“I am the culmination of my past. I am Daredevil. ,, ⚖️

Because despite your valiant efforts at fighting the stubborn spine of your copy of The Phenomenon of Man flat, and despite Matt’s visibly pained attempts to not cringe so openly at the sound of its pages being manhandled, absolutely no studying has occurred. 

The conversation has veered off course. Reliably, you’ve spiraled it toward the hot topic of hookups. It’s an area in which Matt seems to be constantly embroiled, as far as corridor gossip—and Foggy’s colorful commentary—is concerned. It’s also an area that feels masochistic to keep asking about, yet you do again and again with your needling and poking and prodding, for no other reason than to wind up that sick thrill of jealousy in your chest.

Of course, all of it is inconsequential to Matt. He never seems to take offense. He plays along with impeccable composure, which all the more confirms that your chances of getting with him live somewhere in the zip code of Fuck All and Nowhere. It’s your conviction he’s on a much different playing field than you—his revolving door of ruthless future litigators/intense poets/vowelless heiresses. All undeniably drop-dead gorgeous, much so that you weren’t even sure at first who you were jealous of, them or him. 

Besides, it’s not that you like to wallow. You’d like to believe you’re fairly attractive yourself, thank you very much—but there’s much ease in giving in to joyless comparison when, like right now, Matt’s face is lit golden from the afternoon sun and he’s so beautiful, the shapes and lines of him so harmonious it’s only natural he’d be surrounded by people just like him. 

Not like you.

So, rash girl that you are,  you lash out the only way you can. Sarcasm, disbelief.

“You’re telling me,” you say slowly, jabbing your highlighter into the air, “that you, Matthew Murdock, are a virgin. You. You?”

His lips twitch at the corners, amused. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“What the fuck were they doing in and out of your room then? And I quote–‘he was really good’? You giving them confession or something?”

Matt feigns innocence, presses a hand to his chest. With an air of clipped smugness, “Who knows, maybe they were talking about Foggy.” 

Your silence must clue him to the fact that you’re gaping. 

“What? Girls love him!” he says, grinning wide. You can’t argue with that, at least, that much is true. “Besides, it’s a question of semantics. For one, what the word ‘virgin’ even entails when—”

“Just strangle me if you’re going to quote Wittgenstein again, Murdock. You’re a virgin or you’re not.”

Newly emboldened, Matt holds out a thumb to press it against your arm, pushing you playfully. 

“Well, then, enlighten me.”

Enlighten me.

You’re being confronted at your own game and clearly, your prodding can’t hold its own water—embarrassment flooding you instantly at discussing something this bold with someone you’re wildly, secretly in love with. Matt seems to pick up on this, granting you a little reprieve. His mouth quirks, “Alright, I’ll tell you what I think, and you tell me if you agree.”

You have to hope you’re doing a good job of pretending his suddenly stern, even tone doesn’t send your blood pressure skyrocketing.

Calm as ever, he continues, “One would define a virgin as someone who’s never had sexual intercourse.”

One would also define your face as going nuclear, hotter and hotter with each second he discusses this so breezily. Just another day of laying out the facts, like he’s in a debate.

“Yeah,” you manage.

“Sexual intercourse, to mean sexual contact with penetration. Yes?”

“Oh, stop it, Matt,” you groan, hands fidgeting with the page.

“Well—yes?”

“Okay. Yes.”

“Okay.” He leans back, casual, like this is the simplest thing in the world. “If penetration has to be the only metric—then yes, I’m a virgin. Again, if it has to be.”

As if that made any sense, you nod at him, blinking. “Yeah, yeah.” Another blink, upon finally coming to your senses. “Has to be? The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” he repeats airily, biting down a smile. Oh no, he’s enjoying this—“do you think sex is just penetration?”

It takes you a second.

To be more precise, it takes you three seconds. Your confused gaze flicks from his shielded eyes to his mouth, to the tip of his tongue, that which has darted out to wet his pink, pink lips… 

Oh.

“Oh my God,” you utter. Cheeks aflame, you bury your face in your hands instantly, eager to escape his puppylike yips of laughter at your mortification. “Oh my God.”

Jesus. Of course he’d eat pussy like a champ.

“What? What?” His voice has gone high and incredulous.

“Shut up! This paints you more like an asshole in my book, actually.”

He’s grinning wide. “Because?” 

“Because!” Dropping your hands, you stab a finger at him. “I’m pointing at you very disapprovingly, by the way. It’s one thing to brag about being good at sex, y’know, the–uh–uh…p..” 

Just say the word, goddammit! You’re giving yourself away!

“C’mon,” he teases lowly, that delicious rasp in his voice. “You can do it. P-p-p–”

“Penetration,” you spit. “Ugh, Matt!” 

You smack his chest and, scandalously pleased with himself, unbidden laughter escapes him. You have half a mind to simply leave the room; perhaps by doing so, you’ll be spared the punishment of suffering that immaculately handsome smile. Instead, you do nothing but groan. 

“You are such an asshole. Anyway—being good at that is one thing, but you’re saying all that praise was for oral? That’s even worse.”

“Worse? How is that worse?”

“You can’t really coast on– on mutual friction with that. You gotta… um… actually be good at it.” 

Immediate regret bubbles up as soon as the words leave your mouth. Because consequently you’re now picturing Matt’s face between an array of legs, all immaculately smooth, un-stubbly legs, shapely deerlike legs that aren’t yours.

A grotesque fantasy; it may be the worst thing you’ve ever done to yourself.

Matt raises his hands in mock surrender. “They said it, not me. I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Sure. Right.” Eyes returning to the textbook, you grumble low and bitter words you yourself can’t even make form of. Jealous, though you’d sooner bite your tongue in half than admit aloud that you are.  In front of you, the chapter title reads The Season of Life—and Christ take yours now, you’re praying. Matt’s lucky enough he can’t see the withering look you’re leveling at him, but never one to pass up the opportunity to be petty, you utter, “That’s all fiction anyway.”

His head tilts fractionally. 

“Sorry?”

“It’s all fiction.”

“Being good at oral is fiction?”

“Yes.” 

“As in, not real?”

“Yes.” 

Where you’re going with this, you don’t know either. Your brain and your mouth are no longer on speaking terms.

There’s a pause before he speaks again, his voice amused but careful. 

“So in the entire span of human existence—through all of time—you’re telling me not one person has been good at going down on a woman? Not a singular one?”

“Yes!” You throw your hands up, giggling. All rational thought has hurled itself out the window, given way to stubborn absurdity. “Because I’m horrible. And egocentric, and I have to see to believe. Or—feel, sorry. So as far as I’m concerned, no, it has not existed.”

A barrage of your thoughts fill the silence that comes after. What are you even saying? What are you trying to insinuate? Are you coming onto him? Why can’t you just control the goddamn words coming out of your mouth?!

“That’s a terrible worldview,” Matt says at last.

“You’re welcome to leave,” you utter, plenty aware that this is his dorm room.

“Mm. Fiction,” he drawls, mouthing the word again like he’s testing wine. You dare to glance up at him and immediately know you’ve made a mistake: he’s got that smug thing going, head cocked and looking too entertained for his own good.

“I don’t know,” he muses, “it seemed pretty real to me. And to the very respectable women you’re currently calling liars.”

You roll your eyes hard enough you’re sure you can see your brain.

“No, I’m serious. Not only is that dismissive of their agency–”

“Oh God.”

“–but you’re also insinuating I was– What? Pity-praised?” Matt leans forward just slightly, that damned tongue darting out again to lick his smirking lips. “You think it was pity praise for the blind guy?”

“What?! No! I think–” You reel back, flailing, face hotter than it’s ever been in recorded history and you tug away from him as if that’ll help. “Matt, fuck you for real.”

Matt’s grinning so hard now, showing teeth and you can’t bear to face him so you rub your cheeks with your palms again.

“Christ. Okay fine, I walked right into that one.”

“Yeah, you did,” Matt repeats your words, mouthing fiction, shaking his head. “I hope that’s not from experience.” He pauses, tipping his head, a funny expression crossing his face. “Is it?”

Fuck me, you think, panic blooming white-hot, Fuck me, literally, preferably now–

“I- I– Well.” You swallow, finally slamming your textbook shut.

So as not to give anything away to his freakishly good perception, your next words are as matter-of-fact and carefully enunciated as you can manage: 

“Who I put between my legs is none of your business, Murdock.”

Matt raises his brows, frowning and nodding as if to say, ah, alright then, if you say so. Sinking back in his seat, he lets out a sigh so dramatic, you’d roll your eyes again if your entire bloodstream weren’t currently on fire.

“Duly noted,” he says coolly. “And who I put between mine is fair game. Good to know.”

You blink. Fuck.

He’s right. You’re unsure what the etiquette here ought to be. What is it one does when your stupid-smart, obscenely hot crush hits you with an uno reverse that’s technically correct? And now you have to face the fact that you’re the asshole for slut-shaming him when really you’re just… 

A little bit, catastrophically, stupidly jealous…?

“I– um– shit…” you answer brilliantly. “Um… Shit… Okay-you’reright-I’msorry.”

But Matt doesn’t have an answer to give you, no quip to shoot back. He dips his head low, and his shoulders start shaking incessantly. You can’t see much of his face like this—only his mouth twitching in a tight line.

He’s… crying. 

That made him cry?

No way. You’ve never seen him cry before. 

No, no. He’s wheezing. 

From laughter.

“Ha!” he says, eyes bright behind his glasses as a full-bodied laugh finally breaks free from him, smug and delighted. “Got you!”

“Oh fuck OFF, Matt!” you snap, the heat clawing its way down your neck. “I thought you were crying! That’s not–!”

“You walked into that one again.”

“That’s not funny!”

.

Ever the asshole, Matt does find it pretty funny, though. 

Your outrage, your flushed face, the ridiculousness of it all at your expense. And if he weren’t currently fighting for his goddamn life, he’d have the presence of mind to really savor it. Teasing is what the two of you do, an unconsciously learned dance. Yet for Matt, evidently, this back-and-forth holds more weight for him, it being what he can do to deflect from that… what even is it? 

That bite in your voice, every time the topic turns to that.

Disdain, maybe. Disgust. Pity, if he’s being generous.

An indulgent part of him wants to believe it’s jealousy.

But why would it be? You’ve never given him any sign, done anything to be an indication that you’d think of him as anything more than a friend. He knows you: smart, uncompromisingly honest. 

The kind of person who’d never waste time on someone who can’t keep his dick in his pants. 

Which is clearly how you see him.

So that edge, those jabs and barbs and the snide twist with which you said really good… For lack of a better expression, he’s not blind to the fact that you’re disgusted at how careless he must seem. At the thought of him being cheap, shallow, shameless, all of it. Your image of him must be comical, he’s certain: throwing himself in half-clothed thrill, a meaningless chase of affirmation—since anything deeper would be too much. 

Matt likes being your Friend. Loves it, if he’s honest. Which is why he lets you believe what you believe, and he does what he always does: grins, gets on your nerves, then backs off. Just like he’s supposed to. 

Still, it’s not so easy, especially not like this. It’s not so easy now when he’s in sensory hell, and he can smell your apple-scented lotion and the ghost of sunscreen warm on the backs of your knees from walking across campus in the sun. He must catalogue it all: your clean sweat, blooming its sweet human humidity in the bend of your elbows; your anklet clinking and betraying your every restless shift; your rapid heartbeat he can’t even begin to dissect. 

He can smell all of it, hear it, feel it, and God help him—just from this stupid conversation, he’s already hard. 

Be self-controlled and sober-minded, for the sake of your prayers.

Matt exhales, long-suffering, trying to summon some humor for a shield.

“Fine,” he says at last, aiming for flippant and failing spectacularly. “I plead guilty. The rumors are true.”

Your dry snort hits him square, and he can practically feel the eye-roll radiating from you. Still, he goes on, fully aware of what he’s risking. Sentimentality scares you away, he knows this. “The nuns at the orphanage, they’d say it was something special. To share with someone within the sacrament of marriage.” Matt says it grandly, the theatricality making you snort again. Then a little pointedly, because he can sense your mouth already poised for a quip, “I’m not exactly waiting for my wedding night. If that’s what you’re thinking.”

The little hitch in your breath betrays you before you can speak. 

“It’s just…” voice dropping, shoulders curling slightly, Matt doesn’t even know why he feels the need to explain this to you. A bid for understanding, maybe, though he knows that’s too much to hope for. “I haven’t found it in myself to go all the way yet, what with the”—he waves a hand vaguely, words quieting down into a mumble—“the words… in my head, and all.”

“What?” Your brow furrows. “What words?”

He shrugs, lips quirking into a cornered smile. “Nothing.”

“What?!” Before you can even finish talking you’re laughing, grabbing at his wrists in mock outrage. It makes him inhale sharply, your two fingers grazing the tender skin there, and he thanks God you don’t have his senses or you’d know how embarrassingly fast his pulse had leapt beneath your touch. 

“What words, Matt? Do you hear the Holy Spirit or something? Is that a thing?”

He huffs. “I think it’s called a conscience, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. 

For a second—just a second—your heartbeat skips after he says it. Usually, for anyone else, it’d be that tell he knew by heart: Gotcha. Granted, it’s a useful gift, one that’s gotten him into more agreeable doors and down more girls’ jeans that he’d expect. Only it’s not like that with you. He’s long learned that you’re anything but usual to him, the opposite of an open book.

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

Just as he’d expected, it’s annoyance. Not interest.

Matt glances away, smile wavering. “Ah. Sorry.”

But like it’s nothing you’re already chuckling and saying, more quietly, “All that repression, Matt. M’starting to believe your rumors now.”

Tilting his head back again, he nods to himself. There’s not much to say anymore, the two of you falling into a sort of ambivalent silence as you bury yourself back into the study material as if it’s suddenly become fascinating. But for him, it’s less studying the text and more studying you, picking up your heartbeat that seems to be beating quicker and quicker in… Anticipation?

Erratic, like a caught moth, like you’ve found something to say that’s titillating, or inappropriate. 

He could do you one better. He could do inappropriate. He could ruin your friendship right now.

No, no. He has to bite his tongue, chastising himself. Bad Matt. Friendship. Don’t.

Still, your pulse keeps climbing faster and faster.

“Okay,” you finally eke out, mouselike. “My turn.”

Matt tilts his head.

“I’m a virgin too.”

Oh?

That’s not what he expected, and he’s not entirely sure how to react, brows lifting slightly. Keeping his expression careful, one hand rises to rub between his eyes the way he does only when he’s attempting to buy himself time.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with your admission. It’s not a big deal; it shouldn’t even be one at all. Only, it’s sparked something in him that feels too much like relief. Yet it’s for this reason Matt had shut it down the second it reared its head. He knows himself well enough. If he lets that door open, lets himself want anything from that admission, that greedy part of him will enter and everything else he’s spent so long trying to hold back will come barreling with it. 

He can’t afford that. So he shoves it down, hard.

“Okay,” Matt says gently. “That makes two of us then.”

You groan and collapse so far back into your chair it creaks in protest under you. 

“Ugh. Actually, I’m like half a virgin too or something. Aren’t you gonna be a little weird about it? I was so weird about yours, I feel horrible.”

“No, not at all. I’m deeply moved by your honesty, actually.”

“Dick.”

He smiles.

You sigh, scratching at your temple. “I know there’s more leniency when it comes to girls, and I kind of hate that that’s a thing. Like, I don’t give a crap about it, which is why I do? Does that make sense?”

Matt nods solemnly, though the smile’s still tugging at his mouth. “No flaws in logic there.”

You swat at him again, but it’s lighthearted and your hand finds his arm and stays there, fingers drumming absently at the fabric of his sleeve.

“It’s not even about the sex,” you continue. “A lot of stuff makes me feel like it’s a lot more important than it actually is—”

“Hey.” He cuts you off, soft and steady, “You don’t have to justify yourself, you know. Not to me. I get it.”

You nod, shoulders relaxing. You’d gotten completely unaware of how worked up you were getting, the heat starting to pool again in your face.

“Thanks. Sorry.” You pause for a bit, thinking. “I’d just… I’d like it to be with someone I like. Doesn’t even have to be someone I love– I think I’d actually prefer that, just so it isn’t that big a deal. Just… not some random asshole.”

Right.

Matt has to chew the inside of his cheek until he starts to taste blood.

He could be that asshole. He really could. He could make this easy, make it soft, careful, good for you. For both of you.

“Mm,” he says, noncommittal. “Yeah, I know.”

“Just do it once—then it’s over.”

“Then it’s over,” he agrees helpfully. 

“Stop repeating my sentences!” You laugh and slap his chest again, and by that touch he’s a little breathless. He exhales, tongue running along the back of his teeth. There goes the apple-scented waft from your skin again, mingling with the sun-warmed salt.

“Right,” Matt says promptly, forcing himself to lean back. He places his earbuds back in—a futile effort, he’s unable to hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears—and swipes back at his notes with the pad of his finger to seek where he left off.

The issue, of course, is that he’s hard. 

Hard and sweating and stuck. 

If God were any bit the merciful being He claimed to be, Foggy would walk in right now. He’d take any easy excuse to stop and force him out of his predicament. But Matt knows he won’t. He knows it’s just you and him, and nothing but his own will could stop him now. 

Set a guard, o Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips.

You’re murmuring to yourself over the book again, lips shaping out words he can’t hear because all his focus has narrowed down to the sound of your heartbeat. Then you’re leaning closer, pointing something out, and the hem of your top’s brushing his arm. You don’t realize how much he’s shifted, so when you turn to finally look at him, your breath’s fanning his cheek and he stills. You stop laughing, then you laugh again at the sight of his jaw tightening like he’s bracing for impact.

“You okay?” you murmur.

He forces a tired smile, an expression soothed to something carefully neutral. “Just trying to focus.”

“Oh, sorry.” You duck your head, meek, guilty. Suddenly abundantly aware of the weight in the air, you say, “I can move–”

“No, no.” Matt’s hand finds your waist with unerring accuracy, fingertips skimming your side in a featherlight touch. “Stay. I like it when you’re close.”

Something in your chest flutters, and Matt’s more than a little pleased at the shift in your pulse, the way his words had landed and rippled through you.

Christ, Matt. This how you do it?

He’s so close now he can hear every heavy thump of your heartbeat, and he’s listening hard, desperate in his search for anything to prove it’s more than biology, more than proximity, more than his wishful thinking. 

But he can’t take it anymore. He can’t care anymore.

His thumb strokes your side.

“Alright,” Matt whispers, breath escaping ragged, “I’m gonna kiss you, okay?”

You nod before your brain can even catch up.

“…Okay.”

For an agonizing second, neither of you moves. Then he tilts his head, closing the distance slowly—almost painfully so, like he’s giving you every last chance to pull away. Your heart’s ricocheting so hard he can hear the shape of it.

And then his mouth is on yours.

The kiss when it comes is soft. His hand cups your jaw, thumb stroking your cheek as he presses his lips to yours. You make a sound—a little hum, surprised at yourself—and that’s all it takes for him to deepen it. He’s clued in infinitely to the goings-on in your body, the stutter in your breath, the way your hand lifts hesitantly before settling against his chest, fingers splayed over the steady hammer of his heart.

There’s the faint tang of your lip balm on his tongue when it dares to flicker against you, coaxing your mouth open. Strawberry, kiwi—no matter, he hungers to swipe all of it off you with his own lips. His tongue slides against yours and Christ, he can’t help the soft noise that rumbles in his own throat. When Matt pulls back it’s only enough to breathe, noses bumping, but before you can think any better of it—before you can even think about what you’ve ruined, what you’ve just begun—you’re already leaning back in for more, and he catches your bottom lip between his teeth in a fleeting, tender bite before kissing you again, harder this time and less careful. 

Your fingers clutch at the fabric over his chest like you need something to anchor you. And just as you’re shifting closer and closer, the kiss much deeper, the chair under you creaks ominously and then—

It jerks, slipping sideways.

You yelp and flail gracelessly, but Matt’s faster by years, catching you before the fall can register. His arms wrap around your back, a firm hand finding your thigh to steady you as you land hard against his chest, your body flushed against his. You burst out laughing, breathless and embarrassed.

“I got you,” he murmurs, voice roughening at the edges. His black glasses have slid slightly crooked in the commotion, making him look just a little disheveled. His smirk is nothing short of devilish now that you’re straddling his lap fully, thighs bracketing his own with snug pressure. 

It’s then that you both feel it: the heat and the hardness of him beneath you. Even through the barrier of clothing it’s impossible to ignore; by instinct, your body shifts to feed its own want, the hot ridge of his cock grinding against your center through your own clothes.

“Should we…” you start, unsure what it is you’re even asking.

“Yeah,” Matt says shakily, “Bed. Before you fall again and actually get hurt.”

You nod and start to move off him awkwardly, but he catches you again—arms looping around you without effort—and then he’s standing, lifting you against him like it’s nothing. By reflex, your thighs wrap around his strong waist, arms snaking around his neck as he carries you across the room. There’s a second you consider offering directions, murmur clumsy instruction, but Matt moves with complete certainty—exactly where to place you, exactly how to touch you. The surety makes your stomach knot with something sharp and bitter: experience, you think, even as you tell yourself not to—don’t ruin this, don’t rob yourself of how good it feels just to be wanted by him. Fighting against impulse, you swallow it down and let yourself surrender to the moment. 

Matt deposits you gently onto the bed: a twin-sized mess of rumpled sheets and textbooks shoved aside. Coming up to between your legs, when he kisses you this time it’s worlds away from the one before—it’s deeper, hungrier, tongue slick and mouths sliding together in a mess of panting breath and soft noises, your fingers curling into the hem of his shirt.

“Can I—?” he asks between kisses, and you nod, already tugging it up. The dark shirt comes off easily, pulled one-handed over the back of his neck. Like an errant magpie, your gaze is caught momentarily by the silver glint of his cross necklace catching the light, just before your eyes slide down his broad chest, lean and defined, the clean cut of his abs tapering down with a trail of dark hair arrowing below. 

Jesus. 

But you don’t get to ogle him as long as you’d like—it’s your turn then, his hands at your sides, slipping beneath your shirt. Matt’s an impatient man and sure enough, sooner than soon your band shirt comes off, tossed somewhere over the bedframe.

“Goodbye, Nick Cave,” you murmur solemnly.

Matt huffs a laugh, and his lips scorch your newly-bare shoulder, then your collarbone, trailing heat as his hands roam—sliding over your soft stomach, then up to cup your breasts gingerly through your bra, thumbs brushing the edges of the material. You’re tugging at each other again, kissing between whimpers, your fingers fumbling at the button of your shorts, and Matt’s hand covering yours to help. 

Cursing under your breath, you kick the shorts off with a frustrated huff, left in your underwear now, damp and clinging. Unfairly so, Matt’s still wearing those goddamn grey sweatpants that make everything impossible to ignore. You can see everything. You can feel everything. Still above you, now between your legs he ruts forward without meaning to, and his cock grinds against your soaked, clothed core through the layers of cotton and elastic. Like the rhizomatic nature of your conversations with him, natural and free-flowing, the both of you move in unconscious rhythm now, tuned in completely to the feeling of his thick ridge dragging across your core.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters into your mouth.

“For what?” you ask, breathless, trying not to fall apart too quickly.

He hesitates. “I just… didn’t know if you wanted to keep going.”

“Are you kidding?” you whisper. “I was about to ask you that.”

A giggle breaks out from both of you, soft and nervous, mouths brushing, and he kisses you again, desperate. “This feels good,” he mumbles against your lips.

“Yeah?” you breathe.

“Yeah. Yeah.” His fingers slide behind your back, fumbling at your bra clasp. You arch slightly, trying to help, but he curses softly. “Fuck—sorry—can’t—”

“Let me,” you say, laughing again, sitting up just enough to undo it yourself. His ears are flushed now, the tips red with embarrassment, and he opens his mouth to apologize again but your kiss finds him instead, as you reach for his hand and guide it to your chest.

Matt groans into your mouth when you place his palm over your exposed breasts, and he wastes no time, pawing at you greedily, kneading and squeezing like he’s starved for it. Fingers finding your furled nipples, pinching lightly, you shudder under him, clutching his wrist. Summer be damned, the velvet feel of his skin on your skin makes your head swim, and you can’t steal enough of his warmth to be sated. 

His kisses then trail lower, down your neck now, down your sternum, each breath ghosting sultry heat across your skin, and then he’s at your navel, tongue flicking briefly at the dip there. But just as he ghosts lower, nose nudging at the waistband of your panties, you jerk. Acrid panic comes up your throat; before you can think you’re already tugging him up by his hair and the back of his neck, heart hammering against your ribs.

“Wait. Wait—”

He stills instantly, blinking up at you unseeing. His hair is mussed, lips wet, mouth open like he’d been caught mid-word. “…What?”

“I don’t—” The words knot in your mortified throat, and you can’t find the nerve to look at him directly. “Um—I just—”

It’s a burn not solely from want but from the shadow of uncertainty: the thought of him down there, to see you with such closeness, tasting you, and what if you’re disappointing, what if you’re not worth it, if every rumor you’ve pretended not to care about has been true after all and you’re nothing compared to them—

“What’s this, then?” His voice is low, teasing, sufficient enough to puncture your own spiral. Chuckling softly, he asks, “Gonna keep pretending it’s fiction?”

You flush so hard it makes your ears ring. “Shut up. Next time, okay?”

His brow quirks. “‘Next time,’” he echoes, savoring the phrase on his tongue like it’s proof you’ll never get away from him now. 

“Ugh, Matt—just come here—” Flushing hot and annoyed, you yank him up by the necklace, mouth crashing against his before he can say another word, swallowing his grin into your kiss. Slick and consuming, it feels euphoric to slot your own mouth against his like this—lying down, full-body, you could kiss him for hours, your recent indiscretion forgotten—and you’re melting beneath him, your hips grinding up against his, your hands pulling at his pants.

Picking up on your insistence, Matt pulls back, breath ragged, and peels off his sweatpants. They catch at one ankle as you help him tug them off, hands brushing his calves. What’s left then is the stretched fabric of tight black boxer briefs, the full outline of his cock thick and unmistakable, a dark patch of damp where precome’s already leaked through.

You reach for the waistband, teasing it down with one finger. “This okay?”

His voice is strained. Nearly breaking. “Yeah. Please.”

Pulling the briefs down, you have to take a second as his cock springs free, flushed and leaking while it curves toward his stomach, the base nestled in a thatch of dark hair. You swallow hard, because he’s beautiful, Christ, he’s so hard, and he’s already twitching. 

You shimmy your hips forward to be closer to him, legs parting, and he groans loudly the second your plush thighs close around his cock. Beginning to rut forward, he grinds against you slowly, dragging the thick length along your clothed slit, again and again, the damp cotton thankfully doing little to dull the obscene friction. The pressure of each hardened pass catches your clit just slightly makes you gasp, makes you rut back up against him. You can feel the heat bleeding off him, your cunt pulsing with how close he is, how much you need more.

It’s everything and nothing and still not enough. Then, as if to notice this, Matt’s hand drifts down, thumb brushing the waistband of your panties.

“These…” he murmurs lowly, fingertips tracing the edge of your panties with the kind of searing touch that makes your lungs forget their rhythm, “describe them to me.”

For a beat you’re not even sure you heard him right. “What?” you manage, though it’s hardly more than a whisper.

That damned smirk of him has made a reappearance, lips glossy from your kisses. The mockery in his tone is pure provocation, prodding at you endlessly, testing your limits. “Tell me what they look like.”

At his demand, the rush of blood behind your ears is instantaneous. You’re not sure whether it’s that or simply the love-addled lens you’re viewing him through, but a ridiculous little giggle betrays you, shy and uncontainable, as though your body is already conspiring with him. And so despite your attempts to suppress, you relent because he’s waiting, and frankly, because his devilish smile has unmoored you completely. 

“They’re… white,” you begin, voice faltering as though you’re confessing something forbidden, “cotton. Lace at the sides.”

And because this is Matt, you can’t seem to stop, seizing his hand and tugging it down until his broad palm rests against the soft material, your pulse jumping beneath prickling skin.

Matt tilts his head as if he can see every detail anyway. Savoring the description, tasting it out as his smile curves wickedly. “Mm. Fancy?”

“Not really.”

“They expensive?” 

“What? Jesus. No, you perv.”

“Good.” His tone’s dropped lower, thicker with play; its cadence is so warm it flushes heat straight between your thighs, beneath his palm most especially. And as if that singular word has become verdict— his purposeful fingers hook into the waistband sharply. 

RRRIP—!

Your thighs jerk, eyes flying wide as the cotton gives under his decisive grip. Matt tears the panties apart at the seam as though they’re paper, unable to find patience to stop himself from wrenching the ruined fabric aside until you’re bared to him completely. It takes you a second to catch your breath, but you finally break into incredulous laughter, shock and arousal having knotted together in your chest so tight it feels like a stone in your sternum. 

“Couldn’t wait,” Matt pants, “Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“No, I’m not.” His grin widens, flashing wolfish teeth. “Not even a little.”

“You’re gonna have to pay for that, Murdock.”

His laugh tumbles directly into your mouth as he kisses you again to shut you up, hot and reckless, and then drags lower once more— “This is okay, right? You’re okay with this?”

“Yeah. God, yes. Oh—” Yet despite thinking you’ve already tamped it down, the reality is that the two of you are now completely bared to each other; hence the voice of reason from inside your head still emerges, causing you to swallow hard. “Wait, Matt. Are we gonna— I mean, is this—?”

Christ, you don’t even need to finish. He knows what you’re asking, he can tell. And the fact of the matter is, it’s not simply the nature of his suggestibility. Matt’s will is strong, mostly unshakable. The only counterpoint is that it’s you. You’re the one offering, wanting, needing. He’s the one with the conscience clawing at him and telling him to stop. 

But how the fuck can he stop, when you’re whimpering under him, begging for him so openly?

The thought of whether this is the line he’ll cross, it hammers in his chest and remains. Matt can’t bring himself to say it out loud, can’t let the words be real, because despite all his guilt, all his restraint, he wants it too much. He wants to do it right this time. He wants it with you.

He should stop.

“C’mon,” you whisper, bold and desperate in equal measure. “As long as it doesn’t go in, it’s okay. Right? For you?”

Matt’s breath shudders out of him, chest pressing hard against yours. His lips part on a half-formed prayer you don’t understand, and then he’s nodding, rendered helpless by the way you’ve said it.

“Jesus,” he mutters, breaking. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

Wetting his lips, he pulls back and he pushes your pillowy thighs together slowly, and slides his cock between them, the swollen head dragging slickly between your bare folds, through your wetness. Slow at first, drawing each movement out until he feels like he’s about to die from lack of it. Every pass coats him more, precum mixing with your arousal, smearing the softness of your thighs as his cock glides in tight, controlled thrusts. 

You’re wet. So wet he can hear it. The sounds filling the room are lewd and rhythmic, your thighs slick, your cunt clenching around nothing, desperate.

And Matt’s losing it.

He’s not even inside you and already he feels like he’s going to break.

His hands tighten on your hips, heavy enough to remind you he’s holding back by the skin of his teeth. With each pass of his shaft it’s cushioned indulgently by the soft flesh of your thighs, dragging along your folds, hot and wet and thick, the ridge of the swollen head bumping against your clit with every motion and sending zings of pleasure shooting up your spine until you’re breathless, gasping, toes curling.

You don’t realize you’re whining loudly until he leans over you, breathing hard onto your cheek, his chest heaving. Mouth brushing your ear, he mutters, “Mine.”

His claim on you makes your whole body arch, makes your cunt clench down uselessly on nothing, aching.

And it’s true. You’re his, no question now about it. All of it is proof enough: the wetness slicking your inner thighs, your bare pussy glistening and desperate and utterly bare beneath him. 

You roll your hips up instinctively, desperate to catch more of him, to press harder against the hot, swollen weight grinding between your thighs, chasing the flash of electricity when the crown of his cock skims your clit. But his grip only tightens, fingers biting bruises into your waist, holding you down like he knows better than to let you move, like he’s the only thing keeping you tethered to sanity.

It feels like sin. This little game the two of you are playing at, it feels better than it has any right to, filthy and exquisite in equal measure. Each rut of his cock through the slick vise of your thighs drags the swollen tip across your folds, every pass smearing you wetter, every sound between you growing louder, lewder. The air is thick with it, every breath you take steeped in sex. It feels so fucking good—all of it, all of it—all building towards something, something you realize to be this conclusion: it’s not nearly enough. 

“I want more,” you gasp, the words tumbling out unbidden as your eyes flick helplessly downward, caught on the sight of his cock sliding in and out of the tight press of your thighs. The swollen head keeps vanishing and reappearing, glazed with you, every filthy pass making you shiver harder, “Want you.”

“I know,” Matt exhales, and the sound is ragged, breaking in his throat. He presses his forehead against yours, his feverish skin scorching yours completely. “Me too. But we can’t.”

As if a spoiled child, you whine, “Why not?” high and frustrated as you rock your hips against him anyway, greedy, begging with your body even as he keeps you pinned.

Without needing to speak aloud, the answer to your question comes to him with absolute certainty. A hoarse rasp of conscience: Because I’m an asshole.

“Please,” you whimper, every instinct in your body screaming for more. His hands only tighten to keep you down, yet it finds no success in having you stop; it only makes your need bloom sharper, makes your pleas spill faster. “Please, it won’t change anything. We’re still friends, right? Right?”

And then, just for an instant, just enough to catch at your entrance, the head of his cock slips and pushes blunt and hot and shocking against the swollen threshold of your body.

The air is torn from both of you in the same instant, gasps ripping through the thick silence.

The shock of it intoxicates you, blinds you—just that sliver of him breaching you, and you’re undone.

Beside your head, his arm strains to brace his weight, with biceps taut and straining, veins standing out as though his whole body is about to snap. The silver cross around his neck swings free, dangling above your face, catching the faint light with every tremor. 

Matt doesn’t move, shouldn’t, but his cock throbs where it presses into you, every instinct commanding him to push deeper, to sink, to lose himself. To give you what you’re pleading for.

“Fuck—m’sorry,” he grits, wrenching back, pulling himself back out. He’s shaking, chest heaving, the words tumbling from him wild and frantic. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t—You’re just so wet, fuck, I’m sorry—”

And if your hand causes you to sin…

“It’s o-okay—” You’re trembling, nails biting into the meat of his bicep. Your body is buzzing, still lit by the electric shock of him almost inside, and what terrifies you most is the clarity flooding you. 

Singular and decisive: you can’t stop now.

“Matt,” you whisper, sordid with want, “what if—what if you put it in, just a little. A little, please. It’s not enough. It won’t even count.”

You sound like you’re begging for your life. Reduced to nothing but a bitch in heat.

Matt’s hand slides up to your jaw, thumb dragging across your cheek in a trembling, sultry caress, and his head dips, unsteady laughter rasping out of him, “Don’t tease.”

“I’m not,” you plead, “S’long as… s’long as it’s not fully in, it doesn’t count, right?”

“Fuck—” Matt exhales hard, head hanging as if the weight of it will break him. His throat works as he swallows, trying to claw the words out of his conscience. 

He needs to stop. He knows he needs to stop.

Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds.

But how can he refuse you?

“Fuck. Okay. Are you sure?”

You nod, frantic. For Matt, whose senses are paradoxically both focused entirely on you and tuned out by the intense arousal in his head, this simple gesture is insufficient. He shakes his head. “I need you to tell me you’re sure.” His lips brush over yours as he breathes it, a coded message of him desperately begging you to say stop, to absolve him, control him from his own sin.

You do no such thing. 

“Fuck, I’m sure,” your eyes are wet, and you cling to him as if he’s the only thing keeping you alive. “I need you, Matt.”

Need you, Matt.

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Fuck. Okay. Just the tip, okay?”

You nod quickly, almost giddy with relief. 

God can forgive him if it’s just the tip. It doesn’t even count. He’ll be forgiven. 

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability…

Having made his decision, Matt bites down on a groan, then kisses you so hard it steals the breath from your lungs once more. You have the sense his mouth is fierce and desperate to seemingly smother the truth of what he’s about to do. And, ever obliging, his hand reaches down, fumbling between your bodies, guiding himself to your entrance.

Then he’s pushing forward.

Just the tip—barely inside, barely breaching. Enough to tear the air from your lungs, enough to lock every muscle in your body.

“Mmff—” the sound wrenches from him, low and ragged, almost a growl as your heat swallows the thick crown of him. His head drops, sweaty hair brushing your face. “Fuck—that’s tight. You okay?”

You nod quickly, clinging to his arm, your teeth sinking into your bottom lip as you feel him stretching you out.

“Y-yeah,” you gasp, fighting for your voice not to tremble, “it just… hurts. A little.”

Hurts.

Stop now, Matt. Stop it. Stop it.

If he’s looking for a sign, this is it. He’s hurting you. Right? He should stop. Pull out. Apologize. Pretend this never—

But your body won’t allow him to believe it. Not with the way you’re squirming under him with need. Still, he must keep to his word—just the tip. So he doesn’t move, though his cock throbs thick inside you, just the swollen crown wedged in that slick tight heat that’s clenching and fluttering so helplessly around him.

The moment he’s lodged fully inside your entrance, you instantly wish you hadn’t begged for it. The taste of it is too good, too much, and now that you’ve had it, there’s no way this could ever be enough. You want more. You want all of him.

As if hearing your own thoughts, Matt grunts low in his chest, the sound guttural. He grits his teeth, refusing: he knows better than this.

Instead, one hand braces you at the waist, keeping you still, the other fisting the rest of his exposed length. His hand slides up and down his shaft in a desperate grip, every stroke smeared with the arousal you’re drooling down his cock, wetting him to the base. He shouldn’t be doing this. He really shouldn’t. No condom, no plan, no fucking clue how to stop. All he’d need to do was push forward, slide the rest of his cock in and bury himself to the hilt. And as if to compound his own struggle you’re writhing, too, trying to roll your hips the tiniest bit, trying to fuck yourself on him, his grip on your waist being the only thing stopping you.

“Unfair,” you whined, trying to defy the iron clamp of his hand.

“What’s unfair?” 

Jesus. He’s so hoarse he can’t even recognize his own voice.

“You get to—” your chest heaves, words tripping over the wreck of your own pathetic desperation, “—get to jerk yourself off while I—while I can’t even—” Another sharp whimper breaks you off, and for a second Matt thinks you’re going to start completely sobbing right then, with your cunt clenching down helplessly on the head of his cock buried inside you. “I can’t even take it all.”

Christ. 

Matt swallows.

This girl is gonna be the death of me.

“S’not—” he tries, but the word shreds out of his throat like gravel, sweat dripping down his temple. His fist works himself tighter, faster, the slide of it wet and obscene from the mess you’re making all over him. You’re so fucking slick; all of it his, yours, both of you, smeared together down his cock and onto his knuckles. 

“No, no– see–” As if to abate the mounting tension his fingers find your clit, rubbing in frantic little circles with your own wetness. The effect is instant: your back arching, cunt clamping down on his cockhead.

“See?” he rasps, eyes wild. “See? You can feel good too, sweetheart. Just like this.”

Thumb working circles onto your clit, you squirm helplessly under him, sobbing into his mouth when he kisses you again. Every squeeze of your pussy around him frees another curse from his lips, another jerk of his hips forward without his permission, the thick crown driving a fraction deeper before he can stop himself.

“Fuck—” his forehead drops to yours, trembling with effort, “fuck, sweetheart, I can’t—”

The moment his fingers drag again over your clit, you buck deeper onto his cock with a sob.

“I’m not gonna move,” he pants, nipping at your lip to keep himself tethered, “I’m not gonna—fuck—” 

But even as he says it, his hips are already rocking, shallow thrusts plunging his cock just barely in and out of your pussy, every ridge of him catching on the trembling mouth of you. Just the tip, he tells himself. Just the tip. Over and over like a prayer.

The truth is, Matt doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. A live wire embodied, he’s guided by instinct and need alone, no practiced rhythm, no skill, just messy, urgent biology taking the reins. Having given way to baser impulses, his body moves the way it wants to, chasing what feels good, listening to every slick sound, every clench of your cunt, every gasp from your pretty mouth.

“Shit—sorry—sorry—” he grunts, rocking forward again, every shallow thrust ratcheting up the tension inside him like he’s being wound too tight, like he’d snap if he stopped.

“Matt—” you beg, arching up to claw at his arm. “More. Please. More.”

“I can’t,” he says hoarsely, but he doesn’t stop either, still working the tip of his cock into you with ragged little thrusts. “I shouldn’t.”

But your body’s melting open beneath him already, milking him just from that shallow stretch. Just the tip, just the tip, he repeats to himself, but every second inside you only makes him wonder how much better it would feel if he gave you all of it.

He shouldn’t, but Christ, it’s you.

You. Always you. Not just his friend, not just the girl he teases and studies with, but the one his hands ache to memorize, the one whose heartbeat he knows better than his own.

“Fuck—” the curse shudders out of him, his breath stinging your face, “You’re—Christ, you’re so good to me, my girl—” 

Sweat’s beginning to sting his unseeing eyes now as he focuses on the way your pussy squeezes around him. But each time he pulls out, his hips push back in deeper—just a fraction, just a millimeter more. It’s not conscious, not yet, but his cock’s greedy, his body aching for more, and he lets it happen again. And again. And again.

His mouth is everywhere—kissing you hard, biting your lip, licking the sweat from your collarbone as his hips twitch, plunging deeper. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. Until he’s slipping past the point of no return, your walls stretching to take him, your moans soft and broken in his ear.

You gasp when the thick crest of his cock pierces deeper than ever.

“It’s alright,” Matt rasps, between his sultry claims of my girl into your neck. “It’s just a bit, just a little, it’s okay, right? S’okay? Sorry, sorry, shit—”

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue.

And then suddenly, inevitably, he’s in all the way.

Bottomed out, buried to the hilt, his hips pressed flush to yours. His cock seated deep inside your body, throbbing, pulsing, sheathed fully in your wet heat to the very base. He can’t breathe, can’t think, and the only thing tethering him to the moment is the frantic hammer of your pulse and the tight, fluttering clutch of your pussy strangling his cock like you were made to fit him.

Knowledge with self-control… self-control with steadfastness… steadfastness with godliness…

Fuck off, he thinks viciously, growling it in his head to drown the endless refrain of scripture that batters at him even as he trembled above you. He’s not praying anymore—he’s fighting to silence the voice that tells him this is wrong, that this is sin, when all he wants is to make you feel good. 

“Matt,” you whimper, soft and urgent. “Move. Please.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, exhales raggedly against your jaw, and then—hesitantly, testing—he slides his cock out.

It’s too slow. Painfully so. Your swollen folds cling to him desperately, like your pussy is trying to suck him back in, each inch dragging fire across his length until he nearly loses his mind. Your cunt stretches, weeps around him, and when he pushes forward again, even slower, the shaft sinks back inside with obscene resistance, the slick sound of your bodies meeting loud in the overheated room.

“Fuck, so tight,” he gasps, forehead dropping to yours.

He pulls out again. Slides back in again. Every retreat slick, every push met with a bearing down so tight he chokes on his own breath.

And then he does it again.

And again.

And again.

Your thighs tremble against his hips, your back arching, your mouth falling open as you watch him—watch the way his cock disappears inside you, coated thick in your wetness, then reappears glistening, only to sink back inside to the hilt. A ring of wet white clings to the base of his shaft, spreading with every stroke, proof of how thoroughly he’s splitting you open.

“Oh my God,” you whimper, voice thin, eyes glued to the sight. “Matt.”

As if through otherworldly understanding, he says your name back to you, siphoning heat into your mouth—and almost without meaning to, his pace picks up. The slow grind of his hips becomes sharper, his thrusts longer, the rhythm picking up with every drag of your pussy milking him tighter. He pulls back halfway and drives forward again, harder this time, and the sound it makes—the wet slap of your bodies, the squelch of your slick around him—nearly unspools him.

“Fucking hell,” he pants, brow furrowed, eyes shut tight, as if concentration alone can keep him from losing himself entirely. “You’re so—so fucking tight, sweetheart.”

Your hands clutch his shoulders, helpless against the pace as he pumps into you now, faster, deeper, your cries tumbling into the room in a shameless chorus. And still you can’t stop watching his cock slide in and out of your pussy, faster and faster, his stomach clenching, his silver cross swinging tauntingly above you.

One moment he’s easing in, trying to keep that tight rhythm steady, whispering prayers and half-formed apologies against your mouth, and the next he’s simply gone, for lack of a better word. Crossing the threshold of his own control, he’s resorted to straight up fucking you, hips hammering into you, cock pistoning in and out like something feral’s taken hold of him. He’s sloppy, untrained, rutting wildly, but again, biology doesn’t need finesse, and when someone’s fucking you like this—driving into you hard, desperate, needy—the result is still more than enough to make you arch and moan and claw at his back like you’ll die if he stops.

“Fuck—fuck—” Matt pants, forehead slick and pressed against yours, his voice dissolving into hoarse groans each time his fat cock slams all the way in. He’s greedy with it, chasing his own high with reckless abandon. Ever errant, his mouth searches blindly for balmy skin—your neck, your jaw, your shoulder—pressing wet, scorching kisses between bitten gasps. He tastes sunscreen and sweat, your salt and his and that damned apple-scented lotion, the tang so sweet it makes him dizzy, and when your anklet clinks in counterpoint to his every thrust, the tinkling chime fills his ears like music, like a hymn that drives him to thrust harder.

The bedframe protests, the cramped mattress squeaking beneath the combined weight of his body pressing yours down into it. There’s no space left between you at all; he’s smothering you in heat, his musk, his ragged breath against your lips, and you’re drowning in it, in him. His cane clatters to the floor when his thrusts jostle it loose from the headboard, forgotten completely, as though he’s swearing off every marker of restraint with every thrust.

“Matt,” you breathe, and then again, louder, chanting it helplessly, “Matt, Matt, Matt…” with the same fervent rhythm he’d once used to pray the rosary, your cries his new litany.

He can’t get enough. Your cunt is so wet, so tight, clenching around him like it was made to keep him, and he can’t stop laughing breathlessly into your face, disbelieving, “So fucking tight—Christ, you’re so tight—” before his hand’s sliding down again to abuse your swollen clit, your shared wetness slicking his touch until your body jolts violently against him.

Knowing you so well, that’s all it takes—your whole body seizes, your mouth falling open on a silent cry as your orgasm rips through you like a snapped cable. Your vision goes white and you writhe beneath him, clutching and pawing at his back, shaking so hard your knees knock into his hips.

By reflex, Matt buries his face against your neck, his body surging with yours as your cunt spasms around him, soaking him even more. He knows he should pull out. He knows. But the way your pussy’s gripping him, sucking him back in, the soaked evidence of your orgasm leaking down his cock, the way you’re still trembling and panting his name like it’s salvation—

He can’t.

He’s not thinking anymore. Just fucking.

And the bed’s tiny, barely big enough for both of you, and there’s nowhere to go but into each other, sweat dripping off his forehead onto your own, your skin hot and shiny under his, your nails dragging down his spine, and he’s laughing now—breathless, manic—between thrusts.

…That each one must know to control his own body in holiness and honor… 

It should shame him, too. Matt catches it: the slight copper tang of blood lacing the air, the sting of your body stretched too suddenly—but instead it makes him shake, makes him rut harder, makes his cock twitch greedily inside you. Some dark part of him finds the trace of blood endlessly alluring, proof that you’ve ruined each other for anyone else. He doesn’t stop to think, finding himself unable to.

…not in the passion of lust.

Was he this much of a fucking freak, that verses floated up unbidden even while his cock was bullying your cervix, stretching you indecently deep?

He’ll be forgiven. He’ll be forgiven.

As long as he doesn’t come inside you. 

That’s the line. That’s the last shred of self-control he has left, and he clings to it while his hips rut and slam with abandon, while your body milks him so good he’s dazed with it.

But he wasn’t supposed to go this far, so what’s a little farther? 

He doesn’t believe in halfway sins. If he’s going to hell, then he’ll make it worth everything.

“I’ll pull out,” Matt rasps, his voice half-promise, half-prayer. “I’ll pull out, I swear—just a little longer, just—fuck—”

But “a little longer” turns into a little too long. His rhythm breaks down into sloppy, desperate pounding, each slam of his cock inside you wetter, louder, deeper than the last, his breath coming in ragged sobs. His cross necklace clinks wildly above your breasts, slick against your skin where his chest presses you down. His mouth drags open over your lips, teeth nipping, tongue sloppily seeking to catch yours, and when you kiss him back he groans like he’s being possessed, his entire body jolting with the force of his thrusts, helpless as he says again without thinking, “Mine.”

And finally, in acquiescence, you whisper back, “Yours,” clamping down so tight, twitching and moaning under the maddened stroke of his thumb over your overstimulated clit, and he can’t take it, can’t fight it anymore. The thought of pulling out vanishes as though it never existed.

“Oh fuck—fuck—” he chokes, hips slamming forward one last time, burying himself deep as he can go and his cock pulses violently, spilling hot, thick spurts of his seed into your cunt.

It gushes out of him, painting your walls with ropes of it, mixing with your creamy slick as he groans loud and shameless into your open mouth, kissing you through the ruin. His body wracks with it, every muscle seizing, every thrust reduced to helpless little jerks determined to push his spend as deep inside you as he can.

And all you can do is take it—take every spurt, every twitch, your body clenching and milking him desperately as though it refuses to let him go, your name and his name blurring together into moans and gasps until there’s nothing left but the sound of your hearts, hammering in tandem, and the wet, lewd squelch of his cock still seated in your dripping, stuffed cunt.

Matt gasps against your throat, body twitching with aftershocks as his cum leaks out around his cock and down the curve of your ass. You whimper at the warm, slippery sensation, still pulsing around him, still clinging, your cunt reluctant to let him go.

Afterwards, there’s nothing but silence.

Neither of you has any mind to move. His cock is still lodged deep inside you, twitching weakly with every tremor that runs through him. You’re trembling together, not from cold or the heat but from everything, from the enormity of what you’ve just done and the enormity of how right it still feels despite that.

Finally, Matt groans in defeat and rolls his weight just enough to keep from crushing you. It’s not far, though. Not far enough to leave, which relieves you immensely. 

His arm slides beneath your back, gathering you against him like he has no intention of ever letting you go, anchoring you to him, anchoring himself to you. Your legs slip apart at the shift and a tiny whimper of protest spills from your throat, but his grip only tightens, grounding you as if to say, don’t drift away from me.

The sheets are damp beneath your back, your thighs tacky where sweat has sealed you together. Matt’s hand spreads broad at your ribs, thumb stroking lazy arcs into your slick skin. His other arm stays firm beneath you to lock your bodies together, his cross cool and sticky where it’s fallen between you.

“…Jesus Christ,” you finally whisper, the words barely more than breath.

“Yeah.”

Your lips are still swollen from his mouth. “That was intense.”

The pause that follows is thin and fragile as an oyster windowpane. He has no desire to break it at all, but he has to for your sake, and you’re aware of the conscious effort he makes to soften his voice, stripped raw: “You okay?”

“Yeah.” You turn your head toward him, brows faintly knitting, heart twisting. This must be it, he’s going to tell you he wishes it hadn’t happened. “...I was about to ask you.”

Oblivious as you usually might be, you know you’re feeling each other out, testing the waters. 

“Yeah. I’m okay,” he answers finally, then, so quiet in comparison, he continues, “but you’re not… freaking out?”

“No,” you murmur. Your throat tightens as you add, almost shyly, “I liked it.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Matt huffs affectionately against your hair, and tilts to nudge his nose against your temple, pressing dazed little kisses along your cheek, your face, your jaw. Tension having snapped, the silence fractures into soft, exhausted laughter—half relief, half disbelief. And for a long moment you’re content to drown in it, until Matt shifts, arm bracing to push himself up, muscles trembling. 

Your hands clutch at him before he can slip free. “Don’t.”

“I should—I should get you cleaned up.”

“Later,” you insist, pulling him down again, hooking your leg over his to keep him trapped. Your voice is small but iron-willed. “Let me have this, Matt.”

There’s no fight in him, not when you ask like that. He finds it to be what’s ubiquitous across it all: the inability to deny you what you want, no matter what. And so he collapses back into you obligingly, burying his face in your neck. 

A small giggle slips out of you. He lifts his head, curious. “What?”

“I think my brain’s finally coming back online,” you say, stretching enough to wince at the soreness between your thighs.

“Aw, tragic,” Matt drones, “You were so agreeable when it was melted.”

You smack his arm weakly. He catches your hand, presses a kiss to the back of it, and keeps it there against his mouth.

“We should probably get back to studying.”

“Speak for yourself. You’re the one who said you were behind.”

“You’re the one who made me more behind!”

His laugh is a vibrating buzz against your collarbone, tickling you as he nuzzles in closer. “Five more minutes, then.”

You hum, pliant, with no snide retort to shoot back.

For once, you don’t care. For once, you're not afraid of what comes after.

The clatter of dice hits the table, and someone curses irately at rolling another nat one. The campaign pauses just long enough for Marci to look up from the character sheet she’s been only half-invested in, propping her chin in her hand, still a little incredulous that she let Foggy drag her out to D&D instead of spending the afternoon at his place. But he’d been mysteriously insistent on it, and now, watching Foggy grin like a man sitting on a royal flush, it dawns on her what he’d had planned all along.

“They better not hook up,” she mutters idly. 

“You might as well just pay up now,” Foggy says without missing a beat, sliding his root beer aside to make room for his pile of winnings. He doesn’t even look at her, oozing smug satisfaction. “I told you it was gonna be today. No way it was gonna take another month.”

Marci glares at him. “How the hell do you even know?”

“I’ve been watching those two make goo-goo eyes since freshman year. It was only a matter of time,” Foggy says, matter-of-fact. “Besides, she was wearing the apple lotion today. That stuff drives Matt crazy. He’s toast.”

There’s a beat of silence around the table before Marci groans, digging into her purse reluctantly.

“You guys are so weird. And disgusting.”

dark blue seemed mature. forgiving. almost responsible, if swimwear could be responsible. it had a low back that made you sit up straighter just looking at the model, and the top had little gold rings at the straps, small enough to pretend they were classy instead of slutty. the bottoms sat high on the hips, which nat called flattering and you called invasive. still, you ordered it. you even paid for express shipping, which felt like signing a contract with your own downfall.

now, standing in tony stark’s guest bathroom with the swimsuit cutting into places you had never invited fabric to develop an opinion about, the delusion had fully left your body. “this is a hate crime,” you mutter at your reflection, tugging the side higher, then lower, then higher again, like one of those positions will suddenly unlock a new body. “against me, specifically.”

the mirror gives you no sympathy. it just shows you exactly what you are trying very hard to survive. thighs. hips. stomach. skin. actual human flesh, very rude of it. you turn slightly, regret it, turn back, regret that too. the swimsuit is pretty. that may be the worst part. if it were ugly, you could blame the swimsuit. but it is pretty and soft and fitted, which means the problem is clearly you, and that feels legally actionable.

natasha knocks twice, then opens the door like locks are a decorative suggestion. she is wearing a black bikini and a loose white shirt, hair braided back, sunglasses resting on her head. she looks like she has never feared a changing room mirror in her life. maybe she killed that fear at sixteen and buried it in a forest. “if you’re dead in there, say something,” she says, leaning against the doorframe with a drink already in hand.

you glare at her through the mirror. “i’m suing you.”

“for making you look hot?”

“for elder abuse.”

“you’re younger than me.”

“for emotional elder abuse.”

her mouth twitches. she steps inside, closes the door with her heel, and turns you by the shoulders before you can protest. the inspection is quick and blunt, clinical in the scariest possible way, then her brows lift. “yeah. you’re wearing it.”

“you didn’t even pretend to think.”

“i did think. silently. very sexy of me.”

you pull at the bottom again, mostly so your hands have a job. it feels safer when your hands have a job. otherwise they might wander up and cover your stomach or your chest or your face, and then nat would make one of those sounds. a small sound, barely a sound, the kind that says she loves you and also wants to shake you until your bones make music. “it’s too much,” you say, quieter.

“it’s a pool party.”

“exactly. people will be near pools. with eyes.”

“tragic.” nat takes another sip. “people might also have necks. horrifying world.”

you make a face at her, but your fingers have started twisting the hem of the towel around your shoulders. the towel is the only thing keeping you from turning around, putting your shorts back on, and telling everyone you’ve developed a sudden aquatic allergy. chlorine intolerance. water-related moral conflict. any excuse with a medical-sounding word might work on steve. sam would ask questions. tony would ask if the water offended you personally, then offer to replace it with imported glacier melt.

bucky would look at you. that thought is the whole disease. bucky barnes looking at you in this swimsuit is either going to kill you outright or make you wish it had. he is already too much in normal clothes. jeans, shirts, those stupid henleys that cling to his shoulders with religious devotion. shirts in general seem desperate around him. fabric has never looked more underpaid. and now there is a very real chance that you will walk outside and find him shirtless by the pool, all broad chest and sun-warmed skin and dark hair falling around his face, and you’ll have to behave like someone who pays taxes and owns a toothbrush. impossible.

even worse, he may look at you and then look away. the thought is small. mean. familiar. he does that sometimes. looks away when you enter the room like your presence is a lamp turned directly into his eyes. you’ve built a whole religion around it. bucky finds you irritating. bucky tolerates you for nat’s sake. bucky can flirt with cashiers, grandmothers, dogs, possibly dangerous machinery, but when it comes to you, he either teases until you want to bite him or turns cold like you spilled something on his favorite memory.

“he’s already here,” nat says.

you blink at her. horrible woman. witch. spy. roommate. “who?”

“the pool boy.”

“tony has a pool boy?”

“no, but if he did, i’d respect his commitment to the theme.” nat watches you through the mirror. “barnes. he’s outside with steve and sam.”

your mouth goes dry. very mature reaction. very dignified. you deserve an award for remaining upright. “thrilling.”

“he asked where you were.”

“to insult me?”

“probably to write a poem.”

you snort despite yourself, then hate the sound for being too fond. bucky inspires many feelings in you, most of them medically confusing. rage, attraction, pettiness, fondness, the strange urge to press your face into his chest and stand there until society collapses. you used to think crushes were supposed to be fun. light. giggly. yours feels like chewing glass while a beautiful man laughs in another room. “i’m putting clothes on,” you announce, turning toward the pile you abandoned on the sink.

natasha catches the towel before you can turn it into armor. her face softens, which is alarming. she is much easier to handle when she is threatening people or calling men idiots. tenderness from nat tends to make you confess things. “you can wear whatever you want. but if you’re changing because barnes might see you, i’m going to be annoying.”

“you’re already annoying.”

“i have levels.” her hand squeezes your shoulder once. “he’s one guy.”

“he’s a large guy.”

“still one.”

“that’s debatable. he has the surface area of three men.”

she smiles into her glass. “come outside.”

you stare at yourself again. the gold rings at your shoulders glint under the bathroom lights. a soft breath leaves you, slow and unwilling. the girl in the mirror looks terrified, which is rude, because you were aiming for bored. maybe indifferent. possibly mysterious. something with less of a wet-cat energy.

bucky is one guy. one guy with eyes. one guy who probably won’t even look long enough to form an opinion. that is worse. “fine,” you say, grabbing the towel and wrapping it around your shoulders instead of your body. “but if i cry, i’m pushing you into the pool.”

nat opens the door, smug and fond. “deal. i swim beautifully.” you hate her. you follow her anyway.

sunlight hits you like a personal accusation. tony’s summer house is all glass, white stone, obnoxious wealth, and views so good they make you suspicious. the pool stretches across the back patio in a ridiculous blue sheet, bright enough to look fake, with lounge chairs lined along one side and a shaded outdoor kitchen on the other. music plays from speakers hidden somewhere in the landscaping, low and expensive. the air smells like sunscreen, grilled pineapple, chlorine, and the rosemary bushes tony probably paid someone to make look effortless.

everyone is already there. wanda is stretched on a lounger with sunglasses over her eyes, red hair spilling over one shoulder. vision sits beside her reading a book in the sun like a man who has never sweated once in his life. steve is by the grill, wearing swim trunks and a white shirt he left open, looking like a recruitment poster for sunscreen safety. sam is in the pool, arguing with clint over a foam football. tony is wearing sunglasses indoors, technically outdoors, but under the shaded bar, so spiritually indoors. bruce is speaking to pepper near a bowl of fruit like he has been assigned fruit diplomacy.

and bucky. bucky is near the far side of the pool, one foot up on the lower rung of a lounger, laughing at something steve says across the patio. shirtless, obviously. cruelly. swim trunks low on his hips, hair tied back in a loose half-bun, a pair of sunglasses hanging from the collar of the shirt he has abandoned on a chair. his skin is already touched by sun, golden at the shoulders, marked with faint scars and old history, and your brain takes one look at him and files for retirement.

of course. of course he gets to look like that near water. like some mythological punishment. like a sailor’s bad decision. like if marble got warm and developed a bad personality.

you stop near the sliding door. nat keeps walking. traitor. sam sees you first. “hey, finally! we were about to send a search party.”

“i was in the bathroom for seven minutes,” you call back, which is mostly true if you ignore the years spent negotiating with your own reflection.

“seven minutes in woman time,” tony says, lifting his drink. “so either twelve seconds or a fiscal quarter.”

“rich men shouldn’t speak,” you say, and tony points at you like you’ve wounded him.

“see, this is why i invite you. keeps the ego limber.”

that gets a few laughs, easy and warm. you can handle them. most of them. everyone here has seen you in pajamas, sick, angry, half asleep, and once crying over a video of a dog getting prosthetic legs. skin should be nothing. thighs should be nothing. a stomach should be nothing. human bodies have been happening for ages. terribly common things.

then bucky turns. it is fast. too fast. his smile is still there from whatever steve said, wide and relaxed, and then his eyes find you and the smile fades in pieces.

you go so still the towel slips down one shoulder.

he looks at your face first, then lower. hardly a second, maybe less, barely enough to count, but your body counts it. the line of his gaze touches your swimsuit, the bare places around it, the curve you have spent twenty minutes trying to negotiate with, and then he looks away.

just like that. his jaw tightens. his hand curls around the back of the lounger. his attention swings back to steve with such sudden force that you almost laugh. there it is. there it fucking is.

you knew this would happen. stupid, stupid girl. standing in a bathroom telling yourself he was only one guy when that one guy apparently needs to look anywhere else the second you show too much skin. amazing. beautiful. maybe you can walk straight into the pool and keep going until you reach a new continent. the patio sounds louder now. sam’s laughter, clint yelling about cheating, ice clinking in tony’s glass. everything keeps moving around you with obscene casualness. no one else saw it. no one else felt the tiny, sharp slice of it. bucky looked at you and looked away, and everyone else gets to continue eating fruit.

natasha glances back. you arrange your face into something flat and vaguely hostile. a familiar costume. better than the swimsuit.“drink?” she asks.

“yes.”

“alcoholic?”

“aggressively.”

tony hears that and brightens. “finally, someone with taste.”

you make your way toward the bar, aware of every step. the swimsuit feels too tight and too revealing and somehow too loud. bucky is across the patio, speaking to steve. he does not look again. that is fine. excellent. merciful, even. you hope he develops hiccups. tony slides a drink toward you. “for the lady with the aggressive liver.”

“thank you. sorry about your personality.”

“accepted. i bought another one.”

sam hoists himself out of the pool with a dramatic groan, water streaming down his shoulders. He grabs a towel, wiping his face, and his gaze flicks over your swimsuit without the weirdness men can sometimes bring to it. Just appreciative, warm, and easy. “Damn. Look at you.”

your fingers tighten around the glass. for one stupid second, praise lands in a place that has been sitting empty for too long. you lift your brows, aiming for casual. “is that surprise?”

“that’s respect,” sam says, pointing at the gold ring on your strap. “little fancy thing going on. i see you.”

“it’s swimsuit technology.”

“no, that’s a whole look. hey, buck.” sam turns his head before you can stop him. “you seeing this?”

murder becomes briefly understandable.

bucky’s shoulders go rigid. Steve looks between sam and bucky with the pained expression of a man witnessing a grenade roll under a picnic table. the second stretches. maybe two. your drink sweats against your palm. bucky does turn, but his eyes barely make it to your shoulder before skating away again. “yeah,” he says, voice rough enough that it sounds dragged from his throat. “i see it.”

that is worse than silence. you swallow. “fantastic. all votes counted.”

sam squints, sensing something in the air with the survival instincts of a man who has chosen chaos as a hobby. “you okay over there, terminator?”

bucky’s mouth moves into something that could pass for a smile in poor lighting. “fine.”

“sounds painful.”

“sam.”

“what? i’m checking on my friend.”

“check quieter.”

you take a long sip. It is sweet, cold, and strong enough to make your teeth feel clean. Wonderful. Tony Stark may be a public hazard, but the man stocks good alcohol. You let the burn settle on your tongue and decide, with the private little click of a door closing, that this is fine. Bucky can avoid looking at you. Great. Wonderful. Plenty of people have eyes.

Sam, for instance. Sam is grinning at you, towel around his neck, eyebrows lifted. He is handsome and safe and not Bucky, which immediately lowers his value in the ugliest part of your brain. But he complimented you. He looked at you without flinching. That counts for something. “you getting in?” sam asks, jerking his chin toward the pool. “or did you dress up to intimidate the tiles?”

“both can be true.”

“come on. clint’s cheating and i need a witness.”

you glance toward the water, then toward nat, who has settled beside wanda. Then, against all better judgment, toward bucky. He is looking at his drink. Very invested in it. Possibly falling in love with it. Good for them. your drink goes onto the counter. the towel slides off your shoulders and onto a chair before you can give yourself time to become normal again. Cool air brushes over your bare back. Too many places. Too much skin. Your arms fight the urge to cross over your middle.

Bucky’s head turns a fraction. You see it. You hate that you see it. The movement is so tiny anyone else would miss it, but you have a tragic little doctorate in James Barnes pretending indifference. His eyes make it to your legs this time. Then his mouth presses flat, and he turns away again.

Fine. Your chin lifts. “i’m a terrible witness,” you tell sam, stepping toward the pool. “i lie under pressure.”

Sam laughs and offers his hand from the water like he is helping royalty down from a carriage. “perfect. we’ll frame clint together.”

The pool is cold at first, a shock around your calves as you sit on the edge and lower yourself in. You bite back the sound that tries to escape, mostly out of pride. The water closes around your waist, then your ribs, and for a second the swimsuit stops feeling like a spotlight. Underwater, everything blurs kinder. Your hips, stomach, thighs. The body becomes a body again. Less evidence. Less argument. Sam tosses you the foam football. You catch it against your chest with both hands, splashing yourself in the face. “very athletic,” clint calls.

you wipe water from your eyes. “i’m preserving my mystery.”

“your mystery is that you suck at catch.”

“my mystery is that i haven’t drowned you.”

That gets a laugh from wanda. Nat smiles behind her sunglasses, proud and terrible. You start to loosen after that. The water helps. The drink helps. Sam helps too, in his loud, easy way, making you feel included without making you feel studied. He shouts fake strategies, accuses clint of crimes against recreational sport, and once spins you by the shoulders to aim your throw while you laugh so hard pool water gets in your mouth.

It should be enough. It almost is. Then you glance over and see Bucky watching. He is no longer pretending to listen to Steve. His sunglasses are on now, hiding his eyes, but his head is angled toward you. His arms are crossed over his chest, one shoulder leaning against a patio pillar, sun catching along the metal of his left hand where it grips his own bicep. There is nothing soft in his posture. Nothing open. He looks carved into place.

Caught, he turns his head slightly. Of course. Your laugh thins. Sam says something, but you miss it. Maybe your name. Maybe a joke. The pool sounds muffle, slipping in and out around your ears. Bucky can look from far away, apparently. From behind sunglasses. From a place where you cannot look back properly. The second you are close enough for him to have to acknowledge you as a body with feelings, he finds the nearest wall or drink or horizon.

There’s a special sort of humiliation in wanting someone who seems vaguely offended by the evidence of you. “you alive?” sam asks, splashing water near your arm.

You blink back to him. “unfortunately.”

“you looked like you were plotting.”

“I plot as cardio.”

“that explains the stamina.”

Bucky’s jaw moves across the patio. You see that too. Tiny. Annoying. Delicious, if you were a healthier person. A reckless little thing uncurls in your chest. It is petty and hot and stupid, so naturally it feels almost holy. You turn back to sam with a brighter smile, the sort that probably looks normal to everyone else and insane to Nat. Sam raises his eyebrows. Brave man. “teach me to throw better,” you say.

He narrows his eyes. “this a trick?”

“i’m asking for athletic help. cherish the moment.”

Sam laughs, then shifts behind you in the water, hands hovering over your elbows before settling lightly when you nod. It is friendly. It is nothing. It is two people in a pool with a foam football and a crowd of friends around them. But you feel Bucky before you see him. His attention has weight. A dark little weather system rolling over the patio. Sam adjusts your arm. “okay, elbow up. no, less like you’re threatening the ball’s family.”

“I am threatening its family.”

“gentle. release here.” His hand taps your wrist.

Across the patio, Steve says something to Bucky. Bucky does not answer. You throw. The ball arcs beautifully for half a second, then smacks clint square in the forehead. The silence is immediate. Then clint sinks under the water like a betrayed submarine. You clap both hands over your mouth. Sam loses his mind laughing, one hand braced on your shoulder as he folds forward. Wanda sits up. Tony lowers his sunglasses. Steve looks concerned. Nat looks delighted. Clint resurfaces, hair plastered over his face. “attempted murder.”

“self-defense,” you gasp, still half laughing, half horrified. “you had criminal energy.”

“You hit me in my innocent head.”

“no jury would convict her,” sam says, wiping his eyes. “that was art.”

A sound comes from the patio. Low. Short. You look before you can stop yourself.

Bucky is laughing. Not loud. Not like sam. Barely more than a breath, but his mouth has curved despite whatever terrible thing he has been doing with his face all afternoon. He is looking at you now. Fully. Sunglasses pushed up into his hair, blue eyes narrowed against the sun, and for one ridiculous moment, all the air in the day seems to gather in your throat.

Then he catches himself. The smile fades. His gaze drops to the water near your waist, moves away, and he reaches for his drink. It is a slap with no hand.

Your smile goes with it. The water suddenly feels too cold. “i need another drink,” you announce, heading for the stairs before anyone can see your face arrange itself badly.

Sam calls after you, still laughing about clint’s tragic head injury. Nat’s sunglasses follow you from the lounger. Bucky stays by the pillar, but the closer you get to the edge, the more you feel him there. A terrible awareness. Like walking past a stove you know is on. Your hands grip the metal rail as you climb the pool steps. Water streams down your body, cooler where the breeze hits. The swimsuit clings hard now, slick to your skin, making every curve more obvious instead of less. Wonderful design choice. Truly innovative cruelty. You reach for the towel on the chair, but it is farther than you thought, and the stone under your wet feet is slippery.

Your heel slides. For one bright, stupid second, you are suspended in pure indignity. Then a hand clamps around your upper arm. Not sam. Not nat. Not anyone safe enough to survive.

Bucky. His other hand catches your waist, broad palm spreading over wet skin, fingers pressing into the soft give above your hip. The contact goes straight through you with such force that your brain empties. Chlorine, sun, his skin, the faint spice of whatever soap he uses, all of it crowds too close. Your hand lands on his chest to steady yourself, and he is warm. Warm and solid and right there, which is deeply unfair for a man who has spent the afternoon treating eye contact like a hostage negotiation.

“careful,” he says.

One word. Low. Rough. Stupid. Your embarrassment catches fire. You laugh. It comes out bitter, thin at the edges, nothing like the easy laugh you gave sam. Bucky’s fingers tighten once at your waist, and that little pressure makes the whole thing worse. “relax, barnes.” You pull your hand from his chest, hating the wet print your palm leaves behind. “you don’t have to touch me longer than necessary.”

The whole patio seems to keep making noise, but in your little corner, the sentence has teeth. Bucky goes still. His hand stays on your waist for half a second too long, then leaves like he has been burned. The absence is immediate and awful. You hate him for touching you. You hate him more for stopping. His face has changed, though you refuse to name the change. His brows draw together, mouth parting slightly as if he has lost the next line. Good. Let him lose something. “What?” he says, quiet.

You grab the towel and pull it around yourself, too late to feel covered. “Nothing.”

His eyes narrow at that, and for once he does not look away. “That didn’t sound like nothing.”

“You’re very observant.”

“Don’t do that.”

A laugh tries to crawl out of you and dies ugly. “Do what?”

“Act like I did something to you when all I did was catch you.”

You look at him then. Really, probably too much. Big mistake. His skin is still damp at the temples from sweat or the pool water someone splashed earlier, and the sun catches the blue of his eyes so sharply you want to be mad at nature. His chest rises under your gaze. Your palm still remembers him, every warm inch. A handprint in reverse. “you looked away,” you say, and the words escape before pride can shoot them down.

Bucky’s face tightens. “When?”

You hate him. You hate him so much you could kiss him until both of you forget language. “Forget it.”

You turn away, but he catches the edge of the towel. Not enough to pull you back, only enough to stop the escape from being clean. “When?” he repeats, and the softness in his voice is so much worse than anger.

You should have kept your mouth shut. You should have stayed in the bathroom and sued Natasha from there. Instead you’re wet, half naked, humiliated, and Bucky Barnes is holding your towel like it matters. “When I came out,” you say, staring hard at the bar instead of him. “When sam called you. When I got in the pool. Pick one, you’ve been consistent.”

His grip loosens. For a second you think he will explain. He might laugh. He might say you’re imagining things. He might finally cut the whole sickness open and tell you he does not want to look, and then maybe you can be free through the healing power of public devastation. But he says nothing. Of course he says nothing.

Your eyes sting, which is unacceptable. Chlorine. Obviously chlorine. You pull the towel free and walk toward the bar with as much dignity as a woman can manage while dripping on expensive stone. Behind you, Steve says Bucky’s name. Low. Warning. Or concerned. You do not turn around. Tony is pretending very hard to examine a lime. “Drink,” you say, dropping onto a stool.

He pushes one over without commentary for maybe the first time in his life. “Hydration adjacent.”

“your discretion is unsettling.”

“i’m multifaceted.”

You take the glass. Your hand shakes once, barely. You curl it tighter until it stops.

Across the patio, Bucky remains near the pool steps, one hand low on his hip, the other rubbing over his mouth. Steve stands near him now, speaking quietly. Bucky shakes his head. His eyes cut toward you. This time, you look away first.

Pool parties become less fun once you have emotionally exposed yourself near a wet staircase. A tragic discovery. Someone should tell the youth. The afternoon drags onward with the mean persistence of a song you cannot skip. People eat. People drink. Sam retells the clint football incident with increasing betrayal of facts, making himself sound like a coach and you sound like a trained assassin. Clint claims he can see sounds now. Wanda orders him to stop making it tempting to hit him again. Tony brings out enough food for a wedding and calls it “light snacks,” which makes you wonder if billionaires understand hunger as a concept or merely as a branding opportunity. You sit with nat under the shade, towel around your shoulders, swimsuit drying tight against your skin. The drink has made you warmer, loose at the edges, but not enough to soften the place Bucky opened and then abandoned. He has stayed away. Not dramatically. Not in a way anyone could call obvious. He helps Steve with the grill, talks to Sam, lets Tony make jokes at his expense. He is normal.

That might be the ugliest part. You are sitting here with your nerves scraped raw, and he gets to hold a plate of grilled chicken. Do you want to talk about it?” nat asks.

“No.”

She hums, sipping from her straw. “Do you want to lie about it?”

“Desperately.”

“Go ahead.”

You stare at the water. Sam is trying to shove clint off a float. Clint has accepted death with more grace than expected. “I’m having a nice time.”

“Terrible lie. Try again.”

“I enjoy sunlight.”

“Worse.”

“Bucky Barnes is a normal man whose opinion does nothing to my blood pressure.”

Natasha’s mouth curves. “Almost funny enough to pass.”

You pick at a loose thread on the towel. The fibers are soft, expensive, probably worth more than half your closet. Tony’s towels have better career prospects than you. “He looked at me like he wished I’d worn a tarp.”

Nat says nothing for a second. Her silence is rarely empty. It moves around, checks exits, evaluates weak spots. “That’s what you saw?”

You glance at her, defensive already. “I have eyes.”

“Unfortunately, yes. Dramatic ones.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” She turns her head a little, and you follow her gaze against your will.

Bucky is standing at the grill beside Steve. His posture is casual enough for a stranger. Not for you. You know his casual. This is held too tight at the edges. His shoulders are set, left hand curled around a bottle of beer he has barely touched, eyes trained on the pool with such grim commitment that the pool may owe him money. “He’s been weird all day,” nat says.

“He’s always weird.”

“With you, yes.”

“That’s very comforting.”

She nudges your knee with hers. “You two are exhausting.”

“There is no two. There’s me, suffering heroically, and him, being confusing and broad.”

“Broad?”

“Don’t make me defend my vocabulary. I’m injured.”

“You slipped.”

“Emotionally.”

Natasha laughs softly, then reaches over and plucks the drink from your hand. “Slow down.”

You glare. “This is theft.”

“This is friendship.”

“Friendship would let me make poor choices.”

“I let you buy the swimsuit.”

“That was attempted murder.”

Her hand squeezes your knee once. “He’s looking again.”

Your entire body betrays you. It wants to turn. It wants to pretend it has not been starving for that exact sentence. You hold still with the grim focus of someone defusing a bomb under poor lighting. “Good for him,” you say.

Nat’s smile turns small and unbearable. “You’re allowed to like being looked at.”

“By normal people, maybe.”

“Barnes is many things.”

“Normal does seem optimistic.” The words come out light enough. The thought under them sits heavy. Bucky looking at you feels dangerous because you cannot tell what he sees. All day, you have been trapped between wanting his attention and being wounded by how he spends it. Too quick, too hidden, too late. You want him to look in a way that lets you rest, which is insane. A person should not need another person’s eyes to feel real in their own skin. There are self-help books about that, probably. You have not read them because they would tell you to journal and you would rather eat sand.

Tony calls everyone for food, and the shift saves you from Nat’s terrifying accuracy. Chairs scrape. People gather around the long outdoor table. You end up between wanda and sam, safe enough, with nat across from you and Bucky diagonally down the table beside Steve. Diagonally is awful. Diagonally means accidental glances. Diagonally means you can pretend to look at the salad and still see his hands. Diagonally means his knee might bump yours if the table were smaller, which it is not, thank God, or no thanks to God, depending on where you are in your moral development. 

Food helps. A little. Grilled corn, charred sweet at the edges. Watermelon with feta. Skewers. Tony’s obscene little sliders made with buns so soft you briefly understand wealth. You eat more than you expected, mostly to give your mouth a reason to stay busy. Sam leans closer while reaching for the corn. “You ever think about joining a league?”

You stare at him. “For what, pool homicide?”

“Foam football. You’ve got raw talent.”

“I injured one man.”

“That’s how legends start.”

You laugh, easier this time. Sam is lovely. Sam is safe. Sam has never once made you feel like a bug under glass or a prayer no one taught you how to say. His attention is warm and uncomplicated, and maybe that is why it fails to do the thing you wish it would. You want it to. That would be convenient. You could turn your head and smile at the man making you laugh, and your body could decide to be sensible for once. Across the table, Bucky’s fork scrapes softly against his plate.

You glance up. His eyes are on Sam’s shoulder, where it nearly touches yours. His mouth has gone flat again. When his gaze shifts to yours, it stays. No sunglasses now. No immediate retreat. You should feel triumphant. You feel pinned and furious and too warm under the towel.

Sam keeps talking. You answer. Probably. Words happen from your side of the table. Bucky looks away first, but slower this time, and that almost makes you angrier. 

After food, Tony declares a mandatory sunset swim like a man whose money has left him unfamiliar with the word optional. Wanda declines by pretending to sleep. Vision declines with such politeness that Tony thanks him. Steve gets dragged in by Sam. Clint goes willingly after shouting that the water may heal his head trauma. Natasha sheds her shirt and dives so cleanly that half the patio claps.

You mean to stay on the lounger. You really do. Then Bucky sits on the chair two spaces away with a beer and no intention of swimming.

You stand.

“Coming in?” sam calls from the pool.

“Apparently.”

Bucky’s head lifts. There. There it is again. That first startled drag of his eyes as your towel drops onto the lounger. This time you catch all of it. He looks at your shoulders, your chest, your waist, the high cut at your hips, the damp lines where the swimsuit still clings from earlier. His throat moves. His fingers tighten around the beer bottle.

Then he looks away. Again. The hurt comes faster now, less sharp and more tired. You have run out of ways to be surprised by it. “You coming?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

Bucky looks back. “What?”

“In the pool.” You gesture toward everyone else, voice mild enough to deserve applause. “That large wet rectangle behind you.”

Sam laughs from the water. Steve watches Bucky with the concerned patience of someone looking at a friend about to step on a rake. Bucky’s eyes flick toward the pool, then to you. “I’m fine here.”

“Tragic. We’ll notify the rectangle.”

That gets a laugh from Tony. Even Bucky’s mouth twitches, but it dies before it becomes anything useful. “You scared?” you ask.

The words are easy. The ache under them is less so. You want him to rise. You want him to refuse. You want him to look. You want him to leave. You want so many impossible things at once that your own skin feels crowded. Bucky leans back in the chair, jaw set. “Of you?”

“Of fun.”

“Terrified.”

“Figures.” You turn before he can answer, stepping into the pool with all the dignity you can scrape together. The water feels warmer now after the heat of the day, soft around your knees, your waist, your ribs. Sam splashes near you, and you splash him back half-heartedly. The game restarts in some altered form. Someone throws a beach ball. Tony judges from the side with a drink, claiming he is “morally participating.” The sky slowly bruises pink and gold over the trees.

You laugh again. You even mean some of it. But Bucky stays on the chair. He stays dry and distant, one elbow on the armrest, beer untouched, gaze roaming everywhere except you until it does not. Then you feel it between your shoulder blades, across the back of your neck, sliding down where the swimsuit reveals more than it hides. If he is disgusted, he has a strange way of torturing himself with it.

Maybe he is bored. Maybe he is judging. Maybe he is thinking about someone else. Maybe you are pathetic. That last thought arrives with such calm familiarity that you almost miss the ball flying toward your face.

“Duck!” Sam shouts.

You duck too late. The beach ball clips the side of your head, harmless but startling, and you stumble back with a laugh that turns into a yelp when your foot misses the pool step under the water. This time, you do not fall. This time, Bucky is already there.

The splash of him entering the pool sends water up over your arms. You barely process the movement before his hand catches your waist under the water, bare palm meeting bare skin, fingers firm enough to halt every thought you were trying to have. His other hand closes around your wrist, anchoring you while your toes find the step.

The whole pool erupts around you. Sam says something. Tony whistles. Clint declares another murder attempt. None of it matters.

Bucky is in the water. Bucky is touching you.

Bucky’s hair is wet now, loose strands clinging near his jaw. His chest is inches from yours, water beading on his collarbones, eyes fixed on your face with the sort of focus that makes you feel both held and dissected. The metal hand around your wrist is cool. The flesh hand at your waist is warm even underwater. Your body, treacherous little idiot, forgets every insult it has been rehearsing and leans a fraction closer. “Careful,” he says again.

The same word. Same roughness. Less distance. Your laugh barely works this time. It leaves your mouth thin and tired. “You need a new line.”

His eyes drop to your mouth. Stay there. Move back up. “You need to stop slipping.”

“I’m sure the tiles are honored you blame me.”

“Wasn’t blaming you.”

“No, you’re just leaping into pools now. Very casual.”

His hand slides half an inch on your waist as someone’s wave rolls against you both. The movement is tiny and devastating. Your stomach pulls in under his palm before you can control it, and his fingers flex like he felt the reaction and had to restrain his own. Sam clears his throat loudly. “Everybody alive?”

Bucky does not look away from you. “Yeah.”

“You sure? That looked like a rescue.”

“Wilson,” Steve says, warning plain in his voice.

“What? I’m just asking. Man moved like a torpedo.”

Your face heats, and that saves you. Embarrassment brings language back. “I’m fine,” you say, trying to step back.

Bucky lets go of your wrist. His hand at your waist lingers. You glance down at it. He follows your gaze and releases you, slow enough to feel intentional, quick enough to hurt. “Fine,” he repeats, almost to himself.

You step away, wrapping your arms around your middle under the water. The swimsuit feels nonexistent now, yet somehow everyone can see the exact place his hand had been. Maybe there is a mark. Maybe your skin has announced it to the patio in bright letters. “I’m getting out,” you say, mostly to the water.

Bucky’s brows pull together. “Again?”

“Try to survive it.”

Sam says your name softly as you pass him, but you keep moving. The pool steps are kinder this time. You grip the rail, climb carefully, and grab your towel with wet hands. The sky has gone warmer, streaked with orange, and the air makes goosebumps rise along your arms. You head toward the house before anyone can ask.

The sliding door is blessedly close. The kitchen inside is cooler, dimmer, quiet except for the hum of Tony’s expensive refrigerator and the muted thump of music through glass. You leave wet footprints across the tile and feel guilty for half a second before remembering Tony could probably buy new tile by blinking. The towel goes tighter around you. Your face feels too hot. Your chest feels worse. Everything is tangled. Bucky looked away. Bucky watched. Bucky refused to get in. Bucky jumped in without thinking. Bucky touched you like instinct. Bucky let go like regret.

A normal person would accept complexity. You prefer suffering. The kitchen island has a bowl of cut limes, a bottle of tequila, and a tray of tiny desserts covered in plastic wrap. You peel one back and take a mini tart just to have something to destroy. It tastes like lemon and butter and wealth. You chew angrily. “stealing dessert before dinner’s fully over?”

You close your eyes. No. Absolutely no. The universe can go bother someone else.

Bucky’s voice comes from the doorway behind you, lower after the pool, rougher around the edges. You keep chewing. Swallow. Pick up another tart because dignity left hours ago and dessert is here now.

“Tell tony,” you say. “He’ll have me arrested by the pastry police.”

Wet footsteps cross the tile. He has followed you in dripping too, which should make him less intimidating. It does not. The room fills with him, chlorine and sun and that clean masculine smell under it, the one that has ruined many evenings and one perfectly decent pillow you once pressed your face into after he left it on your couch. He stops on the other side of the island. You look at the tart tray instead of him.

“I was checking on you.”

“Very heroic. I’m eating a tart.”

“So I see.”

“Then your work here is done.”

The old rhythm tries to come back. Snap, deflect, survive. Usually he takes the bait. Usually he smiles or scoffs or says something that makes you want to throw a household object. This time he stays quiet, and the quiet crawls right under your towel. You reach for a third tart. His hand covers the tray.

You stare at his fingers. Human hand. Calloused. Thick. The same hand that had been on your waist in the pool, warm through the water, possessive for one second before he remembered he did not want to be. Your own hand hovers uselessly near his. Lemon sugar sticks to your thumb. “Move,” you say.

“Talk to me.”

Your laugh is small and mean. “About dessert?”

“About what you said outside.”

“I’ve said many beautiful things today.”

His fingers press lightly against the plastic wrap, making it crinkle. “At the pool steps.”

The room cools further. Somewhere outside, Sam laughs. The sound reaches the kitchen thin and far away, like it belongs to another life where people can swim and flirt and enjoy fruit without turning into an open wound near a marble island. “I said you didn’t have to touch me.” You lift one shoulder. The towel slips a little. His eyes move to fix on your face with almost painful discipline. “Seems clear.”

“No.” His jaw tightens around the word. “It doesn’t.”

“It really does.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

There it is. Softer than you expected. Worse, somehow. He sounds angry, but the anger has nowhere clean to go. It sits between you, wet-haired and broad-shouldered and too close. You pick at the sugar on your thumb. “Standing in a kitchen?”

“Trying to stop touching you.”

A humorless sound leaves you. “Aren’t you?”

Bucky’s hand slowly leaves the tray. He comes around the island, and you hate yourself for how fast your body registers each step. Wet tile under his bare feet. The shift of muscle in his thighs. Water slipping from his hair to his neck. He stops beside you, close enough that you can see tiny droplets on his lashes. “You think that’s why I looked away?”

Your fingers curl into the towel at your chest. “I’m very tired of talking about where your eyes go.”

“I’m not.”

“Congratulations.”

His voice lowers. “Look at me.”

“No.”

He breathes out through his nose. A patient sound. Not gentle. Not quite. “Please.”

That word does the damage anger could never do. You look up, furious with him for asking nicely. His face is tense, mouth set, eyes darker in the dim kitchen. He looks too serious for a pool party. Too serious for you standing here in a damp swimsuit and a towel, lemon sugar on your thumb, embarrassment turning your throat tight. “Happy?” you ask.

His gaze moves over your face like he is trying to read something written under your skin. “No.”

That almost gets you. Simple answer. No joke. No little smirk to save either of you. Your own mouth opens, then closes again.

Bucky glances toward the patio doors. Outside, the others are loud and bright and drunk on summer. In here, the air holds still around the refrigerator hum and your wet footprints. “I looked away,” he says, each word measured like it costs him, “because if I kept looking, everybody out there was gonna know.”

You stare at him. It takes a second. Maybe more. Your brain receives the sentence, turns it over, rejects it, picks it up again, then shakes it until meaning falls out. “Know what?”

His laugh is almost silent, rough at the bottom. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m asking.”

“You know what.”

“I really don’t.”

His hand lifts, then stops before touching you. That restraint again. Always that. A hand held back like your skin has rules written over it. You hate it more than anything, and maybe you have loved it too, which is inconvenient and humiliating. His fingers curl into his palm. “That I wanted you.”

The fridge hums. Music thuds through glass. Someone outside yells for Tony to stop cheating at whatever stupid rich-man game he has invented. Your towel slips another inch down your shoulder. Bucky notices. This time, he does not look away fast enough.

Wanted. Past tense? Present tense? A cruel grammar question at the worst possible time.

“You’ve been acting like looking at me causes physical pain,” you say, and it comes out less sharp than you need. More wounded. Awful.

His eyes cut back to yours. “It does.”

You blink. Bucky looks almost mad at himself now, which is satisfying for one brief second before it becomes sad. “You walked out in that thing and I had two choices. Look away, or sit there with everyone watching me stare at you like I’d lost my damn mind.”

“That thing?”

His gaze dips. Brief. Hungry. No disgust in it. None. The realization makes your stomach hollow out and fill at once. “The swimsuit.”

“You hate it.”

His mouth parts, then closes. His brows draw down. “I hate that Sam got to tell you first.”

That sentence finds a deep, stupid place in you and presses there. You hate that place. It has no pride. “He was being nice,” you say.

“I know.” in his mouth, right now, it is not reassurance. It is surrender. It is a man admitting something he does not want to resent and resenting it anyway.

“He looked at you like a friend,” Bucky says. “That made it worse.”

You set the tart down slowly, afraid any sudden movement might shatter the room. “Why?”

His eyes come back to yours. “Because I didn’t.”

The answer moves through you like a slow spill. Outside, someone opens the patio door. You both turn your heads at once. Tony leans in halfway, sunglasses still on though the sun is dying. His gaze takes in the water on the floor, your towel, Bucky’s expression, the tray of tarts, and he immediately lifts both hands.

“Fantastic. Haunted kitchen. Love that for us.” He reaches blindly for a bottle near the door. “Pretend I’m rich furniture.”

“Tony,” Bucky says, voice tight.

“Gone. Emotionally, spiritually, legally.” Tony backs out with the bottle and slides the door shut.

The interruption should break the tension. It does not. It makes it worse. Now the world has peeked in and retreated. Now privacy feels chosen. You wipe your sticky thumb against the towel, then regret it. “People are going to come looking.”

“Let them.”

Your eyes flick to his. “That’s a bad idea.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re agreeing?”

“Trying something new.”

Despite everything, a tiny laugh escapes you. Bucky’s face shifts at the sound. Not a smile, exactly. More dangerous than that. Like the laugh handed him proof he had been starving for and now he is trying to keep from grabbing.

“I thought you were embarrassed,” you say, quieter. The words scrape more than they should. “Of looking. Of me.”

His whole body seems to pull toward you without moving. “Jesus.”

You flinch at the roughness, and he sees it.

“Hey.” His hand finally touches your arm, just above the towel’s edge. Warm, careful, barely there. Still enough to ruin you. “No. I’m angry at myself. Not you.”

“You keep looking away.”

“I was trying to be decent.”

“That felt awful.”

His thumb moves once over your damp skin. You wish it did less. You wish it did more. “I see that now.”

“Great. Character development.”

He huffs, but there’s no real humor in it. His eyes have gone to the place his thumb touches your arm. “I’m sorry.”

You blink again. Bucky apologizes sometimes. To other people. Usually with grumbles and half-smiles and enough charm to make forgiveness feel inevitable. With you, apologies are rarer. Maybe because both of you prefer biting to bleeding. Maybe because he never seems to understand where the wound is. 

This one is plain. You have no idea what to do with it. “I don’t want your pity apology,” you say.

His thumb stops. “Pity?”

“Yes.”

“You think I’m standing here half naked in Stark’s kitchen, dripping on a floor that costs more than my first apartment, apologizing out of pity?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds stupid.”

“It sounded stupid before.”

You glare up at him, relieved by the spark of irritation because anger is easier to hold. “Careful.”

That word. His word. It changes something in his face, turns his attention heavier. Your mouth goes dry. Bucky’s hand slides down your arm, slow enough that you could move away. You do not. His fingers find your wrist, then your hand, lifting it between you. Lemon sugar still clings faintly near your thumb. His eyes meet yours, asking nothing aloud, and maybe you nod. Maybe your hand simply gives up and lets him.

He brings your thumb to his mouth. The first touch of his tongue is warm and wet and obscene in its quietness. He licks the sugar from your skin like he has all the time in the world, lips closing around the tip of your thumb for half a second before he lets it go. Your knees forget their duties. The island is behind you, so you lean back against it before your body can embarrass you further.

Bucky watches the movement. “There,” he says, voice rougher. “No pity.”

You breathe through your nose, which is impressive since your lungs appear to have resigned. “That was unsanitary.”

“Pool water’s worse.”

“Comforting.”

His hand stays around yours. “You always do that.”

“What?”

“Make a joke when you’re shaking.”

You glance down. Your fingers are trembling in his grip. Treacherous little things. You consider cutting them off. Too messy for tony’s floor.

“I’m cold,” you say.

Bucky’s eyes drop to the towel, the damp swimsuit, the little bumps risen along your arms. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Want me to get you dry?”

There is nothing clean in that question. Maybe there could have been, from someone else. From him, with his mouth still wet from your thumb and his hand around yours, the words turn thick. You pull your hand back, mostly so you can breathe. “I can manage a towel.”

“I saw.”

“You saw me almost fall.”

“I saw a lot today.”

A pulse starts low in your body, slow and hot and deeply inconvenient. “You looked away for most of it.”

“I looked back.”

That shuts you up. His hand goes to the edge of the towel. He does not pull. Just touches the cotton near your collarbone, where it has started to sag from water and poor decision-making. “I looked back all damn day.”

You try to swallow. It takes effort. “Bucky…”

The patio door opens again. This time it is Nat. She takes one look at you, one look at Bucky, then at the wet floor. Her face gives away nothing, which means she has figured out everything.

“People are asking about dessert,” she says.

You stare at her helplessly. Bucky’s hand drops from the towel. He turns his head, expression suddenly murderous in a very contained, socially inconvenient way. “They can wait.”

Natasha’s brows rise. “Can they?”

“Yes,” he says.

Something about that single word, the calm certainty of it, makes your thighs press together under the towel. Nat’s eyes flick down for barely a second, then back up. You want the tile to open and swallow you. Preferably gently. With snacks. “Right,” she says. “I’ll tell them the kitchen is occupied.”

“Nat,” you hiss.

Her mouth curves. “What? By wet people.”

Bucky sighs like he is in physical pain. “Romanoff.”

“Relax, Barnes. I’m leaving.” She reaches for the tray of tarts, slides it away from you both, and pauses at the door. “Use one of the guest rooms. Tony has cameras in weird places.”

Your soul leaves your body. “What?” you choke.

Tony’s voice carries from outside. “I do not have cameras in weird places. I have cameras in strategic places.”

Natasha closes the door again. The silence after that is different. Less fragile. More aware of its own stupidity. You cover your face with one hand. “I’m moving.”

Bucky makes a sound that might be a laugh if he were less ruined. “Where?”

“Into the ocean.”

“Pool’s closer.”

“Too many witnesses.”

His hand returns to your waist, over the towel this time, and the casual possession of it melts the last few scraps of your brain. “Guest room’s closer too.”

You lower your hand. He is looking at you now. No retreat. No disgust. No careful sideways glance. He looks exactly how you had feared wishing for. Hungry and unsure and trying to make himself stand still. “This is a terrible idea,” you whisper.

“Probably.”

“People are outside.”

“Yep.”

“You were ignoring me two hours ago.”

His mouth tightens. “I was trying to keep my hands off you two hours ago.”

“And now?”

His fingers press into your waist, pulling you one inch closer. Not enough. Enough to make you greedy. “Now I heard what you thought.”

Your chest aches. “And?”

He leans in, slow. Gives you time. Too much time. Your eyes dip to his mouth, and he sees that too. Of course he sees that, the bastard. His lips brush the corner of yours, barely a touch, more breath than kiss, and your entire body answers like it has been waiting years for a command. “And I’m done letting you think it.”

The first kiss is almost gentle. Almost. That is what ruins it. Bucky’s mouth touches yours with restraint at first, warm and careful, and you stand there stupidly with your hand hovering near his chest. It has taken so long to get here that your body does not trust it. He kisses you once, then draws back just enough to look at your face, and something in that tiny pause makes you angry. “No,” you breathe, grabbing the wet hair at the nape of his neck.

His eyes darken. “No?”

“You don’t get to kiss me like I’m fragile after making me feel insane all day.”

The words are barely out before his hand slides behind your head and his mouth comes back harder. This kiss has teeth in it. Not cruel, not careless, but hungry enough to make your fingers tighten in his hair. He tastes like beer and lemon sugar from your skin. His other arm wraps around your waist, pulling you in until the towel is crushed between you and his damp chest, and you make a sound into his mouth that you would deny in court. Bucky answers with a low groan, and the sound breaks something open. The kiss turns messy fast. Your feet slip a little on the wet tile, and he catches you without breaking away, almost lifting you onto your toes. The island edge presses into your back. His hand spreads wide between your shoulder blades, then drags down over the towel, as if he hates every layer between his palm and the body he kept refusing to look at.

Outside, laughter rises. You jerk back. “Guest room.”

Bucky’s forehead touches yours for one second. His breathing is rough, uneven, gratifyingly ruined. “Yeah.”

He takes your hand. That simple thing nearly undoes you. His fingers lace through yours, warm and firm, and he leads you through Tony’s absurd house with far more purpose than a man dripping pool water should have. The hallway is cool and dim, lined with art that probably costs enough to rescue a small nation. You barely see it. You see his back, the muscles shifting under wet skin, the dark hair curling at his neck, your hand held in his like something he does not plan to misplace. A laugh bursts from the patio behind you, then the sound dulls as the hallway turns. Your pulse beats everywhere. Mouth, wrists, thighs, the places the swimsuit rubs too tight. You have spent hours wishing he would look, and now he is taking you somewhere private to do more than that, which means panic arrives right on schedule, prim little nightmare clipboard in hand.

What if he changes his mind when the door closes? What if this is heat and misunderstanding and chlorine? What if he touches you and finds every soft place you spent the day trying to hide? Bucky stops at the first guest room and opens the door. The room is airy, pale, ridiculous, with a king bed dressed in white and a view of the trees beyond the windows. Too pretty. Too clean. A room for people who have sex beautifully, probably, with matching underwear and no body anxiety.

You hover at the threshold. Bucky turns. His gaze drops to your face, then your hand still in his. “What?”

You hate the gentleness. You might start wanting it everywhere. “Nothing.”

He steps closer, slowly enough to make the hallway feel narrower. “Try again.”

Your fingers tighten around his. “I’m wet.”

His brows lift a fraction. “From the pool,” you snap, heat flooding your face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“My face is having a day.”

Despite yourself, a laugh slips out, small and anxious. His thumb strokes over your knuckles, and the laugh fades into something softer. God, this is bad. This is tender now, and tender is much more dangerous than horny. Horny you understand. Horny has a beginning and an end and terrible decision-making in the middle. Tender grows roots. Bucky steps into the room and draws you with him.

The door closes behind you with a quiet click. For one second, neither of you speaks. The silence fills with water dripping from both of you onto the floor, distant music, your own uneven breathing. His hand leaves yours. You miss it immediately, which is humiliating.

Then he reaches for the towel. “Can I?”

You want to say something sharp. Something clever. Something that protects the swollen, nervous thing in your chest. Instead, you nod.

He unwraps you slowly. Not theatrically. Not like some polished movie scene. His fingers fumble once at the tucked corner, and that fumble does more to you than smooth confidence ever could. The towel loosens, slipping from your shoulders, down your arms, catching at your elbows before he pulls it free and drops it onto a chair.

Cool air touches your damp skin. Your hands twitch toward your stomach. Bucky catches them. The movement is fast, but his hold is gentle. Both wrists in his hands, lifted slightly away from your body. His eyes stay on yours. “Don’t hide from me.” The words are low, quiet, and absolutely devastating.

You try to laugh. It barely forms. “That’s ambitious.”

“I can be patient.”

“You? Since when?”

His mouth twitches. “Since about three seconds ago.”

You breathe out, shaky but almost amused. He lifts your hands and kisses the inside of one wrist. Then the other. Your throat tightens. It is so stupid, how much that gets to you. A kiss there. Not your mouth. Not your chest. Just the soft skin where your pulse is making an idiot of itself. “I’m going to look at you,” he says.

Your face burns. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s a warning.” His thumb moves over your wrist. “A fair one.”

“Very gentlemanly.”

“Trying.”

You swallow. “Don’t try too hard.”

His eyes darken. The shift is immediate, and you feel it under your skin. The little softness remains, but something hotter moves through it, something less careful. His hands lower yours to your sides. He waits. Gives you the chance to lift them again.

You don’t. Bucky looks. This time, he lets himself. His gaze starts at your face, maybe for mercy, then slips down your throat, over the thin straps, the gold rings, the wet fabric clinging to your breasts. You feel each inch like touch. He looks at the curve of your waist, the high cut at your hips, the soft places you wanted to fold away. His jaw sets hard. A slow breath leaves him, and the sound is not disgust. Not even close. It is almost anger, but turned inward, like he cannot believe he denied himself this all afternoon.

Your eyes sting again. “Oh,” you whisper, then immediately want to slap a hand over your mouth. Not a standalone reaction, you tell yourself absurdly. Put it in a sentence, idiot. “You actually…”

Bucky’s gaze snaps back to your face. “Yeah.”

“You looked away.”

“I was an idiot.”

“That’s established.”

His smile is brief and strained. “Fair.”

His hands come to your hips, bare now, no towel, no water softening the contact. Skin to skin. You inhale too sharply and his grip steadies, thumbs pressing near the swimsuit’s edge. “You thought I didn’t like this?” he asks, voice dragging lower.

Your eyes drop to his chest, safer than his face by maybe half a degree. “You looked like you were suffering.”

“I was.” His fingers slide along the high curve of your hip, then stop there, squeezing once. “Sweetheart, I saw you come out in this and forgot what language I spoke.”

That sounds impossible. It also sounds like him. Rough, a little annoyed, painfully sincere under all that heat. “You recovered fast.”

“I didn’t recover. I panicked.”

The laugh that leaves you is shaky and wet at the edges. “That was panic?”

“Steve asked if I was having a stroke.”

Your mouth opens. “He did not.”

“He did.”

“Was he concerned?”

“Very.”

You laugh fully this time, and Bucky’s hands tighten like he wants to hold the sound against you. The laugh fades when he steps closer. His wet chest brushes the front of your swimsuit. Barely. Your nipples tighten under the damp fabric, and his eyes drop just long enough to notice before returning to your face. The restraint almost kills you. “Sam complimented you,” he says.

You blink, following the turn. “Yes.”

“You smiled.”

“He was nice.”

“I know.”

There it is again. Acknowledgment. His thumbs move, small circles over your hips that turn thought into warm static. “You hated that?”

“I hated how easy it was for him.” Bucky’s voice goes rougher. “He could just say it. Stand there in front of everyone and tell you that you looked good. I stood ten feet away acting like looking at you too long was gonna put me in the ground.”

You study him, the damp hair, the tense mouth, the eyes that keep trying to fall and climb back up. “Would it?”

“Yeah,” he says, and this time he does smile. Small, wrecked, honest enough to hurt. “Maybe.”

That does something worse than praise. Makes you ache. Makes you stupid. Makes you lift your hand to his chest, pressing your fingers over the warm skin where your palm had landed earlier. He looks down at your hand like he wants to thank it. “You could’ve said something,” you murmur.

“I thought I had time to figure out how.”

“Figure out how to say you liked a swimsuit?”

“How to say I wanted to peel it off with my teeth without getting slapped in front of Steve.”

Your fingers curl against his chest. He watches your face. “Too much?”

The question is sincere, but barely. Mostly he is reading you now, and whatever he sees in your expression pulls his mouth into something darker. “No,” you say, and your voice sounds smaller than you want. “Continue.”

His laugh is quiet. “Continue?”

“You heard me.”

“I did.” One hand leaves your hip and comes up to your jaw, thumb brushing near the corner of your mouth. “Trying to decide if I wanna continue with my mouth or my hands.”

Your knees feel untrustworthy. “You’re taking suggestions?”

“From you?” He leans in, lips grazing your cheek, not quite kissing. “Always.”

The word slides down your body and settles low, hot, awful. You press your thighs together, barely, but he is too close to miss it. “Yeah?” His lips brush your ear now. “That where it goes when I say that?”

“Shut up.”

“Been trying all day.”

“To shut up?”

“To keep from saying worse.”

His mouth touches your neck. Your eyes close before you can pretend dignity. It is only one kiss at first, warm and damp from pool water, placed under your jaw with almost unbearable care. Then another, lower. His fingers at your jaw angle your face up, and the little stretch of your throat makes the room tilt through your body without the phrase in your head. You grip his shoulder, nails pressing into skin.

“Bucky,” you whisper.

He hums against your neck. “That sounded nice.”

“Don’t get smug.”

“Too late.”

You would scold him, but his teeth scrape lightly over your pulse and the scolding falls apart into a weak sound. He hears it. Of course he hears it. His hand on your hip slides around to the small of your back, pressing you closer, and the hard line of him through his swim trunks meets your lower stomach.

Your entire body pauses.

Bucky goes still too, but only to let you register it.

“Oh,” you breathe, then rush to fix it, face flaming. “That’s, um. That’s there.”

He pulls back enough to look at you. His eyes are nearly black. “Yeah. It’s been there.”

Your mouth parts.

“All day,” he adds, almost cruel now, and the hand at your jaw keeps your face tipped up. “You want the truth? I had to sit down after you got in the pool.”

A tiny, helpless sound leaves you.

His thumb strokes your cheek. “No. Look at me.”

You do, barely.

“I’m gonna say things,” he says, voice softer but dirtier somehow, stripped of performance. “And you’re gonna believe me this time.”

Your throat works around nothing. “That’s demanding.”

“Yeah.”

“Usually people ask.”

“I spent all day asking myself if I was allowed to want you.” His hand slides from your jaw to the back of your neck, fingers sinking into damp hair. “I’m done asking me.”

That should terrify you. It does, maybe. But it terrifies the part of you that has been begging for exactly this.

His mouth comes back to yours, and this time neither of you pretend at gentleness for long. You open for him almost immediately, and he groans into the kiss, the sound vibrating through his chest under your hand. His tongue slides against yours, slow at first, then deeper when your fingers dig into his shoulders. The kiss turns wet, hungry, breathing ruined between mouths. He walks you backward without breaking it, guiding rather than pushing, until your calves hit the bed.

The bed. White sheets. Guest room. Pool party outside. Bucky’s hands on you.

Your brain tries one last heroic effort at thought.

What if someone comes in?

Bucky’s hands move to your hips.

What if the door isn’t locked?

He turns you, sits on the edge of the bed, and pulls you between his thighs.

What if this changes everything?

His mouth leaves yours and moves down your throat, and your remaining thoughts scatter like birds.

He is sitting now, which makes him lower, makes your body the thing above him for once. It should help. It does not. His hands spread over your thighs, thumbs running along the place where the swimsuit cuts high, and he looks up at you with damp hair falling around his face. He looks wrecked. Actually wrecked. Like the sight of you standing between his legs has finished what the swimsuit started.

“You were hiding under that towel,” he murmurs, tracing the edge of the fabric at your hip.

You swallow. “It was cold.”

“Liar.”

Your face heats, but his mouth presses to your stomach before you can answer. Right over the swimsuit. Soft. Deliberate. You freeze.

He does it again.

Lower this time.

Your hands hover over his shoulders. You do not know what to do with them. Push him away? Pull him closer? Applaud? Cry? Move to Romania?

“Bucky…”

His eyes lift. His lips remain near your stomach. “Yeah?”

You hate the question. Hate how much room it gives you to stop him. Hate how badly you want him to keep going without making you beg for it. “That’s…”

“What?”

You glance away. “You don’t have to…”

He sits back so fast you regret speaking. His hands remain on your thighs, but the warmth of his mouth is gone. “Don’t.”

The single word is sharp enough to bring your eyes back.

His expression is serious again. “Don’t say I don’t have to. I know I don’t have to.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I want to.” His fingers press into your thighs, almost too tight, then ease as he notices. “I have wanted to put my mouth on you since you walked outside.”

Your body responds so hard it feels unfair.

His eyes lower, following the tiny shift of your thighs. His jaw tightens. “Since before that.”

The room has become too warm. Your swimsuit is drying in patches, damp fabric clinging between your legs, and every tiny movement makes you aware of how wet you are under the pool water. Not just pool water anymore. Maybe not for a while. Horrible. Amazing. You may need medical attention. Or less medical attention and more of his mouth.

Bucky’s thumb slides along your inner thigh.

“You thought I didn’t wanna look.” He says it quietly, but the words carry a rough little bite. “You thought I looked away because I didn’t like your body.”

Your fingers curl into his hair. You do not answer.

He leans forward and kisses the inside of your thigh, just below the swimsuit’s edge.

Your breath leaves in a broken little rush.

His mouth lingers there. “I looked away because I wanted to do this in front of everybody.”

“Bucky,” you whisper, scandalized and so turned on you can barely feel your feet.

His lips move higher, still over skin, slow and warm. “Wanted to drag you out of that pool when Wilson had his hands on you.”

“He was helping.”

“I know.” His teeth graze your thigh. “Still wanted to.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Today?” His eyes flick up. “Yeah.”

His fingers hook under the swimsuit at your hips, then stop. The pause makes your skin prickle. He is waiting. Again. That careful, maddening decency under all the dirty want.

You nod, too fast.

His mouth curves, but it is not teasing. More relief than anything. “Words, baby.”

That name hits deep. Worse after the whole day of being looked away from. Baby means wanted. Baby means chosen. Baby means the towel can stay on the chair and the body you were trying to hide is now the only thing he seems able to focus on.

“Take it off,” you say.

Bucky closes his eyes for a second.

You almost laugh. Almost. Instead your fingers tighten in his hair, and that ruins him faster. His eyes open, and the polite thread in him snaps.

The swimsuit comes down slowly at first, peeled over your hips with such careful attention that you want to crawl out of your skin. The damp fabric resists, clinging where it can, and Bucky seems almost personally offended by it. He leans forward, mouth brushing your hip as he works it lower, then your lower stomach, then the soft skin above your mound. Every kiss makes the wait worse. Every inch exposed feels like a confession.

You expect him to look up at your face once you are bare.

He does not.

His gaze fixes between your thighs, and the sound he makes is quiet, dragged deep from his chest, almost pained. You try to close your legs on instinct, but his hands are already there, spreading warm over your thighs.

“Don’t hide,” he says again, rougher now.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“You’re staring.”

“Yeah.” His thumbs slide higher. “I missed a lot today.”

Your face burns so hot it almost hurts. “You can’t just say that.”

“I can.” He kisses the crease of your thigh, eyes still on you. “I am.”

The swimsuit slips lower, down your thighs, then to your knees. You lift one foot, then the other, and he drops the ruined damp thing somewhere on the floor. A wildly expensive room, white sheets, your swimsuit abandoned in a wet little heap. It should feel humiliating.

It does.

It also makes you throb.

Bucky’s hands return to your thighs. He sits there on the bed, still in his wet trunks, and looks at you like this is the first quiet moment he has had all day and he plans to spend it badly. Your arms cross over your chest, but he catches the movement at once.

“Hey.”

You glare, but there is no force behind it. “What?”

His hands slide around to the backs of your thighs. “Come here.”

“I am here.”

“Closer.”

“There is physically no closer unless I climb you.”

His expression changes.

Ah. Idiot mouth. Treacherous mouth. Mouth with no survival instincts.

Bucky leans back slightly, spreading his thighs more. “Then climb.”

Your body gives an almost embarrassing pulse at the command. “You’re very comfortable giving orders for someone who spent half the day staring at landscaping.”

“I had a hard day.”

“You had a chair.”

“I had you in that swimsuit ten feet away from me.”

“That must have been so difficult.”

He pulls you forward by the backs of your thighs, and the sudden movement makes your hands land on his shoulders. “It was.”

There is no joke in his voice now.

Your knees go onto the mattress on either side of him before you fully decide to move. Straddling his lap like this, bare while he is still partly clothed, feels obscene in a way full nudity might not have. His trunks are wet beneath you. The hard length of him presses up between your thighs, thick and hot even through fabric. Your hips jerk before you can stop them, and his hands clamp around you with a groan.

“Shit.” His forehead drops to your collarbone. “Do that again and I’m gonna embarrass myself.”

That should make you smug. Powerful. Instead it makes you needy in a way you did not agree to. You roll your hips again, smaller this time, dragging your bare pussy over the soaked fabric of his trunks. The friction is rough enough to make your mouth fall open. His hands grip your ass, helping and stopping at once, torn between instincts.

“Baby,” he says, warning and pleading in the same breath.

The word feeds something awful in you. You do it again.

Bucky’s head tips back, throat working, eyes squeezed shut for half a second. This beautiful, irritating man who looked away all day now looks as if your body might actually kill him. Good. Maybe balance exists.

“You like this?” you ask, and your voice is shaky, but the question still has a little bite. “Or are you going to look at the curtains?”

His eyes open.

You may have gone too far.

His hand comes up and catches your jaw, not hard, but certain enough that your hips still. “Say it again.”

Your lips part. “What?”

“What you said outside.”

The pool steps return all at once. Wet stone. His hand at your waist. Your own stupid voice, bitter and wounded.

“You don’t have to touch me longer than necessary,” you murmur, quieter now.

Bucky’s jaw flexes. His thumb strokes once along your lower lip, and the tenderness of it makes the shame worse somehow. “That.” His other hand presses at your lower back, bringing you down against him again. “Every time you thought that today, I want it back.”

You have no idea what that means until he kisses you.

It is not careful now. It is deep, claiming, his tongue sliding into your mouth as his hand guides your hips over him. The wet fabric drags against your clit, and you whimper into the kiss, the sound swallowed by him immediately. He does it again, rolls you down, grinds you over the hard shape of his cock, and the pleasure is dirty and sharp, mixed with the faint scratch of his trunks and the slickness between your thighs.

“Long enough?” he mutters against your mouth.

You clutch at him, face burning. “Shut up.”

His hand slips between your bodies, fingers finding your clit with such sudden precision that your whole body jerks. He rubs slow, tight circles, using your wetness and the water still on your skin, watching your face from inches away.

“Answer me.”

You shake your head, pride making a brave final appearance before dying in combat. “No.”

“No?” His mouth brushes yours, and his fingers press a little harder. Your hips chase the touch, humiliating you on contact. “Still not long enough?”

You hate him. You love him. You want to bite his shoulder until he says your name wrong. “Bucky…”

“That’s not an answer.”

His fingers dip lower, sliding through your folds, and his eyes go heavy at what he finds. “Fuck, sweetheart.” His voice drops into something rough and almost disbelieving. “You’re soaked.”

“Pool,” you manage, immediately ashamed of yourself.

He laughs then, a low sound against your mouth. “Yeah? Pool did this?”

His fingers push inside you, two at once, thick enough that your head drops forward to his shoulder. The stretch steals whatever joke you had left. Your hands claw at his back, and he groans like that hurts in the best possible way.

“Guess I owe the pool an apology,” he murmurs, pumping his fingers slowly. “Been mad at it all day for touching you more than I got to.”

Your laugh breaks into a moan. The sound is embarrassing, open, too needy, and he reacts to it with a thrust of his hips up against your bare thigh, his cock hard and trapped in wet fabric.

“Bucky,” you whimper, turning your face into his neck.

His fingers curl.

Your body goes liquid.

“There,” he breathes, and then seems to remember himself. “Yeah, right there?”

You nod into his skin, too far gone to be difficult.

“Use words.”

A sharp little pulse goes through you. He feels it. His laugh is quieter this time, almost awed.

“Oh, you like that.” His fingers press the same spot again, slow and deliberate, and his thumb finds your clit. “All that mouth at the pool, and now look at you.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” His mouth moves to your ear, breath hot over wet skin. “You hated thinking I didn’t want you.”

That one splits you open more than his fingers.

You try to lift your head, but he holds you where you are, face tucked into his neck, body in his lap, nowhere to go but the truth.

“You hated me looking away,” he continues, quieter, filthy and tender in equal measure. “Hated Wilson saying you looked good because you wanted it from me. Hated that I sat there like an idiot when all you wanted was for me to come over and put my hands on you.”

Your thighs shake around his. The pleasure is building faster than you expected, pulled tighter by every word. He is too accurate. Too close. Too deep, and it is only his fingers, which makes you dizzy with terror over what the rest of him will do.

“I didn’t…” You try. Fail. “I didn’t want…”

He kisses under your ear. “Liar.”

“Bucky.”

“You did.” His hand around your waist slides up your back, holding you as his fingers fuck into you a little harder. “You wanted me jealous. You wanted me to see you. You wanted me to stop acting like a saint and do something about it.”

Your nails dig into him.

“There,” he says, sounding pleased and ruined all at once. “That one.”

You are close. Horribly close. Hips rocking into his hand now, your body making choices your pride would never sign off on. His thumb rubs your clit steadily, and his fingers hit that same spot until your vision goes soft at the edges. You bite down on his shoulder to keep from being too loud, and he makes a strangled sound, hips bucking under you.

“God, do that again.”

You do. Harder.

His fingers slip out of rhythm for one second, and that small loss almost makes you sob. “No, no, no, don’t stop.”

Bucky’s hand tightens at your back. “I’ve got you.”

“You keep saying things like that,” you gasp, words breaking as he finds the rhythm again.

“Yeah?”

“It’s annoying.”

He kisses your temple, and the sweetness of it almost tips you over. “Cum, then complain.”

That should not work.

It works.

The orgasm rolls through you hard enough to make your mouth open against his shoulder without sound at first. Then the sound comes, muffled into his skin, high and wrecked. Your hips grind down on his fingers, chasing every last pull of it, and Bucky talks you through it in a rough whisper that barely sounds like him anymore.

“That’s it, baby. Fuck, there you go. Just needed someone to touch you right, huh? Needed me to stop being stupid and put my hands on you.”

Your body shakes in his lap, every muscle loose and trembling. His fingers slow but do not leave right away. He lets you ride the last of it, forehead pressed to the side of your head, breath rough in your ear. The patio music is still going somewhere far away. Someone outside cheers. Maybe a game. Maybe a toast. The world is criminally unaware that you have just collapsed into a man you were pretending to hate this morning.

Then Bucky starts to pull his fingers free.

You whine.

The sound is pathetic. Immediate. You wish to file a complaint against yourself.

Bucky freezes, then laughs under his breath. “Greedy.”

“Shut up.”

His fingers slide out fully, wet and obscene between you. You mean to look away. You fail. He watches your face as he brings them to his mouth, licking them clean with a slow, dirty satisfaction that makes your cunt clench around nothing.

His eyes darken. “Saw that.”

“You see too much.”

“Not enough.” His hands go to your hips again, turning you carefully and laying you back on the bed before you can protest. The white sheets are instantly doomed, damp under your body, but Tony’s laundry issues are not your ministry. Bucky kneels between your thighs, still in his trunks, cock straining hard beneath the clinging fabric. “I’m making up for it.”

A nervous laugh leaves you as your head sinks into the pillows. “By staring at my vagina?”

His brows lift.

Your face burns. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face again.”

“My face likes you.”

“Your face is an idiot.”

“Yeah.” He presses a kiss to your knee, then lower, then lower again, hands sliding under your thighs to open you wider. “It’s got company.”

The first touch of his mouth between your legs almost makes you levitate.

He does not ease in. Not really. Maybe he means to, maybe he has some beautiful plan involving patience, but the second his tongue parts you, his control seems to go with it. His hands hook around your thighs, dragging you closer to his mouth, and the sound he makes against your pussy is so filthy you cover your mouth with one hand.

Bucky stops.

Your eyes fly open.

He lifts his head, mouth wet, eyes furious in the best way. “Move your hand.”

Your fingers loosen over your lips. “They’ll hear.”

“Let them hear the pool wasn’t the reason you left.”

Your whole body clenches. He sees that too. Obviously. Curse him and his newly unleashed observational skills.

“Bucky,” you whisper, scandalized.

He kisses your inner thigh, close enough to make you twitch. “Move it, baby.”

Slowly, your hand drops to the sheets.

He smiles against your skin. “Thank you.”

Then his mouth is back on you, and gratitude becomes a weapon. He licks into you with slow, messy strokes at first, tasting you like he has been denied water and blames you personally. His tongue drags from your entrance to your clit, lingering there until your thighs tense around his head. Then he does it again. Again. Learning with horrifying speed what makes your hips jerk, what makes your fingers twist in the sheets, what makes your mouth form his name without quite saying it.

You understand, distantly, that he is good at this.

Of course he is. Of course Bucky Barnes eats pussy like he has a vendetta against sanity. Of course the man who looked away all afternoon now has his face buried between your thighs with a concentration that feels almost insulting. Like he is determined to win an argument you did not realize your body had started.

His metal hand slides up your stomach, cool against heated skin, holding you down when your hips lift. The contrast makes you moan. His eyes flick up. He does it again, palm pressing lightly between your ribs as his tongue circles your clit.

“Please,” you breathe, though you have no idea what you are asking for.

Bucky hums into you.

Your back arches. The hum vibrates through every over-sensitive nerve he has already ruined, and your hands shoot to his hair. He lets you pull. Encourages it, maybe, with another wet, open-mouthed suck that makes your thighs clamp around his ears.

“Sorry,” you gasp, trying to loosen your grip.

He pulls back just enough to speak, lips shining. “Do it again.”

“What?”

His teeth scrape your thigh. “Pull my hair again.”

You stare at him, then obey with trembling fingers.

His eyes close for a second, and the expression on his face is so openly pleased that something inside you folds. This is him. Not the cold look-away version from the patio. Not the teasing version with everyone watching. This man, wet-haired and greedy, kneeling between your legs like he has found religion and plans to be terrible about it.

He lowers his mouth again, and this time you pull when his tongue presses inside you.

Bucky groans into your cunt.

The sound is enough to make your hips jerk up against his mouth. He holds you down, but barely. Like he wants the fight. Like every needy movement makes him worse. His tongue fucks into you, then slips back to your clit, alternating until you cannot predict anything except pleasure. It grows too quickly. Your last orgasm has left you sensitive, swollen, every touch brighter than it should be.

“Bucky, I can’t,” you gasp, then hate yourself because you absolutely can and probably will.

He lifts his head, but keeps his thumb moving over your clit in lazy, devastating circles. “Can’t what?”

“Again. I can’t…”

His mouth curves, wet and wicked. “You can.”

“You have too much confidence.”

“I have evidence.” His thumb presses a little harder, and your legs shake. “Look at you.”

“No.”

“Yeah.” He leans up over you, thumb still moving, mouth hovering above yours. You can smell yourself on him. The realization makes you clench so hard his eyes drop. “You gonna get shy now? After soaking my fingers? After grinding all over me like you were trying to ruin my life?”

“I was making a point.”

“You made it.” His lips brush yours. “Very persuasive.”

You mean to roll your eyes. He kisses you before you can, pushing the taste of yourself into your mouth while his thumb keeps working your clit. The kiss makes it dirtier. More intimate. Your hand wraps around his wrist, but you don’t pull him away. You hold him there, grinding up in tiny helpless motions as the pressure builds again.

Bucky’s mouth leaves yours only to speak against it. “You’re gonna cum on my hand, then I’m gonna fuck you. If that’s what you want.”

If. Somehow that word remains. A door, not a trap. It makes your eyes sting again, which is so deeply inconvenient while naked with a man’s hand between your legs.

“I want it,” you say, voice shaking.

His forehead touches yours. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Your grip tightens around his wrist. “I want you. I wanted you all day. I wanted you before today, and you were horrible and confusing and shirtless, which was unnecessary, and I hate that you looked away, and I hate that I cared, and I want you to fuck me so badly I can’t think about any of it.”

Bucky stares at you.

For a moment you regret speaking. Then his mouth crashes into yours, and regret becomes impractical.

His fingers replace his thumb, sliding down and pushing into you again, three this time, the stretch sharper after his mouth. You gasp into the kiss. He swallows it, pumps his fingers deep, heel of his hand grinding against your clit. The pleasure turns immediate and rough, your body already primed by his mouth and his words and the unbearable fact of being wanted after hours of believing the opposite.

“That’s it,” he mutters against your cheek. “There’s my mean girl. Thought I lost you under all that pouting.”

You whimper and slap weakly at his shoulder. “I was wounded.”

“You were jealous.”

“You were avoidant.”

“I was hard enough to see God.”

A shocked laugh bursts out of you, then breaks as his fingers curl. “That’s vulgar.”

“You asked for honesty.”

“I did not ask for theology.”

He laughs into your neck, and somehow the warm sound mixed with the filthy rhythm of his hand tips you closer. You clutch at his shoulders, then his hair, then the sheets. Nothing helps. The orgasm comes slower this time, dragged out of you with cruel patience. Your thighs tense, stomach pulling tight, and Bucky feels the change before you can warn him.

“Yeah, baby. Give me that one too.” His mouth presses near your ear, voice a wrecked whisper. “Need it. Need to feel you cum before I get inside you.”

Need. From him. Bucky Barnes needing anything from you.

Your body gives in.

The second orgasm is messier, wetter, less contained. You cry out before you can bite it back, hips bucking into his hand, and Bucky groans like the sound goes straight through him. His fingers keep moving, slower but deep, dragging the pleasure until you are shaking and trying to push at his wrist.

“Too much,” you gasp.

He stops at once.

The loss makes you whine again, and he laughs softly, kissing your cheek, then your jaw, then your mouth with absurd sweetness for someone who just fingered you into temporary stupidity.

“You’re impossible,” he murmurs.

“Your fault.”

“Yeah.” His hand smooths over your thigh, gentle now. “I’m starting to like that answer.”

You open your eyes. He is above you, wet hair falling forward, mouth swollen from kissing and eating you, eyes on your face with such naked affection that it scares you more than the hunger did.

Affection is hard. Desire has a script. Affection looks at you afterward.

Your hand lifts before you can stop it, touching his cheek. He turns slightly into your palm. That tiny movement ruins you.

“You really wanted me?” you ask, hating the softness in your voice.

His expression tightens. “All day.”

“Before today?”

He presses a kiss to your palm. “Yeah.”

“How long?”

A pause.

The room becomes too quiet again, but this silence is not empty. It is full of him deciding whether to lie. He does not.

“Long enough to act stupid about it.”

“That could be any amount of time.”

“Months.”

Your chest squeezes. “Months?”

“Maybe longer.”

“You’re terrible at flirting.”

“I panicked,” he says again, like that explains the whole tragedy of him. Maybe it does.

You laugh softly. He smiles this time, real and quick, then kisses you. The kiss starts gentle, then deepens when your legs wrap around his waist. His cock presses against you through his trunks, and the teasing drag makes both of you go still.

He looks down between your bodies. “I need these off.”

“Finally, a smart idea.”

His hands go to the waistband, then pause. “Condom?”

Reality returns in a less catastrophic way. Important. Practical. You gesture vaguely toward the side table, then remember this is Tony’s guest room, not a hotel minibar for sex supplies. “Unless Tony keeps them next to the complimentary existential dread, I don’t…”

Bucky drops his forehead to your shoulder with a pained groan.

A laugh bubbles out of you, helpless and mean. “Very prepared seduction, Barnes.”

“I was supposed to be ignoring you by the pool.”

“You did great.”

He bites your shoulder lightly. You yelp, then laugh harder. His own laugh shakes against you, warm and frustrated, and the absurdity of it makes the room feel human again.

Then he lifts his head. “I have one in my wallet.”

You stop laughing.

His brows draw together. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re judging.”

“I am judging.”

“I’m a grown man.”

“With pool-party condoms?”

“One condom. Singular. Emergency.”

“What emergency did you anticipate?”

He gives you a look. “Apparently this one.”

You should make another joke. You truly should. But the thought of him having one, of this actually happening, drains humor out of you and leaves want in its place. “Wallet,” you say.

Bucky’s eyes darken again.

He climbs off the bed, and the loss of his body makes you cold for exactly three seconds before he turns toward the chair where his discarded shirt must be absent, then remembers his wallet is out by the pool with his things. His face changes into genuine despair.

You clap a hand over your mouth.

“Don’t,” he warns.

“You left your emergency outside?”

“I didn’t plan to need it indoors.”

You dissolve into laughter. It is quiet, desperate, half muffled, but laughter all the same. Bucky stares at you, then shakes his head, smiling despite himself. He looks younger like this. Less impossible. Still shirtless and wet and hard in his swim trunks, which does complicate the innocence.

“I’ll go,” he says.

“You are not going outside like that.”

His gaze drops to the obvious tent in his trunks. “Fair.”

You look around the room and spot a folded robe near the bathroom door, white and plush. Perfectly Tony. “Robe.”

“I’m not wearing Stark’s sex robe.”

“Guest robe.”

“Same thing.”

“You want the condom or a philosophical debate?”

Bucky points at you. “Stay there.”

You sink back into the pillows, naked and grinning like an idiot. “Where would I go?”

“Knowing you? Window.”

“Only if things get worse.”

He grabs the robe, pulls it on with visible resentment, and the sight of Bucky Barnes in a plush white guest robe with wet hair and a furious erection is so absurdly beautiful that you almost cry. He catches your face and pauses at the door.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He narrows his eyes. “That smile says something.”

“It says hurry.”

That works. He leaves, closing the door behind him.

The second he is gone, you become aware of yourself again. Naked on white sheets. Swimsuit on the floor. Body cooling, thighs damp, mouth swollen. The laughter fades slowly, leaving a trembling little silence behind it.

This is real.

Bucky wanted you. Bucky is coming back. Bucky went to fetch a condom wearing Tony’s guest robe like some obscene, damp ghost of poor planning.

Your hand presses over your stomach. Not hiding now. Just grounding. It feels different under your own palm after his mouth, his hands, his eyes. Still yours. Still soft in places. Still carrying every insecurity from the bathroom mirror. But his wanting has touched it now, and you hate how much that helps. Hate how badly you needed someone else’s hunger to quiet the awful little voice in your head. Maybe you can work on that later. Maybe growth can wait until after orgasms.

Voices rise in the hall.

You freeze.

Sam: “Barnes, why the hell are you wearing a robe?”

Bucky, low and deadly: “Move.”

Tony, delighted somewhere farther away: “That is Egyptian cotton, by the way.”

Natasha laughs. “Let him live.”

Sam again, audibly grinning: “Is there a fire?”

Bucky says something too low to hear.

A beat of silence.

Then Sam barks out, “Oh my god.”

Your soul exits again, does a lap, returns out of morbid curiosity.

The door opens. Bucky steps in, face red, jaw tight, wallet in hand, robe still tied around him. He closes the door and locks it this time.

You stare.

He points at you again. “Don’t.”

“I said nothing.”

“You’re laughing with your whole face.”

“I would never.”

He stalks back toward the bed, tugging at the robe tie with enough aggression to threaten the cotton’s lineage. “Wilson knows.”

“Oh no.”

“Tony knows.”

“Tony knew before we did.”

“Steve looked proud.”

That breaks you. You roll onto your side, laughing into the pillow. Bucky tosses the wallet onto the bed and grabs your ankle, pulling you back toward him. The movement turns your laughter into a gasp. The robe falls open as he kneels on the mattress, and there he is, absurdity gone in a single second, his body over yours again, desire returning like a hand around your throat.

“Laughing at me?” he asks.

“Yes.”

His hand slides up your calf, over your knee, spreading your leg aside. “That’s brave.”

“I’m very brave.”

“You slipped twice today.”

“Physically brave and spatially cursed.”

His mouth twitches. He bends down and kisses the inside of your knee, then the thigh, and the laughter fades into a softer sound. “You okay?”

The question is quiet. It stops the teasing better than any command could. You look down at him, fingers resting in his wet hair.

“Yes,” you say. Then, more honest, “Nervous.”

His hand stills on your thigh. “About me?”

“About you seeing me.”

His face changes again, but he does not use any of the easy lines. No polished praise. No smooth answer. He moves up your body instead, covering you with his warmth, bracing one arm beside your head. His other hand cups your cheek, thumb damp against your skin.

“I see you,” he says. “I want you. Same sentence.”

Your throat tightens. “That’s unfairly effective.”

“Trying to be clear.”

“Terrible habit.”

His mouth brushes yours. “Can I keep seeing you?”

You nod. “Yeah.”

His lips press to your cheek, your jaw, your neck. “Can I keep touching you?”

Your legs part wider around him. “Yeah.”

His hand slides down between your bodies, and your hips lift when his fingers stroke through your folds again, gentle now, checking. Teasing. Both. “Can I fuck you?”

The bluntness sends a hot pulse through you. Your fingers tighten on his shoulders.

“Yes,” you breathe. “Please.”

Bucky’s eyes close for a beat, and when they open, patience is hanging by a thread.

The robe is shoved away. His trunks follow, dragged down his hips with a wet, clinging sound that would be funny if you had enough brain left. You do not. You are too busy staring. He is thick, heavy in his hand, flushed at the tip, and your mouth goes dry so fast it is almost comic.

Bucky notices. Naturally.

“Still judging my emergency condom?” he asks, tearing the foil with his teeth.

You look up at him. “Less now.”

“Thought so.”

The condom rolls on. His hand pumps once, twice, and your thighs press together around empty air. He sees that too, then settles between your legs and guides them open again. The head of his cock drags through your wetness, and both of you go quiet.

The first press against your entrance is almost too much.

He pauses there, forehead lowering to yours. “Tell me if you need slow.”

You hate that. You love that. You want to ruin him for it.

“I need you to stop talking like a responsible adult,” you whisper.

A short laugh leaves him, strained. “Sweetheart, I am hanging on by a thread.”

“Then stop hanging.”

His hips push forward.

The stretch is slow and full and immediate enough to make your mouth fall open. Bucky watches your face as he enters you, jaw clenched, breath breaking through his nose. He gives you the first inch, then another, then stops when your nails dig into his arms.

“Okay?”

You nod too quickly, body caught between ache and hunger. “More.”

His control slips for half a second. His hips roll deeper, and the sound that leaves both of you is ugly and perfect. He is bigger than his fingers, thicker than your imagination had kindly prepared you for, filling you in a way that makes thought stagger. Your legs wrap around his waist. His hand grips the sheet beside your head.

“Fuck,” he breathes, almost helpless. “You feel…”

You wait for the line. Pretty. Tight. Perfect. Something dirty and easy.

He lowers his face to your neck. “I’m gonna lose my mind.”

That is better.

You clench around him, and his hips jerk. His teeth press into your shoulder. “Do that again and this ends fast.”

“Maybe I want that.”

He lifts his head, eyes dark. “No, you don’t.”

Your body gives you away, warmth spreading under your skin. “Annoying.”

“You want me to take my time now.” He pulls out slightly, then pushes back in, slow enough that you feel every inch. “You wanted me to look, right? Wanted me to stop looking away?”

Your hands twist in the sheets.

He does it again, dragging the pleasure into something deep and almost unbearable. “I’m looking.”

You cannot answer. There is no room. He fills too much of you, his body heavy over yours, wet hair brushing your cheek, the scent of chlorine and him wrapped around every breath. His eyes hold your face as he starts a slow rhythm, each thrust smooth and deep, his mouth parting when you tighten around him.

“Bucky,” you moan, and his name sounds ruined.

His hand slips under your knee, hitching your leg higher. The angle changes, and his next thrust hits so deep your back bows off the bed. He groans, dropping his head to your shoulder.

“There?” he asks, already doing it again.

You nod, frantic. “There, please, there.”

“Yeah, baby.” His pace picks up, still controlled but rougher now, bed shifting under both of you. “Knew you’d sound pretty begging.”

Your face burns. “I’m not begging.”

He thrusts harder.

The words vanish.

“That sounded like begging.” His mouth presses to your cheek, deceptively sweet while his hips drive into you with enough force to make your fingers claw at his back. “Pool made you mouthy. My cock’s fixing it.”

The filth of it makes you clench.

Bucky laughs, but it breaks halfway into a groan. “Shit, you like that.”

“You’re so smug.”

“I’m inside you,” he says, breath hot against your mouth. “I earned a little.”

You would argue, but his hand slides between you and finds your clit. The first touch makes you jolt. After his mouth and his fingers, you are too sensitive, every nerve overfed and greedy. He rubs tight circles as he fucks you, watching your expression collapse.

“Oh, that’s it.” His voice turns thick, affectionate in the dirtiest possible way. “There’s my girl.”

My girl.

You fall apart a little just hearing it.

His eyes sharpen. “Yeah? That one?”

“Bucky…”

“My girl,” he repeats, and his hips hit deeper, harder. “Mine to look at. Mine to touch. Mine to pull out of the pool when she’s trying to make me jealous.”

You shake your head, but your body is a liar and both of you know it.

“No?” His thumb presses harder on your clit. “You didn’t like me jumping in after you?”

“You looked ridiculous,” you gasp.

“Yeah, well. You looked wet and half naked and mad at me. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

A laugh escapes you, then turns into a moan when he rolls his hips. He smiles against your mouth, kissing the sound away, and for a few seconds the rhythm becomes messy. Kissing, thrusting, breathing into each other, his hand working between you, your nails leaving half-moon marks in his shoulders. No clean choreography. No grace. Just damp skin, white sheets, the slap of his hips against yours growing louder, the ridiculous fear that someone outside might hear and the worse realization that you want them to know he came after you.

You turn your face into the pillow to muffle yourself.

Bucky catches your jaw and pulls you back. “No.”

“They’ll hear.”

“Good.”

“Bucky.”

His eyes are dark, almost feverish. “Spent all day watching you think I didn’t want you. Let them hear me prove it.”

Your orgasm rises so fast it scares you. It starts low, tightening through your stomach, then spreads until your thighs tremble around his waist. He feels it. His thrusts lose some smoothness, turning heavier, more desperate.

“You close?”

You nod, helpless.

“Say it.”

“I’m close.”

His mouth brushes yours. “Ask me.”

Your eyes open. “What?”

“Ask me to make you cum.”

The request should annoy you. It does. It also sends pleasure twisting sharply through your body, so your irritation lacks credibility.

“You’re impossible,” you whimper.

“Ask.”

His hips slow.

That is evil.

You grab at his shoulders. “Don’t slow down.”

“Ask me, baby.”

A second passes, filled with the obscene pressure of him buried deep and almost still, his thumb barely moving over your clit. You glare at him with whatever strength remains.

“Please,” you say, hating how breathless it is. Loving how his face changes. “Please make me cum.”

Bucky groans, and the restraint goes.

His hips drive into you hard enough to shove you up the bed, one arm hooking under your back to keep you close. His thumb works your clit faster, and his mouth moves over your jaw, your cheek, your lips, wherever he can reach while he fucks you. He is talking now, rough and uneven, less like performance and more like words escaping under pressure.

“Wanted this so bad. Wanted you so bad, sweetheart. Sitting out there in that fucking swimsuit, looking at me like you wanted to scratch my eyes out. Thought I was gonna snap when you smiled at Sam. Thought I was gonna drag you inside when you said I didn’t have to touch you. Stupid thing to say to me. Like I haven’t been thinking about putting my hands on you for months.”

Months. Again. The word breaks over you with the thrusts, with the pressure, with the hard heat of him inside you.

Your orgasm hits with his name in your mouth.

It is bigger this time, deeper, pulled from every place he touched and every place he looked. You cry out, hips lifting into him, cunt clenching around his cock so hard his rhythm stutters. Bucky curses against your throat, fucking you through it with short, rough thrusts that make the pleasure keep sparking long after the first wave should have ended.

“That’s it,” he groans. “That’s it, baby. Fuck, you feel so good when you cum.”

You cannot answer. Your body is trembling too hard, arms wrapped around him, face pressed into his neck as he loses the last of his rhythm. His thrusts turn desperate, deeper and less controlled, and something about that undoes you almost as much as your own release. Bucky, who spent all day looking away, is now buried inside you and shaking apart over it.

“Where?” he rasps.

The condom. Practicality. Again, somehow.

“Inside,” you breathe. “You have the condom, inside, please.”

He makes a sound against your skin, broken and almost grateful. His hips slam once, twice, then bury deep as he comes. His whole body tenses over yours, breath caught against your shoulder, hands gripping you like he needs somewhere to put the force of it. You feel the pulse of him through the condom, feel the weight of him, the shudder that runs across his back under your hands.

Then he softens by degrees.

His forehead rests against your shoulder. His breathing is rough, warm, damp over your skin. Your own body feels boneless, wrung out and too sensitive, thighs still locked around his waist like they have not received news of the ending.

Outside, someone cheers again.

Bucky huffs a laugh into your neck. “If that’s about us, I’m moving to Siberia.”

You laugh weakly, fingers combing through the wet hair at his nape. “That was my plan.”

“We can carpool.”

“After you get off me. You’re heavy.”

He lifts his head, affronted and beautiful. “You wound me.”

“You crushed me.”

“You wrapped around me.”

“You were available.”

His smile comes slowly this time, soft and disbelieving, and the sight hurts in a new way. Not bad. Just big. Too big for a guest room during a pool party. Too big for a body still buzzing from sex.

He kisses you once, gentle and quick. “I’m gonna move.”

You make a deeply embarrassing sound of protest before you can stop it.

Bucky pauses. The smugness returns in miniature. “Yeah?”

“Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face is speaking.”

“My face has been through a lot today.”

He eases out carefully, and even that makes you wince. His hand strokes your thigh in apology, and the tenderness of it makes you look away. He handles the condom, ties it off, finds a trash bin in the bathroom, washes his hands. Normal things. Human things. Meanwhile you lie in Tony Stark’s guest bed naked, damp, and fucked so thoroughly that your bones feel rearranged.

When Bucky returns, he grabs the towel from the chair and wipes gently at the wetness on your thighs. The care makes your throat tighten.

“You don’t have to do that,” you murmur, then immediately regret the phrasing.

His eyes lift.

Right.

You both hear the echo.

This time, he does not get angry. He leans down and kisses the inside of your knee. “I want to.”

The answer settles over the old wound quietly.

You nod, unable to make a joke fast enough.

He cleans you with warm water from the bathroom after that, careful between your legs while you try not to squirm from sensitivity. Then he finds another towel, pats the sheets around you with the resigned air of a man who knows Tony will make comments for the rest of his life. Your swimsuit remains on the floor. He picks it up, holds it between two fingers, and gives it an unreadable look.

You lift your head. “Don’t insult it. We’ve all grown.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches. “I owe it an apology.”

“You owe me an apology.”

“I gave you one.”

“I want another.”

He climbs back onto the bed beside you, still naked, shameless in a way that should be illegal. The mattress dips under his weight. “For what?”

“For being weird at the pool.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For looking away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For making me think you hated it.”

His face softens in that unbearable way again. He reaches for you, then pauses until you shift closer yourself. Once you do, his arm slides around you, pulling you against his chest. His skin is warm now, less wet, still smelling faintly of chlorine. “I’m sorry.”

You rest your cheek against him, listening to his heart. It is beating fast. Not hammering. You refuse to give it dramatic language. Just fast enough to comfort you.

“And for making me feel like I needed sam to tell me I looked nice,” you add, quieter.

His arm tightens.

A few seconds pass. Not empty. Not awkward. Full of that sentence sitting between you and breathing.

“You looked beautiful,” he says, voice low. “You looked so good I forgot how to act like a person. And that’s on me, not you.”

Your eyes sting again, which is becoming repetitive and rude. “You need to stop saying decent things after sex. It’s confusing.”

His lips press to your hair. “Would it help if I said something indecent?”

“Yes.”

“Your thighs almost killed me.”

A laugh bursts out of you, wet and startled. “Bucky.”

“I’m serious. National threat.”

“You’re so stupid.”

He kisses your forehead, smiling against your skin. “Yeah, but you like me.”

You go still for half a second.

He feels it.

The words sit there, too close to another word neither of you has touched yet. Like. Want. Months. My girl. All safer than the one with teeth. Bucky’s hand moves slowly over your back, giving you somewhere to put the panic.

“You like me too,” he says, softer, almost cautious beneath the tease.

You close your eyes. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Don’t get greedy.”

His chest moves under your cheek with a quiet laugh. “Too late.”

A knock hits the door.

Both of you freeze.

Tony’s voice comes through the wood, bright with theatrical politeness. “As the owner of this house, its Egyptian cotton robe, and several traumatized guests, I would like to announce that dinner part two is happening in twenty minutes. Clothing encouraged. Applause optional.”

You bury your face in Bucky’s chest.

Bucky sighs. “Go away, Stark.”

“Gladly. Also, Wilson owes me fifty dollars. Carry on.”

Footsteps retreat.

Your face is burning so badly it may light the bed on fire. “I hate everyone.”

Bucky’s hand slides possessively over your hip. “Want me to get your clothes?”

The thought of walking back outside in the swimsuit after everything makes you want to dissolve. But then again, the old shame does not bite quite the same now. The swimsuit is still a damp heap on the floor. Your body is still your body. Your friends are still awful. Bucky is still a confusing, broad disaster.

Only now he has seen you. Touched you. Wanted you. Said it clearly enough that even your mean little brain has to work harder to ruin it.

“Eventually,” you say.

He hums. “Eventually sounds good.”

“You can’t keep me in Tony’s guest room forever.”

“No,” he agrees, hand moving lazily over your side. “But I can try for another ten minutes.”

“That’s ambitious.”

His mouth finds your neck, and the smile against your skin is warm enough to melt whatever was left of you. “I can be patient.”

“You said that before.”

“I lied.”

You laugh, and he kisses the sound before it can get away.

The bell above Moretti’s Candy Shop jingles sharp and bright when Bucky shoulders his way inside, carrying the cold autumn air in with him.

“Trouble,” Mrs. Moretti sighs immediately from behind the counter.

Bucky grins, easy as breathing. “You say that like you ain’t happy to see me.”

“I’d be happier seein’ the ten cents you still owe me, Barnes.”

“That was one time.”

“It was three times.”

The shop smells like chocolate and sugar and roasted nuts warming beneath glass lamps. Outside, Brooklyn groans along in its usual rhythm, trolley bells, men hollering across sidewalks, kids sprinting through puddles but in here everything feels softened somehow. Golden. Like the world’s been wrapped in wax paper and tied shut with string.

Bucky leans against the counter, halfway through another smart remark when he notices you.

And just like that, the rest of the room disappears.

You’re standing near the chocolate display case with your gloves folded neatly in your hands, staring through the glass with such genuine wonder it almost knocks the grin off his face.

Not overwhelmed or indecisive, you seem almost enchanted.

Your eyes drift slowly over every row like each candy’s worth considering properly. Caramels. Peppermints. Chocolate turtles. Then your attention catches on the Whoppers display, and stays there.

He almost laughs when he follows your gaze to them.

Cute, he thinks immediately.

Girls usually notice him first. Usually there’s lipstick smiles and fluttering lashes before he’s even crossed the room. He knows what he looks like, knows how his grin lands, knows exactly how long to hold eye contact before women start leaning toward him without realizing it.

But you don’t notice him at all. You’re still staring at the candy like it might hold the secrets of the universe.

Something about that hooks into him immediately as he steps over.

“Those your favorite?”

You blink hard, startled from your thoughts, then turn toward him.

And there it is.

That little pause that every girl gives him, but this one seems different. Not because you recognize him as handsome or because you’re flustered, you just hadn’t realized anyone was speaking to you.

“Oh,” you say softly. “Yes.”

Your voice is gentler than he expected, careful around the edges.

Bucky pushes off the counter and steps closer. “Want a box?”

Your eyes widen instantly. “No, it’s quite alright, I couldn’t possibly.”

“C’mon, doll.” He flashes the smile that usually works without fail. “How could I deny such a sweet girl a sweet treat?”

He expects blushing, maybe a nervous laugh. Instead, you look genuinely conflicted over the idea of him spending money on you.

“Well that’s very kind,” you tell him honestly, “but you really don’t have to.”

Bucky stares at you for half a second, then another.

Well. That’s new.

“Mrs. Moretti,” he calls, unable to stop grinning now, “gimme a box of Whoppers before this sweetheart talks herself outta it.”

Mrs. Moretti snorts loudly but slides the candy across the counter anyway.

“And a cannoli,” Bucky adds quickly.

Your head turns toward him. “Oh, no, truly—”

“Too late.”

He pays before you can protest again, then holds the small paper bag out toward you with exaggerated politeness.

“You really got this for me?” you ask.

“Nah,” he deadpans. “Bought it for the guy behind you.”

You laugh and that sound lands somewhere directly under his ribs. Not loud or practiced. Just soft and surprised, like you hadn’t expected him to be funny.

Bucky suddenly wants to hear it again.

Outside, Brooklyn glows amber beneath the sun. Laundry lines sway overhead between brick buildings. Somewhere down the block, someone’s radio crackles out jazz muffled by static.

You take a careful bite of the cannoli as the two of you step onto the sidewalk, then immediately freeze as cream spills out the other side onto your glove.

“Oh goodness—sorry,” you murmur, horrified. “I made a mess.”

Bucky looks at you.

At the powdered sugar dusting your mouth, the cream threatening to drip onto your sleeve, the embarrassment blooming across your face over something so small.

His brain stops functioning.

“Don’t apologize,” he says immediately, a little too seriously for someone he just met ten minutes ago.

“I just—”

“It’s a cannoli,” he says, clearing his throat. “They’re uh, they're structurally unsound.”

That earns another laugh. And there it is again, that strange feeling settling low in his chest, not lust exactly but something softer than that.

You wipe at your glove carefully, still embarrassed. “I’m making quite the first impression, aren't I.”

“Oh, believe me,” Bucky mutters before he can stop himself, “you are.”

But you don’t seem to catch it. Instead, you just smile politely and continue walking beside him down the sidewalk like this is all perfectly ordinary. Like handsome men buy you candy and pastries every day.

Bucky decides almost immediately that he doesn’t want the conversation to end, so he keeps finding reasons for it not to. He points out the bakery on the corner because “their cheesecake could start a war.” He walks slower whenever you stop to admire storefronts. He offers you his arm when an old woman barrels past with a grocery cart and nearly clips your shoulder.

You take it without hesitation.

“Oh,” you say softly, looping your arm through his. “Thank you.”

Bucky glances down at your hand resting against his sleeve and his heartbeat stumbles oddly.

Usually this part’s easy. Usually flirting feels like muscle memory. Lean closer, smirk a little, call her doll in that lower voice that always works. But you accept every bit of it with such innocent sincerity that it keeps throwing him off balance.

“You always this sweet?” he asks after a while.

You nod thoughtfully. “I do like sugar, yes. But I don't get to eat to very often.”

Bucky chokes on air.

“…Jesus Christ.”

Your brows pull together. “What?”

“Nothin’, doll.”

Because clearly you think he means literal sweetness, and somehow that’s even worse, or better. He can’t tell anymore.

The afternoon stretches unexpectedly around the two of you. You wander through Brooklyn side streets while the sun lowers warm and lazy across the buildings. You stop outside record stores and flower stands and little grocers with apples stacked in wooden crates out front.

And all the while, Bucky keeps trying.

He leans too close while talking and you just look up at him attentively. He calls you doll every other sentence and you smile like you think it’s genuinely affectionate. He flashes smirks sharp enough to cut glass and you return them with polite warmth, entirely unaffected.

“You’re very nice, Mr. Barnes,” you tell him eventually.

Bucky nearly trips over the curb.

“Nice?”

“Well yes.” You glance at him earnestly. “Handsome too, but mostly nice.”

Handsome too. Mostly nice.

Bucky stares at you outright now. Your voice held no teasing lilt, no coyness, you said it like you’re discussing the weather and something inside him short-circuits completely.

Because by now he knows for a fact you have no idea what he’s doing.

“Doll,” he says slowly, “you know I’m layin’ it on thick, right?”

You blink.

“…Laying it on?”

Silence.

Then Bucky laughs so suddenly and loudly a passing couple turns to stare, not in a mocking sense but genuinely delighted. You look confused enough that it only makes him laugh harder.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, shaking his head, “you really don’t know I've been flirting you?”

“I assumed you were being friendly.”

“I am bein’ friendly.”

“That seems normal.”

“Normal?” He stares at you. “I bought you candy fifteen minutes after meetin’ you.”

“Well… yes.”

“And?”

“You seemed very determined about it.”

Bucky rubs a hand down his jaw, trying unsuccessfully to hide another grin.

This should annoy him. It should. But instead he feels strangely fascinated, like he’s spent his whole life learning one language only to discover you speak something entirely different.

“So no fella’s ever taken you out before?” he asks carefully.

“Not really.”

The answer comes without self-pity, just honesty and Bucky’s chest tightens unexpectedly.

“What d’you mean not really?”

You shrug lightly. “I suppose men don’t usually notice me that way.”

Bucky stops walking altogether, making you turn toward him curiously as he just looks at you in complete disbelief. At your soft mouth faintly lined with your lipstick, at your bright eyes, at the way strangers glance at you as they pass without you ever seeming aware of it.

“That oughta be illegal,” he mutters.

You laugh again, warm and startled and sweet enough to ruin him slowly.

Somewhere between the candy shop and the golden Brooklyn sidewalks and the way your hand still rests trustingly against his arm, Bucky realizes something unsettling, he stopped flirting for sport an hour ago. Now he’s doing it because he genuinely likes the way you smile when he speaks. Because he wants to keep hearing your laugh mingle with the evening traffic. Because watching you move through the world feels a little like standing near candlelight, soft and gentle and impossible not to lean toward.

And Bucky Barnes is not known for leaning toward things gently.

Which is how, sometime after you’ve finished your cannoli and the Whoppers box is tucked safely under your arm like it’s something fragile, you both turn a corner and run straight into trouble in the form of Steve Rogers and the rest of the Commandos.

They’re all there—loud, sprawling across the sidewalk like they own it.

“Barnes!” one of them calls immediately. “Where’ve you been?”

Then Steve sees you and something in his expression shifts instantly into knowing.

“Oh,” Steve says slowly. “Oh, that’s where.”

Bucky groans under his breath. “Don’t start.”

Another one of them whistles low. “Barnes buying candy for a girl? End times.”

Bucky, of course, straightens immediately, protective without thinking.

“Leave him alone,” you add gently, glancing between them. “He’s just being kind to me.”

The group goes quiet for half a beat, then someone mutters, “Kind?”

Steve’s mouth twitches like he’s trying very hard not to laugh. Bucky, meanwhile, stops breathing properly, because you said it so simply. Like there was no other explanation, like the idea that he might be doing anything else never even crossed your mind.

He looks at you then and it’s unfair how easy it is to forget everyone else exists when you’re standing that close.

The Commandos keep talking behind him as they walk by, but Bucky doesn’t hear a word of it anymore.

All he hears is the soft cadence of your voice still echoing in his head.

Just being kind to me.

That word lands heavier than anything else today. Kinder than flirtation, kinder than charm, kinder than every practiced thing he’s ever used to get someone to look at him twice. He realizes, with faint shock, that he wants to be that to you. Not some impressive or smooth flirt, just kind.

Eventually Steve clears his throat loudly from behind you. “You walkin’ her home, Barnes, or standin’ there makin’ heart eyes in the middle of the sidewalk?”

“I am absolutely not makin’ heart eyes,” Bucky says automatically.

You glance up at him and his words die immediately.

“…We’re walkin’,” he finishes weakly.

“Good,” Steve says, already grinning. “Try not to break anything on the way.”

Bucky flips him off without looking away from you.

You don’t seem to notice the tension at all. Just adjust your grip on the candy box and smile faintly like this is still just a normal afternoon walk, and somehow that makes everything worse.

The walk to your building takes longer than it should.

Bucky slows down without meaning to and you match him perfectly.

Brooklyn shifts around you in its usual evening rhythm, windows glowing warm, radios humming behind curtains, the smell of dinner drifting out of open doors but between the two of you everything feels strangely contained.

“I had a very nice time today,” you say eventually, glancing up at him.

Bucky swallows. “Yeah?”

“You’re very kind.”

That word again.

It hits him harder this time, right in the center of his chest. He looks away for half a second, jaw tightening slightly like he’s trying to figure out how to respond to something he’s never been called before in a way that mattered.

“Kind,” he repeats quietly, like he's testing whether he deserves it.

You stop in front of your apartment building steps as the streetlamp above flickers softly, casting gold light over your face. For a moment neither of you moves, then Bucky shifts, suddenly more uncertain than he’s been all day.

“Can I ask you somethin’?”

“Of course,” you answer immediately.

He hesitates, this is the part where he usually knows exactly what to say, instead, he feels seventeen different versions of himself arguing at once. He steps closer without thinking, seemingly too close, making your breath catch faintly.

He notices it immediately, the tiny shift in your posture, the nervousness flickering across your face. You’re not used to this part. The closeness, the intention that comes with it.

“Sorry,” he says softer, almost immediately stepping back half an inch like he’s correcting a mistake he didn’t want to make, “I uh—.”

You exhale quietly, watching as Bucky drags a hand through his hair, looking away for a second like he’s regrouping. Then, carefully he speaks up.

“Can I do this properly?”

You blink. “Properly?”

He looks back at you then, all teasing gone for a moment.

“Can I take you out tomorrow night?”

Your eyes widen slightly.

“…Like a date?”

“Yeah,” he says, a little quieter now. “Like a date.”

You look at him for a long moment, then your smile returns—small, but real.

“I think I’d like that very much.”

Something in Bucky’s chest loosens all at once, like a knot he didn’t know he was holding.

“Yeah?” he asks, almost stupidly.

You nod and that’s it, that’s all it takes. Bucky steps back, already grinning like he’s lost all sense of self-preservation.

“Tomorrow,” he says, pointing at you like he’s making a promise he fully intends to keep, “I’m pickin’ you up at seven.”

“I’ll be ready,” you reply softly.

He turns to leave, walking backwards for a second because he can’t quite make himself stop looking at you. Then he finally turns around properly after you give him a soft wave goodbye, and immediately starts grinning wider.

The Commandos are still waiting down the street when he finds them. Steve takes one look at his face and sighs.

“Oh no.”

Bucky doesn’t even try to hide it. He shoves his hands in his pockets, still smiling like an idiot.

“Fellas,” he says lightly, “I’m in serious trouble.”

Bucky doesn’t sleep much that night, at least not properly.

He lies on his back staring at the ceiling, replaying the day in fragments he can’t seem to organize into anything sensible. Your voice, your laugh. The way you looked at candy like it was something magical. And worse than all of it, powdered sugar on your mouth, cannoli cream on your lips and the way you’d apologized for it like it was a crime.

He turns onto his side, groans into his pillow, then sits up like the bed has personally betrayed him.

“Get it together,” he mutters to himself.

But the problem is… he is together.

That’s the issue. He just isn’t used to what it feels like when someone looks at him like he’s safe instead of interesting. So in the morning, Bucky Barnes does the only thing he can think to do, be a man of his word.

He decides to do it properly.

No shortcuts, no charm tricks, no easy grin and leaned-in confidence.

A real date.

Which is how Steve finds him hunched over a small, slightly chaotic pile of wildflowers behind a Brooklyn fence line.

“Are you pickin’ flowers now?” Steve asks flatly.

Bucky doesn’t look up. “Shut up.”

Steve leans against the fence post, arms crossed. “That for the girl?”

“Yes.”

“You know you could just buy ‘em like a normal person.”

“I don’t have money right now for fancy bouquets.”

“That’s not the point.”

Bucky finally straightens, holding the uneven bundle like it might fall apart if he breathes wrong. “It is to me.”

Steve studies him for a long moment, something softer flickering beneath the teasing.

Then he sighs. “You’re in trouble, pal.”

Bucky huffs. “Yeah. I said that already.”

But he doesn’t feel like running from it, not even a little.

By the time evening rolls around, he’s checked his reflection in every shop window he passes twice. He fixes his tie, adjusts his jacket, runs a hand through his hair, then immediately second-guesses it and smooths it back down again. The flowers are wrapped in paper he stole, respectfully stole, from a corner stand. They’re not perfect, a few stems are uneven, one bloom is slightly bent.

He hopes they’re enough.

Outside your building, Bucky pauses as he exhales once. Then knocks.

When the door opens, everything inside him stops. You’re standing there in soft light, hair pinned back neatly, expression shifting the moment you see him. And you light up like it’s involuntary.

Bucky forgets how to breathe for a second.

“Hi,” you say, smiling.

“Hi,” he manages back.

Then he lifts the flowers slightly, suddenly unsure of everything in the universe.

“Those are for me?” you ask, voice soft with surprise.

“Unless your neighbor’s awful pretty,” he says automatically.

You laugh, stepping forward immediately to take them.

“They’re beautiful,” you murmur, already burying your nose in them gently. “Oh… and they smell wonderful.”

Bucky watches you like he’s forgotten how to look anywhere else.

“I, uh,” he starts, then clears his throat. “Yeah. Picked ‘em myself.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Your smile softens in a way that makes him feel strangely proud.

“I’ll find a jar,” you say quickly. “Wait just a moment.”

You disappear inside, flowers clutched carefully to your chest like they’re something priceless. Bucky stays standing there in the doorway slightly stunned. He hears movement inside, cabinet doors opening, water running, your quiet little hum as you arrange them.

He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until his cheeks start to hurt.

Before you leave, your sister appears briefly in the hallway. Older, sharper-eyed. The kind of woman who looks like she’s already decided what kind of trouble someone is before they speak.

Her gaze lands on Bucky immediately.

“Bucky Barnes?” she asks.

He straightens instinctively. “Yes, ma’am.”

She looks him over once then turns to you.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

You hesitate. “Of course.”

She pulls you aside just enough that Bucky can’t hear everything, but not enough that he doesn’t feel it. Her voice is lower when she speaks.

“Be careful." She says.

You blink. “What?”

“Boys like him don't settle down. Sure he’s charming and handsome, but he's just a sweet talker.” Her mouth tightens. “He just wants a good time, so don’t go getting your hopes up.”

Bucky can’t hear the exact words, but he sees your expression shift slightly and something in his stomach turns uneasy.

When you return, you’re still smiling—but quieter now, careful in a way you weren’t before.

“Ready?” you ask him.

“Yeah,” he says, though his voice comes out softer than he means it to.

Dinner settles into something Bucky doesn’t recognize at first.

It’s quiet.

Not empty, but softened around the edges like the whole world has decided to behave itself for once. Soft jazz drifts from somewhere near the ceiling, curling through candlelight and clinking silverware. The room hums with conversation that never quite reaches your table.

And for the first time all day, Bucky Barnes isn’t scanning anything. His eyes aren't darting around the room looking for exits or other women, something quick to catch his attention.

Just you.

You, sitting across from him with your hands wrapped around a glass of water like it’s something grounding. You, talking in that gentle, thoughtful way of yours that keeps catching him off guard. He realizes halfway through your story about your aunt’s ridiculous attempt at baking bread that he hasn’t looked away once.

Not once. And maybe worse, he doesn’t want to.

You laugh at your own memory, shaking your head slightly. “It was practically a brick. We had to slice it with a knife meant for meat.”

Bucky smiles without thinking. “Sounds dangerous.”

“It was emotionally damaging.”

That makes him laugh for real.

And then you smile back at him, that small, bright, effortless smile and something in his chest shifts again. Because he likes this, not the performance of him, not the usual rhythm of charm and response and winning someone over. He likes this.

You talking, rambling softly when you get comfortable, pausing like you’re thinking too hard before continuing anyway. And every time you say his name, Bucky, like it’s just another word instead of something that usually comes wrapped in attention and expectation he feels it settle somewhere warm and unfamiliar.

Bucky Barnes, who usually knows exactly what he’s doing with people, finds himself doing something far more dangerous, imagining. Not in a loud way. In quiet flashes between bites of food and sips of coffee, a small bouquet of flowers on a table that isn’t a restaurant, you at a kitchen counter, hair slightly messy, laughing at something he said. A door opening at the end of a long day and you looking up like it matters that he came home.

He shifts slightly in his seat, almost like the thought physically disorients him.

Impossible things.

And yet they come anyway.

After dinner, the night pulls the two of you deeper into Brooklyn’s glow. Neon signs flicker awake, streetlamps paint everything gold and blue. Somewhere down the block, music spills out of a club like a living thing.

“You seen the new picture show over on Fulton?” Bucky asks as you walk.

You shake your head. “No.”

“Then you’re goin’.”

You glance up at him. “Is that an order?”

“Absolutely.”

You laugh softly, like you’re still not used to how easily he says things like that. The theater is older with slightly worn velvet seats, the faint smell of popcorn and wood polish, flickering light that makes everything feel softer than it should. Bucky buys the tickets without hesitation, you try to argue but he ignores you in the best way possible.

Inside, you sit close but not touching. Close enough that he’s aware of you constantly, that every small movement you make registers like it matters.

Halfway through the film, something changes on screen, the lights dim all soft and emotional, the kind of scene that doesn’t need words. He feels you go still beside him and when he glances over, your eyes are glossy in the dim light.

You’re trying to be subtle about it. You are not succeeding.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just reaches into his pocket slowly and pulls out his handkerchief and without a word, gently offers it toward you.

You turn toward him and for a moment, neither of you moves. Then you take it carefully, fingers brushing his and in the dark, you smile at him softly. Like he did something important without realizing it. Bucky looks back at the screen, but he doesn’t see it anymore, he just feels the moment settle between you like something fragile and real. And he never wants it to end.

The picture ends on a cliffhanger that has the whole theater groaning as the lights flick back on. Outside, the city opens up again. Cool night air, bright lights reflecting off wet pavement. The distant echo of music from clubs and cafés and street corners all blending into one living rhythm.

You walk beside him slowly, a little quieter now that the night has come to its end.

Bucky notices.

He glances down at you. “You alright?”

You nod. “Yes. It was… very nice.”

“Yeah?”

You smile faintly. “You’re very kind.”

That word again.

Kind.

It lands differently now. He doesn’t know why, maybe it’s the way you say it like it still surprises you, like it still feels new. Bucky opens his mouth to respond, but you stop walking. You've tried to fight it all night, tried to push the words far back into your head. But everything feels like a double edged sword, and if you don't do something now, you'll both get cut.

“I just…” you start softly, then hesitate.

He turns toward you fully.

You look down at your hands. “You really don’t have to pretend with me.”

Bucky blinks. “Pretend?”

You glance up, nervous now. “I know boys like you don’t mean anything by this sort of thing.”

Silence. It drops so fast it almost feels physical.

Bucky stares at you and for the first time all day, his expression isn’t teasing or amused or carefully controlled. It’s hurt, deep, immediate and unmistakably hurt.

“Boys like me?” he repeats slowly.

You realize instantly something is wrong.

“I didn’t mean— I just meant—”

He gestures vaguely between the flowers, the dinner, the theater still glowing behind you both.

“You think I do this with every girl?”

Your mouth opens, then closes again. Because you don’t know, you just assumed, because your sister said he’s Bucky Barnes and people talk about him like they know him before he even speaks.

“Sweetheart,” he says quieter now, but sharper in a different way, “I picked those flowers myself.”

You freeze and he exhales through his nose, looking away for a second like he’s trying to steady something in himself.

“I ain’t ever done this before,” he admits. “Not like this.”

That hits harder than anything else tonight, you stare at him now, like you’re recalibrating something you thought you understood.

“But everyone says—” you start.

“Yeah. I know what everyone says.” Bucky cuts in immediately, voice low. "But I only do this unless I mean it."

The street hums around you both, cars pass by, music drifts on the wind, lights flicker in the distance. But between the two of you, everything feels suddenly suspended. The silence doesn’t leave right away, it just changes shape. It stretches between you and Bucky in the middle of the sidewalk, softened only by passing headlights and the distant laugh of strangers who don’t know they’re walking through something fragile.

Bucky doesn’t look away from you.

I don’t do this unless I mean it.

It should’ve sounded smooth and confident. Instead it just sounds… exposed. Because the truth of it sits heavier now that it’s out in the open. He watches your face carefully, like he’s waiting for you to decide something about him, and for the first time all day, he realizes that matters. Not casually, not in the way flirting usually matters, but in a way that sits deep under his ribs and doesn’t move.

Your expression is quiet, thoughtful in that way you get when you’re trying to understand something honestly. He swallows once, then looks away briefly like the night air might help him think straighter, but it doesn’t.

It only makes everything quieter.

“I don’t like that,” he says finally.

You blink. “What?”

He gestures vaguely, frustration threading through his voice now—not at you, but at something older.

“What they say. About me.”

You don’t interrupt, you just listen and that alone is enough to make his chest tighten. Bucky exhales slowly, because this is new for him too. Saying it, not laughing it off, not playing it into something charming.

“People think they’ve got me figured out,” he says. “Think I just—” he huffs a short laugh without humor, “—go around Brooklyn collecting girls like it’s nothin’.”

His jaw tightens slightly.

“And maybe I used to let ‘em think that.”

That lands differently in the air between you.

“But I’m tired of it,” he says quietly.

Bucky continues before he can talk himself out of it.

“Tired of it all blurring together,” he admits. “Tired of it not meaning anything.”

His eyes flick over your face again, more careful now, more intentional.

“And I think…” He hesitates, like the next part is the hardest thing he’s said all night. “I think I’m tired of not being taken seriously.”

That one settles heavier. You don’t speak yet. So he keeps going, because stopping now feels impossible.

“Maybe I don’t wanna be that guy anymore.” His voice drops slightly.

That guy. The one people assume things about, the one who never stays, the one who never gets understood correctly because no one bothers to look twice. The words hang there, raw and unpolished.

You shift slightly on your feet and when you finally speak, your voice is soft.

“What kind of guy do you want to be then?”

Bucky stills.

That question shouldn’t hit as hard as it does, but it does, the way you asked him like you really want to know, the way your eyes never leave his as he looks at you. The city lights catch your face in soft gold and shadow, painting the curve of your cheekbones, the faint red of your lips still slightly brighter from the theater lights, the way you stand there holding his honesty like it’s something you’re willing to carry for a moment without dropping it.

And something inside him clicks. Like a door deciding it’s been open long enough to let something new inside. Bucky takes a slow breath, then another and when he speaks again, his voice is quieter than before.

“The guy,” he says, nodding faintly toward you like the answer has been standing in front of him all night, “that gets to do this with you every night for the rest of my life.”

Silence falls again, but this one is different. It isn’t heavy or tense. It feels like something settling into place that neither of you fully understands yet, but neither of you wants to move away from.

Bucky doesn’t smile, not yet. He just watches you carefully, like he’s waiting to see if he’s gone too far. If he’s said too much, if the version of him he’s choosing now is one you can stand to look at. And for the first time since he met you in that candy shop, James Buchanan Barnes isn’t trying to win anything.

He’s just waiting.

For you.

"I think I'd like that."

Two months don’t feel like two months to Bucky Barnes.

They feel like a rhythm he accidentally fell into and never bothered climbing out of. Mornings start with the same thought: What time can I see her? Evenings end with the same realization: Not long enough. And everything in between just becomes space he has to get through.

He shows up at your apartment more often than he means to. Not in a dramatic way, just like he happened to be nearby. Which is a lie, he crosses half of Brooklyn for it.

“Bucky,” you’d say sometimes, opening the door already smiling, “you live nowhere near here.”

He’d shrug like it doesn’t matter. “Was in the neighborhood.”

“You were in the neighborhood three days in a row?”

“Brooklyn’s a big place, doll.”

You’d just laugh and let him in.

And that’s the problem. You always let him in.

Diners become routine. Milkshakes split between two straws that you pretend not to notice he always lets you have the first sip of. Walks that start with him offering his arm and end with your hand still resting there long after it’s necessary. Movie nights where you lean slightly closer each time you get nervous during a scene, and Bucky pretends he doesn’t notice how carefully you do it. Flowers every week. Sometimes wild. Sometimes bought if he could pinch it. Sometimes just picked from somewhere he absolutely shouldn’t have been picking flowers.

You always put them in a jar immediately. Always smile like they matter. And Bucky changes without noticing, he stops looking at other women entirely, not because he’s forcing himself not to.

Because he just… doesn’t see them the same way anymore. Not when you exist in his world now, softening all the edges.

Steve notices first, then the Commandos, then basically anyone who’s ever known him longer than five minutes.

“You’re smiling more,” Steve says once, watching him across a table.

“I always smile.”

“No,” Steve says, “you don’t.”

Bucky just shrugs. Because what’s he supposed to say? That he likes the way you say his name like it’s something you trust? That he’s started thinking about ridiculous things like whether you’d like a porch someday, or a kitchen with too much sunlight, or a life where he doesn’t leave as often as he does?

He doesn’t say any of it, but it’s there anyway.

Tonight, he’s early.

Which is stupid, because he’s always early now. He’s at the bar having a drink and smoke with the Commandos, but he’s not really with them.

He’s angled toward the door, elbow on the counter, sleeves already adjusted three times, hair smoothed back once, then twice, then abandoned entirely because it keeps falling anyway as Steve watches him with growing disbelief.

“You’re worse than a kid waiting for Christmas,” Steve mutters.

Bucky doesn’t look away from the door. “Shut up.”

“You’ve checked that door eight times in five minutes.”

“It might’ve changed since the last time I looked.”

“Bucky.”

“I’m busy.”

The door opens and he straightens instantly. Not you. His shoulders drop a fraction as he sits back down.

The teasing starts almost immediately.

“Two months huh?” one of them says, grinning. “This one’s got it bad.”

“Must be real good if Barnes is still around.”

“You finally settle down?”

Bucky rolls his eyes, but there’s a stupid softness to his mouth that gives him away immediately.

“Knock it off.”

The laughter builds.

“What’s the catch, Barnes?”

“C’mon, what are you gettin’ out of this?”

“Ain’t no way you’re behaving this long without somethin’ in return.”

Bucky exhales, finally turning fully toward them and for once, he doesn’t joke. Not even a little.

“Nothing’s happened between us yet.”

The table goes quiet. A beat. Then howling ensures.

“You’re kiddin’.”

“Celibate Bucky Barnes?”

“I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

Someone nearly chokes on their drink.

Bucky shrugs slightly, like it’s not a big deal, but his voice goes quieter when he adds on.

“I like her.”

That shuts them up for half a second longer.

“I don’t wanna mess it up,” he says, “by goin’ in headfirst.”

And just like that, the teasing explodes again.

“Look at him.”

“He’s gone.”

“Man’s fighting for his life.”

“You hear this? Barnes is soft.”

Bucky laughs under his breath despite himself, shaking his head.

“Yeah, yeah—laugh it up.”

And that’s when it happens, the door opens again, Bucky doesn’t look right away still half-laughing, still mid-protest, then he hears the sound of the room shifting slightly.

Someone going quiet and he turns. You’re standing just inside holding your bag, still in your coat and completely still. Not smiling, not walking toward him. Just listening. For a second, Bucky doesn’t understand then he sees it. Your expression. Something flickering there, uncertainty, confusion, something tightening at the edges of your face like you’ve just heard something you weren’t meant to.

His smile fades immediately.

“Hey,” he starts, already pushing his chair back.

But you don’t come closer. You take one step back instead, then another, quiet and careful.

“Doll—” Bucky stands fully now.

But you’re already turning to leave, the door swings open, and you’re gone. He’s out of the bar so fast it barely feels like a decision. Brooklyn air hits him like a slap, cold, sharp, and real and for a second he just stands there, scanning the sidewalk like the world might give you back if he looks hard enough.

“Doll?” he calls.

Nothing.

“Hi.”

He turns.

You’re a few steps down the sidewalk, hugging your coat tightly around yourself like you’re trying to hold yourself together with it. Streetlight catches your face in soft gold, but it doesn’t soften the expression there.

Not really.

Bucky’s chest tightens immediately.

He crosses the space between you in a few quick steps. “Hey—no, hey, listen to me,” he says, already shaking his head like he can undo whatever just happened inside by sheer force of will. “Don’t listen to those idiots in there. They don’t know when to shut up.”

Your gaze flickers up to him, then away again just as fast.

“It’s alright,” you say softly. “Really.”

But it isn’t alright, not in the way he knows you mean.

Because your arms are wrapped around yourself too tightly. Because your smile is there, but it doesn’t reach anything. Because you look like you’re already somewhere farther away than the sidewalk you’re standing on.

And Bucky notices everything, too much, sometimes.

“Hey,” he says again, quieter now. “You ready to go?”

A pause.

“…Yeah.”

That’s it.

No teasing, no warmth, no easy rhythm. Just agreement, and it scares him more than anything else tonight.

It's all wrong.

That’s the only way Bucky can think to describe it. Brooklyn is still alive around you, windows glowing, distant laughter, the low hum of traffic, but between you and him there’s a silence that feels heavy instead of soft. He walks slower than usual without realizing it. You don’t take his arm, but your hand finds his anyway just barely. Just fingers brushing, then settling.

Bucky holds it like it’s something fragile.

He keeps glancing at you, waiting for you to look back, you don’t. You’re staring down at your joined hands instead, like you’re trying to figure something out in them. And your thoughts, if he could hear them, would be too loud.

Maybe your sister was right.

Maybe this was always going somewhere you don’t belong.

Maybe he’s just being patient because eventually he’ll expect more.

And maybe you’re already disappointing him.

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Because something about your silence tells him words might break whatever thread is holding you upright right now. So he just walks you home, step by step, closer than usual and quieter than ever.

By the time your building comes into view, something in you has tightened so much it feels like it might snap.

You stop walking, Bucky stops immediately with you.

“Buck…” your voice is barely above the street noise.

“Yeah?” He turns toward you fully.

You swallow hard. “Maybe… we shouldn’t do this anymore.”

Everything stops. Bucky freezes completely, like the words physically catch him mid-step.

“What?” he says, but it’s not sharp, more confused than anything.

You look down, finally letting go of his hand so slowly, like it costs you something.

“I don’t think I’m good for you,” you say.

That lands harder than anything else tonight. Bucky stares at you like he’s trying to understand a language he thought he already knew.

“Sweetheart,” he says slowly, “where is this comin’ from?”

You shake your head slightly, still not meeting his eyes.

“You deserve someone who can make you happy,” you say. “Someone better.”

Bucky lets out a short breath like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“That’s not—no,” he says immediately, stepping half a step closer before stopping himself. “No, that’s not how this works.”

You finally look up at him and whatever he sees there makes his voice soften instantly. Because you look scared. Not of him but of yourself.

“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says, like it should be obvious.

You blink, once, then again. And then it spills out of you before you can stop it.

“I can’t make you happy, Buck,” you say, voice cracking slightly. “I can’t give you what you want, I can’t—I can’t… make you feel good.”

Silence hits again, but this time, Bucky understands exactly where it came from. His expression changes all at once, his frustration disappears, his confusion sharpens into something quieter. Something knowing as the pieces fall into place.

The Commandos. The bar. The teasing.

“Oh,” he says softly. “Babydoll…”

The way he says it now is different.

“I want you,” he says gently. “I’m happy with you just like this. None of that matters to me anymore, okay?”

Your breath shakes slightly but you don’t look convinced. Instead, something inside you finally breaks open.

“Well it matters to me!” you burst out, voice suddenly raw. “I want to, I just—I don’t know how. And I'm scared you're going to leave just because I’ve never—”

You stop but it's too late. Bucky goes completely still and everything clicks into place so fast it almost hurts. Why you flinch sometimes when he gets too close. Why you always hesitate before a kiss even when you want them. Why you look like you’re bracing for something you think you’re supposed to be able to give.

Why you’re standing here right now looking ashamed of something you never should’ve had to explain.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “You’re okay.”

Your eyes are glossy now, but you’re still trying to hold it together. Bucky doesn’t move closer doesn’t rush you. Just stays right where he is so you don’t feel cornered.

“Your parents home?” he asks softly.

You blink, thrown slightly by the question.

“What? Oh… no. They went to my sister’s ballet recital. They won’t be back until later.”

Bucky nods once then gives you a small, warm smile and gently threads his fingers through yours.

“C’mon,” he says quietly, squeezing your hand just once, just enough to ground you. “Let’s go talk inside.”

Inside your apartment, everything feels quieter in a different way.

Not the heavy silence from outside but something softer, contained with warmth between you. You close the door behind Bucky like you’re sealing the world out, then immediately seem to remember yourself again, nervous energy flickering back in.

“Okay,” you say quickly, brushing a hand over your sleeve. “Um—this is the living room. Obviously. And that’s the kitchen, and—”

Bucky just watches you, following your voice like it’s something grounding. You move a little faster now, pointing things out like you need the space filled with words so you don’t have to think too hard about anything else.

“This is my mother’s glass cabinet, don’t touch that one, she’ll know, and—oh.”

You stop because Bucky is already in the kitchen holding two small glasses, and the apple brandy bottle.

He glances over his shoulder innocently. “What?”

You blink. “Bucky.”

He raises a brow. “What?”

“That’s my mother’s.”

“I know.”

“You can’t just—”

“I can,” he says simply, already pouring.

You let out a sound of disbelief. “You are unbelievable.”

He slides one glass toward you. “Relax, doll. I’ll replace it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It is tonight.”

You stare at him for a second longer, then sigh, like you’ve decided arguing with him is pointless.

“Fine,” you say. “But you’re explaining this to her if she notices.”

“Deal.”

You hesitate, then take the glass anyway. That alone makes something in his chest ease.

You lead him toward your bedroom after that, slower now, more uncertain at the edges. Not running anymore, just settling. The room is small. Warm and lived in. A book on your bedside table, a folded sweater on the chair, soft lamplight that makes everything feel like it belongs only to you.

Bucky doesn’t sit right away. He just leans against the dresser, watching as you set your glass down carefully like you’re still trying to figure out what this moment is supposed to be.

You take a sip, then another. Waiting until your chest grows warm.

“I'm sorry about earlier,” you say quietly.

Bucky’s expression softens immediately. “What?”

Your fingers tighten slightly around the glass.

“I’ve… never done any of this before.” You glance up at him, cheeks warm now. “I mean—anything like this. Dating. Being… like this with someone.”

Silence stretches gently. Then, more spills out, almost like you need to get it out before you lose courage.

“And you were my first kiss.”

Bucky goes still in a way that isn’t shock, it’s something gentler and more careful. You rush on quickly, as if afraid of what the truth might do in the open air.

“I just thought you should know. In case I’m—awkward. Or—”

“Hey,” he cuts in softly as he pushes off the dresser and steps closer, slow enough that you can stop him if you want to.

You don’t.

“Look at me,” he says gently.

You do and his expression is steady now. No teasing anywhere in it.

"You don't ever have to apologize to me. For anything."

“I like you a lot, Bucky,” you say suddenly, like it’s been sitting in you too long to hold back anymore.

Something in his face shifts immediately, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

“I like you too, babydoll,” he says quietly.

Your breath catches.

You swallow. “I can’t promise it’ll be any good but—”

Bucky doesn’t let you finish, he leans in and kisses you. It's not rushed or demanding, just soft and gentle. Like he’s waiting for you the entire time, making sure you’re still there with him, still okay, still choosing this. When he pulls back slightly, just enough to look at you, your eyes are wide.

“Don’t…” he whispers, “don’t say that.”

You pause, slightly stunned by the kiss. “Okay.”

A beat, then, softer:

“Can I kiss you again?”

You hesitate only a second then nod.

This time, when he kisses you, it’s a little less uncertain, still gentle and patient. But warmer now, like something between you is finally starting to trust the moment instead of question it. He doesn’t rush you, doesn’t push for anything more he just stays close enough that you can decide how much you want.

And eventually, you do loosen up slowly. Like your shoulders finally remember they don’t have to stay tight. You laugh a little under your breath at something he mumbles against your lips, and he smiles against you in response. When you pull back again slightly, breath uneven, he rests his forehead briefly against yours.

“That okay?” he asks softly.

You nod again, then your voice goes quieter.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I do,” he says gently.

You huff a soft laugh. “That’s not really comforting.”

“It should be,” he replies, a hint of warmth returning. “I’m real good at not rushin’ things.”

And he is, he stays exactly where you need him to, no pressure behind his precense. Eventually, you end up sitting on the edge of your bed together, close enough that your shoulders brush. Your glass is forgotten somewhere on the nightstand and Bucky’s hand finds yours again without thinking.

"I want to try…" you can't make the words out with a deep red blush crossing your face. "And I trust you."

"Good." Bucky hums, pressing a soft kiss to your cheek. "We'll go slow."

When you shift slightly closer, he lets you guide the space between you, like learning something new together instead of taking anything from you. When your nose brushes his, you tug lightly at your sleeve, suddenly self-conscious.

“I feel like I should be… more dressed for this,” you admit quietly. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be wearing.”

Bucky looks at you like the question itself doesn’t make sense then he shakes his head slightly.

“Doll,” he says softly, “you could be wearing a potato sack and it wouldn’t matter.”

You blink at him as he leans in just a little, brushing a gentle kiss to your knuckles.

“Just you,” he says quietly. “That’s all I need.”

You nod as he kisses you again. The kiss started slow, almost hesitant, but the moment Bucky’s hand cupped your jaw, tilting your head just so, it deepened into something more. You'd heard of desire in life, how it can warp the thoughts and actions of even the most resilient. But this, this burning ebb and flow deep within you was something else entirely. It had to be. It was as if a switch flipped inside you, your body felt magnetized to his, pushing closer and closer until there wasn't an inch of space between you.

His lips were warm, insistent, and when he pulled back just enough to murmur against your mouth. "Can I touch you?" 

You could only nod as his fingers traced a slow path down your thigh, the fabric of your dress bunching under his palm as he slid higher, his thumb brushing bare skin. You shivered, arching into him, your hands clutching at his shirt yearning for more.

Bucky smirked, catching your wrist. "Go ahead," he murmurs, guiding your hand down his chest.

Your thumb slipped beneath his shirt, your breath hitching at the hard planes of muscle beneath your fingertips. He was lean but solid, every ridge of his abdomen making your pulse jump.

His lips were still on yours when his fingers returned, teasing the damp fabric of your panties again. “Already this wet for me?” he mutters, voice rough against your mouth. “God, I can feel how hot you are through these.”

You whimper, arching into his touch. “Please, just—”

“Just what, sweetheart?” His thumb presses harder, circling your clit through the silk. “Tell me what you want.”

You gasp, fingers tightening in his hair. “Touch me properly—God, Bucky—”

“That’s it,” he growls, hooking his fingers under the waistband, dragging them aside. The first slow stroke of his fingers through your slickness drew a choked moan from your throat.

“Fuck, you’re dripping.” He drags his fingers up, pressing them to your lips. “Taste.”

You sucked them into your mouth, eyes locked on his as you licked them clean, and the groan that ripped from his chest was filthy.

“You’re gonna kill me,” he mutters, sliding two fingers back inside you, curling them just right. “Love how tight you are, how you squeeze me.” His thumb circles you clit faster. “Gonna cum already? That quick?”

You couldn’t answer, nails biting into his shoulder as pleasure coiled tighter, sharper.

“That’s it,” he urges, voice dark with praise. “Cum on my fingers, let me feel it babydoll.”

Your hips jerk as you shatter, his name a broken moan on your lips. He didn’t stop, fingers still working you through it until you were gasping, oversensitive and trembling.

He didn’t let you catch your breath just yet, licking his fingers clean before hauling you to the edge of the bed. One leg hooked over his shoulder, his mouth hot and relentless between your thighs, tongue lapping at your oversensitive clit.

“One more,” he murmurs, lips brushing your thigh. “Bet you can take it.”

Bucky wraps an arm around you, splaying his wide hand across your stomach, sinking his tongue into the slit of your cunt, curling it before going back to flick your clit. He groans against you, muffled by your skin as his free hand comes up, the pads of his fingers pressing into you.

"So fucking good babydoll," he groans as he feels you rock against his lips and fingers. "Bein' such a good girl for me."

The pressure coils tight inside you, your chest rapidly rising as your words are reduced into nothing but messy mumbles of 'Bucky' and 'Please'. He doubles down on his efforts, closing his lips around your clit as he arches and scissors his fingers inside you, his eyes locked up on you as he watches you crest over your high. Back arching off the bed as your thighs clench on the sides of his head, trapping him right where he wants to be. He brings you down with a gentle kiss to your pulsing clit, easing his fingers out and licking them clean.

"That was so much better... than I ever thought," you pant, still trembling from the aftershocks of your orgasm. Bucky hums against your inner thigh, pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses along your skin. His tongue flicks lightly over your oversensitive clit, just enough to make your hips jerk.

"Mm, you thought about this?" His voice is low, rough with amusement. "My sweet girl thinking dirty thoughts? Thinking about what it’s like to be touched, licked, 'nd fucked?"

You whimper as he teases you again, the words alone sending another shudder through you. His fingers stroke slow circles on your thighs, gentle but possessive.

"Tell me," he murmurs. "Tell me what else you imagined."

You barely have time to answer before his mouth is on you again, licking and sucking just right, his fingers curling inside you with practiced ease. The pleasure builds too fast, too much at once and you're cumming all over again, rolling through you in deep, relentless waves.

When it finally eases, you’re boneless, breathless, but still aching for more. A deep and burning need simmering just under the surface of your skin. "Bucky," you plead, voice raw. "Please."

He kisses his way up your body, slow and deliberate, before finally pulling back just enough to strip off the rest of his clothes. The sight of him, all hard muscle and dark hunger makes your pulse jump.

"Condom?" he murmured, fingers tracing the soft curve of your stomach.

You still, then hum to yourself. "Oh. I don’t have any."

"Shit," he breathes, biting his lip. "Do you think your sister has any hidden, or maybe your—"

"We don’t…" Your voice drops, gentle now. "I mean, if you’re okay with it… we don’t have to."

He goes utterly still above you, his pulse hammering under your fingertips. "You sure, doll? Docs say I'm clean as a whistle," he murmurs, brushing a thumb over your cheek.

"But I don’t wanna rush you into anything."

Your thighs press together instinctively, already aching again, needing more. "I’m sure, Buck. I trust you." You hesitate, then whisper, "And you can… pull out. If you want to."

A slow grin spreads across his face at your shyness, even as the hunger in his eyes burns hotter. "Okay, babydoll."

He kisses you again, deep and slow, one hand cradling your jaw like you’re something precious while the other guides himself between your legs. There’s no rush, just the thick press of him stretching you open inch by inch, his lips never leaving yours until he’s fully sheathed inside.

"Good?" he rasps against your mouth.

You can only nod, nails digging into his shoulders as he starts moving in long, unhurried thrusts that make your back arch off the bed. He licks into your mouth as his hips roll into yours, one hand sliding down to rub tight circles on your clit until you’re gasping, teetering on the edge. Every stroke hitting something deep within you that you didn't even know existed. A quick addiction began inside of you, something you wanted to never end.

Obscene sounds filled the room, the air thick with something sweet and warm and needy. Your hands never left his back, digging half crescents into his skin as you pleaded for more.

Then he stops.

You whimper in protest, but he’s already shifting, pulling out just enough to drag you onto your side. One of your legs hooks over his shoulder as he leans back, changing the angle completely. The first thrust punches a moan from your throat, it's all so much deeper now, his grip tightening on your thigh as he fucks into you with slow, deliberate rolls of his hips.

"Fuck," he grits out. "You take me so damn good."

Your hips rise to meet his thrusts, desperate for more, and the way your body clenches around him nearly makes Bucky lose it. His rhythm falters, a groan ripping from his throat. 

"Fuck—you get so tight when I fuck you like this." He leans back just enough to let his gaze drop between you, his cock glistening with your slick as he drives into you again.  "Go on, baby, look at it. You see that? Not a virgin anymore. Now you're all mine—you and this sweet pussy."

You're drowning in pleasure, barely coherent, but one word claws its way out of your throat.

"Harder."

Bucky obliges immediately, his thrusts snapping into you, the slap of skin echoing in the room. His fingers dig into your hips hard enough to bruise, his breath coming in ragged bursts. 

"Mm, wonder how I should give you your first load," he growls, voice thick with lust. "Should I pull out and paint that soft tummy? Or maybe these tits?" 

He palms your breast roughly, thumb flicking over your nipple. "Maybe I should put you on your knees and cum all over your pretty face—"

"No!" You tighten your legs around him, pulling him deeper with a frantic whimper. "Please—"

He chuckles darkly, sinking into you fully with a satisfied groan. "What, you want it inside?" 

His next thrust is punishing, forcing a broken moan from your lips. "Sweet little pussy’s never been fucked before, and now she wants to be filled too?" His hand slides down to grip your ass, tilting your hips just right. "Greedy little thing."

You can only nod helplessly, your body wound tight around him, clenching and begging as Bucky fucks you toward over edge all over again. Even after he spills inside you, Bucky can't stop, won't stop, his hips grinding slow and filthy, milking every last drop deep into your fluttering cunt. His hands slide under your knees, folding you nearly in half, pressing your thighs toward her chest until you're spread obscenely open.

"Fuck, still so tight," he growls, watching where you're joined—his cock still buried to the hilt, your pussy dripping around him. "Touch yourself. Wanna feel you come again while I'm still inside you."

Your fingers shake as you rub frantic circles over your clit, oversensitive and whimpering, but you don't stop, can't stop. Bucky groans at the way your walls ripple around him, his thrusts turning shallow and possessive, forcing his cum to seep even deeper.

"That's it," he rasps, biting the side of your leg. "Make a mess for me."

You practially sob as you cum again, tears rolling down the sides of your face, cream mixing with his spend, leaking down to your ass as your body is overcome with wave after wave of pleasure. Bucky curses when he feels it, hot pulses of you squeezing him and suddenly he's hard again, slamming into you with a snarl as another orgasm rips through him.

Your legs tremble in his grip. Neither of you can move anymore, just wrecked and sticky and full, but Bucky still rocks into you lazily, refusing to pull out just yet.

"Fuckin' perfect," he mutters against your lips as he gently sets your legs down, your mixed spend leaking from your thighs.

The room soon goes quiet in a soft, yet heavy way. You feel your chest loosen with something new, something warm and gooey.

The lamp is still on. It turns everything gentle around the edges—the rumpled sheets, the scattered clothes on the floor, the faint sheen of warmth still clinging to both of you like the night hasn’t fully let go yet.

Bucky moves first, carefully untangling himself from the sticky warmth of your bodies pressed together. He leans over the side of the bed, rummaging blindly until he finds his pants on the floor, tugging them closer with a quiet huff.

“You stay right there,” he murmurs without looking back at you.

You’re already curled slightly into the sheets, watching him with tired eyes that still look soft around the edges, calm in a way that feels new.

He finds his shirt and brings it over to you, then pauses, thinking.

“Water,” he says to himself like it’s a mission.

He disappears into the small kitchen. You hear cabinets open, the faint clink of a glass, water running. When he comes back, he’s got a glass in one hand and something folded in the other.

He sets the water beside you first.

“Here,” he says gently.

You take it without protest, sipping carefully. Then he unfolds the cloth—damp, warm from the sink.

You blink at him. “What’s that?”

“For you,” he says simply.

And then, softer, “Just… stay still a second.”

He cleans your skin with careful hands, unhurried, like it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to be this gentle after everything. Like there’s no rush anywhere. Like the whole night has slowed down just for this.

You watch him instead of the ceiling now, he notices.

“Stop lookin’ at me like that,” he mutters.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m doin’ something impressive.”

You smile faintly. “You are.”

That makes him pause for half a second, just long enough to look at you properly again. Then he shakes it off, like he doesn’t trust himself to sit in that feeling too long.

“Stay,” he says again, softer, and gets up.

This time he’s gone longer. When he comes back, there’s a cigarette tucked between his fingers and a lighter in his pocket. He pauses at the edge of the bed like he suddenly remembers something.

“…Can I smoke in here?” he asks, already sounding like he knows the answer.

You tilt your head slightly, thinking. “Probably not.”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “That a no?”

“A probably no.”

He nods like he respects that, then immediately does it anyway but not in a careless way. He walks to the window, opens it wide, letting in the cool night air. The city noise spills in—distant traffic, laughter somewhere far below.

He leans out slightly, lights the cigarette, and inhales once before exhaling into the open air. You watch him from the bed, curious despite yourself.

“That smells… strong,” you say.

Bucky glances over his shoulder. “Yeah. That’s the point.”

A pause, then you sit up a little. “Can I try?”

That makes him turn fully now.

“Doll,” he says slowly, like he’s deciding whether to be responsible or curious.

You just look at him expectantly.

He exhales through his nose. “Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He crosses back to the bed, hands it over carefully. You take it like it’s something delicate as he watches you.

“Just… small inhale,” he instructs gently. “Not like you’re drinkin’ air.”

You try and immediately cough. Bucky laughs softly, not teasing, just amused and leans in quickly, patting your back once.

“Easy,” he says. “Easy, sweetheart.”

You glare at him between coughs. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah,” he agrees easily. “It is.”

But you still try again, more carefully this time, and he guides you with quiet patience until you manage it without immediately dissolving into another fit of coughing.

“There you go,” he murmurs, almost proud.

You hand it back to him, shaking your head slightly. He takes another drag, then leans back against the windowsill while you curl into the sheets again, watching him instead of the ceiling now.

After a moment, you let out a small laugh to yourself.

Bucky notices immediately. “What?”

You shake your head, still smiling. “Nothing.”

“That’s never true.”

You glance up at him, amused. “I was just thinking… I’ve had brandy, cigarettes, and lost my virginity all in one night.”

Bucky freezes for half a second, then exhales a laugh, low and disbelieving.

“…Yeah?” he says. “Well. How d'ya feel?”

You nod, still smiling like you can’t quite believe it yourself. “I think I’ve been corrupted by Bucky Barnes.”

That gets him fully now, he turns toward you properly, cigarette forgotten for a moment in his hand.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, a little softer now. “What’s the verdict?”

You look at him for a long beat, not a hint of shyness glinted in your eyes.

“I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Bucky’s expression softens in a way that has nothing to do with charm and everything to do with something deeper settling into place.

He puts the cigarette out and tosses it out the window, crawling across the bed to you, and leans down just enough to catch your face in his hand.

“You’re trouble,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your lips.

You smile against him. “You were trouble first. I was sweet as can be."

What caught his attention, however, was the content of the letter. It was short, and you have never been one to count your words. It pleaded for help throughout three quarters of it. You urged him to come to you at your family’s house. At the bottom, your signature. This time, with a different surname.

Bucky clenched his jaw, suppressing the anger that had no right being there. He had no right to you; he never had any. Not in the way he would have wanted to. You were a fine lady with a good name. Bucky knew that was going to happen from the day he left.

He had pinned a note to the tree you used to hang out by. The one that was just far enough away from town for anyone to notice the two of you were together. He knew you would find it soon after. After all, you were supposed to meet him there every Tuesday at two. It had hurt him more than he could have ever put into words, but deep down, he knew he had to do so.

Your father had caught him walking near your house a few weeks prior. A sight all too suspicious. Bucky’s hair was a mess and boots were muddy. His hands had calluses, and the gun at his hip said a lot more about him than he would have liked.

To make matters worse, he was still holding one of your lockets in his hand. ‘Sell it,' you had told him. Opening his fingers with a tenderness that had made him want to kiss you all afternoon long. Bucky had truly wanted to say no, but those eyes of yours had rendered him weak.

His note had said nothing about that interaction with your father. He had blamed it all on himself and hoped you would hate him for it.

Four years later, he had encountered the odd chance of seeing you again. Just as if it were a matter of fate, Bucky and his gang found themselves to be closer to your hometown than they had been in years. Bucky Barnes was not a selfish man. Certainly not when it came to you. Doing what any other man in their right mind would do if the woman they still likely were in love with sent a letter asking for their help, he took his horse on an early morning, taking the road to ruin.

The porch of your house and its subsequent door were a sight that had never failed to frighten Bucky. All too pristine against the likes of a man like him. The top window to the right was the one in your room. He had pretended not to stare at it while making excuses to walk by one too many times.

The wood creaked under his weight, and he hoped to God it would be you who opened the door when he knocked. Bucky did not have a speech prepared in case he came to stand face-to-face with your father. He took his hat off and held it on his hands, fiddling with the rebel strands that had started to fight their way out after being worn for so long.

Slowly but with certainty, the door opened. The bigger the gap between the door and the wall, the more he got to see of you. Once fully revealed, Bucky’s heart nearly tripped over itself. The air was sucked out of his lungs, and he could have sworn he felt almost lightheaded. You had grown a thousand times more beautiful.

When you smiled at him, bright and hopeful, he remembered exactly why he had come to you. “James, you truly are here.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You sent a letter. What else was I supposed to do?”

You laughed, and it sounded just like he recalled: warm, in a way that swallowed him whole. “You were always a much better man than you liked to admit.”

“If you say so. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

“No, I could never,” you admitted almost proudly. Even if you attempted to, he was observant enough to catch it right away. He had done so more than once. Like that one time you had sworn it hadn’t been you who had given his horse a brand-new saddle.

“How are you, James? How is Steve?” you prompted, taking a step forward and closing the door behind you.

“I’m good, I always am. Steve’s still Steve, trying to keep us all afloat with sheer willpower. I swear his heart is too good for this life.”

You nodded. “Is Sam still giving you a hard time?”

He laughed. Oh, how things had changed. “Not anymore. We worked things out.”

“I don’t believe it,” you nearly scoffed, crossing your arms. For a second there, Bucky could have almost ignored everything else. How nice would it have been to just spend his time with you as carelessly as he had once done.

“Enough about me, though.” Bucky’s tone turned serious. “How’s… how’s that new husband of yours? He treats you alright?”

You closed your eyes and crossed your arms, almost shielding yourself from reality. “Actually, James, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” You looked around before opening the door to your house again. “Come inside. My father won’t be home until the afternoon.”

The house was everything he had thought it would be. You made him take a seat and poured him a glass of high-end, aged bourbon that he was certain cost more than half the things he owned combined.

“I’m a widow, James… there is no more husband.”

Bucky paused before he could even bring the drink to his lips. That bastard had the nerve to marry you and get himself killed. His gut told him this conversation was leading nowhere good.

“That’s why I came back here, to my father’s home. My husband…he owed a lot of money. His death didn’t erase his debts. It only transferred them onto me.”

“Goddamnit.” Bucky cursed—cursed your husband, the man he owed money to; himself; the universe; and everything and everyone. “Who does he—who do you—owe money to?

“Brock Rumlow.” It was loud enough for him to listen, and God, did he wish he had heard any other name.

Rumlow had fame, and for all the wrong reasons. Bucky was no saint, but he had honour, and he had a code. He stole, yes. But always from filthy rich men who could have easily survived with one less bag of gold. His gang robbed banks, not widows. If Bucky had it his way, he would shoot him right in the eye the first chance he got. Which would be certainly unwise, given that Rumlow had as many allies as he had enemies.

He leaned back on his wooden chair, stretching his legs out and crossing his arms. “Alright, alright. What do you want me to do, sweetheart? ‘Cause I ain’t excatly in the position to go and shoot a man like him.”

“I… I don’t know, James,” you stuttered. You hadn’t necessarily thought that far ahead. Rumlow had come to you not too long ago. He had knocked on your door with feigned grief, quickly switching topics to that of your late husband’s money debts. You were a woman with no money of your own, daughter to a man who barely was able to get himself away from the drinks and go to work. See it as you had no way to pay him back; he had made an offer.

“He asked me to marry him.” You spat out bluntly, nearly sending Bucky into the second coma of the morning. “If I can’t pay him, I have to be his wife. Clean his house and help carry his blood-soaked legacy.”

“You can’t do that.” Bucky was almost desperate. He had always known you would marry someone else, which ended up being true. He hoped that, in his time alive, your husband had been able to provide you with the love and the life you deserved. But this? Marrying Brock Rumlow was something he would not have at all. He was a wretched man, and Bucky’s blood boiled at the mere thought of what he could do to you.

“That is why I called you. I may be a widow, and I may have no money of my own. But I am still a woman with dignity. I will not marry that man. I can’t—“ The hints of desperation in your words were the final blow. Bucky was a fool, one who would have done anything you had asked him to.

Your voice also carried that air of feistiness that he had once so adored. You had never been one to ask for much, but you had always known your worth.

Bucky placed his drink down and held his head with both hands, resting his elbows on the table. His thumb ran a few circles between his eyebrows. “That just makes things more complicated, doesn’t it?”

“I know it may be too much to ask—“

He cut you off before you could continue. “No, it’s not. I’ll see what I can do.”

You stood up from your seat in one swift and grateful move. “Will you really?”

Bucky nodded. He would have done anything for you. “Thank you, James!” You exclaimed. “Truly, thank you.”

He smiled, earnest just like him. “Listen to me. If that bastard tries anything at all, you let me know. We have a camp set up not too far from town. I’ll be here on my first chance. Until then, be careful.”

Bucky stood up, too. You smiled back at him when he tipped his hat before sliding it on again. You walked him to the door, holding it open for him and ignoring that familiar flutter that had risen again in both of your hearts.

Bucky returned to his camp with a loaded conscience and an even heavier heart. He dragged his boots through the dirt, kicking rocks and sticks like a lost boy. The hair that he had tried to tame before visiting you was now sticking out in all the wrong directions. God knows how many times he had pulled at it on his way back.

It was all useless. He had to think of a plan, and quickly. Times were rough for both of you. The gang were always short on money, and they couldn’t afford to stay in one place for too long. He had to find a way to help you out before the local sheriff realised that Bucky’s face looked all too familiar. Wanted and bounty posters of him and his gang were painted in towns all across the country.

“Buck”, a voice called out, pulling him out of his nervous trance. It was Steve.

“Mhm?” He replied, halfway irritated. The last thing he needed was to be sent to blow up another bridge seventy miles to the west.

“Are you done staring at the ground like it’s the cause of all our problems? We could use some help over there.”

“I’m sorry, pal, bad day.” Bucky muttered, finally looking up.

“You went into town. You know you shouldn’t do that.” Steve was right. Walking in there in broad daylight could only lead to trouble.

Bucky scoffed and rolled his eyes. He was no child, he had more experience with that life than Steve himself. Steve had no right to tell him what to do, even if he was stating the truth.

Then again, that was his best friend. If there was anyone who Bucky had told about you, it had been him. Steve had been the one to hand him a drink and pat his back when they had run away. He had supported him through his silent heartbreak when the world had suddenly turned bleak.

“She… she wrote me a letter, Steve. She needs my help.”

That certainly caught Steve’s attention, and he walked closer to whisper the next part. “She needs your help? What happened?”

“Brock Rumlow, that bastard happened.” Bucky was barely able to keep his anger contained in a whisper. His hand tightened into a fist, and his jaw tightened. “He’s after her. Her late husband owed him money. Now he wants her to marry him as a payoff.”

Steve frowned. He knew how much you mattered to Bucky, even after all this time. They would find a way; they would help you. “Any idea how?”

“The way I see it, we've got two choices, and both of them are absolutely terrible. I either shoot him in the head or take her with us.” As appealing as both options were to him, he knew it was reckless. You lived a comfortable life until a few months ago; you surely would not want to run off with your gunslinger ex-lover, would you?

“We have to think this through, Buck. I want to help you help her, but we can’t be careless right now.”

“I know, I know…” He sighed. “I’ll find a way. I have to.”

Time started moving slowly after that. The missions, the robberies, and the errands – they all stretched endlessly. Bucky had, for a very long time, been the first to throw himself headfirst into danger. He was skilled at what he did; nobody wielded a gun and a knife. the way he did.

Since your letter, though, he had seemed to quiet down. Perhaps he had found again a reason not to risk himself without purpose. He had, after all, made you a promise. Every day, he had to come to camp in one piece.

He had agreed to do jobs on his own—sixty per cent of the income he would get to keep; the remaining percent went to camp. That was how he slowly started gathering the money to, hopefully, be able to give it to you.

With the care that was needed, he visited town. He rode slowly and with his head down. He nodded politely at everyone who walked by. Bucky became a casual regular to the point where the average citizen did not question his sight.

He knocked on your front door at the same time he always did. Right when he knew you were home alone with nobody to spot him. He held a thick envelope in his hands, one with roughly a hundred dollars – not nearly enough to pay off your debt, but the most he could do for now.

You opened the door quickly and hurried him in. Over time, you had grown more accustomed to the sight of each other. The four years in which you had been apart seemed entirely unimportant. More and more, you wished you had never grown apart.

“I brought you some money. It’s all I could do.” Bucky handed you the envelope with a sheepish smile.

“Thank you a lot, James. Truly.” As much as your heart loved him, you could not manage to form a full smile.

“Don’t mention it…” Bucky paused, his eyes lingering on the way you hugged your arms close to your chest. Your fingers pulled on the sleeves of your dress, and your face was stained with something he couldn’t describe, but he knew signalled nothing good.

“He’s pressuring you, ain’t he?” Bucky wasn’t really asking. He took a step closer, and his hands hovered over your body. He had to remind himself multiple times that holding you was a bad idea, that you surely would not want that, and that it would lead to trouble.

“It’s alright. Don’t worry, please. I’m already asking so much of you. I will manage.” You looked away, hiding all the pain and all the fear. Rumlow had visited more than once, with too many drinks in his system and a pair of hands that wandered where they shouldn’t.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky murmured, fully allowing the pet name to slip past his lips. “Don’t be ashamed to ask for my help. After all the trouble I caused you, this is the least I could do.”

“Cause me trouble?” Your head shot back up, lifting your eyebrows in confusion. “When have you ever caused me trouble?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Getting you involved with me. Romantically. It was a bad idea, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

He watched as your face fell. Confusion turned into sadness, and Bucky had never once regretted his words more than in that moment. “You… you regret me? Us?”

“No—God, no,” Bucky exclaimed desperately. “Never, not once. You’re the best thing I’ve ever had. I had never loved anyone like that until I met you.”

He meant it. The only women he had held dear had been his mother and sister, who he would much rather not talk about. He had closed himself off after that, only sometimes letting Steve in. Until he met you, with your sharp wit behind the face of the proper city lady. Who had both managed to kiss him fervently and tenderly at the same time, who had looked at him like he was worthy.

“Then what did you mean? Because I look back at those times almost daily. Nobody ever listens to me the way you do, James.”

“I meant that I am sorry that I caused you trouble. I angered your family because I was foolishly in love with a woman who was beyond what I deserved.”

You sighed with tenderness and placed one of your hands over his. “My marriage would happen either way. Phillip was a decent husband, but he was not you. He never knew me like you did, and he never made me feel as whole as you did. Please, do not ever regret us.”

Against anything rational, he shook his head and dropped it against your forehead with his eyes closed. “Never. I’m sorry I ran away without a word.”

“That is alright. I knew you would. I saw the way you hesitated during our last meetings before that.” Your hand cupped his face, and your thumb brushed against the scar on his cheekbone.

He kissed your head and stripped himself away from your arms, despite how much every inch of him yelled for him to stay by your side. “I have to go. The gang needs me back.”

You nodded, squeezing his hand before letting go. “Of course.” You walked him to the door, and before saying goodbye, you spoke a few final words. “I wouldn’t mind if you took me with you. Away from this hell. I always wanted to see the world.”

Bucky smirked. “You crazy woman.”

Hope began to grow in both your hearts. You had finally made peace, apologised for the things that had bothered you, and even shared a moment. A part of Bucky even hoped that you would resume things and be together, like he had always dreamt of doing.

Bucky foolishly allowed himself to relax. A man like him should have known better. Nothing in life comes for free—certainly not happiness. He let his guard down, and soon enough, things took a turn for the worse.

Bucky woke up that morning with a heavy feeling in his gut. He was cold and sweating. His chest felt tight. He had not slept well and had not rested. He was too worried thinking about you. You had not sent a letter in an entire week, and between running errands for his camp, Bucky had not been able to visit you.

That very same morning, Bucky could not shake the haunting feeling of dread that surrounded everything he did. It all felt wrong. Too wrong. He couldn’t take a bite to eat and couldn’t drink any of the coffee that had been brewed.

He moved like a ghost through the tents, dragging his feet and trying not to wake those who were still blessed with sleep. Crouching down by the river that the campsite had been built around, Bucky splashed droplets of cold water on his face. He blinked once and twice. No change; he still felt inexplicably anxious.

When he could no longer stand it, he walked to his horse. She was huffing, moving her head and brushing her hoof against the dirt. “You feel it, too, huh? You think we should check on her? Just to be safe.”

The horse brushed her head against Bucky’s open palm. “Thought so.”

By the time Bucky arrived at your house, the sun was almost at the middle of the sky. The ride had taken much longer than he would like.

Not much time went by until his worst nightmares were confirmed. The door to your house was halfway open. He stepped in cautiously, his hand already hovering around the gun on his hip. Bucky held his breath and prayed for the best.

Inside, the chairs around the table were scattered. One had fallen to the ground sideways, and the other rested haphazardly against the wall. He felt the crunch of broken glass beneath his boots and turned his head to the side to find a shattered vase on the floor next to the bookshelf.

Bucky called out your name and received no response at all. The remaining rooms were also empty. Your bed hadn’t been made, which was unlike you. Bucky’s chest felt tighter by the second. Each door he opened, each curtain he turned, he hoped to find you behind.

When his search came to a futile end, he took the door through the back. Behind your house was a field. It led out into a quiet road, the side of town that nobody ever visited. Bucky followed a trail of shoe prints that went further up a hill.

Bucky knew you, and Bucky knew you well. His instincts were all confirmed when he saw your figure being dragged away by Rumlow. You kicked your feet, trying to land a hit on one of his legs.

“Don’t you touch me!” You yelled when he pulled at your hand with his fingers so tight it made your wrist hurt.

Bucky’s heart was in his throat. His mind hadn’t caught up with his feet, and he was already running. He should have known; of course, he should have. Things with you had been going too smoothly for what was normal.

With all the air in his lungs and the desperation of a lover, Bucky screamed. “Stop right there.”

His gun was already out, pointing at the man he had once thought wise not to kill. Your head turned in his direction immediately, eyes widening in hope and horror. You were tired and teary-eyed but determined. Seeing Bucky only made you fight harder to wiggle your way out.

“This is none of your business,” Rumlow spits out, stopping dead in his tracks. “She owes me money. I’m just taking what’s mine.”

Bucky’s heart was racing, and his mind could not form a single rational thought. All he wanted to do was to put a bullet through the man’s chest, have him drop cold on the ground, bleed out and suffer for all the pain he had caused you.

And the heart never cares about rationality. The heart only wants, and Bucky wanted you. In his right as one of the West’s most feared outlaws, he did as he desired. In a movement Rumlow had not been able to foresee, with the precision of an arrow, he landed a bullet right at the centre of his chest.

Rumlow dropped to the ground with a groan. Taking your chance, you ran. You could only run a few steps before your body finally caught up with the moment. You stumbled on the grass, and Bucky sprinted your way.

He placed a warm hand on your shoulder and tugged you close. You were trembling, crying with wide eyes as your head fell against his shoulder. Bucky hushed you, wiping your tears away with a broken heart. “You’re alright. It’s over. You’re safe.”

You shook your head. “It is everything but alright, James. That man—“ Bucky could see the way you bristled behind your anguish. “He killed my father! Came right through the front door and stabbed him before taking me.”

The comforting facade Bucky was trying to put up for you fell. The situation had escalated to a point he had never expected. He had once believed that paying off your debt would be enough; what a fool he had been.

“Oh, sweetheart.” He pulled you into the tightest of hugs. His arms wrapped around your body, embracing you as though trying to mould your body into his. His lips pressed a kiss to your hair and whispered an apology.

Once he felt your breathing had quietened, he spoke. “Is there any family I can take you to?”

“Must you always be that daft?” It was almost a reproach. When would he ever ask what you had wanted him to ask since you had met him?

“I don’t follow.”

“You saved my life, James. You’ve played enough of a righteous hero.” You stared right into his baby-blue eyes as you spoke. “I don’t want to go anywhere that is not with you. Stop pulling away from me.”

Bucky was dumbfounded. Never in his life had he believed it possible. It seems like he had been effective enough at convincing himself that you would never want a life with him. “Do you mean that, sweetheart? Or is it just the adrenaline talking?”

“I mean it. Truly and wholly. I love you.”

The widest of smiles broke through Bucky’s face like the first rays of sunlight after a long storm. His hands cupped your cheeks, and he pulled you into a kiss. You returned it instantly. The hand that you placed over his chest sent shivers down his spine and only made him kiss you harder.

You pulled away to catch your breath, and he pulled you back in at the first chance he got. One of his hands wandered, tracing a slow path from your face to your waist, lingering in a spot that made your head spin.

Bucky pulled away and leant down to kiss your neck. “I love you, too. And that definitely ain’t the adrenaline talking, either.” He murmured between desperate kisses.

You laughed and laced your fingers through the back of his head, pulling him closer. Bucky kissed like a drowned man gasping for air. He had just been granted the keys to the heaven he had always wished for—you, in his arms, forever.

“You mean it? You’re ready to come with me?” He was only starting to catch his breath as he spoke. The lack of oxygen was nothing against the sheer joy that coursed through every vein in his body.

You took his hand into yours and interlocked your fingers. “I spent four years wishing that you had asked this. I will not back down now that I have the chance to be with you.”

With that, Bucky kissed you again, knowing that right there, a new life was starting.

A/N: Here it goes! I loved writing this piece. This AU became so, so dear to me. The start of this fic was heavily inspired by Mary and Arthur from RDR2, because I wish they had also ended up together. I hope that you enjoyed it.