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sstan-hoe · 16 hours ago

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in your hands

pairing: johnny storm x female reader

synopsis: the storm gave you powers that came with a cost—every time you used them, they broke you from the inside out. when you nearly die saving johnny and franklin, he destroys himself searching for a cure.

requested by anon

The first time you fly, the sky does you the kindness of answering back. Not with words—just a feeling that moves from your shoulder blades to your ribs, a steadying hand you didn’t know to ask for. You hang there above the river with the wind pushing your hair into your mouth and the city glittering like it’s finally in on the joke, and you laugh because it feels like a secret you’re not supposed to tell.

Johnny is a bright blur just off your right, carving lazy figure eights like a show-off who knows you’ll forgive him. He grins so hard you can feel it from six feet away, a grin that lives at the intersection of relief and awe. He loops closer until you could kiss him if you reached, so you reach, and he laughs into your mouth, heat skimming harmless as a summer day across your cheek.

Back on the roof, you land too hard and crack a paver with your heel. Ben looks up from a sandwich the size of a small child, eyebrows climbing. “That’s comin’ outta Reed’s grant,” he says, then points at you with the corner of his rye like a toast. “Nice stickin’ the landing, kid.”

Sue hugs you in a way that feels like physics first and arms second, invisible pressure adjusting around bones that don’t bruise anymore. “Slowly,” she murmurs into your hair. “New sky.”

Reed tries for clinical and fails. His mouth can’t stop smiling. “Subjective assessment?”

“Gravity answered me back,” you say, giddy and breathless.

Behind you, Johnny laughs like that’s the only answer he’ll ever accept.

The days after the mission taste like discovery. Strength arrives like another language you already speak. You steady a teetering bus with one hand. You catch a dropped I-beam like it’s a baton in a parade. Your skin forgets how to split; knives turn apologetic. Flight is worse—better. You thread thermals, follow updrafts, learn to read the city’s heat as if it has paragraphs hidden in the air.

At night you dream in wide-angle shots and wake with your palms still buzzing. Johnny runs warm beside you, the human version of a fireplace, and if you straighten your arm you can feel the sunburn in him that never truly fades. Sometimes you both wake at three and stare at the ceiling until one of you gives in and starts telling the other about the stupidest thing that happened that day. The ceiling doesn’t answer back, but the shape of his shoulder does. He pretends not to worry because you pretend not to worry, and you both accept the lie like a blanket.

It starts small, and you let it. The taste of pennies for half a second after you dismount from an unusual angle. A tremor you’d blame on caffeine if you still needed it. Reed calls them anomalies and logs them with a frown he tries to keep friendly; you wave them off and swallow water and refuse to think about the fact that you no longer ache the way normal bodies report their days.

The first time you cough blood, it’s a thread on your tongue that disappears in the sink before you can admit it happened. You rinse too long, palms braced on porcelain, head bowed like church. When you crawl back into bed, Johnny rolls toward you, still pretending to be asleep, tucks you in like he’s been deputized by gravity, and says nothing.

Reed is very careful when he says the thing he has to say. He sits where his height looks least intimidating and thumbs away something on his tablet that isn’t news, just the pretext to soften the moment his mouth makes an angle it doesn’t want to.

“Your cells,” he says, gentle like a man lowering a vase he loves, “are doing something unprecedented.”

You roll your wrist so the light hits the thin white scar there, the one that used to prove you were made of the same mortal nonsense as everybody else. “That’s the point, right? We’re the brochure.”

Reed half-smiles. “Yes. And.”

Johnny is very still in the chair beside you. He’s never very still. He’s an edge-of-his-seat person by nature. He is the person edges were designed for. Now he’s got both hands around a paper cup he hasn’t touched, jaw set like he’s auditioning for stoicism and failing.

“Your invulnerability,” Reed says, “is doing the cruelest possible thing. It’s protecting you from feeling damage that still happens. Microscopic tears. Microfractures. Organ stress that doesn’t register because the nerves can’t argue with the shield. Any normal body would respond by forcing you to rest. Yours gives you a pass.”

“How bad?” you ask, because measured pain feels safer than the kind that arrives without a number.

“Cumulative,” Reed says, which is a scientist’s way of saying water on rock, erosion, inevitable if unchecked. “If you operate within measured thresholds, the mechanism that repairs keeps pace. If you continue at current intensities… we will have to talk about time in a way I don’t want to.”

Johnny finds his voice and it’s not the one he uses for reporters or crowds. It’s the one he used when you broke your shoelace in the lobby and he crouched to fix it like that was always going to be his job. “Say it,” he says to Reed, but looks at you.

“If you keep pushing,” Reed says simply, “you will shorten your life in measurable steps.”

The room goes bare. You hear your own breath and the hum of a machine that’s always lived under the floor. Sue reaches across and fits her fingers over your knee. Ben, on the periphery, squeezes Johnny’s shoulder until bone complains.

“Okay,” you say. The word is steady because it’s too small to wobble.

“Okay you’ll listen,” Johnny says, “or okay you’re about to do what you always do and smile and then go run into a burning building while I watch?” His voice frays on the last word. He isn’t a man who cries in rooms; he’s the man who goes outside, sets himself on fire, and laughs until he can breathe again.

“Both,” you say, because lying feels wrong when the people who love you are looking right at you.

The first fight happens on the roof two nights later because of course it does. You saved three men from a stairwell that decided to audition as a chimney and came home smelling like soaked ash and relief. You tug your hair out of your collar and tell yourself the ringing in your ears is just the wind you threaded.

“You promised,” Johnny says when you land, and the night takes a step back from all that heat.

“I promised to try,” you say, and sound tired, which is either progress or cowardice.

He laughs once without humor. “You think I didn’t hear you in the shower?” He steps closer and then stops himself like he walked into glass. “You think I didn’t see you pressing your hands against the tile like you had to remind them to be steady?”

“It was a bad staircase,” you say, reasonable to the point of cruelty.

He looks at you like he’s cataloguing the first time he will tell a story about how you almost died. “I am going to scream,” he says in a voice that doesn’t rise. “I am not going to scream.” His hands shake. He puts them in his pockets as if that will quiet them. “You keep skipping the part where you’re a person I love, not a public utility.”

That lands. It lands because he never weaponizes love and now he has, against himself more than you. You touch his jaw, thumb catching on the nick he missed with the razor, and he breathes like he’s just been permitted to again.

“I hear you,” you whisper. You do. You hear him even when you don’t obey.

You try to be boring. You say no to calls you could answer in your sleep. You sit cross-legged on the rug and teach Franklin how to tell a good crayon from a bad one. You let Sue make soup like it’s a ceremony and eat every spoonful and learn the taste of being taken care of without protest. You let Reed measure the air around you as if it has a grammar. Ben drives you to the hardware store to buy a plant you will definitely kill and tells you that survival is ninety percent stubbornness and ten percent good dirt.

And then the world asks for something nobody else can give, because that’s the world’s favorite party trick.

A crane seizes. The operator panics. An arm swings, catches scaffolding, people scream. Physics stops being an essay and becomes a fact you can’t argue with. Johnny is two blocks south trying to coax a ruptured gas line into deciding not to explode. Sue is already holding a different building together. Reed is three minutes out and narrating angles you can’t see. Ben is sprinting and apologizing to pedestrians he plows through.

You go.

You are careful. You take men in pairs, set them down where the street will be kind. You mutter irresponsible promises—“you’re okay, I’ve got you, you’re okay”—and try to mean them like a spell. You do not listen to the part of your chest that has begun to complain in a polite voice. You do not listen to the way Reed says your name like a taper being pinched out.

The arm swings back unexpectedly and taps you between the shoulder blades in a way you might call friendly if it didn’t turn your teeth into bells. You put the last two men down and then your knees argue with the ground and the ground wins.

Johnny gets there before you fall all the way because he is a man who outruns what hurts him and what hurts you. He lands too hard, doesn’t care, scoops you up without asking. “Hey,” he says, voice oiled smooth. “I’ve got you.”

“Reed,” you manage. Which is redundant. Reed is in your ear and on your shoulder and already disassembling a machine with his mind.

“Favorite number,” Johnny says, panic translated into patter. “Capital of—”

“Your apartment’s a mess,” you say. It buys you exactly enough normal for him to breathe.

The lab is clean in a way that makes you want to dirty it with joy, just to prove you can. You blink and there is the ceiling you hate and love, and Sue’s hand is on your knee, grounding and unflinching, and Ben keeps touching the corner of the gurney like the furniture’s a talisman. Johnny doesn’t let go of your wrist even when Reed needs both of you to; he steps to the other side and takes the other one.

You sleep because your body finally insists. You wake to Johnny and Reed arguing across you like cliffs.

“Use me,” Johnny is saying, reckless with purpose. “You need heat profiles? You need tuned frequencies? I can hold whatever pitch you want. You said her body reacts to me—”

“What I said,” Reed answers, exhausted and exact, “is that your thermal output triggers a particular response. You running yourself ragged is not a protocol.”

“Watch me,” Johnny says.

You should tell him no. You tell him no. It doesn’t stick. He’s in the lab at three in the morning with his shirt off and goggles pushed up like a cartoon of a scientist, forearms red around the flame where it licks his skin beyond armor, teeth set while he holds a band of heat so narrow it might as well be thread. Ben is behind him with one hand hovering like a spotter at a gym. Sue leans in the doorway, too tired to pretend she isn’t scared, knowing that pretending would scare him more.

Reed is the one who makes the leap you can’t. He looks at Johnny and then at you and then at the horrible dance of your numbers and says, “If we can shepherd her through the resonance bands—if we can keep her from hitting the frequencies that shear tissue—we can let her be who she is without paying in interest.”

“And you want Flame Boy here to be the shepherd,” Ben says, half proud, half appalled.

Reed adjusts his glasses and hides his smile because he likes it when Ben calls Johnny that and pretends he doesn’t. “He can hold a stable thermal pitch with more precision than any machine we can build fast enough.”

Johnny blinks. “Am I… a metronome?”

“You’re a lighthouse,” Sue says, stepping in so he doesn’t have to make a joke to survive the compliment. “And she can steer by you.”

You want to tell him no because you’ve already let him do too much and what if he burns himself down to the version of himself he’s afraid is underneath? You want to tell him yes because you’re suddenly greedy for living. You hold out your hand instead. He takes it like he’s signing something.

The first run is terrifying because it works and because it hurts him. It isn’t the bright, hungry fire that makes crowds gasp. It’s a pale, precise band of heat tuned to the frequency your cells listen to when they’re deciding whether to destroy themselves. He holds it in his hands as if he picked up a hot wire and agreed to smile through it.

“Now,” Reed says, and you move. You force yourself to be careful inside your own skin in a way you’ve never had to be. Johnny holds the line and you can feel him shiver through your bones. Sue stands at your head and talks nonsense like it’s poetry. Ben counts under his breath. The numbers on the screen go up. Repair indices rising, micro-tears knitting instead of opening. For the first time since the storm, the bill doesn’t arrive.

Franklin wakes up from his nap, sheds his babysitter like a coat, and barrels into the lab, hair up, clutching a dinosaur that might be a crocodile. He brakes when he sees Johnny’s hands trembling and you in a suit. His small face folds.

“Are we okay?” he asks.

Johnny makes his mouth do something bright. “Buddy. We’re so okay we’re gonna need celebratory pancakes.”

Franklin peels a glitter star from a sheet and sticks it dead center on Johnny’s bare shoulder like a medal. Then he looks at you, very serious, and puts a crooked moon sticker over your heart. “For luck,” he says.

You try to keep it quiet after that, to keep saving your life something you do in a room where only the people who already love you can see. The corridor holds. It widens by degrees. Your days stop tasting like pennies and start tasting like coffee again. Johnny sleeps some nights. Sue starts reading a book with chapters instead of journal abstracts. Reed forgets to scowl for whole minutes at a time. Ben takes Franklin to the aquarium, points at a giant turtle, and tells him, “See? Slow and tough wins more often than you’d think.”

And then the day arrives that will not be reasoned with.

It starts with a silly errand—Reed’s idea of a family day. Franklin has been promised a pretzel from the vendor outside the museum with the dinosaur he can name and you pretend you don’t love that he says al-lo-sore-us like it’s someone he went to preschool with. Johnny holds your hand because he always does; Sue has an arm hooked through Reed’s. Ben walks a step behind with a cotton candy he swears is for a child and eats like it’s a personal enemy.

A sound under the street goes wrong. It is the kind of wrong that makes birds stop midair and turn. Johnny swears reflexively. Reed’s face goes still. Sue says Franklin in a tone that could hold a bridge.

The first boom lifts the corner of the block. The second makes an old brownstone sigh and then forget how to stand. A gas main—one of a thousand problems the city keeps putting off. Fire slithers up from a crack like a hand. People scream the way people do when noise is the only thing they can control.

“Field,” Reed says, and Sue is already pushing, humming with the effort of grabbing a building with invisible hands. “Ben—”

“On it,” Ben grunts, moving before his sentence finishes.

Johnny squeezes your fingers once—stay with me—and let's go to flame. It jumps off him like it’s been impatient for an excuse. He’s a bright streak over the mouth of the street, writing fire where it will choke oxygen before it can do worse.

Franklin’s small hand slips, because life is a comic strip gag until it isn’t. He ducks backward when someone barrels forward, trying not to be in anyone’s way, and now he is in everyone’s way. He looks so tiny on the museum steps you think your heart might decide this is the moment it finally refuses its job.

“Franklin!” Sue shouts. Her field throws a translucent shoulder into the crowd to slow it. He freezes like a kid who knows the right answer is to go still and wait for a grown-up.

Johnny is already diving. He can’t help it. He’s a magnet for the part of a disaster where someone is about to get erased. He shuts off heat as he goes so he doesn’t scorch, hits the steps running, scoops Franklin with a practiced one-handed scoop that says he has done this more times than anyone counted.

And then the brownstone gives like bread under a knife.

You don’t think. There is no corridor. There is love and momentum and a shape your body has learned, the shape it takes when it makes itself a door. You shoulder into the falling edge of the building and catch it on your palms and hear your bones complain at a frequency no one else can hear, the human parts of you holding up a mistake a century old. Heat pushes at your back, the wrong kind, old gas and dry wood and history. Johnny twists so Franklin’s head is under his chin, curls around the boy, trusts you without looking—like he always has, like he always will.

“Out!” you shout. Sue hears. Reed hears. The street hears, maybe. You take a step backward with the building on your hands and something in your chest unhooks from something else you always assumed would be there.

“Don’t you dare,” Johnny says, and it’s exactly the tone he used the first time you leaned over the edge of the roof to see if you could touch rain.

You take another step. Ben is suddenly there on your left shoulder, shoving at what you can’t see, swearing in a register that shakes a stop sign. Reed is at your right with a tool he didn’t have a minute ago, welding a beam to something that still thinks it’s a foundation so it will remember. Sue’s field is a net under everything, trembling.

You get Johnny and Franklin past the edge of shadow and throw the building backward like a man throws a punch when he knows it won’t win but might distract long enough for someone smaller to get away. You float for one bright second because your body still remembers how to do that. You see Johnny look up at you, mouth open like a prayer, Franklin’s fist tight in the fabric at his collar. You think about how soft the hair is at the back of Franklin’s head when he falls asleep on your lap. You think about the way Johnny says babe like he invented the word.

Then your chest becomes a house with no walls. The ground takes your legs out from under you. Johnny is there because he’s always there, but you’re already leaving. The edges of the world go soft, and then the middle does too.

“Auntie?” Franklin says, small and breaking. Johnny makes a sound you’ve never heard him make. Sue says your name like a field collapsing. Ben clears a path through people who already wanted to get out of the way and makes it bigger than it needs to be because he doesn’t know how not to overdo it when it’s you.

“Stay,” Johnny begs, voice raw. He has you in his arms and you’re ridiculous—your head lolling, your hands limp—because you are always the person who holds, not the person who gets held like this. “Baby, stay with me. I swear, I swear, I’ll—”

He does not finish the promise because even he knows that the only thing worth promising is the one you can’t.

The lab is a white box around the worst version of all the conversations you’ve been having. Reed has the chamber ready because he is a coward and a genius and prepared for the day the worst thing happens. Sue’s hands shake when she pulls your hair out of your face and they stop when she sees Franklin watching. Ben stands like a wall that refuses to let the room move.

“We need amplitude she cannot tolerate,” Reed says, and his voice is the thing that saves him from breaking. “We need duration you cannot hold—”

“I can hold it,” Johnny says. His eyes are fox-bright, red-rimmed, unforgiving. “I’ll hold it ’til sunrise if I have to.”

“Johnny,” Sue says, not big sister, not field commander, just a woman whose child watched someone he loves fold in half, “if you go down, I will not have the hands to hold them both.”

Ben steps in until his chest is to Johnny’s back and sets his hands where Johnny can feel them and not be offended. “I got you, matchstick. You go out, I’ll plant you like a fence post and you can keep doin’ your thing from the floor.”

Johnny laughs once, ugly and grateful.

They strap you in. You float in the part of a room where people decide. You stare at the lights not because they’re beautiful but because they are ordinary. Johnny steps into the ring that measures his heat like a song. He looks at you and the grin he gives you is a translation of don’t be afraid into a language you have always spoken together.

“Stay with me,” he says, and you are sick of how brave you have to be to answer, and you answer anyway. “Always,” you say.

Reed’s voice counts down. Sue’s hand is on your hair, steady, forgiveness already folded inside whatever comes next. Ben leans in and says some stupid joke about you owing him five bucks and you love him for making space.

Johnny lights.

It isn’t spectacle; it’s devotion. He holds a narrow band of heat so steady that the room hums sympathy. It scours his skin in the places where he can’t armor himself with flame, turns the edges of his hands into geography that will blister later, but he doesn’t wobble. He stares at the readout and at you and at nothing at all, jaw set, breath in a pattern you’ve felt under your hand a thousand times.

You move because you have been asked to live. Your body is a hallway with fragile glass on wantonly spaced shelves. The corridor is there if you treat it with respect. Your cells listen to Johnny’s pitch and choose repair over ruin. You can feel the choice like a tide going out. Pain arrives like a bill and then gets paid quickly by something other than you.

Halfway through, you make a sound you don’t plan, a small animal noise. Johnny’s hands twitch and don’t. Ben’s grip tightens on his shoulders until one day the bruise will surprise him in the mirror.

“Don’t stop,” you say. It’s barely sound. He nods like you shouted.

He doesn’t stop. He holds and holds and holds. There are tears in his eyes and he is not ashamed and he is not proud; he is busy. He is the boy who runs toward the thing everyone else runs away from, and he is the man who learned that sometimes running is staying.

The last minute is work. There are no metaphors. It is a pulley, a beam, a bolt, a steady hand, a stupid song Franklin likes, a stupid sticker on your chest, a promise into a forehead, a please please please said into a shirt. You are too tired to be moving and you are moving nonetheless. You are being saved and you are saving yourself and you are saving each other, which is the only way this ever works.

When it ends, everything fails quietly. Johnny’s light goes out like a good man closing a door behind him. The chamber sighs. The screens keep shouting until Reed acknowledges them with a laugh that has no humor and nothing but joy, the kind of joy that has to go through grief to get here.

“Repair indices are up,” he says, voice wrecked. “They’re up. The loop is—” He can’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

Sue makes a noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. Ben lets his head fall forward onto Johnny’s shoulder, which would decapitate a lesser man. Johnny sways and then lets himself go; Ben lowers him by handfuls like he is something rare.

“Hi,” you say, because occupying the smallest word is the only thing that makes sense. Johnny crawls the last two feet on his knees and drops his forehead to your sternum and laughs into crying into please.

“You did it,” you tell him, and he shakes his head against you like it isn’t true or like it only is because you made it true first.

“We did it,” he whispers. He tips his head enough to look up, eyes ridiculous with relief and devotion and the specific kind of pride that doesn’t keep score. “I’m gonna be insufferably humble about this for at least fifteen minutes.”

“You’re burned,” you tell him. He shrugs, winces, grins.

“I’ve had worse at Coney Island,” he lies. Ben snorts so hard it rattles the bed.

They keep you, of course. Reed writes protocols and then writes protocols for the protocols because he is so grateful to have something to boss besides fate. Sue cries in the stairwell and then comes back and reads you half a chapter of a book about a woman on a boat who survives without being a metaphor. Ben teaches Franklin to shuffle cards without bending them; Franklin cheats by being adorable.

Johnny sleeps on a couch with his arm over his eyes and his bandages hanging loose and wakes every time you shift like he’s got a string tied from his ribs to your ankle. In the greenhouse at dawn, he lets you kiss the corner of his mouth while the plants pretend not to look. “I wanted to fix you like an engine,” he says, low. “With fire and hands and cussing. And when I couldn’t, I—” He taps his chest, right over where your palm fits. “I thought I’d break from not being able to do anything.”

“You didn’t do nothing,” you say. “You did everything.”

He nods, the kind of nod that means maybe he will forgive himself next week if you remind him. He slides his pinky around yours like you’re twelve. “Marry me,” he murmurs. It’s not a gesture; it’s not a kneel—it’s a pledge, his voice raw as first light.

“Yes,” you say, easy as a breath. “Soon.”

“Soon, babe,” he echoes, and you can hear the hours he wants to count and doesn’t.

Your first flight after feels like starting over. You don’t punch the sky. You raise your hands and let the air pick you up the way a current will when you step into a river and stop fighting. The corridor hums. Your body answers. You pay attention, and it pays you back.

On the roof, Reed pretends to look at his tablet but his mouth is trembling around a smile. Sue stands with her arms crossed, pretending not to be holding her breath. Ben chews on a bagel and mutters, “Don’t show off,” in the exact tone of a man begging you to. Franklin, in his dinosaur pajamas, waves a hand-lettered sign that says GO AUNTIE in slanted letters.

Johnny cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “That’s my girl!” like the whole city should hear. The jogger on the next block does, the pigeons scatter, and you laugh until your chest aches.

You land lighter than you left. Johnny catches you anyway, palms secure at your waist. He kisses your temple like he’s saying grace. “Proud of you,” he says into your hair. It lands all the way down your spine.

Franklin tugs your sleeve, eyes huge. “Do you have to save everybody every time?”

You crouch so you’re eye to eye. “No,” you tell him gently. “That’s why there’s four of them. Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny. They take turns.”

Franklin’s forehead scrunches. “But… what about you?”

You open your mouth, close it, and smooth his hair with a smile that hides more than it shows. “Me? I’m just here to help when I can.”

Before you can stand, Johnny drops into a crouch beside you, fire still faint in his eyes like it never really leaves. He laces his fingers through yours, stubborn and sure. “No, babe. Five. Always five. You’re ours.”

Franklin lights up, triumphant. “Six if you count me!”

Sue kisses his hair. “We absolutely count you.”

Ben rumbles, “Seven with Herbie, not that I wanna,” and somewhere in the building a small robot makes an offended beep.

You try to laugh, but your throat burns. Johnny just squeezes your hand tighter, like he’s daring you to argue. “All of us,” he murmurs, close enough that only you can hear it. “Always.”

You’ll never be exactly what you were the first day the sky said yes. You’re something better for having almost been lost. The corridor inside you hums—a path, not a prison. When you step into it, it feels like a promise you keep with yourself and with him.

You and Johnny start collecting ordinary. Groceries. Bad movies. A cheap rug that sheds and turns the apartment into a dog you don’t own. Arguments about pineapple on pizza (you: absolutely not; him: loudly yes so the delivery guy will judge him properly). A list on the fridge titled things we’ll do when we’re eighty that includes more jumping than is reasonable. Reed builds you a wearable that purrs when you’re within range and complains when you drift. Sue leaves tea where you’re about to be. Ben tells strangers at the deli that he saw you throw a building; Franklin corrects him: “She caught it.”

Sometimes a siren tricks your old instincts. Heat ghosts along your shoulder where Johnny isn’t touching you yet. He watches your face, calibrating, always ready to hold the pitch if you decide to go.

“You good?” he asks, soft.

You think of a boy with a glitter sign, a woman who held a street, a man who held a frequency until his own skin burned and refused to let go. You think of a lab with terrible lighting and the only miracle you believe in: people refusing to let each other fall.

“Yeah,” you say. Sometimes you add not this one. Sometimes you say I’ll take the next. Sometimes you say come with me. He always does.

On a spring evening that smells like wet concrete and new leaves, you take your small flight up. Johnny cups his hands and shouts, “That’s my girl!” Reed smiles into a coffee he claims is his last. Sue pretends to be unimpressed. Ben pretends not to cry. Franklin tucks his hand into yours on landing like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Stay with me,” Johnny whispers sometimes, for no reason at all.

“Always.” you answer, for every reason that matters.

The sky, which has learned to make room for you, does it again without charging extra. The city keeps its secrets and gives you just enough light to get home by. You and Johnny walk back to a life that is, against the odds and in defiance of every terrible statistic, yours. And when you sleep, your body hums not with a debt coming due but with the simple fact of surviving into morning—a song you don’t have to sing alone.

taglist: @starsanarchy @iliketoeatpaint @cpnsteverogers @spideywebss @inkedeye2345 @sidkneeeee

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sstan-hoe · 17 hours ago

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yeah, just take my heart and destroy it 😭

Unequivocally : ̗̀➛ Johnny Storm x Reader

Pairing: Johnny Storm x Witch!Reader

Summary: The Fantastic Four thought they were done dealing with cosmic threats after the defeat of Galactus. That is, until you crash-landed in Gramercy Park. Except, you aren't a threat, and Johnny Storm might be head over heels in love with a woman who couldn't care less for his flirting...again.

Warnings: little steamy but nothing major, making out, so much god damn fluff, some angst, some adult themes mentioned, strangers to friends to lovers, Johnny is a massive flirt, star-crossed lovers, slow burn, bittersweet ending but there will be a sequel, SPOILERS! for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, MCU spoilers, female reader but no characteristics described, reader kind of has PTSD, maybe some incorrect stuff regarding the 60s and how it worked but it's a fantasy world, VERY lightly edited so apologies for any mistakes

Word Count: 24,720 words

Requests are open! : ̗̀➛ Find my masterlist here

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧

“He’s late,”

Johnny Storm was barely paying attention to the conversation happening around the dining room table of the Baxter Building. Instead, he dug his hand even further into the Lucky Charms box, popping another handful of the cereal into his mouth.

Sue shot him a look across the table, half of the bits of cereal falling from the side of his mouth to the table. His only response was an incredulous look her way, which was met with an affectionate eye roll from his sister.

“He probably just got caught up with something,” Sue tried to calm Ben’s nerves, bouncing little Franklin in her arms as he babbled out nonsense of some kind. That was enough to bring a smile to Sue’s face, her lips pressing a kiss to the side of his little head. “You know how Reed is.”

“Ben’s got a point, though,” Johnny chimed in, as the giant rock hand of his friend swiped his cereal box from his hands. With a defeated sigh, he decided he wasn’t going to start a fight over it, turning his gaze back to his sister and nephew. “Last time he was late for Sunday dinner it’s because you were pregnant and he was having an existential crisis. As much as I enjoyed that crisis, I think we’ve dealt with enough in the last few months.”

He wasn’t wrong, and he knew it. They all knew it. A year later and the aftermath of Galactus and Shalla-Bal still hung in the air. The implications of intelligent, threatening life out there in the universe casting a shadow over every news broadcast across the globe.

“That’s exactly my point,” Ben high fived Johnny from across the table, turning his gaze to Sue as well. “If he’s this caught up with something to miss family dinner, that means he found something.”

“And we all know when your husband finds something, that spells trouble for the rest of us,” Johnny lit his hand on fire for added effect, lips pursed as he waved the burning flames around gently in the air. “For example…cosmic radiation.”

It was clear that Sue wanted to argue with the pair, but Johnny knew there was no arguing with them. Their point was made, and that smirk on his face creeped in as Sue sighed, rising to her feet with Franklin situated on her hip.

“Alright, fine. Let’s go see what he’s up to,”

The chorus of cheers shared between Ben and Johnny from behind was surely making Sue roll her eyes once again. Any moments that Johnny was given to bother his brother in law in the lab was a win in his book.

Following his sister into the elevator, Johnny snapped his fingers in Ben’s direction as they descended toward the lab floor.

“10 bucks says it’s another alien woman,”

Ben’s groan sounded through the elevator, bouncing off the walls. Short laughter from Sue mixed in with it, even as she shook her head in response.

“Johnny, just because the first one dumped you, doesn’t mean you can go chasing after any alien woman in existence,”

“She never dumped me, for your information. She heroically sacrificed herself to save me because of her deep, profound love for me,” the shove Ben gave Johnny’s shoulder pushed him into the wall of the elevator. All he could do was shoot the rock man a glare, following his family out of the elevator and onto the lab floor, but not before pretending to grab at little Franklin’s nose to make the baby laugh. “Plus, I think it’s about time little Franklin got an auntie. A cool one.”

None of them were prepared for the mess of a lab they were stepping into.

Papers scattered the entire floor, from the workstation to the chalkboards. Those chalkboards had a thousand equations scattered across them: some scribbled out, others circled over a hundred times. Poor Herbie was frantically moving throughout the room, trying and failing to pick up every piece of paper that he could and bring some form of organization to the room.

“Uh, Suze,” it was Ben’s voice that cut in first, the trio stood just outside the elevator doors in mild shock at the state of the lab that was usually pristine. “I think your husband may have finally lost it.”

“That or he bought some drugs and tried them for the first time,” Johnny tacked on in a mumble that still got him an unimpressed look from his sister.

Johnny wasn’t wrong, though, and neither was Ben. Reed Richards looked like a certified mess.

He stood at the far end of the lab, moving between workstations at the deep blue tables lining the area in a half circle. He typed viciously, new data points mapped upon the screens adorning the walls. The middle screen, the largest, held a map to the entirety of New York City, markings appearing every so often in certain sections of the city before disappearing.

Even as the group approached, Reed never moved from his place, still typing away as he mumbled to himself.

“Reed,” Sue spoke up, just as her husband stalked across the floor once more.

The freshly written upon papers in his hands fell to the ground the second he laid eyes on them. Hair slightly disheveled, tie almost entirely undone, Reed Richards looked as if he had been rocked by a hurricane.

“Something is coming,”

Those were all the words he had to say. Johnny felt as if the air had been knocked from his lungs, as if all the oxygen in the room had been sucked straight out. He heard the sharp intake of breath from his sister first, before Ben stepped forward.

“Reed, what are you talking about?”

Ben quickly had multiple papers shoved into his hands as Reed gestured to the large screen showing the map of New York. One of the workstations beeped as the scientist quickly logged whatever data his system had just mapped out, another blip appearing on the screen that Reed pointed to desperately.

“For the last fifteen minutes, I’ve been tracking these energy signatures,” the map zoomed in on a focused location of the city. “They’re appearing at strange intervals. They started just a minute or two apart, but have grown to be just seconds apart now. All contained in an area between 24th and 17th street, in conjunction with Park Ave and 3rd Ave.”

“Gramercy Park?” Johnny chimed in, crossing his arms over his chest. He cocked his head slightly, looking at the map and the park that lay directly between the streets his brother-in-law had just named off. Honestly, he was still trying to understand what it was he was looking at, or just understand Reed’s mental state as a whole. “Maybe your baby proofing didn’t work and the Wizard is just out of prison.”

“That was my first thought as well, but the energy signatures proved me incorrect,” Johnny only rolled his eyes, running a hand down his face at Reed’s inability to take a joke. “These energy signatures are different, even more so than those of the Herald. It’s a culmination of dimensional energy–energy that’s being pulled from the fabric of the universe itself–it matches with energies given off by planets, or even stars themselves. But there’s another component to it, something so inherently not scientifically explainable that I can’t understand.”

Johnny shared a look with his sister and Ben, and even a look with confused little Franklin, before Sue chimed in.

“Okay, so there’s some weird space energy in the area-”

“Energy that has organic life woven into it,” Reed emphasized for those standing in front of him. He crossed the room back to his desk, pulling up a clear imaging of the energy itself from a nearby street camera that happened to catch the pulse. It was like a burst of blue strands, interwoven, pulsing and dousing the surrounding area in color, before it blinked away. “This energy beats, like a heartbeat. It moves organically, as if being pushed and pulled by someone. Compare these scans with a simple energy scan of any one of us, anyone in New York for that matter, and the fundamentals match perfectly. This isn’t some cosmic energy seeping into our earth for a moment, there’s something attached to it, something causing it. It’s forewarning something–someone.”

The lab grew quiet, the weight of Reed’s words hung in the air. For Johnny, they hung a little harder.

The last time something–someone–showed up on this Earth, he’d almost lost his family, lost his nephew. He had lost his sister, even for just a brief moment, but that was enough. Enough to never want to be put through this again. Johnny’s jaw clenched at the memory, his gaze flickering back to the screens.

“Why’s the park empty?” he questioned, gesturing to the live feed of the park from security cameras placed around light poles. “It’s not even 8 at night.”

“Suspicious activity in the area over the last week. I spoke to the mayor and had a curfew put in place out of an abundance of caution,” Sue chimed in.

“Okay, so another space alien is coming,” Ben clapped his hands together, the sound echoing as it drew everyone’s attention to him. “We threw the devourer of worlds through a portal to deep space…let’s just do that again.”

“This isn’t Galactus,” Reed muttered, voice just loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room as he turned back to the screens before him. “This is something else.”

Before anyone else could speak again, another pulsation of blue energy directly in the center of the park this time. Bigger than the others, strands of energy moving and beating in the air. Growing brighter, bathing the park in light.

The power of the building flickered for half a second before the live feed into the park cut off suddenly. Reed tapped incessantly, trying to bring it back, but it was no use.

“Reed…what is that?”

On the main screen, right in the center of the park on the New York City map, was one single blip of energy. Unlike the other blips, this one didn’t leave. It held steady.

“Johnny-” his name had barely left Reed’s mouth before Johnny was at the windows of the lab, swinging them open before streaking through the air in a blaze of red and orange.

No one was threatening his family again.

Gramercy Park wasn’t far away from the Baxter Building, especially not for a man who could light himself on fire and streak through the air at speeds humans couldn’t comprehend.

The park and every surrounding street was quiet the second his feet touched down on the pavement, flames dissipating from his body with a single thought.

The trees rustled above him in the night time breeze, stray leaves breaking off of the branches and falling to the ground. In the distance Johnny could faintly hear the usual sound of New York traffic, the muffled sound of sirens streets and streets away.

Straight ahead of him, down the path, laid the circle of greenery and flowers planted around the statue that sat in the middle of the park.

When he approached the center of the park apprehensively, flaming fist at his side ready to attack, the last thing he expected to see was you.

Pacing back and forth until the point he was sure you’d burn lines into the ground under your feet, you were glancing up at the sky over and over, muttering something to yourself. He cocked his head as he creeped closer, taking in the clothes that adorned your body: a pain of jeans adorned with so many tears and holes he couldn’t comprehend why you were still wearing them, and a tight fitting shirt that plunged way too far down your sternum to be considered decent to wear…anywhere. He wasn’t sure he’d even seen a woman wearing a shirt quite that revealing before.

His foot hit a single branch littering the pavement, ten feet from you now, before you froze and spun on your heels to face him. Johnny was pretty sure every bit of oxygen in the air was ripped away the second his eyes locked with yours.

Well, fuck, you are the prettiest fucking woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on.

It was the only thought capable of filtering through Johnny’s head. Reed must have gotten something wrong in his data, been tracking something that didn’t really exist, because there was no way that you were the blip that had appeared on the map. You were just another New Yorker–a drop dead gorgeous one, at that–who was out past the mandatory curfew…even if the clothing you bore threw him for a loop.

You didn’t look scared of him, his hand still burning with flames at his side. He could see the way your eyes drifted to the fire, head almost tilting in curiosity, before you glanced back at his face. Your hands were held out at your sides, fingers flexing as if you were prepared to defend yourself if the need arose.

Johnny wasn’t going to hurt you. You were a civilian, one who should be in her home during this curfew. Just another normal civilian that he would definitely be coming back to this area for the following day so he could figure out where you worked, or which cafe you visited most often so he could orchestrate a way to run into you again-

His watch beeped, that familiar alert sound. Johnny’s eyes tore themselves away from you for just a second to glance down: an energy reading, matching the same one from Reed’s lab, pointed directly at you.

Way to go, Johnny. Get the hots for yet another alien woman that’s probably here to destroy your world and kill your family. Nice job. Way to go. Ben totally isn’t going to make fun of you for this.

“I’m not usually one for telling strong, pretty women what to do,” Johnny quipped, flames igniting on his other hands, both now burning bright at his sides. “But you’re out after curfew.”

“Curfew?” you had practically barked out a laugh, and fuck Johnny hated the fact that even your voice was pretty. Even as it was dripping in disbelief. “Yeah, right. I haven’t seen a single curfew ever go into effect in this city through the multiple alien incursions it’s seen.”

Johnny cocked his head immediately: multiple alien incursions? Given that Shalla-Bal was the only alien he’d watched descend into Times Square, he was utterly confused.

“Makes sense–given that you’re another one of those alien incursions–that you don’t know about the curfew,” flames burning just a tad bit brighter, crawling up his forearms, Johnny raised his hands in your direction as he took a cautious step forward. “I’d prefer not to hurt you, doll, so why don’t we do this peacefully and you just come with me?”

It happened in the blink of an eye. Johnny’s eyes never left you as your head tilted just slightly, a flash of blue crossing your eyes as your fingers twitched at your sides, before suddenly his arms were enveloped.

Like a casing of blue tinted energy, pulsing around his hands and up his forearms, the flames that ignited Johnny’s skin were extinguished in moments. Blue eyes shooting wide open, he shook his hands frantically. Willing himself in his head, telling his flames to ignite, but they wouldn’t. Every wave of his arms did nothing, the blue energy unmoving and shifting with him.

“No use trying, pretty boy. There’s not a single ounce of oxygen in the air around your arms right now, so I suggest you keep the flames at bay because I’d prefer not to do that to your entire body,” you shot back at him. With a single wave of your hand, the casing of energy dropped from around his arms. Johnny let the fires reignite for just a moment, confirming that he could indeed use his power again, before his wide eyes shot back to you.

“...I’m going to be so honest, I can’t tell if I’m terrified or completely turned on right now,”

“I’m, also, not an alien. I grew up upstate. And, why does Gramercy Park look so…weird?” Johnny’s comment was ignored, even though it was a valid question that he was trying to work out in his head. He instead watched you spin around on your heels, pointing around the park and up toward the surrounding buildings. “I know I haven’t left the Sanctum in a few days, but I feel like I would’ve heard construction. That building was never white, that one–wait, how did they build an above ground subway system? That wasn’t there three days ago when I got in, and I know for a fact the city doesn’t have the budget for this.”

In all of his life, Johnny Storm had never been more confused. He’d sat through countless lectures from Reed about matters of organic chemistry that he didn’t understand in the slightest, or cooking lessons from Ben that ended in him shoving his hand deep into a box of cereal, and this was more confusing then all of those combined.

Your clothing, something just about the way you talked and looked, whatever the hell this blue energy was it looked like you were controlling–and what the hell was a Sanctum?

“Back up…the Sanctum?” Johnny chose to start there as you turned back to him. He chose to keep his flames at bay, having a gut feeling that if you really did want to cut off the oxygen around him you could, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with that. “Isn’t that, like, some type of Church thing? Are you from some weird alien cult?”

“I literally just told you I wasn’t an alien. The Sanctum Sanctorum, over on Bleeker street? You know…Wong, Stephen Strange, the Masters of the Mystic Arts?” you must have seen the confusion on his face grow, because Johnny could see the moment your back seemed to straighten. “Wait, you have no clue who they are? Actually–beyond that–you have powers. How do I not know who you are?”

“Great question, sweetheart. The Fantastic Four kind of just saved the world a year ago, so I’m about as lost as you are,”

Johnny wanted to be apprehensive, wanted not to trust a word you were saying. He wanted to be cautious, to put his walls up, because the last time someone had come down into his world like this, he’d almost lost everything.

But you weren’t Shalla-Bal. You weren’t standing on a silver surfboard, speaking with confidence and heralding the end of the world.

No, when Johnny looked at you now, he saw pieces of himself. Of little him, hugging Sue, losing their mother forever. Of the version of him that came back to Earth over four years ago forever changed: confused and scared. The version of him that locked himself away in Building Q, charring the sheets and everything around him as he cried, trying to understand what was happening.

“I meant what I said, by the way,” Johnny cut in, that usual charm infiltrating his words. You were still the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, and he was curious, more curious then he was the moment a woman coated in silver appeared in the air. You had his full attention, even if he was still trying to figure out who the hell you were, but he hoped showing off his charm would ease the tensions a bit. “You’re a very pretty woman…and I might be turned on right now, the jury is definitely still out on that one. Took my breath away when I first saw you, and you could literally do that if you wanted to. That’s hot.”

He watched as you huffed out the semblance of a laugh, still teetering back and forth on if he was a danger to you. Given the fact that you had demonstrated your ability to cut off his oxygen…he was hoping you wouldn’t see him as a threat anymore.

“Ah, a charmer, aren’t you? Knew someone like that, been awhile since I’ve seen someone so brazenly flirt with a woman,”

“Oh darling, that’s my whole brand,”

You hummed across from him, but he caught your body language. Slightly more at ease, not as rigid anymore.

“The Fantastic Four?” your eyebrow shot up, eyes still wide with confusion, but slightly less apprehensive than before, as you brought the conversation back to that name he’d dropped. “Bit of a pretentious name to give yourselves.”

“That was all the fans,” Johnny shot back with a hint of a grin. A ghost of a smile seemed to find your mouth as well, and Johnny mentally cheered to himself that it seemed he was able to convince you he wasn’t a threat to your life.

“Fair enough. The Avengers was chosen for us…I feel like I would’ve heard about another new superhero team being formed in our absence, though,”

Johnny’s confusion was back again as he mulled over your words.

“Avengers? What are they, some superpowered band?”

It was your turn to mull over his words.

“You…you don’t know who the Avengers are?”

There was a whirl through the air as Johnny watched you glance behind him. He turned too, eyes landing on the familiar blue of the Fantasti-Car landing behind him on the pavement, Sue, Reed and Ben stepping out just moments later, practically running down the pavement toward him.

“Johnny-!”

“No, no, wait!” he called out frantically, glancing back at you again. Your hands were rigid at your sides again, fingers flexing, eyes narrowed in a terrified glare in their direction. He glanced back at his family, holding out a hand for them to stop just behind him. “She’s not a threat, I swear!”

Ben’s thunderous steps came to a halt, his head thrown back to the sky as he let out the loudest sigh in the world. “Johnny, seriously, you can’t keep falling for every alien woman you meet-”

Johnny didn’t let him finish, spinning back around to face you. His eyes pleaded with you, hoping you would see his hesitance to hurt you, feet shuffling forward a few steps. You took one back for each step he made forward, that same blue energy dancing around your hands once again.

“I really don’t want to hurt you,” you spoke, voice steady and loud enough to carry through the air. Your eyes glanced past Johnny, to his family. “Any of you. It’s not who I am, that’s not what I do. But if I have to, I will.”

“We won’t,” Johnny promised, taking a glance back at his family. Ben seemed unsure, Reed apprehensive, but Sue watched him. Curious, unsure of what he might do next. He glanced back at you. “I won’t. We’re just as confused as you are right now.”

You laughed. “I really doubt that.”

Reed brought a device out from his pocket, that same alert that came from Johnny’s watch ringing through the air as he pointed it in your direction.

“It’s coming from her,” Reed announced. Johnny tried desperately not to roll his eyes and make a comment of ‘obviously’ toward his brother-in-law. “These readings are coming from her. I was right: she’s controlling this dimensional energy, bending it to her will.”

Johnny hung his head with a sigh, still mulling over making a comment as he turned his gaze back to you. It was apologetic, accented with an eyeroll, one that brought a hint of a smirk back to your face. It worked, though, as you dropped your hands, body relaxing once more as Johnny confirmed for you once again that they didn’t want to hurt you.

With a single flick of your wrist, the device in Reed’s hands was enveloped in that same energy, wrapping around it and carrying it over to your hands before their very eyes. Johnny froze, along with the three directly behind him, as they watched it happen.

“Not energy–well, not technically–it’s magic,” you explained, never taking your eyes off the device in your hands as you fiddled with the controls. “This thing is…so strange. It looks like such a primitive piece of tech but functions so modernly. Did you get this from Stark Industries? Is this some old prototype of Tony’s that Pepper sold you?”

“I designed it,” Reed answered after a moment. You hummed, flicking your hand again as the device made its way through the air and back to Reed’s hands. “Stark Industries, are they a foreign company? Do you work for them?”

Johnny watched that confusion bubble up in your features again, tinged with nerves now. He caught it, the way your leg began to shake as the pacing you’d been doing when he first showed up resumed once again. All he could do was watch.

“T-This doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never heard of you guys, everything about New York looks different, you don’t know the Avengers, hell you don’t even know who Tony is!” you laughed, incredulously this time, as your eyes locked with Johnny’s again. “This has to be a joke, right? A-Are one of you Wong in disguise, trying to teach me a lesson for opening a book to perform a spell that I wasn’t supposed to touch-”

You stopped in the middle of your sentence.

Johnny took another step forward the second you cut your own words off with a gasp. Hand flying up to cover your mouth, your wide eyes never left him as he took a cautious step forward.

“We just want to help you. What are you talking about? Help us understand,”

“The Book of Vishanti,” you said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, like the four standing in front of you were supposed to understand it. “Wong thought I was ready for powerful light magic, h-he invited me so that he could show it to me, so that I could learn from it. I should’ve listened to him, I shouldn’t have snuck down there-”

Sue stepped up to Johnny’s side. He watched his sister, the easy look on her face, the understanding in her eyes, as she spoke softly to you.

“What happened before you showed up in this park?”

“I touched the book without him, I thought I could teach myself things without him,” you spoke quickly, shaking your head frantically. “I could barely read the spell and yet I performed it anyway. Either I fucked it up, or I did it right and I didn’t know what I was doing because…this isn’t my earth. It can’t be, not with all the differences.”

Reed and Ben joined either side of Johnny and Sue now, all four of them staring down at you in front of them as you came to a realization of what had truly happened.

Through it all, Johnny just couldn’t take his eyes off of you. Curiosity pulled at him, more than it ever had before.

“What are you saying?” Reed chimed in.

“I’m saying this isn’t my universe…I think I accidentally traveled the multiverse, and I have no idea how to get back,”

❤︎

Performing a spell from the Book of Vishanti that you couldn’t yet read was, in hindsight, probably the worst idea that you had ever had in your entire young adult life.

When the Sorcerer Supreme believes that you’re ready to handle a book such as that, lined with the most powerful magic and spells and knowledge of light magic that have ever existed…it’s not hard to get an ego about it and jump the gun. You could already hear the berating you’d get from Wong, the things that Steve would’ve said to you if he was still around, the things that Sam most definitely would say to you when you got back to Washington.

If you ever got home, that is.

It was a thought you tried not to dwell on. Every night, as you closed your eyes, you saw them. The ones still here, the ones taken from you even as you fought with every ounce of you to save them all. The final look in your best friend’s eyes before she destroyed the version of herself that she had become, destroying what felt like a piece of you in the process. All so you could wind up in a world without any of them, a universe so far away from your own, nursing what felt like a shattered heart as you tried to find a way home.

You cried enough every time your head hit the pillow of the bed that wasn’t yours, you wouldn’t let the tears find you during the day too.

To their credit, the Fantastic Four were the most welcoming and kind group of people you’d ever met. If a strange woman basically crash landed in your universe, claiming to be a witch, you too would probably have hesitated. But here you were, a week later, having taken up the space on the unused guest floor of the Baxter Building at the insistence of Susan Storm. Trapped in a universe so similar to your own, but so different.

You weren’t alive in the 60s of your Earth, but now you got the chance to experience it firsthand…with a twist. It was strange how retro and yet futuristic this Earth was. The technology was advanced, sometimes more advanced than anything you had seen in your own universe, and that was all thanks to Dr. Reed Richards. You had thought that Bruce Banner and his 7 PhDs was the smartest person you would ever meet, but Reed and his 18 Doctorate degrees blew him out of the water by miles. But beyond the advanced technology of the world, everything else was still so primitive.

The clothing was different, more modest and brightly colored than anything you were used to seeing before. The hairstyles were different, sometimes shorter, almost always poofier than they were in the 2020s. They talked differently, the music was different, everything felt so familiar and yet so wrong at the same time.

This little team, this family you had stumbled upon, had been nothing but helpful, even if they were still wrapping their minds around the idea of the multiverse. The protectors of their Earth, the only superheroes this universe had compared to the plethora yours seemed to have, but some of the most down to earth people you had ever met. Reed Richards was abrasive sometimes, but curious, asking a thousand questions when you would venture out of the guest floor about your magic and the scientific properties surrounding it and its composition. Ben Grimm was kind, giving you space, but always dropping off something to eat on the guest floor for you every day. Sue Storm was kind and bright, strolling in with confidence and her son, Franklin, perched on her hip, filling your closet with an array of clothing to wear so that you would be comfortable.

Johnny Storm followed you like a puppy dog, hanging off every word you spoke and popping up in every corner of the building you found yourself in, much like he was now.

“Find anything in there?”

You rolled your eyes, tossing the book borrowed from the city library onto the coffee table of the guest floor living room. It landed with a thud on the multiple other books that Sue had picked up for you before you glanced over your shoulder, seeing Johnny stalking toward the couch you were sitting upon from the elevator.

“Just more confirmation that witches don’t seem to exist in your universe, except in the fairy tales," you shot back with a sigh. Your gaze turned to the floor to ceiling windows adorning the wall before you, giving you a glimpse of the New York skyline as night crept in on it, the sun dipping below the horizon line in the distance. “Which leaves me with exactly what I started with: nothing.”

Johnny hummed, hands grasping the back of the couch from beside you as he too glanced out over the skyline. The record player in the corner played some Elvis tune, something to fill the silence.

“Can’t you just, like, do the spell again to get home?”

“If I knew what spell I did, probably,” came your answer as you glanced over to him, finding his blue eyes already watching you. “No clue what spell I did, so without that I have no means of traversing the multiverse.”

Your gaze watched him as he left the couch, stalking across the room toward the record player. Another eye roll left you as he plucked the Elvis record off the turntable in seconds, muttering something about how that record ‘wasn’t good enough,’ before combing the collection beside it for another one.

This wasn’t the first time he’d done this over the course of the week. It felt like Johnny Storm practically lived on this guest floor with you: he’d brought his dinner down every night to eat with you, lounged around the living room while you searched through book after book, and had gone through every bit of clothing his sister had procured for you and made comments about which ones he thought you’d look best in (spoiler alert: it was every single item).

You didn’t entirely mind. His presence felt like a soothing balm over the pain that still sat within you, his ability to joke and make anyone around him smile, able to slap a bandaid over what felt like a gunshot.

“What’s music like in the 2020s?” he called out from across the room, settling on a Bob Dylan record instead that he dropped the needle down onto. “Does everyone have giant record collections now, ones that would rival my own?”

“Music is…much different than what you’re used to now,” was the response you settled on, chuckling slightly as you tried to imagine the man across the room listening to the likes of Eminem or even Taylor Swift. Taking a sip of your drink settled on the table in front of you, you dug your now dead cell phone out of your pocket, waving it around. “We listen off our phones, can connect headphones to them wirelessly. Vinyl collections are usually just collections now, not typically used to play music.”

Your cell phone was plucked straight out of your hands by Johnny himself, who had crossed the room with impressive speed. With a chuckle, you shook your head at his antics, leaning your head against your hand as you watched him inspect the dead device.

“I should tell Reed to invent this thing. Have to use that big brain for something useful,”

“And somewhere in Chicago, I can hear Martin Cooper crying that his invention is about to be stolen,”

Johnny tossed your phone back onto the cushion next to you without another thought, plopping down right next to it. Head thrown back against the back of the couch, he turned to look at you again with a giddy grin.

“Ignore the little talking box device for now, can you show me more of your magic?”

That was the question Johnny had asked at least three times a day in the week you had been on his earth. It was cute, the way his eyes would light up with excitement like a little kid every single time you showed him something new. That sparkle in them, the grin that lit up his face every single time, as he’d beg you to show him again.

You tried not to focus too much on how cute it actually was.

“What haven’t I shown you at this point?” you laughed, smile bright, though you already knew the answer. There was a neverending stream of things you could show him.

“There has to be something,” he sat up a little straighter, leaning even more into your personal space now. “Come on, I have a witch sitting in front of me. I thought those only existed in movies and books. You can’t blame a guy for being interested, baby.”

Ignoring that pet name that so easily fell from Johnny’s lips, you took a quick glance around the room. Acting as the centerpiece of the table sat a fresh bouquet of wildflowers, curated by Sue herself and brought up as a gift. Leaning forward, you plucked a single daisy from the bunch, leaning back and holding it in the space between you and Johnny.

Your eyes never stopped watching him as that familiar swirl of blue magic seeped from you, enveloping the delicate flower. The thin, white petals merged together into five beautiful petals, the white coloring fading into an enchanting ombre of orange and pink. Then, as fast as it started, your magic dissipated and the blue hue that lit up Johnny’s face disappeared.

He took the new flower from you with the brightest of grins, a sight that stirred something deep within your chest you were keen to ignore. He took a single sniff, eyes glancing back to you as his smile slipped into a charming little smirk.

“What did that poor daisy ever do to you?”

“It wasn’t a Plumeria,” you shot back with a slight laugh, plucking the flower from his hand and slipping it back into the vase. “They’re my favorite flower.”

“Noted,” he casually stretched his arm over the back of the couch, resting it over the portion directly behind your head, as that charming smirk grew even more. “Want them incorporated into the wedding decor, or should I pin one to my suit jacket so you can see it while we stand together at the altar?”

With a bright laugh, your hand met his face, pushing him back slightly as you rose from the couch, sauntering over into the kitchen with your empty glass. You could feel his eyes on you with every step.

“I have to hand it to you, Johnny, your flirting this past week has definitely gotten more brazen with each passing hour. Be careful, you might fall in love,”

“Too late, that happened when you first turned around,” shooting a glance back at him on the couch, he dramatically flopped backward on the cushions, pretending an arrow had just struck him in the chest. It was impossible not to shake your head and laugh at the sight. “I took one look at you and thought…wow, that’s the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

You hummed in response, pouring yourself another glass.

“Does your charm and your flattery typically get you places with the ladies?”

“Depends, is it working right now?”

Ben had warned you about Johnny’s charming personality and what would surely be incessant attempts at flirting, but you hadn’t thought the man would be as persistent as he had been this past week.

You’d taken to keeping a running list in your head of some of your favorite lines of Johnny’s that he’d thrown your way.

Are love spells a thing? You could put one on me and I wouldn’t even notice: I’m already too far gone for you, baby.

Do you think you fell into our universe because you and I were made to find each other?

Before you head back to your universe eventually, we should send you back with the last name Storm. I think it fits you nicely.

Each one had made you laugh, and you begrudgingly had to admit that most of them were quite cute. It helped that Johnny Storm was as charming as they came.

From the moment you had laid eyes on him in that park that night you’d known it. This man was a heartbreaker, a face that girls across the world surely had hanging on their bedroom walls and were fawning over. Magazines called him a playboy, his personal fan club, The Flaming Hearts, swooned at his feet over how he was the ideal man women should strive for. You saw why they fawned: Johnny was attractive, anyone with eyes could see it. Perfectly swept to the side blonde hair, blue eyes that felt deeper than the ocean, and the charm and wit to have you laughing into the night.

He could flirt all he wanted, but it was going to take more than a flirty comment and a pretty smile to make you feel a thing. Johnny Storm wasn’t the first charming man you’d ever encountered, and he surely wouldn’t be the last.

“Sorry, pretty boy,” you shook your head, finishing off your glass that you’d just poured before dumping it into the sink for later. “Takes a little more than superficial flattery to butter me up.”

“I’m pretty sure you just called me pretty, that has to count for something,”

“It doesn’t,” you shot back, leaning against the island counter as you looked across the room toward him. Johnny was rolling off the couch in the most unelegant way, hopping back up to his feet to lean against the other side of the counter from you, shooting you a wink.

“You know what they say–denial is the first step to falling in love,”

“Acceptance. The quote ends in acceptance,” you barked out another laugh, shaking your head as the man as you stood up straighter. “Now, what did you actually come up here for, or was it just to bother me?”

Johnny clapped, eyes going wide as he seemed to remember exactly why he’d come upstairs in the first place.

“Right! It’s Sunday, family dinner night. You’re invited, and I was volun-told to come and get you,”

“Of course, because I’m sure you really protested being given that job,”

As charming as ever, he shot you another wink as he banged his hands on the table.

“You already know me so well, darling,”

“Are the pet names necessary?”

“Why, are they making you swoon?” yet another wink was shot at you.

“Johnny, I’m sure your charm works on just about every other woman in this universe. You want me to swoon? It’s going to take a lot more than that,” you pointed toward the shirt on his body, the bright blue logo over his chest shining in the light. “Plus, wearing your own team merch all the time? How superficial of you.”

He feigned hurt over your comment, looking down at the logo himself.

“I’m just representing the team. Plus, it’s comfortable, like our suits are too,” Johnny instantly snapped his fingers, eyes wide again as he giddily smiled toward you across the counter. “Your suit! You’ve never shown me your superhero suit! Come on, I’m dying with anticipation here, baby.”

Even as you rolled your eyes, you indulged his request. With a single flick of your wrist, your clothing shimmered in blue tendrils of magics, transforming it into the suit you knew like it was a second skin. Reinforced black and blue fabric that trailed high up your neck and down to your wrists, down your waist and finally tucked into the black boots that sat directly below your knees. That shimmering silver “A” still sat on your belt, something you were never able to part with.

Johnny let out a low whistle, teeth biting into his bottom lip as his eyes scanned you up and down over and over again.

“Hot damn…remember that comment I made about being turned on? Yeah, yeah this is doing it for me,”

With yet another eye roll, something you were learning you did quite frequently around him, you waved off the magic and dissipated the suit once again. The look you shot at him was anything but impressed, even if you were trying to hold back laughter.

“Why are you like this?”

Before some other flirty comment could fall from his lips, the elevator dinged across the room, its large doors sliding open. Neither of you were expecting it to be little Franklin Richards stumbling out on his tiny, wobbly legs.

Tufts of blonde hair on his head, blue eyes wide as could be, a happy little smile overtook his face as he spotted the two of you in the kitchen. His little hands clapped together, incoherent but otherwise happy babbles falling from his lips.

“Frankie! What has your mom told you about playing with the elevator, little guy?”

Johnny was across the room in seconds, sweeping Franklin into his arm with a single swipe. The laughter of little Franklin echoed through the room as Johnny dipped him, practically holding the little guy upside down, before spinning him upright. The little boy wearing a matching grin to his uncle, the man he could practically be a twin of, continued to laugh as Johnny pulled his shirt up, blowing a raspberry directly into his stomach and muttering something about how ‘magic babies never listen to their mothers.’

The skip your heart did at the sight was enough to have the beginnings of a flush crawling up your skin. Maybe his charm didn’t work on you, not his flirty jokes, but this? Seeing the side of Johnny Storm that the media didn’t see, the part that wasn’t the persona he played up for the world, was enough to bring a soft smile to your face and to fully understand why people across the world fell for him so easily.

Willing the blush to go away, desperate to hide the evidence that you did, in fact, find this man cute, you stalked across the room until you came to stand beside the man and his laughing nephew. They both turned to look at you, looking like twins with their bright smiles and blue eyes. Another round of giggles fell from Franklin as you swiped your finger over the edge of his nose slightly, pushing past them both toward the waiting elevator.

“Well, come on then. Guess I shouldn’t be late for my first family dinner with the Fantastic Four,”

In all honesty, you needed Johnny to put Franklin down. He looked too adorable, making faces at the little boy as he pressed the button for the main living area on the elevator. Franklin just continued to clap, babbling nonsense.

“You’re good with him,” you cut through the silence after a moment, smile still soft as you watched the two of them beside you in the confined space.

Johnny glanced up, an air of sheepishness finding him as he laughed lightly, looking back at Franklin. The little boy was watching you once again.

“Yeah, well, what can I say? Always loved kids,”

Bringing your hand up between the two of you, with a single thought you let a little ball of blue magic appear along your fingertips. Franklin’s eyes widened, following the movement of the little ball of magic as you rolled it around your fingertips, dancing it around his head and back to your hand.

Your eyes flickered to Johnny after a moment. His head rested against the wall of the elevator still slowly moving its way down. His smile was soft, softer than you’d seen it look at you before this week, his eyes holding a gentle pensiveness as they watched you.

“What?” you questioned lightly. He shrugged, adjusting Franklin on his hip.

“Nothing. You’re just good with him, too,”

“Well, he’s not the first baby in my life,” you answered, the edges of your smile dropping just a fraction as you thought about her. The little girl that was only, what, 6 years old now? Brown hair and eyes just like her father’s, the wit and sass to match it. Universes away from you, a little piece of someone you used to hold so dear that you may never see again.

“Whoever you’re thinking about,” Johnny was more observant than you gave him credit for, picking up immediately on the thoughts that seemed to plague your mind, even if he didn’t know the full extent of them. His fingers lightly grazed your cheek, an action that you so wished didn’t feel so nice. Comforting, warm with the heat that burned within him, brushing a strand piece of hair back behind your ear, tucking it there. You met his gaze, burning with a quiet determination. “You’ll see them again. We’ll get you home.”

Ignoring the slight flutter behind your ribcage, you raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, you’re suddenly content with letting me go? I remember Ben telling me yesterday that you were planning to keep me trapped here forever,”

His laughter echoed into the living room as the doors to the elevator pushed open, allowing the three of you to step out into the room fully. Ben was hard at work in the kitchen, calling out things to their little helper robot, Herbie, who zoomed around the kitchen at his command. Reed’s arm stretched out across the room, setting the table without ever leaving the kitchen, his other arm wrapped around his wife as Sue laughed at something he said.

“Oh I’ll help get you home, but there are conditions to your departure,” Johnny shot back, walking alongside you toward the dining room. “The one non-negotiable is that you have to leave unequivocally in love with me-”

“Whoa, that’s a big word for you, Johnny-”

“You also have to leave admitting that I’m the most charming man that you’ve ever met-” he cut back in, cutting you off after you had cut him off.

“I mean, you’re definitely on your way to joining the ranks of Tony, Quill, and Joaquin-”

“You also have to leave with the last name Storm,” Johnny spun, back facing the kitchen, as he shot you a wink. “We can negotiate that one. I don’t want to rush our wedding, but I’d prefer you go back home with it. A little something to remember me by.”

Sue Storm was quick to slap Johnny on the shoulder as he dipped into the kitchen, practically tossing the laughing baby into his sister’s arms, before ducking around her to dip his hand into the pot of sauce that Ben was working to season. His rocky hand whacked Johnny on the shoulder, who pretended to crumble to the ground in pain as Ben cried out “you haven’t even washed your hands!”. Reed’s arm stretched across the room, coming between the two and pushing his brother-in-law to the other side of the kitchen without a word, trying to maintain a semblance of peace.

Sue sighed, pressing a kiss to her son’s head, before she turned to you: still standing still, frozen in place by the dining room table, watching the events before you unfold with a smile you couldn’t hide if you tried.

“Welcome to family dinners,” she told you with a laugh, Ben once again yelling at Johnny in the background as he dipped his hand into a cereal box. “Before you ask: yes, it is always this chaotic.”

The chaos was nice, it almost felt like home. A home you hadn’t known for years now. Watching them, you could almost picture them all, the family you used to have: a flash of Natasha’s red hair in your head, the sound of Steve’s laughter, Tony’s quips that Sam always met back just as quick, Wanda muttering to you about how you worked with idiots.

Johnny’s eyes met yours again, a soft smile and a playful wink sent your way before he ducked out of the way of Ben’s arm again, and that was somehow enough to soothe that ache in your heart for just one night

❤︎

“I know people usually look exhausted after leaving Reed’s lab…but you were down there for two hours. I’m surprised you’re alive,”

Stalking across the room into the kitchen of the Baxter Building, you faked a laugh in Ben’s direction, dipping into the fridge for a bottle of water to nurse the headache you could feel approaching. The man let out a laugh at your actions, shaking off his oversized trench coat and tossing it over toward the dining room as he placed the multiple paper bags in his hands down on the counter.

“I am, too,” you shot back at him, hopping up onto the island counter beside him to sit. Ben just laughed at your antics, rifling through the bags on the counter from the market down the street. “He asked for more blood tests, so I consented even though I told him he’s not going to find any answers to why I have magic in my blood.”

“And did he?”

“NO!”

Ben’s laugh thundered through the room as he put some of the groceries away in the cupboards. Returning to the island counter, he dipped into a smaller, white paper bag, producing a small sleeve of paper holding a warm cookie within. The headache you felt coming on almost completely dissipated the second the sweet smell filled the air.

“Good thing I grabbed some of these, then. Eat, before you pass out from blood loss,” you didn’t argue, taking the gooey chocolate chip cookie from him with a smile and sinking your teeth in. “It’s from Maisie’s. Figured it was about time I showed you the best cookies in town, not sure how I held off for two months.”

Two months. It was a time period you tried not to dwell on. If you thought too long about how long you’d been stuck in another universe with no way back home, you were sure you’d start spiraling more than you did every night that your head hit the pillow of the guest floor. The guest floor that was slowly just becoming your floor.

If you thought about it too long, you’d remember how you were starting to forget the sound of Sam’s laugh. How this was the longest you’d gone without visiting Pepper, how Morgan was probably asking where you were. You hadn’t put flowers at Nat’s grave in so long, you could only hope her sister had gone and changed the flowers.

“Well, it’s quite good,” with a slight shake of your head, you sent Ben a strained grin, enjoying the taste of the cookie. It wasn’t a lie, it was quite possibly the best cookie you’d ever had.

Ben hummed, holding your gaze for a moment, before he smiled. It was soft, but you could see it woven in: the pity.

“Thinking about home?”

You swallowed, both the bite of the cookie you’d taken and the lump that formed in your throat.

“Yeah…always am. I hate how good you are at reading me, by the way,” Ben chuckled at your comment, returning to putting the rest of the groceries away in their designated spots. “Reed offered to invent multidimensional travel again today.”

“Did you say yes?”

“No, I turned him down like I do every time,” Ben returned as you shook your head with a wry laugh. “It sucks because I know he could do it, he’d have me home within a week. But multiverse traversal spells exist, they have for a very long time, which means they obviously don’t blow a hole in the space-time continuum. I don’t need Reed to accidentally blow a hole in the entire multiverse just to get me home.”

Ben hummed. Placing one hand on the counter, his other rocky hand laid across both of your legs, delivering the slightest of squeezes in comfort that he was able to. You looked up, meeting his eyes, and practically melted under the kindness and comfort in them.

“You’re going to go home, I promise you that. You’re homesick: it’s where you belong, it’s full of the people you love, and we’ll get you back there. But think of it like this: you’re in a different universe, how many people get to experience that? Take it in, enjoy it, learn from it, eat all the Maisie’s cookies this world has to offer. The people you love will still be waiting for you back home, no matter how long it takes to get there,”

He moved away, his hand sliding back down to his side and he returned to the groceries. But his words stuck with you, hung in the air, settled deep within you.

The quiet hung there in the room for a moment as you just watched him, placing cereal box after cereal box on a shelf near the fridge. He met your gaze again when he turned around, rocky brow raising in question as you let a sigh slip past your smiling lips.

“You remind me a lot of Steve,” Ben waited, letting you collect your thoughts, never pushing. “He always knew what to say, especially to me. That’s how it feels talking to you a lot, like I’m talking to him again. I…I miss being able to talk to him.”

“Well, you can talk to me anytime,” he motioned his hand toward the cupboards of the island counter blocked by your legs. Sliding off the countertop, you stepped to the side as he bent down to put another bag away. “Who do the others remind you of?”

You mulled the question over in your head, grabbing a bag from the counter and helping Ben place the rest of the groceries away across the kitchen.

“I think Reed has to be Bruce, simply because they’re both too smart of their own good. Sue reminds me a lot of Natasha, with the way she takes care of everyone. Nat was quiet about it, but she was always picking up after the boys. Johnny…unfortunately reminds me of Tony. He’s got his same sass, wit, charm and flirtatious nature,”

Ben waved his hand in the air, a grimace on his face.

“Please, no, I don’t want to think about there being another Johnny out there in the multiverse,” you laughed, catching the bottle he threw in your direction to slot into the fridge. “Speaking of matchstick, where’s he at? He’s usually attached to your hip, what with his whole plan of whatever he calls it-”

“Ah, you mean Johnny Storm’s Complete Guide to the 60s?”

It was the dumbest name in the world, but given that Johnny had named it, you weren’t surprised. He’d taken it upon himself to give you a complete guide to what the 60s were like, with the added footnote that the weirdly futuristic 60s they lived in was bound to be different than the 60s of your own universe. Johnny had claimed you were too ‘cooped up’ on your floor of the building, and it was time you got out and ‘lived a little’ since you were here.

Johnny’s guide to the 60s began with bowling. He’d been so excited, sliding into those custom shoes for the alleyways, that you didn’t have the heart to tell him until you were beating him by 70 points in the 8th frame that bowling was very much the same game in the 2020s.

“No, that’s unfair!” Johnny had called out, mouth dropped open as he pointed an accusatory finger in your direction. The manual scoresheet in his hand was all but crumpled at this point. “You didn’t tell me bowling was still a thing!”

“To be fair, Johnny, you didn’t ask,” was the only response you could manage through your laughter, grabbing your ball once more and aligning yourself with the lane in front of you. “Bowling is very much still around, and very much the same game. I guess you just aren’t as good at it as you think you are.”

You weren’t laughing long, a spark of heat igniting along the back of your hand just as you let go of your ball. Your hand jerked immediately at the feeling, sending your ball rolling straight into the gutter. Mouth dropped open, it was your turn to point an accusatory finger in Johnny’s direction.

“Hey!”

“Leveling the playing field here, baby,” he teased, skirting by you as his fingers bumped your chin slightly, before he grabbed his own ball as his body was racked with laughter. “Now, let me show you how good I really am at this game.”

Johnny’s own laughter was short-lived. His ball made it halfway down the lane before coming to a sudden stop along the slick surface, surrounded by a hum of blue magic that flicked it off into the gutter. His betrayed face turned to face you, met with your smirk and hand held out toward the ball. You only batted your eyelashes at him.

“Hey, if you’re going to level the playing field with powers, then I am too. It’s only fair,”

“Oh, I’m going to show you fair-”

The laughter that poured out of you mixed with a shriek the second Johnny practically tackled you, throwing your body over his shoulder like it was nothing and parading you down the alley, highfiving little kids along the way as you could do nothing but laugh, smile never slipping for a second.

Go-Karting, on the other hand, was definitely a little different in the 60s. The karts themselves were much different, a lot less structurally sound at times and incapable of doing the speeds that you knew Johnny really had wanted to drive them at. He had claimed to win the race fair and square, even as you pointed out that he’d gone as far as to melt one of your tires right before you crossed the finish line.

Record stores, golfing, roller-skating, you named it and Johnny dragged you off to do it. He filled every moment with vibrant stories: the record store was one that Sue liked to take him to when they were growing up, golf was something he fell in love with after coming back from space with powers, and how roller skating was something he swore he’d never do, but the smile on your face the entire time had been well worth it.

The diner had been your favorite. Griddles & Waffles, nestled deep in the heart of Queens. A 24/7 joint that sold breakfast and breakfast only, a beloved place by locals. Johnny had been awake into the early hours of the morning that night, the only one still up, diving into a box of cereal buried in the kitchen when you screamed. The next thing you knew, he was practically diving out of the elevator onto your floor as you shakily grabbed a glass of water in the kitchen, eyes wide and panicked as he informed you that he could hear you scream floors away. One look at the state you were in and he was shoving you into the hoodie he was wearing and shoving you out of the building and into his car.

“You took me to a place with waffles in the name, and you ordered pancakes?”

Johnny’s eyebrow shot up, half of the stack of pancakes in front of him practically shoved into his mouth as he pointed the fork in his hand in your direction.

“Don’t you ever diss these pancakes, you hear me? Best flat pieces of dough in the entire state of New York,”

You couldn’t help but laugh lightly under your breath as he barely got his words out through the food in his mouth. Taking another bite of your own waffle, it was easy to get lost in the decor of the diner. Bright colors, shiny metal gleaming under the lights, it looked exactly like the recreations that existed in your own universe. The simple thought of home brought your frown back in seconds, and Johnny was instantly snapping his fingers.

“No, there’s no frowning in Griddles & Waffles, you hear me?” you rolled your eyes, but that simple thought weighed heavy on you, lips still pulled into a frown. Johnny made some motion toward the waitress before he leaned into the table toward you, drawing your gaze to him and his waiting, patient, gentle eyes. “Honey, I’m surprised that scream didn’t wake anyone else up. What’s wrong?”

“It was nothing. Just a nightmare…a memory of a day I don’t like thinking about,” you tried to deflect, shoving your fork around your plate, scraping it against the ceramic. Johnny’s hand caught yours, his eyes still soft and gentle, as he gave your hand a gentle squeeze until you relented. “It’s…I don’t like talking about it. I don’t get nightmares about it often anymore, but when I do, it feels like I’m there again: in that forest full of nothing but blood and dust.”

The blonde hummed, fingers gently rubbing small circles into your knuckles. His skin was warm, unusually warm from the heat that coursed through him, the feel of it on your skin bringing a sense of comfort. Then, he took his hand away, holding both his hands out like he was presenting something, that dazzling smirk of his lighting up his face.

“Have no fear, because Griddles & Waffles has the perfect cure for sadness!”

The waitress came back, sliding a single tall glass onto the table between the two of you with two straws tossed down onto the tabletop. You glanced at it: one large, over the top, classic chocolate milkshake with a large cherry resting right on top. You looked back up at him, your eyebrow raised this time.

“A milkshake? At two in the morning?”

“Have some faith in me, baby,” Johnny teased, slipping the two straws into the shake with ease. He took the cherry between his fingers, easily biting off the majority of the fruit as he twirled the stem between his teeth. Your eyes flicked down for just a second, to the stem between his lips and the hint of red juice that covered them, before your skin flushed and your eyes were back on his. “This is about to be the best milkshake you’ve ever had, and it’s going to cure every bit of sadness in your body.”

Johnny was known for exaggerating, but you indulged him anyway. With a short eyeroll you leaned in, taking a single sip from the straw pointed in your direction. Johnny waited, his smile wide and bright as his fingers tapped against the table, the sound echoing through the mostly empty diner in the middle of the night.

“...alright, it’s pretty damn good,”

His cheer echoed through the diner, the waitress shooting him an unimpressed look as his hands banged down on the table. Another round of laughter slipped past your lips as you shook your head at his antics.

“See? You have to trust me more often,” Johnny teased, leaning in to take a sip of the shake from his own straw. “These milkshakes are the cure to sadness.”

You didn’t have the guts in that moment to tell him the shake didn’t cure anything. No, you felt lighter simply from that boyish grin and the laughter that fell from Johnny Storm’s lips, something you weren’t keen to admit quite yet.

“Talking about me, baby? I leave you alone in the lab for a few hours and you miss me that much?”

As if hearing his name from floors away, Johnny Storm himself came strutting straight into the kitchen, charm rolling off him with every step he took. That smile of his was as bright as ever, eyes wide and full of mirth.

He practically skipped up to your side, tossing the box of food in your hand somewhere onto the counter. Cradling your hand in his, he brought it to his lips without another thought, pressing a featherlight kiss to your knuckles. His gaze never wavered from you the entire time.

With a roll of your eyes, though paired with a smile full of affection, you shoved him off, placing the box of food he’d just tossed away into its rightful place as you shot him a look over your shoulder.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Johnny. Contrary to what you think, you are not the only thing I’m thinking about,”

“You see, but that implies that I am one of the things you’re thinking about,” his response came easily as he made his way over to Ben, stealing one of Maisie’s cookies from the bag before he could be stopped. Ben only let out a sigh that could probably be heard from the other side of the city. “Nevermind that, though, I came here on a mission. The sun is setting and we’ve got a 40 minute drive, so get upstairs and attempt to look even cuter than you already do, if that’s possible.”

Exchanging a quick look with Ben as Johnny walked backwards out of the kitchen and back into the living room, you both looked back at the blonde moments later.

“Get ready for what?” you questioned. “To go where?”

“Long Island, sweetheart. Your guide to the 60s continues tonight,” he paused at the stairway, one hand on the railing and the other pointing across the room toward you. “Meet me in the lobby in ten minutes, got it?”

You considered arguing, but the truth was, you didn’t want to. Every one of these excursions with Johnny so far had been fun, had been enough to fill that little hole in your chest for a fleeting moment, and right now you wanted that more than anything.

“Alright, ten minutes,”

He clapped, beginning to move up the stairs as he practically shouted across the room.

“Good girl. It’s a date-”

“It is not a date-” your words fell on deaf ears as he went sprinting up the stairs, yelling out a distant “It very much is a date!” from the next floor. It was impossible to ignore the heat spreading in your cheeks at his words, though.

The silence of the room only hung there for a minute before Ben’s laughter filled it, echoing off the walls. Shutting your eyes for a moment, you let out a deep breath, trying to understand the enigma that was Johnny Storm sometimes, before patting Ben on the shoulder as you moved toward the elevator.

“Well, wish me luck on whatever this next excursion is. Hopefully it doesn’t involve him almost whacking me in the head with a golf club again,”

“You’ll be just fine,” Ben called out from the kitchen, speaking through his laughter. You could clearly hear the underlying teasing tone to his words. “Have fun on your date-”

“Benjamin, don’t start with me!”

It might not have been a date, but that didn’t mean you weren’t going to try. There really was no reason to, though: Johnny had seen you at your worst over the last two months. Always arriving on your floor sometimes at the crack of dawn with an idea for the day, startling you before you even had a chance to wipe away the mess of tears streaking across your cheeks from yet another nightmare you’d just awoken from.

It wasn’t a date. Just because you chose the cutest pair of pants and a sweater that the closet full of 60s style clothes offered didn’t mean anything. Not a damn thing.

You hated to admit how good Johnny looked in just a simple grey sweater and some slacks. Strutting toward you through the lobby of the Baxter Building, employees already sent home for the day and leaving the lobby bathed in silence, he let out a short whistle as he came to a stop in front of you.

“You say it’s not a date, but you sure do look nice,”

“That’s because your sister filled my closet with all nice clothing,” you shot back.

Johnny hummed, eyes still scanning you up and down. Eyes finding yours again, he held out his arm to you, just as he typically did on these little excursions.

“Come on,”

Hand resting in the crook of his elbow, the cool night air sank deep into your bones as you stepped outside. Johnny’s hand was quick to find the handle to the passenger side door of his custom blue Corvette, swinging it open and taking your hand in his to help you into the leather seat, just as he always did.

The leather made a noise as you shifted, buckling yourself into place as Johnny cooly slid into the driver’s seat. One hand rested on the wheel, the other drumming along the knob of the gearshift as his foot hit the gas, sending you speeding out of the drive of the Baxter Building and onto the roads of New York.

“What’s today’s adventure?” you asked after a few moments of silence. Johnny’s grin simply brightened, his glance finding you beside him for a second before his fingers turned the knobs of the radio on, filling the call with music as he continued to cruise down the streets he knew like the back of his hand.

“That’s a surprise, sweetheart. Just enjoy the drive,”

It was easy to enjoy it. The same city you’d grown up in, yet so different at the same time. Every building looked new, the atmosphere felt lighter than New York had for you in years, everything about the city you knew so well felt different. The lights, the skyline, everything still felt like home as you crossed the East River, flying through the streets of Brooklyn and eventually Queens.

The heaviness eventually found you, though, just like it had every day for the last two months. As city lights shone off the windows of the Corvette, bathing you in its light, your mind still wandered back to memories. The first time Tony had driven you upstate to the new compound in the passenger seat of the god awful orange Audi. The quietness that came with the blip, the way the entire city fell still. The sweeter moments, like dragging your best friend from the compound late one night and sneaking into the city, sitting along the Brooklyn Bridge to admire the lights.

“Hey,” those memories came to a halt, Johnny’s hand brushing across your knee, settling there with a gentle squeeze. “You’re thinking hard over there.”

You hummed, head still resting on your hand as your elbow sat against the window of the car door. You let your eyes settle on his hand, just watching the way his thumb drew circles into the side of your knee.

“Reminiscing on my New York, that’s all,”

“Ah, getting homesick,” the sight of Johnny nodding was just barely visible out of the side of your eyes, His hand slid from you, joining his other hand on the wheel. “You’ll go home, back to your futuristic universe eventually, I know it. Then you can forget all about us in this little universe.”

The radio was blaring a Frank Sinatra song, something much too slow for the night time around you. The song crackled through the speakers as you glanced over, observing the side of Johnny’s face. For a man that hid behind such an extravagant persona for the media and the fans, you could see right through it. That hint of sadness in his own features, woven into the creases of his eyes and the lines around his lips, at the thought of you leaving.

I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast. I fall in love too terribly hard.

“I think you’re underestimating how much I will miss you guys when I go home,” you told him simply, the music playing lightly through the speakers. It really was that simple, it was the truth. “I’ll miss you guys a lot. I’ll miss you.”

Johnny’s hand seemed to tighten along the steering wheel for just a second, so quick you almost missed it. Those blue eyes glanced over at you, catching your gaze. His features were riddled with something you couldn’t understand, but could see how gentle it was, until his charming smile was back, wiping away any trace of the strange emotion you had seen.

“Careful there, little witch. It’s starting to sound like you’re falling unequivocally in love with me-”

His laughter filled the car, overtaking the sound from the radio as your hand reached out and shoved his shoulder, your own laughter mixing in with his own.

“You’re fucking impossible, Johnny Storm,”

Of everywhere that you could’ve thought Johnny would be dragging you to, a drive-in theater was the last place you would’ve imagined.

The entire stretch of lawn buried deep within the heart of Long Island was packed with cars of all different kinds, vintage ones you had never seen in person. There was a group of teenagers crowded around one of the cars, hugging their friends and talking animatedly between each other. Some couples walked through the lines of vehicles, giggling together under their breath as they carried their food from the little stand off to the side.

Johnny pulled the car to a stop in one of the last remaining spots, side windows immediately rolling down to allow the sound from the mounted speakers to infiltrate the car. Night had set in, an announcement projected onto the large screen that the movie would begin soon, as you turned to find Johnny already watching you with a wide grin.

“Come on, don’t tell me you’ve been to drive-in theaters too?”

“They’re still a thing, but I’ve never been,” was the response you gave, a small laugh falling from your lips as he excitedly punched the air. “I have always wanted to go to one, though”

“Then your wish, princess,” in his usual dramatic fashion, Johnny stole your hand in his. With a kiss placed to your knuckles, he was already halfway out of the car before you could truly process the moment. “Is my command. Be right back with the snacks.”

You watched him the entire time he was gone. From the moment he slipped out of the car to ordering something from the snack stand, you watched. Even as the young girl working behind the counter seemed to fangirl at the sight of the Human Torch in front of her.

His charm was stupid most of the time. Little one liners, flirtatious jokes, touches that were all but friendly in nature. You didn’t care for a single one of those moments. It had been awhile, but you’d seen Tony use the same tricks. In the briefest of time you had known Peter Quill even he had tried it. Those moments meant nothing to you, but these did.

Bringing you breakfast in the morning just so you didn’t have to be alone. Dragging you around the city to participate in a thousand activities on the off chance that you hadn’t done them before, once again so that you wouldn’t feel alone and left with your thoughts. Hearing a single scream from you, seeing a single tear, and dragging you through New York in the middle of the night just to see you smile again. Those moments worked on you–meant something to you–more than you wanted them to.

The moment he was swarmed by a bunch of little kids trying to leave the snack stand didn’t help the turmoil you felt inside either. Johnny didn’t complain, not once, simply balanced the food in one arm so he could lean down and high five one of the girls, ruffling the hair of another little boy standing right next to her. He smiled wide, you could see the shake of his chest as he threw his head back in laughter, igniting his hand quickly as the kids all clapped and gasped in awe at the sight of their own personal superhero. There was a news reporter nearby, calling out for a photo that Johnny happily posed for with the kids, leaving them with one last story that had them all looking up at him in awe and adoration.

You hated the stutter that occurred in your heart. You weren’t dumb–you knew what it meant. Johnny Storm was charming, handsome, a literal superhero that had captured the hearts of the entire world. He, also, was the most down to earth man you had ever met sometimes, more observant than you gave him credit for, and too sweet for his own good.

If you thought hard enough, you could almost hear Wong’s voice in your head, scolding you for slowly falling for a man from an entirely different universe. The definition of a man you could never have, never meant to be yours.

“Got swarmed by some little kids, had to make sure I showed off the flames,” Johnny’s voice broke through your thoughts as he slid back into the car, passing a bag of popcorn over the console and into your hands. Just as he did, the large screen in the lot changed, the beginnings of the movie beginning to play as some of those teenagers from earlier began to clap and holler. “Just in time.”

Shaking those thoughts from your head, trying to will them away, you brought your gaze back to the screen. The opening shots of the credits, directors names and actors names plastered across the screen as it dove into the first scene without hesitation, situated on some mountain with hoards of people who were dressed for an even more vastly different time period than now.

“Spartacus?” a questioning glance was thrown Johnny’s way from you as you took a quick bite of your popcorn. “An action/adventure movie was your choice for a drive-in movie date?”

“Hey, you’re the one who said this wasn’t a date,” Johnny retorted, meeting your glance as he took in another handful of popcorn himself with a cheeky grin. “Besides, I didn’t peg you to be a romance movie kind of girl.”

“On some occasions I can be,” you gave back with a shrug. “A good action movie is definitely more my speed, though, so good choice.”

“What can I say, I know you,”

He did. He really did.

It was barely an hour into this three hour movie when your mind finally began to drift off again. Legs curled up on the seat under you, your own popcorn bag finished off and discarded at your feet as you reached over to steal from Johnny’s own bag, you found your thoughts leaving the movie once more. But instead of thinking about home, about the people you lost or the ones waiting for you to come back, you found them on Johnny once again.

Watching the side of his face quietly, you couldn’t help but smile as you watched him mouth some of the words to the movie under his breath, almost mimicking the accents of the actors themselves. It was enough to elicit a small giggle from your lips, bringing his gaze from the movie over to you instead.

“Are you quoting this movie word for word?”

“Hey, don’t knock it. I happen to really like this movie,” your giggles persisted, even as Johnny reached into his bag and tossed a handful of popcorn in your direction. “You should see Ben watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, he could probably act that entire movie out for you. Don’t tell him I told you that.”

“You’re both such dorks,”

“Come on, don’t you have a movie you can quote?”

You hummed, letting the question sit with you for a moment, memories rushing back over you.

“Not a movie, but a show. Full House,” Johnny’s gaze never left you, the movie long abandoned in his eyes for a moment. An idea sprang to mind, your head tilting ever so slightly as you shot him a grin. “Want to see it?”

Excitement crawled into Johnny’s eyes immediately, his head nodding as he sat up straighter in the driver’s side seat.

You took a deep breath. Holding up your hand to the door beside you, that familiar blue magic seeped from your fingertips as that same color glowed in the irises of your eyes, crawling along the interior of the car until it reached the windshield. Your eyes were watching Johnny once again, the absolute wonder in his eyes as his windshield shimmered in blue, before the screen through the windshield changed before your very eyes: gone were Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier, replaced instead by John Stamos and Bob Saget in that iconic kitchen of their San Francisco home.

With another flick of your hand, the speaker at your car switched, playing the sound of the show you were now broadcasting instead of the movie.

“Don’t worry, no one else can see or hear this. Just us,”

Johnny was barely paying attention to what you said, too busy dipping his head in and out of the window in shock and awe, the screen beyond the windshield still playing Spartacus while within the confines of the car your tv show was playing.

“You…I don’t know how you do it, but you somehow get hotter every time you use your magic,”

Laughing, you reached into his popcorn bag and threw an unpopped kernel at the side of his head. Resting back into your seat, arms wound around your knees, you found yourself lost in the scene before you on the screen.

“This was one of Wanda’s favorite shows,” after a minute of silence, engrossed in the scene, you told him. You could feel Johnny’s eyes watching you instead of the show. “She always liked older shows, like Bewitched or I Love Lucy. We used to watch this one all the time in the compound, whenever Steve didn’t have us training constantly.”

Johnny didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched you.

“She was your best friend, wasn’t she? I don’t think you’ve ever said her name,”

“That’s because it’s hard to talk about her,” finding his gaze again, the gentle comfort shining in his gaze washed over you, as if draping you in a blanket. Swallowing the lump in your throat that always formed when you thought too hard about her, you offered him the smallest smile you could muster. “Just a few weeks before I wound up in your universe, I lost her. She lost herself to dark magic, let it consume her, so like the brave woman she was, she chose to protect the world from herself.”

Your words hung in the air, neither of you speaking for a moment. The scene from the show continued to play out before you swiped your hand through the air, dissipating the magic and letting the picture and sound of the movie return to the screen and the little speaker. It hurt too much to relive those moments.

“Hey, do you think by showing me a show that hasn’t come out yet in my universe, this will mess up, like, space and time? Like, what if I go pitch this show to Hollywood real quick and get it made a whole decade before it’s supposed to get made?”

The car got quiet, the only sound being the audio from the movie still playing through the speakers. Raising an eyebrow, entire face contorted in confusion, soft laughter sputtered out of your lips at the simple comment.

“I…what? Johnny that…” his smile grew, as did your laughter as you struggled to get your words out. “Johnny, that doesn’t make any sense?”

“I’m aware,” his hand reached out, thumb and index finger pinching your chin between the soft pads of his fingers. Your breath caught, laughter dying down as you just stared at him, as he drew small circles into your skin, heat blooming under his touch. “You were getting sad. I just don’t like seeing you sad.”

Johnny’s words were so sincere. Not a hint of his usual charm, not a single signature Storm smirk in sight, just genuine affection. Genuine care for you, for your thoughts, for the way your memories made you feel.

The idea of never going home again hurt, but the idea of leaving the Fantastic Four? Of never seeing Johnny Storm again? That was starting to hurt even more.

Even as his blue Corvette was parked in front of the Baxter Building again late that night, headlights flickering off and plunging the car into darkness except for the street lights around the building, your eyes kept flickering back to him.

Driving through Queens, you no longer thought back on the memories of walking through the city one night with Steve when you were younger. Now, you thought about the diner, about the smile on Johnny’s face as he watched you try that milkshake in the dead of night. As you crossed over the bridge into the city, you didn’t think of the nights you and Wanda would sit on the edge and watch the city lights, you instead watched the way the lights danced over Johnny’s skin through the glass.

The elevator of the Baxter Building popped open on the floor of the main living room. The building was quiet, just a lamp in the corner by the staircase to the bedrooms lit up, everyone else fast asleep.

Johnny stepped out of the elevator, pausing just barely still in the doorway. One arm leaning on doors, keeping them open, you both just stood still and watched one another for a moment.

“For a not date, this very much felt like a date,” you threw at him after a moment. Those blue eyes of his lit up, smile lines etching themselves into his skin as his little grin grew immediately.

“Oh sweetheart, this definitely wasn’t a date. Our first date would be a lot different, trust me,”

You hummed, taking a step forward in the elevator, eyes never leaving his. There was barely space left between the two of you now. Johnny's sharp intake of breath was evident, the smile on your lips growing as you ignored every little voice in your head telling you this was a terrible idea.

“What would our first date be like?”

Surprise crawled into his expression. Eyes wide and bright, the smile on his face warped into something you couldn’t quite place. The hand tucked into the pocket of his slacks crawled forward, gingerly placing itself against your waist. Not pulling you closer, just lying there: steady, grounding, present. You didn’t push him away.

“The Regent,” he spoke softly but certainly, eyes never straying from yours. “Exclusive little dance hall just a few blocks away. Live band every night. You’d look just as beautiful as you always do, and I’d get to spend the entire night spinning you around in circles. Making you smile, watching you laugh, holding you close. That would be our first date.”

You hummed, stepping just a hair closer to him. His fingers flexed along your waist, squeezing ever so slightly, as one of your hands came to rest on his chest, looking up at him through your lashes.

“Sounds like you’ve thought about this,”

“Every night since the moment I realized you weren’t a threat that was coming to destroy my entire world…again,”

“I don’t know,” you teased, hand curling into the fabric of his shirt. “According to Sue, you’re kind of into that thing. I could always coat myself in some shiny silver paint if that does it for you.”

He huffed out a puff of air in laughter, tugging you in until you were pressed to his chest in the doorway of the elevator.

“No, you just have to be you. The pretty little witch that could cut off my oxygen supply with a flick of her wrist is all I need. All I want,”

Your eyes trailed down, along the bridge of his nose, until they settled on the pink of his lips. As you spoke, you never looked away from them.

“When would this date be?”

“Tomorrow night, 8 on the dot,”

“That’s so soon, eager?”

“Extremely, I’ve only been thinking about this for two months,”

Your laughter was soft as your eyes finally trailed back to his, only to find them settled on your lips in turn.

“It’s a date, then,”

His blue eyes found yours, shining with an affection that made your knees week. The hand gripping your waist trailed up, fingers dancing along every curve of your body, until it curled around your cheek to cup it within his hand. The heat of his skin bloomed through yours, sending a single shiver down your spine.

“You know,” his voice was low, eyes blown slightly wider than they had been before, as his eyes quickly darted back down to your lips for a moment. “This would be the moment during the date where I’d probably try and kiss you.”

Even with the flutter of butterflies through your chest, head feeling lighter than it ever had before, your lips curled into a wide grin. Eyes glowing blue for just a moment, a small burst of magic left the hand resting on his chest, pushing him backward and out of the elevator doors.

Johnny’s wide eyes watched you as he caught himself, steadying himself on the ground as he stared at you with a dumbfounded smile. You only returned the look, pressing the button for the guest floor without ever breaking eye contact.

“Guess you’ll have to try your luck tomorrow night,”

Even with the amount of bravado laced into your words as the elevator doors swung shut, cutting you off from Johnny’s captivating gaze, nothing could quell the swell of emotion building behind your chest at the simple thought of the blonde man who’d managed to capture your heart without even really trying.

❤︎

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you want to go on a date with matchstick. I mean, he’s my buddy, he's a great kid, but come on. There’s no one waiting for you back in your universe?”

Ben’s comment earned him another affectionate eyeroll from you, along with a deadpan look shot across the kitchen island counter.

He was deep into making a fresh batch of cookies that he had been given the recipe for, the little old woman he’d met claiming they could match the quality of Maisie’s cookies. Reed was skeptical of the recipe, trying to offer advice from further down the counter, but Ben waved him off every single time.

Little Franklin was sitting in his highchair at the counter between you and Sue, babbling incoherently as he played with the little pieces of cereal laid on the counter in front of him. You were simply flicking the little pieces around with little tendrils of blue magic, Sue laughing every single time Franklin tried to catch a piece and you yanked it away.

“No, Ben, there’s no one waiting for me back home,” was the answer you gave the man, never looking up once as you continued to toy with the food on the counter. “Being a superhero for most of your life kind of makes dating an impossible situation.”

“I, for one, fully support this,” Sue chimed in, rising from her chair to refill Franklin’s bottle on the counter. She passed behind you, reaching out to help smooth down the white long sleeve blouse along your shoulders, forcing you to adjust it along your waist where it was tucked into the navy blue slacks she had helped you pick out earlier on. “This is the first time I’ve seen Johnny so head over heels for a woman in a way that might just stick. He worships the ground that you walk on, I love to see it.”

“It helps that you could kill him if you really wanted to,” Ben threw in for good measure, ducking the slap that Sue tried to land on his shoulder. “Sometimes I think it’s a secret kink of his-”

“Okay, I don’t want to hear about what kinks my little brother may or may not have,”

You laughed at the antics you had grown so used to from the group in front of you. Franklin got upset with the constant moving of his little cereal bits, grabbing a handful and tossing them toward you. Wide eyed at his antics, you grabbed onto his tiny hand, blowing a raspberry into the palm of his hand as his shrieks and giggles sounded throughout the room.

“Reed, I’m surprised you don’t have any comments to add in,” you threw in the super genius’ direction. “Nothing about how we’re from two different universes, or how this could blow up the entire multiverse?”

“I’ve been taking notes regarding it, actually,” Ben’s groan sounded through the room the second Reed said it, pulling a notebook out of his back pocket and flipping it open. “Your genetic makeup, based on previous tests, seemed to align with ours, but that doesn’t mean that fundamentally there isn’t something woven into your DNA that doesn’t match with ours. There’s also the idea that, given you’re from two different universes, you were never supposed to meet, so if you managed to fall in love there could be an unforeseen breakdown of the fabric of the-”

Sue’s hand immediately clamped over her husband’s mouth, giving him an unimpressed look, as she shot you the brightest smile she could manage. She slid the now refilled cup for Franklin across the counter to you as you caught it, laughing under your breath at the entire situation as you handed it over to the little boy beside you who made grabby hands in its direction.

“What Reed means to say is that you’re good for him, and honestly, we haven’t seen you as happy as you’ve been the last few weeks since you started spending more time with him. Since you got here he hasn’t done a single PR nightmare worthy thing. I think Lynne might want to get you the keys to the city for it,”

“What are we getting my girl keys to the city for?”

Maybe his charm never worked on you, his endless flirtatious moves and jokes. But in this moment, as he descended the stairs into the living room and your heart stuttered over several beats, you finally understood the hoards of women across the universe that had Johnny Storm plastered across their walls and their hearts.

The navy blue button up he adorned clung to him, almost slightly too tight on him as the fabric pulled in the creases under his arms and by his waist. It was tucked into a pair of white chino pants, accented with navy blue dress shoes. His smile was bright, cheeky as it always was, his hands clasped together behind his back as he made his way across the living room.

Taking a semi-shaky stand on the strappy heels that Sue had helped you into before, you met him halfway across the room, a hush having fallen over the kitchen as you felt their eyes watching every movement both of you made.

Johnny’s eyes trailed up and down your body the second you came to a stop in front of him, taking in the navy blue of your pants and the white of your blouse, before he cheekily shot you a wink.

“Twinning on the first date? What’s the slang they use in your time for that? Couple goals, wasn't it?”

“Couple?” your eyebrow shot up. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Storm. You have to earn that.”

“Oh, I’ll earn it,” his hands finally unclasped from behind his back, thrusting out toward you. “For you, gorgeous.”

A beautiful bouquet of flowers: Plumeria flowers. Glittering in an ombre of pinks and oranges, taking you back to one of those first nights on that couch just a few floors away.

You took the bouquet in your hands, eyes never leaving Johnny’s as you inhaled the sweet scent that wafted from the petals. The adoration that shone in his blue eyes sent your heart into another flutter.

“My favorite,” you responded.

“What, did you think I’d forget?”

“Kind of,”

“Give me a little more credit, darling,” he lifted one of your hands from the bouquet, cradling it in his as he left a kiss along your knuckles. “When it comes to you, I don’t think I could forget even if I tried.”

“Can you two leave for your date and go flirt elsewhere? My god, this is painful to watch,”

Sue laughed at Ben’s comment, and you joined in. Johnny shot the man a look, flipping him the bird that you were sure was being shot right back at him from behind your back.

Sue saddled up to your side seconds later, plucking the bouquet from your hands with a soft smile.

“I’ll put these in water for you and leave them upstairs,” she shot her eyes to Johnny, narrowing them. “Treat her well or I will cover for her when she drags your lifeless body back later tonight.”

Too busy laughing, you never even noticed Johnny’s eye roll toward his sister. The only thing you could comprehend as he pulled you into the awaiting elevator was the feeling of his fingers slipping into the empty spaces between yours, intertwining your hand with his.

It felt right. Too right for two people who should have never met one another.

The Regent was situated just a few blocks away from the Baxter Building, the perfect distance to walk straight there. You weren’t complaining, not with the way Johnny gripped your hand like he was afraid you’d pull it away, every so often tugging it gently so that your body fell into his, arm brushing against his arm.

“We fought with Moleman–well, I guess he prefers to be called Harvey–right here,” he pointed out just a few blocks from the Baxter Building, gesturing toward the blocked off area right beside a small park. There were fences up around what looked like a giant hole in the ground with just the very top of a building sticking out of it, signs indicating ‘keep out’ to everyone that walked past. “He runs Subterranea, the whole civilization under New York.”

“There’s an entire city under this city?” you questioned, looking up at him in alarm.

“Oh yeah, you guys don’t have that?” he quirked an eyebrow toward you as you shook your head in response. “He stole the entire Pan Am building, sinking it down into the ground before we could stop him. Been years and they’re still working on what to do with it.”

You took a single glance around: 45th Street and Park Avenue. The familiar intersection made you smile, one that Johnny seemed to understand all too well. Taking a quick glance around to ensure that there weren’t too many people watching, you slipped your hand from Johnny’s in order to tilt his head to look at where the building used to stand. With a single wave of your fingertips toward his temples, blue seeping into his eyes, you could see the moment they widened at the sight you were projecting to him.

“In my world, this was the site of the Avengers tower,” you could see the glamour you were showing him, but you knew it like the back of your hand. The tower that hung high above the skyline of the city, the shining ‘A’ that matched the one hanging from the belt of your suit. “It was Stark Tower, until Tony decided to fashion it into a base of operations for the team after the battle of New York.”

The vision faded, the traces of your magic leaving Johnny’s eyes, as they turned back to look at you. His hand found yours again without hesitation, fingers tangling with yours again as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him.

“How do you possibly get cooler and more interesting with every passing thing you tell me and show me? It’s not fair,”

Johnny filled every second of the walk with story after story. A diner on the corner that he’d rescued a little girl from during another fight in the city, and the way she’d hid behind her father shyly the second he’d dropped her back down on the ground. Another diner just a block away that he’d dragged Reed to after he’d locked himself in his lab for upwards of 48 hours, not having eaten a single thing to the point where Sue was concerned he’d just pass out on the floor in front of his chalkboard. The bakery that sat underneath a row of apartments that Johnny was convinced had the best pie in the world, but Ben still argued there wasn’t a single bakery in the world that could compare to Maisie’s over on Yancy Street.

Before you knew it, you were standing before The Regent. Elegant, sign shimmering and lighting up the darkened sidewalk before it. One single man stood at the door, surveying the area. With one look to Johnny, he nodded his head toward the door to grant him access.

Stepping into that room felt like entering an entirely new world. Light wooden floors that matched the light wood of the walls, which were decorated themselves with photographs upon photographs of couples and celebrities dancing and performing on the stage. The stage itself was beautiful, shining bright at the end of the room as the lights illuminated the band that was currently engrossed in some Elvis song that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. The walls were all draped with velvety red curtains from the ceiling to the floor, accenting the dimly lit room, dance floor, stage and bar in color. Couples, friends, groups all mingled about, dining at the tables elevated at the back of the room, mingling along the walls, and dancing together in front of the stage.

“Of everything you’ve dragged me to these last few months,” you spoke up, voice rising to be heard over the music as the band switched songs, playing a cover of River Deep - Mountain High now. “This is the most 60s feeling thing yet.”

“And that, sweetheart, is why I saved it for a proper date,” Johnny appeared in front of you, your hand still clasped in his, as he tugged you forward. “Come on!”

Your laughter rang through the room as Johnny pulled you into the throws of people, finding an open spot among the crowd on the floor.

He spun you, that smile never dropping from his lips as you twirled in circles. Each twirl left you dizzy as the song played on in the background, the groups of people around you clapping along to the beat from the band. It was inevitable that you’d eventually stumble in the heels you weren’t accustomed to. Johnny’s arm was there, like you somehow knew it would be, curling around your waist. He dipped you, cheekily pretending as if it was all meant to happen, before spinning you back up onto your heels and pulling you into his chest.

“Come on, I can’t have you tripping and falling for me just yet,” he teased, hands holding yours as he spun you out once again just to pull you right back in.

“You try dancing in heels!” you shot back at him, earning a bright laugh from the man still dancing you around in circles. “We never danced like this at Tony’s parties.”

“I thought you said he threw a lot of those,”

“Yeah, but they were more stand around, drink, and talk parties than dancing,” you took a single glance around the room, at every woman being danced around by their friends and their partners. Swishing skirts, some almost touching the floor, loosely hanging from their bodies. “Not that the dresses I was forced to wear would've allowed for dancing. Too tight fitting–the one had a slit almost the entire way up my thigh.”

Johnny’s hand tugged you in at that moment, your chest flush against his. His lips skimmed over the edge of your ear, voice husky as he whispered into it just loudly enough for you to hear.

“I need you to not give me a mental image of your 21st century clothing while we’re in public, honey,”

A laugh bubbled from your throat as you pulled back to see him fully. The ways his eyes had darkened just slightly, the blue of his eyes almost completely overtaken, had your stomach doing a flip. But it wasn’t enough to stop the slightly sadistic smile that overtook your lips.

“Why? It’s so much fun, seeing you all worked up,” you let your fingers touch his jaw gently, nails dragging down the expanse of his neck and to the small bit of skin just barely visible along his collarbone, before you pushed away from him. “Come on, let’s get drinks!”

You could just barely hear his groan of “You’re going to be the death of me,” behind you as he followed you diligently through the crowd, his hand finding the small of your back within seconds so that you were never quite far from him.

Seated on one of the barstools, sipping gingerly at the drink Johnny had procured for you, it was impossible not to watch Johnny.

The way he animatedly retold a story about how they’d been invited to a fundraiser years ago in a dance hall, how he’d talked Ben into getting up onto the stage to dance. The way he so enthusiastically greeted those around the bar that did recognize him, as they slid in little comments about if you were the “mystery woman” that the papers had begun to pick up on over the last two months. He deflected them with ease, remembering many of those that said hello to him, asking such personal things about their families, their jobs, as if they were his best friends.

Your laughter spilled into your drink as the band played their own version of The Twist, and Johnny chose to demonstrate his moves directly in front of you. He smiled wide, eyes never leaving you, as he mouthed the words in your direction, following along with the dance every other person in the club was doing along with him.

“Johnny Storm: a superhero, an avid golfer, a lover of space, and now we can add dancer to that extensive list,” you teased, taking the final sip of your drink before leaving the empty glass on the counter behind you. “Do you frequent these dance halls a lot?”

“When I was a teenager I found my way here pretty often,” he answered easily as the song came to an end, the room cheering out and erupting in applause for the band. With one arm, he leaned against the counter beside you, looking up at you. “I wouldn't call myself a dancer, though. Just had enough practice to be semi-decent.”

“Practice, huh?” you questioned, just as the band started back up again. “How many girls have you taken dancing before?”

The band kicked back up, their next song already ready to go. You recognized it immediately: that same Frank Sinatra song that had played in the car through Long Island barely 24 hours prior. Johnny only smiled softly, standing out in front of you with his hand outstretched toward you.

“None. Promised myself that only one woman would ever have the pleasure of seeing me dance. Now, will you do me the honor?”

It wasn’t a line, not one of his usually charming, flirtatious lines. Not the way in which he said it: so genuinely, so vulnerably. You slipped your hand into his without a second thought.

Johnny guided you back out onto the dance floor, finding another open space among the couples around with ease. His arm slid around your waist, resting there as if it was the most natural thing in the world. You didn’t want to dwell on the fact that it really did feel so right, in a way you had never felt before.

His hand pressed firmly into your lower back, holding your body close to his. You could feel that unnatural heat that radiated off of his skin through the layers of clothing that adorned your body. One of your arms found its place around his shoulder, hand curled around the back of his neck and tangling just slightly with the hairs that laid there. Your other hand was clasped in his, taking in every bit of warmth that seeped from his palm into yours.

I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast. I fall in love too terribly hard for love to ever last.

“Can I ask you something?” you asked him quietly, nose just barely brushing along the edge of his jawline as you danced together, swayed back and forth across the floor with him.

“Anything,”

“You didn’t have to trust me that day in the park. You could’ve assumed I was a threat, taken me out. Instead, you took me in,” you closed your eyes, leaning in just slightly as your nose brushed over his jawline once again. “Then, you took it upon yourself to make me feel comfortable, to not let me feel alone in a universe that isn’t mine…why?”

“I mean, from the moment I saw you I thought you were pretty, but it was because I felt like I was looking at me,” Johnny’s answer was simple. No charm, no jokes, just the truth. “I saw myself for a moment, the me I was when we came home from space with powers. Confused, angry, terrified of what I had become. I didn’t know what to do. You looked so lost, so alone, and you continued to look that way every day. I didn’t…I didn’t want you to feel alone. I didn’t want you to feel like I did when I came home that day, when I felt like I had to lock myself away. It didn’t help that…I kind of fell for you along the way.”

Any hesitation in your heart, any thought in your brain still telling you that this was a terrible idea, that it could never work, melted away in that single second.

My heart should be well schooled ‘cause I've been fooled in the past. And still I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast.

“Can I ask you something?” he tacked on as your brain and heart still searched for a way to respond to him. All you could give him was a nod, one he could feel from where your skin touched his. “I’ve been flirting with you every day since we met. What made you finally say yes to a date?”

“Because I wasn’t saying yes to Jonathan Storm, the Human Torch, one of the four protectors of this Earth,” you told him simply, leaning back just slightly so that you could catch his gaze as you spoke, bodies still swaying back and forth to the swell of the violin. “I was saying yes to Johnny. The flame boy who decided to trust me. The guy that does the dumbest shit just to make his nephew laugh. The only one who’s made the pain of what I’ve lost lessen these last few months. I didn’t fall for all the bravado, or the charming lines, I just fell for him.”

Your confession was laid bare, as was his. He didn’t say a single word. Johnny simply smiled, leaning forward to press a kiss to the crown of your head, before letting his eyes close and his forehead rest against yours. You followed suit, mirroring him, simply existing in the space within his arms.

My heart should be well schooled ‘cause I've been fooled in the past. And still I fall in love too easily, I fall in love too fast.

What felt like hours later, while also feeling like no time had passed at all, you found your hand clasped in Johnny’s once more. Roaming the streets of New York in the cool air of the night, a giddiness present in each of you that could only be compared to the feeling of pure childlike wonder and joy.

All you could think about was how right it felt, being with him. Having his hand in yours. Being in his arms. Universes separated you, but in this moment, you felt as if you had never belonged somewhere more than you did right now.

“Okay, okay,” Johnny forced out through his laughter, leaning into you as you turned another street corner, trying to find the next question to ask in the long line of questions you had been throwing back and forth. “Favorite fight that you had with the Avengers?”

“Oh god, I don’t know if I can answer that,” you responded easily with a laugh, shaking your head at the thought. “None of them were really fun, they all kind of left immense damage in their wake. One ended with me locked in a high security prison in the middle of the ocean for a short period of time, so, I guess that was fun.”

“That…that sounds like the opposite of fun,”

“Oh, it was. It sucked immensely,” he shoved his shoulder into yours for the comment. “Okay, my turn. Favorite memory with Reed?”

“When he asked me permission to marry Sue. I thought he was going to piss himself, I’ve never seen the man look so nervous,” Johnny laughed, tugging on your hand to bring you in closer to his side again. “Okay, how about your favorite thing you can do with your magic?”

Now that was a show instead of a tell question. Dropping his hand, you slid into the space in front of Johnny on the side walk, shuffling backwards against the pavement. He cocked an eyebrow as you shot him a tiny grin, before your hands at your sides began to glow in that familiar blue as your body lifted off of the grow by just a few feet, uncaring for anyone that could possibly see you in the area.

Johnny stopped in his tracks, dumbfounded as his wide eyes looked up at you. He sputtered for a moment, trying to find his words.

“Wait–you could fly this entire time, and you didn’t tell me?”

“You never asked!”

Johnny’s body ignited in flames, a sight you’d sparingly seen over your time in their world. From the chest down, every bit of him burned in those bright orange and red licks of fire as he, too, flew above the ground before you, back to being level with you once more.

“We could’ve been flying everywhere instead of driving!”

“Well, let’s just have some fun with it now,” you shot back with a wink, before propelling yourself upward. “Keep up, flame boy!”

The chill in the New York breeze was a familiar feeling, beating against your face as you propelled yourself up into the air, flying along the edge of the buildings. Johnny followed along right beside you, the heat of his flames fanning out over you and cancelling out the chill that night air brought with it.

His eyes never left yours as you spun around a corner of the building, propelling yourself further up into the air. You looked down, watching him with a smile as you hung there high above the buildings and the city of New York. Johnny joined you in seconds, hovering just in front of you. The clouds practically kissed your body, the city so far down below you both, leaving you alone together among the clouds.

You could see it, the glint in his eyes, the way they flickered down to your lips for just a second before glancing back up, pretending as if they’d never strayed away. He leaned in, and you let him for just a moment, before letting your body fall backward and freefall through the air back toward the city.

His laughter echoed through the sky as he flew down after you, following the sound of your own laughter. He saddled up to your side, flying down alongside you once again before you took a sudden turn, propelling yourself toward the rooftop of a building just barely in the distance.

Your feet touched down on the private rooftop moments later, magic dissipating from your fingertips as you landed, taking in a deep breath as the rush of flying left your body in one fell swoop. The rooftop garden you’d landed in was clearly one for a private residence, somewhere you probably shouldn’t have been, but you didn’t care. Not with the smell of the flowers invading your senses, the glint of the dim fairy lights strung around the roof bathing you in their light, and the view of the Baxter Building dead ahead.

Johnny’s feet touched the ground just moments after you, the sound of his shoes hitting the flooring alerting you. Spinning, he was standing just a few feet away, watching you with a little smile as he shook his head with laughter.

“You might be insane,”

“Sorry,” your giggles fell into the mix with his own laughter. “It’s been a minute since I’ve flown. I’ve missed it.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever flown with someone on a first date,” Johnny countered, taking just a few steps forward toward you. “Unless you count Shalla-Bal throwing me off her surfboard in space, but that wasn’t really a date.”

“Guess this was a first for both of us, then,”

You matched his steps, barely a few feet between the two of you now. Johnny didn’t make another step forward, though, didn’t close the space separating you.

His Adam’s apple bobbed, his foot tapped against the ground, and his hands clearly didn’t know what to do with themselves.

“What’s wrong?” you asked gently, even though you could practically see the nerves rolling off of him. He laughed, shaking his head as he glanced to the ground for just a moment, before back to you.

“I…I’m kind of nervous, if you can believe it,”

You hummed, taking the initiative to step up into his space, barely a few inches separating the two of you now. Your eyes never left him.

“Why? I thought the charming Johnny Storm had been on a bunch of first dates?” you teased.

He laughed breathily, eyes darting to your lips for just a second.

“Not ones that mattered…not like you do,”

You barely let him finish his sentence before you curled your hands around the back of his neck, tugging him down to you and slotting your lips against his.

It was short, but poured every bit of passion into it that swarmed through your heart and your head. Your lips moved against his just slightly, still testing the waters as the heat that coursed through his skin and into yours felt as if it was sinking straight down into your bones. Johnny’s lips were soft, supple, a shaky breath leaving his lips and fanning out over yours the second that they touched for the first time. Something in your head clicked at the feeling, something that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, making you light-headed as your fingers just barely curled into the hair kissing the nape of his neck.

It was you that pulled away first. Barely a few inches away, the heat of his body still filling the air between you. His blue eyes bore down into your, wide and full of awe, lips slightly parted. A smile stretched across his face first, a matching once crawling across your own as you let your hands fully dive into his hair.

Johnny moved first, hands enveloping your waist and tugging you until your body was almost one with his, his mouth devouring yours in a kiss that had your knees almost crumbling to the ground.

Those heated hands swarmed your body desperate to touch every single expanse of you that they could in the way you were sure he’d thought about, in the way you never wanted to admit you sometimes dreamed about. Goosebumps crawled across your skin with every move of his hands, with every flex of his fingers and they pressed into you. His lips moved against yours like a starved man, slick with spit as your mouth opened to him, letting him invade every bit of you that you could, his tongue slipping just barely in and grazing over your bottom lip. A moan fell–from you or Johnny, neither of you knew–but the sound only spurred you both on.

His hands tightened their grip around your waist, holding him to you like a possession, one he couldn’t bear to lose. Claiming you. Your hand wound into his hair, tugging to elicit a groan from him, as you let your other trail down to rest over the patch of skin just barely visible under the single unbuttoned part of his shirt.

When your lips finally broke, soft pants filling the air between you, neither of you dared to look away. You couldn’t. It was like being in a trance, being pulled to the man in front of you almost magnetically. He leaned in, pressing a series of soft pecks against your lips, hands still flexing across your hips with each little peck that sent the butterflies in your stomach into a frenzy.

“This is crazy, right?” he muttered out between kisses. You hummed in response, matching each kiss of his with your own through your grin, hands still carding through his hair.

“What, falling for each other when we come from completely different universes?”

“Exactly that,” he responded, pressing a kiss to the tip of your nose, before his forehead rested against yours. Those blue eyes bore down into yours, a soft smile over taking his kiss bitten lips again. “I don’t care much, though. Not when it just…feels so right.”

Your smile matched his in seconds as you leaned forward, stealing yet another kiss that flooded your body with warmth.

“Me too,”

Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t so crazy: falling for someone universes away from you. Even universes away, maybe Johnny Storm was always meant to be yours, always meant to be the missing piece to your incomplete puzzle.

❤︎

Johnny Storm had been called many things over the years by the media. A playboy, a womanizer, noncommittal. They were all wrong.

He preferred the term hopeless romantic, especially when it came to you.

Especially in this exact moment, leaning against the doorway of his bedroom in the early hours of the afternoon to see you sprawled out, tangled in the covers that were halfway off his bed. You looked as if you belonged there, and in Johnny’s eyes, you did. There was nowhere else that you belonged than right by his side.

Crossing the room quietly, trying not to disturb you, he gently placed the glass of water he’d ventured into the kitchen for down on the bedside table. He got distracted, as he typically did, at the sight of the polaroids splayed out across the wooden table. Taking them gingerly in his hands, terrified to ruin them, the smile that crossed his face couldn’t be wiped away.

You wrapped in his arms along the Coney Island beach in the early hours of the morning. One of just you, sprawled out in his bed in nothing but one of his button downs that fell down to your thighs. You on the couch, Franklin curled into your lap as you read him a book. His favorite one, sneakily taken by Sue late one night, wrapped in his arms on the balcony of the Baxter Building, lips pressed together through smiles.

He loved you. Johnny loved you more than he ever believed he could love someone in life. Multiverse be damned, you were it for him. You were meant to be his and his alone, and he was hell bent on loving you to the fullest extent every single day that he could, knowing someone could come along and rip you away at any moment.

But the universe had given him a year. An entire year to love you in every way that he could, to prove to you that you were it for him. He thanked whatever being out there in the multiverse he needed to every single day for the time he’d been given with you.

Johnny crawled onto the bed, tugging the comforter down from around your shoulders so he could fully see you. His pillow was clutched between your arms, the space in which he usually occupied. His white t-shirt, bearing the 4 logo that you’d made fun of him for months ago, covered your body, falling to the middle of your bare thighs.

He leaned in with a smile, pressing kiss after kiss to the bare skin of your arms he could see, trailing down to leave heat filled kisses to the bare skin of your thighs. He’d barely left three there before he could hear your giggle, body flipping over onto your back so that you could look down on him with a raised eyebrow and a grin.

“You left me,” you teased with a fake little pout. “I had nothing to hold but a pillow.”

“I’m so sorry, princess,” Johnny mumbled through his smirk, pressing yet another kiss into your thighs. His hands traveled up the sides of your legs, pushing his t-shirt with them as his kisses trailed further up the expanse of your skin. “How could I ever make it up to you?”

“I-I don’t know…round three doesn’t sound that bad,”

Johnny hummed through his laughter, mumbling a quiet “I love you” into your skin. He knew you could hear it, though, he knew that you knew it.

He reveled in every little noise that left your lips, every puff of air that was on the cusp of being a moan as he lavished every inch of your skin in a kiss.

“Look, you’re both adults so I try not to tell you what to do, but it’s the middle of the afternoon and–JESUS CHRIST, JOHNNY!”

He’d never sprang away so fast, throwing himself so hard to the side of the bed that he fell straight off of it to the floor with a thud. Your laughter filled the room as he crawled back up the side of the bed, your hand covering your mouth to conceal your laughter and the comforter pulled back up your legs.

Johnny immediately shot a glare at his sister, standing in the doorway of his room with her eyes covered by her hand.

“Sue, you have no one to blame but yourself for this–”

“You could have closed the door! I don’t need to see you doing all of that, my god,” Sue shook her head, peaking between her fingers to finally see that there was nothing happening, before dropping her hand. “Reed wants you in the lab for a few more tests, okay, he promised those would be the last ones this week. Just…look decent and meet us down there, okay?”

She grumbled the entire way out of the room, muttering comments about scarring her for life.

Johnny only rolled his eyes, throwing himself back onto the bed to hover above you. Nothing could ruin his mood, not when you looked up at him like that, smile bright and eyes full of adoration.

“That’s the third time this month she’s done that,” you managed to speak through giggles, slapping him lightly on the shoulder. “She’s going to kill us one of these days.”

Johnny only hummed, ignoring the comment. Instead, his fingers trailed down your neck, grasping the chain of the necklace that rested against your chest, a little charm of a Plumeria dangling off the end. His Christmas gift to you, one of the many you received as you were showered in them by his entire family. He pressed a kiss to the flower, looking up to you, only to see that same soft look in your eyes.

“I love you,” he whispered out, leaning in to capture your lips in his before you could speak back. He could feel you sigh into the feeling, your fingers dancing over his cheek lightly as you kissed him back just as softly.

“I love you, too,” you whispered back against his lips, before your hand rested on his chest with a little push. “But we’re going to go down to that lab because if we stay here another second, Sue is going to be walking in on a sight that she really doesn’t want to see.”

Johnny groaned, but relented. Falling back to his knees, his hands wound under the covers to your hips, pulling you up to your knees quickly on the bed. His mouth found yours in an instant, cementing another kiss there just for good measure.

“Round three after, right?”

It was your magic this time that pushed him, sending him tumbling back off the bed as your laughter rang out through the room.

“If you can behave, then maybe,”

Still clad in his t-shirt, having thrown on the old pair of ripped jeans you’d arrived in this universe in over a year ago, Johnny tucked you under his arm the second you stepped out of his bedroom, unable to go a second without touching you in any way shape or form. You never complained, even leaned into him as he pressed a kiss to your hairline.

“Lynne was able to get us reservations at that one restaurant you’ve been wanting to try for tonight, by the way,” he told you as you stepped into the elevator, hitting the button for Reed’s lab instantly. He grinned at the way your smile brightened, eyes turning to look up at him.

“Oh my god, that new one in Times Square?”

“That’s the one,” Johnny shot back. He let his arm fall from your shoulders, letting it wrap around your waist. His hand found the edge of his shirt, dipping beneath it so that his hand could press against the skin of your bare back. “Thinking maybe afterward we could go for a little fly around the city, sit down on the Brooklyn Bridge for a little while.”

Your hands cupped his cheeks almost instantly after he spoke, pulling him into a kiss. A feeling Johnny was sure he would never grow tired of, never get enough of.

“It’s a date,”

Stepping out into Reed’s lab, the entire team was gathered around. Reed was fussing over a machine, just as he normally was, with Sue trying desperately to calm him down. Ben was entertaining Franklin over on the couch, reading to him one of his favorite books.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Reed called out, ignoring the doting of Johnny’s sister as he waved you over frantically. “I just want to run a few more tests for this week. I changed some of the parameters, I just want to make sure that we have all of our bases covered.”

You gave Johnny’s hand a quick squeeze before crossing the room, sliding into the same chair you always sat in for Reed’s tests, presenting your arm for the usual blood draw. Reed was convinced that it was necessary to test your blood, to do weekly scans of your body, to ensure that there were no lasting effects on your from staying in the wrong universe for an extended period of time like you had.

Johnny joined Ben and Franklin over on the couch, leaning down to leave a little kiss on his little nephew’s forehead, one that left the boy smiling and giggling.

“Johnny,” Franklin was barely able to say his name, stumbling over most of the letters, but he heard him loud and clear. He ruffled the boy's hair with a laugh, kneeling down in front of the couch.

“Hey buddy,” Johnny glanced over at Ben, at the smirk on the man’s rocky mouth, and raised an eyebrow in question. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing. Love just looks good on you, kid,” Ben teased.

Johnny shot a look over his shoulder, straight toward you. Smiling in that chair, laughing at something Sue said, as Reed drew the blood from your arm with a practiced ease for his various tests.

“Nah, it’s just loving her,” Johnny glanced back at Ben, a hint of a sheepish grin on his lips as he shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it, man. She’s just…I think she’s just it.”

Ben smiled, that knowing one that he always had, as his rocky hand came down to pat Johnny’s back.

“I think so too. You deserve this, matchstick. You were practically made for each other,”

Johnny agreed. He was trying to decide mentally if one year was too soon to officially make your last name Storm like he had promised months ago.

The quiet, the lightheartedness that filled the lab, couldn’t stay forever. Not when the alarms across the room began to blare.

Every head shot up at once, turning to look down the length of the lab to the computers where the alarm was blaring. Reed shot to his feet, taking a step in front of Sue as you ripped the needle from your arm in seconds to join them.

“Johnny-”

“On it!”

He’d practically sprinted halfway down the lab at that point, pulling up the alarm system at the designated workstation. That same map that had foreshadowed your arrival blinked on the screen, the same blip that showed your arrival in Gramercy Park blinking on the screen–right on the Baxter Building.

“It’s the same readings as when she got here,” Johnny called out down the lab, eyes frantically darting back and forth between you and Reed. “The blip, though, it’s right here on the building-”

There was sound from right beside him, startling him. Johnny whipped around, little sparks of yellow and gold flashing in the air beside him.

He instantly took steps back, shuffling backward and away from the growing sparks until his legs hit the back of the couch. Ben stood somewhere behind him, holding Franklin protectively in his arms. Reed held onto Sue across the room from where Johnny stood, keeping her at his side, as you stepped up in front of them: eyes glowing, magic dancing at your finger tips.

Until those sparks of energy grew, larger and larger, until they formed the makings of a small circle. Johnny could hear the second your breath caught, that glow in your eyes fading and the magic at your fingertips vanishing in seconds as you took another step forward.

“O-Oh my god…”

The sparking circle grew, almost the size of an entire person, before it stabilized, and out of what Johnny could only assume was a portal stepped a man. Older, tired, short hair and the remnants of cuts along his face. Body draped in elegant robes of purple and yellow he’d never seen before. His eyes darted around the room, before they landed on you, and he let out the loudest sigh Johnny had ever heard.

“Oh, thank god-”

“WONG!”

You’d practically flown across the room and into the man’s arms. Wong hadn’t wasted a second, hugging you back just as tightly as you cried, holding onto the man for dear life.

Johnny froze: Wong. He’d heard that name before. You talked about him all the time. The Sorcerer Supreme, the man you were supposed to wait for before you performed the spell that had landed you here in the first place. Johnny felt his heart break at the realization. He could feel the eyes of his sister on him from across the room.

His time had finally run out. Home had finally come to take you back from him.

“When I tell you that you aren’t to touch the Book of Vishanti without me, it is not a suggestion,” Wong scolded, hands clasping your shoulders as you violently wiped your tears across the room. “I already had to deal with Stephen breaking into the restricted section years ago, I do not want a repeat of that again. Do you know how difficult it is to find your energy signature through the vast multiverse?”

“I know, I know,” you nodded your head, before shaking it back and forth. “No performing any spells from an ancient book without your supervision. I got it.”

Wong nodded once, before his eyes finally glanced over the rest of the room. They settled on Reed and Sue, Ben and Franklin, and finally on Johnny.

“Do I need to worry about-”

“No, no, they’re friends. They’re practically family,” you assured the man, turning and gesturing out to the room. “This is the Fantastic Four. They’re essentially the Avengers of their universe…”

Your words trailed off as you finally met Johnny’s eyes again. He could see it, the moment that the realization seemed to settle in over you like it already had for him, and he thought his heart was going to break all over again.

From the corner of his eyes, he could see the glance that Wong sent between both you and him. A knowing one, one that spoke volumes without having to speak at all. He sighed, the sound ringing through the otherwise quiet lab, as he squeezed your shoulder.

“Five minutes,” Wong told you gently, his gaze drifting back to Johnny for just a minute. “There’s no telling if your time here has done any damage to the time streams. We need to get you home…I can give you five minutes.”

You only nodded, tearing your eyes away from Johnny. There was no arguing.

He knew this day would come, even if selfishly he wished it never would.

His eyes never left you as you crossed the room, practically flying into Sue’s arms. Johnny felt as if his head was under water. He could see your lips moved, Sue’s lips moving, but he couldn’t hear a word either of you said.

In his head, Johnny could guess what you were saying. A thank you for taking you in, for taking care of you, for all the times Sue had helped you dress for a date or taken you out into the city with her. He was sure Sue was thanking you for simply loving her little brother.

Reed pulled you into a tentative hug, short but still sweet. You didn’t exchange many words, but he could make out a “thank you” on his brother-in-law's lips.A thank you that simply encompassed everything, everything that he was sure Reed struggled to say.

Johnny saw your tears again when you stepped into Ben’s arms finally. A conversation that he was sure detailed the many early morning trips you’d made to Maisie’s together, or the late night talks that happened on the couch over drinks as some movie played on TV.

Franklin’s cries pierced the air, his hands making grabby motions toward you as he cried. You placed a single kiss to his head, walking away before you broke down.

Finally, you stood before him. Mascara running just slightly, tear stains littering your cheeks and down to your chin. You mustered the smallest of smiles that you could for him, albeit watery. Johnny tried to do the same, feeling the lump in his throat beginning to form.

“I thought I had three rules for you before you went home,” he managed to say, trying to swallow back the burning need to cry. You laughed, though the sound almost sounded like a sob, as you nodded your head.

“I’m leaving having accomplished two of those things. I guess that counts as a win,”

Johnny nodded, the beginnings of a sob almost bubbling out of his throat. Like two magnets pulled together, you fell into his arms. Head buried into his neck, Johnny’s one hand curled into your hair, tears slipping down his cheeks and soaking into the skin of the side of your head as your own tears soaked into his neck, your cries muffled by his skin.

“I love you,” he muttered into the side of your head, pressing kiss after kiss to your skin. “I don’t care. I love you. I love you more than anything.”

You pulled away, those red rimmed and watery eyes finding him, as you cupped his cheeks in your shaking hands.

“I love you too,” you whispered, stealing a kiss from his lips that took every bit of breath out of him. Your next words were whispered against his mouth. “This isn’t goodbye. I promise.”

Johnny managed a laugh, stealing another kiss as he gripped you as tightly as possible, hoping if he held on tight enough you wouldn’t slip away.

“What, you’re going to find a way to defy the multiverse to see me again? Abandon your home?”

“For you? Yeah,” you answer was short, meaningful, determined, definitive. Johnny believed every word. “I’ll see you again. And next time, I won’t have to leave. Because you’re my home, too.”

Johnny managed a smile, hoping it was as comforting as he wanted it to be, as he stole one last kiss. Not a goodbye, he wasn’t sure he could handle a goodbye. He wasn’t sure he could handle the idea of never seeing you again. This kiss was a promise. To what? He wasn’t sure. Maybe just a simple promise that he was yours.

“I’ll be counting the days,”

He couldn’t bear to look down at you again, afraid if he kissed you again he’d shove Wong back through that portal and find a way to hold you here forever. Johnny settled for a single kiss to your forehead, accented with the tears that were still running silently down his cheeks, before he let you go.

You slotted yourself back to Wong’s side, wiping at the tears that stained your cheeks. He placed a hand on your shoulder, and even Johnny could see how much it pained him to do this to you. He caught the slight flick of your hand, though, the slight burst of your magic, so small he wasn’t sure at first if he’d seen it correctly.

The room was silent as you and Wong stepped back through the glittering gold portal and onto the floor of the other side. Your eyes met his one last time, a watery smile crossing your lips, before it closed.

And in the blink of an eye, you were gone. Gone as if you’d never been there in the first place.

Franklin’s cries were still the only thing he could hear in the room, No one dared to speak, dared to break through the air, as Johnny’s eyes stayed locked on the last spot you had stood in.

“Johnny…”

He turned, tear filled eyes meeting with his family. The heartbroken look on Ben’s face, the conflicted look on Reed’s, and the absolute pity that shone through on Sue’s. She took a single step forward, but Johnny waved her off immediately, shaking his head as he wiped at his tears, forcing a smile.

“I-I’m fine. I just…I just need a minute,”

No one rushed after him, and he was thankful for it.

The entire elevator ride back up to his room was done in a daze, in a haze of emotions. His vision was blurry the entire time, but no more tears fell. He wasn’t sure he had more to cry.

Stepping into his room again, he felt like he could muster a few more tears. The bed was still unmade. The scent of your perfume, one you’d picked a few months ago with Sue, lingered in the air. Your clothes from the night before were strewn over a chair by his record player.

It was the only sign that you had, in fact, existed here in his universe. You weren’t a figment of his imagination.

Approaching his bed, wanting to bury himself in the lingering scent of you, his breath caught.

Lying there, on the unmade sheets, was a single flower. A single little Plumeria, remnants of blue magic dancing over and around its petals. Right below it? That same Polaroid Johnny loved so dearly.

He clutched it in his hands, willing himself to be back in the moment: holding you on the balcony that night, kissing you, telling you he loved you. As he did, your magic seeped across the bottom white edge of the photo, scrawling your handwriting across the bottom.

Unequivocally yours.

That, alone, was enough to bring a smile back to his lips.

Multiverse be damned: you were his. There was no one in this life or the next that Johnny Storm was convinced he could love more, just as there was no one that could love you the way he could.

In that moment, he knew for a fact he’d see you again. And next time, he was never letting you go.

#johnny storm recs 🔥

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sstan-hoe · 1 day ago

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Testing.. 1, 2, 3 (J.S.)

Synopsis: You think, after noticing something, that you might be pregnant with Johnny Storm’s baby.

Tags/Warnings: Johnny/GN-AFAB!Reader, friends with benefits, fluff, pregnancy scare, comfort, reader is NOT pregnant, but does feel positively about having kids eventually, making out, some smut,

Word Count: 2465

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You’d been friends with Johnny, and the rest of his family, for a while now. Everyone knew that you and Johnny were a little more than friends at this point, but nothing had really been labelled. Friends with benefits was probably the best label that you could come up with, which was more than okay with the both of you. You both liked the dynamic that you had and it didn’t impact your place in the family, you were a part of it whether you and Johnny were just friends, hooking up, or married. The others were accepting like that.

That lack of relationship was exactly why looking at your phone to find a notification that your period was over a week late was so jarring, scary even. Well, it wasn’t exactly the only reason, there was a myriad of others, but for now the idea that Johnny wasn’t even your boyfrind was, for some unknown reason, the one at the forefront of your mind. You hadn’t even thought any of them could have children, considering all the trouble Sue and Reed had been having since their got their abilities. Yet, you were late. Over a week late.

Fuck. If you were pregnant, which you sincerely hoped not - at least not right now - you were pretty sure you knew exactly what day it would’ve happened.

You hadn’t even thought about it at the time, you’d had so much sex it was routine, and you’d basically written off having kids. Surely, it would all be fine. Apparently not.

“Hn- fuck! Yes! Johnny!” You moaned, back bowing in a near perfect arch as Johnny pounded into you, biting and sucking at your neck. He’d learned every inch of your body by now and knew just how to drive you crazy, how to bring you to the brink only to gently pull you back again, if only to prolong his enjoyment of your body and heighten your sensitivity.

“Tell me what you want, baby.” He whispered, making you shiver. He loved to do that, to heighten your every sense and then dial one of them down to 0, to overstimulate you then drag his fingers over your skin, hardly touching at all; to let you suck his cock until just before he came, then shove his fingers in your mouth so you had no taste of him and then fuck you instead.

“Wanna cum please- come on firecracker, been so patient! I wanna cum on your cock.” You moaned, and what you said was apparently enough, because fingers that had been idly circling around your nipple travelled downward to rub your clit instead, until you were cumming so hard you were sure you blacked out for a moment. He followed not far behind, face buried in your throat as he panted. His cock twitched inside you as he came, filling you with his seed, and you held him there with legs wrapped around his waist so he couldn’t run.

Your trip to the store to buy a test was a slow one. Everything seemed to drag out no matter how many shortcuts you took, no matter how fast you walked through the store. You walked down half a dozen aisles, sure that they must’ve rearranged the shelves recently given how long it took you to find the right things. Then there was half a dozen options on the shelf for what test to buy. You settled for three different brands, just in case - who knew if a baby coming from an Enhanced person would even show up on a test. Maybe the entire thing was completely atypical. The cashier didn’t even look twice as she scanned the tests, made no commentary about it, and for that you were thankful. You truly couldn’t handle being told ‘congratulations’ in that moment, if she’d dared.

On the way back to your apartment, you weighed your options up - should you tell Johnny? In theory, you could choose not to say a single thing. It was your body after all, and regardless of the outcome you wouldn’t allow him a choice in what happened, so did you even need to tell him? But then again it would be really nice to have someone beside you holding your hand as you waited for the result. Sue would probably be better for that than Johnny, though.

The decision was taken away from you when Johnny called unexpectedly, and you answered, entirely on auto pilot.

“Hey gorgeous. You busy?” He asked, and you could hear the grin that was undoubtedly on his face. You knew why he’d called, you could tell, but another round was the last thing you needed.

“Kind of? We both are about to be - I’m five minutes away from Baxter. It’s important.” You said, figuring that since he was already there and asking to see you, you’d make the stress and anxiety his problem too. A problem shared is a problem halved anyway, right?

“Oh shit. Yeah okay, I’ll wait for you in the kitchen so I’m there when you get up. You can let yourself in.” He said, and then you hung up without saying goodbye. There was a lot about Johnny that you were able to put up with, but in that moment his horrific excuse for small talk was definitely not it.

He was pacing when you arrived. Pacing. That wasn’t something you’d ever known him to do. Johnny rushed to you immediately and cupped your face with one hand, the other resting safely on your hip as he inspected you.

“Are you alright? What’s wrong?” He asked hurriedly, checking you over as if he’d find a wound gushing blood or a bone protruding from your body. It made sense, you supposed, your lack of romance aside Johnny was still your friend and this was what friends did for each other. They worried.

“Physically, I’m fine.” You assured him, two fingers under his chin guiding his head back up to look into your eyes. His eyes were one of your favourite features about him, and more than once you’d become mesmerised looking into them. All you could see in there was concern, and affection for you. How could you ever doubt telling him the truth about what was going on, when he’d never meet you with anything less than the utmost care and devotion. That was who he was.

“Then what is it?” He asked, not moving your hand or either of his, like he was sure if he disturbed the position or the quiet moment that had formed between you in the face of this tenderness, that you’d disintigrate in his arms.

Rather than speaking, you quietly offered the paper bag to him from the store. He looked between you and the bag once, twice, once more, and then finally actually looked inside it to find its contents. He reached in and took the three tests out, staring at them with wide eyes. You couldn’t discern whether the cause was panic or delight.

“Okay. What are we doing about it?” He asked softly, showing no further emotion about it.

“Well, I need to take the tests first.” You replied, gently taking them from him. Johnny nodded, then pulled you into a quick but no less warm hug.

“Here for you always, you know that.” He said, then pressed a kiss to your temple.

He remained at your side as you peed into said cup, then as you dipped the tests, then he joined you on the cool tile of the bathroom floor to wait for them to process.

Johnny guided you up the stairs to his room, and then into his ensuite, an arm wrapped around your waist the entire way, whether for his comfort or your own you weren’t sure. He remained at your side as you unboxed each of the tests, then took one of the instruction leaflets to read over it.

“I guess they’re all the same, right?” He asked, reaching for the third to check it.

“I think so. Can you get me a cup or something?” You asked, and he nodded. He dropped the leaflets together on the counter then disappered to grab a plastic cup for you to use.

“You didn’t really answer me before so.. what are we doing about it?” Johnny asked, reaching out to take your hand in his, lacing your fingers together.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean am I celebrating or apologising?”

“Oh. I mean. We can’t. Right? We’re not even really together. I rent. You don’t even really have a job, not a stable one.” You mumbled, reaching for his hand with your second one so you could fiddle with his fingers as you thought aloud.

“Ignore all of that for a second. Just a second. What do you want?” He asked, using his free hand to tilt your head back as you’d done to him in the kitchen, forcing you to look into his eyes and actually consider the answer.

“I think. Not right now. But, I would like kids, some day. Maybe. It’s a big deal and I might change my mind but right now.. no. Later, maybe.” You finally decided, and Johnny nodded, pulling you in closer to his chest so he could wrap his arms securely around you, as if just doing that would protect you from the hurricane of feelings in your chest.

“Reed will be able to help, if we need him to.” He decided, and you agreed. He would. He had no moral qualms with doing so either, you suspected.

HERBIE rolled into the room a moment later, to inform you that the time was up, and you could check the tests. You hesitated at first, unsure you were ready to stand and find out what the result was. As long as you remained there, pressed close into Johnny’s warmth, you could remain in limbo. You didn’t have to face whatever came next.

“The longer we wait, the less accurate they are.” Johnny mumbled, lips pressed against your head. He was right, you knew that, so you finally forced yourself up to your feet and he followed shortly after. HERBIE presented the tests to you, all with their lids returned for hygiene reasons. You turned one, Johnny turned the other two, and you found three negative results.

Relief rushed through you, but also an odd sense of melancholy. You didn’t want kids now, because you knew it wasn’t right for where you were in life, but a small voice in the back of your mind whispered how sweet it would be to create a little family with Johnny. He said nothing, waiting for you to have some sort of response to gage how to react.

“Is it weird that I’m disappointed?” You asked, staring at the rest rather than looking at him.

“No. I don’t think so. I mean, it’s a whole potential future that you could’ve had and don’t. The brain is weird about stuff like that.” He offered, taking the test from your hand to give to HERBIE. He gave the bot instructions to dispose of the tests properly and scratched his head befoe sending him on his way.

Gently, Johnny guided you through into his bedroom and lifted you into the bed, following shortly after. He pulled the duvet up over the two of you after discarding his shirt, then shuffled in close to wrap his body around yours, his chest pressed to your back, both your knees bent so it was almost as if you were sitting in his lap on your side.

“Do we want Ben to pick up some of those cookies you like? We can have a little confused pity party.” Johnny offered, and you silently shook your head, a million things running through your mind. You could understand, abstractly, why it might be a little disappointing that you didn’t have a little life growing inside you. After all, you’re genetically predisposed to wanting children, with all the correct anatomy to create and grow them, so sure a rogue chemical response wasn’t all that unusual. What was stumping you, was a new desire that it had exposed to create a real family with the man holding you.

Instead of elaborating, you gently pressed your lips to his, and Johnny didn’t object he just followed where you led. Nothing progressed further from there, you just lay together, exchanging kisses, basking in the warmth of each other’s bodies, and the bed you lay in. It wasn’t often you did things like this, often hanging out as friends or fucking like rabbits, so rarely this in between. It happened after he nearly died fighting Galactus, when he confessed that he’d almost sacrified himself to save his family. You’d been so angry at him, for being willing to leave everyone behind, because yes maybe his family would be safe but they wouldn’t be whole. You’d not added that you wouldn’t be whole without him, you didn’t need to. He knew. That night you’d laid in bed together in much the same way, wrapped around each other and trading kisses that said more than your words could ever hope to.

“Talk to me, gorgeous. What’s going on in that brain of yours?” He asked, kissing along your shoulders in hopes of distracting you and bringing you some comfort.

“Do you want kids, Johnny? One day, in the future?” You replied, rather than giving him a straightforward answer. If he said no, then you’d crush the desire into a fine powder, until it could never come back to haunt you again.

“With the right person? Yeah, I think I’d like that. I love little Franklin, having one of my own sounds.. yeah. I do want kids someday.” You turned slowly in his arms, eyes searching his - what you were looking for, you weren’t entirely sure, but you searched until you were satisfied.

“Do you ever think about getting back out there?” You asked Johnny softly when you finally separated, your head pressed against his neck while his fingers traced shapes you couldn’t identify into your back.

“What? And dating?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Never.” That answer surprised you, and though you wanted to look at him to convey that surprise, you didn’t want to lose the comfortable position you were in.

“Really?”

“Really. I mean, why would I want to? You’re all I could want from a partner in one package.” That sentence hung heavily in the air, neither of you speaking for a long moment.

“For what it’s worth. I think if it was positive, I’d enjoy raising a kid with you.” You whispered several minutes later, just when Johnny had begun to think you’d fallen asleep after the huge emotional outpour.

“Yeah. I think I’d enjoy it too.”

Tag list: @claryeverlarkf @uselessboots @cainnoable @hyperfixationthingss @queenmimi2817

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sstan-hoe · 1 day ago

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Hi, we need more Johnny Storm in our life. Can you write something with the topic misunderstanding? Like the reader loves Johnny and Johnny loves the reader and one day the reader sees Johnny with someone else as she wants to confess her feelings but its nothing. You can write smut, something wild, everything you want! Thank you 🖤

Hi Anon! Absolutely! Apologies for the delay but here's the fic! Hope you enjoy it!

Burn for You (Johnny Storm Fic)

Johnny Storm x Fem!Reader

Summary: You were finally ready to confess your feelings for Johnny Storm—until you saw him with another girl. Heartbroken, you pulled away. But when Johnny corners you about your sudden distance, the truth comes out, and so do feelings you both can’t hide anymore.

Word Count: 1.5k words

Tags/Warnings: SMUT! 18+ MDNI! idiots in love, teasing/dirty talk, unprotected p in v (please wrap it up), sexual content, adult language, f!ngering, possessive Johnny, rough makeout session, friends to lovers, slight angst with a happy ending, mutual pining

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

You’d been clutching the words in your chest for weeks, waiting for the right moment to tell Johnny how you felt. And today, you thought, would finally be it.

You’d rehearsed it in your head a thousand times—how you’d laugh, shrug, say “I think I might love you, Storm” with all the fake casualness you could muster, praying he’d say it back.

But when you rounded the corner of the lobby, you froze.

Johnny was leaning against the desk, grinning down at a girl whose hand rested on his arm. She laughed at something he said, her body tilted close, too close, and Johnny’s smile was the kind he usually reserved for you.

Your chest caved in. The words you’d held onto so tightly evaporated, leaving only the sharp ache of disappointment.

You left before either of them saw you.

-------------------------------

The next few days, you kept your distance. You answered Johnny with clipped replies, dodged his playful nudges, avoided his eyes.

And Johnny noticed.

By the third day, he stormed into your room without knocking.

“Alright,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “What the hell is going on with you?”

You looked up from the book you weren’t really reading. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped, stepping closer. “You’ve been freezing me out since—” he frowned, trying to place it, “since Monday. Did I do something?”

The frustration you’d been swallowing finally cracked. “Why don’t you go ask her?” you bit out.

Johnny blinked. “Her? Who the hell is—”

“The girl,” you blurted, standing so fast your book tumbled to the floor. “The one hanging all over you at the lobby. The one you were smiling at like—like she was the only person in the world. You don’t need to ask me what’s wrong, Johnny, because it doesn’t matter. I love you, okay? I love you, and you’ll never love me back, not when you have girls like her.”

Silence.

Your heart pounded in the ringing quiet. You’d said too much. Shown too much. Tears stung your eyes as you turned away.

But then Johnny’s hands were on your arms, spinning you back to face him. His eyes were wide, almost stricken.

“You… you love me?”

Your throat tightened. “It doesn’t matter—”

“The fuck it doesn’t!” His voice cracked, raw. “That girl? She’s Sue’s friend. She came by to drop something off. I was just being polite.” His grip tightened, his jaw set. “You really think I could smile at someone like that when you’re the one I’m in love with?”

Your breath caught. “You—what?”

“I love you,” Johnny said, no hesitation now, only conviction. “I’ve been in love with you for months. I thought I was obvious about it, but apparently I need to spell it out for you.”

His mouth curved into the barest smirk, though his eyes burned serious. “You’re it for me. Not her. Not anyone else. Just you.”

Before you could reply, his lips crashed against yours. The kiss was desperate, bruising, his hands sliding to your waist, pulling you flush against the hard line of his body.

All your pent-up heartbreak and longing poured out in the way you kissed him back, clawing at his shirt, gasping when his tongue swept into your mouth.

His hands slipped under your shirt, skimming hot over your skin, tugging it upward until you yanked it over your head and tossed it aside. His mouth dropped to your neck, sucking hard enough to mark, his hips grinding into yours with shameless hunger.

“God, I’ve wanted this for so long,” he muttered against your lips.. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

“You were with her—” you started, but he cut you off, pinning your wrists against the wall.

“Not her,” he growled, slamming his palm against the wall beside your head. His eyes blazed like fire itself. “Never her. Only you.”

The raw sincerity in his voice melted the last of your doubts, but your anger and heartbreak had you trembling all the same. He noticed, stepping closer, caging you against the wall. His grip on your wrists was tight, almost desperate.

“Johnny—” you started, voice breaking.

He cut you off, leaning in until his forehead pressed to yours. “I don’t want anyone else. I’ve only ever wanted you.”

The words gutted you, and before you could respond, his mouth was on yours—rough, heated, like he needed to prove it. His grip softens, letting your wrists free.

You gasped, clutching at his shirt, the kiss messy and frantic as if it had been bottled up for years.

Your back hit the wall harder, his tongue sliding against yours. His hands slid down, gripping your thighs suddenly. “Hold on to me.”

You barely had time to obey before he hauled you up, your legs wrapping around his waist instinctively. He carried you towards your bed with ease, kissing you through every step, your nails digging into his shoulders.

By the time your back hit the mattress, you were both panting, flushed, and desperate. He hovered over you, smirking through his ragged breaths. “Guess we’re not done talking yet.”

His hands then began to wander—over your chest, your waist, your hips—touching everywhere like he needed to memorize you.

When his mouth trailed down your neck and sucked at the skin just above your collarbone, you gasped, tilting your head back. “Johnny—”

He smirked against your skin. “Yeah, say my name like that. Say it again.” His hands slid under your skirt, thumbs brushing the inside of your thighs until you were shaking. “Tell me who you belong to.”

“Johnny,” you whimpered, and his grin widened.

“Fuck, that’s it.” His fingers hooked your panties and tugged them down, and tossing it to god knows where. He crouched below you, pushing your thighs apart. “I’ve dreamed about this. About tasting you.”

Before you could answer, his mouth was on you. His tongue slid over your folds, teasing your clit before sucking it hard, and your knees buckled. You grabbed his hair, a broken cry leaving your throat as he devoured you like a starving man.

“Sweetest thing I’ve ever had,” he groaned, lapping at you before plunging his tongue deep. He fucked you with it, then slid two fingers inside, curling them against your sweet spot while his mouth worked your clit. The wet, obscene sounds filled the room, and you couldn’t hold back the moans spilling from your lips.

“Please—Johnny, I can’t—”

“Yes you can,” he said roughly, pulling back just long enough to smirk up at you, chin glistening. “You’re gonna come on my tongue, and then you’re gonna come on my cock. I’m not stopping until you believe I’m yours.”

The orgasm ripped through you fast, hard, leaving you trembling and crying out his name. He rode you through it, licking up every drop, before standing and kissing you filthy, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.

You were still gasping when he shoved his jeans down, his cock thick and flushed in his fist. He stroked himself once, then pressed the head against your soaked entrance.

“You’re mine,” he growled, eyes locked on yours as he pushed inside, inch by inch, stretching you until you were clawing at his shoulders.

“Johnny—” you moaned, the stretch making you dizzy.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he groaned, slamming the rest of the way in with one hard thrust. “Only me. Say it.”

“Only you,” you gasped, clinging to him as he started to move.

He set a brutal pace, fucking you against the mattress, each thrust driving the breath from your lungs. His dirty talk spilled between ragged groans: “So tight around me—fuck—you’re perfect. You think I’d ever want anyone else? You’re my girl. My everything. My fucking forever.”

Every word, every thrust, burned into you until you shattered again, screaming his name as your release clenched hard around him. Johnny cursed, grinding deep before spilling inside you, his groan muffled against your neck as he held you tight.

After, Johnny lied down next you, pulling the blanket over both of you as your chest heaved. He tucked himself in close, his arm slung around your waist like he had no intention of letting go.

For a long while, the only sound was your mingled breathing. Then he pressed a kiss to your temple, softer than you thought he was capable of.

“You believe me now?” he murmured.

You tilted your head to look at him. His hair was a mess, his grin crooked, but his eyes were sincere—warm in a way that made your chest ache.

“Yeah,” you whispered, brushing your fingers over his jaw. “I believe you.”

“Good,” he said, stealing another kiss, this one slow and sweet. “Because I meant every word. You’re it for me. You always have been.”

You couldn’t help the smile tugging at your lips. “You’re still an ass.”

Johnny chuckled, nuzzling into your neck. “Yeah, but I’m your ass.” His voice softened, almost shy for once. “And I’m never letting you forget how much I love you.”

You curled into him, the ache of doubt finally gone, replaced by the steady warmth of his arms around you. For the first time in a long time, you felt safe, cherished… home.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

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sstan-hoe · 1 day ago

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sstan-hoe · 1 day ago

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silver springs

pairing: bucky barnes x fem!reader

warnings: mission occurrences, canon typical pain/gore (you get shot), angst, swearing, barely edited

summary: bucky broke up with you a month ago, but he's about to be shot on a mission - of course you save him, but what does that mean for him? very evidently based on silver springs by fleetwood mac

author notes: hey y'all. this was not what i mentioned earlier apparently i can pull writing projects straight out my arse now so have this pls do enjoy <3

word count: 2.7K

"You'll never get away from the sound of a woman that loves you, my friend." Yelena grumbled, falling backwards onto the sofa in the middle of the Watchtower common area. Her feet automatically kicking up onto the footstool, tilting her head to face Bucky.

Who, in turn, had his arms crossed over his chest, black vibranium against the cotton of his tee shirt. In no single way did he look happy with his situation. He couldn't go back to his room — because your room was on the way. He couldn't go into the gym and train the pain away, because what if you were there too? The common room was risky too, but you only ever passed through here on your way to leave for a mission — you had no missions scheduled for at least a week.

It was stupid really. Bucky didn't quite know why he was getting so worked up over all of this. It was normal, what you did. He would have done the same for you, right? So why did nothing about this whole situation seem normal.

Yelena punched his arm lightly bringing him out of the daze he'd fallen into. "You need to get over yourself, Barnes."

"She shouldn't have done what she did." He spoke, voice barely over a whisper.

"You really think you could have stopped her?" Yelena challenged, knowing that nobody that has ever existed on this world or others could have convinced you to do anything else. "You think anything could have stopped her?"

He shook his head. "Not the point. You don't get it—"

The Widow scoffed, sitting forward and turning slightly to give him no choice but to look directly at her, in the hopes her point might get across at least even a little bit. "No, Barnes, you don't get it. That woman did everything for you, and the fact that she continues to still do everything for you even though you broke her heart says a lot about her kindness and love for you. So get it together. Because we all know you regret breaking up with her. Stop acting like a child and sort it out."

"Jesus—"

"She took a bullet for you, Barnes, pull yourself together." And with that, Yelena had stood back up, storming off somewhere that Bucky didn't really care about.

It fucking sucked. It had been around a month, he couldn't keep track. Moving into a different room in the Watchtower took up a lot of that time. He was an idiot, he knew it. Part of him was questioning whether he would have done the same for you, but his curiosity was futile — of course he would have taken a bullet for you. He still loved you. Whether he wanted to admit it or not.

Eight hours previous

The mission had gone to shit — was the truth of it. All it was supposed to be was an intel gather. Bucky, Yelena, John and you. Infiltrate the building as inconspicuous business-doers, distract while you, the house techie, hacked into their system and get the names of the people that were linked to this off-shore third-party conglomerate. They were tricking people out of money via a scam, targeting those not so well off, and Val's government connection had said that this was a top priority mission. You didn't exactly understand why — nobody was being physically hurt and this could be done by someone just as well in the CIA or FBI.

Until someone fucked up and the four of you were caught. Until seemingly innocent businessmen were pulling out glocks and automatics and every single person in the building were after the four of you and would seemingly do anything to keep you from leaving. Okay, so it was a cover. Perhaps Val had known that, perhaps not. That wasn't the priority.

Priority was getting out without anyone dying.

There was a building outside the window that was to the left of you. Normally, you'd just jump to it, being able to make it because of the serum. Three of you had the serum, Yelena didn't. There was no way you would risk leaving her behind.

"Walker! Behind you!" You shouted, kicking the suited blonde that had come for you at your 3, bottom of the combat boots you were donning hitting her square in the stomach. You spun, holding up your gun as John dropped to the floor, shooting whoever was coming after him before they could shoot him.

John threw himself at someone else, looking towards you. "Thanks."

You didn't respond. The combat was quick, slick, you didn't have time to stop and think. There were too many of them. Did Yelena have a grappling hook? No. It had broken at the last mission, meaning it still needed repairing. Fuck. Okay, so you could carry her while you jumped. But you'd never done that before, there was no way to take in the extra weight in the jump at such short notice. It would have to be the front door then. It was the only way to safely get everyone out of this.

A gunshot released you from the endless escape routes that were taking over your mind. It would have been aimed for you and would had gotten to shot you if Yelena hadn't kicked the gun out of his hands a second before he pulled the trigger. Instead the bullet hit against a plaster wall, going straight through it. You pulled your wrist to your lips. "We all need to get the fuck out of here. Head to the ground floor, any way you possibly can. Someone needs to ring Mel for the getaway car."

"Copy." Bucky murmurs through the comms. It made you realise, you hadn't seen Bucky for a good five minutes, he had just sort of… disappeared when the fight broke out. He wasn't your priority anymore, as much as you wanted him to be. So you let him disappear.

Somehow, you had been backed into a corner. Metaphorically. The corner was in fact your back against a door, and the door was one that lead to the set of stairs. Perfect. And suddenly, you were gone. Thank fuck for the serum, because it meant you could just jump down the middle in between the flights of stairs and not damage a single bone. Your knees might ache a bit tomorrow, but you could deal with that. Better than getting shot. It was only the tenth floor, as well, barely anything.

Feet against concrete, you pushed yourself back up to full height, finding the door and pushing yourself through it, out into the main lobby area. Everyone was shooting everybody. Somehow, John had made his way down here, you didn't even want to question how — maybe he had jumped out a window. At the same time as you pushing out into the lobby, the elevator doors slid open, revealing Bucky, surrounded by collapsed bodies that he'd taken out. But he was unshielded and his walls were down. He didn't expect to reach the ground floor so quickly. And there was a man, in a three piece suit, clasping a hand gun pointed directly towards Bucky and he didn't even notice.

You jumped.

The man pulled the trigger, the bullet leaving the barrel and heading towards Bucky, who only turned as he heard the sound of the gunshot. So, of course, you jumped. Bucky would have been shot if you hadn't. And fuck, was the pain unbearable. You couldn't tell if the bullet hit anything important, but you didn't really care because Bucky had immediately shot whoever had shot you, and had rushed to your side, fast enough to catch you. The last thing you saw before passing out from pain was the image of him above you, hair dangling in front of his ears like you knew he hated, one hand pressing against your back, the other putting pressure on the wound.

Bucky was alive. That was the important thing. That was what you were trying to think, to remember, as you slowly lost consciousness. You weren't dying. Not yet. You didn't know whether Bucky would let that happen, you hoped he wouldn't. But the important thing was that Bucky was alive.

Was it worth it?

One week later

Bucky was on the verge of telling you. To be honest, he was on the verge of a lot of things, but telling you was at the top of the list. He couldn't go on any longer avoiding you, especially now that you were allowed to walk around the compound, which you were definitely taking advantage of. Bucky knew you liked to keep yourself moving, so being holed up on a hospital bed was practically your worst nightmare. Plus, even if he didn't tell you that he was still head over heels for you even though he had been the one to end the relationship, he at least wanted an explanation as to why you had simply jumped in front of a bullet for him.

His opportunity came at the perfect time.

You'd been in the common room, leaning against the kitchen island for support as you made yourself some form of sustenance. It was around mid-day. Everybody else was out, each person having something different to get on with doing. The sun was shining in through the floor to high-ceiling windows of the room, lighting up every possible section but more importantly — lighting up you.

Because of the bullet wound in your side, you were unable to raise your arm further than a certain point. The bowls were just out of your reach. Bucky had gone to turn away, walk back to his room and act like he was never there. But there was that little voice in the back of his head. Fucking thanks, Belova.

So he pulled himself together and stepped into the room, towards you. "Here, let me—"

"Thanks." You mumble, giving up and lowering your arm, forgetting to move away from the cupboard which meant that Bucky had no choice but to invade your personal space. His height, Christ, you couldn't act like it didn't drive you crazy. "You didn't have to, I could have—"

"Don't lie to me, doll, I know, 'cause of the wound."

You hum, nodding. "Yeah, okay, fine."

Bucky places the bowl against the marble of the worktop, the tips of his fingers fiddling with the edge of the china, as if he didn't want to let go because that would mean leaving. The end of the conversation. He needed to do this now, while everyone was out, while you were here and he was already around you. "Can… uh, can we talk?"

He watches your eyebrows knit together, but you nod nonetheless, so that's a little weight off his shoulders. He also knows that at the moment, you can't really get anywhere without leaning against a counter or a wall, so like the gentleman he is, he takes your hand.

And you accept.

Because it's fucking Bucky. Your Bucky. Whether you wanted to admit it or not, whether you were even allowed to want him anymore. He was your Bucky. The one that held you at night with his arms tight around your waist, not scared that the metal would hurt you because you weren't fragile, but you were his. The Bucky that you cleaned wounds for, even when he protested, and whose tears you wiped when he woke up at 3am from the kind of nightmare that meant he couldn't go back to sleep.

So, yeah, you take his hand. You let him lead you through the room, towards the set of sofas and loveseats, you let him settle you against one of them — it doesn't matter which — and you watch as he sits down next to you.

"You took a bullet for me." He swallows, the skin of his neck bobbing as he did so. "Why?"

It was impossible to look him in the eye. "Because you were doing to get shot. You were my teammate, I wasn't going to let that happen, so I made a rash decision in the heat of the moment. Nothing more than that, Barnes, don't worry."

His stomach drops, but your refusal to look him in the eye says it all. "No, sweetheart, please. The truth?"

You fiddle with your fingers that are settled on your lap. Still, you can't look him in the eyes, because you reckon it would break you even more than you currently are. But you look up, towards and out the window, at the great big blue sky. His eyes. Fuck. "Because—" You can barely choke it out. "Because I knew it would hurt me a lot more to see you get shot than it would hurt you to see me get shot."

Bucky's lips part. "Doll—"

You silence him with your palm. "Don't, Bucky. Because I know damn well you don't love me anymore. You broke up with me, and I'm sorry that I still love you and I'm sorry that got in the way of the mission but I need you to accept that I did what I thought was right and you know— you know it was the right decision."

He swallows again, and doesn't speak immediately. The air begins to settle, sounds of New York traffic wafting upwards, and you're glad the Watchtower is in New York. This awkwardness in dead silence you think would probably kill you. But then he reaches his hand out, taking one of yours and entwining his fingers with your own, in an act that has the tears that were simply brimming your eyes, falling down your cheeks. Fuck, were you wrong this whole time? Did he still love you? Did he regret breaking up with you? You needed him to say something, and you needed it to be now. There was no way you could wait any longer.

"I still love you."

Your head turned, finally facing him, finally seeing the tears brimming in his own eyes. Four words. That was all you needed to hear. Him saying them, finally actually saying them.

"And I'm so fucking sorry I ever hurt you. I'm sorry that I ever made you feel like you weren't enough, or that I didn't love you. I was a coward by breaking up with you, the concept never even should have crossed my mind, doll, I—"

With your lips pressing against his, you shut him up. You didn't need to hear anymore. You didn't need to hear the rest of his apology, because his face said everything. His admission said everything. At the action, his other hand automatically slid around your waist, mindful of the wound but also mindful of the way your body was pulling towards his, like coming home after a month long mission. Like coming home to you after a month long mission. That's what he tried to imagine it as.

When breath asked for it, you pull away, gasping through your lips and letting the breath out through your nose, grinning at him. "Don't ever chicken out like that again, you bastard."

He shakes his head at you, a satisfactory smile painted on his lips. "Never. I promise."

"You better. I took a fucking bullet for you, Barnes, there's no going back."

He hums, maneuvering your body so that it sat flush against him, letting you gather both his warmth and all the love in the world he had been bottling up over the past month. After a couple minutes of a lovely, settled silence, he quietly spoke up. "Wanna know what Belova said to me after you got shot?"

"What?"

A small chuckle leaves him, lips partly pressing against your hair as you were tucked under his chin meaning that you could feel every vibration as he spoke. "You'll never get away from the sound of a woman that loves you."

You scoffed, grinning partly from shock, partly from how clever she was. "Do you remember that night we first got together and I showed you that one band?"

"Mhm."

"They wrote that."

"You're kidding."

You shake your head, moving to look up at him. His arm was tight around you, your legs having moved to lay across his lap as you slowly magnetised closer and closer to him. And as he looked down at you, the only thing you could see was love. Pure, unfiltered, unconditional love for you. God, you wouldn't trade it for the world. It was just a shame it took a bullet wound to prove that.

a/n: hope you enjoyed!! love yall<3

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sstan-hoe · 1 day ago

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affection

summary in which you and bucky show affection in front of the team for the first time.

pairing bucky barnes x reader

warnings fluff, a brief mention of choking, pda, bucky and reader being an adorable couple, avengers being avengers.

a/n have a nice day/night <3

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

You and Bucky weren’t a huge fan of PDA for the first few months of your relationship.

It would never go further than holding hands while walking on the streets or Bucky’s hand on your thigh during dinner with your teammates. Sometimes, during galas or parties, Bucky’s hands would be on your waist protectively. You liked his touch, it was comforting but still, he wasn’t really comfortable with people around him and showing affection in front of them was a big step.

And maybe he was ready to take that step.

The whole team was in the jet, exhausted because of the hard mission. Luckily, nobody was hurt, just tired.

You sat next to Bucky like you always did. You were a little distant since the team was around but Bucky had different plans. He took your hand in his and pulled you to his lap, much to your surprise. You looked at him with widened eyes and he smiled at how frustrated you were. Your legs were thrown over his and his arm was wrapped around your shoulders. He kissed your cheek to comfort you a little and it worked. You put your head on his shoulder, inhaling the familiar scent. Even this was too much PDA for you usually, but if Bucky was comfortable it was always okay for you.

“Are you okay, pretty girl? Does it hurt anywhere?” he asked, his voice was worried but calm. He was protective and gentle at the same time. You loved how caring Bucky was, a side of him that only you got to see. You smiled at him and squeezed his hand a little.

“I am fine. You are not hurt, right?” you asked and he kissed your forehead.

“I am okay.” he said and you closed your eyes. You were exhausted and Bucky was warm, his scent was comforting.

“Are you sleepy?” Bucky asked and you mumbled a yes before closing your eyes. He kissed your nose, making you giggle sleepily and kissed your hand before closing his eyes. He put his head on yours.

“I love you, babydoll.” he whispered.

“I love you too, Bucky.”

“Looks like tin man is in love.” Tony said and Steve chuckled at his words.

“We better get used to it. I don’t think they will stop soon.” Natasha said and shook her head.

“I can’t believe this is the same man who choked me for touching his stuff.” Sam said as he looked at you two, sleeping peacefully in each other’s embrace.

“He looks so… loving.” Clint said and the whole team nodded in agreement. They’ve never seen Bucky like this before.

Steve’s eyes were soft as he watched you two. He knew that Bucky deserved this after everything. It was good to see his best friend happy, in love.

He never thought Bucky was the one to do love, but there he was, 70 years later, his big arms wrapped around your smaller frame to protect you from anything even when he is asleep, both of you sleeping peacefully.

After 70 long years, Bucky was in love.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

my masterlist

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sstan-hoe · 1 day ago

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You gotta love earth 828.

Like, those fuckers put together an entire planetary teleportation system on a TIGHT FUCKING SCHEDULE because Sue Storm asked them nicely, meanwhile earth 616 has issues just sitting everyone down for one meeting (and making sure the same amount of people survive the meeting in question).

We couldn’t even make everyone wear fucking masks-

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sstan-hoe · 2 days ago

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I feel it turning into addiction - Part 2

Dark!Biker!Bucky x Reader au

mini series masterlist

Summary: He was too old for this. Crushing on his next door neighbour? Unbelievable. He should leave the poor girl alone. But fuck, he couldn’t. Could he? After all, you were so sweet, and gentle, and kind, and always baked things in the middle of the night and left boxes and baskets filled with sweet-smelling treats at his doorstep for him to find almost each morning. And what did he do in return? He imagined all the sinful ways he could make you whine and whimper for him. He was bad for you, he knew that. People called him all sorts of things: criminal, gang leader, outlaw. Bucky Barnes was bad news. But did that stop him? No. You being so forbidden just solidified his addiction. Bucky Barnes never claimed to be a good man, so he’d do whatever it takes to get whatever he wanted. And all he wanted was you.

Themes throughout the series: somnophilia, dub con, dark!bucky, age gap, smut, explicit language, biker!bucky, younger!reader, loss of virginity, mild daddy kink, mentions of stalking, voyeurism

Walking to Bucky’s house each morning was always a little scary.

Why wouldn’t it be? Everyone in the area only had bad things to say about him. And you knew that there had to be some truth in those rumours and talks. Besides, he looked mean. Longish hair, always riding around on his lethal looking bike. Almost always accompanied by his ‘friends’. You knew they weren’t just buddies who shared a love for riding and bikes. They were indeed a… criminal organisation. You’d seen them in action so many times. Chasing people, beating people up in dark alleys, people whispering their names in fear and some twisted kind of veneration.

Especially Bucky’s name.

But, as notorious as he was, you once saw something that humanised him and overshadowed all the rumours and all the talks about him being devilish. You were on your way home one evening, and you heard what sounded like a bunch of kids squealing in happiness and excitement. You could tell it came from just around the corner so that’s where you went.

And there, as you peeked from a distance, you found Bucky surrounded by a bunch of loud, happy kids who were all enchanted by his bike. Bucky seemed to be in an animated conversation with all of them, and was letting them all take turns to twist the throttle and rev the loud engine of his bike. And there was this rare smile on his handsome face.

Well, he could be as bad as he wanted to be. But no one could lie and say that he wasn’t the most dreamy man ever. He was tall, and strong. And had a smooth voice that could make anyone swoon. And those eyes… gods, those eyes.

You watched the scene of Bucky with the happy kids and then a few seconds later you walked away and headed home with a shy smile on your face. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as people thought he was. So, the next morning was the first time you dropped off a box filled with baked goods on his porch.

And ever since, whenever you baked things, you always made extra with Bucky in mind. You rarely ran into him, except for when he occasionally showed up at your café. Usually with his friends in tow. They were a loud bunch, so you never truly got to talk to Bucky. But the stolen stares, the flirty smirks… they didn’t go unnoticed.

But he was so out of your league, wasn’t he? He was from a different world. He was older. He was known for being dangerous and reckless, and he was never going to be seriously interested in a younger, completely inexperienced woman. Would he?

You saw them often, the bikers at their favourite hangout spots – the bodyshop, that abandoned warehouse, the diner, the bar. And anytime you saw a group of bikes parked outside a spot, your heart raced a little faster. Fine, okay yes you had a bit of a crush on Bucky. But it was hopeless, wasn’t it?

Even now, as you placed the box down on his porch and walked away quickly, your heart raced just thinking about him. Did he think you were an annoying neighbour? Was he sick of your cookies and muffins and scones? He probably was and didn’t know how to get you to stop.

You sighed again, returning back into your house before you let yourself think about that dream last night. How inappropriate to dream of your neighbour like that? If only he knew… but fuck, it felt so real. You woke up drenched! And couldn’t even face yourself in the mirror whenever you thought about that dream… ugh! Having a crush as an adult was the most annoying thing ever.

–

You had a decent day at work. But a long one for sure. Which is why when you came home in the evening and felt like you weren’t alone in your house, you thought it was just your tired mind playing tricks on you.

And when you were in the shower and thought you heard footsteps outside, along the hallway upstairs, you ignored that as well. Maybe it was just the wind.

As you threw yourself into your bed, exhausted, you thought you saw a large outline in the dark, a shadow right outside your window. But before you could panic, you were drifting off to sleep.

Maybe it was just your mind playing tricks. Right? After all this was a perfectly safe neighbourhood. Who would even stand outside your window?

–

The following morning was the first time you saw one of the notes. As if someone had slid them from under your front door. It laid there, on the floor. Seeming harmless. Until you picked it up and read it, your blood freezing and mind racing as you did:

‘You’re so pretty when you sleep.’

What the hell?!

You were late for work, so you couldn’t exactly think too much about the note. But then at work, once things slowed down in the afternoon, you pulled the note out of your pocket and let yourself think about it. Who could’ve sent you this?

The footsteps, the shadow outside your window… someone was watching you. You almost teared up in fear. Someone was stalking you? But why? Should you call someone? Was this a prank?

You threw the note away and decided to do nothing. For now.

—

During the week, more notes appeared. Each of them contained one line or less, but each of them scared you just as much as the first one. You could barely sleep, always paranoid. Always jumping at the slightest of sounds.

It got to the point where you began getting distracted at work.

“Are you even listening?”

You blinked quickly and only then realised that Bucky was standing across the counter, looking at you with those pretty eyes of his. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I was…” You rambled quickly, then recovered, “Uh, hi. What can I get you?”

Shit. He was gorgeous.

Bucky frowned. “You okay?” He asked calmly.

This was the first time Bucky was at your café alone, not at a busy time and not accompanied by his friends. It was quiet, and the two of you were alone. Your heart raced a little faster yet again. “Yeah,” You lied, sighing. “Just, you know, thinking.”

“About what?” He questioned and gave you one of his easy, faint smiles that made you feel so much better.

“Nothing.” You said quickly, then tried to change the topic. “How were, uh, the lemon-blueberry scones I left you this morning?”

You’d never asked him if he liked the stuff you left him. This was the first time.

Bucky could see right through you. You could tell as he placed his fists down on the counter and leaned in so he could be closer to you, and said, “They were great, but tell me what’s truly going on with you?”

You blinked at him. The way his shoulders seemed so broad, his body so large and muscly, even under all the riding gear. Fuck… this man was something else. “Um,” You swallowed, “It’s probably nothing but, I have been receiving these notes and uh, the other night I think I saw someone standing outside my window.” You finally confessed.

Bucky froze for a moment, then frowned deeper. “How long has this been going on?”

The concern in his tone came as a surprise so you tried to calm things down and brush it off. “It’s probably nothing, I just–,”

“It’s not nothing if someone’s stalking you.” He said firmly. “Part of my job is keeping this area and its people safe, angel. But don’t you worry, I’ll ask my boys to keep an eye out. Alright?”

You nodded, immediately feeling loads better. “Okay.”

Bucky left with his usual coffee order.

Except, you didn’t see the triumphant smirk on his face as he walked away.

—

It was probably three in the morning, Bucky got home about an hour ago. It had been a particularly exhausting week for him. Dealing with the sons of bitches who’d been causing trouble in his area was draining. But he finally got rid of them.

For good this time. And now that everything was in order, he thought, maybe he could figure out a way to approach you. Properly.

Bucky was on his couch, some random movie playing on TV. He didn’t pay much attention to it, and he was slowly drifting off to sleep anyway. But then, frantic knocks at his front door pulled him right out of the lazy, sleepy state.

He frowned, standing up and reaching for his gun immediately. Who the fuck would knock on his door at three in the fucking morning?

Then he heard it, the heartbreaking sound of your sobs. “Bucky!” You called out, followed by more hurried knocks, “Please, open up!”

He’d never rushed to his front door quicker than he did upon hearing it was you on the other side. “Hey, I’m here. I’m right here, angel. What’s going on?” He grabbed you and pulled you inside quickly.

Fuck, you must’ve left in a hurry given you were only in your PJs. His favourite ones too, the matching pink set with strawberries all over them.

Not right now, Bucky!

He stood there as you held onto him like he was your only lifejacket. Your arms around him as you sobbed into his chest. Bucky was confused out of his mind. “Talk to me, baby, please. What is it? Did anyone hurt you?”

“No,” You sobbed. “There’s someone…” You gasped for air, fighting back more sobs. Your tears creating dark, wet patches on his grey t-shirt. “I–I heard footsteps just like last time so I came downstairs to look, and– and there was someone there.” You cried. “It was dark but I know, I know there was a man standing there in my house. Please, believe me.”

“I do,” He reassured you. “I do, baby. Listen to me,” He cupped your face in his hands and wiped your tears with his thumbs. “Stay here while I go check it out, okay?”

“No!” You sniffled, “What if he’s armed or something?”

Bucky reached for the gun tucked in his waistband and said, “So am I, angel. Stay here, okay? I’ll be right back. Go upstairs. You’re safe here, you hear me?”

You nodded, sniffling and wiping your own tears. Bucky left immediately, marching over to your house. He clutched his gun in his hand. He wondered if the sight of it scared you. Oh well, you’d get used to it.

Stepping into your home, he stopped at the entrance to listen.

Then he heard him. In the kitchen.

Shutting the front door behind him, Bucky tucked his gun back and walked right to your kitchen, where he didn’t think twice before grabbing John by the collar, “Walker, I will fucking kill you!” He hissed.

John spoke with a mouthful of muffins, “What? I did what you asked me to do!”

“I didn’t ask you to break into her home, you fucking idiot!” Bucky argued, letting John go and watched as he reached for another muffin, popping it right into his mouth like an animal. The whole muffin!

“The notes weren’t working anymore.” John said, sounding like he did the right thing.

Bucky let out a sigh. “I told you to spook her a little bit, not scare the living shit out of my girl! She’s over there shaking like a fucking homeless kitten caught in the rain.”

John looked offended. “Okay but did she or did she not run straight to you?”

Bucky hated when John made sense. “She did.” He answered, begrudgingly.

“So? Job well done, I’d say.” John, even in the dark, gave Bucky one of his shit-eating grins. “I had to speed this up. You’re not getting younger, Buck.”

Bucky sighed, annoyed at the blond asshole. “If anyone finds out about this–,”

“Relax,” John groaned. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t even tell your little girlfriend that you’re the mastermind behind all this. Okay? I won’t even mention the notes, or the stalking, or the,” He put his hand up to make quotation marks, “‘Keep watch outside her yard at night’, or how you took care of that guy who flirted a little too much with her at the coffee shop, none of it, alright? I’ll take it all to my grave. Your secrets, and mine.” John added, “Plus, if we didn’t get her out of the house, how was I supposed to install all the cameras you want in here? You’ve been bitching about that for weeks now.”

Bucky let out another sigh.

“Now go, keep your girl safe.” John smirked. “Oh and by the way, I’m taking all these treats with me. I deserve it.” John chuckled.

“I regret the day I met you.” Bucky said, walking out and away from the kitchen.

“Love you too, bud!” John called out from behind.

Bucky kept walking till he reached his own home.

Okay fine, maybe he was being borderline insane. So what? It’s his girl. If he wants cameras in her house to keep an eye on her at all times, then so be it. After all, he was doing it for your safety.

And maybe asking John to scare you was a bit much. But how else was he supposed to earn your trust? And make himself seem safe? How else would he get you to come to him? How long was he gonna keep visiting you at night? He didn’t wanna sneak around anymore. Did he lowkey want you to be suspicious of every man around except for him? Yes he did. Also, did he love the fact that you didn’t call the police or anything and chose to run to him for safety instead? Fuck yeah he did.

And here you were now, just like how he wanted. Safe, in his house and trusting him with your whole heart.

“I’m back.” He announced as soon as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. And not even seconds later he heard you running downstairs in a rush. He couldn’t help but smile upon hearing your rapid footsteps, knowing you were running to him was such a rush. Fuck, he could get used to this. You running to him as soon as he got home each day.

“Bucky!” You rushed into his arms, hugging him tightly. “Are you okay? Who was it? Did they leave?” You asked, barely even breathing.

“Calm down, angel.” He wrapped his big arms around you and said, “It’s okay. It’s probably just some weird dude breaking in for the hell of it. He didn’t touch anything, didn’t take anything either.” He explained. Except for your muffins. “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s okay. Look at me.”

You pulled away from the hug and looked up at him. “Sorry, I didn’t even realise it was the middle of the night. I just– I got scared and I just ran all the way here.” You sounded a little embarrassed.

“Hey, it’s okay. I took care of it, didn’t I? It’s all good.” He reassured you. “I think maybe you should just stay here till the morning.”

That would give Walker plenty of time to finish up.

You seemed like you were on the verge of tears upon hearing that. “Thank you. I wasn’t ready to go back there just yet.”

“I know, angel. I know.”

Bucky led you back upstairs, after locking up the front door and making a show of checking his whole house just in case the weirdo was still around.

He led you to his bedroom and said, “Sleep in here, I can take the couch downstairs or–,”

“No.” You were quick to oppose. “It’s gonna be morning in a couple of hours. Also, it would be rude of me to kick you out of your own bed. Please, we can share. It’s not like I’m gonna get much sleep now anyway.”

He wasn’t gonna argue with that.

So you both settled in, got under the covers and each stuck to your side. And the silence wasn’t awkward or anything, it was… peaceful. And while you did say it was gonna be hard for you to get some sleep, Bucky noticed that you were snoring softly in no time.

Well, well. But he promised he’d keep his hands to himself tonight. You’d been through enough already. And you felt safe enough to sleep at his place, he wasn’t gonna take any risks tonight.

However, he didn’t realise that you didn’t make any such promises. Because about half an hour later, Bucky felt you scooting closer to him. And closer. And closer, until you were almost on top of him. Shoving your face into his neck, wrapping your limbs around him and squirming until you found a comfy spot like he was just another teddy you slept with.

He didn’t mind being handled like that at all.

God damn. Bucky tried to hold back his smirk as he looked down to find his leg in between yours. Huh. And it wasn’t long before that familiar gasp escaped your mouth. He watched how you slowly, subtly rubbed yourself on his thigh, leaving a patch of wetness on his grey sweats surely.

“Oh fuck, baby. Really? Now?” He murmured, but not moving an inch.

Your soft whimpers and moans were muffled, and your body was warm, moving mindlessly against his. Your quick breaths warm against his neck,

“This is torture, baby.” He whispered against your forehead. “What are you dreaming about now, huh?”

He endured the sweet torture for a few more minutes, until his hands were literally shaking from how hard he had to work to hold back from touching you. And he just had to do something about this so he gently rolled you over until he was right above you, but the movement woke you right up.

Bucky watched how you blinked once, then again. Until you were fully awake. Then you looked up at him and gasped quietly. “Oh… um,” You stuttered, surely remembering the dream from mere moments ago. “Bucky, I–,”

“Yeah, you better explain yourself.” He said, looking dead into your eyes, forcing you to hold his stare. “What was that, huh? I keep you safe, I let you into my home, and this is what I get? Hmm?” He chuckled. “What were you dreaming about that got you using me like this, huh?”

Another surprised gasp. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, no, no. Don’t apologise, angel. Just tell me the truth. What were you dreaming of?”

Silence. He was sick of it by now.

But how could you tell him? The sinful truth?

That you were dreaming of him fucking you right into this matress? That you dreamt of this, him all big and strong above you. Or that this wasn’t the first time you had dreams like these?

He leaned in again, brushing his nose with yours. “Talk to me, baby. Please. I need to know.” He sounded desperate. “Tell me,” he warned. “Or I’ll just have to use my imagination until you confess.”

A pleasant shiver danced down your spine at the sound of that voice. That raw, feral tone. Fuck. It turned you all gooey inside. He was so close. He was so warm, and his body weight slowly pressing down on you felt so good.

Bucky grabbed both your wrists and pinned them above your head before he straddled your body. His big thighs on either side of you.

“Come on, baby.” He tilted his head to the side, admiring the sight of you under him. You looked so perfect that he couldn’t wait to ruin you. He felt his cock, getting hard and pressing against his sweats, and you could too.

His body heat wrapped around you just like it had in your dream and you almost whined at how good it felt. Fuck, it felt like you were losing your mind.

He leaned down and trailed the cold tip of his nose along your neck. “Now, tell daddy all about that naughty dream.”

“Bucky, I-,”

He cut you off by quickly dragging one hand down your body, squeezing your clothed breast briefly before he trailed further down and slid his hand in between your thighs while he stared deep into your eyes. “The truth, angel. Don’t make me ask you again.”

“I– I can’t.”

Bucky smirked, “Fine then, have it your way.” He kept both your wrists pinned above your head, holding them in place in one hand while the other roamed your body, paying extra attention to your breasts.

You just gasped and writhed under him, only letting out a yelp when he pinched your nipple.

“Please…” you said, breathlessly, “Bucky–,”

“Aww, what is it? Does that feel good? Hmm? Here?” He asked as he gently traced the outline of your PJ shorts with his finger. He ran a finger over your front and chuckled when you arched your back ever so gently at his touch. “Does it feel just as good as in your dreams, baby?” He whispered into your ear as he pressed his finger to your clothed clit. “No one’s had this, huh? I can tell by the way you react to my touch, angel. No one’s ever touched you properly.”

You couldn’t hold back the moan which escaped your lips as he slowly dragged your shorts down your legs. Then throwing them behind him somewhere.

“No…” you mumbled.

“Aww, my poor baby. Guess I have a lot to make up for then.”

“Please.” You begged, barely able to hold back. You didn’t know where this shamelessness came from. You didn’t care anymore. You wanted him. You’d care about the consequences, if any, later.

Bucky scoffed gently. “Ask nicely.”

“Please, Bucky…” you begged again, “Please, I need you to touch me.”

He smirked, satisfied. “Oh, babygirl. I’ve got you.” He slid his thigh higher up in between your legs, parting them further. “Anything you want, you can have it.” He pressed his fingers against your clothed core and lazily ran his knuckles up and down your wet folds. “You’re so wet for daddy, angel.” He commented, adding to the heat all over your face.

He caught the way you lifted your hips off the bed, wanting his fingers more. Wanting more. He watched how you whined and whimpered under him. Suddenly he couldn’t believe he’d survived all those years without you in his bed. How did he even live without this?

“You want more, baby?” He asked, leaning down and wrapping his warm mouth around your clothed, hard nipple. “Hmm?” He asked again, licking around your nipple, the warmth of his mouth seeping through the thin fabric of your PJs. You arched more into his mouth.

“Yes…please.” You cried out, barely able to speak properly as he teased you with his mouth and fingers.

Bucky kissed his way up your neck, and pressed his mouth to yours, kissing you gently just as he pushed your shorts and underwear aside and his fingers found their way past your folds. You moaned as he pushed one finger past your entrance. Or tried to at least. You were rather tense, and so tight he could barely fit a proper finger in.

He groaned into your mouth. “Be nice to me, baby. Let me in, come on now.” He whispered against your lips.

You gasped and moaned against his warm, open mouth. “I can’t– I don’t know how.” You murmured.

Fuck. That soft little plea almost killed him. And oh, he loved it. “Gonna have to teach you everything, huh?” He teased. “Come on then, don’t be so tense. Relax, just let me touch you. It’s okay, baby. It’s just me. See? Just me,” he kissed your lips again. “Let daddy in, baby.”

You exhaled slowly, relaxing under him and then he tried again. He pulled his finger out and pushed it back in, sliding in further this time and curled it just right inside of you. He muffled your moan with a rough kiss, he bit your lip before shoving his tongue past your lips and kissing you like he was famished. “There we go, angel.” He said, finger-fucking you slowly. “See? That wasn’t so hard, huh? Just like that, baby. Let it happen. There you go, there’s my good girl.” He growled against your lips, his voice fueling the fire inside you. “No one else is allowed to touch you. Did I make myself clear?” His warm breath made you tremble under him. “You’re my girl. My baby. Only mine.”

You simply nodded, too far away and mind foggy with pleasure to even process what he was saying.

Bucky’s mouth left your lips as he kissed his way down your body, letting go of your wrists and undressing you as he went. Your PJs and underwear found themselves on his bedroom floor as he settled himself in between your legs. His handsome face was mere inches away from your dripping core.

You’d never done this before, so instinctively you tried to scoot away or cover yourself but Bucky’s grip on your thighs was firm as he kept you in place. “Ah, ah. Where do you think you’re going, huh?”

There was a wild hunger in his eyes. As he knelt in between your legs. You felt his warm breath against your body as he spoke, lips brushing against your inner thigh, “This pretty little cunt is mine now,” he kissed your skin so softly and it made your whole body tingle, “So fucking wet, and all mine. I’ll taste it, touch it, fuck it, pet it, whenever I fucking want. You hear me?” He growled before he leaned in and kissed your wet folds, his tongue slowly circling around your throbbing clit and licking down, parting your wet folds with ease.

You cried out in pleasure as his wet, hot mouth sucked on your clit, while he slowly pushed his finger back into you again, brushing against a sensitive spot inside you this time which made you gasp and moan out loud.

A sweet pressure formed deep inside you as you felt his tongue stroking your most sensitive parts. “So fucking sweet…” Bucky chuckled as he looked up at you and found you with your eyes shut, head thrown back in pleasure. “Look at me.” He ordered and the authority in his voice made you tremble. “Look at me or I’ll stop.”

You opened your eyes and supported your upper body up with your elbows digging into the mattress and you took in the sight of him in between your legs. His strong arms wrapped around your thighs, keeping you in place and close to him. “Keep your eyes on me, baby. I want you to watch me as I taste your little cunt.”

He maintained eye contact as he licked in between your wet folds again, making you whine as he teased you with his mouth and finger. His touch was deliberately slow, pleasurably agonizing.

You cried out, whimpering and begging him to take you already. You could no longer deal with his teasing. “Please…” you begged.

Bucky smirked, removing his drenched finger from you. “I know, baby.” He kissed your thighs leisurely, purposely avoiding touching you where he knew you needed him the most. “I know it feels good, doesn’t it? But not yet, angel…” he kissed along your soft skin, gently biting your thighs. You hissed in pleasure. “I’m gonna taste this wet, greedy little virgin cunt until you’re shaking, you hear me?”

You nodded frantically, his words turning you on more than you expected them to. You could feel your arousal trickling out of you, one drop at a time. But Bucky didn’t let none of it go to waste. He was starving. He’d waited too long for this. He was gonna savour each fucking drop. He leaned in and latched his mouth onto your core again, sucking and licking and teasing you until you were a whimpering mess.

His sole purpose was to take his time, and taste you and make you come undone all over his tongue. You whined and whimpered under him, with your legs soon wrapped around his head.

“You taste so good, baby…” he mumbled, closing his eyes, shamelessly humming and moaning at how you tasted on his tongue. Your taste drove him wild, so did your soft whimpers. “So fucking sweet. I could spend the rest of my days right here, face buried in your wet little cunt…” he purred. “Taking my time and making you come over, and over, and over again until all you can think about is me.”

His deep blue eyes watched how you lost control under his touch, legs shaking as he teased your entrance with the tip of his tongue. His hands wrapped around your thighs, securing you in his grip as he pushed his face further into you, making you cry out loud. He made you cum so frequently that your orgasms just overlapped effortlessly, making you gasp for air as your body writhed under him.

You whined wantonly, “Please…” you begged, and tried scooting away from him. But his grip around your thigh tightened and he kept you in place. “It’s too much, please…” you didn’t want him to stop. Ever. But you were so damn sensitive that even just his hot breath fanning your wet folds was making you moan out loud.

“Oh I know it’s too much,” He made you come one more time and then kissed his way up to your mouth again. “But you deserve it, baby.” He kissed your lips as he hovered over you, rough and deep, and you tasted yourself on his tongue. “And I’m not done with you yet.” He whispered against your swollen lips. “I’m a greedy man, baby. I want more. And you will give me more, won’t you? Won’t you be a good girl and let daddy have you? Hmm?”

You looked up at him and nodded, panting and shaking under his gaze. He gave you a brief kiss on the lips then lifted off you for just a moment to get rid of his clothes. Once done, he was hovering over your naked body again. Frankly, he loved the sight of you, naked, hot and squirming against the dark sheets of his bed. He wanted to keep you there forever.

He was gonna keep you there forever.

He smirked, and leaned in closer to you, his hand reaching up to hold your jaw carefully, firmly. “I’m gonna get us some condoms later, okay? I need this right now and I cannot wait. And I know neither can you. So I’m going in bare just this once, okay?”

You nodded. You whimpered, bit your lip and looked up at him. “It’s gonna hurt?”

“No,” He reassured you. “Got you nice and wet for me. Just, let me in, okay? Don’t be all tense like earlier. Okay, baby?”

You nodded again.

“I’ve got you. You belong to me. My girl. My fucking woman. And I’m gonna make it feel good, okay?” He continued, “You’re mine, and I’m gonna be the first and last one to fuck you, you hear me? There’s gonna be no one else, or I will do terrible things to the motherfucker.”

You couldn’t help but giggle and leaned into his touch a little more. He noticed and his eyes softened briefly before the wild hunger took over again.

“You’re gonna be the death of me.” He cooed.

Bucky’s body settled in between your legs comfortably again, and he leaned in to kiss you. Your lips were all swollen and tingly, but still you moaned through the kiss as he pulled you even closer. You felt his thick and hard cock resting against your thighs as he touched you wherever he could, letting his hands linger at your breasts and taking his sweet time caressing and kissing your skin.

“Such a sweet girl for me,” He murmured. “Yeah, you are. You know that, don’t you?”

His hands slipped in between your legs with ease, caressing your inner thighs as he went. You moaned into the kiss, his touch was slow, and gentle but also fiery. His knuckles gently stroked your wet, sensitive folds, making you shiver at his touch. He ran his fingers up and down, gathering and smearing your arousal around.

He stared into your eyes, his face still dangerously close to yours. “You trust daddy, don’t you?” he asked. His voice strained and deep, gravelly with lust.

You nodded a little too quickly. “I do.”

He smiled and leaned in again, kissing you and toying with your clit at the same time. You whimpered and squirmed under him, and he smirked through the kiss before pulling away from your lips, and pressed his forehead on yours gently as he slowly pushed his erected cock past your tight entrance, pulling your legs up to wrap them around his waist.

Fuck, his lean waist to broad shoulders ratio was driving you insane. You didn’t know a man’s body could be that mouthwatering. You whimpered and moaned out loud as he pushed into you, the feeling foreign and uncomfortable for a few seconds.

He grunted as he stopped halfway, “Are you okay, baby? Look at me.”

You lifted your head up and stared into his eyes. You nodded. “I’m okay.”

Bucky leaned in to kiss you again, before pulling away to look down as his cock slowly disappeared inside your hole. “Fuck.” The sight alone could have been his undoing. He hissed as he filled you up entirely, and he gave you a couple of seconds to adjust. You were so tight that he had to fight with all his might to keep his cock inside of you. Your walls were clenching violently around his throbbing cock, almost pushing him out.

You were whimpering all along and he kept kissing you to ease with the brief pain.

“You’re doing so good, baby. Just stay like that, okay? Just open for me, breathe. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, my angel.” He was breathless by the time he grabbed both your hands, laced your fingers together with his and pinned your interlaced hands down on the bed, above your head.

Staring deep into your eyes while he was fucking deep inside you was the kind of overwhelming feeling he didn’t know he could experience. He had always wondered how he would feel inside you. How wet you’d be, how warm and how tight and snug you’d feel… but you felt better than he ever imagined.

You were so full of his thick cock that you couldn’t even form a proper thought. His lips found yours again, trying to get you to stay quiet while he gently rolled his hips against yours. He pulled out and pushed himself back into you, and watched in awe how you struggled to keep quiet and take him.

He lowered his face again, and leaned into your ear. “You feel so good, baby…” he whispered, groaning by the end and letting go of your hands to hold your body. He gripped your waist and pushed deeper into you. You heard him gasp and swear under his breath as he rocked into you. Your nails sank into his skin, around his broad shoulders, which you held onto for dear life as he pounded into you.

You moaned out loud as he pushed deeper and deeper into you each time. He felt large and thick inside you, brushing against sensitive spots. Your back arched each time he thrust deep into you, stretching you out completely.

Your legs trembled around his waist, he thrust deeper into you, and in the daze he was in, he mumbled right in your ear, “Fucking dreamt about fucking this pussy. I never knew it’d feel this fucking good…” His voice cracked and the sound of his moans and grunts sent tingles dancing down your spine.

Your back arched off the bed as you felt a familiar warmth washing over you. Bucky growled and bit down on your shoulder to keep himself from making any loud noises while he fucked you even harder. He was relentless.

You whimpered as he grabbed you by the throat and pulled you closer against him. “You’re so good to me, baby,” he mumbled against your skin. His hand found its way to your front and he pressed the palm of his hand against your lower abdomen. He liked feeling the bulge forming there each time he thrust his cock deep into you. “Feel that? That’s me in there, filling you up. Fucking you just right. Feels good, doesn’t it, baby?”

You could only moan and whimper in response while he kept pounding into you incessantly.

“You’re all mine.” Bucky mumbled in a daze, and you barely heard him as the only thing you focused on was the sounds your bodies made when in contact with one another, along with your whimpers and your incoherent words while he fucked you like there’s no tomorrow.

You felt him quicken his pace. You tightened around him, and he groaned, pounding into you, growling and mumbling under his breath. You felt the pressure in between your hips grow until you could barely hold back any longer.

With a few more strokes of his thick cock, you felt his thrust becoming irregular, and felt his cock throb against your walls. You tightened around him, feeling the burning hot need to come grow hotter and hotter inside you until it exploded.

You came with a loud moan, gushing all around him. Bucky came right after you, buried deep within you. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” His warm cum shot at your walls and trickled out of you when he carefully pulled out. “So fucking good to me.”

You were hazy and worn-out already, so all you remember is snuggling up to him and placing your head on his chest. His body was warm, his heartbeats racing as he pulled you closer.

“You okay, baby?” He asked, running a soothing hand up and down your back.

You snuggled closer to him, seeking his body heat. “Yeah.”

You were both silent for a while. You were drifting off to sleep again, he could tell.

Bucky looked down at you, all nice and cuddled at his side. He thought he was borderline insane before. Before he had you. But now that you were all his, now that he’d had a taste and you were naked in his bed, Bucky’s thoughts scared him. Because he realised that there was absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do for you.

He watched as you fell back asleep quickly. He decided he was gonna let you sleep for another hour or two before you both had to get up for work.

“Isn’t this nice, baby?” He rolled onto his side and parted your legs gently, sliding his cock back into you. “Just wanna feel your warmth for a little bit.” He kissed you all over your face while you murmured something and melted into his arms again. “That’s it, baby. You’re safe with me.” He whispered.

Safe with him, yes. But the thought of you out and about in the world, out of his sight, was driving him mad.

Suddenly, he realised that mere cameras inside your home weren't gonna be enough.

—

a/n: wdym "dark" bucky??? He’s so sweet!!! isn't he???

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