Cassie

The screen flickered with one of those shows she watched. People acting out things that weren't real, to tell stories.

Humans were strange.

In the box, a couple sat across from each other at a small table, candles and glasses between them. The woman laughed at something the man said. He poured her wine. Flowers sat crammed into a glass jar at the center of the table, already dying but arranged to hide it.

Bucky frowned.

"Why are they there?" he asked, chin tipped toward the screen.

He watched the way the man's hand moved, deliberate, not reaching but inviting. The woman's smile shifted, softer. It wasn't the same as what he and she did. When they sat together, it was without ritual. Without this careful performance of interest.

She glanced up, following his gaze. "The dinner? It's a date."

The word meant nothing on its own, but the picture did. Two people, seated face to face, offering each other food and wine, suggestive words and intent body language. He knew of that, in another shape…

"Why?" he pressed.

"Why, what?"

"The purpose." His voice came out more demanding than he meant. "Of sitting like that. The food, the flowers. What are they after? Are they friends or is it a couple’s thing?" he still struggled to understand where the line was drawn between friendship and claim. It irritated him, the way they blurred what his kind made clear.

She laughed, not unkindly, more at the way he'd said it, like he was cross-examining a suspect.

"There's no big purpose, Bucky. It's just... getting to know each other. Spending time together. Showing the other person you care, that you put effort into the moment." She shrugged. "Sometimes it's at the start, when you first begin seeing someone. Sometimes couples keep doing it years later. So they don't lose that."

So they don't lose that.

Lose what? he wanted to ask. But his tongue felt heavy, suddenly too clumsy for the question forming in his mind.

He went quiet, eyes still fixed on the screen, where the fictional man tucked a strand of hair behind the woman's ear and produced a small box with some earrings.

The woman gasped, hands flying to her mouth. Bucky's fingers tightened on her thigh, irritated by the sound -too sharp, too rehearsed- but something else moved beneath his skin, older than annoyance.

Something felt wrong.

They'd shared breakfasts at the kitchen table, dinners, spent entire afternoons pressed together beneath blankets, talking, watching television until she fell asleep against him, but that wasn't the same thing.

Humans seemed to assign meaning to the circumstances rather than the act itself.

His own sought someone apt out once a year, met what the body demanded, and each returned to their own dark after, alone, needing nothing from the other until the next season.

What he felt about her, and her for him, had no name in his tongue. No protocol. No elder to ask how it was done right, how you kept a human who needed things he could not feel the need for.

He thought, suddenly, of the Valentine’s Day situation. The pink foil chocolate. The presents in the market. His own frustration afterward, lying alone beneath cold water while trying to understand gifts, offerings, and fish that carried stones to impress a mate.

He had not given her anything that day.

I could have, he thought bitterly. I could have found something, but I chose not to.

His jaw clenched.

The couple on the screen kissed. The camera pulled back, showing other couples at other tables, a room full of humans performing the same ritual with slight variations.

"We've never had one," he murmured.

She blinked. The hand that had been tracing lazy patterns on his chest stilled. "Never had... what?"

"A date." The word felt foreign, too small for the weight he was giving it. "What they are doing. The ritual. We've never..."

He didn't finish. Couldn't find the words for what they had done instead, afternoons on the beach, in the nest, the occasions when he held her through asthma attacks, and she held him through haunting memories. None of it had been framed. None of it had been for something.

She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Hmm that’s true. We never had one."

It wasn’t a reproach. Just acknowledgment. But he heard reproach anyway, or maybe he heard his own voice saying it for her.

He shifted, uncomfortable, his hand retreating from her thigh to grip the edge of the cushion beneath them. "Would you like to?" The question came out forced, scraped from somewhere low in his throat. "Having… this date thing."

She smiled. That smile that always seemed to know something he didn't. "Bucky, that’s not necessary right now. We are together-"

"But would you like to?" He interrupted her. Hated doing it, but the words not necessary had stuck him like a barb. As if what they had was sufficient, as if she was tolerating his lack of courtship abilities. "Not 'need to.' Like to."

She looked at him. And he saw something shift in her expression, the amusement becoming something more careful, more serious.

“That we go out in a more… human way?" she said, slower.

He nodded once. Rigidly.

She hesitated. Not long -a breath, maybe two- but he noticed it.

"Yes," she said. "I would like to."

He should have felt relief. He felt terror instead.

She must have felt something shift in him -the way his body went still, the way his hand had stopped its lazy path over her leg. She looked up at him, her head tilting slightly.

"Bucky?"

He forced his jaw to unclench. "Yes."

She studied him for a moment, then reached up and touched his cheek, her palm warm against the tension in his jaw.

"We don't have to do anything elaborate," she said softly. "I just... I'd like to do something with you. That's all."

He nodded. Didn't trust his voice.

----

She fell asleep against him eventually, the way she always did, her breathing slowing into the rhythm he knew better than his own heartbeat. He didn't sleep after turning the television off, just stayed awake, staring at nothing, his mind churning.

More human.

The phrase turned like a current, pulling him toward depths he didn't know how to navigate.

What could he offer that wasn't already given? his body, his time, his fierce and unwavering attention?

Money? He had none. Food? He could hunt, but most of the things he could bring her would probably be unfit. Besides, they had eaten together hundreds of times. Was a date simply "eating but with candles"? Was the candle what made the difference?

A restaurant. He'd seen a couple in town when he tagged along with her while shopping for groceries. Lights, tables, people sitting while others served them. The concept had seemed absurd then. It still did. But she had smiled at the screen when the couple entered.

His hand closed into a fist on the cushion.

Objectively -he forced himself to think it, because his kind was nothing if not objective about status- he was a worthy male. The mating mark on his arm proved it, the ink extending past what most achieved. He had survived capture, magic, the war they forced him to wage. He had dealt with those who attacked him while looking for Steve, alone, unarmed, with nothing but what nature had given him.

For his species, that was enough. More than enough, actually. It was superiority.

But she was not his species.

And when she spoke of "effort," of "showing you care," of "putting time into the moment", none of those things required physical traits or abilities. They required something he couldn't name.

Where did he fit in human standards?

He listened for hours while she spoke of things he barely understood: her customers, knitting patterns, shipping policies of some digital platform. He had learned to make toast, to tolerate shoes, to sit in a car that vibrated wrong against his nerves.

The sex was good, that was unquestionable. But she had said once, casually, that for humans sex wasn't enough.

He felt cold suddenly.

Because what else did he do, really? He couldn't buy her things. Couldn't take her to places. Couldn't give her the kind of life that humans built with houses and plans and futures that stretched beyond the next tide. What he could give didn't translate into human currency.

And he had seen what happened to males who couldn't provide in the ways their mates needed in other species. They were left behind.

She stirred against him, murmuring something unintelligible. His hand moved automatically to her hair, caressing it, soothing her back to stillness. The gesture was unconscious now.

That, he thought. That is effort. Learning her. Adapting to her.

But would she see it that way? Would any human?

He looked at the darkened television, then down at his mate sleeping against his chest, completely trusting, her body relaxed in a way no one ever had been with him.

She had chosen him. Was choosing him still, every day she came back to the shore, every night she let him into her house, her nest, her warmth.

I have never shown her that I keep choosing with a gesture. I have simply... stayed.

The thought sat heavy as stone in his chest.

He didn't know if that was enough.

But he knew he couldn't keep asking her to settle for what he didn't understand.

He would learn. He would watch. He would find out what humans needed from each other when they sat across a table with candles and flowers and offered each other their time.

Even if it felt like performing. Even if it made him feel like a creature wearing a skin that didn't fit.

Because she had said yes. And that meant he had to try.

----

A couple of days passed after that.

Not that she noticed anything unusual… not at first. Bucky still came to the cottage, still took up his space on the couch, helped with some things. But his mind was elsewhere, turning like an undertow, circling the same problem from every angle.

She had to sleep, eventually. He didn't always. And those dead hours, when her breathing slowed, and her body went slack against his in the bed, became his window.

The movies.

Not the ones she picked for them to watch together; those had complicated plots and dialogue he couldn't quite track. No. Bucky waited until she was asleep, then took the remote and searched for the ones that seemed to show what people did to impress each other.

The first two nights were frustrating. The movies showed men bringing flowers -he didn't know where to get flowers, or what kind- or reserving tables in places with dim lights – also he had no coin-, or saying things that sounded rehearsed and false.

Is that what she expects? That I pretend to be someone I'm not?

But on the third night, he found a different movie.

A woman walked along a beach at night. Moonlight silvered the water, and then the sea began to glow. Blue. A blue that moved with the waves, that lit up where her feet touched the shore.

Bucky sat up slowly on the couch.

That, he thought. I can do that.

There wasn’t a male there accompanying her, but the woman on screen laughed, spread her arms, spun in the darkness while the water around her flickered like the sea was alive.

He knew where to find that blue. He'd seen it before, floating on the surface like scattered stars.

He would need something to carry it back.

He could already imagine her face. The way her eyes would widen. The sound she'd make, that soft breath she let out when something surprised her in a good way.

He would make her make that sound.

----

The dairy aisle was cold enough to raise goosebumps on her arms, but she lingered there anyway, hand hovering over the butter display.

She grabbed one pack, then paused. Her fingers twitched. She reached for a second pack, then a third, then caught herself and laughed under her breath.

He's going to eat all of this in three days.

She tossed the extra packs into the cart anyway; the butter budget was just part of her life now. She pushed the cart forward, past the yogurts and the cheeses, but her mind had already drifted.

Four days now. She'd noticed a change in him, subtle but unmistakable. He was still there, still present, but something was different.

His silences felt heavier. His eyes would drift to the window when he thought she wasn't looking, and there was a tension in his jaw that hadn't been there before. His hand, which used to find hers instinctively, now rested still on his own thigh. Like he was waiting for something. Or preparing for something.

Four nights, she thought again, he hasn't reached for me first. And coming from him, that was practically a scream.

She'd asked him about it, of course. Twice.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure? You seem-"

"I'm fine."

The second time, he'd said it with enough finality that she'd let it drop. But she hadn't stopped noticing.

She turned down the next aisle, grabbing a box of tea, -a new strawberry blend- and put it into the cart.

Maybe she was overthinking it. He wasn't exactly a talker. He showed things through actions, through presence, and sometimes, words didn't come easily to him. They never had.

But this felt different.

It wasn't the closed-off silence of someone hiding pain, or the distant quiet of someone lost in old thoughts. It was more like... he was somewhere else.

She paused at the end of the aisle, leaning on the cart for a moment, staring at a display of crackers without really seeing them.

Maybe it's the sea.

The thought surfaced before she could stop it, and once it was there, it wouldn't leave. She knew -had always known- that the ocean was part of him in ways she couldn't fully understand.

Not just his home, but his blood. His nature.

What if the restlessness she'd been sensing was something biological pulling at him from the deep?

What if he was trying to figure out how to tell her he needed to leave?

To swim far and deep, to follow whatever instinct was whispering to him?

She remembered what he'd told her, months ago, before they'd become anything. My kind doesn't attach; everything has a purpose. And though he'd changed, though he'd chosen to stay, what part of that nature still pulsed beneath his skin?

Her stomach churned.

Stop it, she told herself firmly. You're spiraling. He said he was fine.

She grabbed a box of crackers at random, threw it in the cart, and forced herself to keep moving. The checkout line was short. She paid, bagged her groceries, and walked out into the cold afternoon air.

The ride back to the cottage was quiet. The sky was overcast, the sea a dull grey, and the wind carried the smell of salt and wet stone. She let herself drift, still thinking about him, still turning over the same questions.

She'd asked him, once, if he ever missed the deeps. The places where the sun didn't reach, where the pressure was so great it would crush a human body. He'd said yes, but he'd said it like it didn't matter. Like she was more important than the ocean.

She'd believed him. She still believed him.

But that didn't mean the sea had stopped calling him.

She reached the cottage door and fumbled with her keys, nudging it open with her hip. The house was empty when she stepped inside.

No Bucky sprawled on the couch, no heavy presence in the kitchen eating toast. He'd said something about the sea yesterday. Feeling the pull. Needing to swim.

She'd nodded, not questioning it. She understood that part of him better than he probably realized. The sea was his home. His body needed it the way hers needed air.

But now, standing in the quiet kitchen, she felt the absence more sharply than she expected.

She unpacked the groceries slowly, putting the butter in the fridge, stacking the tea next to the kettle, folding the reusable bags and tucking them under the sink. Her movements were automatic, her mind elsewhere.

What if he's really trying to figure out how to leave?

The thought hit her like cold water, and she had to stop, her hands braced on the counter, breathing through it.

No. That's not who he is. That's not what we are.

But she'd seen the way he looked at the sea sometimes. The longing in his eyes, even when he was holding her. He'd spent decades alone, wandering, surviving. What if that part of him was too deep to change?

She wrapped her hands around the warm mug a few minutes later, staring out the window at the grey sea, and tried to convince herself she was being ridiculous.

He wasn't going anywhere.

He'd told her, in his own way, that she was his home now.

She had to trust that.

----

The dock was quiet the night of the recollection.

He'd swum the distance, moving through the dark water with the efficiency that only came from being in his element, silent and fluid as a shadow.

The swim had been easy. Almost relaxing, compared to what he was about to do.

He surfaced near the pilings, his head breaking the water in a slow, cautious rise. His eyes swept the dock, the fishing boats, the shore beyond. Empty. Good.

The transformation came quickly, quicker every time he did it, a familiar twist of bone and muscle, his limbs retracting and reshaping, his skin pulling tight over a form he'd never quite learned to love.

He bit back the sounds that wanted to escape his lips, the low grunts and hisses that always accompanied the shift.

It hurt.

It always hurt. But he was used to pain, and he didn't have time to dwell on it.

When it was done, he was human again. Naked and cold. The night air bit at his bare skin, raising goosebumps along his arms. Disgraceful.

He'd considered bringing clothes. Briefly. But the swim had been long, and he had quite the feat to perform after leaving the docks.

Besides, he'd assumed the place would be empty.

He pulled himself up onto the wooden planks, his bare feet silent against the damp surface. The wood was rough and splintered beneath his soles, and he moved carefully, scanning the shadows for any sign of movement.

A few fishing boats bobbed at their moorings, dark and empty. The air smelled of fuel and salt and the faint, rotting sweetness of bait left too long in the sun.

His naked body moved carefully, scanning the ground, then froze.

A sharp sting shot up from his foot. He looked down. A piece of broken glass, glinting in the dim light, buried in the pad of his heel.

He hissed through his teeth, pulling his foot up to inspect the damage. Blood welled dark against his skin.

"Fuck," he muttered, the word still foreign on his tongue but satisfying somehow. That was a human word he'd learned well.

He pulled the glass free -a small piece, nothing too deep- and pressed his thumb against the wound until the bleeding slowed. It would heal quickly. It always did.

But the irritation lingered.

This wouldn't have happened in the sea.

He limped forward a few steps, testing the weight on his foot, then dismissed it. He'd had worse. Much worse. A piece of glass was nothing.

He found what he came for near the end of the dock, a stack of discarded plastic barrels, the kind used for storing fish bait or industrial fluids. They were empty, smelled clean enough, with sealed lids that would keep all inside during the journey.

He tested one. It was large. Heavy, even empty. Carrying two would be a challenge.

He dragged them to the water's edge, then paused, looking out at the dark expanse of the sea.

He slipped into the water silently and shifted again, his limbs spreading wide, tasting the currents, orienting himself.

The barrels floated beside him. He wrapped two tentacles around each, securing them against his body, and began to swim.

The current was against him tonight, but he was stronger. The town faded behind him, then the coast, then the shallows, until he was alone in open water, the stars above and the darkness below.

He swam for hours. Past the fishing grounds, past the drop-off where the seabed fell away into nothing. The water grew colder. The current shifted, then stilled.

And then he saw it.

A faint glow on the horizon, spreading across the surface like a slow dawn. Blue. Electric. Alive.

He slowed, letting himself drift, watching it approach. The light was thick here, so dense it seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat. Thousands upon thousands of tiny organisms, each one a point of light, gathering in the warm currents to perform their silent, ancient dance.

He floated among them for a moment, surrounded by blue, and felt something in his chest loosen. This was his world. This was what he could offer.

Carefully, he uncapped one of the barrels and dipped it beneath the surface. The algae flowed in, glowing faintly, swirling like liquid starlight. He waited until the barrel was full, sealed it, and repeated the process with the second.

The weight was immense. Each barrel was heavy with water, and the distance back was just as far. But he'd carried heavier things. Two barrels of glowing water were nothing.

He turned and began the long swim back, the blue light trailing behind him like a phosphorescent wake. For a while, he let himself feel the satisfaction of making an effort.

By the time he reached the cave, his muscles were burning and the sky was beginning to lighten. He dragged the barrels onto the rock, his muscles burning with exhaustion, and looked at the pools where he'd planned to pour the glowing water.

The tide would reach them in a few hours. If he poured the algae now, it would be washed away before nightfall. All that effort, wasted.

He cursed under his breath, a low, frustrated sound.

He thought about the alcove they used in mating season, and with a final surge of effort, he hauled the barrels there.

His arms trembled with the strain, and his limbs ached from swimming for hours and carrying impossible weights.

He was done.

He let himself slide down into the deepest pool, the cool water enveloping his tired body, and he didn't even have the energy to find a comfortable position. His limbs went slack, his eyes closed, and he let the darkness take him.

----

He woke to the sound of water dripping and the soft gray light filtering through the cave's chimney.

His body was stiff, and his muscles protested as he stretched, uncoiling his limbs one by one. The exhaustion from the night before had settled into a dull ache, manageable but persistent.

The light told him it was late afternoon. Almost evening.

He cursed and dragged himself to grab the containers. Then, he uncapped them and began to work.

Once the last remaining of glowing water was poured, he stopped, breathing hard, and let himself look.

It was… beautiful. He'd known it would be.

The pools glowed softly, even with sunrays still entering from the mouth and the vents. The light reflected off the wet stone and danced across the ceiling. The cave was transformed. It wasn't the kind of beauty his kind usually made: functional, purposeful, built for survival. This was something else. Something that existed just to be seen.

He hoped she'd see it the way he did.

He then moved through the cave, gathering what he needed.

From the alcove he pulled the blankets. The ones she'd brought from the cottage, stored in plastic bags. The ones that still smelled like them, and from time to time, they still used.

He carried them to a flat section of rock near the glowing pools, where the surface was smooth enough to be comfortable, and spread them out with clumsy hands.

It wasn't a bed. Not really. But it was soft, and it was theirs.

Also, some things from the cottage that he took before departing for the lights.

The tupperware with the strawberries that he'd seen her pack the other day, rinsing them carefully, patting them dry with paper towels before putting them on the fridge.

He had doubted. They were hers, and he was taking things from her only to give them back as a gesture. It felt... wrong. Like stealing. Like he was pretending to offer something he hadn't earned.

Then he remembered what she'd said, weeks ago, when he'd hesitated to take food from her pantry.

"Bucky, you live here now. Half the time, anyway. You don't have to ask. It's our food."

Ours.

So he took the strawberries. And the wine, too, a bottle of white she'd bought for a dinner she never ended up making, forgotten in the back of the fridge. He didn't know if it was the right kind. He didn't know much about human wine at all.

But he'd seen it in the movies; it seemed important, and he wanted to get this right, so he had snatched a cooler, ice, and the bottle and gone out before she came back from wherever she was.

----

He stepped back and looked at the glowing pools, the blankets, the food.

It looked like something from one of those movies. Something magical. Something that said I thought about you. I planned this. You matter to me.

He felt a flicker of pride. Small, fragile, unfamiliar in this context.

Then he thought about the logistics.

He shouldn’t be just there, waiting for her to appear through the mouth of the cave by inspiration.

He'd have to go get her. Bring her here. And hope that when she saw what he'd done, she'd understand what he was trying to say.

He slid to one of the pools, looking at his work, and waited for the right time.

----

He waited until the sun was low, just before it slipped beneath the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple that made the sea look as if it were burning.

He climbed the path to the cottage with his heart beating harder than it should have been. Ridiculous. He'd faced a lot of things trying to kill him. Walking up a hill to knock on a door shouldn't make him feel like this.

Once at the door, he took a deep breath and let himself in.

She was wearing something he'd never seen before. A dress -not the comfortable things she wore around the house, not the practical clothes she wore to town. Something softer. Her hair was different, too, in a way that made her look almost like a different person.

He just… stared.

Humans, he thought, do this on purpose. They change their appearance to signal something.

She smiled when she saw him. That was good. Her eyes looked brighter than they had earlier, when he'd left. He'd been gone for almost two days, and she'd clearly been busy preparing for something.

Maybe she expected me to come back.

He hadn't told her he would. He never did. Some days he just... left and came back when the sea had released him. She never complained. Never asked where he'd been. She'd just open the door and let him in, like it was natural. Like she knew he would always come back.

He'd never told her he would.

She has no reason to expect me tonight, he realized. 

But she was dressed like she might meet someone.

"Hey," she said, closing the distance. "You're back."

"I said I would be."

He hadn't. But it felt true anyway.

She chuckled. A small, amused sound. "You didn't, actually. Still, I'm glad you're here." She glanced over her shoulder, into the house, and something in her expression flickered. "But… actually, I was just about to head out."

Something cold went down his spine.

"Head out?"

"Ian, Arthur's friend, the one from the town? He and his girlfriend invited me for drinks at the new pub. They've been trying to get me to go for some weeks now, knowing I don’t go out a lot." She shrugged, a little apologetically. "I figured I'd finally take them up on it. Since I didn't know when you'd be back."

Since I didn't know when you'd be back.

It was fair. Completely fair. He never told her. He never could tell her, because he didn't know himself. She understood that. She'd always understood that.

But right now, the understanding didn't help.

Because he knew that name. He remembered the half-eaten chocolate on her coffee table, the way his chest had twisted when he'd realized another male had given her an offering. On Valentine's Day. On a day meant for courtship.

He'd said nothing then. Had no right to say anything. They weren't anything. He'd told himself that over and over, had let himself drown in that denial for months.

But he remembered.

The one who gave her chocolate. The one who had a girlfriend, supposedly, but still gave offerings to another female. The one who, even now, was taking her out at night.

His jaw clenched.

"You're going out with him," he said. Flat. Controlled. The kind of control he'd learned to use when he was trying not to do something he'd regret.

Her brow furrowed. "With him and his girlfriend, Bucky. Both of them.

"You arranged to go out with him."

"I didn't arrange it. They invited me." She paused, and something in her expression shifted, a hint of wariness. "And I told you, his girlfriend is coming too. It's not-" She stopped, exhaled. "It's not what you think."

What I think.

He didn't know what he thought. Only that the name Ian had lodged itself somewhere in his stomach and was burning.

"The chocolate," he said. "On the human holiday. He gave you chocolate."

She stared at him. For a long moment, she didn't speak.

Then, slowly: "That was months ago, Bucky."

"I remember."

"That was different," she said quietly. "We weren't even-” she sighed. “Ian has a long-term partner," she repeated, firmer this time. "And I'm going out with both of them. Not just him. Both."

The emphasis was deliberate. He heard it.

But his blood didn't care. His blood was already moving, already readying itself for a fight that wasn't there.

He looked at her dress again. The soft fabric. The careful way she'd fixed her hair.

She dressed up for him. The thought came sharp and cruel. She dressed up to go out with the male who gave her an offering. Not for me.

And then, quieter: But I never gave her anything. Not on that day. Not when it mattered.

"You didn't tell me," he mumbled, "That you were going out with him."

"Because I didn't know when you'd be back. You don't have a phone, Bucky. You don't tell me when you're leaving or when you're coming back. I can't just sit here waiting; I have a life."

Again, it was reasonable. He knew it was.

But reason had nothing to do with the way he felt.

He'd been trying so hard to do the human thing. The date thing. The effort thing. He'd spent a day swimming and dragging heavy barrels through the sea, all so he could show her something beautiful, something that proved he'd thought about her, that she mattered.

And she was walking out the door.

The words left his mouth before he could stop them:

"I was going to give you a date," he said. The words came out rough, scraped. "Tonight. In the cave."

She went still.

"A date?"

"Yes." He forced himself to meet her eyes. "The human thing. The one we talked about. I was going to show you. But you are going out with him."

He couldn't say the name.

She stared at him. Her lips parted slightly, and something in her expression shifted. Surprise, then confusion, then something softer.

"You were planning a date for tonight?"

"Yes."

"Oh, Bucky." Her voice came out soft, almost careful. "You didn't have to-"

"Don't." He cut her off, rougher than he meant. "Don't say 'not necessary.' I know it's not necessary. I did it anyway."

----

She blinked.

The words hung in the air between them. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed somewhere past her shoulder, and she watched the muscle in his temple twitch.

He's nervous, she realized.

Bucky. Nervous.

The man who'd faced down his own kind, who'd swum through dark water with nothing but claws and teeth, who'd looked at her like she was the most fragile thing he'd ever held, was nervous.

Because he planned a date.

She'd spent the last few days watching him drift in and out of the cottage, his silences heavier than usual, his eyes distant. She'd told herself it was the sea calling him. That maybe he was figuring out how to tell her he needed space.

And all along, he was planning a date.

She almost laughed.

Almost.

But the look on his face -the way he was bracing himself, like he expected her to tell him it was stupid, unnecessary, too much- stopped her.

"Bucky," she said with a soft voice. "You planned a date for us in the cave?"

His throat worked. "I- yes."

"And you've been working on this for days."

He didn't answer. But the way his eyes flicked away told her everything.

She stepped closer. "I've been thinking you were pulling away."

His head snapped back to her. "What?"

"The silences. The lost gazes. I thought-" She stopped, shook her head. "I thought maybe the sea was calling you. That you were trying to figure out how to tell me you needed… to go."

Something broke in his expression. His hand came up, not quite touching her, hovering near her elbow like he was afraid to make contact.

"No," he said, and the word came out hoarse. "No. I was-" He stopped, jaw working. "I was trying to give you something. The thing we talked about… when we watched that movie." He gestured vaguely, frustration bleeding into the motion. "I thought you deserved that. With effort. With-" He stopped, swallowed.

His eyes met hers, and for a moment, he looked almost lost.

She didn't think. She just moved.

Her arms came around him, pressing her body against his, and she felt the way he went rigid beneath her touch. Every muscle locked, his breath caught somewhere in his chest, held captive by whatever was still coiled tight inside him.

For a heartbeat, he didn't move at all. Just stood there, frozen, like he'd forgotten how to accept comfort.

Then, slowly, something in him gave way.

His arms came up, and she felt it, the faint shake of his fingers against her back. Then his arms closed around her, tighter than she expected, pulling her into his chest like she was the only solid thing in a world that had been shifting beneath him for days.

She felt the breath leave his lungs in a long, shaky exhale, felt the tension in his shoulders begin to loosen, increment by increment, like a rope slowly being untied.

"Okay," she murmured against his chest.

He didn't answer. Just pressed his face into her hair and breathed.

She stayed there, letting him hold her, letting him collect himself. Her hand found the back of his neck, fingers threading through the strands at his nape, and she felt him shiver. Not from cold.

"Okay," she said again, softer this time. "Let's go then. Show me what you prepared."

He pulled back just enough to look at her, his brow furrowing. "But you were going out-"

She almost smiled at the way he said it, all clipped and reluctant, like the words tasted bad.

"I was," she said. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. "And now I'm not."

He blinked, confused, as she unlocked the screen and opened the messaging app. She tapped the voice note icon and held the phone up to her lips, watching his face as she spoke.

"Hey Ian, I’m sorry, but something came up, and I won't be able to make it tonight. Nothing bad, so don’t worry. I’m so sorry for the late notice. Tell Hannah I said hi, and enjoy your drinks!"

She pressed send and slipped the phone back into her pocket.

"There. Done. It’s not like they need me as a third wheel."

"Third wheel?" he asked slowly, brows furrowed in confusion. "What would you do with a wheel in a pub?"

She laughed.

"That means you're the extra person when a couple goes out," she explained, caressing his back. "You're the third one. The one who's not part of the couple. It's a little awkward sometimes, because they're focused on each other and you're just... there."

His frown deepened. "Why a wheel? I don't see why it would be a third thing."

"It's just an expression." She smiled, stepping back just enough to take his hand. "I'll explain more on the way."

He didn't move at first, but then he gave a small nod, barely perceptible.

"Okay," he said.

She grabbed his hand and tugged him gently toward the door. "Lead the way. I want to see this date you planned."

As she followed him out into the cool evening air, she felt his fingers tighten around hers. She noticed, too, as they walked, that the tension in his shoulders had eased. His steps were steadier. His jaw, still set, had lost that sharp edge of worry.

There you are, she thought. There's my Bucky.

----

The path to the cave was familiar by now. She'd walked it enough times, in the golden glow of late afternoon and the gray hush of overcast skies. But tonight, something was different.

A faint glow spilled from the mouth of the cave, soft and blue, pulsing like a slow heartbeat against the darkening sky. She slowed, her hand tightening around his. The light wasn't harsh or artificial; it was gentle.

"What is that?" she whispered.

He didn't answer. Just watched her, waiting.

She stepped forward, drawn by the glow, and when she reached the entrance, she stopped.

The cave was transformed.

The pools that usually sat dark and still were now filled with liquid light. Blue and silver and white, shifting and swirling like captured stars, drifting in slow, hypnotic circles across the water's surface.

The light reflected off the wet stone walls, dancing across the ceiling in rippling patterns that made the rock itself seem alive. It was like standing inside a living constellation, like the night sky had decided to come down and make its home in the dark.

She couldn't speak. Couldn't find the words. Her breath caught somewhere in her chest, and she just stood there, drinking it in, letting the wonder settle into her bones.

Then she started moving, her feet carrying her deeper into the cave without conscious thought. The glow grew brighter as she walked, the light intensifying as she passed each pool.

Some were shallow, barely more than puddles of liquid starlight. Others were deeper, the blue so rich it seemed to have weight, like she could reach in and scoop it up in her hands.

And then she saw them, on a flat section of rock that overlooked the largest pool: a nest of blankets had been spread out. And on top of them, arranged with careful precision: a green Tupperware container, and beside it, a bottle of white wine.

She turned slowly, her heart too full for her chest to hold.

He was watching her. Standing just a few feet away, hands at his sides, his face unreadable but his body tight with tension, like he was bracing himself. Like he was waiting for her to tell him it wasn't enough. That he'd gotten it wrong. That she'd expected something different.

"Bucky," she breathed.

He didn't speak. His throat worked, a swallow he couldn't quite hide.

"It's-" She stopped, shook her head, tried again. "It's beautiful. It's so beautiful."

Something in his expression eased, a crack in the armor he'd been wearing for days. "I thought… you would like it," he said, and his voice was a little unsteady.

She crossed the space between them in three quick steps and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face into his chest. "I love it. I love it."

His arms came around her, and she felt it, the release of tension, the way his whole body seemed to exhale. The grip of his arms was careful, still testing, but the rigid wall he'd built around himself was finally coming down.

She pulled back just enough to look up at him, a smile spreading across her face. "You're the best mate ever."

He went still.

The words hung in the air between them, and she caught the way his jaw tightened slightly, the way his breath caught for just a fraction of a second. His pupils dilated, just a little, and she saw the muscles in his throat work as he swallowed.

"You're the best mate ever," she repeated, softer this time, and she watched him process the word. Mate. His word. His language.

His hand found hers, his fingers closing around her smaller ones, and she felt the slight tremor in them, barely there, but unmistakable. He squeezed gently, and pulled softly at her hand.

"Come," he managed. "Sit with me."

She hesitated a moment.

"Bucky," she said slowly, "don't you want to shift first?"

He stopped, and she saw the brief flicker of uncertainty cross his face. His mouth opened, then closed. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured.

"I thought... the idea was a date, as a human thing. I assumed you would prefer-"

She reached up, brushing her fingers along his jaw. "I prefer you. Whatever way you want to be tonight. The date isn't just for me, Bucky. It's supposed to be for us. Both of us. I want you to enjoy it too."

He stared at her, processing, and she watched the conflict play out across his features. Then, slowly, a spark of his usual confidence flickered back to life.

"In that case..."

His hands moved to the waistband of his jeans, his fingers finding the buckle with deliberate ease. His eyes never left hers, and there was something in his gaze now, a hint of the old Bucky, the one who knew exactly what he was worth.

She stepped forward, her own hands reaching for his. "Let me help."

His breath caught, just slightly, when her fingers brushed against his, taking over the task of undoing his belt. Then she worked the button free, tugged the zipper down, and let the denim fall. He stepped out of them, and she pushed the fabric aside with her foot.

"You're not just saying that to see me undress?" he murmured, and his voice was low, amused, a hint of the teasing she'd missed.

She laughed softly, her hands sliding up his chest as she pushed his t-shirt up. "One thing is not mutually exclusive from the other."

He hissed as the fabric cleared his shoulders, and she took the opportunity to press her mouth to the curve of his neck, just below his jaw. He tilted his head back, a low sound rumbling in his chest, and her fingers splayed across the warm skin of his torso, feeling the way his muscles tightened beneath her touch.

Then his hands were in her hair, tilting her face up to meet his, and when his mouth found hers, there was nothing careful about it.

This kiss was hungry, deep, the kind that stole breath and made her forget where she ended and he began. His tongue swept against her lower lip, and she opened for him without hesitation, pulling him closer, her fingers digging into the firm muscles of his back. He tasted like salt and something darker, something that was entirely him, and she let herself drown in it.

His hands slid down her sides, gripping her buttocks, pulling her flush against him, and she felt the heat of his body pressed against her through the thin fabric of her dress.

She whimpered against his mouth, and he answered with a low groan, his teeth grazing her lower lip before he soothed it with his tongue.

When they finally broke apart, both of them breathless, his forehead rested against hers, his eyes still dark and heavy-lidded.

"Turn around," he said, his voice rougher now, quieter. "I don't want you to see."

She nodded, but before letting go, her hands slid down to the waistband of his boxers, her fingers hooking into the fabric. "These too," she murmured, “you aren’t a cartoon, and they are not cheap.”

He let out a low sound, almost a growl of surprise, as she slid them down his hips, working the fabric past his thighs until he stepped out of them. Her eyes dropped for just a moment -she couldn't help it- before he gently turned her, guiding her to face the wall. Then he pressed against her from behind.

His body was warm and solid against her back, one hand bracing against the stone beside her head, the other splayed across her hip. His mouth found her ear, breath hot against her skin.

"Now," he said, low and rough. "Stay like that."

She felt the word vibrate through her, felt the heat of his naked chest pressed against her, and for a moment, her body screamed at her to turn around, forget about the date entirely and just climb him like a tree. The thought made her fingers curl against the stone.

She took a breath, steadying herself.

Focus.

But his hand was still on her hip; he was still warm against her back, and the ghost of his breath still lingered at her ear.

It took everything she had to push those thoughts away, to remember that this moment -the cave, the lights, the blankets- was about more than just her wanting him.

She pressed her palms flat against the cool rock and waited.

Behind her, she heard him take a slow, steadying breath, and then he walked away.

Then the sounds began briefly after that. A sickening crack. Bone shifting, rearranging, finding a shape that wasn't meant to be seen. She flinched at the sound, her fingers pressing harder against the stone, and she heard him suck in a sharp breath through his teeth.

He was trying to be quiet. She could tell. He was holding back the sounds he didn't want her to hear.

Another crack, wetter this time, followed by a low, gritted grunt that he couldn't quite swallow. Her eyes squeezed shut. She focused on the texture of the rock beneath her palms, on the rhythm of her own breathing, on anything but the sounds of his body pulling itself apart and putting itself back together.

Then came the soft, wet splash of his limbs meeting the stone floor. One, then another, and another after that, uncoiling into the water, the sound of suction cups releasing and reattaching as he adjusted to his true form.

"Okay," he said, and his voice was lower now, richer.

She turned slowly.

He was half in the water, his torso rising from the dark surface, and his limbs -black and blue and gleaming- curling around him in familiar, graceful arcs. The bioluminescence cast his features in soft blue light, shadows flickering across the angles of his face.

His chest was still heaving slightly, and she could see the fine sheen of sweat on his skin, the evidence of what the shift had cost him.

But he was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and that look made everything else fall away.

She crossed the space between them, her hand reaching for his. He took it, and she let him guide her to the blankets, settling onto the soft fabric with him beside her.

The moment they were seated, his limbs moved with a quiet, possessive certainty. One curled around her waist, another wrapped loosely around her calf, and a third settled across her thighs, heavy and slightly moving. He pulled her closer without a word, and she felt herself relax into his hold, the tension of the past days finally beginning to ease.

Then his nose brushed against her throat. A slow, deliberate inhale. She felt the subtle graze of his lips against her skin, and a shiver traced down her spine.

Her hands found the Tupperware container, and she opened it, the scent of strawberries rising up between them. She pulled one out, holding it up to his mouth.

"Strawberries," she said softly. "You're so damn thoughtful," she added, and she watched a faint flush creep across his cheeks.

It wasn't obvious. Not like a human blush. But she'd learned to read him, to see the subtle shift in his skin, the way his gaze dropped for just a second. It made her heart squeeze.

He reached for the wine next, his fingers closing around the bottle. He examined it, turning it over once, his claws finding the cork. He pulled, once, and it slipped. A low grunt of frustration. He tried again, angling his claw differently, and this time it came free with a soft, satisfying pop.

He looked at the bottle, then at her, then at the cave around them.

"Didn't think of cups," he admitted, and there was something almost sheepish in his voice. Like he'd studied so hard and still forgotten something essential.

She smiled and pressed a kiss to his jaw. "It doesn't matter. I don't need cups. This-" she gestured at the cave, at the glowing water, at the blankets and the fruit and him, "this is more than I could have asked for. It's perfect."

His eyes searched hers, like he was trying to see if she meant it.

"Seriously," she added, and she let her gaze travel across the cave, watching the way the bioluminescence danced across the wet stone walls. The blue light rippled and shifted, casting moving shadows that made the cave feel alive. "It's beautiful. How did you do this?"

His chest rose and fell with a breath. "I found something I could give you," he said. "Something only I could do."

That was all he offered. No details.

She wanted to ask. She could see it in the slight tension in his limbs, the evidence of what the task had cost him. But if he didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't push.

Because she knew him. Knew that if he wasn't bragging about the effort, it was because it had been more than he wanted to admit.

So she let it go.

----

He watched her take another strawberry from the box, observed the way her fingers closed around the soft red flesh, and he felt proud. His mate liked it. What he'd made. What he'd done. She'd called it beautiful, called it perfect, said she couldn't have asked for more.

She held the strawberry out to him, and he leaned forward, taking it from her fingers with his mouth. Her skin brushed his lips briefly, accidentally and electric. She smiled at him, with a knowing smile, and he felt the satisfaction washing away the exhaustion.

In his world, you didn't press food into someone's mouth and watch them taste it, didn't wait for their expression to shift with pleasure. Didn’t indulge. It was not necessary. It was, plainly worthless.

She took a sip from the wine bottle, her lips wrapping around the glass rim, and handed it to him. He lifted it to his own mouth, tasting the warmth, the faint sweetness that lingered where her mouth had been.

They talked. Nothing important. She asked about the human form again, about the things he'd learned to tolerate. He told her about shoes -how he still hated them, how they felt like cages for his feet- and she murmured soothingly at him, a sound that made his limbs curl tighter around her.

And beneath all the merriness, he could smell it.

Her arousal.

It was subtle, buried under the sweetness of the wine and the salt of the sea air. But it had been there since they kissed, building as the night wore on, a slow, steady heat that made his skin prickle and his thoughts scatter.

He tried to focus on her words. He really did. But his limbs, traitors that they were, had begun to move on their own. One slid higher up her thigh, the suction cups grazing her skin. Another curled around her waist, pulling her closer. He felt the heat of her body through the thin cloth, felt the way she yielded against him, and his jaw clenched.

This isn't how it goes.

He'd watched the movies. The humans in the restaurants, the candles and the wine and the careful rituals, or the walks in the park, or the theatre.

They didn't do what he wanted to do.

They sat across from each other, kept their hands visible, their bodies apart. They talked. They laughed. And when the male escorted the female to the door, maybe they kissed, and maybe they didn't.

But they didn't -he was fairly certain- get distracted by the taste of their mate's arousal while they were still eating.

He could feel his control slipping. His concentration, sharp and focused moments ago, was fracturing. He tried to pull his limbs back, to give her space, to remember the ritual she deserved.

But she shifted against him, and one of his suction cups brushed her inner thigh, and he couldn't. He couldn't.

His mind was spinning, caught between the Thal'kyr part of him that wanted nothing more than to pin her down and fuck her, and the part that wanted to prove he could do this right.

He opened his mouth, tried to form words, tried to remember what she'd been asking him-

"-ucky. Hey."

Her voice cut through the haze, and he blinked, focusing on her face. She was looking at him, her head tilted slightly, a small crease between her brows.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and the question was gentle, but there was something in her voice... concern?

His jaw worked.

"I..." he started, and stopped.

She shifted again, adjusting her position on the blankets, and the movement pressed her thigh more firmly against the limb that had been creeping upward. A soft, involuntary sound escaped her throat -barely a breath- but he heard it.

Felt it.

The last thread of restraint snapped.

"I want to have sex," he blurted. His eyes met hers, almost obligingly. "But that doesn't… happen on dates." He scowled, frustrated. "In the movies, they don't-"

She started laughing.

It wasn't cruel or mocking, and she pressed her hand to her mouth like she was trying to stop it. "Bucky," she said, and her voice was warm, amused, "maybe you watched a very vanilla catalogue of films. It depends on the movie."

He frowned at her, knitting his brow in confusion. "What do you mean, depends-”

She waved a hand, still smiling. "Let's just say-" She leaned closer, her hand finding his, her fingers curling around his, and she looked at him with a gaze that was anything but innocent. "Not all dates end with sex. But plenty do."

He stared at her. She was looking at him with those eyes, her scent curling around him, her hand warm in his, and he felt the last shred of his careful composure crumble.

"Plenty," he repeated, and the word came out rough, hungry.

"Plenty," she confirmed.

She lifted her free hand, counting on her fingers as she spoke. "You brought me to a beautiful place you prepared with care. We sat down. We ate. We drank. We talked."

Her free hand traced a slow, deliberate path across his chest, leaving a trail of heat in its wake.

"I think the date already hit most of the steps." Her fingers splayed flat against his skin, warm and certain. "Which means we could easily move on to the part you're so interested in."

She leaned closer, her lips brushing the shell of his ear.

"With the added bonus that you don't have to walk me home."

He didn't speak.

Couldn't.

Because she was looking at him like that, her scent thick and sweet in his nostrils, her hand warm on his skin, and every thought he'd been trying to hold onto scattered like fish fleeing a net.

He'd done well. He'd provided. He'd created something beautiful, something she'd loved, and now she was offering herself to him in return.

And he was going to take what she offered.

His instincts took control.

His limbs moved before he could think.

They wrapped around her, lifting her body, arranging her. One curled around her waist, another supported her back, and a third slid beneath her thighs, spreading them apart as he settled her onto his lap. She gasped, and then she was straddling him, her hands finding his shoulders for balance, her eyes dark and wanting.

He didn't need to lie her down. His limbs could hold her exactly where he wanted her, could maneuver her however he pleased, could keep her suspended and open and completely at his mercy.

And he wanted her exactly like this.

"Bucky-" she breathed, and he could feel the way her thighs tightened around him, the way her fingers curled into his shoulders.

He smiled. Slowly.

"I like you here," he murmured, his hands finding her hips, guiding her closer. "Right where I want you."

His limbs shifted beneath her, adjusting her position, spreading her wider. He could feel the heat permeating through the thin fabric of her underwear, and the knowledge that she was already so ready for him made him groan.

But before he could do anything else, her hands slid from his shoulders down his chest, her fingers trailing over his skin slowly. She leaned forward, her mouth finding the curve of his neck, and then she bit down, just enough to make him hiss.

His grip on her hips tightened.

"All night," he said, his voice low and rough, "I've been wanting to touch you like this."

Her teeth grazed his skin again, and she ground down against him, shameless and wanting. "Then stop talking about it."

He gently fisted her hair, throwing back her head.

"Patience, mate."

His mouth found her throat, and he breathed her in, slow and deliberate, letting her scent flood his senses.

"Bucky…" she breathed, and her hands came up to frame his face.

He pulled back just enough to look at her, and the expression on his face was pure, unapologetic satisfaction.

"You smell so good," he said, his lips brushing her jaw. "You've been like this all night. I could smell you while we were eating." A low sound rumbled in his chest. "You wanted me the whole time."

She opened her mouth to respond, but he didn't let her.

His mouth covered hers, deep and possessive, and her hands tangled in his hair, tugging; her hips never stopping the grinding against him. His limbs moved with purpose now, one sliding the hem of her dress higher, another finding the edge of her underwear.

He didn't rush. He savored. Every inch of skin he uncovered, he tasted. Every sound she made, he cataloged.

When his mouth finally left hers, trailing down her throat, she gasped his name.

"Tell me," he murmured as his lips grazed her cleavage. "Tell me what you want."

"You know what I want," she breathed, almost whining. "I want you."

His teeth grazed her skin, just enough to make her gasp. "Good."

One of his limbs found its way under her panties, the suction cups grazing the sensitive skin, and she arched against him with a soft cry. He watched her face, watched the way her eyes fluttered, the way her lips parted as he teased her wet, little pearl. He was in control now. He had her exactly where he wanted her.

His mouth found her ear, his voice low and rough.

"Does this happen on dates?" he asked, and there was amusement in his tone now, a hint of the teasing that had always been there beneath the surface. "Does the male do this-" his limb pressed down in a soft, deliberate stroke against her entrance, and she gasped, "-and the woman still eats?"

He pulled back to look at her face, heated and wanting, and he felt pure, unapologetic, masculine smugness.

"Because I don't remember seeing that," he continued, his teeth grazing her lower lip, "in any of the ones you showed me."

She chuckled, breathless, her hands tugging his hair hard enough to make him groan. "Told you, it depends on the movie."

His limb pressed higher, more insistent now, and she moaned against his mouth, her hips rolling desperately against him. Her hands slid down his chest, across his stomach, and he felt her fingers brush against the slit where his cock was still concealed. He grabbed her wrist and removed her wandering hand, with a hiss.

Not yet

"Then I think," he murmured against her lips, "you're going to have to show me that movie later."

His mouth found hers again, hungrier this time, and the rest of his limbs moved with purpose. One slid her dress higher, bunching the fabric around her hips. Another found the edge of her underwear, and started to tug it down with unhurried precision.

His free hand found the strap of her dress, dragging it down her shoulder with more patience than the rest of him seemed to possess. When her breast came free, he didn't reach for it right away, just looked at it, the way she'd looked at the glowing pools. Then his palm covered it, squeezing as a separate limb, uninvited, curled up along her sides to join it, sliding down the fabric covering her other breast, the ring of suction cups closing gently around her nipple.

She gasped at the double sensation -warm palm, cool pull-  and he made a low sound, pleased with himself.

She was so wet. Of course she was. He'd been smelling it all night, had been tasting it in the air between them. But feeling it -feeling the slick heat of her against his suction cups- made something feral rise up in his chest.

"All night," he murmured against her skin, his lips trailing down her throat again, "you were like this. While you ate. While you talked to me." His teeth grazed her collarbone.

She opened her mouth, but whatever she'd been about to say dissolved into a moan as a suction cup of the limb between her thighs closed over her sensitive pearl and pulled.

"So desperate," he said, and his voice was low, rough. "Even when you were eating strawberries and pretending you weren't thinking about this."

She tried to shake her head, but he wasn't having it.

"Don't lie to me, mate," he murmured. "I can always smell it on you. When you want me to take you. When you want my limbs tasting your body. When you want my heavy seed dripping down your delectable thighs."

His limb teased her, sucking and pushing inside, and he reveled in the way her body arched into his touch, the way her hands found his shoulders, the way she moaned his name.

And then, when she was trembling, when her breath was coming in short, little gasps, almost there-

He stopped.

She made a sound of protest, her eyes flying open, and he smiled at her, knowingly.

"Bucky-"

"I want to feel you come around my cock." he said, and his voice was gentle but firm.

He hadn’t let his shaft free on purpose, forcing himself to wait, so as not to end things too fast even if he craved it. Now it was time, so he finally let his concealing slit relax, and his poor, aching shaft pulsed free against her skin.  

He knew she felt it, heavy and throbbing against her belly, and shamelessly rubbed it up and down, wetting her sensitive skin, his eyes never leaving hers.

"You want it?" he asked, as he lifted her with his limbs, grabbing his cock and teasing her folds.

She just nodded. Couldn't speak.

He pressed his tongue against a fang and pushed into her, slowly as always, and observed her face as she took him. The way her lips parted, the way her eyes widened, the way her body yielded to him inch by inch. When he was fully seated inside her, he paused, letting her adjust.

"Fuck," she breathed.

He pressed his forehead to hers, his breath warm against her skin. "You feel so good."

He pulled back slowly, then pushed in again, and the sound she made -low, desperate- made his jaw clench.

"So perfect," he said, and his voice was rougher now. "My mate. My perfect mate."

She ground her hips against him, trying to take him deeper, to get friction, and he nipped her below her jaw.

"You like it?" he asked, finding a slow, deep rhythm. "You like me inside you?"

She nodded, breathless, and he smiled.

"I would usually ask you for words, mate. But since this is a special occasion, I’m not pushing you tonight," he murmured against her skin.

He started to move faster, harder, his limbs wrapped around her, holding her in place as he thrust up into her, teasing her little bundle of nerves with his limbs.

She was gasping, trembling, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and then he felt her starting to clench around him.

"Bucky-" she gasped.

"I know," he said. "I can feel you. I can feel you getting close."

He shifted the angle, pushing deeper still, and she cried out.

"I've got you, mate. I want to feel it. I want to feel what I do to you." He declared, the tip of a limb rubbing mercilessly against her clit as he fucked her.

She shattered around him with a cry, her body clenching, and he followed her over the edge, thrusting once, twice, before stilling and coming with a low, guttural groan.

For a long moment, he stayed there, buried inside her, his limbs wrapped around her, his face against her throat. His breathing was ragged, and he could feel her heart racing beneath his palm.

"Ok, that was-" she started, but she couldn't finish.

He smiled, satisfied.

"I know," he said.

He pulled out slowly, and she made a soft sound of protest. He felt a surge of warmth at the sound, at the way she still wanted him even now.

He settled behind her, his limbs curling around her, pulling her close. He pressed a kiss to her temple, and she sighed, pressing her back into his chest.

"That was a good date," he said after a moment, and she laughed, soft and tired.

"The best date ever." She conceded.

He felt his chest expand with something he couldn't quite name at the praise. Something deep and old.

"So I did good?" he heard himself ask anyway, his voice quieter now, more vulnerable.

She turned a little in his grasp to face him, her body still pressed against his, her limbs tangled with his. Her hands lifted, finding the line of his jaw, tracing along its edge before sliding down to his throat, that sensitive spot where she knew he loved to be touched.

He shivered, his eyes fluttering half-closed at the sensation.

"What do you think?" she murmured, her thumbs stroking slow circles along the column of his neck.

Her touch was deliberate, knowing, and he felt himself relax into it despite the question still hanging between them.

"I think," she continued, her voice soft, "you brought me to a place you made beautiful. You bring strawberries, the first food we shared. You gave me wine. You talked to me." Her thumb brushed over his pulse point. "You made me feel like I mattered."

He opened his mouth, but one of her hands reached his semi-hard shaft, giving it a playful squeeze, and he groaned, his hips jerking involuntarily into her grip.

"And then," she said, a small smile curving her mouth, "you proceeded to remind me exactly why you're the only one I want."

He felt the damn heat in his cheeks and knew he had blushed like an inexperienced pup. He found himself leaning into her touch like a creature starved for it, his eyes half-lidded, his breath coming in slow, uneven pulls.

"So yes," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "You did good. You did so good."

He didn't answer. Couldn't. Instead, his hands and limbs started to wander along her body, fingers tracing the curve of her hip, suction cups grazing the soft skin of her lower back, other limbs curled around her thighs. He pressed his face into her hair, breathing her in, and let himself feel the weight of her words in a language that didn't require saying things aloud.

Steve knew that feeling. He knew it so well it was almost another sense.

Outside the narrow windows, the night was a blur of cloud and darkness, the kind of black that made the world feel smaller. The quinjet’s lights washed everyone in a hard, unforgiving glow. It made faces look sharper than they were. It made fatigue look like anger and anger look like something uglier.

Natasha sat opposite Bucky, her spine straight, legs crossed at the ankle like she’d decided to be made of iron for the duration of the flight. Her hands were clean – too clean – resting in her lap with deliberate stillness, like she’d scrubbed away more than grime in the field. Her expression was neutral, almost bored, but Steve had learned that Natasha’s stillness wasn’t calm. It was control. It was restraint with teeth.

Clint leaned back against the cabin wall, head tilted slightly, eyes half-lidded as if he were trying to sleep. Steve could tell he wasn’t. Clint’s bow case sat at his feet, straps undone, everything about it suggesting a routine that had been interrupted. His fingers tapped once against his thigh and then stopped. That tiny motion – the aborted rhythm – was the only tell Steve needed.

Tony stood farther forward, closer to the cockpit, arms folded, shoulders tense beneath the sleek lines of his suit’s underlayer. He’d taken off the armor in pieces the moment they were airborne, as if the metal couldn’t stand to stay on him when it had failed. The arc reactor glow shone faintly through fabric, a cold little circle of light at his chest. His brows were drawn down, eyes fixed on nothing. When he exhaled, it came out through his nose in a sharp, controlled burst.

Sam sat near the ramp, bracing a forearm on the bench, gazing at the closed door as if he could still see through it to the city they’d left behind. His wings were stowed, but there was a restlessness to him, a contained urge to move. He kept rolling one shoulder as if trying to work a knot out of muscle.

Steve sat with his hands on his thighs, gloves off, fingers flexing once and then going still. His knuckles were scraped – nothing serious – but the sting was a reminder, like his body was keeping score.

They’d been so close.

That was what made it worse. Not just that the mission had failed – they’d lived through failures before, swallowed them, learned, moved on. This one… this one had been almost. Almost in their grasp, almost a clean collar, almost the end of a thing that had been rotting under the surface of the city for too long.

The target had a name, an alias that shifted like water. In their files, he was a neat stack of paper and photographs: a man with a forgettable face and expensive suits, the kind of person you’d pass on a sidewalk and never look at twice. In real life, he was a shadow behind a network that swallowed people. Young women, boys barely old enough to look like men, children who disappeared between districts and borders like the world had agreed not to see them.

Steve had seen them tonight.

Not all of them – not enough. But he’d caught glimpses in a warehouse corridor lit by flickering industrial bulbs: a girl with duct tape around her wrists staring at him with eyes too old for her face, a boy who flinched at sudden movement, a row of cages that had once held something living and now held only the smell of fear. He’d heard the muffled cries and felt his own pulse quicken with something that wasn’t adrenaline.

Rage had a temperature. It had weight. It settled in Steve’s chest like hot iron.

They’d breached fast, coordinated, clean. Natasha dropping two guards before they knew she was there. Clint’s arrows pinning weapons to walls, disabling without killing. Sam sweeping the upper catwalks, calling out positions, his voice clipped but steady in Steve’s ear. Tony cutting through a reinforced door with surgical precision, sparing the people behind it from a longer wait.

And Steve – Steve had run straight for the office.

Because that’s what it had become with this man. A pattern. A game. The boss always held himself separate, always had an exit route, always had a contingency. He didn’t get his hands dirty, he didn’t get caught in the chaos. He didn’t run.

He disappeared.

Tonight, they’d built their plan around that. Tony’s surveillance. Natasha’s intel. A net designed to close every gap. Bucky and Steve moving like they’d been made for this – flanking routes, anticipating movement. They’d cornered the man in a steel-framed room that smelled of expensive cologne and cheap cigarettes, paperwork strewn on a desk like the world’s ugliest ledger.

Steve had seen him clearly then. He remembered thinking, absurdly, that the man’s tie was perfectly knotted.

The target’s eyes had met Steve’s, and something cold had flickered there – not fear, not surprise. Calculation. Recognition. As if he’d expected the Avengers to arrive eventually, and this was merely a late appointment.

“Captain,” he’d said, smooth as silk.

Then the lights had gone out.

Not an accident. Not a power failure. Tony had cursed in Steve’s comm, something about an EMP pulse that shouldn’t have been possible in that building without warning. For a second, the world had been a void – only the red emergency strips along the floor, only the sound of boots and breath and the distant panicked shouts of guards.

Steve had lunged forward anyway, guided by instinct more than sight. His hand had brushed fabric – a suit sleeve, slick and expensive – and he’d closed his grip hard enough to feel bone beneath. He’d thought, Got you.

Then something cut through the dark, a blade whispering close to his ribs, not deep enough to injure but enough to warn. Steve had twisted, bringing the shield up, feeling metal catch a glancing strike. The sound had been wrong in the dark – too intimate, too close.

By the time Tony restored partial lighting, the office was empty.

Only the tie clip remained on the floor, still gleaming. A small, ridiculous trophy.

The man had slipped through them again, like he was made of smoke.

Steve’s stomach turned now, remembering the smugness in those eyes. Remembering the sound of that blade in the dark.

Bucky’s voice cut through the cabin, low and rough. “He knew.”

Steve didn’t look at him right away. He stared at his own scraped knuckles, at the dried blood beneath one nail that wasn’t his. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He knew.”

Bucky’s prosthetic hand flexed once, fingers spreading and closing in a motion too controlled to be accidental. The metal caught the overhead light, bright and clean and unforgiving. “This isn’t just him getting lucky,” Bucky added, and there was an edge in it, something sharpened by the fact that Bucky understood predators in a way Steve wished he didn’t. “He’s got someone. Or something. Feeding him.”

Natasha’s gaze shifted toward them. Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes did – a fraction more focused, a fraction less distant. “He has systems,” she said. “He has money. And he has people who are terrified of him.” She paused, then, very slightly, her mouth tightening. “That’s usually enough.”

Steve heard what she didn’t say: It shouldn’t be.

Clint’s eyes opened more fully. He didn’t speak. He just watched Steve, like he was reading the part of him that wanted to go back, right now, drop from the quinjet into the night and hunt the man down with his bare hands.

Steve forced himself to breathe slowly, in through his nose, out through his mouth. He’d learned, with time, that anger could be useful – it could drive you, keep you moving – but it could also make you sloppy. The man they were chasing thrived on mistakes.

Tony finally turned from the cockpit area, his boots thudding softly on the cabin floor. He didn’t look at Steve first – he looked at the others, scanning faces like he was taking inventory of damage.

“We saved thirty-two,” Tony said, voice flat.

Steve’s throat tightened. Thirty-two was not nothing. Thirty-two was lives. Thirty-two people who would go home, who would get help, who might one day sleep without flinching.

But Steve also saw the other side of it like a second image burned onto his mind: the empty cages, the list Natasha had shown them, the estimated numbers that had made Steve’s stomach drop.

“How many did we miss?” Steve asked, even though he already knew.

Tony’s jaw clenched. “We don’t have an exact–” He stopped, then forced the words out like they were bitter. “Dozens. At least. And if he relocates again, we’ll be chasing smoke for another month.”

Bucky made a sound under his breath, something like disgust without language.

Natasha’s fingers twitched once in her lap and then stilled again. Steve caught it – the brief betrayal of control – and it made his own frustration spike. If Natasha was tired of this, it meant they’d reached a point where even her patience was fraying.

Steve felt it too. Not fatigue, exactly. Something deeper. A weariness that came from fighting the same evil in different faces, over and over, and knowing that the world kept producing more. That there were always people willing to profit from suffering.

He looked at the closed ramp as if he could see through it to the darkness beyond. “We can’t keep doing this,” he said, and the words came out harsher than he intended. “We can’t keep letting him slip away.”

Tony’s eyes flicked to him. “Not for lack of trying, Cap.”

Steve knew that. He knew Tony had been up for thirty-six hours straight, building predictive models and hacking surveillance systems that were never meant to be touched. He knew Clint’s hands had been steady in the field even while his eyes looked older every time they saw another trafficking ring. He knew Sam had flown himself to the edge of exhaustion, pushing his suit to keep up. He knew Natasha had dug into shadows that even she didn’t like to revisit.

That was part of what made it unbearable. They weren’t failing because they weren’t trying hard enough.

They were failing because someone had built this network to survive them.

Steve pressed his palms against his thighs, grounding himself in the pressure. “Then we need to change the game,” he said.

Silence. A collective pause, like the quinjet itself was listening.

Sam exhaled and finally turned from the ramp, looking at the group. His eyes were tired, but there was something firm in them, something that refused to let frustration become despair.

“We need a different approach,” Sam said.

His tone wasn’t dramatic. It was simple. Practical. The kind of statement that sounded obvious until you realized no one had been willing to admit it yet.

Tony arched a brow. “Okay,” he said, voice edged with skepticism. “Do you have one? Because last I checked, we already tried ‘kick in the door’ and ‘kick in the door harder.’”

Sam didn’t smile. “Not like that.”

Steve watched him, studying the set of his shoulders, the way he held himself like he was preparing for pushback. Sam was choosing his words carefully – and that, more than anything, made Steve’s stomach tighten.

Natasha’s eyes narrowed slightly. Clint’s attention sharpened. Even Bucky lifted his head a fraction, as if he’d sensed the same thing Steve had.

Sam glanced between them. “We’ve been playing by rules he understands,” he said. “Predictable. We gather intel, we raid locations, we rescue who we can, and he slips out because he’s got a head start every damn time. We’re fighting his system. And his system is built to survive us.”

Steve felt the truth of it settle like a weight.

Sam continued, “We need someone who doesn’t come at this like us. Someone who can get close. Someone who can move where we can’t.”

Tony’s mouth tightened. “You mean an undercover.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Or maybe someone who lives in the gray already. Somebody who knows these kinds of networks from the inside.”

Steve’s pulse ticked up, slow and steady, like a warning bell.

Because he knew where this was going.

Natasha shifted her gaze toward the floor for a second, then back up. Her face remained composed, but there was a flicker of something in her eyes – memory, maybe. Recognition. She’d been in the gray. She’d crawled out. She also knew the cost.

Clint’s fingers curled once, then relaxed.

Bucky’s shoulders went rigid.

Steve leaned forward slightly without meaning to. “No,” he said, and it came out too fast. Too instinctive.

Sam met his eyes. “Hear me out.”

“I’m hearing you,” Steve said, and he could feel heat rising under his skin, anger trying to find a target. “And I’m saying no.”

Tony’s gaze flicked between them, wary now, curiosity sharpening. “What exactly are we saying no to?” he asked.

Sam hesitated – just a fraction – and that hesitation was the last confirmation Steve needed.

Steve’s mind supplied the file before anyone said it out loud. A dossier he’d skimmed once and hated immediately. A name that wasn’t a real name, a shadow with a pattern.

Nyx.

Steve could see the first page of it like it was projected behind his eyes: black-and-white stills pulled from security footage, timestamps, locations, bodies on polished floors. Notes in clinical language that tried to make violence sound like data. A list of confirmed kills and probable kills, each one reduced to a bullet point.

And then the part that had made Steve’s skin crawl the first time he read it – not the number, not the blood, but the detail that felt like a choice.

Knife only.

Up close.

Personal.

No mask.

No shame.

A woman with a young face and eyes that, in the still images, looked almost amused.

Steve’s jaw clenched so hard it ached. He hated how quickly his brain provided the image. He hated that it had stuck.

Sam said quietly, “We could use Nyx.”

The words landed in the cabin like a punch.

For a second, no one spoke. The quinjet hummed around them, steady and indifferent, as if it didn’t care what bargains people made in its belly.

Steve stared at Sam, feeling his heartbeat in his throat. “Absolutely not,” he said.

Natasha didn’t argue – not yet. She just watched Steve with that unnerving stillness, like she was waiting to see whether his refusal was principle or fear.

Tony’s brows rose. “Nyx,” he repeated, tasting the name like he was testing it. “You mean the knife artist with the teleportation problem and the moral allergy to killing kids and puppies?”

Bucky’s gaze snapped toward Tony, sharp.

Tony lifted a hand. “I read the highlights,” he said, defensive but not apologetic. “It’s a hell of a résumé.”

Steve’s hands curled into fists. “She’s a murderer.”

“So is our target,” Sam said, voice tight. “But he’s also a businessman. He’s a network. And he’s still out there because we’re not getting ahead of him.”

Steve felt something shift inside his chest – a pressure, a crack. He didn’t want to consider it. He didn’t want to weigh it like an option. The very idea tasted like compromise, like defeat.

Nyx wasn’t a solution. Nyx was a problem you contained.

And yet, Steve’s mind betrayed him with another flash: the cages. The eyes of the girl with duct tape. The boy flinching. The ledger of lives. Dozens. At least.

He swallowed, his throat tight. The anger didn’t vanish. It just… changed shape. Became something sharper, colder.

“Get me the full file,” Steve heard himself say, and he hated that he said it.

Sam’s shoulders eased a fraction, relief threading through his exhaustion. “Yeah,” Sam said softly. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Steve looked away, fixing his gaze on the cabin wall, on a small scratch in the metal paneling that someone had left there months ago. He focused on it like it was an anchor.

Because if he looked at the others, he might see agreement. He might see resignation. He might see the first steps toward a line he didn’t want to cross.

And if he let himself think too far ahead, he could already imagine the first image the file would show him: a young face, unmasked, eyes dark and bright with something he didn’t understand – something that looked too much like laughter.

Steve’s stomach turned.

He didn’t believe in using monsters to catch monsters.

But the world didn’t care what he believed.

The quinjet flew on through the night, carrying them toward home, toward a briefing room, toward a dossier Steve already knew he would read too closely.

And somewhere out there, in a city full of hidden rooms and locked doors, the man they were chasing was already moving again – smiling, probably, because he’d done it one more time.

Steve closed his eyes for a second, feeling the vibration of the engines through the bench, and tried to prepare himself for the idea that stopping this might require stepping into darkness on purpose.

The briefing room felt colder than the rest of the compound.

Steve knew it wasn’t, not really – the temperature controls were calibrated to be uniform throughout the Tower – but something about this room always sharpened the air. Maybe it was the lighting: too bright, too even, designed to erase shadows rather than soften them. Maybe it was the table, a long slab of dark composite material that reflected faces back at themselves in muted distortion. Or maybe it was simply what happened here. Decisions. Compromises. Lines redrawn in careful language.

They filed in one by one after stripping off the last of their gear.

Steve had taken his time removing his suit, methodical in a way that bordered on ritual. Unfastening straps. Rolling his shoulders. Letting the weight lift from him piece by piece. It helped him separate the mission from what came next – helped him remember that this was supposed to be the part where they thought, not fought.

It didn’t help much.

Bucky arrived just after him, freshly showered, hair still damp at the ends. He wore a plain black T-shirt and jeans, the fabric pulled taut across his shoulders like his body hadn’t quite relaxed yet. His metal arm was uncovered, fingers flexing occasionally as if it were still recalibrating to stillness.

Natasha entered with a tablet tucked under one arm, her hair pulled back, face scrubbed clean of makeup and blood alike. She looked unremarkable in the way only highly trained people ever did – deliberately neutral, deliberately unreadable.

Clint slipped into a chair near the wall instead of the table, boots hooked around the rung of the chair, arms crossed. He’d swapped tactical black for a worn gray hoodie, the sleeves pushed up. His eyes tracked everything.

Tony came in last, coffee mug in hand, the scent sharp and bitter as he set it down. He hadn’t bothered changing out of his underlayer entirely – dark shirt, slacks, a visible sign that his mind had never really left the mission.

Sam took the seat beside Steve, close enough that Steve could feel the warmth of him, solid and present.

The door sealed with a soft click.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Steve stood at the head of the table, hands resting on the back of a chair he hadn’t sat in yet. He looked at the blank screen on the wall, the inactive interface, and felt a familiar tightening in his chest. This was the part where they named the thing they didn’t want to name.

“All right,” Tony said eventually, breaking the silence with practiced ease. “Since we’ve officially crossed the line from ‘bad idea’ to ‘actively considering the bad idea,’ let’s get our facts straight.”

Steve shot him a look. Tony met it evenly, then shrugged.

Natasha stepped forward without comment and connected her tablet to the system. The screen flickered, then came alive.

A single word appeared at the top, stark white against black.

NYX

Steve felt it again – that low, instinctive resistance, like his body recognized the name as a warning before his mind caught up.

Below it, a photograph resolved into focus.

The room shifted.

It wasn’t dramatic. No one gasped. No one leaned back. But something in the collective posture of the team changed – shoulders stiffening, attention narrowing.

Steve stared at the image.

Nyx was facing the camera, not head-on but angled slightly, as if she’d been aware of the lens and chosen not to confront it directly. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, dark and thick, catching the light in a way that softened the edges of her face. Her features were composed – not tense, not aggressive. Calm.

Too calm.

Her eyes were dark, large, fixed on something just beyond the frame. They weren’t empty. They weren’t cold. If anything, they looked… engaged. As if she were present in the moment, fully and deliberately.

Steve felt his jaw tighten.

She looked young.

Not in the way some people looked artificially youthful – smoothed by filters, sharpened by angles – but genuinely, unsettlingly young. Barely older than the recruits he’d trained before the war. Barely older than the soldiers he’d watched die.

“Jesus,” Tony muttered under his breath. “She looks like she should be in grad school.”

Clint shifted in his chair. “Or art school.”

Natasha didn’t react. Her gaze was fixed on the image, assessing, cataloguing. “This is one of the clearer stills,” she said. “Most of the footage we have is worse.”

The screen changed.

Video this time. Grainy. Security footage from a parking garage. The timestamp blinked in the corner. Nyx stepped into frame like she belonged there – unhurried, unmasked, a knife already in her hand.

Steve felt his shoulders tense.

The kill was fast. Efficient. Close.

Too close.

The blade flashed once, twice. The man crumpled, blood darkening the concrete. Nyx stepped back, avoiding the spill with practiced ease. For half a second, her mouth curved – not a smile exactly, but something adjacent to it. Satisfaction, maybe. Or relief.

Steve swallowed hard.

“Pause,” he said before he realized he was speaking.

The video froze.

The expression lingered on the screen, caught in the stillness of a single frame.

Steve stared at it, his reflection faintly superimposed over her face. He didn’t like how easily his eyes tracked the line of her jaw, the curve of her mouth. He didn’t like that he could imagine her expression shifting, softening, hardening.

“She looks like she’s enjoying it,” Sam said quietly.

“That’s what it looks like,” Tony agreed. “Which, from a PR standpoint, is… not great.”

Natasha shook her head once. “Don’t project,” she said. “We don’t know what she’s feeling.”

Steve exhaled slowly through his nose. “What we know,” he said, grounding himself in facts, “is that she chooses this. The method. The proximity.”

Natasha nodded and tapped the tablet again.

The screen filled with text.

Known Parameters:

– Primary weapon: bladed (confirmed knife use only) – No firearms – No explosives – No disguises or facial concealment – Targets selected based on contract; refusal clauses documented – Absolute refusals: minors, animals

Steve’s mouth tightened at the last line.

“That’s the part that bothers me most,” he said before he could stop himself.

Tony glanced at him. “The no-kids thing?”

“The idea that she draws a line,” Steve said. “As if that makes the rest acceptable.”

Sam shifted beside him but didn’t interrupt.

Natasha’s expression remained neutral. “Every operative has a line,” she said carefully. “Even us.”

Steve looked at her then. Really looked.

Natasha met his gaze without flinching.

“That doesn’t mean we like where it’s drawn,” she added.

The screen shifted again. More images. Different locations. Different angles. Always the same constants: the knife, the lack of concealment, the ease with which Nyx moved through the frame.

And always that unsettling composure.

“She never runs,” Clint observed. “Not after. She just… leaves.”

“Teleportation,” Tony said, tapping a control and pulling up a schematic overlay. “That’s the fun part.”

Fun.

Steve clenched his fists.

Tony continued anyway. “Short-range, line-of-sight or close approximation. We can’t track it, can’t replicate it. No residual tech signature. No energy spike we can reliably isolate. It’s either biological, extradimensional, or some really advanced tech she’s not sharing.”

Bucky had been silent.

Steve had noticed immediately. Bucky wasn’t studying the data the way Natasha was, or watching for patterns like Clint. He was watching the screen like he was trying to reconcile something that didn’t fit.

Another image appeared – a close-up, this time. Nyx looking directly at the camera.

Steve felt it hit him like a physical thing.

She didn’t look dangerous in the way HYDRA assets had looked dangerous. There was no blankness, no deadened stare. Her eyes were alive. Curious.

Human.

Bucky leaned forward a fraction.

His voice was barely more than breath when he spoke.

“She’s… pretty.”

The word slipped out without intention, without volume. It wasn’t meant for the room.

Steve heard it anyway.

The rest of the team didn’t. Tony was mid-sentence. Natasha was scrolling. Clint was frowning at a data point. Sam was watching the screen, jaw set.

Steve’s attention snapped to Bucky instinctively.

Bucky didn’t look at him. His eyes were still fixed on the image, brow faintly furrowed, like he was surprised by his own thought.

Steve turned back to the screen, heart pounding harder than it should have.

Yes, he thought grimly. She is.

That was the problem.

It wasn’t just that Nyx was young – and she was, alarmingly so, no more than twenty-five if Steve had to guess. It was that her beauty complicated things. It disrupted the neat moral categories Steve wanted to place her in.

It was easier to hate a monster when it looked like one.

Easier to condemn someone when their face didn’t invite empathy.

Steve felt irritation coil in his chest, sharp and unwelcome. At her. At himself. At the part of him that noticed the softness of her features even as he catalogued the violence attached to them.

He didn’t miss the irony.

“She’s been active for at least six years,” Natasha said. “Which means she started young. We don’t have confirmed origins. No childhood records. No known affiliations before her first contract.”

“Someone trained her,” Steve said.

“Yes,” Natasha agreed. “And someone taught her to survive.”

The screen shifted again, this time to a map. Points lit up across cities, countries, continents.

“She moves freely,” Sam said. “Borders don’t slow her down.”

“No,” Tony said. “Physics doesn’t seem to either.”

Steve folded his arms across his chest, feeling the weight of the shield resting nearby even though it wasn’t strapped to his arm. “So what happens,” he said, “when we invite someone like this into our operation?”

Tony shrugged slightly. “Best case? She helps us get to our guy. Worst case? She kills him and disappears before we can blink.”

“And the people around him?” Steve pressed. “The ones we’re trying to protect?”

Natasha’s gaze flicked to him. “Her record shows no collateral damage,” she said. “That’s rare.”

“That’s not the same as harmless,” Steve shot back.

“No,” Natasha agreed again. “It’s not.”

Silence settled over the room, heavier this time.

Steve looked at Nyx’s frozen image one more time.

He didn’t see a savior.

He saw a woman who had learned to live in violence without letting it consume her – or at least without letting it show. He saw a person who stepped into the dark willingly and came back out unchanged, or pretending to be.

He didn’t trust that.

Didn’t trust her principles. Didn’t trust her restraint. Didn’t trust the calm in her eyes.

The image of the cages rose unbidden in his mind. The ledger. The numbers.

Steve closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

“We review everything,” he said finally. “Every scrap of footage. Every refusal. Every anomaly. If we’re even going to consider this, I want to know exactly who we’re dealing with.”

Tony gave a low whistle. “That’s not a no.”

Steve met his gaze steadily. “It’s not a yes.”

Sam nodded once, accepting the compromise for what it was.

Bucky leaned back in his chair, expression unreadable, eyes flicking once more to the screen before he looked away.

Nyx’s image remained, silent and still, watching them from the wall.

Steve felt a chill run through him – not fear, exactly, but something close to anticipation. The kind that came before a battle you weren’t sure you wanted to fight.

He had the sinking sense that this woman – this pretty, dangerous, unrepentant unknown – was already changing the shape of the war they were in. And they hadn’t even met her yet.

For a long moment, no one moved.

The screen remained lit, Nyx’s face suspended in artificial stillness – the curve of her mouth caught halfway between amusement and indifference, eyes dark and unreadable. The room’s lighting reflected faintly across the glass, layering their silhouettes over her image, as if they were already intruding into her space.

Steve felt the silence settle into his bones.

It wasn’t the productive quiet of thought crystallizing into strategy. It was heavier than that. Uncertain. Charged. The kind of pause where everyone was thinking the same thing and no one wanted to be the first to say it out loud.

He shifted his weight slightly, boots whispering against the polished floor. His gaze stayed on the screen, though his eyes had begun to blur around the edges of her face. He focused instead on details – the way the light caught in her hair, the faint tension in her jaw, the stillness that suggested control rather than ease.

That smile.

Steve didn’t like it.

It wasn’t wide. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even obvious. But it lingered in his mind like a question that didn’t want an answer.

Finally, he broke the silence.

“Do we have anything on her past?” he asked.

His voice sounded louder than he’d intended in the closed room.

Natasha’s fingers paused mid-swipe on the tablet. Tony’s mug hovered just short of his mouth. Sam leaned back a fraction, arms crossing loosely over his chest. Clint tilted his head, attention sharpening.

Natasha shook her head slowly. “Nothing verified.”

Steve frowned. “No birth records? No family ties? No early sightings?”

She tapped once, pulling up a dense block of text – redacted fields stacked one after the other like a wall.

“Her first confirmed appearance is six years ago,” Natasha said. “Not suspected. Confirmed. Before that, there’s nothing we can prove belongs to the same person. No consistent aliases. No childhood records that survive cross-referencing.”

Steve felt a cold knot tighten in his chest. “That’s not normal.”

“No,” Tony said, finally taking a sip of his coffee. “It’s impressive.”

Steve shot him a look.

Tony lifted a shoulder. “I’m not saying I like it. I’m saying someone either erased her very thoroughly, or she was never on the grid to begin with.”

Sam frowned. “Everyone’s on the grid.”

“Not if you’re born somewhere the grid barely exists,” Tony countered. “Or if you’re taught how to stay off it from the start.”

Steve’s jaw clenched.

He turned slightly, addressing the room rather than the screen now. “FRIDAY,” he said, keeping his tone even. “Do we have any indication of origin? Accent patterns? Linguistic markers? Movement habits? Anything that points to a country or region?”

There was a brief pause – the kind that reminded Steve just how much processing happened behind the calm of the AI’s voice.

“I’m afraid not, Captain,” FRIDAY replied. “Available audio samples are insufficient for reliable accent analysis. Visual data does not correlate with any specific regional biometric patterns at a statistically significant level.”

Steve frowned deeper. “Nothing at all?”

“No,” FRIDAY said. “I cannot determine her country of origin.”

The words landed harder than Steve expected.

He turned back to the screen, staring at Nyx’s face with renewed unease. Even the smallest detail – a trace of an accent, a familiar gesture – would have grounded her in reality. Would have made her make sense.

Instead, she felt like an absence. A shape carved out of missing information.

Clint let out a low breath. “So we don’t know where she’s from,” he said. “We don’t know who trained her. We don’t know who she answers to.”

“She doesn’t answer to anyone,” Tony said. “That’s kind of her whole thing.”

“That’s not comforting,” Clint shot back.

“No,” Tony agreed quietly. “It’s not.”

Steve rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the drag of fatigue beneath his skin. The day pressed down on him now – the mission, the failure, the images that refused to fade. He lowered his hand and looked at Nyx again.

“You don’t just come out of nowhere like this,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “People don’t become this… precise without a reason.”

Natasha studied the screen, her expression unreadable. “Whatever her origin,” she said, “she learned early that visibility was a liability. That anonymity was survival.”

Steve glanced at her. “And you think that excuses it?”

“I think it explains it,” Natasha replied. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

Steve didn’t argue – not because he agreed, but because the distinction felt thin and dangerous, and he didn’t trust himself not to cross it.

Another stretch of silence followed.

This one felt different.

Heavier still.

Clint straightened slightly in his chair, boots dropping to the floor. “Okay,” he said. “So here’s the million-dollar question.”

Everyone looked at him.

“What are we actually doing?” Clint asked. “Because staring at her face isn’t getting our guy out of hiding.”

Steve felt the weight of that settle into his chest.

Clint wasn’t being flippant. He was being practical – the kind of practicality born of too many battles and too many nights watching the same evil slip away.

Sam nodded slowly. “He’s right. We need to decide.”

Tony set his mug down carefully. “The options as I see them,” he said, ticking them off with his fingers, “are: one, we keep doing what we’re doing and hope he eventually screws up. Two, we expand our net and risk tipping him off even more. Or three–”

He stopped.

Steve knew why.

“–we bring in outside help,” Tony finished.

The words sat there, bare and undeniable.

Steve folded his arms across his chest, feeling the tension coil tighter. “Outside help that kills for money.”

“Outside help that knows how people like him think,” Sam countered. “That knows how these networks hide.”

Steve shook his head. “We don’t even know if she’d take the job.”

Natasha’s lips curved slightly. Not a smile – something sharper. “She would.”

Steve looked at her. “You’re sure.”

“She takes contracts that interest her,” Natasha said. “This would.”

Steve didn’t like how easily she said it.

Bucky shifted beside the table, his chair scraping softly as he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. He hadn’t spoken since his earlier murmur – and Steve was acutely aware of that. Aware of the way Bucky’s eyes had followed Nyx’s image with a kind of wary focus, as if he were seeing something familiar and unsettling in equal measure.

“Even if she agrees,” Steve said, forcing his attention back to the issue at hand, “we’re talking about trusting someone who operates completely outside any system we understand. Someone who doesn’t answer to law, or morality, or–”

“–to us,” Sam finished quietly.

Steve’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

Another pause.

This one stretched.

Steve felt the unspoken truth hovering between them, heavy and unavoidable: they were running out of options.

Tony broke the silence first. “Look,” he said, rubbing a hand through his hair. “I hate this. For the record. I really, truly hate this. But if there’s one thing our mystery friend has going for her, it’s that she doesn’t leave trails.”

Steve looked up sharply.

Tony continued, “Our guy? He’s slipping away because he’s always a step ahead. Someone’s tipping him off. Someone knows when we move.”

The room seemed to contract around the words.

Natasha’s gaze sharpened. Clint’s jaw tightened. Sam straightened fully.

Steve felt a cold line trace down his spine.

“You think there’s a leak,” Steve said.

“I think there’s been a leak,” Tony replied. “For a while now.”

Natasha nodded slowly. “The pattern fits,” she said. “Too many clean escapes. Too many perfectly timed disappearances.”

Steve’s thoughts raced, unpleasant possibilities stacking on top of each other. “You’re saying someone inside–”

“I’m saying we don’t know who,” Tony interrupted. “Which means we can’t widen the circle.”

Sam let out a slow breath. “Which means if we do this, if we even consider it–”

“It stays in this room,” Clint said firmly.

Steve looked around at them.

At Sam, steady and exhausted and trying to hold the line between right and necessary.

At Clint, who’d seen too much and trusted too few.

At Natasha, whose past gave her more insight into this choice than Steve liked to think about.

At Tony, whose skepticism was tempered by the kind of brilliance that saw patterns others missed.

At Bucky, silent, guarded, his gaze flicking once more to the screen before settling somewhere distant.

The responsibility pressed down on Steve’s shoulders, familiar and heavy.

He turned back to Nyx’s image.

She stared out at them, frozen in a moment that wasn’t really hers anymore. A smile caught between frames. A woman without a past, without a country, without a name that meant anything beyond the shadows she worked in.

“She doesn’t play by anyone’s rules,” Steve said quietly.

“No,” Natasha agreed. “Which means she’s harder to predict.”

Steve swallowed. “And harder to control.”

“Yes.”

The word echoed.

Steve exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of the choice settle into place. He didn’t like it. Didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust her.

But he trusted the alternative even less.

“All right,” he said at last.

Every eye in the room turned to him.

“If we do this,” Steve continued, voice steady but tight, “we do it carefully. No official channels. No digital trail beyond what we absolutely need. No one outside this room knows we even considered it.”

Tony nodded immediately. “I can sandbox everything. Offline systems only. Air-gapped.”

Natasha inclined her head. “I’ll handle contact,” she said. “If we decide to proceed.”

Steve hesitated – just a fraction – then nodded.

“And we don’t give her everything,” Steve added. “We give her just enough. We don’t trust her with names. Or locations we can’t afford to burn.”

Sam met his gaze. “And if she refuses?”

Steve looked back at Nyx’s face.

At the calm. The confidence. The unsettling ease.

“Then we keep fighting,” he said. “The hard way.”

Silence fell again – but this time, it felt different.

Resolved.

The decision wasn’t spoken aloud in so many words, but it settled into the room all the same, heavy and irreversible.

They were going to step into the gray.

Steve stared at the screen for a moment longer, then nodded once.

“Turn it off,” he said.

The image vanished.

The room felt colder without it – emptier, somehow – as if something had already slipped away.

Steve straightened, shoulders squared, the familiar weight of command settling into place.

Whatever Nyx was, whatever she had been before she became this ghost with a knife and a smile, she was about to walk into their war.

And Steve had the sinking feeling that nothing about it would be clean.

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“Gloria!” Curtis yells into the flower shop. “Gloria San…” he stops the moment the older woman walks into the shop front. Looking at the man up and down with a scowl. Curtis’ stance switches a bit, before he looks up at the ceiling with a sigh.

“I need a bouquet,” Gloria squeals. Throwing her head back with so much glee. The wrinkles in her eyes gather towards the corners as she hops from foot to foot. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It is a very big deal, Curtis. You don’t date. You definitely aren’t romantic with flowers, and when my husband asked you why you never buy them, you told him you were waiting on that girl. Is it ‘that girl’?” Her brow lifts in a question, and Curtis runs his hand down his face.

“Yes.”

“The day has finally come!” She starts to walk around the store, pulling different stems of flowers. “I knew it would. I had faith she would come back to you, and you could tell her that you have been so in love with her, and too chicken shit to say anything.”

“It’s not like that,” Gloria throws her head back, releasing a belly laugh. “This is serious.”

“I’m aware. You’re picky. You have only settled for chasing tail because you were so concerned about this woman coming back into your life to carry your babies.”

“She doesn’t have to have babies.”

“No, she needs to have your babies, there’s a difference. Does she have kids?” Curtis shakes his head no. “How long have you been in love with this girl?”

“A lot longer than I should have,” Gloria stops, and turns towards him. Resting a hand on his cheek, smiling longingly at him. “It’s always been unrequited.”

“If it was unrerquited, she wouldn’t have kissed you.”

“Shouldn’t have happened, we were drinking,” Gloria rolls her eyes before continuing her mission. “And it was nice. But it was too much, too soon, and…”

“Now you’ve got her alone in your house, and you’re about ready to explode,” Gloria looks back at Curtis with a cheeky smile, and his face falls. “You’ve been celibate for how long?”

“Not important,” no one needed to know that small detail. Because no one truly understands exactly how much he has just wanted you. And no one else has ever compared, and then he got tired of trying.

“Too long!” She shouts, and carries her bundle of flowers to her work station. “You’ve spent a decade pining after this girl who was verbally abused by her mother, and has never really had anyone in her corner. I know how much you’ve wanted this.”

“But she doesn’t,” Curtis gives her an awkward smile, but keeps his eyes on her wrinkled hands building the most perfect bouquet of flowers, and it’s still not more beautiful than you. “We’ve been thrust into this weird situation.”

“Thrust is an odd choice of words.”

“Mind out of the gutter, you dirty ole bitty,” Gloria gives a scraggly chuckle, and finishes wrapping up the bouquet. “I don’t think she knows her worth, and I know I have done a shitty job so far with my tough love.”

“Curtis,” his deep blue eyes finally looks into someone that has oddly been like a mother to him. Her husband was an old ranch hand, and he often invited Curtis to their house for dinner. Tried setting him up with a few of her daughters, until he confided in her.

“You are being a bit hard headed because you don’t want to be hurt. But let your walls down, and show her the real you that’s not so hardened from lonely isolation and working on a ranch,” Curtis would love to give Gloria a deadpanned look. Pretend that this isn’t bothering him as much as it actually is. “And if it doesn’t work out.”

“I lose everything.”

“Then it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Yeah,” he says, laying some money on the counter, “I’m not letting that happen. I may be a simple man, but that woman — she was always meant to be with me. Fuck the ranch. It’s only her that matters,” he nods his head towards Gloria, and heads back to his truck.

“That’s my boy,” she sighs. Curtis isn’t a lot of things. He’s not fancy, he’s not over the top. But what he is, is a kind hardworking man. He will give you the world, and all he asks is for your heart and loyalty. He won’t leave you. He doesn’t want to give up the ranch and his life, but he would. For you.

There’s very little that he wouldn’t do for you. Hell, he’s going to take you dancing, something he doesn’t do. But you love it. He’s gotten all dressed up, cleaned up his beard, wearing cologne, and his nice boots for you. He would change everything about him if it would make you happy.

The good thing is he doesn’t think you want him to be changed. He thinks you rather like his rugged and dirty self. But you definitely need to see that not only does he clean up nicely, but that you deserve to be seen all dolled up with him. Someone that you are proud of. And although he gets a pang of jealousy when other men look at you, there’s also this sense of pride.

He saw the look on Yancy’s face when he was carrying you out of the bar. That look of desperate longing, that he couldn’t have you. Wondering if you were going to fuck him or not. He wouldn’t take advantage of you like that. When the inevitable happens, both of you will be stone cold sober. The two of you will worship the other. Just as it was intended.

And he’s going to take his time. He’s going to memorize every dip and curve of your body while he paints you with his tongue and lips. He is going to make you realize that every inch of your perfect body is beautiful and worthy of complete devotion, and almost obsession. And it’s getting harder and harder to turn you down for sex. Until he sees you completely enthralled by him, or if the mood actually strikes right, he won’t allow it. Nope.

He won’t allow you to debase yourself just in order to forget harsh words from your mom. He won’t let you use his body to fill a void left by feeling unloved, and less than. Your mother should have never been a mother, especially not a mother to a girl. That woman was jealous of the fact that you could smile, and it would make people do your bidding. She’s angry that her dad doted on you and Austin.

Generations of less than perfect parenting. Curtis is stopping the cycle. He’d love kids with you, all you had to do is ask. But until you realize that you are perfect as you are, kids will not even be entertained.

But he can see it. Waking up with you asleep on his chest, while the pitter patter of little feet walk across the floors upstairs. He’ll make sure the boys treat their mama with respect, and the little girls can be just as tough and rumble as the boys. He sees those little hands slipping underneath the door.

He even sees all their faces. Three, naturally. Two strapping young lads, and his little princess. Your sidekick. He chuckles, knowing that thinking this far into your futures when you’re not even included in his plans is a bad idea. Bad luck, he’s sure. But he just wants to shower you with so much love that you have always deserved. He wants to drown you in attention and adoration.

“It’s just the first date,” he tells himself. It’s not even an orthodox way of getting to this first date. But the thought of it still made you smile. He knows that you are excited, and you want it just as much as he does.

You’re bored. Groaning, you lean your head back on the couch. Where is he? He said the two of you would leave at five o’clock, and it’s 4:55, and he’s not here. He’s going to be late. It’s just like a man to promise you something, and not show up.

You look down at your phone, disappointed that you thought that he could be different. At the end of the day what mattered to him was clearly just the ranch. Not you. Not your feelings. It’s humiliating that nobody ever sees you past something you could do for them.

Your blink rapidly, trying to stop the impending tears from falling. You won’t cry for a man. You won’t allow a man to ever have that much control over you. Never allow them to see you down. When Curtis inevitably turns up, you’ll ignore him. This doesn’t affect you.

It doesn’t. It means nothing. You sniffle. It’s allergies. It’s being back in this God forsaken place. All it does is bring up all this unwanted emotional baggage that you don’t want to deal with. It’s not Curtis that has you feeling like shit. No. It’s your mom. Fuck her. And fuck Curtis, too.

You’ll resort to just fucking him. At least you can get something out of this. You’ve waited long enough. And then — you’ll just walk away. Fuck this ranch, too. Fuck. It. All.

You sit up straight, wiping at your under eyes when someone knocks on the door. They knock again, but louder. “Curtis isn’t here. You can go away.”

“Red!” You look back down at your phone again. Five on the dot. “Red, you wanna answer the door?”

You sling the door wide open, planning to glare at him, and then you just stop. You allow your eyes to look up and down his body. He’s wearing good jeans, and even a nice button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up his arm, and showing off the few tattoos he has smattered on his forearms.

“Why are your eyes red?” He looks good. He smells good. Oddly expensive considering how Curtis normally smells like sunshine, sweat, hay, and horses. Extremely masculine, and not as disgusting as one might think. He cleans up nice. Even a pretty watch.

“Red?” You glance up at him. “Your eyes.”

“I just sneezed,” his brow furrows, and his head tilts. Looking a bit dog-like.

“I,” Curtis fidgets, and you finally stop gawking at him, noticing the beautiful bouquet of flowers in his hands. Now your eyes are watery for different reasons. “I b-brough you f-flowers,” he takes a deep breath, and hands them to you awkwardly. “Baby, don’t cry.”

Immediately he steps through the door, crowding you with his manliness, and actual tears break through your lashes. Every part about him overstimulates you. His scent, his height, the way his good boots quickly click on the floor, the way his calloused hands brush over your cheek as he brushes away the tears. And that word. Baby.

You’ve been touched over and over again. Women in college with you called you disgusting names because of the men that have touched you. But it’s in this moment that you realize that you’re still touch starved. Starved for a gentle touch, and soft voice to ease you out of your head. You don’t have to tell Curtis your deep rooted issues. He just knows. He’s lived it.

“Baby,” his Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps. This manly man is being so gentle with you that it hurts. You fear if you enjoy this too much that he will be taken away from you, and you want him more than you have ever wanted anything. Those walls that you spent years building, he is destroying with one goddamn word.

“Red.”

“S-s-stop. Hold,” he starts to retreat, but you grab his hand, keeping it softly on your face. “I thought — I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I wanted to pick you up,” dammit. You will not cry in front of this man. “I just feel we were skipping over some good parts here. The man coming to pick the woman up from her house. I didn’t want to just leave the house like we’re some established couple.”

“And you brought me flowers,” Curtis tries to hide the grin that is threatening to pull his lips completely up. Damn this hot as fuck man that has a sweet soul. “I was talking myself out of how you don’t mean anything to me.”

“Yeah?” He says, that grin fading quickly. His eyes look down in a true sadness. He cares what you think of him. “What did you determine?”

“How much that it actually would hurt me if you didn’t show up,” he peeks back up at you. “I think I care too much about you. About — what you think when it comes to me,” Curtis’ tongue dips out of his mouth, and he pulls his bottom lip in. Biting on the tender flesh. He reaches over to set the beautiful flowers on the counter before he places a hand on the wall and over your head.

You feel so small looking up at him. Mouth agape and trying to catch your breath. He’s so close. His eyes drift down your body, lingering on your chest before he looks all the way down. Appreciating every inch of you, especially the parts you have exposed. His hand that isn’t planted on the wall above you goes to your hip, and he pulls you closer to him, and you whimper. It is completely involuntary, but it makes Curtis pitch his hips forward.

He rights himself by putting a foot in between your own. He bends his knee slightly, and it is almost right at your core. You’re going to suffocate before the night is over. “I think an awful lot about you, baby,” you squeak at that pet name again, and his lips perk up on the side. Cheeky bastard. He knows what that name is doing to you.

“Think about me how?”

“This a pure first date.”

You have visions of the most lewd and salacious ways that he could be thinking about you. The curious part of you wants to know everything. How does he envision you? Does he touch himself when he has those thoughts?

“How are you thinking about me right now?” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. Tsking you. “Be explicit,” you look up at him through your lashes. And you are dying to know everything.

Curtis groans, looking down at his leg, and then back to you. Feeling like that’s a cue, you squat down, touching your core against his thick muscular thigh. The sound that releases from his throat sounds like a man starving for touch, even more than you are. “Don’t start. We got dinner reservations.”

“Then tell me.”

Bending over, he puts his mouth right at the shell of your ear. His voice is pained and whispered, “I briefly,” he breathes, pulling back enough to see you slowly grind over his thigh, "Envisioned you just like this. So desperate for me that you make yourself get off on my thigh.”

“Then what?” you know that you are playing with fire, and you don’t care.

“After you come on my leg, I throw you over my shoulder, and take us to that damn couch, so I can fuck into you, and then watch you bounce on my cock. As good as fucking from behind feels, I never want to take my eyes off you. I just want to stare at you enjoying yourself.”

“Curtis.”

“Baby, if we don’t leave now, I’ll have you sore for a week,” he clears his throat before standing up straight. Putting both his hands on your hip. “And you deserve to be treated like a queen. Don’t pout. I’m not going to fuck you…yet.”

And yet is a promise you will just have to deal with for now. No matter how much it aches. He gives you an easy wink before grabbing onto your hand, “You ready for our first date?”

“Yeah,” you’ve been ready for many years.

You had not expected for Curtis to bring you to the town dance hall. It had few updates since you left, but it is still lively on the dance floor, and the food is yummy. Most people didn’t come for the food, so there are very few tables hence the reason for reservations. The majority of the people came for the live music and good times.

Curtis is clearly reluctant to dance. Choosing to watch you frolic around with a girl you got along with in high school even if you weren’t friends. Your mom didn’t approve of her family. Her mother still works in housekeeping, and her father is a ranch hand. She grew up to be a teacher, and already a mother of two, and happily divorced, and happily remarried. Cheyenne was always nice to you, and didn’t even hesitate to start dancing with you.

It didn’t hurt that her new husband Cliff and Curtis worked at the ranch together. You’re hoping Cliff is the reason that you and Chey are dancing, and not you and Curtis. He did look like he needed to have a conversation with Cliff, and you just wanted to move to the music.

There’s freedom on the dance floor. Even more freedom when you realize you’re not obligated to go anywhere, but back home with Curtis. You giggle to yourself realizing just how wonderful this feels, even if Curtis is somewhat bailing on your date. It’s fine. And Chey has a lot more energy than you.

“I’m going to go get a drink,” you scream into her ear. She gives you a nod, “Then I’m going to bring Curtis out here.”

“That man doesn’t dance,” for all she knows, Curtis and you are just friends. Business partners. Acquaintances. “He seriously doesn’t dance for anyone.”

“Is that so?” You eye her up before turning around, heading to the table that occupies Curtis and Cliff. The tables are pushed back from the speakers, and have the ability to not have the music so loud. Getting over to the table, and you saddle on up in between Curtis’ spread legs. Playfully you put your hands on his thighs.

The way he looks up at you knocks the air right out of your lungs. His hands touch you at your knees, and they skim up your sides, not stopping until they get to your hips. “Oh,” Chey exclaims before crashing into her husband’s lap. “So it’s like that.”

“Red, what cha doing?”

“I’m thirsty,” he removes one hand to reach over to your beer, and hands it to you. You take a long pull from the cup before handing it back to him. Smiling so sweetly.

“What else do you want, darling?" That word does not sound as sweet, but it’s also not making him look quite as gone for you. Maybe it’s a safe nickname in public. “I know you didn’t just plant yourself in between my legs for a drink of cheap beer. What do you need, baby?”

You can hear Cheyenne giggling, but you don’t know if it's at the show in front of her, or the fact Cliff is kissing behind her ear. “You brought me here, and you’re not going to dance?”

“I don’t dance.”

“Not even for me,” you pout playfully, but he roughly pulls you into him. Putting his mouth behind your ear, and he inhales you.

“The next slow song, I’ll…” his voice stops as a slow country song starts playing. “Okay, let’s head out to the dance floor, baby,” you look over at Chey whose mouth is wide open as Curtis leads you out onto the floor. Yet another time of Curtis claiming you, and also proving that you’re different from any other woman he’s ever had at his side.

He’s doing things he doesn’t normally do. He’s showing you off, instead of hiding behind closed doors. He wants the world to know who you belong to. And it doesn’t feel so bad having him drag you out onto the dance floor. Dodging the different people slowing down, and pulling in close to one another.

Curtis twirls you around, before wrapping you tight against his body. His arm firmly around your back. Definitely too close to dance. But close enough to hear him, and feel his breath. Watching his pretty smile in the flashing lights. Physically close, but it’s the intimacy that is striking you harder.

“You dragged me out here, and you’re not going to talk?” His mouth is right next to your ear, and the rumble of his voice goes right to your core.

“I’m just enjoying the view,” smiling up at him, you stop rocking back and forth to stand on your tippy toes. Kissing him right beside his mouth. You move too quickly away from him, but catch his movement to chase your mouth. It’s not all in your head, no matter how much you try to convince yourself it is. You don’t want to think about how things you like disappear. You want to enjoy this, no matter how short it could be.

“So you still think I’m sexy?”

“I think you’re sexier,” Curtis has the biggest smirk as he grips onto your hips tighter. He digs his fingers into your soft curves, pulling you more into him. “I feel like you’re trying to consume me.”

“There’s a guy behind you,” he sighs, letting the two of you drift in a different direction, “I don’t like him staring at your ass.”

“Curtis, people stare at asses.”

“Not yours,” the grip of his hands soften, and slide lower. Too low, and they cup your buttcheeks. “Nobody needs to be staring at you like they want to eat you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re mine,” your brow cocks up immediately. “Only I get to stare at your ass like that. Does this make you uncomfortable?” You shake your head no. The last thing you want is for him to remove his hands off you. This feral idea that he is claiming you, yet again, in front of other men that only see you as a piece of meat just makes you feel weak in the knees.

“I’m such a caveman.”

“Just don’t tell me what to do,” you give him a warning. “I don’t mind you — claiming me. Don’t make it toxic. But I want people to know. Even if it’s not real,” that voice of doubt will forever haunt you. You don’t want to let it win, or even let it control you.

Curtis’ eyes roam over your face as he brings his mouth closer to your neck. He lets his pillowy soft lips tickle your neck. He ghosts his lips over your skin, peppering open mouth kisses on your sensitive column. “It’s very real, Red.”

He jerks you flush against him, and you whimper as his bulging hard on presses against your stomach. “I’m not giving you sex tonight. I’m gonna make you work for my body.”

“Asshole,” you giggle, trying to worm your hand down his stomach, but he grabs ahold of you.

“But I am going to worship you when we get home,” your eyes close at the sound of that. “I want to kiss every inch of your skin. Every dip and curve. I want to pick you up and throw you on the bed, and peel these painted on jeans off your legs, strip your shirt and bra off, and then rip those panties off you. And then,” he presses his forehead against yours, and he inhales deeply. Memorizing the way your heat alters that sweet florally perfume.

“Then?” you gulp, staring up at him.

“I’m going to place my head between your thighs, and I’m going to make you come over and over again on my mouth,” you chuckle, shaking your head. “You doubt me?”

“Nobody has ever made me come from oral,” something flashes in Curtis’ eyes, and he glances down at his watch. “But I’ve gotten very good at faking orgasms.”

“Mmm,” Curtis growls, and is immediately turning. He leads you through the throng of people. Slightly pushing anyone out of the way as he trudges to wherever he’s going.

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” butterflies. You’ve never had a place that felt like home. A place that you wanted to go to feel safe and secure.

“Why?” You giggle, trying to slow him down. He gives a wave over to Cliff and Chey. Thankfully, all you brought was yourself, and your ID. “Curtis!” He doesn’t stop when he makes it through the door. And apparently your legs aren’t going fast enough for him, and he scoops you up. Placing your belly on his shoulder as he carries you through the parking lot.

He doesn’t grunt, or make any sounds with your added weight. This is a man. He is all muscle and hard lines. Each hard piece of him was carved with grueling work. He’s used to tossing things around, and now it’s going to be you. “Curtis?”

He places you into the seat of the truck before he jogs to the other side. Throwing the truck into gear, and he backs out of his spot too easily. God, a hot man knowing how to control a vehicle is ridiculously sexy. The fact he’s on a race to get you home just to feast on you makes you swish around. Pressing your thighs closer together.

“Don’t you ever fake an orgasm with me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You will not hurt my feelings. But I want you to always be satisfied. If you don’t enjoy something, fine. But I need you to know. I really enjoy eating pussy.”

“Great. Tell me exactly whose pussy have you been eating?”

He rolls his eyes, and turns to scowl at you. “None for a very long time. And I’m starving. So you’re going to lay on your back, and let me have fun.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. I take it we’re not taking things slow.”

“We’re taking my dick slow. But I need you to realize just how desperate I am for you. How much I have been envisioning the taste of your cunt. And I hope that you have stayed hydrated today,” his tongue clicks simultaneously with a wink, and he looks back out the window.

“Did you just…?”

“Yes, Red. I did a clicking wink with you.”

“Why should I have stayed hydrated,” he looks towards you, and you look damn near adorable worrying away at your lip. You nervously look out your side of the window, and he stops the car in the middle of the road. “Are you crazy?”

“C’mere,” Curtis’ hand slaps on your thigh before he drags you across the bench seat, and right next to him. “You’re too far away from me.”

“You’re needy.”

“Sure am. Needy for you,” your mouth opens, and it closes quickly. “You better keep that closed when you’re right beside me. And yeah, it’s because you’re too close, and it makes me wonder what my dick will look like between your pretty lips.”

“We can.”

“Nope. This is about worshiping you. But don’t tempt me,” you settle back, making yourself comfortable. It feels nice with his added warmth. It could be the hottest day in the year, and you think you’d still be trying to get closer to him. “Did you ever miss it here?”

Curtis’ voice sounds raw, terrified to hear your answer. It’s not even one you have to think too hard about, “No,” his breath shutters, and his body seems to deflate, “It was only you that I missed.”

“You don’t have to butter me up. I’ll still eat you.”

“I’m not. I think it’s safe to say you and I have always had an odd connection. Some of us were just too scared to do anything because he was afraid of what his best friend would think if you started fucking his little sister.”

“I’d do more than just fuck you.”

“Oh yeah?” You lean to the side, and kiss his neck. Feeling a rumble rattle through his body, you smile as you sit back on the seat. “And just what else would you do with me?”

“Own you. Consume every ounce of your soul and pleasure. I will bring tears to your eyes as we make love for the first time. And I’ll devour you,” home. It can’t get here fast enough. You’re left twitching and moving around in your seat. You can’t say anything to that. You’ve never made love. Never did anything, but fucked. And it felt good. It just never lasted.

His right hand rests on your leg, but makes work moving up and down your supple skin. A torturous countdown of how many seconds it takes to get home. Up. One. Down. Two. Up. Three. Down. Four. Up. Five. Down. Six. It’s all you can do to stay sane. All these promises, and all his control, while you’re melting in this seat. But this is something you could grow used to.

Something that you could grow old with. And that terrifies you. If you let him in, you give him the power that you have refused to give anyone else. Simply put, you allow him to hurt you, to break you completely down into nothing. The power to destroy what little resolve that you have left.

But the thought of not experiencing someone truly loving you terrifies you more. So if you’re going to give him you, you’re going to fully dive right into this moment, and with this man. Giving him the ability to do what you have always wanted from him. What you’ve always craved and needed. You’re going to let him destroy you in pleasure and hopefully love. Not an obligation or a duty to keep something in the family, but because it’s what he wants to do.

His truck comes to a slow roll into the driveway, and without even another word, he slings it into park, and hops out of the truck. You think for only a split second he’s changed his mind until his hands reach in to find your body, and he drags you out of his truck. An arm under your legs, while the other supports your back, he carries you bridal style into the house, while you’re left to roam his chest with your hand.

Even if tonight is all that you get, you’ve had him.

Curtis kicks the door close, and his stride quickens. Carrying you all the way to the bedroom before tossing you onto the bed. He toes off his boots, and reaches behind him to pull off his shirt. His gaze sets on you while he pulls his belt undone, and before you can even think, you try and get this stupid dress off you.

“Uh uh,” he tsks. Yanking his pants down, he stalks to the bed. “I enjoy opening my own presents, Red. C’mere. Scoot your ass to the edge of the bed,” gulping, you follow instructions, too eager. “There’s my good girl,” your eyes glaze over as you stare up at him owlishly. His hands reach towards you, and pulls one worn out boot off before the other. Throwing them both carelessly in the room.

Those thick calloused hands rub over your thighs before his lips attach to your skin. Curtis keeps his eyes directly on you as he kisses his way up your legs. Alternating between each leg painfully slowly before he drags your dress up. His eyes leave yours, and he looks between your spread thighs. Licking his lips at the prettiest pair of itty bitty panties he’s ever seen.

He doesn’t have to wonder if you want this. Your thighs are soaked with your arousal, and your cunt is pulsing through that sheer thong. “You’re already shivering,” instead of your nickname, he whispers your real name. He fully plants himself on his knees before he lifts you up to a sitting position, and attacks your mouth with his own.

This kiss is full of tension. A kiss that you have fought for, for days. He can’t even contain his own neediness as he licks along your lips, and you grant him the access to taste your tongue. He swirls his tongue around yours, and sucks on the muscle. Keeping you just occupied enough for him to reach to the bottom of your dress, and he pulls away long enough to rip the confinement off, and then he’s back.

His hips thrust into air, needing a form of friction that he’s denying himself, and only to pleasure you. To make sure that you realize that you’re first in this equation. That there is nothing that he won’t do to ensure that you are pleasured. His hands grope and prod at your ample chest, and he pulls away from your mouth to kiss and nip along your neck. Chest heaving you reach a hand to his swollen cock, but he flicks you away.

You can appreciate his need to pleasure you, but you want to feel. You want to know that he’s just as turned on as you. Reaching behind your body, he uses one hand to undo your bra, and he slings into the floor. Leaning back, he admires you. His own chest rising and falling with so much heat that you know you’re not imagining things.

“Fuck, look at you, Red. All for me. This is all for me, right?”

“Y-y-yeah,” he leans forward, using himself to lean you back into the bed before he kisses down your body. He sucks a nipple into his mouth, while his hand tweaks the other, and too quickly he continues his course down your body. You rarely let men go down on you. You don’t want them looking too long at your body, but with Curtis, you can’t even think straight. You don’t have a thought in your mind, but wanting his mouth firmly planted on your heat.

He doesn’t stop to remove your panties, no, he desperately kisses over the ruined sheer fabric. Like he couldn’t wait the few seconds it would take to remove the thong. Like he would die without knowing what you taste like. His tongue flattens over your core, and your back arches off the bed.

God, you want him on your bare flesh. You need him there. Need him to suck on your clit, and fuck you with his fingers. You. Need. Him. “Curtis,” he chuckles, and the vibrations make your toes clench. “Stop playing around.”

“Such a needy little thing. You gonna be my sweet little slut?”

“Yes!” At this moment, there is nothing you wouldn’t do for him. “Please just touch me.”

You miss him taking a deep inhale before slowly letting the air out of his lungs. You miss him biting at his lip because the second that his fingers touch that thin material at your hips, your eyes close softly. He isn’t playing. In your moment of thankful pleasure, you don’t see his blue eyes go soft as he peels you out of those panties. You don’t see his breathing stutter as he stares at you naked in his bed. Spread open, and begging for him.

You could never know the years he has spent dreaming of there being a time that you would be in his bed. Pleasuring you, pleasuring him, pleasuring each other. But more importantly, loving. He is one that never thought he was good enough for you, and it’s why he stayed away. You deserved some rich man that would spoil you. But maybe his love is enough for you. That you didn’t require all these materialistic things that your mother wanted for you. That you solely just wanted him.

And he’s tired of pretending that you aren’t everything that he’s ever wanted. Sassy attitude that doesn’t take shit from no one. A woman that claims she doesn’t need love, but gets all soft when he mentions it. Someone that claims that sex is only for pleasure, when he’s barely touched you, and you are putty in his hands. Curves that need to be openly touched. Worshiped. Not only are you perfect, but so is your body. Everything about you is his biggest fantasy.

And now you’re spread out before him like a meal he has always wanted. “Eyes on me, sweetheart,” you’re anything but sweet. But you sure do obey him without any questions. Wrecked before he’s even begun. He lifts up your legs, and rests them on his shoulders. Curtis’ dips lower between your spread legs, giving you not much to look at but his eyes that are blown wide with lust, and a predatory grin that a wolf would be envious of.

He licks one stripe through your slit, and you swear you could come undone from that alone. “Mmm,” he licks his lips, letting you see all of him before leaning forward, and devouring you. He licks, nips, and sucks at your bundle of nerves with no decorum. The noises he makes loudly and proudly, just like a man starved. Like a man that hasn’t had anything to drink in months, and his only survival is your juices.

Your body thanks him in kind. Leaking onto the bed, and he just slurps up every drop of honey that your body gives him. Your body meets his every move as it rocks up over and over again. Such a pretty sight. Curtis wears your thighs like earmuffs all the while he has some crazed look on his face at just how delectable you taste. You could drown him, and suffocate him, and he would die from the taste of your pussy every day of the year.

This is how he wants to spend his life, worshiping at the altar of your delicious cunt. Everyday he needs to taste you. Every day he needs to know that your body gets completely soaked just thinking about his mouth on you. You let out a shrill scream when he pushes three fingers into you. Not even hesitating for your body to adjust to the thick intrusion because you can handle it. Your walls are slicked up and accommodate him perfectly.

You writhe and pick up your own pace, not even realizing that he has stilled. He just kitten licks and sucks on your swollen clit. You do the rest of the work, fucking yourself on his fingers. Both of you are just as desperate for the other, and this is the moment that every single wall has been shattered, and you both know just how much you have needed the other.

Nothing has ever been so perfect. Nothing has ever made him feel more complete than that sounds coming off your kiss swollen lips. Bucking your hips in a need to get off more than you ever had before. Your tits bounce with every move you make, and his free hand cups one, and pinches the nipple. Your walls flutter around his fingers, and he smirks at your comment earlier. He’s about to get you off on his mouth, when nobody else ever has. And not just getting you off, you are dying for release.

This perfect view. This immaculate sight of your body rippling with every move of your hips. Your eyes clench close, and your mouth opens to a silent scream, pace quickening until the sound of his name tears off your lips in the most pornographic way. Your cunt holds his fingers in a vice grip as they pulse around his digits.

Your breath hasn’t even regulated before Curtis crawls up your body. He settles his weight onto you, and he thrusts into you. Boxer briefs still cover his body, but he’s just as needy to get off, and you let him take. Let him demand a release without friction. Simulating fucking has never been so hot, and then his soaked beard and mouth find yours and you kiss him with no abandon. Gripping onto his back, and scratching down his spine and you swallow every wanton moan and groan that flows off his lips.

Nothing has ever been more hot than Curtis needing something that he is refusing himself so much. You would gladly let him spear you with his cock, but all the while whatever this is, is so fucking hot. You will long for the day that you can have him, but you will never forget the day that Curtis wet humped onto your sated body. You are relaxed and willing him to just get off. Let his cum add to the mess between your legs.

“Curtis,” you whimper through the kissing. “Baby, let go,” and instantly he spews against your pussy, and you gasp as he leans back. You don’t know what passes between the two of you as you watch his mouth fall open and moans of his release fan across your face, but you want to experience this again. He is beautiful. Perfect even.

The two of you stare at each other panting, and you don’t even want to break the spell. You want to make a joke about next time just sticking it in, but you can’t. There’s an odd understanding that happens between the two of you. Too much information and feelings, and also not enough. But this moment will forever be engrained in your mind. And this bed will never be the same.

“I should, should get a washcloth to clean you.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“Me neither.”

“This one time — don’t,” Curtis releases a quick breath of air, but nods his head. So many unsaid words pass between you. It’s too much. Feelings are too much and racing in between you. You’ll worry about what this all means tomorrow. Or maybe it means nothing. Maybe it just means that you’re done fighting. Why fight when there is this to gain from giving up. You’ve fought too long, and this prize is too precious.

As if knowing you’ve given up, he lays his head on your chest, and you sigh. This entanglement will be the way you fall asleep. And you hope that this is the way you fall asleep every night. For the rest of your life. Entangled in him.

Taglist: @tis-thedamn-season @marveloustaylortot @rnurse-kole @peaches1958 @seitmai

@smile1318 @andydrysdalerogers @cjand10 @midnightramyeoncravings @kmc1989

@pandaxnienke @distractingbeth @kmm-fluv @retroquest @buckybarnesisdaddy

@munjack @shoegal73 @sunlightkent @looking10 @patzammit

@fenixstar

Next

Happy birthday, tiny menace. Before you say anything: yes, I remembered. No, I did not need a calendar reminder. Yes, Wanda needed three reminders because she is chaos in eyeliner. I love you. I’m proud of you. I hope today is gentle.

You stared at the message for a long second.

Then, despite the sleep still clinging to you, you smiled.

Tiny menace.

You could hear his voice in the words. Dry, affectionate, pretending not to be emotional and failing just enough that you could see straight through him.

Your birthday had never been uncomplicated.

Not in the dramatic way people expected when they heard that no one knew the exact date. It was not something you thought about every day. It did not haunt you the way other things had. But it had always existed in the background like a small, quiet question mark.

No birth certificate with certainty. No story of the day you arrived. No mother saying, I remember the first time I held you. No father talking about pacing a hospital hallway.

Just a date chosen later.

A date your mother had taken and made yours with stubborn, deliberate love.

The day she decided to celebrate because a child deserved candles, even if the world had failed to write down the right morning.

You rolled onto your back, phone resting against your chest.

Another vibration came before you could answer Pietro.

Wanda.

Of course Wanda’s message was longer.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I am not yelling. I am expressing correct emotional volume. I hope you know I am making your soup today even though you are not here to complain about the salt level, because traditions matter and because I miss you and because I refuse to let geography defeat me. I love you so much. I hope this year gives you softness. I hope it gives you doors that open without hurting you. I hope it gives you the kind of happiness you don’t have to explain or justify. Also Pietro is a liar. I did not need three reminders. I needed two. Text me when you wake up. Or don’t. But know I’m hugging you aggressively in spirit.

Your smile trembled a little at the edges.

There it was again.

That strange, aching proof that you had not vanished from people’s lives just because you had stepped away from them.

You typed Pietro back first.

Thank you. I love you too. And I’m older now, so legally I think you have to stop calling me tiny.

His reply came almost instantly.

No.

You huffed a laugh, soft and sleep-rough.

Then you answered Wanda.

Thank you. I love you. Please don’t over-salt the soup out of rebellion.

Her response came in three separate bursts.

No promises. Also you’re loved. Deal with it.

You pressed the phone lightly to your chest again, closing your eyes for a second.

A month ago, you would not have known what to do with that much affection. It would have felt like standing under bright light with nowhere to hide.

Now, it still overwhelmed you.

But it did not make you want to run.

That was something.

The next vibration was not a text.

A call.

Your mother.

Your throat tightened immediately, but not with dread. Not anymore.

You answered before it could ring a second time.

“Hi,” you said softly.

“Oh, sweetheart,” your mother breathed.

And there it was – the same tenderness she had carried for you since you were four years old and sitting in a chair too big for your body, hands folded in your lap, not understanding yet that this woman would become the first real shelter you ever knew.

“Happy birthday,” she said.

Your eyes stung.

“Thank you.”

There was a small pause, the kind filled with everything she did not say because she had learned to love you without cornering you.

Then, with a smile in her voice, she added, “I know you are going to tell me no one is sure it’s the right day.”

Your mouth curved faintly. “No one is sure it’s the right day.”

“And I am going to tell you what I tell you every year.”

You looked toward the pale light at the edge of the curtains.

“That it’s the day I became yours,” you murmured.

Her breath caught.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Exactly.”

You closed your eyes.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Then your mother sniffled softly and said, “I was trying not to cry this early.”

“You called me,” you pointed out gently.

“I know. That was my mistake.”

A quiet laugh escaped you, and she laughed too, wet and warm and familiar.

She asked how you had slept. You told her the truth – well enough. She asked if Tony had anything planned, and you froze for half a second because that was when you realized.

Tony did not know.

Your father did not know.

The thought landed with a strange, embarrassed little jolt.

Not because you had hidden it on purpose.

Because somehow, in the middle of thesis work and defense preparation and slowly learning what it meant to have a father, the date had arrived without you thinking to tell him.

“I don’t think I mentioned it,” you admitted.

Your mother went quiet for one beat.

Then, very gently, “You should.”

Your fingers tightened around the phone.

“I know.”

“He’ll want to know.”

“I know,” you repeated, softer this time.

And you did.

That was the terrifying part.

Tony would want to know.

Not because he had to. Not because he was trying to make up for lost time in some loud, overwhelming way.

Because he cared.

Because for the past month, every time you had called him Dad, something in his face had softened like the word still hit him in the chest. He never made a spectacle of it. Never asked you to repeat it. Never drew attention to it in a way that would make you retreat.

But he heard it.

Every time.

And every time, he looked like he was trying to hold something precious without gripping too tightly.

Your mother stayed on the phone with you for a few more minutes, long enough to tell you she loved you, long enough to make you promise you would eat something decent, long enough to remind you – twice – that your birthday did not have to be perfect to matter.

When you hung up, the room felt quieter.

You sat up slowly and pushed your hair away from your face.

For a few minutes, you just sat there, phone in your lap, breathing through the strange tenderness of the morning.

Then you got dressed.

Not formally. Not like you were trying to perform celebration. Just comfortably – soft trousers, a shirt that did not make you feel exposed, your hair clipped back loosely. The little beaded bracelet from the plane still sat on your wrist, ridiculous and bright. You had not taken it off except to shower.

The house was awake when you stepped into the hallway.

You could smell coffee first.

Then toast.

Then the faint, clean scent of Maria’s flowers from the entryway.

You followed the sounds toward the kitchen and found Tony exactly where you had started finding him most mornings: leaning against the counter with a mug in one hand, tablet in the other, wearing the expression of a man pretending he was not already thinking about twelve separate problems.

He looked up the second you entered.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning.”

His eyes moved over your face with that quick, careful assessment he never quite turned off. Not invasive. Not clinical. Just fatherly in the way you were still learning to recognize.

“You sleep?”

“Mostly.”

“That is an answer,” he said, pointing vaguely with his mug, “but not a good one.”

You stepped further into the kitchen, your fingers curling briefly around the edge of the counter.

He had finished reading your thesis a few days ago.

Not skimming it. Reading it.

Actually reading it.

He had taken notes. Tony Stark had sat with your archaeology thesis and left comments in the margins that ranged from brilliant, painfully precise questions to little exasperated remarks like this sentence is doing push-ups to look stronger than it is. You had pretended to be offended. You had secretly saved every annotated page like evidence of something too tender to name.

He had told you, with unusual seriousness, that your argument held.

That your work was yours.

That you were ready to defend it.

Since then, there had been a lightness under the exhaustion. The thesis was finished. Not done in the cosmic sense – there was still the defense, still the committee, still the strange ritual of standing in a room and proving you understood what you had spent years building – but the writing was complete.

You had reached the end of the thing.

Now there was only the presentation.

Only.

Tony narrowed his eyes slightly. “You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where you look like you’re about to say something and apologize for it before you even start.”

You blinked.

Then let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

“I realized something this morning.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not.” You paused, then corrected yourself. “I don’t think it is.”

Tony set his tablet down immediately.

That alone nearly undid you – the speed of it. The way his attention shifted fully to you like nothing else in the world deserved space until he knew what you needed.

You swallowed.

“It’s my birthday,” you said quietly.

Tony went still.

Not dramatically. Not in shock so much as in sudden, complete attention.

“What?”

You rubbed your thumb lightly over the inside of your wrist, over the beads.

“My birthday,” you repeated. “Sort of.”

His expression changed, softening and tightening all at once. “Sort of?”

“No one’s sure of the actual date,” you explained, voice careful. “Because of the records. Or lack of them. But this is the day my mom chose. The day she and everyone else kept celebrating.”

Tony stared at you.

For a second, he looked like he was doing math again. Dates. Years. Missed mornings. Lost candles. All the birthdays that had happened without him knowing there was someone in the world he should have been calling.

You saw the grief before he could hide it.

“Hey,” you said quickly, instinctive. “It’s okay.”

His eyes snapped back to yours.

“No,” he said, but not harshly. “No, don’t do that.”

You froze.

His voice softened immediately.

“Don’t make it easier for me because I’m sad about what I missed,” he said. “That’s mine to carry. Not yours.”

Your throat tightened.

“Oh.”

Tony exhaled and dragged one hand lightly over his mouth, then set his mug down too.

“Okay,” he said, like he was reorienting himself around the new fact. “Birthday. Your birthday. Today.”

You nodded once.

His eyes searched your face, gentler now.

“What do you want to do?” he asked. “And before you answer with something practical, I am warning you, I will be personally offended if your first instinct is to say work.”

Your mouth twitched despite yourself.

“I wasn’t going to say work.”

“Good. Growth. We love to see it.”

You looked down for a second, suddenly shy in a way that made no sense and every sense at once.

“I don’t need anything big,” you said. “I don’t really know how to… do birthdays.”

Tony said nothing.

He just waited.

You took a breath.

“Can we spend the day together Dad?”

The question came out smaller than you wanted.

Tony’s face changed.

It was not the first time you had called him Dad. That had been happening for a month now, naturally and carefully and with less panic each time. But this seemed to strike him differently.

Maybe because you were not asking for something useful.

Not thesis feedback. Not logistical help. Not advice.

Just time.

His eyes went bright for half a second before he blinked it back.

“Yeah,” he said, voice a little rough. Then stronger, “Yeah, of course we can.”

You let out a breath you had not realized you were holding.

He pointed toward the hallway with a small grimace. “Tiny caveat.”

You lifted a brow.

“I do have to stop by headquarters for maybe twenty minutes. Documents. Actual physical documents, because apparently some people enjoy living in the eighteenth century.”

You smiled faintly.

“But after that,” he said, picking up his mug again and then immediately putting it down as if coffee had become irrelevant, “I’m all yours.”

The words landed warm.

All yours.

You nodded.

“Okay.”

Tony leaned closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “And by all yours, I mean I am prepared to be dragged through museums, bookstores, obscure historical sites, or whatever else makes your little academic heart beat faster.”

“My academic heart?”

“It’s very intense. I respect it.”

You laughed then.

A real laugh.

Tony’s expression softened with quiet triumph, like making you laugh on your birthday had already made the day worth something.

The visit to headquarters took longer than twenty minutes.

Tony blamed everyone except himself.

“You see,” he muttered as the private elevator rose, “this is how they get you. They say document, singular. Then suddenly there are folders. Then signatures. Then Pepper materializes with that look.”

“What look?”

“The look that says I have personally disappointed the concept of competence.”

You smiled and stepped a little closer to his side as the elevator chimed.

The building itself should have made you nervous.

Glass, steel, security. The kind of sleek corporate space that announced power without needing to raise its voice. But Tony moved through it with such effortless belonging that you found yourself more curious than afraid.

No one stared openly.

Or if they did, they were smart enough not to make it obvious.

Tony had introduced you only where necessary, with a careful vagueness you appreciated immediately.

“This is my daughter,” he said once, to an older executive who had clearly been about to ask the wrong question and lost all ability to speak for half a second.

Your heart had tripped over itself.

My daughter.

Not my guest. Not a friend. Not a complicated explanation.

My daughter.

And somehow, he said it like it had always been true.

You kept your face composed because you were very good at that.

But Tony glanced at you afterward, caught the slight shine in your eyes, and did not comment.

He simply rested one hand briefly against your upper back as he guided you down the hallway – not pushing, not claiming, just there.

The documents were waiting in his office.

Which, to your surprise, looked less like a monument to wealth and more like the inside of his mind had exploded into furniture.

There were clean architectural lines, yes, and expensive surfaces, and windows that made the city look unreal beneath you. But there were also scattered prototypes, half-open files, a mug with three pens in it instead of coffee, and a small stack of books on a side table that looked suspiciously like the ones you had mentioned two weeks ago.

You touched the spine of one.

Tony noticed.

“I was curious,” he said defensively.

“You bought four books on material culture because I mentioned one article.”

“I said I was curious.”

“You bought a monograph on ceramic typology.”

“Extreme curiosity.”

You laughed again, and the sound filled the office in a way that made the space feel less impossible.

He signed what he needed to sign. Muttered threats at a contract clause. Took one call that lasted exactly ninety seconds because he said, “It’s my daughter’s birthday,” and then hung up before the person on the other end could fully respond.

You stared at him.

He looked back, utterly unrepentant.

“What?”

“You just hung up on them.”

“I gave them context first.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It does for me.”

By the time you left the building, the sun had shifted higher and the air outside had turned bright and warm.

You stepped onto the sidewalk beside him, still holding the slim folder he had insisted on carrying until you threatened to hide it somewhere “archaeologically inconvenient.”

Tony paused near the entrance and looked down at you.

There was a softness in his face now, quieter than the teasing, deeper than the jokes.

Then he lifted one arm and wrapped it around your shoulders.

Not suddenly.

Not without giving you time to move away.

You did not.

You let yourself be tucked against his side.

The gesture was easy and public and fatherly in a way that made something ache under your ribs.

“Lunch?” he asked.

You leaned into him by a fraction.

“Lunch.”

He smiled.

“Excellent. I know a place.”

“Of course you do.”

“I know many places. It’s one of my more marketable qualities.”

You walked like that down the sidewalk, his arm around your shoulders, your steps matching his.

No cameras this time. No speculative article. No strange strangers trying to turn your life into a headline.

Or maybe there were.

Maybe there always would be.

But Tony had promised he was handling it. That he would keep you out of the center of the storm as much as he could. That if anyone tried to make you into a story before you were ready to tell your own, they would regret it legally, financially, and creatively.

You had believed him.

Today, with his arm warm and steady around you, you believed him even more.

Lunch was quiet and perfect because it did not try too hard.

No candles. No staff singing. No public spectacle.

Just a table near the back, good food, Tony asking questions about places you wanted to see in Athens as if October were not months away but already a fact waiting for you.

“You know,” he said around the time dessert arrived, “I have been informed that birthday cake is traditional.”

“I don’t need cake.”

“That was not what I asked.”

“You didn’t ask anything.”

“Exactly. I made a statement. Very different.”

You rolled your eyes, but when the dessert came – not a full cake, just something small, chocolate and elegant with one candle placed in the center – your throat closed.

Tony did not make a speech.

He just lit the candle, slid the plate gently toward you, and said, “Make a wish.”

For a second, you stared at the flame.

You had spent so much of your life wishing for things in secret.

To be kept. To be chosen. To be safe. To be forgiven for wanting. To understand where you came from. To survive the people you loved.

Now, sitting across from your father on a birthday whose date might not be exact but whose tenderness was real, you realized you did not know how to wish the way you used to.

Your life had not become easy.

But it had become yours in a new way.

So you closed your eyes and wished for courage.

Not happiness. Not certainty.

Courage.

Then you blew out the candle.

Tony watched you with shining eyes and pretended not to.

Later, back at the villa, your phone buzzed while you were sitting outside with your shoes kicked off and your legs tucked under you.

Steve.

You had not expected the message to make your chest tighten so quickly, but it did – not painfully. Just with the weight of old affection.

Happy birthday. I hope today has been kind to you. You deserve that. Also, small life update because I think you’d appreciate the timing: I have a new colleague at the Met. Her name is Sharon. She started this week. She has very strong opinions about exhibition lighting, so naturally I thought of you.

You smiled before you could stop yourself.

Sharon.

You pictured Steve, earnest and patient, standing in some museum corridor while a woman with strong opinions explained exactly why the lighting was wrong. You could practically hear the dry amusement in his voice.

The thought did not hurt.

That surprised you.

It was strange, realizing that pieces of people’s lives could continue shifting while you were away. Steve had a new colleague. Wanda had soup on a stove in New York. Pietro had probably overbooked himself again and would deny it if asked. Your mother was at home, loving you across distance. Bucky was somewhere in the city too – but you did not open that door in your mind. Not today.

Today, you let Steve’s message exist as its own thing.

Gentle.

Friendly.

Safe.

You typed back slowly.

Thank you. Today was kind. And I absolutely do appreciate strong opinions about exhibition lighting. Please tell Sharon she’s probably right.

A minute later, his reply came.

That is exactly what I was afraid you’d say.

You laughed softly.

Tony stepped out onto the terrace then, two glasses of water in hand. He paused when he saw your face.

“Good message?” he asked.

You looked down at the phone, then back at him.

“Yeah,” you said. “Steve.”

Tony nodded. He knew the name. Knew enough of the shape of it. Enough not to press.

“He said happy birthday.”

“Good,” Tony said simply. “People should.”

You accepted the glass he handed you.

For a while, the two of you sat without talking, the evening settling blue and warm around the villa. The day had been quieter than birthdays were supposed to be, maybe. Smaller. Less decorated. Less certain.

But it had been full.

Pietro’s teasing. Wanda’s fierce love. Your mother’s voice. Tony’s arm around your shoulders. A candle. A wish. Steve’s message arriving like a small bridge from the life you had not returned to yet.

You turned the glass slowly in your hands.

“Dad?” you said.

Tony looked at you immediately.

“Yeah?”

You leaned back in your chair, eyes on the darkening sky.

“Thank you for today.”

His expression softened.

“Anytime,” he said.

And because he knew you now – because he had spent the past month learning the shape of your silences – he did not add too much.

He did not say all the birthdays I missed. He did not say I’ll make it up to you. He did not turn the day into grief.

He just sat beside you while the night came down, letting the quiet hold.

And for once, your birthday did not feel like a question mark.

It felt like an answer you were still learning how to believe.

Bucky had spent the morning staring at his phone.

Not continuously.

That would have sounded worse than it was.

He had gotten up. Showered. Made coffee too strong because he still couldn’t be trusted with moderation before seven. He had gone to work. He had answered emails, reviewed two technical reports, sat through a meeting where someone from another department used the phrase “synergy pipeline” three times without apparently feeling shame.

He had functioned.

But every few minutes, his awareness circled back to the device lying face-up beside his keyboard.

Your birthday.

Or the day everyone called your birthday, because nobody had ever known for certain. Because the people who should have written down the first facts of your life had failed you before you were old enough to understand what failure meant. Because your mother had chosen a day and held onto it with both hands until it became real through repetition and cake and candles and Wanda making too much noise in the kitchen.

Bucky remembered so many of them.

Your sixth birthday, when you had sat on the couch with a paper plate balanced carefully in both hands, looking overwhelmed by the number of people in the room but unwilling to admit it.

Your eleventh, when Pietro had managed to get frosting on the ceiling and never convincingly explained how.

Your fifteenth, when Steve had looked at you like he had just realized the world had changed shape, and Bucky had spent the whole evening pretending not to hate him for it.

Your sixteenth, when everyone had been trying too hard to make leaving for college sound exciting and not terrifying.

Your birthdays had always made you quieter.

Not unhappy. Just careful.

Like being celebrated was something you wanted and feared in equal measure.

That was what kept his thumb hovering over the text box now.

He had written the message six times already.

Happy birthday.

Too plain.

Happy birthday. I hope today is good to you.

Too distant.

Happy birthday. I’m thinking of you.

Too much.

Happy birthday. I love you.

Absolutely not. Not today. Not like that. Not when he knew how easily his wanting could turn into pressure if he wasn’t careful.

He locked the screen and set the phone down again.

Then picked it up thirty seconds later.

For the past month, you had been writing to him more often.

Not like before.

Nothing about it was like before.

Before, messages between you had lived in shorthand – complaints, jokes, pictures of stupid things you saw in the city, half-formed thoughts you trusted him to understand without explanation. Before, he could send you a photo of burnt toast and you’d answer with, Tragic. Funeral at noon? Before, he could text you late at night and know you’d answer if you were awake, because your life and his had always overlapped without needing permission.

Now, every message felt like stepping carefully across a frozen lake.

There was warmth, yes. Sometimes even humor. Small pieces of it.

You had told him about Athens. About the one-year position. About October. About how the opportunity connected to your work and to the future you had wanted since the day archaeology had first become more than an idea in your head.

He had told you he was proud.

He had meant it so much it hurt.

You had told him your thesis was finished – really finished, no longer something being dragged toward completion, only waiting to be defended. He had read the sentence three times, smiling at his phone like an idiot in the middle of his apartment because even through everything, some part of him still got to witness your victories.

He had told you about therapy once, carefully, without making it your responsibility. Since then, he had mentioned it only when it came up naturally. Not as proof. Not as currency. Just as fact.

I had an appointment today.

It was difficult.

I think I’m starting to understand some things I didn’t want to understand.

You had never asked him for details.

But you hadn’t pulled away either.

That alone still felt like more grace than he deserved.

And that was exactly why he didn’t want to push today.

Your birthday wasn’t the day for him to insert himself into your life just because the calendar gave him an excuse.

You had said he could write.

But permission was not the same thing as entitlement.

That was one of the things therapy had made painfully clear.

He was learning – slowly, clumsily, not without resistance – that wanting to reach for you did not mean reaching was always right. That missing you did not make his need urgent. That love, if it was love and not fear wearing love’s clothes, sometimes meant keeping his hands to himself.

Even digitally.

Even when every instinct in him screamed.

His therapist had asked him, two sessions ago, what he imagined would happen if he did not act on the impulse immediately.

Bucky had stared at her like the question was ridiculous.

Then he had realized he didn’t know.

Or rather – he did.

Nothing.

Nothing happened.

The feeling rose. Crested. Hurt like hell.

And then, eventually, it passed enough that he could choose.

That was new.

Not pleasant.

But new.

He sat in his car after work with the engine off and the phone in his hand.

Rain tapped lightly against the windshield, turning the streetlights into blurred gold streaks. New York looked tired today. Wet pavement, rushing strangers, taxis cutting too close to the curb. The kind of evening where everyone wanted to get home faster than the city allowed.

Bucky opened your thread again.

The last message was from three days ago.

You had sent him a photo of a stack of printed thesis pages – no face, no context beyond the caption.

It exists in physical form. Horrifying.

He had answered.

That stack looks like it could stop a bullet.

You had replied.

Good. Academic armor.

He had laughed out loud when he read it.

Actually laughed.

Then spent the next ten minutes sitting with the strange ache of missing you and not being destroyed by it.

Now, the text box blinked at him.

He typed.

Happy birthday. I hope today has been gentle with you.

He stared at it.

Gentle was good.

Gentle didn’t demand.

Gentle didn’t say I miss you even though he did. Didn’t say I love you even though he did. Didn’t say please think of me today even though some ruined, selfish part of him wanted exactly that.

He nearly sent it.

Then he imagined your phone lighting up while you were with your mother, or Pietro, or whoever you had chosen to let close today. He imagined your chest tightening because his name appeared when you weren’t ready for it. He imagined ruining even five seconds of a day that had never been simple for you.

He deleted the message.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself, voice rough in the small quiet of the car. “Not about you.”

He set the phone on the passenger seat.

A second later, it rang.

Bucky’s whole body jolted.

He looked down automatically, expecting Steve or Wanda or his mother.

Your name filled the screen.

For half a second, his brain refused to process it.

Then his hand shot out so fast he almost knocked the phone off the seat. He fumbled it, caught it against his thigh, cursed under his breath, and swiped to answer before he could lose the call.

“Hello?”

His voice came out too sharp. Too breathless.

There was a pause.

Not silence exactly.

Your breathing.

Soft. Uneven.

Then, very quietly, you said, “Hi.”

Bucky closed his eyes.

The sound of your voice hit him in the chest with such force that for a second he couldn’t answer. He had read your words for a month. Held onto them. Replayed them. Let them be enough because they had to be.

But your voice…

God.

Your voice was real in a way text could never be.

It crossed distance without asking permission and found every bruised place in him.

“Hi,” he managed.

Another pause.

Awkward. Fragile.

Both of you standing on opposite sides of something neither of you knew how to cross yet.

Bucky forced himself to breathe slowly. To not fill the silence because he was scared of it. To not flood you with questions.

Then he remembered.

His throat tightened.

“Happy birthday,” he said softly.

You let out a small breath.

Not quite a laugh.

Not quite a sob.

“Thank you.”

He stared at the rain-streaked windshield, one hand gripping the phone so tightly his fingers ached.

“I was going to text,” he admitted before he could overthink it. “I just… wasn’t sure if I should.”

“I know.”

His heart stumbled.

Of course you knew.

You always knew more than he expected.

“I didn’t want to impose,” he said.

“I know,” you repeated, softer this time. Then, after a small pause, “That’s why I called.”

Bucky went still.

The rain filled the silence between your words.

He swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Your voice was careful. Delicate, almost. Like you were admitting something to yourself as much as to him. “I wanted… I wanted to hear your voice today.”

Bucky pressed his free hand hard against his mouth.

For one terrifying second, he thought he might make a sound he couldn’t recover from.

He blinked fast, staring at the distorted lights beyond the glass.

“Okay,” he whispered.

It was the only word he trusted himself with.

You breathed out again, and this time there was the faintest hint of embarrassed humor in it.

“This is awkward.”

Bucky’s laugh surprised him.

Small. Broken at the edges.

But real.

“Yeah,” he said. “A little.”

“A lot.”

“Yeah,” he corrected, because lying felt useless. “A lot.”

The silence that followed was different.

Not easy.

But less sharp.

He could almost picture you wherever you were – not your exact surroundings, because he still did not know and did not ask, but the shape of you. Phone near your ear. Shoulders probably a little tense. Mouth pressed together between sentences. Braver than you thought you were.

“How was your day?” he asked finally.

It felt like too ordinary a question for everything sitting between you.

But maybe ordinary was the only way to begin.

“It was good,” you said.

Bucky’s chest loosened by a fraction.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Quiet. Not… not bad quiet. Just quiet.” A pause. “My mom called this morning. Pietro texted before I was even fully awake. Wanda sent something very Wanda.”

Bucky smiled faintly. “So, dramatic?”

“Emotionally excessive.”

“That tracks.”

You hummed softly. “Steve texted too.”

Something twisted in him, but not the way it used to.

It hurt, yes.

But there was no flare of possessive panic.

No old instinct to measure himself against Steve.

Just a quieter ache, threaded with gratitude, because Steve loved you well. Because Steve had always loved you well, even when Bucky had resented him for it.

“That’s good,” Bucky said, and meant it.

“He told me about a new colleague.”

“Oh?”

“Sharon.”

Bucky blinked.

Then, despite himself, he huffed a laugh. “Steve told you about a woman named Sharon on your birthday?”

Your own laugh came through the line, soft and startled, and Bucky nearly came apart at the sound.

“It wasn’t like that,” you said, but there was warmth in your voice now. “He was telling me about work.”

“Sure.”

“He was.”

“Absolutely.”

“Bucky.”

Hearing you say his name like that – exasperated, almost familiar – made his eyes sting all over again.

He looked down at his lap and smiled helplessly.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Couldn’t help it.”

“I noticed.”

For a few seconds, it almost felt like before.

Not completely.

Never completely.

But close enough to hurt.

Then the silence returned, gentler but heavier.

Bucky knew better than to chase the laugh. He knew better than to push the door wider just because it had opened a crack.

So he asked carefully, “How are you feeling? With the thesis being done, I mean.”

There.

Safe topic.

A known topic.

Something you had already told him, not something he was discovering or demanding.

You seemed to appreciate that, because your voice steadied.

“Strange,” you admitted. “I keep thinking I forgot something. Like there must be another chapter hiding somewhere.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched. “Knowing you, there probably is. In a drawer. Fully cited.”

“That’s rude.”

“That’s accurate.”

“It’s finished,” you said, and he could hear the quiet pride underneath. “Now I just have to defend it.”

“Just,” he repeated.

You sighed. “Yes. I know.”

“You’re going to destroy them.”

“That’s the hope.”

“No,” Bucky said, the certainty rising before he could stop it. “That’s the fact.”

You went quiet.

For a moment, he worried he had said too much. That the confidence had landed wrong. That maybe his certainty felt like pressure.

Then you said, very softly, “Thank you.”

Bucky’s throat tightened.

“You earned it,” he said. “All of it.”

Another silence.

This one carried more.

Athens, maybe. Your future. The thought of you leaving in October. The thing he had deliberately not mentioned because he refused to make your dream about his fear.

You brought it up first.

“I’ve been looking at apartments in Athens,” you said.

Bucky closed his eyes briefly.

There it was.

The tiny blade under the ribs.

But he breathed through it.

“That’s good,” he said, and was proud of how steady his voice sounded. “Have you found anything?”

“Not really. Mostly listings that look either too expensive or haunted.”

“Haunted by academics?”

“Probably worse.”

“Tourists?”

You made a small sound of amusement. “Exactly.”

He smiled at the windshield, even while his chest ached.

“October gives you time,” he said.

“It does.”

“You’re going to love it there.”

You were quiet for a beat. “You think so?”

Bucky’s answer came without hesitation.

“Yes.”

He let the word settle, then added, because this was something he could give you without making it about him, “You’ve wanted Europe since you were a kid. Since you first realized ruins were… I don’t know. Not dead things to you.”

“They’re not dead things.”

“I know,” he said softly. “That’s why you’re going to love it.”

Your breathing changed slightly on the other end.

He wondered if you were smiling.

He hoped you were.

“I’m scared,” you admitted.

Bucky’s chest tightened.

Not because he wanted to fix it.

Because he wanted, more than anything, to be worthy of hearing the truth in your voice.

“Yeah,” he said. “Makes sense.”

A pause.

Then, “That’s it?”

“What?”

“No big motivational speech?”

Bucky huffed a quiet laugh, then shook his head even though you couldn’t see him.

“I’m learning restraint.”

That earned him another soft laugh.

God, he could live on that sound.

“I’m scared too,” he said after a moment, before he could decide it was too honest.

You went still through the line.

He felt it.

Bucky swallowed.

“Not about you going,” he clarified quickly, because that mattered. “I mean– no, that’s not true. A part of me is scared about that. But that’s not yours to carry.” His thumb pressed against the edge of the phone. “Mostly I’m scared because I know how much it matters. And I want it to be good for you.”

Your voice was very quiet when you answered.

“That’s… a good answer.”

He almost laughed, but it got stuck.

“I’m trying to have more of those.”

“I can tell.”

The words landed gently.

Not forgiveness.

Not absolution.

But recognition.

Bucky stared out at the rain and let himself feel the full weight of it.

You could tell.

You could tell he was trying.

For the first time in months, the effort did not feel invisible.

The line crackled faintly.

Then you said, hesitant again, “How are you?”

Bucky’s fingers tightened around the phone.

No automatic fine.

Not with you.

Not anymore.

“I’m…” He breathed in slowly. “I’m not great.”

“Okay.”

“But I’m better than I was,” he continued. “I think.”

“Therapy?”

“Yeah.” He leaned his head back against the seat. “Still going.”

“Good.”

The word was small.

But it mattered.

“I didn’t think it would…” He stopped, searching for the cleanest truth. “I didn’t think it would make sense to me. Sitting there. Talking to a stranger.”

“And does it?”

“Sometimes.” His mouth twisted. “Sometimes I hate it.”

“That sounds about right.”

“She asks annoying questions.”

“That is generally the job.”

“She makes me answer them.”

“That is also generally the job.”

Bucky smiled faintly. “You sound like Pietro.”

“Don’t insult me on my birthday.”

His laugh came easier this time.

Then faded.

He hesitated, thumb brushing along the side of the phone.

“There’s stuff I’m starting to understand,” he said carefully. “Not stuff that makes what I did better. It doesn’t. But… stuff about why I panic when I feel like I’m losing someone. Why I turn it into anger. Why I’d rather make a mess than admit I’m scared.”

You didn’t say anything.

But you stayed.

That was enough for him to keep going.

“I’m not telling you so you’ll comfort me,” he added. “I just… you asked how I was.”

“I know.”

“I’m trying not to make my fear somebody else’s problem.”

A pause.

Then, softly, “That’s good, Buck.”

Buck.

Not Bucky.

Not James.

Buck.

His eyes burned.

He pressed them shut.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “I hope so.”

The silence grew again, but neither of you rushed to fill it.

For the first time, Bucky let himself sit inside it without clawing at the walls.

Then you said, almost shyly, “I’m glad I called.”

His heart twisted so hard it almost hurt.

“Me too,” he said.

“I didn’t know if I should.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know the feeling.”

You breathed out, and he heard the faintest movement – maybe fabric, maybe you shifting where you sat.

“I don’t know what this means,” you said.

Bucky’s answer came immediately, quiet but steady.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything yet.”

The words surprised him.

Maybe they surprised you too, because you went very still.

He swallowed, then continued. “It can just be a call. On your birthday. Because you wanted to hear my voice.” His own voice roughened. “That’s enough.”

The silence on the other end trembled.

When you spoke again, your voice was thinner.

“Thank you.”

Bucky nodded, even though you couldn’t see.

He looked at the rain, at the blurred world outside his windshield, at the city that kept moving no matter what broke inside people.

Then he knew.

Not because the timing was perfect.

Not because it would fix anything.

Not because he expected you to say it back.

But because he had written the words. Texted them. Confessed them to other people. Let them live in every space except the one that mattered most.

He had never said them to you out loud.

Not once.

Not directly.

His breath caught.

“Can I say something?” he asked.

You inhaled softly.

“Okay.”

He closed his eyes.

No performance.

No plea.

No demand.

Just truth.

“I love you,” Bucky said.

The words came out low. Steady. Bare.

Like something placed carefully between you, not pushed into your hands.

“I know I’ve written it,” he continued, because now that he had started, the rest had to follow. “And I know saying it doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t ask anything from you. It doesn’t mean you have to say it back.” His voice cracked despite him. “I just needed you to hear it from me. Once. The right way.”

For several seconds, there was no sound but rain.

Bucky didn’t move.

He barely breathed.

Then your voice came through, fragile and full of something he couldn’t name.

“I heard you.”

His eyes opened.

A tear slipped down his face before he could stop it.

He wiped it away quickly, uselessly.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Another pause.

Then, quieter still, you said, “I love you too.”

Bucky bowed forward, phone pressed hard to his ear, one hand covering his mouth as the words hit him.

They didn’t feel like victory.

They didn’t feel like forgiveness.

They felt like grace and grief intertwined so tightly he couldn’t separate them.

They felt like being handed something breakable and being trusted, somehow, not to crush it again.

“I know,” he managed, voice wrecked. “I know.”

“You don’t,” you said, not sharply. Sadly.

Bucky swallowed hard.

“No,” he admitted. “Maybe I don’t.”

“But I do,” you whispered. “Even with everything.”

He closed his eyes again.

“Even with everything,” he repeated.

You were both quiet after that.

Not because there was nothing left to say.

Because there was too much.

Eventually, your voice softened into something tired.

“I should go.”

Bucky’s chest tightened, but he didn’t fight it.

“Okay.”

“I’m glad I heard your voice.”

His throat burned.

“I’m glad you called.”

A small breath.

“Goodnight, Buck.”

His hand tightened around the phone.

“Goodnight,” he whispered. Then, because it was your birthday, because he could say this without asking for anything, because he wanted the last thing you heard from him tonight to be gentle, he added, “Happy birthday.”

You didn’t answer for a second.

Then, softly, “Thank you.”

The call ended.

Bucky stayed in the car long after the screen went dark, rain whispering over the windshield, your voice still alive in the space around him.

He didn’t feel healed.

He didn’t feel forgiven.

He didn’t feel like the road ahead had suddenly become simple.

But his hands were steady when he set the phone down.

And for the first time in a long time, the ache in his chest didn’t feel like punishment.

It felt like something he could carry.

Carefully.

For as long as you needed.

GENERAL taglist: @mellowfurynight | @castielscaplan | @whatisanniedoin | @barewithme02 | @mathcat345 | @overwintering-soldier | @alpinebarnesworld | @alwaysreenie | @iceyyycapsicle | @karlahan

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