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knightyoomyoui · 7 months ago

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Perfect Night [+18]

ft. LE SSERAFIM's Yunjin (x M Reader)

NOTE: First fic of my 2025 comeback and marks as a beginning of my new masterlist! SUMMARY: YN and Yunjin both won an award in a Korean music award show. Coincidentally, it happens in the same day as their anniversary. They went home for an indoor date as a celebration. After the date, Yunjin doesn’t want it to be over yet so she requested one last thing for them to have fun and make their night even more perfect. REQUESTED BY: @dav1233555

WORD COUNT: 3100+ (told yall the 2k max for normal request plan still depends lol) DONATE OR REQUEST FOR COMMISSION HERE: https://ko-fi.com/knightyoomyoui

The artists and their respective fans that filled up the Mizuzo Paypay Dome in Fukuoka, Japan has their ears and eyes all glued to the presenters of the awards for tonight’s 39th Golden Disc award show.

The two presenters were standing in the middle of the stage, the trophy in their hand, as well as their microphone to announce the winner of the category set to be awarded next to that deserving artist.

All of the nominees were shown in the screen, each earning different levels of cheers from their fans who made it in the attendance. After the familiar faces made an appearance, the presenters have been given a cue now to speak. “And now, the 39th Golden Disc Awards for the Best Group goes to…” the host flips the cover of the card to view the name. He pursed his head forward onto the mic and revealed: “LE SSERAFIM!” The blended sound of cheers and applause echoed around the dome. The camera then pans to the five members of the group that was mentioned all have the glee in faces hearing the name they represent called out for an overwhelming reward to their hardwork. They all rise up to their seats, lined up as they walk through the stage while being guided by the staffs of the show. As they made it, the hosts greeted and congratulated them for an another accomplishment in their career. Amongst the crowd watching, there’s you at one of the VIP tables along with other fellow artists eyeing with sincere support and happiness for that group, especially to that one particular woman who did the honor of receiving the award and came up to the front to begin the acceptance speech. Hearing your girlfriend, Huh Yunjin’s voice blasting through the speakers as she stated out her utmost gratitude for everyone who made it possible for them to bag an award tonight was music to your ears. There’s nothing more you can’t be easily get tired of listening than Yunjin in a bright mood when you know she can easily make your day as well. “Thank you so much to our FEARNOTS who voted for us and never stopped being on our side, appreciating our music everytime we do one. We will also continue to do our best on entertaining you guys, We love you!” Yunjin waves the trophy in the air as she was joined by her other co-members on shouting the last line. Before they leave the stage, Yunjin saw you clapping your hands and gave you a wink. You grinned wider and mouthed “I love you too” on her in response to what she said. It earned a blush from her when she understood it.

Another minutes of a performance from other artists have passed and now it was time for another announcement of winner in a category. This time, it was for the Most Popular Male Artist. It warms your heart hearing their cheers from some of your fans after seeing your face being one of the nominees. Whether you win an award or not, it didn’t matter for you anyway, as having a fanbase of your own already meant that you have become successful in your music career.

“For the 39th Golden Disc Awards’ Most Popular Male Artist, please come up to the stage:” “Yeah there’s no way I would be-”

“Song Y/N!” “Oh, wait what?”The spotlights, cameras, and people’s attention were all directed in a snap at your spot, looking confused and astounded. You weren’t expecting that this night wouldn’t be just a normal music show event you’ll be attending again, but there was something more for you to experience. You stood up and went to the stage. The emcees Cha Eunwoo and Moon Gayoung approached and shook hands with you before they handed you the award. As you stood on the platform, you took a deep breathe as you prepare your speech for the night. As you were there pouring out words that came straight from your heart, you were staring at Yunjin who is looking at you proudly. Her dazzling eyes and soft smile at you keeping you composed and more confident that you truly did deserve this award just as much as hers. “To my fans who keeps on reminding me that all my efforts I’ve been giving to my songs were always worth it, this one for each and every single one of you. We did it guys, thank you so much!” You bowed and waved to the public before you made your exit with joy.

After the show ended, both you and Yunjin excused yourselves to your managers and to her co-members that they’ll be meeting each other for tonight. They accepted since they are already the reason why. The reason that is related to your current private relationship with Yunjin. As Yunjin sneaks through the backstage with the help of her manager and some bodyguards, she then met you waiting at the parking lot. She dashes through you and you accepted her hug with open arms. “I’ll take it from here, thanks noona.” “Yeah enjoy your night, you two.” She greeted and waved away. As the manager brought the bodyguards along, Yunjin separated from you and glances straight through your eyes. “Look at you hotshot, winning an award as well huh.” she teased, patting you in the chest. “Yeah I didn’t see that coming. Thought its SEVENTEEN or others as well since they’ve been kinda trending all over social media too.” you responded humbly. “Probably you got back against them through streams and other criterias that lacked, I guess.” Yunjin shrugged. “But hey, there’s no doubt that whether you won or not, being considered for that award is already a big deal.”

Yunjin takes out her own trophy and clangs it at yours. “It’s just so happens that you were the lucky one to be chosen. Or should I say, WE?” “Congrats to us, love.” you kissed her on the lips. “There you go, savor the feeling of victory.” Yunjin said amusedly. “Let’s go home now. I want to get out of here, please.”

“Excited are we?” “More than you think. Well can you blame me? We’re about to turn our date into a double celebration.” She opened the door of your car and hopped in. “Damn right it is.” Both of you buckled up your seatbelts and you drove yourselves all the way to your apartment in Seoul. Reaching your room, you and Yunjin took off your shoes and placed your other belongings on the couch. “How about you go cook our dinner and I go prep up the table for us?” You originally planned to do all of this on your own and have her take a breather for a while as she rests because you don’t want to tire her more, but then again it made sense since this day is actually for the both of you and after you heard her enthusiasm earlier, you just allowed her initiation to join you on making this night special. “That’s sounds good, let’s do it.”

You quickly went to the kitchen, prepare all the ingredients and cook the chosen food you wanted for the both of you that fits tonight’s occasion. Yunjin on the other hand was busy covering the tables with new cloth, arrange the plates and utensils, and and some bit of romantic element around the dining place.

Yunjin can’t help but to be shook and amazed that you were literally taking this seriously with the candles and rose petals you told to her to design with. Right when she created a lovely ambience, you have now served all the foods on the table.

Removing your apron and straightening the crumpled surfaces across her dress, both of you faced each other and looked at the satisfying result of your combined efforts to make your indoor date successful.

“Oh, be right back for a sec, I’ll just gonna grab something.”

“Sure, I’ll wait.”

Yunjin watched you head through your bedroom. Her eyes widened when she heard the door open wide again and unveiled your standing figure holding a bouquet full of her favorite flowers in your arms.

“Oh my… YN, they look so pretty! And these are- wow, did you seriously went with an effort of buying this for me?” she asked, with her hands on her agaped mouth.You responded with a chuckle before flashing a boastful smile.

“How could I forget? Happy 2nd anniversary to us.” Yunjin smiled.

“Shall we begin our celebration with a toast?” She chuckled before nodding her head. Yunjin then dropped the flowers on the couch and gratefully accepted you gentlemen act of offering the seat to her.

As you sat, you reached for the wineglass, opened the bottle and poured each pair before raising it together with her.

“To our love and success.”

“And for many to come and last longer.”

“Cheers?”

You collided your glass gently on Yunjin’s before drinking the alcohol.

An hour has passed filled with your exchange of stories, laughters, and clanging sounds from your plates. You were already full and Yunjin was just emptying the bottle of wine.

“I think we had it all for today, huh.” You said. “Yeah, having an indoor date for the first wasn’t so bad after all then.” Yunjin shared her pleased reception for your decision. “Told you I can make everything wonderful just for my girl.” You squished her blushing cheeks. I’ll go to change now, babe. I want to sleep-”

“Already?” She interrupted you, snapping her head to your direction.

“Why? You haven’t had enough.”

“Nooo, I’m not through yet.” Yunjin pouted. “I still want to do one more thing.”

“Seems like you’re drunk now, babe. You really having fun, aren’t you?”

“Why, don’t you feel the same?” She playfully sulked. You walked beside her and pushed her head against your midsection, combing her hair.

“Stupid, ofcourse I’m not. I can’t get enough of you anytime.”

“You sure about that?”

“Mmmhhmm. What, do you want me to prove it to you or something?”

“What if I am?” She looked up at you. You saw the aura in her face changed into something seducive. Her hand began to rub through your shirt before her fingertips bump at your lowest button. “And I want you to show me in this way.”

“Would you do it with me? To make this night perfect?” She asked you breathily as she starts unbuttoning your buttons. With just a huff and a nod, Yunjin hastily then moved her hands toward your belt.

She unfastened it and opened your pants before she pulled it down. The outline of your hardened shaft laying diagonally against your left thigh made her bite her lower lips.

“That’s why you suck at lying sometimes, babe. Your words ain’t as honest as your body when you’re close to me.”

Yunjin slightly pushed you away for her to have some space as she knelt down before you. Cupping the bulge that charms her intoxicated self, she playfully squeezed it through the prison fabric before hooking her fingers at the waistband. “Mhm I love how huge and stiff it gets because it’s mine~”

That one swift move of Yunjin made you bare naked from below, especially your cock springing out from its confinement, pointing at her in which she giggled at how cute it reacts because of her despite of its dominating size.

Yunjin took ahold of your hardened shaft from the base and rained your entire length with kisses and licks up through the head. She finds your skin following her grasp as she strokes you up and down, edging you for a minute by releasing it and watching it twitch for her.

“Fuck, Yunjin. J-just get through it, please.”

Yunjin smirked, feeling an inch of pity for you. She fortunately followed, lifting your cock and sniffing its musky scent before directing it to her mouth and began sucking you.

You released a huge sigh and placed your hand to her skull, petting and guiding her through your cock as she slurps your appendage inside her warm mouth. Her puckered lips crossing through the foreskin gets you gritting your teeth in sensation..

Based from your relaxed expression, your heaving breaths and trembling hands in her head, Yunjin can tell that she’s doing well with her oral performance, so she proceeded on coating your cock with her saliva, gliding her tongue through every inch.

You looked down and shivered, matching Yunjin’s stare at you while she gives you an amazing blowjob. She’s now sucking the half of your shaft with her fist pumping on the other. She released with a popping sound and sighed, gulping while she continues on jacking you off.

“Shit, Yunjin I’m about to-”

“You’re close?” Yunjin got alerted. “Give it all. In my mouth.”

You nodded. Yunjin returns your slimy cock on her mouth and did a series of deepthroats at you this time as you help her by pushing your hips. Each attempts awakens your senses more with the choruses of her gag reflex absence.

“Fuck… fuck, Yunjin I’m cumming.” You said. Both of your hands are now gripping on Yunjin’s hair. Few more pushes through her face, you felt a streak of hot spunk emerge from your tip straight onto her throat.

You kept her gaped mouth around the thickness of your meat for a second before slowly sliding her off and giving her a chance to breathe heavily. She then swallowed your load and licked some of your pre-cum in her fingers as well as some drops in your tip by tapping it onto her tongue.

“So yummy. That was a lot of a dessert.” Yunjin was impressed. “But I’m sure you still got more left in here, don’t you?” She cupped your balls and massaged it.

“Oh yes I am… and you can have it as much as you want, babe.” Confirming that you’re liking where is this going, you helped her to stand up and pulled her through your bedroom. You finally take off your coat and polo as Yunjin goes to pounce at your neck, giving you some hickeys to remember your heated session for tonight’s date once you woke up tomorrow.

You went through her thighs up to her ass, feeling the panties covering its smooth skin. She yelped at your touch before you stole a kiss again on her lips. Your hands went to the front to get a brush on her soaked slit.

Yunjin whimpered to your mouth. In return, she grabs your semi-erect cock and pumps it back to life. You lift off the hem of her dress and throw it aside, the red laced bra shielding her small mounds became evident at you.

Pushing your idol girlfriend to the bed, you bundled her skirt around her waist and tugged her panties down. Witnessing her dripping cunt, you didn’t want to waste the syrupy liquid so you went with a long slurp of her pussy three times until the juices partly stop.

Yunjin mewled at the feeling of your face against her ass and your talented mouth on the sacred cavern where it rightfully belongs. You kissed each of her asscheeks before slapping them in preparation for what you’re about to do after.

Pushing your now awakened cock again, this time to her tight inviting asshole. It slowly accepted your length, Yunjin shuddered at your cock invading her insides slowly but dangerously. She gripped on to the bedsheets as she noticed her body now rocking with yours as you hump onto her ass, skin to skip slapping playing across the room.

“Fuck, go harder! Shit, oh god how I’ve missed this so much!” Yunjin shouted, acknowledging the longing memory of the last time you and her did this before the long scheduling conflicts affected both of your sexual life.

You used the bundled skirt and her waist as a handle as you continously ravage her plump ass.

“You’re so fucking tight, babe. I might not hold on any longer!”

“And you’re too big! Fffuck I’m going first!” Yunjin elicited one last loud “ugh!” before you felt your thighs being showered with her squirt as you still played with her clit for stimulation.

You pulled Yunjin’s upper body, unwrap her bra which you threw aside like nothing, and grope her bare tits from behind. She kissed you to the side while she rubs her rear into your cock.

You decided to switch positions, with you now laying on the bed and Yunjin still buried within your dick, her sexy toned back faced towards you. She ain’t no dumb to miss the point of where it’s about to go, she then began to bounce slowly at your lap as you watched her fulfill her desire.

“Shit, that’s fucking hot, babe. Goddamn.” You sweared watching your baddie girlfriend twerk her voluptous ass against your crotch. Meanwhile, Yunjin is now eyes shut with horny evidence within her face doing what she loves.

A couple of adjustments of her thighs caged around yours as she rides you, she tries to stir your cock around her ass in different angles as possible while bouncing harshly before you decided to take the show to its end as you now about to reach your peak.

You catched Yunjin’s arm and spun her around to join you on the bed.She went close, you cuddled her and roughly pounded her from behind as you spent the last stamina you have in store to make this stunning woman of yours filled to the brim.

She goes along with your mouth, while you grope her breasts and fingered her fast to boost her stimulation. Yunjin moaned loudly at the pleasant effect of your manhood and digits taking control of stretching her innards.

“Oh god don’t stop, don’t stop! Fuckkk mmhmmm yes yes yes ahhh YN I’m cumming!”

Bump after bump after bump relentlessly to her abused ass, you grunted as you released another large load deep inside of her while she squirted another into your hands, staining the bed.

You helped her ride out her orgasm as you slowly withdrew your active fingers through her pussy along with few more curves. Slicked with her love juices, you slurped and gave Yunjin a taste of her own resolution also.

Slipping your limp cock into her ass, Yunjin holds your arm cuddling around her exhausted body as both of you rest from your activity. She gritted in satisfaction as she felt some of your cum escaping through her used hole, making a trail through her cheek down to the sheets.

“What a perfect night we have.” Yunjin said with a smile of satisfaction. She may have not looked at you, but the firm squeeze she did within your grasp made you feel its sincerity more. “I love you so much,YN.”

“I love you as well, Yunjin. More than you know.” You swept off some sweat and loose strands of her hair away from her beautiful face then smooched her on the crown before falling asleep together with her by your side.

#le sserafim #huh yunjin #yunjin smut #yunjin x male reader #le sserafim smut #kpop smut #kpop au #kpop oneshot

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thosewickedlovelies · 9 months ago

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A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character

Hey hi hello it’s your local museum worker here, offering you some insight and tips to writing museum-related fics! This is primarily organized as a list of different jobs you could have in a museum and what their duties entail. This post might also be useful to you if you’re considering working in museums and want to know What Goes On In There. Let’s go!

For simplicity/fic-writing purposes, I would divide museums into 2 very rough groups: large national or city museums that Have Money (think the Smithsonian or British Museums, or the Chicago Field Museum or the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds); and smaller local museums. These could be local industry and culture/history-of-our town museums, historic houses, or really niche subject museums run by One Person With A Passion.

Big national museums have a fuckton of staff and money (museums can never have enough money. But these places are very well-off compared to somewhere small that might always be hustling and writing grant applications). If you work here you’re likely to have a specific role in a particular department, and you probably won’t do much outside this role (ex., if you work in collections management, you probably won’t also design exhibits)

The smaller the museum, the more varied your workload will be/the more likely you are to be doing a little bit of everything. You’re probably organizing collections storage, manning the front desk, and desperately running fundraising efforts, all at once.

To this end, smaller museums are more likely to be closed one or two days a week- you’ll be there, probably cleaning displays or managing storage, but visitors won’t be.

A lot of (most?) universities also have museums, so a college town setting is also doable. But the same big vs small museum disparity is still possible! At Penn State University, for example, the Palmer Art Museum is its own (recently redone iirc) building in the center of campus with a lovely plaza out front, while the Matson Museum of Anthropology is uhhhhh a couple classrooms in the Anthropology Department (which they’re currently rebuilding tbf, so we’ll see what they’ve done with it in 2025).

Types of Jobs

Curator

The one museum job that everyone can name. Nominally the person in charge. Probably laments that their job is way more admin than fun hands-on stuff now.

Actually this is the role I have the least knowledge of, but I think that’s partially because this job might vary the most from place to place? Structural organization can vary a lot between institutions, but I think the higher up you get in any field, the more your job tends to consist of meetings/overseeing, designating, and ~liaising~

A list of things a curator might do:

Planning or approving events and fundraisers, schmoozing with donors and members at said events, approving or designing a schedule of exhibits, publish outreach/advertising or research materials, oversee hiring, approve new object acquisitions (or de-acquisitions), generally make sure that the museum is working within the scope of its mission and if necessary, change or refine their mission

The curator might not necessarily control a museum’s funds; in this case they’ll liaise with the people who do, likely a Board of Executives or Board of Trustees. Once they get the money from these people, though, they could potentially redistribute it as they see fit.

If you work in a fuckoff museum like the BM, you could also be the curator of a specific department, arranged by overarching subject, geographic area, time period, or even object type (eg Curator of Archaeobotany, Curator of Korean Collections, curator of coins from the medieval period). These categories can be more or less specific depending on what kind of holdings your museum has. I think these types of curators would still be able to do interesting things, as they aren’t the ones who Oversee The Whole Place.

You can also be an assistant or associate curator, like being an assistant manager.

Education/Engagement

These are the people who design fun extra activities (esp for kids) in the galleries or relevant events/workshops/lectures the public can attend. They might be called Engagement/Education Officer or Events Manager or anything similar

Again, the bigger the museum you work at, the more specific your role is likely to be. You might focus on web content/outreach and social media, manage the ‘friends/members of the museum’ program, or engage with shareholders, etc

Or you might do things like develop content and events to engage adult audiences. Workshops or lectures connected to new exhibits, after-hours visits. These people are also probably the ones with an eye on accessibility- you’ve probably seen advertisements for museums’ early or late hours for older visitors, or ‘quiet hours’ for people who might be overstimulated by normal museum hubbub, or tactile workshops designed for visually impaired folks.

I think most places would try to have someone specific for kids activities at the very least. They’ll be designing little activities or dress-up stations for the galleries, kiddie mascots or scavenger hunt trail kind of things, as well as, potentially, activities for any digital elements in the museum. They probably also coordinate school visits and act as a tour guide for classes, and will lead the kids in specific workshops or lessons in classrooms attached to the museum.

As a note on technology- some people would probably say that integrating digital elements into exhibits is the ~next big thing~, that museums have to get with the times in this regard, but opinions vary. Big science and technology museums are the most likely to have the most digital and techy elements in their exhibits, so if this is your setting, your character could also be a generic “tech person”. I would go so far as to say the smaller/more local the museum, the less technology you’re likely to have, but smaller museums are able to get grants, some of them potentially for specifically this type of thing, so it’s totally possibly that they have a few tablets with integrated activities, or some other Digital/Screen Thing.

Engagement Officers are probably the most likely people to be drafted for out-of-hours events, so that’s a potentially fun thing for your character to do. Some museums, particularly bigger ones, have event spaces attached that anybody can rent out, for weddings, galas, markets, etc, so they might also take care of these bookings as well.

Exhibit Design

This role has a lot of nebulous terms: exhibit coordinator, design constructor, exhibit programmer- but these are the people who design the exhibits. They’ll come up with a theme or narrative, a design scheme, choose the objects, write the text. They’ll probably come up with some marketing material as well, that matches the design scheme, or they’ll liaise with the marketing people who will.

These people might not be as familiar with the collections as the collections management folk (below), depending on how strictly divided your roles are, so they’ll likely consult with the collections people on choosing objects for a particular exhibit or theme (they say that good exhibit design builds an exhibit from the objects up, but I digress).

These people will also direct and participate in the install and deinstall (the actual terms) of exhibits- putting the objects on the right plinths/stands and arranging everything just so in the cases. Genuinely there’s a lot of psychology behind exhibit design- colors, lighting, the way you might design an exhibit to be navigated vs the path people will actually take through the gallery, people’s sight lines and where their eyes go first, how the display of any given object affects people’s perception of the importance of that object. Fascinating stuff, many books on the subject.

There are also a lot of accessibility concerns to be considered here- how bright is the gallery, how large is your display text, at what height is the central eyeline of your cases?

Museums often loan objects to and from each other’s collections, so if you’re building an exhibit and you’d really like to include X type of object but your museum doesn’t have any, you can borrow some from another museum (this isn’t necessarily a guarantee- museums are allowed to say no to these requests, but I think manners would dictate that they should have a good reason)

Museums sometimes tour whole exhibitions as well- the objects, the text placards, maybe even the stands for super special or fragile items- and exhibit coordinator people are the ones who would handle those arrangements.

Potentially good opportunities for angst stories here- wow things come to life at your museum, you fall in love with a statue but oh no it’s only at your museum for three months

Collections Care

People who work in Collections Management have the most direct contact with the museum objects themselves. You probably work here if you prefer objects to people. When a museum gets new material, these are the people involved. They might not always initiate acquisitions, and the final approval is probably down to the relevant curator, but 98% of the time they’d be consulted (I hope).

A mind-boggling statistic is that most museums only have like 10% of their collections on display at any given time. Yeah. Forreal lol. But collections folk will know where the other 90% is and what’s in it (particularly the longer they’ve been there).

There’s usually a head Collections Manager. Other workers might be a Collection Assistant/Associate, Collections Officer (we like calling people Officers for some reason), Registrar, or some variant of these depending on the specific flavor of your duties.

Main job duties can be divided amongst documentation and database work, organization and storage of objects, and lite conservation. Just how much/how technical the conservation work depends on your own training, but also on the size/funding of your museum. The more money, the more likely your museum is to have its own lab with people specifically trained as conservators. More on them later.

Here’s what happens when a museum gets new stuff!:

Ideally, it goes to a ‘quarantine zone’ first. This is a separate space or room where the objects can relax for a few weeks to a few months (ultimate best practice is actually a year, but, you know. that’s a long time) to ensure that they’re not harboring anything icky (bugs, mold, etc) that will infect the rest of the collections. It’s ideally super-sealed and climate-controlled, but the primary feature should be that it’s away from the main collections store.

Collections folk do the paperwork. They’ll give each individual object a unique number (following their preexisting system that will allow it to be identified distinct from all the other objects in the collection). They’ll create a ‘collections record’ for the object- documentation containing any and all information about the object. This includes the accession paperwork (everything that says ‘we legally own this now’); provenance info (all previous owners and everywhere else the object has been in its life); measurements and description (in painful detail); and conservation history and concerns (ie ‘there’s a crack in the side so pick up with care’, ‘this was repaired in the 70s so that glue is gonna fall apart any day now’).

(I'll say as a fic writer that this would be an great time to wax poetic over a beautiful statue or painting; you can’t write “This golden crown deserved to be worn by a great king, or maybe by that broody Roman general in the painting in Gallery B” in the collections paperwork, but you can think it.)

For fiction’s sake, your collections records could be either paper or digital, but in an ideal world a museum would have both setups, for security’s sake. So you’d fill out some long forms and/or input all the information to the digital collections management system (‘the CMS’, or referred to by your specific software’s name, as there are many out there). The CMS is not a static archive, but rather a living register that’s updated every time an object is interacted with. The object records also include where an object is at any given time (‘normally in Case E in the Fancypants Gallery, currently in Conservation Lab A for repairs’).

Once the objects are done in quarantine, they’ll go to storage. If they’re being displayed immediately, they’ll probably go to some interim storage space/shelf with other objects for the same exhibit and in that case only get a temporary setting. Every object will get labeled with their object number (directly on them, with a special pen that’s safe for this. Or if it’s really tiny, like a coin or jewelry, then their own tiny box will get the label). Small or fragile items, or items grouped together, will go in their own boxes (made of acid- and lignin-free cardboard or polyethylene plastic, like Rubbermaid totes; lined with polyethylene foam and then acid-free tissue paper). Stable ceramic vessels might sit directly on lined shelving, particularly if they’re very large or heavy, like many stone objects.

Listen, every type of object has a particular way(s) of storing that’s best for them, you’re gonna have to look that up yourself or consult someone if you need that level of detail

Ideally, before being stored away, objects are also photographed. This could be part of the Collection Officer’s duty, and/or your museum could have a photographer on staff. (say it with me:) This is more likely if your museum is really huge and/or has a backlog of unphotographed collections and has hired someone specifically, even if temporarily, to improve its collections documentation.

I would say a collections person, or anyone with a museum studies degree, should have some minimum amount of conservation knowledge that includes basic storage standards for different object materials, how to spot potential preservation problems (like if your bronze axe head is actively oxidizing or if that green spot looks the same as it always has since starting and pausing decaying), and maybe how to give objects a basic clean or deal with certain types of problems. But the nitty-gritty science is more the realm of Conservators, someone with a degree that ends in -Sci or who’s done some other certification course.

The general collections store should always be dark, slightly too cool for prolonged human comfort, and labeled to high heaven. Objects will most likely be grouped by material- ceramics/pottery, metals, precious metals and stones (jewelry or beads), stone, glass, wood, bone/ivory/other organic material like feathers or teeth or anything that can be decorative, textiles, paintings. A museum often has some paper material/documents, usually part of or related to a group of objects they acquired, but generally paper and photographic material is the realm of archives and archivists. Yet again, the bigger/more well-funded the museum, the more likely it to have a separate archive department, so your character could also work as an archivist in a museum.

Another thing the collections care folk probably do is ship objects. Remember how I said that museums loan objects and exhibitions to each other? The stuff’s gotta travel somehow! If things are being shipped internationally, they’ll go in big wooden crates, with specifically dimensioned partitions inside. Then it will be lined with our favorite foam and tissue paper, cut so the objects sit snugly inside. I haven’t personally worked anywhere with a possibility of local shipments, so I can’t say where the threshold might be as to when a museum would just pay an employee to drive the objects over vs ship them with a shipping company. But the preparations would be similar, minus the big wooden crate but with extra-careful packing (and paperwork and insurance etc)

Conservation

Conservators are the people who work in labs with fancy equipment. Not every museum will have a formal conservator or a lab of any kind; sometimes the collections care person fills this role, or if something urgently needs care beyond the abilities of the museum’s equipment, they might send it away to a lab elsewhere, the same way you can send your old VHS home videos to a professional archive to be digitized.

If an object is actively deteriorating in a way that could harm itself or other objects (as opposed to like, at risk of fading bc the lighting is wrong, which is a straightforward fix related to the environment), that’s when a conservator would intervene.

Some methods/machinery by which you can analyze objects:

Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light - Different materials absorb and react to light differently, which you can use to identify them. Useful for seeing things like the different layers of paintings

Stereo-microscopy (microscopes, of varying strengths)

At magnifications of x5-x100 you can see things like tool marks from an object’s manufacture, traces from wear, deposits, and coatings

At x50-x500, with a thin sliver of a sample, you can see (and hopefully identify) fibers, layers, particles, metallographic structures

You can get information from objects without taking samples, but samples are usually worth the information.

energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) - EDXRF allows you to identify the elemental composition of the surface layer of an object. So it might tell you what a tool is made of, and also the composition of the objects it was used on, if they left traces

scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - an SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to produce a magnified, high-resolution image of the surface of an object

X-radiography, both film and digital - X-rayy are beneficial for objects that might be covered by dirt or corrosion and can show you details of an object’s construction or hidden structural weaknesses

I’m not a conservator, so if you want more hard science-based info, ask one of them lol

Listen to me. If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this:

Once an object is in a museum, it is never seeing natural daylight again. Sunlight is the ultimate enemy of every object’s lifespan. If you need to see an object in the sun or moon light for ~magical spell reasons~, you will straight up be stealing that object to smuggle it outside.

Okay. That being said, you do hear (and could probably google) stories about museum employees stealing things from their museums on purpose to prove a point about security or insurance to their higher-ups, so like. Depending on your type of museum, it might not be impossible to steal from lmao. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)

Possibly the most useful advice for you to keep in mind when writing your conservator or collections care characters would be that touching objects hurts them. It might not hurt them now, it might not even hurt them in ten years, but every time you handle an object, there’s a risk that you’ll damage it. Not on purpose, obviously, but to err is human. The simplest, most effective advice my conservation professor ever gave us was “don’t handle an object if you don’t have to.” That means don’t move an object without a plan and a place to put it, first examination should always be visual, not tactile, etc. Unfortunately, that means that your character cannot walk around lovingly handling and caressing their favorite objects (unless this is a Night at the Museum situation where the objects are caressing them back, ykwim)

Museum Technician

These people probably have a lot of different names, but basically, technicians are the background muscle of the museum. They do the technical construction of bigger pieces of exhibition material, up to and including the exhibition cases themselves.

So they wouldn’t deal with the small mount that the object rests on, but they might build the big plinth that the mount sits on. They’ll help move things around the building, particularly big heavy things, hang big framed works, assist with exhibit installs, and generally do most things which might involve power tools/equipment or heavy lifting

I worked in a big museum that hired a third party company to supply their technicians; I interviewed at another place that hired their own. If you’re a small museum, you might just have a freelance person that comes in once or twice a week to help move things.

Other

Other miscellaneous roles one could have in a museum: researcher (for exhibits and/or collections), gift shop or cafe worker, security guard, room attendant, translator, archaeologist, consultant

Honestly, TL;DR? Just have your character be a consultant of some kind. “Oh no, I don’t work here, I’m Y’s friend. They called me in to provide some expertise on X subject that they’re doing an exhibit on.” This could work for literally any subject- history/archaeology/anthropology, art, transportation, science and technology, anything you might find pictures of in an archive, idk. This could get you into an office or meeting room of some kind in the ‘employee only’ space of the museum, or potentially all the way into the collections store if you’re giving them information they were missing about some objects. Otherwise you’d probably (hopefully) need a key or some other kind of security clearance to get into the collections store.

Whew, that was a ride, huh? I hope this guide was useful to someone! I’m always open to answering questions if you think I forgot something or if anyone wants more details <3

#hopefully this is useful to people as Gladiator II comes out <3 #i dont really know how to tag this lol #museums #fic advice #writing advice #reference #writing resources

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revacholreverie · 4 months ago

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X7/Locust City Act's V Plot Details, Tasks, and Endings!

hi everyone! I created a new sideblog EXCLUSIVELY so that I can post this text (I figured my main account is shadowbanned or smth) ANYWAY

you can read the 1-5 Acts' Summaries done by @parasolemn! They've done an amazing job and I wanted to take part in deciphering too, hehe

note: English is not my first language therefore word-guessing can be pretty hard for me. There are some minor places I couldn't undestand so I would highly appreciate your help!

UPD 10/04/2025 @parasolemn kindly helped to fill in some lacunas I had in Endings! At the weekend I'll try to edit other gaps myself

PLOT DETAILS ACT V

So what is Cunoesse’s story?

Cunoesse has brought Cuno to Hämärä Maa as a replacement for a kid she drowned three years ago.

Cuno and Jaakko – the drowned kid – don’t have much in common. Both are/were boys with red hair, and about the same build but that’s about it. Only a child’s mind would come up with a plan to replace the dead kid with an ‘identical’ one so she’d be accepted back in her tribe.

But Cuno can’t just be like Jaakko, he has to *become* Jaakko.

The Suru(?) have a coming-of-age rite that involves drinking a brew made of the bone marrow of a blind underwater cave fish. This experience has sometimes profound, sometimes devastating effect on one’s consciousness.

Perhaps this “Naming Ceremony” doesn’t happen until the Hämäräns are 10 years old, so that’s why Cunoesse never got her name, and this is the pretense under which she lures Cuno into the ceremony – a name for herself (but Cuno doesn’t know it’s also going to be a new name for him.)

Cunoesse believes that if she subjects Cuno to this ceremony and “spirit guides” him through this process Cuno might actually *become* Jaakko. Or at least accept he’s Jaakko now. She’s been laying foundation for this transformation throughout this whole journey.

Cunoesse’s people thought her dead, drowned with the boy. Hardly anyone could recognize her at first sight.

Maybe Cunoesse hid the body (under a rock in one of the caves) before she fled Hämärä Maa, so in her mind no-one can definitively claim the kid she brought back isn’t Jaakko.

Psychedelic Sequence

We want this to be a truly visually … and spectacular setpiece where you can bind the rules of everything <…> and apply dream logic.

The entire underwater showdown will be in FELD.

We can depart form/ play with the … perspective, switching into a side-view showing the vastness of the dark screen, with the C&C small figures sinking.

Experiment with overlays, filters as well as tainted and/or 3D mode/ed addictions (??) in the scene, showing people, motifs and icons elements from their journey. There can be lots of … with the visual elements reflecting decisions the players has made throughout the game.

Competitive Red Checks are the key now feature we want to test here, to create unique playthroughs and the impression of truly “fighting yourself” as the rolled value of Cuno or Cunoesse’s Red Checks affects the difficulty of the other’s counter attack.

For the first time, … and commune with each other.

Cunoesse comes out of the trip with +1 Psyche is she lives.

Blue notes:

Multiple life/death outcomes.

Swarm/Locust City side-plot reaches its conclusion.

New home for Locusts

Funeral cultural event

(another note totally unreadable for me, sorry)

_____________________________________

TASKS ACT V

The path through Act V is still largely TBD

In its bare minimum implementation Hämärä Maa could have the same density as the Deserter’s Island finale of Disco Elysium, where the game’s entire conclusion is communicated through a small number of characters – three very extensive and immersive dialogues (one of which is a stylized dream sequence) followed by a posse epilogue. Although railroaded, Disco’s finale had a “page-turning” quality to it that we should aim for as going too much into the mundane idle of the Hämärans would kill the pacing. However, since the entire journey has been about getting to the island, we should give the player at least a little more to see and do than the Deserter’s Island did.

An example of how the task chain at Hämärä Maa could look:

Face Cunoesse’s folks

Find a new home for the Locust City.

Learn how the brew works

Make the brew

Go to the caves

Survive the caves

Bring “Jaakko” to his parents.

Reactivity/Outcomes

Cuno drowns and Cunoesse is this time for real exited by her people

Cunoesse drowns and Cuno returns to Jamrock alone.

ENDINGS

Ending 1 – Jaakko Ending

Location: Hämärä Maa

Cunoesse is alive, Cuno is brainwashed

Notes:

Cunoesse’s manipulations worked. Cuno has fully internalized Jaakko.

The scene closes with Cuno diving dead-eyed among the Hämäran boys. He’s one of them now.

Loss of Identity. No more Cuno-sentences.

Ending 2 – Pale Ending

Cunoesse is dead, Cuno is alive

Location: Tréville, deserted

Notes:

With Cunoesse dead, Hämärä Maa holds nothing for Cuno anymore. He turns back, aimless.

He lands back in Tréville and finds it deserted. The prison has finally moved.

Cuno sits with him. With Cunoesse’s death, Cuno’s prison has left him too. The thing about freedom is that no one tells you where to go.

Cuno waits with the prisoner indefinitely. We fade to white and roll credits.

Ending 3 – Bad Ending

Cunoesse is dead, Cuno is dead

No notes, no location

Ending 4 – Circle Ending

Cunoesse is alive, Cuno is dead

Notes:

With Cuno dead and her plan failed Cunoesse must exile herself from Hämärä Maa again.

She goes into another Murder Hangover, back to sleep and hibernation.

The Internal Skull(?) announces “A new epoch of timekeeping is beginning”

(two another unreadable notes for me)

Ending 5? – New Tribe Ending

Cunoesse is alive, Cuno is alive

No notes, no location

#locust city #disco elysium #cuno de ruyter #cunoesse vittulainen #kim kitsuragi #project x7

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sierrale8ne · 3 months ago

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AMERICAN WEDDING 001. THE WIN you’ll probably leave later anyways, that’s love made in the usa. pairing paige bueckers x black!oc ( kayden kennedy ) warnings 3.7k words, flashback, brief mentions of homophobia lena talks chapter one finally here! enjoy, more coming soon xx

present day april 2025

When Kayden Kennedy was nine, she sat on her fathers lap on a plane ride to Kolkata. She looked over the water, wondering to herself why there was so much ocean. A year later, it was Baghdad, then Istanbul. She couldn’t remember a solid second where she wasn’t moving— where she wasn’t running off and following her father on the journey of his career.

It’s where she grew her love for history.

The large statues, the Seven Wonders of The World, the history. Many would see these places and be star-struck, amazed by the beauty in front of them. But Kayden was different, she was delighted by the how. How did these people get here, how were they brought up, how did they believe that this— this pyramid or this ancient pot— was a symbol of their culture. As she grew older it developed into why they were colonized. And then as she really learned the meaning of the word war, why did these people fight back. Or even, why did they give up.

The rich history of the world interested her always. Like this morning.

She had woken up at six. The gym waited for her at seven-thirty, where she very attentively listened to an NPR podcast about the tragedies in Gaza. When she got home—nine-thirty on the dot— she changed, showered, ate her breakfast of toast and avocado and sausage while reading The Women by Kristen Hannah.

By 11 she was cleaning the kitchen and at one she was seated on her couch, laptop open as she began to grade the last of her student’s fourth quarter projects: The Mexican-American War.

Kayden would like to think it wasn’t on purpose, how her job seemingly found its way into every aspect of her life when she wasn’t even trying. But then again, she sought out the knowledge. She wanted to grow her brain, fill it with as much information as she could until she was like a human encyclopedia. Which in all honesty she was, thanks to her eidetic memory.

But something about knowing everything and yet still knowing nothing at all excited her, as nerdy as it seemed. It allowed her to imagine another universe where things changed, where lives could be different.

Like how maybe, in another life, she’s watching her ex girlfriend play in person, and not on the comfort of her couch.

In a strange turn of events, the once persistent and completely attentive Kayden was distracted by something greater. Something heavier that weighed on her moral scale. Something she couldn’t quite name, but could feel on her chest. Almost like a boulder.

Kayden pushed buttons, almost like a second nature.

Guide. Channels. ABC. 2025 NCAA Women’s tournament championship game.

Kayden had watched here and there. The burn of the bold UCONN letters ate her alive from time to time. She should’ve been there. In the stands cheering or in the library helping Paige study. That was the plan. Their plan.

There were times when she let her mind wonder. To how Paige was doing, or if she’d thought about her as much as Kayden tended to think about her. When Paige got injured sophomore year, Kayden had hurt a bit. And when she tore her ACL she wanted to wrap Paige in her arms like when they were young and just tell her that it would be okay.

She’d never say it out loud, though.

Kayden watched the whole game. Not missing a second. She felt like a high school student again, forced between a sweaty guy who didn’t care and a sweatier one who cared way too much.

She saved face. Never faltering with a smile or a loud cheer. More for herself than anyone else (as she was alone in her apartment).

A Google Slides presentation is open on the coffee table in front of her, red pen balanced on top, forgotten. Because this, this is way more important. Even if she promised for these grades to be finalized by the start of class tomorrow. Paige, who’s having just a bit of an off shooting game, is playing in a game that could define the rest of her career and that just just occupies a larger place in her brain than James Polk and Ulysses S. Grant.

So Kayden curled up on the couch in an oversized hoodie, her glasses slipping a little down her nose. A bottle of water sweats on the side table. And the game should make her sweat too but she couldn’t. Not even close.

By the start of the fourth quarter– the one of the game she’s been pretending not to watch, but has been glued to for the last hour– the Huskies are leading by 22. Paige’s teammates are killing it. A Sarah Strong layup here, an Azzi Fudd three there (which she does cheer for because she remembers talking to the girl about this dream in hotel room in 2018).

And then she hears the broadcast loud and clear. “Bueckers back door… puts it in! Plus the foul! It’s raining blue in Tampa.” Kayden’s eyes snap to the screen. Her breath catches.

Not because of her name, or even the fact that she just contorted her body and got the bucket.

But the weight of this, the impending win. The fact that the woman she’d once married, is about to have her dreams come true all these years later, just makes Kayden’s heart swell a bit more. Beat a bit faster.

The screen flashes in slow motion: celebrating fans, screaming teammates, Paige on the floor with a grin that hasn’t changed in five years. Kayden doesn’t smile. She exhales like she’s been holding that breath since the day she walked out.

flashback july 2019

My hands fumble with my phone, simultaneously trying to slip my feet into the confines of my black Doc Martens. My socks stick out loosely, white, frills on the edges. Just enough innocence to really make the moment.

pb 🪼 I’m down the street Hurry before your mom starts asking questions

At that, I scramble. Pen, check. Change of clothes, check. Proper lie shoved into my back pocket, double check. I brush over my skirt, tugging down the hem of my tight white shirt in an attempt to cover the tiny stick and poke tattoo that came from drunk dares and an adventurous summer evening with Paige and Jalen.

k 🔐 coming!

I shove open my bedroom door, shoes heavy against the hardwood floor. The summer sun spills in against the grain, soft breeze blowing through the curtains. It’s beautiful, which only makes me speed up to get outside to an impossibly more beautiful girl. The kitchen smells like burnt coffee and lemon-scented cleaner, which makes me all the more excited to get out into the real world outside of this house.

“Where you headed?”

My mom Marianne’s voice cuts in through the hum of the kitchen. She sits on the couch, legs outstretched with reading glasses perched on her nose and a book resting in her lap. She doesn’t look up, her voice doesn’t even have its usual lilt to it. And I know I’m in the clear.

“The Lake. Then Lauren’s house.” I lie, only partially though, because going to Paige’s cousin’s house after was part of our well thought out plan.

She hums, eyes glued to the book. “You sure that’s a good idea? I heard it was supposed to rain.” That’s code for Marianne Kennedy doesn’t want her daughter to go out at all. She’d rather I stay home where she can monitor me.

My voice trembles in the way that it does when I know I’m about to lie to her. “It’s fine. Paige is picking me up. She thinks we can beat it.” I shrug like it’s no big deal.

“Boys gonna be there?” She asks.

Her voice is filled with something else, and I know exactly what she means. She’s really asking if I'm hanging out with the only girl my age that the entire neighborhood knows is gay, or can she feel comfortable knowing that I’ll talk to a boy here and there. But she’d never say that outright, no, because my mother has an image to uphold. So she’ll ask it like that, and then throw a diss in a few seconds.

You know, the usual lowkey homophobia.

“Yeah. Jalen and Chet are going, and some other guys in my homeroom too.” I continue. It’s the half truth. There might be boys somewhere, though I’m hoping to get married and dip before they get there. I’m not that interested in sticking around long enough to find out. My eyes dart out the window, seeing the blonde’s beat up red Cadillac sit parked against the sidewalk.

Mom hums again, thoughtfully this time. Like she herself is thinking about whether or not she believes me or not. “Not that I’m worried about boys, with Paige around.” There it is, that diss I could feel coming like a spidey-sense of mine. I was a superhero, fighting off homophobia one mom at a time. “That girl’s always been… a little wild, no?”

Her words make me flinch and I get defensive fast. Like mom is a girl at school throwing darts and looking to hurt the one person who seems to understand me better than I try to understand myself.

“She’s just not fake.” I say.

I watch my mom put the book face down in her lap, interlocking her fingers to look at me. She’s so blinded by hate that she can’t even notice my choice of attire is ill-fitting for the lake. “There’s a difference between being real and being lost, Kayden.”

“Ma, I—”

“You’re not like her. I raised you better than that.” She raises an eyebrow. Using that damn code language of hers to say check yourself.

My stomach knots. I shift my bag higher onto my shoulder, needing to move, needing to get out of here before I let her words break me and I crack. Paige is outside with a wedding license in hand and I’m here listening to my mother call her all the underlying homophobic names in the book.

I get quiet. “We’re just friends. I have to go.”

“Good.” Mom nods, flipping the book back around. “You’re a good girl. Don’t let anyone confuse you about that.” She says and I dart for the door handle. I grab my house keys from the hook, bidding her a goodbye like she didn’t just stab me and twist the knife.

The car ride was silent—talking wise. Lil Baby blasts from the speaker and the wind rushes in and out of the car so fast I feel like I’m free flying through the air.

Paige sat next to me, her hand occasionally brushing against my knee as if she wanted to see if I was still there. If I was still in it. I was. Who was I kidding? It’s the girl of my dreams sitting next to me with the brightest light in her blue eyes and the biggest smile, probably bigger than the one she shot me after winning state this year.

She’s calm, like this isn’t the craziest idea in the world. Which in turn makes me calm, makes me throw everything that happened with my mom an hour ago out the window.

But now, sunlight flashes across the tile and I stand awkwardly against the wall. A courtroom clerk in front of me. The room is smaller than I thought it would be. Which is crazy considering the biggest event of my young 17 year old life is taking place here.

She notices, she always does. Her keys hang from the pocket of her shorts. The marriage license folded clean in half on the other hand.

“You sure about this?” Paige asks, her back pressing against the wall, shoulder snug against mine. She’s warm with the kind of heat that feels like she could set me on fire.

I huff. “We’ve already driven this far. Lied to our parents.” The series of events bats around in my head. Then I look over to her, as calm as could be. Honestly, I don’t remember the last time Paige let me see her be even just a bit nervous. She’s always walking around with that attitude and confidence that made it seem like the world was hers.

She stares straight ahead, branding the courtroom into her brain. “Baby, I don’t wanna… force you into anything. If you wanna go home, tell me. We can get ice cream on the way back or something.” Paige rations trying to help me make sense of it all. It makes me laugh when I think about the cliche; I help her make sense of the real textbook stuff and she helps me when it comes to all the other impulsive things.

“Then we’d have to tell people we just talked about it. This is way more dramatic.” I joke, peering up at the 6’0 athlete with wide eyes and a grin. “I want to do this. Especially with you.” I admit. The clerk digs his eyes at the both of us. I can assume he’s thinking of how much he’s not getting paid enough to entertain two 17 year old girls with a marriage license.

I grab her hand, dragging us to the clerk. Adrenaline runs through my veins like a fire. Paige slides the sheet over the counter, and he looks over it all disinterested but prepared to let us go through with it anyway.

“Sign here.” He orders, flipping the sheet over like it means nothing.

I look up at my girlfriend, suddenly realizing that after this I get to call Paige Bueckers my wife. I’ll slide a cheap thrifted ring on her finger and then go to college with her in a year from now. It’s all going to happen the way we planned it.

So I reach into my bag for the black pen I had brought from my stationary. My hand trembles slightly, everyday handwriting coming in a bit rough as the weight of it settles in my chest like something permanent. Then I hand it to Paige, who’s full of no nerves and a simple confidence to her.

She takes it before looking down at me. “You sure you’re not gonna chicken out?” Paige had asked, half-grinning, half-terrified— but she’d never let me know that.

I squeezed her hand, grinning back. “I want to be yours.” I didn’t say forever — we didn’t talk about the future much. It was too scary. Too far away. Too… uncertain. Especially with a meddling mom and a girl who might love basketball more than her gir—wife.

The clerk speaks again in his low monotone. “By the authority vested in me by the state of Minnesota, I pronounce you wife and wife.” He stamps the sheet lazily, handing it over to Paige again and right then it hits me like a blow. I was really married.

To her.

And then she kisses me, slow and breathless, like she’s never done it before. She didn’t care about the eyes, and the feeling of her hands on my cheeks stopped me from caring either. My nose brushes against hers as Paige pulls back first, forehead pressed to mine.

“I—I have um. This.” I hold the ring box in my hand, square and suede. It’s a bit dirty from years of it belonging to someone else. But, I don’t care. The box cracks open under my pressure, the dull silver still gleaming in the light. “I figured rings make this, y’know. Official.” I stutter, sliding the ring onto Paige’s finger without hesitation.

“You’re really doing this with me?” Paige asks, her voice so small it almost broke my heart if she wasn’t so perfect.

I nodded. “Always.”

“Good. Because I got you one too. It’s in the car.”

Later, after she put a pandora ring that she’d spent all her summer savings on, on my finger. We drove like nothing happened. Like we didn’t just make a lifelong commitment. Like my mom wasn’t at home praying that the reality of sin didn’t brush onto me from her.

We split cash on Ice cream, her dad sent her some money for gas. Everything was perfect. Even the cicadas that screamed in our ears as Paige drove down the straight road.

Lauren’s house came into view over the hills. The neighborhood was empty enough for us to pull in unnoticed. So Paige parks at the field a block behind the house, climbing into the trunk of the car and pushing the seats back to watch the stars come out.

It’s where we sit now.

She manipulates her long legs so she fits perfectly. I fit into the curve of her body, my skirt occasionally brushing up in the late night breeze. Paige’s fingers trace lazy shapes over my shoulder.

The stars are bright tonight, twinkling like precious diamonds in rubble. I look over my shoulder at Paige, at how you can see the occasional gleam across her irises.

“Paige?”

She blinks languidly, the deep brown of her lashes brush over the apples of her cheeks. Dusting them like a thousand little paint brushes.

“Yeah, baby?” She responds. Voice as deep as a teenage girl could really have. It’s sultry, but full of that kind of love and energy I’ve been subjected to since we were younger.

“You think we’re gonna regret it?” I ask, half-asleep, voice thick with warmth.

Paige had smiled into my skin. “Maybe. Probably. Who cares? At least I’m doin’ it with you, right?” She hums.

And then, as if nothing else in the world exists, she kisses me again. Softer. Quicker. For the hundredth time today. I smile, against her lips, laughter spilling between us like a river flow.

Young. Dumb. Untouchable. And for a while, it felt like the whole world really did belong to us and no one else.

present day april 2025

Kayden’s chest ached with the memory of the past and the imagination of a different one too.

Her laptop had been pushed off to the side alongside stacks of rubrics, messily marked and written on—she'd been prepared to be completely focused, but she wasn’t ready for how long it would really take.

Or how easily she would get distracted.

The channel had only been changed once from ABC to SportsCenter. She sat frozen on her couch, the championship celebration playing out in front of her. Without her.

Paige was in the middle of it all — standing on the black platform, hat on her head and shirt hugging her damp and sweaty arms. The confetti stuck to her hair and skin, glittering like stars against her blonde. She was beaming, electric, so full of life that Kayden felt her own chest hollow out just watching her.

Kayden should have looked away. Should have turned the TV off and finished grading papers like a normal person who didn’t still orbit around a girl she hadn’t touched in five years. Oh but no. She stayed.

She watched as Paige ducked into a hug with her coach as emotional as she’s ever seen her, doing the same with every assistant, every trainer, every teammate. Paige beelined straight for the sidelines, arms open for the family members swarming the court.

Kayden watched, and a stupid, heavy ache twisted low in her stomach.

She couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t explain why she still felt this way — tethered, glued to Paige’s happiness like it had anything to do with her anymore. Which it didn’t. Paige had outgrown the small-town dreams they’d once whispered to each other in the dark. She had built a life bigger and better than anything they ever dared to plan. By the looks of it, she also had someone else to celebrate it with. Azzi. By her side, and grinning the whole time as Paige celebrated a little too hard for national television.

Kayden should have been nothing more than a footnote. A “remember when” if she even crossed Paige’s mind at all.

But sitting there in the flickering blue light, watching Paige take the mic for the post-game interview, Kayden knew the truth she’d never managed to choke down: she really really missed her.

Not all the time, not like an open wound anymore — but here and there, in the quiet spaces. In the slow Sunday mornings and empty passenger seats and songs on the radio that pulled her back without warning. Kayden missed Paige a year ago when she was moving to Dallas, emptying her college apartment, and seeing the ring in the same box it was given to her five years ago.

She missed her when she saw two girls holding hands without fear. When she heard laughter in the breeze that sounded like the kind they used to share.

But more than anything she missed Paige now. Worse than she had in a long time.

On screen, Paige was laughing through tears, her voice still a little hoarse from shouting and ungodly amounts of celebration, when the reporter asked what she’d tell her younger self. Kayden leaned in without thinking, like the answer mattered more than it should.

“I’d tell her to hold on,” Paige said, smiling. “And trust that even the stupid stuff or the little things might matter more than she thinks.” The words that were simple, obvious even, landed like a punch straight to Kayden’s ribs.

She shut the TV off mid-response, plunging the room into thick, echoing silence.

Kayden stayed there for a long time, staring into the blank screen, the ghost of Paige’s smile burned into her mind.

Still married, a small voice inside her said.

Still hers, if she wanted to be.

Kayden buried her face in her hands, realizing that no matter what; that wasn’t her life anymore. It couldn’t be. And it was no one’s fault but her own. Maybe if she wasn’t so listening, so scared, so uniquely Kayden Kennedy.

And yet, somewhere deep inside he — in the parts she’d spent five years trying to bury— she wondered if Paige had ever missed her too.

🔖 @thaatdigitaldiary @bueckersbitch @pboogerswbb @xxloveralways14 @ykylalex @ohmybueckers @avvwritesstufff @flipthepaige @cherryswisherz @lupinqs @vamptizm @bueckers555 @omg-imtumbling @courtsidewithlani @mariahthealchemist @authentic-girl03 @kissamiyahh @rebecca-woso @angryflowerwitch @rhianthebest @paigebaby5 @rishofkf @xoxosierralane @urantisocialgay @issilovesherself @your-local-bi-panic @nicebellee @elalfywhore @cowboybueckers

#sierrale8ne #kalena’s works ୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅#paige bueckers #paige bueckers smut #paige bueckers x oc #dallas wings #lesbian #wlw yearning #my fic #american wedding

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celticcrossanon · 13 days ago

Text

BRF Reading - 23rd of July, 2025

This is speculation only

Cards drawn on the 23rd of July, 2025

Question: Why are we getting this push for reconciliation? (Is it to bring Harry back, to give him some more royal fairy dust, to be able to give him money openly, something else?)

Interpretation: Both The King and Harry are trying to stave off or prepare for a future Tower event.

Card One: The Tower in Reverse

The Tower is the card of a sudden, shocking change that completely destroys some part of your life and leaves you to rebuild it from the rubble. In the reverse, it can mean either a worsening of the Tower situation, or someone who sees a crisis coming and is trying desperately to hold it off, trying to delay the inevitable, avert a disastrous event, or simply resisting a change that has to happen.

The energy I am getting from this card is the 'trying to stop a Tower situation from occurring' energy. The person knows that a Tower situation is coming, but they do not want to make the changes that such a situation would provoke, so they are trying to stave it off somehow. Tower situations usually occur to sweep away something that has faulty foundations in our life. In this case, the energy I am getting is of someone who does not want to admit that something is wrong, that the foundation is faulty, so they are clinging to their illusion that everything is OK for all they are worth, and they are desperately trying to stop any event from occurring that would force them to face facts instead of the fantasy they have in their mind around the situation.

I feel that this energy applies to both The King and to Harry.

I think that Harry is clinging on to the fantasy that he is an important member of the BRF and it can not survive without him. His fantasy includes the expectation that he can return to the BRF at any time and will be welcomed with open arms. The Reconciliation PR feeds this fantasy and makes him feel important, valued, and wanted, so he can hide from that fact that he has been a complete and utter failure at providing for himself in the real world.

I think that The King Is refusing to see the essential nature of his second son. He is clinging to the belief that his son would never do anything that he has done intentionally, and all the horrible things Harry has done are the fault of someone else (Meghan, the ghost-writer for putting all that stuff in Spare, the people around Harry who influenced him to e.g. give the Oprah interview (and all the interviews after that), etc). Harry is just a poor lost innocent who has been misled and who needs to be safely back in the arms of his loving family where he can be guided into the right path and be an upstanding support to the monarchy, and The King has planned all his life. The King is refusing to see Harry for what he really is and is refusing to see the damage that Harry would do to the BRF if he was allowed to return and make balcony appearances etc.

I'm not sure what the Tower situation is that is powering this behaviour. It could be His Majesty's death, which may be closer than we think, or it could be something we are unaware of, e.g. Harry having to file for bankruptcy, the surrogate being revealed, more bullying accusations coming out with proof, Harry being linked to more shady stuff, or something of that sort.

Card Two: The Three of Pentacles in Reverse

Upright, this is a card of working together as a team to build something greater than yourself. In the reverse, this is telling me that the reconciliation is not a team effort. Harry may want it, The King may want it, but other members of the BRF do not want it. It is not a shared goal, it is not a collaborative effort, and there is no teamwork behind it. Instead, this feels like something that is coming from King Charles without the approval of other members of the BRF (some family members may support him, some definitely don't - there is no energy of this being a goal that everyone is behind or wants to come to fulfillment).

The Three of Pentacles can be a card of ego, of people doing their own thing and competing with others for resources/attention, and that energy is coming across strongly here. As much as I hate to say it, it may even be that The King wants Harry back in the BRF to take the person The King views as competition, Prince William, down a peg or three.

Card Three: The Ten of Pentacles in Reverse

The Ten of Pentacles is a card of legacy, of stability, of tradition, family, privilege and wealth. It is a card of the BRF as well. Upright, it says that you can provide for your family and leave a legacy for your descendants. In the reverse, it indicates family disputes, breaking traditions, conflict over money, and instability. It can also indicate a short term success that will harm you in the future.

This card is telling me that bringing Harry back to the BRF is a very bad idea. It will harm the reputation of the BRF and the stability that they enjoy - they will be seen as unstable and their reputation with the general public will be damaged. We knew this already, of course, but it is nice to have the cards confirm it.

This card also tells me that money and legacy are big reasons for this push to rehabilitate Harry (and his family). Harry wants back in so he can be rich again, and The King wants Harry back in so he can support him openly (instead of on the sly as he is doing now, e.g. having Harry and a link to his company on the royal website). I think The King also wants to be seen as the loving father who forgave his misguided son (as per the Prodigal Son story that was going the rounds in earlier reconciliation articles). Both The King and Harry are blind to the damage this would cause to the monarchy - they are focused on their short term goals (Harry of being back in the BRF and having lots of money, The King of having his son back with him and supporting his reign) and either not thinking of the long term situation (Harry) or refusing to see the damage that would be caused by this action (The King).

This is very much an issue of money and status, as per the Pentacles on this card and the one before it, as Pentacles is the suit of money and status.

Underlying Energy: The Three of Cups in Reverse

The Three of Cups is a card of celebration, of friendship, community, and happy social events. In the reverse, It is a card of gossip, scandal, people doing things to excess and/or someone being isolated, of a lack of harmony in the social circle.

This card tells me that the plan to reconcile with Harry is not something to be celebrated. It is not something that The King's larger social circle (family, friends, advisors) is happy about and it is not an event that will promote harmony between The King and the British public. Going ahead with this will promote gossip, scandal, and a complete falling out of The King with his family members and advisors who oppose this action and between The King and the British public.

Conclusion:

The cards are saying, very clearly, that bringing Harry back to the BRF and letting him have balcony events and other marks of privilege is a Very Bad Idea. This is not something to be celebrated and it is not supported by the wider circle of family, friends and advisors around The King.

One of the reasons for this push for reconciliation appears to be money and legacy. Harry wants more money, The King wants Harry back in the BRF as part of his legacy, and everyone else is not happy about the situation at all. It is clear that this is not a goal supported by everyone in the BRF, rather it seems to be an action of The King's own making, with other members of the BRF either opposing it or being very dubious about the value of this action.

The reason behind this push is that both The King and Harry are trying to hold back a Tower event. Both have delusions around the situation that they are unwilling to release, and those delusions and the fear of having to face them are part of the drive for reconciliation (Harry that he is a popular and valued member of the BRF who can return at any time, The King that Harry is just a poor misguided soul who needs sympathy and support).

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versesbyaaliyah · 10 days ago

Text

A Life of Wants

Written by Aaliyah O'Neil

This poem was inspired by the prompt 'Ambition,' provided by @ghostingmyghosts and hosted by @picklemafia .

At five, I swore I’d join the stars—

A NASA suit, a seat on Mars.

With foil-wrapped boots and starry eyes,

I launched from gravel into skies.

At eight, I ruled the jungle green—

A zookeeper, both fierce and keen.

My lion roared; I roared back twice—

The garden pulsed with wild advice.

At ten, I trained for covert life—

A future agent, sharp as knife.

With torch in hand and bugged-out vents,

I filed reports and tracked events.

MI6 was where I’d go—

A licence for what none should know.

At thirteen, I began to fade—

Too loud, too odd, too much afraid.

I hoarded thoughts beneath my bed,

And only spoke with pens instead.

At fifteen, I would heal and mend—

An NHS doctor, wounds to tend.

I traced the heart in every book,

And studied pain in every look.

At eighteen, words rewrote my fate—

I turned from scalpels to create.

Poetry stole my will to fight;

I found myself in ink and night.

At twenty-five, I planned a life

Of Sunday shops and being a wife.

Two mugs, one sink, a porch, a song—

A quiet love, both safe and strong.

At thirty, motherhood took root—

Not just the child, the fierce pursuit.

Through sleepless dawns and Lego mines,

I shaped our world in softer lines.

At forty, I began to crave

Some time to keep, some peace to save.

I cut the noise, embraced the slow,

And learned the grace of letting go.

At fifty, I still danced alone,

But claimed the rhythm as my own.

I laughed, I cooked, wore what felt right—

And kept my clever tongue alight.

At sixty, memory blurred the view—

But scent and song still drifted through.

My daughter’s laugh, a lullaby,

Still simmered in my shepherd’s pie.

At seventy, I sought old friends—

The ones who knew my odds and ends.

We shared old sins and cups of tea,

And stitched the past with honesty.

At eighty, I became a guide—

No shame left now, no need to hide.

They came for cake, stayed for my lore,

And left with more than they came for.

At ninety, love was all I kept—

A hand to hold, a dog that slept.

No medals gleamed, no statues rose—

Just peace that only old age knows.

At one hundred—if I get there—

Let children charge the garden air.

Let dreams run wild, let laughter play,

And bless the dusk of one more day.

These original poems and content are my creative work and are protected by copyright. Please do not reproduce, share, or use them without my permission.

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alicenchanted · 11 days ago

Text

Settling the Score

Cassian X Valkyrie!F!Reader | Cassian Week 2025

Summary: After a brutal day of training- and a deliberately torn pair of leathers- you track Cassian to the steamy Illyrian bathhouse, ready to confront him. What begins as tension and banter quickly melts into something far more intimate as the cocky General reveals a softer side.

Word Count: 1,531

AN: Hey guys! This is a short little smut, but I wanted to get something out there for day 4 of Cassian Appreciation Week. Today's prompt was 'lover.' Thank you to the lovely mods, @cassianappreciationweek for running the event!

If you guys wanna see more Cassian smut, drop me a req!

Tags: Bratty reader, sex in the bathhouse, dry humping, reader is a virgin, valkyrie reader mentions, banter

Read on Ao3

The ripped leg of your leathers itched. Yeah, he was going to pay for that.

Cassian was hard on the Valkyries. You and the girls could handle it. Of course you could. But Cassian was still an asshole, going out of his way to torment you. His blade had shorn the edge of your pants just shy of the skin, which was totally on purpose.

Sometimes, you felt Cassian targeted you specifically. He pushed you, parrying every blow of your blade until you were pinned down beneath him with no way to escape.

After ruining your training clothes, Cassian had left early. Conveniently, he was far too sore to settle to score.

You walked in through the entrance to a steamy bathhouse. Sconces of dim, warm fae light flickered like living fire, guiding you back to the simmering pool of warm water that poured off the edge of the Windhaven mountains.

You knew you’d find Cassian here. Illyrian males loved to come here after practice to boast being bruiseless.

You were in luck tonight though. As you entered a steaming room, only one pair of wings were laid out on the cool tile. Cassian hissed in pleasure, sinking into the hot water as he rested his wings.

“General.”

He turned, brows raising in surprise, but curiosity glimmered in his eyes. “Are you lost?”

“Am I not allowed in here?” you folded your arms over your chest indignantly, but he only snickered, turning around to lean against the tile. His big arms gleamed with dew, flexing as he settled.

“You’re allowed of course, but this is typically the side for males.”

“I was looking for you.” You glanced at the slice of bare skin on your leg, and he followed your gaze down.

“Ah, come to get your revenge?” You huffed, and he went on. “I’ll play with you more tomorrow. Maybe after a night of beauty sleep, you’ll finally land a hit on me.”

You growled at his cocky tone and Cassian looked you up and down. Would he truly stare at you in such a way?

“You didn’t even bring a dagger?”

Oh, no, he had just been searching you for weapons. That was all. You straightened up your shoulders. “You wouldn’t be able to see it if I did.”

Cassian grinned. “Ah, if . So you didn’t. What exactly did you plan to do once you found me here, naked and defenseless?”

A flush crept up your cheeks. “You’re naked?”

“It’s a bathhouse, sweetheart. Of course I’m naked.” He stood up straight and droplets ran down his pecs. It came up just above his belly button, the water obscuring everything below, but your cheeks grew even hotter. You knew he was bold… but not this bold.

“I thought maybe- uh…”

“Thought what,” he drawled, hands propped on his trim waist. He was daring you to look.

You kept your eyes on the ceiling. “I thought you would be wearing boxers or swimwear.”

“I wasn’t expecting the company of a female. But you don’t have to be shy, I’m sure you’ve been with a male before… right?”

Infuriating. Your jaw tightened, but you had no clever comeback. Nothing to snap back with. “If you must know, I haven’t”

Cassian’s face went slack, his mouth dropping slightly. “You haven’t”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry- I'm just…”

“A judgemental prick?”

He crossed his own arms back at you, wrinkling his nose. “No, I was going to say surprised.”

“Well it’s true.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said, wading closer to where you stood at the edge of the pool. “You can’t even look at me, sweetheart.”

“I’m trying to be respectful ,” you bit out. You could feel his heat from where you stood. It took everything to keep from looking down, from allowing your eyes the pleasure of sweeping over his deliciously muscled figure. Agh.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be.”

“What?” Your breath caught.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be respectful. Maybe you should come join me, and let me show you what it’s like.”

Cassian’s words were filthy, but his face was open, encouraging. You had seen him with the priestesses in training, and you knew there was a side to Cassian that was warm and gentle. What would that gentle touch be like on your body…?

A smirk crossed his chiseled features as he gave you a knowing look, sensing your interest. “I do bite sweetheart, but trust me, they feel good.”

Shaking your head, you tried to step back from the water, but his hand grabbed your ankle. He tugged just enough to make you unsteady, and a bright red cord of magic coiled around your arm, making sure you fell forward instead of on your ass. You yelped, taking an anticipatory breath, but Cassian caught you easily.

Instantly, your leathers soaked through. They clung to your body like a second skin and yes, Cassian was staring.

“My leathers will be ruined,” you grumbled.

“I’ll get you new ones,” he murmured. He looked at you until you finally made eye contact with him. Locks of wet black hair framed his face, his jaw, his cheekbones.

For some reason, the openness in his face was scarier than his spunk. It was foreign to you. Now that you were in his arms, he had changed, cradling you in the water like you were precious.

“Do you want to?” There was only one thing he could mean.

“I don’t know.” Answering that question was hard. You wanted something, but maybe not everything.

Cassian startled you from your thoughts with a soft brush of his thumb against your cheek. “Whatever you want.”

“What I really want is to get rid of these wet leathers... No, not like that-”

“Aww,” he whined, “I was hoping.”

“Well…” you sucked in a breath. “Maybe- maybe I actually do want to.”

“You don’t sound like you’re sure.” Cassian cupped your face. “You know,” he said softly, “there’s much more pleasurable things than just sex.”

“Like what?”

“Like sharing a kiss with a beautiful girl.” He tugged you closer, his smile contagious. “May I?”

What was the point in fighting it? Coming here for revenge seemed silly now, an excuse to be close to the General in a way the other Valkyries weren’t. It was a way to be alone. Holding your breath, you nodded.

He leaned in, holding your hips lightly as he brushed his lips to yours. You had shared kisses before, but never with someone like Cassian, someone who knew how to treat you. His touch was light and barely there as he waited for you to escalate. The pace was yours to set, always.

You kissed him with a little more force, a proper one, and he groaned at the feeling. His tongue swept against your bottom lip and you parted your lips for him. He was not sloppy, only slowly coaxing your mouth with his own.

Running on instinct, your hands found their way to Cassian’s hair, tugging on the wet locks until his grip on you tightened. You could feel every inch of him against your tight leathers. Every inch. Somehow you had forgotten he was naked.

“May I?” his broad hands gripped the hem of your pants, his thumb hooking underneath to tug. You nodded, and he peeled them off of you. Tunic, pants, and everything underneath.

The water felt good. It was perpetually steamy and warm in the bathhouse, kept that way by strange old magic. Cassian carefully set your leathers on the tile to dry. A kind gesture considering they were already ripped and likely ruined.

Cassian closed in again, pinning you to the tile with his arms braced on either side. You bit your lip, but he carefully pulled it free with his lips, kissing you again. And again.

He kissed you until you had no breaths left for him to swallow. Cassian’s muscled body pressed tighter to yours, and you felt it. He was hard, and thick. Bigger than you had imagined in your mind. He moaned softly, pressing his cock firmly to your thigh. “Fuck, I have to take care of this…”

“I-”

“No, sweetheart, you just stay still…” His face nuzzled into the crook of your shoulder, pressing a gentle kiss to your misty skin as he began to roll his hips. His cock rubbed against your thigh, cradled at the apex of your hips, and you gasped as he thrusted.

“Fuck… feels so good sweetheart.” A chorus of panting and grunting echoed through the spacious chambers of the bathhouse as Cassian rutted into your soft thighs. His lips caressed your neck sweetly, kissing between shuddering moans. “You’re gonna make me spill so fast.”

You pressed your thighs together and he bit his lip, sliding his dick between them and resuming his thrusts. Within minutes he was grabbing you, possessively squeezing every curve of your body as he came. His eyes rolled back, one last thrust pushing between your legs before he pulled back a bit.

“That was hot…”

His lips curved and he laughed. “Yeah? Why don’t you let me touch you now, sweetheart?”

“I think I’ve had enough excitement for one night. But… maybe we can kiss again?”

“Absolutely.”

#cassian acotar #cassianweek2025 #pro cassian #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #Smut #underwater #lemon #spice #valkyries acosf #x reader #cassian x reader #fanfic #my writing #day 4: lover #lover #prompts

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daydreamgoddess14 · 3 months ago

Text

💫 For Your Consideration - Act 4 Pt 2 💫

actor!Bucky x fem!actress!Reader (no use of y/n, l/n, reader is not described in any great detail. I save that for the gowns 💃)

Warnings: Hollywood AU, language, internet nasties, flirty!Bucky, a little power imbalance, age-gap (Bucky is around 40, actress reader is closer to 30 or younger if you prefer 🤭)... more to be added later.

Bucky Barnes, the suave and talented leading man of the 'Winter Soldier' movie series, finds himself on the red carpet circuit during awards season with his latest film 'The Howling Commandos'. But the season takes an unexpected turn when he crosses paths with a mesmerizing newcomer - the actress who has become the talk of Tinseltown with her captivating performance in her most recent film. Sparks fly as they navigate silly season in Hollywood, with a spotlight on their every move will their chemistry ignite a real life romance?

Word Count: just over 8k (sorry!)

Notes: Rating going UP in this chapter. Warnings for smut, p-in-v, oral (f receiving), fluff, romance, all that good stuff 😄. Really, really hope you like this one 💕

< Prev Act | Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist | Next Act >

DECEMBER 2025 - Part 2

You kicked off your heels the second you closed the hotel room door, letting them clatter to the floor.

Your skin still buzzed with leftover adrenaline - the noise of the party, the paparazzi, the champagne.

And him.

God, him.

The heat of his hands on you, the feel of his mouth against yours.

You could still feel the weight of him pressed against you, the way the world had blurred and faded until he was the only thing you could focus on.

You knew you were in trouble when he’d crossed the room to speak to you.

Confident, his suit impeccably fitted, and just a flash of something in his eyes when he’d greeted Steve.

The thought made you feel giddy.

He’d sensed your impatience as soon as poor Steve had started talking about the new Maximoff musical, the rhythmic tap of your jewellery against the champagne flute, the very slight rise up onto the balls of your feet - sore from standing still for too long.

You replayed every second, from the light touch of his hand on your wrist to the bruising grip of his fingers at your hips.

You probably hadn’t needed to leave the corridor.

The voice had made you both tense up, but relief had quickly flooded Bucky’s face as he realised it had been Sam.

But you had needed to gain back some semblance of control of the situation, you needed to think about something other than how his hands would feel peeling off your dress and setting you alight.

You barely had time to process any of it before your phone buzzed.

You grabbed it instantly. Not thinking, not hesitating. Just hoping.

His name on the screen made you feel lightheaded.

Where’d you go?

You sighed. You’d looked for him - as much as you could. Your hands had still been trembling and you were still breathless when your director, Bruce, had run into you only a second after you’d slipped back into the main room.

“C’mon, we’re heading to meet up with some more folks from the studio - they want to hear your plans for the next few months!”

Your heart twisted as he took your arm eagerly.

By the time that conversation was done, there was another one, and another.

You’d seen Bucky come back in, just a few minutes after you, but every time you’d looked in his direction, his attention had been elsewhere, and by the time he'd turned to look at you, you’d looked away.

And then someone had told you there was another event that it was imperative you and Steve went to.

“I need to say goodbye to someone -” you’d started quickly, but Steve placed a gentle hand on your back and guided you to the door.

“Barnes? He’s probably long gone, he hates these things.”

You sat on the edge of the bed, typing back quickly.

The three dots of his reply appeared almost immediately.

Paused.

Vanished.

You bit your lip, staring at the screen like you could will him into answering.

You could picture him, sitting somewhere just like you, staring at his screen, working himself up to type whatever he said next.

One message turned into two.

Then three.

The kind of back-and-forth that started carefully, almost shy... then quickened.

A spark catching fire.

Your thumbs tripped over each other, heart racing, as he asked to see you after the photoshoot.

The photoshoot was still over a day away.

You weren’t entirely sure what made you offer to go to him.

You knew you should have suggested somewhere neutral - somewhere public even - attention and paparazzi be damned, at least that way you’d be in control.

You’d be able to stop your eyes from wandering... your hands, your mouth.

You dropped the phone onto the bed like it burned your hands.

You couldn’t sit around waiting for a response to your daring suggestion.

Was it too late to walk it back?

Did you even want to?

Your dress clung to your flushed skin, you reached to pull the zip down your back, letting the fabric pooling at your feet.

(You could hear Becka’s voice clear as a bell: Pick that up, it’s Versace, for fuck’s sake.)

You laughed under your breath, hanging it carefully over the door.

The girls were probably still awake, a few rooms down.

You tugged on a t-shirt and a pair of soft shorts, padding barefoot into the hallway.

Your knuckles barely brushed the door before it swung open.

“She’s here!” Dani called into the room, like she’d been waiting.

Inside, Lulu killed the TV and tossed the remote aside.

“Well?”

You climbed onto the first bed, trying to smother the yawn that snuck up now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

“I need to sleep,” you mumbled.

“You need to take your makeup off,” Lulu corrected, lobbing a pack of cotton pads at you.

You caught them half-heartedly, ignoring the pointed look she shot your way until she gave up, soaked a pad herself, and started dabbing gently at your face.

“Lipstick lasted well,” she said under her breath, but stopped when she caught the slow smile pulling at your mouth.

“Or... didn’t it?” she guessed, eyes narrowing.

“No, it did," you said, the tiny grin you couldn’t bite back threatened to overtake your whole face, "it lasted better than you might think. All things considered."

“All things -" Lulu glanced over at Dani, who lowered her phone, sensing something.

“What things?” they demanded together.

You let the silence stretch for a moment longer, just to torture them, before you said it:

“He kissed me."

There was a second of silence. A breath.

Then…

“Shut the fuck up,” Lulu gasped, lurching upright so fast she nearly kneed you in the ribs.

Dani sat bolt upright next to you in the bed. “Are you joking?! When?!”

“The party, he came over while I was talking with Steve, then he suggested we get a drink at the bar and then…”

Dani grabbed a pillow and hit you with it. “And then?”

“We went into this quiet little corridor bit, away from the party. He asked me to go with him, and I did.”

Lulu narrowed her eyes. “And was it good?”

You tried to play it cool but failed instantly.

“Oh god Lu… it was… Jesus.” You hid behind your hands. “He backed me into a doorway like he was in a movie and he was just looking at me like he couldn’t not do it.”

Dani groaned into the duvet. “You are living my dreams right now. I hope you know that.”

“And then we heard someone and… I just… left,” you finished, flopping back on the bed like you could sink straight into the mattress. “Like a complete lunatic.”

“You didn’t want to look too eager,” Lulu reasoned, tugging your arm until you sat up again, already plotting next steps.

“You want him to chase you,” Dani added, with a knowing grin as she shoved a pillow behind her back. “You did the right thing. Very main character of you.”

You weren’t sure that was true. If anything, you felt like a side character in your own story. Clumsy, caught off guard, and wildly underprepared for the heat in Bucky Barnes’s eyes. But it was comforting to pretend. To imagine it had all been intentional.

“I don’t know,” you admitted, rubbing your eyes. “Maybe I should’ve stayed.”

“Maybe,” Lulu allowed. “But the disappearing act was hot.”

“Was it?” you asked, unsure. “I think it might’ve been just… confusing.”

“And confusing is sexy,” Dani said confidently. “Men love a bit of mystery. Keeps ‘em from getting lazy.”

“And now what?” Lulu asked, already half under the covers, practically vibrating with curiosity. “Has he said anything? Have you?”

“I had to leave the party,” you said, fiddling with the edge of the cotton pad in your hand. “Steve and Bruce were trying to drum up some final campaign buzz. They think we might be able to get a couple of Oscar nominations next month.”

“Ok but Barnes,” Dani reminded you, throwing a pillow at your legs.

“I’m gonna shove that pillow somewhere in a minute,” you warned her with a halfhearted glare. “He messaged. Asked where I went.”

“And?”

You hesitated. “I told him I’d looked for him.”

A satisfied hum moved through the room.

“But you’re going to see him again, right?” Lulu pressed. “I mean, obviously you’ll run into each other publicly -”

“It’s complicated,” you said, and the room quieted a little. “I like him. But we all know what the headlines would do with it. If it got out.”

“Yeah but like -” Dani leaned in, eyes wide. “Is that gonna stop you?”

You didn’t answer. You didn’t need to.

“Just promise us if you do see him again… we get a full debrief,” Lulu insisted, sliding further down under the duvet. “Like full.”

“Detailed timestamps,” Dani echoed, already typing something into her phone that she definitely intended to bring up later.

“Eyewitness testimony,” Lulu added, yawning.

“Screenshots,” Dani chimed again, grinning now.

You rolled your eyes, but your smile gave you away.

Eventually, the room began to quiet. One by one, they dozed off, lulled by the late hour and the hazy kind of excitement that lingered after a less than standard night.

You tried to follow.

You really did.

While Dani snored softly beside you, and Lulu kicked at the blankets in the next bed, you stayed awake. Quiet. Thinking.

Thinking about the way his hands felt on your waist.

The low rasp of his voice when he said later.

Your body was buzzing, too keyed up to rest.

That kiss still haunted your skin. You wished there had been a later.

But the image of Bucky. His mouth, his voice, that fucking look… it all kept looping through your mind.

And your phone, inches from your hand, taunted you.

What if he was awake too?

God, you were losing your mind.

But beneath the nerves, the confusion, the anticipation… there was something steadier. Something low and warm in your chest.

He wanted to see you again. He’d said it plainly. No games, no hesitation.

It made your breath catch and your thighs press together.

You gave it another ten minutes.

Then you reached for your phone.

Before you could open the message thread, a new notification popped up on the screen.

You’d both gotten bolder under the cover of darkness and the weight of sleeplessness.

A few hours ago you’d been tucked between your best friends, laughing about the absurdity of it all, basking in their unfiltered hype. Now, your fingers hovered over your phone, skin tingling, your heart skittering against your ribs with every buzz.

You bit your knuckle to keep the sound in.

Dani shifted beside you. Still asleep. Lulu let out a soft sigh in the next bed.

But you were wide awake.

Because every word from him was laced with something heavier than flirtation.

It was want.

Bare, hungry, and unguarded.

You meant every reply. Every playful nudge wrapped in heat. Every pause where your breath caught and you had to roll to your side, your legs squeezing together like that might help.

It didn’t.

And God help you, you were already counting the hours until you could see him again.

Every inhale between his messages felt like a teasing graze of his fingers.

You could picture him so clearly, one hand behind his head, the other still cradling his phone, eyes dark and wicked, mouth curled in that slow grin that said he knew exactly what he was doing to you.

You let the silence stretch a little after your last message.

Maybe you could sleep now.

Just drift off, warm and aching and smiling like an idiot.

But then he sent one more. One line.

And it unraveled you.

I haven’t even gotten to the good part.

The rush of heat was instant. Your spine arched, breath catching, fingers tightening around your phone.

You buried your face in your pillow, stifling the soft sound you couldn’t help.

You should have stayed in your own room.

Let yourself fall into that fantasy alone, free to writhe against the mattress and whisper his name like a confession.

Pictured his mouth, his hands, the press of his chest, the way he might’ve looked between your thighs.

But instead, you rolled back over and stared at the ceiling, letting the ache simmer.

You’d put a pin in it. For now.

Because sleep finally came - slow and sweet - with his voice in your head and his name still buzzing at your fingertips.

He tossed the phone onto the couch and immediately regretted it, snatching it back up like it might disappear.

Read the last message again. And again.

You're dangerous, Barnes.

God.

He was.

Or maybe she was.

Because nothing had ever felt quite like this.

The kind of hum that settled in his bloodstream, impossible to shake. Like she was under his skin now.

He could still smell her perfume on his skin, hear the catch of her breath against his throat, the way she’d pulled back too soon… and then the look she gave him before she slipped away back to the party.

He hadn’t stopped replaying it since.

The previous night had just about ruined him.

He thought it might fade overnight, that the clear daylight and some decent coffee would help him get a grip. But she was everywhere.

His timeline. His feed. His explore page.

Her face in every frame, her voice in every interview clip, every behind-the-scenes snippet of the junket footage.

Name checking him on E!

He groaned, raking a hand through his hair.

“This has to be illegal,” he muttered to the empty room. “She’s haunting my goddamn algorithm.”

Then his phone buzzed again.

And just like that, everything tightened.

Because it might be her.

It wasn't, it was Sam reminding him that he too had a job, and that he too had studio commitments to meet.

He wanted to message her back. Wish her good morning and then wanted to push it, drag her right into whatever came after that message - the “good part,” as he’d stupidly teased - but she was working.

He was working.

And she'd gone quiet. Smart girl.

He wondered if she knew she was driving him insane.

The rest of the day was hell.

“Still stalking the hashtag?”

Sam didn’t even bother pretending not to notice.

Bucky didn’t look up from his phone. “Not stalking.”

“Sure.”

“She’s everywhere,” he muttered, scrolling past a slowed-down reel of her laughing on some carpet, hair falling over one shoulder. “My whole feed is just… her.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “So what I’m hearing is: your phone’s in love.”

“Shut up.”

“She messaged you, right?”

“We're gonna meet tomorrow after her shoot.”

The shrug was forced, but Sam had known him long enough to see through it.

“Where are you gonna take her that isn't going to end up all over the internet, your hotel room?”

“Get out.”

“Just sayin’. If this is just some quick and dirty hook up then I need to know so it doesn't damage your chances in March.”

Bucky didn’t answer.

Because it wasn’t that.

He barely knew her and yet somehow he knew it wasn’t even close to that.

At no point from the minute he'd nearly knocked her over in Toronto could he have considered this - whatever this was - as casual.

He looked down at his phone again. Her name still sat at the top of his DMs, nothing new since last night.

The “seen” stamp mocking him.

He didn’t need a reply.

He just wanted her to know he meant it.

Every word. Every look. Every line he was toeing.

And if she showed up tomorrow… if she still wanted this, whatever this was… He didn’t think he’d be able to hold back this time.

He barely slept.

He woke up tense and wired, immediately checking his phone like a man possessed.

A message.

Sent at 2.03am.

so that was the longest day of my life.

if you still want to see me… I'd like that.

I'll let you know when I finish tomorrow?

His own day was stacked: a Critics Choice brunch, back-to-back interviews, some last-minute reshoots on the campaign video for awards season, and then a late afternoon drinks reception with the studio.

He thought about messaging her back.

Good luck today.

Thinking about you.

… but stopped himself each time.

She knew.

She had to know.

He hadn’t expected to see her there.

He hadn't even realised she was invited until he turned from the coffee station and caught her across the room, backlit by the huge window, laughing at something Dani said.

The fact that he recognised Dani mostly from her Instagram profile wasn't lost on him.

She spotted him a second later. A blink, a pause, and then a smile that nearly floored him.

She mouthed “hi” and he turned to look behind him, feigning confusion before smiling widely back at her. It was worth it to hear her laugh from across the room.

And then, as if guided by fate or some vengeful god who liked watching him suffer, she drifted closer.

“Bucky Barnes,” she greeted lightly, stepping just into his orbit. “Didn’t know you were coming to this one.”

He cleared his throat. “Likewise.”

“Lucky me.”

Their smiles stayed on, bright and camera-ready, plenty of press milling around. No one watching would think twice. But underneath it…

“How've you been? Did you have fun at the Globes thing?”

“It was great, thank you. I haven’t been sleeping too well the last couple of nights, though,” she said, politely nodding and smiling at a passing producer.

He sniggered into his coffee. “Maybe your bed isn’t comfortable enough.”

“I did think that,” she replied, almost too casually. “Wonder if I should try another one.”

His gaze flicked to her mouth. Just for a second. She bit her lip, half looking like she wanted the ground to swallow her up for making such a blatant suggestion.

“Could help,” he shrugged, stepping sideways as someone passed between them. “Change of scenery. New sheets.”

“You got any suggestions, I am new in town after all?”

“I stay at the Mondrian. It's got a great rooftop bar. You can see the whole city.”

“Sounds perfect. Maybe I'll look it up later,” she smiled.

Before he could fire back another line, someone from the studio swept in to claim her, a publicist with a tight smile and a tighter grip on the schedule. She gave him one last look over her shoulder, eyes warm and knowing.

He watched her go, heart pounding, his coffee long forgotten.

The rest of the brunch passed in a blur of polite conversation and meaningless small talk, but all Bucky could feel was the echo of her voice, still teasing.

He should have been focusing.

He checked his phone in the car. Nothing. Just a message from Sam telling him not to be late to the studio drinks.

The rooftop bar line had been a risk, too on-the-nose, maybe. But she’d played along. She’d smiled.

Now it was nearly six, and he was still stuck at the studio drinks that were supposed to be over by five. He wanted to chew glass. A glass of whiskey sweated in his hand, while he watched the clock.

And then his phone buzzed.

He glanced down, more out of habit than hope, and froze.

The feed refreshed as soon as he opened the app, her latest post zooming straight to the top.

On her knees, curves like question marks. His thumb paused, he held his breath. Double tapped. Worry came later.

The comment came first.

You’re trouble.

It wasn’t subtle. He didn’t want it to be.

He waited for her to reply. She didn’t.

Instead, Dani’s comment popped up underneath his, throwing gasoline on the fire.

Sam leaned in behind him between speeches, whispering, “She’s not texting you in the middle of a photoshoot, man.”

“I’m not checking for her,” Bucky lied, turning his phone screen face down like that might help.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later, it buzzed.

Just wrapped. I think I survived.

He read it three times before responding to let her know he was stuck.

He blamed the whiskey for suggesting that they skip the bar altogether.

Actually… You could come here.

To the hotel. I mean… If you want.

He hesitated, wondering if he’d overstepped. He wanted to follow up to say “no pressure.”

He started typing, then deleted it and waited.

Because maybe he wanted her to know exactly what he meant.

A heart popped up next to the suggestion and he sat back, and let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

His hands tapped restlessly against the arms of the chair. The drinks reception blurred in the background.

He messaged the front desk at the hotel.

Told them to let her up if she got there before he did.

He didn't dare think about if she changed her mind.

What if this was too fast, too messy, too much?

But then he remembered the way she’d looked at him before she left the hallway after their kiss. The way she’d said his name, and the way she’d replied to his messages in the dark, like she’d wanted him just as badly as he wanted her.

That had to mean something.

Enough to hold onto.

So he did.

Paced the room. Checked the time. Checked it again.

He’d barely been back twenty minutes when the phone rang. The concierge confirmed she’d arrived.

He hung up.

His chest went tight.

How long should it take to get from the lobby to his room? He had no idea.

He'd had no reason to time it before. But now, every second felt like a lifetime. He wondered how busy it was in the bar, should they go up there after all?

It had taken too long, surely? Had she changed her mind? Stood in the elevator unable to press the button for his floor? Turned and fled?

His mind went through every scenario possible until he heard the faint tap on his door.

You weren't sure you'd even knocked.

Just raised your hand, breath caught halfway to your lungs…

And then the door opened.

The top couple of buttons of his shirt undone, the collar crooked from where he'd pulled off his tie. That look in his eyes.

No hello. No hesitation, just a small smile of what you thought might have been relief.

The silence that filled the space between you wasn’t awkward. It was loaded. Full to the brim. You stepped into the small space he'd left, and closed the door behind you with a soft click that sounded louder than it should have.

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

And that was it.

The air shifted.

“Hi,” you managed. Barely.

He shook his head once.

Like hi wasn’t nearly enough for what this was.

Then his hands were on you, firm. Not impatient, just sure, resting on the curve of your waist.

You felt it in your chest. In your fingertips. In the backs of your knees.

And you were already answering him with your whole body before either of you said another word, leaning into him.

His forehead tipped against yours, the heat of his body warming you.

You could feel the tight, controlled tension vibrating through him, it showed in the clench of his jaw, the sharp inhale of your perfume.

He dragged his hand up your sides, slowly and carefully, like he was checking you were really there.

And then, finally, he kissed you.

Soft at first. Testing.

But when you melted into him, drunk on his touch, he groaned low in his throat and deepened it, sliding his hand up into your hair and pulling you closer.

His mouth didn’t crash into yours.

It wasn’t clumsy. It wasn’t rushed.

It was worse than that.

It was slow and deliberate.

The kind of kiss that made your knees go. That took its time, like he was determined to make sure you'd remember it, like he’d waited long enough and wasn’t about to waste a second.

The press of him, hot and solid, crowded your back against the door.

But it wasn't just you responding to the kiss, it wasn't just your knees going weak and barely holding you upright.

You felt his breath catch when your fingers tangled in his hair.

You felt the way his body shuddered when you tilted your hips, just slightly, just enough.

His hands were everywhere, your waist, your spine, dragging you in. Like he couldn’t get you close enough.

His knee found its way between yours, lifting a little but nowhere near close enough to where you really needed. The whine in the back of your throat made him pause, letting you catch your breath.

“Hi,” he said at last.

You smiled shyly. “Hi.”

He was grinning. That lopsided, stupidly handsome grin that made it impossible to think straight.

“You always gonna make that sound when you see me?” he teased, his voice low and his eyes dragging a slow and sinful path down your body.

You rolled your eyes, cheeks burning. “Shut up.”

But he just laughed, his nose bumping yours, nudging your lips back up towards his. “You’re the one making bedroom noises against a hotel door, sweetheart.”

You smacked his chest, he caught your wrist with warm, gentle fingers. “Last chance for rooftop cocktails,” he murmured.

You shook your head.

He smiled against your skin, his lips finding the spot just below your jaw, “didn’t think so.”

He brushed his nose down the column of your neck and kissed the hollow of your throat.

Your fingers curled into his shirt, gripping it in your fist.

You turned your head, lips brushing against the stubble on his jaw.

“Are you planning to keep me trapped against the door all night, or…?”

His breath tickled your ear as he laughed.

“Depends. You trying to escape?”

“Not even a little,” you whispered.

Still, he eased back just enough to let you move, one hand trailing down your side as you stepped into the room properly with your cheeks flushed and your pulse racing. You already missed the press of him.

He stayed by the door, watching you turn on the spot and survey the room.

Finally you turned just enough to look at him over your shoulder.

“What?”

Bucky shook his head. “You look good, did you eat?”

“Yep, and I stayed hydrated like a good girl,” you smiled, but his concern didn't go unnoticed, and made you nearly as dizzy as his kiss.

He stalked closer, his smirk playful and teasing.

“‘Cos… it's a marathon, not a sprint y’know?”

“Are we talking… life, awards season... anything in particular?”

His hands slipped beneath your jacket, easing it down your arms, fingers brushing bare skin at your shoulders. Goosebumps bloomed in his wake.

“How about I let you know if something specific comes to mind?” He put the jacket over the chair and held out his hand, you took it and stepped out of your heels, sighing as your poor feet sank into the plush carpet.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he murmured, pulling you into him. “You. This.”

You nodded, your heart rattling against your ribs.

“I know,” you whispered. “Me too.”

You walked backwards, towards the bed, drawing him with you.

Bucky followed without hesitation, like you were gravity and couldn't stand to not be in your orbit, his hands on your waist again to keep you close.

You reached for the buttons of his shirt with shaking fingers, and he caught your wrist to stop you.

“Patience,” he teased.

His hands dropped to your hips, guiding you to turn around.

You held your breath at the first sounds of the zip of your dress being drawn down, your skin prickled under his mouth as he placed a kiss between your shoulder blades.

Inch by inch the zip came down, your breath catching each time.

You'd lost count of the number of people who'd seen you in your underwear in the last year, on set, in wardrobe fittings, adjusting hidden microphones, dresses and costumes with daring necklines... It had become the norm.

Hell, he'd already seen you in your underwear on screen in the film.

But this was something else entirely.

The zip reached its resting point at your lower back.

“That picture from earlier,” he whispered into the crook of your neck, his hand warm against your bare skin. “Mine.” He finished, punctuating with a kiss.

You stayed with your back to him, heart thundering as you let your head tip back against his shoulder.

His hand slid up your spine, fingers tracing the bare skin left behind by the dress

He took his time peeling it from your shoulders, dragging it down your arms.

The fabric pooled at your waist, and then slowly, he eased it further down, over your hips, until it dropped silently to the floor.

He exhaled slowly, and you felt the way it ghosted over your skin.

You turned in his arms, nerves pooling in your belly.

You could feel his eyes on you, tracing every curve, every inch.

It felt terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure that he couldn’t stop looking.

“You’re taking your time.” You murmured, your voice trembled with anticipation, with nerves, you weren't exactly sure which. Probably both.

“I’ve been waiting for this. You don’t get rushed now. I can always slow down some more?” He teased.

You arched an eyebrow, your confidence slowly catching up to your pulse.

“Well I hope you're ready for me to do the same, fair’s fair, right?” Your fingers hooked into his shirt to bring him closer, forcing his eyes back up to yours.

He laughed, and then his mouth was on yours again, hungrier now, less careful but no less slow and measured.

You tugged at the buttons of his shirt, impatient and clumsy, but he didn’t seem to care. His hands were everywhere again, warm and possessive, mapping you out like he was making his travel plans for the evening.

You kissed him back harder. Bit his lower lip, just a little, and when his breath stuttered and the low growl that took root in the back of his throat caught your ears, you knew there was nothing you wouldn't do to hear that sound again.

He gave as good as he got, tongue sliding against yours with an aching kind of precision that made your knees buckle. He caught you, arms banding around your waist, holding you to him like you - or he - would fall apart if he let go.

He dragged his mouth along your jaw, down your throat, tasting you.

You were both breathing hard, your hands roaming beneath the fabric of his undershirt, nails grazing the hard lines of his ribs, the hot skin of his lower back.

He groaned against your collarbone and you felt victorious, invincible.

Then he eased you down onto the bed, still not rushed, not rough. Just with purpose, like he’d waited long enough.

“Tell me if this is too much.”

“It’s not enough,” you insisted, nipping his jaw, “you don’t have to be careful.”

“I’m not being careful. I’m being thorough,” he muttered, touching you like he already knew exactly how.

You arched into him when he sucked a mark onto your throat, your legs parting instinctively, welcoming the heat of him between them.

You hooked your fingers into the waistband of his pants, tugging just enough to make him groan.

“Don't do that, how am I going to hide that tomorrow?” You chided lightly.

He pulled back just far enough to meet your eyes, pupils blown wide, chest rising with every ragged breath.

You pulled again but he caught your wrist, bringing your hand down between you both, letting you feel exactly what you were doing to him.

“I’ve been like this since the party,” he murmured, dragging your hand lower. “Since I got one fucking taste of you and couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

You flicked the clasp of his pants and pulled his undershirt up, ignoring his growl of frustration when you pulled it over his head and separated you from him.

He took the chance to change direction and ducked down to press his mouth to the swell of your breast, dragging the lace of your bra down with his teeth.

The gasp that left your mouth was shamefully loud. His grin was feral.

“You’re gonna be loud for me?” he murmured, kissing across to your other breast, thumbs stroking slow circles along your ribs.

“You gonna give me a reason?” you fired back, threading your fingers into his hair.

He cut you off quickly, making you gasp as his mouth closed over your breast, warm and wet and perfect.

His tongue flicked over your nipple before sucking it into the heat of his mouth, and your back arched off the bed.

Your hands tangled in his hair again, nails scratching his scalp, drawing out that same low sound from his chest that made your hips cant up towards his.

“Jesus, Bucky -” you moaned, every inch of you aching for the weight of his mouth and hands.

He shifted, dragging his teeth along your skin as he moved lower, fingers hooked in the waistband of your underwear now, eyes dark and focused and utterly fixed on you. “You good?” He asked hoarsely.

You could only nod.

He dragged his fingers up the inside of your thigh and back to your waistband, eyes on yours the entire time.

“You’re shaking,” he said, almost smiling. “That for me?” He shifted further down and kissed the inside of your thigh, slowly and reverently. “I’ve thought about this. Exactly this.” He murmured.

And then there was no more teasing, only the delicious scratch of his stubble on your inner thigh, quickly soothed by his hot mouth determined to mark you where no one else would see but him.

You jolted when his tongue finally touched your core, slowly, confidently, maddeningly. He didn't rush, didn't chase your whimpers with anything but more measured pressure, drawing out each reaction like he wanted to catalogue it, memorising what made you tremble. Your hand flew to his hair, anchoring yourself as he worked, and when he groaned, deep and low, like he could taste how badly you needed this, you felt it reverberate straight through you.

He paused only long enough to say, “You taste just like I thought you would. Better, actually.” Then he dipped again, with a new kind of intent. Hungrier.

Your thighs tightened around him, involuntarily, and he didn’t mind in the slightest. If anything, it made him smile against you. “Don’t go shy on me now,” he murmured, voice rough with heat.

His correctly placed confidence made you whimper again and at the sound of the quieter, broken gasp, he looked up at you.

His hands hooked around your thighs, holding them open, you'd linked your fingers with his, clutching his hands desperately while each slick drag of his tongue tightened the coil in your belly and had you mumbling his name over and over.

“Look at me. Please.” He pleaded. You looked down as the coil snapped.

“Oh f-fuck, Bucky, I -” your voice cracked, your thighs tensed.

You didn’t even know if your eyes stayed open.

The rush was too much - white-hot and unstoppable, like your whole body had folded in on itself and burst. He didn’t stop. He held you through it, his mouth never letting up, his hands steady and grounding as your hips jerked beneath him.

When the aftershocks had you twitching and gasping, he finally eased back, kissing the inside of your thigh like he was proud of the mess he'd made. One kiss. Then another, higher this time, like a thank you.

Your chest was heaving, fingers still tangled in his. You let go as he sat up, slinging your arm over your eyes, hiding just a little. He looked up, cheekily wiping the corners of his mouth, eyes full of something you couldn’t name, but felt in every inch of you.

“Still breathing?” he teased, voice rough and utterly wrecked.

You nodded weakly but whispered, “no.”

He laughed quietly.

“Good,” he said, crawling up your body with a lazy grin. “Because I’m not finished with you yet.”

You felt the weight of him settle over you, solid and warm, his mouth brushing the edge of your jaw as his hand gently lifted yours from your face.

“You okay?” he murmured, nose nudging your cheek.

You gave a quiet hum, turned your face to his and kissed him, slow and deep. A thank you. A yes. More. Please.

He sighed into your mouth like he needed it just as badly, then tucked his face into your neck. You felt the press of his smile against your skin.

“Can’t believe I get to touch you like this,” he whispered.

You tilted your head, letting your fingers slide into his hair again, scratching lightly at the nape of his neck. “Might’ve let you sooner if I knew this was the good part you were talking about.”

“Oh yeah?” he drawled, eyes half-lidded but wicked. “Knew I should've found you after that party.”

You leaned in close like you were going to kiss him, lips brushing just shy of his.

“Well,” you murmured, “you found me now.”

And then you moved.

With a shift of your weight and a little push, you rolled both of you easily. His body gave way beneath you like he’d been waiting for it, like he loved it. His hands fell to your hips, greedy and eager. His eyes widened just a little as you settled above him, strong thighs bracketing his hips, fingers tracing lazy circles on his chest.

“Still breathing?” you echoed back, with a glint in your eye.

Bucky huffed a laugh, breathless this time. “Barely.”

From your new vantage point you could see how underdressed you were. Or how overdressed he was.

“How do you still have pants on and I only have this left?” You asked, running your hands over the black lace of your bra.

He rolled his hips up to meet yours.

“Uhuh, no rush, remember?”

You leaned down, kissed the corner of his mouth, then lower, jaw, throat, collarbone, while his hands roamed helplessly along your back, unhooking your bra and pulling it down your arms. But you didn’t let him lead this time.

You kissed lower, tasting the salt of his skin, the warmth of him under your tongue.

You sat up just enough to straddle him again, fingers trailing down his stomach to the waistband of his pants.

“Think I should take over?” you asked, voice low, teasing.

He nodded like he’d stopped knowing how to speak.

You made quick work of the zip, dragging the fabric down and away with a victorious smile that made his head fall back into the pillows.

You hovered above him, the tips of your fingers tracing the lines of his hips, your confidence flickering just a little.

“Umm -” you started, your voice a little softer and far less certain, “I didn’t… I wasn’t sure how far this would go. Did you -?”

He reached behind him, into the drawer, and held up a foil square with an easy smile. “Like I was gonna risk not being ready for you.”

Relief flushed through you, quickly followed by a surge of want.

You took it from his hand, leaned down to kiss him, slow and deep, letting your hips roll once against his as you tore it open.

“Good,” you giggled. “Because I’d really hate to stop now.”

His laugh was half groan, half worship. “Remind me never to underestimate you.”

You rolled the condom on with a steady hand and a wicked look.

“Wasn’t going to give you the chance.”

“You're sure about this?” He asked, sitting up to take hold of your wrist as you rose up onto your knees. You nodded firmly but he didn't let go, only raised his eyebrow.

“Bucky, I'm sure,” you smiled, twisting your hand within his grip and catching his instead. You guided his hand down between your trembling thighs. “Tell me what you need.”

“Just you. This,” he breathed.

You guided him into place with a slow, deliberate motion, your breath catching as you sank down onto him. The stretch stole the air from your lungs, your lip caught tightly between your teeth. His fingers dug into your hips, head tipping back with a low groan.

You braced your hands on his chest, feeling his heart pound under your palms as you rolled your hips gently, adjusting to the depth.

“Ohh… god, Bucky,” you whispered, finally releasing the bruising hold your teeth had on your lip.

“Jesus,” he groaned. “You feel like… fuck, sweetheart, you feel perfect.”

You canted your hips again, searching for a rhythm, but every movement had you seeing stars.

He slid one hand up your back, the other gripping your thigh to anchor you as you moved, the muscles in your legs tensing under his hand. The quiet gasp that left his lips when you found the right angle made your whole body tighten with need.

“There?” he asked, voice ragged.

You nodded, unable to form words, and pressed your forehead to his. Your breath tangled between you as you moved, slowly at first, like neither of you wanted to miss a single second.

Your fingers gripped his shoulders, leaving crescent moons on his skin, and your rhythm found its place, steady and deep, every rise and fall, every roll of your hips, wringing a new sound from his lips.

It crept up on you this time, the angle, the depth, the warm slide of his mouth dragging from the hollow of your throat to wrap around your pebbled nipple.

He felt it before you did, sensed it coming, and knew that it was going to take you by surprise.

“C’mon, baby,” he murmured, replacing his mouth with his hand, thumb sweeping in slow circles over your nipple while his other hand held tight to your hip. “That’s it… just like that.”

You couldn’t do anything but cling to him, the pressure building too fast, the way your body clenched around him as the rhythm slipped and faltered.

He watched your face, felt the stutter in your hips, and his voice dropped even lower. “I’ve got you, doll.”

Your head fell forward into the crook of his neck, breath ragged. You whimpered something, but it barely made it past your lips.

“Let go for me,” he coaxed, guiding your hips with a firm roll upward. “Wanna feel you lose it, sweetheart.”

And then it hit, sharp and hot and all-consuming.

Your voice cracked as you wailed his name.

He held you flush against him, managing to keep you both upright.

“How did you -” you whispered, still stunned.

He grinned, breath ragged as he kissed your throat, your jaw, your cheek.

And then he shifted his hips beneath you, deeper, harder, and your breath hitched all over again.

“Still with me?” he rasped.

You nodded, dizzy, already moving with him, already needing more.

“Good,” he muttered, catching your mouth in a kiss, one hand tangled in your hair, the other guiding your hips faster. “I know you're not done.”

Your rhythm slipping into something hungry and headlong. No finesse, just heat and instinct and the heady push-pull of both of you unraveling together.

He met you thrust for thrust, hands guiding your movements, eyes locked on yours like he couldn’t bear to miss a single second.

“Come on, baby, just like that,” he groaned, voice ragged. “You feel so good, so fuckin’ good -”

Your thighs burned with effort, your knees spread wide so he could fill you completely

You leaned forward, mouths brushing, breath mingling, forehead to forehead. “I - I’m -”

“I know,” he whispered, tilting his hips just right. “I’ve got you. Let go, sweetheart.”

The way he said it, desperate and pleading was what finally tipped you over. Your whole body seized around him with a cry you couldn’t hold back.

He held you through it again, groaning as your body clenched around him, his own release catching up in a sudden, sharp rush. He cursed into your neck, holding you so tight it felt like you were the only thing keeping him grounded.

“Fuck, fuck sweetheart,” he hissed, pulsing inside you.

You let him guide you both down onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and panting breaths, your head resting against his shoulder.

“Holy shit,” you mumbled, still trembling.

Bucky laughed, a low, warm rumble that vibrated through his chest. “Yeah, you're not wrong.”

And then, quietly, he whispered, “Told you I’d kiss you again.”

“Kiss me? I think you mean kill me?”

He grinned against your shoulder. “Not yet. I was gonna order room service first.”

He kissed your bare shoulder before dragging himself to the room service menu like it was a sacred mission, slinging the condom in the bin on his way. You watched him climb back up the bed, back up your body, leaving kisses in his wake.

“We’re getting everything. Don’t argue.”

“Who’s arguing?” you yawned, stretching like a cat against him.

In the thirty minutes waiting for room service, you let the hot shower soothe your aching muscles, his hands roaming over your soapy skin until they once again found your bruised hips and he dropped to his knees. You braced your back against the cool tiles, one leg draped over his shoulder, your moans echoing through the bathroom.

You emerged flushed and tangled in towels, breathless from both the heat and him, just in time to hear the knock on the door.

You hid while he accepted the tray of burgers and fries in just his boxers, his hair damp from the shower and pulled from your hands threading through it.

He fed you a fry, then licked the salt off your lips, not bothering to wait before trailing more kisses down your neck.

“Midnight snack round one,” he murmured into your skin. “I’ve got other courses in mind.”

You stole a bite of his burger. “Why, did you order dessert?” You grinned.

He grinned, slow and wolfish. “Full tasting menu, actually.”

The plates were forgotten and pushed aside, he dragged you beneath him again.

When you woke up, the room was still dark.

“Don’t move,” he murmured, voice gravelly, his breath warm between your shoulder blades.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You'd slept mostly on your stomach, his body right behind you pressed into you from head to toe. His knee wedged between yours, your back as his pillow.

He pulled you against him, reaching around to open you up to him and pushed into you, your breathless moan muffled by the pillow. His body covered yours, pressing you into the mattress with each lazy thrust. You came quickly with a quiet cry and he followed, burying himself into you and biting your shoulder.

You lay contented and sated for a minute before you rolled onto your side and found him watching you, hair a mess, smile soft, eyes heavy with affection.

“Morning,” you croaked, throat dry, body still deliciously sore. “Love the new alarm clock.”

“Hmm, same time every morning?” He smiled sleepily. “Still alive?”

“Debatable.” You stretched, then winced. “You’re a menace.”

He kissed your forehead. “You love it.”

You buried your face in his chest. “Unfortunately.”

The phone buzzed on the nightstand, a calendar reminder, messages from the girls, the studio. Reality calling.

He stretched, one arm behind his head, “when do you fly out?”

Your heart sank a little. “Tomorrow night. Straight after the Critics Choice holiday thing.”

His brow furrowed. “Wait, that’s… you're going straight to the airport from there?”

You nodded, “red-eye to Heathrow. My dad will kill me if I’m not home by the 23rd.”

A thoughtful silence fell between you.

“Want to sneak into my carry-on?” You asked softly.

“Don’t tempt me.”

Neither of you wanted to move too fast and break the spell. But eventually, you both knew: time was up.

He reached over, pulling you into him. “Ok. So we do the event. I try not to stare like an idiot. And then… January?”

“January,” you repeated, the promise soft and certain, “I'll be back here.”

He leaned in, kissed your cheek, then your jaw.

“You’d better be,” he murmured, brushing his lips to your temple.

You stayed like that, your head on his shoulder, then he whispered, “January can’t come fast enough.”

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