#blame it on thunderbolts actually being good

[em1i2a3]

I’ll Believe In Anything

Pairing: Bob/Robert Reynolds/The Sentry/The Void x Thunderbolts!Fem!Reader

Summary: You book a beach getaway for the team, only to realize that it would be harder than expected to hide you and Bob's relationship from the others.

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI! Smut (a lot of it…kinda just purely self indulgent, promise next time I’ll have way more plot), and pure Fluffiness. Bob and Reader are in a secret relationship together, and it is relatively new (about two months in, though they were extremely close prior to this)

Smut Warnings: Unprotected P in V Sex (wrap it up y’all…please), Fingering, Oral Sex (Female and Male Receiving), Hands Covering Mouths to Muffle Moans…But like…In a nice way? (I feel like that might need a warning for some reason), Dirty talk, Teasing, The use of the name ‘good girl’ is scattered throughout this, Overstimulation, Squirting

Author's Note: I took the request of a beach day with Bob and I thought of a beach weekend with Bob and the rest of the Thunderbolts with the trope of a secret relationship and it being in peak honeymoon phase where reader and Bob/Sentry just can’t get enough of each other. Thank you Anon for suggesting a beach day with Bob…Because it got out of hand lol

Word Count: 15,200

You were supposed to be on the road by noon.

Instead, it was nearly 2:30 and you were still in Bob’s bedroom–sitting cross-legged on the floor, folding his t-shirts while he tried to seduce you with forehead kisses and absolutely no concept of urgency–while the others were already on their way to the beach house.

“Bob. I need you to focus!” You said, voice muffling through a laugh as he nuzzled against your neck, “You were supposed to be packed yesterday, and we were supposed to be halfway down the coast by now!” Bob, who had his arms looped loosely around your waist and his chin resting on your shoulder, sighed dramatically.

”B-But you smell so good…It’s l-like you bathed in the tropics or something. I-I can’t think straight when you smell like that.”

“You never think straight when I’m around.” You shot back. He turned his head and kissed your jaw, then your cheek, then the tip of your nose.

”That’s b-because you’ve ruined me.” He murmured. You grinned as he kissed the apples of your cheeks, his breath fanning over your skin. His arms tightened around your waist like he was trying to physically keep you from packing, while his whole body curled around yours, pulling you onto his lap slightly. Despite your better judgement, you leaned into him just a little.

”Actually,” You started, reaching for another t-shirt that you had thrown on the floor, “You were just secretly harbouring a high sex drive and didn’t realize it until we finally did it.” Bob let out a flustered breath–half-laugh, half-gasp.

”I-I was not…” Your eyebrows raised.

”Oh, really?” He leaned back a bit so he could look at you fully, with feigned innocence playing in his eyes.

”I-I mean…Fine. I didn’t know it was that b-bad until you. I-It’s not like I ever…I mean, no one’s ever…” He paused and tried to get his words back, taking in a deep breath because his voice almost got carried away with him “Y-You’re the one who makes it a whole different e-experience for me.” You sighed, surrendering to his words.

”I’ll take the blame for opening the floodgates,” You said, tossing another folded t-shirt into his duffel bag. Bob let out a soft laugh that reverberated through your back, warm and full in your ear.

”A-At least you’re a-admitting to it.” You rolled your eyes, reaching for a hoodie you had dug out from the corner of his closet.

”That doesn’t absolve you from having the highest sex drive I’ve ever encountered.” He groaned into your neck, kissing the sensitive flesh there as his arms tightened around you again.

”T-Technically,” He started, drawing the word out, “I’m trying to satiate three different sex d-drives here…” You froze mid-fold, raising your eyebrows at him again.

”Excuse me?” He lifted his head, like he was explaining simple math to you.

”Well…You can’t just put this all on m-me when there’s…Y’know…Two other entities l-living in here.” You immediately started shaking your head at him, giggling slightly in disbelief.

”You are not blaming your libido on Sentry and The Void.” He shrugged, smiling helplessly.

”I-I’m just saying…T-They have opinions too.” You hummed, fighting against the grin on your lips.

”I’m sure they do…But I never thought The Void was needy.” Bob nodded with mock solemnity.

”You’re right, h-he does tend to stay q-quiet unless he really wants to surprise y-you.” You threw his hoodie into the duffel bag.

”Sentry, though…”

“D-Don’t say his name…” Bob cut in quickly, “O-Or else he might be summoned.” He whispered. Which immediately made you double over with a laugh as Bob collapsed back onto the carpet beneath you, his large arms taking you down with him.

You both laid there for a second, tangled in each other and soft cotton, letting the laughter settle in your chests like a weight you wanted to carry. It had only been two months since you started going out with each other–officially. But it hadn’t exactly come out of nowhere.

From the second the Thunderbolts moved into the compound together, you had been drawn to Bob. You didn’t know why at first. He was quiet, hesitant, and always outside the room even when he was inside it. He was your total opposite. But he looked at you like you owned the moon and the stars–and that kind of gaze stuck with you.

It wasn’t long before you started orbiting each other in a way that felt deliberate. Every mission debrief, you found yourself sitting closer to one another. Every team meal, you would share your food with him, and he would do the same with you. Every long hallway walk back from training, he held the door for you with flushed cheeks and twitching hands. He loved the way you smiled, and that was all he wanted to make you do, all the time.

Then, two months ago, it happened. A soft moment. A long look. A kiss in the quiet of your room after a late-night movie together, and then–

You were his. And he was yours.

Now you found yourself in the dangerous phase where everything felt like fire under your skin. You couldn’t keep your hands off each other. He touched you constantly. Kissed you at red lights when it was only you and him in the car. Fell asleep with his fingers curled in your shirt. And snuck into your room at midnight and left your sheets twisted by the morning.

And yet–no one knew.

Not Bucky, nor Yelena, or Ava or Walker…Not even Alexei, even though he had his suspicions. You had both agreed to keep things under wraps until you were ready. Until it wasn’t so new. Until Bob was sure he could be looked at without being seen as a danger to you by the rest of the group. It was not like they didn’t trust him, but in the midst of everything going on with The Void and Sentry, it was easy for them to baby him and treat him like he was always on the brink of exploding, even though that wasn’t the case–mostly because you grounded him.

But both of you were able to admit it was getting harder and harder to keep your relationship under wraps, especially with how much you were sneaking around.

Bob turned his head and kissed your cheek again–slow and soft, right in that spot where he knew it would make you sigh. His lips lingered a second longer than necessary, and it was so sweet it was almost infuriating.

You groaned, flopping your head back against his shoulder. “Okay. We’re getting off-task again. Can you please contribute to the packing so we can get on our way?” He pouted, eyes wide and glistening, still reflecting the sea blue that always put you in a trance.

”A-Alright…Alright. But I want one more kiss.” He said sheepishly. You stared at him for a beat, then leaned in and kissed him on the mouth–firm but brief, something halfway between a promise and a bribe. He chased it for a second when you pulled away, but you were already on your feet, dusting off your thighs and grabbing the half empty duffel.

”Now, help me find those flip flops we bought for you last week,” You said pointing toward his closet.

————————

Thirty minutes later, you were finally on the road.

The sun had begun its slow descent, dipping low and gold behind the treetops as you pulled out of the compound’s gravel lot. The world beyond the gate opened up wide and free–the start of the real sky, of long stretches of road and salt tinged air rising up from the distant coast.

It was warm in the car. That perfect kind of summer heat–the one that lingered on your skin without stifling you. Your hand rested lightly on the wheel, guiding the car through curves and straightaways with practiced ease, in your other hand, condensation clung to your iced coffee cup as you sipped slowly, the straw catching slightly between your lips every now and again.

Beside you, Bob was quiet. Legs drawn up a little, barefoot, with sun streaking through the passenger-side window. His hair was still a little damp from his earlier shower, curling slightly at the edges and shining in the glow of the beams that cascaded over the light brown crown of his head. He wore the black soft cotton t-shirt you liked stealing, and his body had settled into that familiar, lazy sprawl that only happened when he was truly content.

The compound was behind you, and the beach was straight ahead. And for the first time all day, you allowed yourself to exhale. This was the start of something nice and soft, a time to actually relax and not think about anything other than your found family and your secret lover.

Then you felt Bob’s warm hand spreading across your thigh.

At first it was casual, his fingers brushing lightly over your skin, resting just above your knee. You didn’t even glance at him, because Bob always did this–it was his way to soothe himself.

But then his thumb started to move.

A slow, deliberate drag along the inside of your thigh. It certainly wasn’t innocent, and it had alternative intentions.

You shot him a warning glance.

”Bob–“ He didn’t look at you, he just kept his eyes forward, with a small, knowing smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and then you caught the glow in his irises. It was very faint, but you knew the signs better than anyone else.

“Oh, for the love of god.” Sentry’s fingers crept a little higher on your thigh, just enough to make your breath hitch around the straw of your coffee.

”Come on…” He said deeply. Sentry’s voice was silkier, and lower. Touched by something celestial and smug, “Don’t act like you didn’t know I was going to make an appearance.” You groaned, putting your drink down into the cup holder, before dragging your damp hand down your face.

”Sentry…Now is definitely not the time. We literally just got on the road.” You said sternly. He leaned in, not touching you beyond the dangerously warm hand on your thigh, but close enough that you could feel the heat of his gaze.

”Yet, I’ve been waiting patiently. I watched you pack up his bag, and bend over and kiss his cheek as if I wasn’t even there.” His thumb made another slow sweep, dragging a little higher now, just an inch–but an inch too far, “You’re lucky I didn’t ruin the folding party,” He added, grinning now. Your jaw tensed as you kept your eyes on the road, trying very hard not to give him the reaction he was digging for.

”You’re not ruining this road trip fifteen minutes in,” You said firmly.

”Mmm,” He hummed, “I’m sure there’s a lookout space somewhere nearby. We’re already late, what’s another half hour going to do?” You shot him a withering glance.

”Sentry,” You warned, “You know it’s going to be suspicious if we show up super late. I know how you are. It won’t be half an hour. It’ll be half the damn evening and we won’t get to the beach house until midnight or something.” He bit the inside of his cheek before letting the corner of his mouth tilt.

”All I want is a little taste,” He said, voice dark with promise, “Fifteen minutes. We pull off, throw ourselves in the back on top of our bags. I go down on you quickly, then we get back on the road and nobody will know a thing.” You stared ahead, feeling your heart thudding against your chest. His hand hadn’t moved, it just burned against you like a promise waiting to be claimed.

”And hey…We can even pick up something from a market along the way and pretend we made a quick stop to cover up our trail,” He added helpfully, “A 24 case of beer will definitely be a good peace offering…It would be believable.” The hand on your thigh squeezed–gently, but with purpose. Just enough to make your pulse skip and your breath falter.

“I can hear your heartbeat, you know,” Sentry murmured, voice low and amused, like it thrilled him. “It’s stuttering. All fluttery and sweet. It does that when you’re thinking about me.” His thumb resumed its slow, teasing pass along the inside of your leg, brushing higher this time–so close to dangerous territory it made your stomach clench. You pressed your thighs together instinctively, and that was your downfall, because of course…He felt it.

”Oh, sweetheart…” He drawled, his voice smooth and coaxing, “Don’t do that. You’ll have all that friction and it won’t be able to go anywhere…You’ll make yourself ache. Let me fix it for you…” His hand inched slightly higher, fingertips ghosting the hem of your shorts, toying with the edge like he was already imagining sliding them down your legs in the backseat. You let out a sharp exhale and kept your eyes forward, but he leaned in closer, voice dropping to something deep and honeyed as he whispered:

“You know…I can smell your pheromones right? I can smell everything. I’ve barely touched you and you’re already tempting the divine…Don’t make me beg.” You swallowed hard, jaw clenched, and glanced down at your phone where it sat in the center console with the maps app still open. Estimated arrival time: 7:04 PM.

You didn’t even care about being late. But the team would care. And so would Bob, mostly because he would think you almost blew your covers, but at this point…You were putting that off to the side.

Your voice came out rougher than you intended–strained, but full of warning, “I’m going to set a fucking timer, Sentry.” He stilled slightly, his brows raising in curiosity. You glanced over at him just enough to see his eyes–those shimmering, celestial irises already brightening with every breath you took, devouring every word you were about to say.

”I’ll give you fifteen minutes, not a second more. We can have our little backseat romp session, but then I want Bob back so we can get to the beach house without another stunt like this. Deal?” He didn’t hesitate. He raised his free hand, as if he was swearing a divine oath.

”I will keep my promise,” He purred, lips tilting into something between appreciation and mischief. You groaned, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter before flipping on your turn signal.

“Let me find a fucking exit…”

Sentry reclined smugly in his seat, already victorious. “Good girl.” You rolled your eyes.

”You’re lucky the back windows are tinted.” Sentry didn’t move his hand–just let it linger, warm and steady on your thigh as you guided the car down the exit ramp toward a small turnout nestled beneath a canopy of trees. The kind of hidden roadside clearing that was perfect for a quick stop…Or a god-tier rendezvous. He was watching you with that look again. The one that belonged solely to him, not Bob. All gleam and heat and slow-moving hunger. He looked like temptation itself–bathed in the soft, dusky glow bleeding in through the windshield, his smirk half-wicked, half-worshipful.

“I could’ve asked to do it in front of a window without a tint,” he said softly, leaning back like he wasn’t plotting sin, “And you still would’ve said yes.” Your breath caught, “You like my tongue too much to care about an audience.” Your knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. You made a strained noise of disbelief in the back of your throat and gave a low grunt.

“Text the group chat,” You growled, eyes flicking to the parked gravel lot ahead, shaded and deserted. “Tell them there’s traffic, that we’re behind. Say we’re stopping to grab a case of beer. Make it sound casual.”

Sentry made a pleased little sound in his throat, already unlocking Bob’s phone with one swipe. “I love when you get like this,” He murmured as he thumbed out a message.

“Bob: Hey srry, we hit some crappy traffic, gonna be a bit late, going to stop and grab beer so no one complains ❤️❤️❤️”

”You’re putting too many hearts,” You muttered.

”I’m in a loving mood,” He replied, “Or maybe I’m just…Warming up.” He commented, returning his hand back to your thigh, giving it a squeeze. You pulled into the shaded turnout, tires crunching slowly over gravel as you eased the car to a stop beneath a thick curtain of trees. The sound of the highway faded, replaced by the gentle hum of nature and the distant whisper of the coast.

You turned off the ignition and grabbed your phone off the console, flicking to the clock app to put in the timer. You set it for fifteen minutes, and pressed start, before dropping it into the cupholder with a thunk.

Sentry was already shifting toward you in his seat, his pupils blown, and his mouth already watering in anticipation.

“Backseat. Now.” You ordered.

He obeyed without hesitation. But not before dragging his palm slowly up your inner thigh one last time, a promise etched into that final touch.

“Don’t worry,” He murmured as he unbuckled, voice dark and sweet as sin, “I’ll make every second count.” You didn’t wait for another cue. In one smooth motion, you shifted your weight and climbed between the seats–knee first, then twisting your hips as you hauled yourself into the back without ever leaving the car. It wasn’t graceful, but it was efficient–and Sentry made a sound the second your ass brushed past his face.

“Fuck,” He muttered low, and before you even had both feet off the console, his hand came down in a playful smack against your backside. You jolted, letting out a sharp gasp as you turned to glare over your shoulder.

“Seriously?”

“You’re the one waving it in my face like an invitation,” He purred, gaze locked on your curves like he was already halfway undressing you with just his stare. “You expect me not to say hello?” You flopped back onto the bags, thighs spreading automatically as you settled into the soft, uneven pile. The duffels creaked under your weight, but they cradled you perfectly–your legs open, head tipped back, heart already hammering.

Sentry followed in a slow, almost stalk-like crawl. His eyes were molten gold, his mouth parted slightly like he could already taste you.

And the moment he was between your legs, he didn’t speak.

He went straight for your shorts.

His fingers hooked into the waistband, tugging them down with one smooth pull—and your underwear followed, sliding down your thighs and calves and off with a gentle rustle. He bunched them up in his hand, then casually tossed them into the front seat like one would toss a bouquet at a wedding.

“I love this seat now,” He muttered.

You didn’t get a chance to retort–he was already back on you.

Sentry’s mouth descended onto your belly first–hot, slow kisses pressed just beneath your navel, where your shirt had rode up and exposed your skin. He worshipped his way down: lips dragging, breath heavy, hands stroking your sides like he wanted to memorize every inch before devouring the center of you.

You parted your thighs even more for him and his breath hitched.

“God, yes,” He breathed, reverent and aching, like the sight of you made him lose all of his thoughts for a second. Sentry exhaled hard through his nose as you opened yourself wider for him. His hands gripped your thighs, spreading you further like he needed to see every inch, and his gaze–bright, golden, hungry–burned a trail straight to your core.

Then he dipped his head.

The first stroke of his tongue was filthy.

A long, unrestrained lick from your entrance all the way up through your folds, ending in a slow, devastating flick against your clit that made your back arch off the bags. He moaned into you like he’d been craving this for days, like you were his personal religion.

“Fucking perfect,” he breathed against you, and then he was all mouth.

Lips, tongue, teeth–he worshipped you with all of it. He lapped at you like he was trying to memorize your taste, then sealed his mouth around your clit and sucked with a precision that made your hips jerk. You cried out, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling, hard, as your other hand reached out blindly and was promptly pinned to the seat.

He held you there. Just enough pressure to keep you grounded, trembling beneath the mouth of a god.

He looked up at you as he worked–eyes locked to yours, glowing with unfiltered desire. Your hips began to grind instinctively, rutting against his tongue, and he groaned–loud and guttural–at the feel of it. The vibration shot through your entire body, igniting the tension building in your gut like it was being called forward.

And just when you were about to fall apart, he pulled back.

His mouth was slick, chin shining, lips red and parted as he stared up at you with a sinful kind of reverence.

“Look at you,” He rasped, voice thick and ruined, “Already grinding on my face like a good little thing. I knew you missed this.”

You whimpered, and he grinned like he’d won a war.

Then he dove back in.

His tongue was relentless this time–messier, wetter, devouring you like you were the last thing he’d ever taste. Your legs trembled, your hips stuttered and rolled against his face, and his moans only got louder. His tongue circled your clit and sucked hard, and you shattered–with a cry and a full-body jerk as the orgasm ripped through you, fast and merciless.

Your legs clamped around his head, and still he kept going, licking through it, eyes fluttering half shut as he groaned into your core like your pleasure was the most delicious thing in existence.

You collapsed back against the duffels, panting, twitching, vision swimming.

And he still didn’t move.

Not until your thighs loosened and your hand slipped from his hair.

Then he slowly pulled back, breath heavy, lips wet, and reached casually over the seat to tap the screen of your phone.

Seven minutes left.

He looked back at you, eyes flashing.

“Plenty of time.”

Before you could catch your breath, he was on you again–this time with a low growl, gripping your hips and dragging you closer until your thighs were slung over his shoulders. You barely had time to inhale before he buried his mouth in you again, and this time, he didn’t ease in.

He was ruthless.

Sentry licked and sucked with feverish intensity, tongue working your already sensitive clit until you were writhing–overstimulated, gasping, body trying to get away even as your hips betrayed you, chasing more friction. He held you still, strong arms wrapped around your thighs, anchoring you as his tongue danced through you like he owned your pleasure.

“Please–fuck, please–” You sobbed, not even knowing what you were begging for.

“You can take it,” He murmured against you, mouth hot and sticky, “Be good for me. Come on, sweet thing…Give me one more.”

You didn’t even realize you were grinding on him again until you felt how tightly you were rocking against his face–hips pulsing, chasing that high you swore had already ruined you. Your hand reached back to the seat, desperately clutching for leverage, and your thighs began to tremble.

Sentry moaned again. Louder. Hungrier. He followed your movements, let you grind against his face while he kept sucking your clit, letting you fuck yourself on his mouth like he was starving for it.

The orgasm ripped through you even harder than the first–violent, blinding, stars behind your eyes as your entire body locked up, a cry catching in your throat as your hips seized against him. You sobbed, gasped, twitched, and he kept licking until you slumped back against the bags, shaking.

Then he pulled off slowly, tongue sliding with one last lazy lick, and kissed the inside of your thigh.

He sighed like he was full.

“You’re unbelievable,”He whispered, voice low and worshipful. “Fucking gorgeous. So good for me. Such a perfect little thing, letting me ruin you like that.”

You were still panting, barely able to lift your head.

“Sentry…” You breathed, voice hoarse. “You’re insane.”

“Mm. Maybe. But you’re glowing, and I’m proud of my work.”

He licked his lips, still tasting you, and looked dazed with pleasure.

Then he leaned up, slowly, and kissed your mouth.

It was deep, slow, and messy–your taste was still fresh on his lips, and you moaned against him without meaning to. He kissed you until you couldn’t breathe again, then finally pulled back just enough to murmur against your mouth:

“Hopefully,” He whispered, smug and tender, “You can recover for a minute or two…Before you get back to driving.” His eyes–bright and swirling with hints of caramel beneath the glow–scanned over you like he was taking inventory. Your hair was mussed, your shirt rumpled, your thighs still twitching faintly as your breath fought to steady itself. He looked proud. Not smug. Proud–like he’d just completed the holiest task of his life.

Then, gently, he reached down and smoothed his hands on the outside of your thighs, giving you one more kiss before saying:

”Let me help.” You gave him a small nod, watching as he reached toward the front seat and grabbed your discarded shorts and underwear. Carefully, he slipped your underwear back on–guiding each foot through the holes and sliding the fabric back up your thighs with featherlight fingers. His knuckles brushed your hips as he tugged the waistband gently into place. Then he leaned forward and kissed your stomach, right above the hem.

“So beautiful.” He murmured against your skin. You let out a long exhale, watching him closely as he did the same thing with your shorts–lifting and fitting them over your legs, being as gentle as possible. He let his fingers linger for just an extra second at your hips before pulling back, offering you both his hands.

”Come on,” He said softly, his voice now hinting with the familiar cadence of Bob returning beneath the surface. “Let’s get you up front before he wakes up and before your legs decide to go on strike.” You let him haul you up, giggling breathlessly as you stumbled a bit and collapsed into his chest. He steadied you with both arms wrapped around your back, holding you there as your head rested on his shoulder.

“You okay?” He asked, and you nodded into his neck.

”Yeah, just dating a guy who has a menace living inside him.” And he let out a small laugh.

————————

The car still smelled like you.

Even with the windows cracked to let the salt air in and the case of beer tucked safely in the trunk, the interior held the faintest trace of heat and sweat and you–like citrus and sugar and something warm he couldn’t name. The radio was low now, playing a soft stretch of guitar through the static as the trees thinned around you, and the narrow road shifted into something more golden. Sunlight spilled like honey through the canopy overhead, dappling the long gravel drive leading to the beach house with flickering, buttery light.

Bob leaned forward slightly in the passenger seat, eyes wide and quiet as the house came into view–wood-paneled, two-storied, all soft cedar and wide windows that caught the last of the sun and bounced it back into the sea below. You could hear waves in the distance already, even with the engine still humming beneath you. A long wraparound porch stretched across the front of the house, framed by tall grasses and uneven dunes, and parked cars were scattered along the side like lazy footprints. You recognized Walker’s truck immediately, and Alexei’s SUV beside it. Farther up, Bucky’s bike leaned half in shadow near the porch, its chrome handlebars still catching the last low light.

“Almost there,” You murmured, easing off the gas as the tires crunched softly over the gravel. You reached for your iced coffee again, now mostly melted and watered down, the condensation ring still etched into the center console.

Bob, still barefoot, tugged slightly at the hem of his black t-shirt and glanced sideways at you, his voice quieter now. “S-So…How’re we gonna pull this off?” He scratched at the back of his neck, hair still slightly mussed from the backseat, and you could see the concern flickering beneath his tone–half nerves, half anticipation. “R-Rooming together, I mean. W-We’re gonna need a story, right? Or else…”

You raised your eyebrows and cut him off with a soft, sly smile, “I just ‘accidentally’ booked a house with one less room.”

Bob blinked. “You what?”

You shrugged, eyes forward again as you navigated the last turn into the long curve of the driveway. The house loomed larger now, golden in the dying sun. “We’re the last to arrive. Someone was going to get the short end of the straw either way. This way, it just happens to be us.”

His mouth parted slightly, brow lifting with astonished admiration. “Y-You’re very clever…” He breathed, voice warm with affection. Then he leaned in and pressed a kiss to your cheek–quick and soft, just before the car came to a full stop at the base of the porch stairs.

Your skin tingled where his lips had landed, but you didn’t let yourself react visibly. Instead, you reached down and turned off the engine.

The car fell silent, and for a moment, all you could hear was the ocean.

Bob stared up at the house like it might swallow him whole. You could feel the weight of his anxiety settle behind his chest, even though he was trying to play it cool. You slipped your hand over his, gave it a quick squeeze.

“Hey,” you whispered, “We’re going to have fun. That’s the whole point of this weekend, remember?” You raised a brow. “You know…Vacation? No missions. No compound stress. Just the beach. Board games. Barbecue. Bad drinks.”

His lips twitched. “A-And maybe some bad ideas,” He added, rubbing his thumb over the top of your hand.

“Definitely,” You agreed, grabbing your phone and slipping it into your pocket. You both got out of the car at the same time.

The air outside was humid, but not heavy—salt-kissed and breezy, laced with the low rhythmic hush of the tide. You stretched your arms overhead, your shirt lifting slightly to reveal a sliver of skin, and you caught the way Bob glanced at you before looking away quickly. Still flustered. Still sweet.

He grabbed the case of beer from the trunk while you took the small overnight bags. The sand crunched softly beneath your boots as you made your way up the porch steps, and the wooden boards creaked gently under your weight. Laughter spilled from inside–Yelena, unmistakably, and then a deeper voice you recognized as Alexei’s. The screen door rattled in the frame, propped open by a flip-flop.

You paused just before stepping inside, glancing at Bob one more time. His eyes met yours with something soft–nervous, but steady.

“We got this,” You said, nudging your shoulder into his.

He nodded. “O-One less room, huh?”

You smiled.

“Short end of the straw.”

And with that, you pushed open the door.

Inside, the beach house was warm with light–wood-paneled ceilings, string lights draped along the beams, and the cozy smell of something cooking already wafting in from the kitchen. The living room was scattered with mismatched throw pillows, a huge sectional wrapped around a coffee table stacked with snacks and card games. Someone had brought a Bluetooth speaker that was playing an old Rolling Stones song under the chatter. Walker was barefoot, sitting on the edge of the couch drinking a beer with his arm flung over the back, while Ava lay sideways across the cushions on her phone. Yelena was perched on the kitchen counter with a handful of kettle chips, and Alexei was in an apron, aggressively stirring whatever was inside a pot.

The room turned the second the screen door clicked shut behind you.

“Finally!” Yelena shouted, hopping down from the counter. “What the hell took you so long? You miss a turn and wind up in another state?”

”G-Guess there’s no service up here…G-Got stuck in traffic,” Bob explained, lifting the beer up, “A-And we decided to stop for t-this as a peace offering.” He placed the case on the island counter with a thud. Yelena narrowed her eyes.

”Mmm…Well that’s nice…But they’re warm.”

“They’re not warm,” Ava called from the couch. “They’re body temperature. Like they’ve been sweating in a hot car for hours.”

You kicked off your boots, smirking. “Then someone better put them in the fridge if you want to be hydrated by nightfall.”

Alexei gave a loud cheer and clapped Bob on the back hard enough to jostle him. “Bob! You pack swim trunk, or are we going to encourage skinny dipping?”

Bob blushed so violently it touched the tips of his ears. “I-I packed,” He said quickly.

You reached for your bag and motioned casually to the stairs. “Which room are we getting?”

Bucky appeared from the hallway, arms crossed, already looking like he’d claimed the bedroom with the best view. “There’s one left. Top of the stairs, last door on your right. Double bed. Sucks to be the last ones here…”

You nodded, keeping your expression even.

“Guess we drew the short straw Bob…Hope you like sleeping on the floor.” You joked.

You followed Bob up the narrow, creaky staircase, the wood groaning under your footsteps and the hum of laughter still trailing from the kitchen behind you. The upstairs hallway smelled like cedar and sea salt. A tall window at the end of the corridor cast a rectangle of gold light across the hardwood, and you could hear the distant, rhythmic crash of waves through the thin summer walls.

“L-Last door on the right,” Bob said softly, glancing back at you over his shoulder. His voice was still a little hoarse–quiet from nerves or from what had happened earlier in the car, you couldn’t quite tell. Probably both.

The room wasn’t big, but it was perfect.

A double bed was pressed against the wall, low and wide, with fresh white sheets and a faded blue quilt that looked like it had been dried in the sun one too many times. The window above the bed was cracked open, letting in a soft breeze that lifted the edges of the curtains gently like breath. Through the slats, you could see the glittering edge of the ocean just beyond the trees, gold sun sinking into darkening blue. A small dresser sat in one corner, its top empty except for a lone seashell bowl and a lamp that hadn’t been turned on. A fan clacked softly in the ceiling overhead.

Bob hovered in the doorway for a second, like he didn’t quite believe this was real.

You stepped past him, tossing your bag onto the foot of the bed and letting yourself take a slow, indulgent breath.

“Not bad,” You said, turning back to face him with a playful tilt of your mouth. “Definitely cozy.”

Bob let out a breathy laugh, finally crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him with a quiet click. “I-It’s perfect,” He murmured. His eyes drifted to the bed, then back to you. “D-Do you think…W-We’ll be okay sharing that?”

You raised your eyebrows. “I’ve seen you take up more space on a couch than that bed,” you teased, “I think we’ll manage.”

He smiled, stepping closer, his hands still fiddling with the hem of his shirt like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

The tension was different now–softer, quieter. The chaos of arriving was behind you. The shared room was secured. The door was closed. The window was open to the salt air and the hush of waves.

And you were alone.

Bob reached out, brushing a strand of hair from your face, his fingers barely grazing your skin.

“Y-You were amazing earlier…In the car,” He said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I-I know it’s not always easy when he comes out in my moments of happiness like that. I just–wanted you to know I’m grateful. F-For you. For…Everything.”

Your chest ached at the way he said it. Honest. Bare. Like you were holding his whole heart. You stepped in, wrapping your arms loosely around his waist. He folded into you like a tide, resting his chin gently on your shoulder, his arms sliding around you in return. His breath was warm against your neck as he kissed the smooth skin there. You turned your head slightly, just enough to let your nose brush against his jaw, and then you whispered:

“I love every piece of you, Bob. Every single one. The quiet parts, the powerful parts, even the ones that scare you a little. They’re all you—and I love them all.” His breath hitched ever so slightly, and his arms tightened around you in that way that always made your heart ache a little, because it was like he was trying to make sure you didn’t float away.

Then you added, just a little softer, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips:

“And, hey… it’s also kind of a perk that when you’re at peak Sentry, you’re practically putty in my hands.”

Bob huffed a quiet laugh—half embarrassed, half endeared—his forehead tipping against yours. “Th-That’s not fair,” he murmured, grinning shyly, “Y-You already have me wrapped around your finger without any celestial interference…” You opened your mouth to respond, only to be interrupted by Yelena.

”DINNER IS IN TEN!” Her voice carried like a bombshell from the kitchen, followed by the distinct clatter of a pot lid being thrown into the sink.

”STOP THROWING THINGS, WE’RE RENTING THIS PLACE!” Ava yelled. You let out a little groan, and pressed your forehead to his, hearing a soft laugh escape his throat.

“W-We should go down before she comes up here with a spatula…”

”Or worse…A truth serum.” You added, taking a step back, “Let’s go, pretty boy.”

———————

After dinner, everyone moved in slow, satisfied motions–bellies full, limbs relaxed. Alexei’s strange but oddly delicious pasta had vanished quickly, and someone had cracked open the beer before it could fully chill. The plates were stacked haphazardly beside the sink, and instead of drawing straws or assigning chores, a quiet sort of rhythm formed.

Bob washed.

You dried.

Yelena stacked the dishes with unnecessary aggression while muttering under her breath about how she always got “dish-duty by proximity.” Ava supervised, occasionally leaning over to correct the stacking form while sipping wine from a novelty mug. Bucky wandered in halfway through the clean-up with a dish towel over his shoulder and somehow managed to avoid doing anything except drying one fork and then disappearing again. You didn’t even know where Walker had gone, but the open back door suggested he’d escaped onto the porch with the Bluetooth speaker and a fresh beer, and Alexei had sprawled out on the couch.

Eventually, with the kitchen cleaned and the sink no longer threatening to overflow, the group gathered in the living room. Someone dimmed the lights. Bob claimed a spot on the corner of the couch, and you casually sank down beside him. A blanket was draped over the back cushions–threadbare and too warm for the weather, but you tugged it down anyway, letting it spill across your lap and his.

You didn’t say a word.

You just reached for his hand beneath it.

He let you take it, let your fingers lace with his, and his thumb drew slow, steady circles against your palm as the movie began to play. Something old. Familiar. Background noise for a room full of ex-operatives pretending to be ordinary.

No one noticed you. No one questioned the blanket. Maybe they were too full, or too tired. Maybe they didn’t care. But Bob’s breathing slowed the second your hand found his, and you could feel the way his shoulders eased against the cushions, just from that simple, hidden touch.

The movie ran long. People started peeling off one by one. First Walker, then Ava. Alexei disappeared upstairs muttering something about needing to “test the mattress.” Yelena stayed the longest–curled up in a chair with her hoodie pulled tight–before eventually yawning, retreating to her room soon after.

That left just you and Bob.

The TV still played–now quiet, some after-midnight rerun that neither of you were watching.

Bob shifted slightly, his hand still linked with yours under the blanket, and you could see the way the light touched the soft parts of his face, casting long shadows under his lashes and along the slope of his cheekbone.

You turned your head toward him, voice low.

“Hey,” You murmured, “Wanna go for a walk?”

He blinked slowly, like you’d caught him in the middle of a thought, then nodded. “Y-Yeah…It’s cooler now, right?”

“Much.” You smiled, pulling the blanket off and rising to your feet. “Tomorrow we’ll be roasting in the sun. Let’s take advantage while we can.”

You grabbed a hoodie from the back of a chair and slipped it over your head as Bob did the same, and together, you padded barefoot across the wooden floors, out the back door, and down the stairs that led through the grass-covered dunes toward the shoreline.

The sky had settled into a deep indigo, the last hints of twilight drained away, and the stars had begun to peek through the clouds above. The moon was just enough–silver-bright and low, casting its glow across the dark stretch of water. The tide dragged in slow and lazy, brushing against the shore with a soft shush-shush that sounded like breathing.

You and Bob walked in silence for a while, shoulders occasionally brushing, your steps syncing as if you’d done this a hundred times before. There were no footprints ahead of you, only the ones you left behind.

Eventually, you stopped near a slope of dry sand that overlooked the water. You sat first, tucking your legs up loosely beneath you. Bob dropped beside you, not too close, but not far–like his gravity always pulled just slightly toward yours.

You tilted your head back, looking at the stars, breathing in the fresh air, the saltiness of the ocean stinging your lungs slightly.

“I could stay here forever,” You whispered.

Bob glanced over, eyes warm. “T-The beach?”

You nodded. “The quiet. The breeze. The water…All of it. It’s peaceful.”

He was quiet for a moment, watching your profile.

“D-Do you think about that a lot?” He asked softly, “L-Leaving the Thunderbolts and just h-having a normal life?” Your fingers curled into the sand.

“Sometimes,” You admitted. “Not in a running-away kind of way. Just in a…‘What would life be like if it wasn’t chaos all the time’ kind of way.”

He nodded slowly. “Y-Yeah…”

You turned your head toward him, the wind catching the tips of your hair. “You ever think about what you’d do if you weren’t on the team?” He reached up and scratched the back of his neck, shifting a little bit so he was a bit closer to you.

His shoulders rose with a breath, and he let it out slowly–like he was weighing something, choosing the words carefully before letting them go.

“Well…” He said quietly, “I-I think…if I never met you guys, I probably would’ve still been in that b-box in the vault…”

You turned your head to look at him. His voice didn’t shake, but the words held a kind of weight that settled between you, soft but immense. “O-Or most likely dead and forgotten,” He added, more gently now, like the thought had been lingering for a long time. “But…If I wasn’t trapped in that b-box, or if I didn’t volunteer for the Sentry serum… I probably still would be on meth. S-Still strung out. N-Not really contributing to the world l-like I am now.” He gave a soft laugh, small and humorless, but not bitter. Just…real. Then, without another word, Bob leaned back into the sand, stretching his long limbs out with a soft grunt, his eyes fixed on the sky overhead. He looked younger like this–bathed in moonlight, barefaced and barefoot, his silhouette framed by starlight and the faint shimmer of ocean spray.

You followed him down, shifting to lay beside him so your heads were level, your hair brushing the edge of his shoulder. You turned your face toward his, and after a moment, reached for his hand. He gave it willingly–alway-sand your fingers threaded easily through his. The warmth of him, even now, pulsed steady and grounding against your skin.

There was a pause before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was quieter, more vulnerable.

“But I… I’m glad everything happened the way it did,” He whispered, eyes still on the stars, “C-Cause I wouldn’t have met you.”

Your heart squeezed. His thumb was trembling slightly against your palm, like the gravity of what he was saying was pushing through his whole body. And still, his voice held that stunned sort of wonder, like he still couldn’t believe you were real.

You turned to him fully, propping yourself on your elbow as you leaned over, brushing his light brown hair gently back from his forehead. He blinked slowly, his eyes finding yours in the dark, and you saw everything in them. The gratitude. The ache. The awe.

Then you kissed him.

Soft. Gentle. Like the moonlight itself had dipped between you and pressed your mouths together.

It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t lustful. It was slow and full–like every word he couldn’t find was poured into that one, quiet connection. And when you pulled back, you kept your hand against his cheek, letting your thumb brush along the high arc of it, just beneath his eye.

“I’m glad too,” you whispered, your voice low, full of a warm, aching kind of honesty. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you found us. And I’m really…really glad you found me.”

His breath hitched. You felt it under your fingertips. But his smile was soft, full of something steady and glowing.

“I’d choose you,” You added, gently. “In any timeline. On any team. With or without the serum…I’d still fall for you.”

Bob turned his face into your hand a little, eyes fluttering closed, as he whispered back:

“I’d fall for you too. A-Again and again.”

You lay down beside him fully now, your head on his shoulder, your hand still holding his. The waves whispered in the distance. The stars blinked above you. And for a little while, there was nothing else in the world but the two of you–quiet, safe, and absolutely seen.

——————

The room was still dark, kissed only by a faint, early gray light leaking in through the slats of the blinds. Outside, the sound of the tide had softened into something gentler–just the hush-hush rhythm of saltwater sliding over sand.

Inside, the air was warm. Heavy with body heat. Still.

You blinked slowly awake, muscles stiff from sleep, and realized almost instantly that you hadn’t moved in hours.

Bob was wrapped around you like a blanket.

One long arm curved over your waist, the other curled under your head like a makeshift pillow. His chest was pressed to your back, bare and slow with each breath, and his legs were tangled with yours beneath the sun-dried quilt. His forehead rested against the top of your shoulder, and his mouth was half-open against your skin—breathing hot little puffs that clung to your collarbone, sticky with sleep.

You let out a quiet sigh, shifting just enough to test the weight of his grip.

He didn’t stir.

You tried again, this time with a little more effort–attempting to slide your leg out from between his–but the second you moved, his arm tightened around you instinctively. A low, sleepy sound rumbled from his throat, not quite a groan… more like a murmur. His hips shifted a little, like he was seeking you out.

That’s when you felt his erection through his soft jersey sleep shorts, pressed flush against your lower back. He didn’t even seem aware of it yet–he was still snoring lightly, his mouth sticking slightly against your skin with each breath–but the heat of it, the weight, was undeniable. And growing.

You let your eyes slip closed for a second and tried to breathe through the flare of arousal that pulsed low in your core.

Then you felt his nose nuzzle against your shoulder.

Followed by a kiss.

Slow. Barely-there. Like his body was already making decisions his mind hadn’t caught up with yet. Another kiss came next, right where your shoulder met your neck–and this time, his hips twitched forward, just a subtle roll, like instinct.

You let out a soft, accidental sound–something between a sigh and a quiet gasp–and felt him tense behind you.

Bob’s breath caught.

And then you felt his erection twitch against you, pulsing hot through the barriers between you both.

“…Crap,” He whispered hoarsely, voice thick with sleep. His hand flexed against your stomach, like he just realized he was holding you that tightly. “S-Sorry…”

You smiled softly, still facing away, voice barely audible. “Don’t apologize.” You turned your head slightly, just enough for your nose to brush his cheek. His breath stuffered, and he let out a quiet, fragile sound–a mix between a sigh and a groan–as his hips rolled forward again. The heat of him pressed fully into the curve of your backside this time, unmistakably eager now, and definitely awake.

His hand slipped up your torso, fingers smoothing gently along your stomach.

”Y-You know, I was just d-dreaming about you…” He rolled his hips again–slow, sweet pressure that sent a flush of heat straight through your belly. You hummed.

”Well…Now I’m right in front of you, so what are you going to do?” You asked, your bottom lip slipping between your teeth. He groaned and nuzzled into the crook of your neck, kissing just below your ear as his hand slid lower, gently tugging at the waistband of your sleep shorts.

”I-I’m gonna take care of you.” He replied, breath catching as he pulled them down slowly, being extra careful not to pull away from the heat of your body. You lifted your hips slightly to help him, and the material slipped down over your thighs, pooling beneath the covers.

Then you felt him shifting behind you–his own sleep shorts sliding down just enough for skin to meet skin. He pressed a kiss between your shoulder blades as he brought your leg over his thigh, guiding you open with gentle, trembling fingers.

You could feel the tip of him, hot and slow, sliding through your wetness–teasing, and patient. And then, with a quiet exhale, he eased himself in.

The stretch was slow and aching–every inch of him pressing deeper until he was fully buried inside you, his forehead resting against your shoulder, his breathing shallow and unsteady.

You gasped, eyes fluttering, and he immediately reached up, covering your mouth with his hand. His palm was warm, a little shaky, but careful–pressing just enough to muffle you without smothering.

“Shh…” He whispered, kissing your neck as his hips began to move, slow and deep, “Y-You’ll wake the whole house…”

His voice was wrecked already–raspy and breathless, full of longing. His movements were steady but aching with restraint, his body coiled tightly behind yours as he rocked into you with each measured thrust.

“You f-feel so good,” He cooed against your shoulder, voice almost broken, “So warm…So soft around me…”

Your back arched involuntarily, your body melting into his as he moved inside you, breath brushing over your skin like a prayer.

“I–I dream about this,” He confessed, his hand tightening just a little over your mouth when he felt you moan. “Every night, I dream about being inside you like this…” His other hand gripped your thigh where it was draped over his, holding you open for him as he pressed deeper, grinding instead of thrusting, like he needed every second of contact.

“You’re my favorite feeling in the world,” He breathed, voice cracking as he kissed the curve of your shoulder, “N-Nothing else even comes close…”

You whimpered behind his hand, and he felt it–your sound against his palm, your body trembling as you clenched around him. It made him groan, a soft broken sound he buried against your skin.

“G-God,” He gasped, “You’re perfect, you’re everything…”

His hips stuttered, and you felt him shiver behind you–he was close. So close. And trying so hard to keep it together.

But the way you felt around him, the way your body rocked back to meet him with each slow push, the way your legs trembled and your hands clenched the sheets…

It was unraveling him.

“Come for me,” He whispered, muffling another moan against your skin. “P-Please… Let me feel it…”

You didn’t need much more.

The combination of his voice, the press of his hips, the hand over your mouth holding you in that secret, quiet space–it sent you over the edge. You arched into him, muffled cries caught in his palm as your body clenched and shuddered with pleasure.

He groaned when he felt you fall apart, hips jerking as he buried himself deeper one last time, then stilled–shuddering, gasping softly into the hollow of your shoulder as he let go filling you up with warm hot ropes of cum. The room was silent, save for the sound of your breath mingling with his.

He didn’t move for a long moment, he just stayed there, inside you, holding you close with one arm wrapped tightly around your waist, the other still gently covering your mouth until your breathing slowed.

Then, with a soft hum, he kissed your shoulder one more time, and pulled out slowly, hearing a muffled gasp leave your throat. His hand dropped from your mouth, and his fingers brushed your cheek gentle before going down to rest on your waist. You turned in his arms, curling toward him, and he shifted back instinctively, giving you space–but not distance.

His face was flushed, glowing faintly in the dim early light. His lips were kiss-swollen, his hair a mess of soft strands sticking to his forehead. And those eyes–half-lidded, shining, still dazed with the echo of your body around him–blinked slowly as he met your gaze.

You leaned in, brushing your mouth against his, slow and sweet, lingering just long enough to taste the sleep still on his lips. When you pulled back, your voice was low, your words tinted with something warm and teasing.

“Y’know,” You murmured, “It sucks we can’t do that more often.”Bob huffed a quiet laugh, cheeks tinting even deeper pink.

“Y-Yeah…” He mumbled, then kissed you again, quick and tender. “H-Hopefully when we’re ready to t-tell them…It’ll give us more time to do this.”You smiled against his mouth and reached up to brush your fingers along the side of his face, thumb stroking just beneath his cheekbone.

“You’ll be moving your stuff into my room, I hope.” He nodded immediately, voice barely a whisper.

“O-Of course. A-All of it.” You tucked your head beneath his chin, letting your fingers trace light circles across his bare chest.

“Good,” You whispered. “Then maybe we won’t have to sneak around anymore. Bob let out a soft, breathy laugh, and tightened his arms around you, pulling you closer.

“I-I don’t mind sneaking around, but having more mornings like this with you would be so much b-better.” You sighed contentedly into his chest, then tilted your head up and kissed the underside of his jaw.

”As romantic as that is,” You started, “I have to pee.” A groggy whine escaped his throat the moment you tried to wiggle out of his hold, but he released you–albeit reluctantly–letting his arms fall away with a dramatic sigh.

“Such a sour puss,” You teased, with a smile as you stood and grabbed a fresh pair of shorts from your bag. He mumbled something incoherent into the pillow, as you disappeared into the small adjoining bathroom, flicking on the light before sitting down on the toilet with a sigh. You stayed there for a moment, letting his cum drip out of you, while your muscles began to ache slightly in the most satisfying way. You waited a few minutes there, until you wiped, flushed, slipped on your fresh pair of shorts and went to wash your hands, splashing some cold water on your face to shake the sleep off of it. When you glanced in the mirror, you saw your reflection looking flushed and soft, your lips swollen and your hair slightly mussed.

You smiled.

Moments later, you tiptoed downstairs barefoot, the old wooden steps creaking softly beneath your weight. The morning light was barely creeping into the beach house, casting long shadows through the kitchen windows and illuminating the dust in the air like glitter suspended in water.

You were alone for about ten seconds.

Then–

“Morning.”

You startled a little, glancing toward the living room, where Bucky sat slouched at the edge of the couch, already halfway through a mug of coffee. His hair was tied back, a few loose strands falling around his face, and his voice was scratchy with sleep. He was wearing sweatpants and a black t-shirt which allowed his vibranium arm to refract the morning light that shined through the windows.

“Morning,” You said smoothly after you caught your breath, opening the cupboard to grab a mug and filling it at the tap before reaching for the coffee pot. The smell was heavenly–dark and rich and blessedly bitter. He watched you for a moment, then cleared his throat.

”Long night?” You froze with the coffee pot tilted halfway to your mug.

Just for a second.

Then, slowly—calmly—you finished pouring, set the pot back on the burner, and turned around, your mug cradled casually in your hands.

“Yeah,” you said, letting your voice stay light, breezy. “A little. Bob and I stayed up for a bit after everyone went to bed.”

Bucky’s eyes didn’t waver. He took another slow sip of his coffee, and when he lowered the mug, there was a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I know,” he said.

Your breath caught.

“I saw you guys on the beach, actually.” You didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Because you didn’t know what he meant by that, was he watching for long? Or did he just catch a glimpse of the both of you? Those were the burning questions that lingered in your mind. But your poker face didn’t falter. Not yet. You took a slow sip of your coffee.

“Oh?”

“Mm-hmm,” He nodded, swirling the liquid in his mug. “You were sitting real close. Talking. Then lying down together for a while.” His voice was still scratchy with sleep, but his tone was deliberate. Easy. Controlled. Testing.

“I figured it was one of those ‘Thunderbolts trauma-bond’ kind of talks,” He added, voice edged with amusement. “Until you kissed him.” The heat in your cheeks crawled down your neck like a slow steady burn, and you swallowed hard, eyes flicking away from Bucky’s unreadable gaze, attempting to play it off.

“Chalk it up to…a heat of the moment thing,” you said lightly, forcing a shrug as you stared down into your coffee. “It was a nice night. Things just…Felt right, and we y’know kissed, that’s all…”

But Bucky didn’t budge.

He just stared at you–calm, patient, eyes sharp even through the softness of morning light–and took another sip of his coffee.

“Y’know…” He started, tone deceptively casual, “I had my suspicions for a while, especially with the way he gets all boyish and giddy around you…But I never had proof, though…Till I saw your location yesterday when you two were supposedly stuck in traffic.” You glanced up sharply, your heartbeat thundering in your chest. He didn’t look angry, it was just a glance of knowing.

”And I saw you weren’t on the highway anymore, you’d pulled off. And about twenty minutes went by before your pin started moving again…Then with the kiss, everything really clicked…” You felt the blood drain from your face only to rush back hotter than before. Your pulse hammered in your ears. Slowly, shakily, you set your coffee mug down on the counter with a quiet clink, hands trembling slightly.

“So…How long have you and him been seeing each other like that?” He asked.

”…Two months,” You admitted, barely above a whisper. Bucky nodded once, taking that in. His jaw ticked, and he exhaled through his nose.

“How long are you planning to hide it from us?” He asked, not accusing–just…Curious. Honest. You looked up at him, your eyes meeting his.

“We just wanted to keep it a thing between us…Until we were ready,” You said, your voice thin, your throat tight. “Until it wasn’t so new. Until we weren’t worried that…If it went public, people would start treating him like a bomb again.” Bucky’s shoulders sank a little, his eyes flicking away for just a second–guilt passing like a cloud over his expression. He nodded slowly, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

“I get that,” He said finally. Then he sighed, the weight of it long and tired. “But…Are you gonna tell the rest of the team?” You hesitated.

”Are you?” You retorted, which made him shake his head.

”That’s not my call…That’s up to you two. I just…I feel bad that you think you can’t tell us. That it’s something you gotta hide.” He set his mug down, bracing his hands loosely on the counter.

“I mean, most of us have our suspicions. Hell, Ava’s been keeping score on who catches the most looks between you two. But that’s different than hearing it straight from you.” His eyes flicked to yours again, gentler this time. “It’s different when it’s confirmed.” Your mouth was dry. Your heart still raced. But something in your chest eased–just a little.

“…Are you mad?” You asked softly.

He shook his head again. “No. Just…I wish you felt like you could trust us with something that clearly means a lot to you.”

You swallowed thickly, nodding. “It does,” You whispered. “He does.”

“Then maybe it’s time to stop pretending,” He said, pushing away from the counter. “Because if he’s yours…Then you deserve to be honest about it and be proud about it.” You nodded, staring down at your mug again. Bucky turned to head back toward the living room, then paused.

“For what it’s worth…” He said without looking back, “I think you’re good for each other. Might even be the first damn bit of softness either of you has ever had.” Then he left the conversation.

——————

The sun was already high by the time the house started to stir again. Someone had opened the screen door to let the breeze through, and the smell of sunscreen and brewing coffee lingered in the warm air.

Back upstairs, you stood near the dresser, slipping into your bikini with your back to the bed. It was a modest one–navy, with a soft scoop neckline and high-rise bottoms. Comfortable. Secure. Practical. And Bob was watching you like you were peeling the sun itself from the sky.

He sat propped against the pillows, his soft black t-shirt wrinkled, his bare legs still stretched out across the quilt. He didn’t speak at first–just blinked slowly, jaw slack, like he hadn’t quite recovered from waking up with you in his arms. But then he smiled. A slow, crooked thing.

“You look…” He started, then cleared his throat, his voice catching a little. “R-Really good in that.”

You slipped your coverup over your head–a breezy white linen thing that barely touched your thighs–and turned to face him with a raised brow.

“You mean I don’t look like a walking sunscreen ad?” You teased.

He shook his head, grinning. “Y-You look like a goddess…In a very modest disguise.”

You chuckled, padding over to the bed and grabbing your sunglasses. “Well, modest disguise or not… I was thinking,” You said, more seriously now, “Maybe we should tell them tonight…About us…” Bob’s smile softened.

“If you feel like that’s what you want to do,” He said gently, shifting to sit upright. “I’ll follow your lead…Whatever you want.”

You stepped closer, and he leaned up, brushing a kiss over your lips–slowly mirroring the softness of yours. Just enough to make your shoulders melt a little.

“B-But if you’re feeling off about it,” He murmured against your mouth, “We don’t have to. We can w-wait.” You sighed, resting your forehead against his for a beat.

“Well…There’s no point in keeping it a secret if Bucky already knows.” Bob nodded, fingers brushing lightly over your hip.

“Okay. So…We’ll tell them tonight. O-Or tomorrow. Whenever you want. Like I said.”

You gave him a small smile, kissed his cheek, and grabbed the sunscreen from the nightstand.

”This is why I love you so much.”

—————————

Outside, the beach was a sun-drenched haze.

The heat was intense–sharp and golden, radiating off the sand in visible waves. Everyone had already claimed their spots along the shore: Ava and Yelena were sprawled on towels like lizards, Walker was playing a vaguely competitive game of paddle ball with Alexei, and Bucky had parked himself under a battered umbrella with a book and a massive bottle of water.

You and Bob set up beneath a second umbrella, tucked in the shade where the breeze still managed to kiss your skin.

Bob flopped down beside you on the oversized beach towel, already tugging at the collar of his shirt. “T-The heat is already too much for me,” he muttered, sweeping his damp hair off his forehead. “A-Add the sun on top of it all though? It’s like I’m going to suffocate.”

You laughed, sipping from your bottle of water. “You literally have a sun god in you. I’m not surprised you haven’t gotten heat stroke yet.” He shook his head solemnly. “D-Don’t take it off the table. That might still happen.” You both laughed, your heads tilting together like magnets. After a few quiet moments of comfortable lounging, you stretched your legs out and let your head tip back.

“Hey,” You said casually, offering him the sunscreen. “Think you could do my back?” Bob took the bottle without hesitation, twisting the cap and squirting some into his palm before warming it between his hands. You pulled your coverup off slowly, letting it pool behind you, and turned so your back faced him. His hands were warm–steady as ever–as he spread the lotion across your shoulders, down the length of your spine in slow, tender strokes.

Then, as he leaned in to reach the small of your back, his breath ghosted over your ear.

“You know…” He murmured, his voice low and teasing, “If we weren’t out in public…I’d be making you moan into the sand right now.” You froze, eyes widening slightly. Your breath caught in your throat, and you turned just enough to glare over your shoulder.

“You can’t say that out here,” You hissed, cheeks flushing with warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. “You’re being a horn dog.” Bob smiled, slow and wicked, his hands still dangerously close to your hips.

“C-Can’t help it,” He whispered, secretly brushing his lips against your shoulder, a move that nobody noticed before pulling back like he didn’t just say something absolutely filthy, “You s-started it with the modest disguise.” You reached for the sunscreen and smacked him lightly in the chest with it.

“Keep it up,” you warned, “And I’m gonna make you wrestle Walker in the sand just to get all that energy out.” He grinned.

”I-It wouldn’t be the same as rolling around in it with you though…” You laughed again–loud and bright–and tucked yourself into his side as he pulled the umbrella down a little lower to block the worst of the glare. And for a moment, you just sat there–hidden in the shade, hidden in plain sight–wrapped in sunscreen and secrecy and a kind of love you both knew wouldn’t stay secret much longer.

———————

Dinner that night was loud.

The long driftwood table was crowded with mismatched chairs, benches, and half-sand-dusted Thunderbolts wearing tank tops and oversized hoodies. The sky outside had softened into a dusky lavender, and the kitchen was warm with the scent of grilled shrimp, charred corn, and garlic butter. Ava had taken the lead on the stove this time, refusing help and swatting away every wandering hand that got near her skillet. Alexei had uncorked a bottle of cheap white wine and was pouring it generously for everyone, and Walker was arguing over playlist control with Yelena, who had threatened to smash his phone with a meat tenderizer if he didn’t leave the music alone.

You sat beside Bob, as usual.

Close enough that your thighs brushed when you shifted. Close enough that your elbows bumped whenever you reached for the same thing. You waited until the table was full–until everyone had food and was midway through their first drink. Then you reached over, slid your hand into Bob’s under the table, and gave it a quick squeeze.

He looked at you with wide eyes, his fingers instinctively curling around yours, and you offered him a soft, steady nod.

He cleared his throat.

“I–um.” He glanced around the table. “S-Sorry to interrupt, I just–uh, w-we had something we wanted to tell you.”

The table quieted. Forks paused mid-air. Conversations slowed. All eyes slowly turned toward you both. You exhaled, heart thudding, and looked around the room.

“Bob and I are together,” You said simply. “Like…For real. And we have been…For a couple months now.” The silence lasted for a full beat.

Then—

“Thank God,” Ava groaned, tossing her napkin onto the table. “I thought I was going insane watching you two eye-fuck each other every day like nobody was noticing.”

“Finally!” Yelena barked, pointing a chip at you. “I said it three missions ago. I said, those two are absolutely sneaking off during recon debrief, and everyone thought I was being dramatic.”

“You are dramatic,” Walker muttered into his glass.

“But also right,” Bucky added, voice dry. “It was obvious.” Alexei beamed and reached across the table to smack Bob’s shoulder.

“You little sneaks…I respect dedication.” Bob flushed crimson from the ears down.

“Y-You guys are not…Mad?” He asked, looking around the table, voice tentative. Yelena rolled her eyes at him.

”Bob. Come on…You think we wouldn’t accept you dating someone who clearly loves the shit out of you?”

Walker pointed his fork at you. “Honestly, we’d have accepted it even if we had doubts. But we don’t. You’re good together. It’s obvious.”

You felt your chest tighten with sudden emotion. Bob’s hand was still wrapped around yours under the table, his thumb rubbing slow, nervous circles against your palm, but now…It felt steady. Reassured. Warm in a way that made your ribs ache.

“W-We just wanted to keep it between us until we were sure,” He said softly. “Until it felt…safe.”

Bucky nodded slowly. “We get that. But for the record? It was always safe.”

Yelena leaned in, smirking. “Okay but we need details now.”

“Oh my god,” You groaned, “Absolutely not.”

“Wait, wait–who made the first move?” Ava asked, chin propped on her hand like she was taking notes.

“I bet it was you,” Walker pointed his fork directly to you, “You seem like the type who would take the reins.” You rolled your eyes.

”It was actually a fairly mutual decision.” And everyone bursted out into an array of other questions.

——————

The bedroom door clicked softly shut behind you.

Outside, the house had finally settled into silence–punctuated only by distant waves and the creak of cooling floorboards. Inside, the room was wrapped in that velvety kind of darkness only a summer night could offer, lit just barely by the moon spilling through the open window, catching on the rumpled folds of the quilt and casting the softest glow across Bob’s bare chest.

He was sitting at the edge of the bed, wearing a t-shirt and boxers, with his legs spread and elbows resting on his knees. His fingers intertwined loosely between them. He glanced up as you entered, eyes soft, tired, and full of something that you were still processing. You padded over, barefoot and warm from the day, and settled beside him.

For a while, neither of you said anything. You just sat there in the quiet, breathing the same salt-laced air.

Then Bob exhaled slowly.

“T-That went…way better than I thought it would,” he said, his voice a little hoarse from wine and nerves.

You nodded, leaning your shoulder into his. “Told you.”

He gave a soft laugh–one of those short, breathless ones that still sounded like disbelief. His hand reached for yours, fingers curling around your knuckles.

“I-I’m still not used to people reacting like that…Like I’m not something they have to tiptoe around.”

You squeezed his hand gently. “You’re not a liability, Bob. You’re ours. And you’re mine. That means something to them.”

His lips parted slightly, like he didn’t have the right words.

“I’m serious,” You whispered, turning more fully toward him. “They saw how happy you are. And maybe…They saw how much I need you too.”

His throat bobbed. He blinked slowly.

“You make everything feel easier,” He said finally. “T-Talking. Existing. Being me.” His voice cracked just a little on that last word, and his eyes dropped to where your hands were still joined.

“Y-You’ve handled everything so well. Hiding us, balancing missions, b-being my anchor even when things get hard…” He glanced up again, his gaze glassy but steady. “I’m just…I can’t stop being a-amazed by you.” You leaned in and kissed him–soft and slow, your nose brushing his cheek.

“I love you Bob.” You whispered, against his lips, as he gently kissed yours.

”I love you too.” He replied, before kissing you again. It deepened before either of you could take another breath. It started soft–gentle and reverent, like the words that had just passed between you–but it didn’t stay that way.

Bob groaned against your mouth when you pushed him back gently by the shoulders, guiding him down until he was flat on his back against the cool quilt. His hands instinctively found your hips as you climbed over him, settling on his lap. Your thighs bracketed his, and the weight of you on top of him made his breath hitch, chest rising hard beneath his thin shirt.

“God,” He whispered, eyes wide, pupils blown. “Y-You look…”

You didn’t give him a chance to finish. You kissed him again–wet, open-mouthed, and slow–licking into his mouth until he gasped. You swallowed the sound eagerly, rolling your hips just enough to make him groan. His fingers gripped your waist tighter, already trembling.

“I want to go down on you,” You murmured against his lips, voice low and teasing. His whole body jolted.

“Y-Yeah?” His voice broke like it couldn’t contain the need. “P-Please–I mean–y-you d-don’t have to but I–” He nodded too fast, already breathless, already desperate.

You smiled as you slid down his body, leaving a trail of kisses over his clothed chest, and his stomach, pausing just above the waistband of his boxers. You could feel how hard he was–thick and twitching beneath the fabric–and when you pulled the waistband down, he nearly whimpered.

He was flushed and already leaking.

”All this…From just a little kissing hmm?” You whispered, your voice thick with play, with hunger, with affection.

Bob’s breath caught in his throat as your hand wrapped around the base of him, slow and deliberate. You gave him one lazy stroke, then another, your thumb swiping over the bead of slick at the tip. He trembled beneath you–hips twitching slightly, fingers knotted in the quilt beside his thighs.

And when you leaned in and dragged your tongue up the underside of him again, he gasped–loud and sharp–his body tensing so hard you could feel the pulse hammering through him.

You wrapped your lips around the head, sealing him in the wet heat of your mouth.

Bob choked on a moan.

“F-Fuck–oh my god–” His voice cracked, ragged and breathless.

You eased down slowly, taking more of him in, letting your tongue glide along every ridge and vein as your lips slipped lower. He was big–too big to take all at once without effort–and your jaw ached almost instantly, but you didn’t stop. You wanted this. You wanted to see him fall apart.

You bobbed your head with slow precision, using your hand to stroke what your mouth couldn’t reach, slick and steady. The sounds he made–desperate, soft groans and whispered gasps–were the most beautiful thing you’d ever heard. He was so sensitive, so responsive, his hips jerking up involuntarily every time you took him deeper.

One thrust caught you off guard–sharp, too sudden–and you gagged softly around him.

Bob froze.

“I-I’m sorry–I didn’t mean to–”

You moaned around him, eyes flicking up to his, and kept going.

The moment your throat relaxed and you pushed yourself lower, he completely lost it.

“F-Fuck, baby–oh god, please–” His hand came down, gripping your hair gently but tight enough to anchor him. His voice was wrecked, trembling with need. “D-Don’t stop–I’m s-so close–”

Your lips slid over him faster now, your mouth a mess of spit and warmth, your hand stroking him in rhythm as you hollowed your cheeks and sucked harder. You could feel him twitching, his thighs tensing, his hips stuttering as he neared the edge.

“G-Gonna–oh fuck, I–” He cried out suddenly, loud and sharp as his hips jolted once, then again–

He came hard, deep down your throat, his whole body arching off the bed as you swallowed him greedily.

You didn’t pull away. You stayed there, lips sealed tight, swallowing every hot pulse of him as it spilled into your mouth. He was shaking beneath you–his thighs trembling, his fingers tangled in your hair, a broken litany of your name falling from his lips like a prayer.

Only when he finally sagged back against the mattress, panting, did you ease off of him–your lips slick, your mouth swollen, and your eyes dark with want.

You wiped the corner of your mouth with the back of your hand, then crawled back up his body–slow, deliberate, predatory.

Bob’s chest was still heaving when you kissed him.

The moment your mouth met his again, he groaned deep in his throat–like the taste of himself on your tongue shattered whatever composure he had left. His hand slid into your hair and pulled you closer, kissing you hard, deep, messy. Your lips crashed over each other, mouths open and slick, breathing each other in like you couldn’t get enough.

“F-Fuck,” He whispered against your mouth, still panting. “You’re…You’re u-unreal.” You kissed him again–slow this time, letting your tongue slide over his, letting the aftertaste of him linger between you as his hands moved up your sides. Your hips rolled instinctively against his, your shorts damp and clinging between your legs, your whole body strung tight with need.

Bob pulled back just enough to look at you.

His pupils were blown wide, cheeks flushed, lips wet and swollen. “Y-You’re soaked,” He said, voice gone low and reverent as his hand slid down your side. “I didn’t even…D-Do anything..”

You smiled, almost smug, still straddling his lap. “Well,” you whispered, brushing your nose against his, “Maybe you should fix that.” That wrecked little breath he let out made your whole body thrum.

His hand slipped down, trailing over your waistband, fingers playing at the hem of your shorts. And then–slowly, teasingly–he dipped inside. You gasped at the contact, your hips jolting forward slightly. Bob groaned, head tipping back for a second as his fingers found you.

“Jesus Christ…” He muttered. “You’re dripping.” You bit your lip, breath catching as he stroked through your folds, spreading your arousal around on his fingers. “Y-You’re already m-making a mess…” You whimpered against his mouth, “But I know w-what to do to really make things even messier.” And with that, his fingers plunged inside you.

You gasped–a raw, breathless sound–arching hard into his hand as he filled you deep and fast. His fingers were thick and curled just right, stroking against that spot inside you that made your legs tremble.

Your hips rolled down onto his hand, grinding against his palm.

“Th-That’s it,” He breathed, curling his fingers harder, faster. “There you go…You feel that?”

You nodded, breath shallow. “Bob–f-fuck–!” Your body clenched around his fingers as he pumped them fast, unrelenting, his palm dragging over your clit with each thrust. He leaned in and kissed you again, tongue deep and messy in your mouth as you moaned into him.

Then he pulled back just slightly, his breath brushing over your lips.

“I wanna see it,” He whispered. “Wanna see you fall apart for me. Right here. I want you to make a mess in these shorts.”

The words alone nearly made you come.

His fingers slammed into you faster, harder, his hand relentless, your shorts now completely soaked as the squelch of wetness grew louder–filthy and raw and so intimate in the silence of the room.

“I can feel you—Y/N, you’re s-so close, aren’t you?”

“Y-Yes–yes!”

“C-Come for me, baby. Let go.”

And you did.

You cried out as your body convulsed, thighs trembling violently as you squirted into his hand, soaking your shorts and his wrist. Your vision went white around the edges, your breath punched out of your lungs, and Bob never stopped–working you through it, whispering praise the whole time.

“That’s it,” He gasped. “That’s my good g-girl–god, look at you.”

You collapsed forward against his chest, trembling, dizzy from the intensity.

But Bob–sweet, soft, ravenous Bob–pulled his fingers from your soaked shorts and stared at them for half a second, glistening and slick with you.

Then he licked them clean, keeping his eyes on you as he did it. Like he was entranced by the way you were breathing.

And his voice dropped lower.

“I need more.”

He laid you back against the bed before you could recover, tugging your shorts off in one smooth pull, your panties with them. You were still shaking when he dropped to his stomach and spread your legs with both hands.

He groaned at the sight of you.

“Messy little thing,” He murmured, and then he buried his face between your thighs.

His tongue was everywhere–lapping, sucking, tasting you with frenzied devotion. You were already oversensitive, your thighs twitching, your whole body squirming as he licked through the aftermath of your orgasm like a man starved.

He groaned into you, licking deeper, and you realized–

He was touching himself. You could tell by the rhythmic movements of his arm, matching the way his tongue moved against your clit.

“I-I can’t–I’m too sensitive–”

“You c-can,” he murmured, voice vibrating against your cunt. “You’re gonna come for me again. I-I can’t stop. Not when you taste this f-fucking good.”

He sucked hard, tongue circling your clit, and your hips shot up off the bed with a cry.

Your hands fisted the sheets, your body completely out of your control, twitching and writhing beneath him as he groaned and licked harder, dirtier, hungrier.

You sobbed his name as the second orgasm crashed over you–violent and wet, your body spasming as he licked you through it, relentless.

Even when you pushed at his shoulders weakly, begging for a pause, he didn’t stop until he’d wrung every drop from you and licked it from your skin.

When he finally lifted his head, his lips and chin were soaked with you. His hair was tousled, damp with sweat at the temples, and his eyes were completely blown-dark blue and glistening. like something unholy had just been fed and still wasn’t satisfied.

But when he looked at you–shaking, flushed, chest rising in uneven bursts–something softened.

Something melted.

He crawled up slowly, body moving over yours with a reverent kind of slowness, like he didn’t want to startle you. His hands slid under your back, easing you up into his lap until your legs curled around his waist again, your head tipping forward into the crook of his neck.

You were gasping. Trembling. Boneless.

And then–he kissed you.

Soft at first. Warm. Just his lips pressing into yours like he needed you more than breath.

But then you tasted yourself on him–sweet and raw–and something in you twitched.

You whimpered, and he smiled against your mouth, tilting his head to deepen the kiss, tongue licking softly into you, savoring you again in a whole new way.

You couldn’t help it–you started giggling.

It broke out of you mid-kiss, breathy and trembling, one of those dazed, overwhelmed sounds that bubbled up from somewhere so exhausted it had no filter.

Bob pulled back immediately, wide-eyed.

“Did I–? D-Did I hurt you?” He asked, instantly concerned, his hands coming up to frame your face.

You shook your head, still laughing, pressing your forehead to his shoulder. “No–no, you didn’t, I just–Bob, I can’t feel my legs.”

He let out a startled breath, part laugh, part exhale of disbelief. “O-Oh,” He said, sounding sheepish. “I–I mean…Th-That’s kinda the goal, right?”

You laughed harder, still shaking.

He kissed your forehead, and then your jaw, and then your shoulder.

“I think you broke me,” You whispered dramatically, hands curled weakly into his shirt as your giggles faded into something sweeter–something more breathless and soft.

Bob tilted his head, grinning. “M-Maybe we’re even,” he whispered. “You nearly made me black out earlier. I-I think I forgot my own name for a minute.”

That made you laugh. Bob blushed–deeply–but smiled into your neck and nuzzled there. You felt his hands stroke lightly up your spine, slow and soothing now.

“You okay?” He asked, quieter this time.

You nodded against him. “Just… holy shit. That was a lot.”

He gave a quiet hum of agreement, resting his forehead to yours again.

Then, softly, “You taste like heaven. I-I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop.” You bit back a whimper at that, one last full-body shiver rolling through you.

“I need a minute,” You mumbled, laughing into his skin. “Or a whole fucking hour.”

Bob chuckled. “Okay,” he murmured, laying back against the pillows and pulling you gently with him, cradling your body over his. “I-I’ll just hold y-you.” And he did.

You rested there, curled into the warmth of him, his hands smoothing gentle lines up your bare thighs, up your back, over your hair. His heartbeat was steady beneath your ear. His breath, soft against your temple. Bob’s fingers drew lazy, unhurried lines over you, tracing every dip, every curve like he was still mapping the miracle of you. Your head rose and fell with the rhythm of his chest. You could feel his heart–it had calmed, but not completely. Still a little fast. Still a little uneven from moments ago.

“So…” You murmured, your voice warm, sleepy, and just the slightest bit teasing. “Did you enjoy the weekend getaway?”

Bob gave a soft hum in response–one of those low, rumbly sounds that vibrated under your cheek. “C-Course I did…”

You tilted your head up slightly, just enough to glance at him. “Yeah?” You asked, voice still playful. “What was your favorite part?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Instead, he blinked up at the ceiling, lips parted, the moonlight casting shadows along his jaw. His hand stilled on your thigh.

And then–quietly, he said:

“B-Being around you the entire time…”His voice was thick with sincerity, soft like he didn’t trust it wouldn’t crack. “W-With no interruptions. No missions. No briefing rooms or restraints or… Or constantly w-wondering w-what could go wrong.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “It was just…A-All of us actually having some semblance of fun. For once.” You nodded slowly against his chest, your breath catching just a little as your eyes fluttered closed again.

“Yeah,” You agreed. “It felt like a different world for a second.”

He stroked your hair gently, fingers curling behind your ear. “I-I forgot what it was like to let loose like that, with no worries…” You lifted your head again, just enough to press a kiss over his heart. He stilled beneath you like it stopped time.

“You deserve that,” you whispered. “You deserve so much of that.”

Bob let out a shaky breath and curled both arms around you tighter.

“I d-didn’t think I’d ever have this,” he admitted, voice muffled against your hair. “Someone like you. A team that laughs more than they fight. A night where I d-don’t wake up from the dark things in my head…”

You lifted up, just barely, and reached to cup his face. His lashes were damp, the corners of his mouth pulled in that fragile way only you got to see.

“You’re not in the dark right now,” You whispered. “You’re here. With me. And no one’s going to take this from us.”

He nodded, eyes locked on yours, and leaned into your touch.

Then–soft, almost smiling–

“W-We’re gonna need another vacation after this, aren’t we?”

You laughed, shaking your head as you kissed the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. But next time, we’re packing before the morning of…And it’ll just be me and you.”

“D-Deal,” He whispered.

And then he tucked you close again, your bare legs tangled with his, your laughter still lingering in the air like sunlight, like the sea breeze drifting through the window.

[angel-eyes05]

going over easy

pairing: bob reynolds x powered!thunderbolts!fem!reader

summary: two of the same. after breaking through inital barriers, you and the sentry appear to be inseperable, a pull almost forcing you two to each other. the strength of that pull has been getting pretty testy recently, and the two of you begin to wonder who you are to the other.

warnings/info: nsfw and mdni warning by the end of the fic, ill section off that part if you just wanna read the cutey parts, veryyyyyyy soft sex, no use of y/n, this bob is gonna be a little different from how i see him in a lot of other fics so disclaimer about that ig, but dw he's still very soft and sweet, oral sex and fingering (f!receiving), self depreciation on readers side, lots of my headcanons are gonna shine through here, reader is powered as well (yes that is gonna play into this lol) and is less of a blank slate than usual (aka shes kinda side rip), a scene in the void so we can know reader a little more and just for plot purposes lol, bob's powers are gonna be limited to whatever we saw showcased in thunderbolts so please dont get picky if somethings comic inaccurate thanks, its bob so ofc theres a little bit of angst too but dw this is very fluffy as well we love being well rounded lol

word count: 13.3k

notes: so guess who's obsessed with thunderbolts now.....and guess what half of the reasoning is.....if your guess was a man YOUD BE RIGHT!!!! i had to write for him ofc, i put a steve harrington fic on pause for this i had to jump on it lol. one thing i will say about bob fics that annoy me is that ofc everyone turns bob into a cutesy pootsy uwu boy which, hate me or whatever, he is NOTTTTT to me, that man was so sassy and sarcastic in the vault (to walker especially lol) so i wanted that to come out a little more here while still being his naturally sweet and soft self. i go a little bit into 2016 mcu fandom mode on some of the early character descriptions and relationships BUT CAN YOU BLAME A GIRL CAUSE IT FEELS SO GOOD TO BE BACK, I JUST HAD TO </3. i also didnt proofread this cause yet again its like 1am when im posting this and im so tired so if you catch anything uhhhh my bad lol. anyways this is standard to most of my other fics, so have fun lol enjoy!!!

dividers by: @cafekitsune

You always overcooked your eggs. It was part of your routine at this point in your life. As a kid, your irrationally large fear of getting salmonella caused you to force your mom to always burn your eggs, chicken, and other foods of the sorts. It didn't even taste bad to you. It was all you had ever known. Uncomfortable, but natural. You scooped the rubbery eggs out of the pan and onto your plate while you attempted to squirt whatever ketchup you could out of the bottle. Taking your lunch, you leaned on the kitchen island and stared out of the sweeping windows of The Watchtower.

Valentina finding you was complicated. On one hand, you were out of the hell hole of a compound you called a home. However though, her manipulation paired with constant missions and training proved to be its own task entirely. And still with all that, your mind had a knack for traveling back to that dark, damp room. Like a looming threat over your head that if you ever messed up, that's where you would return.

That fear pushed you for the past few years. You worked till your bones cracked fixing up Valentina's messes. It was monotonous, but you had convinced yourself to be grateful for the opportunity to become something more with what you had. You had a special gift after all. Thrusted onto you, sure, but Valentina said that it meant you were worth something now. A living shield and sword. Each time you got hit, your body was able to process the kinetic energy into physical blasts. Meaning dodging an attack was actually bad form on your part. So you got hit. A lot. Most days you'd stumble back to your apartment, knocked in the head so silly you didn't know what was up or down.

But it was good work. Kept you busy. That was until Valentina attempted to have you assassinated, trying to tie up all her loose ends. That's all you were to her at the end of the day. A fly on the way she had to clean up before her guests arrived. Turns out though, she had lots of other flies on the walls, who would in fact turn their forces against her, becoming the world's New Avengers in the process.

One of Yelena's first personal tasks on the job was to find any other lost associates of Valentina. Lucky for you, you fell right into that category. After proving yourself physically capable and trustworthy to her and the rest of the team, you eventually joined as an official member. Your rise to glory had been long and tough, but man was the view from the top nice.

As you grew closer with each of the teammates, you noticed each of their little knick-knacks. Yelena was very easy to let you in, almost like she was begging to share herself with someone else. She must've gotten it from her father, Alexei. He didn't take anything more than four hours to warm up to you. The other three went at a much slower pace, Ava and you eventually bonding over your mutual teasing for Walker, who you made sure knew it was all in good fun. Bucky was last, but it seemed thats how he was with most people. You let him take his time, which seemed to work well in the end. All of them had made their way.

Well. Almost.

Bob was kind of a weird guy. He was kind of an Avenger? But not really? If anything, he was more of their dog that would show up to public appearances with you and the team, but never missions. He spent most of his time lounging around or cleaning up the Watchtower, or in sessions with his therapist. He was always looming around, but kept a specific distance. Mainly physical. Whenever you'd seem to be about to brush by him, he'd scatter away, like a cat who got spooked. You had talked to Yelena about it before, but she said to just give him his time. That this was probably natural after his "incident" a few months back.

You weren't in New York for it, but it of course was on the news everywhere. How a sea of black ink had devoured the city and all of its civilians in their own personalized trauma nightmare. Something you were secretly grateful to have missed. You knew exactly what you'd see if you were in there.

In the recent time of your arrival, you had managed to find and take up your role in your little group. Their own little weird mage, banned from making food for anyone but yourself. No one else liked your burnt food, big shocker.

As you wrapped up with said burnt lunch, you took your plate and utensils to the sink, as a pair of bare feet patted into the room. "Good morning sleepyhead," you called out, knowing who they belonged to already. "Morning's a bit of a stretch, it's like what, 1:30 already?" Bob replied, mid yawn. "I told you guys to start forcing me up earlier," he complained. "Yeah yeah, but Yelena says it's good for you. Your body needs its rest after the serum treatment," you retorted. "Doesn't..." he paused mid sentence to check his sleep tracker on his watch. "....14 hours seem like a little much?" "Hey, your body's gonna take what it needs," you said, finally turning around to face him. He was wearing his usual lounge outfit, a gigantic, comically oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. His body had grown incredibly sensitive to touch after the serum, so the less fabric tightening down on him, the better.

Bob gave a half smile to your comment and attempted to wipe the drowsiness off his face. "You can leave that for me, it's fine," Bob commented, as you took the dish soap and drizzled it over your dirty plate and pan. "I don't mind, I'm already here anyways," you insisted, turning on the tap. Bob sighed and shrugged his shoulders backwards in an attempt to wake his body up. "Alright, but I'm taking charge on the stovetop," he insisted, walking over to your area.

Something must've been in the air today, because this was the most Bob had talked to you in a while, and this was definitely the closest he had stood near you ever before. His presence was a sweet one, as he himself was a sweet guy. You had seen it in the way he acted with everyone else. You knew it probably had to deal with the fact that you were the newcomer, a different face than what he was used to, but you wanted to badly to have something that close with him too. A deep, lingering jealousy had proved to be a close friend of yours when you would see how he would act with John or Yelena compared to how he would act with you.

Hopefully, this was a step in the right direction.

"You know where the others went?" Bob almost immediately asked.

Or maybe not.

"Downstairs in a meeting with Valentina. I got a pass to skip on this one." In the last meeting you had been to, Bucky had to hold you down before you had the chance to blast her smug smirk off her face.

Bob made a hum in acknowledgment. "Can I ask you something?" He nodded, which you caught out of the corner of your eye. "How do you feel about....her?" Bob paused for a moment.

When Yelena had told you Valentina was at majority blame for The Void Incident, you had no doubt in believing it. You didn't know how the others were so okay with it, but Ms. de Fontaine being your boss still unsettled you. You didn't like the idea that she was still overseeing all of your actions and controlling how you were supposed to be acting towards the public. Especially after the shit she's pulled. Once Yelena explained the situation, about the blackmail shock collar the team had on her if she ever took anything too far, you felt a little more at ease about it. But no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't shake off the paranoia about being in this situation with her.

"Fine," Bob responded. You placed the plate down in the sink and turned to face him finally. "That's all you're gonna give me? Fine?" He gave a deep, annoyed sigh. "Well what do you want me to say? That I don't like her? That I don't trust her? That she's the reason I'm like this now and when it didn't go the way she planned, she killed me? Hmm?" You froze a little bit. You hadn't seen this side of him before. The team said it came out a little bit when he would go "Sentry-Mode" (a name made on Alexei's part). You sighed and went back to washing your dish. Bob rubbed his face again. "Sorry, I just thought it was pointless to state the obvious." You smirked a little bit. "Well that's one thing right. Just trying to fill the air I guess." "I know....sorry, that was mean." There's the Bob you know. Always apologizing. "You're good."

The air was stuffy with a tension for the next few minutes while you cleaned the kitchen. Up until a wet glass plate slipped out of your hands and crashed onto the floor, shattering into a billion little pieces. Bob flinched at the sound, on the other side of the island wiping down the counter. You froze and chuckled to yourself a bit. "Woah, you okay?" he asked, concerned. "Yeah, yeah, just a bit of a ditz today," you said, wiping your hand across your face. "You're good, just stay where you are for a sec, I don't want you to get any in your feet," Bob warned, going into first responder mode as he assessed the situation. "I wanna try this out for a second," he insisted.

You watched closely and stilly, as Bob took a deep breath in, closed his eyes, and put his hands out. Suddenly, the glass shards around your feet jittered and lifted into the air slowly, as Bob opened his eyes and guided them to the trash can. Once he was done, he released his breath and dropped his hands. "Well look at mister big shot powers over here!" you cheered. "Bucky let you start practicing again recently?" "Yeah, a little bit here and there just so I don't go overboard again," he blushed a light pink. "Keep it up," you smiled at him.

Before you took another step, you looked down at the ground and noticed a particularly large piece of glass. "Oops, looks like you missed one hot-rod." "Shit, sorry, let me try one more time," he said closing his eyes again. "No no, don't worry, it's fine, I'll just pick this one up," you insisted, reaching down to pick it up. "No, wait, you'll cut yourself!" Bob shouted, almost running over to reach you. "Bob, it's fine I pro-."

As Bob's hand grabbed onto your wrist, you felt a spike of shivers roll down your arm. The first time he had made contact with you, and his hands were so soft....

You couldn't focus on it for long though, looking up and seeing a face of pure horror on Bob's face. You looked at him confused. You were quick to join him though as streams of black slithered across the floor and over your eyes. The last thing you remember was Bob's hand ripping off your wrist, desperately called out your name as the shadows took his place.

~~~~~

Your eyes peeled open, as you tried to assess your surroundings after the chaos. It was eerily quiet, a leaky faucet dripping as the only sound. The room was dark, damp, and cold. Concrete floors and walls, a chamber pot in the corner, and a cot with a wrinkled, thin blanket shoved against the wall. After your eyes adjusted to the darkness, you saw her. The lone decoration of the room. A poster of 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey Hepburn's face faded and discolored with time. The more you stared, the more you recognized this room. You knew where you were. And worst of all, you knew exactly what day this was.

With almost perfect timing, the metal door slide open with angry force. Three armored men burst into the room, as you heard something shuffle itself across the floor. You didn't even notice her at first.

A girl, shoved up into the corner of the wall, head hanging over the chamber pot as she wiped the bile off her mouth. Your memory was fuzzy, but she couldn't have been older than 17 at the time. With short, flat, oily, botched up hair. Wires were bursting out of her neck and down her back, connecting her to a running machine in the wall for vitals.

You. An older one.

The most notable feature was her frame. You would expect someone in this situation to look malnourished, seconds away from death. On the contrary, uncanny muscles were bulging out of her arms and upper back, like they were clawing to be let out. A product of the treatment, like a sumo wrestler on steroids.

The men rushed over to that version of you, ripping the wires out of her neck and latching on a power damper collar in their place. That collar itself was an omen. Can't torture the girl who can absorb the pain and shoot it back out. You'd just be throwing fuel onto the fire.

They forced younger you up to your feet as their superior walked into your room. You could feel your heart stop in your chest as you searched in desperation for a way out. You called out for Bob, Yelena, anyone at all. Almost like your mind was in tune with your decisions, the metal door slammed shut just before you could run out. You leaned your head on the door, not bearing to look, barely standing to listen.

Your old superior examined younger you and the rest of the room, the poster in particular. He smiled sadistically at it. "A real stunner she was, eh?" You scoffed at his words while younger you darted her eyes away. In one swift movement, he ripped the poster down to reveal a makeshift hole halfway into the wall. Your escape route. Taking a deep breath, you finally turned around to face the incoming carnage.

"You think you're smart huh?" the man asked her. Younger you tilted her head up, looking him straight in the eyes, too worn down to care what would happen to her. He smirked. Her silence was enough of an answer. He snapped at his employees, one of them slamming the butt of his gun into her temple in response. You couldn't help but flinch.

The superior slide open the metal door again, as his pawns dragged her unconscious body out the door, while you closely followed. The harsh hospital lights left a sting to your eyes as you traveled through your mind's endless hallways. Finally, you reached the chamber. The door slide open to reveal a dentist chair and an array of instruments littered throughout the room.

The men placed her down into the chair, one of them injecting a serum into her arm to wake her up. Younger you shot awake, pulled down by different leather restraints. Bile filled your mouth as you were reduced to being so helpless to just watch. A doctor followed into the room soon after the six of you, his face burned into your mind.

He took two long prongs, pinching them onto the skin of her elbow, and turned on a machine to send out electrical shocks. After a signal from the commander, he sent out the first wave. You couldn't help but turn your head away, holding back your own tears as phantom pains of remembrance ripped through your skin.

The worst part of all of this was how younger you barely struggled at all, only letting out blood curdling screams of pain. She had accepted her fate hours ago, knowing this was inevitable. Why fight it. It would only make it worse. It made you sick to your stomach. How much she had given up at this point.

A pause in the shocks. You turned your head back to see the commander walking up to the girl, sticking his face down to her's. "You knew this was going to happen?" The girl nodded her head slowly, with the energy she had left. He scoffed. "Then you're dumber than I thought." He stepped back again and signaled for the second wave.

Not baring to take it again, you went against your own judgement and rushed between the men, ripping the prongs off of the girl's body. You met her eyes for a split second.

Behind the numbness, you could see her fear. Roaring underneath the surface.

Before you could sense the rest, you felt a slam into your own temple, knocking you down to the floor. You looked up to see all the men looking at you now, the first time they had done so. The commander pushed past them, staring you down. He crouched down to your level, pushing a stray hair back behind your ear as you shuddered. "Still the same dumb girl I see," he smirked.

In a split second, he grabbed your arm, attaching one of the prongs to it, as the still working machine sent hundreds of volts into your arm in a split second, slicing through your nerves.

~~~~

Before you had time to react to the pain, your body in the real world roared back to life, as you screamed and coughed to catch your breath. You found yourself sitting down in the middle of the kitchen as your hands scrambled all over the ground as you hyperventilated, trying to ground yourself. "Woah, woah, woah, easy, I got you, you're safe now!" You looked up and finally noticed Yelena sitting on the ground in front of you. She had both hands placed on your shoulders, looking deep into your eyes to help you center yourself. You frantically looked around the room, finding the other team members close by, staring at you. Eventually, you found Bob, walking out of the room with Bucky close on his tail. You wanted to talk to him, knowing he was probably upset too, but you had bigger things on your mind.

"I.....I..." You couldn't get the words out. Before you could try again, Yelena softly pulled you into a hug, that you returned very quickly. "You're good now, okay?" she asked. You nodded gently into her shoulder. With more deep breaths and a few tears, you eventually were brought back down. You pulled out of the hug, and began to stand on your feet.

"Yelena, I told you I needed the team up to the helicopter deck in five minutes, do you guys take pleasure in disobeying me or wha-." Valentina bursted out of the elevator, rambling on about what they were probably discussing in the meeting. She only paused after noticing the obvious tension in the room. She looked at you, hunched over and mascara running down your face. "Well what happened to you this time?"

~~~~~~~

The ambient blue glow of the tv washed over your face, as your eyes glazed over the screen. In the few hours since the incident, the team decided it was best for you to sit out on this mission. So you had cooped yourself up in your room, trying anything to distract your mind from going back to that place. Every now and again, you'd hear light pacing footsteps in the hallway outside your door.

You hadn't spoken to Bob since you went under. He hadn't made any attempts to apologize yet. Yelena said it would probably take some time and she would talk to him as soon as she got back. You didn't want to wait until then to make things right, but knowing how fragile both of you were at the moment, you didn't want to accidentally make anything worse.

When the footsteps finally stopped, you sat up a little bit in your bed. Three soft knocks followed. You paused. "Come in." It wasn't him.

Ava gave you a soft "Hi" before stepping inside and closing the door behind her. "How was the mission?" you asked her. She shrugged her shoulders. "More of the same really, you didn't miss much." She gave a little hop onto your bed, laying down on her stomach next to you. "How you feeling?" You gave a little sigh to her. "A little better. I just think I need time." She nodded at your response, and gently held your hand. "You need me, you know where to find me, okay?" You smiled and nodded at her kind gesture. Ava put up a front with the rest of the time, teasing many of the others and acting nonchalant. But something else came out in her around you. That little girl, normally shoved under years of pain and killing.

"Can I ask you something?" you asked her. "Of course." You took a deep breath in and looked her in the eye. "Back when....he took over New York, what did you see?" Ava took a minute to think to herself. "Well, I went through three different rooms to find Bob and Yelena at the center." You adjusted yourself to a more comfortable, open position, trying to create a more welcoming energy in the room as Ava got vulnerable with you. "First room was with my parents and how I got....this way." She took off one of her gloves from her suit, showing her hand phasing between multiple quantum planes at once. A painful experience, she described it as. "Second room was one of my first missions with S.H.I.E.L.D., I had to take out an unarmed doctor."

She twiddled with her fingers, looking down as she picked at the nails. "Last one was a fight I had with an old friend.....he was trying to protect me from....myself I guess....said a lot of things I regret." You frowned down at her, placing a hand on her back to rub it in condolences. "That Bill guy you were talking about earlier, right?" She nodded. "But anyways, I've learned not to dwell on it anymore. My life is different now." She looked up at you. "All of ours are now." You nodded in acknowledgment.

"We're never gonna let those bastards get you again. Can you trust me on that?" She held your face between her hands. You nodded. She looked at you deeper. "I can. All of you," you verbalized. She sat up and pulled you in tightly for a hug. Ava was your best friend. You could trust her more than anyone else here on that.

As she pulled away, she cleared her throat. "Can I ask you a question now?" You nodded. "Do you blame Bob for what happened?"

You took a second.

"No." Ava raised an eyebrow at you. "I really don't." "Okay good, just making sure." You smiled at her. "Is Yelena talking to him?" "She's gonna try to at least," Ava sighed. "He's gonna be like this for a while. Scampery, avoidant. We've learned it's best to let him work through it." You nodded. "But he's gonna be okay, right?" Ava looked up at you, slight confusion in her eyebrows. "Yeah....." You nodded. "Okay....good."

Ava sat in silence for a little bit. "You care more about him being okay than you being okay?" You looked at her, clogs turning in your mind. "When you put it like that, I guess." She looked even more confused now. "Why?"

.....

"I don't know."

~~~~~~~

The next few days were spent with you trying to answer that question for yourself. You and Bob's relationship before this was never a super close one. You always naturally kept a distance from each other. It didn't make much of a difference if things went back to normal from this or not. So why did it matter? Why did it matter if he started talking to you again? Because man did you want him to again. And badly too.

It was like he was playing a prank on you at this point. Every time you would enter a room he was in too, he would find some excuse to leave, leaving you with a sour taste in your mouth. You knew the other team members noticed it too, because you would see one of them usually follow out of the room with him to confront him. You didn't want him to take the blame for this. You knew he was just taking this healing stage at his own pace. But man did you just wish his pace would go a little faster.

At least he wouldn't go on missions with you guys, then you'd really be screwed.

You tended to forget a very important fact because of that.

"Val needs you all downstairs in an hour, there's that press conference about the rebranding today." You could hear Mel talking to the group from your cracked bedroom door. You had been snooping in there, since Bob was in the control room outside with everyone else. "Bob, she wants you there too this time, says the more members there in support, the better."

Shit.

You could hear his whiny groan from your room. "Do I have to?" "Unless you wanna tell Val yourself." That must've been a huge wake up call for him, cause you could hear him rush your way to his room to get ready. He made split second eye contact with you before closing the door. Your heart almost broke with the swiftness his eyes darted away.

You closed your door and started getting ready yourself before you had to take orders from anyone. Most press meetings required a more casual, business attire. Ones like this however, required full glam, full hair, and full costume. You were particularly fast at the getting ready process, especially since you didn't have a thousand gun holsters you had to fasted on, unlike your other team members.

Your costume was also fairly simple. With the nature of your powers, your previous suits had a knack for getting the sleeves torn off, so you decided to replace that design with a simple, black, mock neck bodysuit. Your pants were standard black cargo pants, multiple pockets in case you needed any physical weapons on you in an emergency. They were tied off with a pair of heavy duty combat boots.

For press conferences, Valentina usually requested you to go the most glam with hair and makeup out of the group, since the other two girls were slightly opposed to it. So once that was finally done, you walked out of your room into the control deck, ready to go.

You usually sat there for a good amount of time by yourself, until one of the guys would join you. But this time, Yelena was the first one out after you, albeit half dressed, in the middle of doing her eyeliner, and a makeup bag in her hand.

She looked at you, slightly distressed. "What's up?" you asked. She clenched her teeth. "You're gonna say no, I know it." "Can you just ask me?" She took in a deep sigh. "Can you help Bob with his hair and makeup?" It took every bone in your body not to burst out laughing at her request.

For Valentina and the press, everyone in the tower had to be dressed up. Including the guys. Not too much, but some to cover up most of their "tough guy" looks. Almost like a stage makeup of sorts. The stylists you guys had were always wrangled up with Alexei and Walker, always opposed to the idea and needing extra support, so Yelena would take care of Bob's and Bucky would handle his own.

"I'm already running behind and Val wants Barnes and I down early to practice responses." You looked at her, baffled. "And Ava can't do it?" Yelena raised her eyebrows at you. "It's a miracle Ava can do her own." True, unfortunately. "Yelena, you're kidding me right?" She walked closer to the couch you were sitting at. "He's a grown man, can't he do it himself?" "Yes, but unfortunately he's also a very slow learner too." You shook your head to yourself. "Have you even been in the tower for the past week, he won't even look at me right now," you whispered. She sighed to herself. "I know I know, and this would be a one time thing I promise, I just really need the help right now."

You leaned back into the couch and washed your hands over your face. "And not to be an instigator, but I think it would help you two also." You snorted at her sentence, taking your hands off your eyes to see how serious her face was. You took a deep breath and thought it over for a second or two. "Fine," you gave her, deadpanned. "But you owe me so much right now." Yelena let out a sigh of relief. "I really do, thank you." She dropped the makeup bag, presumably filled with the tools you'd need, in your lap, and bolted towards her room.

~~~~~

The door to the room loomed over your head, seemingly getting taller with every passing second you stood in front of it. Biting the bullet, you finally gave four slight knocks on his door, the same knock Yelena used for all of you. Yes, it was a bit of a trick, but you knew he wouldn't have let you in otherwise. You heard a soft, kind "Come in" from the other side of the door that made your heart warm up ever so slightly. You took a deep breath, and slowly opened the door. Your heart froze up again when you saw the way his smile dropped when you walked in. He was dressed in his usual attire for conferences, a pressed, slightly too big for him, tuxedo with dress shoes. But of course, his hair was in its natural, shaggy mess and you could spot any upcoming pimples from a mile away. Your job for the afternoon.

"What ar-" "Before you kick me out can I explain!" you jumped in before he could interject. He waited a second before nodding. "Yelena had to go downstairs early and doesn't have the time to get you ready, and before you ask, yes everyone else is too busy, and yes, I am your last resort."

His eyes darted away from you and to the ground, the most of an invitation over as you were gonna get. You took a seat on his partially made bed, observing the rest of his room. It took you a second to remember that you've never been in here before. It was a lot cleaner than you expected it to be. Then again, he spent almost all of his time in the tower, so he had a lot more time to clean than the rest of you did.

There were scattered band posters on the dark blue walls of the room, and a few collected rocks lying on his T.V. stand. You opened up the bag and took out his hair gel first. Val liked his long, overgrown hair to be slicked back for press events. You squirted some of the gel on your hands and lathered it deep into them.

When you went for his hair though, he moved his head slightly back away from you. You immediately put your hands down in response. "Okay, let's get this straight now," you snapped. "I get you're mad at me for whatever reason, but I'm not gonna take this from you right now, especially when I'm trying to help you. So either grow the fuck up, or you can do it yourself, okay?" His eyes widened a little bit. You were never the mean type towards anyone on the team, but when your limits were tested like this, you had no choice but to respond.

Putting back any feelings he had, he straightened up and leaned closer into you. "Thank you," you responded. "I'll be quick, I promise. Out of your bubble in no time." Your hands tangled into his hair, pushing the light brown strands back in straight lines. Before it would get tangled in by the gel, you could feel how soft his hair was. Even if it was overgrown, you could tell he took pride in it.

As you pushed his hair back into a makeshift mullet, making sure the gel wasn't ruining his curls at the bottom, you noticed something. Just out of your peripherals, you could see his eyes, darting every which way. They couldn't stay still for more than a second. Sometimes they would be at your shoulders, at your legs, your hair. Most of the time though, they were trying to find where you weren't. But each time, they would land magnetically back to you.

You couldn't help but let out a little laugh to yourself, a little breath out of your nose. "What?" Bob reflexively asked. You smiled and shook your head. "I really don't get you, man." His brows furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" Finally finished with his hair, you untangled your hands and brought them back to you, his eyes following them. "Bob, you're scared shitless of me."

A glow of pink wiped over his cheeks. "N-no I'm not." You laughed right in his face, as you went into the makeup bag and pulled out primer, foundation, and concealer. You squeezed lines of primer from the bottle onto his face. Before you could use your hands to rub it in though, he quickly grabbed your wrist again. Same way as before. You froze for a second before you realized, nothing was happening. You weren't going back in. You realized why when you looked at Bob's face, focused now more than you had ever seen before.

Your face and demeanor softened. "Bob." His face turned to yours, fear glazing over his eyes, trying desperately to keep the void from taking you again. You took his calloused fingers in your hands, peeling them away from your wrist and holding it with your own. You looked into his deep blue eyes, almost lost in them.

"I'm not scared of you."

His breath shook at your words, and you could've sworn you saw his eyes slightly water up. "I never have been. And I don't plan on changing that." The tension in his body melted away at those magic words. His lips pursed inwards as he looked down at your hands intertwined. "Can you trust me on that?" He gave a slight nod to you. You took his chin to your hand and pulled it up to look at you. His eyes were fully watery now. "Can you?" It took him a second.

".....I can."

You smiled at him.

"Thank you," he whispered. You closed your eyes and nodded to him. "You're welcome." The two of you sat for a moment like this, hands tangled in each other and observing each other's faces. You noticed how large his hands were. You never really considered your hands as small either, so the fact they were still much bigger than yours surprised you. They were restless as well, constantly moving between your own fingers, like they were getting a feel for how yours were. This was the most you had ever seen him before, in more ways than one.

Eventually, you let his hand go and cleared your throat. "Let's get you ready now, I'd rather avoid an earful from Val after the conference." Bob nodded and sat up straight again, as you rubbed the primer into his face with your thumbs. His slightly stubbled chin tickled the pads of your fingers in an almost hypnotic notion. Before you even knew it, your hands were staying caressing his face. Bob didn't seem to mind it, his eyes slowly closing, and even leaning his face into your touch further.

The two of you immediately snapped out of it at the sound of Bob's door slamming open. Mel stood at the door, panting, hand leaning against the frame for support. "What the hell is taking so long?" she asked frantically. "Uhhhhhh." The lack of an answer you two could come up with only angered her more. She rolled her eyes and pointed to you. "Get downstairs, I'll finish up with him." You looked back to Bob, smiled, gave his cheek a quick pat as you stood up and walked out the door.

Before Mel closed the door behind you, you caught Bob's eyes, hypnotically following you. As if he was searching for you. For more.

~~~~~~

Something shifted between the two of you after that day. No more avoidance. You found Bob coming to you for anything now. Whether he was having one of his bad days, needed help cleaning something up, or even if he just wanted to watch a movie with someone. Equally, you found yourself going to him for almost anything. Almost.

The main difference between the two of you was Bob had told you everything about him. You knew him like a book. Every page studied and memorized. But when he would ask you something about your past, you always managed to slither out of the question. You didn't mean to be so secretive around him. It was more of a reflex at this point. You'd done it with everyone. He was included in that group.

You could tell it hurt him though. Knowing there was some part of you that either didn't trust him enough to know, or maybe just didn't want him to know at all. Hopefully with time you'd be able to open up, not just to him, to everyone. But that's all the two of you could do for now. Hope.

A sign of that coming close had finally appeared, a new impulse crossing your mind. Dating.

For obvious reasons, relationships had never been a top priority for you. But as things were slowing down in your life, you began to feel left out of the "dating in NYC" craze. Without much experience under your belt, you decided to go through the dating app route. That proved to be more challenging than you thought. "I don't think men on here have ever had a conversation with a woman before," you'd complain to Bob or Ava constantly, usually followed by a large eye roll from them.

Lightning seemed to have struck though. On your way home from grocery shopping, you managed to bump into a guy at your bus stop. It was something straight out of a movie, the way the wind knocked of your cap and he had managed to catch it for you. The two of you spent the entire bus ride talking, and he eventually asked you for your number once you reached your stop. Tonight was date night. He had planned a special dinner in the city, and the two of you would go dancing after.

"Are you sure this guy's not like some stalker or something? You are a superhero after all, there's weird fans all over the city," Ava protested. Her and Bob were sitting in your room as you got ready. She sat on your light yellow beanbag on the floor, tossing a crumpled up paper with the address to the restaurant on it into the air. Bob was laying down on your bed, extra quiet today for some reason, staring up at the ceiling.

"He's not, I promise, Bob saw him too, he can vouch for me," you waved her off, looking in your mirror trying to do your makeup. You could see Ava look to Bob behind you through the mirror. She raised her eyebrow at him, which he just shrugged off. "I'd just prefer you not get kidnapped tonight, so try to avoid that if you can," she turned back to you. "Ava, if he's a normal citizen, I'll have zero problems defending myself, if anything happens," you defended. You sprayed some setting spray onto your face, and got up to change into your outfit.

Your bedroom had an attached bathroom, so you went in there to change. Once you closed the door, you took off your current sweats and baggy turtleneck sweater and slipped on your outfit. Your date asked you to go a little more formal than normal first date, so you specially picked out your outfit from your closet: a black boat-neckline midi dress, with a little thigh slit for less formal environments. It was gifted to you a few years back, but you hadn't worn it since. There was one glaring issue you noticed.

Throughout your time in the lab, you had obviously developed some scars. You didn't mind most of them, being electrocution scars, which made for some pretty cool war stories. Photoshoot photographers were particular fans of those. Some scars, however, weren't exactly your favorites. The specific one being a thick, prominent scar, starting at your right collarbone and trailing up to the back of your neck. It was fairly recent, compared to the rest of your scars, so the fading process was far from beginning. It was part of the reason you stuck to turtleneck fashion so much. But with this dress here, it was finally out in the open, something you weren't so sure you were comfortable with.

After convincing yourself though, you were willing to bite the bullet if it meant looking all dolled up for once. After a final examination in the bathroom mirror, you took a step out the door to show off to your friends. Both of them seemed to jump back to the positions they were in before you walked into the bathroom, almost like they were gossiping girls before. But once they noticed you, the air in the room stopped.

Ava was the first one to give out a little supportive holler when you stepped out, getting a little giggle from you. "What are you waiting for, give us a twirl!" she shouted. Obliging, you gave a little curtsey and spin. Turning to Bob, you could see a little smile curling up from this mouth. "So, what do you think?" you asked him, hoping for some words out of him today. "You look beautiful. Really really beautiful." There was a slight tint of melancholy in his words. You believed what he said, that was sincere. But his smile was actively lying to you.

His eyes spoke the truth though. You watched him as his eyes traced the way your dress hugged your body, highlighting all the beautiful parts of you, leaving little to the imagination. You saw his eyes stop at your collarbone, and his smile faded away. Just before you could see his mouth open to ask about it, you jumped right in. "Well, I better get going, I don't wanna miss my train," you frantically said, grabbing your kitten heels and strapping them on.

Ava and Bob followed you out of your room and towards the elevator out of the tower. Ava gave you a tight hug, whispering a little "Text me if you think he's a killer," before letting go. Bob's body seemed to stutter a little bit before giving you a hug. He had been more in control of the void spreading through his touch, but he was still cautious over it. His hugs always felt like home. The way he would squeeze you just the right amount and how well your chin fit into the crook of his neck. His hand sat comfortably just above your hips, with always his pinky finger straying a bit lower and tracing your upper thigh. When he let go he stayed close to you for a second, his eyes just slightly lower than where yours were. "Be safe, okay?' he asked with full sincerity. You nodded and let go just before getting into the elevator. "I will."

~~~~~~~

You rested your back against the elevator, back at the tower and up to your room after the long night. You checked your phone for a time. 2:24 am. Hopefully everyone else would be asleep when you got back.

The date wasn't bad. Not at all. In fact, it was one of the better ones you could remember going on. Dinner was nice and you went down to this jazz bar for some dancing. He walked you back to the tower and the two of you even shared a quick kiss.

So why did you feel so....weird? The circumstances were perfect for a second date. You like the guy, you really did. But something about him kept you from getting truly comfortable with him that night. The little things. The way he insisted to the waiter on splitting the bill, the way you had to stop every taxi for the two of you, the way he'd cut off your sentences. The way he couldn't stop looking at the scar poisoning your neck. That one really got you.

Maybe it was just your anxiety highlighting it, but it seemed every time his eyes would trail away from yours, they would land right on that scar. Like he was trying to subconsciously let you know it was there. As if you didn't have to take the work to try and cover it up every day of your life. That irked you most of all. You felt awful about it, it wasn't his fault it was there. But no matter how hard you tried, whenever you thought about going on a second date with him, you couldn't erase the look in his eyes out of your mind.

As you examined it in the mirror in the elevator, the doors slid open to an empty living room and kitchen floor. You wiped the tiredness off of your face and turned on a dim overhead lamp, setting your purse on the kitchen island to grab a quick water bottle. Your ears perked up when you heard some stirring from the couch area. Following the noise arose a head of shaggy brown hair. Your face softened and smile lifted when you saw his head turn around to find you. "Hi," you whispered just loud enough for him to hear. Bob replied with a sleepy "Hey," eyes still lowered.

"Whatcha doing out here, shouldn't you be in bed?" you asked, walking over to the couch. "Couldn't sleep...came out here to city watch and try to get sleepy." Your head turned to the massive windows overlooking the night city, still so alive. Bob let out a small yawn and reached his arm over to where you were standing. You took his hand, allowing him to guide you over to sit next to him on the couch. His position was slouched and comfortable, still half asleep. He rested his head into your shoulder, sending a little nervous shiver into you. "How was it?" he asked, eyes closing. You sighed. "Good." He chuckled under his breath. "What's that for?" you asked, pointing your eyes down to him. "Someone who went on a good date wouldn't just say it was 'good'," he slyly slurred out. Maybe this is why you never see Bob right after he wakes up. This Bob was kind of an asshole.

"What, can I not go on a date that's just 'good'?" you asked, getting slightly mad with him. "Someone as special as you shouldn't have to lower herself to going on dates that are just 'good'." The words trailed off in volume on the way out, almost like he didn't even know they came out in the first place. But you managed to catch them. And they sent butterflies down into your stomach, a pink glow to your cheeks, and a stupid grin to your mouth.

You looked down at him, resting on your shoulder. His body leaned perfectly into yours, filling all the empty space with his own. His delicate hands rested in his lap while his eyelashes tickled the upper parts of his cheek. And his hair, his beautiful hair, curled perfectly at the ends, grazing against the back of your neck with the air of The Watchtower. You could fall asleep with him here for days, in perfect, complete serenity.

"So why was it just 'good'?" he finally asked after what seemed like minutes of silence. You thought to yourself. "Cause I'm not gonna go on a second date." He lifted his head off of your shoulder and looked at him, with a slight concern on his droopy face. "Did something happen?" "No no no, I promise," you quickly shut down the idea. "It's just....." He sat more at attention, rubbing his eyes to try and wake up more. You both turned to look at each other, the sides of your faces resting on the couch cushions. "He was fine, great even....I just...." You tried to find the words to describe what you were feeling. "C'mon honey, talk to me," Bob slipped out, in a deep, sleepy voice that sent waves through you.

"I can't see him being able to deal with me," you finally spoke. "What makes you think that?" You sighed. You sat up a little bit and pulled your hair back behind your neck and lifted up your chin. "You saw this earlier right?" Bob gave a soft hum and a nod in response. "I got this a while back, back when I was still in the labs you saw in my nightmare." His eyes focused in on the scar, trying to make it out with the little light in the room. "I wanted to ask earlier, but I didn't wanna upset you," he spoke. "I know you don't like talking about it." You smiled a little at his ability to know you so well.

"Well, on one of the missions I was sent on back there, I got injured real bad. Broke my clavicle and they could only fix it through surgery. But I wouldn't necessarily call their doctors 'top of the line', so the cleanup was messy." You brushed your hair back onto the scar to cover it up. "One of the many souvenirs they gave me," you attempted to joke. Bob smiled a little bit at it, but was still focused on your skin. "Anyways, I don't like looking at it much, it's one of my uglier scars, and when other people catch it, I can't help but worry about what they're thinking."

"What d'you think he was thinking about?" Bob asked, slouching his head back into the couch to secretly admire you. You slouched back too. "About how much of a piece of work I'm gonna be," you chuckled out, even if the thought made you wanna cry. You could see that same sadness in Bob's eyes as they trailed up to your eyes. You sighed and looked away from him to the window outside. "This is why I don't date," you joked, wiping your face.

"Hey." You looked back at him. "Can I do something I'm gonna regret once I'm more awake?" You raised an eyebrow at the suspicious statement. "Okay." He sat a little closer to you, bringing up a hand to your hair, looking to you for approval. You gave him a soft hum as he pulled the hair behind your neck again, and softly traced his thumb over the scar, leaving goosebumps in its trail.

As gently as he could, he brought his face closer and pressed his lips softly onto your clavicle. Your breath hitched, causing him to bring his face back again. His eyes bore into yours, ready to give an apology if you requested. But your hand encouraged his actions, tangling into the back of his hair and pushing his lips back in.

Bob's lips danced over your scar, as your breath got heavier and hands tugged on his roots in approval. His hands found their way to your hips, caressing you in all the right spots. You fought to keep in any sounds your mouth wanted to let out from his touch. But right as you could feel yourself getting to the good part, Bob placed his final kiss, releasing you as well. You rested your head back as Bob stood up from the couch, lending a hand out to you. "It's late, we can talk more tomorrow, but you need your rest for now." Bob almost seemed to snap out of whatever lustful spell was just over him. Or maybe you took what just happened the wrong way. You tried to process it in your head as you took his hand and stood up with him.

Hand in hand, he led you to your room. As he opened the door and let you inside, he leaned over you on the door frame with one more message: "If a man looks at you and his first thought is of is how much work you'll be, he's no man at all."

~~~~~~~~

His words stuck in your heart for the next few days as the two of you tried to pretend that nothing happened. Drowsy Bob was right, Awake Bob apologized to you profusely the next morning, claiming he had no idea what came over him that night. "....I didn't mind it," you confessed after his apology. Made him blush faster than you thought was humanly possible. After a long, embarrassingly awkward conversation, the two of you decided on an agreement.

Whenever you were feeling bad about yourself, physically specifically, you could go to his room and he'd help you....feel better. You weren't fuck buddies, that was for sure. You just happened to be friends who'd kiss each other's bodies multiple times a week. And it made you absolutely insane.

You couldn't even go to Ava about this, since you and Bob agreed it was best if this was a secretive thing. Truth is, this whole ordeal was making you obsessed with the guy. You couldn't get him out of your head. Him being your roommate only made things worse. You couldn't escape from him. You'd never wanted someone this much before, it was driving you mad.

All the problems in relationships you felt before seemed to disappear with him. Since that night, you found yourself opening up more and more to him. You knew each chapter of each other's lives. And that made you really fucking happy. Having someone you could trust with yourself utterly, wholly, and completely.

The late nights where he'd do nothing but kiss and hold you, like he knew the magic of his touch. But you were greedy. You needed more of him, but all the uncertainty just got in the way.

You knew this wasn't just a thing "friends" did. But not knowing the exact details of how he felt for you kept you from asking for more. What if this was something friends did in his mind? What if the only thing he felt for you was based in lust? You'd rather not have that potentially friendship ruining conversation, so you decided to take the "suffer in silence" route instead.

That wasn't your biggest worry at the moment though. No, that spot in your mind was currently being overshadowed by the bullet wound in your side. You weren't gonna die, your powers would take care of that step for you, but it still hurt like a bullet wound. You'd spent a couple hours on the medbay floor of The Watchtower getting patched up, now on your way up to join the rest of the team.

The minute the elevator doors opened, you were greeted by a giant hug from Alexei, shouting Russian expressions of joy. As endearing as it was, you had to have the rest of the team peel him off of you, as he was two seconds away from opening up your stitches. Once you caught your breath, you greeted the rest of the team, all glad for your recovery. Your smile dropped a little, after scanning the members in the room. "Where's Bob?" you asked. "His therapist wanted to extend his session a little bit today," Bucky answered. You nodded a little to yourself. "You know when he'll be back?" you asked, trying not to sound too needy. "Soon enough," Yelena giggled.

....

"Does he know about..." you gestured to your bandages, slightly pink from any leftover blood. In almost miracle timing, Bob stepped out of the elevator and into your conversation. "Hey, what's-," he started, before looking at you clutching your side. His eyes widened with fear. "Oh my god what happened?!" he shouted, rushing over to you. "It's fine, I'm fine, I just didn't dodge very well today and someone caught me off guard." In combat, you usually tried to avoid the gunslingers and sword masters for hand-to-hand instead. You got more energy from absorbing bullet wounds and cuts, but on a pain scale, you'd rather deal with working up multiple punches to the nose.

As Bob questioned your pain scale, it almost seemed as if the other teammates were slowly leaving the room one by one, until only you two were left in it. The two of you naturally made your way to the couch and talked about your days for what seemed like hours. You went over battle strategies, he debriefed about his appointment. Eventually, noticing the sun going down, you started to become aware of all the dirt and blood still sticking to your body. "Um, can I use your tub? I need to get the day off me before I start peeling my skin off," you joked, standing up off of the couch. "Sure, whatever you need," he insisted, getting up with you. The only teammates with bathtubs instead of showers in their rooms were Bob and Bucky, and in all honesty, you just wanted to be near Bob's presence right now.

The mixture of dried blood, sweat, and dirt stuck your suit straight onto your skin as you made a painful attempt to peel it off. You dropped the clothes to the floor, and examined the damage in your mirror, unraveling all your littered bandages. Your stitches seemed to be doing okay, but the rest of the little cuts and bruises on you made themselves apparent. Your powers were useful in the moment, but damn did the aftercare suck.

Wrapping a towel around yourself, you walked over to Bob's room, leaving a soft knock on the door. A freshly bathed Bob opened up the door, now in his own baggy pajamas, his curls still wet and dripping. "I just wanted a to take a quick soak before you got in, I got a new round of hot water running for you." You gave him a little smile and stepped inside; he closed the door behind you. "Thanks." You walked into the steaming bathroom, tub filled to the brim with hot water like he said. Bob's bathroom was a cozy, dimly lit room that smelled just like him; eucalyptus and peppermint oil, incense cones, and a touch of his cologne. It calmed you down almost immediately, and enough for you to ask your question.

"Can you...uh...help me while I'm in there?" you nervously asked. He raised his eyebrow a little bit at the question. "I-It just hurts to turn a little and I need to reach some spots on my back." He looked you over while he deliberated. "I don't wanna sound rude or anything but...you sure you're okay with me....seeing you?" he whispered that last little part. "I'm wearing a bathing suit under here, I don't mind you seeing that at least," you replied, anticipating his concern. "Oh....okay, yeah sure," he replied, scratching the back of his head.

You dropped your towel and placed it hanging over the sink. The black bikini you were wearing covered enough of you, but still allowed all your injuries to be visible. That first step into the tub was heavenly, the heat rolling down off your spine with a slight, but welcome tinge of pain. You closed your eyes and melted down into the water, Bob smiling at your relaxation. "God, I needed this," you breathed out. Bob walked up closer to you, sitting on the edge of the tub.

You sat there for a minute, body absorbing the heat and releasing the built up tension in your muscles from the day. Once you finally opened your eyes, you found Bob's eyes grazing over your body. "What is it?" you asked. A stupid grin found its way to his face, as he readjusted himself to begin helping you. "Nothing, don't worry."

Bob took a nearby loofa and his body wash, about to squeeze some onto it before you put your hand out. "This is gonna sound weird....can you use your hands?" You didn't bother giving an explanation, it wouldn't change the implications of that request. Bob gave a little nod. "Wait just, give me a sec." He quickly got up out of the room, closing the door behind him. You sat there within your own thoughts. Fuck, was that too much? you thought to yourself, praying you didn't scare him off.

After a few anxious minutes, Bob opened up the door, leaving you with a sight that made your heart stop.

He had traded in his pajamas for a pair of swim shorts. You had to fight to keep your jaw from going slack at the sight of him without a shirt on. He wasn't kidding, that serum really did do a lot of work.

First of all, you had seen his arm muscles before, frequently on display whenever he would wear a short sleeve shirt. But paired with his perfectly plumped chest, carved abs, and toned thighs, it was enough to kill a horse. Worst of all however, was his swim boxers, with a very flawed detail: they were about two sizes too small, and you couldn't tell if Bob was aware or not, but you could see it. It was bigger than you thought. You would need a tranquilizer to hide the blush on your face right now.

"I figured it'd be easier to just get in and help, and this is my only pair of trunks.....is it too much?" So he didn't know, huh. You swallowed back any urges you had and sat up a little bit more in the tub. "No, you're fine," you said, pushing your body back to make room for him in the small tub. He shuffled up and gently placed his legs in one by one, sinking in in front of you.

Bob took the body wash again, pouring some and lathering it between his hands. He motioned you to turn around so he could get your back area. Your back showed him about five scattered cuts and scratches and two large bruises by your lats. You could hear his breath shake a bit as he got closer to you. Naturally, you straightened out your back for him to work with a better canvas.

A sigh instinctively came out of your mouth when his hands came down on you, lathering the soap over your skin. His hands worked into you like putty, spreading the bubbles out evenly onto you. The callouses scratched onto your skin, and you felt a deep heat brewing into your chest. It only grew stronger when his fingers started digging into your muscles. Pain oozed out and away as his thumbs worked out the knots in your upper back. You had to bring a hand up to your mouth to keep a pleasurably moan from slipping out.

The deeper his fingers got into you, the more your body began to twitch, itching for more. The water sloshed around a little when you began to move back into him. And thats when you felt it. Your breath hitched when you caught it. He was achingly big, and you could tell by the throbbing you felt on your lower back. He must've noticed you felt it, since his fingers stopped moving. The two of you sat there for a minute in a hot tension.

Eventually, he picked up a cup sitting outside of the tub, filled it with the bathwater, and poured the soap off of your back. Putting it down, he inched slightly closer to you, his hands finding their way again back to your hips like so many times before. "Tell me where it hurts," he whispered into your ear. You tried to shake out your shivers and be honest with him, your mind needing him in one place but your body wanting him everywhere.

You took the safe route. You needed to keep control of yourself. As long as you could at least.

You pointed to a spot along your spine where one of the bruises lay. "Bend forward a little bit," he spoke, in that low, sultry voice again, almost commanding you. You listened. You moved. But unfortunately, you couldn't keep the moan inside you anymore when his lips grazed and kissed over the bruise. You could keep it quiet enough for him to, hopefully, not hear it however.

Your body adjusted and moved to fit him as his lips trailed up your spine, and eventually to the nape of your neck. He sucked on the tender skin, desperation in its trail. Before he could get too carried away though, he pulled himself off of you. His hot breath stuck to your back, as he took a moment to splash some of the steaming water onto his face. After clearing his throat, he asked you to turn back around and face him, which you did of course.

Finding his face, you could finally see the display of his emotions. The main one: a drunken look in his eyes to desperately hide a growing lust. You could tell. It was the same look in yours. Trying to continue with the bath, Bob took some more body was and drizzled it out onto your arms and upper chest. Sure, you could reach those parts of yourself fine, but what's wrong with letting a man take care of you every once in a while. And if this was how he was gonna do it, you'd be glad to give in.

He massaged the soap into your skin again, relaxing your tense arm muscles, a little gentler around your chest and collarbone area. He pressed a deep kiss into your clavicle scar, a tick for him at this point. His eyes stayed down on you, examining the way your skin fit onto your body. You brought your hand to meet his, currently pressing gentle circles onto your tricep. His eyes found a nice spot, staring at your lips, with you back at his. Trembles started to infect his hands and you could even see a slight quiver stain his lip.

"Does it hurt...anywhere here?" he gasped out. Taking the opportunity, you slowly brought your finger up to the tiniest cut you had on your chin. Smiling, he went in, almost taking your entire chin into his mouth. Your hands wrapped around his neck as his mouth moved to press sloppy kisses into your jawline. But that's all where he stayed. And you needed more than that.

Enough with the teasing, you let go of his neck and took his face in your hands, pulling his mouth away from you. He looked at you, beautiful, deep blue puppy eyes mixed with questioning and fear. "Do you remember what I told you Bob? When I was helping you get ready for the conference?" The fear left his eyes, as he realized what you were playing with here. "Remind me...." You smirked at his words. "When are you ever gonna stop being afraid of me?" you asked, eyes glued to his lips. He dropped his head and let out a defeated laugh. "It's never been you that I'm scared of....it's always been myself," he said, lifting his head back up and closer to yours. "And why's that?" The corner of his mouth lifted up as his hand went to cup your jaw, caressing it with his thumb. "Because I have to keep myself from tearing off my clothes and taking you in the living room each time you walk through that elevator."

Before you could respond to what he said, your body started moving on its own, slamming your lips into his, sloshing water everywhere. The kiss you shared was needy, hungry, and slow. Different from the ones he left littered over your body in the past. What surprised you the most about it was what fueled it. This was not a lustful kiss, which is what you had expected from him. This kiss was filled with a pure, tender, and firing love the two of you have silently shared for each other for the past few months.

His hands wrapped around your waist, hugging you closer into him and onto his laugh, where his raging erection made itself more apparent by the second. "You need me that bad, huh?" you teased, breaking away from the makeout and grinding your clothed cunt against it. Bob nodded profusely, leaning back into you to chase your lips, which you pulled back from. You bit your lip and smiled, wooed by his desperation for you. "Someone's excited, huh?" you joked. "Well, I'd rather not get waterlogged here, so how about we dry off, get these swimsuits off, and...." you leaned close to his ear. "...you can take me on your bed any way you want, how's that sound loverboy?" you bit down onto his earlobe

Bob let out a whispered moan and dropped his head into your shoulder, pressing soft kissed into it. "Yes, please," he replied. Before getting up though, he pulled you into a close hug, which you returned gladly. Bob may have a secret, shameful side you didn't know about, but at the end of the day, you couldn't take the lover out of him.

The two of you stepped out of the bathtub, drained the water, and took your towels to dry yourselves off. Once you were dried, you opened the bathroom door, releasing the steamy air into the rest of Bob room. The cold tinged both your skin, as you walked hand in hand to his bed. You were first to undress, slipping off your bikini bottoms and untying your top off. Bob could've sworn his life flashed before his eyes at that moment, as he admired your beautiful body. He quickly kicked off his trunks, allowing his cock to finally spring out to life. He playfully ran up and tackled you onto his bed, kissing into you neck as you let out playful giggles.

His mouth eventually found its way up to yours, as the two of you slipped each other's tongues into your mouths. His hands gently swept you underneath him on the bed, still careful with your injury. "I-fuck, I wanna taste you," he gasped out while you sucked marks onto his neck. "Do it," you whispered into his neck, giving it a little nibble.

He giggled to himself, as his mouth traced kissed down your neck, sternum, and stomach, all the way down to your hips. You lifted your head to look down at him. He smiled up at you as his hands grabbed into your thighs, bending your legs up. His thumb grazed along your leaking folds, already sending shivers into you. "You're so....beautiful," you could hear him whisper just before leaving his first of many soft kisses on your slit. His tongue slowly worked itself over your clit, as one of your hands found its way down into the roots of his hair.

For leverage, you pulled slight tugs onto his hair, which drove Bob bananas. Each pull only drove him further into your pussy, absorbing his own whines and moans. His tongue worked over each of your lips, memorizing the way it made his taste buds react. You tasted so good, he could sit here eating you for hours. Looking down at the sight underneath you only pushed you closer to the edge. His messy, slightly damp curls intertwined with your fingers, as he sloppily ate your pussy, juice dripping down the sides of his mouth. Game changer moment was when he brought in his digits, curling his pointer and middle finger into your swollen cunt.

An exaggerated moan of his name left your mouth, as your hips buckled into his hand, begging for more. "C'mon, you're doing so good for me baby, keep it up," he spoke into your inner thigh, leaving a little love bite in there that left you biting your tongue. As his fingers worked inside you, you wriggled over the sheets, trying to chase an oncoming high. "You're so perfect sweetheart, so perfect for me," he continuously praised.

The twitch in your lower stomach grew more powerful with the seconds, as fingers continued to hit your walls perfect, his teeth grazed your clit, and hot breath washed over you. "Bob, I-I," you started to moan out. "Do it for me baby, come for me here."

As the high washed over your body, a final moan rushed out, paired with another hip buckle and legs a twitching mess as Bob kissed into your pussy. Your juice coated all over his fingers, which added more growth to his member, if that was even possible right now. His fingers slid perfectly out of your aching pussy and into his own mouth, as he got a better taste for you. A smile curled its way onto his mouth as he sat back on his knees, watching you come down from your high.

Bob couldn't help but crawl back up to you. He had to watch this moment with his own eyes. Your heavy breaths hit his face as he leaned on his elbows to perfectly lay over him. Your cheeks glowed a heavy pink as you came down from your orgasm. "Was that good?" he asks. You couldn't help but let out at laugh at the question. Good? Did he see what happened just now? "You're adorable," you validated, love-drunk eyes gazing into his own.

He let a breath out of his nose, and dropped his whole body weight down onto you. You cried out in a fake pain and your body absorbed his heat into you. "Get off, you're killing me!" you joked. He shook his head vigorously. "No, you gotta do it yourself," he played back. You giggled and used whatever strength you had left over to try and push him off. To no avail of course. "Alright, you gotta help just a little, you're pure muscle sweetie." Bob sighed and lifted his body off of you just enough for you to roll him to the other side of the bed.

Before he could move again, you jumped on top of him, placing your own dead weight on top of him now. "You see, I'd play along now, but I'm scared I'd toss you off the bed," he said. True, best not to play games like this with someone who has super strength. "Ugh, no fair," you complained, dropping your head into his neck. You heard his awkwardly adorable laugh, making your heart soar, as he scratched the back of your head.

"C'mere, let me see you," he asked gently. You lifted your head up, a fake frown plastered on your face. The act didn't last long though when you saw his face.

The way he looked at you right now was the way girls had dreamed about since they were kids. His eyes softened with pure adoration for you, with his mouth curled into the dumbest grin. He spoke your name in a question. "Yeah?" He brought his hand up to cup your jaw, which you nuzzled your cheek into as his thumb traced over your lips. "I....I think..." he trailed off. "What is it?" His smile turned slightly more serious. "I think I love you." He paused. "I know I do."

If it weren't for his body heat grounding you into the moment, you would've sworn you were dreaming right now. Everything you've ever wanted was right here. It was all in him. It was him.

"I know I love you too."

The giddy look on his face could set you free, as both his hands grabbed your cheeks to pull you into his kiss stained lips. The two of you continued to kiss and roll all over the bed, as you prepared to continue the rest of your love filled night.

~~~~~~

Sun rays streamed through the breaks in the blinds of Bob's room. Your eyes attempted to adjust to the brightness as you awoke. Wrapped up in his sheets, blooming with his scent, you began to remember the dreamlike events of the night before. You turned to the other side of the bed, and there he was.

Like a painting, Bob laid next to you, still off in his hopefully pleasant dreams. Loose strand of hair fell in front of his sleeping face, his mouth slightly agape to breathe, still swollen lips. In fact, all of your souvenirs from the night before laid over him: scattered hickeys along his neck and shoulders, and nail scratches peeking over from his upper back. It was perfect. He was perfect.

His breath readjusted as he began to stir a bit, and finally, his lashes fluttered open to see you. A childlike smile painted your face as you saw his sleepy eyes adjust to you. "Good morning sleepyhead," you pressed into the tip of his nose as you kissed it. He smiled an eyes closed one to you. "Morning honey." You had found out last night how much of a pet-name user Bob was. You didn't mind at all. It only helped seal the "it feels like i'm in a movie" idea for you. "How'd you sleep," he asked with his eyes still closed. "Good, great even," you hummed. "And you?" His eyes opened and he leaned in closer to you to kiss you silly. "Best in years, honest truth."

After some morning talk, Bob got up to go to the kitchen, leaving you with some extra minutes for sleep. When he returned, it was with a plate of breakfast on a tray just for the two of you. It took a miracle for you not to jump over the bed and onto him then and there. The plate for you included all your favorites: blueberry Eggos, orange slices, and eggs. These weren't your usual eggs though. "I know you like them burnt, but by the time I remembered, I had taken them out of the pan and these were the last two," he apologized.

You inspected the eggs with your fork. It scared you a little, but you'd rather risk a stomach ache than hurt Bob's feelings right now. And plus, it was time to finally grow up. Taking them onto your fork, you took a deep breath, and put them in your mouth.

Chew, chew, chew. Swallow.

God, these were so much better than rubbery, burnt eggs. "These are so fucking good Bob, oh my god," you salivated. He smiled that dumb grin and climbed into bed next to you, as the two of you continued the rest of your morning together. It was nice to know you didn't have to burn your eggs anymore. The other side was better than you could've imagined.

a.n: AND THATS IT i hope you liked it lol. this is by FARRRRR the longest fic i've ever written and it took like a week and a half to write rip so i hope you all enjoyed it. please leave a note or interact if you did, i'd really appreciate it. alright thank you so much again, catch you on the next one BYEEEEEE

[lovebugism]

reader taking care of bob (thunderbolts) during a depressive episode? 🥹

ty for requesting!! — you like taking care of bob on his bad days. he isn't quite sure why (friends in love, fluff, thunderbolts spoilers, cw for mentions of depression and suicidal ideation | 1.4k words)

Bob has his bad days. And he’s not just talking about that stint in New York.

Sometimes he can’t get out of bed, can’t take care of himself, can’t go outside. There are days when he can’t find a reason to be an actual functioning human being, so he takes to rotting in his room — and trying not to suffocate beneath the crushing knowledge that the rest of the world is living on just fine without him. 

He’ll hear the rest of the team laughing or otherwise arguing a floor below, while he hasn’t spoken a word all day because he can’t find the energy to. He’ll go to sleep without having left the four walls of his bedroom, or his bed for that matter, while fighting the black shroud of death that never quite seems to leave him.

It’s been that way his whole life: constant cycles of great days followed by the no-good-very-bad ones that he’s always distantly fearful might be the end of him. So Bob counts himself lucky that he’s got you for those days, and all the days in between. 

“I think the blonde’s finally washed out,” you observe gently as you brush through his freshly washed curls. You get a whiff of the strawberry-scented shampoo with every swipe of the comb from where you sit just behind him on the bed. Bob, meanwhile, slouches on the floor between your legs and fiddles nervously with one of the many skincare products you’ve stacked beside him.

This is often what your “sleepovers” look like — which is what you call the many nights where the rest of the team’s out on a mission and you’re left babysitting the leftovers. (Bob’s almost certain you only call it that so you have an excuse to take care of him.)

“Really?” Bob hums distantly, fighting back a shiver. He’d much rather blame his chills on the water droplets falling from his hair and dampening the neck of his white t-shirt than the fact that he’s just not used to being touched so gently. Not used to being touched at all. 

“Yeah,” you say with an audible smile. “I like your hair better this way.”

Bob scoffs pessimistically. “Shit brown?”

“It’s more like chocolate. Or chestnut, maybe— with little flakes of gold.”

Something in your words strikes him deep. Makes his chest go all warm and sparkly. He doesn’t know how you see such beauty in him when he can hardly look in the mirror without snarling in disgust most days. You still think he’s got so much good left in him, even after Valentina made him hurt you, even after he nearly took out a whole city without blinking. 

He doesn’t get it. 

In fact, the thought alone makes him so dizzy that his head starts to hurt. 

“I— I’m sorry about this,” Bob apologizes through a breathy, awkward laugh. “Just— By the way.”

“Sorry about what?”

“You, you know, having to take care of me and everything.”

“Don’t apologize,” you giggle and drag the brush from his temple, around the curve of his ear, and down towards his neck. “I like taking care of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Bob chuckles with a stubborn shake of his head.

“I do. Honest.” 

The mattress squeaks when you rise from it. Bob tilts his chin and peers up at you with a pair of dark, glittering eyes as you round him. “So… what?” he lilts with a shy half-smile. “You’d rather be here than off fighting crime with the New Avengers?”

“Yes,” you answer automatically, scoffing like it’s obvious, as you sit on the ground across from him. You settle between his parted legs with your own curled beneath you and twist the cap off of something that says deep hydrating face cream.

“I would much rather be here with you than god knows where with Walker trying to tell everyone what to do, and Ava and Yelena shouting at him, and Bucky trying to shout over all of them, and…”

You trail off. The lid unscrews with a quiet pop. You flash Bob a shy smile and a pair of squinted eyes. “Basically, what I’m saying is this is practically heaven compared to that.”

Bob’s face flares. He shakes his head and looks away. His eyes find a rogue piece of glitter in your carpet and lock there. “You don’t mean that…”

“Actually, I do—” You swipe two fingers through the white lotion and set it off to the side. “—Here. Look at me.”

You shift an inch towards him and lift a hand towards his face. Bob flinches on instinct despite wanting you so much closer. “Sorry,” he apologizes, ‘cause that’s his instinct, too.

Your eyes go wide and dart worriedly across his face. “Did I do something?”

“No! No, it’s not— It’s not you,” Bob stammers with his eyes squeezed shut. “It’s— It’s me. I don’t wanna…”

His voice breaks, fragile as glass, and he trails off. He doesn’t have the words for it — what he did to you, how he did it. He only knows that you saved his life, and touched his hand, and saw something that terrified you. He doesn’t know what it was, only that he won’t forget how frightened of him you looked.

You don’t look so scared of him now, though.

Instead, you look at him with your eyes wide and full of hope — like you love being this close to him, like you can’t wait to get closer. 

“You won’t. I promise.”

This time, when you reach for him, you do it slowly. You give him ample time to stop you before you cup his jaw in your hand, slightly scruffy and still flushed from a steaming shower. You cradle his face in your palms without a vision of a long-gone horror flashing across your eyelids. You just feel safe. Warm. A strange sort of happy emotion that still makes you feel like crying.

“See?” you lilt with a sunshine smile. 

Bob swallows hard as your fingertips swipe softly across his face. Your middle and ring fingers trace over the dark circles under his eyes in a feather-light touch as you rub in the moisturizer. Your fingertips follow his cheekbones as they rise to his temples before sliding down and across his stubbly jaw.

He keeps his eyes shut as he tries hopelessly to recall the last time he was ever touched this gently — if he ever has before — if he even deserves it.

“That day…” he starts suddenly, slowly. “You know, the day you guys found me…”

“Mhm?” you hum to egg him on.

“When you pulled me up out of that elevator…” Bob’s dark eyes flutter open again, swimming with honey and apprehension. “What did you see?”

He watches you falter, but only briefly. It’s a faint flicker in your eye that he wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t already notice everything about you.

Your face twitches slightly, like his question single-handedly brings back the dreaded memories you’ve been trying to shove down for years.

“Uh, Hydra,” you stammer, swallowing hard and sitting back on your haunches. You can’t find the strength to meet his gaze, so you focus on your hands as you rub the remaining moisturizer into your palms. “I came back from a mission I couldn’t finish— A children’s hospital full of ‘failed test subjects’ that wanted me to get rid of, and I couldn’t do it… And they punished me for it.”

You decide to save him the gritty, bloody details of what had happened to you that day, but Bob still flinches like he knows everything you’re not telling him. He feels like he does, in a way. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles when he can’t find the words to say.

You flash him a quiet smile and a soft look beneath your lashes. “It’s not your fault.”

Bob scoffs an emotionless laugh. “Well, I mean, it kinda is—”

You reach suddenly for his face again, and his eyes go wide. Your touch is still as gentle as ever, but stern still, as you force him to meet your gaze. “It isn’t,” you repeat with an unyielding stare. “And, you know, despite the circumstances and everything, my life’s actually gotten a whole lot better since you’ve been in it.”

Bob’s face burns at your confession, even more so at your touch. “...Really?” is all he can squeak out.

“Really,” you echo with a firm nod.

He shifts awkwardly, uncomfortable in his skin, and tilts his cheek further into your palm “Like… Even on my bad days?” he mumbles, distantly dreading the answer.

“Especially on your bad days,” you laugh. “‘Cause you’re the only one that lets me braid your hair.”

“That’s the only reason why you like me?” Bob laughs, trying to play it cool even though his hopeful eyes give everything away. “‘Cause I let you braid my hair?”

You smile at his smiling. “Mhm. The only reason,” you nod, obviously playful in a way that makes his heart skip a beat (or three). “Nothing else at all.”

[barnesandwilsons]

Maybe, Just Maybe

a/n: yess guys i watched thunderbolts and i had to do something about it. lovedd the movie sm so here’s a little something i wrote… idk if i should write more because it’s literally just an introduction..??? didnt even bother to proof-read before i end up deleting everything

pairing: bucky x reader

tw: really bad thoughts from reader, bucky being sweet, walker being semi-mean, Red Room mentioned, bucky gives reader his clothes.

PART 2

word count: 2k+..?

summary: you're a new recruit to the thunderbolts, only knowing yelena from your old days, you struggle to find your place in this new environment.

You stepped off the black transport van, keeping your shoulders tense with your eyes scanning everything. A special thanks to your time at the Red Room –giving you paranoia forever. The cold air immediately greeted you as it pushed past your thin ass jacket, you didn’t shiver at all. You’re used to these types of climate, you couldn't afford to look weak in front of your new team. The Thunderbolts.

Behind her, Yelena dropped down from the van and gave her a light push with her arm. “You good?” she asks, in a low volume for only you to hear.

You gave her a curt nod and looked ahead of you, Yelena led the way towards the New Avengers tower. You notice a buff man with a metal arm standing in front of the doors, his arms crossed over his chest. 

One thing about the Red Room – it traumatized you. You were conditioned to have no fear. But, after years outside that hellhole – thanks to Yelena and Natasha – you started to feel things. Emotions. Fear. Distrust. Sadness.

Many people will describe you as always uncomfortable; in other terms you were uncomfortable around people you didn’t know. Coming back to the States, you realized some people truly are evil assholes. 

Yelena greets the man with the arm, “Hey, tin-man.”

He looks at her and nods his head towards you in confusion. You immediately grow nauseous.

“She’s with me.” Yelena reminds him.

He looks at you for a beat too long, your fingers twitch at your sides. You hate this feeling – actually being seen, a strong contrast to your old ways – disappearing in a flash. You turn your gaze away, fixating on a crack on the floor near your feet.

“Right,” the big guy said – Bucky Barnes, you remembered, the Winter Soldier, without his long hair he looks like a new man, he steps aside and realizes his harsh demeanor as he fixes it with a small smile, “Welcome.”

You say nothing as you walk past him with the blonde. Yelena says, “Y/N keep walking straight to the elevator and wait for me.” You continue walking as Yelena turns to Bucky.

“She’s not great with people.” Yelena says protectively, “So, don't take it personally.”

Bucky scoffs, “Didn’t notice.” Bucky really doesn’t blame you. He hasn’t met you for longer than 4 minutes and he can already tell you were damaged. In the nicest way possible, you reminded him of his old self.

Yelena tuts and walks to where you’re standing really awkwardly. You give her a smirk. “Nice digs.”

Yelena smirks, glad she finally has a place to call home, “You should see the kitchen, totally worth it.” She hits the button for the elevator, causing it to immediately open as you both step in.

—

NEXT WEEK

The mission didn't go exactly as planned. Many more bodies were wasted than anticipated. Bucky and You were partners in the same sub-division, meanwhile Walker and Yelena were on the other side of the building.

As the team made it inside the Avengers tower, Walker yelled, “Are you guys really that incompetent you can’t follow simple procedures?”

You frown, jaw tense, you know you messed up but he was being a tiny bit harsh. He turns to you and immediately frowns, “And you! The fuck is your problem–”

Before he says anything else, Yelena steps between you silently, face held up, like a shield. 

Walker’s sentence falters – because let’s be real who isn’t a tiny bit afraid of Yelena.

“She made a mistake,” Yelena says, her voice even.

Walker scoffs, clearly done with this shit, “Whatever. Next time, keep her in check.”

No one moves until he storms out the room, his footsteps finally fading away to his room. Bucky then turns to you, “You okay?”

You’re about to answer, but Yelena does that for you, “She’s fine.”

Bucky looks to Yelena, then to you, then back at her and nods awkwardly, “Alright then.” Then he makes his way to the kitchen, probably to get himself some much needed coffee. Yelena follows him and you can’t help but feel helpless, you know you made a mistake, but it isn’t your fault. You did seem a bit kill-hungry, maybe it was the way the Red Room had embedded this hunger into you. Or maybe it was the coping methods you used to relieve yourself from the never-ending weight of the world on your shoulders.

After they leave, you exhale a breath you didn’t even know you took. You make your way into your room and look around. You curse yourself for thinking you can do this —- because you can’t.

Not with how your hands won’t stop shaking once you’re alone. Your heartbeat trying to claw its way out your chest, and certainly not with that terrible voice in your head whispering that you’re shit, and that you always will be.

You sit on the edge of your bed and dig your fingers into your stomach, hopefully trying to drown out these thoughts with pain. Repeating that you’re fine and this is totally normal. 

Add that to the list of the many things that's wrong with you.

You sit in the dark for a while, the warmness of your room seeping into your bones, the soft hum of the compound being the only sound. You think about how Walker’s words sting, you think about the 4 bodies that happened to die by your hand today, you think about how Bucky looked at you as if he was trying to understand you. 

You almost chuckle at the thought because you're still trying to understand yourself. You hated that he looked at you so gently. How his blue eyes tried to unravel your soul and purpose of being here. You hated it because it made you want to spill your secrets, on why you’re like this, on how the Red Room forged you into this fucked-up piece of shit who can barely form a single thought without thinking about the blood on your hands.

You dig the fingers against your stomach harder. 

Oh the unnecessary deaths.

You hate that part of you still flinches when someone raises their voice, even if it is Walker being a jackass. You hate that you aren’t normal enough to love the fact that someone as sweet and kind-looking as Bucky motherfucking Barnes even looks your way. Because what if he sees your worth? What if he finds out that you truly are damaged and unfixable?

You’re not good. You’re not a hero. Hell, if the perspectives were turned, you were a villain. You’re blessed to have Yelena fight for you because you’ve done immeasurable things. You don’t even count yourself as a person anymore, you were forged and made into a weapon. Someone who was kept on a leash from an early age, you have to pretend you’re healed from it. No emotion and no hesitation showing; just how it was back in the Red Room. You’re not even sure about how you didn’t snap yet.

You press your forehead into your knees, maybe staying this way will dull away the pain. Just for the night. You need to find a way to deal with this before it gets worse, because you can’t afford to fall apart now. Not when you can feel something good within these four walls. A family. The Thunderbolts didn’t turn you away when Yelena brought you here. You have to prove to them that you belong here.

A knock raps gently on your door.

Once. Then Twice.

You freeze. You don’t answer. Silently praying to any God that can hear you that whoever it is will go away. As you hold your breath you hear a voice,

“It’s me.” 

Your face cringes. Fuck. You blink, once, then twice, then again for good measure.

Bucky.

“I–” He pauses, careful about his choice of words, “I know you’re probably not in the mood. I just wanted to – I made you a sandwich.”

You frown, tilting your head to the left. He made you a sandwich?

You don't speak yet. You don’t even move from your spot.

But he doesn’t leave, he continues, “It’s a peanut butter sandwich.”

You stare at the door. You hate how sweet this man is. His kindness feels as if you’re using him, like if he offers you a sliver of kindness, you’re taking something that you don’t deserve.

You get up from the bed, because now that you think of it. You are hungry. You open the door and see that he has changed into a much comfier set of clothes; a black shirt showing off his metallic metal arm, along with gray sweatpants. You can’t lie, he looks good right now.

As soon as you open the door, he looks down at you and notices you still in your gear. But before he even mentions that, you say something, “I’m allergic.”

He looks confused. “Huh?”

“To peanut butter.”

He blinks, “Allergic?”

You nod sadly, “Deadly, even.”

Silence. Another beat of silence passes as you guys share eye contact. Then, Bucky chuckles, “Yelena literally made you a peanut butter sandwich yesterday.”

You freeze. Oops. “It was my cheat day.”

“Yeah, okay,” His lip twitches, almost like he’s fighting a smile. You’re funny, he’ll give you that. “Well besides your allergies, I can make something else?”

You cringe. Maybe Bucky Barnes is something good. Maybe he is the light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe you’re spiraling to have something good in your life. Either way, it doesnt change the fact that he’s practically begging you to eat.

You glance down at your tactical boots, you still see remnants of blood on them. “You don't have to.”

“I know,” he says simply, “But, I’m still here.”

Your eyes flick back up to meet his. Warmth. He’s not trying to push. Just offering.

“I dont know what, I would like to eat,” You admit softly as you cross your arms across your chest.

But that doesn't faze him, “Good thing, we have a big ass kitchen, with an even bigger food selection."

You snort under your breath softly, he smiles at your response. Grateful that he’s finally seen you smile ever since you got here. He’s about to turn to lead you back to the kitchen but he remembered you’re still in your gear.

“Go on and change,” He started, “I know you’re uncomfortable right now.”

You look back into your almost empty room. Kinda embarrassed you admit, “The few clothes I came with happen to be in the wash..”

He pauses, brows furrowing slightly before his expression softens, “Hold on.”

He disappears back into his room at the end of the hallway, leaving you at the doorway, half regretting that you opened the door and the other half grateful that you did. When he returns he’s holding a black hoodie and gray sweats – which looks incredibly too big for you.

“Here,” He offers you, as he holds it out to you as if he’s giving you a high five.

You hesitate. “Isn’t that yours?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s clean though.” He smiles awkwardly. Maybe he’s coming off too strong. He doesn’t wanna scare you off.

You take it. “Thanks.”

He nods. No problem.

“I’ll be in the kitchen.” He says, before heading off.

You watch him go and as soon as he’s gone from your vision, you look down at the clothes in your hand… and smile.

You quickly change out your clothes and immediately wear Bucky’s. It’s soft. A nice alternative to the previous clothes you’ve worn. It smells so warm as well. You look into your bathroom mirror and see yourself, you look tired and worn out. Setting a quick reminder to yourself that after your meal, you need to sleep for about 12 hours.

Bucky’s hoodie easily covers your whole torso and is almost too long for your arms. The sweatpants are almost dragging the floor, but they are soft and warm, so who are you to complain?

You couldn't believe it. Just a few hours ago, you were taking lives. But now? Now you are in a new home. With people who might become your new family.

With another quick glance at the mirror, you walk outside making your way into the kitchen.

Not because you’re fine. But because maybe, you’re starting to believe that you could be.

[fudgebuggyy]

H E L L I C O N I A S P R I N G

Pairing: Thunderbolts!Bob x Thunderbolts!Yelena

Tags: Post-Canon, Thunderbolts Team Members Live in the Watchtower, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort

Warnings: Thunderbolts SPOILERS contained!, Implied/Referenced Past Drug Addiction

Word count: 3.186k

Chapters: 1/4

Next Chapter

Summary: Three months have passed since the Void descended upon New York, and Yelena is getting used to the life her sister led--dealing with PR agents and working in a team she's only recently learned to tolerate.

And then there's the Bob thing. And the Bob thing is super fucking complicated.

✢ Chapter 1 ✢

Robert Reynolds wasn’t Sentry.

Robert Reynolds wasn’t the Void.

Three months after New York had been swallowed by a nightmarish blanket of psychological agony, Robert Reynolds was, once again, just Bob. And Just Bob liked boring French New Wave movies and Depeche Mode and pictures of baby Highland cows. He had a scar on his left knee from where he blew it out as a teenager, drunk on a bike in the suburbs. How about you? How many bones have you broken? (Possibly every single one and possibly twice, Yelena had told him; an answer that always seemed to thrill him in some freakish way, that boyish giddiness that overcame grown men showing off their scars).

Bob hated when people chewed with their mouths open. He was a surprisingly good cook and a surprisingly good singer (the latter she had only found out after catching him sneaking a smoke on the Watchtower’s helipad, quietly singing Al Green). He liked stacking french fries inside his burgers in neat rows like a Jenga Tower. He’d been a Buddhist for three years. He made a mean Lasagna alla Bolognese. He liked Jane Kenyon, Allen Ginsberg—from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine. He played the guitar (kind of). He knew how to jumpstart a car (pretty well, actually). He liked chess.

He had a tiny sun tattooed in the dip below his right ankle, a corny memento he'd gotten in Thailand, in a place that doubled as a shoe repair shop, by a half-blind woman who didn’t seem to mind that some white boy was tripping his balls on shrooms he’d stolen from loaded tourists at the Full Moon Party, their tote bags left unattended on a lounger.

Bob had spent most of his life high, bridging the sober gaps with odd jobs and side hustles and jail. He’d stolen from everyone who’d cared about him enough to let him into their lives. Even from his mother: monogrammed silver cufflinks that had belonged to his grandfather, a decorated war vet who'd had a habit of blaming all his problems on immigrants and women.

Yelena collected Bob’s little revelations inside herself. She’d pluck them from him like a magpie lining her nest. Where'd you go to school? Tell me again about those limestone cathedrals on Railay Beach, the rainforest in Taman Negara. What was your brother's name? Did you really run track? You must've been very slow. 

For someone who claimed to be “average white trash”, Robert Reynolds had lived a strangely extraordinary life. Civilian, yes. But extraordinary.

Lately Yelena had been catching herself watching him more than usual—Bob, in his hoodies and scuffed sneakers, tousled hair and boyish slouch, the secret packet of American Spirits peeking out of his back pocket—standing there being all strange and extraordinary. He was always around, puttering in the background like a housecat and only emerging fully to greet the team whenever they piled in from the helipad, busied by another one of their stupid arguments only made more stupid by the fact that they all lived in the same building now. She didn't remember when she'd started looking forward to it, to him. His small smile whenever he caught her looking. 

Hesitant, bashful.

Bob had the kind of face you could excavate things from, his thoughts so thick they were tangible. Yelena imagined sometimes, plucking the viscous globs of shame from it whenever he assumed he’d said something wrong; the sadness when he thought no one could see; the unmistakable mounds of happiness that bunched around his cheeks, blooming splotchy-red and delightful, crinkled at his eyes, whenever she made him laugh.

She liked making him laugh. That throaty lilting hiccup. He had a kind laugh. He had a kind face. Yelena didn’t remember the last time she’d met someone genuinely kind, someone who liked boring French New Wave movies and Depeche Mode and pictures of baby Highland cows.

Someone who could slam her into the ceiling with a swoop of his hand, and then tear the Winter Soldier’s vibranium arm right out of its socket. 

Robert Reynolds wasn’t Sentry, he wasn’t the Void—but he had been. He would be again.

It was a thought that hummed inside of her like the whistle before a bomb hit.

✢  ✢  ✢  ✢  ✢  ✢

They stuck him in a cell for a month.

A safety precaution, Valentina had called it, ensuring Bob didn’t…change again. And he didn’t at first: no floating, no super-strength, no telekinesis or freaky eyes. For a month, they watched and they waited, while they underwent the grueling process of heroification. It turned out Valentina had a knack for cleaning up. She was the magician; they were the feral rabbits in her very skinny, very expensive silk top hat.

Life was a barrage of press conferences and image consultations and government endorsements and merchandising and PR agents pondering on what uniform trousers gave Yelena the most “appropriate” amount of ass. Everything was to be practical but presentable, assertive but inoffensive.

Walker knew the drill, Bucky tolerated it, Alexei flourished under the attention like he was running for prime minister of a very tiny Eastern European country, mustache and bravado and all. Yelena was glad to have Ava around, who’d spent a large chunk of her life in a box and who’d called Valentina’s PR agents incompetent parasitic dildos after they asked if she wanted a uniform with cleavage when they shot for their Wheaties commercial.

By the time Bob was trusted enough to wander around the Watchtower freely—having regained barely enough telekinesis to lift a fork—each sleeve of the team’s new uniforms donned a red A. (And their asses were all deemed appropriate.)

To call themselves a team still felt like a gross exaggeration. Their togetherness was built on shaky forbearance and the mutual agreement to neither murder each other in their sleep, nor the conveniently placed news anchors stationed at street corners during assignments in the city.

Because there was another rule to add to the plethora of rules that secured their existence as the New Avengers: fight like heroes.

And fighting like a hero meant fighting clean, and if you didn’t fight clean enough, someone would be sent to clean up after you. No more sloppily tossed nail bombs, no more torture, no more nailing bad guys to the wall by their junk (much to Yelena’s dismay). Murder was a big no-no. Death was to be doled out only when explicitly necessary, and there were only so many excuses Yelena could come up with during debrief to try and explain away her mounting tower of corpses, according to Valentina, who loved hyperbole as much as she loved making Yelena's life a living nightmare now that annoyance was the only way she could make the team pay for the cataclysmic inconvenience they've caused her since not dying in a desert warehouse.  

They had to think about optics now, that and public likability. Apparently the public was picky about who they wanted to be saved by.

The world could see them now, see them fully, from all angles, up close, even when they least expected it or wanted it to. 

Was this what it had been like for Natasha?

Natasha, the performer. Sleek and graceful and unknowable, even to those who loved her most.

There was something to be said about the weight of living up to someone else's potential.

Sometimes Yelena swore she felt her here, this tower like a cruel echo chamber with its zig-zag of steel beams and vibranium-enhanced windows designed to withstand the impact of missiles. How it fortified them from Manhattan’s spiky skyline, from the streets below, teeming with cars and people like blood cells, going places, being alive, pacified by the thought that there was a group of chosen heroes watching over them like gods. 

Would things change if they discovered those heroes were nothing but a pack of reformed, rebranded ex-criminals?

Did Natasha have trouble sleeping too? Had she felt the unfathomable weight of responsibility flattening her until she couldn't fucking breathe? Had she snuck to the kitchen at night, sat on the island, and destroyed a whole tub of ice cream, wondering when life would finally slow down? 

“The infamous ice cream thief,” a voice said behind her.

Yelena had heard Bob long before he’d stepped into the kitchen, his steady gait that dragged just a little. She thought maybe it was a habit, a remnant of a different time, of rubber strings and spoons over flames. She wondered about when he would be strong enough to fly again. She didn’t like wondering about that.

Not bothering to look up, Yelena scraped as much ice cream as she could, lifting the tub to her mouth to shovel the rest of it down before she’d be forced to share.

“You know, you could've just asked.” Bob said.

“True. But that would eliminate the thrill of stealing,” Yelena mumbled, mouth full.

Valentina had them on a strict “hero diet” as well, meaning all the snacks came from Bob, who had a knack for befriending possibly anyone, and who’d managed to get one of Valentina's assistants to help him stock up on the most god-awful American junk they could smuggle through the door. Alexei had started calling Bob their calorie dealer.

Rounding the island, Bob leaned against the counter opposite from her, backlit by the oily bulbs of the range hood. He was in a T-shirt and sweats, barefoot. His hair had been freshly cut. 

Was Valentina getting him ready for the cameras? Already?

Yelena stared at the way his hair swirled gently along his brow, his cheek, soft downy brown. He looked like a long nap, the kind that left you foggy afterwards. 

“Good. You didn’t go blonde again. Supremely silly by the way,” Yelena said, earning her a snort and an awkward shuffling of feet.

“No, yeah. I looked like a dollar store Fabio Lanzoni.”

“Who?”

“Oh, he was on, like, books. Book covers. You know, like, romance books—Bodice rippers? Gentle Rogue?”

“Gentle Rogue?” Yelena laughed, trying to imagine Bob on the cover of a romance book. “Very 80’s porno.”

“They were way worse. My aunt had a whole collection. Pretty sure it’s the only reason I learned how to read.” He shook his head. “So, uh—is this an eating alone in the kitchen type situation or do you want company?”

She swallowed, felt stupid for feeling…shy? Was she feeling fucking shy? Around Robert of all people? 

“Well,” Yelena said, “seeing I’ve finished the Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Chunk, I’d maybe let you stay if you shared something from your commissary.”

“Oh, it’s sharing now?”

“I’m willing to trade.” She tapped the spoon on the kitchen island, thinking. Then, “I’ll teach you how to use those nunchucks.”

Bob blinked.

“Come on, I saw you take them from the training deck. You’re very bad at stealing.”

"Okay, I didn’t steal them, I—borrowed—”

“What do you do? Do you just whip them around in your room?” Yelena leaned forward, voice low. “Do you watch Youtube tutorials, Bob?”

“What do you want?”

“Cheetos.” She grinned, quite pleased with herself.

He looked at the empty tub of ice cream, snorted again, then stepped closer. A move so fast she wondered if any of them really knew how much of his powers had actually returned. Looming between her parted legs, blotting out the light. An arcane panic swelled within her so quickly she grappled to push it down—until she didn't have to anymore. And she breathed in, and she breathed out, and he smelled like a fresh shower, like deodorant. Lemongrass? The heat of him like this. Fuck. Sometimes, just sometimes she thought of what that heat would feel like if she slipped her finger past the hem of his sweaters, flattened her hand against his naked stomach, the soft trail of fuzz below—

Bob blinked, his eyelids twitching the way they did whenever he got nervous, which was always, always, and he was so fucking sweet when he was nervous. He cleared his throat, averting his gaze before clumsily crouching down between her legs, letting her heart slam up her throat before she had time to realize he was just rummaging through the cupboard below her, shoving pots and pans aside to get to his stash.

“Just need to—” His shoulder bumped her ankle. “Sorry.”

When he emerged with the requested bag of Cheetos, he shot her a dopey smile, shaking it in the air. “Deal?”

She slid down the kitchen island, making a show of landing fluidly on her feet. The drop in height made her flounder a little. Tilting her head up, she snatched the bag too fast for him to register, fingers grazing his, and she had to clear her throat before she spoke: “Deal.”

✢  ✢  ✢  ✢  ✢  ✢

“So what was it this time?” Bob asked.

They were sitting on the floor of the freshly renovated lounge, by the windows separating them from the nasty cold of a New York winter.

Everything still smelled new and leathery beneath the loom of the giant light fixture that hung like a planet in the dark. It was a space meant for important people, doing important things. She found solace in the fact that Bob seemed to feel just as uncomfortable being in it as she did, when the lights were on and another party was thrown, and servers whizzed around with trays of tiny food she’d scarf down in two bites and skinny flutes of champagne she couldn’t drink.

It was surprisingly peaceful when it was empty. Yelena liked the tower at night. Liminal. An eerie kind of nostalgia she couldn’t quite place.

After tossing a Cheeto in the air and catching it in her mouth, she turned towards Bob, chewing. “Hm?”

“What kept you up this time?” he repeated.

“Just, you know,” she shrugged, “imposter syndrome…and the burden of mortal stewardship…and, like, the fear of insufficiency…and also the weight of the responsibility of keeping a whole country safe from the intergalactic threat of literally anything. You know. The usual.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s, that’s pretty…weighty.” Bob nodded.

She didn’t want to tell him that it was Natasha who kept her tossing and turning most nights. But her sister was a ghost she couldn’t face completely, and especially not with him.

Clearing her throat, she pointed a Cheeto at him, aiming. She tossed it. He missed tremendously. “You?” she asked.

“Uh—” Bob shrugged, picking up the Cheeto from the floor, looking at it for a moment. “I just really fucking miss being high.”

Yelena laughed like a gunshot, tipping her head back with the force of it. She liked when he was honest. She liked when he said fuck. She was like a child endlessly thrilled by others' deviousness. And Bob, surprisingly, had been quite devious.

“Trying to ride it out.” He shrugged. “Distraction helps.”

“Okay,” Yelena coughed, nodded, lifting another Cheeto and tossing it at his mouth. He caught it this time, chewing on it triumphantly. “Let’s distract you then. Tell me more about your voyages.”

“Voyages?” Now Bob laughed. He always laughed when Yelena said it like that. Do you mean my meth-fueled meandering?

He didn’t see them as voyages or adventures. But they were to Yelena. Bob, the unlikely wayfarer of a psychedelic trek across the globe, with nothing but a donkey-eared passport in his pocket. He had a very peculiar talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and somehow not dying. 

“What about yours?” he countered.

“Mine? Mine are just—mission go. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Knee to the face. Bomb. Mission complete.” She pantomimed someone choking to death. “At least yours are super weird.”

“Oh, good to know. Thought you enjoyed them for the ethical quandary.”

“Tell me about Phnom Pen. You didn’t finish last time.”

He snorted. She liked his snorts. “You mean the chicken race?”

“Yeah, of course I mean the chicken race, Bob. It’s a chicken race. You think I’d forget about the chicken race?" She lifted her brows. "Super weird!"

Yelena knew Bob thought of his time before the Sentry Project as pretty miserable, but his stories weren’t all bad, speckled with moments where he hadn’t been so high he couldn’t remember, small audacious moments that had taken him by surprise. As if even now, he had trouble accepting that life hadn't always been out to punish him. 

He’d told her of the places and the people he’d met, people like him, people not like him at all, people from all over. He'd told her the longest time he’d ever been sober was in Cambodia, riding out the bouts of withdrawal on an air-mattress in a garage, taken in by a farmer’s son who’d found him face-down in the rice paddies, half-coherent after a two-week stint in Battambang. I stayed in town for a while. Won some cash gambling and I bought them a new fridge. Learned how to make the best red curry you'll ever eat in your life. 

“Come on, tell me about the racing chickens,” Yelena said, her head slumped against the window. She blinked expectantly. And so Bob told her about the chicken race, and he told her about what happened after the chicken race, and what happened after that and then after that, until he couldn’t remember. Or didn’t want to.

They were quiet for a while, staring out the window, the sheet of lights that seemed to spill out forever. 

"What if we’d met back then?” Yelena said, a little woozy from sleepiness. She felt younger like this. She didn't remember the last time she'd felt like this around someone.  

“You wouldn’t have wanted that. Trust me,” he said.

“I do,” she said. Trust you. Is that a bad thing?

“Still.” Her leg slid towards him. “I think I would’ve liked to have known you sooner.”

It wasn’t true, not completely.

She meant another version of her meeting another version of him in another version of life, where all they worried about was what hostel to stay at next, how to scrounge up enough money for a flight back home, where they met at a dive bar on a beach or a hiking trail to some ancient monastery where all the white backpackers went to feel better about the choices they’d made. 

But in this version of life, this version of her pressed her socked foot against this version of him. And he wasn’t Sentry, and he wasn’t the Void, not right now and not for this. He was warm, and the city lights painted him in faint, vaporous lines, and his chest was broad when he wasn’t slouching, his hands big and sure and smooth, a little clammy at times but she didn’t mind. I don’t mind. And his face, his open face so full of things.

This time, it wasn’t a thought she spotted there; it was a feeling so unmistakable, trembling from its own heat:

Yearning

✢  ✢  ✢  ✢  ✢  ✢

Yelena Belova was Russian after all.

Here was a feeling she knew like no other.

Next Chapter

[howiswhatawhy]

Dive - Bucky Barnes x reader

A/N: Ugh I've been so busy with schoolwork and maybe this is the only fic I'll be able to finish in the next 3 weeks or so (i hope not tho). As always this fic is based on the songs in my bucky playlist. Pairing: college athlete! fuckboy(?)! bucky x tutor! reader (can you guys guess my fav trope?) Summary: Being halfway in love with Bucky is hard when your worlds don't collide. So you try to fit in more in his world by going to a party when asks you to, but it becomes more apparent now than ever that you don't belong. Word Count: 3.7k Warnings: longing, slight angst, soft! bucky, kinda hurt/comfort, reader thirsting over bucky, reader being a bit quirky, uncertainty, no use of y/n, no thunderbolts spoiler. Playlist:

Oh, maybe I came on too strong

Maybe I waited too long

Maybe I played my cards wrong

Oh, just a little bit wrong

Baby I apologize for it

You tap your fingers against the table, an absent rhythm that matches the way your thoughts are tumbling over themselves. The café is warm, soft light pooling over the tabletop, and yet your palms are cold. Why do your nerves always betray you like this?

You weren’t good at this. At pretending like you aren’t halfway in love with Bucky Barnes, if even halfway.

The door swings open, and you look up too quickly, too eagerly. He catches the motion, eyes crinkling just slightly in amusement. You scramble to look casual, adjusting your jacket, moving your coffee cup an inch to the left like that’s something normal people do.

Bucky just shakes his head, grinning as he slides into the seat across from you. "You're cute when you overthink," he murmurs, and your heart stumbles over itself like your hands did a second ago.

“What do you mean?” You pick up your drink. The empty drink. The one you finished ten minutes ago. Smooth.

Bucky slides into the seat across from you, his gaze settling with easy amusement. He’s biting back a smirk. “You’re acting real normal," he teases.

You scoff, or tried to at least. “I am normal. We’re just doing our usual topic, right?” 

"Sure," he muses, tipping his head slightly.

——

I could fall or I could fly

Here in your aeroplane

And I could live, I could die

Hanging on the words you say It started when coach Alexei asked you for a favor. A little academic charity for a star athlete who, according to everyone, just needed someone to "keep him on track." You didn’t expect much beyond forced study sessions, maybe a few half-hearted attempts at getting him to care about coursework in between practices.

But Bucky had surprised you.

To be quite honest, you half expected to hate Bucky. He’s known as a fuckboy, and he’s broken countless hearts. So were you really at fault for thinking that he’s just some kind of jerk who doesn’t care about anyone but himself? Not really, but that thought was  proven to be wrong when you got to really know Bucky.

You don’t really know about how men should treat women. After all, you’ve only dated one person before. And that guy cheated on you twice, and blamed you for it. 

So no, you don’t really know how men are supposed to treat women.

You just know how Bucky treats you.

He listens.

At first, your conversations never strayed beyond class material. But even then, he listened, really listened, which surprised you. You’d expected him to zone out, to fake interest just to get through the session.

But Bucky didn’t check his phone mid-sentence. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t roll his eyes or act like he had somewhere better to be. He met your gaze. He asked follow-up questions. He made you feel like what you were saying actually mattered.

It threw you off at first, how attentive he was. You kept waiting for the catch. Maybe he was just trying to butter you up before a big exam, or maybe this was just another version of the charm everyone warned you about. But it never came.

And little by little, the conversations began to shift. You started to get to know him, and he started to remember things about you too. Like how you don’t like the smell of coffee, which is why he doesn’t drink coffee on Wednesdays, your tutoring day. Or how you always eat sweet snacks when you’re stressed, so he brings some when it’s nearing exams season. 

It was in the quiet moments that you began to notice things about him. Like the way he chewed the inside of his cheek when he was concentrating. Or how he’d tilt his head when he was confused.

You also noticed the girls that watched him when he walked by. The way their eyes followed him down the hallway, the way they whispered to each other behind barely concealed smiles. You saw the way some of them lingered after class, trying to catch his attention with light laughs and playful touches. And you saw the way he smiled and flirted back at them.

Bucky is a sweetheart. He always has been, and he always will be. And maybe that’s the problem. He’s sweet to everyone. 

He holds doors open. He offers his jacket without thinking twice. He remembers names of people he met only once. And he never makes anyone feel stupid for not understanding something right away. That’s just who he is.

So when he’s kind to you, part of you wonders if it’s just habit. If you’re reading too much into something that isn’t meant to mean anything. You wonder if this is the reason why he got the “heartbreaker”label in the first place, because he’s kind.

Too kind.

Because when someone like Bucky Barnes looks at you like you’re the only person in the room, even just for a split second, it’s easy to believe it.

Easy to fall.

So you let yourself hope a little. Hope that you’re the only one he texts after a long day —

Don’t forget to eat tonight. You always forget when you’re overwhelmed.

And you hope (more than you probably should) that you’re the only one he makes space for in his schedule. Not because a professor asked him to. But because he wants to.

The only one he calls “smart girl” with that low, proud smile tugging at his lips. Like you mean something more.

You hope that the way he leans toward you when you talk isn’t how he leans toward everyone. That the way his voice softens when he says your name isn’t automatic. That when his knee brushes yours, he does notice, and he leaves it there on purpose.

Because Bucky Barnes is sweet to everyone.

But you want to believe he’s gentle with you. Specifically.

Deliberately.

And maybe that’s naive. Maybe he’s just kind, effortlessly, carelessly kind. And none of it means what you want it to mean.

But when you reread his message for the third time, when you show up and he’s already there, waiting, when he hands you your favorite snack without being asked, you let yourself hope.

Just a little.

That maybe, just maybe, you’re the only exception.

———

And I've been known to give my all

And jumping in harder than

Ten thousand rocks on the lake

You don’t fall in love often. In fact, you only fell in love once. And the experience made you careful. 

Because you’ve seen first hand what you’d do for love. Even when it hurt. Even when it wasn’t returned the way you needed. Even when it meant shrinking yourself just to keep someone else comfortable.

You bent until you were unrecognizable. Forgave things that should’ve never been. And stayed longer than you should’ve, hoping that things would get better.

You loved hard. And it cost you.

So now, you walk slowly. You check for signs. You second-guess the warmth in someone’s voice, the meaning behind their smile. Especially his smile.

Because Bucky Barnes has history. A long one. With countless of girls in smudged lipstick and dreamy eyes. Fast flings. Short chapters. Open-and-shut hearts.

So it’s hard not to wonder: what does someone like you mean to someone like him?

Because the stories don’t exactly paint a picture of someone who sticks around. And yet, when he’s with you, there’s a quiet difference. A stillness that wasn’t there before.

But questions don’t disappear just because you want them to. They sit there, tangled up in every glance and every word unsaid. Still unanswered.

———

You're a mystery

I have traveled the world, there's no other like you

No one, what's your history?

Do you have a tendency to lead some people on?

'Cause I heard you do, mmh

It’s hard to convince yourself that Bucky doesn’t have feelings for you when you spend half your days daydreaming about him and overanalyzing his texts for the 20th time in a row. But it’s also hard to convince yourself that he’d choose you out of all the girls that are lining up at his feet.

Your worlds don’t exactly collide. You get to hear feel the difference when he talks about what happened at the parties he went last Saturday, asking you to come with him just this once. He always spurts out something along the lines of Come on doll, just this once? You never have fun. You need to relax.

Even if you don’t hear it, you’d see it when you walk with him on campus. The way heads turn when he passes, how girls smile just a little too wide, flipping their hair, biting their lips. Some are bold enough to walk right up to him, completely ignoring you beside him.

“Hey, Bucky,” one of them says, hand brushing his arm lightly, eyes doing that slow scan from his face to his chest. “You never texted me back.”

Or “You still owe me a drink, remember?” with a teasing smirk and a wink that makes your stomach twist.

He just laughs it off, saying “Sorry, sweetheart, been busy,” or “Did I? My bad,” followed by that grin. And all the while, you shrink a little more beside him.

It’s not jealousy, not exactly. It’s this aching feeling that you’re just… background. That you don’t belong in the glittering, easy world he moves through. You’re the girl with ink-stained fingers and mismatched socks, the one who prefers quiet cafes to crowded parties, novels to nightclubs.

You wish you didn’t feel so small beside him. Wish you didn’t shrink into the shadows every time someone looked right past you to get to him. Wish, just once, you could stand beside him and feel like you belonged there. So when he turns to you this time, saying “So, is this the week I finally can convince you to come with me to the party?” You open your mouth, ready to say no, ready to remind him that crowded rooms and flashing lights aren’t your thing. That you wouldn’t know how to blend in, wouldn’t know how to be anything other than the quiet, unnoticed girl beside him.

But this time, the words don’t come. Instead, you think about the way people look at him, like he belongs everywhere, like the world molds itself around him. And for once, you wonder what it would be like to step into that space, even if only for a night.

Would it really be so terrible?

Would you really feel so out of place?

So you let out a breath, glancing up at him, and the smirk he wears softens just enough to make your pulse stumble. "One time," you murmur, more to yourself than to him.

His grin sharpens, triumphant, like he knew you’d cave eventually.

"That’s my girl."

And suddenly, the party doesn’t feel quite so impossible.

——

And I've been known to give my all

And lie awake, every day

Don't know how much I can take

Okay, credits to Bucky, the party isn’t so bad after all. He introduced you to his friends, Steve and Sam, which were welcoming in a way that made it easier to breathe.

"Didn’t think you had it in you, Barnes," Sam says, nudging Bucky’s shoulder. "Our girl here doesn’t seem like the party type."

Our girl.

The words stick in your chest, warm and unexpected.

Bucky just grins, glancing down at you. "Told you she just needed the right crowd."

And somehow, surrounded by laughter, by the buzz of conversation that feels less suffocating now, you start to believe that maybe you’re not entirely out of place here. The warmth lingers for a while.

The easy laughter, the way Sam and Steve talk to you like you’ve always been part of the group, the way Bucky’s hand ghosts over your lower back whenever someone nudges too close, it’s all enough to make you believe you could stay.

So maybe you got too comfortable. You just don’t realize how much until the world tilts slightly when you stand. “You okay, doll?” You glance up. Bucky stands close, the party lights casting soft shadows over his face, making the sharp cut of his jaw look even more unfair than usual. His brow furrows slightly, concern flickering behind his eyes, but all you can focus on is his hand.

It’s at your waist, steady, grounding, not that it’s helping, because if anything, it’s worse. His palm is warm, the heat bleeding through your shirt, his fingers curling just slightly like he already knows you’d stumble if he let go.

It’s ridiculous, really, the way your pulse trips over itself just because Bucky Barnes is looking at you like this.

Just because his voice is this deep.

Just because his thumb presses ever so slightly against your hip.

So you try to focus on something else, you drag your gaze away from his thumb and falls to.. his lips. Soft, curved into something dangerous. Just slightly parted, inviting you to kiss- Yeah, maybe you’re a little drunk. "I—yeah. Just need some water," you manage, but it doesn’t sound convincing. His eyes flick over you, slow and assessing, like he doesn’t quite believe you either. "You sure?"

And damn him, because his thumb presses just a little firmer against your hip, like he’s testing the steadiness of your stance. You inhale sharply, ignoring the way your pulse betrays you completely, and step back just enough to pull yourself out of the gravitational pull that is Bucky Barnes and his hands and his voice and his everything.

"I’m sure."

You turn too quickly, squeezing through the crowd toward the kitchen, ignoring the heat creeping up your neck, ignoring the way your skin still tingles where his fingers had been.

You stayed in the kitchen for a while, trying to calm yourself down, even though nothing seems to be working. The cool air in the kitchen should help, but it doesn’t. Neither does the water you sip slowly, hoping the chill will settle something inside you. But the ghost of his touch lingers.

Then, his voice.

You hear it from just outside the doorway, low and easy,  "Doll—"

You turn instinctively, heart skipping.

But just when he was about to come in, other voices cut in. You don’t register them at first. The thrum of the party is too loud, your pulse beating too harshly in the silence of the kitchen. But then—

"Come on, Buck, seriously?"

It’s right outside the doorway. Close enough that the sound slips into the quiet space you’d created for yourself. You freeze.

“You’re really not gonna entertain us tonight? Just because you’re stuck with that loser chick that clings to you like a leech?”

The words sting, but not as much as the rush of heat crawling up your neck. It’s humiliating, really. To hear such cruel words come out of people who don’t really know you. But even more, because it burrows deep into something you’ve already thought about yourself. Because it feels like the truth.

So, you don’t wait. You don’t stay to hear what Bucky says in response, don’t pause to see the way his jaw tightens, the sharpness in his voice when he does shut them down. Because it doesn’t matter. Not really.

What matters is that you’re done.

Your fingers tighten around your phone as you push through the crowd, slipping past bodies that suddenly feel too close, voices that are suddenly too loud.

You need out.

You barely register the night air when you stumble outside, the chill biting at your skin, grounding you in ways nothing else had tonight.

—— So don't call me baby

Unless you mean it

Don't tell me you need me

If you don't believe it

So let me know the truth

Before I dive right into you

Bucky comes out right after you. The door clicks shut behind him, muffling the noise of the party. He steps closer, warmth lingering despite the bite of the night air. His gaze flicks over you like he’s trying to figure out just how deep the words inside hurt you.

"You shouldn’t have left like that," he murmurs, voice softer now. "Didn’t even let me shut them down properly."

You exhale sharply, gripping your phone tighter, unsure if it’s anger or embarrassment twisting in your chest. But before you can say anything—

"Come on, doll” he says, just barely above a whisper. "Talk to me."

Your breath shudders, the weight of everything crashing down at once.

You don’t fight it this time. Don’t try to swallow the sting in your throat, don’t bother blinking back the tears burning behind your eyes. You just let it break.

The first tear slips free, then another. Your shoulders shake, and you hate how weak you feel, how exposed.

“Baby,” His voice is softer now, careful, like he’s trying not to make it worse. But it does. It does because it’s confusing and it’s cruel. You don’t know what he means by calling you that. Bucky moves closer, hand lifting to wipe away the tear trailing down your cheek. His fingers are warm and comforting in the same way they hurt and break you. Because you can’t take it if he touches you like that, looks at you so gently, calling you baby without it meaning more. You pull back, sharp, sudden.

"Don’t call me that."

The words cut through the night, sharper than you meant them to be, but you mean them. Bucky’s hand lowers, his eyes searching your face. “I—“ He tries. “No, Bucky. I know you’re nice and you’re sweet and you defended me from those girls just now, but they were right. I cling onto you.” Bucky’s brows furrow, the weight of your words sinking in. His mouth opens, like he wants to say something, like he wants to argue. But you continue before he could. “I cling onto you, I make it weird. I make us weird. And you let me, because you're polite, but that’s all this is, isn’t it?”

You hate how your voice wavers. Hate that the confession burns so much. Bucky exhales sharply, shaking his head, something frustrated sparking behind his eyes. "That’s not it. You know that I need you just as m—”

“No, Bucky, don’t say things like that,” you cut in. “You can’t say things like that and expect me to not fall in love with you.” The words come out without you even realizing it. Your chest is tight, emotions making it feel suffocating. The words hang between you, sharp and trembling, like you’ve just cracked something open that can’t be forced back into place.

Bucky stills.

His breath is uneven, his gaze heavy, like he's staring straight through the layers of doubt, insecurity, everything you've tried to bury.

“You know what? Just forget it. I know you’ll never feel the same way. I’m sorry for making it awkward. I’ll just tell the coach that you don’t need me anymore so I can stop embarrassing myself, so I can—"

"Stop." The word is firm, sharper than his usual softness. Bucky steps in again, closer this time, like he's daring you to run. "You think I don’t—" He stops himself, his jaw tightening, like the words are fighting their way out of him.

"You think I don’t feel it too?" His voice is raw now, stripped bare, no hesitation, no restraint. "You think I don’t lose my damn mind every time you're near?"

Your pulse thrums wildly in your ears.

"You think I call you baby just to be nice?" His voice dips, frustration laced with something else. something deeper. "I call you that because I don’t know how to say I want you without completely losing my goddamn mind."

Your breath stutters, chest tight, thoughts spinning too fast for you to catch them. "You—" You start, but the words die in your throat. Bucky is right there, closer than he’s ever been, watching you like you might slip away again if he lets go. Your breath is uneven, your hands trembling at your sides. Bucky is right there, eyes locked on yours, and the weight of everything presses between you, suffocating in its intensity.

“Tell me the truth,” you say, daring him—begging him. “Because if I fall, if I let myself believe it, I need to know I won’t be the only one drowning.”

Bucky exhales sharply, his chest rising, falling. He looks at you like he wants to grab you, shake you, pull you in so close there’s no space left to doubt. But instead, his hand lifts—fingers grazing against your jaw, featherlight, reverent.

“You think I don’t want you?” he murmurs, his voice so quiet, so fragile, it feels like it might break apart before it reaches you. “You think I don’t feel it every goddamn day?”

Your pulse thrums wildly, but you don’t move. You don’t breathe.

“I’ve tried,” he continues, shaking his head like he’s frustrated with himself, like he’s unraveling right in front of you. “I’ve tried to hold back, tried to pretend it’s nothing, but it’s not. It never was.”

His thumb brushes against your cheek, and it’s the softest thing, the gentlest touch, but it wrecks you. Because this is it. This is what you’ve been afraid of, what you’ve been desperate for.

“I want this,” he says finally, no hesitation, no restraint. “And if you dive, I swear to you, I’m right there with you.” Slowly, Bucky moves, pressing his forehead against yours. His warmth seeps into you, into the spaces that have always felt empty.

“I want you,” he murmurs, a breath away. You don’t know how to answer because this has been everything you’ve ever wanter ever since the second you met him. It leaves you breathless, speechless. So you don’t say anything. Not in words. You lean forward, fingers curling into his jacket, holding onto him like he’s the only thing keeping you steady. And he pulls you in. Lips searching for yours in the softest way. And with the way his fingers trace the line of your jaw, a gentle caress that anchors you in the moment, you melt into him, into the warmth that seeps into your bones, into the feeling of being held, wanted. There’s no need for words now. This is the answer. This is home.

[gay-dorito-dust]

Hey! I know you’ve been writing a lot of Bob and Void stuff, but do you write for Walker? I don’t k ow why, and maybe I’m a little odd for thinking this, but I would like him as my big brother figure. Prehaps I could request platonic hcs of him where he and reader act like siblings? Reader is chaotic sunshine and they get on each other’s nerves, but they do truly care for each other!! Bonus points for bits of Bob x reader x void hehe

I love Wyatt Russell (hate Walker tho) so I’ll make an exception for you anon. this might have more bob x reader x void then necessary. I think Walker would be an okay sibling at best.

Major PSA for idiots and dipshits: Also if you don’t wanna read the John and reader sibling dynamic, just skip to the Bob x reader x void section do the headcannons or don’t bother reading this, I’m not holding your hand when most of you are grown adults who are responsible for what you read. (Though I question that level of responsibility everyday the more I hear you moan about fuck all since you’ve got nothing else to do) so don’t blame me for what you consume. Grow up or continue to show your ass like you typically do.

you didn't like walker and you typically liked everyone and will always let it be known as whenever you were working on your aim, you'd intentionally aim for him much to Walker's annoyance.

'Can you stop shooting for me, for five mintues!' he exclaims as he looks at you as you only smiled innocently back at him.

'i don't know what your talking about.' you tell him 'i'm trying to shoot for you but you keep moving like an annoying cockroach that refuses to die.' you added as Yelena, who was stood next to you this entire time, tried to hold back a laugh but failed.

'i'm really feeling the love here team.' walker says sarcastically, lightly swatting your bicep in a repremending act, only to get a smack to his bicep in return.

'we love you too john!' you called after him as you looked back at Yelena as she looked at you with a knowing smile. 'what?' you asked her.

'you might not be family but you and john act like you could've been siblings in another life.' yelena says and you couldn't help but make a face. You were well aware that your relationship with US Agent was an odd one, you acted like you hated each other but the way it came across was more like siblings flipping each other off from the doorways of your own rooms.

which is something you both actually did do on the odd occasion, walking by the doorway of eachothers rooms within the Watchtower and flip each other off wordlessly, it didn't matter if you had company either, you'd still flip each other off regardless. much to the amuesment of the other Thunderbolts.

you both often get asked if you two were in fsct siblings, only for you and john to look at each other as though it was an insult as you both replied simultaneously with a ‘no.’ even if there were times where John did make sure you ate, drink and took proper care of yourself when he thought that you were neglecting yourself more then you should.

He’s even drag you out of the room if he felt that you were isolating yourself in there for his liking. I’m talking busting down your door and dragging you out by your legs as you kick and scream at him to let go, all the while he’s telling you to get out and socialise with the rest of the team instead of being a hermit/ bedroom gremlin. ‘Fuck off!’ You scream at John, ‘what if I want to stay in bed and do nothing.’

‘No can do, now go out with Yelena, Ava or Alexi and socialise and get some fresh air instead of suffocating in the stuffy air of your room for god sake.’ John replied as he shoved you towards Ava and Yelena as you shot him a look over your shoulder as you followed your favourite teammates. ‘Have fun!’ He sarcastically waves at you while you only show him your middle finger. ‘Kids.’ He mutters under his breath as Alexi pats him on the shoulder ‘you’re a good older brother.’ He tells John as the dirty blonde waves it off.

He didn’t think he was fit to be an older brother figure, but you brought that side out of him with how easily it was to annoy one another, he still remembered when you took his helmet and gun and painted them a glittery pick mess. He couldn’t complain at the time as the mission was integral, but he did indeed give you a mouthful afterwards about touching his stuff and fucking with them.

John swears you give him a headache almost on the daily but he’s certain that he does your head in too. So the feeling was mutual as far as he was aware.

Yet you do have moments where the care you had for one another comes through on missions as you two were usually paired up together and the protectiveness came out when the other was in close proximity to danger. You’d shove John out the line of fire, he would shove you behind him when he saw someone aiming for you, shielding you both when they open fired on you both.

Your care for each other was silent but it was there in the small acts you do for one another in a rare moment of reminding that while you acted like you couldn’t stand each other, you were there for one another regardless of the shit you’ve both done.

BOB X READER X VOID

Now when you met Bob, you found him to be cute, slightly clumsy and awkward but in an endearing way that made you want to know him more, his puppy dog eyes didn’t help make matters better as you as you were quick to find yourself spending more time with Bob and ultimately catching feelings for him.

He was meek and barely meet your eyes half of the time when you talked to him, but yet he seemed to stay with you in comparison to the rest of the group, always shoulder to shoulder to you and sharing smiles with you from across the room as butterflies fluttered within your stomach.

‘What’s your name.’ You asked.

‘Bob.’ Bob replies with a small smile, a cute smile you’d determine as you noted how small he tried to make himself look despite his tall and strong stature. There was more to him then you could see clearly, you could tell that this man was of great importance that you assumed that even Bob himself wasn’t aware of just yet.

‘We’ll get along just fine Bob.’ You tell him as he made a face similar to that of a confused puppy, a handsome cute man that you could already tell you’d get dangerously attached towards within embarrassingly short time. ‘How’d you know that?’ He asks.

You shrug your shoulders. ‘Call it a hunch but I just think we’ll work well together.’

‘I’ll trust your hunch then.’ Bob says with a smile and you knew immediately that you were fucked, he was even pretty when he smiled too with how his eyes shined and how his poetically radiated warmth and comfort that you wanted to bask yourself in forever.

Bob would find himself trusting himself within your presence more than others on the team, even going so far as you reach out and grab your hand in his and audible sigh at the touch, having gone without it for longer then he could remember. So needless to say you had become his primary person to look out for him, or just be there for him when the others went on missions and needed someone to be there with Bob until they get back.

You didn’t care as it meant you got to spend all the time possible with him as you made sure that when you were cooped up in the watch tower you would make sure that you and Bob were having fun however you could. Whether that be trying -and failing- to get into baking some cookies or watch tv together where characters make questionable decisions and Bob got to be highly amused by how annoyed you’d get when someone does something stupid.

Sometimes it got so bad to the point where he’d have to stop you from doing something rash as you ate half burnt cookies in a rather aggressive manner as you scowled at the television. It was a highlight for Bob as he got to be with you and experience all of you in your entirety. Only to end up finding himself falling more and more for you yet still being hesitant in calling the deep feelings he had for you as love or like.

So Bob takes his time with you and learns just as much about himself as he does learn about you in the process the longer he got to know and like every single part of you the more quality time you both shared without the rest of the Thunderbolts ruining it with their loud selves.

Void was equally intruded by you as much as Bob was and while he didn’t come out as often, he still was there within Bob as he got to go out with you on small trips together, or simply spending moments together in the watchtower.

He’s aware of all the moments shared between you and Bob and decided that he wanted that too, and to be selfish and more forward then meek, awkward Bob was about his own feelings that were now fully developed. Void understood what it was that he felt towards you and didn’t need anymore time to dissect and digest it, for whatever he wanted he would get sooner or later.

So don’t be surprised when you thought you were sharing a moment with Bob, only to be met with the pinprick eyes of Void as the entity merely chuckles at your look of surprise as he walks through your room as though he’s done it many times before.

‘Don’t look so surprise little bird.’ He tells you, his voice more confident and fuller then bob’s second guessing one, as though he wasn’t confident in using his own voice never less recognise it as if own, whereas void was fully aware of who he was and didn’t need to second guess himself when everything he did was absolute and precise.

‘You shouldn’t wear that face with me, when you look at Bob as though your moments away from grabbing him and kissing him at least.’ Void adds as you looked at him as he admired the photos you’ve took of yourself and fellow thunderbolt teammates and Bob.

Now with void you were a little more conflicted on how you felt towards the shadowy entity who could make people into shadows with a wave of his hand, a powerful being whom you’ve came across on occasions but he never did anything for you to detest him, only ever caress your cheeks and standing rather close to you for whatever talk to be considered casual.

He was bolder than Bob in what he wanted as void had kissed the back of your hand, drawn you close to him and even held you on rare occasions that you still think about at night, occupying your thoughts as you were conflicted on how to feel about void after what Bob had told you about feeling this endless darkness within him. One that only got worse when you were near him, as though it wanted to greet you personally.

Yet you couldn’t help but find Void charismatic and intriguing as the more you got to see him, which was mainly when you and Bob was alone or when everyone was asleep at night. He was dangerous and you knew that well enough to be cautious towards him but yet at the same time you couldn’t help but be drawn to Void whenever you do get to talk to him.

‘Where’s my kiss little bird? Am I not deserving of one unlike your precious Bob? Hmm?’ Void asks as he stepped close to you, his pinprick eyes looking deep into your own as your forced to admit that they were beautiful in their own right, in their own unique and unsettlingly way but beautiful nonetheless.

You would respond but you didn’t get the chance to becuase as soon as you blinked Bob was back in front of you, leaving you to process what had just happened just moments prior while Bob only looked at you in concern.

‘Are you okay? He didn’t do anything to you did he?’ He’d ask as he placed his hands on your shoulders, looking you in the eyes for anything that could give away to him if void did anything or not.

‘No, he didn’t.’ You replied to calm his nerves as he pulls you into his arms, rubbing your back as you gripped him tight, not truly grasping what you had gotten yourself into.

[thunderboltssasterisk]

Thermodynamic Equilibrium - I

Title: Thermodynamic Equilibrium

Pairing: U.S. Agent! John Walker x Extremis! Reader

Rating: Explicit - 18+

Word Count: 15.3k+

Warnings: smut, talks of medical abuse and human experimentation, discussion of ethical concerns regarding working for government agencies no matter how legit they seem, violence, violence against animals, animal death/murder (it’s a snake), suicidal ideation, survivor's guilt, discussion of child abuse, insecurities, and addiction, not-quite infidelity but John hasn’t signed the papers yet (out of pride) so it would be legally complicated for sure

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Smut Prep: (not a hugely obvious dynamic in this part but overall) sub! John Walker/domme! Reader, AFAB reader (no Y/N), first time/getting together, praise kink, handjob, fingering, p-in-v penetration, mention/discussion of pegging

Important Note: this fic will NOT contain any Olivia bashing. That woman made the best, most logical choice for the wellbeing of her home and her son. I’ve seen a lotta John fics demonize her and that’s actually crazy to me fr like they’re divorcing anyway???? I like her idk sue me 

Ao3 Link: here

Summary: set between TFATWS and Thunderbolts* this will be part 1 of a John Walker/Reader series where you are a survivor of the Extremis Project (from IM3) who worked for Tony and now, post-blip, for Val. The next few parts will be set during Thunderbolts* and then continue into the 14 months between Thunderbolts* and the Fantastic 4 arrival.

The tunnels were poorly ventilated. You had, for the most part, stopped being surprised by things like that, but occasionally the poor conditions of the places you raided on Valentina’s behalf left even you appalled. It was a classified underground facility in Nevada this time - though not Area 51, much to your chagrin - located several hundred miles West into the Mojave desert. It was a facility that OXE had taken a special interest in, after a particularly nasty spat between Val and her recently-unskrulled ex-husband, and it was your job to infiltrate the vault-like fortress in the pursuit of information it may have housed on “any potential future-threats.” 

Basically, you were there to spite the CIA. 

The thought made you itchy, irritation prickling your forever-feverish skin as you pondered just how little your actual life meant to Valentina. This whole mission was pointless, anyway, in your not-so-humble opinion. Valentina was already director of the CIA, the problem was that her ex-husband wouldn’t allow her access to any of the medical trial results without proper logging. Valentina couldn’t stand it. If you were being honest, you didn’t blame Agent Ross for being such a stickler - last time the government had been allowed to run around unchecked, they had been infiltrated by Nazis. But Valentina needed to prove a point, so she was sending you off to die. So long as you died in a way that left the older woman able to collect your body, you doubted she would even notice you were gone. You tried - and failed - not to let that bother you. Tony Stark hadn’t been the most openly-jovial employer the world had ever known, sure, but the missions you had been tasked with running for Iron Man had, at least, made sense. They had been helpful. Good. You had been doing good under Iron Man, but you doubted more and more every mission whether or not you were doing good under the Contessa de Fontaine. 

You missed Tony. 

Well, maybe you didn’t miss Tony, nor even really the Iron Man, but you missed the freedom you’d had working for him. The remorse he felt every time he’d seen you had driven his generosity, you knew, but you hadn’t been about to protest a competitive salary and fully-funded living accommodations. All you’d had to do was work for him. Keep the Extremis serum active inside of you for a few more years to help Tony clean up the last of his loose ends, and he would keep you well-compensated and, when the time came, he would help reverse the effects of AIM’s experiments on you, like he’d done for Pepper Potts. At the time, it had seemed like an exceptional deal. You should have realized it was too good to be true. 

Tony Stark, as it turned out, had had a lifetime’s worth of loose ends for you to tie up. Enemies with enemies with enemies, all of them somehow smarter and more harrowing than the last, and all of them with some sort of vendetta against Tony and fetish for human experimentation. You’d freed so many lab rats. People like you, who had gone, struggling, around the world looking for cures to their ailments, or for something to ease their pain. So many labs, so many warehouses. So many bodies. You had done a great deal of particularly heinous things in your pursuit to destroy the people like AIM and Aldrich Killian. Things you regretted, at times, when thoughts of your past plagued you unrelentingly. But they had been for a greater good, done in an attempt to earn back your own freedom. 

Then Tony had gone and died. 

Surely there had been more to it than that, but it’s not like anybody had bothered to sit you down and tell you anything about your employer’s demise. He’d died a hero, everyone knew, saving half the universe from the tyrant of tyrants. Nobody save for the former Avengers actually knew what the fuck that meant, though. It infuriated you, at times, the secrecy that now seemed into every crevice of your life. 

You had no time to dwell on that in Nevada. 

The facility, though poorly ventilated, was well-lit despite being so many miles underground, and you found yourself struggling more than usual to stay hidden in the too-wide halls. You had never been outstanding at stealth missions, you could admit. You were too anxious for them, far preferring a traditional smash-and-grab to the asinine recon plan Valentina had armed you with. But, Valentina now paid your bills, and if she was paying, she was saying. 

The plan, though terrible, was simple enough. You had already completed the first phase of it, making your way down into the facility alongside supply crates in the back of an armoured truck. You’d managed to hide amongst the crates until someone had come in to unload, where you’d knocked them unconscious and taken their uniform and ID badge. Sneaking around the place had gone smoothly thus far, but the constant nerves were beginning to get to you as you crept around looking for the R&D level, your internal temperature beginning to rise even further at the stress. That had always been a problem. Well, not always, but since being subjected to the Extremis Project, your internal temperature had run rampant, a spectrum running from ‘a touch too hot’ to ‘too hot to touch’, depending on what was going on. You were lucky, though. Tony had managed to stabilize the Extremis formula - eradicated it entirely in Pepper, even - so there was very little risk of you turning into an accidental I.E.D. anymore.  

You tried taking comfort in this as you finally managed to locate level 7, the basement of the underground building and the research-and-development floor for the base. This had been your target. Valentina had assured you that the floor was cleared out for the next two hours - something about a maintenance issue taking out the cameras on the floor and the higher-ups not wanting to risk giving opportunity to any whistle-blowers - so it caught you entirely off guard when you slipped into the room to find someone waiting there for you. 

John Walker. 

Irritation spiked your temperature again, an orange haze certainly visible glowing beneath your cheekbones as you stared on in annoyance. Typical. It was so fucking typical of Valentina to double up her odds without informing her gambling tokens, sending them out blindly and damn-near directionless in order to see who came back successful every time. So far, it had always been you, but, it seemed, it had also been Walker. 

“What are you doing here?” the former Captain America sneered when he saw you, annoyance plain on his face. You scoffed. 

“I’m at work, dumbass,” you spat back at him. You had been paired up blindly a time or two before, and worked in a group of three with him exactly once in the past. You hadn’t particularly enjoyed any of those ops. You doubted John had either. 

John rolled his eyes at your petty response, filling in the gaps for himself when you didn’t bother to elaborate further. He wasn’t a dumbass. Despite what you had called him, you knew he wasn’t actually a dumbass. He was actually quite smart, or, at the very least, insanely strategically-minded. An exceptional soldier. A piss-poor spy. 

“How the hell did you even get in here?” you demanded, and it was John’s turn to scoff and withhold a proper answer. Instead, he just turned his back back to you, attention returning to the stainless steel tables covered in equipment. 

It was a large room the two of you occupied, with rows of experimental setups lining the place and a great deal of troubling-looking beakers and vials filling the shelves. It made you uneasy. This room reminded you too much of the labs AIM had housed you in, once upon a time. An impending sense of doom began to creep up on you, your anxiety spiking as the room began to feel smaller, as though it were shrinking around you. You knew it wasn’t. It was all in your head, but it was distracting you nonetheless. Making you sloppy. 

“Why are you just standing there?” John’s annoyed voice cut through your panic, though you rolled your eyes at him rather than acknowledge the unintended aid. 

“I’m locking in,” you mumbled the lie as you shook your head. Focusing back on the task at hand, you started scanning the room for a computer set up. You located one at the back of the room and b-lined for it as Walker started pulling out physical files from the cabinets and drawers. 

Walker, at least, had the courtesy to ignore you. He looked exhausted. He had bags under his eyes, deep and purple like a bruise, and his posture, while technically perfect, held less tension than the last time you’d seen him. Like he was deflating. Too tired for your nonsense. There was less fire behind his eyes now. It worried you, in that vague sort of way it would worry you to see anybody falling apart at half speed. You went back to ignoring him in order to focus on the computer. 

Before AIM and Extremis, you’d been a hacker. Not a label you loved, granted, but certainly one that applied. You’d always been skilled with systems and code, always had a knack for finding back doors and shortcuts where you weren’t supposed to. Your mission training - your combat training - had come later, after the serum took. After your spine healed. Valentina had made a point of using you for both skillsets, much to your chagrin, but you supposed you couldn’t blame her. 

Stupid to only use half an asset. 

The CIA’s systems were almost concerningly easy to get into, but you weren’t about to complain. You made swift progress, downloading files onto a usb drive within minutes as Walker continued to root around the room for manila file folders and loose paperwork, both of you determined to collect more information than the other in a silent standoff. 

God you wanted to win. 

Despite your dislike of the woman, you wanted to be the one to return to Valentina with the better haul. Be the better agent. Walker was undeniably the perfect soldier, but you were by far the better spy. You wanted to prove it. Your hatred of stealth missions aside, you, at least, hadn’t worn literal Stars and Stripes to invade an American base, and you were certain you could download more than he could carry. 

You’re not sure what triggered the alarm. 

It could have been you. Certainly, it could have been you, though you found it unlikely. A loud, piercing siren had started blaring over unseen speakers, the lights in the room flashing a deep red in warning. You didn’t know why. You were a lot of things, but sloppy in a system wasn’t one of them. John hadn’t been doing much that could have alerted anybody to your presence, though, or so you’d thought. Turning around to face the former Captain America, your blood ran cold when you saw him holding the door of a now-open safe. It could have been either of you, in the end, but you didn’t have time to analyze. 

Realistically, if you were captured, you probably wouldn’t be killed on sight. No - if the CIA got you alive, they would keep you alive as a bargaining chip against Val. While it was unlikely that she would negotiate for either you or Walker alone, the pair of you together would undoubtedly increase your odds of being rescued. Your odds of getting out unscathed, however, were exceptionally grim. 

“Walker,” you called out worriedly, “Walker, man, we gotta go!” 

John was two steps ahead of you, halfway marched across the room by the time you’d finished speaking. He dragged one of the lab tables over in front of the door, barricading it temporarily as you scanned for another way out. You had to think fast. You knew that you’d only have minutes, if that, before the CIA managed to break through that door and take you both hostage. The walls were solid stone, same with the floor, but there was a huge ventilation shaft coming down from the ceiling. You bolted towards it. 

“What are you doing?!” John demanded frantically, voice full of an uncharacteristic panic.

“I’m getting us out of here! Come here and give me a boost,” you explained over the noise, and John, reluctantly, rushed to join you. “I’ll pull you up after.” 

“Will you actually?” John asked incredulously. “Or are you gonna bail on me like a coward? You don’t even have anything to open it with!” 

“Oh my god, dude, I don’t have time to explain it! You’re just gonna have to trust me, holy fuck,” you spat, “now give me a boost so we don’t fucking die, Walker!” 

John hesitated for half a second before complying, kneeling down and presenting his shield for you to step on. He lunged upwards when you did, sending you careening towards the vent. You dug your fingers into the steel, heat like molten fire pouring out in concentrated waves. In seconds, your fingers had sunk through the metal, allowing you to grip and pull and send the offending vent flying. The alarm was still screaming at you and Walker, footsteps audible as they approached from the left hallway. Moving quickly, you willed the heat in your hands to dissipate as you hoisted yourself up into the vent, grateful that they were big enough to hide a person. 

“That bitch!” you heard John yell as you disappeared into the metal hideaway, and your stomach churned at the way he sounded. Scared. Angry, too, for sure, but mostly John Walker sounded scared as he raged a floor below you. 

It only took you half a second longer to turn around and lower the upper half of your body back out the opening, but that was long enough for John to have backed up to take a running start at it. Without thinking, you held your arms out wide, catching the super soldier with a yelp, your feet digging desperately into metal to keep you from falling back out onto the floor below. Your feet began to heat, the bottoms of your shoes melting slightly to help stick to the steel, but you had him. 

You had him. 

He seemed just as shocked to be caught as you had been to catch him, if the look on John’s face was anything to go by. You didn’t have time to explain yourself, instead grunting with exertion as you hoisted yourself and Walker back up into the vents. You had to get moving. 

“Come on,” you urged and started forward without a backwards glance. The alarms sounded louder in there, somehow, and the sound was getting to you more and more each passing second. It was jarring. You’d always hated loud noises. 

The vents were only wide enough for one, forcing you and John to move single-file down the metal shafts. You had a vague idea where you were going, but something told you that phrasing it like that to John may actually make the man’s head explode. You could have laughed at the irony. The two of you moved silently for several minutes, both of you doing your best to ignore the blaring alarm and claustrophobic tightness of your current setting. 

You both froze when you heard footsteps beneath you. At least a dozen men passed below, judging by the sound, moving quickly and only slightly out of sync with one another in their urgency to find their target. To find you. Terror gripped your heart, panic seizing your bones as you did your best to will the heat away. You were failing. A faint glow began to emit not from the grid places in the vent below, but from you. Orange in colour instead of the harsh red, the Extremis serum was betraying your anxiety as openly as a tattoo on your forehead reading COWARD. 

John’s fingers curled around your ankle. 

A harsh gasp ripped its way out of your throat at your surprise, the instinct to kick John in the face a hard one to overcome. The glow grew then, heat radiating off of you as you did your best to prepare for whatever it is the super soldier was about to do to you. Something to increase his own odds of survival, you were sure. 

“Relax,” John’s voice was as quiet as it could be, but firm. An order. “Come on, Lava Lamp, you gotta take a breath.” 

You tried not to feel annoyed at the nickname or the commands as surprise added to the suspense rattling around inside your bones. Instead, you focused on John’s words themselves. Relax. Take a breath. You could do that. You could do both of those things. Squeezing your eyes shut, you did your best to ignore the chaos around you, focusing instead on the feeling of John’s hand against your skin. 

You were surprised it had remained there. You weren’t stupid, nor were you in any way blissfully unaware of how unpleasant you were to touch, even through John’s gloves. Your skin burned more often than not, uncomfortable at least and lethal at worst for those around you. It had been so, so long since you’d felt anybody’s hand but your own. 

When you opened your eyes, the glow had faded, your natural skin colour returning in the low visibility. You still felt warm - burning where John touched you - but John didn’t flinch. You glanced back at him, croaking out a weak; “don’t call me Lava Lamp.” 

You knew immediately that the nickname would stick. John’s face had split into a Cheshire Cat-like grin at your words, causing you to roll your eyes. You wanted to keep moving but selfishly - humiliatingly - you didn’t want to move away from the hand on your ankle just yet. It was nice. Nicer than most things you’d endured since Killian found you. There was still a mission, though, so you shook yourself of the foolishness and kept moving. 

Eventually, you and John came to a point in the ductwork that veered upwards as it connected to the floor above. Level 6. Turning your head to face John, you relayed your plan as effectively as you could with the sirens blaring still. 

“This vent has to lead outside,” you explained, “eventually, at least, but I have to go first. I’ll melt hand and foot holes as I go. Wait a few minutes, then follow me up. It’ll be like the world’s worst rock climbing.” 

If John was amused by your attempt to lighten the mood, he didn’t show it. Instead, the blond man nodded once sharply and watched, silent, as you began your ascent. It hurt. Using the Extremis serum always hurt, and the overstimulation was making everything worse. But, you, slowly but surely, managed to drag yourself up the vent shaft, leaving behind adequate hand-holds for John to use after. It took you several minutes to climb all the way to the next horizontal section of ducts, but you were grateful for the reprieve. You only had to wait another 5 minutes or so for your unwilling companion to join you. 

“You didn’t leave?” 

You tried not to feel offended at the accusation behind his words, but it was likely written on your face, with the way John shot you an unimpressed look. Of course he would have expected you to bail. People didn’t work for Valentina if they had a reliable team to work with instead. 

“Come on, Walker.” you replied instead, and you and John continued silently through the vents for the next hour. You repeated your solo ascents up the vents when needed, five more times before coming to the final vertical shaft. 

There was sand everywhere. It was seeping into places you hadn’t imagined possible, pervading so many feet down the metal hall that it seemed to be a fantasy at the end of the tunnel rather than your final escape to freedom. The sand had piled in an incline, making it an awkward crouch as you attempted to get into position. 

“Can you give me a boost again?” you asked, and John huffed. The alarm was still going, the screaming of the sirens fainter now but still suffocating in their relentless shrieks. You were getting tired of practically having to shout above them. 

“Can’t you just do your little trick again?” he shot back. Irritation was plain on his face, but nevertheless, John was maneuvering the shield back off his back and shimmying it forward as he spoke. Taking his advice, though, you hoisted yourself up a foot, arms shaking with exertion until John slipped the shield under you. 

John launched you upwards again like he had in the lab, on his knees in the loose sand this time as he did. You were more stable, this time, able to lean against the vent walls as you gripped your escape hatch, where you again pushed your hyper-heated hands through the metal until the grid face gave way and fell to the ground. There was a three foot drop to the ground below, and it was one you happily did in exchange for finally being free of the blaring of the alarms. 

Relief coursed through you as you pulled yourself up out of the sand. You were free. You were quick to stick half your body back inside after scanning the area, and you saw John looking up at you with an unreadable expression when you did. It was somewhere between awestruck and full of loathing, and it made your heart drop into your stomach at the sight. “Come on!” you called down instead of acknowledging the look. 

The man below you struggled momentarily to strap his shield back onto himself before stretching up to reach your outstretched hand. You struggled a tad to hoist the super soldier out of the vent, but you managed it with a grunt. You backed up as you pulled, leaving room for John to fall into the sand the same way you had. He did. It wasn’t until he refused to stand back up that you realized something truly was wrong. John was curled up on the ground, head between his knees as his hands pressed against his ears. 

His ears. 

Understanding slammed into you, guilt and pity swelling in your chest as you remembered reading about the enhancements Walker’d gotten from his bootleg serum, enhanced senses being among them. Enhanced hearing. However bad the alarms and lights had been for you, they’d undeniably been worse for John. 

“Come on, Walker,” you urged gently, empathy bleeding into your voice in spite of yourself. “I know it sucks but we gotta go.” 

For half a second, John looked like he wanted to protest, but instead he picked himself up from the sand and nodded towards what, to you, seemed to be a random direction. “That way,” he muttered, and you followed easily enough. Now was hardly the time to argue. 

You found yourself quietly grateful for John’s presence as you wandered the desert together, the sun setting rapidly and falling behind the mountainous skyline in the hours you’d spent walking. You were good, sure, and hard to kill, but you weren’t a survivalist. You weren’t prepared for anything other than an immediate extraction, but that wasn’t something you could risk with the base on such high alert. Instead, you and Walker were forced to keep moving, to put as much distance between you and the facility as you possibly could before radioing Val for pickup. You didn’t know how long that would take. 

You two had stopped only once since escaping the base. John had crouched down unexpectedly to cut some sort of overly-textured fruit off of a pretty desert plant. More than you would have known to do. Next to you, John seemed even less thrilled about your circumstances than you were, if the look on his face was anything to go by. His eyebrows were knit together in an aggravated sort of concentration, nose red and lips pursed into a tight line. With his arms wrapped around himself the way they were, John Walker looked thoroughly discontent. 

He looked cold. 

That was something you didn’t really get to feel anymore. Cold. It was a foreign concept by that point, the Extremis Project having eradicated your ability to fall below a certain internal body temperature, even if you’d tried. But the serum John had gotten clearly hadn’t done the same to him, and while in any other circumstances you’d’ve been likely to call him a lucky bastard for it, you couldn’t help but feel bad then. 

He looked cold.

You had only worked with John properly a handful of times, but you already knew that if you brought it up to him without a solution, he would get snippy and close off. John Walker was a planner, one that was easily frustrated by a statement of the obvious when it wasn’t immediately followed by a pitch on how to correct it. It made sense, you supposed, given his extensive military training, but it didn’t make him easy to talk to. 

In the end, it wasn’t you that broached the subject. It was John, his teeth gritted in an attempt not to chatter as he spoke; “we have to find somewhere to hunker down.” 

You knew he was right. The desert during the day was scorching, the kind of heat that even you noticed when exposed to it for too long. The light and warmth both faded fast here, though, the quickly-cooling sand doing nothing to hold its heat as the sun fell below the mountains. Dry and unyielding, the sun had been blistering; the moon, however, seemed to radiate nothing but cold as it rose to take its place. 

You scanned the world around you, eyes peeled for any sort of opening in the rocks you two were now surrounded by. It was dark but you were able to make out the opening soon enough, your eyes drawn to a particularly dark shadow along the stone. A cave. The Mojave desert was full of cave systems and you were beyond grateful for the sight of one then. 

“Come on, Walker,” you said, grabbing a hold of his elbow. It was unnecessary, you knew, but Walker didn’t comment on it as you tugged him towards the cave you found. The wind in the Mojave was biting and you needed desperately to get the super soldier out of it. 

Walker followed you wordlessly, feet damn near silent as you moved together in the sand. You two had worked together well thus far, something that surprised you greatly. You weren’t exactly the team-up-type and you figured Walker wasn’t either, after Germany. Maybe he had been at one point - surely he had been, as a captain for the United States - but not anymore. It hadn’t been the worst mission in history, though, so you had to count the wins where you could get them. 

The entrance to the cave was slightly smaller than you had anticipated at first glance, but you were hardly complaining. The cavern in the rock was spacious, as far as wounds in rock face could be concerned. It was big enough to cocoon you and Walker semi-comfortably, about 9 feet tall and 12 feet deep into the stone, but the problem became evident at the width. It was tight, barely wide enough for you and Walker to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, but the relief from the wind was instantaneous for him. 

“Brace yourself,” John muttered shakily, “close your eyes.” 

Your eyes slammed shut instantly, but the sudden light that flooded the dark space you shared burned despite your lowered lids. You shaded your eyes with your hand as you opened them, squinting against the harsh white that illuminated the small space. 

That’s when you heard it. 

The rattle of a rattlesnake was a nigh unmistakable sound, one you hadn’t heard in years - one that filled the cave you and Walker were hiding in. Your eyes shot down immediately where, coiled angrily around the tactical light Walker had thrown on the ground, you saw a Mojave Rattler. It was a beautiful snake, in any other circumstance, but its tail rattled violently, a clear warning of its intent. 

“Don’t move,” you hissed at Walker and the man beside you froze. 

You braced yourself for the snake to lunge, and you met it when it did. Your hand burned where you grabbed the creature, its scales scalding beneath your skin immediately, but you didn’t dwell on the feeling as you hurled it out of the cave. You felt terrible as you watched the snake fly for as far as you could in the darkness, but you knew it didn’t really matter where it landed, anyway. It was dead either way. 

Guilt churned in your stomach painfully, nausea overwhelming you once the adrenaline had passed. You almost didn’t notice Walker reach out for you, but you’d clocked it in time to not be visibly startled when his hand landed on your arm. 

“You good?” John asked, his voice taking on an uncharacteristically soft edge as his thumb began to rub your upper arm. You doubted he’d even realized he was doing it. 

“Yeah,” you lied, “I’m fine. Good call with the light.” 

You glanced around the small cave in the light provided, scanning for any more creatures or critters you may have to handle before you settled in for the night. There wasn’t any. Relief coursed through you properly for the first time all day, the cave acting as a temporary sanctuary for the pair of you in the aftermath of a - frankly - terrible mission. 

With nothing left to do, you slowly sank to the floor of the cave, your body sinking slightly into the sand covering the stone beneath you. You were so fucking tired. Using your abilities was something you’d gotten better at over the years, sure, but that didn’t exactly make them easy for you to use. They were exhausting. Draining. Energy siphoning in a way that made you feel hollow in the aftermath, no matter how many years it’d been. 

John hesitated only a moment before joining you on the ground as best he could. He reached between you to turn the light off then, flooding the crevice with shadows and darkness as he adjusted his limbs so they could slot between yours in the sand. Arguably, you didn’t have to sit so close together, but with your legs touching his the way they suddenly were, you could feel that he’d started shaking. He was so fucking cold. You sighed heavily, chest tightening when John flinched at the sound. 

“We’ll radio out to Valentina tomorrow,” John said before you had a chance to comment, “put a couple hundred clicks between us and the base before we do.” 

You nodded, though you doubted John could see you anymore. Although maybe he could, with his freaky enhanced super senses. You weren’t sure. Regardless, you didn’t much feel like talking anymore, instead dwelling on the mess of a mission you’d just survived, no small amount of guilt weighing down your heart over the fate of the cave snake. You weren’t even really sure why it was bothering you so much, but it was. 

“It was a Mojave Rattlesnake,” John said suddenly, his voice quiet but still startling in the too-small space. “Venomous as hell. I don’t really know why they’re called that, though. They’re found all over southwestern America, and even down into Mexico. They’re, like, barely Mojave. This part of the desert only makes up, like, 12 or 20 perc-”

John had cut himself off. You did your best to ignore the tremor running through his body as confusion overcame you. Why had he shut up? You glanced around again for a threat, your eyes darting to the mouth of your little hideaway, but there was nothing there. Nobody. You debated asking John what was wrong before deciding against it, instead closing your eyes as you attempted to will yourself into some form of sleep. Then, another rattle-like sound filled the cave. 

John’s teeth were chattering. 

The revelation sent an unpleasant feeling dripping down your spine, like molten pity or white-hot shame. You knew John wouldn’t want to talk about it - wouldn’t want you to actually acknowledge what was going on - so you didn’t. Instead, you closed your eyes and began to focus, all of your remaining energy put into your efforts to raise your own temperature on purpose. You didn’t have to open your eyes to know you had begun to glow faintly again, an orange hue filling the space in the rock between you and Walker. You heard him gasp. 

“You’ll warm up soon,” you assured him. You were grateful when he didn’t comment on the strain in your voice. 

You stayed like that for several silent minutes, sweat dripping down your temples at your effort to project heat without malice. Heat with the intent to kill had always been simpler. There was less precision required when it didn’t matter the collateral - less consequences to live with after you were dead. This, though? This was to help. To keep someone else alive. Heat with the purpose to sustain was almost foreign to you, and you were clearly out of practice. 

“How do you do that?”

The question caught you off guard, the faint light and excess heat receding back into you at John’s inquisitive tone. With a bitter laugh, you choked out the explanation of; “barely.” 

It was grim, but it was true. Judging by his silence, John knew it too. He was still cold. Your heat trick had helped, had stopped the chattering of the super soldier’s jaw, but it wasn’t enough to ward off the late Nevada night. While you remained relatively unaffected by the cold, John hadn’t prepared for it. Not enough. Not the way the Extremis Project had forced you to, years prior. He was still in his typical U.S. Agent get-up - a black-and-red inversion of the red-white-and-blue thing Captain America had going on - which you now knew to be uninsulated. You doubted his helmet provided any sort of warmth either, save for possibly around his eyebrows and cheekbones. His gloves and boots were tactile, not cold guards, and his shield was a concave sheet of freezing metal, 

God, you hoped he didn’t freeze to death. 

The thought, while morbid, was entirely possible if the temperature kept dropping. The elements could kill just as harshly as any man-made weapon ever could, and in some cases, it was worse. You didn’t want that for John - nor for yourself, as unlikely as that scenario may have been - so you sat quietly while you wracked your brain for a solution. Only one seemed obvious. 

“Come on,” you said. You were getting sick of saying it. “I know it’s fucking weird, but we gotta get you warm, so-”

“Why?”

The question caught you off guard. The word - a single syllable - felt like a gunshot in the way it ricocheted around your head, its path of carnage immeasurable in the half seconds it took you to react. His voice had been so… resigned. Tired. He’d been asking simply to hear your answer. 

“What the hell do you mean ‘why?’” you spat harshly, and in the darkness you could faintly make out the way John flinched at your tone. “I’m not gonna let you fucking freeze to death, Walker. You’re my teammate for tonight.” 

You debated saying more - debated telling him that you wanted to keep him alive because, despite your discontent at your situation, you didn’t think he was the worst man alive. You didn’t think he was the monster of monsters that a lot of news outlets had painted him out to be, nor did you think you could find it in you to blame him for the way he’d snapped that day overseas. You thought about telling him about how kindly he had treated you in comparison to so many others, even in spite of his harsh tones and coarse exterior. But you didn’t. Shame and unwanted memories bubbled to the surface as you wracked your brain for more to say that, somehow, wouldn’t betray how rapidly you’d grown attached to the broken man before you. 

“I didn’t even get the files.” 

The admission was soft. Quiet. Almost inaudible with the wind rushing past the cave entrance, but you’d heard it nonetheless. Your eyes finally seemed to be adjusting to the overwhelming darkness surrounding you both, leaving some of John’s features visible despite the lack of light. There was a frown on his face, his eyebrows furrowed, and you could see his arms wrapped around himself in an attempt to ward off the cold. 

“I got the usb,” you assured quickly, but John’s loud scoff was followed quickly by him slamming his helmeted-head back against the stone wall of the cave he leaned against. 

“But I didn't get the files!” his voice was strained and angry. Fear had begun to creep back up on you; a more immediate kind of terror compared to the bone-deep existential dread you had been navigating since the mission’d started. You didn’t like it when Walker got angry. “I didn’t get the files, I didn’t complete my mission. I let Valentina down and I’m the one that’s going to have to pay for it! Me! So I don’t really give a fuck if you got your part of the job, okay? I still fucking failed at mine.” 

You weren’t entirely sure where the emotional outburst was coming from. Or, you were, he had just explained it - profanity laced as the explanation may have been - but you weren’t sure why this had been the breaking point. Surely the military legend was trained to hold on just a little while longer, no? AIM had trained you to withstand genuine torture tactics their enemies may have thrown at you, surely America had done the same for him. 

“I wasn’t bragging,” you said quietly, “I wouldn't have made it out of the room without you, you wouldn’t have made it out of the vents without me. We’re even, here, Walker. We got whatever they had.” 

The words tasted bitter in your mouth, even as you spoke them freely. Sharing credit had never been your strong suit, much preferring to shoulder your breaks and burdens solo, or choke down any unforeseen consequences the same way. Leaving John alone in this didn’t seem to be an option, then. You could tell that whatever part of this had broken something in John that night, it had shattered it in a way that wasn’t fixable by awkwardly-offered compromise alone. 

Then his teeth started chattering again. 

You couldn’t keep the annoyance out of your heavy sigh if you had tried, prompting an equally-irritated sound from John in response. This was ridiculous. You hadn’t been about to extend an olive branch to an icicle, no matter how agitated you felt in the cramped cave. Moving suddenly, you pulled your base uniform overcoat off to expose the standard issue white tank top underneath, the black sports bra you wore under that standing out as a shadow beneath the top. You pulled yourself away from John then and shifted yourself around until your back was against the sloping back of the cave, head pillowed only by your pulled-back hair. 

“Come here,” you said to him, “you’re gonna freeze to death if you don’t.” 

Still, John hesitated. In the faint light provided by the mood and your body’s natural acclimatization to the dark, you could see a look of deep concern on his face as he stared at your outstretched arms. You couldn’t say you blamed him for his reluctance, but you couldn’t help the repeated heavy sigh nonetheless. 

“John,” you said softly, ignoring the way the blond man’s breathing hitched at the sound of his first name, “I don’t want you to die. I can control it better when I don’t have to project it. Come here.” 

The last part was said less like an offer and more like a demand, but it seemed to be what the super soldier needed. John moved stiffly in the cramped space, sliding his helmet off his head and setting it to the side before turning back to face you. Your nerves, begrudgingly, had started to get the better of you again, and a faint orange glow had begun to light up your skin. This, at least, would begin a more natural temperature spike for you. 

“Are you sure…?” 

John’s hesitation was, in a way, sweet. Boyish. The man before you was radiating nerves in a way he never had around you before, not even the times the two of you had come under fire. He was skittish in the faint light of you, his eyes darting across the nebulaic patterns that swirled beneath your skin instead of meeting your gaze. You adjusted your legs and beckoned him forward. 

“I’m sure, John. Come lay with me.” 

That, at last, seemed to finally shatter his resolve. John crawled to you slowly, as if approaching a caged animal, and he was practically a statue as he laid against you. His head came to rest against your shoulder, his cheek pressed to your collar bone and the rest of him pressed against the rest of you wherever it could. You ignored the way this made the glow brighter. Once he’d settled, you threw your base coat over top of the both of you like a makeshift blanket. It was far too small for John, but it was more than he’d had before. 

John seemed to sag against you after a few minutes. He felt deflated. As if any warmth or will to live had long-since seeped out of him. Idly, you brought your arms down to circle his waist, began to rub what you’d hoped were soothing circles across his back at the same time. John’s nose was cold where it pressed against your skin, but that wasn’t what caught your attention. 

He was crying. 

It took you a few more minutes of stillness to be sure, but the feeling of tears sliding against your neck was undeniable. They were hot, and wet, and beginning to roll down your chest as they kept up their unrelenting flow from John’s eyes. You didn’t dare comment. What would you even say? 

The last time you had tried to comfort someone, you’d been a labrat for AIM. You had been one of the phase two testers - the stage after the death-bed dealers and before the retired combat veterans - and you’d been laying in a cot across from a woman whose name you never got to learn. You were both being housed in a medical warehouse outside of Boston at the time, both semi-recovering addicts looking for something to distract yourself from the withdrawal symptoms. While you would later learn that your testing group had been the one used to engineer the addictive properties of the serum’s next phase, all those years ago you had simply been concerned with staying alive and helping your friend. 

“Do you think it’s gonna hurt?” she had asked, red hair fanning out behind her on the uncomfortable bed. She had looked so young. She had barely been 21, a pretty ginger girl with bright blue eyes and hyper-pigmented freckles smattered across her face. You’d smiled at her before you lied. 

“No,” you’d told her happily, “but I’m going first. I’ll warn you if it does.”

You never did get the chance to tell her. Not about the unbearable heat, or the agony of listening to your own spine fuse itself back together. The cause of all those pain pills and drug runs, knitted back together in an instant, and all it’d cost you was your soul. The other girl had burned the same as you, and all it’d cost her was her life. 

Shoving the horrible memories of your friend out of your head, you did your best to focus back in on the task at hand. Walker was crying. He hadn’t said anything yet, and the tension slowly returning to his body let you know that he had no intentions of letting you hear him sob, either. You could feel it, though. You wonder how long it’d been since Walker’d been held, for him to forget that. 

You willed your body warmer, the glow in the cave brightening and your grip on the man in your arms tightening. His shaking hard returned, though you doubted it was from the cold anymore. This was sadness. This was grief. This was the trembling form of a man on the very brink of implosion, self-collapse imminent in spite of his attempts to hold himself together. 

Your heart broke for him. 

A foolish reaction, you figured, but one you couldn’t help. John Walker, for all his flaws, had been one of the highlights in your field ops, especially since Tony passed. You didn’t like the knowledge that he was miserable. You didn’t like it at all. 

“I’m sorry!” John suddenly gasped, practically choking himself on the words in his effort to get them out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”

“Shhhhh,” you soothed awkwardly, doing your best not to come across as angry or upset. “I’ve got you, John. It’s okay. Don’t apologize.” 

You didn’t know what else to say. Was there anything else to say? You didn’t even know why he was crying, just that the sight and sound of it was chipping away at something inside you steadily. The feel of it. Cradling a collapsing star in your hands, you felt like Atlas, doing his best to hold up the sky without letting out a scream. 

John had started sobbing in earnest then, forcing his face deeper into your neck in an attempt to muffle the sounds. It didn’t matter. You felt the way he shook against you, like a war-torn frame heaving against the weight of his own sadness. There was a storm inside of John Walker, and it seemed like tonight was the night it would finally spill out of him. You kept rubbing his back and shoulders, moving one of your hands up to run your fingers through his hair. 

The sound he made, you knew, was practically a wail, but you also knew that John would rather die than admit it. 

“I’ve got you,” you murmured again, “I’ve got you, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not a failure, Walker; you saved my ass a few times tonight. It’s okay.” 

You didn’t know if it was actually helping, or if the excitement of the day was finally catching up to John, but you knew that his sobs had started to quiet at your words. They weren’t gone, granted, but they were subsiding. Waning. The sound still tugged at something inside of you, but the relief you were beginning to feel was palpable. You stayed like that with him for awhile, pity and exhaustion at war in your bones about it, but you were hardly about to tell him to ‘suck it up.’

John Walker needed you. 

It was a foreign feeling by then, being needed. Unusual. You couldn’t remember the last time someone needed you. Her, you thought, she needed you. You’d failed her, but maybe you didn’t have to fail him. Maybe you could actually help John. 

“You’re safe,” you whispered, “we’re safe, because of you. You got us through the desert, man. You’re good.” 

“But I’m not!” John’s outburst startled you. He pushed himself up, wet eyes boring into yours with a ferocity you hadn’t been prepared for. “I’m not good. I wreck everything I touch!” 

Your breathing hitched. His face was barely inches from yours, his chest heaving with the force of his sobs. Tears were still streaming down his cheeks, but you didn’t dare comment on that. 

“You didn’t wreck me.” 

Everything froze. Blood rushed to your ears, your heart pounding out of your chest as you stared up at the former Captain America. John didn’t react to your words at first, just watched the way your skin lit up with your nerves. Frustrated and feeling bold, you repeated yourself. 

“You didn’t wreck me,” your voice was firmer this time, “you didn’t wreck me, John. You’re touching me right now, and I’m okay. I’ve been not okay on a lot of missions, I’m okay on this one now. I’m okay here with you.”  

You were rambling. John hadn’t blinked the whole time you were speaking, leaving you unnerved and glowing brighter. It made you talk more than you normally would, made you anxious in a way you’d hadn’t been in years. You felt yourself heat up at the thought. At least John’s warm, you mused, and your lips quirked up into a small smile. 

John’s mouth was on you in an instant. 

You didn’t even have time to gasp when the kiss landed, John had closed the gap so fast that you almost hadn’t realized it was coming. You kissed back, though. The moment you got your bearings about you, you kissed John back fiercely, bringing your hand up to cup his face. 

He tore away from you with a gasp. 

“I’m sorry!” he choked out, “I’m sorry fucking sorry, holy shit, I-”

“Okay-” you cut him off, “well, that’s, like, discouraging as fuck to hear, but. Okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.” 

John rolled his eyes. “You keep saying that!” 

“I keep meaning it, too!” you snapped back. John was back to staring down at you then, and you found yourself quickly getting tired of the feeling of looking up. “It’s fine, Walker. I’m not mad. I, uh… I’m not mad.” 

You’d lost your bravado half way through speaking, your voice trailing off awkwardly. John’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, frustration twisting the rest of his features unpleasantly. 

“What were you gonna say?” John demanded and you would have screamed a thousand screams if it hadn’t been such a risk. You swore your face was going to explode - and that was only half a joke. 

“Oh my god!” you got out, voice clipped and eyes finally moving away from John’s to the cave ceiling. “I kissed you back! Okay? It’s fine! You surprised me, sure, but I wasn’t, like, fighting you off by any means. I kissed you back.” 

You wished closing your eyes would be enough to drown out the light you were throwing as you sat in your own anxiety. This was stupid. You were both being so fucking stupid, really, acting like a kiss in a cave was the end of the world. Like it was something worth discussing. It was the action of lips on lips, a mouth moving against another mouth. There was nothing special, or world-changing, or life-altering, or-

John kissed you again. 

You kissed back instantly this time. You were out of practice but you tried not to let that get to you, instead focusing on the way John’s lips moved against your own. He was a good kisser. As far as you could tell, at least, John was a good kisser; he was steady, the pressure perfect without being forceful, and he hadn’t rushed in with tongue the way your last boyfriend did. Granted, that had been in university, but that was your only point of reference anymore. 

This time when you broke apart, it was for air, and John didn’t seem ready to back out as he panted above you. Without thinking, you pressed a kiss to John’s cheek, an impulsive move that had the super soldier’s face heating up beneath your lips. Pulling away gently, John buried his face in your neck, and you smiled. Content with what you’d already gotten, you’d been unprepared for the way John’s mouth had found your throat. 

“Oh!” you’d gasped, face and chest heating up in shock. You felt John tense, but he relaxed once your hand shot up to his hair, your grip on his hip tightening with the other. You liked that. You liked this. All of it. John kept up his path across your throat, dipping down slightly to press a row of kisses across your collarbone. Without overthinking it, you raised the leg of yours that was between John’s, your thigh pressing into the core of him firmly. 

He was hard. 

A sick, addicting kind of heat swelled inside you at the revelation and you both froze. You tried to focus on your erratic heartbeat, but molten want kept you pressed where you were despite the danger. You knew this was a fool’s risk - that your heart rate spiking too radically could result in you going off like a bomb. Tony had assured you, years ago, that that wasn’t likely to happen anymore, but the fear had been plaguing you for almost a decade. 

Then John whimpered. 

It was a small sound. High pitched and needy, he did it again when he shifted against you, his hips grinding down minutely into the cushion of your thigh. You inhaled sharply through your nose and inched your leg up more, tensing to give him something firmer to grind down against. You wanted to hear it again. You wanted to hear him again. 

John didn’t give you the satisfaction right away. Instead, the blond busied his mouth on the other side of your neck, exploring the next expanse of skin like the trained tracker he was. It felt good, laying under the former captain, letting him kiss you however he wanted. You assumed he was enjoying it, too, based on the way he kept trying to get closer to you still. His tears hadn’t stopped entirely, but they were slower now. Calmer. They wet your neck more than anything else John was doing. 

You shifted the hand that was on his hip, running it up his side to cup his ribs. John shivered. You’d never really considered what John would be like in bed - in cave - but if you had, you still wouldn’t have anticipated how reactive he was. It was adorable. It was addicting. You liked how well he responded to you, pushing into your hands wherever they laid across his body, his hips grinding down against you in a steady rhythm. It made you feel powerful. You were drawing these sorts of sounds and shivers out of a super soldier - he was becoming putty in your hands. 

“This still okay?” John’s voice broke the monologue in your head, his words quick but clear. They made you smile. Briefly, you debated teasing him about the question, but you knew that you were dancing across thin ice. One wrong move, and Walker would send you plunging into the cold. 

“Still okay,” you confirmed, “now come kiss me again.”

John complied easily. That's another thing you would have never thought to anticipate; how non-domineering John seemed to be when he felt good. It was cute. Sweet. It made your heart beat almost dangerously fast, the light in the cave growing brighter as you continued to make out. The hand on your hip shifted then, John shifted his weight to rest mostly on his other arm, his left hand moving to slip under your shirt. 

Your stomach clenched at the feel of his bare hand on your bare skin. Feeling bold, you swiped your tongue against John’s bottom lip and had to bite back a smile at how easily he opened up for you. At your enthusiasm, John grew bolder too, his thigh pressing against your core firmly, the hand on your stomach sliding up to your chest. You couldn’t help the small noise that left you, a content little hum at the feeling of the super soldier cupping you through your bra. John inhaled sharply at it, and he nipped at your bottom lip before pulling away. 

“I wanna touch you,” you said before he had a chance to talk, and John’s pupils blew wide at your words as he stared down at you. He nodded silently, pink tongue dragging across his bottom lip as he gave you his consent. 

You slid the hand on his ribs down to the front of his suit, and you hoped he was also ignoring the way your hands shook and skin lit up. You were so nervous, even as you felt the evidence of how much John liked this pressing against you. You kissed him again to distract yourself from it and worked your hand between you, finally wrapping your too-warm fingers around the bulge in John’s uniform, 

“Fuck,” he groaned out, mouth hanging open for a second at the relief of finally getting proper pressure where he needed it most. “Fuck, pretty girl, keep going.” 

The words sparked something inside of you, sent a wave of desire crashing through your body like a tsunami of want. John’s voice was even deeper than it had been all day, something thick and primal working its way into his tone as he pushed himself against your hand. Idly, you wondered what he was thinking about, but the feeling of John’s hand sliding down to the waistband of your pants distracted you. You didn’t bother waiting for him to ask, you just nodded enthusiastically, pressing your lips against John’s yet again. 

You really liked kissing John. 

You liked even more the way his hand felt as it slipped into your pants, warm and calloused and strong. Your skin was glowing fiercely, your body running hot as you struggled to contain just how excited you were. You were wet, you could feel how slick you had gotten just from making out and you hoped Walker wouldn’t comment on it. You felt him smirk against your neck and, before he could shatter that hope, you squeezed gently around the bulge in your hand again. John moaned. You began to rub him in earnest then, thrilled when he started to grind against your hand while making quiet, content sounds in your ear. 

“Fuck you sound good,” you mumbled mindlessly. John whimpered. The words had slipped out entirely without your permission as you’d gotten lost in the feeling of John surrounding you, something you’d expected him to hate. Clearly, he didn’t. You kept talking. 

“You look good too, you know?” you’d been asking rhetorically, but John nodded like he was afraid to disagree. “You’re so hot. So pretty.” 

John whimpered again. You thought your heart was going to explode in your chest as you fumbled with John’s belt, doing your best to yank it open blind. “I wanna get my hands on you for real.” 

You said it half to turn him on more and half as a warning, giving him ample opportunity to stop you, if he’d wanted to. He didn’t, if the way he bucked his hips into yours was anything to go by. It was awkward in the cramped space, and your back hurt from the rock. You were glowing, and sweating, and shimmieing around in a sandy cave to give a handjob to a super soldier, but you were excited. You wanted this. You were having more fun on the floor of that cave with John than you’d had in years by yourself in a soft bed. 

You didn’t get a good look at John’s cock despite the light you were emitting, the angle of it all making it damn near impossible to see anything other than blue eyes and soft hair. But you could feel it. Hot and heavy in your hands, John was big. Long, and thick, and you could feel the hair at the base of it when you slid your hand down. John’s breathing hitched. 

“Come on,” he urged softly, hips jutting up into your hand. “Come on, Lava Lamp, I need this.” 

You finally did laugh then, a silly, obnoxious giggle pouring out of you as you wrapped your fingers around John properly, stroking as best you could despite your giggling frame. “Don’t fucking call me that,” you said without any fire, “or I’ll rip your dick off.” 

It was John’s turn to laugh then, an easy sound that made you instantly want to hear more. Between your bodies, your forearms were pressed together awkwardly as you rubbed at each other at, possibly, the world’s worst angle. You couldn’t bring yourself to be bothered by it. “I don’t think you mean that,” John teased back. “I think you like it.” 

He emphasized his point by slipping his finger between your folds, the slow drag of it up your center pulling a ragged gasp out of you. He wasn’t wrong. That was kind of the worst part of all of this, in a way. John really was making you feel good, and you had a sinking feeling in your gut like you may never live it down. You clenched around nothing at the thought. 

“I think,” you flicked your thumb across the tip of John’s cock as you spoke, “that you should be a good boy and fuck me.” 

You wondered for half a second if you’d gone too far, or if you’d jumped the shark in regards to being sexy, but the way John shuddered assuaged any worry you felt in an instant. He moaned as he buried his face back in your neck and nodded, his middle finger working its way back between your folds. You held your breath. It had been so long since you’d done anything with anybody, you found yourself craving something more. 

“Come on,” you choked out, “open me up.” 

John obeyed at once, his finger sliding inside you fully now, right up to the third knuckle. It was just one, but the sudden pressure made you hiss between your teeth. “Sorry,” John mumbled softly, and his thumb came up to press circles against your clit. You couldn’t help the moan you let out, loud and obnoxious. It fueled John on, urging him to continue toying with you in the hopes of hearing more. You kissed him again instead. 

Kissing John with his fingers in you was a different kind of intensity, something far more intimate than just lips-on-lips had been. It had been so fucking long since the last time you’d had this. Since you’d had someone. You knew that whatever was happening between you and John was an impulsive, spontaneous thing. It wouldn’t matter when the sun rose, but it mattered to you tonight.

That was the thought that urged you forward, bringing one of your legs up to hook around his hip as you did your best to relax. After another minute or two, you nodded at John to add another finger, which he did easily. You were so wet. You couldn’t really remember the last time you had been this turned on, the last time you were so desperate to have something fill you. It was a fun, albeit vulnerable, feeling, one you’d hoped John was drowning in himself. 

“Another,” you said breathlessly, hand sliding against John’s cock in an easy glide. You had meant to be nicer about it, but John’s cock twitched in your hand at the command still audible in your voice despite the pleasure. 

John obeyed. 

You loved the feeling of him listening to you. It was an easy sort of control, one that felt earned instead of fought for, and it wrapped around you like a cloud of smoke. Permeating, something that hung heavy in the air and clung to your lungs as you gasped in mouthfuls of John. 

It was obvious before too long that you were both ready. Your pussy was dripping, an audible squelching sound making your face burn as John continued to finger fuck you on the floor of a cave. It was so vulgar. So dirty. But it felt good, and weirdly intimate, less like a hookup and more like a beginning. 

You shook yourself. 

That was dangerous thinking, the kind of sap that got you stuck on the tree of life, forever unable to keep climbing towards the top. You had no place for it in your life. It was a waste. A hindrance. A burden you were simply unwilling to bear. 

“Please let me fuck you,” John’s voice was getting higher in pitch. “Please, fuck, gotta feel you.” 

And, really, hadn’t you always been built a bit different? Hadn’t you been designed to bear more than most? The thoughts felt dangerously close to self harm as you allowed them to dance behind your eyes. 

“Fuck me, John. Come on.”

Walker was quick to lift himself off of you then, something that had almost startled a protest out of you before his hands flew to the button on your pants. He fumbled momentarily before he got himself together, lowering your pants until you could get one leg out entirely, allowing for easy maneuvering. Anticipation swirled in your gut. 

John looked at you for assurance one last time. You nodded your head, bringing your hands up to cup his face. “Come on, John.” 

The tip of John’s cock was red and leaking, his cock throbbing visibly where it bobbed between his legs. He lined himself up, giving you one last peck on the mouth before he pushed in slowly. You held your breath, the glow in the cave almost blinding for a moment as John’s pelvis hit yours. 

You needed this. 

You needed this so bad that you didn’t even care about the stream of content sounds pouring out of your mouth, nor the mindless babbling that followed. “So good,” you panted, “oh my god, John, you’re so good. Feels so good. Fuck!” 

Above you, John did his best to suppress a whine. His whole body shuddered at your words, his hips starting their slow grind against yours. His head pressed against your forehead as his eyes closed and you clenched around him, walls squeezing around his cock as his hips began to drive into yours in earnest. Still, he tried not to let you hear the sound trapped in his chest. 

“Say it again,” John begged, “please, Lava Lamp, I gotta hear it.” 

You couldn’t have helped the smile that spread across your face if you’d tried. “Such a good boy,” you said as you grabbed a handful of his hair. “Making me feel so fucking good.” 

And there it was, that pretty little whine he had tried so hard to hide before. John leaned his head back into your hand, letting you pull the fistful of blond hair with just enough force to drag a moan out of the man. John’s own hands found your hips, gripping them with an almost-bruising force to maintain leverage in the cramped space. You didn’t mind. John shifted slightly then, the angle only minutely changed but groundbreaking nonetheless. 

“Oh!” you gasped, “Oh! There! Fuck!” 

You began to press your hips back as best you could, meeting John thrust-for-thrust as need carried you through on instinct. “There?” John asked, and you nodded dumbly. 

“There, John, fuck. Such a good boy. You feel so good inside me.” you knew you were rambling, but you couldn’t stop running your mouth at the feeling, and you wanted to soak up each and every one of John’s reactions to your words. 

He was so responsive. You hadn’t expected it, had instead been expecting some grand display of stoicism from your temporary teammate, even as the heavy petting had started. The tears from earlier seemed to be pooling at the corners of his eyes again, but you didn’t call it out. You just stared into the deep blue of John’s gaze for as long as you could hold it before the pleasure became too much, the inferno inside of you raging against your need from within. 

“This good?” John panted, and your heart clenched at the desperate way he needed validation, even as you soaked his cock with how badly you wanted him. 

“So fucking good,” you panted, “you’re so fucking good, pretty boy. Such a good boy for me.” 

John’s hips stuttered at the petname, losing their rhythm as the words washed over him. Good. He was being good. John preened under your praise, his heartbeat erratic beneath your lips as you mouthed as his pulse point. He was so cute. You kept up with the praise, dropping a gentle “good boy” or “keep going, baby” whenever it felt right, and John kept fucking you like it’d been his mission from the start. 

“Come on, baby,” you guided gently as his hips began to pause too long at your words, “fuck me like a good boy.”

The words activated him like a sleeper agent. 

Walker fucked into you obediently, hips keeping a consistent, addicting pace with an almost militant efficiency. He was good at following orders. You really should have known that - should have realized that the man trained to take lead hadn’t simply gotten there by never being able to follow - but it was still a surprise each time he listened so easily. He was so compliant, allowing you to lead despite his place above you. Not for the first time that night, you wished fiercely that you were anywhere other than a desert cave. 

The stone beneath your back made your whole body ache. Your spine felt warped under the weight of you both, the heat you were throwing was making everything feel sharper than it actually was. Harsher. The heat inside of you felt so good, though. It felt like the Extremis serum, but kinder. It felt like being wanted. It felt like a need so intense you could barely keep yourself from gasping with it as you rocked your body against John’s as best you could. 

John couldn’t keep his hands still anymore. They explored you in earnest, callused fingertips dragging against your sensitive, glowing skin. He slid his hands up your sides, his palms flat and wide as they covered places on you leading up to your ribs. His hands on your tits made you moan despite yourself, pushing your chest up further into grip. Your nipples here hard against his palms, pebbled as if you were trapped in the cold, and practically begging John to do something with them. 

You hadn’t expected his mouth. 

Walker dipped down to get his mouth on your left nipple faster than you could react, an embarrassing whimper tearing its way out of your throat at the sensation. Wet heat encircled the sensitive bud, John’s lips capturing you with a gentle suck. His tongue flicked against the tip of it after a second, making you clench around him tighter. 

“Oh my god,” you gasped out happily, “John, baby, fuck. Making me feel so fucking good.” 

Your head was practically spinning with want as you tugged at John’s hair, your fingers curled into a loose fist that was tightening by the second. Walker took that as his cue to switch sides, but not before blowing cool air against the spit-slick skin of your left nipple, the feeling making you writhe against him. He sucked on your right tit with just as much enthusiasm, his hips fucking into you with enough force to shift your body against the stone beneath you. 

God you hated the stone. 

Idly, in the back of your mind, you wondered what it would be like to do this properly. Maybe in a motel somewhere while you laid low, isolated enough and with a big enough bed for you to spread the super soldier out and toy with him for real. You wanted to hear him whine some more, wanted to see just how far he was willing to go for praise. You wondered if he was into being made to wait, kept on the edge of orgasm for hours while being forced to beg, or maybe the opposite. Maybe the serum in his veins meant he didn’t have a refractory period anymore, and he would lay back all pretty while you spent a night making him cum until he cried - or ran out. Maybe there was nothing more to your encounter in the cave than a moment of weakness and some desperately needed comfort, but maybe there was also just more to John Walker than met the eye. 

You were desperately hoping for the latter.

You were approaching your high far faster than you wanted to. You wanted to savour this, to hold onto the feeling of John Walker compliant in your arms, but you knew it was a losing battle. You felt too good. Your skin was hot, your insides like fire, and you were glowing like nightlight. You were so bright. You didn’t feel like you were going to explode, though; the heat was a pleasant burn, not a charring scorch. Nothing hurt like this, nothing ached or strained or melted away inside of you. Nothing was wrong. For the first time in years, you could almost pretend that nothing was wrong. 

“John,” you tried to warn him, your voice and cunt both tightening. You didn’t need to continue. John’s hips kept their pace, his hand returning to its place between your thighs without your direction. The feeling of his trembling fingers circling your clit made you gasp. Once. 

Twice.

Three times and you were cumming around John’s cock. Hard. you were sure you would have shouted some sort of obscenity if not for John’s mouth on yours, kissing you like his life depended on it as you clenched around him tight. You felt incredible. Waves of liquid fire lapped at your spine, molten desire drowning you where you laid in the sand. Your limbs tensed, your arms crushing John against you as tight as you could without hurting him and your legs wrapped around his hips as they plowed into you in a way that left your body trembling in the aftershocks. 

“I’m close,” John choked out, going to pull himself out of you. You didn’t want that. You wanted to feel John let go inside you, feel the way his body relaxed when he finally let go. Without thinking, you locked your ankles behind his back. 

“Cum for me, pretty boy.” 

John bit into your shoulder as he came, hard enough to break skin and draw blood. It made you whine in overstimulation, but it didn’t make you pull away. It was hot. Being marked. You knew it would heal as soon as John removed his teeth, the Extremis serum doing its best to repair you completely the moment you began to decline in any way. It almost drove you crazy, your inability to see any lasting effects of the battles you’d been through, but you were certainly grateful that you wouldn’t have any marks to hide from Valentina in the morning. 

The feeling of John’s cum painting your walls was almost enough to send you over the edge again, the aftershocks of your last orgasm squeezing everything out of John as you clenched as tight as you could. You felt amazing. John shook against you, his body rigid before relaxing into a pile of flesh and nerves under your careful hands. You were rubbing his back and playing with his hair as you slid your legs down from his hips, your own stretched pelvis screaming at you for the shift. Your back thanked you, though, profusely as you finally eased the tension in the lower half of your body. 

“You were so-”

“That was rea-”

You cut each other off in your attempts to provide awkward reassurance. With the desire cooling in your bodies alongside your blood, you couldn’t help the swell of nerves you felt in the aftermath. This had been such an insanely stupid idea. What were you thinking? You weren’t, clearly, and-

“You were perfect,” you said instead of voicing a single one of the concerns in your head. “That was really fun, Walker.”

You were sure you sounded weird. Like a failed telephone salesman or a nervous third grade teacher, but you couldn’t help it. You had successfully stolen from the CIA hours prior, and somehow this felt like the most dangerous thing you’d done all day. 

“Yeah?” He asked rhetorically, not shifting his head from your shoulder as he maneuvered himself back into his uniform, “I, uh, I think next time, I should eat you out.”

A sudden wave of hunger threatened to overtake you, your pussy screaming at you to take him up on that right then, but the exhaustion radiating from your bones forced you to ignore it. You barely had it in you to pull your pants back on, and you spent that half minute worried that John wouldn’t return to you when you’d laid back down. He did. You pressed your grinning lips against his forehead. 

“Bet,” you replied sleepily, “but only if I get to fuck you, next.”

The last of the water was gone by the time you’d reached a quarter-mile out from the pick-up spot John had set up with Valentina. You had shared it between you wordlessly, tiny sips passed back-and-forth in utter silence. Visibility, and heat, were both an elevating risk in the daytime. 

You pretended that was the reason for the quiet. 

John had been unable to meet your eyes since you’d woken up that morning. He’d moved away from you some time  during your shift asleep, your body so exhausted that you hadn’t even stirred in the process. That wasn’t like you. Usually, you slept lightly, barely allowing your body to ever fall fully into REM sleep, lest something happen while you were unaware. There was also the nightmares. Those were undeniably a factor in your beyond-fucked sleep schedule, and you wondered if it had anything to do with you waking up alone that morning. 

She had visited you, as she often did in your sleep. All fiery red hair and fierce eyes, flames licking across her skin as she screamed about it hurting. About you lying. About death. You hadn’t thought about her this much in years, the topic something you typically couldn’t bear to dwell on much, but she’d been inescapable since your moment of weakness with Walker. You wondered if you had spoken in your sleep. You debated asking John, but you doubted he would answer honestly. You tried not to let that bother you. You also tried not to let the short, clipped way John now spoke to you bother you. 

You were failing at both. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you threw out there at last. John froze momentarily in his spot beside you. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sticky and there’s sand everywhere and it’s just, like, not the fucking vibe, okay? But Jesus, dude, say something.” 

You felt like a fucking high schooler again. Like two 14 year olds refusing to act normal after their first ever game of ‘seven minutes in heaven.’ It was beneath you. Both of you. Ninth grade behaviour, right down to the way you still avoided his eyes while awaiting a response. 

“Crotalus scutulatus,” he finally responded. You did turn to look at him fully, then, your own wide-eyes meeting his panicked blue ones. “It’s the name. Of the snake. From last night. It, uh, it shouldn’t even really be called the Mojave Rattlesnake? This part of the desert makes up, like, less than one-fifth of their habitable area, maybe even less than an eighth.” 

It was the fact he’d tried telling you last night. You almost laughed. This was a field operative? You weren’t stupid, though, and you knew that laughing at John right then would have shattered the surprisingly blissful moment the two of you were sharing in the blistering hot sun. 

“What would you call it, then?” you asked, and John launched into a 10 minute long rant about the classification of desert fauna in the southwestern United States. Again, you almost had to laugh. 

John Walker was such a dork. 

You hadn’t expected him to be such a dork, rambling on about species identification and the differences between a clade and a class. You pretended to be unfamiliar, mostly just enjoying that you had something to focus on that wasn’t the ever-present threat of being shot from afar. John wasn’t even a terrible teacher, really, though he was undoubtedly condescending at times. You were almost enjoying yourself, in spite of it all. 

Almost. 

The whir of Valentina’s jet engines were hardly the loudest in the world, but they were by no means the quietest, either. You just hoped you could get out of the Mojave before the CIA caught up to you, even as you boarded the grey metal flight trap. You’d never been overly fond of flying, but your anxiety on the matter had only skyrocketed in recent years. You were dreading this plane trip. 

If John noticed your hesitation as you loaded in, he didn’t say anything about it. Then again, in all likelihood, he was too busy dealing with his own. Of the two of you, only one of you was returning to Valentina empty-handed, and you were grateful it wasn’t you. You had meant what you’d said the night before in the cave - about sharing credit - but even you knew it would be a flimsy excuse. 

The Contessa de Fontaine was kind of a bitch. 

The plane didn’t hesitate before taking off and your stomach dropped. You hated this. Even with Walker sitting next to you on the plane, you hated it. It reminded you too much of the mission you’d been on when the Blip happened. You hadn’t found out for some time that that’s what it was called, but that’s exactly what had happened to you almost 30 000 feet in the air. 

You had been tasked with keeping tabs on an Italian Contessa, one Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, one of the founders of OXE group and, if the whispers were to be believed, the most recent name on a long list of mad men trying to recreate the super soldier serum responsible for Captain America. You had been getting really fucking tired of people trying to recreate that serum. But, Mr. Stark had promised that this would be your last job, if it could be. Take out OXE at the root, and you would get to live under the shade of a different tree at last. Then you had turned to ash in the second seat of a two-person plane, and had reformed 5 years later, free-falling from the sky. 

It had all felt like an instant. 

To you, it was sudden. It was jarring. It was worse than being lit on fire and more of a shock than being put out. Every sensation you had ever felt had coursed through you all at once as - to you - your plane and co-pilot vanished in a grey haze, leaving you plummeting to your death over top some fuck ass spot of nothing in the Utah desert. 

To you, it was how you’d realized you could fly. 

The panic had overcome you in an instant, a scream unable to even rip its way out of your throat as you fell from the sky. You had been so sure it was the end, your life one huge, meaningless joke, meant only to crumple lifeless in the sand at the end of your days. But heat had overcome you then, a fire unlike anything you’d ever felt before charring you down to your bones before it collapsed, the inferno rushing downwards, the momentum forcing you up. Up, up, up. Until you had far surpassed your original 30 000 feet, the air around you gone frigid despite the waves of fire lapping at your soles. You’d finally managed a scream then. 

From so high above the ground, everything looked soft. Forgiving. If you squeezed your eyes shut, you could have almost convinced yourself that everything would end okay. The fire at your feet cooled, your descent began again, and you felt the air rush around you like an atmospheric tomb. The pressure was immense, the ground growing ever-closer, and you swore your heart was going to explode before either problem became an actual threat. Then your feet caught fire again, and up again you rose. 

It was a cycle from hell, the worst 15 minutes of your entire life as you launched yourself across the elevation points, your body little more than a ragdoll being shaken by a dog-like wind. Each time you would rise a little lower, fall a little farther, and the ground would come a little closer into view. It felt like being choked, like being edged, like being toyed with. It was a hell unlike anything AIM could have put you through when they’d tried. 

But you were flying. 

Around the sixth or seventh time you caught fire, you could recognize your torment for the primitive form of flight it seemed to be. A culmination of heat and momentum, thermodynamics manifest as you hurled towards both sand and stars. It would have been the most exciting, most elating feeling in the entire world if not for the death you were so certain would follow. You were flying, sure, and it was a damn shame that that didn’t mean you’d realized how to land. 

You’d crashed through the roof of a base you were certain hadn’t been there when you started the flight, thick concrete cushioning your fall as best it could as your flames failed you at last. There was too much pain for screaming then, the air forced out of your lungs as heat overcame you from within. Extremis. The serum was repairing your broken body as fast as it had fallen apart, the very fibre of your being stitching itself back together against the molten heat of rebirth. It was agony. It was bliss. 

It was waking up some hours later, strapped to a hospital bed while your blood was being stolen by one Contessa de Fontaine. 

You had been incensed. You had screamed yourself hoarse and raged for hours after that, body thrashing almost as violently as it had in the air. Valentina had had to sedate you, in the end, and twice more after that each time you’d woken up. Eventually, you had been tired enough to listen, and in the end it sealed your fate. Valentina couldn’t let you leave, not with the potential literally burning beneath your skin, so you had a choice; guinea pig or guard dog? 

You’d chosen the leash over a cage. 

You were so lost in your own thoughts that you barely noticed Walker shifting next to you in his seat. You didn’t care to turn and face him, not then at least. Not with thoughts of ash and arial maladies plaguing you. You didn’t want to have this discussion with him, didn’t want to talk about falling into Hell the way you had or your slow attempt to crawl your way out ever since. John didn’t seem at all deterred by your decision to ignore him, however, as the blond began to speak. 

“It’s a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey,” he said, informative and confusing at the same time, “I’ve ridden in a few before. Good craft. Some of Boeing’s better work, really.” 

So he had clocked it, then. 

A bitter sigh ripped its way out of you. “I don’t want to hear about the plane, Walker.” 

You had tried to keep your voice even. Calm and collected as you addressed the Captain. You knew it hadn’t come out like that. It had come out strained and weak, breaking twice without your permission. You sounded like a little kid, but you had another 3 hours left by plane before you hit Langley and, worse, Valentina. You just didn’t feel like spending them learning about plane facts. 

“What’s your problem with it, anyway?” the question was asked sincerely, but in a tone that made you want to punch Walker right in the head for asking. “It’s a solid plane.”

You laughed bitterly. “All planes are solid until they’re not,” you shot back haughtily, “all planes are solid until they fucking turn to ash.” 

You didn’t elaborate, and John didn’t ask you to. Briefly, you wondered if he thought you were threatening him, implying you would take down the plane if he didn’t shut up. You couldn’t find it in you ro correct him. Not when it got him to move on from the topic of air travel, instead spending the rest of the flight leaned back and sleeping while you were still awake to watch. 

You landed right at the OXE base about 3 hours later, legs stiff and aching as you were led inside by armed guards. The halls of Valentina’s floor of the building were wide like the Nevada-base’s had been. Hers were stark white linoleum where the base had been concrete, but that imposing effect remained the same. You felt unable to hide. You were overexposed walking into that office, even with Walker at your side. 

“Sit.”

She hadn’t even bothered pretending with the pleasantries. Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine had never been a particularly kind or nurturing woman, but the way she’d been radiating cold and malice then had been unnerving. Suffocating. Valentina had the eyes of a brazen bull; hollow inside save for the screams of the dying working their way out of her mouth in the form of commands. 

You and John both sat without question. 

“Which one of you wants to tell me what the fuck happened out there?” Valentina demanded, and you swore your blood ran cold. Did she know? Did she mean the… whatever it had been last night? Or had she meant the base? The alarms and the escape through the vents? You didn’t know. 

“I failed to get the files,” John said instantly, and your head whipped around to look at him, eyes wide. “I prioritized ensuring the safety of myself and my fellow field operative over retrieving them. No casualties in the base, though. No blood spilled.” 

“N-No blood spilled?” Valentina asked rhetorically, a bitter laugh working its way out of her chest. “‘No blood spilled,’ he says, like that’s some sort of goddamn reassurance. You idiots!” 

You and John both flinched at the outburst. 

“Those alarms weren’t for you, stupid! I told you both the cameras and sensors were out on that floor, what the hell is the matter with you? The alarm was triggered by one of the squints on the human trials floor, not by whatever you two losers were doing in the basement.” Valentina was fuming. Steam practically poured out of the woman’s ears as she ranted for another 27 minutes, raving about following orders and not deviating from plans. 

Several times, you’d been tempted to interrupt, but John’s hand on your knee the first time you went to kept you in your place. There was no point. Valentina had decided that you’d both failed, and arguing with her on the semantics of sending out multiple agents at once without informing each other was pointless. She wouldn’t listen anyway. 

When she finally stopped, her chest heaving and her eyes ablaze, you stood up. Wordlessly, you fished the usb out of your pocket and dropped it on her desk. “What’s that?” she demanded. 

“A usb stick full of files from the CIA,” you explained bluntly, your voice a deadpan mockery of itself as you spoke. “It’s here because of me, and I’m here because of him. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all you need to know. Are we dismissed now, Miss Contessa?” 

You refused to flinch or even blink at the intense look Val leveled you with. Her eyes burned. All of you did as well. You knew it was stupid to bite at the hand that fed you, but God, what an exceptional final meal her fingers could make. 

You wondered how this would be taken out on you next. 

Tag List: @gonzo-induced-gender-crisis @ultraviolence969 @shartythefarty @local-limebug

[gyokujyn]

Why the fuck are you people getting mad at Sam???

Spoilers under the cut, but honestly probably more for CABNW than for TB*.

Bucky is my boy. Look at my blog. This bitch is 97% Bucky by volume. What the actual fuck did he think he was doing not immediately bringing Sam in?

Brave New World, Sam is going through it ("it" being a really disappointing movie with such good bones--all this excellent acting, but was Manchurian Candidate really the best plot rip off we could come up with? Mackie already did that flick!) and Bucky cares for this man so much that he saw him on the news and he decided to hop a plane to come offer whatever support he could. Sam didn't call him to ask for support, Bucky took it upon himself to show up. And Sam, vulnerable, scared, opened up to Bucky about his fears, his self-doubt, then about being secretly asked to get the band back together. Big hug, I love you, buddy, and, what does Bucky do? What does he do?

He goes and gets his own team. He's supposed to be putting the Winter Soldier behind to go into politics and you're telling me that he couldn't call in literally anyone else for this? You're telling me he wouldn't reach out to Sam? So, then his reluctant team works out, to no one's greater amazement than their own, and Val dubs them the New Avengers. The New AVENGERS? And, you don't think Sam's going to feel a little hurt? A little betrayed? Fuck, I'd sue Bucky, too.

Now, I love Bucky, I am thrilled to have the Thunderbolts, but why in the name of sweet baby Bob doing the dishes would you blame Sam for any of that???

[moonlight-tmd]

so what if prowl and shockwave blitzwing react to bumlebee is carrying sparking?

Oh damn uh, well.

I will take this a a separate ships reaction cuz I have no idea how to write all 3.

Ooh boy, it's gonna be a long one.

BlitzBee- I have already written something similar in this post so you might wanna give that a read. Another take would be that Bee got sparked on accident after Blitz joins Team Prime. He went a little too rough on his hummel during their nightly activities and oops, energy leak n all, they got a newspark.

Of course Bee doesn't even know until he's at 3rd week carrying. Cue the shock, panic and the confused crying on Bee's behalf. Robotic hormones be doin shit to a mech. Bee's frame is defective by forging so he's not supposed to be carrying, they didn't wanna terminate it so they thought about moving the newspark for Blitzwing to carry (he's not ideal either but more safe than Bee carrying).

Unfortunately, the newspark seemed to attach itself to Bee's spark chamber making it dangerous to perform the surgery. Bee was put on leave with strict rules of what he can and cannot do. Blitzwing was worried of course, his hummel didn't seem to take it seriously and threw a fit whenever he was told no. He tried to be around to make sure Bee doesn't do anything stupid, but alas...

He was only supposed to fly out to get a package and returned to Bee beign hospitalized in medbay; apparently Sari has climbed the tree outside the base while Bee was getting his dose of sunlight and fell- Bee managed to run up and catch her but moments later he collapsed clutching his chassis in pain.

When Blitz was asked to come into medbay after Bee woke up they didn't receive good news... There was no sign of the newspark on the scanner. Bee sobbed his spark out that day, his pitiful wailing was heard all thorough the base, Blitzwing could only hold him while he desperately tried to hold himself together.

It was difficult for all of them but the one who got hit the most was Bee. All he did was lay in his berth and not speak. He refused to eat unless Blitzwing or Ratchet forced him to. The others were extremely worried about him but understood that he needed time. Blitzwing himself was having a hard time coping and basically without a sparkmate to help him he started being aggressive.

One evening he came back home from a call with other teammates and went straight to check on Bee. He thought the scout was sleeping at first but then he noticed his faded colors. He wouldn't wake up no matter how much he called or shook him, Blitzwing just picked him up and ran to medbay.

It was then that Ratchet discovered that their newspark hasn't actually faded, it shrank to the point of not being detected by the old scanner and was now almost twice as big as it was before. It was draining Bee's frame of nutrients and energy, the scout got the appropriate shots and IVs, after he woke up he didn't quite understand what they were saying but once Blitzwing repeated the diagnosis he cried.

After the rollercoaster of emotions Bee has become basically immobile and had to be carried everywhere. He could walk on his own but after what happened he refused to even go close to whatever could negatively impact him. Walking, emotional movies, even majority of his games were left untouched for the rest 3 months of carrying. He blamed himself for nearly killing their child and he wasn't gonna repeat that mistake.

Then one night he woke up with chassis pains again, the emergence date was close so everyone was on edge. Blitzwing rushed him to medbay and by the dawn there was a bitlet peacefully napping in the makeshift baby cot. That night a storm was happening, Bee promptly named the bitty Thunderbolt after he heard one strike after emergence. It was a seeker, colored yellow and beige and purple optics, definitely taking after his sire in size.

But that's not where it ends, about 3 months later, Blitzwing got sparked and they had to get more protoforms. Bee was paranoid about Blitzwing even lifting a wing, especially since his mood swings gotten worse during carrying but he was following the doctor's orders to the word. They got a pair of twins, tiny grounders like Bee colored purple and black with faces and optics matching Blitzwing's other faces. Frost for blue wiht red optics and Flame for red with blue optics. They both got little yellow horns to contrast their colors. The seeker will grow little above Blitzwing's half of height with an aqua plane as alt, while the twins will be Bee-sized with topless jeeps as alts.

ProwlBee- It's a similar story as with BlitzBee; they get rough, Bee's sparked on accident, they find out x amount of time later BUT- they manage to get Prowl to carry the newspark. Prowl caught that something was up pretty early on so there was time. They didn't plan on it yet but there were definitely thoughts about it from time to time.

Bee however has never been more worrisome. He made sure Prowl had everything he needed and more and may or may not have been spoiling him a bit much. It only got worse when Prowl felt weaker and they had to make a check and discovered the newspark has split into 3. It was more than they expected but they would manage.

While Prowl was generally calm about everything Bee wasn't doing as good, on top of what i said earlier he also starter pulling allnighters the closer the due date was. He couldn't let himself be sleepin in case something horrible will happen. Which is why after delivering the bitties one afternoon he immediately crashed after he got a fair look at them and slept for nearly 2 days. They were near-identical triplets and definitely taking more after Prowl frame-wise with horns of course. One was yellow and gold, named Chi. The other one was silver and black, named Typhoon. and The third one (which actually emerged first) was black and yellow, they named it Shuriken. All had blue optics. All would grow to be as tall as Bee with quads as alt modes.

Now ShockBee. Longarm and Bee's relationship was more of a long distance one. Long visited sometimes but it wasn't enough for Bee. He knew Longarm had a job and couldn't just ditch it to spend time with him but he still tried to come up with excuses so that Longarm will have to stay with him for longer... never in a million years would he think of getting sparked though. Bee has tried to be more lustful as a way to keep Long around more but this was a complete unplanned event that he didn't predict.

He didn't even know how to break the news to Longarm, but he supposed it couldn't be bad since Longarm also loved him, right..? He couldn't have been more wrong.

When Longarm came to visit and Bee took him to speak in private and told him all happy, the first thing he heard was to terminate the newspark. Longarm wasn't asking for his opinion, Bee was told to do it and that's it. He argued with Long but all he got was that he doesn't want the sparkling and can't take care of it.

Bee has never seen Longarm so cold to him before. He left saying that he had something important to take care of and Bee would terminate it. Bee was torn and panicking later that evening; he didn't wanna upset his sparkmate but at the same time he didn't want to lose the sparkling that he's grown attached to in the short time he had it.

Bulkhead was there to comfort him, he suggested that he should talk with Longarm one more time before making the decision. So Bee did, he called Longarm to come visit once more and tried to talk with him about it once more. But it was useless. Longarm was set of getting rid of the newspark, even threatening to split up with Bee if he doesn't. In that moment Bee failed to recognise the one he loved and just stared at him before calmly stating he'll keep the sparkling and whether Longarm wants to be in its life it or not is his own choice. Longarm left shortly after that, saying nothing but that he knows his answer.

Bee cried his spark out at night, unable to comprehend why a mech that loved him would be so cruel. Bee was put on leave and did everything he could to make sure the newspark grows safe and strong. It all made sense once Longarm was discovered a spy and was send to stockades. Everyone was shocked and questioning anyone for anything they might know from when they had contact with Longarm. Bee's relationship was kept secret to other Elite Guard, the information about his sparkling's sire was shoved under the rug as well by Team Prime. They knew Bee was innocent and manipulated by Shockwave, so if the information he was sparked by him leaked Bee would never know peace again.

The mere shock of the discovery hit Bee like a freight train, so much to the point he went into early emergence from the stress. The newspark was weak so it had to be supported while in the protoform. The bitty was rusty yellow and black with teal details and antlers when it onlined properly, Bee named it Radio. It turned out to be medium class grounder, while skinny and usually quite taller than Bee. It chose an old type of camaro as alt mode.

PHEW there we go, that's all of them. Hope ya like it cuz I'm all outta writing juice.

[inthefoxholes]

I really want to like Thunderbolts (or the other thing it’s called now, which I don’t want to spoiler here). I want to. It was a solid movie.

But everything Marvel kinda died with Steve’s ending for me, at least everything with Bucky in it. I wanted to like TFATWS, too, even though it was a total mess, because god help me, I’d watch about anything with Sebastian Stan in it, especially Sebastian-Stan-as-Bucky-Barnes.

Thunderbolts, unlike TFATWS and Cap 4, which I both disliked because of their specific content, was actually a solid movie I enjoyed. I would like to take a deep dive into the fics, art, short stories, all that amazing fan discourse. Found family, dysfunctional people trying to get along, snark! (None of those god-awful marvel quips that make any emotional engagement impossible, though, which was a major point in favor of TB imo.)

So I want to do that, but my brain says no. Where’s Steve? How is Bucky without Steve?? Because it’s not even that I think Bucky couldn’t live with this abandonment/rejection, I think he probably could, badly. It’s just that Bucky’s character is so enmeshed with Steve’s - so much of who they are - that I doubt he’d be Bucky with a Steve who’d do something like this.

Bucky is Bucky - always protecting his spitfire but principled best friend/lover, being saved by said friend/lover who through this becomes Captain America in the first place, breaking his brainwashing/programming because he remembers this is Steve, and he needs to protect Steve, and Steve means safety, and even if he cannot trust his brain at the moment, he can trust Steve because Steve always fights for what’s right not what’s easy - because Steve is Steve. But a Steve who’d leave Bucky for a woman he had a situationship with/crush on (?) seventy years ago, who’d willingly live in the past without being able to change it (no saving Bucky; no trying to influence Howard to be a better dad, no saving Nat, no… idk, prevent the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, Thanos etc.) would not be the Bucky’s Steve, not who got Bucky out of his conditioning.

So I want to like the movie. I want to be excited for Avengers Doomsday (even though I found all the Avengers movies messy, and not in a good way). I love seeing Bucky, but my brain kinda cannot compute it, cannot do anything with the information, and I 100% blame marvel for that and what they did to Steve (and thus subsequently to Bucky, as exhibited in TFATWS).

[stilltrails]

Hey there, sorry you got caught in the crossfire these last couple of days. I think a lot of people in Sam's tag are just completely fed up with all the garbage that keeps ending up in there (and that often has nothing to do with Sam). Tbolts* has made everything really, really ugly for the past month, and people are so tired of dealing with it that they aren't willing to look for nuance any longer and are just going to wade in swinging at anything they think is suspect.

Bucky stans also went to town about the serum line when BNW was first released, so the combo of BNW dropping on D+ (and that line getting attention again) plus the continuing bs from Tbolts* isn't a good combo. There are a lot of disgusting people who have said disgusting things about Sam, but I've also seen some people who meant well get hammered.

I'm a diehard sambucky fan and I cannot express in words how much I loved that scene in BNW and how much it told us about the strength of their relationship (which is why I hate how Tbolts* just threw Bucky's character development out the window). And you're right - Bucky was there because Sam needed him. Full stop. He was there because his husband boyfriend best friend was hurting. And Sam trusted him enough to let him see what he was really feeling/thinking. I thought it was a beautiful scene and I appreciated that Sam allowed himself to be vulnerable with Bucky, especially when we have the scene later with Joaquín where Sam makes it clear he feels he always has to be perfect in public.

I think it's important that Sam lumps Steve and Bucky together with that line about the serum, because it lets us see just how frustrated he is and how the self-doubt is creeping in after what happened at Celestial Island. It shows that he's not being guarded - he's speaking from the heart. Of course he knows that Bucky's experience wasn't the same as Steve's. But he doesn't have to spell that out for Bucky - he's talking about the end result. (And, really, when did Sam even have a chance to take the serum? Karli had the Power Broker's supply, Zemo smashed it, and that idiot Walker nabbed the one surviving vial. So Sam is saying he made a mistake about not doing something that he never even had the opportunity to do [unless I'm missing something], which again tells us about his state of mind in that moment.)

And, yeah, of course Bucky doesn't get offended or whatever, because he understands exactly what Sam means by that line and, more importantly, why Sam is saying it in the first place. And that's what he responds to - not the words, but the feelings underneath. That's why he only says 'Why?', because he wants to give Sam the room he needs to (as Bucky also says), say what he needs to say. Because they love and trust each other and they can hear what's underneath the words.

It sucks that Bucky stans turned that line into such a hot potato. I didn't think your post said anything wrong.

I really appreciate this. And now with the context of course I understand why people got so angry. I just wish that they actually read my explanation instead of jumping to pin blame on me for something I had no idea about.

I think just doing two seconds of bare minimum engagement and research would have cleared this up. I'm trying not to let the bad faith actors completely ruin my vibe, but it's very difficult. However, I really appreciate this message.

I wanted to speak about the vulnerability of that scene too. How Bucky is close enough so that Sam can vent to him him however the hell he wants and Buck's just like, "Babe, I got you. I love you." Like no thoughts, just making Sam as comfortable as possible.

I'm not online in terms of the MCU--not anymore. So I genuinely didn't know that people were dogging on that scene. And I still won't watch Thunderbolts because of the racism attached to it.

My witchcraft is making it fail in the box office anyway lol so i'm not gonna contribute to it anytime soon. Maybe when it comes out on Disney Plus, but not anytime soon.

Which I attempted to clarify but to no avail.

I really appreciate this.

[luckytohavebucky]

I have things to say about the new Thunderbolts* trailer...

So, um... yeah... mixed feelings, but I suppose I'll just get to it...

The problems:

To begin with, Bucky is a hero; make no mistake, however, there's implication that Bucky is not a hero when of course he really is, I mean... unless Bucky turns out to not technically be part of the "Thunderbolts" team, and that "not heroes" isn't meant to apply to Bucky, but prior to it says "not super" followed by Yelena saying something about nobody being able to fly, when last I checked that's not exactly a requisite: Steve, Peter, and Bruce clearly are all examples of those who have literal superpowers which never actually included flying, and of course Bucky fits into as well, along with a number of other individuals who are definitely on the previously stated team range ('though in whom's cases may or may not be considered heroes at this point as opposed to Bucky who like I said, is, always has been, and always will be a genuine hero); it was just a really weird thing to put (and probably out of context anyway) because it like straight up (no pun intended) doesn't make sense, then there's what seems like the inevitable treating Bucky like he was in any way responsible for what happened to him while under Hydra's control, just... Bucky seems to yet again be put into that place where it feels as though like everybody is assuming he somehow could've agreed to any of that, including Bucky, and I just wish someone could realise the truth of things/spend time with Bucky enough to convince him that could never be true, 'cause I've tried, but it's not working, meanwhile my heart is breaking into jagged shards of hopelessness; it would be unfathomably tremendous to me for there to be some sort of breakthrough, maybe even in the actual Thunderbolts* movie, where it's shown how Bucky finally properly at least considers the idea he shouldn't blame himself at all, but I'll see, I guess.

The relatively neutral stuff:

Pretty much anything not directly to do with Bucky and that isn't bad like a lot of other parts with Alexei were funny/endearing; that part where Taskmaster slides under something looked cool, and that scene at the end made me laugh a lot; that's probably about it.

The greatness:

1st of all, more Bucky, and not only more Bucky but more positive ranges with Bucky, which... That's all that matters anyway, seeing Bucky in a pretty good mood or even actually happy whereas previous Thunderbolts* trailers merely focused on the intense moments, but this is what I'd been waiting for, and I may have emoted/stimmed from pure joy as a result.

I'm not sure whether that "not giving up" is meant to apply to Bucky there, but it definitely fits him; Bucky's quote, 'though ironically/typically misguided on Bucky's part, implies as much, still I don't really know where it falls into exactly, so I'm putting it here, but related to I'm also glad Bucky is shown again after that scene where he gets his arm pulled off and like shoved to the ground since Bucky must come through that; otherwise it would've been messed up on a level I can't comprehend, and yeah, that's my take on the latest (and longest yet) trailer for Thunderbolts*, which... Obviously there's still work to be done in terms of Bucky being properly accounted for, but so far as the preview range in of itself, I thought it was rather disjointed in terms of quality and logic, but it got there to a degree in any case, and I'm still pissed Bucky isn't the main character technically, just saying.

[thecollectivefixation]

⭐️ THUNDERBOLTS TEASER TRAILER THOUGHTS ⭐️

—

IT’S QUEEN HERE AND GUYS GUYS GUYS GUESS WHAT. THE TEASER TRAILER FOR MARVEL STUDIOS’ THUNDERBOLTS IS HERE!!

Okay guys I won’t lie, I AM A HUGE SEBASTIAN STAN FAN SO THE WHOLE TIME I WAS FOCUSED ON BUCKY BARNES BUT BUT I HAVE A FEW THINGS TO SAY I SWEAR.

THIS TRAILER WAS SO GOOD. Let’s start off with Yelena’s line in the beginning. “There is something wrong with me, an emptiness. I’m just drifting, and I don’t have purpose.” THIS LINE like damn girl i feel the same. 😞☝️As Yelena says this line we get glimpses of John Walker, BUCKY BARNES💜 and Yelena. I feel like that sentence resonates with all three characters. We see that John feels hopeless, like he has no purpose as he scrolls through an article about him on his device. Each scene he’s in, it’s like he’s questioning his life decisions. Then there’s Bucky who is walking through a court room or something I have no clue what’s happening there BUT DAMN SEBASTIAN STAN IS LOOKING GOOD. (Come here pookie bear…🤤🫶)

So the next scene Yelena walks into this room with like stuff, it seems like she’s looking for something. Then she gets thrown off by John Walker, who shoots at her multiple times. They have a little tussle but then John gets pushed by someone else. Now here comes a few masked people who attack them BUT JOHN IS STILL FOCUSED ON TRYING TO KILL YELENA HELP. The fighting pauses only because they turn around and some guy named Bob is standing there looking like he just escaped a mental asylum. 😭 (honestly i have no clue what’s happening here.)

Asking Yelena, John and everyone else if they were sent by someone, I think this is when we learn this was meant to be a trap. Yelena says this line: “Everyone here has done bad things. Shadow Ops, robbing government labs, contract kills.” With this information and also them being all together as the room locks down—someone wants them gone.

ALRIGHT NEXT SCENE. We are now in a museum it seems like, AND HELLO CALLBACK TO THE FIRST AVENGERS FILM??

THATS LIKE LOKI’S SCEPTER RIGHT? Or like a statue of it? I have no clue I apologise if i’m wrong but STILL—also what’s Bucky planning here… I’m literally so excited to see Bucky again I have been CRAVING MORE BUCKY SCREEN TIME.

AAAAAAAAAA ALSO hello Bob? Are those bullet holes in your mental asylum outfit? What’s going on here… (Idk much about the character Robert Reynolds but I know so far that he’s a Marvel hero named Sentry, so I guess we’ll be learning more about him in MCU Thunderbolts.)

HELP NEXT SCENE BUCKY🫶😭 BUCKY PULLING HIS ARM OUT OF THE DISHWATER HELP ME honestly can’t blame him.🤤 He’s so silly I love him so much.

This movie looks genuinely good and I’m actually super excited. The humour, the action, the cast—I can���t wait to see how it turns out and hopefully it exceeds my expectations.

AND ONE MORE THING.

AAAAAA 🫶 BUCKY ON A MOTORBIKE. BUCKY ON A MOTORBIKE!!! He looks so Scrumdilly scrumptious 🤤😏💜

— Queen.

[little-ineffabilities]

Psychoanalyzing Alexei Shostakov (AKA. The Red Guardian)

So I am incredibly excited for Thunderbolts*! You haven’t the foggiest. I count the seconds down until I get to witness more of that masterpiece and all the lovely characters tied to it (We love to hate John Walker here). But I really want to focus on Alexei for a second. Because I need to know why he is the way he is, using all the information we’ve been given of him throughout the MCU (excluding Comics for a second here)

TW: Some pretty heavy feels and mentions of self hatred.

See, as much as I know it can be annoying that Alexei talks to much about being The Red Guardian, and is so obsessed with it~ but like. I don’t blame him.

Taking what we were given in What If Episode 3 Season 3: He was a nobody~ he didn’t have anything important about him growing up, but he was given an opportunity to become someone important, someone who could help and save others! So he took it and they made him Russia’s first and only Super Soldier. Most likely assuming he would get to go on liberating missions and become a hero, helping those in the same position he was once in(Perhaps he did for a period of time, because there are action figures of him and he did have a super suit). But you see wether on not he actually had hero days The Red Room grew tired of not being able to control him, so they took away his freedom without him knowing, pulling him away from the public eye, making him do bad things, that he didn’t know were bad because he never thought to hard about it (“Russia’s greatest Super Spy” not Hero, like he was promised) Alexei didn’t let himself think too hard about what he was doing, to justify it to himself.

And he was also a coward~ he was scared of what would happen to him if he went against The Red Room so he kept doing their dirty work.

Eventually they send him to a deep cover mission in Ohio and he becomes a nobody again~ Bob Toledo, Data input manager. And he hates it~ he wants to do things, speak up for what he believes in, save people, be a hero!(‘HE HAS SUPER POWERS FOR GOODNESS SAKE! WHY IS HE HERE WHEN HE COULD BE DOING SO MUCH MORE!?!’) And then once the mission is over, The Red Room decides that he is a liability and put him in prison~ where he rots away.

So of course he talks about his “Glory days” a lot~ he’s trying to convince himself that all the bad he did and all the bad that happened to him were worth it~ even though he knows it’s not and he hates himself for it.

And the thing is… it wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t worth it at all. Virtually no one knows he exists. Flacon and The Winter Soldier is all about Super Soldiers~ they talk about Steve and even Isaiah! But not once is Alexei mentioned. Most of America and its hero’s don’t know Russia had a Super Soldier.

Which brings me to my second point, that in order for him to heal and forgive himself he needs to come to terms with the fact that the Good he did does not outweigh the bad.

And I think the thing that will truly make Alexei understand that is shock for him being a super soldier. When Bucky or John is surprised by him exiting, it’s going to shatter his little heart because he will feel as though… everything he did good amounted to nothing. He is nothing. The people he hurt outweighs the people he helped.

But knowing that will help him heal and become a better person.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

For quite a while, the section “The Bishop in the Presence of an Unknown Light,” was my favourite bit of Les Misérables, and this was my favourite line of that section:

“A cloud had been forming for fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen centuries it burst. You condemn the thunderbolt.” [1500 from at little before 1800 gives you somewhere around 300 A.D.; this is far too long to be referring to the Bourbon monarchy - thanks to a friend for the idea that it probably refers to the creation of a state church under Constantine in the A.D. 300s.]

N.K. Jemisin has a line communicating what is, I think, a very similar idea in her Broken Earth trilogy, in a world that is beset by great earthquakes:

When a comm [community] builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds are build on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.

And this us not, in some respects, all that different from what Bishop Myriel himself said in an earlier chapter:

“The faults of women, children, and servants, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the faults of their husbands, fathers, and masters, of the strong, the rich, and the wise…If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”

As I’ve learned more detail about the French Revolution, I have become unconvinced of the conventionary’s assertion that it “loosened all the secret bonds of society, made the waves of civilization flow over the earth, is the consecrecration of humanity.” If it destroyed the old tyranny and oppression, it replaced it with a new tyranny and oppression (actual several new ones, from the partisan purge to the ‘managed democracy’ to the military dictatorship); if it removed the old religious intolerance, it replaced it with a new religious intolerance. It was more willing to kill people for following their consciences than the regime of Louis XVI that preceded it, and it encouraged ordinary people to kill not rich oppressors but ordinary neighbours (ref: Murder in Aubagne by D.G.M. Sutherland, a case study on the cycles of violence that came from it becoming socially normal to kill your neighbours for being associated with a different form of republicanism than yourself, and then normal to even kill anyone who agreed with you politically but objected to the murdering).

You condemn the thunderbolt, is, I think, the more convincing assertion - if pressure builds up to a certain point, it will break, like a dam, and the primary blame lies with those who allowed it build up to that point. The argument is not that the dam breaking is the ideal, but that under certain circumstances it is inevitable. Oppression should be fought; reform should be made, firstly for its own sake became it is good and necessary and just and compassionate, and secondly to avert the damage the thunderbolt would do to the innocent; and if that reform is not happening fast enough, the answer is not to say to the suffering, “Be patient!” but to say to the powerful, “Move faster!”