Knight

He didn't come to Dex with pity, which was wise. He didn't sit across from him in some cold room and talk about redemption or recovery or all the other fluffy words people used when they wanted a dangerous man to feel grateful for being tolerated. Dex had heard those words before, and they always meant the same thing: behave, be useful, don’t make us regret leaving you alive. 

Charles, at least, had the decency not to pretend otherwise. He wore a plaid shirt under a vest (questionable fashion, but who was Dex to judge?), carried a leather folder, and looked at him like he wasn't a tragedy, nor a project, nor a rabid dog somebody had been foolish enough to feed. Instead, he looked at him as an asset with very specific applications.

Dex respected that, because the humiliating truth was that he needed a job.

Not a freelance gun-for-hire thing he got going on to fund his crusade against Fisk’s task force. He needed an actual, stable job. He needed money that came in regularly enough to pay rent. He needed a place with working locks, decent heating, and a refrigerator that contained more than condiments, protein bars, and eggs. He needed prescriptions filled before the bottles were empty. He needed ammunition that didn't come from old caches, stolen evidence rooms, or men who sold illegal ordnance out of storage units and thought calling him “buddy” was a good idea.

He needed structure.

Dex had spent so much of his life being pointed at things that he didn't entirely know what to do when no one was pointing. Freedom sounded good in theory, but freedom also meant waking up in a silent apartment with too many hours in the day and nowhere to put the violent itch crawling under his skin. It meant no orders, no parameters, no approved targets, no neat little box where the worst parts of him could be made useful. It meant his own mind, unattended, circling the same dark rooms until he started looking for a window to break.

Charles offered him work instead.

He said it was black ops, but clean enough. Government-adjacent, but deniable. There were forms, salaries, coded assignments, medical access, housing arrangements, travel papers, and weapons clearances. It was ugly in all the ways Dex understood, but it had a shape. It had a beginning, a middle, and, theoretically, an end.

Dex missed that.

Maybe.

He sat across from Charles in a windowless conference room. The table between them reflected the overhead lights in long white strips. There was coffee untouched near Dex’s elbow and a pen placed exactly parallel to the folder.

“So what?” Dex asked eventually, his voice flat. “I’m one of the good guys now?”

Charles chuckled. “You’re useful,” he shrugged. “Let’s start there.”

Dex stared at him for a second. Then, against his better judgment, he smiled.

It wasn't a friendly smile, but it was the closest thing to approval Charles was likely to get. There was something almost refreshing about not being lied to. At least one was asking him to hold hands with his past or apologize to a circle of strangers under fluorescent lights. Charles wanted him because Dex could do damage with precision, and after all this time, there was comfort in that kind of honesty.

After all, in Dex’s book, Charles might not be a good person, but he wasn’t a horrible one either. Unlike Wilson Fisk. Unlike Vanessa Fisk. 

He knew that because he saw who was funding the mission: Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

Charles tapped the edge of the file once with two fingers. “She also bankrolls the Avengers.”

Dex’s expression didn't change.

“The new team,” Charles clarified.

“Yeah,” Dex said flatly. “I know who the New Avengers are.”

“Then you understand the nature of this operation.”

Dex looked back down at the file.

Sure, he understood enough. If Val was paying for Avengers, that meant she was funding heroism. If Charles worked for her, then Charles cannot possibly be that bad, can he?

The logic was stupidly simple, so simple a child could have made it. Dex knew that. He knew goodness didn't transfer through payroll. 

He liked it anyway. He liked clean lines. He liked being told where to stand.

He looked down again before Charles could read too much on his face. The next few pages were maps, photographs, shipment records, old Hydra symbols carved into walls and stamped onto yellowing documents. Europe had been marked in red: Germany, Romania, Austria, Italy, Poland, Norway.

When he flipped through, he found photos of safehouses, labs and weapons caches. The next page had details of facilities hidden under abandoned factories and bank accounts buried beneath shell companies and dead men’s signatures. There were names in multiple languages, some with photographs attached, some already crossed out.

Hydra, apparently, was like black mold. You could burn the house down and still find it growing behind the walls.

“They’re just remnants,” Charles said. “Y’know, splinter groups who aren’t really Hydra anymore, they’re just borrowing the name and the branding. Opportunists, mostly. Scientists who kept copies of files they were meant to destroy. Brokers moving old weapons systems through private channels. Buyers interested in serum research, cryogenic technology, asset conditioning protocols, enhanced human restraints, anything that survived the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the years afterward.”

Dex turned a page.

“This would be a seven-month assignment,” Charles continued. “Possibly longer, depending on what you recover. You’ll move through Europe, locate the caches, secure the weapons, and retrieve as much intel as possible before it disappears into the black market. You’ll have safehouses, false identities, medical support, and extraction options when necessary.”

“When necessary,” Dex repeated.

Charles’s mouth twitched. “You understand the kind of work this is.”

Dex did. He understood it so well that a now-ancient part of him had already begun arranging itself around the mission, routes, and sight lines. He wasn't a spy, but he would try his hand at a language he didn't speak but could fake long enough to get through a checkpoint. He would map the distance between cover and exit in every photograph. He would process the likely angle of fire through the windows of a Croatian warehouse shown on page six.

His mind liked having something to do.

“And the priority?” Dex asked.

“Weapons first. Intel second. People third.”

“Dead or alive?” 

“Alive if possible,” Charles said, adjusting his glasses. 

Dex glanced up, raising an eyebrow. Charles sighed, almost imperceptibly. “If practical,” he amended.

That was better.

Dex leaned back, the chair creaking softly beneath him. He turned another page, then froze.

The photograph clipped to the next sheet wasn't of a weapons cache, a scientist, or some grey-faced man in a tactical vest.

It was you.

Dex stared for a moment longer than he meant to.

The picture looked like it had been taken without your permission from a street corner. You were wearing a winter coat, one hand tucked into your pocket, the other holding a paper coffee cup like you were just another pretty socialite in another expensive European city, not something pulled out of Hydra’s worst nightmares.

Pretty was the wrong word, Dex realised. Pretty was too soft.

You were… intense in a way Dex didn't immediately trust. Your posture was careful, your stride was disciplined. Dex knew a little of what that’s like; he had seen it in mirrors.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

Charles’s eyes flicked down to the file. “Your partner.”

Dex’s smile disappeared. “No.”

“You haven’t heard the rest.”

“I don’t do partners anymore.”

“You do now.”

Disappointment moved through Dex’s eyes, but Charles didn't retreat from it. That made Dex dislike him again. Or respect him. Sometimes the two were close enough to be irritating.

“I work better alone,” Dex said.

“Uh uh. You survive alone,” Charles replied. “There’s a difference.”

For a second, he considered standing up and walking out, just to prove no one in that room could decide anything for him. He could go back to whatever came before this. Cheap rent, unclear income. Too much time. Too many thoughts. His talents were left without purpose, especially after Task Force agents were being rounded up and locked up one by one. 

Dex tapped one finger against the edge of the photograph. “What is she?”

The question was rude. Charles seemed unsurprised by that, too.

But Dex knew that a man like him would not be put to a mission with some other average agent. She must be equipped to handle him in some way, and he needed to know how. 

“She is a super soldier,” he said. “From the Siberian program. She might be smaller than you, but she is faster than you. Stronger than you. More durable than you.”

Dex’s knuckles flexed. Charles, annoyingly, looked amused by that. “Don’t take it personally. You're here because she’s strictly close quarters only. Her aim is dogshit. She can’t pin the tail to the donkey if it was the size of an elephant.”

Dex looked back down. The photograph changed with the information, though nothing in it moved. The pretty coat became a costume. The coffee became a cover. He knew enough of the infamous Siberian Program to know what it meant: cryo, programming, asset conditioning, and brutal compliance. You were a war crime with a pulse.

“Zemo killed them,” Dex said. Or so he’s heard.

“He missed one,” Charles said dismissively.

Dex’s eyes narrowed, but Charles just continued, “She was recovered at the end of the conflict. Barnes and Rogers found her before anyone else did. As far as our records show, Zemo believed the termination was complete.”

“And it wasn’t.”

“No.”

Dex looked at your face again. There you were, alive by accident. A cute little clerical error in the middle of a massacre.

“Is she deprogrammed?” he asked.

“Enough.”

Dex gave Charles a dry look. “She’s stable, then?” 

Charles tilted his head. “Are you?”

Dex huffed a laugh, short and humorless.Fair.

Dex knew this made sense: you probably knew Hydra architecture, internal coding systems, and old asset routes. For this assignment, there was probably no one more useful, save for the Winter Soldier himself. But then again, he was too busy pretending to be a public facing hero, which meant this probably read too much like grunt work to him.  

“When do I meet her?” he asked.

Charles’s eyes shifted by the smallest amount, just enough for Dex to understand that he had given the answer Charles had been waiting for.

“Tomorrow morning.”

Dex shut the folder, though he kept the photograph on top. Then, he agreed to the mission. 

—

As promised, Dex met you the next day on a rain-slick air base that didn't officially exist.

You were already waiting by the plane when Charles led him across the tarmac, hands in your jacket pockets, hair tugged loose by the wind, looking entirely too calm for someone being sent across Europe to clean up an evil organisation’s leftovers.

Charles stopped between you like a middle school teacher introducing two students he already knew would become a disciplinary issue.

“Benjamin Poindexter,” Charles said. “This is your partner.”

“Dex,” he corrected.

You tilted your head. “Do you correct everyone that fast?”

“Usually faster.”

Your mouth twitched, but it wasn’t quite a smile. You gave him your name, and he recognized it from the file. You took a sip from your cup, still watching Dex over the rim. “So. You’re the knife throwing miracle worker.”

“That what he called me?”

“No,” you rolled your eyes. “That’s me being generous.”

Dex felt the corner of his mouth lift before he could stop it.

He folded his arms. “And you’re the super soldier.”

Your face stayed mild. “Allegedly.”

“Allegedly?”

“I don’t like confirming things for strange men on runways.”

“Smart.”

“I try.”

Charles glanced between you like he had already decided this was as good as civility was going to get. “You’ve both read the operational brief.”

“Yes,” you said.

Dex said nothing when Charles looked at him.

Dex eventually said, “Enough.” He said it with a smile a little too charming for your peace of mind.

You scoffed and Dex’s gaze dipped over you once, interested. You noticed, because you were trained to notice changes in breathing, pupil dilation, heart rate, weight distribution. Instead of calling him on it, you gave him your sweetest, most harmless smile.

Dex stared at it like he wanted to peel it off you with a knife just to see what was underneath.

Charles cleared his throat and handed you both slim black folders. The paper inside was minimal, most of the real information tucked away behind encrypted devices and dead drops. You flipped yours open anyway, mostly to give your hands something to do.

“The two of you will have limited external support,” Charles continued. “You’ll have a plethora of assumed identities. You’ll share safehouses when necessary.”

Dex said, “When necessary?”

“Frequently,” Charles said.

You looked up. Dex looked at you.“I don’t snore,” you said. 

Dex’s eyes narrowed. “Congratulations.”

“I do steal blankets.”

Charles pinched the bridge of his nose. “Any objections before departure?”

Dex opened his mouth. You interrupted before he could say something predictably unpleasant. “Nope. Bucky talked me into it, so technically if this goes badly, we can blame him.”

Charles looked amused; Dex’s flicked to you.

You kept looking at the file, not because you missed the reaction, but because you didn't entirely want to deal with it yet.

“Barnes?” Dex asked. His voice had not changed much. The word came out casual, almost indifferent, but his eyes widened, if only a little 

You lifted your head. “Yes.”

“As in James Barnes.”

“Do you know another famous Buckys?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

Dex studied you.

You had expected curiosity. Most people got curious about Bucky. Some got reverent, others got afraid. Some got that awful pitying look, that suggested they thought they knew Hydra to imagine they understood anything at all. Dex did none of that.

“What did he talk you into?” he asked.

You shrugged, tucking the folder beneath your arm. “Working. Y’know. Doing something useful.”

Charles didn't interrupt. Coward.

You glanced toward the aircraft, watching two ground crew members load another case into the hold. “He said I couldn’t just sit around waiting for someone to piss me off.”

Dex’s mouth twitched.

“What did Barnes say?” Charles asked, tilting his head.

You sighed, and without meaning to, your voice shifted into an imitation of Bucky’s low, exasperated drawl. “‘You can’t keep breaking people’s bones and making me explain to the cops why they shouldn’t press charges.’”

Dex stared at you.

You smiled faintly, fond despite yourself. “He had a point. Apparently regular civilians get upset when you dislocate someone’s shoulder in a grocery store parking lot.”

“What did they do?” Dex asked. 

“They touched me.”

Dex only shrugged, as if it was a reasonable thing to do.

“Well,” Charles said, producing a small bag of peanuts from his coat pocket, “try not to kill each other before Germany.”

You looked at Dex. He looked back at you. Then your mouth curved up, entirely too pleased. “Don’t worry,” you said. “I have a feeling we’re going to be just fine.”

—

The first few missions were okay.

Dex had expected friction. He had expected you to get in his way, or slow him down, or make some sentimental speech about doing things cleanly because he’d expected a partner with principles. Instead, you were efficient. You were talkative, but quiet when you needed to be. You were quick in a way that made him understand, very quickly, that Charles had not been exaggerating about the super soldier thing.

Germany was a weapons ledger hidden behind a false wall in a private gallery. You smiled at the owner’s security like you were there to admire post-war sculpture, then put one guard through a locked door with your shoulder when the alarms tripped. Dex handled the cameras and anyone who would eventually get to you. By the time the police arrived, both of you were already three streets away, walking under one umbrella you had stolen from the cloakroom and laughing at how untrained these guys were.

Austria was colder. You had gotten intel of a Hydra courier in a ski town, three dead drops, one safe full of expired serum that didn't do anything except maybe get you high. Dex put a knife through a man’s hand before he could reach the panic button, and you raised a brow at him like you were impressed. Later, in the car, you told him his aim was annoyingly theatrical.

Taking it as a compliment, he told you that your melee skills were not too bad yourself. You smiled at the window and tried your hardest not to deflect it.

By the time you reached Romania, the process had become familiar. You took the left side of a room without being told. Dex took the high angle. You never walked directly in front of his line of fire. He never asked you to move. In safehouses, you cleaned weapons at the kitchen table while he checked exits and pretended he wasn't watching the way your hands worked. You drank terrible coffee. He made comments about it. You ignored him and made him a cup anyway.

You didn't talk much during jobs, but afterward, little pieces of you slipped out.

Unfortunately, a lot of them had Bucky fucking Barnes attached.

“Bucky hated safehouses like this,” you said once, standing in the doorway of a flat in Bucharest with peeling wallpaper and a radiator that knocked all night. “Said they all smelled like wet concrete and black mold.”

Dex looked around. “He sounds poetic.”

“He was mostly complaining.”

Another time outside Salzburg, you watched Dex hotwire a silver sedan and said, “Bucky used to do that one-handed.”

Dex didn't look up. “Congratulations to Bucky.”

You laughed like he had meant to be funny. He had not.

It was annoying, how he kept happening.

It wasn't a constant and definitely not enough for him to call it a problem without sounding insane. It was just often enough that Barnes became a third person in the room even though he had never met the man before, he found him irritating because he was apparently very good at everything.

Bucky had warned you about old Hydra storage locks. Bucky had taught you how to sleep sitting up without waking with a crick in your neck. Bucky had said Romanian winters were worse than Russian ones because at least Russia was honest about trying to kill you. Bucky had this dry little laugh when Steve and Sam got sentimental. Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.

Dex told himself he didn't care. It was obviously a lie, but it was a convenient one.

He didn't care that your voice changed around the name. He didn't care that you said it easily, like muscle memory. He didn't care that Barnes had known you before this, before Charles, before rain-slick bases and seven-month assignments and Dex learning that you hummed under your breath when you were stitching wounds.

He definitely didn't care that Barnes was the reason that you were here, with Bullseye, instead of the picture perfect ex-congressman, now leader of the most high profile superhero team in the world. Emphasis on hero.

The fourth mission was in Hungary, in an old textile factory outside Budapest that had been turned into a weapons relay point by boys too young to remember Hydra properly and too stupid to fear it enough. It went clean until it didn't. Someone burned the files before you could get to them. Dex shot out the sprinklers. You ripped the office door off its hinges. Together, you dragged what you could from the smoke and left six men zip-tied in the loading bay for Charles’s people to collect, not before killing twice as much along the way.

By midnight, you were in a safehouse above a closed bakery, both of you smelling like smoke and wool.

You sat on the floor with your back against the couch, cleaning soot from under your nails with the tip of a knife. Dex stood near the window, watching the street below through a gap in the curtains. For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then you said, “Bucky once set an entire warehouse on fire by accident.”

Dex closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, his reflection looked annoyed in the dark glass. “What is he,” Dex added, “your boyfriend?”

He meant it lightly, mostly. It came out almost like a joke.

The room’s air seemed to change at that; but you didn’t flinch. You didn’t look wounded. You only looked back down at your hands, at the knife balanced between your fingers, and for the first time since he had met you, Dex saw the answer arrive before you decided whether to give it.

“He used to be,” you said.

Ah.

He waited for more but gave him nothing.

The knife moved again, scraping soot gray wasn’t there anymore. Your face had closed in that gentle, polite way he was starting to recognize as armor. And it wasn’t the super soldier armor. Not even the Hydra armor. It was more… personal.

Dex should have asked. He wanted to ask: How long? Why did it end? Did you love him? Do you still? Did he touch you? Did he know what to do with you? 

He asked none of it, mostly because that would have meant admitting he cared. So he only said, “Huh.”

You looked up. “Huh?” you repeated.

Dex shrugged, turning back toward the window. “Didn’t peg Barnes as your type.”

“And what’s my type?”

Dex seemed to consider it for a second. “Bad decisions.”

That got a small smile from you. “You’re not wrong.”

Dex stared out at the empty street, fist curled tight, his heartbeat skipping stupidly beneath his skin.

He told himself it was just curiosity. Barnes was relevant because Barnes had been Hydra, because Barnes knew the program, because Barnes had known you before Dex did. That was all: information, context, and nothing else.

But behind him, you went quiet again, and Dex could only assume and spiral about what you had not said.

He didn't want to know.

Ha! That was a lie.

He wanted to know so badly it made him angry.

You shifted on the floor, stretching one leg out, your boot nudging his discarded jacket.

“He’s a good man,” you said after a while.

Dex’s fingers tightened against the curtain.

Ugh. 

He didn’t know what that shift of note was in your voice. Was it longing? Did you miss him?

“Lucky him,” Dex said through gritted teeth.

You didn’t answer. When he glanced back, you were looking at the knife in your hand like you had forgotten why you were holding it.

—

The next mission went wrong.

At first, it was just another Hydra remnant with more confidence than sense, tucked beneath an old municipal archive in Prague, guarded by men who thought stolen weapons made them important. Dex took the cameras. You took the stairs. It should have been clean.

Then one of them said a name: Vasily Karpov 

Dex didn't know who that was at the time, but he would later learn that he was your old handler.

Still, he witnessed hearing it did to you.

He saw the split-second absence in your eyes— the way your face dropped first, almost blank, before an old and brutal version of you came up underneath it. The man laughed like he knew exactly what nerve he had touched.

He didn't laugh for long.

You hit him once and shattered his jaw.

Dex heard the teeth crack inside the man’s mouth before the body even hit the floor. Blood sprayed across the concrete in a hot arc, one of the molars skittering away into the dark like a dropped coin. The man tried to scream through what remained of his face, choking on it instead.

Then you hit him again.

Your fist came down with enough force to cave his nose flat against his skull. Bone gave under your knuckles with an ugly crunch. The back of his head smacked the floor hard enough to leave blood blooming beneath it, but you didn't stop.

The third punch ruptured his eye.

Dex watched as your knuckles sank into ruined flesh already turning unrecognizable, he saw red slick burst across your sleeve. The man’s limbs jerked once beneath you, involuntary, nervous system still firing even as his face stopped looking human. This was when Dex had to remember that you Hydra didn't just make a super soldier out of you; you were once a Winter Soldier, too.

You kept going.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each hit sounded worse than the last. Your breathing had gone frighteningly steady, not angry or frantic, just mechanically brutal, like your humanity had slipped somewhere far away from yourself and left only an asset behind.

Blood coated your hands to the wrist.

One of the punches split the skin over your knuckles open. You didn't notice.

“Hey!” Dex barked, because this was brutal, even for his standards. which was saying a lot.

The body beneath you had stopped moving entirely now. One arm twitched occasionally from the impact, dead weight bouncing under the force of your blows. There was barely a face left. 

You hit him again anyway.

Dex grabbed you then, hooking an arm around your waist and hauling you backward with a grunt. “Stop.”

You drove an elbow back hard enough to bruise ribs. Dex barely held on. Your boots scraped through blood as you tried to lunge forward again, eyes empty, locked on the corpse like it could still speak.

“He’s dead,” Dex sneered into your ear.

Your fist clenched again.

For one horrible second, Dex thought you were going to tear free and keep going until there was nothing left on the floor but pulp.

Then your whole body jerked still.

The room went quiet except for your heavy breathing.

Slowly, your eyes dropped to the body. Or what used to be one.

—

In the safehouse that night, you took the bed.

You had made a rule three countries ago that the two of you would alternate between bed and couch because you both had trust issues and didn't want to compromise. Dex didn't argue. 

So, tonight, he took the couch.

It was too short. The blanket smelled like dust. His ribs hurt where you had elbowed him. He lay there in the dark, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling and listening to the old building settle around him.

He didn't sleep much.

That was why he heard you scream when you did. It was a full, blood-curdling scream that tore through the apartment like a mortician had opened you up.

Dex was on his feet before it ended.

He had a knife in his hand by the time he reached your door. He kicked it open, expecting an enemy.

But there was no one there. Only you.

You were standing beside the bed in the dark, barefoot, shaking, eyes open, and yet, you looked wrong. Your hair was loose around your face. One hand was curled at your side like it expected a weapon. The other was pressed against your own throat, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

Dex lowered the knife a fraction.

“Hey,” he said, smaller than he meant to. “It’s me.”

You turned toward him.

Then… you attacked.

This was what Dex had imagined Siberian-programmed Winter Soldiers to move like: a nightmare. 

Dex barely got his arm up before you struck him, the impact driving him back into the wall. Pain flashed white through his back, but it was fine. His back could take a hit now. He twisted away from the next punch, caught your wrist, lost it when you wrenched free. 

“Wake up,” he snapped.

You didn't. Instead, your fist cracked into the plaster beside his head when he ducked. He swept your leg; you went down and came back up too quickly. He had fought trained killers before. He had fought men who wanted him dead. This was worse.

Because he could tell, even now, that you were not trying to win. You were merely trying to survive something that wasn't in the room.

Dex said your name again. That got nothing out of you.

You lunged.

He caught you badly. Your strength drove both of you sideways into the dresser. A lamp shattered. His knife hand came up on instinct, not to strike, just to guard, just to keep space between you.

You twisted, and the blade sank into you in the form of a clean, ugly slice along the outside of your upper arm.

That was enough to wake you up.

Your eyes dropped to the blood welling against your skin. For a heartbeat, you only stared at it. 

“Oh,” you whispered.

Dex didn't move.

You blinked once, then again, like the room was assembling itself around you piece by piece. The bed. The broken lamp. The wall. Dex in front of you, breathing hard, knife still in his hand.

“Oh,” you said again, and this time it broke. “Oh.”

He understood before you explained, that this was what Charles had meant when Charles said you were deprogrammed enough.

Enough to pass evaluation. Enough to work. Enough to know your own name in daylight. Enough to sit in cars and drink bad coffee and pretend you were only dangerous by choice.

Not enough to stop a dead man’s name from reaching into your sleep and turning you back into his weapon.

Dex lowered the knife slowly.

Your eyes followed it. “I’m sorry,” you said.

He hated that. “Don’t.”

“I…” you choked, “I didn’t know where I was.”

“I know.”

“I could’ve—”

“You didn’t.”

“I could’ve killed you.”

That almost made him laugh, except nothing about you looked funny. You were standing in the wreckage of the little bedroom, barefoot and bleeding, trying to make yourself smaller when both of you knew you were not small at all.

Dex stepped closer, and you flinched.

For a second, the two of you just stood there with blood between you. Then, he said, “Sit down.”

You looked at him, eyes still adjusting.

His repeated, firmer this. “Sit.”

Maybe it was the tone. Maybe it was the simplicity in the command. Maybe you just needed instruction.

You sat on the edge of the bed.

Dex went to the bathroom, found the medical kit beneath the sink, and came back without looking too long at the broken lamp or the dent in the wall where your fist had landed. He knelt in front of you because the bed was too short and the room was too small and because, apparently, he had decided this was his problem now.

You watched him clean the cut, with hands folded tightly in your lap.

The antiseptic made you hiss through your teeth.

“Hurts?” Dex asked.

“No.”

“Liar.”

That got the smallest breath out of you. Not a laugh, but Dex decided it was enough.

He stitched you up quickly. You watched his hands instead of his face. Dex was grateful for that. He didn't know what his face was doing, and he didn't want you to see it before he figured it out himself.

When he finished, he tied off the last stitch and taped gauze over the wound. Dex sat back on his heels. “Do you know whose name he said?”

Your face went still. “Yes.”

He waited.

You didn't elaborate. He didn't push.

He stood and turned to clean up the kit, but your hand caught his wrist.

It was light and careful and so different from the way you had fought him that it made his chest lock up.

“Stay,” you said.

Dex looked down at your hand, then at you.

Your face was controlled again, but not enough. Your eyes were too bright in the dark, your mouth pressed too tight, your body holding itself together through sheer refusal.

“Please,” you added, a bit more desperate.

He should have said no. Boundaries, professionalism, all of Charles’ stupid rules and all. He should have gone back to the couch and pretended the sound of your scream wasn't still crawling under his skin.

Instead, Dex nodded.

You shifted back on the small bed, making room that didn’t really exist. It was ridiculous: the mattress was narrow and dipped in the middle, the sheets smelled faintly like laundry powder and dust, and there was no way for him to lie beside you without touching.

He did it anyway.

You lay on your side facing him, one arm tucked against your chest, the bandage stark against your skin. Dex settled stiffly beside you.

For a while, neither of you spoke.

Then your forehead lowered, just barely, until it rested against his chest.

Dex stopped breathing.

You whispered, “I thought I was back there.”

His hand hovered above your shoulder. Then he let it settle there. “I know.”

“You don’t,” you insisted.

The words were not cruel, but it was true.

Dex looked at the cracked ceiling.

No. He didn't know Siberia. He didn't know your handler’s voice. He didn't know the cold storage or the chair or whatever else had been dragged into the room with you when you screamed. He didn't know what cryo felt like. He didn't know what being erased felt like.

But he knew what it was to wake up and not feel like a person.

So he said, “Maybe not.”

Your fingers curled in the front of his shirt, and he found himself wanting to hold you a little tighter.

In the dark, in that too-small bed with your blood drying beneath his fingernails and the mission waiting beyond the walls, Dex realized he was jealous of Barnes for something even worse than having been loved by you.

Barnes had known how to comfort you because what was done to you was done to him, too. Dex didn't.

But you had asked him to stay anyway. So, he stayed.

—

After Prague, something changed between you.

The shift wasn’t dramatic, because let’s be real, neither of you were built for dramatic emotional breakthroughs. There was no late-night confession, no sudden honesty, no moment where either of you sat down and admitted that maybe the partnership had stopped being strictly professional somewhere around Austria.

Things just idly softened around the edges.

You stopped pretending the nightmares were rare. Dex stopped pretending he didn’t notice when you paced after missions instead of sleeping. Sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night and find you sitting on the kitchen counter of whatever safehouse you were in, wrapped in one of his hoodies with a mug of coffee gone cold in your hands, staring at nothing.

It was a mutual understanding: he never asked what you were thinking about and you never asked why he always woke up exactly three minutes before dawn.

It worked. Mostly.

And somehow, you became easier around him. You rolled your eyes more openly when he was being difficult. You stole food off his plate. You started sitting too close to him on trains and planes and safehouse couches, like your body had decided he was safe before your brain had caught up.

Dex noticed every little bit of it.

Unfortunately, you still talked about Bucky.

Bucky liked this kind of weather. Bucky hated old countryside safehouses. Bucky once broke three ribs falling through a church roof. Bucky said Eastern European plumbing was cursed. Bucky this, Bucky that.

Dex was beginning to suspect the ancient world war two fossil had opinions on literally everything.

He hated how irrational the jealousy felt. Hated that it existed at all. It was ugly and stupid and embarrassing every time the name left your mouth so casually.

But he swallowed it. 

Until Croatia.

The mission itself had been a disaster from the start. Charles had dropped a bad intel in the form of a wrong entry point in a Hydra splinter cell that turned out to be twice the size the files suggested. Dex got separated from you for exactly ninety seconds, which was apparently long enough for someone to nearly put a knife through your throat.

He found you in a collapsed stairwell with blood on your collar and three bodies around your feet. He had managed to cradle your face and slap your cheek twice to get you awake.

When you opened your eyes, though, he looked furious.

—

Dex tried to shoulder the safehouse door open, but the warped wood only groaned stubbornly against the frame, swollen tight from the rain.

Before he could hit it again, you shoved past him, “Move,” grabbed the handle, and yanked hard enough that the lock gave with a dull metallic snap, the door shuddering inward and banging against the wall. Cold air chased both of you inside as rain streaked down the back of his neck. Mud dragged across the floorboards beneath your boots. The cottage smelled like damp stone, stale smoke, and old wood that had spent too many winters rotting.

You stumbled in, one hand pressed briefly to your ribs because the movement annoyed whatever bruise was blooming there.

Dex saw it, refusing to take his mask off because he didn’t want you to see how frightened he had become. 

Worse, he saw more that you seemed to understand. He saw the split at your lip. The blood at the side of your neck, dried now, but still there in a dark line where that knife had kissed too close. He saw the way you were favoring your left side even though you were trying not to. He saw the notch in your sleeve where a bullet had passed close enough to cut fabric.

The second the door shut, the whole night caught up with him at once.

For one horrible moment back in that compound, Dex had heard the comm go dead and had thought, with a certainty so violent it had hollowed him out, that he had lost you. Not misplaced or separated. Lost. 

Asset unrecoverable kind of lost. Operative deceased kind of lost. 

He had not felt that kind of panic in years, and he didn’t like what it had done to him.

So by the time you were both inside the cottage, wet and bleeding and breathing too hard, he had nowhere to put it except anger.

“You broke formation,” he said.

You tossed your ruined gloves onto the kitchen table, one after the other, like you had all the time in the world. “You changed the route.”

“The route was compromised.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“You were off comms.”

“I was busy.”

Dex turned from the door to see that you were standing in the yellow kitchen light, hair damp around your face, jacket hanging open, blood on your throat like some deadly necklace. And you had the audacity to sound bored.

Busy, you had said, like you had missed a call. Like he had not spent the longest thirty seconds of his life tearing through five men and half a corridor to get to you.

“You disappeared.”

You looked at him then. Your stare sharpened, the same way they did before a fight when some poor man realized too late that the pretty woman in front of him had never been harmless.

“Oh my god,” you said, though you looked annoyed, not cruel. In your head, the mission had gone badly but ended fine. You were alive. He was alive. The intel had been recovered and bodies had been left behind. That was success, by every metric either of you had been trained to respect.

So why was he acting like this? You didn’t understand.

“You disappeared,” he repeated, louder this time. “And then I walk into a room and there’s blood all over you—”

“Not mine,” you reminded me. 

“I didn’t know that!” The words came thundering out of him before he could stop them. “You’re just so fucking reckless, are you?”

You barked out a small laugh, turning toward him, looking into his dark hazel eyes, the only part of his face not covered by fabric. “Oh, and you’re the picture of stability right now, Benjamin.”

Dex turned so fast you almost walked into him. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why?” Your eyebrows genuinely furrowed. “Do you not like your name?”

Still, there was no malice in your voice. You were being awful, yes, but not with the intention to wound. You didn't realize where the line was because no one had ever given you normal lines to stand behind. You were teasing him the way you tested knives: carefully, curiously, delighted when they were sharp.

Then, because apparently you had no instinct for self-preservation when it came to him, you added, “Bucky liked it when I called him James.”

Dex went still, but you didn’t notice immediately.

Not because you were stupid; you were not. You noticed threat, movement, weakness, exits, lies. You noticed the things that kept you alive. But this was different. This wasn't a gun drawn under a table or a man shifting his weight before a strike.

This was jealousy.

Dex hated how fast it rose in him. He hated that it didn't feel grown-up or controlled or even useful. It felt young, embarrassing, like a hot green pulse where his heart should be.

And you had no idea you had just fed it.

To you, it was a passing comparison. Bucky had been part of your life. James was a name he had let you use. It was a small domestic fact and nothing more.

To Dex, it was a door opening onto all the things he didn't want to picture.

Barnes smiling at you. Barnes letting you call him James. Barnes in your bed—

You caught the change in his eyes a second too late. “Dex?”

“Don’t.” His voice came out rough enough that even he heard the damage in it.

You stopped smiling, but that didn't help. 

Because Dex knew you had not meant it. He knew. He could see it in your face now: the faint confusion, the way your mouth parted like you were about to ask what you had done wrong. You were not trying to make him jealous. You were not playing Barnes against him. You were not cruel in that particular way.

You were just carrying another man around inside your memories and forgetting Dex could see the outline.

And the worst part was that this wasn't even really about Barnes. It was about the fact that you were standing there, acting like nothing was wrong after almost dying, telling him you were fine while blood dried on your skin like he had not spent the last hour with terror clawing down his throat. You had almost died tonight, and for a second Dex had not thought of you as his partner, or Charles’s asset, or the super soldier who would probably outlive everyone in the room.

He had thought:

No.

Not you.

And now you were standing there saying another man’s name while Dex was still trying to scrape that terror out of his chest.

Dex stepped towards you before he even realized he was moving.

When he got to where you were standing near the kitchen table, he had you shoved backward to the wall behind you.

Dex planted one hand beside your head, boxing you in. The other grabbed your waist hard enough to pull you flush against him. The impact jolted through both of you. Your body heat hit him instantly through layers of damp clothing.

You looked up at him with wide eyes, not frightened.

You were stronger than him. If you wanted him off you, he would already be across the room. If you wanted space, you would take it. Instead, you stayed exactly where you were pinned against the wall, fingers curling into the front of his tactical suit as he desperately took his mask off. 

God.

His grip tightened reflexively against your waist.

“I thought you were dead,” he said again, and this time the words cracked. “Do you understand that? You almost died.” Dex hated himself immediately for letting that much show.

“But I didn’t,” you murmured softly.

Dex looked down at you breathing hard against the wall, rainwater still dripping from your hair, blood drying at your throat, and suddenly the anger stopped feeling red and started becoming want.

Four months of tension crashed through him all at once. Every accidental touch in cramped safehouses. Every late-night conversation over bad coffee. Every time you had smiled at him after violence like the two of you shared some private language no one else understood.

And now you were looking up at him like this.

Your thumb brushed once against the front of his shirt where you still held him.

“You really don’t understand why that isn’t good enough,” he said.

Your eyes flicked over his face, and for half a second, the teasing left you. Then you tried to cover it, because vulnerability made you uncomfortable, too.

“Y’know,” you said, breath still uneven, “Bucky would’ve—”

Oh, fuck that. 

“—known what to do with— Hmph!!!”

The kiss came so suddenly you barely had time to make a sound.

One second you were speaking, the next Dex’s mouth was on yours, hard and immediate and furious enough to steal the rest of the sentence clean out of you. His hand tightened at your waist; the other stayed braced against the wall beside your head like he needed to keep himself from doing something worse, or kind, or both.

You froze beneath him for one shocked heartbeat.

Dex felt the hitch in your breath, the way your hand tightened in his shirt without pulling him closer yet, fingers twisting in the wet fabric like your body had reacted before your mind could catch up. 

He had kissed you to shut you up. That was the only explanation his brain could hold onto.

Not because he had wanted to do it for months. Not because the sight of blood on your throat felt like he had been skinned alive. Not because every time you said another man’s name, the hunger in him wanted to put his own there instead.

No.

He had kissed you because you would not stop talking.

Sure. That's why. 

When you sighed into his lips, his whole body locked up.

The kiss changed in the space of a breath. Your lips began moving against his, tentative for less than a second before the shock burned off and heat rushed in to replace it. Your fingers dragged higher in his shirt, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.

Dex made a sound low in his throat, and that seemed to snap both of you back to yourselves.

He pulled away, far enough that the kiss broke. For a second, neither of you moved.

You stared at him. He stared back.

Your eyes were wide, Your mouth was parted, damp from his, your breath coming fast. 

He should have stepped back. He should have done anything except look at your mouth again.

Your eyes dropped to his lips at the exact same time.

That was all it took.

Dex barely had time to inhale before your mouth was on his again, harder now, more certain now. Your hands fisted in his shirt and dragged him down into you like you were done waiting for him to decide anything on your behalf.

He kissed you back immediately.

His hand slid from your waist to your hip, gripping there, pulling you against him while your back stayed pressed to the wall. The kiss turned rougher, open-mouthed and breathless, all teeth and heat and months of tension finally catching fire. You made a small whine against him when his body curved into yours, and Dex swallowed it whole.

Your hand slid up into his hair, and he nearly lost his mind.

Four months of looking and not touching, and now you were kissing him like it had meant everything.

Dex pressed in closer, chasing your mouth when you tilted your head, the angle changing. You kissed like you fought, he realized distantly: direct, no wasted movement, no mercy once you decided you wanted something.

Then you pushed him away, palm flattening against his chest. 

Dex was suddenly stumbling backward like gravity had changed its mind. His back hit the edge of the kitchen table with a dull thud, wood scraping against the floor under the impact.

He stared at you for half a second.

You had not even tried.

You looked at him from against the wall, breathing hard, mouth swollen, eyes dark and bright all at once. You looked amazed now, wicked and dazed and pleased by the realization that you could move him so easily.

Dex knew that already.

He had known from the file, the missions, from watching you tear through men twice your size without breaking a sweat.

But knowing it and feeling it were different things.

Feeling your strength turned casually on him, not to hurt, not to threaten, just to move him where you wanted him, made his brain go haywire.

For one dangerous second, Dex wondered what you would do to him if you were given free rein. The next thing he realized was that he would let you do anything to him.

When you walked up to him, Dex’s hands found your waist again, but this time you were the one pushing into him, trapping him against the table, kissing him like you had decided he had started something and now you were going to finish it on your terms.

He let you.

Fuck, he let you.

Your mouth moved over his, hot and demanding, your fingers sliding into his hair again and tugging just enough to make his breath catch. Dex’s grip tightened on your hips, then loosened, then tightened again, like even his hands could not decide whether to pull you closer or surrender completely.

Dex leaned back against the table as you crowded him, and the old wood creaked under both of you. You had his knee pressed between yours, and even then he could feel the damp heat between your legs even though your trousers. He wanted to tease, but when hands roamed up his chest with a kind of greedy curiosity, he forgot language altogether.

He kissed you harder.

You answered immediately, biting at his lower lip until he groaned into your mouth.

Dex felt your smile against his lips for half a second.

Cruel little thing.

Dex pulled his mouth away for a second. You were about to complain, but whatever whiny words you were about to say was silence when his lips dragged down your neck instead. His lips found the place beneath your ear, then the line of your pulse, then the blood-dark smear where the knife had almost cut too deep, and you had mewled like a kitten in response. 

This was fine, he told himself.

Practical, even.

You had both been wound tight for months. Too much blood, too many missions, and not nearly enough release. Wanting you didn't have to mean anything. Wanting to have you didn't have to mean he was already too far gone. This was just mutually beneficial stress relief, right?

Dex almost laughed against your neck at his own reasoning.

It was stupid.

He didn't care.

Your hands slid under the hem of his tactical shirt and dragged upward, impatient and clumsy. Dex pulled back only long enough to tear the fabric over his head and drop it somewhere behind him. He barely had time to breathe before your eyes were on him.

Then, without a word, you followed, fingers catching at the hem of your own shirt, lifting it over your head, tossing it aside.

Dex stared.

Your mouth curved up. “What?”

He stepped back into you.

“Nothing.”

His mouth was on you again before the word had fully settled, kissing you hard, kissing the answer into your skin instead of saying it. His hands moved over your sides, your back, your waist, like he still could not quite believe he was allowed to touch and needed to make up for every second he had wasted pretending he didn't want to.

You made a sound when his lips found your throat again. Your fingers curled around the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

Dex obeyed before he could resent how easily he did.

He kissed lower, then back up, restless, greedy, unable to stay in one place because there was too much of you and he wanted all of it at once. Your hand slid over his shoulder, blunt nails dragging lightly over skin right next to his spinal surgery scar.

Then you shifted your weight, pressing closer, and the table knocked against his back again.

Wrong angle, some still-functioning part of his mind decided.

To fix this problem, Dex’s hands dropped to your thighs.

You barely had time to inhale before he lifted you.

Even knowing you were stronger, even knowing you could have taken control from him without trying, there was something inherently satisfying about the small gasp you gave when he picked you up and turned. Your legs caught around him by instinct, and for one brief second his face was against your shoulder and your breath was in his hair.

Then he set you on the table harshly because he knew you could take it. 

The old wood groaned beneath you.

Dex stepped between your knees immediately, one hand braced beside your hip, the other cupping the back of your neck as he kissed you again from the better angle, like he had been right to move you and was very smug about it.

And because you were as desperate as him, you hastily unbuttoned your trousers as he hooked his fingers under your panties and helped you take them off with your spit still dripping from his lips. 

He looked at you again, mouth swollen from kissing him. You looked wrecked already, but not ruined. He thought you were beautiful, but he already knew that. Here, you looked less like a weapon with a heartbeat and more like a goddamn miracle pretending she wasn't one.

And then, immediately, his mind supplied Barnes.

Bucky Barnes had seen you like this.

Dex’s jaw tightened.

Barnes had known this version of you. He had known you warm and bare and breathless, too. He had looked at you in private. Had heard the sounds Dex was only beginning to earn.

Dex hated him for that. He hated him with that unreasonable jealousy that made his grip flex against your hips.

Your eyes narrowed slightly. “What?”

Dex didn’t answer.

He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to admit that a man he had never met had crawled into his head again. He didn’t want to give that name space here, not now, not with you in front of him looking holy. So Dex leaned closer instead, eyes dark, mouth brushing your jaw as he laid you down on the wood. 

His hand slid along down your body, over your breast and your tummy, exploring and feeling and gripping until they settled on your thighs. 

He wasn't a super soldier.

Fine.

He could not match that kind of strength. He could not promise superhuman stamina or metal fingers or whatever mythic thing Barnes had been in your bed and your memory.

Dex had other talents.

Dex had perfect aim.

And he was determined to make his precision matter more than aimless brute strength. 

His hand slid closer between your legs, the other keeping it open, watching your face the whole time. Your breath caught before he even did anything. 

Your fingers curled into fists.

Dex’s mouth curved, before he peppered kisses on your collarbone, his finger having minds of their own. He touched you like he was mapping a weakness, like every gasp, every shift of your hips, like every sharp little inhale was information he meant to keep and use. You tried to stay composed. Tried to keep the upper hand. It didn’t work.

“Not so mouthy now, huh?” he teased, voice rough.

You glared at him, or tried to.

You wanted to pull him down. You wanted to push him back. You wanted to have him every way the tiny kitchen would allow.

“Tell me what you want.” he said, grabbing your chin with his remaining still-dry hand to make you look at him. 

You hated him for asking. You loved him for making you say it.

Your mouth parted, but nothing came out at first except his name.

It didn’t take long after you felt his fingers in your core for Dex to find what ruined you.

“There,” he said under his breath, a newfound glee in his voice.

That was the unbearable thing about him, the infuriating thing, the thing that made you want to curse his name and drag him closer in the same breath. Dex noticed everything. Every hitch in your breathing. Every tremor you tried to hide. Every tiny shift of your body beneath his hands. He had the focus of a sniper and the patience of a man who knew exactly when he had found his mark.

And right now, all of that terrible precision was on you.

Your back was pressed against the old wood, head only slightly lifted, looking at the ceiling as rain battered the cottage windows.

“Dex,” you breathed, and it barely sounded like a warning anymore.

“Pretty,” he murmured more to himself than to you, rough and pleased.

He curled a finger, and your head fell back against the table with a soft thud.

Your mouth was parted, your breathing uneven, your whole body tense with frustration and the awful realization that he knew exactly what he was doing to you. 

Then he leaned over you, kissed the corner of your mouth, and whispered, “Again.” 

You didn't know whether he meant his name or the sound you had just made.

Either way, you gave it to him.

—

Morning came thin and grey through the curtains.

Dex woke up slowly, which almost never happened. 

He was aware of the sheets first, then the ache in his shoulders, then the faint smell of rain still trapped in the cottage walls.

Then he became aware of you.

You were beside him, half-buried in the blanket, hair spread messy over the pillow, one arm tucked under your cheek. Your breathing was calm and even, one knee had slipped out from under the sheet (which you had stolen), bent slightly, and there were bruises already blooming there, dark against your skin.

Dex stared at them for too long.

He knew exactly where they came from.

You had been on your knees for him the night before, looking up like a fucking falling angel crawling up from hell. He barely lasted at all, because no amount of training or discipline could have prepared him for you. 

Still, he looked at the bruises, and his chest turned over.

You stirred beside him with a sleepy little sound, blinking into the dull morning light. Your eyes found him, then followed his eyes down to your knee. For a second, you seemed confused, and then your lips curled with amusement.

“Don’t look so worried," you murmured, voice rough from sleep. “It’ll probably heal by sunset.”

Dex looked away. “I was assessing damage.”

You hummed, and for one ridiculous moment he wanted to put his mouth on that smile and keep it there. He wanted to ask if you were sore. He wanted to ask if he had hurt you, even though there was a statistically higher chance of you hurting him in such close quarters. He wanted to ask if you were going to regret it now that the sun was up and the mission was waiting.

He asked none of it.

You stretched under the sheets, lazy and unbothered, then rolled onto your side to face him. There was no panic in you, no awkwardness. No visible regret. If anything, you looked pleased with yourself, far too comfortable with the wreckage you had made of him.

Then you sighed happily and said, “Well. That was a successful evolution of our professional relationship.”

Dex looked back at you.

You were grinning.

“What?”

You propped your head on your hand. “I’m just saying. Good to know my fuck buddy has useful hands.”

For a second, Dex’s entire brain went blank.

Fuck buddy.

Fuck buddy?

You said it lightly, teasingly, like it was a joke between the two of you. Like it was cute. 

Fuck buddy.

After that?

After the wall, the table, the bed. After your hands in his hair. After his name in your mouth. After he had woken up beside you and, idiot that he was, felt at peace in his own mind? 

Fuck buddy.

He wanted to claw eyes out.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to ask if that was what he was. He wanted to say the words back to you, cruelly, just to see whether they hurt you, too. He wanted to get out of the bed, get dressed, put a gun in his hand, and see what the barrel felt like in his mouth.

Instead, Dex did nothing.

He did nothing because he understood that if he talked too much, he could lose this before he even knew what this was. If he asked for more, you might run away and give him nothing at all.

You were not trying to hurt him. You were smiling at him, sleepy and satisfied and completely clueless. To you, the arrangement was practical. A category: friends, partners, operatives, fuck buddies. 

Ugh. 

He wanted to tell you that if you called him that again, he might actually lose whatever was left of his mind.

Instead, he still said nothing, because he wasn't stupid.

Unstable, yes. Jealous, increasingly. Probably emotionally constipated beyond medical repair. But not stupid.

If he pushed too hard, you might make it a thing. And if you made it a thing, you might decide the arrangement was too messy and too complicated to continue.

Dex could not risk that.

“Useful hands,” he repeated eventually. His voice sounded normal. He was proud of that, in a distant, miserable way.

You grinned. “Mmhm.”

He gave you a sanitised look.

You laughed, nudging his leg beneath the sheet with your foot like you had any right to be that casual with him after detonating his life before breakfast. “Don’t be offended. That was a very good review.”

“Great,” he said flatly. “Should I expect a written evaluation?”

“I could make a rubric.”

“Don’t.”

Dex almost smiled.

—

Whatever had happened in the cottage didn't end there. It became a part of the mission, as much as false passports and burner phones were a part of the mission. The first time could have been dismissed as an accident. A one-time detonation after four months of tension neither of you had been handling well. But then there was the safehouse in Slovenia, where you came back from a mission with blood on your cheek and smiled at him across the hallway, and Dex knew that it was going to happen again.

Then Munich, against a bathroom sink in an apartment above a closed pharmacy. Then Warsaw, where you didn't even make it out of your tactical gear before dragging him down onto a mattress. Then a warehouse outside Lyon, because the extraction was delayed and apparently the two of you had lost all sense of professionalism somewhere around the fourth body. Then a supply closet in Milan, where he fucked you after you put his mask over your own face. An alley in Budapest. The back room of an abandoned train depot in Belgium.

And because Dex had the self-preservation instincts of a man chasing a moving target off a roof, he let it continue.

He told himself it was better this way. Casual meant stable. Casual meant you stayed. Casual meant you didn't have to examine anything too closely, and neither did he. It meant he got your mouth, your hands, your body in whatever safehouse Charles had arranged for the week, and all he had to do was not ask for more.

He even convinced himself it was more than he had any right to.

You reached for him. You kissed him first sometimes. You slept beside him when the safehouse only had one bed and, sometimes, even when it had two. You learned the scars on his body with your hands. You stole his shirts. You drank from his coffee. You called him by his name and it made him feel like it belonged to you now.

And then, in the morning, or in the car, or while cleaning a weapon at some tiny desk table in another country, you would say something that reminded him exactly where he stood.

“Don’t look so smug,” you told him once, adjusting the strap of your holster in a cracked mirror. “You’re still just my mission stress relief.”

You meant it as a joke, and Dex knew you did.

You looked over your shoulder at him with that wicked little smile, waiting for him to snap back. You expected him to say something dry, something cruel enough to be funny but not cruel enough to count.

He did.

“Good to know I have a job title,” he said.

You laughed and went back to your holster.

Dex stood behind you and wanted to break the mirror with his bare hand.

He had to remind himself over and fucking over again that you were not cruel, at least not like that. You were ruthless, yes. You were capable of killing a room full of people and then asking what was for dinner. But with him, you were not trying to wound. You were simply clueless.

You didn't understand that he had started listening for the way you called for him. You didn't understand that he noticed which safehouses made you sleep easier, which nightmares made you reach for him, which jokes pulled a real laugh out. You didn't understand that he counted every time you chose to sit beside him instead of across from him like a starving man counting coins.

And you really didn't understand what happened to him when you brought up Bucky.

You did it less now, as if you were just starting to get human customs: do not bring up the guy you used to sleep with to the guy you were currently sleeping with unless you were asked.

But when you did bring him up, it was clear as day that part of you loved being given the chance to talk about him.

See, you were guarded about everything else. You deflected questions about Siberia. You made jokes about getting shot. You went blank whenever Charles asked about your programming over the phone. You could talk for twenty minutes about tactical routes and never reveal one honest thing about yourself.

But if Dex mentioned Barnes, even casually, your face would change.

“Barnes teach you that?” Dex asked once, watching you bypass an old Hydra lock with a bent piece of metal and no visible effort.

You smiled immediately. “He tried.”

Dex should have stopped there, but because he apparently liked suffering, he didn't. “Tried?”

You glanced at him, pleased to have the thread. “He was terrible at explaining things. He’d just do it and then look at me like I was supposed to absorb it through proximity.”

Dex hummed.

You kept going. “He got so annoyed when I got better at it than him. He’d pretend he wasn’t annoyed. He used to do this thing with his jaw when he was trying to be mature about losing.”

You mimicked it without thinking. It was… fond.

Oh. Right. 

He watched your hands move over the lock and wondered how many doors Barnes had watched you open. How many safehouses had held the two of you. How many times you had looked over your shoulder at him with that same spark of amusement.

“That sounds annoying,” Dex said.

“He is,” you said. “Very.”

And there was that warmth again.

Sometimes, Dex brought Bucky up on purpose. He hated himself for it, but there was a sickness to his curiosity. He needed to open that wound over and over again to feel something.

“Barnes cook?” he asked one night in Vienna, after you complained about the contents of a safehouse freezer.

You laughed immediately. “Badly.”

Dex regretted the question before you even continued.

“It was tragic. He could survive in the wilderness, dismantle a rifle blindfolded, and break a man’s neck before breakfast, but give him a pan and he can’t make anything that doesn't taste like bland meatloaf.”

Dex stared at the vegetables you were chopping.

You were smiling at the cutting board.

Dex made a noncommittal sound as you talked about it for ten more minutes. 

It was unbearable. 

It was also the most relaxed he had seen you all day, so he let you.

That was the misery of it all. Dex hated hearing about Barnes, but he loved what talking about him did to you. He loved watching that stiff part of you ease when you remembered being loved by someone who had not used you as a weapon. He loved the sound of your voice when it had history in it. He loved that, for once, you were not pretending to be harmless or terrifying. You were just a person with memories.

He just wished the memories didn't belong to another man. Another man who had been your boyfriend.

Not fuck buddy. Not mission stress relief. Not a bad habit in multiple countries. Boyfriend was a real word. A word that meant Barnes had occupied a place Dex had not even been allowed to ask for.

Bucky fucked you and was a boyfriend. Dex worshipped you and was a fuck buddy?

In what fucking world was that even fair?

He hated that he was jealous of a man who had saved your life. He despised that he could not make himself noble about it. He hated that every time you begged him to touch you, some childish, vicious part of him wanted to ask whether Bucky had touched you there, too. 

He never asked, but he imagined plenty.

That was worse, because imagination didn't need evidence. It filled in everything: Barnes’s metal hand on your hip. Barnes’s mouth at your throat. Barnes in all the places Dex had put himself and still somehow felt like the original while Dex became the imitation.

And then you would turn around, clueless and bright-eyed, and ask, “You okay?”

Dex would say, “Fine.”

You would believe him.

That almost made him hate you, in the way a starving man might hate someone for leaving food just out of reach and not understanding why he was shaking.

The arrangement continued because Dex let it. Because he was too greedy to stop. Because having you underneath him, even temporarily, even without the label he wanted, was better than the alternative. Because when you reached for him, he forgot how much it hurt until afterward.

And afterward, there was always a moment that was too tender for his own good. You would button your shirt before going to infiltrate a gala. You would toss him his utility belt with a smirk. You would lean over a map like nothing had changed while Dex stood there with every nerve in his body still aware of the places your hands had been.

He would think, say something. He never did, because what could he say?

Don’t call me that. Don’t call me casual. Don’t talk about him like he still gets the best parts of you. Don’t make me ask for more when we both know you might say no.

So he kept quiet and kept his position, as miserable and humiliating as it was. And every time you called him your fuck buddy, your mission stress relief, your bad decision, Dex smiled like it didn't make him want to drown himself face first in a pool of starving piranhas.

Because for now, you still chose him. Not the way he wanted. Not yet, Maybe not ever.

But Dex had survived on less than scraps before.

So he took what you gave him, swallowed the rest down until it burned, and told himself that temporary was better than nothing.

Even if, some mornings, nothing would have hurt less.

—

Everything imploded during a mission in a church should have been empty.

That was what the file said. An abandoned stone church in a half-empty Italian village had an abandoned Hydra weapons cache beneath the crypt. Supposedly, there was no active civilian presence within a two mile radius, no active guard detail, no complication beyond an old lock. 

It was supposed to be a simple recovery: Secure the intel, secure the weapons for extraction, and leave before anyone in the village noticed the old place had been disturbed.

Dex should have known better by then, that nothing involving Hydra stayed dead just because the walls looked old.

The church stood at the edge of the village with its bell tower cracked down the middle, weeds climbing the steps, and cypress trees stood around the graveyard like black-green sentries. The sky had gone a red late-afternoon color, clouds pressing down over the hills. Inside, the air was cold and wet and stale. Broken saints watched from their niches with missing fingers and chipped faces. Light fell through the stained glass in fractured strips, magenta across the pews, blue over the altar, gold bleeding weakly across the floor like the church still remembered how to be holy.

You found the crypt behind the altar.

The stone slab had been disguised well enough for anyone normal to miss it, but you were not normal. You crouched in front of the mechanism with one knee on the floor, pushing aside a false piece of carved stone until the panel beneath exposed.

It was made of steel, and had a keypad. A half-dead little light blinked red right beside it. Hydra, but older than the other caches. Not Soviet standard. Not the Austrian sequence from month two. Not the lock you had cracked in Romania with a hairpin while Dex stood behind you pretending not to be impressed.

This one made you look… confused.

Dex noticed.

You were very good at focusing and most people mistook it for calm. Dex knew better by now. Your stillness was a sign of assessment, memory, and calculation. You were trying to remember a thousand old lessons while your face gave nothing away. 

But this time, there was no recognition. You only stared at the lock, teeth clenching once.

“You know it?” he asked.

You didn’t answer.

Dex shifted his gun in his holster and looked toward the nave. The church doors were still shut, but the place had too many broken windows, too many side entries, too many shadows. It was bad news, because Dex knew for a fact that you were being followed on your way here.

“No,” you said finally.

Dex turned back, irritated. “No?”

You shot him a look over your shoulder, annoyed and beautiful enough that he hated himself for noticing in the middle of a church with a possible kill team closing in. “Do you want to try?”

“I shoot things.”

“Yes. I’ve noticed.”

Dex might have smiled if he had not caught movement through the broken stained glass at the far left of the church. 

“How long?” you asked, noticing it too.

“Maybe five minutes,” he said, preparing a throwing knife. “Less if they’re competent.”

You went back to the lock, fingers moving over the panel, testing seams, and possible reset catches. Nothing opened. Nothing even flickered. Dex could feel your frustration building like heat in a closed room. 

You hated not knowing. You hated needing anything. That was one of the first things he had learned about you in the early weeks when he still thought learning you would help him keep distance instead of making him want to crawl inside your lungs and live there.

Then you sat back on your heels, reached into your jacket, and said, “I have to call someone.”

No. No, no, no.

He knew. Before you said it, before you even looked at the phone, before your thumb found the contact you should not have needed and Dex absolutely didn't want to hear. He knew the way he always knew when the bullet had already left the barrel.

“Who?” he asked, and his voice was too flat.

You didn't look at him. “Someone who might know.”

“Barnes,” he said through gritted teeth, because who else could you possibly know?

You hesitated, not long enough for anyone else to call it guilt. But Dex saw it, because Dex saw everything, because God or the universe or whatever rotten thing had assembled him had given him perfect aim and absolutely no mercy where details were concerned.

“Really?” he said.

“I’m calling someone with Hydra experience,” you insisted.

“Your ex-boyfriend with Hydra experience,” he shook his head.

You scolded him. “Dex.”

“It’s fine.” His smile was brief and horrible. You only caught a glimpse of it before he put his mask over his head. “Actually, it’s great. Let’s bring him into the room. Why not? He’s practically here most days anyway.”

You looked up then, irritation flashing across your face. “This is not the time.”

“It never is.”

“You want the cache?”

“I want you to know literally anyone else.”

“That is not my fault,” you frowned.

“No, I’m sure nothing is.”

Your eyes narrowed. “Barricade the door.”

Dex laughed once under his breath. It had no humor in it. “I don’t need to barricade the door.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No,” he said, voice flat with fury, “I really don’t.”

“Dex,” you said, voice strained, “Please.”

He stepped back from the altar, eyes set ahead, every muscle of his body pulled tight. “I don’t need to barricade the door while you call your ex about a lock.”

You stared at him, phone already dialing. Dex hated that he could hear the line ringing.

One ring. Two. Each little tone felt like a finger tapping the inside of his skull.

Then the call connected, and James Buchanan Barnes spoke through your phone for the first time. “Hey, doll.”

Dex had thought he was prepared for it. He wasn't.

It was just a voice, just a man’s voice through a tiny speaker, softened by distance and familiarity and whatever history lived between the two of you. It should not have done anything. Dex had heard men threaten him, beg him, scream under his hands. He had been praised by superior, insulted by criminals, given orders by bad men. A voice was air. It should be nothing.

But Barnes said doll like he had earned the right to.

And you changed, though not much at all. Your shoulders loosened by the smallest fraction. Your face relaxed before you could stop it. Dex didn’t know if it was still romantic, and Dex could not even decide if that would have been worse or better. It was familiar and lived-in, like a door in you opening because the voice on the other end had knocked in a pattern you still recognized.

Dex felt like he was on the brink of yet another mental collapse.

“Hey,” you said. “Sorry. I need help.”

Barnes answered with immediate concern, gentle as your hand had been on his skin last night. “You okay?”

Dex wanted to shove his head through the nearest stained-glass window.

He wanted to laugh until his throat split open. He wanted to walk outside, stand in the graveyard, and let the incoming kill squad do whatever they wanted just so he didn't have to stand there and listen to Barnes care about you in real time. It was one thing to know the man knew you. It was one thing to know he had loved you, touched you, saved you, left you for reasons Dex didn't know. Knowledge could be abstract. This wasn't abstract.

This was Barnes’s voice filling the church while you crouched over a lock in broken holy light, letting him help you.

This was a man Dex had never met reaching through the phone and occupying space that Dex had been clawing at for months with bloody fingernails.

“She’s fine,” Dex said, too loudly.

Dex knew he should have kept his mouth shut the second Barnes went silent.

It wasn't even a real silence, but Dex heard the shift in it anyway, because he was him, because he caught things no one else caught, because his whole body had become one raw nerve around the sound of that man’s voice. 

“Who’s that?” Barnes asked. It wasn't panic, and not even jealousy. It was just a calm assessment. 

Dex’s mouth moved before he could stop it. “The guy keeping her alive.”

Your head snapped toward him and Barnes went quiet again. Then, he said, “That right?”

Dex smiled harshly under his mask. “That’s right.”

“Oh my God,” you muttered.

Barnes’s voice stayed low through the speaker. “She usually does a decent job of that herself.”

“She had a gun to the back of the head last week,” Dex said.

“She mention why?”

“Boys,” you snapped, eyes flicking between Dex and the phone like you could physically strangle both ends of the conversation if given the chance. “Can we focus?”

Dex stared at the phone, rage crawling hot under his skin. It should not have hurt, but it did. It hurt because Barnes didn’t sound threatened. He sounded like he knew exactly what you were capable of, exactly how much danger you could survive, exactly where concern ended and respect began. He sounded like someone who didn't need to prove he belonged in the conversation because he had been there first.

You exhaled and looked back down at the lock. “Dex, meet Bucky. Bucky, meet Dex. Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it.

You clearly didn’t mean anything by it. You were just irritated, distracted, trying to do your job. But the words hurt him. 

Don’t worry about it. Not he matters. Not he’s important. Not anything that could stand up against the familiar way that Barnes was calling you an old pet name through the speaker.

Barnes hummed once, unreadable. “Alright.”

Dex wanted to shoot the phone. He wanted to shoot the wall.

He wanted to walk outside and turn the incoming kill squad into a pile of meat just so he would have something to do with his hands besides stand there and feel pathetic in a church.

You pointed sharply at the side door without looking up. “Dex. Door.”

His teeth clenched.

Barnes said, almost mildly, “Might want to listen to her.”

Dex looked at the phone. Then at you.

“You alright?” Bucky asked when he was sure Dex was out of range. Unfortunately, he wasn't.

It was clear that he was going to say something again, but you shot him a glare to stop him. “We’re fine,” you said, “I have a lock.”

“A lock?” Barnes asked, and Dex hated the hint of humor there too, hated that he could hear the little frown in the man’s voice, hated most of all that you probably could picture his face when he made it.

“An older Hydra one,” you said. “It’s an Italian site with crypt entry. It’s not taking any of the sequences I know.”

Barnes went quiet, thinking.

Dex turned away. He could not stand another second of your face while you listened to him. He could not stand the concentration in your eyes, the trust. 

You trusted Barnes’s voice. You trusted him enough to call. Enough to ask. Dex didn't want to know what else you had trusted him with.

He stalked down the nave, past rotting pews and the saints’ blind plaster faces, knife, boots grinding dirt and broken glass into the floor. Your voice followed him. “No, I tried the lower sequence.”

Barnes, apparently, was patient and understanding. “Not that one. Check the left side. There should be a false panel under the carved edge.”

Your answer came after, almost pleased. “There is.”

Dex shoved the side door open and stepped into the graveyard.

The first man came over the wall in black tactical gear with his rifle raised. Dex threw his knife, and it sliced him through the throat.

He dropped backward over the stone wall with a wet, choking sound, his weapon clattering against the grave markers. Two more appeared at the corner of the church, moving in formation, disciplined enough to be annoying. Dex didn't give them time to become more than geometry. He put a round through the first man’s knee, watched him collapse mid-stride, then shot the second through the gap between helmet and mask as he turned toward the sound. The first man reached for his sidearm when Dex crossed the grass and drove his boot into the side of his head hard enough to silence him against the base of a weathered angel statue.

Inside, faintly, through the open door and stone walls, Barnes was still talking. “Don’t force it, doll. If it’s the one I think it is, it punishes pressure.”

Dex’s vision narrowed.

He reloaded while moving, hands steady despite the rage making a live wire of his spine. Another four came through the cypress line on the east side, sweeping toward the church doors. Dex moved between headstones, using them the way lesser men used cover and smarter men used angles. He threw an old stone before the man could fire, because he needed him to drop the weapon, then threw a knife into the second’s exposed thigh, deep enough to make him buckle. The third got close. Dex let him, and he caught the man’s rifle barrel, redirected the shot into the stone at his feet, and slammed the butt of his own weapon into the man’s face until the mask cracked and the body limped.

The fourth hesitated, so all Dex had to do was put him down with a shot to the chest, then another to the head before he hit the wet grass.

He could still hear you through the door. “Like this?”

Barnes said something too low for Dex to catch.

You gave a small laugh.

Dex stopped breathing for half a second.

Then a bullet cracked against the stone column beside his head, spraying old dust across his cheek.

He turned toward the shooter and became what he was good at being.

The kill squad came in waves, and Dex dismantled them one by one. Three from the road, two from the lower wall, another pair trying to circle around the sacristy entrance. He moved constantly, cutting through the graveyard, forcing them into bad angles, making the churchyard’s dead stone work for him. A man lunged from behind with a blade; Dex caught the wrist, twisted until the joint failed, and drove the man’s own knife under his jaw. Another tried to retreat toward the road; Dex shot him through the calf, stepped over him, and finished him only after taking his spare magazine. It was definitely meaner than necessary, maybe, but he had Barnes’s voice in his head and no interest in being merciful.

Blood darkened the grass. Rain began again, soft at first, then heavier, ticking over helmets and stone crosses and the bodies Dex left where they fell. He was breathing hard by the time the last five made a push for the front doors, their boots pounding over the church steps. Dex came at them from the side.

He shot the man with the fancy scope first. The second man reached for it. Dex put a round through his wrist, then threw his empty magazine at the third man’s face hard enough to make him flinch at the wrong second. That second was plenty. Dex closed in, drew his sidearm, fired twice, then slammed the barrel into the last man’s throat when he tried to tackle him. The man gagged, stumbled, and Dex drove him backward into the church door with enough force to make the wood boom from the impact.

The man slid down the door, and Dex stood over him, rain dripping from his hair, blood spattered across his face and collar, chest rising and falling.

Through the thick old wood, he heard Barnes again. “That’s it. Good. Now wait for the second light.”

Good.

Dex’s fingers tightened around the gun.

Good.

Barnes was praising you. Barnes was inside, with you without even being inside. Barnes was at your shoulder, in your ear, useful and alive in all the places Dex wanted him dead. Dex had just killed fifteen men in the graveyard and on the church steps, had turned a kill squad into cooling meat, and still he had not managed to get Barnes out of the room.

When he went back inside, the church swallowed him whole. His boots tracked blood and rainwater down the nave. He passed beneath the broken blue glass while your voice drifted from below the altar. “Got it.”

The crypt panel was open now. A cold blue-white light spilled across the stone, illuminating your face from beneath while you crouched by the mechanism, one hand still on the panel, the phone lying on the floor beside you on speaker. You looked relieved and a little flushed from the rush of solving it. Dex hated how beautiful you looked like that. Hated that Barnes got to hear it.

“Good job,” Barnes said.

You smiled, and Dex felt it like a gunshot.

“Thanks,” you said.

Barnes was silent for a moment, and in that silence Dex imagined him somewhere far away, metal hand maybe resting on a kitchen counter, brow furrowed, voice gentle because he knew exactly how to be gentle with you. Because he had practiced. Because he wasn't a fuck buddy in some safehouse bed waiting for permission to matter.

Then Barnes said, “I… good luck, doll. We’ll catch up when you get back, yeah?”

The rage in Dex went utterly still, like a calm before the storm.

You reached for the phone. “Yeah. I’ll—”

Dex walked towards you in three strides and you looked up too late.

“Dex—”

He snatched the phone off the stone before you could touch it.

Barnes’s voice crackled through the speaker, confused now. “What’s—”

Dex smashed it against the floor. It was loud, amplified by the echo of the hall. The plastic cracked and glass burst outward in glittering pieces. The speaker gave a shrill little whine, but not enough. It wasn't dead enough. 

Dex hit it again, harder, this time stomping it with his boots, the ruined device bouncing against the stone. A third stomp split the casing open. A fourth sent the battery skidding under the edge of the altar. He would have kept going until it was dust if your voice had not snapped him out of it.

“Dex!”

Dex froze over the pieces. For a second, the whole church held its breath.

Rain tapped against the shattered windows. Outside, one of the men he had left in the graveyard made a weak, wet sound and then stopped forever. The crypt light washed over you from below. Dex stood in front of you with blood on his hands, blood on his jacket, and the shattered remains of your phone between his boots.

You stared at it then at him as he took his mask off. 

You were not confused anymore. You were angry.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” you demanded. “We got the cache. The lock is open. We can go!”

Dex laughed. It came out wrong, scraped raw in his throat. “You can go,” he said. “Maybe he can talk you through that too.”

Your eyes narrowed and your mind clicked into place to see just enough.

Not all of it, though. You could never see the full, ugly, pathetic cathedral of feeling he had built around every careless mention of Barnes’s name. Not the months of swallowing down jealousy. Not the way hearing Barnes’s voice had made Dex feel like he was standing outside his own body watching another man touch what he had never been allowed to keep.

Dex looked away because if he kept looking at you, he might say something dumb.

You stood slowly from the crypt steps. “You destroyed our only secure phone because Bucky helped me open a lock?”

“No.” The lie was so bad it was almost insulting.

You stared at him. “No?”

Dex’s teeth clenched once.

He had killed fifteen men outside without hesitation. Had moved through a kill squad like violence was language and he was finally fluent again. But this, standing in front of you while you looked at him like he was unreasonable, like he was the problem, like Barnes had not just reached through a phone and put his stupid vibranium arm around Dex’s throat.

“What, then?” you asked.

He said nothing.

Because if he opened his mouth, all of it would come out.

Because he called you doll and you smiled. Because you trusted his voice. Because he knew the lock and I didn’t. Because he had you first. Because he gets to be James and I’m your fuck buddy. Because I just killed fifteen men in the rain and came back to find you making plans with your ex-boyfriend to "catch up”.

Because I want to matter to you so badly I’m starting to hate you for not noticing.

He could not say any of that.

So he stood there, breathing hard, eyes fixed to a random point over your shoulder while the broken saints watched from the walls and the graveyard outside held the bodies of every man Dex had killed because rage was easier than asking you to choose him over that other man.

You stepped closer, anger burning bright in your face. “Dex.”

He looked back at you, and whatever you saw in his eyes made your own falter for half a second. 

Then the mission reasserted itself. 

You swallowed, “We need to move.”

Dex nodded once. “Then move.” 

—

Turns out, Hydra had hidden enough weapons under the crypt to arm a small war, packed in old military cases and reinforced steel crates stamped with symbols half-scraped away. Some of it was familiar: guns, charges, vials long since gone dark inside cold-storage cylinders, and files sealed in polymer sleeves. Then there were the stranger things, things that made even you go quiet while you put them into inventory: crystalline components, serum stabilizers, old prototype tech sealed inside glass casings with warning labels in Russian and German.

Half of it was water-sensitive, which became a problem when the storm thundered.

It came down hard over the village, wind screaming through the cracked bell tower, rain hammering against the broken stained glass until the whole church seemed to tremble. Water sheeted down the outer walls and leaked through the roof in thin, shining threads. 

Extraction was impossible because moving the cache would stupid. Trying to carry it out through that much rain would ruin half of what Charles needed and possibly kill both of you if one of the more unstable components reacted badly.

So you stayed. You and Dex packed what you could, sealed the crates, and wrapped the sensitive cases in altar cloths and plastic sheeting from your field bags. You worked in silence for nearly an hour, both of you moving around each other.

Neither of you mentioned the phone.

By the time everything was secured, Dex was sitting on the altar steps, forearms braced on his knees, hands loosely clasped in front of him. He had washed most of the blood from his fingers in a rain barrel near the side entrance, but some of it still clung beneath his skin. His jacket was damp. His hair was wet from outside. The scar on his cheekbone caught a bit of dirt and he hadn't bothered to clean properly.

You stood in the center of the altar above him, leaning back against the old stone podium with your arms crossed. The blue-white crypt light spilled up from behind you. The stained glass threw broken color over your face. The church was ruined, filthy, half-flooded by rain and full of weapons, and somehow you looked like you belonged at the center of it.

Dex tapped his knee twice, because he hated being silent with you.

Silence gave him time to feel things. Silence let the church fill with everything he was trying not to say. Barnes’s voice. He hated that he still expected to see you after the mission, as if he had the right to imagine your return, as if he had some claim on you after he dumped you.

Dex looked down at his hands and hated them for shaking. He lifted his eyes to look at you. You were staring out into the nave, not looking at him.

He should have apologized for the phone. He should have said something practical about the cache. He should have asked if you were cold.

Instead, because jealousy had been chewing through him for months and had finally eaten its way to bone, Dex asked, “Did you ever fuck Barnes in a church?”

The question should have been crude enough to make you angry. It was crude; Dex meant it to be. He wanted you to be angry at him. He wanted you to roll your eyes or call him a dickhead or throw something at him so the two of you could turn this into an easier emotion.

You didn't answer. You only looked away, and that was answer enough. 

His face changed before he could stop it.

“No,” he said.

You stayed quiet.

The rain struck the windows harder, wind dragging it sideways against the glass in long furious sheets. “No,” Dex repeated, as if he said it again the universe might take pity on him and rearrange itself. “No.”

Your arms tightened over your chest. “Once,” you said.

A stake through the heart would have been kinder.

He stared at you from the altar steps, and the whole church seemed to gather to watch a wound open. The broken saints, the pews, the stone columns.He could see it without wanting to. You, in another church, another place, another mission, Barnes with you. Barnes, touching you where Dex had touched you. Barnes, hearing you gasp in a place people were supposed to pray.

Dex’s fingers curled against each other. “Where?” he asked.

He didn't want to know. He needed to know.

You hesitated. That pause was its own kind of mercy and its own kind of murder. “On a pew.”

Dex looked toward the old pews in the nave.

They were rotting, dusty, half-broken, washed in fractured color from the stained glass. Innocent objects, really. Nothing but dead wood. But Dex looked at them and hated every church ever built. He hated every prayer ever said. He hated every saint carved out of stone and every man forgiven by grace he had not earned.

Of course Barnes got to make sin romantic.

Of course Barnes got to be the good man and still have that with you. None who came out of Hydra clean stayed clean all the way through, and yet somehow Barnes had managed to become holy in your memory anyway. Saint James with the metal arm. They should really make him a statue just to give Dex the satisfaction of smashing it into million pieces. 

You looked at him in a new light now. “Dex.”

Your voice had changed, like you had finally realized he had gone past ordinary jealousy and arrived somewhere even worse.

He stood, slowly, as if every movement had to be chosen. He climbed the altar steps toward you, hands loose at his sides, eyes fixed on yours, making the space between you feel dangerously thin.

You didn’t move away. You never did when you should have.

He stopped in front of you. You were still leaning against the podium, arms crossed, trying to look unbothered when the pulse at your throat had started to beat harder.

Dex looked down at you for one long second, then lowered himself to his knees.

Oh. 

Your breath caught before you could hide it. Your perspective seemed to realign around the sight of Benjamin Leonard Poindexter kneeling in front of you on cold altar stone, not mocking, not joking, not pretending. His hands came to your waist, firm but not rough, as if he were afraid that if he touched you too carefully he might fall apart, and if he touched you too hard you might scare. But no, you didn't scare easy.

“Did he worship you?” Dex asked.

Your eyes darkened. “Dex.”

He hated the warning in your voice. “Did he?”

You swallowed. “That’s not—”

“Don’t.” His fingers flexed against your waist. “You know what I’m asking.”

You looked down at him, anger and affection warring across your face. He had seen you covered in blood, shaking from nightmares, laughing over terrible coffee, bored while fighting men who should have known better. He had seen you naked under safehouse sheets and pretending it didn't mean more than bodies passing time. But he didn't think he had ever seen you like this: trapped by sincerity.

You didn't know what to do with someone kneeling. Especially not him.

Dex leaned forward before you could answer and pressed his mouth to your stomach through your shirt.

The kiss was placed at the center of you like he was making a promise beneath the fabric, beneath the skin, beneath the version of you that knew how to survive but not how to be adored.

You went completely still. Dex closed his eyes. “I would,” he confessed.

Your hand hovered for a second near his shoulder like you didn't know whether to push him away or touch him.

“I would,” he repeated, and his mouth moved lower, another kiss to your hip, then the side of your waist, then just above the place where his hand held you. “If you stopped dragging his ghost into every room we’re in, I would.”

The words should have made you angry again, but all you could feel was endearment.

Dex looked up at you from his knees, and whatever mask he had been wearing was gone. There was no dry comment, no mean smile. Jealousy, yes, but not only jealousy. There was want, devotion, and hurt, tangled together until it looked almost like worship already.

“I don’t think there’s a God,” he whispered, just enough for you to hear.

Thunder rolled over the church roof as if answering.

Dex laughed faintly, eyes still on you. “No, I don’t. I look at the world and I think there can’t be. Not a good one. Not a fair one. Not if your handlers can make places like Siberia. Not if they can put you in that chair. Not if they can take someone like Barnes and hollow him out and then hand him back to the world like the world is supposed to know what to do with him. Not if they can make me and still expect me to be grateful to be alive.”

His thumb dragged slowly over your waist, grounding himself. “Most days, I think if there is something up there, it’s either blind or cruel.”

You should have said something, but you could not.

Dex was looking at you like he had started confessing and didn't know how to stop, like the church had brought out the darkest parts of him, and now all the things he had swallowed for months were spilling out at your feet.

“And then I think of him,” he said, the word bitten off with bitterness. “James Buchanan Barnes. And I hate him. I hate him so much it’s stupid. It’s pathetic. I know that. I know exactly how pathetic it is, and it doesn’t help.”

Your lips parted, but Dex shook his head once, not letting you interrupt.

“He gets to be the good one. The Winter Soldier who became a hero. He gets to have done terrible things and still be looked at like the tragedy belongs to him instead of the people he killed.” His jaw flexed. “And maybe that’s fair. Maybe he suffered enough. Maybe he earned whatever peace he found. I don’t know. I don’t care. I can’t fucking care.”

Your hand lowered onto his shoulder. Dex’s eyes flicked to it, then back up at you.

Your touch was light, but he looked like it nearly undid him.

“But I care that he got you first,” Dex said, and that was the confession beneath all his sorrows. “He got to know you before me. He got the history, the forgiveness. He gets to be James. I get to be Benjamin when you’re mad at me and Dex when you want me and fuck buddy when you’re trying not to think.”

You sighed. He was wrong, and you wanted him to know. He was wrong, but he would not let you talk your way out of this.

“That’s not fair,” he whispered, and he sounded so furious with himself for saying it that it hurt. “That’s the part that makes me think there’s no God. Because what kind of divine hand puts you in the world and lets someone else find you first?”

The storm crashed outside, hard enough to make the stained glass tremble.

Dex leaned in again, pressing another kiss to your stomach, then another along your belt line, then to the top of your thigh through the fabric of your clothes, each one less controlled than the last but still reverent. Then he looked up at you again, eyes dark and fever-bright.

“But then I look at you,” he said, “and I think I’m wrong.”

You stared down at him. “About God?” you asked quietly.

“About there not being one.” Dex’s hands tightened at your waist, not enough to hurt, enough to say he was holding on to the thought with both hands.

“Because you don’t happen by accident,” he said. “You can’t. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the universe is that careless. I don’t believe a bullet just missed and that’s why you’re here. I don’t believe you survived because Zemo’s aim was off by half an inch. I don’t believe you happened by chance.”

Your eyes darted, tears welling on the corners. He saw the exact moment the words went under your armor and found skin. Because that had been the story, hadn’t it? The only reason you were alive was because someone had failed to kill you correctly. You had built yourself around that fact, maybe without meaning to. You had seen yourself as the surviving mistake, the remaining weapon. Dex looked at you like he wanted to tear that version of the story apart with his teeth.

“No,” he said, as if you had argued with him. “No. Some divine hand must have made you. Something had to. Because you’re too—”

He stopped, jaw working, searching for words and hating that none of them were enough.

“You’re too… perfect,” he said finally, almost angry with how mild it sounded. 

A faint, wounded sound escaped you.

Dex rose slightly on his knees, still not standing, still keeping himself below you.

“Hydra tried to turn you into a weapon,” he said. “That’s all they know how to do. But they didn’t make you. They don’t get credit. They don’t get credit for who you are. They don’t get credit for the way you taste like rain after a fight or the way you stand in this ruined church like the whole place was built just to make light fall on you properly.”

Your fingers tightened on his shoulder, and they shifted slower to his neck.

When he looked back up, his voice had gone lower. “You are part of some grand design I don’t understand,” he said. “You must be, because if you’re an accident, then nothing means anything. If you’re just what was left after everyone else died, then the whole world is worse than I thought.”

He put his forehead against your diaphragm just so he could feel you breathe. For a moment, he just stayed there.

You looked down at him, and your hand moved into his hair. Carefully, like he was the dangerous thing and you were the one trying not to startle him.

Dex shuddered.

“You’re not an accident,” he said against you. “You’re not someone’s failed termination. You’re not his second chance story either. You’re not proof Barnes got better. You’re not proof of anything but yourself.”

Your throat tightened.“Dex.”

He lifted his head, and the look on face made your chest ache.

“I would worship you,” he said. “Do you understand that? I don’t mean I’d say pretty things and get on my knees because it looks good in a church. I mean I would build my days around it. I would make a liturgy out of it. I would become unbearable about it. I would be so devoted you’d hate me for it.”

You tried to breathe evenly, but failed.

“I’d worship the weapon too,” he said. “That’s the part you never understand. You think people only get to love one side of you? I want all of it. I’d kiss the knuckles you break skulls with. I’d kiss the bruises that heal before sunset. I’d kiss the scar tissue and the places they put needles and your pretty mouth that keeps saying his name because you don’t realize what it does to me.”

Your hand tightened in his hair, tugging, simply just because you knew he liked it.

He smiled faintly, almost ruined by it.

“There,” he murmured. “See? That. I’d worship that too.”

You looked down at him, eyes dark now, anger and heat and desire moving through them all at once. The storm had swallowed the world outside. The church smelled like rain, stone, old incense, blood, and the cold metal of Hydra crates waiting below. It should have been an ugly place. Maybe it was.

But Dex was on his knees in front of you, talking nonsense about God and design and worship like a man bleeding out through his mouth, and somehow the ruined church felt less like a tomb than a threshold.

“You’re insane,” you whispered.

“Yes,” he said immediately, like it was the easiest confession in the world.

That almost made you laugh, but the sound tangled in your throat and came out uneven.

Dex’s hands slid slowly from your waist to your hips, then back again, like he could not stop reassuring himself that you were close. His mouth brushed the side of your thigh through your clothes, then your hip, then your stomach again, each kiss more desperate than the last because the words had only made the wanting worse.

“I would,” he said again. “I fucking would.”

“Dex,” you called. When he looked up, you said, “Don’t make promises you can’t survive.”

For a second, the devotion turned visibly dangerous. “Oh,” he said certainly. “I’d survive you.”

You should have pushed him away.

Maybe that would have been kinder. Maybe that would have given both of you a chance to step back from the edge of whatever terrible, reverent sacrifice he had just placed at your feet. 

Instead, your hand slid from his hair to the side of his face, your thumb brushing over the scar along his cheekbone. 

For a second, you only looked at him.

Then you pulled him up.

You caught him by the front of his damp shirt and dragged him to his feet like you had run out of patience with being adored from a distance. Dex came willingly, his hands sliding from your waist to your hips as he rose into your space. He stopped close, eyes dropping to your mouth the second he was level with you.

“You want worship?” you asked, voice barely above the rain.

Dex’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

Your fingers fisted tighter in his shirt. “Then show me.”

Whatever restraint he had left vanished.

Dex kissed you hard, the force of it driving your back into the cold stone podium. Not like the cottage, not like that first furious interruption. This was worse: It had all the confession in it, all the jealousy. His mouth claimed yours like prayer and punishment at once, desperate enough to make you hiss into him.

Dex swallowed the sound like communion.

His hands gripped your hips, pulling you closer, needing proof that the woman he had just called divine was choosing him. The storm broke over the church in a roar, rain pouring through the cracks in the roof.

Before he could think better of it, he dragged you to the other side of the old stone podium, and your back hit the edge of it with a dull sound swallowed by thunder.

He turned you toward the pews. He knew exactly what you were. He knew that you could have thrown him halfway down the aisle if you wanted.

You didn't.

You let him guide you forward until your palms braced against the cold stone. You let him settle behind you. You grinded against him fully clothed, and he moaned anyway. His chest was your back, his breath hot in your ear. Let his hands move over you like he was both claiming and praying.

The empty seats stretched out before you in dark, rotting rows, facing the altar like an audience waiting for confession. Dex saw them over your shoulder, saw the ruined aisle, the broken glass, the blue glow from the crypt below. His imagination had the whole church watching. Every ghost, every ruined saint, every dead thing in the walls forced to witness the truth of what you had become to him.

His mouth found the side of your neck, then your shoulder, then the place just below your ear that made your fingers curl against the stone. 

Before you knew it, fabric shifted and zippers gave out. His touch grew greedier, less patient, dragging away layers of clothing like they offended him. 

“You’re perfect,” he said.

You swallowed hard. “Dex.”

“No.” His mouth pressed to your bare shoulder. You were naked now, your tactical trousers pooling at your ankles, while he was still annoyingly clothed. Surprisingly, it didn't feel humiliating. It felt thrilling. “You don’t get to argue with me about this.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You always do.” His voice was low, finally fumbling with his trousers. “You always act like it’s nothing, like you’re less than because you think you were made by them.”

His hands slid to your hips again. “But look at you.”

The storm roared overhead, and the church seemed to breathe around you. You could feel him behind you, all heat and muscle and restraint worn down to nothing. 

His hand came up to cover yours on the podium, fingers sliding between yours, pressing your palm harder to the stone. The gesture was grounding and possessive all at once. His other arm wrapped around your waist, holding you back against him, and his mouth found your ear.

“This is what worship feels like,” he whispered before bending you over to fuck you like you were delivering sermon.

—

An hour later, the storm had calmed down

Not stopped; not even close. Rain still sheeted against the broken church windows and slipped through the cracks in the roof in thin silver lines, dripping onto stone, into puddles. 

You sat together on the steps of the altar.

After wearing each other out, Dex had found the thermal blanket in your pack. He had pulled it free with hands that were still a little unsteady and wrapped it around both of you like the act of keeping you warm was something he could understand better than whatever had just happened between you.

You were tucked against his side now, shoulder pressed to his ribs, one of his arms around you beneath the blanket. Your clothes were still drying on the makeshift line you had made. Your hair was still a mess, your skin warm where his mouth had been. Dex had his chin tipped slightly downward, pressing his cheek to your temple.

He wasn't talking. This was how you knew he was still bleeding somewhere you could not see.

You shifted beneath the blanket, close enough that your knee brushed his. “Dex.”

His arm tightened slightly around you as a reply

You looked down at your hands, then out toward the ruined church. “You never had to worry about Bucky,” you said.

Dex went very still.

It was almost impressive, how completely he could vanish into his own body without moving at all. His breathing didn't change, but you felt something was off.

“I’m serious,” you added quietly.

He looked down at you then. There was no sarcasm in his face. There was only caution, like if he let himself want to believe you, it would become another way to get hurt.

You hated that a little. You hated that you had helped put it there.

“I don’t love him that way,” you said.

Dex’s brows furrowed.

“Not anymore, and I haven’t for a while. It got complicated towards the end, before either of us knew what to do with it.” You exhaled slowly, trying to make the words come out right. “But I don’t want him like that. I don’t think about him like that. I don’t want to touch him. I don’t want him touching me, not the way I want you.”

Dex blinked once.

I want you.

Did he hear that right?

His fingers tightened very slightly at your waist under the blanket.

You gave him a faint, humorless smile. “I know I talk about him too much.”

Dex looked away.

“I didn’t realize what it sounded like,” you admitted.

The rain filled the silence for a moment.

Then you said, “Bucky was... proof, I think.”

Dex’s eyes moved back to you.

You searched for the right way to say it. It was difficult. Not because you didn't know the truth, but because you had never had to explain it out loud.

“He was Hydra’s weapon,” you said. “And then he wasn’t. He was still damaged, but he was free. He chose things. He chose Steve and Sam, and the Wakandans and me. He chose to fight. He chose to stop being what they made him.” Your throat tightened around the next words. “I needed to know that was possible.”

You saw comprehension take form behind his eyes.

“When Steve was around, he was that to me, too,” you continued. “Not the Hydra part, obviously. But he was a super soldier who could’ve been used as a weapon by anyone with a flag and a speech, and instead he fought for what he believed in. He disobeyed when it mattered. He was made and still stayed his own.”

You looked out at the pews.

“And I never loved Steve like that. He was my friend. My irritating, Nazi-killing, righteous friend.” Your mouth curved softly. “And Bucky is my friend, too. Even now.”

Dex was quiet. You looked up at him again. “I think I talked about him because I didn’t know how else to explain what I wanted to become.”

Oh.

Dex stared at you like something had finally clicked into place.

Inside Dex, the jealousy loosened all at once.

It didn't disappear; he wasn't that kind of man. Jealousy didn't simply leave because it had been reasoned with. It would probably still bare its teeth the next time Barnes called you, because Dex was Dex and wanting made a monster out of him faster than anything else.

But he understood now.

Bucky Barnes had not been a rival in the way Dex had imagined. Barnes had been a direction, a fixed point. He was your fucked up version of a North Star.

Dex knew what that was.

Eileen Mercer, and then Julie Barnes had been that for him once. It was never really romantic, but rather a proof of concept. A person he had turned into a map because he didn't trust himself to know where goodness was unless someone else stood there holding it. 

Dex looked at you then, with the blanket tucked around your shoulders and your face softened by the blue gloom from the crypt. You had made Bucky into something similar. Not a lover you were still reaching for, but a symbol. A blueprint. 

It made Dex feel better. It also broke his heart a little, because of course you had done that. Of course you had taken a person and turned him into proof you could survive. Of course you had mistaken a man for a conscience because nobody had ever taught you how to trust your own direction.

You were more alike than he had realized.

Not in the neat ways. Not in the ways Charles’s files could measure. In pathetic ways. In starving ways. In the way both of you had looked at someone else and thought, if I stand close enough, maybe it’ll rub off on me. It was almost funny that you had found vastly different people that happened to have the same last name to call a moral compass, and somehow still ended up in each other’s arms. 

Maybe that was a confirmation of a higher power, and that they had a sense of humour.

You watched him carefully. “Say something.”

His mouth curved faintly. “You’re asking the wrong man.”

“No, I’m not.”

That got him a little.

His eyes dropped to your mouth, then back to your face. “You really didn’t know?” he asked.

“That it hurt you?”

He looked away, and you felt awful immediately.

“Dex.”

He huffed a quiet laugh, but there was no humor in it. His hand shifted beneath the blanket, fingers finding yours, almost awkwardly. Dex stared at your joined hands.

“You called me your fuck buddy,” he said.

You winced. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought...” You swallowed. “I thought making it casual would make it safer.”

He tilted his head. “For who?”

You didn't answer fast enough.

Dex’s expression softened in the smallest, most devastating way. He understood that too. You had not called him casual because he meant nothing. You had called him casual because he had started meaning too much.

Your hand tightened around his.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

Dex looked like he didn't know what to do with that. So you shifted closer, blanket rustling around both of you, and pressed your forehead against his shoulder.

For a moment, he stayed rigid. Then, his arm came around you properly.

“You’re not Bucky,” you said against him.

Dex made a faint, bitter sound. “Yeah, I got that.”

You lifted your head and looked at him. “I don’t want you to be.”

His face, when he looked back at you, was vulnerable the way you had never seen before

“I want you,” you said.

His eyes searched yours, suspicious of mercy, suspicious of happiness. Instead you gave him the truth plainly. “I love you, Dex.”

The words were not loud, but the church heard them anyway.

For a second, he looked almost frightened. Not of you, but of the fact that he now had something to lose. 

Your thumb brushed over his knuckles. “Dex.”

His eyes closed, just for a moment

When he opened them again, he leaned in slowly, giving you all the time in the world to pull away, and rested his forehead against yours.

“I love you, too,” he said. It came out almost broken.

You smiled, and Dex looked at it like the storm could take the whole church down around you and he would still be exactly where he wanted to be.

Then he kissed you, not to shut you up or to prove a point.

He kissed you because he loved you, and for once, you had said it first.

clark’s breaths came in short, uneven gasps, his fingers gripping the doorknob so tightly that the metal creaked in protest. the scent of something distinctly alien hung heavy around him. his normally calm blue eyes were blown wide, pupils dilated with intense panic and confusion.

“please,” he stammered, voice rough with emotion, “don’t come any closer.”

clark flinched when you took a step forward, his entire body tensing like a coiled spring. a bead of sweat trailed down his temple and he swiped at it clumsily, his usual grace abandoned. the apartment smelled like you — too much like you, the usual comforting notes of your perfume and shampoo now overwhelming, cloying at his senses.

“clark? clark, what’s happening?” unaware of how heightened his senses were, you attempted to reach out for him.

“i — golly — i don’t… i don’t know,” he admitted, voice cracking, “everything’s too loud, too bright,” his hands trembled at his sides, fingers flexing like he was fighting every urge to reach for you, “too hot.” the admission seemed to cost him, causing his shoulders to hunch inward like he expected to be scolded; the man who could lift buildings and turn back time stood before you, seemingly terrified of his own body betraying him.

the air conditioner chose at that moment to kick on with a small rattle, sending a gust of chilled air through the apartment. clark shuddered violently, his skin prickling with goosebumps despite the feverish heat rolling off of him in waves. he pressed the back of his hand against this mouth, breathing hard through his nose.

“oh, geez...” he mumbled against his knuckles, voice muffled and strained, “i cant… i think — i think i should leave.” his knees buckled. one of his hands shot out to catch himself on the wall, leaving behind five perfect indentations in the drywall.

you reached out in an attempt to catch clark, but the moment your fingers brushed against his forearm, he jolted like he’d been struck by lightning. a high, strangled whimper escaped his throat before he could stop it, his face flushing a deep red. his eyes flew wide with horror at the sound he’d just made and his free hand clapped over his mouth as if he could shove the noise back in.

“oh gosh, i — that wasn’t —” clark’s words tangled themselves into knots as he tried to back away, only to find himself trapped between the wall and your cornered advance. his pulse visibly hammered in his neck, knees giving another dangerous wobble as he tried to straighten up. when he spoke again, his voice came out strained and thready, like he was actively fighting against his own body to keep each word steady. “i don’t understand what’s… my brain is all jumbled…” his eyes squeezed shut, his adams apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.

clark’s gaze darted to your lips for half a second before he wrenched it away, looking downright scandalized at his own thoughts. a fresh wave of that strange, intense heat rolled off him, his form trembling dramatically. “i think… i think i might be sick?” clark’s voice was barely above a whisper, laced with confusion and desperation; the question mark at the end of his sentence did all the heavy lifting. his tone suggested that he knew perfectly well this couldn’t have been any earthly illness. his fingers twitched towards you again before he balled them into fists, his knuckles going white with the effort of restraint.

“honey,” you kept your voice low, the way one might approach a scared animal, “tell me what’s wrong. what are you feeling?”

in response, clark’s shoulders hunched further, the tips of his ears burning scarlet. he attempted to steady himself by staring intently at the ceiling, his mouth clicking open and shut several times before any sound came out. “it’s not — i can’t…”

clark disguised a whine as a cough when you reached out for him again. his glasses slipped further down his nose, revealing eyes that appeared glassy with how wide they’d gone. the collar of his shirt was now damp with sweat, clinging to his neck in a way that made him squirm with discomfort.

“clark,” you said, firmer now, “i need to know what’s happening so i can help you. even if it’s embarrassing.”

clark made a small, distressed sound in the back of his throat, his hands fluttering uselessly at his sides before he finally blurted out, “everything smells — it smells like you! and it’s too much and not enough and my skin feels too tight and i keep thinking about —” he cut himself off with a strangled noise, looking mortified.

it was immediately clear: clark wasn’t sick. at least, not sick in any way either of you had anticipated. the way he was reacting to your proximity, the heat radiating off of his body, the desperate way he kept looking at you before forcing himself to look away —

“oh,” you breathed, the syllable heavy with realization. clark whimpered again, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes under his glasses in a futile attempt to push the heavy, overwhelming influx of thoughts away. “clark, is this… a kryptonian thing?”

clark’s breath hitched as he pressed himself harder against the wall. “i don’t — i don’t know,” he managed, his voice faltering, “my parents never mentioned — golly, they wouldn’t have known either, would they?”

you felt an overwhelming sense of pity. the uncharted territory alarmed him so much; you could see it in his eyes. “let me help you, hon,” you sighed, stepping closer despite his repeated warnings.

one of clark’s hands shot out in a desperate ‘stop’ gesture while the other clutched at his own shirt collar like it was the only thing keeping him grounded. the buttons on his shirt strained dangerously as they threatened to pop. “oh gosh, no, please don’t —” his voice cracked again, pitching upward. he squeezed his eyes shut. every word required significant effort when he spoke once more. “i — i’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life and that’s exactly why i need you to stay back.” the last words came out as a plea that wasn’t completely earnest.

clark’s entire body shivered when your fingers made contact with his forearm again. the fight seemed to drain out of him all at once, his knees giving way as he slid down the wall with a defeated whimper. his glasses slipped off entirely, clattering to the floor as he curled in on himself, arms wrapped around his knees like he was trying to make himself smaller. the normally invincible superhero now sat on your apartment floor, looking like a disheveled, overgrown puppy.

when you knelt in front of him, clark didn’t pull away this time, though his fingers dug into his own arms enough to leave pale marks on his skin. his breathing was still uneven, but slower now, like he’d exhausted himself fighting against his own mind.

“honey,” you comforted softly, reaching out to brush a sweaty curl from his forehead. clark made a small, wounded noise at the contact but didn’t resist, leaning ever so slightly into your touch.

“i’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice broken, “i don’t know what’s come over me. i feel like i’m not even in control of my own body anymore.” the apartment was quiet now. somewhere nearby, a car alarm went off. normally, clark would be out the window in a flash to help, but now he barely seemed to notice.

you rested your palm against his cheek and clark let out a sigh, his eyes fluttering closed. his skin was fever-hot under your grasp, and you could feel his jaw tick. “this isn’t your fault, clark,” you spoke gently, watching as his eyelashes trembled against his flushed cheeks. “can i kiss you?”

for the first time since he’d stumbled through the door, he looked less like a man about to fly apart at the seams and more like clark — overwhelmed, embarrassed, needy, but no longer fighting so hard against his desperation.

“might… might not be able to stop,” clark swallowed, his adams apple bobbing.

“i know,” you murmured, and clark’s breath hitched when you leaned in closer.

for a man who could bench-press a train, he looked devastatingly fragile in that moment — like the slightest wrong move might shatter him completely. his body uncurled on itself, and his hands hovered uncertainly before settling on your elbows. the contact made him shudder visibly. “gosh,” he breathed, his voice cracking, “i don’t know what i’m doing.”

you could feel the overwhelming tension coiled in him, the way clark’s muscles trembled as he willed himself to hold back. when you finally closed the distance, clark whimpered, his hands moving from your elbows to your waist to pull you onto his lap. his fingers digged into your sides like he was afraid you’d disappear if he let go. the kiss was clumsy, the heat and desperation burning off of clark’s body evident. as soon as clark attempted to impossibly deepen the kiss, you could tell it wasn’t enough. he needed more.

clark’s hands moved with a sudden, desperate urgency, his fingers tangling in the fabric of your shirt as he pulled you closer. the kiss turned feverish; his usual careful restraint had shattered, leaving behind something raw and intensely desperate. clark’s teeth grazed your lower lip, not enough to hurt, but enough to make you gasp, and the sound seemed to ignite something in him. a low, needy noise vibrated in his throat as he chased the high, his grip tightening further.

“gosh,” he panted against your mouth, the word trembling, “i — i don’t —” his voice broke off into a whine, his head lolling to the side as he shuddered. clark let out a sob when your fingers carded through his sweat-damp hair, his eyes squeezing shut. he looked wrecked — his cheeks flushed, his lips parted and swollen. his control unraveled by the second as his hands slid up your sides, trembling, before one settled at the small of your back, pressing you flush against him.

his hips jerked forward involuntarily in a sharp, aborted movement that made him yelp, his body going rigid with embarrassment. his breath hitched aggressively as he nuzzled into the curve of your neck, his lips brushing your skin in a shaky, open-mouthed kiss. “please. please, i don’t know what to do…” his voice was barely a whisper, completely broken and pleading.

clark’s breath was a mess of short, shallow bursts against your neck, each exhale hotter than the last. when he spoke again, his voice was barely recognizable — low, rough, stripped of all its usual gentle hesitation. “i need —” his throat worked hard, as if the words couldn’t come out, “i need to —” his hips jerked once more, his muscles trembling with the effort of holding himself back. clark’s teeth scraped lightly over your collarbone. “breed… i — i need to breed you,” clark’s voice dripped with shame. his arms locked around you like steel. “tell me to stop,” he panted, though his hands were already sliding under your shirt, mapping the curve of your waist. “please, honey, you gotta tell me to stop, because i don’t think i can —” the sentence ended in a groan as you carded your fingers through his hair again.

“clark,” you started, but he cut you off with another desperate noise, his teeth catching the fabric of your shirt collar.

“say it again,” he begged, “say my name like that again, like you’re not — like you’re not scared of me right now.”

“clark,” you murmured again, softer this time, reveling in how the way you said his name caused his shoulders to ease slightly. his eyelashes fluttered against your skin as he pressed his forehead to your shoulder, his entire frame vibrating. you cupped clark’s jaw, forcing him to look up at you, and he made a noise like a wounded animal, his lips parting against your palm in a shaky exhale. “i’m not scared of you, honey…” your words seemed to only unravel him further. “take what you need,” you attempted to soothe, your own need growing as you shifted in his lap.

clark’s hands trembled as his fingers hooked under the hem of your shirt with hesitant urgency. he moved his hands — slow at first, testing, as if still afraid he might hurt you — before the dam broke. his lips found yours again, desperate and searching. “gosh,” he whispered, voice hoarse, “i don’t deserve you.”

even like this, clark was still clark — achingly gentle beneath the frenzy of his need. his hands roamed your skin with careful reverence, though his movements were interrupted by shallow pants and trembling muscles. the contrast was dizzying: the way he kissed you like a man starved, yet touched you like you could crumble under his grasp. clark kent, even at his most desperate, could never let himself forget how to be careful with you.

clark’s hips pressed forward helplessly, and this time he didn’t pull away. the change was immediate; clark’s hands, usually so precise, fumbled with the waistband of your bottoms as his fingers flexed against the fabric. he let out a soft growl as the material resisted his frantic tugging. he could only manage broken syllables now — “please” and “now” and a particularly wrecked “golly” when you arched against him.

fabric ripped, and clark whined a wordless apology as your bottoms and panties both gave in at the seams. you gasped briefly at the shock of clark’s show of strength, but quickly regained some semblance of composure, leaning back slightly to allow clark the room to remove his own pants.

clark’s slacks proved even more problematic. his belt buckle popped as he wrestled with it one-handed, his other arm locked around your waist like a safety harness. for a brief moment, he looked like he was actually considering using his heat-vision to burn the garment away. “can’t — can’t think,” clark let out a long sigh as the button on his slacks finally gave way and his slacks loosened. the relieved noise he made was downright feral, his hips jerking forward instinctively as he freed himself. he whimpered, embarrassed at the sight — his cock was always big, but the heat was making it appear impossibly larger as it throbbed against his stomach.

you pressed closer with a slow roll of your hips that dragged a choked whine from clark’s throat. “wait,” his voice warbled, “i should — i gotta prep you first, i don’t wanna —.”

“‘s okay,” you soothed, brushing your lips against his neck. “want you like this.”

clark’s hips canted up once more, his hands flying to grip your thighs. “‘but — but i could hurt you,” his voice became smaller, “honey, i cant…”

you rocked down again, and this time his entire body locked up, a strangled groan tearing from his chest. his fingers spasmed against your skin once more.

“trust me,” you asserted, making eye contact with him now. “i can take it, clark.”

for a moment clark just stared at you, his eyes wild and desperate like he was trying to find any evidence against what was coming out of your mouth. then, with a broken noise, his hips stuttered forward, his cock hot and heavy against your inner thigh.

“gosh, i — i.. please, please, i need —” you didn’t let him finish, instead pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips before shifting to line him up with your warmth. clark went rigid, his fingers scrambling for purchase on your hips like he was trying to hold himself back even as you began to slowly sink down onto him.

the noise clark made was almost inhuman — a loud, groaning sob as his head snapped back and his hips arched off the floor, pushing into you.

“too much?” you gasped, pausing, but clark shook his head frantically in response.

“no, it’s —” he swallowed, his vision blurring as he fought to keep his eyes open. a low growl escaped from his throat, “please let me move you.” he was only halfway inside you, but he was already begging like he was close.

“go ahead,” you urged, your voice softer than the ache spreading through your body, “i can take it.”

immediately, clark’s grip tightened just enough to lift you effortlessly. for a fraction of a second, he held you suspended above him, trembling with weak restraint, before pulling you back further down onto him. the slide was slow at first; then, with a shuddering gasp, he eased you down to the base of his cock.

heat radiated off of clark once more as he bottomed out, his skin damp and feverish beneath you. his hips jutted up instinctively, chasing the sensation before he caught himself, freezing with a strangled noise. “f — sorry,” he choked out the apology upon hearing a soft, wounded noise escape your lips.

you shook your head, shifting experimentally, watching the breath punch out of him. his hands gripped your waist once more — slow this time, agonizingly so, like he was attempting to savor the drag of his cock against your walls. the muscles in his arms flexed when he lowered you back down with a broken groan.

clark’s next attempt at thrusting was significantly less controlled, his hips canting up to meet you halfway. the force of it knocked the air from your lungs, and his eyes snapped up to you at the sound. you cut his worries off with another roll of your hips, and whatever apology he’d been mustering dissolved into a strangled moan. his hands tightened reflexively as his brain slipped another notch. “doing so good, clark,” you huffed out, “you wanna breed me, don’t you?” you leaned closer to rest your hands on his shoulders. “breed me then.”

the words seemed to shatter what little restraint clark had left. his hands clamped around your hips with bruising force, fingers digging in as he pulled you down hard against him, burying himself to the hilt with a guttural moan that vibrated through his chest. the sudden stretch burned, but clark was beyond noticing, his pupils blown wide and unfocused as his hips pistoned upward in frantic, uneven movements.

his rhythm was erratic, hips stuttering as pleasure overwhelmed him, alternating between shallow, frantic snaps and deep, grinding rolls that forced choked moans from his throat. one hand slid up to tangle in your hair, tugging just enough to tilt your head back as he mouthed wet, open kisses along your throat. the wall behind him groaned under the force of his movements, causing drywall to crack as his shoulders pressed into it, but clark was simply too focused on you to care.

clark’s cock throbbed endlessly inside you, impossibly hard, each thrust dragging against oversensitive nerves. the wet slap of skin on skin filled the room as clark babbled nonsense against you — half-formed pleas and apologies and your name, over and over like a prayer. his fingers ran against your skin, alternating between clutching too tight and smoothing over you.

“haah — s’you, only you, my — my mate — perfect mate,” he slurred, the syllables tangling together as his hips stuttered forward relentlessly. “gonna — gonna fill you up proper, gonna — nngh — breed you so good, sweetheart, promise, i promise —” his voice broke off into a high, keening noise when you ground against him, pulling him even deeper inside your walls.

“yeah? ‘m your mate?” you felt the way his cock twitched inside you at the words, his breath shallow. “taking care of your mate just right, clark. so good for me.” you hummed between a thread of moans that escaped your lips.

“mine, you’re mine,” the words spilled out of him now, raw and unvarnished, “gonna put a baby in you, gonna — haah — gonna get you so full of my seed and — oh gosh —” his voice cracked into a high-pitched whimper, his rhythm faltering as pleasure coiled tight in his gut. “love you, love you, love you —” the chants were nearly swallowed by a broken moan as his thrusts grew erratic, his hands scrambling to press you even closer, as if he could fuse you with him through sheer force of want.

“gonna make sure you’re full of me,” he whined, “wanna feel you take it all — oh gosh — wanna make sure it takes,” clark’s lips parted around a silent plea before he managed to find his voice again, “close,” he managed, the word strained in his throat. his forehead fell to press against yours as he held you in place and bucked up into you with reckless abandon. “so close, honey, i — i can’t —” his breath was hot and uneven against your lips as he fought to hold on just a while longer.

your fingers moved to cover his hands around your hips in an effort to ground him. “look at you, sweetheart,” you cooed, looking down at him. “fucking me so perfectly, clark.”

clark’s forehead knocked against your shoulder as he whined into the praise. “can’t think — when you talk like that…” a full body shudder followed, causing you to clench around his length.

you’d barely realized how close you were becoming from the overstimulation of clark’s length pounding against your g-spot, and the pleasure was catching up to you now. “fuck, that’s it, let me hear you…” you moaned, “my big, strong superman, coming apart just for me.”

clark made a noise like a wounded animal, his hips snapping up erratically now. when you clenched harder around him, clark’s mouth fell open in a silent scream. “please, honey…”

“shh, i’ve got you,” you soothed, “so good for me, taking what you need. filling me up just right.”

tears welled up in clark’s wide pupils as his body responded before his brain could catch up. his cock pulsed inside you, leaking precum in hot, insistent waves that made your own breath stutter. “please,” he begged, the word dissolving into a breathy moan as you tightened around him. “wanna make you — make you feel good too.” you cut clark off with a slow, filthy grind against him. a strangled sob tore through his chest, his hips fucking up into you so hard that it felt like he was splitting you open. “please, sweetheart, please tell me you’re close,” he gasped once more as his cock twitched inside you, hot and heavy and aching.

the pressure built inside your stomach, each rough grind from clark sending another wave of pleasure crashing through you. “clark — i’m —” your voice broke, the words dissolving into a moan as he angled himself just right, hitting that spot that made your vision blur.

clark held his breath, his entire body trembling. “please cum on me, honey, i need it —”

the plea shattered the last of your composure. your walls clamped hard around him as you cried out, causing clark to groan and jerk his hips erratically. he held you through it, babbling praise between gasps. “so perfect, so good for me — you feel so… gosh,” he fought to keep still, letting you ride out the waves.

when the aftershocks finally ebbed, you slumped against him, breathless. clark’s chest heaved beneath you, his cock still buried deep and twitching with every uneasy breath. his eyes were glossed over with unshed tears, voice still gravelly. “can i — please, can i —?” he swallowed, his hips giving a helpless thrust, like he couldn’t stop himself. “need to — need to fill you up now, honey. wanna breed you so bad, please.” clark’s desperation was raw, his muscles achingly taut with the effort of holding back.

you cupped his face, thumb brushing over his feverishly hot cheek. “cum for me, clark.”

clark let out a raw sound, half-sob and half-relief. his grip tightened, and a series of frantic, uneven movements, each one deeper than the last, followed. “i — breed… breed mate —” clark babbled in choked-off whines, one hand sliding down to grip your thigh, lifting you slightly to change the angle so he could thrust deeper into you. “please, please, please,” clark chanted, tears falling from his eyes onto his cheeks as his eyes screwed shut.

he continued his relentless pace until the climax finally hit him with an excruciating force. a strangled growl erupted from clark’s throat as his grip on you went bruisingly tight for a moment; he pulled you close to his chest with a shattered moan, his entire body convulsing as he spilled inside you in hot, pulsing ropes. it felt like his orgasm never ended, the cum penetrating deep inside you until it began spilling out despite clark’s cock still remaining inside you.

clark’s body went slack against the wall, his breathing shallow and uneven as the last tremors of his climax faded. his grip on you loosened, fingers pulsing where they rested against your skin, damp with sweat. for a long moment, the only sound in the room was the quiet evening out of clark’s breath, the occasional shudder running through him as the aftershocks rippled through his form.

his eyes, still glassy, blinked slowly as awareness crept back into his features. the feverish haze that was clouding his expression began to recede, and he swallowed hard. “honey,” he blinked before his words all tumbled out in a rush, “did i — did i hurt you? i didn’t mean to — please, are you okay?” the heat had stripped him raw, but for a moment, clark became incredibly lucid — every bit the gentle and painfully aware clark you knew.

you cut him off with a kiss, slow and deliberate, bringing him back down to earth even if only for a moment. when you pulled back, his eyes were wide, pupils still blown but slightly clearer now, more focused. “you’re okay?” he asked, his voice small.

you nodded before pressing a kiss to clark’s forehead. “more than okay,” you assured him, your thumb resting against his cheek. “you’re burning up, honey.”

you shifted slightly, and clark made a soft, whining noise in the back of his throat, his hips jerking reflexively before he stilled them with visible effort. for a second, his eyes darkened again, the heat flickering back to life beneath his skin. “‘m sorry,” he muttered, voice barely above a whisper. “i think — i think it’s… the heat, it’s coming back.” clark opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “i — i didn’t even —” his ears turned pink, “didn’t even take my boots off.”

a small laugh burst out of you before you could stop it; clark’s wounded expression only making it worse. he sucked in a breath softly as the laughs sent vibrations through your body and core, his cock throbbing weakly inside you.

“it’s not funny!” clark protested, though the corners of his mouth twitched. “i track in enough debris as it is without — without this,” he gestured vaguely to himself.

you kissed his shoulder in apology, feeling him tense up incrementally. “how’re you feeling?” you cooed, your voice leveling out a bit.

he nodded, then hesitated. “don’t know how long i’ll be… in control.” the vulnerability in his voice made your chest ache.

sensing the time ticking before clark lost himself again completely, you carefully lifted yourself off him, clark’s hands clenching into fists at his sides. his cum immediately began leaking out of you the moment you separated, and a quiet whine escaped his throat from the lack of contact.

“clark, baby,” you tapped his cheek after standing, stepping properly out of your ripped clothing. “bedroom, okay?” you spoke quietly, holding your hand out as if you had the strength to pull clark up onto his feet.

“we should — bedroom. right. that’s sensible.” clark shook his head in an effort to ground his mind, pulling himself most of the way onto his feet before finally taking your hand. now standing, clark’s slacks and boxers fell to his ankles. he reached down and lazily unlaced his boots, stepping out of the pool of fabric at his feet. he nearly tripped on his own feet trying to step forward, his coordination beginning to falter due to the returning haze in his eyes.

the short walk to the bedroom felt endless — clark kept pausing in his tracks, his breath stuttering every time he caught a glance at his own cum running down your inner thigh. by the time you reached the doorway, he was already practically vibrating with need, one hand bracing the doorway as he ducked his head, his shoulders slumped.

“sorry,” he mumbled, his voice thick. “it’s just — every time you move, i can smell —” he cut himself off as he had done multiple times before, ears burning crimson as he squeezed his eyes shut.

the moment you guided him towards the bed, clark’s knees buckled instantaneously, sending him stumbling to sit on the edge of the mattress. his chest heaved as he tried to steady himself, but when your fingers brushed his waist to adjust how he was sitting, he let out a broken noise, hips canting up towards nothing.

“honey, i —” his voice dropped to a barely-there whisper and his skin began burning up once more. “need you. please.” clark’s fingers flexed against the sheets, looking down at the mattress before his hand curled around your waist, pulling you down to lay ungracefully on the bed beside him. the connection made clark pull his hand away like it stung. “please.”

oh.

he needed permission to touch you, and he needed it badly.

the conflict in clark’s expression was almost painful — the way his jaw trembled, how every inch of him was wound tight with want, shivering with the effort of holding himself back.

you nodded. “you gonna be a good boy and breed me again, clark?”

And there was nothing new about it. The sex, anyways. He enjoyed it. He liked the closeness, the heat, the release that felt both physical and mental. And, of course, he liked that it felt good.

So he wasn’t sure why all of a sudden it felt like his chest was being crushed.

It all happened too fast. One second his eyes were fixed on your, watching, hands firm on your hips, his breath steady, synced with yours like for just a moment the two of you were one. And then his breath stuttered. His throat felt like something had wrapped around it and pulled tight. The air felt thick, sticking like he was choking on molasses.

He blinked hard, trying to wipe it away, but it did nothing to put the room back in place, it only continued to blur around the edges. Your sounds – the pretty whimpers, and soft, breathy gasps of his name – sounded distant, like the sound was traveling through water to get to his ears.

It sounded far away. Too far away. Too far.

No, no, no —

He tried to force himself out of it, tried to force himself to think his way back to reality, to figure out why this was happening.

You’re home.

He latched onto the thought, mind digging its claws into it.

Apartment. Bedroom. Bed.

He could feel the sheets under his back, the weight of you on top of him, the smell of the room. He went through it all. Everything he could see, hear, smell, feel. The whole bit. None of it seemed to help.

No blood. No bruises. All my limbs.

His eyes darted down to your body, a quick, – an almost tactical assessment. And you were fine. No signs anything was wrong with you. No sign you were in pain, or in danger. Nothing was wrong. If anything, you seemed to be enjoying yourself. Completely unaware of what was going on in his mind and body. No fault of yours, of course.

She’s okay.

You’re okay.

So why did he feel like this ?

Was it because he had you on top ? No. That couldn’t have been it. He had you ride him all the time. He liked it. Very quickly it had become one of his favorite positions. Laying back and watching you use him to make yourself feel good, grabbing your hips to fuck into you when you got too tired.

He’d never had an issue with it before. He loved it.

His grip on your hips tightened before he realized it, nails digging a little too hard into the skin, leaving behind shallow half-moon shaped indents in the soft flesh. The sting made you flinch, small and sharp.

“Stop –”

The word tore from his throat, felt like it was dragging glass along the muscle and tissue inside it. He pressed down, slowing the roll of your hips against his.

“I need you to stop –”

The panic in his voice, the way it shook and cut through everything else, had you scrambling off him in an instant. No hesitation, no question. Just moving, leaving cold where your weight and warmth had been.

Jason stayed where he was, laying flat on his back, wide eyes fixed on the ceiling. His chest rose and fell too fast, each breath caught on the way in and burned on the way out. His body felt wrong, like it wasn’t really his anymore.

The room felt off, like it had gotten smaller and smaller around him.

“Jay …” Your voice was careful now.

He felt the mattress shift next to him as you moved, felt you get closer before he actually saw your hand reaching out towards him. And something in his chest spiked, his body moving before his mind could.

His hand shot out, catching your wrist before you could reach him. Too tight, he hadn’t meant it to be.

“Don’t –” He gripped on you loosened, but he didn’t let go, still holding you away. “Please don’t touch me right now.”

The request came out rough, but not angry. He wasn’t angry, he was scared. And his body had a bad habit of mixing the two up.

Confusion flickered over your face, your brows creasing, but you didn’t argue, didn’t push at him. You lowered your hand, bringing it back to rest in your lap.

“Are you okay ? Did I do something ?”

Jason only shook his head, the motion small and quick, and you weren’t sure which of your questions he was answering. He didn’t elaborate.

He forced himself to sit upright, dragging his hand down his face before pushing his sweat damp hair back off his forehead. His skin felt too tight, and every touch felt like he was being stabbed. Everything in and around him felt wrong.

He shifted to the edge of the bed, planting his feet against the carpet. His chest was still tight, breaths still burned, the world still felt small. He didn’t understand it.

“I need –” He swallowed hard, “I’m just … gonna go shower. Real quick.”

He didn’t wait for a response before getting up.

The lock on the bathroom door clicked shut behind him, followed by the sound of the running water.

He stepped in the shower before it had time to warm up, letting it hit him cold.

It helped.

A little.

For a second.

He pressed his forehead against the tile wall, letting the water run down his face and back. His heart was still racing, everything still felt too wrong, and too loud. He felt like he was going to be sick.

“What the hell ?”

He didn’t move to grab the soap, didn’t wash his hair. He didn’t do anything but stand there.

You’re safe.

He knew that. There was no threat, no danger. Nothing was happening, to him or to you. So why did he feel like there was, why was his body reacting like he was in some sort of crisis ?

Why did it feel like the world had him pinned down, stripped bare, with no way to get away —

His chest squeezed again.

He forced himself to breathe in, held it until his lungs burned, and let it out.

Again

Again

Again.

He’d never admit how long it took him to even out his breathing, to force the panic into something quieter. Not gone, not by a longshot. But quieter.

He still didn’t have an answer when he shut the water off.

He dried himself off quickly, pulling on a pair of sweatpants, tying them low around his hips. When he left the bathroom, hair still dripping onto his forehead, the bed was empty. For a second that made the panic feel sharp in his chest again.

Then he heard the quiet sounds of movement, the faint click of ceramic. He followed the sound down the hall to the kitchen. He found you at the counter, your back to him, dressed in a pair of soft underwear and a bra. Your hair was messy, shoulders relaxed in a way that showed him you weren’t upset.

You were just waiting. Always waiting.

Jason stepped up behind you, arms sliding around your waist, pulling you back against him. His chin found your shoulder, taking its usual spot there.

You were making tea, and he could tell by the smell of it and the cup you were using that you were making it for him, not yourself. He watched your hands as you stirred honey into the cup, using that tiny spoon he always cracked jokes about. The one that looked like it belonged in a dollhouse, not a kitchen drawer.

You reached for the wooden salt jar next, stirring a pinch in with the same spoon. He remembered he cringed when you first showed him that. Now he can’t stand taking his tea any other way.

“‘M sorry …” He muttered against your cheek

Your free hand came up, fingers brushing against his jaw. It made his breath catch, softer this time. 

“No need to be sorry, Jaybie.” You assured him “Are you okay ?”

He shifted, tucking his face into the crook of your neck, pulling his shoulders in. A failed attempt to make himself smaller.

“Don’t know what happened” The admission made his mouth feel like it was full of sand and stones. “I’m sorry”

You didn’t rush to answer, letting the quiet linger comfortably as you finished his tea.

“It’s okay” You said gently, “You don’t need to know. Sometimes things just –”

“Don’t.” He didn’t mean to cut you off, and he didn’t mean to sound so snappy either. He forced himself to take a breath, forced his body to relax into yours before he tried again.

“I’m sorry. Just … Don’t do the feelings thing. I can’t –” He took another breath when he caught his tone again. “Just not right now.”

“Okay.” You nodded, “Habit.”

Apology.

Jason hummed against your skin.

Acceptance.

“Did you finish ?” He asked after a moment of quiet

“No.” You answered, no hesitation, no embarrassment or shame. Just a fact.

“But that’s okay.” You added, “I don’t need to finish every time”

Jason grunted against your skin, and that was enough to tell you that he did not agree with that statement.

“We can try again,” he suggested. But his tone was cautious, like he wasn’t quite sure.

And you picked up on that. Of course you did, it was how you were, how you’d always been.

You turned around in his arms, he raised his head to let you move, but his eyes didn’t quite meet yours once you faced him.

“Hey …” Your hands came up, holding either side of his face between your palms. You tilted his head up until his eyes were on yours. It took more effort than he’d like to admit to hold them there.

“We don’t have to” You continued, “We can. But only if you’re okay.”

He was quiet for a while. Checking in with himself, his teeth biting into the skin inside his cheek as he thought it over.

He felt better. A little. Not good, but better

But there was still that lingering feeling. Something biting under his skin. There was a quiet squeezing in his chest still that hadn’t fully gone away, like a memory only his body seemed to remember, that his mind couldn’t quite put a finger on.

“Maybe tomorrow ?” He whispered. He paused, letting out a soft, slow exhale. “Yeah … Yeah, maybe tomorrow.”

You smiled, bringing his face to yours to press a firm, gentle kiss against his cheek.

─────────⋆⋅☆⋅⋆──────────

“P-please.” He begs, dropping to his knees.

Needless to say the breakup wasn’t going to plan.

He nuzzles his face into your stomach, and you feel it tighten at the look in his eyes.

“I’ll be so good.”

You blink.

You’re not sure how you got into your bed, naked, with Mark above you (you know exactly how—you couldn’t resist the tears in his eyes as he begged for one more chance to make things better)

“H-aaah.” He’s panting in your ear now, thrusting slow and hard, each one punctuating his promises.

“You’re mine.” Thrust.

“Never gonna… hnggg… let you go.” Thrust.

“Shittttt… do you feel how,” Thrust. “Deep I am?”

He pushes his palm against the bulge that forms in your stomach every time he pushes in and you thrash wildly, the pleasure becoming too much to bear.

“Mark!” You shout out, and his palm covers your mouth, thumb pressing down on your tongue. You moan around his digit, swirling your tongue around it like you would his cock and he groans, pulsing hard inside you.

“It’s okayyy… cmon,” his voice is low, and there’s a cadence in it that only comes out when he has you like this, shivering and crying on his cock.

“I got you, babe.” You’re unsure how long you’ve been fucking, how much time has passed, but you’re so close and so you redirect his other hand to your clit. He starts drawing small and fast circles on it, and you see white behind your eyes as you finally come.

When you come back to, he’s already cleaned you up and tucked you in, and he’s back in his suit, standing by the window.

“Mark?” You ask groggily.

“Uhm… it’s sunrise. Gotta get back to work.” He hesitates, seeing how your eyebrows scrunch.

You can see the decision weighing on him. So despite it being the reason you wanted to break up with him, the hurt it had caused you, you give him a small nod.

each one of them echoing with the sounds of boys talking through the stalls, arguing, or pissing for 5 minutes at a time. like, seriously, it takes a guy that long to pee?

eddie huffs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and scans the hallway. he has a thought — despite high school girls' proclivities to linger in and outside of bathrooms together doing god knows what, the girls' bathroom by the female locker rooms has usually emptied by this time ; no normal teenage girl wanted to spend any prolonged amount of time sweaty and gross by the gymnasium. no, they definitely wanted to get the hell out of there so they could go back to gossiping or snogging their boyfriends in the hall.

quickly, practically skipping over that way before his bladder has a chance to explode, eddie hovers by the doorway, listening.

nothing. not even the squeak of a shoe.

❝ two seconds, ❞ he mutters to himself. ❝ get in, get out, don’t get suspended. ❞

he steps forward —

— and realizes the angle of the bathroom entrance gives him a clear view straight into the girls’ locker room.

who the hell designed this shit?

he freezes.

because someone is there.

he really doesn't mean to look. truly. he stops because he doesn't want to get caught trying to get into the girls' room, not because he's a creep.

but you . . . god, he'll blame you for this until the day he dies.

you're just pulling your pink t-shirt on, your plain white PE shirt discarded on the bench beside you. your arms are raised, hair falling over your shoulders in soft waves. and below the hem of that shirt . . . well, any self-respecting man wouldn't have been able to look away from you. and eddie munson certainly would not have described himself as ❛ self-respecting. ❜ his dark gaze hits soft, lacy pink panties — dainty white trim, pink satin bows, something so delicate and pretty they don’t even look real in the fluorescent lighting of the dingy locker room.

eddie’s brain short-circuits and he finds himself unable to move.

his lips actually part.

his heart jumps so hard against his ribcage that it startles him.

his cock strains immediately against the front of his jeans.

god hates him personally, he's sure of that.

and every fantasy he’s shoved down all year — the ones about you, about the popular girl with the smile much too pretty for him — flashes like lightning behind his eyes.

he doesn’t mean to make the sound he makes.

but something slips out anyway — a tiny, breathless little exhale, almost a whimper, definitely a sigh — the kind that only happens when your nervous system completely abandons all dignity.

and you hear it.

you turn.

slowly.

eyes wide.

expression shifting from bored to startled to something sharp and then, offended.

eddie’s stomach drops straight through the floor.

you caught him.

you caught him staring.

at you. half-naked.

and it looks like his worst nightmare. it looks exactly like he’s been standing there purposely to watch you getting dressed.

his face blanches. you've never seen anyone so white before.

❝ shit. hey. ❞ he stumbles back a step, hands up, panic rising. ❝ i — i wasn’t — i mean, i didn’t— ❞

he may have been able to mutter some excuse and just back up and leave, but.

his hard on is what kills him.

because your gaze is sinking lower and lower, your eyes widening.

the fact that you can tell how turned on he is only serves to ratchet his arousal even higher. the penis is a traitorous thing, if it's anything at all.

you quickly snatch up your PE shirt from the bench and use it to hide your lower half. not that there's any point — he's already seen everything there is to see. ❝ pervert! ❞ you accuse. your voice cracks on the last syllable, like you're not sure whether to throw something or hide your face in your hands.

only then does it occur to eddie to look away.

he turns his face away, covering his eyes with the palm of his hand for good measure. but the sight of you is well and truly seared onto his eyelids. ❝ no! i swear, i — i'm not. i was just coming to see if the bathroom was free. everyone's hogging the fucking stalls in the boys' room. i swear to god! ❞

there's a very pregnant pause, like third trimester pregnant, in which eddie separates two of his fingers to peek through at you.

standing there, breathing heavily, still with your PE shirt dangling in front of you. ❝ . . . seriously? you didn't come in here just to . . . try to see girls naked or something? ❞

❝ no! oh my god, no. i seriously . . . i have to pee so bad. ❞

❝ then go! ❞ you shout suddenly, and eddie flinches.

hurrying into the bathroom with a ❝ okayjesusi'msorryfuck! ❞

locking himself in one of the stalls, he pauses, leaning against it. his heart is racing, breath coming fast to match. god, you . . .

your legs, fuck, he can't help it. and those panties, jesus . . .

so pink and cute. eddie's never seen anyone wear such cute underwear, not even the few girls he's been with over the years. well, the girls he's had sex with probably wouldn't ever have been caught dead in a pink top let alone pink underwear.

but you. you had such wide eyes, pretty little lips, long, satisfying legs. not to mention that little sliver of ass that showed just below the lacy trim of those panties . . . eddie licks his lips, head rolling against the stall door.

his cock throbs and he palms himself through his jeans. how the hell is he ever supposed to pee like this?

well, he has to find some way to go ; if he walks out of here still with an enormous erection, you'd probably take the matter to the principle or some shit. and you'd be well within your right to.

god . . .

eddie does his best to piss and urge his hard on down in record time. he thinks of the most unsexy things he can bring to mind — santa clause, sad movies, the nightly news — and then finally feels well enough to leave.

it's only taken him a couple minutes, but he's hoping you've been able to get dressed and head out in that time.

but when he steps out of the bathroom you're still there. fully dressed now, but sitting on the nearby bench with your hands clasped together and your head hung low.

he would feel bad just leaving without saying anything, so he starts, ❝ hey. i really didn't mean to — ❞

❝ you have to promise, ❞ you tell him suddenly. the look on your face is fierce, and eddie has no doubt that you'd absolutely ruin him and his reputation ( what little is left ) and get him kicked out if he doesn't do as you say. you stand swiftly. ❝ promise me that you weren't looking on purpose. swear. like, swear on your mother's grave you weren't. ❞

his hand is over his heart before you can blink. ❝ i promise. and i swear. on my mother's life and her grave. i wasn't looking at you. i mean. that i didn't mean to. i seriously just came to use the bathroom. ❞ bad idea, now that he thinks back on it.

should have just held it.

you chew the inside of your cheek, apparently mulling over his words. ultimately finding him sincere enough, you nod. ❝ okay. you can go. ❞

there's a brief moment where the two of you look at each other, your eyes flicker down to eddie's jeans and then back up again, curious.

but eddie rushes out of there just as the homeroom bell rings.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

the halls between second and third period are always packed — lockers slamming, sneakers squeaking, the usual high school cacophony. eddie’s doing what eddie does best after class : leaning against his locker with the hellfire guys clustered around him, ranting loudly about some especially cursed arc he's planning for the campaign on friday.

he’s mid-sentence, halfway through defending himself against wild accusations that he's a sadistic dungeon master, when he feels it.

that prickle down his neck.

that someone’s watching you feeling.

he looks up.

and there you are, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

and there he is, replaying the scene again in his mind for the 17th time in the last two hours ; pink lace hugging such a plump ass, gorgeous hips running down from under your shirt and into those adorable panties.

it's a miracle he doesn't pop a boner right there in front of all his friends.

and a good thing he doesn't, too, because he realizes you are walking straight toward him. you look like a girl who's on a mission, a girl who has the upper hand.

eddie panics immediately, because, he remembers, you do.

his voice cracks halfway through explaining, ❝ guys, your party hasn't really been tested heavily yet — ❞ he can't take his eyes off of you.

he's making no effort to disguise the fact that he's looking at someone across the hallway.

dustin follows his seemingly blank stare. ❝ dude . . . whoa. ❞

gareth mutters, ❝ what is . . . is she coming over here? to us? ❞

eddie doesn’t even have time to tell them to shut the hell up.

you stop right in front of him.

up close, god, you look even better than he remembers. and he absolutely does NOT look at your legs this time. or your hips. or anything he is scared of accidentally remembering too vividly. no, nothing else he's spent hours in bed at night fantasizing about. even though much of it was on display earlier, right there, just for him, if only you knew him. knew he wasn't a bad guy, didn't worship the devil or any of that bullshit people were saying about him and other people like him, kids who had ❛ weird ❜ interests.

he braces for you to publicly humiliate him. he deserves it, he supposes, for what happened earlier.

you say, very calmly, betraying nothing of what happened earlier, ❝ munson. i've decided you owe me. ❞

the hellfire boys collectively inhale like they’ve just witnessed a murder.

eddie can't decide what's worse — the fact that his friends are looking between the two of you, bewildered, and he's going to have to find some way to explain to them what happened earlier. or would it have been worse if you'd just screamed at him, gotten it all out in the open so the whole school would know what a disgusting pervert eddie munson was, along with being a freak and a devil worshipper?

eddie’s ears go nuclear red. ❝ i — i told you i didn’t mean — i didn’t, uh . . . invade anything or — ❞

you narrow your eyes. ❝ i know. you promised. i appreciate that . . . do you want to make it up to me or not? ❞

eddie nods so fast the ends of his long hair almost hit mike in the face.

❝ good. ❞ you step closer — close enough that he can smell you, something soft and sweet and some perfume that's definitely expensive. the hellfire club — in tandem — takes a step back and away from the two of you, but eddie somehow stands his ground in the face of you. ❝ take me for ice cream. at the mall. friday after school. ❞

there’s a half-second of stunned silence — the kind that doesn’t usually exist around eddie, because he typically fills every spare inch of air with noise. but right now? he’s speechless.

and of course that’s exactly when the club finds their voices again.

mike sputters first, ❝ wait — friday? but — but friday is hellfire. ❞

dustin’s eyes go wide under his cap. ❝ yeah, eddie. you literally said missing one session throws off the narrative structure of the whole campaign — your words, not mine — ❞

gareth throws his hands up. ❝ dude, you made us sign attendance sheets. attendance sheets. for dungeons & dragons. ❞

eddie whips around like a panicked, cornered animal. ❝ guys, guys — shut up — shut up — ❞ he hisses, waving at them without taking his eyes off you. ❝ i’m — busy. friday. okay? very important business. top secret. national security. ❞

mike looks like he’s about to faint. dustin looks personally betrayed.

you arch a brow, arms still crossed, entirely unbothered by the melodrama imploding behind him. ❝ is that a no, munson? you're really too busy fighting demons to buy me a scoop? ❞

and god, the way you say it — mocking him, but warm underneath, like you already know he’s going to fold — it just about finishes him off.

❝ saturday? ❞ he tries to offer quietly.

❝ i'm busy saturday. ❞

eddie straightens up, tries to pretend he has even one ounce of swagger left. ❝ uh — yeah. yes. absolutely. ice cream. friday. consider it . . . owed. ❞

dustin makes a noise like he’s swallowed a kazoo. ❝ you’re canceling hellfire for a girl? you've never cancelled hellfire, not even once. we still came to club even when you had bronchitis! i mean, what even . . . ❞

eddie doesn’t even look back this time. he just sticks an arm out and shoves dustin’s face gently away like he’s silencing a toddler. ❝ priorities, henderson. ❞

you almost smile — not fully, but enough that eddie feels it like a punch straight to the gut. he thinks he might actually die. it's almost better than seeing your ass in those delicious panties.

almost.

❝ good,❞ you say again, nodding softly. stamping an official seal on the arrangement. ❝ friday. after school. we can leave from here. don’t be late. ❞

and then you turn, disappearing back into the crowded hall without so much as a glance over your shoulder.

eddie stands there frozen, locker at his back, heart somewhere near his shoes, friends staring at him like he’s just announced he’s defecting to soviet russia.

mike is the first to break the silence, whispering, horrified, ❝ dude . . . what the hell? ❞

but eddie? eddie just stands there, feeling like a lump.

because he now has a date with one of the most popular girls in school and has to figure out how to explain to the boys exactly how that happened.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

the food court at starcourt always smells like an oil spill baking in the desert heat — fryer oil and fake cheese and that intense, cloyingly sweet smell from the pretzel place. you must, on some level, be immune to it by now, because you're sitting there like you own the place, leaning back, relaxed, a melting cup of roasted strawberry ice cream in front of you. you must come here every weekend with your friends.

eddie, however, is hyper-aware of everything else.

the way every table feels too close.

the way half the kids from hawkins high are filtering through, doing double takes.

the way two girls at the scoops ahoy counter that eddie recognizes as hawkins cheerleaders whisper behind their straws and stare.

one freshman boy literally almost falls into a trashcan because he’s so busy gawping, and apparently mesmerized, at the sight of you sitting pretty with eddie "the freak" munson across from you.

you don't seem to notice.

or maybe you do — maybe you're just pretending this is normal, like you come here all the time with the losers of the school.

eddie stirs his own ice cream, two scoops of mint chocolate chip, tapping the plastic spoon against the cup. ❝ so — technically — i don’t actually play, ❞ he says. he's clearly passionate about this game, this D&D — he's talking about it like it's something sacred and ancient. ❝ i’m the DM ; the dungeon master. i run the story. the monsters. the world. the . . . uh, chaos. ❞

you blink. ❝ so you don’t actually . . . fight anything? like, as a character? ❞

he snorts. ❝ no. hellfire is my kingdom. i’m basically a god. but, like, a very stressed out, underpaid god. ❞

you let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding — a tiny, relieved little exhale. you look down into your soft serve like it just told you a secret.

eddie tilts his head. ❝ what? ❞

you hesitate, fiddling with your spoon before murmuring, ❝ i . . . thought D&D had something to do with, like . . . satanism. ❞

eddie chokes on absolutely nothing. seriously, he's not even swallowing any ice cream when he does.

and he really chokes.

full body cough.

a kid at the next table over jumps.

❝ jesus christ, sweetheart — ❞ he wheezes once he recovers, leaning in toward you, ❝ satanism? seriously? i mean, i like metal music, but we don’t, like, sacrifice goats in the woods on friday nights. i’ve barely got the energy to stay awake during homeroom. ❞

you laugh — a cute little tinkle that makes eddie's head spin — and shake your head. ❝ i know. i mean, now i know. it’s just . . . people say things, i don't know if you've heard. and the news . . . and one girl told me that your club played with actual spellbooks, so i kind of assumed . . . i don’t know. that you guys were doing something dangerous. ❞

eddie makes a face like you've personally offended him, and maybe you have. ❝ yeah, the most dangerous thing those kids do is eat an entire pizza while we're taking a break. dustin once drank a two liter of mountain dew in one go and almost died. that’s the level of danger we’re dealing with. ❞

your shoulders relax, and you look at him with those clear, bright eyes that eddie could just fall into.

❝ i thought you’d be mean, too, ❞ you admit quietly. ❝ or scary. you know. the whole ❛ freak ❜ thing . . . the rumors. i figured you’d be . . . intense. or angry. i don’t know. i mean, you are intense. clearly. ❞ you laugh gently to show him you're not being rude, just making an observation. ❝ but you’re not mean. you’re actually . . . nice. surprisingly nice. ❞

eddie’s face goes pink — not the dramatic blush from earlier in the week, but something subtler. warmer. his ringed fingers twitch like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

❝ well, uh . . . thanks? i try not to be a jackass unless provoked. or unless someone insults my van. or my band. or my campaign. ❞

you grin into your spoon. ❝ so . . . often? ❞

❝ okay, wow. rude. ❞ he points at you with his spoon. ❝ i buy you one — extremely overpriced — cup of ice cream and suddenly i’m the punchline. ❞

you frown. ❝ i'm not a bully. ❞

❝ coulda fooled me, the kids you hang out with. ❞

your frown deepens, and you both look at each other for a long minute.

and that’s when you notice it — the stares. the looks. the not-at-all subtle curiosity of your peers.

a group of basketball players walks by, whispering. one of them lifts his brows at you like he’s silently asking if you're doing this as some kind of dare.

two sophomores pass by and giggle.

a girl from your math class keeps glancing between the two of you like she’s witnessing an honest to god miracle.

eddie shifts a little, shoulders tensing, but he doesn’t get small the way you expect. he doesn’t shrink. he just sits up straighter, tapping his rings against the table, pretending that the entire food court isn’t buzzing about the freak sitting with a girl way, way out of his league.

after a moment he mutters, ❝ you can leave, you know. if this is, uh . . . too weird. i mean, i know you asked me, but. ❞

you look up.

really look.

his eyes are dark and nervous and hopeful in a way that makes your chest do something uncomfortable. goodness, you realize he has the longest eyelashes you've ever seen on a man.

❝ i’m not leaving, ❞ you say, soft but firm. ❝ it’s just ice cream, munson. people can stare if they want. i don’t care. ❞

eddie blinks.

like he wasn’t expecting that.

like he doesn’t quite know what to do with the fact that you’re still here, that you’re not afraid being seen with him might turn you into a total social pariah.

you take another bite of your ice cream, pretending your heart isn’t beating too fast.

then: ❝ besides . . . the rumors were wrong about you anyway. you’re not a freak. ❞

eddie swallows, hard.

he doesn’t say anything for a second — just watches you, stunned, like no one has ever said something like that to him before. maybe they haven't. it's quite possible no one has ever been nice to eddie munson in his life. the hellfire club boys, sure. they've been friendly with him. but maybe what eddie needs is someone sweet, someone to baby him — just a little.

finally, he clears his throat. ❝ well… don’t say it too loud. people might think you actually like me or something. ❞

you look at him over the rim of your cup.

❝ maybe i do. ❞

eddie pulls a face. ❝ what, from one conversation over some ice cream? ❞

❝ do i have to remind you what happened earlier this week? ❞ eddie's entire face goes blood red ; he's remembering as you talk. ❝ i believe you. i know you weren't looking on purpose. i think you handled it better than most of the popular guys at school would have. they probably would’ve kept staring until i threw my backpack at them or something. and . . . ❞

you mull over what to tell him, how much to reveal. ❝ . . . maybe i noticed you before that. saw you in the halls between class, at lunch with your club. maybe i was . . . curious. ❞

eddie scowls, dark brows pulling close together over even darker eyes. ❝ even though you thought i was mean? that you thought i was an evil, satan worshipping freak? ❞ he says it like he thinks you're trying to pull the wool over his eyes, like he's trying to catch you in a lie.

❝ sure did. but . . . was hoping you weren't. was hoping you were secretly sweet, that you were even better than most of the boys i hang around with. they suck. ❞

eddie doesn’t know what to say, so he just very slowly eats another spoonful of his ice cream.

does he believe you? you hope he does. everything you’ve said is nothing but the truth.

❝ anyway, ❞ you sigh, playing idly with your ice cream and thinking of how to change the subject and make things less awkward. ❝ . . . i never knew D&D was just like lord of the rings. maybe i would’ve played sooner. ❞

there’s an aborted little movement from eddie’s side of the table that startles you. ❝ you’ve read the lord of the rings? ❞

❝ i’ve read just about every fantasy series there is to read, ❞ you explain with a shrug. ❝ i just . . . like reading. ❞

the look in eddie’s eyes changes now, becomes darker ; it looks like he has a secret he’s unwilling to tell you. ❝ jeez, princess. if i didn’t know any better, i’d say you were the perfect girl. ❞

you try hard to just take what he’s said as a compliment. it’s hard, though, with that little caveat he snuck in there. ❝ oh, and you do? know better? ❞

your hand and eddie’s hand are laying side by side on the sticky tabletop. eddie’s fingers twitch toward yours. when he speaks, his voice is low, probably to avoid being overheard by any of your passing classmates. not because he’s ashamed of what he’s about to say, but because he doesn’t want to embarrass you. or have people start to spread nasty rumors about you the way they do about him.

❝ i know you’re pretty. very pretty. what i don’t know is why you’re sitting here with the school outcast giving people a reason to hate you. especially after i . . . y’know, on tuesday. ❞

in a microscopic movement, your fingers meet his, your knuckles now laying together. you aren’t sure who moves first, but eventually your fingers are brushing, back and forth, against each other’s, in the smallest of movements. even just that little bit of affection is enough to make you melt.

you lean toward him, trying to keep your cool and not just crawl all over him right here at the mall. ❝ eddie. in a year, none of these people will matter. their opinions, what they said, the things we did, it’ll all just be history. so let them talk. who gives a fuck? ❞

eddie blinks at you like you’ve just said something groundbreaking. your words — the way you just cursed casually, the confidence, your edge of defiance — they hit him straight in the gut. because that's not how you present. he feels it in a place he knows he shouldn’t, in that exact same traitorous spot from tuesday morning. his fingers twitch against yours, restless, and you let your thumb curl around his index finger, comforting. eddie looks at your entwined hands and then away, scanning for anyone still paying attention to the two of you.

❝ remember what i said, ❞ you mutter, pinkie extending to lay against his warm wrist. ❝ fuck ‘em. ❞

❝ jesus, you’re something else, you know that? ❞ his voice is low too, private, just for you.

you smile a mischievous smile, taking a slow lick of your ice cream, making sure his eyes are now locked on yours. ❝ something good? ❞

eddie swallows so hard you can see his throat working through it, because yes. very good. good enough to make his stomach twist and his cock throb in his jeans. ❝ yeah . . . definitely good. ❞

he leans closer, slowly, still careful not to attract any more attention than is necessary, though he can’t quite hide the way his entire body has gone taut as a bowstring. god, you want to make him come undone. ❝ so . . . uh . . . this is going to sound insane, but . . . jesus, please don’t call me a pervert again, but. ❞ his voice dips lower, teasing you, but still uncertain. ❝ those panties. tuesday. they . . . they were kind of . . . distracting. ❞

you pause, spoon frozen halfway to your lips, eyes flickering down to where he’s turned his hand over in yours, fingers full on skimming back and forth over the sensitive palm of your hand now. there’s a faint flush in your cheeks, and maybe — maybe — a smile that hints you’re enjoying the game he’s playing. ❝ distracting, huh? ❞ your tongue darts out, slices through the mound of soft ice cream on your spoon. ❝ oh really, eddie? kind of distracting? ❞

eddie’s teeth sink deep into his lower lip. ❝ yeah . . . kind of — no. you know what? not kind of. very. very distracting. don’t think i’m gonna forget what i saw. ❞

still his fingers sweep over your palm ; there are goosebumps prickling your entire arm.

you shiver in spite of yourself. ❝ eddie? ❞

your eyes are so wide, your tone so desperate . . . he panics. ❝ hm? hey, what’s wrong? did i say something? i still swear — i didn’t mean to look earlier, i promise it wasn’t on purpose. I would never — ❞

❝ eddie. take me somewhere we can be alone together. please. ❞ you’ve turned your hand over, effectively pinning his to the table. you are desperate, desperate for him. desperate for the way his lashes brush his cheeks every time he blinks, the way his lips move, the perfect timbre of his voice.

you’ve never wanted anyone this badly, and you’re sure he can tell.

he doesn’t have to be told twice. with a nod, he grabs your hand and starts to lead you back through the food court, abandoning your ice creams as you slip past curious glances and whispers until the large glass doors of the mall’s main entrance come into view.

but eddie doesn’t lead you there. he takes a hard turn and pulls you down a side hallway that looks like it might be just for maintenance.

you trust him, though, so you let him keep going, pushing through a small side door and into the brisk night air. into a world of abandoned furniture, wooden tables stacked crookedly, couches leaning against the wall, metal shelving scattered like a maze. the powerful docking bay flood lights hit the dust motes floating in the air, catching on your hair, making eddie catch his breath.

❝ wow, ❞ you sigh, looking around at all of the furniture. ❝ what is this? ❞

eddie shrugs, starting to pick his way past a garish settee. ❝ you told me to take you somewhere private. ❞

you can’t hold in a well-meaning giggle. ❝ yeah, i figured you were gonna take me back to your place. ❞

❝ oh. damn. well . . . i can still do that. ❞ he turns back, ready to leave.

❝ wait, wait. i wanna explore back here now. this is cool. i never knew this kind of stuff was back here.❞

❝ oh, yeah. back of the furniture store. i’ve only been here a couple times, but didn’t take me long to find this place. they don’t guard it very well. clearly. furniture graveyard back here. ❞

❝ you can hardly call it a graveyard, most of this shit is brand new. ❞ you stand on a plush red velvet footstool, trying to track eddie’s movements through the maze of furniture.

he seemingly picks out a suitable armchair the size of a small car, motioning you over.

grabbing your hand and helping you maneuver through the wreck of items, he makes sure you’re safe before taking a seat in the armchair.

eddie pats his lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like of course this enormous abandoned armchair was meant for this — for you, for him, for whatever this is turning into.

you roll your eyes good-naturedly. ❝ seriously? ❞

eddie’s grin goes crooked, boyish, a little smug in that way he can’t quite hide around you. ❝ yeah. seriously. unless you’d rather sit on . . . ❞ he gestures vaguely at a nearby plastic patio chair missing one leg, the saddest item at the party. ❝ . . . that. ❞

you sigh, but it’s useless — you’re already moving toward him. already letting him guide you by the waist as you settle onto his lap.

his hands are warm. too warm, scorching your skin wherever they touch.

you sink into him, into the solid feel of his chest against you, the curve of the massive armchair cupping you both like a secret. you shift a little until you’re comfortable — which is sort of a lie, because there’s nothing comfortable about the way your heart is slamming around in its cage, nothing comfortable about the way his breath hitches when your thighs brush his.

eddie exhales through his nose like he’s trying very, very hard to be chill.

❝ well, hey there, princess, ❞ he murmurs, voice low enough to vibrate against your side. ❝ makin’ yourself right at home. ❞

❝ you told me to, didn’t you? ❞ you tease, turning halfway toward him. in this position, your legs are thrown over the side of the armchair, your bum seated comfortably atop his lap.

eddie’s eyes flicker briefly to your mouth. ❝ yeah, but i honestly didn’t expect you to be so . . . obedient. ❞

you shove his shoulder lightly. ❝ shut up. ❞

❝ no, i mean — ❞ his fingers flex on your hips, steadying you when you shift. ❝ — not complaining. definitely not. ❞

you can feel him adjusting under you, just slightly. enough that you know. enough that he knows you know.

your skirt drapes over your thighs, soft against his jeans, and when you move again — just a tiny test — eddie makes a noise like someone hit him with a truck.

you pretend you didn’t hear it.

he pretends he didn’t make it.

his hand — the one with all the rings — drops to your bare knee, barely touching. just fingertips. just testing. when you don’t flinch away, those fingertips glide up an inch. warm. slow. deliberate.

❝ you okay? ❞ eddie whispers, and you nod. your eyes feel hot, almost like you could cry. but it’s only that this is such a new sensation for you. you’ve never let anyone touch you like this, never trusted anyone to, not even some of the popular guys you’ve known for years.

why is eddie different?

instead of asking or saying any of that, you purse your lips. ❝ are you okay? ❞

❝ oh, sweetheart, ❞ eddie murmurs, thumb brushing the soft, tender underside of your knee now, ❝ not even close. ❞

you shift again — not on purpose, probably — but it doesn’t matter. his hand tightens on your knee, just enough to hold you still. just enough to tell you he feels everything.

you swallow, heat curling low in your stomach.

❝ eddie… ❞

❝ yeah? ❞ he nudges the side of your jaw with his nose, like he’s testing how close he can get before you push him away.

you don’t push him away.

his fingers slide higher, tracing the warm skin of your inner thigh, disappearing under the hem of your skirt like he’s trying not to rush but absolutely is.

your breath stutters.

eddie feels it.

he leans in, lips brushing the shell of your ear, voice a rasp.

❝ you tell me to stop if you want. otherwise . . . ❞ his thumb strokes higher, bolder, ❝ . . . i’m gonna keep going. ❞

your hand covers his on your thigh — not to stop him.

but to guide him.

eddie makes another noise, this one even more alarming, though you don’t know how that’s possible.

you pull back a bit, just enough to look at him, to make sure he’s okay.

eddie looks like he’s drowning, dark eyes melting into yours as you continue to push his hand higher. ❝ gonna let me see those pretty panties again? ❞ he demands to know. ❝ gonna let me touch ‘em? ❞

your hand stops. and so does his. you’re shivering, breathing heavily, feeling like you could shake apart if he left you right now.

❝ not here, ❞ you mumble pitifully, and eddie nods.

❝ okay. ❞

unable to bear it anymore, you close your eyes.

and that’s when he kisses you.

eddie kisses like he’s been wanting you like this for years.

not timid, no longer even a touch hesitant. just hungry — that kind of desperate, relieved hunger reserved only for starving men faced with a meal and drug addicts who just got their fix.

his lips crash into yours, hard and warm, over and over, and your whole body jolts. you realize you’ve been hungry, too. starved for touch and affection and anyone who truly cared about you. he cups your jaw with one hand, thumb sweeping your cheekbone, the other arm locked tight over your legs like he thinks you might leave.

you melt instantly.

you don’t mean to — it’s instinct. the second his mouth opens against yours, your fingers go to his chest, clutching at his shirt, pulling him closer even though there’s nowhere left to go. he’s already pressed against you everywhere — chest firm, thighs solid under yours, the heat of him pushing up through the underside of your skirt.

the kiss deepens fast — too fast — like he’s been imagining it, like you’ve been torturing him just by existing. his breath tastes like the mint chocolate ice cream he’s been enjoying and something bitter underneath, but not unpleasant. something unmistakably eddie.

his nose bumps yours when he tilts his head, clumsy, eager, borderline messy, which only makes this more real. his mouth fits against yours in that perfect, greedy way that makes your thighs tense and your stomach leap into your throat.

eddie groans — a low, rough, startled sound — the second your lips part from his. it vibrates through his chest and into yours, and you swear you could come undone from that alone.

and then he’s pulling you up, hands strong on your waist. you gasp as he lifts you bodily and sets you down with your thighs now on either side of his. you can feel him now. really feel him. underneath your skirt, your underwear — similar to the pair you wore on tuesday, just with less bows and more lace — come into contact with the rough material of his jeans, tented by a very obvious erection. you really hope you’re not making an absolute mess down there.

his fingers slip into your hair, tugging gently, guiding your mouth open under his once more. his rings are cool against your neck when he cups the back of your head, holding you exactly where he wants you.

and you kiss him back with the same needy, aching urgency — because you want him, too. because you’ve wanted this longer than you’ll admit. because nothing has ever felt like this.

eddie breaks away just an inch, your foreheads pressed together, breathing hard.

❝ i have to admit something, ❞ he breathes.

you make a tiny sound, questioning. please don’t admit you’re actually a pervert who really does love spying on girls in the locker room, you think desperately.

❝ you said — ❞ he has to stop, catch his breath, swallow thickly. you soothe him with a hand at his jaw, thumb stroking over his heated skin. ❝ you said you noticed me before, in the halls at school? i noticed you, too. fucking everywhere, baby. in the halls, in class, at assembly, during PE. i’ve thought about you . . . fuck, i’ve thought about you so much. never thought i . . . i mean, what chance did i have with you? the freak of hawkins high? ❞

❝ don’t say that, ❞ you chide, grabbing for one of his hands, which you bring to your lips so you can kiss the inside of his wrist. that area smells so strongly of him you almost pass out. ❝ if we had just . . . i dunno, been paired for a project or . . . sat at the same lunch table, it sounds like this would have happened sooner. ❞

eddie’s dark gaze is cemented to yours, and his voice drops as he continues, like he’s afraid his words might shatter the moment if he speaks them too loudly.

❝ when i saw you standing there in those lace and bows, babe, you looked like — ❞ he exhales, shaking his head a little, disbelief curling at the edges of every syllable. ❝ like a fuckin’ elven princess straight out of one of my campaigns. swear to god, you looked all soft and pretty and . . . fuck. those panties. ❞

his fingers dig suddenly into the meat of your thigh, just under the edge of your skirt.

❝ pink lace. little bows. like you stepped right out of my brain and into that locker room. ❞ he kisses you again, softly, and against your lips he asks, ❝ . . . do they all look like that? or were you wearing those for like . . . a special occasion? ❞

you huff a laugh, smiling into the kiss. ❝ most of them. ❞

he pulls back and his brows lift, hope flaring.

❝ i mean, i have some normal pairs. but most of them are cute like that, yeah. ❞

eddie makes a sound that’s halfway between a choke and a moan and you grab anxiously for his fingers again, slipping them up and under your skirt. ❝ eddie, you can. you can touch. i just . . . i wanna wait until we’re back at your place to have sex. ❞

❝ we don’t have to, ❞ eddie tells you, and at your disappointed look he squeezes your thigh again, reassuring. ❝ i just mean, we can do whatever you want. i’m happy using my fingers or . . . my tongue. don’t feel like you owe me anything. ❞

❝ i want to, ❞ you let him know, urging his hand as high as it’s been now.

eddie watches you carefully as his fingers crawl up the tender skin of your thigh, and just as his thumb presses into the rough lacy edge of the cute lavender pair you’re wearing tonight —

❝ jesus christ, ❞ he mutters. ❝ you’re so fucking pretty, i don’t even deserve to look at you, let alone touch you. ❞

he’s suddenly tense against you, shoulders locking like he’s remembered who he is, where he stands in the pecking order of hawkins high. his hand falters under your skirt, like he’s about to pull it away entirely.

wanting anything in this moment but to lose his warm skin against yours, your palm slides to his cheek, warm and steady, fingers threading into his hair — which is surprisingly soft — to keep him right where he is.

❝ hey, ❞ you murmur. ❝ i told you not to think like that. or talk like that. ❞

his eyes flicker to yours, dark and uncertain.

❝ i’m not . . . too much for you? ❞ he asks quietly. ❝ or — i don’t know — wrong? ❞

you lean in and kiss him again, slow this time. not frantic. not rushed. just enough to make your meaning unmistakably clear.

when you pull back, you keep your nose brushing his.

❝ eddie munson, ❞ you whisper, ❝ i wouldn’t be letting you kiss me in the back of this mall if you weren’t exactly right for me. ❞

something in his face breaks open at that.

he swallows hard, then blurts, ❝ were you really gonna go to the principal? ❞

you blink. ❝ what? ❞

❝ after tuesday, ❞ he admits, embarrassed. ❝ i kept thinking you were gonna ruin my life, expel me or something. ❞ he may hate school, but there’s a reason he hasn’t dropped out yet.

you smile — remembering how you had indeed threatened to take the matter to the principle if eddie didn’t take you out. ❝ no. ❞

his eyes widen. ❝ no? ❞

❝ no, ❞ you repeat. ❝ i was just hoping you’d ask me out. ❞

eddie stares at you like you’ve just told him gravity isn’t real.

❝ you’re kidding. ❞

❝ i’m not. ❞ you shrug lightly, thumb again tracing the line of his jaw, that place you can’t stay away from. ❝ i figured if i scared you a little, you might actually do something. ❞

he lets out a breathy laugh, stunned. ❝ you are . . . terrifying. ❞

❝ worked, didn’t it? ❞

his answer is another kiss — deeper, slower. that thumb finally pushes its way beneath the band of your underwear, stroking the sensitive skin of your waist now. which leaves his other fingers reaching around, clenching at your backside.

you shiver, pressing in close to him. ❝ eddie? take me home now? ❞

eddie nods and stands immediately with you still in his arms.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

the drive to eddie’s place is . . . tense, to say the least.

he keeps drumming his fingers nervously on the steering wheel and glancing over at you until you sigh and reach over for his hand, place it on your thigh for him.

only then does he seem to calm, hand ghosting back and forth over your leg, although he does still look over at you periodically, like he’s still expecting you to scream for him to stop touching you.

when he makes the final turn, he takes a sharp breath and says, ❝ guess i should’ve mentioned i live . . . here. ❞

the van rolls to a stop in front of a trailer — porch light humming, dirty metal stairs leading up to an even dirtier front door.

❝ mhm, and? ❞ you already knew eddie lived here with his uncle, it wasn’t a secret. it was one of the many things jason carver and his goons liked to make fun of eddie for.

❝ well, it’s not exactly a house. ❞

❝ duh. ❞ you tug on his hand and whine, ❝ eddie. come on. ❞

luckily, he obeys without much more obstinacy, hopping from the van and coming around to your side to open the door for you.

❝ my lady. ❞ he speaks in a very good british accent, bowing low, clearly putting his D&D skills to good use.

with a giggle, you take his hand and let him lead you to the door.

it’s gotten fairly cold out, so you stand shuffling from foot to foot as eddie unlocks the door.

even after you’ve gotten inside, you waffle by the entryway, shivering as eddie flits around turning on lights. ❝ if you’re hungry, i think there’s some pizza in the fridge. i also always have pretzels lying around here somewhere. ❞

he’s coming back for you down the hallway where he’s turned on a side light, mumbling something about, ❝ sorry it’s kind of a mess in here. my uncle works nights and — ❞

you greet him with a kiss, giving meaning to the phrase ❛ throwing yourself at him. ❜ his mouth is wet and hungry under yours, steadying the two of you as he stumbles back with his arms around you.

yours are flung around his shoulders, on tiptoe in order to be able to continue kissing him properly. ❝ eds. touch me. ❞

eddie makes a low sound into your mouth — one you can only describe as needy — and his hands find you instinctively, both under your skirt, suddenly gripping your ass.

❝ goddamn, is that . . . ❞ his breath catches in his throat and you step forward to latch your lips to his adam’s apple. ❝ is that . . . silk? ❞

❝ satin, ❞ you correct him with a smile, worrying your teeth over his skin. he’s going to have one hell of a hickey on his throat monday at school.

❝ god, ❞ he murmurs. ❝ you’re gonna kill me. ❞

you smile against his neck. ❝ bedroom, then? ❞

that does it.

he laughs and takes your hand, tugging you down the narrow hallway. he stops halfway down to bang on the thermostat. ❝ sorry it’s kinda cold. heating system’s ancient. it should warm up in here soon. ❞

you merely run your free hand down his arm, trying to convey the sentiment that you don’t care, that there are more important things to be taken care of.

eddie’s room is lit but dim, familiar, lived-in ; band posters, scattered clothes, the faint hum of something electric in the background.

the door barely clicks shut before he’s kissing you again.

slow and deep, eddie memorizing every single one of your gasps and moans.

his hands are careful but everywhere — skimming up under your shirt, on your waist, under your skirt again — grounding himself in the reality of you standing here with him.

at some point, foreheads pressed together, he exhales shakily.

❝ can i ask you something? ❞

you nod, nose brushing his again.

❝ are you . . . ❞ he takes a lock of your hair and places it gingerly over your shoulder, stroking your tresses like you’re a doll to be pampered. ❝ is this your first time? ❞

you nod.

eddie’s hand stills in your hair. ❝ really? figured you’d have guys throwing themselves at you. ❞ his hand meets your waist again, squeezing as if to say ❛ how are you a virgin, looking like this? ❜

❝ guys try, ❞ you admit. ❝ but i really need to trust someone to want to do that with them. ❞

he studies you for a long moment, thumb tracing slow circles at your hip.

❝ and you trust me? ❞

another nod ; you’ve never been more sure of anything.

something in his chest visibly gives.

❝ jesus, ❞ he whispers. ❝ you have no idea what that does to me. ❞

he kisses you again — reverent now — starting to shuffle you back toward his bed.

❝ we’ll go slow, ❞ he murmurs against your lips. ❝ okay? ❞

❝ okay. i trust you, ❞ you tell him again.

❝ thank you. ❞

the both of you toe your shoes off and when he pulls you down with him onto the bed, it’s with care, letting you scoot up the bed until your head is on his pillows. everything smells so much like him now you never want to leave.

he flattens the messy covers around you and when he opens his mouth, you can tell he’s about to apologize again. for what, this time? for how disorganized his room is? for how cold it still is? just for being eddie munson?

you cut him off before he can. ❝ shh. don’t apologize. ❞

you pull him down over you by his shoulders, and eddie covers your body with his.

and though you’ve never done this before, your legs instinctually know where they should go — right around eddie’s tight waist, squeezing, never wanting to let him go.

eddie braces himself with a hand beside your head, while the other cups the outside of your thigh, thumb rubbing soothing circles against your skin.

❝ what you’ve been waiting for, ❞ you sigh, reaching for the zipper at your side.

eddie doesn’t answer, seemingly transfixed by your skirt or whatever’s beneath it.

tugging that zipper down, you let your skirt fall open around you and eddie takes a deep, sudden breath.

you’re encased in a pair of soft lavender satin panties tonight, the whole pair edged with lace with one big white bow at the front.

eddie has stopped moving.

his eyes drag slowly over you, dark and hungry and stunned, like he’s trying to convince himself you aren’t some cruel hallucination. his hand tightens on your thigh. ❝ baby . . . if this is some kinda prank, something your friends put you up to, you need to tell me now. ❞

❝ it’s not. ❞

❝ fuck, ❞ he breathes, barely louder than the hum of the heat finally kicking on. ❝ you’re . . . ❞

he’s seemingly unable to finish his sentence.

his fingers come to brush the lace edge just at the crux of your right thigh, tentative at first — still reverent, like he’s afraid he might ruin these delicate things just by touching. the satin, when he runs his fingers a little higher, is cool beneath his fingertips, smooth, impossibly soft.

❝ jesus christ, ❞ he mutters to himself.

his thumb now traces the line of lace, slow and deliberate, following the curve of your hip up to your waist. you hear him swallow above you.

❝ do you have any idea what you look like right now? ❞

you want to make a joke, you really do, but eddie looking at you like this, touching you like this, like you’re some precious thing, it takes away your ability to do much more than say his name.

❝ eddie? ❞

❝ i know. ❞ his big hand spreads out on your hip. ❝ i know, baby. ❞

you don’t know when you started shaking, but you realize eddie’s trying to soothe your tremors by scooping an arm beneath you, gathering you up against him as he presses a kiss to your neck. ❝ going too fast? ❞

❝ n-no. i mean, i didn’t think so. maybe . . . you show me something now. i can’t be the only one getting naked here. ❞ you knee him in the ribs as gently as you can.

with a grin, eddie pulls back.

when he does, you can see the very obvious tent in his jeans. just like in the locker room. if you were curious then, you’re very curious now.

eddie's grin widens at your words, his eyes darkening with pure lust as he looks down on you. ❝ oh sweetheart, aren’t you playing with fire now . . . ? ❞ he growls playfully, and leans in to nip at your lower lip.

his hands roam your curves possessively, squeezing and caressing every inch of exposed skin. he can feel the heat radiating off of your body and it makes his cock throb with need. ❝ you wanna see what you do to me, baby? how hard you make me? ❞

with a swift movement, eddie stands up and starts unbuckling his belt. his jeans fall to the floor with a soft sound as he kicks them aside. he's left standing there in his shirt and a pair of black briefs, which are straining against his massive erection.

he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear teasingly. ❝ like what you see so far, princess? nothin’ fancy like yours, but i think this works for me . . . ❞

and it definitely does work for him — the midnight black of those briefs against the pale porcelain of his thighs makes you want to attack him.

instead, you pull him down atop you once more, legs around his waist, one hand in his hair and the other snaking between the two of you to palm him through the thin cotton of his underwear. ❝ eds. you're so hard . . . is that all for me? ❞

your hand cupping his aching cock earns you a deep-seated groan, the worn, flimsy fabric of his boxers doing little to hide how hard he is for you. he grinds against your hand, wanting more. ❝ fuck yes, baby girl . . . all for you. every thick inch of me is yours. ❞

he captures your lips in another searing kiss, tongue diving into your mouth to taste and claim every inch. his hips rock against yours steadily now, the heat of your bodies mingling as you rut together.

❝ you feel that? feel how much I want you? how much i’ve been wanting you? ❞ he pants between kisses. ❝ i'm gonna fuck you so good tonight, sweetheart. gonna take my time and make that little pussy mine. ❞

one large hand slides down to grip your ass possessively while the other reaches up to tug at the hem of your shirt. ❝ got somethin’ pretty on up here, too? i wanna see, wanna suck on your nipples until you're begging for my cock . . . ❞

eddie's words make you shy ; you’ve never heard someone talk that dirty before. a soft pink blush starts at your cheeks and drips all the way down to the top of your chest.

you also realize that, if what eddie says is true, he's lain in this very bed before touching himself to the thought of you. ❝ oh god, ❞ you whisper, leaning up to take the bottom of your shirt in hand and yank it off.

laying it aside, you hear eddie exhale sharply. you’re wearing a matching set, so your bra is a nice soft purple too, with satin cups and lacy trim, another big white bow right in the middle of your chest.

eddie's eyes darken with lust, the sight of you in such a dainty set making his cock throb painfully. he licks his lips hungrily. ❝ fuck, you look so good like this . . . like a goddamn princess, i swear. ❞

he leans down to nuzzle at the swell of your breasts, pressing open mouthed kisses along the tops of them before reaching behind to unclasp your bra. his hair tickles you as the lacy garment falls away and eddie groans at the sight of your bare tits.

❝ so fucking perfect . . . ❞ he murmurs reverently before taking one pert nipple into his mouth. he suckles and laps greedily at it while he rolls the other between his fingers.

his hips continue to grind at your center, both of your underwear now soaked with your arousal and some of eddie’s precum. eddie can feel how wet you are even through the fabric. ❝ you're dripping for me already, aren't you, baby? such a needy little thing . . . ❞

you’re squirming, loving all the attention eddie's giving you, all the sweet things he's saying to you. ❝ eddie . . . ❞ you love saying his name, too, loves the way it feels in your mouth, between your teeth.

once eddie sucks that nipple between his lips, you let out an embarrassing moan, fingers scrabbling for purchase against the hard, lean planes of his back. ❝ eddie, eddie . . . want you. want you so bad! ❞

at your desperate plea, eddie groans around your nipple, the sound juddering against your sensitive flesh. he releases it with a wet pop before kissing his way to your other breast to give it the same treatment.

❝ fuck, i want you too, baby . . . want to bury my cock in your tight little pussy and make you scream my name, ❞ he growls, nibbling playfully at your breast.

he sits up suddenly, drawing your legs wider around him as he reaches down to hook his fingers into the waistband of those soft lavender panties. ❝ as much as i love these, ‘m gonna take ‘em off now . . . wanna see all of you. ❞

slowly, like he’s savoring every inch of you being revealed to him, he pulls those panties painstakingly down your legs before tossing them aside. he takes a moment to drink in the sight of you laid out naked beneath him, a feast for his eyes.

you’re embarrassed again, now only because he can see what he’s done to you. your little pussy is a mess, smeared with your own juices.

❝ so fucking gorgeous . . . can't wait to taste every inch of you, ❞ he murmurs, sliding suddenly down between your thighs. ❝ gonna eat this pretty pussy until you're shaking . . . is that okay? ❞

eddie's cheek is pressed to your thigh and your hand is in his hair, petting. more to soothe yourself than him. you nod, less embarrassed now and more nervous. what if eddie doesn't like how you taste? what if he thinks you’re too wet? what if —

eddie’s nuzzling into your thigh, hands sneaking around to cradle your hips. he can feel your nervousness and it makes him want to take extra care of you. ❝ shh, it's okay, baby . . . just relax for me. i’m gonna take such good care of you, i promise. ❞

he places a soft kiss to the inside of your thigh before trailing his lips lower. his breath ghosts over your slick folds and you shiver. ❝ you smell so good, sweetheart . . . can't wait any longer to taste you. ❞

eddie leans in and licks a slow stripe up your slit, groaning at the taste of your arousal. ❝ fuuuck, you taste amazing . . . so sweet. fuckin’ delicious. ❞

he seals his mouth over your pussy and starts lapping at you eagerly, tongue delving between your folds to collect every drop of your essence. eddie focuses on teasing around your clit with the tip of his tongue while sucking gently.

you’re really squirming now, breathing heavily, writhing on eddie’s bed and tightening your thighs around his head. ❝ e-eddie . . . oh god. ❞

❝ that's it, baby, ❞ he mumbles against your slick cunt, ❝ just let go . . . wanna make this pretty pussy cum all over my face. ❞

one particularly insistent swipe of his tongue over your clit makes you thrash, but eddie is holding you down by your hips. ❝ unh . . . eddie. fuck, i'm gonna — ❞

your thighs start to tremble around his head and he doubles his efforts, alternating between flicking his tongue rapidly over your clit and sucking at your entrance.

❝ that's it, baby, cum for me. wanna feel this pussy fuckin’ pulse against my mouth. ❞ he’s growling against you, dark gaze trained up on your heaving chest. ❝ gonna lap up every drop of your cum. ❞

eddie suddenly has two of his thick fingers plunging deep into your tight, hot channel. he pumps them in and out steadily, curling them just so.

as close as you are, you can’t hold back.

those fingers, his tongue, his voice . . . fuck, his voice might be your favorite thing about him. and he certainly knows how to use it in the bedroom.

you scream his name one last time, fingers tight in his hair as you give one last violent spasm atop his comforter and then start to flood his mouth.

he moans as you come undone, your pussy clenching around his fingers, release dripping down his chin. he laps eagerly at you, drinking down every drop just like he said he would.

❝ fuck yes, just like that, princess. cum all over my face. ❞ he keeps his tongue and fingers running in tandem to work you through your high until you come down.

then, gently, he eases those fingers out of you before kissing his way up your body.

eddie takes a moment to nuzzle into the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply. ❝ you did so good, sweetheart. came so hard for me. ❞

your trembling arms embrace him, and you turn your face to meet him for a tender kiss, still breathing hard as eddie holds you close.

but it isn’t long before he’s reaching down, palming at himself through his briefs. ❝ fuck, that made me even harder. i wanna bury my cock in that tight little pussy and fuck you until the only thing you know how to say is my name. ❞

with the way he's started to suck so gently on your tongue, it's a miracle you can even speak when the two of you part again.

❝ y-you said you'll be gentle, yeah? ❞

❝ yes. ❞ he nods, leaning back to take you in, hands worshipping you on their way back down to your hips. ❝ told you, i’ll take care of you. ❞

almost before you know what’s happening, eddie quickly strips out of the remainder of his clothes, revealing his lean, tattooed body and the thick erection jutting from between his thighs.

your heart starts to race and eddie goes for a condom from the bedside table while you try not to think about why he needs those there, what other girls from town he may have been with.

then you reach to still his hand, shaking your head. ❝ no. please? ❞

eddie’s eyes flicker with surprise. ❝ . . . you sure? i mean, i’m clean, to my knowledge. but i have . . . been with some other girls. ❞

you huff, cheeks going red with embarrassment. ❝ i figured as much. i just . . . don't wanna use one, ❞ you finish lamely.

you know it's stupid, know it's risky. but god, if you don't get to feel him sliding bare into you you’re going to lose your mind.

looking as though he knows it’s a bad idea, but wanting to make you happy anyway, eddie sets the unopened condom back on the table and comes to hover over you again. ❝ okay. anything for my princess. ❞

another soft, doting kiss shared between the two of you has you seeing stars.

just before eddie reaches down to line himself up with your entrance, rubbing the head of his cock through your still-slick folds.

his gaze meets yours and you nod and with a subtle push of his hips, the head of eddie munson’s cock pops right into your tight cunt.

❝ fuck . . . i dunno how long i’m gonna last, baby. you feel . . . nngh, god, fuck! you feel so fucking good. ❞ his fingers are bruising on your hips, though you’re sure he doesn’t mean them to be.

you know how he’s feeling, like it’s too much and not enough all at once.

❝ eddie? do i feel . . . do i feel better than those other girls? the — the ones you’ve been with before? ❞ silly, jealousy at this point, when he’s already inside of you. but you can’t help it, can’t help imagining what girls eddie munson has fucked up until now. probably sammy from your fifth period history class. she’s alternative enough. or — god — heather in band who loves to paint her face like those KISS guys. she’s exactly eddie’s type.

elbows now cushioned on either side of your head, eddie pets your hair back from your sweaty forehead. ❝ what are you thinking about? ❞ he questions softly, a smirk on his face like he knows exactly what's going through your head. ❝ there’s no contest — you’re the best fucking thing i’ve ever felt in my life. including the first time i heard metallica. ❞

your eyes go wide. ❝ wow, that's. you mean that? ❞

eddie nods solemnly. ❝ i do. and if you don't believe me, then maybe i should fuck you until you do. ❞

hips inching forward, eddie slips another inch or two more of his aching cock inside of you.

the noise you make is embarrassing, to say the least. it feels way too good to be filled up with him and there are still a few more inches to go.

he grunts, sinking into your tight heat, face buried in the crook of your neck.

❝ you’re so tight, baby. like a vice around my cock. ❞ slowly, he begins to rock his hips, easing more and more of himself inside of you with each thrust. at the same time, his hands roam protectively over your body as he fills you up completely. ❝ i think . . . you were made for me. no one else could ever feel this good. ❞

❝ i honestly . . . i expected it to hurt. fr — from what i've heard from my friends. but. it just feels good, eddie, so good. ❞ you’re surprised, completely blissed out on his cock as he starts to speed up.

eddie chuckles breathlessly against your neck. ❝ i promised i’d be gentle . . . and i always keep my promises. ❞

it doesn’t even hurt when he starts to fuck you harder, slamming deep inside of you with each snap of his hips. his hands slide down to grip your ass, canting your hips up so he can fuck you that much better. ❝ does it still feel good, baby? d’you like feeling my cock stretch this tight little pussy out? ❞

you nod fervently, sure that your fingernails are doing quite a number on eddie's back by now. ❝ you're so big, eds. i feel s — so full . . . ❞

eddie’s movements stutter and he chokes a little. ❝ mm, baby, i’m sorry — i’m so close already. but i want you to cum again first, wanna make you cream on my dick. ❞ in an effort to make that happen, eddie’s calloused fingers drop between your thighs, rubbing at your clit in tight little circles.

and that just makes you go absolutely ballistic, blindsided by your second orgasm of the night as you shake underneath of him, holding him as close as possible.

eddie practically whimpers as your pussy clamps down around him, inner walls fluttering and squeezing at his pistoning cock. and though he must be teetering on the edge as he does so, he thrusts through your orgasm, drawing it out until you’re a shaking, whimpering mess.

❝ god, you’re perfect. so fucking perfect . . . gonna fill this pussy up now, babe . . . mark you as mine. ❞

a few more hard thrusts and eddie buries himself to the hilt inside of you with a guttural moan. his cock pulses as he spills his hot spunk deep into your aching cunt.

you hold him as he cums, breath coming hot and damp against your shoulder, making the prettiest little noises you’ve ever heard a man make.

eddie collapses on top of you, his softening cock still nestled inside your quivering walls.

he nuzzles into your neck with a contented sigh. ❝ feelin’ okay? ❞

when you nod with a giggle, he rolls you onto your sides so he's no longer crushing you under his weight, his arms wrapped protectively around you. he presses a kiss to your shoulder before letting out a satisfied yawn. ❝ i could stay like this forever . . . just you and me. ❞

and wouldn’t that be nice? just you and eddie here in his room, making out and having sex forever.

but, you remember specifically the conversation that was had in the hallway on tuesday. ❝ i don’t think hellfire would take too kindly to that. ❞

❝ i’m gonna make it up to them next friday with an extra long session. but i did have to give a reasonable explanation for why i missed tonight. fair warning. ❞

you tilt your head. ❝ yeah, that you had to take me on a date. ❞

the look on eddie’s face is mischievous, dark eyes glinting. ❝ yeah, sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, but that’s not a suitable explanation for my boys. ❞

frowning, you mutter, ❝ what exactly did you tell them? ❞

❝ the truth. ❞ he apologizes by way of another wet kiss to your shoulder, mouthing at the skin there.

you groan, hiding your face in eddie’s hair. ❝ that’s embarrassing . . . ❞

❝ hey, more for me than for you. i’m the one who comes off as a pervert. ❞

❝ and i’m the one who forced you to ask me out after you were a pervert, oh my god. ❞

eddie shushes you, a hand at the back of your head, cool rings ghosting back and forth over the nape of your neck. ❝ they won’t ever say anything to anyone. and i promise they don’t think less of you because of that. my boys are . . . they’re cool. ❞

nerves calming, you listen to the chilly breeze blow past outside, rattling the trailer windows and sending a draft across the bed. eddie wrestles with the tangled blankets, pulling them higher around you, although it is starting to heat up a little now that the heat has clicked on.

❝ stay? ❞ he mutters against your shoulder.

you tuck yourself in closer against him, skin to skin like eddie is your own personal space heater. ❝ i wasn’t planning on leaving. ❞

Although, he hadn’t expected to be here with you, at all, as a matter of fact. 

Not in the woods behind the school.

And definitely not alone. 

It’s unnatural.

You, laid out on top of the picnic table. Him, hunched on the seat below, straddling the old plank of wood. Too close. 

Closer than he’s ever been. 

It’s aberrant, really.

But maybe, just for today, everything is topsy-turvy. 

Maybe it will go back to normal soon. You in your bubble, him in his. Two separate worlds. Two separate planets orbiting the same rust-bucket town. The same miserable high school. At least for a few more months. 

Then he’ll get the hell out of this place. Just drive and drive and drive until the scent of manure no longer singes his nose hairs. Until the cornfields turn into beaches. Or mountains. Or shit, even swamp lands. He’s not picky. 

And you’ll be off at some college, probably. 

Find a braincell-deficient jock and pop out a couple of kids. He’s picturing a picket fence somewhere there, too. Possibly a station wagon with that dumb wooden interior. He hates that wooden interior. 

And you’ll forget he ever existed. 

And he’ll—

“So pretty.” 

It’s lower this time. A whisper. Like it was only meant to stay inside your head. Like you weren’t even aware you said it. 

And maybe you aren’t aware. Maybe the weed is hitting you hard. Too hard. It’s only your first time. 

So maybe he should pretend like he didn’t hear. Just continue to act like the metal box in front of him needs reorganizing. 

Re-reorganizing, even. 

Whatever it takes to not notice the way your pleated skirt has ridden up, bunched at the tops of your thighs. 

Because he hasn’t noticed. 

No, he’s not aware of how smooth your skin looks, or how the cherry blossom scent of your lotion seems to intoxicate him more than the shared joint, now forgotten, smoldering between your fingers. 

He has no idea what color panties you’re wearing, and absolutely no clue what powder blue fabric looks like when it darkens. 

Baggies to the left. Try to prop them up against each other. Bottles to the right. Line them up. Shit, the baggies won’t sit upright. Maybe lay them flat? Then, if he moves the tin—

“Do you think I’m pretty, too?” 

Fuck. 

Your heavy-lidded gaze is directed at him now, and he finally feels the high. Or maybe it’s just your effect; the kind of haze that leaves him wondering what new strain has him seeing a real life angel. The kind of feeling that sends his heart away at a dead sprint and his mind swimming in a tank of molasses.

Everything is muffled. And there’s only you. And those eyes. Waiting.

“Y-Yeah,” he chokes, hoping you don’t see the heat blooming beneath his cheeks. “You’re pretty. ‘S kinda your thing.” He shrugs. “Popular and pretty.”

It’s a deflection. It’s bitter. It’s crashing through the bubble with an unceremonious pop. 

Because yes, you’re pretty. Everyone knows it. Everyone.

Him noticing isn’t any different. 

You blink. “But do you think I’m pretty? Just pretty.”

He pauses, wondering, for only a split second, if this was all some kind of elaborate rouse to incriminate him. If, any minute now, Andy and Jason are going to step out from behind one of these trees, itching for a fight. Because Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson is tainting the precious queen of Hawkins High. His no-good, low-life, burn-out presence might as well stain your skin like black tar.

But he nods, nonetheless. A calculated risk; it’s shaky, not insincere. 

And that seems to be enough because your painted lips twitch into a small smile. It’s a breath of fresh air. If only his heart would stop pounding against his ribs like it’s trying to get out. To get to you.

“I told my friends, once, and they didn’t talk to me for a day and a half.”

Your smile is gone now. And your gaze is empty as you turn back to the tree tops. 

Eddie shifts in his seat, feeling more and more like he’s fallen through the looking glass. 

“T-Told them what?” 

He’s not sure he wants the clarification. Not sure he wants to understand. Because it doesn’t seem like it’ll work. Like he’ll never truly understand if you say what he—

“That I think you’re pretty,” you mutter, turning to him again, a simple pout weighing your features down.

Fuck.

“We were talking about crushes, and they said theirs. And they were so…excited…. And Heather was trying to convince Jackie S. to tell Patrick how she felt. And I wanted to feel it too.”

He can barely breathe, so he stays silent, just letting you speak to no one in particular. Because he’s not here. 

Not now. 

Not on this planet. 

Not in the same reality as the girl he’s pretended not to watch since the middle school talent show. The girl whose perfume somehow lives in his mind, though he’s never bathed in it longer than a shoulder brush through the halls. Not that girl, not in this reality. 

Not you. Telling him he’s pretty. No way—

“—wanted to hear what they’d say. Like if they would tell me we’d look cute together, or they’d say they’ve seen you looking at me, or something, and maybe there’s a chance.” 

Fuck, he’s low on E. 

And these damn baggies don’t organize well—he should really label them. And Reefer Rick has probably laced this new, stupid supply with something because there’s simply no conceivable way—

“But they just looked at me like I said something insane. Asked me if I was joking. They didn’t believe me at first—” 

He snorts, twisting the skull ring around his finger until the skin underneath starts to heat. You’re silent now, and he almost doesn’t want to look. But he has to. So he does.

Your polished nails, the lipstick stained joint, thousands of wool fibers bending and yielding to the curves of your body. Then that pout, your eyes. A frown.

The baggies of pills, the weathered wood; carved initials giving way to new grain.

“You don’t believe me, either?”

It’s so broken sounding, he has half a mind to lie and say of course he does. Of course he believes you, resident queen of Hawkins High—the girl who prances through school with five guys, minimum, trailing after her, lovesick and delusionally hormonal—are telling the God’s-honest truth. That you have somehow taken a liking to the town pariah. 

The people’s princess has woken up this day and decided she’d like to bestow upon him, of all people, the greatest charity he could never repay, nor even begin to deserve. 

And you’d say this exact thing stone-cold sober. Sure.

He could say that. 

“Um—” he clears his throat, repeatedly dragging a dirty Reebok on the ground until a pile of curled leaves starts to grow, “I believe…uh, we’ve probably had enough.”

Before you can make a move to stop him, he plucks the joint from between your fingers, ignoring the shock of your touch. 

The faint sizzle of embers being extinguished on old wood is the only sound that fills the air. That, and the rustle of wind through the trees. 

He can feel your eyes on him as he licks his fingers and pinches the end of the roll. It may very well be laced, but he’s not the wasteful type. 

And anyway, he’s got plans later. A date with his right hand and the well-loved porno mag he’s made some…changes…to. All while he pretends not to remember how your lips wrapped around the very same joint he hopes will last him long enough. 

You sit up suddenly, swinging your legs over the edge of the picnic table. He nearly knocks his metal lunchbox off the seat, scrambling to avoid the brush of your skin. 

“Do you not like me?” 

The words are filled with accusation, woven by insecurity, and Eddie feels insane. Clinically. Terminally, even. That’s not a thing, but given his luck, he could be the first man, ever, to die from a hot chick coming onto him. 

Because what the actual fuck? You’re looking at him like his very existence is a puzzle to you. As if you can’t imagine why in the world he’d be second-guessing your confession. 

He clears his throat, again, but chokes on his breath the second you slide down next to him, your skirt creeping impossibly higher before settling properly. And he’s up in a flash, like only the heat of you near him is all it takes to burn. And God, does it burn.

“N-No! No, I, um, I—I just don’t know you.” He shrugs, scratching the back of his neck. “Basically just met you today, really.”

He could almost kick himself, the way his voice jumps an octave he’s certain only liars can reach. And you seem to hold the same belief, your eyes all but say as much as you stand to follow him. 

Leaves crunch under his shuffling footsteps, and you pause, as if realizing the space between is carefully set. 

It’s a choice he’s fighting to make, just as he’s fighting not to look at you. Though, one is admittedly easier than the other.

“I mean, not really. We’ve been going to the same school since, like, sixth grade—”

He shakes his head, correcting, “Your sixth; my eighth.”

Bewilderment overtakes your frown, and he understands the semantics appear meaningless to you, but they keep him up at night. When the hours tick by and delusion creeps into the edges of his foggy mind, thoughts of fate start to sound more and more sane. 

 “My mom even made you that casserole when your uncle was sick.”

Oh, yeah. 

That. 

He remembers that day. Thinks about it when the delusion turns sour and his conscience wants to remind him what an embarrassment he is. 

He remembers perfectly how he heard your heels clicking from down the hall. How he took one look through the small hospital window, saw you in your Sunday best and booked it to the en suite bathroom. 

How he left Wayne to fend for himself in a state of utter confusion, never having seen his nephew move so fast. How he hid in the small space, surrounded by porcelain and that chemical smell that still makes his skin crawl. Just so he wouldn’t have to face you. 

So he wouldn’t have to watch you charm his uncle, lift his spirits like you do everyone. 

No, he only had to listen and imagine what shade of lipstick you chose to match with your outfit. Because that was way easier than seeing the cruel fluorescent lights fail to hollow you out like it did everyone who entered that godforsaken room. 

Yeah, hearing the raspy laugh of his uncle, followed by your airy giggles through the surprisingly thin walls was a cakewalk compared to what it would have been had he been forced to smile and nod along. 

Act as if you and he lived the same kind of life. As if one wasn’t a plunder and the other a jaunt through the daisies.

Eddie paces, unable to let his twitching muscles rest. “Yeah, but what does it really mean to know someone, you know? Uh oh! I’m gettin’ philosophical now!” He chuckles, but it’s strained, and your frown comes back, unmovable this time. “Probably the weed.”

His words are stilted, and you seem too aware of this performance, but he will press on with forced amusement until you believe him. Or at least until you let him be; go on back to your bubble. Leave him to suffocate in his. 

“Are you high? I’m high. I think we’re both really high. It’s so funny, it’s like I don’t even know what I’m saying— Blah!” He flails about, already planning on checking himself into Pennhurst after this. “This is so crazy! We probably make no sense right now.”

You cross your arms, trudging back to the picnic table. The breeze lifts your skirt as you plop down, and Eddie turns away. Because he has to.

“I’m not that high and neither are you.”

 It’s that damn pout that’s going to do him in. 

Curls twist around his fingers as he tries to hide behind his hair. “No…no, I’m pretty high.” He nods. “‘Miss Hawkins 1982’ is sitting here, tellin’ me she’s got, like, what—a crush on me?”

“‘S more than a crush,” you mumble petulantly, but for his sanity, he elects to ignore it. 

“I mean, shit! I didn’t think weed had hallucinogenic properties, but you know.” His shoulders shrug in defeat, and he still can’t look at you. “Learn somethin’ new every day!”

Your head cocks to the side. “So you don’t believe me?”

Eyes wide as saucers, he wonders if this is what it would feel like to explain the sky to a mole. 

“Of course I don’t believe you! You sound crazy! I mean you’re…” He searches for the words, but how does one sum up almost a decade of watching? Of wanting— “You. …And I’m me.”

It’s softer. Lower. Just where he should be. Because really, you’re the sky. And he’s just a burrower. Too afraid to leave the caverns he’s carved in his mind, even for warmth. For light. For a smile that doesn’t shine—

“Right…” Your mouth pulls, dim, and the huff of breath sounds derisive, like you can’t possibly pass it for a laugh, but still, you try. “You’re you, and I’m me—”

He nods along, internalizing the sound of his own words on your lips. If you believe it, that will be enough. It will be enough.

“Just boring…me—”

The sentence drips with resignation. As if it’s a truth you’ve cuddled up to long enough for the feelings to subside. Roommates with your own distaste. A years-long relationship molded into resentment. He feels sick.

“What?”

You resituate yourself, pulling inward, and if you could transform the atoms in the air, Eddie thinks there’d be a wall already reaching above the highest branches. 

“No, I just— It makes sense.” You tug at your sweater until your hands are almost hidden, and regret nips at his bare skin, colder than the breeze. “It’s totally true; you’re so cool—”

He swallows the words, but they catch in his throat. Unusual and untrue. And despite his quiet, “Cool?” that slips out, coated in disbelief, you carry on, adding brick after brick.

“You’ve got your band, and that game you love to play—”

Now that’s just strange. 

“D&D?” he mutters, blanching at the sentiment. Because, yeah, he thinks it’s cool. But he can count on one hand how many other Hawkins residents think the same. 

You perk up a bit, and he feasts on the split-second of sunlight. “Yeah! That’s the one. And you literally run a club for it. That’s, like, the definition of cool.” 

It’s the high. It’s the marijauna in your system. Either that, or you and he have vastly different definitions of cool—

“And your music taste! I hear you drive up to school all the time; you’re always blasting that metal stuff! It’s so…” your eyes wander, as if searching for the right word and his mind fills in the usual blanks: loud, shitty, annoying, satanic. “unique!”

You’re too good. He’s decided it. Not because of the popularity, like he had chalked it up to before. This is different. It’s pure. 

And he’s tar. 

“You know, if I had a nickel for every time someone told me my music taste was…unique, I’d be broke,” he huffs, crossing his arms like the act will protect against your budding smile, growing back like the first bloom of May flowers.

“Well, I’m sure they just haven’t tried it yet.” And you’re so sure. He can hear the optimism in your voice and it’s deafening. 

But then, it’s like time reverses, and in comes the April shower to drown the delicate bud; you retreat into yourself, again. Smile fading, insecurity rearing. 

“I’ve never… I mean— I’ve never really tried it before, either.” 

Now you won’t look at him, and the insinuation of your words alone is enough to haunt him. 

With a sigh, he closes the distance, sitting beside you on the bench. For a moment, he only listens to his own pulse. The rushing in his ears. He waits for the confidence to speak, unaware it’s a bus that will never come. 

But impatience gets the best of him, and he decides to walk it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel— It’s just— I just—” He groans, watching the thoughts pass him by while he fails to hang onto even one. His skin feels too tight and he’s certain the only solution is to peel it off his miserable bones. “I don’t know why I am the way that I am.”

The admission rings out like a shot in the autumn air, and the silence that follows lands like an atom bomb, breaking the sound barrier in a mushroom cloud of mortifying truth.

He doesn’t know why he said it. 

Why he thought cutting himself down while you’re bleeding makes some sort of difference. How it could possibly count as some kind of balm to your wounds. 

But you wear your wounds well. And truth leaks from you without loss. It pools without inhibition. Not yielding, but seeping. Filling the cracks in him—the tunnels that quake—with something malleable and pure. Not viscous and sticky. Not like tar. 

His head hangs low, eyes following the way your thumb smooths over your wool skirt. Then his gaze tracks downward, and he wishes it wouldn’t. But your skin looks so soft, and he traces the curving terrain until he sees your pearly-white Keds digging into the dirt. 

You could probably make it to China before he finds the right words to fix this.

“You know, I’ve never had to convince a girl not to like me.” The quirk of his lips doesn’t change the tone, despite his best efforts. 

You cross your ankles, old wood creaking under you. “No?”

It’s simple. Gentle. You’re humoring him. And it’s a kindness he can’t afford, but you give it to him anyway, charity case that he is.

“No.” He huffs, something like a snicker but without the joke. “Usually, it’s the opposite.”

More atomic silence. And he starts to wonder if he ever actually learned how to behave properly. If he fundamentally misunderstands how to have a conversation. 

Or maybe he was just swapped at birth with an alien whose sole purpose is to elicit discomfort. And maybe there’s a human version of him out there, travelling among the stars, charming and suave, dripping with bravado. Yeah, that’s probably it. That’s what he’ll—

“What’s the argument then?”

His brows furrow, and he swings his head to look at you. But the second his eyes meet yours, he has to force himself not to flee. Not to make a coward’s retreat. 

“What?”

“The argument,” you respond coolly. “How are you gonna persuade me not to like you?”

God, he wishes you’d stop saying it. Maybe it’d be easier to hear if it didn’t sound so earnest. If it didn’t sound like it came from a well of truth.

His foot taps on the ground as he thinks, hands flexing restlessly. “Well…I guess I kind of thought the everything about me was argument enough.”

You stare silently, and his flesh might as well be made of a cellophane the way your gaze seems to expertly track the gears turning in his mind. 

“But clearly not,” he murmurs.

Your lips quirk. “Nope.” 

The glint in your eyes should scare him. Should shake him to his core. Because there’s something about this particular glimmer… 

With the determination of a predator poised to attack, or a vulture itching to pick him apart, you watch. Quietly. Waiting. It’s the kind of look only the helpless are on the other side of. He should be terrified. 

But he’s not. His hands aren’t shaking out of fear, and his stomach doesn’t flip out of nerves. 

No, it’s something else entirely.

Your chin tips, and your smile curls around the words. “To ensure a fair hearing, the court must consider all evidence; Mr. Munson, you may proceed.” 

His grin stretches, and he turns his body the slightest bit towards you. 

“Okay,” he nods, pondering the laundry list of reasons he has locked and loaded, ready to go. Who’s the lucky winner? What’s the bare minimum he can share without mortally wounding his pride—well, more than it already is. “Alright, well, sometimes I forget to wear deodorant, and I end up smelling really bad.” 

Before he has a chance to regret his choice, your laugh drowns out every doubt. It cracks through him with an unbearable weight, leaving behind splintered shards of bone instead of prison bars. His heartbeat sounds louder now.

And for a moment—only a moment—he forgets why he said anything at all. He forgets the point. He forgets that the melody floating from your lips doesn’t belong in his dysfunctional orchestra. 

But the urge is there. To hear it again. To be the cause. 

Your eyes squint from the size of your smile. “Shut up.” 

Locked in your gravitational pull, he moves closer—minutely, and he wouldn’t if he could help it. 

“No, I’m serious! It’s bad! That’s why I gotta leave school early sometimes, I start to smell like vegetable soup by 2 p.m.”

His grin is stuck as he watches your head fall back, the melody growing stronger, lodging somewhere deep in his brain. Between cobwebs and old, out-of-tune earworms. He imagines bottling the sound and building a shelf just to hold it.

“You’re an idiot,” you huff breathlessly, the word not carrying the same sting it usually would if it came from anyone else. Because there’s no bite to it. No teeth, even.

He leans in before he can stop himself. “Ah, see, that’s a good one, too! I’m an idiot!”

But the melody quiets, and the violins screech a nasty response as your smile starts to fall.

“No, you’re not.”

It’s firm and final, like you truly believed it even before it slipped from your lips.

“Yes, I am,” he says, soft yet steadfast. “I’m a three-time super senior army crawling my way to a ‘D’ in Mrs. O’Donnell’s class. And I’ve had two full tries at it.” 

You cock your head, eyeing him closely. Then—

“Well, practice makes perfect. Plus, I think it’s totally your year.”

Your smile is back and so is the warmth in Eddie’s body. If he had any sense, he’d steer the conversation elsewhere, because somehow, you’ve managed to flirt with him over his tragic academic history. You’re too powerful. You and your honeyed words, so sweet and thick, he could choke if he’s not careful.

He shifts, but can’t bring himself to move away. “Okay…what about this—I wanna do music.”

Your brows raise and he can tell you see through his pitiful attempt. 

“Well…you’re in a band,” you shrug. “I kind of already knew that—”

“No, like, professionally. That’s what I wanna do. I wanna go to L.A. and, I don’t know, like, get a record deal and shit, and just make music.” The light still shines in your eyes and he knows you’re not getting it. “No college for me, no office job, no suburbs—no picket fence kind of life.”

Your gaze never strays from his. “Eddie, that’s not a bad thing. That’s—that’s inspiring.”

God, you’re making this hard. Especially when you look at him like that—like he’s something to be enamored by. Something worth looking at. Something pretty… 

“No,” he shakes his head, clinging to the reality where you aren’t leaning closer to him, where your soft, perfumed skin doesn’t brush against his rough, bargain-bin jeans. “No, it’s a pipedream. It’s basically me begging to live in a van for the rest of my life because you and I both know it will never—”

“Eddie,” you cut in, grabbing his hand, “let me save you the energy. There’s nothing you can say that will stop how I feel. This isn’t a new thing. I’m not going through a phase. It’s not just a blip or a crush— I like you, Eddie Munson.”

His heartbeat slows, skipping every third thud like an old record, and he now knows the weight of your hand in his. 

And for the first time since his fingers brushed yours while passing the joint, he can’t look away. No amount of self-control or misplaced willpower can drag him up from the depths of your imploring gaze. 

“I like you a lot. You’re sweet,” and his face must’ve twitched because you grin and add, “When you’re not trying to act all tough and broody.”

Cellophane. He’s complete cellophane around you. Weak and pliant and see-through. His posturing means nothing, and he wonders if you always knew that. 

If every snide comment to the jocks came with a footnote in the smallest print only you could read: I’m jealous they get your time. They don’t deserve it. 

If every breezy look elsewhere gave him away as you’d walk past his table in the lunchroom, swaying skirt billowing in the winds of his repression.

“—and you make me laugh, and you’re honest.” Your hand squeezes his and he can’t quite bring himself to hold it yet. To open up. To keel over and admit defeat. “I just feel like everyone here…pretends to live the life they think they should live. But you don’t do that. You just live. And I think that’s beautiful.” 

Your chin tips low and he has a near physical reaction from losing the heat of your attention. 

“I think you’re beautiful.”

His mind whirs, sirens blare, but they’re silent. Unhelpful. Useless. Exactly what he feels like in the wake of your confession. And the only thought he can hold onto long enough to realize it’s just as useless is: he should buy a lottery ticket, or something. 

“I—” 

He watches you shift, doesn’t hear you breathe. 

“I…think you stole my line…”

The pitiful excuse for a chuckle comes too late. Too weak to sound genuine, but just strong enough to deflect. Because that’s what he’s good at, right? Deflecting? Distracting? 

Rejecting, apparently. At least that’s how you seem to take it, the way your hand slips from his so easily. The way your shoulders hunch and your legs squeeze together. 

Small. You’re making yourself small for him. 

And he’s just too unsteady. He’s not firing on all cylinders, not since you clipped his wires a ways back. Somewhere around you’re pretty and I like you. Just left of I told my friends and down the street from you’re cool. 

“Sorry. That was…a lot. God.” Your frown is back and you turn to say something, then give up before you even start. A beat. Then, “I—I’m sorry if I scared you off with all of that.”

You say it as if the moment’s done. As if he’s not still clinging to your words with a white-knuckled grip. 

And you retreat. 

Not in any real way. 

No, you’re still sitting next to him, still closer than ever before, but now, chipping away at your nail polish seems to be far more interesting than anything he could offer. 

“Well…I’m still here…” he tries, unsure.

“Yeah…. You’re still here,” you echo quietly.  

Showing mercy to your manicure, you shove your hands into your lap, twisting your fingers up. He recognizes the movement. The attempt to banish the need. The need to touch. He’s felt it too. Feels it now. 

The bricks stack higher as your wall grows; a structure never meant to be scaled. 

But he’s a burrower. 

“You know…” he ponders, forcing the humor from his tone. “I’m starting to think maybe it’s not the weed…”

That gets you. 

He hears the melody again, sees your wry smile.

“Shut up,” you whine, shoving his chest.

He moves fast and with grace as he traps your hand with his, holding your palm just over where your first laugh torpedoed his ribcage. Where the prisoner waits. 

“Your heart’s beating so fast,” you whisper, voice full of awe—the kind that quickly begins to carve away at his weakened flesh. 

He huffs, low and earnest. “Yeah…. The prettiest girl in Hawkins just told me she likes me and there’s nothing I can do about it. You’re lucky I haven’t gone into cardiac arrest over this.”

You smirk, and he thinks it might just kill him. Like actually. 

“Hm, well, now I feel like I’m kind of missing out on that…”

He snorts, his grin stretching wide. “Oh, yeah? You want me to keel over right here, right now?”

Your smile turns demure and he knows it’s a lie. Then, you give an innocent shrug that can’t even fool him. 

“I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t be extremely flattered—”

He jolts suddenly, grunting and groaning, curling his fingers tighter around your hand as he falls back against the edge of the wooden picnic top. 

You gasp, turning to prop a knee on the bench as you lean over his stiff body. “Oh my God, medic!” Your empty call echoes in the air, amusement bubbling just beneath the surface. Then, your voice falls to a low mutter. “Ohh, what do I do, what do I do? Damnit, I should’ve paid more attention in First Aid.”

Eddie convulses some, really driving the near Oscar-worthy performance home. Then he peeks an eye open, choking out, “M-Mmm-mouth.”

Your mask slips as you smirk, leaning closer. “Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch it over all the dying.”

He slumps even more, the table digging beneath his shoulderblades as he sputters, “Mmm-mouth-to-mouth—”

You sit back, chewing the inside of your cheek and leveling him with an assessing stare as he twitches. “No…that can’t be it…”

Both eyes open as he brokenly utters, “No, it definitely is— With tongue! The tongue helps—” 

You snicker, “Oh, yeah? It’s a necessity?”

He squeezes your hand. “Yeah, big—big necessity.”

You lean in, so close, and his mind turns to static as your perfume invades his senses. 

This is it. It’s going to happen. Almost a decade of dreams that left him waking up in sticky discomfort, and he’s going to know the taste of—

“See, I just don’t remember that in the course,” you shrug, pulling away abruptly. “Mouth-to-mouth, sure, but adding tongue?”

One last shot, he reaches into the sky dramatically, convulses, then slackens in a lifeless heap, accented by his best death rattle.

He hears you call out, some half-assed plea that wouldn’t convince a soul, but then everything stops. Your lips slot against his, soft and plush and timid, and you might as well have used the paddles, the way his system shocks into action.

His hand finally releases yours, but you don’t move it, and he settles a gentle grip on the back of your head. Heavy enough to beg for more, soft enough to leave room for an escape, if you so choose. 

But you don’t. Instead, your tongue glides along his top lip—a teasing kind of sweetness he accepts gladly, thankfully. He responds in kind—in hunger.

He can taste your cherry lip gloss, hear your surprised hum. It’s a tiny sort of sound he swallows with a groan of his own. 

Then the pressure is gone. The taste, the noises—all gone. The music has stopped and the dizzying dance comes to an end with a blinding grin.

“Oh my God, it’s a miracle,” you pant, smoothing your palm up his chest until you reach skin.

He sits up, dazed, and you don’t move away, just letting him hover close like the proximity isn’t debilitating.

His next words slur out before he has a chance to think of a smoother line— “Have you ever considered becoming a doctor?”

And you laugh. And he’s learning that maybe you don’t want smooth. Because if you did, he certainly wouldn’t be your first call, and you wouldn’t be so quick to serenade every dumb comment of his.

So he thanks whoever rents the big house in the sky that you have a thing for burnouts and tries not to choke as you slide onto his lap, your pretty skirt splaying out across worn fabric. 

Your lips find his again, your fingers get lost in his hair, you don’t bother hovering, and he starts writing a mental Last Will and Testament. 

Jeff will get his Sweetheart, Mike will get his D&D manuals, Dustin will get his cassette tapes, and Gareth will finally get those twenty bucks he’s been whining about since last summer. He’ll leave it to Grant to dispose of his stash, and in payment, he can have the stack of porno mags under his bed. 

Though, he might just give them away whether he dies or not, because he’s pretty sure, with the way you’re pressing down on him, they’ll soon be rendered useless. 

Goosebumps rise along heated skin and something prickles up his spine as your nails rake through his curls. His mouth works against yours, a mind of its own as its aim widens, and he’s suddenly nipping down your jaw, tasting the tang of perfume on your neck. 

Your chest racks with heavy, panting breaths and noises that sound like earnest attempts at his name. It’s intoxicating. His lips swell from struggling to keep up with his greed, but he can’t stop. There’s a burning kind of ache deep within him, and it’s growing. 

His hands find their way to your hips, and he can’t tell if it’s you who moves freely, grinding down like you’re searching for something, or if it’s him and the ravenous need he’s not certain can be controlled. 

“Fuck—”

“Eddie,” you call, tightening the grip on his hair until he groans. His cock flexes, straining against the oppressive zipper of his jeans and missing a kind of warmth he’s itching to know.

“Hm?” he grunts into your neck, barely aware. He’s pretty sure he could devour you whole. But then again, he’d much rather savor you, pick you apart and feast on your supple flesh for ages. The smallest little bites until your sweet noises grow louder and louder; scratchy and desperate like the mindless roll of your hips against denim.

“E-Eddie—”

Your voice pitches up, his name breaking on the crest of your movements, and you hunch toward him like the pleasure is a weight your shoulders can’t possibly bear. 

And something twists in his gut then, something raw and hungry. 

He wants to hear that again. Hear his name shatter on your tongue as his hands explore beneath your dainty skirt. He wants to feel the vibrations of your moans as he kisses every inch of you. 

“Mm, yeah, baby?”

“I want— Want you,” you grit out, like the words take effort you can barely muster. 

“Fuck— I know, I wan’ you, too. So bad. So fuckin’ bad.” 

If it were any other time, he might feign control. Might deepen his voice with a confidence he doesn’t have. But this is not just any other time. It’s you, in his lap, whispering needy little pleas into the air like it’s obvious. Simple necessity. Like he’s not just a warm body and you’re not picturing someone else. 

His fingers curl into the waistband of your skirt, and it’s as if you remembered there was more to be said because your hips stall and you press against his chest. 

He swallows the disgruntled whine, and accepts your direction. Doubt creeps into the fog of his mind, but you don’t leave him time to get lost when your thumbs smooth over the stubble on his jaw, the worry in your eyes outweighing his.

“Eddie, I, um, I want—you,” you finish stiltedly, looking at him like you’re waiting for the penny to drop. “But, I, uh, I’ve ne—” It spins. “I don’t really—” And spins. “I mean, not that I’m, like—” And spins. “I’ve just never really—”

It drops, a metallic clang bouncing off the walls of his skull, and suddenly he feels like he shouldn’t touch you at all. His hands hover over your hips and the something-molten deep in his gut turns out to be much more familiar than he thought. Hot, bubbling, careless and incessant in its need to stain. To contaminate. 

“Never?” His brows furrow, trying to decipher the discomfort on your face. If it’s him—if it’s the tar—he might just leave town now. Screw graduation. Screw a diploma— “Like never ever?”

Stupid question. At this rate, he should look into surgically removing his foot from his mouth before he tries to speak next—

“Guess I was just…waiting,” you shrug, thumbing the hem of his shirt. Then your movements become less innocent as your nails trail against his skin. So light, if he weren’t acutely aware of everything you do, if his stomach didn’t twitch in time with his restless cock, he wouldn’t have caught it. 

“Sweetheart,” he almost warns, feeling like he misconstrued this moment for something serious, when clearly, you’re toying with him, spreading your palms along his waistband like you can’t see him shiver. Like you can’t feel his length straining beneath you, flexing against its jean prison, reaching for the warmth of your core. 

“S-Sweetheart,” he repeats, the endearment sounding more and more like a plea as you rake your nails through the wiry curls just below his navel. 

You go on, apparently undeterred by his fraying control. “I’ve been on dates—” 

He doesn’t care. His eyes track yours and the glide of your tongue along kiss-bitten lips. 

“Guys have tried—”

Okay, he cares. What? 

“I’ve just never really—wanted to.”

Fuck. 

You grind down, passing the motion off as adjusting your position, but Eddie doesn’t trust that gleam in your eyes. And you confirm it in the way your palms smooth down his arms until you press his hands to your hips. Making him touch you. Contaminate you. You encourage it, even. Wrapping your grip around his wrists as you guide his hands beneath your wool top. 

“But it’s different with you.”

He shudders. 

“Sweetheart.” 

It’s certainly a plea, now. A cry for mercy as your fingers return to the sensitive skin just above his waistband, travelling up, up, up until he’s entirely covered in goosebumps, and he worries you can feel the pitiful call of the convict in his chest. 

“I don’t want to. That’s not what it feels like—”

God damnit, he’s so confused and all the blood rushed from his brain long ago. There’s nothing up there anymore.

“‘S not like that. ‘S like,” you lean in close, letting him feel the words against his lips before he ever hears them, “a need. Like there’s something missing right now.” You roll your hips and he chokes on the breath he was holding. “And I think— No, I know, if I could just—feel you…inside me—I would be okay again. Better.”

“Oh, f-fuck,” he groans, thrusting up with the coordination of a muscle spasm. He lets his forehead fall against yours in an attempt to gather control. “You—you can’t just say shit like that.”

You peck his lips and he chases the small affection. “But it’s true. I don’t wan’ anyone else. Just want you. Inside me.”

“Jesus Christ,” he grits out, trapping you in a kiss that borders on consumption more than anything sweet. 

He can feel you everywhere: on top of him, in his hair, under his shirt, sinking claws into his sides; your touch is kindling to the fire raging low inside him. 

Suddenly, he’s reminded of the foiled condom he removed from his wallet just the other day. The old thing was practically useless, worn down and crumpled from years of sitting idle in between the folds of cracked leather. But something is better than nothing, and now he’s cursing his past-self for his terminal case of realism. 

The clink of metal draws his attention back, and he hadn’t noticed your lips leave his or how your hands have grown eager, already past his belt and now fiddling with the button on his jeans. 

“Wanna feel you, Eddie. I need to,” your honeyed whines wash over his body, sending a buzz through his veins. But then the purring sound of his zipper sliding open reminds him—

“Shit,” his hand wraps around your wrist. “Wait, I don’t— I don’t have anything,” he admits lowly, miserably. 

You smile, kissing around his mouth like you’re drawing the shame out, and him in. “It’s okay…. I just want you,” you repeat, firmer this time. “All of you.”

And something inside him rumbles, something sick and starving. Once-weak, but now growing in strength. It’s mean and sharp, with teeth that can cut through steel and an appetite that can devour innocence whole.

It’s not unfamiliar, this beast. He’s known it for ages. It’s an old friend. A confidant. Something to speak to in the darkest moments, but never to trust. Something to surrender to during the sweatiest nights, when his hand cramps but the need still aches. Still hungers. 

It’s got an imagination, too. Twisted as can be, it preens at the thought of possession, of staying. Of skin stretching and bones shifting, of curly-haired children that have your eyes and his smile. Soccer practice between label meetings, the sun beating down on hot sand as little feet kick at his back. A ring with weight and a necklace to match.

It’s like a plague on his thoughts. But it’s not. Not really. Because he doesn’t have to fear the lies anymore. The want. The bubbles are melding, his world is clashing with yours. And the beast tells the truth, now.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he mutters against your lips, the words sounding more like a warning than anything.

“Mmm,” you hum, trailing your affection down his neck. “Been there, done that. I’d rather keep you alive for this.”

And you’ve crossed his wires so expertly, he’s practically sparking beneath your touch. 

Imbued with a new kind of power, he slides you from his lap before shucking his leather jacket off and swinging it onto the table’s surface. His shirt follows with, finding a strategic home among the layers. 

You seem to catch on because you climb onto the table, laying yourself out just like before. He grins, helping you out of your top, only to fold it up and leave it where your head can rest. 

Both of you pause, taking just a moment to stare. Openly. 

He tracks your gaze as it trails across his chest, noting each tattoo. Then his eyes widen as you distractedly remove your bra like it’s nothing, like he hasn’t fucked his fist to the thought of this very moment. 

The material slides down your arms and you settle back, pretty as a picture, laid out all for him. 

“Jesus…Christ, sweetheart, fuck.” 

You smirk, and there’s that gleam again. Evil and conniving and he’s a willing victim, first in line, and hopefully last.

“See anything you like?”

He gulps, kneeling on the bench below, itching to touch you, but holding onto manners with a white-knuckled grip. “Yeah. See a whole lot.” 

“Then what are you waiting for?” You grab his hand, guiding it to your breast with a squeeze. “This isn’t a museum, you can touch.” 

“Oh, s-shit,” he stutters, losing all decorum as his other hand joins in, kneading the supple skin. Your sighs possess him, and before he can overthink it, his mouth closes around your nipple, tongue circling and laving at the tightening peak. 

“E-Eddie!” Your hand flies to his curls and he groans, parting his lips wider, needing to feel more of you in his mouth. 

You writhe beneath him, a victim of a fiendish kind of gluttony as he moves to your other breast, tweaking the wet peak he left behind. 

He explores your body zealously, taking his time tasting and nipping every bit he can reach until you start tugging at the roots of his hair, forcing him up. 

“Need you,” you huff breathlessly, yanking at his jeans. “Now.”

“W-Wait—” his hands land on yours, slowing your movements.

Your mouth parts as you look up at him, wide-eyed and completely desperate, and he feels his control unspooling like flimsy yarn. 

“No, Eddie, I already told you—”

“It’s not that,” he shakes his head, kissing you quiet. “I just— We can’t just…”

You watch him patiently, clinging onto every half-thought he struggles to produce. 

“I gotta— No, I—want to make this good for you…obviously,” he grunts, cringing at the lack of suavity. “And to do that, um, we can’t just…”

You nod, encouraging him as his face grows hot. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell he’ll be able to explain the concept of foreplay to you right now. Not when you’re looking at him like that, bare and ready for him.

So he sighs and kisses you once more, this time slow and careful. Full of things he can’t quite say, but he hopes you understand. 

“You trust me, right?” 

“Of course,” you respond instantly, eyes shining so bright.

He swallows, rubbing a thumb along your cheek. “And you’ll let me take care o’ you?”

You lean into his touch, almost shy as you nod. “Yeah. Yes…please.”

And a piece of him breaks off, then. 

Splintered by your soft words, the plea that landed like a hammer on his scuffed lacquer.

One single chip in the barrier, and the beast rises in a crashing escape. 

His lips find yours—messy, needy. 

Wanton greed curls around every cracked rib, reaching out like smoke unfurling. Searching for something to envelop, to take. To take and take and take. Your breath, your taste, you. It wants it all. 

He wants it all. 

The words tumble out too easily. “Such pretty manners, huh?” 

You shudder, hiding your face in the curve of his jaw. 

“Pretty manners in a pretty girl,” he practically purrs, letting his hands slip down your body until his fingers invade the waistband of your pleated skirt. “Gonna let me take care o’ you, hm? Gonna let me get you all nice and ready?”

Your breathy sigh warms his neck as he shimmies the fabric down your legs, laying you back, gently. 

You squirm beneath his gaze, squeezing your thighs together. “Eddie…”

“Shh, patience, pretty,” he murmurs, trailing a finger along your curving terrain until he’s toying with the powder blue fabric. “Gotta be good for me. Think you can do that?”

“Mhm,” you hum, choking on the note as he softly pushes your legs apart. 

“Ohh, look at you…” His eyes darken and he thinks he could get used to this. To seeing you all laid out for him like a meal. A feast that could last him forty days and forty nights. 

You shift, almost imperceptibly, as he drags your panties down, but he noticed. He always does with you. “Be good,” he warns lowly.

“I’m trying.”

Your whine falls to static as he watches a single string of arousal cling to the blue gusset with a fragile strength he aches to snap. 

The trees rustle overhead and the sun peeks through, lending a perfect spotlight to your wet folds, and he groans, pocketing your underwear with little consideration. 

“Fuck, you’re so god damn gorgeous, baby, think I’m losin’ my mind,” he mutters, kneading the fat of your thighs. 

“Eddie,” you call, wiggling into his grip, and he’s never been more certain that you’re a temptress put on this earth to destroy him and everything that he tries to be. Controlled. Polite. Genetlemanly. 

Every stuttering breath, every twitch of your hips, every slow blink—you’re chiseling away at the lacquer, unaware of all that lies beneath.

“Eddie, pl—ease!” 

His middle and ring fingers glide through your folds while his opposite hand holds your hips down as you try to grind onto him. 

“Knew you’d make the prettiest sounds. …Pretty sounds, pretty manners, pretty girl,” he chants the words like a mantra, entranced as he raises his fingers up to watch your arousal glisten in the evening light. “Pretty.”

You whimper, and suddenly it feels like he’s been pulled from the depths as he stares down at your face, pinched in pleasure. You’re waiting as patiently as you can and he has to reward that.

He spreads your folds once more, listening intently as he slips a finger inside. Your broken moan speaks almost directly to his cock, and he can feel a stream of precum soaking his boxers.

You call his name again, your chest moving in perfect time with the pulse of your warm walls. He responds to your plea for more with a second finger, and your nails sink into his wrist. 

“Doin’ so good for me, baby. So good,” he utters restlessly, leaning closer to your soaked cunt. He glances up, notes your closed eyes, and decides to feed the beast. 

With one stolen moment, he breathes deep, cataloguing the scent. Your perfume, your cherry lotion, and now you. The most intimate of all. And he can’t stop now. 

He knows your touch, your heady scent; he wants to know your taste, too. The real thing. Not just your lip gloss or your languid tongue in his mouth. He needs to know you deeply, fervently.

His fingers drag inside you, a slight curl every time you buck your hips. He hears your whines, sees you dripping down his hand, shimmery and inviting. 

Then he pulls out, much to your loud chagrin. And before he can scrounge up any last attempt at control, his fingers are in his mouth and he’s groaning at the taste—so sweet, he could choke. 

“Oh, fuck,” he grumbles, mouth full as you stare at him. He almost feels the need to apologize. He robbed you of the friction you were so desperately seeking just so he could be selfish. Though, he feels like he might never stop being selfish around you, so maybe he’ll allow the precedent.

He’ll blame the beast. It’s not really him. 

It’s not him who wants to drown in you, force you to ride his face until he passes out. It’s not him who wants to leave bite marks along your quivering thighs until salt coats your cheeks and you beg him just to fuck you. 

It’s not him who wants to live in your sweltering heat, carve out a place for himself. Make your walls know the shape of his cock, feel you milk him dry until something takes and you’re his and a part of him is yours.

It’s not him, it’s the rotted want. 

The need that grows hot, like a wound that has festered long enough. A gash you cut into him sometime ago. 

Bleeding for years and he never even knew it. 

The infection has driven him mad. 

But he’s beginning to think maybe you’re suffering just the same. Fevered skin and heavy limbs, weak from the wait. Like him. Withered and hungry. So long watching the have’s, resolved to be a have not— 

“Eddie, please, I need you.” Your hips search for him, for pleasure, for friction, and he drops lower, his breath spreading over your fluttering folds.

“I know, sweets, I know. But I gotta get you all ready, gotta make it good for you,” he whispers, staring as fresh arousal glints in the golden rays. It’s like you’re trying to entice, to coax. 

“‘S already good,” you slur, and it sounds like the words are burning to ash on your tongue. He can feel you overheating. “‘S so good, please, just—”

“Said you trust me, right?” He smooths a hand up your body until he finds your breast, kneading it some more. 

“Yes,” you huff, scooting closer to him. 

He licks his lips, and the lie comes quicker than he’d like. “Just a little bit more. Wanna make sure you’re all re—”

His voice becomes muffled as he presses his face against your cunt like a starved, rabid thing. Your fingers thread deep through his curls—a knee-jerk reaction—and he laps at you with open-mouthed kisses and agonizingly precise flicks of his tongue. 

You squeal and your thighs threaten to close around his head, but his fingers sink into the supple flesh, prying you open as his tongue breaches your slit with pointed thrusts. 

Your back bows, arching high off the table and he pulls you closer to him, finally satisfying what has felt like an insatiable ache. 

Because it’s different with you. He’s never felt this…full. Every pulse, every lewd slurp, fills him; he gorges himself on you. On your taste, on the way your moans crash over themselves like waves trying to drag you both under. 

His fingers slip in once more and your body goes rigid—the perfect picture of marbleized ecstasy. His tongue circles your clit and pleasure carves into your every curve, sculpting a release that courses through you like rolling thunder.

His name dies a thousand times on your parted lips, and your hips begin to flee. 

“O-Oh, God!”

He slows to a stop, smoothing a thumb over your twitching muscles. “Fuck, you taste so good— Knew you would,” he pants, sucking his fingers clean. He settles over you, whispering against your mouth. “Knew you would—”

“Tell me I’m yours.”

It’s sudden. An order.

Every syllable hammers into him, shattering something fragile. Shards of control—of disbelief, of belonging—bite at his skin. He’s paralyzed by it, a nerve punctured somewhere deep inside.

And you look worried, like that simple sentence wasn’t meant to land so heavy, but you don’t take it back. Instead, “Tell me I can be yours.”

He swallows hard, nearly choking on nothing.

He has wanted. Longer than you, he thinks.

But it’s all been in vain. 

Then you show up, move mountains and shift worlds with only your audacious honesty and a quarter of a joint for courage. He could really learn a thing or two from you—

“Yeah,” he whispers, staring into eyes he never thought he’d see this close. “You’re mine.” 

With a shuddering breath and a kiss so gentle, he’s almost certain reality falls away, his mind latches onto the moment your hands blindly find his jeans, urging the material down his thighs. 

He helps you, watching intently as you take him in—all of him—his cock weeping and flexing, reaching for something he never imagined asking for. 

You don’t speak, but he sees a reflection in the shine of your iris. It’s familiar. It commands. It guides as you drag your fingers along corded muscle with a level of reverence that leaves him dizzy. 

Peering down, he holds back every sound, his chest heaving from the marathon of your touch. 

You’re pacing yourself. Exploring—testing, in a way, like you’re figuring out what makes him tick. 

Confidently kneading here, a delicate brush there. 

Sinew twitching, his length jumping, stomach flipping. 

Your nails rake through the dark curls at his navel and you follow the trail until it grows coarse, an observant hum at his body’s reaction. 

“Pretty,” you mutter lowly. 

His frame trembles, the single word falling from your lips like a ton of bricks. 

As your hands wander, you don’t bother with permission and that almost makes him double over. 

There’s no question of can I? There’s only the surety of being yours, like an apodictic artifact you’ve excavated from a shallow grave. 

Because he did lay it to rest. 

So many times. 

Every morning his head lifted from his pillow, he buried it again. Every time your skirt caressed his desk, he threw roses. Every laugh he never caused, he said a prayer. 

But he could not abide an eternity of peace. 

Darkness would fall and he’d dig and dig and dig, the dirt already loose and the trees whispering their greetings. He’d drag up old ghosts—truths only meant for the moon—and dance with them all night. 

Then, like clockwork, golden light would send him reaching for the shovel; the sun would rise and he was resolved to live without. 

Now it’s you who has disturbed the holy ground and it’s freeing. To be exposed. To be known.

Your gaze settles on his face, and he wishes he could understand the thoughts in your mind, the ramblings behind your eyes. 

For a second, he thinks he recognizes the quiet curve of your lips, but—

“So pretty.”

He chokes, his body jerking as your hand circles his cock, firm, yet gentle. Possessive. 

Your unwavering attention and innocent smile turns the blood in his veins molten. His hips buck into your grip, unintentionally coating your soft palm in the sticky precum dribbling from his tip.

“S-Shit, sweetheart—” 

He hunches over, weathered wood scratching against his knees as he tries to warn, to caution you on just how easy he is. How little effort it’d take him to lose it, to let himself fuck your hand like a poor, desperate slip of a thing. 

“I’m ready,” you say, leading him down. “Please.”

He allows your thighs to hitch onto his hips, allows you to hold him, and he allows himself to be this close. To find purchase between your legs, to indulge in the heat of your core. 

He memorizes your features—the determined furrow of your brow, the flutter of your lashes. The version of you before him. 

He so badly wants to tell you what he sees.  

“God, you’re— Fuck!”

Your breath hitches as you press his cock to your folds, and he tries for coherence, but it all falls away when he feels you. Soft and wet and so inviting; you’re killing him slowly. 

“Please, Eddie,” you huff, your hips rolling like you mean to catch him. “Need to feel you, I swear to—”

The sentence shatters on a sharp moan the moment he takes control, letting his length glide against your slit. He’s coated in no time, practically drowning in you, but he doesn’t stop. 

It’s like a trance, the way he moves, watching fresh drops of precum mix with your arousal. He wants to taste that, too. You and him, together. He wants to know. 

You don’t seem to notice his paralysis, instead focusing on bucking your hips just right, and when his tip catches on your entrance, something shocks him into motion. 

Your body wraps around him shallowly, sucking the blunt edge of him in. He doesn’t fight it, doesn’t ignore your babbled pleas for more. 

For once in his life, he allows himself to take. It’s not begrudging permission, not shameful resignation to his more selfish nature. It’s enthusiastic, it’s encouraged, it’s accepted.

He pushes into you slowly, meeting your parted lips with ragged breaths, and your walls cling to him in a joyous welcome. Your pulse drums against his length, squeezing him in a sudden clench; he thinks he mutters advice, something about relaxing, but he’s not sure. 

Reality is bending and he’s thought about this so much, imagined this very moment countless times, and yet, nothing could have prepared him for how your nails take a chunk out of him, how you’re trying with all your might to pull his hips closer, huffing in impatience and cracking under the need.

You’re just like him. 

He hadn’t realized it until now. 

He saw shadows, heard the strain of your voice. 

But he hadn’t looked in your eyes, hadn’t been near enough to hear the call. 

The call of the hungry and withered. Of the wanton and greedy. 

He hears it now. Loud and clear.

Responding in a bellowing groan, he sinks into you fully. His lips flutter over your face, savoring your once-delicate features as they warp in pleasure. 

“F-Fuck! Ed— Eddie, more,” you cry, squirming for friction. 

“More,” he echoes mindlessly, latching onto the order. A real kiss, sweet and loaded like a gun soon to go off, then, “More. The pretty girl wants more— Gets what she wants.”

The words fall from his tongue with little thought—little care. Static whirs in his brain, blocking out everything but you. 

Drawing back steadily, he steals one more glance at you—checking in—then drops down in a sudden snap, guided by your fingers digging into the taut muscle of his ass. 

Sweat beads at his spine as his skin sticks to yours on every impact. His arms hook under your knees, changing the angle just to hear that shrill whine he’s quickly growing addicted to. 

All you manage to say is his name, over and over again like his thrusts are evicting every syllable from your chest. 

The shadows rise, spreading rapidly, and it feels much like possession coursing through him. 

He shudders, his stuttered breaths syncopating with the pulse of your cunt, choking him on every shove in. Your eyes have rolled back now, and your body moves with him, pliant, as if his to mold—to inflict upon, however he sees fit. 

A malleable offering of sheer innocence, laid at his altar. 

And it was your idea. 

The lamb’s idea to come to slaughter. 

“F-Feels good, huh?” he grits, watching you surrender to him so beautifully. 

Your response catches, snagged halfway up your throat, clawed back by a resounding whimper as you nod. 

“Yeah, it feels good,” he parrots, fighting back the raging fire deep in his gut—the one that threatens to engulf you, too. Because he’s not done yet. Not nearly. 

His hips pound into you, cock dragging along your walls at a punishing pace. The beast hums and he smirks as you try to form sentences.

“S-So— Agh! I— Mmmph!”

He nods like he understands every unspoken word. “Now you see why I had to get you all ready? Hm? You were so cute, thinkin’ you could just take it. So brave, comin’ here, all sweet on the freak.”

“Eddie!” 

You have the audacity to paw at him, to pull, to try to meet his strokes in crumbling desperation. He drops your legs, shoving your hands above your head as he presses down onto you, pinning you against the picnic table, the structure rocking with the movement. 

His long, rhythmic thrusts dwindle to swift, sharp ruts, the action bordering on animalistic.

“But now look at you. All mine,” he huffs, dark eyes roving over your trembling body. Then his gaze travels lower, where his cock burrows into you—where you take him so easily, opening up like he said the magic word a thousand times over. “Practically made f’me, fuckin’ look at you. Stretched full and so damn pretty, too. We fit real nice together, don’t we, baby?”

You whine and he maneuvers your wrists into one hand, helping to prop your head up with the other. 

“Look at you,” he repeats, firmer this time. “So wet, you’re drownin’ me, sweetheart.”

Something splinters on your face and he follows your eyeline, notices it fixed on the milky ring that circles the base of his thick shaft and the matted down curls you couldn’t stop admiring earlier. 

“Oh,” he drawls, a wicked, wolfish grin stretching his lips. “You like that?”

You nod and he practically preens. You are just like him. 

“Like seein’ me covered in you? Marked?” 

Your response is nothing more than a brittle whimper and he can feel you clench around him, already so close to falling into the after—the space in time where you will know what it feels like to be thoroughly picked apart, to be undone. By him.

“You’re markin’ me,” he growls into your neck, leaving open mouthed kisses along your jugular, trying not to bite. “Think it’s only fair you let me do the same, hm? What do you say, pretty girl? Gonna let me really fill you up?”

“P-Please! Oh, God, please, Eddie—”

His thumb finds your clit, rubbing tight, practiced circles on the swollen bud and you freeze, arching into his chest, searing your sweat-soaked flesh to his. Your cries fall silent as you gape, convulsing at every third swipe he makes. 

Your walls trap him in a vice grip, fluttering and milking rope after rope of cum from his flexing length. He shivers uncontrollably, feeling his warm spend flood the tight space until it leaks, shoveled out by his now-pitiful ruts. 

He tries to prolong it. Tries to steal the moment from time itself and live in it; play house with the present. But then his body finally gives out, muscles slackening, and your arms are there to catch him, welcoming the iron hold he traps you in.

Raspy whispers are muttered into your neck, tattooed by the heat of his breath; quiet sentiments he’s not certain you hear over the noise of two settling souls. And maybe it’s better that way. Maybe they’re things to hoard—at least for a little while longer. 

He trails kisses up your jaw, blindly searching for your lips, only to find them unresponsive. Worry fills him immediately. 

Maybe he was too rough. He did notice the half-moon marks scattered along your thighs. 

Maybe he was too mouthy. He can never think straight when it comes to you.

Maybe he was just too much— 

“Eddie,” you call gently, pulling him from somewhere deep and dark.

He meets your eyes, surprised to see them wide and wanting, shining with that honest gleam that makes him feel so exposed.

“You are mine.”

So you heard.

He wasn’t cautious and he said the words meant for an empty bedroom out loud. And you heard. 

Your fingers thread through his curls, dragging his wavering attention back to you.

“You are mine,” you repeat, softer but no less confident. 

He wonders how something so delicate could detonate something so sturdy. Years and years of denial, blown to smithereens in three words. 

And you make it look easy. 

Make it sound plausible. 

That he could be yours, just as much as you want to be his.

He nods, hanging onto you like a lifesaver as debris from the wreckage floats by. He swallows and his voice barely forms around the letters, breaking under the weight of it all.

“O-Okay.”

And he surrenders. 

He believes you. 

A/N: For the love of god, please be sweet and talk to me about this fic. I think I looked at it for too long and now I don’t know if it’s maybe the worst thing I’ve ever written or if I’m just too close to it rn, I’m being so for real.

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The silence follows you both into the house.

The house that was supposed to feel different soon. Supposed to be louder. Brighter. Filled with the tiny sounds of a life you’d both been waiting for.

A home for three.

Now it feels like a hollow shell.

You don’t eat. You barely sleep. The days blur together in a haze of exhaustion and grief.

Every morning you find yourself standing in the doorway of the room with the pastel yellow walls.

The nursery.

The crib sits empty.

Sometimes it feels like it’s mocking you.

You stand there for minutes—sometimes longer—just staring at it, imagining what should have been there.

The soft rise and fall of a tiny chest.

The quiet little noises babies make when they sleep.

What could have been.

Simon never tries to pull you away from the doorway.

Never tells you to stop looking.

He just… takes care of things.

He clears the empty mugs from your bedside and replaces them with fresh ones. Brings you food and gently nudges the plate closer when you don’t touch it.

“Just a few bites, love.”

Even when your appetite has long since vanished.

At night he wraps his arms around you and holds you close. Solid. Warm.

A steady, silent presence while you lie awake staring into the darkness.

A week passes.

And not once do you see Simon cry.

Not a single tear.

Tonight, though… the question slips out before you can stop it.

“Simon…”

He glances down at you where you’re resting against his chest.

“Hm?”

“How are you doing?”

Your voice is quiet, careful.

Because you know Simon. If he’s going to talk about it, you’ll have to pull the words out of him.

He’s quiet for a long moment.

Then he exhales slowly.

“How d’you think I’m feeling?”

His voice sounds empty. Hollow. Like the weight of everything is finally starting to catch up to him.

“Angry,” you say.

Not guessing.

Knowing.

He lets out a quiet, humorless breath.

“Yeah.”

The word cracks like old stone.

“Angry.”

His jaw tightens, teeth grinding once before he looks away.

“I wanna smash something,” he mutters. “Punch through a wall. Find whoever’s in charge of this shite and ask ‘em why it had to be us.”

His voice drops lower, rougher.

“Why you?”

The words tremble at the edges.

“But I can’t even do that.” He swallows hard. “Because if I break down…”

His eyes flick back to yours.

“Who’s gonna hold you?”

Your chest aches.

You lift your head from his chest to look at him.

“I need you to break.”

Simon goes still.

He’s used to being the strong one. Used to carrying things so other people don’t have to.

His hands slide down to your waist, his thumbs tracing slowly over your hips through the fabric of your clothes.

“I don’t want to break, love,” he murmurs.

“Not while you need me.”

“I need to know it’s not just me,” you whisper.

Your voice cracks as you tuck your face into his neck.

“I need you to grieve with me, Si.”

Your tears soak into his skin.

His breath hitches.

A tremor runs through him—deep and sudden, like something inside him has finally fractured.

Then it breaks.

A choked sob tears from his chest, raw and helpless.

His arms tighten around you like you’re the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, voice shaking. “I’m so bloody sorry.”

His grip on you tightens.

“I couldn’t… couldn’t save him. Couldn’t protect you…”

His body shakes as the grief finally tears its way out of him.

And this time he doesn’t fight it.

For the first time in years…

Simon “Ghost” Riley breaks.