mangolassibabyyy

◞ : MDNI , 18+ content | tags: dead dove , do not eat ! pheromone perfume prompt ! father figure!dean x innocent fem!reader, age gap (reader is in 20s, dean in his late 30s) heavy fauxcest, dad + daughter dynamics turned ddlg, daddy kink [dad, daddy, dada] brief platonic!brotherly dynamics with sammy ♥︎ petnames [kid, baby, bug, etc.] angst, sexual frustration + male masturbation (yum) inaccurate refractory period with lots + lots of cum.. a really desperate, whiny, + needy dean, he’s essentially in a heat for his little girl ! p in v penetration, cockwarming, loss of virginity + gooey love declarations ♥︎ all characters are 21 years or older + consenting adults !

◞ : summary ; dean’s relationship with you is.. complicated. and after a spillage of a pheromonal hexing substance, that desire his for daughter figure burgeons into a feral lust. 7.3k words.

◞ : notes ; woah. this took so long to write, eeep! i hope i did fauxcest dad!dean justice, i feel like there is so little content for him! :c

It was just a question of time, Dean knew that much to be true. You had only just begun to blossom, a fresh and spry young woman, and yet, you remained terribly nescient to what the world wanted to tear out of you in chunks. Soft innocence seemed to exude from your pores, sweet and rich – and god, Dean knew men wanted to lap it up – lap you up with their sharp, venomous tongues and the mangles of their jaws. Men, more like wolves. Dean had already discerned the debauchery of his kind — the wandering eyes that undressed and fucked you in every bar, the way they glanced at the swells of your chest, or the curves of your hips. More often than not, the stares at his little one left Dean with white, aching knuckles and a tight, tensioned jaw. He had hollowed himself out and buried you beneath the crutch of his wing, desired to guard you from the sinister, from such entities and evil after you’d lost so much… and yet, the full truth of your presence in his life weighed him like mud in his throat – thickened, weighted, filthy, and based on false pretension. How could he condemn and castigate others, when he gnawed for you far worse than the wolven? When he’d palm himself in the front seat after a day of enmeshed touches and sweetened giggles? When you were the name he’d cried into his hand when his reticence retired, and the rage of his groin was hardly relieved by the jerk of his fist?

Dean was always harsh, always punishing in attempts to admonish his attraction. Even when his balls sharply slapped up in a velocious rhythm, and when his sack and cock were left stinging and scathed, his lust would just not wane. Even when he’d spurt and spill, pulsing semen from his slit in a rugged gasp, your angel face remained entrenched and beaming behind his eyes. 

You had never known of the ache veiled beneath his hazeled eyes, nor of the piercing teeth Dean veneered within his grin. No matter if he was pious and paternal in his role, a sanctuary, a salvationist, he was still a wolf all the same. A canine concealed in trust and love, and utter self-abnegation. 

Those first few times Dad and Dada slipped from your lips, the words pooled into his veins like hot, gooey sugar, before he swallowed them - and there, they hardened, weighted heavily within the pit of his stomach. You perceived him as a father figure. And the declaration was pure honey – warm, syrupy, but a viscous truth that left Dean to ultimately choke on with time. He just never thought it would be suffocating him so soon.

Dean didn’t typically relent to your insistence of inclusion, but it was simple enough – the three of you were to scour the deserted properties of a former coven for a specialty grimoire, and his little one could surely handle a bit of urban exploration, right? 

This particular residence was thickly concealed in dust, with gossamers adorning every surface and shelf. It seemed to float in tufts, laced in cobwebs and wisps in the light, and it left your nose tickling, itchy, and red. You had sneezed about nine times, and Dean bit back his typical reprimands that you should be waiting outside – his mind reasoning that it was just dust. 

Your watery eyes continued to flicker through the shelves, delicately removing loose papers and novels in search of the spellbook, before sneezing yet again. And, in an involuntary etiquette, your elbow raised to enshroud your mouth, while incidentally toppling over a medium-sized vial that had lain upon a ledge. The crack of glass and the sudden cold splash of the substance made you jump, squealing in shock. It was already saturating through your clothes and skin when Dean sprinted into the room in response to the shatter. You were crouched on the ground, inspecting the glass for some sort of tell of what sludge had just stained your clothes, before frowning up to a very dismayed and disquieted Dean.

“Baby – what the hell happened in here?” He reproves, raising an eyebrow to you before glancing towards the fractures on the floor and splatters of liquid.

“i spilled yucky stuff,” You pout, before peering down at the puddle again. “i dunno what it is..” 

“Yucky stuff, huh?” Dean murmurs, kneeling down beside you and already gently reaching for your chin to survey your skin. His nose scrunches up at the scent – it’s chemical, industrial, with underlying hints of sweet rot – like dying lilacs seeped in bleach. 

Immediately, his eyes inspect for any marks or reactions, his solicitude and sharpness staining his face. “Damn, kiddo — got this shit everywhere.” He frowns, wiping your cheek with his flannel sleeve. 

“Lucky that glass didn’t cut’chya up.” He speaks, and then he stills, taking a rough aspiration of something that’s residing in thickened wafts, making him lick his bottom lip before he lifts you to your feet. His hunter’s apprehension is evident, beginning his typical inquisitions for mysterious spilled capsules – for all he knows, you could start growing two heads and a tail, or fainting from some sort of hex poison. 

“You feelin’ weird? Lightheaded? Sore? Anything?”

One of his hands departs from your waist, raising your chin up again, peering into your batting lashes and wide eyes, his own heart rate kicking up, even as you confirm with a little, “nope.”

His grip on you stays tight, grounding for a moment, before he lets go of your jaw to chuckle at your nonchalant response. He peers down at you, another once-over for error, but there is none – you’re still just his typical sweet and ditzy girl – thank god. 

“Mm. Alright, lil’ bug. But we ain’t takin’ chances. Gotta getcha cleaned up. Smells like a damn perfume factory exploded – ‘nd not like that powdery sweet stuff ya use.” His nose wrinkles as he reacts to the aroma again, drawing you closer by his grip, and pressing his nose into the sensitive crook of your neck. 

“h- hey!” You huff out, startled at the sudden movement and furrowing your brows as Dean draws in an invasive inhale of your skin, before he recoils away with a throaty cough. 

“Jesus, fuck – that’s strong.” His voice is dipping lower now. Rougher.

“Sure you’re not feelin’... off?” He questions, his throat bobbing as he swallows down saliva. His hands are gliding from your waist, down to your hips instead, fingers flexing with the subconscious desires that warm in his skull. 

“what are you talking about..? it doesn’t have a scent.” You question, bemusement flooding your expression as your nose exhales the same plain stale air you’ve been breathing in all this time.

Dean raises his eyebrows at your assertion, as if you're denying that the sky is blue or that water is wet. He steps closer, his body now crowding yours. 

“You can't smell that?” He chuckles out in an incredulous retort, eyes roaming your tilted gaze for a hint of falsehood, but there is none. 

“It’s like a damn tidal wave, kiddo. How the hell can you not smell that?” And before you can shove him off, Dean is leaning in yet again, nose grazing the tingling nerves behind your ear, his breath hotter, heavier, and inhaling wholly at the odor that transludes from your flesh. 

“a- alright! stop– stop sniffin’ me...” You squirm, maneuvering your head away from his face’s impertinent proximity. 

Dean pulls back sharply, hands hesitantly receding from your waist. His shoulders roll, trying to absolve tension, before he clears his throat and slaps on a half-grin over his tightened jaw. 

“Yeah… yeah, alright – sorry, kid.” Dean rubs the back of his neck, avoiding your now slightly distressed gaze. “Just– makin’ sure you’re not gonna keel over from whatever the hell’s soakin’ ya.” His now empty fingers drum against the denim on his thighs, restless and wanton, before gesturing his chin toward the door. 

“C’mon. Let’s find Sammy before this place starts crumblin’ on us.” His gaze lingers a bit too long – it always does –  and then he pursues the venture out of the manor.  

Unbeknownst to both of you, the searing effects of the perfumed toxin are coursing through his crimson veins, constricting vessels and cerebral blood flow, making his mind misted with an induced haze of hunger. One that’s heightening the horror and sin he’s already envisioned about you; The previously conjured thoughts of your thighs spread beneath him, of him sheathing the throb of his cock inside, of you cumming, are all now projecting in the forefront of his mind. 

Typically, you would whine for Dean’s hand, for it to be held out of such funereal space, but you refrain from the touch – he’s seemingly bittered and harried, and undeniably tense. The residence is a labyrinth of mildewed books and rotting wood, and obviously lacking the sought-after grimoire. Naturally, you attribute his peculiar behavior to disappointment in the failure of the scavenge.

Until, of course, you find yourself noting how Dean won't stop looking back at you as he navigates, and how each of his steps are shakily steady – as if each one is planned rather than a thoughtless, simple tread. On the third glimpse over his shoulder, you stomp petulantly and pout, unnerved and annoyed. “why’re y’lookin’ at me like that!?”

Dean blinks, his vision refocusing and face relaxing slightly, as if he is slipping out of a trance. 

“What? Nah.. Nuthin’,” He mumbles a feigned dismiss, avoiding your stare now like the shitty liar he is when it comes to you. “M’just makin’ sure that stuff ain’t messin’ with that head a’yours.” 

Your nod is laced with apprehension, but you resume following his steps, recognizing the sweat that dots down his feverish temple, and how his lungs are now emitting deeper, more ragged breaths. There’s a slow burn at the base of his spine, and it’s now sundering through to his inner thighs.

Finally, Sam’s familiar face appears in the dimmed and dusted hall, raising an eyebrow to the sight of the two of you – eyes flickering to Dean’s uneasy gait and sterned glare, and your confused little headshake and shrug in reference to it all. 

“Everything okay? You two look…” Sam starts, his brows knitting together at Dean’s restive bearings. “Weird.”

You reply before Dean does, giving him a glared side glance as you speak. “i dunno. he’s actin’ off… i spilled something on m’self – says it’s potent, but i can’t even smell it.”

Sam’s eyes narrow, his tone shifting from banter to his brotherly concern for both you and Dean.

“What exactly did you spill?” He states, clipped and scrutinizing as he looks at Dean, who is exhaling harshly and scrubbing a hand over his face. 

“Hell if I know. Some fuckin’ vial – Kid broke it, got splashed. Says she can’t smell it, but–”

“Jesus, Dean, could've led with that.” He interrupts, scoffing. 

Dean stiffens, defensive and scowling. “I was handlin’ it.” 

Sam ignores him, speaking softly to you and gesturing to the wet sleeve of your wrist, still dampened with the liquid. “Mind if I..” 

“Mhm.” You nod sweetly before he can finish, holding out your hand for Sam to sniff, while Dean leans in much closer than necessary, his hands flexing with the manacle effort to not snatch you up and away. 

“Yea, I’m not smelling anything either,” Sam confirms, lowering your arm back down. His eyes bear to his brother once again, registering how his fingers are twitching towards your skin, before he abruptly clambers his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Dean, you good?”

Once again, Dean clears his throat, shaking off a weight and nodding. “Peachy. Let’s just–” His voice rasps before he corrects his staggering breaths  – “get outta this dump before the lil’ klutz is dumpin’ somethin’ else on her.”

You scoff at the insult, and Sam nods with trepidation, the three of you once again traversing the decaying wood that trails to the exit. The spored and moted air is charged with something headier than the scent Dean believes you to be effusing – like lightning surging to strike as he slurs again senselessly. “That – hhgn – fuckin’ smell.”

“What’s it smell like?” Sam asks now, curious, and Dean bristles behind you, hissing through his teeth.

“Like some – like her, but–” He’s interrupted by his own involuntary brimmed huff, his nose twitching like he can’t help it. He groans out at the pungency of your permeating scent, rubbing a hand over his jaw again. “Fuck– s’like some kinda aphrodisiac or somethin’.”

Sam shrugs, at a loss, looking back at his brother, before glancing back towards you. You're frowning, perturbed by the entire situation, tuned into Dean’s series of tight respires, and yes, ignorant to the way he’s practically salivating at your backside – raptured by the sway of your hips, the curves of your thighs, at just how supple your neck now looks. Without any regard for warning or reasoning, Dean finds himself striding forward, shoving past Sam and grasping at your wrists with one hand, his other snaking tightly around your waist. It’s nothing more than ferocious and completely flurrying, leaving you to gasp in flummoxed fear. Sam reacts in equal perplexity, blinking in shock at the brandishing behavior. “Dude – what the hell?”

When Dean doesn’t respond with more than the seal of his thumbs into your pulse, you yelp, whirling to pull away from his darkened eyes and suffocating grip. “the– the fuck, dean?!” 

And blessed be, it’s enough to make his fingers twitch regrettably as your frightened tinge – at the unsteady whine of his rarely used name – Dean, not Dad – and the comprehension that you’re discomfited seems to inject him with enough sense to pry his grip away. 

“Shit.. Sorry, kid… I– I didn’t mean to grab.” He lies, voiced rasped with the means to console, even as the toxin simmers slick heat up his spine and licks brashly in his gut for you.

Sam still lours, observing his brother skeptically, as he falls into step beside you. He knows Dean has been a bit … smothering, assiduous, too paternal, and far too cosseting for only ever knowing you as an adult. To anyone, it was conceivable that you were his daughter figure, his baby. But this? Dean was incontrovertibly reacting to you in anything but an appropriate manner – instead of the sweet and spoiling father, he’s immensely feral, and overtly sexually frustrated. 

He's marched ahead, crossing the threshold out of the manor for a moment alone, and then bending over with a groan, veritably squeezing his cock in a pitied attempt for an abate – until he hears your ingenious essence gasping at the sight.

“Dean, the fuck!? We’re right here?!” Sam excoriates, watching as his older brother straightens up and glowers back at him. “Dude.. Whatever this is, you’re not immune. You’re reacting. Calm down, man.”

Dean snorts with a sneer, as if he wasn’t just palming himself eight feet away. His respirations remain hot and heaved, shaking his head. “Nah. Ain’t no way some fuckin’ … fragrance is gonna affect me like that. I’m a hunter, not some hormonal-crazed teenager.” He scoffs, voice chock full of conviction, and yet, he’s waving a hand towards you.

“hey– don’t gesture to me. m’not a teenager anymore,” you frown sternly, arms folding over your chest in vexation.

Immediately, Dean’s expression inverts, the previously afflicted features peeling back into something searing and stripped down to dark amusement. He steps closer into your space, his grin drooling with wolfish satisfaction.

“Yeah? Coulda fooled me, sweetness – with the way you’ve been whimperin’ at night, lil' fingers fuckin’ yourself as hard as ya can.”

Your jaw is left slack at his bluntness, paling with Dean’s admission as Sam chokes on air from genuine revulsion. It’s as if all his inhibition has flooded out with each exhale of your aroma, now only filterless and feverish.

“Took ya long enough to figure out how t’make yourself feel good,” he chuckles, soaking in your stunned silence and the way you’re trembling with shame. “Was about to teach you myself, kiddo.”

“Don’t be so surprised, sweetheart. Walls are thin. I listen.”

Sam’s face is gaped with dubiety that wars with horror at his brother’s raw and deranged rebarbative. “Dude–” His voice cracks, the beratement left strangled. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”

Dean scowls, shooting an icy glare at his brother. “Oh. I’m sorry, Sammy. Didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to tease my favorite girl.” He bites, his tone turned hostile.

“No, not– not just that–” Sam stops, eyeing Dean’s frenzied leer on the lines of your body, still and stern, as if he’s the ache of unnatural silence before a calamity strikes. 

Sam grimaces, discernment dawning on his face with despair. “It’s– it’s her pheromones, Dean. They’re– they’re exacerbated from that spell or whatever, and it’s affecting your mind.

Dean huffs out, rolling his eyes hard, shoulders tightening as that possibility flickers to life in the periphery of his sex-addled mind. 

"Yeah, right. Like some cheap spritz is gonna turn me into a damn puppet." He grins, all teeth, letting out a humorous laugh, before turning towards you again. “Jus’ ‘cause I noticed how my little girl squirms when she thinks no one’s watchin’ doesn't mean I’m – what, infected?”

But even so, your pleading eyes and shivering form furnish enough comprehension in him to recognize your consternation, how he’s the one crumbling the comfort he’s only ever sought to provide — and it’s enough to impel him to back away before he pours out more unfiltered remarks. 

“Just — let’s get outta here." Dean mutters gruffly, and then he’s tossing his keys to Sam and stumbling to the Impala before either one of you can interject on his actions. 

Every fucking step aches with waves of dolor and arousal. He’s twitching, and his bulbous, puffy tip is chafing against the waistband of his boxers. The rhythm in his hurried steps is enough to shoot sharp barbs of pleasure up his inner thighs, before they settle thickly in his swelling groin. Your scent just won’t stop permeating into every blood vessel, every cell, and it’s slickening him more with each unbearable breath and step. 

The ride back to the motel is no less than excruciating. For all of you. Dean is in the backseat, head in his hands, trying not to whimper in response to your simple existence. All the windows are peeled down to dilute the air, but it does nothing to simmer the surge in his gut and veins. The visions of you still torment the blackness behind his eyes, each visage imagined in his god-forsaken skull, making him throb harder – what your little pussy looks like, how it pulsates, and how puffy you may be. He thinks of how you may leak out your own cream, or how your hips may lurch up when you cum. He wonders if you orgasm to the thought of him. To the thought of your Dad. He knows what you sound like when you do – your whines endure primevally, permanently, within the confines of his mind.

And now? Well, you are whimpering, only it’s pooled with pure distress and contrition, tears silently rippling down your cheeks as you apologize for the fifth time on the trip back.

“‘m–  ‘m sorry i spilled that stuff, dada. ‘m sorry you’re affected.” You sniffle out, looking back at him through the gleam of the rearview window. The thought as to why only your Dad figure is terrorized by the pheromone, and how Sam remains intact, does not even penetrate into your guileless mind – you’re only concerned for your Dad’s wellbeing, his health, and for his forgiveness. 

Dean shakes his head, his words stammering out through gritted teeth, clenching his hands roughly over his face again. “Not your…  fault, kid.” He swallows and groans, bearing his throat that’s coated in a sheen of sweat, his eyes shutting with a grimace. “Fuckin– Jus’ can’t– think clear.”

Sam's gaze is pensive, looking down at you, sniffling and abashed. You're biting away at your nails and fingertips as the nausea and mortification sour your tummy and throat.

Finally, the motel slips into view, gravel rolling beneath the tread of tires as the Impala pivots into the lot. Although before Sam can even employ the stick shift to park, Dean is tearing out of the backseat, slamming the door, and stalking over in fervent strides to your shared room, throwing himself behind the door.

Neither you nor Sam have time to comprehend the matter, hardly out of the car when the frame of the motel room rattles, and the lock clicks shut. And then the moans commence, bleeding out through the door in Dean’s thick bursts of breath, his suffering attempts to sate himself sounding through in the lot.

“Alright. That’s not good..” Sam discerns, exhaling sharply and glancing towards where you stand, paralyzed by the open passenger door with wide, appalling eyes. Your ears are pink, and your thighs are tensing, as another one of Dean’s guttural groans reverberates through your form. Luckily, Sam’s voice manages to pierce through the predicament, his face a parallel of your own mortification.

“O- okay, kiddo” – back in the car.” He assuages in an appeal to your discomfort. “We’re.. we’re  gonna get food while he’s doing – that.” 

The burnt rubber sounds shrill as Sam speeds you off in the Impala, shipping you both away from such upheaval. But even in the separation, your scent still clings to Dean’s clothes. Adhered to his skin, his arteries – his conflagrant desire for you is now cohered to every blood cell. He is hardly able to flounder over to the shitty mattress, his fingers tottering shakily to disentangle himself from his belt and jeans. The buckle snags on the friction of where his cock is twitching, and his hips jerk in a violent response.  

“Fuckin’– shit!” he snarls, before finally able to bear out enough flesh to rut into his fist. And fuck, he’s already seeped into his boxers, the constricts of the denim moistened through with his precum, smeared in the shameful splotches he had pumped out on the drive back. Pained whimpers gnaw through Dean’s throat as he nudges the ruined fabric down his thighs, the sensation scraping the thick, tensed veins of his pulsing and slippery cock. He’s covered in himself already – glimmering in fresh droplets of white that are already wrung around his swelled, pounding balls and stickily beaded onto his pubic hair. 

By the grace of his extreme equanimity, he’d refrained from cumming in the backseat, untouched and in front of you. His kid.

A whined moan tears from Dean’s lips as he wraps his palm around his fat and tumescent cock, his other hand squeezing the muscle of his thigh so hard that his knuckles already ache. It’s piteous how fast he cums. He can’t even grunt out with the sensation of first touching his cock – it remains to be only incessant whimpers, laced within each pant. A firm squeeze accompanied by the envisioning of your face, your cries, your scent, and he’s melting. Dean's own forbidding, pleading strokes last around all of twenty seconds, before he’s choking on his breath. A crying gasp burns in his throat as he feels his slickened dick wrench up towards his belly in a violent convulse, his cock curling in a breach as his slit shoots out hot and fierce erupts of cum all over his abdomen. The angle of his body and dick prompts the creamy spills to plunge up his shirt, seeping through to his chest and stomach as his hips continue to cant forward in the aftermath of his orgasm. 

His breathing has gone shallow, and there is no fade into clarity. Everything remains to hum and hurt in the pulse beneath his skin. Dean’s dick weakly twitches out more release even a whole minute later, gnawing at his lip as he rubs over his still puffed and pleading tip. 

When his touch recedes from his own body, shivering and slick with his sweat and cum, he coils up on the bed – and there, his half-lidded eyes meet the glassed ones of the stuffed animals that ornament the motel mattress; the ones you insist on accompanying you on such trips. Only now, they glare back in derision at what Dean knows he cannot have – your innocence, your love, and you. He groans, but even in such spite, in the shame, his hand is already grasping towards his groin again.

 It’s well into the witching hour when you stumble out of Sam’s room – despite the insistence you bunk with him to avoid incident, you still cannot sleep; Not without the rhythm of Dean’s susurrations, without the solace he brings you. Your bare feet meet still-warm cement, breathing in soft night air while the faint motel lights bathe your skin in an amber glow. The spare key of Dean’s room rattles in your palm as you shift the weight upon your legs in contemplation. You miss him. It’s been hours. You’ve stripped and scrubbed your skin since then, showered off any possible remnants of the spilled substance. Your steps lead you to his room, surely convinced that his disarray has dissipated… 

You’re proven wrong the moment you turn the key to his door. The scent of his sex whirls in thick waves, heady and musked, hitting your face as you huff. Your clothes are entirely askew, spread upon the floor and the bed in slick heaps – Dean having rived through your bag in complete concupiscence, staining his cum on any surface that has ever touched your skin. And now, he lies naked, on his stomach, seeping secretions even in his sex-induced sleep. His biceps are curled inward and around your stuffies, clinging to them like they’re salvation, and the sight equally spikes and spoils something in your gut.

And then the door shuts, the lock pivots, and you hover above, like a succubus, wanton to strike. Your hands extend to trace down his spine, the sluice of his sweat sticking to your fingers, and Dean stirs. He’s startled awake by the touch on his sensitive nerves, his hips thrusting as he chokes out quiet caution.

“No.. no – Baby, please.” He’s begging, his cock grounding down as he keeps his eyes shut. He already knows you’re pouting, sweet and simultaneously seductive, and he knows if he sees it, he will spurt into the sheets once again. 

His libidinousness rages – and the scent was a spell, inducing a torment in the form of titillation. It has relinquished his refractory period, refilling his balls with semen, and seeping blood flow south in a salacious suffering. He’d lost count of his orgasms much earlier in the evening.

“da- dad.. m’just... i’m scared.” You peep out, and the whimper of his title, his role to you, makes him thrust his thickened cock down harder.

“Ba- baby.. You gotta– mmh– leave Daddy alone, ‘kay?” Dean gasps out, his mouth salivating on the sheets, still refusing to look at you.

“but i don’t wanna!” You pout, your hands trailing to where they're tucked on your plushies and beginning to run fingers over white knuckles, before attempting to pry them off.

“cuddle me instead..” You insist, and Dean groans softly before it blurs into a darkly aroused chuckle.

“Kid, cuddlin’s the last thing on my mind right now.” He rasps, the shape of his ass curving in as he ruts down in front of you again.

“dad… i— please..” You’re holding back tears now from anguish and fright – he’s sickly pale, sweating it out, dehydrated from the sheer exertion, and throbbing throughout his whole body. The tendons in his neck are outstretched in the strain, and when he opens his eyes, they look bloodshot, perhaps from pleasure, guilt, or a souring solution of both.

A moan punches from his gut as he makes mere eye contact with you. You, the young woman he’d practically adopted, the one who became his little girl. You, whom he recognized as a daughter, even through the throes of falling in love. You, who’d now infected every pore and nerve in his body due to his adoration, with no other absolution for his ailment other than a consummation. 

“Li– lil’ one, I can’t.” He doesn’t elaborate – he is unable to, really. The lust is sculpting itself higher in his spine, like that same dirt he’d shoved down his throat when he first began to ache for you; only now, that swallowed mud is reclaiming, thick like clay just before the kiln, and it’s boiling between his thighs.

And then you’re slipping yourself into his now limp grip before he can whine a dissent, curling against him as you breathe in his pants. The sheets are sodden beneath you, and still, you press him closer. The agony licks more fiercely in his gut, his fat cock dragging in the seam between his abdomen and the sheets. It's flesh on flesh, your bare thighs snuggling in against his, your skin only ablazing his nerves further in an indulgence Dean had only ever dared to dream of. Your form is now tucked tight to where he’s burying his body against the bed in debasement, and your aroma is impossibly more afflictive, pungent, and seemingly imbued with the salted scent of arousal.

“Y- y’gotta... hnngh – stop touchin’ kid.” He tries to bite, but his voice is too weakened to weigh the threat. It’s a cry. And he’s going to cum, slick with semen and self-hatred.

“Little girl.. I swear to God– M’ — m’not safe right now.”

His swollen slit spills out more sticky drools of precum, and another strangled sound cracks from his lips, carried high and broken, and yet, you remain. Because he’s still Dean, he’s still Dad. He’s your anchorage and your amity. The man who seeps succor when you’re saddened, who cradles you through sobs and stabilizes your system. The man who spends his spare moments sustaining your serenity through late-night cuddles, cartoons, and coloring pages – he’d been the one who always provided that sanctity and softness for your soul. 

And now, he’s the man suffering in his own sex, supplicant in the terror stirring in his groin, and he is simply the man that you love, even as he shatters.

“Sh- Shit— look away, baby, please—"  

“dad. it’s okay.. you can cum.” You implore, and that solicitation just further stimulates his arousal. And it’s ever enrapturing, his kid, luring out his orgasm in only love. Dean shudders, wincing as his nerves tear themselves apart in your touch as you slip your palm over his spine again. His fingers curl against the sheets as he whines out a wounded cry, his ass flexing as his hips slip into helpless little stutters, the pleasure sparkling as he thrusts his dick harder on the bed. And then he’s cresting, his cockhead pouring another sticky release of his semen. He’s cumming, in front of you, his breath catching in pained gasps as you coax him, caressing the tensed muscles of his back as more sweat sluices over his sides.

Through heaves, Dean does not heft to your gaze; he’s whimpering, quivering, and further turning his florid-blooming face into the mattress. His body is still racked, even as his voice withers, wrecked in pants of chagrin and pleasure.

“Oh– oh fuck. S- Sorry, lovebug– fuck.. didn’t mean–”

“dad.. no, no. don’t be. it’s okay.” Your hands climb down his back in a consoling allure. “lemme help..” 

Dean’s thighs immediately press together with instinct, like he can shroud his impending surrender, but that sickening scent of you makes that impossible. When he finally risks a glance at you, he’s red-faced, his body flush against the sheets, and his hazel eyes are glossy with tears – stained with the faults that he’s failed you and failed the fatherhood he’d prized and provided. His shame sears sharper than the pleasure that still simmers – and yet, your gaze remains to be sweet. A soft, sympathetic smile that gilds your features as you watch him squirm. 

"S’not— hnn—not over. Still hurts." Dean admits hoarsely, his throat thick and thrumming. It’s not quite a plea, but it’s just enough to prompt your lips to his. And you’re eminently gentle, almost inexperienced, as your lips caress his, and that sweet press of you is everything Dean has dreamt and decried for in an equal measure. He doesn’t deepen it, not yet – he just allows your warmth and innocence to penetrate his perilous lust.

“i love you, and i want to.” You whisper as you pull away, your lips a wisp away from his. 

For a moment, he just shivers, stunned, his heart racing as he reaches up to cradle your face. His expression fractures further – he always knew it was a question of time – and now, you had answered, you had appealed, and worst of all, you remained adoring throughout it all.

His thumb brushes your cheek with reverence, voice ragged with guilt.

"Y- you shouldn't want me. I- I shouldn't want you." But his hips twitch forward despite it all, the angle now allowing his bare and bulbous tip to slip out from between the sheets and onto your thigh. 

“but we do, dad.. please. let me give m’self to you…”

Yet another cracking whine forms in his throat, and then he’s kissing you. His little girl. His daughter and his demise. He can taste himself on your tongue from your prior touch, only now, he’s torn, and he’s lapping, lips slick as he swallows every whimper, his chin and nose dipping against yours with the incessant ache to embed himself inside of you. The kiss is tainting, exacerbating the tremors in his body as he holds you tight, his grip drawing you closer to where he’s grounding his hips. His pelvis presses to yours, your Dad pinning you to the sheets as his lips never part, suckling and slipping with his slackened inhibitions — it's as if he’s attempting to be gentle, but now unversed on how to administer that. He’s no longer that of meat and muscle; he's only a host to his heightened arousal and affection.

His shaky fingers roll up the t-shirt you’d slipped on in the surmise to sleep. Now, it’s tossed on the floor as Dean’s messy mouth trails down from yours and over your throat. He so desperately desires to make this good for you. To be a good Dad, even as he ruts his hotly dripping dick deeper into the plush of your thighs. His breath hitches with another whine as his hand slips to where you’re puffy and pulsing, burying his face into your shoulder as he frictions his fingers against your sweet, slickened, and clothed cunt —the one he’s salivated over for months, now just a gusset away.

“Fuck – oh… oh.. honey. This– this hole wants her Dad real bad..” The words are quivered through his lips with pure daze, nearly dumbstruck that his daughter desires him, too. You whimper, nodding, rolling your hips as his fingers smear your wetness down when the garment is stickily torn away.

His purple-flushed tip now flows out precum, veins twitching like electrical wires — eager and alight. He knows he will hurt you, you're untouched, tiny and tight, even as you pump out need, arousal trickling to your puckered flesh, it's not enough. And so, Dean prods, the thrum of his fingers nudging inside his kid’s pussy as tears prick your eyes. Two fingers, too big, but he needs this – he needs his daughter’s cunt, he needs to drip deep inside your womb to dissipate such a spell. And the scent of your slick little pussy is captivating, cloying, and it only makes his fat cock weep impossibly worse.

His thick fingers rub harder, rutting into a sweet spot you’ve never felt ache before, his digits hardly able to explore the teeny traverse of your cunt with how you’re already clamping. Dean drools onto your shoulder with sloppy kisses, fucking his fingers deeper as you whine at his hand between your thighs.

“M’baby… Bug—“ He whines softly, cleaved between his pure obeisance for you, and his torturous, lustrous groin. 

“Love you.. love you s’much.” He babbles, his hips unable to halt the arch of his back as his dick spasms against your thigh, threatening to erupt in creamy declarations once again. 

Your pussy is warming more, molding to his fingers with each curl and kneading rut inside, as Dean stretches his daughter by his own hand. And you’re both on the verge of sputtering sobs, sticky and wet, gasping in the scent of shared sex and sanguine devotion. The sensation of surrender stirs in your tummy, twisting in treacherous waves before his fingers pop out of your plush walls, your juice sliding out through suffused flesh.

And then his tip is flush with where his kid’s cunt cries, his own throat hissing with the stimulation, squeezing the base of his heavy and humming dick in the temperance to not trip over and spurt yet.

“da- dad!” you squeak out, his bulbous and crimson cock now working to breach inside your baby cunt. 

“Mmh— I know. Know it, sweet baby. M’— fuck– M’sorry.” He gasps, nudging your tiny pussy apart as he slots his sluicing, fat length further inside. He hardly fits, his hands on your hips, grasping higher, attempting to angle himself properly to immerse himself in your glossy hole faster. But the thought, the one he’s been damned by for months – that he’s finally going to be deep inside his daughter – deludes him further.

Dean’s hips quiver as you cry out, his eyes closed, brows knitted, tears trailing down scarlet cheeks that sear with shame. But the suppression of his orgasm is splicing, splintering. And your sloppy, compressing walls – the way his little baby is shuddering beneath him – sluicing up every inch he’s shoving inside with his most subdued effort, makes him spill. His fresh, hot, and heady cum pools thickly into your fluttering little cunt as his first orgasm inside you seeps deep. Dean is sobbing out, his cum-crusted belly visibly convulsing along with his arching spine. His hips rut his semen deeper inside until he’s slumping over you, seating his dick into the sticky heat of your soft, sweet little spot inside. He’s irrevocably helpless to his daughter’s pussy, his abdomen set ablaze, his thighs palpitating with the protest to stop, and yet, he doesn’t.

His stomach swirls with the overstimulation and the violent suckle of your hole, slotting into the press of your cervix, and a sob spears your throat. 

“My b– baby. My daughter– D... Dad loves you.” he prattles once again, feeling your little pussy pulsing again. “Nhhgn– N… nuthin’ feels better than bein’ inside you.”

You nod, cock-drunk and clenching, babbling back nonsensically, “mmh– love– love you, dada..”

Dean’s balls throb against your puckering hole, glimmering with a creamy ring of cum that’s slickening every crevice of where you’re connected. Where you’re finally consummating such love, with your Dad’s cock buried and bobbing inside the gummy and gooey walls of his own kid’s cunt.

Another squelching sound emits from your sloppy hole as Dean rolls his pelvis, unable to even pull and press back in, just rutting inside as if even an inch of disperse between you two would destroy him.

He’s graceless and glistening, moans muddled in his throat as your pleasured whines bleed through the sulcating folds of his brain. The fingers buried in your hips, and the thumbprints bruised into your thighs, soon boorishly bend you into a mating press, piercing himself deeper into the plush walls of your baby hole. The angle makes you squeal out, tears trailing down your temples as the tumid head of his cock frictions itself against the tender slit of your cervix. He feels himself there, entirely immersed inside as you writhe, his dick spasming in the tight sheath and seated against your aching womb.

His ballsack bloats once again, taut in each sluicing throb of your stretched and sodden pussy as his balls wrench tight, bullying into the garrote of your cunt before his milk is spurting inside you a second time. His face nuzzles into your neck through it all, whining through his orgasm like he’s starving to be closer. To be yours. And isn’t he already?

Since you first claimed him as a father, that ache, that forlorn feeling that nothing truly had mattered, had faded – disintegrated with each embrace and lacing of hands, every giggle that gleamed his own grin in return. He’s your Dad... and you are his. And all Dean can think is how he’s simply sanctified in you, with you, inside of you – and how the greatest divination he will ever endure will be when he sees his daughter cum for him.

Dean lifts his head to admire you through hazy eyes, moaning at the sheer sight – how you’re holding him against you, how your breaths hitch with each propel of his hips. His fingers embark through the cream over your cunt, his loads still leaking out in thick drools between your thighs and into the cleft of your ass. He feels the girth of himself, embedded into the entrance of your body, smearing what's sluicing out over your folds in an uncoordinated glide, before his fingers are spurring on the engorged bud of your baby clit. The rub on your exposed nerves makes you gasp, before those same, primal, incessant whimpers weep from your lips – the same ones he’s heard hollow out the walls countless times before, when you’d cum by your hand back at home. 

The sheer amount of stimulation leaves the heat in your belly to cinch up, shooting sparks from that spongey, sweet spot up and through the nerves of your spine. He continues to thrust lazily inside, grounding up into the plush press of your pussy, before you're seizing in a sputtering shudder. Your face is pinched in parted pants as you cry out, cumming carnally onto Dean’s cock, and he groans out at such a consecration. A final, visible, and physical culmination of your love. 

With your pussy still clasped on him in aftershocks, his shaky fingers draw to the dough of your cheeks to hold. “Oh, oh fuck. Mmh– My lil’ one.” He croons, tears prickling again at your pleasure-drawn face and clouded corneas – and all of it prompts his cock to twitch, libidinous once again.

The base of his balls is sticky with strings of semen that are still is sliding out, skin slapping the fat of your ass as he grounds himself into your little gummy walls; And in just a few, feverish bucks back into your runny hole, he’s filling you up again, blooming more scorching semen into your bruised womb with a shared, shattered cry between the two of you.

His body slumps into yours, his muscles growing unstrung and supple, and after so, so many hours, he’s finally growing soft inside the cavern where you’re still clenching. The rapacity, the debauchery, is ultimately bleeding away in ebbs of relief. 

He holds you flush against him, sighing out and planting butterfly kisses into the skin his lips can reach, before a self-reproach slips out.

“Should’ve… should’ve made it better f’you. Slower,” he slurs out.

“no.. no– was good, dad.” You swear, nodding with a sated smile. Your hands slip over his shoulders in a soothing caress, his shoulders still sticky with sweat. "mmh– next time.. 'itl be slow. but... still– still was good..." you blather out, and the babble makes Dean brightly beam.

“Yea, bug? Dad was good?” He grins, all boyish and sweet, before pacifying your lips with his own in a delicate, slow kiss that states everything – that you’re bound to one another, in sync, and that he is entirely smitten with you. And he’ll stay slotted, deep inside you until sunrise, cum-sodden and clinging, and succumbed to what was only ever inevitable – it was merely a question of time, and he’d assented, faltering and falling for his own sweet daughter. 

That was odd. No one would’ve guessed that Bucky Barnes even liked flowers.

What was even odder was that this infinitely grumpy, emotionally constipated, “I hate people” supersoldier — would be capable of flirting.

With the florist.

With you.

“Are we seeing this right?” Yelena whispered, elbowing Alexei as they peered through the shop window after Bucky made them wait outside. 

They watched as Bucky stood by the counter, leaning in ever so slightly, a charming grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watched you wrap a bouquet.

“He’s smiling,” Alexei muttered, horrified.

Inside, Bucky reached for the bouquet you were tying up, his gloved fingers brushing against yours. You playfully smacked his hand away, laughing. He laughed, too, and that was enough to send Yelena spiraling into an existential crisis.

Yelena squinted. “He’s flirting.”

Alexei frowned. “Bucky does not flirt.”

“I know. That’s why I’m freaking out.”

They watched as you handed him the bouquet, and in return, Bucky gave you a wink. And then he turned, walking out like he hadn’t just transformed into a different person.

That was when Yelena, utterly horrified Yelena, caught a flash of gold on your ring finger. She squinted her eyes. It was unmistakable. “Wait a second—”

As soon as he got back to them, Alexei folded his arms. “You were flirting.”

Bucky scoffed. “I was not.”

“She’s married!” Yelena accused, pointing dramatically. “She had a ring! You flirted with a married woman!”

Bucky didn’t even blink. He simply shrugged, tucking the bouquet carefully under his arm. “I didn’t see a ring.”

“She was literally wearing it—”

“I didn’t see a ring,” Bucky insisted, tugging absentmindedly at the chain around his neck— the one that held his dog tags, hidden under his shirt.

Yelena and Alexei exchanged a deeply disturbed look.

Bucky Barnes was flirting with a married florist.

What was the world coming to?

—

Bucky knew he’d fucked up the second he stepped back into Thunderbolts HQ. 

Alexie had just looked confused, while Yelena had been simmering the entire walk back, her arms crossed so tightly over her chest it was a miracle she hadn’t snapped a rib. 

She lasted exactly two seconds before she exploded. “You are jackass, Barnes!”

Bucky barely had time to sigh before she stomped closer.

“What’s so wrong with what I did?” he muttered, placing the bouquet of flowers in an empty vase

Yelena let out an incredulous laugh, pacing in front of him like a caged tiger ready to strike. “What’s wrong?” she echoed, her accent thickening with rage. “You flirted with a married woman! I should punch you in the face on principle!”

From the lounge, John Walker looked up from whatever government-issued nonsense he was pretending to read. His brows immediately furrowed, his eyes twisting into the signature disapproving dad look he’d perfected. “Wait, what?”

Ava, who had been drinking tea in the corner, raised an eyebrow. “This is scandalous,” she murmured, eyes brightening with intrigue.

Alexei, who was now plopped on the couch like some washed-up, Soviet-era king, said, “If a man had flirted with my wife like that, I would have hunt him down and mount his head on wall.” He crossed his arms, nodding to himself in approval. “As is tradition.”

Bucky scowled. “I wasn’t flirting.”

“Oh?” Yelena snorted, “So you were just undressing her with your eyes for fun, then?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “That’s just how I look at people.”

Alexie shook his head. “So you look at us like that?”

Bucky opened his mouth. Then immediately shut it.

Yelena’s hands curled into fists. “Yeah. Thought so.”

John’s arms crossed over his chest in that holier-than-thou stance that he was so famous for. “Look, man, I’m married. And if someone flirted with my wife, we’d have a problem.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Bucky groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “You guys are making a big deal out of nothing.”

“Nothing?” Yelena threw up her hands. “She’s married, Bucky!”

“Okay, even if I was flirting,” Bucky turned to her, exasperated— “I didn’t see a ring.”

Yelena’s hands flew to her head, fingers digging into her scalp like she was resisting the urge to rip out her own hair. “You probably chose to look away!”

John sighed like a disappointed youth pastor. “This is unbelievable.”

“No,” Bucky still insisted, “I didn’t see a ring.”

Yelena’s jaw dropped. “It was a thick gold band, Barnes. How could you not see it?”

Ava, who was clearly enjoying the drama more than anyone, sighed. “That is inappropriate behaviour, Barnes.”

Alexei shook his head again, “You should apologise.”

“I’m not apologising,” Bucky scoffed, “Because I did nothing wrong.”

His fingers toyed absentmindedly with the chain that led to his dog tags, and Yelena immediately locked onto the movement. Every person has a tell, a habit they did when they were nervous. And being a super spy, Yelena knew this was his.

She narrowed her eyes. “You are gaslighting us,” she muttered, pacing again like she was mentally weighing the pros and cons of strangling a super soldier.

“I didn’t see a ring,” Bucky repeated, his voice steady.

“You’re lying,” she snapped.

He shrugged, maddeningly casual in all of this chaos. “Guess we’ll never know.”

Ava laughed cynically. “I can’t tell if you’re a complete scumbag or if this is just really fun for you.”

Bucky just popped a beer from the fridge, flicking the cap off with his metal hand. “Why not both?”

He took a long sip of his beer, completely unbothered.

And maybe, he looked a little bit too smug.

—

Three weeks later, Bucky led Yelena and John on a mission to take down a high-scale arms dealer.

And, as always, the mission had gone sideways.

It was too late for any shops to be open, too late for anyone with a shred of common sense to be out on the streets. 

Yelena was bleeding, pressing a torn scrap of fabric against a deep gash on her arm. John had a busted lip and a slight limp. Bucky was sporting a few cuts and bruises himself, but nothing he hadn’t shaken off a thousand times before.

“Guys,” Yelena managed a grunt, shifting her grip on her makeshift bandage, “we need to get ourselves patched up before one of us drops dead.”

“We ran out of antiseptics back at HQ,” John reminded them.

Yelena groaned, throwing her head back in despair. “So what are we supposed to do?” She gritted out, “Just bleed out in the street like sad little orphans?”

John scowled. “That’s a little dramatic.”

Yelena turned and glared at him. “Your face is dramatic.”

Bucky let out a deep breath through his nose, running a hand along his damp hair. He glanced around the street, making sure they weren’t being followed before whispering to himself, “Guess we’re doing this now.”

Yelena tilted her head. “Doing what?”

Instead of answering, Bucky turned on his heel and started walking.

John and Yelena gave each other a wary look.

“I don’t like when he does that,” John said.

“No one does,” Yelena agreed, but they both followed anyway. 

It didn’t take long for them to recognise the route— ​​It was the neighbourhood where the team usually got coffee.

But Bucky wasn’t heading to the café.

They rounded the corner, and suddenly John stopped dead in his tracks.

It was a closed florist—the very one where Bucky had, allegedly, been trying to charm his way into a married woman’s bed.

To John’s absolute horror, Bucky walked right up to the door and knocked.

“Bucky.” He said, voice strangled. “What the hell is this?”

Yelena blinked. “I don’t think we need to seduce a married florist to get medical supplies.”

Bucky sighed, rubbing his temples like he was already regretting this decision. He turned to them, leveling them both with a look. “Alright, listen up,” he said through gritted teeth. "The secret’s out now, so you two gotta keep your mouths shut.”

John’s brows furrowed. “What secret?”

Before Bucky could answer, the door to the flower shop clicked open.

And there you were, standing in the doorway, wrapped in one of Bucky’s hoodies, looking exactly how he’d expected: exasperated but unsurprised. He knew you’d still be up, cataloguing the latest floral shipment for tomorrow’s arrangements.

The second your eyes landed on a bruised and bloodied Bucky, and flanked by two wounded Thunderbolts, no less—you let out a sigh.

“James,” you said knowingly, your voice laced with fond irritation. “What did you do?”

Yelena and John froze in their tracks.

James?

James?

No one called Bucky by his first name. No one. Not unless they had a death wish.

Bucky, unfazed, just stepped inside. “We ran out of antiseptics, honey.”

Yelena and John exchanged a wide-eyed look.

Honey?

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “Again?”

Bucky shrugged like this was a perfectly normal Thursday night occurrence.

You muttered under your breath, “I should’ve known this would happen when I married an ex-assassin.”

Oh.

Yelena’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. “Married.” she repeated

John blinked rapidly. “This is why we can never go to your place?”

Bucky could only shrug. Of course it was— they would have seen the evidence of how much love in his home was carved out for just you.

John let out a wheeze.

Yelena pointed between you and Bucky, motioning erratically. “Wait. WAIT. So—so she’s your wife? She married you?”

Bucky nodded. “Yup.”

“Like—actually married?”

“Mhm.”

Yelena gasped, clutching her chest like she’d been personally betrayed. In a way, she had. “And no one knows?”

Bucky thought for a second. “Sam does.”

“And Joaquin,” you added, trying to be helpful.

Bucky nodded. “Right. Joaquin.”

“Oh, and Isaiah and Elijah Bradley.”

“Yeah, they were at the wedding.”

“A teenager knew about this,” John’s eye twitched, “—and we didn’t?”

Bucky could only nod again.

Yelena rubbed a hand down her face, “You gaslit us,” she accused, jabbing a finger at Bucky. “You let us believe you were a homewrecker for weeks—when you were married the whole time?!”

You snorted, glancing at Bucky, who had the audacity to look smug. “Yeah, that sounds like my husband.”

Yelena let out a string of very creative Russian curses.

John looked like he was about to have a stroke. 

“All secrets aside,” you said, welcoming the two disoriented Thunderbolts in and locking the door behind you, “It’s good to finally meet you both.”

John still looked like he was buffering. Yelena, on the other hand, was vibrating with adrenaline, looking like she was trying to solve a conspiracy theory in real time.

“This is—this is insane,” she muttered, pointing aggressively at Bucky, then at you, then back at Bucky. “You’re—you’re so normal.”

You laughed, shaking your head. “I’d like to think so.”

Bucky just hummed. “She’s perfect.”

Yelena actually sputtered like an old car engine.

John made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a strangled laugh. This was all too much.

But there wasn’t time to let them spiral further. Bucky, gently nudged you toward the others. “Take care of them first, darling. They’ve got worse injuries.”

You frowned, wanting to protest—because, really, Bucky should always be your first priority—but your husband was nothing if not stubborn. You knew better than to argue when he had that look in his eyes— you knew that fighting him on this would only drag things out longer, and right now, time was precious.

You turned your attention to Yelena and John, motioning for them to follow you deeper into the shop. The scent of lavender, roses, and freshly cut stems—clung to the air as you led them toward the back, where your little work table stood tucked in the corner.

Years of practice had made you quick. You moved with quiet efficiency, gathering supplies from neat shelves: you cut and split an aloe vera plant for burns, grabbed bandages, and a mix of balms you’d perfected over your time tending to Bucky. It wasn’t the kind of sterile, military-grade first aid they were used to, but it would have to do for now.

You started tending to Yelena’s arm, gently dabbing the wound with fresh aloe. She hissed through her teeth before narrowing her eyes at you.

“So how long has this been a thing?” she demanded. Bucky, now leaning lazily against the counter with his arms crossed, barely spared her a glance. “A while.”

John scoffed, “A while?”

You bit back a grin as you smoothed a bandage over Yelena’s arm, “Three years.”

Yelena’s jaw dropped.

“Three—” She turned to Bucky so fast it was a miracle she didn’t give herself whiplash. “You’ve been married for three years?!”

John let out a long, defeated groan,This was simply too much to process. “Fuck’s sake.”

Yelena shook her head. “I thought you were a loner who hated people."

Bucky only shrugged, unbothered. 

You chuckled as you pressed the last piece of medical tape into place on Yelena’s arm. “Alright, you’re done.” Then, glancing at John, you motioned for him to sit. “Your turn.”

John sighed but still plopped down. You took his hand gently, turning it over to examine his bruised knuckles before moving to his busted lip.

Meanwhile, they kept peppering you with questions, barely giving you room to breathe.

“How did you meet?”

“How do you put up with Bucky’s brooding?”

“Does he ever actually smile?”

At that last one, you paused, dabbing at John’s lip carefully. “He smiles all the time.”

John let out a scoff. “No, he doesn’t.”

You glanced over at Bucky, knowing he showed that part of him to you and no one else. “Oh, he does.”

And then, finally, it was Bucky’s turn.

You turned to him, your brows knitting together as you studied the little cuts on his cheek, the dried blood near his brows. He looked a little tired, a little worn around the edges. 

Your fingers found his chin, tilting his face toward you as you inspected the damage. Your touch was so featherlight, so incredibly careful. There was no missing the way your thumb brushed over his cheekbone— how incredibly gentle it was.

“You should’ve let me do you first,” you murmured, half-scolding, half-concerned.

Bucky’s lips curved into a small smile, a flicker of mischief lighting his tired blue eyes. “That’s exactly what you said last night, sweetheart.”

John choked.

Yelena groaned, grabbing the nearest pillow from the nearest chair and hurling it at Bucky’s head. “You two are disgusting.”

Bucky caught the pillow effortlessly, giving her a smug grin before setting it aside. When his eyes found yours again, his shit-eating grin turned… lovely. The tension in his brows eased as you dabbed gently at his cut. 

For all the blood, for all the bruises, you handled him like he was glass.

And then, without thinking, you leaned in.

It was meant to be a brief kiss— a quick reassurance, a way of saying I’ve got you. But the moment your lips brushed his, you couldn’t help but linger.

Your fingers curled instinctively against his chin. His hand found your waist without hesitation, as if he needed you closer. As if the world shrank down to just the two of you. 

John and Yelena exchanged a look, the previous horror of their teammate hiding a secret wife momentarily forgotten because this was… weirdly cute.

You giggled as you pulled away, seeing Bucky looking at you like you hung the moon for him. 

“Anywhere else?” you asked, brushing your thumb over his lips.

Bucky hesitated just for a second. Then, a little sheepishly, he said, “Got a cut on my ribs.”

You exhaled, shaking your head. Of course he did. Before he could argue, you reached for the hem of his shirt and tugged.

“Off,” you said simply.

Bucky huffed but didn’t fight you. He lifted his arms, letting you strip the fabric from his skin, and goddamn.

Bucky, half-naked, was unfairly, ridiculously beautiful. Even now, even after all this time, seeing him like this still knocked the breath from your lungs. His body was a roadmap of battles fought and survived, scars carved into the expanse of his chest and ribs that told stories only he could say. 

John made a strangled sound, somewhere between “Jesus Christ” and “I need to leave the room,” but you ignored him completely. Yelena let out a dramatic sigh and whispered “they are one second away from sucking each other’s face off,” to herself.

You tuned them both out, fingers dragging carefully over Bucky’s ribs, searching for the wound. When you found a thin jagged cut just below his ribs— you sighed softer this time and reached for the aloe.

“You need to stop getting hurt, my love,” you said, smoothing the cool gel over his skin.

Bucky’s voice came quieter. “Lucky I have someone to take care of me, then.”

And that’s when Yelena finally noticed it.

The thin chain around Bucky’s neck—one she’d always assumed was just for his dog tags—held something else, too.

A ring.

A simple wedding band that matched yours, worn from years of resting against his skin.

She blinked, realisation hitting her like a freight train. Oh.

That’s why he always played with it.

Every time Bucky was nervous, every time he was uncertain, his fingers would move to that chain—not just to fiddle with his tags, but to remind himself of you.

Maybe he wasn’t a complete jackass after all.

-end.

Note: Hope this doesn't bite me in the ass when the movie comes out.

General Bucky taglist:

@hotlinepanda @snflwr-vol6 @ruexj283 @2honeybees @read-just-cant

 @shanksstrawhat @mystictf @globetrotter28 @thebuckybarnesvault@average-vibe

@winchestert101 @mystictf @globetrotter28 @shanksstrawhat @scariusaquarius

@reckless007 @hextech-bros @daydreamgoddess14 @96jnie @pono-pura-vida

@buckyslove1917 @notsostrangerthing @flow33didontsmoke @qvynrand @blackbirdwitch22

@torntaltos @seventeen-x @ren-ni @iilsenewman @slayerofthevampire

@hiphip-horray @jbbucketlist @melotyy @ethereal-witch24 @samfunko

@lilteef @hi172826 @pklol @average-vibe @shanksstrawhat

@shower-me-with-roses @athenabarnes @scarwidow @thriving-n-jiving @dilfsaresohot

@helloxgoodbi @undf-stuff @sapphirebarnes @hzdhrtss @softhornymess

@samfunko @wh1sp @anonymousreader4d7 @mathcat345 @escapefromrealitylol

Bucky moved like a phantom, silent and sharp, pulse pacing steadily with the beat of crisis. Not panic. Not anymore. He’d spent too many years being the last line between chaos and carnage to waste energy on nerves. But this was the kind of mission that reeked. Hasty intel. Unexpected players. A mess of underpaid mercenaries with too much firepower and no clear objective.

Something was wrong. And it wasn’t just the lack of backup.

He ducked behind a half-collapsed column, adjusting the comms in his ear. “Ghost, come in.”

Nothing.

“Belova, status?”

“Busy,” Yelena snapped back, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting concrete.

“Walker?”

Crackling. Then, “Still upright. Not loving it.”

Not a lot to love. Their extraction point had been pushed back two miles, and the enemies just kept coming. Sloppy formation, uncoordinated, like someone was using them to smoke them out. But why? Sure, they were the newly named “Avengers”, but they weren’t even a proper unit yet. Just a bandage stretched too tight across a bleeding world.

A second burst of gunfire lit up the smoke ahead of him. Bucky pressed forward, adjusting the rifle over his shoulder. 

His ribs ached. Something had cracked when he hit the wall earlier, but he was used to working broken. There wasn’t time to slow down. Another figure emerged from the mist and he recognized the clumsy footwork, the huffing breath. Walker. He was limping, red blooming across his arm, jaw clenched tight enough to crack enamel.

“They’re circling back,” he growled. “Either we regroup or we go down swinging.”

“We’re not dying here,” Bucky said simply.

The comms hissed.

Just a stutter of static at first. Barely enough to make anyone flinch. Then a pulse. Faint. Rhythmic. Almost like—

“Oh god,” Bucky breathed, just as the bass dropped.

It was unmistakable. Blown-out, over-compressed pop blaring directly into his left ear. Not military comms. Not interference. Music. High-energy, aggressively hyper-feminine, shamelessly catchy.

“Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me…”

“Are you—what is that?” Walker barked, slapping at his ear like the sound had crawled inside it.

Yelena’s voice buzzed back into the channel. “Is someone playing Pussycat Dolls on our frequency?”

Bucky didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His blood had turned to static. That song. That voice—not the lyrics, but the one threaded over the top of it, smooth and low and familiar. One he hadn’t heard in weeks and one he wasn’t supposed to be hearing for another few days.

“Miss me?”

Bucky turned and it was like watching the opening beat of a nightmare you hadn’t allowed yourself to dream in years.

The smoke curled around you first—black against the pale concrete, shivering in the aftermath of a concussion blast—and then you stepped through. Leather at your thighs, a familiar half-mask pulled just low enough to show your mouth, batons already swinging. One of the mercenaries clocked you too late. You dropped him with a strike to the temple, pivoted cleanly into another, ducked a swing and hit back twice as hard.

You weren’t supposed to be here.

Not in this fight, not in this city, not in this life.

At least, not anymore.

You had promised. Not with words, never with words, but in the quiet, liminal moments between missions. The soft touches passed like contraband between bodies that only knew how to break things. The way you said enough without ever needing to say it. The way you’d disappeared, with him, years ago, when it became clear the world didn’t need you anymore.

But you’d always needed him.

That much, apparently, hadn’t changed.

“Who the hell—” John started, eyes wide as he tracked your path through the battlefield.

“Shut up,” Bucky snapped. Too loud. Too fast. Too revealing. He kept his eyes on you. Didn’t dare blink.

You moved like you’d never stopped. Like the years hadn’t dulled you. Like civilian life had been a dream someone else lived for you.

Another merc tried to grab you from behind. You shattered his kneecap without looking, then tased him mid-collapse with a baton charged enough to light his vision up for a week. You were grinning now. Not wide. Not cocky. But with the same edge he’d seen years ago when you’d told him you didn’t believe in peace, just long stretches of boredom between moments worth bleeding for.

The team closed in slowly, instinct dragging them toward you without understanding why. Ava reappeared from a wall, phasing in with her hand on her weapon. Alexei lumbered forward, red suit charred at the edges. No one said a word. They all watched as you handled the remaining mercs like it was nothing. Like it was fun.

Then came more boots.

Bucky heard them before anyone else did, just barely, just over the last distorted chorus still crackling through the comms. A dull percussion of heavy soles slamming rhythmically into the concrete, coming fast through the fog of gunpowder and ruin. More reinforcements. He didn’t need eyes on them to know they weren’t freelancers this time. These steps were uniform. Trained. Unrushed.

Whatever this operation had started as, it had just shifted into something colder. Measured. Intentional.

“Movement,” he said, sharp into the mic. “East side. Full formation.”

Ava phased halfway through a concrete wall, scanning. “Tactical gear. Gas masks. No insignia.”

“Of course,” Yelena muttered. “Because today wasn’t already a flaming dumpster.”

They were boxed in. Walker had maybe one clip left. Ava was half in and half out of phase, red bleeding under her ribs. Yelena’s shoulder was hit. Alexei’s arm was dislocated again and he kept wrenching it back into place like it was a door hinge.

And then there was you.

Standing calmly in the center of the chaos, blood on your knuckles, mask cracked at the jawline. Not tense. Not afraid. Just… assessing. Like you’d seen this play out already.

The first soldier in the oncoming wave raised a weapon.

And you moved.

Not back. Not for cover. Forward.

The stereo signal shifted with you, leaping from Bucky’s comms to the mercenaries’ headsets, hijacking every open frequency on-site. A different song—now louder, sharper, folding itself into the space like a knife into bone. The bass thudded through the pavement, disorienting, impossible to ignore.

“This place’s about to blow—”

The lyric hit just as you sprinted toward the advancing line, coat flaring behind you, batons tucked back into your belt. You didn’t need them now.

Two soldiers opened fire. You dropped low into a slide beneath their aim, boots skimming waterlogged concrete. You came up spinning, driving an elbow into one throat, then swinging around to knee the second across the jaw with enough force to crack his visor.

Bucky couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

You were in the center of it now, alone. Completely surrounded.

And utterly untouchable.

One mercenary tried to grab you in a bearhold from behind. Your head snapped back into his face before he could tighten the grip, cartilage crunching under the blow. You twisted free, used his moment of stunned pain to launch yourself off his chest, flipping backward into a double-leg kick that sent two more sprawling.

They were trying to flank you. Six at once now. You moved too fast to corner, slipped between them like smoke through fingers.

You caught a rifle midair—torn from one man’s grip—then swung it by the barrel, not to shoot but to break. Shattered it across another soldier’s helmet. Sparks flew. He screamed.

You tossed the ruined weapon aside like trash.

Another tried for a taser jab. You caught his wrist in one hand, yanked it forward, and let your forehead crack against his temple with a sickening thunk. He dropped. You rolled over his body, grabbed a sidearm from his hip, twisted the battery cell out of it mid-motion, and used the casing as a projectile. Hurled it into the next man’s throat with such force that he stumbled backward coughing blood.

You weren’t improvising. You were performing. A display in violence so surgical, it felt rehearsed.

There was nothing showy about it. No wasted breath. No excess.

But it was beautiful.

More than one of them hesitated now. The last cluster fell back into each other’s lines, rifles up—but jittering. Off-sync. Unsteady. You were outnumbered five-to-one and you looked like you were winning.

No comms. No backup. No partner on your six, despite Bucky standing right there.

And still, no one could touch you.

Alexei had frozen, one hand still holding his dislocated shoulder. He squinted through the haze. “Is that—are they doing this without a gun?”

“She’s using a speaker and spite,” Yelena said, breathless.

Bucky barely heard them. Every atom in him had locked onto you.

He hadn’t seen you like this in years. Not since the war-torn corners of places no one dared map. Not since missions that left no record. He’d watched you walk away from this life—bloody, ragged, swearing you were done with men who handed out orders and didn’t come home.

But here you were.

“This place's about to blow—oh oh oh—”

The beat peaked again. You moved with it.

Bucky didn’t realize until later, until the playback logs came through, that you’d used the signal bounce from the comm hijack to trigger a proximity ping in one of the mercenaries’ own mines. Subtle. Elegant. Just a single pressure charge set beneath the concrete underpass.

You’d timed it to the music.

The explosions hit not with a flash, but a boom—a deep, guttural bass that ripped through the center of the formation. It threw bodies. Concrete cracked. Rebar snapped like bones. The wave of force didn’t kill anyone outright—it was too clean for that. But it sent the force scattering, screaming, radios buzzing with confused shouts in languages the translation software couldn’t keep up with.

You walked through the smoke, now. No urgency.

One of the last men standing raised a trembling pistol.

You were on him in a breath—disarmed him with a spin, yanked the weapon apart in two brutal motions, and slammed the butt of the magazine into his vest until he collapsed, gasping, eyes wide with disbelief.

Bucky took a step forward. And then another. He didn’t know he was moving until the smoke curled at his boots.

Silence followed like a held breath.

When the last one fell, your music still bumping faintly over the comms, you finally looked at Bucky.

“Hi, baby.”

It wasn’t breathless. It wasn’t mocking. Just a quiet, dangerous kind of intimacy.

His heart felt like it stopped.

You moved to him casually, eyes raking over the bruise at his temple, the smear of blood under his collar. You tilted your head, inspecting him like he was a car you’d loaned out and found parked crooked in the wrong neighborhood.

The mask muffled your voice slightly, but not enough to hide the dryness in your tone. “Now that was a proper encore.”

The comms crackled again, faint and dazed.

“…Okay,” Walker muttered. “What the fuck just happened.”

No answer. Not from anyone.

Bucky approached you like someone walking through a minefield he already knew was active. Your eyes met his, slow and deliberate, as you reached up and peeled the broken edge of your mask back enough to speak.

“You look like shit,” you said simply.

“You blew up a fucking parking garage.”

“I nudged the pressure plate,” you corrected. “The garage blew itself up. Poor structural planning.”

Yelena finally spoke, somewhere off to the right. “Who are you?”

You didn’t look at her. Just exhaled through your nose like the question barely warranted a pause. “Old friend,” you said simply. “Fewer ethics, better taste in music.”

It hung there, ambiguous enough to pass but barbed enough that it didn’t invite further questions. You knew exactly how to deflect. How to disappear even while standing in plain sight.

You turned back to Bucky. The tilt of your head, the shift of your voice—both softened, only fractionally, but enough that he would feel it in his ribs. That awful, aching familiarity.

“You weren’t going to tell me about this op,” you said flatly, voice low, just for him.

“You're not supposed to be tracking me.”

You hummed. “And yet.” You tapped a gloved finger to his chest. Right above the hidden seam of his tac vest. He knew there was a tracker there. Or, he would now.

Behind you, the others were beginning to recover, weapons slack in their hands, confusion settling in like dust.

“Again, who is that?” Ava asked, still half in phase, her eyes narrowed.

“Nobody,” Bucky said quickly.

You turned to him again, one brow lifted.

He didn’t flinch.

The silence pressed in again. You could hear Walker muttering something—something about vigilantes, unregistered allies, probably some offhand comment about being underpaid—but it didn’t matter. Not right now.

You leaned in close enough for only Bucky to hear. “I don’t care who you work for now,” you murmured. “But if you’re going to keep playing hero, I’m not going to sit at home hoping you come back with all your pieces. You trained me better than that.”

“I didn’t train you to break into comms systems mid-op and hijack the sound system with—what was that?”

“Don’t Cha.” You smiled faintly. “It slaps.”

He closed his eyes for half a second. Breathed deep. Then opened them again. “You can’t do this.”

“Sure I can. I’m not a part of your team. I don’t need clearance. I just need one good signal bounce and an encrypted network to patch into.”

“And a speaker,” he added, dry.

You shrugged. “I improvise.”

Another pause.

“I’m not here to start saving the world again,” you said. “But I will show up when you’re two seconds from bleeding out in a parking garage in Bratislava because your team has shit intel and someone decided not to bring extra clips.”

He didn’t argue.

You patted his cheek briefly. Nothing overt, just enough to make the breath catch in his throat.

Then you turned, vanishing into the smoke just as casually as you’d arrived, music still pulsing faintly behind you.

Yelena said what everyone was thinking.

“What the fuck just happened?”

No one had an answer.

Bucky didn’t offer one either.

He just stood there, aching in every limb, and wondered how many more of his missions were going to end with Pussycat Dolls blaring through government-issued earpieces—and how many more trackers he was going to have to tear out of his suit.

The debrief had ended thirty minutes ago.

No one had left.

Yelena sat cross-legged in one of the overstuffed chairs, a protein bar crumpled in her palm like she’d forgotten she was holding it. Her blonde hair was scraped back in a half-twisted bun that had begun to unravel midway through the meeting, and her expression had only grown more pointed with every breath Bucky refused to waste explaining you.

Across from her, Walker was pacing—slow, agitated, like a caged animal that hadn’t quite figured out what corner to piss in yet. He’d ditched the tac vest but kept the sleeves rolled, flexing a bruised bicep every time he turned. Alexei had already snagged half of the post-mission snacks from the shared kitchenette and was now loudly crunching on something suspiciously orange. Ava sat against the far wall next to Bob, legs crossed at the ankle, arms folded, as silent and sharp as a scalpel.

Bucky sat alone near the far end of the table, arms folded loosely across his chest, gaze fixed on the blacked-out screen of a wall monitor.

“So,” Yelena said, picking at the wrapper. “Are you going to tell us who they were, or do I have to keep guessing?”

Bucky didn’t move.

Alexei pointed a carrot stick in his direction. “They knew you. Very well. This is not up for debate. They called you ‘baby.’” A pause. “Is that normal? Do coworkers in America do that now?”

“She hijacked our comms with bubblegum pop and flipped a full tactical team without breaking a sweat,” Ava said quietly. “I’d like to know who’s training with that kind of precision and not wearing a uniform.”

“She’s not on any registry,” Yelena added. “I checked. No files. No background. No facial ID. She doesn’t exist.”

“She’s not a threat,” Bucky said. Flat. Final. The tone of someone who’d been interrogated before and wasn’t interested in playing along.

“No. You don’t get to do that,” Yelena said, sliding off the table with a thud. “You don’t get to stand there all quiet and broody after someone cartwheeled through an active war zone, made our entire unit look like unpaid interns, and then blew up a parking garage with what I’m pretty sure was a Bluetooth speaker.”

Walker let out a bark of laughter and didn’t bother hiding it. “Thank you. Finally. I thought I’d imagined that.”

“You did not,” Ava said flatly, still watching the skyline. “I checked the audio logs. She used a frequency bounce to route music through nine of their channels simultaneously. Bounced it again to mask her own comm signature. She was using earpieces as echo chambers.”

“That’s not even real,” Walker scoffed. “That’s comic book shit.”

“So are we,” Yelena shot back.

Bucky rubbed his jaw, said nothing.

Bob looked up from where he’d been twiddling with the strap of his watch in the corner of the room. “I liked the song.”

Four heads turned toward him.

He blinked slowly. “I listened to the audio logs too. It was catchy.”

Alexei made a noise like he was preparing to argue with the furniture itself. “She took out twenty-five men, minimum. With her hands. And rhythm. I am sorry, but this is not someone who just wandered in from the street. This is not some random playlist enthusiast. You know her.”

Bucky didn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

That answer hung there, not quite satisfying.

Yelena stepped closer, arms folded, chin tilted like she was examining a lie for cracks. “Okay. So who is she. What’s her name.”

“I don’t know if she’s using one right now,” Bucky lied easily. “We worked together a long time ago. That’s all.”

Walker barked out another laugh. “Bullshit.”

“We ran ops in a couple regions,” Bucky said. “Mostly when things got too quiet for comfort. Off-books. Years ago. She walked away before everything really came apart.”

“She tracked you across a continent,” Yelena said.

He met her eyes. “She likes to be thorough.”

“Was she CIA?” Ava asked. “Because I’ve seen their psychological profiles and that was not the average ex-operative response to stress.”

Bucky shook his head. “No. Not Langley.”

“HYDRA?” Walker said too quickly.

“Jesus,” Yelena muttered.

“She moved like someone from a program,” Ava said, voice quiet but deliberate. “Someone conditioned. That kind of precision doesn’t come from basic black-ops.”

“She trained under someone worse than HYDRA,” Bucky said.

And just like that, the room shifted. The quiet got heavier. Bob looked away. Alexei stopped fidgeting. Ava stilled completely.

Yelena narrowed her eyes. “Red Room?”

“I didn’t ask,” Bucky said. “Didn’t need to.”

“But she knew you.” Ava again, calm, focused. “That kind of familiarity doesn’t just show up after a few jobs.”

Bucky looked up at her. “I didn’t say it was just a few.”

“You said she walked away.”

He paused.

“She did.”

Silence again.

Walker shifted, elbow on the back of his chair. “Well, wherever she walked to, she kept your damn tracking frequency. I still can’t get the ringing out of my left ear.”

Bucky didn’t look at him. “You’re welcome, by the way. For being alive.”

“Sure,” Walker said dryly. “Thanks to your mystery friend with a war crime mixtape.”

“And now she’s… what? A rogue asset?” Ava asked, tilting her head. “A merc? A vigilante with a playlist?”

“She’s not on anyone’s leash,” Bucky said simply.

“Except yours,” Walker muttered.

Bucky’s glare snapped to him. “She doesn’t answer to anyone. Not to me. Not to you.”

Alexei muttered something in Russian under his breath that sounded vaguely admiring and possibly inappropriate.

Bob finally spoke again, more alert this time. “She’s not joining us, is she?”

“No,” Bucky said.

He said it fast.

A beat.

“I’m sorry, why not,” Alexei said, throwing both hands into the air. “We have room! We have so much room! She could have the bunk above mine, I would even switch.”

“She doesn’t want to be on a team,” Bucky said. “She’s not the type.”

“You mean she’s not the type to follow orders,” Yelena said, eyes narrowing again.

“No,” he said slowly. “I mean she doesn’t give a shit about headlines, or missions, or doing this the right way. She shows up because she wants to. That’s it.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Ava asked. “Someone that volatile just showing up whenever she decides?”

“She’s not volatile,” Bucky said, the words a little sharper than intended.

Yelena caught it. Instantly.

She stepped forward, crossing into his space—not aggressive, but direct. Like someone circling a bruise. “You trust her.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No,” she said, “but you didn’t have to.”

Bucky didn’t speak.

“She’s not just an old op,” Yelena said, eyes still locked on his. “That wasn’t nostalgia out there. That was instinct. You moved like someone watching something yours walk into fire.”

Ava glanced between them. “She did save your life.”

“She saved all of us,” Bucky threw back.

“Okay, but why doesn’t she have a file,” Walker cut in. “Why doesn’t anyone know about her? If she’s that good, someone would’ve picked her up.”

“She’s good at disappearing,” Bucky said.

“And you just let her go?” Walker said. “After she pulls a fucking Mission: Impossible and struts off into the fog like a Bond girl?”

“I don’t let her do anything,” Bucky said. “She’s not mine to handle.”

Yelena leaned back in her chair. The protein bar wrapper crinkled in her palm.

“She’s not going to show up again, is she?”

Bucky shrugged. “Depends on whether I do something stupid again.”

He didn’t mention that you’d texted him two hours ago asking if he wanted to stop for groceries on his way back. He didn’t mention that the front porch light would be on tonight. That you’d probably be curled on the couch in socks and one of his old shirts, pretending you hadn’t crossed any borders this week.

They didn’t need to know that.

He rose from the table and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. The room watched him like he was walking out of an interrogation and back into something no one else could follow.

“Tell Val I’ll finish the debrief report tomorrow,” he said.

Yelena tilted her head. “And where are you going?”

Bucky paused in the doorway.

He didn’t look back.

“Home,” he said.

And then he was gone.

The porch light was on.

Not a floodlight, not a security cam. Just the soft golden bulb above the narrow step that flickered twice when the wind caught it wrong. One of the screws had loosened a few months back during a storm. Bucky had said he’d fix it. You’d said it didn’t bother you. It still hadn’t been fixed.

His boots were scuffed and his shoulder ached and there was probably still smoke in his hair, but he stood on the welcome mat for a second longer than necessary anyway, hand resting on the doorframe like he needed to feel something solid.

Then he unlocked it. Quiet. Familiar. Two clicks, one turn.

Inside smelled like clean laundry and old books and that lemongrass balm you always used for burns.

The record player was humming in the background, stylus long since run dry. You must’ve forgotten to turn it off again. He stepped into the living room and shrugged off his jacket, moving through the space like muscle memory. His eyes caught on the half-finished mug on the end table, a folded blanket on the couch, the sleeves of one of his shirts pushed up over your forearms where you were curled up sideways, knees tucked, reading a book with your bare feet propped against the armrest.

You didn’t look up. Just turned a page.

“I thought you’d be home earlier,” you said softly.

“Got cornered by the team.”

Your voice was light, almost teasing. “They want answers?”

“They want blood.”

You snorted and finally glanced over the edge of the book. “Yelena first?”

“Obviously.”

“Did she throw anything?”

“Just looks.”

You hummed and set the book aside, leaning forward to make room as he collapsed onto the couch beside you. He sat like a man whose bones hadn’t stopped vibrating. You shifted, swung your legs over his lap, and rested one arm lazily across his chest like it had always belonged there.

He didn’t speak. Just closed his eyes for a moment, the side of his head tilted toward yours.

You let the silence stretch. He needed that.

Then—

“Bob said he liked the song.”

You grinned against his shoulder. “He’s got taste.”

“He said it was catchy.”

“He’s not wrong.”

“Again, you blew up a parking garage.”

“I was subtle.”

“You were wearing a speaker rig stitched into your coat.”

“I didn’t say I was quiet.”

He huffed, a small thing. Almost a laugh.

You leaned your head back against the cushion and studied the ceiling. “They’ll figure it out eventually.”

He didn’t ask what.

You didn’t clarify.

“They’ll dig,” you continued, “because that’s what they do. Not because they don’t trust you. But because they can’t afford not to. You don’t keep ghosts around without asking where they sleep at night.”

“They’re not stupid.”

“No,” you said. “Just loyal.”

He rubbed a thumb along the inside of your wrist. You’d skinned it, just barely, probably during that slide beneath the gunfire. 

“They think we’re ex-coworkers,” he said after a beat.

“Mm. That won’t last.”

“I know.”

You shifted to look at him, gaze steady. “You want me to stay gone next time?”

“No.”

It came out faster than he meant it to. And quieter.

You didn’t say anything.

His fingers ghosted across the edge of your thigh. “I just—this thing with the team. It’s still new. Messy. They’re watching me like I might snap. Or disappear.”

“You’ve earned that,” you said, not unkindly.

He nodded.

“They trust you more than they think,” you added after a moment. “Even Walker.”

“Walker thinks I’m one fight away from dragging a metal arm through a convenience store and snapping someone in half over a cereal shelf.”

You smiled. “You did that once.”

“I was sleep-deprived and the guy had it coming.”

“I’m just saying,” you murmured. “They’re not wrong to wonder.”

He let the silence settle again, the weight of your legs grounding him where he sat. Then he glanced over at you. “And you?”

You raised a brow. “Do I think you’re going to snap and kill the team in a cereal aisle?”

“Do you think you’re going to keep crashing my missions with bubblegum pop and a body count?”

You smiled, sharp and warm at once. “Only if you keep making it interesting.”

He stared at you for a moment. Then he reached out, brushed his fingers under your jaw—light, thoughtful, like he was confirming you were still here.

“I meant what I said,” you added, quiet now. “I wasn’t there to play hero. I’m not looking for redemption. Or recognition. That world chewed me up and spat me out long before I met you. I’m not going back.”

“I know.”

“But I’ll always come back. For you.”

His throat tightened.

You felt the shift before he said anything. The way his fingers stilled just under your jaw, how his gaze dropped for the barest second, like whatever he was about to admit weighed more than it should have.

“They’re going to find out,” he said finally. Voice low. Steady, but only just. “Not just who you are. What we are.”

You didn’t look away. “You sound like you’re bracing for it.”

“I am.” He leaned back slightly, enough to study your face. “I’ve kept a lot of things buried over the years. Some of it for good reason. Some of it because I didn’t know how to tell anyone without it sounding like a confession. But this—us—it’s not something I want in the crosshairs.”

You tilted your head. “You think they’ll aim at it?”

“I think people don’t like what they can’t label. And right now, you’re an anomaly with a body count, a comms breach, and no file. Add in a secret marriage to someone like me, and that’s a storm waiting to happen.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then: “You really didn’t tell them anything?”

“No.”

“Not even that we live together?”

“No.”

You nodded. Not in judgment. Just understanding.

“You scared they’ll treat me like a threat?”

He hesitated. “No. I’m scared they’ll treat us like one. Like I’ve been compromised. Like I’m… hiding something dangerous.”

“You are,” you said, with a small, lopsided smile. “But that’s never stopped you before.”

He didn’t smile back. Just ran a hand down his face, thumb braced at his temple. “Yelena’s already circling. Ava’s not far behind. Walker’s an idiot, but even he knows something’s off. And Alexei—Christ, I think he’s trying to adopt you.”

“I could do worse,” you deadpanned.

“He asked if you wanted the bunk above his. Said he’d move.”

You laughed, soft and sharp. “God, he’s going to be crushed when he finds out I’m not single.”

Bucky’s jaw tightened. “That’s not funny.”

You reached for his hand, interlaced your fingers with his. His skin was calloused, palms scarred, familiar in ways your body had memorized years ago.

“James,” you said, and your voice gentled, “I don’t care if they like me. Or believe in this. Or approve. I don’t need them to. I didn’t marry them. I married you.”

His eyes flicked to yours, something fierce and unspoken just behind them.

“You’re not a risk I regret,” you added. “And if they want to dig, let them dig. We’ve survived worse than a nosy debrief room.”

He leaned forward again, this time slower, and rested his forehead against yours. The press of skin, the shared breath, the quiet tension wound tight between your ribs—none of it felt like surrender. Just something harder to name.

He spoke quietly. “If this gets out, they’ll question my judgment.”

“Let them.”

“They’ll dig into your past.”

“Let them.”

“They’ll—” He cut himself off, exhaled. “They’ll try to separate us.”

You tilted your chin. “They can’t.”

It wasn’t a challenge. It was a fact. Solid. Unmoving.

Bucky didn’t answer, but you felt the way his breath dragged out through his nose, how his grip on your hand shifted—fingers tightening, not like fear, but habit. Like holding onto you was muscle memory. Like letting go wasn’t an option he entertained anymore.

You reached up with your free hand and pushed your fingers into his hair, slow and loose at the nape where it was just starting to curl from the heat. It was damp. He hadn’t showered yet. He hadn’t really come home yet. Just crossed the threshold.

“Go wash off the garage dust,” you said. “You smell like diesel and nerves.”

“Thought you liked how I smelled.”

“I do,” you murmured. “But I like it better when it’s under cedar soap and not post-combat sweat.”

He stayed where he was for another beat, forehead still resting against yours. Then he pulled back enough to look at you, just long enough for his gaze to drop to your mouth. He didn’t kiss you. Just studied you the way he always did when you told him the truth—like he was adding it to some invisible tally, a list only he kept track of.

Then he rose without a word.

You watched him walk down the hallway, unzipping the tactical vest as he went, shoulder muscles moving beneath the black fabric like tension still hadn’t learned how to let go. The bathroom door clicked open. You heard the water pressure shift in the pipes before the sound of the shower started.

You waited thirty seconds. Then you stood, peeled his shirt off your frame, and followed.

It had been nearly five months since Bratislava.

Since the parking garage. Since the Pussycat Dolls. Since you’d lit up half a mercenary task force with a smirk and a frequency bounce. Since you’d vanished again into the smoke like a goddamn myth, only to be curled up on the couch that next night asking if he wanted to split a sandwich or order out after the two of you spent far too long in the shower.

In that time, the team had gotten better. Not good, no one in that unit would ever be clean enough to call themselves that, but sharper. More in sync. Intel got vetted. Missions ran smoother. Yelena had even stopped threatening to stab Walker more than once per week.

But the bruises still came. The blood still dried in the seams of their suits. And when shit did go sideways, which it inevitably did, it was always in ways that no one could predict.

The second time you showed up, Bucky had barely made it through the post-mission patch-up before Yelena cornered him outside medical with her arms crossed and murder in her eyes.

“Was that Britney Spears?”

He didn’t answer.

She didn’t need him to. Ava had already ID’d the audio footprint as a hacked signal ping bounced from a cell tower two miles outside the safe zone. Alexei had hummed the song for three days afterward. Walker sulked about it until Bob offered him a playlist of his own.

Three weeks after that, you crashed an op in the Balkans with the entirety of Beyoncé’s Renaissance album queued up in reverse order. You landed halfway through “Pure/Honey,” took down thirteen hostiles, winked at the drone cam, and disappeared before the satellite feed could reorient.

By the time mission four hit, some remote hellhole near the Georgian border with shit reception and worse exits, the team was already halfway joking about which track you’d use next.

It was Kesha again. Naturally.

You’d popped out of a burning APC with "TiK ToK" already mid-chorus and a grin like you’d been waiting for someone to hit the big red button. That time, you didn't leave right away. You passed Bucky a protein bar before the team got on the extraction chopper, kissed his temple, and told Alexei he had a nice ass. He hadn't shut up since.

They were still digging, of course. Yelena and Ava, mostly. Alexei kept making increasingly unhinged guesses about your background—sometimes Russian ballet, sometimes MI6, sometimes something about Vatican ninjas that no one had the heart to correct. Bob just watched. Always quiet. Always listening. And Walker…

Walker had developed a twitch.

He’d started referring to you—loudly, bitterly—as “Bucky’s little bat-signal,” like if he said it enough times it’d turn into a punchline and not an ache. It never landed. Not really.

No one could prove anything. Not about your identity. Not about your methods. You moved too fast. You left nothing behind.

And Bucky never said much.

He never needed to.

But they were all watching. Closer. Louder. Testing the tension in every mission like they were waiting for it to snap.

Which is why, when everything finally went to hell, no one was surprised when Yelena snapped first.

The op was supposed to be simple. In and out. A weapons drop moving across eastern borders, underground tech funneled through an abandoned train yard. Bucky had checked the coordinates himself. The team had split into pairs. Ava and Walker on overwatch. Alexei by the perimeter with a surveillance drone. Yelena at Bucky’s six, teeth gritted, gun loaded.

It wasn’t an ambush.

It was an execution.

There had been too many of them, real mercenaries this time. Not freelancers. Not idiots. Not chaos agents looking for a payout. These ones moved together. Synchronized. Coordinated. Ava had gone down first, wounded. Not out, but down. Phasing between pain. Walker had followed, clipped hard in the leg, trying to cover her.

Alexei was pinned.

And Bucky was breathing too hard, right arm shattered at the elbow, the sound of blood slapping metal every time he moved.

Yelena was cursing. Loud and vicious. Ducking behind rusted train cars as bullets slammed through metal and concrete like the world had narrowed to pure impact.

“Fuck,” she spat, reloading. “We are going to die in a parking lot for stolen tech and Valentina’s shitty paycheck—”

Bucky’s teeth were red. His side was worse.

He grunted, low. “We’ve been through worse.”

“Speak for yourself,” she hissed. “This is bad. This is the bad kind. Unless your little friend plans to show up again with backup dancers and a boom box, we’re dead.”

Bucky would have replied—maybe something bitter, something deflective—but his jaw locked before he could open his mouth. His vision was graying at the edges, muscles refusing to follow orders. His right arm was entirely dead weight now, slung awkwardly against his chest, blood still slick at the wrist. He couldn’t tell if the warmth in his boots was from a burst vein or just the heat of the rail yard’s scorched concrete.

And you weren’t here.

That was the thought that hit him hardest. Not the pain, not the bodies, not the brutal math of angles and ammunition. You weren’t here.

You’d always been here before.

Not early. Not announced. But you showed up. On the edge of disaster, somewhere between the breaking point and the fallout, wrapped in leather and snatched frequencies and songs that shouldn’t have made sense on a battlefield but always did when it was you. And he never called you, never asked. You just came.

Because you always found him.

Because you tracked him.

Because you always knew.

He’d grown used to it without realizing. The hum of music bleeding in when the comms got too quiet. The shape of you moving through smoke like it wasn’t a threat but a threshold. He’d never said it aloud, but it had comforted him. Knowing you were out there, watching, waiting. Knowing he couldn’t disappear without you noticing.

But this time?

This was the worst it had been in months.

And still… nothing.

A part of him, the part that hadn’t already fractured under the pressure, felt it like abandonment. A dull edge of fear pressed hard to his sternum. Not because he doubted you, but because it meant something was wrong. Maybe the tracker hadn’t worked. Maybe the jet wasn’t prepped. Maybe you were late. Maybe you were hurt.

Before Bucky could fully spiral into his own thoughts, a sound split the air.

A low, dull rumble that climbed too fast, too smooth, to be more gunfire.

His head snapped toward the east quadrant of the yard, vision still smeared at the edges from blood loss. The others heard it next—Yelena ducked lower, muttering another string of obscenities. Walker flinched, dragging Ava back behind a stack of rusted shipping containers, weapon raised. Alexei braced one arm against a splintered wall of aluminum and groaned something about incoming air support.

“Jet,” Ava gritted out, barely upright. “No clearance on the feed. That’s not ours.”

Bucky blinked once. Hard.

The shape sliced low across the clouds. A short-range VTOL, clearly military-grade, but gutted and rebuilt. Fast. Loud. 

Yours.

And then the music hit.

“Let’s go, girls.”

“Is that—” Walker squinted, staggering.

“I swear to God,” Yelena muttered, slapping another magazine into place. “If that hatch opens and she’s wearing denim, I’m going to cry.”

The jet didn’t touch down gently. It landed loud and hot, braking hard against concrete and kicking up a storm of soot that coated every blown-out car and corpse in a hundred-foot radius. The engines hadn’t even cooled before the rear hatch cracked open with a hiss and the speakers ratcheted louder.

“Man, I feel like a woman…”

And there you stood.

Framed by smoke and floodlights, one hand braced on the hydraulic frame, the other already holding a med bag like you’d jumped in from a dream with combat boots and a temper.

No weapons. No fanfare. Just get in the fucking jet energy radiating off your entire body.

“Everyone in,” you barked. “Now.”

Walker didn’t wait. He hauled Ava toward the ramp with one arm slung around her waist. She was still phasing in and out, blood coating her knuckles, the blur of her shoulder wound sparking faint with tech static.

Alexei limped next, muttering something about Canadian pop singers and spinal trauma. Bucky barely registered it. He couldn’t feel his arm. Could barely hear the pounding in his ears over the scream of the engines and the bassline.

You moved before he could, stepping off the ramp and into the smoke, boots crunching across grit and glass as you crossed the yard at a dead sprint.

“Jesus,” you snapped as you reached him, one hand already going to the blood-soaked hem of his jacket. “What the fuck, James.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. You pressed one palm to his side, felt the heat radiating off his ribs, and looped your other arm under him to carry him to the jet.

“I couldn’t get the signal,” you said, voice tight. “The tracker was acting up.”

He hissed through his teeth as you shifted his weight, setting him down on one of the jet seats. “Where was it this time?”

You didn’t blink. “The right boot. Back corner. You never put your shoes back in the closet, so I figured I’d stick one there.”

Yelena turned her head so sharply it was audible. “What?”

You ignored her.

Bucky narrowed his eyes, breath still ragged. “I hadn’t even worn those boots in a week.”

“Yeah,” you said, voice edged and sharp, as you tugged off his jacket, “and you left them by the dryer again, James, so guess what? That’s where I put it. Along with three aspirin packets, a ten-dollar bill, and the spare keys you keep forgetting to bring with you.”

Yelena’s eyes went wide. “Wait. Wait, what?”

“Not now,” you snapped. “Stitches first, questions later.”

Yelena froze.

She had just stepped into the bay behind Alexei, one arm looped around a support pole, blood streaked down her left cheek. Her head turned slowly—very slowly—back toward the now closing loading ramp, where you were currently pressing gauze to Bucky’s side and muttering something about his inability to buy new med kits even though you were the one who’d asked for them on the last Target run.

“Hold on. Spare keys,” Yelena repeated, voice pitching up like a red flag had just gone up in her brain and she was sprinting to catch it.

You didn’t look up.

Neither did Bucky.

There was a beat—just one—but Bucky felt it ripple through the cabin like a hairline fracture under pressure. Yelena didn’t blink. Ava, still bleeding and silent, lifted her head just an inch off the headrest. Walker muttered something low under his breath, too quiet to catch. Alexei stilled completely.

You were still working.

You’d stripped back the ruined plate of his tac vest, fingers moving fast over the gauze tape. Your hands weren’t shaking, but they weren’t calm either—tight at the knuckles, decisive in that way they always were when someone you cared about had bled more than they should have.

Bucky sucked in a breath. It rattled at the end.

He could feel it happening. The shift. The attention tilting, zeroing in. It was like watching a tripwire get brushed in real time.

“Did you just say Target run?” Yelena’s voice cracked straight through the tension. “Like the store?”

You didn’t respond.

Walker made a strangled sound. “Hold on. You’re telling me this—this frequency-hacking psycho just casually shops for med kits in her downtime for you?”

“I didn’t say I shopped,” you muttered. “I said I asked. He’s the one who keeps forgetting the list.”

“I got the shampoo,” Bucky said through his teeth.

“You got the wrong shampoo.”

“It had the same label!”

“It was 3-in-1.”

“That’s efficient—”

“It’s disgusting, James.”

And just like that, the whole jet tilted again—only this time it wasn’t from blood loss or the pitch of the wind. It was the silence. The stunned, dawning silence that came from realizing something was very, very off.

Ava blinked. “James?”

Yelena’s mouth opened.

Then: “No, no. You don’t get to just drop a spare key confession mid-evac and not explain. What the fuck are you two on about?”

“Explain what?” Bucky barked, more out of pain than defensiveness, but it landed anyway.

Alexei staggered up from his seat, bleeding from the shoulder and grinning like he’d just watched his favorite soap opera hit a mid-season twist. “You two live together, yes?”

“No,” you said, at the same time Bucky said, “Yes.”

Yelena stopped cold. “What.”

“Fine. She has a drawer,” Bucky muttered, wincing as you pressed harder with the gauze.

“You have a drawer?” Yelena repeated, voice rising. “Do you have a shared grocery list too? Matching towels?”

“Technically,” you said, “we share an Amazon account, but only because I hate ads—”

“You share an address?”

You didn’t answer.

Walker limped past, dragging himself into the seat across the aisle. “I swear to God, if this turns into some Mr. and Mrs. Smith bullshit, I’m out.”

Bucky exhaled sharply through his nose. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like,” Yelena snapped. “Because the last I checked, secret girlfriends don’t get comm access and personal extraction aircraft with customized playlists!”

“She’s not—” Bucky started, then stopped.

You paused, fingers frozen just inside his tac vest as you reached for the dressing pack in his inner lining. “James.”

His jaw flexed. “She’s not some secret girlfriend.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Yelena said, eyes wide now, practically vibrating with the sudden thrill of someone else’s exposed personal business. “Are you saying she’s not a girlfriend because she’s a roommate with benefits, or because she’s a literal government ghost you, what? Accidentally fell into bed with during an overseas op and neglected to tell us for five fucking months—”

“She’s my wife.”

The words snapped out like a misfired round—loud, brutal, final.

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.

You straightened slowly, the antiseptic wipe still in your hand, now hovering somewhere between the edge of Bucky’s ribs and the cratered hole in his bloodstained shirt.

No one moved.

No one spoke.

Then Walker, voice hoarse and stunned: “I’m sorry. Wife?”

Ava, barely conscious, cracked one eye open. “What?”

Alexei groaned from the corner. “I knew it. I said they were either married or psychic. Maybe both.”

“Wait. Wait, no,” Walker held up a hand, bleeding. “You’re married? Like—married married? To her?”

You finally looked up. “Do you have another her in mind?”

Bucky winced. “Now’s not the time—”

“No, no, I think it is exactly the time,” Yelena said, stepping forward, pointing between the two of you. “Because we’ve all been getting tossed around like ragdolls for months while you two have been playing he’s mine, she’s chaos behind the scenes.”

You rose slowly, blood on your palms, face shadowed by the hatch lighting.

“We weren’t hiding it,” you said simply.

Yelena threw both arms in the air. “You were absolutely hiding it!”

“We were keeping it quiet,” you corrected. “There’s a difference.”

Walker sat down hard on the floor. “I’m gonna pass out.”

Ava, leaning against the wall, finally let out a low breath that might have been a laugh. “That explains so much.”

“I—what the fuck?” Walker’s mouth opened and closed twice. “Like with rings and vows and tax brackets?”

“Jesus Christ,” you muttered. “It was a courthouse in Budapest. No photographer. No playlist. Not even a Pinterest board.”

Alexei, who had been silently mouthing tax brackets, perked up. “How long?”

“None of your business,” Bucky said immediately.

“Four years,” you said, at the exact same time.

Yelena made a noise like a cat being punched.

“Four years?” she barked. “You’ve been married for four years and not one of us knew? Not even a hint? Not even a bad fake name on your emergency contact form?”

“Technically, it’s under her alias,” Bucky said, wincing as you pressed gauze to his side with more force than strictly necessary.

“Her alias,” Ava echoed from the back, eyebrows barely raised but eyes locked on you. “That’s comforting.”

Yelena dragged her hands down her face. “I need to sit down.”

“You’re already sitting down,” Walker said numbly. “We’re all sitting down. In hell.”

Alexei was shaking his head slowly, staring at you like you’d sprouted horns. “I can’t believe we have been flying into death zones with Captain Popsicle and his mystery combat Barbie and the two of you have been married this whole time?”

“Don’t call her that,” Bucky snapped.

“I meant it with admiration!”

“She’s a human being,” Ava said flatly.

“And his wife,” Yelena added, throwing her hands up again. “Which apparently gives her license to break every rule of engagement we’ve ever signed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you bit out, finally stepping away from Bucky just long enough to snap a fresh syringe out of the case and toss it to Ava. “Would you have preferred I not show up with an extraction vehicle and leave you all dying in a pile of your own egos?”

“You’re not even cleared!” Walker said, still stuck somewhere between disbelief and cardiac arrest. “You don’t have files. You don’t have a record. You married a former Hydra asset with no fucking paper trail—”

“John,” Bucky said, and his voice didn’t rise, didn’t shout. But the threat in it stopped everything.

Dead.

Walker’s mouth clamped shut.

You turned your back and crouched again, cracking open a package of suture strips with steady, sharp fingers. He didn’t look at you, but he didn’t move away either.

“You married him,” Yelena said slowly, like she was putting the last piece into a conspiracy board. “And you didn’t tell anyone.”

“Correct,” you said, without looking up.

“Why?”

You paused. For the first time since stepping onto the jet, you were still.

Then, quieter: “Because it was ours.”

Yelena blinked.

Walker slumped sideways, muttering something that sounded like Jesus Christ, I’m too concussed for this.

Ava didn’t say anything. She just studied you like she was adding this new truth to a map no one else could read yet.

Alexei, voice quieter now: “You could’ve told us.”

You straightened again, turned, met his eyes.

“We didn’t owe you that.”

And no one, not one of them, could argue with that.

No one said anything for a long time.

The jet rumbled beneath them, steady now. Altitude rising. Stabilizers evening out. The air had gone colder, thinner. Bucky could feel it in his lungs. How the heat of the rail yard had been replaced by that sterile chill of recycled pressurized air and drying blood.

He sat slumped against the inner wall of the aircraft, the pain at his side dulled but ever-present, a pulse of heat beneath the bandages. The lights overhead buzzed faintly. Across from him, Walker had gone quiet. Not passed out, just silent. That silence that came when you didn’t know how to re-enter a world that had just rearranged itself without warning.

Yelena didn’t have that problem.

“Where are the rings?”

You didn’t even blink. Just kept pressing the edge of a suture strip flat against Bucky’s ribs, calm as ever. “We don’t wear them on missions.”

“No, I mean—where are they. What are they. Are they like, hidden daggers? Laser-tracking nanotech? Poison darts? Do they explode?”

“We got tungsten bands off a street vendor in Pest,” you said, flicking the end of the strip down with surgical precision. “Ten bucks each. Mine’s probably under the couch.”

Yelena stared. “You’re telling me you got married with street metal and hid it like it was a war crime?”

You finally looked up. “We didn’t hide it. We protected it. There’s a difference.”

“Yeah,” Yelena muttered, flopping back against the padded bulkhead, “try that line at our next psych eval.”

Alexei perked up slightly. “Did you write vows?”

“Alexei—”

“No, I’m curious! Was it romantic? Did she threaten him? Did he cry?”

You turned to Bucky then, not grinning, not smirking—just steady. “Did you?”

He didn’t answer right away.

He remembered the cold marble floor of the consulate. The cheap pen. The tension in your hand when you signed. The way you didn’t smile, not once, but your shoulders had dropped like something finally let go. He remembered how you’d kissed him afterward, not like a new beginning but like something that had already been burned into your bones and you were just honoring the facts of it now.

He hadn't cried.

But he remembered feeling something break open inside his chest that hadn’t fully closed since.

“No,” he said quietly. “You did.”

That earned a scoff from Walker, who still looked half-sick. “You people are insane.”

“And you’re alive, you’re welcome,” you shot back, not even looking at him.

That shut him up.

Ava tilted her head slightly from where she sat, chin resting against her shoulder. “Are there any other secrets we should be aware of? Kids? A bunker in the Alps? Shared Spotify?”

“We don’t talk about the Spotify,” you said immediately, too flat to be joking.

“I knew you had a playlist,” Yelena muttered.

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I have several,” you corrected.

Bucky let the rhythm of your voice wash over him, the way it always had. It calmed something in him he didn’t have the words for. He wasn't sure he'd ever have the words for it. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? You’d never asked for the language of it. You just stayed. When everything else fractured. When he did.

He let his head tip back against the wall, the throb of the flight engines a dull hum against his skull.

You kept talking.

Yelena asked about Budapest—what song was playing in the cab, what flavor the celebratory gelato was, whether you’d told anyone or if you’d just ghosted the next assignment like it never happened. You didn’t flinch under any of it. You answered what you wanted to. Dodged the rest with a precision that made it clear you'd spent years doing exactly that.

And Bucky watched you.

Listened to the cadences you used with the team—how they shifted only slightly when you got tired, how your sarcasm always dulled at the edges when you were checking someone's wound without being obvious about it. How you deferred to Ava without making it feel like yielding. How you redirected Yelena’s prying with just enough detail to satisfy, just enough space to stay unreadable.

They’d come around.

Eventually.

They always did.

But it wasn’t for them that you showed up in a jet at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t for glory. Or redemption. Or to earn your seat.

It was for him.

And that, Bucky thought, pressing a blood-soaked gauze pad tighter against his ribs, was something no intel report could ever quantify.

He let his eyes slip shut, your voice still in his ears, arguing now with Yelena about the legality of impersonating air traffic control in four different countries. He didn’t smile. Not really.

But he breathed easier.

For the first time in hours.

Maybe days.

Maybe longer.

“I really don’t see why this get-up has got to be so… revealing,” you said. “I look like a harlot.”

“Well,” came a voice from behind the thin paper of the changing screen, “I suppose it’s to entice the strapping young soldiers out there. They do seem to enjoy a bit of… should I say… adultery?”

There came a second voice from further in the room, coiled and slick like a serpent. “Or,” he drawled, “it’s for easy access.”

“Crowley,” chided the first voice, disdain dripping from his tongue.

You gave a silent huff as you adjusted the skimpy little outfit the manager of the West End theater had given you, tugging at the thin material that barely covered your breasts and the thin strap that snaked between your legs. It was a glittery, near-elastic piece of pazazz that was sure to earn you more than a few glances and whistles this evening… something you promised you wouldn’t let get to you. If not for your reputation, for the pair of men on the other side of the changing screen that encased you like a butterfly trapped in a jar.

If you inhaled deep enough, you were still able to smell the smoke that clung to Aziraphale and Crowley’s suits, permeating the air and poisoning their natural musks that you so loved to inhale. You had spent the better part of the evening, as you followed them through London streets and around a magic shop, picking pieces of rubble and dusting traces of the explosion from their backs and shoulders. The bomb had shaken you to your core despite being miles away when it had happened, tucked away safely in the passenger seat of the Bentley.

“Crowley,” you had said as your demon had parked his car between the shadows of two tall, sturdy buildings that still stood against the smoke and destruction of the bombs. “What are we doing here? There’s still planes overhead.”

“Just sit tight for a minute, love,” he’d replied before climbing from the Bentley. “It seems our angel’s got himself in a heap of mess.”

The explosion had rocked the ancient church in the distance like a match igniting a stick of dynamite; fast, and hot, and loud. You waited so long you considered getting out and running to search the site for your lovers before they had come strolling around the corner through the dark, dusting themselves off and murmuring quietly beneath their breaths.

“Aziraphale,” you had said when you climbed from the car to greet them. “What on earth have you done?”

“Good evening to you, as well, my darling,” he had said, then lifted your hand and placed a loving kiss upon your knuckles. “Just got myself a bit caught up. Nothing to worry your head over.”

Crowley had harrumphed slightly as he dropped himself into the driver’s seat once more. “Get in, you two. I’ve got an appointment to keep.”

An appointment had led to forty broken bottles of whiskey. Forty broken bottles of whiskey had led to Aziraphale becoming a magician, and that had led to buying a very real rifle with very real bullets. And the rifle, and the bullets, and the broken bottles of whiskey, and everything else had led to you finding yourself here behind this changing screen, examining the costume of a magician’s assistant who, really, was only there to look pretty and smile when the light panned over her.

Crowley had told you it would be a bit of fun, was all. Aziraphale had assured you no real harm would be done.

Had you not loved them both more than you needed air to breathe, you might have considered saying no, begging your angel to not get up on that stage, dropping to your knees and begging your demon to miracle up a few more bottles of liquor to make up for the whole thing.

But, oh… you loved them far too much.

“Are you about settled, my darling?” came Aziraphale’s voice from deeper in the cramped little dressing room. “It’s ten ‘til, and I would rather not further anger the madame of the theater any more than necessary.”

“She’s a loony old bat,” came Crowley’s quip. “A few minutes won’t hurt her.”

You took one last look down at yourself - at the feathered headband in your grip; the exposed tops of your legs and the plump ‘V’ of your upper thighs that led to their apex just covered by the elastic; the heels that glittered in the dim light; the curves of your breasts, just barely held in place by the haltered neckline of the costume. You looked ridiculous.

With a long, deep breath you felt in your sternum, you placed a hand on the edge of the changing screen. “Don’t you boys poke your fun at me,” you warned them. “I know how I look, I don’t need you both reminding me.”

You pulled back the screen and stepped out, avoiding their eyes as you fiddled with the headband. You expected Crowley to bark out bouts of laughter, for Aziraphale to politely cover his mouth and look away to hide the rosiness of his cheeks as he held back a few giggles. But there came none of that. Instead, you were only met with silence. Hesitantly, you glanced up to meet their gazes.

Crowley and Aziraphale, for once in their eternal lives, looked rather lost for words. You didn’t take too many moments to soak in the way the demon tilted down his shades so he could peer those yellow eyes over the rims, nor how the angel’s back had gone stiff and he clutched his magician’s hat to his chest so tightly his knuckles paled. Instead of entertaining their amusement, you scoffed and clicked over to the vanity illuminated with golden bulbs; funny. Almost all the Watson bulbs had been grinded down for the war efforts. You supposed the West End had a bit of advantage in their supply when it came to things like glass and elastic.

“Yes, yes, gape all you want,” you snipped as you leaned forward to examine your reflection in the mirror; Christ almighty, you looked like a common slut. “Neither of you know how humiliating this is.”

At once, your angel jumped into action. “No, dearest,” he said as he came to stand beside you at the vanity, gently discarding his hat on the countertop. “We’re not poking fun at you, not in the slightest. We’re… well, you simply look…”

You eyed him from the corner of your vision.

“Incredibly doable,” came Crowley’s pitch from where he’d spread himself across the old couch tucked against the wall.

Aziraphale sent him a rather stern glance as you felt your chest drop slightly into your belly. You fixed your reflection with another stare. You looked like a prostitute, all your private planes and surfaces on display for everyone who even glanced in your direction. There was hardly a chance they enjoyed seeing their girl pimped up like this; was there?

“What he’s attempting to say,” said your angel as he reached out a soft, well-manicured hand and rested it respectfully on the middle of your back, “is, well… you do look rather ravishing, is all.”

“Oh, stop it, the both of you. You’re being mean.” Shouldering off his touch, you reached for a bit of the lipstick resting against the vanity and tried to stop your hands from trembling as you pulled off the cap and screwed it up. In all honesty, it still flustered you a bit when they showered you in affection; which they did often. How was it possible that an angel and a demon, in love themselves, who had seen the beginning of the earth and all the beautiful men and women in it, had fallen for you, a mortal, a little bit of soul within this planet full of it?

It didn’t quite make sense to you, but in the moments like these, when you felt yourself growing weak against their words, you cast the thought aside and let sense run rampant.

“After all this time, and you still don’t believe us when we say something nice?” clicked Crowley, reaching up to take the brim of his hat and rest it on the arm of the couch. He tilted his head at you in the reflection of the mirror, his gaze just out of sight behind his shades. “Come here.”

You looked to Aziraphale before blinking a few times, smearing your third layer of lipstick across your mouth. “The show will start soon,” you heard yourself say hesitantly. “I have to go out and announce him to the audience before…”

“Come here.”

Your demon’s sudden drop in tone sent a pang of both anxiety and arousal racing through you like fire dancing along your veins. You set down the tube of lipstick, hearing it clatter slightly from the shaking of your hand, and twisted around on your ridiculous heels to face him. He sat there on the couch, legs spread like he owned the world and arms stretched across the back of the seats like he was waiting for his two favorite people to arrive at his sides. He waited chin held high, finger tapping impatiently on the back. Aziraphale said nothing as you trailed from his side and approached the demon; when he spoke like this, it affected the both of you in the same way.

Crowley adjusted his legs when you came to him, allowing you to tentatively straddle his thighs until your hips were flush against his. A look back in the mirror told you your ass was hanging out of your skimpy little get-up, the leotard-like shape doing nothing to protect your modesty. Aziraphale seemed to be enjoying it quite nicely. You felt long, slender fingers touch your chin and guide your vision back to your demon. With his other hand, he reached up and pulled off his shades so that he could meet your gaze, yellow, slitted eyes boring into yours.

“You really ought to start taking our word for things, love,” Crowley said, and you shivered when his voice retained its deep baritone that only saw the light when there were two things at hand; imminent danger, and the promise of depravity. “‘Cause when we say you look good…” He leaned forward until his thin lips were level with the shell of your ear, his breath fanning across your skin. “We bloody well mean it.”

His hips shallowly bucked up into yours then and the rough material of his trousers rubbed at your clit perfectly through the thin elastic of your costume. You were unable to keep a soft, breathy murmur from escaping your lips at the sudden jolt of feeling, your hands flying up to balance yourself on his broad shoulders.

Behind you, you heard Aziraphale take in a small breath at the sight. He nervously shuffled his weight on his feet, glancing to the door that led to the stage. “Crowley,” he said in what should have been a warning, but it was far too soft to be taken seriously. “Now is… now is certainly not a good time for this.”

Crowley pulled another sound from you, this time a moan, when he held your hips in place and bucked again. “Well, it’s like I said,” he replied, tilting his head so he could look up at you as your hair fell into your face and your eyes began to roll back. “A few minutes won’t hurt them.” The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. “Besides, our girl’s nervous. Come and lend a hand, calm her a bit. You know how she likes it.”

You felt your face flush with heat from embarrassment, but you were slowly losing your will to care as Crowley leaned down to attach his lips to the base of your throat. His forked tongue laved across your skin like he was trying to memorize your taste, teeth nipping and fingers tightening around your waist. You were hardly able to notice when a second weight dipped the couch beside him, and your demon patted your thigh to get you to move. You knew just what to do; you always did. Feeling yourself beginning to grow slick between your legs, most assuredly ruining the gusset of this ridiculous outfit, you swung your legs over to kneel across both Crowley and Aziraphale’s thighs, which were pressed together where they sat so close not an inch of light could have separated them.

Aziraphale’s warm hand reached out to gently cup your chin, his thumb brushing lovingly across your jaw. “Forgive our earlier stutter, my darling,” he said, then leaned forward to press his plump lips to the point where your clavicle dipped. “I assume by now you know the effect you have on us.” He kissed you again, this time upon your bare shoulder. “Especially when you present yourself in such an outfit.”

Just a sigh escaped your lips, Crowley’s finger ran along your side, pulling a short yip from your throat that he quickly swallowed by fitting his mouth over yours. From there, they moved like they shared one mind, like they knew you inside and out because, really, they did.

The couch creaked quietly as Crowley dragged your barely-clothed cunt over their thighs, earning them a drawn-out moan like a symphony to their ears, and Aziraphale’s grip came up to hold the back of your neck steady as he pressed kiss after kiss to anywhere he could reach; your throat; your chest; your shoulder; your arm. They moved you about like their own little doll, so familiar and fine tuned with your reactions they knew they would happen before they did. Sparks erupted like flint on stone within the pit of your belly when, eventually, Crowley pulled you forward at a slightly new angle and your clit caught wonderfully upon a hitch in Aziraphale’s trousers. You tilted your head back and released a long moan, barely able to keep yourself up when you were suddenly worked to hit that spot over and over again.

“Ah…!” you mewled as Aziraphale nipped ever so softly at the exposed skin of your shoulder. Your arms trembled as you struggled to keep your hold on their shoulders. “Oh, right there, boys, right there. Keep going, please don’t stop…!”

Crowley’s lips tilted up into a crooked smirk, slitted eyes drinking you in like a forbidden liquor he’d been dying for since he first heard of it. “I hardly think you need to go out there at all, angel,” he said to Aziraphale beside him. “We’ve got our own show right here.”

You worked your hips along with Crowley’s push and pull, offering more and more of your skin to your angel for him to mark and lavish, feeling yourself approach that cliff they so loved to drag you off again and again. You never feared the fall; you knew they would always be waiting to catch you before you hit the bottom.

Small, whimpered noises escaped your throat as you chased your released upon their thighs, your clit rubbing and catching perfectly against their trousers like this was exactly what they were made for. Lips were showering your skin with love and affection. Hands were anchored securely to your waist. You were held so intensely, so beautifully, that it only took a few words from the tip of Crowley’s tongue to send you reeling toward your end.

“Come on and sin for us, love.”

Your orgasm came hard and fast, racking your body with trembles and twitches you couldn’t control, with bursts of color in your vision like fireworks, like guns firing off beside your ears with smoke that would blind you for days. You felt your release stain the fabric of their pants, and it was the last thing you really minded before all but collapsing against the pair. Hands, arms, mouths caught you securely, rubbing along your back, holding you tight, gently kissing along your face. You felt them pull away for just a moment to meet each other for a deep, passionate kiss before returning to smothering you with adoration.

It was an idyllic few seconds, the quiet that came after an explosion of a moment such as that, before there came a sharp, rattling knock against the dressing room door. “Pick up the pace, Mister Fell,” came the voice of the madame of the theater. “We’ve got an audience waiting, and the war’s not getting any better these days!”

You groaned softly, nestling your face into Aziraphale’s neck as he stroked your hair and called in return, “Ah, yes, of course. We’ll be right out!”

You wanted nothing more than to not go up on the damned West End stage, to smile and twist in your glittery costume and tease the soldiers in the audience like you hadn’t just gotten your world rocked within an inch of your life. And yet… everything came to an end. You whimpered again when your angel gently shifted you off of him, placing you temporarily in Crowley’s hold, before getting to his feet and gently snapping his fingers. You felt the dampness across your demon’s thigh fade into nothingness, along with the slick between your legs. Your hair righted itself to its former do, and the smudged lipstick across your mouth was once more perfected. When you lifted your head, however, you noticed Crowley had elected to keep the messy imprint of your lips across the corner of his mouth.

He noticed you looking and gave you a sly, crooked grin. “I like to wear my trophies,” he said before pulling your head close and pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Come along now, gorgeous. Don’t want to keep the fans waiting.”

Shakily, you got to your feet, struggling momentarily to stand on your heels. While your heart slowed its racing pulse and the heat gently ebbed from your cheeks, Aziraphale lifted your feathered headband from before and tucked it securely over your hair.

“There’s our darling,” he murmured, smiled softly down at you, then tilted up your chin to press a light, though nonetheless loving kiss upon your swollen lips. “Are you ready?”

You took a breath, straightened yourself out, and nodded your head. “I am now, I think,” you replied.