freestyle dance teacher

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:

In an enclosed room far away from the tracks, Clark Kent could almost smell degrading rubber against asphalt. Curved screens on the wall in front of him spelled out live data from your car: a metallic blue beauty made of carbon and pure drive. Engines roared, somehow not loud enough to silence his thoughts, and right now, he was caught in a headwind spiral.

None of the active cameras showed your face, but he could see the shit-eating grin on it.

After half a race season on your team, Clark has learned to read your patterns like he did the mathematics of a running engine—something about the way you gripped the steering wheel told him you were taking this easy, as if Turn 4 wasn’t designed to bait a racer’s easily-inflatable ego.

And speaking of ego, you didn’t just possessed it. That grin he pictured may as well be printed next to the dictionary definition for the word cocky, despite being the woman you are.

Ballsy, too. Clark almost rolled his eyes at the way you straddled the apex of that tight line: perfect, but pushing the speed limit for that kind of bend.

Still, you overtook smoothly.

Dangerous on the circuit, probably even more off it. That was who you were.

Just his luck: you also happened to be the most important person in his life right now.

Clark Kent’s job as chief race engineer was to orchestrate your wins from behind the curtain, and he took pride in doing so.

To be fair, you were quite good at winning: the leaderboard showed your name in the top five along with the greats—the employ of some he’d left in the past for more challenging routes… and less challenging people. You’d started the first three GPs with extremely modest points finish, which you more than made up for in the next few.

Your position had went up dramatically after. Stats from GPs eight, nine, and ten had been nothing short of spectacular. Beautiful curves on his screen—of data, of course, not your outline in that tracksuit.

The thing with you, though? You were greedy.

Before lights out, he’d advised you to keep the pace this time. No going off-script. No surprises.

“The remaining twelve races are more than enough for you to climb,” he’d said. “Remember, you get no points for crashing.”

You’d pouted, and it almost scared him to admit that, for once, he understood.

Because it was Silverstone. All 18 turns and 52 laps of it.

You were racing in the historic circuit that birthed the sport some seventy years ago.

Of course you craved to win it, child-like pout or no. And it wasn’t your fault, not when your whole life had been geared to do exactly this: prestige racing.

Nobody got to compete at the top rung of Formula One without being groomed to survive breakneck speeds and intense lateral forces—the g-force of a simple corner alone could probably dislocate your internal organs if your seat wasn’t secured right. Training wasn’t just requirement, it was survival. That Red Bull driver leading the pack, three positions ahead of you? He raced Albert Park Circuit before getting his license for regular driving.

What got Clark on board was that plain-faced, almost naive ambition of yours.

The grin he’d internally labeled shit-eating was the very same that stoked a fire in him when you first met—a meeting meant for negotiations, except he’d made his mind up almost as soon as the words left your mouth.

“Been a long time since a woman won any Grand Prix,” you’d smiled wide: a sunny curve of your lips that had carved itself into his mind ever since, “Are you gonna help me change that, Kent?”

One deafening zip, then another; Clark snapped out of his visit down Sector Memory.

A quick glance at the screen showed two more cars ahead, overtaking yours at the late apex.

Aside from racetrack blares, the cockpit was as quiet as the control room—a grace you didn’t usually grant him, because you preferred to abuse the comms, complaining about the rear wing or asking if your second driver was that far behind.

This could only mean one thing.

You were thinking. Undoubtedly about a risky move.

Again, he could tell, even with just your helmet vizor in view.

“You’ll get them at Turn 15. Just hold for now,” he spoke preemptively, stern through the static.

“…Nah-uh.”

There it was—that sing-song way you hummed. A sane person would never sound like that, not when they’re reclined in a death machine going 200 mph.

“I see a window.”

Clark felt his temper rise.

“Hold. It’s too risky,” he hissed. The upcoming turn you talked about saw a top driver collide in a race just last season—a simple brush of wheels that ended with his car barrelling violently into a wall.

Copse Corner, it was called. One letter away from being Corpse Corner. The thought was followed by a bone chill.

“Worth a shot,” you replied. Light. Like you were branching out of your usual coffee order.

Clark dragged a hand down his bespectacled face, watching your dash cam. The response wasn’t unexpected, but good Lord, you were taking position and giving him a heart attack in the same breath.

Another warning in the shape of your name. “I’m telling you—”

You didn’t let him finish.

“High risk, high reward, baby.”

Steering wheel turned to the right just a touch. The front wing tilted slightly in response.

…Just enough to bump into Car Number 5’s rear, sparks flying from the friction.

Nothing happened.

Except physics kicked in half a second later: velocity and weight working with the impact and against you, sending your car and Number 5 out of balance. Number 5 skittered but eventually retained course, no doubt cursing your existence in the radio.

Meanwhile, your back wheels spun, skidding loudly in full-bodied circles as centrifugal force overwhelmed you, tail-spinning your car to a bumpy stop off-track before any real seconds could tick by.

Time seemed to stop. Smoke rose at the tragic ending. A convoy of cars that was once behind you flit noisily past.

Someone on comms muttered a dejected expletive. A junior engineer held his breath, eyes pinned on the screen.

Clark took off his headset.

His fingers were already pinching the bridge of his nose when laughter echoed within the room: melodious, entertained, and fully female.

Yours.

You stepped out of the boxy machine that was the simulator, rolling your shoulders front and back after taking off your helmet, hair tumbling out behind you. Why they’d make you wear one in a simulated session, who knows—maybe to get you to take it seriously, which was obviously not what happened.

The rest of the team who sat around the long table—data analysts and race engineers—rushed to consolidate timing sheets and dissect deltas. These number crunchers had grown accustomed to what came next: the death machine operator and the air traffic controller who worked to postpone her suicide attempts were going to get into an argument. Again.

This was Team Orbital’s version of reality TV. Today’s episode: Angry or Horny? Part 18.

“I told you to hold,” Clark Kent marched towards you, nearly seething. Your twinkling eyes gathered his jaw and neck as you leaned against the back of the machine—funny how he was more tense in those places than you were after laps and laps of your session.

A vein, you thought to yourself, tracing the faint shape of it on the side of his throat. Hot.

Your delightful smile was the complete opposite of his storm cloud.

“I saw an opportunity.”

“It could’ve gotten you killed,” he clipped.

“Relax, Clark, it’s just a sim,” you picked on a blunt nail, not even meeting his eyes.

“A sim designed for you to practice! Not, not—” he huffed, hands gesturing in a poor attempt to express himself, until he settled on, “you can’t keep fooling around like this.”

“You know I very well can. I’ve done this, like, almost twenty times. Got your orders down pat.”

He shot you a look that said oh really?

You launched into a spiel.

“At lap start, speed up till eighth gear flat out through Turn 1 and 2. Brake hard into 3, get back to entry point for the left in 4—”

Under different circumstances, he’d be more impressed of the ease with which you correctly rambled on, but frustration won the fight to pilot his mouth.

“And yet you still don’t listen when I tell you to hold.”

Your eyes snapped back to his and he got to witness it right then and there: the change in your face that he’d learned to read without looking. Most of the time, he watched you through cockpit cameras trained on a shaded vizor.

Maybe that was why being face-to-face with you never stopped feeling like a confrontation—as if whatever he could see was dialed up to a hundred.

For example, this look you were giving him: intense enough to be normal, but sultry in a way that invited heat to crawl up his neck.

“That’s because look really good when you’re mad,” you cooed.

That voice. Of course you had to use that voice on him. If making eye contact with you turned him into stone (Medusa would like a word), hearing you speak melted him right back.

He looked away, fixing his glasses: the one thing he could do to hope that you wouldn’t notice his blush.

You threw your head back into an earnest laugh. Not at him—or maybe it was? He wasn’t sure. He felt silly. Awkward pre-teen puberty silly. Didn’t matter that this wasn’t the first time you’d teased him.

“One more run, then you better not crash when we practice for real,” he murmured. The flight to Heathrow was less than 24 hours away, and he’d bet you hadn’t even packed.

You crossed your arms, looking like you had all the time in the world to torment him.

“You don’t trust your driver, Kent?”

“I usually do, but most of the time, they aren’t as crazy as you.” Not as beautiful, either.

“I’m not crazy,” you hummed, “I just want to win.”

And that was the truth behind all truths, written dead-center in your eyes. That was the flame that drew him in like a moth. Ambition. The one that he’d heard others describe as ‘terrifying’. And they weren’t wrong, but nobody wanted to admit how alluring it was. Clark would be the first to testify: because it was your sheer determination that convinced him to join Team Orbital until the end of this season.

That confidence—and the pretty smile that wrapped around it—was this flying man’s downfall.

“I wanna win Silverstone,” you repeated, gaze softening, resolve anything but.

God smite him if he didn’t help you.

He murmured back a reply.

“You need to be alive to do that.”

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

The Hilton Hotel was hell on scorched earth.

It was the preferred accommodation for those participating in the GP: four stars and many floors of buzzing chaos, just days before the race. Every elevator was swarming with people wearing uniforms and checkered lanyards. The breakfast buffet saw constant streams of execs, all men, their shirts unbuttoned way past propriety. Whenever the hotel staff smiled, it was in a stiff way that told you they were bracing themselves for impact or already going through the worst mid-shift turbulence of their lives.

Smart team managers would have booked out rooms in advance. Team Orbital was one such prepared customer, with the entire twentieth floor reserved for their highest profiles.

Clark’s luck—or lack thereof—might be inversely proportional to the blessings of his superpowers, or so he’d like to believe.

Otherwise, he’d have no logical explanation as to why your room was next to his.

The weather throughout the week was a beautiful, clear blue. Pretty much miraculous by Great Britain standards. It seemed the unexpected sunshine gave everyone an extra shot of dopamine except for the metahuman that literally regenerated under it: Clark walked around like the dark beginnings of a minor twister.

His upset wasn’t because of your constant daredevilry behind the wheel.

As a matter of fact, you’d been a good driver. A great one, even. You were obedient and kept to the playbook he talked you through the headset—even the back-up ones he prepared like a paranoid Marvel scriptwriter.

Which left him with nothing to blame his gloominess on…

…other than the true reason. One he wasn’t ready to admit.

He was upset because you were flirting. With every. Man. Alive.

Exchanging too-friendly small talk with a blonde at the lobby whom he was certain you’d only met once. Smiling at suit-donning silver foxes by the circuit. Who were they, anyway? Rich people spectating, or FIA directors?

But the most displeasure Clark experienced was when you bantered with your second driver.

James Barnes. More boy than man. Just joined Team Orbital at the tail end of last season to fill up an empty seat. He was of legal drinking age despite his pretty face, with an eye color not so dissimilar to Clark’s, except they didn’t have a hard time looking directly at you.

“Don’t do anything stupid, James,” you unzipped your suit, revealing a white tank top underneath (did you have to do that in front of everyone?), “or Mr. Kent is going to be upset with us.”

James was clipping on his helmet for his turn on the track, but it didn’t hide his handsome smirk. His eyes flickered down to your lips for a very obvious second. Clark wished he didn’t catch that.

“With me, he will,” James stretched a gloved hand, “but how could he ever be mad at a pretty thing like you?”

You chuckled, undeterred by the blatant advances of a junior: “Are you flirting with me so I’d let you win?”

“I’m flirting with you because you’d make it harder.”

—for him to win the race, that was what James meant, but the wording was far too suggestive to be dismissed.

Clark hated that he could hear you from this distance between the back of the garage to trackside. No, he wasn’t tuning in like you were the radio; his range was just that far, promise. But the exchange spiked his blood pressure enough to fake a trip to the bathroom. He quietly murmured his exit to the rest of the team.

Why can’t you be as smooth on the circuit as you are with double entendres, James?! he wanted to yell, almost stomping to the stalls.

“Get a grip, Kent,” Clark said to his own reflection instead, ignoring the confused stare of some guy two steps down the sink next to him.

James’s room was all the way at the other end of the floor. God bless whoever was in charge of hotel arrangements—for putting that man far away, of course. Not necessarily for making Clark your neighbor.

Because even lingering at the outer fringes of your existence was torturous enough for the so-called Man of Steel.

Staying next to your room meant he had to endure an extra five minutes of being with you outside of what his job entailed, multiple times almost every single day: walking out the same gym, taking the same elevator, bee-lining down the same damn hallway until you stopped in front of the door next to his.

Five minutes.

Long enough for you to know he was painfully aware of you. Long enough for him to take you in.

To survey your curves the way he would a racecar’s—claiming it was for study, when really it was admiration. To assess the correlation between that last km on the treadmill with the color on your cheeks—the harder you trained, the lovelier the shade. To flag an errant bead of sweat, outlier to the common pattern—rather than evaporating into something he could inhale, it traced down your bare arm instead.

And yes, while you undoubtedly had some idea of the effect you had on him, there was no way you knew the extent of it.

No way for you to know he had your scent stored in a memory olfactory, labeled The most infuriating person in the world. Couldn’t tell he counted your heartbeat during fitness testing, just in case you pushed too hard. Clueless as to how he stared at you when you were turned away, as if waiting for your eyes to meet—only to avert his gaze when they did.

Lord and Savior, help him. He was a goner. When did he become a goner?

He remembered Night One at the Hilton. The elevator was going up, people filtering out until it’d been the two of you left. You’d been humming some pop song he’d only ever heard on the radio. Stepping out the box were two matching strides: same destination, diverging mindsets.

You’d messed with him then. You always did.

“Why, Clark. Are you following to my room?”

“Mine’s next to yours.”

“Too bad. Kinda wished you were.”

That wasn’t when he fell. He’d already been ensnared long before.

It didn’t help that, on top of your talent in driving (him insane), you were blessed with a creative mind. You never failed to come up with a new remark in the two-second window before keycards were swiped.

“I’m so sticky,” you sighed.

He swiped his first. Beep.

“Take a shower, then.”

“Join me? Save water and all.”

Halfway through the door, he muttered a ‘no, thank you’.

Clark caught your shrug in his periphery.

“Worth a shot.”

Then his door closed a little loud, mimicking the hammering of his heart. He heard you enter your room right after.

Before his treacherous brain could imagine you sauntering barefoot to the bathroom, gym clothes discarded, he raced to recalculate deviations on his laptop—as if he didn’t get them right the first time around.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

The straw that broke Superman’s broad back landed on the night before the race.

Clark should be asleep, but every time he closed his eyes, calculations ran paranoid behind his eyelids like The Matrix. Whenever he took one step closer towards slumber, he was dragged three steps back to his laptop.

He was in the middle of looking through the same vector for the nth time when some noise occurred outside.

Rustling. It reminded him of his childhood cat, who—aside from killing all the mice like the good girl she was—had a habit of rummaging for extra food in the pantry.

Greedy.

He opened the door to check, even if he didn’t need to. He’d recognize that heartbeat anywhere.

You were in the hallway, going through the abyss of your purse in search for what he assumed to be your keycard. High-heeled, skin generously bared until the hem of your short dress, hair tastefully mussed in a way that suggested a fun night out. The outfit and your make-up glittered in the dim light, shining like a trophy.

Had you been out drinking?

“No, I just danced,” you drawled, finally producing the keycard from your purse.

He didn’t realize he asked out loud.

But Clark being Clark, he knew better—the faint smell of alcohol wasn’t wafting off your dress.

At the stern look he gave you, you placed a hand on your hip, sighing.

“Fine. I only had one watered-down drink.”

He ran a disappointed hand down his face, caring little about leaving fingerprints on his glasses.

“You can’t be serious,” he breathed, “The race is tomorrow and we need you in top shape!”

“Tell me this isn’t top shape.” You had the gall to give him a twirl, the hem of your dress lifting slightly. To your credit, you didn’t stumble on those heels.

And you looked great. Top shape, indeed.

You smiled at him. “I’ll be fine. Race doesn’t start till after noon.”

He crossed his arms like they covered the soft spots he had for you, and boy did he have many. The upset melted away too fast to his liking.

You didn’t need to know.

“I’m gonna put you in the G-force machine first thing tomorrow,” he said, trying to sound more severe than sleep-deprived.

“We don’t have one here, silly,” you smirked, “Unless that’s a euphemism for—”

Red crawled up his cheeks. “Quit it.”

Then he caught it.

Your eyes were tracing down his body that filled up the doorway, languid and slow, just like how his eyes wished they could trace down yours. The smirk on your face broke into a grin.

You pointed at his shirt.

“You’re such a nerd.”

His Star Wars: A New Hope T-shirt stared back at you.

Clark should get an award for not falling for the ‘rage’ part of ‘ragebait’. The fact of the matter was that he was already falling in another entirely different context.

He pretended not to see you appreciating his gray sweatpants.

“You need a nerd to win the Grand Prix,” he righted his glasses. “Now, bed. Please. Tell me you actually know how to go to sleep.”

“I know how to make you not want to go to sleep,” you purred.

He sighed your name. “Get some rest.”

You gave him a mock-salute. “Roger, roger.”

Then you swiped your keycard and disappeared into your room.

Clark’s brows furrowed.

Was that a Star Wars reference you just flung at him?

II. ACCELERATION

The circuit was a living organism.

Grey asphalt sprawled under unusually blue skies, its old veins forming deadly patterns. You and 23 other drivers were its lifeblood, rushing in pulses of red-hot engines and tires that unspooled like thread. Bodies melded into four wheeled-bullets as they shot down corners in supersonic speeds. The air reeked of fuel fumes and burning rubber. Every light brush into heavy impact formed a supernova: disasters so spectacular it was impossible to look away. At the heart of the chase was a need to seize first place in one of the world’s most prestigious Grands Prix.

This was the anatomy of peak human performance.

Still, some people couldn’t help wanting to break the limit.

You were one such person. Right now. In lap 51 out of 52.

“I’m pushing.”

Your car was in second place, a steady shadow behind the irritating backside of a Red Bull. Clark figured anyone who looked at that bright crimson long enough would be inclined to start a fight (who was the Bull now?). Heck, it pissed him off, knowing a sloppy machine like that was in pole position.

To say the formation was packed was an understatement. The top five cars, yours included, looked like they were being pulled on a single invisible string: a choreography followed so precisely that the distance between rear and front seemed no more than a strand of hair.

There was no room for error. No room for anything at all.

From Clark’s point of view (views, considering he had about five up on screen) in the pit wall, you were landlocked.

Fall in line, and you’d end up on the podium—just not the spot you wanted. Move, and you’d be rewarded with broken bones—or worse.

The rock was assumed mediocrity. The hard place was death.

“Clark, I’m pushing.”

“I’m not comfortable with that suggestion,” Clark replied into the headset mic. Words that massively downplayed the wreck in his chest.

The pit wall was divided. Seven critical team personnel, no opinions shared out loud—but Clark saw the unseen statistics.

Out of all of them, half quite literally sagged: the last two laps were as critical as the first two, yet their body language screamed acceptance before you crossed the finish line. Second wasn’t bad. What was wrong about placing second when the alternative could end your career? their resigned faces seemed to say.

The other half were implosions contained beneath Team Orbital uniforms: hearts pumped in a pattern that reminded him of hostage situations, the rush of blood apparent in clenched fists and locked jaws. These were the people begging for a Hail Mary—a small chance to be written into legends. Crashing was mere occupational hazard. A respectful sacrifice for the greater reward.

Clark himself was on the fence.

Clearly, you were not.

“Come on,” you gritted, voice slightly shaky from the engine rattle, “I just need to overtake one car.”

He glanced at the live feed of data. It wasn’t where the solution lived, but seeing your car’s vitals in the green offered a glimpse of relief.

“Negative. Hold. It’s too dangerous.” His voice was steady in contrast, but behind cold articulation was real fear.

“Please,” for once, you sounded like you were actually begging, “if I don’t do this, I’m stuck here!”

“I know, but crashing earns you no points, and if you gamble right now, you just might crash,” he replied.

But between you, him, and everyone else tapped into the public line, the message was clear: this was no longer about points.

This was about you.

“Fuck,” you swore. “Come on. Plan S on Turn 9. I can do it.”

“That’s a 90-degree turn!”

You laughed, crackly through the comms. Not quite as confident as you usually were, but the sound escaped anyway, light above the shrill howl of your car.

“High risk, high reward.”

This was it, he thought.

The thing that kept you apart, yet inseparable. A taut force of nature, greater than attraction and repulsion combined: you pull him one way, he resists to the other, but the center of gravity rests in one formula that trammeled two variables together.

The friction was in his deep care for life against your absolute disregard for your own. The tide was how the two of you were prepared to die.

He’d think you were insane, risking life and limb for the game, but who was he kidding? He would do the same for a squirrel. Actually, he already did exactly that for a squirrel.

And yet there was insurmountable bravery in you: because you weren’t invulnerable like he was.

Because if you crashed, you might actually—

“One date.”

The static from the radio rang loud, temporarily halting the rest of that dark though.

“…What?” his brows knitted.

“If I win, let me take you out on a date. Just one.”

In your voice was teasing, but also a hint of sincerity—and somehow, that was enough for Clark. The circuit’s controlled chaos became his own: his breath hitched the way overworked gears did, a flush washing over him like heat-soaked tarmac.

The convoy finally passed five lights marking the line. On the commercial feed, Clark heard the announcer’s excited exclamations.

Lap 52. The last one.

Your car was hunting Red Bull’s, blue metal bodywork beginning to inch out of formation. You no longer shadowed. You stalked.

“C’mon, Kent,” you goaded. “Dinner. Drinks optional. Or is that too much for you?”

Turn 1 passed with Red Bull cognizant of your maneuver, and with an angled adjustment, the window to overtake closed. You fell back in line. The pit wall groaned collectively.

“Answer her!” the Sporting Director barked from the furthest end of the seven-seater—Perry White’s blood pressure must be unhealthily high right now, but who was Clark to talk? His heart was pumping just as fast.

“Say something,” That was Lang, Head of Track Ops seated to his right.

“Say what?”

“Anything,” she hissed, “Just banter, at least it’s good for publicity. God knows you both already do it all the time.”

The already burning track felt even warmer, but his fingertips on the console grew cold.

Sure. Publicity. Maybe that was why you were saying these things to him—for something people would talk about long after the smoke cleared and the track cooled. Something you could blame on the heat of the moment.

All in all, it was a bad hand in a worse gamble: you ruled as queen of diamonds to his jack-of-all-trades, and the chips could very well fall off the edge of an already precarious relationship. To bet on this would be a tactical failure.

Or would it? Your voice sounded different. Deliberate.

He did it anyway—a part of him wanted to try.

Better to suffer a hurt the sun couldn’t heal rather than live the rest of his life wondering what if.

“Dinner and drinks,” he finally said into your ear, “but I call the shots on what happens after.”

The pit wall team reacted physically: hands ran through hairs, fists clenched as though vindicated in the belief that Chief Race Engineer Clark Kent could rizz you back if he so wished. Meanwhile, Clark tried to forget the fact that the radio line was extremely public. Somewhere in the world, a stream devotee probably sat up straight at this exchange.

You laughed like g-force wasn’t rattling your brain. Or maybe you laughed because it was.

“Knowing you, it’s just ice cream and a kiss goodnight.”

“Were you hoping for something else?”

“Do you have any other suggestions?”

Your dash cam showed that tilt again, the knife-edge balance before the pounce—a maneuver designed to push both your car and Clark’s restraint to their limits. The announcer went wild at your obvious attempt to overtake despite the tight line forming behind the pole position. Clark’s body reacted.

Where the words came from, he didn’t know. At least that was what he’d admit: because in truth, he’d found himself saying them before.

In fantasy, and only in fantasy.

Until now.

Realistically, he’d prefer taking you out for three dates minimum before even considering that. But now was his only chance, and Turn 9 was fast approaching.

“I could teach you how to behave, for once,” he rumbled into the mic.

Someone to his right coughed.

All radio messages were recorded. Somehow, that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was him feeling like this could never be real.

That whatever you saw in him would fade after this, the sparks traded in with large, victorious fireworks. That after the press conferences, after the debriefs, you’d say I was joking or something even more cruel, like how you’d been building towards this all season, and how you were sorry he misunderstood.

Because you loved the game, and you loved winning it even more.

But Clark wanted to help you regardless: not because of the prestige he’d earn, but because he cared for you.

And so he’d do it. Anything. Analyze the calibrations of your car every day. Take your jabs. Watch you flirt. Flirt back at you on radio.

He just wished you knew it was real.

“Deal,” you smiled—again, he didn’t have to see your face to tell, “I’m pushing.”

“Wait, now?” he stammered out of his reverie, “You’re not in position!”

“Then position me, Kent!” you yelled back. The live speedometer told him you were leashing the car at a steady 256 kmph, sitting in Red Bull’s dirty air. “It’s your goddamn job!”

Next to him, other engineers and operators chimed in with reports like they didn’t hear anything inappropriate.

“Deltas optimal. No deviations.”

“Thermals within limit. Confirm to proceed.”

Understanding washed over him right then and there: this was the cusp of everything you’ve worked for. Winning even one race was considered a major achievement, not to mention Silverstone, where this all began. What right did he have to hold you back from this? Everything counted on this final maneuver, and he wasn’t about to tell you to jam the brakes.

He breathed, the exhale slightly shaky. So that’s settled, then.

If you crashed, he’d fly right off to you, secret identity be damned.

He’d do anything to keep you alive.

“High risk, high reward.” Your voice softened.

Are you scared? he wondered. It’s alright. I’m here.

Then came his steady reply.

“On my count.”

“Roger, roger.”

He pictured your mock-salute. The space between his ribs ached.

“Target 300 on dash, then early apex. Plan S on three.”

“Ferrari’s on her tail,” Track Ops warned. Like Clark didn’t see the prowl happening behind you.

“Let him tail! Count!”

“One.”

Eyes trained on the live telemetry of your car. The dial turned up gradually. 298, 299, 300 kmph.

“Two. Keep it tight.”

You did. Wheels nearly touched on both front and rear, he swore he heard the safety car sirens in the distance.

Clark’s fist clenched. Red Bull was in the way, stubbornly blocking your path, but the early apex should negate that.

“Wait for it.”

Just before the 90-degree corner, there it was. A sliver.

“Three. Now!”

You pushed. It wasn’t dramatic—the steering wheel tilted only a fraction of its actual angle, but the acceleration roared alive as you hit top speed on the bend, sparks and smoke flying off the tarmac as you broke free from the locked line, turning earlier. The formation behind you scattered, every driver finding different apexes in the corner.

“Come on!” Perry yelled.

Orbital Blue saddled Car Number 1 now, side by side, before the rush of clean air carried you forward in an aerodynamic push.

Now it was Red Bull who ate your fumes.

The commercial feed blasted alive with the announcer’s enthusiasm. “—Team Orbital comes out of the slipstream! She’s leading!”

The pit wall burst into cheers, but there were still nine more turns until the end. Relief was temporary, fading into baseline tension as you continued to give the other racers a hard time cutting. Clark was with you all the way, talking into the mic.

“Back to Mode 10. You did good.”

“I know,” you laughed back.

“You’re 0.9 seconds ahead,” he read off a graph, trying his best not to smile, but the curve on his lips were widening like the distance between you and the car behind.

You cleared the next turns with a tailwind boon. What came last was the final sector: easy without a Bull blocking your way.

“She’s gonna do it,” Perry hollered, anxiously standing up.

A slashing blur on the track past checkered flags waved in the air, and history was made. The other cars followed too far behind you to matter. Team Orbital’s pit wall erupted in another bout of celebratory hoots twice the volume, while Clark sagged against his chair, breathing once again. His tired eyes watched the screen as the announcer went wild.

“—Team Orbital, winner of this year’s British Grand Prix, passing Red Bull in the final lap! What a moment, ladies and gents—”

There was so much noise in and around his periphery. The crowd in the stands cheered as the last cars flit past. Your second driver James finished at P10 out of 24, earning a point. At least he wasn’t a complete embarrassment.

Just as Clark was about to take off his headset, you spoke into it, playful amidst your victory lap.

“So, about that date…”

III. GRAVITY

The moment you stepped out of your car, there was no moment of calm. It was the storm after the storm.

Cameras flashed, crowds cheered, and you were swept away from one interview to another: trackside, podium, press conference—relentless clamors and sponsored backdrops blurred into something that felt like one long fever dream. Through it all, chaos was the only constant.

The only other constant? The media teasing you about the very public way you asked Clark Kent out on a date.

Every microphone pointed at you seemed to have a spicy question on the other end. How you managed to handle them all after an activity as grueling as professional motorsport racing, you had no clue.

So where are you two going to have dinner?

“I haven’t had the time to look up places. Do you have any recommendations?”

I’m asking for the sake of your fans—are you going on a real date with Mr. Kent?

“If he’ll have me,” punctuated with a light shrug.

How long has this been happening, you and Clark?

“I’m not sure what you mean. Nothing has happened yet, but I’m hoping that tomorrow night, something will.”

The room chuckled good-naturedly, like responding to a joke at a party.

Meanwhile, your answers were all heart-crossed truths.

When you checked your phone in-between being escorted to yet another crowded room, you realized how quickly the internet had picked up the news. Headlines poked fun at your romance-fueled win, some cynically calling it out as a cheap tactic to stir sensation. Instagram was busy speculating your and Clark’s ship name. There were TikToks captioned ‘pov you just asked your chief engineer out mid-race’—that audio, clipped from public comms, was already trending.

You couldn’t blame them. Clark’s voice was smooth and deep even through radio static.

Were you hoping for something else?

I could teach you how to behave, for once.

The volume on your phone was loud enough for your PR manager to cough awkwardly as you walked down the hallway with the rest of the suits, caught off-guard. The suggestive words kept looping.

You locked your phone and bit the inside of your cheek in expectant curiosity.

Was he for real when he said that?

As much as you’d like to confirm with the man himself, the only time you’d been able to catch a glimpse of him was during the debrief. Before the flurry of interviews.

Everyone important had been there: pit wall crew, execs, Marketing, you name it. Clark had dressed down from the official tracksuit to a navy blue Team Orbital T-shirt, its logo stretched deliciously tight across his chest. You found it funny how nobody had addressed the elephant in the room. Perry was all congratulations and rousing speeches, and then Clark himself hyper-focused on data, data, data—but you hadn’t missed the Ferrari red dusting his cheeks, nor his white-knuckled grip around a poor remote control.

That same grip wrapped a cold glass of something during the afterparty, when you finally walked up to him.

To your surprise, he didn’t shy away.

“Any cravings?” you asked from behind the rim of your drink.

“You’re serious?”

He asked so earnestly, your ribcage didn’t have a choice but to ache.

“Mm-hmm.”

Deciding it was too loud, he leaned down to reply above the thrumming bass that masked your heart’s own.

“There’s this place I think you’d like,” his baritone brushed the shell of your ear.

You swallowed, nodding, but your mind pulled you back to the champagne popping earlier that day—and how the violent gush of it looked like a poorly-disguised innuendo.

“Let’s go tomorrow night,” you said back.

Then the party ripped the two of you apart with a tide.

The other drivers had found you, arms flung across your shoulders in boisterous praise while precariously-balanced drinks threatened to spill all over the club floor. Meanwhile, Clark was rushed by one Jimmy Olsen from Marketing and a whole lot of women, their siren-like eyes roaming down Clark’s body as if surprised they hadn’t noticed this man before.

You tried to ignore the rise of jealousy in you, and instead focus on James Barnes’s smirk as you downed a drink together, arms locked, men around you chanting to chug, chug, chug!

There was no time nor space to notice Clark’s gaze on you for the rest of the night.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

The next day rolled around, and you were surprised that Clark held up his end of the deal.

Clark Kent: Good morning. I hope you’re not too hung over. Do you need some Advil?

A gap in-between texts, sent too early for you to have been conscious—like he’d realized you were probably still asleep.

Clark Kent: I’ll come pick you up at 7 for dinner

You bit back a smile past your headache. Pick you up? The man was literally in the next room.

You: see you at 7 You: what should i wear?

A moment later:

Clark Kent: Whatever you want. I’m sure you’ll look beautiful

The way your heart leapt out of your chest was almost violent. When had you last felt so over the moon over something so simple? You chose your outfit with revenge in mind: hem just short enough to show off skin, cute heeled shoes, and an even cuter matching set hidden from view—which, if the steering wheel took you there, would be not-so-hidden at the end of the night.

There was no way for you to hear his heartbeat, but the look on his face when you opened the door at seven said enough.

“I was right,” he exhaled after looking at you from head to toe.

“I hate to say it, but you often are,” you smiled, a thin disguise for your cluttered nerves.

“You look… really good.”

Bless him for finding the strength to breathe that out, the syllables almost shaky.

Calling him handsome would be a disservice. He looked mouthwatering in that crisp shirt and slacks, the sleeves of the former rolled up revealing forearms, enough to be distracting.

You were merely a woman.

“So do you, Clark,” you managed.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

Here you were, four hours into one of the best nights you’ve ever had in your life.

Dinner had been spectacular. To fulfill the prophecy, you got ice cream afterwards before wandering the city, laughing because neither of you could stop making jokes out of your jobs. How could you take the words ‘cockpit’ and ‘wet conditions’ in the same sentence seriously?

And maybe it had been the starry sky or the way you’d dressed differently for the occasion, but for the first time in a long time, both you and Clark existed without arguing—an ease so rare, it should be savored to the very last second.

The season wasn’t over yet.

In two weeks, you’d loop back into the same routine: he’d tell you to stick to your marks like a disappointed parent, and you’d push his buttons in return.

Something shifted when you passed the threshold to the hotel lobby. You thought it was some kind of letdown: a normal reaction for a good time that was about to end.

But as the elevator door closed with just the two of you inside, it felt like moments before you were sealed in the cockpit of your racecar—alone with nothing but compressed air. The charge in the atmosphere made itself clear.

It was anticipation.

The same one that tainted every elevator ride you shared with him before the Silverstone race. Before any race—or even longer than that. You recognized its taste, sharper on your tongue this time, making you tingle with awareness at the gap between his hand and yours.

There was a ding and you nearly jumped under your own skin.

You drowned in the same silence. Stopped at the same floor, walked down the same hallway, ignoring the same electric buzz of bodies: except this time, its crackle reminded you of an overheated engine. One that bristled for attention after being left to run for too long.

One that swore vengeance to detonate.

And yet he pushed it to its limits—and you—by not saying anything, wordless even as you reached your door.

You looked over at him.

He was already looking at you, blue eyes polluted with a darkness you weren’t accustomed to seeing.

He looked intoxicated. You knew he was anything but.

Those eyes bored into you as if they were betting for you to break the silence. As if he was saying show your hand, or I’m not playing.

Passivity wasn’t something you’d normally tolerate in a man, but your bones were telling you he wasn’t just compliant. Something in that look clearly showed he didn’t need encouragement. No, not an inch of the six-something-feet of him needed to be encouraged—you could tell by the slight coil in his forearms, the tightness in his jaw.

What he needed was permission.

Of course, you thought. That was the kind of man Clark was.

A good one.

So you gave it to him.

“Aren’t you going to give me a kiss goodnight?” you breathed, eyes studying his face.

He moved in front of you and you almost thought he was going to. Give you a goodnight kiss, that is: the kind that was sweet as the ice cream you had, light with plenty of room for more. The kind that wouldn’t leave a mark when you flew back to HQ, after which he’d be Clark Kent, Chief Engineer again—and not the Clark Kent you went on a date with, who opened doors for you, who cared about you more than anybody in the team ever did.

But then his hand was on your waist.

Shoes brushed yours as he pressed you gently against your room door. His height cast a shadow over you.

His face leaned down, hovering over yours. You could almost taste him when lips inched closer onto your own parted ones, but nothing came.

No kiss. Just him breathing your air, the slant on his face tentative.

The blue in his eyes were nearly gone, swallowed by dilating pupils. You almost gasped.

There he was, not even an inch away, suspended like he was grappled by some unseen wire only you could release him from.

You could almost see him think. This was a good man who feared he might be doing something wrong.

Because like you, he wasn’t just thinking about a kiss.

…But unlike him, you were quite sure this was right.

“I don’t think I can stop,” he whispered, “once I—”

The words floated in the air, lost. You used yours to help him.

“I don’t want you to.”

He swallowed, the bob in his throat clear as a green light go.

“But I don’t just want you once,” the rasp scraped against your lips, desperate, “not just tonight.”

You looked into his eyes, wondering if yours appeared just as hazy. You nodded.

“Me neither.”

But then he pulled back slightly and you felt cold. He licked his lips. Looked down on the carpeted floor:

“I should probably… take you out to another dinner before we—”

Your hand flew to his jaw, bringing him back to that heady closeness, this time separated by even less of a distance. His sentence devolved into heat, breath fanning your mouth, a sigh escaping him as you slithered your hands up his chest, then neck.

“Plenty of time for that later, Clark,” you whispered sultrily, glad to play the part of a serpent to his Eden, “but for now… we’re just—doing things in a different order, ‘mkay?”

That loose justification almost worked, except he still had something to say. His voice shook slightly—from desire or embarrassment or both, you couldn’t decide—yet the hands on your waist were steady.

“You… really want to go out with me?”

You chuckled.

“I was the one who asked you out in the middle of race, silly.” Fingers snaked back down to his chest—oh, his heart was beating so fast, you could feel it. “Yes, Clark, I’d love to.”

His next words were uncertain. “I thought that you—that it might’ve been for publicity.”

You hummed, toying with the second button of his white shirt.

“Rage-baiting you in simulator sessions doesn’t do anything for publicity,” you murmured, eyes low on his broad chest, “Neither does offering to share a shower with you—and I’ve asked you so many times…”

The groan he let out rumbled underneath your hands first before you heard it. Warm palms crawled up your sides, stroking your curves until one of them cupped the side of your face, directing you to look at him.

His blue eyes on you rushed a split-second moment of emotional sobriety amid the physical intoxication. It sank in slow, like a quicksand swallowed it, powerful as the force that kept you orbiting around each other.

This was really happening.

“Kiss me already,” you breathed.

When he did, it wasn’t urgent—not yet. The tilt of his face was patient, the brush of his lips tentative. But once they pressed into yours, he leaned forward like an unyielding force. Your back was flush against cool, painted wood, making you shiver.

The slight part of your lips wasn’t enough to tempt him. His patience was otherworldly, movements unhurried.

Like he was trying to make this last.

You’d never been good at discipline. Lips kissed his: once, twice, thrice, as though trying to coax him out of his impervious temperance. It didn’t work. Not when his hand caged your jaw, subjecting your motion to stillness under his pace.

“Open the door,” he husked.

He sounded impatient then, except he didn’t stop kissing you. Your fingers blindly dug into your purse, scrambling for that thin card. A relieved sigh escaped you when you found it—the beep it emitted yielding the knob of the door when he twisted it. You nearly stumbled inside, if not for his hand on your back.

Then you were pressed against the door again, this time on the other side, and he was all over you.

Clark kissed and kissed and kissed until you were sure you couldn’t breathe. Whenever you tried to, his mouth covered yours. You were dizzy within seconds—it terrified you a little, considering how even ge-forces didn’t affect you much—but the sensation made you melt against him even more.

Hands grasped at his biceps. His chest met yours.

A palm cupped your hip and your toes left the floor.

You should be surprised at how easily he picked you up. His lips distracted you.

“Clark—”

“You drive me insane,” he mouthed into your neck, teeth light as they scraped your skin. Your breath hitched.

“It was the only way to get your attention,” you answered weakly.

He looked up at you, glasses slightly askew. If you’d been a little bit more lucid, you’d have sensed the offense hidden in his gaze—the gaze that never took itself off of you in the name of doing his job, or a secret reason you were about to discover.

“You always had it.”

His reply made you kiss him the way you wanted to—hard, eager.

A weight landed heavy on your stomach.

He wasn’t reciprocating.

In fact, he moved even slower, if that was possible.

You whined, hands pawing at the front of his shirt, wordlessly asking for more. Apparently he’d reverted back to your dear Chief Engineer, because this Clark Kent didn’t bend at your whims.

No. He stood tall, a rock wall in front of you, hand on your jaw letting him kiss you slow, the other steadying your hip despite your heeled legs already hooking on his lower back. The press of his weight kept you at bay the softest way a man could: you were left stewing in your own need.

In return, he took what he wanted, how he wanted.

When his tongue finally slipped into your mouth, you moaned.

Hands began to clutch at his shoulders. A soft mewl escaped you. He huffed, trading breaths with yours, the fingers on your face coaxing your jaw to open more than you already did.

“Always gotta be the bigger person with you,” he grunted into the kiss while big hands roamed—one to your chest, the other up the hem of your dress, “You don’t think I want you just as bad?”

“Then why won’t you—ah—” you gasped, feeling him knead, “—hurry up?”

The answer was plain. Where you thrived in the rush of blood, he was the one who pulled you back. Leashed you to commands designed for your own good. His commands. Breathe and think, he’d once said during a stressful lap.

Funny how you could do neither under his touch.

“So I can savor this…”

His answer was flint on gravel, low and rough while fingers traveled on your body with restrained want. You were left tilting your head back against the door, trembling at the words he fed directly into your ear.

“…Savor you.”

“Clark, please,” you exhaled into the air. He stole it with a kiss.

Its sweetness pained you. He parted before you could deepen it.

“No. Need to teach you a lesson.”

Cool air rushed as he pulled the zipper of your dress down. Your chest heaved, nipples pebbling as the fabric slowly came loose—not quite off, but certainly not on, either.

He stood close enough for your noses to brush.

“I told you, remember?” he said, “You need to learn how to behave.”

You did remember. How could you not? Even if you deleted it from your memory, which you wouldn’t ever want to, the words were recorded in official F1 radio history.

For one second, you wondered if this was what it meant to poke the bear. Where was the mask of clumsy stoicism he wore while he did his job; the lovely flush of his cheeks when you purred a reply loaded with double meaning? He was pink now, yes, but there was no sign of the meekness that usually came with the color.

Then he moved, and you found yourself hanging on to him.

Footsteps carried you to the ensuite. He lifted you with just one of his hands, a fact you registered when heels came loose and clattered off mid-journey. His other twisted the door knob open.

Clark didn’t let your feet touch anything until the soft sheets, laying you down on the very place you often thought of him. His body followed suit. Muscular arms bracketed your head, weight landing soft on the mattress.

He leaned down and stared straight at you.

“Tell me you’ll listen to me.”

Your lips parted.

“No back-talk,” he husked, “I know what’s good for you.”

Ice ran down your spine at his words, though to say the sensation was unpleasant would be a lie. You tried to respond.

Oh, no. Where’d your voice go?

“Say it for me, sweetie.”

That nickname did the trick. You whimpered—a true mark that he understood your reward-based motivation enough to give you just a taste. It landed like an arrow to your heart: he could apparently see the effect he had, because he was smiling at you.

Soft, gentle. As if you were a fumbling kitten and not someone consumed with want.

“Come on. Tell me you’ll be good for me.”

Your insides melted, and so did the last dregs of your cultivated independence. You snaked your arms around his neck again, a serpentine effort to appeal to the side of him you so desperately wanted to please.

“I’ll be good, I promise,” you whispered.

That handsome smile widened, eyes half-lidded.

“That’s my girl.”

Heat zapped south. Your instinct to tease him was fried into nonexistence along with your nerves.

You could say it. Could murmur already calling me your girl after one date, Clarkie? up at his towering form, but you didn’t. The risk of upsetting him was too big of a loss, however imagined.

Tonight, you wanted to be good for him.

Then cold washed over you as he slipped your dress off. It got discarded to who knows where. The chill didn’t last long.

Because he saw what you had on underneath, and his gaze burned. Jaws locked.

“Wore this for you,” you admitted.

He groaned at that, hands tracing lace, partly sheer and wholly delicate. Blue eyes darkened past a point you didn’t know possible.

“Can I take ‘em off?” he breathed, eyes still raking down to your underwear, chest heaving at the ribbon sitting innocently at its center.

You didn’t answer—not with words, anyway. Just sat up and guided his hand to your back. His mouth pressed kisses on your temple and hair as he got rid of the last things that hid you from him, pretty as they were. He sat on his haunches, studying your reclined body under the dim glow of a night light, now bare.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.

His lips locked with yours again, deeper this time, as if it allowed more of him to fuse into you. But his mouth didn’t stay for long: he moved down your body in a hungry path, sucking a mark into your neck and collarbone before capturing a hardened peak with heat and greed.

You writhed under him—futile thanks to his hand on your hip, the other groping at your chest before switching his attentions. The frame of his glasses brushed goosebumps onto your skin. Fingers darted desperately for some kind of anchor; you found it combing through his hair as his tongue laved and laved until yours nearly lolled out your mouth.

He slid his arm around your waist, and latched.

You cried out. It made him worse, humming as he sucked and nipped and played with you until he was sure your breaths were broken into little sobs.

Eyes locked with yours right as two fingers brushed your core.

Your body twitched in response, as if a simple touch—one you’d imagined more times than you bothered counting—was enough to set you alight. And it was: because it was his fingers that traced up the seam of your slick, not yours. His were callused ever-so-slightly, bigger, and entirely too warm, even when all he did was collect what you were leaking onto his fingerpads, smearing it onto your clit.

His mouth was still on your tit.

“Clark, please just—nggh—!”

Before you could fully beg, he’d read your mind and sank a finger in you.

What you thought would be mercy ended up not being enough—maybe you’d so obviously clenched your want in Morse code, because a second plunged into you in response, and then you gasped, the stretch telling you this was what you wanted to be.

Full.

And to think this was only two of his fingers.

He panted, pulling back to watch you.

“So wet,” the words floated, just as lost as his eyes when they locked on the way your cunt swallowed his digits, “So tight.”

His hand rocked experimentally. Your back replied with an arch, chasing the friction.

“Ah—”

He pumped in. Out. In again, curling in a way that made your head loll to one side. Clark stared all the while, took in the way your skin began to mist with sweat the more his fingers sank into your walls, memorized your moans when he brushed a gummy spot—each one chipped at his thinning patience.

Clark licked his lips, brows knitted, almost with concern.

“Think we’re gonna have to add another, baby.”

The third sank in almost too easily. You gasped at the burn, quickly melting into the mattress underneath you at the feel of him inside—just his fingers, but still much deeper than you’d ever hope to reach by yourself, no matter how hard you’d thought of him while you did.

“Shh,” he cooed against your ear. “You’re okay, sweetie. Just need to open her up for me.”

Okay seemed like too cheap a word to describe the sensation. You squirmed into his hand and he chuckled, eyes dark.

“Alright then. One, just like this, ‘mkay?”

“Please,” you begged.

He was kind enough to oblige, thrusting three in and out of you languidly. The world was quiet approaching the midnight hour, which only served to amplify the slick, wet noises as he finally sped up, your juices already making a mess between your legs.

He hit that spot again. It was too late to stifle the sharp cry that ripped out of you. You didn’t know who stayed in the other room next to yours—you only prayed they weren’t home.

Clark Kent was either the most compassionate person on Earth, or the meanest man who ever lived: he’d bent down and sucked on your tit again, his thumb rubbing your clit.

The outpouring of earnestness with which he moved was enough to send you tumbling over the edge. But perhaps tumbling wasn’t a fair description.

He was dragging you to your peak.

“Clark,” you warned, voice hoarse as you gripped the sheets—his shoulders—the sheets again.

“Hm?” he hummed around your nipple, lighting up your nerves beyond what you thought possible. The white that blurred the edges of your consciousness nearly rendered you speechless as you struggled to form the words.

“‘M gonna—” a thrust in, and your vision blanked, “cum, ‘m gonna cum…”

He moaned at that, loud and shameless, the vibrations reverberating from his mouth to your chest, then to your spine and all the way to your cunt—your hips swayed, craving more.

“So warm,” he mouthed against your tit, “C’mon. Give me one. Want you to come for me—”

As if your body complied, you arched, twisting as your walls clenched and gushed around his fingers. Clark muffled a low sound against your skin, eyes feasting on how your limbs shook and your lips fell into a perfect ‘O’.

It wasn’t just the sight of you that opened an abyssal appetite in him—his fingers felt it, felt you, and from there came a need to taste what you’d given him.

You were laying in your own mess, skin sweat-slick when his fingers left you. Scarcely sentient from the ecstatic buzz that still frayed your nerves, your hazy eyes watched as he took all three fingers in his mouth.

“Mmgh—hh,” his face melted, gaze locked with yours as his tongue wrapped one final swipe, a salacious pop at the release. “Gosh, baby. You’re so…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t let you watch his face as his hands flipped you onto your stomach. It should be alarming, how easily he tossed your weight around.

“Clark…? What are you—”

He pushed a pillow under your chin. Kissed the top of your head before peeling his chest from your back.

“In case you need to keep it down.”

You twisted slightly to look behind you, still confused, but then his lips trailed down your back and realization washed over a second too late.

He was already spreading your cheeks.

“Look at you,” his voice rumbled far too close to where you were still twitching. “So pretty.”

The pillow made sense then, because when his mouth was on your cunt, you buried your face in it and screamed.

For someone seemingly worried about noise complaints, Clark was entirely thoughtless about his own noise. He tugged your torso towards him, the other hand making sure you were open as though he needed space to pour murmurs into your cunt, syllable after rasped syllable.

“Taste so good. Can’t believe you’re—mmh—letting me do this.”

You weren’t sure where your first orgasm faded and the second climbed. Even more unsure how you’d ended up this way: stomach pressed on the bed, hips up, your face buried in a pillow while he dragged the flat of his tongue up your leaking pussy, slurping like you were dessert, eating like the two of you didn’t go out to dinner earlier.

“C-Clark—” your hips jerked back without warning even to you, grinding against his face.

“She’s getting wetter, baby, how’s it possible?” he parted with a pop, scarcely giving you time to breathe before diving back in.

Something slipped between your folds. Something that wasn’t his finger.

Your legs shook.

While he kept you spread, his tongue licked up your seam and into your cunt. The intrusion birthed a second heartbeat in your core. Walls clenched. He hummed in return, pursuing deeper as you were dragged back to the climb you’d barely recovered from, the onslaught teetering on the edge of too much.

His words barely made sense with his mouth against your cunt—you didn’t hear them as clearly as you felt them.

“God, sweetie, I could stay here forever.”

The frame of his glasses grazed your ass and made you buck backward.

“Take it o-oh-off,” you managed to breathe out.

“No,” he answered, licking up into you, “wanna see you. Look, she’s clenching.”

A finger dipped into you, in to the knuckle and out to your clit, before his mouth descended to replace it.

If he kept this up, you’d be throwing your toys away in the morning.

You kept your face in the pillow, a stuttered moan spilling into the plush of it as he continued to eat past your orgasm and the tremble of your thighs. While you were busy gasping for dear life, disoriented, drool escaped from the side of your lips, forming a damp spot.

He lavished praises while his hands kept you open for him to take: “Good girl, good, good, girl” muttered as his tongue greedily gathered the drip of your honey, cleaning you up in the dirtiest way possible.

The moment he loosened his deadlock around your abdomen, you sunk into the mattress, limbs limp and shaky, blissfully unaware of what was going on behind you.

Clark watched your body melt in the dim, the rise and fall of your shoulders betraying the state of your lungs—lungs that trained so hard to remember how to breathe while rounding a corner at top speed, collapsed by just his mouth. Your hair was a mess. Sweat clung onto your skin and seeped into the sheets. Even with your back facing him, he’d never seen you look so spent.

He caught the generous glisten of slick on your inner thighs and grew hungry again.

You yelped in surprise when his hands dragged your legs to the edge of the bed. They dangled right before he flipped you onto your back again. Deep blue scanned your ruin—you glimpsed at a vein in his neck, the one that often appeared when his patience was tested.

Then his knees dropped down and he knelt in the space between your thighs.

Your open mouth was about to protest, but the sound quickly melted into a whimper as he hoisted pleasure-numbed calves over his shoulders.

“‘M sorry, honey. Want one more. Just stay still for me, okay?” he said, lips kissing your sensitive cunt again.

You couldn’t move even if you wanted to.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

One more turned out to be a lie. Clark had made you cum a third and a fourth time: the third on his tongue, before sinking his fingers into you, all while drunkenly cooing “You can do it, baby, you said you’d be good for me, didn’t you? I know, ‘m sorry, ‘m so sorry,” against your pussy. Your body obeyed for the fourth time despite the impossibility.

Now you laid in the aftermath, useless like a worn-out tire, catching your breath while he held you in his arms. Your back rested against his clothed chest.

Fuck, you thought, he hadn’t even undressed yet.

He’d popped his fingers out of his mouth not too long ago, cleaning out your taste—and then he murmured all sorts of things. Praises, gratitude, everything in between. The slope of his nose that had bullied your clit pressed against your cheek, your temple, your crown, placing kisses to punctuate words.

“Thank you. So beautiful. God, so perfect for me. My perfect girl.”

But if the hard bulge pressing against your ass and the damp fabric concealing him were anything to go by, Clark Kent was far from done.

If you wanted to survive this, you had to gain the upper hand.

It took everything, but you turned in his arms, hips sitting on top of his. He groaned at the grind of you, and that open mouth was the perfect opportunity to slide into a kiss, hands fisting the front of his shirt. The world spun—the kiss both grounded you and made the spin worse. Tongues swept, tasting each other. His fingers traced a lazy line down the nape of your neck, your spine, until the curve of your ass, earning a shiver from you.

While he palmed your tit, your fingers slowly unbuttoned his shirt. Not all the way through; just enough for you to slip both hands underneath and study his body by touch.

He was sturdy. More than he looked. Why an engineer would be so built, you couldn’t care less—right now, you just wanted to drink him in.

So you dragged your mouth down from his jaw to his sternum. Your hands trailed a path for your lips to follow, eventually stilling at his belt.

His exhale of your name was ragged.

Belt off, pants yanked down, you let out a sigh as his boxer-briefs came to view.

Cobalt blue, a pool of wetness darkening the color at the front. If circumstances were different, you’d make fun of how his underwear matched Team Orbital, but right now there are more important things.

Thing, to be exact. It rested under soft fabric, except restless was what it was, hard and twitching even when your gaze had been the only thing to brush against it.

He was big. You didn’t need formulas to tell you that.

But just to be certain, you peeled the waistband of his boxer-briefs down.

His breath stuttered.

There were other things you confirmed aside from his size—which was about nine mouthwatering inches, thicker than even the most ridiculous thing you’d seen online. The dim of the room muddled colors, but you could tell the shade of him was pretty: pink all over, darkening at the tip. Veins ran down his length like rivers, subtle except for one that was larger than the rest.

You traced that one with a finger. His cock twitched alive—more than it already was.

He called for you again. You didn’t look at him, merely brushing featherlight strokes up and down his shaft, humming.

“G-G—od, you don’t h-have to.”

Clark was a picture of abandon: head thrown back against pillows, dark curls tousled against the pillow that once swallowed your breathy moans. It lit an urge in you: half curious, half vengeful.

A window to overtake, metaphorically speaking.

From his arms loose on your body to the pool of lust in his eyes, it looked like he had no dog in whatever fight you sought to instigate. In fact, the way he waited patiently signaled that he was the dog in question.

“Don’t have to what?” you replied with false innocence, already leaning down to breathe hot air on his tip. He writhed. Restrained. Disciplined.

“Don’t have to—ngh—”

The spit from your puckered lips dripped right on his tip. Then your fingers wrapped around his cock, spreading the slick before pumping slowly, and Clark turned speechless, mouth open with nothing but noises to offer.

Delicious noises.

“Baby,” he sighed, voice thin.

“Hm?”

Because you were impatient before anything else, your tongue lolled out to take his tip, letting its weight rest in your mouth. A violent shiver wracked his body, followed by a stuttered cry. You giggled at the sight. The vibrations made it worse for him; or was it better? His hands found your hair, fingers firm on your scalp, pulling a moan out of you even when he hadn’t moved.

“Don’t have to what, Clark?” you teased, swirling once around his already leaking head.

“Don’t have to… do this.”

Yet he moaned when you took an inch deeper.

“I already have your cock in my mouth, silly.”

Clark hoisted himself up on elbows, gaze trained on you as though he couldn’t believe that you were in fact telling the truth. But actions convinced him more than words ever could: the heat of your throat as you took all of him in sent lighting up his spine; the cavern of your mouth so hot, so real, and so fucking perfect.

You let go with a pop.

“Unless… you don’t want me to?”

He shook his head. “No, no, don’t stop, d-don’t stop.”

Despite your eagerness, you learned a thing or two from his torture. You leaned back down. Bobbed slow. Kissed the tip at the agonizing up, breathing on it before the dive, letting his blunt tip hit the back of your throat. That was where you’d hum and hollow your cheek.

As a reward, his spine curled in, weak, almost like a sunflower facing the thing that sustained it.

You let him grip your hair, smiling at how good he was: where most men would crumble and fuck your face with that kind of hold, Clark held on to control. Docile. Patient.

It made you want to ruin him even more.

“Please,” he begged, low and shaky.

Which was why you took him out of your mouth entirely, licking your lips.

He whined, a thin and reedy thing that kicked your pulse to the eighth gear.

“Why—”

The rest of his sentence didn’t make it out, because you were on top of him, a hand keeping his cock steady while you slid it between your folds.

Not in. Just between.

Twin moans tangled in the feverish air. You relished the way he crumbled: subtle, like a slippery slope that forewarned a landslide. The chassis of his infuriating tolerance finally began to wear off with each pass of friction as your slick pussy traced his ridges, ending with his tip kissing your abused clit.

You rode him like that and watched him fall apart slowly.

Lips red like stewed cherry, parted wide. Eyes hypnotized by your movements, drinking in the way his cock gathered your juices, shining the more you glided on him.

His glasses fogged up.

Your mouth twitched into a smirk.

“Want me to put it in?” you purred, a wave of hunger rising in you.

He nodded like he was drunk. There was no focus in his stare. Drool began to leak out the side of his mouth as he looked up at you like you were the only thing he understood aside from the blinding pleasure.

“Yes,” he breathed.

Leaning forward, you nipped at his bottom lip. Once. Stern.

“Then beg for it.”

His hands held your arms—they looked so small under his grip. Meanwhile, your palm snaked up to the side of his face, feigning kindness before the grasp you had on his chin turned commanding. You made him up at you.

“Please,” he whispered.

You kept pace, allowing his tip to breach just a little before pulling back out. His cock glistened with your essence and his precum, wet slides filling the air with debauched noises.

“C’mon. Use your words.”

Shclick. Shclick. Shclick.

“Fu—ghh—ah, baby, please, please put it in,” he strangled out a pitchy whine, “I—hngh—can’t—”

“Good boy,” you huffed, overcome with a strange mix of delight and frustration.

When you finally sank onto him, you pretended it was out of mercy and not your own need for more.

Four orgasms didn’t make his nine inches easier to take; there was the girth to consider, splitting you open more than his fingers did. You couldn’t hide the strain on your face as you slid down slow, lips parted at the distracting burn of the stretch.

And then all of him was inside of you.

Both your head and his lolled forward to look, as if the sensation wasn’t convincing enough.

“Hah—you okay?” he groaned, more vibration than voice.

You nodded. Bounced once.

The strength in your thighs nearly melted, but you weren’t a racer only in name. You’ve trained. Practiced. Pushed your body past further limits than this.

The expression on his face both weakened your will and solidified it: you were just as lost as he, and yet you wanted to put him through worse.

You moved up to the tip, down to the hilt. Slow only because that was what you could afford—any more and you’d find yourself ruined before he was. The grind shot ecstasy to your brain, nerves firing at each roll, relief laced with the demand for more.

Soon, you told yourself, wondering if you’d get used to being stuffed like this. You’d ride him hard and fast once you were sure you could.

But Clark had other plans.

The world spun. Your back hit the mattress, body once again underneath him. The coil of his muscles was clearer from here. So was his molten gaze.

In one thrust, Clark buried himself fully inside of you.

You gasped, feeling him in your throat, eyes wide.

“Clark—”

“Is this what you—hah—hoped would happen?”

He did it again, sinking down faster than you thought you could take. Your brain shorted.

“H-huh? Ngh!”

“In that interview,” he continued, ragged as he fucked you slow and deep, “you said you hoped something will happen. You and me. Is this what you wanted, sweetheart?”

He didn’t make sense. Not while he impaled you like that. Yet there was kindness hidden in the pace, because if he went any faster, you weren’t sure you’d remain conscious.

“I don’t know what you’re ta-ah-alking about,” you managed to pant.

Clark didn’t honor you with a direct response other than another thrust in you, groaning in your ear.

“‘If he’ll have me’?” he quoted, almost roaring, “I wanted you first, since the very, gu—hh, fucking beginning—”

It should be embarrassing how fast the knot formed itself in your lower gut. You clawed onto his bare back. His shoulders were sweaty. When had he taken off his shirt? Nothing made sense anymore. Only the throb of his shaft bullying itself into you, your hipbones kissing his at each downstroke.

He groaned your name.

You had no governance over what came out of your mouth; no power to bite back the keen “Clark, please”, no intention to hide the little mewl that slipped when he filled you.

He was the same, or worse: mouthing at your neck in a poor attempt to silence a moan when he wasn’t feeding honesty that tasted like filth straight into your ear.

“See what you do to me?” he groaned, “how—haa—hard I get around you?”

Your throat bobbed, the column of it exposed wholly to him. Hands grabbed his biceps, while his caged your hips.

“Clark, ’m gonna—”

The sound that ripped out of his throat was growly and dark at the impossible clench of you around him.

“Come? Me too, baby,” he gasped, “You feel so, so good…”

A hand slid up the back of your thigh, pressing it to your chest to sink his cock deeper than you thought possible. Colors assaulted your vision even as you closed your eyes: a heatmap of pleasure shifted behind eyelids as he leaned down for an open-mouthed kiss, trading spit and the taste of each other just as his blunt tip bullied into that spot.

The one that made you scream.

“Fuck, Clark, I’m cumming—!”

So was he, the piston of his hips relentless as he pound-pound-pounded you through the finish line. You moaned out nonsense into his mouth, babbling “please, fuck, so good” over and over until the words melted into nothing but hoarse vowels. The clench and gush of you drove him mad, showering you with sobs of “good girl, gonna c-come inside, please, can I?” like he wasn’t already set on doing so.

Your response was a broken yes, yes, yes, and he thanked you so profusely you’d think you saved his life—when in fact he nearly ended yours at the first spurt.

It was hot, bursting against what had to be your cervix as he rutted deeper into you. Your greedy pussy clenched as if drinking him in, but even when your breath finally slowed, his spend didn’t.

Clark choked out your name against your neck, white-knuckling your hips as he ground—you arched, feeling him fuck his cum to parts of your body you didn’t know existed. You panted, glancing down: fuck, it was leaking, heavy driblets of it, and yet his cock still gave you more.

He was watching, too, blue eyes glazed with fascinated disbelief. Like he wasn’t expecting so much.

And then he smiled.

“Look. She’s drooling for me, sweetheart.”

Lust catapulted up your brain, disabling thought and memory. The only thing you understood was right now: how full you were from his cock and cum. Your chest burst at him kissing your face: eyes, cheek, nose, lips—but the ulterior motive behind such sweetness lived in his hands.

Broad, warm palms tugged and twisted you, coaxing you to lie on your side. He plastered his body against your, chest on back, fingers already working your thigh open and hooking under a knee.

You felt it then—the sensation of him coming alive inside of you as your walls twitched.

On the circuit, he was always pushing for a pit stop.

In bed, he was the opposite.

“Clark,” you croaked. What it meant, you weren’t sure. You couldn’t think.

Thankfully, his next words were one syllable each, quite simple to grasp even at your dumb state. He spoke them against your ear, a low promise dripping behind his voice—like high-octane fuel, nearly making you explode.

“I’m not done with you.”

swallowing, you turned your vision back to the movie.

the three of you had fallen into this routine without ever meaning to. long nights blurred and warped into even longer mornings, the sun becoming an awful reminder that you could not spend eternity wrapped up in the amenity of your team-mates; the amenity of your best friends. somehow, though, it became normal for you to crash here, to eat whatever dick burned, to listen to whatever foreign songs kori hummed beneath her breath while you tried not to gawk too longingly.

again, it was easy. familiar.

until it wasn't.

peeking her head out from the crook of her boyfriend's neck, kori tore her vision from the television, allotting it to your frame. hearty cheeks dimpled, and a finger of hers crooked, motioning you closer.

your heart skipped a few beats, though you did not hesitate at kori's silent command. scooting closer, your thigh brushed against hers, palms resting at her ankles. it was light; unthinking. but perhaps it was not so unthinking, because when kori's body seemed to lean into your touch, her smile deepened.

your name echoed gently throughout the room, the sound falling from kori's lips with a certain sort of care that ripped itself through your soul. "you are always so tense after missions," kori commented, quiet enough to almost be hidden underneath dick's laughter at her comment, "even now, resting against me-- your shoulders are like stone."

you hummed, willing the heat that began crawling up your neck to dissipate. "it's the adrenaline," you lied, referring to your nightly patrol, "it'll wear off, kor,"

despite your inadvertent protests, kori's palms still found themselves running along your forearms, all the way up and backwards towards your shoulder blade. "may i?" she asked, green eyes blinking curiously at you. her gaze lingered heavily, question building tensely within the air-- as if her hands on your body were the answer to the inquisitiveness that enveloped her now.

dick glanced over-- damp strands of hair (he had refused to dry his hair properly after his post-mission shower) sticking stubbornly to his forehead. his gaze, you noticed, carried not only something akin to amusement-- but perhaps the same curiosity his girlfriend harnessed as well. permission.

the movie rambled on in the background as you offered her a simple nod.

kori's thumb grazed your bicep, heat prickling beneath her touch. "it is strange," she mused, tilting her head to the side, "when i place my hands on you, your heart-rate quickens," the alien tossed a look behind her to dick, "much like dick's did when i first met him as robin." she swallowed, touch still scorching against your arm, "do you know why that is? perhaps it is a human trait i am unfamiliar with,"

behind her head, you watched dick's face contort into an expression that seemed uncomfortable to anyone who didn't know the man-- but you knew him, and you knew he was fighting back a grin.

your lips parted after a few moments of silence. "i think you know why." the urge to roll your eyes washed over you-- for kori's naivety did not equate stupidity. and in this moment, as you knew koriand'r all too well too, you knew she was weaponizing neither.

the laugh that fell from her lips only confirmed your suspicions. "maybe," she conceded eventually, "but perhaps i want to hear you say it yourself."

envy punctured your lungs as you watched dick raise kori's other hand to his lips, dusting thoughtless kisses along her skin.

"there's nothing to say," you answered simply, ignoring the blood rushing to your cheeks.

"nothing to say," dick echoed, tongue running along the inside of his cheek, as if to himself, "you're not a very good liar, babe,"

you shot the man a glare, nails digging crescents into the plush of your palms; it came out weaker than you wanted though, and landed truthfully instead of coldly-- your expression mirroring a child who'd gotten caught arm's deep into a cookie jar. "what're you even talking about?"

"you," he laughed, the sound raising goose-bumps along your skin, "you get all quiet when you're trying to hide something-- you've always been like that."

the reminder of how long you've known each other-- how well dick grayson knew you-- caused something to churn within your belly. you opened your mouth to protest, brows knitting-- before kori's hand slipped from your shoulder to your jaw, thumb brushing your bottom lip. whatever words you had had, vanished.

"i don't believe it's about lying," kori said, voice laced with amusement, "more just an admission of... uncertainty."

"uncertain?" dick asked, leaning forward to rest his chin on kori's shoulder, eyes lingering intensely on your frame. "'bout what?"

kori nodded, fiery curls bouncing softly. "about what she wants,"

"what i want?" you questioned, a laugh falling from your throat all too shortly, all too breathless.

both kori and dick ignored you, eyes flickering towards each other momentarily-- before landing back on your frame.

you squirmed underneath their gaze, suddenly all too aware of the way your face fit perfectly in kori's palm, and the way dick's eyes scanned your body-- analyzing. dark lashes resting along his cheek, ocean irises locking onto yours again. you shivered.

"this isn't fair," you tried, face contorting into something desperate.

that got both of their attention, all four eyes snapping upwards to yours. "what isn't, love?" kori questioned.

your veins pulsed beneath your skin, finger-tips tingling and ears prickling with heat. "you're talking about me as if i'm not even here," you voice was unwavering, impressively, as kori's digit still pressed lightly against your bottom lip, "you're... acting as if you know how i feel, and you're laughing about it--!"

dick's tongue darted outwards, wetting his lips. "we're not laughing at you." his voice was steady. certain. believable.

"then what are you doing? if not making fun of me," you questioned, eyes lowering and voice trailing off.

"you are misunderstood," kori acknowledged solemnly. "we never intended to make you upset-- all i am is curious about the way you are," she admitted, "curious about the way you get so... bashful, around dick and i."

"i don't get bashful," you snorted, though your voice was thin and unconvincing-- even to your own ears.

dick grinned, jutting his chin forward gently, towards you. "yes you do," he fought, "like right now."

heat bloomed across the expanse of your skin-- your tank-top now painfully revealing.

"you are our best friend," kori continued, "it is only natural i inquire about the way you make us feel,"

"i... what?" you asked, confusion soaking into your expression. "the way i make you both feel?"

"for i have noticed that you are only reciprocal in these feelings." kori finished, ignoring your question. "am i wrong?"

you swallowed deeply, your skin flushing in places you weren't even aware could heat up. "i--"

"what do you want?" dick interjected, voice low. "be honest with yourself," he murmured, circling back to kori's previous comment.

"you're both ridiculous," you finally managed, jaw tightening, "i don't want anything. everything you're... accusing me of, it's adrenaline, i told you."

"so, the way that you stare at kori when you think i'm not looking-- are you saying that's adrenaline, too?" dick asked.

shiiit.

"i don't stare at--" you sighed, "you're imagining it."

"am i?" he asked, tone maddeningly gentle.

kori pressed her thumb harder into your lip, a reminder of the reality of your situation. dick's chin remained glued to kori's shoulder, his gaze warm and taunting-- unrelenting, just as his girlfriend's.

"you're allowed to look at me," kori finally offered, voice impossibly low. her own eyes traced your lips in full now, unashamed in her gawking. "you're allowed to look at dick, too."

"you're allowed to want us," dick added on, blinks slow. purposeful.

you swallowed. "it's selfish."

"it's hot." dick corrected.

"we wouldn't have brought it up like this, had it been upsetting to either of us," he reassured, reaching one of his hands across the small gap between you and kori, his fingers finding the strap of your tank-top, fiddling idly.

"we know what we want-- and it is not to play with your feelings-- so just say with words that it's what you want, too," kori urged calmly, "because your body has said it for you for far longer than you realize."

silence settled heavily between the three of you. the kind that buzzed, electric and full of static. kori's thumb was still against your lip, her skin warm and steady; for the first time tonight, you hadn't felt like there was an insatiable desire burning between your bones that could not be cured. for the first time in weeks, you felt surprisingly close to the edge of contentment-- like this was the crescendo of every yearning thought that wafted throughout your mind, like every flip of your stomach, every jitter within your finger-tips, every throb of your cunt, was finally being answered.

you didn't feel ashamed to be in love with your best friends.

not as you watched kori breathe-- the slow rise of her chest, the curve of her mouth softening. softening as if something inside of her had finally decided that this was a line she wanted to cross. then, so gently you almost missed it, her hand migrated from your jaw to the side of your neck. your pulse raced underneath her palm.

kori's touch was no longer questioning; it was certain.

"may i?" she asked again, quieter this time-- but there wasn't really a question in it.

your answer was barely a nod, but it was enough.

kori leaned forward. the scent of her shampoo-- sweet, intoxicating, something akin to bitter-sweet summer evenings-- hit before anything else. her lips brushed the corner of your mouth, feather-light. not quite a kiss, but something that made your pulse stutter.

from somewhere behind her, dick exhaled-- a low sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. completion, perhaps.

you were not certain who moved-- whether it was you, desperately clambering yourself into kori's lap, or kori, lifting you easily on top of her-- but you had found yourself straddling the woman. both of your thighs wrapped around her hips, your mouths still connected as you kissed without regard for anything else.

it was growing messy, reckless-- your tongues had not waited to meet, and spit dribbled from the corners of your mouth. the sound of your kisses battled the noise of the long forgotten movie, wet and obscene in comparison.

kori hummed against your lips, her palms finding purchase on the plush of your ass-- holding you impossibly close to her body, tilting her head ever so slightly to deepen the kiss. deepen how close the both of you were, deepen how tightly you both were to be infused with the other's soul.

your own hands had snaked their way to the nape of kori's neck-- fingers dancing along scorching hot baby-hairs, tugging at the roots of the mane of curls that made kori kori.

dark lashes of hers batted gently against your cheek as she continued to suck on your tongue-- sounds emanating wildly from the both of you. vaguely, dick huffed beside you; grumbling under his breath, hand running through the dark locks that slowly dried on top of his scalp.

you attempted to pay the man no mind as you and kori continued to kiss; her hands wandering from you ass to your hips, briefly squeezing and rocking you against her crotch-- you whined, bucking your own hips in response.

what little friction you were craving burned between the both of you. your cunt was throbbing beneath the fabric of your pajama pants, panties dampening with each swipe of kori's tongue along your own. the woman beneath you was not shy in her showcase of affections and desire either-- hips rocking upwards into you with the same amount of fervor coursing through her veins as well.

an evil grin broke out across your face as your hands jumped from the back of kori's head to her tits-- groping and squeezing the fat against her chest overtop of her own tank-top; she gasped, and you took the opportunity to tilt your head and stick your tongue down her throat even deeper than before.

the scene was filthy. with the movie long forgotten, heat radiated off of both you and the alien in extraordinary waves.

if only dick had allowed you to continue; big, sturdy palms found your hair and yanked (as gently as he could, given the action) you backwards and off of the alien. opening your eyes in shock, you were met with a prettily flushed koriand'r, and a mean looking dick grayson-- who, despite the cockiness dripping from his face-- had a slight dusting of pink scattered along his cheeks as well.

"m'getting jealous over here," he murmured, blue irises darting towards your swollen lips, before he brought your face to his.

rolling your eyes, you kissed him back; it was sweet, at first. almost hesitant-- before dick remembered he had just watched you and his girlfriend make-out, and you felt as the rest of his resolve crumbled.

where kori had licked your bottom lip in a sweet command for you to open your mouth, dick bit. it was quick and fairly painless-- but the fat of your mouth still tingled as you gasped at the action, feeling the sudden intrusion of dick's tongue in you own mouth.

the grasp dick had on your jaw was intoxicating. gripping your chin with a purpose, your head was tilted within his palm-- giving himself perfect access to your mouth without him having to ask. the strength he used, skin burning beneath his touch, made your pussy pulse. with little care, your hips bucked instinctively again on top of kori-- and you felt her hands snake their way around your waist, guiding your movements to continue.

"i know," she hummed, finger-tips digging into your midsection, "dick kisses so good, huh? makes you want to grind your cunt against me, right, sweet-heart?"

you moaned into dick's mouth at kori's words-- nodding along to the filth that fell from her lips as though you had no clue what else to do. your hips seemed to move on their own, bucking and bucking and bucking, chasing a friction only kori's body seemed to cure.

dick continued to kiss you back with an intensity that only made your cunt ache desperately-- his tongue, his lips, his saliva purely taking up every thought that floated within your mind. only when he pulled back ever so slightly, did you open your eyes; blinking hazily at the couple, vision flickering between the two of them as if they were god's greatest gift to you.

"hey," dick whispered, thumb running along the bottom of your lip, "did kori tell you you could stop trying to fuck yourself on her?"

a shiver travelled tantalizingly up your spine-- igniting something impossibly needy and loud between your legs.

"well, no--" you tried, before kori's palm met your cheek in a muffled slap!

...

your panties were beyond saving.

"that's right," dick spoke again, paying his girlfriend's hit no mind as he brought his lips impossibly close to yours, forced your mouth open with his thumb and spat right into your mouth. "she didn't."

kori purred beside dick, her hands leaving your waist only to find purchase on dick's cheeks instead-- forcing his face mere inches away from her own. "it's alright," she said, feigned sympathy dripping from her words, "since you simply don't want this," she beckoned to dick by sticking her tongue outwards and slooowly licking her way from his adam's apple to his mouth, "you'll just have to watch dick and i instead."

rendered speechless, you watched painfully as kori and dick's lips found each others-- and the both of them fused as if it was the most natural thing in the world. dick groaned against kori's lips, tongues slotting against the other's with zero regard for you-- who, little by little, was being inched off of kori's lap.

"no, i do want that," you whispered.

when the couple heard you and pulled away from each other, a strand of saliva kept them connected-- green and blue irises boring themselves into your figure.

"oh, you do?" dick asked, cocking his head to the side.

you nodded, head bobbing.

the duo laughed, and kori gently pushed you off of her-- your knees meeting the rug of dick's apartment with a soft thud.

"you should've said it properly, n' like a good girl, when we asked the first time then." dick mother-fucking grayson giggled, leaning forward to suck on kori's neck. they were both turned towards each other on the couch now, bodies facing away from the television, and you, as kori's fingers tangled themselves in dick's damp hair.

"say what you really want," kori addressed to you, your name stuttering from her lips as dick pressed a hot kiss to pulse-point. "then we'll consider it."

no words came to you as you continued to watch dick imprint himself onto kori-- searing lips travelling every inch of her skin, hands fondling and groping where yours had once been-- over top of her tits, onto her toned belly, beneath her tank-top.

the woman whined as, what seemed like an eternity later, dick's fingers finally dipped below the waistband of her sleep-shorts. "dick," she muttered, eyes squinting as her boyfriend's hands slinked south, "isn't this about her tonight?"

your stomach flipped from your spot on the carpet.

how fucking pathetic. you were sure if you had had ears and a tail, they'd be perked upwards and wagging with a stupid amount of anticipation. it was shameful, how worked up you had become, at the thought of being given attention.

not that you cared though. not with the heat that was becoming painful within your lower belly.

all dick did in response, however, was shake his head-- peeling kori's shorts and panties off of her body and tossing them somewhere across the room.

"maybe," he sighed, looking pleased at the way kori's pussy had glistened underneath the lighting of the television, "but i think she's better off sayin' what she wants if she can see what she's missing, first."

dragging a finger through kori's cunt, dick grinned. dimpled cheeks suddenly faced you, pointedly, as two of dick's fingers found kori's clit-- rolling heavy and tight circles methodically.

"isn't that right?" he asked you, fingers unrelenting against kori's clit.

you whined, bottom lip being caught between your teeth as you watched dick continue to finger his girlfriend. "m-mhm,"

dick tsked, vision moving back towards kori's pussy at your response. his pupils were blown, and his digits were steady along kori's cunt-- all the while she shuddered and gasped, hips bucking against his hand in a steady rhythm.

"gods-- dick," she heaved, hands clutching desperately at a throw-pillow. strong thighs closed and re-opened against dick's hands as he leaned forward again-- painting feather-light kisses along her collarbone.

dick's free hand found one of her thighs, shoving and holding it open as his thumb replaced his two longer digits, pointer finger now prodding at her sopping entrance. when the man pressed in, your own pussy pulsed in anticipation, as if you could feel him within you too, and kori's back arched meanly away from the couch.

he hushed kori, finger beginning to pump in and out of her with obscene squelches emanating from her cunt. "see? isn't this what you want?" dick asked you, as your name echoed throughout the room.

"yeah, yes-- please," you stuttered, your own grip on your thighs going iron.

dick added a second finger, crooking them within kori juuust right-- causing her to cry out in pleasure. "c'mere then; come put your mouth to use, prove that you want us to fuck you."

he motioned with a jut of his chin towards kori's weeping cunt-- and you, making no mistake, crawled between her legs.

pressing kisses up kori's thighs, you watched her shudder against dick's fingers; the man knuckles deep within his girlfriend. your lips dampened with your saliva and her sweat-- an oddly sweet and exhilarating taste filling every possible sense.

when your lips reached impossibly close to her pussy, dick finally pulled his fingers out-- they shone obscenely underneath the lighting of his living room, and, shameless, dick popped them into his mouth. he groaned at the taste of her, using a sturdy hand to push your face into her cunt. "she tastes so good, so sweet," he moaned, "try for yourself."

(you could've sworn the tiniest of whimpers fell from kori's lips).

you peppered hot and teasing kisses to her cunt, feeling her fingers explore the back of your head-- pulling you closer to her. with a certain dip of your head, your lips connected to her pussy-- wet kisses painted across her folds with reckless abandon.

kori moaned into her fist, head tilting backwards onto the couch as dick stuck his fingers back down onto her clit-- rubbing, rolling, pinching as if only to tease his girlfriend as you finally stuck your tongue out. dick had been right; as you swirled your digit along kori's folds, a passionately sweet taste annihilated your senses. kori's slick dampened the lower half of your face, and you continued to lap at her as she tugged you impossibly closer to her pussy.

"yes--!" she gasped, hips bucking against your face, "just like that,"

flattening your tongue, you dragged it up and down again and again and again along kori's cunt-- chasing her pleasure as if it was your own. dick's fingers remained glued to her clit, pushing her closer and closer towards her release; glancing over at the man above kori's toned thighs, you saw how he was palming himself.

despite your best friend doing nothing to deserve it-- one of your hands left kori's thighs, and reached beside her to dick's. you gave his leg a hearty squeeze, muscle thick underneath your palm-- before moving towards the outline of his cock. your ministrations at kori's pussy, however, remained unrelenting. curling your tongue and poking it forward, your appendage breached her entrance; slick sweeter than ever before. you moaned against her at the taste, hand curving delightfully against dick's bulge.

you heard the man hiss, his own hips jutting forward ever so slightly to keep your hand against his hardening cock-- the pressure of your palm against him just enough to keep his satiated for now. "shit," he mumbled, watching you begin to tongue-fuck kori, "aren't you the over-achiever?"

at his teasing, you managed to flip him off; the sound of dick's laugh reverberating throughout his living room playfully. you felt a finger-- one of dick's, that had been incessantly rolling kori's clit-- push forward to flick your nose gently, before going back to their previous action. you grinned against kori's cunt. she clenched around your tongue, throbbing underneath the sheer desire to cum.

kori's fingers still remained curled along your head, keeping you impossibly close to her pussy. her chest was heaving, a glittering sheen of sweat glistening against her apricot skin. "it d-does not matter," kori mumbled, hips steadily rocking against your face, "she's doing such a wonderful job,"

dick hummed in agreement, your palm still rubbing and aiding the dull throb underneath his sweatpants. "that's right," he purred, "being such a good girl for us."

breaking the rhythm that had lapsed over the room, kori cried out-- back arching off of the couch again. at her pleasure, dick glanced downwards to see that you had, somehow, managed to pull your face away from kori's pussy. in the abcense of your tongue, however, you had stuck two of your own fingers inside of the woman; crooking and curling them against kori's g-spot, pistoning them in and out and in again.

the combination of your fingers, as well as dick's, had kori spiraling quickly towards an orgasm. her legs twitched in an attempt to close around the two sets of hands that ambushed her pussy, but dick's grip of her legs kept her spread and open for the both of you. "take it," dick groaned, bulge grinding into your hand, "i know you can, kor,"

"please," you whined helplessly, fingers sliding in and out of kori with ease-- "i want you to cum on my fingers so bad, baby,"

hearing your pleas, kori shuddered; her mouth fell open, the slightest trail of drool beginning to seep down her chin, and the silent cry of her orgasm washed over her. the intensity had you reeling-- watching kori's cunt weep and pulse right in front of you, you couldn't help it; your mouth found her pussy again.

dick grinned widely, his fingers also keeping a steady pace against her clit-- your mouth and his digits now pushing her orgasm, milking every single tremour and twitch her body could provide.

"that's it," you hummed, muffled vibrations sending shocks up kori's spine, "been wanting this so badly."

green irises blew open, and kori suddenly gasped-- her entire body aching away from your actions. "it's too much!" she sobbed, pussy beginning to ache with overstimulation.

there was a pause in your movements, to dissect kori's face, and-- god. several curls stuck to her forehead from sweat, and her cheeks were tinged a deep shade of orange; if you squinted, you could even pick up flickers of emerald and ivy dancing within her irises. she was stunning.

pulling away, you used the back of your palm to wipe your chin; not before licking any remaining residue of kori from your lips, though. dick delivered a few careless smacks to her cunt, causing the alien to jolt, before pulling his hand off of her. he too, stuck his fingers in his mouth-- desperate to taste whatever lingering traces of her orgasm remained seeped into his digits.

warmth radiated off of all three of you-- and you pressed your palm, harder than before, onto dick's cock. he exhaled shortly at your action, cobalt irises blinking down at you through thick lashes as your voice broke through the comfortable silence that had formed.

"can i fuck you now?" you questioned, to neither one of them in particular. on any other occasion, you would have despised sounding so desperate; but your own pussy was pulsating with a need you were sure now, had grown insatiable. it clenched and throbbed against nothing, craving nothing more than to be filled by someone's fingers, mouth, or cock--

"well you've certainly earned it, love," kori said eventually, after letting her breathing even; "dick," she mumbled, tilting her head towards the man, "lie down on the couch."

✩✩✩

there was no way to tell how long you had been riding dick's cock, save for that the movie's credits had longed ended. your bare body glistened underneath the soft lighting of the living room, hands holding steadily against the back of the couch as you rocked back and forth, grinding your cunt against the bottom of dick's lower stomach. he throbbed inside of you, his own hips rocking upwards to meet your sloppy bounces, moans muffled by kori's cunt.

"f-fuck," you breathed, head tilting backwards to expose your neck to kori-- who, from her seat on dick's face-- leaned forward to suck and kiss and lick at your throat. she too was bare, and grinding her own cunt down onto her boyfriend's mouth-- reveling in the feeling of his big, sturdy palms grasping and molding the flesh of her ass underneath his grip.

the tip of dick practically abused your g-spot-- rubbing again and again and again along the spongy tissue within your cunt, every vein and every ridge of his cock massaging your insides. "you feel so good, dick," you moaned, ass slapping against dick's thighs as you continued to ride him.

in response, all the man could do was moan against kori's folds-- causing kori to moan against your neck.

every sensation you had was being ravaged all at once. the room stunk of sweat and sex and lust, not a single coherent thought beyond fuck me floating around any of your heads. it was almost too much-- but perhaps, that was what made it tantalizingly enough. every second you had spent yearning for something more with your best friends, remained now a thing of the past as your pussy squelched around dick. there was no telling where you began and where either kori or dick ended-- only the sensation of being filled, being stuffed, consuming your mind.

"you like-- haah-- being used like this, don't you?" kori asked dick, suddenly, reaching behind her to grab a fistful of raven locks. through hazy, tear-ridden vision, you watched dick nod-- his tongue still working tirelessly at his girlfriend's cunt. kori tugged, and the man whined from beneath her; you felt his cock twitch impossibly within your pussy, and you grinned.

bringing your body upwards, you slammed down onto the length of dick once again-- causing his back to arch off of the couch, and hips to stutter against yours. he throbbed again, growing desperately, achingly hard within the plush and warmth of your cunt.

"you gonna cum, dick?" you asked, eyes rolling into the back of your head as you continued to riiide dick into the couch. frantically, you watched the man nod-- his chin dripping with kori's slick, and palms gripping almost painfully hard at her thighs.

kori laughed-- an airy sort of sound that broke through one of her moans. you joined her, hands diving into the thick mop of curls on top of her head.

"'course," you quipped, hips speeding up on top of dick, "such a slut for us."

with kori's teeth sinking into your shoulder, suddenly-- (dick had begun spelling his name out against her pussy)-- your cunt fluttered, strangling the man's cock. and that was what sent dick over the edge; a strangled set of moans and expletives flew from his mouth, muffled by kori's cunt, as dick's cum flooded your cunt. his cock throbbed and throbbed and throbbed-- hot ropes infiltrating your womb as if there was an endless supply. you moaned in tandem, too, the sensation of being filled up letting you teeter precariously close to the edge of your own orgasm.

without thinking, you reached upwards softly-- gripping kori's face, only to smash your mouths together. kori made of a sound almost akin to shock, before kissing you back with no hesitation. it was just as sloppy as kissing her before had been; drool everywhere, lips swollen, and cunt's throbbing-- puckering and sucking on the alien's mouth messily.

just as her hands found your hair-- you paused, pulling off of her; pleasure wracked through your body, and you wanted to speak before your orgasm hit you. "shiiit," you moaned, pussy clenching desperately onto the cock within you, "k-kor," you gasped, "switch with me,"

kori had not faltered at your words-- pulling herself off of dick's face with little struggle, her cunt was sopping and easily sucked in her boyfriend's cock as she took the seat you had once been. you, on the other-hand, placed yourself easily onto dick's mouth, ignoring any protests falling from the man.

coincidentally, though, you did not think you had heard any.

you sighed, back arching as dick's tongue began to lap your cunt-- the taste of your arousal and his cum bombarding his senses. he whined underneath you-- crying out about how it was t'much! but you hadn't paid him much mind as your hips rocked against his mouth. you were chasing your orgasm now, grinding your cunt down onto dick's tongue with little regard for the man beneath you.

"c'mon dick," kori cooed from behind you, tone mockingly sweet, "you can take it."

a laugh broke itself from your chest as kori mocked what dick had told her earlier-- before plump lips wrapped around your clit. you gasped, hips stuttering on top of dick's face as he sucked harshly on your sensitive bundle of nerves.

much like your alien counter-part, your hands had found dick's hair with no issue-- pulling on it as a means to make yourself cum on your best friend's mouth.

dick had had the same plans too-- his hands, momentarily, found your hips to raise you off of his face, and he muttered (voice terribly fucked out), "please, baby-- please, cum on my tongue-- we taste s'good together, it's all i want,"

cutting him off with a slam of your cunt back down on his face, you moaned as his tongue curled its way inside you-- prodding at your insides, coaxing your orgasm out.

his efforts proved fruitful as your pussy began to spasm along his mouth-- hips rocking forward desperately to draw every last twitch and flutter and pulse of your cunt, out. your mouth had fallen open silently in an 'o' shape, eyes screwing shut in pure ecstasy.

dick moaned whorishly beneath you, as if he, too, could feel the pleasure that prickled your finger-tips-- the taste of your cum coating his tongue, your lust causing his vision to blur. the sound of skin slapping-- kori's ass now against dick's thighs-- echoing distantly throughout the room as your own thighs closed desperately around dick's head.

"holy shit, dick--!" you cried, legs twitching.

he groaned between your folds, hands keeping your cunt impossibly close to his face. "m'not done," you heard him say, twisting your head backwards to watch kori fuck herself onto her boyfriend's cock. she moaned and whined feeling his appendage keep her terribly full, the tiniest bulge in her lower belly appearing every time she slammed herself down onto him again.

your cunt fluttered, and the hot, raging sensation of needing to be filled again consumed you; "you better-- fuck-- not be," you whispered, grinding down onto dick's mouth, "wanna watch you fill kori up,"

from behind you, kori moaned-- the idea of dick's cum stuffing her cunt entirely too intoxicating. the feeling of it dripping down his shaft as he continuously pulsed inside of her, perhaps even the feeling of you licking it out of her-- made her hips stutter, a slutty little whimper falling from her lips. "god--"

"then i want you to fill me up," you moaned, pussy drooling into dick's mouth, "again n' again n' again."

the words tumbled past your lips with a reckless sort of passion, absorbing and engorging every feeling of lust, desperation, love-- that had somehow tangled itself between you and your best friends. from beneath you-- dick's hands gave a hearty squeeze to your waist, keeping you anchored to him (perhaps in more ways than one). behind, kori had snaked her fingers onto your wrist, threading her steady and slender ones with yours; the three of you somehow seemed to move in sync, and despite the absolute obscenity of the entire night-- you felt oddly at peace. oddly wholesome. oddly, not overwhelmed-- at home.

PLUVOiA 25’ ® - masterlist

loren's thots: i feel like a deadbeat dad the way i abandon yall and then sometimes come back. ......... can yall forgive papa 💔 speaking of deadbeat..... i think i got ghosted by my situationship,,,, wtvvvv more time to write for yall ion een want him fr....

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