#got a little more violent with this one

[jack-the-nibbler]

Voretober Day 7: Hunt

On the night of the hunt, the line between the hunter and the prey is often blurred.

The sounds of howls and snarls filled the night. You had grown used to the cries of beasts and reek of rotting blood. Fear rarely came to you for the most part; the Dream wouldn’t let you die for good after all. After a few nights, the Hunt had become routine…but tonight you’d been caught completely off guard. You were running for your life from a beast you’d once considered a friend.

Father Gascoigne had been hunting far longer than you, and the years had taken a toll on him. Despite this, he’d been happy to mentor you; teaching you how to properly shoot and use visceral attacks, pulling you out of trouble, and giving you a few playful, ultimately harmless shoves. He was a large, intimidating man, but was always fairly gentle with you.

Tonight, the blood had taken him. Gascoigne had roared and charged you with his axe, nearly taking your head clean off. Your yells and pleads were met with roars and snarls, your stamina running low as you tried to keep up the fight. You’d reluctantly retaliated, but the worst had been yet to come.

After taking enough blows, Gascoigne had suddenly burst into a much larger, hairier form, with jagged teeth and claws that could slice through flesh like butter. Already worn down, you just turned and ran down the street, hoping to find somewhere to hide, or even a Messenger lamp to return to the safety of the Dream. Hearing the priest turned werewolf roar, you picked up the pace, your lungs burning. Your escape was sadly short lived.

Gascoigne proved to be much faster, catching up with you in a few bounds and pouncing on you. The wind was knocked out of you in an instant, and the beast’s strong grasp kept you firmly pinned down. You gave a strainer whimper, looking up helplessly at the unnaturally wide maw of your friend. Any moment now, Gascoigne would tear you limb from limb, or perhaps those fangs would chew you into a bloody mess.

The werewolf leaned down and sniffed you, blasting you with hot breath, before giving you a long, slimy lick up the face. You shuddered, struggling as much as you could under his massive bulk as that thick, slobbery tongue lapped over your face again and again. The relentless licking went on for what felt like hours, making you wish he would just bite your head off already. By the time Gascoigne finally let up, your hunting garb was absolutely soaked.

You laid there in a daze, head and shoulders coated in a thick layer of beast slobber. As Gascoigne grasped you like a sandwich and opened his mouth wide, you hoped that he would make it quick. He clamped down, but instead of ripping you in half, he started slurping you in. It took a moment for you to realize that Gascoigne wasn’t going to chew you up…he was swallowing you whole. You screamed as your head slipped into his throat, but your energy was spent. There was nothing you could do.

The bestial priest gobbled you down like a piece of meat, chomping and shaking you around. You weren’t sure if he was taking care not to injure you too much or if you were too fatigued to notice it, but at least it wasn’t hurting. This didn’t help the terror as you slid down the beast’s throat, tightly constricted and squished by the peristalsis. Your head was squeezed tightly before it popped into Gascoigne’s stomach. You took a deep breath, shuddering at the stale, humid air, reeking of blood and bile.

As Gascoigne gulped down your feet, your head and chest slid into the rumbling pouch. Your fleshy prison was fairly spacious, but this was of little comfort to you. You slipped further in, crammed into the literal belly of the beast. The moment the esophageal sphincter clenched shut behind you, the stomach started churning more actively, acids starting to seep from the slimy walls.

Survival instinct kicked in, adrenaline taking over your fatigue as you started to struggle, pressing against the sphincters at either end of the stomach. Neither of them budged, and the strong stomach acids were already starting to eat away at your hunting attire. As the churning pushed you around, working to easier break you down, you reluctantly realized that your only way out was to be digested. With a heavy sigh, you gave in, laying back as the acids dissolved your clothes, well on their way to softening your flesh…

Gascoigne flopped onto his side, giving a belch that sent your soggy hat flying out of his mouth. His hunger was sated, thirst for blood quenched by your sacrifice. Patting his belly, the beast rested his head upon the cold ground, content to let his belly work around his large meal. Over the course of the night, the hunter turned prey would be easily reduced to mush and nutrients to quell his terrible cravings. Come sunrise, you would wake up in the comforting safety of the Hunter’s Dream, while Father Gascoigne would be left to wonder where all this sudden fat on his belly and thighs came from…

[casualavocados]

"Mrs. Coulter in the cave, watching Will, speculating; Will watching her, speculating. Their words like chess pieces, placed with great care, each carrying an invisible nimbus of implication and possibility and threat. Each of them afterwards felt as if they had barely escaped with their life."

HIS DARK MATERIALS — 3.02 | The Break — The Imagination Chamber, Philip Pullman

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[vitaspera]

unhinged calix / viorel yapping commences..

[epiphainie]

.

[bittersweetblasphemy]

.

[im-smart-i-swear]

unable to let go

something something both of these fuckers have spent so long depending on each other that they cant function w/o the other guy despite Tashi's continously worsening mental state and unhealthy clinginess and Soup's desire to explore the world and meet new people...

like the thing about soup is that she had never really been a person who does well stuck in one place for too long, but also tashi is her brother. theyve been through hell and back together and she feels immense guilt for even considering having a life outside of their little family, and also she has NOT worked through her gladiator trauma AT ALL and has been just holding everything in and trying to be a perfect caring figure despite all the anger and frustration she experiences on a daily basis...

(tashi is dealing with that too, but hes never been as good as her at hiding it, and also he has the tendency to make this stuff everyones problem - thus sidelining soups problems by accident. i think soup is kind of what tashi desperately WANTS to be, in a way. on the outside shes the 'stoic selfless caregiver' and i think tashi is jealous of that, so much so that he sometimes forgets that soup is just as much a person with her own problems and desires and flaws as everyone else)

soup is frustrated by how shes been having to take more and more responsibilities as time goes on (bc of tashis Whole Thing and buddys fear of assuming any kind of leadership position) and a part of her loathes this life and she wants to leave. i think her and zoras relationship plays a big role in her feeling on the matter bc shes NOT part of the family, shes someone new and diffrent and thats enticing... also over the years soup had built up this calm easygoing persona that zora can see through, zora is very aware of soups violent past and she is not sfraid of it, giving soup a safe space to express those more negative feelings freely for the first time in YEARS

Its very hand in unlovable hand coded but they very much love each other still and thats kinda the problem

Also putting some notes on their younger selves here bc this feels relevant to how these two ended up

[wavebiders]

it's honestly kinda funny how many of the more dramatic reactions to World of Warcraft are just people refusing to accept the concept of main characters

[brainrot-stitch]

Ough

[nonuggetshere]

So they didn't become void, they were "born" that way

In FaaF there are different species and kinds of higher beings (still a MASSIVE work in progress tbh, trying to figure out how these cunts work, but for now I'm thinking they're extremely rare species with far greater abilities and lifespans than a normal bug's that have a chance to ascend to true godhood (but even if they don't ascend that doesn't stop mortals from worshipping them as they're already very god-like from a normal bug's perspective)), "pale beings" being one of these kinds/mutations.

Well, there was also a different kind once, "void beings", but they all went extinct a very long time ago by the beginning of the story. Shade Lord was one, and last, of them and it lost its life in a fight with Radiance - the same fight that drove her to make her permanent residence in the dream realm out of her new-found fear of death (which backfired spectacularly ngl). Its body was buried in the Abyss, where it broke apart and decayed, or decayed as much as a non-living thing can, before it was unearthed many ages later by the pale wyrm.

Not much is known about them since they've been gone for so long, and the vessels are the only void beings remaining, but since they're not "pure" void beings it'd be foolish of anyone to assume that the ancient extinct species behaved the same way as these ones do. But they were generally greatly feared thanks to the void's freaky, dangerous properties, which partly lead to their extinction as some of the other higher beings purposefully attacked and killed them whenever they stumbled across one out of fear. Now the only thing remaining of them are the rare void sources, where their former bodies still refuse to fully die.

Shade Lord does get accidentally resurrected in the story bc of all the tomfoolery happening with its body before almost immediately getting killed again by Ghost who inherits its title and reign. Don't ask me how that works, haven't figured that out yet. Magic god shit or something idk LMAO

[yardsards]

local man forced to think about their father: one dead, countless injured.

[tonycries]

ATTACK ON P*SSY!

Synopsis. He’s a 10 but when you ask him to be rough…he goes rough.

Pairings. [SEPARATE] Higuruma x Reader, Gojo x Reader, Ino x Reader, Sukuna x Reader, Choso x Reader, Geto x Reader, Nanami x Reader, Toji x Reader

Content. MDNI, fem! reader, rough s, headlocks, hard and fast, manhandIing, dóggy, GOJO’S POWERS, tummy buIges, spítting, dúmbifícation, MARATHONS, jealous s (Nanami’s side), chokíng, leaving marks, cúmplay, p talking, breéding, cervíx kíssing, true form Sukuna, dp, Ino cries, pússydrunk men, they go FÉRAL, p sIapping, pet names, swéaring.

A/N. Lmk if you get the Love and Deepspace reference in Nanami’s heh.

♡ TOJI FUSHIGURO - Twisterrr!

“So…my girl wants it rough, huh?” Toji’s scarred lips tickle precisely the most sensitive spots on your neck, making him depart a husky snicker. “Heh- stop talkin’ outta ya pussy, mama.”

Your spit-glittered mouth formulates into a pout, hazy peripherals darting over your shoulder and towards your leering boyfriend. Hot. Each syllable hitched with whines, “I-I’m not. I reeeally want it r-”

“When ya can’t even handle this?” 

He’s cutting your babbling off with an utterly mean drive of his hips, thoroughly opening up your clingy walls with the curvaceous tip crowning his shaft. Probing n’ probing until he’s pressing a sweet, sweet smooch lovingly on your g-spot. 

Holding it there, unmoving. 

Rendering you so stupid with only a single thrust that you feel yourself tremble like a leaf once he’s gritting out a low, “Oh? She got even ngh- wetter.” And before you know it, a lengthy foot is being pressed right along the middle of your spine. Strong, rugged palms pulling and pulling on your upper-arms to bend you into such a lecherous arch-

“Fine. Brace yourself, doll.”

And Toji barely even gives your popped ears the time to hear his rasped-out promise let alone register it- fuck, you should consider yourself lucky that he gave you a warning in the first place. 

Because Toji Fushiguro was fucking you like he hated you. 

His blushing mushroom head was as red as a strawberry, and just as thick - whacking against the poor bullseye of your tenderest nooks n’ crannies repeatedly until your tastebuds simply drowned in saliva. 

Until you were throwing your head back with a thick gasp, “T-Tooooji- like that. J-just like that.”

“Just like hah! that?” He’s crooning from behind, planting a peck near your jaw. You feel so dirty when his foot strikes down to bow you even deeper into the perfect geometrical curvature, “Bend. Bend f’me a little more- yeahhh, just like that. M’only getting started, mama.” 

Fuck, what?

Toji finds himself smiling all dopily at the tiny sob that slips through your cracked lips. Your glassy eyes wide, thighs shivering against his meaty ones, stringy wads of drool slipping and sliding in thin trails down either cute side of your maw. 

So pretty. 

“Whaaaat? D-don’t tell me this ngh- needy pussy-” And just as rude Toji talked, he pounded into you even ruder. Swollen, heavy cock now smearing streaks of sappy pre that stick on top of your g-spot like glue. “-can’t-” Hard. Merciless. So full and dumbstruck, you can only mewl when his big, beefy biceps ‘round you grow tighter. Bulging out large bruises on your heated skin, “-handle it?”

“I can I can—” You’re shaking your head like a rattle, vision fuzzy with tears and the arousal of his drenched black pubes scratching your violently papping mounds raw. 

He coos, “Mhm, and this pretty pussy hck! won’t cum immediately?”

“Won’t-” You’re choking out, words getting stuck in the leaden ball in your throat when he angles his bloated cock to stroke the roof of your gummy walls. Puffed-up veins massaging every treasure trove of orifices in that delicious zigzag pattern of his. 

“Hmm— dunno if I ngh- believe you.” 

“P-promise.” Hips swiveling back into his in a lazy back and forth that slaps your ass into his toned abs, every murked pant you’re letting off matches the creaking bedsprings of Toji’s mattress. Sniffling, “Give it t’me. Fuh-fuck me rougher pleeease-”

You bite down on your slackened lower lip as soon as he graces your throbbing cunt with a claggy spank. Still being plastered against Toji’s slick, glissading front with one hand of his hands manhandling both of yours to pin behind your back.

You can feel the sloshing whoosh of his buttery precum dripping out of you, coating your inner thighs with such carnal need. 

He chortles something dangerous, and you don’t have to ogle behind at Toji to know that he had his eyes dead set on the prize. Right on your sobbing pussy. “Well…since ya said h-heh ‘please.’”

Within two bats of your tear-lathered lashes, Toji’s unclasping his vice-like restraint on your arms to let you fall onto the cacophonous bed like a delicate piece of domino. Tittering.

Waiting the few sultry nanoseconds it takes for your brows to knit into an adorable furrow, waiting until that disappointed groan is just building up in your throat- before he’s shoving your sweat-shimmered face into the pillows and rutting.

“Jeez, mama-” You hear Toji drawl out through the muffling cotton in your ears, low baritone barely audible over the furious thwack! of his full, rounded breeder balls spanking your thighs. “Told you you’d cum ngh- immediately.”

Fuck. 

Fuck.

And it’s only then that you realize that you are cumming - white-hot bliss flashing behind your flapping lids, your hips struggling to push and push off of the soaked sheets while he draaaaags out your high.

You’re grappling onto the headboard for dear life. For anything grounding, because right now you’re so weak you think you might just break. “Toji- Tooooji…c-cumming. M’cumming-”

“Shut up.” Toji hisses through gleaming, clenched teeth. Gone. Bosomy tip French kissing pinpricks of pre into your g-spot with every quiver of your high, and no matter how much you’re clenching your glutinous walls around him, he’s still driving out and in through the resistance so solidly deep. “Told you- told you.”

Before you can snipe back, his palm roughly plummets down on the sweaty crown of your head. Forcing you to bite on a mouthful of satiny pillowcase, forcing you to shut up. 

To shut up so that he can slouch back and loll his greedy gaze to your gulping cunt, aftershocks of your orgasm so strong that he could count every time your saturated folds twitched. And he did count. 

Five times in all before grumbling, “Told ‘er- didn’t I, p-pretty girl?” Not at you - but at your sloppy pussy. Who seemed more than happy to talk back in wet squelches upon squelches every time he was poking his veins into your gushing entrance. “Yeah- yeahhh I did, you’re so right.”

“Toji mmpf-”

“Wanted it rough, s-so now you’re gonna get it.” Toji’s every word rips out in a primal growl, and you feel your creaking bed snap! somewhere in the distance. Broken. A foot making its lecherous home on your head, hard. “Brace yourself, doll.”

♡ NANAMI KENTO - Jealousy, jealousy

“P-please.” You’re whispering with your jaw hanging foolishly open, warbly tone right on the verge of breaking because your husband’s in so deep. So…insatiable. “You can be ngh- rougher today, Ken—”

“R-rougher?” Nanami’s echo comes out ragged, carnal. As strained as his sanity was beginning to feel right now when you were underneath him and begging so prettily like this. He dips a sensual peck near one of your ankles dangling off of his sculptured shoulders, “I don’t want to hurt you, my love. Or leave any marks that…” Pearly whites clenching, seethingly. “-others can see.”

And oh, Nanami Kento was a gentleman. Nanami Kento was patient with you. 

Always. 

But not with any touchy new co-worker of yours that just-so-happened to hang around you way too fucking often for his taste. 

No, one singular mention of him and he’d dragged you to your shared bedroom to bend you into a filthy, filthy mating press until your melty, cotton-filled brain had completely n’ utterly forgotten just how your day had gone.

Until you were fidgeting the doughy heels of your feet against his curvaceous back muscles, “B-but I want it, baby.” Spit-shimmering lips automatically pulling into one of his weaknesses: your pout. “I want you t-to make me yours.”

At this, Nanami flinches. 

He blushes - a cute blossomy red that scorches across his cheeks and all the way to the tips of his ears, already drenched with thin ribbons of sweat. 

With a deeeep gulp, he croaks out. “...M-mine.” Swallowing a webbed mass of saliva that waters his tastebuds once. Twice. Before tenderly cupping your boneless legs and smearing them so wiiidely agape that they start to burn. Just the mere sinful action makes your pussylips let off a soppy squelch! “Arch f’me then, darling.”

You’re blinking, buzzing eardrums unsure of what you’d oh-so-clearly just heard departing Nanami’s parted lips. “What?”

“Didn’t tell you to question me. Did I, my love?” He hisses, the very fringe of his mouth curling into a sleazy grin at your adorably shocked expression. Rovering down to palm your lower tummy, opened flat and pressed against that thick, cylindrical outline he was fucking into you hard. “Better.”

Oh…he was feeling himself inside you. Caressing your tummy bulge with sheer loving, making your gluey walls stick to his solidly ridged shaft like you were keeping him hostage. 

“Who s’fucking you deep inside?” He flicks the curved mushroom tip bumping through you, dabbing every inch inside you. Sleazy. Sloppy. Molten eyes half-shuttering until he looks so ruined. Fuck. “Who? Me or him?”

Your eyes blearily cross and uncross, the pressure of it so much. “Wh-who- who’s him-”

“Talking about another man when you’re with me,?”

Before you can gather your bearings, before you can even gasp in a lungful of shocked air at the gesture - Nanami shocks your throb-throb-throbbing clit with a sloooow drag of his metallic wedding ring. Smudging a cute, wettened heart right where you were the utmost sensitive. 

“Pleeease-”

“Speak up.”

“I want-”

“Hmmm…what was that?” He’s striking the bulging patch of your g-spot with an achy glide of his bawling wet divot as soon as you open your mouth. Nanami was shutting you up with his fat, vein-covered cock not just once, not just twice- but three whole times before humming. “My apologies. Can’t hear you over ngh- her, darling.”

How could you ever underestimate just how strong your husband was? How rough he could really be. 

Thickened, meaty thighs flex in tightened knots once his hips drive into yours viciously. Every harrowed pap! of his tawny happy trail scratching your slobbery folds open and leaving your mouth parched. 

Whack after whack of his plump, split-ended tip scraping your magical spots expertly. And you couldn’t even predict when the next recurring strike would commence because your dazed eyes were sprinting all the way to the back of your head. 

You could count eight of his Herculean abs in total, all of them cutting into your front and working to pin down your squirming hips. To stop you from getting more more more- “Fuuuck me. J-just want more-”

“Hmmm?”

“Ngh- I said m-more!” You yelp, breaths turning desperate and wheezing once he scrambles - scrambles - over the dewy, rumpled-up bedsheets to recover his favorite yellowy tie. 

Immediately looping it around your delicate neck. Your fluttery lungs fight for gaspfuls of air once he’s leveraging it to drag you alllll the way up off of the claggy pillows- he was bringing you to him.

“Now, whisper it nicely in my hah- ear, my wife. Tell me exactly what you want.” Nanami’s panted puffs cloud your brain with heat and need and him. Before you know it, you’re already nudging your lolled head up to his ear. “There we go, upsy daisy. That’s a good girl.”

And all you can manage out is a slow, simpering gasp of syllables that sounded something like more!

But that’s all it takes.

All it takes for him to reel his greedy hips back, back, back until the very crown of his bloated cock was smooching your ringed hole. Spraying out sheen after sheen of sweltering hot pre that coats your cunt n’ slides right inside.

Timed exactly with the pace that Nanami himself picks up, barrelling out battering rams that indent his rotund circumference into your spongy cervix. 

“Mhmmm, knew I’d h-have ya begging f’me–” Nanami coos something gravelly, holding your weakened head up to nuzzle sweet peck after peck on your lips. Shit, he’s even taking dirty lappings of the puddles of drool geysering from past your slack mouth. “Me. Me- right?” 

“Y-yes.” You’re yelping once his relentless digits tighten on his tie, cutting off your winded breaths. Choking you. “You- you, Kento.”

Soft, padded fingers just finish drawing an obvious NK on your hooded nub- was he writing his name on your clit? “That’s riiiight, s’Kento. Kento’s here for you, my love.” Punctured with sappy snogs - on your lips, inside your leaking pussy. “Kento, no one else.”

“Ngh- n-no one else.” Tiny whimpers crack within your throat when you feel the swampy splat! of slick pouring more n’ more out of you and drenching him from abdomen to his twitching ballsack. Babbling, “You- Kennn—”

“Cute- mine. You’re my wife.”

“All yours.”

“H-heh, bet ya can’t even remember now- What was damn fucker- coworker’s name again?”

“Oh.” Nanami almost asks you to marry him all over again at the way your brows have to furrow, head shaking from side to cockdrunken side to clear your poor lil’ head. It takes a copious vicious pounds into the mattress to even recall the answer to his question. “Right! He said his name was Zayne…from Linkon City.”

♡ GETO SUGURU - “Ya like that?”

Fuck- if the way whines pour from your overflooded lips wasn’t enough of an answer, then the syrupy slick constantly leaking out of you sure was. 

Your bawling cunt was all but having a conversation with Geto, all stuttered slurps n’ squelches that rung like music within his red-tipped ears. And he’s lurching his head in a sudden nod, pearly white teeth all on gleaming display when he ogles a fat dollop of sap and spit slithering down your thighs slooowly.

“Y-yes!” You’re crawling towards the shuddering mahogany headboard, ringing with violent creaks after every pound. “Yes yes yes- I like it, Suguru–”

“Heh, fuuuuck yeah you do.” He doesn’t even bat an eye before hooking a hand on your waist and dragging you all the way back down. “S’supposed to be a punishment but yer such a slut when you’re hck! thrown around.” Smooching a frosty thumb all down your silvery slit, he snickers once he feels your cute insides clench on instinct around him. “Then again…”

Without a singular warning, without even a shred of hesitation, a firm arm roams over to your throat. Tight. 

But Geto doesn’t just hold you- no, that would’ve been much too nice for him. Instead, he’s pushing the curvy mounds of his biceps ‘round your pretty neck like some sort of necklace - trapping you in a fucking headlock. 

You’re plastered like glue against his glissading front, and you think you’ve never been wetter as you’re massaged by his ridged abs. Thin trailways of boiling hot sweat streaming between his cushy pecs and hitting at your backside with a plap! plap! plap!

Voice hoarse in your ear. Low. “There we go. Theeeeere we go. How about this? Ngh- ya like-” Squeezing his arm even tighter until bursts of remaining air leave your lungs. You could feel every twitch, every flex of toned flesh hot against your own. “-that?”

A sob lets off from your stupidly unhinged lips, “Y-yes– I like it-”

“Greedy fuckin’ girls shouldn’t answer.” He’s promptly cutting you off, both with his deep bass and his deeper strokes. Immediately oozing a tiny heart of sticky pre inside, “I was hah- talking to my lady down here.”

You practically shiver at the feeling of his burnished lilac eyes coursing down to your prettily dripping cunt, and just at that moment he hits your cervix with a sloshing spank. 

Filthy. 

A thumb dips down to pry your treacly folds apart, Geto’s pinkish tongue slobbering down his grinning lips at the sight of you swallowing him like mad. The sight of your arched back dappling with perspiration after every vulgar swerve of your hips trying to keep up with his. Needy. 

“Mmmm yeah. She’s ngh- likin’ it alright. Look at her-” Sickly sweet strands of juices dangle off of his padded fingers like gum, so wet that his wrist gleams glossily. He just can’t help but lurch his head over to streamline a viscid web of saliva right on your sloppy hole, “-she’s a damn waterpark f’me.”

You keen at the back of your throat, spittle spraying a sheen all over Geto’s veiny forearm with a splash! “S-so mean, Sugu–”

“Mean? Mean?” 

Something resounds like a growl at the back of your boyfriend’s throat, and only numerous sticky swats of his rounded balls later do you realize - that was a giggle. A giggle. 

“H-hear that? My girl’s sayin’ I’m mean.” Another thwack of weepy spit hits your cunt, and the saccharine sweet gasp you take is delicious. Headlocking you tighter- “Oh, gorgeous. You asked to be punished with it r-rough. And you’re ah- getting it- fucking- rough-”

Rasping and ragged and gone. Utterly gone. 

If this was supposed to be a punishment then you’d gladly take more.

Geto was pounding into you viciously now, rattling your cottony brain with every sharp slap of his fattened crownhead. Probing deeply into your warm innards to spread apart tender nooks and crannies you didn’t even know existed. 

You were nodding like a stupid bobblehead, letting his veiny cock bloat n’ balloon up inside you- shit, the banging flesh where your ass met his silky pubes was rubbed raw by now.

A hoarse bark of laughter flees Geto’s lips once he realizes, immediately angling his rude pelvis just so he can grind purposefully against your agitated skin. It’s so cute the way your moans pitch even deafeningly higher at the texture. 

Sliding his strawberry pink divot juuuust off your magical spot, he rolls his eyes. “Seeeee? N’ you s-say I’m mean.”

At that very moment, you think you’re seeing stars. The only sensations ripping through your mind being the Earth-shattering cadence that Geto was fucking into you, and the soft tickle of his long, beautiful locks curtaining your spine.

You’re tugging mindlessly on one of his inky tendrils, dazed peripherals sliding to a flushed Geto. That split-second of direct eye contact enough to make his base swell- “P-pretty.”

Oh, fuck.

Fuck.

With a wicked slam! Geto’s both burying himself inside till the very hilt - straining your rubbery walls until you were whining at the hefty weight of him - and burying your face into the cushy pillow. His savage palm clawing and clawing at your head while he fucking cums, in the filthiest and most surprising way that fills your gooey cunt until you were overspilling. 

Just from that. 

“P-pull my hair-” He gasps - just barely audible enough that once you do, it makes a creamy coating of even more ribbony seed slip into your entrance. More and more and more. A steaming hot mess that makes you squirm-

“No. No.” Geto gasps - he begs. 

And you don’t think he even registers that he’s promptly slamming a firm foot down on your head to pin you pliably down and make you take it. 

This newer angle floods your orifice with such generous helpings that Geto feels his taste buds drench in water, sighing lovingly at the sight of your inner thighs being glued together by his sap. 

He’s stepping your head even deeper into the sullied pillowcase once he hears you snicker. Shutting you up. Meaty thighs shivering, emptied balls twitching sensitively at the slap of saliva he spits once more on your entrance. 

Gritting through furiously clenched teeth, “Oh, you are s-so getting hngh! pregnant tonight, gorgeous.”

♡ CHOSO KAMO - OLFACTORY ETHICS?!

“B-baby…” Choso’s sharp canines snaggle on the drenched fabric of your panties, broad chest heaving in ragged huffs! as your roommate gulps in a deeeep inhale- and his mouth just drops. “Oh, baby.”

You smelled so sweet. 

His favorite perfume - so good that it makes his pearly whites clench down and bite. 

He’s smearing his favorite pair of your pretty pink silk all down the lower half of his handsome face, where it’d mostly glued to ever since you’d caught him stealing your underwear not too long ago. 

Where it’d been since he’d blushed n’ begged for you to punish him.

And you’d known exactly how. 

“Just fuck me, Cho–” You’re crooning, the pretty sound of your voice itching something deeply primal in his mind and making him twitch. Full-bodied. Making his achingly hard cock bulge a few millimeters even wider n’ girthier, carnally desperate. “Fuuuuck— C’mon now- you can do it.”

“L-like this?” He’s whispering, all muffled and breathy. Darkened mahogany eyes lock in direct contact with yours as he’s rubbing the ridges of his veined shaft along the sticky slope of your pussy. “Tell me- use me.”

“Mhmm— you’ve got it, baby. Rough now, m’kay?” 

“R-rough…”

Slipping and sliding, his hips feel frenzied already. Tapping out a few fat globs of pre from that slobbering orifice nestled on top of his crownhead, Choso can’t help but thumb each bead past your sloppy hole.  

“G-gonna fuck you now.” He’s hiccuping out cloudy syllables, piping hot bursts of air that fan your face and make you shiver. And he notices, oh, he notices and flushes. “Gonna fuck- fuck you, baby…”

Choso’s jaw remains almost permanently unhinged as he watches his globular tip push past your teensy resistance, the clingy surface of your cunt molding and melting around him. Hot. Puffed-up pussy lips stretched wiiidely agape, your hole quivers with every one of his prominent veins scraping their way inside. 

A whine cracks at the back of his throat-

Shit, was this heaven?

Through half-lidded peripherals he’s stealing looks your way to confirm that you weren’t actually an angel. 

Wet tongue lolling out to give your leaky mouth a big kiss, “S’this- this-” And just then Choso’s rumbling baritone is so hot that it makes you clench - and him to jerk into a rut- 

He really was out of control now. 

“Oh.” He’s trailing off, hitting the damp ends of your pussy and he fucking sees white. Every inch that you’re flawlessly gulping down making him swoon into you, “Ohhhh fuck wait- fuck fuck fuck—”

Hard. 

Fast. 

Choso was sloppy, letting his sensory tips dangle near your hips while he bludgeoned you with every sultry second. Using his lean muscular strength to pull your ass down to slap n’ slap against his pelvis. 

Pumping his probing mushroom tip deeper until you swear you could taste every sappy ribbon of milky precum he was pounding into you. Until his sculpted abs were being struck ruby red at the stinging drives.

“This good? M’I good for you?” He makes such a messy puddle of slick pour from between your bloated folds, hitting a fat thumb over the gloopy mess. Your buzzing ears ring with the wet pap! “S’this r-rough, baby?”

“Fuck- ngh- f-fuuuuck, Choso—” Truthfully, you could barely even speak. The only thing able to escape your mouth being jumbles of fucked-out syllables and gluey drool. You whimper with each whack of his fat cock, “Faster-” 

Combing through Choso’s silky bangs, you tug away the stray strands plastered to his sweat-slicked forehead. An action enough to make him burn as bright red as his sobbing tip, leaning further into yours with his utterly ripped front. 

“M-more, baby.”

It’s the only thing that’s falling from your lips before nothing else can anymore. 

Because your dear roommate is taking the kindly time to slap over his palm on top of your mouth - sodden panties and all. 

Damn, was it a sight that made his dewy cockhead twitch dangerously in warning. 

Muffling your lecherous words with the stringy scrap of fabric, he grumbles. “Sh-shut up, baby- another word out of you n’ I ngh! w-won’t last much longer.”

Though- fuck, if he wasn’t weak whenever it came to you.

Because as he feels your steamy maw loosen - droplets of spit dripping down to lather his doughy palm - Choso finds himself inching in closer. Bubblegum pink nipples rubbing sensitively against your front when he leans in and listens-

You’re batting your lashes up at him, “Want- want it all inside, Cho.”

Oh. 

Oh, and when Choso cums it’s with his pussydrunken head buried into the delicate crook of your neck, sharp fringes of his teeth sinking so roughly into the side of your urgent pulse that you think it might draw iron-tasted blood. 

“T-take it.” His voice lilts unstably a few octaves higher, massive hands manhandling the legs looping his feet - pushing and pushing and pushing until your capped knees hit your tits. Veins popping out of his own neck, hard. “Every last fucking drop.”

It’s burst after burst. 

The curving globe of his plump head batters out stripes of hot cum with every single thrust, drilling right past the gluey maze of your walls to leave syrupy white splotches on your cervix that you feel coat your cunt in a sloppy second skin. Messy. 

You claw your hands down Choso’s flexing back and it makes his eyes burst with white-hot stars of pleasure. “Yeah- yeah. I-inside, baby- don’t miss.”

Hypnotically, he drags the simmering pads of his tongue right along your all-new bite mark. Possessive. The entrails of your panties still dangling haphazardly from one side of your mouth-

Choso feels his heart race when he bites down on the silken edges; letting it stretch stretch stretch before he spits your slutty underwear aside.

“Oh, baby.” Snogging away the wires of spit that sliver from between your lips, “Was- was that rough ‘nough.” He murmurs in concern against your lips, eyes daring to dart all over his animalistic marking. And then he slouches backwards to tilt further down. “Didn’t wanna-”

He takes one heartbeat - two - simply staring at the frosty ivory rings of cum that spilled out of your pussy. A mess that he had to blame for.

And when Choso looks back up at you, it’s through pure heart eyes. “A-actually, I don’t think that was ngh- rough enough, baby…”

♡ RYOMEN SUKUNA - Pony.

“Mmmm- my human’s always so sweet.” Sukuna’s sheeny glossed lips pry apart the heated folds between your legs, his long sultry tongue lapping up every bead n’ ribbon of cum pouring out of your cunt. “Sooo fuckin’ sweet.”

And just as monstrously big as his height was, his tongue was certainly not to disappoint. 

You yelp once the split-ended pads of his tastebuds swirl allll the way inside your dripping pussy, round and round. Poking and prodding into sweet geysering spots that he knew would make your pretty lil’ mind useless. 

One big, beefy hand of his roams up to curl around your throat and keep your dazed eyes dead locked on the slicked mess the king was making out of your sugary sweet pussy. Unmoving. 

“Y-you’re so…” You’re drawling, words so drunken that it’s like they were clinging to your hoarse throat. Your mouth simply hangs at the sight of Sukuna constricting his tongue to let creamy oodles of his seed from hours before sliiiiide all down to his parched throat like a runway. “-filthy, Kuna.”

“H-heh.”

He doesn’t get up until you’re all thoroughly cleaned up, every dollop of thick cum lapped away from your overstimulated entrance.  

Hell, you don’t even think Sukuna can think until he pulls away with a drenched plop! Stringy cobwebs of fluids sticking to his face as if some sort of lipgloss. 

A bulky second hand of his leaves a spank right on your throbbing clit, and within the blink of an eye you’re being scooped up into Sukuna’s arms. Nestled right against his cushy pecs - his two achingly hard cocks-

And when he kisses you it’s a reminder - letting your maw slide over the caramel salted splotches homed inside his mouth. Savoring it just as much as he was savoring you. 

Just as much as he wanted to ruin you.

Your spine arches with a scorched breeze as he inches in to grunt against your ear. Low. Prowling. “Callin’ me filthy when you’re the one leaking with my cum, brat.”

“W-well, not anymore because- fuck!”

“Quarrelsome.” He remarks over your shrill wails, toned muscles on his thighs flexing when he grabs the sweaty crown of your head and pushes you down, down, down onto his rock-hard dicks. Every gust of your heady breaths fucked out of you with just a few swallowed inches of his looong vein-decorated shafts. “I should fuck that outta ya.”

He’s bouncing his tattooed legs in a quick, harsh one-two one-two one-two. Panting, leering at the primal squeeeealch–! that rings in his ears.

Capped fringes of his knees smack against the sexy curve of your ass, the relentless little motions push past that tiny resistance and swivel Sukuna’s proudly swollen crowns all ‘round your bruised insides. 

Bulging you open, prying your sticky insides apart until he had you seated all prettily on his lap and whimpering.

“Ride it then, pretty mama. Show me what that ngh- needy human pussy can do.” Sukuna grumbles through a teeth-clenched lil’ grin, halfway through breaking into a soppy smile when your cute noises only get louder. He slouches backwards into the centuries-old headrest so that he won’t miss a single second of your sensual show, “N’ remember- I like fucking rough. I like fucking hard.”

“R-rough?” You rest your hands on his broad shoulders, gulping needily at the way his corded muscles flex underneath your touch. Legs already twitching as you swerve needily, aching once more for that splitting sensation of him plunging oh-so-deep inside. “Fuck- fuuuuuck, Kuna-”

You could already feel the fat bulbs of his tips grow even fuller, snagging right onto the crevices of your g-spot and tugging. He barely even has to try to make your head fill with stupid fuzz.

“Ya call this rough, lil’ human?” He’s spitting into your open mouth, grabbing a handful of your ass and making your clit smear down his tufts of curly pink. Gyrating n’ gyrating. “Seriously- s’embarrassing the king.”

“Th-then you-”

Just at that moment, he’s digging two hands on either side of your hips to slam! them down onto his. Hard. Stinging. Rubbing over the tenderized globeful of your ass before doing it again. Again. And again and again and-

“This is h-how ya fuck rough, pretty mama.” You swear Sukuna’s smirked grin was glistening with a thin trail of dumbstruck drool. “Feel good? Feel the sting? The way m’all deep inside-” Staring down at your cute, cross-eyed expression, he taps a plumply padded finger halfway down your tummy. “-here?”

You’re overstimulated, sensitive. The only thing you can do is nod. Nodding and nodding while a flash of smugness flickers in his crimson eyes. “Count.”

Oh? Oh.

And it’s only when his two matching cocks plant vicious pounds right where he’d marked - only when he slurs out a wet stripe of pre that drenches your pussy from the inside out - that you realize what he meant.

“O-one-”

“Too late. Two.” 

Sukuna grits out, practically mocking you. Numbering away every time his bawling divots were whacking your spongy cervix. The lightning-bolted veins on his lengths scrape every carnal spot he could reach - which was all of them.

“Three- ah! Four.” You mewl out, legs scrambling to latch around his tensing core when you’re struck with another one, two, three bludgeons of his girthy circumferences. It’s enough to make you dizzy, and it’s purely on autopilot that you let off soft gasps of, “Si- s-seven?”

Snickering, “Yer finally haaaah- gettin’ it.” The cushioned mattress rings with creak after creak as he repeatedly bucks. “Put yer back into it, brat.” 

“Ngh! Eight-”

“Mhm.”

“N-nine…”

“Mhm.”

Your papping flesh stings at the ferocious contact, already rubbed raw that when Sukuna swats a rude palm against your pussymound - you find yourself sobbing. Big, fat tears of salt, “Ten!”

“Nuh uh- that counts as hah- eleven.” 

Fuck- he has to stop himself from snickering. He has to stop himself from drooling through both cracked mouths, already missing the taste of you. If you looked closely, you could see the cursed mouth across his abs licking its lips greedily. Grinning. “Now cum f’me before I put my tongue in, too.”

♡ INO TAKUMA - Blush blush blush!

“Here?”

“Taku.”

“Or here?”

“Takuuu–!”

“Orrrrr–” Ino’s tossing his chestnut bangs out of his face to see your cute face better, snickering to himself as he lets his ramming cockhead draw a looong wet trailway to your cervix. Sweltering hot and heavy, slithering right past your precious g-spot. “-here?”

Your gooey walls twitch instinctively around him. “N-noooo-”

Pressing down. Hard. “What’s that? Oh yeah, here. Right?”

You’re huffing and puffing something that sounds like a quivering ‘please’, wobbly lips bitten between the ends of your teeth until Ino pries them free n’ sucks. 

“Hmmm. What was that?” His drenched, bawling divot rubs out a fat thud! mere millimeters above where you were aching for him the most. Again. Purposefully. 

“S-so mean.” You whimper for just about the nth time tonight as his deeply probing dick pushes against your gummy walls, stretching out the hidden crevices. Prominent veins almost massaging your magical spots but not quite. Tease. “All I did was c-call you ngh- pretty.”

Fuck, there it is again.

And it doesn’t matter how many times the very syllables have departed from your unsteady lips - Ino Takuma still blushed a cute, maidenly pink from apples of his handsome cheeks right down to his collarbones.

Breath hitching, nose bridge crinkling. If he was any weaker man he might just have cum—

He whacks the spherical bulge of his plumpened cockhead into you until your peripherals are teary. Hefty balls so fat that you feel the side of them flinch tenderly against your dripping cunt.

“Sh-shut up.” He’s shivering, teeth grit to stop himself from slipping out a strained keen. Those pretty fawn eyes of Ino’s slide all the way to the back of his throat when you slink a hand underneath the dark ski mask capped on his crown n’ caress. “Gonna- gonna fuck you until you haaah- forget that, sweetness. Gonna fuck you dumb.”

Your awestruck tastebuds fizzle with the taste of his splattered precum sloshing! inside you, watery trickles of saliva travelling all the way down to where your chin was smushed against your chest.

Where Ino was folding you into a mating press so tight that you could feel your ears pop after every pressurized thrust. 

He was being so…frenzied. 

Manhandling you to every whim and want, you were fallen onto the bedsheets delicately whilst he handled you like some ragdoll. And you’d never seen him act this vehement, this filthy, clapping his toned thighs noisily against yours. 

“N’ for that…” His sing-song bass tickles the precious soft spots near your neck, rearing to give your molten tongue tiny suckles. “M’not hittin’ that c-cute g-spot any time tonight.” 

It wasn’t simply a threat - he meant it.

He was stroking the slick-glittered mushroom head of his shaft over n’ over into every nook and cranny inside of you except your g-spot. Every rut so greedy that his buttery streaks of pre were piling on near that particular orifice. 

Drowning you.

Ino feels his heart race at the sultry little jitters you give him; your poor body torn between digging your heels into his tense shoulders and pushing him away or pap-pap-papping your ass down for more. 

“Now now, where are you goinggg—” He doesn’t waste any fucking time rounding a hand behind his head and lassoing you ankles within a few slender digits. Trapping you. Dragging you until the backs of your thighs were clapping in a standing ovation against his. “Fuck that pussy back. C’mon. C’mon, pretty.”

“P-pleeeease, Taku-” You can’t even bring yourself to be an ounce ashamed at the whiny pleas that invade your voice. “S-so close, baby- want it. Want it so bad.”

“Fuh-fuck…” He’s breathing out, mouth drier than a desert at the way you had him so weak. His prominent hip bones pat down your pelvis and leave your mouth gasping into perfect ohs! “Fuckin’ evil ya are. How bad do you want it?”

“S-soooo badly.”

“Hmmm, I dunno- where are those manners?”

“Please!”

“Hmmm?”

Oh, how he could feel his abs tense dangerously at the mixture of annoyance and depravity twisting your beautiful face.

“...w-with a cherry on ngh- top.”

“Mhm, n’ you’re gonna take it nicely?” Ino spreads your legs open a little wider, rocking and rocking. And you’re so wet - even wetter than the splattering pools of slick spittle that splosh out of your other set of lips. So sensitive. “Take it like my pretty c-cockslut?” 

You can’t mumble out anything through the thickly rounded fingertips that smush your cheeks together into a pout he almost finds adorable. “Y-yesh— give it t’me, pleeease?”

Fine. And then he does it - finally gives you exactly what you’ve been craving carnally all this time. Striking it right on the bullseye, like you knew he could.

Just a bump up of his plump, curvaceous tip into your splotchy g-spot and you’re halfway through screaming. Struggling and struggling your legs jerkily at the bolting shocks of your orgasm and Ino just doesn’t let up.

He keeps your ankles locked no matter how much you fidget, he keeps the vicious push of his leaking cock into your most favorite spots like it was a button. 

Fuck, it was almost too much.

Gritting his teeth through the sloshing figure-eights your hips swerve through every peak of your high, you’re milking yourself on his throbbing shaft so good that Ino forces himself to tip a hand towards his cottony mask and pull down-

“Taku–?” You’re questioning out in warbly tones once your vision was being blinked back, high tapering out into flimsy tingles that still manage to make your toes curl. 

Before you can stop yourself, your sensory pads flit over to his ski mask to tug away. And boy, were you fucking glad for that.

Because you’d never seen Ino so flushed. So ruined. 

He was like a picture. A red, red gale overtaking his twitching features ‘nough that you could connect the constellations of his freckles.

Caramel brows furrowed tightly knit, tawny lashes flapping his eyelids almost shut. His cherry pink lips looked so kissable; swollen and glossed in slimy spit and- and overstimulated tears.

All ready and awaiting the way you drag him back by the hair and gift his pinkish tongue with a wad of spit. Groaning.  

“My pretty boy.”

♡ GOJO SATORU - Starboy

You’re stuffed.

So stuffed with heaps upon heaps of Gojo’s slick cum and yet he was still possessing a massive hand clawing at your hips. The only thing holding you fucking upright while he drills his overworked cock into you, furiously. 

“T-Tooru—” Your sentence punctures with every hitch of your wheezing lungs, and you can barely see two inches in front of you let alone swivel your head back to stare at the strongest. Keening groggily, “How are you s-still even hck! going?”

He doesn’t answer. Fuck, you don’t even think he can even hear you right now.

But the way your voice pitches into a pretty whine makes him flinch. Buckling on your knobbly knees, you can feel the steamed handprints imprinted on either side of your papping mounds of flesh. 

Dizzy peripherals flickering to the side you gasp- he was leaving scorching hot marks on you. All nice, shapely lengths of his five digits. 

Gojo’s snickering- snickering through one of his ragged scoffs, and he rests his towering bodyweight until it was lounging on the base of your cutely arched spine. He’s shivering. Strained. “S’not enough.” 

Not enough? 

And at this point, your muddled mind is overtaken with the dawning realization that nothing might be enough for a freshly-unsealed Gojo Satoru.

Even though his raw cock was so red n’ swollen already, pulsing out inside you to the same ba-dump–! of your pulse rate. The fat lightning bolts of his veins angle oh-so-deeply against your g-spot. Everywhere and anywhere. 

And Gojo only has to trace a few greedy fingers down to feel the dewy trickles of seed that dribble out from your puffed lips like a waterfall. Ogling his lustrously glazed limbs and gasping-

Your mouth drowns in a fresh lamination of syrupy saliva at the way it makes your thighs slap together as if they were held by glue. Gojo’s bulky base endlessly decorating with more and more creamy strings of sappy cum - and then some.

“I-I’m serious…” You’re blurting out, both hands fisting the drenched silken sheets in front of you. You keep your gaze locked on the way he’s pummeling behind you and find yourself rendered almost spellbound. “-m-might not even fit-”

“Limitless void, sweetheart.” He’s cutting you off smoothly, blushing red crownhead twitching up eagerly with just the lecherous thought. Breathless, fuck- he was so far gone he could barely even choke out an answer. “Be my c-cum…dump.”

It takes you one violent thwack - two - of his sloppy, succulent shaft poking messily into your deepest innards for you to realize what he meant. He wanted to use limitless void on your needy cunt. And then an exact three-second spank to your clit for you to wonder whether he was already doing that.

Because Gojo’s doughy soft fingertips leave your body jolted, miniscule tendrils of blue lightning slithering all across your spilling pussy. 

“Toru- are you already…”

“O-oh.” He didn’t even realize. 

Your eyes roll back at the buzzing sensation of his cursed technique sprinting down your perfectly curved spine, repeatedly pounding hips twitching involuntarily. Vicious. 

“I w-wan’’ that.” You admit, the rooound plumpness of his tip swabbing at your g-spot precisely and making you more honest than ever. Bulbous tears formulate near your fluttering waterline, “Want it. Want it so bad- pleeease, Sato- mmpf-”

And you’re not sure if it’s the sorcerer’s superhuman reflexes or your cockdrunken mind - but it’s almost as if you’ve instantaneously teleported into Gojo’s broad, beefy arms. 

“F-fuuuuck–! Toru, it’s so much- ngh- it’s soooo much.” 

You try to jostle yourself, to perhaps run from the overwhelming cadence. But he doesn’t let you even budge. Of course, he doesn’t.

He was so rough. Using you. 

One of his hands shackled to your hips like superglue, kneading filthy handfuls of your ass while he guides you to meet every pound. The other snugly curled around your throat, the only thing holding you upright - the only thing pinning you to him. 

This all-new angle helping him maze deeper, deeper, deeper inside of you until it felt like he was permanently prying your jelly-soft walls open. The slosh! of his drizzled cum pouring lazily out of you, it was almost as heavenly as the feeling of Gojo’s chiseled abs sloping down your back.

He’s whispering in your ear, pitchy and rasping. “Yeah? Yeah?” His pearly white teeth nibble softly on your tender lobe, every sharp exhale of breath striking you swelteringly hot. “T-take- cumdump- take-”

The warm clinginess of your pussy has reduced the great Gojo Satoru to stuttering. 

“A-all inside” Your head lolls foolishly backwards into the cushioned comfort of his pecs, just slightly slipping on the sweaty sheen covering his muscles. You bat your tear-dipped lashes up at him, “Wan’ it all inside- o-okay, Toru?”

His response departs in a breathless gasp, “Okay.”

And when Gojo cums he makes sure that his girl is not even a second far behind. 

Throwing his head back with the most pornographic, draaaagged out call of your name- he wastes no time drenching his long, long fingers in a splat! of webbed saliva and pinching your clit. 

It’s like an explosion, it’s like you burst with the nth high of tonight - your rubbery walls milking Gojo’s length completely dry with the intensity, your body shuddering, heart thumping so hard you think you bet Gojo could hear it.

And he was even worse.

“S-sweetheart-” Gojo grits his teeth so hard that you hear them clink! Murked heaves are so solidly condensed that you think you can almost see them. Weighted hips clapping against your ass in a sloppy recurring plap-plap-plap. “My girl, m-my…cumdump.”

Your toes curl the moment you feel his thick, ribbony knots of seed overflood your insides. Waves upon waves upon waves of it caking in with the rest of his excess remnants, so heavy that you can feel it tenderly stroke your most sweetest spots. 

Almost too much.

The lights had shattered ages ago, and right now the both of you are so far gone that you don’t even hear the bits of loose furniture in Gojo’s bedroom fall to the floor with dull thuds! 

A milky white ring sugarcoats Gojo’s ivory pubic hair, making his silky texture leave wet streaks across your stinging ass. Ones that make him leap from hoarse and dumbstruck straight into babbling helplessly. 

Completely drunk on you. 

“My girl- my cumdump.” Broad arms wrap around your fatigued body. “My girl my girl my giiirl– oh, my girl.” Before Gojo gifts your bruised mouth with a tiny peck, loving. “D’you know what a-a mating press is?”

♡ HIGURUMA HIROMI - OH BABY, BABY…

The broiling bathtub water sloshes over each ceramic side, almost as wet as the silvery oodles of sap that just kept on pouring out from your pussy. Churning n’ smearing so vehemently that Higuruma can’t help but lift your legs up higher to take a longer look.

Admiring, honestly. 

“Isn’t this niiiiice?” He’s grunting out low into the cute lobe of your ear, your hips wriggling needily with every vibration rumbling from his broad best. So close that you could smell the flowery spuds of soap and his masculine natural musk. It was addictive. 

“A hot bath, n’ my hot wife-” Oh, you can already hear the smirk in his tonality. “-in a hot f-full nelson to boot.”

“Ngh! Hirooo–!” Your weeping whimpers babble out without you even knowing, the masses of your ass grinding vulgarly back into his prominent hipbones. “F-fuck me already.”

“Impatient impatient.” He tuts, “And why should I?”

“B-because I wan’ you—” 

You’re garbling out the prettiest noises, but that wouldn’t be enough to stop his vengeful teasing. Quirking a sleek, black brow. “Aaaand?” He loved this look on you, of course. All greedy n’ desperate. 

Though…little did your dear husband know that you had a secret weapon tonight. 

“And I want a baby.” You’re finishing off. Smug. 

Higuruma freezes. Higuruma gulps, “A-a what?”

“A baby, Higu.”

“A…baby.”

“Mhmm– ah!”

The yelp that departs your mouth in a sudden rush is solely because of the way that he latches his calloused fingertips onto the small of your back like a steering wheel and pulls you down down down. 

Greeting your sloppy entrance with pearly ribbons of pre and a sharp slap of his fat head.

“C-can’t just say shit like that out of your pussy, sugar, n’ ngh!” His gravelly tone punctures every pumped inch pinpricking inside of you. You feel so pliant letting him pry apart your deepest mushiest walls, “-not expect ta end up pregnant.”

Your hands scramble towards the smooth ends of the bathtub to keep yourself grounded onto something - anything. 

But, ah- Higuruma was selfish for your attention. And he ends up guiding your roaming palms up to his damp cocoa hair, letting you pullll through your bouts of adrenaline however you pleased. “Fuck- fuuuck jus’ like that, Hiromi.”

“I know, I know how to fuck my ngh- wife proper, angel.” He slicks his tongue out to lap at a beaded droplet of water running down your neck. Staring through half-lidded eyes, “You just sit- back- n’ take- it-”

Your eyes comically cross and uncross repeatedly with every whacked slam Higuruma plunges into your gooey depths. A sharp, stubborn one-two that leaves your ass rubbed raw from his happy trail so dark that it was almost black.

And he wasn’t easing you in- oh, not even in the least.

He was hard. Rough.

Rugged pounds so much more vicious than usual, you swear he was battering a bruise the same thick circumference as his plummy crownhead. And his tempo was juuuust enough to force the cracks of your mouth to fill up with treacly drool - not urgent, not slow. Simply precise, loooong fucks of his mean length.

You swear your very cunt was being molded to every puffy vein and ridge decorating his shaft, and the mercilessly massaging texture was enough to drive you wild.

You’re clinging onto his velveteen locks with one hand, and his big, bulging biceps with the other. “Ngh- Hiromi- i-it feels so good-” Clawing and rutting your way through every creamy mess of pre he was slipping past your ballooned-up folds. “You’re in so deep.” 

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

And, fuck, your husband didn’t like to see you wasting even those gummy slatherings of precum he was rewarding you. 

You’re feeling the round-tipped ends of his fingers caress the saturated seam of your pussylips and pinch. Holding your dewy cunt tightly closed while he was bound to fill you up - so much so that he promised you were going to overspill.

“Gonna be s-soooo much fucking rounder n’ bigger when I fucking breed ya. Riiiight-” Higuruma hiccups, long lashes tickling across his clammy cheeks at the ever-tightening hug of your pussy. Free hand skimming down to measure out a loooong distance between your gulping hole and where he was hitting his pre-capped head into your cervix. “-there. M’gonna breed ya right there, my wife.”

He was measuring you.

Dark eyes a mere millimeter-wide crack away from falling shut, imagining just how glowing and pretty you’d be all full of his kid.

More thorough, even more thorough. 

Your entrance was so cozy when he pinched your pussy that he had to arch off the polished bathtub with slippery schwfs! Pushing n’ pushing past the slight resistance of you sucking his heated, heavy cock after every thrust. 

Desperate. 

You were biting down on your lips to hold back primal screams, because Higuruma was making sure you felt every dragging scrape of his full veins. Making sure your fuzzy eardrums rang with every wiiiinded squelch and splosh resonating from down under - and that was not just the water. 

“Gonna fuck ya u-until ngh- until they all know what we’ve done. T-till they all know how I made a ngh- fuckin’ mess of ya.” He snickers after your heels slip along the bathtub trying to rut wildly into him.

“H-Hiro-”

“You wanted a baby. N’ now you’re fuck- getting one.”

“P-please–” You’re letting your head tumble backwards, bleary eyes rolling way deeper and deeper to the backs of your lids as Higuruma keeps rocking constantly into you. Impatiently, “Harder, baby. Harder. Faster.”

“Haaah? Harder? M’supposed ta take care of the future mother of my kids, sugar- not break her pretty ngh- pussy.”

Though he’s grumbling this into your unfastened mouth, his pace only picks up into something filthy. You almost feel dirty letting the plumpened curve of his mushroom tip swat the door to your womb. 

And then you feel his reddened, swollen divot dangerously twitch-

“W-wait-” It takes a few seconds for you to manage to get your eyes fluttering open, and even then you’re fighting against the temptation of his long, veined cock fucking you dumb. “Did you j-just say hck! ‘kids’?”

“Sure did, angel—” Higuruma titters by the side of your pulsating throat, gifting you with one, two, three pecks. Right before sinking his teeth into your fragrant skin and groaning, “We’re having five kids. At least.”

A/N. Hope you have a lovely week <3

Plagiarism not authorized.

[eraserbread]

pregnancy hormones don't stand a chance around your husband, nanami ✧

→ needy pregnant f!reader, whipped nanami, sexually explicit content

"hope that books not more interesting than me," you whisper, propped against the open bedroom door, dressed in nothing but a lacey babydoll lingerie set. your four-month pregnant belly peeks through the lace delicately, and your features are on fire.

kento gives you a little peek. "was wondering what took you so long." he's replying, flicking his book to the next page. you're standing, pouting in his presence.

"hello? i'm horny."

"and you do look very tantalizing in that outfit."

"so come take it off."

he gives you another look, this time lowering the leather-bound book enough to see his face. you pose, crossing your knees and jutting out your hip. you can feel those dark hazels fall over your jutting breasts, then to your widening hips, and finally to your swollen, pregnant belly. his little girl's home.

so, he sits up straight, shoving his book to the side table and ushering you over. "come on, love."

"needy girl..." kento is whispering against the back of your shoulder, pressing kisses there and letting them linger. you're hovering over his lap in reverse cowgirl, tongue pushed from your lips as you focus on staying steady.

"let me have it." you slur, cunt milking obsecnely over his bare lap. he's got a thick fist tight around his erection, making sure you're stable and comfortable before he lets you take him.

"i want you to, but i don't want you to hurt yourself... how about I be on top?"

"—no." you insist, shaking your head violently. he won't let the grip he has on your thighs loose, so all you can taste is the bulbous tip of his familiar, blushing cock.

"why do you insist on being so bratty?"

"I don't want to bottom, baby slides up and into my ribcage and ugh.." you're shivering, and if it wasn't for the abnormal influx of hormones, you'd be turned off just thinking about the pain.

the baby kento pressed into you all those months ago, was an active little girl. she kicked the hell out of you whenever you slept on your back, leading to long nights with little sleep. kento knows this, so why he's telling you to just lie there and take it, is lost on you.

though he's stubborn at times, kento is largely well-trained by you, so he lets you take him like this. his grip starts to loosen, and you can finally feel the stagnancy of his cock start to peek through your sticky folds and into you.

filled to the brim with need, you shiver instantaneously. "oh, please, pleaseplease. all the way—mmgh!!"

he's chuckling behind you—actually breathing a stupid laugh from his nose at your blatancy. "you're shaking already?"

to answer him —you're cumming, and it's a release you've never felt before. his fingers are pressing into your belly, keeping you strong and at his mercy as you cream helplessly all over him. your thighs are shaking, eyes rolling back into your skull as you cry and whine.

it feels like every single one of your nerve endings is being fanned and flamed, driving you absolutely apeshit like you've never been touched a day in your life.

"oh, baby... love."

"sh-shut up."

"that feel good?"

"keep—just keep going." you're begging, drool dripping from your lips as his cock massages that sticky, spongy bunch of nerves at an angle only his cock could hit. he's circling his hips under you, tongue tracing licks across your neck.

your pretty lace panties are ripped and disregarded as the night goes on, and your teddy is busting at the seams, sticking to sweat and dipping off your shoulders. kento's big hand reaches to cradle your swollen breasts, growling in your ear as he fucks you just right... so perfectly and deep that you can feel the slick cervix kisses every time he bottoms out.

you're crazy, and fucked off of five orgasms that night.

thank god for pregnancy hormones—thank god for your husband and all his raw talent. sure, he'll bicker softly just to ignite your needy fires, then he'd give you what you want, exactly how you want, until you're sick with it.

what a thoughtful husband.

[i-reblog-castiel]

will forever love that .5 seconds after jimmy novak regains his wife's trust by admitting he's psychotic, he decides to beat the shit outta his friend for being a demon, completely throwing that trust away

[vandrs]

[ 𝐥𝐢𝐞 ] : receiver is trying to convince sender they're feeling fine.

vander s t u m b l e s slightly as he makes it to the basement floor, a little unsteady on his feet as a hand goes to his side. he knew he needed to clean himself up before the girls woke up. no need to worry them. dawn hadn't broken quite yet, he should have time. he winces slightly as he takes his first step towards the door to the door, reaching up to wipe the blood from his face before he freezes in place. mid-wipe he sees the pink haired girl. they hold each other's gaze for a few moment before he sighs, and completes the wipe of his mouth. he takes a step towards his door, still looking to violet as he says, “ everything's alright, vi. you can go back to bed. ”

@gntlets / desperation meme.

[marvelstoriesepic]

A Thousand Times Before

Pairing: Avenger!Bucky x Avenger!Reader

Summary: Bucky travels to an alternate universe for the sake of a mission. But he doesn’t expect to come face to face with a version of you that loves him, completely and openly. Back in his own world, he is left with a truth he can’t keep to himself anymore.

Word Count: 16.5k

Warnings: alternate universe; multiverse; so much yearning; identity confusion; emotional distress; guilt; self-worth struggles; unintentional non-consensual kiss (non-violent, due to mistaken identity); angst; heartbreak themes; slight mentions of Bucky’s past; self-preservation; self-doubt; Bucky is a man in love

Author’s Note: This ended up being longer than I intended. Anyway, I’d love to hear what you think! Also, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an alternate version where the roles are flipped. This time the reader travels to another universe where Bucky and your counterpart are already a couple. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in reading too! I hope you enjoy ♡

Divider by @cafekitsune ♡

Masterlist

The air smells of memory.

As though someone took the world he knew, put it through a sieve, and rebuilt it with hands that were almost - but not quite - shaking.

Bucky walks slow, even though his boots echo down a corridor that used to be silent. Used to be. In his world, the east wing of the Avenger’s compound is always cold, sterile, mostly unused. Here, the lights are warmer. Someone’s installed those vintage bulbs. They buzz faintly and flicker around.

There is a plant in the hallway. A real one. He steps past it. Looks down. A ceramic pot painted with little sunflowers. A tiny sticker peeling off the side.

This version of the compound is lived-in.

It’s unnerving.

He hates how it makes him breathe more deeply as though he is listening for something it shouldn’t. How everything is just off. The couch in the lounge is turned at a different angle. The vending machine is missing. There is a lavender-scented candle burning on the coffee table.

He doesn’t trust this. He doesn’t trust any of it.

Not the way the ceiling seems too low or how the hallways echo the wrong sound the longer he walks. The floor beneath his boots is almost the same. But almost is what gets people killed. And he’s not in the business of dying again. Not even here. Not even in a world that’s supposed to be some mirror image of his own.

It smells of lemon disinfectant and something faintly floral as though someone sprayed a bottle of room freshener and hoped no one would notice the rot underneath.

He runs his metal fingers along the wall as he walks, lets the vibranium whir quietly against the plaster. Feels the microscopic grooves in the paint.

In his universe, there is a crack near the main stairwell. Sam swears he didn’t do it. Clint insists he did. Here, it’s perfectly smooth. That bothers him more than it should.

He takes in this slightly different world as though maybe this is all some trick of the multiverse, some clever illusion designed to fool the worn-down man with the metal arm and the hundred-year-old ghosts. But the walls are still painted in the same color - off-white, barely warmed by the overheads. The hallway lights flicker golden. As though someone decided the compound shouldn’t feel like a facility. As though someone decided it should feel like home. His breath still fogs faintly in the colder patches of the corridor.

This could still be his universe somehow.

Even though it isn’t.

And even though he doesn’t want it to be.

He never wanted to be part of the mission.

He said no. Loudly. Repeatedly. With many adjectives and lots of glares. It didn’t matter. Fury said he was the only one who could go. That this universe had some piece of tech - some half-mythical Howard Stark prototype that their Stark never got the chance to build.

Something with the potential to rewrite temporal coordinates with precision. To fix anomalies. Maybe even to bring back the ones they lost.

He sat through the debrief like a man sitting on a bomb. Not moving. Not breathing more than he needed to.

And Bucky noticed, the way he always did, that you never ask quite so many questions during debriefing - unless the mission involves him. And this time, it’s only him. So that meant more questions from you. More concern you didn’t even try to mask.

And it made his heart clench.

You asked how they knew this tech even existed in that timeline.

You asked why Tony couldn’t just build it himself to which the man gave you a look.

You asked what would happen if Bucky saw someone he knew. If he saw himself.

You asked what exactly Bucky was going to walk into and what was expected of him.

You asked how much they even knew about this universe.

Steve had exhaled, hands braced against the briefing room table, blue eyes clouded. “We don’t know much,” he admitted. “This universe is close to ours in structure, but details are limited. No major historical deviations. No sign of HYDRA still in power. No active wars. Just small shifts. Choices made differently.”

Bucky had watched your face tighten as if the lack of data itself was a warning.

“SHIELD had a file on it, but nothing concrete,” Steve went on. “Stark’s readings say it’s stable - no time fractures, no reality collapses. Just another version of what we know.”

Bucky had listened, fingers flexing against his metal wrist. Close to theirs, but not the same. And he wonders, not for the first or last time, what choices this other world made for him.

The mission is simple. Locate the prototype. Extract it. Avoid unnecessary contact with variants. And get the hell back before anything breaks - him, the people, the timeline.

Bucky stopped listening entirely after receiving all the information he needed.

He only registered you shifting beside him, and it was the tiniest movement, but he noticed. You always get fidgety when something bothers you. He wanted to say something, reassure you, but he didn’t truly know if he even got this.

He knew you were worried. Knew you were angry. The kind that made your eyes too quiet and your hands too still. The kind that made Bucky feel like he was walking through a house where all the lights had been turned off, but every door was open.

When Dr. Steven Strange opened that portal, you stood in the corner of the room, watching him and giving him that guarded look that said you better come back whole. He couldn’t meet your eyes for too long.

And when the world rippled and bent, and the air shimmered as though it might break, and he stepped forward like a man walking into the sun with his eyes closed, he thought of you.

The stairs groan beneath his boots, familiar but not.

Same wood. Same color. But smoother. As though someone took the time to sand down the scars.

In his universe, the fifth step has a chip where Steve dropped a dumbbell. Everyone tripped on it at least once. Here, it is whole. Perfect. No history at all.

That’s what gets him. The lack of damage. As though this place hasn’t lived the same kind of life.

He reaches the second floor and hesitates.

The hallway is dim. Only the lights overhead are on, flickering just slightly. He hates the buzzing. It’s like something alive and trapped.

He turns left.

Your room is down this hall.

Or - your room in his universe is down this hall. He shouldn’t assume anything. Things are wrong here. Tilted just a few degrees off center. The kind of wrong you don’t see until it’s already unmade you.

But his feet are already moving.

It’s not like he’s planning to go in.

He just wants to look. Maybe see how different this version of you really is. Maybe see how different he is, through your eyes.

He reaches your door at the end of the corridor. It’s cracked open. That’s weird. You usually always have it shut.

Your voice isn’t behind it. You’re not laughing, humming, ranting about something. There is only quiet.

He steps closer.

The doorframe is covered in tiny indentations. Not scratches - these are deliberate. Someone’s been marking height on the trim. Two sets of lines. One lower than the other. Two sets of initials scrawled in black ink. Yours. And his.

He knows it’s yours. Because he knows your height. Like a number carved into his bones.

He’s memorized the space you take up in a room. Not just how tall you are, but the way your presence fills the air.

He knows where your head would rest if you stood beside him. Knows it would reach just beneath his chin. Knows the sound your footsteps make when you enter a room, and how the air shifts when you’re near.

He has painted you in his mind a thousand times before.

Eyes open, eyes closed.

In dreams, in silence.

In the echo of a laugh you left behind on a Tuesday.

He’s mapped you in the kitchen. Measured, in his mind, which cabinets you can stand beneath without hitting your head. Which shelves you can’t reach so he can be there, quietly, to help. So he can hand you that mug you always squint up at, the one you pretend you don’t need.

He knows how your arm swings when you walk.

Knows the rhythm of your stride. Knows your pace.

And sometimes, not often enough to be suspicious, he lets his hand brush yours.

Lets his fingers catch a hint of your warmth.

It’s not an accident.

It never is.

He carries you like a story he hasn’t told yet.

And he is aching, aching, aching to write you down.

Bucky stares at the markings like they might reach out and touch him.

He brushes his fingers against one. The ink smudges slightly under the metal pad of his thumb. Fresh.

He doesn’t understand.

Why would he-?

No. It has to be a coincidence. Just a prank. A weird joke. Someone else with your handwriting, maybe. Another version of him. One who doesn’t carry his past like a loaded gun. Or it’s just some odd inside joke he never got to know about in his own universe.

Bucky moves to step back, but his eyes catch on something else.

To the right of the door, hanging crookedly, is a small, square canvas. Acrylic. Textured.

It’s a painting. He knows it immediately. Your style.

He’s seen you paint a thousand times in silence, your jaw clenched, music too loud in your headphones. You always say you paint when you can’t say something out loud. When the words get stuck in your chest and rot.

This painting is familiar. A half-sky. A steel arm. Fingers open, reaching toward a red string that trails off the edge of the frame.

He knows what it means. He knows you.

But the painting doesn’t belong here. Not like this. It’s intimate. Meant for someone who understands the weight in your throat when you speak through colors.

Someone like him.

His stomach twists.

Maybe it is him.

He doesn’t like that thought. Doesn’t like how it makes his heart trip over itself.

He takes a step into the room because his brain told him to and his body didn’t want to argue. And he stops breathing.

Because you're not there.

But the room is.

The room is here.

And that’s almost worse.

It’s too familiar.

Not identical, not exact, but similar enough to tear him wide open.

The walls are a different color. Now necessarily lights. But just not how he remembers it. The books on the shelf are in new places, different spines, rearranged lives.

But the couch is the same shape, the same worn-out comfort.

The window still drinks in the light the same way - slanted, soft, forgiving.

And there’s a sweater messily folded on your dresser.

A book, face-down on the cushion like someone meant to come back to it.

Like you were just here.

Like maybe, if he stays long enough, you’ll walk back into the frame of this almost-life.

He doesn’t touch anything.

He’s afraid to.

Because this version of the world remembers you.

The shape of your existence lives here - in shadows and coffee rings, in the faint scent of something sweet and floral and you.

He walks the room like an intruder in someone else’s dream, eyes cataloguing the differences, chasing the sameness.

He notices that the cabinet doors hang slightly crooked in the same way.

And for just a moment he swears he hears your voice in the next room.

But it’s only silence, mocking him.

He wants to sit.

He wants to stay.

Wants to believe that if he closes his eyes, you’ll be beside him again.

He knows it isn’t true.

This isn’t his world.

This isn’t his home.

And this isn’t his you.

But the ache doesn’t care about reality.

The ache believes in the melodic sound of your laughter and the empty seat beside him.

There’s a coat draped over the back of a chair.

His coat.

Not one like it.

His.

The leather’s too worn in the same places. The collar stretched where he grips it with his right hand. There’s even the tear near the cuff that you stitched together with dark red thread, muttering that you weren’t a tailor but you’d seen enough war movies to fake it.

He steps inside without meaning to.

The room smells like you.

It’s your scent - soft, unassuming, threaded through with something sweet. Like worn pages and old tea and maybe vanilla.

It’s the same smell that clings to your hoodie when you get closer to each other on cold stakeouts to warm the other. The same one that lingers on your gloves when you pass him something, and he holds them a moment too long just to feel the warmth you left behind.

There’s a mug on the nightstand with faded text that reads I make bad decisions and coffee.

He bought that for you. In his world. As a joke.

You still used it until the handle cracked, and then you glued it back together and kept using it anyway.

He reaches out for it.

Stops.

His hand is shaking.

Bucky turns slowly. And sees the photo.

It’s not framed. Just pinned to a corkboard on the far wall, beneath torn paper scraps and to-do lists written in your handwriting.

It’s the two of you.

He recognizes the background - Coney Island. A bench by the boardwalk. Sunlight in your hair. His arm around your shoulder. His face not looking at the camera, but at you.

You’re laughing. And he looks-

He looks in love.

Like he has everything he ever wanted.

His breath hitches.

He steps back.

Back again.

Like distance might undo the gravity of what he just saw.

His ears are ringing.

None of this makes sense. Not fully.

He is stepping into a space he should not recognize but does.

The walls are a little brighter than in his world. Pale blue. Like the sky on cold days. There’s a candle on the windowsill—burned low and forgotten. Its wax has dripped onto a saucer, hardened into a small, messy sculpture. The bed is half-made. A throw blanket in a tangled heap at the foot of it. He recognizes that blanket. You two fought over it last movie night and then ended up sharing it.

There’s another book lying face-down, this time on the mattress. A knife on the nightstand. A half-written grocery list in your handwriting with his name scrawled at the bottom next to coffee and razor blades and more apples.

He stares at the list too long. At his own name like it sits in the wrong place. Like it’s foreign and familiar all at once.

His heart makes a quiet, traitorous sound in his chest.

He shouldn’t be here.

This isn’t his room. It’s not his place. Not his world. He’s just a shadow slipping through someone else’s life.

The longer he stays, the more it feels like the walls are leaning in.

He has a job.

A mission.

A very, very clear objective and a limited window to complete it in. That’s the only reason he’s here. The only reason he agreed to this whole ridiculous plan.

He doesn’t belong to this life.

He doesn’t belong to you.

Not like this.

Especially not like this.

He steps back. Slow. Controlled. As if the room might lurch and pull him in again, keep him held tight inside the heat of it. The scent of lavender on your pillow. A half-drunk mug of something still faintly warm on the desk. A soft blanket, folded neatly over the back of the couch by the window. Woven wool, pale grey, fraying just at the corners. In his world, that blanket lives in the rec room. He draped it over your slumbering body a few times already after you fell asleep somewhere between the second and third act.

The room creaks as though it knows he’s not supposed to be here.

So he leaves.

Each footfall measured like a soldier retreating from a line of fire. Not because of danger.

Because of what it could mean.

He closes the door behind him. Doesn’t let it latch.

He is leaving your room because he has to.

Because he’s still Bucky Barnes, and he still has something to do with his hands that isn’t letting them hover uselessly over photographs he never shot, or standing in the middle of a space that smells like your skin and wondering how long it would take before he forgot this wasn’t real. Or wasn’t his.

The hallway is still and dim. It breathes around him, too familiar and too wrong all at once. Different lungs, but the same bone structure.

His boots scruff over the same tile. The grooves on the walls are the same, the small imperfections in the paint still visible where someone - Clint, maybe - banged a cart too hard against the corner and then tried to cover it up with exactly the wrong shade of touch-up.

There’s a duffle bag sitting outside the laundry chute with a name tag stitched in crooked red thread: WILSON. Of course. Even this Sam never takes his stuff all the way in.

And there is a vending machine. It stands in the wrong corner, but it too has a post-it note stuck to it - out of order, again, thanks Tony - with a penknife stabbed through it, just like Natasha used to do when the machine ate her protein bar credits.

These things shouldn’t exist here. But they do.

Everything feels so carefully replicated, as though this universe is a reflection cast on rippling water - almost right, except where it wavers.

The picture frames are all straight here. No one’s taped up drawings on the elevator doors. But the dent in the wall by the training room door is still there - Tony left it during a particularly aggressive dodgeball game. And the pillow on the corner of the couch is still upside down. Steve never fixes it.

Someone’s sweatshirt is slung over the railing. Sam’s. Same one he wore for three weeks straight after the Lagos op. It still smells like burned rubber and that weird detergent Sam insists is “eco-friendly but manly.”

The common room has a blanket folded over the arm of the couch.

It’s yours.

You always fold it the same way. Two halves, then thirds, then smoothed flat.

The corners of his mouth twitch. Not a smile. Just muscle memory of one.

He walks slower now. Like he’s afraid he’ll wake something up.

He turns down the south hall, toward the kitchen.

He tells himself it’s for the layout. That he’s retracing steps, building a map in his head, keeping sharp like they trained him to. But really it’s you. It’s always you. He knows you’re here, somewhere, and if he turns the wrong corner too fast he might see you in a way he isn’t ready for. Or worse - see you in a way he’ll never forget.

His hand curls into a fist. Flesh and metal both.

The light changes first.

The kitchen here is bigger. Airier. The windows seem to stretch wider than they should, the frame redone in something softer than steel. Someone left the lights low, warm glimmers buzzing faintly above, full of melancholy chords.

And then he freezes. Everything in him turns to stone.

He stops breathing.

Because there are you.

Standing with your back to him.

You are in fuzzy socks, standing at the counter, shoulders relaxed, a pot simmering on the stove, and a sway in your movements that hit him so hard his throat tightens. You shift your weight slightly, hip against the edge of the counter, your hand rising to tuck your hair behind your ear.

The way the light hits you from behind is exactly the same.

You are moving through a rhythm you don’t know he’s watching.

You’re cooking something - he doesn’t know what, can’t smell it through the barrier of this aching distance - but it all is so heartbreakingly familiar. The tilt of your head as you read the label. The absent little sway in your hips as you stir something in the pan.

It’s domestic.

Effortlessly soft.

The kind of moment he’s never had, but has imagined a thousand times before.

His body goes very still. Maybe if he moves, the moment might shatter.

But it cleaves him open.

Because you move the same.

You move the way you do in his world - as though every room bends slowly toward you. As though you don’t know how much of your soul you leave behind in your trail. As though the air makes space for you because it wants to. Because it has to.

He watches.

Rooted to the floor.

This is doing something brutal to him. Seeing you here like this, in this soft golden kitchen that smells like tomatoes and thyme and something slow-cooked with patience and love, tucked into his shirt as though it doesn’t tear his heart apart.

You’re not just wearing it to steal warmth or tease him, the way you’ve done before in his world - tugging on his hoodie after a long mission, smirking when he raises an eyebrow, pretending it was an accident. You always returned it too quickly. Always laughed too loudly when he was too nonchalant about it. Always looked away too fast.

But here. Here you wear it as though you truly mean to.

Here you stir sauce in his shirt and sway slightly to a song you don’t know you’re humming and taste the spoon as though this is just another Saturday. Here, the shirt is not a stolen thing.

The hem skims your thighs. The collar is stretched slightly. The cotton even moves in your rhythm. His name is ghosted into the shape of you, etched along your silhouette. It’s almost too much. It’s absolutely too much.

Your movements are familiar in the way only time can make a person. And God, you move the same way. The same way. Like the version of you he left behind an hour ago. Fluid. Quiet. Self-contained. You hum under your breath, just barely.

He feels it like a bruise forming under his ribs.

His hand curls at his side. Metal fingers flex.

You don’t see him.

He’s not ready for you to. He knows he shouldn’t let you see him.

Not here. Not like this. Not when you’re standing in a kitchen that looks like the one you always complained was too small, in a shirt that is his - or the other Bucky’s - cooking with your whole body curled in that same subtle tension like you’re thinking about something else entirely.

And for one breathless second, he forgets.

He forgets this isn’t his kitchen.

That this isn’t his world.

That the you standing there isn’t the one who left a hair tie on his wrist last Wednesday.

That you’re not the one who laughed at him for not knowing how to use your espresso machine but then proceeded to teach him with that sweet voice of yours he doesn’t mind drowning in.

But God, he wants to walk across the room. Wants to slide his arms around your waist. Rest his chin on your shoulder. Breathe in your scent and feel your heartbeat under his hands.

Because he’s seen you like this before.

In his own kitchen, in his own universe.

Not often. Just enough to be dangerous.

You, in fuzzy socks. You, humming softly. You, squinting into a pot like it might confess its secrets.
You, looking over your shoulder and catching him staring.

Smirking. Amused. But with a warmth in your eyes.

And now, he just watches.

This version of you doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t feel him standing there, made of want and memory and too much tenderness for a heart that was never meant to carry this much.

He grips the doorframe.

Tries to swallow the pain.

Because this is what he’s always wanted, but it isn’t his.

And it won’t be.

But he can’t stop looking.

He knows he should move. Now.

He’s not supposed to linger.

Not supposed to look.

Not supposed to feel.

He’s a shadow in this world, a breath not meant to be heard. A presence designed to pass unnoticed.

But you-

God.

You are gravity and he is weak against it.

You are the glitch in every rule, the exception in every universe.

And he can’t help it.

He looks.

He stays.

Because there is no version of reality where he walks past you untouched.

You are the only thing in this place that hasn’t changed.

The only thing that feels right.

And that’s the worst part.

Because you feel like home.

And you’re not his.

You might never be.

But he stands there, selfish and still, pretending the silence could make him invisible. Pretending this version of you isn’t real. That your shape, your voice, your hands wouldn’t undo him in ways the war never could.

You reach for the spice rack, standing on your toes just a little, the hem of the oversized shirt lifting slightly. His name is written in the way the fabric hangs off your frame. It’s branded into this whole place.

He watches you like a man watches fire from the other side of glass - warmed, lit, and ruined all at once. You move like morning through him - and he, all dusk and dust, knows he is never meant to touch such light.

You wear that shirt on your shoulders as though it is normal for you. As though you want it to be there.

Bucky watches it stretch across the curves of a body he’s only ever worshiped in dreams.

You still feel like you, he thinks and the thought is so sudden and so violent that he has to step back - just a fraction of an inch, just enough to pretend he didn’t feel it, just enough to pretend it doesn’t mean something.

He doesn’t understand how this version of you still reads like poetry he’s already memorized.

He backs away, so slowly, he wonders if time might forgive him for the moment. For his hesitation to leave.

For the way, he just stands there and watches you as though you are the last good thing in the world.

As though you are the world. His world.

You turn, slow, stirring spoon still in hand. You haven’t seen him yet. You’re focused, brow furrowed just slightly, lower lip caught between your teeth, and he knows he should get the hell away from here.

But he is frozen in place. His muscles aren’t working.

He sees the angle of your cheek, the line of your neck, the quick twitch of your nose as though you’ve caught a scent you know too well.

And then you look up.

You see him.

Bucky’s mind is running on empty cells.

Your whole face changes. Clouds lifting. Sun rising. Your smile is instant. As though seeing him is something your body wants to do.

Everything in you brightens. As though the sun cracked open inside your chest. Your whole body jolts. Just a fraction. In surprise, delight. As though seeing him is something that rearranges the air in your lungs and makes it easier to breathe.

He is not prepared for the way you breathe his name.

“Buck-” your voice is thick with shock and joy and something lighter than either. “You’re back.”

He doesn’t move. Can’t.

The word back rattles in his ears. Echoes. Feels like a lie made of gold. He is not back. He is not yours. Not in this life. Not in this room. Not in the way you somehow seem to think he is.

You don’t give him time to speak. You don’t give him space to even think.

Because you’re already closing the distance between you, fast and sure-footed, and he has just enough sense left in him to realize he should say something, before you launch yourself into his chest, arms flung wide, a soft gasp of excitement still spilling from your mouth.

You collide with him hard and certain and unapologetic, and your arms wind around his neck as though they’ve done this a thousand times. So easy with him. Knowing the shape of him.

He stiffens. Every muscle in his body locks up, heart ricocheting against his ribs. He chokes on his breath.

He’s too overwhelmed with this situation to hug you back. His arms stay frozen at his side. His fingers twitch, trying to reach for you but remembering they shouldn’t.

You’re warm. You’re so warm.

You smell like that candle on your windowsill. Like a version of comfort he hasn’t earned.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were back?” you murmur, voice muffled as you bury yourself into the crook of his neck, full of a joy so honest it makes his entire ribcage squeeze the life out of him. “I thought you were still stuck over there. I was starting to get worried. Were you trying to surprise me? Because you definitely surprised me.”

Bucky can’t speak. He can’t do a single thing and that’s absolutely pathetic. He wants to say something clever or distant or safe, but his mouth is a graveyard and the words are bones. He’s not sure he even remembers how to use them anymore.

Your breath fans across his collarbone, your nose brushing his jaw, and it’s too much.

The feeling of you against him is unbearable. You fit. Of course, you do. His body knows you, even if his brain is screaming that this is wrong, that this is not the life he is living, that this version of you is not his to touch.

But you don’t know that. You don’t hesitate. Your hands slide up his back. One of them tangles in the hair at the nape of his neck. The other rests against the curve of his shoulder. His flesh shoulder.

He feels like glass. Like a single breath could rip him to shreds.

You pull back just enough to look at him.

There is something tender in your eyes. Something known. Something that sees him without flinching. You’re beaming. And he is blinded.

You’re looking at him as though he’s something you loved for years and known down to the marrow.

And then, so quickly, so confidently - you kiss him.

Bucky freezes.

All the air leaves his lungs.

His heart stutters in his chest.

Your lips meet his as though the air between you has gravity, as though you have done this before, soft and sure, knowing how he likes it. You kiss him as though you’ve kissed him a thousand times and a thousand more.

Bucky is a rigid wall, thunderstruck.

But he doesn’t stop you.

He should. He knows he should. The second your hands touched his face, he should have stepped back. Should have told you the truth. Should have warned you that this isn’t him. Not the right one. That the man you think you’re kissing is a ghost wearing someone else’s memories.

But he doesn’t. He lets you. For a heartbreaking moment. Lets his mouth press to yours for the span of a beat and a half. Lets the warmth of you crack the ice he’s been carrying in his chest for too long.

Your lips are warm, soft, sweet, tasting of honey and cinnamon and nostalgia and the imaged version of a dream he’s buried too deep to name, one he’s never dared to reach for but still lingers in his bones. Bucky doesn’t know if he’s breathing or if that became something irrelevant.

He lets you press into him as though the whole world hasn’t changed, as though this you is not a stranger wearing your skin, your voice, your tenderness. And for a second, a small and selfish, shattering second, he melts.

His muscles go slack and his eyes fall closed and the universe falls into place. Your lips on his feel like relief, like the end of war, like something he didn’t earn. He lets himself sink into it, into you.

You kiss him as though you know him. As though you know the hollow places and where they go. As though your body is working off muscle memory forged from love he was never around long enough to deserve.

Your hands are on his face and you’re kissing him as though this means something and he wants to pull away, he does, but not for one split-second. He folds like wax in flames, pliant and helpless under your affection.

His heart stutters - skips, crashes, burns.

Your body is pressing forward as though it’s coming home.

His mouth moves with yours, slow and stunned and melted, like a man learning to breathe in a language he doesn’t speak.

This is what he has imagined. This is what has haunted the spaces behind his eyes when he lets his guard down. He has imagined this. Wondered what your breath would taste like when it caught between your mouths, how your fingers would feel fisted in his hair, how it might feel to be wanted by you - openly, without hesitation, without shame.

But then you whisper against his mouth, soft and breathless and full of joy.

“God, I missed you.”

And everything collapses.

The words strike like ice water down his spine. It’s like being shot. He grows tense again. His eyes snap open. His mind catches up to his heart. The sweetness goes sour in his mouth. The warmth becomes poison under his skin. Because it isn’t real. This isn’t real.

You’re not his.

Not his to kiss. Not his to miss him. Not his to touch him with that bright look in your eyes as though he is part of your story.

You think he’s your Bucky. The one who - as Bucky would imagine - kissed you on every hallway in this place, whenever he could. The one who knows which side of the bed you sleep on. The one who earned your trust, your touch, your history.

And so he breaks the sky.

He pulls away - rips himself out of paradise with shaking hands and a jaw clenched so tight it might snap. The breath that leaves him is ragged, torn.

Every muscle in his body is tight. This is not your kiss. Not yours to give or his to take. Not when you don’t know. Not when you think he’s someone else.

And even though it’s you - your warmth, your voice, your heartbeat fluttering against his chest - it’s not the version of you he’s imagined this with.

And it’s not right.

The guilt punches him all at once, shame and grief and confusion he’s never quite learned to survive. He recoils - not even fully on purpose - but instinct, instinct that tells him he has stolen something you didn’t offer him.

He’s just a stranger behind familiar eyes.

You freeze. Blink at him. Confused. Concerned.

Your smile falters. Disappears.

His chest heaves once, twice, too fast, not able to breathe properly with your taste still caught in his mouth. His hands curl into fists at his side, trying to remember what they are for.

And then he sees it - your worry folding into something smaller, something more ashamed.

And it murders him in slow motion, one heartbeat at a time.

Your hands drop away from his face and flutter against your lips for the smallest second as though maybe you’re the one who crossed a line.

And he watches, helpless, as the light behind your eyes dims.

You take a tiny step back, shoulders inching inwards as though you’re suddenly unsure of yourself.

And then your eyes widen, and the guilt spills out of you now, sharp and immediate.

“Buck, I-” you start, your voice soft and hesitant. “I’m sorry. That was… I shouldn’t have just- I didn���t mean to- God, you probably needed a second to just settle, and I-” you trail off and take another step back as though you think you hurt him.

Your face crumples, not dramatically, not completely. But enough to look a little wounded. Vulnerable in that way you only let him see when no one else is around. Even here. Even in this life that isn’t his.

It’s killing him.

That pain in your eyes. The sheen of doubt and confusion that he put there.

You wrap your arms around yourself, retreating inward, your expression far too close to shame.

His chest caves as though something vital just got torn out, and his body hasn’t caught up yet.

Because even if you are not his - you are you. And hurting you, even by accident, even like this, feels like peeling the skin of his ribs.

He feels it in the hollow beneath his ribs, a wound that won’t stop bleeding.

“No!” he forces out quickly, voice low and rough and all wrong. “Hey- no, no, you didn’t- You weren’t- I’m not-”

But he doesn’t know what to say.

He wants to tell you it’s okay, that you didn’t do anything wrong, that it’s him, it’s all him, it’s always him, it’s never you.

He wants to scream that his bones are made of want, that his blood sings only your name, that he is drowning in everything you don’t know you’ve given him.

But none of this is simple. None of it is clean.

And all he does is stand there.

Breath shaking.

Heart breaking.

Hands curled so tightly to keep from reaching.

Because you didn’t give this kiss to him, not knowing who he was. You gave it to the man you think he is. The man you trust.

And he accepted it anyway. Let it happen. For just a split second, but still, he let himself have it.

He feels sick.

And now you look like you’re folding in on yourself, and all he wants in the world is to pull you close and undo every second of pain.

“I just got excited,” you say timidly, even softer now, eyes dropping to the kitchen counter. “I missed you and I didn’t- I thought you’d- Never mind. I’m sorry.”

You’re already turning away, trying to tuck the moment back into yourself, trying to pretend it didn’t just break the air between you. As though you haven’t just handed him a piece of your heart and watched him flinch from it.

And Bucky feels like the worst kind of monster.

Because it’s not your fault. This version of you, who somehow but clearly loves him, who thought she was greeting the man who has kissed her a thousand times and more. Who thought this was welcome. Who probably counted down the days until he walked through that door.

He knows because he does the same thing although his you and him aren’t even a thing.

Because in his world, you’re his friend. Just that. A friend with soft eyes and sharper wit, someone who argues about popcorn toppings and sings loudly in the kitchen when you know he needs some cheering up. You’ve patched him up after missions. You’ve watched old movies with him in silence, both of you staring too long at the screen and not long enough at each other. You’ve fallen asleep on his shoulder. You’ve tucked his hair behind his ear when it stuck to his cheek after a nightmare. You’ve told him - more than once - that you’re here for him.

But you’ve never kissed him.

You’ve never touched him as though you owned the moment.

You’ve never stood in his clothes and cooked dinner for the version of him who let himself be yours.

And god, he wants to hate this version of himself. This man who found the courage to step forward when he only hovered on the edge. Who earned the right to be held by his dream girl like a homecoming.

And now you are ashamed. Now you are hurt.

Because he couldn’t be the right Bucky.

He steps forward, frantic, needing, desperate to fix it, to say something, anything that would wipe that hurt look off your face.

“No- no, hey,” he rasps, voice frayed. His hands are hovering. He wants to touch you. He wants to hold your face in his palms and make this better. “It’s not your fault. It’s not you. I just… I mean, I didn’t think-” He knows he’s not making this better at all right now.

He sighs, mouth open but language failing him, and he scrubs a hand over his jaw as though he can erase the hesitation you saw there.

You search his face, your eyes too deep.

A trembling nod.

“Okay,” you say. “I just thought- I don’t know what I thought. I was just really happy to see you. But I should’ve given you a moment.”

And there it is.

The softness.

The part of you he has always tried to guard. The one he’d go back to Hydra to protect. The one that makes his chest ache and his hands shake at his sides.

He wants to tell you everything. The truth. The mission. That he’s not the man you think he is.

He almost does.

But his throat is choked up.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and that only breaks him in a new way.

Because you think you did something wrong.

“No,” he starts again, firmer this time, softer too. “You don’t need to apologize, sweetheart. I-” he hesitates, and you see it. “I missed you, too.”

He screwed up. Completely.

You bite your lip, unsure. Your eyes flick down to your shirt. His shirt. Not really his shirt. But Bucky’s shirt. You tug at the hem as though it suddenly doesn’t belong to you anymore.

And Bucky knows that this moment will haunt him long after he leaves this world. Long after he goes back to the version of you who wears his hoodies just to tease, who touches him only in passing, who is his friend despite him wishing for you to greet him the same way this you greets her Bucky. For the rest of his life.

You look at him as though he’s a wound.

As though he’s something tender and broken and half-open, and not in the way that frightens you but in the way that makes you reach for the first aid kit. As though you’ve seen the blood already, and you are not afraid to get your hands dirty to make him whole again.

Your voice turns softer now. Maybe trying not to shake the walls around him. Like you’ve already seen him flinch once and you’re afraid of making it happen again. He can hear the thread of caution in your throat, stretched thin with concern.

“Buck,” you say, slow, quiet. “Are you okay?” you ask and it’s not just a question. It’s a doorway. A key turned in a lock he hasn’t let anyone touch. You’re peering through the walls he built up as though you have done it before. Maybe you know all his hiding places. Maybe you’ve kissed every scar on his soul and memorized the way his silences mean different things.

But not this version of him.

Not here. Not now.

And it does something sharp to him.

Because he’s not okay. He is a thousand feet below the surface, lungs full of water and salt and regret. He is standing in a version of his life that is too soft for the callouses on his hands, and you are looking at him as if he means something to you, as if he still matters even after he’s flinched from your kiss, after he’s stood there in a borrowed skin, giving nothing in return.

He wants to say yes. Wants to lie because it would be kinder. Because maybe it would make your forehead smooth out and your mouth curl back up and your shoulders drop from where they’ve crept up near your ears. But the words catch in his throat. He can’t swallow them. He can’t spit them out.

You step closer, slowly now, more careful than before, and the guilt rises more than ever.

“Do you need anything?” you ask, as though you’ve asked him this a thousand times before. “Water? Food? A shower? A-” you falter, “- a second to breathe?”

Your eyes are so gentle he could cry. You’re hurting and you’re still soft with him, still reaching across this invisible crack in the earth, still offering care with both hands like it won’t burn you if he doesn’t take it.

He doesn’t deserve this.

He doesn’t deserve you.

Not when he’s not the man who earned the right to walk through that door and be met with your affection like sunlight. Not when you looked at him like a miracle and he gave you nothing back but a statue.

His hands remain in fists. His chest is too tight. Too small. His own skin is too loud.

“I’m fine,” he answers. Too fast. Too clipped. He regrets it instantly.

Your face drops a little, enough for him to feel it all over again. Another weight, another reminder that he is ruining something delicate, something not meant for him.

“Oh,” you murmur, nodding too quickly, stepping back as though your warmth was a mistake. “Okay.”

And there it is.

That thing he can’t stand.

That thing you do - both of you, all versions of you - when you feel shut out. That pull inward, that retreat behind your own ribs, as though maybe you’d overstepped, and now you need to fold yourself small enough not to take up space.

It crushes him.

Because he made you feel that way.

He made you feel as though you’re making it worse by caring.

He swallows hard, sorrow burning down his throat.

He doesn’t deserve your tenderness. He doesn’t deserve your care. He doesn’t deserve the way you’re moving again, back to the counter, shoulders tense. You’re trying to give him space and comfort in the same breath and it hurts to watch.

You stir something in the pan. Wipe your hands off a towel that looks as though it’s been used too many times. Domestic. Familiar. This life is familiar, too much so, and he is standing in the middle of it like a trespasser.

“I’m almost done here,” you note sweetly, glancing back at him with that look - gentle and worried and wounded. “If you do want something.”

You say it as though you’ve fed him before. As though he likes your cooking. As though this is something you fall into easily, the kitchen your common ground, your voice echoing off the same cabinets.

Bucky can feel his heart cave in.

You’re still looking at him like that. As though he’s someone you’d give your last spoonful of soup to. As though he isn’t just standing there like a coward with your kiss still on his mouth and your concern sitting in the hollow of his chest.

Even when he pulled away, even when he didn’t say a damn word, you didn’t get angry. You didn’t accuse him of anything. You just worried. And you’re still here. Still cooking. Still offering pieces of yourself like they’re nothing when they mean everything.

It makes him feel like a thief.

Because he’s not your Bucky. And he doesn’t know what yours did to earn you, but he can’t possibly live up to it.

His guilt is a creature now - gnawing and breathing heavy in his chest, pacing in circles behind his ribs. He feels it crawling through him, scraping at the back of his throat, making it hard to speak, hard to swallow. You are being careful with him, and all he can think about is how he should have stopped the kiss the second you leaned in.

You wouldn’t have kissed him if you knew who he really was.

And still, he wants to say yes.

Wants to sit at the kitchen table as though he belongs. Wants to take the plate you’d hand him and eat every last bite and listen to your stories and pretend just for a moment that this is his.

But it’s not.

It’s yours.

And it’s his job to leave it untouched.

“I’m good,” he lies, voice a gravel-dragged croak.

You pause, spoon in hand, frowning softly.

He hates that look.

That little line between your brows. The tilt of your head. Maybe you know he’s not telling the truth but don’t want to press. Maybe you’d rather hold the silence in your hands than make him bleed more words than he has.

“Okay,” you say again, quiet but still open, still gentle. “Just let me know if that changes.”

And you turn back to your pan, shoulders remaining to stay curled in. Like a window closing just enough to keep the cold out.

And Bucky just stands there.

Mouth dry. Hands shaking. Jaw tight. Chest full of something that feels like grief and guilt and anguish all tangled up in barbed wire.

And you’re cooking for a man who doesn’t exist in your world.

And the worst part - the part that scrapes down the back of his throat - is that he wishes he could deserve you.

He wishes this was real.

He wishes it were him.

He wishes it more than he’s wished for anything in his life since he lost it.

Since he became something else, since he forgot his own name, since his hands were turned against the world, against himself. Since all he’s done is survive.

He watches you like a man starving for sunlight. Terrified it might disappear if he blinks too long.

The way your shoulders move as you stir. The curl of your fingers around the wooden spoon. The tuck of hair behind your ear. The shift of your weight from one foot to the other.

He watches you move like he’s memorizing. As though this is the last time he’ll see you in motion. Like your movements are things he can bottle and carry with him, tucked deep into some pocket where the world can’t steal it. Where time can’t take it. Where even regret has no reach.

Your fingers fuss over something inconsequential now. Adjusting the position of a mug that didn’t need to be moved, opening a drawer, and then closing it again. You’re pretending not to look at him but he sees the way your eyes keep falling over, the way you keep folding and unfolding yourself. You’re waiting. Giving him the space he didn’t ask for and that he doesn’t actually want but knows he should take. Giving him something kinder than he’s ever learned to give himself.

And you are so familiar. You’re the same here. Even in this place that’s slightly sideways and tinted in colors, he doesn’t recognize. You move the same. You speak the same. You care the same way.

Even if your kindness isn’t meant for him.

Even if your kiss was meant for a version of him he doesn’t even understand.

Because this Bucky - the one you seem to love here - he must have done something right. He must have looked at you one day and not looked away. He must have let himself have you. He must have been brave enough to reach for you with both hands and hold on.

Bucky doesn’t know how to be that man.

He wants to be.

But he doesn’t know how.

Not in his own world. Not where he loves you from afar and pretends that’s protection. Where he swallows the way you laugh like it’s medicine and doesn’t let it show on his face. Where he listens to your questions in briefings - always you, always asking the most, as though you know people better than they know themselves - and he lets the sound of your voice guide him through the fog in his head like a rope he can follow back home.

But he never says anything. Never answers unless he has to. Never tells you how often he thinks about you, about your hands and your hair and your smell and the way your eyes find his in a crowd like a lighthouse built just for him.

Because what would he even say?

Hey, I can’t sleep unless I replay the way you laughed when Sam dropped popcorn all over the floor last month. I still have the napkin you folded into a crane at that terrible diner. I know the shape of your handwriting better than my own.

And what would you say to that?

Would you smile?

Would you run?

He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. Because he never asked. Because he never tried.

But this Bucky did.

And now this is the price.

Standing in the compound’s kitchen that smells of roasted garlic and too many things he’s never had. Watching you move around as though this is all so very familiar to you.

He wonders if you’d greet him like this every day if he were yours. If you were his.

If you’d light up like that every time like he was coming come and not just showing up, arms open, voice warm, like there was no place he could be safer than here with you.

If you’d wear his shirts as though they are yours because of what he means to you, not because they are soft or convenient or too clean not to steal.

He aches with the idea of it.

He wants this.

He wants you.

And not just in the sharp pain that lives under his ribs. Not just in the sleepless nights and the imagined conversations. Not just in the way he stares too long when you’re laughing or how he makes excuses to sit beside you on the couch.

He wants this.

You, warm and open and lit up from the inside. You, the way you could be if you saw him like this. If you let yourself. If he ever earned the right for you to let yourself.

But he hasn’t. He knows that.

He’s just your friend. The one you trust with your coffee order and your spare key and the heavy things you don’t want to talk about until 2 am. The one you steal clothes from, but always give them back because they don’t actually belong to you. The one you fall asleep beside during late movies without worrying about what it means because it doesn’t mean anything. Not to you.

Not like it means to him.

And still, he always watches. From doorways. From shadowed corners of rooms that dim the moment you leave them. Not to possess you - but because to look away would be a small death he cannot bear.

You laugh, and he holds the sound like contraband. You glance past him, and he lets it wound him sweetly. He’ll love you like that forever - at a distance, in silence, in awe. A man carved hollow by devotion, wearing his yearning like a prayer no god will answer.

And this version of you belongs to someone.

Even if it’s just a different version of him, it’s not him. Not this one. Not the one still lost in the burden of everything he’s done. The one who still wonders if the blood on his hands will ever wash off. The one who doesn’t know how to be soft.

He doesn’t know what the other Bucky did to deserve this version of you. Doesn’t know how he got so lucky. Doesn’t know what he offered you, what words he spoke when you were doubting yourself, afraid of being too much.

He’s not sure if he even knows this Bucky. It sounds weird as fuck. But maybe he doesn’t. Because it seems impossible to Bucky that this guy actually managed to get his girl. To get you.

Though he sure as hell would start a fight if the other him ever took this for granted. If he ever walked through this kitchen distracted or tired or in a bad mood and missed the way you smile when you think he’s not looking. If he ever left you waiting too long.

Bucky thinks he’d kill to have what that punk has.

And he hates himself for that.

But he can’t help but watch you, and it feels like the axis of something turning. Like time folding in on itself to offer him one brief, borrowed breath of what could have been.

It feels like being kissed by a future he lost, and forgiven by a present he never dared to ask for.

Because he knows that if you knew his thoughts, if you knew what he is feeling right now, you’d feel betrayed. You’d feel wronged. Because this wasn’t yours to give and it wasn’t his to want and now you’re both tangled in something made of shadows and parallel paths that should never have crossed.

But you’re here. And he’s here. And the moment still smells of cinnamon and citrus and something sweet, like safety, like you.

And he can’t stop wanting.

He wants it so badly he feels like a child in his chest. Like a boy in Brooklyn again, heart too big, hands too empty. Wanting something too beautiful for his fingers. Afraid to touch it in case he ruins it.

He wants this kitchen, this quiet, this life. He wants to be the Bucky who you wrap your arms around without thinking. Without hesitation. The one you miss. The one you think about. The one you care about so deeply. The one you kiss without asking because of course he wants you to.

He wants to be the one you light up for.

He wants it so bad it hurts.

But you are too soft for the ruin of his hands. Too bright for the rooms he lives in. You drink from fountains he was never invited to approach, speak in tones that his rusted soul cannot mimic.

And this is gutting him. To know the shape of your intimate kindness, the tilt of your adoring smile, the poetry of your presence - yet remain nothing more than a silent apostle to your orbit.

And maybe that’s why he finally moves. Why he tears himself away, footfalls too loud in the silence, heart thudding wildly in his chest.

He can’t stay here, not with you standing in the soft yellow light looking like everything he’s ever tried not to need.

He clears his throat, tries to make his voice sound normal, even though nothing about him feels human right now.

Your eyes lift to his. Wary. Still warm. Still worried. Still too much.

“I should, uh,” he mutters, nodding toward the hallway. “I’ve gotta take a shower.”

He bites his lip in frustration at himself.

Your lip twitches. Tugs down ever so slightly. It splits him open.

“Okay,” you say, quiet. There is disappointment in your tone, you weren’t able to overshadow. “You’ll tell me if you need anything?”

He nods too fast. Too tight. “Yeah.”

And then he leaves.

Because if he doesn’t, he’s going to do something worse than kiss you back.

He’s going to beg.

And he knows he has already taken too much.

And he needs to turn away.

Because he has something to do.

Because this world isn’t his. And he wasn’t sent here to collect the storyline he’s too afraid to build on his own.

He’s here for a mission.

He wasn’t sent here to linger in your doorway and let his bones dissolve into longing.

He walks away with you still behind him. He feels your gaze on his skin and with every step, it’s like he’s leaving something behind he’ll never quite be able to touch again.

He almost turns around.

Almost says your name.

Almost asks what this Bucky did - how he said it first, how he reached for you, what it took.

But he doesn’t.

Because he doesn’t get to ask.

So he keeps walking, heart in his throat, your taste still on his lips, and the echo of your smile carved into his spine like something sacred he was never meant to keep.

****

“Did you run into anyone while you were there?”

Steve’s question comes as casually as a bomb dropped from the sky.

Voices rise and fall in the conference room - wooden chairs squeaking under shifting weight, pens clicking, someone’s fingers drumming absently on the table.

The room is too bright. The lights overhead white and clinical, burning a little too harshly through his eyes and down into the back of his skull.

The air smells like ozone and burnt coffee. The kind that’s been sitting in the pot too long, scorched at the edges.

Bucky sits at the far end. Back against the chair but not relaxed, never relaxed, spine too straight, jaw too tight, metal fingers tapping once against the glass of his water before he clenches his hand and stills it.

And he knew this was coming.

Knew from the moment Strange opened that cursed slit in the fabric of the universe and Bucky stepped through like he was boarding a train to nowhere. Knew the second he saw your face - your face, but not yours - that this would catch up with him. That this would unravel under fluorescent lights and scrutiny.

Every muscle in his body coiled tighter. A reflex. A learned thing. His mouth is already dry.

The table is crowded with Avengers, coffee cups clinking, files half-open and untouched because no one is really looking at the paper.

The prototype sits in the center of the table, carefully sealed inside one of Tony’s vacuum-shielded cases. A long-forgotten Howard Stark fever dream, something meant to bend energy fields into weaponized gravity. Or something. It doesn’t matter.

They have it. He got it.

But that’s not what anyone is talking about right now.

Not when Sam is already side-eyeing him. Not when Doctor Strange is seated in his dark robes like the warning label on a grenade, fingertips tented, waiting. Not when you’re sitting two chairs down - his version of you - and you’re watching him with that same knitted expression you always wear when something doesn’t sit right.

“Bucky,” Strange says, voice low and still too loud. “I need to know. Did you encounter anyone significant while you were there? Interacting with alternate selves is risky. Prolonged exposure can ripple. If you spoke to someone who knows you-”

“I know the damn rules,” Bucky mutters, sharper than he meant to, and instantly hates the way your brows lift at the sound of it.

He rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Tries to breathe. His body is still holding something that didn’t belong to him. Your smile. Your voice. The feel of your lips, pressed to his like they had every right to be there. Like you knew him.

He can’t stop thinking about you.

He doesn’t want to talk about it.

He dreads talking about it.

“There was someone,” he says, and the room quiets.

You sit a little straighter. Sam leans forward. Even Clint lowers his cup.

He can feel you watching him.

You, his version of you, sitting across the table with your arms crossed and your head tilted just enough to catch the shadows under his eyes. The real you. The only important you. And it’s so difficult to just look at you because he swears there’s a phantom echo still lingering in his chest. Of another you. Of another kitchen full of light.

“Who?” Strange asks.

Bucky exhales slowly, eyes fixed on the table. The grain of it. The scratch just under his knuckle. He imagines digging his fingers into it, splinters biting through skin, anything to ground himself.

“You,” He meets your eyes when he finally says it, and it feels like swallowing gravel. “I saw her.”

You blink.

“You ran into Y/n?” Sam asks, something like a smirk in his voice.

Bucky nods once. It feels like rust grinding his neck.

He can’t look up anymore. Can’t look at you.

He doesn’t need to look to know your breath has caught. He can feel it in the air. The absence of it. Like the moment before thunder.

He pushes through.

“She was there. She saw me.” His jaw clenches, his fists curl under the table.

Bruce exhales, pushing up his glasses. “That’s not ideal.”

Tony makes a sharp noise in his throat.

“Did you talk to her?” Strange inquiries, voice tighter now, more urgent. And Bucky has to refrain himself from wincing.

He sees you shifting in your seat in his peripheral vision.

“Yeah,” he sighs, quieter now. “We, uh- we talked.”

Silence.

Strange’s eyes are boring through him. “How close did you get?”

Sam leans forward. Bucky doesn’t look at him.

You’re staring at him now. Open. Quiet. You haven’t said a word. Your silence feels worse than anything else.

“I don’t think that matters-” Bucky starts, but Strange interrupts.

“It matters exactly. If she saw you, if you talked, if you touched, if anything that could destabilize your emotional tether occurred-”

Bucky laughs, but it’s hollow, breathless. Rotten. “What the hell is an emotional tether?”

“It’s you,” Strange answers simply. “And her. On a metaphysical level. The same person in different timelines can act as anchors. Or explosives.”

“Jesus,” Bucky mumbles, dragging a hand down his face.

His palms won’t stop sweating.

He hasn’t felt this kind of sick since HYDRA used to strap wires to his temples and ask him how many fingers they’d need to break before he forgot his own name.

The conference room is too still. Too sharp. His chair feels wrong under him, too stiff, too narrow. The soft, predictable sound of conversation from earlier has dropped into something tighter. Focused. Hunting.

He doesn’t want to lie. Not about you. Not when you touched him like that. Not when you said his name like that. Not when it almost felt like it could be true.

So he swallows hard and pushes words through his locked jaw.

“She hugged me.”

A pause.

He doesn’t look at anyone. Just the table. That one dent from Steve’s shield. The scratch Clint made with a fork because he talks with his hands. A small, folded paper crane tucked under your fingers. He doesn’t know where you’ve got that from but your fingers are bending the wings back and forth. He doesn’t think you even realize you’re doing it.

“She hugged you?” Sam repeats, brow raised. “Like… greeted you?”

Bucky nods slowly, heart thudding in his ears. “Something like that.” He can feel your gaze like heat pressed against the side of his face and it almost burns to meet it, so he doesn’t.

“What happened before that?” Steve wants to know, eyes narrowing.

“I-” Bucky starts, and then stops, scrubs a hand over his mouth. “I walked into the kitchen. She was cooking something. Then she saw me. She thought I- he- was back. From something. A mission. I don’t know the details.”

“And she hugged you,” Steve adds.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs.

He doesn’t mean to look at you, but he does. For a second.

And you’re watching him with something unreadable in your eyes. Something still. As though you are trying to understand.

“And you just let her?” Sam presses, not unkind, but relentless in the way only Sam can be. “You didn’t say anything?”

“What do you think I should have said?”

“Well, I don’t know, man-“

“Did I say anything? Or… she?”

It’s your voice.

And it makes his stomach flip.

His eyes snap to you. But you’re not looking at him directly. You look at the edge of his shoulder. The hinge of his jaw. The tension written across his face.

He shifts in his chair. “You- She asked why I hadn’t told her I was coming back. Thought I was surprising her.” His hands are pressed flat against his thighs as though he can keep himself from shaking if he stays grounded.

“And?” Steve asks, too gently.

“She kissed me,” Bucky manages finally, and the room stiffens around him like a held breath. His voice is almost flat now. Hollowed-out. Maybe he’s trying to bleed the memory dry so it stops spreading in his chest.

There is a momentary lapse of silence that feels like someone dropped something delicate and no one wants to be the first to point it out.

Clint exhales slowly, muttering something under it. Sam leans back in his chair, maybe trying to decide if this is funny or devastating. Steve just blinks.

And you go completely still. Not a twitch of movement. Not even your fingers on the paper crane.

“She kissed you?” Natasha says, brows high.

Bucky exhales. Nods.

“What kind of kiss?” Sam blurts, leaning forward again. “A welcome-home kiss? Or a- like a real kiss?”

Steve sighs exasperated.

“No, I mean- we gotta know. This matters.”

His hand is aching. Flesh thumb pressing hard against the knuckle. “It was- not friendly.”

And the room really freezes. Stunned.

Until Sam lets out this sharp, incredulous sort of whistle, and Clint groans, dragging a hand down his face.

You glance down at your lap, jaw clenched, breath held so still it barely moves your chest. And it twists something in Bucky’s stomach, the way you sit there trying to disappear. He’s not sure who it hurts more - you, hearing this, or him, saying it. There is shame curling behind his ears. Shame and something like grief. And it’s all turned inward.

Sam’s eyes narrow. “So she kissed you thinking you were the other Bucky.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. He’s trying to keep still. Trying not to flinch. Trying not to look left. Trying not to look right. Trying not to look at you.

Because he feels the air around you shift like the press of a coming storm. It’s not anger. He knows that heat, and this isn’t it. It’s just quiet and tight and uncomfortable. A subtle withdrawal as though you’ve stepped behind some invisible wall only he can see.

And he hates it.

Bruce clears his throat carefully. “That implies a romantic connection. At least in her mind. Probably in his, too.”

Tony makes a face. “So we’re saying that Barnes and our girl are a thing in that universe.”

“Looks like it,” Natasha muses, eyes sliding toward you.

“Holy shit,” Clint remarks unhelpfully.

They say it so easily. As though this is nothing. As though this doesn’t wreck something fundamental in Bucky’s ribcage.

And suddenly everyone is quiet. Even the noise of the lights seem muted. It’s hot and awkward and strangely intimate.

Bucky stares down at his hands. They look like someone else’s. He can still feel your touch on them. Still feel the heat of your mouth against his. The softness. The way your lips pressed with such intention.

He says nothing.

He feels terrible.

Because a part of him still wants it.

Still aches with it.

Not the kiss. Not the accident.

The life.

That version of himself who gets to love you out loud. Who gets to be yours in daylight, in kitchens, in the moments that don’t demand heroism but just presence. That version of him that doesn’t have to swallow the way your voice makes something flutter in his chest like a broken-winged butterfly. The one who can kiss you because you already know him. Trust him. Want him. Miss him.

He wants that version to exist so badly.

And it makes him feel like a monster.

You’re sitting just far enough to be untouchable, just close enough that he can feel the space between you aching like a wound.

You are you. You are right there. And you don’t even know that in another universe, you loved him so much you ran into his arms without hesitation.

The light from the high windows drips in thin streaks across the long table, catching on Bucky’s knuckles, the tightness of his body.

There’s a long pause.

Then Tony exhales. “Well, that confirms it. Barnes is getting some in another universe.”

“Tony,” Natasha warns lowly.

Tony holds his hands up in mock innocence, but Strange interrupts them, turning to Bucky with a roll of his eyes. His cloak rustles.

“Did you tell her anything?” His voice is edged. “Did she suspect something?”

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately. He shifts in his seat. His back is too straight, and still, and his hands are bracing for something.

“No,” he relents. His voice is raw and rough like gravel pulled from the bottom of a riverbed. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

Strange’s eyes narrow. “Nothing?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Strange tilts his head slightly. His expression is unreadable. Calculating. “Her behavior. Did she seem disoriented? Odd? Suspicious? I assume you know Y/n well enough to tell if she’s acting off.”

The lump in his throat settles as though it lives there.

“She was hurt,” he admits, and the words punch out of him. “I froze up. She thought she’d done something wrong. But she didn’t suspect anything.”

Across from him, you shift. A small movement. But he feels it in his bones. He looks up. Meets your eyes.

You’re watching him as though you’re trying to learn something about yourself from inside of him.

He swallows hard.

“I didn’t tell her anything,” he says again, and it’s not for Strange this time. It’s for you. “I didn’t compromise anything. I was careful.”

“You were compromised,” Strange says, not unkindly, but without sympathy. “Emotionally. Whether you said something or not.”

Bucky doesn’t argue.

Because yes. He was. He is. He doesn’t even know how to be anything else anymore. His chest still echoes with the memory of your laugh - not your laugh, but close enough to trick him. His arms still remember the shape of your body, the way you buried yourself into him. As though you’d been there a thousand times before and would be a thousand times again.

He wonders what that other you is doing now. If you are still standing in the kitchen, perhaps waiting for him. Still hurt. Still confused. Still so worried.

He wonders what that Bucky is doing now. If he’s back. If he’s home. If you’re in his arms, asking what took him so long. If he knows what he has. If he’s grateful. If he deserves you.

And he wonders too, if you - the you here, right across from him now, quiet and tense and real - will ever look at him that way.

Your eyes are on his and it seems as though you want to say something, as though maybe you’ve been wanting to say something for a while now.

He doesn’t hear the others anymore.

They’re voices in a room, sounds in space, language and logic pressing against the outside of a window he’s no longer looking through.

Because your eyes are on him and they are too open, too careful.

And, unfortunately for him, this is where the hope begins.

Small. Thin. Stupid.

Because there is a version out there who loved him already. Who ran to him as though he was safety and home and joy all wrapped in one reckless heart and it had been so easy for her. Natural, even. Like a reflex. Like a need.

And he has to think that if she could, then maybe you could too.

Maybe - if he just keeps showing up, if he keeps giving you pieces of himself even when it’s terrifying, even when he thinks he has nothing worth offering - maybe you’ll see something in him that you’ll want to keep.

Maybe he’s not beyond that.

Maybe he’s not on the edge of the world after all.

His heart stumbles inside him, a sharp jolt under his ribs, and he realizes too late that his breathing has gone shallow. His palm is sweating. His chest is aching in a way that is not just pain, but hunger, longing, desperate weightless wonder.

Strange is talking. Something about dimensional instability and neural resonance and all that science talk - but Bucky is no longer a soldier at a briefing.

He’s a man staring across a room at the person who has made his worst days survivable, and he’s remembering how it felt to see you in his shirt in a different kitchen, how you stood there with your back to him waiting for him to wrap his arms around you, how your lips tasted like things he should never know but can’t ever forget.

You shift again. Your knee knocks lightly against the leg of the table as you tuck your foot beneath you. And your hair falls forward, soft and a little tangled from the wind that always sneaks through the compound’s side doors. Your lips part, as though maybe you’re going to say something in front of everyone, and he braces for it, all of him going still like a wolf spotting something too delicate to touch.

But you don’t.

You break eye contact and tuck your hair behind your ear as though you caught yourself doing something you shouldn’t.

But Bucky doesn’t stop hoping.

Because he watched you do exactly that in a very different universe. Such a small gesture but it means so much to him.

Because yes, maybe he is not the Bucky she thought she kissed.

He’s not the Bucky who wakes up with you tangled in his sheets.

He’s not the Bucky who lets himself believe he could be loved without earning it first.

But maybe he could become that man.

Maybe if he tries hard enough, he too can get the girl.

Maybe if he works at this more than anything else that matters, you’ll love him too. Not just in some alternate world, but here.

In this one.

In your voice, when you say his name.

In your laugh, when he says something without meaning too.

In your eyes, when you don’t look away.

And he knows he would do anything to earn that.

He would do anything to be enough for you in the only universe that matters.

His fingers twitch. His shoulders square slowly, almost unconsciously, as though some decision has clicked into place without needing permission.

The room is still full. Voices layered over voices like shadows that haven’t realized the sun moved. Chairs creak beneath shifting bodies, Sam’s laughter breaking loose and grating on Bucky’s nerves.

The idiot is grinning, leaning back in his chair as though this whole situation is the best thing to happen this week. “Alternate-universe you is in a relationship, Barnes. What do we think about that, huh?”

“Sounds like he’s living the dream,” Clint mutters, giving Bucky a jab to the arm. “You finally got the girl, Barnes. Took a whole damn reality shift but you got there.”

Someone chuckles. Tony, maybe. Or even Steve. He can’t tell anymore. He can’t hear much over the buzz in his ears, over the sound of his own heart pounding behind his ribs.

“Hell, maybe all our multiverse selves are having better luck,” Sam remarks, amused.

Clint chuckles. “Ah, Barnes just grew a pair.”

“Well, that’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it?” Natasha, calm as ever, lifts one elegant eyebrow.

“Alternate-universe Barnes has game,” Sam says delighted.

“Lucky bastard,” Clint mutters under his breath.

They mean well. They always mean well. This is how they show they care. With ribbing and teeth-bared grins, with shoulders nudged, and things they don’t say louder than the ones they do. It’s how they keep their own wounds in check. How they keep from bleeding all over the carpet.

But Bucky isn’t laughing. He isn’t smiling. His lip twitches but only with frustration at his teammates.

He notices your stillness. The lines around your mouth have gone soft and tight all at once. Your hands are folded too carefully in your lap and your gaze is pinned to the table.

With every mention - every offhand comment, every teasing jab - he can see it.

The way your shoulders stuck in closer to themselves. The way your breath grows quiet and shallow. The way you can’t seem to look at him anymore.

He swallows around it, the sharpness in his throat, but it doesn’t go down.

Everyone else seems to think this is a strange, mildly awkward, maybe slightly endearing detail in a weird mission story.

But Bucky feels sick.

Because he’s seen it on your face. The way the information about the kiss struck you like a misfired bullet. A shadow in your eyes, the small breath that caught in your throat, the way you shifted your legs like you needed to move, to run, to put distance between yourself and what you heard.

God.

He’s such a fool.

A lovesick idiot.

Because he let that brightness curl in his chest. The hope that even though you have every right to feel nothing at all, even though he’s spent so long training himself not to want this, not to wish for things he can’t have - he truly thought that if there was a version of you that looked at him that way, that reached for him without fear, then maybe this version, this you - maybe there was something possible here too.

But now he is watching it close again. Watching you feeling uncomfortable, retreating into yourself, folding inward like the paper crane you left behind. And he knows the fault lines are his. That even his silence can crack things apart.

When the meeting finally breaks - Strange dismissing everyone with a calm nod and a list of inter-dimensional protocols Bucky doesn’t hear - you stand before anyone else. Quiet. Not hurried. Just deliberate.

As though you’ve made a decision.

You don’t look at him. Not once. Just gather your notes and your coffee and the sweater you left draped over the back of the chair.

And you leave.

No goodbye. No glance back. Not even that half-smile you offer when the day has left you tired and the silence between you feels soft instead of loud.

Bucky is on his feet before he realizes it. He ignores Sam calling after him, something about needing to finish signing off the tech. Doesn’t respond to Steve’s “Buck?” Doesn’t glance at Strange, who’s looking at him as though he already knows where this is headed.

All Bucky sees is the hallway.

You, disappearing around the corner, just a whisper of your hair and the sound of your boots against the polished floor. And all he can think is no.

Not like this.

He walks fast, with his pulse in his mouth and panic blooming in his chest.

You’re so graceful even when you’re upset, even when your body is stiff with tension. You carry yourself with that strength that’s always pulled him in, and he hates that he knows it. Hates that he can read you this well, because it means he knows you’re hurting.

He walks fast enough to catch up, to not give himself time to think about it too much. His hands are cold again. The way they get when he’s unsure. When something matters more than he knows how to handle.

“Hey,” he calls out, and his voice comes out too soft. Almost hoarse. “Wait- can you- can we talk?”

You stop. Slow, reluctant. As if the last thing you want to do is this but some piece of you can’t help it.

You don’t turn around at first. You’re breathing hard. He can see your shoulders rise and fall too quickly, your jaw tight, your arms folded across your chest as though you are trying to keep yourself together.

You turn.

And it’s worse than he thought.

Because your eyes are shiny and your expression is made of glass and restraint and you’re biting the inside of your cheek in that way you do when you want to pretend something didn’t bother you.

He hates this. Hates that he did this to you, even accidentally.

But god, you still are beautiful in a way that feels like gravity. Like the ache in his chest could drag the stars down to meet you.

You watch him as though trying not to give too much away.

“Can we talk?” He repeats, breath catching somewhere between hope and despair.

You shrug, not cold, not angry. Just tired. “If you want.”

He steps closer. Not too close. Careful. Always careful with you.

“I know it probably sounded bad in there,” he says, voice rough. “I didn’t want it to come out like that. Like I was… caught up in something.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Bucky,” you say quickly, voice too neutral. “You didn’t know. I get it.”

But he wants to explain. Wants to lay it out, piece by bloody piece. Wants you to understand that for a minute there, he forgot how to breathe because of how you looked at him. That he hasn’t stopped thinking about it since.

“I didn’t tell you- I mean, tell her,” he blurts, breathless. “I didn’t tell her who I was. Or where I came from. I didn’t say anything.”

You blink at him. “Okay.”

“She thought I was him. I- I didn’t say anything because I- I wasn’t supposed to engage and I wasn’t planning to. I swear I wasn’t planning to.”

You say nothing. Just stare at him with that sweetly confused expression.

Bucky steps closer. He’s aching, head to toe, something brittle in his chest like cracked glass.

“You kissed me,” he continues, and you bite your lip, looking away, “but I didn’t- I froze. It felt wrong. And when you said you missed me, I panicked. It felt like I was stealing something. From you. From you both.”

He stops. Swallows.

And there it is again. That dangerous spark. That sharp, flickering thing that’s lived inside him ever since he saw that other version of you, ever since your arms wrapped around his neck and your mouth pressed to his and your voice filled his chest with something whole.

He wishes for a version of that hope here, too.

But not if it means breaking you to find it.

You’re watching him with something unreadable in your eyes. He can’t tell if it’s pain or disappointment or confusion or all of it. He just knows it’s tearing him apart.

“I know it wasn’t me she kissed,” he goes on, quiet, every word dragging out of him as if it doesn’t want to be spoken. “And I know it wasn’t you, either. But it made me think that maybe-” He breaks off, exhales. “I know it’s not fair to say it, but-”

“Then don’t.” Your voice is soft when it comes.

And he flinches as though you touched a nerve.

But your face isn’t cruel. It’s sad. Honest. Tired in the way people get when they’re holding too many emotions all at once.

“I’m not her,” you clarify, but there is something fractured in the way you say it, like the words are paper-thin and barely holding shape. “I’m not whatever version of me you saw, whoever she is to you, that’s not me.”

“I know,” he croaks out. Bucky steps closer, just once. Not touching. Not yet. He doesn’t dare.

“No, I don’t think you do.” Your arms unfold slowly, but not in surrender. You gesture at yourself, the smallest movement, but there is steel in it. “She looks like me,” you go on. Your voice is tight. Bitter. It’s not like you. Not how he knows you - the warmth, the patience, the fire and calm and kindness all mixed together. “She sounds like me. But she’s not. She’s not me, Buck.”

And then you turn as if you’re about to go. As though you can’t stand another second of standing still in front of him.

“No- don’t,” he pleads, and before he can stop himself, he reaches. His hand finds your wrist, not tight, not rough, just enough to stop you. “Please.”

You pause again, with an exhale that is sharp and hurt and too loud in the hallway.

He is closer now. Close enough to see how tight you press your mouth together to keep it from trembling. The twitch of pain in your brow, the soft crease between your eyes he knows only shows up when you’re trying really hard not to cry.

Guilt and desperation roll through him, thorough, like a tide pulling everything warm away. It unspools him from the inside.

“What?” There is no weight behind your words. Your voice is worn. Defeated.

Bucks swallows. His voice feels like rust trying to be rain.

“She hugged me. Said she missed me. She kissed me like she’d done it a thousand times before.” His voice is shaking, even if he’s trying not to let it.

“And I didn’t stop her. Not for a second,” he goes on, quiet. “I should’ve. I should’ve pulled away sooner, but I-”

You pull your arm back, but he doesn’t let go.

“Why are you telling me this?” you question him, voice breaking in the middle. “What am I supposed to do with that, Bucky? Be happy for some other version of me?”

There is so much pain in your eyes, so much confusion and hurt and jealousy and heartbreak and it cuts him right through the heart. He feels it bleeding into his organs.

He closes his eyes, forgets how to breathe for a moment.

“I didn’t stop her,” he says lowly, slowly, “because, for a second, it felt like you.”

The silence between you is thick enough to drown in.

Your lips part, but no sound comes out.

“For a second, it felt like something I’ll never have,” he confesses, barely audible now. “And I was selfish. I let it happen. Because it wasn’t just a kiss to me.”

You don’t speak. You don’t move. Your chin trembles.

You look at him as though you want to say something but can’t trust yourself to do it.

“I’ve been trying to bury it,” he admits, voice strained. “This thing in my chest. This want. It’s been there for a long time. And I kept thinking- if I just waited long enough, maybe it would go away. Maybe you’d never have to know. But I saw what it looked like when I had it. When I had you. Even if it wasn’t really you. And I- I didn’t want to come back here and pretend I didn’t feel it anymore.”

You don’t move. Just stand there. Staring at him as if you don’t know what to do with the version of the world he is handing you.

“I’m not asking for anything,” he adds quickly, voice thick and gravelly. “Not expecting anything. I just- I couldn’t let you walk away thinking it didn’t mean anything. Because it did. But not because of that other you.”

Bucky loosens his hold on your wrist the way someone lays a weapon down.

Slowly. Gently. Like an offering. Giving you a choice. A chance to run. A way out, if that’s what you need.

His fingers brush fabric as he lets go, every inch of skin unthreading from yours just another stitch in the fabric holding him together.

He steps back. Not far, but enough. Giving you the room to run if you want to. Because he would never cage you. Not you. Not the girl he’s tried so hard not to need and failed so spectacularly at not loving.

The cold creeps in like a punishment.

He swallows, breath shallow, heart trying to climb out of his chest. He doesn’t look away.

“It meant something,” he breathes, and the words are low but steady, dragged out of some buried part of him where he’s kept the truth folded up too long. “It meant something because I love you.”

The words hang there. Open. Unarmored. His voice doesn’t shake but he feels the quake underneath it. He is already bracing for the ruin of it, for the way your silence might cut him down. It’s too much. He’s too much. Too much and too late and he’s saying it anyway, because what else can he do now, what else is left to do but burn with it.

“I love you. You. Only you,” he repeats, and this time it’s quieter, as if speaking it softer might hurt less if you break him.

He is bracing for your silence. For the recoil. For the slow turning of your back and the slam of a door, he won’t ever be allowed to knock on again.

But you don’t run.

You just stare at him.

Wide glassy eyes, lips parted, your whole face carved out of disbelief. Your chest rises with shallow, trembling breaths, and for a second, it’s like the hallway has no oxygen at all. Just the two of you standing in a vacuum made of shattered timing and aching things laid bare.

You look like someone trying to decide if the ground beneath you is real. If you are dreaming.

And Bucky is not breathing.

Doesn’t know how he will ever take in a breath again.

Then you move.

Fast. Sharp. Certain.

You close the distance between you with a speed that knocks his soul out of him, and before he can even process the intention behind the storm in your eyes, your hands are in his collar and your mouth is on his.

It’s not gentle.

It’s not careful.

You crash into him as though gravity has finally won. As though your body has been held back for too long and now it’s surging forward with years of restraint snapped at the root.

It hits him like an impact. Like a whole damn earthquake disguised as your mouth on his.

He makes a noise - somewhere between shock and surrender - and for the barest second, he is frozen.

He’s still.

Because this is you.

You.

One breathless, startled second he forgets everything - his name, the room, the hallway, the mission, the multiverse - and then he’s moving.

He melts.

His arms are around you in a heartbeat, tight, desperate, finding your waist, your back, the edge of your jaw, greedy and trembling and too careful all at once. He pulls you in, tighter, tighter, one hand threading into your hair, the other locking around your waist.

And then he is kissing you back with everything he has, with everything he’s been holding back, with every version of himself that ever wanted to belong.

He is kissing you back as though he’ll never get the chance again.

His whole body folds into yours, heart slamming into his ribs, mouth pressing against yours, like a question he’s been dying to ask. He kisses you like an apology, like a promise, like he’s been holding his breath for a century and only just remembered how to exhale.

It’s not a careful kiss.

It’s years of aching packed into the space between your lips. It’s soft lips and a metal palm and your nails digging in his jacket and his thumb shaking against your jaw. It’s a kiss that tastes of every unsaid word, every sleepless night, every time he looked at you and wondered what it would feel like to have you.

The second your tongue touches his lower lip, a low and tortured sound rips from somewhere deep in his chest. He answers you with open-mouthed hunger, tilts his head just enough to draw you in deeper, slants his mouth over yours as though he’s living out every dream in which he’s imagined this before.

He feels the warmth of your lips and the way you lean into him, the way you give yourself over completely, and he pulls you even closer, as though he’s trying to kiss every version of you that exists in every universe just to get back to this one. You. Here. Now.

His tongue brushes yours and everything goes tight inside him - his stomach flips, his spine arches ever so slightly, his body not knowing whether to hold steady or fall apart entirely.

Your lips are sweet and urgent and you make a sound - quiet, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp - and it knocks the air in his lungs every which way.

His mouth moves faster when your fingers curl into him tighter and tug him closer, dragging him under. His metal fingers are splayed over the small of your back, and his flesh fingers are tangling at the nape of your neck, holding you still as his tongue licks into your mouth, gentle but full of everything he’s feeling.

He moans softly into you, doesn’t even realize it’s happening until he feels the sound buzz against your lips. His pulse is pounding in his ears. His knees feel untrustworthy. There is heat spreading through his chest, through his limbs, and he wants to live in this moment forever, suspended in the place where you chose him.

When you finally pull back, your lips are swollen, flushed. He presses his forehead to yours just enough to breathe, but not enough to let you go. Never that.

His hands are on your face. His thumbs brush under your eyes. His breath shudders out against your lips.

When he opens his eyes, slowly, he is met with yours. Glistening and wide and so full of feeling it almost floors him.

He stares at you as though he’s seeing the sun rise for the first time.

“I love you too,” you breathe against him.

Bucky shivers.

It lands like a heartbeat he forgot to hope for.

Pleasure surges through his veins, straight to his heart. His eyes fall shut, lost in it.

And something in him tells him he will hear this at least a thousand times, maybe even more, if he’s lucky.

“I loved her not for the way she danced with my angels, but for the way the sound of her name could silence my demons.”

- Christopher Poindexter