hi there! call me space boo - ngl i'm just a tired little intj, but i'm always up for a chat, no matter the topic. i've been super busy as of late so i'm on a kinda hiatus atm but fear not the updates are few yet the ideas still stew ;)
i ult stray kids and ateez, although i'm a multistan at heart and more casually stan other groups (seventeen, boynextdoor, p1harmony, xikers) and listen to even more (gidle, xg, alexa, jimin, agust d, woodz etc.).
i'm also a massive star wars neek (most of my star wars works are on my wattpad) and i also love the dune franchise; if you scroll through my blog which i recommend you don't do, you'll see i dabble in other fandoms too, like bnha/mha *distant barking*. i also read a lot of fantasy, sci-fi and dystopia so i'm also always down to talk about books too - i could literally yap for days.
don't be afraid to spam me!
masterlist | my art appreciation blog | etiquette for reading works
most recent work: ch13 of beneath a crimson sky
works you may know me by (most popular):
stray kids
maniac: ot8 x reader
beneath a crimson sky series (ot8 x reader)
ateez
warriors: san x reader
seventeen
aftercare with seungcheol
stray: dk x reader
my hero academia
as selfish as love: merman!bakugou katsuki x reader
pro-hero alpha deku
dune
atonement: feyd x reader
upon the sands of the arena: feyd x reader
who's afraid of little old me?: feyd x reader
beneath a crimson sky masterlist | prev chapter | next chapter
pairing: stray kids ot8 x afab!reader
genre: apocalypse au, dystopian, dark, adventure, action, thriller, fighting, eventual smut, romance, features ateez and seventeen
a/n: happy april fools! we're back (for now)
chapter warnings: injuries, whump, moral struggles, mention of death, too much damn dialogue, a lil kiss or two :3
chapter word count: 3.4k
“Whoa, whoa,” you tease, swatting Changbin’s hands away. “You think you can even make it past those child proof bottle caps?”
“Hey!” He protests. “I’m perfectly capable - ”
“Of putting burn cream on the parts of your back you can’t reach? Sure, buddy.”
You drag him, defeated, into the carriage with the Round Table and sit him down on the floor, ordering him to stay there while you go to check on the others. He pouts but doesn’t protest further, which implies to you that he’s more hurt than the brave face he’s arranged his features into is letting on.
Jeonghan and Seuncheol are sitting together with Wooyoung. Jeonghan’s forehead has been steristripped, giving him a Frankenstein’s monster sort of air. Seungcheol’s shoulder and Wooyoung’s thigh have been bandaged, but none of the three’s injuries seems to be preventing them from wolfing down the very quickly diminishing contents of their cans. Your stomach rumbles, and Wooyoung makes a sympathetic noise and deftly opens a tinned cassoulet for you.
You speak around a mouthful. “Thanks. Hadn’t realised but I would have probably passed out in a few minutes without this.”
“No worries,” Wooyoung grins. “I had to take the luncheon meat for myself, though.”
“You can have it all, man,” Seungcheol mumbles around his last bit of stew. “I was hungry, but not that hungry.”
Jeonghan snorts. “Once you’re done, the only thing left for the rest of us will be the luncheon meat.”
“Good thing you’re just skin and bones, or you’d be on the menu too,” Seuncheol grumbles back good naturedly.
“Anyone know where Minho and Yunho are?” You interject.
“Yup,” Wooyoung supplies over Seuncheol and Jeonghan’s squabbling, jerking a thumb towards the station. “Over by our sleeping bags.”
You give him a quick thumbs up and a salute, taking your can with you as you jog over to the station, picking up the pace for the sake of Changbin and the shambolic self medication he’ll administer if you’re gone too long. The two are where Wooyoung said, Minho knelt beside Yunho, deftly tying a sling for him, and you stand nearby, hovering until he’s finished. Touching a hand to his shoulder, you smile down at him, and he leans his head against your leg.
“Everything okay over here?” You ask.
“Yeah,” Yunho replies, gingerly testing his range of movement with the sling. “It’s a pretty bad sprain, and it’s sore, but I’m just glad it’s not broken. I think I could still carry - ”
“Don’t worry about the supply runs,” you tell him. “There are plenty who want to help. I bet Doctor Minho’s prescribed you some rest, anyways.”
“It’s the only thing I can prescribe,” Minho sighs. “He won’t take painkillers.”
You nod down at his calf. “Doubt you are, either.” Your lips quirk up. “We’ve got matching scars now, huh?”
The dog bite seems like years ago, the peaks and valleys of scar tissue levelled and faded by time. It’s strange to think of those times, when the camp that’s so real and living before you now wasn’t even a seed of an idea in Chan’s heart, when you fought for trust that you’ve long since earned in the present moment. Minho grins at the memory too, and he pats your knee.
“Don’t tell Jisung, or he’ll want one too.” He starts to stand.
“Where are you going?” You ask, grabbing his arm to steady him.
“I don’t think anyone’s seen to Changbin’s burns yet.”
“Relax, Minho,” you reply, pushing him down until he gives in and sits. “I’ve got him. You and Yunho can rest up and practice your dance moves or something.” You glance at Yunho’s wrist. “You might have to adapt some of them.”
“He’ll find a way to make the choreo more painful, anyway,” Yunho teases.
“Ha, very funny,” Minho deadpans.
You leave them to argue over who made practice more arduous, discarding your now finished can on your way back to the carriage - you laugh under your breath at the sight of Changbin through the window, tapping his imaginary watch. He grins up at you, making jibes about how you took your time, and you give him a playful swat over the head and sit behind him, wasting no time in examining the burns across his back.
The skin is red and blistered where you can see it. His shirt is shredded in areas, and the strong shape of his back visible underneath would be almost appealing if it weren’t for the obvious pain he’s in. Up close, the burns are shiny, and you wince, wondering if you should have left this to Minho: there might be something you need to do other than just cleaning them and putting the burn cream on as you'd planned.
You can hear voices from the carriage next door, but you can’t see from your position on the floor who’s there. After some deliberation, you decide that Minho needs some time off, and you’ll ask him to check your handiwork tomorrow morning.
“Take this off,” you instruct, tugging at Changbin’s shirt.
His back straightens a little. “Oh?”
You make a show of rummaging through the first aid kit. “Dang, I can’t seem to find the sedatives.”
Outraged, he splutters but finally complies, and you help him ease it over his head though the movement pulls at some of the burns; still, he doesn’t say anything, despite how you can almost see his grimace in the tension across his shoulders. You get straight to work, using some alcohol wipes to clean out the small gashes and abrasions, muttering apologies when he flinches or inhales particularly sharply. You’re silent, focused on keeping your hands steady and causing him the least possible, but he fidgets, something (or multiple things) on his mind.
“Hey,” Changbin pipes up. “Thanks for talking to Chan.”
“That’s okay. He promised to take it easier, and I think he really meant it this time,” your hands pause at his back. “We left it too late to properly talk to him, so we had to trick him. We shouldn’t leave stuff like that so long.”
He nods. “Yeah, I agree. It’s a hard lesson, but a good one.”
You fall silent again, discarding another used wipe on the growing pile. Carefully, you grip his shoulder, holding him fast as you work a particularly nasty bit of shingle out of one of his deeper cuts, which means you feel when he slumps, head bowed low. He rubs at his eyes before he remembers he’s supposed to be staying still and drops his hands into his lap. You can sense his words on the tip of his tongue, but he remains quiet, stewing until it begins to gnaw at you too.
“You don’t have to suffer in silence, either, y’know,” you tell him, drawing on your last reserves to instil a drop of strength into your voice. “I’m no better than you. We both - ” You swallow. “ - we both killed today.”
He hesitates, then speaks. “It’s dumb, but… you’d think being a soldier would have prepared me more for war.”
“I don’t think anything could prepare anyone for war, Changbin,” you reply softly, unscrewing the cap of the burn cream.
Your mind falls on all the thralls that died today, and you wonder if they even knew what was happening to them before they were simply gone. Does War give them a last look, a half second to feel the pain of bodies that were theirs before they perish? It makes you want to cry, but you are utterly depleted, your eyes empty and tired, your tears for today already used up.
“I would lie awake when the rest of my squadron had long fallen asleep,” Changbin whispers. “I didn’t think I could kill for my country, but I thought maybe for my friends.” He sighs, though it comes out more like a sob. “In the end, it doesn’t matter who it’s for, it’s still wrong.”
“We saved lives too,” you whisper, but it’s not convincing.
“It’s our weight to carry,” he says finally. “So that others don’t have to.”
The words strike you then, so like those that you’ve repeated to yourself billions of times before, and you nod, reaching around to grip his hand so hard you know it must hurt him. You imagine the yoke, harnessed over your neck, the roughness of the wood digging into your aching shoulders, and though you strain against it, you don’t throw it off.
“Better us than them,” you choke out.
He squeezes your hand. “Better us than them.”
As you smooth the burn cream over his back, you feel the pressure on you lift - it’s not that the weight is gone, but it’s shared now, Changbin right beside you, the two of you a pair of Atlases holding up the sky. He remains calm for a while, but you sense the moment where his thoughts move onto other matters, because he begins to fidget again, his body shifting under your fingertips.
You wonder what he’s thinking about. There are all sorts of problems to occupy him, and they bite at you too, never leaving you a moment of rest. Batting them away for now, you focus on finishing applying the burn cream and loosely wrapping gauze around his torso.
“Stay still,” you chide. “I’m almost done.”
“We need to organise more supply runs,” he says absently. “And we should set up rain barrels.”
You pat the last knot in the gauze. “I’m finished. Also, it can wait until the morning, Binnie. Famine’s not down here yet.”
The moment you say her name, you regret it: something changes in the air, filling your mouth with the taste of rot and death, and your heart jolts, kicking to life as if speaking her name might summon her. She taps on the glass from outside the carriage, beautiful in the black of the night, her smile cloying, and then she is gone, but the prophecy remains bitter on your tongue.
With a sinking feeling, you remember that you need to tell the Round Table about your visions and the truth in them. Jeongin, Felix and Hyunjin already know, and Changbin would be a good continuation, sitting here with his back to you so you don’t have to see the accusation in his eyes when he asks you why you hadn’t mentioned it before. You’ve just begun to work up the nerve to speak when he beats you to it.
“What if Famine and War came down on the same ship?” Changbin presses suddenly. “What if it’s here already?”
“She - it’s not,” you snap, back ramrod straight as you glare out into the night.
There’s nothing there. You know nothing’s there, you can feel it in the pulse of your heart. Only War is here, yet your mind conjures images of the two of them, hand in hand, her with her knife-like beauty and cold eyes and him with his wax candle flesh and bony fingers. You look away, boring your eyes into Changbin’s back instead, grounding yourself in the realness of him.
He turns to face you, nodding at the abrasions on your legs. “Let me clean you up too. You don’t want them infected.”
You attempt to school the relief out of your features at the change in subject; it shouldn’t take so much for you to work up the courage to talk to Changbin about it, but you can’t get the words out. A quiet fear gnaws at you, a fear that doubts how useful it will even be to share the weight of your prophecies - what good can you even do against the horsemen? The Round Table have enough on their plates already, don’t they?
Changbin wraps his fingers around your ankle, angling your leg so it’s closer to him, and you resist. “I’m fine, they’re just - ”
“I insist,” he interrupts.
Sighing heavily, you let him take the tweezers from the first aid kit and sterilise them before he begins picking the small pieces of grit and debris out of your knees. You bite the inside of your cheek at the sting as he gently swipes one of the wipes over your shin. He’s quiet for a bit, concentrating on sticking plasters over the worst of your scrapes, but then he looks up, eyes troubled.
“What if the others - the rest of the camp - want to fight?”
You think for a while, then speak. “It’s clear to them that they’re free to leave if they want. No one’s forced into things they don’t want to - they know the stakes, they’ve seen them in our injuries today, heard the risks. If they choose to walk into that… I guess, just like us, they do it willingly.”
Attentively, you watch Changbin’s face. His gaze fixes thoughtfully on the wall of the carriage behind you, lit by the torch he’d tucked into one of the seats while you were checking on the others, though it flits to your face in the next moment, a smile pulling at his lips. Something flares to life in his eyes that’s totally unguarded, taking you a little by surprise.
He sighs, giving you a look that can only be described as fond. “You’re doing that thing you used to do, though I guess you don’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
Nostalgic, he smiles. “You always used that tone of voice to calm me down. Especially before our middle school History exams.”
“What?” You blurt.
Shock knocks any semblance of comprehensibility from you, and you gape, almost recoiling from him with how stunned you are - you’d almost forgotten that this grown, responsible Changbin that you know now is the same as the scrawny best friend you’d had as a kid. Your eyes narrow. You know exactly what he’s referencing. All those times when you’d stand with your hands on his shoulders outside of Mr Kim’s class and tell him to breathe with you, back when a class test was the worst thing that could have happened to you.
You jab a finger at him. “You remembered me? And you didn’t say?”
“How was I supposed to know you knew?” He protests. “You never said anything about it!”
“I just thought you’d forgotten me,” you admit, sheepish.
“Same,” he retorts, scoffing. “Like I’d ever forget you. I admired you so much.”
“Me?” You squawk, feeling your face grow hot. “No way, I was thirteen - not admirable at all!”
“I was also thirteen,” he points out, dissolving into giggles.
You laugh with him, so much so that tears almost come to your eyes, recollecting when he’d made you laugh as kids, pulling faces at you while you were getting told off or whispering to you about how the supply teacher looked like the ewoks from Star Wars. Head thrown back, his face scrunched up, you can almost see the boy he was, sitting right beside you.
It’s easy to draw on the old memories with him sitting close enough that his shoulder brushes yours. He asks if you remember faking coughing fits to piss off Miss Kang, and you nod and remind him of the time you were caught passing notes scrawled with extremely unflattering drawings of your teachers by Mr Park. You reminisce with him until you tire of the sound of your voice, and still you aren’t tired of his.
After a moment of silence, you nudge him. “I always thought it was weird that you weren’t suspicious of me at all, near the start.”
“Even if I hadn’t known you, I think my instincts are pretty good,” he smirks.
You smack his arm. “What happened to cute little humble Changbinnie?”
He fakes a gasp. “I’m still cute!”
“Handsome, too,” you reply before you can stop yourself, and your cheeks warm.
The blooming flames beneath your skin only grow when you look down to avoid his eyes and are met with the sight of his bare chest - of course you’d been aware his shirt was off the whole time, but you can’t help the juvenile flutter in your stomach now, especially with the way you can practically feel the body heat rolling off him. He raises a hand to tip your chin up, and you’re mesmerised by the effect of the movement of his arm on the muscles in his chest until his breath on your cheek snaps you out of it.
You’re allowed just a moment to realise. Just a moment, filled with the brown of his eyes and the crackle of the charged air between you, and then he leans in and the softness of his lips disperses any residual thought in your head. Your breath hitches, muffled by his mouth on yours, and the fire in your cheeks roars to life again with the feel of his hands on your waist, drawing you close.
Burying your hands in his hair, you lean into him, tongue flicking against his lower lip; a soft sound escapes him, not quite a sigh but not quite a groan either, and your fingers tighten, nails scratching lightly over his scalp.
Gravel crunches outside as someone walks past.
You jolt apart, jerking away from each other as if what you’re doing is forbidden. Outside, you catch a glimpse of someone - Seungmin, by the looks of it - stepping into the carriage next door, and you turn back to Changbin, reassurances on your lips, but stop short. He’s flushed a delightful pink, the rosy sort that the sunset used to be, and he’s already halfway to his feet like he intends to cut and run.
“Sorry,” he blurts, then blushes darker.
Stifling a laugh at his unexpected fight or flight response, you smile up at him from your spot on the floor. “Don’t be. It was nice.”
“Uh,” he says, then relaxes a fraction. “Yeah, it was nice. Like, really, really nice. Um, we could do it again?” Before you can reply affirmatively, he cuts in. “Actually, we should probably go to sleep, get some rest, you know? Busy day tomorrow, as always, and - ”
Wow, he’s even cuter when he’s flustered, you think to yourself as you get to your feet and step close to him. “Sounds good, Binnie.”
Leaning in, you give him enough time to pull away if he wants, but he freezes like you’re a skittish animal that he might scare away if he so much as breathes (rather ironically). The kiss you give him is sweet, a tender touch of your lips to his, and all the tension bleeds out of him as he melts into it.
“I panicked,” he admits bashfully as he pulls away.
You grin. “I could tell.”
Changbin sighs, searching for words, though ultimately all he does is sweep you into a warm hug. His skin is electric on yours, but more than that keen ache is a sense that you’ve been bundled into a blanket and thrust in front of a crackling fireplace, a mug of something warm in your hands. It’s comfort. He feels safe, cosy. His body fits perfectly against yours, the slope of his shoulder cradling your chin.
Stifling a yawn, you blink sleepily up at him, and despite the lingering blush in his cheeks, he’s completely at ease now, his strong hands rubbing soothingly up and down your back. You remain there for a while longer, soaking up the feeling of him and basking in it. It feels like sunbathing.
Eventually, you speak up. “I think there might be a shirt for you next door.”
“That might be good,” he agrees.
“Not that I’m complaining.”
He almost turns red again, but recovers quickly and flexes an arm at you, catching the way your eyes widen at the cut of his bicep before you can hide your admiration. Grinning with newfound confidence, he herds you towards the door.
“I know you want to stay and look forever, but I wasn’t kidding about getting some rest.”
You pull a face at him but let him open the train door for you. It’s dark tonight, the sky cloaked in clouds, but you think you catch sight of two shadows sitting on the platform before you enter the other carriage, and you hope that Hongjoong and Chan are having a good chat.
Then Changbin almost trips headfirst over Hyunjin’s foot, and you have to concentrate on smothering your laughter.
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genre: halateez au, dystopian, best friends to lovers, smut, action, angst for breakfast lunch and dinner, happy (or at least hopeful) ending, grief
summary: you grew up with yunho. you've bled with him, cried with him, survived the impossible, and always he's been at your side. you know him, inside and out, and that's how you can tell he's hiding something from you. you'll be damned if you're going to let him run from you any longer.
tw: 18+, smut (afab reader, rough sex, emotionally charged sex i fear, unprotected sex, p in v, back scratching and marking, creampie, nice gentlemanly aftercare), guns, blood and gore, violence, death, grief
wc: 8.9k
Jeong Yunho loves you.
You’re almost as certain of it as you’re certain that you love him.
You see it in the way he leans into you, his sure, steady hands always hovering near. It is apparent in the tilt of his shoulders when he leans in to listen, clinging to your words like they may drift away, lost forever, if he doesn’t. He gravitates to you like he’s stuck in an orbit, and you too are not immune to his pull. Most of all, the love is plain in his eyes. They are soulful things, warm brown and expressive, a window indeed.
It is no secret to either of you. During the coup, there was a rain drenched night when he told you, fearing neither of you might survive to the morning. The memory is hazy, fragmented by screams and the whistle of bombs and the roar of gunfire, tears and blood wet on your face, but you remember the urgency of his eyes and his grip, insistent on you, how you clung to his words like they alone would save you.
You don’t understand why he dances away now, two years later, skirting around it like it might bite him when it has already sunk its claws so deep inside the both of you there is no extracting it.
Since you were young, you’ve been able to read him; you knew when he was angry before he did, you knew when to leave him and when he wanted to talk it out. You saw the pain that riddled him during the coup, the weight of anger heavy on his shoulders. The new government can ban free expression, but they will never be able to cram him into the box they made for him, for all of you. There is no part of him that is containable, not the sharp angles of his elbows and jaw or the burn of his eyes - only he can curb himself.
And he does. Yunho pulls the shutters down, and though you’ve seen parts of him that no one else has, parts shadowed and dark and wretched, he will not let you see this. A place exists, a corner of him you haven’t set foot in, yet you have been near it, felt the heat of the inferno that he conceals behind a smoke screen.
He’s been pushing you away, coming over to yours less often than normal in some futile attempt to extract himself from your life. There’s been an exhaustion about him recently, enough that you can’t just write it off as an influx of demand in the factory he works at, especially after Halateez’s more recent attacks. You’re tired yourself, frustrated with days and days spent bent over the assembly lines for products that are strictly confidential, but not as much as he is. No, there is something he’s hiding.
At present, he sits across your dining table from you, a half eaten ration pack and whatever chasm he hops over to get to that faraway place in his mind spanning the distance between you. Your tongue itches with half fledged accusations and interrogations, your fingers twisting together in your lap. It stings, really, that he would go there while he’s here with you.
All the time you have known him, you have shared everything: scraped knees, shitty grades, countless long gone snacks crumbled into halves, pain and terror and defiance. The divide started slowly, and you noticed it but let it be, trusting that in time it would come out, that every facet of him would be known to you, just like before.
Yet that unknown space in him grew, and he made no move to stop it. You find it stupid, that you hold such a dislike for a thing, a theory, maybe, that is so critical he must keep it from you. For a while, you entertained the idea that it might be a someone, another, but it isn’t. He looks at you the same, in that way that makes you ache for him, but some sheer wall he has erected keeps him from ever reaching for you.
You have had your fair share of selfish thoughts, gritted your teeth through grudges and bouts of frustration against this spectre, and in the end, you’ve emerged with nothing but the ragged remains of yourself and a bone deep tiredness. What is it that makes him hold himself back from you, and why must he hide it?
You both suffer to be apart from the other.
It’s not arrogance that brings you to that conclusion. He wants for you the same way you want for him, thirsty and desperate to drink from the well, and sometimes he slips, lets himself hold you too long and too tight for it to be proper. His friends ask you to put him out of his misery, and you tell them you wish you could. It makes you want to rip whatever might hurt him into shreds.
You know he doesn’t mean to cause you harm, because deep down to his core, Yunho is kind, good; there will be a reason, something perfectly understandable that is what holds him back. As if to demonstrate his decency, he breaks out of his thoughts and examines your hand, where it traces the imaginary wood grain on your faceless, government assigned table.
“You okay, tiny?” He enquires. “You seem a bit down tonight.”
A million excuses come to mind as to why you’re unhappy, but none make it to your lips. The nickname is what gets you. It fills you to the brim with nostalgia, with memories of Yunho knocking at your door after school and grinning when your mother made him cookies, muffledly saying thank you, ajumma through an overlarge mouthful, back when the distance between you wasn’t so wide, and tears well in your eyes. He’s around the table and kneeling in front of you in a flash, taking your hands in his.
“Tell me,” is all he says.
“Is everything okay, Yunho?” You ask, blinking back the blurriness flooding your vision, hating how your voice wobbles like some terrified wife left at home. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“No,” he replies, more guarded now.
“But you’re afraid,” you answer softly. “There’s something you won’t say.”
“I… I’m not,” he protests, lying through his teeth.
You sigh. “Don’t lie to me. You don’t have to tell me whatever it is, just don’t lie to me.”
He opens his mouth, like if he does, the words might come out, but nothing does, and he just stares at you, crouched there between your knees, a wretched battle playing out behind his eyes, one you’ve watched before countless times. The side you root for always loses. Hopeless, you watch as it does for the millionth time. The distance between you yawns wider.
“I miss you,” you blurt.
His eyes, those eyes, raise to yours, gentle as they regard you with bemusement. “Why? I’m right here.”
Suddenly, you hate the careful way he handles you, like you’re made of glass. You like when he babies you a little - you know you’re safe with him, goddamnit - but you’re not a child. Frustration flashes through you, white hot. Hell, you’re strong enough, you can take the news of whatever it is that he’s been up to that’s against the law, if that’s what it is, and you deserve an explanation from him.
“Yeah. Right here, keeping your distance,” you reply curtly. “Stop pretending everything’s alright. Are you scared of me? Is that why you won’t come close these days?”
“I - I…” he tries, then gives up, sentences forsaking him. He looks almost like he might get up, like he might go, and it sharpens you.
“You what?” You snap.
His face goes white, his jaw tensing. A strange sensation envelopes you, like you’re watching this conversation happen from afar, like the person who just spoke is just a projection of you. You hadn’t expected your voice to come out so harsh, loaded with hurt that you’d tried to gather up in your arms and bury, but had wormed its way out anyway. You’d never been good at hiding things from him - and no, the irony of that isn’t lost on you. You almost laugh, but instead, you jump to your feet, turning from him because you cannot bear for him to see the pain in your eyes. You’ve always hated arguing with him.
“I don’t care what it is,” you choke out, fucking crying again. “I don’t care if it’s because you don’t want me, but if it is, stop acting like you do. Just - just put me out of my fucking misery, will you?”
Silence follows, smothering in nature, not quite broken by your sniffles as you angrily wipe tears from your cheeks. You don’t want him to pity you. You want him to trust you, like you always thought he did. Never one to stay still for too long, he jumps to the feet, paces the room, scrubbing a hand over his face before raking it through his hair, and you see the way he turns from you and wonder if he’ll do it, if he has the gall to tell you he feels nothing.
Eventually, Yunho comes to a stop and faces you again. You wait expectantly, hating the way you brace yourself for the impact, hating that you have so little faith in the two of you working this out. Losing him would be like losing half of yourself. You can’t let it happen. You’re afraid it’s happening right before your eyes.
“I’m scared,” he breathes out at last.
There is fear in his eyes, roiling below the surface like a mighty beast of the sea, but more prevalent is the anger - not at you, that you can tell, but at himself - like tossing waves, churning the rest of him into a disarray you can’t make any sense of. You search his gaze for answers, but he yields none, and at last, you reach for him, in search of the comfort you’ve derived thousands of times from his closeness.
Gripping the lapels of his standard white coat, one everyone is supposed to wear but one he seems to carry differently, you give him a shake. “You don’t have to be scared.”
His jaw works, and he fights back some of the anger, taming it. “I’m not worried for me.”
Something swells in your throat, something close to a sob. This is the confrontation you’ve thought through so many times, the moment where you finally speak blatantly about the way you blaze for him, but you are so angry, so tired. You drop your hands to your sides, and as you stare at him, at how composed he would look if it were not for the burn of his eyes, you take a deep, shuddering breath in. He holds your eyes, waiting, and somehow, it makes it so much worse that he would still listen as he tears himself from the weave of your life.
“I love you, Yunho!” You burst out, shoving at him. “Did it mean nothing when you told me that, when you thought we were about to die? Have you forgotten I said it back? I don’t give a fucking shit if you’re scared for me! I can protect myself, you know that?”
Breaking the calm mask he wears, slipping his tight leash, anger floods across his face, vehement enough to be self loathing, and it darkens his gaze before he wrenches away, shaking you off him like you’re nothing but a nuisance. You resist the urge to hit him, to pummel the back he turns on you until he realises how insufferable he’s being, instead balling your fists by your sides and biting your tongue.
“I can’t do this,” he growls, striding for the door like that’s explanation enough.
A sudden desperation fills you, a fear that if you let him go it will be the last time you see him, and you lunge for him, grabbing his sleeve. “Please don’t leave angry.”
Yunho whirls around, looming over you as he shoves his face close to yours like he’s about to yell at you, but something stills him, just like it stills you. The fury rolls off him in waves. You can feel the heat of him, his breath against your skin, and the air between you crackles like a charged sky before a lightning storm, pulled taut with the strain; he is magnetic with it, even as he grinds out a low curse word.
You draw another breath, a hitched one, and then you collide.
As your lips connect, your fingers curl in the collar of his coat and hold tight. You’re afraid he might slip from your grasp, but you have nothing to be scared of, because he cups your face in one hand and presses you infinitely closer with the other at the small of your back, his kiss bruising, desperate. His tongue runs over the seam of your lips, and you part them, allowing him access with a gasp - you’d trust him with anything, let him do anything to you.
Blindly, your hands run over him, skimming over the leanness of the muscles in his back and up to his broad shoulders, and there you wrestle his coat down his shoulders and arms as far as you can, making your intentions clear as day. It’s like the last vestiges of his restraint evaporate with the heat of your professed want, and he groans into your mouth.
Gripping your hips, he backs you up until you’re right against the dining table. He fumbles with his shirt, then yours, and something deep in your core builds with every inch of his skin revealed. Yunho is better than a marble carving, better because a rosy flush dusts up his neck and his cheekbones and spans over his chest as he leans over you, life so vibrant within him that it almost burns to touch him, so tall but bending to your height as he kisses his way scathingly down your throat.
You spare a moment to trail your fingers down the planes of his chest and abdomen, and you think it strange that he is so plainly strong - he’d told you his job at the factory was fine assembly, tinkering with nuts and bolts, not anything that included manual labour. There are scars on him too, of shapes you cannot attribute causes too. A perfectly circular one, the size of a penny, sits just above his hip bone, and you wonder if maybe it’s a birth mark though you can’t ever remember seeing it before.
“I can’t get you out my fucking head,” he says, branding it like a curse against your skin.
“Good,” you hold him tighter. “Good.”
As he unclasps your bra with lithe fingers, your brain spares you a moment of lucidity, soberness from his touch to remember that you will regret being so angry, having him when there are so many things unresolved. He’s out of control, hands fumbling all over you, and you are the same, fearing nothing but the yawning cavern in your chest only he can fill.
“You drive me crazy,” he snarls against your neck, like he might tear your throat out with his teeth. “Always testing me, trying me.”
“Because you hide,” you reply, tugging at his hair.
Yunho looks up at you, wretched, loathful. “It’s agony.”
“You don’t have to,” you whisper, and your nails dig into his back, the anger simmering in him warming you to the core.
He’s weak. You can tell that he knows he’s doomed, and you see the moment he lets it possess him. His eyes turn hooded and ravenous, his fingers tightening around your waist; he grips your chin and wrenches your face close to his, so close you’re giddy with the way he fills your vision, his chest heaving, and you wonder if he can feel the flutter of your thrumming pulse under your skin.
“Turn around,” he says, and his voice, low and deceptively calm, sends chills down your spine.
You spin, and you’re barely there before he’s bending you over the dining table, his hands yanking at the waistband of your trousers, sweeping his palms over your curves and squeezing in ways that elicit the most treacherous of noises from you. Bracing your forearms on the tabletop, you squirm and push against him as fabric pools around your ankles, and even that is part of your argument, brawling with him even as his fingers ghost over the damp spot on your underwear.
When the echo of his touch reaches your clit, a gasp escapes you and your back arches. He pins you down flat with a palm between your shoulder blades, like a butterfly on a cork board, and then abruptly, the whole of his front presses against your back and you feel him, rock hard against your ass. All he does is reach over you, grabbing the half finished ration pack and chucking it onto the counter, careless enough in his care that you almost laugh, but his weight on top of you turns you boneless, pliant.
Your underwear goes next, torn off you in one clipped flick of his wrist: your pussy clenches when the cold air hits it, again when you hear the jingle of his belt, then at the harsh noise of the few brisk strokes he gives his cock. A vision of it, flushed and aching, flashes in front of your eyes, and then his fingers slide debilitatingly through your folds, collecting your slick before his hand returns to his length.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Soaked for me, huh? Do you get turned on when you’re arguing with me, sweetheart?”
“Please,” you gasp, reeling from the nickname. “Put it in, please, I’m wet enough - ”
The rest of your words trail off into a breathy whimper, because his cock head bumps your clit and your hands grip the table for dear life. It’s not entirely true that you’re wet enough - you’re close to it, but you want to feel the pain of him, you want the stretch to overwhelm you so that he’s the only thing left on your mind.
Minutely, the hand on your back pushes you down further, pressing your cheek into the cold table, and you brace yourself, biting your lip in anticipation of the fire that will come, the feeling of him that you’ve tried to conjure alone in bed, countless nights before, but it doesn’t arrive. You can almost taste his hesitance, his second thoughts, but they are too late, and you writhe against his hold, almost sobbing in your need.
“Please,” you cry. “Please, Yunho, please, I need - ”
He sweeps your hair out of the way and presses a kiss to your neck, and then his fingers tighten and he tugs at your locks until you’re arched almost painfully. “Who am I to deny you?”
Yunho breaches you then, and behind your closed eyelids, you think you catch a glimpse of heaven. You keen, scrabbling at the table for purchase as he sinks into you, inch by inch, and it is more rapturous than you could ever imagine, your cunt clenching down on every velvety ridge of him, your eyes rolling back. The pit of your stomach aches in want for more, more. You need him to be deeper, so you can feel him in your throat, so you don’t know where he begins and you end.
“I won’t - I can’t be gentle,” he intones, words coloured with urgency, his grip on your hips bruising. “Tell me if I have to - fuck - if I have to stop.”
Your only response is to chant his name like a prayer, pleading him with the vice of your cunt: he eases in until you’re wrapped around him to the hilt, and there he pauses, holding still, so deep you think you can feel him in your navel. He must think himself merciful, letting you adjust here, but every second he remains there fills you with something that claws at the cage of your flesh, howling to be let out, and you push back on him, struggling against the weight of him that keeps you immobile, lips moving silently.
“Move,” you croak, finally finding enough air to voice yourself. “Fucking move! I might die if you don’t!”
Yunho chuckles at that. “I’ve got you, baby. Don’t worry.”
Just a centimetre, he pulls out, ever considerate as he measures your body’s response. It gives you enough space to crane your neck round, and so you see the moment he stops squeezing his eyes shut in pain from reining himself in and their soft brown sheens over with something primal.
Your pussy clings to every inch of him as he draws back, and then you’re shunted forward into the table with how hard he fucks back into you. Four earth-shattering thrusts is all it takes for him to find the angle that makes you sing, and sing you do, words tumbling from your lips that you have no control of, his name interspersed throughout. The table rocks with every snap of his hips, and you know sense will find him before he can, but you want him to anoint every featureless government issued surface of this place with you, just like this.
“Taking me so well,” he grunts, trailing kisses over your back. “That’s it, sweetheart, y - yeah, you like that?”
“Yes,” you reply. “Yes, Yunho, ah!”
Words abandon you. The underside of his cock grinds against a spot inside you that leaves you agape. His pace is ruthless, insatiable, and you squeeze your eyes shut, tears threatening at your lash line with how he wrings the pleasure from you. You’d float away on its waves, but his hands are made of the sun, and their immense gravity tethers you to him, the drag of his cock sending flares of solar heat through you.
Just like that, you’re on the brink, teetering on the edge of the event horizon, and you spiral towards that boundary between earth and paradise, closer and closer with each devastating cant of his hips. It spills from your lips as a warning, though he must feel it too in the tensing of your abdomen and the twitch of your thighs.
“Almost,” you pant. “I’m going to - ”
Yunho pulls out, and you clench too late to halt him. A broken sound escapes you, and he’s quick to soothe you and kiss you sweetly as he lifts you up and flips you, smoothing a hand over your unruly hair and skimming it across your waist. He noses at your neck, licking a long stripe down until his head dips down to your chest and his lips close around the peak of your breast, teeth grazing your nipple. The corners of his mouth curve up when he feels you shiver against him.
His face swims back into your vision, eclipsing everything else. “Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Why’d you stop?” You demand, tugging at his hair a little too hard to spite him.
He gathers your wrists in one hand and pins them above your head. “I want to see your face when you come for me.”
He says it casually, like he’s discussing a simple matter with you, but there’s nothing casual about the way he ploughs into you, this time granting you no adjustment period before he begins pounding into you, so hard that the dining table shakes. Your back curves right off the table and you throw your head back; he groans at the expanse of your throat, bared to him and purpled with his marks.
You cross your ankles at the small of his back, drawing him deeper. Yunho hammers into you, relentless like he intends to mould your walls to fit the shape of him, and yet, it isn’t anywhere near close enough for you. You want to feel him moving under your palms, every bunch and coil of his muscles, until you’re certain you won’t forget it.
Like he hears what you want, he releases your hands, and of their own accord they fly to his shoulders, raking lines down his strong back with every stroke. They sweep up, dallying for a moment in the grooves of his shoulder blades, and then you bury them in his hair, bringing his face proximate to yours so you can share his breath and watch his pupils dilate wide enough that you think they might swallow you.
“I can’t get you out my head,” he repeats, broken.
It’s an echo of his words before, except this time it’s not accusation but worship. His chest heaves, his grip on your thigh tightening, and his fingers find your clit and circle it. Ecstasy frissons through you, and you scream his name, sinking your nails into his skin, brought suddenly to the edge by his deft hands. You quake with it, rocking there for a moment before you come, and this time, the sound that leaves you is raw and ragged as the orgasm that tears through you, ripping you to shreds.
Yunho’s thrusts turn sloppy, a moan unravelling from deep in his chest, and he surges into you one last time before you take his face between your hands and kiss him, as heady and syrupy as the high that still percolates through you. He empties himself into you with a guttural noise, cock pulsing with every spasm of your pussy around him.
A pause follows, filled only by the sound of you both catching your breaths, and then you break it, grasping his shoulders. “Yunho, I…”
It’s then that your eyes brim, and you crumble, hiding your face in his chest though you know he feels your tears slip down his skin. He holds you, of course he does, tucking you to him and rubbing comforting circles over your back, and you cling to him, not quite sure why you’re crying other than that it’s to do with the terrible hole that’s opened up in your centre. Dread has settled in your stomach, and though you tell it that it has no home here, it stays.
“Tiny,” Yunho murmurs, tipping your face up so he can search your face. “Did I hurt you?”
“No!” You shake your head vehemently, wiping your eyes. ”No, I - I don’t know what overcame me.”
He smiles, soft enough that your heart hurts. “Then let me help you clean up, sweetheart.”
Slowly, he pulls out, careful not to jostle you. A small oh leaves you as his come slips down your thighs, warm and sticky, and you see his gaze dart down, something flitting over his face that makes your stomach pull hot and tight, but he smooths the expression away just as fast.
Scooping you up, he carries you to your poky bathroom, somehow managing to cram both you and himself into the shower - he fiddles with the knobs, then shields you from the flow as the water warms up, keeping an arm around your waist the whole time like he’s aware how weak your knees are. You lean into his warmth, eyes drooping, and fight back the creeping wrongness of this all.
It’s evident in his demeanour. Yunho cares about you, so naturally he’s going to look after you and make sure you’re alright, but you can sense the change in him, the certainty. He’ll do what he can to ease you, to ensure you’re not in pain, but he’s going to leave with just as many secrets as he came with, and you’ll be left bleeding no matter what he does.
A bone tiredness envelopes you, and you sag against him, willing those thoughts away for now so that all you’re left with is a pleasant numbness and the pitter patter of the shower. Gentle now, his hands rove over your skin, soapy and beginning to border on pruned, and you close your eyes and let him take your weight. The water sheets over you, just the right temperature, because of course he would know you like it on the hotter side, but it doesn’t wash away the despair seeded in your heart.
After a while, he reaches for the shower knob, and you simply react. You don’t want him to switch off the water and step out of this little chamber of steam and skin on skin, for it will take him a step closer to leaving. Too fast for you to play it off as casual, you grab his hand, feeling the scrape of his callouses against yours, and you bring his knuckles to your lips.
“Sweetheart?” He asks, closing his fingers over yours. “Everything okay?”
You force yourself to drop his hand, grimace a smile. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t believe you, but he leaves it, instead switching off the water and exiting the shower: you watch his silhouette through the fogged glass, and then he reappears and engulfs you in a towel that you could have sworn wasn’t as fluffy yesterday. Wobbly, you stumble out of the bathroom. Yunho doesn’t give your legs a chance to give out, plucking you off the floor and into the cradle of his arms.
You let him set you down on the bed and towel off the ends of your hair. You’re too tired to object when he nudges your arms up and slips his shirt over your head, the one he’d been wearing when he arrived, and before you can protest, he beelines to the cupboard where you keep spares for him when he stays over.
The familiarity aches. From under the covers, you watch silently as he shrugs a fresh shirt on, and you think it awful that you’re surrounded by his scent now while he prepares to go, a kind of finality displayed on his face that makes you realise he might not come back. You know, above all, that he’s a responsible man. There’s a good reason, and you shouldn’t ask him to shirk that, but you’re weak.
“Please stay,” you implore, voice small.
Anguish contorts his face, strange when normally he presents as so collected, and he deliberates, standing by your doorway, before he walks over and sits on the edge of your bed. If he twisted around, he’d be able to look at you, but he keeps his back to you, head bowed under a weight that’s invisible but entirely clear to see. After a while, he covers his face with his hands, and your stomach sinks.
You’d thought at first that maybe he’d committed some minor offence, but why would he shy away from telling you such a thing? It must be something bigger, more serious, if he thinks you’d be a target if he saddled you with his information, for it cannot be something he’s simply ashamed to tell you - he must know you’d love him all the same. You go rigid at a thought. Maybe he’s gone and offered his help to Halateez, dangerous as they are. No, surely not.
Something prickles over the back of your neck, and you glance up and blanch when you find him looking at you; you’ve never seen Yunho so stricken, never with such growing terror apparent on his face, like there’s a nightmare playing on loop behind his glassy eyes. You sit up, grabbing his arm just above the elbow and shaking it, as if to snap him out of whatever prison his mind has built for him.
“What’s wrong?” You ask, though you know exactly what’s wrong.
He lurches to his feet, shakes his head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about me.”
Your grip on his sleeve tightens. Like hell you’re going to let him leave in this state. You level him with a fearsome look, one that you used when the older kids next door played too rough with him, or when he’d forgotten to bring over the specific stuffed toy you’d asked him to, and though you’re out of practice, it works, and he stops in his tracks.
Cracks form in his exterior, and beneath the pain is fear. “I’m sorry,” he utters, unable to look you in the eye. “This was a mistake. I - fuck, what have I done? What have I done to you?”
Yunho stares down at his hands like your blood is already on them, and you don’t miss the way they shake. You wish you were back in the shower with him, just the sound of the water, the simplicity of the absence of words and only each other for company, but that’s gone now, slipped through your fingers like you feel him doing so now. Bit by bit, he’s escaping you, and by the end of the night he’ll have fled. You can’t let him go with all the blame.
“Hey,” you insert yourself in front of him and lace your fingers with his. “I wanted this, too. I wanted you - I still do. I had as much a hand in tonight as you did, Yunho. Whatever fault you’re taking isn’t just yours.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t know what I did. What I do.”
“Tell me, then.”
“I can’t,” he replies heavily. “It’s not safe for you to know.”
“It’s hurting you, Yunho.”
“It would hurt me worse if something happened to you because of me.”
His mind is made up. You can see it in the set of his jaw, and you sigh; he’s prolonged this as long as he can, given you as much of him as he’s able, and you guess in a way you’re glad that he spared you this piece of him, riddled with bullet holes and knife wounds but majestic all the same. Sorrow marrs his usually joyful face, dreadfully out of place, and he lingers in the doorway, not quite able to tear himself away yet.
“I love you, tiny,” Yunho says. “I love you, but I cannot stay.”
The lump in your throat is too big to talk around, but you hug him fiercely, pressing yourself to him and thinking of the scars on him that shouldn’t have been there. You will him to come back to you, burying your face in his chest, and then you let him pull away, sand through your fingers. He cups your chin, looking at you like he wants you memorised, and then he kisses your forehead and turns away.
It’s only as he goes that you see the tears in his eyes well over.
You’re distracted during work, your mind filled with memories of Yunho’s scars. Unease and an uncertain sort of grief worry at you so doggedly that your supervisor yells at you for being a clumsy oaf, though it’s not entirely unusual: she’s as embittered by the government’s ban as the next person.
In the end, though your feet ache from being on them all day, you decide to walk the extra distance and detour to Yunho’s place on the way home, despite the knowledge that your mother is surely heading to your place by now. She visits every Thursday, and you long to confide in her about Yunho. A smile pulls at your lips at the thought of her reaction. She’ll shake her head and call him a rash youngster, but the affection will shine in her eyes - she knows him almost as well as you do, and she dotes on him terribly.
Hurrying, you walk as fast as you dare, slowing only at the street corners where government officials are posted. You avoid their eyes, keeping your head down, drawing the least attention to yourself as possible. The last thing you need is them to stop you for suspicious activity. You just want to see that Yunho is okay with your own eyes and ascertain that he hasn’t blamed last night on himself, hopefully also ridding yourself of the odd sinking in your chest in the meantime.
Panic grips you tighter with each step you take, until you can barely breathe where you stand outside his door, pounding on the knocker and jabbing at the doorbell, and then it occurs to you that you have his spare key. You fumble with it, dropping it on the floor twice before you manage to jam it into the lock with unsteady hands.
The door swings open with a bang. You know it within seconds.
He’s not here.
Your mind supplies you with all kinds of excuses. He’s out, stocking up on more ration packs. He’s taking out the trash. He got held back at work. In your heart you know that it’s none of these, that he’d be home by now if everything was well. You notice the chair at his dining table, knocked askew and not tucked in, and there, in the sink, the washing up left halfway through, abandoned.
It can’t be, it can’t be, but it is, and unconsciously, you find yourself searching the small space for signs of resistance, things out of place that Yunho would have never left unattended, but you find nothing, and somehow that’s worse. Terror bolts through you, quickening your heart, and you turn and flee, retaining just enough presence of mind to slam the door behind you.
You force yourself to slow in the streets, the oppressive atmosphere enough to instil some sense into you. If you’re seen running, it’ll be assumed you’re up to no good, and you need to see your mother more than ever now. Cramming the swelling wave of fear inside you into a hidden box, you tell yourself he’s fine, that he’ll be there in your flat, chatting with Ma like he used to before he began to pull away from you both.
“Pull it together,” you mutter to yourself.
The prick of your nails biting at your palms focuses you some more, and you breathe deeply, in and out like your mother always told you to, straightening your back and lifting your chin in a mockery of self assurance as you approach your street. Though you’re closer to home, the dread grows in your chest, and you gnaw at your lip until it’s raw while you wait for the lift to come.
You’re just passing the third floor when the lift rattles. Stumbling, you grip the rail and glance around wildly, wondering if it was just your imagination, and then the doors open and you’re faced with the same lifeless hallway you see every day, except the front door of the flat at the end, your flat, has been caved in like a skull. Your legs move before your brain catches up, pelting you towards it, and then the noise comes.
It’s staccato, a thundering pop pop pop that rends through your head and brings you back to a dark night spent running on rain soaked cobbles, Yunho on one side and your mother on the other, the streetlights put out so all you could see is the whites of their eyes. That sound is straight from the darkest hours of your life. Gunfire. You’re paralysed.
A scream echoes down the corridor, and it jolts you to life.
You don’t have enough breath to shout for her. A nightmare has come to reality in your apartment, but you run toward it, because you can’t leave your mother in there, lost in a space where all she must be able to see is your father being taken down and trampled by the officials again and again. Your heart gallops in your ears, a muted roar that muffles even the pound of your steps underfoot. Desperation nipping at your heels, you pray you get there in time.
Before you can stop, a woman in black tactical gear appears in front of you, and you barrel straight into her, your momentum sending both of you slamming into the floor. Flailing, you kick and thrash against her, a strangled, animal noise leaving you when she tries to pin you down. You rake your nails across her face in sheer panic, your breathing becoming shallow and rasping as a band constricts your chest.
You throw her off you at last. The official makes a last grab for you, and you lurch out of the way, so close to your mother her fingers almost graze yours. She is running towards you, her eyes wide with rage as much as horror, and then you slip on a shard of shattered glass and skid away from her, tearing the skin of your palms on the debris littered over the floor, and she’s blown sideways by a storm of bullets.
Blood splatters over you, misting the air red, and her insides bloom like a rose, her body jerked this way and that as each bullet enters and leaves, tearing through her like she’s made of tissue paper. Gunned down before your eyes, and she’d been so near. Your feet are nailed to the floor. You’re shaking so violently that your vision blurs.
Dimly, you’re aware that the expression on your face is one you’ve seen on many. You’d always wondered why they didn’t run, for their eyes were so filled with fear, but you know now that there’s nowhere to flee to: the destruction, the death, they surround you, leering at you from all sides.
Someone grabs you from behind, and this time, you don’t resist as he hauls you backward, only turning your head to keep your gaze fixed on your Ma’s body, waiting for her mangled chest to rise and fall with breath, but of course it doesn’t, because she’s gone. She’s left you in this desolate place, and you can’t follow her.
She’s dead.
The world pitches on its axis, and it takes a moment to dawn on you that it’s because you’ve been dropped, and the man that was carrying you is pointing and yelling at a figure that has appeared in the window. You raise your head, glass crunching under your elbows and burrowing into your skin as you prop yourself up, and you glimpse three masked figures, clad in black that’s splashed with vibrant red - Halateez has come, for some godforsaken reason, to witness the carnage your life has become.
And then the first one leaps into the room, immediately engaging the closest official in combat. Though you’ve never seen anyone fight like that, though there is a sureness to him that you haven’t witnessed in anything more than the topping up of your water glass or the spinning of a coin across his knuckles, you know him by the way he moves alone. Relief flashes in his gaze when you briefly glimpse his eyes, and it makes you want to throw up.
Yunho has saved you, but he can’t save your mother now.
Your eyes dart to the other two he came with, and though it takes you a moment, you recognise them as Mingi and Hongjoong - ice slithers down your spine with the epiphany that you could probably name every single one of Halateez’s eight members. Piece by piece everything falls into place, and you find yourself wishing that you had let him distance himself from you.
Yunho reaches you. He draws you into the familiarity of your arms, and you cannot wish he was far from you any more. Hiding your face in his chest, you close your eyes, and the darkness is so empty and merciful that it feels wrong to leave the pain behind.
You lift your head, twisting around to search for your mother, to feel the pain like a white hot wire strung right through you, but you’re disorientated. The apartment that was so familiar to you has morphed into a war zone, your window smashed in, furniture splintered and littered around, and there, a footprint of red, a lake of blood -
“Get her out of here, man,” a low voice says. Mingi? “We’ll handle the rest.”
Ajumma. You almost laugh. What does it matter? It’s not really her, just the house her soul lived in, and now the lights are off and no one’s home. The thought has barely tailed off in your mind before you hate yourself for it, and you fist Yunho’s shirt in your hands as he scoops you up, one hand cradling the back of your head, keeping your face tucked into the folds of his jacket. You know he does it to shield you from seeing her body, but he’s too late for that.
He’s too late for a lot of things.
Yunho carries you for a while, and you keep your eyes shut, your fingers curled tightly in his shirt. It’s too easy to get lost in the dark. The gentle rocking of his footsteps pauses, other voices conversing with his, low and hushed; a hand squeezes yours, and you reluctantly pull yourself away from the grand emptiness behind your eyelids.
You look at the other two. “What - what happened?”
“Someone ratted Yunho out,” Hongjoong supplies. “It was just his routine, his usual whereabouts, not his identity, but it brought the officials to your house. I’m sorry.”
You understand now why he’d been trying to keep you at arms length, why he’d stopped his routine visits to see you and charm the socks off your Ma the same way he always had, but it was all for nothing. Maybe the mole’s information was too outdated, or maybe fate simply decided to be cruel, to make all the pain he caused by distancing himself worth nothing.
You avert your gaze before you see anyone’s pity. “Yunho?”
“Yes, tiny?”
“Can you take me home, please?”
“It’s not safe for you to go back,” he tells you softly. “Is it alright if we take you back to the base?”
“That’s okay.”
You don’t remember much of the journey. You walk some of it, always hovering as close to Yunho as you can. No one says much, and you wish they’d speak, because the silence leaves you with yourself, with the strange feeling that aside from Yunho, you’ve been left alone in this world, an adult but still an orphan, a fraction of the greater collateral damage.
Eventually, you end up huddled on a bathroom floor, the tiles’ cold seeping through your trouser legs - the Halateez base seems to be a repurposed warehouse, concealed among many other similar buildings. Yunho sits opposite you, holding your hand steady, your palm facing the ceiling as he disinfects the torn skin there and picks out the broken glass. There’s a gash in your trousers and a deep scrape down your thigh beneath, and he cleans that too, deft and sure like he’s done this before.
Most likely, he's probably done it a million times, on himself and on others. You’re too numb to feel shocked, too numb to feel anything more than a slight prickle of discomfort as he wipes alcohol swabs over wounds that could have been so much worse.
In truth, you’re fazed out, your mind lost at sea so that all you can hear is the crash of the waves, slapping against the sides of a boat far from water tight. Your head tips back and hits the cabinet behind you with a listless thunk. Your dull eyes won’t well up. There’s an absence in your chest where something world shaking should be, and in its place is a choking logic that feels like apathy.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Yunho murmurs, squeezing your hand. “Are you still with me?”
You blink. Yes, you’re still with him, still present inside the chamber of your skull, but you wish you weren’t. Where is the grief, to wrest control from you and turn you into a raging, awful creature? Where is the sorrow, to drown your soul in its torrential rain? Nothing’s there. It feels like you don’t exist.
“I just don’t get why you didn’t tell me,” you reply quietly.
“I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt,” he says. “I was too selfish to distance myself sooner.” He looks up at you. “You’re who I think about when I ask myself who I fight for. I couldn’t make you a target by telling you.”
“It didn’t matter anyway,” you snap, suddenly bitter. “They came looking for you, and now Ma is dead.”
Yunho can’t deny it, nor will he; he looks at you helplessly, anguished, and you detect grief there too, a pain that he bears on his back alongside the weight of yet another life on his hands. You wish then that you would break, that the tears would come and fill the silence so you don’t have to hear your accusations echo back at you, but they don’t, and maybe it’s right that you aren’t abstained from hearing the cruelty of your own words.
There’s a choice here. The pain in your chest is acute, so sharp that it’s a fickle knife in your hand, and you could bury it into his chest, over and over again so that he bleeds as much as she did, but it wasn’t him that gave the order to fire at will, was it? It would be easy to make him hurt. You won’t. You can’t make him carry this too.
Yunho loved your mother just as you did, and as he sits in front of you, falling apart before your eyes, buckling under the accusation you’d launched savagely at him, you know it hurts him like it hurts you, white hot and incomprehensible. Without him, you’ll shatter, and without you, he’ll fragment.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, voice trembling. “I didn’t mean that. I just, I can’t right now. Please, I - I need some space.”
“Okay,” he replies. “There’s a spare room at the end of the corridor. I’m here if you need, and if you don’t want… If you’d prefer, Mingi’s room is opposite mine.”
It breaks his heart to say it, but he says it anyway, and you’re reminded that he’s a good man, maybe the best. What happened was not his doing, but the actions of an authority that deems your mother a necessary death for the possible capture of a member of Halateez, and you will not side with them.
You ache too much to look him in the eye right now, but you know you will never blame him.
Night comes with its own challenges.
The need to blame burns itself out, fast as an angry fire, and the ashes it leaves are far worse. For a long time, you cannot fall asleep, but when you do, you see your mother fall a thousand times, the thud of the bullets impacting on her flesh and the squelch as they exit through the other side playing over and over in your head until you long for anything but to be left alone with that. It takes you less than a second to decide where to go.
The floor is cold beneath your bare feet as you creep across the corridor, arms wrapped around yourself in a vain attempt to keep yourself warm. Your breathing comes out short and ragged, and your head spins, thoughts orbiting the wreck those bullets made of your mother’s body. It’s instinct that leads you down to his room, and you ease the door open, slipping through and shutting it quietly behind you.
Wordlessly, you burrow under Yunho’s blankets and press yourself to his side. His breathing is slow, his chest warm and solid enough that you realise how violently you’re trembling, and as you huddle by his side, he begins to stir, his arm looping around you and enveloping you in him. Your fingers knot themselves into the fabric of his sleep shirt, and you clench your fists, trying to calm yourself.
“Sweetheart?” Yunho asks, bleary eyed.
It’s just him, same as he always has been, yet at the sound of his voice rough with sleep, you shatter into a million pieces, ugly sobs shuddering through you until you soak his shirt with tears. You mourn a world uprooted and pruned in all the wrong places, a world so fucked up that there are days you think there’s no way back, but mostly, you mourn a world without your mother.
Nothing else remains to distract you from her absence. The daze of shock is gone, as is the vengeful fury, and now all that remains is blood and a lifeless body where she should have been. It pours out of you, grief accompanied by the tears in their floods, and not even Yunho can hold you together, but you don’t want him to. This isn’t something that you’ll allow to just pass you by.
“I’m sorry,” Yunho says, eyes wet as yours.
You prop yourself up on your elbows. “Do you - do you think it will get better?”
“I… don’t know.”
He falls silent, and you wrap your arms around him, hiding your face in his neck and holding him tight; after a while, he brings a hand up and you lace your fingers with his. His chest rises and falls beneath you with every breath, his heartbeat steady under your ear, and you tip your chin up, kiss his cheek. In response, his grip tightens around you, and it gives you the strength to think about what she’d want.
Your heart is too raw to begin healing now, but one day, you’ll be strong enough to carry her with you.
4 stories set in the same halateez rebels universe, links below in chronological order. can be read as standalone but recommended to read in order.
INCEPTION
jeong yunho x reader; 8.9k
you grew up with yunho. you've bled with him, cried with him, survived the impossible, and always he's been at your side. you know him, inside and out, and that's how you can tell he's hiding something from you.
you'll be damned if you're going to let him run from you any longer.
ARRIBA
song mingi x reader;
a man with chunky rings and smokey eyes walks into a bar. as the bartender, you're obliged to serve him - and since he's so nice, you decide to give him a little extra on the house.
weeks after, four rebels walk into a bar.
one of them seems a little familiar.
SILVER LIGHT
choi san x reader;
you inhabit two characters.
in one, you're just a civilian. you're tired, like the rest of the population, and you only ever really feel something when you reminisce with your next door neighbour, san. in the other, you are a monster, a weapon wearing a human's skin. you've always been careful to keep them separate.
but when it's no longer in your control to do so, it turns out you're not the only one living a double life.
THIS WORLD
jung wooyoung x reader;
you're just a factory medic. you keep your head down, you patch the workers up, and with every body bag that leaves your clinic, you feel as if there's something slipping through your fingers. you just wanted to make a difference.
but then he comes along , grinning and boisterous and so opposite to what he should be, and you understand what it means to change things.
**read touch and go here**
✮ synopsis: steve rogers has spent two years keeping you at arm’s length. but when a mission goes wrong and his skin meets yours, suddenly every wall he’s built starts crumbling.
(or: the soulmate fic where touch is the one thing captain america can’t fight.)
✮ pairing: steve rogers x soulmate!reader
✮ warnings: gunshot wound, severe blood loss, near-death experience, touch starvation/deprivation, PTSD, panic attacks, grief, hospitalization, steve's crippling self-destructive tendencies, some bone-deep yearning, angst with HEA, explicit sexual content
✮ word count: 17.2k (ur girl doesn't know how to shut up)
✮ a/n: this was supposed to be a drabble. like. idk. (I think I might like it more than 'touch and go' WHO SAID THAT)
series masterlist
bonus drabble 1
bonus drabble 2
The first time you see Steve Rogers cry, you're not supposed to be there.
The SHIELD medical bay at 2:47 AM is meant to be empty—just you, a dislocated shoulder from a mission gone sideways in Prague, and the ice pack you're too stubborn to ask someone else to help you position. But there he is, Captain America himself, hunched forward in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside bed seven with his face in his hands, shoulders shaking in that particular way that says everything hurts and I'm trying to be quiet about it.
You freeze in the doorway, good arm holding your bad arm, heart suddenly hammering against your ribs like it's trying to break free. The fluorescent lights hum overhead, too bright, making everything look sharp-edged and surreal. Your mouth goes dry. There's a metallic taste on your tongue—adrenaline, maybe, or just the copper-tang of exhaustion that's been following you since your transport touched down six hours ago.
He's still in his tactical gear—dirt-streaked and blood-spattered from wherever he's been. You'd heard whispers in the hallways. A Hydra facility. The Winter Soldier, recovered. Captain Rogers, who never fails, who never breaks, bringing his best friend home after seventy years. You'd seen him from a distance when they'd brought Barnes in, shield on his back like it weighed a thousand pounds, and thought what you always think: beautiful and untouchable as a monument.
Now, though. Now he's just a man in a room that smells like antiseptic and grief, crying over—
The bed. There's someone in the bed.
Barnes. James Barnes. The Winter Soldier. Bucky. Whatever name he's wearing today. This is your first time seeing him up close, seeing him as something other than a ghost story whispered in SHIELD corridors. He looks smaller than the legends suggest, more human than weapon.
He's unconscious, or close to it, hooked to machines that beep in rhythms that must mean something to someone who isn't you. But what catches your attention—what makes your stomach twist and drop like you've missed a step going downstairs—is the woman curled against his side.
You don't know her, have never seen her before, but you know what she is. It's in the way she fits against him, like two pieces of something broken made whole. The way even unconscious, his body angles toward hers, his metal arm—and God, that's the arm that's killed presidents—draped protectively across her waist. The way her hand rests over his heart, monitoring his breathing even in sleep.
His soulmate. The Winter Soldier has a soulmate.
And Steve Rogers is crying over them.
Your shoulder throbs, sending white-hot spikes down your arm, and you bite the inside of your cheek hard enough to taste blood. You should leave. This is private, sacred, none of your business. But when you try to shift backward, your shoulder screams—a sharp, electric agony that races down your spine and makes your vision go spotty at the edges. The small sound that escapes your throat—half-gasp, half-whimper—cuts through the quiet like a gunshot.
Steve's head snaps up.
His eyes are red-rimmed, devastated, the blue of them turned dark and stormy with an emotion so raw it feels like looking directly at an exposed nerve. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, catching the harsh fluorescent light, and his lips are parted like he's forgotten how to breathe properly. For a second, neither of you moves. You're caught in the doorway like a deer in headlights, your pulse thundering in your ears, and he's frozen mid-grief, and the moment stretches taut as wire between you.
The air feels charged, like the moment before lightning strikes. Your skin prickles with it, every hair on your arms standing at attention.
Then his face closes off. All that naked emotion disappears behind the Captain America mask, so fast you'd think you imagined it if your heart wasn't still trying to claw its way out of your chest from the impact of seeing it.
"You need help?" His voice comes out rough, scraped raw, gravel and exhaustion and something else threaded through it. He clears his throat, stands, and suddenly the room feels smaller, the walls pressing in. He's always so much—six feet of genetically enhanced perfection that makes your body confused about whether it wants to fight or flee or something else entirely that you refuse to examine.
"I—" Your voice catches, sticks in your throat like you've swallowed glass. You force yourself to look at your shoulder instead of his face, but that means looking at the way his hands flex at his sides, the way his weight shifts like he's fighting the urge to move toward you. "Dislocated. From Prague. I can manage."
"You can't." Matter-of-fact, not unkind, but there's something underneath it—a tension that makes your stomach flip. He crosses the room in three strides, and you have that thought again—monument—but monuments don't usually smell like gunpowder and sweat and something cedar-sharp that makes your hindbrain light up with interest you absolutely cannot afford.
He stops just short of you, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to meet his eyes. The movement makes your shoulder scream, and you can't quite suppress the way your breath hitches.
"Really, I'm—"
"Stubborn?" There's something almost like amusement flickering across his face, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it makes your chest go tight and warm. "I know. You once tried to extract yourself from a building collapse with three broken ribs and a concussion."
You blink, stomach doing something complicated and uncomfortable. He knows that? He noticed that? Your skin feels too tight, like your body's trying to contain something that won't fit.
"Sit." He gestures to one of the beds, and when you don't move immediately—frozen by the way he's looking at you, intent and focused like you're a problem he needs to solve—his head tilts slightly. "That's an order, agent."
"You're not my CO," you point out, but you're already moving, because arguing with Steve Rogers while your shoulder feels like it's full of ground glass and your body is betraying you with all these inconvenient reactions seems like a losing proposition.
He follows, and you're hyperaware of him in that way you always are—the space he takes up, the way air seems to bend around him, the way your skin prickles with awareness even though he hasn't touched you. When you sit on the bed's edge, the paper crinkles beneath you, too loud in the quiet. He stands in front of you, and you have to focus on the SHIELD logo on his chest because looking at his face feels dangerous right now, like staring directly into the sun.
"This is going to hurt," he says, and his voice is lower now, closer. You can feel it rumble through the space between you.
"I know." Your good hand is gripping the edge of the bed so hard your knuckles have gone white. Your heart is doing something irregular and concerning in your chest.
"I mean it's going to—"
"Captain Rogers." You finally look up at him, find him watching you with an expression you can't parse—something intense and careful and guarded all at once. The fluorescent light catches in his hair, turns it more gold than blonde. There's a smudge of dirt on his jaw. "I've been in the field for six years. I know what a shoulder reduction feels like."
Something shifts in his jaw, that little muscle tick you've catalogued along with a hundred other Steve Rogers tells. Your breathing has gone shallow, and you don't know if it's from the pain or the way he's looking at you—like you're something he needs to be careful with.
Finally, he reaches for your arm.
He's wearing tactical gloves.
Of course he is. Steve Rogers always wears gloves on missions, black leather that make his already large hands look even more capable. You've never thought about it before—lots of agents wear gloves. Protection, grip, a hundred practical reasons.
But now, with him this close, with his hands carefully bracketing your injured arm, you notice the deliberateness of it. The way the leather covers every inch of skin from fingertip to wrist. The way he's careful, even now, not to let any exposed skin above the glove brush against you. There's a gap, barely an inch, where his sleeve has ridden up, revealing a strip of pale skin. You stare at it, pulse jumping in your throat for reasons you don't understand.
"On three," he says, and his voice is closer now, quieter. You can feel the heat of him, the solid presence that makes your good hand want to reach out and—
Your fingers twitch on the bed. The paper crinkles.
"One."
He adjusts his grip, and even through the leather, even through your tactical shirt, your nerve endings light up like a circuit board. Your breath catches, stops, starts again too fast.
"Two."
You're watching his face because you have to look somewhere, and that's when you see it—a flicker of something that looks like resignation. Like loss. Like he's steeling himself for something that's going to hurt. The tendons in his neck are taut, and there's a bead of sweat trailing down from his temple despite the cool air.
"Three."
The world whites out. Pain floods your system, sharp and immediate, and your vision goes sparkly at the edges. Your good hand flies up instinctively, searching for something to anchor you, and finds—
His vest. Your fingers curl into the tactical fabric, knuckles brushing against the solid wall of his chest beneath. You're falling forward, or maybe he's moving closer, and suddenly your forehead is almost touching his chest, and his hands have shifted to your shoulders—careful, still gloved, but holding you steady.
"Breathe," he says, and maybe it's the pain, but his voice sounds different. Softer. Rougher. His thumb moves in a small circle against your shoulder, probably meant to be soothing, but it sends electricity racing down your spine. "You're okay. Just breathe."
You realize you're making small, hurt sounds into his vest, and his body has curved around you slightly, protective, blocking you from the rest of the room. Your working hand has somehow fisted completely in his tactical vest, and you can feel the rise and fall of his breathing, too controlled to be natural. His heart beats against your knuckles, faster than you'd expect for someone with enhanced everything.
"I'm good," you manage, though your voice comes out embarrassingly breathy, wrecked. "I'm—thank you."
You pull back, look up, and freeze.
He's so close. Close enough that you can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes, the way his pupils have dilated slightly. Close enough to count individual eyelashes, to see the faint scar on his lower lip. Close enough that when his lips part slightly, you feel his exhale ghost across your face.
His eyes drop to where your hand grips his vest, and there's something almost stricken in his expression. His throat works as he swallows, and you track the movement helplessly.
Then his gaze snaps to your face, and for a second—just a second—his eyes drop to your mouth.
The air between you goes electric.
His hand on your shoulder tightens infinitesimally, leather creaking, and you're suddenly aware that your bodies are still curved toward each other, that if you just leaned forward an inch—
He jerks back. Takes three full steps back, actually, like he needs the distance. Like proximity to you is somehow dangerous. His breathing is slightly uneven, and there's a flush high on his cheeks that wasn't there before.
"You should get that x-rayed," he says, and his voice is too loud in the quiet room, just slightly unsteady. He's Captain America again, professional and distant, but his hands are clenched at his sides and he won't quite meet your eyes. "And ice. Twenty minutes on, twenty off."
"I know the drill." Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, throaty and affected. Your good hand is still raised slightly, fingers tingling from where they'd gripped his vest.
He nods, sharp and efficient. Turns to go back to his vigil beside Barnes's bed. But something makes you speak, words tumbling out before your brain can catch up with your mouth.
"He's lucky."
Steve stops. His shoulders go rigid, the line of his spine straightening like someone's put electricity through it.
"Barnes," you clarify, though you shouldn't. Your tongue feels thick in your mouth, clumsy. "To have someone who—to have her. His soulmate. They're both lucky."
When he turns to look at you, there's something hollow in his eyes, something that makes your chest ache with recognition you don't want to examine. The muscle in his jaw is working again, and his gloved hands clench and unclench at his sides.
"Yeah," he says quietly, and the word comes out like it's been dragged over broken glass. "Lucky."
He says it like the word tastes like ash, like something burned and bitter on his tongue.
"Steve—" You don't know what you're going to say, don't know why his name feels like something precious in your mouth, why your body is still leaning toward him like a plant toward sunlight.
"You should rest." He cuts you off, gentle but firm, and there's something almost desperate in the way he's not looking at you. "That shoulder needs—"
An alarm goes off. Not the gentle chime of a normal medical alert, but the sharp, angry wail that means something's wrong. Steve's already moving, heading for Barnes's bed where machines are screaming and the woman—his soulmate—is sitting up, hands pressed to her temples, saying "Something's wrong, something's—"
Barnes jackknifes upright with a sound that isn't quite human, metal arm swinging blindly, and his soulmate catches his hand without flinching. The moment their skin connects, some of the wildness bleeds out of his eyes.
"Bucky." Her voice is steady despite the chaos. "You're in medical. You're safe. I'm here."
You should leave. This is definitely not for you to witness. But you're frozen, watching how Barnes's entire being reorganizes itself around her touch, how his breathing slows to match hers, how the machines gradually stop their shrieking as his vitals stabilize. The way she runs her fingers through his hair, and he melts into it, face pressing into her palm like he's trying to absorb her through skin contact alone.
And you watch Steve watch them, standing two feet away but somehow miles distant, his gloved hands clenched so tight at his sides that the leather creaks.
You've never wanted a soulmate. The odds are astronomical, the chance of finding them slim to none, and you've seen what happens to people who lose them—the hollow-eyed grief that never quite fades. Better to never have one than to lose them. Better to be whole on your own than broken in half of a pair.
But watching Barnes fold into his soulmate's arms like coming home, watching her hold him together with nothing but touch and presence and fierce, protective love—
Your chest aches with want so sharp it steals your breath. Your skin feels too tight, too hot, like your body is trying to tell you something your mind won't acknowledge.
When you look at Steve, he's already looking at you. For just a second, you see your own longing reflected in his eyes, the same hollow ache of watching others have what you'll never possess. His gaze drops to your hand—the one that had gripped his vest—and something flickers across his face, too fast to read.
Then he looks away, jaw tight, and the moment breaks, and you're just an injured agent who needs to stop projecting feelings onto a superior officer who barely knows you exist.
"Get some rest," he says without looking at you, voice carefully controlled. "That's an order."
This time, you don't argue. You leave him to his vigil, to his grief, to whatever it is that makes Captain America cry in hospital chairs over other people's happy endings.
Your shoulder throbs in time with your heartbeat as you walk away, and you tell yourself that's the only reason your chest hurts. That's the only reason your skin feels like it's burning where he almost touched you. That's the only reason you can still feel the ghost of his vest under your fingers, the phantom heat of him curved around you.
You're very good at lying to yourself at 3 AM.
But your traitorous body remembers the way he'd jerked back from you, the way his eyes had gone wide with something that looked like fear when he'd realized how close you were.
Whatever Steve Rogers is afraid of, you're starting to think it might be you.
The next time you see him is three days later, and your body knows he's in the room before your brain catches up.
You're bent over a terminal in the east wing surveillance room, trying to make sense of intel that feels like it's been encrypted in ancient Sumerian, when every hair on the back of your neck stands at attention. Your spine straightens involuntarily, muscles tensing like an animal sensing a predator—or worse, like iron filings responding to a magnet.
"Agent."
Just that. Just your title in his Captain America voice, all professional distance and careful neutrality. But your treacherous body reacts like he's whispered something filthy in your ear—pulse jumping, skin flushing hot, stomach doing that uncomfortable flip that's becoming alarmingly familiar.
You don't turn around. Can't. Not when you know what you look like right now—haven't slept in thirty-six hours, hair in a messy bun that's listing severely to the left, yesterday's coffee staining your SHIELD-issued crewneck. Not when you can feel him taking up all the oxygen in the room just by existing in it.
"Captain Rogers." You're proud of how steady your voice comes out, even as your fingers have gone white-knuckled on the edge of the desk. "Something I can help you with?"
Silence. Long enough that you almost turn, almost give in to the gravitational pull of him. Then: footsteps. Measured, deliberate. He's moving closer, and your body tracks his approach like sonar, every nerve ending pinging with proximity alerts.
He stops just outside your peripheral vision—close enough that you can smell him (soap, leather, that cedar-sharp scent that makes your hindbrain whimper), far enough that there's no chance of accidental contact. You notice he does that a lot. Maintains exact distances like he's calculated the precise minimum safe zone between bodies.
"The Brussels intel." A pause. You hear him shift, leather jacket creaking. "Fury wants us to run point together."
Your hands still on the keyboard.
Us.
Together.
Run point.
"Us," you repeat, carefully neutral, still not turning around because if you look at him right now your face will do something stupid. Something that reveals how your stomach just dropped through the floor at the prospect of working closely with him. Of being in proximity to Steve Rogers for an extended period when just standing in the same room makes you feel like you're about to vibrate out of your skin.
"Is that a problem?"
There's something in his voice—a challenge maybe, or a test. Like he's waiting for you to admit what you both know: that whatever this thick, electric tension between you is, it's becoming harder to ignore.
"No, sir." You turn then, because not looking is starting to feel more obvious than looking, and immediately regret it.
He's in civilian clothes—dark jeans that shouldn't be legal on someone with his thighs, a navy shirt that clings to his chest in ways that make your mouth go dry. The leather jacket that does things to his shoulders that ought to be classified. But it's his face that kills you—that careful, composed expression that doesn't quite hide the way his eyes darken when they meet yours, the way his jaw ticks when you unconsciously wet your lips.
"Good." He steps closer—just half a step, but your body reacts like he's pressed you against the wall. Your breathing goes shallow, chest rising and falling too fast, and his eyes track the movement before snapping back to your face. "Briefing's at 0800."
"I'll be there."
He should leave. The conversation's over, message delivered. But he doesn't move. Just stands there, looking at you with an expression you can't read, and the air between you feels like it's getting thicker, harder to breathe. Your skin prickles with heat despite the aggressive air conditioning, and you can feel your pulse in your throat, your wrists, between your legs—
"Your shoulder." The words come out rough, like he's had to drag them from somewhere deep. "How is it?"
"Fine." Your voice sounds breathy, affected. You clear your throat, try again. "Good. It's good. Thanks to you."
Something flickers across his face at that—almost pained, like you've said something that hurts. His hand comes up, and for a heart-stopping second you think he's going to touch you. Your whole body goes still, waiting, wanting, every cell screaming yes, finally, please—
But he just runs it through his hair, a gesture that's so uncharacteristically unguarded it makes your chest ache.
"Steve—"
"I should go." He cuts you off, already stepping back, and the loss of proximity feels like someone's turned off the sun. "Early morning."
He's halfway to the door when you speak, words tumbling out without permission.
"Why do you do that?"
He stops. Doesn't turn. "Do what?"
"Pull back." Your heart is hammering so hard you're sure he can hear it with his enhanced everything. "You get close, and then you just—" You make a frustrated gesture he can't see. "It's like you're afraid of me."
His shoulders tense, and when he turns to look at you, there's something raw in his eyes for just a second before he shutters it away.
"I'm not afraid of you."
"Then what—"
"I'm afraid of what I want from you."
The words hang in the air between you like a grenade with the pin pulled. Your breath catches, stops entirely. Your body goes hot and cold at once, skin too tight, like you're having an allergic reaction to honesty.
He looks as surprised as you feel, like the admission escaped without his permission. His hands clench at his sides—you notice he's not wearing gloves, and for some reason that feels significant. Dangerous. His fingers are long, elegant despite their strength, and you have the sudden, visceral thought of what they'd feel like on your skin.
"Captain—"
"Steve." His voice is rough, wrecked. "Just... when it's just us, call me Steve."
Your throat feels like you've swallowed glass. "Steve."
He makes a sound—small, strangled—and takes a step toward you before catching himself. The muscle in his jaw is working overtime, and his hands—Jesus, his hands are actually trembling.
"This isn't—" He stops. Tries again. "I can't—"
"Can't what?" You stand, and your legs feel like water but you need to be closer to him, need to understand what's happening in the space between his words. "Steve, what—"
"0800," he says, and it sounds like surrender. "Don't be late."
He's gone before you can respond, leaving you alone in a room that feels too cold without him in it. Your skin feels raw, oversensitized, like you've been flayed open and exposed to the elements. You sink back into your chair, legs finally giving out, and press your palms against your burning cheeks.
I'm afraid of what I want from you.
Your body is still humming, vibrating at some frequency that feels like it's going to shake you apart. You can still smell him in the air—leather and soap and something unmistakably Steve that makes your hindbrain want to follow him down the hall, pin him against a wall, and find out exactly what he wants from you.
But you don't. You sit in your chair, stare at intel you can't process, and try to convince yourself that whatever's happening between you and Steve Rogers is just chemistry. Just proximity and adrenaline and two people spending too much time dancing around each other in small spaces.
You're getting better at lying to yourself.
But your body remembers the way his eyes had gone dark when he watched you breathe. The way his hands had trembled. The way he'd said your name like it was being torn out of him.
0800 can't come fast enough.
The briefing room is too small.
That's your first thought when you walk in at 0755, coffee clutched like a lifeline, to find Steve already there. He's studying a holographic map of Brussels, one hand braced on the table, the other holding a tablet. The morning light from the floor-to-ceiling windows turns his hair gold and throws his profile into sharp relief, and your step falters in the doorway because he looks like something out of a Renaissance painting—all strong lines and perfect angles and terrible beauty.
He doesn't look up, but his shoulders tense slightly. He knows you're there.
"Morning," you manage, proud when your voice doesn't crack.
"Agent." Back to titles, then. Back to distance. But when he glances up, his eyes catch yours and hold for a beat too long, and you see him swallow.
You take your seat—across from him, with the whole width of the table between you like a demilitarized zone. But it's not enough. The room's too small, the air too thin. You can see the rise and fall of his chest, the way his thumb taps against the tablet in a rhythm that matches your elevated pulse.
"The target's a bioweapon," he says without preamble, swiping something on his tablet that makes the hologram shift and expand. "Hydra remnants, we think. They're moving it through Brussels tomorrow night."
You force yourself to focus on the intel, not on the way his hands move when he talks, precise and economical. Not on the fact that his sleeves are rolled up, revealing forearms that make your mouth water—all corded muscle and prominent veins and a dusting of hair that catches the light.
"Extraction point?"
"Here." He rounds the table to point at a specific building, and suddenly he's beside you, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off him. Close enough that when you breathe in, you get a lungful of his scent that makes your head spin. "Warehouse district. Minimal civilian presence after dark."
You turn your head to look at the map, but that's a mistake because now his face is inches from yours. You can see the barely-there freckles across his nose, the way his lips part slightly when he breathes. His eyes drop to your mouth for a fraction of a second before he jerks back, stepping away so fast you feel the displacement of air.
"We'll go in quiet," he says, voice rougher than before. His hand comes up to rub the back of his neck, a gesture you're starting to recognize as his tell for when he's affected. "Two-person infiltration. Quick and clean."
"Just the two of us?" The words come out more breathless than you intended.
He nods, still not looking at you. "Fury wants it kept small. Discreet."
Discreet. Right. You can be discreet. You can be professional. You can absolutely handle being alone with Steve Rogers on a mission without doing something stupid like wondering what his hands would feel like in your hair, or how his voice would sound saying your actual name in the dark, or—
"Questions?"
You realize you've been staring at him, and your face goes hot. "No. No questions."
"Good." He's already moving toward the door, eager to escape, but he pauses at the threshold. When he looks back, there's something almost vulnerable in his expression. "We leave at 1400. Quinjet bay three."
"I'll be there."
He nods, starts to go, then stops again. His hand tightens on the doorframe, knuckles going white.
"You should wear tactical gear," he says without turning around. "Full coverage. It's going to be cold."
There's something about the way he says it—careful, deliberate—that makes you think he's not really talking about the temperature. But before you can respond, he's gone, leaving you alone in a room that still smells like him.
You spend the rest of the morning trying to focus on mission prep, but your mind keeps circling back to the way he'd looked at your mouth. The way he'd jerked back like you'd burned him. The way he'd specified full coverage like he was trying to minimize the chance of—what? Of skin contact? Of touching?
By 1400, you're wound so tight you feel like you might snap. The tactical gear feels heavy, constrictive, like it's pressing all your sensitivity inward. Every brush of fabric against skin feels amplified, every movement hyperaware.
You find him in the quinjet, running preflight checks with the kind of focus that suggests he's trying very hard not to think about something. He's in his Captain America suit—the deep blue that somehow makes his shoulders look even broader, red and white accents catching the cabin lights. No skin visible except his face and that thin strip at his neck where the cowl doesn't quite meet the collar, every inch of him covered like armor against something more than physical threats.
"Ready?" He doesn't look at you when he asks.
"Always."
The flight to Brussels takes six hours. Six hours of sitting across from each other in a quinjet that suddenly feels impossibly small. Six hours of trying not to stare at the way his hands move over the controls, sure and competent. Six hours of him studiously avoiding your gaze while the tension ratchets higher with every passing minute.
Halfway through, you shift in your seat, and your knee brushes his under the table. It's barely contact—layers of fabric between you—but you both freeze. His hands still on the tablet he's holding. Your breath catches in your throat. For a moment, neither of you moves, like you're both waiting to see what the other will do.
He pulls his leg back.
You curl your hands into fists and stare out the window at clouds that look soft enough to touch, trying to ignore the way your knee burns where it brushed his, trying to ignore the way he's breathing just a little too carefully across from you.
"You should get some rest," he says finally, voice neutral. "It's going to be a long night."
You don't tell him there's no way you could sleep, not when every cell in your body is hyperaware of his presence. Not when you can feel the weight of his carefully maintained distance like a physical thing.
Instead, you close your eyes and pretend, counting your breaths, trying to ignore the way your body hums with proximity to him. Trying to ignore the fact that in a few hours, you'll be alone with him in the dark, dependent on each other in the way that missions make necessary.
Trying to ignore the way your skin already aches for something you've never had.
When you fake-wake an hour later, he's watching you.
The look on his face—unguarded, soft, almost pained—makes your chest tight. But the second he realizes you're awake, his expression shutters, locks down, becomes Captain America again.
"Descending in twenty," he says, all business.
You nod, start checking your gear, and pretend you didn't see the way he was looking at you like you're something he wants but can't have. Pretend your heart isn't racing from that single, stolen moment of his true face.
Twenty minutes to Brussels.
Twenty minutes until you're alone with him in the dark.
Twenty minutes until whatever this is either snaps or shatters.
Your hands shake as you load your weapons, and you tell yourself it's just pre-mission adrenaline.
You're getting worse at lying to yourself.
The warehouse district in Brussels looks like every other warehouse district you've ever infiltrated—all concrete and shadows and too many places for things to go wrong. Your breath mists in the December air, visible for half a second before disappearing, and you're hyperaware of Steve beside you, the way his body heat seems to radiate even from three feet away.
Three feet. Always three feet.
You've been in position for forty minutes, watching the target building through night vision, and the tension between you has ratcheted so high you can practically taste it—metallic, electric, like the air before lightning strikes.
"Two guards, northwest corner," you murmur into comms, watching them through your scope. Your finger rests against the trigger guard, steady despite the way your whole body feels attuned to Steve's presence. "Rotation in approximately ninety seconds."
"Copy." His voice in your ear makes your stomach flip, low and authoritative. Through your peripheral vision, you catch him adjusting his shield, the movement precise, controlled. Everything about him is controlled. Has been since you touched down three hours ago. Maybe since before that. Maybe since that moment in the briefing room when he'd told you to wear full tactical gear like he was trying to armor you against something more than bullets.
The silence stretches, fills with things unsaid. Your skin prickles beneath the kevlar, every nerve ending hyperalert. Not from danger—not yet—but from proximity to him that feels more intimate than touch. You can hear him breathe, steady and measured. Can smell that cedar-sharp scent that cuts through the industrial stink of the district. Can feel the weight of his attention even when he's not looking at you.
"You know," you say quietly, because the silence is becoming unbearable, "for a stealth mission, you're thinking very loudly."
A pause. Then: "I'm not thinking anything."
"Liar." The word slips out before you can stop it, soft and knowing, and you feel him go still beside you.
"Agent—"
"You said when it's just us, I could—" You swallow, throat suddenly dry. "We're alone, Steve. You can use my name."
Another pause, longer this time. When he speaks, his voice is rougher. "The guards are moving."
He's right. You track them through your scope, watching them disappear around the corner, and try to ignore the way your name apparently burns in his throat, the way he can't seem to say it even when you've given him permission.
"Window's open," you confirm. "Ninety seconds, like clockwork."
"Let's move."
You're up and moving before the words finish forming, bodies falling into perfect synchronization. He goes high, you go low, covering angles with the kind of wordless communication that feels like dancing, like inevitability. Your breath syncs with his as you cross the open ground, and you tell yourself it's just tactical breathing, just professional compatibility.
You're getting worse at lying to yourself.
The side entrance is exactly where intel said it would be. Steve makes quick work of the lock while you cover him, and the domestic intimacy of it—you protecting his back while he works—makes something twist in your chest.
"Got it." The lock clicks open, and he pulls the door wide, weapon raised.
You follow him into darkness.
The warehouse is a maze of shipping containers and scaffolding, all deep shadows and blind corners. Your night vision paints everything in shades of green, turning Steve into something otherworldly as he moves ahead of you, all lethal grace and coiled power. You've seen him fight before, but there's something different about moving with him like this, just the two of you in the dark. Something that makes your body hyperaware of every gesture, every signal.
He holds up a fist—stop. You freeze instantly, trusting him implicitly. He tilts his head, listening to something you can't hear, and you watch the line of his throat, the way his pulse beats steady and strong beneath the skin.
Then you hear it too—footsteps, multiple sets, coming from the east corridor.
Steve looks back at you, and even through the night vision, you can see something pass across his face. He points to himself, then forward. Points to you, then to a stack of crates that would provide cover.
You shake your head. You're not letting him go alone.
His jaw ticks—that tell you've catalogued along with all his others. But there's no time to argue. The footsteps are getting closer.
You move together, silent as shadows, until the first hostile rounds the corner.
Steve takes him down in one fluid motion, shield connecting with a dull thud that the man doesn't get up from. But there are more—so many more—and suddenly the warehouse explodes into chaos.
"Contact!" you shout into comms that suddenly fill with static, jamming signals flooding the frequency. "Multiple hostiles—"
A muzzle flash in your peripheral. You pivot, fire twice, watch the figure drop. Steve's shield sings through the air, ricocheting off three targets in quick succession before returning to his hand. You move back to back without thinking, covering each other's blind spots, and the contact—even through layers of tactical gear—makes your skin burn.
"We need to move!" Steve shouts over the gunfire. "The bioweapon—"
"I know!" You drop two more hostiles, reload with practiced efficiency. "Northwest stairs, we can—"
The explosion knocks you sideways.
Your shoulder hits concrete hard, night vision flickering, ears ringing. Through the smoke, you see Steve fighting like something out of legend—shield and fists and absolutely ruthless efficiency. But there are too many. They keep coming, and you're separated now, a wall of hostiles between you.
"Steve!" You fight toward him, muscle memory and desperation driving you forward.
"Get to the weapon!" His voice cuts through the chaos. "I'll hold them—"
"Like hell!"
But more fighters flood in, and you're forced back, forced to watch him disappear behind a wall of bodies. Your chest goes tight with something that's not quite panic but close—the thought of losing sight of him, of something happening while you're not there to cover his six.
You fight harder, brutal and efficient, trying to close the distance. Your body moves on autopilot while your mind tracks him through glimpses—the flash of his shield, the sound of his voice calling out positions.
Then you hear it. His sharp intake of breath, pained.
"Steve?"
"I'm fine." But his voice is strained, and you catch sight of him favoring his left side, blood dark on his tactical suit. "The weapon—"
"Fuck the weapon." You slam a new magazine home, determination crystallizing into something sharp and desperate. "I'm coming to you."
"No!" The authority in his voice stops you short. "That's an order—get the bioweapon. I'll meet you at extraction."
Every instinct screams against leaving him, but he's right. The mission. Always the mission.
You run.
The stairs are clear—too clear. Your instincts scream trap, but there's no time. You take them three at a time, hip protesting from the earlier fall, listening to the sounds of fighting below. Steve's still engaged, still fighting, and you track his progress through the warehouse by sound alone.
The lab is exactly where intel indicated—third floor, northeast corner. Also exactly as unguarded as you'd feared.
Trap. Definitely a trap.
But the bioweapon is there, contained in a small metal briefcase that seems too innocuous for something that could kill thousands. You grab it, already turning back toward the stairs when you hear Steve's voice crackle through the static.
Not "Agent." Your name, sharp and desperate, and the sound of it makes your blood freeze. "Get out. Now. They're—"
The static cuts him off.
"Steve? Steve!"
Nothing.
You're already running, taking the stairs so fast you nearly fall, the briefcase clutched tight against your chest. The warehouse has gone quiet—too quiet. No more gunfire. No more fighting.
Just silence.
You round the corner into the main warehouse floor and see him.
He's surrounded, on his knees, blood running from a cut above his eye. Six hostiles have weapons trained on him, and his shield is nowhere to be seen. But what makes your blood turn to ice is the seventh figure—a man in tactical gear holding something that looks like—
"No!" The word tears from your throat as you recognize the device. Sonic disruptor, strong enough to disorient even a super soldier.
The man's finger depresses the trigger.
Steve convulses, hands going to his ears, and the sound he makes—
You're moving before conscious thought catches up, pure instinct driving you forward. The briefcase clatters to the ground as you raise your weapon, laying down cover fire that sends three hostiles scrambling. But you're exposed now, in the open, no cover between you and—
The first shot catches you in the vest.
The impact slams you backward, driving all the air from your lungs in a whoosh that whites out your vision. Your body armor holds—SHIELD makes good gear—but the force spins you sideways, and before you can recover, before you can breathe—
The second shot finds the gap.
Right where your vest meets your hip, that vulnerable slice of space where mobility trumps protection. The bullet tears through tactical fabric and skin and muscle like tissue paper, and the pain—
The pain is exquisite.
White-hot agony blooms from your hip, spreading like wildfire through your nervous system until every cell is screaming. You hear yourself make a sound—sharp, breathless, more surprise than scream—and then your legs are failing, and you're falling, and the concrete rises up to meet you like an old friend.
Your name rips from Steve's throat like something being torn from his chest cavity.
Through blurring vision, you see him move.
The sonic disruptor doesn't matter. The six weapons trained on him don't matter. He erupts from his knees with a sound that's barely human, pure rage and desperation, and bodies go flying. He fights like something mythical, like something out of the stories they tell about Captain America, except there's nothing heroic about this.
This is brutality. Devastation.
Your hands shake as they try to find the wound, fingers slipping on something warm and wet that's spreading way too fast. The pain is enormous, eating at the edges of your consciousness, white-hot and pulsing with each heartbeat. Your tactical pants are already soaked, the fabric clinging to your skin, and when you lift your hand it's painted crimson in the warehouse's emergency lighting.
That's... that's too much blood. Way too much.
Your body starts to shake—shock, probably, or blood loss, or just the simple animal recognition that you're badly hurt. Your teeth start chattering, and you can't make them stop, jaw clenched so tight you taste blood from where you've bitten your tongue.
"No, no, no, no—"
Steve crashes to his knees beside you so hard the concrete cracks. His hands—his bare hands, when did he lose his gloves?—hover over you for a fraction of a second before pressing against the wound. The pressure makes you scream, body trying to curl away from the pain, but he holds you down, holds you still.
"Hey, hey, look at me." His voice cracks completely, nothing like Captain America's steady authority. This is just Steve, terrified and desperate. "Look at me. Stay with me."
You try to focus on his face, but it keeps fracturing, splitting into doubles and triples before reforming. Your eyes won't track right, keep sliding away like they're too heavy. His face is covered in blood—from the cut above his eye, from other wounds you can't catalog—and there's something wild in his expression, something that makes your chest tight for reasons that have nothing to do with the bullet.
"Steve—" Your voice comes out wrong, too wet, copper flooding your mouth. When you cough, something warm splatters across your lips.
"Don't talk, don't—just stay still. I've got you." He's pressing so hard against the wound that new pain blooms, sharp and bright, making your vision white out at the edges. But his hands—his hands are shaking where they press against you, and that seems wrong somehow. Steve Rogers's hands don't shake. "Med evac's coming. Two minutes. Just two minutes, you have to—"
His voice breaks completely, and you realize he's crying. Captain America is crying over you, tears cutting clean tracks through the blood and dirt on his face.
"'S okay," you slur, though it's not, though nothing is okay. Your tongue feels thick, clumsy. "'M okay."
"You're not okay." It comes out harsh, angry, but his hands on your wound are so careful, desperately trying to hold you together. "There's so much blood. Why is there so much—"
That's when you see it. His bare hands are pressed against your wound, skin to skin where your tactical gear has been torn away, and you wait for something—for warmth, for electricity, for whatever cosmic sign is supposed to indicate a soul bond. But there's just the cold creeping up your limbs and Steve's devastated face above you.
"Please," he's saying, over and over, like a prayer or a plea. "Please, just hold on. Just—"
He reaches for your face with one blood-slicked hand, maybe to check your pupils, maybe to keep you conscious, and that's when it happens.
His palm cups your cheek, and the world explodes.
Not with pain this time, but with something else entirely. Something that races through your dying body like lightning finding ground, like coming home, like every cell suddenly remembering what they're made for. The bond slams into place with the force of a freight train, decades of waiting condensed into a single moment of contact that rewrites everything you thought you knew about existence.
The warmth that floods through you has nothing to do with healing and everything to do with recognition. With rightness. With the soul bond that's singing in your bones, drowning out even the pain, making everything else fade to background noise. You can feel him—not just his hand on your face but him, his emotions crashing into yours like a tidal wave. Fear and longing and desperate denial and—
He rips his hand away like you've burned him.
"No." The word comes out strangled, broken. He's staring at his hand like it's betrayed him, then at your face with something that looks like pure horror. "No, not—not like this. Not now—"
The loss of his touch hits worse than the bullet did. Your body convulses, a sob ripping from your throat that you can't control, can't stop. The bond—new and raw and screaming—feels like someone's reached into your chest and started pulling things out. Every nerve ending is firing wrong, confused, desperate for the contact that just got ripped away.
"Steve." Your voice breaks on his name, barely human. The world is going fuzzy at the edges but this—this burning absence where his hand was—this is crystalline. "Steve, please—you're—we're—"
"Don't." He's pressing against the wound with just fabric between you now, using torn pieces of his uniform to maintain pressure without skin contact. His whole body is shaking, violent tremors that make his hands unsteady. "This can't—I can't—"
"Please." The word comes out slurred, desperate, all your walls crumbling with your blood pressure. Your body moves without permission, trying to arch toward him, and the movement sends agony through your hip but you don't care, can't care, not when every cell is screaming for him. "Need—need you t'touch me. Please. Hurts—hurts so much without—"
A whimper escapes, high and broken, and you're crying now—real tears mixing with blood from where you've bitten through your lip trying not to beg.
"I can't." He's sobbing openly, pressing harder against the wound as your blood soaks through the fabric barriers he's maintaining. His face is wrecked, destroyed, tears cutting tracks through dirt and blood. "I can't do this to you. I can't—everyone I touch—everyone I—"
"'M dying." It's matter-of-fact, clear even through the growing fog. Your body knows it, feels it in the way everything's going cold and distant.
Your hand lifts, trembling so hard it's more spasm than movement, reaching for his face. He catches your wrist with fabric-covered fingers, holding you back, and the sound you make—wounded, animal, barely human—seems to physically hurt him.
"You're not dying." Fierce, desperate, a lie that cracks in his throat. "You're not. Med evac's thirty seconds out. You're going to be fine, you're going to—"
"Hurts." The word is pure anguish. Not just the wound but the rejection, the bond screaming, tearing, dying in your chest. Your body's shutting down but somehow the ache of his denial cuts deeper. "Steve, please—am I—did I do something wrong? Am I not—not what you wanted—?"
"No." The word rips from him with enough force to echo off the warehouse walls. He's shaking so hard the fabric between you vibrates with it. "No, you're perfect. You're everything. You're—Christ, you're everything I never let myself want. That's why I can't—"
"Don' understand." Your vision is tunneling fast now, darkness eating the edges. Your body won't stop shaking, violent tremors that make your teeth chatter. "'S supposed to—soulmates supposed to—to help. To make it better. Why won't you—why won't you just—"
Another sob tears from your chest, weaker this time. Your reaching hand falls, fingers still twitching toward him.
"Because I'll destroy you." Raw, bleeding, the words torn from somewhere deep and wounded. "Because everyone I've ever—because I'm not meant for this. For you. You deserve someone who—someone whole. Someone who isn't—"
"Jus' wanted—" Your voice is fading, each word a monumental effort. Your body feels like it's floating and sinking at once. "Jus' wanted to know what it felt like. To be yours. Steve—'m so cold—”
Your eyes are sliding shut, but you force them open one more time, finding his face. He looks shattered. Broken. Like watching you die is killing him too.
"'M sorry," you whisper, and you don't know what you're apologizing for. For dying? For being his soulmate? For not being enough to make him want to hold you? "Sorry I'm not—not worth—"
"Stop." His voice breaks completely. "You're worth everything. You're worth—"
But you're already going under, the last sensation being the phantom burn of where his palm touched your cheek for those thirty-seven seconds. The bond screams and screams and screams, and then—
The med evac arrives in a thunder of sound and motion, but you can't process it anymore. Hands are moving you, lifting you, but all you can focus on is Steve's face, the way he's looking at you like you're taking his soul with you.
"I'm sorry," he's saying, over and over, his voice following you into the darkness. "I'm so fucking sorry. You deserve better. You deserve everything."
The last thing you see is him standing there, your blood painting his bare hands red, looking like a man who's just given up the one thing he wanted most in the world.
The last thing you feel is the phantom burn where his palm touched your cheek, the bond screaming for a connection that's been severed, your body trying to reach for something that's already gone.
The last thing you think, with the last conscious part of your mind, is that you would have been good to him. You would have been so good to him, if he'd let you.
But maybe that's why he pulled away.
Maybe he knows something you don't—that good things don't last, that soulmates are just another pretty lie the universe tells to make the dying easier.
Your hand falls limp, still reaching for him, and the darkness takes you under.
The medbay ceiling has exactly 247 tiles. You know because you've counted them approximately forty-three times since waking up, which was—what? Two weeks ago? Three? Time moves differently when your body is trying to rebuild itself from the inside out and your soul is trying to tear itself apart looking for someone who won't come.
The gunshot wound is healing. Slowly, methodically, with the kind of grinding precision that modern medicine excels at. They'd had to do surgery twice—once to stop the bleeding, once to repair the mess the bullet made of your intestines. The scar will be ugly, they tell you with professional sympathy, as if that's what you're worried about. As if the external scarring could possibly compare to whatever the fuck is happening inside your chest where the bond lives.
Or dies. You're not really sure which anymore.
Your nights follow a pattern now, predictable as clockwork. At 10 PM, the ward goes quiet, lights dimming to that particular hospital twilight that never quite achieves darkness. At 11:47 PM—always 11:47, like he's calculated the exact time the night nurse finishes rounds—you hear it.
Footsteps in the hallway. Careful, measured, but with that particular weight that only belongs to him. Your body recognizes them before your mind does, skin prickling with awareness, the bond flaring to life like struck kindling.
The first night, you'd opened your eyes.
He'd frozen in the doorway, silhouetted by hallway fluorescents, and for thirteen seconds (you counted), you just stared at each other. His face was—God, his face was something you'd never seen before. Raw. Destroyed. Like someone had reached inside him and rearranged everything until it no longer fit right.
"I—" he'd started.
You'd waited, heart hammering so hard the monitors had started alarming, bringing nurses running.
By the time they'd cleared out, satisfied you weren't dying, he was gone.
Now you know better. You keep your eyes closed, breathing deep and even, and let him have whatever this is. Whatever he needs.
He sits in the chair by the window—always the same chair, the one that creaks slightly when he shifts his weight. For the first ten minutes, he just sits there, breathing. You match your inhales to his, careful to keep them sleep-slow even though your heart is racing, even though every cell in your body is screaming to reach for him.
Sometimes he talks.
"They're releasing you tomorrow," he says tonight, voice barely above a whisper. "Fury told me. Said you're healing well. That you'll be able to—that you'll be fine."
Fine. The word sits between you like a lie neither of you believes.
"I know you're awake."
Your breath doesn't catch. You've gotten very good at this game.
"I know you're awake," he repeats, softer. "Your heartbeat changes when I'm here. Just a little, but—" A pause. The chair creaks. "I memorized it. Before. The sound of your heartbeat. Didn't mean to, it just—happened. Enhanced hearing and all."
You want to open your eyes so badly it's physical pain, but you don't. Can't. Because if you do, he'll leave, and even this—this careful distance, this monitored proximity—is better than nothing.
"I'm being reassigned."
Now your breath does catch, just slightly. You hear him shift forward.
"Fury thinks it's best. For both of us. Different divisions, different missions. Clean break." His voice cracks on 'clean' like the word itself is cutting him. "It's better this way. You can—you can find someone else. Someone who isn't—"
Broken, you want to finish. Scared. Frozen in a past that no longer exists.
But you keep your eyes closed, keep your breathing even, keep pretending that your chest isn't caving in with every word.
"I watched Bucky with his soulmate," he continues, and you've never heard him sound like this. Lost. "Watched how easy it was for them. How she touched him and suddenly he was whole again, was himself again. How the bond just—fixed things. Made sense of them."
The chair creaks again. Closer now. You can feel the heat of him, smell that cedar-sharp scent that makes your body ache with want.
"I thought—" He stops. Starts again. "I thought if I didn't have a soulmate, I could pretend I didn't belong here. Could keep one foot in the past, you know? Keep waiting to go home to a time that doesn't exist anymore. But then you—"
Silence. Long enough that you almost open your eyes, almost give up the pretense.
"You make me want to stay," he whispers, and it sounds like a confession. Like something torn from him against his will. "You make me want to belong here. In this century. In this life. And that fucking terrifies me."
Your eyes burn behind closed lids. Your throat aches with words you can't say.
"So I'm leaving. Because you deserve someone who isn't terrified of wanting you. Someone who can touch you without feeling like the universe is ending. Someone who—" His voice breaks completely. "Someone who didn't let you bleed out rather than accept a bond."
You hear him stand, the chair scraping slightly against linoleum. Feel him hesitate, that particular stillness that means he's fighting himself.
Then warmth. Just for a second. The ghost of fingers near your hand where it rests on the blanket, not quite touching but close enough that you can feel the heat of his skin, the way the air shifts between you.
"I'm sorry," he breathes. "I'm so fucking sorry."
Then he's gone, and you finally let yourself cry—silent, body-shaking sobs that you muffle in the pillow so the night nurse won't come. The bond aches like a severed limb, phantom pain for something you had for exactly thirty-seven seconds in a warehouse in Brussels.
Tomorrow, they release you.
Tomorrow, you go back to a life where Steve Rogers is just someone you pass in hallways, someone who looks through you like you're a ghost, someone who touched your face once while you were dying and then decided you weren't worth the risk.
Tonight, though. Tonight you lie in a hospital bed and count ceiling tiles and pretend you don't know that he stands outside your door for another twenty-three minutes before he finally makes himself leave.
Your apartment feels like a crime scene you're returning to.
Everything is exactly as you left it three weeks ago—coffee mug still in the sink, laptop still open on the counter, the ghost of your normal life preserved in amber. Except you're different now. Hollowed out and reconstructed wrong, like someone took you apart and lost a few crucial pieces in the reassembly.
The first night is the worst.
You'd thought the hospital was bad, with its antiseptic smell and endless fluorescent twilight. But at least there, you could pretend Steve might appear. Could lie to yourself that the footsteps in the hallway might be his.
Here, in your own space, there's no such illusion.
The bond aches constantly. Not the sharp, immediate pain of the first few days, but a bone-deep throb that makes everything feel wrong. Food tastes like ash. Sleep comes in fragments, always interrupted by dreams of warehouse floors and the phantom warmth of a palm against your cheek. Your skin feels too tight, like your body is rejecting itself in the absence of touch it's only had once.
You try to go back to work after a week.
Fury takes one look at you—hollow eyes, hands that won't stop shaking, the way you flinch when anyone gets too close—and sends you home.
"Medical leave," he says, not unkindly. "Take the time you need."
You want to tell him that time won't fix this. That you could take a year, a decade, and you'd still be searching every room for a ghost who won't appear. But you just nod, gather your things, and pretend you don't see the pity in his eye.
The second week is when the anger arrives.
It starts small—irritation at the barista who makes your coffee wrong, frustration with the TV remote that won't work properly. But it builds, feeds on itself, until you're standing in your kitchen at 2 AM, hurling the mug Steve never saw you drink from against the wall, watching it shatter into pieces that still somehow hold more cohesion than you do.
How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
To touch you, to activate a bond you didn't even know existed, and then rip himself away like you're something toxic. To visit you every night but never when you're awake to actually see him. To make decisions about your life, your future, your soul without even asking what you want.
You track his missions through the internal SHIELD networks you're not supposed to have access to anymore. London. Moscow. Cairo. Always moving, always running, like distance could somehow break what's already broken. Your clearance hasn't been revoked yet—an oversight, probably—so you read his reports, clinical and detached descriptions of operations that tell you nothing about whether he's eating. Whether he's sleeping. Whether his soul feels as flayed as yours.
Probably not. He chose this, after all.
The third week is when you see him.
You're not prepared. How could you be? You're just buying groceries, standing in the cereal aisle like a normal person pretending to care about fiber content, when you feel it—that familiar prickle of awareness, the bond flaring to life like muscle memory.
You turn, and there he is at the end of the aisle. Frozen, like he's been caught. He looks—
He looks like shit.
Hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones like he hasn't been eating, a carefulness to his movements that speaks of bone-deep exhaustion. His hands are shoved in his pockets, probably to stop himself from reaching for you. Or maybe just to hide how they're shaking.
For a moment, you both just stand there, two people separated by twenty feet of fluorescent lighting and an unbridgeable chasm of his making.
You watch his mouth form your name. Not quite speaking it, just shaping it, like even that much is more than he's allowed himself.
Your body moves without permission, taking one step toward him, and he takes a step back.
Right.
The message is clear. Crystal fucking clear.
You turn around, leave your half-full cart in the middle of the aisle, and walk out of the store with as much dignity as you can muster. Make it all the way to your car before the shaking starts, before you have to grip the steering wheel just to keep yourself anchored.
Twenty feet.
He couldn't even stand to be within twenty feet of you.
That night, you draft seven different resignation letters. Because fuck this. Fuck playing this game where you pretend you're okay, where you pretend that seeing him doesn't make you want to scream or cry or claw your own skin off just to escape the constant ache of the bond.
You don't send any of them.
But you keep them, just in case.
Week four is when Natasha shows up at your door.
"You look like hell," she says without preamble, pushing past you into your apartment.
"Thanks. Great pep talk. You can go now."
She ignores you, taking in the disaster you've let your living space become—dishes piled in the sink, curtains drawn against the afternoon sun, the general apocalyptic ambiance of someone who's given up.
"He's not doing any better, you know."
You laugh, bitter and sharp. "Good."
"He sits outside your building sometimes." She says it casually, like it's nothing, like it doesn't make your heart stutter and race. "At night. When he thinks no one will notice. Just sits in his car and stares up at your window like a fucking Victorian ghost."
"He made his choice."
"He made a stupid choice," she corrects. "Because he's a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot who thinks he's protecting you."
"From what?" The words explode out of you, months of frustration and hurt finally finding voice. "From having a soulmate? From being loved? From fucking touching another human being?"
"From him." Her voice goes soft, which is somehow worse than when she's being cutting. "From what he thinks he is. What he thinks he'll do to you."
"That's not his choice to make."
"No," she agrees. "It's not."
She leaves after that, but not before placing a small piece of paper on your counter. An address. A time. Tomorrow, 3 PM.
"He won't be there," she says. "But you should go anyway."
You stare at the paper for a long time after she's gone, memorizing numbers you'll probably never use.
But when tomorrow comes, you go anyway.
Because maybe you're just as much of a self-sacrificing idiot as he is.
Or maybe you're just tired of being angry.
Maybe you're just tired, period.
The address leads to a small gym in Brooklyn, the kind that smells like old leather and determination. You expect it to be empty—Natasha said he wouldn't be there—but there's someone in the ring.
Barnes.
He's working the heavy bag with mechanical precision, each punch measured and brutal. The sound echoes in the empty space—thud, thud, thud—rhythmic as a heartbeat. He doesn't look up when you enter, but his shoulders tense slightly, that particular stillness of someone who's hyperaware of their surroundings but pretending not to be.
Your stomach does something complicated. You've seen him around the Tower these past couple months since Steve brought him in, but always at a distance. Always with her—his soulmate, the one who somehow reached through seven decades of programming to find the man underneath. The one who touches him like it's breathing, casual and constant and necessary.
"Natasha send you?" His voice is flat, careful.
"Yeah."
He stops punching, turns to face you. Takes you in with those winter-gray eyes that see too much, catalog too much. There's still something unfinished about him, like he's a sketch someone's only halfway through shading. Two months of freedom haven't quite erased seventy years of being someone else's weapon.
"You look like shit," he says, which isn't what you expected.
"Thanks. Everyone keeps telling me that."
His mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. "Steve looks worse, if it helps."
"It does, actually."
This time he does almost smile, just a flash before his face settles back into its usual brooding. He unwraps his hands slowly, methodically, like he's buying time to figure out what to say. The motion is practiced, automatic—muscle memory that belongs to James Barnes, not the Winter Soldier. You wonder how many things like that he's had to relearn. How many small, human gestures he's had to excavate from under decades of conditioning.
"This is..." He stops. Runs a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. The gesture is so remarkably normal it makes your chest tight. "I don't usually do this. The talking thing. That's more—" A pause, like he's trying to remember who handles these things now, in this new life where he has friends instead of handlers. "That's not really my thing."
"Then why—"
"Because Steve's an idiot," he says bluntly. "And someone needs to explain why he's being an idiot, and apparently that someone is me." He tosses you a pair of wraps. "You know how to use these?"
"I'm on medical leave."
"Not asking you to fight. Just asking if you know how to wrap your hands. Gives you something to do while I..." He makes a vague gesture that somehow encompasses the awkwardness of the entire situation.
You do know how to wrap your hands. The familiar ritual of it—loop around the wrist, between the fingers, across the knuckles—gives your body something to focus on besides the constant ache under your ribs where the bond lives. He watches you do it, noting the slight tremor in your fingers that hasn't gone away since Brussels.
"He ever tell you about Peggy?" Barnes asks suddenly, like ripping off a bandaid.
You pause, stomach twisting into something complicated. "No."
"Course not." He leans against the ropes, and for a moment looks older than whatever age he's supposed to be. "From what I remember—and my memory's not exactly..." He taps his temple with his metal finger, the soft whir of recalibrating plates filling the silence. "But from what I remember, and what I've been able to piece together since, he loved her. Real love, not just wartime desperation. Had her picture in his compass, carried it everywhere. Used to moon over her like she hung the goddamn stars."
Your chest tightens, ribs suddenly too small for your lungs. You focus on wrapping your hands, but the fabric keeps slipping because your palms have gone sweaty.
"But he knew they weren’t soulmates."
"Yeah. And it didn't matter to him. He chose her anyway." Barnes's jaw ticks, and you can see him working through memories that might be his or might be stories he's been told—the confusion of it flickers across his face. "I was already gone when he went into the ice. But from what I've learned, when he woke up, she'd lived a whole life without him. Found her actual soulmate. Got married. Had kids. The whole American dream he thought he was fighting for."
The words land like stones in your chest, each one heavier than the last.
Steve chose Peggy. Chose her without destiny, without the universe's intervention, without biological imperatives. Just looked at her and decided she was worth defying fate for.
And you?
You're just what the universe assigned him. The consolation prize. The participation trophy for surviving into a century he never wanted to see.
Your hands still on the wraps. "That's not—she couldn't have known he'd survive—"
"Doesn't matter. Logic doesn't factor into it." His metal hand flexes, a nervous tic you've noticed before. "I think—and look, this is just my theory, thrown together from bits and pieces—but I think Steve maybe saw it as proof. That the universe was right all along. That choosing her was just him being stubborn, going against what was meant to be."
The words settle heavy in your stomach like you've swallowed cement. "So when he found out I was his soulmate..."
"Proof he's supposed to be here. In this century he's never felt like he belongs in." Barnes's voice goes quiet, almost careful. You can see him choosing his words, this man who's spent two months relearning how to have opinions. "Look, I've only been... back... for a couple months. I'm still figuring out who Steve is now versus who he was then. Half my memories of him are probably more fantasy than fact at this point. But from what I can see, if he accepts you, then he has to accept that this is where he's meant to be. That this is home."
"And he doesn't want that."
"He wants it so much it terrifies him."
Barnes moves to the speed bag, starts a rhythm that's almost meditative. His metal arm moves differently than the flesh one—more precise, less natural, like he's still learning to inhabit it.
"When they brought me in, when I was still more Winter Soldier than anything else, my soulmate—she didn't give me a choice." The rhythm falters for a moment. "Just kept showing up. Kept touching me even when I tried to—" He stops. Restarts. The sound fills the gym like a heartbeat. "Even when I was dangerous. Even when I couldn't remember her name five minutes after she said it."
You know this story, or pieces of it. Everyone at SHIELD does. But the way he tells it—halting, like he's still surprised by it—makes it feel different. Raw. Like he still can't quite believe someone chose to love him through the worst of it.
"I could have killed her. Almost did, more than once those first few weeks. But she kept coming back." The speed bag stills. His hands drop to his sides, and for a moment he looks lost, like he's forgotten what to do with them when they're not fighting. "I didn't get to push her away. Didn't get to decide I was too broken or too dangerous. She made that choice for both of us."
"And it worked out."
"Yeah." His voice does something strange here—goes soft in a way you didn't think it could. Like even after decades of violence, there's still something in him capable of gentleness. "Yeah, it did. But Steve—Steve's got this idea that he's protecting you. From disappointment. From loss. From him."
"That's not his choice to make."
"No. It's not." Barnes looks at you directly, and there's something almost sympathetic in his expression. "But he's gonna make it anyway unless someone stops him. And I'm too fucked up myself to be giving relationship advice, but—"
The gym door opens, cutting him off, and Barnes's entire demeanor changes instantly. It's like watching winter thaw in fast-forward—his shoulders drop, his face loses that careful blankness, even his breathing seems to ease. You turn to see a young woman entering, all bright eyes and gentle energy that seems to fill the space with warmth.
"Hey," she says, and Barnes is already moving toward her like she's got her own gravitational pull, like his body just naturally orbits hers. "You ready to go?"
"Yeah, doll. Just—" He gestures vaguely at you, and she turns that warm attention your way.
"Oh! You must be the one Nat mentioned." She extends her hand, and her smile is so genuine it makes your chest hurt. There's something knowing in her eyes, something that says she understands what it's like to love someone who thinks they're unlovable. "I've heard about you."
"Hopefully not all bad."
"Never." She squeezes your hand gently before releasing it. "How are you holding up?"
The question is so earnest, so carefully kind, that you almost start crying right there in the gym. Your throat goes tight, eyes burning with tears you refuse to shed.
"I'm—" You stop, unable to lie to this person who radiates the kind of empathy that makes dishonesty impossible. "Managing."
She nods like she understands, and somehow you think she does. Then she turns back to Barnes, and it's like watching a completely different person emerge. He leans into her space without seeming to realize it, his hand finding the small of her back with the kind of casual intimacy that speaks of constant touch, constant contact. The metal hand, you notice. The one that's caused so much damage. She doesn't flinch from it.
"You eat today?" she asks him quietly, reaching up to brush his hair back from his face. The gesture is so tender it makes your chest ache.
"Yeah, sweetheart." His voice is impossibly soft, private.
"What did you eat?"
A pause. His mouth quirks slightly—a ghost of whoever James Barnes was before the war, before the fall, before everything. "You."
She smacks his chest. "That doesn't count as food, James."
"Seemed pretty filling to me."
"Oh my god." She turns to you, cheeks pink but biting back a smile. "Six decades as an international assassin and he thinks he's a comedian now."
"I'm hilarious," Barnes says, completely deadpan, but his hand is rubbing small circles on her back, and the look she gives him—fond and exasperated and completely besotted—makes something crack in your chest.
Because this is what choosing looks like. This is what wanting looks like when it's not forced by biology or destiny or the universe's sick sense of humor.
Steve chose Peggy like this. Without destiny. Without force. Just looked at her and knew she was worth everything.
And you? You're just the assignment. The universe's way of telling him he can't go home. The anchor keeping him in a century he never asked for.
Your hands curl into fists inside the wraps, nails digging into your palms hard enough to hurt.
"We're gonna grab dinner," Barnes's soulmate says to you, still tucked against his side like she belongs there. "Real food," she adds with a pointed look at him. "You should come."
"I—no, thank you. I should—" You gesture vaguely at nothing, at the door, at escape.
"Think about what I said," Barnes interjects, not unkindly. His eyes are serious, understanding in a way that makes you want to run. "And..." He pauses, seems to wrestle with something. "Steve's an idiot. But he's an idiot who's been looking at you like you hung the moon since before Brussels. That's not the bond. That's just him."
They leave together, her hand in his, talking quietly about dinner plans and everyday things. You watch them go, Barnes letting her guide him toward something as simple as a meal, and the comparison burns in your throat like acid.
He never pushed her away. Even when he was dangerous, even when he was broken, even when he couldn't remember her name. He let her choose him.
But Steve? Steve took one look at the bond between you and ran.
Because with Peggy, he had a choice. He chose to love her.
With you, he doesn't. You're just what he's stuck with.
Your phone buzzes. A text from an unknown number.
He has a mission briefing tomorrow at 0900. Conference room C. Just saying.
You delete the text, but the information burns in your brain.
Maybe it's time to stop letting Steve Rogers make all the choices.
Even if you're just the consolation prize.
Even if you'll never be Peggy Carter.
Maybe especially then.
Conference Room C is empty.
You stand in the doorway like an idiot, staring at the polished table and empty chairs, at the blank whiteboard that mocks you with its pristine surface. The digital clock on the wall reads 09:07. You've been lurking in the hallway since 08:45, watching people filter in and out of different rooms, none of them Steve.
Of course.
Of course Natasha's intel was wrong, or maybe it was right and he changed locations when he realized you might—
Fuck this.
Fuck all of this.
The anger that's been simmering for weeks boils over, hot and sudden.
You're done.
Done waiting, done hoping, done letting Steve Rogers dictate the terms of your existence with his absence. Your hands shake as you turn to leave, the bond aching with fresh disappointment, and you're so focused on not crying that you don't hear the footsteps until—
A hand wraps around your elbow.
Even through the fabric of your shirt, you know it's him. Your body recognizes his touch like a key in a lock, every nerve ending suddenly alive, suddenly screaming. You're yanked sideways—not roughly, but with desperate efficiency—into a supply closet that smells like printer toner and industrial cleaner.
The door clicks shut, and you're plunged into darkness cut only by the thin strip of light under the door.
Your eyes adjust slowly, and when they do—
Jesus Christ.
Steve looks destroyed.
No, destroyed doesn't cover it.
He looks like someone reached inside him and hollowed him out with a rusted spoon. His uniform is torn—actually torn, with what looks suspiciously like blood staining the blue fabric black. There's a cut on his cheekbone that's already healing, but slowly, like even his enhanced body is too exhausted to properly function. His hair is matted with ash and something darker. His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide in the darkness, and he's breathing like he can't get enough air, like his lungs have forgotten how to work properly.
"Steve?" Your voice comes out tentative, barely a whisper.
He makes a sound—broken, animal, completely unintelligible. His hand is still on your elbow, grip tight enough that it should hurt but doesn't, and you can feel him trembling. Not just his hand. All of him. Vibrating with something that looks like shock but feels like barely contained devastation.
For a moment, you just stare at each other in the dim light. His chest heaves with each breath, and you can smell the mission on him—gunpowder and smoke and something else, something that makes your stomach turn. Death. He smells like death.
"Steve, what—"
He breaks.
With a deep, shuddering breath that sounds like it's being torn from the very center of him, Steve pulls you against him. It's not gentle. It's desperate, consuming, like a drowning man finding solid ground. One hand tangles in your hair, fingers twisting in the strands hard enough to make your scalp sing with that perfect edge of pain-pleasure. The other arm bands around your waist, and then—
His hand slides up under your shirt, fingers splaying wide against the bare skin of your back, and you both gasp.
The bond roars to life.
It's not the gentle warmth you'd imagined soulbonds to feel like. It's a flood, a tidal wave, every point of contact sending liquid heat through your veins like you're mainlining pure sensation. Your knees buckle, but he's got you, holding you up with desperate strength as he buries his face in the crook of your shoulder.
The noise he makes then—God, you'll hear it forever. Half sob, half relief, muffled against your neck as he breathes you in like you're the only thing keeping him tethered to earth. His body curves around yours, too tall, too broad, trying to eliminate every millimeter of space between you.
"Had to—" His voice is wrecked, barely recognizable, words pressed hot against your throat. "Had to find you. Couldn't—fuck, I couldn't breathe—"
His hand on your back moves restlessly, seeking more skin, and when his fingertips brush the edge of your bra, you shiver so hard he groans. The sound vibrates through your chest where you're pressed together, and you can feel his control fracturing, feel the way his hands shake with the effort of not taking more.
But he does take more.
His hand in your hair tightens, tilts your head back to expose your throat, and his mouth presses to your pulse point—not kissing, just resting there, feeling your heartbeat against his lips. The hand under your shirt spreads wider, slides higher, until his thumb brushes your ribs and you make a sound you've never made before.
"The mission," he says against your skin, and you feel more than hear it. "There was—Christ, there was this couple. Shopping for groceries when the building came down."
His whole body shudders, and he presses closer, pins you against the door with his weight like he needs the contact to stay upright. You can feel every line of him through the torn uniform—the hard planes of his chest, the way his stomach muscles clench with each ragged breath, the thick press of his thighs against yours.
"She died instantly." The words come out broken, wet. "But he—he lived long enough to feel the bond break. Have you ever—" His voice cracks. "I've never heard anyone scream like that. Like his soul was being ripped out through his chest."
"Steve—"
"All I could think about was you." His confession comes with another full-body shudder, and suddenly his mouth is moving against your throat, not kissing but talking, like he needs the contact to get the words out. "What it would feel like if—if I lost you before I ever—"
He pulls back just enough to look at you, and his eyes are wet, devastated, completely without walls. "I can't lose you. I can't. I'll die. I'll actually fucking die."
"You won't lose me," you breathe, but he's already shaking his head, already pulling you impossibly closer.
"You don't understand." His hand slides from your hair to cup your jaw, thumb brushing across your cheekbone with reverent desperation. "The bond—it's not—for normal people it's intense, but for me—" He makes a sound like he's in physical pain. "The serum amplifies everything. Every sensation, every emotion, every—"
He cuts himself off by pressing his forehead to yours, and you can feel him trembling with the effort of holding back.
"Steve."
"I need—" His hand at your back shifts, slides around to span your ribs, thumb brushing the underside of your breast through your bra, and you both freeze. The touch is electric, sends sparks racing down your spine, pooling low in your belly. "Fuck, I need to touch you. Need to—please. Please, just let me—"
"Yeah." The word comes out embarrassingly breathy, but you don't care because his hands are already moving, already taking.
He spins you suddenly, presses your back against the door, and then his hands are everywhere. One slides up to cradle your throat—not squeezing, just holding, feeling your pulse flutter against his palm. The other pushes your shirt up, fingertips tracing your ribs like he's memorizing you through touch alone.
"So soft," he murmurs, and it sounds like prayer. "How are you so fucking soft?"
His thumb finds the hollow of your throat, presses gently, and your head falls back against the door. He makes a sound like you've killed him, and then his mouth is on your neck, open and hot and desperate. Still not kissing exactly—more like tasting, like he needs to experience you with every sense.
Your hands come up to clutch at his shoulders, and he crowds closer, presses you harder against the door. His thigh slides between yours, and the pressure makes you gasp, makes your hips cant forward involuntarily.
"That's it," he breathes against your throat. "Let me feel you. Let me—"
His hand at your throat slides down, palms the curve of your breast through your bra, and the sound you make is embarrassing and needy and you don't care because he echoes it, his hips pressing forward to pin you completely.
"Been dying," he confesses against your collarbone, words muffled by skin and want. "Every day, dying by inches. Watching you walk past, smelling your shampoo in the hallways, hearing your laugh and knowing I couldn't—"
"You could have." Your hands find his hair, tangle in the sweat-damp strands, and he groans. "This whole time, you could have—"
"No." He pulls back to look at you, and his pupils are blown so wide there's barely any blue left. "Would've destroyed you. Consumed you. The bond, the way I need you—it's not normal. It's not healthy."
"I don't care."
"You should." But even as he says it, his hand is sliding up your ribs again, fingertips tracing patterns that make you shiver. "You should be terrified of how much I want you. How much I need to—"
He cuts himself off, jaw clenching, but his body betrays him. His hips press forward, and you can feel him hard against your hip, can feel the way he's shaking with want.
"Show me," you breathe, and he makes a sound like you've shot him.
"You don't know what you're asking."
"Then show me."
His control snaps like a rubber band stretched past its limit.
His mouth finds yours with the kind of desperation that makes your knees buckle, and it's nothing like you imagined during those long, empty nights. Nothing soft or careful or sweet. This is drowning. This is Steve Rogers trying to climb inside your skin through your mouth, one hand fisted in your hair to angle your head exactly how he needs it, the other pressed flat between your shoulder blades like he's trying to fuse your chest to his.
His tongue slides against yours, hot and demanding, and you taste copper—blood from where he's bitten his lip raw—mixed with something that's just fundamentally him. Something that makes your brain short-circuit, makes you grab at his shoulders just to stay upright. The bond roars to life under your skin, weeks of rejection suddenly reversed, and the whimper that escapes you would be embarrassing if you could think past the electricity racing through your veins.
"Fuck," he breathes against your mouth, not really pulling back, just speaking the word into you like he needs you to swallow it. His teeth catch your bottom lip, tug just hard enough to make you gasp, and he uses the opportunity to lick deeper into your mouth, thorough and filthy and completely at odds with Captain America's public persona.
Your back hits the door harder as he presses closer, and you can feel how affected he is—the way his chest heaves against yours, the tremor in his hands, the hard length of him pressed against your hip. It's overwhelming and not enough, too much and not nearly—
"Perfect," he growls, breaking away just long enough to trail his mouth down your jaw, teeth scraping in a way that's definitely going to leave marks. "You're so fucking perfect. Do you have any idea—" His hand slides under your shirt, fingertips tracing your ribs like he's mapping you for memory, "—what you do to me? How many meetings I've had to leave because you walked by and I could smell you?"
"Steve." Your voice comes out wrecked, barely recognizable. Your hands are in his hair now, tugging probably too hard, but he groans like you've given him a gift.
"I know, sweetheart. I know." His mouth finds your pulse point and sucks, and your vision whites out for a second. "I've got you. Let me—just let me—"
His hands shift with purpose now, one sliding down to grip your hip hard enough to bruise, the other pushing your shirt up, up, until cool air hits your stomach. And then—Jesus Christ—he's dropping to his knees with a fluidity that shouldn't be possible for someone his size, pressing his mouth to the skin above your waistband like communion.
You look down and nearly combust. Captain America—Steve—on his knees in a supply closet, eyes closed like he's praying, pressing open-mouthed kisses to your stomach that are somehow both worshipful and obscene. His tongue traces the line where your pants sit low on your hips, and your hands fly to his shoulders because your legs have forgotten how to work.
"Should've been doing this for months," he murmurs against your hipbone, and you feel the words more than hear them, vibrating through skin and muscle and straight to your core. "Should've been worshipping you. Should've—" His voice cracks, and suddenly his arms are banded around your waist, his forehead pressed to your stomach like he's hiding. "That man today, when his bond broke—the sound he made—"
"Steve." You card your fingers through his hair, gentle this time, trying to soothe whatever demon is riding him. He shudders against you, full-body, and presses closer.
"I can't lose you." The words come out muffled by your skin, but the desperation in them is crystal clear. "I can't. I won't survive it."
"You won't lose me."
It's probably a lie. You're both in a dangerous line of work. People die. Bonds break. But right now, with him on his knees looking like you're the answer to every prayer he's never let himself voice, you'd promise him anything.
"Promise." His hands tighten on your waist, and when he looks up at you, his eyes are wild, desperate, nothing like the composed soldier the world knows. "Promise me."
"I promise."
He surges up and kisses you again, different this time. Still desperate but searching, like he's trying to memorize you—the shape of your mouth, the sound you make when his tongue slides against yours, the way you shake when his thumb brushes the underside of your breast through your bra. It's overwhelming in a different way, intensity without hurry, and you're dizzy with it, drunk on the sensation of being wanted this badly by someone who's spent months pretending you don't exist.
When he finally pulls back, you're both wrecked. His lips are swollen, slick, and his pupils are blown so wide there's barely any blue left. You probably look worse—you can feel your hair sticking to your face with sweat, your mouth tender and used.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, thumbs stroking your cheekbones with a gentleness that makes your chest ache. "For Brussels. For after. For being such a fucking coward."
"I know." You do. It doesn't fix anything, not yet, but you know.
"I'll make it up to you." His thumb traces your lower lip, and you can't help the way your tongue darts out to taste it, salt and skin and Steve. His breath hitches. "However long it takes."
"You can start now." It comes out more breathless than the sultry suggestion you were aiming for, but something about your desperation makes his eyes go dark again.
He laughs, rough and ruined, and presses one more kiss to your mouth—this one soft, almost chaste, if not for the way his hand tightens possessively in your hair.
"Tonight," he says, and it sounds like a prayer. "Let me—let me shower, change, become human again. And then dinner. Real dinner. Where I pick you up and we go somewhere and I don't run when the bond makes me feel everything."
"And if you run?" You're trying for threatening but it comes out vulnerable, scared. Because he's run before. He's so good at running.
His hand slides to your throat, not squeezing, just holding, thumb pressed to where your pulse hammers against your skin. "You have my full permission to hunt me down and make my life hell."
"I will." And you mean it. You're done being the one left behind, the one reaching for someone who's already gone.
"I'm counting on it."
He steps back, and the loss of contact hits like cold water. Your skin feels too tight, too sensitive, nerve endings firing confused signals—where is he, why isn't he touching us, bring him back. You can see him feeling it too, the way his hands clench and unclench at his sides, the way his body sways toward you like you've got your own gravitational pull.
"Tonight. Eight o'clock."
"Steve?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time you have a bad mission, come find me. Don't wait. Don't hide. Just—come find me."
Something in his expression cracks open, vulnerable and raw and so un-Captain America it makes your heart skip. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He kisses you one more time—quick, fierce, a brand, a promise—and then he's gone, leaving you slumped against the door on legs that feel like jello. Your mouth is swollen, your skin still burning everywhere he touched, and you're pretty sure you've soaked through your underwear, but the bond...
For the first time in months, the bond doesn't ache.
It purrs.
It fucking purrs.
Tonight. Eight o'clock.
You're going to need a very long shower. And possibly a new pair of pants.
And maybe—just maybe—you're going to get what the universe has been trying to give you all along.
Even if you're not Peggy Carter. Even if you're just the consolation prize.
Right now, with the taste of him still on your tongue and bruises already forming on your hips in the shape of his fingers, you can't bring yourself to care.
"Tell me about Peggy," you say, and it comes out embarrassingly breathy because Steve's just shifted his hips in a way that makes stars explode behind your eyelids.
"Fuck." His hands tighten on your hips, fingers digging into soft flesh with bruising intensity. The pressure sends heat pooling low in your belly, makes your inner muscles flutter around him. "Can we... not?"
It's not the most unreasonable request in the world. He's inside you, after all, thick and perfect and stretching you in ways that make coherent thought impossible. You're straddling him on the couch, and he's maneuvering you exactly how he wants—one hand gripping your hip hard enough to leave fingerprints, the other splayed possessively across your lower back, controlling your rhythm with casual strength that makes you dizzy. Like you weigh nothing. Like you're his to position and please and wreck completely.
"Bucky says—"
A growl rumbles through his chest at the name, vibrating through your body where you're joined. His hand slides from your back to your throat in one fluid motion. Just resting there, feeling your pulse race beneath his palm. A reminder. A warning.
"Another man's name?" His voice is dark, edged with something primal that makes your stomach flip. "While I'm inside you?"
You gasp as he lifts you slightly, changes the angle, and your thighs shake with the effort of holding yourself up. "S-says she's the reason you stopped believing in soulmates."
Steve goes still. Not completely—he's still buried deep, still hard, still breathing like he's barely holding onto control—but his hands stop their restless movement, and his eyes snap to yours with something like exasperation mixed with disbelief.
"Are we really doing this?" His thumb presses against your pulse point, and you feel your heartbeat stutter. "You want to talk about someone else while I'm trying to fuck you through this couch?"
"I just—oh god—" Your train of thought derails as he rolls his hips up, deliberate and punishing, hitting that spot that makes your vision white out.
"What you need," he says, voice dropping to that Captain-giving-orders tone that should not work in this context but absolutely does, "is to stop overthinking and let me take care of you."
One hand slides up your spine to tangle in your hair, tugging just hard enough to make your neck arch, exposing your throat to his mouth. The other grips your hip, holding you still as he rolls his hips again, controlled and devastating.
"She wasn't my soulmate." The words are pressed hot against your throat between open-mouthed kisses that feel more like claims. "Loved her, yes. A long time ago. Thought I'd marry her if I survived the war. But she wasn't mine."
His teeth graze your collarbone, and your whole body shudders, nerve endings singing. The bond between you pulses with each heartbeat, amplifying every sensation until you can't tell if the pleasure is yours or his or some perfect fusion of both.
"Not the way you are." His hand in your hair tightens, forces you to meet his eyes. They're blown dark, barely any blue remaining. "Not even close to the way you are."
"But—"
"Sweetheart." He stops moving entirely, and you make a sound of protest that would mortify you if you could think past the need coiling tight in your belly. "Listen very carefully, because I'm only saying this once."
His hand leaves your throat to frame your face, thumb stroking across your cheekbone with gentleness that contrasts sharply with the possessive grip in your hair.
"She chose someone else. Her actual soulmate. And yeah, it messed me up. Made me think the universe was laughing at me." His hips flex slightly, involuntarily, and you both gasp. "But you know what I realized?"
"What?" The word comes out wrecked, barely audible.
"The universe wasn't wrong. I was." He releases your hair only to grip the back of your neck, holding you steady as he starts to move again, slow and deep and deliberate and exquisite. "I wasn't meant for that time. If she'd been my soulmate, I'd have stayed in the forties. Lived a quiet life. Had the house and the kids and the picket fence."
"That sounds—"
"Like everything I thought I wanted," he agrees, punctuating the words with a particularly deep thrust that has you seeing stars. "Until I woke up here. Until you walked into that briefing room two years ago, looking so goddamn competent and untouchable, and my body knew you were mine before my brain could catch up."
Your nails dig into his shoulders as he picks up the pace, and you feel his pleasure spike through the bond, mixing with yours until you can't separate them.
"I fought belonging here for so long," he continues, voice getting rougher, more breathless. "But you—Christ, you make me want to stay. Make me grateful the ice gave me you instead of her."
"Steve—"
"That’s it, sweetheart. No more names but mine," he commands, and then he's kissing you, deep and claiming and filthy. His tongue slides against yours, and you taste desperation and possession and something that feels dangerously close to devotion. When he pulls back, you're both panting. "And I want to keep hearing it. Preferably screamed."
You nod, words beyond you, and something dark and satisfied flashes across his face.
"Good girl."
The praise shoots straight through you, makes your cunt clench around him. He groans, forehead dropping to your shoulder, and his control finally, blessedly shatters.
He fucks up into you with purpose now, each thrust deliberate and devastating. His hands are everywhere—gripping your hips, sliding up your ribs, palming your breasts with possessive familiarity. Every touch feels magnified, the soul bond amplifying sensation until you're drowning in it. You can feel his pleasure mixing with yours, feeding back on itself in an endless loop that has you both gasping, clutching at each other like you might dissolve without the anchor of skin on skin.
"This is what I think about," he confesses against your throat, words punctuated by the snap of his hips. "Not the past. Not her. You. Always you. How you feel around me, how you taste, the sounds you make when you're close."
Your nails rake down his back hard enough to leave marks, and he hisses, the pain-pleasure bleeding through the bond making you both groan.
"The serum," he pants, rhythm getting erratic. "Fuck, the goddamn serum makes everything more intense. Every touch, every—I can feel you everywhere. In my blood, in my bones. Under my skin where I couldn't get you out even if I wanted to."
"Don't want you to," you manage, chasing your release, that coil in your belly wound so tight you might shatter.
"Never." It's a vow pressed into your skin with teeth and tongue. "Never letting you go. Mine. My soulmate, my—fuck, I'm close—"
His hand slides between your bodies, thumb finding your clit with unerring accuracy, and you're gone. The orgasm crashes over you like a tidal wave, pleasure so intense it borders on transcendent. You do scream his name, just like he wanted, and he follows you over, your name on his lips like a prayer, his hands holding you against him like you might evaporate if he loosens his grip.
You collapse against his chest, both of you panting, sweat-slick and trembling. The bond hums between you, satisfied and warm, and for the first time in months, you feel whole.
"So," you say once you can form words again, unable to help yourself, "just to be clear—"
He flips you suddenly, pressing your back into the couch cushions, and the predatory look in his eyes makes your breath catch. He's still hard, still inside you, and when he rolls his hips experimentally, you both groan.
"You want clarity?" His voice is dark, promising. He hitches your leg higher around his waist, slides deeper, and your head falls back. "Let me be very, very clear."
He pulls almost all the way out, then slides back in with devastating slowness, making you feel every inch.
"You are the only person I think about," he says, setting a rhythm that's slow and deep and intentional. "The only person I want. The only person who's ever made me grateful to be exactly where I am, when I am."
His hand slides up your thigh, grips behind your knee to open you wider, and the new angle has you gasping, clutching at his shoulders.
"The past is the past," he continues, voice steady despite the way his control is visibly fraying, tendons standing out in his neck. "And I plan to spend my future making up for lost time. Starting now."
"Steve—"
"That's it," he praises when you say his name, and rewards you with a particularly deep thrust that has your back arching off the couch. "Just like that. Let me show you exactly how not hung up on the past I am."
And he does.
Thoroughly.
By the time he's finally satisfied you understand, you've forgotten not just her name, but your own. The only thing that exists is him, the bond between you singing with contentment, and the absolute certainty that the universe knew exactly what it was doing.
Even if it took Steve Rogers seven decades to appreciate the gift.
well fuck. that was a year i guess. it was good, but i wasn't very active and i lowkey still need to answer the pms from my moots (i'm sorry). this year, there were a lot of fics i wanted to write but didn't because some wips needed to be attended to first. some of those wips got finished, others... did not. also i got ao3 whoop whoop!
all in all, thank u so much to my moots and followers, new and old, love u and miss u and giving u all consensual forehead kisses 🫡
total statistics for 2025:
no. of fics: 7
total wc: 66.2k
no. of wips: 7
genres explored in 2025:
romance, fantasy, dystopia, apocalypse, post apocalypse, canon divergence, medieval, omegaverse
top muses in 2025:
this was a hard choice between skz and mha. i reckon mirio togata is a joint winner with bang chan, just because the mirio brain rot was so fucking strong and because i spent so much time chipping away at the chan fic.
first fic of 2025: the way you were
- posted: january 12th
- pairing: ken sato x reader
- comments: this one i mainly worked on in the year before (it's mentioned in last year's wrapped actually), and i'm honestly very proud of the prose. not much else to report but i remember feeling very soft while i wrote it
last fic of 2025: embers
- posted: december 28th
- pairing: alpha!seungmin x omega!reader
- comments: this universe lives so utterly rent free in my head, please expect more like this - i really want to develop the magic system more and also raaaaah pack dynamics
longest fic of 2025: tungsten heart
- posted: december 18th
- pairing: cyborg!chan x cyborg!reader
- comments: this fic took a whole fucking year to write. it was a true labour of love. probably the most thought i've put into world building for a one shot
top 3 most popular fics of 2025:
alpha deku goes into rut
- posted: january 14th
-pairing: alpha!deku x omega!reader
- comments: solely written because of art here and here lmfao. the deku hours were strong
the princess's guard
- posted: april 10th
- pairing: bakugou x kirishima x reader
- comments: my top two being omegaverse is actually straight up diabolical but ok fine. i did like bratsuki in this one
beneath a crimson sky
- series started: august 22th 2024
- pairing: ot8 stray kids x reader
- comments: this series continues on despite the odds. i do love her tbf and i have great things planned i just need to get them going
space boo's personal pick:
the vigilante
- posted: august 20th
- pairing: vigilante!mirio x reader
- comments: oh god this fic holds a special place in my heart. fan serviced myself here with the angst and also just in general, shout out to the five other mirio fans ever
2026 goals:
i did manage to fulfill some of my goals from last year, namely practicing writing without the hyperfix and publishing that bloody ken sato fic. writing stamina improvement is questionable but ig i'm keeping up with BaCS (sort of) so that's something. this year's goals are a lot less ambitious because i'm sensing a busy period coming up but i'd like to continue work on my wips: cowboy izuku (needs salvaging), naga dabi and the halateez series. i also have a sci-fi idea for seungmin and a play w fire inspired idea for hyunjin and i really want to get round to them (hoping saying it here gives me accountability). also i'd like to do a few more headcanons for the maniac universe bc that's been swimming around the dome recently
hi i luv ur fics and saw ur pfp so thought you’d like this lol, thanks for existing and happy holidays!! 💖💖💖💖
for MEEEEE???
genuinely jumping up and down and all about rn HES SOOOOO CUTE RAAAAH look at his little blep ackkkk i love the bg colour that legit used to be my old blog colour eheheheh
thank u so much beloved tumblr user meikoo u made my day!! really appreciated ur rb on the bkg fic too i always giggle and swing my feet whenever one of those pops up in my notifs :DD hope u had great holidays and thank U for existing
TAZ MY LOVE IT'S BEEN SO FREAKING LONG I MISS U SM TUMBLR IS EVIL AND I FR DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE ACTIVE AGAIN HOW ARE YOU HOW ARE YOU HOW ARE YOUUU??
JKASHYUAGIHKUSUY HELLO
rip tumblr is evil and im semi active (???) again hehe, ive been so busy it's actually the bane of my life raaah but i had a nice christmas holiday w the fam (also very busy bc my sister likes to drag me everywhere instead of letting me go hermit mode).
enough abt me tho HOW ARE U WHAT HAVE U BEEN UP TO
