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โก = smut, 18+ ONLY
last updated: 09/10/2022
TOP GUN
โผ bradley 'rooster' bradshaw
strip that down โก
โ you crash your fiance's bachelor party
this is me trying part i | part ii | part iii โก
โ former rivals to acquaintances to friends to lovers
that's my girl โก
โ blurb 'bout a bj in the bronco
won't you keep lettin' me love you for a long time
โ you drive rooster home after one too many margaritas
โผ jake 'hangman' seresin
make me a... โก
โ family planning with jake (pwp)
sweat dripping on our dirty laundry โก
โ doing a load with jake god i'm sorry I typed that but it's true
kiss your fingers โก
โwhen teasing jake goes too far at rooster's housewarming...
you left me no choice but to stay here forever (right where you left me)
โ your friendship with jake over the years until everything changes
my feet canโt touch the bottom of you โก
โ jake offers to help you out but breaks your heart in the process
pairing: beefy grumpy!bucky barnes x sunshine!reader (soulmates au)
warnings: mentions of torture/pain, soulmate bond that shares injuries, emotional intensity, angst with comfort, soft tenderness, mutual pining, fluff in the end.
summary: Youโve spent your whole life carrying Buckyโs painโevery Hydra scar, every mission injury, every break in his body echoing in yours. Careful to the point of smallness, you swore youโd never add to his burden. But when fate drops you into the Towerโs medbay, the man behind all those phantom aches finally stands in front of youโand he isnโt ready for the truth youโve been holding all these years.
a/n: inspired by this ask. i loved everything about it. immediately locked in to get this written out like it deserved ๐ฅน๐
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You learn to count time in pain.
Not the ordinary kindโstubbed toes or paper cutsโbut deep, bone-dragging pain that drops like a storm out of a blue sky, leaving you breathless and clutching the edge of the kitchen counter while the kettle screams. It starts when youโre small. Youโre tracing the outline of a sun on construction paper and your wrist burns as if someone pressed a brand to the inside of it. You cry. Your mother doesnโt tell you it will be okay. She holds you and says, in the voice she keeps for truths that donโt bend, โYour soulmate must be very brave.โ
You donโt know what โHydraโ is. You donโt understand the hiss of electricity you sometimes taste at the back of your tongue, the static that makes your hair lift before the pain crashes down. You only learn to breathe through it. Count. In. Two. Three. Four. Out. Two. Three. Four. The first language you become fluent in is not English; itโs endurance.
By twelve, youโve got a system. Ice packs in the freezer. Soft clothes. Sneakers unlaced but ready by the door in case you have to pace the hallway at three a.m. to convince your body itโs yours. You keep a notebook that looks like it should be full of heart doodles; itโs filled with dates and symptoms, a crude map of someone elseโs suffering laid over your growing-up years. You get good at noticing the patterns. Thereโs no point asking why. The why hurts almost as much as the when.
There are months that feel like mercy. Weeks where your life is ordinary: school, hot chocolate, friends who tease you about the way you patch them up after PE like a one-girl med tent. Itโs always been there, that impulse. If someoneโs scraped a knee, you are half a step ahead with antiseptic and steady hands. Your teachers write โcalm under pressureโ on your report cards. You shrug. They donโt know that pressure lives in your marrow like weather.
You decide early: if your soulmate is going to live a life like this, you will build a life that can help him. You wonโt drag him under with your pain. Youโll be carefulโhyper-careful, the way other people are with words they only say once. You keep to sidewalks. You clip your nails. You never push a dull knife through a tomato. Your high school friends call you โgrandmaโ because you keep band-aids in a silver tin and text to make sure everyone gets home safe. You smile and let them laugh because this is the only way you know to love a stranger: become a place that doesnโt hurt.
You work, study, volunteer at the free clinic even when the head nurse warns you the hours will wring you dry. You learn to read vitals like sentences and stitch skin like youโre coaxing something holy back together. When pain hitsโsharp, crushing, electricโyou excuse yourself, breathe behind a door, splash cold water, return. Patients call you sunshine. You donโt feel like light, not really. You feel like a glass lamp with a storm inside it, but youโve gotten good at making the outside glow.
You hear his name before you meet him like a rumor in a language you almost understand. James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. Assassin. Avenger. Ghost. The way people say it, you could believe heโs a half-made myth wrapped in a manโs body. You watch grainy footage once, because you think maybe you should know what his shadow looks like if youโre going to spend your life holding its weight. He moves like heโs been taught to be both bullet and bruise. He doesnโt look at the camera. He never looks at the camera.
When you get the offerโthe Towerโs medbay is hiring, the pay is good, the benefits are better, and the NDAs would make your law professor weepโyou read it three times and put the phone down. The Tower. A job where your carefulness might matter; where your quiet hands might do something for the man whoโs been hurting you by accident since you traced suns in crayon. You donโt know if heโs there, if he exists the way the headlines claim, if heโs healed or breaking or in between. You only know that your chest says yes so fiercely it feels like a door blowing off its hinges.
New York is less myth and more noise than you expect. The Tower is glass and steel and gravity; itโs also the medbay coffee machine that sputters like a sleepy dragon and a stash of mismatched mugs, three of them chipped. Dr. Cho is as brilliant as the stories promised and almost unnervingly kind. She looks at you the way she looks at the bioregenerative cradle: as if youโre a technology worth understanding. โWe do medicine differently here,โ she says on your first day, and she isnโt talking about equipment. โWe donโt treat the body as separate from the person who lives in it.โ
โGood,โ you say softly. โI donโt either.โ
The first time you hear his voice, youโre inventorying suture kits. It isnโt a dramatic entrance. No alarms. No sprinting down gleaming hallways, no blood blooming across floor tiles. Itโs the slow murmur of a debrief drifting through the medbay door someone propped with a lab stool. He doesnโt sound like a ghost. He soundsโฆ tired. Kidding, a little, around the edges, the way people bargain with exhaustion. Someone laughsโSam Wilson, probably, that warm raspโand then a lower rumble says, โIโm fine,โ and your lungs forget their job. Pain doesnโt spike. Thatโs new. Thatโs alarming. Thatโs relief so sudden it feels like a bruise pressed and found not tender.
You donโt see him. You donโt need to. You sink onto a stool and wrap your hands around your own wrists until the urge to go to the doorway and lookโjust lookโpasses. Youโve spent years not chasing pain. You can give yourself one day not chasing a man.
It turns out to be three days, because life is busy and the team rotates through like weather systems: in, out, sometimes dropping with laughter, sometimes with the hard silence of missions that didnโt go the tidy way. You keep their secrets like stitchesโneat, small, essential to healing. You make sure thereโs always a clean blanket folded on the end of the cot that faces the window. You set aside the mugs that get used most. You learn Natashaโs tell for โdonโt ask.โ You become very good at saying, โIโve got you,โ and meaning it.
When you finally do see him, itโs not heroic. Itโs a Tuesday. Youโre rewrapping Clintโs wrist because the idiot archer has decided his tendons work better if wrapped in stubbornness. The door opens. The air changes. You donโt look up because youโre a professional. You tell Clint to stop using his injury as an excuse to avoid dish duty and tie a tidy knot with your teeth while you reach for tape.
โBarnes,โ Clint says, because heโs a menace. โMake the sad eyes at her; maybe sheโll guilt-release me.โ
โNot a chance,โ you say, and glance up on the smile, and that is how you meet the man who has taught you your own pain.
He is larger than the headlines made him. Not in heightโthough heโs that tooโbut in presence, like a storm-tossed ship that has decided to be harbor instead. His hair is longer than youโd expected, his mouth softer, his shouldersโGod, his shoulders. The synthmesh shirt heโs wearing gives you every detail you donโt deserve. Heโs carrying a bruise on his cheekbone like heโs done this before and will do it again.
โHey,โ he says, slow, as if the word might shatter if he isnโt careful. His eyes find you, and something at your breastbone loosens without permission. The thing about learning someone in pain is that you can tell when they arenโt. Today, right now, he isnโt. You exhale a smile you didnโt know youโd been holding.
โHi,โ you return, equally gentle. You will not drop the room into reverence because a man with a tragic dossier walked through the door. You will not orbit him like heโs gravity. You will thread this moment into the cloth of the day, and see if it holds.
โI need a quick look,โ he says to the room in general, and to you specifically he addsโalmost apologeticallyโโI took a hit. Nothing big.โ
Clint makes a noise that means โdefine big.โ You pat his wrist and say, โIโll trade you out with Dr. Cho and check Mr. Nothing Big. Weโll see which of you wins the โmost dramatic patientโ medal this week.โ Clint huffs and you stand, finally, on legs that feel steady because they remember what steady has been for years.
โSit,โ you tell the soldier youโve never touched, and he obeys so instantly itโs almost a prayer. You take in the details that matter: blood at the shoulder seam, sluggish, just enough to tell on itself; a rip at the shirt thatโs more resigned than angry; the set of his jaw like heโs holding a drawer closed with his knee while the contents lean hard against it.
โArm?โ you ask, reaching out, hovering your fingers over the metal. He nods. You lift. The weight is mercifully familiar because youโve trained on the Towerโs simulators; the heat is real and particular. He watches your hands, not your face. You donโt mind. Youโve always known people from the outside in.
The wound is ugly and simpleโshrapnel tore a crescent low along his deltoid. It should have felt like your body was being carved open while you slept or ate cereal or argued with insurance forms, but it didnโt. You felt a echo, maybe, last night: a tug, a silent alarm. Not the old lightning. Not the chair.
Youโre cleaning it when you see the scar.
At first itโs just another pale seam among many on his shoulder, a crisscrossing atlas of old maps. Then your vision tips, tilts, and your hand goes still. Thereโs a crescent there, almost the same path as the wound youโre treating, and another line that forked off it years ago, long-healedโno, not years. You know it like you know your own heartbeat. You know it because sometimes you scratch at your upper arm in the shower not because it itches but because youโre remembering something that never touched your skin. You saw this scar once, with your fingers. It was the first time he survived long enough for the wound to become a story. You bled for it and then you didnโt.
He shifts, and the world comes back. You have to breathe, remember? In. Two. Three. Four. Out. Two. Three. Four. You finish cleaning, wrap, tape, and only then, only when the practical magic is done, do you say, โYouโre okay.โ
He huffs. โDefine okay.โ
โAlive. Not leaking. Clear for lunch if you promise to actually chew.โ
It startles a laugh out of him, rusty and perfect. He lifts his eyes. You shouldnโt have been unprepared; youโve been preparing for this your whole life. But thereโs something about the colorโlake-water in shadow, a bruise after the sting fadesโthat lands in your throat. You could drown there and not mind.
He sees your reaction. He sees everything. His expression changes in a way youโll learn means heโs thinking about something dangerous like youโre a safe place to put it. โHave we met?โ he asks softly, like heโs already sorry for taking a piece of you with the question.
โNo,โ you say, and itโs true. Itโs also the closest thing to a lie youโve ever told. You swallow, choose gentleness, choose truth that fits in your mouth. โIโm new. First week.โ
โYouโre good,โ he says, as if heโs been doing this long enough to know. He flexes the arm experimentally and doesnโt wince. You watch relief move through him like light. You try very hard not to cry.
โEat,โ you say, because youโve used up your bravery for the hour. โAnd come back tomorrow so I can admire my work.โ
โOrder, huh?โ
โSuggestion,โ you amend, and then because youโve been living careful for so long youโve forgotten what it feels like to let a door swing open, you add, โI make good coffee. As a bribe.โ
His mouth does a thing you will think about later, when the city is quiet. โIโll take it,โ he says. โThe coffee. And the bribe.โ
He leaves. You stand in the middle of the medbay with your heart beating like itโs relearning tempo. Clint slings his legs off the cot and smirks. โSo,โ he says, โyou gave the Winter Soldier a juice box and told him to chew. Bold strategy.โ
You make a face and flick his chart. โGo. Youโre cleared. But if you open that jar of pickles with your wrist again, Iโm telling Natasha.โ
You donโt intend to get hurt. You never do. Being careful is your religion. But life, with her crooked sense of humor, likes to test faith.
It happens on a Thursday two months later. The team is out. The medbay is quiet. Youโre stocking gauze on the high shelf you shouldnโt be using because youโre five-six on tiptoe and this is a job for someone with a ladder. You tell yourself to be sensible. You tell yourself not to reach. You reach. The metal box shifts. You catch it. Victory, you think, and then the corner kisses the back of your hand with enough enthusiasm to leave a mouthful of glass.
Itโs small. Itโs nothing. Itโs the sort of cut you could put a cartoon band-aid on and call it character-building. You stand there, watching bright blood well up like your body is surprised by its own richness, and you feel something you havenโt felt in a very long time: terror so swift it edges into shame.
You do not hurt him.
You move on instinct. Sink to the stool, grab gauze, clamp down, breathe, breathe. Itโs fine. Itโs barely anything. You are overreacting after a lifetime of training yourself not to. You sit there counting seconds until the hot panic cools to embarrassment, and then the door slams open so hard the stool skates under you and crashes into the cabinet.
โWhere?โ Bucky demands, and heโs across the room before you can assemble words for his face. He looks wild. Sweat slicks his temple. Thereโs road-dust in his hair and blood on his knuckles and a kind of grief in his eyes you have seen beforeโfrom the inside.
โWhere,โ he says again, softer, as his hands find your hands. He pulls your fingers away from the gauze with care that makes you dizzy. When he sees the cut, the relief he lets out is almost obscene, like heโs been holding his breath under a long wave. His thumbs tremble at your wrist. โYou,โ he says, and the word is as full as prayer. โYou. It was you.โ
You donโt realize youโre crying until he makes the soft noise people make when they find a fragile animal and want to prove they wonโt hurt it. He looks up at you and doesnโt look away. He doesnโt look away.
โI felt it,โ he says, simpler than the ownership brand youโve both been living under. โOn the bike, it hit me so hard I thoughtโโ He stops, swallows. Tries again. โIโve been feeling things for years I couldnโt name. And then months of quiet, like someone was trying not to breathe too loud. I thought I was going crazy or getting better or both. And then this, just now, like a firefly sting, and I knew.โ
You laugh, wet and breathless. โFirefly.โ
โDonโt make fun of me; I have a limited bug vocabulary.โ
He is shaking. So are you. You reach up and touch his faceโfirst time, first real timeโand his eyes close like the lightโs too bright. His skin is warm. He leans into your palm the way a man leans into a lighthouse in the middle of a ruin. โHi,โ you whisper, because you donโt know what else to do with a moment this large.
He opens his eyes. His hand comes up to cover yours at his jaw, large and steady. You can feel the edge of a scar under the pad of your thumb, the fine, faint seam you traced once with shaking hands while he slept on a cot three rooms over. He lifts your palm enough to kiss the heel of it and the world tilts.
โIโm sorry,โ he says, and the apology is too big for the room. โFor all of it. Forโฆ Christ, youโve beenโhow long?โ
โAll of it,โ you echo, but your voice is gentle. โDonโt be sorry you were alive.โ
He makes a hurt noise and laughs at the same time. โYou sound like Cho.โ
โIโll take that as a compliment.โ
โIt is.โ He swallows. โI kept thinking I had a guardian angel. Or a ghost. Orโโ He looks down at your hand again, at the careful little crescent of red sealing itself at the edges. He is not horrified by blood; anyone can see that. He is horrified by this: that his life might land anywhere near yours with sharp corners. โYou were careful,โ he says, and itโs not a question. โI can feel it. Now that I know, I can feelโthereโs space where there shouldnโt be. You made a quiet place out of yourself.โ
You laugh again, crooked. โI didnโt want to hurt you.โ
He lifts his head. For a long time he just looks. โYou can, you know,โ he says quietly, because heโs Bucky Barnes and heโs braver than grief made him. โIf you want to live. You can stub your toe and burn your tongue and climb a stupid ladder andโโ He inhales, wincing like the truth costs him. โI donโt want you small. Not for me.โ
The careful thing would be to nod. To say youโll think about it. To promise a theoretical you freedom tomorrow while you keep yourself wrapped in bubble wrap today. But you are holding his face and his hands are holding your hands, and you have been breathing around this man for years without the words for him. The truth falls out: โI want to be brave in ways that donโt break you.โ
He kisses you like an answer.
It isnโt a cinematic kiss; the medbay doesnโt swell with music. Itโs clumsyโboth of you shaking, both of you a little stunned. But his mouth is warm, and he is careful in a way you understand down to the cell. He is careful the way you have been. He cups the back of your head. Itโs not a collision; itโs an opening.
When you pull back, he presses his forehead to yours and exhales. โI wonโt always be good at this,โ he warns, like you havenโt read the manual written on your own nerve endings. โIโm grumpy. I get it wrong. Iโโ
โMe too,โ you say, so fast and fervent that his laugh chokes. โIโm soft, not stupid. And Iโm not here to fix anything. Iโm here to be with you while you fix it yourself.โ
He is very still. You can feel him rerouting the way rivers reroute after a landslideโslow, hungry, unstoppable. He nods. His hand is still on yours, both of them, metal and flesh, and the balance of them might be your favorite thing youโve learned so far. โOkay,โ he says. โThen be with me while I do this right.โ
He kneels.
Itโs not a proposal. Youโre not ready for that, and he knows it. Itโs something older. Heโs always had a soldierโs instincts for ritual, and this is one: he kneels, taking your hand in both of his like itโs a flag heโs been carrying too long and is finally returning to its rightful owner. He flips your hand gently so the back faces up. He studies the small, fresh cut the way he studied maps once. He leans in and kisses beside it, not on it, and when he looks up again thereโs a wet shine in his eyes he isnโt ashamed of.
โMatching scars,โ he murmurs, the words slow with reverence. โA story only we know.โ
You breathe out a laugh that doesnโt hurt. โYouโre getting poetic on me, Sergeant.โ
โDonโt tell anyone,โ he says, and stands, and kisses you again like he likes you. Like he will like you in the mornings and the messy middles. Like the bruise-color in his eyes is light coming back, not leaving.
You learn quickly what the Tower already knows: Bucky Barnes is grumpy like a cat is grumpyโperformative, selective, deeply amusing when you know the tells. He is also gentle like gravity is gentle: constant, inescapable, the thing that pulls you home. He looms, sure, but it turns out that looming can be a love language. He has to get used to you swatting at his chest when he tries to open your doors for you, not because you donโt like chivalry but because you have hands and youโd like to use them. He has to get used to you laughing in his mouth when he glowers at Tony for teasing you, because the teasing is affectionate and you can handle affection. He has to learn that if he scowls at your coffee mug and says, โYou should drink water,โ you will hand him a matching mug and say, โYou should drink water,โ and then youโll both drink water and pretend you won something.
He worries. You donโt mind. Worry is another word for โI know what it is to be powerless, and I refuse to be indifferent.โ He touches your shoulders to feel that youโre solid. He watches you walk down stairs like the stairs have offended him. He loves you with his body like a fortress and with his mouth like a promise. He learns to say โIโm taking a walkโ when pain flares, and you learn to say โIโll come with youโ or โIโll be here when you get backโ depending on which kind of alone he means.
The team, of course, knows before either of you is ready to make speeches about it. Natasha gives you a clean nod that means welcome to the club of women who will set the world on fire to keep our boys warm. Sam hugs you once and mutters, โThank you,โ hot and awkward into your hair. Tony pretends to be scandalized and then pesters Bucky with a PowerPoint called โSafe Practices for Pain-Linked Partners,โ which includes, among other gems, a slide that reads DO NOT DO ANYTHING DUMB, BARNES, with an animated arrow pointing at your face labeled ALSO YOU.
You live anyway. Thatโs the point. You stub your toe on the medbay stool and you both yelp and end up on the floor laughing so hard you scare the interns. You burn your tongue on pizza and he licks his own on reflex and makes a betrayed noise so theatrical you cry with laughter. You trip on a curb and he catches you and then trips with you because momentum is a law and the two of you grinning on the sidewalk like a PSA about joy is a fact. Pain happens. It doesnโt own you. The point is, finally, that youโve stopped letting fear steal the future from you in tiny, obedient bites.
Thereโs one nightโthe kind of night New York does best, fog rolling off the river like a secret coming homeโwhen youโre both on the roof because the elevator decided to sulk and the stairs smell like Tonyโs latest experiment. You sit with your back against the lip of the roof, knees up, sweatshirts zipped, mugs cradled. The city hums below like an animal settling its bones. Bucky slides down the wall until his shoulder is pressed to yours, metal warm through the cotton.
โYou know the worst one?โ he asks after a while, like you were already mid-conversation in some parallel life.
โThe worstโฆ scar?โ you ask. You can feel him smile into his mug.
โPain.โ He tips his head against yours. โThe one I hated the most.โ
You go quiet the way you do when someone hands you a small, important box. He doesnโt make you guess. He never makes you guess when it matters.
โIt was when I realized I was hurting someone else,โ he says, soft like a confession into church dust. โNot just in the field. Notโโ He swallows. You put your hand over his knee, grounding. He draws a shaky breath. โSometimes it hit like an echo. Not mine. Quieter. I didnโt know what to call it, and I sure as hell couldnโt tell anyone. But it made meโฆ careful, I guess. More careful than the job wanted me to be. If I could take the hit instead of giving it, I did. If I could remove a fight from a room with my body, I tried.โ He huffs out a breath. โSam says thatโs why Iโm still alive. Stubborn kindness.โ
You blink hard against the sting in your eyes. โYou did that for me,โ you whisper, and it feels too big and too small at once.
โI didnโt know it was you,โ he admits. โBut yeah. For you. For whoever you were. I wantedโGod, this is sappyโto build a world where you didnโt have to carry quite so much of me. Even if I didnโt get to see it.โ
You want to say a lot of things. You choose one. โYou do.โ
He turns his head to look at you, and the roof becomes a quieter place. โI do,โ he says, and then he laughs, soft and disbelieving. โI do.โ
You donโt bring up the chair often. When you do, itโs not to pull pain up like a bucket from a well and splash yourselves with it. Itโs to set the bucket down between you and say, โThis is heavy. Letโs carry it together.โ Sometimes he tells a story about something smallโhow the edges of the metal bit into his palm, how he learned the songs of the machine and where he could hide his mind between notes. Sometimes you tell a story about the day you learned to count breaths. You compare scars. You donโt rank them. You decide the only metric that matters is โwe are still here.โ
He touches your arm one evening and says, โThere,โ and you look down and see what he means: a faint pale crescent near your deltoid, one you didnโt get yourself, one you have touched absentmindedly for years. Youโve never loved your body more than in that moment, marked with your shared history like a secret tattoo.
โMatching,โ you say, smiling. โI like the symmetry.โ
He grins, and his grin is a revelation every time. โI like that I can kiss it,โ he says, and does, and the spark you feel is not pain. Itโs recognition wearing joy like sunlight.
People ask, later, if itโs hard to love someone whose pain is also yours. You tell themโwhen you answer at allโthat love was never the problem. Love was the reason. You were careful for him, and then he was careful for you, and then you were brave together, and that was the bridge you walked across into a life that had room for both the hurt and the healing.
You donโt keep the notebook anymore. Or rather, you keep it, but you start a new one. The first page isnโt a date and a list of symptoms; itโs a grocery list that reads like a poemโtomatoes, basil, the good olive oil, bread, ice cream, patienceโand beneath it, in the slanted hand you get when youโre shy, you write, โTell Bucky the firefly story.โ He snorts when you do, because he pretends to mind being teased. Then he kisses you until you canโt see the page.
There are still nights where pain rolls in without warning and you ride it out together, your breath syncing, his hands anchoring, your voice in his ear counting him through it the way you counted yourself through it for years. There are mornings when he comes back from a run with a split lip because New York sidewalks donโt care how many medals you buried. You clean it; he kisses your fingers; you bring him an ice pack for his pride. There are days so quiet you forget to be grateful and then remember and sit down on the floor just to feel it properly. There are thunderstorms. There is laughter so sudden it hurts. There is hurting that softens because you name it and hold it like a sparrow.
And there is this: a pair of matching scars with a story only you know. Not because you keep it secret out of shame, but because stories belong most to the people who lived them. If anyone asks, you can say what Clint says when heโs feeling dramatic and wants to pretend heโs not: โItโs complicated.โ If anyone listens harder, you can say what Dr. Cho would: โItโs healing.โ If anyone pushes, you can shrug and say, โItโs us.โ
Sunshine and storm. Grumpy and gentle. Careful and brave. Two people who met in a room that smelled like antiseptic and coffee and chose, over and over, not to make each other smaller.
The world will write its own versions of youโmission reports, gossip columns, memes. Let them. Your version is the one that matters: you, in the medbay, saying โEat,โ and him, hours later, coming back with a sandwich he cut in half, placing one on a napkin in front of you like an offering. You, on the roof, mugs warming your hands, telling him about the day you decided to become a healer for a man whose name you didnโt know. Him, sprawled on his back beside you on a patch of warm concrete, pointing out constellations he remembers from a childhood spent on a different shore. You, stubbed toe and all, laughing. Him, kissing the crescent on your arm before a mission like itโs a compass.
If love is a language, you are fluent. If healing is a map, youโve drawn a new one together, all the old scars turned into landmarks, the routes between them marked with the most unglamorous and holy word you own: โhome.โ
And if pain still comesโbecause it will, because life does not stop being life just because it learned your names
Astarion, once he's comfortable with you, is definitely the type of man to sleepily reach for you when he realizes that you've rolled out of his arms at night.
Like the moment, and I mean the moment, that he doesn't feel you wrapped up in his arms, he's up. Sure, he's groggy as all hell and he can't properly see anything around him -- but all he knows is that he's not holding you when he most definitely should be.
He'll push himself up onto his elbows, squinting to see that you've turned yourself away from him and rolled out of his arms. Your back is turned to him, but he knows that it wasn't intentional.
With a fanged yawn, Astarion reaches for you again. His arms loop around your waist and turn you around, tucking your head beneath his chin. Instinctively, your legs tangle with his own, your arms adjusting to wrap around his midsection.
guy with telepathy but he can't use it because every time he tunes into someone else's mind their unique perception of all of reality is so fundamentally different than his own and so incomprehensible that he just immediately passes out like a lovecraftian horror protagonist