My Space

Bucky was good in bed. Everyone in the tower knew that by now because you weren’t exactly quiet. How could you be though? You had never been fucked this good in your life. You’ve truly been missing out. You’re making up for lost time with all those exes of yours and climbing on Bucky every chance you get. It got so bad that Tony actually soundproofed both of your rooms.

Of course, sometimes you didn’t make it to either of your rooms which caused you to be temporarily banned from that area “until further notice”

Bucky actually preferred to have you in one of your rooms, cause then he could see if he could make you scream any louder. One of these days he is actually going to split you in two. At least that’s how it felt.

Today was no different. Bucky had you faced down on the mattress, relentlessly pounding into you. His fingertips gripping your hips so hard they were surely going to leave permanent dents.

You were boneless. Sprawled over the mattress, your ass only now slightly in the air since your knees gave out. You were gone. As far as you were concerned right now, you were in space due to how many stars you were seeing. All you could do was moan and scream and let out the occasional heavy breath.

The soundproof system Tony built worked for the ears of the people on the outside. But there was a slight flaw. Some people just don’t think before entering.

You were too lost in pleasure to even process what was happening other than the feeling of Bucky’s thick, long cock buried deep between your thighs but you felt him slow down.

"OH MY GOD!" the intruder yelled.

“Can I help you?” you heard Bucky’s deep voice say with a tinge of irritation laced in it. You felt a cool piece of fabric get draped over your sweaty bare skin and a hand placed gently on your lower back to keep it from moving.

“Can you lock the door?” you heard the other person say but you still couldn’t tell who.

“The door was locked!”

“Bucky,” you whined, moving your hips against him.

“I know, sweetheart, I’m here,” he whispered, his other hand reaching to gently stroke your hair. His head snaps to the intruder, “Get out, Wilson!”

“You two need to calm down,” he said before rushing out the door and slamming it behind him.

“Now” he started as he removed the sheet. He flipped you over onto your back and hovered over you, “Where were we?”

You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper inside you. Bucky let out a deep chuckle at your neediness.

But then the air shifted.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

The low timbre wrapped in affection sounded stronger than the bass of the music.

You didn’t turn your head when Bucky Barnes took a seat, his thigh pressed against yours. You felt his eyes on you anyway, watchful and warmer than how he looked at everyone else. Some days you forgot that he was a dangerous man with power, reach, and a reputation.

My fiancé.

“Hey, yourself,” you replied, hoping your voice didn’t betray the emotions swirling inside you.

“It’s time to come home,” he said.

Home.

“But I’m having such a good time,” you teased, finishing your drink in one gulp.

He snatched the glass from your hand and forced you to meet his gaze. Your breath caught. He was always handsome, but the trimmed beard was really doing it for you. And he was staring at you like he was a heartbeat away from spreading you out on the table and taking you right there.

He had waited long enough.

“It’s midnight,” he said, his breath brushing your lips. “Time’s up.”

You swallowed. One year. You asked for one year of freedom before you had to marry him, and he shockingly obliged. 

But you should’ve realized he’d know right where to find you tonight.

He never stopped watching you.

His expression softened. “Angel, come home with me.”

Your stomach flipped. “So it’s ‘angel’ now?”

“Well, I know you behaved during your year without me, so that’s pretty angelic,” he answered with a hint of possession. “But we can talk more about that at home.”

Talk. Plan the wedding. Become Mrs. Barnes.

Your fate was sealed.

This could be fun to expand on. Love and thanks for reading. ❤️

It really seemed like a no-brainer to you when the topic came up at the engagement dinner. Steve and Natasha weren’t trying to kick him out. In fact, it wasn’t even their idea. He was the one who said it made the most sense, that they needed their space and he should find his own. Sam joked that he just didn’t wanna hear the bed banging on the other side of the wall, if they “knew what he meant.” Bucky’s face, and the red on Steve’s cheeks, told you he wasn’t too far off. 

So, when he mentioned to you that he wanted to keep a roommate, you didn’t hesitate to offer that he move into your apartment. After all, Wanda had moved out a year ago when her and Vision found a house on the outskirts of the city. You had the extra room, and you didn’t mind offering him help. You had known him for years throughout college, if only through mutual friends, but you enjoyed his company. He was the type that didn’t expect anything out of you during conversation. It flowed naturally, or if it didn’t then you simply sat in comfortable silence. You had discovered through several discussions that you shared the same taste in literature, and you both preferred the night to the morning. 

You knew living together would be easy, and you were nothing if not capable of adapting. If need be, you’d just work around each other's schedules and respect the other’s space. You had never had any expectations of your roommates, not since you became used to your own capability. If you needed something done, you’d figure out how to do it. Wanda had said several times that she often wasn’t even aware you were around, given your nature to tending to yourself. You understood what she meant, because there was a point in time where you had to force the habit. Your last relationship was happy, you really had no right to complain… it was only that he never wanted to do any favor you asked. Something as simple as taking out the trash could turn into a huge argument about you “suffocating” him. Which was fine, you had found in the recent years that you liked your independence more than reliance on others.

So, when you offered, you assured Bucky that you knew how to pull your weight. You were not simply asking him just because you thought it’d be useful to have a man around. 

You figured you were on the same page when he gave you an easy smile, a teasing scrunch of his nose, and leaned over to say, “Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetheart.” 

Oh, you were wrong.

~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅

It started small, with chivalrous things you hadn’t realized you missed until he did them so easily. There was no show about it, no performance. It wasn’t grand or mind blowing. 

He opened your door. 

The day he moved in, you had been out grocery shopping, getting home right as he finished up. He had gone back outside to park his car. You beat him up the stairs, grocery bags making red indents in the skin of each of your arms. You didn’t mind, until you came to the door and found you couldn’t even reach it. You mumbled several curses while trying to maneuver for your keys and not drop the bags, this was a weekly occurrence after all. 

“Let me,” came that familiar voice from behind you, two hands reaching for the bags on your arms before you had a chance to even respond.

He glanced down at your arms with a frown, looking at you as if disappointed. Then, bags in hand, he reached for his key and opened the door, waiting for you to enter first. You blinked at his steady smile, looking between him and the entrance to the apartment. When you walked in, he followed behind and came to set the bags on the counter. 

“You don’t have to do that,” you stopped him as he began taking things out of the bags, “I’m sure you need to unpack.” 

He simply scrunched his nose as if you were just being silly, “I am capable of both, you know.” 

And you supposed you did know, given his success on the college hockey team. The strength and stamina shared between him and Steve was a highlighting topic among many broadcasting channels. Not that you paid attention, or anything. Still, though it was a helpful gesture, something about it made you uncomfortable enough to stop him again. “It’s just that…” you offered a smile, “I’m kind of crazy about organizing everything.” 

He glanced between your eyes and the fidgeting of your fingers, stepping back with an easy smile and a, “Whatever you say,” before retreating to his room to unpack.

It continued like that, small things that you didn’t know how to feel about. After all, opening the door for others was just polite. It spoke to how introverted you were that it was a novelty. The same applied to carrying heavier objects, or offering to do your laundry when he was already putting in a load. You were baffled to have them returned to you perfectly folded. 

You supposed you were just good friends who enjoyed each other's company, even if his accommodating attitude set you off balance. You enjoyed how he paid attention. Getting to know each other was a simple exchange of observations, where you learned that you mirrored the other often. Except for a few things. 

It was late afternoon on a sunday, you had just stepped out of the shower and thrown on a long shirt and shorts. You stepped out of your room, into the living area where the golden New York sunset seeped through the windows. There was Bucky, haloed by the light, setting a book back on your shelves only to take another off. You stopped and watched as he ran his finger over the spine, then split the pages. His brows drew together, but his lip turned up. 

“What is it?” You spoke up. 

He looked up to you immediately, only his eyes seemed to drag up from your bare legs to your wet hair. That smile grew into a smirk, his tongue darting out over his bottom lip. He took his time, like he always seemed to. Like he didn’t know what it meant to rush. Yet he never left you hanging, “You’ve annotated every book on this shelf.” 

It wasn’t a question, just an observation, lifting the book in his hands as if to prove the point. He was holding Pride and Prejudice. Your eyes widened as you took sight of your neat scribbles in pink ink, taking several steps forward and opening your mouth to respond. 

Only, he beat you to it, eyes flickering back to the page, “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of Mr. Darcy described using the word ‘daddy.’” 

Your mouth fell open completely, in fact your jaw might have unhinged itself altogether. The way he read the word aloud with no shame whatsoever? You remembered feeling embarrassed just writing it across the page. 

You forced yourself to stand straighter, crossing your arms and clearing your throat. 

“Well, you obviously haven’t been on booktok very often, then.” You raised your brow, turning the challenge onto him. 

He only took it in stride, leaning a shoulder against the bookshelf and giving you a deliberate once over. “Oh really? You’re telling me there’s an entire community out there for the kinds of things you write in these margins?” He turned his attention back to the flipping pages, muttering more so to himself, “interesting.”

You scoffed, finally reaching out and snatching the book from his hungry eyes, “Oh, give me that!” You turned to place it back where it belonged, next to Emma. “And for your information, no. Not all of them are annotated.” You expecting more teasing from where he stood, still leaned on the shelves. Like he was right where he wanted to be. Only, his smug expression softened into something closer to curiosity. “Yeah, I was wondering about that…” then he reached a corded arm over you, almost caging you between him and the bookshelf. You lowered your eyes immediately, because seriously, he wasn’t even flexing, were his biceps naturally that large? Was that normal? It felt disrespectful to even look. But he brought it back down soon after, holding in his hand the one book you hadn’t touched with a pen. 

When he still didn’t move away, you took it upon yourself, taking a considerable step to the side. He only thumbed through the pages, as if to prove his point, “What’s so different about The Notebook?” 

What couldn’t be more different? You wanted to say. You simply turned your eyes to the shelves, exhaling a dissatisfied breath. “It’s unrealistic.” 

“Unrealistic?” He laughed, pointing to the top shelf, “More than The Chronicles of Narnia?” Which was littered with your takes on favorite moments and quotes. 

You rolled your eyes, “It’s unrealism disguised as realistic.” You shrugged, trying not to sound bitter, “I mean, what kind of man genuinely asks a woman what she wants, and then vows to give her all of it?” 

He didn’t miss a beat, “A good one.” His voice was softer then, and you didn’t like the look in his eyes when you met them again. Like he was reading you now, like you were a puzzle he was slowly piecing together. He looked as if he just found another fitted piece. 

“Yes, well,” you tried to sound unbothered, because you were unbothered. It didn’t matter. It never had. “Sometimes you have to be ‘a good man’ for yourself.” 

The conversation ended there, because you felt exposed under his gaze, and plucked a book before retreating back to your room. The Hobbit this time. 

You hadn’t noticed the book was missing until you walked into the apartment a week later and noticed the unbalanced lean of other books on the shelf. Some had fallen over into the empty spot it had left. Your mouth turned into a frown, but you quickly brushed it off. Maybe he wanted to read it. Maybe he’d feel the same way you did in the end, that it was a pointless kind of fantasy, and you would laugh together about it.  

When it returned to its spot, however, you felt your palms itch immediately. For what reason, you didn’t know. You asked him if he liked it the following morning, and he gave a simple “yeah,” that somehow made you more antsy. He didn’t give anything else but a shrug, before turning the conversation to teasing you about your inability to get a pancake to the perfect temperature without burning it on one side. 

When you were alone in the apartment, you finally groaned in frustration and picked it up. You didn’t know what you expected, because you knew he didn’t so much as highlight his books, and yet… 

You found quotes highlighted in marker to match the cover, small annotations written in black at the edge of the pages. 

“She would tell him what she wanted in her life--her hopes and dreams for the future--and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true.” 

“She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.” (Nicholas Sparks, 2000). 

And off to the side: You deserve all of it. Everything.

You shut the book immediately and put it back, stepping away with a hand over your chest. It was as if you actually heard alarms go off in the back of your brain, red sirens flaring. It was unfair of him to plant any idea of that in your head. You wringed your hands and turned away, not liking the chasm that formed in your chest. The ache it created. Within minutes you had your bag and were out of the apartment, trying to get as far from that bookshelf as possible. 

Then it became… more. He took notice of your work schedule several weeks in, noting when you would usually come home late and when you usually went without dinner as a result. Suddenly, you were coming home to dinner on the table and a Bucky who only smiled and asked about your day. Suddenly, the dishwasher was emptied before you had a chance to get to it. Suddenly, the washer wasn’t making that horrible noise anymore and the volume on your TV didn’t randomly move up and down. But he never mentioned the bookshelf. 

You didn’t let it affect your expectations. He was just being nice, trying to make a good impression. It was sweet. Gentlemanly. You continued your routine as you had before he moved in, only more deliberately. In hindsight, you might not even have noticed yourself doing it. Anything you said you would do, you made sure it got done early. Even if he brushed you off and said he would take out the trash in the morning, you would wake up early and do it, responding innocently when he eyed the new bag in the can. 

You worked hard at your HR internship, then came home and worked some more. You liked the space clean and organized, probably more than you even realized. It’s only that you were used to relying on yourself; not even your maintenance men were helpful–

“What are you doing?” Bucky said from somewhere above you, his tone sounding like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. 

You slid out from under the sink, wrench in hand, “There’s a leak.”

The crease in his brow was obvious, his mouth opened as if you said something offensive, “Didn’t you just get back from work?” 

“Mhm.” You figured you could work and talk, leaning back under the sink. 

“And you didn’t think to–hey!” Before you knew it, a hand was wrapped around your ankle, and you were tugged across the tile until you were no longer laying under the sink. Bucky had knelt down, like getting closer would get his point across, “I’m right here.” 

Yes, yes he was. Right there. Close enough that you could lean up and you’d be sharing the same breath. You could pick the grey out from the blue in his eyes, the hint of something solemn, yet all you did was look at him with a questioning expression.

He sighed, shaking his head, “You’ve been working all day, let me fix the sink.” He held his hand out for the wrench.

You didn’t give it to him, “You’ve been working too.”

“From home,” he said simply, “You have been on your feet–”

“This doesn’t require me to be on my feet.” You motioned to the fact that you were very much on the floor. 

He turned his head away, muttered something that sounded an awful lot like “unbelievable” before taking a deep breath and meeting your eyes again, “Why won’t you let me help?”

You didn’t want to open that topic at the moment, so you decided to hit him with the biggest card you had, “Do you not think I’m capable of fixing the sink?”

The look he gave you told you he was not going to fall for that game, but he only said: “I think you’re incapable of relaxing.” 

You shrugged, “I’ll relax when the sink is fixed.” 

“Or,” the wrench was plucked from your hand when you least expected it, “You go change, get settled, and I will have this fixed in thirty minutes.” 

“Or,” you growled, reaching for the wrench he held high above your head, “you could let me–” you huffed, shifting to reach higher, “just give it–” you didn’t even think before using his shoulder as leverage, and your sentence turned into a squeal as you fell forward. Directly onto him. Your thighs split across his abdomen as you landed, his breath coming out in a rough exhale as he hit the tile. You hadn’t had much time to catch yourself and focus on grabbing the wrench, meaning you fell directly onto his chest. 

You were certainly sharing air now. 

The look on his face was… you didn’t have time to read the look on his face. You scrambled off him so quickly, muttering several “I’m so sorry”s and “oh my god”s because you were splayed completely across him and you felt way more than you should have and–

You only breathed once you got back to the safety of your room, realizing then that you basically just surrendered the battle. Your pride swelled, scolded you for losing focus all because you forgot what it felt like to be pressed up against…

You shook your head, not the time. 

The next morning, you would turn the faucet to find the sink working perfectly. No leak at all. And Bucky wouldn’t mention a thing.

~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅

Somehow, it got worse after that. You noticed the vase on the coffee table, the green one you found thrifting, had a new bouquet every week. Now, when you came home late, he wouldn’t have just made you dinner, but he’d wait to eat his with you. At the table, without a phone in sight. When you went somewhere, found yourself cold halfway through whatever event you were attending, he’d appear with an extra jacket he’d brought, “because you were too stubborn to grab one, doll, even though you always get cold.” It was so… domestic. So unlike the life you had made. 

So much so that at times, you panicked. Wanda and Natasha didn’t understand it, no matter how much you tried to explain it. They told you to lean into it, and you didn’t know how to tell them you couldn’t. You had been pretty certain that you were happy as you were. You enjoyed your alone time, your career, and the community you had made. You didn’t need romance. You had once been told that love was a disease to a woman with ambition, and you had believed it wholeheartedly. 

Now, you weren’t so sure. 

You found yourself conflicted once you realized that no, James Barnes was not going to turn around at some point and resent you for all the helpful things he had done. You weren’t sure when it became such an obvious part of his character. Maybe somewhere between him knocking on the door while you showered to place towels—fresh from the dryer—on your counter and him calling every clinic in town on a Friday night to see who could fit you in when you were sick. 

 “Fuck—“ he threw the phone down on the couch next to your hip. He was crouching in front of you, hand running over his frustrated face. “Every clinic closed at 5.”

You only hummed in acknowledgment, too achy to care. You had been in and out of sleep the entire evening, going between shivering with a fever and breaking into a cold sweat. You only became more aware when you noticed him standing, reaching for his coat, “What are you—“

“We’re going to the ER.” He said as if he wasn’t, in your opinion, half mad. He shrugged on his coat then did a once over for you, turning to your room to presumably grab your shoes. 

“What?” You croaked in the most astonished voice you could muster, sitting up on your elbows, “Buck–no, there’s no reason–” 

He looked over his shoulder at you as if you were the crazy one, motioning to your form spread across the couch, “You’ve been like this all day. You can barely walk, you won’t eat, you’re feverish–”

“Listen to me…” You pushed yourself up slowly, your heart thundering like each movement was equivalent to a mile, “It is just a cold, I’m sorry–” 

He stepped forward then, “Why are you apologizing?” 

“I didn’t mean to take up your day, and I don’t want you to have to spend your evening taking me somewhere or nursing me back to health.” You gave him a kind smile. You appreciated him, so much so that something else was blooming next to that ache in your chest. A sort of… fluttering. But this wasn’t his job, “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you.” 

He was silent for the time it took him to close the remaining space, his expression looking as if you had spoken a different language entirely. He crouched next to you, shaking his head and gently wrapping his hands around your shoulders to help you lay back down, “I don’t have anywhere else to be…” 

“Still, I–” 

“Why do you apologize for existing?” The words seemed to spill out of him, as if he couldn’t quite keep them in. 

“What?” 

“You’re human,” he whispered your name, absentmindedly checking his watch. It was time for medicine again, he reached for the pain reliever and your water. You had to give it to him, he didn’t look the least bit burdened. “It’s natural to need others.”

You took the medicine, laid your head back down, “I’ve taken care of myself this far, I can handle a common cold.” 

He gave you that same look from the engagement party, but this time you read his smile as something akin to pity, or maybe affection? He lifted a hand to slide over your cheek, curling in your hair and smoothing it over your pillow, “I know you have, but now I’m here too.”

It didn’t matter when, just that you knew. This kindness was who he was, only that didn’t make him yours. The sweet words, soft touches, helpful gestures… James Barnes was a good man. Perhaps one of the best you would ever come to know, and that in of itself was more difficult than anything. You couldn’t brush him off as incompetent, or ill-mannered, or drowning in toxic masculinity, which had been so easy when dating up to that point. Only you weren’t dating, he wasn’t yours. 

It became apparent when, a year after moving in, he announced, “I’m thinking of looking for my own space.” 

You were eating takeout on the couch when he said it, curled up on opposite ends of and talking about nothing in particular prior. Then suddenly every nerve in your body lit, your focus zeroing. 

Had you been wrong? Did he think you were taking advantage after all? 

All you could say was, “Oh.” You set your carton down, suddenly not hungry. Suddenly the quiet atmosphere of the room felt as if you were suffocating. 

He seemed to track the movement, as if assessing. His mouth pulled into a frown, “Yeah.” 

You pulled your lips inward, biting down on them as you looked literally anywhere else. Which time had it been? When your laundry was done in the dryer, and you hadn’t noticed because you were knee-deep in paperwork, so he folded all of it for you? You hadn’t known what to think when he handed you a pile of your neatly folded panties with a slight blush across his cheeks. Or was it when he noticed your books were overflowing, so he surprised you on your birthday by building in an entire new section to the shelves? 

The apartment was practically screaming his name at this point, filled to the brim with his actions. The flowers, the late night dinners, the shelves, all of it. If he had been trying to worm his way in, he had done it. 

“It’s just… I saw some listings go up down the street,” he continued, picking at his chow mein, “figured I’d give them a look. Couldn’t hurt, right?” 

Right. 

You forced your throat to clear, planting on a supportive smile. This was your best friend,  moving onto a new chapter of his life, you should be happy. You nodded eagerly, “Yes, that sounds great… um,” you unraveled your legs from below you, “I think I’m ready for bed actually…” 

He furrowed his brows, “Already? We’re not even through the first Scream.” 

You scrambled for words, “It’s been a long day.” 

“Ah, I see,” bless him and his ability to bounce right back, “Natasha said you’re an easy scare, but I never thought–”

You smacked his shoulder, “I am not! You’re the one who was so focused on your book the other day that you jumped at the sound of the doorbell!”

He waved his finger at you, “Not fair! I was reading Stephen King!”

“And what? You were scared the pages were going to jump out at you?” 

His mouth fell open, “Oh, you’re not going anywhere–” 

Bucky jumped up at the same time as you, blocking your exit from the living you. You squealed, trying to get around the coffee table, but fuck him for being a goalkeeper. He follows you around, and you resort to trying to step onto the table for a fast exit, only to find his arms wrapping around you from behind. You screamed, the giggle in your throat making you feel like a schoolgirl with a crush. 

“Got you!” His voice was rough with laughter, and you felt him step back, easily picking you up completely. 

“Oh my god,” you slapped his arm around your waist, “put me down!”

“Nope,” he fell back on the couch, bringing you with him. It was unfair, the way he held you, like your previous conversation never happened. His breath tickled your neck as he promised, “Not until we get through at least the first two movies.” 

You did eventually make it back to your room that night, shutting the door and falling against it. Your hand came up to cover your mouth. You weren’t proud of the sobs that followed shortly after, or that chasm in your chest that now felt as if it had doubled in size. You groaned in frustration, pulling at your roots. 

“There were rules, I had rules…” you pleaded to the ceiling, as if someone would hear you, as you sank to the floor. “I said I wouldn’t change my expectations… that I wouldn’t let it go too far.” 

But at some point… it had. At some point, that fluttering you had felt began to wrap around the discomfort like a balm over your heart. It soothed, forcing your guard down. Letting you dream before you even realized you had been. Thinking about what it would be like to trust someone again. To have… not a man to babysit, but a partner who was equal to you in character and intelligence. You thought the girls who said they wanted a man they could turn their brains off with were naive, stupid even, until you started imagining how easy it would be with him. Not all the time, but like an even exchange. Being able to trust that he had you, just as he would trust that you had him. 

It was becoming increasingly obvious what had happened.

“Damnit.” You sobbed, your forehead dropping to your knees. 

You were upset, but also so angry. So pissed off at yourself for letting this happen. You were smarter than this, stronger than this. They said the most intelligent women didn’t fall for this bullshit, and here you were. 

You let yourself cry quietly for another thirty minutes, then you forced yourself up. Off the floor, away from the door. You got ready for bed, and didn’t let yourself cry again. You had felt this before, and you had overcome this before. Yet, as you laid down, closing your eyes, you had a nagging feeling that one realization wasn’t going to go away. 

You didn’t want to be alone forever, not anymore. 

~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅

Claps rang out around the room, a few people drying tears on the corner of their napkins. Yelena’s maid of honor speech was funny and lighthearted, and yet still made hearts swell as she recounted childhood dramas and memories (or lack of) of late nights in college. She was even biting her lip at the end, trying to hold in a smile as she explained how Natasha never thought she’d find her person, until she met Steve. The cliche lines earned raised glasses, and knocked back champagne. 

It was a gorgeous rehearsal dinner, with a small party. Both families had pitched in on the decorations. The colors were muted, but no less beautiful, with red roses centering each table. Candles lit up the entire room, washing everyone in a romantic, golden light. All of the guests were asked to wear colors while Natasha and Steve sat in white. It was everything Natasha had said was dumb before, and you enjoyed seeing her lean into it. 

You enjoyed all of it, so much that it made that ache in your chest feel the size of a canyon. It was the same ache that had been building for a year, and you hated yourself for it. It was their day, and you wanted it to be perfect. But as you watched Steve pull her in, kiss her cheek, and the tension fall from her shoulders… all you could think was that you wanted that. That softness, that intimacy. Falling into someone and not wondering if they’d catch you. 

But you’d been doing this for so long on your own, you weren’t even sure how to appeal to someone anymore. You weren’t necessarily flirty, or even playful unless you really knew the person. You also rarely found yourself attracted to strangers, so how would you even pick someone? There were too many variables, you wondered how anyone figured it out. 

Bucky rose from the chair next to you a few moments later, after Yelena sat down. You watched him, in his blue suit, go to pick up the mic and smile to the room. He opened with something that made the room laugh, but you found yourself in a daze. There was nothing surprising about him, nor how he was dressed. You had seen him walk out of his room, had driven with him on the way here, had plenty of time to adapt to the way he seemed to take up the entire room, and yet… suddenly it felt as if he was the only one in the room. 

You watched his eyes scan the room, “…Folks, I’m just the best man. I can’t speak for Steve or his feelings but, I believe love isn’t about lust or attraction… and yes, it is about friendship. About finding that woman who you want to share everything with, who you can’t get off your mind. But more importantly,” then his eyes landed on yours and he paused. Like it was just him and you and that wide smile, with eyes that matched his suit jacket. Then he found himself, cleared his throat, “it’s about finding the person you want to take care of for the rest of your life. The person that makes effort feel like a privilege…”

His eyes snapped away as he kept speaking, but you felt like you were about to throw up. This was the only variable. Every missing data point combined into one. Everything you wanted, right here. 

And he would be leaving soon. Soon, you would be coming home to an empty apartment that still felt like him. You would have to move on and rebuild each wall, knowing all it took from him was a single look to knock them down. 

Glasses raised, people cheered, the couple kissed. Bucky found his seat next to yours right as you swallowed a lump in your throat. 

“How’d I do?” He leaned into your space, his arm coming around the back of your chair. 

You managed a small smile, grateful for the steady and supportive tone of your voice, “Perfect, very romantic.” 

Dinner was served, and everyone gathered. It was lovely, every single moment of it. The drunken laughter and kind remarks. Natasha and Steve fawning over each other. Sam teasing everyone in sight. Even Tony stood for a speech towards the end. 

You chastised yourself every time the thought popped into your head: I want this. It wasn’t your day. It wasn’t yours to want. Even when your mind felt like it was racing a million miles a minute and you just wished that you had a soft place to land. A place to rest it all. Instead, you had driven away the one person who had been such a driving force in your life the past year. Now he was leaving too. 

You tried to distract yourself by moving to the other side of the table with the excuse of visiting with Natasha to discuss bridesmaids plans for the next morning. It helped, for a moment. She was so lively about how she wanted everything done, and you were good with lists. Little boxes to check off, that was your area. The wine was a good call too, because two glasses in you were giggling and successfully avoiding glances from down the table. 

It would only last so long though, you supposed, because once dinner was over you were out of options. You hugged every last person, even the family members you didn’t know, taking extra long on your goodbyes. But, finally, you met him back at the door with a tense smile. 

Bucky stood with his hands in his pockets, angling his neck to get a better look at you, “You alright?” 

You nodded, bouncing on your heels, “Yeah, ready to go?” The valet would be bringing the car back soon. 

He only tensed his brows and raised the back of his hand to your cheek, “You sure, you’re flushed?” 

“Oh,” you didn’t mean to flinch away, it was only a reflex, “I probably had too much wine.” Which you were regretting, just now remembering that wine did not get you tipsy in the same way vodka or tequila did. You were tired now, and every thought you had from earlier was rushing back. You turned for the doors, not wanting to continue the conversation and knowing he would follow. The valet had, indeed, brought the car around, and you hopped in the passenger side after thanking them. 

Bucky took the driver's seat, adjusting his arm behind your head to reverse out of the narrow lot. He was mostly quiet, save for when he made sure you were buckled. You held your breath against the swelling emotions, trying to bat away the voices in your head. You felt at war, like the two different sides of yourself wanted very different things. One screamed it’s better this way, while the other responded it doesn’t have to be. Both had valid arguments.

In the five years you had been single, you had made the most progress in your career and financial independence. You knew yourself better, had built a better routine, and had become comfortable without the opinions of others. However, there had also been nights where all you wanted was a pair of arms wrapped around you. There were times you ate dinner, and wished you had someone across from you to talk about your day with. Someone to dance in the kitchen with… or even the more intimate aspects. Someone who took their time with you, learning every inch of your skin without a selfish expectation. Someone who just wanted to be with you. 

That lump in your throat became too much, and you coughed into your elbow, trying to release some of the tension in your chest. You began to feel pins and needles breaking out over your skin, your hands feeling restless and unsure of what to do with themselves. 

You felt his eyes glance over at you before focusing back on the road. You were on a backroad now, the dinner having been out of the city. After several moments of quiet traveling, he finally spoke, “I’m not sure if I told you, you look stunning tonight.” It was a soft compliment, his hand slowly reaching over to squeeze your knee, because of course he knew something was wrong. “This dress is lovely.” 

It was too much, all of it. You couldn’t even remember the last time a man complimented something specific on you. When it was dangled in front of you like this, you found you enjoyed it too much. You felt greedy with the need for more, like you wanted this to be your normal. 

But he was leaving. 

The sob tore from your throat before you could stop it, all of it suddenly becoming too much. You brought a hand to cover your mouth, turning away, but it was already too late. Bucky only squeezed your knee one last time before bringing his hand back to the wheel with a pained sigh. You noticed the car slowing, finding him pulling over to the shoulder. You grunted in disapproval, something like an apology. For causing a scene? For being selfish? For having agreed to this in the first place? All of the above?

Once the car stopped, you heard him unbuckle and turn to you. Then, a hand gently pried the one from your mouth, “Sweetheart? Talk to me.” 

You only hung your head, your teeth clenching around more sobs. You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to block everything out. 

He was persistent. He moved your hair behind your ear, trying to get a look at you, “What’s going on,” with a plea of your name he said, “please?” 

You shook your head, “I-I’m sorry, I don’t know–” 

“Don’t apologize,” then he was taking your cheeks in his hands, giving you no choice but to turn to him. He made a pained noise when he saw your tears, his thumbs brushing under your eyes, “Tell me what it is, pretty girl. Tell me, and I’ll fix it.”

That felt like salt on a wound, your breath releasing from your chest broken and cracked. You tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let you. One hand slid to cup your nape while the other unbuckled you, tugging your knees till you faced him more. It only made you cry harder. 

“You gotta talk to me, I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me.” 

You finally broke with a, “You don’t need to do anything!” 

He wasn’t having it, “Bullshit. You’ve been out of it all night, and now you’re bawling your eyes out. Best believe I’m going to figure out what caused those tears and–” 

“I’m tired!” you emphasized the words, trying to give them more meaning than they had on their own. 

His brows furrowed, “Of what?” 

“Everything! All of it.” You motioned your hands as if that was a good explanation, “I’m so fucking selfish! It’s someone else’s night and all I could think about–all I’ve been thinking about–is how goddamn tired I am of doing everything myself.” 

“You don’t have to,” a hand runs through your hair, smoothing it, almost lulling you. 

“But I can! I was! For a long time! And-and then suddenly…” you trailed off, shrugging your shoulders and finally forcing yourself to look away from him. 

He squeezed your knee again, “Suddenly?” 

You shook your head again, but not necessarily to his question. More so, to the tone of his voice, the earnestness of it. He cared so much, and it was as heartbreaking as it was exhilarating to be the center of his attention. 

It must have been the exhilarated side that quietly answered: “You.” 

“Me?” 

“You!” You repeated with more confidence, “You showed me something different and now you’re leaving and… I don’t know…” You searched for the words, “do you ever get tired of being alone?” 

Your question seemed to send the car into such thick silence that you couldn’t stand to stare out the front dash anymore. Slowly, you turned to look at him. For the first time, he wasn’t looking at you. His eyes were downcast, his mouth hung as if he had no clue what to say. 

Shame spread across your cheeks. You’d really done it this time. In a matter of months, weeks for all you knew, he’d be gone. He wanted to leave, and here you were saying silly things. Embarrassing yourself. This was why you hadn’t dated. 

But that was a lie. You hadn’t dated because you hadn’t felt this in a very long time. If ever.

When Bucky finally did move, it was to shift the car back into gear. His other hand moved back to the steering wheel at the same time that you said, “I’m sorry.”

It was his turn to shake his head, “Just…” his voice was rough, pained, “Just let me take you home. I think… I think you need to see something.” He pulled back onto the highway, careful of the speed limit despite the way his fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel. 

The ride was quiet, save for your sniffles as you tried to quit crying. You had no idea what he meant, no clue what he might want to show you at home that you didn’t already know about. Or maybe it was something else… a lease he’d already signed? His bags packed neatly in his room? Maybe he just wanted out of this car before telling you how tiresome this past year has been for him. Either way, you were determined to pull it together by the time you entered the parking garage. 

And you had, for the most part. To his credit, he didn’t seem the least bit angry getting out of the car. You both walked calmly up the stairs to the apartment, and you waited for him to unlock the door. When you walked inside, however, he did not lead you to his room to show you any documents or boxes. He did not turn and give you a piece of his mind. 

He walked to the bookshelf. 

Your face twisted in confusion as his hands went directly to the spine of the book he was after, not even taking a second to search. Like he knew the exact spot it lived in like the back of his hand. And when he turned, you saw the cover was the same book he had pulled months ago when you had stood against those shelves together. The Notebook. The same book he had annotated for you without a word, that you had put back before even beginning to flip through the pages. 

Now, however, he was thumbing through them himself. When he stopped, three fourths through the book, he opened it fully and turned it to you. His eyes met yours again, the first time since you had spoken in the car, as he handed you the book. You took it without question, looking at him for a few moments before finally turning your eyes to the page. And right there, where highlight draws over lines of Noah confessing to Allie what is loving her has meant to him, is the only annotation written in your favorite pink ink: 

When I read these love stories, about a man who cares for a woman until his dying breath, I only ever think of one person. Love at first sight might not exist, but I have cared for you from the very first moment. Then again at every party, every class, every dinner, and every night in this little apartment. 

Oh. 

You blinked several times, reread the words to the point that he probably thought you were illiterate, but you only wanted to make sure they were real. Then you looked up at him, with his bitten lip and puppy-dog eyes. You mouthed wordlessly for several seconds before landing on a single question, “James–” 

“I was betting on you getting curious when the book was missing,” he shrugged, “I guess I was wrong.”

You shook your head, “You weren’t, I-I did look. I just didn’t get too far because…”

“You got scared.” He understood. 

You finally met his eyes, “You don’t think I’m too much?” 

The exhale he let out was soft and full of pity, yet he still stepped forward. “I think,” he said, “that you have been left alone for far too long,” he gently took the book, setting it on the arm of the couch next to you, “and I am sorry that anyone ever made you think you had to do this alone.” 

You couldn’t breathe, “I—“

“I love you.” His hands cradled your face once again, tilting your head up so he could look at you properly. He was so close, close enough to do whatever he pleased, and yet he still waited. 

Only until you said: “I love you too.” 

Then he was kissing you without reprieve. There was no hesitancy in the way he took your purse from your shoulder, dropped it to the floor, and backed you against the door. You took no time in responding, your mouth matching his kiss or kiss. Your hands lifted to his shoulders, sliding down to fist his shirt in your fingers. It was a consuming sort of kiss, and not just for the fact that you hadn’t kissed someone in years. It was him, and it was overwhelming in the way that it felt right. 

You forced yourself to pull back before you could melt into him, giggling when his lifts tried to follow yours. “I just…” you leaned against the door, looking up at him, “I thought you wanted to leave?” 

His breath was already ragged, and you could practically hear his heart pounding. It didn’t stop him from shaking his head, “No, sweetheart.” The words were breathed against your forehead before his lips dropped to your skin, planting kisses on your forehead before reaching your cheeks, “I never wanted to leave, but being near you and…” his exhale was hungered, full of longing, “and not having you, it’s like torture.”

“I know the feeling…” you replied, voice no more than a whisper. 

The groan he let out was like nothing you had heard from any man before, and then his lips were on yours again. There was nothing held back about it. He fisted your hair and tugged your head back, his tongue sliding along yours when you gasped. You didn’t need him to hold you there, you were more than happy to arch into him, and he knew it. His hands slid down next, over the fabric of your butter yellow dress, brushing your thighs right where the hem ends. He mumbled something against your mouth, but you were too focused on the taste and feel of him. His muscles were both hard and soft all in one, and it was the safest place you had ever been. And as you ran your hands down the definition of his abdomen, you found yourself dizzy with more than just love. 

He pulled away when it was obvious you hadn’t heard him, and only then did you notice his fingers brushing up under your dress. Your breath hitched, fingers flexing against him. He nudged your nose with his, whispering again, “Will you let me?” 

You knew what he was asking without any clarification, because your body was miles ahead. Still, you hesitated. Could you do this? Did you still even know how? What if you messed up? Or couldn’t please him? Or–

Bucky whispered your name, thumb brushing your cheek, “You’re overthinking.” 

“It’s just been a long time for me.” You bit your lip, watching his eyes track the movement.

He nodded like he knew, because of course he knew. “I just want you to relax, okay? Let me take care of you.”

You weren't prepared for how easy it would be to listen to the gentle command, to uncurl your fingers from his shirt and let go of the urgency because he had you. One of his arms wrapped around your waist, the other gripping the back of your thigh as he pulled you up to wrap your legs around him. And then he really was against you, and you gasped once again against his mouth. He smiled as he turned to walk down the hall, undoubtedly knowing that you can feel all of him pressed to you. And judging by your perception of size, "all" was a considerable amount.

He entered his room, kicking the door shut behind him, and brought you to his bed. He kissed you once more before laying you down on the white comforter and leaning back to get a better look at you. Your hair fanned across the bed, your dress riding up your thighs. He smirked down at you, his hands coming up to your thighs.

"Gorgeous," he mumbled, more to himself, and ran his hands down to wrap around your ankles. You squealed as he gave a sudden tug, pulling you to the edge of the bed where your thighs fell on either side of him. Your dress was ridden up to your hips by that point, putting the cotton of your ordinary panties on display.

Not that it seemed to make any difference to him, he was still intent on looking his fill. So much so, you felt yourself start to squirm at the attention, letting out a whine.

He only tutted, shrugging off his suit jacket before his hands went to the buttons of his shirt, "Patience, sweetheart." Then he was shirtless, and you couldn't have formed a remark if you wanted to. He was all definition under soft, tanned skin. When he finally brought himself down, his body covering yours, you did not hesitate to run your hands along his chest and shoulders.

You could have stayed there like that for a long while, just feeling him pressed against you. But Bucky was the one losing patience all of the sudden, with his lips against yours and his hands at the hem of your dress. You moaned when he bit down on your bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth, and he used the moment to drag your dress up your sides and over your head. It had been wired, leaving you without the choice of a bra, not that you regretted it when you heard the groan he let out at the sight of you under him.

Then his mouth was on you, leaving nips along your collarbone before dropping down to your breasts. You cursed in response to the sensation, gasping his name as your fingers flew to his hair.

"Fuck," his lips let go of your nipple just to mumble against your skin, "dreamt of this, having you under me," he sucked a hickey onto your skin, "thought I was an awful man for wanting you at my mercy, but look at you," his hips rolled into yours, you arched and pulled at his hair, "you're loving this."

"Please," you breathed as his mouth closed around the other nipple, sucking it into his mouth.

"Please what, baby?" He trailed kisses down your stomach next, before he dropped off the bed. Next thing you knew, he was kneeling in front of you.

You could only squirm, feeling pinned under him, "I-I don't know..."

He hummed, still so pleased with you, "I know, I know what you need. You just lay there and take it, doll."

The very idea made your insides burn, pleasure licking up your spine as his lips ghosted along the seem of your panties. He kissed over them, completely shameless to the eroticism of his actions. You, on the other hand, were speechless. Your thighs were already close to shaking and he had barely touched you. He knew the effect he had too, if his smirk was any clue. He watched for your reaction as he brought his hands to the sides, slowly bringing them down your legs.

You closed your knees on instinct, but he wasn't having it. He pulled them apart with a warning look at you and placed one thigh over his shoulder, his other hand pinning your knee to the bed. You couldn't take your eyes off his expression though, seeing the hunger in his eyes when they finally fell on you. He exhaled, his voice rough, "look at you," then his thumb was pushing through your folds, dragging down the seem of your cunt. "Already so wet for me. I think I deserve a taste, don't you?"

You gasped, not even thinking when you started nodding, your hips already grinding against his thumb.

He hummed, nipping at the inside of your thigh, "So good f'me." Then he was on you, his tongue dragging from your entrance up to your clit before his mouth sucked hard. It was your turn to cry out a curse, your hips coming off the bed. But he adjusted, an arm wrapping under your thigh and coming back up to hold your hips down. "So sweet," his voice vibrated against you, "can't believe you kept this from me."

"Didn't want to," you whined, words barely coherent, "didn't wanna--"

"Mm," he pulled back, thumb replacing his mouth and working your clit while he watched your reaction. "We're gonna make up for all that lost time, yeah baby?"

You nodded incessantly, muttering pleas as his pointer finger found your entrance.

"Gotta get my pretty girl ready," he mumbled, more so to himself, as he pushed the finger in and found immediate resistance. He wasn't discouraged, though. His mouth found your clit again, laving and sucking until your thighs began to shake. Slowly, you began to relax to the point that he was able to move the finger in and out, curving it into the spot that made you let out a needy whine.

"There she is," he smiled against you, and you thought you might have found heaven. When he used a second finger with his tongue, his arm pulling your hips flush against his mouth, you found yourself repeating words over and over. "Please"s and "I love you"s tumbling out. He talked you through all of it. The second your eyes rolled to the back of your head and your mouth opened with a scream, he was encouraging you with "good girl"s and "give it to me"s and "please, baby"s.

He didn't stop until you were tugging on his hair and trying to pull him back up. When he sat up, he was breathing heavily and his pupils were blown wide. And when he brought himself back onto the bed, you could so clearly see the evidence of his arousal. You bit your lip, hard, and looked up at him with an expression you were sure gave away exactly what you wanted. If it didn't, it didn't really matter, because then you were tugging him down over you.

His mouth met yours again, and you tasted yourself on him. It was consuming, but you didn't let it distract you from moving your hands to the zipper of his slacks. You weren't about to waste any time, and with the way he was grinding against you, he wasn't either. He kicked his pants and boxers down the minute you pushed them past his hips, both of you groaning at the feeling of skin on skin.

He kissed you hard once more, taking a moment to admire you, before leaning up on his forearm. Using his other hand, he brought your leg over his hip. His forehead dropping down to yours, he whispered, "You gonna let me take care of you?"

You could only nod, feeling him adjust and run the head of his cock up through your wetness and against your clit. You could barely see straight.

He smiled, pleased, "Breathe for me, okay? Relax." He waited to watch you obey, pulling in a deep breath and melting against him all over again. Then he pushed against you, the tip of him sinking slowly inside. He took the moment to pinch the nipple of one of your breasts, making you cry out and push against him. It made the pleasure of him thrusting into you sharper, better than you ever remember this being.

He cursed once again, moaning your name against your ear as he pulled out only to sink back in. "So tight. Perfect. And just for me, aren't you?"

You nodded, eyes rolling back as he set a rhythm.

But he grasped your chin, made you look at him, "Say it, tell me you're all mine."

It took you a minute to find your words, too focused on the feeling of him dragging inside you. There was no way it had always been like this, there had to be something different about James Barnes. Him and the way his cock pushed inside you, making stars dance in your vision.

"'m yours, Bucky, all yours. Please--"

"That's right," he pushed harder, his thumb dropping back down to press against your clit, "My perfect girl and her tight cunt, all for me." He dropped his mouth to your breast, sucking and biting down gently, "All for me to take care of."

The words mixed with all of the sensations happening in your body were too much. You felt your legs tighten around him, your hips lifting to meet his, mumbling his name and whining into his neck when you began to press kisses into it.

"Mhm, that feel good, doll?" the room was full of the noises of slapping skin and heavy breathing, "You gonna cum for me?"

You cried out, hands grasping at his back and nails dragging across his skin, "Uh huh, please!"

"Don't gotta beg me, I'll give you anything you want. As long as you keep letting me take care of you." He groaned, his thrusts turning sporadic, "Fuck, and letting me spread those legs and ruin this pussy. Please, baby..."

You felt your body tighten around the pleasure, the buildup from your first orgasm to your second feeling ten times more intense. And being pinned down underneath him while he whispered dirty words and promises of love only added to the pleasure as it hit you. You screamed his name so loud he was forced to put a hand over your mouth so the whole apartment wouldn't hear. He didn't last much longer either, his mumbles turning to whimpers of your name as he thrust through his orgasm.

You were both left with ragged breaths and sweaty skin after, letting out quiet laughs as your kisses turned lazy and sweet rather than rough. He ran his hands up and down your sides as you combed yours through his messy hair.

"Are you okay?" You found yourself asking.

He chuckled, "That's my line." Then he slowly began to pull out, watching your reaction as you winced at the soreness. He brought a hand to your hip, rubbing soothing circles into the skin.

You bit your lip, feeling a hint of that worry seep back in as he gave you a once over, "But... are you?"

He met your eyes again, reading you like a book. You watched as it dawned on him what you meant, and he leaned down to press a kiss to your forehead, swiping your hair from your cheeks. "I'm not sure I could be better," he pulled back, "I love you. I mean it, I'm not going anywhere."

You sighed, any last bits of tension seeping from your muscles, "I love you too."

He smiled, standing and scooping you up into his arms once more. You squealed again, securing your arms around his neck and bringing your lips to his for one last peck. He then buried his nose into your neck, breathing in your scent as he walked towards the bathroom.

"What are we doing?" You rested your head on his shoulder as you let him take you wherever he pleased.

"Taking care of you," he said simply, "You barely ate at dinner. So, I'm gonna get you cleaned up, then we'll eat something."

You hummed, and for once didn't worry about the where, or why, or how of it all. You let him take the lead, knowing he had you. You were safe. You were loved.

~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅★⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ~ ⋆⋅

note: this might have felt a little daydreamy... and that's because it really was just me daydreaming about actually finding a competent man. As a hyper-independent, anxious girly, I won't be putting bets on it. But I sure can dream about Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. :)

Inside, Professor Barnes, who has the reputation for being the toughest grader in the department and object of half the campus’ unrequited crushes, looks up from his desk, one brow arched, red pen hovering whatever he had been grading, silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose and sleeves rolled up to his forearms.

You recognize it immediately, the slightly judgemental expression of someone who was not expecting to have his work interrupted with even as much as a knock; but the moment he notices the expression on your face, your hands still shaking with adrenaline, his own shifts from professional uptightness to something much softer. A soft look you’ve come to know, too, after the two of you began a secret relationship a little over four months ago.

“Sorry,” you say, already stumbling through words. “Sorry, I know I didn’t knock, I just—"

 “Come in. Lock the door.” His voice drops, shifting from Professor Barnes to your James in the space of a few words.

You do just that. Then you stand there, backpack still hanging off one shoulder, hands twisting the strap.

“I’m freaking out about the European History exam,” you start. Professor Barnes shows no signs of being bothered by you immediately firing information his way.

“Sit down first.”

“I can’t sit down, James. I’ve been sitting for the past four hours, trying to—" You drop your bag onto the floor and start pacing the narrow strip of space between his bookshelf and the leather couch pushed against the wall. “I completely bombed it, okay? I know I did. Question three asked about the socioeconomic impacts of the Treaty of Tordesillas. I wrote about trade routes, James. Why did I write about trade routes? That wasn’t the prompt. And then I couldn’t remember some exact years, so I guessed, and I’m pretty sure I guessed about two decades off. If I fail this exam—”

“Please, sit—”

“—my GPA drops, and if my GPA drops, I lose my seminar slot for next semester, and then my entire track is ruined, and I'll end up living in a cardboard box—”

“Love.”

You stop, the way you always stop when he calls you that, like your mind still hasn’t quite learned to process that this man, older, more experienced, with a salt and pepper beard that makes your knees weak, would want to call you love.

James is leaning back in his chair now, arms crossed with muscles straining slightly against the shirt, and watching you with a particular patient expression, despite your serpentining conversation.

“The exam is done. You're spiralling," he tells you, and the second after he is getting up from his chair and stepping into your pacing path. A hand reaches for your wrist and makes you stop in front of him. “Breathe for me?”

“I’m not breathing, I can’t breathe, I have three more finals this week and I feel like my skull is gonna fracture from the pressure,” you whine, but are already leaning into his touch, seeking the warmth of him through your most stressful moments. He lets out a sympathetic sigh, fingers curling firmer around your wrist and pulls you fully to him before he presses a lingering kiss to the top of your head.

“There’s nothing you can do about it now.” And he’s not wrong. You open your mouth, close it, then sigh. Because there is nothing you can do about it now, and that’s somehow better, but also considerably worse. James tips your chin up with two fingers, ocean blue eyes meeting yours from behind his glasses.

“You have barely slept or eaten properly for the past week. I don’t like it. The way you chastise yourself whenever something goes wrong.” His thumb traces your jaw, and some of the tight coil in your chest loosens very much against your will. “Take a seat.” 

“James, I don’t need to—"

“I’m not asking,” he says gently, which makes it incredibly more effective than if he had said it any other way, then nods towards the leather couch. “Sit. You’ve been white-knuckling it for days, give yourself ten minutes.”

You consider it. Not because you want to sit down, not because the exam is finally slipping away from your mind, but because James has shifted into that version of him he only ever lets out when he’s near you, with you, the one that breaks down all your defenses and leaves you bare, although not unsafe. You always feel safe with him.

Slowly, you agree and take a seat on the couch, back slumping against the cushions. Your body recognizes it as home almost immediately, letting the familiarity seep into your bones and making you relax.

James crouches down in front of you and rubs one hand over your right knee.

"Still thinking about it?" he asks.

"...A little."

You sink deeper into the worn leather of the couch, the tension in your shoulders only kind of melting under the weight of his gaze. James remains crouched between your knees for a long moment, large hands taking residence on your thighs, now, thumbs stroking soothing circles through the fabric of your jeans.

“You know I’ve always got you, right? Prettiest girl I’ve ever met. Smartest, too,” he murmurs, voice wrapped in velvet. That does it quickly, for you, and you know he knows it. He showers you in praise every time, because every time your body opens to him like a flower blooming in the sunlight.

Before you can overthink it, you simply nod. There’s a brief moment where you’re sure he whispers something like ‘let me take care of you’, and you do, you let him, the permission being the way your legs gently pry open right in front of him. A shaky exhale, head falling back against the couch. All the agreement he needs.

His long fingers travel upward and make easy work of the button of your pants before peeling them down your legs slowly. James pulls your boots off, then the pants along with them, and he leans forward, mouth pressing a kiss to your left knee. Upward, to the skin of your thigh, a bit to the side, to the inside of your leg. Three days' worth of stubble prickles against you as he moves, and you make a noise, something he sees quickly as desperation, and you know the complaint is futile. When has Professor Barnes ever given you anything quicker than the exact pace he wanted to?

“Relax,” he says against your thigh, then presses his lips to the skin again, an open-mouthed kiss before he bites down so gently you are barely even able to call it a bite. “Didn’t I just say I’ve got you?”

Large hands slide from your thighs to wrap firmly around the backs of your legs, fingers digging in with just enough pressure to tug you forward on the couch, sliding your ass closer to the edge so you’re perfectly positioned for him. That’s when you open your eyes again, just in time to watch him hook his fingers into the waistband of your panties and peel them down slowly, dragging the fabric along your thighs and off your ankles. And he does it all with his eyes on yours, two blue pits making you feel dizzy, but you still don’t look away. You couldn’t if you tried.

Cool air hits your now exposed pussy, making you shiver. James lets out a quiet hum of approval at the sight of you, already glistening with arousal.

“She’s always so beautiful,” a reverent whisper before his large hands wrap around your legs again and lift effortlessly to drape them over his broad shoulders, heels of your feet resting against his back. The new angle tilts your hips up towards his mouth, spreading you open for him completely, and before you can even catch your breath, or take a moment to push down the flush on your skin growing from the vulnerable way you are exposed to him, he leans in and drags his tongue through your folds in a filthy stripe from your entrance to your clit.

A breathy moan tears from your throat, echoing in the quiet office like a confession, and it unravels the last threads of your anxiety as pleasure rises in its place. Then James does it again, a little slower, savoring the taste of you, messy and unhurried, spit mixing with your arousal until your folds are slick and shining. On his knees in front of you, this brilliant man, esteemed professor, becomes nothing more than a servant doing worship at the altar of his Goddess. His broad shoulders carry your legs like an honor he would gladly take forever, and his eyes flutter shut as he presses closer.

He’s incredible at this; you’ve known it from the first time he fell to his knees, right here, in this office, always reading every twitch, every gasp, mouth moving with exquisite skill. Slow and indulgent at first, mostly for himself, drowning in the taste of your slick, before giving way to teasing flicks of the tip of his tongue around your swollen clit only to dip lower again, lapping messily at your entrance where your arousal flows for him.

Wetness coats his silver-streaked beard, glistening on his chin as he buries his face deeper between your thighs. The obscene sounds of his mouth feasting on your fill the room, wet slurping and sucking noises, a slick glide of his tongue, an occasional hungry groan into your cunt that sends sparks flying up your spine, all of it the actions of a man who could be on his knees for hours.

Your hands fly to his hair, gripping the dark strands as your thighs tremble around his head. “James…”

No words come out of his mouth then, none you can understand, anyway; instead, the response comes in the way he sucks your clit between his lips, wet suction making your hips jerk, before he releases it with a lewd pop. One hand claws at your thigh, keeping your legs right in their place, while two thick fingers slide into your welcoming heat, curling against the spongy spot inside you that makes stars explode behind your eyelids. James pumps them slowly, in time with the dance of his tongue over your clit.

Exam long forgotten, the world narrows to nothing but him, the way his blue eyes will sometimes flick up to watch you through fogged glasses, dark with lust and adoration. Only when he needs to take a moment to breathe, a quick one, enough to allow him to keep going for as long as you need him to, does he speak again.

“Goddess,” he whispers teasingly, slowing his fingers as if to get your attention. Your head tilts forward and you watch him through hooded eyes. “Will you cum for your most loyal subject?”

You huff in soft frustration, the sound breaking into another shaky moan as your body refuses to cooperate with your irritation. Because the edge is so close, molten in your belly, and here he is, being a wicked scholar and working you through comedic words.

“James, don’t… fuck, I’m so close, don’t play with me right now…” you manage, trying to reprimand him. But even as you say it, your cunt betrays you completely, clenching hard around his fingers, fluttering and squeezing with need and pulling them deeper as slick coats his hand.

Your favorite Professor gleams with amusement, lips curled into a devastating half-smirk, swollen and shiny. “You like it when I’m funny. You’ve told me before.”

You want to protest, but he curls his fingers again, strokes the perfect spot and dips his head again, sucking your swollen bud with perfect pressure, flicking the tip of his tongue rapidly in a rhythm that makes your vision spark white. For a second, he slips his fingers out and instead fucks you with his tongue, thrusting it inside you, before dragging it back up to torture your clit again while his fingers move back to their rightful place. His free hand grips your thigh harder, holding you open for him as you start to grind against his face, chasing the pleasure.

The combination is merciless. Frustration melts instantly into overwhelming pleasure, and another broken moan rips from your throat as your thighs tighten around his shoulders, heels digging into his back. Every stroke, every suck makes the coil in your belly tighten, pulling you deeper into a sea of sensation where exams and fears cannot reach. His beard scrapes deliciously against your sensitive skin with every movement of his head, and arousal drips down his chin onto the leather couch, but he only presses closer, as if he would gladly drown in you.

And just like that, your orgasm crashes over you like a tidal wave, sudden and blinding. You cry out sharply, back arching off the couch as pleasure tears through every nerve in your body. James moans against your pussy like a man receiving divine absolution, your walls pulsing and fluttering around his fingers, gushing against his mouth. And he drinks down every drop of you until your trembling begins to quiet down, slowly easing his movements before pressing a couple of tender, open-mouthed kisses to your oversensitive pussy and to your inner thighs.

Still, he keeps your legs draped over his shoulders a moment longer, gazing at you through glasses that look slightly uneven with the most loving expression you have ever seen on a man. Breathless and floating, you manage to meet his eyes, and you smile at the sight of your brilliant professor on his knees, face glistening with the evidence of your pleasure.

“You’re trouble,” you whisper, though the words carry no real heat in them. James is busy kissing down your legs, lips reaching softly to every inch of skin, but he smiles in the midst of it.

“Trouble?” he repeats, feigning offense. “My goddess calls me trouble after I’ve knelt here and offered proper tribute? How cruel.”

You let out a breathless laugh that turns into a soft gasp when he nips gently at the crease of your thigh.

“You do know I love you, right? Even when you’re being silly while going down on me.”

That makes him smile wider. “I reckon you love me especially when I’m being silly while going down on you.”

And he’s not wrong at all.

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By the third time your card declined in front of Jack Abbot, you were ready to walk into traffic and let Pittsburgh finish what your bank account started.

Not dramatically. Not even with much feeling.

Just a clean, practical exit from the kind of humiliation that made your skin feel too tight over your bones.

The cafeteria at PTMC was too bright for this hour, all hard fluorescent light and polished floors and the faint, permanent smell of fryer oil losing a war against antiseptic. Behind you, the emergency department pulsed on with its usual awful rhythm—monitors chiming, stretchers squealing past, somebody coughing low and ragged, the sound dragging itself through the corridor, Dana Evans barking for someone to move their ass before she moved it for them. It was a living thing down here. Hungry. Overlit. Never satisfied.

You had a wrapped turkey sandwich in one hand, a bruised banana in the other, and that particular, skin-tight shame of being broke in public.

The cashier, who looked as tired as everyone else in the building, tried not to make a face at the register.

“Sometimes it’s the chip,” she said.

“It’s not the chip,” you said, because apparently your mouth had decided the truth was less embarrassing than optimism.

You could feel the line behind you growing restless. A respiratory therapist with a Diet Coke. A med student in wrinkled scrubs whispering urgently into their phone. Dr. Whitaker, gentle-eyed and awkward, staring at the ceiling like he was trying to give you privacy by force of will. Somewhere near the coffee station, Santos was talking too loudly about a procedure she “absolutely could’ve done faster if anyone had let her finish,” and Dr. Mohan was answering in that careful, measured way that made even a correction sound like she’d considered the whole person first.

You shifted the sandwich lower against your palm.

“It’s fine,” you said, already turning. “I don’t need it.”

A hand reached past your shoulder and tapped a card against the reader.

The machine beeped.

Approved.

You froze.

Jack Abbot stood close enough behind you that you caught the familiar edge of him before you looked up—the clean, medicinal bite of hospital soap, the stale warmth of coffee, the faintest trace of sweat under scrubs after too many hours on his feet. He didn’t look at you right away. He watched the cashier print the receipt with the same expression he wore when waiting for labs, jaw set, eyes tired, patience worn thin but not gone.

“Bag?” the cashier asked.

“No,” Jack said.

You stood there with the sandwich in one hand and the banana in the other, suddenly too aware of the bruised peel, the cold give of the sandwich through the cloudy plastic, the line behind you, and Jack Abbot’s shoulder beside yours.

You stared at him. “Seriously?”

He finally looked at you.

Jack Abbot always looked like he’d been awake since the Clinton administration. It should’ve made him less attractive. It didn't. The exhaustion sat under his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth, but there was something about him that made tired look like discipline instead of defeat. His hair was a little mussed, his scrubs were creased at the hips, and his stance had that slight adjustment you’d learned to notice after months of seeing him around PTMC—the subtle distribution of weight that came with his prosthetic leg and the old damage he carried without announcing it.

“What?” he said.

You lowered your voice. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“That’s my lunch.”

“Looked like it.”

“You paid for it.”

“Sharp today.”

You huffed, heat crawling up your neck. “Jack.”

That got you the smallest change in his face. Not a smile. He didn’t hand those out recklessly. More like one corner of his mouth remembered humor existed and gave a half-hearted twitch before giving up.

“Eat the sandwich,” he said.

“I was going to.”

“No, you were going to put it back and pretend you weren’t hungry.”

You opened your mouth.

Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

You closed it again.

Behind him, Whitaker looked down at his shoes like they might offer instructions, visibly desperate not to be part of this. Santos, unfortunately, had no such instinct.

“Damn,” she said, appearing at Jack’s shoulder with a coffee she had definitely not paid for recently enough to still be that hot. “Abbot’s buying lunch now? Is this a resident perk, or do I need to almost faint near the muffins?”

Mohan didn’t look up from stirring sugar into her tea. “You would never almost faint quietly enough to qualify.”

“I don’t faint,” Santos said.

“You got lightheaded during central line training.”

“That was low blood sugar and a hostile learning environment.” Santos pointed two fingers toward Jack. “But I’m serious. I want in on the cafeteria patron program.”

Jack looked at her.

Santos looked back.

The silence lasted exactly long enough for her confidence to thin at the edges.

“Or not,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Noted. Very selective program.”

Dana passed behind the group with a stack of charts under one arm and a look sharp enough to split sutures. “If any of you are done loitering in my cafeteria like it’s a damn wine bar, I’ve got three beds backing up, a grown adult arguing with registration, a kid melting down in triage, and a Lego stuck in one of their ear canals.”

Whitaker blinked. “Who? Adult guy or kid guy?”

Dana didn’t slow down. “That’s the part that’s gonna disappoint you.”

Santos grinned. Mohan gave a small, resigned sigh. Jack, without looking away from you, said, “Eat.”

Your face was still hot.

The sandwich felt heavier now that it had been purchased by him. Not because it was expensive. It was hospital cafeteria turkey on wheat, overpriced and bland, the cloudy plastic crinkling under your fingers every time your grip tightened. But Jack had noticed. That was the part you didn’t know how to hold. He’d seen the little calculation you’d tried to hide, the quiet defeat of deciding hunger could wait until later, and he’d stepped in with no fanfare. No pity. No soft voice.

Just a card tapped against a reader and a dry order to eat.

“I can pay you back,” you said.

Jack’s eyes dipped briefly to the sandwich and then back to your face.

“Don’t.”

“I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“That’s not how money works.”

“It is when I decide I don’t care.”

You gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “That’s very generous of you, Dr. Abbot.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

You should’ve let it go.

You really should’ve.

But the humiliation had already burned off into something else, something warmer and more dangerous, because Jack was standing there with his tired eyes and that blunt, immovable steadiness, and you had never been good at leaving tension alone when you could poke it until it bit.

“Careful,” you said, tucking the sandwich against your chest. “People are gonna think you’re my sugar daddy.”

Whitaker made a strangled sound and turned toward the condiments with the strained focus of a man suddenly invested in ketchup packets, while Santos choked on her coffee hard enough that Mohan closed her eyes like she was choosing patience on purpose. Jack only stared at you, and for one awful second, you thought you’d gone too far.

Then Jack took the receipt from the cashier, crumpled it in one hand, and said, flat as a dead monitor, “People think a lot of stupid shit.”

He walked away before you could answer.

You watched him disappear through the cafeteria doors and into the arterial chaos of the ER, shoulders squared, limp controlled, already swallowed by the work waiting for him.

Santos leaned closer, grin wide enough to be medically concerning.

“Oh, that was not nothing.”

“It was lunch,” you said.

Mohan looked at you over the rim of her cup, thoughtful in a way that made you feel unfortunately examined. “He noticed before anyone else did.”

You pressed the cold sandwich wrapper against your burning face.

Dana shouted from somewhere down the hall, “Santos, if you’re socializing instead of working, I’m assigning you Lego ear.”

Santos snapped upright. “I’m not socializing.”

“Good,” Dana called. “Then you can do it faster.”

You stood there with Jack’s lunch in your hands and tried very hard not to smile.

It would’ve been easier if that had been the end of it.

But Jack Abbot, you learned, was not a man who did anything halfway once he decided it made sense.

He didn’t become flashy. He didn’t start acting like some rich asshole in a bad romance novel, throwing cash around and waiting to be thanked for it. That would’ve been easier to resist, probably. Less intimate, anyway. You could’ve rolled your eyes at that. You could’ve made fun of him. You could’ve called it ridiculous and kept your pride intact.

Jack was worse.

Jack was practical.

He bought your coffee the next morning because, as he put it, “I was already standing there.” He brought you half a container of pasta from the staff fridge because “Robby ordered too much and nobody here understands portions.” He left a protein bar beside your laptop during a night when the waiting room looked like every bad decision in Pittsburgh had agreed to arrive at once. He noticed when your left shoe started peeling at the sole and said nothing, which somehow made you more self-conscious than if he’d pointed at it.

Robby noticed before you did.

Or maybe Robby noticed everything and simply chose when to weaponize it.

It was just after noon on a bad shift, the kind where every hallway seemed to have sprouted a stretcher and every call light sounded like one more thing nobody had enough hands to answer. You were near the nurses’ station, trying to make sense of a scheduling conflict that had three departments blaming each other in increasingly creative language, when Robby came up beside you with a tablet in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

His hair was doing that thing where it looked like he’d run both hands through it enough times to qualify as a cry for help.

“Is Abbot feeding you?” he asked.

You nearly dropped your pen. “What?”

Robby glanced toward trauma two, where Jack was leaning over a chart with Dr. McKay, both of them listening while Javadi spoke quickly and carefully, too eager to be casual. Jack’s attention was fixed, but his expression had that faintly skeptical set that made med students stand up straighter by instinct.

“Food,” Robby said. “Coffee. Whatever else he’s pretending is a coincidence.”

“He bought me lunch once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And coffee.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe pasta.”

Robby’s eyebrows rose.

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you have a point?”

“Not one worth putting in writing.” He took a sip of coffee, then winced like it tasted exactly as bad as he expected and somehow worse. “Just be careful.”

That killed the humor faster than you wanted it to.

Your eyes shifted back toward Jack before you could stop them.

Robby caught it. Of course he caught it. He was annoying that way, all ragged compassion and clinical perception, the kind of man who could call out a hemorrhage, a lie, and a panic attack in the same breath.

“He’s a good guy,” Robby said, quieter.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s uncomplicated.”

You swallowed. “I know that too.”

Robby’s face softened by a fraction. It made him look older, which was unfair, because he already looked like the hospital had been chewing on him for years and kept forgetting to swallow.

“Okay,” he said. Then, because sincerity seemed to physically pain him if left unbalanced, he added, “Also, if this turns into some HR nightmare, I’m denying I noticed.”

“There’s nothing to notice.”

“Great. Love that. Very convincing.”

You looked back down at your schedule so he wouldn’t see your face.

Across the department, Jack glanced up.

For a second, through the moving bodies and swinging privacy curtains and fluorescent glare, his eyes found yours.

He didn’t smile.

He just looked.

That was becoming the problem.

Jack didn’t flirt the way other men flirted. He didn’t crowd you with charm or drown you in compliments or make a show of wanting to be watched. He looked at you like noticing was a form of pressure. Like every detail went somewhere and stayed there. The coffee order. The bad shoe. The way you tucked your hands into your sleeves when you were cold. The way your voice got flatter when you were trying not to admit something hurt.

You wished he’d be less good at it.

You wished you liked it less.

The car thing happened on a Thursday.

You were leaving PTMC after a shift that had somehow lasted ten hours despite only being scheduled for eight, which felt like a violation of both labor law and physics. Your head ached from fluorescent lights. Your feet throbbed. The parking garage smelled like wet concrete, exhaust, and old rain, with the city beyond it slick and dark under a spring storm that had rolled in hard after sunset.

Your car made the noise again when you turned the key.

Not the cute noise. Not the “haha, she’s old but reliable” noise.

The expensive one.

A grinding, metallic cough dragged itself out from under the hood, followed by a rattle that sounded like several important pieces had started a fight and nobody was winning.

You shut the engine off immediately.

“Please,” you whispered, resting your forehead against the steering wheel. “Not tonight.”

The car answered by doing absolutely nothing, which was at least better than exploding.

You tried again.

The sound came back worse.

A knock hit your window.

You screamed.

Jack stood outside in the harsh garage lighting, rain clinging to his shoulders, one hand braced on the roof of your car. He looked unimpressed by your survival instincts.

You rolled the window down halfway. “Jesus Christ.”

“No,” he said. “Just me.”

“Do you always lurk in parking garages?”

“Only when cars sound like they’re about to die.”

“It’s fine.”

Jack looked at the hood. Then at you.

“That’s not a fine sound.”

“It does that sometimes.”

“It shouldn’t do that ever.”

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel. “I’m taking it in next week.”

“You’re not driving it until then.”

A laugh slipped out of you, brittle and defensive. “Okay, Dad.”

His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened.

Your stomach dipped.

Not fear. Not exactly.

Something else.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the open window. “Pop the hood.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Pop the hood.”

There was a particular tone he used in the ER when people were bleeding, lying, or being stupid about symptoms that could kill them. Apparently, your car had been triaged into that category.

You popped the hood.

The storm pushed rain sideways into the garage, misting the concrete in silver sheets beyond the open level. Jack moved around to the front of your car and lifted the hood, shoulders hunching slightly as he looked inside. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just dark scrubs under a gray zip-up that had seen better decades, sleeves pushed to his forearms. The overhead light caught the tendons in his hands, the salt at his temples, the hard concentration in his face.

It was obscene, honestly, watching a man become attractive over engine trouble.

He checked something, frowned, checked something else, then lowered the hood with more control than the situation deserved.

“Do not drive this,” he said.

You were already shaking your head. “I have to get home.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, Jack.”

He stared at you over the hood. “You got a better plan?”

You did not.

You had forty-three dollars in your checking account, a rent payment looming like an execution date, and a car making noises you couldn’t afford to identify. But admitting that felt worse than standing barefoot on broken glass.

“I can call someone,” you said.

“Who?”

The question was simple. Too simple.

That was the problem with Jack. He had no patience for the decorative lies people used to get through conversations. He stripped things down until you either told the truth or stood there bleeding around it.

You looked away first.

Rain ticked against the garage opening. Somewhere below, an ambulance siren rose and fell, dopplering into the wet city.

Jack’s voice dropped. “Get your bag.”

“I don’t want to be a problem.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want you fixing everything.”

“I’m not fixing everything.” He came around to your side of the car, opened the door, and stood back enough to give you room. “I’m stopping you from driving a death trap.”

You didn’t move.

Jack exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh.

“You can be mad in my car,” he said. “It has heat.”

That was how he won.

Not with softness. Not with a speech.

Heat.

You grabbed your bag and got out.

Jack’s car was clean in the way a person’s car got when they didn’t spend enough time in it to make a mess. There was an old coffee cup in the holder, a folded jacket in the back, a snow scraper on the floor, and a faint smell of leather, rain, and whatever soap he used that always made you think of hospital sinks and his hands.

He turned the heat on without asking. Then, after a second, he aimed one of the vents toward you.

You noticed.

You hated that you noticed.

Neither of you said anything as he pulled out of the garage. The rain blurred the windshield, smearing Pittsburgh into traffic lights and dark brick, ambulance bays and slick streets, the city looking bruised and alive under the storm. Jack drove with one hand low on the wheel, the other resting near the gear shift, fingers flexing once when his leg seemed to bother him.

“You okay?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

His eyes stayed on the road. “Yeah.”

“Your leg?”

“I said yeah.”

“Right. Sorry.”

His jaw worked.

Then, quieter, “Long day.”

That was as much as he usually gave. A door opened an inch, then locked again.

You nodded. “Yeah.”

The wipers dragged water from the glass in steady, tired arcs.

At a red light, Jack said, “Where do you take the car?”

You laughed weakly. “To a mechanic who knows me by name and already looks tired when I walk in.”

“I’ll call someone.”

“No.”

“You don’t know who yet.”

“I know it’s going to involve you paying for something.”

The light turned green.

Jack drove.

You looked at him, incredulous. “You’re not even denying it.”

“Seemed like a waste of both our time.”

“Jack.”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course you know a guy.”

“I’m old.”

“You’re not that old.”

That got you a glance. Brief, sharp, almost amused.

“No?”

“No,” you said, and then because you had apparently decided self-preservation was for other people, you added, “Just old enough to have a guy.”

The corner of his mouth moved.

You felt victorious and doomed at the same time.

“I can handle it,” you said, softer. “The car. I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you can.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jack was quiet long enough that you thought he might not answer.

Then he said, “Because figuring it out shouldn’t mean hoping your brakes make it another week.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly.

You looked out the window so he wouldn’t see it.

The thing about being broke—really, really, broke—wasn’t just the lack of money. It was the math. The constant, grinding math of survival. A sandwich became a calculation. A repair became a catastrophe. A strange noise under the hood became a negotiation with God or luck or whatever indifferent force kept old cars alive for one more day. You got used to making everything stretch until stretching felt like living, and then someone like Jack came along and called it unsafe in that blunt, infuriating voice, and suddenly the whole thing looked different.

Not brave.

Not independent.

Just exhausting.

He pulled up outside your building and put the car in park. Rain ran down the windshield in crooked streams.

You didn’t reach for the door handle.

“Thank you,” you said.

Jack nodded once.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“I’ll pay you back if your guy does anything.”

“No.”

You shut your eyes. “Please don’t make me fight you in your car. I’m tired.”

“I noticed.”

“Stop noticing.”

“No.”

Your eyes opened.

Jack was looking at you now, body angled slightly in the driver’s seat, face cut by passing headlights and dashboard glow. Up close, in the dim, the lines around his eyes looked deeper. So did the restraint. He wore it like part of the uniform, like scrubs and a stethoscope and whatever pain he kept filed away under function.

Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. “Why?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It was the first answer he’d given you that didn’t sound like a diagnosis.

That made it worse.

You tried to smile, tried to make the air lighter before it crushed you. “This is getting very sugar daddy of you.”

The joke landed differently in the dark.

You felt it. So did he.

Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth for half a second. Maybe less. Long enough for your pulse to trip, not long enough to accuse him of anything. Either way, when he looked back up, his face had gone still in a way that made the warm air from the vents feel suddenly too hot.

“You should go inside,” he said.

You nodded.

Neither of you moved.

Then his phone buzzed in the cup holder, snapping the moment clean down the middle. Jack glanced at the screen, saw Robby’s name, and declined the call before typing something one-handed with the resignation of a man who knew better than to leave him unanswered too long.

You opened the door before you could do something stupid, like ask him to come upstairs.

“Night, Jack.”

His hand tightened once around the phone.

“Lock your door.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yes, Doctor.”

His eyes lifted.

There it was again, that almost-smile. Faint. Dangerous.

“Don’t start,” he said.

You got out before your face could betray you.

The car repair cost eight hundred and sixty dollars.

Jack didn't tell you this.

The mechanic did, because you called behind Jack’s back after getting one text that said, Car’s handled. Pick it up Friday.

Handled.

Like it was a chart. Like it was a consult. Like it was one of the million things at PTMC that needed to be assessed, fixed, signed off, and moved along.

You stood in a supply hallway with your phone pressed to your ear, your grip tightening around the case while the mechanic cheerfully explained that Dr. Abbot had already squared it away.

Squared it away.

You were going to kill him.

Unfortunately, when you found him, he was in the middle of resetting a dislocated shoulder with Robby at the bedside and King handing over medication with careful, focused precision. There was a teenage patient crying, his mother pacing, Dana telling everyone who wasn’t useful to back up, and Jack looking exactly like a man who could not be murdered until after he finished being competent.

You had to wait.

That made you angrier.

By the time he stepped out, stripping off gloves and tossing them into the trash, you had worked yourself into something sharp enough to throw.

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars?” you said.

Jack stopped.

Robby, behind him, stopped too.

Dana looked up from the desk.

Santos, who had the survival instincts of someone convinced she could talk her way out of anything, immediately leaned over the counter.

Jack’s eyes flicked over your face. “Not here.”

“Oh, no, definitely here.”

Robby pressed his lips together and took one very deliberate step backward.

“Coward,” Dana muttered.

“Experienced,” Robby corrected.

Jack lowered his voice. “You called the mechanic.”

“You paid the mechanic.”

“Yeah.”

“Eight hundred and sixty dollars, Jack.”

“Would’ve been more if you kept driving it.”

You stared at him. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point.”

“I told you I didn’t want you fixing everything.”

“And I told you I wasn’t letting you drive a death trap.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.”

For the first time, something like frustration cracked through his calm.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get to decide everything for you. But I do get to decide what I do with my money.”

Dana made a low sound. “Jesus.”

Santos whispered, “This is better than whatever I was supposed to be doing.”

Mohan, passing with a chart, said, “You're supposed to be working.”

You barely heard them.

Your whole focus had narrowed to Jack’s face, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tension in his shoulders. He looked tired. He always looked tired. But underneath it was something else now, something protective enough to be annoying and personal enough to hurt.

“I can’t pay that back right now,” you said.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“It makes it done.”

You laughed once, without humor. “You’re impossible.”

“Usually.”

“You can’t just—” You stopped, aware suddenly of how many people were pretending not to listen. Your voice dropped. “You can’t just keep doing this.”

Jack’s gaze held yours.

“Doing what?”

The question should’ve been innocent, but it wasn’t. Not after the lunches, the coffee, the rides, the mechanic, or the way Jack looked at you like you were a problem he wanted to solve with his bare hands. You stepped closer before you thought better of it.

“You know what,” you said.

For a second, the department moved around you, loud and bright and indifferent, but you and Jack were still.

Then Dana slapped a chart down on the counter hard enough to startle everyone within ten feet.

“Okay,” she said. “As much as I’d love to watch whatever this is turn into a workplace training module, Abbot, bed nine needs you. You—” She pointed at you. “Take a breath before you rupture something expensive.”

Jack’s mouth tightened, but he listened.

Of course he listened to Dana. Everyone did, eventually.

He stepped past you, close enough that his sleeve brushed your arm.

“Friday,” he said under his breath.

You turned your head. “What?”

“Pick up your car Friday.”

Then he was gone.

Santos waited exactly three seconds.

“So,” she said, bright-eyed. “How does one apply for the Abbot scholarship fund?”

Dana pointed at her without looking. “Bedpan in curtain three.”

Santos deflated. “Damn it.”

You hated how badly you wanted to laugh.

By Friday, when you picked up your car, there was a new pair of black nonslip clogs sitting in the passenger seat.

Not fancy. Not wrapped. Just sensible, comfortable work shoes in your size, made for twelve-hour shifts and the brutal, steady wear of the ER. A sticky note was pressed to the box in Jack’s blunt handwriting.

Your old ones were unsafe.

That was it. No apology, no explanation. Just another problem he’d noticed and solved before you could decide whether to be grateful or furious.

You sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the note, then laughed until your eyes burned.

The fundraiser was Robby’s fault.

At least, that was what you told yourself, because blaming Robby was easier than admitting you had agreed to attend a hospital donor event while quietly hoping Jack would look at you in something other than scrubs.

PTMC held one every year, apparently. A grim little ritual where administrators, donors, board members, and exhausted medical staff gathered in a hotel ballroom to pretend the emergency department wasn’t being kept alive by overworked staff, aging equipment, and the quiet fact that everyone had learned to make do with less. There would be speeches. There would be bad chicken. There would be wealthy people using phrases like “frontline heroes” while nurses calculated how many working monitors the cost of the floral arrangements could’ve bought.

You hadn’t planned to go.

Then Gloria Underwood’s office had needed extra administrative support for check-in, and Robby had said, “It’s easy money. Wear something nice. Try not to let the donors explain healthcare to you.”

You’d said yes before checking your closet.

That was how you ended up in your apartment three nights before the event, sitting on the floor in a towel, surrounded by every dress you owned and the creeping realization that none of them worked. Too casual. Too tight in the wrong way. Too old. Too funeral. Too “college career fair,” stiff in all the wrong places and not nice enough to pass under ballroom lighting. One had a broken zipper. One still had a stain from a margarita incident you refused to revisit.

Your phone buzzed.

Jack:

Car still running?

You stared at the message, then at the graveyard of dresses around you.

You:

yes, dad

Jack:

Don’t.

You smiled despite yourself.

You:

thank you, by the way for the shoes too even though you’re insane

Jack:

You going tomorrow?

You stared at the message for a second too long, then looked down at the heap of rejected clothes around your legs.

You:

maybe

Jack:

That means yes.

You should’ve stopped there.

Instead, with the fatal confidence of a woman sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor and losing an argument with formalwear, you typed:

You:

it means maybe now i just need a dress that doesn’t make me look like i wandered into the fundraiser by accident

The reply took longer than usual.

Jack:

Show me.

You stared at the message, suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin the pile of rejected clothes wasn’t covering.

You:

the dress?

Jack:

What else would I mean?

Your face went hot.

You:

don’t ask me that when i’m half naked on my bedroom floor

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Jack:

You have tomorrow off?

You stared.

Then stared harder.

You:

why

Jack:

Answer the question.

There were several smart things you could’ve said.

You said none of them.

You:

yes

Jack:

I’ll pick you up at 10.

Your stomach flipped.

You:

jack

Jack:

10:30 if you’re going to argue.

You:

you don’t even know what i was going to say

Jack:

I’m learning patterns.

You pressed your phone facedown against your thigh and sat there half-dressed and mortified, thighs pressed together, waiting for your body to stop reacting like he’d put his hands on you.

The next morning, Jack arrived at 10:28.

Of course he did.

He drove you to a small boutique outside downtown, the kind of place you would’ve walked past without entering because the window displays didn’t include prices, which meant the prices were rude. Jack parked, got out, and came around to your side before you had fully finished spiraling.

“I don’t like this,” you said as he opened the door.

“You haven’t gone in yet.”

“That’s why I still have hope.”

He gave you a look.

You stepped out, hugging your coat tighter around yourself. “Jack, I’m serious. I’m not letting you buy me some expensive dress.”

“Okay.”

You blinked. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“That was too easy.”

“You said some expensive dress.” He closed the car door. “Find a cheap one.”

You stared at him.

He headed for the shop.

“That is not a loophole,” you called after him.

“It’s exactly a loophole.”

Inside, the boutique was too quiet, too soft, too expensive in ways it didn’t need to announce. Pale wood floors, warm lighting, racks arranged with almost insulting confidence, the dresses hanging with more breathing room than your apartment closet could spare. The air smelled faintly of steamed fabric and perfume, and the woman behind the counter looked up with the calm precision of someone trained to know who was buying before anyone spoke.

You hated that. You hated more that Jack didn’t seem to notice.

Or he did notice and simply didn’t care.

He told her what you needed in a few clipped sentences: hospital fundraiser, semi-formal, comfortable enough to work check-in, not black unless you wanted black, shoes optional because you had shoes. He didn't mention size like a man trying to guess or gesture vaguely at your body like an idiot. He looked at you when that part came up and let you answer for yourself.

That tiny bit of respect did something inconvenient to your chest.

The saleswoman brought options.

You rejected the first three.

Jack rejected the fourth before you could come out of the dressing room.

“No,” he said through the door.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, startled. “You haven’t even seen it.”

“I saw the sleeve.”

“You can diagnose a bad dress by sleeve?”

“I’ve diagnosed worse with less.”

You pulled the curtain back just enough to glare at him.

Jack sat in a low chair outside the dressing rooms, one ankle braced carefully, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked absurd there, too solid and worn-in for the soft gold mirrors and velvet hangers, like someone had dropped a combat medic into a room built for silk and champagne.

His eyes flicked to the sliver of dress visible through the curtain.

“No,” he repeated.

The saleswoman, traitor that she was, nodded. “He’s right.”

You shut the curtain. “I hate both of you.”

The fifth dress was the problem.

You knew it before you opened the curtain.

The fabric skimmed instead of clung, soft where it needed to be, structured where it counted. It made you look like you’d meant to be invited. Like you hadn’t spent the week calculating grocery money in your head and pretending exhaustion didn’t count if you kept moving. The neckline was tasteful, but not innocent. The color warmed your skin without washing you out. You turned once in the mirror and felt something low in your stomach shift.

Confidence, maybe.

Or danger.

“Let me see,” Jack said from outside.

“You’re bossy.”

“Yes.”

“You admit that way too easily.”

“I’m old.”

You smiled, then caught your own face in the mirror and watched the smile fade.

This was a bad idea. Not the dress—the dress was perfect.

That was the bad idea.

You opened the curtain, and Jack looked up.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The shop noise seemed to thin around you—the music, the soft movement of hangers, the saleswoman tactfully vanishing somewhere behind a rack. Jack’s gaze moved over you once, controlled enough to be deniable and slow enough to ruin you anyway. He didn’t leer. He didn’t smirk. He just looked, jaw set, eyes catching for half a second too long at your waist, your hips, the neckline of the dress, like the only thing keeping his hands to himself was the fact that you were standing under boutique lights instead of somewhere with a locked door.

His jaw shifted.

Your fingers tightened around the curtain.

“Well?” you asked, because silence was going to kill you.

Jack leaned back slightly, but it didn’t make him look relaxed. It made him look like restraint had become physical.

“No,” he said.

Your face fell before you could stop it.

Then he added, lower, “That’s the problem.”

The words landed low enough to make your stomach tighten. You looked down at yourself, then back at him. “Too much?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

His eyes returned to your face like it cost him effort.

“It fits.”

It was such a stupid answer. Controlled, careful, almost useless—and somehow hotter than a compliment, because you could hear everything he wasn’t saying in the rough edge of his voice.

You stepped fully out, smoothing your palms down the front of the dress because you needed something to do.

“It’s probably expensive.”

“Probably.”

“Jack.”

“You like it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s my point.”

You exhaled, trying to laugh, but it came out thin. “You can’t keep buying me things.”

He stood. Not quickly, not dramatically. Just unfolded himself from the chair and came closer, stopping at a respectful distance that still felt indecent because his eyes hadn’t left the dress, or you inside it.

“I can do what I want.”

“You sound like a nightmare.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You glanced toward the mirror, unable to hold his eyes. In the reflection, he stood behind you, hands at his sides, older and tired and steady, and you looked like something neither of you could keep pretending was professional.

The thought went through you too sharply.

You swallowed. “People are going to think I’m exactly what I joked about.”

Jack’s reflection didn’t move. “What’s that?”

You met his eyes in the mirror. “Your sugar baby.”

There. Said out loud in the warm boutique light, with the dress between you as evidence.

Jack’s gaze held yours. Then he stepped closer, just enough that his voice didn’t have to carry. “That what you want this to be?”

Your mouth went dry. The smart answer was no. The honest answer was more complicated, and the answer your body wanted to give had no business being spoken in public before noon.

So you made it worse on purpose.

“I don’t know,” you said, tilting your head. “Depends on the benefits package.”

Jack looked at you for a long second. Then the almost-smile appeared, brief and devastating.

“Change,” he said. “Before I regret asking.”

You spent the rest of the day pretending your hands weren’t shaking.

Saturday night came wrapped in rain and reflected light.

The hotel ballroom looked too clean, too bright, and too expensive for a fundraiser built around people who spent most days trying to keep the whole place upright. White tablecloths. Gold fixtures. Centerpieces too tall for conversation. A stage at the far end with the PTMC logo projected behind the podium, clean and official and nothing like the controlled disaster of the emergency department. Nurses and doctors looked strangely exposed out of scrubs, like actors at the wrong rehearsal. Dana wore navy and carried herself with the same brisk authority she had at the nurses’ station, like the ballroom was just another crowded hallway she intended to get under control. Robby had put on a suit, but he wore it with visible reluctance, one hand already tugging at his tie before the first speech had started.

Dr. McKay arrived with her hair pinned back, already checking her phone for updates about her son. King stood beside her, fidgeting lightly with her bracelet while listening to Whitaker ramble about how strange it was to see everyone with “normal arms,” which he then tried to explain and somehow made worse. Javadi looked polished and nervous, her mother somewhere in the room like a pressure system. Mohan was composed, elegant, and already listening to the opening remarks with the patient focus of someone rationing her tolerance carefully.

Santos wore a sharp dress and confidence like body armor.

“Okay,” she said when she saw you. “I’m going to say something, and I need you not to make it weird.”

“That’s never a good opener.”

“You look hot.”

“Santos.”

“What? I said don’t make it weird.”

Mohan, passing behind her, said, “You made it weird by announcing you weren’t going to.”

Santos ignored her. “Abbot seen you yet?”

You busied yourself with the check-in list. “Why?”

“Because I’m invested.”

“You need a hobby.”

“I have one. It’s being right.”

You were saved from answering by Dana appearing at your side with two badges and a look that missed nothing.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Dana’s eyes swept over your face, then the room, then the entrance where Jack had not yet appeared. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?”

“Me too what?”

“Nothing.”

Dana handed you the badges. “Honey, I’ve worked ER longer than some of these donors have been pretending to care about ER. I know when there’s a thing.”

“There’s not a thing.”

“Then stop looking at the door like you’re planning an escape route.”

You opened your mouth, found nothing useful, and looked back down at the check-in list.

Dana smirked and walked away.

Jack arrived ten minutes late in a dark suit, and something behind your ribs fluttered hard enough that you had to look away.

It wasn’t fancy. That was the worst part. No special tailoring, no flashy tie, no clean magazine version of him. Just a dark suit on a man who looked like he’d rather be elbows-deep in a trauma bay than standing under chandelier light, his hair slightly unruly, his face tired, his posture adjusted in that familiar way. The jacket sat broad across his shoulders. The shirt opened at the collar because of course he looked better slightly undone. There was a roughness to him the room couldn’t soften, something lived-in and disciplined and worn close to the bone.

Robby said something to him at the entrance.

Jack answered without smiling.

Then his eyes found you.

Everything else blurred.

Not fully. You were still aware of the check-in table under your hands, the murmur of donors, Santos whispering “oh my god” somewhere behind you with absolutely no attempt to hide it. But Jack looked at you in that dress, and the rest of the room slipped out of reach for one dangerous second.

He walked over slowly.

“Hi,” you said, which was embarrassing because you knew more words than that.

Jack’s gaze moved over your face first, then the dress, then back up slowly enough that your skin warmed beneath the fabric he’d bought.

“Hi.”

You tried for a smile. “You clean up okay.”

“I was going to say that.”

“You can still say it.”

“No.”

“Too generous?”

“Too easy.”

His eyes dipped again, just once, and something in your stomach tightened before he seemed to remember the room around you. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

You stared. “What is that?”

“Receipt.”

“For the dress?”

“For the car.”

Your stomach dropped. “Jack.”

“Relax.” He slid it across the check-in table with two fingers. “It says paid. That’s all.”

You looked down.

Paid.

Your throat tightened.

“You said you didn’t like owing people,” he said.

“I still owe you.”

“No.” His voice stayed quiet, but something in it made the word feel less like comfort and more like a line drawn in permanent ink. “You don’t.”

You looked up at him, and for a second the ballroom felt too bright, too crowded, too public for the thing trying to break open in your chest.

Before you could answer, Robby appeared beside Jack with the timing of a man either doing you a favor or robbing you of a bad decision.

“Abbot,” he said, “Underwood wants us near the front for the photo.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. She used the phrase ‘visible leadership.’”

“That makes it worse.”

“I agree.”

Robby looked at you then, eyes flicking once between your dress and Jack’s face. His mouth twitched.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Abbot looks like he’s about to be taken out behind the building and shot, but that’s formal for him.”

Jack gave him a look.

Robby clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Come on, visible leadership.”

Jack didn’t move immediately.

His hand came to rest at the edge of the check-in table, close enough to yours that your fingers could’ve brushed if you shifted an inch.

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

Your pulse kicked.

“I’m working.”

“After.”

Then Robby dragged him away with a level of cheer that was clearly retaliatory.

You watched Jack go and tried to remember how to do your job.

For a while, the event was exactly as awful as promised.

Speeches about resilience. Applause that sounded expensive. Donors talking about “the Pitt” like it was a concept instead of a place where every decision had a body attached to it. Gloria Underwood spoke with smooth authority while Robby stared at the middle distance like a man practicing astral projection. Langdon appeared late and left early, moving through the edge of the room with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Collins was mentioned by someone near the bar, her name landing with that particular hospital weight of people who had been part of the machinery and then weren’t there in the same way anymore.

You checked people in. You directed donors toward their tables. You smiled until your cheeks ached.

And Jack kept finding you.

Not obviously. Not enough for anyone to call it hovering. But he passed behind your chair and set a glass of water near your hand. He appeared during a lull with a plate from the buffet because “you weren’t going to get one.” He stood beside you while an orthopedic surgeon whose name you immediately forgot talked at you for seven minutes about golf, his presence quiet and solid and just intimidating enough to make the man eventually wander away.

At one point, you leaned toward him and murmured, “This is very attentive of you.”

He didn’t look down. “You looked like you were going to stab him with a pen.”

“I was.”

“Bad idea.”

“Because violence is wrong?”

“Because you’d still have to finish check-in.”

You laughed into your glass.

Jack looked at you then, and the humor in his face faded into something warmer before he caught it.

You saw him catch it.

That was the dangerous part.

Near the end of dinner, a donor with silver hair and a smile like a polished blade cornered Jack near the bar. You recognized him vaguely from the check-in list, one of those names with a foundation attached, the kind of man who spoke slowly because he expected people to wait for the privilege of his point. His wife stood beside him in pearls, looking around the ballroom with faint disappointment.

You were close enough to hear because you’d gone to retrieve extra place cards from the side table.

“Dr. Abbot,” the man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder like they were old friends and not strangers separated by several tax brackets and a moral canyon. “Hell of a turnout. You ER people clean up better than expected.”

Jack’s smile was minimal and false. “We try.”

The man’s eyes shifted to you.

You felt it like cold water.

“Well,” he said. “Some of you more than others.”

Jack’s face changed by degrees. Anyone else might’ve missed it. You didn’t.

“This is—” Jack began.

The man cut in with a laugh. “No, no, let me guess. You’re the resident I’ve been hearing about.”

His wife made a soft sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite disapproval.

Your fingers tightened around the place cards.

Jack went still.

The man looked pleased with himself, encouraged by his own cruelty. “Abbot and one of his young residents,” he said, eyes moving over you slow enough to make the dress feel suddenly too visible. “People do talk.”

Jack’s voice came out clipped. “Don’t.”

“Relax, Jack. I’m joking.” He lifted his glass slightly, like that made it harmless. “I just didn’t think you were going to start making public appearances with your little girlfriend now.”

The words entered you cleanly: little girlfriend. Not girlfriend—that would’ve been embarrassing enough. Little, like you were an accessory, a midlife crisis in a nice dress, something young and decorative Jack had brought out because he could. Something people could reduce in one glance and one ugly little adjective.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it felt like pain, and still you smiled automatically, hating yourself for it.

“It’s not—” you started, because apparently your first instinct was to make yourself smaller for the comfort of a man who had just insulted you.

Jack’s voice cut through yours. “Don’t call her that.”

The donor blinked. So did you. The room didn’t stop, not exactly—the music kept playing, silverware still clinked, someone laughed too loudly near the stage—but the air around the four of you tightened.

The donor’s smile twitched. “Easy, Doctor. No harm meant.”

“I’m not interested in what you meant.”

Jack didn’t raise his voice or step forward. He simply stood there in his dark suit, tired eyes gone cold, body held in a kind of controlled restraint that made the donor’s hand fall from his shoulder.

“If you’ve got something to say about me,” Jack continued, “say it to me. Leave her out of it.”

The wife looked away first. The donor’s face colored.

“No offense intended.”

Jack’s gaze didn’t move. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Your breath caught.

People were starting to notice. Not enough to make a scene, not enough for anyone to step in, but enough that the space around you felt suddenly brighter. Dana had turned slightly from the bar, her attention fixed and assessing. Robby watched from near the stage, glass lowered now. Even Santos had gone still, the eager curiosity wiped off her face by the look on yours.

You couldn’t stand any of it. Not the attention. Not the humiliation. Not the awful, sharp thrill of Jack defending you like he had any right to. Like he wanted the right.

You set the place cards down.

“I need some air,” you said.

Jack’s head turned toward you immediately. “Wait.”

But you were already moving.

You slipped out of the ballroom and into the corridor, then through a side door onto a covered terrace overlooking the wet street below. The rain had softened to a mist, silvering the railings and turning the city lights hazy. Cold air hit your skin, raising goosebumps along your arms where the dress left them bare.

You gripped the railing and forced one breath in, then out. In, then out. In. Out. It didn’t help. The door opened behind you, because of course it did.

You laughed under your breath because the tears were already gathering hot behind your eyes, making the terrace lights blur at the edges, and you refused to let them fall here—not in the dress Jack bought, not with your hands locked around rain-cold steel, not because some rich asshole had found the ugliest name for what you were already afraid this looked like.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said.

Jack let the door close behind him. “Done what?”

You turned on him. “Made it worse.”

“They made it worse.”

“Now everyone thinks I’m exactly what he said.”

His face changed at that, anger tightening somewhere beneath the surface, but not at you. Never quite at you.

“They don’t know what you are.”

Your chest pulled tight.

“And what am I?”

The question came out too vulnerable to take back.

Jack didn’t answer right away.

Mist clung to his suit jacket, darkening the shoulders. Behind him, warm light spilled through the glass door, all gold and soft edges, turning the ballroom into something distant and unreal. Out here, the air smelled like rain on stone, cold metal, wet city streets below. Everything was sharper than it had been inside. The railing under your hands. The damp hem of your dress against your legs. The silence between his breath and yours.

He looked so out of place and exactly right, a man built for crisis standing in the aftermath of one he couldn’t stitch closed.

You hated that you wanted him to say it.

You hated more that he looked like he wanted to.

Instead, he said, “Not that.”

A hard little laugh left you before you could stop it. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Great.”

Jack came closer, stopping beside you but not touching. The restraint was worse than touch. You could feel him there anyway, the heat of his body cutting through the cold night, the careful space he left like distance could still save either of you.

You stared out at the rain-blurred city. Headlights smeared over the street below. Somewhere, a siren rose and faded, thin and familiar enough to make your stomach twist.

“You bought the dress,” you said.

“Yes.”

“You fixed my car.”

“Yes.”

“You buy my food. You show up. You pay for things before I can even figure out how to say no.”

Something moved in his jaw, but he didn’t interrupt.

“What do you think people are going to call that?”

“I don’t give a shit what people call it.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me what you call it.”

The words took the air out of the terrace.

You looked at him.

Jack’s eyes held yours, tired and dark and unflinching. He wasn’t letting you hide in the joke this time. He wasn’t letting himself hide either. That was the terrifying part. The thing between you had been allowed to live as banter because neither of you had forced it to stand under direct light.

Sugar daddy. Old man. Doctor. Daddy.

All those little names you used to turn intimacy into comedy before it could ask something of you.

Now Jack was standing there asking.

Tell me what you call it.

Your mouth felt dry.

“I call it confusing,” you said.

His expression shifted.

You kept going because stopping felt worse. “I call it you being too good at noticing things I wish you wouldn’t. I call it you making it really fucking hard to feel normal around you. I call it embarrassing when someone says the quiet part out loud and I realize I don’t even know how to defend myself because I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Jack’s hands were still at his sides, but nothing about him looked relaxed.

You swallowed. “And I call it unfair that you get to act like this is all practical when you look at me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Like what?”

You shook your head. “Don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know what I look like under the dress.”

The words left you too soft, too honest, and Jack inhaled slowly. Neither of you moved while rain whispered beyond the overhang and the ballroom noise pressed faintly through the door, muffled and useless, like it belonged to a different night.

Then he said, rougher than before, “I don’t.”

The words went through you slowly, leaving heat in places they had no right to reach.

His eyes lowered, not all the way down your body this time. Just to your mouth.

“But I’ve thought about it.”

The terrace went silent.

Or maybe your body stopped receiving sound from anything that wasn’t him.

You stared at him, suddenly aware of everything at once: the dress clinging where the mist had touched it, the cold air slipping beneath the hem, the damp railing at your back, the small, charged space between your body and his. Jack hadn’t touched you, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he’d already imagined where his hands would go first. The want in his face wasn’t polished or easy. It looked dragged out of him, unwilling and hungry, like every careful thing in him had finally started losing.

“Jack,” you whispered.

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

You stepped closer, just enough to watch his control take the hit.

“What was I going to say?”

His eyes lifted.

“That we shouldn’t.”

The truth of it sat there between you, almost laughable.

You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. The age gap was there, humming under the surface. The hospital. The money. The care. The fact that everyone seemed to have noticed before either of you had admitted it out loud. The fact that Jack carried enough damage to make most people step carefully, and you were standing there in a dress he bought, wanting him to ruin every careful thing about you.

“You’re right,” you said.

Jack nodded once, like the verdict had been delivered.

Then you added, “That's what I was going to say.”

His eyes sharpened.

You took one more step.

“But it’s not what I want.”

For the first time all night, Jack looked shaken.

Not much. He’d never give that much away in public. But you saw it in the slight part of his mouth, the break in his breathing, the flicker of something raw beneath the restraint.

“Say that again,” he said.

The words nearly undid you.

You lifted your chin because if you were going to tell the truth, you were going to do it with your head held high.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Jack looked at you for one long, unbearable second, then lifted his hand slowly enough to give you every chance to step back.

You didn’t.

His knuckles brushed your jaw first, careful in a way that made your whole body ache. Not rough. Not yet. Worse than rough, maybe, because he was still holding himself back and you could feel the effort in every inch he didn’t take.

“You’re not my little girlfriend,” he said.

Your chest tightened. “No?”

“No.” His thumb shifted under your chin, tipping your face up by degrees, not forcing you, just making it impossible to look anywhere else. “You’re not little. You’re not a joke. And you’re sure as hell not something I’m ashamed of wanting.”

The words sank through you, hot and low, settling in every place he still hadn’t touched. Jack’s eyes dropped to your mouth and stayed there long enough to make the choice for both of you.

Then he kissed you.

It wasn’t frantic at first.

That would’ve been easier.

It was deliberate, a firm press of his mouth to yours, steady and devastating, like he had finally decided to stop lying but still hadn’t given himself permission to forget where you were. His hand held your jaw; the other stayed at his side, fingers curled tight like touching you anywhere else might finish what the kiss had started.

You made a small sound against his mouth.

That was what broke it.

Jack stepped into you, guiding you back until the rail met your spine, and the kiss turned filthy in one sharp, breath-stealing shift. His mouth opened wider, tongue pushing past your lips to lick deep and slow against yours, wet enough to make your knees weaken, sure enough to make heat pool low in your gut. His breath came rough through his nose, his hand sliding from your jaw to the side of your neck, thumb tucked beneath your chin like he wanted to feel the exact second you stopped fighting him and melted under his palm.

You grabbed his jacket.

He made a low sound, almost a warning.

You pulled him closer anyway.

The rail pressed against your back. Damp air cooled your bare arms. Inside, beyond the glass, the fundraiser glowed on with its speeches and donors and useless flowers, but out here Jack’s body cut off the light, his mouth hot and sure, his hand at your neck keeping you exactly where he wanted you.

When he dragged himself back, he didn’t go far.

His forehead hovered near yours. His breathing was harsher now. So was yours.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

You laughed, breathless enough that it came out softer than you meant. “You kissed me.”

“I know.”

“So your professional opinion is hypocritical.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed dark, fixed on yours with a heat that made it impossible not to remember his tongue in your mouth. He looked like he was still tasting you, like he was one wrong word away from dragging you back against the railing and making a mess of that pretty, expensive dress.

“You keep talking,” he said, voice low enough to feel like it belonged between your legs instead of in the open air, “and I’m going to forget we’re still at a hospital fundraiser.”

Liquid heat shot through you, sharp and shameless. You curled your fingers higher into his lapels. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jack searched your face for one last sign that you wanted him to be better than this.

You didn’t.

His thumb dragged once along the side of your neck, slow enough to make your thighs press together under the dress, then he stepped back and opened the door.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

His eyes held yours.

“My car.”

The walk through the ballroom should’ve been humiliating. Maybe it was. You couldn’t tell. Jack stayed close without touching you, which somehow looked worse after what had just happened, like distance had become another form of confession. Your mouth still felt swollen from his, your skin too awake beneath the dress, your whole body lit with the kind of want that made every normal step feel rehearsed.

Robby saw you first, because of course he did. His eyes moved from Jack’s face to yours, then back again, and he lifted his glass slightly—not smiling, just acknowledging the inevitable.

Dana caught your eye from near the bar with one eyebrow raised. Santos looked ready to say something disastrous until Mohan turned her gently but firmly toward the dessert table. McKay glanced over, clocked enough to know better, and immediately pulled Whitaker into a conversation he looked relieved to have guidance for. Javadi watched for half a second too long, then looked away like she’d remembered curiosity had consequences.

Jack ignored all of them.

You loved and hated him for it.

The elevator ride down was worse.

Mirrored walls. Soft music. Your reflection beside his. His shoulder inches from yours. The phantom feel of his hand still on your neck. Neither of you speaking because speech had become a loaded weapon and you were both already wounded.

In the parking garage, the air smelled like rain and concrete again.

Jack unlocked the car.

You stopped by the passenger door, suddenly aware of the line you were crossing. Not the moral one. That had been smudged for weeks. This was more physical. More real. A door. A backseat. His face in the dim garage light, turned toward you with all that want and all that control and all the consequences waiting behind both.

He saw the hesitation immediately.

Of course he did.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

The words loosened something in you.

Not because you wanted to.

Because he meant it.

You stepped closer. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Jack’s eyes searched yours.

“Tell me if I do something you don’t want.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

He nodded once.

Then you said, quieter, “Do you?”

His face shifted.

“Do I what?”

“Know what I want.”

The garage seemed to hold its breath.

Jack opened the back door.

“Get in,” he said.

Not loud. Not cruel.

Just low enough to go through you like a match.

You got in.

The door shut behind you, and for one suspended second you were alone in the dark leather backseat with your heartbeat, the rain ticking somewhere beyond the garage, and the reflection of Jack moving around the car in the tinted window.

Then the opposite door opened.

He slid in beside you, too big for the space, too warm, too close. The dome light cut over his face for a second before it faded, leaving him in shadow and stray fluorescent spill. His knee brushed yours. His hand came up, not touching yet, braced against the seat near your hip.

“You still think this is about money?” he asked.

Your breath caught.

You shook your head.

“Words.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think it’s about money.”

His gaze dropped to your mouth.

“What’s it about?”

You could’ve said care.

You could’ve said want.

You could’ve said every soft, terrifying thing his hands had been saying for weeks with coffee cups and repair bills and the new shoes you wore until they stopped hurting.

Instead, because you were trembling and stubborn and still you, you whispered, “Your sugar daddy complex.”

Jack’s eyes flashed.

Then he kissed you hard enough to knock your head back against the seat and it was nothing like the terrace—careful and slow and weighted with confession. This was hungry. His teeth caught your bottom lip, tugged, and the sound you made was swallowed by his mouth as his tongue slid against yours, wet and deep and tasting like the whiskey he'd barely touched all night. His other hand found your waist, gripping the silk of the dress, bunching it, pulling you across the seat until your hip hit his and you gasped into his mouth.

"Jack—"

"Don't talk." His lips dragged to your jaw, your throat, the spot behind your ear that made you arch. "Just—let me —"

His hand slid up your thigh, pushing the dress higher, and the leather was cool against the backs of your legs but his palm was hot, rough, callused from years of work and combat and things he never talked about. You spread for him without thinking. He made a sound against your neck—approval, hunger, relief—and his fingers pressed higher, found the wet heat through your underwear, and stopped.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're already—"

You bit his earlobe. "Your mouth on the terrace did that."

He laughed—a low, broken thing—and his fingers hooked the edge of your panties, dragged them down your thighs. You lifted your hips to help, and he dropped them somewhere on the floor mat, already forgotten, already gone. His hand came back wet.

"Look at me."

You did. His eyes were dark, half-lidded, his breathing ragged. The garage light caught the silver in his beard, the flush rising up his neck, the way his thumb was already circling your clit like he'd done it a thousand times before. He hadn't. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I tried to be careful with you,” he said, voice rough, his fingers sliding through your slick folds, gathering, teasing, “I tried so fucking hard. Then I walked in and saw you at that table in the dress I bought you, and I knew I was done.”

Your breath hitched as his middle finger pressed inside you, just the tip, just enough to make your hips buck.

"—and you knew, didn't you?" He pushed deeper, slow, watching your face. "Knew what it was doing to me."

You couldn't answer. His finger was inside you, thick and deliberate, curling, finding the spot that made your vision blur. Then a second finger joined it, stretching, and you heard yourself whimper—high and desperate and not caring who heard.

"That's it," he murmured. "Let me hear you."

He worked you open like he had all night, like the parking garage was empty, like the world had shrunk to the space between his fingers and your cunt. His thumb pressed your clit in slow circles while his fingers pumped—not hard, not fast, just deep and aching, stretching you until you were dripping down his hand, until your nails dug into his shoulder through his jacket.

"Jack—I need—"

"I know what you need."

He pulled his fingers out slowly, deliberately, and you watched him bring them to his mouth. Watched his tongue slide across his knuckles, tasting you, his eyes never leaving yours. The sight of it—this tired, controlled man in his undone suit, licking your wetness off his fingers like it was the best thing he'd tasted all night—made your hole clench around nothing.

"Get on top of me."

It wasn't a question. He was already reaching for his belt, the buckle rasping open, the sound sharp and final in the close air of the car. You climbed over him, the dress bunching around your waist, your knees finding the leather on either side of his hips. His cock was hard beneath his briefs, straining against the fabric, and you reached down and wrapped your hand around it.

He hissed through his teeth. "Fuck —"

He was thick. Hot. The head slick with something that might have been precum, might have been your imagination, but when you stroked him once, slow, his hips bucked into your palm.

"If you keep doing that," he said, his voice strained, "this is going to be very embarrassing for me."

You laughed—breathless, wild—and leaned down to kiss him. "Then stop me."

He didn't.

His hand found your hip, guided you forward, and the head of his cock nudged against your entrance. Wet. Ready. The two of you hovered there, breathing each other's air, and his forehead pressed against yours.

"Tell me you want this."

"I want this." Your voice was barely a whisper. "I want you. Please, Jack—"

He pushed inside you.

The stretch was a shock—full and deep and so much more than his fingers had promised. You gasped, your nails digging into his shoulders, your head falling back as he filled you inch by inch, until you were seated in his lap, his hips flush against yours, his cock buried to the hilt inside your tight, wet heat.

"Fuck," he breathed. "Fuck, you feel—"

He couldn't finish. His hands found your hips, held you there, and for a moment neither of you moved. Just the feeling of him inside you, the throb of his pulse through his cock, the way your body adjusted, accepted, wanted.

Then you moved.

Slow at first—a roll of your hips that made his eyes roll back, a tilt of your pelvis that drove him deeper. His grip tightened on your waist, guiding, and you found the rhythm together: him thrusting up as you sank down, the slap of skin loud in the enclosed space, the wet sound of your bodies meeting.

"Look at you," he said, his voice rough, his eyes fixed on where you were joined. "Taking all of me. Fucking yourself on my cock in a parking garage."

You moaned, riding him harder, the dress bunched around your waist, the silk skin-warm and bunched up. His thumb found your clit again, pressing, circling, and the pleasure coiled tight in your belly, hot and sharp and building.

"The dress," you gasped. "You bought me this dress—"

"I bought it so I could take it off you." He tugged at the strap with his teeth, the fabric slipping down your shoulder, exposing your breast to the dim light. His mouth was on it instantly—hot, wet, his tongue circling your nipple before he sucked, hard, and you cried out, your rhythm faltering.

"Say it again." His mouth against your skin. "Say sugar daddy again and see what happens."

You laughed, breathless, your hips grinding against him. "Sugar daddy."

He bit your shoulder—not hard, but enough to make you gasp—and then his hand was in your hair, pulling your head back, forcing you to meet his eyes.

"Then take what I give you." His voice was low and rough and it made your pussy squeeze around him. "Take this cock like you've been wanting to since I fixed your goddamn car."

You did. You rode him harder, faster, the leather squeaking beneath your knees, the car rocking with the motion, your breath coming in short, desperate gasps. His hand stayed in your hair, his other gripping your hip hard enough to bruise, and he thrust up into you with a rhythm that was pure instinct—hungry, claiming, the restraint he'd held for weeks finally snapping.

"That's it," he growled. "That's my girl. Taking what she needs."

"Jack—I'm close—"

"I know. I can feel you. You're squeezing me so fucking tight—"

His thumb pressed harder on your clit, circling faster, and the orgasm hit you like a wave—sudden and overwhelming, your vision white, your back arching as your cunt clamped down on his cock, pulsing, milking, the pleasure so sharp it was almost pain. You heard yourself cry out—his name, a curse, something that might have been a sob—and he kept thrusting through it, drawing it out, letting you ride him through the aftershocks.

"Fuck—" His voice broke. "I'm going to—"

"Inside me." You grabbed his face, forced him to look at you. "I want it. Please."

He came with a groan that was almost a prayer, his hips driving up one last time, his hand gripping your hip so hard it would leave marks. You felt it—hot and thick, pumping into you, filling you, his cock twitching with each pulse, his breath ragged against your lips. The sensation pushed you into a second, smaller climax, your body clenching around him, drawing out every drop.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. His forehead rested against yours. His breathing was harsh, uneven, mingling with yours in the close air. The car smelled like sex and sweat and the faint, stubborn trace of hospital soap beneath his cologne, and your thighs were slick and trembling, and his cock was still half-hard inside you, and it was the most real you'd felt all night.

Then he laughed.

A low, disbelieving sound, his shoulders shaking against yours. You started laughing too, breathless and giddy, and you kissed him—messy, open-mouthed, tasting salt and spit and the whiskey he'd barely touched.

"Well," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you. "That was—"

"Stupid," you supplied.

"Reckless."

"A really bad idea."

His hand came up to cup your face again, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Worth it."

You kissed him again, slower this time, and you felt him smile against your mouth. When you pulled back, you were still straddling him, his cock still softening inside you, and the reality of it settled into your bones like warmth.

"We should probably—" you started.

"Yeah." He didn't move. "In a minute."

His hand found yours on his chest, lacing your fingers together, and the garage light caught the gray in his hair and the tired lines around his eyes and the way he was looking at you like you were the first real thing he'd seen in years.

"I'm not going to pretend this was casual," he said.

"Good," you said. "Because it wasn't."

He helped you clean up with the wet wipes he found in the glove compartment—absurd, practical, so perfectly him—and then he helped you rearrange the dress, his hands careful now, almost reverent, smoothing the silk over your hips like he was putting something precious back together. The fabric was wrinkled now, carrying the memory of his hands, and when you looked at yourself in the window reflection, you saw the flush on your chest, the bite mark on your shoulder, the way your hair had come loose from the careful updo.

You looked like someone who had been thoroughly, completely, indisputably wanted.

He watched you adjust the strap, his eyes following the small, careful movement like it mattered. You sat half-turned against him in the backseat, put back together enough to face the world again, though both of you knew exactly what had happened here. Jack’s hand rested at the back of your neck, thumb moving slowly against your skin, and in the dim garage light he looked less like the man everyone trusted in a crisis and more like someone who’d finally let himself want something he couldn’t triage.

“What?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’re about to disappear into your own head.”

That almost-smile moved over his mouth, faint and tired. “You diagnosing me now?”

“I learned from a very bossy doctor.”

“He sounds unbearable.”

“He is.”

The quiet settled, full of everything waiting outside the car: the fundraiser, the rumor, the receipt, the repaired car, the shoes, the dress, every careful thing Jack had done before either of you had dared to call it care. You looked down. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like a burden.”

Jack didn’t answer quickly. That made it worse. Better. Finally, he said, “Needing help isn’t the same thing as being helpless.”

Your throat tightened. You hated him a little for knowing exactly where to put the words. You loved him a little for it too.

“Jack,” you said softly.

He waited.

You smiled, small and shaky. “Do I get an allowance now?”

For half a second, he stared at you. Then his eyes closed, and the laugh that left him was quiet, rough, almost unwilling. It felt like winning something no one else got to see. When he opened his eyes, they were warm.

“You get breakfast.”

“That’s it?”

“And your car.”

“Already got that.”

“And the shoes.”

“Also already got those.”

“And whatever else you need,” he said, thumb brushing once at your neck, “if you stop acting like needing it makes you less.”

Your smile faded into something softer. “That sounds an awful lot like a boyfriend.”

Jack looked at you for a long moment, tired and undone and still there. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m working up to that.”

The fundraiser was still waiting upstairs, all polished glassware and polite cruelty, the kind of room where people could turn want into rumor before the night was over. You would have to go back to PTMC after this. You would pass Jack in hallways. You would hear his voice over trauma bays, see his name on charts, feel the weight of every title that should have made this impossible.

But in the backseat, with his thumb moving slowly against your skin, Jack wasn’t looking at you like a mistake, or a risk, or something he’d have to explain away in daylight.

He was looking at you like something worth keeping.

The Winter Soldier doesn't love anyone, he’s got a heart made of Siberian ice and a soul that drowned in the dark waters of his past.A past he can’t even remember, leaving him completely numb to the world.

They built him to be a cold-blooded killer, a weapon wrapped in tactical gear, moving through nights like a phantom. He doesn’t know the touch of a real romance, he doesn't know how to hold a girl's hand without feeling the weight of a trigger.He only understands the darkness.

His metal arm is freezing to the touch, smelling of gun oil, cheap gasoline, and the bitter copper of old blood. It's a flawless piece of Soviet machinery designed to break pulchritudinous things into a million little pieces.

He has seen too many empires fall, too many cities burn, and too many innocent people beg for their lives. There’s no softness left in his damaged mind, no vintage love songs from the quadragenarian years playing in his head. The only sound it the loud static of old military radios and a long list of names he was programmed to erase from the earth without a single spark of pity or regret.

He is a monster masquerading as a god, a beautiful nightmare that you just can't wake up from no matter how hard you scream. When he breathes, it’s just the freezing air of a perpetual winter filling up his hollow chest.

He is not a human, he’s just a ghost trapped in a body of muscle.A hollow shell where a man’s soul used to live before they tore it out and replaced it with wires and Soviet steel. He does not feel, he doesn't know what it’s like to have a warm heart beating against his ribs. He doesn’t feel the sting of the freezing rain on his face, he doesn’t feel the ache of loneliness in the middle of the night, and he certainly doesn’t feel a single drop of guilt when his hands are wrapped around someone’s throat in a dark alleyway.

You could cry right in front of him, you could bleed all over his black leather boots, and those storm-colored eyes wouldn’t even blink, because there is no pity inside him, no tenderness.

So why is it that every time he sees you in your little bookstore, tucked away between the dusty old paperbacks and the soft glow of the lamps, he swears he feels something?—a terrifying little spark that cuts right through his chest?

It’s probably a glitch in his programming...right?An agonizing malfunction that shouldn’t exist in a man like him. Every time he looks at you, the heavy static in his brain suddenly clears, replaced by a strange warmth. It feels like a forgotten memory of a summer sun he hasn't seen in fifty years.

It makes no sense to an asset like him; it scares him more than any bullet ever could, because he doesn't know how to handle the sudden weight of being almost human again.

Because of that terrifying feeling, he’s been stalking you for months now. And he's completely unable to stop himself from drifting toward you. He’s become a permanent fixture in the shadows across the street, parking his motorcycle.

He watches you through the rain-streaked glass of your shop as you dust the shelves, drink your black coffee, and read those sad, romantic books until closing time. He knows the exact time you turn off the radio, he knows the sound of your keys jingling in the front door lock, and he has completely memorized the way your perfume smells when you step out into the night air.An intoxicating mix of expensive vanilla and something he can't name.

He tracks your movements like a predator, knowing which train you take, which street corners you cross, and exactly how long you linger at the flower shop down the avenue.

Pink roses are your favorites,he has learned.

He hates himself for it, he hates that a cold-blooded killer like him is utterly hooked on the simple, mundane sight of a girl who doesn't even know his name. He’s an addict, unable to tear his dead eyes away from you.Because in a world full of blood and white noise, you are the only thing that makes his heart beat against his metal ribs.

He tried to forget you, god knows he tried to wipe the very memory of you from his damaged mind. He went back to the dark streets of foreign cities, trying to forget you. He threw himself into the violence, losing himself in the familiar comfort of high-stakes missions and the sound of gunfire.

He was desperate to let the adrenaline wash away the soft light in your eyes. He stared at the cracked ceilings for days, trying to force his brain back into the icy state of a perfect soldier. But none of it worked, absolutely none of it, because no matter how many miles he put between himself and your shop,it just didn't work.

Mostly, he just can’t get your soft lips out of his mind. It’s a sick obsession that keeps him awake in the dead of night A cold-blooded killer shouldn't know longing, but he craves the thought of your lips more than his next breath, imagining how incredibly soft they would feel against his own unholy mouth.

He imagines the sweetness of you on his tongue even when he’s surrounded by the bitter smell of gunpowder and blood, a torture that makes his metal fists clench in sheer frustration. He is a monster completely ruined by the simple, devastating thought of your lips.

He can’t get the thought of you on your knees for him out of his head.It’s an obscene image that burns behind his eyelids every time he closes them. It's a vision so sharp it makes his breath catch in his hollow throat.

He imagines you there, small and completely surrendered on the cold hardwood floor of your little shop, looking up at him through your eyelashes with that soft innocence. He craves the total submission of it. He wants to look down and see you ruined by him

And your lips. God, your lips on his...

The thought alone is a lethal dose of adrenaline running through his frozen veins. He wants to feel the agonizing contrast of your warmth against his vile mouth. He wants to ruin your neat little world with his heavy, rough hands.

He wants to press his mouth against yours until the taste of blood and gunpowder is completely drowned in your sweetness, leaving him choked on a desire he has no right to feel.

It’s a suffocating hunger. He knows he would break you—but the dark, selfish part of his broken soul doesn't care. He wants to be the one who brings you to your knees, and he wants to be worshipped by your mouth.

He knows that this wrong. Every single cell in his genetically engineered body screams at him that this is a fatal error. A weapon doesn’t crave the softness of a girl’s lips. A soldier doesn’t dream of a submissive angel on her knees in the warm glow of a bookstore.

It’s a betrayal of everything he is. Every time his mind drifts back to the vanilla scent of your skin, a cold sweat breaks out under his tactical gear, a raw panic that he hasn’t felt since they first strapped him into the chair.

Because he knows what happens if Hydra finds out.They will come for you. They would see you not as a girl, but as a contagion. A weakness to be excised with surgical precision. They would hunt you down, shatter the glass of your pretty little shop, and paint those dusty paperbacks with your blood just to prove to him that he belongs to them.

They would make him watch. Or worse, they would re-program him, wipe his mind until his eyes are dead again, and force his own flesh and metal hands around your delicate throat.

The mere thought of Hydra discovering your existence sends a spike of pure terror through his chest. He can already hear the clinical voices of his handlers, the heavy clanking of the laboratory doors, and the terrifying phrase that strips away everything he is: Longing. Seventeen. Daybreak.

He should leave. He should turn the key to his motorcycle, speed into the freezing rain, and never look back at this street corner again. He should let the winter swallow him whole.

It’s Valentine’s Day, but the flashing red and pink neon signs down the avenue don’t mean a damn thing to you. You’re standing inside your little bookstore, surrounded by the comforting scent of old paper and dust, completely detached from the cheap, plastic romance that the rest of the city is buying into tonight.

You haven't cared about this day in years, closing your heart off to the hollow promises of drugstore chocolates and rushed dinners, choosing instead the quiet safety of your own solitude. It’s not that you’re bitter; it’s just that you have these impossibly big, cinematic expectations of what love should be.A grand, dangerous kind of devotion that nobody in this mundane world could ever give you. You have these high standards built from the poetry and romantic novels on your shelves, and you’d rather spend your nights completely alone than settle for a lukewarm boyfriend who doesn't understand the depth of your personality.

You look out the rain-streaked window at the couples rushing past under their umbrellas, knowing that you’re waiting for a different kind of romance.

So it shouldn’t bother you that all of your friends are out tonight with their partners, dressed up in their expensive, velvet clothes, drinking cheap red wine under the dim lights of fancy downtown restaurants. It shouldn't matter that they are whispering sweet, mundane little clichés into each other's ears.

But it does, it really does. You can feel your chest tightening with a heavy ache at the thought of spending another long night entirely alone.

It’s always been like this though. They’ve always had their fun, drifting through the easy phases of normal romance, while you—well, you always stayed behind. A disastrous girl locked away in her own ivory tower of old paper.God,it sounds like you're a character in a Paula Fox novel.

You try to tell yourself that you’re above it all, that their drugstore version of love could never fulfill a girl with your kind of imagination. But as the hours tick away, the quiet of the bookstore becomes an absolute prison, and the crushing, agonizing realization that you are completely on your own in the dark.

Or...are you?

You glance at the clock on the wall and realize it’s finally time to close up, because the streets have been empty for hours and nobody is going to walk through that door tonight. I mean, who in their right mind would come to a dusty old bookstore on Valentine’s Day anyway?

You start moving through the golden shadows of the shop, your fingers lingering on the spines of the sad poetry books as you prepare to shut it all down.

You turn off the vintage radio, cutting off the melancholic jazz that was keeping you company, and the sudden silence hits your chest like a physical weight. You grab your keys, the metal clinking sharply in the quiet room, ready to lock the door, completely unaware that the only man who has ever truly looked at you is still waiting out there in the dark.

You step out into the freezing night, turning the key in the lock until the bolt clicks firmly into place. You pop open your black umbrella against the pouring rain, pulling your trench coat tight around your chest as you take your first step onto the wet pavement.The wind is howling down the avenue, and you’re walking with your head down, just trying to escape the bitter cold.

You only take three steps before you crash hard into a solid, unyielding wall of muscle and wet leather. A force so heavy it sends a sharp shock straight up your spine and makes your umbrella wobble in your hand.

You stumble back, your breath catching in your throat as you look up through the rain-streaked air, trying to make out the silhouette towering over you.It’s too dark to see his face under the shadows of the street corner, but you can perceive his shoulders and the dark tactical gear strapped tight under his jacket.

Then you look down, and your heart skips a heavy beat.A single, delicate pink rose is lying in the puddle, its soft petals bruised by the cold water. It must have fallen from his hands the moment you collided.

“I'm so sorry,” you whisper, your voice trembling slightly in the freezing air as you lean down to gently pick up the flower.You stand back up, holding the bruised pink rose out to him. You wait for him to take it, wait for a curse, a brush-off, or the sound of his voice—anything to break the awkward silence stretching out between you under the pouring rain.

He doesn’t say a word. He just reaches out and takes the pink rose from your hand, his black leather glove brushing against your fingers for a brief second. He tucks the flower into his jacket pocket, turns around, and walks away into the rainy night, leaving you standing alone under your umbrella.

You stay there on the sidewalk for a long time, watching the spot where he disappeared. Your mind is spinning, completely confused by what just happened.

You wonder who this giant of a man was.You touch your fingers to your lips, still tasting the bitter scent of his gasoline and gun oil in the air.

You walk back to your apartment, the freezing rain soaking through your coat, but you can barely feel the cold. You climb the stairs, turn the key to your bedroom, and throw your wet clothes on the floor.You pour yourself a glass of cheap red wine and sit on the edge of your bed, staring at the ceiling.

Your mind is completely hijacked by him. You can’t stop thinking about the dangerous contrast of his body against yours.It’s a haunting image that keeps looping in your head—this silent, terrifying monument of a man, carrying a single pink rose through the storm like a cliché.

You crawl under the blankets, wondering where the stranger was going.

You don't know that outside your window, tucked away in the alley, his motorcycle sits idling in the dark. The Winter Soldier feels so incredibly foolish, a cold-blooded assassin frozen in place by a girl who smells like vanilla and old books.

He looks down at the bruised pink rose resting on the leather seat of his bike. He hadn't planned on any of this. He had only intended to slip into your shop during the closing chaos, to leave that soft, stupid flower on your counter when you weren't looking—a silent, anonymous token from a monster who has no right to feel like this.

But then the brass lock had clicked, you had stepped into the rain, and you had broken right against his chest.He couldn't even speak. A machine that knows how to order an execution in five different languages completely lost his voice the moment your hands brushed his glove.

Oh,he's pathetic.

Maybe it was because, for the very first time, he actually looked at you. Not through the distorted scope of a rifle, not through a rain-streaked windshield, but right there in the blackness of the street corner.

He saw the soft innocence in your eyes, the gentle way you rescued his bruised flower from the puddle. He feels trapped between his violent programming and the terrifying realization that your sweetness has officially conquered something inside him.

He decides it’s better to keep his distance, at least for a little while. He needs to pull back and disappear, if only for a single day, just to analyze the fatal error running wild through his system.

He needs to look at the situation with the calculating precision of the weapon he was built to be, rather than the desperate longing of a man who has lost his mind over a bookstore girl.Yeah..he's pathetic.

Few hours later he sits in a cheap motel room on the edge of the city. The bruised pink rose sits on the nightstand next to his silver handguns and his black tactical knife—a delicate little intruder in his violent world.It's kinda ironic.

He tells himself that one day away from your bookstore will cure this sickness, that twenty-four hours of isolation will put the ice back into his veins and force the vanilla scent out of his head. He promises himself he will stay away, that he won't drive past your street corner, and that he will find a way to become himself again.

And then...the air in the motel room is thick. He sits on the edge of the mattress, his tactical gear half-undone, staring at that pale pink rose on the nightstand until his vision blurs. He tried to think like a soldier, he tried to run the numbers, but the cold analysis completely shatters under the memory of your body breaking against his chest in the pouring rain.

His heavy leather glove hits the floor with a dull thud, and he reaches down with his bare human hand, his fingers trembling with hunger he hasn't felt in a lifetime.Or has he? He knows what he's doing,how to...but why? He knows pieces are missing from his brain.

He closes his eyes, and suddenly he’s not in this rotting room anymore—he’s back in the golden glow of your bookstore, watching your soft lips part, visualizing you shape,your submission as you drop to your knees on the hard wood floor just for him.

He touches himself with a rough slowness, his breath catching sharply in his hollow throat as the image burns behind his eyelids. He visualizes his metal fingers tangled ruthlessly in your hair, holding you down, forcing you to take every inch of him.You look up at him with those innocent eyes,that tear up a bit,and he gets harder at the thought. Every stroke is fueled by adrenaline and a fatal error in his system that makes his muscles lock up and his chest heave as he chases the taste of your skin and your sweet, ruined mouth in the dark.

He groans into the empty room, a low sound that tastes like sins, his hips moving in a punishing rhythm against his own bare hand. He’s completely losing his mind in the red neon light of Valentine's day, hallucinating the friction of your soft thighs against his waist.

He pulls his own hair with his metal hand, wanting the sharp sting of pain to wake him from this wicked dream, but he’s too far gone, too deeply drowned in the fantasy of ruining you. His imagination ahifts from the bookstore.He imagines pinning you down into this mattress, your delicate wrists held captive above your head by his silver fingers.

He is chasing a high he was never meant to know, driving himself closer and closer to the edge with the devastating thought of your lips stretched wide around him.

His muscles lock, veins standing out against his neck as an electric jolt of adrenaline tears through his frozen spine. With one final thrust against his own hand,it hits him like a physical blow, that leaves him completely undone in the bleeding red light of the neon sign.

He gasps, a low sound echoing against the peeling wallpaper. He collapses back onto the damp sheets, his human hand slick and his silver fingers trembling against the mattress, completely paralyzed.

The static in his brain is gone, replaced by a silence that offers no comfort,and terrifying realization that he didn't wash you out of his system at all. He just let you entirely inside,his heartbeat slowly drops back into the freezing dark.

...

Two days. Two whole days of absolute silence.

He managed to stay away from your street corner for forty-eight hours, hiding out in the dark. Trying to cure himself of a wicked addiction. He cleaned his weapons, and tried to pretend that the sweet scent of vanilla had finally faded from his leather jacket.

He told himself that the error in his system was corrected, that the cold-blooded killer was back in control, and that your little bookstore was just a hallucination he had successfully left behind in the rain.

But it was all a lie, a delusion he built just to keep from tearing the city apart. Every single tick of the clock on his nightstand felt like a blow against his ribs. He didn't cure the sickness; he just let it fester in the dark, his hands shaking under his tactical gloves every time he pictured your soft lips.

Two days of playing dead was all his broken soul could take. He needed you.During those two days, you felt a strange mix of disappointment and relief. Part of you wanted the dangerous stranger to reappear out of the rain, to prove that the shock of your bodies colliding wasn't just a figment of your wild imagination. But as the hours dragged on and your shop remained empty, the ache in your chest began to soften into a familiar numbness.

You told yourself it was for the best. You cleaned the shelves, reorganized the poetry section, and drank your black coffee in silence, slowly letting the memory of his heavy leather jacket and the bruised pink rose fade into white noise.You had almost forgotten the whole thing, convinced yourself that he was just a nameless stranger passing through the dark, never to be seen again.

He can't take the distance anymore, and he sure as hell doesn't do polite invitations.So he writes you a letter.It’s not a soft, romantic Valentine's card; it’s a rough piece of paper torn from a tactical notebook, written in aggressive black ink that nearly rips through the page. It’s short, blunt, and so utterly typical of the Winter Soldier that it’s almost funny—a dangerous machine trying to command a girl who smells like vanilla.

Midnight.The old abandoned observatory on the hilltop. Under the broken dome.Don’t make me come fetch you.Be there.

He slips the note straight under the front door of your bookstore right before closing.You find the paper lying on the hardwood floor, your heart doing a dangerous flip against your ribs as you read the crude ultimatum. He isn't asking for a chance,—he is ordering a surrender.

You hold the rough piece of paper in your hands while the cold adrenaline starts to flood your veins. Your mind is racing, honey, frantically trying to piece the puzzle together as you stare at the ldark ink and the aggressive handwriting that feels more like a tactical order than a love note.

You find yourself wondering who could have possibly slipped this under your door. Who even knew you were here...well,you have a lot of costumers. So it could be anybody.

But deep down, in the dark corner of your soul, you already know the answer. Or at least, you desperately hope you do.

You know it’s crazy, you know a smart girl would tear the paper to pieces and lock her bedroom door, but your heart is hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs because the thought of him waiting for you up on that star-lit hilltop is a drug you’re already too weak to refuse.

You spend the next few hours in a fever dream, the minutes ticking away on the wall. You step into your bathroom, the mirror fogging up with warm steam as you try to wash away the mundane exhaustion of the day.

You pick out your clothes. You slide into a soft, dark slip dress that clings to your curves, and pull your heavy leather trench coat over your shoulders to protect you from the freezing night air.

You don't put on much makeup, just a touch of your signature expensive vanilla perfume behind your ears and on your wrists. You stare at your reflection one last time.

The winding mountain road is completely black, swallowed by the suffocating silence of the pines and the cold mist rolling off the hills. You drive up the dark asphalt, while the radio hums a slow melody.

When you finally reach the crest of the hill, the abandoned observatory rises from the darkness. Its massive, rusted dome looks like a fractured skull against the midnight sky, with jagged shards of broken glass catching the brilliant light of the stars above.

You cut the engine.You step out of the car, the gravel crunching beneath your boots.And then, you see it—tucked away beneath an old oak tree, the dark silhouette of his motorcycle sits in the dark, its guttural purr vibrating straight through the ground and up into the soles of your shoes.

He just watches you step closer in your dark slip dress and leather trench coat, his jaw clenched tight as he realizes you actually came.

He cuts the engine, and the sudden silence on the mountaintop hits you both. He swings his leg over the seat, stepping off the motorcycle with a predatory grace that makes your breath catch in your throat. He takes a long step toward you, his massive combat boots crunching against the gravel.

“You came,” he mutters.

“I didn't think you'd actually show up,” you whisper.You try to sound brave, but the slight tremor in your voice betrays every high expectation and desperate hope you've been nursing for the last two hours.

He leans down just a fraction of an inch closer, his hot breath brushing against your cold cheek.“You've been in my sights for a very long time.”

He grabs your wrist—his grip tight but not breaking you—and leads you up the rusted iron steps of the observatory, toward the highest observation ledge right under the open sky.

When you reach the top, the entire world opens up below you. The city is distant, completely insignificant compared to the silver cosmos stretched out over your heads.He walks right to the edge of the stone platform. He sits down, letting his heavy combat boots dangle over the ledge into the empty blackness, and nods once toward the space beside him.

You take a slow breath, your heart hammering against your ribs, and sit down right next to him. The contrast is devastating—you in your delicate black silk, and him wrapped in cold tactical gear and wet leather.

Your bare shoulder brushes against his heavy jacket, and the electric warmth of his body almost makes you shiver. You both look up at the infinite dark, completely isolated from the rest of the living.You sit there on the cold stone ledge, your bare legs dangling into the empty blackness right beside his heavy combat boots.

“Which one is your favorite?” you ask softly. You tilt your head back, your eyes search the silver dust of the Milky Way.

He doesn't look up at the sky. His storm-colored eyes stay fixed on the side of your face, watching the way the starlight hits your cheekbones.

“I don't look at them to admire them,” he grunts. He reaches down with his human hand, his rough fingers tracing a line along the seat of the ledge. “In Hy— where I was trained, the stars just meant we had three hours of navigation left before dawn. They aren't pretty, They're just coordinates”

You let out a soft laugh, turning your head to meet his intense gaze. “I know who you are Bucky.”

The realization that you knew exactly what he was didn’t scare him; it liberated him.He leaned in closer, the scent of rain and old leather completely erasef the sweet vanilla on your skin.

“Good,” he growled. “Then I don't have to pretend anymore.”

“You know what I am,” he stated, his human hand moving from the stone ledge to grip the back of your neck. His fingers were rough, anchoring you in place.“You know what these hands have done. And you still drove up a pitch-black mountain just because I told you to.”

He tilted your head back slightly, forcing your eyes to meet his. His gaze wasn't romantic; it was hungry. It was the look of a predator claiming territory it had been stalking for months. He looked at your mouth, his thumb brushing against your lower lip with just enough pressure to part them. He didn't want a sweet, innocent kiss. He wanted you on your knees, entirely consumed by him, surrendering every piece of yourself to his control. He wanted to ruin you for anyone else.

“Maybe I don't want a softness” you whispered, your voice trembling slightly but holding your ground. “Maybe I wanted exactly this.”

A dangerous silence fell between you. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek. He didn't say another word. He didn't need to. Your answer was the green light the predator inside him had been waiting months for.

With a single, effortless movement, his human hand tightened on your neck and he hauled you up off the stone ledge. He didn't do polite. He marched you backward into the deeper shadows of the observatory, until your lower back hit the cool, metallic frame of his motorcycle.

You submissively started to sink toward the gravel, your knees going weak as your instincts told you to kneel for him. But before your knees could even touch the ground, his metal hand shot out. His vibranium fingers wrapped firmly around your bicep, arresting your descent with effortless strength and pulling you right back up.

“No,” he growled. He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “Not tonight. You save that for the next time I command it. Tonight, I want to look into your eyes while I take you.”

He didn't give you a chance to process his words. His flesh-and-blood hand moved down to the hem of your dark slip dress, bunching the soft silk upward in his rough palm. His calloused hand dragged against your bare thigh.

He gripped your hip, lifting you effortlessly and placing you right onto the leather seat of the motorcycle. He stepped his heavy combat boot between your thighs, opening you up and claiming every inch of your space.

“Legs up,” he commanded, his voice dropping into a rough growl.You didn't hesitate. You wrapped your bare legs around his waist, the soft skin of your thighs pressing tightly against the rough canvas of his tactical pants. The position placed you perfectly at eye level with him.

He stepped his heavy combat boots closer, crowding right between your thighs until his massive chest was pressing you back against the handlebars. You were completely trapped between his heavy frame and the cold metal of the bike, your delicate black silk dress bunched up around your waist.

His large human hand slid up your bare thigh, his rough fingers hooking into the delicate elastic of your underwear. He didn't ask for permission. With one deliberate tug, he ripped the lace right down your legs, tossing the ruined fabric onto the gravel below without a second thought.

Your breath caught in your throat at the sudden display of dominance. You were completely exposed to the freezing night air now, shivering against the seat of the motorcycle.

He didn't bother taking off his leather jacket or his tactical gear—he wanted to keep you warm, and honestly, he was too far gone to care about undressing completely. Instead, his human hand moved down to the front of his tactical pants. You watched with wide eyes as his fingers quickly unbuckled his belt and lowered his zipper, aggressively freeing his thick length into the cold air.

“Look at me,” he muttered, his eyes dark with an intensity that made your heart hammer against your ribs. “I want you to remember this.”

He didn't push in yet. Instead, he just pressed his hot length right against you, teasing the entrance while his storm-colored eyes tracked the desperate, shallow breaths escaping your lips.

“Bucky—”

His human hand clenched tighter around your hip, his thumb digging into your skin to anchor you. “Don't call me Bucky.”

You blinked through the darkness, your breath hitching as your hands clutched the rough leather of his jacket. “Then... what do I call you?”

“Soldat,” he growled.

You didn't fully understand what it meant to him, or what dark memories it triggered in his conditioned mind.You swallowed hard, your heart hammering against your ribs as you looked up into his unyielding eyes.

“Soldat...” you whispered softly, the word tasting strange on your tongue.

His eyes blew out completely black with lust, and without another second of hesitation,he drove all the way inside you.

A breathless scream tore from your throat, as the sudden fullness stretched you completely open. Your legs instantly locked tighter around his waist, your boots digging into his lower back as your fingers clawed blindly through his jacket.

He didn't slow down. The rhythm of his hips remained heavy, each deep thrust making the motorcycle shift slightly beneath you. His combat gear and heavy leather rubbed roughly against your bare skin, a constant reminder of his sheer size and power.

“I watched you for months,” he growled against the skin of your throat, his breath scorching hot as he drove into you again. His metal fingers dug firmly into your hip. “I sat in the dark across the street and counted the minutes until you opened the doors.”

A needy gasp escaped your lips, your body clenching tightly around him. Hearing him confess to the unfiltered depth of his stalking didn't scare you—it sent a violent rush of heat straight to your core, making you tighter and completely undone.

“I know,” you cried out breathlessly. “I knew you were there... I saw the edge of your jacket in the pines. And I liked it, Soldat.”

Bucky’s entire body went dead still for a fraction of a second, his chest heaving violently against yours as your words registered in his mind. The realization that his target hadn't been an innocent victim, but an active participant playing the game right back with him, completely shattered the last of his restraint.

“Fucking whore,” he muttered.His grip on your waist turned entirely feral, lifting your hips higher against the leather seat, and he began to drive into you with a relentless pace.

“You liked it?” he growled. He drove deep, bottoming out inside you until you let out a helpless sob. “You liked knowing a killer was tracking your every move? You're a sick little girl.”

The leather seat of the motorcycle creaked beneath you with every ruthless strike.“Look at you now. Completely stretched out on my bike, taking every inch of me.”

“Soldat... please—” you cried out, your legs tightening around his waist, your fingers clawing deep into the leather of his jacket.

“Please what?” he muttered roughly. “You belong to me now. Say it.”

“I'm yours,Soldat” you gasped.

“Damn right you are,” he growled. He pulled back just enough to drive back in with a heavy thud that made your vision spot. “You don't get to come until I tell you to. You hold it in for me, you hear me? You take every single thrust until I'm ready to give it to you.”

Your fingers clawed desperately into the thick leather of his jacket, your bare legs trembling violently where they were locked around his waist.

“I can't... Soldat,” a helpless sob tore from your throat. Your entire body was trembling violently beneath him, as the agonizingly sharp waves of pleasure threatened to pull you under. “You're... you're too deep. It's driving me crazy, please...”

“I told you to wait. I want to watch your eyes roll back when I finally let you break.” His metal hand slid up to cup your jaw, while his flesh hand held your hip perfectly pinned to the leather seat of the bike.

“Tell me what you want,” he commanded roughly, his face dropping down until his forehead rested against yours.“Beg for it.”

“Please, Soldat... please let me come,” you sobbed out. You arched your back against the cold handlebars of the bike, your trembling thighs squeezing his waist as tightly as you could.“I'll do whatever you want... just let me come. Please.”

“Good girl,” he growled, the rough words vibrating straight against your wet lips.He didn't give you another second of warning. His hand slammed hard against your hip, holding you locked flat against the leather seat, while his left hand anchored the back of your neck. He picked up the pace.

The motorcycle creaked violently beneath the sheer force of his movement. You couldn't even breathe, let alone speak, as he ruthlessly drove you over the edge.

“Take it,” he muttered roughly, his face burying into the crook of your neck, his teeth bruising the soft skin over your collarbone. “Come for me now,sweet thing.”

The command was all it took. Your head fell back, a loud scream escaping your lips into the silent night.Hearing you break completely unraveled the Winter Soldier.

He let out a harsh roar—a sound of pure animalistic release—as his own climax hit him. His jaw locked so tight the veins in his neck strained.At the final moment, he shifted, pulling away to ensure the intensity of the encounter reached its conclusion outside of you.

The thick heat of his climax painted the dark silk of your bunched-up dress and the pale skin of your stomach and chest in long surges.He stood there shivering from the sheer force of the release, his chest heaving violently against yours.

The only sound in the ruined observatory was the frantic rhythm of your shared, breathless recovery and the distant, lonely sigh of the pines below.His thumb remained resting against your skin, tracing a slow line over your thigh as if he were trying to process the physical reality of what had just happened.

For a man who had spent decades living as a ghost— who only left blood behind—the sight of his own messy, unmistakable mark of possession on a living person seemed to completely stun him. He looked entirely trapped somewhere between the efficiency of the Soldat and the stunned awakening of a man who hadn't felt this alive in half a century.

His fingers aggressively pulled his tactical pants back up, tucking himself away before his metal hand yanked the zipper shut with a sharp, metallic clack. He reached for his tactical belt, tightening the buckle with a loud snap.Only when he was fully dressed and locked back into his soldier uniform did he look back up at you.

Was it normal to get aroused again just by looking at him? Probably not.

He reached into one of the side pouches of his tactical belt, pulling out a dark military-grade utility cloth.He didn't ask you to move. His large flesh hand gripped your thigh to hold you steady on the leather seat, while his left arm braced against the frame of the bike. He leaned over you again.

The cloth was dry and rough against your sensitized skin. He wiped the cooling smears of his climax from your stomach and chest with firm strokes. He didn't look into your eyes while he did it; his focus was entirely objective, cleaning your skin with the same detached, methodical thoroughness he would use to maintain a weapon after a heavy firefight. His fingers were rough, but he wasn't trying to hurt you—he was just completely devoid of tenderness.

Once your skin was clear, he shoved the cloth back into his pouch. He reached down, grabbing the hem of your bunched-up dark silk dress, and pulled it back down over your thighs with a single, rough yank to cover you up.

“I need my underwear back,” you said.He looked down at the dark gravel between his combat boots, where the delicate, shredded lace was lying ruined in the dirt. He had ripped them off with zero regard for their survival, and they were completely useless now.He didn't bend down to pick them up. Instead, he looked back up at your face, his expression deadpan and entirely unbothered.

“You're not getting them back,” he grunted. He took a single step closer, crowding your space one last time. “I tore them. They're mine now.”

“Take your coat,” he ordered. “The mist is rolling in. You're going back to the city.”

He had taken your underwear, marked your body, and ordered you back to the city with military authority. He was already pulling away, retreating back behind the icy walls of the Soldat.But you weren't ready to let him go yet.

“Can I kiss you?” you whispered into the dark. Bucky went entirely still, his hand freezing on the handle of his motorcycle. In all his decades of programming, nobody had ever asked for his permission to touch him. Nobody had ever looked at his lips—the lips of an assassin—and wanted a kiss.

He leaned down just a fraction of an inch, his hot breath brushing against your lips, teasing you with the very proximity you were begging for. His thumb pressed hard against your bottom lip, deliberately parting them, but he kept his own mouth just out of reach.

“You want a kiss?” he muttered, his voice a low, gravelly warning that rattled down your spine. “You earn it first. Go back to your shop. Sit bare under that dress all night and think about what we did up here. If you're a good girl, maybe next time I'll give you what you want. Now get in your car.”

He blacked out for just a second and when he came to, he was lying on his back, staring up at the cold white lights of the ice rink. His cheek burned and he could feel something trickle down his chest but that did not matter because today was the day he’d tell you he loved you.

The crowd was booing and the grin still did not leave his face.

“You okay there, Vizsla?” Berenson’s face appeared above him, peering down at him with grave concern, “You’re bleeding all over the ice.”

“Never been better,” he answered truthfully, “Now help me up, we got a game to win.”

“I don’t think there’s a we anymore,” Kaida, the team’s physician showed up next to him, “You are going to get your things and get some stitches for that cut. No more playing for you today.”

Under normal circumstanced he’d fight her decision. He would grumble and beg and argue that a little blood would only make him play harder and he had a score to settle. But today’s priority was to get the game over with as fast and as smoothly as possible and if that meant him being off the ice? He could handle that.

All it had taken was one night.

One night of getting to hold you, touch you, hear your deep breaths in the darkness and get to bury his nose in the crook of your neck, and he knew there was no going back for him. He had half-expected that this evening of letting himself be close to you would somehow reveal to him that his emotions weren’t as intense as he feared, that he could be normal about you.

But he had quickly learned that there was nothing normal about you. You were the warm sunshine on a cold Hoth day and the thought of you crying, of him being the reason for it, made a hand clench around his heart so tight, he might as well drop dead before hurting you.

“Vizsla, I need you to stay still,” Kaida order him with a hand on his shoulder, “Stars what is up with you? You’re worse than my kid on a birthday morning.”

“Sorry,” he grinned, “I got places to be and someone to look pretty for.”

The dark-haired woman laughed and he perked up when Joe, one of the team’s assistants, walked in, holding his bag from the locker room. Moments later, his phone rang and although the number was unknown, he knew exactly who it was.

“Tell me you are alright,” your voice rang out the second he accepted the call, “Paz, please tell me.”

“Worried for me?” he teased you.

“That looked bad,” you brought out, “There was blood.”

“There still is,” Paz replied easily, tilting his head to Kaida could put one of the butterfly bandages over the cut, “But, I’m fine, omega.”

“You promise?” he hated how small you sounded, still groggy, and in his mind’s eye, you were still in bed, still wrapped in the blankets that smelled like him while you watched the game on the TV. While you watched him.

“I promise,” his softened his voice, “Would it make you feel better if I paid you another visit tonight.”

A gasp on the other end of the line had his cock twitch. He wanted nothing more than to be back in bed with you and hold you just like he had done tonight. “But Chants said you’re supposed to fly back tonight,” you said, “Could you even visit me then?”

“About that …” he rubbed the back of his neck, trying his hardest to ignore the amused grin Dr Kaida sent his way, “I have a proposition.”

*

When Chants had texted you that he and Din would stay another few days at the resort because the team was supposed to fly back home right after the game, your first thought had been I thought he would come back to me.

What had not occurred to you was that the very same night, you would make your way onto a plane because “Din is staying a bit longer and so there is a seat open for you, if you want it, sweetheart.”

You were greeted by a very grumpy looking Coach Fett. The Mandalorian Minotaurs had ended up winning the game 5-1 but somehow the older man still looked as if he was ready to throw punches with the refs. It was even more intimidating when he mustered you up and down, “How are you doing, kid?”

“Better, thank you.” And that was the truth. Your pre-heat symptoms had faded around lunch time and you knew that it afforded you at least two weeks of peace before your full-on heat hit. You would have to take a look at your calendar when you were home to make sure you could shift some plans to afford you a few days in your nest.

Thank the stars your travel plans had changed. It was nice not having to take the several-hour train journey and instead just a two-hour flight. It was even nicer because Paz Vizsla was standing at the very end of the aisle, pushing a bag into the overhead compartment. Your eyes drifted over his arms, taking in his thick bicep, the tattoos on his forearms and remembering how that very arm had been slung around your waist just last night.

A strange mix of confidence and nervousness filled you as you approached him. There had to be a reason he had asked you to join him on the plane and you were 95% sure it wasn’t because he wanted to reject you. He wouldn’t be that cruel.

So was this finally the moment you got to clear the air?

Paz must have spotted you out of the corner of his eye because he turned to you with a smile on his face. The strong line of his jaw was interrupted by a bandage and you winced. The worry you had felt when you had seen him take a fall on live television returned but Paz did not seem to notice it, instead he reached out his hand. You handed him your suitcase without a second thought, allowing yourself to admire his strong arms as he hefted it into the overhead compartment.

“Wanna have the window seat, love?”

“Yes, please.”

He took a seat right to you. The plane offered two seats on each side of the aisle, meaning that his bulk blocked you in, cutting you off from the excited chatter of the team around you. His right leg stretched out into the aisle and you sank into the soft seat, feeling safe and tucked away.

“How are you feeling?”

“I should be asking you that.”

“It’s just a scratch,” he shrugged, “I’ve had far worse.”

That didn’t make you feel better. You reached out, your hand softly cupping his bruised cheek. You did not like seeing him hurt but how could you say that to a man whose job was so physical? Paz’s eyes fluttered shut and he tilted his face into your palm, almost like a cat. Your thumb traced the bandage over his jaw, resisting the urge to press a kiss right there.

“I’m okay, omega,” his took your hand in his, settling it in his lap, “I promise.”

He kept his hold on your hand for the entirety of take-off. Once you had reached the travel altitude, the team members around you moved out of their seats. You frowned, watching as Berenson threw you a wink before making his way to the front of the plane with all the others.

Only Paz remained seated, your hand in his, and did not make any move to join his colleagues.

“Do you need to go too?” you asked him.

Paz just shook his head. “Coach called a post-game meeting but we agreed that I would have one-on-one later with him.”

“Oh, I see.”

Which meant you were all alone. No one was around you to listen in. And judging from the serious look on his face and the way his whole body turned towards you, that was exactly what he wanted.

“You said Chants told you about my parents.”

You nodded, gripping his hand tighter. “He did.”

“I … feel like maybe the dinner was a missed chance for me to clear the air,” he cleared his throat, “And I was hoping maybe I could take the time now to say something that I should have said much earlier.”

Your heart started to race again. This is it. This is it. This is it.

“My father was – is – a very talented man and for a long time, he was my icon. He pushed me to follow my dream of hockey and I will never forget how he took me to get my first second pair of skates. He was so proud, telling everyone in the store that I was going to be the next Boba Fett.” He paused, his teeth digging into his bottom lip and his eyes glazed over, like he was somewhere completely different. “He was also a very angry man. I didn’t notice it at first because I was so eager to make him proud that I often thought his anger was justified … but it was not. It took me a long time to realize that my mother was a very angry woman too. I can’t pretend to know what their relationship was like but I know she wasn’t treated the way she should have been treated and I think that, towards the end, she saw a lot of my father in me. The last words she said to me were the exact same words she said to my father. That I should never attempt to find an omega because all I would do was …” he swallowed harshly, “hurt them.”

“Paz …”

You wanted to say so much. You wanted to tell him that he wouldn’t hurt you, not again. That you could only imagine the hurt he must have felt as a child. Stars, you wanted to hug him.

The dark-haired man smiled slightly and shook his head. “I am not finished yet, love.”

A quick nod of yours later, your hands were in his lap again, entwining your fingers. He started playing with your hand, not meeting your gaze. You could feel the callouses on his fingertips as he started to trace the lines on your palm. His touch calmed you down and you got the impression that it rooted him as well.

“I carried my mother’s words with me for a long time. Longer than I should have, really. I – Din got me a place at a therapist just a few years agoand I worked through a lot of stuff regarding my father. You know, anger management, talking about feelings, admitting failure … all that jazz,” he shot you a dry smile, “I didn’t realize that I hadn’t worked through what my mother told me until I met you.”

His touch on your palm stopped and you froze.

“I can still see it,” his lips quirked up, “That game was a shitshow and all I wanted was to go home. And then Din called me over and I spotted you … the world froze. I saw you and I smelled you and I realized, I realized you were … you. You were to me what I was always so terrified of.” He lifted your hand to his lips and you watched with baited breath as he pressed a kiss on the back of your hand, “and instead of pulling you to me and scent you for all the world to see like I wanted to, I – I lashed out. I thought you would be safer and happier without me and I needed to just … nip it in the bud before you could see who you were to me.”

His words washed over you like warm honeyed tea and you savoured each and every word that left him. All this time you had thought that he didn’t reciprocate your feelings. That he just saw you as an annoying acquaintance that couldn’t control her crush on him when he was around. But now – hearing the truth – it became clear that his parents had hurt two people. Him and you.

“it was already too late by then,” you murmured, shifting as close to him as you could. The arm rest dug into your hip and Paz pushed it back, spreading his legs until he could drag you onto his thigh, pulling you into his lap. “It was too late,” you repeated against his cheek, “The moment I saw you I knew, I just wasn’t sure if you … I thought you didn’t feel it.”

“I am so so sorry, omega,” he rumbled, holding you even closer, “I hurt you and I should not have. I will spend my life making it up to you if you let me.”

It felt so surreal, Paz admitting that he had felt the same things at your first meeting. That he knew who you were to him, who he was to you. This could be a fresh start, one that you had been dreaming about and one that, from the feeling of his hands on your hips, you were already in.

“That sounds intriguing,” you teased him, brushing your lips over his jaw, “Tell me more.”

His hands gripped your hips tighter, pulling you against him until you had no choice but to wrap your arms around him. It put your face right in the crook of his neck and you took a deep breath.

“I want to take you out on a date,” he whispered in your ear, “I want to see you cheering for me in the stands and know that I was the one who invited you to the game. I want to take you ice skating and hold your hand the entire time. I want to be the one you come home to after work and tell me about your day. I want …” he sighed, “I want everything. And that scares me because I don’t know if I can ever be the type of man you want or deserve.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” you smiled at him, running the tip of your nose over his stubbly cheek and feeling like your heart was getting fuller by the minute, “There is no type of man that I want. I just want you.”

One large hand cupped the back of your neck, holding you in place so your foreheads touched. “You have no idea how happy you make me,” he whispered in the quiet space between your mouths.

You could not help yourself, rocking forward until your lips brushed his just for a brief moment. It was just to see, just to test the waters, you hadn’t been ready for the fireworks exploding in your chest, or his hand pulling you back against him for another kiss.

Where the first one had been brief and soft, the second was still gentle but much deeper. Goosebumps ran down your back as his mouth moved against yours, coaxing you open for him. Your hand flew to his chest, feeling his heart beat strong and fast under your palm, matching your own. His tongue brushed over your bottom lip and you squeezed your thighs, hot desire running through your veins.

“Come to my game next weekend,” he murmured against you, “I will get you the best seats in the house, whatever you want. I want to see you again, omega. Give me a chance to woo you.”

He didn’t have to ask you twice.

*

Playing for you again.

You smiled at your phone, the text message Paz had sent you just a few hours before still making your heart race as if you were about to meet him for the first time again. The game had been a rowdy affair again but you could not remember the last time you had so much fun. Paz had spotted you immediately, sending you a wink every time he skated past where you and Chants were sitting. He had not missed it once in the entire game and you could feel your cheeks burn from the cold and how much you had cheered for him.

Now you were standing in the hallway, watching player after player leave the locker room and make their way home.

“Vizsla is waiting for you inside,” Din told you, a knowing grin on his face, before greeting his fiancée with a kiss, “Better say hi.”

Better say hi, indeed.

The locker room was empty, though the evidence of its recent occupancy was clear in the humidity of the showers and the stench of all kinds of people mixing in the air. But you could not care about that when you saw your alpha leaning against the wall, freshly showered, with no shirt on.

“You’re wearing my jersey,” he greeted you, drying his hands on a towel. Water droplets were collecting at the end of his curls and his gaze was positively smouldering.

Your fingers played with the hem of the Vizsla jersey you had splurged on in the merch shop. It had taken only a bit of courage to actually make the purchase and Chants’ cheer when you had showed up in the dark blue and white shirt had convinced you to keep wearing it.

Paz’s dark eyes roaming over your body felt like a reward.

“Looks like I am.”

He pushed off the wall, slowly walking towards you. “Makes you look like you’re mine.”

Feeling like very voluntary prey under his gaze, you took a few steps back. “I’ve heard worse things.”

Paz did not stop his approach, forcing you backwards until you ended up against the cold metal of the locker. His proximity gave you a front row seat to the sight of his broad chest, the muscles hiding under a layer of fat and – a very familiar chain around his neck.

“That’s … mine,” you whispered, reaching up to play with the golden band hanging around his neck, “I got you that.”

“I didn’t take it off,” his voice was rough just before he ducked down to kiss you, “Not even once.”

The kiss was hotter than anything you could have dreamed about. His teeth on your bottom lip had you wrap your arms around him and it did not take long before his hand was on your thigh, lifting your leg around his waist. His kisses continued, making your breathless until all you could see, think, smell, feel was him.

Paz Vizsla had kept your chain. He had kept something you had given him before everything else had happened and it made your heart like it was flying out of your chest.

Opening your mouth for him had his tongue slip against yours and you gasped, wanting him closer. You could feel him, hard and heavy, against the apex of your thighs and you shivered with need. He was big, you had suspected as much, but feeling it for yourself had something short-circuit in your brain. You didn’t want to be wooed anymore.

Or maybe you did want to be wooed. But you also wanted to be fucked.

Your hips bucked, seeking the friction your clit so desperately ached for, but he pressed himself closer, grinding his erection against you and pinning you in place in the process. “I won’t fuck you here,” he rumbled while pressing his hips against yours, “I want to have you in my bed, ‘mega, somewhere soft, where I can take my time, where I can knot you and know you’ll sleep comfortably.”

“You can knot me here,” you breathed against his mouth before diving in for another kiss. Your fingers tangled in the soft hair at the nape of his neck and he growled – actually growled. The sound made your pussy clench and you tugged at his hair, being immediately rewarded with a snap of his hips.

“Not here,” he said, more to himself than to you, “Not when I am so out of control.”

“You’d never hurt me, Paz,” you assured him, cupping his cheek, “Never.”

He sighed against you and you could feel his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. You loved to see how affected he was by this, by you.

“I know,” he said, resting his forehead against yours, “I just – don’t want to risk it. Can’t risk it yet, love, not when it’s you.”

You nodded, looking in his eyes and trying to convey the trust you felt in him. He kissed you again, instead, slow and deep, and the feeling of him against you, unwilling to let you go, only made the wetness between your legs grow.

“You make me want to do crazy things,” you admitted in a whisper, “Please, I just need –“

He chuckled darkly, setting you down but not letting you go. Paz’s hands slipped under your jersey and you arched your back, loving the feeling of his dry hands against your skin. Everywhere he touched left a fire of want behind.

“I know you’d let me take you right here where anyone could walk in,” his hands came up to cup you through your bra, his thumb rubbing over your nipples through the lace,” and one day I just might have to show everyone how gorgeous you are for me. But today’s not that day. And tomorrow won’t be either.”

His fingers rolled your peaked nipples and you mewled, trying to rub against him again. A jeans-clad thigh slipped between your legs, raising you up and you gasped, standing up on your tiptoes while also grinding down against him.

“Now that I think about it I might never want to share you,” his nose brushed over your scent gland and your core tightened again, “Not if you’re this responsive for me, omega.”

Pleasure coursed through you and when the seam of your jeans caught on your clit just so, you could not help the outright moan that left you. “Paz, what if – oh stars, what if someone comes in?”

“Then I am very sorry to end their career early,” he pressed a kiss to your temple, “Because the only one who gets to see my omega come is me. Do you understand that, love? Tell me you understand.”

You could only bring out a jerky nod, your hip movements picking up. You felt hot all over, slippery, somehow, but Paz’s grip on you didn’t loosen.

“There we go,” Paz tugged on your nipples, the pleasurable pain shooting down your spine, “Come for me, love, come right on my thigh so I can carry your scent with me everywhere I go. C’mon, be a good omega for me.”

His thigh lifted, raising you off the ground, your entire weight resting on him and on the place where you were chasing your climax. And when his fingers pinched you, his teeth grazing over that sensitive patch of skin on your neck and his scent rose in your nose, you had no choice but fall over the cliff.

“Fuck!” you breathed out, your walls clenching around nothing as you rode on his thigh.

Paz laughed, happy and deep, “Good girl, coming apart so beautifully for me. Ride it out for me, sweetheart, let me see how good you feel, hm?”

Your head feel back against the metal door of the locker, your body bowing for him, arching into his touch. His fingers brushed over your chest, down your sides, caressing you through the after waves.

“Beautiful,” he whispered against you, kissing you softly before slipping his hands from under the jersey, “Now how about dinner?”

*

So there’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about

Do you want me to call? We’re just boarding now, I can find a quiet place.

No, it’s not that important

Everything you tell me is important.

Charmer

I am trying.

What did you want to talk about then?

My heat is coming. I know you said you wanted to woo me the old-fashioned way but I have been thinking and I want to spend my heat with you.

… Paz?

Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide a boner on a plane? Fuck, mega,

Don’t make me squirm

I am not. I am thinking about how to make you come, omega.

I take it you’re not insisting on dinner tonight, then?

Dinner’s cancelled, sweetheart, I want you waiting in my bed when I come home

*

“Fuck, I missed you,” Paz’s lips peppered kissed over your shoulder and you giggled when his stubble brushed over your sensitive neck, “This is exactly what I wanted to come home to.”

“A needy omega waiting in your bed?”

“No,” his hand gripped your chin, making you look at him, “You.”

He had come home just a few minutes after you had stumbled into his apartment – an apartment he had given you the key to after your second official date. Your heart still skipped a beat when you remembered how he had slid it across the table and told you “You will always have a home with me, ‘mega. It is important to me that you know that.”

Which is why it was so much more fun to lie in bed, waiting for him in your underwear while you were surrounded by the softest and most comfortable blankets and pillows. Paz’s entire bedroom was painted and styled in dark blue. The monochrome look was so him (a statement he had chuckled at when you had first told him) but it was also dark and moody, making you feel like you were shut off from the hectic of the outside world.

Now he was above you, wearing nothing but the most sinful looking grey sweatpants that did nothing to hide the growing bulge between his legs. The sight made you squirm, your skin feeling hot with want.

You had already started to feel feverish but your fidgeting was not connected to any doubts or fear. For the first time in your life you had someone who you felt safe enough to spend your heat with, someone you wanted to spend your heat with.

His eyes were soft and warm, looking at you so earnestly it made your heart and pussy melt.

“I missed you,” he repeated, pressing a kiss to the tip of your nose before his hands unclipped your bra, freeing you up for his gaze. His hands were rough and warm when he cupped your breasts, his thumbs circling your hardened nipples. Electricity shot through your entire body at the contact and he laughed, his fingers pinching your nipples until you arched your back, opening yourself up to more of his touches.

“I missed you too,” you mumbled back, reaching your arms out to touch him. You wanted to trace the lines of his tattoos and feel his skin move under your touch. You wanted to pull him closer and closer until there was nothing separating you anymore.

“No, omega,” his hand caught yours, encasing both your wrists and gently pushing them over your head until they were lying on the pillow. Leaning above you, holding you down, he looked so in charge it made your mouth water and your pussy even wetter. “I want to take my time with you.”

“Alpha, please, I need –“

“I know, I know,” he assured you with a wicked grin on his face, “Your heat is near, love, and you need someone to fill that pussy of yours. I promise, I will. Okay?”

You nodded, pouting up at him, “Okay.”

He was a sight for sore eyes, all broad and shielding you from the sunlight falling in through the window. He was so close, you were sure he could feel your heart pounding in your chest hard enough to make your stomach flip. The scent of pinewood filled your nostrils and you smiled at him, feeling calmer than ever at his presence. Paz leant down, kissing you again before trailing kisses down your neck, right to your chest.

“Leave your hands where they are or I’ll have to stop.”

You wanted to ask him what he meant to stop, but by then his hands had already ripped your panties to shred and were busy holding your legs apart. The callouses on his fingertips made the soft skin of your inner thighs feel extra sensitive and your legs twitched, trying to close from his gaze. Heath flushed your face and chest, you had never been looked at so intently by someone and the fire in Paz’s eyes gave no indication of him stopping.

“Beautiful,” he murmured as if to himself, his thumbs brushing over your thighs, “You’re absolutely beautiful.”

And then he dove in.

You weren’t prepared for the concert of sensation he would cause in you. One lick over your slit and your back arched off the mattress, a hint of teeth on your folds and he slipped your thighs over his shoulders, allowing him to press harder into you.

His tongue gathered your juices and you moaned, feeling the desire thrum through your veins. When he circled your clit, you saw stars at the edge of your vision, and then he sucked and it took every ounce of willpower you had to leave your hands on the pillows and not bury them in his hair, trying to pull him closer.

Paz groaned, the vibrations making you gush and you could feel his calloused fingers on your folds, spreading you wide open for him to plant open-mouthed kisses against you. His ministrations made you climb higher and higher, especially when his thumb came into the mix, steadily circling your clit while he sucked on you. “A-alpha, I’m … I think I’m ….”

“Come for me,” he looked up at you, the sight absolutely the stuff of dreams. Although you hadn’t touched him, his hair was all dishevelled and his eyes were a burning blue when he looked at you from between your thighs, his mouth against your clit. One large finger, much larger than one of your own, slid inside you and the slow stretched paired beautifully with his mouth on your clit.

So beautifully that, when his teeth grazed over your clit, you came apart on his tongue and fingers.

Paz let you ride out the waves on his finger, prolonging your pleasure when he pushed a second finger inside you. It was clear he was trying to be gentle, stretching you with his fingers slowly pushing in and out, massaging that spot that had your feet trembling.

Here you were, completely out of breath, and Paz was still hitting spots in you like he had barely gotten started.

“This is exactly what I dreamt about,” the alpha sat up, licking his lips. The sight was so sinful, you could feel yourself gushing again. “You’re delicious, sweetheart.”

Then his hands drifted to the waistband of his pants and you watched with baited breath as tattooed fingers pushed down his pants, revealing a very sizable erection. He was large and heavy, hanging between his legs like something out of a horror movie – or your wet dreams. You swallowed back your gasp at the sight of him but you could not help your core clenching in anticipation. Paz’s eyes fell to that exact spot.

“Look at that little pussy,” he rumbled smugly, one hand closing around his shaft, stroking himself, “All ready to get filled up, aren’t you?”

You nodded, not even trying to pretend like you were cool anymore. “Yes, please.”

“Always so polite,” he teased you. Free of his pants, he climbed back over you, his weight pushing you into the comfort of his bed. One hand found your wrists again, pushing them into the soft pillow. You spread your legs for him, urging him to get closer. Your heat made you feel like you would climb out of your skin unless he was inside you within the next thirty seconds. Thankfully, your alpha seemed to understand the direness of the situation.

Your alpha slotted himself between your legs, his shaft gliding over your folds. The touch already drove you crazy and he made it even worse, tapping the head of his cock over your clit again and again and again until –

“Paz!”

“Alright, alright, sweetheart.”

- he slowly pushed inside you. You took a deep breath, trying you best to accommodate his girth and size. Your walls fluttered around him, and you took another deep breath, relaxing around him.

 “Stars, you’re a dream,” he grunted, his breath hot on your face, “So tight for me, sweetheart. Gotta open up, love, gotta let me in.”

You angled your knees, lifting them around his hips and he slipped in another inch, stealing your breath. One hand still held onto your wrists, keeping you unmoving while he sank in to you.

“Let me in,” he rumbled, his eyes never leaving yours, “Let me take care of you, mega, alright?”

All you could do was nod, stars and blackness dancing at the edge of your vision from how much pleasure – how much pressure – you felt. It was almost too much.

“’m bursting,” you whimpered, squeezing around him. Every ridge, every vein, you felt it all as he worked himself inside you. “Never been so full. I – I don’t know how – ”

Paz’s eyes darkened. “I know, sweetheart, I know you’re so full of me you don’t know what to do with all that cock. But you want to let me inside, don’t you? You want to know what it’s like to be knotted by your true mate, hm?”

The gentle tone of his voice stood in stark contrast to the filthy things he was describing but it was exactly what you wanted to hear. The thought of being knotted by him filled you with a whole new wave of want.

“Yes,” you rasped, clamping down on him, “Yes, I want that.”

Paz started to move, slow and careful, at first, watching your face for any sign of discomfort. You tried your best to show him that while he might stretch you to your limits, it was the best you had ever felt. Your skin tingled with pleasure and when your breaths turned into short gasps, your eyes hazy from all the sensation, Paz seemed to realize it too.

When he pushed inside you again, he used more force, his hips snapping against yours. His pubic bone ground against your clit and you swallowed back a moan. Noticing you holding back, Paz growled, grinding against you, hitting a spot so deep inside you, it both hurt and sent a thrill through you. It could have made you come on the spot.

“P-Paz,” your fingers tingled, desperate for getting a feel of him.

“Sh, you can take it,” he hushed you, his mouth gently brushing over your temple. He was leaning over you and you let your eyes roam over his naked chest, rippling muscles covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He smelled and looked divine and when you lifted your gaze, your eyes caught on the gold chain hanging around his strong neck.

He was still wearing it, even now, and your heart skipped a beat at the knowledge. He’d always had a soft spot for you.

Widening your legs, you offered yourself a view of him driving inside you. A view for the gods, really. There was something so erotic about watching his thick shaft, covered in your wetness, driving into you again and again.

“How’s it look?” he asked you darkly, “How does my thick cock look in you?”

“Good,” your cheeks heated with embarrassment, “It looks perfect, alpha.”

“That’s what I thought, now look back at me. Let me see those pretty eyes all glazed over cause you’re finally filled just the way you need, hm?”

Words left you and you could only nod. That’s when he picked up the pace, hitting that spot inside you and your clit over and over again.

Your body bowed, thrashing with pleasure, but Paz held steadfast. His rhythm did not stutter even once, consistently fucking into you until you were a babbling mess, crying out for him to please please please make me come.

His free hand wound between your bodies, his thumb circling your clit and it was just that light touch that finally sent you over the edge. This wasn’t your first orgasm by any means but somehow, it felt entirely new. Your body felt on fire, your muscles clenched from your jaw to your tiptoes, nothing but pleasure registering in your brain.

“Good job, omega,” he softly kissed your temple, “Keep coming for me. Doing such a good job, milking me for all I’m worth, sweetheart. Won’t have no choice but knot you soon, hm?”

The mention of him knotting you, tying himself to you figuratively and literally, made sparks shiver down your spine. Your hands clenched helplessly in his grasp, your climax drawn out by the images in your head. And yet, you couldn’t say anything, your mouth dry, your chest heaving from pleasure still. You opened your lips, hoping – praying – that he would understand what you wanted to say so desperately.

Paz’s grin was diabolical in the hottest way when he leant down so close that his lips brushed against yours “C’mon, use your words,” he encouraged you, his voice heavy, before he bit down on your bottom lip, “I know what you want but you gotta say it, love. I can’t fulfil your wishes if you don’t tell me about them.”

What a bastard.

Your annoyance unlocked something in you. “Knot me,” you whined, “Please please knot me, alpha. I want you to come inside me and – oh fuck, please.”

“So polite,” he nipped at your ear, his nose brushing over your scent gland. His hand let go of your wrists and his knuckles stroked over your cheek before he settled his palm at the base of your neck.

His fingers dug into your throat ever so gently, his thumb pressing into your scent gland and it was that little bit of stimulation that had your eyes roll back in your head as you came again. Fuck, would it be like this all the time? If so, you would never let him leave your bed.

Your tightness must have been what set him off because Paz moaned, a beautiful deep sound, and he pushed into you as far as your body would allow. You could feel him swelling at the base, his knot forming right where he entered you. No one had ever come inside you, but the feeling of his come shooting inside your walls was just oddly right. Like a puzzle piece that finally fit.

And the blissful look on his face made even the stretch at your entrance seem minimal because you made him feel like that. You were the one and he was the one who had made you see stars.

Paz’s weight settled on top of you, almost crushing you but somehow also keeping you tethered to reality. His head laid on the pillow next to yours, facing you. His fingers gingerly brushed over your scent gland, where his thumb had almost left a mark. “Shit, ‘mega, I’m sorry, I don’t know what –“

“Mate me.”

“What?”

“Mate me, please,” you whispered, your chest heaving with breaths. Everything had suddenly become so clear, you felt like when you were looking at him, you were looking at your future. You knew you were looking at your future. “Don’t make me beg, alpha, or wait. I know what I want and I want it with you and this feels … right. It feels right, just how it’s meant to be and if you’re going to tell me you can’t make me happy then I’ll tell you how you’re wrong and – oh!”

His teeth sunk into your flesh and you moaned. You wrapped your arms around his back, holding him close while his face was buried in your neck. You angled your knees, trying to give the bulk of his body more space. You could feel his bite drawing blood but, oddly enough, it did not hurt at all. In fact, it felt right.

It felt like you had spent your entire life underwater and now you were coming up through the surface, breathing in the fresh air and seeing the world clearly and in colour.

“Do it,” he murmured, his tongue laving at the wound on your neck, “Mark me, mega.”

You did not even question what he was talking about before your dug your teeth into his strong neck.

You both stayed like that, entwined with each other, heaving chests pressed together and completely out of breath. You could still feel him inside you, could still feel the new traces of the bond between you and your eyes stung with tears of joy. You had finally arrived somewhere you were always meant to go.

Paz gently rolled you both around until he was on his back and you were straddling him. You settled your cheek right on his chest, listening to his racing heartbeat under your ear.

A blanket fell over you, cocooning you in against his scent and warmth.

“I love you,” he rumbled, his fingers drawing patterns over your back, “Maybe I should’ve told you that before I marked you for everyone to see but it’s true. I love you, omega, and I will spend my life trying to be worthy of you.”

For the longest time, you were convinced that hearing these words from his mouth would absolutely exhilarate you. But the reality was you already knew he loved you. You sensed it in every word he directed at you, every touch, every smile he sent your way. Hearing him say it out loud filled you with long-awaited peace and satisfaction.

This was your true mate. This was the alpha you knew he would be.

“I love you too,” you whispered, your eyes already dropping closed from exhaustion. You could feel how your heat was satisfied for the moment, being filled by him and close to your alpha.

He kissed your hairline, his arms tightening around you. “Rest now, love,” he murmured against your forehead, “I will be here when you wake up.”

And you knew what he said was true: You would wake up in the arms of your true mate.

Breathing became harder and harder and he ripped off his helmet, taking in gulps of air as the vents of the days caught up with him. Fighting no longer offered the distraction, the reprieve, that it usually did for him. And that was a lot for an alpha to take in.

Almost inevitably, all on their own, his thoughts returned to you. The words you had spit at him, how you had flinched away from him, how you screamed you would never be able to forgive him if he fought. How you were glad he refused to mate you because you would not bear to see him again in the afterlife. The husband you had offered yourself to in exchange for peace with your clan.

And he remembered how angry he had gotten, how frustrated, how he had shut off completely, knowing that telling you the truth – that your father had attacked first, that he could never sacrifice his people for an omega he may or may not love, that he had a duty – would fall on deaf ears. How he had simply shed his cape, told you that he was glad his safe return would not matter to you. That you could sleep well, then, without him.

The pain in his chest as he had left the covert was something he had never felt before.

A hand grabbed his upper arm ripping him away and he flinched, suddenly face to face with his right-hand man.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing, Vizsla?“ Dieko hissed at him, his hands heavy on his shoulders, “What do you think will happen to your omega after you die, huh? Do you think your council will keep her safe here? Think that anyone can take care of her better than you? Get your head straight, Vizsla, whatever shit you’re pulling it’s only going to break her heart and yours.”

He blinked, not quite understanding what Dieko was talking about. Only the mention of breaking your heart, of hurting you, got him to listen. Because stars knew you could hate him all you want but he would never – could never – hurt you.

Then he remembered how reckless he had been. How he had fought like a young one, like his life did not matter, like he was challenging death itself to come and get him if it dared.

“Calm down, friend,” he replied gruffly, wiping the blood from his face, probably only succeeding in streaking it more over his cheeks, “Nothing happened.”

“Something very well could’ve,” Dieko hissed, not letting go, his hand even wrapping around his throat, pure anger in his eyes and face. Paz was too shocked – no one ever dared to teach the clan leader like that – to say anything. So, he just stared. And listened.

“I refuse to take over the task of telling your widow what happened and see her discarded from our clan, refused to be taken in by her own. All because you are too stubborn to talk.”

“I would never leave her alone like that,” he heard himself saying. And meaning it. The thought of never seeing you again, of spending his last moments regretting everything he had never said to you.

“Don’t tell me that,” Dieko said, letting go of him and patting his shoulders, “Tell her.”

*

It was dark by the time they reached the covert. There was no large welcome ceremony, no uproar. Just the quiet and empty halls as everyone made their way back home. He could smell the scent of happiness, of relief, through the doors, even spotted Dieko being greeted by his omega as she flung herself at him, burying her face in his neck.

A pang in his chest made him look away, the unreasonable wish that one day you would greet him like that too coming up in him.

The rooms of the clan leader were the furthest inside the cave, the safest place for the covert. He had only reluctantly accepted them, happy with his one room as a warrior during the time his parents had still been alive. But now he relished in the space because it was space that he could offer you. And even if you were to avoid him, he knew that wherever you were, you were safe.

His heart started pounding, his feet getting heavier with every step he took towards your shared home. And then the door was in front of him and he felt more nervous than walking into any battle.

You were probably already asleep somewhere, not acknowledging him until the morning and it pained him even as he put his hand on the doorknob, slowly pushing it open and revealing his home.

He found himself taking a deep breath through his nose, relishing in your scent that coloured every single thing in his rooms now. (He would not have it any other way but he was not ready to admit that yet.) It was not completely dark yet, a single lamp in the corner still shining a dimming light across the room.

The size of his bed was something you had always enjoyed, he knew that. The blankets, the pillows, the space and the softness – all things that made you curl up next to him happily, your hands seeking him in your sleep, pulling his hand up until you could lay it over your neck. He knew you never did it on purpose, never wanted him to squeeze or anything. But you wanted his scent. And stars, did he want to scent you.

But the surprise he felt when he saw you in the bed this time, too, was something he could never ever put into words. Because there you were, right in the middle, a nest of blankets on top of the sheets and while that made his heartbeat skip on its own, what really got to him was that you were clutching his cape to your nose, whimpering in your sleep.

“Omega,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling his tears sting suspiciously, “Omega, love, I’m home.”

You flinched, your eyes suddenly wide open but still unfocused from sleep. “Alpha?” you asked groggily, “is that you?”

He nodded, not finding the words, and stepped closer, lowering himself so he could sit down at the edge of the bed.

And suddenly your arms were around him, your whole weight slamming against him and he groaned in surprise, falling on his back and you followed, burying your face in his neck much like Dieko and his mate and his throat was tight, his skin hot and cold and all he wanted was to –

“I am so sorry,” he started, taking a deep breath, “I am so sorry, omega, I never- I never wanted you to think that –“

Your body trembled under his hands and it took him a while to realize that you were crying. For him.

“You were gone and I thought,” you sniffled, leaning back a bit so he could see your tear-stained cheeks, your trembling lips, your red-rimmed yes, “I thought you might never come back again. Paz, I – I do not want anything to happen to you. Never.”

He swallowed thickly, wishing he could somehow make you understand how important you were to him. How much he admired you. How much he loved you, even. But he was afraid that whatever he was going to say now, whatever words he would manage to form, would frighten you away.

You did not seem to notice his inner struggle. You were straddling him, wearing nothing but your long shift and his cape around your shoulders and you were so close, he never wanted to leave this bed.

 Yet, he could see the exact moment you spotted the bruises on his neck, left there by Dieko.

“Who did this?” you asked, frowning in concern, your fingers reaching up to brush over his scent gland again, your nails slightly scratching over his stubble, “What happened?”

“It’s – they’re nothing,” he assured you with a smile, “just me acting like a fool.”

“Are you okay?” you asked again, a little furrow between your brows as you mustered him up and down, trying to spot any damage on his armours that could indicate an injury. But your fingers kept moving, brushing over his throat as you calmed him down.

He closed his eyes, simply enjoying you scenting him. “Hmm, I think I am, now at least,” he teased you and he felt that hearing your giggle added ten years to his life.

You leant forward, your nose brushing over his throat and a whole body shudder went through him when he felt your lips on him too. He hummed, his hands tightening on your hips pulling you closer and you seemed to tighten your arms around him as well.

He leant his head back, wanting to give you more space. The movement made his eyes wander even as his body stirred, feeling you press your body against his, and he found quite a few bowls and plates of food on the table by the door, looking lush and plenty and completely untouched.

“What’s that, omega, did you have a feast without me?” he joked, trying to ignore the sting of fear that maybe you did have fun while he was away.

But you looked at him so sweetly, so sincerely, it made his heart ache, his fingers skimming you’re your sides.

“No, I – I just had prepared for when you come back,” you explained, his heart stopping. You slipped out his arms so easily, his fingers reached for you even when you were with both feet on the floor again.

Watching you walk through your shared room, your hips swaying, the thin fabric of your shift barely covering your form, it made him feel all sorts of things. His cock stirred, his breathing picked up, and his heart clenched in his chest. But most of all it made him feel warm. And wanted.

“I got some of the berries you like,” you explained shyly, coming back with a little bowl, crawling into your nest, beckoning him to follow you. The pieces of his armour came off quicker than ever before and he curled around you, draping his big body around yours so he could feel you everywhere.

You giggled, raising a berry to his lips and he took it between his teeth, unable to resist the temptation to press a quick kiss to your fingertips. Your sharp intake of breath made his scent spike and he could smell yours too, warm and fresh and sweet. Irresistible.

He had hardly noticed that you had gotten this close. But your forehead was against his, your noses brushing and your breaths were mingling. His hand landed on your hip, pulling you a little closer.

“You want one too?” he asked, his voice rough, shuffling even closer so your legs were pressed against each other.

“Uh-huh,” you nodded, “Please, alpha.”