Daydreaming in fantasy worlds | Find me on Wattpad & Inkitt as: SiverioEnTinta 📜 | EN / ES | Soñando despierta entre mundos de fantasía | Encuéntrame en Wattpad & Inkitt como: SiverioEnTinta 📜 | EN / ES |
hiii babies, i'm Maria, but you can call me Faith or Marie (like the aristocats) by the way, i'm 30 years old and Venezuelan. i've loved writing since I was a teenager, especially for the Supernatural fandom (and well, I mostly wrote for myself).
i tend to get fixated on certain characters because sometimes i feel colorblind (wait, who said dean winchester, adrian chase and benjamin poindexter?), i like pop, rock music, horror movies, and series that are paranormal or at least have a good plot.
fandoms I write to / fandoms a los que escribo
supernatural, the Boys, marvel, and individual movies or series
(it's kind of like instant crushes I have / es como una especie de crush instantáneo que me da)
rules of don'ts:
i don't accept rude, degrading, or nonconstructive comments.
no acepto comentarios groseros, ni degradantes ni comentarios no constructivos
i don't write fanfiction or one-shots about celebrities, only fictional characters
no escribo fics o oneshots de famosos solo de personajes ficticios
i don't take requests (for now)
no hago requests (por ahora)
I don't write about gore, incest, or the typical "dad's best friend" cliché. I mean, no offense to those who like that trope, I like older men, just not those kinds of men…
No escribo: gore, incesto o el típico cliché del mejor amigo del padre. Es decir, no se ofendan las que les gusta el trope, a mí me gustan los hombres mayores, pero no esa clase de hombres.
masterlist / la lista
The boys
Headlock - Soldier Boy x supe!female reader
part 1 - part 2 -
Marvel
You did it for me? - Benjamin Poindexter x female reader
I said I'm fine - Bucky Barnes (40's) x female reader
credit for these beautiful dividers: @cafekitsune
This is under construction, so it may change slowly (or not).
Bucky Learns That He Likes Being a Pillow Princess
TW sexual content (no anatomical detail as per usual), dom/sub undertones, riding, power play, soft dom!reader (she/her).
WC: 1.4k (my drabble size lmao. I know they should be like 500 words but unfortunately I am a yapper.)
Look.
Bucky Barnes doesn’t start out as a pillow princess.
He starts out as the exact opposite, actually. He starts out insisting, very politely, very stubbornly, very Bucky, that he likes being on top.
Not in a controlling way. Not in a “you don’t get a say” way. Never that. Bucky is so careful with you it almost hurts sometimes. But still.
He likes being on top.
Or at least, he thinks he does.
Because in his head, behind all the therapy and progress and the twenty-first century trying to teach him how to be human again, there’s still this stubborn little 1940s voice telling him a man takes care of his girl.
A man does the work.
A man holds himself over you, keeps his weight off your body, kisses your forehead, tells you, “I got you, sweetheart,” and makes damn sure you feel good before he even thinks about himself.
And honestly, you're not really complaining.
Because Bucky on top of you is a religious experience. Bucky with his hair falling around his face, metal hand braced beside your head, flesh hand curled around your waist, jaw clenched like he’s barely surviving the pleasure is a wonderful thing, 10/10 would recommend finding your own super soldier to do this with.
He loves seeing you under him. He loves when your head tips back, loves when your hands clutch at his shoulders. Loves when your eyes go glassy and unfocused because he’s taking care of you exactly the way he promised he would.
It’s sweet and hot and very gentlemanly in that old-fashioned, “I’ll take care of you, sweetheart, that’s my job” sort of way.
And you love him for it.
But, unfortunately for Bucky and his entire masculine self-concept, you also like being an active participant in bed.
You like touching, teasing, taking. You like making him react. You like not just being adored, but getting to adore him back.
So one night, after he has once again kissed you breathless and settled himself between your thighs, you put a hand on his chest.
He stops immediately.
His eyes snap up to yours, alert and worried. “You okay?”
You almost laugh because he is so serious about your sex life. Still, you push gently at his chest and say, “Lie down.”
Bucky blinks. “What?”
“Lie down,” you repeat, smiling. “Let me take care of you.”
And ohm the look on his face.
It’s not reluctance, exactly. It’s confusion in some very outdated idea of what he is supposed to be. “Sweetheart,” he says, “you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” You kiss him once, “I want to.”
That does something to him.
And because Bucky trusts you, he lies back.
And then you climb over him.
And James Buchanan Barnes, six-foot-something super soldier, man with a vibranium arm and a kill count he refuses to talk about, looks up at you like he has just discovered God is real and she’s sitting on his lap.
The first time you ride him, he loses his mind.
There is no dignified way to say it.
His hands go to your hips first. Then his gaze drops, and his eyes nearly roll back because the view is good.
You know the view is good.
You can feel the way he reacts to it, see his throat work when you start moving. Your hands on his chest. Your body over his. The roll of your hips. The way you smile when you realize he’s already fighting for his life.
“Jesus,” he breathes.
And that is when the power starts going to your head.
Because Bucky Barnes under you? Bucky Barnes breathless beneath you? Bucky Barnes, who can flip cars and tear through reinforced doors and take down guys twice your size without breaking a sweat, looking up at you with parted lips and blown-wide pupils because you have him pinned to the bed with nothing but your thighs and your audacity?
It makes you drunk with lust. Drunk with power. Drunk on the knowledge that you can tame him. That this beautiful nightmare of a man is lying beneath you, moaning your name.
Of course, at first, he tries to help.
Because he’s Bucky and therefore doesn’t know how to simply receive.
You start riding him properly, slow at first, finding the rhythm, enjoying the way his hands flex against your skin, and then his hips snap up hard.
You laugh, breathless and a little wrecked, and press your hands harder to his chest.
“No.”
Bucky freezes. “No?”
“No,” you say, leaning down until your lips brushes his. “Stop trying to do my job.”
His looks confused, flustered, and turned on beyond belief. “I was just—”
“I know what you were doing.” You kiss the corner of his mouth. “You were trying to take over.”
He swallows.
You sit back up, roll your hips deliberately, and watch his head press back into the pillow. “Let me ride you, Barnes.”
That shuts him up for about three seconds.
Then he makes a growl so deep and broken you feel it everywhere.
And that is how it begins: The glorious corruption of all his old-fashioned little ideas about what a man is supposed to do in bed.
Because once he realizes he is allowed to just lie there and let you want him, let you use him, let you take pleasure from his body while he gets to watch you come undone above him, he becomes addicted to it.
At first, he is almost shy about it.
He still offers to get on top. Still murmurs, “C’mere, sweetheart, let me take care of you,” because that is his default setting. That’s muscle memory. But then you push him back again.
And again.
And again.
And every time, he gives in a little faster.
Until eventually, it takes almost nothing.
All it takes is a hand on his chest and a “Lie back for me, baby.”
And Bucky’s gone.
He’s on his back, pillows messy behind his head, hair spread out, lips parted, eyes dark and dazed and fixed on you.
He is still strong, obviously. You never forget that. You know he could flip you over in a second.
But he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want to.
You love it so much it makes you a little insane.
You love watching the terrifying Winter Soldier become your sweet, desperate, ruined man in bed. You love the way his hands hover when you tell him not to touch yet. You love the way he groans when you finally guide them to your waist. You love that he blushes sometimes.
Actually blushes.
This man has survived wars and assassins and brainwashing and aliens, but you tell him he looks pretty like this and he turns pink to the tips of his ears.
“Don’t say that,” he mutters, even though his hands tighten on you.
“Why not?”
His jaw works. “Because.”
“Because you like it?”
He glares at you.
It is not intimidating at all, considering he’s underneath you, panting and letting you set the pace.
“You’re enjoying this too much,” he says.
You grin. “Yes.”
You enjoy it too much. You enjoy him too much.
It’s not really just about sex, either.
It’s about trust.
It’s Bucky letting himself be wanted without earning it through service. It’s him learning that taking care of you doesn’t always mean doing all the work.
And fuck, does he learn.
He learns a little too well, maybe.
Because now he has preferences.
Now he has the audacity to look at you from the bed with those big, tragic blue eyes and his hair already messy against the pillow. He reaches for you lazily and says, “You coming here or not?”
He knows what it does to you when he lets the metal arm rest above his head, when his shirt rides up, when he looks at you like he’s already waiting to be ruined.
He’s still a gentleman about it.
He says please.
He says thank you against your mouth afterward, which should not be as hot as it is.
He still checks on you, pulls you close and rubs your back and kisses your shoulder and asks if you need water.
Sometimes, sure, he gets on top when you ask. Sometimes you want him over you, want that old Bucky sweetness, the low murmur of his voice in your ear telling you he’s got you. And he gives it to you instantly.
But even then, there is a difference now.
Because that’s not his default setting anymore.
His default is now being told to lie down, because he likes being ridden until he forgets how to speak.
Bucky Barnes may have started out convinced he needed to be on top because that was what a man was supposed to do.
But now, more often than not, he is your pillow princess.
And honestly, he has never looked better.
—
Notes : Reminder! Short stories don’t have taglists <3
He had called it “team cohesion,” but really, he wanted a day off. Yelena had packed three different kinds of knives into a tote bag with sunscreen and a murder mystery novel. Ava had arrived in sunglasses so dark they made her look like she was attending a funeral
And Bucky was doing fine.
He had survived the sun. He had survived Alexei trying to start a volleyball game that immediately turned into a full-contact military operation. He had survived John taking his shirt off like he expected someone to applaud. He had survived Yelena throwing grapes at him whenever he looked too peaceful.
He was handling it.
Then you walked out of the changing hut in a bikini.
And Bucky Barnes, former Winter Soldier, decorated war veteran, man who had once been tortured, frozen, brainwashed, shot at, stabbed, and thrown off more moving vehicles than he cared to count, forgot how to breathe.
Fuck fuck fuck.
You were laughing at something Bob said, one hand holding your sandals, the other adjusting the tie at your hip like you had no idea you had just altered the chemistry of his brain.
You looked good.
But Bucky always thought you looked good. You could show up to breakfast in sweatpants and one of those oversized Thunderbolts hoodies Val had ordered in bulk and Bucky would still spend twenty minutes pretending not to notice you.
But this was different.
This was sunlight on your thighs, your stomach, your shoulders. This was the little gold chain around your neck catching the light when you moved. This was the lazy confidence of you walking across the sand like the beach had been built specifically for the purpose of letting Bucky suffer in public.
And then you turned around.
FUCK FUCK FUCK!
Bucky’s entire soul left his body.
Right there, low on your back, just above the curve of your bikini bottoms, was a tattoo.
It was horizontal, small enough to still be delicate and make his mouth go dry. The ink had pretty, curling lines and little details that followed the shape of your lower spine. Someone had put art exactly where his hands would go if he ever lost every scrap of self-control he had spent the last few months clinging to.
Bucky stared. He knew he was staring. He told himself to stop staring.
He didn’t. His brain went completely useless. It was just static.
Because, unfortunately, he was still a man. A very repressed, very observant man with a huge crush on you and an imagination that had no respect for him whatsoever.
And all he could think was that you would look so good underneath him.
Or above him.
Or bent over his bed, his hand spread over that pretty tattoo, his mouth pressed to the back of your shoulder while he let his load paint over the ink—
“Quit staring,” Ava said beside him.
Startled, Bucky nearly dropped the bottle of water in his hand.
Ava didn’t even look at him. She was sitting under the umbrella, flipping lazily through a magazine, face unreadable behind her sunglasses.
“I’m not staring,” Bucky said immediately.
Ava turned one page. “You are, old man.”
“I was looking at the ocean.”
“The ocean is the other direction.”
Bucky shut his mouth.
Ava finally glanced up, followed his line of sight, and then made a small sound of understanding.
“Oh,” she said. “What, you’ve never seen a tramp stamp before?”
Bucky’s head snapped toward her. “Don’t call her that”
Ava slowly lowered her sunglasses enough to look at him over the rim. “What?”
“She’s not a tramp.”
For one glorious second, Ava just stared at him.
Then her face changed. It was subtle, but Bucky saw the tiny lift of her brow. Her mouth curved up, amused.
“Oh my God,” she said.
Bucky frowned. “What?”
“You think I called her a tramp?”
“You just said—”
“That’s what the tattoo placement is called, Barnes.”
Bucky went still.
Ava’s smile widened
“A tramp stamp,” she said, like she was explaining a word to a dog. “Lower back tattoo, right? Yeah, sure, it used to be derogatory, but it’s become really popular again.”
Bucky stared at her.
Ava stared back.
The silence lasted exactly three seconds before she leaned back in her chair, delighted. Ava put two and two together: He thought she was insulting you, jumped to defend you. Ergo, he was in love.
“Cute crush you got there, Barnes,” she said absentmindedly.
Bucky took a drink of water, mostly to avoid answering.
It didn’t help. His ears were already pink.
Ava looked back toward you, where you were now crouched by Yelena’s towel, stealing crisps from the bag and pretending not to hear Yelena’s threats of violence.
“It is hot, though,” Ava added casually.
Bucky choked.
Ava smiled into her magazine.
Bucky wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave her a murderous look. “Can you not?”
“What? I’m agreeing with you.”
Bucky dragged his human hand down his face.
He should’ve stood up, walked into the water, and stayed there until his entire body cooled down enough for him to be a normal person again.
But then you looked over. Because Ava had the subtlety of a brick through glass and Bucky had the survival instincts of a man who kept choosing to sit near her.
You smiled when you caught them both looking.
Then you stood, brushed sand from your knees, and started walking toward them.
Bucky’s stomach dropped.
Ava head tilted like he had just handed her a grenade and permission.
“No,” Bucky muttered.
Ava turned a page. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Don’t.”
You stopped in front of them, blocking the sun with your body, head tilted as you looked between Bucky and Ava.
“What’s wrong?” Of course, because they looked like they’ve been arguing while looking your way.
“Nothing,” Bucky said too quickly.
Ava said, “Bucky thinks your tramp stamp is hot.”
Bucky closed his eyes.
For a moment, he focused on the sound of the waves. John yelling in the distance. Alexei barking out about rules he had definitely just invented. Yelena laughing like someone had been injured.
Then you said, very softly, “Oh?”
Bucky opened one eye.
You were smiling.
Your gaze dropped over him, slow enough to be intentional, taking in the line of his shoulders, the way his hand had tightened around his water bottle, the bright flush creeping up his neck.
Ava, apparently sensing she had accomplished enough, stood up with her magazine tucked under her arm.
“I’m going to go pretend I like sand,” she said. “Have fun.”
She patted Bucky’s shoulder as she passed. “Try blinking.”
Then she left.
Traitor.
You waited until she was far enough away before stepping a little closer.
Bucky looked up at you from his chair, and that was a mistake too, because now you were standing over him in that bikini, and he was suddenly aware of exactly how little clothing either of you were wearing.
“So,” you said. “My tattoo?”
Bucky cleared his throat. “It’s nice.”
“Nice?”
“Pretty.”
Your smile deepened. “Pretty?”
He looked away.
You leaned down slightly, hands braced on the arms of his chair, caging him in just enough to make his pulse kick hard. “I didn’t know you liked tattoos there.”
“I just like… ink.”
Yeah, sure. Nice job, Barnes.
You glanced at his mouth before turning like you were going to walk away, but stopped halfway. Obviously to show off your tattoo.
Bucky’s hand curled against his thigh.
“You know,” you said, innocent in a way that did not fool him at all, “if you wanted a closer look, Barnes, you could’ve just asked.”
Then you walked away.
Bucky sat there under the umbrella, burning alive, watching you walk away like you hadn’t just left him hard and and half-feral over a tattoo at the small of your back.
Then, a little flirty over-the-shoulder glance sealed it.
Yeah, no.
He was definitely coming to your quarters later to find out if that “closer look” came with permission to put his hands on your hips and bending you over.
—
Note: I see all your blurb requests from this post, and keep them coming!! I will try my best to write most of them over the next few days but I might pass on a couple simply because I’m blanking on them 😭
I know you exist. I mean, I know you're out there doing something with your life.
I know you have a life out there. A job, a house, parents, siblings, or I don't know… but I know you're out there, somewhere in the world maybe. Maybe near me or far away. Maybe you're working, trying to keep your life in order, or maybe you're with someone other than me, asking you the same things as me.
Where are you?
You don't know me, and I certainly don't know you.
Yet I have dreamed of you. I have dreamt of your eyes, blue with the soft, devoted way you gaze at me in dreams. I have dreamt of your dark hair, of your hands caressing it to accommodate it because it has gone out of place.
I have dreamed of your smile, calm and charming, hidden under that soft beard. A smile that, somehow, I feel is just for me…
We've met two or three times in those dreams, but we've never really interacted or spoken there. We simply looked at each other with that complicity that felt long-standing.
Like two lovers finding each other again and again through time...
The last time I dreamed about you, you were arguing with a woman in a room. I could see you, I was a kind of ghost in that room, a pair of silent eyes and ears before the drama that was unfolding, and I assume it's someone you date or who you used to date in this life.
Maybe you didn't want to be with her anymore, or maybe it's her, the one who didn't want to stay with you. In fact, she seemed quite fed up and kept arguing with you.
I've never been able to fully hear the sound of your voice because despite having seen you argue with that woman, there was no sound of your voice, only hers, but inside I know what it sounds like, with that soft, raspy, masculine, and sweet tone.
But I dreamt that we were happy, that we were together. I introduced you to my friends, and you looked handsome and groomed, and you had some flowers for me.
They were pink, but I don't know what they were.
I wish I knew who you were or where you are. Because sadly, for moments, I have imagined a life I don't have, with kids, a house, and even a farm, all of that with you.
Some days it hurts me to imagine a life with someone I don't know but somehow in the very depths of my being I know exists, maybe it's because we are truly connected in some way and see each other in dreams.
There are days when I no longer know if it's my mind trying to make me feel better or trying to heal something that literally another person damaged. Part of me fears you're not real. Part of me fears you're all just a figment of my imagination to make me feel better about not finding the love I'm looking for.
The love I've always longed for...
The love I've always wanted to deserve...
It sounds stupid to mourn something you haven't even had yet.
But I do. I miss someone I don't know, I miss someone with whom I've had children, I miss someone I've kissed, someone whose hand I've held, someone who has looked at me with eyes of true love.
Where are you? Will we ever see each other again, or will we never meet?
Pairing: Guy Moratz x Female Reader
Summary: During sex, Guy finds out that a slap to the face might just be the type of pain he's always been looking for.
Word Count: 1.3k
Warnings/tags: porn without plot; top & kinda dom reader (not heavy); needy whiny bottom (guy); slapping (heavy on this one); praise kink; begging; guy is a bit of a masochist; dirty talk; creampie; no use of y/n
Notes: i had an hour and half for lunch break and a dream. this is the result. anyway blame @sheriff-bodecker for talking to me about pathetic, whiny Guy Moratz
Lights may be low in your bedroom, just the way Guy usually likes them, but the entire scenery around you feels too bright, too alive. He’s underneath you, sweat already beading on his forehead, hands clutching your hips so hard you wonder if he’s scared you’ll disappear the same way dreams begin to escape you when you wake up. Every time you sink down on him he makes this soft, needy sound in the back of his throat like he can’t believe this is happening to him.
Sometimes, you can’t either. You don’t really know what it is that attracts you to him more, if his awkward personality or how he manages to make himself look so small even when he looks exactly like all your favorite things about a man put together in one package. He listens. He’s a little weird but with a sweet tang to it, and you particularly enjoy how he never expects you to want him as much as you always do.
You’re riding him slow and deep, grinding in a way that makes his eyes flutter, head thrown back against his pillow. The pleasure builds thick, and you’ve found it builds harder when his blue eyes are on yours, something that isn’t happening right now because he’s got them fully closed, almost as if trying to keep himself in check. So you reach for him.
“Guy, look at me,” you whisper, one hand holding yourself up on his chest, the other coming to rest against his cheek. “Come on, baby.”
He doesn’t open his eyes. Barely, in fact, even acknowledges your words. Which is why, when you say it again, your hand on his cheek lifts and delivers a light slap to his cheek. It’s tentative, more of a tap than a slap, but the result is all the same. Guy’s whole body jolts, and his eyes fly open, startled, before he just stares at you for a full moment, mouth parted and cheeks turning a faint pink. You know, from all the time you’ve already spent together, that the blush on his cheeks was not from the hit of your hand against skin. He’s embarrassed, caught wanting something he deems shameful.
“Shit, sorry,” you whisper immediately, freezing on top of him. “I shouldn’t have done that, just… just wanted you to open your eyes…”
He doesn’t say anything at first. His breathing is shaky, and you can feel him twitching involuntarily inside of you, before his voice finally comes out, small and slightly mortified.
“…Do it again?”
You blink. “What?”
That’s a turn of events. Guy shifts beneath you, avoiding your eyes for a second before forcing them back. His hands squeeze your hips tighter. “Please…?” It comes out whiny, desperate as he sounds when he’s too turned on to hide it. “Just… a little harder. If you want. I mean, you don’t have to but—”
“Guy, I don't wanna hurt you,” you say softly, guilt mixing with the heat between your legs.
His face twists, like admitting this is peeling off another layer he wasn’t yet ready to lose. “I know it’s weird, okay? I just—fuck…” Voice wavering, turning into a pathetic little whine as he rocks his hips up into you to chase friction, you try to take pity and lean forward to kiss him and steal the words out of him, but he pushes you back just an inch. “Please? It felt… good.”
You hesitate, still worried.
That seems to frustrate him. His grip tightens, and his voice rises, not at you, just a way to process the emotions running through him. “Come on, I’m not gonna break. You don’t have to treat me like I’m fragile…”
Somehow, his impatient tone makes irritation flare hot in your chest. You’ve always liked him needy, a little impatient. You don’t appreciate it when he doesn’t get it that you care and that you caring is exactly why you don’t want to hurt him.
But fine.
Your hand swings down hard, a solid crack across his cheek that snaps his head to the side and leaves a bright handprint blooming instantly on his skin.
Guy lets out a shameless moan, his entire body shuddering beneath you. His cock throbs hard inside you, hips jerking up so suddenly he almost bucks you off. For a moment he just pants, eyes glassy, awkward embarrassment now shattered and replaced by pure need.
“Yes, thank you—" he gasps, voice trembling. And you, in the height of your pleasure, now knowing how much power you hold over his own, continue moving your hips, rolling them steadily, taking him deep again and again, the wet sound of skin meeting skin filling the room along with ragged breathing.
“It stings,” he whispers, but there’s no complaint to his tone, only awe. His hands slide up your sides, clumsy and urgent, fingers pressing into your skin as if anchoring himself. “Feels so good when it’s stinging. I… I didn’t know I wanted it this bad. God, I’m sorry, I know it’s weird—”
“Shhh, it’s okay,” you soothe, with a teasing lilt in your tone now. You keep riding him at that same pace, dragging your nails lightly down his chest and feeling his muscles twitch under your touch. “You’re doing so good, baby. But you were getting impatient with me.”
He nods quickly, too eager to please, hips stuttering up into you with a needy little thrust. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just get like this. It’s embarrassing.” Guy's head tips back against the pillow again, but this time his eyes stay open, fixed on you with a worshipful look. You clench around him, and his mouth falls open on a whine.
“I’m so close already,” he admits. It comes out a little shameful, but you give him a reassuring smile, one that lets him know that it’s okay, it’s always okay when he’s with you. “Just… just from you hitting me. Is that pathetic? I feel pathetic, begging for slaps while you’re fucking me so good…”
You lean forward a little, still bracing yourself on his chest with one hand so you can roll your hips faster, tighter circles that make him gasp every time you take him to the hilt. “Stop talking,” you tell him, a little firmer, and his cock twitches again. The slick sounds grow wetter; you don’t remember the last time you were this turned on by something that isn’t being done to you.
But Guy doesn’t obey your request. You didn’t want him to. In fact, his rambling picks up, words spilling out faster and more broken.
“I’m gonna come,” he whines, voice growing into a moan as you slam down particularly hard, grinding your clit against him at the same time. His hips struggle to jerk up and meet your rhythm, but he sure tries. “Oh god, I’m so fucking close, don’t slow down, please— keep going just like that.”
“Needy thing,” you murmur. “Begging so pretty while you’re buried inside me. Do you want me to slap you again?”
Guy can only whimper at that, and he nods frantically before he even gets the words out. “Please, I’m so close already. Just slap me one more time while I come? Please? I’ll be good, I promise. Just... fuck, please do it again…”
This time, you don’t make him wait.
A ringing slap echoes and leaves his cheek blazing red after your hand connects with it, impact sharp enough to make his eyes water. At the same moment you slam your hips down hard, taking him as deep as your body allows you to. And just like that, innocent, awkward Guy comes with a shattered cry. His body seizes up beneath you, hips bucking up as he spills inside you, moaning and whimpering through every pulse, through every spill of his cock. Whatever shame he felt before evades him as he allows pleasure to overtake him, to settle deep in his core as you milk him out of every last drop.
As he rides out the aftershocks, panting and trembling against your body, all you hear are the soft, little ‘thank you’s whispered against your skin, awkwardly nuzzling into your hand while he silently prays you’ll never regret giving him exactly what he begged for.
summary ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ with two deans in front of you, the only thing left to trust is the part of him no monster can steal cleanly
pairing ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ dean winchester x reader ( f )
wordcount ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ 807 genre ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ angsty !!
warnings ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ emotional distress, weapon mention, blood/injury mention
notes ˚˖𓍢ִ໋ ִ❀໋ consider supporting my work .ᐟ
the worst part is that they both look tired.
not evil. not wrong. not even slightly off in the easy, merciful way you need one of them to be.
they both stand under the flickering motel sign with dean’s face, dean’s blood on their knuckles, dean’s green eyes fixed on you like you are the only solid thing left in the whole ruined parking lot. rain dots the windshield of the impala behind them. somewhere far off, a dog won’t stop barking.
your gun shakes in your hands.
“sweetheart,” the one on the left says, breathless. “look at me.”
the one on the right flinches. “don’t call her that,” he snaps.
same voice. same rough edge. same wounded anger tucked under the words. your stomach turns. “stop,” you say, and it comes out smaller than you want. “both of you. stop talking.”
they do and it almost makes it worse.
the shapeshifter has dean’s memories. sam warned you, voice tight over the phone while you were still running through wet alleyways and trying not to throw up. it can know things. private things. motel rooms and bad jokes and the way dean hums under his breath when he thinks you’re asleep. the first time he kissed you. the first time he said i love you and then immediately panicked and pretended to check the car’s oil. all of it. stolen.
“ask me something,” left-dean says, stepping half an inch forward.
you lift the gun higher. “don’t.”
he stops.
right-dean’s jaw tightens. “ask me.”
your eyes burn. “you both know.”
“not everything,” right-dean says.
left-dean scoffs, and god, it sounds so much like him you feel sick. “that’s what i’d say too.”
your finger rests near the trigger. not on it. near.
you think of dean’s hands on your hips in the bunker kitchen, warm and grease-stained from fixing something that didn’t need fixing. you think of him stealing your fries, then pretending he didn’t. you think of the night he crawled into bed beside you without a word after a hunt went bad, pressing his forehead between your shoulder blades, silent until he finally whispered “don’t make me talk yet”.
you know him. you do. so why can’t you breathe? “what did you tell me,” you start, voice cracking despite the effort, “after jolene’s case? when i wanted to quit?”
both of them go still. left-dean answers first. “i told you that you could. that i’d drive you anywhere you wanted. no guilt trip.”
your chest caves a little. right answer. perfect answer.
right-dean swallows hard. “and then i said i was selfish.”
left-dean turns sharply. you freeze.
right-dean looks at you. “i said i was selfish because i wanted you to stay,” he says. “and then i got scared you’d hear that as pressure, so i made a joke about your terrible motel coffee and you threw a pillow at my head.”
no. it doesn’t. that’s the awful thing. it still doesn’t.
then left-dean softens his face, careful and familiar, and takes one slow step toward you. “baby, come on. you know me.”
baby. too easy. too clean. your dean almost never uses that when he’s scared. he gets rougher. quieter. meaner to himself.
right-dean’s eyes flick to your gun. then to you. “shoot me,” he says.
your heart drops. left-dean goes silent.
“what?”
right-dean’s voice is hoarse. “if you can’t tell, shoot me. leg, shoulder, whatever. silver’ll show you. don’t let him near you.”
“dean—”
“don’t argue with me.” his face breaks, just for a second. “please.”
there. not in the memory. not in the words. in the way he makes himself the sacrifice before he lets you become one.
your hand steadies.
left-dean sees the shift before you move. his expression hardens, dean’s face turning strange with something that is not dean at all. “you sure about that?” he says.
you aim at him. “yeah,” you whisper. “i am.”
the shot splits the rain. silver hits shoulder, not heart, because even now—stupid, stupid—you can’t shoot dean’s face without mercy. the thing screams with his mouth, skin rippling wrong under the streetlight, and then sam is there from nowhere, finishing it before your knees can give out.
after, dean catches you before you fall. the real dean. solid. shaking. warm. you grab his jacket with both fists and shove your face into his chest, furious at him, furious at yourself, furious that you ever had to learn him this way.
“you told me to shoot you,” you choke.
his arms tighten around you. “yeah,” he says, voice breaking at the edges. “i know.”
“i hate you.”
“yeah,” he whispers into your hair. “i know that too.”
you hold him harder anyway, because his heartbeat is under your ear and it is his. it is his. it is his.
ꔛ. all works ; writing guidelines ; writing schedule.
⚠️ Content Warnings (CW): heavy angst, toxic relationship dynamics, explicit language, non-consensual sexual comments (from Ben), physical violence (slapping), mentions of drug/alcohol abuse, references to historical civilian death (Harlem tragedy), intense sexual tension/breeding ground for dark romance.
📜 SUMMARY: the road to vengeance is paved with old blood and older sins. While tracking down the remnants of Payback with Butcher and Hughie, you are forced to confront the wreckage of the man you walked away from decades ago. But seeing Benjamin in that seedy motel room isn't just a reminder of who he used to be: a reminder that the dangerous, toxic pull between you two never truly died.
A/N: my native language is not English. I'm getting back into writing, so I'm open to advice ❤️ It may contain errors.
part 1 - part 2 (you are here)
The trip was relatively long and exhausting. As the old van rattled down the highway, you stared out the window, watching the green pastures slowly morph into industrial grey. You talked for a while with Hughie, who seemed to be the most empathetic of the group, or perhaps he was simply curious about you.
He kept glancing at you with a mix of awe, asking how you ended up married to someone like Benjamin.
Sometimes, you wondered that too.
"Well, it's a rather complicated story..." you said, glancing at him, who was sitting next to you, carefully giving you space. However, he looked like a child waiting for a story from an adult. "I was young, and he was very good at pretending to be good.
Hughie nodded slowly, swallowing hard, his eyes dropping to his own lap. "Yeah… I guess he was."
"That's the best summary I can give you. Even though it didn't all start that way…" you muttered back.
But you were trying to calm yourself because your head was now starting a weird, faint, rhythmic throbbing behind your temples. You were nervous about seeing him again. Damn it, who wouldn't be? The guy was a real jerk on many occasions: blunt, unfiltered, and a misogynist, though fundamentally broken.
He was a product of a time when men like him were told the world belonged to them, and women were just the scenery. Unfortunately, although everyone else just saw the image of that womanizing playboy, you knew he was just a young man who had desperately wanted to be someone for his dad but took the wrong path, becoming something entirely different.
He had swallowed Vought’s lies whole just to feel like he mattered, trading whatever humanity he had left for a shield. The heavy thud of a brown paper bag being tossed into your lap by Butcher snapped you out of your thoughts.
"Rations, love..." Butcher scoffed from the passenger seat, not even bothering to turn around. "Eat up. Don't want you fainting before you can put a leash on the mad dog." You opened the bag and stared inside.
"A bacon cheeseburger" Hughie had called it. In 1982, fast food existed, of course, but it hadn't evolved into this weird shit, a compressed disc of meat drowning in a sauce so artificial it almost looked like paint.
"What the fuck is this?" you said as you took the hamburger out of the bag. You had an expression somewhere between disgust and curiosity, which undoubtedly amused Butcher a lot. In other words, in the small town where you lived there were hamburgers, but they were homemade, and they didn't look like this one.
"That's progress." Butcher responded with his trademark cynicism. "Speaking of your lovey-dovey, he's currently holed up in a shithole motel. Watching television and drinking himself into a stupor. He hasn't changed a bit."
"Benjamin never changed." you noted, your voice dropping as you carefully placed the bizarre burger back into the greasy paper, the hamburger tasted strange.
"He was always a monster..." Marvin's voice cut through the hum of the engine. It wasn't loud, but it had a sudden, rigid edge that made everyone shut up. In the passenger seat, Butcher rolled his eyes.
Here he went again…
You frowned slightly, looking at the back of Marvin's head. "Ben was an arrogant, toxic bastard, Mr. Milk. But he was Vought's premier puppet. A bully with a shield."
"He wasn't just a bully..." Marvin replied, his knuckles squeezing tight against the steering wheel.
"Marvin..." Hughie started, his voice cautious, trying to placate him. "We don't have to—"
"No, Hughie. She needs to know who the hell she’s going to see." Marvin interrupted. Without another word, he violently pulled the van into the empty parking lot, killing the engine. He turned his torso around to look at you, his eyes bloodshot, shining with a raw pain that was decades old. "In 1965, your husband was doing a Vought publicity stunt in Harlem. A couple of car thieves were running away..."
Marvin began to speak, trying to do so as firmly as possible, without letting the anger consume him. "Soldier Boy decided to show off for the cameras. He picked up a station wagon and threw it..." Then he paused. Butcher, surprisingly quiet, placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, giving him the silent strength to continue the story.
"He threw it through the roof of a house..." Marvin continued, each word dropping like lead. "My grandfather's house. My grandfather was sitting right there in his armchair. My father… my father watched his dad get crushed into paste by a car your husband threw because he wanted to look like a big man on the evening news."
Your breath caught in your throat as the horrific mental image hit you.
"My father spent the rest of his life working himself to death, trying to sue Vought, trying to get justice until his heart gave out."
A young boy, unable to do anything, watched his father get crushed by a car inside his own home. Sadly, by 1965, you had practically separated from Ben emotionally because the charm had worn off, and exhausted by his suffocating need for female attention, you had locked yourself away in your own corner of the apartment, refusing to feed his monstrous ego.
And Benjamin hadn't handled your withdrawal well.
Denied the attention he felt entitled to at home, he had spiraled hard into a haze of drugs, heavy drinking, and whatever starlets Vought threw at him to keep him compliant. He was constantly high, paranoid, and desperate to prove he was still a god. That was the Ben who went to Harlem that day. A man frantic to feel powerful because his own wife was slipping through his fingers.
"I…" your voice, usually so calm, was barely a whisper. "Marvin… I didn't know. When he came home boasting about 'cleaning up the streets' that night, he was so high he could barely stand. I didn't ask questions because I just wanted him out of my sight. Vought told me it was a routine patrol."
"Of course Vought lied…" Marvin said, his shoulders trembling slightly as he turned back to the steering wheel. "But it wasn't a patrol to me. It was my whole life."
You remained silent. You felt guilty for some reason, even though you weren't the one who committed that horrendous act.
"But your husband is the one who owes me a debt… not you." Marvin’s voice added, entirely devoid of malice toward you. He was a good man, driven by justice, and despite the raw, unadulterated weight of sixty years of stolen peace, he knew how to separate the monster from the woman who had shared his cage.
From the passenger seat, Butcher let out a low, dark whistle, a shark-like grin cutting through his beard as he glanced back at you.
"Well..." Butcher murmured, his eyes gleaming with malicious satisfaction. "Now's your chance to help him collect, love. The next stop is Ohio."
You all arrived at the motel a few hours later. You looked around with deep suspicion; it was undoubtedly a seedy, disgusting place to see your supposed ex-husband staying. Butcher reached out to open the door, but Marvin stopped his hand, looking at you one last time. "There's something we need to tell you. You don't really know who you're going to meet…"
"Open the door, Butcher. There's nothing I haven't seen from him..." you said with a sudden surge of courage.
He didn't need to be told twice. With a heavy shove of his shoulder, the flimsy wooden door of Room 104 gave way with a pathetic click of the lock, swinging open into the dim, damp interior. The stench hit you first. It was so suffocating you felt your eyes watering from the smell of cheap weed, stale gin, and decades of unwashed misery that belonged to shitty motels like this one.
Letting out a sigh to keep from getting dizzy, you stepped inside with the boys, noticing that the only light came from the flickering, bluish glow of a massive, bulky television set from the late nineties.
Benjamin was sitting on the edge of a sagging mattress, wearing a flowered robe that looked like a woman's because of how ridiculously short it was. Holy fuck, you could almost see everything. Nothing you hadn't seen before, of course, but it was still surprising. He stared blankly at the screen, a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey dangling loosely from his fingertips.
"Oi... I brought some old friends, mate" Butcher announced, his voice dripping with his usual casual arrogance as he stepped fully into the room. "And a very special guest."
"Did you bring me a whore or something? Because damn it, I’m sick of polishing my own medal in this shithole. My hand's about to fall off…" Ben muttered.
This wasn't the flawless, sun-bronzed god that Vought had plastered on billboards for decades. His eyes, once so bright and full of a terrifying, sharp energy, were bloodshot, hollow, and ringed with dark, heavy shadows. He looked completely worn down to the bone, like a ghost trapped in a body too strong to die. Butcher glanced back at you, his eyes tilting in a silent question. You just scoffed in disgust.
Yet, that sharp, familiar sound somehow made Benjamin move his head slowly, his gaze sweeping past Butcher and landing squarely on you.
"Great..." Ben muttered, his voice raspy as he rubbed his bloodshot eyes with his free hand. "Fucking great. Now that shit is making me see things. I knew those pills smelled like fucking bad battery acid..." He raised the whiskey bottle to his lips again, expecting your image to dissolve into the damp wallpaper.
But you didn't dissolve, and that was a problem.
You just stood there, arms crossed, staring down at him with the exact same look of absolute exhaustion you used to give him back in New York before you told him you wanted a divorce. You actually felt sorry for him, even now. It was something that, deep down, despite his infidelity and everything else, you hadn't wanted for him. Ben was frozen. The bottle hovered inches from his mouth, his gaze snapping from your face to Butcher’s shark-like grin and then to Hughie.
"Something's wrong, mate?" Butcher asked, leaning against the doorframe, clearly wanting to see if he could provoke him a little. "Seeing visions?"
The bottle slipped from his fingertips, shattering on the floor. Dark liquid splashed over his bare feet, but he didn't even flinch. He stood up slowly, the ridiculously short, flowered robe hanging open as the sheer, imposing size of his chest.
You looked up at his head, actively ignoring his groin.
"Gillian?" Fuck, that was all you needed. Benjamin wants to use his last name on you, trying to have a claim to something that expired decades ago. Because for forty years, his mind had been a prison of Russian torture, but as he stared at you, the paranoia of a man warped by Vought and betrayal locked right back into place. You noticed a terrifying spike of heat radiating from his chest.
That part was completely new to you, and it was deeply unsettling.
"What the fuck is this?" Ben growled, his eyes never leaving yours as he took a heavy step forward, stopping just two feet away from you. Up close, he was a wall of muscle, stale alcohol, and raw panic. "Did they send you to put me back in a box?! Huh? Vought decided to send the devoted wife to try and beg her husband to come back?"
Ben's jaw tightened. He stared down at you, his chest heaving under the silk robe, completely blindsided by your lack of fear. He was invading your personal space, you could smell the bitter sting of gin on his breath.
"What's the plan, hmm?" he sneered, his voice dropping into a low rasp that made you remember exactly how it was before everything went to shit. "You gonna get down on your knees and beg me to let 'em lock me up again? Because I remember you used to look real good down there, but I don't think you've got the mouth to talk me into a box today."
It was a disgusting, vile display of the exact unfiltered trash that had driven you away forty years ago. You didn't blink. Before the last disgusting word could even leave his mouth, your hand connected perfectly with his cheek. The slap was incredibly loud, echoing through the cramped motel room. Benjamin’s face snapped violently to the side from the sheer force of your blow.
In the corner, Hughie covered his mouth, while Butcher's eyebrows shot up in genuine, dark amusement. You really had the non-existent balls to raise your hand to him. Amazing.
"You're still a jerk..." you said, your voice cutting through his bravado. "Nobody sent me, Benjamin. And don't call me Gillian... I'm not your wife anymore."
Benjamin stayed like that for a long, agonizing second. But then, slowly, his shoulders began to shake. He turned his head back to look at you, and to everyone's absolute shock, a dark, slow smirk was spreading across his face. He swiped a thumb over his lip, tasting the bitter sting of the slap, his bloodshot eyes suddenly alive with a dangerous, wicked spark.
"Goddamn..." Ben murmured, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly chuckle that was entirely too intimate. "There she is. I was wondering where my girl went."
He leaned down slightly, his gaze dropping to your lips before snapping back to your eyes. You moved your hands, holding them up slightly to maintain a distance without touching him.
"You always did like it rough, sweet cheeks. Remember Buenos Aires in '56? Damn, you gave me the exact same look right before we tore that hotel suite apart."
A sudden spike of heat hit your lower belly hearing those words. You hated it. You hated that just the mention of that sweaty, chaotic night in Argentina made your pulse race it was still that phase of honeymoon. Before you knew the whole truth behind him, the women, the drugs, Crimson Countess, and everything else. You hated too that, despite the cheap weed, the ridiculous flowered robe, and the forty-year gap, the animalistic pull between you two was still right there.
But you weren't going to blush like you used to in those early years, because you knew Benjamin's playbook now.
So you decided to play along, at least a little. You reached out, your fingers lightly trailing over the lapel of his absurd robe, just a hair's breadth away from his skin. You didn't know if it was from being locked up in this motel room all this time or what, but he now had an abnormal, intense warmth radiating from his chest.
Then, you hummed, your eyes locking onto his.
"You know, honey? Back then, you actually had the stamina to back up that big mouth of yours."
Ben's breath hitched. His smirk widened, and the bastard actually dared to bite his lower lip, his eyes darkening with a hunger that was entirely too familiar.
"But now?" you continued, your fingers giving the silk of his robe a sharp, playful tug that forced him to lean a little closer to your face. "Now you’re just a pathetic wreck hiding in a garbage shithole. And it's kind of a turn-off, darling."
Ben was caught between intense arousal and absolute mortification at your words. He knew that time had made you a different woman; you had not only matured but also adapted. He opened his mouth to fire back a devastating, macho retort, but his brain completely short-circuited under the weight of your insult.
"Umh, okay, this is great, really..." Hughie muttered, his voice impatient as he stepped forward. "But Crimson Countess is already dead, Homelander is losing his mind by the second, and we didn't track you down to this shithole to watch you two have a mid-century marriage counseling session."
Hughie then let out one of his nervous laughs, trying not to seem apprehensive to anyone.
"But Ben, we have a deal. We get you the rest of Payback, and you help us kill Homelander. Are we doing this or what?" Hughie swallowed nervously, worried that this might trigger more vulgarities from Ben; he had already said several things to him before.
You let go of Ben’s lapel with a sharp, amused click of your tongue.
"Nice robe…" you muttered, looking at him up and down, and then you moved towards the sofa, sitting down and calmly crossing your legs. Benjamin snapped his head toward Hughie, his eyes narrowing into a dangerous glare.
"Watch your mouth, kid!" he growled, fixing his robe with an aggressive, embarrassed yank to cover his thighs as if, out of nowhere, he had an attack of modesty. "I didn't forget the deal. I'm just… evaluating the company."
"Right..." Butcher chimed in, stepping between you and Ben, a manipulative grin cutting through his beard. "And now that you’ve reunited with the ex-wife, I suggest you get your pants on, sunbeam. You don't know where the rest of your old teammates are hiding in 2026, but we do. We have a lead on Mindstorm."
You looked at Butcher; he hadn't told you that you were going with them to look for that jerk.
"I'm not going..." you said, frowning. Butcher looked at you as if you had insulted something very precious to him, and before he could say anything else, you added: "No, Butcher. You told me that this senile old man was acting crazy and that you wanted to know if I could stop him."
"Oh, love…" Butcher sighed heavily, taking a step closer to you, his voice dropping into that smooth, deceitful tone he used when he was trying to sell a lie. "Plans change, don't they? We need a leash on the big guy, and you're the only bloody thing he actually looks at without wanting to blow it to pieces. Think about it: we get Mindstorm, we get the rest of Payback, and you get to make sure your lovely ex-husband doesn't accidentally level half the country."
What a fucking prick, you thought when you saw him. He sounded like you were your ex-husband's nanny, an ex-husband you didn't really want to be involved with anymore, you just wanted… well, you know what? You didn't even know what the hell you wanted. You could have told those three guys to get lost and slammed the door in their faces.
But something made you come here, something pulled you here. Maybe it was the fact that you wanted to make sure he was still alive, or maybe... you don't know.
"Don't talk about me like I'm not in the goddamn room, Butcher." Ben barked from the edge of the bed. He looked at you, his eyes scanning your face with a mixture of intense hunger and bitter resentment. "And you... you think you have a choice? You always did love to play the independent woman, sweetheart, but let’s be real for a second. You missed me. You spent forty years running around, probably letting every cheap suit at Vought handle you, just waiting for the real thing to come back."
"Are you calling me a whore?" you snapped back. "Because you're the last person on this goddamn earth who can, Benjamin. And I did run away, it's true, but because I was sick of how sick Vought was as you were, and I went far away…"
"Far away?" Ben cut you off. "You didn't go anywhere, doll. You're still breathing my air, you're still using my last name, and you're right here in front of me. You can pretend you're done with me all you want, but we both know how this ends."
You didn't back down. In fact, you got up from the sofa: "You know? I had faith that them taking you to the Russians would change you, but you're still the same arrogant piece of shit I left behind."
Ben's entire demeanor shifted when the Russians were mentioned. The boys had told you what the Russians had done to Benjamin back then, it was undoubtedly a low and awful blow to have said that to him.
But… deep down, you know he kind of deserves it.
So you simply stepped back, giving him a cold, dismissive look: "Keep telling yourself that, Benjamin. If it helps your bruised ego handle the fact that I survived just fine without you."
And with those words you leave the motel room to wait in the van.
Yay, finally part 2!
i admit i got a little tangled up in it myself because i've decided not to plan the stories too much, because i get stuck in a planning loop and nothing ever comes of it. anyway, i hope you enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it.
I've decided to give this blog a sort of rebranding. My idea is to return to an old passion of mine, which is writing, regardless of whether it's good or bad.
I feel like I've been bottling things up for a long time, holding onto feelings that I feel are somehow consuming me from the inside. I know it sounds dramatic (and I apologize), but lately my mind and soul have been asking me to be more myself, rather than what others want or expect me to be.
In other words, I feel like this is a kind of dark night of the soul (if you've read about it, you know what I mean, and if not, I'll help you):
the dark night of the soul is a metaphor that describes a profound existential and spiritual crisis. It is characterized by an intense feeling of emptiness, loss of meaning, and desolation, where old life structures, beliefs, or identities crumble.
So yes… it hit me hard.
Anyway, there will be 2 lists of fanfics and even general writings, one in english and another in my native language: spanish. That way I feel I can express myself better and anyone who wants to can enjoy reading it.
I've been thinking lately about how the use of AI has been damaging the writing community. And other areas too.
Because I think the saddest thing you can read is, after creating a one-shot or something similar, being told it's AI. Especially for those of us who usually translate stories into English, even though it's not our native language.
I've already seen several writers this happen to… 😢
It's just that it's so strange how people have started to normalize using AI to write the plot for you and basically everything.
Or maybe it's because back in my day, you racked your brain trying to come up with a good plot and made sure it all came together without looking like a poorly sewn patchwork quilt.
Damn, and yet, people liked it even in that state.
Summary : Benjamin Poindexter confesses that he has been obsessively fantasizing about a domestic future with you.
Pairing : DDBA! Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Fluff!!!! (Maybe flangst?) Domestic but still unhinged Dex, obsessive love, possessive relationship, reader is mentioned to be a PhD student in forensic psychology (no age is mentioned), codependency, romanticized violence, injury care, talks of marriage, future children talk, brief mention of breeding kink and sex is implied (but it’s for set up I swear), established relationship, hurt/comfort, Dex's version of a nuclear family is a bit unhealthy but he means well!! (Let me know if I miss anything!) set right after the ending of DDBA Season 2.
Word Count : 9.8k
Requested by : multiple people asking for Dex fluff!
Notes : this is my attempt to write a domestic (yet still obsessive) Dex while not being too ooc, inspired by the song Bloom by the Paper Kites. Also, should I start a Dex taglist? Anyways, Enjoy!
You had not meant to start talking about employment while you were wiping blood off Benjamin Poindexter on your bed.
It just slipped out of you, somewhere between the towel going pink under your fingers and the smell of peroxide rising through the warm, lived-in air of your studio apartment.
You and Dex shared that space in New York, which sounded more pathetic than it felt. It wasn’t luxurious. It wasn’t really the kind of place people imagined when they said they wanted to build a life with their love of their life. There was no separate bedroom, no separate dining room, no hallway to put your coats in. The kitchen was barely its own room, more of a stubborn little strip of counter and cabinets pretending to be separate from the rest of the apartment, and the bed sat close enough to a cabinet that you had once knocked a stack of your research books onto the mattress by accident and Dex had caught two before they hit your knees.
But it was yours, and that made a difference.
Dex didn’t really need much. That was one of the first things you had learned about him, and one of the saddest.
He owned what he could carry, what he could hide, what he could use: clothes, weapons, toothbrush, a plain black jacket that had seen through more death than most people. He hadn’t moved into your life so much as folded himself carefully into the empty spaces of it, as if he was still waiting to be told he had taken up too much room.
You had filled the rest. Your desk sat in the corner under the window, always drowning in highlighters, case studies, printed articles, and half-dead pens. Your forensic psychology textbooks were stacked wherever they would fit. There was a mug full of rulers and pencils beside your laptop, a corkboard with notes and deadlines and a photobooth strip of the two of you in Coney Island that Dex pretended not to care about but always noticed when it tilted crooked.
Of course he cared. It was your first date.
And though he didn’t tell you, he had made a copy of it and put it under his suit when he went out, right over his heart. It was a reminder that you wanted him home.
But this space was enough. It was more than enough, somehow.
There was still room to dance in the kitchen if you were careful. Last Saturday, barefoot and half-asleep, with the radio turned on, you had twirled yourself into his arms to Tina’s Proud Mary. Dex had just stood there like he had no idea what to do until you took his hands and put them on your waist. There was still room for him to lift you onto the counter when you kissed him too sweetly for too long. There was still room for dinner eaten on a small table with two folding chairs, there was still room for your laundry tangled together in one basket, for his shoes beside yours by the door.
There was still room, somehow, for Dex to crowd you back against the wall, hands firm on your hips, mouth hot against your throat while you laughed under your breath and told him the neighbors were going get tired of hearing how well he fucked you.
Room for him to murmur filthy and wrecked things, that he should “throw your pills away,” that he was going to “knock you up, huh? Want me to put a baby in you?”
You’d pull back with a wicked smile, nails hooked in his shirt, and you’d whisper, “That is not the threat you think it is, baby.”
You chalked it up to your boyfriend being a kinky little shit. You should have paid more attention to the way his eyes went black, the way his grip tightened on your skin. When he kissed you again, it was with the devoted certainty of a man who had just realized his most unhinged fantasy was not his alone.
Still, even in this small fantasy, there was still room to pretend, on the good nights, that you were normal.
Tonight was not one of the good nights.
Dex had come home after a day across the Supreme Court building with blood dried dark along his cheekbone, though you suspected none of it was his.
Even if it was, you knew he wasn’t hurt at all, because Dex didn’t stagger or slump. He didn’t come through the door gasping or cursing or asking for help. He entered the apartment with rigid control in his body, like every step had been measured in advance. He came in like arriving home had been a decision, not an escape. Like whatever had happened in this room, with you, was sacred compared to the rest of the world.
He came home like he had not been part of the makeshift siege at court.
Like he had not shot the Mayor’s aide.
Like the whole city had not been tearing itself apart on the news for hours while you sat on the bed with your phone in your hand, refreshing headlines you didn’t want to read and listening for footsteps in the hallway.
When he looked at you, his pupils tracked your face. Before he let you touch him, before he let you ask questions, before he decided whether his own body was allowed to matter, his eyes went over you like a security sweep to make sure you were safe.
Then they landed on your arm and saw a bruise.
It was nothing, really. You had caught yourself badly against the fire escape earlier when you’d climbed out for air because the apartment had felt too small with sirens in the distance and Dex not answering his phone. It was a mean little scar, blue and purple, but shallow enough not to hurt you permanently. It was annoying, more than anything. You had almost forgotten about it.
But Dex looked at it like it was evidence.
So now you were sitting beside him on the bed with a towel, a bottle of peroxide, cotton pads, and the sad frozen bag of peas you had pulled from the freezer because neither of you owned a real ice pack. You were trying to clean blood from his face. He was trying to ice your bruise.
It would have been funny if it did not make you want to cry.
“Give me your arm,” he said.
“There’s literally blood on you,” you sighed.
“Not mine,” he said dismissively, confirming your suspicions, “give me your arm.”
“Benjamin.”
His hazel eyes flicked up, mostly because you only called him that when you were annoyed at him.
You stared at each other for one stubborn second, but he didn’t seem like he was going to let up.
Then you sighed and gave him your arm.
He took it carefully, his fingers gentle around your wrist despite the split skin across his knuckles. He pressed the frozen peas to the bruise like he was handling precious and breakable gemstones, his mouth set in a hard line, his focus absolute.
That was the thing about loving Dex: it wasn’t sensible. It had never been sensible.
You’d always had a practical head on your shoulders. You were getting your third degree in forensic psychology because you liked patterns, motive, broken systems, and the strange little hinges inside people that made them choose one door instead of another. You were both a student and a research assistant at the university, which sounded better on paper than it felt in your bank account. You were technically employed, technically building experience, technically lucky to have the position at all. In reality, you were paid in a way that felt insulting once, tuition costs, books, and subway fare had finished carving you hollow.
Still, you were smart. Academically, you understood obsession. You had annotated articles on attachment trauma, violent conditioning, hypervigilance, and maladaptive devotion. You had spent whole nights highlighting phrases that described people like Dex in clinical and sterile language.
You knew the warning signs and studied the red flags. You knew the vocabulary you were supposed to use. You knew what you were supposed to do when someone like Bullseye looked at you like you were the last fixed point in the universe: run.
But when Dex saved your life during an Anti-Vigilante Task Force raid on the lab you were visiting, all that practical knowledge had become extremely inconvenient.
It had been chaos: glass breaking, alarm screaming. Your supervisor shouted for everyone to get down. The AVTF had come in hard, looking for records, samples, names, anything connected to vigilante research and enhanced activity. You had hidden beneath a workstation with one hand clamped over your mouth and your heartbeat so loud you thought it might give you away.
Then Dex had arrived.
He had been hunting that day. You later found out because he told you.
He had moved through your lab with a purpose, turning the room itself into a weapon. A glass beaker found its way into a man’s throat. He had thrown a ruler with such perfect force, it split skin and cartilage. A metal clipboard managed to dislocate a man’s jaw, even through the helmet. Pens, scalpels, broken glass, a heavy ceramic mug from your professor’s desk were all used. Ordinary things became fatal in his hands, as if the universe had been waiting for him to point at something and decide what it was for.
He killed twelve men with office supplies and lab equipment, and then he crouched in front of you, breathing hard, blood on his cheek, and asked you if you were okay.
You should have been horrified. You were horrified.
Part of you had been shaking with terror. Another part, the part you did like to examine too closely, had understood with awful clarity that some monsters were safer when they were loved than when they were not.
You should have run from him.
Instead, you had fallen in love.
Worse, he had fallen, too.
The love that grew between the two of you wasn't sweet, nor safe. Not in the way people with normal jobs and normal apartments and normal dinner plans fell in love. Dex loved wholly. He loved like if he took his eyes off you, the world would immediately try to take you from him. He loved like affection and violence had gotten tangled in him so early that he no longer knew how to separate protection from possession.
And you, for whatever reason, loved him right back.
You loved him in the studio apartment with the too-small kitchen and the desk in the corner. You loved him when he stood behind you while you brushed your teeth, chin resting against your shoulder, silent and half-asleep and watchful even then. You loved him when he checked the locks twice before bed. You loved him when he pretended not to care about your old Greek and Roman mythology books and then remembered every story you had ever told him. You loved him when he came home with blood under his nails, but looked at your scraped arm like the city owed him an explanation.
“Hold still,” he said, pressing the frozen peas more carefully against your skin.
You stared at him, at the slight bruise under his jaw and the split knuckles he was ignoring because your shallow scrape had somehow hurt him more.
“I should get a job,” you said, almost offhandedly.
His hand stopped.
You hadn’t meant for it to come out like that: flat and sudden. Not while he was sitting on your shared bed after a long day. But there it was anyway sitting between you and the ruined silence of the apartment.
Dex looked up slowly. “You have a job.”
“I have half a job.” You laughed without much humor. “I have a professor who thinks payment is optional because experience is apparently a currency. Because PhD students clearly don’t need to eat, right?”
He huffed. A few months ago, he did offer to dispose of your professor and you just waved him off, saying the person who would take his job would be worse. He offered to dispose of him, too, but stopped offering half-measured solutions when you kissed his forehead and said the department would probably just shut down because they can’t afford two murders. “But you’re in school,” he said.
“So?” You shrugged, “Lots of people are in school and have extra jobs.”
“You babysit Mrs. Smithers’ cat,” he frowned.
You snorted before you could stop yourself. “She pays us in lasagnas.”
“She makes good lasagna,” he insisted.
“That is not an income stream, Dex.”
“No,” he shook his head, knowing how hard you actually worked for your spot in the institution. “But you’re always busy anyway. I can take care of you”
“You’re wanted, baby,” you reminded him.
That hurt.
Dex’s eyes barely changed, but you knew him too well now. You saw the tiny shift in his eyes. His fingers adjusted around your wrist. He looked down at your arm again, focusing too intently on the ice pack, as if his obsession to keep you safe could be used to cover a wound in the conversation.
“I can provide,” he said.
You sighed immediately, because of course he would say it like that. Like a vow, like a reflex, like a wound of his own.
“I know.”
“I pay rent,” he reminded you, though he said it like it was a responsibility. He didn’t use it against you; it was just a fact.
“I know.”
“I pay groceries,” he said.
“Yes, Dex,” you huffed, “I know.”
His teeth clenched, more disappointed in himself than at you. “Then what?”
You looked around the apartment because it was easier than looking at him.
Yes, Dex paid rent. Dex bought groceries. Dex came home with cash sometimes, folded tight and tucked away in envelopes. He made sure there was good coffee in the cabinet because you hated your mornings without it. He bought the brand of cereal you liked and pretended it was because it had been on sale. He fixed the loose leg on your desk chair. He remembered bills before you did.
He provided, but it was not stable.
Dex didn’t clock into shifts. Dex didn’t have a payroll department, a predictable deposit, a pension, or a neat little tax form with an employer’s name printed at the top. His work came in fragments and dangerous calls from powerful people who knew what he could do.
Odd jobs, if you wanted to be generous. Assassination, if you wanted to be honest.
He did it because he was good at it.
But mostly, lately, he did it because of you.
Because rent was due. Because the fridge needed filling. Because your textbooks cost you too much. Because he liked watching you eat takeout on the bed with your legs folded beneath you, he liked seeing you safe and warm and full in his room. Because every dollar he brought home became proof that he could keep you satisfied, that he could build a life, that he could be more than the worst thing he knew how to do.
And that terrified you almost as much as it touched you, because there was no stability in that kind of work.
Sometimes, Dex wished he had known you when he was still with the FBI.
Before prison. Before Fisk. Before his face was plastered on the news. Before every job application in the world became a joke. He imagined it sometimes in a way that felt masochistic.
He imagined coming home to you in a suit and taking you to dinner with a paycheck that had his name on it. He imagined you flowers, buying you pretty things and whatever else you asked for.
He could have been a man for you. As outdated as he knew that sounded, he still wished he could be that man again.
“It’s not about whether you do,” you said carefully. “It’s just that… it’s not steady.”
His teeth tightened further.
“I’m not insulting you,” you reassured.
“You think I can’t take care of you.”
“No.” You leaned closer, your voice softening the impact. “I think you take care of me so much that you forget I should be allowed to take care of you, too.”
He didn’t answer.
Outside, a siren wailed below, then faded into traffic and distance. The studio felt very small around you, too warm and intimate.
Dex looked down at your arm again and pressed the melting bag of peas more gently against your skin.
“I’ll find something steady,” he said.
Your heart clenched. “Dex.”
“I will,” he promised.
“Where?”
His eyes lifted to yours. You tried to smile, but it came out tired and fond and sad all the same. “You shot Buck Cashman in front of half the city. I’m not saying that like I’m mad. I’m saying maybe LinkedIn is not going to work out this month.”
“I’ll find something,” he said.
It came out too quickly, too flatly, like he was sealing a wound before you could see how deep it went.
You looked at him where he sat on the edge of the bed, one knee pressed against yours, the frozen bag of peas melting slowly in his hand. You saw the bruise smudged high beneath his cheekbone, the split in his lower lip that he kept worrying with his tongue like he had forgotten it was there. He looked awful. Beautiful, too. The world had tried, again and again, to make him unlovable, and your stupid heart had taken one look at him and said, mine.
“What, a desk job?” you asked.
Dex gave you a look.
He wasn’t offended exactly. More like you had asked him to picture himself, in his Bullseye suit that you loved so much, sitting under fluorescent lights, wearing a lanyard, filling out forms, and smiling politely at coworkers named Brad from HR.
The idea was so absurd that, despite everything, your mouth twitched upward.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” you said, leaning in a little. “Did I insult your very promising administrative career?”
He frowned unwillingly, and for a second you hated yourself for accidentally being a little too mean.
Still, you couldn’t help yourself. You leaned closer and kissed the scar near his cheekbone so gently it was barely anything at all. Dex closed his eyes for half a second. When you pulled back, he still kept his eyes closed for one breath longer.
“Baby,” you whispered, voice gentler now, nearly breaking with fondness, “you cannot put ‘excellent with projectiles’ on a résumé.”
His eyes opened and found you immediately. “I could.”
You shook your head, “You really, really shouldn’t.”
“I have skills.” He pouted. It was cute.
“You have criminal charges.”
“Transferable skills,” he said, with such dry seriousness that you chuckled before you could stop yourself.
His posture changed, like he always did when you laughed. Not dramatically, though. He didn’t transform all at once. He softened by millimeters, as if your happiness had reached into some fortified part of him and loosened one bolt at a time. The hard line of his shoulders eased. His teeth unclenched. His thumb, which had been pressing the peas too carefully to your bruise, shifted a little.
For a moment, he looked less like a weapon that was left loaded in your apartment and more like a man who had come home to you because there was nowhere else in the world he could bear to be, because he was yours. Because he wanted so badly to be good for you that it almost broke your heart.
He adjusted the ice pack again. “You shouldn’t have to worry about money.”
“We live in New York, Dex.” You tried to sound light but it just came out tired. “Worrying about money is basically a civic duty.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said again.
He didn’t say it like a boyfriend trying to be useful. He said it like a soldier stating a mission objective. Like he had identified the enemy— rent, groceries, tuition, your professor underpaying you, the whole grinding machine of the city— and had decided that he would kill it if he could. “Not you,” he added, quieter.
And Dex didn’t feel this way for you because he had learned to be a sympathetic person. He wasn’t.
He didn’t suddenly feel tender toward the whole world because he learned how to love. He didn’t look at strangers and imagine their mothers. He didn’t hesitate before hurting people who had put themselves on the wrong side of his line. He could kill a room full of people and sleep like a baby afterward. He didn’t ask himself if the Anti-Vigilante Task Force agents had families who were waiting for them. Their blood did not weigh on his conscience in any meaningful way.
He hasn’t learned to be secretly good and noble under all the damage in some easy, redeemable way. He was only tender with you, and even that was not because you were an exception to his nature.
It was because somewhere along the way, Dex had thought of you and him as the same person.
You weren’t some separate innocent woman he loved from afar. You were not a moral compass he worshipped because you made him better. You were his life. His home.
Your body was his body outside his body. Your exhaustion was his exhaustion. Your money was his money, and his money was yours, not because he felt entitled to it, but because the two of you had stopped existing as separate organisms somewhere around the first month he slept in your bed and woke up with your hand on his chest. You were one system now. One thing. One fused unit pretending to be two people for legal convenience.
So watching you work long hours in a lecture hall that barely paid felt like self-harm. That was the clearest way his mind could understand it. Like the two of you shared one nervous system, and every hour you worked yourself past exhaustion was pain traveling down the same wire until it reached him, too.
“Come on, Dex,” you frowned. “You think I want you running yourself into the ground because you decided you have to pay every bill?”
His eyes lifted to yours, and all you saw was terrible sincerity. It was desperate enough to frighten you because it didn’t know how to ask for love without offering blood in return.
“I should take care of you,” he said.
Not I want to. Not I’d like to. Not even let me.
I should.
You swallowed. “Dex…”
“I should.” His voice roughened, and it was absolute, like he had said this to himself before. Like maybe he had been saying it for months, in his head, every time he bought groceries, every time he counted cash, every time he watched you fall asleep over your notes with your cheek pressed to an open textbook. “You shouldn’t have to think about it. Rent, food, school, any of it. You should just—” He stopped, eyes darting away. “You should just sit there and be pretty.”
That ruined you a little.
There were things you could have said: Things about partnership, equality, how love was not supposed to turn into duty, how his need to provide came from some wounded place in him that still believed usefulness was the same as worth. You knew those things. You believed them, mostly.
But then he looked at you like taking care of you wasn’t a burden but a privilege. Like the idea of failing at it scared him more than the city hunting him. Like every terrible thing he had ever been made into could be balanced, somehow, if he could use it to keep you warm, fed, safe, untouched by the worst parts of the world.
He sat there, bruised and exhausted, dried blood at his temple, your scraped arm cradled in one hand as if it mattered more than every wound on his own body.
So you kissed him.
You didn’t mean to make it deep. You meant it to be reassurance, just a little press of your mouth to his, a way of telling him you were not leaving, not angry, not disappointed in how his love manifested even when it frightened you.
But Dex never received you halfway.
He leaned in, immediate and helpless, his free hamd coming to your waist with that familiar, possessive spread of his fingers. It was not rough, because he was never rough with you unless you asked him to be. But it was intense, as if the second your lips touched his, his body decided the only thing that made sense was pulling you closer.
You kissed him until the frozen peas slipped slightly against your arm and neither of you cared. Until his muscles relaxed under yours. Until he made a small sound in the back of his throat that made you hum, pleased with yourself.
When you pulled away, his eyes stayed on your lips, looking at your mouth like it had betrayed him by leaving.
You brushed your thumb over his chin. “You cannot just decide to provide by sheer force of will.”
Dex blinked, still dazed enough from the kiss that it took him half a second to find the conversation again.
Then his eyes sharpened in that almost boyish, almost hopeful way. “What if I got work?”
You exhaled through your nose. “Again. Where?”
His thumb moved once against your waist in small strokes that were barely there.
“I heard that the CIA director is looking for someone to take over a contract,” he said.
You blinked.
It sounded clean on the surface and filthy underneath.
He said them carefully, like he was testing whether they could pass as normal if he used the right tone.
“You mean black ops,” you said blankly.
“I mean work.”
“Benjamin,” you tilted your head.
“It’s steady enough.” His eyes did not leave yours.
“That is not the same as safe.”
His eyes looked like guilt passing quickly through the devotion. “I can handle that.”
“I know you can.” You touched his cheek again, achingly gentle. “That’s what scares me.”
He looked at your face, taking inventory of every emotion there. His hand tightened at your waist.
“I’d come home,” he said.
Your heart ached. “You can’t promise that.”
“I’d make it true.”
“That’s not how promises work.”
“It is for me.”
And there he was. Your Dex. Your impossible, obsessive man, sitting in your too-small studio with blood on his face, telling you with complete sincerity that he could bend fate into obedience if the reward was coming home to you.
You wanted to argue, but he cut you off before you could even finish forming thoughts.
“If I got a job,” he said carefully, “I could buy you a ring.”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
For a second, you forgot how to breathe.
He had said it so quietly, so carefully, like the word itself was fragile. Like if he had manifested it into the room too hard, it might shatter before you could touch it.
A ring.
Dex watched you like he was waiting to see if he had ruined everything.
He didn’t look casual. He was never casual about you. He didn’t toss out precious things like the future just to see if they landed. He offered them like they had been a piece of his flesh cut out of him.
And you realized, in that second, that this had not been a stray thought.
Dex hadn’t just imagined it. Dex had been living with it.
You could see it now, in the way he held himself in the way his fingers had tightened just slightly at your waist, in the way his eyes kept flicking down to your mouth like he wanted to kiss the answer out of you and was forcing himself not to.
He had carried this around. Maybe for weeks. Maybe for months.
Maybe he had been thinking about marrying you while listening to your rant about your professor. He had been thinking about it while fixing the wobbly leg on your desk chair. He had been thinking about it while watching you laugh at Mrs. Smithers’ cat through the cracked door.
Maybe he had been thinking about it while buying groceries. Maybe he even stood in the pasta aisle with blood still under his sleeves, picking the brand you liked better because you once said the cheaper one tasted “dusty.”
“Mm,” you managed.
It was barely a sound. Your throat had gone tight. You were trying very hard not to break apart, trying not to let the whole sweetness of it take you down completely, but your hand was already lifting to his face. Your thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, careful of the split in his lip.
“You sure you wanna marry me?” you asked.
Dex looked genuinely offended. “Yes.”
It came so fast you almost laughed. You did, a little, but it cracked around the edges. “Really?”
His brow furrowed, as if the question itself made no sense. “Yes.”
“You’ve thought about it?”
Dex stared at you, and the answer was so obvious then.
He had probably thought about it too much. Dex didn’t daydream. He planned. He mapped. He calculated. Even his fantasies came with exit routes and contingency plans.
“Okay,” you whispered. “What would that life even look like?”
You saw this glint in his eyes, the way they widened by a fraction. You had asked the one question he had been dying to answer.
His hand stayed at your waist. His thumb moved once, almost unconsciously, a small stroking motion through the fabric of your shirt.
“I’d get us a house,” he said.
Your heart gave a helpless little kick.
His gaze drifted past you, not away in dismissal, but as if the apartment disappeared from his eyes.
“Not in the city,” he said. “Close enough if you still wanted it, for work or whatever you wanted, not right in it. Not sirens under the window all night, not this building where you can hear every footstep in the hall and know which ones don’t belong.”
His thumb moved once against your waist, like even with his head in the clouds he needed one hand on you to make sure the dream had a center.
“We’d look at the suburbs,” he continued. “I’d want roads I could learn. I want neighbors so you can bake them pie, but I don’t want them too close. We need a neighborhood with space between houses. We need streetlights that work. A sidewalk, maybe, where you could walk in the morning if you wanted and I wouldn’t spend the whole time looking over your shoulder.”
You stayed quiet.
You didn’t want to interrupt him. There was something too precious about the way he was speaking, like he had cracked open a safe inside himself and all these impossibly domestic things were spilling out.
“It would have a yard,” he said, smaller now. “Not huge. We don’t need huge, but we need enough. We would need a fence. A good one. Tall, but not ugly. I’d make sure it looked nice. You’d care about that.”
Your throat tightened.
“I’d make sure I have good sightlines in there,” he continued, “no blind spots.”
There he is.
“And I’d plant flowers,” he added.
You blinked. Dex glanced at you, then looked down again as if the admission embarrassed him more than the blood on his face.
“You like flowers. The wild-looking ones. The ones outside delis in buckets, or growing through fences. You slow down when you see them.” His mouth twitched faintly, affectionate. “You pretend you don’t, but you do.”
He… noticed?
“I’d plant those,” he said. “I don’t know anything about gardening, but I could learn.”
He kept going before you could answer
“There’d be a porch, or a back deck. I’d put a chair there for you.” A little warmth moved through his eyes, as if imagining it. “You’d probably bring a blanket out even if it wasn’t cold.”
You smiled, and it seemed to give him more courage.
“And you’d have an office,” he said. “A real one, not a desk shoved into a corner with your papers stacked on the floor.”
Your eyes stung.
“Built-in shelves if we could, for your research books,” he continued. “Your fiction books, all of them. You wouldn’t have to pile them on the windowsill or keep the heavy ones under the desk. Your desk would face a window, but no one should be able to see into it from the street.”
You let out the smallest laugh, but he kept drifting deeper now.
“There’d be a couch in there,” he said. “So I could sit with you while you worked. I’d be quiet.”
The confession was so completely him that something inside you melted. He said it without shame, without trying to make it sound less obsessive than it was. Of course he would watch you. Of course he had already imagined sitting in a room built for your mind, staring at you while you read and wrote and thought, content just to be near the machinery of you.
“I like when you’re focused,” he murmured. “You make that face.”
You did not ask what face. You wanted him to keep talking.
“The kitchen would be big,” he said next, and there was certainty in that, like he had stood in it a thousand times. “Big enough for that island you like.”
Your mouth parted.
“We’d have one with those ugly pendant lights,” he added, with the resigned tone of a man making a grave sacrifice.
You smiled fully now. “They’re not ugly,” was all you could manage under your breath.
He heard it and very quickly added, “They are. But you like them, so we’d have it.”
That nearly did you in.
“There’d be storage,” he said. “Pans would be in the cabinets, not in the oven. I’d build you a spice drawer and I’ll organise them.”
You pressed your lips together, smiling harder.
“I’d make coffee before you woke up,” he continued. “Yours first. I’d make breakfast and I’d make more than eggs. Pancakes, maybe. You like pancakes when you’re sad.”
Your smile trembled.
“I’d make dinners, too,” he said. “You could sit at the counter and read to me while I cooked.” He looked almost shy at that. “Or talk. I don’t care. I just like your voice.”
The room felt too small for him then. Too small for the size of what he wanted.
“And a dining table,” he said, his thumb stilled against you. “With more than two chairs.”
He swallowed once and kept going.
“The bathroom would have that shower,” he said. “Like the hotel you wouldn’t stop talking about.”
You almost laughed. “A rain shower?” You asked
“Yes,” he said seriously. “With a glass door, a bench, and heated floors, because you hate cold tile.”
His eyes flicked to your face.
“I’d spoil you,” he said, like a vow. His eyesight lowered to your hand, then back to your face.
You couldn’t speak, but he went on anyway, because now that he had started, the dream seemed to pull him forward by the heart.
“There’d be security,” he said. Of course there would be. But from Dex, even that sounded like love.
“I’ll get good locks with reinforced doors. I’d install cameras.” he said immediately, almost gently. “I’ll get motion lights and window sensors.”
He breathed out slowly.
“You wouldn’t have to check anything,” he said. “I’d do it.”
What he was saying was wouldn’t have to listen at night, or wonder, or brace, or be scared just because the world was dangerous. Dex would take the ritual of fear and make it his. He would check the doors, the windows, the shadows, so you could go upstairs and sleep.
“I’d check the locks before bed,” he said. “You could just go up and get in bed. Read or sleep with the light on if you want. I’d turn it off.”
He said it with such certainty that tears gathered before you could stop them.
He didn’t notice yet. He had gone too far into the house.
“There’d be a gun cabinet,” he continued, practical now. “Locked, of course, and separate from ammunition. I’ll get biometric locks and a backup key hidden somewhere only we knew.”
His focus sharpened slightly as he pictured it.
“And a weapons cabinet too, with knives, anything tactical, anything I wouldn’t want left out. It would be hidden or built into the wall somewhere no one would look. Not near the kitchen. Not near the bedrooms.” He said it like he had already rejected three possible locations. “Everything would be secured,” he continued. “No exceptions. Nothing lying around.”
Then, still looking into that future house, still seeing the walls and the locks and the rooms and all the dangerous love he wanted to put inside them, he added, almost absently, “at least until the kids are old enough.”
Oh.
“The kids?” you asked.
Dex blinked. For a second, he looked almost confused that you had stopped him there, like the kids had been so naturally integrated into the architecture of his fantasy that he had forgotten you were only just now seeing the floor plan. In his head, apparently, they already existed.
“Yes,” he said, as if it were obvious. “Kids.”
He said it as if this were already settled. As if the universe had filed the paperwork. As if somewhere, in some future suburb with a fenced yard, your children were already waiting for him to come home.
“You just assumed?” you asked, your voice dazed.
Dex’s brows pulled together like he was only now realizing assumption was supposed to be a problem.
Then his eyes searched yours, suddenly cautious.
“I—” He paused, his fingers tightening slightly at your waist. “I assumed you’d want them,” he finished. “I assumed I’d give you anything you wanted. And I assumed…” His eyes dropped, then lifted again. “I assumed if there was any way the world let me have you like that, I’d take it.”
There it was.
Dex didn’t want a family because he had always dreamed of domestic happiness. He wanted it like conquest. He wanted children because they would be yours, because they would be his, because they would be the physical evidence of a future he had no right to expect. Benjamin Poindexter didn’t want in half measures. He consumed possibility whole. If he loved you, he loved the future of you and the shape of you extended forward. The house that held you. The children that might come from you.
That was deranged. That wasn’t normal. But to you, that was also, for reasons you could not explain without sounding like you needed professional intervention, romantic.
Dex watched your mouth part. “I’d love them,” he said. “I would. I know I would. Because they’d be yours.”
There it was, not the socially acceptable version. Not I love children or I always wanted a family. Dex didn’t know how to make love sound normal when it came from him.
He would love them because they would carry your eyes, maybe, or your mouth, or your stubbornness. Because he would look at them and see you continued into another body.
“They’d be mine too,” he added, like that part was harder for him to trust. “And maybe that part could be good because it came through you.”
Dex looked down at his hands that had done terrible things and could still hold you like it was made of light.
So you only sat there letting him talk, letting him show you the things he had apparently been thinking around for months.
“Have you thought about names?” you asked.
Dex nodded slightly.
Your lips parted.
“You have,” you whispered.
He looked almost offended again, but not at you this time. At the idea that he could have built this whole imaginary house, this whole impossible future, and not named the children already running through it. “Of course I have.”
“Tell me,” you said.
Dex watched you carefully. You could tell that there was still that small, frightened part of him, the part waiting for the insult, the laugh, the moment where your wonder hardened into common sense. But you just looked… patient.
“For a boy,” he said, “Jason.”
Jason.
Dex’s voice lowered. “Because you loved Jason and the Argonauts when you were little. The way everyone went after something impossible.”
You remembered telling him that, barely. It had been one of those late-night conversations with your cheek on his chest. His fingers moved through your hair as you rambled about mythology books you used to check out of the library, about heroes who were never as perfect as people wanted them to be.
Dex had listened.
“And for a girl?” you asked, already knowing he had one.
“Callie,” he said then immediately added, “Short for Calliope. Callie at school. Calliope if she liked it. Whatever you liked.”
Your eyes stung. “Callie,” you whispered.
Dex nodded. “You said she was the muse of epic poetry. You liked that she belonged to stories.”
You pressed your fingers to your mouth. He remembered that too.
“Jason and Callie,” you said with a sigh.
You realized then, that Dex had not chosen names because he liked them. He had chosen names because he thought you would.
Because even in his most private fantasies, the children were not abstract. They were not trophies. They were not little versions of him he could shape into whatever he wanted. They were pieces of you carried forward into the world, proof that some part of you could exist outside your own body and still belong to him, too.
“You like them,” he realised.
“I love them.”
His hand tightened around yours. Then, as if the names had opened a door he could no longer close, he kept going.
“Jason would have your eyes,” he said, voice distant again, head fully in the clouds now. “He’d be quiet, I think, the kind of kid who watches first. He’d notice everything.”
Your throat tightened.
“And Callie,” he said, and a faint helplessness moved through his face. “She’d be trouble.”
You laughed a little.
“She’d climb things,” he continued. “She’d argue. She’d look right at me while doing exactly what I told her not to do.”
You could see it.
Worse, you could see how much he loved it.
This imaginary little girl, stubborn and wild, already had him wrapped around her tiny, nonexistent finger.
“She’d have your mouth,” he said, almost to himself. “Your attitude.”
“My attitude?”
His eyes flicked to yours, and there was something wickedly fond in them. “Your attitude.”
He looked down at your joined hands again, thumb moving over your knuckles, and his voice changed.
“They’d need to be ready.”
For what?
But you knew what for. This part that should’ve made you want to retreat, but it only made you want to lean in more, because this was Dex’s love too. The same root, grown through darker soil.
“Ready?” you asked.
“For the world,” he clarified.
Dex’s eyes were calm now, focused and devoted. There was nothing theatrical in him, nothing performative. He was not fantasizing about violence for the sake of it. He was imagining two children made from you and him, and his first instinct was to make sure nothing could ever make them helpless.
He wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. He was in the woods with Jason and Callie when they were older and taller.
“I know what I am,” he said with finality. “I know what I’m good for.”
Your heart pinched. “Dex…”
“No,” he said, because he knew you. Because he could hear the protest forming before you even opened your mouth. “Don’t do that.”
You tilted your head.
“I know what I’m good for,” he repeated, gentler this time, but no less certain. “And if I’m good for anything, I will make sure they have every tool in their disposal to survive.”
There was no self-pity in it. He didn’t sound like a man condemning himself. He sounded like a man who had finally found a use for the worst parts of him and decided that they would serve you.
“They won’t be helpless,” he said. “Not our kids.”
Our kids.
“Jason and Callie won’t be fragile and easy to hurt. I won’t do that to them.”
His jaw tightened, and pride flickered through his face.
“They’ll be smart. They’ll be aware. They’ll know when a room feels wrong. They’ll know what a threat looks like before it reaches them.”
You listened, heart thudding.
“And they’ll be skilled,” he said.
It mattered to him. You could hear it.
Skilled.
Not broken. Not molded. Not made into little copies of him. He wanted them skilled, accurate, and alive.
“I’d start small,” he continued. “I’ll teach them hand-to-hand, teach them how to use their reflexes. I’ll teach them how to move without panicking, how to get up when they fall, how to breathe when they’re scared. Jason would overthink it at first. He’ll want every movement perfect before he tries. Callie would rush in and get mad when I made her slow down.” His mouth curved up faintly. “She’ll hate slowing down.”
You almost smiled through the ache in your chest.
“But she’ll learn,” he said. “They both will.”
His eyes darkened around the imagination.
“When they’re older, I'll teach them how to aim.”
Aim was not violence to him, not really. It was discipline. It was proof that the body could obey the mind.
“They better have their old man’s aim,” he murmured.
It should have sounded awful.
And it did, a little.
But it also sounded like him imagining a son and daughter with pieces of himself; His focus, his loyalty, his ability to lock onto a target and not shake.
“They’ll know how to throw,” he said. “How to hit what they mean to hit. I’ll get them knives, when they’re old enough. Take them to the range to shoot guns when they're older. No one fucking picks on my kids and lives to see another day.” He looked at you then, and the obsession in his face had turned holy. “I’ll make sure they understand that.”
You swallowed.
“If they find themselves in a bad situation, I’ll make sure they’re better than lucky. Lucky runs out. Lucky gets them killed. I want them trained. I want them calm. I want them to be able to look at danger and know they’re more dangerous.”
His hand tightened around yours.
“I want Jason to know how to get Callie out if something happens. I want Callie to know how to get Jason out. I want both of them to know how to get back to their mother.”
Your breath caught.
Their mother.
Dex said it as if it were the center of the whole plan.
“I’ll make sure they come home in one piece,” he said, voice rough now. “Ready for dinner. That’s the point.”
Your throat tightened.
“I’ll make damn sure they can leave this house and come back to it. I’ll make sure you’re not sitting at that kitchen table wondering if they’re safe.” His eyes dropped to your mouth, then back up. “I don’t want you afraid.”
Fuck.
The whole deranged, violent, tender fantasy had always curved back to that. Dex teaching your future children to fight, to aim, to survive, not because he wanted war in the home, but because he wanted peace for you. Because his idea of fatherhood was Jason and Callie walking through the front door with backpacks tossed on the floor, cheeks flushed, while you stood at the stove or sat at the island with your coffee and didn’t have to imagine every terrible thing that might have happened to them.
“I’d kill for them, you know this,” he said, rubbing a slow circle on your skin, “I’d burn the whole world down for them.” Dex did not look away. “But if I know they can take care of themselves, then my eyes can stay where they belong.”
His hand cupped your face fully now.
“On you.”
He said it like it was obvious. Like the whole future had a single center of gravity and he had been circling it the entire time, pretending he was talking about houses and kitchens and gun cabinets and kids, when really he had only ever been talking about you.
“Because all of this,” Dex whispered, “would happen because of you.”
His thumb moved beneath your eye, catching the tear before it could fall properly. He looked at you like the city and the sirens and the blood on his knuckles were temporary, like the whole world outside the window was an environment he could outlast if it meant getting you somewhere safe.
“You understand that, right?” he asked, but his voice made it sound less like a question and more like a confession he needed you to survive hearing.
Dex leaned closer, his hand cupping your cheek now, holding you with that possession that never felt casual.
“I’d make sure the kids knew that,” he said. “I’d make sure they knew anything good in me came from you.”
Your lips parted, but nothing came out.
“The warmth in the house, the fairytales they would hear before bed, the flowers they pick from the garden.” His thumb brushed slowly along your cheekbone. “They’d know that was you. That all of it was you.”
Your eyes burned.
“They’d love you,” Dex whispered. “because you’re perfect.”
“Dex…”
“And they’d love me because I’d earn it.” he said.
Oh, Benjamin.
Your heart broke a little at that.
He said it simply, like love was not something he had ever expected to be given for free if it was him.
His hand slid a little lower, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth, parting your lips.
“You wouldn’t have to learn how to shoot,” he reassured. “Because you’d have me.”
His voice dropped lower, intimate and possessive all the same.
“I’d take care of you,” he continued, “because that’s the only thing I was made wrong enough to do right.”
It should have sounded suffocating. Maybe from anyone else, it would have. But from Dex, it felt less like a cage and more like a shelter.
A small, broken laugh caught in your throat.
His mouth curved faintly, almost shy and almost wicked. “You can just sit there and be pretty, huh, baby?”
Your heart gave in completely.
He said it like a promise, like he would happily make a fortress of his own body if it meant you never had to lift a finger.
Your tears started falling quicker before you could stop them.
They started coming too quickly, gathering along your lashes and breaking loose before you could blink them back. One rolled down the side of your nose. Another slipped along your cheek toward his thumb. Suddenly you were crying in front of him over a house that didn’t exist, children who hadn’t been born, a ring he hadn’t even given you yet, and the sincerity of Benjamin fuckin’ Poindexter imagining a life precious enough for you to be loved.
Dex noticed and his whole face changed. His hand, still cupping your cheek, squeezed slightly. His eyes moved over your face, searching for the wound, the mistake, the exact word that had hurt you.
“What?” he asked, his voice wound tight. “What did I say?”
You shook your head, but that only made another tear fall.
He frowned. “I upset you.”
“No.” Your voice cracked. You hated how small it sounded. “No, Dex.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
There was a panick-y edge beneath the flatness of his voice. Dex could handle blood and anger Dex could handle fear if it had a direction, if it could be aimed back at something. But your tears did something awful to him. They made him look helpless in the one way he could never tolerate: like he had caused pain he couldn’t kill.
You caught his wrist before he could pull his hand away from your face.
“Baby,” you whispered, “no.”
You pressed your cheek harder into his palm, making him understand that you were not resisting his grand plan. “These are not bad tears.”
Still, you could tell he didn’t believe you yet.
“They’re not,” you promised, laughing weakly even though your throat hurt. “You just… fuck, Dex. You just said all of that like it was real.”
His mouth parted slightly.
“You really want all of that?” You asked, though it sounded more squeaky than you’d like
Dex stared at you, looking almost offended again, as if he was wounded by the possibility that you could still doubt the size of what he wanted when he had just laid it open in front of you.
“Yes,” he said.
You breathed in shakily. “The house?”
“Yes.”
“The kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“The flowers?”
His thumb moved under your eye, wiping away another tear. “Yes.”
“Jason and Callie?”
His eyebrows relaxed immediately at the mention of the names. “Yes.”
You shut your eyes.
And for one second, because he had given you permission by wanting it so badly, you let yourself imagine it.
Dex driving with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching back at a red light because Calliope had dropped her stuffed animal and immediately made it everyone’s emergency. You could see it his eyes flicking from the mirror to the road to her little outstretched hand, his mouth set in that serious line like recovering a plush rabbit from the floorboard was a tactical operation. Callie would kick her feet in the car seat, impatient and bossy, already certain her father would retrieve anything she dropped because Dex had never once been normal about anyone he cared for needing something.
Dex in a school parking lot, terrifying every other father by accident. He’d stand there in a dark jacket and smart-ish trousers, trying to look approachable and while still planning thirteen ways to neutralize a PTA committee just in case someone tried to speak wrongly about his kids. Jason walking beside him with a too-big backpack and the solemn concentration of his father. Callie skipping ahead, fearless because her father was behind her and therefore the world hadn’t yet invented anything that could touch her.
Dex teaching Jason how to throw a ball in the backyard. His son would squinting with concentration, little shoulders tense, trying too hard because he had inherited that from you. Dex crouched in front of him, adjusting his grip, telling him to breathe. Then he’d step back, watching Jason throw too hard and too wide, and smiling anyway. He’d be proud anyway, because it was a start. He’d make his way to the knives eventually.
Dex standing behind you in the kitchen, arms around your waist, chin tucked against your shoulder while your children ran through the yard beyond the window.
He’d kiss your temple and ask for another one, and you’d say, “We’ll think about it,” because you two were a unit. You were two parts of the same whole.
You opened your eyes, and he just looked terrified of how much he wanted it.
Your hand tightened around his wrist.
“When you eventually ask me,” you said, voice shaking, “know that I’ll say yes.”
For a moment, Dex didn’t move.
He didn’t even seem to breathe.
His eyes searched yours once, twice, desperately, like he had to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.
“You will?” he asked.
You smiled through the tears. “Of course.”
Joy did not sit easily on Dex, but you knew this was what it looked like.
You let out a watery little laugh, because if you did not laugh you were going to sob properly.
That seemed to bring him back to himself.
Dex leaned in and kissed your neck once, then your cheeks, then the damp place beneath your eye where a tear had slipped down.
Each kiss was careful and possessive in the best way. He wasn’t trying to stop you from crying. Instead, he wanted to claim every tear.
Dex kissed your jaw again, then tucked his face into your neck, and for a long time he just held you.
What you did not know was that the ring was already more than a fantasy to him.
What you did not know was that earlier that evening, before the Supreme Court had gone to hell, he shot Buck Cashman, before he came home, Dex had received confirmation of an advance from Mr. Charles.
He had a government contract. He had a stable job.
Dex had read the confirmation once.
Then twice.
Then, because he was Dex, he had memorized the number. The second he saw the advance, his mind had gone to you.
Rent. Groceries. Your tuition. The overdue utility bill you had tried to hide under a stack of journal articles like paper could make debt disappear. The textbooks you kept putting off buying because you said you could “probably survive with library copies,” even though he had seen the way you frowned when you said it.
And then the ring.
He’d already planned the ring.
And no, he hadn’t told you any of this yet.
Maybe he will after the first payment cleared. Maybe after the first job was done and he knew the money was steady. Maybe after he had washed the blood off well enough to convince himself he was allowed to touch something as clean as your hand.
He’d find the right jeweler, though he already had one in mind: a shop in the Upper East Side that did custom pieces. He’d get one commissioned specifically for you. Nothing too delicate, because he wanted people to notice it. Nothing too flashy, because you would wrinkle your nose and tell him he had lost his mind.
He’d get something that looked right on your hand when you reached for your coffee in the morning. A gem that would catch the kitchen light when you turned pages in your office. Something Jason might touch curiously as a child, asking if Dad gave you that, and Dex would hear you say yes from the doorway. Something Callie would one day ask to try on, and you would laugh and tell her when she could when was older. Something that said you belonged to him.
And more importantly, that he belonged to you.
For now, he said none of that.
For now, he only held you tighter on the bed, making sure you were okay.
“You’re going to be so spoiled,” he whispered against your skin.
You smiled, eyes closing, tears still drying on your face. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“By a wanted man with frozen peas?”
That got the smallest laugh out of him.
“By your future husband,” he said.
Your heart did a helpless little flip.
Little did you know, with this contract, the future wasn’t just a fantasy to him anymore.
He just needed to ask.
—end.
-
Extra note: at this point I think everyone’s seen that clip of Wilson saying Dex should get an equally unhinged girlfriend, and I just can’t help but think of this reader getting as obsessed with his plans for the future as he is and she would not let anything stand in her way! Like she’d kill her way into it if she had to, and her being a forensic psychologist would make for interesting storytelling. (This is just a thought, I make no promises!)
⚠️ Content Warnings (CW): Severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, heavy angst, canon-typical violence (mentions of HYDRA experimentation, gunfire), emotional outbursts/shouting, and comfort.
📜 SUMMARY: Ever since his rescue from the HYDRA facility, Bucky Barnes has been fighting a silent, losing battle against his own mind. When a well-meaning attempt to comfort him triggers a terrifying panic attack, Bucky flees into the freezing, dangerous European woods. Defying Steve’s orders, you go after him only to find yourselves trapped between the lingering ghosts of his trauma and a deadly enemy patrol.
A/N: My native language is not English. I'm getting back into writing, so I'm open to advice ❤️
Ever since Bucky returned from that HYDRA facility, things have been a little strange with him. Sometimes he would just stare at a specific, empty spot in the camp, utterly lost in his own head. And even though he was safe and free with the Howling Commandos, he barely slept.
Sometimes, he barely ate.
Everyone at the camp was talking (including Steve) about how great it was that Bucky was finally back, acting as if he were the exact same man who had left.
Except for you.
You knew perfectly well that something was deeply broken inside him. But you couldn't just confront him directly, that would only make him retreat further into his shell, especially since he had clearly decided to suffer in absolute silence.
Surprisingly, he hadn't even opened up to Steve. Which was already strange, considering they'd been best friends since childhood. But Steve hadn't shared many details about how he’d found him, or rather, what horrific condition he’d been in. You only remembered that Bucky had arrived looking deceptively "fine" at least until the sun went down that first night.
It was during those twilight hours that you noticed his hypervigilance.
He started flinching at loud noises, even the casual shouting among the men. I mean, you all were stationed in a war zone, so reacting to sudden sounds was normal since this wasn't a fucking walk in a park.
But reacting that way to people he already knew and trusted? Something was terribly wrong.
Eventually, you grew tired of watching him waste away. Bucky had to talk about it sooner or later.
When you finally stepped inside his tent, he was now sleeping alone, segregated from the rest of the unit because it made him uncomfortable to hear the others sleep. You found him sitting on the edge of his cot. Bucky was silent, perfectly still, his back hunched over as if he were physically trying to hold his own ribs together.
"James, are you okay?" you asked softly, cautiously approaching his bunk. But there was no immediate response.
He kept his blank, unblinking stare fixed on the dirt floor. It wasn't until you sat down beside him, offering a warm cup of soup, that he finally blinked, turning his terrified blue eyes toward you.
He just nodded and hummed a small "hmm-mmh…" which had become his usual greeting with almost everyone in the unit. He didn't take the cup of soup.
"James, I know it was hard..." you began, a quiet sigh escaping your nose as you tried to find the right words to talk about the subject. Ugh, but you couldn't quite figure out how to navigate this with the right words, so you just let the raw truth flow. "And I'm asking you, please, don't shut us out. Don't shut me out..."
Gently, you placed a hand on his tense shoulder. "Honey, you haven't said a single word about what happened to you. I'm worried. You're not eating, and you just stare into space, and you aren't sleeping either, and—"
"I'M FINE!" Bucky snapped as he surged to his feet. His hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists, his breathing turning ragged.
It looked exactly like a panic attack.
The volume of his voice caught you completely off guard. In all the time you had known him, he had never raised his voice to you. Not once. Until now.
"DO YOU THINK I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE SHIT THEY DID TO ME?" he continued to shout, his tone jagged, though it trembled as a violent shudder ran through his body. "HUH? YOU FUCKING THINK I WANT TO TELL YOU HOW IT FELT TO BE STRAPPED DOWN LIKE A GODDAMN ANIMAL AND EXPERIMENTED ON?"
In a sudden, frantic motion, Bucky struck out, knocking the cup of soup clean out of your hands. It shattered against the floor, splashing everywhere. Startled, you scrambled up from the bunk, stepping backward to put some distance between you and him.
"YOU KEEP ASKING, OVER AND OVER, LIKE A NUISANCE! LIKE TALKING IS GONNA FIX THIS!" He pointed a trembling finger fiercely at his own face.
You stood there, utterly petrified.
You looked at him as if he were a complete stranger. An involuntary tremor overtook your body, your breathing hitching as your eyes welled with tears, frightened to your core by his erratic explosion.
Bucky froze. The anger drained out of him as quickly as it had flooded in, leaving behind a hollow ache in his chest.
His eyes locked onto your trembling form, onto the terror reflected in your tear-filled gaze.
"Fuck, I'm sorry…" His voice broke completely. "I didn't… you just… I can't…" He stumbled over his words, drowning in a wave of sudden guilt and shame. He was starting to feel like a monster, like the very monsters who had held him captive and subjected him to those hazy, horrific experiments.
Bucky instinctively reached a hand out toward you but stopped himself in midair. He couldn't touch you. Not like this.
"I'm not... I'm sorry." he whispered.
Turning on his heel, Bucky did what he had learned to do best lately: he fled. He vanished into the dark night, alone. Bucky stumbled blindly through the darkness of the camp. The cool night hit his flushed skin, but it did nothing to quiet the crushing weight of his guilt. Damn it. He would have never raised his voice to you like that, especially when all you were trying to do was care for him.
Because that's all it was... you were just worried about him, like everyone in the unit.
A deep-seated shame chased him into the woods, he walked faster until he was running through branches that scratched his face and arms, but he barely felt them. He didn't stop running until the trees parted, revealing the rushing waters of the river. Standing at the water's edge, staring down into the dark, murky surface, his knees finally gave out. Bucky collapsed heavily into the dirt, burying his face in his hands as a strangled, agonizing sound ripped from the depths of his throat.
Not a scream, but not a sob. Just... a sound.
Back at the camp, your heart was still hammering against your ribs. Trembling, you had gone straight to Steve’s tent, the words tumbling out of your mouth in a breathless, panicked rush as you explained exactly what had just happened.
He didn’t get angry. Instead, he had simply brought you into a brief, comforting embrace, his large hand resting on the back of your head.
"Give him some space" Steve had murmured gently, trying to soothe your fears. "He just needs to clear his head. He won't have gone far, I promise."
Steve wanted to believe that. He needed to believe his best friend was still just the Bucky from Brooklyn. But you knew better. In the fragile, volatile state Bucky was in right now, he was capable of doing anything.
And you weren't about to sit around and gamble with his life.
Defying Steve’s advice, you grabbed a small oil lamp from the supply crate, struck a match, and slipped away from the warmth of the tents. The moment you stepped past the perimeter lines of the encampment, the darkness of the European forest swallowed you whole. It was terrifying, you were officially out of bounds, navigating a dangerous no-man's-land where enemy scouts or Hydra soldiers could be lurking in the shadows.
The cold air of the winter night bit ruthlessly through your clothes, making your teeth chatter, but you pressed on. You couldn't call out his name. You couldn't scream for him to hear you, knowing that a single loud shout in these woods could attract something far worse than the cold. But after a few minutes, or what felt like minutes to you, you had to take a chance.
"JAMES?" you called out. You raised the oil lamp higher, moving it in a slow, sweeping arc, the flame flickered against the bark of the trees, casting long, eerie shadows across the dirt. You desperately searched for any sign of movement. You prayed to see his silhouette, perhaps him sitting on a fallen tree trunk, exhausted and asleep, or worse, lying unresponsive on the freezing ground.
"James, where are you?" you tried again a little louder, but there was no answer. Your chattering teeth cut the words short as you pushed past a dense thicket of pine branches. Through the trees, a few yards away, Bucky heard you. He knew he should stay silent. Stay hidden in the pitch black and let yourself give up, forcing you to go back to the safety of the camp, fuck, but he couldn't.
Not when you were out here in the freezing cold. Not when you sounded so afraid in the dark. He pushed himself to his feet, stumbling a bit as the cold dirt clung to his knees. He began to track the sound of your voice, moving through the dense foliage with the quiet precision of a ghost. Suddenly, your boots froze in the mud. Through the heavy rustling of the pine needles and the distant rush of the river, you heard the rhythmic crunch of heavy combat boots hitting the frozen ground.
They sounded like two men, probably, and then you started to see the dim light of their lamps. And given how deep you were into no-man's-land, they weren't American soldiers. Moving on pure, terrifying survival instinct, you blew out the small flame of your oil lamp, plunging your world into absolute, suffocating darkness. You scrambled blindly to the side, dropping low behind the thick trunk of a fallen tree, pressing your back against the wood to hide your silhouette.
Through the dark, the harsh, low guttural murmurs of German voices grow louder, they had heard something.
One step.
Two steps.
They were going to find you.
A broad, calloused hand suddenly clamped down over your mouth, sealing your lips shut before a scream could betray your position. You flinched, your heart leaping into your throat, and your trembling fingers lost their grip. The oil lamp slipped, crashing heavily against the dirt. You could hear the sickening, fluid hiss of the oil leaking out, soaking into the dirt.
"Shh… it's me." His voice was a ghost of a whisper against your ear, so low it was practically a vibration against your skin. "Don't move."
Even through his own internal chaos, Bucky had tracked you down. He had heard the German patrol scouting the perimeter. He held you tight, his iron grip on your waist locking you against him as the beams of the enemy flashlights swept merely inches above the log you were hiding behind. You could feel the erratic, violent hammering of his heart against your shoulder blades. He was risking everything, exposing himself to the very monsters who had tortured him, just to make sure they wouldn't lay a finger on you.
The German soldiers lingered for what felt like an agonizing eternity, kicking at the brush, searching for the source of the noise. The scent of the spilled lamp oil hung heavy in the freezing air, threatening to give you away at any second. Bucky didn't breathe. He kept his body completely rigid over yours, a human shield in the dark, waiting for the threat to pass. Finally, after a few torturous minutes, the heavy boots began to retreat, the harsh whispers fading back into the deep woods until the forest was quiet once more.
Slowly, very slowly, Bucky let out a shaky, ragged breath against your neck. But he didn't let you go. His hand remained gently over your mouth for a second longer, just to be sure, while his other arm tightened around your waist.
"Oh God, I thought you were gone..." you whispered fiercely, hugging his torso so tightly it felt as though you were gripping a lifesaver in the middle of a stormy sea. "You had me so worried…"
You leaned your temple against his chest, letting out a ragged, trembling sigh. Your whole body was shaking, a chaotic mixture of the freezing winter rain and the lingering adrenaline of having enemy soldiers just inches away from your hiding spot.
"You're freezing." Bucky said gruffly. His calloused palms began rubbing up and down your back in a desperate attempt to create some heat back into your bones through friction. "What are you doing out here?"
His voice was still rough, but he gentled his grip as much as his trembling muscles allowed.
"I'm sorry I scared you." he murmured, his lips pressing a soft, lingering kiss against the crown of your head. "I didn't mean to worry you. I just… I needed a minute. Needed to clear my head."
He couldn't bring himself to tell you the real truth. He couldn't tell you that he had run into the woods to hide from you. He couldn't bear the thought of you looking at him like he was a broken, ruined stranger.
"You can't keep coming after me like this." Bucky whispered against your wet hair, shielding you from the drizzling rain that was starting. "It's not safe out here. I won't let you…"
He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. The thought of HYDRA catching you because of him made his blood run cold. You looked up into the darkness, trying to map his features in the shadows of the night.
"But I couldn't leave you out here alone." you replied, your voice trembling from the chill. "It's raining, James. It's freezing, and you're still supposed to be recovering." In a futile, comforting gesture, your fingers reached up, blindly trying to brush away the wet dirt and pine needles clinging to the fabric of his soldier's uniform. "In that case then you should be more careful too, James." you added softly, a faint, familiar spark of stubbornness returning to your tone. You were ready to argue and bicker back and forth the way you always did as a couple whenever he got too reckless.
But before he could respond, a faint, sharp sound echoed through the dense thicket behind the fallen log. A sudden rustle of frozen leaves. A heavy, uncoordinated step. To your ears, it could have just been a wild animal, a deer shifting in the brush, but to Bucky, the sound was entirely different, his heart accelerating against your palms as he realized the patrol wasn't as far away as you thought.
"Listen to me..." he said urgently, his voice was low, scared. "We need to go. Now. That's not an animal out there."
You tried to plead with him, but he ignored you.
"I know you're cold, sweetheart." he said firmly, his hands rubbing your arms briskly to stimulate your circulation. "But we have to move. I'll keep you warm, I promise. I'll carry you if I have to."
Abruptly, he changed direction, veering off the faint path and plunging into a thicker, denser part of the woods where the trees grew tightly together and the underbrush was heavy. He wrapped an arm protectively around your waist, his other hand drifting down to grip the handle of the gun at his hip. You couldn't hear anything over the sound of the wind, practically running blind with him through the pitch-black forest.
"I don't hear anything…" you whispered. Bucky didn't respond. He couldn't. You could hardly keep up with his pace he was practically dragging you through the rough terrain, and your boots caught on hidden roots, making you stumble and nearly fall twice over the jagged stones. "James, I can't keep up with you…" you choked out.
He cursed under his breath as you stumbled again, his heart leaping into his throat. In a swift, seamless motion, he carries you. "Just hold on to me" Bucky muttered through gritted teeth, his breath coming fast and sharp.
The Hydra patrol had changed their trajectory, following the exact noise you two were making. The footsteps were right behind you now. He had to get you out of their line of sight. Now. Before the thick brush gave way, Bucky stopped beneath a massive, ancient oak tree with sturdy, low-hanging branches.
"Jump." he ordered you, bending his knees. "Jump and I'll hoist you up. We need to get into the trees."
Trusting him implicitly, you climb, swinging your body up onto the sturdy branches with a desperate surge of strength. You scrambled onto the thick bough, trembling, and immediately turned around to wait for him. For Bucky, it was effortless he hauled his frame up into the tree beside you in a single, silent leap. He pressed himself against the rough bark of the trunk, immediately pulling your back flat against his chest, completely enveloping you in his warmth. Instinctively, you wrapped your arms around him, burying your cheek against his chest.
His heart was hammering wildly against your ribs, a frantic, violent rhythm. Moving on pure survival instinct, your trembling fingers reached up and tightly grasped his silver dog tags, clenching them flat against his chest to hide the gleam of the metal from any source of light or sound. He felt you shaking. "Shh..." his lips brushing the shell of your ear, his warm breath cutting through the winter chill. "Just breathe. Nice and slow. We're safe here."
He hoped to God he was right.
The footsteps stopped very close to your tree. Through the leaves, you slowly tilted your head down, your eyes widening in horror. There were three of them. Clad in dark, heavy winter coats bearing the unmistakable, cruel insignia of HYDRA. They were heavily armed, scanning the forest floor with harsh tactical lights, looking for the perimeter of the Allied camp. You felt Bucky’s grip tighten violently around the handle of his gun, his finger hovering over the trigger. He was ready to open fire, ready to take their lives in a heartbeat if it meant keeping you safe, even if it meant sacrificing his own life in the process.
"No..." you whispered against his chest, your hand pressing over his. If he shot now, the muzzle flash would give away your position instantly, and you would be completely outnumbered and outgunned. Bucky looked down at the three soldiers below, hearing your soft, desperate whisper of your warning. You were right. Shooting was a suicide decision, so he consciously eased his finger back from the trigger, tilting the barrel of the gun safely toward the ground.
But he didn't lower it.
Below, the beams of the enemy light swept across the brush, the heavy boots kicking at the frozen leaves, searching for the source of the noise they had heard. Looking for someone. Whatever their mission was, the sheer terror of the moment made your mind shift. You slowly tilted your head back, your eyes locking onto Bucky’s dark silhouette in the shadows. You knew you shouldn't have done it. Not now. Not in the middle of a no-man's-land crossroads between life and death. But somehow, it felt like the only right thing left to do.
Carefully, silently, you used your free hand to gently pull Bucky down by the back of his neck, pressing a chaste, soft kiss against his cold lips. You weren't saying goodbye. You just needed to ground him. To ground yourself. He knew he shouldn't respond. He knew it was an astronomical and fucking stupid risk, a reckless distraction when a single sound could get you both killed. But he couldn't stop himself. Helpless against his own devotion, he gently pressed back against your lips, desperately savoring the fleeting, tender pressure of the contact. He kept the kiss short.
He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly bone-dry as his heart pounded like a war drum.
Snap.
A new sound cut through. More footsteps. From a different direction. A second group was approaching, their movements heavy but distinctly different. Back at the encampment, Steve and the Howling Commandos must have realized you were both missing after all, you had no idea how much time had passed since you had slipped into the woods to track Bucky down. He prayed to whatever God was left that it was the Commandos coming to pull you both out of this.
But a dark, cynical, HYDRA-tainted part of his mind whispered a terrifying alternative. What if it were a trap? What if the scout patrol had silently signaled for backup and you were about to be completely surrounded? His knuckles turned white around the grip of his gun, his finger hovering over the trigger. Ready. Waiting.
Please, let it be the Commandos, Bucky prayed silently, his jaw clenching so hard it ached. Please let them be coming for us. The crunching of leaves grew louder as the shadowy figures drifted between the skeletal trees below. Bucky couldn't count their numbers through the thick fog, but he was entirely prepared for the worst. But right before the dark silhouettes could merge, a booming, boisterous sound echoed from the direction of the Allied lines.
It was Dum Dum Dugan's unmistakable, hearty laughter. You immediately looked up at Bucky, your eyes wide with a sudden, overwhelming wave of relief.
"God, thank you…" you murmured gratefully. You rested your forehead flat against Bucky's chest, soothing your panic. Bucky let out a slow, shaky breath as Dum Dum's laughter rang out again. The sound was a literal lifeline in the darkness. He felt a fraction of the toxic tension bleed out of his coiled muscles, but he didn't drop his guard. Not yet. After all, those three HYDRA scouts were just a couple of meters away from the American perimeter, they were deep in enemy territory, outnumbered, and they knew it.
Suddenly, the lead HYDRA soldier below froze, catching the sound of the approaching Commandos.
"Verdammt… Allies!" the German soldier hissed to his men. "They're coming! We must retreat! Sofort!" The HYDRA scouts scrambled to sprint back into the deeper woods.
But as they turned to flee, one of the soldiers caught a stray glint of metal from above. The German instinctively started to raise his rifle toward your branch to fire a parting shot. Bucky reacted on reflex. At the exact same microsecond, he swung his pistol around and fired two precise, lethal shots downward. The bullets struck true, dropping the hostile before he could alert the rest of his fleeing squad. The remaining two HYDRA soldiers didn't even look back.
Through the trees, the shouting of the Commandos grew louder, drawn by the sound of the gunfire
"Barnes! Answer me! Where in the Sam Hill are you!?" Dum Dum’s voice bellowed through the brush, accompanied by the urgent, rapid footsteps of Steve Rogers leading the pack. Steve’s tactical lantern pierced through the leaves, illuminating the two of you perched high in the oak tree. Bucky knew their current position was… highly compromising.
He was covered in mud, your clothes were soaked from the rain, and you were practically wrapped in his arms, sitting on a branch in the middle of the night. As the light hit them, Bucky watched Dum-Dum Dugan step into it, his initially shocked expression instantly melting into a massive, lewd grin. Gabe Jones and the others chuckled behind him, while Steve just let out a heavy, exasperated sigh of pure relief.
Dum Dum tipped his bowling hat back, crossing his arms as he looked up at the tree. "Well, I'll be damned..." Dugan bellowed with a booming chuckle. "Looks like the lovebirds found themselves a cozy little nest to get away from the war, eh, Cap?"
You couldn't help but laugh. It was a breathless, slightly hysterical sound. In the middle of that terrifying forest, still perched on a frozen oak branch, you felt incredibly lucky to have been found by the Howling Commandos.
"Well, this is not exactly comfortable, Dum..." you said between ragged chuckles, your chest heaving as you tried to catch your breath. As you spoke, you glanced at Bucky’s face. His expression still held those haunting thoughts he couldn't shake, and Steve, standing just a few yards away with his lantern, noticed it instantly.
Bucky looked as Steve approached, mapping the heavy concern etched onto his best friend's face. Steve knew. This had been a fucking close call. "Yeah, well, it's not exactly the Ritz..." Bucky muttered, his voice tight with a strained attempt at a grin. He shifted his weight, trying to ignore the physical aches of his body and the much harsher pain in his mind.
He looked back at you, watching you shudder against the winter night. You had to get down, you couldn't stay up there all night (well, you could), but you were risking hypothermia. Every instinct urged him to help you, but he hesitated. His hands hovered, paralyzed by the terrifying uncertainty of whether you would even welcome his touch after… everything.
After he had snapped and let the monster beneath his skin snarl at the only person he cared about, he felt a pang of regret. Sure, you had kissed and hugged him up there, but his dark thoughts whispered that it was only because you were worried or because you both thought you were going to die at the hands of those soldiers.
He convinced himself it didn't mean anything more.
"Let's get you down..." Bucky murmured softly.
With the help of Dum Dum Dugan, who, next to Steve, was the tallest, you carefully began your descent. Dugan reached up, his massive, gloved hands catching your waist with absolute, old-school gentlemanly care, lowering you safely to the frost-dusted ground. Bucky watched from the branch as Dugan helped you down. A sharp, ugly pang of jealousy flared in his chest at the sight of another man holding you, but he viciously pushed it down. Now wasn't the time for his broken insecurities.
"Thanks, Dum…" you whispered with a faint, grateful smile. You hugged the large soldier for a brief second, seeking any scrap of warmth, before stepping back to wait for Bucky.
The moment Bucky's boots hit the ground, the massive chasm separating you from your boyfriend felt real again. Your eyes drifted toward Steve, finding his gaze already fixed on you, quiet and observant. Bucky didn't know how to fix the rift, so he just took a hesitant step closer into your personal space and wrapped an arm around your waist to keep you warm.
But the tension was still there.
You managed to keep your arms locked tightly around your chest, walking alongside him but maintaining just enough distance so your shoulders wouldn't brush. The Commandos began to lead the way back, the lights bouncing off the trees as the entire group moved toward the perimeter of the encampment. You made sure to walk far enough behind the rest of the squad so your quiet whispers wouldn't carry over the crunching of their boots.
"Listen…" Bucky started, his voice rough, cracking in the quiet of the woods. "About before, in the thicket… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"
You looked down at the dark path, letting out a shaky breath. "James, you said what you said..." You shrugged slightly, trying your absolute hardest not to let the memory of his harsh words sting your eyes. "I pushed too hard for you to tell me what was wrong. You had a reason to react the way you did."
Bucky shook his head, a sharp wave of relief washing through his chest, but he refused to let you take the blame. Not for this. Not for anything.
"No, honey, listen to me..." Bucky said softly, his voice low and intense. "What I said, the way I reacted that was entirely on me. Not you. Never you." He reached out, his large, warm hand gently enveloping yours, rubbing it between his fingers. "I lost control. I let the darkness take over, and I scared you. I hurt you, and I am so fucking sorry." he whispered, his voice cracking. "I never want to be the cause of your fear or your pain. Ever. You deserve so much better than a broken soldier."
He paused, his blue eyes frantically searching your face in the dim reflection of the squad's distant flashlights, looking for any sign that you still wanted him. "I know I have to do better. I have to find a way to control these horrible thoughts inside me." Bucky vowed, squeezing your cold hand imploringly. "Tell me how to make this right. Tell me what I need to do to earn your trust back. Your forgiveness."
He was begging you with his eyes just as much as his words, praying for a second chance. Then, he looked ahead at Dugan’s broad back and looked back at you.
"I can even fight Dum if you want, one-on-one." he said softly, a familiar, vulnerable half-smirk playing on his lips. "I'd let him punch me right in the face if that makes you laugh... and forgive me."
You tilted your head slightly, looking up into his worried, handsome face. The absurdity and sweetness of his offer melted the last of your icy armor. "Oh, James…" you said softly, thoughtfully. You let out a quiet sigh into the freezing air. "… As soon as you left the tent, I forgave you."
A soft, deeply loving smile finally returned to your lips, even though your eyes still held a lingering hint of nervousness from the terrifying encounter with the HYDRA patrol.
"I thought you knew that already..." you murmured.
He had spent the last two hours agonizing in the dark, believing he’d have to crawl for your forgiveness, but to hear you give it so freely utterly humbled him. You were so good. In moments like this, your kind-hearted nature reminded him so much of Steve, always trying to understand the pain of others, always choosing grace over anger.
"But… I think I will take you up on that offer about Dum..." you joked softly. A genuine, breathless laugh broke from his chest, his gaze softening beautifully as he took in your gentle smile, memorizing the way you looked at him despite the horror you had both just witnessed. Suddenly, Bucky stopped walking. He shook his head, a self-deprecating shadow crossing his features before he looked back into your eyes. "I don't deserve your forgiveness. Not after the way I snapped. The way I let you see that part of me…"
He let the rest of the squad drift slightly ahead of you. After all, the trees were thinning out, and you were all finally at the edge of the camp. The distant, warm glow of the campfires flickered through the fog. The danger had passed. You were safe, practically standing at the perimeter of the Allied lines, but the sheer adrenaline of almost dying left your emotions raw, blurring any thought of propriety.
You didn't care if you had an audience.
Turning fully into his space, you kissed him back, a soft, chaste kiss born of pure gratitude and relief. Your eyes fluttered shut as you tilted your head up, your hands sliding beneath his arms to wrap firmly around his torso, seeking the steady, solid warmth of his body. Bucky deepened the kiss instantly, his large hands anchoring you against him. He savored the intoxicating softness of your lips and the way you completely melted into him. For a beautiful, fleeting moment, the entire war faded into the background.
There was no blood, no nightmares. There was only you.
But then, the crunching of boots ahead abruptly stopped. The sudden stillness was enough. His gaze drifted past your shoulder to find Steve and the Howling Commandos standing just a few yards ahead near the camp tents. They had all stopped in their tracks, watching the two of you with expressions ranging from absolute shock to knowing, wide-eyed amusement. A sudden, fierce heat crept up Bucky's neck as he realized they had just given the entire squad quite the show. He glanced down at your face, seeing the bright, rosy blush coating your cheeks as you awkwardly kept your hands resting against his chest.
Clearing his throat, Bucky forced himself to loosen his grip on your waist, taking a half-step back to regain whatever soldierly composure he had left. He shot a glaring, yet deeply amused look at the squad, putting his hands on his hips.
"What are you all staring at?" Bucky barked, his voice distinctly hoarse but dripping with that classic cocky Brooklyn swagger. "What? You never seen a guy kiss a woman before? Go find your own lines to cross!"
A chorus of muffled snickers, low chuckles, and mock gasps instantly bubbled up from the group. Gabe Jones nudged Dum Dum with his elbow, while Montgomery Falsworth simply raised a polite, highly amused eyebrow, tipping his head in a silent salute to Bucky's nerve. Bucky knew he was going to be the subject of relentless, merciless teasing for the next month. Dugan would probably never let him hear the end of it, but looking down at you, he found he didn't care at all. Feeling incredibly shy under their stares, you let out a soft, nervous laugh. You quickly covered your mouth with one hand to hide your flushed face. Bucky didn't need to be told twice. Keeping his fingers tightly laced through yours, he shot a final, warning look at the grinning Commandos, but his focus immediately shifted back to you.
"Let's get you back to your tent, sweetheart." he murmured, his voice dropping back into that low, soothing register meant only for you.
When you finally reached the small canvas tent that served as your quarters, Bucky pushed the flap open, stepping inside with you for just a brief, stolen moment of privacy. The space was dim, but it was dry, a welcome sanctuary from the brutal night.
"I'll see you at dawn, then..." he whispered into the quiet of the tent, his blue eyes searching yours. He leaned down, pressing a sweet, slow kiss to your forehead.
He gave you one final, deeply loving look before stepping backward through the tent flap, letting the canvas fall shut between you.
