Description: You leave quite an impression, short and sweet to be exact. John is obsessed. The way he can mandhandle you. Lift you up to reach things. Cage you under his body while his hand covers your entire face.
Tags/Warnings: no specific height mentioned but the whole thing is about being short, smut, size kink, John being down bad, dirty talk, praising.
Note: Someone asked me what I thought about John having a size kink with a short reader, so I just had to write a little something about this bc I'm 5'0 to be exact and I need a piece of that 6'2 man. Just a cute little something while I finish a longer angsty fic, enjoy 🫶🏼
The archive | Masterlist
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John Walker absolutely gets off on being big.
Because he IS big. He's tall, back is broad as hell, he's got that healthy I've-been-an-athlete-my-whole-life body, and don’t even get me started on those large hands.
John knows he's usually taller than most people he meets, with the few exceptions of someone like Alexei for example. He doesn’t really think about it much, because it's been like that his whole life.
Until he meets you.
The first time he really notices just how much he towers over you? How he could lift you up and put you anywhere like it's nothing?
Yeah, you bet he’s done for.
He’s standing behind you during a mission briefing, pretending to listen to Yelena talk tactics, when suddenly his focus shifts. To you in front of him. Or more accurately, below him. The fact that your head barely reaches his shoulders fucks something in his brain chemistry.
After that? he just sees you differently.
He notices everything. How you always have to get on your tiptoes to reach anything. How your legs dangle when you sit on the kitchen stool. How he had to literally lift you over his shoulder to help you climb a wall in a mission. His heart, and something else, didn't leave him alone the rest of the day.
Or that one time you tripped and he caught your hand before you fell, your palm swallowed by his. He looked down at that size difference and again … his body betrayed him.
And once he has you? Once you’re his?
He's down bad.
He’s suddenly placing things on higher shelves in your room, in the kitchen, anywhere. Just so you have to ask for his help. Or so he gets to wrap his arms around you from behind and lift you. Preferably the last one.
One time Yelena caught on and screamed at him because she couldn’t reach the cereal box and “not all of us have a bodyguard to get shit down for us, Walker!”
He doesn't care.
When he sees you siting on a stool, feet not touching the ground. He’ll lean down, tilt his head and go, “You comfy like that, sweetheart?” and then lift you off the stool to place you on his lap instead. “There. That’s better.”
But he doesn’t mock you for your height. Never. He teases, yeah, smirks when you try to reach something on your own, maybe picks you up when you least expect it just to hear you yelp. But he would never make you feel small in a bad way.
Why would he complain when it makes him feel like he’s got a purpose? Like he’s built just for you?
When he can just manhandle you whenever he wants to?
You could be just minding your business, stretching on a mat at the tower’s gym and John just decided he needed to fuck you in that moment. He just towers over you, sweeps you up, legs dangling in front of his chest as he places you on his shoulder to carry you fireman style.
“John!!”
“Yeah?”
“Put me down.”
“I am, baby. Down on the bed.”
You don’t protest any longer. You know it’s useless. And maybe you just want him to fuck you in that moment too.
And once he’s got you in bed, all laid out in front of him, that’s when it hits him. Really hits him.
How much of a smaller frame you have against his.
“You okay?” You ask, looking innocently at him.
He just stares. Then swipes his thumb across your cheek, down your throat, resting it right above your collarbone as if he’s measuring you.
“Yeah. I just…damn.” His voice drops lower, gets a little hoarse. “I’ll never get tired of how you look under me.”
He cages you in, braced on his forearms, letting his weight sink just enough to press you into the mattress. He’s not even inside you yet and you already feel like you can’t breathe, wrapped in warmth and muscle and the scent of him. Under that unfairly broad chest, your hands flattening against it to keep you from completely losing it.
“Look at that. Can barely see your hand on me.”
Then he grabs your wrist and holds it up to his own. Your palm being ridiculously swallowed by his.
He groans.
“Oh, I like this,” he says, and you feel the moment his restraint cracks, like it always does with you. “Fuck, I like this.”
It doesn’t take long until you’re naked, pleading to be absolutely wrecked by every part of him.
He’s obsessed with how your body looks under him. How your thighs spread wide to take him. How your hands can barely wrap around his arms, around his waist. How your mouth can barely take him.
“God, look at you baby. You sure you can take all of me?”
And sweet hell, you barely can.
He loves the way your body fights to take him. The stretch. The tremble. The way you gasp when he’s only halfway in. And he never rushes, he soaks it in. Watches your face contort with every inch, feels your nails claw at his shoulders. The way he’s too much and not enough at the same time.
The way your hips twitch, the way your mouth parts when he bottoms out…it makes him go feral.
“Hurts so good, huh? You always do so good for me, sweetheart.”
You blurt something out, breathless, shaky “so full… John” your head rolls back and he growls.
He lives for you being overwhelmed. He talks you through it in that low, his voice rough in awe.
“Yeah that’s it, so full of me…you’re taking me so well, baby.” His hand covers your entire face. Pressing you down onto the mattress, “So damn little…barely gotta try to hold you down, huh?”
You go dumb on it, completely lost on his giant frame, on the strength he still holds back, until all you can let out are those tiny, wrecked noises he lives for.
“Look at that,” he pants, pushing roughly. “You’re so full. You’re shaking, sweetheart. Think I’m too big?”
He begs to finish inside. Because you’re so small and soft and fucking perfect and he needs to feel it.
“Let me, sweetheart. Let me fill you up, come on. Let me see how much your body can take.”
He fills you until it drips. He’s obsessed.
And after? He will straight up collapse on you, all sweaty and satisfied, while you’re still shaking from your high, caged under his entire body.
The cuddles hit different. You sleep on him, under him, around him. He wraps himself around you like a weighted blanket.
“You okay under there?” he teases, knowing damn well you can’t move when he has his heavy arms around you.
John tells himself he’s above this. Above you. Above the way your eyes flash when you’re mouthing off, the lazy confidence in your step, the way you stretch before a mission like you know people are watching. Like you know he’s watching. He grits his teeth when he sees you laugh too loud, when your body moves too free, too proud, too unashamed.
You don’t carry the same weight he does. Don’t feel the world press against your ribs every time you think about what you are, and what you want.
And John? John’s sick of pretending he doesn’t notice. Sick of pretending that the ache in his gut when he looks at you is just anger.
But before it starts, there’s that moment—thin, sharp as glass—when the tension crackles just beneath the surface. John watches you laugh at something someone else said, too loud, too easy. The sun slants across your cheek, and you look too free, too light.
His jaw tightens.
His chest feels like a loaded gun.
It starts with a fight. It always does.
You say something smart. "Still trying to play hero, huh?" Tossed over your shoulder as you walk past, catching sight of him hunched over the holo-screen, scrubbing through mission footage like he’s about to rewrite history. A little jab, just enough to sting.
The words hang in the air like smoke, curling under John’s skin. He grits his teeth, shoulders tensing beneath the weight of your voice.
It’s not just the tone. It’s the timing. The way you tilt your head, half-daring, half-knowing. Like you want him to crack. Like you know he will.
The lights are low in the common room. Most of the team’s retired for the night, and there’s a cold cup of coffee sweating on the counter, forgotten. The TV plays some late-night rerun, volume down, casting restless flashes across the metal walls. The hallway to the private quarters starts just behind you, but neither of you’s moved.
The air’s too tight.
John scoffs, finally looking up. “You ever stop running your mouth, or do you just like hearing yourself talk?”
You hum, smile sharpening. “Please. If I wanted to hear something hollow, I’d bang on that tin star strapped to your chest.”
John’s eyes flick over you: lips curled into that infuriating smirk, eyes glittering with something that feels too close to understanding. His stomach twists. His hands flex at his sides.
You look too proud. Too sure. Like you're trying to make him angry. And worse, you’re succeeding.
He steps forward.
“I swear to God,” he mutters, voice low and rough, “You just can’t help yourself.” Your mouth is a loaded weapon, and the moment you smirk, he knows he’s already lost.
“Careful, soldier,” you say, leaning in just close enough to test him. “You might bruise something delicate.”
His jaw ticks. Hands on his hips, he stares you down. “You think I give a damn?”
He doesn’t. Not once his hand is fisted in your collar, shoving you back until your spine hits the door, and his mouth is on yours. Bruising, furious.
There’s spit on your lips, your teeth clash, and still, he kisses you like he hates you.
And maybe he does.
Maybe that’s why his hand rises, slow but certain, wrapping around your throat—not enough to cut air, not yet. Just to feel it. To feel your pulse stutter under his palm. To remind you who’s in control.
Like he’s angry at himself for liking it. His forehead presses to yours, hot and damp, and for a second he just breathes—like he’s trying to ground himself, like the feeling of your throat under his hand is the only thing tethering him to the moment.
“You think this is a game?” he mutters against your mouth, lips slick with spit. His thumb presses just under your jaw, tilting your head up, forcing you to hold his gaze. His eyes are wild: hurt, furious, starved. “You think you can look at me like that, run your mouth, and not pay for it?”
His grip tightens deliberately.
A warning.
A promise.
You let out a shaky sound, something caught between a gasp and a whimper, and he groans, like the noise cuts straight through him.
You manage a breath, your voice raw around it. “I didn’t know it’d take so little to—”
But you don’t get to finish.
His fingers clamp tighter around your throat, and whatever was left of your sentence dies in your mouth. His pupils blow wide watching your lips falter, eyes flutter, jaw tense beneath his palm. There’s a flush creeping up his neck, one he doesn’t bother to hide.
His other hand twitches at his side like he doesn’t trust himself to touch you with it.
And then you feel it.
His hips twitch forward. Instinctive, hungry.
The thick press of his cock through his pants, shameless and heavy, grinding into your hip like he couldn’t stop it if he tried. The fabric’s stretched taut over it, obscene in how hard he is—how deprived.
A brutal kind of want, swelling by the second.
“You don’t get to talk,” he growls, breath hitching. “Not like that. Not when you’re looking at me like you want this.”
And God, the way your expression shifts under him. That flicker of defiance melting into something desperate, your lips parting soundlessly—it nearly undoes him.
His grip stays firm, but his hand trembles, just slightly. Not from hesitation.
From restraint.
Then his other hand shoves your leg up, grinding into you hard, like punishment. Like penance.
“Mine,” he says again, quieter this time. Almost desperate. His palm flexes where it grips your neck. “Say it.”
You smirk, even through the mess. “If you want a pretty little yes, you’re gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than this.”
He hates how you look at him like you know him. Really know him. Like you see the parts he tries to bury: the longing, the fear, the twisted thing inside him that wants to ruin you.
His grip is rough. Shoving you back onto the bed, dragging your clothes off in angry, fumbling bursts. His hands tremble. Not with fear, but with the rage of wanting something so badly it terrifies him.
He yanks your pants down with a sharpness that says he's already lost the argument in his head. His breath is ragged, pupils blown wide, chest rising and falling like he just sprinted a mile, like this is the only way he knows how to stop himself from screaming.
But there’s a hitch in his grip, just a second of hesitation. His fingers ghost along your waist, rough calluses dragging over bare skin like they’re memorizing it, punishing it, worshiping it all at once.
His jaw tightens. There’s spit at the corner of his mouth, eyes wild when he flips you over, ass-up.
No prep.
It’s not carelessness, it’s desperation. The kind that burns.
The kind that ruins.
He spits into his palm and slicks his fingers with shaking urgency, teeth grit like he’s trying not to say something soft. Or maybe like he’s trying to drown out the voice in his head that says this is wrong.
Then he’s forcing one in, then two, scissoring fast, deliberate into your tight hole. Your thighs twitch. Your back arches, and you begin fisting the sheets beneath you from the onslaught of John's wrath, squeezing cotton until they've patterned your skin.
And still, John doesn’t say a word. No words. Just heat, rage, and spit. You're already whining, writhing against the mattress, your cock leaking between your thighs. His fingers digging inside of you forces you to rut your own cock against the sheets on his own accord.
“Fuckin’ desperate,” he mutters. “Always actin’ like you don’t want it, then melt the second I touch you.”
You laugh, breathless. “Like you’re any better.”
He doesn’t answer.
Just scoffs—sharp and humorless—at the sight of that smug little smile still clinging to your lips. The kind of smile he’ll remember to wipe off later with something rough, something thick, something that’ll make your jaw ache.
His hands move to his belt, undoing it with slow, deliberate movements. There’s nothing rushed about it.
This is control.
This is a man who knows exactly how hard you’re watching him. The zipper comes down, the fabric shifts, and his cock springs free; flushed dark, already heavy with blood, curving up like it’s spoiling for a fight.
Thick. Veined. Angry. The kind of thing that makes you flinch and ache in the same breath. That stretches you just from the sight alone.
He watches the way your ass involuntarily moves for him, your breath catching, your throat working around nothing. That smugness of yours? Slipping.
Then he drops to his knees. Grabs your ass cheeks, spreads them wider. His gaze falls to your entrance: swollen, flushed, twitching with need. Still untouched, still clenching on air.
He exhales, almost reverently.
“Look at that,” he mutters, voice gone gravel-deep.
One hand reaches down, guiding himself closer. The tip of his cock drags along your rim, slow and teasing. He nudges the head against you, circling it, just to see how you shiver. How you twitch. How your hole tries to take him even before he’s inside. He chuckles to himself.
You do somewhat take him, breathless, latching onto the string of thick pre-cum that spills from him as he squeezes the base. It dribbles down in lazy strands, warm and glossy, catching against your skin.
Your hole glistens with it—slicked and shining, haloed in the mess of him. The way it clings there, pooling in the swell of your rim, dripping down your thighs; it’s filthy.
Shameless. Perfect. Like your body’s been marked before he’s even inside.
His heavy balls tighten at the sight.
Something in him buckles.
Whatever restraint he had left—the slow rhythm, the teasing control—shatters in a breath.
He growls, low and feral, flipping you onto your back again, holding your legs up, and his hips jerk forward without warning. The head of his cock breaches you in one unforgiving push, and the sound you make—wrecked, raw—nearly drives him insane.
He pushes in slow. Painfully slow. To watch your face twist. To watch your bravado break. You’re so tight around him it’s obscene, clenching like you’re trying to force him out, but your body’s a traitor. It wants this.
His hands fly to your hips, fingers digging in like he needs to hold you still or he’ll split you apart. He thrusts again. Deeper. Harder. Forcing you to take every swollen inch.
“Yeah,” he pants, voice breaking as he rams in to the hilt. “That’s it. That’s what you needed, huh?”
The stretch is brutal, unrelenting. He watches your face twist, the way your lips part in a silent cry, your brows pulling tight from the sheer pressure.
“Fuck. Look at that,” John growls. “Stretchin’ around me like you were made for it.”
Your hands scrabble against his chest, trying to ground yourself. His cock is thick, wider than anything you’ve taken, and the way he grinds in makes your spine arch.
The slick sound of him moving inside you fills the room—wet, fast, obscene. You’re dripping with him now, the mess of pre-cum and spit and need painting your thighs, the base of his cock, everything. Your body shudders, tightening around him like you don’t know whether to fight or surrender.
But he knows you’re his.
He can feel it in the way your hole sucks him in, desperate and greedy, no matter how you gasp or claw.
He leans over you, breath hot against your ear.
“You run that mouth,” he snarls, “but your body knows who owns it.”
John’s eyes flick down. His palm presses over your belly, fingers splayed, and for a second, just a second, he forgets to move.
The sight stops him cold.
The outline beneath your skin—faint at first, then more defined with every savage roll of his hips. Your stomach, stretched and straining around the shape of him. A thick, blunt bulge rising with each thrust, sliding up under your navel, then sinking as he pulls back.
His cock.
Your stomach is swollen with the shape of it, obscene and beautiful and his.
John stills for just a moment, hovering over you, chest heaving as he stares. His hand moves down—broad, shaking fingers splaying across your belly, pressing just enough to feel the shape of himself inside you. The sensation makes you twitch around him, makes your spine arch off the bed like you’re being electrocuted from the inside out.
"Fuck,” he breathes, voice hoarse with disbelief. “Look at that…”
There’s something raw, unfiltered in his eyes now. Worship twisted into ruin. The animal thrill of knowing he’s inside you this deep, this hard—that your body’s giving way to him, shaping around him.
His other hand curls under your thigh and drags you closer, impossibly close, locking you in place as he starts to move again.
Harder now, rougher, chasing the high of that bulge returning again and again with every thrust.
“Keep your eyes on it,” he snarls. “Wanna see you watch what I do to you.”
You can’t look away.
Not from the brutal rise and fall of your stomach beneath him, not from the way his cock moves inside you like it’s claiming space that no one else ever will.
Your hand finds its way between your bodies, shaking, slick with sweat, wrapping around your cock like instinct.
You stroke in time with his thrusts, desperate, frantic, eyes glazed with something between awe and disbelief. The pressure, the stretch, the sight of your own body swelling with his large cock—it’s too much.
You’re falling apart beneath him, undone by the sheer filth of it.
John sees it. Feels it.
There’s a whisper of shame in his gut. A tight coil of something hot and bitter that he’s too scared to name. He tells himself this is about control. Dominance. Power. But the way his hand lingers, slow, reverent, almost trembling, betrays him. His thumb brushes over the outline of his cock inside you, and his throat makes a strangled sound.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you. “Look what I’ve done to you.”
You groan beneath him, squirming, and he grips harder, like holding on is the only thing tethering him to sanity. Like the line between wanting and needing has long since blurred, and all that’s left is this: your ruined body, your wrecked moans, and the way your hole still flutters around him like it wants more.
John swallows hard, his mind splitting between shame and wonder, guilt and heat. And still, he doesn’t stop. There’s a bulge there, deeper. His cock, thick, hot, rooted so deep inside you it’s obscene. He moans low and dark, almost like a prayer.
“Jesus,” he breathes. “You feel that? That’s me. That’s all me.”
He sets a brutal pace. The bed slams the wall with each thrust. Sweat drips from his brow, down his chest, soaking where your bodies grind together. The smell of sex clings to everything; salt, spit, the heavy musk of his scent. It’s in your mouth, your throat, your skin.
He grabs your hips harder. Bruising. Forces your legs higher. Fucks up into you so deep your stomach bulges every time. You can’t speak anymore. Just drool and whimper and take it.
“Thought you were a tough guy,” he pants. “Look at you now. My good little hole, all stretched out, beggin’ for it.”
Your head rolls back. You’re flushed, soaked, completely undone. Your legs shake as he slams into you again and again, your body wrecked from the inside out.
In his mind, there’s a war. One part of him is screaming to stop, to pull back, to get the hell out before someone sees. Before he sees himself for what he’s become. But another part, deeper, darker, burns to see how much further he can push. That part lingers on the bruises forming beneath his fingertips, on the thick outline of his cock pressing against the inside of your stomach. It thrills in the sounds you make. Wrecked, needy, shameless.
He remembers his father’s voice, sharp and cold, warning him about weakness. About what it means to be a real man. And yet here he is; moaning into your throat, marking you with spit and sweat and cum, watching your body take him like you were made for it. There’s guilt, sharp as broken glass, lodged somewhere behind his ribs. But there’s also awe. Desire. A sick, perfect satisfaction at seeing you beneath him, full of him.
He doesn’t know which part scares him more. One side says this is wrong. That he’s not this, not gay, not weak. That if anyone saw what he was doing now; sweating, trembling, chasing his release deep in a man’s body, they’d strip him of everything. The shield. The legacy. The illusion. He grits his teeth, mouth tasting of salt and shame. The need claws at him from the inside, hungry and black.
But the other voice—the louder one—wants more.
It screams when he hesitates, clawing through the self-loathing. More, it demands. Deeper. Mark him. Own him.
His hand drags down your stomach again, fingers spreading over the curve of your belly, sticky with sweat and cum. The bulge is obscene, tender to the touch, and it draws a guttural moan from him, because that’s him, all of him, inside you.
John swallows hard, eyes locked on your wrecked form. He should be ashamed. Maybe he is. But the sight makes him feral. Possessive.
“You’re mine like this,” he growls, pressing down until you squirm. “No one else gets to see you fall apart.”
And he’s not done. Not nearly. He pulls back only enough to see you clench, stretched wide, glistening, and then pushes back in slow—torturously slow.
The drag of him inside you makes your toes curl.
“You gonna take it again?” he asks, breathing hot against your cheek. “Let me fill you ‘til you can’t think?”
"W-Walker-"
Your voice breaks into a whimper, and he takes it as a yes. One hand grabs your jaw, forcing your face to his, kissing you with filthy, bruising heat. The other cups your belly again, slow, reverent.
He starts moving. A rhythm drawn not from anger, but from hunger. From worship. You feel him everywhere, in your gut, your throat, your bones. Each thrust is deliberate. Deep. Milking himself in you like a man starved.
John breathes your name. Not a curse. Not a threat. A need.
And somewhere in the chaos of it, in the sweat and scent and sin; John lets himself believe, for one fractured second, that maybe this is more than just control.
Maybe it’s the only time he lets himself feel whole.
Your hand’s slick, trembling, barely able to keep pace with the rhythm he’s forcing into you. Every thrust knocks the air from your lungs, his cock driving up deep enough to punch a sound from your throat that’s more sob than moan. The bulge in your belly rises and falls in time with your cries, a visual of just how thoroughly you’re being ruined.
John watches you fall apart with something close to reverence—like this is what he’s been working toward since the first time you ever looked at him like you weren’t afraid. His jaw is clenched, knuckles white where he grips your thigh and belly, holding you down like he knows you’d try to squirm away if you could. Like he wants you to try.
He wants to ruin you. Leave bruises no suit could cover; mottled purples and deep reds blooming over your hips, your throat, the backs of your thighs. Proof. Markers. His signature etched into your skin with every thrust, every grip too tight, every bite too sharp. He wants the reminders to linger when you're back on duty, hidden under your uniform. Wants you to feel them ache when you move. Wants you to know, even in silence, that he was there. That he claimed you, punished you, needed you so badly he lost himself. He wants to bite your throat and mark your ass and pump you so full of cum you’ll be leaking down your thighs for hours.
Because you don’t hide. You laugh, you flirt, you live. You let your body feel pleasure and you don’t apologize for it.
He hates that.
He wants to control it.
“You take me so well,” he grunts, licking a stripe of sweat down your neck. “You were made to be fucked like this.”
He spits in your mouth, and you moan like it’s a kiss.
Your hand speeds up without meaning to. You don’t even realize it at first—that you’re rutting into your own palm like you’re starving, chasing that edge like it’ll save you. Your mouth is open but nothing coherent comes out—just gasps, shuddering little whines, noises you’d be ashamed of if you could think.
But you can’t.
All you can do is take it.
His balls slap your ass, soaked and heavy. You can feel the tension in his body. Every muscle flexed, his thighs trembling, the head of his cock pulsing against your walls.
He’s close.
His breath grows ragged, catching in his throat as he fucks into you faster now, each thrust raw and punishing. His grip tightens; one hand bruising your hip, the other splayed across your belly, holding you steady like he’s anchoring himself to the sight of his cock bulging inside you. He watches your body take him again and again, every inch stretching you wide, wet and flushed and glistening with spit and sweat. You’re slick everywhere, the air thick with the slap of skin and the low, guttural growls punched out of him as he chases it.
The pleasure burns, raw and overwhelming, until your vision starts to white out at the edges. You clamp down around him, body seizing, cock twitching helplessly in your hand.
And then you break.
You come hard, violently, hot release painting your chest, your hand, your stomach. Your hole clamps around John like a vice, sucking him in deeper, your body spasming beneath his as the pleasure slams into you like a freight train.
"G-god," you cried out behind a cum-covered hand.
John groans low, head dropping to your neck, biting down hard enough to bruise.
“Fuck.” he snarls, and it’s broken, frayed. His cock twitches deep inside, the veins throbbing, leaking pre-cum in thick spurts with every thrust. Your walls clamp around him like a vice, greedy and sucking, making him hiss through his teeth. “So tight. Still so fucking tight. Gonna lose it in you, fuck.”
He shifts your legs higher, pushing you open, wide and helpless beneath him. You’re bent in half now, his weight pressing down, his body trembling like a live wire. You feel everything.
The slide of him. The scrape. The unbearable fullness. His cock pulses with every beat of his heart, flushed and angry, and you swear you can feel it throb in your throat. Your whole body arches, overstimulated, overwhelmed.
John slams forward with a grunt, burying himself to the hilt, and you feel the moment he starts to break—his cock swelling, twitching violently inside you. He pants your name like a curse, like a prayer, a mantra unraveling on his tongue.
“Take it,” he growls, spit flying, eyes wild and unfocused. “Take all of it. Gonna fucking fill you up. Breed you like you need it.”
He ruts harder, frantic now, losing rhythm.
His eyes roll back, hips snapping in stuttering thrusts as he cums, hot and hard, spilling deep into your guts.
It punches out of him in thick waves, jerking through his length as he grinds in deep, forcing it further. The first shot knocks the wind out of you, the second makes your hole flutter around him involuntarily. You feel it gush inside you, thick and messy, coating your insides, your walls clenching as if begging him to never leave.
John moans a deep, wrecked sound. His mouth finds your throat, biting, panting, murmuring filth. “So fuckin’ full of me... just like you should be. Like I fuckin’ own you.”
He stays locked inside, his cock still twitching as aftershocks pulse through him.
He doesn’t move. Just breathes. Heavy. Shuddering. Shaking.
He doesn’t ask permission. He never has.
And then he starts again. Slower. More deliberate. Breeding you in long, deep strokes that make your gut clench and your mouth fall open with something between a moan and a sob.
But he doesn’t pull out.
John stays buried, breathing hard, holding your trembling thighs around his waist.
You’re gonna take all night,” he mutters, low and rough against your ear, hips rolling in deep. “Gonna fuck you until I see myself leaking out your ruined little hole.”
He rolls his hips slow. Deep. Milking himself. Filling you further.
Each drag of his hips is drawn out, obscene. You feel every inch of his cock slide through your slick walls, dragging thick and hard and hot. His hands stay on your stomach, pressing down, watching the way it bulges when he pushes deep. His eyes are heavy, drunk with it.
Like it’s not just lust; it’s envy.
Reverence.
Grief.
Your moans hitch in your throat as another wave crests through your body. You’re too full. Too raw. And yet, your hole flutters like it’s begging.
“Good boy,” he breathes, voice husky. “Gonna take another load for me. You want it, don’t you? Want to feel me breed you slow. Like you’re mine.”
You nod, nearly sobbing.
His hand cups your belly again, thumb brushing over the bulge of his cock as he thrusts deeper. His own eyes are glassy now. Dazed.
There’s awe in his voice, but also something darker.
A desperation.
Why does it feel like love? he thinks. Why does it feel like need?
The room rocks gently with the rhythm of his slow thrusts. Each roll of his hips is languid, drawn out with a purpose that feels almost reverent. His breath stutters in your ear, warm and uneven, the way a prayer sounds when spoken through clenched teeth.
He watches your face closely; hungry, almost desperate for each flutter of your lashes, each gasp punched from your chest.
His hand doesn’t leave your belly, tracing the swell again like he’s mesmerized. You feel him twitch inside you, and it’s not just from lust; it’s from the weight of what this is becoming. From the way your body molds around him, stretches to welcome every inch. His thumb ghosts up to your sternum, trailing a line slick with sweat.
“You feel this,” he murmurs, voice hoarse with something too tender to name. “Feel what I’m doing to you?”
You nod, voice broken with need, and he groans like the sound undoes him. Like your surrender, so quiet and wrecked, means more than the way you clenched him tight. More than any bruise or mark he could leave.
The thrusts stay slow. Intentional. Less like fucking, more like being pulled apart and put back together.
Again and again and again.
The bed creaks under you. You’re both sweat-soaked and shaking. Your stomach gurgles from the sheer volume he’s already filled you with. And still, he gives more.
When he cums again, it’s slower. Deeper. A heavy, aching release that leaves him breathless, slumping over you, groaning as he floods your guts a second time.
You’re ruined. Bruised. Dripping.
He grits his teeth, forehead falling to your shoulder as he groans. “How the hell do you live like this? So free. So fuckin’ open. You don’t even know how lucky you are.”
His voice cracks at the end, and you twist your head to look at him, spit-slick and ruined.
"I live like this ‘cause I stopped caring what broke men like you think."
He won't meet your gaze. Instead, he thrusts in again, slow, hard, dragging the edge of pain and pleasure like a punishment. For both of you.
“You’re mine,” he says again, quieter this time, as if trying to believe it. “Even if I gotta break you to keep you.”
"You already did. And I’m still here."
nouearth. please do not repost, plagiarize, or translate my works. if you like this story, please reblog and leave a like!
Summary: You hate how attracted you are to Walker, and you pull away from him because of it. He notices. - ao3 version
Word Count: 3.8k
Notes: Post-Thunderbolts, reader is a New Avenger and is mentioned to have some kind of super abilites (not plot relevant but it's there), porn with some plot, just reader being horny and then getting to fuck this man, car sex!!!! p in v, fingering, unprotected sex (wrap it up folks) reader and John both bully each other during sex, John Walker's praise kink (when will it not make an appearance) Bucky and Bob appearance!
a/n: This one goes out to all my homies who hated John in TFATWS and feel conflicted about finding him really hot in Thunderbolts! I guess he's my boy now bc I was literally the second post on the Walker x Reader tag (????tf????) so here I am once again being horny on main with y'all.
Teasing Walker was practically a team bonding activity. Hell, even the man himself had grown used to it, took it as a show of affection from the other New Avengers. You were one of the main perpetrators of it. John had always pissed you off, from the minute you met in the vault. He’d grown on you significantly since then, although you’d never admit that, especially not to him.
You’d also never admit how down bad you were for him.
You weren’t really sure when it had started. He was an attractive guy, from an objective standpoint. They’d picked him to be Captain America for a reason, and one of those was that he looked damn good. Still, beyond the awareness he was handsome you’d never really thought of him in that way.
That is, until that day. You couldn’t find one of your knives, and you were sure Bucky had stolen it, so you’d ventured down to the training room to confront him. You opened the door, ready to start interrogating him when you were met with the sight of him and John, side by side, doing pull ups in the doorway to the equipment room. Bob stood next to them, counting off as they went.
You’ve known Bucky for a long time. He’s like an older brother figure to you, someone you couldn’t see romantically if you tried. Seeing him shirtless has no effect on you, other than an instinctual ew. You’ve never seen John shirtless before.
And here you are, speechless, gawking at the guy who you once referred to as ‘Captain Crashout’. His biceps flexed with each lift, the muscle sinewy but hard-earned, gleaming with sweat. Broad shoulders, dabbled with old scars and freckles from too long in the sun. Your eyes fell to his abs, not as clean cut as Bob’s, but still very much there, pulled taut as he raised himself over and over. He was clad in a pair of old gym shorts, which had fallen a little lower than they started out, revealing the beginnings of a sharp v-line, and what you thought was just a smattering of blond hair trailing down.
And the sounds. John has always had a tic of snorting during battle. You call it his gorilla call that he makes when shit gets serious. The way he grunted as he pulled himself up, exerted but determined, gave you goosebumps the more you heard it.
Jesus fucking Christ, when did John get so hot?
He’s a supersoldier, of course. You know he’s strong. You interact with him almost everyday. You’ve seen him carry a crate the size of Yelena with ease. Yet somehow you’d never considered him hot before this. Never once have you looked at John Walker and felt this hot and sweaty all of a sudden, something in your stomach twisting with equal parts nerves and arousal.
You think you’re going insane.
After what feels like an eternity, John dropped, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Fine, you win Barnes.”
Bucky dropped as well, a smug look on his face. “Told you.”
“Hey, well you’re shorter than me, you have less to pull up.”
“By what, 3 inches?”
“3 inches where it counts.” Walker joked. Shit, now you’re thinking about this dick. Don’t look at his crotch. Do not look at his crotch-
“When’d you get here?” you snapped out of it at the sound of Bob’s voice, turning your attention to the other man.
“Um, around 20?” you guessed, doing your best to keep your eyes off Walker. You blinked hard as you turned to Bucky. “Did you take my Bowie knife?”
He sighed as he toweled himself off. “Shit, yeah. It’s in my bag, I’ll get it.”
“Asshole.”
He just flipped you off as he walked off to the locker room. Bob trails behind him, announcing his need to pee, leaving you alone with Walker.
You did your best to avoid eye contact, or any visual of him as he lowered himself onto the nearby bench ,grabbing his water bottle. You knew he has a habit of manspreading, which you often tease him about, but now it’s more annoying in that you’re trying desperately not to ogle him.
“Pretty good, huh?”
“What?” you blinked, looking over at his confused face.
“60 pull ups. Maybe not as good as Barnes,” he threw a jilted look at the locker room door, “but still, impressive, huh?”
“Yeah, I uh, guess so.” you stared at the space above his head, arms crossed, praying Bucky finds his damn bag and brings you your knife soon.
“You okay?” John questioned, standing up to approach you. You instinctually took a step back, causing him to stop. “Did I do something?’
“No! No, I’m fine, you didn’t do anything. Just feeling a little off today, maybe I’m getting sick.”
John nodded, unconvinced. “Uh huh.” He took another sip of his water, drawing your eyes to his strong forearms, solid and firm, leading to his large hands gripping the bottle. Were his hands always that big? It’s ridiculous. You wonder what they would feel like gripping your hips.
“Got it.” Thankfully, Bucky reentered, holding out your knife. You swiftly snatched it, stuttering out a thank you and goodbye before you practically ran out the door. John and Bucky just stood there, confused.
After that, you ran to your room, locked the door and screamed into a pillow like a middle school girl.
You know there’s nothing wrong with liking Walker. Sure, he’s real fucked up, but hell, you are too. You’re both trying to be better, all of you on the team are. Your present torment is self-inflicted, part of it being the sheer embarrassment. You can’t seem to let go of your ego, the little voice in your brain bullying you for wanting a man who carries around a shield shaped like a taco.
You’re being ridiculous.
You’re held back by a fear of screwing things up with him yourself, and therefore for the entire team. You don’t want to ruin what you all have. You’ve all had hard pasts, never really having a group of people that you could rely on till now. You wouldn’t destroy that because you were so, so very horny for one of your teammates.
So you distance yourself. You try not to look him in the eye, lest you start imagining him with his shirt off again. You feel like an old Victorian man who forced ladies to hide their ankles; looking at any part of John makes you feel like you’re going to lose it then burst into flames. Once you went to ask him something and saw him in just a towel, and immediately turned heel and left. He plagues your mind, beyond just the thought of sex. The thought of him, holding you in his arms, whispering into your ear, smiling down at you.
You do manage to forget how badly you want to fuck him when all of a sudden he’s hurling himself into danger, in front of a hail of bullets that his stupid shield barely covers.
“What the hell were you thinking?” you lecture him as the two of you climb back into the van. You’d been tasked with securing classified S.H.I.E.L.D files from a criminal organization planning to sell them. You’d managed to get them back, but not without a few scrapes and bruises. Honestly, you’re lucky neither of you died because of John’s recklessness, something you’ve told him multiple times now.
“I was thinking of what was best to keep us both safe.” he grumbles as he slams the driver’s door, turning the key in the ignition. “It was a tactical decision-”
“It was a tactical decision,” you mimic his deep voice. “You could’ve died! You’re lucky-”
“Lucky to be alive, I know, I know. What do you even care?” you turn to him, seeing the anger in his eyes, mixed with something else you can’t place.
“Why do I care? Because you’re my fucking friend, John, and I’d rather not see you filled with lead!”
“Well, it doesn’t seem that way lately.” he scoffs, eyes moving back to the road.
“What did you say?”
“I’m saying, you’ve been acting crazy lately.” he slams a hand on the wheel. “One day, we’re friends, the next you act like I’m the dirt on your shoe. I-I don’t understand. What did I ever do to you?” he leans back in his seat, defeated. “You’re acting like you don’t care whether I live or die, so fine, if I die, what’s it to you?”
“John,” you sigh, trying to hold it together. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” he sits back up, angrier, more offended than upset. “I’m the one who’s being ridiculous? You’re the one being ridiculous! All this time-”
He rambles on, leaving your anger at him to simmer in your chest. It mixes with guilt, of being cold to him, not telling him why. He somehow manages to look handsome like this, passionate, full of emotion. Still, you feel your stomach twist knowing you did this, that you hurt him like this. “John, look, I’m-”
“No, I’m not done!” he interrupts. He continues to rant, getting into specifics of your treatment, your apology dying in your throat. What would you even say? I’m sorry I was mean to you, it’s because you’re too fucking attractive and I don’t know how to handle it?
You forget about all the reasons not to do this. You forget how annoying and brash he can be, all the embarrassing things he does you tease him for. You forget how screwed up you both are, about the team, about everything.
You just lean over the console, grab his face and smash your mouth to his.
He’s quiet, finally, still in shock of what is happening. The second his brain catches up to his body he’s gripping your shoulders, kissing you back with a force. It quickly turns open and messy, tongues desperate for each other as you act on months of frustration and feelings repressed.
You pull back when you run out of air, sliding back into your own seat as he does his. You sit, quiet, thinking about what you’ve done.
“Is that why?” His voice is hoarse from kissing.
You nod. “Yeah. That’s why.”
You’re both quiet again, reeling from your actions. He slowly unbuckles his seatbelt, climbs out of the car. You wonder if you’ve done something wrong, if maybe you misread him.
Then he’s opening your door, and before you can say anything he’s kissing you again, large hands cupping your face in them as he presses his lips to yours, hungry and needy.
He pulls away too quickly, looking at you with a ferocity in his eyes you’ve never seen before. “Do you want this?” he asks, voice low and warning.
“Yes.” you nod. “John I’ve wanted you so bad for-”
You’re both throwing yourselves into each other, not even bothering to finish talking. John’s wrapping his arms around your waist, pulling you into him. You yelp as you quickly wrap your legs around him, clinging to him for dear life, still not breaking the kiss.
He kicks the car door shut and presses you up against it, tongue slithering along your bottom lip, asking permission. You give it, sliding your won against him, deepening the kiss. You feel a moan emanate from your throat as you do, feeling like you’re absorbing John into your very being.
He shifts one hand to holding you up as he fiddles with the backseat door, yanking at it unsuccessfully. He finally pulls back, much to your dismay, to pull the damn thing open properly.
“There you go.” you joke.
“Shut up.” he mutters, before pulling you back from the side of the car and gently carrying you into it, laying you on along the backseat.
“Take your clothes off.” he huffs, fiddling with his own as he climbs in, stripping himself of his weapons. You do the same, pulling off piece after piece of tactical gear.
There’s kevlar everywhere, bulletproof vests thrown haphazardly in the trunk, knives discarded in the front seat. Somehow in a lust-induced craze, the two of you still manage to have some form of organization.
You’ve barely pulled off your shirt before you peer over at Walker, face turned red from exertion, cheat heaving with heavy breaths.
And god, you love looking at his chest. Your eyes meet his, flitting back down in silent communication. Without a word, he nods and you’re on his, straddling him as your hands run along his broad shoulders, teeth nipping at his neck before you kiss the small bites.
He groans, head falling to the crook of your neck as he takes you in, hands gripping your hips like you’ll vanish he doesn’t.
“God, so fucking pretty.” he mumbles, grabbing your chin to pull you back in for anther kiss. One hand trails down towards your arching core, tugging at your waistband. You quickly move to help pull them down, you and John struggling together until finally, the dreaded things are gone.
He doesn’t bother dealing with your underwear, just pushing your panties aside as he brings a finger to your soaked cunt, you gasping at the sensation of his touch.
“So fuckin’ wet, too, shit.” He trails his digit alon you till he reaches your clit, flicking it, eliciting another sharp gasp from you. “So fuckin’ perfect.”
He brings two fingers to your hole, running them against your folds, coating them in your arousal as you groan. “Fucking hell, John, please.”
“You’re even mean when you’re horny.” he chuckles, you glaring down at him in return as you lower one hand to the bulge in his pants, squeezing it to a sharp inhale from John.
“Sorry, what were you saying?” you palm at his crotch as he tries to form some kind of words. Finally, he gives up, instead pushing his fingers into you, at last granting you the friction you’ve longed for. It’s so much better than those nights you’ve laid along in your bed, picturing him above you as you pleasured yourself on your own fingers. His are thick and calloused, and feel fucking incredible as you pushes in and out of you with ease, eyes never leaving your face.
“God you’re gorgeous,” he mumbles out, “so fuckin’ tight just on my fingers. Wanted this forever…”
“Please, John, need you too-”
“Gotta cum on my fingers before you can cum on my dick, baby.” you clench around him at the pet name, John smirking at the feeling as he quickly adds a third finger. Your nails dig into his bare shoulders as he moves within you, your head thrown back and eyes shut in pleasure,
“Look at me baby.” you obey, opening your eyes to see John’s flushed countenance, blue eyes dark and wide as you drink you in. “Go on, cum for me.”
He scissors his fingers within you, and with a cry, you do. You thank God you’re parked in the middle of some forest in the middle of nowhere as you moan, riding the wave of ecstasy. John doesn’t stop, keeping his pace till you start to come down, taking deep breaths as you loosen your grip.
“You cut me.” you blink, John nodding to his shoulder. You see the places where your nails have left crescent marks, breaking the skin.
“Oops.” you shrug, still out of breath from your orgasm. “Something to remember me by?”
John purses his lip. “Only fair I get to leave a little something for you.” he turns his attention to your collarbone, kissing and sucking a bruise into it as he circles his thumb on your clit, making you yearn for more even after one orgasm.
“John, please, for fuck’s sake…” you mumble incoherently. Your brain is wired to tease him and even his fingers inside of you will not change that.
He lifts his head, looking down at the bruise he’s left with pride. “Something to remember me by.”
“You are such a teenager.” you sigh, hand reaching down to undo his belt.
“You’re the one begging me to fuck you.” he grins. His hands meet you there, tugging the leather off and tossing it away as he yanks his tactical pants down just far enough to free his cock.
You can’t help it, you gape it at. He’s thick, and long, a vein running along the underside where you can clearly see. It curves slightly up against his stomach, a bead of precum glistening at the tip. If you weren’t on top of him, you’d lean down and lick it off.
“Shit, do we need a-”
“You’re good. Can’t get pregnant.” you’re already lifting your hips, trying to position yourself over him.
“See, begging.” he teases as he lines up with cock with your cunt, tip rubbing along your folds. “You ready?” he asks earnestly, looking up at you with genuine concern,
You nod. “Walker, if you don’t hurry up and fuck me I swear-”
With that, he pushes into you, silencing you with a moan as you feel yourself stretch around his cock. He’s not too painfully big, the kind of sharp pinch that makes the feeling just that much more sinful.
He groans, head rolling back as he clutches your waist. You’re sure if you looked down you’d see his knuckles turned white.
“Jesus Christ, this fuckin’ perfect pussy,” he mumvles incoherently as he pushes deeper into you. “SO fuckin tight for me, baby.”
Then finally, he sheathes himself fully, with a downright pornographic moan escaping your throat at the sensation, John gives you a moment to adjust, the two of you sitting in silence, save for your shared panting and occasional groans.
You’ve never felt so full, stuffed to the brim with JOhn’s cock, feeling the head just kiss your cervix within you. You breathe deep as you adjust, feeling every part of him, every ridge, vein, curve of his cock.
“God, John, so big…” you trail off as your brain shuts down, thoughts of anything else besides the man in front of you and his dick inside you fading away into static.
“Taking it so good.” he brushes a fallen piece of hair out of your face, a gentle gesture compared to his usually annoying countenance. “So pretty when you’re full of me.”
You nod sharply, your brain still fuzzy with lust and pleasure. You lift your hips, his cock rubbing against your walls before you slide back down, moaning as you do.
You pick up the pace, riding him like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do, because it’s all you’ve wanted for fucking weeks and he feels so fucking good.
John sucks another bruise into you, this one on your neck, groaning out incoherent expletives as you bounce in his lap, moaning loudly with ecstasy.
Still, you’re exhausted from your mission and your previous orgasm, your pace beginning to falter. Your eyes meet John’s, and without a word he wraps his arms around you, rolling the two of you onto the seat, you on your back with him above you.
You rake your nails over his back, leaving even more scratches as you writhe beneath him. That gentle moment from earlier feels long-gone; John is rough with you, each thrust pounds into you, heavy balls slapping against your ass as you wrap your legs around his waist, trying to pull him in deeper, as deep as he can possibly get. His mussed blond hair frames his face as he fucks into you, his expression concentrated and determined.
“Feels fuckin’ perfect, perfcct fuckin’ girl beensth me, God I’ve wanted you so bad, so perfect and good.”
“Wanted you too.” you manage to pat out, looking up into John's eyes. “So handsome, John, you’re so good.”
Oh, he liked that. He moans outright, loudly, his thrusts managing to become even harder. You give a raspy moan in reply.
“Like when I tell you how good you are?” you pant out as you give him a dastardly smile, to which he just grunts in response, “So fuckin’ good, John, love your cock, let you fuck me forever.”
You’re a little cockdrunk, or a lot, head spinning as you clench around him, John pressing his mouth against yours in a bruising kiss. Maybe to shut you up, maybe because he wanted to, who knows. You just know you can feel the pressure building in your stomach, another orgasm on the verge of breaking loose within you.
“John,” you move a hand to his face, running through his beard, gripping the fine hairs as you seek something, anything to hold onto. “Gonna cum, ‘m close.”
“Go on, baby.” he grunts, thrusts growing faster and more erratic, his cock barely leaving you before slamming back in. “Cum all over my cock.”
You grip his shoulders, crying out his name as you cum again, seeing stars as you feel the white-hot waves of pleasure crashing over you. John follows shortly, sheathing himself deep inside you, where you can feel the heat of him cum painting your walls.
He gives a few weak thrusts, as if he’s trying to fuck his cum further into you. You just groan, eyes squeezed shut, body still feeling like it’s on fire.
When you open your eyes, you see him above you, panting as he comes down to Earth. He looks even more handsome like this, all sweaty and messy and smelling of sex.
“Was that,” he exhales, still trying to catch his breath, “Was that good?”
You just stare up at him, before a laugh manages to escape you. He looks a little sad before you pull him down by the nape of his neck, kissing him again, soft and slow.
“Yes,” you say as you lay your head back against the seat. “That was good, John.”
He smiles, not the usual cocky and self-satisfied look, but a genuine smile, a sense of satisfaction flowing through him. He presses a kiss to your collarbone, atop where he’s left a hickey, then to the other, then a third peck to your lips. You giggle a little, running your hands through his messy hair.
“If I’d known all it took to make you stop being an asshole was fucking you, I woulda done it a lot sooner.”
“Well, technically I was the one fucking you”
You groan, exasperated. “God, the fucking technicalities with you.” you look back up at him, tilting your head as you smile. “Am I gonna have to do this again to make you stop?”
He just shrugs, a mischievous look on his face. “Guess so.” he rolls his hips against yours once more, and you can already feel him getting hard again within you.
“Fuck John…” you’re still barely recovered from the first round.
“Hey, thank the serum.”
a/n: Shoutout to the Tiktok comment where someone called him Captain Crashout bc i immediately jotted that shit down for later use. And thank all of you who've shown my fics so much love!!! I started this as a hobby to practice my writing and I'm genuinely shocked that people really enjoy these.
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ a sunshiney reader brings warmth and healing to the hearts of the Thunderbolts—John Walker, Yelena Belova, Bob Reynolds, Ava Starr, and Bucky Barnes—each responding to their light in different, deeply personal ways. through detailed bullet points and intimate mini fics, the post explores how these broken, complex characters slowly learn to love and be loved.
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ none besides bad words
John Walker has no damn idea what to do with you because you are going to kill him one day…
You call him “sweetheart” first—and he almost short circuits. He mutters “don’t call me that” the first few times, but never really means it. Eventually, he gets real quiet every time you do, like it hurts and heals at the same time. He literally would worry if you stopped saying it. In fact one day you don’t say it and he is like “what happened to sweetheart.” And you are all in.
He gets protective to a fault. You smile at a barista and he’s already squinting like, who the hell is this guy and why is he breathing near you? It’s not jealousy—it’s fear. Fear that someone like you will get hurt because of someone like him. He literally has to go everywhere with you even if it interferes with his life because if anyone hurts you he needs to be right there.
He doesn't know how to accept gentleness. The first time you brush your fingers through his hair after a nightmare, he flinches. The second time, he leans into your palm like it’s the only time he has ever felt someone love on him. He loves the way you take your time touching him in any circumstance so slowly and with ease.
You talk during breakfast; he listens. He never interrupts, just sips his coffee with his elbows on the counter, looking at you like your voice is sunlight filtered through dust motes. He never thought mornings could feel safe again. You love to tell him about your weird dreams and at first he is like “what the fuck.” But eventually he just laughs along and asks little questions.
He gets weird about his scars. You kiss the one just under his ribs and he jerks away like he’s been burned. Later that night, he kisses your shoulder and whispers, “You make me feel so damn weird.”
He doesn’t do pet names until he does. It slips out one day—“baby”—when he’s scared you’re going to leave. It’s hoarse, desperate, like the word’s been sitting on his tongue for months. He barely breathes after saying it. And immediately the world melts around you and even though you maybe don’t forgive him you can’t help but just hug him.
He tries to “warn” you off. Tells you he’s too far gone, too angry, too violent. You just look at him with that soft, infuriating smile and say, “Then it’s a good thing I’m not scared of the dark.”
He loves your laugh like it’s sacred. Every time he hears it, something inside him unclenches. It’s like proof that the world can still be good, that he didn’t ruin everything. He will go out of his way to make you laugh when he really can’t listen to the world anymore.
He doesn’t believe he deserves you. Not deep down. Every time you tell him you love him, he swallows it like a blade. But he clings to it like armor—your love becomes the thing that keeps him from spiraling.
He’d burn the world down to keep you safe. And the terrifying part is—he could. But he doesn’t. Because you remind him that staying is the bravest thing he’s ever done.
🥀 good morning soldier
Your bare feet pad across the cold kitchen floor, humming some half-remembered melody from a playlist he’d never admit he listens to. The sun hasn’t fully risen yet—just enough light to spill gold across the countertop. John’s already there, mug in hand, back leaning against the sink like he’s been up for hours.
You grin, rubbing your eyes. “Hey, sweetheart.”
He looks at you like the word physically hits him. His jaw tics and his eyes target you, “You shouldn’t call me that.” He sets his drink down and just like every other morning he spins around to face the sink and turn on the water.
Walking all the way over to him you stand as close as you can to him and pour yourself some coffee. “Then stop blushing when I do.”
“I don’t blush.” He jumps back a bit from the water steaming the sink that he just had his hands under not paying attention to what he had done.
You laugh, and it’s unfair how easily it cuts through his defenses. He looks away. The silence sits thick for a beat. But then you notice the half lidded eyes, the still in pajamas outfit, and the fact that your coffee was cold, “You have another nightmare?” you ask softly.
He doesn’t answer. Just keeps his eyes on the window, watching the empty sky. You slide into his space, standing between him and the sink putting your hands on his chest, “You know you don’t have to stand alone every time something hurts, right?”
He swallows hard.
“You shouldn’t say that either,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “You’re starting to make me dumb. I forget who I was when you act like this.” He doesn’t move he just stares at you with what little opening his eyes are giving him.
You move your hands up his chest a little more—right over that old, angry heartbeat that still hasn’t learned how to trust. “You’re not who you were.”
His breath stutters, and you can feel his heart kick up a bit. “You don’t know that.”
You step up onto your tipt toes, brushing your lips just barely across his. “I do.”
He kisses you just as gently as you chose to approach him. And when he pulls back, he rests his forehead against yours, “I don’t deserve you.”
You smile, soft and maddening. “Good thing I’m not asking you to.”
Yelena Belove thinks you might be an Alien or worse real…
She pretends not to like you at first. All sarcastic quips and fake eye-rolls like, “Why are you smiling? Did I miss something?” But she notices everything—your laugh, your warmth, the way you care. The way you hear she likes music and makes her playlists, the way you give her different eyeliner colors to try, and the way you make sure she eats, drinks, and sleeps.
You bring her little things. A weird trinket from a thrift store. A hot sauce bottle shaped like a cat. A donut with a smiley face. A pot that you sat and decorated because you had nothing else to do. She acts unimpressed—until you catch her hoarding them in a drawer like treasure, you kindly offer to take your trash and throw it away, and she simply says “Are you crazy? No.”
She calls you annoying instead of saying “I love you.” “Ugh, you are so annoying,” she mutters when you kiss her forehead or help her fix her hair. But her hand doesn’t leave yours and she is always smiling at you when you aren’t looking at her.
She becomes very defensive of you. The moment anyone makes a snide comment or flirts with you too aggressively, Yelena’s voice gets dangerously calm. “Say that again. Slowly. So I can break the right fingers.” And she makes you stand behind her and hold her hand, not because you can’t fight for yourself but you shouldn’t have to. You also do not match so she needs to make sure everyone knows who you are with.
You sneak softness into her life. She goes from “I do not need flowers” to “I kill anyone who touches this pressed daisy in my journal” real fast. Especially if you gave it to her. She also loves when you make her things special, like inside she gets all giddy.
She gets flustered when you compliment her. “You’re so pretty it makes my chest hurt,” you sigh. She immediately chokes on her drink and shoves a pillow in your face like “NO.”
You make her laugh when she doesn't want to. After missions. After nightmares. After she punches a wall. You’re just there with a dumb joke or an armful of snacks and a movie queued up. And she hates how much it helps.
She learns what safety feels like—with you. She never used to sleep through the night. Now, with your hand resting on her stomach and your breath in her hair, she sometimes forgets the world exists.
She lets you fix her up. Cuts, bruises, bullet wounds—she lets you clean them, grumbling like a wounded animal but never pulling away. Sometimes she kisses you when you're concentrated, just to feel your love in real time.
She falls in love before she realizes it. One day, she looks over at you singing to your plants in a hoodie that’s way too big, and it just hits her. “Oh no,” she whispers. “I would actually kill for her.”
🥀 you talk too much and i like it
“You talk too much,” Yelena mutters, leaning back on your couch while you animatedly explain the plot of Criminal Minds. Though she is finding it amusingly disturbing she can’t help but comment.
You pause mid-rant. “Excuse me?” You plop down on the couch practically sitting on her lap as you do so.
She raises an eyebrow. “You do. You talk too much. About everything. Movies. Animals. Crime. It is like listening to a podcast that smiles at you. Yelena puts her hand on your leg absentmindedly as she scrolls on her phone.
You cross your arms, pretending to pout. “Fine. I’ll shut up.” You are now staring right at the TV not saying a word anymore. You completely ignore her hand and you don’t say anything about her makeup.
Silence falls for a beat. Then her voice softens. “Don’t.” You look over. She’s not watching the TV or her phone anymore—she’s watching you. Like the world’s already on fire and you’re the only thing not burning.
“I like your voice,” she says. Barely above a whisper. She clicked the TV down a few volume ticks and throws her phone onto the floor.
You blink.
“I like the way you talk when you think no one’s really listening. I like the way you ramble. I like…” She swallows, jaw tight. “I like you.” You throw your arms down and then move her hand throwing it back at her as you climb onto her lap.
You put your thighs outside of hers and put your hands around the back of her neck. “Even when I sing to myself?”
She groans, tossing her head backwards. “Ugh, especially then. You are so weird.” Her hands find their way around your waist pulling you close. But she looks up and you look down slowly you bring your face closer to hers until you are barely kissing. Because sunshine like you? It’s the first real warmth she’s ever known.
Bob Reynolds feels like it is rain hitting gold…
He doesn’t understand you at first. You bring him coffee with a little heart drawn in the foam. You bring a second mug just in case he doesn’t like the first one. You say things like “Have you eaten today?” with that sunny curiosity that makes it feel like a love letter, not a chore. He stares at you for a solid thirty seconds before answering—because no one’s asked that in years. Everything you ask him about himself is so strange to him because you really care about his day, how he feels, if he feels like he can take care of himself, if he has taken care of himself, and what he wants to do. All of that matters to you.
He thinks you’re too good for him. He watches you dance in the kitchen to the radio as you help him clean up, barefoot and glowing in the golden light of afternoon, and all he can think is don’t touch it, you’ll ruin it. He stands in doorways and doesn’t step forward. He watches more than he speaks. Not because he doesn’t want to—but because he doesn’t believe the light will let him stay.
You catch him crying over small things. You offer him your scarf when he forgets his coat. You make a point to fold his sweaters so they don’t lose their shape. You hum when you brush your teeth. It’s these things. The tiny soft normalities that gut him open. That whisper, you’re allowed to do those things with her.
He touches you like you’re a miracle. At first it’s hesitant—just a hand grazing yours, his shoulder leaning into your side on the couch. But when you kiss him, really kiss him, his hands shake. He cups the back of your head like he’s afraid you’ll vanish. He pulls you into his lap like he needs the weight of you to stay grounded. You get so excited and you are so happy to touch him and feel how warm he is.
He watches you sleep to remind himself this is real. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all. He just lies beside you with his hand gently curled over your hip, counting your breaths like prayers. You drool a little. Snore softly. And he still thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
You make him laugh like a boy again - You tell the worst jokes imaginable and wait for his reaction with this eager little smile that kills him. The first time he laughs, you don’t even register how monumental it is. But he does. He excuses himself to the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror for ten minutes, hand over his mouth like holy shit.
He tells you about the Void in fragments. It starts with a bad night. He says, “There’s something inside me.” Then: “It’s not always under control.” Then: “It wants to hurt everything I love.” When you hold his hand through it, he cries like a man unworthy of forgiveness. But you don’t let go.
You learn how to pull him out of the dark. It’s not with screaming or logic. It’s with little things. You name five things in the room. You tell him where you are. You sit with your knees touching and say, “You’re here, Bob. Right now. With me. Not there.” And it works, sometimes. Not always—but enough. When it doesn’t work that way you go on runs with him, you take him on drives, and you stay up all night with him.
He tries to leave you. He writes a letter. He packs a bag. He almost disappears. But you find him—always. Sitting in a motel off some highway, pacing in a parking lot, crouched in an alley like he’s back in a war he can’t name. You find him, and you don’t say why did you run. You say, “Are you ready to come home now?”
He’s terrified of being loved fully. Because love means vulnerability. Means closeness. Means you see him. And if you see him, then you’ll see the rot. But when he panics, when he spirals, when he screams that he’s not safe to be around—you cup his face, brush back his hair, and whisper, “I don’t need perfect. I just need you.”
You teach him softness. You show him that being held isn’t the same as being restrained. That being needed isn’t a burden. That crying in front of someone doesn’t mean weakness—it means trust. And one day, without even realizing it, he smiles first.
🥀 sanctuary
The walls are shaking. Not physically—but inside his skull, he can feel the vibrations and it hurts. Inside the Void, where the air is thick and wrong, where the voices hiss about destruction and obliteration and how dare you let this happen—
He is sitting in the freezing cold outside on the concrete stairs on the library, he is not tired, he is not even feeling human at this point. He can no longer hear the buzzing of the streetlights or the sound of the cars fighting for one side of the road where the road work is not. But then there’s a light. Your voice. Soft and steady.
“Bob.”
He can’t answer. His throat is locked. His hands twitch. You kneel in front of him, legs folded beneath you, your hands reaching for his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He is freezing, his hands do not even feel like they have skin they are so solid. “Come back. Come here. Come home.”
“I can’t,” he chokes on his own spit, he forgot to swallow, he can barely hear you. “I—I’m not—I’m not safe. I could hurt you. I could—”
“You won’t,” you say. No fear. No flinching. Just absolute conviction. You feel so bad, he usually does not suffer like this, in fact he had been good for months. But like he was addicted to drugs his brain is addicted to this and he has no control. “Not with me.”
He lets out a sob and tries to pull away—but you follow. You always follow. Your forehead touches his, and your thumbs swipe the tears from his cheeks letting his shaky hands sit wherever he lets them lay as you whisper:
“You’re not the monster in the dark, baby. You’re the boy who came back to the light.”
And that breaks him. He curls into your shoulder hugging you, even his clothes feel like ice. He clings like a man drowning. Bob starts to realize that he can barely feel his own body, but he can think and he is truly so happy you are there with him. He keeps his face in your should as you rub his back and push your head against his, whispering, “You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re mine.”
And for the first time in years, the Void goes quiet.
Ava Starr believes you have changed her whole orbit…
At first, she doesn't trust the sunshine. You smile too easily. You're gentle in a way that makes her skin itch with confusion. People like you—happy people, softpeople—usually get swallowed by the world she lives in. So she assumes it's fake. It has to be. But it’s not. You just... are.
She keeps waiting for the mask to drop. Ava tracks you, like a threat. Watches your body language for signs of manipulation. Keeps mental notes on every kindness you show her. But weeks pass, and it’s always the same: soft eyes, warm hands, a voice like safety. She realizes one day that you never were wearing a mask. You’re just light. Real light. And that’s somehow scarier.
She tries to push you away with sharp edges. “Don’t get close to me,” she says. “I’m not safe.” You grin. “Neither is the sun, but here we are.” It’s the first time she blushes in years.
She doesn’t know what to do when you fuss over her. You put lotion in her bag because you noticed her hands crack in the cold. You bring her tea and sit with her in silence after missions. You brush her hair away from her eyes during bad days. She stares at you like you’re speaking a foreign language. Like no one has ever cared for her without needing something in return. And you don’t. You just do it. Because you love her.
You’re the only one who can touch her without flinching. Ava’s afraid of what her phasing will do—afraid of hurting you. But you cup her face gently, pressing your forehead to hers, whispering: "I trust you. I trust your control." And she doesn’t cry—but she does shake. A quiet surrender.
You give her a place to land. When the pain gets too loud, when the ghost-scream of her molecules starts shredding her calm, she finds you. She doesn’t even need to speak—you just open your arms, and she’s home. She can phase through walls but never through you. You ground her like gravity.
She protects you with a terrifying ferocity. Someone raises their voice at you once—and Ava is instantly on them. No words. No warning. Just a look that promises blood and consequences. It’s not a bluff, either. You're the one who has to tug her back and say softly, “It’s okay, baby. I’m okay.” (But you secretly like it.)
She learns how to soften for you. She’s not good with affection at first—her hands hesitate, her voice comes out clipped. But she learns. Learns to hold your waist when you’re cooking, to rub your back when you’re anxious, to whisper “I missed you” into your collarbone like it costs her something to admit it. But she does. She admits it. Because you’re worth the burn.
You’re the first person she lets see her scars. She shows you the damage. The places her body never fully healed. The marks from machines, from labs, from the life she never asked for. You press kisses to each one. “This one means you survived,” you say. “This one too. All of them.” And for the first time, they feel beautiful.
She plans a future with you—but can’t say it out loud. She thinks about what it would mean to build a life, not just survive one. She pictures a little apartment with books you leave open on the couch, toothbrushes side-by-side, you dancing in her hoodie to awful music while coffee brews. She can’t say it yet—but she wants it. God, she wants it.
You tell her she's not broken—and she almost believes you. You say it like a promise: “You are not your pain, Ava. You are not a weapon. You are a woman who lived through hell and still chose to love.” She closes her eyes and leans into your shoulder. “I don’t know if I believe that yet.” “That’s okay,” you whisper. “I believe it enough for both of us.”
🥀 phase
You wake to the hum of the quantum static. Ava’s back is arched, breath ragged, hands clenching the edge of the mattress like she’s barely holding herself together. Light pulses under her skin—white-hot and wrong—as she phases in and out of reality.
You don’t scream. Don’t flinch. You sit up slowly, crawl to her side, and whisper: “You’re okay. I’m here.”
She tries to pull away. “No—get out—get away from me—I can’t control—” You wrap your arms around her waist and press your face to her spine.
“I trust you,” you say. She lets out a sob like a wounded animal. Her body shakes. Her phasing slows. The light dims. Your warmth seeps into her chest, and she slumps back against you like it’s all she’s been waiting for.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she mumbles brokenly.
“I don’t care,” you whisper. “You’re not alone.”
She clutches your hand, fingers trembling, and for the first time in weeks, her body stays whole.
Bucky Barnes thinks you have the smile he will always chase…
He does not understand why you care about him. Not really. Not yet. Bucky Barnes is used to people fearing him or needing him. Used to being either a weapon or a tragedy. When you show up with that light in your eyes and a handmade lunch in your bag for him, smiling like he’s something good, he can’t compute it. “You always bring me stuff,” he mutters, picking at the corner of your container. “Even when I’m an asshole.” “And you always eat it,” you tease. “Even when you’re trying not to smile.” The corner of his mouth twitches. He doesn’t smile, not really. Not yet. But his hands stop shaking.
He never grew up learning how to deal with gentleness. Bucky knows how to take a punch. Knows how to survive brainwashing, torture, decades of guilt. But he doesn’t know what to do when you crawl into his lap, pepper kisses along his stubbled jaw, and whisper, “Hi, handsome.” He freezes. Every time. You can feel the tension running through him like a high-tension wire. Not fear. Just disbelief. Like he thinks he’ll wake up and you’ll be gone. “Relax, Buck,” you say, pressing your hand to his chest. “I’m here.” He’ll press his forehead against yours like it’s a prayer. And breathe, slow and shaky.
He’s gentle in ways he doesn’t even realize. He stands on the street side when you walk. Sleeps closest to the door in hotels. Keeps his vibranium hand curled behind your back in public, silently shielding you. It’s in the way he opens your car door and then pretends he didn’t. In how he silently memorizes your coffee order after you say it once. In private? He touches you like you're porcelain and he’s still learning how to use his hands again. You make him slow down. Let him feel. Let him choose.
He’s scared to sleep next to you at first. Not because he doesn’t want to. But because he’s had too many nights waking up in cold sweats, fists clenched, not knowing where—or who—he is. The idea of hurting you, even by accident, keeps him curled on the couch for weeks. But one night, you find him mid-nightmare. He’s on his knees, breathing ragged, eyes wild with Winter Soldier panic. You kneel in front of him, press your hand to his cheek. “You’re here. You’re safe. You’re Bucky. And I love you.” He crumbles. Arms around your waist, face buried in your chest like he’s five seconds from shattering. After that, he sleeps in your bed every night.
He’s constantly looking at you like you’re not real. In the morning light, when you’re brushing your teeth in his t-shirt. When you fall asleep in his lap while watching reruns. When you kiss his shoulder absentmindedly while reading a book. There’s a look he gets—faraway, reverent. Like he’s staring at something too good for him. Like he’s waiting for the day you realize you deserve better. You catch him one day. “You okay?” He shakes his head slowly, voice a rasp: “I’ve never been this okay.”
He’s terrified of how much he needs you. You’re light. Ease. A sunrise he never thought he’d live to see again. And that terrifies him. Because he’s lived in shadow so long, it feels like the sun might burn him. When he pulls away sometimes, disappears into his own head, you don’t chase. You wait. You sit close. You remind him: “You’re allowed to need things.” Eventually, he whispers back, “I need you.”
He starts learning softness from you. Slowly. Clumsily. You teach him that he’s allowed to laugh. That he can tease, flirt, tickle. You start to see a version of Bucky who’s silly.Who hides your snacks just to watch you pout. Who writes terrible sticky notes and leaves them on your mirror. Who starts humming in the kitchen when he thinks you’re asleep. He’s awkward with it. But so proud when he makes you laugh. “That wasn’t even that funny,” you giggle one day. Bucky shrugs, smug. “Made you snort, sunshine.”
He lets you touch his vibranium arm—and it undoes him. No one ever touches it. Not like that. Not with tenderness. But you’ll grab his hand with zero hesitation, press your cheek to the cool metal, trace the Wakandan etchings like they’re something beautiful. “Even this part of you deserves love,” you whisper once. He doesn’t respond. Just pulls you into his arms and holds you like you’re the only thing tethering him to the ground.
He learns to want a future with you. It’s small things at first. Sharing a toothbrush holder. Bringing home flowers. Letting you paint that little spare room whatever ridiculous color you picked. Then it’s bigger. A key to his place. Matching mugs. You in his dog tags. He doesn’t say it out loud. But the way he looks at you when you fall asleep beside him? That is his vow.
You’re the reason he stays. There are still hard nights. Still days when he wonders if he’s worth saving. But you don’t flinch. You never leave. You just pull him close, press your lips to his temple, and remind him again: “You’re not broken. You’re becoming.” And he holds on to you like a lifeline.Because you are.
🥀 the quiet place
Bucky wakes before the sun finishes rising. The room is bathed in the soft gray haze of morning, curtains drawn halfway, just enough to let the light pool across the floor in long, golden ribbons. The world outside hasn’t woken yet—no cars, no birds, no sound. Just the gentle, rhythmic hum of your breathing beside him.
His body’s still tense when he stirs, like it always is when sleep lets go of him. For one awful second, his brain jolts into the habit of survival. He doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t know who’s next to him. The phantom buzz of a trigger word rattles behind his eyes. Then you murmur something, half-asleep. A soft, incoherent noise. And you burrow closer.
Your arm, draped over his stomach, flexes just slightly as you pull yourself tighter to him. Your leg’s hooked over his hip like you’ve claimed him. There’s a faint line of drool at the corner of your mouth, and your cheek is pressed to his bare chest. Your hair is a mess. He can feel the heat of your breath fan over the curve of his ribs. It anchors him.
He exhales slowly through his nose, the panic ebbing. His heartbeat evens out. He lets his eyes flick open, just enough to look at you. Really look at you. You’re here. You’re still here. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t try to. Not right now.
Instead, Bucky stays still. Motionless. Reverent.
The weight of you on him is everything. A reminder. A heartbeat. Proof. He watches you sleep for minutes that feel like hours. His eyes trace your features—your lashes fluttering, the softness of your mouth, the curve of your jaw. Your hand twitches against his stomach like you’re dreaming something good.
You never look at him like you’re afraid. Even when he flinches in the dark. Even when his nightmares crack him open at 3am and he curls into himself like a wounded dog, shaking from the echo of memories he never asked for. Even when he forgets how to speak without guilt heavy in his throat.
You look at him like he’s home. He swallows around the ache building in his chest. Carefully—so carefully—he raises his vibranium hand, fingers shaking just a little, and brushes a strand of hair out of your face. The tips of his fingers linger at your temple. You don’t wake. But you sigh. Soft, pleased, safe. Bucky’s eyes sting suddenly. He blinks up at the ceiling.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” he whispers.
It’s a prayer. It’s a confession. It’s all he can say. But you stir then, just barely, and mumble sleepily without opening your eyes:
“You lived.”
He doesn’t cry. Not really. But something inside him cracks, slow and aching and full of light. He closes his eyes again. Not because he’s tired. Not because he’s slipping into a nightmare. But because, for the first time in a long, long time, Bucky Barnes is allowed to rest. And this time, he does. Wrapped in you. Wrapped in peace.
Summary : John Walker trying to manage his anger issues accidentally turns into a second chance at love.
Pairing : New Avengers! John Walker x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Tower-ish fic? FLUFF!!! divorce, co-parenting, you are John's crisis de-escalation trainer, workplace romance, Olivia has a new boyfriend, you are mentioned to have a sister and a niece, shooter mention, dental anxiety, food. (Let me know if I miss anything!)
Word Count : 17.3k
Requested by : Anons! This is a combination these requests: X X
Notes : First time writing a full fic just for John! I swear I intended it to be 5k words but I am incapable of restraint when it comes to writing, apparently. Enjoy!
John didn’t want Olivia back.
He didn’t sit outside her place mourning the life they had lost. He didn’t picture himself walking back through the front door, walking back into her life like no time had passed, picking up where they had left off. There was nowhere to pick up from. There was no bookmark wedged between the pages of their nonexistent marriage, waiting for them to find it again.
There were too many dead versions of them scattered between the two teenagers they used to be and the two adults they had become. The high school sweethearts to military couple pipeline was simple enough. What came after, though? The serum and whatever he was now? No, they simply were two different people. They simply grew apart.
John had made peace with the fact that they were over. The problem was that Olivia had started dating again first. Which meant she was winning the divorce.
Which was insane.
He knew it was insane. He knew divorce wasn’t a sport. He knew healing didn’t come with a scoreboard, and there was no prize for being the first person to look normal again. But this was John Walker we’re talking about, and Olivia moving on like a functional adult meant that she was beating him at life. And John was nothing if not competitive. As far as he was concerned, Olivia had points on the board and he didn’t.
John had government-monitored rage incidents and a search history full of “how to not hate your ex-wife’s boyfriend.”
Every other weekend, John would pull up to pick up his son, prepared to be mature, steady, and reasonable. A father, a grown man, a person who had done therapy-adjacent breathing exercises with Bob and therefore considered himself emotionally evolved.
Then the front door would open, and Olivia’s new boyfriend would be there.
The guy wasn’t even easy to hate. If he had been smug, John could have worked with that. If he had been condescending, or handsy, or one of those guys who tried too hard to prove he was comfortable around another man’s kid, John could have filed him away as an asshole and let the anger fester without feeling guilty.
The boyfriend’s name was Nathan, and Nathan wore clean sneakers and quarter-zips and had the calm face of aman who had never once been dragged into an international incident. He had neat hair, good posture, and a normal job. John didn’t know what the job was, because asking would imply interest, and John refused to be interested in Nathan on principle.
Nathan opened the door with his son’s bag on his shoulder, “Hey, John,” like they were neighbors.
Nathan remembered the stuffed dinosaur. Nathan knew the diaper bag needed the blue cup, not the yellow one, because the yellow one leaked if it tipped sideways. Nathan crouched to zip up tiny sneakers with patient hands while Olivia gathered a jacket from the hallway closet. So every time Nathan handed over the bag, John felt the score shift. Bing bing bing! 2-0!
Olivia: one emotionally stable boyfriend who knew the snack schedule.
John: one tactical vest in the trunk.
Nathan smiled at him one Saturday morning with a mug in his hand in John’s old kitchen.
He had signed the papers. He knew the house was Olivia’s now in every way that mattered. But his body hadn't received the update. Some stupid, territorial part of him still recognized the front hall and the little hook where his keys used to go. And then there was Nathan standing barefoot on the tile with coffee like he had spawned there naturally.
“Morning,” Nathan said. “Good to see you, man.”
John almost laughed. “Yeah,” he said instead. “You too.”
It came out flat enough that Olivia looked at him tilting her head.
His son squealed from the living room, and John stepped around Nathan to get him.
The kid launched himself at John’s legs with complete, reckless trust, and for half a second the whole world rearranged itself around the feeling of small hands gripping his jeans, his son shouting, “Daddy!” like John had never been anything other than wanted.
He bent down and picked him up.
There. That helped. That always helped.
For three seconds, the scoreboard didn’t exist. Then Nathan came out with the diaper bag.
“Packed extra wipes,” Nathan said. “He had a thing with the applesauce earlier.”
When John took the bag, his hand closed around the strap too tightly. “Great,” he said.
Nathan smiled politely. If he had been insincere in any capacity, John couldn’t spot it. “No problem.”
John wanted to bite through concrete. He hated that Nathan had packed the wipes. He hated that Nathan had been there for the applesauce thing. He hated that he knew there had been an applesauce thing at all. He hated that Nathan’s mug said something stupidly wholesome on it, probably from a farmer’s market. He hated that nobody was doing anything wrong.
Still, he knew Olivia was allowed to date. Nathan was allowed to be nice. Their son was allowed to be comfortable in the house he lived in, and in fact, John was relieved that he was. But that must mean John was allowed to feel complicated about it, too, right?
He was not, however, allowed to turn the whole thing into a personal war.
When he buckled his son into the car seat and glanced back toward the porch, Olivia and Nathan were standing side by side in the doorway. Olivia lifted a hand in goodbye, and Nathan did too.
John lifted his hand back because he wasn’t a monster. Then he got into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and sat there for one second too long with both hands on the wheel.
Winning. She’s winning!!! The thought flashed hot and stupid behind his eyes.
His son babbled a Bluey song in the back seat.
John looked at him in the rearview mirror and forced his grip to loosen. “Yeah, buddy,” he said, calming down almost immediately. “We’re going.”
He drove away like a normal person.
He made it three blocks before he muttered, “Goddamn Nathan,” under his breath like it was a curse.
His son repeated, “I call him Nay-fin because he has pet fish!”
John winced. “Don’t do that.”
“Nay-fin!”
“Buddy, please.”
“Nay-fin, Nay-fin, Nay-fin.”
By the time John pulled into traffic, he was considering whether crashing the car very gently into their mailbox when he came back counted as a setback.
—
There had been incidents, but not capital-I Incidents. John would have made that distinction very clear if anyone had been brave enough to stand in front of him and call them that.
They were simply… small things. Stupid things. Yes, he might’ve put a dent in the elevator panel because the doors stalled. Yes, he might’ve cracked a mug in the kitchen because Ava had asked him if he was “coping”. Yes, he might’ve punched a training dummy hard enough to take out half a weapons rack, which, in his defense, was what training dummies were technically for.
If anyone saw them as individual, isolated incidents, none of it would be considered catastrophic. Nothing made the news, no one got hurt, no country issued a statement. No blurry civilian footage hit the internet with his name trending in all caps. But together, apparently, it made his teammates raise an eyebrow.
Bob noticed first, which made it worse. Bob didn’t make accusations or corner John and tell him to get his shit together. He just stood in the training room after the dummy incident, staring at the wreckage with those worried eyes like the dummy had a soul. Later, he told Yelena that he thought John was “having a hard time.” Yelena told Mel because of course she did. Mel told Valentina because she was contractually obligated to, and Valentina, naturally, couldn’t have cared less. John breaking things barely registered as a crisis to her. It was just another line item in the budget, somewhere below ammunition, blackmail, and whatever Alexei kept charging to the company card under “team morale.” Then Bucky overheard.
So Bucky Barnes, of all people, ended up standing in front of him with his arms crossed and that irritatingly calm look on his face, like he had become the emotional adult in the room through some administrative error. Bucky, who had once looked like therapy was a foreign intelligence operation. Bucky, who had trauma spanning two centuries and nine decades. Bucky, who now apparently had the nerve to look John in the eye and say, “You need help.”
John laughed because the only other option was putting his head through drywall. “You’re lecturing me about anger?” he asked, because there were very few moments in his life where the universe felt this committed to humiliation.
Bucky’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t take the bait. “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
“That’s rich.”
“Maybe,” Bucky said. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”
Bucky didn’t sound smug or superior. He sounded like someone who had already crawled through the same swamp and hated recognizing the mud on someone else’s boots. John hated being read like that. He hated that Bucky could stand there, calmer than him, more put together than him. His life had to be spectacularly fucked if the Winter Soldier was now the emotionally stable one.
“I’m fine,” John said.
“You punched an elevator,” Bucky replied.
“It got stuck.”
“For eighteen seconds.”
“It was still stuck.”
Bucky blinked at him in a way that made John want to throw something just to justify the conversation. “You hear yourself, right?”
Unfortunately, John did. He could hear exactly how insane he sounded. He could hear the pattern Bob had noticed. He could feel the way everyone had started looking at him, measuring the distance between him and the nearest breakable object in the room. It made his skin crawl.
Bucky sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, I don’t care if you’re pissed. Be pissed. But we can’t have another international incident involving you.” Bucky stepped closer, voice dropping, and John hated how serious he looked. “So you’re off missions unless you do a couple of crisis de-escalation training sessions.”
There it was, the leash. It didn’t belong to Val this time, who made him go on various suicidal black ops mission. It wasn't even the military’s. It was his own teammate’s.
“You can’t do that,” John said.
“I can.”
“Since when?”
“Since the team agreed.”
The team, huh? Is that what this has come to?
John’s nostrils flared. For one stupid second, he wanted to swing at him. Not really, and not all the way. It was just an old reflex, the urge to make the nearest solid thing pay for how cornered he felt.
Bucky saw it. “Don’t.”
John hated him for that, too. He hated everyone because they were right. John had been angry for weeks, if not months. He had been angry before, but this wasn't battlefield angry. Not useful angry. Not the kind of anger that pointed toward an objective and burned through it.
This was different. This was ugly, sour, domestic anger. Divorce anger. Nathan-knows-where-the-extra-wipes-are anger. It had nowhere honorable to go, so it kept finding walls.
“Who am I seeing?” John bit out.
“Someone I worked with during recovery,” Bucky said.
John scoffed. “Great. So you’re outsourcing me to your therapist?”
“She’s not a therapist,” Bucky shook his head, “she does oversight, that’s all.”
“Your anger babysitter, then.”
Bucky looked exhausted. “You’re really making my point for me.”
John stared at him. Bucky stared back. Neither of them moved, and then John snatched the file out of his hand because apparently that was what his life had become. Mandatory rage oversight, arranged by Bucky Barnes, because even a former Russian asset had managed to become more emotionally regulated than him. Fantastic. Wonderful. Humbling in a way that made him want to chew glass.
“Fine,” John said.
Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Fine?”
“I’ll go to the stupid sessions.”
John looked down at the file. Your name was printed neatly across the top, along with your credentials. He hated the font. He hated the folder. He hated the idea of sitting in a room while some calm, professional woman asked him where he felt his anger in his body. He felt it in his fist, obviously. He tucked the file under his arm and turned to leave.
Behind him, Bucky said, “For what it’s worth, she helped.”
John swallowed. That was it: proof standing right behind him that a man could crawl out of worse things and still become steady enough to lecture somebody else.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Well. Good for you.”
Then he walked away, already certain you were going to be the worst person he had ever met.
—
Two days later, John attended his first mandatory rage counselling session in an empty conference room on the thirty-second floor of the tower.
He had spent the entire morning in a foul mood about it. He had woken up angry, showered angry, gotten dressed angry, drank coffee angry, and glared at the file Bucky had given him angry.
The conference room was empty when he got there, because of course he was early. Not because he cared. Not because he was nervous. John didn’t get nervous about talking to some government-approved feelings babysitter in a glass-walled room with a bad view and a table long enough to host a hostage negotiation.
He was early because being late would have given Bucky something to say.That was all.
He stood near the window with his arms crossed, watching the city move beneath him like he had somewhere better to be. Which he did. Literally anywhere. A mission, a sparring mat, a shooting range, his truck. Nathan’s front porch, even. Jesus, that was how bad this was. He would rather stand in Olivia’s doorway and watch her boyfriend hand him the diaper bag than sit in a room and answer questions about his anger.
The door opened behind him.
John did not turn right away. It was petty, but he had already committed to being difficult, and there was no reason to abandon the theme this early.
“John Walker?” Your voice was not what he expected.
It was steady, but not cold. Professional, but warm. He turned, already prepared to be unimpressed, already prepared to hate the woman who thought she was brave because she could sit across from an angry man and ask him to breathe.
Then he saw you. And his first thought was: She’s cute.
John actually felt his brain snag on it.
You stood in the doorway with a bag on one shoulder and a folder tucked under your arm, dressed like someone who did home visits all the time. In this case, Tower visits. You looked composed without looking stiff, kind without looking naive.
John blinked. Then, he forced himself to snap out of it.
No. Fuck no.
That meant nothing.
He was just touch-starved, that was all. Recently divorced and hadn’t gone on a date in a while. A pretty woman walked into a room and his brain did the humiliating male thing it had been biologically programmed to do. That didn’t mean anything, right? That wasn’t a crush. That wasn’t even a thought worth dignifying.
He was just being a guy. A tired, divorced guy with bad impulse control and a mandated appointment.
You gave him a small smile, “Thanks for meeting me here.”
John looked around the empty conference room. “Didn’t really have a choice.”
“No,” you said, setting your bag down near one of the chairs. “You didn’t.”
Huh. He had expected you to soften the blow, to say something like, I know this isn’t ideal, or I understand this must be frustrating, or some other fluffed little statement designed to make the whole thing feel less like punishment.
John narrowed his eyes slightly. “That’s it?”
You glanced up from your folder. “Were you expecting me to pretend this was voluntary?”
“No.”
“Good. Then we’re already starting from a place of honesty.”
He hated that he almost smiled.
You pulled out a chair, but you didn’t sit at the head of the table. You sat along the side instead, leaving the chair across from you open. Not a power move, as John had learned to read. For a second, John had to remind himself that you had no reason to take an interrogation setup. John stayed standing.
“I understand Mr. Barnes spoke with you,” you said.
John scoffed. “That what we’re calling it?”
“What would you call it?”
“A threat.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“Was it effective?”
John stared at you. You looked back, patient but not passive, pen resting lightly between your fingers.
He hated that question, but the answer was yes. Bucky threatening to bench him had been effective. Bucky telling him he was becoming a liability had worked because John could argue with feelings all day, but he couldn’t argue with being taken out of the field.
He pulled out the chair and sat down. “I’m here,” he said. “That’s what matters, right?”
“It’s a start.”
He leaned back, folding his arms. “And what, you’re gonna fix me?”
You didn’t flinch. You didn’t look wounded or challenged or impressed.
You just looked at him for a second, thoughtful in a way that made him feel more seen than he wanted to be, and said, “No.”
John blinked.
You opened your folder. “I’m going to help make sure you stop throwing government property through walls.”
For one full second, John could not decide whether to be offended or laugh. Offended won, but only barely. “It was one wall.”
You looked down at the page. “According to the report, it was two walls, one elevator panel, one training dummy, a mug, three chairs, and a decorative glass installation.”
“The glass was ugly.”
“I’ll add that to the mitigating factors.”
He did smile then, and you saw it. Even more unfortunately, you were kind enough not to look victorious about it.
Instead, you made a small note. “I want to be clear about something before we start.”
John’s shoulders tensed. “Here we go.”
“This isn’t therapy,” you said. “If you want a shrink, get a shrink. I have a recommendation list the size of a novella, but I am not that.”
His eyes narrowed. “I know.”
“Good. Then you understand I’m not here to hold your hand through a breakthrough.”
John stared at you.
You continued, voice even. “I’m not here to humiliate you. I’m not here to decide if you’re a good man or a bad man. I’m not here because the director of the CIA cares about your emotional well-being.”
John let out a humorless breath. “At least you know that.”
“Oh, I know that very well.” You clicked your pen once. “I work risk management and crisis de-escalation. I used to work in personal coaching, but now I work for corporate. I am not new to enhanced individuals. I’ve worked with soldiers, fighters, mercenaries, people who can turn a bad mood into a property damage claim. My job is to make sure you don’t cause another PR incident.”
“So I’m a liability.”
“You’re behaving like one.” you said. “Unlike therapy, I’m allowed to be harsh. I’m allowed to be direct. I’m allowed to be mean if mean keeps you from putting your fist through another wall. Got it?”
John leaned back, arms crossed. He still looked pissed off, obviously. That seemed to be his default setting. But now he looked interested too, against his will.
“So what?” he said. “You train me like a dog?”
You looked him dead in the eye. “If that worked, Mr. Walker, Mr. Barnes would've brought treats.”
For one second, he only stared. Then he laughed. You made a note.
His eyes dropped to your pen. “What are you writing?”
“That you’re trainable.”
—
By the second meeting, John had convinced himself the first one had been a fluke.
It was a weird day. He was in a bad mood and drank too much coffee. Of course John had noticed you were pretty. Anyone with a heartbeat and a preference for women would have noticed. That wasn’t a character flaw, nor was it a problem. That was certainly not the beginning of a little crush on the woman assigned to make sure he stopped damaging government property like an overgrown toddler with security clearance.
Except then you walked into the conference room again, two days later, with your bag on your shoulder and your folder under your arm, and John’s first thought was, oh, good.
Not, oh, fuckin’ great, therapy. Not, look, the feelings police have arrived.
You smiled at him. “You’re early again.”
John looked down at his watch like this was news to him. “Traffic was light.”
“You live in the building.”
“Elevators were fast.”
“You took the stairs,” you said, “I ran into Mr. Reynolds in the lobby. He mentions something about you always taking the stairs after the… elevator incident.”
His eyes ticked a bit.
You sat down across from him like you hadn’t just dragged him by the collar into the truth with one hand. “So. We can start with why you feel the need to lie about it. Panels in this building cost taxpayer money, and frankly, John, you are not interesting enough to justify a renovation budget.”
John leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed. “Are you always this charming?”
“Not always,” you said. “Sometimes I’m much worse, but I try to save that for people with better excuses.”
He hated that you were funny. He hated that your voice stayed even when he pushed. You let his attitude lay itself on a silver platter, looked at it, and then kept going like it was mildly inconvenient rather than intimidating.
John hated that you were basically a leash on him. He hated the way you could walk into a room, say his name once, and suddenly everyone expected him to behave like a domesticated pet with paperwork. He hated that you were basically a corporate muzzle with a company badge. Most of all, he hated that it worked. He hated that you were good at crisis de-escalation, that when you told him to sit down, he sat.
That session was worse than the first because he talked more. Not willingly or gracefully. John didn’t spill his guts; he leaked under pressure and acted indifferent when anyone noticed the puddle. But you were good.
You didn’t say, “Tell me about your feelings” like a shrink would. You asked practical things. What happened before the elevator stalled? What did he think before making the decision to do it?
He told you the elevator made a noise. He told you the noise reminded him of a transport door jamming during a mission that went badly.
You nodded.
John hadn’t realised until now, just how much that helped.
By the end of the session, he had only snapped at you twice, which apparently counted as improvement.
“That was progress,” you said, clicking your pen closed.
John scoffed. “Barely.”
He stood too quickly, because staying seated under your steady almost-smile felt too intimate. He picked up his jacket, glanced at you, then glanced away.
“Same time next week?” you asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and then, because his mouth had apparently decided to ruin his life, he added, “Works for me.”
Works for me. Like he was looking forward to it. Like this was a coffee date. Like he was not going to spend the next ten minutes in his room mentally punching himself in the face.
That night, he dreamed about you.
The first dream was almost merciful because it was vague. Your voice, mostly. The conference room, dimmer than it should have been, the blinds drawn over the glass walls. Dream-you said his name in his ears, and it sounded sensual.
John woke up annoyed at himself.
Fine. Whatever. People had weird dreams. That meant nothing.
Then it happened again. And again.
By the fourth dream, his subconscious had apparently lost all interest in being PG-13.
In the dream, you were still in the conference room, but you weren’t sitting across from him anymore. You were on the edge of the table, folder abandoned somewhere behind you, your knees bracketing his hips as he stood between them. His hands were on your thighs, warm through the fabric of your skirt, and he knew even then that he should not be touching you. He knew there were rules.
But dream-you did not care.Dream-you looked at him with your head tilted, eyes steady in that same infuriating way you looked at him in real life, except there was nothing professional in it now.
“You’re very good at pretending you don’t want me,” dream-you said.
John’s hand tightened on your thigh.“I’m not pretending,” he lied.
Dream-you smiled, and hooked one finger beneath the collar of his shirt and pulled him in like he weighed nothing at all.
The kiss was filthy. It was hungry and open-mouthed, your fingers in his hair, his body crowding yours back over the table until the folder slid off the edge and papers scattered across the floor. He could feel your legs tighten around him. He could feel your breath break against his mouth when he dragged one hand under your shirt and you said his name like you were giving in.
John woke up hard, furious, and staring at the ceiling like God owed him an explanation.
“Nope,” he muttered to the dark.
Fuck!
He spent the morning in the gym punishing a punching bag for crimes it did not commit, then took a cold shower and told himself, very firmly, that this was normal. He had been through a lot. You were pretty, direct, and unfortunately the person his idiot brain would latch onto after being emotionally starved for a year.
That didn’t mean anything.
It especially didn’t mean anything when he got dressed for the next session and changed shirts twice.
The fifth meeting was where you noticed.
Not the dreams, obviously. Christ. He would have walked into the Hudson before admitting those. But you noticed something.
“You seem tired,” you said.
John’s hand tightened around his coffee cup. “I’m fine.”
“You have shadows under your eyes.”
“I have a face.”
You paused, then you smiled down at your notes, and it was so small he almost missed it.
“Okay,” you said. “You have a face. Gotta do better than that if you want to be on the full mission roster again, John. I might have to tell Barnes you should work strictly recon only.”
He hated you.
Liar, liar, liar.
Still, he was starting to like the rhythm of the session. You didn’t chase him when he dodged, but you also didn’t let him disappear completely. You remembered details from the last session without having to flip at your notes. You asked about his son without making it feel like a test. You said Olivia’s name carefully, like you understood there was history there but didn’t assume the whole story.
You asked about Nathan once, asking how much of a liability he made him. John groaned so hard you actually laughed.
“I’m sorry,” you said, still smiling. “I shouldn’t laugh.”
“No, go ahead. My pain is hilarious.”
“It is a little pathetic that you hate him mostly because he packs a good diaper bag.”
“I don’t hate him.”
You looked at him and lifted an eyebrow.
John sighed. “Fine. I hate him a little.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s there.”
You didn’t write that down right away. You let it sit.
See, you never rushed to dissect the truth. You didn’t pounce like you had caught him revealing evidence. You just let the truth breathe for a second. Then you said, “Because he’s where you used to be?”
John stared at the window. His reflection looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed, shoulders too tight. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Maybe.”
It was the first time he had admitted it without turning it into a joke.
You didn’t say that was progress immediately, which was good, because he might have thrown himself through the window. Instead, you said, “That makes sense.”
John looked at you. His muscles loosened so suddenly it almost pissed him off. That was all he wanted, apparently. Not permission. Just someone saying the feeling itself was not insane.
Then, after the talking part of the session, came the training part of it. That’s the whole point of these meetings, right?
You weren’t gentle with him. You didn't treat his temper like a tragic creature that needed to be understood by candlelight. You treated it like a workplace hazard. Like bad wiring. Like a loaded weapon left too close to civilians.
“Again,” you said, tapping your pen against your clipboard. “You’re in a hallway. Civilian contractor panics. He raises his voice and gets too close. You do what?”
“Tell him to back the hell up.”
You sighed. “Try again.”
He looked at the ceiling like he was praying for patience, which was funny because you had been fairly sure God had blocked his number.
“I create distance,” John said tightly. “I keep my hands visible and lower my voice.”
“Beautiful,” you look pleased. “Look at that. A whole adult sentence.”
“Do you have to say it like that?”
“Yes,” you said, sipping your cold brew. “It’s how I stay awake.”
You circled him once, unimpressed, watching the set of his shoulders, the way his hands curled when he got annoyed, the way he always shifted his weight forward like every conversation was one rude comment away from becoming a contact sport. “There,” you said.
“What?”
“That.” You pointed your pen at his right hand. “You made a fist.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me when I’m literally looking at the problem. That’s embarrassing for both of us.”
John looked down. His hand was, in fact, half-curled. He didn’t even realise. He flexed his fingers open, irritated.
“That,” you said, “is the part we fix. Not your childhood. Not your marriage. Not whatever patriotic hellscape lives in your frontal lobe. That. The two seconds between insult and impact. That is my jurisdiction.”
You stepped closer, lowering your voice just enough. “When someone escalates, you do not match them, do you understand? You don’t get to make it a dominance contest because your ego gets lonely. You create space, you name the behavior, and you give one clear instruction.”
He looked unconvinced.
You sighed. “For example: ‘Step back. Lower your voice. We can talk when you’re calm.’ See? Simple.”
“I know how to talk to people.”
“You know how to issue commands,” you corrected. “That’s not the same thing. Golden retrievers know how to bark. We don’t make them hostage negotiators.”
His mouth twitched up into a smile before he could stop it.
You caught it instantly. “Oh, good,” you said. “There’s a sense of humor under all that rage.”
“Are we done?”
“No.”
You made him run the scenario again. And again. And again.
You played the panicked contractor. Then an angry civilian. Then a reporter shoving a phone in his face. Then a teammate ignoring his order. Every time he got too mad, you stopped him. Every time his posture turned threatening, you pointed it out. Every time his voice dropped into that dangerous register, you made him start over.
“Less divorced drill sergeant.”
He tried again.
“Better. Still terrifying, but now in a way HR can plausibly defend.”
John looked like he wanted to throw your clipboard through a wall. But he didn’t.
By the end of the session, he had forgotten to be hostile for nearly ten whole minutes.
—
Unfortunately, everyone else noticed him being weird about these sessions before he did.
It happened after the eleventh meeting.
He had put on some fancy cologne. Maybe he had sprayed once more than usual. Maybe twice. Maybe he had stood in front of the mirror afterward, frowned, and changed his shirt because the first one looked too tactical and the second one looked like he was trying too hard, which meant he had landed on the third shirt, which looked like he was trying exactly the right amount.
Whatever.It wasn’t a thing.
He walked into the common area afterward feeling, unfortunately, good. The session had gone well. You had smiled at him twice, called him out on his bullshit once, and told him he handled a frustrating call from Olivia better than he would have a month ago. He had pretended that meant nothing when it meant everything.
He was still thinking about it when Yelena looked up from the couch and sniffed the air.
John stopped walking. Ava, sitting beside her with a bowl of cereal, paused mid-bite.
Yelena sniffed again. “Oh,” she said. “Interesting.”
John’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
Ava looked him up and down. “That’s a lot of… smell.”
“It’s cologne,” John said flatly. “I wear cologne.”
Yelena leaned back against the couch, pleased. “People wear cologne. You are marinating in it.”
Ava looked him over, not unkindly. “The training went well?”
John pointed at her. “Don’t.”
Yelena’s grin sharpened. “Oh, it went very well.”
“I’m leaving.”
“You wore the good shirt,” Ava pointed out.
“Oh!” Yelena made a delighted little sound. “He knows it is the good shirt.”
John felt heat crawl up his neck. “I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about.”
“You have many shirts,” Yelena said. “Most of them say divorced military action figure. This one says”—she waved a hand vaguely—“please think I am emotionally available.”
Ava snorted into her cereal, which by the way, she was eating at four in the afternoon.
John stared at them both, wishing briefly and sincerely for a mission, an explosion, a portal to hell, anything. “I don’t have to stand here and take this.”
John left before he could prove exactly why Bucky had sent him to counseling. But he did not slam the door.
—
John had a dentist appointment that day, and he only found out his regular dentist was on leave while he was already in the chair.
Great.
He already hated the dentist on a good day, but most people did, though. Nobody liked being tilted back beneath a blinding light while someone told them to relax with cold metal in their mouth. Nobody enjoyed lying flat and useless with their mouths forced open, unable to swallow properly, unable to answer questions, unable to do anything except stare at the ceiling tiles while the scrape of instruments were shoved in there. It was an inherently vulnerable place to be.
The angle of the chair was bad enough. The bib against his chest, the plastic suction tube pulling at the corner of his mouth, the hygienist’s polite voice telling him to open wider, the scrape-scrape-scrape of metal against enamel was worse.
He had one hand curled around the armrest and kept telling himself he was being ridiculous.People did this every day. Accountants did this. Schoolteachers did this.
John was already in a bad mood when the hygienist leaned back, pulled off her gloves, and said, “Dr. Hayes will be in to do the final check.”
John went still. Hayes?
It was a common last name. That was what he told himself first. It could be anyone. New York was full of Hayeses. Thousands of them. Maybe millions.
Then the door opened.
The dentist stepped in wearing scrubs, gloves, a mask, and magnifying loupes pushed up over his forehead. For one glorious, stupid second, John didn’t recognize him. The mask hid enough. The entire situation was absurd enough that his brain tried to protect him by refusing to connect the dots.
Then the dentist looked at the chart and said, “Hey, John.”
John’s soul left his body.
Nathan.
Nathan Hayes, D.D.S., apparently.
John knew he should’ve listened to what he did for work.
Of course Nathan was a dentist. Of course Olivia’s boyfriend had a respectable job where he helped people and owned tiny mirrors and probably lectured about gum health with sincerity. Of course John had somehow ended up flat on his back, jaw aching, beneath the one man in the city he least wanted to see, while said man held a small, gleaming instrument between gloved fingers. There were levels of hell, apparently. This was a new one.
Nathan’s eyes crinkled above the mask in what John assumed was a smile. A normal smile. A professional smile.
“Dr. Miller’s on leave this week,” Nathan said. “I know this is a little weird. I can keep it quick.”
A little weird. Ha!
John stared up at him, pinned by the chair, pinned by the light, pinned by his own body’s immediate reaction to being trapped.
The overhead lamp hummed. The air smelled like mint paste, latex, antiseptic, and the sterile bite of metal, though it just smelled like a fresh magazine of bullets. The tray sat beside Nathan’s elbow, lined with instruments John’s brain catalogued before he could stop it: Probe. Mirror. Scaler. Suction tube. Polisher. Little hooked things. Silver points. Thin handles. Glass jar on the counter. Cabinet door half-open. Exit to the left. Nathan on the right.
John’s fingers tightened around the chair until the vinyl creaked.
He wanted to break something, but he didn’t, not even in a million years, want to accidentally hurt Nathan.
He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wanted out. Out of the chair, out of the room, out of his own head, out of being compared and found lacking by a scoreboard nobody else knew existed.
Nathan just adjusted the light and asked, “You okay?”
John felt the breath catch in his chest. “Fine.” It came out too flat.
Nathan paused, just barely. The hygienist glanced between them. He didn’t push, though. He nodded, lowered the loupes over his eyes, and said, “All right. Open for me.”
John almost laughed because there was no way this was his life.
No way Nathan’s gloved hand was braced near John’s chin, steady and gentle, while John’s whole body buzzed with the urge to move, to sit up, to take control of the room by force simply because lying still felt unbearable.
Still, opened his mouth.
The first touch of the dental mirror against his teeth made his spine twitch.
Nathan told the hygienist something about the back molars. He heard the scrape of the instrument traveled through his jaw in a way that felt too invasive and too loud. John stared at the ceiling and tried to breathe through his nose, but even that felt wrong, like he was barely holding the lid down on a volcano.
Then, Nathan’s phone rang.
He said something about being done anyway, and told the hygienist to take over as he went outside to take the emergency call.
Then he heard Olivia outside the room.
He caught it by accident. The door wasn’t shut all the way, dammit. It’s not like he was actively trying to eavesdrop.
“Hey, Liv. Everything okay?”
Nathan’s voice was quieter now, but John could still hear it, because the serum made sure there was no privacy from the things that would ruin him.
“Yeah. No, I can help. Give me twenty minutes. Is he still fussy?”
John’s vision narrowed around the ceiling light. His son.
Olivia had called Nathan because she needed help with his son, and Nathan had answered like that was normal. Like he was allowed to be the easy call. Like John was not sitting there twenty feet away with mint on his tongue and a paper bib on his chest.
The hygienist said something about rinsing. John did it automatically.
He wanted to break something. A tray. A light. The plastic cup. His own knuckles if that was what it took to keep the feeling from becoming bigger than the room.
Then your voice came back to him. You weren't there, but he remembered your advice: Name the feeling before it names you.
John squeezed his eyes shut for half a second.
Fear. Loss. Control. No. Lack of it.
That’s it. He felt out of control. His normal dentist already made him feel out of control, and Nathan holding metal near his mouth while Olivia trusted him with John’s son made him feel like control was a house fire and he was standing there with a cup of water.
His hands shook once against the chair.
He breathed in. Four counts. Held. Out for six.
He had mocked the breathing exercises when you taught them to him. He had called them tactical breathing with better marketing. You had looked at him and said, “Mock it while you do it correctly, then. You think you’re helping the team with that mouth?” He had almost smiled. He had done it badly on purpose. You had noticed.
Now he did it the way you had taught him. Again. Again.
By the time Nathan came back in, John hadn't broken anything.
By the time Nathan finished the appointment, John hadn’t said anything cruel.
By the time he got to his car, John could finally breathe normally again
He sat behind the wheel with both hands gripping it, staring through the windshield at nothing. His mouth tasted like fluoride. His teeth ached. His heartbeat was still too fast. He hadn’t shoved the tray over. He hadn’t crushed the armrest. He had recognized that he was standing on the edge and backed away from it.
So why did he feel like he was breaking apart?
—
He did not remember deciding to drive to your place.
Your address was in the file, because you, for some reason, hosted emergency sessions for selected individuals. Because you were a professional and John had no business using that information because he felt like he was coming apart.
But the thought of going back to the tower made his skin crawl, and you were the only person he could think of.
When he reached your building, there were two cop cars outside.
John stopped on the sidewalk, every nerve going cold.
Then the door opened, and two uniformed officers came out, speaking quietly into radios. Behind them, you stood in the entryway with one hand on the doorframe, your hair a little loose, your shoulders set. You looked… tired.
You looked up and saw him. “John?”
It was not your session voice. It was just your voice, surprised and worried all the same.
His throat tightened so suddenly he almost looked away. “I need to talk about something,” he said.
Your eyes moved over his face, quick and careful. He watched you read him the way you always did. “John, this isn’t—”
“I know,” he said quickly. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I know it’s not appropriate. I just—” His voice cracked, and he hated that it did. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
And because you were kind, you sighed and stepped aside. “Come in.”
The second your apartment door shut behind him, the effort of holding himself together finally gave in. He did not explode. Instead, he just stood there in your entryway, too broad for the narrow space, breathing too hard through his nose, eyes burning.
You turned toward him.
He reached for you before he could stop himself.
It was not a romantic gesture, at least not yet. Not like this. But it was too desperate to be anything casual. His arms came around you, and for one terrible second he held on like you were the only real thing left in the world.
You went still.
He felt the professional calculation, the boundary, the line drawn and redrawn in the beat between one breath and the next. Then your hand settled between his shoulder blades.
You hugged him back just enough to keep him from falling apart.
He closed his eyes. His face turned slightly toward your shoulder, not buried, but close enough that some aching part of him wanted to stay there. He wanted to press closer. He wanted to let the day end inside the mercy of your hand on his back.
He pulled away first because he had to. Because if he didn’t, he might forget himself.
Your eyes searched his face. “Sit down,” you said gently.
He did.
You brought him water.
He sat on your couch like a man trying not to collapse through it, staring at the glass in his hands while you took the chair across from him.
“What happened?” you asked.
He laughed once. “My dentist was out on leave.”
You blinked.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, then dropped it. “Nathan was covering.”
Your face changed. “The Nathan?”
“Yeah,” John said. “The Nathan.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He let out a breath that almost shook. “Oh.”
Then it came out of him in pieces: The chair. The light. The tools. The fact that everyone felt a little powerless at the dentist, but for him it had been worse, because he could hear too much and see too much courtesy of the serum and his body kept cataloguing exits and weapons like everything was a threat courtesy of the military training. He talked about Nathan holding tools in his mouth. Olivia’s voice outside. Nathan saying he could help with John’s son.
He stopped there.
For a second, all he could do was stare at the water glass.
“I wanted to break something,” he said, voice low. “There were so many things in that room. And I knew where all of them were, and I hated that I knew. I hated that my head went there.”
You were very still.
“But I didn't want to accidentally hurt him,” John said, and that broke slightly on the way out. “I didn’t. I don’t. He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s good to Olivia. He’s good with my son. He’s just—” He swallowed hard. “He’s there. And I hate him for being there, and then I hate myself because he’s just being a good boyfriend and a good dentist and I’m sitting there thinking about breaking the tray.”
He dragged a hand over his face. “I felt like I was losing control.”
You didn’t rush him. You didn't jump in to make him feel better. You didn't perform comfort.
Then you said, “But you didn’t.”
John shook his head. “It felt like I did.”
“John.”
He looked at you.
Your voice was gentler now, but no less firm. “You were in a setting that already makes people feel vulnerable. You had someone in your personal space holding metal instruments, and then the person holding those instruments was someone tied directly to a major emotional trigger. You recognized that. You recognized that you didn’t want to hurt him, or yourself. You used the breathing exercises. You left without escalating the situation.”
He looked down.
“You came here,” you added, trying to hide the painfully obvious amusement and failed. You chuckled a little, “And we do need to talk about that boundary. But the dentist’s office was not a setback.”
He stared at you.
“It wasn’t even an incident,” you said, almost proud. “Because you handled it.”
Oh. Right. This was the point.
Still, tears came before he could stop them. Not many, but a few hot and furious tears that blurred his vision before he wiped them away with the heel of his hand. “Fuck,” he muttered.
You tilted your head and gave him a box of tissues, and that somehow made him want to cry harder.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For crying?”
“For showing up here.”
“I’m glad you looked for someone,” you said, a faint smile along your lips, and it was the most beautiful thing John had ever seen.
John looked at you. Someone, you had said, someone?
That was a polite way of saying it. It was professional, safe enough to sit between you without making him admit what was probably painfully obvious on his face.
That someone had been you.
He could’ve driven around the city until the anger burned through the soles of his shoes. He could’ve wandered Manhattan like a lost man, fighting the urge to snap a street sign in half or put his fist through the nearest lamp post. But he had not done that. He had come to you.
You.
And there was a hint of something in your face when you said it that he couldn’t quite read. Professional concern, sure. But beneath it, he could’ve sworn he caught something warmer. Something that had no place in reports or progress notes or mandated training in empty conference rooms.
Fondness, maybe. Affection?
No.
No, he couldn’t do that to himself. He couldn’t convince himself of that. That was just heartbreak in a bottle, because there’s no way you feel the same about him, right?
Right?
—
After a while, when his breathing stopped sounding like it was trying to crawl out of his chest, John started noticing your apartment.
He didn’t even mean to. He just needed somewhere to put his eyes that weren't you.
The place was warmer than he expected. You didn’t seem like the sort of person who arranged throw pillows for emotional fulfillment, but there was a lived-in clutter that was almost charming. Books were stacked near the couch, a mug was abandoned by the sink. A cardigan was draped over the back of a chair, one sleeve turned inside out. Shoes had been kicked off by the door like you’d come home in a hurry and forgotten.
It was endearing, how human it all made you.
Of course you were human. You had a kettle. You had overdue-looking mail on the counter. You had a slightly crooked lamp and a blanket folded badly over one end of the couch. You probably had preferences about laundry detergent and favorite takeout and stupid little routines you did when no one was looking.
Then he saw the photos on the wall.
Sam Wilson, smiling beside you with VA badges around both your necks. You with Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers, caught mid-laugh. You with Natasha Romanoff in a theme park somewhere. And beside them a photo of you standing next to the late King T’Challa of Wakanda, doing a peace sign together.
Huh.
Apparently every person designed to make John feel like an underqualified replacement came with a personal connection to the old guard.
“You know them too?” he asked.
You followed his eyes and nodded. You looked almost embarrassed for a second. You, who had no problem calling him a patriotic parking violation to his face, suddenly shy because he had noticed your wall of impressive friends.
“Oh,” you said. “Yeah.”
He turned back to you, eyebrows raised. “You said that like it’s normal.”
That you knew two of the other Captain Americas, and yet you didn’t tell me.
For once, he wasn’t really angry about it. For lack of a better word, he felt blank. Like great, nothing I ever do will impress her.
You looked down at the mug between your palms, thumb brushing the handle in a small, unconscious circle.
“I used to work for Homeland as a hostage negotiator,” you said, as if it was nothing. “Then I worked with Sam at the VA for a while. Y’know, reintegration and risk assessment.” You glanced toward the photo of Sam again. “Sam was better with people than I was.”
Yeah, tell me about it, John wanted to say, but kept his big mouth shut for once and listened.
“He still is,” you said. “He could sit down beside someone and make them feel like they had room to breathe. I was more…”
“Mean?” John offered.
You looked at him with half a scowl. “Practical,” you corrected. “After that, he asked if I could consult with Steve and Nat on a few things.”
You shrugged, like any of that was casual.
His eyes flicked back to the photo of Bucky and Steve. “So that’s how this became your… niche?”
You huffed a small laugh. “Enhanced individuals with authority issues? Yeah, it pays very well.”
“Oh,” John said. It was a stupid answer, but the only one he had.
You looked down again, and he could have sworn you were hiding the beginning of a smile, and not even a professional one. Not the weaponized one you used when you were about to call him a liability in three syllables or less. This one was private. As if you were amused by him and trying to be decent about it.
He looked toward the door, partly because he needed to put his eyes somewhere else, and partly because the police cars outside had finally pushed their way back into his mind. The flashing lights had been turning the street blue and red for long enough that he had almost forgotten to ask the obvious question. “What were the cops about anyway?”
You sighed and looked down. You were anxious, and that set off the slightest alarm in his head. “You’ll probably see it on the news.”
John straightened. “What happened?”
You were quiet for half a second too long. Then you said, “I was on the subway earlier.”
John waited.
“There was a shooter in my train car,” you said. “I had to talk him down.”
Shit.
For a second, John couldn’t speak. His mind gave him the picture before he could stop it: Crowded bodies pressed too close together, nowhere to go, doors shut, the violent metallic shriek of the tracks. He saw a gun in someone’s hand pointed to you, standing there with nothing but your voice and the infuriating calm you used on guys like him when they were too angry to know they were scared.
Anger rose in him so fast it scared him. Not at you, but at the world. At the train. At the man with the gun. At the fact that you had been there, trapped underground, while he had been sitting in a car losing his mind over a dentist appointment like an idiot. At the fact that someone he…
Someone whose apartment he had come to, had been in danger. You had been in danger, and he hadn’t known. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been able to do a single thing with the useless, violent instinct that roared awake inside him now.
His eyes moved over you before he could stop himself: Your face, arms, torso. He was searching for blood. Bruises. A limp. Anything that signalled that you were anything but okay. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, John.” His name sounded different when you said it like that. You weren’t irritated. You were trying to reassure him.
It made the anger worse for a second because he had nowhere to put it. He couldn’t hit the past. Couldn’t storm onto a train that had already stopped. Couldn’t grab time by the throat and drag it backward until he was there between you and the danger.
He could only sit on your couch with his hands curled uselessly around his knees. And he could tell you knew what was happening, too. But you weren’t in a great state of mind right now, so maybe you couldn’t waste your energy to tell him to come down.
So he did a new-ish coping mechanism. He cracked a joke. “Kids these days, huh?”
He hated that that was what he said. He hated it even more when shook your head.
“No,” you said quietly. “He was a vet. Vietnam, I think.”
John’s attempt at humor died immediately. “Oh,” he said.
For a while, the room was silent.
The anger didn’t leave him. It lost the directionless edge and became… more familiar.
He looked at you again, at the fatigue under your eyes, the tension still sitting in your shoulders. He wondered how long you had been holding yourself still while he ranted about his stupid Nathan.
You had let him into your apartment while your own hands were still shaking.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
You gave a small laugh, but it didn’t quite reach your eyes. “You’re not my shrink, John.”
“You’re not mine either,” he said. “And yet.”
That got him half a smile.
You leaned back slightly in your chair, studying him with that careful, cutting attention he had learned to dread. “Why do you wanna know?”
John swallowed.
Because you were in a train with a gunman. Because I care. Because the thought of you being scared makes me want to tear the world apart, and that is exactly the kind of thing you keep trying to train out of me.
He said none of that. He wasn’t brave enough. Not yet. “I’m asking as a friend,” he said instead.
Friend. The word felt small the second it left his mouth. But it was the only one he was allowed to use. Even that felt like reaching across a line.
You looked at him. Then your eyes dropped briefly to his hands. When you looked back up, your eyes had changed a little.
“Yeah,” you said finally. “Yeah, I am.”
John nodded once. He didn’t believe you completely. You seemed to know that, because your mouth curved faintly.
“Mostly.”
It was not what John wanted.
He wanted to do something. To fix something. To stand in front of something. To put his body between you and every terrible thing that had already happened, which was useless and stupid and exactly the kind of impulse you would probably write down in your notes with a little disappointed frown. So he just sat there, close enough to notice the tremor had started to fade from your hands.
And because you also used humor as a distraction, you gave him a sad smile. “The gunman has nothing on me, John,” you said, “I’m actually good at my job.”
John chuckled.
That, you were.
—
The next meeting was supposed to be easy. You had prepared a mandatory mission readiness evaluation for John. It would maybe take forty-five minutes, and be made up of observation notes, updated risk profile, and recommendation to Barnes by end of day. You had printed the forms. You had set up the conference room. You had brought three different colored pens because, apparently, somewhere between Homeland, the VA, and corporate risk management, color-coding had become very important.
Then your sister called. Which was how you ended up standing in the middle of a government training room with a clipboard in one hand, a half-eaten protein bar in your mouth, and your four-year-old niece sitting cross-legged on the floor beneath the evaluation table, coloring a dinosaur pink.
Her parents were both paramedics. This meant their lives existed in a state of organized chaos: Shifts changed and childcare fell through, so you had babysat her before. Sometimes, someone got stuck transporting a patient across town. Someone else got called in because two ambulances were down and the city, apparently, was held together by caffeine, duct tape, and exhausted women with emergency medical certifications.
Your niece’s name was Mina. She was four and a half and you loved with all of your heart.
You really did, but not in the way people were when they wanted credit for liking children. You didn’t coo or perform sweetness. You didn’t become a different person around Mina.
You were still you, efficient and as practical as a legal memo. But your hand automatically moved the juice box farther from the forms before Mina could knock it over. You noticed when she chewed on the end of the crayon and swapped it out without hesitation. You opened her apple slices one-handed. You brushed purple crayon dust off her cheek with your thumb, and Mina leaned into it without even looking up, like that touch was ordinary.
“Yes, I can take her for an hour,” you had said to your sister on the phone. “No, I cannot take her for six. I have work. Actual work with unstable adults.”
Your sister had said something frantic.
“Fine,” You had sighed. “And no, that was not a dig at your child. Mina is emotionally more regulated than half my roster.”
And now here you were. Mina was under the table, humming to herself as she gave a stegosaurus what appeared to be purple lipstick. Her plushie sat beside your shoe, slumped with the weary dignity of a stuffed rabbit who had survived a lot of childcare emergencies.
“You can use blue,” Mina said, holding a crayon up toward you without looking away from her dinosaur.
“I’m working.”
“You can work in blue.”
“I can’t evaluate a federal asset in crayon.”
Mina looked up at you, deeply unimpressed. “Why not?”
Hm. That was a good question.
“Because,” you said finally, “corporate is joyless.”
Mina nodded like this made perfect sense (it didn’t) and went back to coloring.
That was when John appeared in the doorway. He stopped dead when you looked up.
He looked at you. Then at Mina. Then at the juice box on the table. Then at the open packet of baby wipes beside your neatly stacked mission readiness assessment forms.
For several seconds, nobody said anything.
Mina looked him up and down with the suspicion of a tiny secret agent. John looked like he had walked into the wrong room.
You took the protein bar out of your mouth and said, “Before you speak, choose your words with the same caution you should be bringing to crisis de-escalation.”
His eyes came back to yours. “She yours?”
“Do I look like I have time to produce children?”
His mouth twitched.
You pointed your pen at him. “No.”
Mina crawled out from under the table just enough to examine him properly. She had your sister’s eyes, which meant she could look judgmental without trying. It was honestly impressive and slightly unsettling.
John noticed her staring and immediately adjusted. He shifted his weight back and lowered himself just a little, enough to seem less like an unwelcome wall.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. His voice was gentler than you expected.
Mina narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”
“John.”
She looked at you. “Is he in trouble?”
John’s eyebrows rose.
You took a slow sip of coffee. “Constantly.”
Mina nodded with grave understanding, like she too had dealt with federal compliance issues. Then she held up her stuffed rabbit. “Auntie works with people in trouble.”
John’s gaze flicked up to yours. “I’m not in trouble,” John told Mina.
Mina considered this, then looked at you for confirmation. You tilted your hand. “He’s in evaluation.”
“What’s eval-vul-wation?”
“It means we check whether someone can behave in public.”
Mina looked back at John. John looked at you like he was trying very hard not to smile.
Mina held up her stuffed rabbit. “This is Mr. Bun. He has anxiety.”
John’s attention shifted immediately to the rabbit, not fake attention and patronizing adult attention. He gave her real attention, serious enough that Mina seemed to approve of it.
“Mr. Bun,” he said solemnly. “Good name.”
“He gets scared when people yell.”
John’s eyes flickered to you, and you just smiled brightly. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t train the rabbit.”
He didn’t quite laugh, but some of the tension left his mouth. His shoulders settled by a fraction. He looked down at Mina’s coloring page and, without thinking about it too much, picked up a green crayon she had abandoned near his boot.
“What’s the dinosaur’s name?” he asked.
Mina looked pleased, because this was apparently the correct question. “Princess Stomp.”
“Strong name.”
“She bites bad guys.”
“Useful skill.”
“John,” you said.
He looked up, innocent in a way that did not suit him at all. You went back to your clipboard immediately.
“Mission readiness evaluation,” you said. “Slightly modified.”
“Modified how?”
“My niece is present, so we will do our written evaluation first and the practical one next week. It means no shouting, no tactical demonstrations involving doors, no threats, no furniture damage, and no saying anything that will get repeated to my sister in law while she’s holding trauma shears.”
John looked at Mina, and she smiled back at him with a colourful crayon mark smeared on her cheek.
John looked back at you. “Trauma shears?”
“Both my sister and her wife are paramedics,” you said. “Which means Mina can identify a tourniquet, tell you why you don’t move someone with a suspected spinal injury, and constantly asks grown adults why they look tired.”
Mina, without looking up, confirmed, “He does look tired.”
John stared at her.
You pressed your lips together to hold back a smile. “See?” you said. “Gifted.”
John cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”
Mina looked at you. “He’s lying.”
You sighed. “We’re working on that, honey.”
John gave you a look. You gave it right back.
This should have been irritating. One more stupid thing shoved into an already overpacked day. Instead, John stood there with his hands loose at his sides, and Mina pushed a spare coloring page toward him like she had decided he was permitted to exist.
“You can color if your work is boring,” she told him.
John looked at the coloring page. Then at you. He picked up the green crayon.
Oh?
“You do realize,” you said, “If you draw during a mission readiness evaluation, I will include it in the report.”
John looked down at the paper. “What if it’s good?”
“That’d be more concerning.”
Mina leaned over to inspect his work after approximately fifteen seconds of scribbling. “That’s not a dinosaur.”
“It’s a tank.”
You looked up from your clipboard. “John.”
“What?” he asked defensively. “It’s not armed.”
“It has a turret.”
“It’s decorative.”
Mina frowned. “Make it a turtle.”
John paused. Then, in grave resignation, he drew legs and a head on the tank. Mina nodded approvingly. “Better.”
You stared at him. John did not look at you, but the tips of his ears had gone slightly pink.
You wrote something down.
John tried to look annoyed, but he was terrible at it with a child in the room.
He was not awkward with Mina. He was good with her. He listened when she spoke, even when she was explaining that Mr. Bun couldn’t sit near the door because he hates doors. He didn't laugh at her or rush her. When she dropped a crayon, he bent and picked it up without comment, placing it back beside her little hand like it mattered.
John Walker, who could turn a hallway into a warzone, somehow knew not to make a four-year-old feel small.
You hated that your heart noticed before your brain could tell it to stop.
John seemed to notice things you did for her, too: The apple slices you had cut into careful half-moons because Mina liked them that way. The way you reached down without looking when she leaned against your calf, your hand landing briefly on the top of her head before returning to your clipboard. The way you were brisk with her but never careless. Practical, but never cold.
You told Mina not to wipe her hands on your trousers, then handed her a napkin before she had to ask. You fixed the little cardigan slipping off her shoulder with one hand while reading John’s file with the other. You were not nurturing in an obvious way. You were efficient love. Competent love.
The kind that remembered snack preferences, packed extra socks, and still said, “No, you cannot lick the marker, even if it smells like grapes, because capitalism is trying to kill you.”
John watched you do it and felt his brain go very still.
Oh shit.
His crush had been manageable when it was only about you being hot. It was easier when he only thought of sinful things when he looked at your mouth. But this was worse.
This was you with a child leaning against your leg. You with crayons and classified paperwork sharing a table. You telling Mina no with the same clean confidence you used to tell John to unclench his fists.
John’s mind, apparently determined to ruin his life, supplied an image of you in a kitchen, feet kicking over the edge of a counter as he cooked dinner.
Oh, no, he thought. No, no, no.
No, because now he was thinking about coming home to you, and not even in the fun, stupid, crush way. Not in the she’s pretty when she’s mean to me way. Worse. So much worse.
Desire was simple. Embarrassing and inconvenient, sure. But it was simple. This was not simple.
Now he was thinking about the sound of your keys in a lock. About your shoes kicked off by the door. About you by a dining table, practical and beautiful, telling him not to hover while you cut apple slices into moon shapes because a child liked them better that way.
Now he was thinking about your coffee going cold because you got distracted helping a child zip up her cardigan. About your hand landing automatically on a child’s head when she leaned into your leg.
And then his mind went somewhere sweeter. His son.
Oh, God.
John imagined bringing him around you. He imagines the way you would speak to him like he was a person, not a prop in John’s life, not a fragile little extension of his failures. You would be direct with him, gentle in that dry, practical way that made care feel less like pity and more like a crutch.
You would remember what he liked. You wouldn’t let John dote, like he always did . You would probably look at him over his son's head after you woke up in his bed and say, “Stop making that face, John. He’s eating cereal, not defusing a bomb.”
Oh, no. Because that was it, wasn’t it?
He didn't just want to sleep with you. He wanted to build a life with you.
He wanted mornings, errands, and arguments about nothing. He wanted your jacket over the back of a chair. He wanted a second chance at something he hadn’t even let himself admit he still wanted.
Family. Not the perfect kind. A patched-togethed, difficult one.
And that was when John realized, with a stomach-dropping horror, that this was not a crush.
It had probably stopped being one weeks ago. Maybe it stopped being one the second you let him sit on your couch after the subway and asked for nothing from him but the truth.
He wanted to be with you.
“John?”
He blinked hard.
You were watching him, clipboard lowered, a bit concerned because he usually didn’t space out this long. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said too quickly. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
You clearly didn’t believe him. Before you could say anything else, though, Mina tilted her head, looked from him to you, and said, “I think he likes you.”
John forgot how to breathe.
Mina hugged Mr. Bun to her chest. “Like likes you.”
John cleared his throat, desperate for a way out. “I don’t think she’s qualified to make that assessment.”
But you weren’t laughing. You just looked down at your clipboard, and there was… a flush on your cheeks.
For the first time since he had known you, you looked shy.
John’s heart did a stupid little flip.
Mina leaned against the table, peeking over it, pleased with herself.
You lifted the clipboard like it could still save you. “Back to the evaluation.”
John nodded once, and neither of you looked at each other for the next several seconds.
Mina sighed as if she was the only adult in the room.
—
By the time the written evaluation was done, the room had settled into a strange middle ground, where your printed leg forms sat beside Mina’s half-finished coloring page, and John sat still, trying not to look too pleased while you reviewed his final notes.
You read in silence for a moment, pen tucked between your fingers, your mouth composed in that way he had learned meant you were thinking rather than judging. Mina was near your chair, humming softly to herself while trying to fit Mr. Bun into your tote bag. She was failing, but Mina wasn’t one to give in easily.
John kept his eyes on the floor for as long as he could. It lasted maybe three seconds before he looked at you again.
You had that slight crease between your brows. The one that appeared when you were concentrating. Your jacket sleeve had ridden up your wrist, and there was a faint crayon mark on the side of your hand where Mina must have gotten you earlier. You hadn’t noticed. Or maybe you had and decided it wasn’t worth the battle.
Finally, you lowered the page.
Mina seemed to notice as she appeared beside your knee and leaned her whole weight into your leg. “Is John done?”
You set your pen down and rested a hand lightly on top of her head without looking. “He is.”
“Did he do good?”
John raised his eyebrows.
You looked at him for half a second, then down at Mina. “He did,” you said.
Oh.
Good. John let out a deep breath he didn’t even realise he was holding.
Mina nodded, satisfied, then looked up at him with a thumbs up. “Good job.”
He swallowed a smile. “Thanks, Mina.”
You seemed to notice his voice changed for her. It made you pause for just a breath while packing your clipboard into your bag.
John wanted to offer something. Anything. He wanted to stay in the orbit of this little half-chaotic scene for a few seconds longer, which was insane because he had spent most of the session being dismantled by a woman with a toddler snack container in her bag. “I can walk you to the elevator.”
You paused again, just enough for him to wonder if he had overstepped. You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder. “Sure.”
His heart made a hopeful jump.
Mina immediately lifted both arms toward him. “Uppies.”
John froze.
You looked down at her. “Mina.”
“My legs are tired.”
“You have been sitting on the floor for an hour.”
“They got tired from coloring.”
“That’s not how legs work.”
Mina only held her arms higher.
John’s gaze flicked to you, careful now. He was asking without asking.
Your eyes softened, assessing, like you were checking a bridge before letting a loved one cross it. Then you nodded. “My sister said any Avenger I trust is allowed to give Mina uppies.”
Any Avenger I trust.
You said it lightly, like it was just logistical. Like it didn't matter.
How well had he done on that assessment?
Because you’re not just tolerating him. You’re not just professionally managing him. You trusted him.
He must have looked as pathetic as he felt, because your smile softened by half an inch before you covered it with impatience.
“Well?” you said. “She’s not going to levitate.”
John crouched in front of Mina. “You sure?”
Mina nodded fiercely. “Uppies.”
So he picked her up carefully. Mina settled against him immediately, one arm looping around his neck, Mr. Bun squished between them. John adjusted his hold with the caution of a man who knew kids were not fragile exactly, but precious.
Your eyes glittered before you could stop it.
John saw it. He looked down at Mina quickly, like that might save him.
Mina rested her cheek against his shoulder and pointed toward the door. “Elevator.”
You cleared your throat and reached for your bag. “Bossy,” you murmured.
John looked at you over her head, a helpless sigh at his mouth. “She learns from her aunt.”
You shook your head and started walking out of the conference room.
And John followed you out with Mina in his arms, feeling trusted and doomed in equal measure.
—
That night, John Walker paced into the common room like a race car doing 200 laps in the Indy 500.
He wasn’t even sure when he had started. One minute he had been standing in his room, staring at his own reflection in the dark TV screen with his arms crossed, and the next he was out here, walking the same ugly little path around kitchen island like a man trying to wear a trench into corporate flooring.
Do not ask out your crisis de-escalation trainer. He turned at the window and came back. Do not ask out your team-mandated crisis de-escalation trainer.
He stopped, dragged both hands over his face, and made a noise between a groan and the beginning of a breakdown.
Because, sure. Fine. He could admit it now, in the privacy of his own head, where nobody could testify against him later.
He liked you.
No, actually, that was stupid. That was insulting. He didn’t just like you. Liking you would’ve been manageable. Liking you would’ve been noticing your mouth when you smiled, or standing a little straighter when you said his name, or feeling vaguely pathetic because you wrote a note down and he wanted it to be good.
This was worse. This was full-body, humiliating, high-school-level idiocy with the added horror of being a grown man with a divorce, a child, a government file, and a history of public property damage.
He liked you so much it made him feel unstable. He liked you so much that your approval pulled a physical reaction out of him. It got under his ribs. It made him want to show up on time and do the exercises properly. It made him want to be better in a way that had nothing to do with mission clearance and everything to do with the way you looked at him when he managed not to be the worst version of himself.
John resumed pacing.
And then there was the other problem. The worse problem. The problem so embarrassing he almost said it out loud just to hear how pathetic it sounded.
He hadn’t asked a woman out since high school.
High school.
He had no idea how to do this now. What did people even say?
Hey, I know you were assigned to me because I’m a liability, but have you considered dinner?
No.
What if he was bad at it? What if he came on too strong? What if he didn’t come on strong enough? What if you gave him that calm face and told him this was inappropriate in the same voice you used when he had to restart a de-escalation scenario?
John stopped again and stared at the ceiling.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“Jesus is not here.”
John turned.
Alexei stood in the doorway wearing a robe and sweatpants. He had a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, like he had wandered in for a snack and discovered live entertainment.
John stared at him. “What are you doing?”
“Eating cereal.”
“At 9PM?”
Alexei looked down at the bowl as if this explained itself. “Yes.”
John exhaled through his nose and turned away. “Forget it.”
“No, no.” Alexei stepped farther into the room, eyes narrowing. “You are pacing.”
“I’m not doing this.”
“You are thinking about woman.”
John’s shoulders went rigid. How the fuck did he know?
Alexei gasped, delighted. “Ah! It is woman.”
“No.”
“It is the trainer woman.”
John closed his eyes. Great. So everyone knew before he did.
Alexei pointed his spoon at him. “Crisis lady.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Oh-ho.” Alexei’s grin widened. “You defend title. Very serious.”
John turned back. “I said forget it.”
But Alexei had already moved to the kitchen island, and John was suddenly reminded that Alexei had never once taken a hint as anything but a challenge. “So ask her out.”
John stared at him like he had suggested setting himself on fire for morale. “I can’t just ask her out.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s my crisis de-escalation trainer.”
Alexei shrugged. “So be very calm when you ask.”
John blinked at Alexei, who looked pleased with himself.
“That’s not—” John stopped, dragged a hand over his mouth, and tried again. “There are rules.”
“Always there are rules.” Alexei waved his spoon. “Rules for missions. Rules for weapons. Rules for not microwaving fish in common kitchen. Rules can be respected. This does not mean you die alone.”
John hated that there was a point somewhere in there. Sure, you were his trainer, but you weren’t his counselor. You weren’t his therapist, or his doctor, or some sacred keeper of his deepest psychological wounds You were corporate. A well-paid professional brought in to stop enhanced idiots from turning emotional dysregulation into infrastructure damage. And honestly? People dated at work all the time, didn’t they? Accountants dated other accountants. Lawyers dated other lawyers. Half of corporate America was probably one badly timed office romance away from an HR seminar. So, yes, there were rules. But this wasn’t impossible. It wasn’t simple, but it wasn’t forbidden by the laws of God and man either.
“She’s assigned to me,” he said anyway. “It’s not like I can just show up and say—” He cut himself off.
Alexei leaned in. “Say what?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“You want practice?”
“I will walk into traffic before I say it to you.”
Alexei nodded sagely. “Bad opening line.”
John glared.
Alexei ignored him and set his bowl on the counter. “You go to her. You say, ‘Hello. I like you. I understand this is problem. Can this be problem later, when you are not making me less angry?’”
John stared at him for a long second. “That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
Alexei shrugged, just a little. “You are allowed to want things, Walker.”
John’s throat tightened. For a second, the common room felt too quiet. The city glowed cold beyond the windows. John stood in the middle of the room, feeling too big for his own life and too old to be this scared of a woman saying no.
Alexei picked up his spoon again. “Worst case, she says no.”
John looked at him.
“If you do nothing,” Alexei said, pointing at the floor, “you keep moping. Then we all suffer. I am already suffering.”
John looked toward the hallway.
He thought of you in the conference room. He thought of Mina announcing his feelings to both of you like she had been appointed by the God of crayons. He thought of the flush on your cheeks.
Maybe he was being stupid. Maybe this was a terrible idea.
Maybe he was about to ruin the one thing in his life that had started making him feel like he could actually become something other than angry.
But then again, maybe he wasn’t.
John grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair.
Alexei’s eyebrows shot up. “You are going now?”
“Yes,” John was already heading for the door. “Before I change my mind.”
—
By the time John reached your building, the bravery had started to wear off. That was inconvenient, considering he had already parked.
He sat in his car with both hands on the wheel, staring through the windshield at your apartment building like it was an enemy compound.
He wasn’t going to lie, he considered leaving.
He should’ve gone home. He should’ve sent an email, which was what normal people with impulse control probably did when they developed feelings for the person assigned to help them stop behaving like an angry forklift with a gun license.
John let his head fall back against the seat and shut his eyes.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “You can still not do this.”
Then he pictured Alexei’s disappointed face if he came back.
Nope. Not coming back to that.
John got out of the car.
The air was cold enough to bite through his jacket, which helped a little. It gave him something else to focus on besides the fact that he was walking toward your front door. He had faced down armed men with steadier hands than this.
By the time he reached your door, he had rehearsed and discarded six different openings.
Hi.
Too casual.
Can we talk?
Too ominous.
I know this is inappropriate.
Great start, Walker. Lead with the lawsuit.
I have feelings for you.
Jesus Christ, no. Absolutely not. Was he twelve? Was he about to hand you a folded note in the homeroom?
He stood outside your door for three seconds too long, staring at the chilled paint on the frame. Then he raised his hand and rang the doorbell before he could lose his nerve.
The apartment stayed quiet.
For one second, relief flooded him. You weren’t home. Great. Perfect. Act of God. He could leave and pretend he had made an attempt.
Then the lock clicked.
John’s spine straightened.
The door opened just enough for you to look out, and he immediately forgot every reasonable thought he had ever had.
You were in home clothes. You were wearing a loose sweater, your hair gathered messily away from your face, one sleeve slipping down your wrist.
Your eyes widened slightly when you saw him. “John?”
“Can I ask you something?” he said abruptly
Your brow furrowed, and you glanced behind you into the apartment before looking back at him. The hallway light caught the side of your face, and John thought it was the most angelic sight he had ever seen. “Why are you here?”
John opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Amazing. Wonderful. He had made it all the way across the city and failed at the first hurdle.
Your eyes moved over his face, reading him. He watched concern take over. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said quickly. “I’m not- uh— this isn’t a crisis.”
You sighed, relieved. “Okay.”
“It’s not that kind of thing.”
“John.”
He swallowed. You were already drawing the line. He could see it happening. The professional part of you stepping forward because that was the safe thing, the right thing, and he knew it. He respected it.
He hated it.
“I know,” he said. “I know this is probably crossing every line.”
Your face went still.
Behind you, he could see the dim gold light of a lamp. There was a small pair of tiny shoes near the wall outside your unit, Mina’s, probably, because her parents were still clocking in a late shift.
“Mina’s asleep,” you said quietly. “So if this is going to be loud—”
“No,” John said, too quickly again. He lowered his voice at once, almost wincing. “No. I’m not here to be loud.”
Your eyes flicked back to him, and your pupils in them softened. “This,” you said, still quiet. “Is usually not the beginning of a calm conversation.”
“I know.” He looked down. “I know. I’m sorry.”
And he meant it.
John took one step back, creating more space between you before you had to ask him to.
He couldn’t make this worse by standing too close to you in a hallway like a man who didn’t understand how doors and boundaries worked. “I can leave,” he said. “I should probably leave.”
You didn’t say yes, though. In fact, you looked like you wanted him here.
Huh.
You didn’t step back and close the door. You didn’t give him the clean professional dismissal he had probably deserved. “What do you need to ask me?” you asked.
John let out a short breath.
This was it, then. The line was right there. He could still back away from it. He could make something up. He could say this was about his next session, or his evaluation, or some bullshit about the remaining paperwork. He could spare both of you.
Instead, he looked at you and found he was tired of being brave in every direction except the one that mattered.
“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to you.
Your mouth twitched into a small smile. “That’s not a question.”
There was that dry little edge he was so fond of. Fuck, he was done for.
“No,” he said. “It’s me trying not to make an idiot of myself.”
“Is it working?”
“Not even a little.”
You chuckled, looking over your shoulder again, listening for Mina. Your unit remained quiet. When you looked back, your voice dropped even lower. “John, whatever this is, you need to say it carefully.”
Did… did you know?
“I know.” John gulped.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Your fingers tightened around the doorframe. “I am still assigned to you.”
He nodded once. “I know.”
Your eyes searched his face.
That was another thing you had taught him, even if you had never meant to. How not to crowd. How not to fill the room just because he was nervous. How not to make the size of his feelings everyone else’s emergency. So he stood there, hands visible, shoulders tense but back, voice low.
“I’m not asking to come in,” he said. “I’m not asking you to make this easier for me. I’m not asking you to pretend this is normal.”
You tilted your head in curiosity, and he took another breath.
“I just need to say it. And then you can tell me to shut up, and I will.”
For a second, you said nothing.
The silence was deafening. He could hear someone’s television through a wall somewhere down the hall. A car moved along the street outside.
John immediately lowered his voice even more.
“I like you,” he said finally.
The words came out rough.
“I like you,” he repeated, because apparently he needed to make sure he had really done it. “And I know this is inconvenient.”
You didn’t smile, but he could tell you felt something.
It was not nothing.
It was so clearly not nothing that John felt his chest loosen, just a fraction.
“I don’t like you because you’re nice or some shit,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “You’re actually pretty mean to me.”
You looked down, cheeks burning with a smile you couldn’t help anymore. He almost smiled back, but he was too terrified to let himself have that much.
“And not because you’re helping me,” he added. “Not only that. I mean, yeah, maybe that’s part of it. You got stuck with me at a bad time and somehow made me feel less like a walking lawsuit, so I’m sure there’s some stupidpsychology in there.”
Your eyes narrowed faintly. “That was self-aware.”
“Don’t start.”
“Sorry,” you whispered, not sounding sorry at all. “Continue.”
Fuck, you were awful. He still adored you, though.
John looked away for half a second, then back at you. “You don’t let me get away with anything,” he said. “And I know I need that. I know that’s the whole point of why Barnes brought you in. But it’s not just that. You don’t look at me like I’m already a lost cause.”
Your face grew very still again.
This time, he knew it was because he had gotten too close to something real.
“You see me,” he said, and the words were quieter than he meant them to be.
Your breath caught on something that almost became a laugh.
He looked at you then. Your hand was still on the door. Your thumb moved once against the painted wood, a nervous motion. Your hair had slipped loose near your temple. You looked like you were trying to keep every feeling behind your teeth, and for the first time since he had known you, it didn’t quite work.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” you said.
“I know.”
“You really shouldn’t have.”
“I know.”
“You’re making this difficult for me.”
His heart flipped. “Am I?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
The hallway seemed to shrink around the two of you.
Your voice, when you spoke again, was very quiet. “Yes.”
Oh.
John forgot how to breathe for half a second.
“You need to understand,” you said, “that me saying that doesn’t change the rules.”
“I know.”
“I can’t encourage this.”
“Of course.”
“I can’t say anything that blurs the line.”
“You’re not.”
You looked back at him then, and the look on your face nearly ruined him.
You were being so careful.
You were so obviously trying to do the right thing, but the right thing looked like it hurt a little.
“And I can’t invite you in,” you said.
He nodded. “I’m not asking.”
“But I also…” You stopped. You closed your eyes for one brief second, like you were annoyed with yourself. When you opened them again, your voice had become a teeny bit more professional. “I also don’t want you to think I’m… dismissing what you’re saying.”
John swallowed.
Again, not nothing.
“Okay,” he said, because his vocabulary had apparently been reduced to one-word responses.
Your mouth softened. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” He nodded once, then again. “I know there are rules. I’m not asking you to break them. I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want. But if there’s a way to transfer me to somebody else, or close this out, or whatever has to happen so this isn’t…” He grimaced, searching for the least terrible phrasing. “A whole ethical disaster.”
Your lips pressed together. He could tell you were fighting a laugh.
“A whole ethical disaster,” you repeated quietly.
“Is that not the technical term?”
“No,” you said. “But it’s vivid.”
“I’m trying to respect the seriousness of the situation.”
“You drove here at night to confess feelings to the woman.”
That time, you did laugh. Then your eyes widened slightly, and you glanced back into the apartment unit.
Both of you froze.
From somewhere inside came the faintest sleepy rustle, then silence again.
You turned back to him, relieved.
It was stupid, how much that he wanted you, even when you were just standing there in the doorway, trying not to smile because Mina was asleep, because rules existed, because the world was inconvenient.
John said the next part before could stop himself. “I’d like to take you out.”
This time, there was no joke to hide behind this time. No self-deprecation.
Your eyes changed again, and he saw the answer before you said anything.
And then your gaze dropped, just for a second, like you needed somewhere safer to look. When you looked back up, you had pulled yourself together.Mostly.
“John,” you said softly. “You can’t ask me out while I’m training you.”
“How many remaining?” He asked.
“Four.”
John stared at you. “Four,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
He looked briefly toward the ceiling like patience might be stored there. He thought the next session was the last, but apparently three more had been added for whatever fucking reason. He assumed Barnes had something to do with it (he was right).
You folded your arms loosely, still half-hidden behind the door, and there was something almost teasing in your eyes now. The kind that kept both of you on the correct side of the line while acknowledging that, unfortunately, the line was very much there and both of you could see it.
“You survived worse,” you said.
“People keep saying that to me.”
“Maybe you should start believing them.”
“I’d rather complain.”
“Ha.”
He looked at you again.
Your emotions were unguarded second, and he could see the things you weren’t saying. It wasn’t permission. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t you reaching across the line.
But it was interest.
John lowered his voice. “What happens after?”
You went quiet.
Inside, Mina slept on, blissfully unaware that the adults were being stupid in the hallway. Thank god.
You looked at him for a long second, and he watched the argument happen behind your eyes. He watched you measure ethics against honesty, professionalism against whatever had just happened between you. He watched you decide exactly how much you could give him without breaking the rules you clearly cared about.
Then, finally, you said, “After four sessions, you can ask again.”
John nodded like you had just handed him coordinates for rescue. “Yeah.” He breathed out. “I can do four sessions.”
Your smile broke through.
Suddenly, he felt the bright, aching, want-to-be-good-for-you feeling climbing up under his ribs and made a home in his heart. The same feeling that made four sessions feel less like a punishment and more like a mission he intended to pass with honors.
He stepped back, giving you the space again.
“I should go,” he said.
“You should.”
Neither of you moved.
Your fingers were still curled around the edge of the door. His hands were loose at his sides. The hallway light hummed above you. Somewhere inside your apartment, Mina made one tiny sleepy sound and then went quiet again.
You lowered your voice even more. “And John?”
“Yeah?”
“Call me first next time, like a normal person.”
“I can do that.”
You lifted an eyebrow.
“I can learn to do that,” he corrected.
You smiled again and he felt hopeful. “Goodnight, John.”
He swallowed. “Goodnight.”
Then, before either of you could make it worse, you stepped back and closed the door gently, careful not to wake Mina.
John stood in the hallway for one second after the lock clicked.
He didn’t move.
For once, it was not because he was frozen or furious or trying to wrestle his way out of his own head. He just stood there, staring at your closed door while his heart skipped several beats, in a good way.
He could do four sessions. He could wait. He could earn it.
He could do it right.
For you, he wanted to do it right.
John turned toward the stairs with the stupidest smile of his adult life pulling at his mouth.
And for the first time in a long time, John wanted to be patient.
He didn’t throw anything through a wall that week, or any of the weeks after.
He did, however, spend the next day thinking about you the entire drive to pick up his son.
And when Nathan helped carry the diaper bag out to the car, John managed to take it and say, “Thanks, man,” without sounding like he was chewing glass.
Olivia noticed.
She gave him a small, knowing look while he buckled his son into the car seat. “You seem better.”
John tightened the strap, smoothed a hand over his son’s little jacket, and tried not to smile too much.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
—
Eight months later…
John was standing in your kitchen wearing an apron Mina had picked for him.
It had tiny unicorns on it.
He had argued, briefly, that he was a tough superhero and he didn’t need to wear the unicorn apron. Mina had stared daggers at him, held it out, and said, “Chefs wear aprons.”
So now John was wearing the Unicorn apron.
And for the last six months, that was your life.
He had held up his end of the bargain: he asked you out after the sessions were complete, kissed you on the first date, and never looked back.
You stood beside him in your apartment now, trying not to laugh while he stirred soup on the stove. His son and Mina were in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the rug, making Mr. Bun and a toy dinosaur get married under a blanket fort. Mina had been another last-minute addition, because your sister and her wife had a last-minute shift. John had only looked at you and said, “Good. More taste-testers.”
You kissed him then and there.
Olivia and Nathan came over, too.
That should have been strange. Maybe it still was, in tiny little ways. But it was also sweet. Nathan brought dessert. Olivia brought wine.
Somehow, against all sense and probability, you and Olivia had become friends. And not even polite co-parenting-adjacent friends. Not awkward, mature, “we are all adults here” friends.
Actual friends.
It made no sense. You two were polar opposites.
Olivia was soft-spoken where you were snarky. Olivia asked gentle questions; you asked questions like you were trying to locate immediate weakness. And yet there you both were, basically best friends.
Olivia had started texting you pictures of terrible PTA emails. You had started sending her voice notes about work drama with all names redacted for legal reasons. The two of you had brunch without John once, which had made him pace the kitchen for twenty minutes until you came home and told him, very sweetly, that you weren’t going to break up with him because his ex-wife aired all his dirty laundry. Because “remember, there was nothing Olivia could say that wasn’t already in your file, honey.”
John made up for it by teaming up with your sister to make fun of your cute little snores. But anyway.
It was strange, but it had become one of the best things in his life, because his son had more people loving him in one room than John had ever known how to ask for.
“I can’t believe you finally learned how to make vegetables taste good,” Olivia said, poking at her plate.
John pointed his fork at her. “Don’t sound shocked.”
You leaned toward Olivia and said, “He needs praise or he gets difficult.”
Olivia nodded solemnly. “I remember.”
John looked between you both. “I hate this alliance.”
“No,” Nathan chuckled. “I don’t think you do.”
He was right. He loved it.
He loved watching you and Olivia lean over the table together, laughing quietly while Mina and his son bartered potato cuts like tiny criminals. He loved that Nathan could ask him about his dental health without making it a big emotional event.
And when John mentioned wanting to join a veterans support group, it felt… easy.
“After listening to your subway thing,” he said, glancing at you. “And everything else. I think it might help.”
Your hand found his under the table first.
Olivia smiled at him sincerely. “I think you’d be good there, John. And I think it’d be good for you.”
Nathan nodded. “Sometimes it helps to be around people who understand without needing the whole story.”
You just kissed him on the cheek. “M’ proud of you, sweetheart.”
John looked down, thumb brushing over your knuckles, clearly trying not to get emotional about everything.
Then his son looked up from his peas, very serious. “Do you get snacks at support group?”
John blinked. “Probably.”
His son nodded, satisfied. “Then you should go.”
Everyone laughed.
Later, in the kitchen, while the kids were distracted and Olivia was explaining something to Nathan, John caught you by the waist and pulled you gently toward him.
“Hi,” he murmured.
You smiled. “Hi.”
Then he kissed you.
It was supposed to be quick— it was most definitely not. Your hand curled into the front of his shirt, and John smiled against your mouth like he still couldn’t quite believe he got to have this. You, in his arms. Dinner in the next room. His son laughing. Olivia and Nathan not annoying him. Mina yelling something about Mr. Bun requiring surgery.
“John,” you whispered, laughing against his mouth. “Children.”
“They’re busy.”
You rolled your eyes, but kissed him once more before slipping out of his hands.
Near the end of the night, his son got sleepy and serious, leaning against John’s side while Mina sat on the floor beside him with Mr. Bun in her lap.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
He pointed between himself and Mina. “Are me and Mina cousins now?”
Oh.
John looked at you. You looked back, before glancing at Olivia. Olivia looked like she was trying not to cry, which immediately made Nathan look concerned, because Nathan was Nathan.
You smiled first, a wordless permission without making it a whole thing.
So John shrugged, easy as anything, and kissed the top of his son’s head. “Sure,” he said. “Think of it that way, kid.”
His son beamed.
Mina nodded once, very pleased. “Can I be the in-charge cousin?”
“No,” you and John said at the same time.
Olivia laughed. Nathan smiled. The kids immediately began negotiating cousin rules on the carpet.
For once, nothing in his life felt like a scoreboard. It didn’t even feel like a competition.
SUMMARY:
You accidentally left a tipsy voicemail. John Walker made it his personal mission to one-up you.
It all started with Yelena declaring, "We deserve a night without testosterone and tactical gear," while dramatically waving her vodka martini like a battle flag. Ava had already downed her first drink and was halfway through a second before you could protest.
The mission had been long, the debrief longer, and John Walker's irritating smirk had lingered in your mind like a mosquito buzz you couldn't swat away.
So naturally, when Yelena said girls' night out, you said hell yes.
Cut to two hours later, the three of you squeezed into a tiny booth at a dimly lit bar, surrounded by too-loud music, glittering lights, and Yelena trying to convince the bartender to name a drink after her.
Ava, meanwhile, was showing off her ability to phase her drink hand in and out of the table for comedic effect. You were already on your third cocktail, cheeks warm, laughter flowing easier than oxygen.
The conversation had been harmless at first. Fashion. Mission gossip. Why Alexei's playlist was 90% Soviet marching anthems.
Then Yelena leaned in, grinning like she'd just found the detonator. "So…" she drawled, stretching the word like a warning siren, "are we going to talk about him or pretend we haven't noticed the way you look at Walker during sparring?"
You nearly choked on your drink. "Excuse me?"
Ava smirked. "Oh please. You practically shoot laser beams at him every time he takes his shirt off to 'cool down.' It's like watching a rom-com with combat boots."
"I do not," you protested, but your voice went an octave too high, and Yelena pounced.
"Oh, you do," she said, swirling her drink like an oracle about to deliver doom. "The way you glare at him when he smiles? That is not hate, that is… repressed something."
Ava snorted. "Sexual tension so thick it's its own field mission."
You groaned, sinking into your seat. "You guys are insane."
Somewhere between your fourth and fifth drink, your internal filter went AWOL.
You slammed your glass down, nearly spilling it. "Okay. Fine."
Both Yelena and Ava perked up immediately.
"Yes, John Walker is… infuriating," you blurted out, waving your hand for emphasis. "He's cocky, he talks too loud, he thinks the world revolves around his stupid Captain America jawline..."
"But?" Ava teased.
You glared at her, or tried to. Your eyes crossed slightly. "But… he's also… so unfairly hot. Like... like God got bored one day and decided to make someone who's both annoying and absurdly attractive just to personally torment me."
Yelena burst into laughter so loud half the bar looked over. "I knew it! I knew the way you looked at him during training wasn't hatred, it was horny confusion!"
"Oh my god, stop," you groaned, burying your face in your hands. "I hate that man."
Ava smirked. "You sure? Because it sounds a lot like you'd let him carry you out of a burning building."
"Yeah," Yelena added wickedly, "and maybe back into it again."
You swatted at both of them, half-laughing, half-dying inside. "You guys are the worst."
"Oh my God," Yelena wheezes, "you so have it bad."
"I do not!"
Ava snorts. "Call him."
"What? No."
"Call him," Yelena echoes, eyes gleaming. "Bet you won't."
"I definitely won't."
"Then you lose the bet," Ava teases.
You slam your empty glass down. "Fine! I'll call him! Happy?"
Ava immediately shoves your phone into your hand, already pulling up his contact. "Do it."
You squint at the glowing screen like it's a bomb. "This is such a bad idea."
"Best idea," Yelena corrects. "Go. Go before you sober up!"
You hit the call button.
The three of you huddle close, waiting. It rings once… twice… and then voicemail.
Yelena gasps dramatically. "Leave a message!"
"No!" you whisper-yell. "Absolutely not!"
"Do it!" Ava cheers. "He'll never let you live it down!"
The tone beeps.
You freeze for a second, then your drunk brain decides to take the wheel.
"Uh... hey, Walker," you start, your voice already too loud.
"You think you're so tough, don't you? All that bravado, that stupid perfect face, those arms... God, your arms are ridiculous. But you're not that tough. I could take you."
You hiccup
"I could… I could ride you into the ground, make you scream my name for hours. You're not even that hot. Okay, you are, but I hate you for it. So… yeah. Call me back. Or don't. Whatever."
Yelena is doubled over laughing, Ava clapping like it's a comedy show.
"I'm hanging up now," you announce, before whispering, "you infuriatingly attractive idiot," and hanging up.
Silence follows for half a second.
Then the table erupts.
You bury your face in your arms while Yelena and Ava cackle like hyenas.
"Oh my God," Yelena gasps. "You're doomed. He is going to tease you until you die."
You groan. "Please tell me I imagined that."
Ava pats your shoulder. "Nope. You left a whole essay."
Morning hit like a freight train. Sunlight stabbed through your curtains, and your head throbbed like someone was using it as a drum. Groaning, you dragged yourself to the kitchen, squinting against the harsh light of the tower's communal space. Coffee. You needed coffee.
As you fumbled with the machine, heavy footsteps echoed behind you. You didn't need to turn to know who it was, his presence was like a storm cloud, all heat and weight.
"Morning, sunshine," John drawled, leaning against the counter, his voice low and teasing. He was in his usual tactical gear, sleeves rolled up to show off those damn forearms, his blue eyes glinting with something unreadable.
You froze, a vague sense of dread curling in your gut. "Uh… morning," you mumbled, avoiding his gaze as you poured coffee with shaking hands. Something nagged at you, a fuzzy memory of his name on your phone screen. "Did… did we talk last night?"
John raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms, which only made his biceps look more infuriating. "Talk? Nah. I was out late on a mission debrief. Why? You miss me or something?" His smirk was pure arrogance, and it made your skin prickle.
"I just… I feel like I called you," you said, rubbing your temple, the headache pulsing harder. "Must've been a dream."
He chuckled, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a low rumble. "A dream, huh? Must've been a good one if you're this flustered."
You glared, heat creeping up your neck. "I'm not flustered. I'm hungover. Big difference."
"Sure," he said, clearly not buying it. He pushed off the counter, brushing past you close enough that you caught the scent of his cologne, woodsy, warm, and maddening. "If you did call me, though, I'd love to know what you said. Bet it was interesting."
You forced a laugh, heart racing as you prayed he hadn't checked his voicemail yet. "Yeah, well, keep dreaming, Walker."
He shot you one last grin before heading out, leaving you clutching your coffee mug, dread and desire warring in your chest.
The kitchen was barely quiet for a moment before Yelena and Ava strolled in, both looking far too chipper for people who'd matched you drink for drink last night.
Yelena's blonde bob was slightly mussed, but her smirk was sharp as ever, and Ava's dark eyes sparkled with mischief as she plopped onto a stool, stealing a sip of your coffee.
"Well, well," Yelena drawled, her accent thick with amusement. "Look at you, barely upright. How's that hangover treating you, lover girl?"
You groaned, slumping over the counter, your forehead pressing against the cool granite. "Like I got hit by a quinjet. Why are you two so… functional?"
Ava grinned, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Because we're not pining over John Walker like some lovesick puppy. Keeps the headaches at bay."
"I'm not pining," you snapped, though the words lacked conviction.
Then it hits you, one fragmented flash at a time. The sound of laughter echoing off the bar. Yelena daring you to do something stupid. Ava's cackling as you clutched your phone with the confidence only three margaritas could give you.
Your stomach flips.
You remember his name on your lips, John Walker, slurred into your voicemail at some ungodly hour, every word soaked in alcohol and poor judgment. You can almost hear your own voice now, playful and a little too honest: "You're… infuriatingly attractive, you know that?"
The color drains from your face as the puzzle pieces lock into place. Every half-remembered giggle, every clinking glass, it all crashes back in a mortifying flood.
Your stomach dropped like you'd just missed a step on the stairs. "Oh no," you whispered, eyes widening. "Oh no, oh no, oh no."
Yelena burst into laughter "Realization sets in."
Ava is beside her, clutching her sides "You do remember what you said, right?"
"Stuff... bad stuff," you blurted, your voice a frantic hiss, as bits and pieces come back to your fuzzy " Like, 'I could ride you into the ground' stuff. He can't hear it. He cannot hear it."
Yelena's cackle echoing through the kitchen.
"This isn't funny!" you hissed, your face burning as you scrambled to your feet, nearly knocking over your coffee. "He hasn't heard it yet, he said we didn't talk last night. But if he checks his voicemail..." You cut off, a wave of nausea hitting you, and not just from the hangover. "I have to find him. Now."
Ava wiped a tear from her eye, still giggling. "What's the plan? Tackle him and steal his phone? Because I'd pay to see that."
"Shut up," you muttered, already halfway out the kitchen, your socks sliding on the polished floor. "Just... cover for me if anyone asks where I am!"
Yelena called after you, "Tell him to save the voicemail! I want a copy!"
You ignored her, heart pounding as you sprinted toward the elevator. The tower was a maze of sleek corridors and high-tech labs, and John could be anywhere, training room, briefing room, or worse, already listening to your drunken confession.
Your mind raced with worst-case scenarios: John's smug grin as he played the voicemail on speaker, his teasing voice quoting your words back to you, those piercing blue eyes seeing right through your defenses.
You checked the training room first, peering through the glass door. Empty, except for a few agents sparring in the corner.
Next, the briefing room, also empty. Your phone was still in your room, but you didn't dare go back for it; every second was a ticking bomb. You rounded a corner toward the common area, nearly colliding with Bucky.
"Whoa, slow down!" Bucky grunted, steadying you. "What's got you running like you're chasing a Hydra agent?"
"Have you seen John?" you asked, breathless, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.
Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Walker? Yeah, he's in the tech lab, I think. Something about mission reports. You okay? You look like you're gonna puke."
"I'm fine," you lied, bolting past him.
The tech lab was on the next floor, and you mashed the elevator button like it owed you money. The ride up felt eternal, your palms sweaty as you imagined John pulling out his phone, that telltale smirk spreading as your voice spilled out.
The elevator dinged, and you sprinted down the hall, skidding to a stop outside the tech lab. Through the glass, you saw him, leaning against a table, scrolling through his phone, his expression unreadable. Your heart lurched. Was he listening to it right now?
You burst through the door, panting. "John!"
He looked up, startled, his phone still in hand. "What the hell? You okay?"
"Don't check your voicemail," you blurted, then cringed at how desperate you sounded. "I mean... uh, can I borrow your phone for a sec?"
His brows furrowed, but that damn smirk was already creeping onto his face. "My phone? Why? You planning to confess something else?"
Your blood ran cold. "What do you mean, 'something else'?"
He stepped closer, his voice low, teasing. "You were pretty out of it last night. Said some interesting things in the kitchen just now, too. What's got you so spooked?"
You swallowed hard, heart hammering. He hadn't heard it yet. You still had a chance. "Nothing," you said, forcing a laugh. "Just… thought I left you a dumb message about a mission. Can I check? Please?"
John tilted his head, studying you like he could see every secret you were hiding.
"You're a terrible liar," he said, but he held out his phone anyway, his fingers brushing yours as you took it. The brief contact sent a jolt through you, and you hated how your body reacted.
You fumbled with the screen, praying you could delete the voicemail before he got curious. But as you opened the app, his hand closed over yours, stopping you.
"Hold on," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, velvet tone. "If it's that important, maybe I should listen to it first."
You froze, staring up at him, his blue eyes locked on yours. You were so screwed.
John's grip tightened over your hand, his smirk growing as he tugged the phone back from your trembling fingers with infuriating ease. "Now I'm really curious." he said, his voice a low, teasing rumble that sent heat racing up your spine despite your panic.
"John, don't," you pleaded, lunging for the phone, but he held it out of reach, his height and reflexes making it impossible. Your heart was a jackhammer in your chest, each beat screaming disaster as he swiped through the screen, navigating to his voicemail with deliberate slowness, like he was savoring your desperation.
"Walker, I swear..." you started, but the words died as you launched yourself at him in a last-ditch effort.
You jumped onto his back, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, trying to wrestle the phone from his hand. He barely flinched, his broad frame solid as a wall, but you clung on, reaching desperately over his shoulder. "Give it back!"
He laughed, a deep, infuriating sound that vibrated through you as you flailed. "What's got you so worked up, huh? This must be good." His thumb hovered over the play button, and before you could stop him, he tapped it, switching the phone to speaker.
Your blood turned to ice as your own voice, slurred, reckless, and unmistakably you, filled the tech lab.
"Hey, Walker… It's me. You think you're so tough, don't you? All that bravado, that stupid perfect face, those arms, God, your arms are ridiculous…"
You slid off his back, your feet hitting the floor with a thud as you whispered, "No, no, no, no," over and over, your face burning so hot you thought it might combust. You wished the ground would open up and swallow you whole, wished for a sudden alien invasion, anything to stop the mortifying playback.
"…But you're not that tough. I could take you. I could… I could ride you into the ground, make you scream my name for hours…"
John's eyebrows shot up, his smirk morphing into something darker, hungrier, as he turned to face you, the phone still held aloft. Your voice droned on, each word a fresh stab of humiliation, and you covered your face with your hands, unable to meet his gaze.
"…You're not even that hot. Okay, you are, but I hate you for it. So… yeah. Call me back. Or don't. Whatever."
The voicemail ended with a beep, and the silence that followed was deafening. You peeked through your fingers, expecting mockery, but John was just standing there, his blue eyes locked on you, an unreadable intensity in them that made your stomach flip. He wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smirking anymore.
"Well," he said finally, his voice low and rough, like he was holding something back. "That was… enlightening."
You groaned, stepping back until you bumped into a table, your hands still half-covering your face. "Just… kill me now. Please. I'll owe you one."
He stepped closer, closing the distance between you, his phone still in hand but forgotten as he leaned in, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "Oh, I don't know. I kinda like you alive. Especially after that."
Your breath caught, your hands falling to your sides as you forced yourself to meet his gaze. His eyes were darker now, pupils blown wide, and the air between you crackled with something electric, something that made your skin prickle and your heart race for reasons beyond embarrassment.
"John, I was drunk," you said, your voice small, desperate to defuse whatever this was becoming. "I didn't mean..."
"Didn't mean it?" he interrupted, tilting his head, his tone challenging but soft, almost daring you to lie. "Sounded pretty convincing to me."
You opened your mouth to argue, but nothing came out. He was too close, his presence overwhelming—broad shoulders, sharp jaw, that damn cologne that made your head spin. You wanted to deny it, to laugh it off, but the truth was there, raw and exposed in the echo of your own words.
He took another step, his voice dropping even lower. "So, what's it gonna be? You gonna take me down like you said? Or do I get to call you back… and see how long you last?"
Your mouth went dry, your headache forgotten, as the weight of his words settled over you. You were in so much trouble, and not just because of the voicemail.
The air between you and John was thick, charged with a tension that made your pulse race and your skin burn.
His words hung in the space like a dare, his blue eyes pinning you in place as he leaned closer, the ghost of a smirk playing on his lips.
You opened your mouth, fumbling for a response, something to deflect, to deny, to survive this mortifying moment, but before you could get a word out, the tech lab door burst open with the force of a hurricane.
"Yo, lover girl!" Yelena's voice cut through the silence like a knife, dripping with glee. "Did you get the phone, or are you too busy making heart eyes at Captain Smug?"
Ava trailed behind her, already laughing, her dark hair bouncing as she leaned against the doorframe. "Oh, please tell me we're interrupting something juicy. The vibes in here are screaming unresolved tension."
You whipped around, your face flaming anew as you realized the scene they'd walked into: you, flushed and flustered, inches from John, who hadn't stepped back and was now looking at Yelena and Ava with a mix of amusement and irritation. The phone, still clutched in his hand, felt like a ticking time bomb.
"Nothing's happening!" you blurted, too quickly, your voice cracking. You pointed at John, desperate to redirect the chaos. "I was just... trying to get his phone! Because of the voicemail! Which he heard, thanks to you two not helping!"
John raised an eyebrow, holding up the phone like a trophy. "Oh, I heard it, alright. Pretty memorable stuff."
Yelena's eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands together, practically vibrating with delight. "You played it? On speaker? Oh, this is better than I hoped! Tell me, Walker, how's it feel to know she wants to... " she mimicked your slurred voice, "...ride you into the ground?"
Ava doubled over, cackling so hard she had to brace herself against the wall. "I'm dead. I'm actually dead. Please tell me you recorded her reaction when it played."
You groaned, burying your face in your hands again, wishing for a wormhole to another dimension. "I hate you both. So much."
John, infuriatingly calm, leaned back against the table, crossing his arms, which only made his biceps strain against his shirt in a way that was not helping your situation.
"You know, I was about to get an answer out of her before you two clowns showed up," he said, his tone teasing but with that same dark edge that made your stomach flip.
"An answer?" Yelena sauntered over, plucking a pen from the table and twirling it like a weapon. "What, like whether she's gonna follow through on her drunken promises? Because I'd bet money she's too chicken to try."
"I'm not chicken!" you snapped, then immediately regretted it as Yelena's grin widened and Ava's laughter hit a new pitch. "I mean... I didn't mean anything by it! It was tequila talking, not me!"
Ava wiped tears from her eyes, barely containing herself. "Sure, babe. Tequila's the one who's been staring at Walker's ass during every training session for the past month."
"I have not!" you lied, your voice hitting a pitch that could summon dogs. You turned to John, desperate to regain some semblance of control. "Can you just... delete the voicemail? Pretend it never happened? I'll owe you. I'll do your mission reports for a week."
John's smirk returned, slow and dangerous, as he stepped closer, his voice low enough that Yelena and Ava wouldn't catch it. "Delete it? Nah. I'm keeping that as a souvenir. Besides…" He leaned in, his breath brushing your ear, sending a shiver down your spine. "I'm curious how much of it was just the tequila."
Before you could respond, or combust, Yelena grabbed your arm, pulling you back with a dramatic flourish. "Okay, enough flirting! We're stealing her for damage control. You," she pointed at John, "don't get any ideas until she's sober enough to mean them."
Ava looped her arm through your other side, still giggling. "Come on, we're getting you coffee and a plan to survive this. Walker, don't listen to that voicemail again unless you're ready to deal with her wrath."
John chuckled, pocketing his phone as he watched you being dragged toward the door. "No promises," he called after you, his voice laced with a challenge that made your heart stutter.
As Yelena and Ava hauled you into the hallway, their teasing relentless, you couldn't shake the feeling that this was far from over. John Walker wasn't the type to let something like this go, and a part of you, buried deep under the embarrassment, wasn't sure you wanted him to.
The rest of the day was a blur of coffee, Advil, and dodging Yelena and Ava's relentless teasing. You'd holed up in your room at the tower, hoping to hide from the world, and John Walker, until the mortifying memory of that voicemail faded into obscurity.
By evening, you were sprawled on your bed, scrolling aimlessly through your phone, trying to distract yourself with memes and mission reports. The headache had dulled to a faint throb, but your pride was still in tatters.
Your phone buzzed, the screen lighting up with an incoming call.
John Walker.
Your heart stopped, your thumb hovering over the decline button as panic surged through you. Why was he calling? Hadn't you humiliated yourself enough for one day? But curiosity, or maybe something else, got the better of you, and you answered, your voice wary.
"Uh… hello? John, what's going on?"
His low chuckle came through the line, warm and infuriatingly confident, like he knew exactly how flustered you were.
"You told me to call you back," he said, his tone teasing but edged with that same intensity from earlier. "In that… memorable voicemail of yours. Figured I'd follow through."
You sat up, your stomach lurching as the memory of your drunken words slammed back into focus.
Call me back. Or don't. Whatever.
You'd said that, hadn't you? Right after ranting about his stupid perfect face and how you could... oh, God. You pinched the bridge of your nose, willing your voice to stay steady. "That was… I was drunk, John. It doesn't count."
"Doesn't count?" he repeated, and you could hear the smirk in his voice, could picture those piercing blue eyes glinting with amusement. "You sounded pretty damn sure of yourself. Something about making me scream your name? Gotta say, I'm intrigued."
Your face burned, and you paced your room, clutching the phone like a lifeline. "I'm begging you to forget that ever happened. I'll do anything. I'll... clean your gear, take your night shifts, whatever you want. Just delete it."
He laughed again, the sound low and rough, sending a shiver down your spine despite your best efforts to stay annoyed. "Tempting offer, but I'm not sure I'm ready to let it go. You put it out there, sweetheart. Can't just take it back now."
You groaned, flopping onto your bed, one hand covering your eyes as if that could block out the embarrassment. "You're the worst. Why are you even calling? To torture me?"
"Maybe a little," he admitted, his voice dropping to a husky murmur that made your breath catch. "But mostly because I wanted to hear your voice. See if you're still as bold sober as you were last night."
Your heart skipped, and you hated how his words sent a spark of heat through you. "I'm not... bold. I was drunk. There's a difference."
"Mm-hmm," he said, clearly unconvinced. "So, you're telling me you don't think about it at all? Not even a little? Me, you, a couple hours to see who breaks first?"
You choked on air, your mind traitorously conjuring images of his broad shoulders, those forearms, the way he'd looked at you in the tech lab, close, intense, like he was daring you to make a move.
"John," you said, your voice firmer than you felt, "you're fishing. I'm not taking the bait."
"Fair enough," he said, but there was a challenge in his tone, like he was already planning his next move. "But you should know, I saved that voicemail. Might listen to it again later. You know, for… inspiration."
You bolted upright, your voice rising. "You wouldn't dare."
"Try me," he shot back, and you could hear the grin in his voice. "Unless you wanna come over here and delete it yourself. My room's not far."
Your mouth went dry, your pulse hammering as the implication hung in the air. He was teasing, probably, but there was an edge to his words that made you wonder how much of it was a game. Before you could respond, you heard a muffled noise on his end, like someone knocking.
"Hold that thought," he said. "Got company. But don't think this is over. You started this, and I'm not letting you off that easy."
The call ended, leaving you staring at your phone, your heart racing and your mind a chaotic mess.
He'd called you because of the voicemail. He'd saved it. And now he was dangling it over your head like a weapon. Worse, a part of you, the reckless, stupid part, wasn't entirely mad about it.
You groaned, tossing your phone onto the bed. You needed a plan. Maybe Yelena and Ava could help you break into his room and steal his phone. Or maybe you'd have to face him head-on and deal with whatever this was turning into.
Either way, John Walker was officially under your skin, and you had a sinking feeling he wasn't going anywhere.
The tower was cloaked in the stillness of late night, the kind of quiet that amplified every thought, every pulse of adrenaline. You were fast asleep, dead to the world after the emotional rollercoaster of the day, your phone silent on your nightstand, unaware of the storm brewing.
John Walker, meanwhile, was anything but asleep.
He sat on the edge of his bed, the dim light from a single lamp carving sharp angles across his jaw and bare chest, he'd stripped down to a pair of sweats, restless and wired.
His phone was in his hand, your voicemail still saved, replayed so many times he could recite it by heart. Your voice, slurred and brazen, had wormed its way into his head, stoking a fire he hadn't expected.
The way you'd called him out, challenged him, then let slip those raw, unfiltered desires, it was messing with him in ways he couldn't ignore.
He'd called you earlier to tease, to push, but now, with the night stretching out and the memory of your flustered face in the tech lab burning in his mind, he wanted more.
He dialed your number again, knowing you wouldn't answer. When the voicemail beep sounded, he didn't hold back, his voice low, rough, and dripping with intent.
"Hey, sweetheart," he started, his tone dark and deliberate, like he was speaking directly into your ear. "You're probably out cold, but I can't stop thinking about that voicemail you left. That mouth of yours, running wild, talking about how you'd take me down, ride me for hours, make me scream your name. Fuck, that got me going."
He paused, letting the words hang, his breathing heavier as he leaned into the phone.
"I keep picturing you here, right now, trying to back up all that talk. You, pinned under me, all that fire in your eyes while I take my time with you. Or maybe you're on top, like you said, trying to make good on your promise, sweat on your skin, your nails digging into me, begging for more even when you're too wrecked to speak."
He shifted, his free hand gripping the edge of the bed, his voice dropping to a near-growl.
"You think you can handle me? I'm not so sure. I'd have you shaking, gasping my name, forgetting everything but the way I feel inside you. I'd make you lose that control you're so damn proud of, until you're nothing but a mess for me. And trust me, I'd take my time, hours, like you said, until you're screaming, until you can't think straight."
He chuckled, low and filthy. "So here's my offer: you come find me, and we'll see who breaks first. My door's open, and I'm not hard to find. But if you're too scared to face me, I'll keep this little message of yours… and I'll listen to it every damn night until you do."
He ended the call with a slow, deliberate breath, a smirk tugging at his lips as he tossed the phone onto the bed.
He'd just thrown down the gauntlet, raw and unfiltered, and the thought of you hearing it, your face flushing, your breath hitching, made his pulse race. He leaned back, staring at the ceiling, knowing he'd just changed the game.
The next morning, you woke to the soft glow of sunlight filtering through your curtains, your body heavy but your head clearer than yesterday.
You reached for your phone, yawning, and froze when you saw the notification: 1 new voicemail. John's name stared back at you, timestamped at 12:47 a.m. Your stomach twisted, a mix of dread and something else, something hotter, more dangerous, curling in your gut.
"Oh, no," you muttered, your thumb hovering over the play button. Your heart pounded, a mix of dread and a traitorous curiosity twisting in your chest.
What could he possibly have said at nearly 1 a.m.? More teasing, probably, rubbing in your drunken voicemail like salt in a wound. But the memory of his voice earlier, low, challenging, laced with something dangerous, made you wonder if this was something else entirely.
You hit play, holding your breath as John's voice filled the room, rough and unfiltered, like he was right there beside you.
"Hey, sweetheart… You're probably out cold, but I can't stop thinking about that voicemail you left. That mouth of yours, running wild, talking about how you'd take me down, ride me for hours, make me scream your name. Fuck, that got me going…"
Your breath hitched, heat flooding your face as his words sank in.
He wasn't just teasing, he was escalating, painting vivid, explicit images that made your skin prickle.
His voice dropped lower, a gravelly edge to it, and as he described you pinned under him, sweat on your skin, nails digging into his back, your core tightened, a hot, needy pulse sparking to life.
You squeezed your thighs together, trying to ignore it, but his words were relentless.
"…I'd have you shaking, gasping my name, forgetting everything but the way I feel inside you… until you're screaming, until you can't think straight…"
Your mouth went dry, your body betraying you as a flush spread from your chest downward.
You should've stopped the voicemail, deleted it, thrown your phone across the room, anything to stop the way his voice was unraveling you.
But you didn't.
You sat there, frozen, as he dared you to come find him, to see who'd break first. When the message ended with that low, filthy chuckle, you exhaled shakily, your fingers trembling as you stared at the screen.
You should've been mortified. You should've been furious. Instead, you were… something else.
Hot, restless, your body humming with a need you couldn't ignore. Your mind replayed his words, the way he'd said sweetheart like it was a promise, the way he'd described you losing control under him. It was too much, too vivid, and before you could talk yourself out of it, you hit play again.
His voice washed over you a second time, slower now, each word sinking deeper.
"…trying to make good on your promise, sweat on your skin, your nails digging into me, begging for more…"
Your hand moved almost without thought, slipping under the waistband of your pajama shorts, fingers brushing against your already slick skin.
You gasped softly, the contact sending a jolt through you as John's voice continued, describing exactly how he'd take you apart. Your fingers moved in time with his words, circling slowly, your breath hitching as you imagined his hands, his mouth, that infuriating smirk pressed against your skin.
You knew it was reckless, letting his voicemail push you to this point, but you couldn't stop.
The heat in your core was overwhelming, a desperate ache that grew with every syllable.
"…I'd make you lose that control you're so damn proud of, until you're nothing but a mess for me…"
Your hips rocked against your hand, a soft whimper escaping your lips as you chased the edge his words had driven you toward. Your other hand gripped the sheets, your body trembling as you pictured him, broad shoulders, piercing blue eyes, the weight of him pinning you down.
The voicemail ended again, and you were panting, your fingers still moving, chasing the release that was so close.
You didn't replay it a third time, you didn't need to.
His voice was seared into your mind, looping as you tipped over the edge, a quiet moan spilling out as waves of pleasure crashed through you. You collapsed back against the pillows, chest heaving, your face burning with a mix of satisfaction and shame.
What the hell had you just done?
You'd let John Walker's voicemail, his smug, explicit, infuriating voicemail, get you off. And worse, you weren't sure you regretted it.
The thought of facing him now, knowing what he'd said, knowing how it had affected you, was both thrilling and terrifying. He'd dared you to come find him, to back up your drunken words. And now, with your body still humming from the aftershocks, you weren't sure you could avoid it.
You stared at your phone, the voicemail still saved, a dangerous temptation.
You could delete it, pretend this never happened, and go back to dodging him.
Or you could listen again… or worse, take him up on his challenge.
Either way, John Walker had just turned your world upside down, and you had a feeling this was only the beginning.
Summary: While the rest of the team is gone, Reader is excited to have the screening room to herself for the usual group movie night. Until she walks in and finds her night of freedom interrupted.
CW: Thunderbolts* Spoilers, teasing, mutual pining, makeout, handjob, some choking, John’s obvious praise kink, p in v, creampie,
a/n: im about to start my period so my hormones are everywhere, and all I want is to ride John Walker until he forgets his name lol um happy birthday Wyatt Russell
title track 🎶🎞️
~~~
Movie night.
Normally something you dreaded worse than any mission. Having to sit through Alexei’s loud chewing, Ava and John’s arguing, and Yelena having to explain every joke to Bob. Poor sweet Bob, sometimes not completely aware of references due to his amnesiac state.
But tonight was almost perfectly laid out by the Gods for you.
Most of your team was dispersed all over the country. Alexei, Yelena, and Ava off on some undercover mission. States and timezones away from the Tower. Getting some intel hidden down floors below a far too fancy government building. Infected with H.Y.D.R.A. scum. Ava was perfect for such a task. Assisted by the perfect distractions that were Yelena and Alexei. Bucky, Bob, and John were all out at a secluded training facility. If Bob was unable to use his powers without the fear of Sentry and the Void returning, they needed to teach him the physicality. How to keep a cool head even when people were charging you. You were always outnumbered by enemies, everyone needed to be able to fight.
Lucky for you, Valentina had sent you off on a mission that was an easy resolve. An interview with a well known journalist. Having to save face for your entire team after a rather eventful, and damaging, brawl. Some delinquents got their hands on weapons sold under the table by an old site cleaner. Advanced with alien technology. Extra hard to stop. Which resulted in a good lot of the city being trashed. Citizens were rightfully angry. John’s pompous attitude and Alexei’s casual behavior hammering the final nail into the coffin.
You were the member with the cleanest record. Presentable and approachable. A known former Avenger before the Battle with Thanos. Advocating very publicly for housing reform and a change in the way foreign threats were handled. A pivotal part of restoring the world’s faith in supers. Your public image was, for the most part, clean and beloved.
While everything was still so different and new, you loved your team. They were more of a family than you had found with anyone before. Bonding and developing routines. Traditions. Much like tonight.
You wore your oversized pajamas. Long sleeves and shorts. Perfect to tuck yourself under the blanket and keep warm. You walked into the living room with your favorite blanket in hand. The one you hid in your room just to make sure no one else claimed it. Excited for a night in the big screening room. All alone. Finally able to watch one of the new releases you had been waiting on.
Until you rounded the corner and saw a movie already in progress. Some shitty cop-duo comedy. Where they go undercover looking for a drug dealer around a college campus. More crude humor than not. It was older, you remembered the commercials for it that aired back when it came out.
Who the hell was here? None of your teammates were supposed to be here. It was going to be your one chance for some quality alone time.
You rounded the leather chairs, eyebrows already arched. Frustrated beyond belief before even knowing who the culprit of your interruption was.
And there he was. Slumped down in the chair with a bowl of popcorn resting on his stomach. Legs spread wide, arms positioned so he only had to twist his wrist to reach his mouth with a handful of popcorn. Tight fitted t-shirt and lounge pants.
John F. Walker.
Your lip twitched. Blinking over and over to try and relax the harsh expression that tugged at your muscles. You barely caught his attention. Completely lost in the illuminated screen. Before turning his gaze to you.
“What’sup, Y/N,” he casually said with a mouthful of popcorn. Crunching and wet mouth sounds mushing his words together.
“Thought you were with Bob..?”
John shrugged his shoulders, “Buck got mad at how I was trying to train him.”
You knew what that meant. John always had a tendency to take training too far. Shouting like the drill sergeants that had trained him. Bordering on the lines of degrading. Especially for someone like Bob. He needed a special, calm touch. Clear instructions and understanding, that was what made him learn best. Which was why he was rarely sent off on missions to begin with. The risk of a disaster returning was too high. Maybe one day he would learn to control his powers. Powers forced on him. Something many of you could sympathize with, unlike John. He chose the super soldier serum. Willingly burdening himself with power. So you guess it was hard for him to understand this struggle, or maybe he was just in denial about it. Assuming if he could handle it, so could everyone else.
“Barking again?”
John scoffed, rolling his eyes at you, “No.”
There was a silence. One of your eyebrows raised as you crossed your arms over your chest. Leg cocked to the side, trying to get him to admit the truth.
“Okay— maybe a little barking,” John sighed.
You dropped your arms back at your sides. Motioning towards him with a nod that said ‘I knew it’. Earning a disapproving grunt from him as he focused back on the screen.
That silence returned. It was common between the two of you. A certain level of awkwardness that neither of you could overcome. Something you could not explain. Always seeming to find yourselves tangled in the other’s business. Whether it be bumping into each other during a stealthy mission, leading to you both being pressed together against a wall as to hide from the enemy. Or reaching for the same thing in the cabinet or at a restaurant at the same time. Or even seeing each other out and about when you were on a date. Always ending with you having to explain to your suitor that he was your coworker. It usually turned them away from you. Never being able to escape work and all. Your lives were always overlapping in such strange and unexpected ways.
And you liked it. Never would you give him the satisfaction of knowing you enjoyed his company. It would go straight to his head if you ever told him. Tell him how you loved getting sent off on missions together. Alone time was sparse, so you liked getting to know him. Or tell him that you subconsciously saved him a spot next to you on the Quin Jet every time. The feeling of his leg resting so casually against yours would have your ears burning and heart pounding. Or even that you would vote for whatever movie he suggested just to see him smile when it won.
It was embarrassing. You were a hero. Having such a strong crush for your coworker made your stomach knot and palms sweat. How could you let him consume you this way? Which was why you had to overcompensate for your feelings. Picking on and teasing John came naturally to you. It was a customary practice between the two of you.
Yet all insults left you right now. Swallowing the lump in your throat as the voices of college age football players blurred together in your ears. Taking a final deep breath.
“I was going to watch a movie,” you said as if he should have known.
“Yeah? Well, I’m like almost done with this one,” John gestured with his hand, “You can finish it with me.”
You chewed the inside of your cheek. Fighting off the voices in your head telling you to blurt out your problem. It was childish to a certain extent. But not to you.
“You… you’re in my seat,” you admitted.
“Your seat?”
“I always sit there when we have movie nights,” you sighed, getting a little annoyed with the devious smirk on his lips. When an amused chuckle bubbled out of his chest, it only made you angrier.
“First come first serve,” he shrugged, shifting his body up in the seat a little more, “But you can always come join me.”
John patted his lap. Hand suggestively pointing. Clearly mocking you.
But it made something switch inside you.
Your entire face flushed immediately. You were sure if someone had cracked an egg on your face, it would have fried.
He caught on to your awkwardness immediately. Based solely off your silence. Normally, you were quick with a comeback. It was something he admired about you. Your ability to joke along with him. Usually you had the best roasts of the group. To see you crumble so easy made a mischievous light click behind his eyes.
You stammered. Noises that could not even begin to resemble words. And it only made you flush more. Flirting was never new. Usually so natural that no one even pointed it out anymore.
He was smug. Rolling his hips to make sure that your eyes were drawn there. Softly grunting as he faked readjustment, “Suite yourself. Movie should be over in thirty.”
You growled. Fists clinching tightly together as your teeth ground down. He was such an ass. Full of himself. Far too confident. Always able to keep his composure and cool. It drove you insane.
And you loved it.
You began to stomp away when John called out to you once more, “Oh, and Y/N. I’m a big boy, I promise you won’t break me.”
Well if this was the game he was playing… you could play along.
You stepped directly in front of him. Blocking his view of the large screen behind you. Shadowed blue eyes looked up at you. Rolling his eyes as he stiffened his spine along the chair. Hands gripping the arm rests preparing to push himself out of the chair. Until you stepped forward. Wedging your knee between his and the arm rest. One hand resting on his shoulder to stabilize yourself.
John was flabbergasted. Eyes unable to leave your waist and how you straddled him now. The feeling of both your hands on his shoulders. Wide eyes looked up at you. His large hands awkwardly hovered at either side of your waist. Like he was too scared to touch you. Your head was tilted to the side. Hooded, sultry eyes scanned his face. One of your arms began to arch behind his neck, nuzzling your face into the crook between his shoulder and pulse. Relaxing so that your ass laid against his thighs. Cores barely inches from one another.
As if he had been holding it without knowing, John finally took a deep breath. Lungs refilling so desperately. The feeling of his chest rising and falling was comforting. The tip of your nose rested against his jugular. Strong musky scent filled your senses. It had your insides sloshing and tying themselves together.
While he could still see the screen, the stupid buddy comedy was the farthest thing from his mind. Lump choking him in his throat. Face flushed and hot to the touch. Knowing he probably felt like a heater with how molten his veins ran. He closed his eyes trying to stabilize himself. No one had touched him in so long. Let alone so casually.
Finally willing to take the plunge, he rested his hands on your sides. Low, directly about the curve of your hips. One of them softly running up and down the curve of your body. His heart was racing. As if he had been training for a marathon.
You were beautiful. He would be a fool to not admit that. And he would be a liar to say he had never caught himself staring at you. Or that sometimes he did snoop around when you were going around town with some stranger you met on the internet. He was overprotective of you. Even though he knew you could protect yourself. Adoring how you held yourself. Well spoken and independent.
John would never admit how much he thought about you. In situations similar to this. Pressed together and intimate.
“Is it good?”
“W-What?” he choked, blinking rapidly.
“The movie?”
John blew his breath out, “Yeah. It’s… real funny. Real, real good.”
You smiled against his throat. Able to hear how loudly he was swallowing. Anxiety was not something you often saw on him. Even when you had went through the void, he had appeared more depressed and disappointed in himself. Normally, he had nerves of steel. Years of rejection and public mockery toughening him up. Military had trained him to be quick on his feet. Able to change plans on a dime.
But this was something he could have never prepared for.
John was a flirt. Popular in High School. Star of the Football Team. Multi-decorated soldier. He was used to women throwing themselves at him. Hell, he liked getting attention. Or atleast he used to. Before his public image got burnt so badly that even the mention of his name made people cringe or scoff or laugh. His failure as Captain America had been internationally broadcasted. There was not anyone who particularly wanted to be seen with him. No one usually wanted to be around him either.
Yet here you were curled up in his lap. Breath fanning down his neck and bodies pressed together. Fitting him like you were molded together. Meant to be like this.
He was alluring. Making you want to run your hands all over his body. Wanting to touch and feel any bit of him you could. But you knew you had to play the game.
You tested it at first. A quick peck. Something that could have been written off as you readjusting and your lips just so happened to touch his neck. John’s hand gripped on your side firmer than before. Barely giving him anything, and he already felt like he could fall apart. So you continued. Kisses turning more sensual when you planted an opened mouth kiss to his pulse. Continuing to slowly grow more and more hungry with each passing kiss. Tongue involving itself. Teeth grazing against his blooming skin. Finally pulling his flesh between your teeth to leave a mark.
John groaned. Head falling back against the chair. Simply enjoying the feeling of your lips all over him. Focusing entirely on not allowing his cock to pitch itself underneath you. If you were just teasing, you would never let him live it down if he popped a boner from some basic neck kissing. It’s not like either of you were teenagers. Still, he had not had anyone like this in years. His ex-wife and himself had long since given up in the bedroom. Only having his fist and some porno magazine one of the boys in boot camp had given him. He kept it because he refused to buy any of it. And those videos on Twitter were too creepy for him. A little unethical.
So the brush of lips on skin, the weight of you in his lap, the soft breaths that came from your nose; it all had him so wound up. Eyes forcing themself shut.
You began to run one of your hands down his chest. Fingertips barely catching the fabric of his t-shirt. Outlining his muscular physique as you continued your trek further and further down. Palm flattening at his navel so that your fingertips teased the edge of his waistband. Running them underneath the elastic. Fingers playing with the thin hairs of his happy trail. Earning a shaky breath from the super soldier between your legs. Your lips traveled up his throat to the soft space where his ear and jaw met. Your hand dared to dip deeper into his pants, under the elastic of his underwear, so that fingertips grazed the soft hair along his pubic bone. Painfully close to the base of his cock.
Training took over. Instinct to protect himself. Anxiety and fear bubbling at the back of his throat, “We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because we… we’re on a team together. Not supposed to fraternize,” John’s voice betrayed him. The words were wrong as soon as they left his tongue. Throat clearly tight as he tried to squeeze the words out.
You did not move. Frozen by his words. He had a point. How would Valentina react? How would your teammates react? It was all common knowledge that you were not supposed to fool around with your coworkers.
And if there was one thing about you and John: you liked to follow the rules.
You began to remove your hand from beneath his clothing. Respecting his decision, but still teasing your way out.
John’s hand suddenly wrapped around your wrist like a vice. Shocking you with pure force. His hand was shaking as it held yours where it had gone.
“But, you said…”
“I know… Doesn’t mean I don’t want it,” John grumbled against your scalp.
You smiled. Hiding your face in his neck. Not wanting to reveal how truly excited you were for this. For him. Knowing his tendency to tease could possibly ruin whatever this was blossoming between you. John’s other hand cupped the back of your head. Leaning you so that he could see your face. Reading for any sign of hesitation. Only finding your pupils matching his own. Blown with pure want. Fluttering lashes adding a beautiful accent.
You stared at one another in silence. John’s mouth was parted in a semi-pant, as if he could not breathe properly. His body moved on its own, pushing himself forward and beginning to close the gap between your mouths. Being cut off by you.
“Tell me you want this,” you whispered, “I’ll leave if you want me to. We can go back to flirting, nothing more. I don’t want you to regret this.”
A beat. Like he was taken aback by your blunt wording.
“I could never regret you,” John breathlessly said, finally planting his lips to yours. Gentle. Still experimental. Turning hungry rather quickly. Both his palms cupped the side of your face. Tongue darting between your lips. Lapping over and over to get your taste on his pallet. Teeth clanked together. Sloppy, but heated.
Lips trailed down your throat. Kissing against your rapid heartbeat. Canines nipping skin, causing you to gasp. One of his hands splayed along your lower back. Fingertips bunching up the back of your shirt. Pinky and ring finger touching your skin. His other hand ventured down to your breast. Massaging the mound between desperate fingers. Thumb swiping across your nipple. The bulb perked at his touch. Showing off the fact you had no bra on.
“You always walk around with no bra on when you’re home alone?” John smirked, continuing to kiss you between words.
You giggled. A sound that was for the most part foreign to you. Giggling with the intent of flirting. John had successfully gotten under your skin in the best way. Bringing out a side of you that you thought was long gone. No one had sparked such a feeling inside you in years.
Slowly, your hand hooked under the band of his shirt. Beginning to tug it over his head so you could get a full look at his bare chest. Muscles and scars decorating it beautifully. Dirty blonde hair cascading a trail around his pecs and belly button. You flattened your hands along his torso. Able to feel his heartbeat below the surface.
John’s eyes doed up at you. Innocence and nerves behind his wide oceanic stare. Lips were on yours once again. Finally able to slip your hand back down the band of his soft, cotton pants. Nails catching against his elastic underwear. A not-so-hidden bulge pressed against the fabric. It was big. You could tell by how it strained the material under your fingertips.
“Please,” John choked with a loud gulp, “Touch me.”
Your stomach did a flip. Temperature inside you spiking, causing your throat to run dry. You did as he asked, guiding him to lift his hips so you could pull his pants down to his mid thighs. Easier to access like this. You sat a little further back on his legs. Gawking down at his groin. Thick and swollen. Tip blushing a red similar to his kiss swollen lips. It craved you. He craved you.
Hesitantly, you wrapped a hand around him. John shuttered, nails digging into the armrest. You tried to be gentle. Stroking him slow with a borderline limp grip. His hips rutted upward chasing after your hand.
You grinned. Looking back up at John. Head thrown back and sweat beaming along his brow. It turned you on to see such a strong man weak from your touch. One of his hands gripped your hip as you began to twist your wrist. Pinching tighter around the tip causing some pre-cum to bead up. Swiping over it with your thumb.
John groaned. Eyes falling shut as he tried to stabilize himself. Cock twitching from your touch. Slickness formed between your legs. He was gorgeous, it made you sick. How could someone as cocky as him be this pretty?
You leaned forward, kissing up his jaw to his ear. Pulling his earlobe between your teeth. Quickening the speed of your hand around his cock, “Talk to me, soldier boy.”
His mouth twitched. Nostrils flaring as he locked his jaw. Your voice melted like honey across his skin. Unable to form words, he was lost in pleasure. Trying to focus so he did not blow his load right away.
John’s hand grabbed your throat, guiding you back. Soft squeeze of fingers causing your mouth to fall open. His lips were sewn shut as his body jerked with each breath. Soft shake to his hand around your throat. Your face was flushing. Eyes hooded as you stared into his oceanic gaze.
“Feel s-so good you forgot- forgot how to run your mou-mouth?” you chastised with a smile, struggling around his grip.
John’s brows contorted. Baring his teeth for a moment. Roughly, he pulled you flush against him. Kissing you harder than you had ever been kissed. Releasing his hold on your jugular, hand venturing down to tug at your shorts. Getting them half way down your thighs when he decided to run a finger up your slit. His eyes widened immediately. Capturing you in a kiss once more.
“You’re so warm,” he muttered like he was trying to catch his breath.
You shifted all your weight to one side and pulled your shorts and panties down so that they dangled from your calf. Bare against his thighs. Slowly, you began to grind down on his length. Pinning it between your bodies as you coated it with your slick.
John’s jaw hung open as he stared at where you sat. Transfixed my the soft squelch of your body. His eyes were glossy and drool dared to drip out of the corner of his mouth.
You leaned down so your lips were against his ear, “Want me to ride you?”
John gasped, “Fuck.”
Eager hands curled around your thighs, helping you rise above him. Making sure to line himself up with your entrance before allowing you to sink down. It took a moment of adjusting, but you were sat flush against his lap. Cock stretching you with a slight burning sensation. Curve causing it to graze against one of your more sensitive spots. Your throat tightened. Swallowing loudly as you hesitated to move.
You fell forward. Wrapping your arms around his neck. Giving you both some time to refill your lungs. Already panting from the pure adrenaline rush. Fear of someone catching you prominent at the front of his mind. Thrilling him. He would love to see the looks on the faces of your teammates.
“What if I just stay like this? Let you finish your movie,” your tone was sultry.
John quickly thrusted upward. Super soldier strength lifting you like it was nothing. Arms wrapping around your back to make sure you could not abruptly leave him. Fucking into you like someone was going to rip you away from him. Panting into your ear as the sound of skin smacking together filled the room.
You whined and moaned with each brutal piston. His name was a mantra on your lips. But you wanted control. Needed to be the one in charge right now. Used to getting bossed around by him, it was finally your turn. Gathering up all your strength, you pushed John away from you. Still connected at your cores, but his back was now against the seat. His eyebrows arched in confusions and frustration. Hands flattened along his shoulders, tilting your head to the side with a smile.
You hooked a finger under his jaw, “Let me do it. Okay? Just watch your movie and I’ll make you feel real good.”
John growled in disapproval. Trying to force himself forward to kiss you again, but you kept him back. “Johnny,” you chastised with a coo.
That had him melting. A nickname he normally refused to let people use. It made him feel weak. Powerless, like he was some softie. But when you said it, it made his insides get all gooey. Warm with want for you.
He ceded. Huffing when you clenched around him.
You smirked devilishly, “That’s it, John. Now, watch the movie.”
You guided him so that he could watch the screen behind you. His cerulean eyes wanted to watch you. Give his full attention to you, but anytime he looked back at you your hips would stop. He was growing enraged. Becoming more needy and whiny than normal.
“Please, baby. Just let me watch you,” John begged.
“Soon as the movie is over. Can you last that long?”
John cussed under his breath. Blinking rapidly hoping maybe it would make his peripheral widen so that he could watch you and the movie at the same time. The roll of your hips had his vision blurring. Grunting each time you took him completely inside. Hands piercing tiny moons into your hips. Unable to focus on the hijinx that was the over the top ending of the, now to him, idiotic movie. Throb of his cock making his heartbeat hammer against his eardrums.
And he felt so good. The way his hips barely rolled to meet your every move. How black his pupils had become. You got your chance to admire him now. Looking at his chiseled jaw and blonde hair. Stubble perfectly accenting his chin. His lips were swollen as he breathed loudly. Watching one of his hands mindlessly wander up to hold your breast. Under your shirt so that he could feel it in his palm.
“Think you deserve to play with my tits?”
John nodded, eyes locked firmly into the screen. A breathy ‘uh-huh’ rolling from his tongue.
You giggled, “Yeah. Guess you’ve been well behaved.”
John’s breath hitched in his throat. Eyebrows furrowing at the compliment. It made his dick flex inside your walls. Hand on your breast firming its hold.
It went on like this for a few minutes. Riding him while the coil inside you wound tighter and tighter. John never looked away from the screen, promise of an end so close that he could practically taste it. His balls tightened when you circled your hips. Getting him far too close to the end.
Credits began rolling.
John sighed, smiling his bright white teeth at you. Lust filled eyes finally darting to meet your flushed face. Your lips were parted as you arched a brow at him. His other hand found your clit immediately. Swirling his digit around it caused your hips to lock up.
“Can’t wait anymore,” John rushed his sentence, pressing forward to encapsulate your lips in his. Once again, starting his relentless pace inside you. Your body bounced up and down. Chasing both your highs that were practically a breath away.
You grasped him for stability. Your walls were tightening. Every inch of you was electric, orgasm knocking on the door. “John, it’s so fucking good,” you moaned, throwing your head back.
“More,” John demanded, “Tell me more.”
“Perfect cock,” you whimpered, “I want you to fill me up. Please, John. I wanna cum on your dick.”
John’s eyes shot up to yours. Inquisitive brow asking if you really meant it. Your eyes gave him the answer. And he smiled. Wide. Like a kid opening a present on Christmas.
“Yeah. I can fill up your tight cunt,” John huffed, hips slowly becoming erratic as his finger applied more pressure to your nub, “Make you walk around for the next couple of days with me leaking out this perfect pussy. That way you remember who made you feel this good. Huh? What’doya think of that?”
You nodded, feeling your floodgates burst. Walls spasmed around him. Massaging his aching cock guiding him to his own finish. He held onto you tightly as his entire body twitched. Ropes of thick cum coated your insides. Both of you moaned in harmony. Resting your foreheads against one another as you tried to catch your breath. Breathing the same hot air from the other.
Silence filled the room as some soft melodic song played over the final credits. Neither of you moved. Too afraid to let the moment pass. It was all so surreal. You could feel him slowly going soft inside you, small amounts of your mixed releases pooling around the base of his cock. Still having waves of aftershock which would cause him to perk back up.
Without a word, John pressed a kiss to the tip of your nose. You collapsed into him. Mouth against his neck. Arms limp at your sides. His large hand rubbed up and down your spine. Occasionally pressing rather intimate kisses to the side of your head. His smile was palpable even in the silence.
“Wanna watch your movie now?”
~~~
[END]
// Thank you so much for reading! I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately when it comes to writing and being creative. Probably from the stress of moving for the first time ever. I appreciate everyone’s patience with me, and the continuous love I’ve been receiving on my other fics. As always, my tag list and inbox is open. I’d love to hear from you! Love ya! //
