I Write Stuff!

The man waited outside.

Your stomach sank.

You pulled out your phone and called Dex. It rang once before going to voicemail, which meant he was either working or already packing his things and moving towards you. You left the line open anyway, slipping your phone into your coat pocket as you stepped back onto the pavement.

“I’m on Stanton,” you said, quiet as you could, knowing the microphone would catch it. “I’m going on the safe route, and there’s a man following me.”

You headed towards the twenty-four-hour diner two streets away. At least there were lights, cameras, and most importantly, people there.

You almost reached it, but the man caught you when you passed the narrow service road behind an apartment building. One moment his footsteps were behind you; the next, his hand gripped around the back of your coat and dragged you hard enough that the thicker collar choked into your throat.

Your keys fell from your fingers, and all you could manage was a pathetic little scream before he could cover your mouth.

His palm immediately struck your lips and teeth, crushing the sound back into your skull as he hauled you into the darkness of some random New York alley. Your heel scraped uselessly across the pavement as you bit down until you tasted blood that wasn’t yours. It worked! He swore, jerking his hand away.

Immediately, you drove your elbow backwards.

Dex had shown you where to aim for, and you were trying to retrieve it from the rolodex of information in your mind, not quite the ribs, but lower in the soft tissue. 

The man grunted, but he didn’t let go. His arm locked around your throat instead, squeezing until firework-white sparks burst across your vision.

“You stupid fucking—”

You stamped on his foot before he could finish his sentence and threw your weight forwards, turning beneath his arm, exactly as Dex had taught you.

Eventually, his hold broke.

You stumbled free and ran, but the man recovered faster than you initially expected. His hand found its way and tangled his fingers in your hair, snapping your head backwards so violently that your neck burned.

He slammed you face-first against the brick wall.

Oh. Fuck. 

A burst of pain exploded through your cheek, teeth unintentionally biting into the inside of your mouth. Warm, fresh blood flooded on your tongue, thick and metallic, while his body pinned you against the wall.

The panic bells ringing in your head turned everything white-hot. “S-stop!”

He didn’t.

No. No. You were better than this.

You reached behind blindly, clawing for his eyes, his throat, anything you could find. Your nails found skin, raking down as he cursed and drove you against the brick again.

Maybe your nose broke, you couldn’t really tell.

His hand slid beneath your coat, and that’s when your vision went red. Rage flared hot inside you, burning through every thought in your head. You threw your skull backwards and felt his cartilage collapse beneath it.

His grip loosened, howling in pain.

You spun and shoved him with both hands.

He stumbled off the curb at the edge of the service road. His ankle twisted beneath him, and he went down hard. The man managed to catch himself on one palm before his shoulder struck the pavement.

You could have run.

The diner was less than a hundred yards away. You could see its red sign glowing at the end of the road, bright as a fresh exit wound.

That was when the man looked up at you.

A sick, satisfied feeling churned in your stomach as red poured from his nose and over his mouth.

And… he was smiling.

Oh. 

He still believed he was going to win.

He pushed himself onto one knee. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Your hand found the loose brick beside the wall, and it was heavier than you expected. Its edges bit into your palm as you lifted it with both hands.

When the man saw it, his smile vanished in an instant.

You brought the brick down across his temple.

The sound that came off it was shockingly small. It sounded like a damp knock, followed by the scrape of his body collapsing onto the road.

He rolled onto his back, blinking rapidly. One side of his face had already begun to swell around the ripped skin as a blotch of blood ran into his ear and disappeared beneath his head.

You stood over him, panting.

He was still conscious. “Wait.”

You could’ve stopped. You could’ve shown mercy. 

Instead, you struck him again.

This time, the brick split the skin above his eyebrow. Blood sprayed across your coat and speckled your face in warm droplets.

He raised one arm to protect himself.

Huh. Cute. 

You hit that too.

His arm gave beneath the brick with a muffled crunch. His forearm bent where it shouldn’t have been bent, and he screamed, the sound travelling through the empty service road.

You dropped the brick.

For half a second, the sight of his ruined arm nearly pulled you back into your logical self.

Then, his good hand closed around your ankle.

You shrieked and kicked him in the face. Your heel connected with his mouth as teeth snapped together. One of them even skipped across the pavement and vanished beneath a parked car.

He released you, but you fell on top of him.

Your knees struck the ground on either side of his hips, and your hands seized the front of his jacket. His blood made the material slippery beneath your fingers.

Before you could think any better of it, you dragged his head upwards, then slammed it against the curb.

The back of his skull struck concrete with a thick, hollow crack.

His eyes rolled, and it horrified you how much you liked it, seeing the man who wanted to touch you fucking bleed out. 

So you did it again.

Blood spread beneath his hair.

Again.

The hard crack now sounded wetter as the skin split and bone began to cave in. His body jerked beneath you, heels scraping against the pavement, but there was no strength left in it.

He made a noise through his broken mouth. You didn’t know whether it was a plea or merely air left escaping.

“You followed me!” you sobbed. “You fucking touched me!”

You brought his head down again.

The edge of the curb disappeared beneath blood. It ran between your fingers, coating your palms each time you pulled him upwards.

“I did everything right.”

Again.

“I—”

Again.

“Have—”

Again.

“A—”

Again.

“Fucking—”

Again.

“Boyfriend—”

Again.

“You—”

Again.

“Asshole—”

Again.

“He’ll fucking kill you!”

The last word broke somewhere in your throat, ragged. You were crying now, maybe. You couldn’t really tell. Your face was wet, your hands were red, and the whole world had shrunk down to the most-likely-dead man in your grip and the curb beneath him and the memory of his hand on you where it never should have been.

The back of his skull was now the shape of the concrete underneath.

You felt the structure collapse beneath your hands where there should have been resistance. It didn’t feel dramatic or righteous. All you could think was how it felt gooey in the wrong places. 

You pulled him up again anyway.

“I told you,” you sobbed, or screamed, or whispered. You couldn’t tell anymore. “I told you to stop.”

But his eyes were open and empty, staring past you at nothing, and when you tried to lift him one more time, your hands slipped in all the blood and he dropped back against the curb with a sound that made your stomach sink

That was when the anger went out.

All at once, as if someone had blown out a candle inside your chest.

You stared down at your hands and the red beneath your nails. You saw a dark smear across your wrist where he had grabbed you. “I did everything right,” you said again, smaller this time.

His face had lost all expression. Blood bubbled faintly at his lips before spilling down his cheek.

He was dead.

You knew he was dead.

You screamed as you struck him again, though you no longer knew whether you were furious or terrified.

You remembered Dex telling you never to stop until you were safe.

Make sure they cannot get back up. 

You had done everything he told you to do.

The man’s head struck the concrete one final time and didn’t bounce.

You released him.

His ruined skull settled crookedly against the ground. The road beneath him shone black-red beneath the distant streetlights, and blood soaked through your tights at the knees and dripped from your hands in heavy threads.

The dead man’s head no longer looked human.

Your stomach heaved.

You tried to stand, but your legs folded beneath you. The world tilted violently, the brick walls stretching upwards as though the road had dropped away beneath your body.

Footsteps thundered behind you, but you couldn’t turn around.

Your vision narrowed until the alley became a tunnel.

Then a hand touched your face, but this time, the touch was gentle.

His thumb swept carefully beneath your eye, avoiding the swelling along your cheekbone, as an arm curved around your waist before you could collapse fully onto the body.

“There you are,” Dex whispered.

His voice sounded distant beneath the rushing in your ears.

You tried to tell him what you had done, but your lips would not let you.

Dex’s palm cradled the back of your head, carefully nudging your nose back into place. He pulled you into him, turning your face away from the ruin on the pavement.

“My smart girl,” he murmured, stroking your hair with bloodless fingers. “You remembered everything.”

The praise sank through your heart as he felt his lips press against your temple.

“You saved yourself.”

Eventually, dazed and overwhelmed by the adrenaline crash, your eyes closed.

The last thing you felt was Dex’s thumb moving across your cheek, wiping away a tear.

—

Dex knew you.

He knew you were nothing like him.

That much had been obvious almost from the beginning, though he hadn’t understood it properly. Dex’s first instinct had always been violence. Whenever a problem appeared, his mind found that the bloodiest way was often the fastest way to solve it. Even inconveniences made his skin crawl, from a jammed drawer, a car alarm that would not stop, to a man looking at you for half a second too long across a restaurant. 

You were different.

You were gentle in ways Dex had once found impractical.  

You apologised to furniture when you bumped into it. You cupped moths in your hands and carried them outside. You left sugar water out for bees in summer and lowered your voice around frightened dogs. You once stopped walking entirely because there was a snail on the pavement after rain, and you refused to let anyone step on it until Dex moved it safely into the grass with a leaf.

He had stood there watching you then, half-annoyed, half-fascinated.

“It’s just a snail,” he had said.

You had looked up at him like he had spouted bullshit from his mouth. “It’s alive.”

From then on, he realized alive mattered to you.

Even small alive. Even when it was inconvenient .

Dex hadn’t been raised with that as a natural instinct. As a boy, he had thrown stones at birds because he found that he liked the little burst of movement. He hadn’t thought of it as cruelty then. It was just aim, maybe boredom. 

Then you bought a bird feeder for your apartment.

You hung it outside the kitchen window with such bright delight that Dex hadn’t even known what to say. You filled it every morning, scattering seed with your bed hair falling over your face, then stood there with your coffee while sparrows and blue tits flickered down. You loved them. You loved their stupid little hopping, their bright feathers.

You loved listening to birdsong most of all.

You whistled back sometimes without realising it while you watered plants or folded laundry. At night, when you were deep enough asleep that your body forgot to be self-conscious, you made the same small breathy sounds in your dreams, sweet enough that Dex would lie awake beside you and listen as he calmed down.

So instead of throwing rocks at it like he used to, he learned how to imitate their songs.

At first, only because you smiled when he whistled them. Then, he did it because you looked at him like he had performed a miracle when a robin landed on the feeder while Dex stood still by the window, unknowingly calling them closer.

Without realising, he had learned to mimic their distinctive calls.

He even stopped exterminating annoying bugs because of you. 

You were afraid of spiders, yes, but when one of them showed up in the nightstand and you screamed, hiding behind him like a shield, you would make this horrified and pleading sound because he reached for a shoe instead of a cup. To you, being afraid of the little thing didn’t mean it deserved to die. 

“Dex, no. Outside. Alive.”

So for you, he learned to trap spiders beneath glasses and slide envelopes carefully underneath them. He learned to carry them to the windowsill instead of crushing them. 

Eventually, he learned not to flick beetles off the balcony, because you worried about whether the fall would hurt them. He learned to scoop flies out of half-open windows with hands while you hovered behind him whispering, “Careful, careful,” like he was defusing a bomb.

He learned to pretend he cared whether tiny, ugly things lived.

Eventually, he cared because you cared, and caring about what you cared about was the closest thing to general empathy Dex had ever understood.

And that was why Dex knew that you could not wake up knowing what you had done.

Because you had not even wanted him to kill spiders.

How the hell were you supposed to survive knowing you had killed a man?

Dex had known that the moment you went limp in his arms, your bloodied hands curled weakly against his shirt, your body giving up its adrenaline high only after it was finally safe to stop fighting. You had passed out before he could praise you properly, even before he could look you in the eye and tell you that you had done exactly what he taught you to do.

You had saved yourself.

Dex was proud of you in a way he knew he couldn’t show when you woke up.

Especially not with the body in the trunk of his car and your clothes stuffed into a sealed black bag hidden in the closet. His own clothes in there too, soaked with blood where he had held you, smeared bleach where he had poured it over the concrete. 

He would deal with it later, when you were properly asleep, because the body could wait and you could not.

So Dex got you, half-passed out and half mumbling nonsense, home. Perhaps it was simply your mind coping on a traumatic memory.

He stripped you carefully, cutting fabric where it stuck, easing sleeves down your arms, peeling everything off your skin piece by piece until there was nothing left between you and him. His clothes came off too, though nothing was ever sexual about that, but because his soaked shirt was evidence, too. 

He washed you in the shower while you leaned against him, barely conscious, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, your knees buckling every time the warm water hit another bruise. He did this all while murmuring sweet nonsense into your ear, words he knew your body understood even when your mind was tuned out. “You did so good, baby. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He washed you until water at your feet ran pink, then red, then thin and clear.

Your hands took the longest as he held each finger between his own, washing beneath the nails, over the knuckles, around the raw places where the brick and pavement had scraped you open. You whimpered once, so quietly he almost missed it, and he kissed your wet temple before continuing.

He had to make them clean because you would look at your hands first.

When it was done, he carried you to bed and lay down naked beside you, pulling you onto his chest before the cold could bite.

The skin to skin was its own kind of intimacy, no barrier, but his body around yours.

By 2 a.m., he had not slept. He had tried, once or twice, mostly for the performance, because if you woke up and found him sitting upright in the dark watching you breathe, you would know something was wrong. 

So he lay with you until dawn, and every time your breathing hitched, Dex tightened his hold. Every time you made a frightened sound, he kissed your head and whispered until you settled. He kept one eye on the bedroom door, one ear tuned to the street.

But mostly he watched you.

You looked smaller when you slept after fear, lashes clumping from old tears. Your mouth was swollen and a bruise was blooming along your cheekbone where the man had slammed you against brick, and Dex had to look away from it more than once because all he felt was red-hot rage. 

But it wasn’t like he could do anything. The man was already dead.

You woke up sometime around 3 a.m.

Dex felt it when you choked on a breath, curled against him, cheek on his chest, one leg tangled with his. Your fingers twitched against his ribs, and he knew some part of you had surfaced too quickly.

Your eyes opened.

Almost immediately, panic tore through you.

You jerked upright so fast the sheet slipped from your chest. 

Your hands flew up in front of your face, fingers spread, as though blood might still be dripping from them. They were clean, but you stared anyway. 

You turned them over, looking at your palms, backs, nails, and wrist.

You seemed shocked to find them… clean. 

Dex sat up behind you. “Baby.”

You flinched at his voice, and that knee-jerk reaction hurt more than he expected.

You twisted towards him, naked and shaking, eyes wide with a terror that had no full memory attached to it yet. 

Dex could see your mind reaching and clawing through fog, finding only flashes of memories. Maybe you remembered a streetlight, maybe a hand on your throat. 

Your lips parted, but no sound came out.

Dex reached for you.

You scrambled back half an inch, and he frowned immediately. 

He tried to make himself look harmless, like there was nothing hidden near the closet, nothing dead cooling in the back of his car.

“There you are,” he murmured.

Your face fell, but the sob didn’t come out. It got trapped in your chest, making your whole body shake. You looked down at yourself then, at your bare skin, at his bare skin, at the tangled sheets, and your confusion quickly became fear. 

Dex moved carefully, scooting closer until his thigh touched yours.

“You were cold,” he said, pulling the duvet back up around you before you could ask. “ I had to get you warm.”

Your eyes darted around the room.

The bedroom looked normal. That made it worse. 

There was no proof of anything, no blood, no alley, no proof of anything but your body remembering what your mind could not grasp.

Dex placed one hand over your knee.

You stared at it.

He expected you to pull away, but instead your breath hitched and your whole body tilted towards him, helplessly, like a compass finding north. He gathered you before you could think better of it.

You collapsed into his lap.

Dex wrapped both arms around you and pulled you against his bare chest again, tucking your face beneath his chin. You were shaking so hard it passed into him. You pressed your hands flat to his shoulders, then curled, then opened again, like you could not stand the idea of grasping flesh too tightly.

“There,” he whispered. “That’s it. Come here, baby.”

Your breath hitched against his throat, and he felt the first wet tear hit his skin.

Then you were crying without sound, which was worse than sobbing. Violent tears shook you from the inside while your body stayed stiff with shock.

Dex rocked you slowly, enough to give your panic a rhythm to follow.

“You’re home,” he murmured into your hair. “You’re with me. No one’s gonna touch you.”

Your fingers dug into him. “I—I…,” you whispered, not quite coming out with words yet

Dex closed his eyes for half a second. “It’s okay, baby.”

Your eyes darted in a panic. “I don’t know what happened.”

He tried shushing you. “You don’t have to know all of it right now.”

“I-I don’t know, Dex.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

Your breathing grew shallow, almost choking. You tried to pull back and look at your hands again, but Dex caught them between your bodies, folding them against his chest where you could feel his heartbeat beneath your palms.

Focus there.

You did.

“I-I remember him,” you managed to say.

Dex stroked the back of your head. “Okay.”

“I remember walking. I took the right way.”

“You did.”

“I did what you said.”

“You did everything right.”

The sentence seemed to be a trigger, ripping a sob out of you.

Dex held you tighter.

“I-I did everything right,” you repeated, smaller now. “I promise.”

“I know.”

“I went inside. I waited. I called you.”

“You were so smart.”

Your face pressed harder into his neck.

“So smart,” he whispered again. “My girl, you did so well.”

You shook your head, frantic, because praise did not fit beside the images cutting through you. 

You didn’t remember much, but you saw flashes of blood and concrete behind your eyelids. 

Your breathing stopped.

His hand slid up the back of your neck and held you close. “No,” he murmured, soft as velvet. “Stay with me.”

“I saw—”

“You saw too much.”

“I… did something.”

“You protected yourself.”

“No, I—”

“You protected yourself,” he repeated, more insistent this time. 

Your fingers twisted against his chest.

Dex let his voice warm up, like honey in warm water. “You were scared and hurt and you did what you had to do.”

He felt you take the information in, but your panic continued circling it like vultures on corpses.

Dex kissed the top of your head, then your temple, then the bruised corner of your brow. “You’re okay,” he breathed. “I promise.”

You made a wounded noise, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

The kindness was not accidental, it was architecture. He was building a room inside your memory, where the bloodier parts could be locked outside until you forgot where you held the key.

“Where is he?”

Oh. So you vaguely knew there was a he now. 

“He’s in the hospital.” He lied easily. 

Dex knew this was how it would happen. One lie was enough to sound like mercy, and you would hold on to it because you trusted him more than you trusted your own shattered memory. He was making you need his version of the truth because he truly believed it was the only one that would save you.

You froze in his arms, and Dex held you through it.

“The hospital?” you whispered.

“Mm.”

Your hands clutched him harder. “He looked...”

“I know what it looked like.”

You pulled back just enough to see his face.

Dex hated it, and not because he couldn’t lie to your face. He could, he had, and would again if it meant it would preserve and protect your sense of self. Instead, he hated it because you looked so desperate for him to make the world kinder than really it was, and he loved you so much it nearly made him crueler.

He cupped your cheeks.

“Head wounds bleed badly,” he said. “You know that, sweetheart.”

Your eyes blazed into his, and he knew he made a mistake then. You didn’t remember that part.

“H-head wounds?” You breathed out in disbelief, unable to claw the memory now. 

“He was breathing when I got there,” Dex lied again.

A strangled sob left you, but it didn’t sound like relief yet. For now, it was only the body realising it had been offered a way out.

“Head wounds a-are dangerous.”

“I know.”

You hiccuped. “I thought— I remember—”

“Pieces,” Dex murmured. “You remember pieces.”

“But I saw blood.”

“There was blood.”

“On me?”

“Yes.”

Your face fell, Dex pulling you back in before the horror could.

“That’s why I cleaned you up,” he whispered, and that part, at least, was not a lie. His thumb moved slowly along your cheek, careful in a way Dex was rarely careful with anything that wasn’t you. “That’s why we ended up like this. You were shaking so hard, and I couldn’t get you warm. I tried. I swear I tried.”

His mouth brushed your temple, barely a kiss.

“I kept trying to move,” he murmured. “I kept thinking I should get you a shirt, but every time I pulled away, you reached for me again like you thought I was leaving, and I couldn’t—” His voice snagged, just slightly. “I couldn’t make myself do it. Not when you looked at me like that.”

You stared at him, still heavy-limbed, your thoughts coming back to you in pieces. It sounded embarrassingly believable, because there was a warmth in your chest that remembered him. Your hands had always found him before the rest of you caught up.

“I did?” you asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Your eyes narrowed, weakly suspicious. “You’re lying.”

Dex leaned down and kissed your forehead, lingering there like the answer mattered more than the accusation. 

“About you needing me?” His voice dropped. “Never.”

You cried harder then, finally making messy little sobs that broke against his chest while Dex rocked you, He ran his hands up and down your back, whispering into your hair. He called you precious until the word stopped sounding like a word at all. 

You shook your head.

Dex closed his eyes and held you tighter.

“You’re my girl,” he whispered. “Nothing about you changed.”

His gaze drifted once, towards the closet.

The black bag waited.

Behind the wall, beyond the apartment, beneath the ordinary morning, the dead man waited too. 

Later, he would get rid of the body. Later, he would burn what needed burning. For now, you were shaking in his lap, believing him because you needed to.

“Dex,” you whispered.

“I’m here.”

“You promise?”

He knew what you were asking.

You promise I didn’t? You promise I’m still me? You promise whatever I don’t remember isn’t real?

Dex pressed his lips to your temple and held them there. “I promise you’re safe.”

It was not the answer you wanted, but it was the one he gave.

You sagged against him after that, emptied by tears, your body surrendering. Dex eased both of you down until he was lying on his back and you were draped over him, skin to skin beneath the sheet. Your cheek rested over his heart, hand curled weakly near his ribs.

He kept touching your scalp, your spine, and the back of your neck in gently repetitive strokes until your breathing evened out. 

Eventually, sleep took you again. Poor girl, still so tired after murdering an evil man. 

Every few minutes, you twitched. Every time, Dex whispered you back down.

My precious girl, he would praise. You did so well.

At last, your body grew heavy over his, your fingers stopped moving. Your mouth grew pliant against his chest.

Dex waited for five minutes, then ten, then twenty.

Only when he was certain you were properly asleep did he turn his head towards the closet again.

He had things that needed doing.

But you stirred faintly against him before he could move, and Dex froze. Your brow pinched, your hand tightening on his skin, some nightmare threatening to pull you under.

He settled back immediately.

Not yet.

The dead could wait a little longer.

Dex brushed his mouth over your hair and smiled.“My sweet girl,” he whispered.

His hand covered yours, pressing your clean palm flat over his heart.

“You did everything right.”

He adored you for last night, even if he could never let you know exactly what you had done.

He adored the shaking, furious thing you had become when there had been no one left to save you. He adored the fact that some part of you had remembered him, remembered every warning, every lesson, every instruction, just in case. 

He adored that you had survived. More than that, in some terrible private corner of himself, he adored that you had survived violently.

He adored that for a split second, you had become him. 

But he knew you best, and he knew you weren’t made for that. 

So he would take that truth to the grave, and you would wake up tomorrow with the love of your life beside you.

You would wake up believing you had done only enough to live.

And Dex loved you enough to make that true.

—end.

NOTE : I genuinely love seeing all your requests in my asks, but I do get a lot and I physically can’t write every single one. I usually write the ones that catch my eye, and it’s probably every 1 in 5. 

That’s why I have Ko-fi! If you request there, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll write it within a month of responding as a token of appreciation (keep this post in mind for July and August 2026). If I’m uncomfortable with the request or don’t think I can do it justice, I’ll let you know and we can brainstorm something else.

Please remember I run this blog for free, so any support means a lot, only if you’re able to give it! Love y’all and thank you for reading!!! <3

buy me a ko-fi here!

Dex taglist part 1:

You were forbidden from going anywhere near it. So, naturally, it was the most interesting thing you could see from your window.

Sometimes, a raven came to sit with you on the sill.

He was a sleek, handsome thing with feathers black enough to reflect blue beneath the sunlight and eyes that seemed far too clever for an ordinary bird. He never startled when you moved too suddenly or tried to touch him. He simply watched you, head tilted, while you complained about your lessons, your father, and the latest dreadful man being considered for your hand.

The raven was your only friend.

You had started leaving scraps of breakfast for him, though he never really ate them. Most days, he seemed content merely to listen. Occasionally, he would tap his beak against the window sill or make a croaking sound at exactly the right moment, as though offering an opinion.

Every morning followed the same rhythm of breakfast before lessons, before war planning, before a walk in the palace gardens with no fewer than six guards pretending they weren’t following you, before fencing, before dinner.

Occasionally, your routine was interrupted by another prospective husband. Sometimes it was a prince, other times it would be a duke or a marquess. Once, it was an unfortunate count who spent twenty uninterrupted minutes explaining taxation while trying to court you.

Your father always watched these meetings with hopeful eyes.“What do you think of Prince Alistair?”

“He called me ‘adequate.’”

“He meant well.”

“He compared me to wheat,” you rolled your eyes.

He could only sigh. “Wheat is valuable.”

“I don’t want to marry a man who thinks my greatest quality is being agriculturally useful.”

Your father sighed, and it was the weary sigh of a king rapidly discovering that raising a stubborn daughter was considerably harder than negotiating peace treaties between entire territories. “You cannot refuse everyone.”

“I haven’t refused everyone,” you corrected, which was technically true.

“You’ve refused twelve.”

You held up a finger with a sly smile. “Twelve so far.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are one day going to become queen.”

“I know.”

“You need a husband.”

“I know,” you slumped to your seat, though the corset was now digging into your spine. 

“A suitable one.”

“I know.”

“So what exactly are you waiting for?”

You glanced past him, beyond the castle walls, toward the ancient forest shimmering on the horizon.

“I don’t know,” you admitted. “But I feel like if I marry any of them…” You paused. “I’ll be settling.”

Your father smiled sadly, mistaking your hesitation for youthful nerves. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

You smiled back because it was easier than arguing.

The truth was, you already understood.

You simply wanted more than a political alliance and polite conversation over dinner. You wanted someone who made your heart race.

Someone worthy of becoming the subject of stories.

You looked out and simply wondered, if any human prospect was ever going to be remarkable.

—

You had never escaped six armed guards before, but today, you found out that it was surprisingly easy.

They were watching for assassins, kidnappers, enemy soldiers, perhaps even a dragon if the kingdom had been having a particularly difficult week. They were not watching for their princess to lift her skirts, squeeze through a gap in the palace hedge, and run directly into the trees.

By the time anyone shouted your name, you were already gone.

Why did she even do this? Your father would probably ask, but there was really only one answer: boredom. 

You were bored of the same rooms, the same lessons, the same walks through the gardens. You were bored of waking each morning already knowing exactly how the day would end.

The raven had visited your windowsill that morning, but he stayed only long enough to tilt his clever little head at you, and then flew back toward the forest.

You had watched him disappear beyond the palace walls and thought, with a miserable pit in your stomach, if only I could be that free.

Perched beside you in the tower one moment, exploring the forest the next.

So you decided to do something about it and ran.

The forest began as ordinary woodland,

 but grew stranger the farther west you went. The trees became older, their roots rising through the earth like sleeping serpents, and silver mist gathered between the trunks even beneath a clear sky.

That mist marked the border: Your kingdom ended on this side, and the fae realm began on the other.

You were not stupid enough to cross it.

You were still catching your breath by a rock when you heard something crying in the undergrowth.

The sound drew you deeper into the woods long before you saw its source.

It was not a cry of pain so much as a weary exhale, the sort a creature made after running farther than its body wished to carry it. The forest seemed reluctant to reveal where it came from, as ancient oaks stood shoulder to shoulder like old kings in round tables, their branches weaving together until only ribbons of sunlight reached the moss below. Blue-white motes drifted lazily through the shade, vanishing whenever you tried to follow them with your eyes 

The doe lay only a few paces away, as though she had collapsed the instant she reached the safety of your kingdom. She was a beautiful hind with a pale face and enormous dark eyes that blinked sleepily rather than fearfully. The white arrow with black feathers rested against her flank, though when you looked closer your brow furrowed.

There was no blood or torn flesh.

The arrowhead shimmered with threads of pale gold that flowed over the deer’s body like sunlight through water. Wherever the light touched, the muscles beneath her coat relaxed. Her breathing remained calm.

“Oh.” You crouched beside her. “You aren’t hurt, are you, my love?”

The doe lazily lifted her head and nosed your shoulder before letting it fall again into the grass with contented resignation, determined to finish its nap.

You laughed nervously under your breath. “What have they done to you?”

“The Sleep of Rowan.” 

The voice came from somewhere inside the silver mist, beautiful enough that it almost seemed to belong to the forest itself.

You looked up.

He stood where the mist was thickest, and somehow the trees seemed arranged around him rather than the other way around. His leathers were the deep blue of the ocean down by the south border, embroidered so finely with bronze thread that every movement caught the light like autumn leaves stirred by the wind. 

A longbow rested loosely in one hand, carved from white wood that glimmered with faint silver runes. His hair was slightly tousled, sometimes dark brown and other times it was slightly golden. He was… Fair Folk.

There was no mistaking it.

He had pointed ears peeking through his hair, a strong jaw softened only by expressive lips that looked almost permanently on the verge of a knowing smile. His amber eyes were startlingly bright, flecked with molten gold, his fingers were glowing blue at the tips.

Then there was the scar, crossing one cheek in a narrow line, and one on top of the eye.

It should not have been there. Whatever had given him that one must have been vicious.

You knew now, that any sensible person would walk in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, you had never been particularly sensible.

“Sleep of Rowan?” you blinked.

He inclined his head toward the doe. “The arrow contains no iron.” His voice carried no arrogance, only certainty. “It numbs the body before it strikes. By the time the arrow lands, the creature feels only warmth. They grow sleepy.”

The doe punctuated his explanation by yawning.

Your heart immediately melted. “Oh, sweetheart.”

The fae watched you smile at the animal. His expression changed so subtly you almost missed it.

Interest, maybe. Recognition, perhaps. 

You looked from the doe to the bow resting in his hand. “You mean to kill her?”

“When the forest gives permission.”

You blinked.

He nodded toward the ancient trees surrounding you, fingertips brushing across the carved wood of his bow.

“We never hunt mothers with young,” he continued. “Never more than the Court requires. Every hide is worn and every antler is carved. Every bone shall be returned to the old groves before the first snowfall.”

He spoke not like a man explaining himself, but someone with rules and guidelines so ingrained into his bones it might as well be prayer.

“We borrow a life,” he said quietly. “We are expected to return honour in its place.”

You looked down at the sleeping doe as she twitched once in her dreams.

“Then…” Your fingers drifted automatically to the white patch between her ears, stroking it with infinite care. “…couldn’t you borrow another?”

The fae regarded you with an expression you couldn’t begin to understand.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve already proved you could catch her.”

His brow lifted.

“You did.” You gestured toward the shimmering arrow. “She’s asleep.”

“She is.”

“So you’ve won.”

A tiny smile threatened the corner of his mouth. “I have.”

You looked back at the doe. “Please let her go.” The words escaped so quietly they were almost carried away by the breeze. “Please.”

He didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he looked only at you, but not at your dress or the small golden circlet resting in your hair, but into your eyes and then to the way your hand never stopped stroking the sleeping animal.

The silence stretched so much you began to wonder whether you had insulted him.

Then, without a word, he reached for the arrow. The runes dimmed beneath his fingers, the arrow dissolving into the afternoon air like scattered pollen.

The doe stirred, blinked twice, and climbed to her feet.

She stood for a moment, swaying gently as though waking from the deepest sleep she’d ever known. Then she nudged her nose against your shoulder in what could only be gratitude before disappearing into the trees with three graceful bounds.

Only then did you turn back. “You just… let her go.”

“Yes.”

“Because I asked?”

He smiled. “You asked kindly.”

“That can’t possibly be enough reason.”

“It appears to have been.”

“I’ve just ruined your hunt,” you managed a nervous laugh, “and you’re not angry?”

His eyes held yours. “No.”

“Why?”

He considered the question far longer than it deserved. “Because I preferred watching you.”

Unexpectedly, heat crept up into your cheeks.

There was nothing crude or flirtatious in the way he said it. It sounded like a fact. 

He looked at you the way scholars looked at miracles and priests looked at altars: with complete attention, as though every movement you made deserved remembering.

“You have leaves in your hair,” he observed.

You huffed, taking one. “I escaped six guards.”

“I know,” he stepped ever so closer. “They’re still looking for you.”

“How do you know that?” You raised an eyebrow, taking a cautious step back. 

His smile deepened ever so slightly. “They’re remarkably loud.”

“I suppose they are.” You sighed. “They worry too much.”

His expression remained pleasantly calm. “They are guarding a princess.”

You sighed, and he merely tilted his head.

After a moment’s silence, you simply asked, “Do… you have a name?” 

“Dex.”

“Dex?”

“It will suffice.” You nodded.

“Very well, Dex.”

A brightness flickered across his face at the sound of the name in your voice. Approval, perhaps. Or satisfaction.

He rested the bow across his shoulder with effortless grace. “And you, Princess,” You didn’t even notice that he had done it again. “have convinced me to let my dinner wander off. The least you can do is point me towards the blackberry bushes.”

He knew the forest better than any living creature. Yet somehow, you found yourself leading him through it anyway.

And Dex, Crown Prince of the Wyld Fae, followed without the slightest complaint.

Because, according to every sacred law of the hunt he had ever been taught, once you found something worth following, you did not let it out of your sight.

—

The blackberry bushes grew wild along the riverbank, their thorny branches weighed down with fruit so dark they looked blue beneath the fading light. Dex moved through them selecting one berry from dozens as though there was an art to it. He plucked a particularly lavish one between two fingers and held it toward your mouth.

You stared at the blackberry, then at him. “I’m not stupid.”

Dex managed an infuriating smirk. “It appears you are.”

“Excuse me?”

His mouth pulled into a chuckle. “You think I’m trying to enchant you with fruit that grew in your own kingdom.”

You simply crossed your arms “I am smarter than eating or drinking anything offered by the Fair Folk.”

“The roots are in human soil,” he said, pointing to the roots of the tree. “Made of human rain and human sunlight. You will not be bound to me.”

Ah. Right. 

Still, you narrowed your eyes. “No secret marriage?”

Dex looked more amused by your paranoia, as if enjoying toying with it. “No.”

“No hundred-year sleep?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“No waking up in your palace wearing a crown?”

Dex’s eyes dipped briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes. “Not from the blackberry.”

You should have been more concerned by the distinction. Instead, you leaned forward and took the fruit from his fingers.

It was sweet enough to make you hum, wild and far richer than anything cultivated in the palace gardens. Dex watched you eat it with a satisfaction so singular it was almost ridiculous, as though convincing you to accept one perfectly harmless berry had been the greatest victory of his life.

After that, you talked, mostly about nothing. Then about everything.

You told him about the tower and how the wind made noise through the stones during winter. You complained about your governess, your embroidery lessons, and the latest nobleman your father intended to parade before you like an expensive horse. Dex listened with his full attention, asking questions in places where most people would have nodded politely and waited for you to stop speaking.

He told you about the forest in return, about flowers that only opened beneath eclipses and streams that remembered every person who crossed them. He showed you which mushrooms laughed when stepped on and warned you never to follow lanterns that moved. When you asked whether every fae hunter was as strange as he was, he told you that he was considered perfectly reasonable by the standards of his court.

You didn’t believe him.

The evening came around you while you wandered along the river, eating blackberries you picked yourself and talking until the light turned gold, then rose, then a deep violet between the trees. Dex stayed close. Sometimes, his hand hovered near your waist when you stepped over roots. 

By the time the first stars appeared, you had almost forgotten you had escaped the palace at all.

That was until, the distant toll of the evening bell carried through the woods. You stopped beside the river. Dex stopped with you.

“I have to go.” The warmth left his eyes so quickly, and in its place was something coldly neutral. Still, you kept talking. “My father will be very furious.”

“Oh,”

It was all he could say. 

You looked at him for a long moment, taking in the burnished gold hidden in his dark hair “I like you, Dex,” you said.

He went completely still.

It pleased you, strangely, to know you could surprise him. “Are all fae this kind?”

A glint passed through his mischievous eyes. “Is that what you think I am?”

“My mother says your kind are manipulative,” you said, “She says every gift is a trap and every kindness hides a bargain. She doesn’t trust your kind. Should I?”

Dex glanced toward the silver mist in the distance, then back at you. His frown had gone softer, though no less intent. “I suppose you will have to make up your own mind.”

You considered him as the fae hunter who had released a doe because you asked, as the stranger who had followed you through the forest, listened to every complaint, and fed you nothing that could bind you.

Before you could lose your nerve, you stepped closer and rose onto your toes and pressed a light kiss to the scar on his cheek.

When you drew back, he looked almost dazed, one hand lifting slowly toward the place your lips had touched. For a creature so graceful, so composed, and so clearly dangerous, he appeared wonderfully unprepared for affection.

“Goodnight, Dex.”

You began walking backward toward the palace path.

He remained by the river, watching you leave with that singular concentration.

“Will you be here again?” he asked.

You only smiled. You knew better than to give a promise to a fae. 

But you thought the answer was obvious.

—

By the time you slipped back into the palace, dusk had swallowed the gardens.

Your father stopped you only long enough to ask where you had been. You could tell he was furious under his skin, having sent half his kingsguard on a fruitless search party.

You lied with the ease expected of royalty, telling him you've been reading in the reclusive west tower all afternoon. After all, you have been trained to lie to foreign dignitaries from birth. 

“You are the Crown Princess,” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should have told us if you wanted to be one. You cannot simply disappear.”

“I won’t do it again,” you said, fully intending to do it again.

Once safely inside your tower, you dismissed your ladies, locked the door, and collapsed onto your bed with a sigh.

The ceiling stared back, and so did your thoughts.

You, of course, thought about Dex.

You smiled before you could stop yourself.

You knew the fae hunter was a terrible idea. But he was beautiful enough that every story your mother had ever told suddenly felt painfully believable.

You rolled onto your side, hugging one of the embroidered pillows to your chest. It was only harmless fun, right?

You weren’t making bargains. You weren’t wandering into Faerie. You weren’t accepting enchanted feasts beneath silver trees.

You knew the rules.

You couldn’t eat his food, but surely…

Surely you could have some fun with him.

That wasn’t forbidden.

…Probably.

You buried your face in the pillow with a groan. “This is how princesses end up cursed.”

Suddenly, you heard a gentle tap against the window, followed by another a few seconds later.

You turned immediately, your smile widening as familiar black feathers came into view. “There you are.”

The raven hopped onto the stone sill as it had done a thousand times before, folding his wings neatly against himself before fixing you with that strangely thoughtful stare of his.

You opened the window, and he stepped inside as though he’d always belonged there.

He gave one little chirp.

You laughed under your breath, pretending to be able to talk to him, because you always seemed to pretend he knew everything on your mind. “I know.”

He hopped a little closer.

“He’s a bad idea.”

The raven blinked.

“A very bad idea.”

He seemed to furrow his amber eyes, which was ridiculous to even imagine, right.

“…But he’s awfully gorgeous.”

The bird made a small little croak.

“I know.”

You smiled helplessly, as he nuzzled to your fingers. 

Your heart melted immediately. “Oh, you.”

You gathered him carefully against your chest, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. His feathers were warm beneath your cheek, damp with the scent of leaves and evening air.

“You’re still my favourite,” you half-promised. “Even if Dex is very pretty.”

The raven settled into your arm, satisfied.

You held him while looking toward the distant forest, completely unaware that he had arrived much later than usual.

—

You had not slept properly in three nights.

Every time you closed your eyes, you saw Dex was waiting beneath the trees. Sometimes he stood beside the river with evening light caught in his hair. Other times he was close enough that you could see every tiny fleck in his eyes and the faint silver edge of the scar you had kissed. Once, in a dream so vivid you woke with your heart racing, he had simply watched you from the other side of the mist while you tried to find the path back to him.

By the third night, lying awake and pressing your face into a pillow had begun to feel undignified.

So you abandoned your bed, pulled a cloak over your nightdress and crept down to the oldest part of the royal library with a candle cupped between both hands. 

The palace was unnervingly still at that hour, thanks to the portraits watching you pass through dark corridors, and every floorboard that determined to announce that the crown princess was wandering barefoot toward a locked collection of forbidden books because she could not stop thinking about a beautiful stranger.

The books concerning the Fair Folk were kept beneath the main library, behind an iron gate whose hinges had bled rust into the surrounding stone. Your mother kept the key in her study, hidden beneath a false-bottomed drawer so obvious that you suspected she had never once considered you might look.

The lower level library smelled of old leather, damp parchment and extinguished fires. Shelves climbed toward the vaulted ceiling, crowded with books no one had touched in decades. Some of them were even bound shut with iron clasps. Others had charms stitched into their covers or warnings written across their spines in three different languages.

You found the passage about the Wyld Court in a green leather volume, frail with age.

Several dried anemones had been pressed between its pages. Their white petals had yellowed around the edges, and one crumbled beneath your thumb when you turned to the chapter on the Hunt.

The first few pages were almost reassuring.

Human stories called the Wyld savage because they hunted often, but the account insisted this was ignorance rather than truth. 

The Wyld do not kill for purely sport. Their hunters study the land before taking anything from her, sometimes watching a herd through an entire season to understand which lives could be spared without leaving young unprotected or weakening the group before winter. They never hunt during birthing months. They never took more than the court required. Every part is used and every hunt ends with a rite beneath the oldest trees.

You smiled.

You remembered Dex's voice when he explained why he wasn’t ashamed to hunt. He had simply believed it should be done with his ancient ritual. 

The next section described how Wyld hunters selected their quarry.

They never choose impulsively. 

A hunter watches first. They learn where the animal drank, where it sleeps, which trail it favours and how it behaves when startled. They study the rhythm of its body, the sounds it makes when content, the direction it turns when frightened and the places it instinctively returns to when it believes itself safe.

You shift the candle closer. 

It was practical, of course. A skilled hunter had to know what he followed.

Dex had been like that with the doe, you supposed. 

The book continued.

Once the quarry has been selected, the hunter begins appearing along its path, never close enough to alarm it, and never so often that it flees the territory entirely. They learn of its world before stepping inside it, careful not to disturb the habits they wish to understand.

That sounded…. strangely gentle.

You imagined Dex moving through the forest without snapping a twig, following the doe from somewhere beyond the trees. 

A note in the margin had been written in a shakier hand than the rest:

The Wyld considers attention an act of reverence. 

You traced the words.

“Mmm,” you whispered, though there was no one there to agree with you.

He had seemed to have undivided attention. 

Dex had listened to you with the same concentration gave the forest. 

You had assumed he was simply considerate.

The book described a hunter’s patience in borderline devotional language. 

The hunter does not chase too early. He lets the quarry become accustomed to his presence, appearing at familiar places until their presence no longer causes alarm. If it looks toward them instead of away, that is considered progress. If it remains nearby willingly, it is a sign that the pursuit has entered its next stage.

Your mouth curled up. The doe, freed, hadn’t remained near Dex.

You had, but surely it must be different. You were not prey.

You barely entertained the intrusive thought before returning to the page.

The Wyld believes pursuit should be quiet. A careless hunter frightens away what they hope to bring close. A patient one learns how to make his presence welcome. They leave signs along familiar paths, small objects chosen with care that the quarry would recognise they have not appeared by accident. They remove thorns and stones from frequently used trails. They frighten away other predators before they are ever seen.

You pressed your thighs together beneath the table without thinking.

It was not fear that you felt. It was the memory of Dex following you beside the river, the way he had watched you eat the blackberry as though the smallest movement of your mouth fascinated him. The way his eyes changed when you said you liked him.

Perhaps Wyld hunters were simply intense people.

Some men at court barely remembered the colour of your eyes after spending an entire dinner speaking about themselves. Dex had looked at you once and seemed to notice everything.

That was hardly frightening. It was flattering.

You turned another page.

The descriptions grew more… intimate.

A hunter learns the sound of their quarry’s footsteps before they ever see it. They can identify its scent beneath rain, smoke, or crushed leaves. Over time, they begin to anticipate where it would go before it had made the decision itself.

You smiled dreamily, picturing Dex somewhere in the western woods already knowing which path an animal would take.

Perhaps he would be waiting near the river. Perhaps there would be anemones beside the blackberry bushes.

You hoped there would be.

A final passage sat at the bottom of the page, separated from the rest by an inked border of thorns. You bent closer to read it.

Wyld fae are occasionally known to form attachments of extraordinary depth to their prey. Once a hunter has chosen, fixation may last years, centuries or the full span of an immortal life. Distance rarely weakens it. It may delay the pursuit, but seldom ends the attachment itself.

Well… that sounded a little excessive.

You turned the page quickly.

The next chapter concerned Wyld courtship.

Anemones appeared again in the illustration. You expected this part to be filled with poems and stories. Maybe an explanation of some elaborate fae ritual performed beneath a full moon. You expected several paragraphs at least.

Instead, the chapter contained a single sentence with  letters that were larger than the rest of the book, boxed in black ink and surrounded by a border of thorns:

WARNING: WYLD FAE DO NOT RELIABLY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN COURTSHIP AND THE PURSUIT OF PREY.

Huh. You thought. How vague.

—

The next morning, your mother returned just after sunrise with thirty riders, two foreign ambassadors, enough sealed documents to keep the council occupied for a fortnight, and a potential husband.

Ugh. 

The palace bells rang the moment her party crossed the outer gate.

Servants hurried through the corridors carrying fresh flowers, guards straightening their uniforms. Courtiers appeared from nowhere, already smiling before the queen had even dismounted.

Queens inspired that sort of efficiency.

Your kingdom had always been matriarchal. Daughters inherited crowns. Queens wore crowns and commanded legions while kings negotiated peace treaties. 

Kings advised. Queens decided.

Which meant your marriage had always been your father’s responsibility. The fact that your mother was now getting involved meant one of two things: you were becoming a spinster, or your prospects have started to look so concerning, even the head of state had to lend a hand. In your case, probably both. 

She embraced you only briefly before holding you at arm’s length. “You look tired.”

“I’ve been unable to rest, mother.”

There was the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve inherited your father’s habit of avoiding sleep.”

She smoothed an imaginary crease from your sleeve before her eyes settled back into regal.

“I’ve brought guests.”

You looked past her, and one of them was already looking at you.

You recognised him immediately as Lord Edmund, though you’d never met him.

You’d heard enough.

You heard ladies from across the land whispering his name behind fans at winter banquets, and their maids lowered their voices when he walked past. A merchant’s daughter had once refused to dance with him at a feast, that she’d been sent away to live with an aunt before the week was over.

Nothing had ever been proven, but you heard these things happened because of his very unpleasant behaviour.

He was handsome enough, and more importantly rich enough, to make the rumours inconvenient.

“My lady.”

He bowed and took your hand. His thumb traced the inside of your wrist with lazy familiarity before releasing you immediately tucked your hand behind your back. “You’ve grown even lovelier than your portraits.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

He laughed.

Your mother looked between the two of you with quiet satisfaction. “Lord Edmund has spent the last month travelling with our delegation.”

“I’m honoured,” he gave a saccharine smile, 

“You should be.” She said it lightly, but you knew that tone. She had already decided this alliance made sense.

Oh. No. 

As her conversation moved elsewhere, you took half a step backwards, and Lord Edmund took half a step forwards.

No one noticed when his hand settled lightly against the small of your back with enough pressure that you felt every finger through the silk of your gown.

Your body stiffened.

“So tense,” he murmured.

You moved away, and of course mother turned just then.

“There you are.”

You forced yourself to smile.

The bastard looked every inch the perfect gentleman. 

“Lord Edmund has mentioned going on a hunt tomorrow,” She mentioned, adjusting one of your curls behind your ear. “You’ll accompany him.”

Your stomach dropped. “Mother…”

“It will do you good to leave the palace.”

“I don’t enjoy hunting.”

“You enjoy forests.”

Not the same forest, you thought, Not the same hunter.

Your hesitation lasted a heartbeat too long.

Your mother frowned slightly. “You’ve refused every suitor your father introduced.”

“I barely know any of them.”

“Exactly,” her voice lowered. “You cannot know a person’s character across a dinner table.”

She glanced toward Lord Edmund, who was speaking pleasantly with your father.

“Watch how a man behaves when he’s armed.”

It was advice every queen passed to every daughter: A gentleman could lie, but a hunter rarely did.

“I think you’ll find him disciplined.”

Oh, you very much doubted that. 

—

The next day, you did go hunting with Lord Edmund.

The only alarming detail was that you returned dragging his dead body behind your horse.

By the time you reached the palace gates, the rope around his ankles had rubbed the leather of his boots raw and left a dark trail through the dirt.  His expensive hunting coat was torn open at one shoulder, caked with mud and dead leaves, and his head struck every uneven stone with a dull, ugly rhythm that made several of the guards flinch as they rushed to meet you. 

You rode straight through the gates, eyes blank beneath the grime, skirts streaked green and brown from the forest floor, one hand wound tightly around the reins while the other still trembled despite your best efforts.

Your father reached you first. He looked relieved to see you alive, only to collapse into horror when he noticed what followed behind. Your mother arrived seconds later, still fastening the clasp of her cloak, and stopped so abruptly that the entire courtyard seemed to halt, too, as she looked down at Edmund.

You dismounted without assistance and untied the rope from the saddle. His entire body dropped heavily onto the cobblestones at your feet.

“He went into fae territory,” you said. Your voice sounded remarkably calm. 

Your mother stared at the arrow buried cleanly through Edmund’s chest. Fae work, unmistakably.

You nudged his shoulder with the toe of your boot and looked down at him with exhausted contempt. “Very sad.”

What a lie.

The truth was that Edmund had never intended to hunt anything.

He had looked convincing enough when you left the palace that morning in fine hunting leathers and a freshly carved bow. 

For the first hour, he thanked the servants, praised the hounds and kept his hands where everyone could see them.

Then, he began thinning the party.

The dogs were too noisy, so he sent the handlers east. The scouts had supposedly found fresh tracks near the ridge, so the huntsmen followed. The guards were told to wait with the spare horses near the stream because too many riders would disturb the game. His instruction sounded reasonable by itself, and even though you had been suspicious, you didn’t understand what he was doing until you were alone. 

Only then did you notice that he had not examined a single track all morning. He had not tested the wind, drawn his bow or once looked into the bushes. 

He had watched your body instead, not listening to what on earth you were saying. He hungrily watched the sway of your body in the saddle, and how your skirt shifted when you dismounted to cross a fallen tree. Whenever you tried to turn the conversation back toward the hunt, his attention slid away from the forest and returned to you with the same damp, crawling persistence.

By the time he guided you toward the border, silver mist was already visible between the ancient trunks.

You told him you wanted to turn back. You even pulled your horse around, but Edmund blocked the narrow path with his own and smiled at you as though your fear amused him. 

There was no deer trail or quarry, no reason to be there except the isolation and the knowledge that no human voice would carry far enough for help to come.

That was when the performance ended.

He caught your wrist when you reached for the reins and dragged you down badly enough that your shoulder struck the side of the saddle. Your boots hit the ground unevenly, and before you could recover, his body pressed yours up against the horse.

You told him no, I’m not interested. 

You said it clearly and shoved at his chest and tried to twist away, but he only laughed under his breath, as though refusal were a nervous habit he expected to train out of you after marriage.

And when his hand forced its way beneath your skirts…. An arrow came through the silver mist so suddenly that the air scarcely had time to whisper around it.

It struck Edmund through the heart. 

You knew the arrow immediately. It was the same white arrow with black feathers, the same fine silver runes carved along the shaft. It was the same one he had used on the doe, except there was no Sleep of Rowan in his mercy. 

Oh. This one hurt.

Edmund’s hand tore away from you at once, his face blank with shock as he staggered backward, looking down at the arrow as blood welled dark through his coat. He collapsed first to his knees and then onto his side, choking on a breath that would not come properly.

The mist moved between the trees, and somewhere inside it stood a hunter who had watched long enough to understand exactly what Edmund had intended. 

Edmund was still alive when you walked over to him.

His eyes found yours, wide now, stripped of all his arrogance. His mouth opened as though he expected you to help. Perhaps he thought you would call for the guards. 

Instead, you looked down at him, shaking with fury, and relief so vicious it almost felt like joy.

Then you spat in his face.

He died seconds after.

You stood over the body for several long moments, wrist throbbing where he had held you. 

Dex had killed him.

Dex had seen and he had known exactly what was happening and had not hesitated for even the space of a heartbeat.

You should have been horrified, you should have looked at Edmund’s blood soaking into the moss and felt sick over the life extinguished at your feet.

Instead, you felt safe.

It took you nearly an hour to secure Edmund’s ankles and drag him back through the woods, following a vague trail of blackberries that ensured you made it back safely, knowing exactly who put them there. You didn’t remove the arrow; wanted your mother to see it. 

Now, standing in the palace courtyard with your parents staring at the corpse, you folded your hands in front of you.

Your mother crouched beside Edmund and studied the entry wound. Her face remained composed, but her eyes flicked once toward the bruises around your wrist before returning to the arrow.

“He crossed the border?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And the fae killed him without warning?”

You met her eyes. “He should have known better.”

Your father looked stricken. Your mother looked unconvinced.

Neither of them asked why Edmund’s bow was still strapped neatly across his back, unused. They didn’t even ask why one side of your skirt had been torn near the hem.

Neither of them seemed to want to ask why you showed no grief.

—

That night, your mother sent you back to your chambers to sleep. 

And you should’ve at least tried. 

Instead, you lay tangled beneath your blankets, staring up at the canopy while your mind wandered helplessly back to the western forest, and the dead body of a potential suitor.

Soon enough, your mind wandered back to Dex.

His name alone made heat unfurl in your stomach.

It was ridiculous how easily he ruined you. He had barely touched you the one time he saw you. Tonight, he hadn’t even shown his face. 

But somehow, before you called for him, Dex had known you needed him.

Your thighs pressed together beneath the sheets.

What a sick fucking thought, you scolded yourself, what a sick fucking mind I have, that this makes my core weep? 

“No,” you whispered to yourself, but your body had no interest in your dignity.

But your hand was moving between your legs before shame could stop you.

Beneath the blankets, your fingers slipped lower, tentative at first, then less so as you imagined Dex with your eyes closer. 

A soft gasp left your lips. 

“Dex.” The name came out needy, more pathetic than you meant it to. Still, pleasure sparked through you at the sound of it.

You said it again, quieter this time. 

“Dex.”

Your fingers moved faster.

You bit your lip and tilted your face into the pillow, trying to swallow the next sound, but it escaped anyway, in the form of a helpless gasp that made your whole body shiver beneath the sheets.

You were shameless, lying alone in your tower, touching yourself to the thought of the fae who had killed the man meant to court you. 

Another tremor of pleasure rolled through you as your back arched faintly from the mattress.

“Dex,” you breathed again, a little broken now.

It felt like summoning him. It felt like a confession.

You imagined him at the foot of your bed, hearing exactly how his name sounded when it left your mouth like that. You imagined his head tilting, his eyes darkening, his perfect composure cracking because you were not afraid enough, because you wanted him. Because some wicked part of you had read all the cautionary tales about fair folk and and thought yes.

Yes, him.

Yes, please.

The thought made you whimper into the pillow.

Pleasure built slowly, then all at once, warm and dizzying. You chased it with your eyes shut and his name on your tongue, thinking blood on moss and the beautiful fae monster who had looked at you through the mist.

“Dex, please—”

You didn’t know what you were pleading for.

You only knew you wanted more than just your fingers. You wanted more of that shameful sweetness rolling through you. 

Your fingers twisted in the sheets. Your lips parted around a mewling sound. The pleasure crested so suddenly you nearly sobbed, your body going tight and shaking beneath the blankets as his name fell from your mouth one last time, helpless and utterly damning.

For a while, you could only lie there, glassy eyes staring up at the canopy as though it had witnessed your fall from grace.

An absent-minded smile made its way to your mouth before you could stop it.

“You really are a terrible idea,” you sighed into the darkness.

The words held no conviction at all.

Outside your window, the raven landed silently upon the stone sill.

He watched you through all that, head tilted thoughtfully, black feathers gleaming blue beneath the moonlight. 

That night, you didn’t notice him. 

Nor did you notice that, for the first time since you had known him, he didn’t tap impatiently against the glass to ask you to let him in.

He simply remained where he was, keeping watch over the lonely tower until dawn.

—

By morning, you had decided you only wanted to thank him.

A perfectly reasonable thing, right? A man saved your life and your dignity, even if he was not exactly a man. It was only… polite.

You sat on the edge of your bed, fingers curled into the blankets, staring toward the window.

You… should know better. 

But wanting never really came with a rhyme or reason. 

So, you dressed quickly, perhaps too quickly. 

Your fingers fumbled with the laces of your gown, and you had to redo them twice. Your hair refused to sit properly and reflection looked entirely too flushed, too guilty for a princess who had technically done nothing wrong.

Technically.

You leaned closer to the mirror and frowned at yourself.

“You are going to say thank you in person,” you said firmly. “That is all.”

Your reflection did not look convinced.

“You are only doing this, because he came to your rescue,” you continued, because apparently arguing with glass was where your morning had gone. “Like a civilised woman. You have manners, right?”

Still, your reflection looked at you as if to say that civilised women with manners did not usually wander alone into fae woods after spending the night thinking improper things about the fae in question.

You ignored her.

At breakfast, you had honeyed bread, the sugared fruit, the little cakes glazed gold beneath the kitchen light. You needed to eat, just in case. You cannot find yourself hungry in the presence of Wyld Fae! 

You could not be tempted to eat or drink anything he gives you, that’s all. You needed a full stomach, because you weren’t foolish

Less than an hour later, you were slipping out through the western gate alone.

With your mother’s return, it was even easier to sneak out this time, as many of the guards were preoccupied with the queen’s every whims and needs. A queen, that your father loved to remind you, that you would one day be, too.

Still. 

The morning air was damp, mist clinging to the grass beyond the castle grounds, thin as lace, and the forest stood ahead of you in a dark green wall of ancient trunks and tangled branches. 

Eventually, you stopped at the edge of it.

The trees seemed to notice as it shifted though when there was no wind. Somewhere deep in the woods, a bird called once, then fell silent. The path you had taken yesterday was still there, winding blackberries between moss-covered stones and pale roots, but in daylight it looked… narrower. 

Stranger.

You swallowed.

“Dex?” Your voice sounded terribly small.

Nothing answered an took one step beneath the trees.

The forest swallowed the sounds of the castle almost at once. The distant clatter of carts, the faint bells from the chapel tower, the servants calling to one another across the courtyard was barely noise behind you.

You walked for what felt like an hour.

Then another.

At first, you told yourself he would appear any moment. Dex seemed exactly the sort of person who enjoyed doing that. He would step from behind a tree, and ask whether you made a habit of wandering into dangerous places alone.

You had already prepared an excellent answer.

No, you would say. If I assumed I was in danger, I would not be here.

But Dex did not appear.

By midday, your boots were wet and the hem of your dress had collected half the forest floor. You had crossed the same fallen branch three times, which either meant you were walking in circles or the branch was following you. You had apologetically startled at least four rabbits, nearly tripped over a root that had definitely not been there a moment before, and apologised to a mushroom because it looked like it was wilting when you stepped too close.

“This is foolish,” you whispered.

Then, a branch shifted above you.

You looked up to see your raven friend sat on a low bough. His head tilted, bright eyes fixed on you with unsettling intelligence.

“Oh,” you said. “It’s you.”

The raven blinked.

For a moment, you could not move.

He looked exactly as he had outside your window: watchful and clever, as most corvids are.

Huh. You thought. He travels far, doesn’t he?

Because if this bird knew the forest, maybe he knew where Dex was, or at least where the most dense fae population was near the border. If he did, then perhaps you were not wandering blindly through the woods after all.

You took one step closer towards your friend. “I don’t suppose you could help me?”

The raven gave a small chirp.

Your mouth curved into the smallest smile. “I only want to thank him,” you said.

The raven stared as your smile faded.

“All right,” you whispered, finally admitting to him what you had failed to admit to yourself all night. “I want to see him.”

The raven dropped from the branch and landed lightly on the moss.

Behind him, the mist thickened between two dark trees.

It didn’t drift so much as gathered.

The silver-white started subtly glowing, curling over the roots like silk poured over bone. The path you had followed seemed to end there, as if the forest had brought you as far as ordinary courage could take you.

The raven stepped toward it, then looked back.

“No,” you whispered. “Stay, please. I don’t want to be alone.”

He only watched you.

The air cooled against your skin. Suddenly, the castle felt distant, like it belonged to another princess, a safer princess. A princess who would not follow a raven to the ends of the earth because she wanted to see a dangerous man smile.

And just after giving a little croak, the raven vanished into the white.

You stood at the edge, alone now, cloak ends pooling around your ankles.

For one moment, you thought you saw something through the mist, like gold flowers and black thorns along a path no human should walk. And deeper still, briefly, you could’ve sworn you saw amber eyes watching from the other side.

Your lips parted. “Dex?”

When no answer came, you should have turned back.

You knew that, but longing was not sensible. And whatever Dex had become to you since he met you… that was not sensible either.

You stepped forward and the mist touched your boots first. Then your hem, then your hands.

You should have turned back.

Instead, you took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.

—

Eventually, the mist disappeared. 

It thinned around you in pale ribbons, peeling back from your face and shoulders until the forest revealed itself by degrees. 

It took you a while to blink awake, looking around blankly at the white that was now retreating when…. Oh. Oh, wow.

It was beautiful.

Moss glowed faintly pink beneath your boots. The trees rose black and enormous on every side, their bark veined with silver, their roots twisting through the earth like sleeping serpents. Violet flowers bloomed among thorns, heavy-headed and luminous, turning slightly as you stepped forward as though even the plants wanted to look at you.

It was very clear that wherever you had gone, it was far away from the human realm. 

You looked around, looking for your raven friend. 

You looked through the strange trees, the unnatural sky, and the path of white stones winding away into the woods as if it had been waiting for your feet.

You found nothing.

Your strange little friend had vanished.

You turned in a circle, searching the branches above you and the curling mist behind you.

“Hello?” you called quietly.

Nothing answered.

You frowned, though your heartbeat was too quick for proper annoyance.

“You cannot just lead me through the mist and abandon me,” you managed to say. “It’s rude.”

A drop of water fell from a leaf somewhere overhead.

Still, no raven.

You took another careful step. The moss gave beneath your boots with a cushion-y feel that felt almost alive. “Where did you go?”

At last, a voice behind you said, “Lost, princess?”

You turned so quickly your cloak swung around your legs.

Oh. 

Dex stood beneath a silver-barked tree.

In that moment, all your prepared thoughts vanished.

He looked less like he had walked here and more like the forest had grown him. He was as pretty as you last remembered him, eyes fixed on you with that calm attention that made your stomach tighten and your thoughts go embarrassingly pliant at the edges.

Your breath hitched as his eyes dropped briefly to your mouth, then lifted again.

You remembered yourself with effort.

You had found him, yes, but you had some dignity left in you. You weren't going to make this easy for him. 

“Where is my friend?” You said instead. 

He raised an eyebrow slightly, though he didn’t seem confused at all. “Your friend?”

“The raven.” You glanced over your shoulder, still half-expecting the bird to appear on a branch. “He was right here. He led me through, and then he disappeared.”

Dex looked past you with mild, infuriating faux innocence. “Ravens are difficult to command.”

“I did not command him,” you insisted, trying to look away, even as you have found what you came for. “I asked for help.”

Dex tilted his head. “Did he?”

“He did,” you nodded, “but then abandoned me.”

“Perhaps he thought you had arrived safely.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You say that as though you know where he went.”

“I know very little about the private affairs of true ravens.”

“That sounds like a lie.”

Technically, it wasn’t. 

Dex’s mouth curved up, barely, enough to make heat lick up the back of your neck. “You crossed into fae territory to interrogate me about a bird?”

“No.”

“Then why did you come?”

The question should have an easy answer. In fact, you have practiced it on the walk through the outer woods, when the trees still looked ordinary and you still had the comfort of pretending this was a sensible errand. You had told yourself you would be calm and grateful. You would thank him properly and then go home.

But Dex was looking at you now, all that polite pretenses felt suddenly thin.

“I wanted to find you,” you said weakly.

You hated that the words felt so bare once spoken, because you didn’t even say I wished to thank you or I owe you a debt of gratitude. It didn’t sound like court manners or duty.

I wanted to find you.

Dex took one step closer and asked. “Why?”

You swallowed.

You had many things you wanted to say, none of them a good idea saying. You wanted to tell him you had not slept properly because every time you shut your eyes, you saw the arrow split the mist. 

“I wanted to thank you,” you said.

Dex’s eyes stayed on your face. “For killing the foul creature who wished to touch you against your will?”

You looked down.

Your fingers twisted in the edge of your cloak. For a moment, the forest around you blurred into last evening: Edmund too close, his fingers where they had no right to be. 

The memory made your skin go cold.

You looked up at him. “Yes,” you whispered. “For him.”

Dex came closer, slowly, like approaching prey.

He gave you space to step back, space to turn away. You didn’t.

“You do not need to thank me for that,” he said, “it was my responsibility.”

His responsibility?

It certainly was not. 

You should’ve questioned it. But unfortunately, you had more… urgent matters in your mind. 

“I want to,” you insisted. 

His eyes flicked over your face, lingering on your flushed cheeks, your mouth, the rise and fall of your chest beneath your corset.

“And that is all?” He asked. 

The air warmed between you. Or perhaps that was only your body betraying you.

You lifted your chin. “Yes.”

Dex’s eyes barely changed, but you knew he didn’t believe you for a second. “Princess…” he tsked, almost scolding in nature. 

“I came to thank you,” you insisted, as if repetition could make it any less untrue. Still, you were unable to meet his eyes as you said it.

“I heard what you said.”

“It is the truth.”

“No.” He stepped closer again, close enough now that you could smell rain on leather and pine. “It is part of the truth, isn't it?”

Your back touched the smooth trunk of a silver-barked tree not realising you had stepped back. 

Dex stopped immediately, one hand bracing against the tree beside your shoulder. He didn’t cage you in fully or press his body to yours. He simply stood close enough that your breath tangled with his, close enough that if you leaned forward even an inch, your mouth would find his.

“Do not pretend a you’re welcome is all you should expect from me today,” he murmured.

Your breath caught.

His eyes lowered to your lips. “It is frankly insulting,” he continued.

A scandalised little sound escaped you. “I do not expect anything from you.”

He smiled. “Liar.”

You should have been offended. You were, distantly, beneath the pounding of your heart and the sudden awareness of your own body, there was probably a very respectable princess who objected to being called a liar by a fae hunter in the middle of an enchanted forest.

Unfortunately, she was not currently in charge.

Dex lifted his free hand. You watched it rise, unable to move.

His knuckles brushed beneath your chin, tilting your face up to his in a feather-light touch. 

“Look into my eyes,” he said softly. “And tell me you came only to thank me.”

You held his gaze, and you really did try to force it out, but would not come.

Dex’s thumb brushed the corner of your lips.

“There,” he murmured. “I thought so.”

Your throat went dry. “T-this is very unfair.”

“Is it?” Dex looked amused.

“You know what you are doing.”

“Yes.”

The honesty made something your stomach pull tight.

His eyes darkened, not with cruelty or triumph, but with want so restrained it almost looked like pain.

“Can I kiss you, princess?”

Oh.

You didn’t expect fae to be this… blunt.

Heat rushed down your throat and settle behind your ribs. It made you remember Edmund again,m, because Edmund had not asked. Edmund had pushed close and taken space and treated your refusal like a bug he could smother beneath his heel.

Dex asked.

Dex, who could have been terrifying without trying. Dex, who has killed for you. Dex, whose mouth hovered near yours and still waited.

“Yes,” you whispered.

Only then did he lower his mouth to yours.

He kissed you slowly at first. His lips brushed yours once, and for one second, he let you decide, let you lean in, and let you press yourself closer to him. You fingers curled into the front of his cloak as you kissed him back.

Then you made the neediest sound against his mouth, and his control snapped thin.

He kissed you deeper, his hand sliding to the back of your neck, fingers warm beneath your hair. The tree was cool against your spine, his body warm in front of you, and between them you felt held rather than trapped. 

His mouth opened over yours with a hunger that made your knees buckle, but even then, even with his fingers tightening slightly at your nape, he kissed like you were the singular thing that gave his life meaning.

You clutched his cloak, body tilting toward him before your pride could stop it.

Dex groaned quietly into the kiss.

Oh, what a wonderful sound. 

You pulled him closer, and his other hand found your waist. His grip was warm as though he needed to feel the shape of you. He kissed you until your lips tingled, until your breath came in shallow little gasps.

When he broke away, it was only to press his mouth to your jaw, then your throat.

You tipped your head back before you could stop yourself.

Dex’s mouth curved against your skin with a little hum. 

You were already shaking. “Do not sound pleased with yourself.”

“But I am,” he mumbled. 

His teeth grazed the side of your neck just enough to make your fingers dig into his shoulders.

“Dex.”

For all his composure, his reaction gave him away. He liked your voice like that. He liked you, breathless and honest, he liked that that you had come here dressed in gratitude and were now pressed against a silver tree, melting under his mouth.

His hand slid from your waist to your hip, then lower. over the fabric, dragging heat in the wake of his palm.

Your breath hitched.

Dex froze at once. “Can I touch you?”

Your eyes opened halfway.

He was watching you now, close enough that his lashes cast shadows against his cheeks. 

“Yes,” you said, cheeks burning “Yes, Dex. Touch me.”

His hand tightened once on your hip before he kissed you again and gathered your skirts, agonisingly slowly.

He did so layer by layer, his fingers drawing the fabric upward, exposing your stockings, your garters, the bare skin above them to the cool air of the fae wood. 

You should have felt vulnerable, and part of you did, but you were not afraid. The vulnerability made your heart pound harder and your mouth open against his. 

Dex felt your thighs part before his hand had even reached them.

“Oh, princess.” It was filthy and wondrous at the same time. 

Your face burned as his fingers brushed your inner thigh.

You gasped.

Dex’s eyes darkened as his hand slid higher.

The first touch between your legs made you jolt against him. He found you slick already, shamefully wet, soaked from his kiss and his voice and the humiliating truth that he had been right. Thank you was not all you had come for, not even close.

For one second, Dex didn’t move much.

He dragged his finger through, feeling the slick heat of you against his fingers and your hips giving the smallest helpless tilt toward his hand.

His teeth clenched hard enough to make the muscle jump.

“Oh,” he breathed again, rougher this time. “You really did come here wanting me.”

Your hand flew to his wrist to hold him there. “I c-came to thank you,” you insisted for the third time. 

His fingers slid through your wetness, and the sound beneath your skirts was utterly indecent.

Your breath broke.

Dex’s mouth brushed the corner of yours. “Yes,” he murmured. “You are thanking me very well.”

The words made you clench around nothing.

Dex felt that too.  His smile felt dangerous against your cheek.

“Ah,” he whispered. “Shameless little thing.”

You would have protested if his thumb had not found the puffy sensitive bundle of nerves, begging for his attention.

The touch was light at first, circling through the slick, making pleasure spark hot beneath your skin. Your head tipped back into his waiting palm. He kissed your exposed throat, open-mouthed, while his fingers learned you beneath your gown.

He was too careful to be rushed but too precise to be merciful.

Every movement had purpose. Every stroke, every firm circle. His thumb pressed a little firmer.

Your knees buckled.

Dex caught you with his body, pinning you gently against the tree while his hand kept moving.

His fingers slid lower. “Still only here to be polite?”

You made a strangled sound. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” you gasped. “I don’t.”

His first finger pushed inside you, and the sound of it could be heard within the hush of the forest.

Your mouth fell open on a mewl, and Dex’s forehead dropped to your collarbone. He held still for a heartbeat, letting you clenched around him.

You gripped his cloak with both hands. “No. More.”

His eyes nearly closed.

His composure cracked, hunger flashing naked and bright through the careful mask, and then he kissed you hard as his finger began to move, gently at first, slick and deep, curling inside you until pleasure jolted through your hips.

You cried out against his mouth.

Dex swallowed the sound like he had been starving for it. “There?”

You could not answer.

He curled his finger again, and your body jerked.

“Need words, princess.”

“Yes,” you gasped. “There. Please.”

His thumb circled while his finger worked inside you, the rhythm steady and wickedly exact. Every stroke made a pool of arousal gather around his hand.

His smile should have made you embarrassed.

Instead, it made you shameless, rocking down onto his hand with a broken little whimper.

Dex groaned.

“You hear that?” he murmured.

Your eyes squeezed shut. “Dex.”

“You do,” he said, kissing your cheek. “You hear how badly you want me.”

He added a second finger.

The stretch made your breath catch. 

His fingers moved again, sliding into you with ease that made your face burn and your body melt. He curled them carefully, pressing deep, finding that same place until your thighs shook around his wrist.

Dex watched you like you were the only thing in the forest.

Not like Edmund.

Edmund had wanted you afraid. Dex wanted you ruined by pleasure.

Your hands clutched his shoulders. Your hips chased his fingers. You moaned into his neck, too far gone to care about the old stories warning girls never to follow fae men into the woods.

You had followed. You had crossed.

You were here.

So you might as well make the most of it, right?

“Dex,” you mewled as pleasure flared so bright you nearly sobbed.

“There,” he whispered. “Better than your own fingers, right?”

You should have noticed. You should have asked how he knew what you had done in your tower. You should have questioned how he knew his name had been in your mouth the night before.

But his fingers curled again and your thoughts scattered.

Dex smiled on your throat. “That’s what I thought.”

He didn’t give you time to recover.

His hand moved quicker now, fingers buried deep to his knuckles, thumb steady as pleasure climbed too fast and too high. Your whole body tightened around him, hips rolling shamelessly into his palm, chasing every stroke. You were wet enough that the sound of him touching you filled the space between your bodies, and Dex seemed to lose another thread of control every time he heard it.

“You are so sweet like this,” he murmured.

“Stop talking.”

“No.”

“Dex.”

“You like it.”

You did.

His thumb pressed harder as his fingers curled exactly right.

The climax tore through you in a hot, shaking wave.

You came with your face buried against his shoulder, mouth open on a broken cry, squeezing around his fingers as pleasure pulsed through you again and again. Dex held you upright through it, one arm firm around your waist, his mouth against your temple, his hand still moving beneath your skirts until every last shiver had wrung itself out of you.

Only then did he stop.

The forest around you seemed hazy and unreal, glowing moss beneath your weak knees. Dex withdrew his fingers, and your body gave one last helpless flutter at the loss.

You should have looked away, instead you watched as he lifted his hand between you, his fingers gleamed with your arousal.

Dex’s eyes stayed on yours as he brought them to his mouth and tasted you.

His eyes turned dark with satisfaction. “You really are sweet,” he said.

A scandalised little sound escaped you. “Dex,” you gasped. “You cannot say things like that.”

His thumb brushed your lower lip. “I can say much worse.”

“You should not.”

“No,” he agreed. “I should not.”

Eventually, he guided you carefully away from the tree.

Your legs were unsteady, dress rumpled. Your heart felt as though it had been taken apart and put back together. Dex kept one hand at your waist, watching you with a hunger that had not faded at all.

If anything, it had grown worse.

“How much more gratitude should I expect from you, princess?”

Your breath caught.

You knew you should be careful. You knew enough old stories to understand that words mattered here. Especially words spoken to beautiful fae men beneath magical trees and your heart no longer safely your own.

But then Dex’s hand slid into your hair, guiding you lower, his fingers threading through the loosened strands that your breath caught before you had even reached your knees. The moss gave beneath you, soft enough to feel unreal through the layers of your dress. Around you, the forest went uncannily quiet, as though the trees had closed their eyes and the flowers among the thorns had turned away out of courtesy.

Above you, Dex opened his belt. The buckle came free with a metallic click that seemed to echo as leather slid through its clasp, each small movement made unbearable by the way he watched you watching him. His blue-touched fingertips worked with the same terrible care you had seen when he handled his bow, and that precision made the moment feel even more indecent.

“As much as you want,” you whispered, holding his eyes, unshaded by how badly you wanted him to know the truth.

Dex smiled.

Your eyes lifted to his, licking the tip of his now-free length. 

“There,” he groaned, thumb brushing your cheek as he pulled your mouth almost fully into him. “Now that feels like a thank you.”

You swirled your tongue as he closed his eyes. “Ah— fuck,” he breathed, voice barely controlled. “That’s it.”

You wanted more of that strained, beautiful sounds he tried and failed to hold back immediately. 

So you let your lips and tongue become gratitude, letting every eager movement say what your mouth could not form into words. 

Thank you for the arrow. Thank you for Edmund. Thank you for seeing what I wanted and waiting until I said yes.

Dex’s head tipped back slightly, a rougher, lower sound this time.

You took it as a reward.

“Princess,” he warned, though it sounded nothing like warning. It sounded like prayer.

Your eyes watered from the effort of taking all of him, from how much he was, from just how big he was that he barely fit in your velvety mouth. 

Still, you looked up through wet lashes, and the sight seemed to make him twitch.

“Sweet, reckless thing.” he whispered. 

You gave him more.

Dex groaned and the sound was beautiful.

This was better than court music under a chandelier during the autumn feast. This was the dangerous fae hunter above you losing pieces of himself because your mouth was warm and utterly devoted.

His pleasure was music to your ears and you wanted to make him sing.

“Look at me,” Dex said.

You did.

His amber eyes were dark now, fixed on your face, looking undone and hungry. His blue-touched fingertips glowed faintly where they rested against your cheek, wiping away a tear.

“Good girl,” he said.

You nodded, too full of want to be embarrassed properly.

His thumb stroked beneath your eye. “You are too sweet for your own good.”

You would have rolled your eyes if you had been capable of dignity.

Instead, you bobbed again, more frequent this time.

Dex’s breath broke as you tasted the first bead of arousal coming out of him, proof of how badly he wanted you.

His mouth parted around a breath that was nearly a laugh, nearly a moan.

“Do not look so shocked,” he murmured. “You did that.”

The words made heat flood through you all over again.

You should have felt shy. Instead, pride curled through your chest, wicked.

You had done that. You had made him sound like that.

So you kept going, tearful and greedy until he started murmuring curses in a language older than yours. You wanted him to remember this. You wanted him to know that you were no longer simply thanking him.

In an attempt to go deeper, to feel him in your throat as if you’ve trained all gag reflex away, you tilted your head slightly.

That’s when you saw the quiver of arrows lay in the moss beside you. It must’ve slipped off his shoulders at one point or another.

White ash arrows rested inside, carved with silver runes. You knew those arrows but it was not the arrows that stopped your heart.

It was the feathers that tipped the ends of the arrows, glossy blue-black beneath the fae light. You never noticed them before, but they were… raven feathers.

Your breath hitched.

Oh. 

Oh. 

Suddenly, you thought of the windowsill, your friend tapping at the glass. You remember his clever black eyes watching while you read aloud, lonely and foolish. The little creature had listened to your complaints, your restless dreams, your secrets. 

The raven who had visited for years. The raven who had led you through the mist.

Your eyes lifted slowly.

Dex looked down at you with his amber eyes. 

Oh.

All those mornings, all those evenings, all those years…

You should have known. You heard of stories of fae folk turning into woodland creatures all the time. 

He was the raven.

Your hands tightened.

You should have pulled away and demanded answers. How long? How much had he heard? How many secrets had he carried away? 

Oh, you had been so, so foolish. 

You should’ve known from the first day you truly met in the woods. You should have questioned how he had known to call you princess when you had never told him what you were. 

For a second, real fear flickered through your eyes. Not fear of him, Fear of the fact that some part of you did not hate it enough.

Dex’s face changed the moment you understood.

He knew the pretty princess he had been pursuing for years had finally had it all figured out. 

Pleasure and guilt and hunger crossed behind his eyes in the same vein, you could barely separate them. His hand remained gentle in your hair, giving you room to turn your face away from him and the old magic curling around both of you.

You stared up at him, eyes wet, heart pounding.

You were frightened. But as your mouth kept working him, clearly, you weren’t frightened enough.

Instead, you had felt strangely, terribly cherished by the thought that the raven at your window had waited years to be touched by you like this. 

As you quickened your pace, your eyes burned harder.

Dex’s thumb brushed another tear from your cheek, intended to be an apology in gesture.

You answered by giving him more.

His breath shattered.

You became greedy for his pleasure, greedy for every note you could draw from him. The forest blurred silver and green around you. The flowers bowed their heads among the thorns. Mist curled over your knees, hiding the path back, making you forget the safer version of yourself, who would have stopped the moment she realised the truth.

You were not her anymore.

You had crossed the line.

Dex’s moans were music to your ears, so controlled until they were not. Each one made your own heart pound harder, made your mouth react and your hands more certain. You wanted to ruin him kindly, to thank him until he forgot how to be anything but yours in that moment.

His head tipped back, and the sound that left him was almost helpless. It filled you with vicious pride. You wanted to keep it forever the way he had apparently kept pieces of you.

“You’re going to ruin me,” he said as the blue at his fingertips brightened.

His hand tightened in your hair, then loosened at once, still careful even at the edge of himself. His body went rigid above you, and the final sound he made was the prettiest yet.

His seed spilled into you as he reached his high and no textbook had warned you that a fae could taste like sweetness and binding magic. 

Your throat worked once, eyes rolling back in a haze from the taste.

And you swallowed.

For a moment, you only knelt there, dazed.

Dex, finally catching his breath, finally looked down at you.

He laughed fondly, as though you had done something preciously foolish and still utterly expected.

“Oh, princess,” he murmured.

Then, his hand slid over the crown of your head in an almost patronising pat pat pat.

You blinked up at him, eyes glossy, mouth parted, still too ruined to be properly offended by the way he was looking at you, like you were helpless and had walked directly into his snare and thanked him for setting it.

“Poor thing,” he cooed, “you really don’t know, do you?”

Huh?

Your eyebrows pulled together, confused, mouth still dripping silver-white liquid. “W-what?”

Dex lazily pulled his belt on before crouching in front of you, amber eyes bright with wicked tenderness. His thumb brushed your lower lip, wiping away the last trace of him gently.

“You were right to refuse our fruit,” he said. “And you were right to refuse our wine.”

A strange warmth bloomed beneath your ribs.

Dex smiled wider. “But the old laws never distinguished between feasts and lovers.”

The words sank in slowly.

Your heart stumbled as looked down at your hands in the moss.

For one second, you thought the strange fae light was playing tricks on you. The glow of the flowers, perhaps old magic bending colour where it touched skin.

But no.

Your fingertips were blue at the very tips, like you had dipped them in moonlight and frost. The colour shimmered luminously beneath your skin, not stain, not paint that could be washed away.

A bond.

Dex made a pleased hum and took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the new colour as though admiring his own mark.

You should have recoiled or demanded answers. Maybe shouted at him 

Instead, your lashes fluttered, and the golden thread beneath your ribs tugged you toward him until your body swayed towards him, not entirely magical in origin.

Because you truly believed, bond or not, you still wanted him. 

Dex caught you.

His hand settled possessively at your waist, and you looked up at him with a weak smile that made his cold heart melt.

You had not known a lover’s offering could bind as surely as bread and wine. You had not known that he had turned your body into a feasting table and your mouth into a cup.

And the worst part was you did not care enough.

How could you, when Dex looked at you like you hung the moon and stars for him? How could you when the forest seemed to hum approval? 

A distant, sensible part of you understood that you should have reacted. You should have stiffened in his arms, looked back toward the mist, thought of your mother and father, your kingdom, your guards, the frantic search parties that would soon spill into the western woods calling your name. Instead, you only curled deeper into Dex as though the sound had frightened you toward him rather than away from him, and his arms tightened around you at once, pleased by the surrender.

He gathered you closer, one hand beneath your knees and the other firm against your back, carrying you as though you weighed nothing at all. The thorn path opened behind him with a shiver of black branches, parting for their prince and the human princess he had finally claimed. 

Dex kissed your temple once, his mouth lingering there as he murmured sweet little nothings into your hair. I never used the Sleep of Rowan until he wanted to become the kind of hunter you would not fear. I wanted to be good for you. You made me want to be kind. My North Star. My pretty girl. My princess.

The words should have mattered. A foolish part of you heard them and melted, heard the devotion beneath the old loneliness of centuries spent alone. Perhaps some corner of your heart truly did believe a creature like him meant every gentle thing he said, even while carrying you deeper into a realm that had just swallowed you whole. 

All his pretty promises blurred into the darker truth humming through the old magic between you. He could not wait to show you his realm, his palace, his gardens, his bed. He could not wait to keep you spoiled as his lover and his plaything, the future mother to his heirs. You were for as long as the Wyld remembered how to hunger.

You should have been horrified, but you were too full of the sweetness you had swallowed, and the magic now curling through your blood like a second heartbeat. Your cheek rested against his throat, and when Dex’s hand stroked over your back, you sighed as though you were relieved, because being taken felt too much like being wanted.

For Dex, Prince of the Wyld, his three-year hunt for his mate was finally complete. 

If he was being honest, he had thought it would take longer.

Not that he was complaining.

—End. 

Dex taglist part 1:

Peter looked up from where he was painting a blue stripe on one of Yondu’s old shoes because he thought it looked cool. “Wheels are useful,” he shrugged.

“They are primitive.”

“Cars are cool.”

“Cars are slow.”

“They have music.”

That, unfortunately, made you stop dead in your tracks, because Terra did have good music. Peter made sure everyone knew that. He had his cassette player and he treated it like the planet lived inside that little plastic box and those stupid orange headphones.

Still, you lifted your chin. “Fine,” you rolled your eyes. “One point for Terra. I’m still never moving there.”

Peter threw a bolt at you. You caught it without looking.

From the doorway, Yondu laughed,“Both of you kids are idiots.”

You grinned. Peter grinned. Yondu scoffed and pretended he didn’t love either of you.

Back then, you and Peter were just Ravager kids. You grew up with rooms under engine bays, learning how to steal and squeeze into tight spaces before you learned how to talk about feelings.

You called Peter your brother as a joke. He called you his sister, too, when he was annoyed with you, which was often. Mostly because you stole his snacks, rewired his blasters, and told alien girls he cried during Footloose (the girls would be so confused and ask what is a loose foot?).

Neither of you knew, until years later, that the joke turned out to be true. 

Why would you even think that? You looked so different.

By the time you learned you were both children of Ego, everything was already falling apart. You and Peter both stood there with celestial light in your veins and heartbreak deep in your stomach.

Ego looked at you and Peter like you were not his children at all. To him you were not people, not family. You were not kids Yondu had fed, clothed, shouted at, protected, and raised in his own terrible way.

You and Peter were… batteries.

And then Yondu died.

What were you supposed to do then? How were you supposed to process the fact that your father was a monster and your daddy was fucking dead?

That grief changed you. It changed Peter, too.

For a while, neither of you joked about anything. 

Yondu’s parenting hadn’t always been… healthy. He had been mean, loud, unfair. He pitted you and Peter against each other because he said it “builds character”. He taught you to steal, lie, shoot, and run,

But he had also taken you in. He tried his best and loved you, even if he never knew how to show it properly.

The Guardians became your family after that, making space for you the way that they made space for Peter. 

And it didn’t take long for you to realise why your brother was so fond of them : no one really knew how to leave each other alone.

Rocket complained about everyone while making sure everyone had weapons that worked. Groot wrapped little branches around your wrist when he thought you were upset. Drax gave you advice that was almost always terrible and occasionally devastatingly profound. Gamora understood what it meant to be made by a monster, and yet still wanted to be better. Mantis, newcomer to the group, too, touched your hand one night and whispered that your sadness felt like a dying star.

The Guardians didn’t fix that grief, they could not. They filled that hollow emptiness with arguments over music, bad plans, worse jokes, emergency repairs, and shared meals. 

You had been a Ravager first, but with this rag tag band of freaks, you became more than Ego’s child, more than Yondu’s ward. You were a Guardian of the Galaxy, with all the terrible decisions and accidental tenderness that came with it.

For a while, that was enough. What more could you ask for? Your family was insane and the galaxy kept trying to kill you in increasingly creative ways, which honestly felt normal enough. You had missions and people to annoy. You had Peter to bully whenever he got too sentimental about Terra. You had a place to stand. You had a reason to stay.

Then came Thanos, and Titan.

Titan was dead in a way that made your skin crawl. It was huge and orange and silent, a ruined sky stretching above you like the planet itself had given up long before you arrived.

The fight came back to you later in flashes, though your brain still struggled to fill in the full picture: You remembered Tony Stark bleeding into the ground and Stephen Strange looking at everything like he already knew the ending. You remembered Mantis holding on to the Mad Titan’s sleep with everything she had, small but braver than almost anyone gave her credit for. Peter Parker, an arachnid boy to the best of your understanding, had been fighting for his life. You remembered throwing yourself at him, blades in hand, the remnants of power burning beneath your skin. You hated the way it reminded you of Ego. You hated the way it made you feel like his daughter. But in that moment, with your chosen family around you and that monster in front of you, you used it anyway.

You were a guardian; and guardians didn’t have to be healed to fight for each other. You didn’t have to be whole.

But it was not enough.

The plan almost worked, which just made it worse. For one breathless second, it felt like you might actually pull it off. Mantis had him under and the gauntlet was right there. Everyone was moving, shouting, straining, almost winning. 

Then Peter found out about Gamora, and grief did what grief always did in your family: it broke.

You couldn’t even blame him, really. Later, maybe, people would. 

Maybe they would say he ruined everything. Maybe they would say he should have held it together. 

But you knew Peter. You knew that kind of loss. If someone had stood in front of you mentioning Yondu’s death like it was necessary, you weren’t sure you would have been any smarter, any less reckless. 

Neither you nor Peter had ever learned how to grieve quietly.

Then Thanos was gone, and you never knew silence would get worse than the fight.

At first, you thought the dust on your hand was from the planet. Titan was full of it, after all. But then your fingers started to break apart, coming undone, and grey at the edges, scattering into the air before your mind could make sense of it. 

You stared at your own hand, as if you looked hard enough, you could force it to stay.

Peter saw it happen.

One second he was Star-Lord, heartbroken and still trying to understand what he had done, and then he was just Peter. Your brother, the boy from the Ravager ship, the idiot who used to throw bolts at you. 

“Hey,” he said, and there was panic in it immediately. “No. No, no, no—”

You tried to reach for him, but your arm started disappearing halfway there. 

That was when the fear finally hit you like a child reaching for light in the dark. You looked past Peter and saw Mantis fading too, eyes wide and wet, her hand stretching toward you even as her own body betrayed her. Drax was already gone. The battlefield was emptying itself one person at a time, and all you could think was that your family was scattered across the galaxy and you had not said goodbye to any of them.

You had spent your life acting like leaving was easy because Ravagers left. Guardians left. People like you learned how to walk away before anyone could see what it cost. But this was not leaving. This was being taken. This was the universe reaching into your chest and ripping you out before you could choose a final word, a final joke, a final insult about Terra just to make Peter laugh.

Peter lunged for you, hand outstretched, desperate to catch what was left, but he… started disappearing, too. 

Then you were both dust.

—

And then, five years later, you woke up in what felt like the middle of the end of the universe.

One second, you were dust on Titan. The next, you were gasping air back into your lungs, stumbling through a portal with Peter shouting and Mantis grabbing your arm like she needed to make sure you were real. There was no time to understand or ask what had happened, where you had been, or why everyone looked like they had spent years grieving you. 

There was only Thanos standing across the battlefield like the galaxy had not already suffered enough because of him.

So you fought him again, and this time, you won.

Earth, as it turned out, was not boring. 

Earth was loud and muddy and actively on fire, which was frankly more personality than you had expected from Peter’s stupid little wheel planet. Earth had witches throwing red light from their hands, sorcerers opening glowing doorways in the air, flying men in metal suits, a giant green Terran who looked like someone had inflated a nerd with steroids, and at least one god with an axe. There were soldiers with wings, tiny insect people, archers with no self-preservation, and a man dressed like a flag who kept throwing a shield like he had never heard of blasters.

Earth also had Bucky Barnes.

Rocket introduced you to him two days after the battle, when everyone was still sleep-deprived and trying to figure out what the fuck had happened in the five missing years. The Avengers had put the Guardians in a motel, which was… an interesting choice. The bed was too soft, the ceiling was too low, and everything on Terra smelled like detergent and old carpet. You were sitting on the floor because it felt less ridiculous than the springed-cot thing they called a mattress when Rocket kicked the door open without knocking.

Rocket had been introducing “Terran freaks” to you, which mostly involved dragging various Avengers to the motel and describing them in the least respectful way possible. He had spent five years coming back and forth from Earth, apparently, which meant he met most of the important ones. And those he hadn’t met yet, he already knew about through stories. 

“This is Green Monster Man,” Rocket said yesterday, showing Banner around to the guardians.

“That’s Bug Guy,” Rocket said this morning, taking Scott Lang on a tour of the motel, showing him off like a show-and-tell presentation.

Of course, this time, he had a new guy to show around.

“Hey,” he said, jerking one thumb over his shoulder. “This is Metal Arm Man.”

You looked up.

And fuck.

Metal Arm Man was beautiful, in the way some Terrans seemed to admire. He was not shiny, like a Sovereign. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He looked like a man who had crawled out of several consecutive wars. He had tired blue eyes, dark brown hair tucked behind his ears, a jawline carved by old gods, and a black-and-gold metal arm— so it made sense why Rocket had taken a liking to him. Or. y’know. His metal appendages.

He stared at you too, and there was nothing polite about it. His eyes moved over the faint shimmer under your skin and the Ravager leathers you had refused to trade for Earth clothes. He looked at the bruise healing along your collarbone, and the knife strapped to your thigh. 

Rocket looked between the two of you and made a gagging sound. “What the hell are you two doing?”

The man cleared his throat, like he had remembered manners halfway through staring at you. “My name’s Bucky.”

You blinked. “Bucky?”

His mouth twitched. “Yeah.”

You stared at him for another second, genuinely trying to decide whether Terra was playing some kind of joke on you. “Is that even a real name?”

From somewhere in the hallway, Peter shouted, “Don’t make fun of Terran names! You’re embarrassing me!”

You ignored your brother. Bucky, to his credit, didn't look offended. If anything, he looked amused, which only made him more annoyingly attractive.

“It’s um...” He scratched the back of his head with a human arm. “It’s short for James Buchanan Barnes,” he said, as if that made it any better.

You frowned. Why are earth names so unnecessarily long and complicated? “That’s worse.”

Peter, who apparently had still been listening in, made a noise from the hallway. “Can you be normal for literally one minute?”

“No,” you and Rocket said at the same time.

Bucky actually smiled then.

And you, who had spent most of your life insisting Terra was primitive, boring, and overrated, had the unfortunate thought that maybe you had been wrong.

—

You ended up on the motel roof that night because Earth rooms were suffocating.

It wasn’t exactly difficult. Terran buildings were hilariously easy to escape from. All it took was one window, one rusted ladder, a short jump, and you were on the roof with your back against a humming vent and your knees drawn up to your chest, looking out over a planet you still didn’t understand.

Earth was strange at night. The fire and smoke from the battlefield were gone from here, replaced by yellow streetlights, blinking towers, the rush of wheeled vehicles dragging themselves along roads like they had nowhere better to be. The sky was weird. There was too much light from the city and not enough stars visible. You could barely see anything past the haze, and for someone who had grown up under infinite darkness in a space pirate ship, that felt almost cruel.

Your fingers moved absently over your arm.

The markings there were faint tonight, but still visible. Thin lines of soft, light trailing from your wrist toward your elbow, glowing under the skin like someone had hidden stardust in your veins. Proof, if you needed it, that you were not human. These were markings of your mother’s species, but it didn’t really matter, did it? Your mother’s planet was a dead one. You had no true home. 

Behind you, the roof access door creaked.

You didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. “You’re still here, Metal Arm Man?”

You heard a pause, then a huff that might have been a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Still here.”

Bucky Barnes stepped onto the roof like he was trying not to startle a wild animal. He was wearing the same thing he was earlier: dark shirt, dark jacket, dark boots. The metal arm reflected the weak rooftop light as he walked closer, black and gold lines shifting with him.

He stopped a few feet away, giving you space.

“Your brother cornered me downstairs,” he said.

You finally looked over at him. “Pete?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “He wanted to talk to me about Captain America collectible trading cards.”

You blinked. “About what?”

“That was pretty much my response.”

You tried to picture Peter, still freshly returned from being dust in his home planet, cornering this beautiful and haunted-looking Terran soldier in a motel hallway to discuss little paper images of a man in a flag suit. You had no idea what trading cards were. You had no idea why Captain America needed collecting. You had no idea why Peter was like this, except that unfortunately you knew exactly why Peter was like this.

“He’s very embarrassing,” you said.

Bucky’s mouth twitched up. “He seemed excited.”

“He gets like that when Terra is involved. The planet does something to his brain.”

“Pretty sure he was asking if I knew how much the 1944 set was worth.”

You stared at him. “Do you?”

“No.” This time, he did laugh. It was a startled sound that seemed to slip out of him before he could stop it. The sound suited him too much. It made him look younger for half a second, less broken from war and more like someone who might have once been very good at smiling.

He walked closer after that, though still not too close. “Mind if I sit?”

You looked back out over the city. “It is your planet.”

“Not sure that means much.”

“No?”

“No.” You could hear him being flat and careful. There was something he wasn’t really saying.

So you shrugged, and Bucky sat beside you with a polite amount of space between your shoulder and his. For a while, neither of you spoke. Somewhere in the building, you could hear Drax laughing. And in a nearby home, you could hear a young voice crying quietly enough that they probably thought nobody could hear. But you could, your hearing was better than human hearing. 

You did not feel better than human that night, though. You… felt tired.

Bucky’s eyes moved to your arm. You thought he was looking at your species marking. But then he asked, “does it hurt?” and you knew he was talking about something much more… sensitive.

You glanced down at your arm, turning it over to show the deep scarring line that never quite healed from your battle with Ego. “No. Not usually.”

“What is it?”

You flexed your fingers, watching the light shift faintly beneath your skin. “Proof that my planet-sized narcissist father tried to kill me.”

Bucky turned his head toward you.

You smiled without humour. “My biological father is a living planet. He made many children across the galaxy because he wanted to use us as batteries for his expansion plan.”

Bucky stared at you for a second, then looked out over the city again. “That’s a lot.”

“Yeah,” you leaned back, “I have been told my childhood is not a good first-date topic.”

His mouth twitched again, but it was kinder this time. “This a first date?”

You looked at him, and the rooftop seemed to tilt slightly. “I don’t know. Is sitting on a roof after a universe-ending battle a date on Terra?”

“Usually no.”

“Usually?”

“I’m old. Dating got weird while I was gone.”

While I was gone. 

Huh. Another little door with some probably horrible backstory behind it. You wondered how many of those he had

So you pushed your door open first.

You just started talking because the city sounded too alive after all that death, and because Bucky Barnes gave you the kind of comfort that made people say things they didn’t mean to say yet.

You told him about Ego first, because that was the biggest part of the story on paper. But he was not the part that hurt the most.

You told him how mother’s home planet had already been dying when Yondu found you. The sky had been the wrong colour for so long that you thought all skies looked sick. You remembered your mother’s hands, or maybe you had invented that memory. You remembered being small, hungry, angry, and too tired to cry properly.

Then Yondu came. He got you out because that was what he did.

Bucky listened without interrupting. He didn’t rush to relate, though you suspected he might’ve been able to. He sat there beside you on the motel roof, one knee bent, metal arm resting still against it, and let the words come out.

You looked down at your hands.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said eventually.

People said that a lot, and you usually hated it. But from him, it didn’t sound empty. Maybe, it was because his voice already carried so much sorrow that it knew how to make room for yours.

You swallowed. “The funny thing is, Yondu threatened to eat Peter and me so many times. But at least he was there. I might have Ego’s blood, but Yondu gave me a home.”

Bucky sighed. “Blood doesn’t mean much by itself.”

You looked at him.

His eyes were fixed on the city, but he was not really seeing it anymore. The streetlights reflected faintly in his face, illuminating the tired slope of his mouth and the shadows beneath his eyes. “I had a family once. Parents, a sister, everything.”

And just like that, Bucky pushed his door open too.

Maybe it was easier to trauma dump to a pretty alien girl who he’s pretty certain he won’t see again.

He told you about war, handing you broken parts of himself and trusting you not to cut yourself on them. He told you about leaving home, about falling, about waking up in the hands of monsters. He told you enough that your stomach turned cold. 

You had known there was something wrong in him. It made more sense now that you knew they had taken a living thing apart and put it back together with instructions missing. 

You looked at his arm again, even though that wasn’t the arm. Then, you looked at his face. “Oh,” you said, after he told you about HYDRA. “They made you a weapon.”

Anger rose in your stomach, a real, hot, familiar anger. It was the kind of anger you had learned from Ravagers. It was actionable. It was pure and feral.

“Are they dead?” you asked.

That made him look at you.

You blinked. “What? It’s a reasonable question.”

Bucky studied your face, and he looked almost amused behind the exhaustion of his eyes. “Most of them.”

“Most is not all.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

“Do you want help?”

His eyebrows lifted.

“I am very good at killing people,” you added, because honesty, that seemed polite.

Bucky stared at you for half a second, then laughed again, this time with more breath in it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

You smiled despite yourself, then looked away before it got too real. You had known him for less than a day, properly, and the rooftop felt smaller than it should. His shoulder was not touching yours, but you were aware of the space between you.

Bucky seemed aware of it too.

“So,” he said after a while, voice lighter in a way that felt deliberate, “do aliens have one-night stands?”

You turned to him slowly. “Do we have what?”

“One-night stands.”

You stared.

He seemed to realise he had lost you and shifted slightly, almost embarrassed. “I uh… Casual sex. You know… two people spending a night together because they want to.”

“Oh.” You considered that. “Yes. Obviously.”

He exhaled a laugh. “Obviously?”

“You thought Terrans invented casual sex?”

“No.”

“That would be a very Terran thing to think.”

His smile lingered, and so did yours.

The air changed then, and it had been changing for a while, probably from the moment Rocket shoved him into your orbit and called him Metal Arm Man like he was doing you both a favour. But now there were no Guardians yelling in the lobby, no brother to embarrass you with trading cards. Just the two of you on a motel roof, talking your asses off about monsters who called themselves fathers and creators, grief, and sex like any of it belonged in the same conversation.

Maybe it did.

Maybe this was what survivors did. Maybe they took the worst things that had ever happened to them, laid them down between each other, and then reached for each other anyway.

“So,” you said, because you were suddenly very aware of your own two heartbeats, “is this you asking?”

His eyes flicked back to yours. “Maybe.”

“Maybe is a coward’s answer.”

That did something to him. You saw it in the slight shift of his jaw, the way his gaze darkened, the way his human hand curled loosely against his knee. Still, when he spoke, his voice was careful.

“I’m asking,” he said. “But only if you want that.”

You didn’t answer immediately, though not for being unsure. You were very, annoyingly sure, actually. You wanted him in a way that felt too quick and too simple after a lifetime of things being complicated. You wanted his mouth and his hands and the sadness in his eyes. You wanted to forget the battlefield for a few hours. You wanted to feel alive in a way that didn’t involve fighting for it, for once.

You leaned closer anyway.

“On my planet,” you said, “we do not call it a one-night stand.”

“No?”

“No,” you shook your head with a chuckle. “Mostly because I don’t have a planet. But if I did, I would call it a very reasonable use of a night.”

Bucky’s smile was small and devastating. “That so?”

“Yes.”

You were close enough now to see the tiny flecks of grey in his blue eyes and  the faint scar near his mouth. Yet, he held himself like he was giving you every chance to change your mind.

You didn’t.

Instead, you touched the metal fingers resting beside him. The vibranium was cool under your hand.

“I want that,” you said. Then, because you had never been good at masking kindness, you added, “And I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Bucky’s face changed, but not with pity, thank the stars. You would have left immediately if it had been pity.

Instead, it was recognition.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me neither.”

When he kissed you, it was careful for all of two seconds.

His mouth pressed yours once, soft and hesitant. His human hand hovered near your waist before settling there, warm through your shirt.  His metal hand stayed braced against the rooftop beside you, like he was holding himself back from touching too much too soon.

It was infuriatingly sweet.

So you fixed it.

You leaned into him, fingers curling into the front of his shirt, and kissed him back harder.

Bucky made a small sound against your mouth, and his hand tightened at your waist. His mouth opened under yours, and the kiss turned deeper, messier.

You had kissed people before. You had kissed in back rooms of spaceports, against ship walls, in the dark corners of bars where nobody cared about names. You knew what casual was.

This did not feel like that.

Bucky kissed you like he was trying to remember how, and somehow that made it worse. When your fingers slid up into his hair, he exhaled against you.

He was a little rough at the edges. He was careful, then hungry, then careful again when you shifted closer and his metal hand finally moved to your hip.

You pulled back just enough to breathe, your forehead nearly touching his.

Bucky’s eyes opened slowly. His pupils were dark, his mouth swollen.

“Sorry,” he said, voice rough. “I’m a little rusty.”

You blinked at him. Then you looked very deliberately at his metal arm.

“You don’t have rust.”

For a second, he just stared at you. Then he laughed. “No, I don’t.”

You traced your fingers down the front of his shirt, feeling his breathing change beneath your touch. “You don’t need to apologise.”

His eyes dropped to your hand.

It should not have been so attractive, how kind he was. So you kissed him again.

By the time the two of you made it back inside, laughing under your breath, Bucky nearly knocked his shoulder against the frame trying not to let go of you. 

It was still supposed to be simple. That was what you told yourself when he kissed you against the wall. That was what you told yourself when your hands found the edge of his shirt and pulled it over your head. That was what you told yourself when he paused, forehead against yours, and asked again if you were sure.

You were.

So for a few stolen hours, neither of you had to be a weapon. 

You just made each other feel good.

—

In the morning, someone knocked on your door.

It was a determined knock, followed by a pause, followed by another knock that was weirdly polite.

You opened your eyes slowly.

For a second, you had no idea where you were. The light coming through the curtains was thin and grey and Terran. Then you became aware of the warm body behind you, the weight of an arm across your waist, the steady rise and fall of Bucky Barnes breathing against the back of your neck.

Oh.

Right.

The knocking came again.

Beside you, Bucky stirred awake. His arm tightened around you for half a second before he seemed to remember where he was, who you were, and what had happened the night before. 

“I am Groot?” came a muffled voice from the hallway.

You closed your eyes.

Bucky’s voice was sleep-rough when he whispered, “Is that…?”

“Yes,” you whispered back. “That’s Groot.”

“He okay?”

“He’s asking about breakfast.”

“I am Groot,” Groot said again, more insistently this time.

You dragged a hand over your face. “What the hell is an IHOP?”

Bucky blinked, then made the mistake of laughing.

It wasn’t particularly loud, but you felt it against your shoulder and immediately wanted to do several stupid things, including staying exactly where you were and never opening the door. Unfortunately, Groot knocked again, and then someone in the room next to yours opened their door.

“I am going to kill both of you” Nebula called to you from the hallway.

You sat up so fast Bucky almost got elbowed in the chin.

Oh, shit.

Bucky sat up beside you with his hair a mess, eyes wide, mouth pressed tightly together like he was trying very hard not to laugh and make this worse.

You put a shirt and trousers on, panicking, making bucky put his boxers on, too.

Nebula continued, voice flat and merciless. “Some of us were trying to sleep. Some of us didn’t need to hear whatever Terran mating ritual you were performing in there all night!”

Your entire body went hot.

“You heard?” you opened the door to peek outside to see a crowd of guardians already converging there. You weren’t opening the door fully yet. Obviously. Bucky was still trying to find his shirt.

Nebula scoffed, “It was impossible not to.”

From the hallway, Rocket’s voice cut in. “I just put a pillow over my head.”

You dropped your face into your hands.

Bucky’s hand touched your back as he made his way to look for his socks, still shirtless.

“I am Groot,” Groot said again.

“I know,” Rocket said. “We’re going to IHOP. Quill’s handling it.”

“I still don’t know what IHOP is,” said Mantis, because apparently, she was there too.

“A breakfast place,” Bucky said, loud enough for everyone to hear. To be fair, Bucky had never really been there either. It was only a thing after the war, so all the knowledge he had about chain restaurants came secondhand from Sam’s stories and Shuri’s travels.

Drax, answer loudly from the hallway. “Why is it called that?”

“It stands for International House of Pancakes,” Bucky shouted back, looping his belt through. You stared at him, and he looked almost apologetic.

Before Bucky could answer, there was another voice in the hallway.

Peter.

“Why is everyone standing outside—” His voice cut off into a silence, which meant Peter Quill had looked through the half-open door, seen Bucky Barnes half-dressed, and experienced several emotions at once, most notably disgust and awe, which you were unaware could coexist .

Then he shouted, “YOU HAD SEX WITH A HOWLING COMMANDO?”

You froze. Bucky froze.

You stared at Peter through the gap in the door, genuinely exhausted. “I have no idea what that means.”

Peter looked like he hated that he knew something about his sister’s sex life, but was amazed you bagged a historical figure he learned about in school. “It means he’s a war hero!”

Bucky, looking increasingly like he regretted being alive, said, “Quill—”

Peter opened the door a little wider. “No, no, no, no, I’m not judging. Sir, I respect you very much.”

“Oh my god,” you said.

“Don’t call him sir,” Nebula said from somewhere out of sight.

Peter ignored both of you, because Peter had never once let good advice stop him. “Bucky, sir, would you like to join us at IHOP?”

You turned to him in alarm. “No.”

Bucky looked between you and the doorway.

“No, please,” you said, smoothing your stupid borrowed human shirt that said I ❤️ New York. “Bucky. Just go.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly.

You immediately realised how that sounded a bit aggressive and winced. “Not like that. I mean— before they make this worse. Before Peter starts asking you questions about ancient Terran history or Rocket asks if your arm has detachable components.”

“I was building up to it,” Rocket said, looking a bit pissed.

Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. You could see the smile fighting its way onto his mouth despite everything, still unfairly attractive. He finally found his shirt under the bed, while you looked very hard at the wall and pretended you were not noticing the way his back moved.

Bucky pulled his shirt on, then his jacket, then paused by the bed.

Rocket was still muttering about pancakes, Groot was making curious little noises, and Peter was whispering something that sounded like “World War Two Legend” under his breath. But inside the room, between you and Bucky, there was a pocket of silence.

“I’ll see you around?” you said.

“I hope so.” Then he smiled like he wanted to say something else, but then Peter coughed very loudly in the hallway, and the moment snapped. Bucky gave you one last look, then stepped out into the corridor, where Peter immediately straightened.

“Big fan,” Peter said.

“Pete!” you groaned.

Bucky, because he was apparently kind even under extreme psychological pressure, just nodded. “Thanks.”

Just like that, he left with a kiss on your temple.

Peter spent the entire walk there explaining World War Two to you.

Rocket and Drax collectively ordered too much food. Nebula threatened three different utensils. Groot liked the syrup so much he tried to drink it straight from the little container. Mantis, still not fully adjusted to Earth mornings, asked if your “night of physical bonding” had helped with your sadness, which made you put your head down on the table while Peter choked on his coffee.

By the time you got back to the motel, you saw a small Terran phone on the nightstand that you hadn’t noticed when you left.

It had one number saved: Bucky. 

—

You were supposed to leave Earth after a week.

It had been the initial plan. It was only supposed to be one extra  week on Peter’s weird little wheel planet, just long enough for Rocket to patch the Benatar, insult several Earth scientists, establish reliable interstellar communication, and call NASA a hobby club with delusions of grandeur.

Unfortunately, the Benatar was more fucked than anyone wanted to admit.

Earth, being a backwater planet with no shortage of paperwork, five years of stagnation, and parts that apparently could not just be stolen without “causing an international incident,” made repairs painfully slow. Rocket had to source pieces from Stark warehouses, Wakandan labs, old S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra storage, and one aerospace facility where he bit a man for calling him a raccoon.

So one week became five months.

And of course, you had to pass the time somehow.

Bucky Barnes was a very, very good way to pass the time.

The phone came in handy, because every time you weren’t helping a guardian with an annoyingly administrative task, you were lonely. So, you would call him.

It might not have been a one night stand anymore, but it was still casual. 

It was so casual you fucked him every time the two of you were alone for more than seven minutes. You did it in his temporary apartment, your motel room, the roof, his kitchen, the backseat of a borrowed car, after he made the mistake of telling you the windows were tinted. 

Huh. Maybe this contraption on wheels wasn't as useless as you thought it was.

Bucky had survived many things, including war and brainwashing, but apparently nothing had prepared him for you, wearing Ravager leathers deciding she wanted him immediately and treating Terran public decency like a loose suggestion.

There was the bar incident, which he still could not talk about without going pink in the ears. See, Bucky Barnes had not expected to be getting a blowjob from an alien girl in a cubicle of a newly reopened dive bar bathroom.

But there he was.

Things happened.

There was also the alley behind a Brooklyn diner, where his metal hand ended up in your folds, and you learned, very quickly, that Terran technology was not always primitive. 

There was the temporary compound supply closet, where you had gone in looking for a power converter and came out with your hair ruined and knees weak, and Bucky looking like he had seen god in a storage room full of printer paper. There was the motel laundry room at three in the morning, where the machines rattled so loudly that you thought no one could hear you, until Drax walked past the next day and told you he sincerely wished his “pounding” would produce “strong children.”

You looked like you wanted the planet to split open and swallow you whole.

It was filthy and stupid. It was fun. It was definitely casual.

That was what you kept saying, anyway.

Calling it casual meant it didn’t matter that his metal arm felt good. Casual meant it did not matter that his human hand felt just as good. Casual meant it didn’t matter that he figured out exactly when you wanted him to be gentle and when you very much didn’t, that he could make you forget every insulting thing you had ever said about Earth with his mouth on your neck and that Brooklyn rasp in your ear.

Casual meant you could leave when you had to.

Bucky made that harder by being annoyingly charming outside of bed. He introduced you to human food like pizza, bagels, and pancakes. He taught you how to tell real New York pizza from the “modern stuff,” even when you were still struggling to eat the flimsy-foldable bread thing in the first place.

“You like it,” he said, watching you steal a pepperoni from his box.

You shrugged, but didn’t deny it. He smiled at you like you were funny, which was dangerous because you liked his smile far too much.

Then one afternoon, he told you he was from Brooklyn, and you sat up so fast you nearly kicked over the coffee table.

“Brooklyn,” you said. “As in No Sleep Till?”

Bucky blinked, then laughed. “Yeah. Shuri made me listen to that.”

“Pete loves that song.”

“Of course he does.”

You nodded solemnly. “It is one of the only respectable things about this planet.”

He leaned back, smiling into his coffee. “Brooklyn?”

“No. Music.”

He looked so offended you had to kiss him.

That was the problem with Bucky. He was too easy to kiss, too easy to want, too easy to crawl back to after a long day of Rocket screaming at wiring diagrams and Peter trying to explain why Earth malls used to matter culturally. Bucky made you food and started leaving space for your knives on his temporary dresser like that was a normal thing to do for someone you were only sleeping with.

The Benatar was fixed eventually.

Rocket announced the news to Avengers and Guardians and Asgardians and Wakandans alike, over breakfast like it was good news, because it was. Your family could leave, because the ship could fly. 

Bucky didn’t say anything.

He just looked at you across the table, and you realised with a sick little twist in your chest that casual had become the biggest lie you had ever told.

—

The night before you left Earth, you found yourself on top of Bucky Barnes again in his makeshift New Asgardian tent.

It was getting increasingly harder and harder to pretend your chest didn’t hurt every time he looked at you like you were a treasure he had found in the wreckage and wanted, desperately, to keep.

His hands were on either side of you, your knees pressed into the cot on either side of him, your palms braced against his chest, your hair falling around your face while you rode  him hard enough to make the frame knock into the fabric.

“Fuck,” Bucky breathed, head tipped back against the pillow, eyes half-lidded and wrecked. “Baby—”

You hated when Terrans called people that. Well. You hated it until he did it.

When he did, it made a warm pool in your stomach, made both your hearts kick faster, made you grind down harder just to hear him lose his breath again.

His metal hand tightened on your thigh. His human hand slid up your waist, warm and rough, thumb pressing into the place beneath your ribs like he was checking that you were still there.

You leaned down and kissed him because you couldn’t stand his face.

You could not stand his beautiful, sad, earnest face. You couldn’t stand that he had kissed you on the temple in a motel hallway once and therefore ruined your life forever. You couldn’t stand that he had made Earth feel less like Peter’s stupid planet and more like a place with someone waiting for you to come back.

Bucky groaned into your mouth when you moved again, taking him until your thighs shook.

“Christ,” he rasped, dragging his mouth down your throat, the place where your pulse was too fast. One pulse. Then the other. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“Good,” you said, breathless. “Then I don’t have to leave you.”

It was meant to be a joke. It didn’t feel like one.

You were leaving in the morning, and earlier today, Drax had asked if Bucky would be joining you and then said that he hoped so because Bucky seemed like he had “excellent reproductive prowess.”

You had kicked Drax under the table.

Bucky had not laughed much after that.

Now he looked up at you, hair messy against the pillow, mouth swollen from kissing.

After you rode out your high and drawn out his at the same time, you collapsed next to him.

“Stay,” he said, barely above a whisper, as if he had been holding it in for weeks and it had finally slipped out

“Bucky...”

“I know,” he said quickly, and his hands slid up your back, holding you against him. “I know. Pete’s out there. The Guardians are out there. I know that’s your family.”

You swallowed hard. “You could come with me.”

His face changed. There it was, the conversation you had been circling. You knew in reality, that this was nothing more than a ridiculous, impossible fantasy you had been trying not to build.

“You could,” you said again. “Thor’s coming.”

Bucky huffed a laugh, but it broke halfway through. “Yeah, well. Thor doesn’t exactly blend in here either.”

“You don’t blend in anywhere.”

“That’s fair.”

You tried to smile. 

Bucky’s hand came up to your face, metal fingers careful against your cheek. The cool touch made your eyes sting.

“I haven’t been home in a long time,” he said.

“I know.”

“I don’t even know if New York is still home,” he admitted. “But I think I need to try.”

You nodded, even though it felt like swallowing glass.

You understood. Bucky had been dragged through so much. He had only just been handed a life that belonged to him. For the first time in a long time, this was his chance to figure out who he was when nobody was using him.

How could you ask him to leave that?

And how could he ask you to stay?

Your only tether to anything like family was Peter and Guardians. 

Earth had Bucky.

Space had everyone else.

You pressed your forehead to his. “You’re breaking my hearts,” you whispered.

His breath hitched, kissing the edge of your lips. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” you said, wiping at your cheek angrily. “And they’re both beating quicker than they should be.”

He laughed then, and you laughed too, even as tears slipped hot down your face and fell onto his skin.

He kissed them off your cheeks.

You kissed his lips then as if you could press every unsaid thing into his mouth and make him understand. I’m sorry. I want you. I have to go. Come with me. Stay safe. Wait for me. Don’t wait for me. Please wait for me.

Eventually, Bucky rolled you beneath him with one smooth shift and you gasped against his mouth.

For a second, you thought he only meant to hold you there.

His weight settled over you, his hair fell around his face, his breath still uneven from what you had done to him not long ago, and yet when his hips pressed between your thighs, you felt him already hard again.

You blinked up at him.

Bucky froze, because in all honestly, his uncontrollable evidence of wanting you had made him feel like a perv. It was almost funny, really. This man had survived unspeakable things, but apparently getting hard again too quickly in front of the girl leaving his planet in the morning was what made him look embarrassed.

Your lips parted.

He let out a rough little breath, eyes flicking away for half a second. “Sorry.”

You stared at him. “Why are you apologizing?”

He was embarrassed and wanting and so painfully Bucky that it made  your chest ache. “Super soldier thing,” he muttered. “I can, uh…”

You raised an eyebrow.

He looked down at you, cheeks faintly flushed now, and that was worse than all the filth you had done together in the last five months. “…go again,” he finished.

Then, you laughed, but not because it was funny.

But because of course James Buchanan Barnes would be hovering over you on your last night on Earth, looking sweet and apologetic for the fact that his body still wanted yours after you had already wasted him half to death.

He laughed too, quieter.

“You don’t have to,” he said quickly. “I just— I want you. But you don’t have to.”

You reached up and touched him. His stubble scratched against your palm. His eyes closed for half a second like he was trying to memorise that too.

It was your last night, with his sheets tangled around your legs, with his body over yours.

You were tired and sore. But you wanted him again so badly it felt dumb.

“Yes,” you whispered.

Bucky opened his eyes.

You hooked your legs around his waist and pulled him closer. “Yes. Please.”

He kissed you first, like he was saying thank you into your mouth. Then his hand slid down your side, over your hip, between your thighs, touching you with careful fingers until your body reacted to him all over again.

He pushed into you again, slow enough that you felt every inch and stretch until your back arched.

His forehead dropped to yours.

“Look at me,” he said.

You did.

He moved slowly at first,one hand tangled with yours against the sheets, the other braced beside your head. It was not the frantic, filthy kind of sex the two of you had gotten so good at.  It was not trying to see how fast you could make him come apart before someone noticed you were missing.

This was him fucking you like he wanted you to remember exactly what leaving felt like.

Every thrust pushed the air from your lungs, and every drag of his body against yours made your thighs tighten around his waist. You dug your nails into his back and he groaned into your neck, hips snapping harder for a second before he caught himself again.

“Don’t,” you gasped.

He lifted his head. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t hold back.”

His eyes darkened.

Your voice cracked around the next words. “I want to miss all of it.”

Bucky kissed you hard, and then he gave you exactly what you asked for. He fucked you into the mattress with the kind of hunger that had been hiding his mouth at your throat, his hands on your hips.

You let yourself have it.

For once, you didn’t try to make it funny. 

You just let him have you.

And when you came, it hit you so hard you cried out against his shoulder, bones trembling. Bucky followed after, burying his face in your neck with a broken sound, holding you so tightly it almost hurt.

Good.

You wanted it to fucking ache. 

For a long time afterwards, neither of you moved.

The room smelled like sweat and sex and Bucky’s laundry soap. Your skin was damp against his. His heartbeat thudded under your ear, steady precious.

Eventually, you whispered, “I’m going to miss this.”

His hand stilled in your hair.

You closed your eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”

Bucky pressed his mouth to the top of your head.

“I’m gonna miss you, too,” he said.

You wanted to be brave about it. Still, your throat burned.

You shifted enough to reach for the little device on the makeshift nightstand. It was small, flat, and ugly, because Rocket had built it from three different communication systems, one stolen Stark component, and another thing he claimed was “probably not radioactive anymore.”

You placed it in Bucky’s hand.

He looked down at it. “What’s this?”

“A communicator.”

His brows lifted. “This works in space?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Some parts of space are unreachable,” you said, defensive because Rocket had already explained the limitations six times and you understood maybe half of them. “There are dead zones, black-market relay issues, Kree interference, and weird cosmic nonsense. Also Rocket said if you press the red button too many times, it may get hot.”

Bucky stared at you.

You sniffed. “But it works.”

His thumb moved over the edge of it, careful. “Yeah?”

“Yes. So reach out, please.” Your voice went low. “Even if I don’t answer right away, even if it takes a while. I’ll answer when I can.”

Bucky looked at you then, and the naked hope in his face nearly killed you.

“I’ll visit,” you said quickly, because if he looked at you like that much longer, you were going to do something embarrassing like stay. “From time to time.”

“From time to time,” he repeated.

You winced.you knew that sounded terrible, as if you didn’t want to give enough effort. “I mean I will come back,” you said, grabbing his wrist. “I mean it. I don’t know when. I don’t know how often. My family attracts disasters like Drax attracts confusing conversations, but I will come visit.”

Bucky’s hand turned under yours until he could lace your fingers together.

“I’ll be here,” he said.

Then Bucky sat up, reaching toward the floor where his jeans had been abandoned hours ago. He searched the pocket and pulled out a thin chain tangled around his fingers.

He looked almost shy when he handed it to you.

You took it, frowning at the two small metal plates hung from the chain, stamped with Terran letters and numbers you didn’t fully understand.

“What is this?”

“My dog tags.”

You stared at him, then thought of the only other dog you know of: Cosmo. “You’re not a dog.”

He laughed, soft and pained. “No.”

“Then why are they called that?”

“I don’t know. It’s an Army thing.”

You turned the tags over in your palm. “They have your name,” you said, before looking up. 

His smiled.

Oh.

“They’re important,” you realised.

Bucky nodded once. “They’re from… before.”

And just like that, you understood. Your fingers closed around the tags.

“Bucky,” you whispered.

He shrugged like it didn’t matter, which meant it mattered terribly. “Figured you should have something.”

You looked down at them again, and your vision blurred. “I don’t have anything like this to give you.”

“You gave me a space phone that might explode."

You laughed. Bucky smiled, but his eyes were wet too.

You leaned forward and kissed him gentler, before he slipped the chain over your head. The tags settled between your breasts, cold against your skin, right between your two stupid, breaking hearts.

Bucky watched them land there, and the look on his face made heat curl through you all over again.You touched the tags. “How do they look?”

His eyes lifted to yours.

“Like mine,” he said, then seemed to realise what he had said.

You went very still.

Bucky’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t mean—”

“You did,” you said.

He looked at you.

You crawled back into his lap, the chain shifting against your bare skin, the communicator forgotten on the bed beside you. His hands came to your waist automatically.

“Good,” you whispered.

Then you kissed him again.

By morning, your body ached everywhere.

When you finally stood in the doorway with your bag over your shoulder and his dog tags hidden beneath your shirt, you and Bucky looked at each other like you both wanted to ask again.

Stay.

Come with me.

Both of you were too kind to say either out loud.

You kissed him one more time before you boarded the Benatar.

—

You visited Bucky Barnes four times in the next three years.

Four times sounded almost generous if you didn’t think about all the days between. 

Still, you messaged him when you could.

Sometimes the communicator worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes your voice arrived through the little device in his palm three weeks late, half-swallowed by static and distance, saying, “—Rocket says if this thing starts beeping, that's technically your fault—” before cutting out entirely.

Sometimes Bucky sent you a message and had no idea whether it reached you.

Still alive?

That was his most common one. It looked and sounded casual. It was anything but.

You usually answered with something stupid, like: Unfortunately. Or Yes. You?

Or once, after apparently being shot at by pirates, chased through a collapsing space station, and nearly eaten by something Peter insisted was “not technically a worm”, you texted back: Define alive.

Bucky read that one in his kitchen at two in the morning and was scared shitless for your life.

Then he looked out of his window.

Brooklyn never showed enough stars, but some nights, when he couldn’t sleep, he went up to the roof anyway. He stood there with his jacket pulled close, metal hand resting on the ledge, eyes lifted to a sky that hid you from him.

He wondered where you were.

He wondered if you were safe. He wondered if you were injured and pretending you weren’t. He wondered if Peter was annoying you. He wondered if Rocket was taking care of you the way he promised to. He wondered if you ever looked out into the dark and thought of him, too.

—

The first time you came back, it was only for two days.

You told nebula to land on his roof, because of course you did. Bucky had already learned that you considered swinging, hinged doors a Terran inconvenience because you stubbed your toe on one once. 

He had been waiting there for twenty minutes, when your little shuttle appeared above the building, and Bucky forgot every reasonable thing he had ever planned to say.

You jumped down with a bag over your shoulder, boots hitting the concrete like you had never once doubted you would land on your feet. For a second, you just looked at him. He looked at you, too. Eight months sat between you awkwardly, until you smiled.

“Your planet still smells strange,” you said.

Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Hi to you too.”

He kissed you, and it wasn’t frantic at first. It was worse. His hands came up to your face like he was checking that you were real, thumbs brushing your cheeks, before you made a small sound and pulled him closer by the front of his jacket. 

When he finally pulled back, his forehead stayed against yours.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said quietly.

You swallowed, suddenly irritated with him for sounding so grateful. “For two days.”

“I know.”

“It’s not enough time.”

“I know,” he said again.

His apartment was exactly like him in the worst way. There were books stacked beside the couch, a blanket folded over the arm, mugs drying beside the sink, and a little space cleared on the dresser where, after one hour, your duffel bag somehow ended up.

You walked around slowly, inspecting everything. Bucky followed you like he was trying not to look nervous.

“It’s very square,” you announced eventually.

He leaned against the kitchen counter. “You said that about the motel too.”

“Terrans love boxes.”

He laughed and spent the days showing you his neighbourhood. 

That night, you didn’t do half the filthy things you had promised yourself you would do on the way there. You had thought you would make the most of the short visit, but instead, you ended up under his blankets, your back against his chest, his arm around your waist, your body so tired from travel and space jumps that you fell asleep before you could even make a joke about his mattress.

Bucky stayed awake.

He couldn’t help it. He had spent eight months imagining you in this apartment, and now you were here. His dog tags rested against your chest beneath one of his shirts. He could feel the little metal plates when his hand settled over your ribs.

“You still wear them,” he murmured.

You weren't fully asleep. “They are important.”

“To me.”

“To me too,” you said, voice thick with exhaustion.

Bucky’s breath hitched.

You seemed to realise what you had said a second later, because you shifted and cleared your throat. “Also, they’re useful identification in case I misplace you.”

He huffed a laugh into your hair. “In case you misplace me?”

“Yes.”

“Where would you misplace me?”

“I don’t know. Your planet has many streets.”

A long silence passed as your fingers found his hand over your waist, and instead of moving it away, you threaded your fingers through his.

After a while, Bucky said, “You know, this feels like one of those old war movies.”

You turned your head slightly. “What does?”

“This. You showing up for two days and leaving again.” His voice was light, but trying too hard. “Like you’re a sailor being shipped out.”

You blinked in the dark. “I am the sailor?”

“Yeah.”

“And what are you?”

You felt his smile against your neck before he said, very seriously, “The damsel.”

You chuckled sleepily. Bucky chuckled, too, arms wrapping around you properly when you playfully tried to twist away from him. “Oh, you poor thing,” you said. “Do you require rescuing, princess?”

“Every few months, apparently.”

You laughed again, quieter this time.

Then the humour faded, because every joke with Bucky seemed to have a cliff beneath it.

—

The second time you came back, it was for five days.

Rocket needed Bruce Banner for something involving gamma signatures, and deep-space interference. You came with him because someone had to stop Rocket from biting another scientist.

Also because Bucky was there.

Not that you said that.

You invited him to the ship and while Bruce was there, too. Rocket gagged. “Not in my lab.”

You didn’t make it to dinner before you ended up in Bucky’s apartment.

This time, the urgency was there. Five days was longer. You could do more than cuddle in five days.

Bucky kissed you against his front door with one hand at your waist and the other braced beside your head. You laughed into his mouth when he almost tripped over your bag, and he muttered something about you being a menace before kissing you harder.

Afterward, as your skin cooled beneath his sheets, Bucky went quiet.

“What?” you asked, turning your head on the pillow.

He stared up at the ceiling, one hand resting on his stomach. “I went on a date.”

He looked like it had been eating him alive. He looked like he hated himself for it.

Against your better judgement, as you took in the absurdity of the conversation, you laughed. It came out a little too bright.

“Oh,” you said. “Okay.”

Bucky looked at you. “Okay?”

“Yes. Okay.” You pushed yourself up on one elbow and tried to look mature. “That’s good.”

He didn’t answer. He almost would rather you shout at him, even if you never said you were exclusive and had no reason to assume so.

You kept going because silence was dangerous. “You live here. You should date. You should have… Terran meals and Terran walks and whatever else dating is.”

“I had dinner where she worked,” he said quietly.

You looked at him for a moment, then asked another question because you were stupid and cruel to yourself. “How was she?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Nice.”

“Nice is good.”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty?”

He turned his head toward you, and he looked hurt now. “Don’t do that.”

Bucky seemed to regret saying it as soon as he did. He looked away again, but you had already seen too much.

You swallowed. “It is not like we’re in a relationship.”

“I know.”

“You can date.”

“I know.”

“Then how was it?”

“She…” he gulped, knowing it went nowhere, knowing he would never see her again because it felt so wrong, he felt nauseous afterwards. “She’s not you.”

Oh.

You didn’t know what to do with that.

You wanted to tell him not to wait for you, but the thought of him not waiting made your breath hitched. You wanted to tell him to date someone else, but not her. Actually, not anyone. You wanted to say you were sorry, or that you loved him. 

Instead, you reached for his hand.

He let you take it.

“I don’t want you to be lonely,” you said.

“I know.”

You looked at him. “But?”

Bucky squeezed your fingers once. “But I still am.”

—

The third time, you visited, you stayed for a week

That time, Sam invited you to a Wilson cookout at his sister’s house.

Bucky asked badly as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Sam’s having a cookout. Sarah’ll be there. The boys too, but… we don’t have to go.”

You stared at him. “Do they know about me?”

“Yes.”

“What do they know?”

He looked uncomfortable.

You narrowed your eyes. “James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Oh, now it’s the full name?”

“What do they know?”

“That you visit.” He smiled faintly, but it faded quickly. “I… I just wanted you there.”

So you went on the short flight to New Orleans with him.

The Wilson’s Louisiana house was warm and smelled of grilled food and salt air. 

You stood beside Bucky, as kids pointed out your markings, and suddenly became very aware that you didn’t know how to be introduced.

Sarah solved that immediately by smiling at you like she had already decided she liked you.

“So,” she said, handing you a plate, “you’re Barnes’ long-distance girlfriend.”

Bucky froze. Sam took one sip of his drink like had been waiting all day for this.

You laughed at once. “That’s not what this is.”

Sarah’s eyebrows lifted.

“It is more like…” You glanced at Bucky, then away, because his face had gone blank. “What you Terrans call an intergalactic booty call.”

Sam choked.

One of the boys immediately asked, “What’s a booty call?”

“Ask your uncle,” Sarah said.

Sam looked betrayed. “Why would you do that to me?”

You wanted to take it back.

You wanted to say, actually, no, that was wrong. Actually, he’s not that or I cross galaxies for him. 

But you didn’t say any of that.

Later, while Sarah’s boys asked you increasingly strange questions about space, you caught Bucky looking at you from across the yard. He was leaning against the railing beside Sam, who was saying something to him. But Bucky was not really listening. His eyes were on you like a lost puppy.

You mouthed, stop.

He smiled faintly.

Three days later, you begged for his spare arm.

Bucky said no before you even finished explaining.

“It is for Rocket,” you insisted.

“That makes it worse.”

“It’s for Christmas!” You told him, leaning across his kitchen table. “He’s my best friend.”

Bucky leaned back, looking at you. You were wearing one of his shirts again, hair still damp from his shower. His apartment looked both wrong and right around you, as if you had always belonged there and were always about to leave.

“Fine,” he said at last.

Your face lit up. “Really?”

“Yeah. But I want something.”

You immediately narrowed your eyes. “I don’t make deals with soldiers.”

Bucky smiled, but it was fragile. “Just come back soon, yeah?”

Oh.

He didn’t look away, even though you could tell he wanted to.

Soon.

As if soon was easy, as if your life was not a mess of missions, emergencies, broken engines, family obligations, cosmic disasters, and Peter doing stupid things with massive diplomatic consequences.

“Bucky…”

“I know,” he said. “I know you can’t promise me anything.”

You swallowed.

“I know,” he repeated, but his voice was rougher now. “Just… try.”

You could have fought a demand or mocked a plea. But this…

You reached across the table and took his hand.

“I’ll try,” you said.

—

The fourth time, you came back two months later.

He opened the apartment door and just stood there, staring at you like he couldn't quite believe you were here. 

You held up a bag, because apparently, you had taken a detour on the way to his apartment. “I brought bagels.”

His eyes dropped to the bag, then back to your face.

You lifted the bag higher, because you couldn’t survive much more of that look. “Bread circles, Bucky. Are you going to let me in or do Terrans eat in corridors now?”

He let you in.

The bagels were forgotten on the counter within minutes.

You told him about Mantis on the second night.

You were in his bed, his arm around you, the room dim except for the weak city light through the blinds. The dog tags rested against your bare sternum, rising and falling with your breathing. Bucky’s fingers had been tracing absent shapes along your side, soothing, when he asked about how Christmas in Knowhere went.

So you told him that Rocket loved the arm, but you also told him the bigger revelation.

“Mantis is my sister,” you said.

Bucky’s hand paused for a second. “Your sister?”

You nodded, staring at the ceiling. “She’s one of Ego’s, too.” You said with a smile. “She was already family. I mean, before. She was already one of ours. But now…”

“Now it’s different,” Bucky said.

“Yes.”

He shifted slightly to look at you. “How do you feel?”

You took a long breath. “Happy. I want to kill him again, but he’s already dead, so...”

Bucky smiled faintly. “I’m glad you have her.”

You believed him.

And he was telling the truth. He was glad, and Bucky would rather jump off a bridge than ever be cruel with your happiness. He never made you feel guilty for having family beyond him, never treated the Guardians like a competition, never asked you to shrink your world until only he was left in it. He loved you too much for that, even if neither of you had said the word.

But mantis being your sister, when all you ever wanted in life was family, meant that you’ve got another reason to stay up there.

Every piece of family you found among the stars tied you tighter to a life Bucky could only visit through broken messages and sparse wondering.

And what did Earth have?

One soldier in Brooklyn. 

And later, after you fell asleep, Bucky laid awake beneath you and looked toward the window. 

He wondered where you would be in a month.

He wondered if the communicator would work or if Rocket would be stripping it for parts again in an emergency.

He wondered if one day you would stop coming back and he would still find himself on the roof, looking up, waiting for you.

Then he looked down at the dog tags resting against your chest. For a few days, at least, the universe was small enough to fit in his bed.

—

Months later…

Rocket almost died, not in the abstract way all of you almost died every other cycle, either. 

Rocket actually almost died.

You could still see it when you closed your eyes: his body on the table, fur matted, chest refusing to rise like a normal raccoon. 

For a second, you thought your best friend had gone somewhere none of you could follow. 

Then he came back.

Against all odds, Rocket lived.

The High Evolutionary was gone, his ship was wreckage. The children and the animals aboard the ship were safe. Knowhere had become both an ark and a home to many, many new faces. 

Everywhere you looked, there was evidence of survivals. There were kids sleeping in corners because they hadn’t yet learned beds were safe and strange animals blinking under unfamiliar lights. 

And now, your family was changing.

Mantis said she wanted to go. Although it felt like your sister was abandoning you, she reassured you that she wanted to see the universe without Ego. She wanted to find herself without the guardians breathing down her neck. 

Which was fair 

But she was your sister. You had barely gotten to have that before this. And yet, you understood.

Then Peter said he was leaving, too.

He was leaving for Earth because he wanted to see his grandfather again.

Peter tried to say it casually, but he was terrible at it. When he said it, he was not Star-Lord. He was not the idiot who had danced in front of Ronan, or the man who had lost Gamora, or the brother who had thrown bolts at you across Ravager floors.

He was just Peter, a little boy who had been taken from home, finally admitting there was still someone there he needed to go back to.

And maybe because everyone else was saying the brave thing out loud, you did, too. 

“I could come with you,” you said.

Peter blinked at you. Then his face scrunched up in immediate disgust. “You can’t come live with my grandpa with me.”

You smacked him upside the head.

“Ow!”

“No, dumbass,” you rolled your eyes, "I'm not gonna live with you.”

Peter rubbed the back of his head, wounded and hurt, but then his eyes dropped to the chain beneath your shirt.

His eyes changed.

“Ohhh,” he said.

You looked away at once. “Don’t.”

Peter’s mouth opened wider. “Ahhh.”

“Peter.”

“Oh my god.”

“Don’t.”

But he was already grinning, all mischief and brotherly cruelty. “I see now.”

Drax leaned forward, deeply alarmed by being left out of something. “What? What are we seeing?”

“Nothing,” you said quickly.

Nebula folded her arms, finally catching up, “Guess who else is on Terra?”

Your face went hot.

Drax’s eyes widened. “Ah.”

“I am not going because of him,” you sputtered out, clearly lying through your teeth, “maybe I just want to learn of Terran music!”

The pretense was paper thin, and even you knew it. 

Rocket made a rude little noise from his seat.

You turned. “What?”

He lifted both paws. “Didn’t say anything.”

“I am Groot,” Groot said mildly from beside him.

Rocket nodded. “Exactly.”

You looked at Groot in betrayal.

Groot only blinked at you with those gentle eyes.

Mantis smiled softly. “You do touch the metal necklace every time someone mentions Terra.”

“I don’t.”

“You are touching them now.”

You dropped your hand like the metal had burned you.

“This is amazing.” Peter looked delighted. “My sister is moving to Earth for that old robot. We’ll practically be neighbors.”

“He’s not old.”

Nebula finally looked up.

Peter held up a finger. “He fought in World War Two.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“It means old.”

“He looks fine.”

Rocket barked a laugh. “Oh, she’s got it bad.”

“I don’t have anything”

Drax nodded with grave certainty. “She has been claimed by the metal warrior. He gave her necklace plates.”

“They are called dog tags.”

“You are not a dog.”

“That is what I said!”

Nebula smiled a little, which for her was basically hysterics. “You cross galaxies to crawl into his bed and wear his military identification around your neck.”

Well, when she said it like that…

Mantis leaned closer. “He makes you less lonely.”

Finally, everybody shut the hell up. 

Because yes. He did.

Right. 

Rocket looked away first.

He was picking at a seam in his jacket, claws worrying the fabric until the thread started to pull loose. His ears were low, though he was clearly trying to make them not be. His mouth had twisted into that flat line he wore whenever feeling like he wanted to bite.

Mantis was leaving. Peter was leaving. You were leaving. The children of Ego, all drifting off in different directions like the dead bastard pleft cruelty in your blood.

Rocket scoffed. “Great. Real touching. Everybody’s got somewhere better to be now.”

Your hearts felt hurt. “Rocket.”

“What?” he snapped, too fast. “It’s good. It’s great. Everyone’s got somewhere to be.”

Rocket didn’t look at you.

He had almost died. He had woken up into a universe where he was finally captain, and now his family was peeling apart.

“Family’s still family,” you said, “Even when we’re spread out.”

You looked around the room at the only family you’d ever really known, and here was Rocket pretending not to be sad.

The raccoon looked up at you three, and this time, he looked… okay. 

“I am groot,” Groot said, finally. 

I love you guys. 

—

Bucky wasn’t expecting a knock on a random Tuesday.

He should have been, probably. 

That was his life now: he always had knocks at weird hours, which was usually campaign staff with clipboards. Sometimes it was Sam showing up because apparently “boundaries” were optional during election season. Other times it was someone from legal, or from security, or an intern from the press being brave enough, or stupid enough to knock on the former winter soldier’s door at 8AM. 

He had only just started his campaign for congressman, and already his personal life felt less personal the more people tried to pry open his head with a crowbar.

So when the knock came, he thought someone had leaked his address.

He thought this must be a reporter. His life must be blowing up. 

He set the mug down, rubbed a hand over his face, and walked to the door trying to make his expression less like it belonged on a wanted poster.

Then he opened it and the entire world stopped.

You were standing in his hallway.

You.

You were actually there, clothes damp from rain, hair windswept, a duffel bag hanging from your shoulder, his dog tags tucked beneath your shirt.

Behind you, Peter Quill stood near the stairwell, a respectful amount of distance, but probably a reminded that he was still your brother. He gave Bucky a small thumbs-up before scurrying down the stairs. He had already said goodbye in the car and given you his address in Missouri after driving you here, obviously. You didn’t know how cars worked. Yet. 

Bucky barely saw him, mostly because he couldn’t stop looking at you.

You looked nervous, which was so wrong it almost hurt to see. You had fought gods, monsters, armies, and living planets. And now you were standing in his doorway like you were afraid he might say reject you.

“Hi,” you said, voice smaller than usual.

Bucky’s hand tightened around the edge of the door.

“I’m here to stay,” you said. “If that’s okay.”

For a second, nothing existed to Bucky, not even the campaign or reporters or Earth or  space. Just you.

Then Bucky stepped forward and pulled you into his arms.

Your duffel slipped off your shoulder and hit the hallway floor, but neither of you cared. His metal hand spread across your back, gentle even when the rest of him was shaking. His human arm was wrapped around your waist as buried his face against your neck.

You went still, startled by it, and then folded into him without any resistance whatsoever.

Bucky closed his eyes.

His throat tightened so suddenly he almost couldn’t get the words out.

“How long?” he asked.

Your fingers curled into the back of his shirt. “For the foreseeable future.”

Oh.

Oh, stars.

Bucky pulled back just enough to look at you.

Your eyes were watering. His probably were, too, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have room to care. You swallowed.

“I should’ve asked you first,” you rushed out. “I know. I just wanted it to be a surprise, and Pete thought it might be a good surprise, so I’m—”

Bucky kissed you.

He couldn’t stand to listen to you ask permission to be wanted. Because of course you were wanted.

Yes.

Yes, stay.

Yes, here.

Yes, with me.

You made a broken little noise into his mouth, and Bucky’s hand slid into your hair, holding you there like he was anchoring both of you to the same planet.

When Bucky finally pulled back, his forehead stayed pressed to yours.

For a second, neither of you spoke.

Then you whispered, “Good surprise?”

Bucky let out a laugh, but it broke. “Yeah,” he said, voice wet. “Yeah, sweetheart. Good surprise.”

You sighed then. 

Bucky bent down, picked up your duffel, and stepped back into the apartment. You crossed the threshold, eyes moving over the campaign papers on the table, the tie abandoned on the couch, the books stacked by the window, the stupid square Terran box of a home you had to teased every time you visited.

—

And then life kept going.

You stayed, and the world didn’t collapse.

Bucky still had campaign meetings and reporters still asked questions that made your fingers twitch toward knives you were no longer allowed to carry in certain government buildings. Peter sent too many messages after getting you both a smartphone. Rocket called every once in a while, calling Earth “a bureaucratic sinkhole.” Bucky tried to teach you how primaries worked, and you told him Terrans had made voting sound more complicated than interstellar smuggling.

He won anyway.

By the time Mantis visited Earth months later, Bucky Barnes was now Congressman Barnes, which still sounded fake to your alien brain.

The news loved it, obviously. They wrote all sorts of headlines: 

Former Winter Soldier wins historic congressional seat.

James Buchanan Barnes sworn into office.

Congressman Barnes has an alien girlfriend.

That one was your favourite.

You framed it.

Bucky came home one evening, saw it hanging in the hallway of your new DC penthouse, and stopped dead with his briefcase still in his hand.

You were sitting on the floor nearby, sorting through a box of your things and pretending very hard not to watch him notice.

He stared at the headline.

“You framed it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“In the hallway, where guests can see it.”

“That is usually why people hang things in hallways, is it not?”

Bucky sighed, but he didn’t take it down.

The penthouse had been a compromise, which was to say Bucky had wanted something secure and reasonable, and you had wanted the biggest house with the biggest windows.

You’re still not used to Terran skies, but from high up, DC was lovely. You could see glowing roads and  monuments with headlights and ridiculous little wheeled vehicles dragging themselves around.

Bucky said the place made sense for security.

When Peter visited for the first time, he looked at the glass walls, the high ceiling, the guest rooms, the kitchen big enough for a small diplomatic crisis, and said, “Oh. So you guys are rich rich now.”

“It’s practical,” Bucky said, even though rich wasn’t a place he’d use. 

“It has what? Two walk in closets ” Peter said, and guessed right.

“I wanted a third one for all my knives,” you said. “But I had to compromise.”

Bucky looked at you like he loved you and regretted encouraging you at the same time.

And slowly, it became yours.

You had your weird human boots by his polished shoes. You had strange little space trinkets on his shelves, and your faux fur jacket thrown over the back of his very expensive chair. 

When Mantis visited, Peter visited, too.

He was still arguing with security about his blasters when she stepped into the penthouse and looked around with wide eyes.

“Oh,” she said softly. “You live very high.”

Bucky was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, opening pizza boxes.

“Your sister likes windows,” he said.

He said it like your wanting mattered enough to explain the whole place.

Mantis smiled.

Bucky glanced at you, then slid a box toward all three of you. Eventually, Peter sat on the floor like he owned the place. Mantis sat cross-legged beside him, studying her slice with concern. You curled into Bucky’s side on the couch, his arm along the back of it, his knee against yours.

Mantis took one bite and her eyes widened. “This is amazing.”

You looked at Peter, your brother, who had once thrown bolts at you across the floor of a Ravager ship and now sat eating pizza in your living room. You looked at Mantis, your sister, free and alive and choosing her own way through the universe. You looked at Bucky, the man who had once been a one-night stand in a motel room, but now, he was your home in every sense of the word.

And tonight, the universe was small enough to fit in one living room.

Mantis leaned back, pizza balanced carefully in both hands.

“I like Earth,” she said.

You looked at her, then at Peter, then at Bucky.

“Yeah,” you said, leaning into your lover’s side. “It has one or two good things.”

—end.