jacket Bucky lent you because you misjudged the wind off the water. It's still too big, the sleeves past your knuckles, and he keeps reaching over to roll them back up for you, his thumb brushing your wrist every time.
You can't remember whose idea it was to come here. Maybe yours, maybe his. Maybe it doesn't matter, because Bucky's hand is wrapped around yours. You've been official since January, though the line between before and after has blurred into something that feels like it started long before either of you were brave enough to name it.
The boardwalk is crowded with families and couples and teenagers laughing too loud, but Bucky moves through them like he was made for this—for cotton candy and carnival lights, for the easy joy of a Brooklyn summer night. He fits here, you realize. He fits now. A hundred-year-old soul learning how to be young again.
"Step right up! Test your luck!" A barker's voice cuts through the noise, and you follow it to a row of old arcade machines tucked beneath a stripped awning. Skee-ball, claw machines, a racing game with a faded steering wheel—and then you see it.
A fortune teller machine.
It sits in the corner like something out of another era, which, you suppose, it is. Madam Zola's Mystical Fortune Cards, the peeling gold paint reads. Insert coin. Receive Your Destiny. The mechanical woman inside has painted glass eyes and a silk scarf draped over her plastic hair, and her hand rests on a deck of cards that probably haven't been mystical a day in their life.
Bucky follows your gaze and laughs. "You're kidding me."
"I'm absolutely not kidding you." You're already digging in your pocket for a quarter. "Madam Zola and I are colleagues, I need to know if she's legitimate."
"She's made of plywood."
"So judgmental." You find two quarters and press one into his palm, your fingers lingering against his. "For you, professional courtesy."
He looks down at the quarter, then back at you, and something softens in his expression. "Alright," he says. "But if this thing tells me I'm gonna die alone, I'm blaming you."
"Fair."
You drop your quarter in first. The machine whirs to life with a dramatic creak. Madam Zola's hand moves across the cards in jerky, mechanical motions, and after a moment, a small white card drops into the brass tray below.
You pick it up. It's not a real tarot card—just cardstock, cheap, the edges already soft from humidity—but the image printed on it makes your breath catch. Two hands clasped, reaching across a starfield. Beneath it, in gold script: The Lovers.
And underneath that, smaller: You've found the one. Don't waste time doubting it.
You stare at it. Bucky leans over your shoulder to read it, and you feel him go still.
"Huh."
"Your turn!"
"I don't need a card to tell me—"
"Your turn, Barnes."
He huffs, but he drops in the quarter you gave him. The machine grinds and another card falls. He picks it up. You don't see it at first, but you see his face—the way his jaw loosens, the way his eyes soften at the corners.
It's the same image, but the text beneath reads: What was written in the stars has come to pass. Trust the path, trust your heart.
The noise of the fair fades to a distant hum. You look up at him, and he's already looking at you.
"Bucky—"
"I don't care if it's rigged. I don't care if every card in that thing says the same thing. You're—" He stops, swallowing thickly. "You're it for me. You know that, right?"
Your heart is doing that complicated thing again, the thing it does every time he looks at you like you're the only person in the world.
"I know," you whisper. "Me too."
He kisses you then, right there in front of Madam Zola and half of Brooklyn, his hand cradling your jaw like you're something precious. When you pull apart, you're both breathless, and someone's wolf-whistled from the skee-ball line, but none of you seem to care at all.
"Come on," he says, lacing his fingers through yours. "I saw a ring toss on the way in, I need to win you something."
It takes him four tries and an embarrassing amount of money, and by the end he's swearing at the rigged bottles while you laugh so hard you have to lean against the counter for support. But on the fifth throw, the last ring catches, and the barker hands over the prize with a grudging nod.
It's a ridiculous bear, oversized and caramel-colored, wearing a tiny red bow tie. Bucky presents it to you as if he was handing you over the Holy Grail.
"For you. I was gonna go for the giant panda, but this one looked like it needed you more."
You crush it against your chest, burying your face in its soft synthetic fur. "I love him. I'm naming him James."
"You're not naming him after me."
"I'm absolutely naming him after you. Look at him, he has your expression."
Bucky stares at the bear's blank button eyes and then at you, and then he laughs, tilting his head back and you want to take a picture of him like this—careless, happy.
"Let's go to the photobooth," you demand, grabbing his hand. "Before the light changes."
"Bossy."
"You love when I'm bossy."
He doesn't agree, but he doesn't deny it either.
The photobooth is tucked behind the funhouse, a vintage four-strip model with a faded red curtain and a sign that flashes OUT OF ORDER every third flicker. But when you slide your money in, it whirs to life, and the first bulb flashes before you're ready.
"Wait—" you laugh, still adjusting the bear on your lap.
Too late. The first picture capture you mid-laugh, Bucky leaning in with his mouth open, probably saying something sarcastic.
"Okay, okay, be serious," you say, turning toward him.
"Serious," he repeats, but his eyes are dancing.
The second flash catches you pressing a kiss to his cheek, his hand coming up to rest on your waist. The third finds him turning his head at the last second so your lips meet his instead, his fingers threading into your hair. The fourth flash finds you both laughing into each other's mouths, your foreheads touching, the bear crushed between you. You don't remember who kissed who, but you don't care.
When the strip slides out of the machine, you hold it up to the light, watching the images develop in slow motion. Four tiny windows into a perfect moment. You look at them, and you think about al the cards you've ever pulled, all the lonely spreads and reversed cups, all the years you believed love wasn't meant for you.
And here you are. Here he is. A love out of time.
"I'm putting these on the fridge," you say. "When we get back to the apartment."
"Our apartment," he corrects and your heart flips.
You're moving in together next month. You found a place in Brooklyn with a windowsill wide enough for two cats and a fire escape that gets morning sun. He's already planning on building a spare room for your appointments, and built a shelf for your cards. You told him he didn't have to, that you'd find another place to do your readings and keep the cards in the closet if he wanted, and he looked at you like you'd suggested drowning a kitten.
"It's your gift," he said. "Why would I want you to hide it?"
Later, when the moon is high and the fair lights are starting to dim, you sit together on the boardwalk with your shoes off, toes buried in cool sand, sharing a funnel cake.
"We should get home," you say, but you don't move. "Salem and Nova are probably destroying something."
"They're fine, Nova's probably sleeping on my tool bag, and Salem's judging her from the windowsill."
"How do you know that?"
"Because that's what they do every time I'm there." He licks powdered sugar off his thumb. "Those cats have a very established routine. Nova loves me, Salem tolerates me… it's a good system."
You smile, leaning your head on his shoulder. "Salem tolerates everyone, that's just his personality. Nova loves anyone who gives her attention. They're not a good benchmark."
"Okay." He pauses. "Then you love me. And you're a much better benchmark."
You go still. The word hangs in the air between you, but he doesn't take it back. He just turns his head and looks at you, waiting, his eyes reflecting the last of the carnival lights.
"I do," you whisper. "I love you."
His smile is small and yet so full of hope it makes your chest ache. "I love you too. I think I started loving you the day you shut the door on my face."
"You have terrible taste."
"Must be the century I was born in, we liked 'em feisty."
You laugh, pushing at his chest, and he catches your hand and presses a kiss to your knuckles. You sit like that for a long time, watching the tide come in, his thumb tracing slow circles in your palm. Eventually, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the fortune card from Madam Zola's machine.
"Do you think it's true?" he asks quietly. "The whole destiny thing. Do you really believe we were supposed to find each other?"
You look at the card, then at him—the man who was born over a hundred years ago, who fought a war and survived things you can't imagine, that sometimes admit not knowing how to do any of this, but that tries anyway for you.
"I believe," you start, "that the cards pointed me in a direction. They told me to wait, to not settle for something that wasn't right." You turn his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm—his life line, long and unbroken; the heart line, deep and sure. "But I don't think they made this happen, Bucky. I think we did. I think you showed up at my shop and you were rude and impossible and I couldn't stop thinking about you anyway. I think we let Maggie manipulate us into falling in love. The cards didn't do that, we did."
"Okay," he says. "I like that better anyway."
"Me too."
He folds the car again and tucks it back into his pocket, over his heart. "I'm keeping this, though. As evidence."
"Evidence of what?"
"That sometimes the universe gets it right."
You don't pull cards that night, haven't done it for a while, because you don't need to. You fall asleep with Bucky's heartbeat against your back, Salem purring at your feet, Nova curled on the pillow between you like a furry chaperone, and you dream of nothing at all—just the deep, peaceful dark of a life that's finally exactly where it's meant to be.
☆ SUMMARY: After a series of bad dates, mid-conversation ghostings and a week straight of rejections– you need some good ol’ fashioned fun. Unfortunately, you end up drunk-dialing your hot, older boss– the one you’ve been crushing on since starting your residency. For some reason, he picks up.
☆ CONTAINS: Younger, fem!reader, descriptions of throwing up (sorry emetophobes), medical inaccuracies, blood, mentions of gunshot wounds, a girl who can’t hold her liquor and is annoying while drunk!
☆AUTHORS NOTE: DING DING DING– we have a winner! In all honesty guys, this ended up getting way out of hand and longer than I initially wanted it to be– it always gets like that when I involve multiple characters. Hopefully you guys feel happy with the final result of your vote and enjoy this fic<333
☆ PAGE DIVIDERS BY: @sweetmelodygraphics
“Come on, it’s just one more drink!” you slur, holding your glass out of reach from Samira, who sends a helpless look back at the rest of the group.
“O-kay, I think you’ve had enough–” Dennis says nervously, reaching for your other side.
Trinity rolls her eyes, standing up from her seat as she starts tugging on your arm as well, while Victoria nervously glances around the bar, trying not to get kicked out because you’ve had too much to drink.
You stand up abruptly, faster than a drunk person should be able to move, which sends them tumbling into each other. Chugging down the rest of your drink, the dayshifters can only watch in horror as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand– a loopy grin forming on your face.
"Whadd’ya say this is called? Blue Lagoon? Get me anotha’ round of ‘em– for the ‘lot!” you exclaim, and Mel quickly shoots a glance at the bartender, shaking her head as she does a cutting motion with her hand.
“No, no– she- she doesn't mean that!”
“Yup, I defffinitely do– mmph!” A hand clamps over your mouth before you can continue bankrupting yourself at 10 PM on a Tuesday. Blinking, you’re met with Dennis’ sweaty face, a painful smile forced onto his face.
Of course, staying silent while a hand is physically blocking your mouth is only optional.
Licking his palm, you sigh in content when he finally lets go.
Dennis jerks his hand back, eyes widening in horror at the slick trail of saliva now streaked across it.
“Oh what the fu–”
“I wanna’ dance,” you garble, stumbling on your feet as you shake off the hands gripping your frame.
“Absolutely not,” Trinity snaps immediately, already bracing herself as you attempt a very ambitious spin that ends in you nearly concussing yourself and her.
You pout, swaying awkwardly as you roll your eyes dramatically.
“But I feel the music!” you exclaim, and do a…shimmy?
“There’s literally no music playing,” Victoria mutters quietly, shrugging when Samira shoves her shoulder lightly. “What? It’s true, I mean– it’s a Tuesday– who gets blackout drunk on a–”
“Well…she did say she’s been having a rough week at work,” Mel softly interrupts, a gentle frown on her face as she watches Trinity wrestle yet another drink you’ve magically gotten, out of your hands.
Victoria grows silent, a slight regretful look on her face.
Though whatever apology you might have gotten is long forgotten when you start doing the robot.
“There’s music in my bones– c’mon fruitcake, dance with me!” you holler, and Dennis sinks further into the wall, unable to watch anymore.
He needed to look away if he wanted to be able to give you a semblance of respect tomorrow.
Samira sighs, giving you a pitiful smile.
“New plan– how about we head home, honey?” she speaks as gently as she can, slowly lowering your flailing arms, trying to preserve some of your dignity.
“No!” you gasp like she was suggesting something criminal, “We just got here–”
“No, we just got here– you’ve been here since 7 PM,” Trinity mutters, already reaching for your bag.
You can feel her irritation, despite the overflow of alcohol in your system right now.
Suddenly– you halt– slumping back in your chair as your lower lip wobbles, pathetic sniffles escaping you.
A collective, panicked rambling ensues, trying to prevent a drunken disaster.
“Oh no–”
“Hey, come on– you’re fine!”
“We– we were just joking–” Samira rushes, immediately crouching in front of you, hands cupping your face as your expression crumples further.
Your eyes glass over, lashes clumping together as your breathing hitches– dramatic and shaky, a complete overreaction.
“No you weren’t,” you mumble while shaking your head adamantly, voice thick. “You guys hate me!”
“We do not hate you,” Trinity says quickly, crouching beside you now too, her usual bite completely gone. “You’re just like, really drunk,”
“And kind of embarrassing,” Victoria adds quickly, before shrugging helplessly at the glares she receives “...But like, in a cute way!” she amends weakly.
That does not help.
A sob wracks through your body, and Mel looks about three seconds away from getting an Uber home and spending the entire ride looking at lava lamps.
“I– I just–” you whimper, breath catching in your throat, “I’ve had a bad week–”
Dennis exhales slowly, dragging a hand down his face before stepping closer. “Yeah, we know–”
You shake your head again, sniffing loudly.
“No– everyone keeps, like, leaving mid-conversation, or saying they’ll text and then not texting and– and I think this one guy blocked me before I even finished writing–” you babble, hiccuping in between words.
“Honey, that’s not on you,” Samira quickly responds, her patient satisfaction skills working overtime. “They’re idiots– you’re a total catch!”
Despite your tear streaked face and bloodshot eyes– with mascara running down your face and your sorry attempt of reapplying your lipstick smudged way past the lines of your lips– a soft, hopeful smile wobbles onto your face.
“Really?”
The four remaining dayshifters quickly perk up at the glare Samira, once again, sends them over her shoulder, a chorus of agreements suddenly being heard.
“Of course!”
“You’re, like, super smart too–”
“Y-yes, you’re a stunner!”
“Beautiful, honestly–”
You sniff, eyes darting between them like you’re trying to decide if they’re lying or telling the truth. Not that you would be able to tell anyways.
“…You’re not just saying that?” you ask, voice small, hesitant in a way that makes all of them soften instantly, despite the one man circus you’ve been running for the past few hours.
“Of course not!” Samira reassures, wiping the makeup smudging under your eyes. The rest of the group nods adamantly, Mel reaching for your bag, while Victoria grabbed your jacket, Trinity and Dennis already taking hold of each of your arms
You squirm out of their grip, stumbling on your feet.
“Okay…we can go, I just– I really need to pee…” you swallow thickly, wiping the snot from your nose.
Once they see the queasy look on your face and the drops of sweat forming on your forehead, they stop fussing– keeping you at arms length while they lead you towards the bathroom in the back.
“Are you sure you’re okay in there?”
You hear Mel call out, though slightly muffled from the door you slammed shut in your hunt to find the nearest toilet to spill your guts into.
“Mmph– m’fine–” you manage to force out, before another wave of nausea washes over you, forcing your head back into the toilet bowl.
You hear the footsteps retreating over the sound of your heart beating in your ears, and end up slumping against the cool tile wall, sitting on the disgusting bathroom floor.
Groaning, you weakly tug on your phone that's currently digging into your hip– making the position even more uncomfortable than it already is.
You sink back against the cold porcelain, gaze unfocused when they land back on your phone.
Rubbing your bleary eyes, you grab it staring at the apparatus in your hands.
“Piece of crap, stupid assholes…” you snivel, angrily tapping on your screen as you scroll through the endless amounts of names in your contact list. “You–you’re all jerks!”
Your thumb keeps sliding across the screen, vision blurring every few seconds as fresh tears gather.
“Don’t need any of you,” you mumble stubbornly, hiccuping as your head thunks back against the toilet seat. “I have plenty of options,”
Your phone nearly slips from your grip before you fumble it back, squinting at the glowing names that refuse to stay still.
One contact catches your eye.
Jake.
One of your recent failures that spent the entirety of the date rambling about his failed career as an professional athlete, because of an injury he got in high school.
When you explained to him that a sprained finger doesn’t result in never being able to play soccer again, he– for some reason– got upset and stormed off, leaving you with the bill.
You suspect he did it on purpose.
“Tch…he had the nerve to tell me I’m boring? I- I’m a fucking doctor– I need to tell that piece of shit he’s the boring one, I’m not boring at all–” you mutter lowly, a sudden determination in your veins as you tap on the call button.
Bringing it to your ear, you listen to the ringback– and the call connects within seconds.
Oh. You didn’t think he’d actually pick up.
“Hello–”
“Pfft…don’t ‘hello’ me you…you boring asshole!” you slur, words sticking together as you try and sit up straighter against the wall.
“I think you have the wrong numb–”
“Oh yeah? Real mature Jake– I have the wrong number? I can’t believe you left me with the bill after I went with a salad and you ordered the fucking steak–”
“I think you should take another look at who you’re speaking to right now,” a gruff voice interrupts, and you falter for a moment.
Huh, you think to yourself, Jake’s voice managed to get a lot deeper in a week.
You scoff, struggling to keep yourself upright as you start sliding down the wall again.
“Geez, that sooooo scary– “
“I’m not Jake,” the voice huffs out, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was laughing at you.
You groan as you pull the phone from your ear, only doing it so that you can prove your point, before looking down at the caller ID.
Jack Abbot.
“It literally says–” the words die on your tongue as you do a double take, bringing the phone back down from your ear and blinking at the screen
Jack Abbot–
You scramble to press the phone back to your ear, nearly dropping it in the process.
“I– Doctor Abbot?”
The line goes quiet for a few seconds, and in your drunken state of mind, you almost think he’s hung up on you. But then, you hear the sounds of sheets rustling on the other end, and a soft grunt as he speaks into the phone again.
“So, this Jake guy, huh? Seems like a real jerk,”
You sniffle softly slowly letting yourself sink down against the wall again.
“Yeah…he was,”
“You okay, kid?”
“M’fine, my head’s just pounding” you mutter slowly, before sighing– immediately bouncing to the next subject. “You know, you have it so much easier, Doctor Abbot–”
“Jack,” he reprimands softly, and you adjust promptly, scoffing into the speaker.
“Whatever, Jack– you– you have, like, women throwing themselves at you from every corner!”
“Where did you get that idea from?” Jack replies, voice low, rough with sleep but unmistakably amused.
“Uhm, hello– do we not work at the same hospital? I’ve seen the way people go– Oh yes handsome doctor man– please save me–“ you say, voice pitching up as you reenact an overdramatized interaction that Jack can’t recall ever having.
“And you’ve witnessed this happening?” his raspy voice crackles through the speaker and you subconsciously find yourself pressing yourself closer to the device, blinking sluggishly where you’re draped across the floor.
“I’m a victim of it, baby–” your voice comes through in a horrible southern accent, and Jack lets out a surprised laugh, which in turn makes you giggle as well, the sound echoing around the empty bathroom.
Jack Abbot is a fifty-year-old war veteran and amputee, currently laughing into his phone like some love struck teenager.
He’s been married once, then widowed. He’s been on the ledges of buildings, and pulled himself away from them– he’s lived an entire life keeping his guard up– only to have every wall he’s ever built torn down by his twenty-something-year-old, resident, currently in a drunken fit of giggles on the other end of his phone.
At the realisation of how fucking stupid he should feel, his chuckles falter, eventually reaching an end, and the sound of your uneven breathing is all thats heard from the speaker of his phone, currently echoing in his otherwise silent room.
Jack knows better.
He knows he should probably hang up, to let you get home and forget all about this– to see you at work tomorrow and pretend like you didn’t shake his whole world view from just one phone call.
“Christ– how much have you had tonight?” he finds himself asking instead, ignoring the way his stomach stirs at the sound of your heavy breaths.
There’s a small pause on the other end, before another one of your soft giggles breaks it.
“That's not important,” you mumble, words slow and syrupy, like they’re melting together.
Jack huffs quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching despite himself.
“Somehow, I doubt that,”
“Mmm,” you hum, shifting slightly. There's the faint sound of fabric dragging against tile, a soft thud like your shoulder bumps the wall again before you sigh loudly. “This is so not helping my crush on you,”
Jack freezes where he’s sitting against his headboard– heart thudding so loudly in his chest he’s thankful you’re drunk– convinced you might have heard it otherwise.
“Alright, I think it’s time we–” he begins, only to be cut off by you.
“What, like you didn’t know? You’re like, the hottest man I’ve ever seen, I can barely even speak to you at work–”
Jack should not be feeling as smug as he is right now, sitting up straighter in bed at your words.
He needs to hear more.
“Yeah? I— is that why you keep avoiding me? You think I’m hot?” he finds himself asking, the words foreign on his tongue. He’s swallowing thickly in suspense as he awaits your answer.
It’s sick, honestly— the way he’s using your drunkenness to satiate his own greed, but Jack never claimed to be a righteous man.
If anything, he’d happily throw all his years of discipline and restraint away if it meant having you.
You snort, rolling your eyes at his words. In your intoxicated state of mind, his words don’t register as amused or particularly curious— just disbelieving, which you can not have.
“Pfft, seriously? You’re acting like you don’t walk around practically beggin’ for it in that SWAT-uniform,”
Jack laughs again, the sound crackling from your speaker.
“You’ve been thinking of me in my SWAT-gear?”
“Are you kidding? I love that stupid thing–”
A loud knock on the bathroom door interrupts your rambling, and you turn towards the noise sluggishly. Your phone drops to the floor just as the door opens, and Samira Mohan is the first to rush over at the sight of you sprawled over the bathroom floor.
“Holy shit– are you okay? Did you fall–”
“Wha– no, I just got tired…” you mumble, wriggling out of her hold on your shoulders. You let out a grunt, trying to reach your phone, but the dayshifters seem to have a different idea.
“Yeah, okay, time to go Frank Gallagher!” Trinity huffs, grabbing your arm as she and Victoria pull you to your feet. You lean your weight on them, motioning weakly towards your phone on the floor.
“Need…need my phone–” you mumble, arm flopping uselessly in its direction. “Wait– hold on, he’s still–”
“What?” Trinity frowns, following your half-hearted gesture before spotting it on the tile. “Oh, for fuck’s sake– huckleberry, grab her phone so we can go already!”
Dennis narrowly avoids your swaying figure, before he bends down and picks your phone up off the ground. As soon as he grabs it, the screen flickers on, revealing an ongoing call.
Dennis reads the name on the screen, before his face drops, a panicked look forming on it as his head snaps up towards the rest of the group.
Samira is the first to notice, pausing in her action of wiping the dried vomit from your chin.
“What?”
“I– uh–” he stutters, looking between the phone and you, who’s currently wrapping yourself around Trinity, koala style.
“Don’t – uh– fuckleberry, move!” Trinity snaps, trying to keep you upright as you sag further into her shoulder.
“No, I,” Dennis continues to look between the phone and you, then back again, his expression twisting into something between horror and disbelief. “She’s…on a call,”
“So?” Victoria mutters. “Hang it up!”
“I don’t think I can!” he half whispers- half yells back at them, before turning the screen so that they can read.
Trinity lets out a disbelieving laugh looking down at you with an impressed look on her face as she holds you firmer against her.
“Holy shit– you’ve got balls!”
Dennis pales even further, clearly the only one worried about his future career as a doctor, now that his friend, and he says that very lightly after tonight, has drunk dialed their boss.
As in, the night shift attending they so frequently bump into at work.
Snatching the phone, Samira promptly presses the mute button, before looking around the room.
“Fuck– what do we do? Do we hang up?”
“We can’t just hang up!” Victoria exclaims, eyes wide. “...Can we?”
“I don’t think that's a good idea– hasn’t he already heard us on the phone?” Mel chimes in, only to frantically wave her hands around at the way everyone seems to further panic. “Or maybe he hasn’t! I just– I mean, since he hasn’t hung up, maybe he’s just…waiting for confirmation that she’s okay?”
The room seems to still at that, the rest of the group letting out a collective exhale.
Samira nods, still holding the phone as far away from her as possible, like it's an explosive.
“Okay– yeah, I mean– that makes sense. We can do that. Just…go ahead!” she waves the phone, motioning for someone to grab it.
No one steps forwards.
“Come on guys, we need to say something,” she laughs awkwardly, smile faltering when nobody moves again. “...Guys?”
“Jesus fucking Christ– give it to me!” Trinity sneers, snatching the phone out of Samira’s grip, dumping you onto Dennis, who scrambles to catch you before you face plant onto the floor.
She takes a deep breath, glancing across the room before pressing the unmute button, clearing her throat.
“Doctor Abbot?”
You wake up in cold sweats, neck cramping from where it’s bent uncomfortably on the armrest of the couch.
The feeling of your head spinning as you try and sit up, causes you to clutch it– your stomach grumbling loudly. Your eyes adjust to the darkness of the room, and you quickly realize you're in Trinity and Dennis’ apartment. Below you, Samira is passed out on the floor, Victoria on the armchair next to the couch. Mel must have taken the first chance she could to go home.
Good for her, your mind echoes.
Blindly reaching beside you, you feel for your phone, wincing when the screen lights up and the time flashes.
05:36 AM
Great, at least now you could try and cure this hangover before work.
Pushing yourself off the couch, you almost fall flat on your face as you try and avoid stepping on your friend whose long limbs are stretched across the space between the coffee table and couch.
Finally, you manage to make it past without waking anyone, pressing on your temples as you feel your way towards the bathroom, blinking blearily when you turn the light on.
What greets you in the mirror is a horrid sight– you, but after a night out.
“Fuck me,” you mutter in disbelief, reaching up to touch your face.
Your hair was a tangled mess, looking more like a bird's nest than something you have on your head, your makeup– what was left of it– had been smudged across your face, like you’d taken your makeup bag and just shoved your face in there.
At least you didn’t feel nauseous, but the thought leads you to wonder over just how hard your friends had to work to get you home last night.
Tip-toeing into the kitchen, you take the first of many aspirins that day.
The five of you walk into the ER, each one clutching a bottle of gatorade in one hand, and an iced coffee in the other.
You’re sporting a pair of sunglasses, and Dennis’ eyes somehow look even more sunken in than usual.
Victoria’s hair is sticking out of the ponytail she lamely attempted to throw together, and Samira just looks unfairly put together– ready as ever to work.
Trinity is the last to walk in, shivering into the collar of her jacket she’s pulled up over her lower face.
Robby stands by the patient board, eyes quickly moving over his residents– before stopping as he realizes the state you’re all in.
“You’ve got to be fuckin’ kidding me,” he says, a wry cackle escaping him as his hands land on his hips, looking like a disappointed father.
You groan, shielding your already covered eyes from his glare.
“Please, Robby– I’ve already been verbally berated today,” you utter quietly, not trying to send Trinity into another fit of rage.
“Yeah, because you–” Trinity starts up again, only to be led towards the lockers by Dennis, her spew of insults fading away.
You dump your backpack under the desk, then slump over the counter, pressing the space between your eyebrows.
“Alright– is there anyone except Doctor Mohan that’s ready to work today?” Robby sighs, rubbing his forehead.
You glare weakly at him, straightening up.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” you say firmly, though the slight tremble in your chin makes him sigh again.
“You’re on triage,” he points directly at you, and you splutter, trying to plead your case.
“But–”
“No buts!” his tone sharpens, “When you walk in like some kind of hungover “Breakfast Club”, you don’t get to choose your cases, and since I have a pretty good idea of who the bad influence was– you’re in triage!” Robby interjects, before grabbing your bag and then your shoulder, steering you towards the lockers.
“Change your clothes, and if I hear that you’ve gone to the bathroom more than twice in an hour, you’re done for today, got it?” he gives you a menacing smile— then drops it immediately, walking back to start handoffs.
“I’m Michael Robinovitch– I’m the boss—” you mock, shoving your bag into the locker and slamming it shut with way more force than necessary.
When you turn back towards the entrance, a yelp escapes you at the sight of the nightshift attending, standing by the doorway.
“Shit— you scared me Doctor Abbot!” you say through nervous laughter, hoping he didn’t just hear you make fun of his oldest friend.
Instead, Jack leans against the entrance, toned arms crossing over his chest as his eyes roam your frame, studying your slow blinking and sluggish movements.
“How are you? Is your head feeling alright?”
Your eyebrows furrow in confusion– did you look that hungover?
“Uh, fine, thanks. How’s yours…?” you ask awkwardly,
“My head?” he repeats, a breathy laugh rumbling in his chest, “My head is fine,”
“Oh,” you blink, lips stretching into a thin-lipped smile as you nod. “That’s good,”
There's a beat of silence, before you shift on your feet, grabbing your zip up hoodie from the locker and clearing your throat.
“Well, I should probably…ya’ know…” you motion with your thumb vaguely towards the door. Then, just as you start to step past him, his hand shoots out, grabbing your arm and holding you in place.
His gaze lands on your forehead, more specifically, the redness above your eyebrow. In an instant, he’s sandwiching you against the locker, eyebrows furrowed as he runs his thumb over the scar.
“What’s that?”
Your breath catches at the sudden closeness, your back pressing flat against the cool metal of the lockers. Wincing at the reminder, you watch as his jaw clenches at the sound, giving you a slight nudge on the chin as he forces you to hold his gaze.
“It’s nothing, Doctor Abbot—”
“That’s not nothing,” he mutters, his thumb brushing over the tender spot again, slower this time, like he’s testing how much it hurts. His brows knit tighter, jaw flexing. “Did someone do this to you?”
“What? No—”
“Are you sure?” he presses, gripping your chin as you try and avoid his gaze once again. “Hey– eyes on me. I need you to give me an answer,”
You pause, overwhelmed by his sudden overflow of concern, and Jack looks about ready to drag you out of the ER and home, if you don’t give him an answer within the next minute.
“Yeah!” you say quickly, then correct yourself. “ I mean, yes— we all just had a little too much to drink last night, I must have just banged my head or something,"
He watches for a second longer than necessary, and you can feel the doubt in his eyes.
“I swear,” you say, softer this time as you try to reassure him, though you don’t know why he suddenly cares this much.
Jack lets out a controlled sigh, biting his lip to keep himself from saying something he might regret— then let’s go, stepping just far enough so you still have to squirm to get past him.
“Alright, then. Go ahead,”
You nod, a little dazed and lingering for a moment, before walking into the ER.
Jack watches as the crowd of people working swallows you up, only slumping against the lockers when you’re out of sight.
Pressing a hand to his chest, he rubs gently— the pounding in his chest rivaling the one he usually only gets when working under active fire.
“Have you talked to Abbot yet?”
Victoria Javadi walks into the break room around noon, just as you’re downing your second aspirin of the day.
The memory of him pressing you against the locker flashes in your mind. His warm touch, his concerned gaze– the way his voice grumbled so low you were sure you could somehow feel it in your chest–
Grimacing as you down the painkiller, you shake your head.
“Doctor Abbot? Why would I do that?”
Victoria pauses halfway through opening the fridge, slowly turning to look at you with a perturbed look.
“…Okay,” she says carefully.
“What?” you frown, giving her a suspicious look before you take another sip.
“Last night?” she asks, “You don’t remember what happened?”
Your face pales, heart dropping from your chest at her words– only the worst words to ever be uttered after a night out.
“What are you talking about?” you ask slowly, water bottle lowering from your face.
Before she can reply, Perlah peeks her head in through the doorway, glancing between the two of you with a regretful smile.
“Incoming traumas from the SWAT-team– we need all hands on board,”
The two of you nod, and she leaves just as fast as she arrived.
“You’re telling me everything after we’ve dealt with this,” you whisper as the two of you head out of the room and back into the chaos of the ER.
“Somebody get me a clear view of this thing!” You call out, eyes narrowing as you try and see through the blood currently obscuring the wound.
A nurse moves in immediately, pressing down with fresh pads that immediately turn crimson. You lean in, jaw tightening as you finally catch a glimpse beneath the mess.
“Okay– gunshot wound, lower abdomen and looking…” you wait until they’ve flipped the patient slightly, before nodding “Penetrative– the bullet is still inside,” you confirm, glancing up at the loudly beeping screens.
“Vitals dropping!” someone calls out from behind you, a sigh escaping you.
“Someone get me Robby–” you say, hands moving fast as muscle memory takes over, despite the lingering headache from earlier.
“I’ll do you one better,” a gruff voice speaks up, and before you know it, Jack Abbot is by your side, dressed in his military green SWAT-uniform.
Tearing your gaze away, you gulp, focusing on the person in front of you instead.
“Talk to me,” Jack says, already gloved up, stepping in without hesitation.
“Penetrative gunshot wound to the lower abdomen,” you reply, voice steadier than you feel. “Vitals are unstable, possible internal bleeding,”
“Alright,” he nods, hands moving alongside yours, “We’ll assume the worst then, that he’s hemorrhaging internally– what’s your next step Doctor?"
“Uh,” you sigh, before shaking your head– realizing there’s no time to doubt yourself. “Somebody page surgery, and I want blood ready!”
“Good,” Jack nods, before his gloved hand lands on yours, readjusting your hold. “Pressure here,” he corrects softly, watching the way your eyes flicker across the area, assessing every possible outcome.
Your eyes land on the patient, gaze softening at the sight of his frightened look.
“Stay with me,” you mutter, giving him a weak smile as his vitals turn steady, “You’re going to be alright, you hear me?”
He gives you a long, acknowledging blink in return.
“OR’s ready,” Perlah informs, phone clutched to her ear.
You nod immediately, watching as they take over where you’re standing, moving the bed out of the trauma room and towards the elevators.
After taking a moment to decompress, you finally let out a quiet sigh, striping off your gown and gloves, and wiping the sweat off your temple.
“Good work with that patient,” Jack speaks up as you turn around to face him.
Without the adrenaline and distraction of trying to save a life, you can take in the full sight of him, dressed in that damn uniform.
“Thanks,” you say, the reply coming out a beat too late, than your usual quick remarks.
You keep your eyes on your hands, roughly rubbing hand sanitizer into them.
Jack steps closer, head dipping down to try and catch your averted gaze.
“I thought you said you liked seeing me in this uniform?”
You freeze at his words, brows knitting together as you search his face, trying to figure out how in the hell he could have known about that.
“You don’t remember?” His words cause a wave déjà vu, and before you know it, Victoria's words from earlier in the breakroom echo in your head.
Did you talk to Abbot?
Jack smirks at your panicked look, then takes a step back, moving towards the door.
“Alright then,” he chuckles, shaking his head as he walks backwards towards the exit, "Come find me when you do,"
With that, he leaves you alone to think about what the hell it was just happened.
“What the fuck happened last night?”
Your voice is sharp in the otherwise, finally calm, central station.
Samira pretends not to hear you, Victoria just laughs weakly– mumbling something about needing to run something past Robby.
Mel squirms uncomfortably, and you honestly don’t have the heart to interrogate her.
Dennis keeps his gaze on the computer at all costs, not even blinking.
Like a shark smelling blood, your eyes land on him.
“Whittaker,” you press, glare narrowing into slits.
“Dennis, you keep your mouth shut–” Trinity points her index finger at him, but you grab the back of his chair, turning it so that he’s facing you.
“Spill!”
“Don’t you dare–”
“You drunk dialed Abbot last night, and he told us that if we keep quiet about it he’d buy us breakfast for a month!”
Dennis finally bursts out, as a collective groan spreads around the area you’re all occupying.
“You had one job, fuckleberry!” Trinity grumbles, head falling into her hands.
Samira massages the bridge of her nose, not even bothering to look at him.
“Pathetic,” she mutters quietly, and Dennis physically recoils into himself.
You find Jack Abbot– thankfully in his scrubs this time– standing in the ambulance bay, squinting at his phone screen.
Clearing your throat, you watch as he glances over his shoulder, only to turn fully when he sees that it’s you.
“Doctor Abbot,” you begin, a shameful look on your face.
“Doctor,” he counters, a half smile on his face as his hands lock behind his back. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Your smile tightens, and you try not to react to his smug, frankly provocative, expression.
“I’m here to talk about last night,” you exhale, trying to relax your stiff shoulders.
“Last night?” He repeats it like he’s testing the phrase on his tongue, brow lifting just slightly, “You’re going to have to be more specific.
“Doctor Abbot–” you squeeze your eyes shut, unable to look at him.
“Jack,” he reminds you and you’re about two seconds away from running in front of the next ambulance that pulls in.
“Jack,” you hiss, taking a deep breath, “If you’re going to hold this over my head, please just get it over with so I can get some peace of mind!”
“Why would I do that?” he asks, switching the weight between his feet as he looks down on you.
“What?” You blink, looking up at him. “Because, it’s the nice thing to do–”
“No, why would I hold it over your head?”
You physically bite your lip to stop yourself from crashing out on your boss.
“Because you’re like– angry with me or something? Isn’t that why you told my friends to not tell me what I did? Because you’re going to take me to HR or, probably even straight to Gloria herself–”
You can feel yourself spiraling anyways, words coming faster now, defensive and messy– like if you keep talking you can outrun the embarrassment doing its best to chase you down.
“And I get it,” you add quickly, “I mean, obviously I crossed a line, I was drunk, I was being unprofessional, and I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I just– I don’t even remember what I said exactly but I’m assuming it was bad enough, and really can’t lose my job over–”
Jack chuckles, and the sound stops you mid sentence.
Did he just laugh in your fucking face?
Thankfully, he speaks up before you can open your mouth and jump to any conclusions.
“I’m not going to HR,” he begins, taking a step closer, “Or Gloria,” another step, “And I didn’t stay quiet because I was planning on using it against you either,”
He stops just an inch away from you, so close you can feel his warm breath fanning over your cheek.
Your eyes flicker across his face– from his hazel eyes, to the bridge of his nose, down to his moving lips and finally, back to his eyes again.
“I didn’t say anything, because I wanted you to know that when I finally asked you out,” his hand lands on your jaw, tilting your face up, “It wouldn’t be because of something you regret,”
You can’t find the words to respond, not after what he’s just revealed.
Your boss, the same one you've been crushing on since starting your residency six months ago, is telling you he liked you?
Jack takes your silence as rejection, and you can see the way his face crumbles as his hand drops from your face.
You panic at the defeated look on his face, spluttering as you try and come up with something, anything, to try and say to him. But your mind is blank, the shock of his sudden confession leaving you speechless.
Impulsively, in the only way you know how to convey your feeling for him right now– you press yourself into his arms, crashing your lips onto his.
Jack freezes at the action.
Then, almost instinctively, his hands grip at your waist, steadying you.
You can feel it in the way he squeezes you, like he's trying to hold back, to keep it contained. Something he can play off later, incase things somehow manage to go south– not for his own sake, but for yours.
That's not what you want.
Wrapping your arms around his neck, you tug him closer, lips moving with frenzy as you tug on his shoulders, let your hands grasp freely at the arms you've spent more time than you'd like to admit daydreaming about.
Jack slowly finds his restraint slipping, unable to resist with you, finally in his arms, in a way he'd thought he'd only get in his sleep. His hands glide along the expanse of your curves, grasping at whatever you’re willing to give him while you’re pressed against him.
His greed sickens him.
The world fades away around you, and all his senses are tuned into your every touch and sound, desperately wanting– no– craving more.
Eventually though, the need for air burns at your lungs, and only when it becomes unbearable, do you pull away– Jack still holding you close enough to press his forehead against yours, heavy breaths mingling.
Your mind wanders as you collect yourself, remembering why you had hunted him down in the first place.
Watching the way his eyes slowly flicker open, his disoriented gaze meeting yours, a soft smile twitching on the edge of your mouth. Leaning in again, you paus, just a breath away from his own waiting lips.
“...Did you really try to bribe my friends?”
☆END NOTE: Is it really one of my fics if it doesn't end on a fuckass question? I am also extremely sleep deprived, so excuse any typos, I'll come back and edit in a few<33
pairing: bucky barnes x reader | 10.2k words | modern soulmate au
warnings: explicit sexual content (18+), soulmate bond/past life memories, multiple lifetimes, memory flashes, discussions of war, brief references to trauma/recovery, love at first sight across lifetimes, wedding night smut, destiny vs choice, happy ending
summary: when you and bucky reach for the same bag of lemons at the farmer’s market, the touch triggers flashes of the many lifetimes you’ve spent loving each other. as those memories keep surfacing, the two of you have to figure out what it means to fall in love again in the life you’re living now.
authors note: this is very loosely inspired by everything is romantic by charli xcx, and by “loosely” i mean i took several lyrics, made them devastating, and then built an entire soulmate reincarnation love story around them. many many thank you's for this fic! thank you to @/iamthatonefangirl and @/barnesonly for organizing our bwat summer collab; go check out everyone else's work! thank you to my baby, @/pinksplace for giving this idea and listening to me continuously crash out about it🫶 and a very special thank you to @/buckybsdoll for not only beta reading it, but for also encouraging this fic is indeed NOT buns, and i can do hard things. love you all🩷
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Saturday mornings belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
That is what Bucky tells himself, anyway—what he has been telling himself for the better part of three years, ever since recovery stopped feeling like a cliff edge and started, slowly, cautiously, feeling like a road. Not an easy road, not a straight one, but a road all the same. Something he can wake up and keep walking.
Saturday means the same coffee stand on the corner where the barista with the chipped purple nail polish starts making his drink the second she sees him coming. It means the farmer’s market under the green-striped awnings in the square, where he buys a loaf of crusty sourdough from the old Polish couple in stall fourteen and fresh eggs from the woman who always insists the yolks are brighter in spring. It means peaches if they’re in season, because one summer in Wakanda he had bitten into one so ripe it had run down his wrist and made him laugh out loud in the middle of a field, and ever since then peaches have felt like proof of life. It means flowers some3times, too, if the apartment feels especially bare. Something cheap and cheerful in a mason jar on the kitchen counter. Something that says a man can make a home even if he was taught for years he did not deserve one.
It is a good routine. A hard-won one. Bucky likes the honesty of it, the way these small rituals ask nothing of him except that he show up.
This morning, June sun already warming the pavement, his paper cup of coffee hot in his hand, he feels almost light. The market is crowded enough to buzz but not so packed he gets hemmed in. A violinist near the fountain is playing something bright and quick. Someone’s kid is trying to pet every dog within reach. The air smells like basil and strawberries and the faint yeasty sweetness of fresh bread.
Bucky buys his loaf first. Then tomatoes. Then a bunch of green onions. He pauses at the peach stand, testing one for give with his thumb, and decides they need another week.
By the time he reaches the citrus table, the vendor is rearranging pyramids of lemons in rough wooden crates, their skins bright and dimpled in the morning light. Bucky reaches automatically, already picturing chicken piccata for dinner, and another hand reaches at the same exact moment.
Your fingers brush his.
The world splits open.
One second he is standing in the farmer’s market with coffee on his breath and sunlight on the back of his neck, and the next—
Neon. Laughter. Chapel bells tinny through cheap speakers. Your mouth, painted the color of a ripe cherry, open on a breathless laugh. White satin clinging to your hips. A fake Elvis in a rhinestone jumpsuit grinning around too-big teeth beneath a plastic crucifix bolted crooked over the altar.
Bucky gasps.
The bag of lemons slips from both your hands and tumbles to the pavement, yellow fruit rolling in wild directions as if they’ve been startled too.
The vision doesn’t stop there. Visions of different lifetimes flash through his eyes like he’s watching the life of ten different couples all at once.
A steering wheel under his palms, worn smooth with use. Summer wind through open windows. You in cutoff shorts, feet on the dashboard, singing badly and loudly while the road curls ahead of you like a dare.
White sheets. Lace curtains breathing in a warm midnight breeze. Gold band on your finger catching moonlight where your hand presses against his chest. Your mouth moving against his throat with a broken little sound that is half laughter, half prayer.
A rough cabin wall. Splintered pine under his palm. You in a wool shift with your hair braided down your back, cheeks wind-burned, smiling over your shoulder as foxes cry somewhere out in the dark and a baby sleeps in a cradle by the fire.
Smoke and jazz and blackout curtains. East London. Silk black as sin against your skin. Your hand catching his by the wrist before he can disappear back into the war.
A beach. Bright afternoon. Children shrieking at the tide. Orange drinks sweating in glass pitchers while he kneels in the sand with his sleeves rolled up, helping a little girl press shell fragments into the turret of a sandcastle, and you walk toward him laughing, sunlight at your back so fierce it turns you to gold.
Then all of it is gone.
The market snaps back into focus so suddenly it hurts. Sound crashes in—vendors shouting prices, stroller wheels rattling, the violinist sawing away by the fountain. Bucky stumbles backward a step. Across from him, you catch yourself on the edge of the citrus crate, looking exactly as wrecked as he feels.
Your eyes lock on his.
“Oh my God,” you whisper.
Bucky’s heart is pounding hard enough to bruise. “You saw that too.”
It isn’t a question.
In this world, everybody knows about soulmarks and first-flashes. Knows that when you meet the person your soul is tied to, memory can strike like lightning. Some people get a single image. A porch swing. A train platform. A hand in a hospital room. Some get a rush of several lives at once, enough to leave them reeling for days. Most people dream of it when they’re young. Spend adolescence looking at every stranger a little too long. Wondering when it will happen, if it will happen, whether the person on the other end of them is alive or halfway across the planet or just around the corner.
Bucky stopped wondering a long time ago.
HYDRA did not leave much room for destiny.
You swallow. “That was not normal.”
“No,” he says, voice rough. “No, that was… not.”
The lemon vendor is gathering the fallen fruit with admirable indifference, the kind that says he has seen stranger things at this market and will see stranger still. “You two need a minute?” he asks.
You make a sound that could be a laugh or a near-sob. “Maybe five.”
Bucky buys the entire bag of lemons because it feels like the least insane thing he can do, then follows you blindly toward the edge of the square where there’s a row of benches under a sycamore tree. The shade dapples your face when you sit, and for one unmoored second he knows the pattern of it. Not from now. From somewhere else.
He stays standing until you glance up at him and pat the spot beside you with a shaky hand.
“You’re real?” you ask once he sits.
He almost laughs. “I was about to ask you that.”
You rub your palms over your knees as if trying to ground yourself. You’re wearing denim shorts and a white tank top and sunglasses pushed up into your hair, and you look like someone who belongs to summer. Not delicate exactly, but bright. Alive in a way that makes Bucky’s ribs ache. “I know this is a weird question,” you say, “but are you going to tell me your name, or am I just supposed to keep calling you fake-Elvis-groom in my head?”
“Bucky,” he says automatically. Then, because he has spent years relearning how to offer the softer pieces of himself without flinching, he adds, “James. But people call me Bucky.”
Your mouth curves, the first real smile since the vision hit. “I’m glad to know at least one of us looked better in Vegas.”
He huffs out a breath that is almost a laugh. “I looked good.”
“You looked reckless.”
“That too.”
You tell him your name, and the moment it lands between you something in his chest settles with a frightening kind of certainty. Not because fate says so. Not because the universe stamped your names together in some cosmic ledger. Because the sound of it moves through him like recognition. Like stepping into a room he did not realize he had been trying to get back to his whole life.
For a while neither of you says anything. The market hums on around you. Somewhere nearby, a dog sneezes. Someone drops a crate. Bucky stares at the paper sleeve around his cooling coffee and tries to swallow around the strange thickness in his throat.
“I’ve heard of people getting strong first-flashes,” you say at last, quieter now. “But not like that. That was… a lot.”
“A lot,” he agrees.
You tilt your head toward him. “How many do you remember already?”
He thinks of the chapel. The truck. The bed with the lace curtains. The cabin. The club in London. The beach. “Six,” he says. “You?”
“Same.”
A breeze stirs the leaves overhead. It smells like sun-warmed bark and citrus oil.
“I don’t know what to do now,” you admit.
That, strangely, is what steadies him.
Because Bucky knows that feeling. Knows what it is to be handed something overwhelming and not know where to put it. Knows that survival sometimes looks like doing the next smallest thing instead of solving the whole impossible shape at once.
He glances toward the coffee stand, then back at you. “You want to start with coffee?”
You look at him for one long beat, then laugh softly, incredulously, like maybe you can’t believe that is the question that just saved you from bolting. “Yeah,” you say. “I think I do.”
So that is how it begins.
Not with thunder. Not with immediate declarations. Not with some cinematic collision that resolves every loneliness in a heartbeat.
With coffee. With your hand wrapped around a paper cup. With the two of you sitting at the edge of the market, dizzy on each other’s borrowed memories, learning the outlines of the present slowly enough to survive it.
He learns that you come to the farmer’s market most Saturdays too, though usually later. That you always buy flowers you don’t strictly need. That you live twenty minutes away in an apartment with bad plumbing and excellent light. That you work in graphic design and keep odd hours and have a weakness for peaches even when they’re underripe. You learn that he is in therapy. That he likes routine because sometimes routine is the difference between drifting and staying. That his apartment in Brooklyn is small but his windows face west and the light there in the evening is good. That he cooks. That he bakes bread when the weather turns cold because kneading something until it rises feels like a miracle he can participate in.
He does not tell you everything that morning. Not about HYDRA, not about the winter that lasted decades, not about the names he no longer answers to. But you do not push. Maybe because you can feel, in the strange echoing chambers of whatever ties the two of you together, that he has already been dragged open too many times to count.
When you part, it is almost noon.
You both hover awkwardly by the fountain, neither one wanting to be the first to say goodbye.
“So,” you say, shifting the bouquet of daisies and feverfew you bought somewhere along the way into one hand. “Do soulmate rules say we’re supposed to immediately move in together now, or is there like a grace period?”
Bucky smiles before he can stop himself. “I think there’s paperwork.”
“Tragic.”
He glances at the lemons peeking out of your canvas bag. “You still owe me half of these.”
You grin then, bright and quick and devastating. “That sounds fake.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But it’s a reason to see you again.”
Something softens in your expression. “Okay,” you say. “Then I’ll take the fake reason.”
He gives you his number. You type your own into his phone and hand it back, your fingers brushing his again. No flash this time. Just warmth. Just the sharp, impossible awareness of skin.
“All right, Bucky Barnes,” you say. “Text me when you want to split custody of the lemons.”
He watches you walk away.
At the corner, you turn and look back.
The city seems to hold its breath.
Then you smile at him one more time and disappear into the crowd.
Jesus Christ on a plastic sign
The Vegas lifetime comes back first.
Not all at once. In drips. In flashes that catch Bucky at strange moments over the next few days, as if the memory has been jarred loose and is still deciding how much of itself to reveal.
He is washing dishes on Tuesday night when he looks down at a ring of soap suds circling the drain and suddenly he is twenty-six—or thirty, or some other age in some other body—and the air smells like desert heat trapped in asphalt. He can hear slot machines from the lobby below the motel balcony and your laugh from inside the room, where the air conditioner is fighting a losing battle and you are standing in front of the cracked mirror pinning your hair up with bobby pins you bought from the gift shop downstairs.
“Tell me again,” you say, smiling at him through the mirror, “why exactly we’re doing this.”
Because you had met forty-eight hours earlier in line for dollar margaritas and spent the night talking until sunrise on the motel roof. Because you had missed your flight on purpose. Because he had looked at you over watery eggs in a diner the next morning and known, with the same bone-deep certainty he feels now on a Brooklyn Tuesday in a kitchen lit by one warm overhead bulb, that life was sometimes simplest when it was ridiculous.
Because you had asked if he wanted to get married as a joke and then kept grinning at him after he said yes.
“Tax benefits,” he answers solemnly, sitting on the end of the bed in his borrowed suit jacket.
You laugh. “Romantic.”
“Practical.”
“Liar.”
You cross the room barefoot, white dress swishing around your thighs. It is not really a wedding dress. It is a satin slip from a resale shop with a tiny champagne stain at the hem and thin straps that make him forget his own name every time he looks at you. You stop between his knees and hook your fingers in the lapels of his jacket.
“Tell me not to do it,” you whisper. There is laughter in your voice but something trembling under it too, a softness that asks to be taken seriously. “Tell me we’re being insane and I’ll call it off.”
He looks up at you and feels his whole impossible life narrow into one clean, brilliant line. “I think,” he says, resting his hands on your hips, “that if we don’t do this, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life wondering why I let the best idea I ever had walk out of a motel in Vegas.”
Your expression cracks open into something so nakedly happy it almost undoes him.
The chapel is tiny and tacky and perfect. The plastic crucifix is screwed above a velvet curtain backdrop. The fake Elvis officiant keeps winking like he personally invented love. You say your vows through laughter because your bouquet is made of silk roses that smell faintly like dust and the minister’s sideburn is half detached. Bucky can barely get the ring onto your finger because his hands won’t stop shaking.
Afterward, you run into the sun with your shoes in one hand, your new husband’s name in your mouth as if you were born to say it.
On the sidewalk outside the chapel, there’s a sign for a twenty-four-hour wedding package with JESUS CHRIST LOVES YOU printed above a blinking arrow in red bulbs, and the whole thing is so absurd that you double over laughing. Bucky catches you around the waist before you can fall.
“Mrs. Barnes,” he says into your hair, tasting the words.
You lift your face to his, eyes wet from laughing. “That sounds made up.”
“Probably is.”
You kiss him anyway.
In the present, water runs cold over Bucky’s hands in the sink. He blinks hard and finds himself staring at a plate gone slippery in his grip.
He dries his hands, sits on the edge of the counter, and texts you before he can think better of it.
Got another one. Vegas.
The reply comes so fast it is almost a breath.
me too
Then, after a beat:
did we really get married because the line for margaritas was too long and we needed something else to do?
Bucky smiles helplessly at his phone.
we were committed to the bit
You start texting every day after that.
At first it is practical. Did you remember this detail? Did the chapel carpet have stars on it or was that just me? Do you think the fake Elvis was secretly judging us?
But the practical gives way to easy almost before either of you notices. He sends you a picture of a dog in a raincoat outside the bodega. You send him a photo of the flowers you bought even though your rational brain said you didn’t need them. He tells you when therapy goes badly. You tell him when work is making your eyes cross. By Friday, your name on his screen feels less like a surprise and more like the continuation of something that was already in motion long before lemons hit pavement.
The next Saturday, he finds you at the market before he reaches the citrus stand.
You are standing at the peach table, frowning at a fruit in your hand with the seriousness of someone evaluating a gemstone.
“You know those need another week,” he says.
You glance up and smile in a way that makes his whole body wake up. “I know. I’m being optimistic.”
“Reckless.”
“Wow. You meet one man in Vegas and suddenly he thinks he knows you.”
He laughs, and there is no fear in it this time.
You spend the morning together again. Coffee, bread, flowers. At the tomato stall your shoulder brushes his and warmth skates down his spine, but no memory comes. At the herb table he tucks a stray basil stem behind your ear and your breath catches, but still nothing.
It hits later, when the two of you are leaving the market and pass an old pickup truck parked crooked by the curb, windows down, classic rock spilling tinny from the speakers. You stop dead. So does he.
Your head turns toward him.
His chest caves in around a heartbeat that is no longer entirely his own.
Winding roads, doing manual drive
In that life, you are eighteen and everything feels enormous.
Summer stretches in front of you like a dare. The town is small enough to suffocate if you stay still too long, so you never do. Bucky has a beat-up blue truck with a sticky clutch and a radio that only works when you slap the dashboard in exactly the right place. He teaches you how to drive manual in the abandoned church parking lot at the edge of town, laughing every time the engine stalls because you keep popping the clutch too fast.
“You’re mean,” you tell him, gripping the steering wheel.
“I’m helpful.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Because you cuss like my grandpa.”
You cut him a glare so ineffective it makes him grin wider. He reaches across the bench seat to guide your hand to the gearshift, his palm warm over your knuckles.
“Slow,” he says. “Feel it catch. Don’t force it.”
Outside, cicadas scream in the heat. The sun is dropping behind the trees, turning the windshield gold.
You try again. This time the truck lurches, shudders, then rolls forward smooth as breath.
“Oh my God,” you say, startled into laughter. “I did it.”
Bucky looks at you the way boys in movies are always supposed to look but almost never do in real life—like the sight of you happy is enough to rearrange his whole future. “Yeah,” he says softly. “You did.”
Once you know how, you drive everywhere with no destination at all. Back roads. County lines. Winding stretches of blacktop between soybean fields and creeks and gas stations with flickering signs. You drive because gas is cheap and the cab of the truck is a world no one else can enter. You drive because Bucky’s knee pressed against yours feels better than anything either of you have a name for yet. You drive because being young and in love can make movement feel holy.
Sometimes you pull over on the shoulder just to watch the sky bruise purple over the fields. Sometimes you kiss at red lights until the truck behind you honks. Sometimes you park at the overlook above the quarry and share a bag of gas station peanuts while Bucky tells you all the places he wants to see one day, voice gone soft with wanting.
“Anywhere specific?” you ask.
He shrugs one shoulder. “As long as you’re there.”
You laugh because you think he is teasing. Then you look at him and realize he is not.
The air changes.
He reaches up, pushes a strand of hair behind your ear with trembling fingers. “I know we’re eighteen,” he says, trying for casual and failing spectacularly. “I know people say that means we don’t know anything. But I know this.”
Your breath catches.
Behind you, the truck ticks and cools in the dusk.
“I know,” he says again, “that I could drive with you forever and never get tired of the road.”
Then he kisses you, and the whole wide summer tilts.
The memory drops away while a bus sighs to the curb and someone nearby curses over a jammed stroller wheel.
You are breathing hard. So is Bucky.
“That one hurt,” you say quietly.
He knows what you mean. Not because it was bad. Because it was good in the simple devastating way only youth can be. Because watching some other version of yourself love with that much unguarded certainty feels like pressing a bruise you didn’t know you had.
“You drove stick,” he says.
“I was bad at it.”
“You were terrible.”
You laugh then, startled and watery, and he thinks he would do almost anything to keep hearing that sound.
There is a diner half a block away with cracked vinyl booths and a waitress who calls everyone honey. He nods toward it. “Come on.”
“Is this where we process our cosmic psychic episodes now?”
“Pancakes seem medically necessary.”
So you sit across from each other in a booth smelling faintly of syrup and coffee grounds while the waitress tops off your mugs and pretends not to notice that the two of you keep staring. The market bag rests by Bucky’s boots. Your flowers lie across the seat beside you like a witness.
“You ever think about what it means?” you ask after a while.
He traces a thumb over the seam of his coffee cup. “The past lives?”
“The soulmate thing. Any of it.” Your gaze is steady on his. “Like… are we supposed to just trust that because we loved each other before, we automatically will now?”
Bucky is quiet for so long, the waitress comes by to ask if he wants more bacon.
When she leaves, he exhales. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I think maybe it’d scare me if it worked like that.”
You nod once. “Me too.”
Because obligation is not love. Because destiny without choice starts to look too much like a cage.
Bucky leans forward, forearms on the table. “I don’t want this to be automatic,” he says, surprising himself with the urgency in his own voice. “I don’t want you because of… cosmic paperwork.” Your mouth twitches at that. He presses on. “I want to know you. Now. Here. I want whatever this is to be because we choose it.”
Something in your face softens so completely it leaves him winded.
“Okay,” you say.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” you repeat. “Then we do it the hard way.”
His mouth curves. “Dating?”
“Scandalous, I know.”
He looks at you across the table, sunlight striping the booth through the blinds, and feels a piece of his life click gently into place.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dating.”
The smile you give him then follows him home and waits with him through the week and sits with him at the edge of sleep. It is still there when he picks you up for your first actual date on Thursday, when you buzz him into your apartment building wearing jeans and a green top that makes your eyes look unfair, when he spends ten whole seconds forgetting why he came.
You cook together in his kitchen because restaurants feel like too much too soon. Lemon chicken. Roasted potatoes. Salad with too much parmesan because you insist there is no such thing.
It is simple. It is easy in the kind of way Bucky once would have distrusted on principle. You move around his kitchen as if you’ve already learned its shape. You lean against the counter and steal bites from the pan. You laugh when he pretends to guard the sauce from you and do not look startled when he laughs back.
After dinner, you help him wash dishes. After dishes, you stand by the open window drinking wine while the city breathes warm and loud below.
“I had a nice time,” you say, glancing at him over the rim of your glass.
His pulse kicks. “Good.”
“I’m serious. For a man who hoards lemons as a manipulation tactic, you clean up pretty well.”
He snorts. “I’ll put that on my dating profile.”
“You should. Honest branding.”
He smiles, and you smile back, and the air between you changes.
It is not sudden. Not violent. Just the slow, unmistakable tightening of a thread.
He sets his glass down first.
You do the same.
When he steps closer, you do not move away.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, because in every life he has ever loved you there has been want in it, but in this one he wants the shape of your yes more than he wants air.
Your eyes go soft. “Please.”
He kisses you carefully at first, because he is not eighteen in a truck anymore and he is not some reckless fool in Vegas with rings in his pocket and a grin too wide for his face. He is a man who has taken years to learn how to touch gently. Who knows what damage carelessness can do.
But then your hand lifts to his cheek and your mouth opens beneath his and the careful part of him turns molten.
The flash hits so hard he breaks the kiss with a gasp.
You are hit by it too. He sees it in the way your pupils blow wide, the way your hand clutches the front of his shirt.
“Oh,” you breathe.
The apartment falls away.
Early nights in white sheets with lace curtains
The room is small and gold with lamplight.
In that life, you have been married for six hours.
Your shoes are by the door. Your veil lies in a pearly heap over the chair back. Somewhere downstairs the last of the wedding guests are still laughing over cake and champagne, but up here the inn is quiet except for the tick of rain against the lace-curtained window and your own uneven breathing.
You stand with your back to Bucky near the bed, fingers trembling where they rest at your throat. The silk of your nightdress skims the backs of your knees. Your wedding band glints like a promise.
He has never seen anything more beautiful.
You are not delicate. Nor candlelight that makes you look like something painted. You are real in all the ways that matter most—nervous and wanting and trying to be brave.
You glance at him over your shoulder, and the vulnerability in your face brings him to his knees faster than reverence ever could.
“We don’t have to,” he says softly.
Your brows draw together. “I want to.”
“I know.” He steps closer, slow enough to stop if you need it. “But I want you to know we don’t have to do anything tonight except be married.”
Something in you loosens. Relief. Love. A tenderness so intense it almost aches to look at.
“I want to be married,” you whisper.
He smiles, cupping your jaw. “You already are.”
“No,” you say, eyes luminous. “I mean like this. Here. With you.” Your breath shakes. “I want tonight.”
He kisses you then, gentle enough to ask, deep enough to answer.
The nightdress slips from your shoulders a little at a time. He learns your skin by lamplight and fingertips, by the soft sounds you make when he touches somewhere that matters, by the way you cling to him when pleasure finally starts to outrun nerves. The white sheets twist around your legs. The lace curtains stir in the open window. Rain cools the room, but your bodies are all heat.
You are not shy for long.
He kisses his way down the column of your throat, your collarbones, the slope of your breast. Your fingers knot in his hair when his mouth finds your nipple and he sucks gently, then harder at the sound that tears from you. By the time he lowers you onto the bed your hair is loose around your shoulders and your face is flushed and he is so hard it hurts.
“Bucky,” you whisper, reaching for him.
“Tell me what you need.”
You laugh softly, dazed with wanting. “You. Obviously.”
He smiles against your mouth, then works two fingers between your thighs and nearly loses his mind at how wet you are for him already. Your hips jerk. Your eyes flutter shut.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “There you go.”
He takes his time because he can. Because there is no war waiting outside this room, no clock to race. Because after the vows and the music and the endless hands grabbing at you all day, he wants this moment to belong only to the two of you. He strokes you until your body learns the shape of pleasure under his hands. He brings you apart once with his fingers, your back arching off the bed, then again with his mouth until you are clutching the sheets and crying his name into the rain-soft dark.
When he finally settles between your thighs, braced on one forearm, your gaze on his is wrecked and certain all at once.
“You still sure?” he asks, voice gone rough as gravel.
You wrap a hand around the back of his neck and pull him down until your foreheads touch. “I have never been more sure of anything.”
He pushes into you slowly, giving you every inch with a care that feels like worship. The stretch of you around him steals the breath from his lungs. Your mouth opens on a gasp. He stills.
“Okay?” he whispers.
You nod, biting your lip. “Move.”
So he does.
Slow at first. Then deeper when your nails dig into his shoulders and you lift to meet him. The bed creaks softly. Rain taps the window. He kisses you whenever your face crumples with feeling, every thrust turning more desperate as your body opens for him. You cling to him, legs wrapped around his hips, whispering his name like a secret you intend to keep forever.
When you come, it is with your mouth against his throat and tears bright at the corners of your eyes.
He follows with his forehead pressed to yours, his whole body shaking with it.
Afterward, you lie tangled in white sheets gone warm and wrinkled around you, the lace curtains stirring like breath. He draws lazy circles over your stomach while you trace the line of his mouth with one sleepy fingertip.
“This counts as a successful wedding night,” you murmur.
He laughs softly. “Good. I was hoping.”
You turn into him, already half asleep. “Anywhere is home,” you whisper, the words blurred at the edges with exhaustion, “if you’re in the bed.”
He never forgets them.
When the memory releases you both, Bucky is still standing in his apartment with his chest heaving and your hands fisted in his shirt.
The kitchen light is too bright. The city outside the window too loud. He can taste you without ever having had you in this life.
Your face is flushed all the way down your neck.
“Well,” you say after a stunned second, voice frayed. “That was wildly inconvenient timing.”
He laughs once, brokenly, because if he does not laugh he might combust.
“You okay?” he asks.
Your gaze lifts to his, honest and heated. “Ask me in five minutes.”
He brushes his knuckles over your cheek, a touch so careful it is almost absurd after what you both just saw. “I mean it.”
“I know.” Your hand slides down to cover his where it rests against your face. “Yeah. I’m okay. A little overwhelmed. A lot turned on. But okay.”
Heat hits him hard and immediate. He closes his eyes for a second.
You laugh softly. “Right. Sorry. That was—”
“Don’t apologize.”
When he opens his eyes again, your expression has gentled. “Bucky.”
He knows what you are asking. Not just whether he wants you. That is almost insultingly obvious. You are asking whether he can separate memory from present. Whether he can stand in this kitchen and want what is in front of him without letting the weight of every before crush what could be now.
He answers by leaning down and resting his forehead against yours.
“I want this,” he says quietly. “But I want our first time in this life to be ours.”
Your breath leaves you in a rush. So does some tightness in his chest he hadn’t fully realized he was carrying.
“Okay,” you whisper.
He kisses you once more, soft and lingering. Then he walks you home because if you stay the night he is not sure either of you will survive your own restraint, and because there is something holy in wanting badly and still choosing patience.
At your door, you touch his wrist before he can step back.
“For the record,” you murmur, eyes warm, “that other us had very good taste.”
He grins helplessly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I get it now.”
Then you kiss him quick and disappear inside with a smile that haunts him for days.
The weeks that follow feel like being built from the inside out.
The flashbacks do not stop, but they become less like ambushes and more like weather—still sudden, still powerful, but no longer catastrophic. A scent, a sound, a patch of light can call one up. Sometimes you text each other in the middle of the workday with fragments: did you remember the red truck in the mountain life had one broken taillight? or I think Bucharest-you stole that robe from the hotel. Sometimes a memory arrives whole when you are together and leaves both of you laughing or aching or red-faced in its wake.
In between, you date.
Real dates. Present-tense ones.
You go to a bookstore in Cobble Hill and accidentally spend two hours arguing about whether people who dog-ear paperbacks can be trusted. You sit in the park eating takeout and watch a wedding party take photos under the arch. You make pasta in your kitchen and burn the garlic because you are too busy kissing against the fridge. You let him meet your friends, who like him immediately and try not to look too smug about it. He tells Sam about you over beers and gets stared at for a full ten seconds before Sam breaks into the kind of grin that means Bucky will never hear the end of this.
And slowly, because slowness is another name for mercy, you get used to the fact of each other.
One night in late July, you fall asleep on Bucky’s couch halfway through a movie. Your head ends up in his lap, your bare feet tucked under his thigh, the credits rolling blue light over the room. He does not move for an hour because the weight of you there feels too precious to disturb.
When you wake, drowsy and disoriented, you blink up at him and smile.
“There you are,” he says before he can stop himself.
The words do something strange to the air.
You sit up slowly, blanket slipping down your shoulders. “What?”
He swallows. “Nothing. I just—”
But then the memory comes, not violent this time. Gentle as smoke.
You see it in each other’s faces as it arrives.
Sleepyhead ’cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night
The cabin is barely more than one room and a stubborn prayer.
In that life, winter has a vendetta against you. The land is raw and half-finished around you—trees felled and stacked, fields only partly cleared, the nearest neighbors hours away by horse. Everything aches. Your hands, your backs, your hope.
And still, you build.
By day Bucky swings an axe until his shoulders burn and your tiny patch of earth starts, slowly, to look like something that might feed you come spring. By day you mend, cook, scrub, carry water, keep accounts in a little ledger with cramped neat writing, and somehow still find the energy to laugh when the hen gets loose again and wreaks havoc under the table.
By night you sit by the fire mending his shirts while he carves handles for tools and the baby—your daughter, round-cheeked and solemn—sleeps in a cradle made from wood Bucky planed himself.
It is not easy. God, it is not easy. There are weeks when the roof leaks and the wind gets through the chinks in the walls and your flour goes sour and the loneliness of so much open land makes your chest feel flayed raw. There are days Bucky comes in from the field looking so worn you have to bite the inside of your cheek not to cry.
But there is you. There is him. There is the little sleeping weight of your child and the fire and the bed you built with your own hands.
Sometimes that is enough to make hardship look almost like devotion.
One night in early autumn, the foxes scream outside the cabin so long and loud that neither of you gets any real sleep. By dawn you are cross and bleary-eyed, hair half falling from its braid as you stand over the hearth trying to stir cornmeal mush that refuses to thicken.
“Sleepyhead,” Bucky says softly when he comes up behind you.
You elbow him weakly. “I’ll kill you.”
He laughs into your hair and wraps his arms around your waist anyway, his chin settling on your shoulder. Outside, the new fence leans and the world is still cold and demanding. Inside, his body is warm all along your back.
“We’re doing it,” he murmurs after a while.
You blink at the pot. “Doing what?”
“Building it.” He turns his face into your temple. “A life.”
The words are simple. They hit with the force of revelation.
You tip your head back against his shoulder and close your eyes. In the other room your daughter stirs. The foxes have gone quiet. Morning light pushes pale and stubborn through the little window above the table.
“We are,” you whisper.
He kisses your cheek. “Told you I’d build you something.”
You smile, tired and full to aching. “You built me everything.”
The memory fades with the warm dim glow of Bucky’s living room around you.
You are still on his couch, the television a muted wash of menu screens no one bothered to turn off. For a while neither of you says anything.
Then you reach out and lace your fingers through his.
“That one felt different,” you say.
He nods. “Yeah.”
Not youthful. Not fevered. Not all heat and spark and want. That life had been built plank by plank. Through work. Through weather. Through choosing each other when the choosing was made of practical things—fences, soup, babies, roofs, morning fires.
It lands in him heavier than some of the others. Maybe because recovery has taught him what it means to build anything worth having by hand.
“I liked them,” you say quietly. “That version of us.”
He rubs his thumb over your knuckles. “Me too.”
You glance around his apartment then, at the bookshelf he assembled crooked and fixed himself, at the herb pot on the windowsill, at the loaf of bread cooling under a dish towel on the counter.
“You’re doing it too, you know,” you murmur.
He looks at you. “Doing what?”
“Building a life.”
The thing in his chest, scarred and careful and too often braced for loss, goes very still.
You squeeze his hand. “It’s a good one.”
He kisses you then because there is no other answer big enough.
By August, you keep a toothbrush at his place.
By September, there is a sweater of yours folded over the back of one of his dining chairs, two hair ties on his bathroom sink, a half-used bottle of your fancy conditioner in his shower that he is under strict orders not to touch. None of it is dramatic. None of it is announced. The shape of your presence simply grows until it feels absurd to remember the apartment before it.
The flash that takes you next comes in early October, on a rainy Thursday when you duck with him into a jazz bar in the West Village to escape a downpour.
The room is all amber light and low ceilings and cigarette-scarred booths preserved from another era. A singer in a black dress stands by the piano, crooning into a microphone. Bucky goes still before you even make it to the bar.
You know before the memory hits what it will be.
The note hangs in the air.
Then London rushes in.
late nights in black silk in east london
The war has made everything look dimmer around the edges.
Bucky is young in the way only war can make a man young—old enough to be exhausted by it, young enough to still be surprised by beauty. He is stationed overseas for too long in a city stitched with blackout curtains and ration books and the bruise-colored exhaustion of people trying very hard to act as if life is still ordinary.
Then one wet December night, a fellow soldier drags him down a narrow stairwell off an alley in East London and the whole world changes shape.
The club is hidden beneath a tailor’s shop with no sign out front. Music seeps through the floorboards before the door even opens. Inside, the room glows low and gold around the edges, tables crowded close, voices pitched just above the band. Women in silk and men in uniform and civilians with danger in their smiles. Someone is laughing at the bar like the war has never existed. Someone else is dancing with one shoe off.
And there you are.
You should not stick out. You’re not center stage or demanding attention. You’re leaning one hip against the bar in black silk gloves and a slip dress that gleams when you move, listening to the pianist with your head tilted slightly as if you know a secret about the song.
Bucky sees you and forgets how war works.
Maybe he forgets how breathing works too.
“Careful,” his friend mutters, following his line of sight. “That one looks expensive.”
Bucky barely hears him.
When you look over and catch him staring, you smile. Not coy. Curious, amused, entirely too direct. Then you lift your glass in a tiny salute.
He is doomed.
Later, after he has found enough courage or foolishness to cross the room, you tell him your brother runs supplies out of the docks and your mother thinks this place is scandalous and your favorite thing in the world is men who look like they’d fall apart if a woman in black silk talked to them too long.
“I am not falling apart,” he says, already half gone.
You laugh, low and delighted. “No? That’s a shame. You’d be awfully handsome doing it.”
You dance with him before midnight. Then again after. The band slows, the room blurs, and you fit against him so easily it feels less like meeting and more like remembering a step he somehow learned before birth.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The alley smells like wet brick and smoke.
“Are you always this easy?” you ask when he walks you to the corner.
“Only in London.”
“Convenient.”
You stop beneath a streetlamp draped in wartime dimming paint. Your lipstick has worn soft at the edges. His gloves are damp. Somewhere far off, a siren starts and then dies.
“I don’t know how long I’m here,” he says, because war steals the illusion of endless time from a man pretty quick.
You look at him with that same level, fearless steadiness you will carry in every life. “Then don’t waste the nights you’ve got.”
So he doesn’t.
He spends every free hour he can find with you in that black silk East London life. Dancing in hidden clubs. Eating chips from newspaper parcels by the river. Kissing in doorways while the city holds its breath between bombings. Falling in love so fast it would look irresponsible to anyone not living under the same shadow.
On his last night before shipping out again, this time to Bucharest, he finds you in the club after closing, curled barefoot on the stage in your black dress with your knees drawn up, humming to yourself while the pianist smokes by the door.
He sits beside you. The stage creaks.
You do not ask him if he is leaving. You already know.
For a long moment you just lean into him shoulder to shoulder, breathing in the dark.
Then you take his hand and lace your fingers with his as if you have always had the right.
“I hate war,” you say flatly.
“Yeah.”
“I hate that it teaches people to love in a hurry.”
He turns to look at you, but your face is tipped toward the empty room. “Maybe,” he says after a while, “it just teaches people not to waste time pretending they don’t.”
That makes you smile a little, though your eyes shine.
When you finally kiss him, it feels like grief and promise all tangled together.
“I’d have found you anyway,” you whisper against his mouth.
He believes you.
Presently, the jazz bar swims back around you in amber and brass.
Your hand is flat over your heart. Bucky is gripping the edge of the bar hard enough his knuckles ache.
“You were terrifying in that one,” he murmurs.
You blink at him. “Terrifying?”
“You had me done in about twelve seconds.”
Your laugh spills out warm and bright enough to make nearby heads turn. “Good.”
He stares at you, at the woman in front of him and the woman in black silk and the impossible thread between them, and something old in him loosens. That London memory is the first one that brushes directly up against the era he remembers in his bones. The first one that lets him feel, without the cold hand of history around its throat, that he once had youth. Flirtation. A version of himself that existed before damage became the loudest fact in the room.
Later, walking you home under a shared umbrella, he tells you more.
Not everything. Not all at once. But more.
About Brooklyn in the forties. About enlisted men and too much bravado and the way the world sharpened at the edges when war started circling. About the years after, in pieces, with pauses long enough to breathe in between. You listen without interrupting except to ask where it hurts. Not where it happened. Where it hurts. The difference matters so much he nearly stops in the middle of the sidewalk.
At your building, rain dripping from the umbrella’s edges, you cup his face and kiss him like he is something to return to, not something to be rescued.
That night he sleeps six straight hours for the first time in weeks.
The last of the big memories comes in November.
By then, the market has become yours together. Saturday mornings are no longer Bucky’s alone. They are yours in the plural, so natural now he sometimes forgets to be startled by it. Coffee for two. Bread for two. Peaches finally back in season for a heartbeat before the weather turns. Your fingers hooked through one of the canvas bag straps while he carries the heavier side.
At the stall with the glass-bottled lemonades and orange sodas, you reach for a bright neon-orange drink at the same time he does.
The glass knocks against his ring finger.
Sunlight slams through him.
Neon orange drinks on the beach
Salt lives in the walls of that house.
Here, you and Bucky live in a little coastal town where everyone knows everybody’s business and no one minds much as long as you bring enough food to the potluck. The house is white clapboard with a porch swing and chipped blue shutters. Sand collects in the doorway no matter how often you sweep. Wind rattles the windows in winter and smells like sunscreen in summer.
You have children in that life. Three of them.
A girl with your laugh and Bucky’s serious eyes. A boy who climbs everything he’s told not to. A baby still soft at the wrists who rides your hip with one fist full of your shirt.
The beach is five minutes from your front door. On hot afternoons you walk there loaded like pack animals—blankets, towels, snacks, toys, a cooler that bumps against Bucky’s leg every other step, the toddler already whining for the ocean before you’ve even crossed the dune grass.
It is a beautiful chaos. Your favorite kind.
The day memory gives you is bright enough to ache.
The sky is clear blue from edge to edge. Your youngest is asleep under the shade tent with one plump foot sticking free of the blanket. Your son is digging a moat around a sandcastle with all the focus of a man handling explosives. Your daughter, solemn with purpose, is handing Bucky shell fragments one by one so he can decorate the towers properly.
“No, Daddy,” she says with immense patience. “That one goes there.”
Bucky, thirty-something and sun-browned and already half buried in sand because the children have no respect for rank, nods gravely. “My mistake.”
You come down from the boardwalk carrying a tray of neon-orange lemonades in plastic cups, ice clinking. Condensation slicks your fingers. The sun catches on the rims of the cups until they glow like tiny lanterns.
Bucky looks up when your shadow falls across the sand.
Even after years, even with sunscreen on your nose and beach hair whipping your cheeks, he looks at you like there has never been anyone else worth the trouble of sight.
“You’re my favorite person,” he says as you hand him a drink.
You arch a brow. “Even over the tiny tyrants?”
“Depends. Are they giving me lemonade?”
Your daughter takes her cup in both hands and squints up at you. “Mama, Daddy made the castle wrong.”
You laugh. “I’m shocked.”
“It was sabotage,” Bucky says.
The children shout over each other. The baby wakes and starts fussing. A gull swoops dangerously low near the pretzel bag. The tide inches closer. Everything is loud and sandy and sticky and imperfect.
It is paradise.
Later, when the children are collapsing in a sugar crash on towels striped green and white, Bucky stretches out beside you and tugs you down until your head rests on his chest. The ocean hisses and folds itself a few yards away.
“You think,” he says after a while, fingers combing absently through your damp hair, “we’ll ever get tired of this?”
You tip your face up. “The beach?”
“This.”
The life. The family. The ordinary miracle of it.
You can feel the answer in him before he says it. In the steady beat under your ear. In the salt-warmed skin of him. In the children making sleepy, disgruntled sounds nearby because even paradise requires snacks and naps and somebody always getting sunscreen in their eye.
“No,” you say softly. “I don’t think so.”
His mouth brushes your forehead. “Good.”
Because in every lifetime, it turns out, what the two of you build is not grandeur.
It is a table. A bed. A road. A cabin. A dance floor. A beach towel in the sun. A thousand tiny places where love gets to put its shoes by the door and stay awhile.
When the memory loosens its grip, you are back at the market with cold glass sweating in your hand.
You are crying.
So is Bucky, though he only realizes it when you reach up and wipe at his cheek with your thumb.
“That one was rude,” you say thickly.
He laughs through the ache in his throat. “Yeah.”
It isn’t the children, not really. Though that got him. It’s the ordinariness of it. The ease. The way love in that life had settled into the bones of things so thoroughly that joy looked almost plain. A beach day. Lemonade. Sand. A family.
A future.
You look at him with tears still bright in your eyes. “Do you ever think maybe that’s why it keeps happening?”
“What?”
“Us.” You glance down at the bottle in your hand, the impossible orange brightness of it. “Not because we’re destined in some giant dramatic way. Maybe just because every time the universe throws us somewhere new, we keep making the same choice.”
The market blurs around the edges.
Bucky takes the bottle from your hand and sets both your drinks down on the stall so he can hold your face in both palms.
“I think,” he says, voice low and unsteady, “that no matter where I find you, you keep teaching me that a life doesn’t have to be extraordinary to matter.”
You inhale sharply.
He goes on because he has spent too much of his existence losing time, losing names, losing chances to say what needed saying. Because he will not waste this one.
“I loved you in a chapel with a plastic sign. In a truck on back roads. In a bed with lace curtains. In a cabin when we had almost nothing. In London when the whole world was on fire. On a beach with kids climbing all over me and sand in places there should never be sand.” Your mouth trembles around a laugh. His thumbs catch the tears on your cheeks. “And every time, it wasn’t because things were perfect. It was because it was you.”
Your hand covers one of his. “Bucky—”
“In this life,” he says, holding your gaze, “I don’t care what fate says. I don’t care what we were before unless it helps me be better to you now. I just…” He exhales, helpless in it. “I just know I am more myself when you’re in the room. And I want to keep choosing that. For however long I get.”
Something breaks open in your face.
Then you are kissing him in the middle of the farmer’s market, November wind cold around your ears and strangers surely staring and lemons probably within a three-yard radius somehow, and Bucky does not care about any of it.
When you finally pull back, you rest your forehead to his and laugh wetly.
“You took forever to say that,” you whisper.
He blinks. “I did?”
“Yes.” You kiss him once, quick and smiling. “It’s okay. I was going to let you.”
That night you come home with him.
Home, because that is what it is now no matter how recently he learned to say it.
The apartment smells like the rosemary chicken you cooked together and the bread he baked that morning and the cold air that followed you in when he opened the door. Your overnight bag sits by the couch. Your laughter is still in the walls from where you nearly dropped the oranges while making cocktails because he kissed your neck and ruined your concentration on purpose.
There are no visions this time.
No past lives pouring through the cracks.
Just the two of you in the warm gold hush of his bedroom, lamplight soft on the sheets, your sweater slipping from one shoulder as you sit on the edge of the mattress and look up at him.
“This is ours,” you say quietly.
He nods. “Yeah.”
You reach for him.
The first time you make love in this life is not a reenactment of any before. There are echoes, maybe. The same reverence. The same hunger braided with tenderness. But this is its own living thing, shaped by who you are now—older in different ways, scarred in different places, more careful and more certain all at once.
He undresses you slowly, like unwrapping something he intends to keep. You do the same for him, kissing each mark on his body as if introducing yourself to every chapter. When your fingers brush the long scars at his shoulder and side, you do not hesitate. You just look at him for permission and then kiss them too.
His throat goes tight.
On the bed, he takes his time. He is afraid this time, rather he wants to feel every second of being chosen with full knowledge. Your skin under his mouth. Your breath hitching when he drags his thumb over your clit. The way you smile against his lips when he says your name like a marvel. He works you open with his hands first, then his mouth, until you are clutching the sheets and half laughing, half sobbing because pleasure in this body, in this life, feels new and familiar all at once.
“Bucky,” you whisper when he comes back up over you, eyes dark and wrecked.
“I’ve got you.”
You nod, hands framing his face. “I know.”
When he pushes into you, slow and careful, your mouths are open against each other. He feels your body welcome him in inch by inch, feels your legs tighten around his hips, feels the tremor that runs through you when he finally settles deep. It is overwhelming in the simplest way. Not because of memory. Because of presence. Because you are here. Because he is too.
He moves. You move with him.
Outside, the city keeps being itself. A siren in the distance. Somebody laughing on the street. Heat clanking faintly through old pipes. Inside, his bedroom narrows to breath and skin and the soft wreck of your voice. You scratch lightly through his hair and murmur yes against his mouth and he nearly comes from the sound alone. He holds himself back long enough to watch the exact moment pleasure overtakes you, the way your eyes go bright and your body arches up into his with a cry he feels all the way to his ribs.
He follows soon after, buried deep, forehead pressed to yours, your names tangled together in the dark.
Afterward you lie under the sheets while the room cools around you. Your head rests on his chest. His hand drifts up and down your bare spine. The curtains are plain cotton, not lace. The sheets are soft gray, not white. The city outside is Brooklyn and not some inn in another century. It does not matter.
You draw lazy circles over his sternum.
“You know,” you murmur sleepily, “I think I liked every version of you.”
His fingers still for a second. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You tilt your chin to look at him. “But this one might be my favorite.”
Emotion catches him so hard it almost hurts.
He bends and kisses your forehead because if he tries to speak right then, he will probably embarrass himself beyond repair.
Months later, when winter gives way to spring and then, at last, to summer again, Saturday morning finds the two of you at the farmer’s market under the same green-striped awnings where everything began.
Bucky has two coffees in a cardboard carrier. You have a bouquet of sunflowers tucked under one arm. The bread guy waves. The peach stand is finally, gloriously in season. The lemon vendor clocks you both and grins like he has been expecting to see how this turns out.
“Need a bag today?” he asks.
You glance at Bucky. Bucky glances at you.
Then, smiling, you both reach for the same lemon on purpose.
No flash comes.
There is no need.
Your fingers lace together instead, easy as breath.
The square is bright with morning. The violinist by the fountain is playing something warm and sweet. Coffee steams between you. Peaches perfume the air. Beside you, your soulmate—your chosen person, your present-tense miracle—squeezes your hand.
And because love, in the end, is often this simple, you walk the market together like you have done it all your life.
Maybe you have.
Maybe you will again.
Either way, the peaches are ripe, the bread is warm, and Bucky Barnes is laughing at something you said with his whole face open to the sun.
It is not a dramatic ending.
It is better.
It is a life.
And every ordinary second of it feels, impossibly, like falling in love again and again.
Summary : You invite Dex to your birthday dinner at your sister's apartment. Unfortunately for Dex, your sister is Elektra.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her) | Modern au
Warnings/tags : modern au (I’m aiming for neo noir vibes) assassin!Dex, stunt choreographer!reader, Weapons/art collector! Elektra x Law Professor! Matt. Reader is Elektra’s little sister by a few years but whether she’s a biological sister or adopted is open to interpretation, murder and assassination, discussions of witness intimidation and coercion, blood and minor injury, morally grey characters, legal allegations, reader knowingly dating an assassin, implied sex and sexual content, alcohol, family conflict, happy ending if you ignore the moral implications lol.
Word Count : 8.9k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : Hey ya’ll! If you wanna be tagged, please send me a message! Comments get lost sometimes. Enjoy!
You met Dex in a hotel bar in Los Angeles on the night Daniel Shaw died, though you wouldn’t know until much later that he was the reason he was dead.
At the time, he was only a man at the end of the bar with a beautifully scarred face and a glass he barely touched. You noticed him because everyone else in the room was making a performance out of grieving. Several producers stood in tense little clusters with phones pressed to their ears, actresses dabbed at dry eyes beneath perfect mascara, personal assistants went back and forth like frightened birds between tables, and every agent in the building seemed to be calculating whether a dead studio head meant opportunity or unemployment.
You were not crying either, but at least you had the decency not to pretend.
Daniel Shaw had owned the movie studio currently paying your invoices, which made his sudden death inconvenient more than tragic. He had been found in his suite less than an hour ago. Someone said it was a heart attack. Another person said it was suicide after someone found a bullet in his head. It was so sudden! Your coworker kept repeating, as if the situation might become less alarming if she repeated it enough. You had worked under his studio for three months and met him properly only twice. He was charming, rich, and distant. Powerful men often were, which meant he remembered nobody’s name unless they could make him money.
You were a stunt choreographer. That put you somewhere below the director, below the producers, below the lead actress’ wellness coach, and slightly above the poor intern sent to buy twelve green juices at six in the morning. Shaw dying wasn’t personal to you, but it was close enough to your paycheck to keep you at the bar instead of going upstairs to sleep.
You took a sip of your whiskey and watched the room in the mirror behind the bottles.
That was where you found him watching you.
He didn’t look away when your eyes met, and it made you smile. Most men glanced down when caught, then looked back later with some lazy excuse written across their face. This man didn’t bother. He simply held your gaze in the mirror, almost amused, like he had known you were going to notice him and had been waiting for you to decide what to do about it.
You turned slightly on your stool. “You’re staring.”
His mouth curled up, barely. “You finally noticed.”
“I’m trained,” you shrugged, trying to keep things vague. “I notice when someone is watching me.”
He simply raised his cup to his lips. “Good to know.”
“Is it?”
“It explains the bruises.”
You looked down at your knee, where the hem of your dress had ridden up enough to show the dark bloom of a rehearsal bruise above your shin. It wasn’t your worst one this week, but it wasn’t the prettiest, either. Still, the way his eyes touched it and moved on made your skin warm, because he didn’t leer. He assessed.
You picked up your drink and carried it down the bar to him because the night was already strange, your contract might be cancelled by morning, and you had never been especially good at leaving interesting things alone.
“Since you’re apparently studying me,” you said as you sat beside him, “what else have you learned?”
He turned his glass once against the bar top, eyes moving over your face with infuriating patience. “You’re not drunk, but you’re trying to decide if you want to be. You’re not sad, but you know you should look sadder. You’ve checked the exits twice since I sat down, and you keep favouring your left side, which means either your hip hurts or your knee does.”
“My knee,” you confirmed, hating how impressed you sounded. “And I checked the exits because this room is full of dickheads. That’s just good sense.”
He managed a small, performative frown. “They’re just film executives.”
“Eh,” you shrugged, “same difference."
This time, he smiled properly. “Fair.”
You angled your body toward him, letting your shoulder rest against the bar. “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“What have I learned about you?”
His eyes stayed on yours. “Go ahead.”
You let yourself look, because he had started it, though that pretence felt childish and paper-thin now. He had a dark jacket on and an expensive watch worn like he didn’t care whether anyone noticed it. His posture was relaxed, but not loose. His hands were still on the bar and had no wedding ring, no visible nerves, no grief, no curiosity for anyone in the room except you.
Your sister had taught you to read people pretty well.
“You’re too quiet to be an actor,” you said. “You’re not a producer either, because you haven’t checked your phone every six seconds and you don’t look like you’re about to ruin someone’s career over a schedule change. You could be security, but you’re not standing like you’re being paid to watch the door.”
“Maybe I’m off duty.”
“Maybe,” you allowed. “But if you were off duty, I think you’d still know exactly who in this room was carrying, who was lying, and who would scream first if the lights went out.”
The amusement in his face was evident. “And who would scream first?”
You glanced around the bar and nodded toward a red-faced producer loudly saying Shaw had been like a father to him. “Him. But only after checking whether TMZ is watching.”
The man beside you laughed under his breath. You liked the sound too much immediately, which was annoying because you didn’t even know his name yet.
You held out your hand. “I’m not calling you stranger all night.”
His hand closed around yours. “Dex.”
“Just Dex?”
“For now.”
“That’s weird.”
“Do you like weird?”
You should have denied it. Instead, your smile gave you away. “I like interesting. Weird is reviewed on a case by case basis”
Dex didn’t release your hand immediately. He brushed his thumb over your knuckles, where tape residue still clung from that afternoon’s rehearsal. When he let go, you had to remind yourself not to stare.
“So,” he said, “stunt performer of some kind.”
You narrowed your eyes as if you were surprised that the handshake had given it away. Still, it was fun to play along, right? “Were you at the dinner?”
“Briefly.”
“And did you know Shaw?”
He considered his answer this time “Briefly.”
You chuckled, and Dex watched as if he wanted to understand the mechanics of it. It was unsettling, but it didn’t make you want to leave. If anything, it made you lean closer, because he was giving you so little that every small reaction felt like a gold star. You worked with performers all day, people trained to externalise every emotion so the camera could catch it. Dex did the opposite. He made you want to get your hands on him just to see what he was like underneath.
“What do you do, Dex-for-now?” you asked.
“Private security advising.”
You tilted your head. “That is the most fake Hollywood job I’ve ever heard.”
“It pays well.”
“I bet it does.” You smiled, “Do you consult on security, or do you just stand around looking intimidating?”
His eyes dropped to your mouth again, and this time he wasn’t quick enough to hide it. “Depends on who’s paying.”
You shifted on the stool, crossing one leg over the other, and watched his eyes flick down for the briefest second before returning to your face.
Controlled, you thought again. He was controlled enough that making him look felt like winning.
“You know,” you said, “for a security advisor, you’re not very reassuring.”
Dex leaned slightly closer, his voice dipping beneath the noise of the bar. “And yet you came over.”
“I was bored.”
“You’re not bored now.”
You hated that he was right. You hated it more because of how certain he seemed, as if your interest was another fact he had collected. The room around you blurred into a swirl of candlelight, glass, perfume, and expensive panic. Upstairs, a billionaire was dead. Down here, this stranger watched you like you were the only interesting target.
You took another sip of your drink. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“With some things.”
“And with others?”
Dex’s gaze held yours. “I like to be certain before I touch.”
It was absurd how quickly a fucking line got to you. Nothing in his tone was crude, and he barely even moved. But suddenly you were thinking about his hand around yours, his thumb over your knuckles, his mouth close to your ear.
You looked away first, which made him smile.
You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you set your glass down and let the silence stretch. Dex didn’t rush to fill it. He only watched you while the whole room kept mourning a man neither of you seemed able to miss.
Finally, you said, “My job might be gone tomorrow,” you sighed as if that didn’t affect you. It probably didn’t. Your family had enough money that you could just jet to the Bahamas tomorrow and not look back, but you actually liked the project you were working on. “That should bother me more.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“It does,” you said, then shrugged. “Just not enough to make me behave.”
Dex’s eyes moved over your face, and he shifted a little. “How badly do you want not to behave?”
Fuck.
It was so direct. It was certainly too much, maybe, from a man you had met fifteen minutes ago in a bar full of vultures dressed as mourners. But you had spent your whole life around danger. Dex was not pretending hard enough to be safe, and the reckless part of you respected that.
You leaned close enough that your knee brushed his. “That depends.”
His breath changed.
There. You had him.
Dex stood and offered his hand.
You looked at his hand, then at his face. “You always pick girls up in weird hotels?”
“No.” He managed a dry laugh, “you’re special.”
You laughed despite yourself and placed your hand in his.
The elevator ride up was a lesson in restraint. He stood beside you without touching you again, which made every inch of space between your bodies feel like you were pulling teeth. The mirrored walls showed you too many versions of him: his profile, his hands, the line of his throat where his shirt opened. You could feel him watching your reflection instead of your body directly, which shouldn’t have been hotter, but was.
The elevator doors opened before you could say anything.
His room was high up, expensive, and nearly untouched. There was no mess or scattered clothes. No sign that anyone had lived there longer than necessary. Los Angeles glittered beyond the windows, silver streets and distant headlights, while the door clicked shut behind you.
You turned to face him. “You’re not really a security advisor, are you?”
Dex looked at you for a long moment. “Not tonight.”
You should have asked what that meant. You should have cared. Instead, you stepped closer and reached for the open collar of his shirt, letting your fingers slide beneath the edge of the fabric.
“Good,” you said. “I’m off the clock too.”
When he kissed you, the control didn’t vanish all at once. That would have been too easy. It was slow, first with his hand at your waist, firm enough to make you gasp against his mouth. Then his other hand at the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair as he angled you exactly how he wanted you. He kissed like a man who had thought about doing it before he allowed himself to move, like every second of restraint in the bar was hell on earth.
You pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He let it fall without looking away from you. When you started on the buttons of his shirt, Dex caught your wrists, not to stop you, but to slow you down, his thumbs pressing lightly to your pulse points like he wanted to feel exactly what he was doing to you.
“You’re impatient,” he murmured, and for a second, you realized, holy shit. He really didn’t do these one night flings often.
Still, the only thing you managed to say was: “You’re overdressed.”
His mouth found your neck, and your answer dissolved into a breathless laugh. He smiled against your skin. You felt it more than saw that private satisfaction, and then his hands moved again with a precision that made your knees feel unreliable. He never grabbed thoughtlessly. He touched with the same focus he had watched you with downstairs, learning what made you arch, what made your fingers dig into his shoulders.
By the time he walked you backward toward the bed, you were hot and irritated by how badly you wanted him. Dex seemed worse off for trying to hide it. His shirt was open, his hair no longer perfect because your hands had been in it, and his breathing had gone rough, making you smile against his mouth.
You pulled him down with you.
After that, the night turned feverish. It became his mouth on your skin, your dress pushed away, his hands gentle until you guided them, and suddenly they were not. He was careful in ways that made you ache and rough only when you dragged it out of him, and the first time you felt his composure slip, you laughed breathlessly because you could not help it.
Dex lifted his head, eyes narrowed.
“You’re not as controlled as you look.”
“No,” he said, his mouth brushing yours. “Not like this.”
You believed him, though you had no reason to. Maybe that was the point. All you knew was that this was just a bad day with bad timing and a dead man upstairs whose absence had left the door to the evening just open enough for a stranger to step through.
Later, when the room was dark and your body fell beside his, you lay with your cheek against his chest and traced one of the old scars near his ribs. He was quiet under your hand, but not asleep. You knew the difference.
His fingers moved slowly along your spine, almost absent. “Dex?”
“Mm.”
“Were you really there for Shaw?”
His hand paused for less than a second before it continued.
“Briefly,” he said again.
You smiled into the dark because you knew he was giving you nothing, and for tonight, only tonight, you decided to let him.
You should have gone back to your own room. You should have asked better questions. You should have treated this as a stupid one night stand and pretended this never happened.
Instead, you closed your eyes and stayed exactly where you were.
—
Six months after that night, you moved to New York.
Officially, it was for work. A Broadway production had brought you on to choreograph the stage combat for a lavish, over-funded revival with sword fights, balcony falls, and a dramatic death scene that had to happen eight times a week without sending the lead actor to hospital.
It was a good job. You even put it on exclamation points and sent it to your agent like you had made a responsible career decision.
It had absolutely nothing to do with Dex being based in New York.
Mostly.
Fine, maybe a little.
Your sister was there too, which made the decision feel less incriminating. Elektra had an apartment in Manhattan, three passports in names you were not supposed to know, and an art studio collecting ancient weapons, because technically, that was her job.
You knew better than to ask where the acquisitions came from, and Elektra knew better than to ask why you had suddenly accepted a Broadway job in the same city as a man who called himself a security advisor and looked at you like he would happily ruin his life if you asked sweetly enough.
You and Dex had been officially dating for three months.
It was a good three months of late-night dinners, hotel room mornings, flowers delivered to rehearsal with no card because he knew you would know. It was three months of you pretending not to notice when the news mentioned a man connected to Shaw’s circle dying strangely overseas. Three months of Dex pretending his work calls were about security logistics and not whatever thing he did for people rich enough to afford him.
You knew what he was. Dex carried violence too naturally for it to be a hobby, and sometimes, when he came to you after work, the calm around him was too emptied out. He would shower before touching you, scrub himself raw, come out with damp hair and bare feet.
Your moral compass had raised one weak little hand in protest, but then Dex had kissed you against your kitchen counter, murmured sweetheart like a prayer, and made your entire sense of right and wrong pack a bag and leave the state.
Maybe that made you terrible. Maybe it made you Elektra’s sister after all.
Or maybe Dex was just so unfairly, stupidly, devastatingly hot that you just kept getting distracted.
And Dex knew that you knew after the first month or so, when you jokingly called him Hot John Wick.
Dex had always expected you to figure it out sooner or later. He knew you were a smart girl. He just didn’t realise you’d figure out this soon.
Instead of being shocked though, he just raised his eyebrows and said, “John Wick is already hot.”
You chuckled and pulled him close. “Shut up and take it as a compliment that I find you even hotter.”
“Yes ma’am.”
And that was that.
—
Earlier today, you had texted Dex and asked if he could come over and cuddle.
Ha.
You were already on the couch when he got in, cozy in sleep shorts and an oversized hoodie, one fuzzy sock half-off your foot, your body tired from rehearsal and your brain still muddled with stage falls, sword cues, and actors who didn’t understand that “again from the top” didn’t mean “try to improvise a stabbing.”
Dex took off his coat and looked at you like he had been waiting all day to come home to you.
“You’re late,” you said.
“‘M sorry.”
He came closer, and you let him pull you up just so you could immediately drag him down with you again. Dex caught himself over you with one hand braced beside your head, his knee sinking into the couch, his body warm and heavy enough above yours to make your whole chest loosen.
He kissed you, mouth moving over yours like he wanted to settle there. Like he needed a minute to remember what it felt like to be wanted without being useful. You went pliant underneath him almost immediately, because apparently that was what you did now. You let murderers kiss you tenderly on your couch and call it romance.
His hand slid beneath your hoodie and you hummed against his mouth.
Dex’s palm dragged up your ribs, then paused over your breast, cupping you through the thin fabric beneath like he was not even trying to pretend the cuddling was innocent anymore. His thumb moved once, and your breath caught hard enough for him to smile into the kiss.
“Dex,” you murmured.
“Mm.”
“That is not cuddling.”
“It’s close.”
His mouth dipped to your throat, and the laugh you tried to give him turned embarrassingly quiet halfway out. He knew exactly what he was doing.
His hand slid down again over your waist, then your hip, then lower.
He pushed his body down yours, mouth tracing heat along your neck while his fingers found the waistband of your shorts. He tucked himself there, resting under the elastic, knuckles brushing warm skin.
Dex loved having his finger between your legs, knowing he can’t seem to miss the sweet spot, ever. Which meant you knew exactly how to make him suffer.
His fingers started to slip lower, and you caught his wrist.
Dex stopped.
Slowly, he lifted his head, looking offended, as if you had interrupted him mid-prayer.
“Sweetheart,” he said carefully.
You smiled. “My birthday is coming up.”
For a second, he just stared.
His wrist flexed under your fingers as you held it still. “I know.”
His thumb slipped under the edge by half an inch, expecting you to give in, but your hand only tightened, keeping him out of your shorts still.
Then his eyes lifted to yours, already suspicious. “Baby.”
You smiled. “Ah-ah.”
His gaze narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“Negotiating.”
“With my hand?”
“With your access,” you corrected
His desire didn’t disappear. It only got interrupted by confusion. “You’re blackmailing me.”
“I’m making a birthday request.”
His eyes flicked down to where you were holding his wrist. “With leverage.”
You held back a chuckle, trying your best to look innocent. “Smart girls use leverage.”
Dex opened his mouth, then closed it again.
You smiled sweetly. “That’s what I thought.”
For a second, he looked like he wanted to argue. Unfortunately for him, he also wanted control of his hand back very, very badly. “What do you want, pretty girl?” he asked.
You knew he meant presents, like actual presents. He was prepared to buy his way out of this. Hitman money in New York apparently paid well enough that Dex looked genuinely prepared for you to name something like a weekend in Paris.
You tightened your grip on his wrist. You looked up at him, very pleased with yourself. “I want you to meet my sister.”
Dex went still, much more still than when you had called him a hitman for the first time, actually, which told you a lot about his priorities.
“Your sister,” he said.
“Yes.”
“For your birthday.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what you want?”
“That’s what I want.”
He looked at you like you were a puzzle he hadn’t been hired to solve. Dex looked down at his trapped hand, then back at your face. “You’re really withholding this until I say yes.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
His teeth clenched as your thumb stroked idly over the inside of his wrist. You were not even trying to be seductive with it, but Dex watched the movement like it was actively shortening his lifespan.
“Baby,” he said.
“Mm?”
“Let go of my hand.”
“Say yes.”
“You don’t play fair.”
He made a sound that was half a laugh and half suffering. “You know I adore you, right?”
“Then say yes.”
Dex lowered his head until his forehead rested against yours. His eyes closed briefly, like he was gathering strength. It was ridiculous. He could probably walk into a guarded room and come out alive without messing up his hair, but you asking him to attend one birthday dinner had him acting like you had handed him a bomb with a pink bow on it.
“You haven’t told me anything about her,” he said.
“She’s my sister.”
“That’s not information.”
“She’s important to me.”
It managed to shut him up.
You sighed, just a little, though you still didn’t let go of his wrist. “I want her to meet you. Isn’t that enough information?”
Dex opened his eyes, and he looked almost undone by it.
You kissed him lightly. “Please.”
His breath caught.
You knew that would get him.
“Don’t,” he murmured.
“Please, Dex.”
“Sweetheart.”
“For my birthday.”
He stared at you with the exhaustion of a man who had never stood a chance. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll meet your sister.”
Your smile bloomed. “You’ll be nice?”
“I’ll be polite.” Dex looked pointedly at his wrist. “Can I have my hand back now?”
You hummed like you were thinking about it.
His eyes darkened. “Baby.” His mouth brushed yours.
Eventually, you released his wrist.
Dex didn’t move immediately, even though he had been desperate two seconds ago.
Dex kissed you first, like he was still thanking you for wanting him at dinner. His hand slipped lower and you gasped against his mouth, laughing breathlessly when you felt his smile.
“Now,” he hummed, “where were we?”
—
You and Dex stood outside Elektra’s apartment door with his hand at the small of your back and enough tension in his shoulders to make you bite back a smile.
For a man who had once admitted, very calmly, that he preferred entering buildings through service corridors because front doors made people too expectant, he had spent an absurd amount of time preparing for your birthday.
He had brought you flowers first, an arrangement of red ranunculus, white anemones, dark tulips, and little sprigs of jasmine tucked between them because he remembered you once saying jasmine smelled like nights in expensive hotels.
You had stared at it for so long that Dex had asked, “Too much?”
“No,” you said, already smiling like an idiot. “It’s beautiful.”
Only then had he relaxed.
The second gift was smaller, slim black leather notebook with your initials pressed into the bottom corner in gold, the pages thick enough for blocking notes, sketches, injury reports, and all the frantic choreography scribbles you usually left on call sheets and napkins. Inside the front cover was a thin metal bookmark shaped like a tiny sword.
You had smiled, and he looked painfully pleased with himself.
Then, because he was Dex, he had stopped in a supermarket on the way there and very pragmatically asked, “What kind of wine does your sister like?”
“Expensive.”
He only nodded.
Now he stood beside you holding a bottle that probably cost more than your weekly food shop, his jaw tight, his scarred face composed, his coat immaculate. He looked less like a boyfriend arriving for dinner and more like a man approaching a guarded border with falsified papers and a personal stake in crossing.
“You know she’s not going to fucking kill you.” You nudged him gently. “She made dinner. That’s basically a peace offering.”
“She made dinner for you,” Dex said flatly. “I’m the complication.”
Right.
Dex didn’t care about charming people for the sake of being liked. He didn’t need Elektra’s approval because he wanted a pleasant evening or a normal story to tell later. He needed it because Elektra mattered to you, and she was the one person whose opinion could matter. Because, in Dex’s mind, your sister was not an enemy. She was a hurdle to get to you more permanently. That’s all.
You turned toward him and straightened his collar, even though it was already perfect. “Be nice.”
Then the door opened.
Elektra stood there in silk trousers and bare feet, beautiful in the effortless way she had always been beautiful. Her eyes moved from you to Dex, then to the flowers in your arm and the wine in his hand.
“Well,” she said, “at least he brings tribute.”
You managed to chuckle. “Elektra.”
Dex offered the bottle and said, very flatly, “Thank you for having me.”
Elektra took it, glanced at the label, and lifted one eyebrow.
You could practically see Dex winning one microscopic point in a war he had invented entirely inside his own head.
“Come in,” Elektra said.
Dex’s hand found your back again as you stepped inside.
He was here. He was trying.
From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a familiar voice called, “Are they here?”
Dex stopped, and not enough for Elektra to notice, maybe.
Then Matt Murdock appeared at the edge of the dining room, one hand against the wall, his red glasses reflecting apartment light.
Dex’s voice changed.
“Oh.” he said, “Murdock.”
Matt seemed to recognize the voice immediately because his head tilted in recognition.
Wait.
Wait.
What?
“You two know each other?” Your voice cut through the apartment before anyone else could decide what kind of lie to tell.
Elektra, of course, looked delighted. “Oh,” she raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
You turned on her. “Don’t start.”
Matt’s mouth twitched, but the almost-smile disappeared quickly.
Dex’s hand hovered over your back, not quite touching you now, which irritated you more than it should have.
You looked at Matt again, your confusion finally catching up with the rest of the room. “I didn’t even know you were coming.”
Matt’s mouth softened when he turned toward you. “Happy birthday.”
You blinked at him. “I didn’t even know you and Ellie were back together.”
Beside you, Elektra took a thoughtful sip of her wine like this was all very normal and not at all insane.
“We are,” she said.
You stared at her.
Matt’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Apparently.”
Despite everything, despite Dex standing beside you like a wire pulled too tight, you felt a laugh threaten the back of your throat, because this was them. This had always been them.
You had known Matt since high school, back when Elektra was in college for art history. Your sister brought him home during holidays with the same indifference she used for all things she secretly cared about. You remembered him at your family table, too stubborn and too principled for his own good, arguing with Elektra about morality while she stole food off his plate. You remembered being younger and thinking their breakups sounded serious until Matt appeared again two months later with flowers.
So no, Matt being here was not strange. Matt being here with Elektra again wasn’t even that strange.
Matt recognizing your boyfriend was the problem.
You looked between them. “How do you know each other?”
Dex went quiet.
“Our paths crossed professionally,” Matt said.
You stared. “How vague.”
“That’s all you need to know,” Dex said.
Elektra’s smile widened behind her glass.
Matt looked worried, but it wasn’t really dramatic. Matt never looked dramatically anything unless Elektra was bleeding or lying to his face. But you knew him. You knew the slight tension in his mouth, the way he seemed to listen to more than what people were saying.
“You look worried,” you said.
Matt paused. “I’m not worried.”
“Matthew.”
Dex’s eyes twitched at the familiarity in your voice.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
You glanced back at him and found him standing there with perfect manners, trying very hard not to strangle a blind man from across the table for no apparent reason.
Elektra noticed too, and naturally, this pleased her.
“Well,” she said, stepping aside to let everyone further into the apartment. “This is already a much better birthday dinner than I expected.”
“It is my birthday dinner,” you said. “Not an interrogation.”
“That depends entirely on your boyfriend.”
Dex looked at Elektra then.
For the first time since the door opened, his attention moved to your sister, realising the human hurdle had a knife in its hand.
You sighed and clutched your flowers a little tighter.
Matt stepped closer. “It really is good to see you.”
Your irritation waned, because he sounded sincere, so you hugged him.
Matt hugged you back, one hand warm between your shoulders, gentle in the way he had always been somewhat of a big brother to you. “Happy birthday, kid.” he said again, quieter this time.
“Thank you,” you muttered. “Even though all of you are being weird.”
“We’ve barely started,” Elektra said.
“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”
When you pulled away from Matt, Dex was still watching him.
You looked at the three of them and pointed toward the dining room. “Everyone sit down,” you said. “And someone is going to explain what professionally means before dessert.”
—
Dinner began with Elektra leading you to the table, Matt followed by memory, and Dex stayed close enough behind you you could feel him breathing on your neck. The food was already laid out, far more elaborate than she had admitted over the phone, with candles burning between the plates and your cake waiting beneath a glass cover on the counter.
You sat beside Dex. Matt took the chair opposite him, and Elektra sat beside Matt with the calm of someone who had accidentally arranged the most interesting seating plan possible.
For the first few minutes, the conversation stayed on you. Your birthday, your Broadway production, the lead actor who kept trying to make the sword fights faster, the balcony rig that had failed inspection twice. Matt asked intelligent questions and Elektra asked whether anyone deserved to be pushed from the balcony for real. Dex was deathly silent, and you assumed it was for fear of saying the wrong thing and losing Elektra’s favour, which in turn meant losing your favour, too.
Then, Matt mentioned teaching now, and your eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
“Holy shit,” you managed. “Professor Murdock?”
Matt had laughed under his breath. “That surprised you?”
“A little. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Then you had turned to Dex, trying to make it casual, trying to move the night away from whatever ugly thing was coiling beneath the table. See? this is fine, you tried to say with your eyes
Well. It was until Matt decided to say, “And Poindexter, you’re still in security?”
Dex’s eyes had flicked to Matt for half a second.
“Yeah,” he said, with his hand warm on your knee, “She knows my work.”
Matt had gone still.
Dex hadn’t smiled, but you felt the satisfaction in him anyway.
You could feel him think, Matt cannot use that against me.
Except Matt kept going.
Matt didn’t sound like he wanted to humiliate him. He sounded worried, and maybe that was what made Dex more anxious. Accusation, he could meet. Concern made him look like an animal.
And because you had no idea what the fuck to do, you blurted out the one thing you probably shouldn’t have.
“Um,” you choked out. “Would you like to tell us how you met?”
Oh fuck.
Mistake, you could tell from the way Dex was looking at you now. Big mistake.
“It was years ago,” Matt said finally. “During my work on a civil suit. Nelson, Murdock, and Page represented several former employees of a private security firm.”
Dex’s thumb stopped moving on your knee.
Matt continued. “We found evidence of illegal surveillance, witness intimidation, and coercion.”
Elektra leaned back slightly, actively thinking of Dex’s bad influence on you now.
Dex’s face didn’t change.
“He worked for them?” Elektra asked.
Matt’s head angled toward Dex. “Ask him.”
Dex’s teeth shifted once.
You felt the violent urge in him before you saw it. His body didn’t lunge and his hand didn't move. But you could tell he was thinking of hurling a fork in Matt’s direction.
You put your hand over his and squeezed hard.
Dex’s eyes snapped to you.
You didn’t say anything. You only dug your fingers into the back of his hand, right where the skin was thin over bone. It was a warning, a plea not to escalate things. Your nails pressed in harder when his eyes moved back toward Matt.
Dex. You warned with your eyes.
His nostrils flared.
Please don’t.
Matt kept speaking, unaware or too aware. “His name came up in access logs and reports.”
Dex’s hand flexed under yours.
You pressed harder, until your nails broke skin. A tiny crescent of blood welled beneath your thumb, bright against him.
Dex looked down, and that’s what did it. All the focus in him fractured around the sight of your hand gripping his hard enough to hurt him, your fingers trembling. This was your silent refusal to let him become the thing Matt was describing right in front of you.
Though the haze in his mind didn’t disappear, he turned his face away from Matt. It came back to you and the fact that you were frightened enough of what he might do to stop him with pain.
Dex swallowed. Under the table, he turned his hand over and caught your fingers carefully, like he was afraid you might pull away.
Matt was still talking, though. “One witness was hospitalised the night before deposition. Another vanished for three days and came back with a different story.”
Elektra looked at Dex. You looked at Matt. Dex looked at nobody but you.
“And nothing stuck,” Dex said.
His voice was too controlled.
Matt paused. “No.”
Dex’s fingers tightened around yours once, not enough to hurt, enough to ask whether you were still there.
You were.
You hated that you were.
Dex’s eyes finally lifted to Matt again, and there it was: you knew he wanted to fucking hurt him, and not because Matt was lying. Because Matt was telling the truth in front of you. Because Matt had dragged a past version of him into your sister’s dining room and set it between the candles.
Your grip tightened again.
Dex breathed in slowly, then he looked at you.
You shook your head once. Please.
The fight went out of his shoulders by force, not surrender. He leaned back a fraction, still holding your hand under the table, your bloodied little nail marks hidden between his fingers like a secret.
Elektra set her wine down. “Dex,” she said. Her voice was smooth. “Can I speak with you?”
You looked at her immediately. “Ellie.”
“Privately.”
Dex didn’t answer right away.
His thumb moved over your fingers once. There was blood on his skin because of you, and somehow that made his touch gentler.
“It’s fine,” he said.
It was absolutely not fine. He stood anyway.
Before he followed Elektra, he bent close enough that his mouth brushed your temple. It was not quite a kiss and more like proof of control.
Then he left with your sister as the balcony doors shut behind them.
For a second, you only stared at the glass, watching Elektra turn on him with folded arms while Dex stood very still in front of her, hands visible, every inch of him pretending he had not almost lost himself at your birthday dinner.
Matt was still across from you when you turned back to him slowly.
He looked… worried.
You wiped your thumb against your napkin, and tried to breathe like your heart was not still stuck somewhere in your throat.
“Ummmm,” you said, because if you started with Dex, you might cry. If you started with the lawsuit, you might scream.
Matt turned his face toward you.
“So,” you said, voice smaller than you wanted it to be. “Are you sticking around this time?”
Matt didn’t answer right away.
That was very Matt of him.
He sat across from you at Elektra’s dining table with one hand curled near his wine glass, head angled faintly toward the balcony doors. Outside, your sister had Dex backed into a conversation you could not hear properly through the glass. Elektra’s arms were folded. Dex’s hands were visible at his sides.
That alone told you he was trying very, very hard.
You watched them for another second, then looked back at Matt.
“So,” you said, because there was no clean way to ask it. “Are you sticking around this time?”
Matt swirled a bit of his wine. Awkward.
“I… think so,” he said.
You stared at him. “You think so?”
The smile he gave you was small. “I’m trying.”
“Mmm. Very convincing.”
He huffed, almost a laugh, and it tugged at an old memory in your chest.
Because before he was Professor Murdock, he was Elektra’s on-again-off-again disaster boyfriend, and that made him your on-again-off-again big brother. He had been the person who helped you with homework at the kitchen table because Elektra said she was too busy and then corrected every other answer from across the room anyway. He had been the person who let you complain about school and teachers and boys without making you feel stupid for being young. He had been the one who said, very seriously, that no, you probably could not sue your PE teacher for being annoying, but he admired your commitment to the argument.
And then he would leave.
“She was awful last time you guys broke up,” you said.
Matt lowered his head.
You picked at the edge of your napkin. “Not in the fun way. She was actually awful.”
“What do you want me to say?” He sighed.
The candles on the table flickered between you. Elektra had made too much food, of course. Your flowers sat in a vase near the counter, lush and ridiculous and beautiful, and you could still feel the small dent of Dex’s hand where he had held yours under the table.
“She missed you,” you said. “She pretended she didn’t, obviously, but she did.”
His mouth fell.
“And I missed you,” you added, staring very hard at the napkin. “Who else do I get to complain about her to? Mom and Dad don’t give a shit anymore.”
Matt’s laugh was tiny and helpless. “I missed you too.”
That almost made you forgive him.
You looked back at him. “Then stay. Or don’t. But don’t drift in and out like we’re all supposed to just reset every time you and Ellie get bored again.”
He nodded once, accepting the hit. For a second, it felt like being sixteen again. Like he was still family, sitting at your family table.
Then his head shifted slightly.
Toward the balcony. Towards Dex.
And you felt the whole conversation distort.
Matt didn’t pounce. He was much worse than that. He eased into it, like he was only following the evidence where it naturally led.
“You know why I’m worried about your boyfriend,” he said.
You sat back and sighed. “There it is.”
“I’m not trying to start a fight.”
“No,” you shook your head. “You’re building a case.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I know you care about me,” you said. “I do. But please don’t do that... That lawyer thing with your wording. You're making me feel like I’m supposed to realise I’ve accidentally admitted something.”
“I’m not cross-examining you.”
“You are.”
“I’m asking questions.” Matt exhaled.
You hated how much you still wanted his approval, because he was one of those people who had seen you grow up and therefore they had earned the right to worry.
He leaned forward a little.
“How did he tell you about… what he does?”
You looked at him and took a sip of wine to buy yourself time. “I’m not thick.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” you said. “But he didn’t have to tell me shit for me to realise his job was more than sit around looking pretty with a gun.”
Matt’s jaw clenched slightly.
Outside, Elektra said something to Dex that made his shoulders go tense.
“He gave you a version,” Matt said.
You laughed once, without much humour. “Everyone gives a version.”
“Some versions are omissions.”
“God, you are so irritating.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” you cocked your head. “You think irritating is fine when you’re right.”
Matt tried again.
“There are patterns,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Patterns.”
“Yes.”
“With Dex.”
“With men like him.”
You looked sharply at him. “Men like him.”
Matt’s mouth tightened. “Men who know exactly how much truth to give you.”
Your throat tightened despite yourself.
He heard it, because damn that freakish hearing of his was apparently still going.
His voice flattened a bit. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Always very generous.”
“I mean it. I think you’re smart. I think you know more than most people would.”
You looked down at your hands.
There was still the faintest mark beneath one nail where you had dug into Dex’s skin hard enough to pull him back. You could still feel the moment he snapped back into himself. The way his fury turned, not gone, just redirected because you had asked without words.
Matt said your name, like he used to when you were younger and trying not to cry.
“I think you’re too close to the facts,” he said. You almost smiled because only Matt Murdock would say something like that at a birthday dinner.
You set the fork down. “You mean I’m biased.”
“I mean you’re involved.”
“I’m allowed to be involved in my own life.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Matt went silent.
You looked at him now, studying his posture “Because it sounds like you think if you arrange the argument properly, I’ll reach your conclusion.”
“I think you’re making a dangerous choice.”
“There we go.”
His face soured. “He is dangerous.”
“So is Ellie.”
“She’s different now.”
“And?” You leaned forward. “And?”
Matt didn’t answer fast enough.
You lowered your voice. “We both know what she’s done. We both know what half of that collection cost before she started using invoices and whatever else she claims is legitimate now.”
“She got out.”
“Good for her.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I,” you groaned. “But she still deserves love, doesn’t she?”
Matt looked pained, and you hated hurting him.
“You love her with a whole archive of exceptions,” you said. “But I’m supposed to treat Dex like one bad document is the entire record?”
“It’s not just one bad document—“
“It’s close enough.”
“No,” Matt said, and there was that courtroom firmness in him now. “I’m saying you probably know what the record looks like. You're just ignoring the parts you don’t want to read.”
You swallowed.
“I know what it costs,” he said. “To love someone and start making room for things you would have condemned.”
You looked toward the balcony.
Dex had turned his head slightly, like he could feel you looking.
Matt kept going, though kinder now. “You start with mitigation. Then you start giving out exceptions. I’m just asking you to consider—”
“No.” Your voice cracked a little. “No, you’re asking me to accept your ruling.”
Matt stopped.
Ruling.
Huh. You really have changed over the two years he was gone.
You breathed in shakily. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about him. Maybe you’re not. Maybe there are things I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll regret this so badly I’ll hear your voice in my fucking head for the rest of my life.”
Matt’s shoulders lowered.
“But my mistakes are mine to make,” you said.
Oh.
You saw the tiny break in his knuckles. The big-brother part of him, the one who never really had anyone but himself, the part that still remembered you as a teenager at the kitchen table with bruised knees and far too much attitude for your own good, wanting to protect you from yourself because he had loved a more bloody Elektra the way you loved Dex.
“I don’t want to watch you get hurt,” was all he managed to say,
You looked down. “You might have to.”
He looked down.
You reached across the table first and found his hand, because touch had always been a sensory experience he reacted to.
“I’m not blind,” you said, then immediately groaned. “Sorry.”
Matt’s mouth twitched. “It’s fine.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“I know he’s not safe.”
Matt’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles.
“But he listens to me,” you said. “And maybe that’s not enough for you. But it matters to me.”
Matt didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.
For once, it felt like mercy.
Outside, you heard a scrape against the balcony table.
Matt’s head tilted. “What’s happening?”
You looked past him through the glass.
Elektra and Dex were no longer standing in their neat little interrogation positions. They looked like they were seated across from each other at the tiny balcony table, elbows planted, hands clasped, Dex’s shoulders covering half the scene.
You blinked.
Then, despite the ache in your chest, you laughed. “I think they’re arm wrestling.”
Matt closed his eyes.
The look on his face was so exhausting that it only made you laugh harder.
—
The rest of dinner went by quickly after Elektra and Dex came back in from the balcony with no visible injuries, which you counted as a birthday miracle.
Elektra looked smug and Dex looked composed, but there was a tightness around his lips that made you narrow your eyes. When you glanced between them and asked who won the arm wrestle, Elektra only smiled into her wine. Dex said nothing. Which, unfortunately for him, was an answer.
After that, everyone behaved, mostly. Matt stopped trying to lawyer you out of your own relationship. Dex stopped looking like he wanted to fling Matt through one of Elektra’s very expensive windows. Elektra told a horrible story about you at seventeen trying to jump from the garage roof into the pool and missing by an amount she called “humiliating but educational.” Matt laughed, Dex looked absolutely fascinated, like your teenage stupidity was precious. He asked one follow-up question, and you kicked him under the table.
By the time you left, she kissed both your cheeks, held your face for one second longer than usual, and said happy birthday one more time and told you to call her tomorrow.
Matt hugged you too, while Dex and Matt shook hands, proving to God and each other that they could survive physical contact without committing a felony.
Then Dex took you home.
You were sleepy in the car, full from dinner, cake, and emotional warfare.
At your apartment, you kicked off your shoes by the door and padded into the kitchen for water. Dex followed, taking off his coat, watching you with that careful quiet he got when he was not sure whether he was allowed to touch you yet.
You leaned against the counter and looked at him over the rim of your glass.
“So,” you said. “Who really won?”
Dex’s expression went flat. “No.”
You smiled. “No?”
Dex flexed his hand once, as if remembering. “She’s irritating.”
You laughed. “Mmm.”
“But you love her,” he said.
Your laugh faded.
Dex leaned back against the counter opposite you, arms crossed. “And she loves you. And she’s capable of protecting you.” He said, as if it was the only metric that mattered. “So I guess I’ll try.”
You stared at him. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said about anyone.”
Dex rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. He looked tired now. Not physically, more like tired from pretending to be a decent person.
You walked across the kitchen and took his hand.
The little marks from your nails looked worse up close. There were tiny, red, broken crescents on the back of his hand.
“I’m sorry,” you said, trailing small kisses on them
Dex looked down at your lips touching the wounds. He shrugged as if you did what you had to do to get the result you wanted, and Dex had always been pragmatic like that.
That night, Dex fell asleep with his arm locked around your waist.
He slept heavy, going slack against your back, his breath warm at the nape of your neck, his hand spread beneath your sleep shirt like he had reached for bare skin even in his sleep.
Your phone pinged just after two.
Then again. Then again.
You reached for it carefully, lifting Dex’s arm just enough to drag the screen close without waking him.
It was a text…. From Elektra.
I’m glad he’s on your side.
Then the next text.
That’s still not the same thing as him being safe.
Another message came through before you could answer her.
Make an informed decision. That’s all I’m asking.
Then, she sent a link.
You stared at it for a long time in the dark.
Dex shifted behind you, his arm tightening automatically around your middle, his face pressing closer to your shoulder, still asleep.
You opened it… and there it was. The lawsuit Dex was allegedly involved in.
The text was dense and written in bloodless language detailing private security and consultants. It detailed alleged intimidation and coercion, resulting in witnesses withdrawing statements and misplaced evidence.
Dex’s name was there.
You read until the words blurred, until the apartment turned orange in the early morning. Dex slept against you while a colder version of him lived through depositions and sealed complaints and things nobody had ever proved.
But you knew your boyfriend. You knew he was capable of this.
You waited for the feeling to change.
Maybe, you expected to be disgusted. Fear, more likely.
It didn’t come.
You felt the same about him as you did before.
And of course it wasn’t fine. Matt was not wrong and Elektra wasn’t worried for no reason.
But you had always looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses.
By dawn, you closed the file.
Dex stirred when you set your phone down, as if even the sound of it against the nightstand was enough to pull some half-asleep part of him back to you.
His arm tightened around your waist first. Then he dragged you closer, face pressing blindly between your shoulder and neck, making it impossible to move even if you had wanted to.
“Sweetheart?” he mumbled, barely awake.
You hummed and covered his hand with yours.
For a second, you lay there with the lawsuit still burning behind your eyes. All those careful words and sealed statements. All those allegations circling the man in your bed like vultures.
And maybe Matt was right.
Maybe Elektra was right.
Maybe Dex was dangerous.
But Matt had loved your sister through her murderous years, hadn’t he? So who were they to look at you like you were insane for dating an assassin?
You were now thoroughly informed, now, weren’t you?
You turned carefully in Dex’s arms until you were facing him. His eyes stayed closed, his brow furrowing faintly at the movement, but his hand slid up your back on instinct, keeping you close.
“Go back to sleep,” you whispered, kissing him softly.
Dex exhaled against your mouth, already sinking again. You tucked yourself beneath his chin, his arm heavy over your waist.
Informed decision made.
—end.
NOTE : I genuinely love seeing all your requests in my asks, but I do get a lot and I physically can’t write every single one. I usually write the ones that catch my eye, and it’s probably every 1 in 5.
That’s why I have Ko-fi! If you request there, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll write it within a month of responding as a token of appreciation (keep this post in mind for July and August 2026). If I’m uncomfortable with the request or don’t think I can do it justice, I’ll let you know and we can brainstorm something else.
Please remember I run this blog for free, so any support means a lot, only if you’re able to give it! Love y’all and thank you for reading!!! <3
Summary : Dex has to learn that you can have bad days, too.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : established relationship, hurt/comfort, sensory overload, overstimulation, emotional, traffic light system, safeword use, mentioned free use arrangement, aftercare?, soft ending, dark romance elements, obsessive Dex, protective Dex. DDBA! Dex I think. :)
Word Count : 6k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : Hey ya’ll! If you wanna be tagged, please send me a message! Comments get lost sometimes. Enjoy!
You hadn’t had the best day and it started with the coffee machine not working.
That was entirely your fault. You had cleaned it the night before, rinsed everything carefully, set it back in place, and then just… not set it up properly again. Usually, you would have found it funny. You would have sent Dex a picture of the dead display and made him promise to bring you coffee later.
Instead, you stood barefoot in the kitchen at seven in the morning, pressing the button over and over like one of the attempts might change the result, and felt tears sting your eyes.
Dex was asleep down the hall, face buried in your pillow, one arm stretched across your side of the bed as if he had gone looking for you in his sleep. You considered waking him, and you nearly did, standing in the bedroom doorway with your bag hanging off one shoulder, watching the rise and fall of his back, and thought about crawling under the covers again.
But he had been out all night.
He needed sleep, and you needed to leave.
So you found instant coffee in the back of the cupboard and made it too strong because you were already running late. You burned your tongue, while the clasp on your necklace got caught in your hair. Your tights had a ladder in them, a thin line running up the back of your calf that no one else would probably notice but that you could feel all day like a crack in glass.
You changed twice and hated both outfits.
The third one was acceptable until you got outside and realized the waistband sat weird when you walked. It pinched at one side and shifted at the other. You kept trying to fix it discreetly beneath your coat while waiting for the train, which only made it twist more.
Then the train was delayed.
You kinda wished it would’ve been canceled; it would at least have given you something to be angry about. It was delayed by six minutes, then nine, then twelve, with the announcement changing every time you looked up. The platform filled around you as a lady stood close enough behind you that her bag pressed against your back every time they moved. A man near the stairs was watching videos without headphones, and two women beside you were having an argument in furious whispers.
Your phone buzzed in your hand.
Dex. Coffee machine dead?
You stared at the message for too long.
Normally, you would have answered with something dry and funny immediately. Instead, you typed three different replies and deleted all of them because every version sounded irritated, and you were irritated, but not with him.
You sent a heart.
He replied with three.
That nearly made you cry again.
Work was not terrible enough to justify how terrible it felt.
Nobody screamed at you and nothing caught fire. You didn’t get fired or humiliated, but it was just a constant fucking drag.
An intern, a fresh graduate called Grace, stopped you before you had taken off your coat because they needed help with something they had known about since yesterday. Your computer decided to update while going to the double-booked meeting room, so everyone stood in the corridor pretending not to be annoyed while Brad from HR insisted he had reserved it first. When you finally got inside, the projector would not connect.
Then your manager, Amy said, “This should only take five minutes,” and it took forty-three.
At some point, your coworker Jack, put a hand on your shoulder from behind to get your attention.
You nearly snapped. They apologized. You apologized for reacting. Then you spent the next ten minutes thinking about whether your apology had sounded strange.
That was when you had to go to the bathroom and cry.
You sat in the last stall with the lid down, both feet planted on the floor, trying to breathe quietly so that no one would hear you. You hated crying at work and the bathroom lighting and the thin toilet paper scraping under your eyes. You hated that there was no single problem you could point to and say, there, that’s why I can’t do this today!
Your phone buzzed again.
Dex had sent you a message about going out because task force was spotted in droves on the other side of the city, and that he was going out to get them.
Then cried harder because you missed him, even though he lived with you and you had technically seen him that morning.
You washed your face, went back to your desk, and tried to finish the day.
At four, Dex texted that he would probably be home late.
You stared at that one until the words blurred.
It was reasonable and normal, by your standards. He worked strange hours and disappeared with even stranger explanations. You were used to eating without him. You were used to waking up with him suddenly in bed beside you, one hand finding your waist beneath the blanket.
But you had spent the whole day thinking about going home to him.
You didn’t even want to talk to him. You wanted to walk through the door and see him standing in the kitchen. You wanted him to take your bag without asking and tell you to change into a soft cotton shirt so as not to trigger your sensory issues. You wanted to sit between his knees on the sofa while he rubbed slow circles into your thighs.
Instead, you sent. Okay. Be safe.
He reacted with a heart.
You put your phone facedown and finished the last hour.
The train home was worse than the train in.
You had to stand while a wet umbrella kept brushing your ankle, even though you didn’t realise it had been raining. A man across the carriage kept coughing into his fist and then touching the pole. Every time the train stopped, more people got on and nobody got off.
By the time you reached your building, your shoulders ached from holding them up around your ears. You dropped your keys in the hallway, and the sound of them hitting the floor was so annoying that you just stood there staring at them for several seconds before bending down.
The apartment was dark when you opened the door.
You turned on the lamp instead of the main light and you took off your coat and immediately felt colder. You put it back on. Took it off again because the lining felt horrible against your skin. You stood in the living room holding it, suddenly unable to decide what to do with it even though there was a hook three feet away.
You dropped it on the floor.
Then you felt guilty because Dex liked things clean and in their place.
Fuck.
You sat down beside it and cried with one shoe still on and one shoe off, louder than you cried in the office bathroom. You cried because the apartment smelled faintly like Dex, but he wasn’t there. You cried because you had spent the whole day being reasonable, and now there was nobody in front of you to be reasonable for.
Afterward, you felt stupid and sticky-faced, which just made the sensations worse.
You picked up the coat and put your shoes away. You sent Dex a message asking when he would be home, then deleted it before sending because you didn’t want him distracted while he was out doing very dangerous Bullseye things.
You showered instead, and the water was too hot at first, but you didn’t fix it quickly enough, so your skin felt like it was boiling across your chest and shoulders. You washed your hair. Then the wet texture clung to your back and made you angry, so you wrapped them in one of Dex’s old shirts instead of a towel because it was softer.
You put on your sleep shorts and the gray shirt of his you always stole.
It smelled like the detergent you both used now, not specifically like him, which made you strangely sad.
You tried to eat.
There were pasta leftovers in the fridge. Dex had labelled the container DO NOT EAT in black marker, then added unless you are my girlfriend beneath it in smaller writing because you had told him one you liked one of those cheesy jokes, and Dex being Dex, listened and manufactured it into his life even though he got no real enjoyment out of it. You heated it up, took three bites, and put them back because the tomato sauce was chunky, and it felt weird on your tongue even though technically, there was nothing wrong with it. .
So you made tea and forgot the bag until it went bitter.
You turned on the television, then muted it because the voice of the newscaster irritated you. The silence irritated you too, so you turned it back on quietly with subtitles.
At some point, you checked the locks twice.
You knew Dex would not use the door when he came back. He would use the fire escape.
On most nights, the thought made you smile. Tonight, you wanted him to use his key like a normal person.
You wanted to hear it turn in the lock like a warning. You wanted him to call your name from the entrance so you had time to prepare for being touched.
But whatever. He probably didn't even bring his keys.
You climbed into bed with the lamp on.
Usually, you liked Dex coming home with that focus still in his eyes. You even loved the way he sometimes stood at the foot of the bed and looked at you as if he had followed you there. You liked the games he played to rile you up, because Dex knew exactly how to frighten you without making you unsafe. You liked restraints because he checked every knot, every buckle, every inch of space between your skin and whatever held you down.
You liked being helpless when it was Dex.
Usually.
But tonight, you just wanted him.
You wanted to press your face into his chest and let him complain that your wet hair was soaking his shirt. You wanted him to ask what happened, accept “nothing” as the answer, and hold you still.
The fire escape groaned outside the window.
Then the living room window slid open, and Dex climbed in with blood on his sleeve, still.
You were in that half-sleep state where your body had gone heavy but your mind was still floating somewhere above it, listening to the hum of the television you had left on in the living room and the old pipe knocking faintly in the wall. You were even still aware of your breathing, too shallow to be restful.
You knew what Dex was like after a long night. You knew the way adrenaline ran in his body like a live wire, making him hungry and a little fucking insane. Usually, you were more than happy to let him spend the rest of it on you.
That was the arrangement, after all.
The free use thing had happened over weeks of conversations, some serious, some filthy, some with you sitting cross-legged on the bed while Dex sat on the floor taking it all in like he was memorising a mission brief. What was okay, what was not. It was discussed and re-discussed, picked apart in daylight until even Dex’s paranoid brain had nothing left to gnaw on.
You had said it first half as a joke, grinning over your mug while Dex sat opposite you at the kitchen table looking like you had just handed him a loaded gun.
“What, you don’t like the idea?” you had teased.
His eyes had gone dark in a way that made your thighs press together beneath the table. “I like it too much.”
That had been the problem, Dex had always liked you too much, wanted you too much, so you made rules.
You told him what he could do if you were half-asleep, and what he could do if you were pretending to be asleep, which was different, because sometimes you liked lying there smug while Dex tried to kiss you patiently. You knew what he could do if he came home needy.
Most days, you loved Dex coming into the bedroom while you were still sleepy, his hands sliding under your shirt like he owned every inch of skin he found there. You loved the first drag of his mouth against your shoulder and the rough sound he made when you pressed back into him without opening your eyes. You loved pretending to be annoyed while he kissed down your spine and told you that he knew you were awake because your thighs were already sticky for him.
You loved being wanted like that, loved Dex murmuring filthy nonsense against your skin about how pretty you were, how good you were for him even when you were barely awake. You loved the way he could make free use feel less like being used and more like being worshipped.
Sometimes he was sweet about it, climbing into the bed clean and careful, gathering you back against his chest, and kissing you awake inch by inch like he had all the time in the world. He would slide one hand over your stomach and whisper your name until you made that cute complaining sound he loved, and then he would laugh like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Sometimes he was not sweet, still shaking with adrenaline and put a hand over your mouth before you could say something naughty, only to kiss your temple immediately. Sometimes he pinned your wrists because you liked to fight him for show, and he liked pretending not to know you were letting him win. Sometimes he found you half-asleep and still managed to fuck you awake so thoroughly that by the time you could think again, your face was hot, your hair was a mess, and Dex was in your ear telling you how good you were for letting him have you.
You liked that.
But tonight, your body had already been handled by the entire fucking day. Your nerves had been touched and touched and touched until touch did not feel like touch anymore. It felt more like threat.
You knew that, but then Dex came home and your first thought was still I want him.
You then heard the movement of him walking around the apartment, and not like a direct line to the bathroom, or the kitchen. Not even to check the lock, which he always did even when he had just broken into his own home like a lunatic.
Instead, he was coming to you.
The bedroom door was half-open, and you kept your eyes closed.
You told yourself it was because you were too tired to move, but part of you liked the game. Part of you wanted to be found like this, buried in the middle of the bed in his shirt and your sleep shorts, pretending you hadn’t been waiting all night, helping you forget the day, forget the job, forget everything except getting his hands on the one thing in the world that belonged to him.
He stopped in the doorway, and before you knew it, the mattress dipped.
Dex was always careful at first, even when he was feral. He put a hand beside your hip, not touching yet. His breathing was slow, but not steady. You could hear the way he held himself back for the sake of a rule he wanted to break only because you had once told him breaking it in the right way turned you into putty.
His fingers touched your ankle beneath the blanket, almost testing.
Your body gave a tiny shiver.
Dex went still, before his hand slid higher, possessive enough to make heat flicker through the exhaustion. His palm travelled up the back of your calf, over the bend of your knee, over your thigh. You heard him exhale, and the sound was so hungry it made your stomach flip despite everything.
“Pretty girl,” he whispered.
Your face warmed.
Stupid body. Stupid, fucking traitorous body.
He leaned over you, and his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder where his shirt had slipped wide at the collar. He started with one kiss, quickly followed by another. It became open-mouthed and filthy, like he was trying to be gentle and got overwhelmed. His hand found your waist beneath the shirt, fingers spreading against your skin.
For one second, it worked.
Your violent, devoted, half-mad Dex came home through windows and touched you like you were the only object of desire in the universe, who could make you feel filthy and adored at the same time, who could make being half-asleep feel like the dirtiest kind of safety.
His mouth moved to your neck, hand tightened at your waist.
“Missed you,” he breathed, rough against your skin. “Been thinking about you all night.”
Your thighs pressed together beneath the blanket before you could stop them.
Dex noticed and made a small sound against your throat, almost broken with relief, and shifted closer until his body was against your back. His hand slid over your hip, tugging you back into him.
For one second, you really wanted it.
Your body remembered him before it remembered itself. It remembered all the other nights he had come home ruined and desperate and crawled into bed like your body was the only place he knew where to put the violence. It remembered waking up already breathless to his greedy hands, his mouth saying filthy, adoring things against your skin until you went undone beneath him.
For one second, you wanted to be that girl again.
Dex’s hand tightened on your hip, and your breath broke in a way that sounded enough like pleasure to confuse both of you. He pressed his face into your neck and inhaled like he was trying to crawl inside your veins.
“Color?” he asked, it was rough, but still good of him.
You meant to say yellow.
The word was right there, sitting behind your tongue. Yellow meant slow down, meant you wanted him, but you needed him kinder. It would mean this was good, but also too much. But Dex’s mouth was on your throat, and his hand was warm under your shirt, and you had missed him so badly all day that admitting you needed less felt like losing him for a stupid reason.
So you said, “Green.”
Dex exhaled against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured.
You nodded, eyes still closed.
You should have said yellow again then. You should have corrected yourself because there was still a good amount of space to do it, while his hand was only at your waist and his mouth was only at your neck, but your mind was gone and your body had betrayed you with that little shiver, and Dex had never been the best at reading the small things. He was more a flashing lights kinda guy.
Feelings had to be handed to him with both hands. It had had to be said plainly, right in front of his face, with no riddles and no hoping he would guess. Dex, through no fault of his own other than his upbringing, didn’t always know the difference between you trembling because you were turned on and you trembling because your nerves were fraying apart unless you told him.
He caught your hip and flipped you onto your back in one rough movement, fast enough that the mattress jolted under you and your breath left in a startled little sound. Dex was above you immediately, one knee between your thighs, one hand braced beside your head, his eyes blown wide with whatever the night had left in him. There was blood at the edge of his collar, and a smear of it near his wrist. His hair was damp from the rain, falling over his forehead in a way that made him look more unhinged at the same time.
“Missed you,” he said, voice wrecked.
Your stomach flipped.
Fuck, he was beautiful like this. Even terrifying, he was beautiful, and you had built so much of your wanting around those two things. Dex looked down at you like he wanted to ruin you and worship whatever was left.
His hand slid to your chin, possessive.
Your thighs pressed together on instincts held apart by his leg between them.
“Mmm ,” he whispered. “My pretty girl.”
Heat curled in you, slick and stupid, even as your skin prickled at the edges. Your bad day had not killed the part of you that loved being grabbed by him, turned by him, handled by him. You loved Dex rough because Dex rough still meant Dex focused, Dex obsessed, Dex so fucking hungry for you that the rest of the world could plunge itself into a void and he wouldn’t give two shits.
His mouth was on yours before you could think. The kiss was hard enough to make your head press back into the pillow. His hand stayed at your chin, holding you there while he took your mouth in a way that made your body go loose for him out of habit. You kissed him back, finger catching the front of his shirt, and when you pulled, Dex made a groan against your lips Then his hand went to the hem of your shirt.
His shirt, technically. He dragged it up your body impatiently, and the cool air hit your skin. You lifted your arms for him before you remembered you were tired.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Your face went hot.
He threw the shirt behind him.
Usually, you would have laughed and he would have said something deadpan and filthy enough to shut you up. Tonight, the loss of the shirt made you feel exposed too quickly, like your body had not agreed to be perceived that much even if your mind wanted to.
But then Dex kissed down your throat, and you forgot for a second.
His hands were everywhere, greedy at your waist, your ribs, your thighs, reminding himself you were real, coaxing himself out of whatever horror he had done.
You arched under him, and that was honest too.
Your back lifted as your hands found his shoulders. He caught both your wrists in one hand and pressed them above your head, pinning them there against the pillow.
His eyes lifted to yours, fever-bright. “Yeah?”
You swallowed, and this time, no color came out.
Dex took it for yes because it did feel like a yes to you. Usually, you liked being held down. Tonight, you were too tired to know the difference.
Dex reached for the drawer beside the bed.
Your heart jumped, not in fear at first, but in anticipation.
You knew that drawer and what was in it. The rope came out in his hand.
Your breath caught.
“Still green?” he asked.
Say yellow.
Say yellow.
Say yellow.
You looked up at him, at the way his chest rose and fell. You thought about the whole day: the train, office, light, the way you had cried on the hallway floor because your coat had fallen.
You thought, I can take it.
So you said, “Green.”
Dex looked relieved and hungry and dangerously grateful, like he had been waiting all night for permission to stop being human in exactly the way you usually loved.
He tied your wrists to the headboard, roughly, because he was Dex.
He checked the space between rope and skin automatically, two fingers, always. Your wrists went up as the expensive silken rope was bound to the bedframe.
Your body went liquid for one dizzy second.
You loved the helplessness that made your brain melt in a good way. It was a dirty drop of the heart, knowing you couldn’t reach for him now unless he let you. You loved how Dex looked at you when you were restrained, like your trust was the most intimate thing you had ever given him.
“Look at you,” he whispered.
You looked at him looking at you, and for a moment, it was perfect.
Then the rope shifted just slightly. The knot didn’t tighten or hurt. Still, it felt wrong.
The texture scraped your skin in a way it never had before. You could feel every fiber, every point of contact. Your skin pressing against the rope seemed to get louder than everything else in the room somehow, louder than Dex’s breathing, louder than your own heartbeat.
Your fingers flexed, and the rope moved again.
Your stomach dropped.
No.
You tried to breathe through it.
You tried to get the good feeling back. You tried to look at Dex, at his face, at the hunger you usually loved so much. You tried to remind your body that this was chosen and safe and that Dex had checked. That you had said green twice. That you loved this. You loved this. You loved this!
But the rope kept touching you and it felt like pure, crawling wrongness. The feeling started at your wrists and travelled up your arms until your shoulders froze and your chest went tight. The knot might as well have been around your throat for how quickly your breathing changed.
Dex lowered his mouth to your chest, still murmuring something against your skin,filthy and half-mad.
You barely heard it as your eyes filled.
At first, you did not even know you were crying. Then a tear slipped sideways into your hair, then another.
Dex felt you go still, and this time, he noticed immediately.
His head lifted. “Hey,” he said.
You blinked hard, but the tears came faster.
Dex froze above you, that predatory stance gone now.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, panic filling the back of his eyes, unable to read your thoughts.
You couldn’t answer.
His eyes moved over your face, your mouth, your chest, your wrists. He looked almost frantic trying to identify the injury. Was it blood? Bruises, pulled shoulder? Dex was good at identifying wounds.
Emotions made him useless unless you labelled them for him, but this was blatant enough that even Dex understood something was wrong.
“Baby,” he said, voice suddenly stripped bare. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Your breath caught as the rope brushed your wrist again when you moved.
You made a horrible little sound, unable to speak.
Dex’s eyes snapped to your hands.
“What?” he said, reaching up but not touching yet. “The rope?”
You nodded once, almost ashamed.
He nodded grimly. “What about the rope?”
“I-It feels wrong,” you choked.
Dex went white.
Your fingers flexed again, and the texture dragged at your skin, and suddenly you couldn't bear it for one more second. Not even half of one. Your whole body reacted around the rejection, and the word whispered out of you before you had decided to say it. “Red.”
Dex moved instantly.
His hand went to his belt and to his weapons, and for one horrifying second your body thought knife and almost spiralled further under, but Dex was not looking at you like that anymore.
He pulled the blade free with the same face he wore disarming a bomb.
“Don’t move,” he said, practical.
He didn’t untie the rope, because untying took time.
Dex cut it, a clean slice through the first binding, then the second. The rope fell away from your wrists in loose pieces, useless on the pillow, and Dex threw the knife across the room like he couldn’t stand to have it near you a second longer.
Your arms dropped free, and he was already backing away.
Dex had stopped being a man and become an emergency response. His shoulder hit the dresser, hands lifted, palms open.
You were crying, that was all he saw.
Because of me, he thought.
“I’m away,” he said, a little too loudly and too quickly. “I’m away. I’m not touching you.”
His voice was flat. Dex had never been truly calm a day in his life, so was just forcing panic into a box in his mind that was labeled “procedure.”
You tried to say his name, but it came out broken, and it made him worse.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I can go. I should go. You need space. You need me out. I’ll go to the living room. No, not the living room, that’s not far enough. I’ll go downstairs. Outside. I can wait outside. I won’t come back until you tell me. I won’t touch you, I won’t—”
“Dex—”
“I hurt you.”
You wiped at the tears from your eyes now. “Y-you didn’t.”
He wasn’t listening.
His eyes kept dropping to your wrists. His mouth had gone pale and his hands were still up, still shaking slightly like he didn’t trust them anywhere near you.
You said red and you’re crying, was all he could think of.
“I hurt you.” he said, words coming faster now. “I scared you. I tied you down and you cried. I had a knife in my hand. I shouldn’t have had the knife, I knew I was—”
“Dex.”
“I’ll go.”
You tried to get back up, but even the sheets were starting to crawl as you were getting more and more overwhelmed. “N-No.”
“I need to go.”
“Dex,” it came out breathy.
“I need to not be near you right now.”
“Nuh-uh. Dex—”
“I can’t be the reason you’re looking at me like that.”
You were crying harder now because he was spiralling, and you were spiralling, and the two of you were dragging each other down in opposite directions. Dex kept retreating. You kept trying to pull him back with a voice that was too fragile to reach him.
He turned toward the door, and you finally snapped.
“I need you!”
He froze.
The shout tore out of you raw, loud enough to hurt your throat. Dex stopped like you had fired a warning shot.
You shoved yourself upright, blanket slipping around your waist, cheeks wet, chest heaving.
“Stop,” you sobbed. “Don’t you dare fucking leave while I’m-I’m l-like this.”
His face fell, panic still prevalent. “I’m trying not to make it worse.”
You choked on a breath. “You are making it worse!”
Dex went still.
You pointed at the floor like you could physically pin him there with the gesture. “You are standing over there looking at me like you’re a monster and you keep talking about leaving and I can’t— I can’t do this too, okay? I can’t comfort you while you’re trying to punish yourself. I need you.”
He looked devastated, and maybe that meant he was finally listening.
“I just—” Your voice broke, and the next words came out almost screamed, because gentleness wasn’t cutting it anymore. “I just need you to hold me, you fucking idiot!”
Dex stared at you, looking completely lost.
Every terrible conclusion he had been building in his head had slammed into that sentence like a shield and shattered at his feet.
“You want me to hold you?” he asked, barely audible.
“Yes,” you cried. “Jesus Christ, yes.”
His hands lowered by an inch.
“But I scared you.”
“Because I was already scared of everything,” you managed through gritted teeth.
“You said red.”
“And you stopped!”
You could see it finally go through to him. His eyes flicked to the cut rope, then to your wrists, then back to your face. He was still terrified of himself, but he stopped backing away.
“I need you clean,” you said, voice shaking. “Then I need you here.”
He moved immediately.
Thank God.
Giving him an instruction helped him. Dex disappeared into the bathroom with stiff purpose, and you heard water slam on. As he scrubbed his hands too hard. You heard him almost losing it over the sink and forcing himself not to because you had not asked for that.
When he came back, the blood was gone.
His shirt was gone too, replaced with the white sleeveless one you liked, because it made him look less like he had crawled out of an alley and more like the man who lived here. Your man, who slept with one hand searching for you.
He stopped by the bed, still afraid to presume after what happened.
You opened your arms.
He climbed onto the bed slowly, gave you every second to change your mind, and only closed his arms around you when you grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him in.
Then he was truly in, and you folded into him.
You cried into his chest with both fists clenched in his shirt, and Dex held you like he was learning how to touch you all over again.
“Tighter,” you sobbed.
His arms tightened.
“More.”
He held you properly then, careful but not distant. His chin tucked over your head, one hand spread between your shoulder blades, the other on your back, keeping you against him without trapping you. You could feel his heartbeat racing under your cheek, and still, yours was worse.
For a while, neither of you said anything.
Words had been too much all day. Everything had been too much all day. So this was good.
Dex pressed his mouth to your hair.
“I just had a bad day,” you whispered into his chest.
His arms tightened again.
You felt him inhale. “All day?” he asked.
You nodded.
His hand flexed against your back.
He wanted to ask, you could feel it. He wanted names, causes, targets, so he could follow them home and put them through a wall for making you feel like this. But for once, he held it in.
You cried harder, because he was warm and clean and finally close enough. “I meant to say yellow,” you whispered.
His chest stopped moving for a second.
“I know,” you added, before he could spiral again. “I know I said green. I know. I just wanted to be okay. I wanted it to be like usual.”
Dex didn’t speak for a long moment.
Then he held you a little closer and pressed his cheek to the top of your head. “Okay,” he said roughly.
It sounded like he was swallowing glass.
You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was serious, jaw tight, laying in bed with the woman he loved crying all over his shirt, trying to work out how to shoot a bad day.
And then, with absolute sincerity, he asked, “Do you want me to kill anyone?”
You stared at him.
He meant it.
Fuck.
It was so shocking, so cathartic, that a sudden laugh burst out of you, half-strangled against his chest. You tried to stop it, but the look on his face only made it worse. He frowned slightly, earnest, still holding you like he would rather die than move wrong.
“I’m serious,” he said.
You laughed harder. “Dex.”
“What?”
“You can’t kill someone because I had a bad day.”
His brow furrowed. “Why not?”
“Oh my God.”
“If there’s a person responsible—”
“There isn’t.”
“There’s usually a person responsible.”
“There was Brad from HR.”
You blinked at him. “How do you know about Brad from HR?”
“You texted me about him once.”
“That was, like, six months ago.”
“I remember things.”
Despite yourself, you laughed again.
You buried your face against him again, laughing and crying at the same time until you could barely breathe. Dex still looked confused, but his arms settled securely around you. He understood this much, at least, when you pressed closer instead of pushing him away.
“I don’t need you to kill anyone,” you murmured once the laughter faded.
“Okay.”
“I just need you to hold me.”
His mouth pressed to your hair again. “That I can do,” he said.
And he did, held you until your breathing slowed, until the room stopped feeling like it was on fire.
After a while, very quietly, he added, “I would, though.”
You huffed a tired laugh into his shirt. “I know, honey.”
His arms tightened carefully around you.
“Just checking,” he said.
And because it was him, because he meant it with his whole heart, because the day had been awful and you were safe now, you laughed one last tiny laugh into the dark.
summary: being the object of a demigod's affection is what everyone wants, isn't it? that's why you're honored to be doted upon by apollo's favorite son, kal-el. but when your father forces you to separate from him and become a priestess instead, you learn that being the object of a demigod's affection - and the target of his Father - isn't something anyone should yearn for.
CWs: 18+ MDNI! eventual smut, demigod!clark x priestess reader, ancient greek au, fem!reader, no use of y/n, he's only called kal-el in this one, forbidden romance, so much ANGST, bits of fluff here and there, probable historical inaccuracies but i did a lot of research and tried my best so pls be nice to me, the gods are NOT nice, probably (definitely) blasphemy, i think that's most of it lol
favorite son - prologue
kal-el returns to you from a quest with his heart on his sleeve and a proposal with your name on it. what does he leave you with? a broken heart and a newfound hatred for his Father.
darkness - part one
five years after your denying of kal-el's proposal, you find yourself struggling to focus during delphi's final oracular ritual of the year. all you can think about is your former lover, his five-year long silence, and how much you hate your father and his.
daybreak - part two (finale)
when kal-el finally returns to you, he brings a few consequences with him. do either of you care enough about them to stay separated? and, more importantly - will apollo spare his favorite son for defiling his head priestess?
author's note: PUTTING THIS AT THE BOTTOM BC IT'S SO LONG LOL ANYWAY - many many thanks to my beloved @sparklingsin for creating the BEAUTIFUL, STUNNING, SEXY, GORGEOUS graphic up at there at the top of this masterlist. ash you are a genius and a scholar and i adore you. i can never thank you enough for that. also, thank you to my beautiful perfect bestie @clarkscolumn for helping me so much with the drafting process on this one. it would literally not exist without you (and i would not exist without your soul to be intertwined with) so i owe you endless thanks and hugs and love. finally, i know that this is so different from my usual thing here. i know that. but as a greek mythology kid and lover of apollo, im a little bit shocked that no one else saw the connection between him and clark. i am being the change i want to see in the world.
House hunting in the suburbs with Dex and your son?🤞
Finding the Perfect House with Dex
TW: domestic fluff!!!!! A bit suggestive towards the end. Set after DDBA season 2. You and Dex have a son called Leo, Husband! Dex x Wife! Reader (lmk if you I missed anything)
WC: 1.7k
Could be read as a one-shot but this is technically part of What Makes a Good Man?
House hunting with Dex had been great, actually.
Which was weird, because eight years ago your husband was imprisoned for multiple counts of murder. Because not too long ago, your husband was breaking out of prison, and now he was standing beside you at house viewings, asking estate agents questions about roofing, school districts, and whether the windows were double-glazed.
Most of this happened because Dex had a stupid amount of CIA money now, which meant you had a stupid amount of CIA money, too.
Mr. Charles paid well, like, “thank you for doing morally grey things in countries we will never admit you visited” well.
And Dex was legitimate now. Technically.
Charles was his handler, as per his government contracts. He had the paperwork to prove it. He wasn’t sleeping in safehouses anymore, not showing up at the apartment bleeding because he “had it under control.” He was coming home after a week-long mission in Madripoor, kissing you hello, showering, putting Leo to bed, and then sitting at the kitchen table with a laptop open looking at mortgage calculators.
So suddenly your Saturdays had become house viewings.
So fucking many house viewings.
He had a spreadsheet and a calendar specifically for viewing times. He packed snacks for Leo and carried him when he got tired. He started asking realtors questions about roof age and damp surveys and driveway sizes. He held your hand through front doors, and you loved watching him check locks without even realising he was doing it. You loved the way Leo ran from room to room yelling, “This one! No, this one! No, this one!” like every empty bedroom could be his.
But there were so many not-perfect houses.
One had a backyard that was technically a yard in the same way a crisp packet in a puddle was technically a water feature. Another had carpet in the bathroom, which should have been illegal. Dex said one had “not good enough sightlines down the stairs.” The last one you saw had “loads of potential,” which meant “please imagine this house after spending ninety thousand dollars.”
Sometimes, a house would be perfectly fine, on the outside. But then Leo would tug on Dex’s sleeve, look up at him very seriously, and say, “Daddy, I have bad feeling about this.”
And that was it, viewing over.
You and Dex would just exchange one look like, knowing Leo must’ve sensed something very wrong with the house. You wouldn’t even go upstairs. You’d just tell the estate agent something like thank you for your time, goodbye forever.
Because you both knew better than to question your son’s supernatural premonitions.
Then, this week you got to the house.
And, oh, you loved it immediately.
It wasn’t super-fancy. It was a Goldilocks-level of just right.
The hallway had enough space for Leo’s shoes, because Dex, who could never say no to his son, had been buying him every possible pair of dino shoes to the point that you had to buy an extra cabinet just for your little boy. The kitchen had beautiful lights. The living room had a corner where Dex would pretend he wasn’t watching you read. Upstairs, Leo found a bedroom with a window facing the garden and his eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
Then he saw the backyard.
It was bigger than you expected. It had a tree and a cute little swing set near the fence.
Leo stepped outside holding Dex’s hand and looked up at him with his own hopeful little eyes staring back at him. “Is this all mine?”
Oh, fuck off. That. Was. So. Cute.
Dex crouched, brushed Leo’s hair back, and said, “Whatever you say, buddy.”
Whatever you say.
Of course he didn’t say “maybe” or “we’ll see” or “don’t get your hopes up, kid! Only if the offer goes through.”
And right then and there, you knew Dex was gone gone.
You should’ve scolded him for possibly giving his son false hope, but then you watched Leo run to the swings and your stupid heart began rearranging itself.
You could see it now: Dex would stand by that kitchen window with coffee and you would complain about the school run. Leo would bring in worms and call them friends.
This was it, wasn’t it? This was the house.
Then the little girl appeared at the fence.
You were the only one close enough to hear, and Dex was inside with the estate agent, asking something about the boiler.
Leo was on the swing, pushing himself badly and loving every second of it, when the girl leaned over from next door.
“Hi!”
Leo lit up. “Hi! I’m Leo Poindexter.”
He always said it now, because Dex had taught him how to say his full name, slowly, syllable by syllable, but he got there eventually. Le-o Poin-Dex-Ter, he would practice again and again in the mirror, finally being able to legally use his father’s name, even though he didn’t know why he couldn’t before.
He said it to nurses, shop assistants, delivery drivers, dogs, one pigeon, everyone. Apparently, to his future neighbor.
“Hi!” The girl smiled. “I’m Danielle Cage.”
And your heart dropped.
Cage.
CAGE.
As in Luke Cage? As in Jessica Jones? Hello????
You stood there with a polite smile stapled to your face while your brain started going through every fucking scenario possible.
Leo said, “Do you want to see my Iguanadon socks?”
“Sure!” Danielle Cage climbed over her side of the fence and landed in the garden without even breathing hard.
Right. If you had any doubts that that girl might not be the Cage, it was erased right there and then.
Your son, delighted, showed her the socks. And Danielle nodded, telling him her daddy was going to build her a swing too one day.
You said nothing, because what were you supposed to say?
Sorry, sweetheart, I’m sure you’re lovely, but can you go home because your parents are too competent and inconvenient for our family dynamic?
You let Leo play for a few more minutes because he was happy and you were weak. Then you left the house with Dex beside you, Leo half-asleep in the back seat of your car, and your stomach somewhere around your ankles.
That night in the apartment, after Leo finally passed out clutching one of his dinosaurs, you told Dex.
“The neighbour’s kid is Danielle Cage.”
Dex paused, but only for a split second. He took off his watch and set it on the dresser.
“Dex,” you sighed, “are you even listening to me?”
He looked at you and walked across your bedroom slowly.
You stepped back, pointing at him. “Don’t do that.”
He kept walking you back until you hit the edge of the bed with the back of your knees. Still, he said nothing. He was calculating.
“Luke Cage would live next door,” you said, because you were still trying to be reasonable. “Jessica Jones would live next door. That woman will take one look at us and know we’re hiding things.”
For example, your son’s mutation.
Dex’s hands eventually settled on your waist.
“Leo loves it,” he murmured.
“Leo loves cheese puffs. That doesn’t mean we buy him a factory.”
His head dipped and kissed the corner of your mouth.
You stopped mid-breath.
Oh. So this is what he had resorted to now.
“Cheap trick,” you whispered.
Dex hummed against your skin.
Oh, you hated him.
Except you didn’t. You were catastrophically in love with him, and Dex knew it. Worse than that, he knew you. He knew when you needed to spiral and when you needed to be held and when your brain was building a doomsday bunker out of perfectly valid concerns.
He had learned, very early into marriage, that kissing you could be a strategy.
You had a lot to say, but Dex had discovered that if he kissed you gently enough, touched you carefully enough, your arguments would start dissolving
And he was a competitive man.
“You can’t seduce me into agreeing to move next door to the fucking Cages,” you said.
Dex placed a well-timed kiss under your jaw.
You closed your eyes. “Dex.”
His fingers tightened slightly at your waist. He wasn’t trapping, and you could have pushed him away.
But you didn’t because you liked it.
“You’ve made up your mind,” you realised, weaker now.
He laid you on the bed gently, hovered over you, and kissed you properly then.
Eventually, your thoughts drop one by one until all that was left in your mind was Dex, Dex, Dex.
You clutched his shirt as he smiled against your mouth.
“Don’t be so smug,” you breathed.
He kissed you again.
Bastard.
You were still trying. Kind of.
“She’s the best private investigator in the city,” you mumbled when he resorted to giving you open-mouthed kisses to your throat.
“We’re gonna have a bulletproof neighbour,” you held back a moan, because Leo was asleep in the next room.
He went back up, kissing the sensitive spot under your ear.
“They probably have a super strong child.”
You felt him laugh silently against your neck. “At least Leo doesn’t have to be different alone.”
Oh.
Oh, right.
Dex lifted his head, and his face was close. His eyes were on you like you were the only future he had already decided to build.
“We’ll handle it,” he said.
You hated that you loved that certainty.
You loved that Dex could still be scared of so many things and yet not this. How could he be scared of Leo having a yard? How could he be scared of that perfect attic you would turn into your private library?
He kissed you again before you could speak, because, frankly, he had learned this trick too well.
Your hands slid into his hair.
By the time you could think again, you were tucked against his chest, his arm around your waist, your legs tangled under the blanket.
“You weaponised your kisses again,” you whispered.
His fingers moved through your hair and kissed the top of your head. “Mm.”
You playfully pinched his side, and he caught your hand and held it against his chest.
For a while, neither of you said anything. Then, because apparently you had no survival instincts left, you sighed.
“Fine,” you finally said, “We can put in an offer.”
Dex’s arms tightened around you.
And that was how your husband, newly legitimate CIA asset, former walking red flag, kissed you into agreeing to maybe move next door to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones.
(Later, Dex would bring up the fact that Luke couldn’t exactly judge him for the whole Charles thing when he used to work for Charles, too.)
Not beta'd. I do not give permission for my work to be reposted, copied, translated or put through an AI machine. all my work is 18+. Dividers by @/saradika-graphics
Tags/warnings: Bucky being an idiot, Bucky being a romantic, fluff
Summary: When Prince Rogers and your Lady begin courting officially, you're forced to be close to the man you hate most: Bucky.
Word count:1.8k
A/N: This was originally going to be in Flufftober but I changed it last minute. For anyone remembers this Steve fic, yeah... enjoy the inspiration!
Bucky Masterlist | Navigation
'Twas swooning season, apparently.
Your face is set like stone as you stroll behind your lady, who is deep in conversation and light laughter with the Prince of Angieon; Steve Rogers. Although you know your lady is not prone to fainting, nor does she hold much stead in pathetic courting rituals; she has still brought her fan with her, and occasionally flutters it - prompting the prince's cheeks to go pink each time.
Whatever fan-signal she sends her husband-to-be works - because the prince seems ready to swoon at her feet. However, just as you make a mental note to tease her for it later, an annoying sound pierces your ears and you're forced to glance to your left.
Bucky, the prince's knight and best friend, was attempting to make small talk again.
"It's a lovely day for a walk." He says flexing his right arm over the hilt of sword.
"Yes. Indeed." You say coolly focusing back on your Lady and her prince.
"Heard it was your idea." Bucky continues. "The walk."
"Yes."
"You still haven't forgiven me, have you?" Bucky sighs.
"My, whatever gave you that impression?" Your body is taught, head and neck stiff as you keep your eyes forward.
Steve says something in a hushed tone and your Lady laughs. A pang of jealousy strikes your chest. If only you could have experienced something so pure.
"I've apologised countless times already." Bucky says in a desperate whisper.
"Quiet." You hiss over at him. "I don't need my Lady to know about her servant's business. Nor do I want to discuss it further."
Bucky clamps his mouth shut with a frown. "Courting you isn't... it's not..."
You suck in a sharp breath and glower at him with the fury of a thousand suns. "Your cowardice is none of my concern."
You snap your head and beam at your Lady when she addresses you, answering her politely with an inclination of your head. When she turns away, your frown is back and your voice drips contempt.
"I'm not one of your love-sick damsels, Bucky." You snap. "Go and bay at some other poor creature's window and let her take pity on you instead."
You take a few long strides to get ahead of him, leaving him to sulk behind you. You don't look back. You don't need him to see how your eyes are full to the brim with tears.
Your words struck harder than any blow a man could have dealt him and they echo in Bucky's mind long after the walk has finished and Steve gushes about his future wife-to-be.
"Isn't she the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?" Steve sighs dreamily.
"Yes, your highness." Bucky replies, remembering how you'd looked at him with such gentle care - like he'd break into a thousand pieces at your soft touch.
And then he'd scorned you.
"She's so- so- gah! I can't think of an adjective fitting enough!" Steve is practically frolicking from each side of the room.
Bucky can't remember the last time he himself had frolicked. Or if he ever would. "Yes, your highness."
Steve's frolicking ceases suddenly as he turns to look at his best friend, who's sitting sullen in a dark corner, growing mushrooms. Steve had never seen him look so glum.
"I take it you're mystery woman didn't work out?" Steve questions, sitting backwards on a chaor opposite Bucky.
"Something like that, your-"
"If you say your highness once more I'll throw something at you." Steve sighs, crossing his arms across the top of the chair and resting his head on top of them. "You know you can refer to me by my name in private."
Bucky sighs, slumping further into himself. "Sorry. But yes, the mystery woman didn't work out."
Steve studies Bucky for a moment. "May I ask how come? I've never seen you this upset over a woman before. Surely, a woman didn't finally break your heart?"
"No." Bucky replies and Steve grins. "But I ruined everything."
That wipes the smile off Steve's face. "How so?"
"I said I cannot be with her." Bucky sighs. "My duty is to you and the Kingdom. A knight-"
Steve looks utterly aghast. "You said what?"
"I- well," Bucky shrugs helplessly. "It would never have worked out."
Steve's mouth hangs open. "You mean to tell me that this mystery woman you have been chasing for months... you- you-" Steve runs his hands over his face and groans loudly. "You're such a fool."
"Surprisingly," Bucky chuckles wryly. "She has been telling me similar."
"No wonder." Steve harrumphs, slumping into a chair. "There is no rule for you not to marry." He says finally, eyes closed and brows furrowed. "I'm not understanding your logic, Buck."
Bucky rolls his shoulders, half shrug, half releasing the tension in his muscles. It didn't make sense out loud - not really. However, Bucky knew that his dedication to the kingdom and to Steve would always trump whoever he would be married to. And when it came to you in particular, he didn't think he would be able to fulfill his duty.
You would always, always, come first.
Well, up until a fortnight ago.
He had thought that it was best if he put an end to your secret courtship; best for the both of you. Best for him. Stupidly, he had not expected that your warm demeanour would shift to cold. Gone was the kindness and the gentle caresses of your hand brushing against his when he'd accompany you to the market to give the prince and his fianceé some privacy. Instead, he felt as if you were now leagues apart - the look of irreprable despair on your face when he told you things had to end haunting every waking moment. The fact of the matter was he loved you and that he could not do anything about it.
He tells Steve as much, who throws up his hands in exasperation.
"Why did you not tell me?" He huffs and Bucky smiles. Of course his best friend would be upset over a secret romance.
"Because you are so in love," Bucky replies coolly. "I didn't want to trouble you with this trivial matter."
"Love is not trivial." Steve argues. "She's unlike your other flings, correct?"
Bucky nods. "Entirely different."
"And she feels the same way?"
"She did," Bucky sighs. "I wouldn't be surprised if she hates my guts at present."
"Then all is not lost." Steve says jumping up. "If she truly loved you, her heart would not be fickle. Her anger at you demonstrates as much."
Bucky blinks at him in disbelief. "You cannot be serious."
"Deathly." Steve says seriously. "Now, tell me. Who is she? I wish to help you devise a plan to win her back."
Your Lady had been at afternoon tea with the Queen the following day, dismissing you from your usual duties. The day had been warm enough to read in the sunshine, the evening cold enough to hurry you inside; yet, the sky remained clear enough to see the stars. You sat in the stone crevice of you window gazing up into the night, thanking the powers that be from thwarting further emotional investment on such a cowardly knight.
You may have wished upon a star that there was a different outcome, and you sigh away thoughts of what could have been.
That is, until, a voice beckons you from the darkness below. You squint downward and a warm firey glow from a torch illuminatws a man's face.
"Bucky?"
He grins up at you. "Good evening, my lady."
You roll your eyes and pull a sour face. "How did you get in?"
"I'm a future king's knight." He says, as if it answers your question entirely.
"Very well," you snap. "What are you doing here?"
His face falters for a second - struggling to keep his smile under your hard gaze. "To see you. I wish to speak with you." He pauses to swallow a lump in his throat. "To make ammends."
"Oh," you say, faux-excited. "Here is something for you to make ammends with."
Bucky tactfully dodges the silver jug you launch at him and watches ruefully as you close the wooden windows, shielding yourself from him. A quick glance to the darkness to his left with a shrug, has Steve pointing furiously at the trellis that clings to the wall, leading to your chambers. Bucky sighs.
You pace angrily. How dare he! It isn't enough to have embarassed you, but to get your hopes up too! You thump a pillow angrily, before hugging it to your body, and continue your pacing. A soft knock at your wooden shutters stops you.
No. He couldn't- he wouldn't- have.
You throw the shutters open and there is Bucky, half-hanging onto your window ledge. He looks sheepish, covered in scratches from the roses that trail the trellis but somehow still manages a smile.
"Please," he says quietly. "Listen to what I have to say."
You fold your arms and make no move to help into your room. He sighs in defeat and begins to talk.
"I was a fool. I am so incredibly sorry for hurting you." He dips his head. "But you must understand that my duty would be to the prince first and foremost."
You harrumph in response but he continues.
"However, the prince has informed me that I am also an incredibly small-minded fool amd that I would make a better court jester than a knight - if I do not make it right by you."
You raise an eyebrow and he wiggles slightly. Something snaps under his foot and his body slips slightly. Tensing, you sigh and reach over to him to help him up. He thanks you, and smiles like he hasn't ripped out your heart once already.
"You have apologised many times already." You tell him, picking a stay leaf from his mail.
"I wish to make it right, not apologise." He says firmly. He takes your hand in his softly, cautiously, careful not to break you. "I want you to be my wife."
You stare at him incredulous, heart beating like a cornered beast's. "Bucky you-"
"-are a fool? A wretch?" He interjects, holding your hand tighter. His eyes are fierce. He was serious. "I cannot for a moment think of my life without you. I wish to be selfish. Even if it means forgoing my duties."
"You- but the prince-"
"I have Steve's blessing." He says quickly. "I would be lying if I said that this entire evening was my idea."
It clicks. That was how he got in. The prince pulled strings; which meant...
"My lady also knows about this?"
"By morning, I will let everyone know." Bucky says. "I will shout it from the rooftops if I must; let everyone know that I am yours." He glances at you, eyes hopeful and voice low. "If you will have me?"
It is the longest moment of your life, until you remember to breathe again and fling your arms around his neck. "Of course, my beautiful fool!" You kiss his cheeks as he picks you up and spins you around your room. "Don't you ever be so stupid ever again!"
"Now that, my dear, I can promise."
END
Maybe we will see these two again! I quite like Knight!Bucky hehe 😈
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okay tasm!peter parker thought!!! he’s obsessed with touching your face. like, when you’re talking about something he’ll just randomly grab your face and smoosh your cheeks. he’ll boop or kiss your nose at random times. most importantly, when he’s kissing you he’ll be holding your face, his big hands on your cheeks guiding your head so he can kiss you better. omg
doughnuts
summary you're really excited about doughnuts. peter really wants to kiss you.
content tasm!peterparker x fem!afab!reader
note this is my first time writing for tasm!peter please forgive me if it sucks.
For the first time in a while, you come home after work with enough excitement to light up the entire flat.
Peter's sitting up in his bed reading when you find him. All things soft with rumpled hair, his clothes even worse, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. You're not sure if he really needs them anymore, but he likes to wear them to keep an ounce of normalcy.
"Hi," you chirp when he notices you. He dog-ears his book and puts it down almost immediately. You beam.
"Hi, baby," he seems just as happy to see you as you do him. Though, there's a buzz to you that Pete lacks. You think if you got home twenty minutes later he would've been napping.
You move across his room while pushing your work skirt down your legs. Peter's heart skips when it looks like you might trip and he tries to keep his eyes off your soft thighs. You rifle through his draws to find one of his shirts to wear, unbuttoning your own blouse in the process.
"How was your day?" you ask, holding up a shirt to your nose. You choose it because it smells more like your boyfriend than the others.
Peter crumples his face, trying not to laugh. "It was good. Didn't do much - you?"
You say something while pulling the shirt over your face that Pete can't discern. You all but jump into his lap when you reach him. Hooking your thighs over his lap until you're face to face.
He allows you to get comfy, pushing your knees into his side while he sits up, hands finding their place on your hips. "Hello," he says again, much quieter now that you're in his space. You look adorable in his shirt and your work tights.
"Did you hear me?" you ask, basically pulsing with giddy energy. You push your fingers under the hem of his shirt and he short-circuits for a moment.
He blinks. "You had your face in your shirt."
"Right," you giggle, a girlish sound that Peter wants seared in his brain, "I said, you know the food truck around the block?"
"You'll have to be more specific," he says, squeezing at your hips.
"The one that shut down."
"Oh, right. The Jam Van," he laughs knowingly. You'd moped for almost a month when they closed. You were inconsolable.
"Yeah," you grin, poking his chest, "yeah, they reopened!"
You're smiling so hard Peter worries that you'll get stuck like that. With your eyebrows raised and your cheeks appled. He thinks he needs to hold your face like right now.
He lets his hands leave your hips and raises them to hold your cheeks. Your skin is warm under his touch like he expected. "That's great, baby."
You ignore his hands. "Right? It's amazing."
Peter pushes your cheeks together until your lips pout outwards. He thinks you look extremely cute. Even worse when you try to frown and it just looks like a smooshed mess. He wants to laugh but you look peeved.
"Pete," you try to say. It comes out all mumbled.
"Yeah?" he says, distracted by your puffy face.
You pull your face from his hands and struggle a bit. Holding his arms to his chest you say, "Are you even listening to me?"
"The Jam Van," he says nodding. Smarmy.
"Right," you say, still mildly upset, "they're open right now if you wanna..."
"You wanna go get doughnuts?" he asks with his arms still pinned to his body. His hands wriggle to touch you.
"Can we?" you ask, eyes wide with hope. Peter wishes he had his camera with him.
"Can I kiss you first?" he grins boyishly. You wish you had a better resolve. He's awfully pretty and you really want doughnuts.
You let his arms go, huffing like kissing him is a difficult task. "If you really want." You have to hold back a laugh.
He reaches his hands back up to your cheeks and gives them another squeeze, "Of course, I want to."
You let him guide your face down to meet his lips, huffing into his mouth once they meet. You go lax in his lap when he presses firmer, spreading his fingers over your warming cheeks. He tilts your face upwards so he has better access to slip his tongue in your mouth. You whine when he has you exactly where he wants. Putty in his hold, holding you close by your soft cheeks.
You pull away from his lips, blinking away the dizziness. "Pete," you say panting.
Peter licks his lips, "Yeah?"
You push your face into his neck to hide the way he so obviously makes you feel, holding onto his sleep shirt for dear life. You try to even out your breathing and fail.
"You okay, love?" he asks. There's a hint of smartassery you don't miss. He's awful.
"Yeah," you say a tad breathlessly. "Yeah."
He kisses your shoulder and you shudder. His ego swells tenfold. "You sure?"
You take a moment to compose yourself, hating yourself for being so pliable. You sit back to look him in the eye. "So," you say with a confidence you lack, "Jam Van?"
Peter laughs and catches your face again. You like it much more than the first time. "That felt like coercion ."
"You asked to kiss me!" you say bewildered, pushing at his chest with not enough force than you feel is deserved.
"You tricked me," he laughs with you, letting you paw at his chest. It's quite adorable, really.
"Whatever," you say with more heat than you mean, a smile tugging at your red lips. You untangle yourself from his lap and stand to walk away. "I'll get my own jam doughnuts."
Peter smacks your ass before you can get away and you gasp. "Peter Parker!"
"You can't go out like that."
"I'll do what I like!" you call from the other end of the hallway.
Peter chases you around the flat until he gets you in his arms. The doughnuts wait for a few more hours.
Summary : Of course, out of everyone in the universe, you had to fall in love with a soldier from Brooklyn.
Pairing : Bucky Barnes x Guardian of The Galaxy! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Will they, won’t they trope, one night stand to lovers, fluff, angst-ish with a happy ending! grief/mourning, sexual content (including semi public sex, no anatomical detail as per usual). Childhood abuse/neglect, trauma dumping with Bucky, Reader is a humanoid alien described to have non-specific markings on her skin. Reader is described to have two hearts but looks like a human female otherwise. Reader is the daughter of Ego (half siblings to Star Lord and Mantis). Described the plot of GOTG vol 2, Infinity war, Endgame, GOTG vol 3, and a little bit of lead up Thunderbolts. Earth is referred to as Terra. Food. (Let me know if I missed anything!)
Word count : 13.7k
Note : This has been in the works for like, 6 months now, and I’m finally happy with how it turned out! The title is taken and inspired by “Let Me Down Easy” by Gang of Youths. Enjoy!
You told Peter Quill you would never live on Terra when you were thirteen years old.
You were sitting cross-legged on the floor of a Ravager ship with grease streaked on your cheek and a stolen ration bar in your hand. You had the confidence of a little girl who had never once seen Earth and had already decided it was not fun at all.
“You said your planet still uses wheels,” you said, horrified.
Peter looked up from where he was painting a blue stripe on one of Yondu’s old shoes because he thought it looked cool. “Wheels are useful,” he shrugged.
“They are primitive.”
“Cars are cool.”
“Cars are slow.”
“They have music.”
That, unfortunately, made you stop dead in your tracks, because Terra did have good music. Peter made sure everyone knew that. He had his cassette player and he treated it like the planet lived inside that little plastic box and those stupid orange headphones.
Still, you lifted your chin. “Fine,” you rolled your eyes. “One point for Terra. I’m still never moving there.”
Peter threw a bolt at you. You caught it without looking.
From the doorway, Yondu laughed,“Both of you kids are idiots.”
You grinned. Peter grinned. Yondu scoffed and pretended he didn’t love either of you.
Back then, you and Peter were just Ravager kids. You grew up with rooms under engine bays, learning how to steal and squeeze into tight spaces before you learned how to talk about feelings.
You called Peter your brother as a joke. He called you his sister, too, when he was annoyed with you, which was often. Mostly because you stole his snacks, rewired his blasters, and told alien girls he cried during Footloose (the girls would be so confused and ask what is a loose foot?).
Neither of you knew, until years later, that the joke turned out to be true.
Why would you even think that? You looked so different.
By the time you learned you were both children of Ego, everything was already falling apart. You and Peter both stood there with celestial light in your veins and heartbreak deep in your stomach.
Ego looked at you and Peter like you were not his children at all. To him you were not people, not family. You were not kids Yondu had fed, clothed, shouted at, protected, and raised in his own terrible way.
You and Peter were… batteries.
And then Yondu died.
What were you supposed to do then? How were you supposed to process the fact that your father was a monster and your daddy was fucking dead?
That grief changed you. It changed Peter, too.
For a while, neither of you joked about anything.
Yondu’s parenting hadn’t always been… healthy. He had been mean, loud, unfair. He pitted you and Peter against each other because he said it “builds character”. He taught you to steal, lie, shoot, and run,
But he had also taken you in. He tried his best and loved you, even if he never knew how to show it properly.
The Guardians became your family after that, making space for you the way that they made space for Peter.
And it didn’t take long for you to realise why your brother was so fond of them : no one really knew how to leave each other alone.
Rocket complained about everyone while making sure everyone had weapons that worked. Groot wrapped little branches around your wrist when he thought you were upset. Drax gave you advice that was almost always terrible and occasionally devastatingly profound. Gamora understood what it meant to be made by a monster, and yet still wanted to be better. Mantis, newcomer to the group, too, touched your hand one night and whispered that your sadness felt like a dying star.
The Guardians didn’t fix that grief, they could not. They filled that hollow emptiness with arguments over music, bad plans, worse jokes, emergency repairs, and shared meals.
You had been a Ravager first, but with this rag tag band of freaks, you became more than Ego’s child, more than Yondu’s ward. You were a Guardian of the Galaxy, with all the terrible decisions and accidental tenderness that came with it.
For a while, that was enough. What more could you ask for? Your family was insane and the galaxy kept trying to kill you in increasingly creative ways, which honestly felt normal enough. You had missions and people to annoy. You had Peter to bully whenever he got too sentimental about Terra. You had a place to stand. You had a reason to stay.
Then came Thanos, and Titan.
Titan was dead in a way that made your skin crawl. It was huge and orange and silent, a ruined sky stretching above you like the planet itself had given up long before you arrived.
The fight came back to you later in flashes, though your brain still struggled to fill in the full picture: You remembered Tony Stark bleeding into the ground and Stephen Strange looking at everything like he already knew the ending. You remembered Mantis holding on to the Mad Titan’s sleep with everything she had, small but braver than almost anyone gave her credit for. Peter Parker, an arachnid boy to the best of your understanding, had been fighting for his life. You remembered throwing yourself at him, blades in hand, the remnants of power burning beneath your skin. You hated the way it reminded you of Ego. You hated the way it made you feel like his daughter. But in that moment, with your chosen family around you and that monster in front of you, you used it anyway.
You were a guardian; and guardians didn’t have to be healed to fight for each other. You didn’t have to be whole.
But it was not enough.
The plan almost worked, which just made it worse. For one breathless second, it felt like you might actually pull it off. Mantis had him under and the gauntlet was right there. Everyone was moving, shouting, straining, almost winning.
Then Peter found out about Gamora, and grief did what grief always did in your family: it broke.
You couldn’t even blame him, really. Later, maybe, people would.
Maybe they would say he ruined everything. Maybe they would say he should have held it together.
But you knew Peter. You knew that kind of loss. If someone had stood in front of you mentioning Yondu’s death like it was necessary, you weren’t sure you would have been any smarter, any less reckless.
Neither you nor Peter had ever learned how to grieve quietly.
Then Thanos was gone, and you never knew silence would get worse than the fight.
At first, you thought the dust on your hand was from the planet. Titan was full of it, after all. But then your fingers started to break apart, coming undone, and grey at the edges, scattering into the air before your mind could make sense of it.
You stared at your own hand, as if you looked hard enough, you could force it to stay.
Peter saw it happen.
One second he was Star-Lord, heartbroken and still trying to understand what he had done, and then he was just Peter. Your brother, the boy from the Ravager ship, the idiot who used to throw bolts at you.
“Hey,” he said, and there was panic in it immediately. “No. No, no, no—”
You tried to reach for him, but your arm started disappearing halfway there.
That was when the fear finally hit you like a child reaching for light in the dark. You looked past Peter and saw Mantis fading too, eyes wide and wet, her hand stretching toward you even as her own body betrayed her. Drax was already gone. The battlefield was emptying itself one person at a time, and all you could think was that your family was scattered across the galaxy and you had not said goodbye to any of them.
You had spent your life acting like leaving was easy because Ravagers left. Guardians left. People like you learned how to walk away before anyone could see what it cost. But this was not leaving. This was being taken. This was the universe reaching into your chest and ripping you out before you could choose a final word, a final joke, a final insult about Terra just to make Peter laugh.
Peter lunged for you, hand outstretched, desperate to catch what was left, but he… started disappearing, too.
Then you were both dust.
—
And then, five years later, you woke up in what felt like the middle of the end of the universe.
One second, you were dust on Titan. The next, you were gasping air back into your lungs, stumbling through a portal with Peter shouting and Mantis grabbing your arm like she needed to make sure you were real. There was no time to understand or ask what had happened, where you had been, or why everyone looked like they had spent years grieving you.
There was only Thanos standing across the battlefield like the galaxy had not already suffered enough because of him.
So you fought him again, and this time, you won.
Earth, as it turned out, was not boring.
Earth was loud and muddy and actively on fire, which was frankly more personality than you had expected from Peter’s stupid little wheel planet. Earth had witches throwing red light from their hands, sorcerers opening glowing doorways in the air, flying men in metal suits, a giant green Terran who looked like someone had inflated a nerd with steroids, and at least one god with an axe. There were soldiers with wings, tiny insect people, archers with no self-preservation, and a man dressed like a flag who kept throwing a shield like he had never heard of blasters.
Earth also had Bucky Barnes.
Rocket introduced you to him two days after the battle, when everyone was still sleep-deprived and trying to figure out what the fuck had happened in the five missing years. The Avengers had put the Guardians in a motel, which was… an interesting choice. The bed was too soft, the ceiling was too low, and everything on Terra smelled like detergent and old carpet. You were sitting on the floor because it felt less ridiculous than the springed-cot thing they called a mattress when Rocket kicked the door open without knocking.
Rocket had been introducing “Terran freaks” to you, which mostly involved dragging various Avengers to the motel and describing them in the least respectful way possible. He had spent five years coming back and forth from Earth, apparently, which meant he met most of the important ones. And those he hadn’t met yet, he already knew about through stories.
“This is Green Monster Man,” Rocket said yesterday, showing Banner around to the guardians.
“That’s Bug Guy,” Rocket said this morning, taking Scott Lang on a tour of the motel, showing him off like a show-and-tell presentation.
Of course, this time, he had a new guy to show around.
“Hey,” he said, jerking one thumb over his shoulder. “This is Metal Arm Man.”
You looked up.
And fuck.
Metal Arm Man was beautiful, in the way some Terrans seemed to admire. He was not shiny, like a Sovereign. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He looked like a man who had crawled out of several consecutive wars. He had tired blue eyes, dark brown hair tucked behind his ears, a jawline carved by old gods, and a black-and-gold metal arm— so it made sense why Rocket had taken a liking to him. Or. y’know. His metal appendages.
He stared at you too, and there was nothing polite about it. His eyes moved over the faint shimmer under your skin and the Ravager leathers you had refused to trade for Earth clothes. He looked at the bruise healing along your collarbone, and the knife strapped to your thigh.
Rocket looked between the two of you and made a gagging sound. “What the hell are you two doing?”
The man cleared his throat, like he had remembered manners halfway through staring at you. “My name’s Bucky.”
You blinked. “Bucky?”
His mouth twitched. “Yeah.”
You stared at him for another second, genuinely trying to decide whether Terra was playing some kind of joke on you. “Is that even a real name?”
From somewhere in the hallway, Peter shouted, “Don’t make fun of Terran names! You’re embarrassing me!”
You ignored your brother. Bucky, to his credit, didn't look offended. If anything, he looked amused, which only made him more annoyingly attractive.
“It’s um...” He scratched the back of his head with a human arm. “It’s short for James Buchanan Barnes,” he said, as if that made it any better.
You frowned. Why are earth names so unnecessarily long and complicated? “That’s worse.”
Peter, who apparently had still been listening in, made a noise from the hallway. “Can you be normal for literally one minute?”
“No,” you and Rocket said at the same time.
Bucky actually smiled then.
And you, who had spent most of your life insisting Terra was primitive, boring, and overrated, had the unfortunate thought that maybe you had been wrong.
—
You ended up on the motel roof that night because Earth rooms were suffocating.
It wasn’t exactly difficult. Terran buildings were hilariously easy to escape from. All it took was one window, one rusted ladder, a short jump, and you were on the roof with your back against a humming vent and your knees drawn up to your chest, looking out over a planet you still didn’t understand.
Earth was strange at night. The fire and smoke from the battlefield were gone from here, replaced by yellow streetlights, blinking towers, the rush of wheeled vehicles dragging themselves along roads like they had nowhere better to be. The sky was weird. There was too much light from the city and not enough stars visible. You could barely see anything past the haze, and for someone who had grown up under infinite darkness in a space pirate ship, that felt almost cruel.
Your fingers moved absently over your arm.
The markings there were faint tonight, but still visible. Thin lines of soft, light trailing from your wrist toward your elbow, glowing under the skin like someone had hidden stardust in your veins. Proof, if you needed it, that you were not human. These were markings of your mother’s species, but it didn’t really matter, did it? Your mother’s planet was a dead one. You had no true home.
Behind you, the roof access door creaked.
You didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. “You’re still here, Metal Arm Man?”
You heard a pause, then a huff that might have been a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Still here.”
Bucky Barnes stepped onto the roof like he was trying not to startle a wild animal. He was wearing the same thing he was earlier: dark shirt, dark jacket, dark boots. The metal arm reflected the weak rooftop light as he walked closer, black and gold lines shifting with him.
He stopped a few feet away, giving you space.
“Your brother cornered me downstairs,” he said.
You finally looked over at him. “Pete?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “He wanted to talk to me about Captain America collectible trading cards.”
You blinked. “About what?”
“That was pretty much my response.”
You tried to picture Peter, still freshly returned from being dust in his home planet, cornering this beautiful and haunted-looking Terran soldier in a motel hallway to discuss little paper images of a man in a flag suit. You had no idea what trading cards were. You had no idea why Captain America needed collecting. You had no idea why Peter was like this, except that unfortunately you knew exactly why Peter was like this.
“He’s very embarrassing,” you said.
Bucky’s mouth twitched up. “He seemed excited.”
“He gets like that when Terra is involved. The planet does something to his brain.”
“Pretty sure he was asking if I knew how much the 1944 set was worth.”
You stared at him. “Do you?”
“No.” This time, he did laugh. It was a startled sound that seemed to slip out of him before he could stop it. The sound suited him too much. It made him look younger for half a second, less broken from war and more like someone who might have once been very good at smiling.
He walked closer after that, though still not too close. “Mind if I sit?”
You looked back out over the city. “It is your planet.”
“Not sure that means much.”
“No?”
“No.” You could hear him being flat and careful. There was something he wasn’t really saying.
So you shrugged, and Bucky sat beside you with a polite amount of space between your shoulder and his. For a while, neither of you spoke. Somewhere in the building, you could hear Drax laughing. And in a nearby home, you could hear a young voice crying quietly enough that they probably thought nobody could hear. But you could, your hearing was better than human hearing.
You did not feel better than human that night, though. You… felt tired.
Bucky’s eyes moved to your arm. You thought he was looking at your species marking. But then he asked, “does it hurt?” and you knew he was talking about something much more… sensitive.
You glanced down at your arm, turning it over to show the deep scarring line that never quite healed from your battle with Ego. “No. Not usually.”
“What is it?”
You flexed your fingers, watching the light shift faintly beneath your skin. “Proof that my planet-sized narcissist father tried to kill me.”
Bucky turned his head toward you.
You smiled without humour. “My biological father is a living planet. He made many children across the galaxy because he wanted to use us as batteries for his expansion plan.”
Bucky stared at you for a second, then looked out over the city again. “That’s a lot.”
“Yeah,” you leaned back, “I have been told my childhood is not a good first-date topic.”
His mouth twitched again, but it was kinder this time. “This a first date?”
You looked at him, and the rooftop seemed to tilt slightly. “I don’t know. Is sitting on a roof after a universe-ending battle a date on Terra?”
“Usually no.”
“Usually?”
“I’m old. Dating got weird while I was gone.”
While I was gone.
Huh. Another little door with some probably horrible backstory behind it. You wondered how many of those he had
So you pushed your door open first.
You just started talking because the city sounded too alive after all that death, and because Bucky Barnes gave you the kind of comfort that made people say things they didn’t mean to say yet.
You told him about Ego first, because that was the biggest part of the story on paper. But he was not the part that hurt the most.
You told him how mother’s home planet had already been dying when Yondu found you. The sky had been the wrong colour for so long that you thought all skies looked sick. You remembered your mother’s hands, or maybe you had invented that memory. You remembered being small, hungry, angry, and too tired to cry properly.
Then Yondu came. He got you out because that was what he did.
Bucky listened without interrupting. He didn’t rush to relate, though you suspected he might’ve been able to. He sat there beside you on the motel roof, one knee bent, metal arm resting still against it, and let the words come out.
You looked down at your hands.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky said eventually.
People said that a lot, and you usually hated it. But from him, it didn’t sound empty. Maybe, it was because his voice already carried so much sorrow that it knew how to make room for yours.
You swallowed. “The funny thing is, Yondu threatened to eat Peter and me so many times. But at least he was there. I might have Ego’s blood, but Yondu gave me a home.”
Bucky sighed. “Blood doesn’t mean much by itself.”
You looked at him.
His eyes were fixed on the city, but he was not really seeing it anymore. The streetlights reflected faintly in his face, illuminating the tired slope of his mouth and the shadows beneath his eyes. “I had a family once. Parents, a sister, everything.”
And just like that, Bucky pushed his door open too.
Maybe it was easier to trauma dump to a pretty alien girl who he’s pretty certain he won’t see again.
He told you about war, handing you broken parts of himself and trusting you not to cut yourself on them. He told you about leaving home, about falling, about waking up in the hands of monsters. He told you enough that your stomach turned cold.
You had known there was something wrong in him. It made more sense now that you knew they had taken a living thing apart and put it back together with instructions missing.
You looked at his arm again, even though that wasn’t the arm. Then, you looked at his face. “Oh,” you said, after he told you about HYDRA. “They made you a weapon.”
Anger rose in your stomach, a real, hot, familiar anger. It was the kind of anger you had learned from Ravagers. It was actionable. It was pure and feral.
“Are they dead?” you asked.
That made him look at you.
You blinked. “What? It’s a reasonable question.”
Bucky studied your face, and he looked almost amused behind the exhaustion of his eyes. “Most of them.”
“Most is not all.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“Do you want help?”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I am very good at killing people,” you added, because honesty, that seemed polite.
Bucky stared at you for half a second, then laughed again, this time with more breath in it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
You smiled despite yourself, then looked away before it got too real. You had known him for less than a day, properly, and the rooftop felt smaller than it should. His shoulder was not touching yours, but you were aware of the space between you.
Bucky seemed aware of it too.
“So,” he said after a while, voice lighter in a way that felt deliberate, “do aliens have one-night stands?”
You turned to him slowly. “Do we have what?”
“One-night stands.”
You stared.
He seemed to realise he had lost you and shifted slightly, almost embarrassed. “I uh… Casual sex. You know… two people spending a night together because they want to.”
“Oh.” You considered that. “Yes. Obviously.”
He exhaled a laugh. “Obviously?”
“You thought Terrans invented casual sex?”
“No.”
“That would be a very Terran thing to think.”
His smile lingered, and so did yours.
The air changed then, and it had been changing for a while, probably from the moment Rocket shoved him into your orbit and called him Metal Arm Man like he was doing you both a favour. But now there were no Guardians yelling in the lobby, no brother to embarrass you with trading cards. Just the two of you on a motel roof, talking your asses off about monsters who called themselves fathers and creators, grief, and sex like any of it belonged in the same conversation.
Maybe it did.
Maybe this was what survivors did. Maybe they took the worst things that had ever happened to them, laid them down between each other, and then reached for each other anyway.
“So,” you said, because you were suddenly very aware of your own two heartbeats, “is this you asking?”
His eyes flicked back to yours. “Maybe.”
“Maybe is a coward’s answer.”
That did something to him. You saw it in the slight shift of his jaw, the way his gaze darkened, the way his human hand curled loosely against his knee. Still, when he spoke, his voice was careful.
“I’m asking,” he said. “But only if you want that.”
You didn’t answer immediately, though not for being unsure. You were very, annoyingly sure, actually. You wanted him in a way that felt too quick and too simple after a lifetime of things being complicated. You wanted his mouth and his hands and the sadness in his eyes. You wanted to forget the battlefield for a few hours. You wanted to feel alive in a way that didn’t involve fighting for it, for once.
You leaned closer anyway.
“On my planet,” you said, “we do not call it a one-night stand.”
“No?”
“No,” you shook your head with a chuckle. “Mostly because I don’t have a planet. But if I did, I would call it a very reasonable use of a night.”
Bucky’s smile was small and devastating. “That so?”
“Yes.”
You were close enough now to see the tiny flecks of grey in his blue eyes and the faint scar near his mouth. Yet, he held himself like he was giving you every chance to change your mind.
You didn’t.
Instead, you touched the metal fingers resting beside him. The vibranium was cool under your hand.
“I want that,” you said. Then, because you had never been good at masking kindness, you added, “And I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
Bucky’s face changed, but not with pity, thank the stars. You would have left immediately if it had been pity.
Instead, it was recognition.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me neither.”
When he kissed you, it was careful for all of two seconds.
His mouth pressed yours once, soft and hesitant. His human hand hovered near your waist before settling there, warm through your shirt. His metal hand stayed braced against the rooftop beside you, like he was holding himself back from touching too much too soon.
It was infuriatingly sweet.
So you fixed it.
You leaned into him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt, and kissed him back harder.
Bucky made a small sound against your mouth, and his hand tightened at your waist. His mouth opened under yours, and the kiss turned deeper, messier.
You had kissed people before. You had kissed in back rooms of spaceports, against ship walls, in the dark corners of bars where nobody cared about names. You knew what casual was.
This did not feel like that.
Bucky kissed you like he was trying to remember how, and somehow that made it worse. When your fingers slid up into his hair, he exhaled against you.
He was a little rough at the edges. He was careful, then hungry, then careful again when you shifted closer and his metal hand finally moved to your hip.
You pulled back just enough to breathe, your forehead nearly touching his.
Bucky’s eyes opened slowly. His pupils were dark, his mouth swollen.
“Sorry,” he said, voice rough. “I’m a little rusty.”
You blinked at him. Then you looked very deliberately at his metal arm.
“You don’t have rust.”
For a second, he just stared at you. Then he laughed. “No, I don’t.”
You traced your fingers down the front of his shirt, feeling his breathing change beneath your touch. “You don’t need to apologise.”
His eyes dropped to your hand.
It should not have been so attractive, how kind he was. So you kissed him again.
By the time the two of you made it back inside, laughing under your breath, Bucky nearly knocked his shoulder against the frame trying not to let go of you.
It was still supposed to be simple. That was what you told yourself when he kissed you against the wall. That was what you told yourself when your hands found the edge of his shirt and pulled it over your head. That was what you told yourself when he paused, forehead against yours, and asked again if you were sure.
You were.
So for a few stolen hours, neither of you had to be a weapon.
You just made each other feel good.
—
In the morning, someone knocked on your door.
It was a determined knock, followed by a pause, followed by another knock that was weirdly polite.
You opened your eyes slowly.
For a second, you had no idea where you were. The light coming through the curtains was thin and grey and Terran. Then you became aware of the warm body behind you, the weight of an arm across your waist, the steady rise and fall of Bucky Barnes breathing against the back of your neck.
Oh.
Right.
The knocking came again.
Beside you, Bucky stirred awake. His arm tightened around you for half a second before he seemed to remember where he was, who you were, and what had happened the night before.
“I am Groot?” came a muffled voice from the hallway.
You closed your eyes.
Bucky’s voice was sleep-rough when he whispered, “Is that…?”
“Yes,” you whispered back. “That’s Groot.”
“He okay?”
“He’s asking about breakfast.”
“I am Groot,” Groot said again, more insistently this time.
You dragged a hand over your face. “What the hell is an IHOP?”
Bucky blinked, then made the mistake of laughing.
It wasn’t particularly loud, but you felt it against your shoulder and immediately wanted to do several stupid things, including staying exactly where you were and never opening the door. Unfortunately, Groot knocked again, and then someone in the room next to yours opened their door.
“I am going to kill both of you” Nebula called to you from the hallway.
You sat up so fast Bucky almost got elbowed in the chin.
Oh, shit.
Bucky sat up beside you with his hair a mess, eyes wide, mouth pressed tightly together like he was trying very hard not to laugh and make this worse.
You put a shirt and trousers on, panicking, making bucky put his boxers on, too.
Nebula continued, voice flat and merciless. “Some of us were trying to sleep. Some of us didn’t need to hear whatever Terran mating ritual you were performing in there all night!”
Your entire body went hot.
“You heard?” you opened the door to peek outside to see a crowd of guardians already converging there. You weren’t opening the door fully yet. Obviously. Bucky was still trying to find his shirt.
Nebula scoffed, “It was impossible not to.”
From the hallway, Rocket’s voice cut in. “I just put a pillow over my head.”
You dropped your face into your hands.
Bucky’s hand touched your back as he made his way to look for his socks, still shirtless.
“I still don’t know what IHOP is,” said Mantis, because apparently, she was there too.
“A breakfast place,” Bucky said, loud enough for everyone to hear. To be fair, Bucky had never really been there either. It was only a thing after the war, so all the knowledge he had about chain restaurants came secondhand from Sam’s stories and Shuri’s travels.
Drax, answer loudly from the hallway. “Why is it called that?”
“It stands for International House of Pancakes,” Bucky shouted back, looping his belt through. You stared at him, and he looked almost apologetic.
Before Bucky could answer, there was another voice in the hallway.
Peter.
“Why is everyone standing outside—” His voice cut off into a silence, which meant Peter Quill had looked through the half-open door, seen Bucky Barnes half-dressed, and experienced several emotions at once, most notably disgust and awe, which you were unaware could coexist .
Then he shouted, “YOU HAD SEX WITH A HOWLING COMMANDO?”
You froze. Bucky froze.
You stared at Peter through the gap in the door, genuinely exhausted. “I have no idea what that means.”
Peter looked like he hated that he knew something about his sister’s sex life, but was amazed you bagged a historical figure he learned about in school. “It means he’s a war hero!”
Bucky, looking increasingly like he regretted being alive, said, “Quill—”
Peter opened the door a little wider. “No, no, no, no, I’m not judging. Sir, I respect you very much.”
“Oh my god,” you said.
“Don’t call him sir,” Nebula said from somewhere out of sight.
Peter ignored both of you, because Peter had never once let good advice stop him. “Bucky, sir, would you like to join us at IHOP?”
You turned to him in alarm. “No.”
Bucky looked between you and the doorway.
“No, please,” you said, smoothing your stupid borrowed human shirt that said I ❤️ New York. “Bucky. Just go.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
You immediately realised how that sounded a bit aggressive and winced. “Not like that. I mean— before they make this worse. Before Peter starts asking you questions about ancient Terran history or Rocket asks if your arm has detachable components.”
“I was building up to it,” Rocket said, looking a bit pissed.
Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. You could see the smile fighting its way onto his mouth despite everything, still unfairly attractive. He finally found his shirt under the bed, while you looked very hard at the wall and pretended you were not noticing the way his back moved.
Bucky pulled his shirt on, then his jacket, then paused by the bed.
Rocket was still muttering about pancakes, Groot was making curious little noises, and Peter was whispering something that sounded like “World War Two Legend” under his breath. But inside the room, between you and Bucky, there was a pocket of silence.
“I’ll see you around?” you said.
“I hope so.” Then he smiled like he wanted to say something else, but then Peter coughed very loudly in the hallway, and the moment snapped. Bucky gave you one last look, then stepped out into the corridor, where Peter immediately straightened.
“Big fan,” Peter said.
“Pete!” you groaned.
Bucky, because he was apparently kind even under extreme psychological pressure, just nodded. “Thanks.”
Just like that, he left with a kiss on your temple.
Peter spent the entire walk there explaining World War Two to you.
Rocket and Drax collectively ordered too much food. Nebula threatened three different utensils. Groot liked the syrup so much he tried to drink it straight from the little container. Mantis, still not fully adjusted to Earth mornings, asked if your “night of physical bonding” had helped with your sadness, which made you put your head down on the table while Peter choked on his coffee.
By the time you got back to the motel, you saw a small Terran phone on the nightstand that you hadn’t noticed when you left.
It had one number saved: Bucky.
—
You were supposed to leave Earth after a week.
It had been the initial plan. It was only supposed to be one extra week on Peter’s weird little wheel planet, just long enough for Rocket to patch the Benatar, insult several Earth scientists, establish reliable interstellar communication, and call NASA a hobby club with delusions of grandeur.
Unfortunately, the Benatar was more fucked than anyone wanted to admit.
Earth, being a backwater planet with no shortage of paperwork, five years of stagnation, and parts that apparently could not just be stolen without “causing an international incident,” made repairs painfully slow. Rocket had to source pieces from Stark warehouses, Wakandan labs, old S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra storage, and one aerospace facility where he bit a man for calling him a raccoon.
So one week became five months.
And of course, you had to pass the time somehow.
Bucky Barnes was a very, very good way to pass the time.
The phone came in handy, because every time you weren’t helping a guardian with an annoyingly administrative task, you were lonely. So, you would call him.
It might not have been a one night stand anymore, but it was still casual.
It was so casual you fucked him every time the two of you were alone for more than seven minutes. You did it in his temporary apartment, your motel room, the roof, his kitchen, the backseat of a borrowed car, after he made the mistake of telling you the windows were tinted.
Huh. Maybe this contraption on wheels wasn't as useless as you thought it was.
Bucky had survived many things, including war and brainwashing, but apparently nothing had prepared him for you, wearing Ravager leathers deciding she wanted him immediately and treating Terran public decency like a loose suggestion.
There was the bar incident, which he still could not talk about without going pink in the ears. See, Bucky Barnes had not expected to be getting a blowjob from an alien girl in a cubicle of a newly reopened dive bar bathroom.
But there he was.
Things happened.
There was also the alley behind a Brooklyn diner, where his metal hand ended up in your folds, and you learned, very quickly, that Terran technology was not always primitive.
There was the temporary compound supply closet, where you had gone in looking for a power converter and came out with your hair ruined and knees weak, and Bucky looking like he had seen god in a storage room full of printer paper. There was the motel laundry room at three in the morning, where the machines rattled so loudly that you thought no one could hear you, until Drax walked past the next day and told you he sincerely wished his “pounding” would produce “strong children.”
You looked like you wanted the planet to split open and swallow you whole.
It was filthy and stupid. It was fun. It was definitely casual.
That was what you kept saying, anyway.
Calling it casual meant it didn’t matter that his metal arm felt good. Casual meant it did not matter that his human hand felt just as good. Casual meant it didn’t matter that he figured out exactly when you wanted him to be gentle and when you very much didn’t, that he could make you forget every insulting thing you had ever said about Earth with his mouth on your neck and that Brooklyn rasp in your ear.
Casual meant you could leave when you had to.
Bucky made that harder by being annoyingly charming outside of bed. He introduced you to human food like pizza, bagels, and pancakes. He taught you how to tell real New York pizza from the “modern stuff,” even when you were still struggling to eat the flimsy-foldable bread thing in the first place.
“You like it,” he said, watching you steal a pepperoni from his box.
You shrugged, but didn’t deny it. He smiled at you like you were funny, which was dangerous because you liked his smile far too much.
Then one afternoon, he told you he was from Brooklyn, and you sat up so fast you nearly kicked over the coffee table.
“Brooklyn,” you said. “As in No Sleep Till?”
Bucky blinked, then laughed. “Yeah. Shuri made me listen to that.”
“Pete loves that song.”
“Of course he does.”
You nodded solemnly. “It is one of the only respectable things about this planet.”
He leaned back, smiling into his coffee. “Brooklyn?”
“No. Music.”
He looked so offended you had to kiss him.
That was the problem with Bucky. He was too easy to kiss, too easy to want, too easy to crawl back to after a long day of Rocket screaming at wiring diagrams and Peter trying to explain why Earth malls used to matter culturally. Bucky made you food and started leaving space for your knives on his temporary dresser like that was a normal thing to do for someone you were only sleeping with.
The Benatar was fixed eventually.
Rocket announced the news to Avengers and Guardians and Asgardians and Wakandans alike, over breakfast like it was good news, because it was. Your family could leave, because the ship could fly.
Bucky didn’t say anything.
He just looked at you across the table, and you realised with a sick little twist in your chest that casual had become the biggest lie you had ever told.
—
The night before you left Earth, you found yourself on top of Bucky Barnes again in his makeshift New Asgardian tent.
It was getting increasingly harder and harder to pretend your chest didn’t hurt every time he looked at you like you were a treasure he had found in the wreckage and wanted, desperately, to keep.
His hands were on either side of you, your knees pressed into the cot on either side of him, your palms braced against his chest, your hair falling around your face while you rode him hard enough to make the frame knock into the fabric.
“Fuck,” Bucky breathed, head tipped back against the pillow, eyes half-lidded and wrecked. “Baby—”
You hated when Terrans called people that. Well. You hated it until he did it.
When he did, it made a warm pool in your stomach, made both your hearts kick faster, made you grind down harder just to hear him lose his breath again.
His metal hand tightened on your thigh. His human hand slid up your waist, warm and rough, thumb pressing into the place beneath your ribs like he was checking that you were still there.
You leaned down and kissed him because you couldn’t stand his face.
You could not stand his beautiful, sad, earnest face. You couldn’t stand that he had kissed you on the temple in a motel hallway once and therefore ruined your life forever. You couldn’t stand that he had made Earth feel less like Peter’s stupid planet and more like a place with someone waiting for you to come back.
Bucky groaned into your mouth when you moved again, taking him until your thighs shook.
“Christ,” he rasped, dragging his mouth down your throat, the place where your pulse was too fast. One pulse. Then the other. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“Good,” you said, breathless. “Then I don’t have to leave you.”
It was meant to be a joke. It didn’t feel like one.
You were leaving in the morning, and earlier today, Drax had asked if Bucky would be joining you and then said that he hoped so because Bucky seemed like he had “excellent reproductive prowess.”
You had kicked Drax under the table.
Bucky had not laughed much after that.
Now he looked up at you, hair messy against the pillow, mouth swollen from kissing.
After you rode out your high and drawn out his at the same time, you collapsed next to him.
“Stay,” he said, barely above a whisper, as if he had been holding it in for weeks and it had finally slipped out
“Bucky...”
“I know,” he said quickly, and his hands slid up your back, holding you against him. “I know. Pete’s out there. The Guardians are out there. I know that’s your family.”
You swallowed hard. “You could come with me.”
His face changed. There it was, the conversation you had been circling. You knew in reality, that this was nothing more than a ridiculous, impossible fantasy you had been trying not to build.
“You could,” you said again. “Thor’s coming.”
Bucky huffed a laugh, but it broke halfway through. “Yeah, well. Thor doesn’t exactly blend in here either.”
“You don’t blend in anywhere.”
“That’s fair.”
You tried to smile.
Bucky’s hand came up to your face, metal fingers careful against your cheek. The cool touch made your eyes sting.
“I haven’t been home in a long time,” he said.
“I know.”
“I don’t even know if New York is still home,” he admitted. “But I think I need to try.”
You nodded, even though it felt like swallowing glass.
You understood. Bucky had been dragged through so much. He had only just been handed a life that belonged to him. For the first time in a long time, this was his chance to figure out who he was when nobody was using him.
How could you ask him to leave that?
And how could he ask you to stay?
Your only tether to anything like family was Peter and Guardians.
Earth had Bucky.
Space had everyone else.
You pressed your forehead to his. “You’re breaking my hearts,” you whispered.
His breath hitched, kissing the edge of your lips. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” you said, wiping at your cheek angrily. “And they’re both beating quicker than they should be.”
He laughed then, and you laughed too, even as tears slipped hot down your face and fell onto his skin.
He kissed them off your cheeks.
You kissed his lips then as if you could press every unsaid thing into his mouth and make him understand. I’m sorry. I want you. I have to go. Come with me. Stay safe. Wait for me. Don’t wait for me. Please wait for me.
Eventually, Bucky rolled you beneath him with one smooth shift and you gasped against his mouth.
For a second, you thought he only meant to hold you there.
His weight settled over you, his hair fell around his face, his breath still uneven from what you had done to him not long ago, and yet when his hips pressed between your thighs, you felt him already hard again.
You blinked up at him.
Bucky froze, because in all honestly, his uncontrollable evidence of wanting you had made him feel like a perv. It was almost funny, really. This man had survived unspeakable things, but apparently getting hard again too quickly in front of the girl leaving his planet in the morning was what made him look embarrassed.
Your lips parted.
He let out a rough little breath, eyes flicking away for half a second. “Sorry.”
You stared at him. “Why are you apologizing?”
He was embarrassed and wanting and so painfully Bucky that it made your chest ache. “Super soldier thing,” he muttered. “I can, uh…”
You raised an eyebrow.
He looked down at you, cheeks faintly flushed now, and that was worse than all the filth you had done together in the last five months. “…go again,” he finished.
Then, you laughed, but not because it was funny.
But because of course James Buchanan Barnes would be hovering over you on your last night on Earth, looking sweet and apologetic for the fact that his body still wanted yours after you had already wasted him half to death.
He laughed too, quieter.
“You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “I just— I want you. But you don’t have to.”
You reached up and touched him. His stubble scratched against your palm. His eyes closed for half a second like he was trying to memorise that too.
It was your last night, with his sheets tangled around your legs, with his body over yours.
You were tired and sore. But you wanted him again so badly it felt dumb.
“Yes,” you whispered.
Bucky opened his eyes.
You hooked your legs around his waist and pulled him closer. “Yes. Please.”
He kissed you first, like he was saying thank you into your mouth. Then his hand slid down your side, over your hip, between your thighs, touching you with careful fingers until your body reacted to him all over again.
He pushed into you again, slow enough that you felt every inch and stretch until your back arched.
His forehead dropped to yours.
“Look at me,” he said.
You did.
He moved slowly at first,one hand tangled with yours against the sheets, the other braced beside your head. It was not the frantic, filthy kind of sex the two of you had gotten so good at. It was not trying to see how fast you could make him come apart before someone noticed you were missing.
This was him fucking you like he wanted you to remember exactly what leaving felt like.
Every thrust pushed the air from your lungs, and every drag of his body against yours made your thighs tighten around his waist. You dug your nails into his back and he groaned into your neck, hips snapping harder for a second before he caught himself again.
“Don’t,” you gasped.
He lifted his head. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t hold back.”
His eyes darkened.
Your voice cracked around the next words. “I want to miss all of it.”
Bucky kissed you hard, and then he gave you exactly what you asked for. He fucked you into the mattress with the kind of hunger that had been hiding his mouth at your throat, his hands on your hips.
You let yourself have it.
For once, you didn’t try to make it funny.
You just let him have you.
And when you came, it hit you so hard you cried out against his shoulder, bones trembling. Bucky followed after, burying his face in your neck with a broken sound, holding you so tightly it almost hurt.
Good.
You wanted it to fucking ache.
For a long time afterwards, neither of you moved.
The room smelled like sweat and sex and Bucky’s laundry soap. Your skin was damp against his. His heartbeat thudded under your ear, steady precious.
Eventually, you whispered, “I’m going to miss this.”
His hand stilled in your hair.
You closed your eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”
Bucky pressed his mouth to the top of your head.
“I’m gonna miss you, too,” he said.
You wanted to be brave about it. Still, your throat burned.
You shifted enough to reach for the little device on the makeshift nightstand. It was small, flat, and ugly, because Rocket had built it from three different communication systems, one stolen Stark component, and another thing he claimed was “probably not radioactive anymore.”
You placed it in Bucky’s hand.
He looked down at it. “What’s this?”
“A communicator.”
His brows lifted. “This works in space?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Some parts of space are unreachable,” you said, defensive because Rocket had already explained the limitations six times and you understood maybe half of them. “There are dead zones, black-market relay issues, Kree interference, and weird cosmic nonsense. Also Rocket said if you press the red button too many times, it may get hot.”
Bucky stared at you.
You sniffed. “But it works.”
His thumb moved over the edge of it, careful. “Yeah?”
“Yes. So reach out, please.” Your voice went low. “Even if I don’t answer right away, even if it takes a while. I’ll answer when I can.”
Bucky looked at you then, and the naked hope in his face nearly killed you.
“I’ll visit,” you said quickly, because if he looked at you like that much longer, you were going to do something embarrassing like stay. “From time to time.”
“From time to time,” he repeated.
You winced.you knew that sounded terrible, as if you didn’t want to give enough effort. “I mean I will come back,” you said, grabbing his wrist. “I mean it. I don’t know when. I don’t know how often. My family attracts disasters like Drax attracts confusing conversations, but I will come visit.”
Bucky’s hand turned under yours until he could lace your fingers together.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
Then Bucky sat up, reaching toward the floor where his jeans had been abandoned hours ago. He searched the pocket and pulled out a thin chain tangled around his fingers.
He looked almost shy when he handed it to you.
You took it, frowning at the two small metal plates hung from the chain, stamped with Terran letters and numbers you didn’t fully understand.
“What is this?”
“My dog tags.”
You stared at him, then thought of the only other dog you know of: Cosmo. “You’re not a dog.”
He laughed, soft and pained. “No.”
“Then why are they called that?”
“I don’t know. It’s an Army thing.”
You turned the tags over in your palm. “They have your name,” you said, before looking up.
His smiled.
Oh.
“They’re important,” you realised.
Bucky nodded once. “They’re from… before.”
And just like that, you understood. Your fingers closed around the tags.
“Bucky,” you whispered.
He shrugged like it didn’t matter, which meant it mattered terribly. “Figured you should have something.”
You looked down at them again, and your vision blurred. “I don’t have anything like this to give you.”
“You gave me a space phone that might explode."
You laughed. Bucky smiled, but his eyes were wet too.
You leaned forward and kissed him gentler, before he slipped the chain over your head. The tags settled between your breasts, cold against your skin, right between your two stupid, breaking hearts.
Bucky watched them land there, and the look on his face made heat curl through you all over again.You touched the tags. “How do they look?”
His eyes lifted to yours.
“Like mine,” he said, then seemed to realise what he had said.
You went very still.
Bucky’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did,” you said.
He looked at you.
You crawled back into his lap, the chain shifting against your bare skin, the communicator forgotten on the bed beside you. His hands came to your waist automatically.
“Good,” you whispered.
Then you kissed him again.
By morning, your body ached everywhere.
When you finally stood in the doorway with your bag over your shoulder and his dog tags hidden beneath your shirt, you and Bucky looked at each other like you both wanted to ask again.
Stay.
Come with me.
Both of you were too kind to say either out loud.
You kissed him one more time before you boarded the Benatar.
—
You visited Bucky Barnes four times in the next three years.
Four times sounded almost generous if you didn’t think about all the days between.
Still, you messaged him when you could.
Sometimes the communicator worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes your voice arrived through the little device in his palm three weeks late, half-swallowed by static and distance, saying, “—Rocket says if this thing starts beeping, that's technically your fault—” before cutting out entirely.
Sometimes Bucky sent you a message and had no idea whether it reached you.
Still alive?
That was his most common one. It looked and sounded casual. It was anything but.
You usually answered with something stupid, like: Unfortunately. Or Yes. You?
Or once, after apparently being shot at by pirates, chased through a collapsing space station, and nearly eaten by something Peter insisted was “not technically a worm”, you texted back: Define alive.
Bucky read that one in his kitchen at two in the morning and was scared shitless for your life.
Then he looked out of his window.
Brooklyn never showed enough stars, but some nights, when he couldn’t sleep, he went up to the roof anyway. He stood there with his jacket pulled close, metal hand resting on the ledge, eyes lifted to a sky that hid you from him.
He wondered where you were.
He wondered if you were safe. He wondered if you were injured and pretending you weren’t. He wondered if Peter was annoying you. He wondered if Rocket was taking care of you the way he promised to. He wondered if you ever looked out into the dark and thought of him, too.
—
The first time you came back, it was only for two days.
You told nebula to land on his roof, because of course you did. Bucky had already learned that you considered swinging, hinged doors a Terran inconvenience because you stubbed your toe on one once.
He had been waiting there for twenty minutes, when your little shuttle appeared above the building, and Bucky forgot every reasonable thing he had ever planned to say.
You jumped down with a bag over your shoulder, boots hitting the concrete like you had never once doubted you would land on your feet. For a second, you just looked at him. He looked at you, too. Eight months sat between you awkwardly, until you smiled.
“Your planet still smells strange,” you said.
Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Hi to you too.”
He kissed you, and it wasn’t frantic at first. It was worse. His hands came up to your face like he was checking that you were real, thumbs brushing your cheeks, before you made a small sound and pulled him closer by the front of his jacket.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead stayed against yours.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said quietly.
You swallowed, suddenly irritated with him for sounding so grateful. “For two days.”
“I know.”
“It’s not enough time.”
“I know,” he said again.
His apartment was exactly like him in the worst way. There were books stacked beside the couch, a blanket folded over the arm, mugs drying beside the sink, and a little space cleared on the dresser where, after one hour, your duffel bag somehow ended up.
You walked around slowly, inspecting everything. Bucky followed you like he was trying not to look nervous.
“It’s very square,” you announced eventually.
He leaned against the kitchen counter. “You said that about the motel too.”
“Terrans love boxes.”
He laughed and spent the days showing you his neighbourhood.
That night, you didn’t do half the filthy things you had promised yourself you would do on the way there. You had thought you would make the most of the short visit, but instead, you ended up under his blankets, your back against his chest, his arm around your waist, your body so tired from travel and space jumps that you fell asleep before you could even make a joke about his mattress.
Bucky stayed awake.
He couldn’t help it. He had spent eight months imagining you in this apartment, and now you were here. His dog tags rested against your chest beneath one of his shirts. He could feel the little metal plates when his hand settled over your ribs.
“You still wear them,” he murmured.
You weren't fully asleep. “They are important.”
“To me.”
“To me too,” you said, voice thick with exhaustion.
Bucky’s breath hitched.
You seemed to realise what you had said a second later, because you shifted and cleared your throat. “Also, they’re useful identification in case I misplace you.”
He huffed a laugh into your hair. “In case you misplace me?”
“Yes.”
“Where would you misplace me?”
“I don’t know. Your planet has many streets.”
A long silence passed as your fingers found his hand over your waist, and instead of moving it away, you threaded your fingers through his.
After a while, Bucky said, “You know, this feels like one of those old war movies.”
You turned your head slightly. “What does?”
“This. You showing up for two days and leaving again.” His voice was light, but trying too hard. “Like you’re a sailor being shipped out.”
You blinked in the dark. “I am the sailor?”
“Yeah.”
“And what are you?”
You felt his smile against your neck before he said, very seriously, “The damsel.”
You chuckled sleepily. Bucky chuckled, too, arms wrapping around you properly when you playfully tried to twist away from him. “Oh, you poor thing,” you said. “Do you require rescuing, princess?”
“Every few months, apparently.”
You laughed again, quieter this time.
Then the humour faded, because every joke with Bucky seemed to have a cliff beneath it.
—
The second time you came back, it was for five days.
Rocket needed Bruce Banner for something involving gamma signatures, and deep-space interference. You came with him because someone had to stop Rocket from biting another scientist.
Also because Bucky was there.
Not that you said that.
You invited him to the ship and while Bruce was there, too. Rocket gagged. “Not in my lab.”
You didn’t make it to dinner before you ended up in Bucky’s apartment.
This time, the urgency was there. Five days was longer. You could do more than cuddle in five days.
Bucky kissed you against his front door with one hand at your waist and the other braced beside your head. You laughed into his mouth when he almost tripped over your bag, and he muttered something about you being a menace before kissing you harder.
Afterward, as your skin cooled beneath his sheets, Bucky went quiet.
“What?” you asked, turning your head on the pillow.
He stared up at the ceiling, one hand resting on his stomach. “I went on a date.”
He looked like it had been eating him alive. He looked like he hated himself for it.
Against your better judgement, as you took in the absurdity of the conversation, you laughed. It came out a little too bright.
“Oh,” you said. “Okay.”
Bucky looked at you. “Okay?”
“Yes. Okay.” You pushed yourself up on one elbow and tried to look mature. “That’s good.”
He didn’t answer. He almost would rather you shout at him, even if you never said you were exclusive and had no reason to assume so.
You kept going because silence was dangerous. “You live here. You should date. You should have… Terran meals and Terran walks and whatever else dating is.”
“I had dinner where she worked,” he said quietly.
You looked at him for a moment, then asked another question because you were stupid and cruel to yourself. “How was she?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Nice.”
“Nice is good.”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty?”
He turned his head toward you, and he looked hurt now. “Don’t do that.”
Bucky seemed to regret saying it as soon as he did. He looked away again, but you had already seen too much.
You swallowed. “It is not like we’re in a relationship.”
“I know.”
“You can date.”
“I know.”
“Then how was it?”
“She…” he gulped, knowing it went nowhere, knowing he would never see her again because it felt so wrong, he felt nauseous afterwards. “She’s not you.”
Oh.
You didn’t know what to do with that.
You wanted to tell him not to wait for you, but the thought of him not waiting made your breath hitched. You wanted to tell him to date someone else, but not her. Actually, not anyone. You wanted to say you were sorry, or that you loved him.
Instead, you reached for his hand.
He let you take it.
“I don’t want you to be lonely,” you said.
“I know.”
You looked at him. “But?”
Bucky squeezed your fingers once. “But I still am.”
—
The third time, you visited, you stayed for a week
That time, Sam invited you to a Wilson cookout at his sister’s house.
Bucky asked badly as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Sam’s having a cookout. Sarah’ll be there. The boys too, but… we don’t have to go.”
You stared at him. “Do they know about me?”
“Yes.”
“What do they know?”
He looked uncomfortable.
You narrowed your eyes. “James Buchanan Barnes.”
“Oh, now it’s the full name?”
“What do they know?”
“That you visit.” He smiled faintly, but it faded quickly. “I… I just wanted you there.”
So you went on the short flight to New Orleans with him.
The Wilson’s Louisiana house was warm and smelled of grilled food and salt air.
You stood beside Bucky, as kids pointed out your markings, and suddenly became very aware that you didn’t know how to be introduced.
Sarah solved that immediately by smiling at you like she had already decided she liked you.
“So,” she said, handing you a plate, “you’re Barnes’ long-distance girlfriend.”
Bucky froze. Sam took one sip of his drink like had been waiting all day for this.
You laughed at once. “That’s not what this is.”
Sarah’s eyebrows lifted.
“It is more like…” You glanced at Bucky, then away, because his face had gone blank. “What you Terrans call an intergalactic booty call.”
Sam choked.
One of the boys immediately asked, “What’s a booty call?”
“Ask your uncle,” Sarah said.
Sam looked betrayed. “Why would you do that to me?”
You wanted to take it back.
You wanted to say, actually, no, that was wrong. Actually, he’s not that or I cross galaxies for him.
But you didn’t say any of that.
Later, while Sarah’s boys asked you increasingly strange questions about space, you caught Bucky looking at you from across the yard. He was leaning against the railing beside Sam, who was saying something to him. But Bucky was not really listening. His eyes were on you like a lost puppy.
You mouthed, stop.
He smiled faintly.
Three days later, you begged for his spare arm.
Bucky said no before you even finished explaining.
“It is for Rocket,” you insisted.
“That makes it worse.”
“It’s for Christmas!” You told him, leaning across his kitchen table. “He’s my best friend.”
Bucky leaned back, looking at you. You were wearing one of his shirts again, hair still damp from his shower. His apartment looked both wrong and right around you, as if you had always belonged there and were always about to leave.
“Fine,” he said at last.
Your face lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah. But I want something.”
You immediately narrowed your eyes. “I don’t make deals with soldiers.”
Bucky smiled, but it was fragile. “Just come back soon, yeah?”
Oh.
He didn’t look away, even though you could tell he wanted to.
Soon.
As if soon was easy, as if your life was not a mess of missions, emergencies, broken engines, family obligations, cosmic disasters, and Peter doing stupid things with massive diplomatic consequences.
“Bucky…”
“I know,” he said. “I know you can’t promise me anything.”
You swallowed.
“I know,” he repeated, but his voice was rougher now. “Just… try.”
You could have fought a demand or mocked a plea. But this…
You reached across the table and took his hand.
“I’ll try,” you said.
—
The fourth time, you came back two months later.
He opened the apartment door and just stood there, staring at you like he couldn't quite believe you were here.
You held up a bag, because apparently, you had taken a detour on the way to his apartment. “I brought bagels.”
His eyes dropped to the bag, then back to your face.
You lifted the bag higher, because you couldn’t survive much more of that look. “Bread circles, Bucky. Are you going to let me in or do Terrans eat in corridors now?”
He let you in.
The bagels were forgotten on the counter within minutes.
You told him about Mantis on the second night.
You were in his bed, his arm around you, the room dim except for the weak city light through the blinds. The dog tags rested against your bare sternum, rising and falling with your breathing. Bucky’s fingers had been tracing absent shapes along your side, soothing, when he asked about how Christmas in Knowhere went.
So you told him that Rocket loved the arm, but you also told him the bigger revelation.
“Mantis is my sister,” you said.
Bucky’s hand paused for a second. “Your sister?”
You nodded, staring at the ceiling. “She’s one of Ego’s, too.” You said with a smile. “She was already family. I mean, before. She was already one of ours. But now…”
“Now it’s different,” Bucky said.
“Yes.”
He shifted slightly to look at you. “How do you feel?”
You took a long breath. “Happy. I want to kill him again, but he’s already dead, so...”
Bucky smiled faintly. “I’m glad you have her.”
You believed him.
And he was telling the truth. He was glad, and Bucky would rather jump off a bridge than ever be cruel with your happiness. He never made you feel guilty for having family beyond him, never treated the Guardians like a competition, never asked you to shrink your world until only he was left in it. He loved you too much for that, even if neither of you had said the word.
But mantis being your sister, when all you ever wanted in life was family, meant that you’ve got another reason to stay up there.
Every piece of family you found among the stars tied you tighter to a life Bucky could only visit through broken messages and sparse wondering.
And what did Earth have?
One soldier in Brooklyn.
And later, after you fell asleep, Bucky laid awake beneath you and looked toward the window.
He wondered where you would be in a month.
He wondered if the communicator would work or if Rocket would be stripping it for parts again in an emergency.
He wondered if one day you would stop coming back and he would still find himself on the roof, looking up, waiting for you.
Then he looked down at the dog tags resting against your chest. For a few days, at least, the universe was small enough to fit in his bed.
—
Months later…
Rocket almost died, not in the abstract way all of you almost died every other cycle, either.
Rocket actually almost died.
You could still see it when you closed your eyes: his body on the table, fur matted, chest refusing to rise like a normal raccoon.
For a second, you thought your best friend had gone somewhere none of you could follow.
Then he came back.
Against all odds, Rocket lived.
The High Evolutionary was gone, his ship was wreckage. The children and the animals aboard the ship were safe. Knowhere had become both an ark and a home to many, many new faces.
Everywhere you looked, there was evidence of survivals. There were kids sleeping in corners because they hadn’t yet learned beds were safe and strange animals blinking under unfamiliar lights.
And now, your family was changing.
Mantis said she wanted to go. Although it felt like your sister was abandoning you, she reassured you that she wanted to see the universe without Ego. She wanted to find herself without the guardians breathing down her neck.
Which was fair
But she was your sister. You had barely gotten to have that before this. And yet, you understood.
Then Peter said he was leaving, too.
He was leaving for Earth because he wanted to see his grandfather again.
Peter tried to say it casually, but he was terrible at it. When he said it, he was not Star-Lord. He was not the idiot who had danced in front of Ronan, or the man who had lost Gamora, or the brother who had thrown bolts at you across Ravager floors.
He was just Peter, a little boy who had been taken from home, finally admitting there was still someone there he needed to go back to.
And maybe because everyone else was saying the brave thing out loud, you did, too.
“I could come with you,” you said.
Peter blinked at you. Then his face scrunched up in immediate disgust. “You can’t come live with my grandpa with me.”
You smacked him upside the head.
“Ow!”
“No, dumbass,” you rolled your eyes, "I'm not gonna live with you.”
Peter rubbed the back of his head, wounded and hurt, but then his eyes dropped to the chain beneath your shirt.
His eyes changed.
“Ohhh,” he said.
You looked away at once. “Don’t.”
Peter’s mouth opened wider. “Ahhh.”
“Peter.”
“Oh my god.”
“Don’t.”
But he was already grinning, all mischief and brotherly cruelty. “I see now.”
Drax leaned forward, deeply alarmed by being left out of something. “What? What are we seeing?”
“Nothing,” you said quickly.
Nebula folded her arms, finally catching up, “Guess who else is on Terra?”
Your face went hot.
Drax’s eyes widened. “Ah.”
“I am not going because of him,” you sputtered out, clearly lying through your teeth, “maybe I just want to learn of Terran music!”
The pretense was paper thin, and even you knew it.
Rocket made a rude little noise from his seat.
You turned. “What?”
He lifted both paws. “Didn’t say anything.”
“I am Groot,” Groot said mildly from beside him.
Rocket nodded. “Exactly.”
You looked at Groot in betrayal.
Groot only blinked at you with those gentle eyes.
Mantis smiled softly. “You do touch the metal necklace every time someone mentions Terra.”
“I don’t.”
“You are touching them now.”
You dropped your hand like the metal had burned you.
“This is amazing.” Peter looked delighted. “My sister is moving to Earth for that old robot. We’ll practically be neighbors.”
“He’s not old.”
Nebula finally looked up.
Peter held up a finger. “He fought in World War Two.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“It means old.”
“He looks fine.”
Rocket barked a laugh. “Oh, she’s got it bad.”
“I don’t have anything”
Drax nodded with grave certainty. “She has been claimed by the metal warrior. He gave her necklace plates.”
“They are called dog tags.”
“You are not a dog.”
“That is what I said!”
Nebula smiled a little, which for her was basically hysterics. “You cross galaxies to crawl into his bed and wear his military identification around your neck.”
Well, when she said it like that…
Mantis leaned closer. “He makes you less lonely.”
Finally, everybody shut the hell up.
Because yes. He did.
Right.
Rocket looked away first.
He was picking at a seam in his jacket, claws worrying the fabric until the thread started to pull loose. His ears were low, though he was clearly trying to make them not be. His mouth had twisted into that flat line he wore whenever feeling like he wanted to bite.
Mantis was leaving. Peter was leaving. You were leaving. The children of Ego, all drifting off in different directions like the dead bastard pleft cruelty in your blood.
Rocket scoffed. “Great. Real touching. Everybody’s got somewhere better to be now.”
Your hearts felt hurt. “Rocket.”
“What?” he snapped, too fast. “It’s good. It’s great. Everyone’s got somewhere to be.”
Rocket didn’t look at you.
He had almost died. He had woken up into a universe where he was finally captain, and now his family was peeling apart.
“Family’s still family,” you said, “Even when we’re spread out.”
You looked around the room at the only family you’d ever really known, and here was Rocket pretending not to be sad.
The raccoon looked up at you three, and this time, he looked… okay.
“I am groot,” Groot said, finally.
I love you guys.
—
Bucky wasn’t expecting a knock on a random Tuesday.
He should have been, probably.
That was his life now: he always had knocks at weird hours, which was usually campaign staff with clipboards. Sometimes it was Sam showing up because apparently “boundaries” were optional during election season. Other times it was someone from legal, or from security, or an intern from the press being brave enough, or stupid enough to knock on the former winter soldier’s door at 8AM.
He had only just started his campaign for congressman, and already his personal life felt less personal the more people tried to pry open his head with a crowbar.
So when the knock came, he thought someone had leaked his address.
He thought this must be a reporter. His life must be blowing up.
He set the mug down, rubbed a hand over his face, and walked to the door trying to make his expression less like it belonged on a wanted poster.
Then he opened it and the entire world stopped.
You were standing in his hallway.
You.
You were actually there, clothes damp from rain, hair windswept, a duffel bag hanging from your shoulder, his dog tags tucked beneath your shirt.
Behind you, Peter Quill stood near the stairwell, a respectful amount of distance, but probably a reminded that he was still your brother. He gave Bucky a small thumbs-up before scurrying down the stairs. He had already said goodbye in the car and given you his address in Missouri after driving you here, obviously. You didn’t know how cars worked. Yet.
Bucky barely saw him, mostly because he couldn’t stop looking at you.
You looked nervous, which was so wrong it almost hurt to see. You had fought gods, monsters, armies, and living planets. And now you were standing in his doorway like you were afraid he might say reject you.
“Hi,” you said, voice smaller than usual.
Bucky’s hand tightened around the edge of the door.
“I’m here to stay,” you said. “If that’s okay.”
For a second, nothing existed to Bucky, not even the campaign or reporters or Earth or space. Just you.
Then Bucky stepped forward and pulled you into his arms.
Your duffel slipped off your shoulder and hit the hallway floor, but neither of you cared. His metal hand spread across your back, gentle even when the rest of him was shaking. His human arm was wrapped around your waist as buried his face against your neck.
You went still, startled by it, and then folded into him without any resistance whatsoever.
Bucky closed his eyes.
His throat tightened so suddenly he almost couldn’t get the words out.
“How long?” he asked.
Your fingers curled into the back of his shirt. “For the foreseeable future.”
Oh.
Oh, stars.
Bucky pulled back just enough to look at you.
Your eyes were watering. His probably were, too, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have room to care. You swallowed.
“I should’ve asked you first,” you rushed out. “I know. I just wanted it to be a surprise, and Pete thought it might be a good surprise, so I’m—”
Bucky kissed you.
He couldn’t stand to listen to you ask permission to be wanted. Because of course you were wanted.
Yes.
Yes, stay.
Yes, here.
Yes, with me.
You made a broken little noise into his mouth, and Bucky’s hand slid into your hair, holding you there like he was anchoring both of you to the same planet.
When Bucky finally pulled back, his forehead stayed pressed to yours.
For a second, neither of you spoke.
Then you whispered, “Good surprise?”
Bucky let out a laugh, but it broke. “Yeah,” he said, voice wet. “Yeah, sweetheart. Good surprise.”
You sighed then.
Bucky bent down, picked up your duffel, and stepped back into the apartment. You crossed the threshold, eyes moving over the campaign papers on the table, the tie abandoned on the couch, the books stacked by the window, the stupid square Terran box of a home you had to teased every time you visited.
—
And then life kept going.
You stayed, and the world didn’t collapse.
Bucky still had campaign meetings and reporters still asked questions that made your fingers twitch toward knives you were no longer allowed to carry in certain government buildings. Peter sent too many messages after getting you both a smartphone. Rocket called every once in a while, calling Earth “a bureaucratic sinkhole.” Bucky tried to teach you how primaries worked, and you told him Terrans had made voting sound more complicated than interstellar smuggling.
He won anyway.
By the time Mantis visited Earth months later, Bucky Barnes was now Congressman Barnes, which still sounded fake to your alien brain.
The news loved it, obviously. They wrote all sorts of headlines:
Former Winter Soldier wins historic congressional seat.
James Buchanan Barnes sworn into office.
Congressman Barnes has an alien girlfriend.
That one was your favourite.
You framed it.
Bucky came home one evening, saw it hanging in the hallway of your new DC penthouse, and stopped dead with his briefcase still in his hand.
You were sitting on the floor nearby, sorting through a box of your things and pretending very hard not to watch him notice.
He stared at the headline.
“You framed it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“In the hallway, where guests can see it.”
“That is usually why people hang things in hallways, is it not?”
Bucky sighed, but he didn’t take it down.
The penthouse had been a compromise, which was to say Bucky had wanted something secure and reasonable, and you had wanted the biggest house with the biggest windows.
You’re still not used to Terran skies, but from high up, DC was lovely. You could see glowing roads and monuments with headlights and ridiculous little wheeled vehicles dragging themselves around.
Bucky said the place made sense for security.
When Peter visited for the first time, he looked at the glass walls, the high ceiling, the guest rooms, the kitchen big enough for a small diplomatic crisis, and said, “Oh. So you guys are rich rich now.”
“It’s practical,” Bucky said, even though rich wasn’t a place he’d use.
“It has what? Two walk in closets ” Peter said, and guessed right.
“I wanted a third one for all my knives,” you said. “But I had to compromise.”
Bucky looked at you like he loved you and regretted encouraging you at the same time.
And slowly, it became yours.
You had your weird human boots by his polished shoes. You had strange little space trinkets on his shelves, and your faux fur jacket thrown over the back of his very expensive chair.
When Mantis visited, Peter visited, too.
He was still arguing with security about his blasters when she stepped into the penthouse and looked around with wide eyes.
“Oh,” she said softly. “You live very high.”
Bucky was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, opening pizza boxes.
“Your sister likes windows,” he said.
He said it like your wanting mattered enough to explain the whole place.
Mantis smiled.
Bucky glanced at you, then slid a box toward all three of you. Eventually, Peter sat on the floor like he owned the place. Mantis sat cross-legged beside him, studying her slice with concern. You curled into Bucky’s side on the couch, his arm along the back of it, his knee against yours.
Mantis took one bite and her eyes widened. “This is amazing.”
You looked at Peter, your brother, who had once thrown bolts at you across the floor of a Ravager ship and now sat eating pizza in your living room. You looked at Mantis, your sister, free and alive and choosing her own way through the universe. You looked at Bucky, the man who had once been a one-night stand in a motel room, but now, he was your home in every sense of the word.
And tonight, the universe was small enough to fit in one living room.
Mantis leaned back, pizza balanced carefully in both hands.
“I like Earth,” she said.
You looked at her, then at Peter, then at Bucky.
“Yeah,” you said, leaning into your lover’s side. “It has one or two good things.”
—end.
Extra note: I think this reader would make a wonderful Thunderbolt. Thoughts?
Summary : You fall for Dex, a faerie hunter. Little did you know, he has already decided you belong to him.
Pairing : Faerie Prince! Benjamin Poindexter x Human Princess! reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Faerie au, fantasy au, dark romance, obsessive/possessive behaviour, stalking, shapeshifting, hidden identity, predatory courtship, manipulation by way of fae bargaining and loopholes, attempted assault by another character, murder, blood, explicit sexual content (afab reader with no explicit anatomical description), masturbation, fingering, oral sex, praise/degradation, implied captivity, food, north star! Reader. Reader is described to be a "spinster" and I picture her to be in her mid20-mid30s with the king and queen to be in their 60s, but open to interpretation, of course! (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 13.3k
Requested by : anon
Notes : The Title is Inspired by the song “Call Me Little Sunshine” by Ghost. Enjoy!
Being a princess was, in practice, spectacularly dull. Storybooks had neglected to mention that.
According to the bards, princesses spent their days dancing through rose gardens, befriending woodland creatures, and waiting elegantly by castle windows until the perfect knight arrived on a white horse.
The reality was considerably less glamorous, because reality included embroidery, war planning lessons, standing perfectly still while yet another seamstress held yet another gown against your shoulders and declared that ivory “brought out your breeding.”
The reality often was being escorted absolutely everywhere because, according to your father, kingdoms had a habit of declaring war over unmarried princesses.
You lived in the tallest tower of the royal palace, and not because you were imprisoned, but because it was traditional.
Your father insisted generations of royal sons and daughters had lived there before their weddings. The tower overlooked the capital, the forests beyond the walls, and, on particularly clear evenings, the silver mist that marked the border of the fae realm.
You were forbidden from going anywhere near it. So, naturally, it was the most interesting thing you could see from your window.
Sometimes, a raven came to sit with you on the sill.
He was a sleek, handsome thing with feathers black enough to reflect blue beneath the sunlight and eyes that seemed far too clever for an ordinary bird. He never startled when you moved too suddenly or tried to touch him. He simply watched you, head tilted, while you complained about your lessons, your father, and the latest dreadful man being considered for your hand.
The raven was your only friend.
You had started leaving scraps of breakfast for him, though he never really ate them. Most days, he seemed content merely to listen. Occasionally, he would tap his beak against the window sill or make a croaking sound at exactly the right moment, as though offering an opinion.
Every morning followed the same rhythm of breakfast before lessons, before war planning, before a walk in the palace gardens with no fewer than six guards pretending they weren’t following you, before fencing, before dinner.
Occasionally, your routine was interrupted by another prospective husband. Sometimes it was a prince, other times it would be a duke or a marquess. Once, it was an unfortunate count who spent twenty uninterrupted minutes explaining taxation while trying to court you.
Your father always watched these meetings with hopeful eyes.“What do you think of Prince Alistair?”
“He called me ‘adequate.’”
“He meant well.”
“He compared me to wheat,” you rolled your eyes.
He could only sigh. “Wheat is valuable.”
“I don’t want to marry a man who thinks my greatest quality is being agriculturally useful.”
Your father sighed, and it was the weary sigh of a king rapidly discovering that raising a stubborn daughter was considerably harder than negotiating peace treaties between entire territories. “You cannot refuse everyone.”
“I haven’t refused everyone,” you corrected, which was technically true.
“You’ve refused twelve.”
You held up a finger with a sly smile. “Twelve so far.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are one day going to become queen.”
“I know.”
“You need a husband.”
“I know,” you slumped to your seat, though the corset was now digging into your spine.
“A suitable one.”
“I know.”
“So what exactly are you waiting for?”
You glanced past him, beyond the castle walls, toward the ancient forest shimmering on the horizon.
“I don’t know,” you admitted. “But I feel like if I marry any of them…” You paused. “I’ll be settling.”
Your father smiled sadly, mistaking your hesitation for youthful nerves. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
You smiled back because it was easier than arguing.
The truth was, you already understood.
You simply wanted more than a political alliance and polite conversation over dinner. You wanted someone who made your heart race.
Someone worthy of becoming the subject of stories.
You looked out and simply wondered, if any human prospect was ever going to be remarkable.
—
You had never escaped six armed guards before, but today, you found out that it was surprisingly easy.
They were watching for assassins, kidnappers, enemy soldiers, perhaps even a dragon if the kingdom had been having a particularly difficult week. They were not watching for their princess to lift her skirts, squeeze through a gap in the palace hedge, and run directly into the trees.
By the time anyone shouted your name, you were already gone.
Why did she even do this? Your father would probably ask, but there was really only one answer: boredom.
You were bored of the same rooms, the same lessons, the same walks through the gardens. You were bored of waking each morning already knowing exactly how the day would end.
The raven had visited your windowsill that morning, but he stayed only long enough to tilt his clever little head at you, and then flew back toward the forest.
You had watched him disappear beyond the palace walls and thought, with a miserable pit in your stomach, if only I could be that free.
Perched beside you in the tower one moment, exploring the forest the next.
So you decided to do something about it and ran.
The forest began as ordinary woodland,
but grew stranger the farther west you went. The trees became older, their roots rising through the earth like sleeping serpents, and silver mist gathered between the trunks even beneath a clear sky.
That mist marked the border: Your kingdom ended on this side, and the fae realm began on the other.
You were not stupid enough to cross it.
You were still catching your breath by a rock when you heard something crying in the undergrowth.
The sound drew you deeper into the woods long before you saw its source.
It was not a cry of pain so much as a weary exhale, the sort a creature made after running farther than its body wished to carry it. The forest seemed reluctant to reveal where it came from, as ancient oaks stood shoulder to shoulder like old kings in round tables, their branches weaving together until only ribbons of sunlight reached the moss below. Blue-white motes drifted lazily through the shade, vanishing whenever you tried to follow them with your eyes
The doe lay only a few paces away, as though she had collapsed the instant she reached the safety of your kingdom. She was a beautiful hind with a pale face and enormous dark eyes that blinked sleepily rather than fearfully. The white arrow with black feathers rested against her flank, though when you looked closer your brow furrowed.
There was no blood or torn flesh.
The arrowhead shimmered with threads of pale gold that flowed over the deer’s body like sunlight through water. Wherever the light touched, the muscles beneath her coat relaxed. Her breathing remained calm.
“Oh.” You crouched beside her. “You aren’t hurt, are you, my love?”
The doe lazily lifted her head and nosed your shoulder before letting it fall again into the grass with contented resignation, determined to finish its nap.
You laughed nervously under your breath. “What have they done to you?”
“The Sleep of Rowan.”
The voice came from somewhere inside the silver mist, beautiful enough that it almost seemed to belong to the forest itself.
You looked up.
He stood where the mist was thickest, and somehow the trees seemed arranged around him rather than the other way around. His leathers were the deep blue of the ocean down by the south border, embroidered so finely with bronze thread that every movement caught the light like autumn leaves stirred by the wind.
A longbow rested loosely in one hand, carved from white wood that glimmered with faint silver runes. His hair was slightly tousled, sometimes dark brown and other times it was slightly golden. He was… Fair Folk.
There was no mistaking it.
He had pointed ears peeking through his hair, a strong jaw softened only by expressive lips that looked almost permanently on the verge of a knowing smile. His amber eyes were startlingly bright, flecked with molten gold, his fingers were glowing blue at the tips.
Then there was the scar, crossing one cheek in a narrow line, and one on top of the eye.
It should not have been there. Whatever had given him that one must have been vicious.
You knew now, that any sensible person would walk in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, you had never been particularly sensible.
“Sleep of Rowan?” you blinked.
He inclined his head toward the doe. “The arrow contains no iron.” His voice carried no arrogance, only certainty. “It numbs the body before it strikes. By the time the arrow lands, the creature feels only warmth. They grow sleepy.”
The doe punctuated his explanation by yawning.
Your heart immediately melted. “Oh, sweetheart.”
The fae watched you smile at the animal. His expression changed so subtly you almost missed it.
Interest, maybe. Recognition, perhaps.
You looked from the doe to the bow resting in his hand. “You mean to kill her?”
“When the forest gives permission.”
You blinked.
He nodded toward the ancient trees surrounding you, fingertips brushing across the carved wood of his bow.
“We never hunt mothers with young,” he continued. “Never more than the Court requires. Every hide is worn and every antler is carved. Every bone shall be returned to the old groves before the first snowfall.”
He spoke not like a man explaining himself, but someone with rules and guidelines so ingrained into his bones it might as well be prayer.
“We borrow a life,” he said quietly. “We are expected to return honour in its place.”
You looked down at the sleeping doe as she twitched once in her dreams.
“Then…” Your fingers drifted automatically to the white patch between her ears, stroking it with infinite care. “…couldn’t you borrow another?”
The fae regarded you with an expression you couldn’t begin to understand.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve already proved you could catch her.”
His brow lifted.
“You did.” You gestured toward the shimmering arrow. “She’s asleep.”
“She is.”
“So you’ve won.”
A tiny smile threatened the corner of his mouth. “I have.”
You looked back at the doe. “Please let her go.” The words escaped so quietly they were almost carried away by the breeze. “Please.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he looked only at you, but not at your dress or the small golden circlet resting in your hair, but into your eyes and then to the way your hand never stopped stroking the sleeping animal.
The silence stretched so much you began to wonder whether you had insulted him.
Then, without a word, he reached for the arrow. The runes dimmed beneath his fingers, the arrow dissolving into the afternoon air like scattered pollen.
The doe stirred, blinked twice, and climbed to her feet.
She stood for a moment, swaying gently as though waking from the deepest sleep she’d ever known. Then she nudged her nose against your shoulder in what could only be gratitude before disappearing into the trees with three graceful bounds.
Only then did you turn back. “You just… let her go.”
“Yes.”
“Because I asked?”
He smiled. “You asked kindly.”
“That can’t possibly be enough reason.”
“It appears to have been.”
“I’ve just ruined your hunt,” you managed a nervous laugh, “and you’re not angry?”
His eyes held yours. “No.”
“Why?”
He considered the question far longer than it deserved. “Because I preferred watching you.”
Unexpectedly, heat crept up into your cheeks.
There was nothing crude or flirtatious in the way he said it. It sounded like a fact.
He looked at you the way scholars looked at miracles and priests looked at altars: with complete attention, as though every movement you made deserved remembering.
“You have leaves in your hair,” he observed.
You huffed, taking one. “I escaped six guards.”
“I know,” he stepped ever so closer. “They’re still looking for you.”
“How do you know that?” You raised an eyebrow, taking a cautious step back.
His smile deepened ever so slightly. “They’re remarkably loud.”
“I suppose they are.” You sighed. “They worry too much.”
His expression remained pleasantly calm. “They are guarding a princess.”
You sighed, and he merely tilted his head.
After a moment’s silence, you simply asked, “Do… you have a name?”
“Dex.”
“Dex?”
“It will suffice.” You nodded.
“Very well, Dex.”
A brightness flickered across his face at the sound of the name in your voice. Approval, perhaps. Or satisfaction.
He rested the bow across his shoulder with effortless grace. “And you, Princess,” You didn’t even notice that he had done it again. “have convinced me to let my dinner wander off. The least you can do is point me towards the blackberry bushes.”
He knew the forest better than any living creature. Yet somehow, you found yourself leading him through it anyway.
And Dex, Crown Prince of the Wyld Fae, followed without the slightest complaint.
Because, according to every sacred law of the hunt he had ever been taught, once you found something worth following, you did not let it out of your sight.
—
The blackberry bushes grew wild along the riverbank, their thorny branches weighed down with fruit so dark they looked blue beneath the fading light. Dex moved through them selecting one berry from dozens as though there was an art to it. He plucked a particularly lavish one between two fingers and held it toward your mouth.
You stared at the blackberry, then at him. “I’m not stupid.”
Dex managed an infuriating smirk. “It appears you are.”
“Excuse me?”
His mouth pulled into a chuckle. “You think I’m trying to enchant you with fruit that grew in your own kingdom.”
You simply crossed your arms “I am smarter than eating or drinking anything offered by the Fair Folk.”
“The roots are in human soil,” he said, pointing to the roots of the tree. “Made of human rain and human sunlight. You will not be bound to me.”
Ah. Right.
Still, you narrowed your eyes. “No secret marriage?”
Dex looked more amused by your paranoia, as if enjoying toying with it. “No.”
“No hundred-year sleep?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No waking up in your palace wearing a crown?”
Dex’s eyes dipped briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes. “Not from the blackberry.”
You should have been more concerned by the distinction. Instead, you leaned forward and took the fruit from his fingers.
It was sweet enough to make you hum, wild and far richer than anything cultivated in the palace gardens. Dex watched you eat it with a satisfaction so singular it was almost ridiculous, as though convincing you to accept one perfectly harmless berry had been the greatest victory of his life.
After that, you talked, mostly about nothing. Then about everything.
You told him about the tower and how the wind made noise through the stones during winter. You complained about your governess, your embroidery lessons, and the latest nobleman your father intended to parade before you like an expensive horse. Dex listened with his full attention, asking questions in places where most people would have nodded politely and waited for you to stop speaking.
He told you about the forest in return, about flowers that only opened beneath eclipses and streams that remembered every person who crossed them. He showed you which mushrooms laughed when stepped on and warned you never to follow lanterns that moved. When you asked whether every fae hunter was as strange as he was, he told you that he was considered perfectly reasonable by the standards of his court.
You didn’t believe him.
The evening came around you while you wandered along the river, eating blackberries you picked yourself and talking until the light turned gold, then rose, then a deep violet between the trees. Dex stayed close. Sometimes, his hand hovered near your waist when you stepped over roots.
By the time the first stars appeared, you had almost forgotten you had escaped the palace at all.
That was until, the distant toll of the evening bell carried through the woods. You stopped beside the river. Dex stopped with you.
“I have to go.” The warmth left his eyes so quickly, and in its place was something coldly neutral. Still, you kept talking. “My father will be very furious.”
“Oh,”
It was all he could say.
You looked at him for a long moment, taking in the burnished gold hidden in his dark hair “I like you, Dex,” you said.
He went completely still.
It pleased you, strangely, to know you could surprise him. “Are all fae this kind?”
A glint passed through his mischievous eyes. “Is that what you think I am?”
“My mother says your kind are manipulative,” you said, “She says every gift is a trap and every kindness hides a bargain. She doesn’t trust your kind. Should I?”
Dex glanced toward the silver mist in the distance, then back at you. His frown had gone softer, though no less intent. “I suppose you will have to make up your own mind.”
You considered him as the fae hunter who had released a doe because you asked, as the stranger who had followed you through the forest, listened to every complaint, and fed you nothing that could bind you.
Before you could lose your nerve, you stepped closer and rose onto your toes and pressed a light kiss to the scar on his cheek.
When you drew back, he looked almost dazed, one hand lifting slowly toward the place your lips had touched. For a creature so graceful, so composed, and so clearly dangerous, he appeared wonderfully unprepared for affection.
“Goodnight, Dex.”
You began walking backward toward the palace path.
He remained by the river, watching you leave with that singular concentration.
“Will you be here again?” he asked.
You only smiled. You knew better than to give a promise to a fae.
But you thought the answer was obvious.
—
By the time you slipped back into the palace, dusk had swallowed the gardens.
Your father stopped you only long enough to ask where you had been. You could tell he was furious under his skin, having sent half his kingsguard on a fruitless search party.
You lied with the ease expected of royalty, telling him you've been reading in the reclusive west tower all afternoon. After all, you have been trained to lie to foreign dignitaries from birth.
“You are the Crown Princess,” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should have told us if you wanted to be one. You cannot simply disappear.”
“I won’t do it again,” you said, fully intending to do it again.
Once safely inside your tower, you dismissed your ladies, locked the door, and collapsed onto your bed with a sigh.
The ceiling stared back, and so did your thoughts.
You, of course, thought about Dex.
You smiled before you could stop yourself.
You knew the fae hunter was a terrible idea. But he was beautiful enough that every story your mother had ever told suddenly felt painfully believable.
You rolled onto your side, hugging one of the embroidered pillows to your chest. It was only harmless fun, right?
You weren’t making bargains. You weren’t wandering into Faerie. You weren’t accepting enchanted feasts beneath silver trees.
You knew the rules.
You couldn’t eat his food, but surely…
Surely you could have some fun with him.
That wasn’t forbidden.
…Probably.
You buried your face in the pillow with a groan. “This is how princesses end up cursed.”
Suddenly, you heard a gentle tap against the window, followed by another a few seconds later.
You turned immediately, your smile widening as familiar black feathers came into view. “There you are.”
The raven hopped onto the stone sill as it had done a thousand times before, folding his wings neatly against himself before fixing you with that strangely thoughtful stare of his.
You opened the window, and he stepped inside as though he’d always belonged there.
He gave one little chirp.
You laughed under your breath, pretending to be able to talk to him, because you always seemed to pretend he knew everything on your mind. “I know.”
He hopped a little closer.
“He’s a bad idea.”
The raven blinked.
“A very bad idea.”
He seemed to furrow his amber eyes, which was ridiculous to even imagine, right.
“…But he’s awfully gorgeous.”
The bird made a small little croak.
“I know.”
You smiled helplessly, as he nuzzled to your fingers.
Your heart melted immediately. “Oh, you.”
You gathered him carefully against your chest, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. His feathers were warm beneath your cheek, damp with the scent of leaves and evening air.
“You’re still my favourite,” you half-promised. “Even if Dex is very pretty.”
The raven settled into your arm, satisfied.
You held him while looking toward the distant forest, completely unaware that he had arrived much later than usual.
—
You had not slept properly in three nights.
Every time you closed your eyes, you saw Dex was waiting beneath the trees. Sometimes he stood beside the river with evening light caught in his hair. Other times he was close enough that you could see every tiny fleck in his eyes and the faint silver edge of the scar you had kissed. Once, in a dream so vivid you woke with your heart racing, he had simply watched you from the other side of the mist while you tried to find the path back to him.
By the third night, lying awake and pressing your face into a pillow had begun to feel undignified.
So you abandoned your bed, pulled a cloak over your nightdress and crept down to the oldest part of the royal library with a candle cupped between both hands.
The palace was unnervingly still at that hour, thanks to the portraits watching you pass through dark corridors, and every floorboard that determined to announce that the crown princess was wandering barefoot toward a locked collection of forbidden books because she could not stop thinking about a beautiful stranger.
The books concerning the Fair Folk were kept beneath the main library, behind an iron gate whose hinges had bled rust into the surrounding stone. Your mother kept the key in her study, hidden beneath a false-bottomed drawer so obvious that you suspected she had never once considered you might look.
The lower level library smelled of old leather, damp parchment and extinguished fires. Shelves climbed toward the vaulted ceiling, crowded with books no one had touched in decades. Some of them were even bound shut with iron clasps. Others had charms stitched into their covers or warnings written across their spines in three different languages.
You found the passage about the Wyld Court in a green leather volume, frail with age.
Several dried anemones had been pressed between its pages. Their white petals had yellowed around the edges, and one crumbled beneath your thumb when you turned to the chapter on the Hunt.
The first few pages were almost reassuring.
Human stories called the Wyld savage because they hunted often, but the account insisted this was ignorance rather than truth.
The Wyld do not kill for purely sport. Their hunters study the land before taking anything from her, sometimes watching a herd through an entire season to understand which lives could be spared without leaving young unprotected or weakening the group before winter. They never hunt during birthing months. They never took more than the court required. Every part is used and every hunt ends with a rite beneath the oldest trees.
You smiled.
You remembered Dex's voice when he explained why he wasn’t ashamed to hunt. He had simply believed it should be done with his ancient ritual.
The next section described how Wyld hunters selected their quarry.
They never choose impulsively.
A hunter watches first. They learn where the animal drank, where it sleeps, which trail it favours and how it behaves when startled. They study the rhythm of its body, the sounds it makes when content, the direction it turns when frightened and the places it instinctively returns to when it believes itself safe.
You shift the candle closer.
It was practical, of course. A skilled hunter had to know what he followed.
Dex had been like that with the doe, you supposed.
The book continued.
Once the quarry has been selected, the hunter begins appearing along its path, never close enough to alarm it, and never so often that it flees the territory entirely. They learn of its world before stepping inside it, careful not to disturb the habits they wish to understand.
That sounded…. strangely gentle.
You imagined Dex moving through the forest without snapping a twig, following the doe from somewhere beyond the trees.
A note in the margin had been written in a shakier hand than the rest:
The Wyld considers attention an act of reverence.
You traced the words.
“Mmm,” you whispered, though there was no one there to agree with you.
He had seemed to have undivided attention.
Dex had listened to you with the same concentration gave the forest.
You had assumed he was simply considerate.
The book described a hunter’s patience in borderline devotional language.
The hunter does not chase too early. He lets the quarry become accustomed to his presence, appearing at familiar places until their presence no longer causes alarm. If it looks toward them instead of away, that is considered progress. If it remains nearby willingly, it is a sign that the pursuit has entered its next stage.
Your mouth curled up. The doe, freed, hadn’t remained near Dex.
You had, but surely it must be different. You were not prey.
You barely entertained the intrusive thought before returning to the page.
The Wyld believes pursuit should be quiet. A careless hunter frightens away what they hope to bring close. A patient one learns how to make his presence welcome. They leave signs along familiar paths, small objects chosen with care that the quarry would recognise they have not appeared by accident. They remove thorns and stones from frequently used trails. They frighten away other predators before they are ever seen.
You pressed your thighs together beneath the table without thinking.
It was not fear that you felt. It was the memory of Dex following you beside the river, the way he had watched you eat the blackberry as though the smallest movement of your mouth fascinated him. The way his eyes changed when you said you liked him.
Perhaps Wyld hunters were simply intense people.
Some men at court barely remembered the colour of your eyes after spending an entire dinner speaking about themselves. Dex had looked at you once and seemed to notice everything.
That was hardly frightening. It was flattering.
You turned another page.
The descriptions grew more… intimate.
A hunter learns the sound of their quarry’s footsteps before they ever see it. They can identify its scent beneath rain, smoke, or crushed leaves. Over time, they begin to anticipate where it would go before it had made the decision itself.
You smiled dreamily, picturing Dex somewhere in the western woods already knowing which path an animal would take.
Perhaps he would be waiting near the river. Perhaps there would be anemones beside the blackberry bushes.
You hoped there would be.
A final passage sat at the bottom of the page, separated from the rest by an inked border of thorns. You bent closer to read it.
Wyld fae are occasionally known to form attachments of extraordinary depth to their prey. Once a hunter has chosen, fixation may last years, centuries or the full span of an immortal life. Distance rarely weakens it. It may delay the pursuit, but seldom ends the attachment itself.
Well… that sounded a little excessive.
You turned the page quickly.
The next chapter concerned Wyld courtship.
Anemones appeared again in the illustration. You expected this part to be filled with poems and stories. Maybe an explanation of some elaborate fae ritual performed beneath a full moon. You expected several paragraphs at least.
Instead, the chapter contained a single sentence with letters that were larger than the rest of the book, boxed in black ink and surrounded by a border of thorns:
WARNING: WYLD FAE DO NOT RELIABLY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN COURTSHIP AND THE PURSUIT OF PREY.
Huh. You thought. How vague.
—
The next morning, your mother returned just after sunrise with thirty riders, two foreign ambassadors, enough sealed documents to keep the council occupied for a fortnight, and a potential husband.
Ugh.
The palace bells rang the moment her party crossed the outer gate.
Servants hurried through the corridors carrying fresh flowers, guards straightening their uniforms. Courtiers appeared from nowhere, already smiling before the queen had even dismounted.
Queens inspired that sort of efficiency.
Your kingdom had always been matriarchal. Daughters inherited crowns. Queens wore crowns and commanded legions while kings negotiated peace treaties.
Kings advised. Queens decided.
Which meant your marriage had always been your father’s responsibility. The fact that your mother was now getting involved meant one of two things: you were becoming a spinster, or your prospects have started to look so concerning, even the head of state had to lend a hand. In your case, probably both.
She embraced you only briefly before holding you at arm’s length. “You look tired.”
“I’ve been unable to rest, mother.”
There was the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve inherited your father’s habit of avoiding sleep.”
She smoothed an imaginary crease from your sleeve before her eyes settled back into regal.
“I’ve brought guests.”
You looked past her, and one of them was already looking at you.
You recognised him immediately as Lord Edmund, though you’d never met him.
You’d heard enough.
You heard ladies from across the land whispering his name behind fans at winter banquets, and their maids lowered their voices when he walked past. A merchant’s daughter had once refused to dance with him at a feast, that she’d been sent away to live with an aunt before the week was over.
Nothing had ever been proven, but you heard these things happened because of his very unpleasant behaviour.
He was handsome enough, and more importantly rich enough, to make the rumours inconvenient.
“My lady.”
He bowed and took your hand. His thumb traced the inside of your wrist with lazy familiarity before releasing you immediately tucked your hand behind your back. “You’ve grown even lovelier than your portraits.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
He laughed.
Your mother looked between the two of you with quiet satisfaction. “Lord Edmund has spent the last month travelling with our delegation.”
“I’m honoured,” he gave a saccharine smile,
“You should be.” She said it lightly, but you knew that tone. She had already decided this alliance made sense.
Oh. No.
As her conversation moved elsewhere, you took half a step backwards, and Lord Edmund took half a step forwards.
No one noticed when his hand settled lightly against the small of your back with enough pressure that you felt every finger through the silk of your gown.
Your body stiffened.
“So tense,” he murmured.
You moved away, and of course mother turned just then.
“There you are.”
You forced yourself to smile.
The bastard looked every inch the perfect gentleman.
“Lord Edmund has mentioned going on a hunt tomorrow,” She mentioned, adjusting one of your curls behind your ear. “You’ll accompany him.”
Your stomach dropped. “Mother…”
“It will do you good to leave the palace.”
“I don’t enjoy hunting.”
“You enjoy forests.”
Not the same forest, you thought, Not the same hunter.
Your hesitation lasted a heartbeat too long.
Your mother frowned slightly. “You’ve refused every suitor your father introduced.”
“I barely know any of them.”
“Exactly,” her voice lowered. “You cannot know a person’s character across a dinner table.”
She glanced toward Lord Edmund, who was speaking pleasantly with your father.
“Watch how a man behaves when he’s armed.”
It was advice every queen passed to every daughter: A gentleman could lie, but a hunter rarely did.
“I think you’ll find him disciplined.”
Oh, you very much doubted that.
—
The next day, you did go hunting with Lord Edmund.
The only alarming detail was that you returned dragging his dead body behind your horse.
By the time you reached the palace gates, the rope around his ankles had rubbed the leather of his boots raw and left a dark trail through the dirt. His expensive hunting coat was torn open at one shoulder, caked with mud and dead leaves, and his head struck every uneven stone with a dull, ugly rhythm that made several of the guards flinch as they rushed to meet you.
You rode straight through the gates, eyes blank beneath the grime, skirts streaked green and brown from the forest floor, one hand wound tightly around the reins while the other still trembled despite your best efforts.
Your father reached you first. He looked relieved to see you alive, only to collapse into horror when he noticed what followed behind. Your mother arrived seconds later, still fastening the clasp of her cloak, and stopped so abruptly that the entire courtyard seemed to halt, too, as she looked down at Edmund.
You dismounted without assistance and untied the rope from the saddle. His entire body dropped heavily onto the cobblestones at your feet.
“He went into fae territory,” you said. Your voice sounded remarkably calm.
Your mother stared at the arrow buried cleanly through Edmund’s chest. Fae work, unmistakably.
You nudged his shoulder with the toe of your boot and looked down at him with exhausted contempt. “Very sad.”
What a lie.
The truth was that Edmund had never intended to hunt anything.
He had looked convincing enough when you left the palace that morning in fine hunting leathers and a freshly carved bow.
For the first hour, he thanked the servants, praised the hounds and kept his hands where everyone could see them.
Then, he began thinning the party.
The dogs were too noisy, so he sent the handlers east. The scouts had supposedly found fresh tracks near the ridge, so the huntsmen followed. The guards were told to wait with the spare horses near the stream because too many riders would disturb the game. His instruction sounded reasonable by itself, and even though you had been suspicious, you didn’t understand what he was doing until you were alone.
Only then did you notice that he had not examined a single track all morning. He had not tested the wind, drawn his bow or once looked into the bushes.
He had watched your body instead, not listening to what on earth you were saying. He hungrily watched the sway of your body in the saddle, and how your skirt shifted when you dismounted to cross a fallen tree. Whenever you tried to turn the conversation back toward the hunt, his attention slid away from the forest and returned to you with the same damp, crawling persistence.
By the time he guided you toward the border, silver mist was already visible between the ancient trunks.
You told him you wanted to turn back. You even pulled your horse around, but Edmund blocked the narrow path with his own and smiled at you as though your fear amused him.
There was no deer trail or quarry, no reason to be there except the isolation and the knowledge that no human voice would carry far enough for help to come.
That was when the performance ended.
He caught your wrist when you reached for the reins and dragged you down badly enough that your shoulder struck the side of the saddle. Your boots hit the ground unevenly, and before you could recover, his body pressed yours up against the horse.
You told him no, I’m not interested.
You said it clearly and shoved at his chest and tried to twist away, but he only laughed under his breath, as though refusal were a nervous habit he expected to train out of you after marriage.
And when his hand forced its way beneath your skirts…. An arrow came through the silver mist so suddenly that the air scarcely had time to whisper around it.
It struck Edmund through the heart.
You knew the arrow immediately. It was the same white arrow with black feathers, the same fine silver runes carved along the shaft. It was the same one he had used on the doe, except there was no Sleep of Rowan in his mercy.
Oh. This one hurt.
Edmund’s hand tore away from you at once, his face blank with shock as he staggered backward, looking down at the arrow as blood welled dark through his coat. He collapsed first to his knees and then onto his side, choking on a breath that would not come properly.
The mist moved between the trees, and somewhere inside it stood a hunter who had watched long enough to understand exactly what Edmund had intended.
Edmund was still alive when you walked over to him.
His eyes found yours, wide now, stripped of all his arrogance. His mouth opened as though he expected you to help. Perhaps he thought you would call for the guards.
Instead, you looked down at him, shaking with fury, and relief so vicious it almost felt like joy.
Then you spat in his face.
He died seconds after.
You stood over the body for several long moments, wrist throbbing where he had held you.
Dex had killed him.
Dex had seen and he had known exactly what was happening and had not hesitated for even the space of a heartbeat.
You should have been horrified, you should have looked at Edmund’s blood soaking into the moss and felt sick over the life extinguished at your feet.
Instead, you felt safe.
It took you nearly an hour to secure Edmund’s ankles and drag him back through the woods, following a vague trail of blackberries that ensured you made it back safely, knowing exactly who put them there. You didn’t remove the arrow; wanted your mother to see it.
Now, standing in the palace courtyard with your parents staring at the corpse, you folded your hands in front of you.
Your mother crouched beside Edmund and studied the entry wound. Her face remained composed, but her eyes flicked once toward the bruises around your wrist before returning to the arrow.
“He crossed the border?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And the fae killed him without warning?”
You met her eyes. “He should have known better.”
Your father looked stricken. Your mother looked unconvinced.
Neither of them asked why Edmund’s bow was still strapped neatly across his back, unused. They didn’t even ask why one side of your skirt had been torn near the hem.
Neither of them seemed to want to ask why you showed no grief.
—
That night, your mother sent you back to your chambers to sleep.
And you should’ve at least tried.
Instead, you lay tangled beneath your blankets, staring up at the canopy while your mind wandered helplessly back to the western forest, and the dead body of a potential suitor.
Soon enough, your mind wandered back to Dex.
His name alone made heat unfurl in your stomach.
It was ridiculous how easily he ruined you. He had barely touched you the one time he saw you. Tonight, he hadn’t even shown his face.
But somehow, before you called for him, Dex had known you needed him.
Your thighs pressed together beneath the sheets.
What a sick fucking thought, you scolded yourself, what a sick fucking mind I have, that this makes my core weep?
“No,” you whispered to yourself, but your body had no interest in your dignity.
But your hand was moving between your legs before shame could stop you.
Beneath the blankets, your fingers slipped lower, tentative at first, then less so as you imagined Dex with your eyes closer.
A soft gasp left your lips.
“Dex.” The name came out needy, more pathetic than you meant it to. Still, pleasure sparked through you at the sound of it.
You said it again, quieter this time.
“Dex.”
Your fingers moved faster.
You bit your lip and tilted your face into the pillow, trying to swallow the next sound, but it escaped anyway, in the form of a helpless gasp that made your whole body shiver beneath the sheets.
You were shameless, lying alone in your tower, touching yourself to the thought of the fae who had killed the man meant to court you.
Another tremor of pleasure rolled through you as your back arched faintly from the mattress.
“Dex,” you breathed again, a little broken now.
It felt like summoning him. It felt like a confession.
You imagined him at the foot of your bed, hearing exactly how his name sounded when it left your mouth like that. You imagined his head tilting, his eyes darkening, his perfect composure cracking because you were not afraid enough, because you wanted him. Because some wicked part of you had read all the cautionary tales about fair folk and and thought yes.
Yes, him.
Yes, please.
The thought made you whimper into the pillow.
Pleasure built slowly, then all at once, warm and dizzying. You chased it with your eyes shut and his name on your tongue, thinking blood on moss and the beautiful fae monster who had looked at you through the mist.
“Dex, please—”
You didn’t know what you were pleading for.
You only knew you wanted more than just your fingers. You wanted more of that shameful sweetness rolling through you.
Your fingers twisted in the sheets. Your lips parted around a mewling sound. The pleasure crested so suddenly you nearly sobbed, your body going tight and shaking beneath the blankets as his name fell from your mouth one last time, helpless and utterly damning.
For a while, you could only lie there, glassy eyes staring up at the canopy as though it had witnessed your fall from grace.
An absent-minded smile made its way to your mouth before you could stop it.
“You really are a terrible idea,” you sighed into the darkness.
The words held no conviction at all.
Outside your window, the raven landed silently upon the stone sill.
He watched you through all that, head tilted thoughtfully, black feathers gleaming blue beneath the moonlight.
That night, you didn’t notice him.
Nor did you notice that, for the first time since you had known him, he didn’t tap impatiently against the glass to ask you to let him in.
He simply remained where he was, keeping watch over the lonely tower until dawn.
—
By morning, you had decided you only wanted to thank him.
A perfectly reasonable thing, right? A man saved your life and your dignity, even if he was not exactly a man. It was only… polite.
You sat on the edge of your bed, fingers curled into the blankets, staring toward the window.
You… should know better.
But wanting never really came with a rhyme or reason.
So, you dressed quickly, perhaps too quickly.
Your fingers fumbled with the laces of your gown, and you had to redo them twice. Your hair refused to sit properly and reflection looked entirely too flushed, too guilty for a princess who had technically done nothing wrong.
Technically.
You leaned closer to the mirror and frowned at yourself.
“You are going to say thank you in person,” you said firmly. “That is all.”
Your reflection did not look convinced.
“You are only doing this, because he came to your rescue,” you continued, because apparently arguing with glass was where your morning had gone. “Like a civilised woman. You have manners, right?”
Still, your reflection looked at you as if to say that civilised women with manners did not usually wander alone into fae woods after spending the night thinking improper things about the fae in question.
You ignored her.
At breakfast, you had honeyed bread, the sugared fruit, the little cakes glazed gold beneath the kitchen light. You needed to eat, just in case. You cannot find yourself hungry in the presence of Wyld Fae!
You could not be tempted to eat or drink anything he gives you, that’s all. You needed a full stomach, because you weren’t foolish
Less than an hour later, you were slipping out through the western gate alone.
With your mother’s return, it was even easier to sneak out this time, as many of the guards were preoccupied with the queen’s every whims and needs. A queen, that your father loved to remind you, that you would one day be, too.
Still.
The morning air was damp, mist clinging to the grass beyond the castle grounds, thin as lace, and the forest stood ahead of you in a dark green wall of ancient trunks and tangled branches.
Eventually, you stopped at the edge of it.
The trees seemed to notice as it shifted though when there was no wind. Somewhere deep in the woods, a bird called once, then fell silent. The path you had taken yesterday was still there, winding blackberries between moss-covered stones and pale roots, but in daylight it looked… narrower.
Stranger.
You swallowed.
“Dex?” Your voice sounded terribly small.
Nothing answered an took one step beneath the trees.
The forest swallowed the sounds of the castle almost at once. The distant clatter of carts, the faint bells from the chapel tower, the servants calling to one another across the courtyard was barely noise behind you.
You walked for what felt like an hour.
Then another.
At first, you told yourself he would appear any moment. Dex seemed exactly the sort of person who enjoyed doing that. He would step from behind a tree, and ask whether you made a habit of wandering into dangerous places alone.
You had already prepared an excellent answer.
No, you would say. If I assumed I was in danger, I would not be here.
But Dex did not appear.
By midday, your boots were wet and the hem of your dress had collected half the forest floor. You had crossed the same fallen branch three times, which either meant you were walking in circles or the branch was following you. You had apologetically startled at least four rabbits, nearly tripped over a root that had definitely not been there a moment before, and apologised to a mushroom because it looked like it was wilting when you stepped too close.
“This is foolish,” you whispered.
Then, a branch shifted above you.
You looked up to see your raven friend sat on a low bough. His head tilted, bright eyes fixed on you with unsettling intelligence.
“Oh,” you said. “It’s you.”
The raven blinked.
For a moment, you could not move.
He looked exactly as he had outside your window: watchful and clever, as most corvids are.
Huh. You thought. He travels far, doesn’t he?
Because if this bird knew the forest, maybe he knew where Dex was, or at least where the most dense fae population was near the border. If he did, then perhaps you were not wandering blindly through the woods after all.
You took one step closer towards your friend. “I don’t suppose you could help me?”
The raven gave a small chirp.
Your mouth curved into the smallest smile. “I only want to thank him,” you said.
The raven stared as your smile faded.
“All right,” you whispered, finally admitting to him what you had failed to admit to yourself all night. “I want to see him.”
The raven dropped from the branch and landed lightly on the moss.
Behind him, the mist thickened between two dark trees.
It didn’t drift so much as gathered.
The silver-white started subtly glowing, curling over the roots like silk poured over bone. The path you had followed seemed to end there, as if the forest had brought you as far as ordinary courage could take you.
The raven stepped toward it, then looked back.
“No,” you whispered. “Stay, please. I don’t want to be alone.”
He only watched you.
The air cooled against your skin. Suddenly, the castle felt distant, like it belonged to another princess, a safer princess. A princess who would not follow a raven to the ends of the earth because she wanted to see a dangerous man smile.
And just after giving a little croak, the raven vanished into the white.
You stood at the edge, alone now, cloak ends pooling around your ankles.
For one moment, you thought you saw something through the mist, like gold flowers and black thorns along a path no human should walk. And deeper still, briefly, you could’ve sworn you saw amber eyes watching from the other side.
Your lips parted. “Dex?”
When no answer came, you should have turned back.
You knew that, but longing was not sensible. And whatever Dex had become to you since he met you… that was not sensible either.
You stepped forward and the mist touched your boots first. Then your hem, then your hands.
You should have turned back.
Instead, you took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.
—
Eventually, the mist disappeared.
It thinned around you in pale ribbons, peeling back from your face and shoulders until the forest revealed itself by degrees.
It took you a while to blink awake, looking around blankly at the white that was now retreating when…. Oh. Oh, wow.
It was beautiful.
Moss glowed faintly pink beneath your boots. The trees rose black and enormous on every side, their bark veined with silver, their roots twisting through the earth like sleeping serpents. Violet flowers bloomed among thorns, heavy-headed and luminous, turning slightly as you stepped forward as though even the plants wanted to look at you.
It was very clear that wherever you had gone, it was far away from the human realm.
You looked around, looking for your raven friend.
You looked through the strange trees, the unnatural sky, and the path of white stones winding away into the woods as if it had been waiting for your feet.
You found nothing.
Your strange little friend had vanished.
You turned in a circle, searching the branches above you and the curling mist behind you.
“Hello?” you called quietly.
Nothing answered.
You frowned, though your heartbeat was too quick for proper annoyance.
“You cannot just lead me through the mist and abandon me,” you managed to say. “It’s rude.”
A drop of water fell from a leaf somewhere overhead.
Still, no raven.
You took another careful step. The moss gave beneath your boots with a cushion-y feel that felt almost alive. “Where did you go?”
At last, a voice behind you said, “Lost, princess?”
You turned so quickly your cloak swung around your legs.
Oh.
Dex stood beneath a silver-barked tree.
In that moment, all your prepared thoughts vanished.
He looked less like he had walked here and more like the forest had grown him. He was as pretty as you last remembered him, eyes fixed on you with that calm attention that made your stomach tighten and your thoughts go embarrassingly pliant at the edges.
Your breath hitched as his eyes dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.
You remembered yourself with effort.
You had found him, yes, but you had some dignity left in you. You weren't going to make this easy for him.
“Where is my friend?” You said instead.
He raised an eyebrow slightly, though he didn’t seem confused at all. “Your friend?”
“The raven.” You glanced over your shoulder, still half-expecting the bird to appear on a branch. “He was right here. He led me through, and then he disappeared.”
Dex looked past you with mild, infuriating faux innocence. “Ravens are difficult to command.”
“I did not command him,” you insisted, trying to look away, even as you have found what you came for. “I asked for help.”
Dex tilted his head. “Did he?”
“He did,” you nodded, “but then abandoned me.”
“Perhaps he thought you had arrived safely.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You say that as though you know where he went.”
“I know very little about the private affairs of true ravens.”
“That sounds like a lie.”
Technically, it wasn’t.
Dex’s mouth curved up, barely, enough to make heat lick up the back of your neck. “You crossed into fae territory to interrogate me about a bird?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come?”
The question should have an easy answer. In fact, you have practiced it on the walk through the outer woods, when the trees still looked ordinary and you still had the comfort of pretending this was a sensible errand. You had told yourself you would be calm and grateful. You would thank him properly and then go home.
But Dex was looking at you now, all that polite pretenses felt suddenly thin.
“I wanted to find you,” you said weakly.
You hated that the words felt so bare once spoken, because you didn’t even say I wished to thank you or I owe you a debt of gratitude. It didn’t sound like court manners or duty.
I wanted to find you.
Dex took one step closer and asked. “Why?”
You swallowed.
You had many things you wanted to say, none of them a good idea saying. You wanted to tell him you had not slept properly because every time you shut your eyes, you saw the arrow split the mist.
“I wanted to thank you,” you said.
Dex’s eyes stayed on your face. “For killing the foul creature who wished to touch you against your will?”
You looked down.
Your fingers twisted in the edge of your cloak. For a moment, the forest around you blurred into last evening: Edmund too close, his fingers where they had no right to be.
The memory made your skin go cold.
You looked up at him. “Yes,” you whispered. “For him.”
Dex came closer, slowly, like approaching prey.
He gave you space to step back, space to turn away. You didn’t.
“You do not need to thank me for that,” he said, “it was my responsibility.”
His responsibility?
It certainly was not.
You should’ve questioned it. But unfortunately, you had more… urgent matters in your mind.
“I want to,” you insisted.
His eyes flicked over your face, lingering on your flushed cheeks, your mouth, the rise and fall of your chest beneath your corset.
“And that is all?” He asked.
The air warmed between you. Or perhaps that was only your body betraying you.
You lifted your chin. “Yes.”
Dex’s eyes barely changed, but you knew he didn’t believe you for a second. “Princess…” he tsked, almost scolding in nature.
“I came to thank you,” you insisted, as if repetition could make it any less untrue. Still, you were unable to meet his eyes as you said it.
“I heard what you said.”
“It is the truth.”
“No.” He stepped closer again, close enough now that you could smell rain on leather and pine. “It is part of the truth, isn't it?”
Your back touched the smooth trunk of a silver-barked tree not realising you had stepped back.
Dex stopped immediately, one hand bracing against the tree beside your shoulder. He didn’t cage you in fully or press his body to yours. He simply stood close enough that your breath tangled with his, close enough that if you leaned forward even an inch, your mouth would find his.
“Do not pretend a you’re welcome is all you should expect from me today,” he murmured.
Your breath caught.
His eyes lowered to your lips. “It is frankly insulting,” he continued.
A scandalised little sound escaped you. “I do not expect anything from you.”
He smiled. “Liar.”
You should have been offended. You were, distantly, beneath the pounding of your heart and the sudden awareness of your own body, there was probably a very respectable princess who objected to being called a liar by a fae hunter in the middle of an enchanted forest.
Unfortunately, she was not currently in charge.
Dex lifted his free hand. You watched it rise, unable to move.
His knuckles brushed beneath your chin, tilting your face up to his in a feather-light touch.
“Look into my eyes,” he said softly. “And tell me you came only to thank me.”
You held his gaze, and you really did try to force it out, but would not come.
Dex’s thumb brushed the corner of your lips.
“There,” he murmured. “I thought so.”
Your throat went dry. “T-this is very unfair.”
“Is it?” Dex looked amused.
“You know what you are doing.”
“Yes.”
The honesty made something your stomach pull tight.
His eyes darkened, not with cruelty or triumph, but with want so restrained it almost looked like pain.
“Can I kiss you, princess?”
Oh.
You didn’t expect fae to be this… blunt.
Heat rushed down your throat and settle behind your ribs. It made you remember Edmund again,m, because Edmund had not asked. Edmund had pushed close and taken space and treated your refusal like a bug he could smother beneath his heel.
Dex asked.
Dex, who could have been terrifying without trying. Dex, who has killed for you. Dex, whose mouth hovered near yours and still waited.
“Yes,” you whispered.
Only then did he lower his mouth to yours.
He kissed you slowly at first. His lips brushed yours once, and for one second, he let you decide, let you lean in, and let you press yourself closer to him. You fingers curled into the front of his cloak as you kissed him back.
Then you made the neediest sound against his mouth, and his control snapped thin.
He kissed you deeper, his hand sliding to the back of your neck, fingers warm beneath your hair. The tree was cool against your spine, his body warm in front of you, and between them you felt held rather than trapped.
His mouth opened over yours with a hunger that made your knees buckle, but even then, even with his fingers tightening slightly at your nape, he kissed like you were the singular thing that gave his life meaning.
You clutched his cloak, body tilting toward him before your pride could stop it.
Dex groaned quietly into the kiss.
Oh, what a wonderful sound.
You pulled him closer, and his other hand found your waist. His grip was warm as though he needed to feel the shape of you. He kissed you until your lips tingled, until your breath came in shallow little gasps.
When he broke away, it was only to press his mouth to your jaw, then your throat.
You tipped your head back before you could stop yourself.
Dex’s mouth curved against your skin with a little hum.
You were already shaking. “Do not sound pleased with yourself.”
“But I am,” he mumbled.
His teeth grazed the side of your neck just enough to make your fingers dig into his shoulders.
“Dex.”
For all his composure, his reaction gave him away. He liked your voice like that. He liked you, breathless and honest, he liked that that you had come here dressed in gratitude and were now pressed against a silver tree, melting under his mouth.
His hand slid from your waist to your hip, then lower. over the fabric, dragging heat in the wake of his palm.
Your breath hitched.
Dex froze at once. “Can I touch you?”
Your eyes opened halfway.
He was watching you now, close enough that his lashes cast shadows against his cheeks.
“Yes,” you said, cheeks burning “Yes, Dex. Touch me.”
His hand tightened once on your hip before he kissed you again and gathered your skirts, agonisingly slowly.
He did so layer by layer, his fingers drawing the fabric upward, exposing your stockings, your garters, the bare skin above them to the cool air of the fae wood.
You should have felt vulnerable, and part of you did, but you were not afraid. The vulnerability made your heart pound harder and your mouth open against his.
Dex felt your thighs part before his hand had even reached them.
“Oh, princess.” It was filthy and wondrous at the same time.
Your face burned as his fingers brushed your inner thigh.
You gasped.
Dex’s eyes darkened as his hand slid higher.
The first touch between your legs made you jolt against him. He found you slick already, shamefully wet, soaked from his kiss and his voice and the humiliating truth that he had been right. Thank you was not all you had come for, not even close.
For one second, Dex didn’t move much.
He dragged his finger through, feeling the slick heat of you against his fingers and your hips giving the smallest helpless tilt toward his hand.
His teeth clenched hard enough to make the muscle jump.
“Oh,” he breathed again, rougher this time. “You really did come here wanting me.”
Your hand flew to his wrist to hold him there. “I c-came to thank you,” you insisted for the third time.
His fingers slid through your wetness, and the sound beneath your skirts was utterly indecent.
Your breath broke.
Dex’s mouth brushed the corner of yours. “Yes,” he murmured. “You are thanking me very well.”
The words made you clench around nothing.
Dex felt that too. His smile felt dangerous against your cheek.
“Ah,” he whispered. “Shameless little thing.”
You would have protested if his thumb had not found the puffy sensitive bundle of nerves, begging for his attention.
The touch was light at first, circling through the slick, making pleasure spark hot beneath your skin. Your head tipped back into his waiting palm. He kissed your exposed throat, open-mouthed, while his fingers learned you beneath your gown.
He was too careful to be rushed but too precise to be merciful.
Every movement had purpose. Every stroke, every firm circle. His thumb pressed a little firmer.
Your knees buckled.
Dex caught you with his body, pinning you gently against the tree while his hand kept moving.
His fingers slid lower. “Still only here to be polite?”
You made a strangled sound. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” you gasped. “I don’t.”
His first finger pushed inside you, and the sound of it could be heard within the hush of the forest.
Your mouth fell open on a mewl, and Dex’s forehead dropped to your collarbone. He held still for a heartbeat, letting you clenched around him.
You gripped his cloak with both hands. “More.”
His eyes nearly closed.
His composure cracked, hunger flashing naked and bright through the careful mask, and then he kissed you hard as his finger began to move, gently at first, slick and deep, curling inside you until pleasure jolted through your hips.
You cried out against his mouth.
Dex swallowed the sound like he had been starving for it. “There?”
You could not answer.
He curled his finger again, and your body jerked.
“Need words, princess.”
“Yes,” you gasped. “There. Please.”
His thumb circled while his finger worked inside you, the rhythm steady and wickedly exact. Every stroke made a pool of arousal gather around his hand.
His smile should have made you embarrassed.
Instead, it made you shameless, rocking down onto his hand with a broken little whimper.
Dex groaned.
“You hear that?” he murmured.
Your eyes squeezed shut. “Dex.”
“You do,” he said, kissing your cheek. “You hear how badly you want me.”
He added a second finger.
The stretch made your breath catch.
His fingers moved again, sliding into you with ease that made your face burn and your body melt. He curled them carefully, pressing deep, finding that same place until your thighs shook around his wrist.
Dex watched you like you were the only thing in the forest.
Not like Edmund.
Edmund had wanted you afraid. Dex wanted you ruined by pleasure.
Your hands clutched his shoulders. Your hips chased his fingers. You moaned into his neck, too far gone to care about the old stories warning girls never to follow fae men into the woods.
You had followed. You had crossed.
You were here.
So you might as well make the most of it, right?
“Dex,” you mewled as pleasure flared so bright you nearly sobbed.
“There,” he whispered. “Better than your own fingers, right?”
You should have noticed. You should have asked how he knew what you had done in your tower. You should have questioned how he knew his name had been in your mouth the night before.
But his fingers curled again and your thoughts scattered.
Dex smiled on your throat. “That’s what I thought.”
He didn’t give you time to recover.
His hand moved quicker now, fingers buried deep to his knuckles, thumb steady as pleasure climbed too fast and too high. Your whole body tightened around him, hips rolling shamelessly into his palm, chasing every stroke. You were wet enough that the sound of him touching you filled the space between your bodies, and Dex seemed to lose another thread of control every time he heard it.
“You are so sweet like this,” he murmured.
“Stop talking.”
“No.”
“Dex.”
“You like it.”
You did.
His thumb pressed harder as his fingers curled exactly right.
The climax tore through you in a hot, shaking wave.
You came with your face buried against his shoulder, mouth open on a broken cry, squeezing around his fingers as pleasure pulsed through you again and again. Dex held you upright through it, one arm firm around your waist, his mouth against your temple, his hand still moving beneath your skirts until every last shiver had wrung itself out of you.
Only then did he stop.
The forest around you seemed hazy and unreal, glowing moss beneath your weak knees. Dex withdrew his fingers, and your body gave one last helpless flutter at the loss.
You should have looked away, instead you watched as he lifted his hand between you, his fingers gleamed with your arousal.
Dex’s eyes stayed on yours as he brought them to his mouth and tasted you.
His eyes turned dark with satisfaction. “You really are sweet,” he said.
A scandalised little sound escaped you. “Dex,” you gasped. “You cannot say things like that.”
His thumb brushed your lower lip. “I can say much worse.”
“You should not.”
“No,” he agreed. “I should not.”
Eventually, he guided you carefully away from the tree.
Your legs were unsteady, dress rumpled. Your heart felt as though it had been taken apart and put back together. Dex kept one hand at your waist, watching you with a hunger that had not faded at all.
If anything, it had grown worse.
“How much more gratitude should I expect from you, princess?”
Your breath caught.
You knew you should be careful. You knew enough old stories to understand that words mattered here. Especially words spoken to beautiful fae men beneath magical trees and your heart no longer safely your own.
But then Dex’s hand slid into your hair, guiding you lower, his fingers threading through the loosened strands that your breath caught before you had even reached your knees. The moss gave beneath you, soft enough to feel unreal through the layers of your dress. Around you, the forest went uncannily quiet, as though the trees had closed their eyes and the flowers among the thorns had turned away out of courtesy.
Above you, Dex opened his belt. The buckle came free with a metallic click that seemed to echo as leather slid through its clasp, each small movement made unbearable by the way he watched you watching him. His blue-touched fingertips worked with the same terrible care you had seen when he handled his bow, and that precision made the moment feel even more indecent.
“As much as you want,” you whispered, holding his eyes, unshaded by how badly you wanted him to know the truth.
Dex smiled.
Your eyes lifted to his, licking the tip of his now-free length.
“There,” he groaned, thumb brushing your cheek as he pulled your mouth almost fully into him. “Now that feels like a thank you.”
You swirled your tongue as he closed his eyes. “Ah— fuck,” he breathed, voice barely controlled. “That’s it.”
You wanted more of that strained, beautiful sounds he tried and failed to hold back immediately.
So you let your lips and tongue become gratitude, letting every eager movement say what your mouth could not form into words.
Thank you for the arrow. Thank you for Edmund. Thank you for seeing what I wanted and waiting until I said yes.
Dex’s head tipped back slightly, a rougher, lower sound this time.
You took it as a reward.
“Princess,” he warned, though it sounded nothing like warning. It sounded like prayer.
Your eyes watered from the effort of taking all of him, from how much he was, from just how big he was that he barely fit in your velvety mouth.
Still, you looked up through wet lashes, and the sight seemed to make him twitch.
“Sweet, reckless thing.” he whispered.
You gave him more.
Dex groaned and the sound was beautiful.
This was better than court music under a chandelier during the autumn feast. This was the dangerous fae hunter above you losing pieces of himself because your mouth was warm and utterly devoted.
His pleasure was music to your ears and you wanted to make him sing.
“Look at me,” Dex said.
You did.
His amber eyes were dark now, fixed on your face, looking undone and hungry. His blue-touched fingertips glowed faintly where they rested against your cheek, wiping away a tear.
“Good girl,” he said.
You nodded, too full of want to be embarrassed properly.
His thumb stroked beneath your eye. “You are too sweet for your own good.”
You would have rolled your eyes if you had been capable of dignity.
Instead, you bobbed again, more frequent this time.
Dex’s breath broke as you tasted the first bead of arousal coming out of him, proof of how badly he wanted you.
His mouth parted around a breath that was nearly a laugh, nearly a moan.
“Do not look so shocked,” he murmured. “You did that.”
The words made heat flood through you all over again.
You should have felt shy. Instead, pride curled through your chest, wicked.
You had done that. You had made him sound like that.
So you kept going, tearful and greedy until he started murmuring curses in a language older than yours. You wanted him to remember this. You wanted him to know that you were no longer simply thanking him.
In an attempt to go deeper, to feel him in your throat as if you’ve trained all gag reflex away, you tilted your head slightly.
That’s when you saw the quiver of arrows lay in the moss beside you. It must’ve slipped off his shoulders at one point or another.
White ash arrows rested inside, carved with silver runes. You knew those arrows but it was not the arrows that stopped your heart.
It was the feathers that tipped the ends of the arrows, glossy blue-black beneath the fae light. You never noticed them before, but they were… raven feathers.
Your breath hitched.
Oh.
Oh.
Suddenly, you thought of the windowsill, your friend tapping at the glass. You remember his clever black eyes watching while you read aloud, lonely and foolish. The little creature had listened to your complaints, your restless dreams, your secrets.
The raven who had visited for years. The raven who had led you through the mist.
Your eyes lifted slowly.
Dex looked down at you with his amber eyes.
Oh.
All those mornings, all those evenings, all those years…
You should have known. You heard of stories of fae folk turning into woodland creatures all the time.
He was the raven.
Your hands tightened.
You should have pulled away and demanded answers. How long? How much had he heard? How many secrets had he carried away?
Oh, you had been so, so foolish.
You should’ve known from the first day you truly met in the woods. You should have questioned how he had known to call you princess when you had never told him what you were.
For a second, real fear flickered through your eyes. Not fear of him, Fear of the fact that some part of you did not hate it enough.
Dex’s face changed the moment you understood.
He knew the pretty princess he had been pursuing for years had finally had it all figured out.
Pleasure and guilt and hunger crossed behind his eyes in the same vein, you could barely separate them. His hand remained gentle in your hair, giving you room to turn your face away from him and the old magic curling around both of you.
You stared up at him, eyes wet, heart pounding.
You were frightened. But as your mouth kept working him, clearly, you weren’t frightened enough.
Instead, you had felt strangely, terribly cherished by the thought that the raven at your window had waited years to be touched by you like this.
As you quickened your pace, your eyes burned harder.
Dex’s thumb brushed another tear from your cheek, intended to be an apology in gesture.
You answered by giving him more.
His breath shattered.
You became greedy for his pleasure, greedy for every note you could draw from him. The forest blurred silver and green around you. The flowers bowed their heads among the thorns. Mist curled over your knees, hiding the path back, making you forget the safer version of yourself, who would have stopped the moment she realised the truth.
You were not her anymore.
You had crossed the line.
Dex’s moans were music to your ears, so controlled until they were not. Each one made your own heart pound harder, made your mouth react and your hands more certain. You wanted to ruin him kindly, to thank him until he forgot how to be anything but yours in that moment.
His head tipped back, and the sound that left him was almost helpless. It filled you with vicious pride. You wanted to keep it forever the way he had apparently kept pieces of you.
“You’re going to ruin me,” he said as the blue at his fingertips brightened.
His hand tightened in your hair, then loosened at once, still careful even at the edge of himself. His body went rigid above you, and the final sound he made was the prettiest yet.
His seed spilled into you as he reached his high and no textbook had warned you that a fae could taste like sweetness and binding magic.
Your throat worked once, eyes rolling back in a haze from the taste.
And you swallowed.
For a moment, you only knelt there, dazed.
Dex, finally catching his breath, finally looked down at you.
He laughed fondly, as though you had done something preciously foolish and still utterly expected.
“Oh, princess,” he murmured.
Then, his hand slid over the crown of your head in an almost patronising pat pat pat.
You blinked up at him, eyes glossy, mouth parted, still too ruined to be properly offended by the way he was looking at you, like you were helpless and had walked directly into his snare and thanked him for setting it.
“Poor thing,” he cooed, “you really don’t know, do you?”
Huh?
Your eyebrows pulled together, confused, mouth still dripping silver-white liquid. “W-what?”
Dex lazily pulled his belt on before crouching in front of you, amber eyes bright with wicked tenderness. His thumb brushed your lower lip, wiping away the last trace of him gently.
“You were right to refuse our fruit,” he said. “And you were right to refuse our wine.”
A strange warmth bloomed beneath your ribs.
Dex smiled wider. “But the old laws never distinguished between feasts and lovers.”
The words sank in slowly.
Your heart stumbled as looked down at your hands in the moss.
For one second, you thought the strange fae light was playing tricks on you. The glow of the flowers, perhaps old magic bending colour where it touched skin.
But no.
Your fingertips were blue at the very tips, like you had dipped them in moonlight and frost. The colour shimmered luminously beneath your skin, not stain, not paint that could be washed away.
A bond.
Dex made a pleased hum and took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the new colour as though admiring his own mark.
You should have recoiled or demanded answers. Maybe shouted at him
Instead, your lashes fluttered, and the golden thread beneath your ribs tugged you toward him until your body swayed towards him, not entirely magical in origin.
Because you truly believed, bond or not, you still wanted him.
Dex caught you.
His hand settled possessively at your waist, and you looked up at him with a weak smile that made his cold heart melt.
You had not known a lover’s offering could bind as surely as bread and wine. You had not known that he had turned your body into a feasting table and your mouth into a cup.
And the worst part was you did not care enough.
How could you, when Dex looked at you like you hung the moon and stars for him? How could you when the forest seemed to hum approval?
A distant, sensible part of you understood that you should have reacted. You should have stiffened in his arms, looked back toward the mist, thought of your mother and father, your kingdom, your guards, the frantic search parties that would soon spill into the western woods calling your name. Instead, you only curled deeper into Dex as though the sound had frightened you toward him rather than away from him, and his arms tightened around you at once, pleased by the surrender.
He gathered you closer, one hand beneath your knees and the other firm against your back, carrying you as though you weighed nothing at all. The thorn path opened behind him with a shiver of black branches, parting for their prince and the human princess he had finally claimed.
Dex kissed your temple once, his mouth lingering there as he murmured sweet little nothings into your hair. I never used the Sleep of Rowan until I wanted to become the kind of hunter you would not fear. I wanted to be good for you. You made me want to be kind. My North Star. My pretty girl. My princess.
The words should have mattered. A foolish part of you heard them and melted, heard the devotion beneath the old loneliness of centuries spent alone. Perhaps some corner of your heart truly did believe a creature like him meant every gentle thing he said, even while carrying you deeper into a realm that had just swallowed you whole.
All his pretty promises blurred into the darker truth humming through the old magic between you. He could not wait to show you his realm, his palace, his gardens, his bed. He could not wait to keep you spoiled as his lover and his plaything, the future mother to his heirs. You were for as long as the Wyld remembered how to hunger.
You should have been horrified, but you were too full of the sweetness you had swallowed, and the magic now curling through your blood like a second heartbeat. Your cheek rested against his throat, and when Dex’s hand stroked over your back, you sighed as though you were relieved, because being taken felt too much like being wanted.
For Dex, Prince of the Wyld, his three-year hunt for his mate was finally complete.
If he was being honest, he had thought it would take longer.
summary: clark has the perfect plan to get to know the love of his life. it consists of eight dates, eight carefully crafted steps, and if all goes well, a happily-ever-after. but when jimmy sets him up on a blind date with you, sticking to the plan turns out to be a lot harder than he thought.
word count: 21k (i’m so sorry… the plot was plotting)
warnings/tags: 18+ mdni, tooth-rooting fluff, comfort, banter, slight angst if you squint, strangers to lovers, idiots in love, slow-burnish, clark’s pov, teacher!reader, reader’s in her late 20s, reader is shorter than clark, reader is skeptical of superman, kissing, cursing, introspection, miscommunication, fingering (f receiving), oral (f and m receiving), multiple orgasms, doggy style, missionary, unprotected p in v, creampie.
a/n: i’ll admit i went a little off the rails diving into clark’s head and writing from his pov. i really took my free will to the next level, but i hope i managed to capture him and his essence. special mention to @sai-int for helping me edit this fic!!! she was so supportive and kind, and made me feel like a professional writer <3 dear angel: you’re a mastermind, and i’m beyond grateful you took the time to engage with my work!!! and thank you all for reading :) likes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated!!!
Over the years, experience has taught Clark that whenever Jimmy labels one of his ideas as brilliant, it’s usually the complete opposite.
Which is why, the moment he approaches his desk first thing in the morning, Clark’s already saying, “No. Thank you.”
“Hello to you, too,” Jimmy notes, rolling his eyes and watching as Clark drops into his chair, adjusting his tie. “You haven’t even heard what I was going to say.”
“I don’t need to, because I have the feeling it involves me in some type of way.”
“Well, aren't you smart?”
“If smart means being your friend long enough to know you, then yes.”
Spreading his arms wide, Jimmy smiles as if he were a kid about to ask for a pony. “Come on, Kent! You’re going to love this brilliant idea I had yesterday.”
Were there a hidden camera in the office, Clark would be staring straight into it right now, like they do in The Office. Instead, he just glances at Jimmy while unpacking his bag. “Your brilliant ideas are never to be trusted.”
“Now why would you say that?”
“It’s just that you always find a way to put me in the thick of it.”
“That’s not true. Name at least one time something like that happened.” As Clark inhales to list a dozen examples, Jimmy stops him by holding up a finger. “Never mind. But you have to trust me on this one!”
Clark blows out his cheeks, peering up at him over his glasses. “Alright. What is it?”
“So there’s this girl—”
“Here we go again.”
“—which is totally your type.”
“You said that last time.”
“But this time I mean it.”
“You said that the time before last time.”
“Well, I’m not perfect, you know? Neither am I a certified matchmaker. This is a hobby, which I do out of pure affection for you.”
“I don’t recall ever asking you to do this.”
Jimmy shrugs, inspecting the coffee Clark had set on his desk as if it belonged to him. “Technically, you did. You said, and I quote: Oh, it’d be nice to have somebody. I’m all alone. I’m miserable.” He drops his voice into a deep imitation of Clark’s, hunching his shoulders in an exaggerated way.
For the record, he hadn’t exactly said it like that. Jimmy just loves being dramatic.
Clark clenches his jaw the moment Jimmy lifts the cup closer to his mouth. “Buddy, that’s mine,” he mutters, though he makes no move to snatch it back.
Completely unbothered, Jimmy takes a trial sip, smacking his lips together as he drifts his eyes shut. “God bless caffeine.”
Clark sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Just because you heard me saying it once doesn’t mean I was explicitly asking you to get me a girlfriend.”
“I still wanna do it,” Jimmy argues. “I’m telling you, that girl’s out there, and it’s my duty as your best friend to find her.”
That last bit has Clark shaking his head. When put that way, what he wants sounds stupid, even childish. The whole relationship thing, falling in love. The white picket fence and the late nights in.
It had been around the time Jimmy introduced his current girlfriend, Molly, to both Lois and him that Clark found it all so endearing he actually snorted and patted his friend on the back.
They were at a bar, drinking with the ease of a Friday night, and despite not being able to get wasted, he felt tingly all over. Perhaps it was because the mere image of love was standing right in front of him, this time personified in a couple he knew.
“It must be nice to be in a relationship,” he had mused, without meaning to say it out loud. It was meant to stay a thought, but it had slipped past his lips, and immediately three pairs of unrelenting eyes were scrutinizing him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to ruin the mood. I’m really happy for you guys.”
Lois, it seemed, had only heard the first part. “You want to date?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“And here I thought you weren’t the dating type,” Jimmy said, raising his eyebrows and taking another sip of beer. “I mean, you never have any free time outside of work. You’re constantly in a rush. In fact, I’m surprised you’re even here tonight. How would you even manage to fit in a girlfriend with your schedule?”
In moments like those, Clark wished alcohol would have an effect on him. “I’d figure it out. But of course I’d like to be with someone.”
If other people could have it, why couldn’t he? In his mind, he deserved it as much as anyone else. Though again, he wasn’t like anyone else. He wasn’t even a person to begin with. He might look like one, but his DNA was far from normal.
As obnoxious as Jimmy was, and still is to this day, once he got something in his head, it was as good as done. “Babe, don’t you have, like, a hundred friends who are single?” he asked Molly, intertwining their fingers, and she pursed her lips, thinking.
Molly ran a hand through her long red hair, toying with a specific strand. “A great deal.”
Jimmy’s gaze slid back to Clark, a smirk plastered across his features. “Then consider it done, mister. You may start calling me Cupid from now on.”
Fueled by desperation and maybe a little fear, Clark almost choked on his own saliva. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to! It’ll be fun.” Jimmy clapped a hand on Clark’s shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze. “You leave it to me, and I’ll set you up with the love of your life.”
That night, promises were made, and days later, Jimmy had put together a PowerPoint presentation, each slide featuring a different woman, along with her job and hobbies.
In the end, Clark ended up going out with several of Molly’s friends and work colleagues. One would think that, with this much help, he would’ve had better luck, but none of those dates were of his liking.
The ones at the forefront of his memory were the following:
Alexandra: sweet, but her ex-boyfriend had cheated on her just two weeks before their date, and she was still in love with him. He spent the entire evening listening to her cry and handing her tissue after tissue. They decided to stay friends.
Casey: tried to convince him to take off his glasses, insisting that they looked ‘unconventional’. She said she often wondered why natural selection didn’t eliminate poor eyesight before glasses were inverted. He faked a call from his mother twenty minutes in and ran to his apartment.
Emma: claimed Superman was a government-made hologram designed to control and terrorize human beings. He didn’t stick around to hear the rest of her theory.
Not just finding someone, but actually connecting with them, was becoming harder than he’d thought. Jimmy often tells him he’s too particular when it comes to meeting new people, although Clark doesn’t consider being meticulous a flaw.
Years ago, he’d come up with what he believed was the perfect plan to get to know someone. It consisted of eight dates, eight carefully crafted steps.
Dates 1 and 2: Minimal physical contact. A handshake or a kiss on the cheek at most, but a first kiss that soon was off the table.
Dates 3 to 5: A real kiss was allowed, but nothing more. Hugging was fine. Still in the getting-to-know-her stage. Visiting each other’s apartments was too risky, though small gestures were encouraged. Conversations could start leaning toward future relationship prospects.
Dates 6 to 8: Resist the temptation to go further. Make sure the other person was as invested as he was. If all is still going well by the eighth date, tell her the truth, and hopefully think about marriage someday.
The problem is that Clark has never made it past the first date with any of Molly’s friends, and it’s starting to get on his nerves. How difficult could it be to find someone even a little like him?
Jimmy snaps his fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Clark. Where’d you go?”
“Sorry,” Clark says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this.”
“I can always create you a Hinge account—”
“We’re definitely not doing that.”
Jimmy raises his hands in mock surrender. “Alright. But please, you need to trust me on this one. I have a really good feeling about this girl.”
Clark’s expression sours, going poker-faced. “Is it because she’s the last option you have?”
Jimmy clutches his chest, pretending to get offended. “You always think so badly of me.”
Scowling, Clark sighs for the hundredth time this morning, and the clock hasn’t even struck nine-thirty yet. “Can I at least see a picture of her?”
“Nope. It’s a blind date. Exciting, right?”
A crease forms between Clark’s brows. “You can’t be serious. How am I supposed to recognize her if I don’t know what she looks like?”
“That sounds like a you problem,” Jimmy replies, giving a dismissive wave of his hand. “Does tonight work for you?”
“Well—”
“Perfect. I’m so glad you’re not busy saving the world or whatever. I’ll text you the details. And hey, if everything goes according to plan, maybe you can even tell her about… the thing.”
Clark hooks two fingers into Jimmy’s sleeve, tugging until he’s leaning down so they’re eye-to-eye level. “We said we wouldn’t talk about the thing at the office.”
“I know. I just still can’t believe it! You’re Sup—”
“—Super committed to my job? Yup. Love it. I’m a big fan of newspapers,” Clark interrupts, his voice an octave too high.
Across the bullpen, Lois asks, “What are you two whispering about over there?”
“Someone’s got another date lined up!” Jimmy chirps, now popping around behind Clark to give his chair a spin.
“Poor thing,” Lois says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I thought you were done with those.”
“Me too,” Clark mumbles, palming his cheek flusterdly.
Grinning, Jimmy adds, “I could help you next time, Lois.”
“I’d rather die alone, but thank you.” At that, she strides off, and Jimmy’s mouth downturns, resembling something that looks a lot like a pout.
Before strolling off toward his desk, he gives Clark one final glance. “Just imagine the double dates we’ll go on, CK!”
Clark forces a smile to appease his friend.
Perhaps being single wasn’t the worst fate after all.
While getting ready, he finds himself torn between restless anxiety and utter resignation. It’s a strange combination, to say the least. Both feelings coexist tensely inside him, neither winning out over the other.
You’re ten minutes late to the date, which isn’t much, not really. After pacing the block twice, he’d arrived half an hour early to the restaurant Jimmy sent the location of, hoping nothing in the world would go wrong and force him to abandon the establishment and leap up into the air.
Already, he’s read the menu more times than he can count, memorizing each dish with its ingredients and price. He knows the chicken parmigiana comes with a chicken breast that can be topped with mozzarella, Parmesan, or provolone, and that the garnish—
“Clark?”
His head snaps up from the menu, and he sees you standing there with an apologetic smile, holding out your hand in greeting.
“Hey,” he says, standing so fast his chair nearly tips. He grips your hand, enveloping it, and swallows like his throat has gone dry, suddenly parched. “I’m—Yes. Hi. Hello.”
Golly.
He’s temporarily lost the ability to speak coherently. No longer does he know which letters go together to form the words he wants to say. It’s beyond incredible, the effect your beauty has on him.
You tilt your head, studying him before giving him your name. “Jimmy said I should look for a guy who looks tall even when he’s sitting, but you’re way taller than I expected.” Your nose wrinkles immediately after hearing yourself. “That sounded weird, didn’t it? Sorry. I swear it sounded less awkward in my head.”
A nervous laugh escapes his throat. “It’s alright. I’ve been mistaken for Bigfoot a handful of times now.”
Usually, when he jokes, the response he receives is no more than a polite chuckle. He’s convinced he has no sense of timing, no instinct for delivery, but now you’re genuinely laughing at what he’s just said. It feels authentic, and for him, that’s unbelievable.
Then he realizes he still hasn’t let go of your hand. He drops it like it burns, wiping his palms on his black slacks as he sits again, silently chiding himself for how much he’s sweating.
“I’m so sorry I arrived a bit late. I couldn’t find a place to park.” You hang your purse from the back of the chair as you sit, the corner of your mouth quirking up. “Did I make you wait too long?”
Clearing his throat, he lifts the menu and waves it awkwardly. “I, uh, had plenty of time to learn all the dishes.”
“Then I suppose you’ll have no problems ordering for me.”
He’s left flabbergasted. “But—How?”
“I like almost everything, that’s why it always takes me forever to choose. Trust me, you do not want to be stuck here with me until closing,” you explain, lifting your shoulder in a half shrug.
A distorted echo of his own conscience cuts through his thoughts: who says I wouldn't want that?
Soon you’re talking, the conversation unspooling. You tell him you’ve known Molly since primary school, and that when she initially asked if you wanted to go on a date with one of Jimmy’s friends, you turned it down.
“—So I thought I’d try to navigate the dating world on my own, but months passed without much success and I lost motivation.” You lace your fingers together, setting them neatly on the table. “Then Molly asked to meet, and this time she brought Jimmy, and… well, here I am.”
“I’m glad you didn’t lose all your hope,” he rejoins before realizing the hidden meaning of his words. He steers away from that subject. “Jimmy’s a pretty… chatty guy, don’t you think?”
“He’s great! Plus, I’ve never seen Molly this happy.”
“You’re right. They look good together.”
“And he talked a lot about you. Said some very nice things.”
“Does that mean you know more about me than I know about you?”
“Maybe.” Your eyes wander around the room before returning to his. “Besides, he paid me to be here, so this date better be a success.”
His expression falls. There’s a sudden tightness that creeps into his chest, and he can’t help but blink owlishly. “Wait, did… did Jimmy actually pay you?”
“I’m kidding!” you clarify, stumbling over your words as you lean forward, your knuckles brushing his across the table. His shoulders loosen, and he exhales. You continue with a soft chuckle. “That was my best attempt at breaking the ice. I don’t think I’ll ever be good at jokes.”
“I’m no better. Want proof?”
“Go on.”
“Why are colds bad criminals?”
You lift your brows. “Why?”
“Because they’re easy to catch.”
Propping your chin on your hand, you shake your head with a crooked smile. “That was… terrible.”
“Oh come on, you could at least pretend it was funny.” Clark laughs.
“And lie to you? Never.”
“You’ve crushed my dreams of following my true passion.”
“… Which is?”
“Pursuing a career in comedy, obviously.”
You’re laughing. Again. He thinks he’s never managed to make someone laugh this much in such a short span.
Once the laughter dies down, you offer up another question: “So, you work at the Daily Planet, right?”
He nods. “Mostly reporting. Some articles and interviews as well—”
At that moment, a waitress interrupts before he can continue, carrying a notepad in her hands. After she finishes listing off tonight’s specials, he blurts out both orders: the same dish, because panic takes over. He then asks you to choose the drinks; you settle on water, and he echoes your choice without thinking.
Once the waitress is gone, you continue your thought. “I’ve read some of your pieces—Some of the interviews with Superman, for instance.”
“Oh.” He hums, with an air of shock.
“Sorry. You’re probably tired of people bringing him up.”
His pulse quickens in the blink of an eye. “No, not at all. It’s just that I sometimes forget people are meant to read what I write, you know? It still amazes me.”
“Well, you’ve got an avid reader here.” Your lips curve knowingly. “So… is he cool? Nice? Or does he think too highly of himself?”
That last part catches him off guard. He fumbles with the napkin in his lap, mindlessly tearing it into smaller pieces. “What makes you think that?”
You ponder, wrinkling your nose. “Well, when someone has that much power, it’d be easy to slide into arrogance.”
His voice, when it comes, is so subdued that he can barely hear it. “I believe he takes what he does very seriously. I wouldn’t say he’s arrogant.”
You rest your chin on your palm, studying him. “He’s not so fond of the media, though, right?”
“That’s because some have chosen to distort his image.”
“I see you’re a Superman apologist,” you tease, tapping the table with two fingers. “So tell me: if he’s not exactly approachable, then how did you manage to land all those interviews with him?”
In situations like these, Clark realizes he’s been taking air for granted. How do you know which buttons to push to make him sweat?
“I just…. happen to be in the right place at the right time. That’s all.”
You give him a lopsided grin. “Don’t be so modest! Give yourself some credit. You’ve given him a voice no one else has. I think it’s admirable.”
There’s a fleeting moment when he falls silent, partly blinded by your radiance. He feels as though he can’t look at you properly while speaking, as if he’s staring straight into the Yellow Sun.
It seems almost unreal that you’re here, sitting across from him, breathing the same air, your shoes only inches away from his under the table.
You’re beautiful. And he’s petrified of making the wrong move—of saying the wrong thing and scaring you off forever.
“I wouldn’t say we’re friends or anything like that,” he adds after a beat. “It’s strictly professional. He wants others to hear his side of things, too.”
He isn’t too sure what he just said, too stuck on the fact that he could really be falling for you after knowing you for less than half an hour. It sounds absurd—Gosh, it is absurd. That he knows for sure.
But what role does absurdity play when it comes to love? Aren’t those the very things that can’t be logically explained? The unreasonable acts?
Stick. To. The. Plan. You big poet.
Cutting off Clark’s mental spiral, the waitress timely returns with both of your drinks, placing them carefully on the table. He takes a sip, the water cold and numbing against his throat, though it does nothing for the heat rising in his cheeks.
He sets the glass down. “Anyway, enough about me. Tell me something about yourself.”
“I teach,” you say, your tone softening. “Primary and high school. For my older students, I focus mostly on literature.”
“That sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
Your eyes brighten a little. “It is. It can be incredibly exhausting at times, but I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. Teaching is my calling, you know? What I’m meant to do.”
His lips quirk before he even speaks. “Should I confess then that I haven’t read a fiction book in years?”
“How are you still going on with your life?” You jest, taking a sip of your water.
“I manage just fine.”
“Lucky you, I can recommend you something whenever you want.” It’s like you’re half hoping for a denial, because then you clarify, “Not like I’m forcing you or anything. Not everybody enjoys reading. I’m only saying that if you’re interested—”
Jimmy won’t believe it, Clark thinks, that he set him up with someone who overthinks their words just as much as he does.
His heart sings as he answers, “That’d be nice.”
While you eat, Clark starts memorizing all these details that you mention, storing them in the back of his head:
You’ve trained yourself not to curse, thanks to all the hours spent surrounded by children, though every once in a while a bad word sneaks out, especially when you stub your little toe on the edge of your bed.
He learns that you’re not much of a drinker. You’ll take a gin and tonic every now and then, but you refuse to accept beer, wine, or anything too sugary.
As a kid, you dreamed of being a librarian, and you even worked in one through college.
When the check is paid and his cheeks ache from smiling more than he has in weeks, he insists on holding the door open for you as you step outside.
The moment he turns back, you’re holding your phone out toward him.
“I’d really like to see you again, if you want to,” you murmur, fluttering your eyelashes with a hopeful grin on your lips. “Think you can—Would you give me your number?”
His mouth hangs agape briefly before he shuts it tightly. His eyes gloss over you once more. “I’d love that. Of course. I mean, you’re great, and I think—”
A giggle escapes you as you perceive him to be just as nervous as you are, and you give the device a playful shove back into his chest.
He takes it, pressing each number with practiced delicacy while trying not to waste the little time you had left. He hands the phone back, rocking on his heels, searching for the right thing to do with his hands.
“It was a good first date,” he admits at last.
The silence between you deepens, and then you say, “I’m glad I accepted Jimmy’s offer.”
“He’ll be all over me at work tomorrow.”
You beam at him, your eyes crinkling at the corners. “Tell him I said hi.”
“I will.”
Even so, there’s a part of Clark that doesn’t want to leave. He wants to know more about you, despite having already memorized all those little details you shared throughout the night.
You both have responsibilities, and he knows he can’t ask for too much when you’ve only just met, but he would stay up all night if it meant spending just a little more time with you.
God, he’s already in so deep.
You tighten your grip on your purse strap, slinging it over your shoulder. “Okay, then… bye. I guess I’ll see you around.”
You shift closer, rising on your toes, and judging by the way you’re tilting your head, he’s pretty sure you’re planning on kissing him on the cheek.
He suddenly remembers his plan, panic kicking in before common sense, his hand shoots forward to hold yours, stopping you.
Startled, you slip your hand into his, saying, “A true gentleman.” You give it a firm shake. “Noted.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“Don’t worry.” You offer him another one of your earth-shattering smiles. “Goodnight, Clark.”
He waves, and so do you, but neither of you moves right away. He gestures toward the sidewalk. “I’ll go first.”
You take two steps backward. “Yup. Fine.”
Needless to say, when he’s a block away and risks glancing over his shoulder, he finds you already looking back at him.
“I need all the details!”
“Jimmy, I swear to God—”
“You’re entitled to tell me! I was the one who set you up!”
Clark shushes him, pressing a hand over his mouth. They’re right by the printers, and he flashes an innocent smile at a woman passing by on her way to the break room, concern flickering in her eyes.
“Stop yelling, man!” Clark hisses, his gaze boring into Jimmy’s as he all but slaps his large hand over his mouth. “You’re scaring people, and you have—What the hay, dude?!”
Clark yanks his hand back, staring at his palm in disgust. His skin is wet and sticky.
“Did you just lick me?” Clark grimaces, wiping the saliva on Jimmy’s shirt. “How old are you? Three?”
“I will not be silenced.”
“You’re gross.”
“And I’ll continue to be if you don’t tell me how it went last night,” Jimmy presses excitedly, giving a light punch to Clark’s chest.
Clark sighs, looking around to make sure no one’s eavesdropping their conversation. “I already told you it was fine. What else do you want to know?”
“Did you kiss?”
“What?! No!” Now Clark’s the one yelling.
“Relax. It’s not like I asked if you two reenacted the Kama Sutra.”
A rush of heat prickles at the back of Clark’s neck. The newsroom feels stifling, and he tugs at his collar, aiming to keep his voice even. “Why are you more… unfiltered than usual?”
“Kissing isn’t a sin, pal. Stop treating it as if it were,” Jimmy explains, and with a shake of his head, he drifts toward the coffee machine, leaving Clark even more confused.
He quickly follows after him. “But it’s too early for a kiss. We’ve only been on one date.”
Steam curls from the machine as Jimmy fills his cup. The vapor fogs Clark’s glasses, blurring his vision for a second.
“You notice how you're trying to control the situation? It’s like you want to structure every single thing,” Jimmy says, stirring in sugar, clinking a spoon against the ceramic. “You need to just let it flow. See where it takes you. Forget about that stupid eight-dates thing.”
Taken aback, Clark’s brows snap together. “I don’t ‘go with the flow’. And my plan’s not stupid. I just… put a lot of thought into it,” Clark laments.
“How many times did you shake her hand last night? Five?”
“In my defense, she did it first.”
“Oh! Fantastic. Looks like I’ve found someone who matches your freakiness.”
Clark opens his mouth to argue, but the unexpected buzz in his pocket derails his train of thought. As his heart hammers, he fishes out his phone. His lock screen lights up with a new message from an unknown number.
He can’t help the way his lips twitch upward, betraying him. He’s been waiting all morning for this.
Jimmy leans in, trying to angle the screen toward himself. “Oh, man. Is it her? Tell me it’s her.”
Clark pivots the phone away trying to use his size to his advantage, but Jimmy cranes his neck anyway, squinting at the text that’s popped up:
I really hope you didn’t give me a fake number last night.
Clark’s thumb hovers over the screen, debating his next reply. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy remains grinning next to him, taking a long sip of coffee before nearly hollering, “Remember that sexting in public is gross!”
He walks away after that, and a few heads turn in Clark’s direction as he jerks upright, almost dropping the device. “He’s joking, obviously,” he sputters, his head bent. “I’d never do that. You’re all… safe.”
Retreating to his desk, he sinks into his chair, hiding his face behind the glow of his phone screen. He creates a new contact under your name.
Clark: What kind of person do you think I am?
The typing dots appear right after.
You: I barely know you. Why should I trust you?
Clark: I can’t think of any good reason right now.
You: Well, if you want to prove your identity, tell me the color of the jacket I wore yesterday.
Clark: It was blue… and you paired it with a black sweater and a pretty pair of earrings.
You: Your eyes do work wonders.
Clark: It’s the glasses. They take all the credit.
You: But is your memory always this good?
Clark: Only on important occasions.
Your second date comes a few days later at a bookshop café you’ve been meaning to try. Clark’s determined to leave with at least one book under his arm, and after debating his choices with you, he ends up choosing Atonement.
Turns out you don’t talk much. You mostly read, and yet the silence between you feels natural, almost familiar. Most people don’t consider Clark’s quiet nature much of a virtue, but he’s never seen it that way.
He thinks back to his parents on the Kent farm, sitting side by side on the porch. They wouldn’t speak, only stare at the horizon, steady and unflinching.
He wonders if this is how they felt when they were younger, or how they still feel after so many years of being together.
It’s too soon, and he knows it. Still, the thought lingers, stubborn as ever: if that kind of comfort was supposed to take years, why is he already finding it with you?
As with most things in life, Clark has always believed that something very good is inevitably followed by something very bad. After the date, a thousand excuses run through his head, all the things you could say to ghost him.
I don’t think we really connected. Maybe we could just stay friends.
Actually, I’m not single. I have a boyfriend and two dogs in another city, waiting for me to come home.
You’re kind of boring, your relationship with Superman is concerning, and I never want to see you again.
All his doubts fade the moment you text him before going to bed, reminding him to send you his thoughts after finishing each chapter of the book.
The third date happens almost a week later, when both of you finally manage to carve out the time. You’d mentioned a certain movie you’d been wanting to see, and now that it had finally hit theaters, Clark wasn’t wasting the chance.
You’ve taken your seats in the designated theater. The movie, Materialists, won’t start for another ten minutes. You’re devouring the popcorn he bought, tossing kernel after kernel into your mouth, while he steals a handful whenever you pause.
“I didn’t know you liked popcorn so much,” he says, laughing softly at the way you pop them into your mouth.
“I love it, but I’m starving, too.”
“Guess you’ll have to survive on popcorn for now.” He stretches his legs, sinking deeper into the seat. “By the way, what’s this movie about?”
He can't tell you that he got these tickets online while he was in Europe just a few hours ago, and that's why he didn't have time to read the plot.
“A love triangle,” you explain, crossing one leg over the other. “I hope it’s good. I’ve heard all kinds of opinions.”
It starts off promising. When Pedro Pascal’s character, Harry, flirts with Dakota Johnson’s Lucy at the wedding, he spares you a quick glance, noticing how your gaze is fixed on the screen. You partially cover your face each time they get too close.
About halfway through the film, there’s a scene where Harry and Lucy start making out in his apartment. It’s heated, and now Clark finds himself picturing doing the same with you, which isn’t helpful at all.
The safest distraction, he decides, is eating. He dips his hand between the two seats, where the bucket of popcorn should be wedged.
Except it isn’t there anymore. Somehow, in that moment, it’s gone, and instead of buttery kernels, his hand brushes against yours.
Driven by reflex, you jerk it away, nearly jumping in place. Clark turns to you, and an expression of perplexity settles on your features. A thousand thoughts race through his mind.
He wants to say he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean to be so forward, that he was only reaching for the popcorn to derail thoughts of which you were the protagonist.
What he doesn’t know, because that would require slipping inside your head, is that you’re forcing yourself not to turn and stare at him. Every so often your control falters, and you steal a glance from the corner of your eye, grateful for the excuse of being seated so you can drink in his profile unnoticed.
His nose, the soft fullness of his lips, the line of his chin. The way his glasses slip down and he pushes them back up, how the flickering scenes from the film ripple across the glass in short fragments.
He’s everything you ever wanted, and more. Your friends would probably tell you you’re rushing, that you should be more objective, keep a cool head. But nothing feels cool beside Clark. Your emotions turn visceral, heat rises under your skin, and logic abandons you exactly when you need it most.
From then on, it all happens in slow motion.
Your hand goes back to the armrest, palm tilted upward, as though waiting for something from his side. He notices the faint creases of your skin, the twitch of your wrist as you squirm.
The most primal part of him aches to grab your face and kiss you until you’re breathless. But that’s not something he can do, something he should do. It doesn’t go according to the plan.
Instead, he makes the choice to take your hand deliberately. He intertwines his fingers with yours, no inch of skin apart. Warmth radiates from you, seeping into him where you’re joined as his thumb brushes along your knuckles.
There’s a moment when the movie fades into background noise for him, and he can’t help catching every small disruption in the theater. A woman a few rows down chewing with her mouth open. A young couple kissing like the world’s about to end. A phone that buzzes and refuses to be ignored.
And yet, the sound he picks out most clearly is your heartbeat as it drowns out the rest. It echoes in his ears so loud, so frantic, that he feels as if it belongs to him.
Clark tests his luck, as though this were an experiment, and squeezes your hand. The effect is immediate; your pulse stumbles, skips, and the rush of it startles him enough that his knee jerks, knocking into the seat in front and making a stranger yelp.
The man turns around in an instant, forehead wrinkled in annoyance. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Clark swallows hard. He hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. “I’m so sorry. I think I got a cramp,” he whispers, hoping that he’ll take pity on him.
All he gets in response is a grunt, which sounds like a curse, but he couldn’t care less.
He hasn’t been this buried in work in months. If he had to lay the blame on someone, he’d have to call it quits and tell Superman he’s not doing any more interviews.
In other words: no more referring to himself in the third-person.
Defending himself against every critic and headline is one thing, but doing it disguised as a reporter is entirely different.
He’s afraid the people who read his articles will eventually start thinking he’s losing his objectivity. But given the circumstances, and since Lex Luthor appears to be on every TV program calling Superman a filthy martian, it’s not like Clark can stay silent.
His stomach’s been growling for the past hour. It’s officially lunchtime. He should put something in his body before hunger drives him to slam his keyboard against his desk, though the thought of abandoning the draft in front of him makes him itch.
Good gosh. Perhaps he should start writing under a pseudonym.
When he checks his phone, there’s a message from you. You’ve got a long break between classes, and you’re thinking of grabbing lunch. The mere thought of food makes him fantasize about gnawing on anything remotely edible.
Clark: Think I’ll just skip lunch today. There’s so much I have to get done.
He sends the text without waiting for a reply, sets the phone down beside his computer, and goes back to work.
From behind his back, a hand waves a Pop-Tart in his direction, waggling it. A theatrical voice murmurs, “Eat me.”
Clark lets out a laugh, swiveling just enough to see Steve smirking as he leans on the edge of his desk.
“I’m serious. Take it. You look like you need it more than me.”
“It’s fine, I’ll just eat later,” Clark retorts, rubbing at his temples and sinking back into his chair.
Narrowing his eyes, Steve says, “You look stressed.”
“Well, I most certainly am.”
“Is it about all the hate your little friend’s been receiving lately?”
On any other occasion, were he not this tired, he’d have corrected him, insisting they’re not friends. But today, he lets it slide. “It’s draining. Collecting all this information and then—having to ask—”
His own sigh cuts him off. There’s a weight pressing on his chest he can’t shake, and he peers up to stare at Steve.
Steve bites into the Pop-Tart, chewing it with a thoughtful expression. “I wonder if this is the end of Superman.”
Clark tries to keep his voice level. He really does. “What?”
“I mean, he’s constantly being criticized. Sure, most people still like him, think he’s great, but—”
“He’s not gonna stop helping others just because there’s some… bald guy on TV who lives to antagonize him. His entire purpose on earth is to be helpful. It’s what drives him. It’s—He’s not giving up.”
Startled, Steve tilts his head. “Did he tell you all that?”
Clark stammers, “He didn’t, but I—I know that’s what he’d say if I were to ask him.”
After that, Steve appears to have decided to drop the subject, finishing what’s left of his snack. Clark assumes that’s the end of their conversation, which had been long enough to exasperate him anyway, even though he considers himself to be patient.
But then—
“So… I’ve heard you’re going out with this girl.”
“You mean Jimmy told you.”
Steve shrugs. “Same thing in my book. When are you seeing her again?”
Clark stiffens, stretching his arm to grab a pen and rhythmically clicking the end of it. “I don’t know. We’ve both been busy the last few days.”
You? Busy teaching, preparing lessons, and correcting assignments.
Him? Busy juggling two lives. When he tells you he’s exhausted and heading to bed early, it’s often a lie. Later, you’ll catch him on TV, throwing himself at some gigantic creature, and text him a picture of the screen: Unlike you, your friend’s not getting much sleep tonight.
“Got a picture of her?” Steve asks out of nowhere.
Studying him for a moment, Clark draws his brows together. “I’m not showing you—”
“Kent,” a voice cuts through, calling his attention. Nino, the security guard from the entrance, stands a few meters away, and he looks irritated to have been sent upstairs. “There’s someone waiting for you outside.”
That’s weird. “For… me? Are you sure?”
“It’s a girl. Says she’s looking for Clark Kent.” The man’s voice thickens with annoyance. “As far as I know, you’re the only Clark Kent in the entire building, so unless you’ve got a secret twin brother or something—”
Clark’s already rising to his feet before the guard finishes. “Alright, alright. I’m coming.”
He doesn’t expect to see your face when the doors open and the rush of cooler air spills in. His heart jolts inside his chest as he steps toward you, and that’s when it hits him.
He had actually missed you more than he realized. What stage of the plan was he in now?
“What—I don’t—You’re here?”
“I texted you, but you weren’t answering, so I figured I’d just… drop by,” you begin, slightly breathless. “You said you were skipping lunch, and I brought you food, and—”
Looking down, he catches a glimpse of the paper bag you’re clutching. The smell alone makes his stomach rumble in betrayal. “You didn’t have to.”
“I was getting something for myself as well.”
“But—”
You take one step closer, a grin tugging at your lips. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Don’t play that card with me. You know I am.”
That makes you laugh. “Then take this, and tell me if you like it.” You press the bag into his hands, and your fingers brush against his. Neither of you pull away. “It’s a sandwich and fries. I got myself the same thing, so I’m counting on it being good.”
I missed you. I missed you. I missed you. I missed—
“I’m sorry I didn’t check my phone. I just… there’s a lot going on at the moment.” His pinky hooks against yours, and you glance down for an instant. “I wasn’t avoiding you or anything.”
Nodding your head, your eyes twinkle with something he can’t describe. “I know. I didn’t think that, and I—”
You quiet down when a crowd of people interrupts your moment, the murmur of voices overlapping, making you grimace.
“I'd better be going,” you say, jerking your thumb toward the street. “My next class starts in about half an hour, so—”
“Makes sense,” Clark answers, though his words don’t match the way his throat tightens, wishing he could disappear into the crowd with you instead. He massages the back of his neck, scanning the sidewalk like he’ll lose you if he looks away. “I’ll head back inside.”
You sigh, shoving your hands into your pockets. “And I’ll go back to dealing with eight-year-olds.”
Would now be a good time to ask when he can see you again? The thought burns on his tongue, when—
“Kent, are you coming in?” Nino’s holding the glass door open with one hand, and he seems to be seconds away from letting it slam shut.
“Right. Sorry,” Clark murmurs, clearing his throat. “Yeah—Bye.”
He lingers until you vanish from sight before stepping back inside. The moment Jimmy spots the bag, he’s immediately smirking, but Clark walks straight past him, setting it beside his keyboard and reaching for his phone.
You: Want me to grab you something? I’m nearby anyway.
You: Hello?
You: Well, now I’m just getting you food.
You: Would it be weird if I dropped it off at your office?
You: I’m trusting my instinct.
All the while he eats the sandwich, he can’t stop beating himself up for not telling you how much he’d been wanting to see you. He rubs his fingers together, the salt of the fries clinging to his skin, and he gets the best idea he’s had in weeks.
There’s a chance Perry will scold him for leaving earlier than he should, but he’s willing to take the risk.
Hours later, he finds himself at a florist's, buying you flowers. He waits outside your work longer than he expected, watching as each child is picked up one by one.
Eventually, as the last of your students leaves, he watches as you descend the steps. Your face lights up as you catch sight of him.
“Clark?” You’re smiling now, walking faster. Your eyebrows shoot up to your hairline when you notice he’s hiding something behind his back. “What is it?”
You reach out, but he dodges. “Easy there.” He thinks about teasing you a little longer, but the way you’re looking at him makes him weak in the knees, and he brings the flowers out from behind him. “This is my way of thanking you for today’s lunch.”
“Oh my God!” you squeak, taking them into your hands. You bury your face in them, smiling wider. “These are so pretty! Thank you, thank you, thank—”
Before he can react, your arms loop around his neck. Your chest collides with his, and he stumbles back, losing his balance for a brief moment. He circles your waist, lifting you off the ground. You laugh against his ear, the flowers brushing the back of his neck, while his nose sinks into your hair as he breathes in.
How is he supposed to go slow when being with you feels like a dream?
That’s it. He’s gone. Completely head over heels for you. You could do anything to him, tear him apart and piece him back together, and he wouldn’t even try to stop you. He can’t understand how someone who was a stranger just weeks ago can now make him feel a hundred different things at once.
A month ago, if he’d seen you on the street, he would’ve glanced twice and kept walking.
Today, he’s terrified of losing sight of you.
The hug lasts only seconds, but for him, it stretches into years. As he sets you down, he notices how close you are.
His breath comes unevenly as you curl your fingers into his tie. You’re staring at him, deeply, though you make no move, and he offers you a crooked smile.
“I take it you liked the flowers?” he asks, his voice pitched a little higher than usual.
Your answer doesn’t come in words, but in a kiss.
Your lips fit against his perfectly. The kiss is sweet, fleeting, and gentle. You pull away, and he follows your mouth instinctively. You throw your head back, laughing, so that he’s met with your cheek instead.
He noses your skin, eyes fluttering shut. “Are you free tonight?”
For the sake of his sanity, he counts both encounters as the fourth date.
Tonight, you’re having your fifth date. This event marks the end of stage two of his plan.
Everything feels like it’s moving too fast. He has to remind himself that sex is absolutely off the table for a fifth date, even if he’s stepping into your apartment for the first time.
“It won’t happen.” He’s talking to his own reflection now as he fixes his hair in the mirror. “You’re strong. You’re… committed to the plan.” Tapping his finger into the glass for emphasis, he says, “Stick to it. Think about the final outcome.”
This plan wasn’t something he came up with overnight. Its roots go back to when he was sixteen, when his friends first started dating and fumbling through romance—a life he thought was reserved for everyone but him.
Clark believed he was a danger to others if he wasn’t careful. For the longest time, he smothered every feeling that even brushed against love, locking it away before it could grow. He was afraid of hurting someone.
He never quite stopped feeling like an infant in the body of a man, learning his limits piece by piece. He knows he has two arms and two legs, two eyes and a mouth. He knows that when he grips something, it stays there.
But then there are the gifts. The strength, the senses, the heat in his blood; powers he never asked for, but could never escape. With Ma and Pa’s help, he learned how to live with them, though the process was frustrating, sometimes terrifying.
At the age of seventeen, he didn't know what was destined for him. He was just a boy who wanted to hold a girl’s hand without worrying about burning holes in the ground with his heat vision.
He always knew his life would be complicated. He knew finding someone who could stand beside him, someone willing to accept his calling, would be nearly impossible.
That’s why he couldn’t just let things happen. He didn’t trust fate. He didn’t want to wait for love to stumble across him by chance. He had to find it, not wait around for fate to find it for him.
His phone rings, pulling him from his thoughts, and he realizes he’s been standing in the bathroom for almost five minutes. He accepts the call without checking the screen.
“Hello?”
“Well if it isn’t my favorite lovebird. How are you doing?”
“Jimmy, I’m leaving in ten minutes. Be quick.”
“Are you nervous?”
He is, but Jimmy doesn’t need to know that. “Why would I be?”
“You’re finally getting laid!”
Clark stops buttoning up his shirt. “Wait. What? Why are you even saying this?”
“Because—aren’t you going to her place?”
“Yeah. And?”
“Well, do the math, dude!”
“You’re trespassing all my limits. Please, Jimmy.”
“Look, it’ll do you good. Even Superman needs to copulate sometimes.”
“Copulate?! I don’t—That’s it. Goodbye, Jimmy.”
The state in which he arrives at your apartment is far from what he’d hoped. Hair toussled, cheeks pink with windburn.
His hand trembles slightly as he knocks, checking his phone for the fifth time to confirm the hour. He’s not early, nor is he late, but right on schedule.
He’s really doing this, standing outside the apartment of the girl he fancies. He tells himself it’s simple: come in, talk, share dinner, leave within the span of two hours. Easy-peasy.
Only nothing about this feels ordinary. One single line of his plan won’t leave him alone, and it flashes every time he closes his eyes: visiting each other’s apartments was too risky. Now, with his pulse racing and nerves gathering tight in his chest, he knows exactly why he wrote that.
Dear Clark from the past: you were wise beyond your years.
When you finally open the door and invite him in, he has to remind his lungs how to work, forcing in a breath. Crossing the threshold feels less like walking into a room and more like stepping into uncharted territory.
His eyes roam over the portraits on the wall, the small decorations, the ceramic sculpture of a dog perched on a shelf. It hits him only then how desperately he’s been avoiding your gaze.
“You have a really nice place,” he murmurs at last, forcing himself to turn back. It would feel wrong not to.
You surprise him with takeout from a place he’d mentioned once in passing. They sell these wraps you can customize to your liking, and he doesn’t remember ever telling you his exact dream order, but you’ve nailed it anyway.
His has pulled beef, cheese, and a rich dressing that overshadows every other flavor. Salsa slips from the edge of the wrap, trickling down his chin as he takes a big mouthful, and you laugh, cheeks full, still chewing.
“What?” he asks, the word muffled, and it’s almost as if he’d momentarily forgotten the first rule of table manners his parents had taught him. He wipes the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, a clumsy but effective maneuver to deal with the greasy mess on his fingers.
You sip your water, pressing a napkin to your lips. “Since when are wraps so messy to eat?”
“Mine’s about to explode, but it’s worth it,” he replies, and you nod.
You lean back in your seat, scratching your chin in thought. “Hey, remember the other day you said you were staying late at the office?”
Clark hums, his eyes fixed on his wrap. Better to stay absorbed in his food than risk betraying the truth. That he hadn’t spent his Wednesday night typing, rereading the same sentences until they blurred into nonsense.
“Did you manage to finish that article?” you ask, now resigned to using a knife and fork instead of wrestling with your wrap.
“Oh, yeah. I just… had to check some minor details with… my source,” he says, hoping the conversation won’t make the food turn in his stomach.
Lifting your fork, you point it at him. “Let me guess. Does his name start with an S and end with -man?” He doesn’t bother answering, because it isn’t necessary. “Don’t even say it. I already knew I was a mastermind.”
“He told me all about his fight with the Kaiju,” Clark tries.
You chew slowly on a carrot, thoughtful. Your gaze narrows on him. “Do you agree with everything he does?”
Clark nearly bites his tongue. “What—what do you mean?”
“When you’re writing about him, quoting him, making references to all his rescues, don’t you ever feel like… maybe your opinion might differ from what he did? That you might disagree with his actions?”
Why did it feel like tonight you were the journalist and he was the one on the record?
“I get what you’re saying,” Clark answers, straightening in his chair. “But yeah, I agree with what he does.”
You arch your brows. “With every single thing? Really?”
“I wouldn’t interview him if I didn’t.”
“I don’t believe you.” Your tone is teasing, playful, but under it runs a thread of sharp skepticism. “There’s gotta be something about him you don’t like.”
Clark pretends to think, then shakes his head. “Not that I can remember.”
You ball up your napkin and toss it at him, laughing. “Come on!”
“What?” He catches it and tosses it back with no real effort. “I’m being honest. He gets me exclusives, front page spots. What’s not to like about that?”
You click your tongue and wave him off. “See? You’re biased. You’re not thinking straight. If you were, you’d find something unlikeable. Everyone has flaws.”
Clark attempts to shift the focus of the conversation. “So does that mean I’ve got something you don’t like about me?”
You bite your lip, glance up at the ceiling as though calculating. “You could say that.”
His interest sparks immediately. “What is it? Now I have to know.” He scrapes his chair across the floor until he’s sitting at your side, facing you directly. “You’re not getting out of this.”
“I’m not roasting you for free!”
“I’m literally asking you to!”
“Clark—”
“I’ll just keep going until you break,” he teases, leaning in closer. “You’ll get tired of me eventually.”
With him this near, your eyes betray you, flicking from his gaze to his mouth before you catch yourself. Clark notices. Of course he notices. He watches as you squint, weighing whether or not to give in to his persistence.
Finally, you decide to, because the next thing you say is: “You never question him, not even once.”
He had been waiting for you to say something untrue, something easy to laugh off. But your words catch him off guard. He leans back slightly, needing that extra inch of distance to really look at you.
Your gaze softens as if you regret pushing too far. Rising from your seat, you gather both your plates and glasses. “I’m sorry. I was just—I was joking. You know I’m terrible at that, right?”
You’re trying to dissolve the tension, to make it vanish into the clatter of dishes. He can’t blame you for it.
“Yeah, now I remember,” he says quietly, watching the curve of your shoulders as you walk toward the kitchen. “Please, never give up teaching.”
He trails after you. You’re at the counter, cutting squares of the brownie you baked earlier. You take the first bite, humming at the rich taste as your foot taps the floor, and he can’t stop watching the way your face relaxes with delight.
“Good?” he asks, folding his arms. Despite your recent exchange, he can’t avoid getting lost in your beauty.
It’s a fact that you always look pretty, but tonight there’s something different he can’t quite place. Maybe it has to do with the way you carry yourself, more at ease, a little less preoccupied.
You’re glowing, and it has nothing to do with a physical change, but with something harder to name, something more intimate.
You answer his question with a small, “You have to try it,” and then you’re holding out a piece to him, the same one you’d bitten into seconds ago.
His eyes flick to yours, then down to the brownie, then to your fingers, and back to you.
“Come on,” you insist, swaying the piece a little. Your tongue darts out to lick the chocolate at the corner of your mouth. “I swear it’s not poisoned.”
This is the end of him. Who would’ve thought, out of all possible scenarios, that he’d die right here in your apartment?
He inches forward a little, carefully biting into the brownie, hyper-aware of how close his teeth are to your fingers. He braces for you to look away, to break the tension, but you don’t, and neither does he. His gaze stays locked on yours as he literally eats from your hand.
Don’t get hard. Please, just don’t.
“It’s… delicious,” he manages after a beat, clearing his throat. “Can you make, like, a whole batch for me?”
Rolling your eyes, you say, “Sure.” You finish the last bite yourself, brushing crumbs from your fingertips. Then your brows knit together, like a thought just struck you. “By the way, how’s Atonement going? You like it so far?”
He scrambles in his mind for the last place he left off. “I reached the part where Robbie and Cecilia are… well, you know.”
“You mean the library scene?”
“Yeah.”
“They recreated it so well in the movie. I still remember it to this day.”
“I had no idea there was a movie.”
“It’s from 2007. We should watch it someday… or perhaps tonight?”
There’s no way he’s surviving you, not with the way you’re looking at him now, the way you’re leaning back. You tilt your head to the side, the movement shifting your shirt just enough to reveal the faintest strip of skin. His breath catches before he can stop it.
Your lips part slightly, as though you’re about to speak, but the silence stretched instead.
“Darn it,” he mutters under his breath, and he’s sure you’re about to ask what he said, but you never get the chance, because he cups your face and kisses you.
His mouth crushes onto yours, and it takes you a few startled seconds to catch up before you melt into it, fingers clawing at the collar of his shirt to drag him closer. You climb higher, nails raking against the sensitive skin at his nape, and he shudders under your touch.
Without drawing away, he makes a sudden movement and lifts you onto the counter. Your lips break apart for just a gasp, and you’re immediately tugging him back down, kissing him harder.
As your tongue slides against his, a moan dies on his throat, caressing your hips through layers of fabric. He can even taste the chocolate from the brownie you both just shared.
Your legs part instinctively, and he looms forward, fitting himself between your thighs. You feel the unmistakable hardness against you, and the sound that escapes you is closer to a whine. Hooking your ankles around him, you lock him there, grinding just enough to drive him nuts.
Any other man in his shoes would be floating. Ecstatic. But he isn’t, not fully, because beneath the fever of it all lies the stinging edge of guilt.
He’d sworn to himself he wasn’t here for this, that it was too soon. He’d promised. Yet what you two are doing couldn’t be further from just talking.
The back of your head bumps against the cabinet, making you wince, and instantly he adjusts, pulling you tighter into him, angling your body until you’re practically perched on top of him.
His senses are overstimulated, beyond heightened. He swears he can hear the rush of blood in your veins, the frenzied beat of your pulse. Outside, cars pass, sirens wail, horns blare. Tires screech against concrete, and voices rise and fall.
He presses his hand more firmly to your skin, needing to feel the weight of flesh beneath his palm to remind himself that this, what he’s living right now, is real.
He’s here with you, though at the same time he feels like he's everywhere all at once.
The moment your hand slides even an inch lower, this will all be over too fast. He can’t stay still. He can’t think, because doing so would mean putting a stop to this madness. And the truth is, he doesn’t want to. He knows he made a vow to himself, but—
Your phone starts ringing somewhere down the hall. Your room, or maybe the bathroom. Once his ears catch it, it’s not like he can unhear it. That insistent sound drills through everything.
His hands freeze at your sides, his voice coming out rough. “I think your phone’s… ringing.”
Between kisses, you reply, “I don’t care.”
“What if it’s important?”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“But what if it is?”
Finally, you break away, drawing in a long breath. His lips chase yours for just one last kiss before he moves aside to let you slip down from the counter.
Clark takes a step back. The second you’re gone, he’s leaning back against the wall, his head thudding against it. He drags in a shaky breath, noticing how fogged his glasses are, and then his eyes peer down at the front of his tented pants.
In a rush, he drops onto the couch, grabbing the nearest cushion to shield his lap, shifting uncomfortably as he adjusts beneath it. Even though his cheeks feel warm, the guilt burns worse than the ache.
You come back with your phone in hand, shrugging, and you drop it onto the table. “Wrong number. Told you it wasn’t important.”
Sinking onto the couch beside him, your gaze flickers down before you can help.
He drags a hand over his face, desperate to find a way out from your unrelenting stare without having to meet it. “Please, just ignore it. It’ll go down. Eventually.”
“Clark, it’s normal.”
“That doesn’t make it any less mortifying.”
“I actually feel flattered.”
Silence envelops you both. He can feel himself relaxing.
Then you speak again. “I’m sorry. Was that too much?”
His head jerks toward you. “What do you mean?”
“Like… the kissing. I feel like I got carried away.”
“I didn’t think you were too much. I—I liked it,” he admits, scratching the side of his nose. “I think you were able to see that clear as day.”
That has you exhaling a breathy laugh, and he tries to shake off the discomfort weighing down on him.
There’s a question he knows he should wait to ask you. It's been playing in his mind, formulating itself at odd hours of the day. Normally, he's able to suppress it, to file it away in a mental junk drawer, but he must be too affected to tell right from wrong.
“Are you seeing someone else?”
“No,” you answer quickly, a puzzled frown on your face. “… Are you?”
“No.” He also shakes his head to make his answer more emphatic. “But would you want to? See other people?”
“Oh, no.” You keep quiet for a moment, your lips pressed into a thin line. “Why are you me asking this? Do you want to?”
He snorts. “Gosh, no.”
“It’s always a possibility.”
“Trust me, it isn’t.”
“You could want to explore other connections.”
“Are we on Love Island?”
“You get what I’m trying to say.”
In fact, he does. Sliding the cushion back where it belongs, he turns to face you. “I like where this is going.”
What he’d meant to say was: I like you. He only reformulated it at the very last second.
The next time you kiss him, it’s different. Slower, softer as your nose brushes his, and he wonders if he’s still in control of the plan.
You wake up with the flu on the day you were supposed to have your sixth date.
You: I must’ve gotten it from one of my students.
You: I feel like crap. I’m so sorry, I really wanted to see you :(
Clark leaves the sentence he was typing half-written, fingers abandoning the keys. He pushes his chair away from the desk with his feet, staring at his reflection on the phone. The white glow of the computer screen casts shadows across his jaw and under his eyes.
Clark: At least let me cook for you.
You: Nooooooo!!!
You: I don’t want you to get sick.
He wishes he could tell you that you're not passing him any germs; not today, not ever.
Clark: I won’t stay for too long.
Clark: I know a soup recipe my mother taught me. I haven't made it in a long time.
That should be enough to soften you.
You: Alright…
When night comes around, he’s in your kitchen, chopping vegetables on a wooden board. The TV hums faintly in the background, interrupted every so often by the sharp sound of you blowing your nose.
The soup is simple, just as it’s always been. His Ma used to make it for him whenever he was sulking as a boy, a cure for bad moods as much as for colds. He only hoped his came close.
Steam curls upward as the vegetables start getting tender, and he keeps one eye on the pot while stirring. You’re standing beside him, watching the procedure.
“I’m sure it smells great,” you mumble, congested. “I mean, I wouldn’t know, but it looks like it does.”
Clark lowers the heat, sets the spoon down. His thumb grazes your cheek before he pulls you into his chest, whispering, “Come here.”
You let out a disapproving sound, but your body doesn’t offer any resistance as he hugs you. “You’re going to end up catching what I have.”
“No, I’m not.”
“That’s how contagious illnesses work.”
“Turns out I’m the exception.”
His arms wrap around your shoulders, palm smoothing circles into your back. You lace your fingers behind his waist, muffling your face against his shirt with a pleased noise.
“You’re so warm,” you say groggily, like you might fall asleep standing there. He kisses your forehead and goes back to stirring with one hand, not letting you go.
Later, after you’ve eaten and declared that the soup made your stomach feel simultaneously more full and leagues better, you put on a random movie to pass the time. Clark actually tries to follow the plot, but you don’t.
Your attention keeps drifting toward him, more interested in the man sitting beside you than in the film.
“You never take them off?”
“Take what off?”
You say it like it’s obvious. “Your glasses.”
Subtly, he adjusts them out of pure instinct. “I can’t see much without them.”
“Have you ever tried contacts?”
“Oh, no. My eyes are too sensitive for that.”
“Everybody’s eyes are, in fact, sensitive.”
“I can’t handle them,” he insists, shrugging. “They feel weird.”
Another minute passes without you uttering a word.
But you won’t drop it. “Can I try them on?”
“Some other day. They’ll make your headache worse.”
Blowing out your cheeks, you hug a cushion to your chest, propping your chin on it. “You keep talking to me like I’m a child.”
He picks up the remote to pause the movie. “I’m just answering your many questions.”
“Curiosity is one of my best traits.”
“I know.”
“Which is why I keep wondering why I’ve never seen you without your glasses.”
“Because I wouldn’t be able to make out your gorgeous face without them.”
“Touché.” You lean against his shoulder, stifling a yawn. “Let’s save this debate for another night.”
“Want to call it a day?”
“No, I can stay up for a little longer.”
Your eyelids end up betraying you ten minutes later, fluttering shut as your head tips against him, your body pressed firmly into his side.
By the time the credits roll, you’re fast asleep. He takes a slow breath, carefully gathering your frame in his arms, and you stir just enough to mumble something about being fine, but you don’t fight him when he carries you to bed.
Clark sets you down gently, covering you with the blanket, smoothing it over you and tucking it along your shoulders. You sink deeper into it with a soft sigh.
“Clark?”
“Tell me.”
“There’s a spare set of keys on my nightstand—”
He freezes. A key? Sixth date. Sixth. Date. What does this mean?
“—so you can lock the door on your way out. I don’t want to get up anymore.”
Sinking to his knees, he lingers at your bedside for a moment. His hand hovers before caressing your cheek, and then he gives a feather-light kiss to your forehead.
You try to hide from his gaze, but it’s nearly impossible. You bury your face into the pillow. “Stop looking at me like that.”
Clark can’t help the smile tugging at his lips. “Like what?”
“Like I’m dying and you don’t have the cure,” you mutter, peeking through one eye. “I know I look bad, but don’t make it so obvious.”
His brows knit in concern. “You don’t look bad at all.”
Attempting to shove him away, you lift a hand from under the sheets to push at his chest, though he doesn’t budge an inch. “Oh, you’re too sweet.”
“I mean it,” he says, voice steady, eyes holding yours. “You’re beautiful. Can’t you see it?”
The certainty in his words makes your smile falter. You don’t miss the confidence in the way he stares at you, the weight behind his honesty. In a sudden urge of truth, perhaps fueled by your discomfort, you ask him, “Where have you been all my life?”
He can’t think of anything clever to say, because he’s afraid of making a false move.
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep, huh?” His lips brush your forehead again, this time scattering delicate pecks across your skin. “I’ll call you in the morning to check on you.”
You nod, surrendering to exhaustion, your eyes fluttering shut as your body relaxes. “Don’t forget to call me,” you whisper, rolling onto your side to fully face him, curling against the sheets.
He huffs out a quiet laugh. “I promise I won’t.”
When he rises, he stills, watching you without realizing it. Your face has softened into pure calm, the rise and fall of your chest unchanging, your lips parted in a quiet breath. The sight disarms him.
“What are you doing, giving me your keys?” he whispers into the room, as if someone might answer.
He finds them right after that, not daring to make noise, and only exhales once he’s outside your apartment, the door clicking shut behind him.
His first loss shouldn’t look like this.
As he plummets from the sky, body tossed by the Hammer of Boravia as if he were nothing but a ragdoll, Clark tries to frame the fall as a lesson.
All heroes who wear capes face a moment they don’t win. They fall, they falter, but they always get back on their feet.
Sooner or later, that would happen to him, too. Just not now.
He’s driven into the ground once more. He can’t stop it this time, can’t even shift the angle, so he braces himself for whatever comes. His back collides with the pavement, and it shatters beneath him.
The debris pulverizes into dust, thickening the air, and it scrapes his lungs as he breathes. He’s got a rib, maybe two, fractured. He’ll have to check at the Fortress.
All around, screams erupt and people scatter. He’s 99% sure no one got caught under him. A burst pipe sprays water across one side of his suit, and as flexes his wrist, he tries to mask the pain and fails in the process.
Tiny voices start murmuring all sorts of things. Even tinier shadows edge closer.
“Is he dead?”
“He can’t die, you dummy.”
“My dad said he could beat him up.”
A little girl points straight at him, her tone squeaky with awe. “ARE YOU THE REAL SUPERMAN?”
Blinking slowly, Clark realizes they’re all wearing the same clothes.
It’s a school uniform.
He crashed outside a school. Fantastic.
“Kids? What did I say about not overwhelming him back in the classroom?”
Is that your voice? Maybe he’d hit his head harder than he thought.
“But Miss—”
“No buts. Move a bit further away. Give him some air.”
Oh, God. It’s definitely you.
He attempts to sit, but the pain rips through his ribs, pulling a wheeze from his chest. His vision steadies in flashes, until finally, there you are, standing at the edge of the crater, eyes wide.
From high above, the Hammer’s deep voice pours into Clark’s ears, saturating him.
The United States will continue to feel the wrath of the Hammer of Boravia…
“Are you okay?” Your soft voice cuts through the chaos. You descend through the debris, your focus seemingly fixed on helping him. Even though the crowd swells around the scene, you’re the only one moving. “Can you stand up?”
When he looks up, the sights hit him. Dozens of phones are raised, their lenses all aimed at him. Clark swallows, hearing the strain in his own voice when he manages, “Ma’am, you’ve got to get out of here. It’s not safe.”
You shake your head, determined, and you offer him your hand. He takes it, barely, and with your help he staggers upright, your shoulder slipping under his arm for support.
The absurdity of it all. You've been in this exact position before, only last time he wasn't wearing the suit.
The Hammer speaks again, hovering high above, his voice reverberating across the city. “This is your last warning,” he roars, vanishing into the sky, leaving the street shaking.
Clark's instincts urge him to follow him, to continue the fight. But he’s too weak, and as he intends to move, he collapses again, groaning as if his entire body’s crumbling with every effort.
“Don’t force yourself right now,” you scold, slipping an arm under his to steady him. “You can’t… fly in these conditions.”
Of all the people to see him like this, it had to be you. His luck is unbelievable.
The crowd begins to thin, and by the time you help him to a bench, fewer eyes linger. The city seems eager to swallow the moment whole and move on.
Another ordinary day in Metropolis.
He presses a trembling hand to his side, each breath stabbing his ribs as they expand. You stand in front of him, arms folded, watching him closely without taking a seat.
He needs to recover fast, but his strength keeps slipping away.
“So… Superman in the flesh,” you say, tilting your head. “Funny thing. I know someone who knows you.”
“You’ll… have to be more specific than that,” he murmurs, keeping his gaze low, afraid the dizziness will swallow him if he looks up.
“Clark Kent,” you reply, tipping your chin up. “He’s my—well, it doesn’t matter.”
That makes him tense, pulling himself upright despite the pain. “Your… what?”
“We’re seeing—” You stop, narrowing your eyes. “Wait. Why do you care?”
If he weren’t certain the laugh would tear his ribs apart, he’d laugh at the absurdity of it all.
He ignores your question, his gaze drifting past you to the school. Children are filing back into their classrooms. “I wouldn’t want to take up more of your time,” he says quietly. “Your students must be asking for you.”
You follow his line of sight, then back to him, your brows knitting. “I don’t know if you’ll find this disrespectful, but—maybe you shouldn’t have done that thing in Jarhanpur.”
It’s the last thing he needs. Pain gnaws at his body, but the sharper sting comes from hearing you dissect his choices to his face.
He pushes himself up, almost limping, his hand dragging across his shoulder. “Thank you for the constructive criticism, ma’am. But I have to go now.” His eyes catch yours for just a beat. “Stay safe.”
Then he’s gone, vanishing into the sky.
When he checks his phone hours later, he finds a message from you waiting for him.
You: I think now I’ve got beef with Superman. Call me?
Clark gets Jimmy a last-minute birthday gift. A dumb, cheap disposable camera despite the fact that he has tons. But it's the thought that counts, right?
Yeah, blame him. He’s definitely not getting the best-friend-of-the-year award. He had almost forgotten about the whole event, until Jimmy approached him at work that Friday before they parted ways.
“See you later!” Jimmy had said, and Clark had stood there, his eyes locked with his friend’s for a solid half-minute, trying to understand why they’d be seeing each other in just a few hours.
Right. The party.
Clark had forced a smile. “Sure.”
The party’s at the bar where Molly works. This is her night off, but she still manages to score him a huge discount, which is the only reason Jimmy’s picked this place.
The bar’s already buzzing by the time Clark slips inside. He spots Jimmy instantly, his laughter carrying above the noise. Clark shoulders his way through the crowd, tapping him on the back. “Hey, buddy.”
Jimmy turns, face lit up red by the neon bar lights. His grin grows even wider when he sees Clark. “Man, you came! I wasn’t sure—”
“Of course I came. Got you something, but don’t open it yet.”
Jimmy nods, taking the small ‘Happy Birthday’ bag from Clark’s hands. Molly drifts by and he loops an arm around her waist. “Babe, can you put this with the other gifts?”
She says something Clark doesn’t quite catch. A guy nearly barrels into him, waving a tray of free shots. Clark thanks him but refuses to grab one, stepping aside.
For a fleeting second, he thinks Jimmy and Molly are staring at him, but then he realizes their gaze is aimed past his frame. “What is it?” he asks.
He follows their line of sight, and there you are, standing in the doorway.
Jimmy slings an arm around his neck. There’s sweat trickling down the sides of his face. “I know it’s not your birthday, but I also got you a gift,” he murmurs into Clark’s ear. Meanwhile, Clark can’t stop staring at you, waiting for your eyes to find his. “It just arrived.”
It takes you a full minute to reach them, murmuring apologies to the people you brush against. You’re wearing a denim skirt and a long-sleeve top. He reminds himself not to stare too long, not to look at you as if no one else exists.
Clark’s been having a problem. Actually, he has many, scattered across cities, countries—even galaxies. He’s had them for many years now.
But lately, one specific problem has been bugging him, and it’s solely your fault.
Ever since you kissed for the first time, he hasn’t stopped thinking about it—dreaming about the feeling of your lips on his, the taste of you on his tongue, waking up hard and aching. Nearly every morning, still half-lost in a dream, he finds himself rutting into the mattress, moaning your name.
The worst moments are when his phone lights up with your messages. Sometimes you’re up before him, and you send him voice recordings, your voice still thick with sleep. He places the phone on the cold pillow beside him, turns the volume up, and pretends he isn’t waking up to an empty bed.
When he says it out loud, in the privacy of his head, it sounds pathetic. Creepy, even.
And then he texts back, Good morning! Hope you have a wonderful day at work! You’d never guess that just minutes before, he’d been in the shower, stroking himself to the thought of you.
It’s become a ritual now: open his eyes, get out of bed, jerk off, shower, Daily Planet.
At present, you give him a quick hug, and you seem shy, almost hesitant. He understands the feeling, since it’s the same one running through him. The first time you’re together in front of mutual friends. The very friends who set you up.
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
“It was a surprise,” you reply, a delighted smile breaking across your face. Your eyes crinkle at the corners with a playful sparkle. “Are you surprised?”
Your smile is so contagious it gets to him. “Very much surprised, yeah.”
He hasn’t seen you since that morning, since the fight he lost against the Hammer of Boravia. That day he wasn’t Clark for you; he wore another name, another face, a cape heavy on his back.
The urge to kiss you rises fast, blocking out everything else. He lowers his head, holds his breath—
But before he can, Molly tugs at your shoulder.
Clark steps back and watches the two of you lean in, whispering. You glance at him as she points toward the bar, mouthing a sorry.
“You mind if I steal her for a bit?” Molly asks.
He shakes his head, and you catch the small gesture he makes.
With a beer in hand, he engages in small talk with half the bar. He ends up the listener, executing a series of practiced moves, because his body may be there, keeping him present in appearance only, but his mind and heart are elsewhere.
He nods at the right moments, shakes his head in disbelief when needed, parts his lips when the other person’s excitement spikes. Even mutters “Jeez, that’s tough” if the story calls for sympathy.
He slips away from one of Jimmy’s cousins, who probably managed to utter a hundred words per minute, and paces through the crowd. He expects to find you with Molly, but instead you’re alone in a booth, circling the rim of your glass with your finger.
He takes the opportunity and slides in beside you. “Did it hurt?”
You squint at him. “What?”
“When you fell from heaven, did it hurt?”
That elicits a low chuckle from you. “You’re real smooth.”
His shoulder brushes yours as he leans closer. “You having a good time so far?”
“Yeah,” you breathe into his ear, raising your voice over the music. “Even better now that you’re here.”
He doesn’t miss the way your gaze flicks to his lips. He tilts his head, breath grazing your cheek, lashes fluttering—
Someone clears their throat, and you pull away.
Lois slides into the seat opposite. “Kent, I see you’ve decided to invade female territory.”
Under the table, his knee knocks yours. “It’s not my fault you left her alone, Lois. What else was I supposed to do?”
“I didn’t leave her alone! I was just getting more of this,” she says, lifting her drink and taking a sip of it. “So, where were we? Oh, yes! Superman.”
Clark nearly chokes, coughing hard. You rub his back, concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he rasps. “Just choked on my saliva.”
“You should see how flustered Clark gets at work whenever we talk about his most beloved friend.” Lois beams at you, setting her palms down flat on the table.
You let out a quiet laugh. “Oh, I can imagine.”
“He gets pretty defensive,” she presses.
He lifts a finger, calling her attention. “I don’t.”
“You totally do.”
“I just give my opinion,” he counters, raising his brows. “It’s literally our job.”
Lois rolls her eyes, her hair flicking over her shoulder. “Don’t do that. You’re changing the topic.”
“I’m not—”
“What do you think about what Superman’s been doing lately” Lois turns to you, the corners of her mouth quirking up, turning the spotlight on you.
You toy with your glass, your expression dull. “I guess some things could’ve been avoided if done differently.”
“Like what?” Lois inquires, leaning forward.
“The fight with The Hammer of Boravia. Entering a country without first getting permission.”
Clark downs the last of his beer in a single motion. He needs to do something with his hands. At his sides they feel strange, unfamiliar, like they’d only just been stitched onto him a moment ago.
Lois reclines in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, a smug smile stretching on her features. “This is what I was talking about! He’s dying on the inside.”
“Don’t you think he had… fair motives?” he turns to you, gesturing too broadly. “It’s not like he thought it would make things worse.”
“Well, then maybe he should think twice before acting,” you reply, straightening. “I’m not one of those people that think he’s being dishonest. I believe he wants to do good, but he interfered with international affairs. He knew the authorities weren’t going to give him a medal for it.”
“But he was stopping a war,” Clark insists, his voice tighter than he means it to be.
“I’m not saying what he did was wrong, Clark. Regardless of his intentions, he should reflect on his actions no matter what they are. Everything he does ripples across the planet,” you continue to explain, your eyes locked on his. “He might be morally right, but he has to know any intervention he makes on another country will be questioned.”
A sickness twists in his stomach. Between the thrum of music, the clatter of glasses, the press of bodies, and voices overlapping like static, a dizziness blooms at the base of his skull.
At that moment, Lois cuts through. “He crashed outside a school the other day, didn’t he?”
Your head snaps in her direction. “I work there.”
“And how was he? Got his ass kicked?”
“Excuse me,” Clark begins, adjusting his glasses, “but he didn’t completely get his ass kicked.”
“He was pretty hurt,” you argue, your nose crinkling. “I saw him. I helped him get up.”
As if sent from God above, Jimmy bursts into the booth wearing a birthday hat crooked over his hair. “Okay, enough chatting. Less than thirty seconds until my birthday. Dance floor, now!”
Lois trails after him when he disappears back into the crowd, but you stay seated, and so does Clark.
The countdown begins in the background. His chest is tight, and it would be an outright lie to pretend the conversation hasn’t rattled him. He sizes you up. “I didn’t know you hated Superman.”
You exhale a long breath. “When did I say that? Honestly, what part of what I just said gave you that impression?”
“You took the opportunity to rip him apart.”
10…
“I’m being critical, Clark. We all need to be—even you.”
9…
He can’t control the way his face twists with each passing second. He must be watching you without a shred of remorse, because then you’re saying, “Can we talk like adults without you looking at me like I’ve murdered someone?”
8…
He averts his gaze. Holds his tongue.
7…
You catch your lower lip between your teeth. “Are we really fighting over this—”
6…
“—over Superman?”
5…
“Clark, will you please look at me?”
4…
He does, but stays silent.
3…
“Why do you care so much about what I think of him?”
2…
His tongue feels heavy in his mouth as he intends to speak. “I—I don’t—Can we—”
1…
The look on your face is beyond devastating.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JIMMY!
The bar explodes with cheers. Lights dim, the room falling almost entirely into shadow. Even in the half-dark, Clark notices the tight line of your jaw, how tense it is. You don’t meet his eyes when you ask to slide out of the booth to go congratulate Jimmy.
When he rises, it’s slow, like his muscles are made of lead. His legs feel numb, his fingertips burning. He watches you cross the room, sees you touch Jimmy’s back before hugging him briefly.
Molly arrives and folds you into a hug too. You shake your head, adjusting the strap of your bag. A moment later you step back, and Molly turns her attention to Jimmy, arms looping around his neck, pressing a kiss to his lips.
Clark realizes you take that as your exit. You’re leaving without even glancing back at him. Panic flares, and he strides toward Jimmy, interrupting a conversation to pull him into a hug.
“Happy birthday,” he murmurs as he pulls away.
Jimmy smiles, though not fully. “Thanks, man. I appr—”
“I got you a disposable camera, hope you like it, happy birthday!”
Clark rushes out of the bar, nearly stumbling onto the sidewalk in his haste. He scans both sides of the street and spots you nearly at the end of the block.
“Wait!” he shouts.
You turn, startled. “I’m heading home,” you say. Your apartment is only four blocks away.
“Let me walk you.”
It isn’t necessary. He knows you’ll be fine. The streets on a Friday night are crowded, buzzing with life. But the most profound part of his being needs it. He needs it.
You hold your hand up. “Don’t—just don’t,” you say, frowning. “It’s no use.”
“Please, let me.”
“I’m tired.” You rub your eyes, letting out a shaky breath. “I should—My head’s a mess right now.”
He takes a step forward. You’re still too far away. “I just want to make sure you get home safe,” he says, opening his heart to you. “You can kick me out later, but—just let me do this one thing.”
You tilt your head back toward the sky as if searching the stars for an answer. It takes you some time, but you end up sighing, giving a small nod. He jogs up to you, and together you start down the street toward your building.
When you slip the keys into the lock, you ask if he wants to come in for a minute. It goes without saying it won’t be a minute. It won’t be two, not even five.
A sixth sense isn’t among his powers, but he knows that once he steps inside, once he breathes the air of your home and the door clicks softly shut behind him, it will be almost impossible to leave.
The first thing you do is toss your purse onto the counter. He doesn’t move past the doorway. He just stands there in silence, coat still on. His eyes follow you as you turn your back on him, and then you spin around, forcing the confrontation.
“What was that back in the bar?”
The question cuts straight through him. Clark had improvised answers before: quick excuses about why he stayed late at the office, why he never took off his glasses, why Superman, of all people, chose to grant interviews only to a soft-spoken reporter like him.
Yet this is different. What’s about to happen feels inexplicable, and has no easy exit.
“I got carried away,” he finally says, burying his hands in his pockets to prevent you from seeing how hard his skin is burning, knuckles white from balling his fists too tight.
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What exactly don’t you want me to do, Clark?” You take a step closer. Your lips are trembling, he notices that. “I don’t know what happened there. I don’t know what got you so… defensive all of a sudden.”
In his mind, he compares this moment to the first time he ever saw you. Maybe you were standing at the same distance back at the restaurant Jimmy had picked that night. Maybe you were even wearing the same shoes you have on now.
But everything feels different tonight. He can’t deny it, can’t cover it up with anything.
“I was asked for my opinion, and I gave it, and then you suddenly changed completely. You’re stiff, you didn’t talk to me. You didn’t even look at me.”
Clark struggles to meet your eyes. Every time he does, he sees the lie he’s been weaving for nearly two months.
“Even still, you won’t look at me.”
He knows he’s here to talk. You want answers; you deserve them. But even though he understands that, sees it as rational and appropriate, it doesn’t mean his body comprehends it the same way his mind does.
You continue, each of your words is punctuated by a wild movement of your hands. “Why does it bother you that I don’t agree with every single thing he’s done?” Your mouth opens and closes before you find your voice again. “Last time I checked, I was dating you, not him.”
There are a million clever things he could say, but the only thing that comes out is: “The Boravian government isn’t well intentioned.”
A humorless laugh bursts out of you, almost leaving you breathless. “You’re unbelievable,” you mutter, rubbing your temples. “Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. I asked him.”
“That’s right. You seem to have unlimited access to his knowledge.”
“What are you implying?”
“Does he pay you for the interviews?”
The question made his head snap back, as if dislocated. “You think Superman’s bribing me?”
“I don’t know! You’re just so—loyal to him!”
“He’s not a bad person.”
“Nobody’s said that, Clark! You’re putting words in my mouth. All I said is that he should’ve considered the consequences of his actions.”
“You believe he had the time for that while trying to save a whole country?”
“Why don’t we call him and ask, huh? Do you have his number? Does he own a phone? Does he—”
“People were going to die!” Clark’s shout rips through the room, his throat raw with the effort. Heat surges through his veins, rushing outward until every nerve is thrumming. He feels both more alive than ever and completely paralyzed.
You take a step back, stunned. His voice still echoes in the room, and shame rises in his chest. He’s never known where his breaking point was until now.
“Okay,” you say slowly, steadying yourself. “What is it that you’re not telling me?”
Should he leave? Vanish? Hand back the spare key you offered him one late night?
You continue to stare at him. “There’s something more to this. I know there is.”
It’s over. He can’t undo what just happened, so why not risk the last chance he has with you?
His fingers close around the edge of his glasses, pulling them from his face. At first, you don’t register what’s happening, until your hand flies to the wall, bracing yourself.
“Holy fuck.”
It’s the first time he’s heard you curse.
You blink furiously, chest tightening with every breath. No sound comes out at first.
“You—What? This… this whole time, you—WHAT?!”
“Please, don’t freak out.”
“I’m not freaking out. I’m fine,” you snap between gritted teeth, though your expression betrays you. “I only had one drink.”
“I know.”
“I’m not drunk,” you insist.
“I know,” he repeats, softer this time.
Your eyes don’t leave him, even as your breathing slows. “You look… different. How?”
He holds up the glasses between you. “They’re called hypnoglasses. They—they alter the way people see me.”
You swallow hard after a while, brow furrowed, like you’re working out impossible math in your head. “Were you going to tell me, or are you doing it out of—what, guilt?”
“It was supposed to happen after our eighth date.”
You stop dead in your tracks. “Excuse me, eighth date? Have you been… counting them?”
Something good was supposed to happen tonight. That’s what he’d thought initially.
He feels stupid as soon as the words leave him. “That—You didn’t have to know that.”
“Why after the eighth date? Why only eight?”
“I don’t know! I like even numbers.”
“Clark, I swear—”
“I thought if we got that far, then… then it meant you really liked me,” he mumbles, heart clenching in his chest. “That you liked me as Clark. And then—well.”
Now it’s your turn to be speechless. He pushes forward anyway.
“I care about what you say about Superman because I’m him. I’m sensitive. I speak before I think. I took matters into my own hands because I believed it was the right thing to do, and I don’t regret it. I wasn’t representing anyone except myself.”
His voice softens, almost breaking.
“And for the record, I like you. A lot. I know I’ve never said it out loud, and I know that it’s late for a confession like that, but I think you deserve to hear it.”
He’s afraid you might slide down the wall, that everything he’s said has been too much. That tonight has shifted something in you. He tells himself he’s half-ready to face another loss, and though it wouldn’t be fought with fists, it would still break him all the same.
“Please, just—just tell me you want me to leave and I’ll go.”
“I don’t want that.”
Perhaps he’s heard you wrong. “What?”
“I said I don’t want you to go.”
He can’t answer in any form other than monosyllables. “Why not?”
You gather your courage and step closer, tilting your chin to meet his eyes. “You have to be more careful. I know you’re—bulletproof, but you still need to take care of yourself. Take care of what you do. Think things through.”
“I seriously don’t understand—“
“What I’m trying to say is that—that I like you, too.” You cut him off, voice rising just a little. Those four words undo him. “I—I really do.”
“Even after all this?”
“I guess I’m really stubborn.”
“So… you don’t want me to go?”
“No.”
“You don’t hate me?”
You touch his forearm gently. “I’d never be able to hate you.”
“You don’t hate… Superman?”
“We may not see eye to eye on everything, but that shouldn’t be an issue,” you counter. “We’re both adults. We can deal with it.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Holding his gaze, you whisper, “No. I don’t hate him, and I don’t hate you.”
Clark pulls you into his arms, tucking his chin near your neck. He hugs you with unguarded enthusiasm, your hands stroking small circles along his back. He breathes in your perfume, closing his eyes briefly, as if he could keep you there forever.
“You know what I would hate?”
“What?” His answer is muffled against your shoulder.
“Not knowing more about your dating plan.”
He draws back just enough, still holding you close, your faces inches apart. “Forget about it.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s—not worth it. Trust me.”
“Please, tell me.”
“You’re gonna make fun of me.”
You narrow your eyes, lips curving into a pout. “I promise I won’t.”
For an instant, Clark thinks about changing the subject, but he gives in.
“It consists of eight dates. Divided into three parts—” He cuts himself off when your lips quiver, fighting a smile. “That’s not fair! You’re already laughing.”
You have to bite your lip to stifle your grin. “I’m sorry. It’s just that—you had it all planned. It’s cute.” Your hands slide up to link behind his neck, and a flush creeps across his cheeks. “Okay. You may continue.”
He clears his throat. “Right now, if we count tonight as our seventh date—”
“Are you sure you want to count our first argument as a date?”
“—we’d be in the last stage,” Clark finishes. “Then one more date. After that, if everything went well, I’d tell you the truth, but I—I got ahead of myself. For obvious reasons, of course.”
“Does each stage have… its own conditions?”
“Sort of.”
“Is not touching me one of them?”
“S-sorry?” he stutters, ears going red.
“It’s just that your plan sounds a lot like a chastity one.”
Clark sputters, looking down. “I mean—I never specified such a thing. It’s not prohibited, but—No, I wouldn’t say engaging in that kind of activity was written into the actual plan.”
You hum thoughtfully, nodding. “And would you like it to stay that way?”
“I’m the one who made it, right? So… theoretically… I’m allowed to make a few changes here and there.”
“How interesting.”
His thumb grazes the strip of bare skin between your top and your skirt. “It depends on what you want to do tonight.”
Your chest rises with expectation. You wet your lips, and Clark sees how your pupils expand until they nearly eclipse the rest of your iris’, as if the Yellow Sun had been replaced by an overwhelming moon. “I want it all.”
A tempered heat begins spreading through his limbs. “All as in… all of it?”
“Why don’t you start by kissing me first,” you murmur, rising onto your tiptoes to hover your mouth over his, “and then we just… see it as we go?”
Clark nods as though you’ve given him a concrete assignment that he must now accomplish.
And suddenly, he has a goal.
This is really happening. He knows it doesn’t exactly fit the plan he drafted for himself. If he were following it, he’d wait. But circumstances have shifted.
Again and again, life has pulled the ground out from beneath his careful steps, and strangely enough, he can’t complain.
It’s hard enough to control his own feelings, but trying to rein in someone else’s is nearly impossible. And he can see it, that you want this as much as he does. There’s a yearning, something raw and real, sparking between you.
Maybe Jimmy was right. Maybe he should… go with the flow. At least for once.
RIP Clark Kent’s dating plan. You were a loyal ally through all these years of restraint and abstinence, but your time is up.
Clark kisses you, slowly at first. His hands find your waist, pulling you closer, and the way you kiss him back sends a deep shudder through him. At some point, his glasses slip from his pocket and clatter to the floor, but he hardly notices.
The sweetness doesn’t last. That first careful kiss soon spirals into something more frantic. You tug at his hair, drawing involuntary sounds from him each time your mouths break apart by the barest inch. Like magnets, you find each other again and again, tongues clashing, your teeth knocking into his.
He’s already hard. It hasn’t been long, barely anything at all, and yet his body is betraying him with a raging boner. Every time you brush against him, he shifts his hips back, desperate not to let you feel it. He doesn’t want to push too far or make you uncomfortable.
But you notice, and before you can speak, he blurts out, “I’m sorry. It’s just—you’re… so pretty, and I’m—”
Your lips are swollen, flushed from kissing. “You shouldn’t apologize for being aroused,” you say, the corner of your mouth lifting in a brief smile. “Besides, you’re not the only one.”
You pull away just enough to unbutton your skirt, sliding it down the length of your legs. He stares, entranced, before shrugging off his jacket and tossing it aside with his glasses.
Eyes locked on his, you take his large hand and guide it between your thighs, pressing it lower until he cups you. Even through the lace of your black thong, he feels it: the undeniable slickness clinging to his fingers. You’re wet.
No, scratch that—you’re beyond wet.
His breath hitches at the scent of you. You gasp when his fingertips trace your folds over the thin fabric. “See?” you manage, your voice trembling despite your attempt at calm. “I’m just as—as affected as you are.”
Something in that moment snaps him out of restraint; it’s as if a hand has struck his cheek, jolting him awake.
He devours your mouth this time, pushing you backward until your shoulders hit the wall. His strong thigh wedges between yours, prying them apart and holding you there.
One hand braces the wall beside your head, while the other hooks your underwear aside. He’s transfixed by the sight of you: glistening and inviting in equal quantities.
His fingers skim you at first, his knuckles grazing your stomach as he lifts your top. His mouth wanders down your throat, and you throw your head back, hips canting up instinctively. “Clark—please—”
You sound so sweet, so needy, that he can’t make you wait any longer. He pushes a finger inside, achingly slow, your slick guiding him deeper. You’re tight and warm, and he swears he can feel the pulse of your heartbeat.
You moan, and the sound elicits a groan from him, his mouth ghosting over your jaw as he curls his finger inside you.
“Shit,” you mutter, eyes squeezed shut, hands fluttering helplessly with nowhere to hold on. Not that you could fall, because Clark’s holding you as though the world itself depends on it. He pumps his finger a few more times before easing it out of you, instead focusing on rubbing your clit with earnestness.
He captures your lips again, angling your face with a firm hand on your chin to deepen the kiss. All the while, his ministrations on your clit don’t falter, and you can’t help but whimper.
“You’re—God, you’re killing me with these sounds,” he rasps. You melt against the wall, chest heaving, and he inhales unsteadily, peering down at where his hand moves against you. “I’ve been dreaming about this. About you. I can’t—believe you’re mine.”
He fears that last word carries more meaning than it should, but it’s the only truth he knows. He wants to be yours as wholly as you are his; he wants to give you his time, to learn every last detail of who you are.
You nod as best you can, your fist curling into his shirt. “I’m—I’m yours,” you coo, voice thick with desire. Between kisses, you add, “And… you’re… mine.”
Another moan bubbles up in your throat as he sinks two of his fingers into your heat, stretching you even further. The wet sounds each time he draws them back and forth captivate him.
“Are you close?” he asks, though he already knows, but you still whine in agreement. “Oh, I know. You're shaking so bad. You wanna come?” Your nails rake over his arms, clutching at him. “Alright. I got you.”
He works you toward your peak, and moments later, you break, coming around his fingers. Your thighs clamp around his hand, hips twitching with aftershocks. His own moan muffles against your cheek as he peppers it with sloppy kisses, drinking in every one of your mewls.
When you come back to your senses, you kiss him languidly, your tongue sliding against his. “That was… amazing,” you breathe into his mouth, giggling as you attempt to catch your breath. You tangle your fingers in his hair. “I want to touch you.”
He stills. Clark carries so much pent-up tension that it might work against him. He’s pretty certain that the moment you put your hand on him, he’ll finish embarrassingly fast, and he can’t let that happen.
So instead, he drops to his knees.
Your brows lift in surprise. There are beads of sweat clinging to your temples, and Clark parts your thighs with his hands, positioning himself between them. Your cunt, still dripping, is right before him.
He hears you swallow, suddenly shy with him this close to such an intimate part of you. “You don’t have to—”
“But I want to taste you.” His thumbs spread your folds as his mouth waters, and his gaze flicks upward, asking for permission. “Can I?”
You nod frantically, panting, and he settles in. His tongue slides into your entrance, savoring you, before laving over your folds. He closes his mouth around your clit and sucks with intent, and you can’t keep watching him. It’s too much.
“So—fucking good,” you stutter, threading your fingers in his black curls. Your hips rut instinctively against his face, chasing the friction when he eases back a little. “I don’t—I don’t even want to know where you learned all this.”
Clark slips his digits back inside you, plunging them to the hilt. He’s not used to this loss of control, this need to consume, but he doesn’t know how else to do this. If he stops, he fears you’ll vanish, leaving him to wake from the same cruel dream where he’s helplessly humping his mattress.
“You taste like heaven,” he purrs, pulling back with a string of slick connecting his mouth to your pussy. His hand slides higher, palming your breast through your bra. It’s as if the rawest part of him, which is usually buried beneath restraint, has broken loose, and now he only craves more.
“Please, don’t stop.” Your voice is barely a whisper. Your eyes are teary, and for a moment he worries, but then you look at him, pleading. “Keep—keep going, just like that—”
Your flesh is soft beneath his grip, and he squeezes your thigh, grounding you as his fingers piston in and out of you. His tongue draws the same pattern again and again over your nub, and he can feel your whole frame trembling.
As you experience your second orgasm of the night, you don’t make a sound. Your knees buckle, and Clark has to press you against the wall to keep you upright.
With broad strokes, he continues to drink from the nectar between your thighs, enamored with the taste, the scent, the feel of you.
He lets go only when you tap his shoulder, your eyes half-lidded. He rises, making sure to steady you with a hand at your waist. You cradle his face, wiping the spit running down his chin.
You kiss him, softer than before, standing on top of his shoes. “Why are you still wearing clothes?” you ask, your hand slipping down to tug at his belt. You unbuckle it as you lead him toward your bedroom, and he follows without a word.
He sits at the edge of your bed, touching you wherever he can while you undress him. You pop each button of his shirt with ease, taking your time, leaving a kiss here and there before trailing lower. Your fingers caress his chest, and your gaze meets his.
Your voice carries a strained edge when you speak. “Clark?”
“Yeah?”
You’re looking at him with so much affection he could cry on the spot.
“I—I think—” The words die on your tongue, and after a beat you say. “I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you.”
His heart stings. For a moment, he’d thought you were going to say those three words he’s been biting back.
Nevertheless, his lips cover yours gently, smiling. “Oh, I have.”
“Yeah? Who is it?”
The answer is simple. “You.”
You stifle a laugh. “That’s very cheesy,” you murmur, kissing him shortly. Your fingers unbutton his pants, lowering the zipper, your eyes searching his. “I want to take care of you.”
He draws back a little, takes a deep breath. Again, he’s nervous, as though you aren’t both already half-naked. “There’s something I need to tell you.” You hum in encouragement, and he clears his throat. “Well, I—Gosh, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Just… say it however it comes.”
“I’m not going to last long,” he admits, heat prickling at the back of his neck. You blink, brows furrowing. “I’m not being modest or anything. I—I just know it. I know my… body.”
You take a moment to think. “And what’s the problem with that?”
“Well, it’s certainly not… what you’d expect from me.”
You shake your head. “You’re overthinking it.”
He swallows, lifting his hips so you can tug his pants down. You sink to your knees on the carpet, kissing him again, your nails scraping lightly at the skin just above the waistband of his boxers.
“I don’t care how long you last.” You lick into his mouth, swallowing his whimper. “I just want you to feel good. That’s all.”
Pressing his forehead against yours before straightening, he observes as you push his boxers down. His cock springs free, unashamed, like every other time he’s thought of you alone in his apartment.
The only difference tonight is that it isn’t his hand that grabs it, but yours.
You stroke him once, tentative, studying every vein. Your mouth hovers over the tip before your tongue darts out to taste a bead of precum, moaning at the taste. Clark fists the sheets beneath him, peering up at the ceiling.
“Hey,” you whisper, urging him to look at you. Your hand glides up and down his length, and you chuckle. “Eyes here.”
Clark plants both hands on the mattress, leaning back, his gaze locked on yours.
“That’s it,” you coo, flattening your tongue along his shaft as your hand works him. “Is this okay?”
“Feels… nice,” he manages, attempting to come up with coherent sentences. “It feels—Oh, Jesus.”
His tip disappears behind your lips, and you suck dutifully, making his thighs twitch. He tries to even his breath, but it comes in rapid exhales.
As you hollow your cheeks, he slides a hand down, feeling the outline of himself through your skin. A choked moan rumbles in his chest when you take more of him, your throat tightening around his length. Seconds later you pull back, eyes watery, stroking what you can’t fit into your mouth.
The knot in his lower stomach is becoming unbearable. At times, his knee jerks with small motions. He can’t remain still, about anything but you and the hot paradise of your mouth.
His eyes flutter shut for an instant, and then you pinch the skin above his navel, startling him back, almost tickling him. You bob your head, trying to keep eye contact, but even you have to take a break sometimes from the intensity.
That’s when your free hand slips between your legs, pleasuring yourself too.
“Oh, baby,” he groans, barely registering the pet name. It only spurs you on, and a little saliva begins to drip from your lips, sliding down the side of his shaft, making a mess in his trimmed hair.
And now he’s close. So close he could come any second. He drags a palm over his face, holding his breath, and—
The pleasure disappears. He blinks once, twice, unsure if he’s lost what was left of his sanity or if you’re having fun edging him.
Sort of breathless, you sit back on your knees, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, and it only takes one look at you for him to know exactly what you’re thinking.
For a moment, he swears he blacks out. He feels as if he’s outside himself, disoriented, like a runner who has to reach the finish line at all costs. Except here, the goal waits between your thighs.
Then the haze clears, and he’s back in the bedroom with you. You’re on all fours before him, back arched, presenting yourself. His hands knead the flesh of your ass, and he gnaws at his bottom lip before the urge overpowers him.
He bends, tongue sliding through your slit and tracing it along your folds, tasting you until your voice breaks, pleading for more.
At long last, the moment of truth has arrived. He fists himself, lines up, and notches his tip at your entrance, slowly pressing in.
Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t—
“Fuck,” you keen, wriggling your hips, quivering. “You’re—you’re splitting me in half.”
“Don’t… try to rush it.” He pulls back a little to push in again, then pushes deeper, growling through clenched teeth. “It’s gonna take a while, sweetheart.”
He doesn’t miss the way you clench around him. His knees buckle and he has to steady himself with a bruising grip on your waist.
“You like that, don’t you? You like it when I call you those names?” Clark asks, voice rough, desire thick in his throat. “That’s why you’re clamping down on me?”
He watches as you nod, the gesture nearly imperceptible. “Please, move.”
Swallowing the lump in his throat, he blurts, “Can’t. You’re—really tight.”
“I wanna feel you,” you retort, your hand groping back, searching for his thigh. Your neck twists so he can cast you a glance: you look already wrecked, mascara smudged under your eyes, lips swollen and parted. “It’s okay. You won’t hurt me. I can take it.”
He knows you can. He repeats it all along as he continues to feed you his cock, storing all the noises you make and the responses you have to his touch in his memory.
Once he bottoms out and can’t go any further, when his balls are flushed firmly against your cheeks, he pulls out until only the tip remains, and slams back inside.
The sound alone is pornographic. Your inner walls stretch to adjust to his size, welcoming him in, and you mutter something about feeling him in your stomach.
“Y-you hear that?” Clark asks, voice breaking. To prove his point, he rolls his hips, the obscene squelch filling the void. He does it again, and again, each thrust making your breath hitch. “She’s crying for me. Wants me to keep her full.”
With a whine, your arms finally give out, and your face sinks into the pillow. That change in angle drives him mad. Clark spreads your cheeks wide, watching the way he disappears into you as he ruts harder into you. He pounds against your sweet spot, the room echoing with the lewd slap of skin meeting skin.
Chest flush to your back, he buries himself even deeper, one arm curling around your breasts to pull you upright as he jackhammers into you, giving you no chance to recover before he’s plunging forward again.
“C-Clark, oh my God,” you wail, clutching at him, trying to turn your face to catch his eyes. “You’re fucking big, you’re—you’re everywhere.”
He licks a stripe along your shoulder blades, tasting salt, and then drags his mouth along your damp skin. “You feel so good, baby. So good, so warm—I never wanna leave you.”
His own pace is killing him. It’s too fast, too deep, too erratic, but he can’t stop. He’s far too caught up in the moment to think of a way to make it last. His body, acting on instinct, moves on its own, leaving him behind.
You’ve told him before that you’re on the pill, that it’s safe, but he still needs to hear it again.
“I’m—I’m close,” he whimpers into your ear, twitching, working every muscle he has. “Can I—I’m just—Please, let me. I’m sorry, I’ll make it up to you, but p-please.”
“Come inside me,” you breathe, arching your back. “I want it. You can let go.”
And with your permission, he does, spilling inside you. His hips falter, driving in short thrusts as he spills inside you, pumping his release deeper with each spasm.
His heart hammers like it’s going to burst free from his chest, tearing out of his ribs, beating hard against your spine as he clings to you. He chokes on a sob against your nape, mouthing at your hair, feeling a surge of blood rushing through him.
Your body lies flat against the mattress, his last brain cells fighting not to crush you with his full weight. He braces himself on his forearms, the fire in his abdomen slowly ebbing.
He thinks he’s spent, but then another hot spurt escapes him, and he tightens his grip on the sheets.
Your walls flutter around him, and you crack one eye open, trying to glance back. “How are you still—”
“I have no idea,” he replies, nosing your cheek. “There’s probably a Kryptonian anatomy book somewhere that could explain it.”
You chuckle, exhaling as your body softens beneath him, getting comfortable. Maybe you think that’s it, that the two of you will collapse into bed, or shower, or do anything other than keep going at it.
But Clark gets hard… again. He never fully softened in the first place. Now, buried deep inside you, he feels himself swelling again, his length hardening back to steel.
After a couple seconds, you notice it. “Are you—are you hard again?”
“Looks like it,” he husks, hips shifting before he even realizes it. “Feels even better now.”
He’s still sensitive from his first orgasm. He can hardly believe either of you are ready for more, but his body isn’t listening.
You wince when he pulls out, clenching around nothing. You try to push yourself up, but your arms refuse. “What are you doing? I wanted you to stay.”
No answer. Just pure silence.
You twist your neck, brows knitted. “Clark? Is something wrong?”
He’s too entranced by the sight in front of him. His essence leaks out of you, and he surges forward to glide his fingers through the mess, gathering it to smear it along your folds. You moan low in your throat as he pushes it back into your hole, your body greedily swallowing two of his fingers.
“You’re—much kinkier than I thought,” you mewl, and then he presses his arousal flush against your lower back, making you chuckle. “Second round?”
He hums, kissing your neck, then your jaw. In one swift motion, he flips you onto your back, pinning you to the mattress. His lips claim yours as his palms slide down to your breasts, rolling your nipples between his fingers before replacing his touch with his tongue, lavishing attention on each hardened peak in turn.
You rake your nails against his scalp, squirming beneath him. He kisses his way back up to your mouth, biting at your lips.
“I can see you better this way,” he rasps, rubbing the head of his cock through your folds, sighing when he catches your entrance. “You’ll tell me if it hurts?”
Looping your arms around his neck, you tug him closer, kissing him shortly. “I will.”
This position grants him the privilege of watching your eyes widen as he sinks into you, inch by inch, until you’re filled to the brim again. Your nostrils flare, your mouth falling open in silent pleasure. His forehead drops to yours and his eyes roll back, high on the sensation.
He braces both arms on either side of your face, and you lock your ankles at the base of his spine, urging him on. Clark starts a slower rhythm this time, his only focus now to pull you apart.
His balls swing and impact rhythmically against the curve of your ass. You tilt your pelvis on each of his thrusts to help him reach deeper, telling him to go faster, harder.
“You’re so beautiful,” he chants between ragged breaths, whatever thought crosses his mind spilling out unchecked. You’re pinned beneath him, his sheer size overwhelming, like he could consume you whole without much effort. You tilt your head back, turning to putty. “I’d do anything for you. Just say the word and—and I will.”
His eyes fall closed as he inhales deeply, only reopening them once he’s expelled the breath.
“I love you,” he confesses then, voice wrecked, each word punctuated by a jerk of his hips. Any sort of reaction involving coherent speech appears to be beyond you. You just take what he’s giving you, your tits swaying as he pounds into you.
“C-clark, I—” You can’t finish your thought. He can almost see the gears turning in your head, how your face scrunches in ecstasy and the words tangle in your throat. “I—”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back just because I did,” he answers, sneaking a hand between your bodies to rub at your clit, circling it with precision. “I just wanted you to know it. I can wait.”
Your breathing staggers. You grab his face to kiss him, tangling your tongue with his. His gaze flicks between your blissed expression and the place where your bodies meet. His own orgasm creeps closer, though he’s determined to wait until you’re there with him.
The headboard keeps rocking against the wall, and you’re murmuring his name like it's the only word you remember of the English language. By the look on your face, he knows you’re close, that you just need a little more pressure for the knot in your stomach to snap.
“I’m gonna get you there, don’t worry,” he promises, rutting harder into you, never letting up on your clit.
“I—I’m so close,” you whine, sucking in a sharp breath, your thighs tightening around his frame. “Don’t stop.”
“Never,” he pants, holding himself on the edge of the precipice. “I’m right here, honey. I’ve got you.”
You come with a cry, shockwaves wracking your body as your walls clamp and flutter around him. Clark follows instantly, shuddering as he spills deep inside you for the second time, his whimpers muffled by your neck.
He doesn’t pull out until he’s sure you’ve milked every last drop. When he finally does, it’s reluctant, wishing there could be a way to live his whole life buried inside you without facing any consequence. He drops onto the mattress at your side, tugging you into his chest.
To his surprise, he actually feels tired. He’s sticky, sweaty, and madly in love with you.
Wait. He told you he loved you while still inside of you.
Romanticism isn’t dead, ladies and gentlemen, because Clark Joseph Kent is the living proof of it.
Your hand traces absent shapes on his chest, your breath warm near his ear. “I think we need to shower.”
“Yeah,” Clark mutters, staring up at the ceiling. “With holy water.”
You both laugh at that, and he holds you closer, stroking up and down your arm. After a while, he realizes you’re not tracing nonsense on his skin.
You’re writing the same letters, over and over.
I. L. O. V. E. Y. O. U. T. O. O.
“Oh,” he breathes, capturing your fingers and tilting your chin until you’re looking at him. Your lashes flutter, your face glowing with a pleased expression. He can’t stop the smile pulling at his lips. “Really?”
“Yes.” You kiss him softly, brushing your nose against his. “I love you, Clark.”
He seals his mouth with yours. “I think we should start saving to gift Jimmy and Molly a trip somewhere nice.”
“That’s your way of saying thank you for setting us up?”
“Exactly.” He gives you another peck. “I’d suggest preparing yourself for the double dates. I’ve already made my peace with the idea.”
The mere thought doesn’t unsettle you in the least. If anything, it only widens your smile, and your eyes crinkle at the corners.
Clark’s duty on Earth had always been clear. He came from a distant planet called Krypton, and despite the circumstances, his life’s purpose was to serve humanity, to make the world a better place.
What he never expected was that, beyond that destiny, he would find someone who would make his time on Earth feel greater than any calling ever could.
Over the years, experience had taught Clark that whenever Jimmy labeled one of his ideas as brilliant, sometimes… he was right.
Summary : Dex was doing just fine being the only prisoner in Enhanced Supervision Housing until they put you in the cell next door.
Pairing : DDBA!Benjamin Poindexter x mutant!reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : hurt/comfort! Meet cute at Rikers, prison isolation, mutant!reader, thermokinetic!reader (controls temperature, pyrokinesis and cryokinesis), restraint jacket/straitjacket, institutional neglect, arson and murder mention, Foggy’s death mentioned, blood, injury, prison break, guard death, violence, through-the-wall romance, hurt/comfort, first kiss, Set in DDBA S1, including part of the episode 8, where Dex uses his tooth to break out of prison. (let me know if I missed anything!)
Word Count : 6.3k
Notes : Need more mutant! reader in this fandom. The title is inspired by Impossible by Nothing but Thieves. Enjoy!
Dex had spent five months alone in Rikers’ brand-new Enhanced Supervision Housing after killing Foggy Nelson.
Of course, the city had decided that Benjamin Poindexter was not a man you put in general population, or solitary, or protective custody, or any other place built for your run-of-the-mill violent offenders. Apparently, if a person could kill his way out of most situations with a paperclip, a loose screw, or the edge of a dinner tray, the state had to start getting creative.
So they made a new building just for him and called it Enhanced Supervision Housing. ESH for short.
It was funny. As if calling what he could do an enhancement instead of a talent meant anything when they still fed him through a slot, restrained his hands before opening the door, and had three men with rifles posted behind reinforced glass every time he was escorted anywhere.
There were eight cells in ESH. Eight beautiful little boxes built with reinforced doors, observation panels, pressure sensors, thermal cameras, anti-ligature fixtures, shatterproof windows, and enough cameras to make privacy feel like a fairy tale told to a child.
Dex had seen the brochure when one of the guards had left paperwork too close to his cell during intake, and Dex had read it upside down through a reflection in the polished floor.
It was made for “high-risk enhanced detainees” with “special containment protocols” and “behavioural isolation.”
Cute.
The problem was, there were no other enhanced detainees. After all, not every day did somebody with a weird little gift or near-superhuman talent get arrested in New York. Not every day did someone land in Rikers with enough justification of being locked in a concrete aquarium, and half of them were in the supermax across the country, and the other half was in The Raft.
So it was just Dex.
Eight cells, seven empty. A whole hallway built for monsters, and only one monster inside it.
It was isolating, sure. But it was fine. There were worse places to be in the world. Maybe. Meh.
Rikers still had a rhythm. Even the ESH had one, if you were trapped long enough to learn it. He learned that the lights dimmed but never went fully off and guards passed every twelve minutes unless the night shift was bored, then every nine. The vents clicked twice before the air shifted temperature. Camera four made the smallest electric whine when it adjusted focus. Guard Velasquez dragged his left foot when he was tired and guard Miller breathed through his mouth and smelled like cheap coffee.
Dex knew all of it, and it helped with the silence creeping in sometimes.
The silence was the worst part, probably, not the restraints. Not even the meals so bland they felt punitive on a spiritual level.
This type of silence made his thoughts louder and made the walls seem closer at night, when he lay on the thin mattress with his hands folded over his stomach, staring at the ceiling like the ceiling might someday blink first.
Sometimes he thought about Foggy Nelson, but not in the way people probably wanted him to. He didn’t feel guilty; he did what he thought he had to do. He thought about that chapter in his life like a splinter under skin– impossible to forget without digging too deep and making it worse.
Sometimes he thought about Fisk. Sometimes he thought about his spine. Sometimes he thought about how easy it would be, if someone made one mistake.
Just one.
If someone would just accidentally give him the wrong set of cuffs. If a new guard would just be standing too close to the bars with his badge clipped to the wrong side of his belt.
But no one had made a mistake. Yet.
Then, in the middle of June, in the middle of the night, the hallway suddenly erupted.
The far door opened with a metallic groan, then another. Buzz. door one. Buzz. door two. Buzz. door three.
Eventually, boots flooded the corridor, and Dex counted twenty guards. Maybe more.
He could hear the metallic clangs of rifles and the plastic bounce of shields as static popping over radios. A guard whispered., “Keep moving,” like whatever they were escorting might change its mind if they hesitated.
Dex sat up.
The lights snapped brighter overhead, white and ugly, turning his cell blind at the edges.
He didn't move to the door. He stayed on the bed, head tilted slightly, listening.
There was a slightly smaller set footsteps beneath all the others.
This one must be the prisoner. It dragged, but not fighting. Perhaps this person was sedated? No. There was a little bit of struggle. Maybe they weren’t sedated enough. Whoever it was kept resisting the pace without ever fully stopping.
Metal clinked as someone cursed under their breath.
Then came a sound like fabric straining, and he could tell it was heavy fabric. Then, he heard thick restraints being adjusted. Not ordinary cuffs, and definitely not a chain.
Dex tilted his head. Interesting.
The procession stopped in front of the cell next to his.
The guards shifted around the door, blocking his view through the narrow panel in his own cell. He caught pieces of you, though nothing whole. He could see a bit of your hair, and the corner of something white and reinforced strapped across your torso. Your rikers-issued shoes were planted firmly against the floor, like you were refusing to be placed anywhere by anyone.
One of the guards knocked twice on Dex’s door with his baton. “Got a neighbor now, Poindexter.”
Dex looked at him.
The guard smiled like he’d said something funny, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, none of them looked relaxed.
Tonight, they were not afraid of Dex. They were afraid of you.
The door to Cell Two opened and they moved you inside.
You didn't scream, threaten, or beg, even if you were half-awake.
Weird, Dex thought, people usually did one of the three when they arrived in a place like this.
You were shoved past the threshold in silence, and the guards backed out fast. The door shut with a brutal final sound, locks engaging one after another, heavy and layered and unnecessarily dramatic. A guard gave an all-clear over the radio. Another laughed once, shakily, then stopped abruptly when nobody joined in.
Dex stayed very still as the guards filed out, one by one, until the hallway swallowed their footsteps one by one.
Eight cells, two occupied.
For the first time in five months, Dex was not alone.
He waited for you to make a sound, but he couldn't hear any noise, not even crying from the next cell. You weren’t pacing, like he did on the first night, and you barely even rattled whatever restraints they put on you. Most notable, you didn’t even attempt to make contact through the wall.
Dex stared at the wall between his cell and yours: solid concrete, thick enough that he shouldn't have been able to feel anything through it.
He did, though he didn’t know how to explain it. The only measurable metric was that somehow the room had felt cooler than it had been an hour ago.
He lay back down eventually.
From the other side of the wall, you still said nothing, no sound at all except the occasional shift of fabric and once, very quietly, an exhale through your teeth.
Dex almost smiled. That’s when he saw the window.
At first, he thought the glass had caught the overhead light strangely. ESH windows were narrow, reinforced slits. You could see a suggestion of the sky if you stood at the right angle, but mostly you saw the garden roses and your own reflection staring back like a bad idea.
Tonight, the glass was… clouding.
What?
Dex sat up again.
A thin white film crept across the corner of the window, delicate and pretty. Tiny veins of frost branching outward in lacy patterns, spreading over reinforced glass that had no reason to be cold.
Why was his window frosting up in the middle of summer?
—
For the first couple of days, Dex assumed you were asleep. Or unconscious. Or dead.
It was hard to tell with the wall between you and him. Still, the guards checked on you often enough that he knew you must technically be alive, but they did it through the panel, never through the door unless there were at least six of them and one of them had the long black shock baton they liked pretending it was not a weapon.
Dex had seen criminals arrive angry. During his time in the bureau, he had seen them arrive screaming, pleading, spitting, promising lawsuits, promising revenge, promising innocence. He had seen prisoners break under silence in twelve hours and start telling the ceiling their childhood nicknames.
You did none of that. In fact, you barely moved.
That was the strangest part, not the frost, not even the straitjacket, which was still interesting in a funny way to him, because they had Dex’s hands restrained any time they opened his door like he was going to start flicking femurs through skulls, but you must be special. After all, you had arrived wrapped up like a badly behaved present.
By the second day, he started actively listening for you.
It was pathetic, maybe, but there were very few things to do in Enhanced Supervision Housing besides become intimately familiar with the sound of your own breathing and develop opinions about fluorescent lights, so a new person on the other side of the wall was not nothing.
You shifted sometimes, when he heard a small scrape of fabric against concrete. He could hear the faint clink from whatever additional restraints they had attached to the jacket. Once, your head hit the wall with a dull little thud, and Dex turned his face toward the sound before he could stop himself.
Then… nothing. Nothing but a drag of breath through your nose.
The guards did not like you either, that became obvious pretty quickly.
They liked Dex, in a way. Obviously, they didn’t like him as a person, they were not stupid. But they understood him. They had made a little mental box for him: former FBI agent turned murderer. They had rules: keep your distance, keep his hands restrained, do not let him near anything that he could throw.
You, they did not understand.
They approached your cell like prey approaching a sleeping animal in the wrong enclosure.
On the third morning, one of them brought your breakfast and stood too close to the slot.
Dex heard a soft crackle before the guard even reacted. Then the man swore and stumbled back. “What the fuck—”
“Don’t put your hand in,” another guard snapped.
“I didn’t put my hand in!”
“Then stop whining.”
“She froze my fucking fingers, man!”
Dex sat on his mattress, elbows on his knees, staring at the wall. Interesting.
Your cell stayed silent and the breakfast tray was shoved in with much less dignity after that.
Nobody asked if you were hungry. Nobody asked if you were hurt. Nobody asked if you needed the jacket loosened, even though Dex could hear the shallow and held in breath, clearly struggling for air half the time. It was as if the straps cut across your ribs and you were trying not to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing it bothered you.
By the fourth day, Dex had decided you were either extremely disciplined or extremely broken. Possibly both.
He had also decided that the silence was annoying. This was unfair, because he had hated the silence before you arrived, and now that the silence had another person inside it, he hated it more.
He tried not to care, but that only lasted until evening.
A guard walked past and muttered, “Crazy bitch still hasn’t said a word.”
Dex’s head lifted.
The guard kept walking, probably feeling very brave because there were reinforced doors and rifles between him and the consequences of being stupid.
Dex watched him go. He didn’t say anything, and neither did you.
The night after that, the frost came back, but not just on Dex’s window this time. They were crawling up the walls.
It crept from the seam where the concrete met the floor, thin and white under the dimmed lights. At first, he thought it was moisture, a product of bad ventilation and Rikers being Rikers. Then the frost branched, crawling in little veins across the wall between your cells.
Dex got up and walked over, putting two fingers against the concrete. It was painfully cold.
On the other side of the wall, you breathed out, and frost thickened under his fingers.
Dex almost knocked. That felt ridiculous.
What was he going to do? Tap his knuckles against reinforced concrete and ask the stranger in the murder-prison next door if she was making the building colder because she was sad?
No. So he went back to bed, but did not sleep.
By day five, the guards had stopped pretending this was normal.
Maintenance came in wearing insulated gloves, and even gave Dex a thicker orange jumpsuit, even though he never minded the cold. They took temperature readings in the hallway, checked the vents, checked the windows. They argued about condensation. One of them said it was probably a system fault, and then immediately shut up when a thin line of ice crawled over his boot.
Dex enjoyed that a lot, actually. It was the first entertainment he’d had in months.
By the fifth night, Dex woke up to snow.
At first, he thought it was dust falling from the ceiling. But then a single cold snowflake landed on his cheek.
Dex blinked.
For a moment, he lay very still, staring up at the ceiling where tiny white flakes drifted down from nowhere. Another landed on his chest. Then another. Soon there were dozens, small, delicate, almost shy.
Dex sat up slowly.
The floor was beginning to powder white. His blanket had caught a fine layer of it. The air was cold enough now that his breath was visible.
He looked toward the wall, and for the first time in five days, he spoke to you. “You doing this, neighbor?”
Nothing but silence.
Dex waited.
The hallway outside was quiet, which meant either the guards had not noticed yet or they were all standing very still pretending they had not noticed yet. Dex watched snow gather on the toes of his prison-issued socks.
Then, from the other side of the wall, there was the faintest shift.
And then your voice, rough from disuse. You sounded almost… bored. “...mmhm.”
Dex’s mouth curved up. Ah. She speaks.
He leaned back against the wall, feeling the cold bite through the cotton of his shirt. “Should I be concerned?”
Then, barely louder than before, you said, “Probably.”
Dex laughed once under his breath.
His own sound surprised him, because it sounded wrong in the cell. Too human then he had ever been.
The snow kept drifting down. It should have made him uneasy. It should have made him think about containment failures and emergency protocols and what the guards might do if the whole unit iced over. Instead, Dex sat there with his shoulder pressed to the wall between you, watching winter collect in his lap.
“Good to know,” he said.
You didn’t answer. But a few seconds later, the snow slowed down.
—
After that, Dex learned how to read you. It was not subtle, once he understood what he was looking at.
When you were sad, you were cold so it made sense that in the first month, it snowed almost every day.
You barely spoke during those days, you barely even moved.
The guards asked questions through your door and received nothing but silence. The nurses came by with clipboards, asking if you had eaten, if you were injured, if you needed medical attention, if you understood where you were. You gave them nothing.
Sometimes, actual ice sealed your food slot shut. Snow collected in the corners of Dex’s cell.
His blanket went damp and cold and his breath fogged when he sat up. Even the guards stopped making jokes when they passed Cell Two because nobody wanted to laugh in a place that had started to feel like a morgue.
Dex sat with his back to the wall and listened. That was all there was to do: listen and wait for proof that you were still in there.
Then, eventually, the cold would begin to cease.
The frost on his window would sweat and snow would melt into silver lines down the concrete. The air would warm by a degree, then another, like your body was remembering that it was summer.
And then, and only then, you would speak. “Neighbor?”
His eyes opened in the dark. “What?”
You inhaled, as if you had been thinking about this for days. “Do you think they’d let me have a hairbrush?”
Dex stared at the ceiling. “No.”
You were quiet for the rest of the night, but the cells suddenly became as warm as a hug, as if someone had reminded you that human connections were possible.
Then, the next day, you called out again. “Poindexter, right?”
“Mm,” he replied.
You paused, as if considering whether or not the question was stupid, but said it anyway. “Do you think pigeons know they’re ugly?”
Dex blinked. “I don’t think pigeons care.”
“Good for them.”
Then, a few hours later, after hearing a prison guard during dinner time call you this, you said, “Dex.”
The name came too naturally from your mouth for someone who had never said it before.
He turned his head toward the wall. “What?”
“I have an itch.”
He waited. You said nothing else.
“Okay.” he finally said.
“I’m in a restraint jacket.”
“I figured.”
“It’s under my shoulder blade.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is,” you sounded very, very annoyed.
The room heated so fast it made the steel bars creak.
Dex smiled into the dark.
You were quiet a moment longer, then said, “They keep calling it that.”
“What?”
“A restraint jacket.”
“That’s what it is.”
“No,” you said. “It’s a straitjacket.They just call it a “fireproof restraint jacket” because that sounds nicer with the taxpayers, and straitjacket makes me sound like I’m supposed to be in a basement eating wallpaper.”
Fireproof, huh?
Dex found your comparison amusing and laughed under his breath. “You’d prefer that?”
The wall warmed. You heard him. He knew you did, because the warmth stayed.
“At least it’s not an inhibitor collar,” you muttered finally.
Dex went still. “They have those?”
“Not anymore,” you said, though Dex didn’t ask for any clarifications that day.
For a while he stared out quietly.
After a moment, you asked, “Are you in one?”
“An inhibitor collar?”
“A straitjacket, genius.”
“No.”
The temperature dropped, but only in a small enough increment. “You’re not in a straitjacket?”
“No.”
“That is so fucked up.”
Dex closed his eyes. “Is it?”
“Yes,” you scoffed, “What makes you so special?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is discrimination.”
Dex, who couldn’t miss if he wanted to, looked around to see nothing in his cell that he could throw or ricochet with. And if he was imagining you right, your hands must be the main conduit to your power. You didn’t need an object to break out if your hands were free. “I don’t think that’s what that is.”
“It is to me.”
After that, you told him your name. You said it at two in the morning, half-muffled through concrete, like it had slipped out by accident.
Dex repeated it once.
The heat that bloomed through the wall felt almost shy.
After that, Dex started sleeping with his shoulder closer to your side of the cell, though he told himself it meant nothing: The bed was narrow and the room was small, that’s all. There were only so many places to put a body inside a box. But every night, somehow, he ended up turning toward you, listening for your breathing through concrete like it was the only sound in Rikers that mattered.
And when you went quiet for a bit too long, Dex would listen in, panic blooming, and it would not calm until you shifted or sighed or muttered something ridiculous about prison oatmeal, and then he could breathe again like an idiot.
That was when he understood the other half of you.
When you were in a good enough mood, your powers weren’t icy anymore. You’d run hot.
The first time it really hit him, Dex woke up sweating with his shirt clinging to his back. The window was fogged over and the snow had vanished completely, and the whole cell felt damp and tropical, like a greenhouse in Rikers.
And you were talking. God, you were talking.
You were talking your ass off, giving him whole floods of thought, fast and impossible to hold still.
“Do you think they built this place because of you specifically,” you asked once you realised your rambles had shook him awake, voice bright through the wall, “or do you think someone made a budget request years ago and then got really excited when you gave them a reason?”
Dex looked to the wall. You didn’t wait for an answer.
“Because eight cells is very ambitious. Someone must’ve sat in a meeting going, no, trust me, we are going to have so many enhanced criminals. And then it was just you for like, half a year.”
Dex sat up, and the air was even warmer.
On the other side of the wall, you shifted in the jacket, fabric rasping hard against concrete.
“Also, do you think enhanced is offensive? I can’t decide. It feels offensive. Like I didn’t ask to be labelled like a skincare serum.”
Dex’s mouth twitched up a little. “You done?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I also think the eggs are powdered.”
“They are.”
“I knew it.”
Then you laughed, and it was a half-controlled laugh this time, wild around the edges. The temperature in Dex’s cell jumped so fast it felt like someone had opened an oven door.
Dex now knew how your powers worked: when you were kinda sad, things frosted over. When you could barely move, it snowed.
Good mood meant warmth. Full manic meant tropical.
It was ridiculous and fascinating all the same. Sometimes, the whole unit went damp and sticky, other times the reinforced windows fogged over, the walls sweating like the building was nervous.
Eventually, it got warmer and warmer, and you would be pacing, five steps one way, five steps back, talking out of your ass like language had become a pressure valve.
You talked about everything. The guards’ schedules, the ceiling tiles, how ugly prison socks were, whether corporations should be burned down in alphabetical order or by severity of moral failure.
Dex listened to all of it.
He learned of who you were without ever seeing your face. He knew when you were smiling because the wall warmed before your voice changed. He knew when you were pretending not to cry because the frost came fast, like you were trying to hide it and failed anyway. He knew the difference between your tired silence, your angry silence, your sad silence, your plotting silence. So he knew you.
And you knew him, too, in ways no one alive had earned before. You knew when his guards had pissed him off before he said anything. You knew when his spine hurt from the way he breathed through his teeth. Once, when he had gone too silent, you knocked your forehead lightly against the wall and said, “Dex, don’t go wherever your mind just went.” He had stared at the concrete for a long time after that, because nobody had ever come looking for him inside his own head before.
That's why, when you talked, he listened.
Some of it was nonsense. Some of it was clever. Some of it was both. You talked like someone sprinting downhill with no interest in stopping, fast and too amused by terrible things. You even told him what you did: apparently you burned down a warehouse and office of a company called Meridian Dynamics. They made suppression tech: Inhibitor collars, cuffs, injectables, sold to prisons and private security. Apparently, you planned to burn the building down during a very important board meeting, which resulted in your two counts of arson and twenty four counts of murder.
And, inevitably, you started talking about escape.
“I’m getting out,” you told Dex one night.
He was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, sweat dampening his collar. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You can’t burn through reinforced doors.”
“I could if I had my hands.”
Dex looked down at his own, free, for now. He was still dangerous. His hands had always been the part of him people watched first, the part they feared, the part they restrained before opening any door.
He understood, suddenly, the cruelty of having your body treated like a weapon even when you were just sitting there, breathing.
You shifted in the jacket, and the fabric rasped like it hurt.
“Obviously,” you said, trying for lightness and missing by inches, “I don’t have them.”
Dex stared at the wall. For once, he did not know what to say.
You laughed, but it came out thin. “I can feel them. That’s the worst part. They’re right there. I just can’t use them.”
The heat dimmed.
“That why you keep talking about chewing through your jacket?”
You shrugged, though it hurt. “Maybe.”
“You’ll break your teeth.”
“You care about my teeth?”
“I care about not listening to you complain.”
“You care.”
He should have denied it, but he didn’t.
Dex had spent his entire life understanding attachment as a liability, something people could weaponize until he became useful or pathetic or both. But with you on the other side of the wall, this attachment didn’t feel temporary. It was clear in the way he measured his nights by whether you spoke. He had an ache of wanting to see your face and being terrified that if he did, it would only make this feeling worse.
The silence stretched, warmer than it should have been. Then you said, very quietly, “I don’t think I could actually chew through it.”
“No,” Dex said. “Probably not.”
“I still might try.”
“Don’t.”
That made you laugh for real. The wall warmed beneath his palm. For a moment, it was almost gentle.
One night, after hours of heat and pacing and a long speech about how prison architecture lacked imagination, you went suddenly quiet.
Dex waited.
The wall was warm against his shoulder. Then you whispered, “Dex?”
“What?”
“Do you think I’m going to be like this forever?”
Dex looked at the concrete between you, at the damp shine where the heat had melted old frost.
“No,” he answered.
It was the closest thing to a promise he could make through a wall. He wanted to say more, but everything else felt too fake.
He didn’t know why, but he had the urge to tell you that you were not an object or a containment problem. He wanted to tell you that if the world had built eight cells for monsters, then fine, let the world call him one, because he had found you in the next cage over and suddenly the world didn’t feel so lonely anymore.
Instead, Dex pressed his palm flat to the wall.
A second later, warmth bloomed under his hand. Not enough to burn, but enough to meet him.
—
Dex getting moved to general population should have made him think about the Fisks.
It should have made him think about the obvious thing first, which was that Vanessa Fisk wanted him dead.
Being moved to genpop was not a transfer. To him, a former FBI agent in a room full of convicts who has also pissed people off by working for the Kingpin, it was a death sentence. Genpop was a fancy term for a room full of men, any one of them purchasable, any one of them stupid or desperate enough to try him with a sharpened toothbrush, a melted piece of plastic, a hand around his throat in the showers.
But when the guards dragged him out of ESH when you were asleep in your cell, that was not what Dex thought about.
He thought, with a sudden, sick clarity, that you were going to be alone.
You would be alone like he had been alone for five months, rotting in a hallway built for people the world didn’t know how to categorize.
Alone with no one but the guards who would never understood your moods.
So he called Matt and offered him a lifeline: tell him who hired him to kill Foggy Nelson in exchange for freedom.
Of course he didn’t think Matt would forgive him. But Matt had believed in the law. And mercy too, whether he wanted it or not. Dex needed both, and hated needing both, and hated more that he was not even asking just for himself.
Need sat wrong in his head. It had always felt like weakness or an exposed artery, as if anyone could just hook a finger into and pull. Needing Matt Murdock was bad enough. Needing Matt Murdock for you was humiliating in a way that Dex didn’t have vocabulary for, because it meant there was something in the world he could not take, kill, steal, or aim to fix.
See, he wanted an appeal for you, too. He had this whole speech of how in another life, Matt would defend him. About isn’t that what good men do? Defend their worst enemies? About I’m bargaining for our life here, counsellor.
Our life. Not mine. Ours.
“Oh,” Matt said. “That’s what this is.”
Dex said nothing.
“So fell in love in prison?” Matt said sarcastically. “Sweetheart, what do you want me to do? Want me to get a couple of murderers out of prison, want me to get an appeal?”
Dex didn’t answer, because answering would have made it sound too… juvenile.
Love was not a strong enough word for a woman he had only known through a concrete wall and had fallen for anyway. It was not right for experiencing snow in a prison cell, or feeling heat through the wall, or your voice talking nonsense at three in the morning. It was not right for the way he had started sleeping closer to your side of the room.
Matt saw enough of it anyway, and maybe that’s why he had a glimmer of sympathy. Maybe it was disgust. Maybe he thought again of Foggy, and before he knew it, Matt was slamming his head on the metal table.
Dex barely had time to register it before pain flared through his mouth and his head snapped hard enough against the metal that the room flashed white, blood filling his mouth.
Then, he felt something small and hard come loose against his tongue.
A tooth.
A projectile.
“Thank you, counsellor,” he smiled.
The guards pulled Dex back, and he let them haul him away, head bowed, blood dripping down his lip, the tooth hidden carefully.
Killing the doctor and the guard was child’s play after that. Navigating the prison with the dead guard’s badge was even easier.
He would break out and kill Fisk in his black and white ball. But for now, he had something else to do in this hell hole.
He wouldn’t escape without you.
Dex moved through Rikers with blood still drying at the corner of his mouth.
When he reached ESH, he killed the two stationed guards with medical tools stolen from the infirmary.
And when he got in, the hallway was frozen.
Ice crawled over the floor in white veins. Frost had swallowed the observation glass. Snow had gathered in the corners like the building had been abandoned for winter. Your food tray sat untouched outside the slot because the mechanism had sealed shut.
Dex stopped outside Cell Two and looked through the narrow panel.
This was the first time that Dex ever really saw you.
He had seen flashes between guards, maybe a reflection from one of the guard’s shields during training drills.
You were curled on the floor in the fireproof straitjacket, knees drawn up as much as the restraints allowed, cheek resting against the concrete. Your hair was messy. Your lips were discolored from the cold, frost clinging to your lashes like a lifeline, delicate as glitter, cruel as evidence.
You looked… smaller than he had imagined, but no less beautiful.
He had built you in his head as strong as weather, a voice bright enough to make lights flicker. But through the glass, you were just a girl in a white straitjacket, cold and alone and trying not to disappear.
Dex pressed his bloody hand to the door.
He looked at the jacket and the lock and and thought of every hand that had put you in there and every person who had looked at you like you were a weapon before you were a human being.
He broke the door open with the stolen keycard first.
When the door gave out, the cold rushed out around him.
You stirred, eyes opening slowly.
For one second, you only stared at him like he couldn’t possibly be real. Like maybe the cold had finally started making things up for you.
Then the frost nearest his feet began to melt.
“Dex?”
You looked confused. As if it was a guess.
That's when you realised… you had never really seen him, either.
He nodded, stepping inside.
Snow fell between you, unnatural and absurd beneath the fluorescent lights. Your eyes moved over his face to the blood on his mouth and the stitches on his forehead. You knew him, finally, after months of knowing him only as a voice through concrete.
Your voice sounded broken. “Is that what you look like?”
Dex almost smiled, thrilled that you looked anything but disappointed. “Yeah.”
You blinked at him, dazed and trying very hard to make your mouth curve up like this was funny. Like you had not been left alone, and that loneliness without him had turned the building into a snowy wasteland.
He crouched in front of you.
For the first time, there was no wall between you.
Dex reached for the straps.
You flinched, but not because you were afraid of him, but because the last person who reached for the jacket had touched you like you were an object, and you had burned him by accident, and then they had hurt you for it.
Dex saw all of that cross your faces so he stopped.
His hands hovered over the buckles.
“I’m taking it off,” he said, “that’s all.”
You looked at him, considering your choices. Then, just a little, you nodded.
Dex broke the first strap, the fabric strained under his grip before giving in with a harsh snap. The sound echoed through the frozen cell. Your breath caught, and his eyes flicked back to yours immediately, checking if you were okay.
You were.
So he broke the next one.
Then the next.
Each strap breaking felt personal, and each piece tearing loose felt like he was taking something back from everyone who had decided your hands were too dangerous to belong to yourself.
When the last strap snapped, the jacket loosened.
Then your arms slipped free. You did so slowly, like you had forgotten they were ever yours.
Your hands trembled in your lap.
Dex looked at them.
So did you.
You had not seen them for months.
The snow thinned at first, then eventually, it stopped, the last few flakes drifting down and melting before they touched the floor. Warmth bloomed from you in a fragile little wave.
This time, it wasn’t manic heat. Instead it was warmth, like spring breaking after a cold winter.
You lifted one hand carefully, almost shyly, and the first thing you did was touch the scar on Dex’s face.
He went perfectly still.
You brushed the blood at the corner of his mouth with your thumb, your eyes furrowing.
“You came back,” you whispered, which, to Dex translated to: I thought you left me forever.
Dex leaned into your touch before he could stop himself. “Yeah.”
There were alarms somewhere in the distance, but ESH was far away, out of security. It would take them a while to get here. And by the time they did, it would’ve been too late.
Dex didn’t move. Neither did you.
Then your fingers curled lightly against his chin, and before he could think better of it, Dex bent forward and kissed you.
It was small, nothing but a brush of his mouth against yours, warm and bloody from the missing teeth.
You froze for half a second before you kissed him back.
You were sweet and a little clumsy, because your arms were stiff and your hands were shaking and neither of you had any business being tender in a prison cell full of evidence of your sadness and isolation.
When he pulled back, you stared at him.
The frost on the walls ran down in thin silver lines.
Then you smiled, sheepish and dazed, like you were embarrassed by your own warming heart.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” you admitted.
Dex looked at you and he had no answer.
The ruined straitjacket was still in his hands, your fingertips still against his face, and the warmth of your lips lingering on his mouth.
Outside, the prison began to panic. Inside, you smiled at him like he had brought summer with him.
And Dex, who had spent five months alone in a place built for monsters, thought there was no better reason to become one again.
—end.
Extra note: I reread this before posting and realised I may have accidentally written reader as bipolar-coded, which is very me😭😭😭 I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around a decade ago, and it’s manageable now, but this fic ended up feeling way more personal than I expected. This is the first time I’ve ever written mood disorder x mood disorder so I hope I did alright. So please be kind with this one. She’s special to me 🫶
Please send in an ask or message if you want to be added to the dex general / series specific taglist! Comments get lost sometimes! Let me know if I missed anyone!
