C's corner: Apparently we're just building an entire extended universe of Thunderbolts being absolute disasters... and honestly? I couldn't be happier. 😂 This is another Thunderbolts Shenanigans request, I genuinely loooove writing these idiots. They're chaotic, dramatic, somehow incredibly competent on missions, and then immediately lose all sense the second they're back at the tower. It's one of my favorite little corners to write.
A huge thank you to my lovely anon for sending in this request! 🫶🏽 I had so much fun with it, and I really hope it lives up to your expectations. Thank you for trusting me with your ideas and for giving me another excuse to unleash complete Thunderbolts nonsense.
As always, thank you to everyone who's reading, liking, reblogging, commenting, and screaming alongside me. You all make writing these stories so much fun.
WARNINGS: Nothing but Thunderbolts chaos and absolutely no respect for normal team communication.
✍🏽 WC: 4.1K+
SUMMARY: When one ridiculous handshake turns into an entire secret language, you and John Walker accidentally create a communication system made of looks, noises, phrases, and pure nonsense. Naturally, the rest of the Thunderbolts refuse to be left out.
It starts because John Walker can't stop looking at you. Not in the normal way. Not in the romantic, soft-eyed, forehead-kiss way that usually makes your stomach do something embarrassing behind your ribs.
No. This is worse. This is tactical staring.
Across the training room, John lifts his chin exactly two centimeters.
You narrow your eyes.
He narrows his back.
You tilt your head toward the weapons rack.
He glances at it, glances at Bucky, then glances back at you.
You blink once.
John's mouth twitches.
Then, without saying a word, he steps behind Bucky, reaches around him, plucks the foam training knife off the rack, and tosses it underhand across the room.
You catch it without looking.
Bucky, who has been standing directly between you and John the entire time, goes still.
Slowly, he turns his head toward you. Then toward John. Then back toward you. "What was that?" he asks.
You look down at the foam knife in your hand. "What was what?"
"That."
John grabs his water bottle from the bench. "Knife transfer."
"With eye contact?"
"Situational awareness," you say.
Bucky's jaw tightens. "You two are getting worse."
"We're getting efficient," John says.
"We're developing as professionals," you add.
Bucky points between you. "You made eight facial expressions and committed theft."
"It wasn't theft," John says. "It was logistics."
Bucky stares at him.
John drinks his water.
You toss the foam knife back at Bucky. He catches it, annoyed that he catches it well, which somehow makes the entire thing better.
That should've been the end of it.
Unfortunately, you and John have never once let anything be the end of anything.
The handshakes were bad enough. Now, apparently, you and John have evolved.
You don't just have handshakes anymore.
You have looks. Sounds. Phrases. Small, stupid little bits of language that mean nothing to anyone else and everything to you.
It happens naturally.
A hum means come here.
A double click of the tongue means look left.
A sharp inhale through your teeth means absolutely not, Walker.
John's little "mm" means I'm listening, but I'm about to do something dumb.
Your "hm" means I know, and I'm deciding whether to stop you.
A slow blink means get me out of this conversation before Alexei explains his squat-based greeting again.
Two fingers tapped against your own wrist means food theft.
One eyebrow up means we're not telling them.
Both eyebrows up means we should absolutely tell them, but in the worst way possible.
And then there are the phrases.
"Ceiling weather" means the vibes are terrible.
"Blue fork" means someone's lying.
"Parking lot rules" means nobody panic, but definitely prepare to panic.
"Soup is armed" means you've both lost the plot and there's no returning from it.
You don't know how it started.
You're pretty sure John said it once during a mission when an informant served suspicious stew with a gun hidden under the table.
Now it means everything. It means danger. It means awkwardness.
It means Bucky looks like he's two seconds from throwing someone through drywall.
It means Valentina has entered the room wearing sunglasses indoors.
It means Alexei is about to say something that'll require a team apology.
It's a system. A perfect, terrible, deeply stupid system. And for three blissful weeks, nobody notices.
Then Bob ruins everything.
You're in the common room with John, Ava, Yelena, Bucky, and Bob. Alexei is somewhere upstairs, allegedly "resting," though the thuds in the ceiling suggest he's either exercising or fighting furniture.
Valentina stands by the windows, reviewing mission details from her tablet. "The target will likely attempt to escape through the east corridor."
John makes a small sound beside you. "Mm."
You don't look at him. You keep your eyes on Valentina. "Mm-hm," you answer softly.
John shifts his weight.
You tap two fingers against your thigh.
He clears his throat.
You hum once.
John nods.
Bucky's eyes move between you. Ava's tea pauses halfway to her mouth. Yelena stops eating chips.
Valentina doesn't notice, which is probably the only mercy left in the room.
Bob, sweet Bob, kind Bob, Bob with the survival instincts of a scented candle, raises his hand. "Sorry," he says. "Are they talking?"
Valentina looks up. "Who?"
Bob points at you and John.
The room goes silent.
You and John slowly turn toward Bob.
Bob's hand lowers. "Was I not supposed to say that?"
"No," you say.
"Definitely not," John adds.
Valentina removes her sunglasses.
Ava sets her tea down with the delicate precision of a woman preparing for war. "I knew it."
Yelena sits forward. "I knew there were noises."
"There aren't noises," you say.
John nods. "No noises."
"You literally just hummed at each other," Bucky says.
"That was breathing," John says.
"You said 'mm.'"
"That's a natural human sound."
"You answered it," Ava says to you.
"I'm also human."
Yelena points a chip at you. "Debatable."
Valentina closes her tablet. "Explain."
You smile politely. "No."
John smiles too. "Can't."
"Classified," you both say together.
Alexei bursts into the room at exactly the wrong moment wearing gym shorts, one sock, and the expression of a man who heard gossip through concrete. "Who has classified thing?"
Nobody answers.
His eyes widen. "It's handshakes again."
"It's not handshakes," Bucky says.
Alexei gasps. "Worse?"
Yelena nods gravely. "They've developed a sound language."
"It's not a sound language," you say.
John leans closer to you. "Ceiling weather."
You snort.
Every head turns.
Ava's eyes narrow. "What does ceiling weather mean?"
"Nothing," John says.
"It means something," Yelena says. "Write it down."
"There's nothing to write down." You insist.
Yelena grabs the whiteboard marker from the side table like she's been waiting for the universe to hand her purpose.
She writes:
WEIRD LANGUAGE
Under it, she adds:
Mm = suspicious
Ceiling weather = unknown
Knife transfer = crime
"That wasn't a crime," John says.
Bucky mutters, "It was close."
Valentina looks at the board, then at you. "How many of these are there?"
You and John look at each other. Terrible mistake.
Because John raises one eyebrow.
You raise both.
He presses his lips together.
You tilt your head.
He lets out the smallest laugh.
Yelena screams. Not loudly, just one sharp little "Ha!" of triumph. "You are doing it right now!"
"We're not," you say.
"You are!" Bob says, delighted. "That was a whole conversation."
"What did it mean?" Ava asks.
John folds his arms. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Bucky points at him. "That means it meant something."
Alexei looks betrayed all over again. "First, secret handshake. Now secret face?"
"It's not secret face," you say.
"It is face espionage."
John nods once. "That's actually pretty good."
"Don't encourage him."
Alexei marches to the whiteboard and writes FACE ESPIONAGE in massive letters.
Valentina pinches the bridge of her nose. "I'm not approving this."
"You don't approve team culture," Yelena says.
"I absolutely do when team culture becomes mouth Morse code."
John looks at you.
You look at John.
You both click your tongues once.
Valentina's head snaps up. "No."
"What?" you ask.
"No clicking."
John points at himself. "I didn't click."
"You clicked."
"I have teeth."
"That's not a defense."
Ava leans forward. "What does the click mean?"
"Nothing," you say.
"It means something," Bucky says.
"Why are you so invested?" John asks.
"Because I'm apparently surrounded by human walkie-talkies."
Bob raises his hand again. "Can I learn it?"
"No," everyone says.
Bob lowers his hand.
You immediately feel guilty.
John does too, because he's tragically soft under all that military-grade smugness. He sighs. "Okay. Bob can learn one."
You turn to him. "John."
"What?"
"We talked about this after the handshake incident."
Bob perks up. "You talked about me?"
"No," you say.
"Yes," John says at the same time.
Bob looks pleased anyway.
Yelena draws a new column.
AUTHORIZED STUDENTS
Bob: pending
Alexei: denied
Bucky: pretending not to care
Ava: already spying
"I am not spying," Ava says.
Yelena doesn't look at her. "You're memorizing blink patterns."
Ava takes a sip of tea. "That's not spying. That's threat assessment."
Bucky closes his book. "Fine. What's 'blue fork'?"
You freeze.
John freezes.
The room sharpens.
Bucky smiles very slowly. "Interesting."
Ava points. "That one's real."
"Everything's real," Yelena says, scribbling.
John looks at you.
You look back.
One blink.
A tiny hum.
Two fingers tap against the table.
John nods.
Bucky groans. "Stop doing that."
"We're not doing anything," you say.
"You just had a board meeting with your eyelashes."
Valentina looks deeply tired. "I need every phrase on that board by end of day."
You laugh.
She doesn't.
"You're serious?"
"Very."
John slips his hands into his pockets. "Can't. It's organic."
"It's nonsense."
"Organic nonsense."
Alexei slams a fist against his palm. "Then we make our own."
The room stills.
Ava says, "No."
Yelena says, "Yes."
Bucky says, "Absolutely not."
Bob says, "I'd like a phrase."
Valentina says, "Nobody is making a phrase."
Alexei lifts both arms. "Too late. Revolution has begun."
It does, in fact, begin.
By dinner, Yelena has invented a noise system consisting of three clicks, a hum, and one sharp whistle that makes Bucky flinch every time.
"What does that one mean?" Bob asks after she whistles at him across the kitchen.
"It means you are standing in front of the drawer I need."
Bob steps aside. "Oh. That's useful."
"It's also awful," Bucky says.
Yelena whistles again, this time at him.
He doesn't move.
She whistles louder.
He turns slowly. "Do it again and I'm eating your chips."
She gasps. "You wouldn't."
John leans toward you. "Blue fork."
You choke on your water.
Ava's head snaps up. "That means lie."
"No, it doesn't," John says.
"Yes, it does," Bucky says.
You look at him. "How would you know?"
"Because he said it when Yelena told Bob she didn't steal his pudding."
Yelena points at Bucky. "You have been collecting data too."
"I have eyes."
"And feelings," you add.
Bucky's stare goes flat.
John murmurs, "Ceiling weather."
You lose it.
Ava looks furious that she doesn't understand. "This is intolerable."
So Ava builds her own system.
It's not fun. It's not silly. It's terrifying.
One eyebrow shift means move.
Two blinks means duck.
A slow turn of her mug means shut up right now.
A gentle tap of her spoon against the table means if you don't stop talking, I'll phase my hand into your snack and ruin your day.
Nobody knows how they know this, they just do.
During breakfast the next morning, Alexei begins explaining the emotional symbolism of his proposed "solidarity grunt language." Ava taps her spoon once.
The entire table goes silent.
Alexei frowns. "Why did everyone stop?"
Bob whispers, "Spoon."
Alexei looks at Ava's spoon.
Ava smiles pleasantly.
Alexei sits down.
John leans toward you. "Parking lot rules."
You nod. "Soup is armed."
Bucky pushes his chair back. "Nope." He leaves.
Yelena writes:
SOUP IS ARMED = escalation
PARKING LOT RULES = possible disaster
SPOON = Ava has seized control
By the end of the day, Bob has invented his own form of communication.
It's mostly thumbs.
Thumbs up means good.
Two thumbs up means great.
One thumb sideways means confused but supportive.
Two thumbs sideways means confused and afraid.
No thumbs means he's gone nonverbal because the room got too weird.
It's surprisingly effective.
John respects it. You respect it. Ava respects it.
Yelena studies it like Bob has accidentally rediscovered an ancient language.
Alexei hates it because it doesn't involve enough yelling.
Bucky becomes fluent immediately. This annoys everyone.
"How do you understand him?" Yelena asks when Bucky passes Bob the salt after one sideways thumb and a small nose scrunch.
Bucky shrugs. "He's clear."
"I'm clear," Alexei says.
"No, you're loud."
"I'm loudly clear."
Ava taps her spoon.
Alexei sits down again.
Then Bucky, because he's the worst kind of hypocrite, develops his own system without admitting it.
It's grunts. Not random grunts. Specific grunts.
A low one means no.
A shorter one means absolutely not.
A sigh through the nose means I heard you, and I'm ignoring you.
A soft hum means maybe.
A barely audible "hm" means yes, but I'm annoyed about it.
John figures it out first.
You catch him standing beside the fridge, watching Bucky stare into it.
Bucky grunts.
John hands him the leftover pasta.
Bucky grunts again.
John gives him a fork.
Bucky hums.
John nods. "You're welcome."
You stare.
Bucky shuts the fridge.
You point between them. "Did you just speak Barnes?"
"No," John says.
Bucky says nothing.
"That was Barnes."
"It wasn't."
"He grunted and you provided pasta."
John shrugs. "Context clues."
Bucky walks away with the pasta.
You follow him with your eyes. "He said thank you."
John nods. "Yeah."
"He did not say thank you."
"He did."
"He hummed."
"That was thank you."
You stare at him.
John smiles. "You're jealous."
"I'm not jealous."
"You're jealous I speak Barnes."
"I speak Barnes."
From across the room, Bucky grunts.
You point at him. "See?"
John tilts his head. "That meant 'stop involving me.'"
Bucky grunts again.
John nods. "And that meant 'especially you.'"
Your mouth falls open.
Bucky leaves the room.
You turn slowly toward John. "How dare you."
He grins. "What? I'm multilingual."
You flick his shoulder.
He catches your hand automatically.
Palm.
Backhand.
Fist.
Roll.
Then you both pause. The whole team isn't there. It's just the two of you in the kitchen.
John's thumb brushes yours, the private little last step of the new handshake.
Your chest softens.
He smiles at you.
Then, from behind the pantry door, Alexei whispers, "I knew there was romantic thumb."
You scream. "Son of a...!"
John yanks the pantry door open.
Alexei is crouched inside with a bag of pretzels and the expression of a man who has witnessed history.
"Why are you in the pantry?" John demands.
"Research."
You press a hand over your heart. "You almost killed me."
Alexei points at your joined hands. "You have secret romance language too."
John looks down at your hands. You do too. Neither of you lets go.
Alexei's eyes get wetter. "Beautiful."
"No," John says. "Not beautiful. Illegal."
"You can't call emotional discovery illegal."
"I can, and I will."
Yelena appears behind Alexei. "Did he find something?"
You narrow your eyes. "Were you both in the pantry?"
Yelena holds up a finger. "Different reasons."
"That doesn't make it better."
She looks at your hands. Her face lights up. "Ah. Romantic thumb."
John points at her. "Don't name it."
"Already did."
By the next morning, romantic thumb is on the whiteboard.
John tries to erase it. Yelena slaps his hand away with the marker. "Documentation matters."
"Our privacy matters," John says.
"You lost privacy when you communicated soup danger in front of the group."
"That's not legally binding."
Ava walks by, glances at the board, and says, "Romantic thumb sounds like a medical condition."
Bob gives two thumbs sideways.
Bucky grunts.
John points at him. "Exactly."
You look at John. "What'd he say?"
"That he agrees."
Bucky grunts again.
John's mouth twitches. "Okay, fine. He said, 'Stop translating me.'"
"You're enjoying this too much," you tell him.
"I'm finally good at languages."
"You know English and Barnes."
"And you."
Your expression softens before you can stop it. John realizes what he said at the exact same time you do.
The kitchen goes very quiet.
From the table, Bob slowly gives two thumbs up.
Ava taps her spoon once, but gently this time.
Yelena whispers, "This is cinema."
Bucky sighs through his nose.
John clears his throat and looks down at the counter.
You nudge his boot with yours. He nudges back. A tiny thing. A private thing.
Naturally, everyone notices.
Alexei walks in carrying a bowl of cereal, sees the room, sees your feet, and gasps. "Foot language!"
"No," you and John say together.
"Too late," Yelena says, writing.
Things devolve from there. The team develops too many systems.
Yelena's whistle language becomes impossible because she keeps changing meanings based on "emotional texture."
Ava's spoon code spreads outside meals. She starts carrying one in her jacket pocket like a weaponized utensil.
Bob's thumb system becomes official enough that Valentina asks him for a mission status and he responds with one thumb up, one thumb sideways, and a nervous smile.
Bucky's grunts are translated by John against Bucky's will.
Alexei creates a full-body communication system that involves poses.
His "danger" pose looks like stretching.
His "snack shortage" pose looks like grief.
His "team unity" pose looks like he's about to throw a couch.
Nobody likes it, but everybody understands it. That's the problem.
During one mission briefing, Valentina pauses mid-sentence when she realizes nobody has spoken for almost four minutes.
Yelena whistles.
Ava taps her spoon.
Bob gives one thumb sideways.
Bucky grunts.
Alexei strikes a pose by the window.
John makes a small sound.
You murmur, "Ceiling weather."
The entire team shifts positions at once.
Valentina lowers her folder. "What just happened?"
"Nothing," John says.
"You all just had a staff meeting without words."
"That's efficient," you say.
"No. That's unsettling."
Alexei holds his pose. "It's unity."
"It's a communications hazard."
Bucky grunts.
John says, "He disagrees."
Bucky points at John without looking.
John says, "And he'd like me to stop."
Valentina stares. "You can understand him?"
"Unfortunately," Ava says, "yes."
Valentina looks at you next. "And what does ceiling weather mean?"
You shrug. "Depends."
"On what?"
"The ceiling."
She closes her eyes. "I hate this team."
Yelena whistles twice.
Bob gives two thumbs up.
Ava taps her spoon.
Alexei changes pose.
Bucky grunts.
John leans toward you. "Parking lot rules?"
You glance at Valentina's slowly tightening grip on her folder. "Parking lot rules."
Valentina points at the door. "Everyone out."
Nobody moves.
Ava taps her spoon once.
Everyone gets up.
Valentina looks horrified. "Did the spoon just outrank me?"
"Yes," Yelena says.
"Absolutely," you say.
John nods. "Clean chain of command."
Valentina throws the folder onto the table. "No more nonverbal communication during briefings."
Bucky grunts.
John opens his mouth.
Valentina points at him. "Translate that and I'll assign you to Wilson for a month."
John shuts his mouth.
You lean in and whisper, "Sam's squad."
John shudders. "Don't joke."
The ban lasts twenty-two minutes.
It breaks because Alexei tries to ask Bob to pass the potatoes at dinner without speaking, using only his "snack shortage" pose.
Bob misreads it as "emotional injury" and tries to hug him.
Ava taps her spoon.
Yelena whistles.
Bucky grunts.
John translates Bucky.
You say, "Soup is armed."
Valentina walks in, sees everyone frozen around a bowl of mashed potatoes, and walks right back out.
For a while, it's just funny. Stupid funny. Tower funny.
The kind of funny that sticks to the walls and makes the place feel less like a government-funded mistake and more like something almost warm.
Then one night, after a bad mission, it becomes something else.
Nobody talks much after you get back.
There's blood on John's sleeve that isn't his. Dirt on your cheek. A bruise blooming along Bob's jaw. Bucky's left hand keeps flexing like he's still waiting for a fight to come back.
The common room is quiet. Not peaceful, just tired.
Ava sits on the floor with her back against the couch. Yelena is beside her, knees pulled up, a bag of chips unopened in her lap. Alexei stands at the window, arms crossed. Bob is curled in the corner of the sofa, both thumbs tucked into his fists.
John stands near the kitchen.
You're by the table.
His eyes find yours across the room.
No smugness. No joke. No performance.
Just John.
He lifts his chin slightly.
You breathe in.
He taps two fingers once against his wrist.
Not food theft, not this time.
You know what he means.
You okay?
You give him one slow blink.
Not really.
His jaw tightens.
Bucky grunts softly from the couch.
Everyone looks at him.
Then tilts his head toward you.
John understands before anyone else does.
Go.
John crosses the room.
No one jokes. No one writes it down. No one whistles.
He reaches you and holds out his hand.
You take it.
Palm.
Knuckles.
Thumb.
He doesn't kiss you yet. He just holds your hand between both of his and rests his forehead against yours.
You close your eyes.
Behind you, Bob gives one small thumbs up.
Ava doesn't tap her spoon.
Yelena doesn't write anything down.
Alexei sniffles loudly and pretends he doesn't.
Bucky grunts one more time.
John exhales a soft laugh against your forehead. "He says we're annoying."
You laugh too, but it comes out shaky.
Bucky mutters, "That one was obvious."
The room loosens just a little.
Later, when everyone starts drifting away, you and John stay behind in the kitchen.
The city shines outside the windows, all glass and gold and late-night traffic.
John leans against the counter beside you. "You okay?" he asks.
You look at him. "You already asked."
His brows pull together. "No, I didn't."
You tap two fingers against your wrist.
His expression softens. "Oh."
You bump your shoulder against his. "I like that one."
He nods. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He looks down at your hands, then holds his out. "Think it needs an answer."
You slide your palm against his. "An answer?"
"For when you aren't okay."
Your fingers curl around his.
His thumb brushes your knuckles.
You think about jokes. About soup. About ceiling weather. About all the ridiculous, cobbled-together ways you've learned to find each other across rooms and chaos and bad days.
Then you press your thumb gently against the inside of his wrist.
Once.
His breath catches.
"There," you say quietly.
John looks at you like you've handed him something fragile and glowing. "That means stay?" he asks.
You nod. "It means stay."
His thumb settles over yours. "Okay," he says. "I can do that."
You smile. "You're good at that."
"I'm good at you."
Your heart does something ridiculous again.
From somewhere behind the couch, Alexei sobs, "Beautiful!"
John's head drops forward.
You close your eyes. "Why is he always hiding?"
Yelena pops up from behind the couch beside him. "He's not hiding. We're observing."
Ava appears from the hallway holding her spoon. "I told them this was weird."
Bob peeks over the back of the couch with both thumbs up.
Bucky stands in the doorway, arms crossed. "I was dragged into this."
"No, you weren't," Yelena says.
He grunts.
John points at him. "That means yes, he was."
Bucky glares.
Valentina's voice calls from down the hall. "I swear to God, if anyone has invented another language, I'm transferring all of you."
Alexei whispers, "Workers' rights language still pending."
Ava raises the spoon.
Everyone shuts up.
You look at John.
John looks at you.
One blink.
One hum.
A tiny smile.
He squeezes your hand.
You press your thumb to his wrist.
Stay.
He leans down and kisses you softly.
From the hallway, Valentina sighs. "I heard that."
John pulls back just enough to murmur against your mouth, "How do you hear a kiss?"
You grin. "Face espionage."
Yelena gasps. "She said it!"
Alexei cheers.
Bob gives two thumbs up.
Ava taps her spoon twice, which apparently means applause now.
Bucky grunts, which John wisely doesn't translate.
And because the room is already lost, because this team has never once known when to leave well enough alone, because John Walker is still unbearable and you're still no better, you point at him.
He points back.
Palm.
Knuckles.
Thumb.
Kiss.
Then you both turn toward the others and click your tongues once.
i have a request if you feel up to it! i think this would be a funny moment between john walker and reader!! a bit of hurt/comfort and maybe soft john since reader is injured?
💬 1 🔁 17 ❤️ 101 · Person A: "...is there any particular reason as to why you're carrying me?
Person B: "You're slow."
Person A: "I'm als
You are nearly indestructible, but somehow you still wind up injured and in John Walker's arms.
A/N: I'm a huge sucker for Colossus so I thought it would be fun to give reader his power set :> To make the linked dialog in the request work, reader's weight is referenced but I tied it to her mutant abilities to keep reader less described.
Rating: PG (just some adult language but no smut)
WC: 3.1k (complete)
CW: Mostly fluff, hurt/comfort, banter, reader is a thunderbolt/new avenger, reader is a mutant, reader is she/her, references to intimacy but no smut, romance, nicknames (honey), reader and bob are besties, reader is endangered and injured but not mortally, some light action but nothing overtly violent.
You earned the nickname after your second mission, after an entire building came down on your head and you walked away without a scratch. Wrecking Ball. It was John’s idea (exasperated then eventually affectionate), but the others adopted it fast.
Up until recently, Alexei held the title of Most Likely to Cause Avoidable Property Damage, but then you showed up. And unlike Alexei, John wanted to get you in bed, which really bolstered his ability to handwave the chaos and the unpredictability and all that collateral damage.
It did not, however, make fighting at your side simple, because it didn’t matter how many times John asked you to wait, hang back, let him take point, you refused to listen, charging ahead of him.
And now, hunkered down together behind a waist-high retaining wall, John could just feel you getting ready to do something stupid. Both of your comms crackled as Ava’s voice arrived from the other side of the warehouse. “It’s no good. The mines are everywhere, and it will take me way longer than a minute to reach the back door.”
“Hold position, we’ll compare notes and regroup,” John said, grunting as another sniper’s volley zipped over the wall, right between the two of you. “Yelena, you got anything?”
“Nope.” Her voice was bored, tired, her actual person somewhere north of the target location, one eye likely down the sights of her own rifle as she tried to pick off stragglers.
“This would be a whole hell of a lot easier if one of us could fly,” John grunted, just to you, comms off. Bob wasn’t there to get offended, but he knew it might get back to him; you and Reynolds were attached at the hip, a fact John had told himself didn’t matter. It was none of his business, and anyway, you weren’t meant to be part of the team forever, just until Bob came off the bench.
Next to him, ass in the dirt and eyes on the sky, you bristled. “I’ve got this, okay? This is why I'm here. I can clear a path for you. The others can loop back around, follow us inside.”
“Out of the question. If the mines don’t tear you apart, the snipers will.”
You shrugged, actually shrugged, at the possibility of surviving four hundred yards of pressure-trapped ground and two apparently incredibly accurate snipers. It was the kind of courage John ordinarily admired, even aspired to, but now, when it was coming out of you, when it meant you would probably get yourself killed, it just made his chest ache.
“John, I’ve shrugged off a nine-fifty before. I’ll be fine.”
And you weren’t just bragging or bullshitting. John stared at you, shield braced on his right side, pistol in his left hand, another large caliber bullet zinging over your heads and burying itself in the Croatian soil six feet away. The day was wearing on and none of you were any closer to breaching the facility. There were hostages, which was always a sore spot for him, dredging up memories of missions run by a man wrapped in principles, armed with a righteousness he’d learn to bitterly regret.
You were brought on to do a job. He should just let you do that job, but fuck, it was hard to when you were looking at him like that, equal parts sweet and dangerous, your soft skin already hardening into its osmium shell before his eyes.
It never got easier to watch. The first time you did it in front of him, it made his stomach twitch. Now, it was just…fascinating. One minute you were flesh and blood, the next you were bright as a diamond, armored from head to toe in glittering silver metal.
“This is a terrible idea,” John stated, taking a ragged breath.
“Yeah, I’m full of them.” Your voice echoed, hollow in the alloy shell of your chest.
“Reynolds is going to kill me if you don’t come back.”
“Who knows? Might be enough to bring Sentry out,” you said lightly, but John saw the flicker of doubt in your eyes even after they had gone agate white, as impervious and shiny as the rest of you. You leaned across and grabbed his shoulder, squeezing. “You came up with the nickname, pal, can’t be surprised when I live up to it.”
“Hey—”
The rest of what he said was lost, swallowed with a flinch as you hauled yourself up and leapt over the barrier.
“What the hell am I looking at?” Yelena asked, voice sparking to life in his ear. She must have noticed you sprinting headlong into a football field’s worth of ordinance through her scope. “Is she crazy?”
“Yes,” John answered, lifting his shield to peer over the barrier, watch your insane, probably doomed run.
The ground shook from the density of your footfalls, and then from the first mines going off. Glancing blows at first, but John saw you stagger after the third explosion, listing to the left. Somehow, you kept your feet. A sniper round clanged off your shoulder, only throwing you off-balance for a few steps. More explosions. So much dust and grit and drifting powder that John couldn’t see you anymore through the haze. His heart crammed itself into his throat. “Jesus. Get ready to move,” he told the others. “We’re not wasting this chance.”
Memories felt like dreams as you passed in and out of consciousness. There was metal in your mouth, dripping down your throat. Not the normal kind, not your metal, not the organic version that coated you like a spray finish when you wanted it to. No, this was the wrong kind of metallic taste, thick and sludgy, wet on your tongue, crusted to your nose.
Nothing made sense yet, so you just closed your eyes for a while. Just a little while.
Your mind took you somewhere else.
You could see the golden lights blinking over the long, black table in the New Avengers briefing room. The air conditioning was turned up way too high. The aesthetic couldn’t stand in starker contrast to the Institute, where everything was wrapped in vintage leather, the walls were homey, beaded wood and the carpets were faded from use. It always smelled like tobacco, even though the Professor had outlawed smoking indoors years earlier. There were sneaky offenders keeping that smell drifting through the halls; you had suspects, but you never snitched.
But the Watchtower? Rubberized steel, high tech holographic displays, refrigerators that talked, for some reason, glossy floors, floor to ceiling windows, a plasticky, corporate stink over everything with sparing clues that humans inhabited the place, like tiny, determined weeds poking through urban concrete.
A VISIT GEORGIA magnet on the fridge, a bathrobe left haphazardly over a black leather sofa, homemade liquor hidden among the high class, expensive bottles, cases of imported Pritty Limón shoved to the back of the pantry…
You hadn’t seen those things your first day, you just saw a bunch of tired, skeptical faces. One stood out in particular—handsome, severe, thick brows pulled low over blue eyes that boiled with impatience.
You had done your homework on the bus down. You knew who was mean mugging you and who was watching with a more open mind, though you did not know who the sweet-faced guy in the corner was; that was a mystery until Barnes went around the room, forcing everyone to grunt out a name and a greeting.
“She’s on loan from an institute upstate, just for a few months,” Bucky Barnes explained, while you were presented like the day’s catch. A fucking whopper, honestly, though none of them seemed to understand that yet.
“On loan?” Bob asked, scratching the side of his head. “Like from a library?”
“Yeah,” Bucky said with a smirk. “Like a library book you can throw through a concrete wall.”
“Up you go.”
That wasn’t right. Nobody had picked you up off the ground that day in the Watchtower. But now… Your head felt like a bowling ball on a pipe cleaner. You could taste that disgusting tang in your mouth again. The world returned to you in snatches of washed out gray and white, like you couldn’t see in color yet.
“I’ve got you.”
Arms. Strong, sure arms. Your vision sharpened gradually, presenting you with a ceiling that had caved in, exposed wiring, skeletal rebar and a cloud-covered sky. Someone’s boots crunched over broken glass and scattered plaster. The more you became aware of yourself and your surroundings, the more you wanted to go unconscious again. Your chest throbbed like a car had been dropped on it. You couldn’t feel your left arm, but it did occasionally brush your hip as John Walker carried you out of a smoldering ruin.
“Where are we?” you asked, coughing up blood and something gritty.
“Croatia. Borovik. What’s the last thing you remember?”
John’s face and beard were smeared with dirt. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his beret. That was sad. You liked his little hat.
“You.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead, but you noticed his jaw tighten, a muscle flutter in his cheek.
“We were… sitting? Maybe?”
“Strong start.”
Your head rolled across his shoulder, tucking against his neck. He smelled good somehow, like gunpowder and sweat and a woodsy sweetness that was all his own. “No, I remember now. You were yelling at me, but I was already running.”
“That could be any of our missions,” he sighed.
“What’s jingling?”
You had become aware of a chime-like music coming from somewhere beneath you.
“All the nine-fifties you survived,” he said. “Six, by the way.”
“Why did you pick them up?”
“Lot of questions for someone who should be dead.”
“Here’s one more: why are you carrying me?”
John adjusted you in his arms, but it kind of felt like he just wanted you closer. Maybe you were imagining things. Maybe you were dead and this was just a dream. “You're slow.”
“I'm also heavy.”
“You’re slower than you are heavy,” John said, finally glancing down at you. He was almost smiling. Almost. Then he saw your arm hanging loose at your side and that smile went away quick.
“I am not slow.”
“You are when you’re—” He caught himself, clearing his throat, jaw setting as he brought you out into the fresh air. Somewhere in the distance, you could hear the whir of the jet as it sat idle, engines churning. “You’re slow right now, let’s leave it at that.”
“You’re trying to distract me,” you said, studying him, absorbing the next quiet flinch he tried to hide. “How bad is it?”
“Well. You’re not going to be running through any minefields for a few weeks.”
“And my shoulder is dislocated. Left one.”
John finally did allow himself a flicker of a smile. “And that.” He carried you in silence for a moment, then grunted: “God, you’re tough.”
He said it the way some men said, “God, you’re beautiful” or “God, you’re sexy.”
It made you heat up. It made the metallic taste in your mouth ease.
“Sorry I’m so heavy,” you said, half-joking. “You should try to carry me when I’m transformed sometime.”
“No thanks.”
You headbutted his neck as hard as you could, which wasn’t hard, given the state of you. John laughed, dry, his concern keeping it from reaching his chest.
“Don’t apologize for anything,” he added. “You got us inside that hellhole.”
“Good ole Wrecking Ball, am I right? Boom boom pow pow.”
He sighed.
“Did the hostages make it?”
John shifted you in his grasp again, nodding. “Every single one.”
“Good.”
The way he was carrying you, rocking you on each step, was kinda relaxing. You curled against him, sleepy, breathing in his scent, remembering the first look he had ever given you, like he couldn’t possibly be impressed, like you were just a stopgap, an interloper, Bob’s stand-in until they could have the real deal.
And now his scratchy chin was tucked down to meet your forehead, and his hands were digging into you like if you went down, he’d go down with you. Nobody had ever even tried to pick you up before. It was straining him, but he was determined not to let you or anyone else see it. Along with the sniper rounds in his pocket, the shield on his back jangled quietly as he brought you back across the torn-up minefield to the jet. There was still some distance to go, and he was so warm and cozy, and damn, but you were exhausted…
“No, no, no,” he jostled you against his chest. “Can’t go to sleep, honey—”
“Honey,” you echoed, drowsy. That did wake you up a little. You stirred against his throat, smiling. “Honey.”
“We call everyone that in Georgia.”
“We’re not in Georgia. We’re in Croatia. Borovik.”
“Smart ass.”
“Usually.”
John shook his head, snorting. “Just…don’t fall asleep. You could have a concussion; you have to stay awake until we can get you checked out.”
“It’s a long flight. I’m gonna fall asleep.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You gonna keep me awake?”
John rolled one shoulder, adjusting your weight across his arms again, his biceps flexing against you. “Yes, fine, just stay with me.”
You were almost to the jet, the wind roaring around you, a wall of mechanical sound slamming into you, which was certainly keeping you alert for the moment. Ava and Yelena were there, standing watch over the hostages, guiding you both up the ramp and inside.
“We’ve got stops to make,” Yelena was saying once everyone was aboard. “Can she hold on?”
“I’m fine,” you insisted, trying to salute with your left arm before remembering it was dead weight.
“Yeah, you look great. Never better,” Yelena scoffed, rolling her eyes as she hurried off toward the cockpit. “Secure her somewhere, okay? We’ll get her home soon.”
Home. That was a weird one. It didn’t feel wrong, sound wrong, but it was still… strange.
The word stuck with you as the jet soared over the Atlantic, emptier now that the hostages had been returned. And in the quiet, with the monotone hum of the plane and the cool air and a dense blanket tucked up to your shoulders, it was getting harder and harder to stay awake.
“Don’t drift off on me.”
John’s voice floated down to you. He knelt beside your head, on your left. He had already offered to pop your shoulder back in twice, but the thought almost made you puke. His phone was resting on his right thigh, bright, lighting him from below.
“You lost your hat,” you said, trying to think of things to keep your mind busy.
John smirked. “I have more.”
“I should get a hat.”
“You don’t need a hat, you can turn into metal.”
“Your hat is wool, what’s it going to protect you from? A bad hair day?”
While typing something on his phone, he ignored that. “Team back in New York was worried about you. I told them you’re alive. They’ll let Reynolds know.”
You blinked up at him, swaying slightly as the jet curved on a left turn. John kept his gaze locked on his device, away from your face. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Bringing up Bob.”
His next comment came out thick, graveled. “You like each other.”
“Like each other? Are we in third grade?”
He shrugged that off, put his phone away, settled down onto his butt, one leg bent, the other scooped under it.
“He doesn’t call me honey.”
John’s brows twitched up, mouth wobbling before he wrangled his expression back down to something neutral. Sedate. Empty. “He’s thinking about it.”
“You’re doing it.”
“It was an accident. It just…came out.”
“Oh, okay, night night then.”
John clamped his mouth shut, eyes closing on a grunt, snapping open again when you nestled down into the blanket and turned your head to the side like you were going to sleep. He touched your middle, right over your waist, rocking you carefully. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because we work well together and I don’t want you to fucking die, okay?”
You eased back around to face him, eyes soft and hazy in the freezing, red glow of the jet’s interior. John watched you back, braver now, or maybe scared. “Is that all?”
John worked his chin forward, then back, like he was trying to relax his collar, allow himself more room to breathe without actually tugging on his suit. “Even if…” He blew out a tortured breath, wiping one hand down his face. “Even if, speaking in hypotheticals, I wanted to call you honey on purpose, it’s a bad idea. You’re on loan. One day, you’ll leave.”
And that hurt. You could tell it hurt. Just the idea of you going away… His voice broke softly on the last word.
“Bob might never get his powers under control,” you pointed out, scooting across the floor toward him, bundled up like a mummy but finding a way to move anyhow, bouncing until you were pressed against John’s foot. You could feel the power of that might hanging between you.
You didn’t completely realize you had fallen for him until you had been in his arms. Grumpy wasn’t usually your type, but John’s icy exterior came from real pain. He couldn’t transform in and out of that armor, it was stuck to him for good. Although, looking at him now, his blue eyes soft, his body leaning toward you, his hand warm and protective on your stomach, you wondered if maybe you were the right kind of hardheaded to chip it away.
“What if you gave me a reason to stay?”
John sagged forward even more, like the weight of that question was compressing him into a cube. “You and Bob—”
“Are friends.” You fished your right hand out from under the tightly packed blanket, snaking it over yourself to cover his fingers with yours. “But you’ve been risking your ass trying to keep me alive out there, you gave me my nickname, you picked me up when I was half-dead and I weigh, like, half a ton, so…”
“Are your bones made of that metal all the time or--?”
“Yeah.”
John snorted, ruffling his hair with his free hand. “That explains it.”
“Makes sex really chill and easy, let me tell you what…”
That got him. He laughed down at his belly, shaking. He collected himself, thumb stroking you through the blanket. His shoulders squared, then tilted, his palm sliding further up your body. “Just need someone tough enough. Durable.”
“Know anyone?”
“I might.” John’s hand slipped off your body, off the edge of the blanket, planting on the metal floor underneath you as he leaned down, over you, lips hovering just an inch above yours. “And I think I know what will keep you awake, honey. Just came to me.”
His lips closed over yours, sweet and searching, beard scratchy against your chin and cheeks. You cupped his jaw with your good hand, whimpering into the taste of him, heat spreading through you from the point of contact. Your fingers tightened against his face, and as he breathed another relieved breath into you, it felt like the perfect reason to stay.
C’s corner: This is just a little chaotic fanfic with a fluffy ending requested by anon. Thank you so much for this request! I love creating chaos, especially Thunderbolts chaos. 🫶🏽✨
WARNINGS: Nothing but Thunderbolts chaos
✍🏽 WC: 3K
SUMMARY: You and John Walker accidentally invent a secret handshake. The Thunderbolts accidentally turn it into a team-wide crisis.
It starts because John Walker is unbearable.
Not in a serious way.
Not in a somebody take the shield away before this becomes an international incident way.
Just in the everyday, deeply irritating way where he catches the protein bar you toss across the kitchen without looking, then gives you one unbearably smug nod, as though the two of you have just completed a highly classified tactical maneuver.
You point at him.
He points back.
Your hands meet automatically, somewhere between habit and instinct.
Slap.
Backhand.
Fist bump.
Knuckles roll.
Two fingers hook briefly before you both snap your hands apart and point at the floor.
“Grounded,” you say.
John nods solemnly. “Severely.”
The entire exchange takes less than three seconds.
Ava, sitting at the kitchen island with a mug of tea, watches the two of you with narrowed eyes. "What was that?”
You grab another protein bar from the cabinet. “What was what?”
“That.”
John tears open the wrapper with his teeth. “Classified.”
“It looked stupid.”
“It’s not for you,” you tell her.
Ava stares at you. Then at John. Then back at you. "Good.”
She leaves the kitchen.
You wait until the door swings shut behind her.
“She wants one,” John says.
“Oh, desperately.”
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, it spreads.
By lunch, Yelena knows.
By dinner, Bob knows.
By the following morning, Alexei has somehow turned the existence of your handshake into a personal betrayal.
“You have secret gesture,” he announces, storming into the common room.
You lower your cereal spoon with the weary resignation of someone who already knows this conversation is going to be exhausting.
John, sitting beside you on the couch, doesn't look up from the mission report on his tablet. "It’s a handshake,” he says.
“A handshake is gesture.”
“Technically.”
“A secret gesture between teammates.”
You glance at John.
He glances at you.
Neither of you moves.
Alexei’s eyes widen. "You do it now.”
“No,” you say.
“You must.”
“It doesn’t work on command.”
“It is handshake. Of course it works on command.”
John finally looks up. “You can’t force chemistry, Alexei.”
Alexei puts one enormous hand against his chest. “Chemistry?”
You bite the inside of your cheek.
John’s mouth twitches.
Alexei looks between the two of you like he has uncovered an affair, a conspiracy, and tax fraud in the same thirty-second window.
“You have handshake chemistry?”
“Apparently,” you say.
“This is outrageous.”
From the armchair, Bucky turns a page of his book. “It’s a handshake.”
Alexei wheels around. “You are not bothered?”
“No.”
Yelena walks in carrying a bowl of grapes. “They have different endings.”
Bucky’s eyes lift from the page.
You stop chewing.
John freezes beside you.
Alexei whispers, “Different endings?”
Yelena pops a grape into her mouth. “I have been collecting data.”
“That’s not unsettling at all,” John mutters.
“The base sequence is slap, backhand, fist, little twisty thing.” She demonstrates badly with one hand. “But then it changes depending on mood.”
“It does not,” you say quickly.
Yelena looks at John.
John looks at you.
Neither of you dignifies that with an answer.
Ava appears in the doorway, tea in hand. “It absolutely does.”
“You said it looked stupid,” you remind her.
“It does. I can still recognize a pattern.”
Bob wanders in behind her. “There’s a pattern?”
“No,” you and John say together.
The room falls silent.
John slowly turns his head toward you.
You point at him.
He points back.
Slap.
Backhand.
Fist bump.
Knuckles roll.
You both tap two fingers against the side of your own necks before pointing at the others.
“Nosy,” you say.
“Extremely,” John agrees.
Yelena drops a grape.
Alexei looks devastated.
“You made one for us being nosy?”
“That one already existed,” John says.
“It did not already exist,” Ava says. “I saw you invent it.”
John shrugs. “It exists now.”
Bob takes a cautious step closer. “Can I have one?” He asks with such genuine hope that your resolve immediately begins to crumble.
John, however, is weak. “Sure,” he says.
You turn toward him. “John.”
“What?”
“There are standards.”
Bob’s face falls.
John points at you. “Look what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You crushed him.”
“I'm fine,” Bob says, visibly not fine.
You sigh and stand. “Okay. Fine. Bob gets one.”
Alexei shoots to his feet. “Then I also get one.”
“No.”
“Why does Bob get handshake?”
“Because he asked normally.”
“I ask normally now.” Alexei clears his throat and clasps his hands behind his back. “Hello. May I please have secret chemistry gesture?”
“No.”
“This is discrimination against Russians.”
Yelena raises a finger. “I am Russian and I support this decision.”
“You are terrible daughter.”
While they argue, you turn to Bob. “Okay. Keep it simple.”
Bob nods intently.
You slap palms.
He misses the backhand.
You try again.
Slap.
Backhand.
Bob completely misses it. He forgets the fist bump and grabs your wrist.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
John leans against the couch, arms folded. “You’ve got to stop thinking about it.”
Bob looks helplessly at him. “How?”
“You just do it.”
“That is terrible advice,” Bucky says.
“It worked for us.”
You glance at John again.
He taps his fist lightly against yours. It's not part of the handshake, not technically. You tap back anyway.
Ava notices. "What was that one?”
“Nothing,” you say.
“That was new.”
“It was not.”
“It was.”
Yelena points at your hands. “You are creating additional gestures in real time.”
“We’re not creating anything.”
John reaches past you for the remote at the exact moment you hold it out to him.
Neither of you thinks about it, your palms slide together.
Twist.
Pull.
Knuckles tap twice.
John takes the remote. You drop back onto the couch.
The room goes silent again.
You stare at the television. John stares at the television. Slowly, you both realize nobody else is talking.
“What?” John asks.
Ava looks furious. “That wasn’t the original handshake.”
You glance down at your hand. “What wasn’t?”
“The thing you just did.”
Yelena nods. “She is right. That was an entirely separate handshake.”
“It wasn’t a handshake,” John says.
“What was it?” Bucky asks.
“A transfer.”
“A transfer,” Ava repeats flatly.
“Of the remote.”
“With choreography?”
You lean back into the couch cushions. “You’re all making this weird.”
“We are making it weird?” Yelena asks. “You two have developed a silent hand language.”
Alexei crosses his arms. “I want hand language.”
“No,” everyone says.
That's when the problem truly begins.
Somewhere along the way, you and John have accidentally developed an entire disciplinary system.
If John steals food off your plate, the standard slap-backhand-fist ends with you pressing your thumb down over his knuckles.
“Probation,” you tell him.
He chews your fry. “Worth it.”
If you interrupt him during a briefing, he catches your hand, taps your wrist twice, and points toward the hall.
“Benched.”
“You don’t have that authority.”
“I do in the handshake.”
If either of you makes an especially terrible joke, the handshake ends with both thumbs pointing sharply downward.
“Sent to Sam’s Avengers squad,” you announce.
Sam is not present to defend himself.
That does absolutely nothing to stop the category from becoming alarmingly specific.
John leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor.
“Sam’s squad.”
You use the last of his protein powder.
“Sam’s squad, auxiliary division.”
He finishes the coffee and doesn't start a new pot.
“Sam’s squad, unpaid internship.”
You hide his boots after he calls your playlist “aggressively adolescent.”
“Sam’s squad, mandatory team-building weekend.”
That one makes him look genuinely disturbed.
“You take that back.”
“Apologize to My Chemical Romance.”
“No.”
“Then enjoy your trust fall.”
The others are no longer merely jealous. They are invested.
Yelena starts keeping score on the whiteboard in the training room.
HANDSHAKE OFFENSES
John: 17
You: 14
Alexei: 63, despite not participating
Bucky: 2
Ava: 4
Bob: 0
“I have not committed sixty-three offenses,” Alexei protests.
Yelena uncaps the marker and adds another tally. "You are complaining about the board.”
“This is dictatorship.”
Another tally.
“This proves my point.”
Another tally.
By the end of the week, everyone has attempted to create their own handshake with you.
Bob’s is gentle and involves one fist bump and a tiny finger wave. You let him keep it.
Ava’s is brutally efficient. Palm, wrist, release. It looks less like a greeting and more like she is checking you for a pulse.
Yelena keeps changing hers on purpose so you can never learn it. When you mess up, she acts disappointed in you as a person.
Bucky refuses to admit he wants one. He simply starts holding his fist out whenever you enter a room.
At first, you bump it normally.
Then, one afternoon, he adds a second knuckle tap.
You add a third.
His eyes narrow.
The next time, he switches hands.
You follow.
Three days later, John catches the two of you silently escalating beside the weapons lockers.
“Seriously?”
Bucky drops his hand. “It’s not a handshake.”
“Right,” John says. “It’s a transfer.”
You snort.
Bucky’s expression goes flat. “I hate both of you.”
John sticks out his hand.
Without looking, you complete the original handshake.
Slap.
Backhand.
Fist.
Roll.
Then both of you turn your thumbs downward.
“Sam’s squad,” you say together.
Bucky’s jaw tightens. “You know I’m friends with Sam.”
“Then you’ll settle in quickly,” John says.
Alexei is the final holdout. Not because he doesn't want a handshake. Because he wants the best handshake.
He spends days pitching ideas.
One involves elbow bumps. One involves saluting. One somehow includes a squat.
One requires you to lift him, which you refuse before he finishes explaining.
Finally, during a mission briefing, Valentina catches the team paying more attention to Yelena’s whiteboard tally than to the actual mission.
She stands at the head of the table.
Her gaze moves from Alexei, who is whispering suggested hand gestures to Bob, to Bucky, who is pretending not to practice his knuckle sequence against his thigh.
Then she looks at you.
Then John.
“What,” she asks slowly, “is happening?”
“Nothing,” you say.
“Team cohesion,” John says at the same time.
Valentina closes her eyes. “You two.”
You point at yourself. “Us?”
“Yes. Whatever this is, end it.”
John’s brow furrows. “End what?”
“The handshakes.”
The room revolts.
Bob gasps.
Yelena says, “Absolutely not.”
Ava sits forward. “You can’t ban them now.”
Bucky mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “This is bullshit.”
Alexei slams both palms on the table. “You see?” he cries. “Now outsider tries to destroy family tradition!”
Valentina stares at him. “This started six days ago.”
“Tradition must begin somewhere.”
You glance at John.
John glances at you.
His mouth twitches.
You know exactly what he's thinking because you're thinking it too.
Your hands meet under the table.
Slap, muffled against your knees.
Backhand.
Fist bump.
Roll.
Then a new ending, completely automatic.
Two fingers cross.
Palms turn outward.
Both thumbs point directly at Valentina.
“Grounded,” you whisper.
“Sam’s squad,” John adds.
Valentina’s eyes drop to your hands.
The room holds its breath.
She looks back up. “Did you just assign me to another superhero team?”
“No,” you say.
John nods. “Definitely.”
Valentina gathers her files with a sigh. “The mission is tomorrow at six.”
She walks to the door, pauses, and looks over her shoulder. “For the record, Wilson’s team has dental.”
Then she leaves.
There's a long silence.
Yelena slowly turns toward you. “That was devastating.”
John looks at his teeth in the reflection of his phone screen. "Do we have dental?”
“I don’t think we have payroll,” Ava says.
Alexei rises from his chair with the solemnity of a man accepting a great burden. "I have decided.”
Nobody asks.
He holds one hand out toward you. “My handshake will represent workers’ rights.”
You look at his hand.
Then at John.
John gives you a tiny shrug.
You take Alexei’s palm.
He immediately yanks you into a one-armed hug and lifts you off the ground.
“Alexei!”
“This is first step!”
“There will not be a second!”
Everyone starts shouting at once.
Bob tries to help lower you.
Yelena begins adding tallies to the board.
Ava threatens to phase through Alexei’s rib cage.
Bucky stands in the corner with his fist held out, waiting patiently for you to notice.
John watches the chaos for a moment.
Then he catches your eye over Alexei’s shoulder.
He points at you.
You point back.
Even while being carried across the briefing room by a delighted Russian super soldier, you manage the ending together.
Two thumbs down.
“Sam’s squad,” you and John say.
Alexei stops. His face falls. “This handshake is cruel.”
“It’s adaptable,” John corrects.
Somehow, that only convinces everyone they need their own.
Over the next month, the handshakes spread faster than any briefing ever had.
Bob practiced his every morning.
Alexei still insisted his workers’ rights handshake deserved reconsideration.
Yelena continued documenting new variations for “research.”
Bucky never admitted he had one. He simply kept holding out his fist whenever he saw you.
Somewhere along the way, the original handshake stopped belonging to just the two of you.
Maybe that was inevitable.
One quiet evening after another mission, the tower had finally settled into something resembling peace.
The silence that settled over the common room felt earned.
You stood at the kitchen sink, rinsing out two coffee mugs while the city glittered beyond the windows. Behind you, John leaned against the counter with his arms folded.
“You know…” he said.
“Hm?”
“I think we created a monster.”
You laughed softly. “We absolutely did.”
Comfortable silence settled between you. Months ago, it would have been awkward.
Back when every accidental brush of your hands lingered a second too long.
Back when every mission briefing ended with one of you finding an excuse to stand a little closer.
Back when everyone except the two of you seemed to realize you were hopelessly gone for each other.
Now he simply existed beside you.
Close enough for his shoulder to bump yours.
You bumped him back.
He smiled. “So.”
“So?”
“We have got handshakes for everyone.”
“We do.”
“But…” He scratches the back of his neck. “…we don’t really have one that’s ours anymore.”
You turn toward him. “What do you mean?”
“They belong to everybody now.”
You looked down at your hands.
He was right.
Somehow, without either of you noticing, the thing that had started as yours had become something the whole team shared.
Nobody had stolen it. You had simply shared it until it belonged to everyone.
John let out a quiet laugh. “I miss when it was just us.”
Your heart stumbled in the familiar way it always did whenever he said something unexpectedly honest.
“So…” You stepped closer. “We make a new one.”
His blue eyes brightened immediately. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He holds out his hand.
“No audience?”
“No audience.”
“No Alexei?”
“Especially no Alexei.”
You place your palm against his.
“Okay,” you whisper.
“Okay.”
You start slowly.
Palm to palm.
Your fingers slide apart.
His hand catches yours again.
Your knuckles meet.
Tap.
Tap.
His thumb brushes lightly across your fingertips.
Not part of the plan.
You smile anyway. “Horrible form, Captain.”
“I improvise.”
“So do I.”
Your hands separate for only a moment before finding each other again.
Neither of you plans it. Neither of you thinks about it.
Your knuckles meet once more.
His thumb glides slowly across yours before settling gently over your knuckles, holding there for the briefest heartbeat.
John looks down at your joined hands. “I think…" He looks back at you. “…we are missing something.”
“Oh?”
He nods once. "Last step.”
“What is it?”
Instead of answering, he gently tugs you closer. Close enough that your joined hands rest between your chests.
“So this is classified?” you murmur.
“Highest clearance.”
“I do not know if I can be trusted.”
“I think you have done all right so far.”
You grin. “I did invent probation.”
“You absolutely abused probation.”
“And you deserved every single one.”
“I probably did.” His voice has gone quieter. Softer. The kind of quiet reserved only for you. His thumb strokes once across your knuckles. "You ready?”
“For the last step?”
He nods. “Any objections?”
“None.”
He smiles. “Good.”
Still holding your hand, he turns it slightly until his thumb settles comfortably over your knuckles once more.
Palm.
Knuckles.
Thumb.
Then, without another word, he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to your lips.
It's not hurried. It's not dramatic. It's warm, familiar.
The kind of kiss that feels less like a beginning and more like the inevitable last step in a sequence neither of you realized you had been building all along.
When he pulls back, your foreheads rest together.
“…I like that step,” you whisper.
“I was hoping you would.”
“So…” You squeeze his hand. "Is that officially part of the handshake now?”
John pretends to think about it. “I think it is mandatory.”
“Mandatory?”
“For me.”
You laugh, the sound quiet enough that it never leaves the room.
“I can live with that.”
He steals one more quick kiss. “Good.”
Then he holds his hand out again. “One more time.”
You roll your eyes with exaggerated affection. “You are such a dork.”
“I know.”
You slip your hand into his.
Palm.
Knuckles.
Thumb.
Kiss.
From somewhere down the hallway comes Alexei’s booming voice.
“I KNEW THERE WAS SECRET FINAL STEP!”
You and John freeze.
Silence.
Then John sighs toward the ceiling. “…Straight to Sam’s Avengers.”
SUMMARY:
A lazy weekend turns into a cozy little project when you and John Walker decide to build a gingerbread house just to fend off boredom.
The weekend stretches out like warm taffy, slow and sticky and determined to be absolutely useless.
You're sprawled on the couch in one of John's old gray hoodies that you stole from him, legs tangled in a throw blanket, staring at the ceiling like it might offer entertainment if you squint hard enough.
John sits at the other end with a protein bar he's clearly not hungry for, rotating it between his fingers like he's trying to will it into becoming something fun.
"This is it," you say, voice dramatic. "This is how we die. Not in a blaze of glory. Just… slowly. By boredom."
John's mouth twitches. "I've survived worse."
"Name one."
He looks around the living room, then deadpans, "This conversation."
You toss a pillow at him. He catches it with one hand like he's catching incoming fire, utterly unbothered, which is rude of him.
A beat passes.
His eyes flick to you. "There's a gingerbread house I bought last time my son was here... we could built that."
You blink. "Are you… trying to fight me?"
"I'm trying to save you," he says, solemn as a man delivering a mission briefing. "Before you start narrating your own tragic downfall again."
You sit up. "Okay. Fine. But if it looks like a war crime, I'm blaming you."
John rises from the couch with the purposeful stride of someone about to enter hostile territory. "I'll accept that burden."
He returns from the kitchen with a boxed gingerbread kit tucked under his arm like a field manual. The box is obnoxiously cheerful, all cartoon frosting swirls and perfect little windows. It's so optimistic it feels like it's mocking you.
You take it from him and squint at the picture. "This is a lie."
"It's a goal."
"It's propaganda," you correct, and tear the box open.
Ten minutes later, the coffee table's been converted into a sugar coated construction site. There's a plastic tray. There are brittle gingerbread panels. There's a piping bag filled with icing that looks like it was engineered by someone who hates hands.
John reads the instructions with the intensity of a man disarming a bomb.
"You're taking this way too seriously," you observe.
His eyes don't leave the paper. "I don't lose to baked goods."
You snort. "It's not baked goods. It's… pre baked architecture."
John finally looks up. The way he does it makes your stomach do that little inconvenient flutter like it's trying to get involved. His gaze slides over you, slow and deliberate, and you feel the warmth of it like a hand at your waist.
"Architecture," he repeats. "So you're saying it needs a strong foundation."
You narrow your eyes. "Are you flirting with me over structural integrity?"
"Is it working?"
You lift the icing bag. "I'll decide after I see your piping technique."
His eyebrows jump, and then that grin hits his mouth, quick and dangerous, like it belongs on a man who knows exactly what he's doing with his hands and enjoys the knowledge a little too much.
"Alright," he says, leaning in. "Show me."
You cut the tip of the bag, pinch it between your fingers, and press. A thick ribbon of icing oozes out onto the tray with a sound like defeat.
John watches, his attention sharp. "You're squeezing too hard."
"I'm not squeezing too hard," you argue, squeezing harder out of spite.
The icing slumps like a sad glacier.
John reaches across you without warning, his forearm brushing your wrist. His touch is warm, steady. He guides your hand with quiet confidence, like this is just another drill and you're his trainee who refuses to follow directions.
"Ease up," he murmurs close to your ear. "Let it flow."
Your breath catches on the last word. Your hand does, in fact, relax. The icing line smooths out, neat and glossy.
You glance up at him. "You're enjoying being right."
"I always enjoy being right."
"That's not true."
John's eyes flick to your mouth, and the air turns… different. Not heavy exactly. More like charged. Like the room has decided to pay attention.
"It's mostly true," he amends.
You push the first wall panel into the icing bead and hold it upright. John takes the opposite panel, mirroring you.
For a few seconds you're both still, leaning toward the center, hands steady, faces closer than necessary for baked goods warfare.
It smells like cinnamon and sugar and the kind of quiet you only get when nothing is on fire.
"This is kind of nice," you admit.
John's mouth softens. "Yeah."
Then the wall wobbles.
"Hold it," he orders.
"I am holding it."
"It's leaning."
"It's expressing itself."
John's laugh is low and brief, like he tried to keep it in and failed. "You're making excuses for a gingerbread wall."
"You're yelling at a gingerbread wall."
He shoots you a look. "Focus."
You stick your tongue out at him, which is extremely mature and effective.
He stares for a second, then drops his gaze like he's counting to ten. "Do not make that face at me."
"What face?"
"That one." His voice roughens, just a notch. "The one that says you're about to cause problems."
You smile sweetly. "Me? Never."
"Liar."
The wall steadies. Together you press the pieces into place. John's hand brushes yours, knuckles grazing, and it shouldn't matter. It does anyway.
When the base finally holds, you sit back on your heels and exhale.
John rolls his shoulders like he just survived the final round of a competition. "See? Strong foundation."
You point a finger at him. "Do not turn this into a metaphor."
"I'm not turning it into anything."
"Your eyes are turning it into something."
His eyes flick up, shameless. "Maybe you're projecting."
"You're absolutely projecting," you counter, and reach for the icing bag again.
The roof panels come next. They're heavier than they look, and as soon as you try to set one in place, the walls begin to buckle like they've remembered they're made of cookies.
John braces the house with one hand while you pipe icing along the top edge with the other.
"Careful," he says, and his tone drops, softer. "Don't rush."
"I'm not rushing."
"You're rushing."
You make a face and press harder. The icing spurts out in a rebellious blob that lands on the corner… then arcs, traitorous, toward you.
A fleck smacks your upper lip.
You freeze.
John freezes too.
For a second, the only sound is the faint hum of the refrigerator and your say nothing stare turning into a silent standoff with the universe.
You lift your hand toward your mouth, but John catches your wrist.
"Don't," he says.
You blink at him. "Don't what?"
His gaze locks on your lip like it's a target he's been trained to hit, and suddenly all the playful energy sharpens into something quieter, closer, more dangerous than it has any right to be in a living room full of sprinkles.
"Don't wipe it," he repeats, voice low.
Your throat goes dry. "Why?"
John's mouth twitches like he's fighting a smile and losing. "Because."
"That's not an answer."
His eyes lift, meeting yours, and there's a heat there that makes your spine remember it has nerves. "Because I can't stop thinking about kissing it off."
For once, you don't have a quick comeback ready. Not a smart one, anyway.
Your heart does this ridiculous little thump like it wants to applaud.
You swallow. "John…"
He shifts closer, still holding your wrist, but gentle. Like he's asking without asking. His thumb presses lightly against your pulse point, and it's an unfair reminder that he can feel what you're feeling, can measure it.
Your lips part.
"You're getting distracted," you manage.
His eyes flick to the gingerbread house, held together by sheer will and icing, and then back to you. "Yeah," he says, completely unapologetic. "I am."
You tilt your chin up, daring. "So fix it."
John's expression changes, like something inside him settles. He leans in slowly, giving you time to stop him. You don't.
His mouth brushes yours first, soft, like a question. Then he shifts, precise, and kisses the icing from your lip with a gentle sweep that's somehow both sweet and indecently intimate. The taste of sugar blooms between you, and your hands forget what they were doing.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, close enough that you can feel his breath. "There," he murmurs. "Problem solved."
You stare at him, stunned into silence for half a heartbeat.
Then you lift your free hand, smear a tiny dab of icing on the corner of his mouth, and smile like an angel with a criminal record.
John blinks. "Did you just…"
"Problem created." you say sweetly.
His eyes narrow. "You're dangerous."
"Maybe."
He sets the gingerbread house down with extreme care, like he's placing a fragile artifact back into a museum, then turns fully toward you.
"Alright," he says, voice warm and warning all at once. "Now you're asking for it."
"What am I asking for?" you tease, even though the answer is obvious in the way he looks at you.
John leans in, and this time the kiss isn't a question. It's still gentle, still sweet, but there's a confident hunger to it that makes your breath tangle. He tastes like coffee and sugar and that quiet heat he keeps under control until he doesn't.
Your fingers slide into the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging lightly. He hums against your mouth, hand bracing at your waist, steadying you the way he steadied the walls.
When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, and he exhales like he's amused at himself.
"You know," he murmurs, "we're never finishing that house."
You glance at the cookie structure behind him, now slightly slanted, frosting dripping in a slow surrender. "It's fine."
John's mouth curves. "It's leaning."
"It's expressing itself," you repeat.
He laughs again, low and genuine, then kisses you once more, quick, like punctuation.
"Next weekend," he says, "we do something less dangerous."
You raise an eyebrow. "Less dangerous than gingerbread?"
John's eyes flick to your mouth, lingering like he's filing the memory away for later. "Less dangerous than you with icing."
You nudge his shoulder with yours. "Coward."
He tightens his hand at your waist, pulling you a little closer, and his smile turns softer.
"Yeah," he says, like it's a confession and a promise. "Only around you."
C's corner: Hello loves ❤️ So… I got a little carried away with this chapter. But honestly? John and Em needed this. After everything they’ve been carrying, they deserved a moment to just be soft with each other. Messy, emotional, tender, and finally honest in the way only they can be.
Thank you so much for all the love on this story so far. Every like, comment, reblog, and tag means so much to me, and to all of my followers, thank you for sticking with me and my emotionally complicated little corner of the internet.
I hope you enjoy this one. John and Em are deep in the feelings trenches now, and honestly… so am I. 🫶🏽✨
This is written in second POV, but reader will have a name, Mara Hart, it won't be used often, but will pop up every now and then, especially her nickname, Em, and from here on out Hart.
WARNINGS: 18+ only, MDNI, explicit sexual content, first time together, emotional intimacy, love confessions, mentions of grief, mentions of past violence/killings, military pressure/investigation, anxiety, guilt, trauma, protective john walker, soft aftercare, john being painfully tender.
✍🏽 WC: 11.7K+
SUMMARY:
After another long day pulls John away from you, worry and longing follow you straight to his apartment. What starts as checking in on him turns into something softer, heavier, and harder to ignore, as both of you are forced to face the feelings growing between you and the ghosts still lingering in the room.
TAGS: @iwritefanfictionsnottragedies, @quantumlethe, @qvicksilversass, @daylightandthedreamer, @mencantaleer, @amnatreal, @sebastians-love, @spectralexiletrace, @weasleyswizarding-wheezes, @lilulicious (to be added to the tag list CLICK HERE)
The church smells like floor cleaner, coffee, and old wood. It should be grounding, usually, it is.
The scrape of folding chairs across linoleum. The low murmur of volunteers sorting donation bins. The distant laugh of someone in the kitchen who has no idea the world has ever ended, or maybe knows and has simply learned how to laugh anyway.
You should be thinking about the stack of canned goods in front of you. You should be checking expiration dates, organizing labels forward, keeping count the way you promised Sister Agnes you would.
Instead, you are thinking about John Walker's hands. Because apparently your brain has no sense of community service.
You stare down at a can of green beans and see his apartment instead. The couch. The forgotten report. His mouth against your throat. His voice saying girlfriend into a military phone call like he had carved the word into stone before anyone could take it from him.
You had almost crossed a line.
No.
You had walked right up to the line, pressed your hands against its chest, and asked if it wanted to come closer.
If that phone had not rung, you know exactly what would have happened.
Your face warms in the church supply room. 'Perfect. Wonderful. Very holy.' you think. You set the can down too hard.
Across the table, Sister Agnes looks up over the rim of her glasses. She is tying little paper tags onto donation bags with the calm precision of someone who could probably shame a demon back into the ground with one look. "Everything all right, dear?"
You blink. "Yes."
She eyes the can.
You glance down at it. The green beans are dented now.
You smile weakly. "Aggressive sorting."
Sister Agnes hums, slow and deeply unconvinced. "Careful. Even vegetables deserve mercy."
"I'll apologize to them."
"See that you do."
There is no judgment in her voice. Somehow that makes it worse. She simply gives you one more look, gentle and knowing enough to peel paint, before going back to her donation bags.
You exhale through your nose and press both hands flat to the table. 'Get a grip, Mara.'
The problem is, you don't want a grip. You want John. The thought doesn't arrive gently. It lands heavy and honest in the center of you, no disguise, no exit strategy.
You want him.
His hands. His mouth. His rough little sounds when you touch that freckle on his ear. The careful way he asks if you're okay even when his whole body is shaking with the effort of holding back. The warmth of him in bed beside you, steady and alive, one arm always finding you sometime in the night like he's checking that you're still there.
You want him, and you're almost certain John wants you too.
You saw it in his eyes before the call interrupted. You felt it in his hands beneath your shirt. You heard it in his voice when he said your name like it cost him something.
Your fingers drift to your chest without permission. The wolf charm rests beneath your shirt, warm from your skin. You slip it free and hold it between your fingers.
For a moment, the church noise dulls around you.
The charm catches the light, small and familiar, and grief rises in you the way it always does. Not sharp enough to cut you open today. Not gentle enough to ignore either.
"I still love you," you whisper.
The words are so quiet they barely exist. You bring the charm to your lips and kiss it.
It's not a confession you need forgiven, not an apology, just the truth.
You love Bucky. Some part of you always will. That love sits in the marrow of who you became after the world broke apart. It's stitched into the old version of you, the one who survived on ghosts and knives and promises no one else could hear.
And still...
You love the way John looks at you like he's relieved you walked into the room. You love the way his apartment has started to hold your shape. You love the way he lets you be haunted without trying to exorcise you.
You love him too. The realization sits in you quietly. Just waiting for you to stop looking away.
Your phone pings in your back pocket. Your heart makes one stupid, hopeful little leap before you can stop it.
You pull it out.
John: I'm sorry, love. Got held up at base. I'm not going to make it to the church today.
Another message appears before you can type.
John: I'll call you when I can.
You stare at the screen.
You knew this would happen. You felt it coming all morning, that ugly little pressure behind your ribs every time you checked the door and saw someone who was not him. Base has been swallowing him whole lately. Free days. Nights. Mornings that were supposed to be his. Hours that were supposed to belong to neither mission nor report nor special review.
The military keeps taking pieces of him and calling it duty. You hate it.
You hate that he sounds sorry when he has no control over it. You hate that you can picture him standing somewhere fluorescent and sterile, jaw tight, shoulders squared, saying yes sir while someone else decides what part of his life gets to belong to him.
You type back before anger can turn into something sharper.
You: It's okay. Be careful.
Then, because you're trying to be a person who says what she means before the world punishes her for waiting,
You: I miss you.
The little delivered note appears. You lock the phone and slide it away.
For a second, you let your fingers close around the charm again. Then you tuck it beneath your shirt, pick up another can, and try not to dent this one too.
By the time evening starts smearing gold across the parking lot, most of the volunteers have gone home. The church doors are propped open behind you. The last of the supply tables are folded and stacked.
You and Lemar are clearing the parking lot. Which mostly means you are picking up empty water bottles while Lemar carries three folding chairs at once because he likes being useful and irritating about it.
"You know," he says, balancing the chairs against his hip, "for a place of worship, this parking lot has a real talent for collecting trash."
You stab a paper cup with the grabber in your hand. "Maybe the trash is seeking redemption."
"That cup looks beyond saving."
"You would know."
Lemar pauses. "Was that an insult?"
"You'll figure it out."
He grins. "There she is."
You roll your eyes and drop the cup into the trash bag.
Lemar shifts the chairs higher in his arms. "You've been quiet today."
"I'm volunteering. Quiet is allowed."
"With you? Suspicious."
"I can be quiet."
"Yeah, when you're plotting."
You look at him. "Do you want me to start plotting?"
"No, ma'am." He lifts one chair like a shield. "I choose life."
You huff despite yourself and tie the trash bag closed.
For a minute, the two of you move in silence. Comfortable silence, the kind that has earned its place. Lemar has always been too good at standing beside your damage without poking it just to see what color it bleeds.
That makes him dangerous in a different way.
You glance toward the street. Then at him. "Can you give me a ride?"
Lemar doesn't even try to hide his smile.
You regret speaking instantly.
"To where?" he asks, voice already too innocent.
You narrow your eyes. "Don't."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do."
"I'm simply asking for the destination. Very normal. Very logistical."
"John's place."
Lemar's smile becomes a full event. The man has never met a moment he could not turn into a weapon.
"Hmm," he says.
You point at him. "No."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said hmm."
"Hmm is not a crime."
"It is when you do it like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're about to put on a bonnet and gossip from a porch."
Lemar laughs, bright and loud, and the sound bounces off the church brick. "Trouble," he says, "you have a key to the man's apartment and still ask me to drive you over there like this is a neutral errand."
You grab another empty bottle off the pavement. "It is a neutral errand."
"Right."
"I am going to check on him."
"Very neutral."
"He has been stuck at base all day."
"Mm-hmm."
"He might be tired."
"Naturally."
"And someone should make sure he hasn't worked himself into the floor."
"Someone."
You glare at him. "You are enjoying this way too much."
"I'm enjoying it a normal amount."
"There is nothing normal happening on your face right now."
Lemar presses a hand to his chest. "That hurts. This is my concerned face."
"That is your I know something and I'm about to make it everyone's problem face."
He laughs again and finally starts walking toward his truck. "Come on. I'll take you to your neutral errand."
You follow him. "You are never meeting anyone I date ever again."
"Too late. I knew John before you did."
"That is exactly the problem."
He tosses the chairs into the back of the truck and looks over at you. The teasing softens, not gone, just lowered. "He text you?"
You look down at the trash bag twisted in your hand. "Yeah."
"Base?"
"Yeah."
Lemar's jaw tightens for half a second.
You see it. He knows you see it. Neither of you says anything until you're both in the truck and the church starts shrinking in the rearview mirror.
The ride begins with the radio low. Some old R & B song hums through the speakers. Lemar taps two fingers against the steering wheel, less to the beat and more because stillness doesn't suit him when he's worried.
You watch streetlights flick on one by one. For a while, you let the quiet sit. Then you ask the question that has been clawing at the inside of your chest since John's phone call days ago.
"Do you think they know?"
Lemar's fingers stop tapping. He doesn't look at you right away. "Know what?"
You turn your face toward the window. Your reflection looks back at you from the glass, faint and ghostlike. "My past."
The truck rolls through a green light. Lemar's voice changes when he answers. Less playful now. All brother, all soldier. "Mara."
"The killings," you say, because if you don't say it cleanly, it will grow teeth. "The people I killed after the Blip. What I was doing when John and I met. When you found me."
Lemar is quiet.
You remember that night too well.
The warehouse stink of blood and dust. The sound of your own breathing, too calm for what you had done. You had been a ghost wearing skin, a girl sharpened into a weapon by loss, grief packed so deep inside you that mercy had felt like a language from another country.
John had looked at you like he could see the wound beneath the blade. Lemar had looked at John like, what the hell are we walking into? Neither of them had turned you in.
"They don't know," Lemar says.
You look at him.
His eyes stay on the road, but his voice is certain enough to put steel in the air. "John and I never made a report."
Your throat tightens.
He continues, steady. "Not about you. Not about what happened. Not about who you were before or what you did. In our files, that whole thing is smoke. Bad intel, dead end, nothing actionable."
"Lemar."
"I mean it." He glances at you then. "You're a ghost in our reports."
The words should comfort you, they do, a little. They also chill something old inside you. A ghost. You have been that for so long.
"I don't know if that matters anymore," you say.
"It matters."
"They asked John about me."
His mouth tightens.
You watch his hands on the steering wheel. "He didn't tell you?"
"He said they asked questions." Lemar exhales through his nose. "He didn't say details."
"They asked how long he knew me. What I was to him."
"Yeah," Lemar says quietly. "That tracks."
Your stomach twists. "With what?"
"I don't know yet."
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"That soldier voice." You turn toward him fully. "The one where you pretend uncertainty is strategy."
Lemar's mouth pulls into a humorless smile. "Learned from the best."
"John?"
"No," he says. "You."
That shuts you up.
The truck moves through the evening, tires whispering over pavement.
You stare at your hands.
"They can ask whatever they want," you say. "It doesn't change what happened."
"No. It doesn't."
"And if they find out, if they dig deep enough, if some buried thing crawls its way out..." You swallow. "I'm prepared for the consequences."
Lemar's head turns sharply toward you before he forces his eyes back to the road. "No."
You blink. "No?"
"No," he repeats. "I hate when you talk like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you already signed the sentencing papers in your head."
Your jaw tightens. "I'm being realistic."
"You're being cruel to yourself and calling it realism because it sounds more respectable."
The words land harder than you expect. You look out the window again.
Lemar softens, but only slightly. "Prepared doesn't mean deserving, Mara."
You close your eyes. "Don't."
"I'm serious."
"I know you are. That's why I said don't."
He sighs. "You did terrible things."
Your eyes open.
He doesn't flinch from it. That's the thing about Lemar, he can be kind without lying. It makes the kindness harder to survive.
"You did," he says. "And you also survived something that tore the world apart, both can be true. But don't sit there and act like consequences are the same as justice. They're not always."
You stare at him.
He keeps driving.
After a long moment, you say, "I hate when you're emotionally competent."
He smiles a little. "I know."
"It's unsettling."
"I contain multitudes."
You huff, but the laugh barely makes it out.
Lemar reaches over and taps his knuckles lightly against your knee. Quick. Brotherly. There and gone.
"He won't let them use you," he says.
You look down at where his hand was.
"And neither will I."
The threat in his voice is soft. It makes your chest ache.
"Thanks," you whisper.
He gives you a sideways glance, trying to pull the moment back from the edge before it becomes too tender to survive.
"Also, for the record, if you and John ever break up, I'm keeping you in the divorce."
You blink. Then you laugh, sudden and real.
"There's no divorce, idiot."
"I'm just saying, I was your brother first."
"You were never my brother."
He looks offended. "That is hurtful."
"You assigned yourself the role."
"And I have performed it beautifully."
"True, you are driving me to my boyfriend's apartment while bullying me."
"That's premium brother service."
You shake your head, but you are still smiling when his truck pulls up outside John's building.
Lemar puts it in park and looks up at the windows.
For a second, the teasing vanishes again.
"You sure you're okay?"
You follow his gaze. One of the windows is lit. John is home. The sight loosens something in your chest before you can stop it.
"Yeah," you say. "I'm okay."
Lemar looks at you.
You sigh. "I will be."
He accepts that because he knows it's the best truth you have.
He gets out with you anyway.
"I can walk myself upstairs," you say.
"I know."
"Then why are you getting out?"
"Because I want to see his face when you use the key."
You stop on the sidewalk and glare.
Lemar grins. "What? I've earned joy."
"You've earned silence."
"Never cared for it."
You mutter something unkind under your breath and head inside. Lemar follows, delighted.
The elevator ride is unbearable because he keeps looking at you. You stare straight ahead.
"Stop."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're looking at me emotionally."
"That's your thing."
"I learned it from John."
"You two are terrible influences on each other."
You glance at him. "And you're loving every second."
"Deeply."
When you reach John's door, you pull the key from your pocket. It still feels strange in your hand. Not bad strange, terrifying strange, soft strange. The kind of strange that makes your ribs feel too small for your heart.
You unlock the door.
Lemar makes a sound behind you.
You turn before opening it. "No."
He presses his lips together.
"Do not say anything."
He holds up both hands.
"You're vibrating."
"I am full of support."
"You are full of something."
You push the door open before he can answer.
John is already there.
He stands near the hallway, towel in one hand, running it through damp hair. He has on a dark T-shirt and sweatpants, feet bare, shoulders loose in a way they only get when he's home and trying to pretend the rest of the world is not chewing through his patience.
He looks up at the sound of the door.
For half a second, his face is all soldier.
Then he sees you.
The tension around his eyes eases. His mouth softens. His hand stills with the towel half lifted, and the warmth that moves through his expression is so open that you almost forget Lemar is behind you.
"Hey," John says.
You step inside like you have every right to. Because apparently, you do now.
"Hi."
John's eyes flick past you to Lemar, then back to you. Amusement ghosts across his face. "You bring backup?"
Lemar steps in behind you. "Chauffeur. Emotional witness. General public nuisance."
Without looking back, you say, "At least you're self-aware."
"Barely," Lemar says.
John's mouth twitches.
You walk straight to him, rise onto your toes, and kiss him. Quick and soft. Possessive enough to make your own stomach flip.
When you pull back, John is looking at you like you just turned the lights on inside his chest.
Unfortunately, Lemar exists.
You glance over your shoulder at him. "Not a word."
Lemar holds both hands up, eyes wide with theatrical innocence. "I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say I'm leaving."
"You were not."
"I was eventually going to get there."
John laughs under his breath.
You point at him. "Do not encourage him."
"I breathed."
"You both use that excuse. I hate it."
Lemar grins at John. "For the record, this was apparently a neutral errand."
Your face warms. "Lemar."
"What? I'm supporting the narrative."
"You are seconds away from losing speaking privileges."
He looks between you and John, grin softening into something far too knowing. "She's mean when she's in love."
The apartment goes still.
Your entire body heats.
John's eyes flick to you.
Lemar's grin falters just enough to prove he knows he poked something soft. Then he clears his throat and takes one step back. "I'm leaving now."
"Great idea," you say too quickly.
John's eyes flick to you.
You look anywhere but at his face. "I'm going to take a quick shower," you tell him. "Lemar, thanks for the ride."
Lemar salutes you badly.
You glare at him because that is safer than any other expression. Then you escape down the hall before the apartment can grow more feelings.
The bathroom door shuts behind you. For a second, you stand there with both hands on the sink. Your reflection looks flushed. Nervous. Alive in a way that still catches you off guard sometimes.
You turn on the shower.
In the living room, John watches the hallway long after the bathroom door closes.
Lemar sees it. The man has made a hobby out of noticing what John tries to hide.
"You good?" Lemar asks.
John looks back at him. "Yeah."
"That was convincing."
John tosses the towel over his shoulder. "What?"
Lemar's teasing fades. There is no clean way into it, so he just steps through.
"She's worried about you."
John's jaw tightens. "Lemar."
"No. I'm saying it because she won't." Lemar keeps his voice low. "She's worried about all this military bullshit you're wrapped up in. The special review. The questions. You getting called in on days you're supposed to be off. She's acting like she can take whatever comes, but that doesn't mean she's not scared."
John looks toward the hall again. A muscle works in his jaw. "I know."
"Do you?"
John's eyes come back to him, sharp now.
Lemar doesn't back up, he never has.
John exhales and drags a hand over his damp hair. "I know she's worried."
"She asked me if they knew about her."
John goes very still.
Lemar's expression hardens. "About what happened after the Blip. About what you and I walked into."
John's voice drops. "What did you say?"
"I told her the truth. We never made a report. She's a ghost in our files."
John looks down. The words don't soothe him the way they should. Because now the military is asking questions about a ghost. And John doesn't like ghosts becoming targets.
Lemar steps closer. "You need to talk to her."
"I will."
"Don't just tell her everything's fine."
John's mouth tightens.
Lemar raises his brows. "That face means you were absolutely going to tell her everything's fine."
"I can handle it."
"I know you can handle a lot." Lemar's voice softens, but only a fraction. "That's not the same as letting her in."
John looks toward the hallway again.
The shower is running now.
He can picture you in there too easily. Wet hair. His soap on your skin. That look you get when you're pretending not to worry because you think worry is another burden someone else has to carry.
His chest tightens.
"I'll talk to her," he says.
Lemar studies him. Then, because he is Lemar and apparently allergic to ending anything with clean sincerity, he tilts his head toward the hallway.
"So," he says, "she has a key now."
John blinks at him. "What?"
"I'm just saying. Key to the apartment. Showing up after church. Kissing you like she pays rent here."
John narrows his eyes. "Lemar."
Lemar lifts both hands. "I'm observing."
"Get out."
"Gladly. Some of us respect boundaries."
John gives him a look.
Lemar's grin flashes. "Recent development. I'm proud of it."
"Goodnight, Lemar."
"Goodnight, boyfriend."
John's ears go faintly pink.
Lemar sees it, brightens, and wisely leaves before John can throw something at him.
The apartment quiets after the door closes.
John stands there for a moment, listening to the shower, feeling the shape of everything pressing in from all sides.
Base. The review. The questions. You.
You, who walked into his apartment with a key and kissed him like coming home. You, who loved a ghost and somehow still looked at him like he was something worth reaching for.
His hand curls once at his side. He's going to handle this, he has to.
When you come out of the shower, you are wearing one of John's oversized shirts and your shorts.
Of course, the shirt is his. Of course, it hangs off one shoulder. Of course, John Walker, decorated soldier, trained officer, certified man with working lungs, forgets how to breathe.
You walk into the room rubbing a towel through your hair, bare feet quiet against the floor. The shirt slips a little lower with each step, exposing the curve of your shoulder and the strap of your top underneath.
John is standing near the couch. He looks at you, then your shoulder. Then very deliberately back at your face like he's trying to be noble and losing a private war.
You notice. Your mouth curves. "What?"
"Nothing."
"That was not nothing."
"You're wearing my shirt."
"I wear your shirts all the time."
"I know."
"You keep looking surprised."
"I keep surviving it."
The words slip out before he can stop them.
Your smile softens in that dangerous way, the one that makes him feel seen and undone at the same time. You step closer. "Surviving?"
"Barely."
Your face warms, but you don't look away.
John reaches for you slowly, his fingers brush your exposed shoulder. A soft, careful touch.
Your breath catches.
John's thumb moves once over your skin. "You're cold," he murmurs.
"I just got out of the shower."
"Mm."
"That was an explanation, not an invitation to look concerned."
His mouth curves faintly. "I'm always going to look concerned."
"Sounds exhausting."
"Sometimes."
Your eyes lift to his. The air shifts slowly, the way a tide changes while pretending to be still.
John's hand stays on your shoulder, warm against the cool damp of your skin. His thumb traces a small path there, over and over, and your body betrays you by leaning into it.
He sees that too. But instead of kissing you, instead of letting the heat catch, he draws in a breath. "Lemar told me what you asked him."
Your eyes close for half a second. When they open, the softness is still there, but now it has armor around it. "I'm never telling Lemar anything again."
John's mouth twitches. "He cares about you."
"He has a terrible way of showing it."
"He drove you here."
"He mocked me the entire way."
"That's how he shows affection."
"I noticed. It's a hostile love language."
John smiles, but it fades quickly. His hand slides from your shoulder to the side of your neck.
"Everything's under control," he says.
You stare at him.
John already knows that look. It's the one that means you have found a weak point in his sentence and are preparing to stab it.
"Is it?" you ask.
"Yes."
"John."
"I mean it."
"You got called into base on your free day again. The military's asking questions about me. Lemar looks like someone shoved classified dread into his pockets." You step closer, fingers curling lightly around his wrist. "And you want me to believe everything is under control?"
His jaw tightens.
You soften your voice. "I care about you."
That hits him harder than the accusation would have. You see it land. The way his eyes change. The way his throat works once. The way his hand stills against your neck.
You lift both hands and cradle his face. "I care about you," you repeat, quieter. "That's what makes me worry about all this special review crap."
John closes his eyes for half a breath. When he opens them, the soldier has not disappeared. He's still there, still braced, still ready to shoulder the weight alone because that is what he was trained to do and praised for doing and punished for failing at.
But the man beneath him is tired.
Your chest aches. "Talk to me," you say.
He looks at you for a long moment. Then he covers one of your hands with his. "I don't know what they're looking for yet."
The honesty is small, but it matters.
You nod.
"They're reviewing my conduct. My reports. My recent operations. They're asking questions that don't line up with what they said this was supposed to be." His thumb brushes over your knuckles. "And now they're asking about you."
"Because of me?"
"No."
"You don't know that."
His expression hardens. "I know you're not the problem."
"That's sweet."
"It's true."
"Those aren't always the same thing."
"Mara."
The name comes out rough.
You stroke your thumbs along his cheeks. "I'm not saying I'm the problem. I'm saying I have been one before."
His face changes. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Talk about yourself like evidence."
The words knock something loose in you. For a moment, you cannot answer.
John leans his forehead against yours. "I can't tell you not to worry," he says. "That would be stupid."
"Mm. Growth."
His mouth twitches against restraint. "But I need you to know I'm not going to let them turn you into leverage."
Your breath catches.
"They don't get to use you to get to me," he continues, voice low. "And they don't get to use me to scare you."
You close your eyes for a moment. "I'm prepared," you whisper.
John pulls back enough to look at you. "I know you are."
You blink at him.
He doesn't say it like Lemar did. He doesn't argue. He doesn't soften the truth until it becomes something easier. He simply sees you.
"But you don't have to prepare alone," he says.
Your throat tightens. You hate him a little for that.
"You're getting dangerously good at saying the right thing," you murmur.
His eyes soften. "Only with you."
You drop your hands from his face before you do something humiliating like cry over emotional competence.
John catches one of your hands before it falls completely. His gaze moves over your face, searching. Then, because he must sense you're one tender sentence away from dissolving, he changes the subject.
"So," he says quietly.
You look at him. "So?"
His thumb moves over the back of your hand. "You used your key."
The shift is so soft, so carefully placed, that for a second all you can do is stare at him.
Then your face warms.
"I did."
John looks toward the front door, then back at you. "Felt kind of natural."
"Don't get emotional about a key."
"I'm not."
"You are."
His mouth twitches. "Maybe a little."
You narrow your eyes. "You and Lemar are unbearable in different fonts."
"He said this was a neutral errand."
"Lemar says a lot of things."
"He also called me boyfriend."
Your eyes close slowly. "I'm going to kill him."
John's smile finally breaks through. It's small, tired, and unfairly beautiful. "He seemed proud of himself."
"He should mind his business."
"He never has."
"He should start."
John's fingers lace with yours. You look down at them, then back up.
The room has gone softer at the edges. The worry is still there. It hasn't left. It sits in the corner like a patient animal with too many teeth.
But John is here. Warm. Barefoot. Damp-haired. Looking at you like you're the only thing in the room he understands.
You tug lightly on his hand.
"Come to bed."
His eyes darken. Not all at once. Not crudely. Just enough.
"Mara."
"What?" You lift your brows. "We share a bed now."
His mouth curves. "Yeah, we do."
"Very domestic of us."
"Terrifying."
"Deeply." You step backward, pulling him with you. "Come on."
The warmth returns first. Then the heat beneath it. Then the careful pause he always gives you, even now, even after weeks of shared beds and stolen shirts and kisses that have been getting less innocent by the day.
"You sure?" he asks.
You step closer until your body nearly brushes his. "Yes."
John's hands tighten at your waist.
"Okay," he says softly.
Then he kisses you soft enough that it almost hurts.
His mouth moves over yours with the kind of patience that makes your knees unreliable, one hand sliding from your waist to your lower back while the other comes up to cradle the side of your neck. He walks you backward carefully, not rushing, not pushing, just guiding you toward the hallway as if the apartment has narrowed to the path between his mouth and the bedroom.
You go willingly.
Your arms wrap around his neck, fingers sliding into the damp hair at his nape. He makes a quiet sound when your nails graze lightly there, and you smile against his mouth because you are becoming terrible with power.
John notices. "You're proud of yourself again," he murmurs.
"A little."
His mouth brushes yours. "Problem."
You huff a small laugh and slide your fingers higher. You find his left ear.
John's breath catches before you even touch the freckle.
Your smile deepens. "Already?"
"Hart."
There it is, that warning with no ammunition.
Your thumb brushes over the tiny freckle on his earlobe. John stops walking for half a second. The sound he makes is low, quiet, almost helpless. It moves through you in a warm, wicked little bloom.
"You are so easy there," you whisper.
His eyes open, dark and narrowed. "Keep talking."
"Is that a threat?"
"No." His hand slides lower on your back, pulling you a fraction closer. "It's a warning."
You brush the freckle again.
John's jaw flexes. Then his mouth is on yours again, hotter now, less patient.
You stumble backward into the bedroom, laughing softly against his lips when your heel catches the edge of the rug. John catches you immediately, one arm firm around your waist, the other braced at your side.
"Careful," he murmurs.
You look up at him.
The word hangs strangely between you. You have both been so careful. Careful with grief, with want, with the ghost under your shirt and the soldier beneath his skin. Careful has kept you safe. Careful has also become a door neither of you knows how to open without breaking something.
You lift your hand to his face. "I'm here."
His eyes search yours.
Then his mouth softens, and he kisses you again, deeper.
He walks you back until your legs hit the edge of the bed. You sit, tugging him with you by the front of his shirt. John follows with a low breath, one knee sinking into the mattress beside your thigh as he leans over you.
His hand cups your jaw. His thumb traces your cheek.
"You tell me if you want me to stop," he says.
You nod.
His eyes sharpen slightly.
You swallow. "I will."
"Promise me."
The demand should annoy you. It doesn't. Not when his voice is rough with want and still threaded with restraint. Not when his body is asking for you and his first instinct is still to make sure you know the door is open.
You touch his cheek. "I promise."
John exhales, then his mouth lowers to your shoulder.
The shirt has slipped again, leaving skin bare to the cool air and his warm breath. His lips brush the curve first, a barely-there touch that sends a shiver through you. Then he kisses you properly, open-mouthed and slow, right where your shoulder slopes toward your neck.
Your head tips back before you can stop it. A soft sigh leaves you.
Pleased.
John stills for the smallest second, then he does it again.
Your fingers tighten in his shirt. "John."
His name sounds different like this. Less like a warning. More like permission.
His mouth moves along your exposed shoulder, patient and devastating, each kiss placed with maddening care. His hand settles on your bare leg, warm against your thigh, thumb brushing once over your skin.
You breathe in sharply.
He looks up immediately. "Okay?"
You nod, already reaching for him. "Yes."
His gaze stays on yours for another beat, making sure.
Then his hand moves again, slow over your thigh, his palm callused and warm, sliding carefully until his fingers curl at your hip. He kisses you as he does it, mouth returning to yours, and you fall back onto the bed, pulling him down with you.
John follows. Always careful with his weight. Always aware of where his hands are, where your body is beneath his, how much room you have to move.
You hate how much that undoes you.
His body settles over yours, one hand braced beside your head, the other still on your hip. Your legs shift around him naturally now, no panic in the movement, no apology.
Just want, just the heat of him and the familiar weight of his breathing against yours.
Your hands slide under the hem of his shirt, fingers pressing to the hard warmth of his back.
John groans into your mouth.
The sound sparks through you. "There it is," you breathe.
He pulls back just enough to look at you, eyes dark. "You like that too much."
"I like a lot of things too much."
His mouth curves, but the smile shakes at the edges when your hands move over his skin.
"Yeah?" he asks.
You nod, then lift your hips slightly beneath him.
John's eyes close. His breath leaves him in a rough exhale.
Your own sound follows, small and helpless, when his hand slides beneath the edge of the shirt you stole from him.
His fingers find your waist first. Warm skin to warm skin.
You both go still.
It's not the first time he has touched you there.
These past few weeks have shifted things between you, kiss by kiss, touch by touch, the line between comfort and hunger thinning until you can barely see where one ends and the other begins.
His hands have learned your waist, your ribs, the dip of your back.
Your hands have learned the weight of his shoulders, the warmth of his stomach, the soft, secret sound he makes when your mouth finds his left ear.
Nothing has crossed that final line. But innocence has packed a bag and fled the apartment.
John's hand slides higher beneath your shirt, over the skin of your side, thumb tracing the curve of your ribs. Your back arches slightly, a pleased moan slipping from your mouth before you can trap it.
His eyes snap to yours.
There's heat in them, but also something else. Wonder. Tenderness. That quiet, dangerous awe he gets sometimes, as if he still cannot believe you're here beneath him, touching him back.
"Don't look at me like that," you whisper.
His hand pauses. "Like what?"
"Like that."
His mouth lowers to your jaw. "Can't help it."
You turn your face, catching his mouth again before he can make you feel anything too large for your chest.
The kiss burns hotter.
His hand moves under the shirt again, slow and deliberate, pushing the fabric higher just enough for his palm to spread over your bare stomach. You stiffen for half a second.
John feels it immediately. He stops. His mouth leaves yours.
"Love?"
You open your eyes. The concern in his face nearly breaks you.
"I'm okay," you say.
His gaze searches yours.
You place your hand over his, holding it there against your skin. Against the place where grief has lived in a language no one else could read.
His expression shifts.
He understands. Not all of it, no one can, but enough.
His thumb moves once. Soft and reverent. The touch is not apology this time. Not pity or fear.
Just love before the word has arrived.
You pull him back down.
John kisses you with a sound low in his throat, and the heat returns, threaded now with something so tender it makes your eyes burn. His hand stays beneath your shirt. His fingers trace your side, your waist, your ribs.
Every touch asks, every breath listens.
And you answer.
With the arch of your body. With your hands in his hair. With the soft sounds you no longer try to swallow because you have learned what they do to him.
A small moan escapes when his mouth returns to your shoulder, when his teeth graze lightly over the skin there, not enough to hurt, just enough to make your fingers dig into his back.
John groans against you. "God."
You smile, dazed and warm. "What?"
His mouth brushes your skin. "Those sounds."
Your face heats. "Don't."
"I can't." He lifts his head, eyes heavy-lidded and bright with something unguarded. "I like the sounds you make for me."
The words move through you, molten and sudden.
You tug at his shirt before either of you can get lost in the size of that feeling.
"Off."
His mouth stills against your skin.
When he lifts his head, the corner of his mouth curves. "Bossy."
"You like it."
His gaze drops to your mouth. "Yeah."
He pulls back long enough to strip the shirt over his head.
You have seen him shirtless before. In the mornings, after showers. Half-asleep in blue-gray light while you pretended not to stare because you had dignity, allegedly.
This is not the same.
Not with him over you like this. Not with his chest rising hard, skin warm under the lamp glow, every line of him familiar and new at once.
Your hands go to him immediately.
John's breath catches when your palms slide over his chest, then lower, over the tense plane of his stomach. His control slips by degrees, betrayed by the sharp inhale when your nails drag lightly over his ribs.
You look up. "Oh."
His eyes narrow. "Don't."
You smile, slow and delighted. "There?"
"Hart."
You do it again.
John groans, low and helpless, his head dipping toward your shoulder. The sound moves through you like heat through metal.
"You make sounds too," you murmur.
His laugh breaks against your skin, rough and breathless. "Apparently."
"I like them."
He lifts his head, eyes darker now. "Yeah?"
You nod.
Something hungry flashes over his face. Then his mouth is on yours again, and he kisses you until every clever word scatters out of your head.
His hands find the hem of the shirt you are wearing, his shirt.
You lift your arms.
John pulls it up slowly, his knuckles brushing your stomach, your ribs, the lower curve of your breasts. He keeps his eyes on yours until the last possible second. Then the shirt is gone, and the air touches you everywhere.
For one heartbeat, you want to cover yourself.
Because your body has been a battlefield. A shelter. A weapon. A graveyard. Because being seen has never been simple.
John sees the flicker.
He catches both your wrists before you can move them inward and brings your hands to his mouth. He kisses your knuckles one by one.
"You're beautiful," he says.
Your chest pulls tight. "Don't say it like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you mean it."
He lowers your hands back to the bed on either side of your head and leans over you, his mouth near yours.
"I do."
The words burn.
You close your eyes, but John kisses them open again, one soft touch beneath your brow, then your cheek, then your mouth.
His lips move lower.
Your breath catches as he kisses the line of your jaw, the hollow beneath your ear, the place where your pulse is betraying you. His mouth drifts to your throat, reverent and slow, and then he stops.
Not because of you.
Because of the charm.
The little wolf rests against your chest, caught in the lamplight between your bare skin and his gaze.
For a second, the room changes shape.
John doesn't touch it. He only looks at it, then at you.
The silence is gentle, but it still cuts.
Your hand rises to the charm before you can think better of it. The metal is warm from your skin.
Bucky's ghost. Bucky's memory. Bucky's love.
Still there.
Still yours.
Still resting over your heart while John looks at you like he wants to be careful with every broken, breathing part of you.
Your throat tightens.
John's voice is quiet. "Love." He swallows. "You don't have to do anything."
The kindness of that almost hurts worse.
Your fingers curl around the charm. "I know."
"I mean it." His hand comes up, not to take it, just to rest beside yours on your chest, warm and steady. "I don't want you to feel like you have to choose."
Your eyes sting.
You look down at the little wolf, thumb brushing over the familiar shape. For a moment, you are somewhere else. Somewhere colder. Somewhere full of grief and blood and all the prayers you never said out loud.
Then John's thumb strokes once over your skin.
You breathe in. "I'm not choosing between ghosts and the living."
John's expression tightens, like the words have found somewhere soft in him and pressed.
You reach behind your neck with unsteady fingers. The clasp is small, suddenly stubborn, and your hand trembles once before John carefully covers it with his.
"Let me?"
You nod.
He shifts closer, his fingers brushing your hair aside with aching care. He unfastens the chain slowly, like the necklace is something sacred, not an obstacle. Like grief deserves gentleness even when you are setting it down.
The clasp gives.
The wolf charm slips into his palm.
John looks at it for a second, then back at you.
"You sure?"
You take the charm from him and press the cool metal to your lips. Your eyes close for half a breath. Then you set it carefully on the nightstand. Just resting there, safe in the low light.
When you look back at John, your chest feels unbearably bare.
No chain.
No metal.
No memory between your skin and his hands.
Only you.
Only him.
Your voice is soft when it comes. "Tonight, I want to be here with only you."
John's breath leaves him like something in him has come undone.
For a moment, he only looks at you.
His eyes are dark and bright, his face open in a way that makes your ribs ache.
Then he lowers himself over you again.
Skin to skin.
The contact steals every thought.
His chest presses to yours, warm and solid against the place the charm used to rest. His mouth finds yours, and when you kiss him back, something in you opens wider than fear.
John's hand curls at your hip. "You're here," he whispers against your mouth.
You slide your fingers into his hair. "I'm here."
His forehead drops to yours. "And I've got you."
You believe him.
The air between you changes.
Not all at once. Not sharply. It softens first, then warms, then deepens into something that makes your heart beat too hard.
John looks at the bare place on your chest where the charm used to rest.
Then he looks at you.
"I love you."
For a second, you forget there is a body beneath your skin. You forget the bed under your back, the warmth of his hand at your side, the careful tremble in his breath.
All you know is the shape of those three words.
They do not sound clean when he says them. Not perfect or polished. They sound dragged out of him, rough around the edges, too honest to be pretty. Like they had been living in his chest for weeks and finally broke the lock.
John is still above you. He looks like he has already accepted that the words are yours now, whether you keep them or hand them back. His thumb brushes beneath your eye once, careful and afraid and so warm it hurts.
"John," you whisper.
His name is all you have.
His throat works. "I didn't mean to scare you."
You shake your head. "You didn't."
His eyes search yours, still uncertain, still open in a way that makes something deep inside you ache. You have seen John Walker angry. You have seen him proud. You have seen him brave, stubborn, exhausted, protective enough to make your own fear bare its teeth.
But this is different.
This is John with his armor on the floor and his heart in his hands.
You lift your fingers from his hair and trace the side of his face. The movement is slow, because everything feels breakable now. His cheekbone. His breath. The space between his mouth and yours.
"I don't know what to do with that," you admit.
The truth lands softly.
John's eyes flicker, but he does not pull away.
"Okay," he says.
Just that.
Not wounded. Not demanding. Not trying to stuff the words back where they came from.
You almost hate him for that. For being patient when it would be easier if he pushed. Easier if he gave you something to fight, something to resent, something sharp enough to hide behind.
But John only lowers his forehead to yours and breathes you in like even your confusion is something he can hold.
"You don't have to say anything back," he murmurs.
Your throat tightens. "That's not fair."
His mouth brushes yours, barely a kiss. "I know."
"No." You close your eyes. "I mean you being good about it. That's not fair."
You feel his smile against your mouth.
"I'll try to be worse next time."
A laugh breaks out of you before you can stop it. It comes out shaky, almost wet, and John kisses the corner of your mouth like he loves that sound too.
Then the heat returns slowly through the cracks tenderness left open.
His body is still over yours, warm and solid. His hand rests against your side like he is afraid to move without permission now that the words have changed the room. Your legs are still tangled around him. Your fingers are still at his face.
And you want him.
God, you want him.
It is different now. Deeper. It does not crawl across your skin. It sinks beneath it, fills the hollow places, turns your heartbeat into something heavy and bright.
You tilt your face and kiss him.
John freezes for half a breath.
Then he kisses you back, slow at first, like he's letting you set the terms of this new world. His mouth moves carefully over yours, but his breath shakes when your tongue brushes his, and that tiny loss of control sends heat pouring through you.
You slide your hand down his chest, feeling the hard beat of his heart beneath your palm.
His hand flexes at your waist.
You kiss him harder.
John makes a low sound into your mouth, restraint fraying. You feel it in his shoulders, in the way his body lowers over yours, in the careful pressure of his hips settling between your thighs.
Your back arches.
Both of you inhale at once.
"Love," he breathes, pulling back just enough to look at you. "We don't have to."
Your fingers curl against his skin. "I know."
"I don't want you to feel like this has to happen because of what I said."
Something inside you softens so violently it nearly undoes you. You cup his jaw. "John."
He goes still.
"I want you."
The words leave you quietly, but they hit him hard. His eyes darken. His mouth parts slightly. His fingers press into your skin.
You see the exact second he tries to make himself behave.
You decide, with great seriousness, to ruin that.
You lift your hips again, slow and deliberate.
John's eyes close. A rough breath tears out of him. "Mara."
"I want this," you whisper. "I want you."
When he opens his eyes, the look in them is almost too much.
Desire, yes. Enough to set the room on fire. But beneath it, something reverent. Something astonished. As if he has been handed something fragile and holy and is terrified his hands are too rough for it.
You pull him down by the back of his neck.
His mouth meets yours again, and this time there is no pretending the kiss is only a kiss.
John's hand cups your breast, his thumb brushing over you with a slowness that makes your breath fracture. He pauses, watching your face, learning the sound, learning the shape of your reaction beneath his palm.
His mouth follows.
Your back arches off the bed.
The sound that leaves you is not careful. It is not quiet enough. It is raw and soft and yours, and John reacts like it has gone straight through him. His hand grips your waist. His mouth becomes hotter, slower, patient in a way that makes your thighs tighten around his hips.
He stops. Looks up. Checks.
You nod before he can ask.
"Yes."
His mouth lowers again.
You learn him too.
The way his breathing changes when your nails scrape lightly over his back. The way his stomach tightens when your hand drifts lower. The way that tiny freckle on his ear still has the power to ruin him completely.
You reach for it.
John catches your wrist, eyes dark.
"Careful," he warns.
You are breathing hard, lips parted, body warm under his.
"You keep saying that."
His thumb moves over your pulse. "Because you don't listen."
"You like that too."
His mouth curves, but the smile disappears when you lift your head and kiss the freckle instead.
John shudders. A deep, broken sound pulls out of him, and his hips press down into yours before he can stop himself.
The contact makes you both gasp.
John looks at you.
There is no hiding what he wants now. No disguising it behind teasing, no wrapping it in restraint until it looks safer than it is.
He wants you.
All of you.
And you want the same.
Your hand slides down his chest to the waistband of his sweatpants.
He catches your wrist again, but this time his grip is weaker. Less warning. More plea.
"Mara."
You look at him. "Yes."
His jaw works. "Say it again."
Your heart stumbles.
You understand what he is asking. Not because he does not believe you. Because he needs to hear it with the world narrowed to this bed, this choice, this final step.
You lift your other hand to his face. "Yes, John."
His eyes close briefly.
When they open, something in them has changed.
Not control lost.
Control offered.
He kisses you then, deep and slow, and his hands move to your shorts. He does not remove them at first. He hooks his fingers in the waistband and waits. You lift your hips. That is all the answer he needs.
He draws them down your legs with care, mouth following the path of fabric and skin. He kisses your thigh, your knee, the inside of your calf, so tenderly that your throat tightens even as heat curls low in your belly.
When he comes back up the bed, you reach for him.
He lets you.
Your fingers push at his waistband, and this time he helps, shedding the last of his clothes with a breathless kind of impatience that makes you smile despite the pounding of your heart.
Then he is above you again. Skin to skin. The contact steals every thought.
John's chest presses to yours. His thigh slides between your legs. His hand curls at your hip, and the heat of him settles against you in a way that makes you gasp into his mouth.
He goes still immediately. "You okay?"
You nod, but your voice comes out shaky. "Yes."
His forehead drops to yours. "We can stop."
"I don't want to stop."
His eyes search yours.
You hold his gaze. "I don't want to stop."
The air leaves him in a slow, trembling breath. "Okay."
His mouth finds yours again as his hand moves between your bodies. The first touch makes you jolt from the sudden bright rush of sensation. John stills, learning you, waiting until your body eases beneath him.
"Tell me," he murmurs.
You swallow hard. "Softer."
His touch shifts instantly.
Your eyes close. "There."
He does it again.
Your fingers dig into his shoulders.
John watches your face like it is the only map he needs. He learns pressure. Rhythm. The places that make your breathing hitch and your hips lift toward his hand. He learns the little broken sound that leaves you when he touches you just right, and when he hears it, his own control fractures.
"Love," he says, voice rough.
You open your eyes.
He looks wrecked. Beautifully, painfully wrecked.
You reach for him too, fingers wrapping carefully around him. John groans, burying his face against your neck, his whole body shuddering at the touch.
You go still, startled by the power of it.
He laughs once against your skin, breathless and undone. "Don't stop."
So you don't.
You learn him by the sounds he cannot hide. By the way his hips move into your hand. By the tension in his arms, the heat of his mouth at your throat, the way his voice goes low and uneven when he says your name.
"Mara."
You love the sound. You love that it belongs to this moment, to his skin beneath your hands and his breath breaking against your jaw.
John pulls back enough to open the nightstand drawer with an unsteady hand. He finds protection, then pauses, looking down at you.
You nod before he can ask.
He prepares himself with shaking fingers, and the sight of him like that, careful even in his hunger, nearly undoes you.
Then he settles between your thighs again.
The whole room seems to hold its breath.
John leans down and kisses you once. A promise before the crossing.
"You tell me if anything feels wrong," he says against your mouth.
You brush his damp hair back from his forehead. "I will."
"I mean it."
"I know." You wrap your arms around his neck. "John."
His eyes meet yours.
"I trust you."
Something in his face breaks open.
He kisses you again, and as he does, he begins to push inside so slow your breath catches and holds.
Your fingers tighten at the back of his neck. John stills at once, body trembling over yours.
"Love?"
You breathe through it, eyes closed.
Not pain exactly. Pressure. Stretch. The overwhelming intimacy of being opened to someone who is looking at you like you are not something taken, but something received.
"I'm okay," you whisper.
His mouth brushes your cheek. "Look at me."
You open your eyes.
He's right there. Close enough that you can see the gold caught in his lashes from the lamplight. Close enough that his breath is yours. Close enough that the fear doesn't have room to grow teeth.
He moves another inch.
Your body yields slowly.
His jaw clenches. A rough sound slips from him, restrained and desperate.
"God," he breathes. "Mara."
You cup his face, keeping him with you.
He stops when he is fully inside.
Both of you go still.
There's no noise for a moment except your breathing.
You feel full of him. Surrounded by him. Held open not only by his body, but by the enormity of this choice, this trust, this warmth you have allowed into a room grief used to own alone.
John is shaking.
You realize it with a strange little ache. His arms are braced on either side of you, muscles tight, every inch of him holding back.
You stroke your thumb over his cheek. "You're shaking."
His laugh is barely sound. "Trying not to move."
The admission sends heat through you.
You shift beneath him experimentally.
His eyes close. His head drops forward with a low groan. You feel him everywhere. The sound makes your body clench around him.
John's breath breaks.
"Fuck," he whispers, and then immediately kisses your cheek like he has to apologize with his mouth.
You almost laugh, but the laugh turns into a gasp when he moves, just a little. A slow pull, a careful return.
Your whole body responds. Your nails press into his shoulders.
John watches you. "Okay?"
You nod quickly. "Again."
His eyes darken.
He moves again, still slow, still careful, but deeper this time. The sensation rolls through you, warm and startling and intimate enough to make your eyes burn.
He learns you one movement at a time.
Slow at first.
Listening to every breath.
Stopping when your body tenses. Continuing when your hips rise to meet him. Adjusting until the angle makes your mouth fall open and a moan spill out, helpless and sweet.
"There," you gasp.
John's control slips visibly.
His hand slides beneath your thigh, lifting it higher against his hip. The next thrust reaches something deeper, brighter, and your back arches off the bed.
John groans with you.
"There?" he asks, voice ruined.
You nod, breathless. "Yes. John, there."
He does it again and again.
The rhythm builds slowly. His body moves into yours with increasing certainty, and yours answers, hips lifting, thighs tightening around him, hands roaming over the damp heat of his back.
You learn the weight of him. The drag of him. The way his mouth searches for yours whenever the feeling threatens to become too much. The way he murmurs your name against your skin like he is trying to keep himself anchored. The way his hand finds yours on the mattress and laces your fingers together when your breath starts to shake.
You learn that he loves your shoulder. He returns to it again and again, kissing the bare curve like he has found a place of worship there.
You learn that the light scrape of your nails down his spine makes his rhythm falter. You learn that when you whisper his name right against his ear, John Walker loses the thread of every disciplined thought he has ever had.
And he learns you.
The place at your hip that makes you shiver. The pressure you like. The rhythm that pulls sounds from you faster than pride can catch them. The way your breath hitches right before pleasure crests too high.
His hand slips between your bodies again.
Your eyes fly open. "John."
"I've got you," he whispers.
He changes the angle of his hips, keeps moving inside you, and touches you at the same time.
The world narrows to sensation.
Heat.
Pressure.
His body over yours.
His voice in your ear.
"That's it, love," he murmurs, rough and tender. "Let me hear you."
Your body trembles.
You don't swallow the sound this time. You let it leave you.
John groans like it ruins him.
The pleasure builds, slow and relentless, coiling tighter with every stroke of his fingers and every deep movement of his body inside yours. You cling to him, breath breaking, face turned against his neck, your mouth finding any skin it can reach.
His pulse beats beneath your lips.
Alive.
Here.
Yours for this moment.
And there is nothing between you now. Nothing but his body, his breath, his hand wrapped around yours.
The pleasure gathers under your skin, rolls through your hips, your stomach, your chest.
John feels the change in you and follows it, his mouth at your throat.
"That's it," he whispers. "Let go. I've got you."
You believe him.
That's what breaks you open.
Not only the pleasure, though God, there is so much of it. Not only the way he moves inside you, deep and sure now, learning the rhythm that makes you fall apart beneath him.
It's the tenderness, the steadiness, he way he keeps one hand in yours while he takes you apart.
Your body tightens. Your breath catches.
John feels it. His voice goes rough. "Love?"
You cannot answer.
You can only cling to him as the pleasure crests, sudden and overwhelming, pulling a broken moan from your throat. Your whole body trembles beneath his. Your thighs lock around him. Your nails dig into his back as wave after wave rolls through you, bright and blinding and too much to hold in silence.
John watches you come apart.
The look on his face almost undoes you a second time.
Awe.
Hunger.
Love.
His rhythm falters, but he keeps moving, slower now, carrying you through it while you shake against him.
"That's my girl," he breathes, voice wrecked.
The words hit something deep. Possessive, but gentle. Reverent, not claiming what you have not given.
And tonight, you have given so much.
You pull his mouth to yours. John groans into the kiss. His body tenses above you, his control finally fraying to its last thread.
"Where are you?" you whisper against his mouth.
His eyes open, confused and dark.
You cup his face. "Stay with me."
The words do to him what his did to you.
His breath breaks.
"I'm with you," he says.
Then he lets go.
His hips press deep, his whole body shuddering as release overtakes him. A low, raw groan tears from his chest, your name caught inside it. He buries his face against your neck, shaking through it, holding you close without crushing you.
You hold him, one hand in his hair the other spread across his back. You hold him while he comes back to himself.
For a long time, neither of you moves.
The room is warm and dim around you. The sheets are tangled around your legs. Your skin is damp. John's breathing slowly steadies against your shoulder.
He is still inside you, still close, but the urgency has softened into something quieter, almost sacred.
Eventually, he lifts his head. His face is flushed. His hair is a disaster. His eyes are too soft for your survival.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
You nod, but he waits.
So you answer properly. "I'm okay."
His thumb brushes your cheek. "Any pain?"
You shake your head. "No."
"You sure?"
"John."
"I'm checking."
"I know." You touch his mouth with your fingertips. "I'm okay."
Only then does he exhale.
He kisses you once, soft and grateful, then carefully shifts away to take care of the condom and clean himself up. The loss of his warmth makes you shiver, and before you can complain, he is back with a damp cloth and that serious expression that means he has decided aftercare is now a military operation.
You stare at him.
He pauses. "What?"
"You're very focused."
His ears go pink. "I want to do it right."
The tenderness of that nearly kills you.
You let him clean you with gentle hands. Let him kiss your knee, your hip, the inside of your wrist when your fingers brush his. Let him pull the blankets back and gather you against his chest like he has been waiting his whole life to learn exactly how you fit there.
You end up half on top of him, cheek against his bare chest, one leg tangled over his. His heartbeat is still fast beneath your ear.
Your wolf charm rests on the nightstand. You look at it for a while.
John follows your gaze but says nothing. His hand moves slowly over your back.
"I'll get it for you," he says quietly.
Your throat tightens. You press your lips to his chest.
"Not yet."
His hand stills.
Then it resumes, careful and warm.
"Okay."
The silence stretches.
You trace a lazy line over his ribs, smiling faintly when his stomach tightens under your touch.
"Still sensitive there," you murmur.
John huffs a laugh into your hair. "Don't start."
You lift your head and look at him.
He looks exhausted now. Soft. Younger somehow, with the fight gone from his face and only the man left behind.
The man who loved you before you were ready to know what to do with it.
Something opens in your chest.
Quietly.
Completely.
John sees the change before you speak. His hand comes up, brushing hair away from your face.
"What?" he whispers.
You look at him for a long moment.
Then you lean down and kiss him.
It's not hungry this time. Not a question, not a distraction.
It's answer.
When you pull back, your mouth stays close to his. Your voice shakes.
You say it anyway.
"I love you."
John goes completely still.
You feel the words move through him before his face changes. His breath catches first. Then his eyes, widening slightly, shining in the low light. His hand tightens at your back like he is afraid he imagined it.
You smile, small and tearful.
"I love you," you say again, softer but steadier now. "I don't know what that means tomorrow. I don't know how to make it simple. I can't promise I won't be scared."
John's eyes search yours, raw and bright.
"But I love you," you whisper. "Tonight, I know that."
His face breaks. Not fully, John is still John. Even undone, he tries to hold himself together.
But you see it.
The way relief moves through him. The way wonder follows. The way all that careful restraint collapses into something tender enough to make your own eyes burn.
He pulls you down to him and kisses you.
Once.
Twice.
A third time, longer, his hand cradling the back of your head.
When he finally speaks, his voice is rough. "Say it again later."
You laugh softly against his mouth. "Demanding."
"Please."
That ruins you.
You touch his cheek. "I will."
John closes his eyes and presses his forehead to yours.
Outside, the city keeps moving. Somewhere beyond the apartment, the military waits with its questions, its reports, its special reviews, its teeth hidden behind official language.
But here, in John's bed, with your charm resting on the nightstand and his heart beating beneath your hand, the world narrows to his skin, your breath, the truth between you.
For tonight, there are no ghosts in the bed.
Only John.
Only you.
Only love, terrifying and warm, finally spoken out loud.
C's corner: Hi loves, this chapter is definitely one of those calm-before-the-storm chapters, but I promise it’s doing more than just letting Mara and John breathe for a second. We have maybe two or three more chapters before we start moving into the Endgame / time heist era, and I am both excited and emotionally afraid because once canon starts knocking, it will not be polite. For now, I’m letting them have the warmth. The apartment. The teasing. The illusion that love might be enough to keep the world from barging in.
It won’t. But they don’t know that yet. 🥲
As always, thank you so much to everyone reading, commenting, yelling, suffering, and sticking with this story. I appreciate you all more than you know. 🫶🏽✨
This is written in second POV, but reader will have a name, Mara Hart, it won't be used often, but will pop up every now and then, especially her nickname, Em, and from here on out Hart.
WARNINGS: grief, emotional vulnerability, mild angst, suggestive kissing, language, military-related tension, mentions of past violence
✍🏽 WC: 10K+
SUMMARY:
You try to keep your heart under control, but John Walker keeps making that impossible. Between stolen moments, soft confessions, and the slow comfort of becoming part of each other’s lives, you begin to let yourself want something warm again. But healing is never clean, and just as things start to feel steady, the outside world begins pressing its fingers against the edges.
TAGS: @iwritefanfictionsnottragedies, @quantumlethe, @qvicksilversass, @daylightandthedreamer, @mencantaleer, @amnatreal, @sebastians-love, @spectralexiletrace, @weasleyswizarding-wheezes (to be added to the tag list CLICK HERE)
The next day, you decide the compound is trying to eat you alive.
Not literally. The walls are not shifting. The floor is not opening beneath you. No alarms are blaring, no missions are calling, no one is bleeding in the hallway.
Which, somehow, makes it worse. Because silence gives your brain room. And your brain, traitorous little bastard that it is, has decided to use every available inch of that room to think about John Walker.
John in his kitchen. John's hands at your waist. John's mouth against your neck. John saying love like the word had been pulled out of him with teeth.
So you stay busy, you stand in the church parking lot with a clipboard in your hand, staring at a stack of supply crates like they might offer divine intervention.
Your phone sits heavy in your back pocket. You know because you have checked it approximately six hundred times since leaving the compound. You haven't texted him. You haven't called him. You haven't even opened the thread just to stare at his name, which you feel should count as a major personal victory.
Except now you are doing something worse.
You are inventing reasons.
A lot of reasons.
Maybe you could ask if he got home safe last night... No. He texted you.
Maybe you could ask if he ate breakfast... Absolutely not. What are you, his commanding officer in charge of toast?
Maybe you could tell him you forgot something at his apartment... Dangerous. Also a lie. Unless dignity counts, in which case yes, you left that all over his kitchen counter.
You press the clipboard against your chest and shut your eyes.
"Get a fucking grip, Mara," you mutter.
"Talking to yourself again, Trouble?"
You nearly jump out of your skin.
The clipboard slips halfway out of your hand before you clutch it to your chest like it is the only thing standing between you and public humiliation. You whip around and find Lemar standing a few feet away, arms crossed, expression far too pleased with himself.
"Jesus, Lemar." You glare at him. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
He holds up both hands. "I said your name twice."
"You materialized."
"I walked."
"You stalked."
"I approached with regular human feet."
"You approached like a government secret."
Lemar's grin spreads. "You know, for someone who claims not to be hiding anything, you were looking pretty suspicious over here."
"I'm working."
"You were staring at canned beans like they owed you money."
"They do."
"Sure." His eyes drop briefly to your pocket. "How's your phone?"
Your glare sharpens. "My phone is fine."
"Uh-huh."
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You thought it loudly."
"That's because my thoughts have stage presence."
You point the clipboard at him. "Your thoughts need a muzzle."
Lemar laughs, bright and easy, and the sound chips at some of the tension sitting between your ribs. Annoying. He's annoying. He's also impossible not to love a little for it.
"Where's John?" you ask before you can stop yourself.
Lemar's grin turns slow.
You immediately regret breathing.
He opens his mouth, probably to ruin your entire life, but another voice cuts in behind him.
"Everything okay?"
Your body reacts before your brain gives permission.
Heat moves through you first, then awareness, then that terrible little flutter in your stomach you have no intention of admitting to anyone ever.
John walks toward you from the supply truck, sleeves pushed up, posture easy in a way that's probably fake and still devastating. The sunlight hits the side of his face, turns his hair warm at the edges, catches on the line of his jaw.
You hate him a little for having a jaw. For existing in a parking lot like that should be allowed.
Lemar looks between you and John. Then his entire expression transforms into delight.
"Everything's great," Lemar says.
You narrow your eyes at him. "Is it?"
"Fantastic."
John's gaze flicks to you. Something softens there immediately, quick enough that maybe no one else would catch it.
Unfortunately, Lemar is standing right there with his little emotional binoculars.
John doesn't seem to care. That's new, terrifyingly new.
He steps closer, eyes on your face. "Hi."
One word. Two letters. Somehow catastrophic.
You shift your grip on the clipboard. "Hi."
His mouth curves.
"How are the supplies treating you?"
You stare at him. "The supplies?"
"You looked intense."
"She was threatening beans," Lemar supplies helpfully.
"I was not threatening beans."
"You had murder in your eyes."
"I always have murder in my eyes. That's just my face."
John's smile deepens, and it's so warm, so openly fond, that your brain briefly trips down a staircase.
"You're cute when you're defensive," he says.
The parking lot goes silent, not actually.
But in your tiny corner of the world, everything stops. Your face burns.
Lemar inhales sharply.
"Oh," he says, sounding thrilled. "We're doing this now?"
You look at John. "Really?"
John's eyes stay on yours. "What?"
"You're just adding fuel to the flame."
"Worth it."
Lemar claps once. "I love growth."
You turn on him. "Don't you have supplies to unload?"
"I do," he says, backing away with the grin of a man who has been given a gift basket full of ammunition. "And I'm going to do that because I am a helpful, mature adult who absolutely will not bring this up later."
"You're going to bring this up before lunch."
"Before lunch feels ambitious," Lemar says. "I'm thinking ten minutes."
"Lemar."
"Going!"
He turns, still laughing, and heads toward the truck.
You watch him go with narrowed eyes. "He's going to be insufferable."
John steps closer, not too close, but close enough that the air changes anyway.
"He already was," John says.
You huff. "You're making him worse."
"I know."
"That's your defense?"
His hand reaches for yours.
Your breath catches before you can stop it.
He takes your hand gently, thumb brushing over your knuckles like he has every right and still cannot believe he gets to do it. "It's worth it," he says, voice lower now, "just to see you blush."
The heat in your face becomes unforgivable.
"I am not blushing."
"Okay."
"I'm not."
"Sure."
"You're very smug for a man standing in a church parking lot."
His thumb moves again over your hand. "Only because you make it easy."
You stare at him, heart doing something stupid behind your ribs.
Absolutely not, you need to steer this conversation somewhere safe before your mouth betrays you, before your face stages a confession, before Lemar circles back with popcorn and a legal pad.
"So," you say quickly, pulling in a breath. "You're just here to drop off supplies?"
John watches you for a second, clearly noticing the change in subject. Mercifully, he lets you have it.
"Yeah. Drop-off, check in, then back to base."
Your chest dips before you can stop it. You hope it doesn't show.
It probably shows.
John's expression shifts, soft at the edges. His hand tightens around yours by the smallest amount.
Then he asks, "Do you want to come over tonight?"
Yes, you mind supplies, yes you will abandon every crate in this parking lot and sprint across Brooklyn barefoot if necessary.
You don't say that out loud.
Instead, you swallow and ask, "Is that okay?"
John's brows draw together slightly, like the question hurts him.
"Yeah," he says. "It's okay."
You look down at your joined hands. "I don't want to just... show up in your space all the time."
"My apartment feels more alive with you in it."
There it is, the killing blow.
Your face heats so fast you almost get angry about it.
John sees it, his mouth curves again, quieter this time.
You tug lightly at his hand. "You are a problem."
"I've been told."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
That stills you.
The teasing slips, not fully gone, but softened by the way he looks at you. Like he means every word. Like the apartment had been too quiet after you left. Like your absence had taken something with it.
Your throat tightens.
You should say something careful. Something reasonable. Something that doesn't make this more than either of you are ready to name.
Then John turns slightly, glancing toward the truck where Lemar is currently pretending not to watch you both with the subtlety of a fireworks display.
And that's when you see it.
A tiny freckle on his left earlobe. Small. Almost ridiculous. Barely there.
The world should not tilt over something that small.
Your eyes catch on it, and suddenly you want to touch it.
Not his hand. Not his chest. Not his jaw, though God knows that jaw has been offending you in public for several minutes.
That freckle.
You want to press your thumb to it. You want to know if he makes a sound. You want to find out if that tiny mark can undo him the way his mouth against your shoulder nearly undid you.
Your fingers flex around his.
John notices. His gaze comes back to your face. "What?"
"Nothing."
"That was not nothing."
"It was."
"You're a terrible liar."
"You're a terrible influence."
His smile flickers. "Yeah?"
You stare at him.
Something inside you shifts.
Yesterday, you were careful. Last night, you tried to be careful and still ended up on his kitchen counter with his hands on your waist and your breath stolen out of your chest.
Careful hasn't saved you from wanting him. Careful hasn't stopped his voice from living under your skin. Careful has only made you ache longer.
So you stop.
You take one step closer, lift your free hand to the front of his shirt, and pull him down.
John reacts immediately.
A sharp inhale. A brief, stunned stillness.
Then his hand slips from yours to your waist, firm and warm, while the other comes up carefully to the side of your neck. The kiss is not wild. Not here, not in the open, not with Lemar absolutely somewhere pretending to organize canned goods while spiritually levitating.
But it's not shy either.
Your mouth meets his with intent, and John answers like he has been waiting all morning for permission to stop pretending he was composed.
His thumb brushes the side of your neck.
Your fingers tighten in his shirt.
For one bright, reckless second, the parking lot disappears.
Just John.
Warm. Solid. Careful until you give him reason not to be.
When you part, both of you are breathing a little differently.
His forehead nearly touches yours. His hand stays at your waist. Yours stays curled at the back of his neck, because apparently your body has decided this is where your hand belongs now.
John's voice comes out low. "Hi."
You bite down on a smile. "You said that already."
"Thought it deserved another try."
"Better the second time?"
His eyes drop to your mouth.
"Much."
You should step back.
Instead, your gaze shifts again to his left ear.
That tiny freckle. Waiting there like a dare.
You lift your hand slowly, giving yourself every chance to stop, you don't.
Your fingertips brush the side of his neck first, then slide higher, gentle over the edge of his jaw, until your thumb finds that tiny mark on his earlobe.
John goes completely still. Then the smallest sound leaves him.
Low. Surprised. Barely there.
But you hear it, oh, you hear it.
It drops into your chest and locks itself in a little golden box with your name carved into the lid.
Mine.
The thought arrives before you can soften it. That sound is yours.
Your thumb brushes the freckle again, softer this time, testing.
John's hand tightens at your waist.
His eyes darken.
"Hart," he says, and there's warning in it, but not enough of one.
Your stomach flips.
He almost never calls you that. Not unless something in him has been knocked off balance.
Very interesting.
You tilt your head. "What?"
His gaze narrows slightly, though the effect is badly undermined by the faint flush creeping up his neck.
"You're not playing fair."
You smile before you can stop it. A dangerous smile. A delighted one. A well, well, well, look what I found kind of smile.
"You started it."
John lets out a breath that sounds almost like a laugh, except rougher. His thumb presses once at your waist, a small answer, a small confession.
From behind the truck, something clatters loudly.
Lemar's voice follows immediately. "I'm fine! No one investigate!"
You close your eyes.
John drops his head slightly, mouth twitching against restraint.
"I'm going to kill him." You whisper
"He'll deserve it."
Lemar calls out, "For the record, I heard nothing, saw nothing, and support everything!"
You pull back from John just enough to glare toward the truck. "Lemar!"
"What?" Lemar appears from behind a stack of boxes, face absolutely full of innocence and lies. "I'm unloading supplies. Like a helpful, mature adult."
John coughs into his fist.
You turn your glare on him. "Don't encourage him."
"I'm not."
"You laughed."
"I breathed."
"You betrayed me."
John leans closer, voice dropping just for you. "I'll make it up to you tonight."
Every thought in your head shuts off.
Lemar, mercifully, does not hear that part. Or if he does, he values his life enough to pretend otherwise.
John watches the effect of his words land, and something smug, soft, and devastating crosses his face.
You point at him, though your finger lacks conviction. "Problem."
His hand finds yours again. "Yeah," he says, thumb brushing your knuckles. "But you're still coming over."
It is not a question.
It should annoy you. It does a little.
Mostly, it makes warmth uncurl under your ribs.
You squeeze his hand once. "I'm still coming over."
John's expression changes.
The flirting stays, but beneath it comes something quieter. Something almost relieved.
"Good," he says.
For a moment, neither of you moves.
The church parking lot continues around you, indifferent and holy in its own cracked way. Supplies being unloaded. Volunteers calling to one another. Lemar loudly pretending not to hover.
And you stand there with John's hand in yours, his mouth still warm on yours, his tiny freckle now cataloged somewhere deep inside you like a secret you have no intention of giving back.
Careful has left the building. You're not sure what comes next. You only know that tonight, you are going to his apartment.
And John Walker is looking at you like he already cannot wait to open the door.
By the time you make it back to the compound, your phone feels less like an object and more like a weaponized accusation.
You have stared at his last message like it might hatch into something useful if you looked at it long enough.
The message is not even dramatic.
John: I'll see you tonight.
That is it.
Four normal words. Barely even a sentence with ambition.
And still, you have been staring at it like it kicked down the front door of your self-control and took your dignity hostage.
You stand in the compound kitchen with your hip against the counter, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the screen. Natasha is at the table with a mug of coffee and an expression that says she has been watching you spiral for at least three minutes.
Possibly longer.
Natasha doesn't announce herself when she observes someone. She simply appears in the ecosystem, silent and devastating, like judgment with red hair.
"You're looking at that phone like it betrayed you," she says.
You jolt. The phone nearly slips out of your hand.
"Jesus."
She lifts her mug. "Not quite."
You press a hand to your chest. "Does everyone in my life sneak now?"
"I was sitting here when you walked in."
"That's worse."
"How is that worse?"
"Because it means I'm losing awareness."
"No," she says calmly. "It means you're distracted."
You narrow your eyes.
Natasha takes a slow sip of coffee. Her gaze drops to your phone, then returns to your face.
You flip the phone facedown against the counter too fast.
Natasha's mouth moves. Not a smile exactly. Something more dangerous because it's almost one.
You point at her. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're thinking loudly."
"Interesting accusation from someone who just tried to hide her phone from me like it was classified material."
"It is classified."
"Is John classified now?"
Your face burns immediately. Absolute traitor.
Natasha's almost-smile becomes real. Tiny, sharp and merciless.
You groan and drop your forehead against the cabinet beside you. "I'm hopeless."
"I didn't say that."
"I am." Your voice comes muffled against the wood. "I'm hopelessly in too deep with John Walker."
The words stumble into the kitchen wearing no armor at all.
For a second, everything goes quiet.
No hum of conversation in thehallway. Just that sentence, sitting between you and Natasha like a little flare.
You lift your head carefully.
Natasha is looking at you differently now. Her fingers curl around her mug. "I know."
Your throat tightens. "You know?"
"Mara."
The way she says your name almost makes you look away.
"You came back last night with his hands still written all over your silence," she says gently. "And today you walked in staring at your phone like the screen personally wounded you."
You huff a small, embarrassed laugh. "That obvious?"
"To me?" Natasha's face softens by another impossible fraction. "Yes."
You swallow and glance down at the counter.
Your phone is still facedown. Cowardly little rectangle.
"I don't know what I'm doing," you admit.
Natasha says nothing.
That's one of the things that makes her dangerous. She knows when silence will pull more truth out of someone than a question ever could.
You rub your thumb along the edge of the counter.
"I keep waiting for it to feel wrong," you say quietly. "Not complicated. It already feels complicated. It feels like trying to walk through a room full of tripwires while holding something made of glass." You breathe out. "But wrong. I keep waiting for it to feel like betrayal."
Natasha watches you.
Your voice drops. "And it doesn't."
The confession lands softly, but it shakes something in you anyway.
"It feels scary," you continue. "It feels reckless. It feels like I am standing too close to something warm after years of freezing and I don't know if I'm allowed to want it."
Natasha's expression shifts. Her gaze flickers to your chest, to where the wolf charm rests beneath your shirt, unseen but never absent.
Then she looks back at your face. "You are allowed to want to be alive," she says.
Your throat closes.
The kitchen blurs for half a second.
"Nat."
She sets her mug down, carefully, like any sudden sound might crack you open. "I'm glad," she says. "That you're slowly healing."
The words are too much, too gentle.
Too close to the tender, bruised part of you that still doesn't know what to do with kindness unless it's wrapped in sarcasm or emergency medical intervention.
So naturally, you panic.
"I'm going to his place again tonight," you blurt.
Natasha blinks. Then her face does the tiniest thing.
The emotional moment, delicate and dangerous, slips on a banana peel and lands face-first in the kitchen.
You close your eyes. "That was not my smoothest subject change."
"No," she says. "But it was effective."
"Please forget I said anything."
"I won't."
"Great."
Natasha leans back in her chair, the softness still there but tucked neatly beneath a layer of amusement. "You should pack an overnight bag."
Your eyes fly open. "Excuse me?"
"Just in case."
"Natasha."
"What?"
"I am not packing an overnight bag."
She raises an eyebrow. "Why not?"
"Because that is presumptuous."
"You slept there last night."
"That was different."
"Because you did not pack?"
You glare at her. "Because grief was involved."
Natasha gives you a look.
You point at her. "Do not weaponize logic against me."
"It's one of my better skills."
"I'm not packing a bag."
"Okay."
"I'm serious."
"I believe you."
"You sound like you don't believe me."
Natasha picks up her mug again. "I believe that you are not packing a bag today."
You stare at her.
She drinks her coffee with the serene cruelty of someone who knows exactly what she has done.
You grab your phone from the counter. "I hate it here."
"No, you don't."
"I do."
"You're smiling."
"I'm grimacing emotionally."
"Of course."
You tuck your phone into your pocket with more force than necessary. "I'm going to change."
"And not pack an overnight bag."
"Correct."
Natasha hums.
You take three steps toward the hall, then turn back. "Not today."
Her mouth curves.
You point at her again. "Do not look pleased."
"I would never."
"You are a liar."
"One of my better skills," she repeats.
You leave before she can make it worse.
By the time you reach John's building, your nerves have turned into a small orchestra of poorly supervised raccoons.
You stand outside the entrance with your hand hovering near the buzzer.
Ridiculous.
You were kissing him in a church parking lot hours ago. You had your hands on his neck. You touched that freckle. You heard that sound.
You press the buzzer.
For two seconds, nothing happens.
Then John's voice comes through the speaker, low and familiar.
"Yeah?"
Your stomach does something humiliating.
"It's me."
A pause.
Then, softer, "Come up."
The door buzzes.
You step inside.
The elevator ride feels too long and too short at the same time. Every floor number changes with the slow cruelty of a machine that knows you are walking directly toward trouble and has decided to make you marinate in it.
By the time you reach his door, your pulse is in your throat.
You barely lift your hand before the door opens.
John is there.
Dark shirt. Jeans. Hair still slightly damp like he showered not long ago. Sleeves pushed up enough to show his forearms, because apparently the universe has chosen violence.
His eyes move over you once.
Enough that heat curls low in your stomach and your fingers tighten around the strap of your jacket.
"Hi," he says.
You breathe out. "Hi."
For one heartbeat, neither of you moves.
The old version of this moment would have been careful. A step inside. A polite question. A safe distance while both of you pretended there was not a live wire stretched between your bodies.
Neither of you reaches for careful.
John steps back just enough to let you in, and the second you cross the threshold, his hand catches yours.
The door closes behind you. You barely hear it because John is already pulling you to him.
Certain and immediate.
Like the whole day has been one long exercise in restraint and now that you're here, inside his apartment, with no parking lot and no Lemar and no supplies pretending to be witnesses, he's done pretending too.
His mouth finds yours.
Your body answers before thought can catch up.
The kiss is warm, deep, and startlingly familiar for something still so new. Your hands go to his chest first, fingers curling into his shirt. His hands find your waist, drawing you closer until the line between greeting and confession disappears entirely.
You make a small sound against his mouth.
John breathes in sharply.
That is all it takes.
The kiss changes.
Still controlled, but barely. The kind of barely that makes your knees remember they have never been trustworthy structures.
He turns you gently, walking you back without breaking the kiss, one hand sliding from your waist to your lower back. You feel the door behind you before your brain catches the movement.
John pulls back half an inch. His eyes search yours, dark and careful despite the heat in them.
"Okay?" he asks.
You nod.
His gaze sharpens.
You swallow. "Yes."
"Good," he murmurs.
Then he kisses you again.
Your jacket slips from one shoulder. You don't care. Your phone presses awkwardly against your hip. You don't care. The entire world could politely collapse outside his apartment and you would ask it to keep the noise down.
John's hands stay at your waist, but there's nothing hesitant about them now. They hold, they guide, they confess in pressure what his mouth has not yet said.
You slide one hand up his chest, over his shoulder, along the side of his neck.
He knows what you're doing before you reach it.
You feel the exact second he realizes.
His breath catches.
Your thumb finds the tiny freckle on his left earlobe. That lovely, dangerous little mark. You touch it gently.
John makes that sound again. Low and quiet. Ruined around the edges. A delicious little fracture in all his discipline.
Your entire body lights up. "There it is," you whisper before you can stop yourself.
John's hand tightens at your waist. His eyes open against yours, pupils blown dark. "Hart."
The warning should work better than it does.
Unfortunately for him, it only makes your stomach flip.
You brush the freckle again, slower.
His jaw flexes. "Don't start something you can't finish," he says, voice rough.
Your breath catches.
For half a second, the words hang there, hot enough to burn fingerprints into the air.
Then your mouth curves. "You started it."
John stares at you. Then something in him gives way.
His mouth returns to yours, deeper this time, the kiss hungry in a way that steals the shape of every sensible thought you might have had. Your hands slide into his hair. His fingers press into your waist, warm through your shirt, and you arch into him before you can talk yourself out of it.
The door is solid behind you, John is solid in front of you. The combination is catastrophic.
He kisses like he's trying to stay honorable and losing ground inch by inch. You kiss him like you're done making that easy for him.
Your fingers tug gently at the hair near the nape of his neck. John exhales against your mouth, almost a groan.
It rolls through you, sharp and sweet.
You chase it.
Your thumb returns to his ear, grazing the freckle again, and his hand slides from your waist to brace against the door beside your head.
The apartment narrows to the heat of him.
His chest against yours. His breath mixing with yours. The faint scent of soap on his skin. The sound of him trying not to lose himself.
Then his mouth leaves yours.
You nearly protest but you don't get the chance.
John's lips brush the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then the line of your jaw. Slow and careful at first, still asking without words.
Your fingers tighten in his hair. He takes that as answer.
His mouth moves along your jaw, warm and deliberate, and your head falls back against the door before you can stop it. The movement opens your throat to him, gives him more room, more access, more of the skin your body has apparently decided belongs under his mouth.
John goes still for half a breath.
You feel him looking at you. Feel the restraint fighting its final tiny war.
Then he lowers his head again. His lips find the place beneath your jaw where your pulse is betraying you.
The sound that leaves you should be humiliating. It is soft, needy, and wrecked. It belongs to some version of you with less pride and more honesty.
You don't care anymore, not even a little.
John hears it, his whole body reacts.
His hand tightens at your waist, the other still braced beside your head. He exhales against your skin, rough and unsteady, and the feel of it sends heat rushing through you so fast you forget how to stand like a normal person.
"Love," he murmurs against your throat.
Your eyes flutter shut.
That word.
That voice.
That mouth.
It should be illegal for a man to contain this many problems in one body.
"What?" you manage, though it comes out less like a question and more like surrender wearing borrowed clothes.
John's lips brush your skin when he answers. "You keep making those sounds."
Your face burns. "Don't mention it."
His mouth moves higher, back to your jaw. "I'm trying very hard not to."
"You're failing."
"I know."
The admission is so rough, so honest, that your fingers curl tighter in his hair.
He kisses your jaw again, slower now, as if he has discovered a new way to test your composure and intends to conduct a thorough investigation. His nose brushes your cheek. His breath warms your skin. His body stays close enough to make thought difficult, but not so close that you feel trapped.
Even like this, even with your back to the door and his hands on you, John leaves you room.
The realization slides through the heat like something softer.
He wants you.
God, he wants you.
You can feel it in the tension of his shoulders, in the way his breath catches when you touch him, in the careful pressure of his hands. But he's still holding himself back for you. Waiting for every yes, listening for every no.
Your chest aches with it.
You turn your face toward his, catching his mouth again.
This kiss is messier.
You are done with being composed. Done with pretending you can stand here with his mouth on your skin and still be some clean, untouched version of yourself who doesn't want too much.
You want his hands. His mouth. His little sounds. His apartment. The way he looks at you like you are both a blessing and a battlefield. You want so much it scares you.
So you kiss him harder.
John answers immediately, a low sound caught in his throat. His hand slips beneath the edge of your jacket, palm warm against your side through the thin fabric of your shirt.
You shiver.
He notices, he always does. His mouth slows. His forehead rests against yours. Both of you are breathing hard.
"You okay?" he asks.
His voice is wrecked but it's also tender enough to break something.
You open your eyes.
He's close. Too close and somehow not close enough. His pupils are dark, his mouth flushed, his hair mussed where your fingers have been. That tiny freckle sits on his earlobe like a secret you have already stolen twice.
You lift your thumb to it again. This time, you don't tease. You touch it softly, almost fondly.
John's eyes close for half a second. There's that sound again, quieter now. Less ruined, more helpless.
Yours.
You smile, small and breathless. "I'm okay," you whisper.
His eyes open. The heat is still there. The hunger, the restraint stretched thin, but so is the softness.
"Yeah?"
You nod. "Yeah."
His hand moves from your waist to your cheek, thumb brushing once beneath your eye.
For a second, the apartment goes still around you.
The door at your back. John in front of you. The whole world on the other side, loud and waiting and cruel in all the ways it knows how to be.
But here, in this narrow space, there's only his hand on your face and the faint tremor in his breath when you touch something as small as a freckle.
You tilt your head, brushing your mouth over his again.
A gentle kiss this time. Almost sweet, almost safe.
John pulls back just enough to look at you. "You came back," he says quietly.
Something in your chest twists.
Not because he sounds surprised exactly. Because he sounds like he tried not to hope too loudly.
You swallow. "I said I would."
"I know."
Your thumb traces the edge of his ear, careful over that tiny mark. "Then stop looking at me like I performed a miracle."
His mouth softens. "Maybe it feels like one."
Your breath catches.
The tenderness is too sharp, too sudden. A blade wrapped in velvet.
You should make a joke. You should say something ridiculous before your heart starts speaking without supervision.
Instead, you let the truth sit there just for a second. Then you tug lightly at the front of his shirt. "Are you going to let me stand by the door all night?"
His expression shifts. Heat returns, so does that almost-smile, faint and dangerous.
"No," he says, voice low.
His hand slides down to yours. He steps back, giving you room to move, but his fingers stay threaded through yours.
You look down at your joined hands then back at him.
Ther's no pretending now. No careful distance. No polite little lie either of you can hide behind.
You came here because you wanted him and John knows.
He looks at you like he knows. Like he is trying to decide whether to kiss you again in the hallway or drag himself into better behavior by sheer force of will.
You make the decision harder by brushing your thumb over his freckle one last time.
John exhales, eyes darkening. "Hart," he says.
You smile. "What?"
His gaze drops to your mouth. "You're trouble."
You pause, then your smile widens. "No," you say, stepping closer until your chest nearly brushes his. "That's Lemar's name for me."
John's eyes flick back to yours.
For a heartbeat, something unreadable passes through his face.
Then his mouth curves, slow and warm. "Then what are you?"
Your hand settles against the side of his neck.
You don't have an answer. Not one that doesn't scare you. So you rise onto your toes and kiss him instead.
The weeks don't fix you. That would be too easy. Grief is not a bruise that fades politely because something good has touched it. It doesn't see John Walker's hand in yours and decide to pack its bags. It doesn't vanish because you laugh more, sleep better, or wake some mornings with your chest feeling less like an abandoned house.
It stays.
It lingers in quiet places. In support group chairs. In the space beneath your shirt where the wolf charm rests against your skin. In the sudden ache that comes when someone says Bucky's name, or when Steve's face goes distant in that way you recognize because your own reflection has worn it too often.
But something changes, you change. Not all at once, just small things.
John's hand finding yours when he walks beside you.
Your toothbrush appearing beside his sink.
The extra coffee mug he buys without telling you, pretending it was just there, like mugs spontaneously generate in cabinets when emotionally repressed soldiers fall in love.
The way you start knowing which floorboard in his apartment creaks. The way he starts keeping the pasta you like in the cabinet. The way his place stops feeling like somewhere you visit and starts feeling like somewhere that sighs when you arrive.
He visits you at the compound sometimes too.
Not often at first. The compound still has its own atmosphere, too large and echoing, a place full of ghosts wearing official badges. John walks into it like a man stepping onto a battlefield he has not been briefed on, shoulders straight, jaw set, polite in a way that makes Natasha look amused and you feel dangerously fond.
The first time he meets Steve Rogers there, you nearly choke on your coffee.
John freezes, actually freezes.
It happens in the common area on a Tuesday afternoon, because of course the universe would choose a random Tuesday to humble a decorated captain. Steve walks in wearing a gray shirt and the tired expression of a man who has carried too much history on his back and still says hello like he means it.
"John," you say, trying very hard not to smile, "this is Steve."
John's posture changes by one entire military rank.
"Captain Rogers," he says.
Steve's mouth curves faintly. "Steve is fine."
John nods once. "Yes, sir."
You press your lips together.
Natasha, sitting across the room, slowly lowers her book.
Steve's smile deepens just a little. "Really. Steve."
"Right," John says. "Steve. Sir."
You make a strangled sound into your mug.
John's eyes flick toward you, betrayed.
Natasha's eyebrows lift in exquisite delight.
Steve, who is either kind or enjoying this more than he lets on, offers his hand. "Good to meet you."
John shakes it like the entire concept of America is watching.
"You too," John says, voice very controlled. "It's an honor."
You can't help it, you laugh.
John's ears go faintly pink.
Steve glances at you. "Something funny?"
"No," you say immediately. "Nothing."
Natasha hums from the couch. "Very convincing."
John gives you a look.
You shrug, helpless. "You should've seen Lemar when he met him."
John's eyes narrow.
"He was weird about it too," you say.
"I was not weird," John says.
Natasha closes her book. "You called him sir twice after he told you not to."
John looks at her.
Natasha looks back, serene and lethal.
Steve's mouth twitches.
You sip your coffee to hide your grin.
Later, when John walks you down the hall, he mutters, "That was not my best work."
You lean into his side. "It was adorable."
His hand tightens around yours. "Do not tell Lemar."
"I am absolutely telling Lemar."
"Em."
"You called Steve Rogers sir five times in under a minute."
"I have respect for chain of command."
"He is not your chain of command."
"He's Captain America."
"Not anymore."
John looks mildly offended by the technicality. "That doesn't just go away."
You look up at him, softer now. No, you think. Some things don't just go away.
John catches the shift in your face. He always does. His thumb brushes over your knuckles once.
You say nothing.
He doesn't ask.
That's another thing you learn about him.
John can be forceful with the world, with expectations, with rules, with whatever impossible standard he has nailed into his own ribs. But he's careful with your grief.
He picks you up from support group on Wednesdays when he can.
He never makes a big deal about it. Never asks what you said in the circle before you're ready. Never pushes when your eyes are red and your voice has gone thin at the edges.
He just waits outside in his truck, leaning against the passenger side with his arms crossed, looking like every stern military warning sign ever printed, until he sees you.
Then his whole face changes. Every time. Like he has been holding his breath and didn't know he was doing it until you came out.
The first time, you almost turn around and walk back inside because the tenderness of it is unbearable.
Instead, you walk to him.
He opens the door for you.
You stare at him.
"What?" he asks.
"You're doing the thing."
"What thing?"
"The gentleman thing."
He looks down at the open door, then back at you. "I can close it again."
"Don't you dare."
His mouth curves. "Get in, love."
You hate how easily you obey. You hate it less when he gets in beside you and reaches across the console, palm open. You put your hand in his.
That becomes a rhythm too.
Support group, John waiting outside, your fingers tangled with his on the drive.
Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you cry quietly while looking out the window, and he keeps his hand in yours like a promise he has no intention of announcing.
Sometimes, when the grief is lighter, you make fun of his radio presets until he threatens to leave you on the side of the road.
"You wouldn't," you say.
"I might."
"You'd miss me before the next traffic light."
He glances over. "Yeah, I would."
You look at him. His eyes stay on the road, but his thumb moves over your hand. The words land softly. Just truth, set down between you without ceremony. You look out the window before your face can betray you.
You spend most of your time at his apartment after that.
It happens gradually, then all at once.
A sweater over the back of his chair. A book on his coffee table. A bottle of shampoo and conditioner in his shower because the military sadness soap he owns makes your hair feel like straw and regret. A hair tie on his nightstand. Your favorite tea in his cabinet. Your shoes by the door.
Little traces of you everywhere, bright little fingerprints left across the careful order of his life.
John notices all of it. You know because he never moves any of it. Not even the hair tie.
The overnight bag appears after Natasha looks at you one morning over her coffee and says, "You are not fooling anyone."
You look down at yourself. John's shirt. Your jeans from yesterday. "I am fooling several people," you say.
"You are fooling no one."
"I might be fooling Steve."
"Steve is being polite."
You squint at her. "That's worse."
"Pack a bag."
"I have clothes."
"At John's?"
You open your mouth then close it.
Natasha smiles into her coffee.
Two days later, you bring an overnight bag to John's apartment and drop it beside his bedroom dresser like it doesn't mean anything.
John looks at it. Then at you. Then back at the bag.
"Don't," you warn.
"I didn't say anything."
"You are looking at it emotionally."
His mouth twitches. "Am I?"
"Yes."
"I'll work on that."
You point at him. "This doesn't mean anything."
"Okay."
"I just got tired of stealing your clothes."
John's gaze drops briefly to the shirt you are currently wearing.
His shirt.
You both look at it.
The room goes quiet.
You clear your throat. "This is unrelated."
"Completely."
"Exactly."
He nods, very solemn. "You brought an overnight bag so you could keep wearing my shirts."
"That is not what I said."
"It's what happened."
"You are insufferable."
His smile warms slowly. "You still came over."
You glare at him.
He kisses you before you can pretend you're angry.
The bag stays. You barely use it.
Your own sleeping clothes sit folded inside like a well-intentioned suggestion from a version of you who has never experienced the simple luxury of sleeping in John Walker's T-shirt.
His shirts are softer, warmer. They smell like him, clean soap and laundry detergent and that quiet warmth beneath it that always makes your chest ache.
So you wear them every night you stay.
John never complains.
He does, however, lose the ability to function normally for several seconds each time he sees you in one. You consider that a fair trade.
Still, there's guilt. Not the old guilt. Not the sharp, punishing kind that used to crawl under your skin and make every good thing feel stolen.
This one's quieter.
Natasha sits alone in the compound when you leave.
The building is too big for one person. Too full of empty rooms and ghosts and echoes that never learned when to stop speaking. You know that kind of silence. You hate the thought of leaving her inside it.
"You know I can stay tonight," you tell her one evening, standing near the kitchen doorway with your jacket in your hand.
Natasha looks up from cleaning a knife with the kind of calm precision that would scare a lesser person.
It scares you a normal amount.
"You have plans."
"I can cancel."
She studies you for a moment, then sets the knife down. "Mara."
You shift your weight. "What?"
"I'm not a child."
"I didn't say you were."
"I'm also not lonely in a tragic tower, waiting for you to rescue me from my own dramatic lighting."
You blink.
"That was very specific."
"You were thinking it."
"I was not thinking dramatic lighting."
"You were thinking something close."
You sigh and lean against the doorway. "It just feels wrong sometimes. Leaving you here."
Natasha's expression softens, though she tries to hide it by reaching for a towel.
"I lived alone before you," she says.
"I know."
"And I'll be fine when you spend nights somewhere else."
You look down.
She stands and crosses the kitchen, stopping in front of you. Her hand comes up, quick and gentle, tugging at the collar of your jacket like she is fixing an excuse you are wearing wrong.
"You are allowed to have something that makes you want to leave the house," she says.
Your throat tightens. "Nat."
"And for the record," she adds, "you come back lighter."
You look at her then.
Her face is careful, but not closed. There's affection there, quiet and steady, the kind she rarely puts on display because Natasha's love has always been better at action than announcement.
"That matters," she says.
You swallow hard. "I still worry."
"I know."
"I'll always worry."
Her mouth curves faintly. "Good. Keeps you annoying."
You laugh despite yourself.
She gives your collar one last tug and steps back. "Go."
"You sure?"
"Mara."
"Okay, okay."
You leave before you can make it more emotional, because apparently your main survival tactic is fleeing tenderness like it is an active grenade.
John buzzes you in before you can press the button a second time.
He opens the apartment door with his phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, mouth set in concentration, fingers already flipping through a report in his other hand.
You step inside quietly.
He looks up.
The focused line of his brow softens instantly. Relief. Want. That quiet warmth that makes the whole damn world feel steadier. Home, even if neither of you has dared say the word out loud.
"I'll call you back," he says into the phone, eyes locked on you.
A pause on the other end.
"No. Tomorrow is fine." His gaze drops to your mouth for half a second, then back up. "Yeah. Understood."
He hangs up and exhales like he's been holding that breath since you texted him earlier. The phone lands on the coffee table with a soft thud.
"Busy?" you ask, shrugging out of your jacket and hanging it beside his.
"Report."
"Boring?"
"Extremely." He drops back onto the couch, already skimming through the papers again.
"Important?"
"Unfortunately." His mouth curves just slightly, that half-smirk you love. "Give me ten minutes. Tops."
You walk over, slow and deliberate. "That's what you said twenty minutes ago when you texted."
He glances up, eyes tracing the way you move. "It was true then."
"It's a lot less true now." You stop right in front of him, close enough that your knee brushes his thigh.
His mouth curves, but his gaze drops stubbornly back to the report. "Ten minutes."
You sit beside him anyway, thigh pressed to his. For about thirty seconds, you behave. A personal record, really.
John reads with that familiar furrowed brow, one elbow hooked over the back of the couch. His sleeves are pushed up to his forearms, apparently an act of war against your self-control. Lamplight traces the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his ear, and the small freckle on his left earlobe.
Your freckle. Not his anymore.
You stare.
John turns a page without looking at you. "You're staring."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"You're reading. How would you even know?"
His mouth twitches. "I always know when you're staring."
"That sounds like paranoia."
"That sounds like experience." He finally lifts his eyes, just a fraction. "Hart."
The name lands warm in your chest. "What?"
"Let me finish the report."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're thinking about doing something." His voice has that slight rasp now, the one that gives him away.
You smile, slow and innocent. That, apparently, is enough.
John looks at you fully. Big mistake.
Whatever warning he meant to give dies on his lips the second your eyes meet. You lift your hand. His gaze follows it, then snaps back to your face, knowing, already braced.
Before he can protest, your fingers brush the side of his neck. His breath catches, just barely. You slide higher, gentle, reverent, until your thumb finds that tiny freckle on his earlobe.
John's eyes flutter shut for half a second.
A low, soft sound slips from his throat, that tiny fracture in his discipline. The sound that's only ever for you.
It melts through you like warm honey.
You have both learned by now that there are certain things you no longer need to ask. Not because permission has disappeared but because trust has grown in its place.
You know the difference between hesitation and invitation. You know the way John's hands open for you before they touch. You know the way his breath changes when he wants you closer. You know that if either of you says stop, everything stops.
So you don't ask before moving.
You swing one leg over him and settle into his lap, the report crinkling forgotten between you. The new position brings your bodies into closer alignment, hips settling against his. John's eyes open. For one delicious second, he looks completely betrayed by the fact that paperwork has failed to protect him.
"Mara."
"Still reading?" you ask, voice already lower than it was a second ago.
His gaze drops to your mouth. Dark. Hungry.
"No."
"Good."
You kiss him, and it's immediate fire. No slow build tonight. You're already burning, and John reacts instantly, the report abandoned blindly as his hands reach for the coffee table with very little dignity before letting the papers slide onto it. Both of his hands fall to your hips, gripping harder this time, pulling you down against him as his mouth moves against yours like he has been waiting through every phone call, every page, every line of that report just to get here.
The kiss is hungry from the start, mouths parting, tongues meeting in a slow, deep glide that makes you both groan. Your hands slide into his hair, tugging, and he answers with a rough sound that vibrates through his chest into yours.
You smile against his mouth.
He notices. His hands flex at your hips, fingers digging in. "You're proud of yourself."
"A little," you breathe, then roll your hips once, slow and deliberate.
John's head tips back against the couch with a low, helpless groan. "Em..."
The sound goes straight through you.
"You're distracting," he manages, voice already rough.
"You invited me over."
"I was trying to work."
"That was your first mistake."
His laugh catches low in his chest, but it dies the second you kiss him again, deeper this time. You leave his mouth to trail hot, open-mouthed kisses along his jaw, and he exhales sharply.
"Jesus," he mutters, the word half-groan.
You reach his ear. Your lips brush the freckle.
John's whole body goes tense beneath you. A broken sound leaves him, low and wrecked, and his hands slide down to your thighs, gripping hard.
"Mara," he warns, voice scraped raw.
You hum against his skin. "What?"
His fingers press into your thighs. "You know what."
You kiss the freckle again, then gently scrape your teeth over it.
John shudders violently, hips jerking up into yours. A rough moan tears out of him. "Fuck..."
You smile against his ear. "I love that sound."
"You're gonna kill me," he breathes, voice shaking.
"Good."
John turns his head and catches your mouth again, kissing you like he's lost the last thread of patience. One second you're in his lap, the next, the room tilts as he moves with careful strength, rolling you beneath him on the couch. His weight settles over you, one thigh sliding between yours, and you both groan at the new pressure.
He stops immediately, breathing hard, eyes searching yours. "Okay?" he asks, voice hoarse.
You nod, already pulling him back down. "Yes. John..."
He kisses you before you finish, hungrier now, the kiss messy and deep. The couch dips beneath your bodies. His hand braces beside your head, the other gripping your hip as you arch up into him. He groans into your mouth, the sound low and filthy, and you chase it, legs wrapping around his waist to pull him closer.
"God, you feel good," he murmurs against your lips, then kisses you again before you can answer.
Your hands roam over his shoulders, down his back, nails dragging lightly through his shirt. John's mouth leaves yours to trace your jaw, your throat, and you tip your head back with a soft moan.
"There," you breathe. "Right there."
He obliges, lips and tongue working that spot until you're trembling beneath him. His hand slips beneath the hem of your shirt, palm warm and broad against your stomach, then higher, fingers splaying over your ribs. The touch makes you arch harder, a broken sound slipping out of you.
John lifts his head just enough to look at you, eyes dark, mouth flushed.
"You keep making those sounds," he says, voice rough with want, "and I'm not gonna be able to think straight."
"Then don't think," you whisper, tugging him back down.
He goes willingly, kissing you deeper, his hand stroking slow, deliberate lines along your ribs while his hips press into yours in a slow, grinding rhythm that makes you both moan. The sounds are quiet but constant now, your soft gasps, his low groans, the wet slide of mouths meeting again and again.
At one point he pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against yours, breathing hard.
"You're shaking," he murmurs, thumb stroking your cheek.
"So are you," you answer, voice breathless.
He huffs a laugh that turns into a groan when you roll your hips up to meet him again. "Yeah. I am."
His mouth finds yours once more, slower this time but no less intense, tongues sliding together as his hand keeps exploring under your shirt, mapping every inch of skin he can reach. You kiss along his jaw again, finding that freckle one more time, and the sound he makes is almost pained with pleasure.
"Jesus... Em..."
"I know," you whisper against his ear. "I know."
He captures your mouth again, kissing you like he can't get enough, like every sound you make belongs to him. His hand tightens on your hip, pulling you harder against him, and the low, desperate groan that leaves him makes heat flood through you so fast you forget how to breathe.
You're both lost in it, hands gripping, mouths moving, soft moans and rough groans filling the space between kisses, when his phone rings.
The sound slices through the apartment like a blade.
You both freeze.
John's forehead drops to your shoulder with a frustrated, broken sound that is half groan, half laugh.
"You have got to be kidding me," you whisper, voice wrecked.
He doesn't move for a second, just breathes against your neck, his hand still under your shirt, thumb stroking absent circles on your skin like he can't quite make himself stop touching you.
"If that's Lemar," you say, still breathless, "he has the worst timing in the entire universe."
John huffs against your throat, the sound almost a moan. "I'm going to kill him."
His phone keeps ringing.
He finally lifts his head, eyes dark and glassy, hair completely mussed from your hands. He looks wrecked. Beautiful. Yours.
"I should answer that," he says, but he doesn't move.
You slide your hand up to his left ear, thumb brushing the freckle one last time.
John's eyes flutter shut and a low, helpless sound leaves him.
"John."
"Yeah."
"Answer the phone."
He groans, long and low, then pushes himself up on shaky arms.
He reaches blindly for the phone, still hovering over you, and glances at the screen.
The change is immediate. His face closes. His posture shifts. Something in his shoulders locks into place, sharp and practiced. The warmth doesn't leave his eyes entirely, but the soldier steps forward inside him.
"It's not Lemar," he says.
Your stomach tightens.
He sits back slowly, giving you room, and answers the call.
"Walker."
You push yourself up on your elbows, shirt still rucked slightly at your waist, skin cooling where his hand had been.
John stands and walks toward the window. Not far, but far enough.
His back is to you for a moment, one hand at his hip, the other holding the phone to his ear. The city light catches against the glass, turning his reflection faint and ghostlike.
"Yes, sir," he says.
Your body goes still. 'Military.' You sit up fully and tug your shirt down, suddenly aware of the room, the report, the way desire can vanish beneath the weight of one phone call.
John listens. His jaw tightens. "No, sir. I understand."
A pause.
His eyes flick to the window, but you can see his reflection. The crease between his brows deepens.
"I submitted that last week."
Another pause.
His hand curls briefly at his side. "Yes, sir."
Then silence, longer this time.
You watch him.
Something shifts in John's face, confusion, then something colder. He turns just enough for his eyes to meet yours over his shoulder. The look hits you like a drop in altitude.
"Yes," he says slowly into the phone. "I know her."
Your breath stalls.
The apartment suddenly feels too big, too quiet.
John's gaze stays locked on you. His voice drops, firm and steady. "She's my girlfriend."
The word lands like a quiet detonation.
Girlfriend.
The first time. Not teasing. Not whispered against your skin. Not under Lemar's grinning supervision. He says it to the military like an unshakeable fact, like something he will defend with or without permission.
Your heart stumbles hard.
John looks away first, jaw tight. "No, sir. There's nothing to report." A pause. His fingers flex around the phone. "With all due respect, I'm not sure what you're asking."
The silence on the other end stretches, tinny and poisonous.
John's posture straightens further, shoulders rigid. "Yes, sir. Understood." Another beat. "I'll be there."
Your stomach drops.
He glances at you. "No. Tomorrow morning is fine." A final, clipped "Yes, sir," and he hangs up.
For a long moment he doesn't move, phone still in hand, staring out the window. His reflection in the glass looks ready to crack.
"John?"
He turns. The mask he tries to pull on is late and sloppy.
"What did they ask you?" you say.
"Nothing."
You stare at him until he looks away.
"John."
He exhales through his nose and drags a hand over his mouth. "They asked about you."
The words drop heavy between you.
"About me how?"
"Name. Background. How long I've known you. What our relationship is." His jaw flexes. "I told them the truth."
Your skin prickles. Old instincts wake up, sharp, familiar, dangerous. Alleys. Bodies. Blood. The years you spent becoming a ghost.
"Why?" you ask, keeping your voice even.
"I don't know." The answer comes too sharp. He hears it and softens, but the worry stays. "I don't know."
He sets the phone on the windowsill with deliberate care. Too careful. That's how you know it's bad.
John is worried. Tactical, protective, angry worry, not the gentle kind he soothes with a hand on your back. This is the kind that makes him stand like he's already between you and a threat.
"Don't worry about it," he says.
You blink. "John. You're standing by the window looking like someone just handed you a live grenade with my name on it."
His expression flickers, almost amused despite everything.
"I'll handle it."
"Handle what, exactly?"
His mouth shuts. That's the part he hates, not knowing.
You stand and cross the room slowly. He watches you approach, torn between pulling you close and keeping whatever this is locked outside the door. When you stop in front of him, you don't push. Not yet. Instead you take his hand.
His fingers close around yours, too tight at first, then deliberately gentler. "Sorry," he murmurs.
You shake your head. "Don't."
His eyes search your face. "I don't like this."
"I noticed." You press your free hand to his chest, feeling the hard, rapid thump beneath your palm. "Hey."
He looks down at your hand.
You don't lie and say it's fine. You both know better. Instead, you shift the subject with the only mercy you have.
"So..." Your voice comes out lighter than you feel. "Girlfriend?"
John stills.
The hard line of his shoulders softens almost comically. His eyes snap back to yours, surprised, a little embarrassed, and warm.
"That's what you're focusing on right now?"
"Yes." You smile. "You called me your girlfriend. To the military."
His ears go faintly pink. You glance at the left one, your freckle sitting there like it belongs to you.
John catches you looking and gives you a warning look that has zero authority behind it right now.
"First time you've said it out loud," you murmur.
"Yeah." His throat works as he swallows. "I meant it." No hesitation. Just steady certainty.
Dangerous man.
"You could have asked me first," you tease, no real bite.
"I know."
"You just assigned me the title."
His mouth twitches. "That's one way to put it."
"Very official." You step closer, thumb brushing over that freckle on his earlobe.
John's breath catches. That soft, low sound slips out again, yours, always yours.
Your smile gentles. "Does this mean I can start calling you boyfriend?"
For a second he just looks at you. Then the fight drains from his face, leaving the man beneath the Captain. Not all the worry, just enough for this.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "You can."
"Yeah?"
His mouth curves, small and helpless. "Yeah."
"Boyfriend," you test, soft and deliberate.
John closes his eyes for half a second, like the word lands somewhere unguarded. When he opens them, the look he gives you is warm enough to push the military call farther away.
"Girlfriend," he answers, voice low.
Your stomach flips. You try not to smile, you fail.
John notices, of course he does. He leans in slowly, giving you time, and kisses you. This one is quiet. A seal, a promise pressed into skin. His hand cups your cheek; yours stays over his heart.
When he pulls back, forehead resting against yours, he whispers, "I'll find out why they asked."
The worry is still there, under the warmth.
"I know," you breathe.
"I won't let anything happen to you."
You don't tell him he can't promise that. Instead you brush your thumb over his freckle again.
His breath hitches.
"Then you'd better get used to having a girlfriend who asks questions."
John's mouth curves against yours. "Bossy."
"You like it."
His eyes soften. "Yeah. I do."
The phone stays silent on the windowsill. The report lies forgotten. The worry lingers.
C's corner: Welcome, my lovely readers, to a new fic that is technically not new because she has been sitting in the corner collecting dust and judging me.
Echoes in My Mind is officially being rewritten, this time in third person and following Cassandra Vale as she tries to understand her powers, her past, and the very dangerous things waking up inside her.
I do want to say now that this fic probably won’t update as often as Fault Lines, because that story still has me in a chokehold and refuses to let go. But Echoes is no longer abandoned. She is alive, she is blinking in the dark, and she has decided to make that everyone’s problem.
Thank you for giving this story another chance. I’m excited to finally bring Cassandra’s chaos back to life. 🖤🧠✨
WARNINGS: 18+ only, minors DNI, explicit sexual content, one night stand, alcohol consumption, mind reading/intrusive thoughts, lack of control over powers, implied human experimentation, memory loss, trauma from past captivity, brief flashbacks, mentions of lab escape, emotional vulnerability, post-Thunderbolts tension, mentions of Olivia, bruising/hickeys, intense sexual tension, possible dissociation/feeling like “someone else” is taking over, early hints of Cassandra’s Echo persona, messy feelings.
✍🏽 WC: 5.3K+
SUMMARY: Cassandra Vale only wanted one quiet night before facing Valentina. Instead, she meets John Walker, hears the desire he never says out loud, and loses herself in a connection that may awaken something dangerous inside her.
TAGS: @quantumlethe
The bar was dim, all amber light and polished wood, the kind of place that made time blur if someone stayed long enough.
Cassandra Vale sat near the end of the counter, one long leg crossed over the other, her fingers curled around a glass she had barely touched. The dark liquor inside caught the light when she moved it, turning gold at the edges before sinking back into brown.
Her long black hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders, soft and heavy, the ends streaked pink like someone had dipped her in neon and shadow. A few strands had slipped forward against her cheek, brushing the corner of her mouth whenever she tilted her head. She wore black because it was easy. Because it disappeared well in corners. Because it made the pink in her hair look even brighter, almost defiant under the bar lights.
A cropped leather jacket hugged her shoulders. Silver rings glinted on her fingers. There was a faint scar near the inside of her wrist, pale enough that most people would miss it unless they looked too long.
Cassandra always noticed when people looked too long.
She swirled the liquid in her glass, not really tasting it.
Valentina had called her to New York with that clipped, no-nonsense voice of hers, the one that made it sound like she was always in control, always five steps ahead. Cassandra was sure she knew what Valentina wanted. She was sure Valentina knew about the power coursing through her veins.
What unsettled her was the possibility that Valentina already knew that power was changing. Expanding.
Telekinesis had once meant simple control. Moving objects with a thought. Bending the world to her will.
A door opening without her hand touching the knob. A knife sliding across a table. A glass lifting in the air because her temper had gotten there before the rest of her.
Lately, though, it had sharpened into something deeper. Voices in her head. Strangers' fears, their insecurities, their desires. It wasn't constant, not yet, but when those voices came, no matter how hard Cassandra tried to ignore them, they could be persistent.
A man two stools down worried about the text he had not answered. A woman in a blue dress wondered if her lipstick had smudged. The bartender silently cursed a customer who kept snapping his fingers for attention.
Small thoughts, harmless thoughts. But they pressed against Cassandra's skull all the same, soft and needling, until she could feel the ache building behind her eyes.
She rubbed her temple, her rings cold against her skin.
For one second, the bar vanished.
White walls. Metal restraints. A woman's voice, low and urgent, telling her not to scream.
"Run, Cassie. Don't look back. No matter what you hear, do not look back."
Cassandra blinked hard, and the memory dissolved into amber light and polished wood.
Her mother figure from the lab existed in fragments now. A warm hand around hers. A voice that shook only when she thought Cassandra could not hear it. Blood on a sleeve. A door held open just wide enough for a child to slip through.
After that, everything went hazy.
Cassandra remembered running. She remembered screaming. She remembered the sky looking too big when she finally saw it again.
Then nothing.
Whole years of her own life sat behind fogged glass.
As if that wasn't enough, now she had Valentina to deal with.
She lifted her drink and tried to enjoy the last day of loneliness before meeting with her the following morning. She wished she could simply ignore the summons, but she knew better.
Valentina would find her again. Valentina always seemed to find what she wanted.
So Cassandra had chosen the simpler option.
She raised the glass to her lips and sighed. "Here's to new beginnings," she whispered mockingly.
🩷💚🩷💚🩷💚
Across the bar, John Walker needed a break from all of it.
A place where no one cared who he was. What uniform he used to wear. What title had been given to him, stripped from him, twisted into something heavier than he knew how to carry.
So he came here, the closest bar to the tower he could find.
It wasn't like he could get drunk, not really, but he needed time alone with his thoughts. That was something he could never do back at the tower.
Not with Bucky brooding in corners like a storm cloud with a vibranium arm. Not with Ava watching everything without saying a word. Not with Alexei's endless stories.
And Yelena...
Well.
Yelena was Yelena.
The bourbon burned the way it was supposed to, sharp enough to dull the ache that still lingered. John rubbed a hand over his jaw, staring down into the amber in his glass, trying to pretend it could fill the hollow inside him.
That was when he noticed her.
At first, it was the hair.
Black waves spilling over leather, the pink-streaked ends catching the light every time she moved. Then it was the rest of her. The tilt of her head. The curve of her mouth, faintly bored and faintly amused. The dark polish on her nails. The way she sat like she expected the whole room to try something and had already decided she would win.
She looked dangerous. Not loud dangerous, something quieter. A blade tucked into velvet.
Cassandra went still the moment his thoughts brushed against her mind.
Don't do it, John. Just drink, then leave. Keep your head down.
Her glass hovered halfway to her mouth.
Slowly, she turned her head.
The man staring into his drink a few stools away was broad-shouldered and tense, carrying heaviness in every line of his body. His hair was short. His jaw was tight. His hands looked too strong around the glass, like he had to keep reminding himself not to break things.
She shouldn't have been able to hear him, she hadn't meant to. But control had been slipping through her fingers lately like smoke.
John dragged his gaze back to his glass.
He shouldn't look again. She had already caught him once, the stranger at the end of the bar. If she noticed him staring, she would think he was some creep. He just could not seem to stop checking if she was still there.
Cassandra studied him openly now. He looked familiar, but not in the polished way public men looked familiar from news footage or government ceremonies.
No, this recognition sat lower, deeper. Something in the shadows.
Then she heard him again.
Haven't touched anyone since Olivia. Not looking. Don't want to want this.
Cassandra smiled faintly into her glass.
For the first time in days, the voices were not a swarm. They were only his.
When John finally forced himself to look up, her eyes were already on him, calm and steady. There was something about those eyes. Dark and sharp beneath smoky liner, watchful in a way that made him feel seen before he had offered anything.
Something in his chest shifted, restless and almost painful.
He should've looked away.
He didn't mean to walk over. He didn't mean to ask if the seat beside her was taken.
But somehow, his bourbon was in his hand, and he was sliding onto the stool next to hers.
"Mind if I sit?"
Cassandra glanced up, one brow arched like she did not particularly care either way.
"It's a free country."
Her lips curved into the faintest smirk as he settled beside her.
Up close, he was bigger than she had realized. His shoulders strained against his shirt, his presence heavy but not unwelcome. There were shadows under his eyes, the kind left by sleepless nights, not bad lighting.
John nursed his drink, pretending it was about the bourbon.
His thoughts betrayed him.
God, she's pretty.
Don't say that. Don't even think it.
Haven't felt this pull in years.
Cassandra bit back a smile, swirling her glass.
"You always talk to yourself that much," she asked, "or am I special?"
His head snapped toward her, pulse kicking.
"What?"
She shrugged, casual, taking another sip.
"You just look like the kind of guy who's having a whole conversation in his head."
His mouth quirked despite himself.
"Depends who I'm looking at."
And right now, I'm looking at you.
Heat crept up the back of Cassandra's neck. She hid it behind the rim of her glass.
"Careful," she said. "That almost sounded like flirting."
John chuckled low, a rumble in his chest.
"What if it was?"
Bet she tastes sweet.
Bet she sounds even sweeter.
Cassandra nearly choked on her drink.
His mind dipped into her without him knowing, explicit and unfiltered, and her pulse quickened before she could stop it.
She set her glass down and leaned closer, the pink ends of her hair sliding over one shoulder.
"Then I'd say you're rusty at it."
Something in John's gut coiled tight.
Rusty? Maybe. But he was not about to back down.
"Oh yeah?" He leaned in, voice dropping. "Why don't you let me practice?"
Bet I could make her moan before she even knows my name.
Her lips parted.
For a second, John thought he might have said it out loud.
Cassandra swallowed, the air between them suddenly charged. He had no idea what she had heard. No idea what he was putting in her head without a word.
And God help her, she did not know how to push him out.
"Maybe I'll let you," she murmured. "If you buy the next round."
His grin was sharp, dangerous.
"Done."
And after that, I'm not letting her walk away.
Cassandra's pulse thundered. Because she knew he meant it.
The second round came quickly. John ordered for her without asking, like he already knew her taste. The bartender slid the glass across the polished wood, and when her fingers brushed the rim, his voice brushed her mind again.
Bet those hands would feel good on me.
She forced a casual sip, the liquor burning down her throat.
"So," she said, "what brings you to a place like this? You don't exactly scream corporate retreat."
She was sharp.
John was not used to being read so easily.
"Needed a break from the job," he said, vague enough. "Too many people, not enough breathing room."
And right now, I just want her in my lap, not talking, just...
He cut the thought short, jaw clenching.
Cassandra caught it anyway. Her cheeks heated. Her thighs pressed together beneath the bar. His mind was a raw, unfiltered reel, and all of it was about her.
She smirked, trying to cover the flush in her skin.
"You don't look like the type who takes breaks."
He smirked back.
His thoughts betrayed him again.
She'd look even better riding me until I couldn't breathe.
Cassandra's breath hitched.
She shifted on her stool, desperate to shake the heat threading through her body.
John noticed the flicker in her eyes, the way her pupils widened. For one panicked second, he wondered if he had said something out loud.
No.
She was just reacting. To him. To this. And damn, it felt good.
"Maybe I don't," he admitted, voice low. "But sometimes you gotta give in to what you want."
And I want her. Here. Now.
The words slammed into Cassandra like a jolt. Her fist tightened around the glass, focus narrowing. She could not let him keep bleeding into her head like this. She needed control.
She shut her eyes for a beat and forced her mind into stillness.
A wall.
A lock.
One by one, his thoughts dimmed until she only heard his voice in the room, not the one in her head.
When she opened her eyes again, she smiled faintly.
"Guess we all want something."
John's grin was slow, crooked, almost dangerous.
"Guess so."
For the first time that night, his mind was blissfully silent. But the look in his eyes told Cassandra exactly what he was still thinking.
The silence in her head was a relief, like closing a window on a storm. His thoughts had been hot, heavy, impossible to ignore. Now she had space.
Space to think. Space to push back. Space to play.
She tilted her glass toward him, smirking.
"So, tell me. When you're not brooding in hotel bars, what do you actually do for fun?"
John barked a short laugh, shaking his head.
"That's what you call it?"
Her eyes glittered.
He had not felt this alive in years.
"Alright," he said, leaning in. "What do you do for fun? Besides calling strangers out on their bad habits."
Cassandra swirled her drink, letting the silence stretch, savoring the way his attention clung to her.
"Depends on the stranger," she said smoothly. "Sometimes I like to see what they're hiding."
She did not mean it as a confession, but his gaze sharpened like he had heard more in her words than she had offered.
Something about her tone twisted in John's gut. Like she knew. Like she could see every unclean thought he had been wrestling down.
His pulse quickened.
"You think I'm hiding something?" he asked, voice low.
Cassandra met his stare evenly, leaning close enough that her knee brushed his.
"Everyone's hiding something."
His lips curved, slow and wolfish.
She had no idea. Or maybe she did.
Maybe that was why he could not drag himself away.
"You keep talking like that," he murmured, "and I might start thinking you're trouble."
Cassandra smiled, heat curling in her chest.
"Maybe I am."
The third round arrived untouched and forgotten.
The air between them was thicker than the bourbon in their glasses. Cassandra had shut him out of her head, but she did not need his thoughts anymore. Everything she needed was written in the line of his mouth, the flex of his jaw, the way his gaze refused to leave hers.
The untouched glasses between them might as well not have existed. The noise of the bar faded, every laugh and clink of glass drowned out by the weight of his stare.
Cassandra did not move first. Neither did John.
But somehow, her knee pressed harder against his. His arm brushed the back of her chair. Her breath came shallow.
And then he was there.
The second his lips touched hers, it was over.
Restraint gone. Patience gone.
Cassandra tasted like fire, like the answer to every dark thought John had not let himself feel since Olivia. The kiss was all heat and teeth, his hand cupping her jaw with a firmness that demanded she lean into him.
The barstool dug into the backs of her thighs as he pulled her closer, his tongue sweeping across her lips until she opened for him. The taste of bourbon and smoke filled her mouth, dizzying and intoxicating.
Her fingers fisted in the collar of his shirt, tugging him down harder, and his hand slipped to her waist, gripping like he would die if he let go.
God, he had missed this.
Missed touch. Missed heat. Missed wanting someone so badly his chest hurt with it.
The kiss deepened, shameless, and Cassandra didn't care that the bartender was probably watching or that someone might whisper about it later. All she cared about was the press of John's mouth, the way his tongue slid against hers like he owned the moment, the way his body leaned into hers like he could not stop himself.
By the time he finally pulled back, his breathing was ragged.
Her lips were swollen. Her hair had fallen wild around her face, black waves and pink ends spilling over one shoulder. Her heart was a wild drum.
John rested his forehead against hers.
Cassandra did not need to hear his thoughts to know exactly what he wanted. She wanted it too.
The elevator ride was a blur of stolen kisses pressed against mirrored walls, his hands gripping her hips like he could not wait another second. Cassandra's reflection flashed around them in broken pieces. Dark hair. Pink streaks. Kiss-bruised mouth. John's hands gripping her like gravity had rewritten itself around her body.
By the time the door to her room slammed shut, she was already breathless.
John's mouth claimed hers again, rough and urgent, all heat and bourbon and raw hunger. His jacket hit the floor, followed by her leather one, both of them tearing at every barrier between them with frantic hands. His palms slid down her waist, over the curve of her hips, squeezing hard enough to leave marks as if he needed to memorize every inch of her right then.
Cassandra broke the kiss just long enough to murmur against his lips, "You wanted practice?"
His answering growl vibrated deep in his chest, sending a shiver straight through her. "Hell yeah I did. Been thinking about this since I saw you at that bar."
She shoved him back onto the bed and straddled his lap before he could say another word. His breath hitched sharply as her hands pressed against his chest, pushing him flat onto the mattress. Cassandra hovered over him, thighs framing his hips, her long black waves with those defiant pink streaks falling around them like a dark curtain. The pink ends brushed his bare throat when she leaned in, teasing.
Every muscle in John's body tensed beneath her, solid and warm. The weight of her pressing into him felt like a fever dream.
"Take what you want," he rasped, voice breaking with need. "Fuck, sweetheart... I'm all yours."
That was all the permission she needed.
She rolled her hips against his, feeling the hard, thick line of him straining through his jeans. His hands flew to her hips, fingers digging in possessively, guiding her movements as a low groan tore from his throat.
Cassandra leaned down and kissed him hard, tugging at his shirt until he ripped it over his head himself. Her fingertips traced the scars mapping his chest, stories written in raised lines, while she rocked against him, savoring the way his breath stuttered.
"Goddamn, you feel good already," John groaned into her mouth, hips bucking up to meet her. "Keep moving like that and I won't last."
But Cassandra wasn't stopping. Their clothes joined the growing pile on the floor, layer after frantic layer, until nothing stood between them. Cool air kissed her heated skin, but the fire between their bodies burned hotter.
John paused for a brief second, hands tightening on her thighs, breath rough and ragged. "You sure?" he asked, voice softer but edged with barely leashed control. "Tell me you want this."
Cassandra looked down at him. Her flushed face, blown pupils, and the way her jaw clenched with restraint made something low and hungry uncurl in her chest.
"Yes," she whispered, the word not entirely feeling like hers. "I want you. Now."
For the briefest second, as she said it, her eyes flashed a vivid, unnatural green, bright and luminous in the dim light of the room.
John saw it.
A flicker if something electric and wrong in her gaze, there and gone in an instant. But before he could even process it, a low rumble of distant thunder rolled outside, and a jagged flash of lightning lit the edges of the blinds. He blinked once, hard.
Lightning, he told himself. Just the storm playing tricks with the light.
He was too far gone, too consumed by the heat of her straddling him, the weight of her body, the way her hair spilled over her shoulders and brushed his skin. He didn't question it. He didn't want to.
Instead, his grip on her thighs tightened again, pulling her down closer as a low, hungry sound rumbled in his chest.
"Fuck... good," he rasped, voice thick. "Then come here, sweetheart."
As she sank onto him slowly, deliberately, a sudden rush of heat flooded her veins. Sharper, greedier than anything she'd felt before.
John's ragged curse filled the room "Fuck... so tight, so perfect", but her mind flooded with his desire, raw and unfiltered, pouring into her like fuel on an open flame.
Every sensation doubled. The delicious stretch and fullness of him inside her, the bruising grip of his hands on her hips, the hot pulse of need radiating off him.
For one dizzying heartbeat, the dim lamplight caught in her eyes as she glanced toward the mirror. They flashed vivid green, bright, unnatural, glowing from within. Her powers were amplifying again, feeding on the want, the heat, the overwhelming connection. The voices in her head had always been intrusive, but this was deeper, hungrier, like her ability was drinking in every filthy, desperate thought he had and throwing it back at her tenfold.
A cold shiver raced down her spine even as pleasure surged through her body. She blinked hard, and the green was gone. Her eyes were dark again, but the brief glitch left her unsettled, heart hammering for reasons that weren't only lust.
She pushed the disorientation aside and rolled her hips deeper, taking him fully. "Like that?" she breathed, voice husky. "Is this what you've been imagining?"
"Better," John growled, his hands guiding her faster, thumbs pressing into her hip bones. "So much fucking better. Ride me, sweetheart. Let me feel you."
John groaned, sitting up suddenly, powerful arms banding around her back. In one rough motion he flipped her beneath him, pressing her into the mattress with his weight braced over her. His mouth crashed down onto hers, tongue sliding deep and claiming as he thrust into her hard and urgent, like he'd been dying for this since the bar.
Her gasp against his mouth nearly undid him.
"Not letting you do all the work," he growled against her lips, pulling back just enough to watch pleasure twist across her face with every deep stroke. "Not a chance. Gonna make you feel every inch."
The force of him knocked the air from her lungs, each thrust deeper, rougher, faster, the slick sound of their bodies filling the room alongside her moans and his ragged breathing. Her nails raked down his back, leaving red trails that only made him drive into her harder. Sweat slicked their skin, her pink-streaked hair sticking to her neck and shoulders.
Right as the pleasure surged through her, hot, blinding, and overwhelming, the bedside lamp flickered violently. Once. Twice. The light dimmed and stuttered like something was pulling at the electricity itself, casting wild shadows across the walls before snapping back to steady.
John's rhythm faltered for half a second. His eyes flicked toward the lamp, brow furrowing slightly in confusion.
"John," Cassandra cried out, voice breaking as he hit that perfect spot inside her.
The flicker had already pulled his attention for that split second. By the time he looked back down at her, the oddity of her saying his name never registered, he was too lost in the heat of her body clenching around him and the way her voice shattered so beautifully.
"Fuck, say it again," he growled, lips brushing her ear, teeth grazing her neck as he sucked a bruise into her skin and slammed into her harder, completely lost in the moment. "Love the way you sound saying my name."
"John... fuck, right there," she moaned, legs wrapping tighter around his waist, pulling him impossibly deeper. Her body clenched around him with every powerful snap of his hips.
"That's it, sweetheart," he rasped, voice rough and filthy. "Let go for me. Wanna feel you come apart on my cock. You're so goddamn perfect."
The pressure built fast, hot and overwhelming. Every thrust, every scrape of his teeth, every growled word pushed her closer. She clung to him, nails digging in, body shaking under the relentless force of him.
And then it broke. Pleasure tore through her, sharp and blinding. She cried out, muffling the sound against his shoulder as she came hard, pulsing and trembling around him.
The second John felt her tighten, he lost control with a deep groan that tore from his chest. "Fuck!" He drove deep one last time, shuddering hard against her as he followed her over the edge.
His arms gave out. His forehead dropped to hers, both of them panting, bodies slick and entangled. For a long moment there was nothing but their ragged breathing, the scent of sex and bourbon heavy in the air, his weight heavy but grounding over her.
John stayed close, chest rising and falling, his hand brushing gentle circles along her side, tender in a way that surprised them both after the intensity.
"You alright?" he murmured, voice low and rough, lips brushing her temple.
She hummed, eyes half-closed, body still humming with aftershocks. "Better than alright... that was..."
He chuckled softly, the sound vibrating through her. "Yeah. It was."
Her answer made something tight in his chest loosen. He hadn't realized how badly he needed to hear it, that she didn't regret this.
John brushed a strand of black hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. His thumb lingered against her cheek longer than it should have.
She was beautiful. Messy. Flushed. Lips kiss-bruised. Pink-streaked hair spilled across the pillow like spilled paint on midnight.
Beautiful.
And fuck, he hadn't touched anyone like this since Olivia. Not just the sex. The holding. The softness after. He'd thought he'd lost that part of himself for good.
Cassandra caught the shift in him, the way his gaze softened into something almost vulnerable. For a moment, it scared her more than the raw hunger from before.
This tenderness. She wasn't supposed to get attached to it.
She ran her hand down his arm, feeling the solid muscle beneath, the steady proof of him alive and here.
"Don't look at me like that," she whispered, half a plea.
His brow furrowed slightly. "Like what?"
"Like I'm more than this."
The words hit him hard.
Because wasn't that exactly what he was thinking?
That she was more than just a night. That he could get lost in her if he wasn't careful.
But John swallowed it down and forced a crooked smirk. "Maybe I'm just bad at casual."
Cassandra laughed softly, and the sound curled through him like warmth in a place that had been cold for too long.
The laughter faded into silence.
Soon, John's breathing evened out, his arm still draped over her as sleep pulled him under. Cassandra lay awake longer, staring at the ceiling, memorizing the weight of him, the warmth, the way it felt to be wanted so completely.
She told herself she wouldn't see him again. That this was just a night. One night. And that was exactly why she let herself melt into the safety of his hold, if only for now.
🩷💚🩷💚🩷💚
The sun slanted through the half-closed blinds, painting pale stripes across the rumpled sheets.
Cassandra stirred slowly, her body heavy and warm, black hair tangled around her face. Pink ends brushed her collarbone when she shifted.
The bed beside her was empty.
For a moment, she didn't move.
The heat of him still lingered in the mattress. The faint scent of him clung to her skin. The memory of his hands, his mouth, and the way he'd held her after stayed tucked beneath her ribs like something she hadn't meant to keep.
A pang hit her chest, brief but sharp. Then something else followed. Not regret, exactly. Just a strange, hollow pause.
Cassandra blinked up at the ceiling, replaying the night in fragments.
The bar. His thoughts slipping into her head. The heat. The way she'd leaned into it instead of pulling away. The way she'd teased him, pushed him, taken what she wanted without hesitation.
Her brows drew together.
That wasn't like her.
Desire, yes. Want, yes. Loneliness, absolutely.
But there had been a moment, somewhere between the second drink and his mouth on hers, where something inside her had shifted. Like another hand had closed over the wheel. Like some darker, hungrier part of her had smiled through her mouth and decided for her.
Cassandra sat up, the sheet slipping down her shoulders.
For one second, she could almost feel it again. That echo beneath her skin.
"No," she whispered.
She exhaled sharply and pressed the heel of her palm to her temple.
She was tired. Overwhelmed. Her abilities had been acting up for weeks, dragging strangers' thoughts into her skull until she couldn't tell where the world ended and she began.
That was all.
She had wanted him. That was the explanation. Simple. Human. Messy. She had wanted John, and for one night she had let herself have him.
Nothing more.
Cassandra pushed the thought away before it could grow teeth.
It was for the best that he was gone. He wasn't hers. She wasn't his.
She had a life to figure out, powers to control, and a past full of missing pieces waiting to be dragged into the light.
He was a storm she had survived. She couldn't afford to chase him.
Cassandra slid from the bed and padded into the bathroom. The tiles were cool under her bare feet. She turned on the shower and stepped under the hot spray without waiting for it to warm up all the way. The water hit her skin in stinging little bursts, and she let out a slow breath as she tilted her head back.
She washed quickly, methodically, running her hands through her tangled hair, over the faint marks he'd left on her neck and hips, across the places that still felt tender and oversensitive. The scent of him lingered on her skin longer than she expected, and she scrubbed a little harder, trying to rinse away the memory along with the sweat and bourbon and sex. But the heat of the water only seemed to wake her body up again, reminding her of the way he'd touched her, the way he'd held her afterward like she was something fragile and precious.
She didn't linger. She couldn't afford to.
When she finally stepped out, she wrapped herself in a towel and caught her reflection in the foggy mirror. Her lips were still slightly swollen. There was a faint bruise forming just below her collarbone. Her eyes looked darker than usual, like something had shifted behind them and hadn't quite settled back into place.
Cassandra shook her head and turned away.
She dressed quietly in the main room, pulling her clothes back on piece by piece with practiced efficiency, black fabric smoothing over her skin, the cropped leather jacket settling over her shoulders like armor. She caught her reflection again in the mirror by the door.
Long black waves, still damp at the ends, the pink streaks catching the morning light. Smudged eyeliner. A mouth still swollen from him.
A woman she recognized.
For a moment, Cassandra wondered if John had left a note. A number. Some small proof that he had been real and not just another voice her mind had conjured from the dark.
But there was nothing. Which was exactly how it had to be.
She told herself it was just one night. A night of fire and heat, of forgetting the world and her fears for a few stolen hours. A night where she had lost control because she wanted to. Not because something inside her had taken it.
The thought made her pause with her hand on the door. For one breath, the room felt too quiet.
Then Cassandra shook her head, almost laughing at herself.
"Get it together," she muttered.
The world was back now. The storm of her powers. The shadow of her past. And whatever Valentina had waiting for her. For now, that had to be enough.
Cassandra took one final look at the bed, smoothed the sheets, and stepped into the day.
Behind her, in the mirror by the door, her reflection seemed to linger half a second too long.
My loves, here’s a little description of our protagonist, Cassandra Vale, for Echoes in My Mind 🖤🧠✨
I may have indulged a little with her design because, yes, I absolutely gave her some of my favorite colors. Cassandra has long black wavy hair with pink streaks at the ends, and eventually her tactical suit will have touches of pink too because I said so. Let my girl look deadly and pretty.
And later, once her powers start amplifying, we’ll get those green power visuals creeping in. Very soft nightmare Barbie energy. Very “something is wrong with her, but she’s serving.” 💗💚
I’m so excited to explore her, especially with the whole mystery of her past, the lab, her abilities growing beyond what she understands, and the Echo persona slowly starting to peek through.
Basically, Cassandra Vale is pretty, dangerous, traumatized, and one bad day away from becoming everyone’s problem. As she should.
