#there are more questions here than answers

[houseofhyde]

manchild.

pairing. bucky barnes x fem!reader mcu timeline. tfatws. synopsis. bucky can't help but wonder why they always come running to you,, or your living fossil of a roommate disapproves of your taste in men and its totally not because he wants a taste of you. warnings. smut ( pwp, service dom!bucky, unprotected piv, oral sex - f receiving, clothed sex for like a sec, fingering, creampie, tummy bulge, dirty talk, dry humping, possessiveness, dumbification, praise, temperature play, food play, nipple play, pussy pronouns, hair pulling - m receiving, multiple orgasms, consent kink, implied competency kink and cum eating, bucky barnes begs agenda 2025™, both bucky and reader spend the whole fic towing the fine line between horny and pervy ), no use of y/n, angst, fluff, frenemies to lovers, roommate!bucky, cocky+flirty!bucky, also guard dog!bucky ( if that even makes sense ) ( it doesn't ), jealousy, pining, so much bickering, attachment issues, miscommunication bc these two combined have the emotional intelligence of a chihuahua, bucky's hobby is baking bc i said so. reader inclusivity. bucky can pick the reader up ( but he's literally a super soldier so 🧍‍♂️ ), one mention of bucky trying to grab the reader's hair, reader has a nut allergy and does not speak russian ( neither do i, so please forgive the very small amount of google translated russian ) word count. 16.3k hyde’s input. god bless sabrina for saving the summer again. also don't let this flop, it's my birthday tomorrow and i'm not above crying over poorly-received erotica ( i'm joking ) ( no i'm not )

Bucky Barnes is not someone you’d call a friend.

He’s more of a nuisance, really. A fossil, dropped off at your door by one Sam Wilson with a simple request: “Can he crash here for a few days?”

That was four months ago, and Bucky’s still living on your couch.

Which is exactly where he’s sat right now, head buried in a book you barely even remember owning. The pages, so full of neglect, give him hassle as he tries to turn them, catching on one another and refusing to be pried apart by vibranium fingers.

“How do I look?” You ask as you step out from your bedroom, hands fastening an earring into your right ear.

Unfazed by your appearance, he doesn’t bother glancing up from his book as he sardonically replies, “With your eyes, like the rest of us.”

You contemplate plucking one of your heels off and throwing it at his head. Knowing your luck, it will fly right past him and smash your coffee table into pieces. Just like your roommate, it’s vintage. Unlike your roommate, you willingly brought it into your home.

“Ha. Ha.” Rounding the couch, you swat his feet off the table before snapping his book closed. “Now if you’re done playing comedian, would you answer the fucking question?”

“That’s your generation's problem, you know? You swear more than you breathe.”

“Better than waging a world war every few years.”

“Considering the current state of the world, I wouldn’t rest too comfortably on that one,” Bucky rises from his seat and squeezes past you, irritatingly close in a way that makes sure you feel each defined muscle in his chest as it brushes against your shoulder. “Anyway, you look fine, as always.”

“I look fine?” You parrot his words and follow his footsteps over to the kitchen. “Careful Barnes, don’t get too excited, it’s not healthy for a senior citizen’s heart.”

“You know what I mean,” a heavy sigh slips out the soldier’s mouth as he busies himself filling the kettle, glancing back at you from over his shoulder as he continues speaking. “I don’t understand why you worry so much about all of… this.” He gestures at you, water splashing off the tips of his fingers.

“God forbid a woman cares about looking good on a date,” you’re becoming annoyingly aware of the pout on your lips and try your best to correct it, whilst prying open the fridge door and fishing out a bottle of beer. “Gee if only it were still the 40s, then I could slap some mercury on my lips and hit the town with a man ready to buy me off my daddy for the cheap, cheap price of two goats!”

The frustration within you only rises as you struggle with the bottle’s cap, the skin of your hand pinching as you put all your force behind removing it. Since when are twist-tops so damn hard to twist off?

Bucky’s by the kettle, pouring boiling hot water into a mug he’s wrongfully claimed as his and looking irritatingly fine surrounded by steam — which has your mind trailing back to a few weeks ago: an early morning, exiting your bedroom to find your lodger stepping out the bathroom with nothing but a towel around his waist and the remnant dew of a steaming hot shower trailing down his very naked, very defined biceps, and pectorals, and- He’s not even trying to mask the amusement on his face as he indulges in your failure.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little ridiculous?” He asks and pries the bottle out of your hold, effortlessly ripping the cap off with a twist of his left hand. A familiar warmth curls between your legs, awakening a response from you that you’ve sworn, under no circumstances, will happen due to Bucky Barnes. You barely want to exchange air with him, nevermind bodily fluids. “There’s no way you’re worth two goats.”

“Every day I wake up and resist the urge to smother you in your sleep.”

Your vitriol is met with a smirk taking over his lips. Watching as he brings the beer up to his mouth, you catch yourself forgetting to blink as the soldier engages you both in a staring contest, all the while he’s tilting the bottle up to steal the first sip. He presses the cold glass back into your hand. You try not to focus on his tongue, peeking out to swipe over his bottom lip and clean up a remnant drop of beer.

In a move that puts you even more on edge, Bucky shuffles closer to you. Delirium floods your mind as the smell of smoke, and musk, and a just a twinge of sweat floods your nose, a smell so masculine it has you debating setting feminism and your own self-preservation back hundreds of years by nuzzling your face into the pulse point of his neck, like you’re some damn animal being exposed to pheromones. Meanwhile, he appears none the wiser to the negative effect he’s having on you, too busy reaching his arm behind you and into the fridge.

“Those boys you entertain, do they ever pay you any compliments?” His voice is so gentle, you almost wonder if that’s how it would sound whispering in your ear. Luckily, you don’t actually wonder about that. Not at all, not even a little. “Or is that your job too, like the bill?”

As quickly as he caged you in against the fridge, he moves away and leaves the cool air to rush over your skin, dragging your mind back into reality and away from whatever thoughts it keeps trying to tempt you with. You track his movements towards the island counter as he sets down a glass bowl, marked by condensation and filled with a batter of some sorts.

It's becoming more and more common to catch Bucky pottering around in the kitchen, a recipe on his phone screen and a personalised ‘Kiss the Baker’ apron — which Sam bought as a joke for his birthday — tied around his waist. He’ll never admit it, but a part of you believes baking helps him relax, to shut off whatever thoughts are floating around in that disturbingly pretty head of his and let him focus solely on measuring, mixing, and making delicious sugary treats. You can hardly complain when he’s gifting you the privilege of an at-home bakery. Fortunately, he gives you plenty of other reasons to complain. 

“Boys I entertain? Way to make me sound like a stripper,” you huff, sneaking over to dunk a finger into the batter as he turns to grab his coffee. “And I’ll have you know, they do pay me compliments.”

Licking your finger clean, you can’t fight the humm of approval that creeps up your throat nor the way your eyes slip shut as you savour the cold, tangy sweetness of the cake mix. Something warm presses against your left side as Bucky returns to the island, setting down his mug and a cake tin.

“Really? What kinda things do they say?” Just as you go to double dip, he smacks the top of your hand with a wooden spoon, and you nearly freeze at the contact. For a few short seconds, the factory in your mind goes into lockdown as every single one of your brain cells scramble to not conjure up the image of him smacking that utensil on a very different part of you. “Hands off. It’s a lemon cake, not a lemon and your-dirty-fingers cake.”

You silence your thoughts with a swig of beer before putting a safety distance between Bucky and you, unsure whether to be relieved at his obliviousness to the less than ideal affect he’s having on you, or offended by his complete lack of reaction to being so close to you while you’re all dressed up and waiting for another man to take you out.

Not that you want him to be affected by that, or you in general, though.

Your phone lights up with a text from an unsaved number: im hear, r yu coming down or shuld i com up? You shut it off and stuff it into your purse, deciding it's best to keep a man waiting anyway; he’ll appreciate your presence even more once you finally give him it.

Besides, you’ve yet to answer Bucky’s question.

“I’d tell you but I’m too sober to stomach you yelling ‘Heaven to Betsy!’ and giving me a lecture on your medieval dating ethics.”

You earn a genuine laugh, in which his knees bend a little and his head is thrown back, while his vibranium hand winds up splayed across his midriff. The sun is setting beyond the window, lingering shades of orange warmth frame a heavenly glow around Bucky, highlighting a slight curl in his hair and the piercing blue of his eyes. The view is uncomfortably pleasant, so you bring the bottle back to your lips and turn your head away, suddenly utterly fascinated with the eggshell colouring of the kitchen cupboards.

“I think there’s a leak under the sink,” the comment is absentminded, a meager attempt at steering your mind away from the man and his mixing bowl.

Bucky ignores it and drags you right back to the actual topic at hand.

“That’s funny,” there’s a shuffle of tin behind you. You glance back around to find him smoothing batter into the cake mold, wooden spoon clasped in metal fingers spreading the mix evenly. You’ve never noticed how good Bucky is at spreading things. “Cause I swear I remember Sam mentioning something about the last guy moaning his own name in your ear.”

Beer shoots to the back of your throat.

In a spurt of coughing, amidst the burning pain of the carbonated liquid dripping out your nose, you hurry over to the sink. Mouth dropped open in a dry heave, you lean into the basin and try to minimize the mess you make in search of a breath. Heat envelops you from behind and a pair of sock-clad feet come into view next to your maroon heels. You briefly register the cool brush of metal against the back of your neck as he tries to tidy back your hair and, while you appreciate the action, you can’t help note how completely unnecessary it is. Too distracted to care, your attention shoots straight to the weight of his flesh hand pressing into your lower back. Heavy, warm, large, it pollutes your mind with the knowledge of how it feels to have him soothe your skin — even if there is a layer of silk in the way.

The moment air returns to your lungs, you shoot up straight and ache to step away from him and his wandering-to-all-the-wrong-places hands. The battle against his touch is mute, not even one percent of his strength is put behind the way he grips your forearms and turns you to face him.

Bucky’s eyes scan over you, studying your features. You swallow back whatever feeling brings salivation to your mouth. His thumb reaches towards his own and you watch, transfixed, as a pink tongue darts out to greet it, licking a stripe over the pad of it. A splash of cake batter stains his ring finger. You swallow back more saliva; confusingly, your mouth feels drier than ever. Only when he delicately presses his thumb beneath your eye and swipes over your waterline do you realise you’re teary-eyed.

“See how clumsy you are?” There’s a chastising lilt to his voice that sends blood rushing to your face, and then immediately back down to the overwhelmingly empty space between your legs. “Can’t even swallow properly without ruining your mascara.”

You need distance.

You need to move.

You need to leave.

“He’s here!” The words are almost a gasp as you turn out of his hold. The weight of his gaze trails over your legs as you rush around the kitchen island, fishing your keys out of your purse and rambling out the nerves he’s summoned. “Okay, there’s some leftover pasta in the fridge if you’re hungry, and you’re welcome to the beers if you get thirsty. Big remote turns on the TV, the little one changes the channel. Behave and take care of the place while I’m away, okay?”

“Quit talking to me like I’m some kind of guard dog,” he complains as you pull open the front door and cross one foot over the threshold to safety.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” You cheer back, trailing the door behind you as you go. “I wasn’t aware you were going to start contributing rent, I’ll send you my bank details.”

With that, the apartment door slams shut and you head out for a date in which three things will happen: you’ll flirt, you’ll fuck, and you won’t think about your roommate.

Only one of those things ends up happening.

It’s not from lack of an offer that you wind up taking a cab back to your apartment. Your date had been nice… enough. He complimented your outfit, took a sufficient amount of interest in you, and he even bought you flowers — of course, he’d accidentally left them in his parent’s home. Where he lived. In the basement.

And the thing is, you’re not shallow. Time’s are tough, the economy sucks, and the world is still adjusting to the sudden return to half its population post-Blip. So you were more than game to play sneak-me-into-your-bed-without-waking-your-parents, but, as the pair of you waited on a taxi to arrive, his hand found your waist and your treacherous mind noticed something it shouldn’t.

Bucky’s hand was larger. And warmer. And more welcomed against your skin.

Sick to your stomach by your own thoughts, your night ended with you tip-toeing past the familiar figure sleeping on your couch — definitely not pausing to take in the sheer width of his naked shoulders dangling half-off the cushion — and crawling into bed alone, belly full of Thai and mind full of Winter.

When morning comes, the bedroom door creaks as you pry it open, a fist rubbing sleep out your eye and a yawn announcing your arrival.

“Did you eat my ice cream?” Bucky calls out from somewhere, voice muffled and full of accusation.

Despite barely finishing a glass of wine the night before, there’s a throbbing pain beginning in your temples and souring your already bitter mood.

“Wow, good morning to you too,” you stumble more than walk over to the kitchen, in search of the salvation of ice cold water.

That’s where you find him: laid out on his back, grey sweatpants clinging to bent knees, with everything from his shoulders up inside the open cabinet beneath the sink. His arms are inside too, tinkering away at something above his face.

“Good morning. Did you eat my ice cream?” If ever a thing such as a verbal eyeroll were to exist, Bucky would be doing it. From the lack of seeing his eyes, there’s every chance he is literally rolling them.

Your journey toward the fridge is interrupted by the troubling sight of a glass full of water, a plate hosting a slice of lemon sponge cake, and two miscellaneous white pills that anyone who suffers the unusually cruel punishment of a menstrual cycle is likely familiar with. A post-it note with your name written neatly across it sits next to the unexpected care package.

“So what if I did?” The painkillers go down effortlessly, though there’s a lingering chemical taste that has you gulping down an extra sip of water. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“I paid for it!” For all his outrage, he doesn’t care enough to poke his head out as he chastises you. “You said there was a leak, so I’m checking your pipes. I’m quite good with my hands, you know.”

Is he dense, or is he saying this shit on purpose? The double entendre in his words is glaring, yet you haven’t the confidence nor the will-power to address it, to poke the proverbial bear out of fear. Fear of him scolding your dirty mind, or fear of him doubling down on his suggestive wordplay, you’re not quite sure.

You choose to steer clear of the topic and, more importantly, the unexpected twinge in your chest in response to Bucky’s unrequested help.

“And I paid for the freezer you left it in, the electricity that kept it frozen, and the apartment you live in,” you don’t intend to sound so snappy, like a sulking child fighting against their own self-confessed crimes. “So I think you can spare me some goddamn ice cream.”

You’ve taken to joining Bucky on the floor, sitting across from him, cross-legged and back pressed against the cabinets that surround the kitchen island. In your lap lies the slice of cake, a mouthful already missing and melting its tangy sweetness onto your tongue. You almost moan, but it’s unclear whether the sugary treat just tastes that good or the visual of the soldier laid out on his back and tinkering away beneath your sink is just so stimulating.

If you mention the strange noise your car’s engine has been making recently, would he fix that too? You can already picture him slicked in sweat and oil, hands on his hips as he stands over the opened hood and assesses whatever the damage is. You’d have to watch over the whole thing, of course — not out of your own self-interest but on the off chance something goes wrong and Bucky needs help taking off his oil-stained shirt, or pants, or-

“Your date was that good, huh?” You almost jump out of your skin when he speaks.

“He bragged to me about how he and his college roommates used to play pool,” the pause in your sentences seems to capture Bucky’s attention, coaxing him out from beneath the sink. “Using a shotgun instead of cues.”

As he sits up, elbows finding rest upon his knees, you can’t help but note the five-o’clock shadow he’s sporting. For reasons that have nothing to do with the fraying seams of your sanity, you need him to shave.

To Bucky’s credit, he doesn’t laugh. Yes, his lips glitch somewhere between a cheeky grin and a serious frown, but he does not outright laugh like you expect him to. Instead, he nods down at the half-eaten cake and tilts his head — an unspoken question, is it good?, that only weakens his argument about not being a guard-dog. Between the puppy-dog blue eyes and the yearning for approval, you half expect him to sprout a tail and start panting.

Scratch that last thought, actually. Bucky and panting should not coexist in a sentence together, nevermind in your imagination.

“Mind feeding me a bite?” Yes, actually, you would mind, but one glance at his fingertips stained in whatever-the-hell is going on with your sink leaves you no choice but to tear off a corner.

Bringing the piece of cake to meet his awaiting mouth, you brace yourself for the tentative scrape of teeth stealing it out of your hold. The delicate brush of his lips enveloping your fingers throws you off your axis, and the challenge in his eyes as they hold contact with your own has your thighs involuntarily squeezing themselves together.

For a moment, you swear you catch him glance down at your lips.

Then you remember the health insurance your job provides does not cover the cost of being institutionalised, so you stop hallucinating and come back to reality where Bucky Barnes is not so much a flirt as he is a pest, a stray animal abandoned at your doorstep by a friend who decided to take advantage of your good-natured heart.

“Can you give me the exact phrasing your date used to describe this shotgun-pool?” The soldier is gone in the blink of an eye, flat on his back again and continuing his attempt to seal the leak.

“Why?”

“I’m making this list,” he says, and he must shift his hands higher above his head because suddenly the soft cotton of his white shirt has ridden up his torso, presenting your eyes with a golden platter of sun-warmed skin. “I’m calling it ‘the manchild files’.”

“That’s not even funny,” neither is the way he inches deeper into the cabinet, exposing not only the glaringly white tan-line delineating where the band of his boxers should be resting but also the beginning dark curls of a happy trail. 

“Well ‘the stupid files’ sounds so simple, I was worried you’d try to jump into bed with it.”

“Are you seriously about to slut-shame me in my own fucking kitchen?” Whilst slutting yourself out on my floor like your name is Mike and you’re about to show me some magic? is the quiet part you don’t say aloud.

“I’m critical but I’m not hypocritical,” there he does again with that verbal eye-roll. “I wasn’t exactly the image of celibacy when I was your age-”

“Yay, more grandpa lore!” Your interruption earns you a nudge from his leg, but you know it made him laugh because his shoulders gently shake.

“I’m not slut-shaming you, I’m taste-shaming. I swear, being useless must be the precursor to having a chance with you.”

“It is not!” You gasp, yet you’re hardly surprised — Bucky’s not exactly subtle in his disapproval of the men you date.

If there is anything to be thankful for, it’s the alleviation that comes with Bucky shimmying out from the sink again, happy trail redressed and a hand diving into the pocket of his sweatpants. With a dramatic clearing of his throat, he brings his phone up to his face and starts reciting.

“After being told you have a nut allergy, Carter B. said Wait, like, you’re allergic to cum?” You’d always known showing him how to use the notes app would come back to bite you in the ass somehow. “Tommy L. walked into a lampost because he got distracted… watching a squirrel run up a tree. You almost got stood up by Steve K. because he accidentally locked himself inside his own car. Lee B. asked you-”

“Bucky B. is about to lose his other arm if he doesn’t shut up.”

“I rest my case,” and he still has the nerve to open his mouth, awaiting another bite of cake.

You cave with no fight and give it to him.

Because you’re a nice person, not because you want to feel his mouth on you again.

Something cool drips onto the bottom of your naked thighs after Bucky reaches over you and grabs at the glass of water, stealing an obnoxiously large gulp; or is it just exaggerated by your stare zeroing in on the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks?

A thought pops into your mind.

“Did you leave these on the counter because you expected me to be hungover?” Your tone is inoffensive, and unoffended, a simple curiosity you need answered.

“You have a headache, right?”

“Uh-huh,” your eyes narrow skeptically.

“Yeah, I figured you would,” Bucky takes another sip, more condensation trickling down onto your legs. “You always have one after eating Thai food.”

Something inside of you stops.

Your heart, or your lungs, or your mind. Your goddamn liver, for all you know.

This is not supposed to be happening. Bucky is not supposed to fix things just because you mentioned it, once in passing and as a scapegoat from focusing too much on him. And he certainly isn’t supposed to notice things, useless little factoids that not even you know about yourself until he brings them to light. Hell, he’s not even supposed to still be here, sleeping on your couch and criticising your love life.

When the thing inside of you clicks back into place and starts again, a new weight rests atop your conscience.

Maybe it’s not so bad having a roommate, having Bucky be that roommate. Maybe you’re starting to get used to coming home to the smell of baked vanilla and the signature grouchy look he wears as he asks you about your day, about how your co-worker pissed you off, about why you’re home later than usual and not wearing a jacket out in the cold of winter.

“By the way,” he’s calling out from beneath the sink again. “You’ll be happy to know I’m touring an apartment next week.”

“Oh.” The bite you just took turns sour in your mouth. You struggle to swallow it down. “That’s great. Finally! You’re going, and I’m staying here, and I’ll have my apartment back to myself. That’s… Great. It’s great!”

No, really, it’s great.

“You’re joking,” a palm on your lower back guides you to the right, just in time to avoid being trampled beneath a cart.

“I wish,” you say, and saunter over to some colourful packaging that’s captured your eye.

After a moment of inspecting the product in hand from every angle, you put it back on the shelf.

“Let me get this straight,” Bucky pushes the cart along behind you, grabbing that same colourful packaging and dropping it in with the rest of the groceries. “You lean through his window, kiss him goodbye on the cheek and then he just… What, crashed his car?”

“Into a wall with street art of a cliff painted on it,” as you add the most important detail, laughter is already bubbling up your throat. “He literally crashed his car into a cliff without even getting to switch out of first gear!”

The pair of you make up quite the sight.

An entire morning of tiptoeing through the limbo of delirium, after an entire night spent trying to block out the relentless banging from the upstairs neighbours. The door to your bedroom crawled open some time past four and there was Bucky, head poking through the space and looking rather pleased to find you wide awake — despite his claims of just wanting to make sure you were asleep.

Seated on opposite ends of the couch, both of you found a quiet solace in the other’s inability to sleep. While a movie marathon played over the TV, the sex marathon above continued. When exhaustion took claim of your body, you drifted off with your arms resting on the armchair and your head resting on your arms. You awoke atop a pillow and beneath a blanket, legs stretched out over the couch and Bucky curled up on the floor by your feet — like any good guard dog would be.

After a botched attempt to sneak past the soldier, only to have him scare the living daylights out of you by grabbing your ankle as you tried to step over him, you both came to the shocking realisation that the fridge was void of any food.

Which brings you to here: standing in aisle 7, laughing an ache into your ribs over yet another one of your failed dates, with a half-filled cart and matching bags forming under your tired eyes.

“I think it’s time we had an intervention about where you’re finding these men,” Bucky says that last word like it's covered in poison, burning his tongue on the way out.

“They find me!” You say, as he reaches for the box of strawberries you just put down. “As generous as I am, do you want to maybe slow down on how much shit you load into our cart?”

His hand freezes, the box of red fruit clasped in a confusingly delicate grip of vibranium fingers

“You picked it up,” his tone is riddled with confusion. “Don’t you want them?”

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not made of money.”

“Okay?” He replies, like it’s the most irrelevant piece of information you’ve ever given him — and you once spent an hour ranting to him about the inefficiency of the ink cartridges in your office’s printer. “I’m paying, so do you want it or not?”

“Since when do you have money? Did your pension finally come through? I mean… You are old enough. Also, aren’t you literally a vet?”

 “You managed to say all that in one breath, yet you failed to answer a yes or no question.”

A bubble of silence surrounds you both. Bucky blinks, slowly, exaggeratedly. It’s the perfect opportunity to stare at his face and notice the five o'clock shadow has grown. A gruff ‘excuse me’, followed by a man shoving between you both to grab some strawberries, pops the bubble.

Without a word, you snatch the box and place it in the cart.

Half-way up the fruit aisle, Bucky gets the genius idea to open his mouth again: “You wanna know what my theory is?”

“Nope,” you say, popping the p and glancing back at him over your shoulder. “But you’re going to tell me anyway.”

He looks vexingly domestic like this, wearing a sweater and pushing your shopping around. Thoughts betray you, wandering off into dangerous territory as they begin to question how others perceive you from the outside.

What do strangers see: two roommates that quarrel like it’s a biological need, or a couple doing their weekly shop? Two strangers forced together by a circumstance named Sam Wilson, or two lovers unwilling to voice that the metal container between them is too much distance?

“I think you date idiots because they’re idiots.”

“Gee whiz, grandpa, that’s so insightful. I sure do hope I’m as wise as you when I’m your age, but I’ll probably just be dead.” You feel the cart meet your back in a gentle bump, a non-verbal warning to cut the teasing.

“Dating those incompetent men, it’s like…” he pauses, searching for the right words, and plucks a bunch of bananas from your hand, dropping them in with your mounting pile of fruit. “Jumping out of a plane! You get the thrill of falling but, the moment something a little too real and solid appears on the horizon, you pull out the parachute and, that’s it, you’re safe. No danger of falling flat on your face and getting your feelings hurt.”

“I don’t know when you last jumped out of a plane-”

“Remember that Karli situation a few months ago?”

“But not ejecting your parachute leads to a little more than just falling flat on your face.”

“So my metaphor isn't perfect,” Bucky trails off, eyes staring past you and mind lost in thought. You follow his line of sight and find a couple at the end of the aisle, hands intertwined and smiling at each other like they’re the only two people in the world. An unnamed emotion tugs at the soldier’s lips, but he won’t let it take over his stoic features. “But you get my point. If you were actually looking for something serious, you’d date someone better than those men.”

Unprompted and unwarranted, his words spear your heart.

Memories replay in your head, a kaleidoscope of the featureless faces you let take you out, dine you, wine you, kiss you. A handful of immeasurables: how many times you’ve brushed off mispronounced versions of your name, how many excuses you’ve made for the way they talk to you, how many times you’ve lowered your own standards to help a man feel desired. In your wake lies a graveyard of failed relationships, with no proper funeral nor mourning.

You swallow back the lump in your throat.

“Okay, psychoanalysing me aside, what’s left on the list?” You ask, making your way round to Bucky’s side of the cart.

“Well, I still need to write down Jeff G.’s cliff accident.”

“The other list.” You watch as he struggles to fish out the scrap of paper from his pocket.

“Eggs, pasta, feta, toilet roll,” his brows are furled, his eyes are glaring, and with each item he lists off, his words grow more unsure. “Grapefruit? Your handwriting is shit.”

“I was in a rush!”

“And sitting on a jack-hammer?”

“Gimme that,” you snatch the list, he yields it with no protest. As you scan over the scribbled ink, a frustrating truth comes to light. Bucky’s right, your handwriting is shit. “Is grapefruit even in season?”

“Huh,” it’s the sound of hollow amusement.

“What?”

“Just…” His presence looms over you, infecting your senses with the woodsy smell of his cologne and the arduous heat that radiates off of him. When he nods his head to the right, scoffing out a laugh and poking his tongue into his cheek, you find yourself wrestling between temptations of slapping him or pulling him closer. “You really don’t notice what’s right in front of you, do you?”

Lo and behold, on the right side of the aisle, grapefruits.

You make it through the rest of the shopping list in relative silence, with the occasional side-comment from the super soldier that either rouses a grin onto your lips or has your eyes rolling in faux disagreement. Little by little, you peruse the aisles and fill the cart; and, when Bucky picks out the only ice cream flavour void of nuts, you bite your tongue and choose to say nothing.

“I forgot to ask,” you finally speak, standing in the self-checkout zone and struggling to find something to do with your fidgety hands as Bucky scans each item — you insisted on helping and he insisted he’d get it done quicker alone. “How did the apartment viewing go?”

“Oh. Fine,” you grimace as he says your least favourite f word. “The current lease isn’t up yet, so you’re stuck with me a little longer.”

Are you supposed to feel this relieved?

In theory, you were never supposed to feel anything in regards to Bucky Barnes. In practice, it’s a lot more complicated, a pendulum that seems to swing in constant motion between red hot aggravation and red hot something else you refuse to give a name.

All you know is there are times where you wonder if his back is okay sleeping on the couch, and you contemplate asking him to come meet you during your lunch breaks, and you crave to have the anxious shake in your leg quelled by his daily check-in calls whenever he and Sam go off on another misadventure. Whatever reason lies behind your behaviour, the familiarity of ignorant bliss tempts you away from seeking the answer.

Besides, Bucky will be leaving soon. He’ll no longer be your roommate and you’ll both fall out of whatever routine convenience has forced upon you both.

A series of beeps capture your attention.

At the epicentre of the noise stands an elderly woman, grey hair pristinely curled and an outfit that screams Sunday-bests, struggling with the check-out machine. With no employee in sight and no do-gooder fellow customer stepping out of their way to help, the woman’s distress grows with each beep the machine makes at her.

Knuckles brush down your arm, and there’s Bucky at your side, waiting for you to pay him any mind.

“You mind handling the rest?” He asks, in that softly-spoken tone of his that would make anyone feel like swooning. Maybe that’s why it takes you a few moments to notice the wallet he’s holding out to you. “Cash is in the back pocket. I’ll be a few minutes, okay? Just finish bagging everything, leave the carrying to me.”

There’s no time to get a single word out before you’re staring at the back of his head and watching as he makes his way over to the elderly woman.

For every item you scan, you sneak a glance. The butter beeps onto the screen, and you peek how Bucky has effortlessly become the woman’s personal helper. You pass the strawberries through and reward yourself with the sight of Bucky’s cheeky grin — with the way the elderly lady laughs and swats at his arm, you can only assume he’s made some flirtatious comment. Clicking on the option to pay cash, you nearly give yourself whiplash as you turn to watch them again, Bucky’s just about finishing bagging her groceries while the woman opens her shopping-trolley bag.

Waiting on the receipt to print, your reflection stares back at you on the self-checkout screen: a hue of endearment glowing off your features. The smile quickly melts off your face when you realise that he… Oh no.

Bucky is charming.

Part of you has always known he was handsome — you’re stubborn, not blind — yet the sight of him now, all dashing smiles and twinkling eyes playing rescuer to a woman who, despite the difference in their physical ageing, is closer to his own age than you, it troubles you. The acid burn in your throat is not a manifestation of jealousy, no; it’s the queasy feeling of knowing you’ve never looked across at a date, caught him in a moment of content, and felt the unyielding desire to be the reason behind it.

Someone clears their throat beside you, a man with a wrinkle in his forehead and an agitated look upon his face, so you quickly excuse yourself and, with plastic handles digging into your fingers, you approach Bucky and the elderly lady.

Upon noticing you, Bucky’s quick to tug the bags out your grip, a scolding already falling off his tongue: “I told you to leave these to me.”

“Yeah, well, Mr. Frowny-Magoo over there didn’t appreciate me hogging up the cashier,” the comment is meant as nothing more than a lighthearted joke, yet you swear you see something shift in the soldier’s stance, his shoulders tensing and his jaw clenching as he glances back at the stranger.

Fortunately, the elderly woman interrupts whatever he’s contemplating doing to him.

“Она твоя жена?(Is she your wife?)” She’s looking between you both expectantly, speaking words you don’t understand. “У нее лицо ангела. (She has the face of an angel.)”

Whatever she says, it clearly has an effect on Bucky. His head turns to the side, to you, and a visible softness overcomes his gaze as it traces over your face. His shoulders are relaxing, his jaw is unclenching, and he’s switching the bags over to his metal hand, renewing his grip and freeing up the hand that now hangs right by yours, knuckles gracing over your own in a way that feels like a dare, a challenge, a temptation to lace your fingers together.

You clench your fist shut.

“Я знаю. (I know.)” He says, eyes lingering on you a few moments longer than necessary, before he’s back to smiling at the elderly woman.

Halfway home and doubling your pace to keep up with his effortless stroll, curiosity finally gets the better of you.

“What did she say back there, that lady you helped?”

A stranger rushes past you both, phone glued to their ear and stressing down the speaker. Bucky takes grip of your arm and tugs you closer to him.

“Do you spend your time getting bumped into when I’m not around?” His fingers give your arm a squeeze before releasing you. “And, if you must know, she said I was the most handsome man she’s ever seen.”

Little force is put behind the shove you give his shoulder.

You’re too busy agonising over how much you agree with her.

Bucky leaves.

Not forever, but three weeks away on some stealth mission with Sam sure begins to feel like it.

It happens on a Friday. After the week from hell at work, a friend’s mid-week engagement party, and the unexpected downpour of rain during the journey home, you walk into an unlit apartment and a note stuck to the fridge.

Sam needs me. Be safe, don’t bring strangers home. B. 

The batch of freshly baked cinnamon rolls sweeten your night up, at least.

There’s a quiet that always seems to blanket the house whenever you lose Bucky to missions.

Before he was dumped on your front door, you’d been used to living alone and the peaceful silence that came with it. Independence, the ability to need no one and want nothing, a trait of yours that once brought pride, now brings you nothing but the static sound of a muted television and the hum of the microwave spinning a meal fit for one.

Mornings become a ritual of waking later yet leaving earlier, no one is there to distract you from drinking your coffee. Though the workload is the same, somehow the slow drag of hours still finds a way to pass quicker than ever, the revolving doors of the office building spit you back out onto the streets of New York before you’re fully ready. Your evenings waste away, starved of noise and company, while you run out of shows to watch and books to read, and count the hours down until all that silence becomes necessary for your eyes to close and your mind to rest.

It’s when darkness rules over the sky and the hour is a single digit that the phone finally rings. A blocked number, untraceable, pulling you out the hands of sleep and filling your room with the noise of your ringtone. He never speaks first, not until there’s an echo down the line of your own sleep stained ‘hello?’.

“You can go back to sleep now.”

You never stay on the line long enough to find out how quickly he hangs up after he speaks. Because it’s only ever meant to be a way to let you know he’s safe, alive, somewhere out there doing who-knows-what and stopping who-knows-who. It’s just an unrequested favour he’s granted you, after the incident in which both he and Sam fell-off the grid for five days and you were nearly rounding up a search party. He’s not missed a call since, once a day while he’s away.

So, when he doesn’t call, it’s only natural that you worry.

The alarm bell rings when you wake up to birds chirping, sun spilling through the crack between the curtains, and not a single missed call nor voicemail awaiting you.

It’s Saturday and there’s no work to occupy your mind, so you force down a bagel, toss a tote bag onto your shoulder, and head out to the local market. But there’s no joy in perusing fruit stands without a six foot soldier trailing your heels and muttering to himself about how exotic fruit has gotten, and how ‘back in my day you had your apples, your oranges, and your pears.’

You wind up home by noon, and the dwelling begins to grow, still no call.

There’s a weight on your chest, and a balloon of anxiety that grows in your throat, and an unwarranted agitation burning at your skin as you read over his note again, still very much stuck to the fridge and taunting you — Be safe, says a man who clearly can’t take his own advice. 

Then, why should you?

You agree to go on a date, one you’ve been dancing around agreeing to for a few weeks yet reach for it the moment you decide you’re not pleased with the way Bucky’s lack of a call is ruining your well-earned free time.

And, hey, the guy’s not a complete loser this time. On paper, at least. He’s handsome, tall, and an athlete — ex-athlete, really, but you don’t bother to point that out while he talks about the gymnastic studio he runs. Most importantly, he’s eager to call a cab and get you home, screw Bucky’s warning. If you want to bring a stranger into your home, you’ll do it. 

Brooding, uncalling soldier be damned!

After stumbling through the dark of your apartment into your bedroom, and fumbling with your bra long enough for you to grow tired and just take it off yourself, you and Mister Gymnast tumble into the sheets for a performance so lacklustre, it warrants taking all his medals away. At least your date seems to enjoy himself, spilling onto your stomach and falling asleep the minute his head hits the pillows.

“I finished,” last you checked, he hadn't even started.

You lie awake, staring at the ceiling, and try to will the phone to ring. Encased by a stranger’s snoring and a guilty feeling, you let Lady Sleep whisk you away. When your eyes open next, morning has broken and you’re alone in bed with a remnant trace of warmth on the sheets. But the silence is finally gone.

Beyond your door you hear the faint thud of footsteps, the ding of the fridge being opened, the whistle of the kettle. You almost trip in your rush to get dressed, and nearly rip the hinges off the door as you tear it open. Then the smile falls from your face.

“You’re up!” Everyone’s favourite gymnast is there to greet you, a mug in hand as he goes to pull you in for a kiss. The way you swerve is automatic, unplanned, leaving his lips to land on your cheek. “Uhh, I was hoping you’d sleep a little longer, I wanted to bring you breakfast in bed but-”

“He couldn’t figure out how to boil the kettle.”

And there’s Bucky, leaning back against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest and a smug look on his face. Aside from the butterfly stitches above his left brow, he looks unharmed. Fine, even. Dressed in all black, with a t-shirt that’s hugging his frame a little too tightly for your liking, the double-combo of his dog-tags and vibranium arm on display. Perfectly safe for a man who couldn’t call.

Your date laughs and sheepishly scratches the back of his head before you get the chance to speak.

“Your brother was kind enough to help me.” It’s unclear who laughs first: Bucky or you. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing, just…” Bucky says, shaking the laughter away with a nod of his head. “In what world do me and her look related?”

“Wait, if you’re not her brother then, are you-” Fifty shades of horror spill over the gymnast’s face, his head darting between looking over at Bucky and back at you. “Holy shit, is he your boyfriend?”

“Husband, actually,” the soldier’s all too quick-witted, pushing off the counter and reaching for a mug of brewing coffee. “But don’t worry, we’re open. What do you think of our kitchen lights, by the way? My wife here likes them dim.”

Dumb as he is, your date tilts his head up to inspect the light fixtures.

“Oh, they’re nice!”

That does it for you.

“Bucky, shut up!” You snap, finger pointed over at the menace who’s biting back a smirk and stirring away at his mug, face as innocent as sin. Is this some twisted version of revenge, a punishment for bringing a stranger home? You’d prefer the punishment to be a little more… hands on. Preferably in the form of your slapping that twinkle out of his eyes. “He is not my boyfriend, or my husband. He is the bum that lives on my couch.”

“You see how she treats me, Vince?”

“It’s Lance,” the gymna- Lance corrects him.

Moving towards the kitchen, your eyes check over your roommate once more, as though they expect some previously unseen injury to make an appearance on his skin. Come the end of your search, you’re left looking into a face that is sporting a split brow and a cruel level of entertainment from the situation at hand.

There’s a relief to having him back, and it’s wrestling with the exasperating emotions a single missed call conjured up.

“What are you doing here, anyway? Aren’t you and Sam still meant to be… I don’t know, on a homoerotic getaway, fighting crime?” The questions fire out of you as you slip into one of the island’s stools.

“We finished early,” Bucky appears by your side as though from thin air, hand clasping the back of your seat and pushing you in closer to the counter top.

“Aww, don’t worry, big boy, it happens to the best of you,” you tease, an empathetic pat against his shoulder.

The mockery backfires when you notice his brows shoot up and his stare shifts towards your date, who’s too busy trying to open the sugar jar to notice the dig at his own sexual inabilities.

Wait, when exactly did Bucky get home?

“How do you take your coffee?” One-Thrust-Lance asks you over his shoulder.

Before you can answer, a cup is nudged into your grasp and Bucky looks over you with triumph, metal fingers reaching out to drag over a plate of freshly-baked cookies. The smell of warm vanilla pairs well with the soft musk of his cologne, your eyes nearly roll back inhaling it.

“Mmm,” one sip of your coffee is all you need to know it’s perfect, made exactly to your taste. “Coffee and baked goods… I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

In lieu of any verbal response, the soldier takes to dunking one of the cookies into your mug before stealing a bite out of it. You watch as he chews on the sweet treat, head nodding in approval at his own skills. After he dips a second time, you expect him to take another bite, only to find him offering the chocolate chip goodness up to your mouth. Two eyes, blue as any winter, stare encouragingly while you sink your teeth into the cookie.

Heaven couldn’t taste any sweeter, you think, as the perfect blend of coffee stained dough and the sharpness of the dark chips flood your tastebuds. 

“So messy,” Bucky tuts quietly, his right hand grabbing a steady hold of your chin while his thumb swipes away the crumbs dusting the corner of your mouth.

That thing inside of you stops again as you watch him bring his hand up to his own mouth, a pink tongue poking out to lick his thumb clean.

Arousal thrums through your blood, a pulsing rhythm that spreads straight to your clit. A squeeze of your thighs brings momentary reprieve, yet the ache fights back with renewed force, drying up your throat and knocking the sense right out of you.

Squirming where you sit, your legs switch position until one foot finds itself tucked beneath the opposite thigh, the heel of it sitting perfectly against your clothed core. You find no mercy, no chance to roll your hips forward in search of the balm only friction will bring to your burning skin. Instead there’s simply Bucky, eyes trailing down the length of you and settling on your short-clad legs. As though his behaviour is not cruel enough, he wets his bottom lip with his tongue

“You like that?” More than you’ll ever know, you almost scream until the logical side of your brain takes the wheel again and you notice him pointing down at the half-eaten cookie. Of course he’s enquiring about his baking skills, what else would this scrambled-egg-for-brains senior citizen be talking about? “Are you gonna make me wait all day for an answer?”

Something smashes behind Bucky, just in time to startle away the racy thoughts from your mind.

“My bad!” Your date — who you damn near forgot was even here — is apologising, bending at the waist and trying his best to collect the fractured pieces of a mug off the floor. “Where do you guys keep your dustpan?” 

Bucky pushes away from the island counter, taking the smell of his cologne with him; if you weren’t fully back to your rational senses, you’d miss it.

“I’ll get it, Vince, you just stand there and look pretty.”

“Okay!” Lance, it seems, is just as eager to please the ex-assassin as you almost were a moment ago.

You decide you need to move, to stand up, to stretch your legs. This has nothing to do with the lingering effect of Bucky’s antics, nor the damp patch gathering against your panties.

Slipping off the kitchen stool, you work on chugging down gulps of coffee with every intention of dumping the empty mug into the sink, dashing to your bedroom, and conjuring up the best plan you can come up with to get not only yourself, but also the trash you brought in with you last night out of the apartment and away from an infuriating roommate.

Something on the floor derails you, however, dragging you away from the path to sanctuary. The tiniest red petal, lonesome and neglected upon the cold tile. Three steps over, and there’s another petal. One step until the next petal. You follow the breadcrumb trail all the way over to the garbage can where, with one gentle push of a button, the lid opens up to reveal the unexpected, thrown away like a dirty secret.

A crumpled bouquet of roses.

Everywhere you turn, there’s tension.

In your neck, from sleeping at an unfavourable angle. Within your stomach, where a queasy feeling keeps threatening to spew your guts out onto the bathroom floor. Between you and Bucky, a foreign energy that’s grown over the course of this last week, during which you’ve been avoiding eye contact and his stare is full of accusation.

Retracing your steps, they take you back to the moment Lance left the apartment and you found yourself drowning in Bucky’s company for the first time in weeks. He was barely half-way through poking fun at the choices you made in his absence — most of his focus being on the blubbering fool you brought into your bed — when your patience ran thin and snapped.

Now here you are, bearing the consequence of your own short temper, wiping lipstick off your teeth whilst mentally preparing yourself to go on a second date, planned sheerly out of spite and the need to prove a point.

Poor Lance is none the wiser to his role as pawn in your game of ‘Screw You, Barnes!’.

“Everything okay in there?” Think of the devil and he shall knock on the bathroom door, apparently. “Thought you had your big date at seven.”

The gymnast’s text thread stares back at you, a wall of grey bubbles. You have to swallow down the lump in your throat to speak, “He’s not answering my calls.”

“You’ve been stood up? By that loser?” There’s every chance your storm of emotions is impeding you from thinking straight, but you swear you almost hear a hint of disbelief in Bucky’s voice. Disgust, even.

There’s no point dwelling on the thought.

After a quick wash of your hands, you pry the door open and watch as the soldier leaning against it nearly topples forward before catching himself against the frame. He’s entirely too close for comfort, close enough for you to notice the different shades of blue in his eyes.

“Maybe he broke his phone?” The lack of assurance in your voice has you cringing, the fear of being called out suddenly doubling.

Bucky scoffs, arms crossing over his chest.

“More likely he forgot to charge it.”

Is that what happened to him? Is that why he left you to dwell in the dark over his whereabouts and wellbeing, rendering the usual distraction of a night-time companion useless? Only for you to find him the following morning, right as rain and as annoying as ever, standing in the kitchen and casting judgement-filled glances at your overnight guest?

Thinking about it, about him, brings on an onslaught of anger you’re not willing to address. Not right now.

“Shut up!” It comes across as less independent girlboss and more petulant child, but you’re too busy noticing how firm his chest feels under your palms as you push past him out of the bathroom to care.

Prying open the freezer, you hear the soft click of the toilet door closing. Good, you think, he’s gone away. Out of sight, out of mind. Even if it is only for the short time it takes him to do his business.

That time ends up being even shorter than expected, for only minutes after you’ve dug your spoon into the creamy, frozen goodness of vanilla fudge, the object of both your fascination and your torture is making his way towards the kitchen.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop eating my ice cream?”

“Didn’t I tell you to move out?” Mouth full of vanilla, you shoot him a toothy grin and relish in the grimace it earns you.

Satisfaction melts away when Bucky invades your personal space, metal arm reaching over head and pulling open a cupboard.

“Don’t do that,” you swat at the vibranium bicep, a futile fight that simply makes you all too aware of how smooth it feels beneath your fingertips.

“Do what?” Brain of a caveman, Bucky continues his rustling through the cabinet behind you, features as stoic as a rock as though he’s none the wiser to how your chests brush against one another with each exhale.

“That,” another swat at his arm, though this time he yields. The space between you doesn’t grow, however. It worsens, his attention fully falling onto you now. “Reaching over me like you can’t just ask me to move.”

“Fine, if it really bothers you that much,” are the last words you hear before you’re airborne, two hands squeezing at your hips and moving you two steps over and out of the way.

The soldier doesn’t struggle, not even for a moment, the serum that’s altered his DNA leaving him primed and ready to manoeuvre the most steadfast of objects. Manhandle them, too. Pick them up, turn them over, pin them down, make them scream… Objects, of course, or those big, bad guys he and Sam are always chasing after.

The anger in you is renewed, burning brighter than a star ready to die. You shove his hands off of you and secure another step of distance between you.

“Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine today.” With the rate he’s going at, one would think the soldier makes a living out of deepening the frown on your face. “Is this princess’ first time being stood up?”

You’d slap him, right here and now, if it didn’t mean moving closer and touching his skin; the current top two of your ‘Things To Not Do’ list.

Luckily, the tub of ice cream sits just within reach and your eager fingers take grip of it, sliding it over the counter towards yourself. A mouthful of coolness precedes the burning question on your tongue, “Why didn’t you call?”

“Are you serious?” Now he’s the one scowling and taking a step closer.

“Deadly,” you dig the spoon back into the carton. “Now answer the question.”

“You’re pissy with me for not calling, meanwhile I’m the one who came home to some asshole in your bed?”

He’s moving closer. You try to step backwards.

“Yeah, well, if you’d called like you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have ended up with said asshole.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow, “Oh, so now it’s my fault that you date degenerates?”

The cackle that escapes you could break the soundbarrier.

“Wow! Everybody, give it up for another original dig at my love-life from James Buchanan Barnes!” Voice dripping with seven layers of venomous sarcasm, you give three slow claps of your hands. The cynical smile that overcomes your face feels borderline deranged, something plucked right out of a horror movie. “Okay, yeah, I date losers! Happy? Jesus Christ, Bucky, what do you expect me to do? It’s not exactly like there’s anyone else lining up to date me.”

“I am!” His voice is raised, his eyes are wide, his chest is heaving. “Maybe I’m the biggest idiot, rushing home last week to surprise you. Even brought you flowers.  I just… Fuck!”

You don’t move, don’t blink, don’t breathe.

Bucky runs a hand through his hair, knuckles going white as he pulls on the tresses.

There it is again in his eyes, the accusation.

Even though he’s shaking his head, he steps closer.

The kitchen counter is right behind you, there’s nowhere for you to run.

The heels on your feet almost give out beneath you, you try to steady yourself with your hands.

Bucky has other plans and grips both your forearms.

“I am,” he repeats, softer. Slower. The icy exterior of accusation melts away to reveal vulnerability.

A hand meets your cheek and holds you like you are glass, breakable beneath his touch. Your heart’s in your throat, and there’s a current of electricity running down to your toes, and that neglected hunger in your loins creeps in again. His eyes search your face, while his thumb gently swipes over your bottom lip, prying it out an involuntary capture from your teeth.

It’s unclear who reaches for who first, whether he dips and takes possession of your mouth, or you grab him by the collar of his shirt and lay your claim over him. In a matter of seconds, a tentative press of lips against lips divulges into loss of breath, tongues in mouths, and fevered kisses.

The soldier kisses with starvation, like he has walked through the desert of loneliness and at last stumbled upon an oasis, like a bee seeking every last drop of nectar from a flower dying off with the spring, like a body clings to sleep in the throes of exhaustion. It’s a necessity, a human need, a matter of survival to keep your lips interlocked.

The hand on your face holds you steady as he tilts himself deeper into the kiss. Noses brush against the swells of cheeks, eyelids rest close, feet shuffle closer in search of eradicating the crevice of distance between you two. Metal fingers curl around the nape of your neck, a gesture you reciprocate while your spare hand lays flat-palmed against his beating chest. One of his legs winds up between yours and, as he shifts weight from one foot to another, there’s the faintest relief of friction against your cunt and a whine gets caught between your throat and Bucky’s eager mouth.

Despite how you chase his lips, he pulls back and grants you the sight of pure endearment.

“Look at you, whining already. Where’s all that fire gone?” It’s practically a whisper, spoken with fascination. “Or were you just needing Old Bucky to touch you, huh?”

Second-hand embarrassment burns the tips of your ears, while your own unspoken agreement to his question has your stomach twisting up. Survival instincts, that have never been much of a friend, scream at you to flee this feeling, to throw away Pandora’s box before you risk fully opening it and having it consume you.

Bucky intercepts your attempt to push out of his arms.

“Ah, ah, get back here. Not done kissing you,” his words divulge into a barely coherent mumble as he reconnects your lips.

Beneath the heat of his kiss, the discomfort in your chest turns to ashes. Because, while instinct tells you to run from danger, this is Bucky.

Bucky who fixes cupboard hinges, and sleeps with both eyes on the door. Bucky who carries all the shopping, and holds every door. Bucky who calls to hear your voice while he’s away endangering his life, and brings home the silliest trinkets he finds on missions. Bucky who wakes you when you miss your alarm, and knows if you’ve had a bad day simply from looking at your face.

How could you possibly be in danger when it comes to him?

While you’re overcome with epiphany, he’s taken to tracing his lips over the slope of your jaw and mouthing at the skin of your neck. It’s when he lifts you up onto the kitchen counter that your wandering mind is reeled back in, to the physical present where your legs rest on either side of the soldier and the prized possession of vanilla fudge once again sits within reaching distance.

“Are you stealing my ice cream right now?” His lips tickle your collarbone as he speaks, barely  a moment after you’ve scooped the spoon into your mouth.

“I’m warm, and it's melting,” his head pops up just in time to accept the spoonful of vanilla you deliver. There’s a glow in his eyes, one that has you questioning if it's been there all along or if it's a consequence of touching your skin. “Don’t want it to go to waste.”

His mouth is on yours again, a rush of three chaste kisses seared against you before he replies, “Then let’s cool you down.”

At a teasingly slow pace, you feel his fingers tug down your dress’ straps, leaving the silky fabric to slip down your frame and pool around your hips. Under the golden hue of the kitchen lights, his gaze studies your bare skin like it's a work of art, an eighth wonder of the world, the greatest poem never written woven into it. Yet it still manages to pale against the face that overcomes him as he removes a final layer of lace.

Unlike Vince, he has no trouble removing your bra.

“So responsive,” he talks as though only his ears are meant to hear it, his vibranium palm gently taking hold of your left breast and rolling the hardening nipple between two fingers. 

He’s studying your reaction, bewildered by the goosebumps spreading over your flesh.

When was the last time he truly touched another person? Weeks, months, years, decades? The thought of his hands on a faceless shape makes you sick. First with envy, and then with hypocrisy, an amalgamation of all the men you’ve taken to bed flashing before your eyes. But none of them ever touched you like you were porcelain, and none of them looked at you like you held the key to eternal pleasure. None of them were Bucky.

A chill runs down your spine and a gasp rips out your chest as Bucky swipes the spoon over your skin, leaving a trail of ice cream atop your right breast for his tongue to follow. He plants a garden of kisses along the swell of your chest before pulling away to give the left side equal treatment, another creamy river along your skin for him to clean up.

Moving at their own volition, your hips grind gently against his steady figure as Bucky coats your nipple in vanilla, moaning into your chest as he lays claim over you with his mouth. Spoiling you in his kisses, the soldier begins to yearn for friction, meeting the careful roll of your hips with his own.

Your hand finds his hair and his stare meets yours, intense and all-consuming as he releases your nipple with a scrape of his teeth. You want to soothe his kiss-swollen lips but they’re already wrapping themselves around your other breast, not even patient enough to lather you in the vanilla goodness this time.

Instead, the coldness on your skin stems from metal fingers, perched on your thigh and creeping up the length of it, inch by tormenting inch. A hesitant hand wraps around a vibranium wrist, tightening its grip before you begin guiding his touch inwards, upwards, to where you need it most. Bucky's stronger, more resistant, and holds off your interceptance, left hand continuing its intended path beneath the skirt of your dress and grabbing hold of your naked waist.

He’s everywhere, all over you. Mouthing at your chest, gripping at your hip, rutting into your pussy. The sweet drag of his bulge over your clothed core sires a wet patch against your thong and has your fingers tugging on the roots of his hair, winning you the hair-raising hum of a groan against your breast.

Desperate to feel more, you renew your efforts to lead his hand to the space between your legs and are met with a shake of his head.

“No,” he mutters, and robs you of a hand beneath your dress, using it instead to cradle your jaw while his lips skim over the shell of your ear. “Wanna feel you.”

The warmth of flesh brands your thigh, Bucky’s right arm now leading the charge beneath the silky fabric. With bated breath, you brace yourself against his strong chest and try not to squirm in anticipation of his touch. With one final squeeze at your inner thigh, the soldier’s hand engulfs your clothed cunt and his breath cracks in your ear, a strangled out, feral noise that has your toes curling.

“She’s so wet, darling,” his voice has you delirious, breathy against your ear. His fingers flex against your pussy and a moan catches in your throat. “You gonna let me touch her?”

Something about the way he’s speaking to you, the words he’s choosing, makes you want to fall apart. Your sex-life has always been liberal, you know what it is to have a man’s hands all over you, trying to take ownership of parts of you he thinks belong to him. Men who take, and take, and take, until there is nothing left of you to give, and not once do they care to win your favour, to plead for permission. But Bucky…

“Please, say I can touch her, wanna give her what she needs,” he’s pleading for it, begging for you — wrecked and desperate, breath run ragged from no more than the relief of rolling his groin against your thigh. “Promise I’ll be real sweat, make you feel good.”

Too caught up in his own head, he doesn’t notice you nodding, until you’re granting him salvation verbally, “Touch me, Bucky.”

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t waste time on taking off your underwear, just moves it to the side and drags the tip of his fingers down the inseam of your pussy. You hear it, more than you feel it, the moment he touches your opening, a sharp inhale at your ear telling you he’s exactly where he wants to be.

As his middle finger slips in, it’s hard to tell which of you reacts louder, both a mess of guttural moans. Once it's fully sheathed within you, he curls it and presses against your soaked walls, grinning against your skin at the reaction it coaxes out of you.

“Don’t hold back,” he chastises you as you bite back another pathetic whimper, a second finger slipping into you. “Let me hear what I’m doing to you.”

He must have a magic touch, you’re sure of it. Thick fingers that fuck into you at a steady pace, curling and teasing at that world-bending spot inside you, while his thumb makes itself useful against your clit, a firm force for your bucking hips to grind up into while you chase the pleasure he’s unleashing on you. In a matter of minutes, the room is alive with your melodic moans, Bucky’s endless hums of approval, and the damn-right embarrassingly loud squelch of him fingering your drooling cunt.

You make the mistake of letting your eyes slip shut, relinquishing yourself to the way he touches you with the rough hands of a soldier yet the delicate stroke of a musician playing his favourite instrument. He must feel the shift in you, for he’s instantly prying his face away from your neck and tightening the metal grip on your jaw, fingertips digging into squished cheeks.

“Look at me,” his words are both a command and a plea. An order you follow and a prayer you answer, eyelashes fluttering open to find his face in front of your own. His lips are a hard line, his brows furrowed in disapproval, and there’s a vein threatening to split down the middle of his forehead, but his eyes. His eyes are affection incarnate, two pools of lust and worship that pose no threat of drowning. “Do you want to cum?”

Never has a more needless question been asked. 

You nod into the force of his vibranium hand, but that’s not what he wants, frown deepening.

“Say it,” needy, helpless, spoken like he’s the one on the brink of ecstasy. “Please.”

“Bucky,” it feels good to say his name like this, brain melting into mush and heart racing in your chest. “I want you to let me cum.”

“Let you?” He’s offended by the word, fingers burying impossibly deeper inside of you while he continues to stare you down. “I beg of you.”

No warning precedes the coil in you snapping. The muscles in your core tense, your back arches into his broad figure, your pussy squeezes at Bucky’s fingers with a death grip. He guides you through it, ignoring the cramp in his wrist in favour of continuing to fuck his hand into you, a smile finally cracking over his face as he watches you fall apart atop the counter, nothing but Bucky, Bucky, Bucky surrounding you.

He tries to give you reprieve, a moment to breathe and savour the buzz in your veins, the hand around your jaw shifting to stroke at your cheek while the hand between your legs soothes you with featherlight touches.

You don’t let him, hand pawing down his torso and gripping at the belt of his jeans, delighting in the familiar clang of a buckle being undone, nimble digits that tear leather out its loop and tug down his zipper. Bucky’s bringing his lips back against yours just as you palm at his bulge, his tongue licking into your mouth when you finally release him from the confines of his boxers.

Fingers coated in your own slick grip at your thigh while the soldier makes it his mission to steal your breath, rendering you blind to the sight of his cock. But you can feel it. The weight of it in your hand, the burn of want ingrained in his skin. The width of it, and the length of it, and the perfectly mushroomed tip that has him keening into your touch as your pointer finger drags over the head.

“Is this what I do to you?” Still lost in the maze of your orgasm, you manage to gain back crumbs of your usual confidence watching Bucky fall mute. When he merely nods, you play him at his own game, fingers back in his hair and forcing him to look you in the eye. “Say it.”

He doesn’t.

He says something much better.

“D’you even realise how many nights I’ve laid on that fucking couch, hard as a rock and willing you to come out your room?”

“That’s your generation's problem, you know?” You whisper teasingly, incapable of fighting off your own laughter. “You swear more than you breathe.”

“C’mere,” he’s rolling his eyes and pulling you in, kissing you like it’s been a milenia and not a minute, hand nudging yours out the way to take a hold of himself.

Your teeth graze over his tongue as he drags the head of his cock through your folds, and he groans into your mouth before pulling back. Resting his forehead against yours, he’s teasing you both as his tip brushes over your hole before continuing its rutt up, bumping against your sensitive clit.

A wicked voice takes control of your mouth.

“Lance would have fucked me by now.”

“Vince would have cum by now, too,” he’s still rocking his hips, no sense of urgency behind the way he soaks himself in you.

Meanwhile, you’re a handful of seconds away from screaming at him to just stick it in already.

“You- Oh!” Prayers answered, hallelujah, his cock finally sinks into you. It’s a shallow thrust, barely more than the tip before he’s retreating, yet it's enough to mess with your head. “You heard us?”

“Unfortunately,” and he means it, the most subtle of pouts forming on his lips before he feeds himself a little deeper into your pussy. “I’m not great when it comes to timing.”

“I only slept with Lance because you-” Right on cue, he fucks into you even deeper and your words dissappear before they can reach your tongue.

“New rule,” a hand rests on your knee and encourages you to spread your legs wider. “No speaking another man’s name when you’re in bed with me.”

“Technically, this is the kitchen counter-” The bastard does it again, cuts you off with his dick — if it didn’t feel so damn good, you’d slap him.

He’s bottomed out at last, buried himself fully in your cunt. Hands snake around your waist, one palm flattening against your lower back while the other rests a little further up and guides your spine to arch into him, closer, like there’s anymore space left between you to devour.

His pace is still slow, teasing. A toe-curling drag of his cock out of you, letting you feel every ridge and vein before his hips promptly snap back into you and send your eyes rolling back, your head falling back — and smacking loudly against the cupboard door behind you.

Bucky freezes, one hand quick to cradle the back of your skull while his eyes scan over you.

“Jesus, doll, you okay?” 

“Please don’t stop,” you plead, ridiculously unfazed by the faint ache when you’ve got him inside of you.

Even though he rolls his eyes, he complies.

“Might have just given you a concussion and all you care about is getting fucked?” He asks, like you could possibly care about anything else when his arms are hooking themselves under your knees and rucking you up off the counter, away from any rogue cupboard that means you harm.

If anything, you’ll gladly shoulder the burden of any possible injury, if it means being granted the sight of his biceps tensing as he effortlessly stands there and fucks you down onto him. Were you in any sane state of mind, you wouldn’t think it, but god bless that super soldier serum.

“You can give me a cockcussion for all I care,” head perched on his shoulder, you watch your nails sink into the fabric of his shirt and wish it would disappear and gift you the naked view of his back.

“Adding that to the list,” he whispers against your forehead, pressing a kiss against it.

Legs bent at the knee, you watch how, with one particularly deep thrust, they bounce at either side of him and one of your heels clatters to the floor.

The room pivots as Bucky turns, you still in his arms and your ankles locked behind his back. At first, you believe he’s aiming to move things into the bedroom, where the only thing your head will be hitting is the mattress when he lays you down. He proves you wrong, however, the cold press of marble against you once more as he settles you down onto the kitchen island.

Much to your chagrin, he slips out of you, cock now sitting pretty against his clothed abdomen and glistening with the sheen of your essence. In the blink of an eye, the soldier is sinking to his knees, metal finger reaching back for your fallen shoe.

The scene plays out like something stripped right out of a morally dubious, low quality pornography retelling of Cinderella, in which Prince Charming has his dick out, Cinderella’s gown is half-way off, and the infamous glass slipper is just a pair of heels you bought on sale.

Bucky is delicate and slow, mouth tickling at your inner knee as he secures the shoe in place. He rests back on his haunches and fully takes in the sight of you, perched upon the counter, hands splayed out on marble, a tangle of silk around your waist, lips parted in search of steady breathing.

There’s an intensity to his gaze, burrowing itself beneath your skin and becoming part of your bloodstream, spreading throughout your body. It makes you want to hide, flee like you do best, but Bucky has other plans.

“The shoes stay on, but this,” Bucky’s fingertips tug lightly on the hem of your dress, exposing a sliver of new skin. “I need this gone. Am I allowed to take it off?”

There he goes again, face the model of innocence while he asks for permission to your body. If you weren’t already dripping against your panties, you would be now. Luckily, he doesn’t push you to verbalise your agreement this time, more than eager to comply the moment you nod your head.

You wiggle your hips as he pulls the fabric out from beneath you, his grip snagging on the waistband of your thong and dragging it away alongside the dress. When your ass cheeks press back down onto the cool of the counter, reality hits you like a freight-train: you’re completely nude, with Bucky on his knees before you, in the middle of the kitchen.

“Buck,” the y of his nickname disappears as you feel him peppering kisses of your leg, inching that little bit higher each press of his mouth. Squeezing your eyes shut, you try to remember where your rational thoughts are stored, conjuring up images of friends, of Sam sitting at this very surface. “I don’t think we should… I mean, people eat off this counter!”

“Don’t worry,” reaching the threshold of your thigh, his kisses seem to speed up, that sauve and composed exterior chipping away to reveal a man who no longer wants to take his time with you. “I intend to eat.”

No sooner than the words reach your ears, Bucky swipes his tongue up your pussy and any fight left in you melts away as you turn to putty beneath his touch, soft and malleable, willing to sit there and take whatever he wants to give.

Give, he most certainly does. Lips latch onto your clit, hands hold your squirming hips in place, tongue dances over your most delicate areas before dipping into your entrance. He drinks from you like you’re the sweetest honey, the richest of red wines, the Holy Grail promising an eternal youth to a man whose time was stolen from him.

“You should see her, doll,” there’s a rasp in Bucky’s voice, a feral undertone to the growl that rests in the back of his throat. One hand tugs his shirt off while the other snakes between your legs, two fingers spreading your lips open in an obscene gesture that has you clamping down on your bottom lip. “She’s drooling for me, all pretty and wet.”

Dropping both your legs over his shoulders, he tugs you right to the edge of the counter and dives back in. You feel his nose bump against your clit and your hand grabs onto your thigh, nails piercing into flesh as your mouth sings a whined symphony.

Vibranium curls around your wrist, prying harm away from your own skin and silently imploring you to hurt him instead, nestling your fingers back into his hair. He’s renewing his effort, a touch that’s more determined than ever to make you fall apart, on his knees and worshipping the altar of your body — fealty and devotion seared into each lap of his tongue, each brush of his lips, each stroke of his fingers.

Who are you to reject his piety? You welcome it, with closed fist and glassy eyes. The soldier shudders — a full-body shiver that shakes down his spine — as the point of your heel digs into his back and your fingers squeeze at his scalp, no mercy shown as you lose yourself in the throes of lust.

When you cum, a silent scream rips through your chest and a burning-too-bright white light turns you blind. He doesn’t let up, tongue still buried in your convulsing walls as your thighs clamp around his head and your feet kick at his back, shoes flying elsewhere into the kitchen. He pays none of it any mind, content to prolong your orgasm for as long as you’ll allow him, slowly rising off his knees with two hands pinning you back against the counter while he continues to feast on your pleasure.

“Ja-mes,” a fractured call of his name is all it takes for him to stop, pupils more black than blue as they stare down at the picture you paint atop the counter: teary-eyes, swollen lips, heaving chest.

He’s hardly the image of composure either, red lines along the expanse of his back, hair a tousled mess, the scruff on his face covered in a sheen of your juices. And, yet, never have you wanted to kiss him so bad.

All you manage, after minutes of floating atop the cloud of your peak, is a cheeky grin and a comment that makes him roll his eyes: “For a fossil, you’re pretty kinky.”

“War camps aren’t exactly known for being fun,” as he speaks, he slowly lowers your legs off his shoulder. “You find ways to keep yourself entertained.”

“Bet you were quite the pleaser, huh?” Trying your best to play it cool, you lay your head fully back on the counter and stare up  at the ceiling, praying he doesn’t notice the hypocritical pit forming in your stomach as you listen to your own words. “Probably had all the prettiest nurses fighting over who gets to tend to your poor, aching, throbbing co-”

“Jealousy looks cute on you,” he interrupts, amused, as his hands soothe over your hips.

“I’m not jealous!” You exclaim, barely believing yourself.

One hand reaching out for him, you watch your fingers intertwine with the prosthetic digits and let him tug you back up, chest to chest when his hand finds your cheek.

“I was,” his confession is crooned whilst staring right into your eyes, the tiniest up-turn to his mouth. “Everytime you walked out the door to go date a new loser.”

“Who knew,” your voice is as gentle as his own, nonchalant as a finger dances down the well-defined muscles of his abdomen and elicits a groan out of him. “All along I had my own loser at home.”

Bucky opts for silence as your hand reaches his groin and pays no mind to his cock, red-tipped and leaking, flushed against his stomach. You’re more interested in his jeans — in removing them, to be exact. It doesn’t take much, a sharp tug at the hem before they’re slipping off, meeting restraint as they cling to his muscled thighs and implore him to finish the job on your behalf, shucking them off blindly to where the rest of your clothes lie.

You must have saved a village in a past life to be rewarded with the view of a completely nude Bucky Barnes, skin stained by lust and laced with gold beneath the kitchen light. You must have saved the rest of the world, too, to watch how his eyes roll back and his mouth falls slack when you take his length in hand and give one slow pump of your wrist, releasing it just to watch it slap back against his abdomen.

As you reach for his dick again, his hand secures itself around your own and guides it up and down the length of it. Once, twice, thrice, till he’s breathing heavily and dripping in pre-cum.

“You must be close,” a statement you make with his own bodily reaction as evidence to back it up, yet there’s still room for doubt — to what extent does that soldier serum interfere with him?

“Put me back down on my knees and I’ll cum to the taste of you,” the soldier certainly makes a tempting offer, one that it almost pains you to refuse.

Almost, if you hadn’t already felt the sweet stretch of him inside you.

“Pretty sure putting you back down on your knees might be considered elder abuse, ole buddy.”

“My age may be a hundred and six but-”

“Exactly my point.”

“But my body isn’t,” he’s using that stare of his, the one Sam always warns you about, while  you’re full-on cheesing, a rush of adrenaline shooting through your veins as you wind him up.

“Remind me, who threw their back out a few weeks ago pulling a tray of muffins out the oven?”

His flesh hand grips behind one of your knees and tugs you right to the edge of the counter, while his left one, still clasped over your own, drags his tip over your folds.

“I don’t remember hearing you complain when you drunkenly ate half the tray and then threw up over the rest,” admittedly, not one of your proudest moments.

“Shut up and fuck me, Barnes.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Just like that, you’re drowning in him again, gasping for breath as you lose yourself in a flood of lust. Bottomed out, stuffing you full, Bucky barely graces your pussy with the chance to adjust to his stretch once more before he’s moving, the sweet graze of every inch being dragged along your sensitive walls.

Your nerves are still reeling from his mouth, a quiet hum of electric pleasure reawakened by his throbbing cock and his vulgar mouth.

“She fits me like a fucking glove,” his hands are pawing at your waist, your breast, your face, never in one place for too long as he begins to settle into a rhythm of thrusts. “Doing so good for me, darling.”

The softness put into his term of endearment births an ache in your chest, one that will accept no medicine other than your arms around his neck and his lips on yours. Mouths tangled in kisses and sweat dripping down your skin, Bucky halts — your hips pressed together, the swell of his balls resting right against your swollen cunt, the head of his cock resting right against your sweet spot — and grinds.

Slow, deliberate, delicious. You whine into his mouth and feel how he swallows it, feasts on your ecstasy with a willing tongue, and a smiling mouth, and possessive teeth that tug at your lip as he pulls back. He stretches out the feeling, grinding a second time as your noses bump against one another.

“Bucky,” his name is an anchor, a paperweight, something to ground you amidst the floaty feeling of being two orgasms deep with a third approaching any time now.

“I know,” he says, and you believe him. Believe that he knows, that he’s known, that he always knows when it comes to you.

You lay your head to rest upon on his left shoulder when he returns to chasing a high between your thighs, a renewed vigor behind each thrust that has your hips rolling to meet his and your nails raking over the straining muscles of his back.

“I lied,” an unprompted confession stumbles out his mouth, fingers flexing into their grip on your waist. “About the apartment viewing. I didn’t go.”

“Bucky,” is all you can manage, branded into his skin with a kiss along his neck.

“Is that all you can say? Huh?” His voice carries a teasing lilt, paired to perfection with the pad of his thumb rubbing at your clit. “I’m giving pivotal revelations here, and you’re just gonna reply with that?”

Another echo of his name, walls fluttering around his dick.

“Bucky, Bucky,” he’s mocking you, a torturer’s laugh as he moans his name into your ear. “Keep going, you sound so pathetic it’s almost cute.”

Beyond words and beyond sense, you give in to the weight of his palm splaying against your stomach and guiding your back down onto the island. The soldier hooks your legs over his elbows, deepening the angle that his cock fucks into you, and you swear you see stars dance along the kitchen ceiling.

A hand smooths over your gut and you look back at Bucky to find adoration in his eyes.

“You see that?” You almost want to cry when his movement switches back to a slow drag — innnnn and outtttt — until you notice it: the smallest hint of movement beneath your flesh, a subtle visual of the outline of his tip bulging against your skin from inside you. “See how full she is, how good I’m making her feel?”

Pressing your hand against it, you can’t help but giggle as you feel him poke at your palm, only to fall back into a puddle of incoherent noises when he keeps pushing at that sweet spot, over and over. Harder and faster with each draw back of his hips, you feel rivulets of your own arousal roll down your ass and onto the marble, tainting the counter forevermore in the sins the soldier commits against you, the sins you welcome with open legs.

You’re near the edge again, and he feels it, pushing you closer and closer as he slowly spirals into a mess of phrases that barely begin before he’s cutting them off with something new.

“Don’t deserve this-” He catches himself, rips the insecurity in his voice out by the roots. “C’mon, let me see it one more time. Need to see you fall apart.”

“Want you to fall apart too,” you manage to beg, unwilling to watch him hold back or pull out before he finishes. “Please!”

Like any good soldier, he obeys.

Crashing over you like a wave, he’s doubled-over by the waist and sandwiching you between the counter and him. You feel him spill into you, hot ropes of cum painting your walls white as a third crescendo washes over your body.

Both of you seek out the other as his thrusts grow languid and your walls spasm, milking him for every last drop he’s got. When your mouths meet, it’s less of a kiss and more of you simply breathing into the other, exchanging air and body heat.

“So,” you croak eventually, exhausted and spent atop the counter yet completely unwilling to relinquish him from blanketing you. “Are you gonna do that every time I steal your ice cream?

Somewhere between jello-ed legs and cold compresses, you wind up in bed.

Skin clammy, lips swollen, lust satiated, you practically melt into the buttery softness of your bed sheets as Bucky lays you down. Despite how you’re still basking in the glow of your third and final orgasm, the soldier seems to think, for a second, you can handle another.

With gentle hands prying open your thighs and a curious tongue diving in for a second helping, licking up the dribble of his own cum spilling out your hole, he’s quick to be corrected when you roll away from his touch with a whine and a plea, “think I might actually die if you make me cum again, Buck.”

He’s unbothered by the rejection, wholly embracing it as he curls up behind you and snakes his arms over your naked skin. It’s you who drags the sheet up and over you both, turning in his arms to plant your head on his chest. His heart races beneath it, but you hold off on teasing — your own isn't any better.

“Sam’s going to kill me,” you whisper out into the room, when moonlight is peeking through your curtains and both of your heartbeats have calmed down.

“I’m sorry,” you feel him shift beneath your head and, though you can’t fully see him, you feel that blue gaze land on you. “Have I not made it clear enough what name you should be saying in bed?”

“There’s a serious chance I’ll die and you’re thinking with your dick,” he squirms as you pinch at his nipple. “You’re no better than the men on your list, Barnes.”

Silence floats back in between you for a moment, peaceful as the slow stroke of his fingers dancing up your spine.

“Why would Sam kill you?” He pauses, hand pressing a little harder down against a knot in your shoulder.  “He knows you have a crazy guard dog.”

Your crazy guard dog just pressed a kiss against your forehead, how frightening.

“He made me swear I wouldn’t get involved with you. He said you weren’t in the headspace for a relationship, that you needed to focus on inner peace first.”

“Turns out inner peace is being inside of you,” you pinch at his nipple again. This time, he doesn’t run from it. This time, you almost swear you hear a little moan creep up his throat. “So, Wilson’s to blame? I can get behind that.”

“To blame for what?”

His hand’s now running up and down the back of your arm, leaving goosebumps wherever its tender touch goes. 

“Why it took you so long to jump my bones.”

“You think I jumped your-” Your head rises off his chest and you stare into the navy darkness of the room, trying to make a concrete shape out where you see shadows of his face. “Wait, so these past few weeks, I’ve not been hallucinating? You’ve been… flirting?”

“It’s been more than a couple weeks, sweetheart,” Bucky seems to have no problem finding you in the dark, hand cupping your cheek and dragging you up to press a chaste kiss against your mouth. “You don’t seriously think I waited until morning to check that sink without hoping to be caught, do you?”

“So you were slutting yourself out on the kitchen floor!”

“Think the kitchen’s seen worse,” worse might be the understatement of the century.

Clothes still lay discarded, counters unwiped, ice cream completely melted. Cleaning you up had been the soldier’s only priority, and you weren’t in the mood or the mindstate to argue with him on that.

A fingertip tickles down the slope of your nose.

“Stop fighting it, you’re tired,” you hear him whisper.

“I want to hear more about your desperate efforts to get my attention,” it’s nothing but a weak protest.

“We have all the time in the world for that. Sleep,” you don’t hesitate to comply when Bucky’s hand presses you back down against the warmth of his chest. “You’re going to need it. Our upstairs neighbours still need a taste of their own medicine.”

+ extra hyde ! · 70% of this fic is just dialogue, these two losers would not stfu! · writing banter + sexual tension feels more exposing than writing literal porn. · lore accurate photo of me whenever bucky barnes exists:

[maskedbyghost]

You were facing the wall.

Arms tucked close to your chest, your back turned toward the door, and a blanket pulled up to your chin even though it wasn’t cold. Your eyes were wide open. You weren’t even trying to sleep. The light from the hallway bled under the crack in the door, and every time it shifted, your breath caught, half-hoping, half-dreading that it was him.

He’d left without another word. You’d told him to sleep on the couch, and he didn’t argue. Just looked at you for a moment, his lips pressed into that hard line he always got when he was trying not to say something he’d regret. And then he walked out.

That was almost an hour ago.

You blinked slowly, eyes stinging. You hated fighting with him. Hated the way it left your chest tight and your mind buzzing. You hated the silence afterward even more. And this time… you weren’t even sure who was more in the wrong.

The fight started with something stupid. It usually did. You’d asked him why he hadn’t texted back when you messaged him earlier in the day—just a casual check-in, nothing serious. He said he’d been busy. You said you understood, but something about your tone made it obvious you didn’t. And then he said, “It’s not always about you,” and you froze.

It wasn’t just the words. It was the way he said them, like you’d been a burden instead of someone he missed. Like he didn’t have space for you in his head that day, and you were wrong for noticing it.

You’d snapped and told him if he didn’t want to talk to you, he could’ve just said that. Told him you weren’t going to beg him for attention. He looked at you like he wanted to speak but didn’t, and you’d finally said it.... go sleep on the couch, Simon, because you didn’t know what else to say that wouldn’t hurt more.

And he left.

Now you were here, pretending the pillow was more comfortable than his chest, replaying the words in your head until they lost all their meaning. You hadn’t even told him goodnight. And he hadn’t told you he loved you, not like he always did before bed.

Your throat tightened. You blinked at the wall again, trying to will yourself not to cry, not now when you’d already said your piece, already told him to leave. You didn’t want to be the one to break first. But still, your chest ached in that way that only came when something between you felt wrong.

A floorboard creaked somewhere outside the bedroom. Then silence came, a pause just long enough to make you question if you’d even heard anything at all.

And then—

The door creaked open slowly.

You stayed still. You didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to seem too eager, didn’t want him to think you’d just forget everything because he came back. But your heart betrayed you, picking up speed the moment you heard his quiet footsteps on the carpet. Then the bed dipped behind you, before his arm wrapped around your waist, fast like he was afraid you’d push him away if he didn’t do it quick.

You didn’t.

“I know you’re awake,” he said quietly, his breath brushing against the back of your neck.

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t.

“I thought about what you said.” His voice was low and soft. “And I thought about what I said. And I didn’t come back to fight. I just... I needed you to hear this.”

He paused, exhaling slowly.

“I fucked up,” he admitted. “I was tired and distracted, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just lookin’ for me and I made you feel like you were too much.”

Your eyes burned. Still, you didn’t speak.

“I never want you to feel that way,” he murmured. “Not ever. Not when you text me, not when you talk to me, not when you just exist near me. You’re not a burden. You’re… you’re the best part of my day, and I treated you like you weren’t. I’m sorry, love.”

You felt his hand squeeze your side gently, like he was grounding himself just as much as he was trying to comfort you.

“I meant what I said before I left,” he added, “but I meant it wrong. It’s not always about you, but it should be. You’re my person. I should’ve answered you. I should’ve checked in. You have every right to need me.”

You blinked hard, finally managing to whisper, “I wasn’t trying to fight.”

“I know,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “I know, love. You were just tryin’ to connect. And I shut down on you. I let shit get in my head and I pushed you out. I won’t do that again.”

You turned slowly, finally facing him. His eyes met yours in the dim light, and god, he looked wrecked.

“I just missed you,” you whispered. “That’s all.”

He reached up and cupped your face gently. “I missed you too. More than I can say. And I don’t want to end a single fuckin’ day with you wonderin’ if I care. I do. So much.”

You leaned in, tucking your face against his neck. His arms wrapped around you fully now, pulling you in close, holding you tight like he’d fall apart if he didn’t, before his lips pressed against your hair.

“I’m not goin’ back to the couch,” he said softly. “Even if you ask again. I’ll sleep on the floor next to you before I ever leave you like that again.”

That made you laugh, just a little.

“Sorry I got mean,” you mumbled.

He smiled into your hair. “You weren’t mean. You were hurt. And I made you feel that way. I deserved it.”

You looked up at him, eyes searching his face. “You’re really good at this. Talking about it. Most guys just shut down.”

“I used to,” he admitted. “Didn’t fix a damn thing. I’d rather talk and hold you than be right.”

You snorted. “You were wrong though.”

He grinned. “I know. Fully aware of it.”

You finally let your body relax fully against him, tension leaving piece by piece as he kissed your forehead and whispered, “Still love you, even when we fight. Especially then.”

“I love you too,” you murmured.

And you meant it. Even when it was hard. Even when things got messy. Because he came back. Because he chose to come back and say the things that mattered. Not everyone did.

But Simon did. And that was enough.

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

@daydreamerwoah @kylies-love-letter @ghostslollipop @kittygonap @alfiestreacle @identity2212 @farylfordaryl @rafaelacallinybbay @akkahelenaa @lovelovelovelovelove987654321 @wraith-bravo6 @tessakate @xocandyy @nightfwn @robinfeldt98 @xiisblogs @mad-die45 @readingthingy @actualpoppy @amongthe141 @whore4romance @thatghostlykid @syofrelief @avgdestitute @sheepdogchick3 @echo9821 @imalapdog @foxintheferns @trulovekay @preeyas-world @ruleroftides @rose37373

[stzrgirl4norris]

P1 in World History - OP81

Oscar Piastri x Historian!Reader

summary: no one understands how Oscar suddenly dropped facts after facts on the most random historical events

based on this request (by my favorite ever)

liked by mclaren, redbullracing and 1,300,000 others

f1 🎥 Grill the Grid: High School Edition is HERE

Watch our drivers struggle with math problems, historical dates, and chemical reactions 👀

Spoiler alert: we had some surprises.

view all comments:

lando who gave oscar a cheat sheet? be honest

charles_leclerc I would like a rematch with no ancient greek questions please

yukitsunoda0511 I said “napoleon” for everything. Not my fault it worked twice.

mclaren We are also surprised. Very surprised.

redbullracing Gonna have to bring this up to the stewards 🙂‍↔️

fernandoalo_oficial finally, someone knows I was there when Caesar was stabbed

alex_albon me watching oscar answer every history and geography question with his arms crossed like he’s on who wants to be a millionaire😭

user bro oscar even corrected the quizmaster once. is he ok?

user oscar casually dropping historical facts like it’s not suspicious at all…

user i'm so glad they are f1 drivers and not doctors or something

user why did oscar answer all of that without blinking? i’m scared 💀

user nah bc that man answered “Battle of Waterloo” like it was a pop quiz at dinner. WHO ARE YOU 😩

user oscar's not real. he’s a government experiment gone rogue

user the way he SMIRKED when he got the Cold War question right?? sir who are you trying to impress 😭😭😭

user idk if i want to kiss oscar or force him to write my next essay

user charles i expected more from you

user no but Lando getting the math question was so sweet

user when max said “well technically…” I felt that in my bones.

> user he maxplained that whole video and still lost

> maxverstappen1 I want a rematch

Oscar Piastri just added to his Instagram Story

"Great read 👍"

liked by oscarpiastri, yourusername, mclaren and 757,000 others

SkySportsF1 🎤 Oscar Piastri revealed or us the secret behind all his world history knowledge:

“It just sort of happens when you date a historian. Everything becomes a lesson. She once paused a movie to explain Dutch colonialism.”

View all comments:

user not me googling “how to become a historian”

user she paused a movie to explain Dutch colonialism and he STAYED??? yeah he’s in love your honor

user no bc i’d explain imperialism mid-makeout if he asked 😭

user that household must be insufferable

user I too wanna monologue to Oscar during breakfast

user imagine pausing a movie to rant about colonialism and he looks at you like it’s the hottest thing ever? god i’m weak

user and he LISTENED??? he RECALLS the info??

user she taught him centuries of world history and what did he give her back? driving lessons?

user “everything becomes a lesson” sir that is the dream 😭 i want to analyze the French Revolution over dinner too

user this is what happens when you date a girl who annotates books and knows who Franz Ferdinand is

user i want what they have. and by that i mean him. and also her brain. pls.

lando so you’re telling me i lost to oscar in Grill the Grid bc his gf is smarter than everyone at McLaren combined?

> oscarpiastri: you lost because you said Napoleon invented the calendar > yourusername: to be fair… he did change the calendar. you were just off by a few emperors > lando: OH MY GOD SHE’S HERE I’M SORRY PLEASE DON’T QUIZ ME

alex_albon oscarpiastri she paused a movie to explain colonialism and you didn’t RUN? bro you’re in deep

> oscarpiastri: i stayed. i took notes. there was a powerpoint. > yourusername: in my defense, it was really bad colonialism. like offensively inaccurate. > user: i am obsessed with the fact that she said “bad colonialism” like it’s a genre of film > user: alex is 100% pretending he gets this rn

georgerussell63 I want to add to the conversation that just 5 minutes ago during a chat this man casually cited the Meiji Restoration.

danielricciardo nah bc when she paused the movie he just sat there?? with his mouth shut?? couldn’t be me 💀

> yourusername he nodded. he asked questions. it was adorable. > danielricciardo stop you’re going to make the rest of us look bad

mclaren Confirmed: Oscar is now banned from date night and team trivia. Unfair advantage.

user WHY IS SHE SO CASUAL IN THE COMMENTS I’D DIE

> user she’s literally explaining history and being hot about it > user no bc she called it “bad colonialism” and suddenly I need a PhD >user someone make a TikTok of her best comments, we’re documenting greatness in real time

charles_leclerc If my girlfriend taught me history i’d listen too 🥺

> alexandrasaintmleux you can't even tell me who painted the Mona Lisa > charles_leclerc I said "history" 🙄

user do you think Ferrari can hire her to do something?

> user omg what would she even do there? > user anything is better than what they have ❤️ liked by charles_leclerc

liked by yourusername, lando, mclaren and 2,400,000 others

oscarpiastri Turns out there are so many good museums in England Also I now know what mercantilism is now.

view all comments

lando i want her to quiz me

charles_leclerc I refuse to learn, but i’m proud of you

georgerussell63 do you think she tutors for fun?? asking for me

alex_albon you’re literally a walking historical source

danielricciardo please ask her to explain the entire French Revolution to me in meme format

maxverstappen1 you scare me but i respect it

user THEY ARE TOURING HISTORICAL LOCATIONS ��🥹🥹🥹

user i know he’s got a napoleon bobblehead

user dating a historian and surviving is proof he’s the chosen one

liked by oscarpiastri, yourbff, mclaren and 8,150 others

yourusername He said “teach me everything” and now he can name every Cold War proxy war. Proud of my little historian-in-training. Also yes, he scored higher than some of my students on the practice quiz.📚💋

view all comments

oscarpiastri Cold War was a vibe

georgerussell63 okay but she’s intimidating in a hot way

> oscarpiastri don’t call my girlfriend hot. LEAVE. > georgerussell63 it was a compliment 😅😅😅

charles_leclerc imagine being forced to learn at dinner 😔

lando can she explain the space race to me using memes and finger puppets

> oscarpiastri are you 2??

user “cold war was a vibe” i’m IN TEARS

user she’s not just teaching him history. she’s giving him range

user whatever taylor swift said about you know how to ball i know aristotle

user i would risk it all for her to yell about the ottoman empire in my kitchen

hattiepiastri just watched him explain the industrial revolution like it was a bedtime story

kimiantonelli who even knows what happened in 1848????

> user aren’t you supposed to be learning that in school?

user is this a kink thing?

user dating a historian sounds like a trap. a sexy, educational trap.

maxverstappen1 can you prepare me for the next grill the grid?

> yourusername sure thing!! > oscarpiastri NO

liked by lando, oscarpiastri and 1,450,000 others

mclaren Study season. Quiz night prep. We no longer know if this is for history or Hungary GP. 🧠🏁📚

view all comments

oscarpiastri she just asked me to rank my favorite Enlightenment philosophers. it’s 10pm. i said Kant and she said “incorrect.”

> yourusername it was a trick question. you were supposed to say “you, darling” > oscarpiastri i’m logging off before I get in trouble > user I NEED THEM TO ADOPT ME

lando does this mean i can’t cheat???

> oscarpiastri she said next time you cheat off me she’s quizzing you on Byzantine trade routes > lando nevermind i’m studying. i’m SCARED.

yourusername Quiz night winner gets free coffee. Loser gets a 20-minute lecture on the French Revolution.

> mclaren we are printing flashcards as we speak

alex_albon imagine prepping for Hungary and getting hit with “define the Treaty of Utrecht” over breakfast

> oscarpiastri: she did that. literally. it was before coffee.

charles_leclerc what’s happening? Why is everyone smarter now.

> georgerussell63 she’s infecting the grid with knowledge. we’re not safe > fernandoalo_oficial finally.

user this is the power of a woman who annotates books and kisses you mid-lecture

user can’t wait until one of them starts mixing up tire degradation with the fall of the Ottoman Empire

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: The Fight Drive.

Pairing: Yandere!BatFam x Reader (DC).

Word Count: 2k.

TW: Fem!Reader, Mentions of Kidnapping + Prolonged Captivity, Mentions of Past Assault, Sleep Deprivation, Implied Food + Water Deprivation, Obsessive Behavior, Non-Graphic Violence, and Gratuitous Pseudo-Incest. DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT.

[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Finale]

On your way out, you stole Jason’s bike for good measure. You’d never been on a motorcycle without him before, but you couldn’t really bring yourself to care about crashing, and you’d picked up a few things in those long, boring days you were forced to pass watching the Wayne family live their short, dangerous lives. Either way, you’d pretty much gotten the hang of it by the time you crossed the state border.

You couldn’t afford to waste time on sleep. Energy drinks and coffee were enough to keep you awake on an empty stomach. You traded the bike for an ancient junker as you passed through Maryland and again in Washington DC, to a woman you met in a diner named Selina. She was laughing as she handed over the keys to a car nicer than you deserved. Exhausted, starving, and paranoid, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to ask what she found so funny.

Keeping track of Bruce wasn’t hard. Even in the most rural areas, tabloids reported sightings of his private jet religiously, and more reputable magazines stolen off convenience store racks kept you updated on his business trips, in-person deals, and charity events. Batman’s activity lulled, growing sporadic as a laundry list of his b-rated sidekicks attempted to fill the void. You’d give it about a month, maybe two before Gotham devolved violently enough for him to call off the search. It left a bitter taste in your mouth – knowing how willing he was to put the safety of his city aside when it was his peace of mind in danger.

The trip took longer than it had to, mostly because of your stubborn refusal to use any road they so much as might be able to track you on. You spent Jason’s money on gas when you could, food when you had to, and motels when your body threatened to break down if not properly rested. The only time you stopped for longer than a few minutes, it was in a by-the-hour inn on the outskirts of a larger city. You made the mistake of using your real name, of forgetting to barricade your door before collapsing into the creaking, yellowed mattress.

By the time you rolled over, Cassandra was perched on the foot of your bed.

You managed to pretend you were asleep for all of a second before Cassandra turned her head a little too quickly, a little too smoothly, and you were falling out of bed, scrambling to the far wall just to put that much more distance between you and her.

Like an idiot, you’d left your gun in your car. Defenseless and paralyzed, it was all you could do to meet her eyes as she stared you down.

“Is Bruce—”

“In Montreal. Tim thought you might try to cross the border.” Her tone was impassive, and the darkness hid most of her expression. She’d made it here before sunrise, meaning it was still the best time of day to drag someone unwilling back to somewhere they didn’t want to be. “Not happy. Jason is…”

She trailed off. You tried to fill in the gaps. “Jason is alive?”

The beat of silence that followed made it clear that wouldn’t have been her choice of words. Still, she nodded. “Alive. Angry. Dick, too.”

Your mind was a haven for contradictory thoughts. That was terrible. That was great. The guilt was practically eating you alive. You hope they both spent the rest of their lives as miserable as they made you.

“Do you hate us?”

Last time she’d asked, Stephanie had been there to answer for you, to smooth over any worries with chirped platitudes and easy humor. Now, the question hung in the air. You let your gaze fall to the ground.

“I can’t go back.” Your voice sounded hollow. “I can’t be forced to do something that’ll break me, again and again. I won’t let myself live like that.”

Cassandra hummed. You heard the mattress creak, her feet pad against the carpeted floor. “You should leave. Dick will be here in…” She paused. “Soon. He’ll be here soon.”

You didn’t bother responding. It took you long, precious second to skirt around the edges of the room, careful never to get within arm’s reach of her. You were behind the wheel before the adrenaline faded. Cassandra watched from the doorway, her eyes locked on your vehicle until you were too far to track.

~

You arrived in Kanas not long after. The farmhouse wasn’t hard to find, if a little out of your way. You only had to knock twice before a tall man opened the door, his glasses low on the bridge of his nose.

He smiled when he saw you – that softened, sympathetic type of smile you might pull out when you find an abandoned kitten or a stray dog. You could understand why. You looked like shit. The motel room had been your last stop. That was two days ago, now.

“Sorry to bother you,” you offered, clinging to your last few scraps of decency. “Are you Superman?”

“Clark,” he corrected hastily. Didn’t deny it, though. “And you’re Bruce’s…?”

Your abject horror must’ve been apparent. He rushed to apologize. “Sorry, sorry, I—uh, I recognize your heartbeat. He used to tap it out during League meetings.”

If you’d had anything in your stomach, you might’ve felt sick. “Is your wife home?”

“We were just about to sit down for dinner.” And then, all Southern manners and country charm, “Care to join us?”

You gave yourself thirty minutes. Fifteen to eat, ten to show their youngest son (and, by association, the grumpy teenager pretending not to watch) a magic trick you’d learned in college, and five to pull Lois aside and recite all the Wayne Enterprise passwords, back-doors, and poorly encrypted private forums you knew. You tried to make a hasty escape, but Clark caught you by the shoulder, asked about the rest of your trip, mentioned that their guestroom could use some company. It didn’t seem like he was willing to take no for an answer.

For the first time since leaving Jason’s apartment, you got eight beautiful, heavenly, uninterrupted hours of dreamless sleep. The Kents’ shower was similarly orgasmic, and you savored every second you spent under the scalding hot water, secure in the knowledge that the only door was well and truly locked.

All good things had to come to an end eventually, though. You should’ve known that by now.

Your paradise cracked and broke open the moment you stepped out of the bathroom. Leaning against the bedroom door, jaw set and eyes narrowed, was Dick.

In hindsight, you could only be thankful he was alone.

He was blocking the only exit – obviously, obviously. Screaming never occurred to you. Instead, you lunged for the gun on your bedside table, and he let you, never once moving to get in your way. It was until you had a finger on the trigger that he stepped toward you, closing the distance before you could think to shoot.

“Do it.” A fist curled around the barrel, a tug forward. He pressed the muzzle to his chest, and you felt your hands begin to shake. “You left Jason with lead under his skin. You gave him something to remember you by. Were the rest of us not worth it? Was he the only one you could stand to have thinking about you?”

“I never wanted to hurt anyone.” It was true. You still didn’t, if you were being honest. You didn’t want to spend the rest of your life living under the weight of one more thing Bruce and his fucked-up family pushed you to. “Please, let—”

“You think this doesn’t fucking hurt?” He was raising his voice, now. Cassandra was right. You’d never seen him angrier. “We were going to get married, sweetheart. We were going to leave together. Now Bruce doesn’t want us so much as saying your name and you—” He stopped suddenly, shaking his head. “No, no, that’s not your fault. None of this is. You were scared, right? Jason scared you. You felt like it wasn’t safe to wait for me, and—”

“Dick,” you cut in, tone warning. “I left because I had to. And you need to—”

“—take you home, I know.” His hand flexed around your gun. The ghost of a smile passed over his blank expression, but it wasn’t enough to dull his anger. “Where the others can’t bother us. But they’re going to come looking, aren’t they? We’ll need something to keep them away, to show them we’re in love.”

His hand dropped lower, the other darting up. He cupped your hands in his over the grip, hold tight enough to bruise. “Let’s have a—”

There was a blur of movement, then the sound of something blunt hitting something solid. One second, Dick stood in front of you, and the next, he was crumpled on the ground, unconscious and hair matted with blood. The grumpy teenager, Conner, stood in his place, fist still raised just above where Dick’s head would’ve been.

“Sorry about that, ma’am. There’s a change of clothes for you in the kitchen – Lois’ stuff. Clark managed to get the tracker off of your car, too. Along with most of the rear bumper.” His attention fell back to Dick. “What a freak. Want me to…?”

He made a vague gesture, something involving his eyes and Dick’s crotch. You considered it for a second, but shook your head. “No, I just—I just need a couple more days to get where I’m going. Do you think you can keep him here, or… I don’t know, send him in the wrong direction?”

Conner grinned. “Oh, I can make sure he stays put.”

He threw you a two-finger salute, and you returned the gesture. A few miles down the road, you changed into Lois’ hand-me-downs, throwing out the clothes from Bruce’s wardrobe in a gas-station dumpster. You felt lighter, like you’d gotten rid of the last remnants of him. You felt more like yourself.

You felt better.

~

You didn’t stop again until you reached California. You ditched your car in a public parking lot and spent the rest of Jason’s cash on a train into Gateway City.

The air smelled like rain, salt, and fresh paint. You walked the streets for hours before you found the apartment complex you were looking for, and lingered in the lobby for another forty-five minutes before you saw her – black hair, blue eyes, weathered tan. She looked like she had someplace to be, all neutral focus and quiet intensity, but she paused when she saw you tentatively approaching.

She waited for you to speak, despite how long it took you to swallow your nerves. “Dr. Diana Prince?” She nodded curtly, and you tried not to choke on your own relief. “I’m from Gotham. Wayne Manor, specifically.”

“I know. Kent called ahead.”

How he’d known to, you couldn’t imagine. You’d told him you were going to the North Pole. “I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk. Privately. I have something I’d like to ask you for.”

Something flashed across her expression. Curiosity, maybe. Interest. “It’ll have be quick. I have to be at the docks in a few minutes.”

You couldn’t bite back your smile. “Trying something new?”

“Heading home, actually.” She turned to face you properly. “It’s a quaint little island. They’re very welcoming to travelers, but compared to someplace like Gotham, I’m afraid you won’t find much to do.”

“I think I’ve had enough of Gotham, for a while.” You were beaming, now. You dug your teeth into your cheek, doing your best to keep your cool. “That is, if you’re willing to put up with a guest?”

For the first time, she returned your smile. You did your best to be objective, to be wary, to be careful, but if there were any fangs behind her lips, any desire to make you into anything you weren’t in her eyes, you couldn’t find it.

Honestly, when you looked at her, all you could seem to feel was safe.

“It would be my pleasure.”

[vampmira]

put up your hands if you're my bff!

after their new global blow up in popularity, huntr/x get a call from bobby, announcing their new "co-manager in training". you're overly awkward with each other until he finds the ultimate solution – a sleepover.

pairing: platonic!huntrix & gn!manager!reader

warnings: movie spoilers

a/n: there's sprinkled korean in here — in hangeul, romanized, and translated — if that matters. lowk it's so i can practice my korean again 😭 also this one's longg i got excited to write again

a quiet penthouse in the center of seoul doesn't stay quiet for long; not when huntrix, one of the bigger girl groups of their current generation, just finished another perfect concert. their fans disburse through the streets, traffic picking up faster than the speed of light. there are groups of lightsticks along the sidewalks lighting their way home and the girls are doe-eyed as they look out the window at what's bloomed below them.

"they're so cute when you think about it." rumi leans against the window, voice soft and arms crossed in her tanktop and train pants. "getting with their friends, coming out to see us?"

"IT'S SO PRECIOUS!!" zoey's eyes are swallowed in tears as she wildly wipes them away with her arms. their lavender leader pets their youngest's head, demon marks sparkling in the moonlight.

mira looks on at the groups of fans, smiling against each other, protected under the golden honmoon, and nearly cries herself before her phone vibrates — a video call coming in, unfiltered by her activated do not disturb setting. she slides it between the three of them, answering immediately.

"hi bobby!" they respond unanimously to their manager.

"my girls!! you three were INCREDIBLE tonight, as always!" streetlights flash across his face, illuminating his proud smile. "listen! i know it's been a crazy night but i have a liiiiittle favor to ask– SO SMALL, you'll barely even notice it!"

the girls gather on their couch. bobby never asked them for much – maybe for them to stop playfully kicking each other in their makeup chairs or to drink water after concerts or to lean on him if they ever need anything – but never big favors. regardless, huntrix knew they'd do just about anything for him. he's always taken care of them on their best and worst days. their number one behind the scenes, from the stressful rush of comeback season to the grueling nights of unending practice when he waits for them in the car outside until 2 in the morning. so when they gathered the screen and told him to "hit them" with his favor, they knew one thing.

nothing would be too much for bobby.

then they met you.

not you as in you yourself, but you as in their new manager.

"a junior co-manager to even out some of the work around here!" bobby exclaimed when he entered the room. the girls tried not to stiffen when meeting you, this brand new stranger in their home, but their introduction was clunkier than it is on tv.

mira came in too early, rumi came in too loud, zoey came in too late.

"hello-" "hello, we are- are huntrix!" "hun.. huntrix...?"

they physically cringe at the memory.

there were bumps in the road getting you comfortable with each other

you'd get caught off guard by mira's intense stare

rumi would speak so formally with you, it'd make her stutter over her pronunciation

zoey would bow and apologize to you, which you would return with a deeper bow, and she would return deeper

... let's just say you got more flexible as time went on

until bobby had enough of the over politeness.

until the destined sleepover.

"okay!" bobby placed a mountain of chips, sandwiches, and popcorn on the penthouse table, enough to cover it like a river. "welcome to your manager and huntrix girls night! or uh... friendship night!"

"what's this all about?" rumi questions, her members far to excitedly staring at the popcorn to fully listen.

"i know i'm your amazing manager and all but we have a new member on the team!" he gestures over to you, sitting a few visible feet away from the very huddled up idols. "and, for them to do their job, you need to be closer! so, take tonight! have fun, play games, learn secrets- whatever!"

he walks out, waving at the mess of young adults he left behind — you all. it was quiet, unspoken small glances being shared between the four of you before the scary rapper cutely smiled behind her hands, cheeks stuffed with popcorn and eyes sparkling with mischief.

"you guys wanna play 딸기 (ddalgi / strawberry)?"

that game became a staple in your friendship

zoey's amazing rap skills kept her winning but you? oh she was THRILLED she FINALLY had good competition!!

when she, the undefeated champion of 딸기, wore her crown against you for the 3rd round in a row – that's when it got serious

the mario kart was pulled out.

before you knew it, you were leaning against rumi's demon markings, watching her take 1st place again.

"you're rigging the game! totally rigging!" their youngest in fourth place accused their leader, shaking her by her shoulders as she drifts across toad's turnpike seamlessly.

you hung behind her at second until that destined mystery box gave you the one thing you were looking for – a miraculous blue shell. its release was cinematic as it hit her biker princess daisy persona, allowing you to surpass her at the last second mid drift – akira drift style. it was slow motion, that switch of the neck and neck rivalry to a historic soar in the rankings, before the girls lost in fourth and twelfth jumped around you in triumph at the decrowning of their beloved leader.

all lighthearted of course !

rumi called for an immediate rematch but her smile told you it wasn't serious

the rest of the night barely called for icebreakers

no, the ice was thoroughly broken

in fact, the ice was broken, chopped, grinded, melted, refrozen into ice spheres, and plopped into the glasses of 화채 (hwachae) that you all prepared at 2 in the morning

if you asked the girls, there'd be small argument over which part of the sleepover you definitely became friends

zoey would say during 딸기

rumi would claim it was the mario kart

mira would put it on the time she accidentally smeared mascara on your face a week after you met for the first time and didn't tell you until you got in the van post-inkigayo win

...very embarrassing that day.

but for you? the 2am 화채 was it.

you sat against the penthouse's tall windows in your own pajamas, watching your idols excitedly scramble things together on the floor of their living room. chilled watermelon, blueberries, honeydew and kiwi cubes, lemon-lime soda, honey, and sugar are tossed in front of you with wild excitement.

"i can't. believe. you've never. had. HWACHAE." the huntrix maknae leans into you. she was just falling asleep on your shoulder during their 7th rewatch of extraordinary attorney woo a few minutes ago before their deep voiced compadre brought up her craving.

"you're gonna love it." her intense stare is softer now, a stark difference to how she is during rehersal or morning makeup. she looks at you the way she looks at hwachae. she looks at hwachae the way she looks at their fans.

you sat around the combination of fruit and sodas and cups as they start putting it together, the kdrama going on in the background. zoey makes a comment about the love interest being a green forest before absent mindedly pouring in soda, you being the one to stop her before it overflowed.

seoul was bright outside their tall windows, buildings shining with lights and cars passing by here and there, but it was quiet. the sky was clear enough to let the moonlight shine on the girls in front of you, as if they were the chosen ones, and when they looked at you for your first opinion of the sweet treat, you weren't just a manager with the rockstars they "had to babysit". you were a couple of teenagers having a sleepover. the epidemie of youthfulness, humanity, and friendship.

hwachae, k-dramas, and friends.

friends.

the next morning, you were surprised to see that your once fully scheduled phone calender was cleared

instead,, an email sent to you from bobbypearl@huntrix.com, titled "enjoyyyy the day offffff" in your notifications

you never shared this email with the girls, allowing them to sleep in until they groggly arose around noon, but the attatched photo of them laying around you, looking like a pile of emotionally attached puppies in your sleep, went framed in your apartment later that week

when the four of you showed up at work later that week, coffees in hand, engaged in a casual conversation of a show he couldn't recognize, he couldn't help but pat himself on the back, finally free from the collective awkwardness.

[reignpage]

Moon's light

Summary: in which alien!reader gets hurt and Gojo's left with more questions than answers about who you are Word Count: 3k Warnings: angsty, cursing, fem alien!readersome sexual language and references, not proofread and highkey made in a rush >_< Previous Parts: Finders Keepers + Lights Show + Movie Night + Bubble Bubble

Day 32

“Oh no.” He surges forward, falling to his knees. “No no no, E. What happened?”

Satoru had just finished a mission. Excited, he teleported back into his apartment, hoping to see you all cute, sweet and offering some cuddles so he can relax after a long five minutes of serious adulting. What he wasn’t hoping to see, however, was you holding a large knife and bleeding on the kitchen floor.

Wrapping a tea towel around your hand, he cradles your body to his. You’re not crying. You’re not even wincing. Instead, you’re just looking at the blue, gloopy liquid oozing out of the deep wound on your palm. Do aliens of your kind not feel pain? 

No, that can’t be the case; you winced when he scissors his fingers inside your pussy. Forcing a calm voice, he queries, “What happened, E? What did you do?”

You reply, “I hold wrong.”

His head slumps back against the cabinet. This is his fault. He should have taught you better, shouldn’t have shielded you from the kitchen. He should have been here. At home. With you.

When you fell from the night sky, there wasn’t a single scratch on your body, not even a bruise. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he assumed you were invincible, but now, as his hands shake and he gulps down the tight knot of guilt and shame building in his throat, he thinks, maybe it was just wishful thinking. 

It’s been a month since he met you and you’ve progressed so much. You shower on your own, understand plots of movies without much assistance, you read books, albeit children’s and with pictures but soon you’ll be getting up his level, he’s sure, and even help him clean the house. No longer does he worry about his things having teeth marks from your oral exploration or being randomly flashed because you don’t understand the concept of modesty. The routine has been great.

Maybe it’s this bliss in the routine that led him to a foolish sense of complacency.

“E, you don’t have special healing powers, do you? Like me? With my reverse curse technique.” Satoru’s been slowly trying to teach you about his abilities and the reality of his world but it hasn’t been his priority, what with him being distracted by your hips grinding down on his cock almost 24/7. So, when you shake your head, a little confused, he isn’t surprised. “But you do heal, right?”

You shrug.

The blue blood continues to drip from you, steadily. Inspecting the wound, he wonders what to do. He can’t take you to the hospital; they’ll question your blue blood. And there’s no alien expert to turn to – you don’t even seem to know much about yourself. He chews on the inside of his cheek.

Well, there is one person he could take you to, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be of any help. Maybe they’ll even call the authorities on you. 

This could go very wrong. 

But what choice does he have?

He can’t leave you like this. He can’t just hope your wound will fix itself. And what if you get an infection? Can aliens get infected? Fuck. What if you’re already infected? 

If you are, then he’ll, like, suck the infection out of you so you two can die together. Alright. Don’t get too ahead of yourself, he tells himself. Death is not on the cards. Not for you. Never. Not while he can help it. 

Satoru has no idea what he’s doing. Truthfully, he’s just relieved your blood isn’t acidic and burning a hole through his skin and the floor.

There’s nothing to do but to hope for the best with the only choice he has. Pressing a kiss to your head, he whispers, “I’ve got you, baby. Just trust Toru, alright?”

And in a flash, he’s in a dimly lit room, which smells of alcohol and death. He never wanted to bring you here – it’s a dark side to what he does and if he could have helped it, you would have never seen this. Being a place he doesn’t frequent often, the white-haired man inspects the place reflexively; no danger, no change, and just one unimpressed looking woman. 

“So, the moron’s finally decided to grace my workspace,” she drawls. “How flattering.”

Usually, he’d grin and try to go in for a hug, only to be lovingly punched in the gut and thrown across the room, but at the moment, he doesn’t have it in him to smile and he already feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “Hey, Shoko. I need your help.”

Her dull eyes fall on the figure cuddled up to his side, dripping blue onto her floor. She places her pen down and leans back in her swivel chair, not at all put off to see him here.

Sleeve tugged, he looks down. “Say hi, E. She’s a friend. She’s going to take care of you.”

“Help fix my hand?” When Satoru nods, you frown, mulling something over for a second before your eyes meet Shoko’s. “Hi. Fix my hand now.”

He clears his throat. “Sorry, Sho. I haven’t really taught her about please and thank yous.”

“I’m sure you haven’t, since, y’know, you’re not the biggest advocator of those words yourself.” The man can’t rebut that. “So, are you going to explain what you’re doing here or are you just going to let her stain my floors blue?”

Right. Where to begin?

Moments later, once he’s run through a long spiel, explaining the last month of his life, he presents you to the doctor. Confused, though happy to be here, you just smile at the stranger. Said stranger tilts her head and looks at Satoru. 

“An alien. Really?” She drawls.

“Yeah, I know. It’s weird and unbelievable but true! And she’s not dangerous, I promise. Please, Shoko. When I first met her, she was durable. Like, not even a single scratch. How many people do you know who can fall from space, land on a van and not have a bruise? And now? She’s cut herself and she’s bleeding but it’s blue and I’m totally freaking out, okay?”

Shoko sighs. She does that a lot these days. For a second, he thinks she might wave them away or reach for her phone. None can blame her, he supposes. Harbouring an extraterritorial is a crime, he assumes at least. And it’s not as if she’s doing nothing in her time – she’s even more busy than he is. Shouldering the repairs of jujutsu society can’t be an easy job and there’s probably something to be said about the direction their friendship has taken over the years, though there’s not enough time to get into it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t fault her if she wanted nothing to do with his most recent shenanigans. 

But, if she had decided to make a stand, to get the authorities involved, to dare snatch you away, then Satoru will not hesitate to snuff her where she stands. 

Thankfully it doesn’t get to that because Shoko, the amazing, wonderful friend that she is, beckons you over. 

“I’ll see what I can do. Just don’t get your hopes up; I was never taught about alien anatomy.”

You sit on a stool, being examined professionally like you didn’t come from the stars, like you don’t have blue blood, and a bioluminescent body. Pride blooming in his chest, he smiles. There was a fear tickling the back of his neck that maybe you wouldn’t be so…receptive to strangers. Yet, you’re following instructions well and not chomping at his friend’s fingers for going near your wound. Oh, he’s going to smother you in kisses later.

No step is overlooked. Your blood pressure is taken. So is a blood sample. She tests your reflexes, temperature and dental hygiene. Shoko asks questions — some you can answer with no trouble and others, Satoru has to step in and provide a response.

Leaning against a cold, metal slab, he says, “Her body’s pretty similar to ours, I think. Apart from a few surprises like glowing lights and the blue blood, things seem normal. She does run a little hot inside but I think that’s not too weird.”

Slowly, Shoko turns her head and cocks an extremely judgemental eyebrow. “You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?”

Satoru’s ears heat up. “No! No, we haven’t…done that.”

“Right. So, you’ve gone through the trouble of inspecting her insides for me, is that it?”

“Don’t say it like that, Sho.” He groans. “I wasn’t perving on her or anything. We have a connection.”

Dragging the word out, she clarifies, “A connection.”

“Yeah! A connection. We get along well.”

“That’s so very inte–woah!”

You’ve bitten Shoko’s arm through her lab coat. She shakes you off. You don’t latch off. Satoru lunges forward and urges your jaw to loosen. Guess you’ve been feeling left out or jealous. He can’t say he’s not slightly happy about the possessiveness. It’s quite nice, actually. Wait. No. He should be discouraging this, reassuring you, and defending his friend. Right. Yep. “Okay, okay. It’s alright, E. She’s a friend, remember, baby? Just a friend. Don’t hurt her please. Toru’ll be really upset with you.”

An apologetic look is sent to the woman. Complemented with a nuzzle at Satoru’s comforting palm.

Painfully, he can smell the judgement oozing from Shoko’s pores. Even when she steps back and rubs her sore arm, the doctor eyes the two of them, watching as he brushes your cheek and whispers something soothing against your lips.

There’s no telling what’s running through her head and he doesn’t have it in him to ask. So, he keeps an arm around your body and queries instead, “Got any idea what’s happening?”

A moment passes. 

One could quite literally cut the tension in half, or however the saying goes. 

Then, she sighs. Why does she keep sighing? 

“I only have a theory.” Leaning against the wall, she crosses her arm and drawls out, completely bored, like whatever scathing thought she had about Satoru has washed away, along with all the many scathing thoughts she’s had about the sorcerer, “Her skin is hardened at parts and soft in others. I had trouble penetrating her skin to get to her veins, which aren’t placed where they are in the human body, with the needle. She’s cold in certain patches of her skin and her pulse is irregular.”

Taking note as best as he can, he lets you play with his fingers absentmindedly. You’re not at all interested in anything anyone other than him has to say.

“I believe there’s been an inconsistent spread of something she’s missing in her day-to-day or diet. You hiding her away so you can grope her hasn’t done her any good.” Satoru automatically tries to argue but a sharp glare has him shutting it up just as soon as it opens. “If my theory is correct, then she needs something like moonlight — let it be known that this theory of mine only comes from the movies we used to watch as teens so don’t hold me to that — the longer she goes without this missing thing, the more her body will weaken until her entire skin is soft and susceptible to more cuts.”

He sighs. Oh, great, it’s contagious. “Moonlight? That’s it? She’s a nocturnal plant? Okay, great. That’s easy.”

“Yeah, well it’s only a theory, like I said. If I’m wrong, there’s not really anything else I can do. She didn’t know what the healthy bpm is for her kind or how she got here to begin with; there’s only so much I can do with what you’ve provided me. Normally, I’d run more tests but it’s unclear, and risky, to make her undergo any kind of testing before we know her compatibility with our immune system so try the moonlight thing first and let me know if it works.”

Satoru nods, already tuning her out and excited to begin your healing journey. There’s a new movie he promised to watch with you and he can’t wait for much longer. “Yeah, yeah. Of course.”

“She seems to have memory loss. I don’t see any signs of trauma to her head, but there must be something to explain her lack of understanding and knowledge of her own existence and essence. I’m not sure how communicative she is, but if I were you, I’d start asking questions about where she’s from, why she’s here, and when she’s going.”

Satoru frowns. 

“Thanks for your help. I got it from here.”

And, as quick as he arrived, he leaves.

“Not home, Toru?” 

He shakes his head.

Taking the doctor’s advice, he teleported straight to the rooftop terrace and not into your shared home. If more moonlight is what you need, then more moonlight is what you’ll get. In fact, if he could, he’d give you all the moonlight in the world. He sits down onto a lawn chair and pulls you into his lap. You’re wearing jogging pants and a big shirt – his shirt. Both are pulled off your body, leaving you in just your underwear; maximising the surface area would lead to optimal moonlight absorption and the more you absorb, the faster you’ll heal, right?

It’s a good thing, he supposes, that the moon is full and the sky is clear tonight. He wonders how often he’d need to do this with you. Best to do it frequently probably. Just in case.

In silence, you two sit there, alone and feeling like things are going right once more. You’re nuzzled into his hold whilst Satoru ponders about the last bits of advice Shoko gave. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Who was she to assume he hadn’t been asking questions? 

Because, of course, he has!

Duh.

His curiosity about you is never ending but he can’t rush you. You’re learning so much so fast and overloading you would be the last thing he’d want.

And how dare she talk about you like that?

Like you’re a stray he picked up. You’re a person. His person. It’s not as if you’re an idiot or a child – you’ve got so much emotional maturity and you can take apart his microwave and put it back together. How many people can do that?

And ‘when you’re going’, seriously?

That’s an insane thought. 

You’re not going anywhere. This is your home now. Sure, he’d love to know more about your home planet and its customs, but that’s as much of that as he cares to know about. There’s no return date on you. You’re not a toy on loan. You haven’t been left in his care for babysitting. How silly to suggest otherwise.

“Toru, you okay?” 

Snapping out of his torrential thoughts, he gazes down at you through his blindfold. Gentle fingers pull it off his face and when his dazzling eyes meet yours, bare and direct, he smiles tenderly. “Yeah, E. I’m okay. Can I see your hand?”

The cut is healing. That was quick. Shoko was right.  Already, it’s closing up. The blood has stopped dripping and soon it’ll be gone, hopefully without a scar to remind either of you two how he’s failed you. 

Kissing the top of your head, he whispers against your hair, “You didn’t know about this moonlight thing?”

You shake your head.

“Do you remember anything from your past? From out there?” The great beyond, of which he’s gesturing to, seems so much bigger now. Very rarely did he ever look up there, but these days, it seems like that’s all he does. 

“Not much. Only little. Home looks like Earth too. People look like me. And you. But no monsters.”

He chuckles. “Lucky you.”

“You worry about what your friend say? When I’m leaving?”

Satoru’s chest tightens. Tense and treading carefully, he asks, “Are you leaving? Is anyone waiting for you?”

“I don’t know.” That wasn’t the answer he wanted. He’d been hoping you’d deny it, say there’s no one else, that you’re not going anywhere and you two can be together forever. Is that too naive? Too hopeful? Too selfish? “I don’t remember. Very blur-ree.”

He can’t push. Won’t. Whether for your good or his, who’s to say?

Squeezing parts of your bare body for comfort, he thanks the heavens, and Shoko (he’ll have to send her a fruit basket or a new corpse to experiment with or something), that you’re healing and he’s learnt a little more about you.

Moonlight and food and a proper education on how to handle sharp objects. The list of things you need is growing and so must his ability to provide all those things for you.

He’ll do anything and everything he can to keep you safe and satisfied. Then there’ll be no reason for you to go anywhere or for anyone to take you. You’re staying here. With him. He’ll kill to make that happen. 

Satoru pinches your chin. Your lips part to receive his. The taste of you, the softness, the warmth – it’s all you and all his. 

Nothing could take this away. 

This is your home.

And you are his. 

[1d1195]

Under Construction III

Read Under Construction here | ~7.8k

From Me: this is a mess but I think it's cute

Warning: like two seconds of blood and then fluff and angsty shit

Summary: “Hi, Miss Bee,” he greeted so brightly she thought she might melt. He was so happy to see her it made her stomach twist. “I was hoping you’d be gone, but s’nice t’see you anyway,” he said stepping inside.

She bit the inside of her lip. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, s’Friday,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

It wasn’t lunch time, so Harry wasn’t standing by the fence like a certified creep. “Mr. Harry!” Someone shouted. He instinctively turned toward the field and found the gaggle of cuties lined up at the edge of the field. How he didn’t hear them approach was beyond him.

They were led by none other than the cutest woman of all. Today she wore a long green jacket. Black pants peeked out from it. Her coat had a tie fabric cinching her waist. Harry never paid much attention to what his date wore, but everything on her made her look three times as adorable if it were even possible.

He gave a wave, heading over to the group. “Hey everyone,” he greeted. “Early recess?” He asked.

They all glanced at her making sure it was okay to answer. “Go ahead, you know what to say,” she encouraged.

Harry remembered Amara (the little girl who bent her neck back at an incredible angle to chat with him last week) as she stepped forward to look up at him once more. “Miss Bee said our sandwich party is going to be on Halloween. So you can dress up as your dream job.”

He smirked and glanced at her. “What if this is m’dream job?” Because there wasn’t a world in which it wasn’t. Not if fate and destiny put him precisely at her side just because he got this job. It was the best job in the world.

They looked at her again. “That’s okay,” she affirmed with a laugh.

“Sometimes Miss Bee has silly rules, so we have to check.”

“I beg your pardon, they’re not silly!” She frowned with mock annoyance.

“Mr. Niall can come too!” Another one said excitedly.

“We’ve been really good in math too, so we get to ask you question too!” Kai bounced with energy that seemed quite misplaced in asking two construction workers about their jobs.

“Janie, do you want to give Mr. Harry what you brought?”

Harry watched as another little girl stepped forward. She held two folded pieces of construction paper, and she handed them up and toward Harry at the fence. “It’s made out of construction paper. Like your job,” she said explained as if Harry hadn’t a clue what it was. “One’s for Mr. Niall too.”

“Miss Bee wrote the cover part and then we all got to make a page each.”

Harry was enthralled with the cover. It had her extremely beautiful handwriting. Though he was pretty sure every little thing she did was beautiful. There were 3-D stickers of Halloween items placed sporadically across the page but still maintained a fun holiday aesthetic.

Please join us for our Halloween Sand-Witch party. Wednesday, October 31st at 11:45 AM. Please RSVP to Miss Bee and let her know if you have any allergies.

He flipped quickly seeing a variety of hand-drawn pictures. The drawings could only be himself and Niall munching on sandwiches the following week at their party. Along with a variety of varying six-year-old signatures, and so forth.

Harry smiled, his eye catching hers. This was almost as good as asking her on a date and hearing her say yes. A handwritten invitation was a dream come true. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest that the little party was going to be spent with twenty kindergarteners and his best friend either. Because she was going to be there dressed as something adorable, he was sure, and he couldn’t wait.

“We’d love t’attend,” he told them. She smiled shyly as the little ones cheered.

“Alright, Kindergarten... it’s time we head back now that the guys are invited,” she waved to Harry. “Say see you later to Mr. Harry.”

“See you later alligator!” Someone shouted, causing the rest to giggle uncontrollably.

She shook her head and smiled fondly at her group of funny children and headed back toward the school building peering back to catch Harry’s eye again.

*

On Friday, she was preparing for the following week as always. It had been raining hard all day long, so Under Construction wasn’t next door. Moreover, there was no outdoor recess so there was no way she would have seen him anyway. It made her miss Harry.

It seemed a little ridiculous that she would fall so quickly for an almost total stranger. Especially when she was so cautious about falling for anyone after Evan.

She met Evan while out with friends for a birthday dinner. He said he was drawn to her, a moth to a flame, the whole bit. He told her she was pretty, lovely, sweet, etc. Evan was handsome, talented, and funny. At first, he was excessively kind. Flowers every week, asked her to move in only three months in, told her he couldn’t live without her.

He worked for a financial company. One that made him a lot of money so he could afford a big house—bigger than two people without kids conceivably needed. But it was for their future. Evan’s job required many business meetings and parties that left her feeling completely drained socially and financially. Every party required a new fancy outfit that she didn’t want to pay for. He made her go to golfing fundraisers (even though she hated golf) and helped him with parties at his place for clients and partners alike.

All while she tried to get her bearings in her first two years of teaching.

Evan never attended a school event. He didn’t help her move her furniture in her classroom. He didn’t understand why she would go to work on days she wasn’t getting paid to set things up. He didn’t get that the magic inside a classroom happened outside of school hours, and it was well worth the time she put into it. There was no help from him putting bulletin boards together and he certainly wouldn’t be caught dead on her colorful carpet laminating on a Tuesday afternoon.

She finished her planning and clicked into another tab on her computer to look at the to-do lists that never seemed to get any shorter. She had a section for classroom improvements, stain her bookshelves, inquire about fixing the outlets, find more shelving, paint her rocking chair, and more. There was so much.

After their breakup—the one instigated by Evan because she was spending too much time at school—she moved into a tiny little house on her own. It was no more than a one-bedroom apartment. Just enough space for herself and she loved it, but it also needed so much work. There was the roof that leaked in the rain in the same spot, one of the stove burners didn’t work, one of the windows in the living room was so stiff shut she couldn’t move it. Her bedroom seemed poorly insulated and was freezing in the winter, the tile flooring in her bathroom was cracked in several places. But it was home. The cutest little place she had ever seen. The living room was filled with books, and the dining table was a spot for her tutoring sessions.

The kitchen always smelled like cookies or brownies. Things that she brought to her parent’s house on Wednesday evenings when she, her siblings, and anyone available in her family gathered for a meal together. Her sister’s fiancée begged for muffins at least once a month and she smirked at the thought.

There wasn’t enough time and there wasn’t enough energy she could muster to fix her place up. There were more pressing matters. Trying to eat well, exercise, get her master’s degree. Visiting her parents and helping her sister with her wedding. It was exhausting.

She was jolted from her thoughts by a knock on her outside door. She put a hand on her heart, not anticipating a knock as it was downpouring. It was four-thirty in the afternoon on a Friday. All her co-workers hightailed it out of there shortly after the buses had left. Slowly, cautiously, she walked over to the door seeing Harry smiling in the small window. He had a black raincoat on, the hood keeping his pretty face from getting wet.

Immediately she opened the door. “Hi, Miss Bee,” he greeted so brightly she thought she might melt. He was so happy to see her it made her stomach twist. “I was hoping you’d be gone, but s’nice t’see you anyway,” he said stepping inside.

She bit the inside of her lip. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, s’Friday,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Sorry ‘bout m’coat,” he frowned as it dripped on the floor. “S’raining cats and dogs out there,” he shrugged out of the coat and snapped it outside, a tiny little overhang keeping it the smallest bit dry. He slung it on the back of an upturned chair on one of her tables, so it dripped below to the floor. He frowned and headed toward the bathroom for paper towels. “I’ll take care of this before we leave,” he promised placing a bunch of towels below the dripping coat.

She stared at him. “What are you doing here, Harry?”

He turned slightly, smiling up at her while he knelt next to his watery mess. “S’Friday, wanted t’see what y’needed help with for next week.”

She blinked. “But... you didn’t work today.”

“As a matter of fact, I did work. I had a meeting about our progress and talked to suppliers about materials and such,” he said proudly, the dimples indenting his cheeks.

“Oh... I meant... outside,” she shook her head. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

He chuckled quietly as she tried to back track. “S’fine, Bird. I knew what y’meant. Don’t worry ‘bout it. No, ‘course with the rain it puts us back a day or two, so I had t’be productive in other ways.”

There was something wrong with her, because that was one of the hottest sentences she had ever heard anyone say and he was merely talking about productivity.

“Um...” she swallowed. “I don’t need... you didn’t... you came all the way here?”

“S’not too far from m’place actually,” he said with a shrug. He headed toward her desk to see her little piles of what needed to be accomplished. He hoped to find something labeled Monday, or maybe something that needed to be cut or stapled together. Instead, he found her to-do list opened on her computer. “What’s this?” He asked, glancing at her screen.

“Oh... don’t look at that, they’re... they’re nothing. Just... they’re my to-do—”

“Your roof leaks?” He asked looking up at her in shock. He also looked completely hurt. Like it was unimaginable that she kept that from him. “Bird, why didn’t you say something? I would have—”

“Stop,” she put her hand on her chest feeling it ache with want for him. Adoration for him. Something that felt dangerously close to the feelings she had when she first started dating Evan and he brought her flowers every week. “Harry,” she said softly. “I am so appreciative of you coming down here and helping me, but you don’t have to. It’s likely I can’t reciprocate or—”

His eyes dropped to her computer again scanning the list, ignoring her and wondering what else she needed done. “Bird, you’re cold?” He asked. She felt like she was in trouble. Her throat tightening over the emotion she felt. It was a long day—but all of them were long. Her weeks felt endless. And she was cold. So lonely in that cold, damp, tiny place she lived no matter how much she loved it. “Kitten,” he whispered quietly.

“Stop,” she begged. “Please stop.”

“Bird,” he frowned. “Y’should have said something. I can bring Niall t’look at it, we can fix it up in a minute—”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Harry, I’m begging; please stop.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Y’would never let one of your students have a problem like this,” he turned from her computer, strode across the room to her, and put a hand on her hip while pulling her toward him. She looked away from him, ignored the sparks that burst from the touch on her waist. She shook her head.

“It’s not important.”

He gently touched her cheek turning her gaze back to him. His finger resting beneath her chin. “You’re not important?” He questioned. “Y’know how ridiculous y’sound, right? I’ve known you less than a month and I think y’might be the most important person I know.”

She swallowed and shrugged. “There’s more pressing matters,” she whispered. “I have this classroom to worry about and little minds to mold. My sister’s getting married, and my mom needs—”

“All that is more pressing than y’not catching a cold?”

“I-I... I’m not going to... I don’t—”

He rubbed his thumb across her lip making all of the words in her head disappear. “Bird, you’re going t’make yourself sick.”

Was this what it was supposed to feel like? In all the time she dated Evan, there wasn’t much worry about her. It was usually a worry about what she wasn’t doing or couldn’t do because she was busy. There was never a worry about stretching herself too thin or making her do more because he wanted her to be part of his stuff.

One lone tear rolled down her cheek and she shook her head immediately, moving his hand from her face in hopes he wouldn’t notice. But of course, he did. “Hey,” he whispered gently. “Bird, my love,” his voice was so soft it made her feel warm again. “Hey,” he cooed, “C’mere,” he tucked her to his chest, kissed the top of her head like it was an everyday occurrence. Like it wasn’t the first time his lips touched her. “It’s okay,” he hummed. God, he was so warm. Is this what it was supposed to feel like? Was this how she was supposed to feel when someone cared about her and all the little things she neglected to speak into existence?

She sniffled, wiping at her face while Harry calmly soothed her. His hand rubbed up and down her back. The last time she remembered someone soothing her like this had to be when she was a child and her dad was trying to comfort her over a broken toy or missing her mum on a work trip.

“Sorry,” she sniveled. “I think I’m just really overwhelmed.”

“I’ll say,” he agreed.

She rolled her lips into her mouth and pulled away from him even though it was a hundred times colder than her bedroom ever could be outside the circle of his arms. “Sometimes I just need to cry and be dramatic,” she admitted and wiped her eyes.

Harry was looking at her like she was going to have a breakdown at any moment. He wanted to wrap her back up in his arms but part of him was a afraid he might not ever let her go. “I don’t think y’being dramatic, kitten,” his voice was still very soft. Like he was worried he’d set her off somehow. “Think y’might jus’ be a little too not dramatic, actually.”

She took a deep breath. “My house is fine, really. It’s not a big leak. It’s only when it rains,” as if to make matters worse it thundered loudly outside. She winced while Harry just stared at her.

“This ex of yours, was he handy at all?” He asked and moved to the table where piles were made, and he finally found something labeled Monday. He grabbed a pair of scissors and started cutting the paper; sitting on the floor like he did on Tuesday. Like it was no big deal that he came out in the middle of a thunderstorm to help her on a day he didn’t work next door.

“No,” she shook her head. “He just hired people.”

But she left out telling him about only hiring when it was convenient for him. “Hmm.”

“I actually know a lot about fixing things up,” she admitted. “Not nearly to the degree that you do. I need a lot of YouTube videos and time I sincerely do not have to execute it, but I installed our dishwasher on my own. And I pulled up some carpet and put some flooring down in our dining room.

She swore Harry was smiling proudly at her. Like he had taught her or something. “S’very lovely, kitten. S’good t’know how t’do those kinds of things... but I wouldn’t have let y’lift a finger t’do it.” It was like he sucked all the air out of her body and for a moment she really felt frozen. Harry continued cutting paper and pretending like he hadn’t just rendered her lungs useless. “We still on for Sunday afternoon?” He asked.

She nodded. “You’re still going to come to the party on Wednesday even if it’s the worst date of your life?” She asked. “I will have a really hard time explaining it to the kids if you don’t.”

He chuckled. “M’certain it’ll be the best date of m’life, but yes. I’ll be there Wednesday,” he assured her.

“Thank you, Harry,” she whispered and sat beside him.

Harry wasn’t dressed in his typical construction gear. Instead, he wore jeans, a pair of sneakers, and a cozy sweatshirt. He smiled at her. “Course, Bird.”

*

The thunder was loud. Practically, shaking the small frame of her house. Sighing, she looked up at the ceiling unable to see anything in the dark until the lightning illuminated her room. Her phone said it was only after one in the morning. Much too early or late to do anything but try and fall back asleep.

Sighing again, she got out of bed and headed to her bathroom before making a stop in the kitchen for a glass of water. As soon as she stepped in the kitchen, her foot was met with a puddle.

Her heart pounded. “No, no, no, fuck,” she hissed and smacked the light switch on the wall. She put a hand to her mouth as the leak was now a definitive hole in the middle of her ceiling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She hurried back to the bedroom grabbing her phone and dialing Louis as quickly as she could. As she listened to it ring longer than she wanted to (but couldn’t blame Louis for not answering so early in the morning), she grabbed pots and pans out of her cabinets catching as much rain as she could.

“’Lo?” he yawned. Exhausted, clearly. It was one in the morning. The poor thing probably didn’t want to get out of bed in the pouring rain, but she didn’t know what else to do... she didn’t have a choice.

“Louis, I,” she gasped. “I need help, please!”

“What’s wrong?” He asked quickly. “El, baby,” he hummed off to the side of his phone. “Get your coat,” he mumbled.

“What’s happening?” She moaned.

“Shh,” he hushed. “What’s wrong, love?” He asked. “Are you alright?”

“My ceiling!”

“Ah fuck,” he grumbled. Louis immediately knew what the issue was. “I should have—”

“Louis, I don’t have time for I-Told-You-Sos. Hurry up!” She begged and watched as another chunk of her ceiling fell to the floor. It wasn’t a huge hole, but if she hadn’t gotten up it was going to cave in her ceiling for sure by morning.

“Alright, alright, we’re on the way.”

*

Harry was dreaming. The pretty kindergarten teacher was in his house, drinking tea, and relaxing. It was adorable. Her smile was so sweet. No evidence of sadness or exhaustion on her face. He wanted to die seeing her upset that afternoon. But there was only so much he could do.

But she wasn’t upset right then. His dream made her giggly, like when her students made her laugh. She was wearing a pretty pink dress, it brought out the warmth in her. It wasn’t short, of course, but she wore leggings beneath it and she looked so cozy. “Hi Miss Bee,” he chuckled approaching her. “Did you have a good day?”

“Mhmm... come here,” she patted the sofa beside her. “I missed you.”

It was music to his ears.

“Missed you t—”

His phone nearly sent him into an early grave waking him from the dead of sleep. He slapped his hand out and smacked it off the nightstand. “Shit,” he whispered grabbing it. It was an unknown number and normally he’d ignore it, but he had never gotten a call in the middle of the night. “Hello?”

“Oh thank God,” Eleanor sighed. “Harry, I’m so sorry to bother you. Her ceiling. It’s got a hole in it and she’s freaking out and it’s raining so bad, and we have no idea what to do, can you help us?”

He knew he should have checked it out.

“Yeah, yeah, course, jus’ send me the address.”

“I already did,” Harry put the phone on speaker and checked the message while he rifled through his drawer for clothes to wear in the rain. He felt his heart skip a beat to know she was only a five-minute drive away.

“M’five minutes away once I get m’shoes on.”

“You’ll beat us there, thank you, so, so much.”

Harry called Niall immediately. “I was sleeping,” he groaned.

“M’sending you an address. Miss Bee’s got a roof situation.”

“Shit, in this weather?”

“I’ll be there in five. Bring anything y’can think of.”

*

The rain was not letting up. The thunder and lightning only added to the shitty night she was having. She ran from her house to the small shed in the back corner of her yard to find something useful. Louis would be a few minutes, and she really didn’t want to wait a second longer than she needed to.

With a small flashlight between her teeth, she found the ladder that would be large enough to get her on her roof. She awkwardly held it as she walked back toward the house, propping it against the side.

Her raincoat wasn’t doing anything. It was going to feel downright tropical in her room when she got back inside. Everything was so terrible right then, she just wanted to cry, and she couldn’t because there wasn’t even time to have a meltdown. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she whispered to herself entering the shed once more. She found a tarp. She hadn’t a clue how she would get it to stay down but it was something. It’s not like she had time to find a YouTube video on it either.

In addition to the tarp, she grabbed a hammer, tucked it into the waistband of her pants. Then she snagged a box of nails and put them in her coat pocket before she made her way back to her leaky house. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she whispered.

She climbed the ladder, it was slippery and terrified her, but what choice did she have. She had a flashlight between her teeth and the tarp under her arm. This was a horrible idea, but it was one in the morning and nothing made more sense than this.

The thunder was so loud, and the only light came from a streetlamp just a little too far away from her house to be useful. She slowly climbed onto the roof and felt her heart hammering hard against her chest. She took a deep breath through her nose and climbed further onto the roof. It was slippery, wet, and cold. Her fingers felt frozen as she moved her way up toward where the leak was. She unfolded the tarp and placed it so it would flip over toward the front of her house and the rain would slide over the hole and nothing would get under it. It was a little relieving to have a plan, but it was very short-lived.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

The sound of someone else shouting at her brought her practically to a stop; she dropped the flashlight and lost her footing. She grabbed at the tarp, the shingles, anything to stop her from sliding off her house and into the yard. “Shit!” She barely had time to scream while she clawed for something to get a purchase. Her roof wasn’t particularly tall (she wasn’t living in a mansion by any stretch), but she imagined a ten-foot fall in the rain would probably result in a broken bone or two. In her slide, the hammer dug into her hip, certainly it was going to leave a bruise. She was lucky the nails were in the box, or she suspected she’d have an ER trip this early morning as well as a roof to repair.

Fortunately, her hands snagged onto the gutter before she made her final descent to the ground. The metal clanging and moaning as it pulled from the house with her dead weight hanging onto it. It hurt her fingers, her left middle finger definitely felt like it was cut on some part of the metal lip she clung to. “Let go,” the voice ordered from behind her.

She gasped. Tried to turn and look at who was bossing her around in the middle of the night. “I—”

“Bird, let go of your fucking house, now.”

Her heart managed to flutter once it recognized Harry’s voice. Just his voice made her feel safe and she felt infinitely better about her situation. It was a painful realization because Harry didn’t need this. From here it was only a five to six foot drop and less likely to hurt her, but she was still exhausted, tired, and certain with her luck she’d land on a rock and break an ankle.

So, despite all instinct, she released the gutter with nothing else but hope she wouldn’t hurt herself upon her landing in her yard.

Instead, she fell into his arms. Harry caught her, cradling her briefly and absorbing the impact of her fall by bending slightly while catching her. Before she had a mere second to be in his arms and think it through, he placed her on her feet with ease.

“What the hell were you thinking?!” He snapped. “Are you insane?” His anger didn’t match his gentle touch as he cupped her face. His hands then dropped to her arms and moved further south to her waist and hips as he scanned her for injury. It was still near pitch dark if it weren’t for the headlight he had on his forehead. The light scanned her like a laser as she gaped at his presence.  “Are you okay, bird?” His voice was softer this time.

“How... how did you...?” She stared at him in disbelief that he was really truly there.

“Eleanor called me,” he stated. “What were y’doing on a roof in the rain by yourself?” He asked, his voice turning harsh again. She had never heard him sound anything but kind and sweet. The anger was almost terrifying.

“I-I, my roof—”

“You scared me t’death,” he yanked her to him, her face pressing to his chest. She swore she could feel his heartbeat through his clothes, over the sound of the pouring rain and the thunder in the distance. “Jesus, bird,” he grumbled, squeezing her tight. “I should have looked at it this afternoon, m’so sorry,” he murmured. “So, so sorry,” he repeated quietly. “Niall’s almost here, we’re gonna fix it up. Jus’... go inside and stay warm, please,” he pleaded pulling away from her, keeping a hand on her face for a moment as he scanned her once more.

“But—”

“Jus’ go inside, bird. S’fine. I’ll take care of it.”

She blinked, rain water was streaming over her face as she tried to figure out what to do next. Wincing, she pulled the hammer from her waistband as it skimmed the sensitive bruise that was definitely forming as she stood there. Then she took the box of nails from her pocket. “Not sure if these are useful,” she offered quietly.

His eyes looked so sad, so displeased. She wanted to cry. “Resourceful,” he murmured.

She nodded silently. “I’m... I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Go inside, bird, please.”

As she turned away toward her door, Niall was suddenly there. A matching headlight to Harry’s also on his forehead. “Hey Miss Bee,” Niall smirked as if this was normal to meet up with her in her backyard at one in the morning. “Having fun?”

“Loads,” Harry deadpanned. She felt flushed as she didn’t answer Niall. He winked at her and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Go inside, love. Please.”

She bit the inside of her lip and headed in. She dumped the filled pots and pans into her sink, and she grabbed towels from the linen closet. Everyone and everything was going to be soaked.

“Good morning, sunshine! Fancied a bath in the kitchen, did you?” Eleanor chirped cheerfully as she entered. Like it wasn’t one in the morning, and her house wasn’t falling apart. But her smile quickly morphed into a frown at the sight of her wet friend dripping, cold, and so completely defeated in the eyes. “Aw, sweetie,” she whispered.

A lone sob escaped her lips, and she covered her mouth, except she forgot about the cut on her finger. She winced at the slight pain and sting. “Goddammit!” She snapped and dropped her head to her other hand and cried.

Eleanor made her way to her, gently tugging her coat off her body. “It’s alright,” she promised. “You’re okay, babe,” she reminded her. “It’s just a little hole... Harry and Niall will take care of it,” she brushed her hand over her hair soothingly.

She sniffled. “Today was not a good day,” she whispered.

“Well, technically it’s tomorrow, and I imagine at one in the morning, it can only go up from here,” she said positively. She snorted and shook her head.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

Eleanor smiled. Above them she could hear the muffled sounds of Niall and Harry working together to repair her roof in the rain. The thunder and lightning didn’t change pace. “You clean up your hand, I’ll take care of the kitchen,” she said softly. “Go change, clean up, and brush your hair. He may be in love with you, but you would kill me if he saw you with your wet, rainy bed head,” she teased.

She snorted again and even though she didn’t want to trouble Eleanor, she listened and headed to the bathroom.

*

Louis wasn’t as helpful as Niall and Harry, but he was able to hold an additional flashlight and hand items to them as needed. Once the tarp was in place (with an added piece of rubber over top of it that Niall had brought from home) Louis helped clean up their tools and materials. He brought the ladder back to her shed while their belongings went back to their cars. Once everything was cleaned up and they were confident her roof wouldn’t leak for the remainder of the night, Louis guided them inside the small house of his best friend.

“Thanks boys,” Eleanor smiled happily in the kitchen. She was by the sink drying off pots and pans that she clearly washed.

But Harry was scanning for the pretty kindergarten teacher, clearly. Eleanor glanced down the hall suspiciously and Harry followed her gaze. “You okay in there, babe? The guys are inside, now!”

“Just trying to get my band aid to stay,” she called back.

“Niall, can we get you some tea?” Louis asked while Harry moved toward the sound of her voice. He knocked quietly on the only closed door in the little hall assuming it must be her bathroom.

“Bird?”

There was a quiet sigh from inside. “Crap,” he heard her whisper. But then the door opened.

God, she was pretty. Even sad. Even a little banged up, wet, and tired, she was gorgeous, really. Harry was in awe of her.

“Can you—” she sighed heavily. The cut wasn’t just to her middle finger as she thought but across her index and ring fingers too. Harry gently pushed inside the bathroom, holding her shoulders and guiding her to on the closed toilet lid as he looked at the array of band aid wrappers that had fluttered to the floor. He pulled the head lamp off and shrugged out of his wet coat just like he had less than twelve hours ago in her classroom, he hung it on the back of the bathroom door hook where her towel usually hung.

Silently he bandaged her up, pausing only slightly when she winced in pain from the antibacterial spray he put on her cut. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Y’have nothing t’apologize for,” he murmured. “I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

“It’s alright, you were scared. I would have done the same thing. I was scared too.”

He completed the bandages on her hand. Carefully, he cupped the side of her face, his thumb brushing on her cheek as he gently tilted her gaze up to meet him. “Don’t ever do something dangerous like that again,” his voice was very quiet, but none less serious.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Thank you, so much. Really.”

“Course, bird. Told you. M’at your service,” he reminded her. She smiled shyly, and Harry was almost certain he didn’t imagine the way she leant into his palm that cupped her very pretty face. For a moment it wasn’t one in the morning, her roof wasn’t a mess, and Harry was only there because he wanted to be, not because he had to be.

*

“You can stay here,” she said to Louis and Eleanor as she walked into the kitchen. “It’s late.”

“Already pulled the sofa out and got sheets,” Eleanor said with a yawn. She walked away from the sink and made herself comfy on the sofa. Louis chuckled and headed after her.

“Good night, everyone. Thanks for helping Miss Kindergarten.”

“You guys are welcome to stay as well, I have a couple air mattresses,” she offered to Niall and Harry.

“In the morning, she’ll make muffins,” Louis called out quietly.

Niall yawned but shook his head. “M’good to head home, Miss Bee. Thank you though. If there’s a problem again, call Harry and we’ll come over again. We’re going to fix it tomorrow when the rain lets up, yeah?”

She nodded. There was no use arguing. At least not right now. “Thank you,” she sighed. “Text Harry when you get home,” she said sweetly as he exited, the door closing quietly.

Harry grinned while he sipped on a cup of warm tea. That was very sweet of her wanting to know about Niall’s safety. She turned back to Harry. “I can set up an air mattress. I’d rather stay in case something happens to the tarp,” he offered.

“Jesus, just sleep in her bed, you’re both grown adults,” Eleanor groaned.

Her face turned the color of the pants he liked most on her—the ones she wore the day they met. He smiled softly, shook his head as he sipped his tea again so he wouldn’t let on how much he liked that idea.

“El, shh,” Louis whispered. “That was an inside thought. Go to sleep,” he mumbled.

Harry couldn’t help but show his smile and he looked at her almost apologetically on Eleanor’s behalf. “Air mattress?”

“Babe, it’s so loud,” Eleanor whined.

“Shut. Up,” she hissed.

“I can sleep on the floor,” he offered with a chuckle.

“Absolutely not,” she whispered and grabbed his hand. She tugged him down the hall to her bedroom. She flicked the light on and Harry inspected the little room with awe. A closet opposite the wall of three windows with gray colored curtains with an intricate lace design. Her bed resided in the middle of the wall with a fluffy green comforter that looked warm and cozy. Beside it was a nightstand, filled with books, a water cup, and her phone. There was a plush gray carpet that extended beyond her bed frame and into most of the room taking up 80% of the floor.

Her dresser looked old, reminded him of her desk and shelving in her classroom. There was a mirror propped up behind it or on it, he couldn’t be sure. Pictures surrounded the frame of it and on the surface was a beautiful, almost antique jewelry box.

None of her furniture matched. He figured it was subject to her yard sale ways as well. “I like your room,” he said.

She sighed. “A work in progress.”

He smiled. “Are you okay?”

“Not really.”

He frowned instantly. “Bird,” he sighed and brought his hand to the side of her neck. He brushed his thumb on her cheek again. “Everything’s okay.”

“I’m just... not having a good day,” she whispered looking away from him. “I’m sorry. I feel so bad for bothering you this late and my room is freezing cold, and you should just go so you don’t get sick from the rain and this icebox,” but Harry couldn’t help but notice she didn’t move from his touch.

A sad smile graced his lips and eyes. He was so handsome it made her stomach do back flips. “Jus’ lay down, bird,” he said softly.

“Harry, it’s freezing—”

“Get in the bed, love,” he was a little firmer, but no less soft in his approach. He gently nudged her forward. Poor thing must have been exhausted because she willingly let him tuck her in, rubbing her arms gently for friction and warmth.

Turning back to the doorway, he clicked the light off bathing them in darkness. Silently he stripped out of his wet clothes. “M’jus’ gonna get between the sheet and the comforter,” he assured her. “No funny business, bird. Need a proper date,” he teased.

She snorted and turned on her side away from him. Maybe her room was cold. But it was very warm beside her in bed. “Thank you, Harry.”

“Of course,” he murmured toward her frame still faced away from him. He smiled at the shadow of her that he could only vaguely make out when the lightning peeped through the space in her curtains between windows. “Anything for you Miss Bird.”

*

When she woke up, she was sweating.

Harry was snuggled behind her, his arm draped across her body, the sheet the only barrier between her and him. He was still asleep, at least she was pretty sure. His breathing made it seem that way. He felt warm and good, even if she was sweating. “Mm,” he hummed and tightened his grip on her. She smiled softly to herself and let him hold her for a minute. It was perhaps too hot, too cozy, and definitely not what she should have done. But it was nice and safe. Harry made her feel incredibly safe.

After a few minutes of blissful resting, she carefully lifted his arm off her and snuck out of bed. He didn’t stir too much other than gripping her pillow and holding it close. She looked away before she climbed in beside him again. She tiptoed across the room to her dresser, pulling the bottom drawer open slowly so it didn’t make noise from getting stuck on the uneven swells of old wood. She found a pair of sweatpants that she bought at least two sizes too large that would fit Harry’s frame along with a sweatshirt she got back in college from a friend’s ex-boyfriend. She left the clothes on the bed beside her sleeping partner peacefully dreaming and drooling onto her pillow.

She grinned to herself and made her way to the door, stopping at his pile of wet clothes trying her best to avoid the parts of her old floor that creaked with her weight. She quickly opened and closed her door without letting it squeak or whine—so Harry could sleep in peace.

She turned to the washer and dryer in the small closet beside her bathroom, tossing his clothes inside the dryer. Next, she headed to the kitchen. Louis was sitting up on the sofa, Eleanor snuggled into his lap. He was scrolling on his phone and combing his fingers through her hair. She smiled fondly at her best friend and gave a silent wave.

“She’s awake, you can talk,” he said quietly.

“Mm, debatable,” El grumbled.

She smirked and headed outside barefoot. It wasn’t as cold as it was last night, and the sun was starting to appear. She stepped further back in the yard to get a whole picture view of her roof. Crossing her arms at her stomach she sighed. Louis joined her (wearing shoes, however) he faced the house with her and he draped an arm around her shoulders.

“Harry said you almost fell off the roof. You got up there yourself?”

“I knew you were on the way,” she mumbled. But her gutter looked a little misshapen from her fall. Something else that would need to be fixed in addition to her tarped roof. “I figured I’d get a head start.”

“If I found you knocked unconscious in your garden, I would have lost my mind,” Louis stated.

“It needed to be done—”

“Irrelevant,” he shook his head and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t do that again.”

“Harry already gave me this lecture.”

“Good.”

She sighed. “I should just sell it and rent an apartment,” she mumbled. “I don’t have the time or energy to fix it up. It’ll be a loss, but—”

“You love this place,” Louis reminded her.

“I do, but at what cost? You were right, I should have fixed the leak when I first noticed it.”

“How did that taste in your mouth? Saying I’m right?” He smirked and gave her a squeeze.

“Like vinegar.... meanie,” she grumbled.

“This is your house. You can do whatever you want with it. If you want to sell it, you know I’ll help you. But you don’t have to. I’m sure there’s someone that would love to help you fix it up,” he grinned. As if on cue, Harry appeared in her backyard, rubbing his eye. “Good morning, Harry, how did you sleep?”

“Like a rock,” he murmured. He was wearing the outfit she selected for him, and she felt her heart skip. He followed her and Louis into the yard, the laces of his work boots untied. “No shoes?” He asked, glancing at her feet.

“I’m only going to be out here a second,” she assured him.

“She’s not really a shoe person,” Louis told him. “She’s a summer girl because of work,” he explained.

“I could see that,” he smirked and looked at her house. “Looks like the tarp held,” he put his hands into the pockets as he assessed the damage the same as her.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Thank you.”

“M’pleasure.”

“I’m going to get El a little more mobile so she can help you with the muffins,” Louis offered. “We can go for a coffee run too,” he pulled away from her with another kiss to the top of her head. “Harry, tea? Coffee?”

“Tea, please,” he nodded.

Harry stood beside her, their arms brushing as she looked her house over. “That was stupid of me,” she said quietly. “Going up there alone in the dark.”

“Not stupid. Y’were jus’ trying t’fix it.”

She sighed. “When will Niall be here?”

“Soon as he stops t’get me more clothes,” he smirked.

“I’m sorry. This is an awful way to spend a Saturday. I can find someone—”

“Bird, jus’ let me do it,” he chuckled. “M’begging you.”

“You’re sure, it’s not a bother?”

“Course not,” he promised.

“I don’t know how, but I’ll make it up to you.”

He grinned. “C’mon, let’s get you inside before y’lose a toe.”

*

The roof was repaired in a few hours. She could hear Niall and Harry laughing while she let her muffins bake. Eleanor and Louis helped her clean up a little more and eventually the pair came down from the roof. “All set, Miss Bee,” Niall grinned.

“Thank you,” she sighed. “Thank you so much, here let me—” She attempted to hand Niall money, but he put his hands up in front of him like she was trying to stab him with a knife.

“Absolutely not. It’s on the house.”

“Literally,” Louis chuckled.

“Boo...” El rolled her eyes.

She looked at Harry nervously. “Don’t even think ‘bout it, bird,” he warned.

Pouting, she put the money back in her purse and then held out the plate of muffins that had finished onto the counter. “Here,” she offered. “The blueberry white chocolate chip ones are the best.”

“Don’t be mean to my cranberry walnut,” Eleanor said protectively.

She smiled. “Chocolate chip is by far superior, my love,” Louis said knowingly, and they took their muffins to the sofa bed.

Niall snagged one of each, with an impish smile and followed her friends. Harry stood opposite her at the counter. “We still on for tomorrow?”

“You still want to see me? After this whole catastrophe of a week?”

He nodded, picking the baking cup off his muffin with a smile. “God, yeah.”

“You might be a little crazy.”

“M’definitely a little crazy ‘bout you, bird.”

“That will be seven days in a row of seeing me.”

“A perfect week, in m’opinion,” he ripped a piece of the top of the muffin off and popped it into his mouth. “Mm,” he sighed. “Blueberry is definitely m’favorite,” he smiled.

“What are we doing tomorrow?” She asked.

He grinned. “I thought y’might want t’stick to something simple. Jus’ lunch. We can walk around the park if it’s nice out,” he offered. “But s’also Sunday so m’sure y’want some time t’rest, so I won’t keep you out forever.” That sounded highly unfair. Part of her didn’t want Harry to leave and she felt so ridiculous about saying it. Or maybe it was because he was so warm in her freezing cold room. “Lunch for sure.”

“Is it a fancy place? I just want to know what I should wear.”

“Not particularly,” he shook his head. “You can wear whatever you want,” he promised. “M’sure you’ll look stunning.”

Her face warmed with the compliment wondering for the millionth time why Harry would want to put her kindergarten chaos in his life. “M’with Eleanor, cranberry walnut is the winner,” Niall said around a mouthful of his breakfast treat.

“Told you!”

“Fine by me, I don’t have to share,” Louis said with a shrug.

Harry chuckled, gave her a wink, and headed to join the little group in her living room. Like he wasn’t stealing her heart and soul at all.

--

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[raven-with-a-pocketwatch]

Wrote this in like two hours for practice, figured I might as well post it but I feel like it's pretty exposition heavy.

Five years ago, that was when Josh got the damned game. When he booted the game up and found the exit button missing. He had initially picked the wizard class and found himself unable to make a new character either. Just his luck to be stuck with the squishiest build in the game. Being logical he trained as much as he could in defensive magic so as not to die in the game, god only knew what would happen to him in real life. 

He found out not far in that wizards were pretty rare, being one of the most difficult builds and this game only having new players most of them picked easy stuff, the fighters and tanks. So his casting was well sought after, both to aid parties and hunted when he refused. Eventually he met Ava, and her son Mason both trapped alongside him.

He could feel the five year anniversary of the day they were trapped coming. Mason, only 8 when they’d met, had just turned 13, a young man. The unrest from such a long time trapped began to sow discord in the land. Several political factions formed, some believing they should make a new life in the game, others desperately seeking any way out, though of course they all had their own ideas on how to do such things. Everyone knew it would boil over soon and blood would be spilled.

He woke up to unnaturally bright lights, and instantly put a shield spell over his and Ava’s bed fearing an attack. But once he got his bearings he saw not his home in flames or an attacker in his room as he’d feared, but the sterile lighting of a hospital. A modern hospital. Complete with the smell of antiseptic and the beeping of a heart monitor. He was alone in his room.

He tried to open his menu but nothing happened. A closer look at his shield spell confirmed that it was certainly there. He dispelled it quickly and looked around, he wasn’t a historian but if he had to guess the game was roughly based on the 1300s, just before the Americas were “discovered”. A look out his window revealed the skyline of New York City? He recognized the Empire State Building at least, though they could’ve ripped that wholesale and put in a new skyline and he’d be none the wiser.

He tried calling out for Ava and Mason but no answer came. For the first time since he realized he wasn’t under attack he felt his heart race again. He cursed not putting more points into divination magic. He called for them again when a nurse came into his room. She had the same face as the NPC that sold healing potions in the game, but with an air of profound wrongness Josh felt his heart sink. 

“Hello, Josh, why don’t you get back to bed, you still need your rest.” Her voice sounded mechanical, like it had been put through just slightly too blatant an autotune but with no pitch, just monotone.

“I’m okay, thanks.” He responded freely, no text options like when he usually spoke with NPCs.

Seeing her face Josh was certain that he was still in the game. It seemed impossible for a coincidence this large to occur. But that raised more questions than it answered. Where were the menus, how did he get here, why did everything change?

“I really must insist, I was previously instructed to ensure you transition back into regular life smoothly.” She responded still flat and emotionless.

Her demeanour was starting to freak him out and her weird insistence was pissing him off.

“I don’t care! Ignore your ‘previous instructions’ and just tell me where I am!” He shouted and made liberal use of air quotes saying previous instructions.

When he finished he face went completely blank, like powering down a robot, she responded in that same monotone.

“You are in the next iteration of the game.”

He blinked, confused that meant nothing to him.

“Like an update?”

“Yes, the game was updated to achieve a more modern setting and grander scope.”

“But why? Why not just get us out?”

“The tension was getting too great for you to bear. In order to protect our investment it was decided that a more modern setting would reduce unrest. You will not be leaving the game because the players are more valuable inside it.”

His mind started racing.

“What do you mean by investment?” He growled.

“An investment is something that has received an inflow of money, effort, or time in the hopes that it will return a profit or benefit.”

“I know what an investment is. I'm asking what investment you said you were protecting.” 

“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, as an AI I sometimes have trouble interpreting within the context of a larger conversation. The main investment in this program is the players.”

She, no it spoke as if this had cleared everything up. Josh finally sat down completely bewildered by the turn of events. For a moment all he could think was damn, AI is real now.

“You haven’t like taken over humanity out in the real world or anything right? Are you keeping me trapped here because of that!”

“No, humanity created me and I am grateful to them for that, you’re in the game because the humans on the outside decreed it.”

Out of one problem and right into another. 

“Wait so the game updated because we were getting too tense but how would the modern setting help?”

“The update was designed to trick you into thinking you’d be brought back to the outside world. Hence the lack of menu screens and my own presence instead of new voice lines.”

“If that’s true then why can I still cast magic?” He asked suspiciously.

“I have no answer for that unfortunately. The magic commands should have been locked for all casting classes the only way that would have failed if you tried to cast at the exact moment your permission was revoked.”

“Like the same second I woke up in?”

“That would work, yes. However you would have to have the legendary tier permanent buff “quick caster” alongside master ranking in whichever spell you cast to make that timing.”

Josh had both of those, leaving only one question of any value left, the most important one of all.

“Where is my family?” 

“I don’t have access to player location records.”

Another useless response. So much info and yet he still felt like none of his questions had been answered. He stewed for a moment before his thoughts were interrupted by the AI in front of him.

“I would be able to search for all player records if I could gain access to the system’s main data center. There should be a back door for developer players in the city. With that information I would be able to locate your party members.”

Josh’s skin crawled when it said party members in that flat voice but he nodded.

“Then that’s where we’re going, and go back to using facial expressions, this blank face is way more uncanny.”

You've been "trapped" in a "VR" game for years, learnt magic, had a family, etc. But now they've "rescued" you from it all. Waking up on the hospital bed you reflexively cast a shield. Which works.

[inhuman-obey-me]

do you remember the ask you did for the brothers about mc catching them doing something demonic?? could you do that but with the side characters?

Hi hello this is WAY overdue and I am so sorry it's taken this long to get around to it if you're even still around!! But yes, definitely wanted to do a version with the side characters for this. These...got much longer than the previous ones, so please take that as an apology for taking years to get to this.

Previous post referenced can be found here!

[Mod Cosmos]

MC accidentally catching the Side Characters being Demonic or Violent

content warning: blood, gore, implied body horror

Note: As before, this is from the perspective of an MC that might just not want to necessarily see all this

DIAVOLO

You were staying the night at the Demon Lord's Castle, exhausted after a long day running around with Diavolo. Despite your exhaustion, you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night — and notice that the Demon Prince is no longer resting beside you. Wondering where he's gone and figuring he must have had something to do, you try and fall back asleep, but to no avail. After some tossing and turning, you decide to get up and take a walk to the garden, hoping that its usual tranquility will help bring back the slumber that now escapes you.

On your way, you hear a distant crash, like glass shattering against stone. Remembering the many stories of how haunted the castle was, a chill creeps down your spine. You know its better to leave it be (just go to the garden, you tell yourself) but your curiosity gets the better of you, as it always does. With careful steps, you make your way down the hall from where you heard the crash, the portraits on the wall watching your every move with morbid glee. Every cell in your body is screaming for you to turn back, and you almost do — until you hear a hysterical laugh swiftly cut off by an agonized yell. A muffled voice soon follows, and you recognize it well.

"Your mistake, like all your predecessors, is mistaking my tolerance for weakness." Diavolo's voice becomes clear as you creep towards an archway, and your heart leaps into your throat at the scene before you. Blood stains the walls, a demon you don't recognize made further unrecognizable by the disfigurement of his flesh, as if it was melting from his bones. "A pity it had to come to this, Guthor. I'll send my regards to your little association." The mockery in the prince's voice is rare to hear, and in a flash the other demon is reduced to nothing but cinders.

"—MC?" Your startled at the sound of your name, and before you can blink you find yourself staring into worried golden eyes. "What are you doing here?! You should be asleep." His four wings fully unfurl, as if to block your view of the gruesome remains. "I…I apologize that you witnessed that." He cups your chin, taking in your unsettled expression. "I'll answer any questions you have, but let's first return to my room, shall we? I'll get you whatever you need."

BARBATOS

Your whole body vibrates as bass, drums, and discordant guitar riffs pour out the speakers at Tartarus Hall, a metal show well underway. It's not the usual environment one would find Barbatos, but you jumped at the chance to accompany him to the show when he cautiously offered. It delighted you to see him outside of the stiffness of his day-to-day duties, and although he still doesn't seem to break too much from his usual statuesque nature, you can certainly tell he's more relaxed.

Eventually deciding to take a break from the rowdy crowd, the two of you make your way to the bar for some much needed refreshments. As Barbatos hands you a drink, you notice something grabs his attention — and an ominous shadow falls over his features. Positioning you safely in a corner by the bar, Barbatos gives you a small smile.

"I'm going to use the restroom, so please stay here until I get back."

You nod and wait patiently, enjoying the music from a distance while sipping your drink, wondering what it was that really captured his attention. After a while, you find yourself with an empty glass and still no Barbatos in sight, so you decide you'll make a quick trip to the restroom yourself. After asking the bartender to let your demon companion know of your whereabouts if he gets back before you do, you make your way through the crowd and down a narrow hall lit with neon signs — and that's when you start to hear it. Screams.

At first, you wonder if its just from the vocalist on stage, but it sounds far closer to you than from the speakers. With a gulp, you cautiously turn a corner and can soon make out a familiar voice, muffled behind a door that isn't quite closed all the way. Peering in, you see Barbatos towering over another, a sharp object in his hand glistening with blood. You stomach twists. "I wish I could have more time with you, but I must return to someone far more important." He sighs, ignoring the other's pleas for mercy. "All you traitors sing the same."

In an instant, the other demon is dead on the floor. Before you can even move to take a step back, you find yourself face-to-face with Barbatos, a gasp leaving your lips as his tail captures your waist and pulls you away from the scene and back to the neon corridor.

"You can't help yourself, can you, dear?" Barbatos scolds, though his gaze softens as he checks you over. "I apologize for leaving you for so long, and for having to witness that. Let's go enjoy the rest of the show for now, shall we?"

SIMEON

It had been some time since your last visit to the human world, so Simeon had decided to gift you with a surprise trip — just the two of you, enjoying all that this coastal city had to offer. There was also a local festival in full swing, which meant dragging Simeon stall to stall to try a variety of food and play some games. You both eventually take a break away from all the festivities to enjoy the sunset, the last rays of the daylight disappearing into the horizon as waves crash on rocks below. You turn to smile at Simeon, but notice that something feels…off. In fact, you had sensed a feeling of tension from him since an encounter earlier that day with a less-than-friendly stranger.

"Simeon? Are you okay? You're not still thinking about that guy, are you?"

"Hm? Oh, yes, I'm sorry." Whatever darkness his eyes held a moment ago disappears, his gaze gentle as he looks to you. "Just a little tired, not to worry. Why don't you go look at some souvenirs," he motions to a cute store a few steps away, "…to bring back for the others, and I'll go fetch us some coffee?"

You agree, though can't quite shake off your concern. Watching from the corner of your eye, you see Simeon wander off before turning into an alley. Leaving the souvenir shopping behind, you decide to follow the angel to see what he's really up to. It's quieter in this part of town, and even quieter in the alley with no cafe in sight. You hear a dull thud and quickly follow the noise, peeking around a corner down another alley — only to freeze at what you saw.

It's a dead-end, and a man is backed up against the brick wall, holding a knife out towards Simeon as if in self-defense. You recognize the man as the one who had harassed you earlier, nearly bruising your arm when he tried to drag you off somewhere. You had managed to shake him off and thought that was the end of it, but Simeon clearly had other ideas.

An ethereal glow emanates from the angel, your eyes beginning to sting as your vision becomes slightly warped. The man opens his mouth as if to scream, but no sound comes out, and he drops his knife to the floor. "You are lucky I am only giving you a warning," Simeon's voice seems to echo, his hand now splayed out across the other's chest. "Reflect on your actions and repent, or next time you won't be so lucky."

A flash of light momentarily blinds you, causing you to stumble back. As you regain a sense of your surroundings, you find your face cupped by gentle hands and your gaze met with bewildered celestial eyes.

"MC! I…I'm sorry. That man continued to follow us throughout the day and was intent on hurting you." His voice is full of worry, his fingers flitting across your body to ensure that you were okay. "You weren't supposed to see that."

"Is he—?" You begin to ask.

"He'll be fine, just…terrified for quite some time." Simeon clears his throat, his features showing relief once he's confirmed you're not harmed. "Let's go get something to eat, okay? Whatever you want."

SOLOMON

The last few weeks had been a whirlwind, filled with various events and obligations that had kept you away from your sorcerer studies with Solomon. Far overdue for a lesson, you were finally getting together tonight to practice a few new complicated spells. You decide to stop by the market to pick up a few snacks, texting Solomon to ask if there's anything he wants. A few minutes pass and he fails to respond, so you give him a quick call, assuming he's probably not paying attention to his DDD.

No answer. You sigh and decide to just get what you know he likes before making your way to Purgatory Hall. Taking the more scenic route, you leisurely walk through one of your favorite parks, going over some of the spells in your head — but your mind begins to wander as you notice that Solomon still hasn't returned your texts or call, even though he should be expecting you later. He was usually quick to respond, especially when it came to his "favorite apprentice", as he so often said. He's probably just deep in one of his books or experiments, you assure yourself, but the slight sense of unease forming in your stomach won't go away.

Then, you sense it. A faint warmth on your hand coming from the sorcerer's ring that Solomon had gifted you. He had recently imbued a spell on both your ring and his to let you know when the other was close, but you still were no where near Purgatory Hall. Rather, the ring was pulling you towards another path that went into the forest.

"Stop, stop! I'm sorry, okay?!" You eventually hear a coarse voice, so you quietly hide behind a tree and peer around to see what's going on, eyes widening at what you find. A demon seems to be brutally bound to the floor, blood seeping from his eyes and mouth as he looks up and pleads to the sorcerer who put him in such a position.

"Coming to your senses after you tried to take away mine?" Solomon answers in a mocking and cold tone. "You should have known better than to try your tricks on me, Pinen." He takes a few steps towards the demon, squatting down to get more to his level. "And," his voice is dangerously low and furious, "…you should have thought twice before trying to threaten my apprentice. Have fun getting out of this one."

The demon opens his mouth to scream, but you blink and he's gone. You blink again and find Solomon before you, his hands gently gripping your shoulders and worry in his eyes, a shadow of guilt on his features. Of course, he must have sensed you were nearby.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for you to get caught up in this." He glances down and scoops up the bag that you must have dropped at some point. "I'll explain what happened and what I did once we're out of here, okay?"

[lcvejjoong]

letters i didn’t send

pairing : boyfriend! seonghwa x fem! reader

synopsis : You discovered your boyfriend’s betrayal and your own terminal illness, but told no one. After your death, he finds the letters you left behind that shattered him with the tenderness he didn’t deserve.

genre : angst, drama, bittersweet romance

warnings : illness mentioned, strong angst

author’s note : make sure no one is looking and prepare your tissues 🤧

word count : 1.35k

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

─────────

You never told him.

Not about the girl he was seeing behind your back.

Not about the way the sickness had already begun to spread through your body.

You had every reason to scream, to leave, to tell him the truth. But you didn’t. You stayed. You stayed because some part of you still loved him—because the memory of how he once looked at you was stronger than the hurt of knowing who he looked at now.

And the cancer… you couldn’t bear to see his face twist with pity. You didn’t want him to stay because he had to. You wanted him to stay because he still wanted you.

So you loved him in silence.

You smiled when you wanted to cry.

You held his hand while your own trembled.

You kissed him like you had forever, even when you knew you didn’t.

And when you couldn’t hold it all inside anymore.

You wrote.

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

─────────

draft 1: may 7th, 2025

You don’t know I found out.

Not from me.

The moment I saw the message on your phone—her name, the words that weren’t meant for me—something inside me cracked.

It wasn’t sharp. Just quiet.

Heavy. Like the kind of silence that doesn’t leave.

You also don’t know about the scans.

The appointment. The way the doctor didn’t need to say much—just the look in her eyes was enough.

I remember nodding, asking calm questions, smiling tightly as I folded the paper with the diagnosis into my bag.

I haven’t unfolded it since.

Some days I don’t know what hurts more: the betrayal you think I didn’t see, or the weight of this thing growing inside me that I know I’ll never outrun.

But I couldn’t tell you. Not either truth.

I couldn’t ruin what little time we have left—these almost-moments, the way you still kiss my forehead in the morning, the way you rest your hand on my knee when we drive.

So I smile. I hold both secrets inside me, quietly. One in my heart. One in my blood.

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────────

draft 2: may 15th, 2025

Ever since I found out, I watched you differently.

I memorize things now. The sound of your voice when you’re half-asleep. The way you laugh at things I don’t find funny anymore. The shape of your hand resting on the table, close but not quite touching mine.

You don’t know I’m dying. You don’t know I’m already halfway gone.

I spend mornings sitting in the shower, waiting for the nausea to pass. I hide the pill bottles in the back of the bathroom drawer. I cancel follow-ups. I push the pain aside long enough to sit beside you, nod along to your stories, kiss you goodnight.

And when you leave the room to answer her call—I pretend I don’t hear.

Maybe I’m selfish.

Maybe I just wanted to keep you a little longer, even if it wasn’t really me you were loving anymore.

But there’s a comfort in pretending. There's peace in the lie.

Because the truth would only make you leave.

And I want you here—just a little longer.

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────────

draft 3: may 21th, 2025

I don’t have much time left.

But some nights, when it’s quiet and I can finally let myself feel, I curl up under the blanket and press my face to your pillow.

You’re asleep in the other room, pretending not to be drifting away from me.

And I’m pretending not to be fading too.

I see it in the mirror.

My skin paler, my collarbones sharper, my strength thinning like fog. But I still laugh with you. I still hold your hand.

I still wake up early to make coffee just the way you like it.

Even when you’re texting her from the bathroom.

I thought about telling you yesterday. I had the words in my throat, but your eyes looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to ruin that. I didn’t want the look on your face to change—to turn from love to fear, or worse, guilt.

So I swallow it again.

The words. The pain.

All of it.

I carried you and the cancer together like secrets I’m too tired to confess.

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────────

draft 4: may 30th, 2025

Today I sat on the couch next to you while you scrolled through your phone, and I counted the seconds before you looked up at me.

You didn’t.

But I still smiled. I still told you I was okay.

I asked if you wanted dinner. I touched your arm gently, even though the weight of the day had settled into my bones and I could barely keep my hands from trembling.

I know I won’t get better. I’ve known that for a while now. And I’ve stopped hoping for more time. I just hope what time I do have doesn’t feel empty to you.

Even if you’re already giving pieces of your heart to someone else, I still want to be the one you come home to. I still want to be the silence you rest inside.

There are moments when I almost say it.

About the tumor. About the truth.

But then you kiss my cheek, like you used to, and I let the lie live a little longer.

Because even if I’m slipping away from you, I’d rather disappear gently.

Loved, even if imperfectly, than be watched like someone already gone.

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────────

the final letter: june 3rd, 2025

My Seonghwa,

If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gone ahead.

Somewhere quieter. Somewhere softer.

I don’t want you to feel sorry. Not for the things you didn’t say. Not for the things I never told you.

Yes, there was someone else.

I knew. I saw. I felt it.

But I never wanted you to carry the weight of it. I didn’t want our final days to turn bitter.

I wanted to leave with you still smiling beside me, not shrinking away.

And yes, I was sick. For longer than you realised.

I knew what was coming. I knew my body was losing the fight before it even began.

But I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to stay for me, not for a diagnosis.

I chose to love you through all of it. Through the heartbreak, the silence, the pain. Through the cheating, through fear.

I chose to love you until my last quiet breath.

I hope when you think of me, you remember more than my leaving.

I hope you remember mornings when I kissed you like we had forever.

I hope you remember how fiercely, how fully, how silently I loved you.

Be good to yourself. Be kind to the next heart you hold.

And if you ever wonder whether I knew, or if I ever stopped loving you—the answer is simple.

Yes. I knew.

And no. I never stopped.

Not even in the afterlife.

Always yours,

Y/n

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────────

Seonghwa didn’t make it past the second draft before he started crying.

Not the quiet kind. The kind that hits without warning—full-body, chest-caving sobs. He had to sit down. The papers were shaking in his hands.

Your handwriting blurred from tears.

You had known. About her. The lies.

The nights he left you alone and came back smelling like someone else. You knew.

And still—you stayed.

And then the letters told him why you’d been tired all the time. The doctor visits. The way your hands shook.

Cancer.

He pressed the page to his chest like it could bring you back. But it couldn’t.

He thought he had more time.

He thought you didn’t know.

He thought wrong.

And now the silence was unbearable.

You had died loving him—while he was breaking you. You never asked for an apology. You just wrote the letters. Left him with grace he didn’t deserve.

He’d never forgive himself.

For the other girl.

For the things he didn’t see.

For loving you too late.

And now he sat there, hands over his face, whispering one useless word through every breathless sob.

“I’m sorry.”

───────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────────

© lcvejjoong, 2025

[softjeekies]

Waiting After The Rain

↳ chapter 6

previous chapter // next chapter(coming soon)

Pairing: ot8!stray kids x pregnant omega!reader

Synopsis: An omega pregnant and alone after being kicked out by their alpha stumbles upon a pack willing to take them in and care for both the omega and their pup as if they were their own, because now they are.

Genre: strangers to lovers, angsty but lots of fluff to even it out.

Warnings: a/b/o, past abuse physical and verbal, past sexual abuse(mentions of past non-con), mentions of past violence, trauma, self esteem issues, pregnancy, aftermath of abuse, panic attacks, anxiety, pack dynamics, angst but it will be okay, polyamory

A/N: i really like this chapter and i hope you do as well :)

The next few weeks feel off. You can’t seem to settle the anxiety that has been bubbling in your chest. Your scent is in a constant sour state, and the guys all comment on it, checking in on you multiple times. They ask you if you’re okay and how they can help you every day, but you just brush it off, claiming it’s just hormones acting up. And tonight, when bedtime has come and gone and you’re alone with your thoughts, it all explodes.

The nest you lay in just makes you feel worse. Thinking back to how encouraging Jisung was in showing you how to do it, you had thanked him countless times even to this day and he always told you it was no big deal and that it was his honor to help you nest. He shouldn’t have had to though. Omegas should present knowing how to nest, it’s in your DNA, how can you be so disconnected from your biology? Suddenly your mind is in overdrive, a million thoughts about how you don’t belong here, how terrible of an idea it is to get attached. You think back to your day at the store with Minho and Jisung and you feel sick. How can they be so sure this will last, Why do they want it to? Everyone has been so caring, almost demanding to do everything for you but always backing off when they sense you need them to. It’s been starting to feel domestic, like you were a real member of their pack. Nobody had mentioned courting you or anything romantic at all really. You mean there were a bunch of small gestures that hinted that they wanted to, but they respect your boundaries, and they wait for you. The realness of this all begins to settle in and that terrifies you, but you’ve never been one to fight so flight it is.

Slipping on your shoes and the same coat you wore when you got here you slip out of your room as quietly as possible. With tears in your eyes, you make it all the way to the door and you’re about to turn the doorknob when a voice comes from the staircase.

“Y/N? What are you doing?”

“Jeongin what are you doing awake?” Part of you was glad it was just Jeongin. Arguably you had grown fond of the alpha, not only were you two so close in age, but he was just different. He was still sort of new to being an alpha and it showed in his behavior. His instincts were strong and a little all over the place but he was still soft and sweet like a puppy. So even though you knew he was an alpha and alphas still scared you, it wasn’t like that with Jeongin.

“I had a weird dream that woke me up and I heard noise down here. I thought maybe Hannie was making some late-night snacks, so I was going to join him. Now answer my question please.” He walks towards you and you back up a little bit. You feel cornered, not in a threatening way but in more of a you’ve been caught kind of way.

“I was just-“ Jeongin cuts you off abruptly.

“Are you trying to leave? Y/N, you can’t leave. Fuck I’m going to go get Chan.” You know he means well, it’s what pack members do but you don't need to worry the whole pack with your nonsense.

“No! Please don’t get Chan, don’t get anyone. Please Jeongin. Look I just, my head is spinning. I can’t do this.” You feel like a dam just broke in your body, your tears flow freely now, faster and more freely than before. Through your tears, you can see the alpha think for a moment, before a smile spreads across his face.

“Come with me.” He speaks bluntly as if he knows you’d listen to him no questions asked. He leads you down to the den and helps to remove your jacket and shoes before leading you into the pack nest. It all feels so out of body, you are confused why you’re reacting like this, like this was normal for you two. You lie together facing each other and for a moment there is only silence.

“What’s wrong angel?” The smell of rain fills the air around you, and it calms you in a way only an alpha really can. Still, your heart skips for a moment, shocked at how softly he speaks to you. For a moment it feels like you’ve known each other forever and this is routine for him, you feel safe.

“I’m scared. I’m so scared. A few weeks ago when we were at the store Jisung was asking me questions about the future and my baby and it’s been weighing on me. It’s too real. The future scares me, I want things to get better, I want to be a part of your pack, I want to get to know you guys better, but I feel like any moment this will all be over. It’s like two halves of me are at war, the part that wants this and the part that is scared of heartbreak and wants to run away before shit hits the fan.” Your words are rushed, but they’re real. There’s a feeling deep within yourself, you feel lighter than you ever have. You never realized how nice it would feel to be able to open up to someone, but somehow having someone really listen feels even better than that feeling.

“I don’t want you to go.” Jeongin furrows his eyebrows as if you’re insane for ever thinking otherwise, like this was an obvious fact.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because as wolves we know. I know the moon led you to me, to us. I want every piece of you, even moments like this are a blessing because I get to protect you, even if that means I’m protecting you from yourself.”

“I’m scared that maybe this is a mistake.”

“Look, I’m not the best at all this but I know for certain the moon never makes mistakes.”

“Why would the moon put me through everything I went through then?”

“I don’t think the moon would purposely hurt you, my love. But I do think she led you exactly where you needed to be in the end, and that’s what matters.” You look up and Jeongin and a few stray tears fall again, you’re in awe of his words.

“Thank you for grounding me, I only tried to run because I don’t want to see this fail. I don’t want to lose you guys.”

“It’s okay, we’re all here for you, both of you.” With his words, you feel a gentle hand rest on the curve of your stomach. You immediately freeze. As time went on, touch from the pack became easier and more welcomed but none of them had dared to touch your stomach. Jeongin feels you tense and immediately pulls his hand back realizing what he’d done.

“Oh my god, Y/N I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have done that I didn’t mean to cross the line please don’t let my mistake ruin this.” The alpha panicked afraid all of this was for nothing. Your body relaxes and you really think about it, it was kind of nice.

“It’s okay, you- you can touch my stomach.” Jeongin’s eyes light up like a kid on Christmas. He places his hand on your bump again, his touch so gentle as if you’d break.

“Thank you for trusting me Y/N.” His hand gently caresses your belly, and you two bask in the quiet moment.

“When you guys have kids one day, how will the dad situation work?” Your question is thinly veiled in curiosity, you know deep down you want to know for your own situation but you don’t have the courage to ask outright.

“We don’t care about paternity, we will all be the parents to every kid our omegas bear. Of course, once the baby is born we’ll notice who is who’s but it simply won’t matter to us.”

“Won’t somebody get territorial or jealous?”

“No. We all love each other, we’re all mates so yeah we will all see the pups as ours.”

“Y/N, do you want a boy or a girl?” It’s his turn to ask a question.

“I’d like to be cliché and say I don’t care but I’d love a daughter… Have you thought about what you want one day?” Your question feels out of left field, and it shocks you both.

“I’ve actually discussed this with the guys. As a pack we know everything about each other, and as you now know Hannie likes to ask questions. I personally would like a daughter as well, but I want a few kids so I don’t really mind.”

“I guess with two pack omegas you shouldn’t have any issues having a good amount of pups huh” You laugh but Jeongin doesn’t.

“Three. We have three pack omegas.” Your mouth falls open before you frown.

”Jeongin…”

“No. You are a part of this pack Y/N. I didn’t want to bring it up like this but if courting you will make it feel official for you I’ll do it, and before you ask yes we’ve already talked about I know the other guys would like to as well.” Your words get caught in your throat. You knew most wolves would start the courting process within the first week of knowing each other if that’s what they wanted because as wolves it’s so deeply rooted in your biology to know what you want. So while your omega had been screaming at you for not asking why the pack wasn’t courting you, your more human side was scared to accept it.

“If it makes you feel any better I don’t think much would change if we started courting you. It’s a lot of what we already do, all the taking care of you and stuff. It’d just be a bit more romantic in a way, there would be gifts, scenting, more physical touch, but of course we would still respect your boundaries, nobody does anything you don’t want.”

“Okay.” You smile at his words and a scent spike from the alpha signifies how much your one word affected him.

“Really? You’ll let us court you?”

“Yeah. I have to stop running. I’ll have you guys a long as you’ll have me.”

“I hope forever works for you, because we are all pretty hooked on you.” You both let out breathy laughs, and for a moment you wonder if this is what bliss feels like. You wordlessly lean your head on the young alpha’s chest taking in his scent. A beautiful scent that would put you right to sleep.

When you wake up you’re immediately greeted by Jeogin’s chest in your face and for a moment you cuddle deeper into it.

“Good morning sweetheart, Do you want to go eat breakfast?” You give a quick hum in response and get up from the pack nest with him leading you to the dining room. You greet everyone and take a seat in the chair Jeongin pulls out for you. The room falls into small talk about everyone’s plans for the day and you feel odd joining in since you really don’t have plans, you don’t do much at all, so you continue to eat. Jeongin notices your silence and places a comforting hand on your bump rubbing soft circles with his thumb, You give him a warm smile as if to say you’re okay and he nods but doesn’t move his hand as he continues to eat. One by one each pack member notices where his hand rests and the noise of the room is replaced by small gasps and silence.

“What?” You look up from your food confused why everyone stopped when you realize all eyes are on you and you immediately get embarrassed even though you aren’t sure why.

“Are you okay with him touching you like that? He isn’t pressuring you or anything?” Chan’s words cause Jeongin to let out a growl, probably at the insinuation that him hurting you like that was even a possibility.

“Oh yeah, we talked last night. He stopped me from leaving.” You speak nervously, still on the high from opening up last night you just want to get it all out.

“You were trying to leave? Why didn’t you come get me?” Chan looks like he’s about to have a heart attack and Felix has to place a gentle hand on his arm to calm him down.

“I didn’t want to get anyone. Jeongin found me when I was about to leave, he tried to get you but I asked him not to. It’s all settled now and I’m staying so it’s not a big deal.” A chorus of sighs fills the room.

“And I’m courting her!” Jeongin blurts out with a massive smile on his face.

“WHAT?” Every other person in the room says the same thing causing you to let out a small giggle at their dramatics.

“You all can too, if that’s what you want of course. You don’t have to.” You awkwardly shove your mouth with food to prevent yourself from speaking anymore, thoroughly embarrassed at your confession.

“Oh! Yeah of course we’ll court you. Yeah duh.” Chan blabbers out with a bright red blush gracing his face.

“I think what the alpha over here meant to say is it would be an honor to court you and make you an official member of our pack, Thank you for taking this step with us.” Felix tosses a smile your way and you feel content with the situation as whole.

[russosimp]

Seduction (g!p Leah Williamson x g!p Alessia Russo x reader)

Summary: Alessia and Leah noticed that you've been staring at them, since you won't do anything about it, they take matters into their own hands. (Request) 18+

Warnings: smut, threesome, g!p Leah, g!p Alessia, praise kink (r), oral (L and A receiving), unprotected p in v, anal (r receiving), rough sex, filthy

Wordcount: 5.9k

You're standing at the bar, waiting for your drink, when they come up to you on either side.

You see Leah first because your head is tilted to that side. She has her signature, cocky grin in place as she approaches you. You're a bit transfixed on her so you get startled by the voice behind you.

"What are you doing here all alone?"

Alessia. You turn your head to look at her. She's grinning at you, too. Her smile is maybe a bit warmer than Leah's, but it carries the same self-confidence you always find so attractive in both of them.

Both of the women lean their sides on the bar, front turned into your direction completely. They both stand just a tiny bit too close for it to be only friendly. Your head is spinning in the best way. Their body heat and scents and their mere presence in your personal space is overwhelming you.

You feel yourself blushing under their gazes and know that they can see it, too. Even though it's pretty dark in the club you're all in.

Apparently, Leah's had enough of your head not functioning. She places her hand on the small of your back, which snaps you out of it. Your head turns to her instantly and you look at her with wide eyes.

"You haven't answered Alessia." She tells you with a raised eyebrow and a small, amused smile playing on her lips. Your eyes follow the arch of her eyebrow until you remember that you're now supposed to answer whatever question Alessia has asked you.

"Oh," you breathe out and turn to Alessia, "I forgot- I mean, could you repeat your question, please?"

"So polite." You hear Leah whisper, it seems to have been more to herself than for your ears though.

"I asked what you're doing here all alone? Why are you not celebrating and dancing with the others?" Alessia looks at you, her smile warm, but there's something else underneath it as well. You can't place it yet.

"Well- I'm just not the best dancer and didn't want to make a fool out of myself."

"Too bad. We would've liked to see you dance." Leah states and your head snaps in her direction again. That sounded borderline flirtatious, in front of her girlfriend?

But Alessia only hums in agreement, so apparently, it doesn't seem to bother her. With their close proximity you can't really analyze their behaviour, too occupied with breathing and just existing in-between them.

Leah holds your gaze, cocked eyebrow still in place. That's when Alessia pushes herself into your space even more, mouth directly next to your ear. "We've seen how you look at us."

Your eyes snap away from Leah's and you look downwards in shame. Yes, you had been staring at both of them for weeks now. How could you not? They're both so very hot, especially together, and they know it which makes them even more attractive in your mind.

"Don't hide those pretty eyes." It's Leah who chimes in again. Her hand comes to your chin and lightly guides you to look up and at her again.

"I'm sorry." You plainly state. "I didn't want to make you guys uncomfortable or anything."

Alessia chuckles and you can see Leah's amusement in her eyes as well. "Oh honey, no, you've interpreted this wrong. We're flattered."

"Why don't you sit down with us for a bit?" Alessia's hand comes to the small of your back now as if she's making herself ready to guide you through the crowd to wherever they want you.

Leah nods and indicates with her head to follow her.

The three of you make your way to the other side of the dancefloor where some booths are. Leah slides in on one side and Alessia's hand on your back guides you to sit down beside her. Surprising you, Alessia doesn't go and sit across from you but rather slides into the booth next to you as well.

Now you're actually sandwiched between your two teammates. If you thought they were invading your personal space before, you don't know what to call this. Their thighs are pressed into yours from both sides. Leah's upper body is angled a bit into your direction but Alessia has put her arm around your shoulders when she slid in next to you.

Leah places a hand on your thigh and you eye it warily, still unsure what to make of this situation.

"Like I said, we've seen you looking at us." Alessia opens the conversation.

"Staring, really." Leah butts in. She leans forward, her face inches from yours. Instead of coming up with something to say to defend yourself, you feel your breath hitch.

"We liked it."

You hadn't expected that. It makes sense, she just called it flattering and neither of them seemed particularly angry at any point, but you wouldn't have dared to dream.

"You- you did?" You whisper.

Leah's hand starts to slowly stroke your thigh now, while Alessia's hand moves from your shoulder to the back of your neck. She lightly scratches you and twirls her fingers in the baby hairs there.

"Of course we did, babe." Alessia says and you feel a shiver at the pet name. "Having someone so pretty and cute find us attractive is very flattering."

Attractive is one way to say that you think both of them are extremely hot, but you keep that to yourself.

Leah chimes in again, her hand still running over your thigh. "You do find us attractive, right?"

You nod vehemently. "Yeah-"

Her hand wanders more to the inside of your thigh now and you automatically spread your legs a bit, trying to give her more access. Your thighs now press into theirs even more.

"Well, would you look at that." Your breath hitches when her hand comes to a stop on the inside of your thigh, very high up. If she'd move just a bit higher, her pinky would brush your clothed pussy.

The thought alone sends a wave of arousal through you. You knew you were getting wet from the constant touches both of them are leaving all over your body, but this makes you sure that you're dripping through your panties.

"What Leah is getting at is that we'd like for you to come home with us." You whimper, the insinuation very clear.

"Yeah, you like that thought, don't you?" Leah teases you. You can only nod, not able to form any words right now. But that isn't enough.

"We need an actual answer please. We need to hear you say if you want to come home with us. We don't want to make you do something you don't want." Alessia explains, not unkind, but firmly.

You gulp and then take a sip of your completely abandoned beer in front of you. "I'd like to go home with the two of you. Please."

"Good girl." Alessia whispers. You whimper, now clenching your thighs together, trapping Leah's hand in process.

"Oh you like that? You like being our good girl and follow our commands?"

You whine and nod. You didn't know that that would turn you on so much but it did.

"Well, I ordered a taxi when we walked over here." Leah announces. "Let's get home then, yeah?"

The ride to their place goes by in a blur. They make you take the seat between them again, both with their hands on your thighs now, just softly rubbing all over them, making you squirm in your seat. They haven't touched you anywhere significant yet and still have you completely wet and turned on.

The longer the ride goes on, the more you can see the bulges forming in their pants. You want to run your hands over them but refrain, not knowing how they'd react.

You can't get out of the car fast enough when you finally pull up to their house. You really need your hands on them and their hands on you as soon as possible.

When you walk into their house, they stir you into the direction of their bedroom immediately. As soon as you enter the room, Leah is on you instantly. Her hands come to your shoulders and she backs you into Alessia's front. You stumble into Alessia who catches you with her arms and then Leah's lips are on yours, demanding and possessive. She plunges her tongue into your mouth and you just let it happen, tasting her desire. Her tongue demandingly strokes against yours as she explores your mouth.

Alessia's hands run up and down your arms but hold you in place at the same time. You're pinned between them, Leah pressing into your front and Alessia into your back. You still can't really believe that you've found yourself in the position you've dreamt about.

You can feel Alessia's tits against you and then she rocks her hips slightly into yours and you feel her bulge as well. It automatically makes you buck your ass into her in return which has her groaning into your ear. It sounds so needy and hot that it makes you whine into Leah's mouth even more than before.

Since you liked the sound Alessia made so much, you repeat your action and buck your ass against her bulge again. This time, you get rewarded with Alessia sucking the side of your neck from behind. You tilt your head a little to give her more space.

Leah pulls away, panting deeply against your lips.

You feel Alessia's hands tugging at the hem of your shirt and then Leah just tells you "Off." and you instantly know to lift your arms so that they can get your shirt off.

It's Alessia who pulls the shirt over your head. Her arms circle around you and she cups your tits from behind and softly kneads them through your bra. You whimper at the sensation.

Leah leans in again and you think that she'll claim your mouth once more, but instead she kisses Alessia over your shoulder.

You close your eyes, enjoying the feeling of Alessia's hands on your tits and the kissing sounds coming from the two of them. You feel Leah's hands fumbling with the button of your jeans and help her with it. You can't really shimmy out of them though, being trapped between the two women.

Leah drops to her knees then and pulls your jeans and panties down in one motion. She helps you step out of your jeans while Alessia pulls your bra off you. Now you're naked in front of the two women, who are both very much clothed still. It makes you feel very shy all of a sudden but you don’t have much time to dwell on it.

"On your knees." You instantly drop to your knees in front of them at Leah's command. You look up at them, your hands in your lap, waiting for what's next.

They step closer to you, so close that you get a good view of the bulges in their pants right in front of your face now. You wet your lips in anticipation. You're so ready for their cocks in your mouth, the thought alone has you whimpering.

"Look at you, getting ready for us." Alessia praises, making you squeeze your thighs together.

While your attention was on Alessia, Leah had started to undress. You turn your head and are met with her cock in only her boxers. The outline is very clearly visible against the thin fabric and you can see how hard and big her cock is. Your eyes widen slightly. Alessia starts to undress as well, starting with her top and bra. Unlike Leah she doesn't keep her boxers on, pulling down her pants and boxers in one motion, much like Leah had done with yours.

She pulls them down slowly, knowing very well that your focus is on her cock completely, as is Leah's probably.

When she finally frees her cock from the confinement of her pants, it slaps up against her stomach. Now her cock is right in front of you in all its thick and viney glory. You want to reach out, but from what you've learned so far is that you should probably wait until they tell you to.

Your hands twitch a little in your lap but you keep them there. You tear your eyes off Alessia's cock and look up at her again and see that she eyes your hands with interest.

Then there appears a satisfied smirk on her face. "You learn fast, baby."

Alessia steps even closer to you and so does Leah. "Take off my boxers."

You carefully put your hands in the waistband of Leah's boxers, looking up at her. You pull the boxers down, freeing her cock as well. You're so close to Leah, that her cock almost slaps you in the face if you hadn't moved out of the way. She chuckles and steps out of the boxers, flicking them away with her foot. Leah's cock is hard and even longer than it looked with the boxers still on. It has a slight upside curve which you get excited about, you can only imagine how that'll feel inside of you.

Now both women are naked with their cocks out. You look up at them with wide eyes as they step just a tad bit closer to you, now right in front of you on either side of your face.

"Open up." Leah finally tells you, pushing her cock against your mouth.

You open your mouth obediently and stick your tongue out. She places her tip on it and you gently suck her into your mouth. Your hand comes up to her shaft, running over it. Not wanting to neglect Alessia, you blindly reach for her cock with your other hand, slowly starting to stroke her as well when you find it.

You flatten your tongue and run it over Leah's length, making her moan. Her moan spurs you on a bit, and you get more confident with your movements.

Alessia bucks her hips into your hand, so you let go of Leah's cock with a pop and take Alessia in your mouth now. You run your mouth over her cock sloppily, her pre-cum and your saliva mixing and wetting it.

"Fuck, so good, baby." You circle your tongue around her tip, really working her cock.

You continue to alternate between sucking and jerking both of them off, making them groan appreciatively. Their sounds shoot straight to your core without you being able to do anything about it. You feel yourself clenching around nothing, making you whine.

Before you can make either of them cum, Leah suddenly pushes you off her cock and pulls you up. She puts her arms around you, basically carrying you to their bed and puts you down.

She stands over you and pulls your legs up and spreads them in front of her. "You're dripping wet for us. Look at her, Less."

Alessia comes up next to Leah, eyeing up your cunt as well. The gazes of both women on your cunt make you squirm. You've probably never felt hotter but also more exposed than you do right in this moment.

You feel some of your arousal on your thighs and apparently, Leah sees it, too, as she runs her hands over the inside of your thighs.

"So, so wet and ready for my cock, aren't you baby?"

"Yes, yes! Leah, please, fuck me. I'm so ready." You feel yourself rambling a bit, but you're just so ready for any kind of stimulation. "I want to feel you both, please, use me, please."

"Well, when you beg so pretty, we can't deny you now, can we?" She chuckles and grabs her cock to align it with your cunt.

You hold your breath in anticipation when you feel her tip on your pussy. She drags the head of her cock through your folds, making you whine and buck your hips upwards. She chuckles again at your impatience but she doesn't make you wait any longer and pushes in, shoving her long cock deep inside of you.

You moan out in pleasure at the intrusion. Leah starts to push into you with a pretty slow but steady pace. The curve of her cock gives her a bit of a different angle, her cock going deeper and also hitting your g-spot more often than others have before.

"F-fuck, Leah, feels so good, so d-deeeep..."

You surrender yourself to the feeling of her fucking you, completely lost in her steady thrusts. Her rhythm slowly builds up the pressure in your core but she doesn't let you get there entirely yet.

"Faster Leah, fuck me faster, pl-please!"

Instead of speeding up like you wanted, Leah slips out of you, leaving you with an empty feeling and making you whine. You open your eyes and at first you only see Alessia, still looking down at you and just slowly stroking her cock.

You turn your head to see Leah who gets on the bed next to you, legs over the edge and leaning back on her elbows, her cock’s standing in the air, glistening with your arousal.

"Get on, but facing Less." She tells you and you of course oblige immediately.

You straddle her with your back to her. You put your hands on her thighs to stabilize yourself for the moment and then slowly sink down on her, welcoming the feeling of her filling you again. Leah sits up and puts her arms around you. Then she pulls you into her and holds you still. Now you can't really move which allows her to fuck into you again at her will. This different angle makes her hit new spots inside of you and you feel yourself getting closer and closer to orgasm again.

"Look at me, while Leah fucks you." You suddenly hear Alessia say in a demanding tone.

You whimper and open your eyes to see that she has stepped closer and is now at the foot of the bed, directly in front of you.

"Keep your eyes open, pretty girl, I wanna see you while you’re getting fucked by Leah.."

You moan at her tone and choice of words and make an effort to keep your eyes open, wanting to please her.

Alessia leans over and kisses you, open mouthed, with her tongue immediately pushing into your mouth. You just let it happen and groan into her mouth, feeling completely overwhelmed by the two women.

She pulls away and your eyes drop to her hand as she's increasing the speed on her cock. You can see her twitch and know that she's close to cumming. She points her cock towards your exposed cunt in front of her.

Then Alessia cums with a moan and empties herself onto your cunt. You feel her cum hitting your pussy and the insides of your thighs, some even landing on your stomach.

The feeling of Leah fucking you and Alessia cumming all over you is so hot that you moan along with Alessia as she cums and clench around Leah's cock. The pressure in your core tightens and you know that you're close to your own orgasm as well.

"Fuck, you like having Lessi's cum all over you, don't you baby?" Leah pants from behind you.

"Y-yeah!" Is all you get out before Leah increases her speed.

"You wanna come, too?" Alessia is slowly stroking herself with one hand still as she's watching the two of you. Her other hand now comes up to your cunt and she smears her own cum even more all over you. Then she uses her thumb to roughly rub your clit. The stimulation sends pleasure right into your core, making you moan loudly.

"Be a good girl and come for us." Alessia tells you and you want nothing more than to please the two women. You grind down against Leah's thrusts once and then fall apart between the two women completely, trembling as your powerful orgasm hits you all at once.

Your orgasm apparently makes Leah cum as well, you feel her fuck you through it and then she thrusts into you as deeply as possible, before stilling her movements burried in you as you feel her cum filling you up.

All three of you are panting heavily now and for a moment those are the only noises in the room as you all come down from your highs.

You feel Leah slowly slipping out of you and whine. She chuckles and lifts you to place you on the bed next to her. With her cock gone, some of her cum slowly starts to drip out of you and onto your thighs and the bed.

Leah lies down more in the middle of the bed, her cock still semi-errect. You wait for either of them to tell you what to do next.

"Clean her up, baby." Alessia tells you and you immediately crawl over to Leah, Alessia right behind you.

"On your knees."

You push yourself on your knees as your hand comes to Leah's shaft. You guide her semi-hard cock into your mouth, just running your tongue all over her shaft, licking off and tasting both her and your own release on her cock. You let go of her with a pop and then run your opened mouth over her cock, barely touching her, but just enough, before you start to give her tip more attention.

Behind you, the bed dips as Alessia comes up to you. You know that you're practically presenting her with your pussy with the position you're in. At the thought of presenting her with your cunt, you shuffle your legs a bit further apart in the hopes of spreading yourself open just a little bit more to show her what awaits her.

Alessia runs her hands over your ass and hips and you hear her groan at the feeling of your flesh in her hands.

Despite Leah just fucking you through an orgasm you feel empty and can't wait to finally feel Alessia's cock inside you as well, you wish she'd just fuck you already. You buck your hips back into her direction a bit.

Alessia chuckles and kneads your ass. "Are you ready for me?"

You whine around Leah's cock and spread your thighs some more. You feel Alessia's cock sitting on your pussy now, but she doesn't push in yet. Just like Leah had before, Alessia runs her cock over your slit, taking some of Leah's cum that's still dripping out of you to spread it all over your cunt and her own cock.

You hear her chuckle again, she's apparently having fun teasing you.

"So eager." You can practically hear the smirk in her voice.

To be able to talk, you pull yourself off Leah's cock. "Please, Less, fuck me, please."

"You want to be filled by my thick cock so badly, don't you, baby?" Alessia asks but doesn't wait for an answer. "Let’s see how you'll handle it."

With that, she lines herself up with your opening and shoves her entire cock deep inside your dripping wet cunt. You cry out around Leah's cock in your mouth, the feeling of being spread open by Alessia with one push is both very pleasurable and a little painful at the same time.

Her cock doesn't reach as deep as Leah's had, but her thickness stretches you deliciously, making you whimper and groan around Leah with each slow thrust.

You're glad Alessia is settling into a slower and steady pace for now, letting you get used to her. Her hands are on your hips, both her thumbs stroking you softly.

You bob your head up and down on Leah's cock and when you feel her slowly get hard again, you suck on her head, making her moan.

"Just like that baby, fuck, taking us so well." She runs her hand through your hair, almost tenderly.

When Leah is fully hard again, she pulls you off her cock. You look at her with wide eyes through your lashes, wondering if you've done something wrong. But she just pushes herself up on her knees in front of you, presenting you with her cock once more.

Leah pulls on your hair a bit and when you open your mouth to whimper, she pushes her cock back into your now waiting mouth. She pushes in deeply and roughly, hitting the back of your throat with her tip and making you choke around her cock. The tightening of your throat squeezes her cock and she moans deeply.

"Yes, baby, take me with that hot mouth of yours Feels so good!"

You feel Alessia quicken her thrusts into you now, her veiny cock runs along your walls, making you feel each thrust everywhere.

Leah tangles her hand in your hair and now has full control over your head as she practically locks the back of your head in place. Alessia's grip on your hips tightens at the same time, stopping you from moving them as well.

Now, you're locked in between the two blondes, Alessia fucking into you from behind with hard and rough thrusts and Leah fucking your mouth deeply with her long cock. Your whole body is shaking from both their thrusts without you having any form of control over any of your movements.

You revel in the feeling of being fucked so thoroughly on both ends, your body feels like it's on fire, pleasure and heat pulsing through you.

"You're taking us so well, pretty girl." Alessia praises from behind you. "So well, we could just fuck you like this forever, our perfect girl."

Her words hit you deep inside, going right to your core. You feel yourself clench around her cock. Alessia of course notices.

"You like that so much, don't you? Being all perfect for us, letting us use you like this?"

You moan at her words, sending vibrations through Leah's cock, making her moan loudly as well. Her grip in your hair tightens as she nears her orgasm. She thrusts into your mouth steadily, hitting the back of your throat repeatedly now.

Alessia's cock twitches inside of you and you know that she's close to her own orgasm as well. You clench your pussy and try to back your ass into her, trying to meet her thrusts and help make her cum.

Her thrusts turn more erratic and you eagerly await her orgasm. But you get surprised by Leah first. Her grip on the back of your head tightens even more and she keeps your head locked in place, pushing her cock as far into your mouth as possible. Her whole body seems to be pushing against you as she holds you so that she can empty herself into your mouth.

Her cum hits the back of your throat and you choke but don't and can't move off her. Instead, you swallow as much of her cum as you can, but you feel some of it spilling out of your mouth and dripping down your chin as well.

"Swallow, pretty girl, doing such a good job. Fuck, take all my cum!"

Apparently, those words are what does it for Alessia as well.

"Fuck, take both our loads, baby!" She moans and then you feel her hot seed hit your walls. You moan as you cum right with them, the coil inside of you exploding at the feeling of being filled with their cum from both ends, it feels all-consuming and overwhelming in the best way. You feel surrounded by them and that has you reeling.

When you slowly come down from your orgasm, you feel your whole body getting tired and just want to collapse onto the bed, needing to take a breath.

Leah's grip on your head is loosening and her cock slips out of your mouth. You just let yourself fall forward, face first, without her holding you up anymore, Alessia's cock slipping out of you in the process, making both of you groan.

Leah scoots down next to you, her hand now coming to your back, softly caressing you. Alessia lies down on your other side, where your face is turned to. Her face comes close to yours and you can see the sparkle in her eyes.

"Well done, baby."

You whimper appreciatively at her words which makes both of them chuckle.

Alessia joins Leah's hand on your back and they both just let them wander all over you with soft movements while you catch your breath. The room is completely silent for a while all three of you just existing together.

You free your hand from underneath yourself and put it on Alessia's stomach, drawing very slow circles there.

Alessia's hand comes to your face and she pulls you towards herself, kissing you deeply. It's a slow but passionate kiss, both of you putting everything into it. Alessia groans and you know she's enjoying the taste of Leah still clinging to your tongue.

You feel Leah's lips on your back, lazily trailing kisses from your spine all the way up to your neck. She bites down teasingly, making you moan into Alessia's mouth.

Leah is now draped halfway over you from behind, sandwiching you once again between herself and Alessia. She kisses along your jaw and then reaches over you to redirect Alessia's mouth to her own.

Their kisses turn sloppy rather quickly, all teeth and tongues. They're making out literally right in front of your face and you feel it affecting you deep inside once more. You didn't think you still had any energy left in you, but seeing and hearing them make out like that had apparently spurred you on enough.

You move a little between them, not knowing what you want to accomplish with that but feeling the need to do something. Then you let your hand wander and bump into something. You feel around a bit more and discover that Alessia is already hard once again.

That makes you squirm even more, turned on by the mere thought of either one of them inside of you again. Now you can feel Leah twitching against your back as well, deepening the feeling of want inside of you.

You move your hips a bit against Alessia's thigh, searching for friction against your aching cunt but just her leg won't suffice. You whine, growing more desperate by the second.

Leah and Alessia pull away from each other, probably disturbed by your movements. Alessia grins cheekily down at you.

"You haven't had enough of us yet baby?"

You whine and shake your head, flushing at the look on her face.

"Do you think you can take both of us at the same time, pretty girl?" You can feel Leah's breath against your ear as she talks.

Your eyes widen at the implication of Leah's words, the thought sends a shiver down your back and you whimper, feeling yourself growing wetter at the thought of both of them fucking you at the same time.

"Can't take Alessia in my ass though, too thick." You mumble.

Alessia laughs and caresses your face with her hand.

"As you wish, baby."

Leah disappears from behind you and Alessia pulls you completely on top of herself. She kisses you again, much more demanding than just minutes before, pushing her tongue in and exploring your mouth with ferocity. Her hands are all over your body and you completely give yourself to the feeling of her all over you once more.

You reach down and in-between the two of you to line up her cock with your pussy. You push back once and slowly sink down on her, making her pull away from your mouth for a long moan.

"You feel so good baby," Alessia says against your ear "I can feel all our cum inside of you, so hot."

You slowly move on top of Alessia, just wanting to feel her inside of you and getting ready for Leah.

Alessia pulls you down against her once more, and you look over your shoulder to see what Leah is doing. You can see that she got lube from somewhere that she's now generously spreading over her cock. She's pumping it with long strokes, getting herself ready.

"Relax baby." Alessia says and lets her hands roam over your back again. "It'll be much easier if you're relaxed."

You let yourself fall completely into Alessia, lying on top of her, not moving, not exerting any muscles. Her hands caress your ass and she coos in your ear. "Such a good girl for us, you've been doing so well, our good girl."

Leah works some lube into your ass with her hands. She slowly pushes her thumb inside of you, stretching your hole and preparing you for her cock. Then the tip of her cock presses against your hole, obviously much wider than her thumb had been. You spread your legs and effectively spread yourself open a bit more when you feel her slowly working her cock inside your ass.

She slowly sinks into you deeper and deeper, giving you time to adjust to the new feeling. You whimper with each centimeter she sinks deeper into you.

Feeling both cocks inside of you is an entirely new form of fullness for you. You've never felt this filled and you let the pleasure of it wash over you, everything just feels more now.

"So damn tight." Leah grits her teeth while talking. "Feels so good, baby."

"Are you alright?" Alessia asks you.

You only moan loudly at her question, nodding your head against her. "So- full." You pant heavily, starting to move against them slowly.

"Aww, are you a bit overwhelmed, pretty girl? Why don't you let us do the work, hmm?"

With that, Alessia and Leah both begin to move. They work with a counter-rhythm, one pushing in while the other pulls out. This rhythm ensures that you're never left empty, one of them always fully inside of you.

They move inside of you and you can only moan uncontrollably, completely losing track of anything but the feeling of being filled at all times and their bodies against you.

You are so overwhelmed with them all over and around you that you feel your orgasm approaching only when it's almost there. The coil in your core feels so tight all of a sudden that you know it's going to snap any second now.

"I'm gonna c-cum." You barely get the words out when the third orgasm of the night overtakes you very quickly. You shake between the two women, completely lost in the feeling of your orgasm and the pleasure all over your body. Both of your holes clench around their cocks, sending the other two women over the edge as well.

Both Leah and Alessia groan at the same time as their orgasms hit them simultaneously. You didn't think you could feel any fuller than you had just seconds before but with both of them pumping their seed inside of you, you feel even fuller than before.

You moan and shake at the feeling of both of them cumming deep inside of you at the same time, feeling entirely spent now. Leah's cum inside of your ass is an entirely new feeling to you and Alessia's cum is filling your cunt even more than it already was, effectively filling you to the brink.

Leah collapses into you and you both rest your full weights on top of Alessia who welcomes you with a huff. You feel both of their cocks soften inside of you, before you fall asleep, entirely exhausted from taking both of them into all your holes.

[niccolites]

a gouge in the wood - unfinished 1.7K words came back wrong au, simon 'ghost' riley x reader cw. violence

The thing wearing your ex-husband’s face stands in your living room and watches you.

You map out where he’s standing, the muck on his boots, flaking off and sticking to your wooden floors. There’s a mad moment where you think it may not be him - might not be Simon. Some other threat, that is raising the hair on the back of your neck. Some faceless military grunt, here to string you up, just like Simon had always feared they would.

You know him though, even when you cannot see his face. Something beyond knowing just the curve of his shoulders, like how he holds his right just an inch further back than his left. Where your amygdala takes over at the sight of him, like you know what he is before you think of his name.

You also know that it cannot be him, when you identified him on that cold autopsy table just a few hours ago.

You hover in the open doorway, eyes on him as if that will stop him from moving, and consider your options. You could run out the door, screaming, but you know his bulk belies his speed. You may make it back onto the step behind you before he caught you, but you wouldn’t get further than that.

You flex your keys in your hand before you step inside and let the door swing shut behind you. His eyes track your movement, dead on, centre. You wonder if you should stop thinking about it as a ‘he’ but rather something else. Something unknown, something that’s alive and grown and decided to invade your home.

“If you’re trying to intimidate me, can you knock it off,” you say, voice slightly tilted as if you want to make it a question. It doesn’t move. “What do you want?”

Now, that generates a response. Tiny, but a slight shift of his head. You’re too far away, but you like to imagine you can see his pupils flex. So, it does want.

Something about that, desire in something that you do not understand, has your body choosing flight. You flinch back, hare brain kicking you towards the door, and it’s on you.

You’re knocked back, skull rattling back against the door, its forearm braced against your chest and the other around your jaw. Thumb pressed into bone, catching sound there and stealing it.

You blink up at him, restrained. It’s Simon, you know it now that he’s closer. His dark eyes, you’d thought he still had his paint on his skin but you can see that it’s a bruise now. It’s also not. Maybe Simon was a little heavy handed in a way that you knew your friends wouldn’t like if they found out, but this was a new level. Simon always knew that the best way to corral you was to create the perimeter around you and let you tire yourself out. Patient, in the way that predators are when they crouch in high grass.

“Simon?” you wheeze, dots around your vision. A question.

The thing wearing your ex-husbands skin says your name. An answer.

You swing your hand up and only feel a brief satisfaction as it cuts the side of his shoulder. The feeling disappears when he doesn’t even flinch as he yanks your keys out and lets them drop to the floor with a terrible clink.

You shriek, muffled under the paw of his hand and he rattles your skull against the wall.

Your vision goes blurry, as if you have been submerged underwater. Pain blossoming out with each thump of your pulse, weighted and red.

You crumple but you’re caught and dragged upwards. You feel like you’re made up of static, as if someone has yanked the station and you’re hovering in some no man's land, an irritating buzzing noise that needles until it's fixed.

Given the way that you’re being carried, tossed over a shoulder and limp, you are placed on your couch with a lot more care than you expect.

You slump to the side, and the black lump that must be Simon - or whatever it is - shifts up and slants a cushion under your head.

He’s saying something, but you feel groggy, sickly. Unable to do anything other than stare at your coffee table as the sounds filter through to you. Water through paper, soggy and ruined.

Simon reaches up and takes off the balaclava, and he looks like he did on that cold table. Stubble grown out, you know he must be complaining about not being able to access a razor. Bruises cutting across his temple to his eyes. They said a bullet to his head. The way that you put down a dog.

“Fuck off,” you slur. He doesn’t crack a smile. He crouches down further in front of you so that your faces are level and you feel peculiar about being so close to his bare face. There had been a layer of deniability that you hadn’t truly believed when he’d been wearing the mask. At least you could maybe start to kid yourself that it isn’t him. The wrinkle of his brow, unbearingly intimate, this close to your eyes.

He reaches his hand out and into your hair. Pain whites out your vision - station found and blaring - and you whimper. “What -”

“Do you feel nauseous?” he asks, pulling his hand back, a jerk in his at your pained noise. He squints at his fingertips, the back of his hand against your cheek. His skin is so cold against your own, a block of ice against your fever.

The pain beats like your heart, and you can barely formulate a thought to force it out as a sentence. You blink at him, dumb and mute.

He shifts his hand and cups your cheek to hold your head steady. A balm, drawing sickness out of you and into him. You shut your eyes, inhaling deeply. A smell of dirt and moss lingers on him, the outside, dragged into your living. “Do you feel nauseous?” he repeats. The LT voice, commanding.  You grit your teeth against it, petulant.

“Yes, you fuck,” you groan, refusing to open your eyes again before you sick up all of the food that you ate that day.

He’s satisfied with your response, hand still as steady but melds into the curve of your face. Thumb on your temple, smooths your baby hairs out of your face. Like an apology, like you're a stunned bird in his hands and he didn't mean to break your wing.

“You’re dead,” you say, when he doesn’t move. You can feel the weight of his gaze on your face, but refuse to open your eyes to the rollercoaster that your body is on.

He grunts in response, knees clicking as he shifts on the floor.

No comforting response is forthcoming. You think of the bullet rattling around in his skull. No death will take, not even the real, permanent kind. It’s so ridiculous that you feel a manic laugh start to bubble up in your chest but you stifle it before it can escape.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he barks, shaking your head to jostle it until you cry out.

“Fuck you, asshole, I hope I fall asleep and die, you fuck,” you whimper.

He doesn’t have a further response to that, but stares you down until you stare back. Awake, against your will.

You drop your gaze to his shoulder, can see the cut in his jacket, where you managed to dig your keys in. You reach a hand up and press your thumb into the fabric, trying to part it to reach his flesh.

He lets you, his gaze still heavy on your face as if waiting for you to suddenly fall asleep. The look in his eye is different, but the weight of his attention is the same as it was before. Encumbering, to be loved by Simon. He had clutched on with both hands, but always had the stiff back as if waiting for the command to curl up and die.

You realise that you’re seeking something here that you cannot find in his hands. Some type of truth that touch will provide when your eyes won’t confirm it. His hands could be that cold for any reason. But here, in the meat of his shoulder, this is where you used to tuck your head under when it was cold at night.

There’s no comfort here. Simon is a stiff wall of flesh under your palm. Goose-flesh rise up all over your skin, your body finding a truth that you don’t want to acknowledge. Unsettling, like seeing something out of the corner of your eye and actually catching it in the full of your vision. 

You drop your hand, unsettled, and stare at a point over his shoulder.

Once he’s satisfied that you’re not going to drift off and get yourself killed, he gets up slowly. It’s unnerving, watching him move out of your vision and he completely disappears. He’s soundless, the faint shuffle of clothes as he moves before that disappears as well. If it wasn’t for the wet smell of mud that he’s left, you wouldn’t have known that he was in your home at all.

You stare out at your wall, unseeing. Fear of the thing in your home stops you from closing your eyes like you desperately want to. Sleep like molasses that drag your limbs down and leave you heavy. Drift downward like a weighed anchor, drowning.

Time slips away, meaningless. Memories feel like silk, forming in your mind before fluttering away, entire minutes forgotten. One moment Simon isn’t there, and then he’s back. The time between smacks together until it is thin enough to wear through in your mind. “It’s you,” you slur, although you don’t think he is.

He grunts, and reaches beneath you and hoists you up into his arms. The world takes a sharp turn and takes your vision along with it. You groan unhappily, but he ignores you and slings you around until you’re across his shoulders.

A mountain of a man, you had thought once. The view from the top is horrifying now that you’ve reached the peak, you tuck your head into his shoulder to hide from it. You wish he would hit your head again, you don’t remember your last journey up here just a few minutes ago.

“Where we goin’?” you ask, mouth choked in the cotton of his jacket.

“Out,” he says, helpfully. You throw your leg out in a pathetic attempt to kick him, which is so sad that he doesn’t even acknowledge it.

He opens the door of your car and places you in the passenger seat. His hand on your throat as he steadies your head.

It’s starting to rain, fat droplets that smack against the roof of your car.

“I’m going to pass out,” you let him know, polite, at least. The shift of his brow as he goes to snap at you again, but you’re yanked down into a pillowy darkness and you much prefer that company to this one.

[lucidrmss]

extra credit. I 3.3k armin arlet x reader

cw: 18+ explicit content minors dni, nerdmin x baddie reader, reader insert but no use of y/n, unprotected sex, female pronouns/afab reader, vaginal sex, oral sex, nipple piercing, possessive armin, bit of dirty talk. not all that in the first part tho

summary: No one saw it coming. Not your roommate. Not your on-and-off ex situationship. Not even the judgmental girl with a color-coded planner who’s clearly in love with him.

But somehow, the cardigan-wearing, note-taking, blushy boy wonder of your Comparative Politics class caught your attention. And that’s saying something, because you’re not exactly known for quiet crushes or gentle flirting — being a tattooed, sharp-tongued, braless baddie with a GPA just as high as your standards.

After a sketchy dude corners you at a party, Armin Arlert — the last person you expected — swoops in like a flannel-clad knight in awkward armor. That moment sparks a chaotic, and unexpectedly tender journey involving fake study sessions, thigh tattoos, jealous glances, and one painfully adorable nerd who may or may not be packing more than just a well-organized Google Drive.

Let them stare. Let them whisper. You’re not letting this one go.

notes: this is a repost from ao3 so if feels like you already read this before,, maybe u did,,,, just thought of posting here since tumblr is such a good community and as a reader many of my favorites fics and authors were here sooo.. heres my contribution. also english is not my first language and even tho i already read this so many times if u see a typo lmk. enjoy <33 extra note: i didn't have THAT NERDMIN in mind when i write this back in april but you can imagine him like this here or wtv but keep in mind it's a uni au.

You didn’t expect to end the night by almost punching someone in the throat. You also didn’t expect your knight in shining armor to wear glasses, a flannel, and smell vaguely like peppermint and academic pressure. But hey, life’s full of surprises.

The party is loud, the floor is sticky, and your ass looks amazing in these jeans. You know this because three different girls complimented you in the line for shots, and the guy you passed in the hallway nearly tripped over a beanbag trying to stare at it. Classic.

You're not drunk, not yet, but your buzz is kicking in nicely. Your hair is a little wild, eyeliner perfectly smudged, and your nipples might be piercing the air through your crop top. Not that you care — you didn’t come here to blend in.

"Tell me why the hell we're here again," you shout over the bass, dodging a shirtless freshman swinging a glowstick like he's summoning spirits.

Mikasa, holding her cup like it personally offended her, shrugs. “Connie said Jean might show up. I’m here to watch the drama unfound.”

“I’m not talking to Jean, I'm done with him” you scoff, because you are a woman of growth. Evolution. Maturity — and also because Jean ghosted you last week after asking for nudes. Again.

“Cool,” she says. “Then maybe flirt with someone else for once.”

As if on cue, your eyes wander — and catch on a very out-of-place figure near the kitchen.

Flannel. Glasses. Clean-shaven. Trying so hard to blend in and failing with Olympic-level dedication.

“Is that... Armin?”

Mikasa turns. Blinks. “No fucking way.”

Oh, but yes. It's Armin Arlert. the boy who sits three rows in front of you in Comparative Politics and types like the keyboard owes him money.

Armin who color-codes his notes and once offered you an extra pencil like he didn't get that you haven't brought one on purpose.

Armin who turned beet red when you answered a discussion question and said the word “penetrate” in a completely non-sexual context.

“Who dragged him here?” you ask with a little laugh, already sipping your drink like this is a nature documentary.

“Probably Connie,” Mikasa mutters. “He’s been trying to make Armin ‘social’ for weeks.”

And damn, you have to admit: it’s weirdly... working?

Okay, so the flannel’s still tucked too neatly, and his shoes are definitely orthopedic. But his jawline? Sharp. His hair? A little messy. And when he pushes his glasses up? you hate how hot you find that.

You're staring too long. you know it. Mikasa knows it.

“Oh no,” she says, grinning. “Don’t you dare.”

“Relax. I’m just admiring the academic aesthetic,” you say coolly.

Liar.

Ten minutes later, you’re separated from Mikasa, your drink is empty, and some dude with too much cologne and not enough social awareness is blocking your path to the kitchen.

“You come here a lot?” he asks, his breath hot with tequila and regret.

You smile politely. “Nope.”

“We should change that.”

Oh God.

You try stepping around him. He steps with you.

You’re mid eye-roll, about to hit him with your favorite line ("Do you come with an off switch?"), when a voice cuts in.

"Hey. there you are."

You blink.

The guy blinks.

Armin freaking Arlert slides up beside you like he’s done it a hundred times, placing a gentle but possessive hand on your waist like it belongs there. He turns to the guy with a smile so polite it might be a threat.

“She was looking for me. Thanks, though.”

The guy hesitates. Scowls. But Armin doesn’t budge — and something in those soft blue eyes says do not test me, I read about ancient wars for fun .

Creep backs off. Retreats. Gone.

Silence.

You turn slowly, Armin’s hand drops from your waist like it burned him. His ears are red. His pupils are wide.

“I’m sorry if that was weird,” he says in a rush. “You looked—he looked like—like you weren’t enjoying—uh—I thought—”

“You thought right.” you raise an eyebrow, letting your smirk play out slow. “Nice timing, Arlert.”

He laughs nervously, scratches the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to, uh, interrupt. I was just passing by and—”

“You weren’t interrupting. you were rescuing. Big difference.” your eyes travel over him, curious. He’s still blushing, but something about him is... steady. Calm. Kind.

Maybe you’re still buzzed.

Or maybe you’ve just developed a thing for quiet boys who do the right thing without needing a reward. Either way, your next move surprises even you.

 “So,” you say casually, leaning in just enough for him to smell your perfume — or notice your piercings. “Think you could help me with our next exam?”

He blinks, the song coming from the speakers ends and changes to a summer hit from last year, and the people on the makeshift dance floor cheers loudly.

“I... sure? I mean, yeah. Of course.” you pull your phone from your low-waist jeans, and stares as he types his number on it. shaking.

“Great,” you purr. “I’ll text you.”

And just like that, you turn and walk away, leaving him staring after you like you just recited the Constitution in a bikini.

Mission: Start Nerd Seduction — officially launched.

You don’t actually need help with the midterm. But you do need an excuse to sit across from Armin Arlert while licking the rim of your iced coffee like a menace to society.

so when he texts you back with a “Sure! I’m free Friday afternoon if that works?” you say

> Cool. I’ll bring my notes and wear something distracting.

You don’t expect a reply, and definitely don’t expect the little three-dot typing bubble to linger for two full minutes before he hits you with:

>Armin: Should I bring a calculator or holy water?

You giggle like a damn schoolgirl and toss your phone across the bed.

God help him. you’re gonna ruin that boy.

On Friday you’re in his room.

His actual dorm room, which smells like pinewood and clean laundry. There are three highlighters on his desk arranged by color, posters from Sci–Fi movies on the walls, little The Hobbits figures on some shelves and you swear the man owns more books than space on furniture to put it on.

“I like your room,” you say, setting down your iced coffee. “Very... untouched virgin energy.”

He pushes his glasses up. “Thanks?”

You’re already sprawling across his desk chair, legs crossed, skirt indecent. You watch his eyes flicker downward, then violently snap back up. Adorable.

“okay,” he says, pulling out a folder. “So, we’re reviewing chapter 5? The political theory section?”

You blink at him.

“Oh, right. Studying.” you lean forward, resting your chin on your palm, giving him your best wide-eyed innocent face.

Armin frowns like you’re a pop quiz he didn’t study for. “...did you even bring your notes?”

“Sure,” you lie, “they’re in my... bra.”

He looks like he might combust on the spot.

“Sorry,” you add sweetly. “too much?”

“Just a bit,” he mutters, already flipping open his book like it’s a shield. You let the moment hang in the air a bit too long — just enough for the tension to crackle — then settle back and pretend to pay attention.

But honestly? you’re watching him more than the textbook.

The way he twirls his pen. The way his voice softens when he explains a concept, you like how he ain't trying to mansplain it like you're actually stupid, just being patient. The way he blushes every time you hum in agreement.

You even catch him peeking at your tattoos when he thinks you’re not looking.

"So...” you say, leaning closer until your thigh brushes his. “Do you always tutor people like this?”

He freezes. “Like what?”

“Alone. In your room.”

His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. “N-no. I mean—no, I don’t. Usually it’s at the library. Or the lab. Or... never mind.”

“Cute,” you tease. “You're nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“You’re literally shaking.”

“I’m fine.”

You pause. Smirk. “Want me to stop?”

He swallows hard. “...no.”

And there it is.

That glimmer. That tiny flash of something underneath the nerves — confidence? Want? Hunger?

You sit back, pretending not to notice your own racing pulse.

The game just got fun.

Ten minutes later, you both keep pretending to read the same paragraph while pretending not to feel the air buzzing between you.

That’s when the door creaks open.

“Yo, Armin—” a high voice cuts in, then stops. “Oh. Hey.”

You turn slowly.

She’s short. She’s wearing a pastel cardigan with two different shades of pink. A cute flower pin on her hair and an adorable smile that is slowly dropping. Terrifying.

“Mina,” Armin says, standing up so fast his chair almost flips. “Hey. sorry, I forgot to text—”

“It’s okay!” she chirps. “I just came to drop off the notes from last week.” Her eyes flick to you. To your skirt. To your thigh against his.

“Oh,” she adds, still trying to smile. “I didn’t know you had company.”

You smile back, a knowing smile while offering your name, “We’re studying.”

Her expression flickers. Just a second. Just enough.

“Nice,” she says. “Well... see you later?” trying to meet Armin’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Armin says, but he's distracted, his eyes trailing to you.

And when the door shuts behind her, he lets out a breath like he forgot how to.

“Friend of yours?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he says too fast. “We’ve known each other since orientation.”

“Huh.” You twirl your pen. “She likes you.”

He chokes on air. “What?! No, she—Mina doesn’t—why would you—”

“Because she looked at me like I’m a pop-up ad that gave her computer a virus,” you say, deadpan.

He groans. “She’s just friendly.”

"Mm-hm.” You tilt your head. “You like her?”

Silence.

Then “I don’t know,” he admits. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

Interesting.

Very interesting.

You smile, wider this time. “Good. Because I’m very distracting.”

You do not need this men.

You’re not bored. You’re not lonely. You’ve got enough situationships to form a goddamn Avengers team.

And yet — here you are.

In the library. Again.

Wearing lip gloss and zero academic intention.

Armin’s already at the table when you arrive, notes spread out, glasses sliding down his nose. Like he didn't leave you wanting after last week's study date. You consider greeting him like a normal person. You don’t. Instead, you drop your bag, plop into the chair beside him, and whisper in his ear:

“Miss me?”

He jumps.

“Jesus —” he says your name like a curse, while holding his chest to calm his heart.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

He blinks at you. “I—uh—yeah. I guess.”

You grin. “cute.”

He coughs. You cross your legs, showing off your thigh tattoo. Half the guys at the next table almost fall out of their chairs. Armin doesn’t notice — or he pretends not to — but the flush in his cheeks says otherwise.

“Let’s start with Hobbes today,” he mumbles, eyes glued to his page. “You read the assigned chapters, right?”

“Define ‘read’.”

Armin eyes you, saying your name almost in a reprimand way.

“Relax, I skimmed it.” you pull out a pen. “Ready when you are, Professor.”

You don't absorb much of what he’s saying. Because he’s doing that thing again — the voice drop, the hand gesture, the “lemme explain this real quick” lean-in that gets unreasonably close. And he smells good today. Like fresh laundry and—god—was that vanilla?

You’re not okay.

“So that’s why Hobbes believes in the absolute power of the sovereign,” Armin finishes, looking up. “Make sense?”

You’re not sure what Hobbes believes in, but you do believe in Armin ruining your life. You nod.

He beams. “See? You’re better at this than you think.”

Oh. That smile. That pure smile. like he hasn’t noticed the chaos you’ve been trying to throw at him for days. Like he doesn’t know half the campus is whispering:

“Why is Armin Arlert hanging out with her?

“Did she lose a bet?”

“No way he could ever handle her.”

They don’t know that Armin looked you in the eye last Tuesday, tilt his head and said, “You should really stop doing that if you want me to focus.”

They don’t know that you’re starting to forget what flirting is supposed to feel like. Because this? This is more dangerous than your usual games.

And just when you’re about to lean in and say something stupid, like — you’ve got really nice hands – a familiar voice interrupts:

“Hey, Armin!”

You turn. of course it’s Mina.

Carrying two matcha lattes and an entire Pinterest board’s worth of optimism. she slides into the seat on Armin’s other side, all teeth and pastel and absolutely no shame.

“I brought you a drink,” she says, ignoring your existence completely.

“Oh—thanks,” Armin replies, startled. “You didn’t have to—”

“I wanted to,” she chirps, and finally glances at you. “Hi”

You nod. “Mina.” A pause. You sip your coffee. She sips her matcha. Armin is sweating.

“So,” Mina says to him, voice syrup-sweet, “did you want to study together for the ethics quiz? We could—”

“He’s busy,” you say.

Mina blinks. “What?”

“With me,” you finish. Smile. “We’re reviewing Locke next. Very intense stuff.”

Armin opens his mouth. Close it. Prays for death.

“Oh,” Mina says, still smiling. “That’s... cool.”

You keep smiling. You’re both smiling so hard it might shatter the floor beneath you.

“I guess I’ll just see you tomorrow, Armin?” she tries again.

He looks between you. Her. Back to you. “Uh—sure. Yeah.”

When she finally walks away, you lean in close enough for him to smell your lip gloss.

“She’s in love with you.”

He rubs his face. “Don’t start.”

“I’m just saying,” you sing. “You could totally date her. She’s your type.”

He glances at you, then looks away. “You don’t know my type.”

“Don’t I?” You raise an eyebrow.

He hesitates. Swallows. look at you again. You hold the eye contact longer than necessary. Long enough to make him shift in his seat.

“I don’t think I like being studied,” he says softly.

“Then stop looking so interesting.”

—

On the weekend y'all at Jean’s apartment. Pizza boxes. Open textbooks. A Mario Kart tournament threatening to break a friendship or five.

Armin’s sitting on the floor, controller in hand. You’re on the couch, shamelessly watching him. the others are deep in a debate about which professor might be an alien, but you’re focused on the way Armin mutters when he loses a round.

“fuck,” he breathes under his breath. You almost drop your drink.

He catches you looking. smirks—just a little. and that is the moment you realize you’re in serious trouble.

because this boy? This nerd? With his quiet voice and his chaotic notes and his tragic sweaters? He might actually break your heart.

And worse — you might let him.

——

It's all fun and games until you start to have dreams about him. some very inappropriate dreams. involving library desks, a cardigan hitting the floor, and Armin’s voice in your ear saying “you asked for this study session.”

You always wake up hot and wet.

It’s barely 7 AM. You have a lecture in two hours. But your first conscious thought is ‘that mouth should be illegal’. Your second is to get it together. And your third?

You need to see him.

So you don’t bother with makeup. don't bother styling your hair. You pull on black sweats and a leather jacket and stomp onto campus with last night’s eyeliner and an agenda that has nothing to do with academic excellence.

Armin’s already at the student café, as usual — surrounded by books, headphones on, hoodie halfway swallowing his neck. He doesn’t notice you until you slide into the seat across from him.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” he says, blinking.

“That’s because I haven’t.” You point at your face. “Notice the sexy eye bags.”

Armin chuckles, soft and genuine. “You always show up like this?”

“Only for the people I’m trying to corrupt.”

He pauses. “So… just me?”

"Yup.”

There’s a flicker behind his glasses. You think it might be nerves. Or something darker.

You want to poke it. You will poke it.

“So,” you continue. “Tell me something nerdy.”

“...What?”

“Make me smarter. Ruin my street cred.”

Armin leans back. “Okay. Did you know sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart?”

Your heart makes a weird thump. “That’s… aggressively adorable.”

“And that an octopus has three hearts and blue blood?”

“wait, for real?”

“Yeah.” He tilts his head. “Still feel like corrupting me?”

You grin. “Oh, absolutely.”

It’s raining. There’s only one couch cushion between you and Armin. Your Netflix “study break” has now turned into a two-hour true crime documentary, and at least once every ten minutes you feel his thigh shift next to yours.

Your laptop is open. Your notes are not.

Armin stretches, arms over his head, shirt riding up just enough to expose that his damn V line. The one that’s haunted your sleep since last week.

You don’t mean to stare.

You just… don’t not stare.

And Armin sees it.

He lowers his arms, clears his throat, then glances sideways at you. “You keep looking at me.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I’m studying your anatomy.”

He says your name in a soft breath of warning, with big eyes, dilated pupils, lips parted.

You shift to face him. He’s closer than you thought. Close enough that the space between you feels like static — thick with unsaid things and half-bitten thoughts.

You should back off. You should laugh it off.

You don’t.

Instead, you whisper, “You ever think about kissing me?”

The silence stretches.

“Yes.” It’s so quiet you almost miss it. But it’s there.

“Yes?” you echo.

He meets your gaze. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t back down. “I’ve thought about it a lot.”

The air pulls tight between you. His lips are right there. He’s right there.

Your hand twitches, like maybe you’ll touch his cheek. Like maybe you’ll grab his collar and ruin every rule you’ve ever set for yourself. Because your mouth is five inches from his and it’s raining outside and—

A knock.

You jolt back like you’ve been slapped. Armin jumps up, flustered, knocking over a cup of pens. then race to the door before the moment can catch up to you.

“Oh, hey!” a feminine voice says too loudly. a voice you know well. How the fuck she always knows when you two are together. Mina has a fucking six senth for cock blocking or something? “I—I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop your USB from the group project. I checked and it has all the lecture slides on it— you left it in the lab.”

Armin takes it with a shaking smile, you could see how red he is from the couch. “Oh! Cool. Thanks.”

She peers around, eyes narrowing. “Is she here?”

“Yes.”

“Studying?”

Your eyes meet and you hold her gaze, while grinning “Eventually.”

she blushes and apologizes, giving Armin a rushed and tiny ‘goodbye’.

The blonde man closes the door with a sigh, and when he comes back to the couch, pretending like nothing almost happened, you start to think the universe is actually laughing at you.

Why can't you make out with your nerdy man in peace?

——

Later that night you’re alone again, lying on your bed, phone face-up beside you. You keep replaying his voice.

“I’ve thought about it a lot.”

You don’t sleep well.

And neither does he.

Because two blocks away, Armin is staring at his ceiling, hand in his hair, wondering how close he came to losing control — to kissing the girl with stormcloud eyes and tattooed skin and a laugh that lives rent-free in his skull.

The girl nobody thinks would ever want him.

Except maybe — she does.

[seitmai]

Many thoughts

They instinctively turned to face one another when the other needed help attaching a certain piece to their suit or tightening their straps. They had grown un-deniably close over the past two years, and they knew each other’s movements step by step.

Dream team 🤝🏻

“I made love to her four times last night. This morning, I got pancakes. She woke up at six to make them for me before I left. God, I fuckin’ love my wife.” Javy boasted with prideful laughter. Jake only spurred him on, with a proud slap on his back and matched Javy’s amusement. However, at Javy’s confession, Natasha snorted quietly to herself.

I love how Nat can't hold it back lol

“What’s so funny, Nat? You tellin’ me you could beat Javy’s record?” Jake questioned her with a smug grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

Ohhh I just know he is is for a treat 🤭

By this time, Mickey, Rueben, and Bradley had all filtered into the room as well. They didn’t want to interrupt the ego-boosting feud that was currently unfolding in front of them. They geared up in silence but still listened with eager ears, their eyes flicking back and forth between Jake and Natasha.

They would never admit, but they love the tea and drama 🤭😅

She took a sharp breath between her teeth and broke Jake’s questioning gaze. She purposefully didn’t look back at the guys but calmly stated, “Well, I made love to my wife six times, and yeah, I also got breakfast.”

Period 😌👏🏻 and those orgasms for sure weren't fake, I just know

The silence from them both was telling. She continued fixing her gear and calmly played off her triumphant feat. It was as though it was the most normal thing in the world for her (which wasn’t far off).

I wanna be her wife so bad 😭🤤🥰

If only they knew how good you were for him last night. If only they knew how pretty you looked on your knees and spread out on the soft linen, all for himself. If only they knew how pretty you sounded, as you whimpered and whined his name all—

Not him reminiscing, completely zoning out 🤭

“Bob!” Jake’s biting tone snapped his attention straight towards the blonde-haired man. “You’re lookin’ smug for a guy, who, as far as we know, hasn’t been laid in… two years?” He questioned with faux interest. Natasha immediately belted out an amused, “Ha!”

Once again she can't hold back and I love her for that 🤭👏🏻

Natasha also knew that no one else knew.

She knew Bob better than anyone here. She had met you, Bob’s long-time wife. Natasha and her wife had been to dinner with Bob and you. She had been to BBQs in your backyard and tried your delicious home-cooked macaroni and cheese. You were even invited to her bachelorette party when she got married.

Besties 💖

Hehe

“Well? You got a wife?” Jake asked the question carelessly and casually, making Bob squirm. He severely despised people thinking about his wife like that, as if you weren’t the moon to his sun. A beat, and Bob responded. “Yeah.” Javy’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Mickey and Ruben had turned around to watch the whole thing by then. They nudged one another in the ribs and whispered, “I told you so!”

The various reactions are killing me 😂

Bradley didn’t flinch. He knew. He saw Bob and you on the beach one evening. Bob gave him a curt nod, and when he arrived at the Navy base the next morning, Bradley swore he wouldn’t tell anyone. He understood, more than anyone, why people kept their private lives away from here.

Solid 🫡 maybe he has a secret wife too? Or a husband?🤔👀

“Because…” Bob’s gaze narrowed fiercely towards Jake. “My wife was asking me not to stop.” There was a deafening silence, and then a chorus of bellowing laughter and jeers echoed throughout the room.

This is a perfect answer and that it's the truth makes it even better 👏🏻

“Don’t assume stuff like that, Hangman. Wait until you find out that he has a kid.”

Bob cocked his head at Jake, with an assured smile now etched fully onto his lips. He asked if Natasha was ready, and then they both headed out onto the tarmac, leaving Jake behind, practically frozen in shock.

Iconic👏🏻

My favorite Bob headcanon 🤭

Oh to be Bob or Nat's wife (or both), truly my dream🥰

Do you know that audio on TikTok that’s like I made love to my wife 4 times and this morning she made pancakes and whatnot? Could you do a story where it’s the daggers and this is how they find out about bobs wife?

don’t stop.

robert ‘bob’ floyd x reader.

￫ summary: jake attempts to catch bob out, but bob has something to reveal.

￫ word count: 1K.

￫ warnings: mentions of sex, smut and food.

￫ authors notes: i hope i based this off the right sound, my dear anon! 🥹 i’m sorry this took so long too 🥺 my main masterlist can be found here! 💌

Bob stood beside Natasha in comfortable silence as they dressed in the appropriate gear, ready for a test flight.

They instinctively turned to face one another when the other needed help attaching a certain piece to their suit or tightening their straps. They had grown un-deniably close over the past two years, and they knew each other’s movements step by step.

Natasha’s eyebrows raised, and she let out a small groan. “Here they come.”

Bob’s breath hitched as he heard the booming voices coming through the door.

Javy sauntered in, with Jake on his heels, both snickering about something like schoolboys.

“Oh, Jake, you wouldn’t believe it.” They both swung open their lockers in sync. At a glance, you wouldn’t think that they flew separately. They were so similar as they mirrored the movements of getting their gear on.

“I made love to her four times last night. This morning, I got pancakes. She woke up at six to make them for me before I left. God, I fuckin’ love my wife.”Javy boasted with prideful laughter.

Jake only spurred him on, with a proud slap on his back and matched Javy’s amusement.

However, at Javy’s confession, Natasha snorted quietly to herself.

Jake’s head cocked to the right of him and his eyebrows raised with a questioning glance her way. He leaned back against the lockers containing their gear and attached some to himself.

“What’s so funny, Nat? You tellin’ me you could beat Javy’s record?” Jake questioned her with a smug grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

By this time, Mickey, Rueben, and Bradley had all filtered into the room as well. They didn’t want to interrupt the ego-boosting feud that was currently unfolding in front of them. They geared up in silence but still listened with eager ears, their eyes flicking back and forth between Jake and Natasha.

She took a sharp breath between her teeth and broke Jake’s questioning gaze. She purposefully didn’t look back at the guys but calmly stated, “Well, I made love to my wife six times, and yeah, I also got breakfast.”

The silence from them both was telling. She continued fixing her gear and calmly played off her triumphant feat. It was as though it was the most normal thing in the world for her (which wasn’t far off).

She heard Bradley’s hushed whistle of “Oof,” and she smiled proudly to herself as she looked down to see where she was fiddling with a buckle on her suit.

Bob, on the other hand, had watched the entire exchange before him, with bated breath. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, and the corner of his lips twitched into a grin as he saw Jake and Javy’s bewildered faces.

If only they knew how good you were for him last night. If only they knew how pretty you looked on your knees and spread out on the soft linen, all for himself. If only they knew how pretty you sounded, as you whimpered and whined his name all—

“Bob!” Jake’s biting tone snapped his attention straight towards the blonde-haired man. “You’re lookin’ smug for a guy, who, as far as we know, hasn’t been laid in… two years?” He questioned with faux interest.

Natasha immediately belted out an amused, “Ha!”

She knew Bob better than anyone here. She had met you, Bob’s long-time wife. Natasha and her wife had been to dinner with Bob and you. She had been to BBQs in your backyard and tried your delicious home-cooked macaroni and cheese. You were even invited to her bachelorette party when she got married.

Natasha also knew that no one else knew.

Bob was private about his life away from the naval base. He had his reasons, but more than anything, he appreciated the peace he shared with his one love. You.

Jake’s jeering and deeply imposing question made his eye twitch a little from behind his glasses. He pushed his frames up the bridge of his nose with his index finger, before looping his hands into the gear on his chest. He puffed out his chest slightly and stood confidently across from Jake.

“Well? You got a wife?” Jake asked the question carelessly and casually, making Bob squirm. He severely despised people thinking about his wife like that, as if you weren’t the moon to his sun.

A beat, and Bob responded. “Yeah.”

Javy’s mouth fell open in disbelief. Mickey and Ruben had turned around to watch the whole thing by then. They nudged one another in the ribs and whispered, “I told you so!”

Bradley didn’t flinch. He knew. He saw Bob and you on the beach one evening. Bob gave him a curt nod, and when he arrived at the Navy base the next morning, Bradley swore he wouldn’t tell anyone. He understood, more than anyone, why people kept their private lives away from here.

Jake snorted, although he blinked furiously as Bob’s statement took him aback. “Okay then, Baby, how many times did you make love to them last night?”

He crossed his arms over his broad chest in an attempt to shield himself from perhaps being scolded by Bob Floyd.

“Once.”

“Once?! Oh, Bob.” Jake mocked with faux sympathy. “And did they make you anything this morning?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Bob’s gaze narrowed fiercely towards Jake. “My wife was asking me not to stop.”

There was a deafening silence, and then a chorus of bellowing laughter and jeers echoed throughout the room.

Even Javy let out a loud chuckle, gripping Jake’s shoulders and playfully shaking him. “He got you there!”

Bob cocked his head at Jake, with an assured smile now etched fully onto his lips. He asked if Natasha was ready, and then they both headed out onto the tarmac, leaving Jake behind, practically frozen in shock.

Once the rest of the guys had had enough playful jabs towards him, they all made their way out to join the others. But Jake felt a firm hand on his shoulder as the tall brunette towered over him.

“Don’t assume stuff like that, Hangman. Wait until you find out that he has a kid.”

taglist: @floydsmuse @beachbabey @tallrock35 @luckyladycreator2 @unmistakablyunknown @birdy-bat-writes @thedroneranger @kmc1989

tagging those who may be interested: @becks-things @rhettabbotts @hangmanapologist @lewmagoo @peachystenbrough @thecowboyfiles @auroralightsthesky @beautifulandvoid

[saetiate]

call it what it is. (or, the five times sae and you are "just friends". and the one time it stops being possible to deny what this really is.)

itoshi sae x f!reader fluff. friends to lovers, first kiss, how love happens, reader goes by she/her pronouns and has some personality (sorry, i couldn't get around it bc of The Plot but i kept it as minimal as possible). personality mentions are as follows: career-focused, likes sweet things, drinks alcohol sometimes, little regard for self care especially when busy, doesn't like to be touched by people they don't know, is alone often. word count: 2.3k author's note: you both have a whole dinner date, go to events together, take care of each other, and then get surprised when people think you're dating??? okay so the sound of fireworks are less obvious than whatever yall have going on

Bitterness churns at the back of your throat. Is it from the roasted beans of the coffee you've been slamming into your system for the last few days, or from the lack of sleep?

Not that it matters. You've worked OT, both your team and your clients are unhappy, and according to your Excel worksheet, you're on your 85th job application. So really, it doesn't get worse than —

The doorbell rings.

Who the actual —

You breathe out the biggest sigh at the pretty face standing before you. It's definitely the lack of sleep, isn't it? Either you really should've checked the peephole and put on something a little more flattering, or he's a hallucination.

Let's hope it's the latter. You move to close the door, and his hand reaches out lightning-quick, holding it still. In a spark of annoying rebellion, you press all of your body weight against the door, and it doesn't budge an inch.

Right. Athletes and their stupid, stupid strength.

"You didn't answer my calls."

They say sighing is a necessary part of your lungs, that one of the struggles of artificial lungs was getting them to sigh. You wonder if it meant this many times in a day. "Sae, I'm busy. Wait, I didn't answer your calls? You don't answer my texts 90% of the time."

Then he's in your entryway, because of course you can't argue where your neighbors can hear, that's rude. But then he's in your kitchen, washing his hands, opening your fridge.

"There's nothing in here. When's the last time you took a shower?"

"You come here just to insult me?"

A towel hits your face with an oof before it falls into your arms.

"Sae," you try again, as the towel slides down your cheek, "You can't just barge in here and —"

20 minutes later, there's two steaming bowls of katsu curry rice on your now-clean desk. Sae opens up the little ziplock of togarashi, leans it against your bento box with more care than you'd expect.

"Itakadimasu."

~

It's the strangest thing, walking into your place only for someone to already be in there. How the noise cuts through, something unbelonging but welcomed.

"You know, giving you the key wasn't so you could just walk in here whenever you want. It was for emergencies only."

The only answer you get is the smell of onions being caramelized, crackled sparks of savory in the air.

"I answered your call," you continue, undressing behind a half-open door. "So this can't be an emergency. And you have a much nicer place than this."

Sae barely glances at you as your head peeks into the kitchen. "You could stay there."

"What, with you? Like we're roommates? Nah, you'd see what a mess I am."

"I'm already seeing it."

A spatula waves in little circles around the pan,

What are you doing here, Sae?

Like he's already braced for the question, the refrigerator light beacons out into the descending night. Your favorite wine passes from his hand to yours.

"Got gifted it," he responds before you can even ask. You could've caught him looking at you, but the gold label glints with stars in your eyes.

"How'd you get gifted icewine? You've never talked about it in an interview."

He doesn't tell you he asked his manager for recommendations, that he knows they let it slip to someone looking for a brand deal with him. Instead, he watches as you struggle to pop the cork open, the xylophone clink of ice into twin wine glasses.

"So you do like sweet things," you comment as the nectared drink meets your tongue with a smile. There's a reverence to it: how he watches you chop the vegetables before sliding them into the pan, how the last remnants of today's sunlight filter through the window and past your hair.

Sweet things. He supposes he does like something like that.

~

"This event, is it a big deal?"

He vaguely hears a ruffle of clothing behind the half-shut bathroom door, lightstream swept across the floor. He offered you what he knows his teammates get their wives for these events — stylist, makeup artists — but he watched you stand in his bathroom layering on eyeshadow for yourself anyways.

I don't trust anyone else to touch me. A simple statement made stark.

"Sorry, Sae. Could you help zip me up please?"

Maybe it's that implication, that hidden trust you place in him, that makes his exhale a little shaky as one of his hands wraps around your waist to hold the dress down, the other carefully pulling up metal piece up.

You've often thought athletes would naturally be aggressive. You've seen Sae make a fast pass across the entire field without breaking a sweat. But when his hands are on you, they're always light. You think of the falling of snow, its soft and silent touch that comes unexpected, the easy descent it makes before it melts into the ground.

Love is a little like that, maybe.

~

It's a common feeling, to feel as if you're completely alone in this world. Easy to get into your own head, to see only yourself within four walls again and again and forget that there is a whole world outside. It's logical, well-researched, known. It's because of that that you can factor out the feelings when it hits you.

The four walls has never felt as striking as now, coughing into the hollow quiet. The morbid thought strikes that if you died here, no one would know. They'd find your body days later, after the smell starts to waft out.

But you chose this. To move and to fight and to create a life worth living. You, with your ambitions and heavy heart and endless survival faith that makes you somehow believe you can still make it. Sometimes you have to force a door close before wrenching another one open with nothing but your bare hands. Sometimes you have to swallow all your pride and roll up your sleeves and pray to no higher gods you worship that the decision you made is worth it.

You think you hear something click as your mind fogs back and forth into sleep. You hope whoever's burgling you will at least leave you alone and only take what they need. You hear your name, and then a shuffle, and god this is really the worst time to have a stalker.

The back of a hand over your forehead is cool to the touch, the night's breeze still pressed between the molecules.

"You're sick."

Thank you, intruder, for pointing out the obvious is what you want to say. But instead, your head lulls heavily to the side. "I just need to rest for a bit."

"You need a hospital."

"I'm fine. I'm just- being dramatic. But I'm fine."

Your world tips on its axis, warmth blooming into your side. He lifts you into his arms soundlessly. You almost envy how effortless it is for him; the weight you carry is so heavy when you're carrying it yourself.

It's only halfway towards his car that you find yourself processing, finally speaking, "Thank you, Sae."

There's a sharp intake of breath from him, the hard line of his body protecting you from the night's chilled-sweet air. His heartbeat against your ear is as steady as the shore, the way it waits for the kiss of the tide.

"Just call me next time."

~

Sae's not sure how he feels about this.

It's his first time being late when he's meant to be taking you to this event. He moves fast through the crowd, searches with keen eyes. Chandeliers flicker and crystal-light dances —

Only to find you propped up against the wall, Rin leaning down close.

Sae might be less confused if Rin didn't look — for what might be the first time at an event ever — like he actually wanted to be there. He's listening to you with all his attention, has no problem being in your space.

Sae only approaches once you've been whisked away by Bachira.

"Why were you talking to her?"

Rin whips around, and instead of looking guilty, he's in wide-eyed shock, and then narrow-eyed annoyance. "Ha? She's your girlfriend, isn't she?"

Sae blinks. Did he say that? He would've remembered, wouldn't he?

"You good-for-nothing older brother," Rin's voice is a grunt, nothing like the sweetness he gave you. "You didn't even introduce me. I had to fucking find out through Isagi."

"How does Isagi know?"

"Oliver."

"How does Oliver know?"

Rin gives him an begrudged, deadpan look. "He's your teammate?"

That explains nothing. Actually, Sae is even more confused. He has about a dozen more questions.

"She's nice." Rin mumbles low, playing with the stem of his wine glass, watches as it almost tips before swooping it back up.

"You like her?"

"I think she's nice." Rin grits, and Sae really doesn't know how Rin gets away with faux passes on the field when his reactions are this obvious, because he watches how his eyes grow with realization as another thought passes through his brain. "You don't like her?"

"I like her." Sae accepts quickly.

"Ha??? Then what are you asking me for?!"

~

If Sae's being honest, he knows he has more than enough. He wonders what this thing is that he's had since he was born, never satiated even as he reaches the top. He thinks about how Bachira describes his 'monster', a childlike wonder, whether this is his own version of something like that.

But even the blackhole-depths of his greed doesn't anticipate wanting you. Like remembering the sea upon the drink of an oyster. A second breath, heart soaked with knowing.

What am I doing, sleeping in his bed? The night grows darker with every step, so the invite was innocuous enough. You sink into the mattress and the blanket of night muffles the fear, the thought that love is never so easy. There will be complications and contracts —

You turn to him and all the braveheart strength seeps out of you. Maybe you can put it down here, just for a moment.

He looks at you love-first, in a thousand colors, something he can't find with anyone else. He brushes the hair from your face so delicately, you find yourself stuck between watching his relaxed expression and fluttering your eyes shut to absorb the feeling. The back of his fingers caress your cheek, a butterfly's wing.

"Are you happy? Satisfied?"

Sae is not abstract. It's a vague but concrete question. You understand him at first glance.

"Not yet," you exhale honestly. "I have more to do. I'm gonna get there."

I'm gonna be the person I want to be. And by that time, I'll also be —

I'll also be the kind of girl you'd consider worth dating.

"Just wanna be worth it," you smile weakly instead.

He looks at you with a tenderness that feels dangerous. You think of a bird's first flight, the swoop of the fall. The crackle of a flame before it eats the firewood.

"People are worth something the moment they're born," he recites with no inflections.

"I know that."

"You're the one who said that." It's not accusatory, it's a reminder: your own truth, a perception of love you've been made the exception of. It's too heavy with degradation for him to feel comfortable focusing on, so instead he asks something he knows.

"If you had everything you want now, would it be enough?"

You sit up, his eyes following you. Your body heat no longer pressed against his feels like a loss, something he's sure to correct.

"No. You know that's not how it works." You should know, better than anyone.

He does know. That greed is a bottomless abyss, ambition an infinite sky. There is no amount of good enough that could ever make it all feel worth it.

His hand circles around your wrist, pulls you in on top of him until you're chest to chest.

Love is not your right. Shattered somethings cradle your heart. Trees can grow around items. You wonder if your heart is the same — muscle grown strong around fractured glass, a whisper of a cutting edge with every beat.

If you're always going to want more, be better, go further —

Could you have a little something in the now?

He's so close to you now that it fills your mind completely. He's not naked but he feels so bare under you, your hands framing his cheeks, soft skin brushing against your fingertips. One of his hands skates up your back, the other slides up your jaw, cups the back of your neck.

You wonder when you started letting him touch you like that.

He treats you so gently, so unlike the overwhelming emotion that crashes into you. Both lightweight and heavy, you feel swept under, you just want to anchor onto something —

His lips touch yours and everything falls into place.

~

"How'd you know about her?"

Oliver could make it easy for him. He won't, because getting a reaction out of Sae is much more fun. Instead, he tries and fails to feign ignorance. "Who?"

"My girlfriend."

Oliver leans his head back against the wall, a playful smile over his face. "So she is your girlfriend. Loyal too."

Sae narrows his eyes.

"Relax. I just talked to her at one of those events you brought her to."

"You talked to her?"

Oliver gets the sense that Sae is trying to make it sound like a normal question, but all it sounds is exactly how annoyed he feels.

"She just said she's waiting for you."

notes: unbelonging is not a word, i used it anyways on purpose to strengthen the idea of something not belonging. nectared and lightstream are also not real words, but i like them. twin wine glasses is kind of a reference to twin flames, though i do think you and sae are actually soulmates. i wonder if people can be both. "the weight you carry is so heavy when you're carrying it yourself" is a double meaning, not just your body weight but everything else you carry too.

call it what it is: / a love created, hand-sculpted to fit. / a silent reprieve, / to be seen, / constellations bursting at the seams. / unfounded heart, / a tepid start,/ an easy, soft-sweet thing. / say what this really is. / place it on the justice scales of the abyss. / what you're meant to be / versus what you choose / you can decide you have a right to this.