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kenthoe · 20 days ago

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Your Five Truths¹

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x reader Summary: You have five simple truths. But when your relationship and your life are put on the line, you start to question what you believe in anymore. Warnings: reader is a bau tech analyst, serious angst, aaron is being mean, big argument, mentions of haley's death, references to foyet arc, home invasion, graphic descriptions of violence Words: 3.5K

Masterlist | Part 2

a/n: there will be a part 2.

1. Aaron doesn't yell at you.

If all else was unsure, then this was one of the five things you knew for certain. You weren't sure if he yelled at all. Maybe at work with criminals, but never with you.

This was still true.

Right now, he wasn't yelling at you. He was speaking in an even tone, but you knew him well enough to notice the difference. His voice was as cold as his rigid stance, like ice ran through his veins. His arms were crossed, and so, even if you weren't a criminal—even if you knew you were his fiancé—you sure as hell felt like one.

Standing on the other side of the kitchen island, you were in opposition of each other in every sense of the word.

You took a deep breath before speaking. "Aaron—"

He cut you off before the words could even leave your mouth. "We've had this conversation before. I've already told you how I feel about it."

You repressed the urge to take another breath, knowing he was a profiler. Knowing he could profile the discomfort all over you, regardless. But you picked up a few profiling tricks, too.

You could see the way he was staring at you. Like you were an idiot.

Maybe you agreed on that.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot—

You took the breath, anyway. "Aaron, I said I'm sorry."

You tried to step closer to him, and he didn't move away. But he didn't usher you into his arms, either.

And despite the fact that Aaron doesn't yell at you, you could tell he really wanted to.

"And I'm saying you shouldn't have to say sorry. We shouldn't be having this conversation because you shouldn't have done it," he scolded.

You took another step closer, rounding the counter like your body was trying to get him to physically understand, to remind him that you were on the same side.

"What was I supposed to do?" Your voice was desparate now, almost like you actually wanted him to answer. "You were working. I had to work. You weren't picking up the phone—"

"That's right," he cut you off again. This time, he stepped closer to you. "I was working. You weren't."

2. You have an equal relationship.

The second truth was what had you tilting your head. You were already flushed from the heat of the argument, but now you could feel yourself getting a little angry.

"What do you mean I wasn't working?" you questioned. "Yes, I was. Garcia said you called everyone in; you said to get there stat."

He was quick. "I meant everyone that was necessary. You aren't."

You could feel the cut immediately, etched deep into your skin. It didn't matter how he said it, frivolous or not—the words were sharp enough to cut you effortlessly.

You aren't necessary.

The words echoed through your head. Words you'd heard before, but never from him. Never from the man who swore to be better than everyone else who ever hurt you.

Yet, no matter how much you'd been hurt in the past, it hurt a thousand times more to come from him.

You waited for him to say something else, waiting for any sign of regret to cross his face.

Nothing did.

There were many times when you wished you had Aaron's poker face, but right now, you didn't have to try. The sadness flooding your body remained internal; the only thing that showed on your face was rage.

Your eyes narrowed. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Hotch doubled down, staring you right in the eye. "It means your job is an accessory. Garcia does the same job as you—you aren't needed."

That was a lie so blatant it made you scoff. You were a technical analyst for the BAU, and you'd proven yourself time and time again. Hotch was the one that hired you—he's the one that said he saw something in you.

Apparently not.

"I'm not needed," you echoed, sarcasm lacing your voice. "Right. So when an alert comes out that there is an active hostage situation and a potential terrorist threat, what do you expect me to do? Not come into work?"

"Yes," he deadpanned. "Not when you're picking up my son."

You ran a hand through your hair, stuck in disbelief. "You can't be serious—"

"When you're picking up my son, what I expect is for you to take him home."

You spoke over him, countering, "I brought him to a place where I knew he'd be out of harm's way. You weren't picking up the phone. I did what I thought was best—"

"You brought him to Jessica—"

"I brought him to his aunt—"

For the first time since the conversation started, Aaron raised his voice just enough for it to stop you dead in your tracks. "You don't get to bring him to his aunt. You are not his mother!"

3. You are not Jack's mother.

You knew that. God, you knew that. You were there to see the carnage in the Hotchner household after Haley's death. The blood that splattered the walls. The boy who was too young to spell the word devastation but still felt it in his bones.

You knew you were not Jack's mother. You lived in a house with her pictures on the wall. Jack was a mirror image of her; he was her son, and you knew that. It was one of the truths you held the most conviction in.

It was the truth.

But you still recoiled, almost like Aaron had slapped you. A part of you thought maybe that would've hurt less.

All the fire you had was extinguished. You didn't have a rebuttal for that. What could you say? It didn't matter if you loved Jack like he was your own—that didn't change the fact that he wasn't.

You avoided Aaron's gaze, choosing to stare at the pattern of his tie instead and trying not to succumb to the sting in your eyes. You liked this tie; it was one of your favourites. You were close enough to him to see all its beautiful details.

But, at the same time, you'd never been further away from him.

Aaron still hadn't said anything, and out of fear that the dam would break if the silence continued, you spoke up. "I—" your voice cracked. "I know I'm not Jack's mother, and I'm not trying to be." You paused. "I was just doing what I thought was best."

You left it there, not knowing if the right words to say the right thing even existed. Saying the right thing was always Aaron's thing, not yours.

But whatever words he was going to say were cut off by the shrill pinging of a cellphone. Two cellphones.

Aaron picked up his first, sighing immediately. You didn't have to guess what it said. "We have another case." The heat in his voice was gone; he sounded like himself.

That didn't mean you felt any less burned.

"Okay, um—" you couldn't stop yourself from sniffling even if you tried. "I'll stay here and watch Jack. You go."

Another sigh left him. "Y/N—"

The sound of your name leaving his mouth almost made you cry, but you persisted, "No, you can go, it's fine." You chuckled if not just to make light of it for yourself. "I'm not needed there, anyway."

"Y/N."

"Aaron." You fingally looked up at him, and you saw it. Remorse swirling in his brown eyes. The same eyes that crinkled at the sides when you said you'd marry him. Somehow, that made it worse, knowing that it was the same person who said both of those things. Who built you up from scratch just to bring you right back to the bottom.

You repeated yourself, "Go." The team needs you, you wanted to say. The only reason you didn't say it was because he'd already accused you of trying to be his past wife; you didn't need to prove him right.

You could practically hear the churning of his inner turmoil, torn between staying and leaving. It was pointless; you both knew what his decision would be.

When he reached for his go-bag, it was final. And in some ways, he was leaving more than just the house.

As if he could sense that, he turned around. "We'll finish this discussion when I'm back," he said. That was an anchor: telling you something about the present by talking about the future. When I'm back meant that he'd be back. Discussion meant you had something to talk about, a two-sided activity. We meant you were still one unit; you were still a we.

Maybe that's what he meant by it. If you scoured through his words and read between the lines, maybe you'd find the beginnings of an apology—in his own way, at least. But he wasn't sorry, not for what he said. If anything, he was only sorry that he said it.

You wouldn't profile him and ascribe meaning to words that didn't mean anything. We'll finish this discussion when I'm back meant you'd finish the discussion when he was back.

When you replied, that was what you were replying to. "Okay."

You weren't okay.

This wasn't okay.

Aaron cast one last look at you before he crossed the threshold. You looked away.

And then he was out the door, leaving you in a house that no longer felt like your own.

—

"Y/N, my love, I thought I'd die without you!"

Penelope was on you as soon as you walked into the bat cave, shooting up from her chair and hugging you so tightly that you would've thought you'd been gone for ages. Really, you were only gone for a night.

You told Aaron that you wouldn't be coming in, and you were holding true to that, but you weren't gonna make Garcia work alone if she had to, even if she was perfectly capable of it.

You knew you weren't needed. Hotch was right: this ship could sail just fine without you. But you could help.

You'd just dropped Jack off at school, so now you were here, ready to work until you had to pick him up again.

You forced yourself to laugh at her words, causing her to hit your back. "No, I'm being serious! You're my oxygen—I can't live without you."

At that, you snorted. "Okay, Penelope."

She pulled back, resting her hands on your shoulders. "Seriously, though." She looked deep into your eyes, seeming to be looking for something. "Are... are you okay? I don't even think you've taken a sick day since... since forever."

You smiled at her exaggeration, even if it didn't really reach your eyes. "Yeah, I'm fine, P. I just have to leave early to go get Jack, and um... I'm gonna stay off camera today. And off the phones." You shifted your weight. "Not like it matters or anything, but I just don't really want Hotch knowing I'm here. I just want to stay in the background today, if that's okay?"

Her brows raised, but she quickly affirmed, "Yes, that's okay! Totally okay. We'll keep this 100% incognito."

It was in Garcia's nature to ask questions, so you knew she had them, but she didn't voice a single one.

You talked about work, and new bureau technology, and your next girls night, and everything but what you asked of her.

You'd never been more grateful.

—

It'd been two days since the team left, two days of bouncing back and forth between the office and back home with Jack. The son that wasn't really yours. The son that felt like yours, anyway.

If you were doing as good as you thought you were, then nobody knew you were even there. Garcia was telling the rest of them that you were sick. Your phone had been flooded with get well soon messages from everyone except the one person you really wanted one from.

Aaron hadn't spoken to you since he left. You wished it didn't hurt as badly as it did.

"Okay, Jackers! I think it's time we head to bed."

"What?" You held back a laugh at the incredulity in his voice, knowing that—for an 8 year old—this was a very serious matter. He looked at you with traces of shock, somehow looking everything and nothing like his father at the same time. "But it's only ten o'clock!"

"Ah, and yet it is still past your bed time. Mine, too."

Jack frowned—and there it was. There was that bit of Aaron you were looking for. "You say that, but you're just going to stay up after I go to sleep."

You couldn't suppress the smile on your face any longer. "No, Jack. I promise you I'm so tired, I'll be out as soon as my head hits the pillow." You ruffled his hair, your smile becoming a grin as he groaned. "Now go brush your teeth, little man."

Jack got up from the table, his little feet pitter-pattering across the floor as he made his way to the stairs. It didn't sound much like a pitter-patter anymore now that he was getting older, but he would always be the same little boy to you. So, "pitter-patter" it was.

Until suddenly, you heard a different noise.

Not pitter-patter.

The door.

Your eyes darted to Jack as he stopped in his tracks, then they darted to the door. The knob, turning lightly, gold glinting in the light. The sound of your own heart beating was just as loud as the turning. The person got impatient, the knob turning faster now, like someone was trying to pry it open.

Fuck. Fuck.

Your mind ran a mile a minute. That wasn't Hotch. You weren't expecting anyone, and whoever was at the door certainly wasn't asking for an invite in.

They were trying to force their way in.

Somebody was breaking in to the house.

With that realization, you were moving. "Jack." You caught his attention easily, spotting the fear on his face right away. More than fear.

Familiarity.

He went through his before. Oh, your Jack. He'd been through this before, and he would know what to do. You did.

Conversations with Aaron flashed through your head, just-in-case scenarios, if then statements. Emergencies.

You knew what to do, too.

You just never thought you'd have to.

You grabbed onto Jack's shoulder, immediately feeling how his body was trembling. "Jack, I need you to listen to me." The knob got louder. You lowered your voice. "I need you to work the case, okay? Like with your dad. Do you understand me?"

His eyes went wide. "Wait, Y/N. What about you—"

"Jack. Do you understand me?" He went quiet, and then he nodded, making you sigh in relief. "Okay, take my phone. Call 911, but don't make a sound." You handed him the phone, and then you let go of him. "I love you." Your throat closed up. "Now go."

Jack ran up the stairs, and you were up automatically, trusting he'd do as you said.

It was like someone else was in your body, telling you what to do. You opened the pantry, looking where you'd never looked and typing numbers into a keypad you'd never touched.

Why do we need a safe in the kitchen? you had laughed at the time.

In case of an emergency, Aaron had said. You thanked his forward thinking.

The only way you knew that you were still there was by the violent shaking of your hands as the cool metal touched your skin. You'd only ever operated a gun once or twice. Did you even remember how to load it?

The door banged, making you jolt. You had to remember now. Come on, Y/N. Load the fucking gun.

You thrusted the magazine into the well and then pulled back the slide. Another bang. You turned the safety off.

Hold the gun with both hands.

God, Hotch, when will I ever need to do this?

Well, I hope you never have to. But we can never be too safe.

Another bang hit the door, this time more forceful. We can never too safe. Tears flooded your eyes, and you promptly blinked them away.

Then. There was another bang, and this time, the door hit the wall.

You intook a sharp breath, hearing footsteps thump against the floor. You closed your eyes, focusing on the noise. One set of footsteps.

Aaron's voice echoed throughout your head. Are you sure?

You screwed your eyes shut tighter, straining your ears. Yes. One person. Loud. Heavy. Male.

Okay, that's good. What else do you know?

You knew they spent a long time fiddling with the door knob before busting the door open. That could either mean they lacked physical strength or they were trying to taunt you. The second option. You knew this was a low-risk neighbourhood. You knew your car was out front. This wasn't about money. This was personal. Intentional.

You knew this was an FBI agent's house. You knew—

Wait. You strained your ears more, following the footsteps. They weren't heading for your direction. No. No, no, no, no.

Jack was upstairs.

You couldn't let this man go up there.

4. You love Jack Hotchner unconditionally.

Knowing number four makes you act fast with a determination you'd never felt before. The pantry door swung open as you left the enclosed space, instantly raising the gun in the air like it was weightless.

You pointed it at your stairwell where a masked man stood, motionless.

"You better stop right there, you son of a bitch," you threatened, cocking the gun like it was second nature to you.

The man raised his hands into the air slowly. He tilted his head at you as if he was trying to mock you.

And then he smiled.

Before you could even realize what was happening, he was running at you. Your eyes widened, pulling the trigger. You barely got to see if your shot made it before he was tackling you to the ground, knocking the gun out of your hands.

The back of your head hit the ground, making a sickening crack. You gasped for air, and then you were wheezing as the man's hands wrapped around your neck, squeezing tightly.

You looked up into his demented eyes, hearing not the sound of your own voice but Hotch's. Use what you see. Frantically, your eyes flew all over the unsub's body until you saw red staining black, right at his shoulder.

Without thinking about it, you stuck your finger into the wound, hearing him scream. He was stunned enough that he loosened his grip, giving you the chance to kick him off of you.

You scrambled to your feet, searching for the gun and finding it in the middle of the living room floor. You dove for it right as he got back up, getting to you before you could try shooting again.

His hands wrapped around yours, trying to wrestle the gun from your hands. You held on like your life depended on it because it did. Your life depended on it— Jack's life depended on it.

You fired a shot into the ground and then another into the wall as he fought you, knocking a picture frame off the mantle. You couldn't see where the gun was pointing anymore, but then, suddenly, pain radiated throughout your lower abdomen, and you knew it was pointed at you.

You gasped, looking down and seeing blood spreading through the white of your tank top.

You looked back up, seeing the asshole smile at you with his teeth. They were pearly white. So clean for a man so dirty.

You sought to make them red, too.

In a surge of energy, you twisted the gun out of his grasp and didn't think before pointing it at his head and firing.

You watched the bullet penetrate his skull before he fell to the ground. Like a domino, you followed, crumpling against the couch.

The gun slipped out of your hands and they immediately went to your wound, making you hiss in pain. You pressed down on it, feeling blood flow between your fingers like a river.

Keep swimming. Keep your eyes open.

The fatigue hit you like a train. You blinked, trying to keep your eyes open, but they felt so heavy.

Jack. Jack was upstairs. He called the police.

He was okay.

You heard sirens in the distance. The police were coming.

You could sleep now.

And so, as you remembered your fifth truth, your eyes started to flutter closed.

5. You love Aaron Hotchner. And he loves you.

You let yourself fall into a dreamless sleep, hoping that somehow, on some plane of consciousness, he could hear you say I love you one last time.

You loved Aaron Hotchner. You knew that for certain.

You just hoped he still loved you.

#☆ kent's recs #aaron hotchner x reader angst

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kenthoe · 20 days ago

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The Truth²

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x reader Summary: Aaron had always valued the truth above all else. But sometimes the truth isn't enough. Warnings: home invasion, murder (self-defence), cm-typical cases, references to foyet arc and haley's death, aaron was mean, grovelling, complicated relationships, lots of angst Words: 4.7K

Masterlist | Part 1

a/n: omg, i'm so sorry for leaving you all hanging! i genuinely forgot ab this with exams and everything. but thank you so much for all the love! it means the world. lmk if you want a part 3!

Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

"Hotch."

Aaron looked from the papers haphazardly placed across the table, seeing Morgan standing in the threshold. "Yes?"

Derek nodded his head outward. "Garcia's on the line. We've got a lead."

He was up before Derek could finish his sentence, following him out of the makeshift office and into the conference room where the rest of the team sat.

"Go ahead, babygirl."

Garcia's voice crackled to life from the receiver on the table. "Okay, so after some deep, deep sleuthing, I have found that the victims do all indeed have something in common. Each of them has been involved in a court case, specifically domestic disputes, that kind of thing. Andrew Sykes was a character witness in a rape trial, Maya Zhao the plaintiff in another, and Carson Williams the accused. The only reason Carson's name didn't come up immediately is because his record was expunged—he was a minor at the time."

Emily raised her hand into the air, her eyebrows scrunching together. "Wait, wait, wait. So the unsub is targeting just random people who've been involved in rape cases?"

Reid tilted his head. "Garcia, what was the outcome of each case?"

"Um..." she paused, her keyboard clacking. "The first case with Sykes was dismissed, Maya's rapist was found guily, and Carson was found... not guilty."

"Guys, what if the unsub doesn't just choose his targets because they're involved? What if he's choosing them because he thinks they're lying?"

JJ raised a brow. "Lying about the crime?"

"Yes! What if that's the link? Not because of the lives they lead but the choices they made?"

"That would explain the overkill," Rossi added. "If the unsub believes the victims are disingenuous, ruining people's lives, then that may be his justification for taking them."

Hotch nodded, going over the details in his head before he agreed. "We're ready to give the profile. Thank you, Garcia."

"You got it." A click resounded, signalling the call was over. Similarly, everyone cleared the room, slowly filtering out.

Emily was the last one in the room, appearing to be grabbing her files before setting them down on the table once everyone was gone. "Hotch."

He stopped turning halfway through, turning to give her his attention. While he expected curiosity on her face, what he didn't expect was the pure inquisitiveness, if not interrogation, that he saw.

"What's going on with Y/N?"

He had to stop himself from intaking a breath, but he knew even that was futile. Emily was nothing if not a great profiler, and she had taken to profiling him very well. When he saw the curiosity on her face start to resemble accusation, he knew that he gave something away, anyway.

Before he could even think of anything to say, she continued, "She hasn't been to work in days. She says she's sick, but... you haven't called her once to check in on her. And normally you call her all the time when she's in perfect health." She tilted her head in a way that felt like a challenge and then repeated herself. "What's going on?"

Hotch's first instinct was to defend himself, even though Emily didn't know anything about what happened. He could explain it, but then what would he say? That he told you that you weren't Jack's mother? That he called you an accessory? That he was cruel?

He implied that you weren't a member of this team. But the way Emily was searching for information told him otherwise.

This wasn't a case. He couldn't lay out all the facts and present it to jury. And he couldn't coldly tear you down like you were a defendant in need of prosecution.

But you did, his mind echoed. You already did that.

He wished he didn't.

He stopped avoiding Emily's eyes, and he told the best truth he could tell at that moment. "We got into an argument," No, he berated you. "and we haven't spoken since. I've been... trying to give her space."

Emily looked as though she were mentally calculating what he could've said to warrant so much space. But if he told the full truth, the honest truth, then she would know that he created a distance between you that he didn't know how to bridge.

"Hotch—" she paused like she was debating whether or not to speak her mind. "Don't take this the wrong way, because I'm saying this with the utmost respect. But you have a great thing with a great person." She let her words soak in before delivering the final blow. "Don't mess it up."

Hotch didn't need to respond to that, and Emily didn't need to say anything else, leaving the room right after. He already messed up a marriage, and she knew that. She was there when he received the divorce papers. So were you. Yet you let him fall in love with you anyway, and you loved him back with everything you had.

But at that moment, he felt like he didn't deserve any of it.

—

Standing in the police station's bullpen, Aaron's fingers hovered over his keyboard, twitching with uncertainty. He didn't know what to type.

He was good with words. He sent people to prison with compelling arguments. He co-wrote the textbook on hostage negotiation. He didn't need Reid's lexicon to know he was good with words. But maybe it would help with knowing what to say to you.

There were too many things to apologize for, and not enough variations of the word sorry to account for any of it. Sorry didn't hold enough weight.

But it was all he could think of that was acceptable to say over text, and Emily was right: he couldn't afford to mess this up.

So he started typing, starting with an absolute truth before he said anything else.

I love yo—

Garcia's contact filled his screen, interrupting his message. He sighed, and then immediately felt guilty about it. He had three victims and the potential for more. The case had to be his focus, not his wrongdoings, no matter how wrong they were.

He accepted the call, pressing the phone to his ear and getting straight to the point. "Have you found anyone in connection with the three court cases?

"No! Well, yes, but no, that's not what I'm calling about. Sir—" Garcia cut herself off with something that sounded like a sob.

Hotch furrowed his brows. "Garcia?"

"Hotch. Some— something happened." Garcia took a deep breath. "It's Y/N."

Hotch felt his world stop. All time and reason and logic ceased to exist. All he could hear were Penelope's words, playing on a loop like a broken record he never wanted to hear.

It's Y/N.

Just like that, the earth started spinning again, making bile rise in the back of his throat. "What happened?"

From the corner of his eye, he could just barely see the team looking up at him. He couldn't really pay attention to it.

When the silence went on too long, he repeated himself. Sharply. "Garcia. What happened?"

"There— there was a break-in at— at your house." Hotch's heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. No. No, no, no— "Jack is fine, he's completely unharmed, but Y/N—" Garcia's sobbing cut her off once more.

"Where is she?"

"Bethesda, at Suburban Hospital."

"I'm on my way there right now." Hotch immediately hung up. When he looked up, he found expectant faces staring back at him.

Rossi broke the silence. "Aaron?"

Hotch didn't waste another second. "My house was broken into. Y/N's been—" He didn't even know. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know. "Y/N's in the hospital. I need to leave."

Everyone was quick to rise to their feet. "What?" Morgan's voice cut through the air. "Hotch, we can't just stay here. This is Y/N we're talking about."

Hotch had completely forgotten about the case, but it was brought right back to his mind. "No, you have to. This is still an active case—"

"Your house was broken into. You don't call that an active case?"

"It is. But we can't all leave. Garcia has another update, call her back and find out what it was." He didn't stay any longer than that, leaving the room without another word.

He stormed past officers gazing at him curiously. He couldn't bring himself to care about any of it.

He threw open the door to the SUV, the keys nearly falling out of his hands for how badly they were shaking.

You aren't needed.

"Aaron!"

Hotch wouldn't have heard the calling of his own name if the car door hadn't opened, startling him. He looked over, seeing Rossi get in the passenger seat.

"Dave—"

Rossi appeased, "It's alright. I left Morgan in charge. Told the others to update me and I'd update them. Now, let's go."

If Hotch had the will or the energy to argue, he would've. But all he could think about was you. The same you he callously tore down without care for your feelings. The same you who said yes without thinking twice when he proposed. The same you who could be in any condition right now, not knowing how much he loved you.

So, he just nodded. He started the car, squeezing the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white to stop his hands from shaking, praying that you were okay.

He prayed that you knew the truth. Unsent messages and unsaid words.

I love you.

—

When Aaron got some of his wits back, he realized he had to call Garcia. It was stupid to sit on the jet without knowing how you were.

You were shot. While protecting his son.

Your son.

Sharp words echoed through his head, words he knew would cut deep and said them anyway. Now you were the one bleeding in an operating room while he was still hours away, and the distance between you had never been so large.

You are not his mother!

"Aaron."

Hotch looked up, finding Rossi staring at him with concern swirling in his eyes. Whatever he was going to say to comfort him wouldn't work. This wasn't something Hotch could be consoled over.

"She's going to okay," Dave reassured. He looked like he truly believed it, but Aaron knew the importance in not making promises you couldn't keep. "She shot the guy back—put a bullet right between his eyes. Whose influence do you think she got that from?"

Aaron sighed. He taught you how to shoot a gun. But he may as well have been the one to pull the trigger. "It's my fault, Dave. If I had never left her there—"

"She still would've gone home, Aaron."

"No, you don't understand. I left her." Aaron met his eyes, even though Rossi's figure started to blur. "I left her, and I—" he cut himself off, swallowing harshly.

He couldn't even believe that he said it. Before this, he couldn't have imagined a world where he said any of it.

You were his world. You and Jack were his family. But he made you feel like you weren't part of it at all.

Dave cocked his head. "Something happened between you two," he stated. Not a question.

Aaron swallowed a second time. "Yes."

He almost thought Rossi would ask him what happened, but he did the opposite. He only sighed. "Look, Aaron. I don't know what happened between you, or what you said that has you ruminating so deeply. But whatever happened, you have to know that it is not your fault that this happened to her."

"Dave—"

Rossi waved his hands in the air. "No, I don't really care for whatever illogical, self-deprecating argument you have right now. She wouldn't, either." He sat up straighter in the seat across from him, leaning forward. "What you need to think about right now is the fact that she's okay. That is what you need to believe. She shot this asshole, and we'll figure out who he is as soon as we touch down. You can apologize later. But she is okay, Aaron."

Were you, though? Even if you were physically okay—which he had no way of knowing—were you okay mentally? What about your relationship?

Another lifetime ago, Hotch could remember a relationship with a wife who grew to resent him. The image of her body sprawled across the ground was etched into his memory.

He closed his eyes, and when he reopened them, he was blinking tears away. "This has happened before, Dave."

Rossi didn't have any real response. Quietly, he said, "I know." He remembered just as well as Aaron, just as well as everyone else.

No one had ever forgotten.

—

By the time Hotch and Rossi got to the hospital, it was already dark out. Rossi insisted that he be the one to drive. Hotch was getting out of the car before it'd even fully stopped.

Garcia already told him what floor to go to. She was there when he came running out of the elevator.

She quickly stood up. "Sir—"

"How is she?" He was out of breath.

"I-I don't know. She's still in the OR. They— they've been in there a while, but no one has been out to update me yet— oh, God. Oh, God, I hope she's okay."

Hotch ran a hand through his hair. You were still in surgery. He didn't know what that meant.

He couldn't think about it. If he thought about it, then—

"Jack?"

"Oh! Yes, um, he's with Jessica. They were here but I told them to head home. I'm so sorry, I didn't even think— of course, you would want to see him. I can—"

"No, that's okay," he assured, even though it looked more like he was assuring himself. "He should be in a place that's familiar to him right now." Oh, his poor boy. His poor, sweet boy had seen enough blood to last a lifetime. Hotch couldn't help but think that Jack already lost a mother once; he couldn't lose one again.

You are not his mother.

He released a shaky breath, then tried to school his expression. "Okay, what do we know about the unsub?"

Garcia's eyes widened. "Everything! I have him dead to rights, Sir." Without reading from a screen, she recited, "Forensics ID'd him as Joshua Lawrence—"

Hotch cut her off, recognition flashing in his brain. "Lawrence?"

"Yes, Sir. Lawrence was the unsub in a murder case you prosecuted back in '94. Went to prison for life after being charged with second degree murder of his girlfriend when he was 16. He was just released on good behaviour 2 days ago."

The pit in Hotch's stomach deepened. His voice was grave. "And so he wanted to punish me by going after my family."

Penelope winced, not for the first time since their conversation started. "Yes, Sir. And he's dead now." For some reason, that didn't make Hotch feel all that better. His family was still paying for his sins. Jobs he had. Deals he didn't take.

Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

"For Y/N Y/L/N?"

Both Aaron and Penelope turned around in quick speed. A doctor in blue scrubs stood before them, a scrub cap still sitting atop her head. Aaron stopped breathing. He barely even noticed Rossi coming to stand beside him.

But he was the head of the BAU, and he could spot the doctor's cool expression a mile away. So the weight on his chest felt lighter before she even said a word.

"I'm Dr. Reyes. Ms. Y/L/N is stable. We removed the bullet, and she should make a full recovery. There were some complications during surgery. The bullet knicked a major artery, but we were able to replace the area with a graft. She is incredibly lucky," she emphasized. "If the police hadn't been called at the time they were, the outcome could have been entirely different."

Aaron let out a breath of relief while Rossi asked the questions he didn't have the mind to ask. "How long will she be in recovery?"

"I'd like to monitor her here for about a week," Reyes replied. "She's resting right now in room 305, but I can allow one of you in there."

Finally, Aaron could speak. "Thank you, Dr. Reyes." He couldn't truly put his appreciation into words.

Reyes nodded, and then she turned and walked away. Rossi and Garcia immediately turned back to him. "Well? What are you waiting for? Go see her," the former urged.

Hotch hesitated, much unlike the man his team was used to and much unlike the man he was used to. He masked it with careful redirection. Turning to Garcia, he asked, "Where are we with the case?"

The blonde was wiping mascara from beneath her eyes, looking confused for half a second before realization dawned on her. "Oh, um, the case has been solved, Sir. Stenographer Albert Brown was the culprit; Morgan et al. pursued him just an hour ago. They should be wrapping up at the station now."

Hotch nodded. "Good."

Tiredly, she added, "Would've found him sooner if we'd made the connection between the cases earlier. Y/N/N had a hard time with that one record since it was expunged and all—"

Hotch's brows furrowed. "Y/N? She hasn't been to work."

Garcia's glasses suddenly fell back to her nose, her eyes widening in a way that told them both she'd said more than she meant to. "Right," she whispered. "Right, she hasn't. Except— she has. She comes in right after dropping off Jack and leaves when it's time to pick him up."

Despite the way the words rapidly tumbled out of her mouth, Aaron understood every word. You were still coming into work. Doing the job without receiving any credit for it. Even after what he said to you. Not only that, but you were staying with Jack like it was your top priority, even though you were working.

If Aaron hadn't felt sick before, he surely felt sick now.

Rossi was looking at him like he was a ticking time bomb set to explode, Garcia bracing herself for the impact.

Hotch cleared his throat. "I'm going to see her now," he informed them. Neither of them said another thing as he walked in your direction.

But deep down, he didn't feel like he deserve to see you at all.

—

When you opened your eyes, the first thing you did was close them again. The light was too much, and your eyelids felt as though they were being weighed down.

The dull throbbing in your abdomen made you open your eyes again, looking down to see your body covered in a hospital gown atop a hospital bed. For a second, you were confused, until the memories hit you like a train.

Doorknob. Gun. Man. Blood.

You took in a sharp breath, which made the pain worse. As if the noise had triggered it, movement started to your left.

You turned your head, seeing a man in a suit sitting in the chair beside your bed. Light streamed in from the curtains, highlighting his brown hair. And although you couldn't see his face right away, you only knew one man who would sleep in an uncomfortable chair in a suit.

Aaron.

He rubbed at his eyes, and you deduced that he must've been there for a while. When his eyes were no longer obscured by his hands, they locked with yours. You watched them soften in real time.

Quietly, he said, "Hi."

Your heart squeezed. "Hi—" your voice broke into a cough. Aaron was quick to grab the water at the side table, guiding the straw into your mouth. The water felt cool travelling down your throat, but you couldn't stop the way your face warmed.

Aaron put the water back when you signalled you were done, and then he stood there awkwardly. Under different circumstances, you would've found it cute. But how could soft eyes and gestures mean anything to you when you could still remember the hardened scowl on his face before he left?

You don't know how long the silence lasted before he spoke. "Y/N—"

"Can I see Jack?" You didn't mean to cut him off, not really, but it was instinctual. You didn't know what Aaron was going to say, but you knew you didn't want to hear it yet.

Aaron's shoulders deflated, but he didn't say anything in protest. "Yes, of course." He nodded—to you or himself, you weren't sure. "I'll go call Jessica now."

Aaron left the room, phone in hand. As soon as he was out of the room, you sighed to yourself. At the sight of your engagement ring glinting in the light, you screwed your eyes shut once more.

Not a mother. Not a team-member.

Were you still a fiancé?

—

"Y/N!"

At the sight of a blonde flurry of hair rushing your way, you smiled wider than you'd smiled in days. You laughed, despite the fact that it made your stomach hurt. "Jackers."

Jack rushed the side of your bed, only stopped by his father's voice. "Easy, Jack." The smile on your face faltered slightly at the sound, glancing at Aaron standing in the doorway. His eyes were fixed on his son. "Remember what we said, okay? Y/N's been hurt, so you have to be gentle." He glanced at you momentarily during the explanation, looking strained.

"Yes, Daddy. I know." After his confirmation, Jack's attention was back on you, concern colouring his features. "Are you okay, Y/N?"

You softened at the serious look on his face. Aaron used to joke that he was all Haley, but that look was purely him. "Yes, I'm fine, buddy," you lied. "Don't worry about me."

Jack didn't look like he believed you. You didn't blame him. "Are you sure? There was a lot of blood."

You took a deep breath. In your peripheral vision, you could see Aaron take a step forward, but you collected yourself before he could say anything. "I know. And I'm really sorry you had to see that." You blinked away the tears welling in your eyes. "You did very good, Jack. Listening to me and calling the police."

Jack's grin stretched from ear to ear. "I did?" he echoed.

You nodded, smiling back at him. "You did. Thank you."

"I'm just glad you're okay, Mommy." Your breath hitched, but Jack looked none the wiser. If you dared to glance at Aaron, you would see him in the same speechless state. As if he didn't just turn your world upside down, Jack followed up, "Can I come lay with you?"

This time, Aaron intervened. "Jack—"

"Of course, sweetheart. You can come sit right here." You moved over on the bed, ignoring the ache altogether. And for the first time since Jack entered the room, you looked directly at Aaron, silently asking him with your eyes to help him onto the bed.

The cautious look in his eyes told you he disagreed with you, but he still walked over and helped Jack up, anyway, carefully placing him on the bed. You immediately wrapped your arm around him as he settled into your side. The feeling calmed you down more than the morphine pumping through your veins.

Jack yawned, prompting you to ask, "Do you want a bedtime story?" He nodded fervently, despite whining that he was 'too old' for that now, causing you to giggle. Running a hand through his hair, you started, "Okay. Once upon a time, there was a princess, hiding away in a tower. You see, it wasn't safe outside. Someone had captured the sun and made it so dark outside that she couldn't leave. So she waited, and waited, and waited for the day the sun would return. And one day, her saviour came. A knight arrived, and he courageously fought the sun thief. He was scared, too, but he was brave enough to do what was right. And so, the next day, the princess watched the sun rise for the first time after so much darkness." Your voice lowered as Jack's eyes fluttered closed. "She thanked the knight for bringing her light back to her, and everyone in the land lived happily ever after."

You caressed Jack's hair as he fell asleep, smiling at the sight, even as your eyes burned. You didn't know if this story would have the happily ever after you wanted it to.

Aaron's voice penetrated the silence, reminding you that he was there. "I told the team to come back tomorrow once you've gotten more rest." He was quiet, mindful of Jack.

"That's good," you responded.

"They were really worried about you." Pause. "I was really worried about you."

You sighed. "Aaron—"

"I'm sorry." He sat down in the chair beside you, desperately trying to meet your eyes. "I was spiteful and purposelessly cruel. I had no right to be angry, and I should not have said any of the things I did."

When you finally met his eyes, a tear fell down your cheek. "But you said them."

"I didn't mean them," he disputed, begging you to believe him. "Everything I said was untrue."

"No." A humourless chuckle left you. "I'm an accessory. Garcia doesn't need me to excel at her job, and the BAU certainly doesn't need me for anything she can't already do." Aaron opened his mouth to protest, but you continued, more tears falling from your eyes. "And I'm not Jack's mother. He's tired, and he slipped earlier, but that doesn't make me his mom."

"Y/N—"

"But Aaron," your voice cracked. "Even though I am not Jack's mother, he is my son. And you have to know that."

"Y/N." Aaron reached out for your left hand, engulfing it in both of his. If your eyes weren't so blurry, you would've seen the tears in his eyes, too. "You have raised Jack for over half of his life. You are his mother. I wouldn't take that from either of you. I'm sorry for ever implying otherwise. And I'm sorry for implying that you weren't a part of the team. Garcia told me how you linked the victims together while only being there 6 hours out of the day. You are the reason that case was just solved. You are an integral member of the BAU, and I took that for granted."

"No, Hotch, you don't get it." Hurt flashed across his face at the name, but you held your resolve. "You didn't just imply that I wasn't a part of the team. You implied that we weren't a team, and that is what killed me inside." You ripped your hand from his, but it didn't escape either of you that you then used your other hand to wipe away your tears.

Aaron swallowed, letting his hand fall to the mattress. "We are a team. You're the love of my life." Even he could hear how he was grasping at straws.

Lightly, you shook your head, staring back at him with a pitiful smile. Pity for him. Pity for yourself. "You didn't make me feel that way."

A sense of inevitability settled over the room. Aaron's gaze was drawn to the ring on your finger before he looked back up at you. "I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you if you let me," he promised. You both understood it for what it was: a plea.

"I know." No tears fell this time, despite the lump lodged in your throat. Just above a whisper, you put forward, "Just give me time, okay?"

Aaron didn't respond immediately, but you could see the shift in his eyes. Not quite the look of a man who lost, but not quite the look of a man who won.

"Okay," he whispered back.

You thanked him, going back to caressing Jack's hair. The silence was less loud now, punctuated by the truth.

Your story with Aaron didn't start with Once Upon a Time. And it didn't end with Happily Ever After.

But you ended with the truth. And that's all you asked of him.

taglist: @hotchnerave @cantbecreative @holmesry @amber97 @queenofvelaris @midnghtprentiss @deeninadream @michasia24 @donttrustlove @sjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj @allysunny @jessjessmarvelandhp @burkayyy @mrsxyz480 @loki101 @athanasia-day @mischiefmanaged71 @beardedhotchner @doe-eyed-diva @witchcraftandwit @diabolichii @vivs30 @burrithorr @racoonkitty @gemininormouzz @wallowingselfpity @singlepringle4you @pillkits @alice07ea @storiesbynova @mmmunson @rannifer @dedicatedfangirl2001 @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @jencole214 @ssa-danhotchner @kcch-ns @cultish-corner @fckgrier @aasmalfoy @cocopuff213 @axionn @ponyosmom35 @phaedrashafiq @planetsnshit @laufeysvalentine @anthropsych @thatkidofwarandpeace @cassiesversion @person-005 @wilmalovegood @leclercprettyeyes @esw1012 @lafrone @elliewhite-123 @avada-kedavra-bitch-187 @rethasavedlives @anninhaaagomes16 @doyoulovemenough @yousigned-upforthis @msfreedom @vhkdncu2ei8997 @berrywoods1245 @nessjo @wh0rezs @messageforthesmallestman @thecutestaaakawaii @starrynightsil @redama @batmanunicorns523 @spideyreid @sillymuffintrashflap @bennetbreakdown @girl-who-loves-books @onedgirl10 @fallen-angels2213 @aaaaau @notsochillnerd @swag13r @rousethemouse @cumuluscranium @maximoffwitch @youunravemerblgs @tearykth @sexlapis @guilty-cheese @rauspberries @kaetastic @dakotapaigelove @softtdaisy @fanfareofafangirl @love-dray @elyjellybelly @rivaiken @softlyspencer @chill-out-imqueen-persephone @spideystar @siampie @ssa-writerminds @kouibin

additional a/n: thank u all for ur kind words! i basically tagged u if u commented or reblogged (tysm for supporting!). lmk if you'd like to be removed from the taglist for this series!

#☆ kent's recs #aaron hotchner x reader angst

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kenthoe · 22 days ago

Text

CUTIES

Sonnet No. 33 - MV1

Max Verstappen x Student!Reader

summary: Max falls in love with the cute fan who is also a double major student with a lot to teach him

based on this request

notes: i have no idea if juilliard has an english major, i also don't know how U.S colleges work, but for the sake of this smau let's pretend it does this way

📍Juilliard, New York

liked by yourbff, yourroommate, maxverstappen1 and 456 others

yourusername Uni life, literature, musical theory, and one very important Sunday. Congrats on the win maxverstappen1 🏁💙

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yourbff this max guy owns me for hearing you screaming at the screen for 2 hours 💀

maxverstappen1 Thanks! I like your bookshelf by the way.

↪︎ yourusername wait WHAT ↪︎ user bro blink twice if you’re being held hostage by your own emotions ↪︎ user what is HAPPENING here??? ↪︎ user this is adorable. and terrifying. carry on.

user why is max randomly replying to fans????

user can someone explain how she got Verstappen to engage in emotionally intelligent dialogue because I can’t get a guy to reply to “hey”

yourroomate i’ve never seen you sprint across the dorm faster than when you saw that comment 💀💀

user Max Verstappen replying to a redheaded lit/music major from yale… I smell a ✨plotline✨

user “I like your bookshelf btw.” Sir. What does that even MEAN????

⋆ ✩ ⋆ ┄ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ┄ ⋆ ✩

liked by yourbff, yourroommate, maxverstappen1 and 23,455 others

yourusername New week, new breakdown. But the piano solo slapped and I finally got a flat white that didn’t taste like existential dread. Small wins count 🥹🩷

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maxverstappen1: think you liked the keychain 😎

> yourusername I DID! it’s everywhere with me now > maxverstappen1 I’ll make sure to send you a cap next time > yourusername I think that counts as a legally binding statement

user Max is down bad and this is adorable

user Bro is out here giving keychains 💀

user the bookshelf is now lore. the keychain is lore.

user Max, tell the truth. She’s made you read Jane Austen, hasn’t she?

↪︎ maxverstappen1 no. something worse.

yourbff I would like to publicly announce that i am such a fan of this

user Max said: ‘girl studies books, I study HER’ 😭

user WHAT IS GOING ON HERE I’M SWEATING???

user not me shipping this like it’s canon and I’ve read ONE comment thread

user the bookshelf comment. the keychain. ladies we’ve got a CRUSH developing in real time

user now I’m imagining her studying with live timing in the background while he texts her from the garage 😭😭

⋆ ✩ ⋆ ┄ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ┄ ⋆ ✩

📍Monte Carlo

liked by maxverstappen1, redbull, yourbff and 65,493 others

yourusername books closed. dress zipped. weekend saved. 🥂🌊

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maxverstappen1 You forgot the picture of me winning.

> yourusername there are plenty of those online already 😘

user THIS COMMENT SECTION IS KILLING ME

danielricciardo The man is GONE. GONEEEE 😭

yourbff My bestie flew to Monaco and came back smugger than a triple world champ

user HOLD ON IS THAT MAX WITH THE WHITE CAP???

user Soft launch speedrun unlocked

user this whole thing is SICK AND TWISTED

user not a single tag but every girl with anxiety and a Red Bull hoodie knew it was Max immediately

user oh your honor they are in love.

user And now she’s back at uni reading Wuthering Heights pretending she wasn’t kissed on a yacht at midnight

user he liked her bookshelf and now she’s in Monaco. we’re in a romcom.

user i don’t even go to uni and I suddenly want to major in Literature 😭

user He’s such a Cancer moon I swear to god

user Is she gonna be in the paddock at Silverstone next???

user showed this to my mom and she said, “she has the look of a girl he’d fall for.” I’m emotionally unwell.

⋆ ✩ ⋆ ┄ ⋆ ✩ ⋆ ┄ ⋆ ✩

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maxverstappen1 Strong weekend. Good car. Great company. 🏁💙

(Tagged: yourusername)

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yourusername what happened to soft launching??

> maxverstappen1 Do I look like I know what that is?

danielricciardo AND JUST LIKE THAT HE IS IN LOVE

lando "great company” bro she made you eat vegetables this week admit it

charles_leclerc yourusername I'm sorry you have to endure him

> maxverstappen1 Be careful, I know where your dog lives.

user from bookshelf to podium. we rise.

user Verstappen HARD LAUNCHED Literature Girlfriend™ and I, for one, have not emotionally recovered.

user not max's rizz being about a BOOKSHELF

user can't believe i lived to see this day🧡

user HIS INTERVIEW SAYING, “I admire people who are passionate about what they love.” AND THEN THIS POST I'M IN AWE

pierregasly Did she write your caption or do you just sound like this when you’re in love?

georgerussell63 Charles owes me £50. I said it would be Belgium. Pay up.

> charles_leclerc 🙄🙄🙄

user My man went from “I don’t have time for distractions” to kissing her in the garage with one eye closed 😭😭

#f1 x reader #☆ kent's recs #max verstappen x reader

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kenthoe · 22 days ago

Text

‘BETTER THIS WAY’ part two

PAIRING: anthony lockwood x reader, anthony lockwood x lucy carlyle

SYNOPSIS: you’ve been lockwood’s partner-in-crime since you joined his agency, but it’s clear that’s changing— or perhaps it already has.

THEME: angst! (unrequited love if you squint)

WARNINGS: nothing much, just a horrid attempt at angst

NOTES: not proofread. requests open, drop a comment or message. comment to join my taglist. click here to see my masterlist.

My work is not to be reposted, copied, translated or used in any form without explicit permission from myself.

taglist for this fic: @my-space13reading @scarab-8 @that-choir-girl @mazzbarnes @kenthoe @snoopyluver20 @shakespearseclipse @fineshytnaomi @dearhnymn @lady-ashfade @death-befor-decaf @cookie369 @nansasa this includes anyone who asked to be added to it, or who specifically commented for another part. please do say so if you'd like to be added or removed, as this taglist will be used on all my lw&co works

@websterss i absolutely adore this beauty of a gif btw

Kettle on.

Four mugs.

Herbal tea for George.

A generous share of sugar for Lucy.

A richer, more mellow cup of tea for Lockwood. Just how he liked it.

And for you?

You weren't even entirely sure what you wanted. You just threw in whatever was at hand.

It was one of those late nights where 35 Portland Row was hushed, other than the low hum of the kettle, following a fatiguing case after a day of running back and forth from Scotland Yard on the polite request of an agitated Inspector Barnes.

You hadn't the heart to refuse when George, failing to stifle a yawn and rubbing furiously at his eyes beneath his glasses, had asked for the brew— and in this house, making tea for one meant making tea for all.

And mechanically so, as though you were on auto-pilot. At this hour your mind was entirely void of thought, and so you barely acknowledged the process of preparing it. Curls of steam ghosted across your face as you gathered the ready mugs into a line on a tray like soldiers. But they weren't the most orderly, jostling around owing to your trembling hand as you lifted the tray.

Lucy was still upstairs, you noted, nudging open the door with a foot to see Lockwood and George seated exactly how you'd left them. George was sitting, or lying, rather, back in the corner of the sofa, for once free of any workload courtesy of his lethargy. Lockwood was occupied scribbling away, as he chattered, into the thick, black case-book, certainly logging today's success.

"...quicker than I expected, really, George, sprinkled a bit of salt and it was over with!"

He didn't seem to notice your return, eyes glued to the book, with that boyish grin on his face in excitement as he recalled the evening's events. That smile of his would have made you rival it, stupidly, once upon a time, but now, it did nothing but cause an unease to settle over your chest. One you couldn't quite name, but one that was there nonetheless.

And the more you felt it, recently, the more you feared what it meant.

This was a repetitive cycle now, drowning yourself in research, only to get just a quick smile every now and then from someone who had once been one of your dearest friends. In a way, you were much more appreciative of George now, because you understood how difficult his role was, and because only he seemed to really note a change in your behaviour.

That was all you wanted.

From anyone, at this point.

You placed the tray down on the table wordlessly, and dropped to the sofa with a shaky exhale. Closed your eyes. Every bone in your body screamed at you to head to bed, but you knew you had to stay to hear whatever it was Lockwood had promised to share with you all from what Barnes had told him before the team had left Scotland Yard to rush for the case up in Yorkshire. You knew, otherwise, that it was highly unlikely you'd be up before the late afternoon tomorrow, and probably wouldn't get a summary from any of the other three, all of whom seemed endlessly busy nowadays.

"Finally, tea!"

You pried open your eyes with effort to see Lockwood grinning (somehow) even wider, reaching across the table. There it was, that glimmer in his eye, that shine that you knew far too well. It always seemed to come right before he mentioned—

"Lucy does this thing, right, she adds a spoon of—"

You cursed.

Loudly.

Both George and Lockwood looked over at you, and the latter's brows furrowed slightly, his mouth ajar. "You alright?"

You looked away. "Fine."

"I'm exhausted, if you're interested Lockwood," spoke George, his speech almost elongated dramatically. You were thankful he'd spoke, because you could feel the heat rising in your face. "So if you'd kindly drop whatever it is you're withholding, it'd be much appreciated."

Lockwood grinned, rolling his eyes. "Just wait another five minutes, why don't you? She'll be here in a second, then we can discuss it."

"I doubt it," grumbled George. "She'll go to bed as soon as she finishes all the hot water, mark my words."

Lockwood paused mid-sip as though considering this. "Perhaps you're right... well, I'll go up and let her know when she's out of the shower."

"Yes, yes," agreed George, "Now do share, please."

Lockwood huffed with a smile. "I don't know if you'll find it too interesting, now that I think about it, George. Barnes wants us at a relic-market, identifying what sort of thing they're selling— something to do with trying to link different cases of sources being stolen."

This was interesting enough, indeed, but certainly not worthy of you refraining from sleep. George seemed to be thinking along the same lines, staring expectantly at Lockwood as though waiting for more. "And?"

"And nothing, really, he just said we'd sort of be better off posing as pairs. Just to blend in."

You straightened up. Pairs?

"Pairs?" George raised a brow. "Couples, you mean?"

Was the room getting tighter, or were you imagining it?

"Not necessarily," said Lockwood, but that movement, the casual glance around as he itched cluelessly at the back of his neck, was something you knew all too well. Anthony Lockwood trying to downplay.

"When?" asked George, his voice now monotonous and almost bored.

"Friday."

George sat up abruptly. "This Friday?"

"This Friday indeed."

"No can do, I'm afraid," sighed George, but his tone was hardly apologetic. "I already told you I'm heading home for the weekend."

Lockwood's brows knitted together. "That's this weekend?" he asked, his voice almost squeaky in outrage. "Can't you—I don't know—”

"I hope you're not suggesting I cancel on my mother, Lockwood?"

Strange. You vividly remembered George complaining about dreading his weekend at home just a few days ago. He really disliked the idea of this relic-market, clearly. It'd have to be just the three of you.

The three of you.

Posing as pairs.

Now, you weren't the best at maths (perhaps that was partly why you'd picked the field you had) but it wasn't too difficult to conclude that this wouldn't work. Either one of you would have to stay behind, or one of you would have to play a single, partnerless relic-seeker at this lovely market.

Perhaps it wouldn't be you, though. You'd played the part with Lockwood, once, a year or so ago. And well, from what you could remember. Maybe he'd remember that, maybe he'd surprise you.

"George, Barnes specifically asked for four people! I've already given him my word!"

"And I already gave you my word, Lockwood," replied George, standing up gradually, cradling his tea. “Just tell him there’s been a mix-up."

Lockwood tutted, but didn't speak again. He had accepted defeat.

You didn't linger after this. Tea forgotten, you rose from the sofa, and passed by George and Lockwood, into the hallway, and upstairs to your room. You'd think about whatever this was tomorrow. In the late afternoon, preferably.

As George had promised, Lucy was in the shower for what felt like hours, and you eventually gave in to exhaustion, dropping into bed with a yawn.

And just as soon as your eyes shut briefly, they shot back open at the sound of a door unlocking, and the patter of footsteps up the stairs. A light pattern you recognised too well.

And to you luck, it seemed, the pair bumped into one another just outside your door.

"Relic-market, this Friday. Barnes wants us undercover..." Lockwood paused. "The pair of us, if that's alright?"

Lucy hummed lightly in response. "Of course—just two of us though? Is that safe?"

Your door creaked as though someone was leaning on it. You held your breath.

"Should have been all four, but George is off, remember? Barnes wants us in pairs for safety, but we're a person down, and we can't have her alone."

He couldn't have you alone?

Or did he want to be alone with her?

"It sounds risky, Lockwood," said Lucy tentatively.

Lockwood sighed. "I'll see what Barnes says. You should go and get some sleep, Luce." There was a pause. "Have you trimmed your hair?"

"A little."

"Suits you."

You could hear him grinning.

"Thanks. Night, Lockwood."

"Goodnight."

Goodnight for each of them, perhaps. You didn’t get much sleep that night at all.

#☆ kent's recs #anthony lockwood x reader angst

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kenthoe · 22 days ago

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‘BETTER THIS WAY’

PAIRING: anthony lockwood x reader, anthony lockwood x lucy carlyle

SYNOPSIS: you’ve been lockwood’s partner-in-crime since you joined his agency, but it’s clear that’s changing— or perhaps it already has.

THEME: angst! (unrequited love if you squint)

WARNINGS: nothing much, just a horrid attempt at angst

NOTES: not proofread. requests open, drop a comment or message. comment to join my taglist. click here to see my masterlist.

My work is not to be reposted, copied, translated or used in any form without explicit permission from myself.

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The smell of damp was in the air as the three of you returned home that evening. It had poured down constantly throughout the entire day, and down with the rain went spirits. Well, yours did. Lucy’s did slightly. Lockwood’s hadn’t at all.

He sprung ahead slightly, closely followed by Lucy, who looked as though she’d been through hell and back, judging by her ruffled hair. Further behind them, were you, dragging your heavy boots along the pavement. Every exhausted step echoed down the empty streets, and your face was drawn in fatigue.

Lockwood was buzzing with the victory of handling a particularly difficult case, a cluster in a large, maze-like house. Leaving such a case was a win in any Agency’s books, especially one with a history like this one.

Tonight was one of those nights that Lockwood insisted every agent had once in a while. You hadn’t done much at all, other than lay out the iron chains and scout around the building. The sources had been found by the pair ahead of you, and Lucy had even found a passage behind a decorative piece, one that would surely interest George.

You listened partially to the conversation before you, consisting of Lockwood’s easy chatter, and Lucy’s slow remarks. It was background noise, almost, and you had grown accustomed to it by now. But tonight, there was an air in Lockwood’s voice, one that made you cease thinking and listen.

“…absolutely amazing!” Lockwood was saying, a hint of amusement in his voice. “You’ve got a real knack for this kind of thing, it’s brilliant!”

A faint smile tugged at Lucy’s lips. “It wasn’t that impressive, come on. Anyone could have seen that, it was obvious.”

Suddenly, your face was burning. Anyone? You certainly hadn’t seen it, and you’d passed by that wall countless times over the evening. You were hardly anyone– no, you were a qualified Agent who’d been working here for years.

Lockwood shook his head. “Yes, but you found it. That is impressive!”

Your brows creased together, steps faltering ever so slightly. Lockwood always praised the team, but something in his voice, in his lingering gaze on her felt wrong. It was unusual, the softness, the deliberateness.

No. This wasn’t unusual. He complimented all of his Agents, including her. You’d earned it, as had she.

But the fire in your stomach said otherwise.

Lucy laughed. “Well, in future, I’ll leave it to you. I’ll take the day off.”

“Oh, come on.” Lockwood grinned. “We’ll be working all day if you don’t come along.”

There was that look again. A look of something unspoken in his eyes as he smiled, of something he himself was still working out.

It gnawed at you.

He was intentional, easy but deliberate with his words. It was different. Careful.

You lingered at the gate and they both jogged ahead, Lucy’s spirit visibly brightened. He held the door open for her, a wide grin on his face, and it hit you for a moment that he hadn’t glanced back for you. The door was left open in wait.

You hesitated but followed them in, a light storm beginning to pass within you. Their shoes were kicked off already, and you did the same, following their voices into the kitchen.

“Record timing,” said George, clearing his papers from the table.

Lockwood grinned in Lucy’s direction yet again, and you felt a frown appear on your face. What on earth was going on?

“What’s for dinner, George?” asked Lockwood, plopping down on the chair beside him. George pushed his glasses further up his nose.

“Not ready yet.”

Lockwood nodded. He looked at each of you in turn, then finally at the redhead standing by the sink. “Why don’t you take the first shower, Luce?”

Lucy raised a brow. “You’re being weird. What’s the catch?”

Lockwood let out a laugh, leaning back in his seat. “Why does there have to be a catch?”

He looked around, but there was no reaction from anyone. His smile didn’t fade. “I think you deserve it.”

A smile spread over Lucy’s face too. “Okay, but don’t complain if I finish the hot water.”

With that, she left the kitchen, and a silence took over. It would be comfortable, usually, but you were still stood stiffly by the door, hovering. This didn’t feel right at all. This wasn’t professionalism, nor was it casual goodness.

No, this was attention.

Lockwood frowned at you. “You alright?”

The sudden question caught you off guard, but you pushed a smile nonetheless. It felt more like a grimace. “Just tired.”

He seemed satisfied with the answer, for he stood up and turned his back to you, flicking on the kettle.

You stood there for a moment, lost for words. The last hour had been baffling, and it was only catching up with you now. His behaviour felt so absurd, abrupt, abnormal. For a moment, you were struck with the thought that it was envy.

No.

You weren’t jealous, of course not.

But you didn’t know what to make of the ache in your chest either.

Something had shifted, you thought, as you lied in bed that night, tossing and turning. It was clear. But you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. So you slept on it instead.

The morning arrived far too quickly.

The house felt quiet, but perhaps it was just you. Maybe it was the tension you’d felt the night before, or maybe just the piercing ray of sunlight that had awoke you much earlier than you’d have liked.

Regardless, it felt off.

In the kitchen, George glanced up briefly from his files at the table. “Morning,” you mumbled, without a look in his direction. He returned the greeting and went right back to work. It was comforting, slightly, to see his regular behaviour, his slight gruffness.

He’d beat you to putting the water up to boil. You leaned against the counter, drumming a hand on it in an attempt to clear your head, which was racing with an anxiety you still didn’t understand. From the living room, a soft laugh sounded.

The drumming stopped instantly. You visibly stiffened at the voices.

It was just a conversation. A casual talk, the type they’d always had in the past.

But the shift you’d noticed left no room for normality.

Lucy was crucial to the team, you knew that. And you did like her, genuinely. But there was an edge to Lockwood’s sudden attention, the way he spoke. It was unsettling, like the night before.

For a moment, you considered joining them. Would that be awkward?

Of course it wouldn’t! This was your home.

Yet your feet remained rooted to the spot. What would you even say? It felt intrusive, as though it wasn’t anything to do with you.

You slipped out, and headed straight upstairs with your tea.

By the third day, your spirit had drained even more. You’d never felt so miserable in all your time at the agency, and you were still telling yourself it was over nothing. There was nothing to feel miserable about.

But there was. You’d had days now to sit back and observe the lingering gazes between the pair. Lucy was far less obvious, still casual and her usual self. Lockwood, on the other hand, couldn’t be more obvious. His eyes followed her every move. He looked for her opinion on the slightest of matters. There was smaller stuff too, like his refusal to correct some of the things she said, or the chuckles he let out at certain remarks that you would never have it in you to say aloud.

Every observation piled up on your chest, and soon, the weight was so heavy you couldn’t even look at him in the face.

You’re being stupid.

Heart heavy, you retreated throughout the day, at times in your room, at other times in the basement with George.

If there was one area you couldn’t be beaten by her, it was in research.

Though he was confused at first, George gladly accepted the help. For days, you combed through files at the archive by his side, and at other times, you did so alone. It was preparation, you told yourself. Nothing more or less.

But a voice in your head said otherwise. It told you that Lockwood had barely spoken to you for days, spare the odd greeting or question. The evenings in the library, the playful camaraderie had ceased, and instead, he spent evenings in the living room, talking lowly with Lucy about things that no one else seemed to be worthy of hearing.

Or perhaps just you.

No. This wasn’t about you. You weren’t being left out. This was a team. You were part of it, and so was George.

But all he seemed to be interested in was taking advantage of your sudden productivity.

“You’re on a roll!” he grinned, taking the slim folder you were holding out for him one morning.

You returned the smile, but it was about as lively as one of the socks he’d dropped by the kitchen door as he had done the laundry. “What’s going on?”

You shook your head. “Just staying on top of it all. I figured you’d need a hand.”

He frowned but accepted nonetheless. It wasn’t his place to question it if you wanted to drown in all this paperwork. But he was grateful regardless.

But it was more than just some paperwork for you. It was a race you couldn’t seem to win. A problem you couldn’t name. An ache caused by something you couldn’t piece together.

Or that you simply didn’t want to.

The tension grew with the distance you put between yourself and the unspoken. Every conversation, every laugh you heard pulled the knot in your chest tighter, and soon it was suffocating.

No matter how deep you buried yourself in papers, it wouldn’t loosen even an inch.

Roughly a week after your initial realisation, you were hit with another. Lockwood hadn’t spoken to you once. Not a word, not a sound.

You hadn’t noticed at all at first, busy with research and the odd case here and there. But sitting in a silent room over a warm beverage does things that make your mind work. It was routine, in a comical way, for Lockwood to stroll around the house before a case, a mug in his hand, before heading to your room, where he’d often find you getting ready. He’d lean back against the windowsill, reading notes aloud to you as you got ready.

“Take any longer,” he’d say, grinning, “and I’ll start charging you for my time.”

But now, it was a bizarre silence, far off from the banter you’d both once shared. It wasn’t argumentative, but you would be less upset if it was. It was simply a lack of acknowledgment, communication. It was invisibility.

But the longer you thought about it, the more stupid you felt. He didn’t owe you attention! This was your employer, at the end of the day. How could you expect such from him?

But it still didn’t stop you.

Emotionally, Lockwood had always been distant. But there had been a mutual respect between you both, a camaraderie that had quickly made this place home. But now it felt frayed— or perhaps, it hadn’t existed to him at all. Maybe to him you were just another person he happened to be around often.

But what hurt you the most was the idea that you were no longer good enough. Were you unnecessary? An extra wage he was paying? Maybe you had been outshined— no, you certainly had been. Maybe the place you’d sat in for so long, the role of Lockwood’s go-to partner had been filled now by Lucy.

And you couldn’t even hate her for it. She was far too likeable.

It didn’t stop the fear that clung to you every time you heard her voice.

You weren’t good enough.

Soon, the silence was unbearable, but it was as though he hadn’t noticed. He was far too easy going, too casual. The odd smile from him as he passed by sent you spinning, but it didn’t last. You only threw yourself deeper into work.

It didn’t pass by George.

He dropped into a seat across you, brows narrowed as he took a sip of tea. His eyes travelled from the pen you’d paused writing with, and onto the stack of papers at your left.

“You really don’t need to do this,” he said, motioning to them. “You’ve been at it for hours.”

You went straight back to writing. “I’m just staying ahead.”

George didn’t look convinced. “I’ve heard that from you everyday for nearly two weeks.”

You didn’t reply. George’s brown eyes narrowed further. When he spoke, his tone was careful.

“Did Lockwood say something to you?”

Your gaze shot up, and he didn’t miss it. “No,” you said quickly. It was almost breathless.

George set down his cup. “Has he spoke to you at all?”

Your pen hovered, train of thought long forgotten. He noted how your lips formed a tight line, gaze remaining lowered.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he spoke, in a tone much gentler than his usual one. “He’s got his head in the clouds, Lockwood has. He always does.”

“I know,” you swallowed. Your nose was beginning to sting, eyes beginning to water. “It’s not personal.”

It felt it.

And you hated that you had no idea how to fix it.

But you weren’t going to let George carry this on any further, to tell you it was all “fine” when it felt anything but. In the end, Anthony Lockwood was simply your employer. A charming one, at that, but he could never be anything more.

And maybe it was better this way.

#☆ kent's recs #anthony lockwood x reader angst

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kenthoe · 23 days ago

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you had me at throat slit ⟢ OP81 series (coming soon!)

main masterlist | fic playlist

PAIRINGS: oscar piastri x female!reader

SUMMARY: oscar was completely okay of being single, though lando says otherwise. lando had managed to convince oscar in joining a dating app—under fake name with a cursed meme for a profile pic, and mostly expecting nothing. but then he matches with you—a gorgeous girl, awkward, sarcastic, emotionally bruised, and just as skeptical about online dating. somehow, your weirdness clicks with oscar's.

REMINDERS: this is purely fiction, the way how the character is portrayed in my story does not reflect the person that is portraying my character in real life. always separate fiction from reality, and do not repost or copy my work in any way.

WARNINGS: use of y/n, face claims, photos taken from pinterest, satire, humor (dark humor), crack au, dating apps, inaccurate information, awkward, unhinged, memes are maybe a bit too much, dump accounts as form of freedom of expression, and minor typographical errors.

FACE CLAIM: liang lawrence (& others)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: it's me again! with new oscar smau. i'm really into smaus these days, and maybe i'll stick into doing stuff like this up until i'm finally okay with writing full length aus. i've mentioned this the last time, but as of the moment, writing full length aus drains me so much bc there's a lot of typing and proofreading—which can be really tiring. i'll be staring this smau once i'm done with the oscar smau that i'm currently working on.

part one ⟢ part two ⟢ part three ⟢ part four ⟢ part five ⟢ part six ⟢ part seven ⟢ part eight ⟢ part nine ⟢ part ten ⟢ part eleven ⟢ part twelve (ending) ⟢ alt. ending

#☆ kent's tbr!#CAN'T WAIT FOR MORE #oscar piastri x reader

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kenthoe · 27 days ago

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· · · · ♡ NO LOVE IN NEW YORK

… starring oscar piastri x f!reader ... 5.2k words ... in which your good samaritan tendencies, and some loser forgetting to show up on your first date, lead you to the most bizarre yet exhilarating nyc commute of your life. ... featuring fluff, humor, meet cute, some forced proximity. female reader (wears 'feminine' clothing). language, reader gets stood up on a date, suspension of disbelief for manhattan geography and the logistics of the mta (please forgive me new yorkers i went ten years ago). english is not my first language. ... author notes tadaaa oscar piastri debut who cheered!!!! not me because i'm scared to death of getting him wrong lowk. i was bemoaning the absence of oscar pictures at the f1 premiere and thought, "i know he just couldn't be bothered to go, but wouldn't it be funny if he'd just gotten lost?" and thats how this fic happened. ngl this is very much out of my comfort zone, i know oscar less than other drivers + much more romcom than i'm used to and idk how i feel about it so feedback would be VERY appreciated! very much open for a part 2 if you'd like that tho!!! enjoy ヘ(≧▽≦ヘ)♪ MASTERLIST / ASK BOX

There was no valid reason dating in New York City should have been this complicated.

Yet you prided yourself on being quite smart—smart enough to survive in the hostile urban jungle as a twenty-something on her own; definitely smarter than the national average judging by the (frankly depressing) headlines you heard pinging on your phone every morning. Outstanding high school GPA, reading comprehension way above your grade as a kid, and still no damn clue how to score a date in Manhattan.

Well, rather, how to score an agreeable date. Or perhaps just one that turned out to be real.

Monday morning had risen with a yawn from the sun, as though it were remembering only now that June was well underway but the streets remained chilly. Weak light shimmered over the fire escape when you’d drawn your curtains open. Ramen was sitting on the railing, licking his cream paw and staring at you with unimpressed nonchalance, and you’d grinned. Ramen—your downstairs neighbor’s cat, a sandy little imp whose real name you’d never found out but had baptized so after he’d stolen your instant dinner right off your kitchen counter—only showed up on mornings with importance. Like the day you’d aced Introduction to Statistics with nothing but two hours of sleep and five Monsters.

This was a good omen.

So yes, you were enthusiastic by the time you got home from class, scrambled together an omelet, and disemboweled your apartment looking for your favorite earrings. You were optimistic, and that sometimes sounded like the worst thing anyone could be in New York City.

But this first date promised to be nothing like the others, your inner voice hammered home as you tried to cram your feet into shoes half a size too small. He was cute, funny, not a fascist, he waited exactly the right amount of time in between replies—neither psychopathic nor disinterested—, and he’d told you to dress up because it was only fair that real-life art should match the paintings on the wall. After half a dozen insipid dinners at every other pizza place in Little Italy, and as many ghostings, a museum first date sounded more promising than you’d dared to hope.

Even though he dropped off the radar at ten p.m. the prior evening. Even though you shot him a bubbly, “you said 2:30pm right? can’t wait!” at eleven (the appointed time was but a scroll away, but you just needed to say something, diffuse the nerves somehow). Even though you double-texted him at two fifteen, “omw!”.

But Ramen was there this morning, blinking his slow blinks at you. The date had to go well.

The sun was fully awake, undeniable, blazing above the trees and endless spires piercing the sky beyond Central Park, by the time you sat down on the steps in front of the museum. Alone.

It wasn’t until two fifty-seven that you accepted to face the glaring truth.

First miss for Ramen.

You collected yourself in a clumsy torpor. Nothing to do with your heels, or the stupidly long dress you’d picked out and whose skirt you now had to lift with every step—this was the inescapable, crushing feeling of disappointment.

Of course New York City would punish the optimistic. The naïve. The superstitious, who put the outcome of their days into the hands of some feline apparition, scan the sky for four-leaf clover clouds. Served you right for still believing in things falling into place.

Your face burned from the sun and the humiliation, eyes prickling from unshed tears as you stuffed your phone into your purse. Pretended not to notice the group of tourists snapping shots of you, perhaps thinking you some roaming Millais muse. Disappeared into the shade of 103rd Street station, green gown flowing behind you like a pennon.

Every step down the long stairway stung more than the last, but you kept your gaze firmly to the ground, careful not to trip—and bury any ounce of dignity left in you for good. Blend in with the jaded city folk, you thought as you swiped your Metrocard; act as if you know exactly where you are going and go there with purpose, even if you could not be more stranded. Where to now? Back to your disordered, sweltering apartment, its haphazard pile of dishes in the sink and Ramen gauging you silently from the windowsill? Or to the campus library, trying to glean whatever productivity lies within heartbreak? And risk bumping into your friends, who’d teased you all day about the giddy bounce to your step, and having to explain you weren’t even worth showing up for?

“Excuse me?”

You looked up and met hazel. A mop of chestnut hair, that he had manifestly tried to arrange before giving up; discreet moles on an otherwise pale face, and brown eyes where danced flecks of gold and the most gripping kind of urgent resignation. The stranger was cute, and for some incomprehensible reason he matched you: he, too, was dressed to the nines like he’d run off from some wedding, and he also distinctly looked like he wished more than anything for the Earth to swallow him.

“Are you going to the F1 movie premiere?”

“What?”

“The, uh, the F1 movie red carpet thing? Are you going there right now?”

You were starting to worry your foreign-accent (British, or perhaps Australian?) comprehension skills had gotten alarmingly bad, or maybe the shrieking of MTA wagon brakes had finally rendered you deaf.

“No, uh... I…” Oh, what the hell. Like there was any use lying to a beautiful stranger who seemed like he was somehow having a worse afternoon than yours. “I got stood up by my date. F1, you mean like Formula 1?”

What a formidable and ridiculous scene you two must’ve painted—two kids in formalwear, standing in the middle of a New York City subway platform, stuck amidst the pungent smell of piss and nonsensical conversation.

“I’m sorry about your date, they sound like a bit of a dropkick,” the stranger replied, and although you weren’t entirely sure what a dropkick was you were surprised to find him genuine. “But, uh… I think I’m lost, and I hoped you might help me, or else I’m gonna be the one doing the standing up. On about two thousand people.”

You had no time to furrow your brow, or chew on his words. Suddenly everything clicked with an audible bang, right in sync with the train doors closing to your left. The reason you’d felt so familiarly drawn to that cherub face, and why he had mentioned Formula 1… None of the downright lubricious Instagram edits your best friend had ever sent you featured him in a suit, but he was unmistakable.

“Oh my god, you’re Oscar Pia—”

“Please don’t tell all of Manhattan,” Piastri interrupted, grimacing as he glanced around the platform. You suffocated your voice, though found his dread of being heard a little pointless. Two people standing idly in black-tie garments as metros passed them by were eye-catching, for sure, but nowhere near NYC eye-catching standards. “It’s already pretty bad how late I am to my own premiere, I don’t want to have to take selfies in the subway.”

A million questions jostled about inside your head, but all you could do was stare at him, mouth agape in incomprehension. You didn’t keep up with Formula 1, hardly saw any point in cars going in circles, and perhaps a McLaren (was it McLaren or Mercedes?) superfan might have known better than you what the fuck Oscar Piastri was doing there. Not the film premiere gimmick, you were willing to believe that was the kind of fanfare F1 drivers spent their off-days doing—what the fuck he was doing alone at three in the afternoon, asking for your help in some acrid station on Lexington Avenue.

“Couldn’t you just drive to the damn premiere?”

“Oh, right, so I should just steal a car off the street?” he deadpanned.

“No, I mean… don’t you have a chauffeur? An… an agent or something? A team? How do you even end up…” you trailed off, finding no words that wouldn’t bring you to astonished frustration. Instead, you opened your arms wide, encompassing all of New York’s rickety railways. “Here?”

Piastri parted his lips to retort with one of his impassive quips, but his whole face fractured then with tremendous vulnerability.

“I’ll tell you if you help me find my way. Please?”

He did not look like the type of man who’d ever begged anyone to do anything for him—you expected a high-adrenaline junkie like him to pray for neither forgiveness nor permission—and the contrast made you consider. That, and the sheer absurdity of the situation. And the fact the only other way you could see your afternoon ending was with an onslaught of messages from some guy assuring you life had gotten “sooo hectic” in the last ten to twelve hours.

Piastri was much cuter than him anyway.

“You know what, yeah, sure, what the hell,” you shrugged with a growing smile. “I’ll help you. I could use the good karma. I’m Y/N, by the way.”

This whole plan was utterly ridiculous, and you had no idea how you’d possibly explain that to your friends when they’d ask how your date had gone, but the way Piastri deflated with relief, like his whole body was exhaling, had you convinced you’d made the right call.

“Thanks, Y/N.” He said your name with the slightest of accents, and you caught yourself wishing he could say it again. “Maps said this was the shortest path to Times Square, but I think it’s a little confused—”

“Times Square? Oh, you’re not getting anywhere near that on the 6. We need to get to Central Park North. You coming?”

You tilted your head to the side, to the staircase drenched in hazy summer light, and Piastri seemed to be weighing the pros and cons for a split second—you couldn’t fault him, to be fair; you could’ve been a stalker, or a lunatic, or the lowest echelon to a weird MLM scheme. Still, he must’ve decided whatever you were recruiting him for was less dangerous than missing this premiere, because he took off after you.

When he billowed out of the station and back into the city, Piastri winced, and at first you assumed it due to the piercing sunlight reverberating on glassy panels, or the cacophony of horns and engines. However, you quickly noticed him glancing at the passersby with frantic interest… and looking puzzled at their utter disinterest in him.

“Relax, no one’s looking at us,” you reassured him, striding down the street on autopilot. He jogged two steps to catch up.

“You sure?”

“Certain. There’s so many people in New York City, and so many of those people do weird shit, that practically anyone can go unnoticed. I assure you that this,” you gestured down at your long dress, catching the light like rippling topazes, then at the silver cufflinks on his jacket, “does not even make the top 5 weirdest things any of these people have seen today.”

But the Australian looked unsure still, twisting his thin lips in a crooked zigzag, so you stopped in your tracks and hailed a young lady passing you by on the sidewalk, Airpods firmly bolted inside her ears.

“Excuse me, do you know who this guy is—”

She strode past you with the most furtive glance biologically possible and a mechanical Nothankyouhaveagoodday. You turned back to Piastri.

“See? No one cares.”

He chuckled, face breaking like dawn, and you chuckled too with no real reason. You weren’t too sure what was funny about typical New York callousness, but the way Piastri’s eyes crinkled, still somewhat strained from stress but illuminating all his features, made you all fuzzy inside. Up close and under sunlight, he looked even younger than you’d thought, no more than twenty-five, and the shadows on his face had lifted, rounding the angles and softening the corners. Like he’d been oil-painted on canvas, ochres and whites melting into each other at the edges.

“Okay, I guess you’re the local,” he conceded, and you resumed your brisk walk.

Maybe you really were at the museum, after all.

“So,” you spoke up after a bit. “I was promised a story.”

“Right,” he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, clearly regretting his bartering skills.

“How do you, Oscar Piastri, end up late to a movie premiere and alone in a subway station?” You stepped across a grate on the sidewalk, careful not to wedge your heel in the holes. “They just left you behind? Did you oversleep or what?”

No reply, but his dry laughter morphing into a cough was a flagrant enough response.

“Oh my God, Piastri,” you gasped merrily. “Did you seriously sleep through your movie premiere?”

“No! … It’s not over yet. I’m just late for the red carpet part. I can still make it to the screening.”

You stared, unconvinced, and he stared back, unconvincing. Biting the inside of his cheek, he watched your smile grow wider until he couldn’t take your teasing anymore. For heaven’s sake—you’d known him a grand total of five minutes and were already tormenting him!

“What?”

“How do they let you get away with this?”

“I was racing in Canada yesterday! God forbid a guy wants a nap,” he stressed the last as though it were some capital punishment and rolled his eyes.

Something in his demeanor was fabulously amusing. He was all relaxed tension, calculated coldness akin to what you’d expect from a person who’s constantly scrutinized; yet there was something more, a sort of agitation bubbling within, under the pores of his handsome face. Feeling so deeply and letting a stranger see so much was not in his nature, that much was clear. Every microexpression, in the lift of his brows, the curve of his lips, the arc of his eyes betrayed a kind of imbalance. He was losing his footing, like a glacier abraded from the top by the sun.

New York City had trained you for all sorts of people, including still waters like him. How to ripple their surface.

“Does this happen to you often?”

“No. Never.”

“Never missed a flight?”

“Just once. My mom woke me up screaming one hour before boarding the second ti—watch out.”

Swiftly, he grabbed your elbow and switched your spots on the sidewalk, pushing you closer to the wall. Before you could open your mouth to protest, the ground rattled from a firetruck barreling past you, ruffling Piastri’s hair and the lapels of his jacket.

“But I set three different alarms on my phone and I figured, Lando will probably break my door down if I sleep through them, so I’m safe,” he resumed, entirely unfazed. You looked up at him like he’d just performed actual magic. “But… apparently not. I woke up… twenty minutes ago?” That explained the slim, red pillow mark on his face you’d mistaken for a fading sunburn. “I wanted to call a taxi, but they’ve cut off traffic. It’s a big deal, you know? Brad Pitt’s gonna be there.”

The way he said Brad Pitt, with a tone so level it became thick with meaning and the littlest of jazz hands, made it abundantly clear there were few people on Earth Oscar Piastri would’ve been less excited about than Brad Pitt.

“Are you in it?”

“What?”

“The movie. Are you even in it?”

“Uh, my elbow is. Minute fifty-three.”

“Wow,” you giggled, arching your eyebrows in a playful wave. “So am I talking to Oscar Piastri the pro athlete, or Oscar Piastri the movie star?”

“Eh, just Oscar Piastri’s fine,” he shrugged, non-committal, though the glint of a smile now flickered uninterrupted on the corner of his lips, almost real enough to remark upon.

Your steps had carried you to the subway entrance north of Central Park already—too soon, far too soon, you thought with a faint ache in the chest. Piastri stirred in your body some kind of early-summer warmth, soft and shimmering like a drowsy morning. As soon as he would vanish to the far side of the platform, only the icy wind would remain, howling endlessly through the corridors…

Piastri, however, did not seem set on giving you up. At least judging by the tiny, tentative steps he took as he walked up to the turnstile, as though the machine could eat him the way it did cardboard tickets. You saw him take out a small, green-lettered card from his pocket… and stopped him.

“Wait, that’s not gonna work.”

“Huh?”

“Your ticket, it’s a single ride. You used that back there on Lexington, right?”

“Uh, I guess?”

“You don’t have a Metrocard?”

He turned to you, puzzled, and almost slammed into a hurried businessman in the process. Thankfully for Piastri, even assault was too inconsequential to reroute the average New Yorker, and the man just breezed past the turnstile and into the guts of the Earth with a nasty glare and a taunting beep!

“Why would I have a Metrocard, Y/N, I’m in this city about twelve hours a year.”

You glanced toward the entrance, where a faint trickle of light still seeped in. A flock of little old ladies, perhaps en route to a high-stakes bingo showdown, had laid siege to the terminals. Judging by their furrowed brows and squinting eyes, no one else in the station would be seeing so much as a hint of a ticket anytime soon.

Goodness gracious. Your helpfulness would be your undoing.

“How late are you to this thing?”

Piastri checked his watch. “Very.”

“And how much do you care about being late to this thing?”

“Normal dude Oscar Piastri? Not so much, to be honest. Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri…”

“Say less.”

Veritable horror surfaced on Piastri’s face at your confident strides, as if he imagined you were about to vandalize your way through the gates.

“Come on! Hop over,” you signaled.

“Uh…”

“Or we could wait in line. Your call.” Like trying to get a puppy to jump through a hoop. What was he waiting for, a treat?

Or perhaps the patrol of inspectors coming down the hallway at the exact same second as Piastri gathered momentum and jumped the turnstile. That, too, seemed like a sensible thing to be on the lookout for.

The two men cried out right as his dress shoes hit the ground.

“Oh come on!” you whined. “They’re never here!”

“What do we do?!” he cried.

“What do you mean, what do we do? Just book it!”

You heard a cacophony of footsteps behind your back, promptly echoed by lighter sounds as Piastri ran down the corridor. Without a second glance, you pushed down on your hands, swung your legs forward, and… came to an abrupt halt mid-air. Looked down. Sage green fabric had wrapped around the metal blades of the turnstile, like snakes constricting their branches.

“Oscar!” you yelped.

If you’d had any doubt Oscar Piastri was the real racing deal until now, they were all silenced at once from the way he spun on his heels, ran back to you and, without a split second’s hesitation, not even the span of a breath, picked you up from your perch and took off. Instinctively your arms wrapped around the taut base of his neck as you felt his clammy hands slide down your back: the glossy fabric offered no grip to hold on to, yet his strong arms held you into place as tightly as they could. You gritted your teeth, prayed to God your heels would not fall off, and watched in stunned silence as Oscar raced down the stifling hallways.

It seemed like but an instant had passed when Oscar threw himself into the belly of the train, its imminent departure chime his very own chequered flag, and the old doors rattled shut behind you. For the first time, New Yorkers shot you strange looks. Finally you had crossed their threshold for urban bizarrerie.

And you were still in Oscar’s arms, flushed and panting even though he was the one who’d done all the running. And had barely broken a sweat.

You were about to clear your throat and kindly—begrudgingly, perhaps?—request he put you down… when the announcer’s perky voice began chirping out the next stops through the loudspeakers. You snapped your head at the line map above the doors. No matter what language she said it in, your next stop was always wrong.

“Oscar,” you murmured.

“Yeah?” he breathed out.

“We got on the wrong way.”

“There’s no oil in New York City.”

Oscar remained silent for a few seconds, as if in a trance. His jittery leg did not.

“What?” he mumbled when he broke out of his reverie.

You simply pointed at his knee, bouncing up and down since he’d sat.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to drill a hole in the ground with your shoe for. There’s no oil in New York City. If there was, Trump would’ve sucked it dry already.”

Oscar sighed, throwing his head back against the glass panel, but your heart swelled with satisfaction when you caught a glimpse of his smile.

Rippling anyone’s surface had seldom proven as easy as it was fun.

You leaned a little closer to him, and he closed his eyes with a faint grunt. His leg, however, was now still.

“Why are you so nervous about being late? You’re the main attraction, it’s not like they’re going to hold it against you.”

Hearing his reply proved difficult over the train’s thundering racket, glass windows and moist handles vibrating within their sockets like charged electrons. His eyes, mercifully still closed, allowed yours to linger on his mouth—to decipher each word as it formed, and to savor the quiet contemplation.

“Being fashionably late usually draws more attention than I like to get.”

“So why bother going? You don’t look like you enjoy being in the public eye that much anyway.”

Only one eye opened, tentatively so, and met your small, expectant smile, chin resting on your fist and your crossed legs imperceptibly brushing his. Any story he could’ve told you right then would’ve been riveting, it seemed, and for the first time in weeks Oscar found that for you, he did not mind sharing one.

“I told Lando I’d go. We collided yesterday on track and they thought it would maybe look bad if one of us showed up and not the other. Like we’re avoiding each other or something. I don’t know, PR stuff. But I promised Lando, so.” He pursed his lips then, and blew air through his nose, holding back a giggle. “Also, I don’t know, I felt like I had to go. I had a… a premonition.”

“A premonition?”

“Yeah, I don’t know, some kind of hunch. In my cereal.”

You stared at him long, assessing him and the likelihood of a lie, but he was a master of the unreadable smile, the one that could mean anything from I’m one look away from bursting into laughter to I have never dissociated more than I am currently, and even, perhaps, I wish this train ride with you would never end.

“In your cereal?”

“This morning, at the breakfast buffet, I had cereal and there was this kinda cornflake clump that looked like a clapperboard. You know,” he mimed it with his hands and the click of the tongue to match. “So I thought that was some… sign? The universe was telling me to go to this premiere, or something.” His neck tensed abruptly as he suddenly remembered himself. Who he was, and what he believed in. “But uh, that’s a little stupid. Forget it.”

The subway doors opened and closed, chimes rang and accordion tunes from the platforms faded in and out of the background chatter. You had close to lost count of how many stops were left until Times Square. The incessant ballet of New York’s illustrious unknowns would still play out, with or without your attention.

When Oscar looked down at you, almost entirely hunched over his lap and taking him in like he was an August rainshower, he found you beaming.

“No, I totally get you. This date I was supposed to go on before I ran into you… I went because Ramen showed up, even though there were so many red flags that I could’ve seen coming.”

“Who?”

“Ramen.”

“Who’s Ramen?”

“The neighbor’s cat. That’s not his real name, just what I call him.”

Oscar stared at you, expression frozen in one of delightful incomprehension, the one you get when you are not entirely sure a miracle is destined for you just yet. And you stared back, awaiting his next words for as long as it’d take them to come.

“So you went on a date because a cat told you to?”

“He didn’t tell me anything, silly, he’s a cat,” you retorted like it was the most obvious thing in the universe, to which Oscar rolled his eyes and muttered Of course. “He just stared, and every time he does it, I know I’m gonna get lucky that day. He’s never failed me before. Well, until today.”

A beat passed, during which you refused to elaborate further out of fear you’d betray the words lingering at the front of your mouth. Maybe this hadn’t been a miss for Ramen, after all. Maybe his magic had worked in unexpected ways. Oscar, on the other hand, just basked in the whole of you, and his lips slightly parted without a sound, as though they didn’t quite know where to begin.

“What?”

“It’s just… My job, this whole universe I live in, there’s no room for good luck charms or silly little superstitions. They’re just… distractions. All the answers are in the data. Our only faith is in the numbers.” And you sensed him about to say something else, something he had to wring out of the very cloth of his ribcage, but suddenly the deep wells in his pupils were sealed off with his favorite lid of deadpan humor. “Well, except the Italians. But they suck, so I wouldn’t take them as an example.”

“Oh my God, Oscar,” you gasped, “you can’t say that, do you know how many Italians there are in New Y—”

A sudden jolt shook the entire train, knocking the carriage back onto its breathless tracks; the momentum sent a teenage girl flying into a tall gym guy, who in turn crashed into you—your hands were too slow to catch you, not lighting-fast and gloved in greatness—you fell on top of Oscar, your nose buried against the open buttons of his shirt.

You were upright in less than a second, locked in a litany of Oh my God sorry’s to which Oscar replied his own recitation of No worries it’s not your fault’s. The train resumed its journey through the depths of Manhattan as if nothing had happened, and truthfully nothing had—except you were now a little closer to each other than you’d been before, and you hoped with all your might that he wouldn’t notice the way your eyelids fluttered, or how your fingertips had started burning up, or how the air was now thicker, or maybe you hoped he did, so you wouldn’t have to speak it aloud—nothing had happened, and truthfully everything had.

“Why did you think I was going to the F1 premiere back there?” you asked softly, not sure why that was the question you’d elected to go with now.

Oscar’s face was impassible—he’d found his calm, collected control back. But he didn’t know, or didn’t care to know, that you could hear his heartbeat louder than the railroad racket below.

“You looked funny.”

“Okay, you’re literally wearing a bowtie, and it’s crooked, by the way.”

“No, I mean, you looked pretty.” The faintest flick of his tongue showed above his bottom lip, undoubtedly accidental. “You looked really pretty, so I assumed you were a guest or something.”

Maybe what you’d heard and thought was his heart pulsating in sync with the wobbly tracks had not been his, but yours. Somewhere indistinct, the lady’s mechanical voice crackled something about Times Square.

“Thank you,” you smiled, with no mischief attached, this time.

“I’m… pretty glad that your date didn’t show up in the end, huh,” he laughed half-heartedly.

“Oscar, Times Square,” you sprung to your feet, nearly twisting your ankle. “That’s you!”

The doors almost chewed down on the hem of Oscar’s pants when he jumped out of the train. Without so much as a glance back or a single word of forgiveness, all the carriages vanished into heavy shadows, and the world was back to normal again.

Or almost. If there was anything even remotely normal about Times Square.

Every single light blinded you—no matter how many times you came you could never wrap your head around how the place managed to dazzle you even in broad daylight—as you both exited the metro station. Summer lay heavily on the commotion of cars, police whistles, loud music, and… screaming bloody murder?

“Ah, I think that’s my cue.”

Oscar held his hand over his eyes as he took in the scene, and only then did you notice the race cars parked in the middle of the street, some fifty meters ahead. It was probably a fair assumption, then, that the thousands of people massed near the makeshift stage, underneath gigantic screens, were all waiting for him. A fair assumption, and an incredibly odd one; to think you had spent such a mundane moment with the man they would soon shout themselves hoarse for!

“Yeah, good luck with that, I’m not going any nearer,” you forced between clenched teeth. “I hope you don’t get into too much trouble.”

When you spun on your heel, you found Oscar extending his hand out for you to shake, squinting his eyes against the sun. Or maybe it was an excuse not to have to look you in the eye more than absolutely necessary. In the same way you couldn’t tell whether your hand was slightly clammy from the heat or the nerves.

“Thanks for saving the day. Or at least mine,” he said, a little too solemn, a little too final. Like this was a farewell rather than an acknowledgment.

“Thanks for saving mine,” you replied, hoping the little smile you forced on your lips looked appropriately warm, and not inexplicably aching. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

To anyone else Oscar would’ve replied the truth—Probably not—but that was not what his bowl of cereal would have wanted of him, so he said:

“Maybe.”

He gave you a wink half a second too long, and immediately looked horrified at what he’d done, which made you double over in a flurry of giggles. When you opened your eyes, he was a few steps ahead, waving you goodbye, and you returned the salute. You watched him jog the distance to the first cameras until he was but one more black and white dot in a sea of elegant millionaires, your throat hollow save for a funny kind of longing.

Then you walked back the way you came, carrying the end of your skirt down the stairs of the metro station.

Thirty minutes later, as you rummaged through your purse for your keys in front of your apartment complex, you noticed your phone lighting up. Usually, when you went on a date, you’d put it on Do not disturb so as to not be tempted—basic education, you reckoned, and something not many dates of yours had had the courtesy of reciprocating—, but you always sent your best friend your location beforehand and allowed her and only her to go through. She knew better than to text you unless it was life or death.

Clearly, this was of the utmost importance, and the fact there were only three messages instead of the fifty-seven you were expecting did not reassure you one bit.

“bitch” “who tf is that with oscar” “and why tf is it you??????”

A link to a TikTok came up mere seconds later.

The sage green gown was unmistakable. Anything else could’ve been explained otherwise, maybe blamed on some uncanny resemblance, a fortuitous angle—it looked like the video had been shot from very far away, and the protagonists not at all aware of the recording; but you would’ve recognized that lilypad-bright dress anywhere. Just like you knew that the blurry mass of pixels near the man’s face was a pathetic excuse for a wink, and the woman doubling over for no reason was actually laughing. That she’d watched him disappear into the crowd, immobile and longing, to commit to memory the very way his bones moved when he walked.

“Oscar Piastri’s Mystery Date Gets Cold Feet Right Before Red Carpet Debut?? 👀”

You stared at your phone even as it kept going off, its vibrations tickling your palm. A series of interrogation marks, each its individual message, popped up one after the other on your notification bar, and all you could do was clutch the screen as though you could shatter it with your bare hands.

This meant nothing, you calmed yourself down. This would blow over soon, you swore. As soon as they realized Oscar Piastri would never be seen again with this mysterious woman, and that it was never anything serious. Anything at all, even. That the New Yorker in apple green was just a mirage on his path, pertaining only to him and for a split instant.

And even if things didn’t smooth over… you had a feeling Oscar’s team would have no problem tracking you down.

©musicallisto, 2025

⤷ liked this fic? then you might enjoy... endless giggles (ln4)!

#oscar piastri x reader #☆ kent's recs

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kenthoe · 1 month ago

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#loud n proud #ao3 #fanfics #x reader

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kenthoe · 1 month ago

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Hold Fast | Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: A winter mission goes sideways, forcing you to cross a frozen lake under fire. The ice doesn’t hold—and when you go under, Bucky is the only thing between you and the dark.

MCU Timeline Placement: Post Thunderbolts*

Master List: Find my other stuff here!

Warnings: THUNDERBOLTS SPOILERS, hypothermia, near-drowning, descriptions of drowning, blood, injuries, limb trauma, hospitalization, PTSD symptoms, emotional vulnerability, protective behavior, team banter, soft angst with resolution!

Word Count: 9.5k

Author’s Note: had so much fun with this request!! this one really reminded me of no way but through, which holds such a special place in my little cold-weather-loving heart. i loooove icy mission settings, hypothermic chaos, and painfully soft bucky barnes, so this was basically a dream to write. also couldn’t help myself and had to bring in the full thunderbolts/new avengers crew at the end. i am nothing if not predictable <3

The wind off the lake bit harder than it had twenty minutes ago.

Not that it mattered. You’d stopped registering the cold a while back, after the second ridge, where the frost had started creeping into the inside seam of your gloves. Or maybe when you heard the first round of gunfire echo through the trees, half-muted by the thick snow-laden branches overhead.

Your teeth weren’t chattering. That would’ve meant your body had enough energy to waste on something so useless. Instead, everything inside you was pulling inward. Tightening. Conserving. Slowing.

“Keep moving,” Bucky’s voice snapped, low and close behind your left shoulder, and you did.

Not because he told you to. Because you had to.

The mission had gone wrong in the kind of way that didn’t leave room for debriefs. No secure exit point, no external comms, no second wave coming in behind you. Just you, Bucky, and the last evac flare tucked in Yelena’s pack two klicks east—across a frozen lake, through the trees, past whatever was still hunting you from the west ridge.

You hadn’t seen what hit the quinjet. Just felt the shockwave under your boots, then the plume of smoke curling over the horizon. Yelena had been the one closest to the treeline. She moved faster, covered more ground when it mattered, and she was carrying the extraction beacon. So when everything went to hell and the team scattered, it was you and Bucky left circling back to pull recon on the ones who shot your ride out of the sky.

Bucky walked behind you now, a half-step slower than usual. Calculated. Watching your six, probably watching your feet, too.

“Northeast ridge is clear,” Yelena’s voice crackled softly in your comms. “Found an evac point. I’ll hold position.”

“Copy,” Bucky muttered. He was closer now. You could hear the rough edge in his voice, the constant scrape of concern just underneath it. “Let us know if anything shifts.”

There was a pause, a soft click, and then silence.

It had been thirty-two minutes.

Thirty-two minutes of sprinting across a frozen forest, every breath burning in your lungs. Thirty-two minutes of feeling Bucky’s presence hovering behind you like a shadow stitched to your spine, keeping pace, always watching. Watching your six, probably watching your feet, too.

“We’re near the lake,” Bucky said quietly.

You nodded once. Didn’t slow.

The lake had shown up on recon, a massive spread of black and silver on the satellite map, completely iced over and ringed by skeletal trees. You hadn’t planned to get near it. No cover. No depth perception. And the ice…

There were warnings. Cracks. Inconsistent freeze. The warm weeks earlier in the month had made it unreliable. Solid in places, dangerously thin in others.

Your fingers flexed around your weapon. You could still feel the scabbed-over cuts along your knuckles from the last mission. You hadn’t even gotten the blood out of the gloves. It had frozen stiff.

“They’re pushing,” Bucky said, eyes scanning the treeline. “Trying to flank.”

“We keep moving.”

“You’re hurt.”

“Not bad.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Your jaw locked.

There was blood soaking into the seam of your left leg, trailing down to right where the fabric met your boot. You didn’t look down. Couldn’t. It hadn’t slowed you down yet. If it did, you’d think about it. Not now.

You didn’t tell him how deep the cut went. You didn’t need to. He could smell it by now, metallic, sharp, slicing through the scent of ice and pine. It left a trail behind you, carved like a signature across the snow. If any of the hostiles had dogs, you were as good as marked.

The lake came into full view as you crested the ridge. It didn’t shimmer, didn’t glint—it was too dark for that now. Instead, it stretched wide and waiting, flat as glass and just as merciless. A wound in the landscape, glossy and black, veins of fracture spidering out across the surface where the snow had been blown off by the earlier blast wave.

Bucky said nothing, but he stopped just behind you. You could feel the weight of his silence.

“We don’t have time to go around,” you said, voice thin. “They’ll have us before the trees thicken again.”

“There’s no cover out there.” His tone wasn’t harsh. It was worse, quiet, steady, resigned. “If they catch sight of us, we’re open. Sitting ducks. You know that.”

“They won’t.” You adjusted your grip on your weapon. The trigger guard was sticking, your blood had frozen at the seam. “There’s mist coming off the surface. It’ll give us some visual buffer if we move fast.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Which is why I can’t climb another fucking ridge.”

Your voice barely made it past your lips. It felt thinner than the air you were pulling into your chest. You didn’t need to look at Bucky to know he was staring at you again—sharp, narrowed, assessing you the way he did before a breach. Not checking for weakness. Measuring the cost.

But there was no time for costs anymore.

The crack of gunfire ricocheted off the ridge behind you.

Not the echo of distant threat, but close. Immediate.

Bark splintered off a tree trunk ten paces from your position, and Bucky moved instantly, grabbing your arm and yanking you down into a crouch behind the lip of an ice-encased boulder.

You landed hard on your knee, your injured leg screaming in protest. Warm blood surged and stuck to the inside of your pants, and it was only then that you realized the muscle was torn. Not grazed. Torn.

Bucky didn’t flinch at the impact, but you caught the way his jaw clenched. “They’ve got fucking elevation,” he muttered under his breath. “How the hell did they—”

Another round cracked off a rock to your left. You ducked lower.

You didn’t answer him. You were trying not to pass out.

The second ridge. That was where they’d circled back. They must’ve doubled back around while you were sweeping east, using the wreckage and smoke trail from the quinjet as cover. You should’ve clocked it. Should’ve seen the trail crossing itself on the HUD.

But you’d been too busy bleeding.

A comms stutter broke through your earpiece. Yelena’s voice, brittle and curt: “Multiple heat signatures—tracking southeast. Six or seven. Aggressive push. Fast. You need to move.”

“Noted,” Bucky muttered, and clicked off.

He turned toward you, and there was something behind his eyes now. Not fear. Urgency. That hard-edged tension you’d only ever seen once before, when he’d carried your unconscious body out of a compound fire and spent the next forty minutes in complete silence.

“We’re not getting around the lake,” he said flatly.

Another shot cracked the air.

You flinched. He didn’t.

“They’re herding us,” you said quietly, barely audible. “Driving us into the open.”

He nodded once. “They want the intel. They don’t want to kill us. Not yet.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

More shouts. They were getting louder. You heard the low whine of an engine somewhere, a snowmobile, maybe. Not yours. Yours was ash.

“We need to split,” Bucky said suddenly.

You turned sharply. “No.”

“I’ll draw them off. You follow the lake’s edge. Keep to the trees.”

“They’re tracking us both. They know there’s two.”

“They don’t know where you are,” he said, already rising to his feet. “Not exactly. You haven’t fired since the breach. You’re harder to trace. Let me pull them west, and—”

“No.”

It came out louder than you meant it to. It silenced the forest.

You were breathing too hard. The edges of your vision had started to smear. Your leg was going numb.

“Bucky—”

Another shot. Close. Too close.

He didn’t hesitate.

He turned and hurled a flashbang toward the sound. The white light ignited against the snow with a violent hiss, smoke billowing out and momentarily masking your position.

Then—

Movement.

From your left. Fast.

You turned, raised your weapon, but it was too late. Something barreled through the trees and tackled you full force, body slamming into yours and driving you back, pain blooming white-hot in your thigh where the wound tore wider.

You hit the ground hard, your weapon flung into the snow. The hostile landed on top of you, mask fogged, breath rapid. He went for your throat. You reached for your boot knife, fingers numb, clumsy.

The lake was right there. Ten feet behind you. Maybe less.

You heard Bucky shout your name.

The knife slid into your hand. You didn’t think. You just moved.

You drove the blade up under his jaw, hard and clean, and rolled him off you before he could finish choking.

You were on your feet again—limping, half-hopping, gun lost, blood pouring down your leg now—and the others were coming.

You saw five through the smoke. At least five .

Too many.

You could try to crawl back to Bucky. Hope they didn’t shoot you in the open. Hope he could carry you.

Or—

Or you could do the thing you shouldn’t.

The thing that would buy you time.

The thing that would probably kill you.

You turned and ran toward the lake.

Bucky was still shouting, but his voice was muffled now, lost to the scream of your pulse and the way the air changed as you broke through the treeline.

Your feet hit the ice, and it sang beneath you.

A deep, haunted groan that vibrated up your legs and through your spine. The kind of sound the earth makes when it doesn’t want to be touched.

You didn’t stop.

The mist coming off the surface curled like fingers, wrapping around your boots, your knees, your breath. It shielded you, just enough. You heard the men behind you shouting, confused, uncertain. They’d lost you in the fog. For now.

But they’d find you again if you stopped moving.

You didn’t expect to make it across. That wasn’t the point.

You weren’t stupid. You’d seen the fractures on recon. Knew the freeze was uneven, knew the surface tension wouldn’t hold under sustained weight, and certainly not without punishing you for the arrogance of trying. You also knew there were at least four men behind you, maybe more, and you weren’t going to outrun them through another ridge. Not on a torn leg. Not dragging blood like breadcrumbs.

But you could give Bucky a chance. A window.

You weren’t going to last much longer anyway. Your sidearm was gone. Your rifle was jammed. Your limbs were starting to seize—not from fear, not from cold, but from simple math. The cost of staying alive had begun to outweigh what your body could give.

So you played the only card left.

If you could get two of them on the ice. Maybe three. And if you timed it right, kept your distance, baited them into giving chase, made them run heavier than you walked, there was a chance the lake would decide who stayed topside and who went under. You weren’t built like them. Smaller frame. Lighter gear. You knew how to move soft. They wouldn’t.

They were cocky. Angry. Trigger-happy and armored to hell. That kind of weight broke tension in seconds. You’d seen it happen. Watched it once during a training exercise, how a man with sixty extra pounds of ammo sank in four seconds flat when he tried to follow a sniper across a riverbed in spring thaw.

It might kill you too. But it might not. And if even one of them went in—

That was one less gun Bucky had to deal with. One less bullet in the air. One less thing clawing for your neck.

That was something.

Your breath came faster, colder. The cut in your leg had gone numb, finally, but you could feel the wetness inside your boot. The weight of it. The imbalance.

You didn’t know how far out you were.

The fog was thicker now, curling up your spine, swallowing the tree line. You could’ve been ten meters from shore or two. Could’ve been standing over solid ice or the thinnest patch on the lake.

Didn’t matter. You had to keep going.

There was shouting again. Closer. Heavier footsteps now, rapid and uncoordinated. They’d spotted your prints. One of them yelled to the others. Someone fired, blind and stupid, too far to your left to matter. The shot cracked across the lake and echoed, turning the world sharp and brittle.

You heard the ice answer.

A moan beneath the surface. A shift. A warning.

Still, you didn’t stop.

Another shot hit near your feet, spitting a web of cracks like a warning flare. You stumbled. Went to one knee. Pain flared up your hip. You hissed through your teeth and scrambled upright.

Behind you, closer now, another shout.

And then, footsteps on ice.

They were following you.

You felt the lake notice. The way it strained. The way it listened.

You started weaving, not running, but changing angles. You knew better than to move in a straight line. Spread the pressure. Make them adjust their balance. You could almost hear their weight dragging the surface down. Could hear how reckless their strides were. One of them slipped, boots sliding, cursing and shouting, and the others answered in angry Finnish.

You adjusted again, shifting your weight to the balls of your feet as you zig-zagged across the ice, lungs straining, vision speckled with spots. The cold had crawled under your skin now—made a home in the corners of your elbows, the hollow between your shoulder blades, the soft hinge of your jaw. You weren’t shivering anymore. That would have required your body to care whether it was dying.

Behind you, the men had begun to split. Two followed your path directly, weapons raised and boots clumsy across the frost, the third veering wide, trying to cut off your arc. You didn’t know where the fourth had gone. You didn’t have the capacity to guess. You’d passed beyond the edge of tactics and into instinct.

The ice beneath you moaned again, longer this time, a groaning, glacial sound that rippled underfoot like a living thing. The cracks spidered wider at the edges of your vision, faint lines of fracture glowing pale beneath the frost-dusted sheen. You counted every step in your head, each one a wager against weight and water.

You needed them closer. Just a little closer. You needed them to get stupid again, greedy for the kill.

And they did.

One of them shouted something guttural in Finnish, laced with adrenaline and mockery, and opened fire. The shot missed your side by inches, skimming the air close enough that you felt it kiss your ribs. You dropped hard into a crouch, used the momentum to pivot left, and rolled back into a full sprint. The surface answered with another shriek of pressure.

You couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a promise.

Then another sound, behind the gunfire—something real, something known.

Bucky’s voice.

Low at first, almost lost in the chaos. Then sharper, clearer, a shout that carved through the storm like a blade. He was yelling your name. You didn’t turn. Couldn’t. You could barely see anymore, and the fog curled tighter now, clouding everything but the space directly in front of you.

A second burst of fire came from the opposite edge of the lake—sharper, faster. Controlled. You recognized it immediately. Not hostile. That was him.

He was flanking.

You caught the flicker of movement through the mist just ahead and to your right. Bucky breaking the line of trees at a full sprint, a blur of black and gunmetal, eyes fixed on you like he could will you to stop. He was shouting again, but your ears had gone dull. All you could hear was the ice. The awful, pulsing hum of it underfoot, vibrating with your heartbeat.

And then one of the hostiles did what you’d hoped. He fired while running.

The recoil jolted his center of gravity, boots sliding out from under him as he fell sideways. He hit the ground hard, and the impact buckled the surface beneath him, cracks detonating outward like glass under a hammer. It sounded like thunder.

The other two tried to stop, but it was too late. One went down to a knee, skidding, scraping across the slick, and the third barreled into him, toppling them both in a tangle of limbs and shouted curses.

For a breath, you thought it had worked.

But it didn’t matter.

Because the fourth man, the one you couldn’t see, had circled wide, just like you feared. You didn’t hear him until he was right behind you. There was no gunshot. No shout. Just the thud of weight as he tackled you square in the back.

You hit the ice with a sickening crack, elbows slamming down first. The pain stole the breath from your lungs. Your vision whitewashed. Your cheek scraped frozen mist and split open.

He tried to roll you, get leverage to pin you down, but you were already moving. Already driving the knife from your belt up under his ribs, your fingers so numb you couldn’t tell if it connected.

It did. You felt him grunt, deep and surprised, before he staggered back, and you surged to your feet, but—

But the ice had had enough.

It screamed beneath you. A seismic groan, deeper than the others, wrong in every register. You felt the surface ripple like a muscle torn mid-strain. Your knees bent automatically, weight shifting light, trying to disperse, but it was too late.

The cracks burst outward from where the hostile had landed. The seams raced under your feet, intersecting, multiplying, fracturing the world beneath you in real time.

You heard Bucky shout your name again.

Closer.

Desperate.

And then he was there, just at the edge of your sightline. His face was bloodless, teeth bared, feet skidding to a stop as he reached out like he could catch you from twenty feet away.

“Don’t move!” he barked.

You didn’t.

Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

But the ice moved anyway.

It bowed beneath you.

Then split.

The water came up like a hand and yanked you under.

Bucky saw the ice go before he heard it.

Not the split, but the way your knees flexed, just slightly, the way your arms went out as if your body knew before your mind did. That half-second of weightlessness right before everything collapsed. Bucky knew that look. He’d seen it in jump footage, in buildings on fire, in the eyes of people who understood they weren’t getting out unless someone came back for them.

He was already running.

Not thinking. Not planning. Just moving. Snow churned under his boots, breath barely fogging the air. He heard your name tear out of his throat, loud and raw and useless.

You were looking right at him. Eyes wide. Mouth slightly open. But you didn’t say anything. Didn’t scream. Didn’t even move.

You just dropped.

The ice beneath you opened like a mouth.

He reached the edge just in time to see the water close back over you.

The sound was sickening. One second you were there, the next you weren’t. The lake swallowed you whole, and all that remained was mist and the soft sound of new cracks racing toward him.

Bucky didn’t hesitate.

He launched himself forward, boots slamming into the ice, the weight of his landing enough to make the surface whine under him. He dropped into a slide, knees bent, palm out to brace, momentum hurtling him across the ice toward the place you’d gone under.

The cold didn’t register. Not the air, not the wind, not the water as it seeped through the cracks already kissing the soles of his boots. The serum kept his blood from reacting the way a normal man’s would. No immediate shock. No burning in the lungs. But it didn’t make him immune to the knowledge of what cold did to you.

You had maybe ninety seconds before the water started convincing your body to stop trying.

His hand was already going to his comm.

“Belova, she fell through,” he said, voice sharp, clipped. “The lake. Northwest section. I’m going in.”

Yelena’s reply came fast, static, then her voice, tight with urgency. “That lake is thirty meters deep in the center, Barnes. If you lose her—”

“I won’t.”

“You better not. I’ll find a snowmobile. If you’re still breathing, I’ll come get you.”

He reached the hole, just barely visible now. It was a jagged, black wound in the surface, already sheeting over at the edges with a thin glaze of refreeze. He dropped to his knees, leaned over, peered in—

And saw nothing.

Just black.

No movement. No sound. No trace.

“Northwest,” he repeated, already stripping his rifle off one shoulder and driving it into the snow at the edge of the break. “Tell evac. We’ll need heat. And a med kit.”

“Copy,” she said. “Don’t die.”

He could feel the press of his heartbeat in his teeth.

“Shit.” His voice cracked out of him like a whip.

He stripped the rifle from his shoulder, shoved it into the snow behind him, and without another thought, threw himself in.

The lake gripped him like a vice.

It wasn’t like diving into water. It was like diving into a vacuum. It swallowed him. Crushed him. Everything disappeared at once. Sight, sound, weight. He didn’t kick. Didn’t thrash. He let himself drop, arms out, the metal of his left dragging him faster. One breath in his lungs. That’s all he allowed.

He opened his eyes.

There was nothing.

Only black, smeared with silver light from the hole above him, already shifting, narrowing. Snow-dust had drifted across the opening. It would vanish in seconds. He needed to find you now.

He rotated once. No sign of you. Kicked again, deeper. The pressure increased, the cold turning the skin of his right arm to fire. He ignored it. Turned again. Saw—

Movement.

To his left.

A flicker. A shape. Limbs caught in the water’s drag. No fight in them.

He pushed toward it.

You weren’t moving. Your arms floated loosely, your legs bent at strange angles, one boot still half-trailing a blood-red ribbon through the current. Your head was tilted, hair haloing out in the dark.

For a split-second, something in him broke.

He reached you in three kicks. One arm wrapped around your chest, hand braced under your jaw, holding your head above your shoulders. Your face was waxy, mouth parted, lashes spiked with ice. He pulled you in, curled his metal arm across your ribs, and angled upward.

The surface was gone.

The hole was gone, nowhere near.

He turned in a tight circle, one-handed, dragging you with him. No openings. No shadows above, no light. The ice was seamless.

His vision tunneled.

He launched upward, fist first, and when his knuckles hit solid, he didn’t stop. He punched.

The sound was muffled underwater, more sensation than noise. The vibration hit his bones, the resistance of ancient ice refusing to yield. He drove his arm up again—once, twice—until the metal met fracture.

The ice split.

The hole widened just enough. He kicked upward and shoved you ahead of him, breaking the surface with a gasp you didn’t make.

The air burned. The cold above was nothing compared to below.

He hauled himself out of the water, grabbing you under the arms and dragging you with him, the both of you half-dead and slick with lakewater, steam rolling off your clothes as the air hit them.

You weren’t breathing.

“No—” he rasped. He dropped to his knees, pressed two fingers under your jaw. Nothing. His hand flattened against your chest. Still nothing. He tipped your head, cleared your mouth, and without pausing, sealed his lips to yours and breathed.

Twice.

Again.

Your body jerked, but only from the force.

He pressed down hard. His hands trembled, just slightly. Not from the cold.

“C’mon,” he muttered, voice cracked and low, barely human. “Don’t you fucking dare—”

Another breath.

You coughed.

Violent. Wet. Your whole frame arched up before collapsing into him, lungs sputtering lakewater and whatever else you’d swallowed, mouth opening to drag in air like it hurt to exist.

Bucky’s arms locked around you the second your head tilted forward.

You were shaking now. Not convulsing. Not yet. But the kind of full-body tremor that said your blood wasn’t moving fast enough. That your skin was freezing from the inside out.

“I got you,” he whispered, over and over, voice half-strangled as he pulled you close, as close as he could get without hurting you more. “I got you, I got you.”

He didn’t realize he was rocking you until your fingers clenched in his jacket. A tiny, involuntary twitch—no force behind it, no awareness—but it was enough. Enough to tell him you were still here. Still fighting. Still fucking breathing.

“Easy,” he whispered against your hair. “Just stay with me. I’ve got you.”

You made a sound. Barely anything. A cracked whimper caught in the wreckage of your throat. He pressed a hand to the back of your neck, fingers splayed wide, trying to shield as much of your skin as he could from the wind.

Your body was ice. Every inch soaked through. Your gear, your boots, the back of your neck, all of it was clinging to you like a second skin, each layer working against you now, not for.

The low snarl of a snowmobile engine cut through the trees, carving hard across the frozen ground. He didn’t look up. Didn’t shift. Just curled tighter around you and angled his body between yours and the open lake.

The engine cut off twenty feet away, skidding to a halt. Snow crunched under boots. Then—

“Shit.” Yelena’s voice dropped the usual smirk. “She’s hypothermic?”

“Full submersion,” Bucky said, barely audible. “At least a minute. Maybe longer.”

Yelena was already moving, yanking her pack off and crouching beside him. “Then we need her out of those clothes, now. You too. You’re soaked.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re wet,” she snapped. “You’re not immortal.”

“She’s freezing.”

“Exactly why we strip her down and use what’s dry. I brought a tarp rig for the back—get her on it. We’ll wrap her, I’ll drive.”

Bucky didn’t argue. He peeled his jacket off one arm, then the other, movements sharp and economical. It hit the snow with a wet slap. His gear vest followed. Then he reached for the zipper at your collar, fingers already numbing where they met the icy fabric.

“Hey,” he said softly, tipping your chin. Your eyes fluttered open for a breath, then closed again. “I know it’s cold. But we gotta get you out of this stuff. Alright?”

You didn’t answer. Just let him move you, limp and loose like your bones had gone slack. He tried to be fast. Careful. Stripped your coat first, then the soaked thermal underlayer, exposing your shoulders to the air. You flinched. He wanted to curse out loud. Wanted to punch the goddamn lake.

Yelena shrugged off her own jacket. “Here.”

He took it without looking and shoved your arms through the sleeves. It was warm. And dry. It didn’t matter if it was hers or his or stolen off a corpse. He’d have wrapped you in skin if it meant getting your body temp up fast enough.

But it wasn’t enough.

Your pants were soaked through. So were the boots. And your left leg—fuck.

He saw the blood pooled inside the boot as he started to peel it off. Frozen red around the seams. Your thigh was still bleeding, sluggish now from shock, but still enough to be dangerous.

“Yelena,” he barked without turning. “Gauze. Whatever you’ve got.”

“Med kit’s in the sled,” she called, already unrolling the tow platform and yanking the thermal tarp open. “Field wrap’s on the side.”

He ripped the second boot off, tossed both aside. The pants clung like wet parchment. He muttered something sharp under his breath and took the knife from his belt, slicing the fabric clean up the seam to the waistband. He didn’t pause. Didn’t look at your face. Just cut them free and tossed them into the snow.

Your leg was a mess. Torn muscle, ragged edge, blood sluggish but still weeping. He didn’t have time to be gentle. He grabbed the wrap from Yelena’s outstretched hand and packed the gauze into the wound, fingers fast and precise. Then he cinched the bandage tight just above your knee.

You groaned, weak and hoarse, but it meant you were still responsive.

“I know,” he muttered. “I know it hurts. Just hang on.”

Yelena was already back at the sled, lifting the flap on the side and unfurling the padding. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before she drops out completely. Help me get her in.”

He moved without answering. One arm behind your back, one under your legs. You were a deadweight bundle of wet limbs and heatless skin.

Together, they settled you into the tow rig—padded, shielded at the sides, thermal canopy overhead. Standard evac mod. But it still looked like a coffin.

He hated that it looked like a coffin.

Yelena threw him a blanket roll, and he tucked it tight over your chest and shoulders, then your hips and thighs, arms crossed low over your ribs. Your skin was damp, your hair frozen at the ends, lashes rimmed in ice. He didn’t let himself stop moving. He kept one hand pressed just over your heart, the other ready to shield your face from wind.

His hand stayed there.

Just a second too long.

She didn’t call him on it.

“You’re going with her,” Yelena said instead, already climbing back onto the snowmobile. “I can drive. You monitor her breathing. Try and get her talking if you can. If she fully passes out—”

“She won’t.”

“I’m just saying—”

“She won’t.”

His voice was steel. He wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t pleading. He just knew.

Yelena didn’t argue again. She gunned the engine, and the machine roared to life.

He climbed into the tow sled, kneeling beside you, one hand on your chest, the other braced against the frame. Wind blasted past them as they launched forward, but he didn’t feel it.

All he felt was the shallow rise and fall beneath his hand.

You surfaced slowly.

Not all at once. Not in a cinematic way—no gasping, no full-body jolt, no sudden realization that you were still alive. Just pressure. First behind your eyes, then in your chest. A tightness, dull and deep, like your lungs had been filled with stones and someone had stacked their weight across your ribcage to make sure they stayed there.

Your mouth was open. You hadn’t meant it to be. Something cool and artificial was feeding air through your nose, down your throat. Plastic tubing, you realized after a beat, half-formed thoughts dragging behind sensation. An oxygen cannula.

Your head ached.

Not a sharp pain. Not even pain, really. Just distance. Like your skull had been filled with static and your thoughts had to crawl through it on hands and knees to reach you. When you tried to move, just a twitch of your shoulder, your body didn’t respond. Not fully. Your nerves were slow, reluctant. Your arms felt like they belonged to someone else.

Then, light. Soft, not blinding. White above you. Clinical. Cold. You tried to blink and felt the dry pull of your lashes against skin that had been left too long without moisture.

There were sounds now. Somewhere in the periphery.

Muffled voices. Beeping.

A hiss of something mechanical resetting. Maybe a vitals monitor, maybe a heat unit.

The next thing you noticed was your skin.

Your entire body felt like it had been peeled back and glued together wrong. Your legs ached. Not in the sharp, obvious way of a gunshot or blade, but deeper. Bone deep. Joint deep. There was a dull, pulsing throb in your left thigh that you couldn’t place, and you realized after a moment that you didn’t want to.

You were alive.

You weren’t supposed to be.

A slow breath pulled through your chest. It hurt. Not like you’d broken anything, but like your lungs had fought too hard to keep you, and they were punishing you for it now. You could feel the heaviness in them, the stiffness—residual fluid, probably. You weren’t coughing, but your chest was tight, and something wet shifted faintly every time you inhaled.

Hypothermia. Near-drowning. Soft tissue trauma. Blood loss.

The words filtered in one by one like files retrieved from a burned cabinet.

You didn’t remember the evac. Just ice. The smell of pine. A scream half-swallowed by the wind. The weight of water crushing your body into stillness. And then, heat. Arms. Metal against your ribs. Something solid that refused to let go.

Something you’d stopped fighting for before it found you.

There was a voice outside the room, beyond a curtain surrounding you. Sharp. Familiar.

Yelena.

“—two hours max. That’s what the doc said. She needs rest, not another round of brooding Bucky Barnes breathing exercises.”

A grunt. Quieter. Male.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

A beat.

“Oh my god. You’re already doing it.”

You tried to turn your head toward the sound, but your body was too heavy. The world tilted and dragged behind you. Then, footsteps. Two sets. One softer, reluctant. One clipped.

They didn’t come in.

Their voices faded just enough to let the quiet crawl back in. Only the monitors kept humming, a soft rhythmic count of your survival, like the room was measuring every second you stayed alive and wasn’t convinced yet that you would.

You lay there, still and heavy, unsure if your body would obey you at all. Everything felt wrapped in gauze. Muted. Far away. But your chest remembered. The weight, the pressure, the water. The ache that lingered behind your ribs told you the lake hadn’t really let go. Not completely.

You tried again.

It wasn’t even a word at first. Just a shift. A breath caught too sharply in your throat. Your fingers twitched against the blanket. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe you imagined it. You turned your head, just barely, toward the voices outside the curtain, and let your lips part.

“Buck—”

Your voice wasn’t a voice. It was air dragged across a raw throat, shredded in the middle, collapsing before it made it to sound. But it was enough. Enough to make the effort real. Enough to make your pulse spike on the monitor. Enough to send a tremor through your lungs.

The curtain shifted instantly.

Then opened.

Bucky’s silhouette filled the space between the light and the noise. For a second, he didn’t say anything. Just looked at you, jaw clenched, shoulders set. His face didn’t change, but you saw it anyway. Relief. The kind that didn’t need expression to be known.

“You’re awake.” His voice was low. Too steady.

You swallowed—or tried to. It scraped. Burned. Your throat felt flayed.

He crossed the room in two strides, dropping into the chair beside your bed like he’d been ready to launch himself forward the whole time and was only now allowed. His hand hovered near yours, not quite touching.

“Do you need the doc?” he asked. “I’ll go get them. Just hold on—”

You moved before you could think.

Not much. Not even fast. But your hand lifted, weak and trembling, and curled around his wrist as he started to move. The motion cost everything. Your arm dropped a second later like it had been cut loose, but it did its job.

Bucky froze.

You tried to speak again. The word caught halfway up your throat and crumpled. You coughed instead, once, hard enough to burn, and his hand was on you instantly, palm flat against your sternum like he could keep you from falling apart just by holding you still.

“You’re okay.” His voice was different now. Thinner. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

You tried.

Your chest shook with it. Your lungs were still too tight. Too full of memory. But the oxygen tubing helped, and eventually the coughing stopped. Your body settled back against the sheets, exhausted from the effort of existing.

His hand didn’t move.

“I’m fine,” you rasped. Or tried to.

The word sounded nothing like a word.

It scraped the back of your throat and shattered. You winced. He shook his head once, almost imperceptible.

“Don’t,” he murmured. “You don’t have to talk. Not yet.”

You blinked up at him.

He was too close. Not in a way that made you uncomfortable, never that, but in the way that made you aware of how much space he took up without saying a word. The way his presence made the machines quieter. The way the lines around his mouth looked carved from stone. The way his hand hadn’t left your chest.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said, softer now. “I thought—”

He didn’t finish.

You didn’t need him to.

You felt it in the way his shoulders curled forward. In the way he kept watching your pulse monitor like it owed him something. In the way his eyes kept returning to your mouth, to your neck, to the shallow rise and fall that proved you were still here.

You opened your mouth again.

The words didn’t come. You weren’t sure they could. Your throat felt like someone had taken a wire brush to the inside of it. But you moved your lips anyway, slow, deliberate, shaping around the simplest thing you could mouth.

How long?

Bucky blinked.

For a second, you thought maybe he hadn’t caught it. Then his hand left your chest—not completely, just enough to curl around your wrist again, warm and solid, anchoring.

“Seven days,” he said quietly. “You’ve been under for seven.”

You let that sit. Let it press.

Seven days.

Not just unconscious. Unresponsive. Monitored. Kept warm. Intubated, probably, if your throat was any indication. You were certain there’d been a moment, maybe more than one, where they weren’t sure you were going to come back at all. Where your body might have decided to give up on the rest of you even after the lake let you go.

You let your head tip, eyes dragging slowly across the room. The motion made your neck ache. Even that, especially that, felt like a small defeat.

There was a table beside the bed. Narrow. Stainless steel. You hadn’t noticed it before.

It was cluttered.

Not with the usual medical shit. Not gauze or tubing or pill cups. Something else. Something… softer.

There were a few folded paper cranes, wings dipped in bright marker ink. A knitted square of fabric, uneven at the edges, with a giant uneven “W” stitched into the center in dark blue yarn. A cheap plastic snow globe—Branson, Missouri—with fake snow and a peeling label. A tiny flickering LED tea light. A single packet of hot chocolate. A folded sketch torn from someone’s notebook paper.

You stared at it. Confused.

Your brow furrowed, unsteady, and you felt Bucky’s eyes move with yours.

He shifted in his chair, the leather creaking faintly under him.

“Those are from Bob.” He nodded toward the cranes. “He said paper folding helps with anxiety. Sat outside your room for two hours trying to get that red one right. Said you’d like it because it was ugly. Had character.”

Your lips twitched. Or tried to. He saw it.

Bob had tried to teach you once, back when missions were lighter and your hands steadier. He’d brought a pack of neon origami paper into the rec room like it was contraband, all sheepish grin and muttered instructions, and you’d spent an hour cursing under your breath while he quietly folded a perfect flock beside you.

You never managed a proper crane, just a deeply cursed paper lump with uneven wings, but he’d kept it anyway. Called it your “battle bird.” Said it looked like it had been through something. Just like you.

“The tea light is Ava’s,” Bucky continued. “She said you always lit a candle on briefing nights. Figured you’d want one burning when you woke up.”

You did. Always the same squat little votive, tucked on the corner of your desk, flickering through every debrief while the rest of the team pretended not to notice. Ava had, though—said the sound and smell helped her keep her pacing in check, the rhythm of it steadier than her own breath some nights.

Bucky pointed at the snow globe, grimacing. “Walker. No note. Don’t ask.”

You made a rough sound, not quite a laugh, and regretted it immediately. Your chest ached. You swallowed it down.

Of course he brought Branson, Missouri.

The man had one week of leave and spent it sending you unsolicited selfies from a dinner theater called “Yakov’s Last Laugh,” wearing a cowboy hat two sizes too small and arguing over text about whether Silver Dollar City technically counted as “historic.”

You’d told him Branson wasn’t a real place. Just a Midwest fever dream built entirely out of unlicensed Elvis impersonators and knockoff Dollywood energy. He’d called it “America’s soul.”

You’d called it “a cry for help in gift shop form.”

And now it sat beside your medical chart, a tiny, glittering monument to the world’s pettiest inside joke.

God help you if it made you smile again.

“The sketch is from Alexei,” he went on. “It’s supposed to be you in the snow, fighting a bear. Or dancing with one. He wasn’t clear.”

You blinked slowly. That tracked. He’d once told you, entirely unprompted, that your “ferocity under pressure” reminded him of a Siberian she-bear. You’d assumed it was a compliment. Probably.

“And that,” he added, gesturing to the hot chocolate, “Yelena. Said hospital cocoa was an abomination and if she caught you drinking any she’d pull your IV herself.”

You smiled faintly. Yelena was the one who started it. Midnight cocoa in the mess when neither of you could sleep, hands still shaking from whatever dreams you'd clawed your way out of. No talking. No questions. Just heat, sugar, and silence until your pulses evened out again. A truce in a mug.

Your throat was still raw. You didn’t dare try a full word, but the question was there—in the slow blink, the glance toward the yarn.

“That’s from Walker too,” Bucky said, deadpan. “He learned to knit. Apparently.”

Your eyes drifted back to him. He hadn’t looked away from you once. Not really.

There was one more thing on the table. You hadn’t noticed it before. Smaller than the rest. Set slightly apart. A small matchbox-sized tin. Dark blue. Metal. Worn at the corners.

Bucky followed your gaze. His jaw tightened.

You looked at him.

He didn’t speak.

Just reached over slowly, picked it up, turned it once in his palm like he wasn’t sure if he regretted leaving it there.

Then he held it out to you. Didn’t press it into your hand, just let it rest there, cradled against his fingers, waiting.

You tilted your head toward it, but your muscles were still too slow, coordination still too shot. He noticed. Said nothing. Just flipped the lid open himself.

Inside, nestled into the tin’s base on a folded strip of linen, was a tiny object. Barely bigger than your thumb. Faintly metallic. Dull silver at the edges, matte black at the center.

It was a music box cylinder. A fragment. Something old, worn smooth. The kind used in hand-crank players—the ones tucked inside the little wind-up boxes you used to fidget with as a child, flipping them open and closed like they were meant to be solved.

You blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Bucky was watching you. Carefully. Like the weight of your reaction might crack him open.

“You said,” he said quietly, “a few months ago… that you had one when you were a kid. Broke in a move. Said you remembered the sound but not the song.”

You remembered. You hadn’t thought he had.

You hadn’t thought anyone had been listening.

“I found that in a market in Riga,” he went on, voice low, roughened at the edges. “The guy didn’t know what it played. Didn’t have the housing. Just this. It was rusted shut. Took me a few days to clean it.”

He paused.

“I was gonna wait to give it to you. But I didn’t know when the right time was.”

You tried to speak again. Your throat clenched. No sound came.

Still—you pushed the air up, forced it out like it owed you something. Like you had to say it, even if it burned.

“Why?”

It rasped out of you like broken glass dragged across stone. More breath than voice. But the word made it past your lips this time, and that was enough.

Bucky didn’t answer right away.

Didn’t look at you, either. Not at first. His eyes had dropped back to the tin, as if the shape of it might tell him how to start.

The silence stretched.

You didn’t push him.

“I didn’t know if you’d want it,” he said finally. The words came low. Barely above a whisper. “Didn’t know if it meant anything coming from me.”

He shifted in the chair like he didn’t trust it to hold his weight. Like he was trying not to lean too close.

“You said that thing about the music box and it just—stuck. I don’t even think you realized you said it. We were talking about… something else. Some mission. I can’t even remember which. You were just fiddling with your comm and you mentioned it. How the song used to help you sleep, but now you can’t remember the tune. Just that it made you feel… safe. Back then.”

He rubbed his thumb over his knee, like he needed something to ground himself.

“I remembered,” he said again, quieter this time. “And I kept looking. For months. In every market, every junk bin, every fucked-up antique shop we passed through. Most of them were trash. Broken. Stolen. Or the wrong kind. But then I found that one. Just the cylinder. No box. No sound. Just…possibility.”

His jaw twitched.

“I figured I’d give it to you when… I don’t know. When things slowed down. When we weren’t bleeding every week or crawling through wreckage or losing people left and right. But things don’t slow down. Not for us. So I waited.”

He finally looked at you.

And the look in his eyes—God. It made your breath stutter beneath the oxygen tube. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t soft, either. It was sharp. Too sharp. Like the only way he knew how to look at you was like he was still checking for exit wounds.

“I thought I missed my chance.”

He said it so plainly you almost didn’t feel it at first. But it settled in your chest like a weight. Like truth.

“I thought you were gone,” he went on. “On that lake… when I couldn’t find the surface, when I finally got you out, when your body—” He stopped himself. Shook his head. “You weren’t moving. You weren’t breathing. You were just drifting. And I remember thinking—that’s it. That’s the end. That’s where I lose you.”

Your chest tightened. Not from pain. Not from cold. Just the sound of him.

“I don’t lose people like that anymore,” he said. “Not like I used to. Not if I can help it. And sure, I’ve said that before. But this time—” His voice cracked, just once. “This time it was you.”

You blinked. Hard.

He leaned forward now, elbows braced on his knees, voice lower than before.

“You don’t get it,” he said, rambling on like the words were exiting his mouth before he even thought about them. “You think you’re just… part of the team. That you’re one of us. And you are. But it’s not the same. Not for me.”

He exhaled, sharp and tired and fraying.

“You get under my skin in ways that nothing else does. You keep me tethered when shit goes sideways. You ask questions no one else asks. You call me on my bullshit without making it feel like I’m back in some shrink’s office getting dissected. You make space. And I didn’t know how much I needed that—no—wanted it. Until I thought I’d lost it.”

You didn’t know you’d started crying until you tasted salt at the edge of your mouth. Just a few tears. Silent. Clean. Your throat hurt too much for sobbing. Your eyes hurt too much to keep them open.

But he noticed.

He sat forward quickly, hand reaching for the call button. “Shit—do you want the doc? I can get them, they said to page if you—”

You lifted your hand again. Just barely. Just enough to curl your fingers around his wrist.

“No,” you whispered. Barely there. Barely sound.

His hand hovered an inch above the call button, frozen. You felt the way his wrist flexed beneath your fingers, the way the tendons in his forearm pulled tight like he wasn’t sure whether to move or stay. His eyes searched your face again, sharp and clinical for one second—checking your color, your breathing, your pupils—and then he exhaled, quieter this time. Sat back.

Didn’t pull away.

You swallowed. The effort scraped down your throat like sandpaper, but you did it anyway. Forced air past the ruined edges of your voice until it shaped something. Small. Crooked. Yours.

“I didn’t… know you remembered,” you rasped, each word a dry scrape across something bruised and tender. “The music box.”

Bucky exhaled. Short. Quiet. Almost a laugh, except there was nothing funny in it.

“I remember everything you don’t think I do,” he said. “You always think no one’s paying attention. But I see it. All of it. The way you cover for people when they’re tired. How you pass your dessert off to Bob when he pretends he’s not hungry. That little stretch you do before every mission.”

Your lips parted, breath caught halfway to forming something else. But your throat cracked mid-inhale, so you let it go. Let him keep speaking.

He leaned forward again, this time more gently, his forearms braced on either side of your legs, like he was trying to fold himself smaller. Make himself quieter. Like he didn’t want the rest of the world to hear what came next.

“I see you,” he repeated, quieter now. “Even when you think you’re blending in. When you’re holding it together for everyone else.”

You blinked slowly. The tears had stopped, or maybe your body had just run out. Your eyes burned from the effort of keeping them open. But they stayed on him.

“I think…” You paused, tried to clear your throat, but it made it worse. You grimaced through it, blinked hard. He moved like he might reach for you, or call again, but you shook your head, barely.

“Let me,” you croaked, voice shot to hell, every syllable catching like thread pulled through torn cloth. “I think I… do the stretch… because I’m scared.”

His eyes didn’t widen. He didn’t flinch. Just watched. Still. So fucking still.

You blinked again, slow and raw. “Not of dying. Not really.”

That earned a twitch of his mouth. Not amusement. Something darker. Sadder. Knowing.

“Of what, then?” he asked, voice low.

You swallowed hard. The air in your lungs felt too thick now, heavy with what you hadn’t said before the lake took you. “Of… getting close. Of being… close. And then it ending.”

Something in his expression fractured. Not broken, not open, just bare. Like you’d peeled something back without meaning to. Like you’d stepped too close to the place he kept boarded up with silence and mission reports and one-liners that didn’t quite pass for humor.

He nodded once. Not like he was agreeing. Like he understood.

“You’re not the only one,” he said quietly. “You think I didn’t notice how long it took you to unpack after the Bataysk job? You kept your bag zipped by the door for three weeks.”

You almost laughed. Almost. But it came out too soft, caught on the edge of a breath.

“You knew?”

“I always knew.”

You looked at him again. Really looked. His hands weren’t covered by gloves like they normally were. They were bare, calloused, fingertips nicked and bruised. His left hand rested beside your blanket, the metal dull and wet-lit under the fluorescents, motionless.

Your hand moved before your brain caught up.

Weak. Slow. You lifted your fingers and reached for the edge of his sleeve, but your arm shook with the effort and dropped short. He caught it before it fell completely—his flesh hand, warm and scarred and careful—and guided your palm over the metal one like it wasn’t strange at all. Like you’d done it a thousand times. His jaw ticked.

“It’s cold,” you whispered.

He nodded. “I know.”

“I don’t mind.”

He let his thumb brush across the edge of your wrist, slow and grounding. Not a stroke. Not comforting. Just there. “I didn’t think I’d get to tell you any of this,” he said. “When I pulled you out, when you weren’t breathing, I—” He cut himself off again, jaw tightening. “I thought you were already gone.”

You wanted to say something, anything, but the only sound you made was breath.

It was enough.

“I wasn’t ready to lose you,” he said. “Not like that. Not ever. But especially not without… you knowing.”

Your throat pulled tight.

“Knowing what?” you whispered, wrecked.

He didn’t hesitate.

“That I give a damn. That I think about you more than I should. That you’re not just some mission partner I cover in the field. That you matter.”

You opened your mouth again. Closed it. Your lips trembled.

Bucky moved closer, just slightly, head still bowed low like the words had weight. Like if he spoke too loud they might splinter.

“You matter to me,” he said. “More than I ever planned for.”

Your eyes burned. Your hand twitched in his, a pathetic excuse for a squeeze, but he felt it. He held on tighter.

You swallowed again, painful and raw. “Me too,” you said, barely audible. “You… matter.”

Something broke in his face. Not his composure. Not his strength. Just the smallest trace of distance, pulled away. A breath he hadn’t been able to take until now.

You saw it in his eyes.

And maybe that would’ve been enough. Maybe in another world—one with less noise, less blood—you would’ve stayed like that for another minute. Maybe you would’ve reached for him again, said something more, pulled the words from the ruin of your voice just to hear him say your name in that same, low, wrecked way.

But this wasn’t that world.

And the curtain tore open before you could even draw your next breath.

“MY BEAR CUB LIVES!”

Alexei’s voice exploded through the medbay like cannon fire, and before you could brace for it, before Bucky could so much as turn in his seat, there were arms. So many arms. Warm, clumsy, massive arms wrapping around you like a weighted blanket made of noise and Soviet linen.

You wheezed. A sharp, involuntary gasp you couldn’t help as Alexei crushed half your torso in a rib-cracking hug.

Bucky was on his feet instantly. “Hey—hey! Easy! Watch it, she’s still—”

“Bah!” Alexei cut him off with a wave of one enormous hand. “She is strong! Like small elk! Look at this—already upright, already beautiful, skin like ice sculpture!” He reached out and cradled your jaw for a second, then kissed your forehead in a way that nearly knocked the oxygen cannula askew. “You do not die on me. You are not allowed to die on me. I would never forgive you.”

“I tried to stop him,” Yelena muttered dryly, appearing behind him with arms crossed and absolutely no remorse. “I tackled him in the hallway. Didn’t matter. He just kept bounding.”

She was flanked by three more figures—Bob, shifting awkwardly and clutching a bouquet that looked like it had been stolen from a funeral arrangement, Ava hovering beside him with a look of cautious relief, and John leaning just far enough into the room to smirk.

“Look who decided to rejoin the land of the living,” Walker called, voice light but eyes sharp. “Don’t do that again. It’s bad for team morale.”

Bucky hadn’t moved far from your bedside, just enough to make room, to stop Alexei from inadvertently crushing a vein or breaking an already-bruised rib. He was still watching you, eyes flicking between your face and your vitals monitor like he couldn’t help himself.

Alexei finally released you with a thud and an affectionate slap to the shoulder that nearly dislocated something. You blinked hard through the swirl of motion, coughing once as your lungs protested the sudden influx of people and oxygen.

“Careful,” Bucky muttered again, more to himself than anyone else.

But you caught his wrist before he could move back.

Just a small touch. Nothing demanding. Just enough.

He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

The others kept talking—Yelena launching into a commentary about how ugly the paper cranes were before realizing Bob made them and immediately changing the subject, Ava threatening to install a lock on the medbay door, Bob quietly asking if you wanted him to adjust the light overhead, Walker declaring he’d brought “real food” and pulling a suspicious-looking bag from behind his back that Yelena immediately swatted out of his hands.

It was chaos. Loud and jagged and human.

But you didn’t look at them.

You looked at Bucky.

And he looked at you.

And in that small, quiet moment—under the hum of machines, under the curtain pulled halfway back, under the noise and the mess and the aching throb in your chest—you felt it settle. All of it. The tension. The fear. The distance you’d both kept because you didn’t know what would happen if you crossed it.

He stayed exactly where you needed him. Elbow resting on the frame of your bed, hand lax in your grip, eyes never leaving yours even when someone bumped the curtain again or when Yelena started swearing in Russian under her breath because she had opened the bag Walker had and apparently it smelled.

You didn’t speak.

Neither did he.

But your fingers stayed curled around his wrist, weak and unsteady, still trembling from the cold that still lived somewhere in your bones, and he didn’t pull away.

Didn’t shift.

Didn’t give you some line about rest or recovery or needing to take a break from all this noise.

He just stayed.

Not because you asked.

But because that’s what he did.

What he’d always done, quietly, behind the chaos.

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#bucky barnes x reader #☆ kent's recs

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kenthoe · 1 month ago

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PAIRING | Robert “Bob” Reynolds x f!Reader

TAGS/WARNINGS | angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, non-sexual intimacy/nudity, Bob’s sadness and self-deprecating thoughts.

SUMMARY | Four times Bob lets his true feelings for you go unaddressed, and the one time he doesn’t.

WORD COUNT | 3.3k

NOTES | You know, I was actually gonna take a break from writing (again, I know, I’m sorry) but I somehow managed to bang this out today at work so here you go, my first ever Bob fic 🫶🏻 Happy Wednesday!

⋆ ˚｡⋆˚ NAVIGATION | | BOB REYNOLDS M.LIST ˚⋆｡˚ ⋆

I do not do taglists. Please follow my sideblog @ficsbyjane for notifications whenever I post.

✧.* Truth Be Told

The first time he touches you, he does it almost without hesitation.

Normally, Bob makes a point to keep a respectable distance. He doesn’t touch anyone or anything without the most careful of considerations first—even though he wants it, craves it.

But when you’re this close, when you’re leaning into him instead of away, when you’re looking at him like he’s just Bob and not the same guy who almost let the Void inside him swallow New York whole, his hands can’t help but ache for you.

He’s restless with it, his palms itching as though something was missing. He wants to know what your skin would feel like under his fingertips, whether your eyelashes would flutter under his touch, and if you’d sigh just the way he would whenever he imagined closing the distance between you.

So before he knows it, Bob’s already reaching for you.

His heart leaps to his throat the moment he makes contact, turning his hand over, using the blade of his finger to brush away the crumbs at the corner of your mouth.

You look up from your plate, the box of pastries you’d bought for the entire team as an early afternoon pick-me-up still laying open on the table, your eyes widening a fraction when they meet his.

“You’ve got a little bit of…” he trails off, not really caring or even knowing what it is. Bob’s never had much of a sweet tooth, but right now, you smell like almonds and raspberry jam and a touch of something that’s uniquely you… and he suddenly wants nothing more than to taste.

“Oh,” is all you say, staying still as he lets his hand linger instead, his knuckles brushing along the curve of your jaw. You smile, your eyes softening, and for a fraction of a second Bob swears you lean into his touch. “Thanks, Bob.”

He nods, not trusting his own voice or the temptation of your name on his lips, before very reluctantly breaking the connection. His fingers are already twitching with the need to touch you again by the time he puts it back down onto the dining table.

And although you never talk about it, there is an easing of invisible barriers after that. Now that he’s had a taste, Bob can no longer resist the warmth of your skin against his—no matter how chaste or innocent the contact is.

“You’ve got an eyelash,” he’d say, pointing to his own face, his lips twitching with the fib, and you’d simply lean forward at the same time he did, allowing him to swipe the tip of his finger down your cheek. Trusting, unsuspecting, and oblivious to the yearning expanding like a balloon in his chest.

What if, one day, he could lean in just like this and let his lips find their way to yours?

Impossible, but a man could dream.

But sometimes there isn’t anything there at all, but he still dips slightly at the waist, beckoning you with his hand before removing the imaginary thing from your cheek, your nose, or the aching perfection that is your cupid’s bow.

And when you smile up at him expectantly, even when Yelena catches him in his little white lies one day, lifting a skeptical brow when she meets his eye over your head, Bob just carries on.

Truth be told, he can’t even bring himself to feel guilty about it.

—

The first time he ever holds your hand is on a Thursday.

It’s unseasonably cold for the time of year, and Bob’s shivering under his sweater. You have been sent out on an errand to restock the Tower with food and supplies, and Bucky insisted that Bob go with you.

“Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you out there,” Bucky said to you, slapping a hand down onto Bob’s shoulder before turning towards him, “Right?”

“Right,” Bob mumbled, feeling his cheeks going red because evidently his feelings were written all over his face, and now even Bucky, of all people, was taking it upon himself to nudge things along.

“Plus Bob can help carry your bags,” Yelena joined in, not looking up from the game of Scrabble she was playing with Alexei. “Dad, that is not a word!”

“Says who?” He said, gesturing to the gibberish he’d placed on the board, full of X’s, M’s, C’s, and V’s, but not a single vowel in sight.

Ava scoffed, her face scrunching up in both confusion and annoyance. “She can take care of herself. Just last week she kicked John’s ass—”

But then John nudged her, maybe a little too hard, almost sending her tumbling out of her chair. She glared up at him, before she caught the meaningful look on his face.

“Oh… yeah… erm, nighttime in New York is practically the Purge. Might as well take him with you.”

You gave them all looks of thinly veiled suspicion, but then you just shook your head and turned to Bob as you were winding a scarf around your neck. Smiling, you asked him, “Do you mind, Bob?”

As if he would.

Venturing outdoors is still rather daunting, which is probably another reason why the team’s been so eager to get him out of the Tower. The thought that someone might recognize him makes him sweat, despite the mid-morning chill.

And then the two of you approach a particularly crowded spot on the sidewalk, and Bob’s footsteps falter slightly. You stop as if you sense his hesitation, turning to him just before disappearing into the throng of New Yorkers. As naturally as breathing, you hold out a hand.

“Come on,” you prompt with a shake of your hand when he just stares for a few seconds.

Bob holds on quickly before you can change your mind. You tug him along, squeezing his hand tighter as you reach the thick of the crowd. Bob emerges on the other side of it with pink cheeks that should be almost numb from the biting wind, but instead they are warm with something else.

And even as the horde dissipates, the sidewalk opening up with more than enough space for the two of you to walk side by side, you don’t let go.

He catches your reflections in the glass windows of the nearby shops, you with your head turned away to admire the displays of a flower shop, but your hands still joined together.

Bob wonders what others think you are to him.

He wants them to know you’re special.

He hopes you know, too.

—

The first time he falls asleep next to you starts with him sitting in the dark of his room, his shoulders slumping a little further forward with each passing minute. The others have left on another mission without him, and Bob just wishes he could do something to help.

But he still can’t control his powers well enough yet; it’d be too dangerous for him to be out in the field with them. He understands this better than anyone—the last time he tried tapping into full extent of his Sentry powers, he almost murdered somebody (even if Alexei would argue that that person, Valentina, had deserved it), that god-like sense of superiority leeching ominously into his mind.

He is hopeful when Yelena says he’s improving, slowly but surely, tries to believe it when Bucky tells him that it will happen soon. He just needs a little more time.

But Bob can’t help but feel like a burden, someone they have to take care of rather than a part of the team. The voice in the back of his mind comes back, a few notes lower than his own, that slight taunting lilt of it latching onto the edges of his subconscious.

You’re worthless, Bobby.

You think they care about you?

You will always be alone.

It will always be just you and me.

He doesn’t know how long he's sat there like that, but the room remains dark now even though someone draws the curtains. Bob shrinks back, as though the beam of moonlight spreading across his lap hurts him, doesn’t even look up when someone calls his name.

“Bob?”

He sighs, closes his eyes against the habitual burn of shame, that familiar heat creeping up his neck. Because he’s never wanted you to see him like this—so sad, so pathetic, wallowing in his own self-pity.

“Do you want to talk about it?” You ask carefully, and he doesn’t know if it’s better or worse when he hears you kneeling on the carpet in front of him.

He shakes his head.

“Okay,” you tell him gently, patiently, so kindly, “do you want me to leave?”

Please don’t. Don’t ever leave me alone, he wants to say, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he just shakes his head again. Despite himself, he’s somehow relieved when he feels the mattress dip slightly next to him, the warmth of your thigh dangerously close to his.

When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees in the periphery of his vision is your hand, lying face up on your lap. It’s an invitation that’s too sweet for him to deny, and he slides his hand into yours, watching with a strange mixture of disbelief and euphoria as your fingers close around him.

That you would still want to touch him after seeing him like this. That he would find such comfort in the simple meeting of your palms.

His chin lifts when you turn, your other hand coming up to tuck a curtain of his hair behind his ear.

“Is this okay?” You whisper.

Bob nods, and for one treacherous moment he lets himself believe that you unconsciously seek him out too, that your hands itch to touch him just as his own do for you. And then you’re gathering him into your arms, and he follows without hesitation, falling into your embrace and burying his face into your shoulder.

He doesn’t know when he fell asleep but when he wakes, you’re still there.

“Hi,” you breathe, as though afraid you’ll disturb this peace if you speak any louder. Bob doesn’t tell you that he thinks he’ll only find peace if you’re around.

“Hi,” he whispers back, a smile lifting his lips as though you’re breathing life back into him. “Thank you.”

You don’t even hesitate. “Anytime.”

—

The first time you undress in front of him is, well, it’s not like that.

Because the entire time, Bob is furious. He wants to break something, feels the frustration crowding his lungs and resists the urge to just scream it out.

The whole team had frozen when he appeared in the doorway when they got home, his eyes wide as he took in the sight of you. One of your arms was slung around Ava’s shoulders as she propped you up, and your other hand was pressed gingerly to your ribcage.

There was a bruise blooming along your temple. Your lip had split in two places, and there was dried blood along your hairline. He could smell fresh blood in the air, even though he couldn’t see any open wounds.

John took a step toward him, one hand up in what seemed to be a placating gesture. “She’s okay, Bobby.”

“Okay?” Bob asked shakily, “she can barely stand.”

“She made it home alive, that’s all that matters,” Yelena reminded him, and while it was somewhat reassuring, it did little to quell the fire in his throat.

“She just needs to rest now,” Bucky told him, inhaling sharply when Bob’s jaw was clenched so tight it looked like his teeth might crack under the pressure.

“I’ll be fine, Bob,” you said quickly, smiling at him through your pain.

That was somehow worse than your physical injuries. Bob wanted to know then and there who did this to you, because he would unleash the full and unrestrained wrath of his powers if it meant avenging you, consequences be damned.

For the first time, he wanted to see something burn.

Ava cursed under her breath when Bob’s eyes flashed gold, but then you were asking him, “Help me to my room?”

Just like that, his eyes returned to their natural blue, and the room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

And now, as he stands in your room, his hands are shaking as he pulls a clean set of clothes from your dresser. You limp toward the en-suite bathroom, leaning one hand on the counter and breathing deeply through your nose as you try to peel off your soiled tact-suit.

The second you let out a hiss of pain when the movement tugs at your stitches, Bob is at your side in an instant. He pushes down the panic clawing at his throat, the one that won’t quite settle down even though you’re right here, alive and breathing.

But he can spiral later; you need him now.

Bob gently, so gently, brushes your hand away so he can reach for your zipper. You make eye contact with him in the mirror, nodding, and he swallows the lump in his throat as he slowly helps you out of your bloody clothes.

“I’m going to be fine, okay?” You repeat and he just nods, his hands skimming over your shoulder blades, down your arms, as he helps you undress. His breath hitches as your suit falls into a heap around your feet, when he finds the square of gauze taped over your midsection with a spot of dreaded crimson seeping through. There’s a matching one on your opposite side. “It was a through and through. Missed all vital organs, the doctor said. It’s basically a flesh wound.”

“I should have been there,” Bob finally says when he finds his voice.

“Hey…” you turn to face him, “this happens. It’s part of the job.”

“I can help,” he almost pleads. He presses your hand to the side of his face, trying to hide the sting of tears. “If I’d been there, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt. None of you ever would.”

He hates it, that feeling of helplessness as he’s forced to stay behind in the Tower. But what he hates even more is the thought that one day, you or Yelena or any one of the team could die out there—and he’d be here, safe and sound even though he was the strongest out of all of you, twiddling his thumbs waiting for you to come back.

“Don’t say I’m not ready,” Bob bites back a sob as he drops his forehead to your bare shoulder, “I’m ready. I’ll always be ready to protect you.”

He’s just found you.

He can’t lose you now.

“I know,” you turn around and your eyes shining just as brightly as his are. “And we’ll protect you, too. I promise.”

Bob’s never doubted you before.

He won’t doubt you now, either.

—

The team never leaves Bob behind after that, and when he first tells you what’s in his heart, it’s a quiet, almost unassuming thing.

He hadn’t intended to, although he’s always wanted to.

He wanted to tell you when you all boarded the jet, full of nervous but cautiously optimistic energy now that Bob was with you. He found his spot next to you, ignoring John’s teasing quip and Alexei’s beaming smile, his arm pressed to yours on the armrest between your seats.

He wanted to tell you just before stepping off the plane, when you gave him a reassuring smile and a confident nod, like you were saying you’ve got this. He wanted to call it after you as you rushed into the fray, weapons raised and ready, the others following closely behind you.

He wanted to tell you when he stepped in front of you, absorbing the impact of a bullet aimed straight at your forehead. It bounced harmlessly off him with a high-pitched ping, didn’t even leave a single dent or red mark on his skin, but you still gasped behind him and cried out his name.

But he couldn’t think straight in that moment, could only think about eliminating anything and anyone who’d try to take you from him.

He wanted to tell it to you on the plane ride home, when you brushed his hair back to double and triple check the spot where he’d been hit, undeterred by the splatters of someone else’s blood on his suit.

Bob thought about the man it belonged to. He hadn’t set out to kill anybody, but if that was the price he had to pay to keep you alive… well then, he’d pay it again and again.

“It didn’t hurt at all?” You asked. “Are you sure?”

He smiled, full of affection, exhaling on something of a laugh, “I’m invincible, remember?”

“That we know of,” you didn’t return his smile, “please, don’t do that again.”

Bob didn’t answer, because he knew he couldn’t promise that. Even if he could, it’s not like he ever would.

He wants to tell it to you when you pull him into your room the second you get home, standing close enough that he can count the stars reflected in your eyes.

He wants to tell you everything right now, everything he’s held onto so tightly all this time because he didn’t think that he ever deserved this.

Bob’s been made his whole life to think that this was never in the stars for him. The Void in his chest, the one that he manages somehow to keep at bay most days, still whispers it to him. Still sneers at him for even entertaining the idea he could ever have it, let alone with someone as good as you.

Then you kiss him. Just a peck, the briefest meeting of lips at first. You look up at him searchingly, waiting for him to push you away or say this is a mistake, but he would never. So long as you want it, he’d give you anything.

He’s the one to initiate your second kiss, more firmly this time, with the reverence of a man who believes he would never get to do this again. You wrap your arm around his shoulders, pull him closer and closer until your chests are touching.

“Invincible, maybe,” you whisper once you pull away, your voice wobbly as you breathe the words into the quiet space between you, “but not replaceable. Not to me.”

Bob feels something crack open inside him then. He buries his nose in the junction of where your neck and shoulder met, hot tears dripping down the delicate curve there and soaking into your shirt.

He wants more, to let his body tell you what he can’t yet bring himself to say, but finds himself almost afraid of it. It has been a while since he’s been this close, this intimate, with someone he genuinely cares about. Maybe even longer since he’s done it with a clear head.

But you seem content to just hold him, like that first time, as though it doesn’t make him near desperate with want and weak with affection all at the same time. And later, before sleep can claim the both of you, he carries you to the bathroom to wash up. The two of you stay in the tub long after you are clean.

Steam curls into the air, hot water rippling as Bob sits behind you, caging you between his arms as you lean back comfortably against the sturdy planes of his chest.

He says it to you then, murmurs into your skin that he’s found love here.

Bob almost can’t believe it when you say it back.

That night, he falls asleep in your arms again, the side of his head pressed to your chest, listening to the steady beating of your heart against his ear.

The darkness in his own begins to recede that much further with each reassuring thump, as though chased away by the dawning of the morning sun.

And you.

Always you.

FIN.

Notes: There’s been a lot of discourse lately about how Bob’s character is or has been written since Thunderbolts* came out. I only hope I did him justice somewhat; there’s so much we still don’t know about him. Choose kindness when interacting with each other. (I will not budge on the stutter thing, though. Note that having a stutter and the occasional nervous stammer in high-tension situations are not the same thing.)

© 2025 by thereoncewasagirlnamedjane. Do not repost, translate, or copy to third party sites. No part of this work may be fed into any AI software or websites. Minors are asked not to interact with my blog; you are responsible for your own media consumption. Blank/ageless blogs will be blocked.

#a man who yearns is a man who earns #NEED THAT #bob reynolds x reader #☆ kent's recs

1K notes · View notes

kenthoe · 1 month ago

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i don’t wanna hear about him — h.s

hello beautiful people 🤍 welcome back! i know it’s been a while! but now, i present you a one shot i’m veryyy proud of, and hopefully you’ll find it to your liking as well <3 it’s inspired by harry’s unreleased song, “him.” just fyi, there won’t be a part two of this! as always, please let me know what you think! you can do so in your reblogs, in your tags, or in my asks! your feedback means the world to me. so, without further ado, happy reading! <3

— inspired by “him”, by harry styles

tw: some swear words

word count: 13.5k of pure angst (please get something to drink and tissues)

masterlist | leave your feedback or requests here

6 years before the day.

when harry told her that they were going to attend the same college, she couldn’t believe him. she was sure harry was gonna take a gap year or something, travel around the world, make experiences. all the while she would wait for him patiently, like she always did.

falling for your best friend isn’t the smartest idea, anyone would tell you that. a little of a cliché too, perhaps. but there was nothing she could do against those feelings: they planted their seeds deep into her heart, and bloomed. and they kept doing so.

now, three years into their college career, those feelings had developed deep roots, and it seemed like nothing was ever gonna eradicate them.

but it was fine, she kept telling herself: it hurt, of course it did, but at least she had harry in her life, in some way. there was only one thing of the utmost importance: not letting harry find out.

she knew that if he found out, he would run. that’s what he did every time he was faced with difficult situations, and god if this wouldn’t be one.

so she learned how to mask those feelings, and she got pretty good at that over the course of the years. she couldn’t stand even thinking about not having him in her life, especially as a friend, so if all it took was bottling up her feelings, she would gladly do so.

harry was happy: he was having fun in college and was seeing people whenever he wanted to, enjoying being a bachelor more than anything. and he was in college with his best friend, who was always there to play with his hair whenever he asked her to. he liked the comfort she brought him, and that’s why he didn’t really stop to think about what it could feel like for her, if it had a different meaning for her.

she’d always look at him as if he put the stars in the sky for her, she had nothing but love for him in those eyes. even if she tried sparing glances at him whenever he wasn’t looking, everyone around her noticed. and every time, harry didn’t.

or that was what she had always thought.

actually, and unfortunately, harry did notice, but didn’t know what to do, how to bring up such a topic with a person who he only saw as the best of friends, but nothing more than that.

and maybe, just maybe, he was so arrogant that he loved the attention and didn’t want to deal with the consequences of actually talking about it.

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#SO SO GOOD #harry styles x reader angst #☆ kent's recs

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kenthoe · 1 month ago

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oscar’s declassified crush survival guide ⛐ 𝐎𝐏𝟖𝟏

r/aita · @awenthealchemist asked, “aita (m24) for constantly avoiding my coworker because i’m (hopelessly) in love with them?” & @landoscarino asked, “aita (m24) for being so emotionally constipated that i made my coworker think i hate her because i can’t function properly when she’s around?”

ꔮ starring: oscar piastri x mclaren mechanic!reader. ꔮ word count: 5.3k. ꔮ includes: romance, humor, teensy bit of angst. mention of food; profanity. oscar is so emotionally constipated it’s absurd, idiots in love, miscommunication. title from ned’s declassified school survival guide. ꔮ commentary box: this was initially supposed to just be a ha-ha funny fic (as evidenced by the title!!!) but uhhh. this oscar pic hit my timeline and the prospect of a little angst became a little tew good,, the fact that oscar got two requests of this nature is very telling :D 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

GUIDE TO: TALKING TO YOUR CRUSH.

Step one: Don’t be weird about it.

Oscar fails this step almost immediately.

You’re standing by the garage bench, sleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in telemetry notes and gearbox data. There’s a smudge of grease near your jawline—a perfect crescent moon of imperfection that Oscar wants very badly to ignore and also memorize forever. His first coherent thought upon walking in is that the lighting is unfair. Too cinematic. The way the fluorescents hit your skin makes this look like the opening scene of a doomed romance.

He clears his throat. That’s a thing people do when they want to talk. Right?

You glance up. “Morning, Oscar,” you greet. “Car’s ready for install checks. We made a few minor tweaks on the rear wing.”

Professional. Efficient. Like this is your actual job or something. It is. Oscar nods too quickly. “Cool. Great. Rear wing. My favorite part of the car.”

What?

“Right,” you say after a moment’s pause. “Well, we’ve adjusted the flap angle slightly. Should help with balance into Turn 12.”

“Yep. Downforce. Love that stuff. Big fan.”

Step two: Form actual sentences.

He tries again. “I mean, yeah, that’s—that sounds good. Smart. Like you. Not that I think about you being smart. I mean, obviously, you are, that’s why you work here. With me. I mean, not with me, with me. Just… adjacent. Garage-adjacent."

You stare at him.

Step three: Pull the emergency eject before you combust.

“Anyway,” he says, voice cracking like he’s fourteen again, “I’ll just go… check the tire blankets.”

He doesn’t even know where the tire blankets are. To top it all off, he spins too fast and knocks his elbow against the table. The telemetry tablet wobbles. You reach out, stabilizing it with reflexes honed over years of high-stakes pit work.

“Careful.” Your voice is neutral, but your brow twitches. Confused, maybe. Or mildly concerned. You’re not used to seeing Oscar flustered. No one is. He’s known for being unshakably calm. Cool. Tactical, even.

Except around you.

Around you, he forgets how to be human.

He ducks his head and mutters something vaguely apology-shaped before disappearing behind a stack of Pirellis. Once hidden, he presses the back of his hand to his forehead like a fainting Victorian heroine.

Step four: Get it together.

He’s been telling himself for months now that he can handle this. That you’re just a coworker. That it’s fine if his pulse races when you say his name, or if he finds himself inventing excuses to linger near your workstation. He’s an F1 driver. He can do impossible things at 300kph. Surely he can speak to you like a normal person.

But then you smile at him. Or call him mate in that easy way that suggests you don’t think twice about it. That you don’t know what it does to him. And Oscar just short-circuits.

He peeks around the corner. You’re already back to work, focused and capable and utterly out of his league.

Step five: Try again tomorrow.

GUIDE TO: HAVING DINNER WITH YOUR CRUSH.

Step one: It’s not a date. Repeat that. Out loud, if necessary.

Oscar repeats it three times in the mirror before leaving his hotel room. “Not a date. Not a date. Team dinner. Totally normal. Totally fine.”

He still changes his shirt twice.

The restaurant is one of those trendy-but-trying-not-to-look-trendy types. Ambient lighting. Concrete floors. Eucalyptus in glass jars. Half the grid has probably eaten here before a photoshoot. But tonight, it’s just McLaren—engineers, mechanics, and the drivers who secured a front row lockout. A reason to celebrate.

Oscar usually doesn’t come to these. He’s good at the post-race Irish exit. Ghosts away after media, catches up on debriefs, crashes early. He’s got his routines. But then he heard you were coming.

So.

Now he’s here.

And you’re across the table. Not directly—thank God—but diagonally enough that he can see you without making it obvious. (It’s not working. He’s being obvious.)

You’re laughing. The real kind, not the polite kind people do when someone from aero makes a weird joke. You’re talking to one of the tyre techs, relaxed, shoulders loose, sipping from a glass of white wine like you haven’t spent the entire week elbow-deep in machinery.

Oscar can hear the way you say “brilliant” with that low, amused lilt. It hits him somewhere soft and stupid.

Step two: Do not stare.

He’s staring when you glance over. Just a flicker, like you felt him looking. Your eyes meet his.

Oscar immediately looks down at his menu like it personally offended him. “They have food,” he mumbles to no one in particular.

He hears Lando snort beside him. “Of course they have food,” the Brit huffs. “It’s a bloody restaurant. What were you expecting?”

Oscar kicks him under the table. Misses. Hits the table leg.

Step three: If you’re going to suffer, suffer discreetly.

The food comes. Oscar picks at his. Conversation floats around him in waves. Banter, stories from pit wall chaos, someone making a joke about Zak’s karaoke voice. He hears you again before he sees you: a low, amused hum, your elbow lightly nudging someone’s arm as you tell a story.

You’re magnetic without trying. You talk with your hands. You tip your head when you listen. When you laugh, Oscar feels it in his molars.

It should be illegal.

Then the check comes.

“We splitting this or what?” someone asks.

Oscar, caught mid-thought (the thought was “what would happen if I accidentally knocked over this glass of water and needed someone to help clean it up”), says without thinking, “I got it.”

There’s a brief silence. Then a round of delighted surprise:

“We’ve got a big spender over here!”

“P1 perks, huh?”

“Look at our golden boy!”

Oscar wants to crawl under the table. “I didn’t mean—I just meant—it’s not a big deal,” he protests weakly as he scrambles for his wallet. “I can afford dinner. Occasionally. Once a fiscal quarter.”

Lando claps him on the back. “Generous king.”

Oscar groans, fishing out his card, muttering something about regret and financial ruin. But then you stand. Shrug into your jacket. You touch the back of his chair as you pass, a gesture so casual it might not mean anything, and say, soft and warm: “Thanks, Oscar. That was really sweet of you.”

You smile.

And Oscar?

Step four: Die quietly.

He watches you walk toward the door, your voice joining the others as the team filters out into the night. The air smells like grilled steak and good wine. Lando says something else, probably teasing, but it doesn’t register. Oscar’s still frozen in place.

He tucks your thank-you away like a note in his back pocket. Something small. Something priceless. Something that’s just his.

GUIDE TO: CELEBRATING YOUR CRUSH’S BIRTHDAY.

Step one: Arrive at the garage like it’s any other Friday. Practice sessions ahead. Tyres to scrub. Data to collect. Emotionally perilous scenarios to avoid.

“Did you sign the card?”

Oscar’s brows furrow. The engineer in front of him is grinning like he knows something Oscar doesn’t. Which, clearly, he does. “What card?” Oscar asks.

“For her birthday. Come on, mate, there’s cupcakes in the sim room and a paper crown someone stole from hospitality.”

Step two: Panic.

Birthday. Your birthday.

How had he not known? Had it come up and he just—blanked? Had he repressed it, maybe, in some strange bid for self-preservation? Was he supposed to know? Was this a fireable offense?

He drifts toward the sim room, trying to play it cool. (He is not playing it cool.) A few crew members shout greetings to you. One even sings. You laugh, tucked half over your laptop, pen behind your ear, and it does something violent to his chest.

You look good. You always look good. It’s unfair, really. Something about the daylight against your cheekbone, the way your smile tugs to the side when you’re caught off guard. Oscar catalogues these moments in real time, all while internally spiraling.

Then someone asks if anyone has a lighter.

Someone else says, “Oscar, didn’t you say you’d pay for the cake?”

He feels his brain fizzle like a light bulb. This happens a lot around you, apparently. “I did?”

“You did. Earlier,” one of them mechanics notes. “Very loudly, in fact.”

He had blacked out, clearly, and now everyone is looking at him with the coercive energy of people who know he can’t say no. That’s how Oscar ends up standing in the center of the garage, clutching a cake topped with flickering candles like it’s a live bomb.

You’re pulled away from your work and corralled into a semicircle of clapping and whistling. You look bewildered but amused, and then your gaze lands on him. Oscar almost drops the cake he’s apparently footing the bill for.

You smile. Gently. Kindly. Like you don’t notice the way he’s standing too straight, too still. Like he isn’t seconds from combusting.

You blow the candles out in one breath.

The crew cheers. Oscar exhales.

Step three: Try to recover from Step two.

Later, in a lull between tire tests and telemetry readouts, you find him by the stacks of unused slicks. You’re still in your overalls, arms crossed, expression soft. “Thanks for the cake,” you say.

Oscar shrugs, one shoulder up, eyes flicking away. “Wasn’t a big deal.”

“Still. It was nice.”

“Yeah, well. People like cake.”

There is a beat of silence. You nod. Not hurt, exactly. Just—pulling back. Stepping away from the space between you like it doesn’t belong to you both.

“Right. See you at briefing,” you say with a half-wave that’s pitifully awkward.

Oscar watches you leave. Feels the quiet settle like dust. He wonders if there was a better version of that conversation in a parallel universe. One where he said something funny. Or sincere. Or even just not dumb.

Step four: Contemplate the merits of baking lessons and time machines.

Both feel equally out of reach.

GUIDE TO: TELLING YOUR CRUSH YOU LIKE THEM.

Here is where the steps fall apart.

Where the feelings overtake, trying to squeeze in some nonexistent gap. Where everything that could be doesn’t quite cover for everything that is.

Here is the thing Oscar Piastri will never say out loud, not to his engineer, not to Lando, not even to the digital diary he sometimes keeps on long-haul flights when no one else is awake: he is having the most emotionally taxing race weekend of his life.

Because of you.

Because you smiled at him on Thursday morning like nothing’s wrong, like he didn’t all but flee the birthday conversation two weeks ago with the grace of a malfunctioning espresso machine. Because you handed him a tablet during FP1 with your usual gentle efficiency, your fingers brushing his for half a second, and he forgot every single line item on the run plan. Because he cannot focus, not when you’re around the car, around him, around.

He’s been trying to keep his head down. Driving smooth. Avoiding Lando’s sideways glances and Andrea’s knowing comments. But he’s a little haunted this weekend. Haunted by the way your laugh travels across the garage. Haunted by the suspicion that this whole crush thing might be undoing him in ways telemetry will never explain.

It bleeds into everything.

He takes corners with the kind of deliberation that feels almost holy. He treats the car like something sacred—like it’s borrowed, like it matters. Like if he takes care of it well enough, it might return the favor. Maybe he thinks if he drives beautifully enough, you might look at him and see more than a stammer and an awkward joke about tire deg.

He’s not proud of it, but he does glance at the pit wall. During pit entry, during yellow flags, during brief moments when the world slows just enough to allow him a glimpse. You’re always focused, always impossible. You never notice him looking, which is probably why he keeps doing it.

Qualifying is a blur. He finishes P1.

P1.

He can barely hear his own breath for how loud everything is. The crowd, the crew, the cheer that rips through the garage like lightning. All he can think about is how you don’t look surprised. He catches it—barely—a flicker of calm satisfaction in your eyes, like you always knew he had it in him. Like it was inevitable.

They take photos of him, hands braced against the halo, head bowed like he’s praying.

He is.

Not to the gods. Not to the MCL39. But to the parts you touched. The bolts you torqued. The wings you adjusted. This ridiculous machine he fell in love with, because falling for the person who builds it felt impossible.

He can love the car, love the process, love the speed. He can show love to everything but the hands that build him up for failure and success.

He thinks about that too much.

He wants to tell you. He almost does. After parc fermé, when the garage is awash in orange and accolades, and he finds you standing just beyond the crowd with your arms folded like always. He walks up, half-drunk on adrenaline and your proximity.

You beat him to it. “Nice one, Piastri,” you say, soft and sure. Your voice is his favorite post-session sound.

And he just—blanks. All he says is, “Wasn’t bad,” like a fool. Like a man who just won pole and still can’t summon the courage to say, I like you. I like you so much it’s inconveniencing me.

You nod, faint smile flickering. Then someone calls your name and you’re gone again, swallowed by tire blankets and telemetry screens and the rest of your life that doesn’t include him.

Oscar exhales. Presses his palms back to the car. Prays again, maybe.

Or just thinks of you. Nowadays, they feel a lot like the same thing.

GUIDE TO: NOT GETTING JEALOUS OVER YOUR CRUSH.

The thing about emotional maturity, Oscar thinks, is that it always sounds like a good idea until you actually have to practice it. Like yoga, or flossing. Or staying calm when the person you like is laughing with your teammate in a corner of hospitality like she didn’t just cause you to nearly fumble a front wing this morning with one offhanded smile.

He tells himself it’s fine. He tells himself distance is good. Necessary, even. He’s tried talking to you. Tried the whole dinner thing. The birthday fiasco. And after all that? Still pathetically infatuated. Maybe this new strategy is the answer. Avoidance, detachment, sheer willpower.

So far, it’s been working. He’s been diligent. Professional. Leaves the room when you enter, pretends to be very busy with tire data when your voice floats too close. Rewires his brain to treat you like an ambient noise: the quiet whirr of a fan, or the distant hum of the garage. Background.

It’s working until it isn’t.

It’s a humid Thursday afternoon in Barcelona. The whole team has gathered in the McLaren hospitality unit. Engineers swapping notes, marketing handing out itineraries, Lando dramatically recounting some dinner party in Ibiza like he’s auditioning for a reality show. You’re there too, sitting with one knee pulled up in your chair, giggling over Lando’s animated storytelling.

Oscar should look away. He tries. But then you say something, and Lando bursts out laughing, and the two of you lean close in that way people do when they share some unspoken shorthand. Oscar feels it again, then. That thing he’s been pretending doesn’t live under his ribs.

Someone teases, “You two should start a podcast or something. Oscar’s missing out.”

And Oscar—like an idiot, like a boy who’s forgotten every chapter of his own guide—says, with a half-laugh and a mouth moving faster than his brain: “Nah, they’ve got the flirting covered without me.”

There’s a beat of silence. The one that feels like a collectively sharp inhale, like a breath being held, as Oscar realizes this may not have been his best moment.

Lando raises his eyebrows. Someone coughs. Your eyes shift, and Oscar catches it—the flicker of surprise, the hint of hurt. It hits him square in the chest. “I was joking,” he says quickly, forcing a laugh. “Kidding. Just tired. Jet lag or whatever.”

You give him a small smile, the kind that doesn’t reach your eyes. Then you excuse yourself, something about checking telemetry. Your chair scrapes softly against the floor. The room breathes again.

Oscar wants to disappear.

Later, he corners Lando by the espresso machine.

“Hey,” he starts, voice low. “About earlier—sorry. That wasn’t about you.”

Lando sips his coffee, tilts his head. “You sure? ‘Cause it sure felt that way.”

“It wasn’t,” Oscar says again, firmer now. “You’re not the problem.”

Lando looks at him for a moment. Then shrugs. “I’m not the person you should be apologizing to.”

Oscar rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah. I know. I just—”

He breaks off. His throat is dry. Lando watches him. Patient. Curious. This is how Oscar knows things are particularly bad; when even Lando can clock his shit, then the world must truly be ending in some bird-flapping-its-wings-over-in-Asia way.

Oscar exhales, then mutters, more to himself than anyone else, “Can you keep a secret?”

GUIDE TO: ASKING YOUR CRUSH OUT (WITH ADVICE FROM LANDO NORRIS).

The only step: Catch her when she’s not holding a wrench.

Oscar thinks this around the same time you duck out from under the chassis, motor oil on your sleeve and a very specific look on your face. Not annoyed. Not exactly. Just very focused. Which, for some reason, is even more intimidating.

“Hey,” he starts, already flinching at how loud it sounds in the garage. “I, uh. Was wondering if you maybe wanted to grab a coffee later?”

You look up, eyes narrowed in a scrutinizing way, before gesturing vaguely to the side pod that’s still half off. “Kinda in the middle of something,” you answer, tone a touch clipped.

Right. Free practice. The clipped barrier. The unscheduled hands-on aftermath of a moment’s lapse.

“Right,” he echoes, because repetition is his only coping mechanism. “No, yeah. Obviously. Just—later? Not like. A date. Or, I mean—unless you want. It’s fine. I wasn’t planning anything major.”

You stare at him for a second longer than he can reasonably survive. Then you sigh and nod toward hospitality. “You want coffee? We can do that. Ten minutes.”

He shouldn’t feel winded by that. But he is.

The McLaren hospitality is empty enough to echo. Late afternoon sun flares in from the side windows, painting long, golden lines across the table where Oscar sits stiffly, gripping a branded paper cup.

You’re seated across from him, still in uniform. Still with a faint smudge of something along your jaw. He doesn’t point it out.

You take a sip. He takes a sip. There is sipping.

“This is weird,” you say after a moment, not unkindly. “You don’t usually do this.”

He raises his shoulders in a shrug. “I could surprise you.”

You lift an eyebrow. “This wouldn’t happen to be about that thing you said last week, would it?”

The jab. The Lando thing. Oscar nearly drops his cup, swallows hard, grasps at straws. “Yeah. No. I mean—yeah. I’m sorry. For that. It was… dumb.”

You watch him, quiet.

“I didn’t mean it the way it came out,” he adds. “It was more about me than it was about you. Or Lando.”

You nod slowly. Then tilt your head. “It’s alright. I’ve heard worse.”

That should make him feel better. It doesn’t. You finish your coffee in one long sip. The silence creaks. “Well,” you say, standing, “if this was HR-mandated bonding time, I hope you got to check it off your list.”

Oscar’s stomach sinks. “What?”

You offer him a smile. Tight-lipped. Cordial. Evasive in that already-halfway-out-of-the-door way. “Nothing. Thanks for the coffee.”

And then you’re gone, leaving behind the faint scent of motor oil and roast beans, and Oscar sitting in a chair that suddenly feels much too big. He stares down at his hands.

No matter how bad he thought that might go, it still went worse.

GUIDE TO: COMFORTING YOUR CRUSH ON A BAD DAY.

It’s a shit weekend, full stop. The kind there’s no guide for.

The rain is unpredictable, the car’s balance is off, and Oscar ends up P17 in qualifying after a messy stint that leaves his engineers speaking in apologetic tones and his helmet visor fogged from the inside out. The debriefs go long, too long, and he peels his race suit down to his waist as he stalks through the garage, feeling every part of his body buzz with the kind of frustration that hums in his bones.

He’s halfway to the motorhome when he sees you.

You’re tucked behind some crates near the back of the McLaren garage. Your shoulders are hunched, your head bowed. There’s the unmistakable tremble of someone trying not to cry. It makes him stop cold.

He wants to back away, pretend he didn’t see anything. But he’s rooted. And then he pads over slowly, careful not to startle you. You hear him anyway, looking up too fast, wiping at your eyes in a quick, practiced motion.

“Sorry,” you mumble, eyes already flicking away. “Just needed a minute.”

He doesn’t say anything, just slides down to sit next to you. He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket. He never means to carry one, but his mum insisted he keep one during his rookie year and now it’s a habit. He offers it to you without a word.

You glance at it, then him. Then take it.

The silence that stretches out isn’t awkward. It’s something gentler. Steadier. The muted thrum of activity around the paddock feels distant from this makeshift alcove. You cry, not heavily, but enough for it to stretch. He stays.

When the tears subside, you laugh a little under your breath. “Bet this is the last thing you need,” you say, voice watery around the edges. You say it like it’s a joke, except it’s not really.

Oscar blinks. “What?”

You huff out a breath too brittle to be a laugh. There’s something tired in your eyes, but also wry. “Oscar, you avoid me like I’m contagious. You barely talk to me. You make digs about me and Lando, remember? The dinner thing? My birthday?” You shrug. “It’s fine, really. You don’t have to explain. You can’t be expected to like all of your co-workers.”

He opens his mouth. Then closes it. He feels like he’s back in boarding school again. Clumsy. Helpless. Trying to solve a maths problem with the wrong equation.

The words don’t come right. They never do when they matter most.

You smile softly, a little sad. “We probably could’ve been good friends,” you say, and somehow that’s the shittiest thing about all of this.

You stand before he can figure out what to say, his handkerchief balled in your fist. “Thanks for this, though,” you say. “For staying.”

You leave. Oscar stays, hands limp in his lap, wrinkled from the type of day he’s needed to weather.

Rain taps against the metal siding of the garage. For once, he doesn’t know what part of him feels more soaked: his suit, or the inside of his chest.

GUIDE TO: CONVINCING YOUR CRUSH TO STAY.

Oscar is riding a high. P17 to P1 is the kind of miracle they talk about in the Bible.

His visor is still flecked with champagne spray, a towel around his neck, every other teammate slapping his back with unfiltered elation. He grins for photos with the trophy and McLaren’s social media team, answers questions at the press pen with a string of rehearsed lines, all while his brain starts drifting somewhere else entirely.

“The car was good,” he tells everyone, in different variations. The car was perfect. The car was flawless. The car was the best it’s ever been. Underneath it all, he is saying thank you, thank you, thank you to the crew. To you. To the extra work you put in to make sure he could make this impossible comeback.

He doesn’t clock your absence until the cool-down lap is long over. There’s no familiar click of your boots in the garage, no sharp clap on his shoulder, no dry comment about how he took that one apex like a cocky bastard. No handoff of telemetry sheets. No nods between you and the race engineers. Usually, you’re grumbling about how long podium ceremonies take, arms crossed and grease still on your collar. But now—now you’re just not.

He overhears it from Paul. Offhand, casual. It’s not even directed at Oscar. It’s a piece of information passed on to some intern, and Oscar just so happens to be passing by when he catches your name and hears, “Bit of a shame she’s moving to Lando’s side by the next race.”

Oscar stops walking mid-step.

His towel slips off his neck and hits the floor with a wet, forgotten thump.

He finds you in the shadowed end of the motorhome, half-tucked behind a storage shelf, clipboard in one hand and scribbling notes while half-listening to someone from logistics. There’s a pen behind your ear. Your brow is furrowed in that way that means you’re troubleshooting something in real time. You look like you built the whole operation from scratch. Today, you probably did.

When you notice him, you straighten, expression unreadable. “Congrats,” you say. “P1. Smooth drive.”

“You’re transferring to Lando’s pit crew?” he blurts out, voice just a touch too sharp.

The logistics person excuses themself and hurries off. Rumors of Oscar’s feelings towards you have been greatly exaggerated, and it irks him more than he cares to admit. Even more than you coolly saying, “Yeah. Guess you heard.”

“Why?”

“Just felt like a change.”

It’s meant to come off light. Detached. It doesn’t. Not to him.

Oscar doesn’t believe it for a second. Not when the car felt like it had been designed to read his mind. Not when every corner today had felt like grace. Not when he could feel your work in every single turn.

He says your name like it means something. (It does.)

You look away, your gaze catching on something behind him. “You made it clear you didn’t want me around,” you say. “I figured it’d be easier for everyone if I just... moved.”

Oscar exhales. He wants to pace. He wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you. He wants to review every stupid mental guide he’s made insofar and chart where it all went to shit.

Instead, he starts talking. Or rather—he starts panicking, but with words.

“God, that’s not true. That’s completely wrong. I haven’t hated you. I haven’t even come close. I’ve—” He stops, shakes his head, tries again. Tries harder. “I’ve liked you. I like you. Like, a lot. Too much. To the point where I could barely function normally. So I avoided you, or made some idiotic joke, or froze. I thought I was hiding it. But apparently I just came off like a complete asshole. I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want to make things weird. It got fucking weird anyway. And now you think I hate you, which is just—” He gestures, helplessly. “It’s backwards. All of it.”

He finally stops, chest rising and falling like he’s just come out of the car again.

Silence follows. Heavy and exposed.

You stare at him. Your mouth parts slightly, but you don’t speak right away. When your words finally form, your voice is rough with disbelief. “You have a weird way of showing you like me.”

He laughs deliriously, his hands dropping to his sides. “Yeah. I know.”

You shift your weight. And then, a little quieter, a little less sure: “I wasn’t exactly straightforward either.”

Oscar’s eyes snap to your face. There’s an uncharacteristic flush of red high in your cheeks. You’re blushing. Why are you blushing?

“I really thought you hated me,” you admit. “So I kept my head down. I threw myself into work. Every upgrade, every tweak—I just kept thinking, okay, maybe I can’t fix whatever’s between us, but I can at least give you a good car. Something that works. Something that will get you what you want.”

Sometimes, Oscar’s sisters liked to wax poetics about ‘Oh.’ moments. Exactly like that. Capital ‘O’, italicized, full stop with a period. The realizations of all realizations. Epiphanies that hit like a train. Oscar called them all hopeless romantics, but now—

Oh.

Your confession is a lot more sophisticated than his, but it’s still that. A confession. Rationale for the endless chances, the delicate smiles, the car that put him on the podium most weekends. Before he can overthink it, before he can try and consult the guides that have failed him spectacularly so far, Oscar reaches out.

Your hands are not soft. They’re rough with work. Calloused, nicked, a little stiff around the joints. Oscar loves them. Oscar loves you. They’re the hands that have made him, the hands that he’s thought of holding for an impossible amount of time. He should tell you that. Instead, he says:

“You’re something that I want, too.”

GUIDE TO: DATING YOUR MECHANIC.

Step one: Be subtle about it.

Oscar likes to think he’s subtle.

He likes to think he’s smooth now, too. That something about crossing that invisible threshold from oh God, I can’t even look at her to I get to kiss her now!!! has imbued him with a serene sense of smugness.

He brings you coffee when he knows you’ve been up since five. Waits for you after debriefs like it's protocol. Accidentally-on-purpose grabs your hand when you pass tools. You nudge his ankle under briefing tables. He swears you winked at him once in parc ferme, but you’ve denied it. The same way you denied canceling your transfer to Lando’s pit crew because Oscar was, in fact, just someone terribly down bad for you.

You’re both very professional. Very secret. Very subtle.

Everyone knows.

Oscar hears it in the way Lando coughs pointedly every time he sidles up next to you during a garage walk-through. In the way the rest of the crew suddenly finds reasons to give the two of you space at lunch. In the deadpan way Zak says, “Tell your girlfriend good job on the diffuser setup,” and walks away before Oscar can sputter out a reply.

Oscar insists to Lando that it’s not a thing. “No one thinks we’re dating,” he says one evening, the words muffled around a protein bar.

Lando doesn’t look up from his phone. “Mate, you smiled like it was your wedding day when she tightened your front wing.”

Oscar goes red. Deeply, irrevocably red.

Still. He likes it. The way you catch his gaze across the garage, shake your head just a little like you’re both in on a long-running bit. The way your fingers brush his when you pass him telemetry sheets. The fact that he knows you’ll be there at the end of the day, leaning against the doorframe, helmet bag in hand, looking at him like he’s still something new and ridiculous and kind of wonderful.

He knows it won’t always be this easy. That the season will twist and tighten again, as it always does. That one of you will slip up eventually. That the world might want to chew on this thing that should be worshipped.

For now, Oscar will win races and kiss you behind stackable crates and pretend that no one knows you’re the heart on his sleeve.

He gets to call it subtle, gets to hold your hand.

And he steadfastly follows the only step that really matters: he gets to be happy. ⛐

#THIS IS SO CUTE #☆ kent's recs #oscar piastri x reader

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kenthoe · 1 month ago

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easy on me ⛐ 𝐘𝐓𝟐𝟐

people catfish all the time. how were you supposed to know that the person on the other end of the screen was actually who he claimed to be?

ꔮ starring: yuki tsunoda x reader. ꔮ smau + word count: 2.4k. ꔮ includes: romance, humor, fluff. mentions of food, alcohol; profanity. based on this prompt, online romance, a shameless love story reference in the year of our lord 2025. title from adele’s song of the same name. ꔮ commentary box: i had canva and a dream,, i will probably never do this much graphic editing for a fic ever again, but yuki deserves it!!! happy 100th race to the man, the myth, the legend. stunt on these hoes, yukino 🐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

You’ve always known things like this happen.

Random giveaways, surprise upgrades, the universe occasionally tossing you a bone just to keep things interesting. Still, when a Red Bull staffer handed you a gleaming Paddock Club pass outside the circuit entrance like it was no big deal, your brain went full static.

“Just giving a few away today,” she’d said, smiling like a benevolent game show host. “Enjoy.”

Sure. Just like that. Like this wasn’t the motorsport equivalent of getting handed a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory. You’d clutched it like it might vanish if you blinked too hard.

Now, you’re here. Inside hospitality. Where everything smells like victory champagne and lemon scented diffusers. Where Max Verstappen just asked for a second espresso like it was a normal Sunday.

And then there’s Yuki.

Not on a screen. Not in selfies or helmet cam footage. Real. Silver necklaces glinting underneath the artificial lighting. Laughing about something with a physio until he spots you.

You watch his face shift. There’s something that might be recognition, then something gentler. Then something you don’t have the emotional vocabulary to name because it’s currently buried under twenty-two layers of oh-my-God-what-is-happening.

You’re not supposed to be here. You should be texting ‘Yuki’, your ‘Yuki’, joking that you beat him to hospitality. Something harmless, and hilarious, and impossible. Hell, you could probably tell the Real Yuki about how your kinda-sorta-maybe Internet boyfriend is catfishing as him. Would that be too weird? You think Real Yuki might get a kick out of it.

But then Real Yuki is walking over.

And then he’s hugging you.

And you’re not breathing.

“Why are you being weird?” he mumbles into your shoulder, like this is a routine greeting and not the collapse of your entire reality.

His arms are warm. His cologne is unfair. Your heart is doing something between a samba and a panic attack. “I’m not being weird,” you say, weirdly.

He pulls back slightly, just enough to look you in the eye. He’s got an amused sort of smile on his face, but there seems to be a hint of nerves underneath the bravado. “You texted me a meme thirty minutes ago,” he points out, “about groundhogs.”

Holy shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

You did do that. You thought you were texting a stranger with suspiciously specific knowledge about Suzuka and a penchant for catfishing motorsport fans. Not a literal Formula One driver standing in front of you with the expression of someone who’s been waiting all day for you to get here.

“Right,” you say, your voice an octave too high. “Funny squirrel. Classic.”

He narrows his eyes. “Are you okay?”

You nod. You lie. “Yup. Normal. Great. Totally fine.”

Your brain is not fine. Your brain is assembling a crime scene timeline:

Matched with somebody who used Yuki Tsunoda’s photos for his profile. Unverified, in your defense.

Started talking about meals. For icebreaking purposes, initially. Eventually, a way to ensure the other had eaten well. A sort of tender ‘Are you taking care of yourself?’ day to day.

Talked until midnight, then past-midnight, then the kind of past-midnight that bled into early mornings. Lost track of time, every single time.

Exchanged phone numbers. Deleted Bumble; neither of you needed it anymore. Moved the daily conversations to texts. Made room for that in your routine.

Agreed to meet in Montreal. Except you didn’t. You were going to be in Montreal and you mentioned it offhandedly. The Bumble guy had said, “Cool, me too.” You’d assumed he was just playing along. Roleplaying the bit. Like a particularly immersive LARP.

You hadn’t thought he’d actually be here.

You hadn't thought he might actually be him.

He squeezes your hand, casual but instinctive. You let him, because you still don’t know how to say any of it. Not here. Not now. Not in front of half the paddock and the world’s most diverse cheese board.

He glances over his shoulder. “You wanna sit? I saved you a seat.”

You nod again, because that’s apparently your only mode of communication now.

He leads you to the table. His hand never leaves yours. All you can think, as you try not to trip over a Monégasque intern and whatever’s left of your dignity, is: You might be in love with a Bumble match who actually turned out to be Yuki Tsunoda.

You’re not entirely sure how you’re still functioning. Your body is moving, your mouth is making sounds, but your internal monologue is curled into the fetal position somewhere behind your left lung.

Yuki’s talking. Just… talking. Like you’re normal people. Like this is just a nice weekend in Montreal and not a glitch in the matrix.

“They changed the breakfast spread,” he says, nudging your elbow as he sits beside you. “No more miso soup. Just scrambled eggs that taste like regret.”

“That’s devastating,” you manage, dizzily remembering excited texts from a week ago where Yuki had raved about the miso soup.

“Thank you,” he says seriously. “Finally, someone gets it.”

He launches into a story about Isack stealing his smoothie this morning, complete with impressions and dramatic reenactments. And you laugh. You actually laugh, which feels a bit like betraying your own nervous system.

There’s a quiet kind of ease to him. Quick with a joke, but not performative. Relaxed, but with a coil of energy under the surface. It’s as if he’s always halfway between a punchline and pole position.

The thing is—he’s warm. Not just emotionally. Physically.

His arm is looped around the back of your chair, his fingers occasionally brushing your shoulder. It’s casual, sure. But there’s a possessiveness to it. Not the caveman kind. More like the kind that says, You’re mine to look after, even if it’s just for ten minutes between media obligations.

You’re still not saying much. Nodding, smiling, blurting out half-thoughts and hoping he finds them charmingly minimalist. He doesn’t comment on it. If he notices, he lets you keep your buffer.

Someone in a headset materializes at the table like a very polite ghost. “Yuki, time to go,” the staff announces.

He sighs. Gives you a look that borders on cartoonishly pouty. “Duty calls.”

He gets up slowly, like maybe if he moves languidly enough, reality will bend to let him stay longer. Before he steps away, he leans down, grinning.

“Good luck kiss?” he asks, head tilted, tone teasing but devastatingly hopeful.

You freeze.

Yuki laughs under his breath, gently amused. “Okay, okay,” he says, holding up his hands like he’s diffusing a very delicate bomb. “Next time.”

Then, his voice gets softer. Enough so that only you can hear. “But you’ll still be here after the race, right?”

You nod, throat dry. “Yeah. I’ll be here.”

He taps your shoulder once before heading off. You’re left sitting in the halo of his warmth, trying to make sense of anything. Your phone buzzes with a new message.

From him. Mere seconds since he last saw you.

allegedly yuki tsunoda [9:23 AM]: don’t eat the lemon tarts btw. learned that the hard way. 🤮

You stare at the screen, lips twitching. Bumble match or not, he’s still looking after you.

You start in the paddock club because that’s what a normal person would do. Sit somewhere warm, surrounded by petit fours and champagne flutes and that one guy in a turtleneck trying very hard to pretend he knows the difference between a double diffuser and a double espresso.

After ten minutes of watching the race on a high-def screen while Alex Albon yells something off-camera about tire degradation, you realize you’re crawling out of your skin.

So you duck out.

You find a seat on the outer edge of a section near Turn 10. The air is sharper here, cold in that way Montreal likes to be in June, like it never got the summer memo. It’s loud. Bones-rattle-in-your-sinuses loud. It helps.

There’s a certain thrill to watching it live. The cars are less clean here, less like smooth CGI and more like animals snapping past at speeds that make your stomach tighten. Yuki’s car flies by and your heart jerks without permission.

You tell yourself you’re annoyed. Which is true. You’re annoyed that he never told you. Annoyed that he just assumed. Annoyed that you didn’t assume harder.

Yuki’s in the points.

You tell yourself you don’t care. But you’re counting his laps. You’re watching the timing screen with the manic focus of someone who’s very not-invested, obviously. You’re definitely not bouncing your leg during the final stint or whispering under your breath for him to hold off that Haas. No, not at all.

When the checkered flag waves and he crosses the line in P7, you allow a smile. Just a small one. Barely perceptible. A moral victory.

You’re still pissed. Obviously.

But pride’s a slippery bastard, and it slides in before you can lock the door. Because despite everything, he did it. Despite everything, you think you might’ve liked him before you knew who he really was. That’s the part that grates.

Yuki texts you, afterwards. Twice. The first one says, where did you go??? The second one is just a question mark. Not passive-aggressive. Not petulant. Just puzzled, with a little side of concern you can read even through the punctuation.

You leave him on read.

Not because you’re cruel, but because you’re still somewhere between third-hand embarrassment and full-body incredulity. Your fingers feel too tight around your phone, and your brain keeps cycling through I got catfished by an actual celebrity like it’s some strange mantra.

You do the thing people in denial do best: you keep walking. Past the paddock club. Past hospitality. Past the frosted-glass glam of the inner circles. You buy food, you make small talk with disappointed Tifosi, you find your way back to the grandstands. You watch the track, empty now except for marshals and the tire scuffs they haven’t swept up yet.

You sit there and stew. Arms crossed. Chin tucked into your collar. Giving the sky your best unimpressed glare.

Because what kind of famous person makes a dating profile with their own face? What kind of high-profile athlete answers that Adele is his go-to karaoke song and means it? What kind of rich man texts “are you mad at me :(((((“ with that many parentheses? (That was earlier in the week. You screenshotted it. For evidence. And also maybe affection.)

You don’t even hear him at first. There’s just the crunch of gravel, a puff of breath, and then suddenly: “You ghosted me.”

You look up. Yuki stands there, his race suit traded for a team polo. His hair’s a little damp from the balaclava, sticking out in soft tufts. There’s a Red Bull jacket slung over his shoulder and a frown carved into his face.

“You ghosted me,” he repeats, dropping into the seat beside you like he owns the entire stadium.

“You’re famous,” you say wryly.

“That’s not a real defense.”

“It’s my opening statement.”

He stares at you.

You stare back.

You can feel your expression start to crack around the edges. The disbelief, the emotional whiplash, the deep, deep shame of having sent him a meme about Pierre Gasly thinking he was some guy from Manitoba.

“You should’ve told me,” you say, voice tight.

He stares at you like you’ve grown a second head. “I thought you knew,” he bites out, and that gets you.

“I thought you were pretending to be you!” You’re not screeching hysterically, but it’s a close thing. “I thought you were, like, one of those weird fandom catfishers who’s like, ‘Hey girl, I’m Harry Styles and I love small batch kombucha. Let’s talk about your smile.’”

“That’s a dated reference,” Yuki huffs, but you barrel on.

“I was protecting myself, okay? I didn’t want to get my hopes up about someone just because they used a hot guy’s face and knew a lot about what happened at the 2024 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.”

His lip twitches. “You think I’m hot.”

You scowl. “That is not the point.”

“Kinda feels like the point.”

You throw your hands up. “This is why I didn’t text back. Because I knew you’d be like this.”

“Like what?” he says, all mock innocence, even as the corners of his mouth fight upward.

“Annoyingly smug. And unfairly cute,” you lament. “And—and now I have to retroactively go over every single text we’ve ever sent and recontextualize it through the lens of you being you.”

Yuki’s smile breaks free, full and blinding. He leans back in his seat, like this is the best post-race entertainment he could’ve asked for. “I knew you liked my texts.”

You look heavenward. For patience. For answers. For an alternate universe where you maybe played this cooler.

He shifts closer, bumping your shoulder. “So let me get this straight. You matched with me, kept talking to me for weeks, actually liked me—but thought I was an impersonator?”

“Yes.”

“And you still talked to me?”

You sigh. When he puts it that way, you sound like a fucking idiot. “Well, yeah. You were funny,” you say defensively, “and weird. And you sent me that article about the town that elected a golden retriever as mayor.”

He turns his whole body toward you. “You like me me.”

“God help me.”

“You liked me even without knowing I’m me.”

You groan. “Don’t make this a thing.”

“It is a thing,” he says, beaming now, eyes scrunching in that way that makes your stomach flip traitorously. “It’s such a thing. I just podiumed emotionally.”

You shove his arm. “You’re unbearable.”

“But cute.”

“Moderately.”

He leans in a little closer. His tone dips, playful but softer around the edges. “This could be a proper love story, baby,” he coos, “just say ‘yes’.”

Your reaction is a full-bodied flinch. “Do not quote my karaoke song at me,” you say, as flatly as you can manage, but it falls apart in the face of Yuki’s giddiness.

You glance at him. He’s right there, smelling faintly of rubber and cologne, still a little flushed from the high of the race and from something else. Somehow realer now than he ever was on your screen. Dusk curls in around the track, the buzz of the day beginning to fade.

You let him keep smiling at you like that. And when he reaches out to fill the spaces between your fingers with his, you let him do that, too. ⛐

#this is the cutest thing ever #☆ kent's recs

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kenthoe · 1 month ago

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i’m okay with change and i’m fine if things are no longer the same i embrace change

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kenthoe · 2 months ago

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i hate accidents: the between

femme!reader x benedict bridgerton, femme!reader & the bridgerton family, femme!reader & penelope featherington

summary: the adventures of a working class femme who befriends a fellow writer, a boisterous family, and a bewitching second eldest son

sections: I. the beginning / II. the between / III. the ball

y/n: bipoc, she/her, afab, nonbinary femme, queer, working class, of immigrant parents

content warnings: classism, mentions of financial survival, microaggressive sexism, microaggressive gender assumption, intersectional low self-image of y/n, positive/supportive families, retelling of recurrent microaggressive homophobic experience with y/n’s family member in [II.vi], short description of almost throwing up (not related to low self-image) in [II.vii]

word count: 9.1k (of 38.8k)

story context: everything in s1 and s2 of the tv series is canon for this story except for the s2 epilogue with the bridgertons. this story takes place leading up to and into the 1815 season.

additional notes: this story is incomplete. scenes that are not written are described in chevrons <> with third person pov or are delineated by isolated ellipses. additionally, the author has only watched s2! she has not watched any of s1 aside from clips, and they have not read the books aside from quotes used in edits. they have not yet watched queen charlotte. the author kinda knows the gist of an offer from a gentleman; they are familiar with sophie beckett (and are excited to meet her/them in the tv series!).

author’s note: this is the first time the author has written fanfic in 13-15 years. :) it is her hope that they have made some progress since her pre/teens. additionally, this fanfic has been written, on and off, over the course of two years. the author sincerely hopes you find some sort of joy in it, especially the readers who maybe hope to see themself a little more specifically in the world we so love.

tagged: @omgsuperstarg @bedobeeeee @stvrdustalexx @anisas-nonsense @crazymar15 and all who have liked the story so far: the author extends her gratitude for your engagement with the first section. <3

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.i ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

“have i told you that you are the best model who has ever sat for me?”

it has become a common occurrence. whenever you read while in the drawing room, benedict asks if you can be his model for his hand studies. you oblige, seeing how you are already so still while reading aside from the occasional page turn, and—more so—you want to support how benedict progresses in his craft. today, you and benedict are sat at a table as hyacinth plays a solitary game of cards on the floor and kathani and anthony sit at a couch with some delicious smelling tea. you had come over to meet eloise and penelope first thing but were soon informed that the two young ladies were still at the markets with colin. that made you smile; your loud friend is, no doubt, inserting herself emotionally and physically in between your two friends in love.

you feel yourself scrunch your eyebrows at benedict’s comment.

“surely you are exaggerating.”

“hyacinth was my last model; she was horrific.”

you hear an aghast gasp and do nothing to hide the amusement in your smile.

“it is difficult to sit still!” the youngest bridgerton yells.

“hyacinth, it is not becoming of a young lady to ye— ow!”

you see somewhat in your periphery how kathani puts the hand she used to thwack her husband’s arm back on her teacup handle, smiling. benedict, in the meantime, groans and seems to be focusing even more intently on his sketch as not to make eye contact with his youngest sister.

“yes, i understand it is difficult, but you did not sit still for even eight seconds.”

you have not shifted your position in the past half hour or so as not to ruin the angle of your hand for benedict; but you need not visual confirmation to already know that hyacinth has rolled her eyes in response to her brother and returned to her game.

“well, what about the art academy?” you continue. “there must have been very good models there for you to draw.”

and very beautiful ones, at that.

“it is true, there were; but,” you see him smile as he smudges his paper, “none are comparable to you.”

you feel your cheeks light aflame and, with a cough, focus even more intently on your passage.

“then i ought to give up on my profession as a basket weaver and put in my request as a model at the art academy.”

“you do realize that you would have to pose—” you see how he pauses his drawing, looking to see where the youngest is in the room, and lowers his voice as he leans forward towards you; (you attempt not to roll your eyes), ”—nude, in order to be a model there, y/n.”

“yes, and what issue is there with that?”

you look away from your passage to benedict to make a point with your stare and are startled to see how startled benedict looks, the familiar ocean of his eyes almost entirely gone and replaced by the black of his pupils.

“nothing. there is no issue. no issue at——” he coughs, scratching the back of his ear, no doubt smudging it with charcoal, “would you like to see my progress so far?”

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.ii ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

< in the gardens of number five. penelope, eloise, hyacinth, and gregory are adventurers looking to save the princess benedict from the banshee y/n.

< hidden behind a hedge, y/n and benedict bicker. >

“you are a middle child on a technicality, benedict.”

“what is that supposed to mean?”

“you have seven siblings. anthony the eldest, hyacinth the youngest—and everyone in between simply a middle child? you all could not be more different from one another, and you are at the very top; you are practically an eldest child.”

“i’ll have you know that no one, myself included, sees me as such.”

“i’m familiar. an eldest sibling with a penchant for peculiar tea is not one i would describe with an overwhelming sense of duty.”

“how do you know of that?”

“kathani told me. she recounted to me her first dinner with the family and how transcendently in the most literal sense you had behaved.”

“so you two talk of me?”

you feel the tips of your ears heat, but fortunately your hair hides your embarrassment sufficiently. you roll your eyes.

“is that what you gleaned? do not think too deeply about it.”

“i shall think about it deeply and often,” he states with a twinkle in his eyes. in an attempt to ignore your fluster and flutterings, you roll your eyes again and shove him. he laughs, his nose scrunching and eyes crinkling adorably whenever he is truly delighted. despite your best efforts (you put in no effort), you smile at him. it cannot be helped when you are around benedict.

“now, make haste; hyacinth is about to cast a spell, and she needs a princess to save. may i grasp your arm?”

“grasp my what?”

“your arm! i need to pretend as if i am holding you captive, but i am not simply going to take hold of it without permission.”

“how chivalrous of you.”

“i suppose i’ve learned from a sufficient enough gentleman.”

benedict grins and offers his arm.

“i am yours for the taking.”

it is preposterous how much this man makes you want to roll your eyes. and how much you welcome it. in the moment, however, you refrain yourself and, instead, smile at him in return as you yank yourselves both out of the hedge to be seen by the others.

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.iii ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

< on a morning before she is off to number five, y/n realizes that her last remaining skirt still needs to be cleaned after she had spilt a bottle of ink on it. (she was devastated by losing so much writing material and money in one fell swoop.) she had been so preoccupied with work that she had forgotten to clean it.

< in a rush, she looks throughout her house for extra skirts but to no avail; the only thing she finds that she can wear is a pair of trousers from when her father was younger. she finds this suitable enough, puts them on, and runs off to bridgerton house.

< upon arriving at the drawing room wearing trousers, y/n hears a choking sound. she looks over and sees that benedict has somehow spilt tea all over himself. as the bridgerton family makes comments of curiosity and support of y/n’s current attire, benedict excuses himself, y/n hearing how he mumbles that he needs to change his clothes.

< after some time, benedict returns, but y/n notices that, aside from removing his coat, he still wears the clothes he was in. she remarks to herself: how can he have been gone for long enough but still be in the same clothes? >

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.iv ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

you gasp.

“wait!”

you do not wait to hear a response from your companions; you right about turn, swing open the door to number five, and run into the house, straight towards the drawing room.

“benedict!” you shout, “you must come see!”

“wha—“

you grab his hand, pulling him up from his slouched lounge.

“quickly! you must make haste!”

adrenaline and joy rushing in your veins, you lead benedict out of the drawing room and towards the entrance where, upon returning, you see giles, with a large beam on his face, holding open the door. you laugh, shooting him a quick nod and grin of your gratitude, and bring benedict outside, pass penelope and colin, pass the gates of bridgerton house, towards the road, and halt yourself and benedict in place.

you shoot your forefinger outward, pointing towards the sky, your grin ever growing.

“look!”

benedict has been looking at you incredulously, as if you’ve completely lost your mind, and perhaps you have, but you’d be damned if you got to see this and benedict hadn’t. he shifts his gaze and grin from you towards the sky, and as you had expected, as you had hoped, his expression transforms from gleeful confusion into complete awe.

“see? it is just like your palette of ideas! the oranges, the reds, the yellows, the purples, the pinks. here it all is, made by mother nature herself, and you have already managed to capture the hues in the pigments of your paints!” laughter bubbles out of you. “it is amazing! you are amazing!”

you hear a soft buzz in your ear, causing you to turn towards the familiar sound. a bumblebee swirls about your head, and it makes you giggle. you always had a fondness for the sweet creatures; how wonderous one has come to greet you at such a moment! the bee lands on your nose, as if to give you a kiss, causing you to giggle even more, before it departs and flies off into the sky.

as you stare at your departing friend, as you stare into the sorcerous colors of the sunset, as your smile feels permanent in this moment, you ask benedict,

“isn’t it beautiful?”

“yes.”

you turn to benedict, expecting to see his side profile tilted towards the sky when, instead, you connect with his ocean eyes. gazing at you.

your smile fades away as you quietly suck in air through your nose. you feel a soft caress at your hand, and looking down, you see that you are still holding hands with benedict, him gently rubbing the side of your hand with his thumb. you look back up, and with indecipherable ocean eyes and a soft smile on his lips, he still gazes at you. butterflies flutter maddeningly within you. the way he looks at you, it makes you feel scared. but you’d be damned if you allowed your fear to tear yourself away from benedict. so, instead, you smile back and gently rub the side of his hand with your thumb too.

“well!”

you and benedict reel back from one another, letting go of one another’s hands. as you feel the loss of his touch, you whip your head towards the voice and see a smirking colin, by the side of a smiling penelope, both approaching the two of you.

“while i hate to get in the way of two— friends in the midst of a conversation, i must fulfill my duties and escort miss featherington to her home.”

you roll your eyes as you promptly ignore the fire that burns on your cheeks.

“you rich people and your escortings. penelope lives across the way! she would have already been home if you would have let her, colin.”

“yes, that is true,” pipes up penelope, “but then i would have missed out on such a beautiful sight,” and instead of gesturing at the sunset as her words imply, she keeps her eyes locked on you and benedict.

menaces. i am friends with menaces.

with smugness in their smiles and delight in their eyes, penelope and colin nod their heads in farewell. as they move past, you feel a soft squeeze on the side of your arm and see penelope giving you a wink. you stare off at the couple, penelope featherington and colin bridgerton, your absolute menaces of friends who have left you and benedict stunned in spot.

benedict.

benedict!

you turn your head to face him. he must have realized at the same moment as you, for you are greeted by an equally speechless expression. feeling yourself staring into his ocean eyes a moment too long, you cough and look away.

“right, i suppose— i, going— i should be going.”

“of course— yes, that is— right, yes, very good—— not! you going! you going is not— not good! i— we— are more than glad to let you stay!— not let you, but! but have you stay with—— us! stay with us!—”

“benedict,” feeling the instinct to touch his hand again, you hesitate and, instead, touch the side of his arm. you offer him a smile to his (adorably) flustered state. “i understand what you are trying to convey.”

he huffs out a breath and smiles warily in return, and it is truly absurd how beautiful he is when his suave falls away. when he takes off the façade he performs to the world and is just himself. not a bridgerton, not a second eldest son, not a gentleman. just—

benedict.

the one you—— care for.

the one you care for.

the one i care for.

“thank you, y/n,” you hear him say, “for sharing this with me.”

“of course. you were first to come to mind when i saw it.”

“shall i— shall i escort you home?”

you snort, inadvertently breaking whatever odd energy has grown between the two of you, and he grins in response.

“goodness, no. i am fully capable of walking there myself. besides, it is too far from here, unlike miss featherington,” you intonate the last of your words with mockery. you will battle colin bridgerton one day.

“i enjoy a long walk. and with such a beautiful sight, it would be much more a blessing than a burden.”

“daylight is fastly fading; the sunset will not last another eight minutes.”

“yes, the sunset. because that is what i was referring to,” he says as he stares at you with a lopsided grin.

rolling your eyes, and feeling the violent flutterings in your stomach, you shove benedict by his shoulder, which causes him to laugh and throw his hand up in mock surrender.

“good evening, benedict,” you finalize as you walk away, a smile quickly forming on your lips once out of his sight.

“good evening, y/n,” and you hear the smile in his voice.

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.v ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

“it is here!”

you had just begun to cross your writing when you look up and see kathani enter the drawing room, paper in hand.

“what’s here?” you inquire. the viscountess smiles.

“perhaps you should be the first to see,” and she hands you the sheet.

taking it into your hands, you are immediately struck by the ornate illustrations of flowers and foliage ornamenting the borders—they are printed on! rather than hand drawn. you run your fingers against the paper to test your observation. you’ve only seen such a feat in the books you’ve borrowed from the bridgertons, so it impresses you (though perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, you remark to yourself) that kathani has found a press to accomplish this feat for her printing.

you then take in the lettering and read,

a ball in titania’s garden court

“come, now a roundel and a fairy song.”

the company of

is requested at bridgerton house, number 5 in grosvenor square, on thursday evening, jul. 6, 1815 at 9 o’clock p. m.

“you helped inspire the theme,” kathani remarks. you look up from the paper to her; her eyes are intently on you.

“me? how so?”

“with our reading of his work, and our conversations with eloise and penelope, he was naturally on my mind when planning for the ball.”

you beam.

“how wondrous! your first ball in the city, and you are bringing the fairies to it,” you turn to the others. “you must tell me how it goes! i’d be delighted to hear what the dresses were like, with the theme and all, and if any larks ensued.”

you note to yourself how penelope will likely know of all of the latter far better than any of the bridgertons, but it would be intriguing, nevertheless, to hear their perspectives. you turn to the viscountess once more, “it is a brilliant idea, kathani. i’m honored to have had some part in it.”

you see her open her mouth in response—

“oh good!”

—when you hear anthony’s voice at the entrance of the drawing room.

“you’ve accepted! that is wonderful news.”

you furrow your eyebrows as he approaches.

“accepted?”

“the invitation. to the ball.”

“what?”

anthony looks around the room to his family and then back to you.

“i— am beginning to think that is not what you were responding to.”

“how quick of you, brother,” deadpans colin.

“i have just entered!”

“and have proceeded to make a fool of yourself,” eloise counters.

“it’s appropriate for the theme, really,” colin turns to kathani. “sister, perhaps you might change the dress to costumes? anthony would make an excellent bottom to your titania.”

“i am—” you start, “still lost.”

kathani gently nods her head to the paper in your hand. you look down again. previously neglecting it for the printed words and illustrations, you now read what is clearly in the viscountess’s handwriting between ‘the company of’ and ‘is requested’:

miss y/n y/l/n.

“this is an invitation. for me.”

you look up from the invitation and are greeted by kathani, and the rest of the bridgerton family at number five, expectantly staring at you.

“but—— but—”

“now, i understand that this might be quite overwhelming,” begins kathani, “but after speaking with the family, we all agreed that it would be most wondrous if you were to attend the ball. we would make certain that you felt prepared, beforehand, with lessons in dance and etiquette, hence why i’ve prepared the invitations earlier than customary.”

“not! to assume that you are not already competent in these,” adds colin. “you certainly have more grace than eloise— ow!” and he rubs the part of his arm eloise just smacked.

“but if it would appease your mind,” violet interjects, “and help with your concurrence, then we would be more than elated to offer them, and to do them with you.”

“your attire would be paid for,” anthony states simply, “and we would pay the business of your employment their missed earnings for the days in which you will be preparing for the ball and resting from the event’s happenings. and, if you shall allow it, we would support you and your family from your abstained days of wages.”

“balls are dreadful,” asserts eloise, “but!” she continues swiftly, and exasperatedly, upon seeing her family’s reaction, “with your presence, this one would certainly be more bearable. pleasant!, even.”

“we,” hyacinth gestures to herself and gregory, “cannot attend the ball, but we will help you in any way we can before then!”

“and we will be there on the morning and afternoon of, if you would like!” gregory exclaims.

kathani was wrong.

this is not quite overwhelming. this is overwhelmingly overwhelming.

you do not even know where to begin in processing all of the information with which you have just been bombarded. the wages, the etiquette, the paying, the attire, the dancing, the days off, the ball itself.

but what strikes you most of all—

“you all… agreed? of wanting me at the ball?”

you look around the drawing room. your friends’ countenances are illuminated with beams. all, but one. you turn to him. he was the only one not to have stated his case in the family’s proposal.

before you can start to ruminate on the implications of such, he offers you a smile. small, but enough for those stupid, stupefying butterflies to flutter within.

“we did,” benedict says. “we do.”

you exhale.

“then,” though weary from the turn of this day, you offer a small smile in return, to benedict, to the family, “then yes. i shall go to the ball.”

hyacinth and gregory nearly knock you over in the chair you’re sat in by the sheer power of their hugs. violet, clapping her hands, laughs with delight at the sight. eloise exclaims something about penelope finding out. anthony states he shall begin the ledger. colin, for whatever reason, starts talking about the cakes that will be there. kathani remarks that there is much to do and that she, and all of the family, will be there every step of the way.

and benedict smiles. still small. still enough. with those damned ocean eyes.

i shall never understand the absurdity that is this family.

and how delighted you are by that. how grateful you are for them.

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.vi ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

“your rehearsal partners will be myself and gregory,” states the viscount.

you try to withhold your sigh. you have been dreading this day since kathani first told you of it. you are utterly delighted to be a student under the tutelage of the viscountess; you are utterly petrified of being a dance student.

“and why do benedict and i not have the privilege to dance with y/n?”

it also does not quell your petrification that the entirety of number five has decided to be present for your lessons.

“because, colin, you two are unmarried men; i am a married one; and gregory is a child.”

“i have just entered my adolescent years!”

“precisely,” anthony grins, “a child.”

“kathani and hyacinth can be potential partners,” you suggest, diverging as not to join hyacinth in her laughter at gregory’s disgruntlement. despite the anxiety that somehow both swells and knots within you, you are resolute on being intentional and present during your lessons. “the former is married, and the latter is a child.”

anthony opens his mouth to respond but suddenly closes it shut. he blinks.

“why have you not considered eloise?”

“because she is unmarried. i am assuming that you do not want me to partner with colin or benedict, for fear of some sort of— romantic attraction forming. so i’ve applied the same logic to eloise.”

there is a small silence. you can see how anthony (and perhaps the rest of the room, you sense) is busily processing within his mind (and theirs) what you have said to him.

kathani pats her husband twice on his back and smiles at you.

“that is an excellent idea, y/n. we will rotate your partners amongst myself, anthony, gregory, and hyacinth. let us begin.”

and so you do, and it is quite horrendous. or rather, you are quite horrendous.

kathani is, unsurprisingly, a marvelous teacher, but not even she as a guide can prevent you from stepping on her, anthony’s, hyacinth’s, and gregory’s feet. you apologize profusely each time you do so, and so you apologize frequently and often, but each of your partners still smile at you without a drop of deceit or regret in their expressions despite their winces. they encourage you in all their particular ways. kathani gently knocks the foot you stepped on her to where it ought to be placed. anthony pacifies that you are doing well. hyacinth recounts how she had struggled as you when she first began her lessons. gregory assures that you are not nearly as heavy-footed as eloise.

even those who aren’t your partners encourage you. eloise confirms gregory’s statement, not once peeking into the book she holds in her hands. colin claps his hands to help you keep the tempo of the steps. violet, at the pianoforte, enthuses how much progress you are making with each passing dance. penelope, who joined the drawing room part way through a rather disastrous cotillion with anthony, begins to clap her hands excitedly upon seeing you.

the only bridgeton you haven’t heard from the entirety of your lessons is benedict. while rehearsing a sequence in a quadrille with hyacinth, you notice the vacant spot next to eloise where he once sat. you try to feign to yourself that your following misstep is due to your ineptitude in rhythm and nothing else. certainly not the lack of presence of a particular someone.

after you curtsy and kathani bows upon finishing a scotch reel, she beams at you.

“i believe that is enough lessons for today.”

you sigh with every bit of your lungs, your attempt at perfectly squared shoulders immediately slumping in relief. the family chortles in response and gives you a pleasant round of applause. you feel your cheeks go flush with embarrassment, completely unbelieving that your horrific display of dancing deserves any sort of praise, but the sentiment warms your heart.

“i would like to pardon myself, if that is all right,” you request towards kathani, “for a moment, is all.”

“yes, of course,” and she takes your hand. “and we do mean it, y/n. you have done well today. you should be proud.”

before you can respond to her, she gives a gentle squeeze of your hand and turns to walk towards anthony. blinking, you shake your head out of your thoughts. the bridgertons and penelope seem to respect your want of excusing yourself as they grin or nod their heads in your direction but make no move towards you. you take a moment more to look at the family and then turn to leave the drawing room. you cannot help the smile that blooms on your face as you cross the entrance—

when a hand catches your wrist and pulls you further away from the drawing room. you are about to scream when you see benedict, with furrowed eyebrows and pleading ocean eyes, swiftly put his forefinger to his pursed lips.

“fuckin’— benedict!” you whisper-yell, attempting to honor benedict’s unspoken request for your silence. “are you mad? and why are you out here? have you been here this entire time?”

“may i speak with you? in private?”

the urgency in his whisper stupefies you, any frustration felt within fading away.

“of course you may.”

he slides his hand down from your wrist to take your hand—

“follow me.”

—and, with haste, leads you down the corridor and up a set of stairs.

“are you certain this is all right? the last time we had spoken alone together, you were scolded by your brother.”

“i am more than willing to take that risk with you,” benedict says sincerely, with a smile, but it is strained. it is a subtlety, but with knowing him for as long as you have now, it is something you have noticed in his expressions.

“are you all right, benedict?”

he promptly ignores your question. it is unlike benedict, to ignore one of your inquiries. to retort with a snarky quip, yes; to make a particularly theatrical countenance, yes; to respond with uncertainty, yes. but never outright, deliberate evasion. it makes your heart swell even more with worry.

you and benedict arrive at a set of grand doors. turning the gilded knob, he opens the door and, in true gentlemanly fashion, holds it for you to pass. such etiquette would have caused you to roll your eyes, but with benedict’s current distress, you will yourself to refrain.

just as you enter the room, benedict enters too, turns around, and carefully closes the door shut. he reaches into his pocket and, after some shuffling about, retrieves a key. you hear a click of the door, and before you can comment on the absolute peculiarity of this situation thus far, benedict whips himself around and faces you.

“do you have attraction to both sexes?”

“i— what?”

“do you have attraction to both sexes?” he repeats with impatience.

“to all persons,” you correct with equal impatience. “and yes, i do.”

benedict blinks at your response but shakes his head out of his thoughts.

“and how long, how long have you known? of your attractions?”

“‘of my attractions’?”

“i am asking a question, y/n!”

“you are being strange, benedict!”

“i am!—” and he turns away from you, running his hands through his hair, sucking in air through his nostrils. he turns back to you and it startles you—how frustrated his countenance is, and how vulnerable his ocean eyes are.

“i am merely trying to ask a question. i am trying to understand. please, y/n,” benedict begs. “please.”

“i— all right,” you try to soothe. “i, i don’t know how long i have known. i suppose, since i was a child? or, perhaps, truly in my adolescent years, when i found myself gazing at those with names like emily and andrew and how i—” you swallow, suddenly feeling exposed, “how i held my breath around them, whenever they were close, when— whenever they were near.”

“and do you still feel that way?”

“pardon?”

“do you still feel that way? around people? for people?”

just for the one.

“i, i do.”

after staring at you a moment more, benedict turns away again, and you quickly exhale a breath—when you’re stricken with a sudden fear.

“does this change your opinion of me?”

benedict turns back to you, frustration still in his features but confusion slowly seeping into them.

“when i—” am i crying? “when i told my sister how i felt for a girl in our neighborhood, she did not—” you try to shake your head of the fog that starts to fill your mind at remembering, “did not look at me for weeks, and when she did, i felt like, like—— like a monster.”

his face falls.

“no,” benedict states, fastly approaching you, “no, no, no, y/n.”

“i am sorry,” you choke out as he places his hands on the sides of your arms.

“why are you apologizing?” benedict whispers, applying pressure to where he holds you steady. you had not realized you’ve been shaking.

“you had asked me questions, these questions of importance to you, and i— i have made it about myself— i am so sorry, benedict.”

“you have nothing to apologize for.”

you shut your eyes close, feeling your face contort in the way it does when everything simply becomes too much for you to bear.

“you were, and are, so much more courageous than me.”

benedict’s gentle voice and strange statement rouse you to open your eyes.

“i do not understand?”

“you have told another person about your attractions to both— to all persons. i…”

he goes quiet, unable to finish his thought aloud. you scrunch your eyebrows in confusion, but staring into his ocean eyes a moment more—vulnerable, scared, hurting—it dawns on you.

oh.

benedict.

your heart blooms as you shake your head.

“it is not about courage, benedict, i do not think. with my sister, it was about trust. i thought i could trust her with my feelings, with— well, with me. and she had proved me wrong.”

“and you have proved me right.”

“why are you speaking so vaguely today?” you manage to jest.

benedict rolls his eyes, a small smile resting on his lips.

“and you have proved me right in that i could trust you. and i do, y/n. i trust you with— with me.”

perhaps you should have thought better of it, but your emotions move faster than your logic, and your emotions call you to reach out your hand and cup benedict’s cheek as you see tears line his ocean eyes.

“as i trust you with me.”

you do not mean to do it; perhaps it’s the intimacy of your conversation, perhaps it’s the proximity of standing so close, perhaps it’s the way you can feel his bated breath mix with yours, but your eyes flicker down at benedict’s parted lips and, swallowing, you look back into his piercing, indecipherable ocean eyes and breathe,

“benedict—”

when a loud sequence of knocks thud at the locked door.

“oh god!” and you take off, running away from benedict and looking about the room when your eyes fall upon a wardrobe.

“what are you doing!” benedict whisper-shouts at you as you hasten towards your destination.

“i am trying to prevent you from being in trouble again with a certain eldest brother, and you ought to be doing the same!”

you open the door to the wardrobe, hop into it, and, grabbing the door’s edge, look at benedict and the adorable shock on his face.

“answer the door as i hide in here!” before he can babble out a response, you whisper-yell, “go!” and promptly, quietly, shut the wardrobe.

before long, you muffedly hear the clicking of the door and it being opened. there is a bit of quiet until gregory’s voice asks—

“what happened to your hair?”

“what of it?”

“it is a mess. it has not been that messy since—”

“nevermind my hair! what is it that you need?”

“have you seen y/n?”

“what? why would i know of y/n’s whereabouts?”

“do not play foolish, brother.”

“i am not playing foolish!”

“you two are always together! you and y/n are like eloise and penelope, anthony and kate, colin and food— you never see one without the other, and she hasn’t been seen since her lessons.”

“i have not seen her; does that answer your inquiry?”

“why are you so on guard! ugh, never you mind. hyacinth and i will look for her on our own, with no thanks to you.”

before benedict can retort, you hear footsteps walking away from him and down the corridor. there is another moment of quiet before you hear the shutting of the door and the turning of the key. you slowly open the wardrobe, and when you see a disgruntled benedict and benedict only, you hop out and walk towards him, unable to contain the growing smile on your face.

“you shouldn’t be so harsh on gregory. he was, after all, merely asking a question.”

“you’re taking his side?”

“of course i am. he, along with hyacinth, are my favorite bridgertons.”

“and where do i fall on this list of yours?”

“eighth,” you reply easily, and benedict’s jaw drops, “but that’s merely on a technicality— i have yet to met daphne and francesca.”

“what have i done to be thought of so little in your regard!” benedict’s expression is aghast, but you see the ghost of a smile on his lips (that you certainly do not stare at for another moment too long).

“do not mistake your low ranking in how i care for you,” you tease but then soften, unable to keep up the lark over your truth. “i care for you, benedict. for all of you. precisely as you are and what you feel and who you—” you swallow, “whoever you love.”

the jest and play fade away from his expression. benedict simply stares at you, ocean eyes once again indecipherable. before he can say anything, you step into his space and tidy his hair.

“you ruined your coif earlier,” you whisper.

“what fortune i have for someone to care for me so.”

his smile is so sweet, his voice so sincere, his ocean eyes so gentle. it is too much, it is so much.

“if you weren’t such a mischief maker,” you diverge, “you wouldn’t need such fortune.”

that makes him scoff, and you grin, quietly glad a new emotion begins to overtake your overwhelming one.

“wise words coming from a mischief maker herself.”

“a mischief maker who knows how to handle her trouble,” you respond pointedly. “speaking of which, i must be going,” and you turn from benedict and head towards the windows.

“and where are you going?” you hear the befuddled amusement in his inquiry as he follows you. you unlatch a window.

“i must leave by way of window and make it appear as if i have been out in the gardens this entire time,” you carefully open the window and peer outside. no one in sight. pleased, you turn around and are greeted by an adorably perplexed benedict. “how else will we deceive the family into believing that we were not alone together? particularly after gregory inquired after me and found you here. it would not help our situation if we left the same room, even if at staggered times.”

“this is not the first time you have escaped home,” he declares matter-of-factly.

“of course it’s not.”

“yet another thing we have in common.”

you snort but then cover your mouth. you turn around and peer out the window, hoping, willing that no one has heard you. no one in sight still. you sigh in relief and turn back to a grinning benedict.

“you are compromising my meticulous plans.”

“then you ought to be going. i shan’t compromise you any further.”

you roll your eyes deeply, ignoring the double entendre (and the flush you feel creeping across your face), but soften.

“will you be all right? are you all right?”

benedict inhales deeply and exhales equally so.

“i—— have much to think over. of myself. to myself. but, it is a comfort to know that i am not alone in this. in this experience, the feelings themselves, as well as in the navigation of them,” the corners of benedict’s mouth tug into a gentle but most radiant smile, his ocean eyes incandescent with joy. “thank you, y/n.”

the butterflies flutter violently within.

“i, i have done nothing.”

“you have done more than you know.”

unable to withstand the intensity of his gaze, you turn back to the open window and steady your hands onto the sides of the frame, leveraging your weight against the ledge to lift yourself up.

“be that as it may,” you assert perhaps too forcefully, “i truly must be going now.”

you carefully but easily shift your body over the ledge and place your boot against the exterior side of bridgerton house to start your descent. you should just go—leave and neglect the violence of feelings within you. but you do not. instead, you look up and are greeted by the sight of benedict at the window, hands also steadied on the ledge, body leaning towards the outside and downwards, beaming at you, the afternoon sun casting light upon his now even more beautiful countenance.

shit.

you will yourself to focus.

“if you need or wish to speak again on this, you will let me know, yes?”

he still smiles but you see the subtlety of his ocean eyes transforming, from delight to… something else. you don’t know what, benedict’s ocean eyes ever indecipherable in moments such as this, and it does nothing to quiet the flutterings within.

“i shall. and hopefully in a manner that does not require your escape.”

“oh, this is nothing.”

“of course it’s not.”

you smile broadly, a particular burst of fondness and play and courage overcoming you—

“farewell, princess.”

and you begin your descent down bridgerton house.

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.vii ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

< kathani and y/n make a day of getting y/n a dress for the bridgerton ball. they meet first at bridgerton house early in the morning, before the rest of the family is awake. they break fast together, and kathani teaches y/n how to make masala chai. y/n remarks that how kathani speaks of indian drink and food reminds y/n of how her parents talk about their drink and food from their home country.

< the conversation then grows into talking about how much the ocean intrigues y/n because of how her parents have talked about it, especially in their stories of emigrating to england by ship. the mystery, beauty, comfort, fear, and joy of the ocean all in one entity.

< the conversation then shifts to kathani and y/n talking about the scrappiness of making do with what resources you have access to. it makes y/n recount a memory with her mama when she had offered to give up buying ink, quills, and paper to support the family once her elder sister had married and left their family home. >

“it is a hobby, mama, it—”

“it is important, she says pointedly. “it is your passion.” and she smiles. “we have managed once with just my and papa’s wages, we shall manage now. you need not worry, my child.”

< eventually, kathani and y/n finish their breakfast. they leave bridgerton house and hop into a bridgerton carriage to go to the modiste. it is the first time y/n is in a carriage and it is a surreal, lovely experience. it feels like a fairytale. >

–

< after arrival at the modiste and introductions, kathani decides to roam the markets of the neighborhood as madame delacroix tends to y/n in the back of the shop. >

“madame delacroix—”

“clients call me madame delacroix,” she interrupts. you feel shame flood your body. of course. you are not a client. you are a charity case. at the whims of this wealthy family that has bestowed their pity on you. how else would you be in such a position, in such a shop, before such a talented artist revered by the upper echelons of london. you’re a fool, you wish to run away, you must go when you hear what madame delacroix says next—and she’s smiling.

“friends, however, call me genevieve,” she remarks with a wink.

…

“now, y/n, how would you feel about me being,” genevieve flourishes her hand in the air, “experimental with your dress?”

a combination of fear and excitement perk up within you.

“how do you mean?”

“the ton are quite—” she seems to fight hard not to roll her eyes but admits defeat to a sigh, “—conservative in their fashion—”

“you mean dreadfully dull?” you chime in. genevieve laughs warmly.

“exactly, my dear,” she grins. “you, however, are anything but. i see the french silhouettes more fitting to your character, to your personality, to your spark.”

you feel overwhelmed by the kindness of words that flow easily from the mouth of your new friend. you have not known each other for more than ten minutes, and she seems to see something within you. it makes you feel self-conscious, undeserving, and incredibly proud.

“i would be honored to be graced with the true magnificence of your artistry, genevieve.”

your friend’s eyes shine with joy, and you cannot help but feel utterly delighted that you were the one to ignite such happiness within her.

“my dear, the ton will be green with envy at the sight of you. with your natural beauty and with my vision, you shall be an unstoppable force.”

you furrow your eyebrows at “natural beauty.” you open your mouth to comment—

“is there any person you are looking to,” she hums, looking for the right word while looking for her measuring tape, “impress?”

“no,” you lie. “i would not know anyone aside from the bridgertons and penelope.”

“ah, yes. miss penelope,” the modiste says with much fondness in her heart. “she is quite brilliant, is she not?”

you beam. “she truly is.”

“though,” genevieve ponders, wrapping the tape around your waist, “she is rather besotted with the third eldest bridgerton.”

“oh, yes, it is very appar— wait. why do you say that?”

genevieve shrugs, but you give it more thought.

“are you implying that i have affections for penelope?”

you love penelope. she has come to be one of your closest friends, and my god she is beautiful inside and out—but you have never felt an inkling for her beyond platonic love.

“i imply nothing—i’ve just said she’s besotted with the third eldest, did i not?” genevieve plays coy with a smile. “and the viscount, he is very in love with the viscountess.”

“are you now implying that i have affections for anthony?”

you feel your entire body shudder. the idea of having any sort of love for the eldest bridgerton beyond one that is platonic makes you want to— the very thought—

you put one hand to your mouth and the other to your stomach. genevieve laughs, delighted by this game she’s inflicting upon you and entirely unperturbed by your potential sick in her shop.

“so,” she continues on, “with mister colin and lady kate and their beaus eliminated, unless you are of the temptress kind—”

“no!”

“then,” laughs genevieve, “that leaves three—”

“what do you mean ‘three’!”

“y/n, please, you are a terrible liar. you have affections for one of your friends, that is clear.”

“i do not!” you lie again. she tilts her chin down, looking at you pointedly.

“as i was saying, that leaves three. there is miss francesca, miss eloise, and mister benedict.”

you feel yourself take in a small breath through your nostrils as you hear his name, and you pray that genevieve does not notice.

“aha!” she declares. your prayer has failed. there is no god. “ah, yes, mister benedict bridgerton. the second eldest.”

you hold back a groan, not wanting to give your friend evidence to her (very much correct) claim, so instead you lift your head towards the ceiling. when you snap it back down to look at her, you are startled by how her delighted expression from a mere moment ago has molded into an expression you cannot figure out.

“y/n, you must know,” she states, with so much sincerity in her tone. you are entirely confused by this shift in genevieve, and your confusion only intensifies when she gently takes your hand into both of hers.

“benedict and i... we had been acquainted— intimately, at one point.”

oh.

“oh,” you respond pathetically.

the words should not affect you. they should not affect you. they should— not— affect you.

but—

you huff out a laugh.

“genevieve, why are you sharing this? it’s all ri—”

“i share this with you,” she replies in earnest, “because while intimate, and yes, even passionate—” you try not to wince, “—it was brief and, most of all, not of depth,” she sighs. “but i can only speak for myself, can i?”

you swallow, hoping it will cure your dry throat, and with a smile say, “he is very lucky to have won your affections.”

“my dear.”

genevieve removes one of her hands from yours and brings it to the side of your face, softly wiping away a tear on your cheek. you hadn’t noticed you had started crying. you close your eyes, weak by and ashamed at the frailty of your heart, as you lean into the comfort of your friend’s hand.

after a few moments, you feel her hand leave your cheek and feel your chin held between her thumb and forefinger, lifting up your head. you open your eyes.

“anything i felt for him, i feel for him no more, y/n. he is lucky to have your affections,” genevieve declares. “and if benedict is an intelligent man, he must feel the same for you.”

you laugh.

“benedict is a beautiful person who attracts beautiful people. i am not a beautiful person.”

it is peculiar, how genevieve’s eyes flood with hurt as if you have offended her. what did you say that has hurt her so? you were only speaking of yourself. before you can think further on it, the modiste steels her expression, fire suddenly blazing her eyes.

“well! then i must prove to you what you fail to see, my dear! i dare you not to feel beautiful in the dress i make for you. and if you doubt your beauty,” she peers at you, “will you doubt my artistry?”

you laugh, this time sincerely, radiating gratitude for your new friend.

“it would be foolish to doubt your artistry.”

genevieve beams.

“exactly.”

𝄆 ⚘ ✸ II.viii ✸ ⚘ 𝄇

you kick your feet off again, swinging yourself back and surging forward as you look up at the stars. you try not to make too much noise. you know it’s not proper to ambledly hang about your host’s back garden at night as they all slumber. you feel as though you are taking advantage of the bridgertons’ kindness in allowing a pauper like you to stay the night at their home, in allowing you any time to stay at their home since making their acquaintance, in allowing—— you sigh again. you could not sleep. restlessness has entirely consumed you, and you had decided that some fresh air and some childlike fun would be exactly what you needed to calm your nerves. while the cool air and the beauty of the night have been a welcomed reprieve, your heart still pounds and your mind still races with anxiety over the ball tomorrow night.

“couldn’t sleep?”

you slam the heels of your boots into the ground as you hear the familiar voice, doing everything in your power to ignore the flutters of butterflies in your stomach upon hearing it, and fall over onto your knees, planting your hands into the dirt so as not to completely and embarrassingly plant your face there instead. you hear the body of the voice rushing towards you, offering his hand in your periphery. you look up as benedict’s soft ocean eyes stare into you. feeling your cheeks flood with warmth, you take your dirtied palm into his, promptly ignore the lightning that shoots out from the touch to the rest of your body, and lift yourself up with benedict’s gentlemanly assistance. you murmur your thanks as you dust off, in vain, the dirt on your nightdress.

“i did not mean to startle you.”

“well, you have very clearly failed at that,” you remark.

after one last whoosh about your knees to clear off the excess dirt, you look up at benedict and are startled by the utter sincerity of his concerned look. he looks as if he is about to say something, as if he is about to apologize, when you offer him a smile.

“i’m teasing you, benedict.”

he blinks once before breaking out into a smile, a smile that forcefully summons the butterflies within you to flutter about once again, and laughs. you cannot help but smile and laugh with him.

“may i have the honor of sitting with you, miss y/l/n?”

you roll your eyes.

“it is your home after all, you need not my permission.”

“am i to ignore the privacy a lady wishes to have?”

“a lady’s privacy, i am sure, is something you wish to have for yourself,” you retort, alluding to your lack of such a title.

he swallows.

“that is something i cannot deny.”

something shifts in the air as benedict stares at you. you feel yourself holding your breath and, in an attempt to shift away the energy from whatever this— this is (and how much it thrills and terrifies you), you playfully curtsy as you gesture to the swing next to the one that you had occupied.

“i would be delighted by your company, mr. bridgerton.”

the overwhelming gentleness of benedict’s expression transforms into an amused smile, and he follows along with an exaggerated bow of his head. you take a seat at your swing as he takes his seat at the other on your left.

“i couldn’t,” you say in reply to his first question. before he can ask why, you hastily jump into your inquiry. “and why are you up?”

“i was sketching. i had an idea for a painting and wished to lay out the preliminary work before it escaped me,” he sighs heavily, turning to look out to the rest of the garden. you feel the loss of his gaze. “i was frustrated with the results and thought some fresh air would do me some good.”

“what is the idea for your painting?”

he hesitates.

“a portrait,” he seems to admit carefully. feeling how benedict wishes not to be pressed further, you simply hum an affirmation in response.

“i am certain that your sketch is not nearly as horrendous as you think it is.”

“i appreciate your kindness, but it entirely lacked their spark.”

“you seem quite fond of this person,” you huff with a bit of a laugh, jealousy starting to pool in the pit of your stomach.

benedict smiles.

“i am.”

and he turns to look at you.

you swallow, averting your gaze from soft intense ocean eyes, and kick your feet off the ground to begin a gentle swing.

“you should continue with the portrait,” you rattle on in a hasty attempt at diversion. “not only are you blessed with natural talent but you are also fueled with such a passionate determination to ever improve your skill because that is how much you love your craft. an undying devotion to something for which you so deeply care. it is admirable and extremely apparent in all that you do.”

“and what of you?”

“and what of me?”

“of your passions?”

you scoff.

“my passions?”

“your writing.”

you halt your swing and whip your head to benedict. he is grinning with stupid satisfaction, and you would find a way to wipe it off his stupid (beautiful) face if you were not so aghast by the situation.

“how do you know of that?”

“well, whenever you are not reading or conversing with eloise, penelope, and kate; or playing make-believe with my youngest siblings; or squabbling with colin and anthony, you are busily writing in a folded quarto. or, rather, crossing in a folded quarto. crossing twice, if you can manage. you are quite the prolific writer.”

you gape at him, and he continues to grin.

“eloise also told me.”

“she told you!” you shriek.

“indeed. it is, after all, how you met penelope, apparently. and penelope is how you met eloise. and eloise is how we— how you met the rest of us.”

you slump in your swing.

“i feel betrayed.”

benedict laughs heartily, and you shoot him a glare. he holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“she was merely sharing a fact.”

“she is merely a traitor.”

benedict laughs once again, and you summon all the strength within you not to choke it out from his lungs.

“you seem not to handle perception of yourself very well, y/n.”

“when you are me, it is easy not to be perceived,” you mumble, still reeling from the traitorous nature of your loudmouthed friend.

there is a small silence.

“i do not think that is true.”

you turn to him, once again surprised by the gentleness of his sincerity.

“i see you,” benedict declares in a quiet but steadfast voice. his ocean eyes, indecipherable once more, gaze into you.

you feel yourself hold your breath, unable to stop the truth from ringing out in your heart, mind, body, and soul.

i love you.

you shoot up from your swing.

“i must be going, it is quite late—”

“y/n, wait—”

“thank you, benedict,” you say sincerely, turning to him. “i— i really enjoyed our conversation, as brief as it was.”

he blinks and offers you a small smile. i must control myself, you reprimand as you feel the butterflies viciously flutter within.

“as did i.”

“good night,” you whisper. with all the self-control you can muster, you turn away from benedict and hasten towards bridgerton house.

“good night, y/n,” you vaguely hear him say from the swings that brought you together. you attempt to tune out the wistfulness that you hear, that you imagine you hear in his voice.

#☆ kent's recs #benedict bridgerton #benedict bridgerton x reader

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