🖤Harley❤️

You could not sleep, not truly, not anymore.

At least it felt that way. You could not remember what it was like to have a truly restful night of sleep now that you were so swollen with child.

Curtis shifted behind you, the weight of him a presence you were still not quite acclimated to, even after all these months. His arm groped around your middle, not gentle, but not cruel either—the grasping, possessive way he always had of reminding you that your body was his, that you had been claimed and would never, ever be unclaimed.

“Settle,” he rumbled, voice thick with sleep and something else—something that tinged the word with an implication, a warning, a plea. His hand splayed over your stomach, thumb tracing the tautest curve of your belly. You could feel the talon at the tip of his thumb, filed to more bluntness now for your comfort, but never quite harmless.

“I can’t,” you hissed, heat rushing up your neck. “It’s not comfortable, Curtis. I feel the stiffness in my hips, in my spine. I feel too tight, too—”

He rolled you to your back, so you faced him and the flicker of his phosphorescent blue eyes. He looked at you with rapt attention, like he was examining a rare specimen, one whose suffering was evidence of profound, necessary transformation. You hated him for it, and wanted to weep with relief that he might touch you, change you, ease the ache.

“Your body was made for this.” His hand cupped your jaw, then trailed down your neck, the pressure just shy of discomfort. “Do you remember the first night I claimed you?”

You did.

You remembered every moment: the sting of his teeth, the shocking stretch, the coolness of his skin, the relentless, remorseless fullness of him inside you. You remembered the moment shame and terror lost its edge and pleasure consumed the rest.

His hand moved to your chest, fingers splaying over the heavy curve of your breast. The child was not the only thing that had grown inside you; the rest of you had blossomed too, flesh thick and ripe, veins congesting with new blood. Every sense was heightened; your skin felt alive, every nerve exposed and raw, hungry for relief. The ache in your hips and spine was nothing compared to the ache between your thighs.

His hand squeezed, and you couldn’t help but arch into it, greedy for the pressure.

“You ache,” he said. It was not a question. “Let me help.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but already his hand was sliding, possessive, down your torso, across the vast swell of your belly. His touch was electrifying, not because it was gentle—he was never gentle—but because it was so exact, so insistent, as if he could knead away every complaint inside you, every complaint and every protest, until there was nothing left but the wanting. It seemed your body was always already in anticipation, every cell addicted to the inevitability of what he would do next.

“Curtis,” you tried, but the word came out as a sigh, as permission.

His tail was already curling under your knee, prying your legs apart with the unhurried strength of a tree root. He lowered his face to your neck and breathed in, the exhale chilling, the inhale so deep it felt like he was drawing the breath from your lungs. His hand was at your thigh now, squeezing the flesh, kneading it as if evaluating the meat on a haunch. He’d told you, more than once, that you’d filled out beautifully, that the lake itself approved of what you’d become.

You squirmed away from his cool heat, the pressure, but he only pressed his palm up to your pussy, and you yelped, not out of fear, but at the obscene, greedy pleasure of it. He inhaled again, and you realized that he was savoring the rising, salt-sweet scent of your arousal.

“You’re restless,” he said, tongue flicking in the hollow behind your jaw. “Let’s cure it.”

You thrashed, but the movement only succeeded in pressing you against his cock, which was already hard and waiting, resting like a threat against your thigh. His thumb found your clit, pressing down until you bucked, the pulse so fierce it brought tears to your eyes. He held you there, his mouth at your throat, tongue darting out—licking, flicking, biting. You could not have moved if you’d wanted to; every part of you was locked between the hardness of his body and the suffocating need in your own.

He took his time, always. He was deliberate; he seemed to relish the slow climb, the way every touch made you shudder, made your skin pebble, made your cunt throb with a greedy, insistent rhythm. His mouth found your nipple and sucked, pulling at it until you moaned, the sensation radiating out from your chest in a dizzying spiral. He bit down, and you couldn’t help it—you reached up and tangled your fingers in his hair, yanked him closer so the pain and the pleasure crashed together at the point of his teeth. His hand scrabbled for leverage on your hip, fingers digging deep as he sucked, scraped, and finally groaned into your chest, the sound wet and low, just this side of feral.

He lifted his head, mouth shiny with spit. “You need this,” he said, his voice ruined and ragged. “You need to be fucked. You need to be relentlessly filled with my seed, flushed with it so thoroughly it stitches your bones together around the ache. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” you choked out, clutching at his shoulders. They were slick with the faintest sheen of lake water, always, always, as if he carried the essence of his world with him, whether he was in or out of the water. Your whole body was trembling, aching, desperate for him.

He pressed the tip of his nose into your cheek, dragging it slowly along until it slid down the side of your neck, his breathing steady, his lips curled against your racing pulse. “You’re changing,” he murmured, and his hand stilled on your belly, spreading his fingers wide as if to encompass the entirety of you. “Do you feel it, little one?”

You whimpered and nodded, because it was impossible to ignore. You felt it wakeful, and you felt it always. Your body was not just growing, it was being remade. The softness of your skin had thickened to something more water-resistant, but only just. At night, you dreamed of gills blossoming open along your ribs, of your hands webbing at the base of each finger. Your eyes now reflected the moonlight with the same shimmer as his.

His hand cradled the base of your skull, claws gentle for the moment, a cage of tenderness you did not want but could not help but need. “It isn’t just the child,” he breathed, as if reciting a benediction. “It’s what happens when one like me mates with one like you. The biology is… transformative.” There was a hint of awe in his voice. “Every time I fill you, your body takes more of me, and less of your old life remains.”

He was fascinated by the heat of you. He had told you, after finally bringing you to his curious lair, that your human body ran so warm inside, and that your cunt felt like a living furnace, a molten trap that threatened to melt and consume him every time he entered you. He said it in the same way he said everything—half-worship, half-mockery, always with the edge of a threat—but you could tell he meant it. The lake was cold and deep, and he was made to thrive in it—the fire of your body was an impossible addiction.

Curtis pressed your legs apart even wider, nestling between your thighs as though he belonged nowhere else. His skin, always cooler than yours, felt almost feverishly good when it touched you. He braced himself on either side of your hips, and then, with unhurried care, pressed the head of his cock to your entrance. He was always so eager for the first breach, he always relished the shock and resistance, that first gasp, that split-second where you didn’t know if you could take him. Now, your body admitted him gladly, almost hungrily, and you felt yourself yield to the pointed insistent pressure, stretch around his girth, suck at him once he passed the initial resistance. The catching pain blended instantly with the pleasure, as familiar now as his voice, as expected as the tides. He groaned when he breached you, grinned so wide it seemed all teeth, and set a brutal, perfect pace at once—the slow, deep strokes that made you claw at the sheets, then faster, the piston rhythm that made it impossible not to buck up and meet him.

“You were born to take this,” he crooned, as he loomed over you, cock pounding out every remnant of sleep and doubt. “To crave it. I could keep you filled for a thousand seasons and you’d still want more.”

His hips never stilled, and his tail snaked behind, curling serpent-like around your ankle, claiming even more of you for himself. Your fingers clawed for purchase on his back, the scales there a cool counterpoint to the fevered pulse of your own skin. You felt yourself coming undone, senses overrun, the pressure building and building, rolling, deep pressure of his cock splitting you open again and again, and, oh, how you wanted more.

You had once thought that his rutting would get less urgent, less insistent over time, but if anything, Curtis fucked you harder every month, every week. He seemed to want to breed you anew every time, as if there was always a possibility you could be more his, more changed, more claimed. He would say things in your ear—“I can feel you opening for me,” “You’re so much tighter for me,” “No one else will ever fuck you this cunt that belongs to me,” “Do you like how I fill you, little one?”—and you did, you did, and you told him so, the words turning to gasps, to high-pitched whines as the pleasure outpaced any language you could give it. The world shrank to the bed, the pounding throb of his cock, the cold pressure of his scales, the way the air itself seemed to hum with the force of his need.

Curtis’s eyes gleamed in the semidark, and he gripped your face in both hands, thumbs pressing to your jaw, holding you steady so he could watch the pleasure breaking across your face with every stroke. “I love how you look when I fuck you,” he growled, hips never slowing. “You try to be strong, but you shatter every time. No one will ever see you like this but me.”

Dawn was hours off, and you had no expectation he would unhand you before then, even if by some miracle you managed to sleep. His stamina was naturally supernatural, and his hunger only that.

You came twice before you even realized it, the first at the seizing stretch, the second at the rolling, unyielding pressure of him grinding your clit with every pass. Curtis liked to feel the way your thighs trembled, the way your cunt clamped around him, the way you lost yourself in it. And you did, again and again, until the world burned white-hot and you were nothing but need and the squelch of your bodies meeting, hypersensitive to every flicker of sensation.

You didn’t notice at first what his tail was doing, too lost in the rhythm, in the hunger, in the collision of your hips. But then the cool, slick tip pressed behind you, teasing at your other entrance, and the shock of it made you jerk and squeal. Curtis laughed, low and wicked, and didn’t pause for a moment.

“Shhh, shhh—” he crooned, voice full of wicked, hungry delight, “just let me in, let me in—” and the pressure increased, cold and smooth and unyielding. He’d done this before, once or twice, always slow, always greedy, and you’d never been able to resistthe insistent, pulsing claim of his tail. The cool pressure breached you, slow and inexorable, until you were trembling, almost sobbing, with the shock of fullness from both ends. He waited only long enough for your body to yield—never gentle, but vigilant to the ways you stiffened, the catch of breath before pain. There was satisfaction in him, an echoing hum that radiated through his hands into your skin: a predator’s pride when prey surrendered to the jaw.

And how you surrendered.

He set a rhythm, fucking you with both cock and tail, every thrust calculated to reach further, fill more, feel more. You could not move, you could only ride out the onslaught, the relentless hammer and thrum and pleasure so staggering it threatened to dissolve you. Your body sang with it, nerves scattering into the ether, your mind reduced to the tidal wave of sensation. Every time you sobbed your pleasure, Curtis redoubled his efforts, drilling into you so hard you thought you could feel your whole womb twisting up to make room for the stretch. The twin fullness overwhelmed your nerves, a bright white so severe you almost begged for mercy. He gave none.

There was a point at which you were certain you could not take more, and yet your body learned to take it, to want it, to clutch him with desperate, greedy spasms, to refuse to let him go. All your muscles burned with the effort, with the need to hold him in, to be filled so absolutely that nothing else existed. Your cunt spasmed and wept and gushed around his cock, and you hardly noticed when your own arms lost the strength to clutch at his scales and simply splayed above your head, limp and pleading.

By the time you felt the first ripples of his climax about to break, you were slick with sweat. Curtis’s whole body tensed, every scale and muscle gone rigid. The groan that erupted from him was guttural, ripped from something ancient and primal inside him. He drove himself as deep as possible, until your breath caught and your pelvis ached with how wildly, impossibly full you were, and then he came. It was an abrupt flood, a torrent, so much and so shockingly intense you could feel it overflow around him, seeping hot and icy down your thighs, leaking from every stretched, desperate inch of you. His tail, still working at your other hole, pulsed too, and you felt another rush fill you there—this flooding from his tail a first, your body trembling, boneless.

You lay pinned beneath him, shuddering and shocked, and when he finally stilled, there was nothing else in the night but breathless, trembling aftermath. For a long time, neither of you moved; the weight of him, the chill and the heat, the press of his tail still inside you, the throbbing ache that was already shifting into a deep, heavy peace.

Then, gradually, you noticed something else—the strange, spreading numbness that radiated from the place where his tail breached you. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it felt like a balm poured over the burning aftermath of climax, a slow, dreamy unraveling of every tension in your body. Your limbs went slack. The ache in your hips dissolved, your spine melted back into the mattress, and every muscle, every fraught, knotted nerve, at last let go. Your body, which had been a battleground of need and pain and pleasure, suddenly belonged to no one and nothing, and you drifted in a haze of perfect, suspended contentment.

“Curtis,” you managed, voice slurred and slow, “what are you—”

He stroked your hair, smoothed your brow, and quietly uttered a, “Shhh,” against your temple.

You didn’t have the strength to reply. The world glowed dimly at the edges but was mostly darkness, punctuated only by the chorus of your own heavy breaths and the lazy, overlapping whisper of the lake at the edge of the cool, cavernous lair of your new home. You lay there, half-buried under his body, feeling as if you might melt into the bed and the earth beneath it.

“I never told you about the venom of my tail. It’s not the kind you think—nothing lethal. But it is… potent.” His tail flexed, and you felt the last dregs of will drain from your limbs, leaving you hollowed out and weightless.

“It’s a sedative,” he explained, rolling you to your side and curling around you, spooning you with the possessive certainty of an apex predator. “It relaxes the bones and nerves, renders any prey motionless.”

He curled himself tighter around you, chest at your back, tail draped over your thigh, anchoring you in the nest of bedding and moss. In your boneless state, you could not escape the possessive drag of his palm over your skin—first up to the arch of your ribcage, then slowly, almost reverently, to the globe of your belly. He pressed his hand there as if you were both a relic and a promise, a rare treasure he’d stolen from another world, and you suppose you were.

In your mind, you felt the distant panic of a body that knew it should not be so helpless, that this creature had seized your survival reflex by the throat and throttled it—but after a few heartbeats, you realized you didn’t care. Curtis was pressed up behind you, his arms a wall of certainty wrapped all the way around your womb, your ribs, your shoulders. The ache was gone. The tightness was gone. You had been wrung out, emptied, and now you were nothing but full of him, inside and out.

He rumbled a sound from deep in his chest, almost a purr. The vibration traveled through your spine and straight to the place where pleasure had left you rawest. He nuzzled your hairline, then traced the shell of your ear with the tip of his rough tongue.

“Sleep,” he murmured, and you did. Or at least, you drifted on the edge of it, not quite inside sleep, not quite awake, suspended in the place where dreams bled into touch. Curtis’s hand moved over your skin the entire time, massaging the rounded slope of your belly, stroking your thigh, sometimes cupping your breast or tracing the curve of your jaw. The cocoon of his arms made you smaller, softer, less yourself and more a thing to be adored and kept.

You vaguely registered the way his cock, not even fully soft, pressed against the seam of your thighs, rutting at the seam like a persistent dream. You couldn’t have moved if you tried, but the feeling of him pushing between your thighs—wanting back in—was, impossibly, not unwelcome.

You wondered, or perhaps only imagined, if he could sense your dream-thoughts; the question seemed to amuse him. He gave you a moment of what passed for tenderness, nuzzling your hairline, rocking you back and forth in his arms, his tail stroking the flesh behind your knee. The sedative in your bloodstream left you blissed and limp, a ragdoll for his pleasure.

He was hard again, or nearly so, and the friction of his cock caught between your thighs was both a comfort and a question, as if your body had become the only vessel for his hunger.

Curtis’s hands never tired. You tried to imagine the monotony of your body, the sameness of your skin beneath his touch, but it seemed he could never get enough. He massaged your belly in long, slow arcs, sometimes lifting the weight of it as if to relieve you, sometimes holding so gentle and so firm that it seemed your flesh was his most prized, fragile artifact. His palm spanned the roundness, mapping every centimeter, sometimes dipping to the underside where your skin felt stretched to near-breaking, sometimes trailing up to the space above your navel. The gentle repetition of it—his touch, the rise and fall of his chest at your back—lulled you deeper into the velvet black of near-sleep. Even your mind became lazy, thoughts smudging at the edges until only sensation remained.

When he was satisfied that you’d gone slack, that your muscles had relinquished every old human defense, he shifted behind you. The cool press of his cock found the seam between your thighs—he never seemed to lose his interest for long, even in the slow moments. He nestled himself between your legs and, with a single, unhesitating thrust, pressed his half-hard length into your cunt. It was not rough, not this time; he moved with the patience of someone tending a sacred fire, easing in until your bodies were flush, and the faint ache became a deep, saturating fullness. Your mind drifted, but your body, trained and conditioned by months of relentless attention, responded in kind: you flexed around him, and a lazy, involuntary moan struggled up your throat. Curtis groaned, his chest pressed flat to your back, and rutted once, twice, before stilling, letting you sheath him while you both floated on the edge of sleep.

He didn’t use his hands now, not for pleasure, not directly. Instead, he gripped your hip for leverage, holding you open and tilted just so, and pulled your ass flush to his pelvis, driving his cock in to the hilt and then simply… staying there. You felt every twitch and pulse of his cock, every shift in the slow, animal rhythm of his breathing. He stayed hard inside you, using your body as a sheath, as a warm, wet cradle; you were perfectly pinned, utterly possessed, and you could do nothing but receive him.

Curtis exhaled into your hair, his voice a thick, slurred mumble. “You’ll keep me, won’t you? Keep me in you all night. That’s what I want, little one. I want to rut in you while you sleep. I want to use your heat, let my cock twitch and throb all night in that perfect cunt.” He rutted once, again, and you felt the faint flutter of his cum oozing out from the last round, slicking your insides. He seemed to relish the sensation, the lazy, languid pleasure of being buried and unmoving, until another aftershock rolled through him and made you gasp.

“I can feel your body holding me,” he said, the words warm and thick as sap with sincerity. “It’s all I want now. Just to be in you. You don’t even need to be awake for it, little one. Let me have you while you sleep. I’ll fuck you in your dreams if I have to, and you’ll wake up full of me.”

You tried to protest, but the sedative still dulled your tongue and every nerve, made your body heavy and dumb with pleasure. He rocked his hips, once, and the sensation rolled through you like a wave, sticky and slow and so deep it made your eyes water. The pressure of him inside you was a kind of lullaby, a constant, anchoring weight, and you found yourself drifting, drifting, until your thoughts were only the animal, helpless response of your body clutching around his cock, milking it with every slow, involuntary contraction.

“I’ll take care of you,” Curtis promised. “You’ll always feel good. I’ll see to every want you have, and every want you can’t even name.” The words were a net, a binding, and you believed him, not for comfort, but because he had never lied to you, he had no reason to.

The night drifted on. Curtis’s hand never left your belly; his cock never left your cunt. There were times, across the long hours, where you felt his fingers knead at your clit with lazy affection, almost absent-minded, and sometimes you came, even in this fugue—little contractions that made you clamp down and wring more pleasure from the fullness. He’d sigh when you did, and sometimes you came, even in this fugue—little contractions that made you clamp down and wring more pleasure from the fullness. He’d sigh when you did, the sound vibrating through your back, and sometimes he’d soothe you with a stroke of his hand, as if petting a restive animal. Occasionally, a tiny aftershock in him would pulse more of his seed into you, and it seemed like he was intent on keeping you topped up, leaking around his cock, overflowing with the certainty of his claim.

Sometimes he’d lick the sweat from the back of your neck, or whisper obscenities in your ear about how perfect you were, how he would keep you filled until it took, until you were more lake than girl, reminding you that you were changing, that every time you let him breed you, you became more his, less the fragile thing you had been. You believed it, because it was true: your body grew more resilient, your hunger more intense, your mind more focused on the simple, ceaseless need to be joined, to be filled.

This is what your life was now, and Curtis kept you like a pearl.

I make no apologies. I need to go shower.

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

You'd been assigned to him, more or less. Some liaison arrangement, a name on a form. You were supposed to help him with the practical things – the phone, the money, the hundred small humiliations of a world that assumed he already knew. And on the first day you'd taken one look at the list they'd given you, the tidy little curriculum for reassembling Captain America, and you'd folded it in half and dropped it in the trash and said, “Okay. Forget all that. What do you actually want to know?”

He'd stared at you.

Nobody had asked him that.

Not once.

Not what do you need to be able to do but what do you want.

He hadn't had an answer ready. So you'd made him one. You'd started small – coffee, the good kind, from the place on the corner that you swore by and he came to swear by too. Music, but not the important music, not the canon they kept trying to hand him; you played him ridiculous things, songs about nothing, and laughed when he frowned, and slowly, slowly, the frown had learned to be a smile again.

You were the one who made the century small enough to hold.

And here was the thing Steve knew about himself, the thing he did not say out loud, the thing that lived underneath his gratitude like rebar under concrete: he had studied you.

He didn't think of it that way, not usually. But it was what he'd done. In those first raw months, when the whole world was noise, you had been the one clear signal, and he had turned the full force of his attention on you the way he'd once turned it on a map before a drop. He'd learned you. Your moods, your tells, the particular quality your silence took on when you were happy versus when you were hiding something. The way you took your coffee. The two friends you'd cut out of your life and the reasons. The exact register of your laugh when it was real and the slightly higher one you used when you were being polite.

He told himself it was love. Attention like that – surely that was love.

He didn't examine, too closely, the part of him that had always been most at peace when he knew a thing well enough to move it.

Two years. Then three. Somewhere in there the assignment had quietly dissolved and left behind the realest thing in his life. You were his best friend. That word was true and he leaned on it. Best friend. He said it to himself like a boundary. Like a wall he was keeping up.

He was very good at keeping up walls right until the moment he decided to take one down.

Here was the thing Steve did not know, in all his careful study, for all his reconnaissance.

You were in love with him.

You had been for longer than you'd admit to yourself, and much longer than you'd ever admit to him. It had come on the way these things do – not a lightning strike but a slow tide, a rising, until one day you'd looked at him laughing in your kitchen over some song you'd played to torment him and realized the water was already at your throat.

You never told him. Of course you never told him.

You had your reasons, and they were the mirror image of his, though neither of you would ever know it. You were his best friend. You were the person who'd caught him when he fell out of the sky and into the wrong life, and you were not going to be the one who made it weird, who wanted more, who looked at Captain America – at Steve, your Steve, who left his socks on your radiator and argued with you about films – and dared to think mine.

So you held it.

You got good at holding it.

You dated other people, sometimes, in a distracted half-hearted way, and none of it took, and you told yourself that was just how it was for you, that you were picky, that you'd never met the right anyone.

You had. That was the joke of it. You'd met him and made his coffee for three years and never told him and never would.

Steve missed all of it.

He missed it because he wasn't looking for it – because in his model of you, the one he'd built so carefully, you were the sun and he was the man grateful for the warmth, and the sun didn't want, the sun just shone. He had never once let himself imagine that the way you touched his arm when you laughed might be the same thing that lived in him, held just as still, just as hidden.

But here was where the missing got complicated. Here was where a decent man's blindness started to shade into something else.

Because Steve, not knowing you loved him, still could not stand the men who tried to love you.

There'd been a few, over the years. A colleague of yours who'd asked you to dinner. A man from your building. Someone you'd met at a wedding and lit up about for a week. And every single time, without ever once raising his voice, without ever doing a single thing you could point to, Steve had found himself in the middle of it.

Nothing so crude as forbidding. He'd never. He was your friend; he only wanted you happy – he told himself this constantly, and the telling had the slightly overworked quality of a man reinforcing a floor he suspects won't hold weight.

But he'd ask questions. Gentle ones.

The colleague – did he seem like he really listened to you, or did he just wait for his turn to talk? The man from the building – didn't it seem a little convenient, how fast he was moving? The wedding one – and here Steve had been at his best, his most careful – Steve had simply been around, more than usual, that whole week. Present. Attentive. Making your apartment the warmest place you could be, so that the pull of somewhere colder and newer never quite caught.

He'd tell himself he was protecting you. Looking out for you. That was what a friend did.

He never let himself finish the other sentence. The one that went: and if I keep you close enough, keep the warmth turned up high enough, no one else ever gets a real hold on you.

He never finished it. But he ran the strategy all the same, the way a body breathes without being told. A man who had spent a war learning that you don't win by attacking – you win by controlling the ground, by patience, by making sure that when the moment comes, it comes on terrain you've already shaped.

He was playing a long game. He'd have been horrified to hear it called that. He'd have believed, sincerely, hand on heart, that he was just being a good friend.

That was what made it work. On you. On himself.

It came out on a night that was like a hundred other nights, which was why it caught you both off guard.

Rain. Your apartment. The second bottle of wine, opened with the specific recklessness of two people who have nowhere to be in the morning. Some film playing that neither of you was watching. You were sprawled on the couch with your feet tucked under his thigh, the way you'd been sitting for years, a closeness so worn-in that neither of you flinched at it anymore.

He was watching your profile in the blue light of the screen. He did that more than you knew.

You'd been talking about a man. A recent one – a date, two dates, a third that had ended at your door with a question you'd answered by saying goodnight and stepping inside alone. You were telling it as a funny story. You were good at that, turning the ache of your own life into something you could laugh at from a safe distance.

“–and I could tell he thought that was it, you know,” you were saying.

“Like, third date, obviously. He had the whole face on. And I just–”

You made a small helpless gesture with your wine glass.

"I couldn't.”

“Because you didn't want to,” Steve said. Carefully. Reading you.

“Because I never do.”

You said it lightly, but something had shifted under it, some floor giving way, and you'd had exactly enough wine to keep walking out onto it.

“That's the– okay. Don't make it a thing.”

“I won't make it a thing.”

“I mean it, Steve.”

“I know you mean it.”

You looked at him for a long moment, and he held very still, the way he'd learned to, and then you laughed – the higher laugh, the covering one – and said it.

“I've never actually had sex. With anyone. Full stop.”

You waved the glass again, a whole life dismissed in a gesture.

“There. The world's oldest– whatever. It just never happened. And now it's this whole–”

“You're not old,” he said, automatically, and it came out rougher than he meant.

“–thing in my head,” you finished, ignoring him, because you needed to get to the end of it now that you'd started. “And I don't want you to think it's because I'm– God, some blushing innocent girl. I'm not. I know what I like. I've had a lot of time to figure out what I like.”

You said it with a flash of something almost defiant, and he watched your mouth make the words and felt the room tilt.

“I just never let anyone– that far. That's all. It stopped being about the thing and started being about who gets to–”

You stopped.

You looked into your wine.

“Who gets to be the one,” you finished, quiet now. “And nobody ever was.”

Steve did not move.

Outside, the rain kept on. The film murmured to itself, unwatched. Your feet were still tucked warm under his thigh and he was aware of every point of contact between you like a man aware of a live wire.

He should have said something kind and friendly and safe. He had a whole vocabulary for that. That's nothing to be embarrassed about. The right person will come along. You deserve someone who understands what a gift that is.

He didn't say any of it.

Because something had happened in him in the space of your last three sentences, something fast and total and quiet as a door closing, and it had rearranged him from the inside, and when he opened his mouth he honestly did not know what was going to come out.

Who gets to be the one.

And nobody ever was.

Here was what happened inside Steve Rogers in that moment, and this was the truth of him, the part he'd spend a long time not admitting even after he'd admitted everything else.

His first feeling was not tenderness.

Tenderness came. It came a half-second later and it was real, an ache at the thought of you carrying this, at the flash of defiance you'd needed to defend yourself against a hurt no one had even landed yet.

But the first thing – the very first thing, the thing that arrived before he could dress it in anything better – was mine.

Not a word.

Faster than a word.

A kind of heat that went through his whole body and closed a fist around something at the base of him.

The knowledge, sudden and absolute, that there was a first, still, out there in your future – a man, some man, some faceless deserving man who'd get to be the one – and that Steve wanted, with a violence that frightened him, for that man not to exist.

He didn't want you to have a first who wasn't him.

He examined the thought, in the fractional silence, the way you'd turn a strange coin in your fingers. He was good at examining his own thoughts; the war had made him honest, at least in the privacy of his skull.

And what he found, under the tenderness, under the years of best-friend and the sun doesn't want, was this: he didn't just want to be your first.

He wanted to be your last.

That was the shape of it.

Not a night.

Not a favor.

Not some noble one-time kindness to spare you a lesser man.

He wanted to be the one and stay the one, wanted to close the door behind him and have there be no more afters, wanted – the word came to him plainly, and he didn't flinch from it the way he should have – to keep you.

A quieter man might have been ashamed.

Steve was ashamed, distantly, the way you register weather through a window.

But mostly, God help him, mostly he was clear. Clearer than he'd been in three years. All that careful holding-still, all those walls, all the times he'd told himself the sun didn't want – it fell away, and what was left was appetite with a strategy attached, and the strategy came to him already half-built, because some part of him had been building it for a long, long time.

He couldn't just tell you. He knew that in the same breath. If he told you now – best friend, wine, rain, your feet warm under his thigh – you'd panic. You'd rebuild the wall between you before he finished the sentence. He knew you. He knew you the way he knew the load of a shield in his hand, and he knew that the direct assault would lose.

So he wouldn't make the direct assault.

He'd do what he was good at. He'd shape the ground.

He looked at you, and he let none of it show – not the heat, not the mine, not the plan already assembling itself behind his steady friendly eyes – and when he spoke his voice was gentle, and warm, and exactly, precisely the voice of a man who wanted nothing for himself.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Look at me.”

You did.

“You didn't do anything wrong,” he told you. “Waiting for someone who's the one. That's not a thing that's wrong with you.”

He let a beat pass.

Let it land.

Then, easy, almost offhand, planting the first seed so lightly you'd never feel the soil move, “Honestly? I think it says you've got better sense than everyone I know. You held out for it to matter. Most people would kill to have done that.”

Something eased in your face. He watched it ease. He'd known it would.

“You think?” you said.

“I know,” he said.

And he smiled at you – the good smile, the one you'd rebuilt out of a broken century, the one you trusted absolutely – and he tucked the blanket a little more snugly over your feet where they rested against him, a small warm gesture of a man taking care of his friend, and inside the calm cathedral of himself Steve Rogers began, quietly and without any hurry at all, to plan how he was going to become the one.

He had time.

That was the beauty of it.

He was patient; the war had taught him patience, and love had taught him more.

He'd move slow. He'd move so slow you'd never see it as moving. He'd make himself the warmest place in your whole cold new world, warmer than any man who ever asked you to dinner, so that when the moment came – and he'd know the moment, he'd make the moment – it would feel to you like the most natural thing in the world.

Like your own idea.

Like coming home.

He'd give you a first you didn't have to be brave for.

And once he was your first – once you'd let him that far, further than you'd ever let anyone – well…

He didn't let himself finish that one either. But the shape of it sat warm and certain in his chest as the rain came down, and your feet were tucked against him, and the film played on, unwatched, telling its little story to no one.

First, he thought, watching your profile in the blue light.

And last.

You had no idea. You leaned your head back against the arm of the couch and let his kindness settle over you like the blanket, grateful, unguarded, feeling – for the first time all night – completely safe.

You were, of course, exactly the opposite of safe.

You'd never been more thoroughly in someone's sights in your life.

But it felt like being loved. It felt, from the inside, precisely like being loved.

That was the whole trouble with Steve Rogers.

It always did.

He didn't move for three weeks.

That was the part no one would have believed of him, if anyone had been watching – and no one was, that was rather the point.

Three weeks of nothing.

Three weeks of being, in every visible particular, exactly the friend he'd always been.

But underneath, he was watering what he'd planted.

He did it so gently you'd never have called it anything. He simply returned to the thing, now and then, from oblique angles.

A film you watched together where a couple waited years for each other, and Steve, offhand, eyes on the screen, “See, that's the thing people don't get. Waiting for the right one isn't weakness. It's the opposite.”

He didn't look at you when he said it.

He didn't have to.

He felt you go still beside him, felt the words go in and find the soil he'd already turned.

A week later, a friend of yours got engaged, and you were happy for her and a little raw underneath, and Steve was there for that too – present, warm, and somewhere in the evening he said, easy as anything,

“You know what I've always thought about you? You're not waiting because you're scared. You're waiting because you know what it should feel like. That's rare. Most people just settle.”

You know what it should feel like.

He watched the sentence do its work over the following days.

He was patient.

He'd learned in a war that the ground does most of the fighting for you, if you shape it right and wait.

And you – you didn't know you were being shaped.

You only knew that lately, when the old ache came, the one about being the last of your friends to have never, Steve's voice was there in your head to meet it. Not making you feel broken. Making you feel chosen by your own restraint.

Turning the wound into something almost like pride.

You didn't notice that the voice comforting you and the ache it comforted had started coming from the same place.

That was the craft of it. He didn't just want to be your first. He wanted you to arrive at him feeling like it was the wisest thing you'd ever done.

He chose the night the way he'd once chosen drop zones.

He didn't force it.

He waited for the conditions and let them assemble, and when they did – a Friday, rain again because the rain was on his side, a week where you'd been tired and worn thin and had said, twice, that you just wanted to be somewhere that felt safe – he simply made sure the somewhere was him.

He cooked.

He didn't usually cook; he made a point of it now, and made a point of it looking effortless, so that you'd arrive at his door and be met with warmth and food and low light and the particular gravity of a room that has been made ready for you without ever announcing that it has.

You didn't notice the candle.

You noticed you felt better the second you were through the door, and you didn't ask why, because that was what his apartment always did to you, and you'd never once wondered whether that was an accident.

It was not an accident. It had never been an accident.

You ate. You drank a little – not much; he watched that too, careful, because he did not want a version of this you could tell yourself later hadn't been real.

He wanted you clear.

He wanted you to choose it. The choosing was the whole prize.

And he let the evening soften into the shape it always took, you curled into the corner of his couch, him near, the rain, the low light, the safety he'd built for you brick by brick over three years and you'd never once seen the trowel.

He waited until you brought it up yourself.

He'd known you would. He'd shaped the whole night so you would. And you did – sideways, the way you always came at the tender things, some joke about the engaged friend, about being the last one standing, and the laugh you used to armor it.

He didn't laugh with you this time.

He let a silence open instead. And into the silence, gently, like setting something down that he'd been carrying a long way, Steve said:

“Can I tell you something I've been thinking?”

He'd rehearsed it.

Of course he'd rehearsed it.

He'd rehearsed it in the shower and on his runs and lying awake, editing, the way he'd rehearsed the last one, except this time he'd learned from watching you for three weeks exactly which words would land and which would spook you, and he'd built the speech to your specifications without you ever knowing you'd given them.

But he delivered it like a man thinking out loud.

That was the art.

Nothing rehearsed.

Just a friend, arriving in real time at a hard, honest thing.

He started with you. Always start with them; make it about them.

He said he hated that you carried this like a weight. That someone had made it a wound. That you were the least broken person he knew and it killed him a little that you didn't see it.

He watched your face soften and open.

Then he moved – one careful step, so smooth it didn't feel like a step at all.

He said the thing he was about to say, he was only saying because he was your friend. That he needed you to hear it that way. No expectations. Nothing owed. Nothing changed. He needed to say that part first, he said, because otherwise he'd lose his nerve.

Nothing changed.

The oldest lie in his arsenal, and he laid it down first, deliberately, because a lie told up front lowers the guard against everything after it.

And then – gentle, reluctant, a man dragging the words up against his own modesty, a performance so good he half-believed it himself – he offered.

He said he didn't want your first to be someone who'd be careless with it. Someone who'd take a thing that mattered and not understand that it mattered.

He said the word he'd built the whole campaign on, the one he'd planted in you three weeks ago and watered ever since – someone who makes it matter – and he watched it land in the exact soil he'd prepared, watched you recognize your own comfort in his mouth, watched it feel to you like being understood.

He said, if you ever wanted – if it would take the weight off – it could be him.

Because he was your friend.

Because he'd be gentle.

Because he'd take care of you, and make it good, and never once make you feel like the thing that man had made you feel.

He ran the whole thing so warm, so selfless, so entirely about you, that the want underneath it never showed – the mine, the first and last, the fist that had closed at the base of him three weeks ago and never once let go.

He kept all of that behind his steady friendly eyes, where he kept everything, and he let you see only the kindness.

And then he stopped.

And he let the silence do the last of the work.

He'd learned, in a war, that you don't take the ground. You make the ground so untenable that the other side walks into your arms believing it was their idea.

He watched your face. He read every flicker of it. He'd been reading it for three years.

He saw the moment you decided.

He saw it before you knew it yourself.

“Okay,” you said.

Quiet. Barely more than breath.

But he heard it land in the room like a struck bell, and something in his chest surged so hard he had to hold his face still against it.

“Yeah?” he said.

Soft.

Careful.

Give it back to them gently, let them feel it was freely given.

“Yeah.”

You laughed a little, shaky, and it wasn't the armored laugh, it was a real one, undefended, and it went through him like sunlight through the wrong century.

“God. Yeah. I– with you. It should be– of course it should be you. Who else would I–”

Who else.

He'd built that, too.

The whole architecture of who else. Three years of being the warmest place in your world so that when the question came there'd be no other answer in the room.

It had worked. It had all worked. He should have felt like a man who'd won.

He did feel that. He felt it low and hot and certain.

But he felt, too – and this surprised him, this he hadn't planned for – a swell of something enormous and unbearably tender, because you'd said of course it should be you with your whole open face, and for one vertiginous second he forgot the campaign entirely and was just a man in love who'd been told yes.

That was the strange thing about Steve Rogers.

Even the manipulation ran on something real.

Especially the manipulation.

He reached over.

He took your hand – didn't pull you, didn't move toward the bedroom, didn't do a single thing to break the spell by making it suddenly, crudely, about the act.

He'd thought about this part, too.

He was not going to rush you. Rushing you was for lesser men, the careless ones, the ones he'd spent three years defining himself against.

He was going to hold you right here, on this threshold, in the warm ruin of your yes, and he was going to let it be enormous.

Because if the first thing after your yes was a scramble toward a bedroom, some part of you might flinch, might feel it become transactional, might wake up.

He wasn't going to let you wake up.

So he just held your hand.

And looked at you.

And let the moment stretch until it was almost too much to bear, until the whole air of the room had changed, gone thick and slow and charged, until you could feel your own heartbeat in your throat.

“We don't have to do anything right now,” he said, low.

And you'd have sworn – you did swear, to yourself, in that moment – that it was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to you.

You didn't hear the other thing in it.

The patience of a man who'd waited three weeks and could wait one more hour, because he knew that making you wait now, holding you here trembling on the edge of it, was going to make everything after so much more completely his.

“I know,” you said. “I just– can we just–”

“Yeah,” he said. “We can.”

And he settled back, and drew you in against his side, and you let yourself be drawn, your yes still ringing in the air between you like the note after a bell, unspent, everything still ahead of you, nothing crossed yet.

His heart was slamming.

Yours was too.

Neither of you moved toward the door that both of you were now, unmistakably, going to walk through.

He looked down at the top of your head, tucked against him, trusting, chosen, caught.

First, he thought, and this time he let himself finish it, slow, savoring it, the whole long game folding shut around you like a hand.

And last.

The rain came down. The candle he was sure you hadn't noticed burned lower. And Steve Rogers held you on the threshold he'd spent three weeks building you toward, and did not, for one more perfect suspended minute, move.

It wasn't that night. That was the first thing that surprised you.

You'd said yes on his couch, in the warm ruin of the rain, and some part of you had braced for the rest of it to happen then and there – for him to lead you to his bed while the yes was still ringing.

He didn't.

He held you on the threshold and let it be enormous and then, when the candle had burned low and the hour had gone soft, he'd walked you to the door and kissed your forehead and said goodnight.

You'd lain awake most of that night not knowing whether to be relieved or bereft.

What you didn't understand – what you wouldn't understand for a long time – was that the waiting was also his.

That a man who has spent three weeks and one careful evening bringing you exactly here does not squander it on a single unplanned night.

He wanted it chosen.

He wanted you to walk toward it in daylight, awake, sober, with days to change your mind and no wine to blame – because a yes you could take back and didn't was worth infinitely more to him than a yes he'd caught you in.

So the days passed.

Four of them.

And they were strange, luminous, unbearable days.

Because now it was between you.

He'd hand you a coffee and your fingers would brush and you'd both go quiet a half-second too long.

He'd text you something stupid and you'd read it eleven times.

The whole architecture of your friendship, three years of it, had been picked up and set down one degree to the left, and everything looked the same and nothing was.

Now it lived in every ordinary thing.

He'd hand you a coffee and your fingers would brush and you'd both go quiet a half-second too long. He'd text you something stupid and you'd read it eleven times. The whole architecture of your friendship, three years of it, had been picked up and set down one degree to the left, and everything looked the same and nothing was.

And this was the part that undid you – he talked to you about it. Like it was ordinary. Like it was allowed.

“I don't want it to be weird,” he said, on the phone, on the second night, his voice low in your ear in the dark.

“I want you to actually think about it. What you want. How you want it. If you change your mind at any point, even walking in the door, even after– you tell me and it stops. I mean that.”

“I know you mean it” you said, and you did, and that was somehow the most dangerous part of all.

“And if you don't change your mind,” he went on, careful, “then– Friday? Your place?”

Your place.

He'd chosen that too, though you didn't clock it.

Your bed. Your room. Somewhere you'd feel safe, somewhere that was yours – so that when he took it, it would feel like being kept rather than taken.

“Friday,” you said. “My place.”

You heard him breathe out, slow, on the other end of the line. You thought it was nerves.

It was a man watching the last piece of a very long game slide quietly into place.

“Friday,” he agreed. “I'll bring dinner. We don't have to rush anything. We've got all the time in the world.”

He said that a lot, that week. All the time in the world. You thought it was reassurance.

It was a promise.

You just didn't know yet what he was promising.

On Thursday, you were off all evening, and he clocked it inside four minutes.

That was the trouble with being known by Steve Rogers. Three years of a man studying your face the way other people study scripture, and there was nowhere left in you to hide a mood. You'd arrived at his door on the third day with takeout and a smile that didn't reach anywhere, and you'd been fine, determinedly fine, aggressively fine, all through dinner.

He let you be fine for an hour and a half. He was patient like that.

Then he put down his fork and said, “Okay. What is it.”

“What's what?”

“You've laughed at three things tonight and you didn't mean any of them.”

You looked at him. He looked back, unmoving, with that terrible mild patience of his, the one that had gotten more out of you over three years than any interrogation ever could.

“It's nothing.”

“It's not nothing. You've been chewing on something since you got here.” He tilted his head. “Is it Friday?”

And there it was, said out loud, in his kitchen, over cold noodles. Friday. The word had been sitting between you for three days like a lit fuse and neither of you had touched it.

“No,” you said.

Then, “Sort of.”

Then, because his eyebrows had gone up a quarter inch and that was somehow worse than any question, “It's stupid. Steve, it's genuinely stupid, can we not–”

“You're allowed to change your mind.” He said it fast, and something in his voice had gone very slightly wrong at the edges. “I meant that. Any point. You don't have to have a reason, you just say the word and it's–”

“That's not it either.”

He waited.

God, he was good at waiting.

He'd sit there all night.

He'd sit there for a week.

And the silence he made was never cold or expectant, it was warm and patient and completely unbearable, and it pulled things out of you the way heat pulls water.

You cracked in about nine seconds.

“How many people have you slept with?”

Steve blinked.

Whatever he'd been braced for, it hadn't been that. You watched him actually recalibrate – watched the careful machine of him stop, reverse, and start again in an entirely different direction.

“...Why?”

“Forget it–”

“No. Hey.” He leaned forward. “No, I'm not– I'm not dodging. I'm asking why, because I want to answer the actual question and I don't know what it is yet.”

You put your hands over your face.

“Because you've done this,” you said, into your palms. “That's the– okay, look. You've had women. Obviously you've had women, you're–” a helpless gesture at all of him, “–that, and it's been three years, and you're not a monk, and I never asked because it wasn't my business, and now it's Friday and it is my business, sort of, and I keep–”

You stopped.

“You keep what,” he said quietly.

“I keep thinking about them.” Your voice had gone small. “Whoever they were. That they knew what they were doing. That they were– that you have something to compare me to and I've got nothing, I've got nothing, I don't know how to do a single part of this and you're going to be so–”

“Don't say bored.”

“I was going to say disappointed.”

Something crossed his face that you couldn't read.

He got up. Came around the table. Crouched down beside your chair so that he was lower than you, looking up, which was a thing he did sometimes and which you'd never once been able to withstand.

“Okay,” he said. “Ask me properly. I'll answer anything. Straight.”

So you did, because you'd already humiliated yourself and there was nothing left to protect.

“How many?”

“Few.” He said it without flinching. “Since the ice– three. One that lasted about eight months, back at the start. Two that didn't last at all.” A pause. “Before the ice, none. For the record. I was a hundred and ten pounds and nobody was interested, and then there was a war on.”

“Eight months.”

“Eight months.”

“Did you love her?”

He considered it. He didn't rush to say no, which somehow you respected and hated in equal measure.

“I wanted to,” he said finally.

“I tried pretty hard. She was kind, and she deserved better than a man who was – ” He stopped. Restarted. “I wasn't really there. She said that, actually. At the end. She said it was like living with someone who was waiting for a phone call.”

You didn't understand, then, what he was telling you.

You would, later. On a grey morning, in the clear light, with all the pieces laid out. You'd count backwards and realize that the eight months had ended about two years ago, right about the time a man had looked up in this kitchen and noticed the shape of your hands, and you'd understand exactly what phone call he'd been waiting for.

But that was later. Right then you just sat there feeling worse.

“Great,” you said. “So there's an eight-month person. Who presumably knew how to–”

“Hey.”

“–and I'm going to be lying there like a–”

“Hey.” His hands closed over yours in your lap. “Look at me. You want the straight answer? Here's the straight answer. I can't remember her face without trying.”

You went quiet.

“That's not me being cruel about her,” he said. “She was a good person and she didn't do anything wrong. It's just true. I've had three, and I couldn't tell you one specific thing about a single one of those nights, and I've been sitting in this apartment for three days now unable to think about anything except–”

He stopped.

Very suddenly. Like a man who has walked to the exact edge of a cliff at speed and put his heel down just in time.

The kitchen was very quiet.

“Except what?” you asked.

Here was what was happening inside Steve Rogers at that moment, and it was not what you thought.

He was cornered. Genuinely cornered, for the first time in three years of careful navigation – and by his own hand, which was the galling part.

Because he'd built this whole thing on a lie of omission.

I'm doing this for you. No expectations. Nothing changes.

He'd told you it was a kindness, and the trouble with telling someone it's a kindness is that it makes them the charity case, and now you were sitting in his kitchen with your hands shaking under his, believing you were a favor he was doing, believing there were better women in his past that you'd be measured against.

And he could fix it.

Instantly.

One sentence would fix it, and the sentence was I have wanted you for two years and there has never been anyone else in the room, not once, not ever, they were all just places I was standing while I waited for you.

He couldn't say it.

Not yet.

Not three days out, not with the whole thing balanced this delicately, not when saying it now might spook you into calling Friday off – because he knew you, he knew what you did when something got too big, you ran, you laughed it off and rebuilt the wall and he'd have to spend another year getting back to here.

So he did the thing he was best at.

He told you the truth – as much of it as he could afford, and not one word more. He gave you the edge of it and let you believe the edge was the whole.

“Except you,” he said.

Your breath caught.

“That's– Steve–”

“Three days,” he said, low. “I haven't slept much. I keep–”

He shook his head, and the frustration in it was completely real, which was what made it work.

“You think you've got nothing to offer. You think you're gonna disappoint me. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to tell you that I've been half out of my mind since Friday got put on the table and it's got nothing to do with being helpful.”

“But you said–”

“I know what I said.”

You stared at him.

He held your gaze and let you look, and he let just enough of it show – not all of it, never all of it, but enough. Enough that something in your chest turned over hard.

“I don't understand,” you said.

“I know.” He squeezed your hands. “You don't have to yet.”

And then he moved you off it – deftly, warmly, the way he moved you off everything.

“Here's the part I do want you to hear,” he said, “because it's the part that's actually true and I need you to stop carrying it. Ready?”

You nodded.

“There's nothing to be good at.”

“That's not–”

“There isn't.” He said it with total conviction.

“That's a thing people made up to sell you something. Nobody's grading it. There's no technique that matters more than–” he searched for it, “– than the person actually wanting to be there. That's it. That's the whole thing. And the idea that you'd need to perform for me, that you'd be lying there worried you're not–”

He broke off, and something flashed across his face that you'd never seen before, something with a great deal of heat in it.

“That's not going to be a problem,” he said. “I promise you that's not going to be a problem.”

“You can't know that.”

“I can,” he said. “I do.”

And there was such flat, absolute, unarguable certainty in it – the certainty of a man who has run this scenario in his head several hundred times and knows precisely how it goes – that you felt the ground shift under you.

“Okay,” you said faintly.

“And for what it's worth.” He got up, sat back down in his own chair, and reached over to steal a piece of your food, so casual, so ordinary, so completely deliberate. “The comparison thing works both ways.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged, eyes on his plate.

“Means they're not the ones who spent three years learning what your face does,” he said. “So I'd say I'm at something of an advantage.”

You laughed. It surprised you, coming out.

He smiled at his plate, and let you laugh, and did not look up – because if you'd seen his face in that moment, all the careful work would have been for nothing.

Three years learning what your face does.

He'd told you the truth. He kept doing that, all week, in small unbearable increments – offering you the actual shape of it in pieces you weren't yet able to assemble, so that later, when you finally could, you would understand that he had never once lied.

Only ever waited for you to catch up.

“Friday,” you said.

“Friday,” he agreed.

And he thought, watching you go back to your food with your shoulders finally loose and every day after that, if I've done this right.

Friday came the way you'd been half-dreading and half-dying for it to come.

He arrived with food and you barely ate it. You both knew you wouldn't, really; the dinner was a courtesy, a soft place to land the first hour, a way to let your nerves burn down to embers before anything else.

He was good at that.

He was good at making you feel like there was no clock, even as he watched the evening move exactly where he'd meant it to.

He kissed you standing, in the middle of your living room, with the rain going on the windows and the dinner neither of you had eaten gone cold behind you.

He took your face in both hands to do it.

That was the thing that undid you first – not the kiss, the hands.

The way he framed your jaw between them, thumbs along your cheekbones, tilting you up like something he'd been given permission to hold at last.

Careful.

Almost formal.

As if after three years of not being allowed, he intended to do this properly.

The kiss was soft.

Softer than you'd expected from a man that size. He kissed you like he had all night – because he did, because he'd made sure of it – slow closed-mouth presses that asked and asked and never once pushed. His breath was warm on your upper lip. His thumb moved once against your cheek.

You'd waited three years for this. Three years of standing in kitchens and doorways and not letting yourself, and now it was happening and it was gentle, and something in you went molten and impatient all at once.

So you bit him.

Not hard. Just caught his lower lip between your teeth and pulled, a small deliberate provocation, more instinct than plan.

Steve made a sound like he'd been struck.

And the careful thing broke.

It happened fast. His hands left your face and found you properly – one at your waist, one at the small of your back – and he moved you, three steps, no effort at all, until your shoulders met the wall.

Not hard.

He'd never put you into a wall hard. But the ease of it, the sheer thoughtless strength of being relocated by a man who could do it without straining, punched a moan straight out of you before you'd decided to make one.

Because you felt him then. All of him, all at once. The whole solid front of him pressed flush against you from chest to hip, and it was so much – so much more real than anything you’d ever conjured alone in the dark – that your knees genuinely went. You could feel the thick, heavy line of his cock already hard against your stomach, straining against his jeans, and the heat of it made your mouth go dry.

“Fuck,” he breathed against your mouth, voice rough. “‘M sorry. Been waiting three years to feel you like this. Sorry, too much?”

“Don't you dare apologize.”

He laughed, wrecked, and kissed you again, and this time it wasn't soft at all.

It went hot in the space of a breath.

His mouth opened over yours and yours opened under his and it stopped being careful entirely – teeth catching, tongues sliding, the graceless wet urgency of two people who have waited far too long for a thing and have suddenly stopped being polite about it

He kissed you like he was trying to get through you. You kissed him back like you'd been drowning.

His hands didn’t stay still. One kept its grip at your waist, fingers spanning half your ribcage, holding you exactly where he wanted you against the wall. The other went into your hair and held – cradling your skull, tilting your head where he needed it, giving him the angle he wanted so he could fuck his tongue into your mouth deeper.

You couldn't breathe properly.

Neither could he.

Between kisses there were these ragged half-seconds where you both just gasped into each other's mouths, foreheads pressed, and then one of you would go back in like it hurt not to.

And then he slid his thigh between yours.

You didn’t even register it happening. One second there was space and the next there was the hard, thick muscle of his leg pressed up tight between your thighs, taking your weight, holding you up when your legs had stopped bothering. The seam of your jeans dragged right against your clit with every tiny shift, and you were already so wet the fabric felt soaked through.

You made a sound into his mouth. He swallowed it.

“There it is,” he murmured, rough, dragging his mouth along your jaw. “There’s that sound. God, you have no idea– three years I’ve wondered what you’d sound like when you finally stopped holding back. Three years I’ve thought about getting my hands on you and finding out.”

He didn't finish it. He bit the side of your throat instead, open-mouthed and greedy, and you keened.

He’d meant it to be slower.

That was the thing. He’d planned this – of course he’d planned this, he’d been planning it for months, every careful conversation, every soft offer to “make sure it was someone who actually gave a damn” – and in the plan this part was fifteen minutes of taking the edge off your nerves before he moved you toward the bedroom and began, slowly, methodically, the careful hours of work he’d mapped out in his head.

He was managing it. Just about. His control was fraying but it was holding.

And then he felt you move.

He went absolutely still.

Not stopped-kissing still.

Something deeper.

A stillness that started somewhere behind his sternum and spread outward, because his body had just registered a piece of information his mind was three full seconds behind on.

You were rocking against his thigh.

Small. Slow. An unhurried little roll of your hips, back and forward, grinding your cunt against the hard muscle of his leg, seeking the pressure of him, entirely without instruction – and when he made himself pull back an inch to look at you, he understood in one glance that you had no idea you were doing it.

None. Not a shred of awareness.

Your eyes were half open and gone somewhere far away. Your mouth was red and swollen and slack from him, still parted, still chasing. Both your hands were buried in his hair, fisted tight enough to sting. And your hips just kept going, small helpless movements, riding the muscle of his thigh with the unthinking single-mindedness of a body that had stopped consulting anybody about what it wanted.

You weren't performing. You weren't trying to be anything. You weren't even present enough to be embarrassed.

Steve stared at you.

Something enormous turned over in his chest.

Because here was the thing he had never allowed himself to properly imagine, not in three years, not in a single one of the shameful careful fantasies he'd built and dismantled in the dark: that you might want him like this.

Not sweetly. Not gratefully. Not as a favor accepted from a good friend.

Like an appetite. Like a woman with a body that knew exactly what it was after and had gotten tired of waiting.

She's not innocent, he thought, dazed. God help me. She’s just never been touched. And she wants it. She wants me.

And he almost let it happen.

He came so close. Every animal part of him wanted to press his thigh up harder and hold you there and watch you come apart against him in your own hallway – and for one long second his hand actually moved to your hip to help, fingers digging in, guiding the roll of your body so the seam of your jeans dragged tighter over your clit.

Then he stopped.

Because he'd promised himself something four days ago, lying awake, rehearsing.

Not against a wall. Not in a hallway with her shoes still on.

Not the first time.

He had spent three years getting here and he was not going to spend the first thing you ever felt from another person on a rushed ten minutes in a corridor. He wanted you on a bed. He wanted hours. He wanted to watch your face when he finally pushed inside you.

So he took his thigh away.

The sound you made was awful.

A high, thin, wrecked little whine, muffled against his throat, so entirely undone and so completely unlike anything you’d ever let him hear that it nearly finished him where he stood. Your hips kept moving anyway, chasing the pressure that was no longer there, cunt clenching around nothing.

“I know,” he breathed. “I know. I know, sweetheart– you were right there, weren’t you? I felt it. You were gonna come on my leg like that.”

“Steve–” You were shaking. Your hips were still moving, mindless. “Please, I was– I was almost–”

“I know you were.” His voice was barely holding together. His hands slid down, gripped the backs of your thighs hard enough to leave marks. “That’s exactly why I’m not letting you. Not here. Not like this. I’ve waited too fucking long to take you against a wall for the first time.”

And he picked you up.

Just lifted you, straight off the floor, as effortlessly as picking up a coat – and your legs went around him on pure instinct and your arms went around his neck and the sound you made this time was different, because the position had put you flush against him, directly against the thick, hard length of his cock, nothing between you now but two layers of ruined clothing.

You ground down on him without deciding to. Hard. The ridge of him dragged right against your clit through the fabric and a broken sound punched out of both of you at the same time.

He staggered half a step.

“Baby.”

“I can't– I can't stop–”

“Then don’t.” He got his mouth back on yours, kissing you as he walked, taking the whole weight of you on one forearm so the other hand could hold your face. “Don’t stop. Rub yourself on me all you want. Just don’t come. Not yet. Give me one more minute, that’s all I’m asking–”

You whimpered into his mouth and rolled your hips anyway, shameless, grinding your soaked cunt against the hard line of him with every step, and he laughed, breathless and ruined, and kept walking.

The hallway was three metres long. It took a while.

Your shirt went first – he’d got it halfway off you against the wall and you finished it, dragging it over your head, throwing it somewhere that turned out to be the kitchen. His went next, and it was you who did that too, both hands under the hem and shoving, desperate for skin. He had to set you down for two seconds to get it over his head and you both made frustrated noises about the two seconds of separation.

One of your shoes came off in the corridor. The other one you kicked at the bedroom door and it hit the frame and bounced.

He got you up again. You got your legs back around him. He walked you the last few feet with your mouth on his throat and his hands full of your ass and his belt half undone by fingers that had no business being that clumsy. You could feel how hard he was, the thick shape of him trapped against your stomach, and every step made you grind harder against it.

By the time you made it to the bed, most of it was gone. The rest went in a graceless heap somewhere between the door and the mattress – jeans, underwear, the last of your clothes – neither of you looking, neither of you caring, both of you making sounds into each other’s mouths that would have mortified you in daylight.

And then there was nothing left, and he was carrying you bare against him, skin on skin down the whole length of you. You felt the heavy, hot weight of his cock trapped between your bodies, the head of it already slick against your stomach, and you both stopped dead at the shock of it.

He held you there. Breathing hard. Forehead against yours. His hands were shaking where they gripped the backs of your thighs.

“Okay,” he managed, voice wrecked. “Okay. Look at me.”

“Okay,” you agreed. Neither of you moved. You could feel how wet you were against him, the slick heat of your cunt pressed right against the underside of his cock.

He turned to lay you down on the bed.

And stopped.

You felt it happen – felt the whole enormous frame of him go rigid, felt the change in his breathing – and you lifted your head from his shoulder to see what he was looking at.

Oh, God.

The nightstand. Half-tucked behind the lamp, where you'd meant it to live out of sight and had entirely, catastrophically forgotten it would be visible from this angle, held in these arms, naked, tonight of all nights.

Small. Yellow. Absurd.

A little rubber duck, except for the shield painted on its chest, and the tiny painted mask, and the unmistakable, ridiculous, unmissable A on its forehead.

“Oh my God.” You said it into his shoulder. “Oh my God. Steve. That's not– okay, that is not–”

“Whose is that.” Quiet. Not cold. Quiet.

“A friend gave it to me.” The words came out in a rush, muffled, desperate. “As a joke, it was a birthday thing, everyone laughed, she thought it was hilarious– because of you, obviously, because I never shut up about–”

You stopped.

You’d said too much and not nearly enough, and you were naked, wrapped around him, held off the ground by a man whose bare skin was pressed to every inch of yours – the thick, hot length of his cock trapped between your bodies, the head of it already slick against your stomach – and the horror of it and the heat of it hit you at the exact same moment and came out of you as a sound that was not a word at all.

Because you were still at the very edge. He’d taken you to the brink in your own hallway and left you there, and your whole body was still humming and furious about it, cunt still throbbing and empty, and now this – his arms, his chest, the shameful little yellow thing on the nightstand, the sheer overload of it…

You moaned. Right against his throat. Helpless. Your hips rolled once, involuntary, dragging your wetness along the underside of his cock.

He felt it. Every part of him felt it.

“A joke,” he said.

“Steve–”

“And you used it?”

The question dropped into the dark and stopped everything.

You could have lied. He felt you decide not to. He felt the truth come up through you, hot and honest, and you lifted your chin the smallest fraction – that flash of defiance that told him you were not, whatever else, some blushing innocent – and you said it.

“Yes.”

One word.

It went through him like a struck match through paper.

Because there it was – the thing he’d told himself he was too decent to feel. You’d taken him – this ridiculous painted duck-version of him, this joke, this stand-in – and in the privacy of this room, alone, in the dark, you’d spread your legs and pressed that little yellow body between them and come with his face in your head. Every other man who’d ever asked you to dinner had been turned away at the door, and the only version of anyone you had ever let into this bed had been him.

Even as a joke. Even in rubber. It had been him.

The possessiveness that took him then wasn’t a thought. It was tidal. It closed over the last of his careful decency and pulled it under without a sound.

He didn’t touch the duck. He’d get to it. He’d get to it in his own time, and the knowledge of that sat in him warm and patient and certain.

“Okay,” he said, very softly, and you heard the change in him – the way his voice dropped into something darker, rougher, almost hungry – and your breath caught. “Okay, baby. So you’ve been using me to get yourself off. For how long?”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t.

He laid you down.

And then he stopped, and looked at you, and didn't touch you at all.

You’d have squirmed under it if you’d had the coordination left. He was kneeling over you, braced on one arm, completely naked, cock heavy and flushed against his stomach, and he was just… looking. Taking his time about it. His eyes moving over you slowly, thoroughly, from your face down the length of your body and back up again, lingering on your breasts, the soft curve of your stomach, the wet shine between your thighs, like a man reading something he’d been told about for years and had never been allowed to see.

“Steve–”

“Give me a second.” His voice was unrecognisable – low, rough, almost reverent. “Three years I’ve imagined what you’d look like under me. Give me one second to actually see it.”

So you lay there and let him look, and watched what it did to his face, and it was almost worse than being touched. His cock twitched visibly against his stomach. A bead of precome welled at the tip and slid down the underside.

Then he took his time – which, after the hallway, after being carried, after being left shaking on the very edge of it, was almost cruel.

He touched you like a man with nowhere else in the world to be. Slow palms up the outsides of your thighs, spreading them wider. Along your ribs, thumbs spread wide so they brushed the undersides of your breasts. His mouth at your throat, your collarbone, the soft give beneath – unhurried, methodical, learning you by hand and by inches while you writhed underneath him and made sounds you’d have been mortified by in daylight. Every time his fingers drifted close to where you needed them most he pulled them away again, stroking the crease of your thigh instead, feeling how wet you’d already gotten just from being looked at.

You told him, at least three times, that you were going to lose your mind.

“I know,” he murmured, into your skin, entirely unmoved. “I know. Almost. I’ve waited three years to get my hands on you. I’m not rushing the first time I get to touch you like this.”

“You left me–”

“I did.” Not sorry. Not remotely sorry. His mouth moved lower, open and wet against the soft skin just above your navel. “I wanted the first time you came for me to be right here. In this bed. With my fingers inside you and my mouth on you so I could watch every second of it.”

“That’s–” You had to stop and breathe when his tongue dipped into your navel. “That’s a horrible thing to do to someone.”

You felt it more than heard it – the warm huff of air, the curve of his mouth.

“Probably,” he agreed. “But I’ve been hard for you since the second I walked through your door, and I’ve been thinking about this exact moment for months. You’re going to have to live with it.”

And you understood, dimly, through the fog – the way you understand a thing you won't be able to name until much later – that he was enjoying this. Not the way a man enjoys being generous. The way a man enjoys having something exactly where he wants it, after a very long wait.

And then he touched you properly, and you stopped being able to form sentences.

The first thing was the shock of how different it was.

That was what nobody had ever told you. You knew your own body – you’d had years alone in this room with nothing but time and a joke made of rubber, you weren’t some blank page – but you had never once considered that another person’s hand would feel like an entirely different category of thing.

You couldn’t predict it. That was the difference. You didn’t know what was coming next, or how long it would last, or when it would change, and your body couldn’t brace for any of it – so every single thing he did landed unguarded, straight through, nothing between you and the sensation at all.

His fingers slid through the soaking folds of you, parting them, and the sound was obscenely wet. You made a noise like you’d been hurt. His head came up instantly.

“Okay?”

“Don't stop. Don't you dare stop–”

“Not stopping.” His mouth came back to your jaw, voice rough against your skin. “Not stopping, sweetheart. Just checking. Fuck, you’re soaked. Is this all for me? Or is some of it left over from thinking about that little yellow duck while you touched yourself?”

It didn't take long. It couldn't have.

You’d been strung tight since the hallway, since before the hallway, since a Tuesday in his kitchen four days ago – and he knew it, and he used it. He read every twitch of you, every hitch of your breath, adjusting to each one, cataloguing in that ruthless observant way of his exactly what made you shake and exactly what made you sob.

Three years of watching your face for the smallest tells, put to this.

Two thick fingers circled your entrance, gathering slick, then pressed inside you in one slow, steady push. The stretch made your back arch off the bed. He curled them immediately, searching, and when he found the spot that made your whole body jolt he made a low, satisfied sound against your throat that you would think about for weeks afterward.

“There,” he said, voice dark with triumph. “There it is. That’s the place you’ve been rubbing that little duck against, isn’t it? Right here.”

“Steve–”

“I know. I’ve got it now.” Something had come into his voice that hadn’t been there before. Something certain. Something almost proprietary. “I’ve got you. I’m not going to lose it again.”

He didn’t. He held that exact angle, merciless, and worked his fingers inside you in slow, deep strokes while his thumb found your clit and rubbed firm, steady circles. It built in you fast and hot and impossible, and you had a moment of genuine panic – of I can’t, it’s too much, this is too much with someone watching – and he felt even that, because of course he did.

“Yes you can.” His forehead against your temple. His breath ragged now too; he wasn’t unaffected at all, he was breathing like he’d been running, hips shifting restlessly against the mattress so his cock dragged against your thigh. “Yes, you can. You’re going to come on my fingers exactly like this. Let me see it. Please– sweetheart, let me see what you look like when you finally let go for me–”

Then he kissed you.

And that was what finished you: his mouth over yours, swallowing every sound you made, taking them straight out of you as they came – as if he’d decided that if he couldn’t have the rest of you yet, he’d have those.

You broke apart underneath him.

He watched every second of it.

Your cunt clenched hard around his fingers in rhythmic pulses, so tight he groaned into your mouth. Slick flooded his hand. Your thighs shook violently on either side of his wrist. He kept working you through it, slower now but relentless, dragging every last tremor out of you while he watched.

He’d kept his face inches from yours the whole time for exactly that reason. He wanted the front-row seat and he took it, and he watched you come apart under his hand with an expression you had never seen on him in three years and would not be able to describe afterward – something between reverence and hunger and a kind of naked disbelief.

Three years, he was thinking. Three years and it looks like that.

It was better than the fantasy. It was so much better than the fantasy that the fantasy seemed insulting in hindsight – thin, polite, invented by a man who hadn't known anything.

When it finally released you, you were boneless. Shaking. Your hand had fisted so hard in the sheet that it took a moment to unclench. You could feel how wet his fingers still were inside you, the slow, filthy slide of them as he gently eased the intensity.

He pressed his mouth to your temple and held you through the aftershocks, murmuring things against your skin.

“There,” he said. There was wonder in it. And something much darker underneath. “There you are. That’s what you look like when you come for me. Fuck, baby. I’ve been imagining that for so long and it still wasn’t enough.”

You couldn’t speak. You couldn’t do anything but breathe.

“Okay?” he asked, voice softer now, though his fingers were still buried inside you, still moving in the slowest, laziest strokes, like he couldn’t bring himself to pull them out yet.

You managed a nod.

He kissed you again – softly this time, almost sweetly, at odds with everything – and when he drew back his eyes had gone very dark. He slowly withdrew his fingers, watched the way your body tried to clench around the emptiness, then brought them up between you so you could both see how they glistened.

“That’s one,” he murmured, and licked them clean without looking away from your face.

Something in the way he said it made your stomach drop.

He moved to shift you – hands at your hips, turning you, guiding you up onto your knees to face the mirror in the corner, beginning the thing he'd been building toward for three years–

And you caught his wrist.

He stopped instantly. Every part of him stopped. His eyes came to yours in the dark, alert, already scanning your face for the thing he'd promised he'd watch for. “Hey. Hey– we can stop, if you want to stop–”

“No.” Your fingers stayed closed around his wrist. You could barely get all the way around it. “No, I just–”

You were steadier now. That was the thing. The edge had come off; the desperate humming urgency that had run you since the hallway had finally, mercifully quieted, and in its place was something calmer and far more dangerous: you could think again. You could look at him.

And you had been wanting to touch him for three years.

You had to make yourself say it. It came out smaller than you'd meant.

“Can I touch you first?”

Steve went completely still.

And here was what you did not know, and could not have known, and would not understand until much later.

That question was not in the plan.

He'd planned everything. Every hour of the last four days, every word of the three weeks before them, three years of shaped ground and patient warmth and doors quietly closed on other men. He had run this night in his head so many times he could have recited it. He knew what he'd do, and how slowly, and in what order, and what he'd say when you got frightened, and how he'd make it painless, and exactly how he intended to ruin you for anyone who ever came after.

In none of it – not once, not in a single version – had it occurred to him that you might want to touch him.

He'd never imagined being on the receiving end. That wasn't a thing that happened to him. He was the one who gave; that was the whole architecture of him, the shield, the plan, the man who takes care of it. Nobody took care of Steve Rogers. Nobody had reached for him in seventy years and meant it.

“You–” His voice came out strange. “You want to?”

“Is that okay?”

He made a sound. It wasn't a word. He nodded, once, jerkily, like a man agreeing to something whose terms he hadn't understood.

So you touched him.

You weren’t an expert. You had no idea what you were doing and you didn’t pretend otherwise – you just put your hands on him, at last, after three years of not, after three years of that constant low ache of proximity, and you let yourself learn him.

His chest first. Flat palms, spread wide, the ridiculous solidity of him under your hands. The heat of his skin. The way the muscle jumped the second you made contact. You felt his breath go wrong immediately – a sharp, broken inhale that he tried and failed to hide.

Then slower. The line of his collarbone. The old pale seam of a scar under his ribs that you’d never seen and had no story for. The heavy shift of muscle in his shoulder when he swallowed. You mapped him the way you’d wanted to for years and never once let yourself, and every place you touched, something in him jumped. His cock, still hard and heavy between you, twitched against your stomach when your thumbs brushed over his nipples.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay– fuck–”

He was trembling. This enormous man, trembling under your hands like it hurt.

You put your mouth on him – his sternum, the hollow at the base of his throat, the place where his pulse was going wild – and he made a low broken sound and his hand came up to the back of your head. Not guiding. Just holding on, the way you hold onto something in weather. His fingers flexed in your hair every time your tongue dragged over his skin.

“You’re allowed,” you murmured against his throat, because you could feel how still he was making himself, how hard he was working to simply let this happen. “Steve. You’re allowed to want it. You’re allowed to feel it.”

“I don’t–” He stopped. Started again, wrecked. “I’m not used to– nobody’s– it’s been so fucking long since anyone–”

“I know.”

You didn’t, entirely.

But you felt it: the way a man goes rigid when someone is kind to him in a way he has no defense against. You’d spent three years watching him take care of everyone in his orbit. It had never once occurred to you either, until this moment, how long it had been since anyone had touched Steve Rogers just because they wanted to.

You went lower.

Your mouth traced the center line of his chest, then the hard ridges of his stomach. Your hands followed, sliding down the deep V of muscle that led straight to where he was thick and flushed and leaking against his own skin. When your fingers finally wrapped around him – tentative, learning the weight and the heat and the way he pulsed in your grip – he made a sound that was almost a sob.

He let you. For a while, he let you – and he was so unguarded about it, so vocal, so entirely undone by having hands on him after seventy years of nobody, that it went to your head like wine. Every sound he made was involuntary. Every one of them was because of you. His hips gave tiny, aborted thrusts into your fist, like he couldn’t stop them. Precome slicked your fingers. His thighs were shaking.

For now you weren’t the one being managed. He was in your hands, and he was coming apart, and you were the one doing it.

Then his hand closed around your wrist, hard.

“Stop.” Ragged. Urgent. “Stop, you have to– sweetheart, stop.”

You froze. “Did I–”

“No. God, no.” He was breathing like he’d run somewhere. His eyes were shut, his jaw locked, his whole body strung tight as a wire. His cock throbbed hot and heavy in your grip, so hard it looked almost painful. “You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s the– that’s exactly the problem. You keep going and I’m going to come in your hand like a fucking teenager and that is not how tonight is supposed to go.”

It took him a moment to get himself back. You watched him do it: the long haul of a man dragging his own control into place by main force, one breath at a time. His hand was still locked around your wrist, keeping you from stroking him again.

When he opened his eyes they were black.

“Not like that,” he said, low. “Not tonight. Tonight you get all of it. Every inch. I’m not finishing anywhere except inside you.”

“Steve–”

“Do you have any idea,” he said, and his voice had gone rough and strange, almost shaking, “how many times I’ve thought about this? How many times I’ve jerked off thinking about finally getting to push inside you and feel you take me? How many times I’ve had to stop myself from just showing up at your door and begging?”

He stopped himself. Visibly. The end of that sentence sat between you, enormous, unsaid – but the damage was already done. You could see it in his face: the raw, hungry truth he hadn’t meant to let out.

He exhaled hard through his nose, then reached up and cupped your face with both hands, thumbs stroking your cheekbones like he needed the contact to stay grounded.

“Later,” he said, quieter, but no less intense. “You can touch me as much as you want later. You can take me apart if that’s what you need. But not tonight. Tonight I need to be the one who does it. I need to be the one who takes care of you. Can you give me that?”

Later.

You'd think about it a great deal, afterward – about how many things that man had put in the box marked later, and how long the box had been full, and what it must have cost him to carry it around for three years, smiling at you over coffee.

He kissed you then, hard, and turned you.

Gentle hands on your hips, guiding, until you were kneeling up on the bed facing the tall mirror in the corner – the full-length one, the one you saw yourself in every ordinary morning, that had never once seen anything like this.

You saw yourself in it. Bare, kneeling, undone. Cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, thighs already shiny with how wet you still were.

And then you saw him rise up behind you, broad and solid, and settle in close, chest to your back, and meet your eyes in the glass.

His breath was still short. You could hear it – could feel it uneven against your shoulder, not yet recovered from what your hands had done to him – and there was something enormously satisfying about that. About having put it there. His cock, still hard and heavy, rested against the small of your back, leaving a wet smear of precome on your skin every time either of you shifted.

“I want you to see,” he murmured, low, against your ear. “I want you watching. I want you to see who’s finally touching you. Who’s going to be the first one inside you.”

He didn’t finish the thought out loud. He didn’t have to. It was already the truest thing in the room.

Then he reached over to the nightstand.

You knew what he was doing before his hand closed on it. You’d known since the way he’d looked at the little yellow duck and set it down and made you wait – and knowing didn’t help at all.

“Steve.” Your voice came out thin. “Steve, no, that’s– that’s not–”

“Mmmh-hmm.”

He picked it up.

It sat in his palm, small and yellow and absolutely ridiculous, and he turned it over once with his thumb the way he had the first time, and the sound you made was half a laugh and half a sob and entirely disbelief.

He pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the side of your throat.

“No,” he said, warm and wrecked and almost amused. “No, we’re not wasting this. You used me. You put this little thing between your legs in the dark and thought about my hands, my mouth, my cock. Now I get to use it on you while you watch.”

“That’s not– it’s not the same thing–”

“It’s exactly the same thing.” His mouth moved to the shell of your ear, voice dropping even lower. “You were in this bed, in this room, in the dark, with this. Thinking about me. Coming with my name in your head.”

A pause, deliberate, cruel.

“Weren’t you?”

You didn’t answer. Your reflection in the mirror looked wrecked already – eyes wide, lips parted, chest rising too fast.

“Sweetheart.” Softer. Absolutely relentless. “Were you thinking about me when you used it?”

“…Yes.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, and there was something in it that was not amusement at all – something dark and hungry and deeply satisfied. “Yeah. Well. Now you don’t have to pretend. Now it’s actually me.”

“Steve, I can’t– I just– I just came, I can’t–”

“You can.”

Total certainty. No room in it anywhere. He was already settling the little yellow duck into place, low and sure, pressing the curved head of it right against your still-swollen clit, exactly where you’d set it yourself all those nights – and the sheer indignity of that, of him knowing precisely where, of him being right, burned through you hot and shameful and somehow made everything tighter.

“You will,” he said against your ear. “Trust me.”

And he thumbed it to life.

The sound was absurd. A small ridiculous hum in the dark, comic, the sort of noise that should have made you both laugh – and for exactly half a second it did, you felt the laugh start in your chest–

And then it landed.

On nerves still raw and singing from what he’d done to you ten minutes ago. Everything oversensitised, everything already wrung out, and your whole body went rigid and then bowed backward against his chest with a sound that had nothing funny in it at all. The vibration was sharp, focused, merciless against your clit. Your thighs jerked. A fresh rush of wetness slicked the insides of them.

The comedy burned clean out of the room.

“Steve–”

“I know.” Rough, against your nape. “Too much?”

“I don’t– I don’t know–”

“Then we’ll find out.”

His other hand came up to your throat.

Not squeezing. Never that – he’d have died first. Just there: a warm broad span across the front of your neck, no real pressure at all, only enough to keep your head level and your chin up and your eyes forward.

Only enough to keep you facing the glass.

That was the whole purpose of it, and you understood the purpose about a second after it was too late to object. You couldn’t look away. You couldn’t drop your head, couldn’t turn into his shoulder, couldn’t hide your face the way every instinct in you was screaming to – because that hand was there, patient and immovable, and it held you exactly where he wanted you.

“Watch,” he said against your nape, voice low and rough. “Look at yourself. Look at what you look like when I’ve got you like this.”

“I can’t–”

“You can.” His mouth moved down: the curve of your neck, the point of your shoulder, unhurried, worshipful, taking his time about it while the little yellow vibrator kept humming steadily against your clit. “You can, and you’re going to. That’s the whole point of tonight. I want you to see every second of it. I want you to watch yourself come apart for me.”

So you watched.

And that was the thing that undid you – not the hum, not his hands, not even the shameful little object he was holding against you. It was the mirror.

You saw your own face, flushed and open-mouthed. You saw the way your breasts moved with every shaky breath. You saw his big hand spanning your throat, his other hand working the vibrator in slow, deliberate circles that made your hips twitch helplessly. You saw how wet you were, the shine of it on your inner thighs, the way your body kept trying to rock into the vibration even though it was already too much.

You watched yourself.

Kneeling up, bare, held. Flushed all the way down to your chest. Your mouth open, your eyes glassy, your whole face wearing an expression you had never once seen on it – not in all the years of getting ready in front of this exact mirror, not ever.

You didn’t recognise her. That was the vertigo of it. There was a woman in your bedroom mirror who wanted things and was getting them, and you’d never met her.

Then you looked past her, at him.

Steve, over your shoulder. Eyes half-shut, jaw tight, the muscle in it working hard. And on his face – plain as anything in the low grey light – years of discipline coming apart in real time.

You had never seen him without it. Not once. Not in three years of coffee and films and rain on the windows. He was the most controlled human being you’d ever met and you were watching the control fail, live, in your own bedroom, because of you.

He caught you looking. His eyes came up and met yours in the glass and held.

“There,” he said quietly, voice rough. “Now you see.”

“Steve–”

“That’s what you do to me.” His hand shifted at your throat, the barest adjustment, keeping your chin up so you couldn’t look away. “Three years of that. Every time you laughed at me. Every time you sat on my couch with your feet under my leg. Every time you leaned in too close and I had to pretend I wasn’t hard. You want to know what it looked like underneath?” His mouth found your shoulder, open and hot. “That’s what it looked like. That’s what I’ve been holding back.”

You made a sound you couldn’t control – high, broken, helpless.

“There she is,” he murmured, watching it happen in the mirror with dark, hungry eyes. “Look. Look at her. Look at what you look like when I’ve got a vibrator on your clit and my cock against your ass.”

And you watched him hold you like something he’d won and couldn’t quite believe he’d won.

That was the other thing in his face – under the hunger, under the fraying discipline – a kind of stunned disbelief, as though some part of him were still standing in a kitchen three years ago watching your hands around a mug, certain this would never in a hundred lifetimes be his.

It made your chest hurt. It made everything worse. It made you want to give him absolutely anything.

Time did something strange after that.

You lost the thread of it entirely. There was only the relentless little hum of the duck against your oversensitive clit, and the rain on the windows, and his mouth moving over your shoulder, and the two of you in the glass – and every so often his voice at your ear, low and steady and coming apart at the edges, telling you exactly what he could see.

“You’re dripping. Look at that. You’re making a mess of my cock and I haven’t even been inside you yet.”

Your moans were small and helpless and you couldn’t stop them and he drank each one like it was owed to him.

Then he moved.

Not into you. Not yet. He shifted his hips and settled the thick, heavy length of himself against you instead – flush, close, unbearably present – sliding the whole of him between your slick folds without pushing in. The sound that came out of both of you at the contact was the same sound, torn from two throats at once.

He’d meant it to be a moment. Just a moment, just a taste, just enough to take the edge off the pressure that had been building in him for three weeks and three years.

It was not a moment. It went on and on.

Because the first slow drag of him against you told him something he hadn’t been prepared for, and it undid what was left of his composure in one clean stroke.

You were soaked.

Wet through, slick and hot and ready, everything he’d done to you gathered there waiting for him – and he felt it coat him as he moved, felt himself glide through the thick evidence of exactly how much you wanted this. His forehead dropped hard to your shoulder and he made a sound like he’d been punched in the gut.

“Oh– fuck, sweetheart.”

Wrecked. Barely a voice at all.

“You feel that?” He rocked again, slow, deliberate, dragging the entire thick length of his cock through the heat of you, the head of him catching on your clit with every pass, the underside of him sliding through your folds until he was shiny with you. “You feel what you’re doing to me? God. God, you’re so wet. I didn’t know you’d be this wet. I didn’t know you’d feel like this.”

He couldn’t finish the thought. His breath had gone to pieces.

He’d imagined this. That was the thing that was killing him. He had imagined this, in the dark, for years, in a shame he’d never confessed to anyone – and every single version he’d built had been a pale, polite, dishonest little thing next to the reality of you slick and shaking and arching back into him.

Because you were. That was the other thing. You weren’t just letting it happen.

You were meeting him.

He felt it the second time he moved – your hips tilting back, chasing the thick drag of him, your body seeking the friction on its own without any instruction from the wreck of your mind. Small greedy movements. Rolling up into him so that every slow thrust of his hips dragged the head of his cock right over your clit and the vibrator at the same time.

“There you go,” he breathed, and there was something dangerously close to awe in it. “There you go. Look at you. You’re– fuck, you’re riding it. You’re actually fucking yourself on my cock and you haven’t even taken me yet.”

“Steve–”

“Say it.” His voice cracked. “Say it while you watch yourself do it.”

“I want–” Your voice broke on it. The hum was still going, still relentless against your clit, and the thick slide of him through your folds was making everything tighten again already, and you could barely get the words out. “I want it. Please. Please, I want you inside me–”

The sound he made then was not a word.

And you felt him.

That was what none of your quiet nights alone had ever, ever come close to – the fact of another body, alive and undone, reacting to you.

You felt him shiver.

You felt the great controlled bulk of him – this man built to withstand things that killed other men – actually shudder against your back when you rolled your hips a certain way. You felt his arms tighten convulsively around you. You felt the tremor run the whole length of him like something coming loose.

You felt his breath, hot and broken and far too fast at your ear, catching every time you moved.

You felt his heart going like a hammer against your shoulder blade.

And you felt him twitch against you — an involuntary jerk of his cock, hard and hot and slick where he was pressed to you, a thing his body did entirely without his permission — and that was the moment it stopped being something being done to you and became something you were doing to him.

The power of it went through you like a drug.

“Oh,” you breathed, stunned, watching his face in the mirror as another full-body shiver ran through him. “Oh, you–”

“Don’t.” His voice was barely holding. “Don’t say it. If you say it I’m gonna come all over your back before I even get inside you–”

You said it anyway. You leaned back into him and turned your face and said it right against his jaw, eyes still locked on his reflection.

“You’re shaking.”

He swore.

Actually swore, a low ruined syllable against your throat, and his hips snapped forward once, hard, uncontrolled – dragging the entire thick length of his cock through your soaked folds, right over the exact place the little humming duck was working your clit – and you both cried out.

He caught himself instantly. Went still. Breathed hard against your neck.

“Fuck– sorry, I didn’t mean–”

“Do it again.”

He froze.

“Do it again,” you said, voice shaking but clear.

And the sound he made – half a groan, half a broken laugh, entirely destroyed – was the sound of the last strut going out of a structure that had held for three years.

He did it again.

He moved against you slow and deep and endless, the thick, heavy length of him gliding through the slick heat of you, the head of his cock catching on your clit with every pass, the underside of him coated in how wet you were. Neither of you could keep quiet anymore. His breath came ragged and open-mouthed against your neck, punctuated by low, helpless grunts he wasn’t managing to swallow – small sounds of effort, of restraint, of a man holding back something that badly wanted to be let go. Your own noises had stopped being anything you could control: high and broken and continuous, rising every time the thick drag of him lined up just right with the vibrator.

The slide of it had gone effortless. Slick and hot and perfect. Every pass of him gathered more of your wetness until the sound of it was unmistakable under the hum – the wet, filthy noise of his cock sliding through you – and it made you burn scarlet and it made you want it more.

“Listen to that,” he said hoarsely against your ear. “Listen. That’s you. That’s how fucking wet you are for me.”

“I know–”

“That’s how much you want me.” His arms had gone tight, all of him strung, the muscle standing out in his forearm where it braced across your chest. “Three years and I never– I didn’t know. I didn’t know you’d feel this good. I didn’t know you’d be this ready.”

He broke off. Rocked into you again, harder, the thick head of him catching deliberately on your entrance this time without pushing in.

“Steve.” You were shaking. “Steve, I can’t– you have to–”

“I know.”

“Please– inside me, please–”

“I know, baby.” He was panting now, openly, past hiding it. “I know. Me too. Look at me– look at me in the glass– Christ, look at us–”

You looked.

And what you saw in the mirror finished you: the two of you moving together in the low grey light, his eyes wild and blown and locked on yours in the reflection, his jaw clenched, his whole enormous frame trembling with the effort of holding at the edge for you – and you understood, with a lurch, that he was as far gone as you were. That the patient man, the careful man, the man who had planned every second of this, was hanging on by a thread thinner than yours.

“Steve,” you whispered. “Now.”

His breath stopped.

“You’re sure–”

“Now. I want you inside me. Now.”

And then–

Both of you gasped at once. The same breath, torn out of two throats. That first give, that first fraction, that first impossible inch of him finding you – the blunt, thick head of his cock pressing against your entrance and then slowly, carefully, beginning to stretch you open. The surprise of it, the sheer overwhelming fact of it after all this waiting, after three years, after four days, after a joke made of rubber that had somehow led here–

You froze. He felt you freeze.

He went utterly still behind you, buried his groan in your shoulder, and got his mouth to your ear.

“Just the tip, baby.” Rough. Ragged. Barely holding. The words slurred as if he were drunk. “'S just the tip. 'S okay. 'S okay, I've got you, look– look at us– 's just the tip, we've got all the time in the world.”

He kept you there a long time.

That was the thing you’d remember, after – not the ache, because there was almost no ache, only a deep, stretching fullness that bordered on too much – but the patience. The way he held the two of you suspended at that first impossible fraction and refused, absolutely refused, to hurry through it. A lesser man would have taken the yes and pushed deeper. Steve held it in his hands like something that might break if he breathed wrong, and he breathed carefully, and he waited.

Every time your body tensed around the newness of him – that instinctive clench, the ancient bracing of a self that had guarded this for years – he stilled. Completely. Went to stone behind you, his whole enormous frame locked around the effort of not moving another millimetre, and got his mouth to your ear, and gave you something else to feel instead.

The hum, low and shameless, where his hand held the little yellow duck tight against your clit.

The mirror, and the two of you inside it, lit silver-grey by the rain-light: your face flushed and open, his face wrecked and focused, the place where his body disappeared into yours.

His other hand at your throat – no pressure, never pressure, only warmth, only the wordless instruction of it: watch. Turning your face gently back to the glass whenever your head tried to fall, whenever your eyes threatened to close and hide from how much you were feeling.

He had redirected everything. That was the craft of it and the tenderness of it, and by now the two were the same thing. He had taken every scrap of your attention and moved it somewhere else – to the absurd little song of the toy, to the sight of yourselves, to the slow worshipful drag of his mouth along the top of your shoulder – so that when he pressed a fraction deeper, the smallest rock of his hips, the barest give of another thick inch, there was no room left anywhere in you for fear. Only more.

You never felt the stretch as anything but more.

He worked you open by inches and the inches took forever and forever was the whole point, the whole gift. Tiny movements. A rock forward, a pause held so long you thought you’d die of it, his groan buried hot in your nape, another fraction of him sinking into the tight heat of you, another pause, another. He read your breath the way he’d once read a battlefield – every catch of it, every shiver, every place your body softened or resisted – and he answered each one, adjusting, coaxing, never taking more than you’d give and always, somehow, making you want to give more.

“There you are,” he breathed once, when a long slow press drew a sound out of you that you’d never made before – high, broken, almost disbelieving. “There. Just like that. Feel how you’re taking me. I’ve got you.”

And he did. That was the thing. However this had begun – however carefully he’d shaped the ground beneath your feet for three years to bring you exactly here – right now, in the dark, with the rain on the glass, you had never in your life felt so completely, so unbearably held.

Somewhere in that endless slow undoing you felt it start to build.

You felt it gather at the base of you, low and hot and coiling – the relentless hum against your clit and the thick, stretching fullness of him and the sight of his face behind you in the mirror all winding tighter and tighter, a tension with nowhere to go, climbing past anything you’d ever managed alone in this room with a joke made of rubber. Because it had never been like this alone. Alone there had been sensation. This was him. This was three years of wanting given a body and a weight and a mouth at your ear, and it was too much, and it was not enough, and it kept climbing.

“That’s it.” His voice had gone thick, watching your face come apart in the mirror, drinking the sight of it. “That’s it– look at you– look at us– don’t look away, stay with me, let it happen–”

You came like that.

Held on the very threshold of him, the little humming thing pressed hard against your clit and only the first thick inches of his cock inside you, and it broke – it broke over you in a long bright wave that took the room with it. Your body clenched sweet and helpless and rhythmic around him, and the tight, pulsing heat of your orgasm dragged him the rest of the way home while you were still shaking, still gone, still lost in it.

So that by the time you surfaced, gasping, boneless, blinking at the two of you in the glass, he was fully seated. All of him. Buried to the hilt, his hips flush against your ass, exactly where an hour ago you’d have sworn you couldn’t take him – and you hadn’t felt a single second of the final stretch as anything but coming apart.

He held still inside you then. Every thick inch. Both of you trembling, his chest heaving against your back, his heart slamming so hard you could feel it through your own spine. You could feel the heavy pulse of him deep inside you, the way your body kept fluttering and clenching around the new fullness.

“There,” he said, wrecked, against your ear. His arms had come around you, holding you upright, holding you together. “There. All of me. See? Told you.” A rough, reverent kiss pressed to your temple, your cheekbone, the corner of your jaw. “Didn’t hurt at all. Not for a second. I wouldn’t let it. You’re perfect. You’re taking me so fucking perfectly.”

It hadn’t hurt. He’d made certain of that. He’d redirected every ounce of you so thoroughly, so deliberately, that the thing you’d carried for years as a kind of wound had passed while you were looking somewhere else entirely – and now it was simply done, gone, dissolved, replaced by the impossible fullness of him and the singing wreck of your own body, and you understood dimly that he had planned even this, this mercy, this sleight of hand, and could not for the life of you find it in yourself to mind.

Then he drew back – slow, so slow, dragging every nerve in you awake as the thick length of him slid almost all the way out – and gave you the first real stroke.

And the world went white at the edges.

Because this was different. This wasn’t the careful inching-open, the patient claiming of ground. This was him – the whole heavy length and deliberate drag and deep certainty of him filling you completely – and the sound you made didn’t even sound like your own voice, some low broken thing torn up from a part of you that had never spoken before.

He did it again. Still slow, but full now, complete, unhurried and total, burying himself to the hilt with every stroke. His forehead dropped hard to your shoulder at the feel of it, his breath shuddering out of him in broken bursts. You felt his control fraying with every deep unhurried pull, felt the discipline of three years coming loose thread by thread, and it was the single most intoxicating thing you’d ever witnessed – this vast, contained, careful man beginning, at last, to lose himself inside you.

And then, with a low rough sound of decision, he threw the duck away.

You barely registered the small absurd clatter of it hitting the floor somewhere across the room – because his hand, the one that had held it, came straight back to you, bare now, his own thick fingers finding exactly where the toy had been. And it was so much better. So much warmer, so much surer, so much more him. He rubbed firm, knowing circles over your swollen clit while he fucked you in long, deep strokes, and the dual sensation made you sob aloud and sag back against his chest.

“Don’t need it,” he muttered, half to you and half to himself, hips rolling, fingers working you with a knowledge of your body he had no right to and had somehow earned anyway. “Don’t need the fucking toy. It’s me. It’s just me now. Just us. Only ever gonna be me inside you after this–”

And you shattered again.

Just from that. Just from him – his hand and his mouth and the deep, slow, relentless certainty of his cock filling you over and over – a third orgasm, harder than the two firsts, folding you forward over the strong braced line of his arm while he held you up through all of it and worked you through every wave. He watched every last second of it in the glass with dark, greedy, disbelieving eyes, like a man who could not quite believe the thing he was seeing was real and was his.

And in the middle of it – past the roar of your own blood, past the last shred of anything guarding you, barely conscious of your own mouth moving…

“I love you,” you whispered.

It just fell out of you. You weren’t even certain you’d said it aloud. It slipped free the way breath slips free, involuntary, unbidden, the truest thing in you rising to the surface in the one moment every wall you owned was down at once.

Steve went absolutely still.

You felt it – the whole of him, stopping. His fingers on your clit. His hips. His breath. For one endless suspended second the only sound in the entire world was the rain against the glass and the ragged double-time of your own heart, and the thick pulse of him buried deep inside you.

And then something broke in him that had never broken before.

Not the strategist – that was already gone, dissolved somewhere back at the nightstand the moment you’d said yes. This was deeper. This was the last thing, the thing underneath all the other things, the belief he had quietly built his entire careful campaign on top of and never once examined in the light: the sun does not want. The sun simply shines. I am the man who gets to stand in the warmth, and I will ask for nothing, and reach for nothing, because reaching was never something I was allowed.

And you had just whispered, half-gone, not even meaning to, that the sun wanted him back.

Three years of holding still. Three years of a man convinced that the very best he could ever hope for was to live near your light and never dare to touch it. Three years of loving you in a silence so complete he’d nearly mistaken it for peace. And you’d said I love you into the dark with your whole body wrapped around his – without deciding to, without performing it, without any reason to say it but that it was simply, helplessly true – which meant it was real. Which meant it had been real for longer than tonight. Which meant that all this time, in some room of your own, behind some wall of your own, you had been holding your breath exactly the way he’d been holding his.

He lost it.

Every last thread of the control he’d carried into this room like armor – gone.

His hand left your throat – gently, gently, always gently, even now – and cupped your jaw instead, and turned you, up and back over your shoulder, until your mouth found his. And he kissed you like a man surfacing from under ice. Deep and desperate and endless. All of it at once, everything, nothing held back. He kissed you like he was trying to breathe you in, like the three years had all been leading to precisely this and he could not bear to have waited even one second longer. His hips started moving again while he kissed you, deeper, less careful, the thick length of him sliding in and out of your still-fluttering cunt with a wet, rhythmic sound that filled the room.

“Say it again,” he breathed against your mouth when he broke for air. Ragged. Wrecked. Not commanding – begging. This man who had strategized his way to your bed, reduced now to a plea. “Please. Say it again. I need– please, sweetheart, say it again.”

Your eyes came open. Wide. You heard it land in the air a full beat too late – heard your own voice replaying I love you into the quiet – and felt the panic surge up hot in your chest, the instinct to snatch it back, to laugh it off, to rebuild in a single second the wall it had taken you three years to hold…

He didn’t let you.

“No,” he murmured, and kissed it away, kissed the fear right off your open face, his hips moving harder now, deeper, the last of his restraint gone and something helpless and overflowing rising in its place. “No, no. Don’t. Don’t take it back. Don’t you dare take it back, I’ve got you–”

“Steve–” your voice cracked, “–I didn’t mean to–”

“Love.” The word broke out of him like it had been waiting three years for permission to exist. “Sweetheart. Look at me– no, not the mirror, not the glass– me. Look at me.” And he turned your face fully to his and held it there, forehead pressed to forehead, both of you coming apart in the dark, his eyes so close they were the only thing in the world. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You hear me?”

His voice cracked clean down the middle.

“I’m never letting you go. Not ever. Not after this. You don’t get away from me now– I won’t let you. I’m keeping you.”

And it wasn’t a cage, the way he said it. It wasn’t the possession that had roared through him an hour ago at the sight of a painted rubber duck. That was gone too – burned off, transfigured, remade into something rawer and simpler and completely undefended. It was a man who had lost everything once – every friend, every anchor, an entire world, a whole century swallowed by the ice – waking one more time into a life that finally, impossibly fit, and finding you at the center of it, and refusing, this time, with everything left in him, to let the cold take the thing he loved.

Keeping. Not caging. Not owning. Keeping – the way you keep the one thing you’d walk back into the freezing dark to save. The way you hold on to the single warm thing in a life that has taught you, over and over, how easily warmth is lost.

“Okay,” you gasped, past tears you didn’t fully understand, past the very last of your own unraveling, your hands scrabbling back to find his and lacing tight through his fingers, holding on like the whole world had tilted and he was the only fixed point left. “Okay. I love you. I do– I said it, I meant it, I’ve meant it for so long, I love–”

He kissed the rest of the words out of your mouth.

And the two of you went over the edge together – finally, completely, no threshold left to hold at, no careful inch left to preserve, nothing between you anymore. Not the years. Not the silence. Not the strategy or the shaped ground or the walls you’d each built so high and held so long. All of it gone at once, and only this left standing: him, and you, and the rain on the glass, and the two of you in the mirror moving like a single thing breathing.

He came with a broken, helpless sound against your mouth, burying himself as deep as he could go, pulsing hot and thick inside you while your body clenched around him in long, rhythmic waves. Your fingers stayed locked. Your foreheads stayed pressed together. Both your hearts hammered the same impossible rhythm.

And a ridiculous little yellow duck lay forgotten on the floor across the room, having done, in the end, exactly what it was always secretly for.

Afterward he held you against his chest and would not loosen his arms, and you let him – boneless, wrung clean through, wearing the heavy steady slam of his heart under your cheek like something you had been given and meant to keep.

For a long while neither of you spoke. There was only the rain, and your breathing slowly finding each other's rhythm, and the warmth of him around you like a wall built to keep out cold instead of to keep you in.

“I meant it,” he said at last, into your hair. Quiet now. Sure. No campaign left in his voice, no strategy – just the plain flat truth of a man who has stopped, finally, being careful. “All of it. Every word. The keeping part especially.”

“I know,” you murmured.

You didn't, yet. Not the whole of it – not the three years and the three weeks and the four days, not the film chosen on purpose, not the seeds planted and quietly watered, not the drop zones and the shaped terrain and the long patient war he had waged to bring you to this exact bed. That would come later. Some of it. As much of it as he would ever bring himself to tell you.

But you knew the part that mattered. You had felt it break wide open in him in the precise instant you stopped guarding your own heart – felt the whole vast careful machine of him come apart the second you said three words he'd never once let himself believe he might hear – and you knew, with the certainty of a thing felt rather than reasoned, that whatever else was true about how you'd arrived here, you had not been the only one holding your breath for three long years.

“Stay,” he said. Not a question.

“I live here,” you pointed out, muffled, smiling helplessly against his skin.

You felt his laugh move through his whole chest – low and startled and completely undone, the laugh of a man who has spent so long braced for loss that joy still catches him off guard.

“Then I'm staying,” he said, and pulled the blanket up over the both of you, and drew you in closer against him, and did not, for the rest of that long rain-soft night, let go of you even once.

The rain came down. The duck lay where it had fallen.

And Steve Rogers – who had planned everything, shaped everything, won everything he'd set out to win, and been utterly, helplessly undone anyway by the one thing he had never dared to plan for – fell asleep at last with your heartbeat beneath his hand. Kept, and keeping. And, for the first time since the ice closed over him a lifetime ago, entirely, dangerously, finally home.

You woke before he did, which never happened.

In three years you had never once beaten Steve Rogers awake – he ran at dawn, he'd been built to need less sleep than the rest of the species, he was always up and moving and quietly making coffee by the time you surfaced. But this morning you swam up out of sleep into grey light and rain-washed quiet and found him still under you, still around you, his arm heavy across your waist, his face slack and open and years younger in sleep than you'd ever seen it awake.

You lay very still and looked at him.

And in the clear unhurried light of morning, with your body pleasantly wrecked and your head finally quiet, you started – slowly, the way you turn something over that's been sitting in your hand all along – to think.

About last night. About the four days before it. About the phone call where he'd been so careful, so patient, so ready. About the candle at his place you were fairly sure you hadn't imagined. About the film, weeks ago, and the thing he'd said about waiting not being weakness. About the engaged friend and you know what it should feel like. About how, every single time you'd tried to fall for someone else in three years, you'd somehow ended up back on his couch instead, warm, safe, home, the pull of anywhere colder never quite catching.

About how the only version of anyone you'd ever let into this bed had been a joke made of rubber wearing his face.

The pieces sat there in the morning light. You looked at them.

And here is the thing you understood about yourself, in that moment, that you would maybe never say out loud: you weren't afraid.

You should have been. Some sensible part of you noted, distantly, that a wiser woman might feel a chill right now – might look at the sheer duration of it, the patience, the shaped ground, and feel like something had been done to her rather than with her. That part of you spoke up, dutifully, and then fell silent, because the rest of you had already gone somewhere else entirely.

The rest of you was on fire.

Because three years. Because he'd wanted you for three years and said nothing and built a whole quiet world to keep you in and you'd never seen it, never once, and the not-seeing didn't feel like violation this morning – it felt like being wanted on a scale you had never in your life been wanted. Steve Rogers, who did everything deliberately, who had planned wars, who never in three years did a careless thing – had spent all of it, patiently, deliberately, on you.

The thought went through you low and hot and you had to press your face into his chest to hide what it did to you.

He woke to that. To your mouth against his sternum and your heart going too fast.

“Hey,” he murmured, rough with sleep, his arm tightening. “You're up first. That's new.”

“Steve.” You didn't lift your head. You weren't sure your face could be trusted. “Can I ask you something?”

You felt him go still. Not tense, exactly – alert. The particular stillness of a man who has just registered a change in the weather.

“Yeah,” he said. Carefully.

You lifted your head then and looked at him. And you asked it plainly, watching his eyes, because you already half-knew and you wanted to see him not be able to lie to you.

“Last night. And the four days. And– all of it.” You held his gaze. “How long?”

He didn't pretend not to understand. That was the thing about him; he could shape the ground under you for three years, but he couldn't, when you looked at him straight, actually lie to your face. It was the one thing his whole careful arsenal had no answer for.

Something moved behind his eyes. A long, complicated something.

“...A while,” he said finally.

"Steve."

“A long while.” He looked away, then made himself look back, jaw tight. “Longer than I should've– longer than was fair to you, probably.”

“How long,” you said again. Softer.

And he gave you the truth, but only at the edges, the way a man confesses when confessing fully would cost more than he can pay. “Since about the second year,” he said. “Maybe before. I stopped keeping track on purpose, because keeping track felt like–” He stopped. His hand moved on your hip, absent, restless. “I told myself I didn't want anything. I got real good at telling myself that.”

“And the candle,” you said. “At your place. The other night.”

A pause.

“Yeah,” he admitted, low.

“And the film. The one about the couple who waited.”

His eyes came back to yours, and there was something almost helpless in them now, something caught. “...Yeah.”

“And you told me waiting made me smarter than everyone you knew. Right after my friend got engaged and I was – right when I was feeling it most.” You watched his face. “You knew exactly when to say that.”

He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The not-answering was its own answer, and he let it be, and he watched you take it in with an expression you'd never seen on him before – braced, unguarded, ready for the exact moment your face would change into something that would end this.

Because he thought you were going to be afraid.

He'd shown you the shape of it – half of it, the demandable half – and now he was waiting, the way a man waits under fire, for you to understand what had been done and pull away from him and be right to.

Your face did change.

Just not the way he'd braced for.

“Steve,” you breathed – and he heard it, the thing in your voice, and his eyes sharpened, because it wasn't fear at all, it was the opposite, it was low and warm and stunned and it went straight through him. “You wanted me for two years and never said anything.”

“I–”

“You planned all of it.” You'd come up onto your elbow now, over him, and there was color high in your face and your voice had dropped somewhere new. “Every part. The candle. The film. Last night. You've been – God, you've been steering me, this whole time, for years, and I never–”

“Hey.” He caught your face in his hand, alarmed now, his careful control scrambling back into place, mistaking your voice for the beginning of hurt. “Hey, listen to me, I never– I'd never make you do anything you didn't– you always could've said no, every single time, I'd have stopped, I swear to God I'd have–”

“I know,” you said.

And then you told him the truth, the one that undid him more thoroughly than any of his own confessions, the one that turned the whole morning over on its head.

“That's not– Steve. I'm not upset.”

He went still.

“I should be.” You said it wonderingly, half to yourself, watching your own reaction like it surprised you too. “I know I should be. Some part of me is standing way back there being very sensible about it.” Your hand flattened on his chest, over the hard fast slam of his heart. “But the rest of me just found out that the man I was in love with for three years spent two years quietly rearranging his entire life around keeping me, and never asked me for one single thing, and–”

Your voice caught.

“–and it doesn't scare me,” you said. “It does the opposite. It does completely the opposite.”

You watched it land in him. You watched him understand.

You watched Steve Rogers realize that the thing he'd been most afraid of – that you'd see the whole careful machine of his wanting and be repelled by it – was not going to happen. That you'd seen it, or enough of it, and that it hadn't cooled you at all. That it had lit you up.

His breath went ragged. His hand slid from your jaw into your hair.

“Say that again,” he said – the same words as last night, the same helpless plea, except now there was something dangerous waking under the wonder in his voice, something that had spent three years leashed and had just been told it never needed the leash at all.

“It doesn't scare me,” you whispered, leaning into him, your mouth almost on his. “Knowing you did all that. Knowing how long. Knowing you'd– Steve, knowing you're not going to stop–” You felt the shiver go through you at your own words. “It should. And it doesn't. It just makes me–”

He kissed you before you could finish. Hard, this time. No careful patience in it now, no ground being shaped, no strategy – just a man who had been handed permission for the one thing he'd never let himself have, which was to want you out loud, in daylight, without dressing it as kindness.

“You don't know what you're saying,” he murmured against your mouth, and it was half a warning and half a prayer, his hands already moving, already sure. “Sweetheart. You don't– if I stop pretending it was ever about being good–”

“Then stop pretending,” you said.

And felt the last of the careful, decent, three-years-holding-still Steve Rogers come apart in your hands – not into cruelty, never that, but into something honest and hungry and finally, completely unhidden – and understood, with a thrill that curled all the way down your spine, that you had just told the most patient man alive that he never had to be patient with you again.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

Somewhere on the floor, a small painted duck lay on its side, watching the ceiling, entirely redundant now.

Neither of you got up for a long, long time.

GENERAL taglist: @mellowfurynight | @castielscaplan | @whatisanniedoin | @barewithme02 | @mathcat345 | @overwintering-soldier | @alpinebarnesworld | @alwaysreenie | @iceyyycapsicle | @karlahan

STEVE taglist:@mrsevans90 | @blobfishlol | @phoenix-in-writing | @sassandscribbles | @alyssinwunderland-blog-blog | @pattiemac1 | @fantasyfootballchampion | @theoryxwaller | @thatisamericas-ass | @allthingswickedpodcast | @katarina1224 | @kryptidfiles | @greatenthusiasttidalwave | @vicmc624 | @strangerthing93 | @scarlettbeth | @05-12-05 | @projectcutie | @cap-bot | @peachiestevie | @evilplansandstuff | @kaley0144 | @nicobidd | @i-lie-here-charmed | @doni-tello-shifts | @bennyyion

Bucky remembers you fondly as Steve's kid sister, a little spitfire who hung fearlessly off the back of his bike growing up, all uncoordinated limbs and wild freckles and toothy smiles. When he and Steve went off to college, you were just starting high school, and the most he’s connected with you since has been through Facebook ‘happy birthday’ posts and the occasional Instagram comment. 

You were serious about your academics, about making something of yourself, which is what kept you away so long. A real smart cookie, he’d always called you. You'd graduated college in just three years, thanks to all your hard work. Internships and summer courses and work studies have stolen you away for so long that Bucky has nearly forgotten what your laugh sounds like. 

Until he hears it echoing off the trees outside, like a long-forgotten favorite song.

Bucky abandons Steve while he loads up the fridge with groceries (aka beer and liquor), and jogs out onto the front porch.

Coming down the dirt path is a small group of Steve's cousins, laughing boisterously, talking plans for the three weeks ahead at the cabin. A flash of hair catches Bucky's eye. You have an arm slung over your older cousin’s shoulders, laughing along with the rest.

Your smile is exactly the same, but it fits your face better now, Bucky notices. You look… grown up. The untamed spirit of your youth still lives in your eyes, but you’ve matured considerably elsewhere. 

He can’t help the way his eyes wander to your frayed jean shorts and the way they hug your hips, the expanse of thigh that lays below their ripped hemline. He tries to pulls his gaze away, but it lands on your freckled shoulders, your tank top, the neckline that slopes down to frame breasts that developed quite nicely while you’ve been away.

Bucky looks down at his feet, feeling like the world’s biggest creep.

Steve had made him promise years ago to never touch you. It was long enough ago that Bucky had never even thought he’d have to worry about keeping it. Bucky wouldn’t have dreamed of it — you were Steve's kid sister. You were never even on his radar in that way before.

Suffice to say, his radar is definitely picking you up now.

“Bucky!”

He glances up to see you running full tilt towards him, bounding up the steps with your smile overtaking your whole face. You crash into him, your arms looping around his neck in a tight embrace. Bucky stumbles back slightly from the force of it, and his hands find your waist to steady you as he huffs a laugh.

He breathes you in, sunscreen and clean sweat and something fruity that makes his mouth water. You give him a squeeze, holding on for a few beats before releasing him.

Your eyes still have that familiar, impish sparkle. “Hi.”

“Long time, no see,” he drawls, trying to keep his eyes where they won’t get him into trouble. It doesn't work.

A large hand claps him on the shoulder, startling Bucky. Steve shoves past him and sweeps you up into a hug, spinning you around in greeting while you squeal and laugh.

It only serves to remind him of his promise. Bucky sighs and rubs the back of his neck. It's gonna be a long couple of weeks.

You have been hopelessly in love with Bucky Barnes since you were nine years old. Since the time your cousin had wrestled you into the dirt and Bucky nearly put his lights out, then cleaned the scrape on your knee with great care.

He’d never noticed you that way, and you’d resigned yourself to that a long time ago. Mostly.

You threw yourself into your studies with zeal and occasionally entertained the idea of a boyfriend. They never lasted long — A, because they were a distraction, and B, because they weren’t Bucky Barnes. Not their fault, but not something you could tolerate, either.

But now, school is behind you. For now, at least. You had been toying with the idea of a masters, but right now the idea of more school makes you want to puke. You have three weeks ahead of you with no books, no plans, no demands or schedule.

Just your family and friends and Bucky.

The moment your eyes meet his on the front porch of the cabin, you can tell something has shifted.

His hands are warm on your waist even though your clothes, and the way he looks at you makes you preen a little with satisfaction. I'm a woman now, Bucky. Surprised?

He, on the other hand, hasn’t changed a bit. He still has that slightly grown in stubble and those infuriating muscles that he started sporting in high school, much to the chagrin of your raging hormones at the time. The only thing that is different about him is the glimmer of interest in his expression, interest that has never once been directed at you before.

Every time his eyes stray towards you that afternoon, it feels like glitter rushing through your veins, shimmering and hot. You feel it everywhere.

Once everyone is sufficiently unpacked, the group loads up a cooler of drinks and grabs their bikes. The plan being to head down to the pier and watch the sunset, as a reward for a long day of driving.

You hang off the back of Bucky's bike like you’ve done a thousand times before, your feet on the rear axel pegs, your hands on his shoulders. But this time, his shoulders flex lightly underneath your touch, his jaw ticks when you lean down to speak into his ear, and he keeps his eyes firmly on the road despite your attempts to distract him.

At the pier, the sun turns everything gold and red, slowly descending to kiss its reflection in the water. You glance at Bucky to find him already looking at you, and he quickly turns his head away, caught.

You grin and take a swig of your beer. This is going to be fun.

Bucky is being tested. He's sure of it.

That night, he stares at the ceiling in the top bunk until exhaustion pulls him under. He tries and fails to think of anything other than you. Those eyes. That mouth. Those thighs peeking out from those god-forsaken shorts. 

In the morning, he climbs down the ladder, creeps past Steve snoring softly on the bottom bunk, and out to the kitchen to start preparing breakfast for the group. He'd gotten the short straw last night, so no rest for the wicked.

The living room is littered with sleeping bodies. There's only so many beds in the cabin, and they were first come, first serve. Which had resulted in you and two of your female cousins crashing on a large air mattress in a tangle of limbs.

In the adjoining kitchen, Bucky earnestly tries to keep his eyes to himself. But you’re splayed out on the air mattress, in nothing but an oversized t-shirt that has ridden up your stomach and flimsy pajama shorts that leave nothing to the imagination.

When Bucky starts on the bacon and pancakes, the noise stirs you. You stretch, your t-shirt riding up even higher, letting out a soft little groan that doesn’t help his morning wood in the slightest. He fixes his attention on the pan and resolves to keep it there.

It wanders anyway. When it does, he finds you looking right back at him from where you lay on the mattress, watching him with interest and a little amusement. His first instinct is to immediately look away, the way he did yesterday. But he doesn’t want you to know how much you’ve rattled him, so he holds your gaze for a beat before returning his focus to flipping pancakes.

He thinks that’ll be the end of it, but of course it isn’t. Before long, you untangle yourself from your cousins, who groan in protest and roll over as you stand. Bucky can hear the sound of your bare feet padding across the wooden floor toward the kitchen.

“Morning,” you greet him in a slightly gravelly morning voice.

“Morning,” he replies casually.

“That smells so good.” You pluck a grape from the bowl of fruit sitting on the counter and pop it into your mouth. “I’m starving.”

A muscle ticks in Bucky's jaw. He's not sure what’s worse — if you’re unaware of the effect you’re having on him, or if you are aware, and doing it on purpose.

“It’ll be ready in a few,” he declares, pouring the last of the pancake batter into the pan. “So, you enjoying your freedom from school?”

“Definitely.” You hoist yourself up to sit on the counter, placing yourself very much in the way, but Bucky doesn’t have the heart to ask you to move. especially when the position grants him another tempting view of your thighs.

“You miss me?” you purr, playfully nudging his hip with your foot.

He doesn’t take the bait. Flipping pancakes is simple, so that’s what he does. “Of course I missed you. The place isn’t the same without you.”

You smile, and Bucky gets stuck on it momentarily. A moment passes, tense and delicious at the same time. You just watch him, content to wait, to sit in the tension winding tighter between you.

Bucky reaches up by your head, opening a cabinet and fetching a plate. His hip brushes the outside of your knee, and he doesn’t move away immediately.

“You planning on helping, or are you just gonna sit there staring?”

“I’m appreciating the view,” you counter, your eyes dragging over his frame as you steal another grape from the bowl.

A chuckle slips out of him at your boldness. “You're trouble, you know that?”

Your eyebrow ticks, a silent dare.

And then Steve stumbles in, bleary eyed, and the moment shatters.

“Please tell me there’s coffee,” Steve mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

As inconspicuously as possible, Bucky shifts a respectable distance away from you to plate the bacon and quietly clears his throat. “By the microwave,” he says.

Steve doesn’t appear to have noticed the atmosphere he walked into, but Bucky still scolds himself internally. You make it way too easy for him to forget where he is, forget his promises and responsibilities to his friend. Too easy to forget that he shouldn’t be looking at you like that in the first place.

He shoves all of it down and brings plates of breakfast out to the picnic tables outside, leaving you and your dangling legs and sharp eyes behind.

“Hey.”

Bucky's voice rings out from behind you, into the open air of the night. You turn to see him descending the cabin steps, towards where you’re sitting on top of a picnic table, your feet resting on the bench. 

You'd come out here to be alone, just to have a quiet moment, while the muffled sounds of laughter and celebration from the cabin underscore your solitude. But you find that you don’t mind having your solitude disrupted, if Bucky is the one to do it.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” he asks, circling the table to face you.

You glance up at the sky. “Too much light pollution at school to really see the stars. Thought I'd remind myself what they look like.”

It really is a sight to see. Swirls of stars glittering in the dark expanse, configurations and constellations you never get to see in the city. All around, crickets chirp and cicadas sing, a familiar song floating on the balmy summer air.

Bucky looks up right along with you, just as appreciatively. Even with several feet of space between you, you can feel that tension that’s been winding tighter ever since you arrived yesterday. You wonder why he came out here tonight. If he came to find you.

“I thought all you boys were playing beer pong,” you say with an arched brow.

Bucky smiles sheepishly, as if he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. From within his pockets, he produces a joint and a lighter. “I’m being selfish. Don't tell on me.”

“I can keep a secret,” you reply conspiratorially as you pat the space beside you on the picnic table. “C’mere.”

He hesitates, and you wait ever-patiently, watching him carefully as his brain wars with itself until he finally gives in. Keeping a careful distance — not too far to be cold, but not close enough to touch — he sits beside you and sparks up.

The cherry of the joint glows in the darkness as he takes a drag, and tendrils of smoke curl out from behind his lips when he exhales. Bucky looks briefly surprised when you reach for the joint, plucking it from his grasp to take a drag of your own.

Smoking isn’t new for you — you’ve indulged a handful of times at the handful of college parties you’d attended between school obligations. But seeing you smoke, smoking with you, is very new to Bucky. Hypnotized, he watches your lips as they wrap around the joint, where his mouth had just been. He only manages to break his gaze away when you breathe out and let the current of smoke escape.

He shakes his head in disbelief. “If Steve knew I was getting his little sister high, he’d beat my ass.”

Your older brother is the last subject you want to discuss right now. You pass the joint back to him, letting your hand linger just a little against his. “What Steve doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Following up on that comment feels a little too dangerous, and so the two of you sit in silence for a moment, passing the joint back and forth underneath the canopy of smoke and stars.

Before long, you start to feel it. That slight, pleasant heaviness in your limbs, that heightening of your senses. That warm, fuzzy feeling settling over your mind. The high is better here, in this place that has known you since you were a child, shared with someone you’re completely at ease with. You shift closer to him, your knee bumping his.

“This is nice,” you sigh.

“Yeah,” he agrees, something bittersweet in his tone. “Real nice.” 

“Just like old times.”

“I can think of a few things that are different,” he chuckles.

“Such as?” you ask, deftly snatching the joint back from him.

“You’ve grown up.” He looks at you pointedly as you take a long drag. “Quite a bit. It's kinda…complicating things for me.”

You hadn’t expected him to own up to it like that, this newfound attraction. You turn to him, passing back the joint, head tilted in curiosity. “Complicating things how?”

He fidgets with the joint between his fingers, as if he’s debating what to say or how to say it. When his eyes meet yours again, they’re warm and dark and full of want.

“Steve made me promise. That I wouldn't touch you. That I wouldn't even look at you that way.”

You hadn’t known about this, not really. But it doesn’t surprise you in the slightest. Steve has always been protective of you, even when he didn’t have to be.

“What do you call how you’re looking at me now?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper.

“Complicated.” 

His gaze drops to your mouth and stays there. The night seems to fold around the two of you, heavy and hot and close.

You shift closer to him, your thigh now pressing against his.

“I’m not a kid anymore, Buck,” you murmur as you slowly lean into him. “I don’t need a big brother to protect me. I can make my own decisions.”

For a fleeting moment, you’re close enough to breathe the same air as Bucky, lips nearly brushing his. But then he pulls away, gets to his feet, runs a hand through his hair as he looks firmly at the ground.

“I can’t. I'm sorry.”

You don’t have the chance to say anything else, because he walks with quick strides up the cabin steps, disappearing through the screen door. The joint lays on the picnic table beside you, half-smoked and smoldering.

You sigh, frustrated, head in your hands.

Bucky should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it. Maybe if he had never said anything at all to you, it would have been easier. But now it’s out in the open, and you seem to be intent on torturing him.

It’s already difficult to avoid your presence, with everyone cramped into one cabin. Even still, you’re almost always in his orbit, your laughter in the air around him, your eyes occasionally finding his across bonfires and picnic tables. Then there’s the seemingly endless parade of tiny shorts and barely-there tops and strappy little sundresses. He's sure Steve will catch him staring at some point, because he just can’t seem to keep his gaze from wandering in your direction, snagging on whatever new inch of exposed skin he finds there.

At the end of each day, Bucky forces himself under the cold stream of the shower, shamefully stroking his cock as he tries in vain to think of anything other than your hands on his skin and the way you’d looked at him that night.

On the fourth day, the group heads down to the lake for a proper swim. Bucky finds himself woefully unprepared for the toll it takes on his sanity.

The trek down to the lake isn’t long, but with the noonday sun high in the sky, everyone is sweating by the time you arrive down at the dock. Clothes are eagerly shed in favor of sinking into the cool lake water. You waste no time, pulling your tank top overhead and wiggling out of your shorts.

It's not the first time Bucky has seen you in a bathing suit. But that was a different time, a different you. Gone are the sweet little one-piece swimsuits of your youth, replaced by a very enticing little bikini. Every curve of your body that the passage of time has wrought is on full display. Of course, you catch him staring, and you smile coyly before catapulting yourself off the end of the dock and into the water.

You resurface, laughing and gasping, as Bucky sets down the cooler and removes his shirt. He doesn’t have to look to know you’re watching, but he does anyway. He sees you floating on your back, observing him with a siren’s gaze.

Behind him, Steve smacks a mutual friend in the back of the head for staring at you. “That’s my sister, man,” he warns.

Bucky's chest tightens with lingering guilt, and he hopes against hope that the water will cool the afternoon off, so to speak.

Wishful thinking.

Everyone else whiles away the hours laughing and splashing and relaxing, while Bucky is wound tight as a spring. He watches as Steve hoists you onto his shoulders, watches you squeal in delight as he tosses you into the water, and remembers the times when things could be easy and fun with you, in that way. But he can’t seem to trust himself around you anymore. It makes him feel sick to his stomach, sick of himself.

He sits on the edge of the dock, feet dangling into the water, a beer in his hands that is rapidly turning tepid from the summer heat. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots you hoisting yourself out of the water and onto the dock, lake water sluicing off your body. Bucky peels the label off the bottle and stares at the horizon while you dry yourself off.

A nudge at his shoulder grabs his attention. You’re standing over him, a bottle of sunscreen in your hand and a smirk on your lips.

“Could you get my back?”

Swallowing with difficulty, he looks back out towards the water where Steve and three other cabinmates are engaged in a game of chicken. He appears otherwise distracted, and it would be weirder of Bucky to refuse than just help you. It's an innocent enough activity, after all. Or it should be.

Bucky sighs and turns towards you, taking the bottle from your hands as you sit down in front of him.

You pull your damp hair over your shoulder and out of the way, glancing back at him. Bucky squeezes a dollop of sunscreen into his palm and begins to apply it to your shoulders. He works in silence and keeps his touch perfunctory, but he can’t help but note the warmth and softness of your skin.

His hands work lower and lower, until he has to slip his fingers beneath the strap of your swimsuit. He's a gentleman about it and doesn’t linger longer than he needs to, though he can feel a flush creeping into his face.

It’s so quiet for a moment that when you speak, it almost startles him. “Are you planning on ignoring me the whole rest of the trip?”

“I'm not ignoring you,” Bucky counters.

“Bucky.” You shoot him a skeptical look over your shoulder. “I've known you for, like, two thirds of my life. I can tell when you’re lying.”

Bucky sighs again as he finishes working the sunscreen into your lower back and lets his hands fall away. “What do you want me to do?”

You turn towards him. “I think you already know,” you reply smartly, with an arch of your brow.

“Jesus, I mean…” He rubs his temple, looking everywhere but at you. “I already told you why this can’t happen,” he says quietly.

You huff in annoyance and pick up the bottle of sunscreen off the dock. “Well, I think your little bro code is stupid.”

Bucky chuckles under his breath in spite of himself at your bluntness.

Placing a hand on his shoulder, you turn him until he’s facing away from you and begin to apply sunscreen to his back now, without having been asked. Bucky grows very still underneath your touch, trying desperately not to be affected by it. It's not really working.

“You made your little promise when I was… what, fourteen?” you continue. “We're both adults now.”

Bucky frowns. “Steve is my friend.”

“Steve is a big boy. He'll get over it.”

Bucky feels your hand run along his spine, nails dragging slightly, and he hates the way his cock stirs at the feeling.

“I’m not gonna touch you,” he says firmly. “Not like that.”

“You don’t want to?” You’re closer now, close enough that he can feel the warmth of your body inches from his back, your breath at his ear.

Bucky takes a deep, steadying breath. “It's not about what I want.”

Finally, your hands leave him, and Bucky doesn’t know whether to be thankful or disappointed.

“Maybe it should be,” you muse softly, before getting to your feet and diving back into the water.

It's nearing the end of the first week. You've been so very, very patient. But you’re done waiting around for Bucky to stop torturing himself over nothing.

After dinner, everyone gathers around the bonfire to make s’mores for dessert. And you’re on a mission. 

You take up the seat directly across from him instead of next to him, where you know you’ll be right in his eyeline all night. And as soon as the marshmallows come out, you put on a show.

For Steve's sake, as well as your cousins, you keep it on the subtle side. You craft a s’more in a less-than-neat fashion, so naturally it makes a bit of a mess as you eat. And naturally, it leaves a few stray smears of chocolate and melted marshmallow on your fingers. And there’s no harm in licking away the evidence, not among friends and family. You're very thorough about it, not missing a single sticky morsel.

As you drag the pad of your thumb along the corner of your mouth and close your lips around it, you glance at Bucky across the fire pit.

Admittedly, he’s doing an admirable job of keeping it together in front of Steve, but the tell is in his eyes. They're hungry, and they don’t waver when they connect with yours. It almost makes you shiver, despite the balmy temperature, and it makes you press your thighs together on instinct.

Because you know you’ve got him — hook, line, and sinker.

Phase two begins. You announce to your cousin sitting next to you that you’re heading inside to wash your hands. You make meaningful eye contact with Bucky as you stand. You turn to walk up the front steps of the cabin, screen door swinging shut behind you.

And you wait, your heartbeat thrumming in your ears.

Bucky is going to hell. He's sure of it. His fate is sealed as soon as he walks up the front steps.

But he does anyway, two minutes after you left the bonfire. It's a small consolation that no one seems to notice when he slips away.

He closes the screen door quietly, aware that this is probably the point of no return, his last chance to turn around and preserve his friendship with Steve from unnecessary risk.

He doesn’t turn back.

Light glows from the crack underneath the bathroom door down the hall. Swallowing back his nerves, he raps his knuckles softly on the door.

The door swings open, revealing you, excitement and a hint of smugness glittering in your eyes. You reach for his hand and gently pull him through the doorframe, and he shuts it behind him.

His back meets the cool wood seconds after, and his lips meet yours in a tangle of heat and desperation. 

You still taste sweet from your little performance with the s’more, the smell of woodsmoke clinging to your skin. Bucky expects you to at least play at innocence first, but there is nothing innocent about this. It’s immediately filthy, your tongue in his mouth and your hands in his hair and your entire body pressed against his.

His hands find your hips, partly to steady himself and partly to bring you even closer. He tells himself that he’s going to stop, that he just needs a taste of you and then he can go back out there like nothing happened. But you moan softly against his mouth, and he can already feel himself getting addicted.

Bucky had already been half-hard at the bonfire, watching you suck your fingers clean right in front of everyone without an ounce of shame. Now, as your lips wander across his jaw and down his neck, as you subtly rock your hips against his thigh, it feels like all the blood is rushing out of his brain and straight to his cock. He’s harder than he’s been this entire trip so far, which is saying something, because he’s been very hard, very often.

You reach for the button and zipper on his pants, and it snaps Bucky back to reality for a split second. He still has a chance to stop, to be the good guy, to not let this go any further.

“Baby,” he pants. “I can’t—“

“You're not touching me.” Holding his gaze, you slip your hand past the waistband of his boxers and wrap your fingers around his cock. “I'm touching you. It's okay.”

It’s more following the letter than the spirit of the law. but when you stroke him, slow and firm from base to tip and back again, Bucky’s head thuds back against the wood of the door. He knows he’s not going to stop you. He's already going to hell, so he might as well enjoy the perks.

Once you’ve successfully freed him from the confines of his shorts, you sink to your knees in front of him. Bucky's eyes widen as he looks down at you. Fuck, he really is going to hell, because he’s about to let you do this. He’s about to let you suck his cock, all while your brother sits right outside the cabin, unaware.

Your hand slowly works him as you experimentally swirl your tongue around the tip, and Bucky lets out a shuddering breath. “Jesus, you’re—“

The words die on his lips as you lick a long stripe along the underside of him, stroking a particularly sensitive vein. He lets out a startled moan, his hand finding your hair of its own accord.

“Holy shit,” he whispers.

You don’t tease him for long. Perhaps you sense that he’s too worked up for that, or perhaps you know time is limited before someone comes looking for one of you. Soon enough, you take him fully into your mouth, sinking down slowly.

Bucky watches, hypnotized. “Look at you,” he murmurs, brushing your hair back from your face so he can watch how his cock sinks into the wet heat of your mouth, how your perfect lips wrap around him like you were made to ruin him. “Gorgeous.”

You moan around him, the vibration traveling down his cock and settling into his bones. His abs twitch and his hand tightens in your hair, and Bucky can tell this is going to be a pathetic showing of his stamina. You've barely started, and already he’s starting to lose it.

Your head begins to bob, finding a rhythm as you work to take him further and further down your throat, applying the perfect amount of suction on the uptake. Bucky has to make a considerable effort to keep quiet, lest everyone outside hear exactly what the two of you are doing. 

Eventually, you take a long breath to prepare and take him so deep, your nose brushes the hair at the base of his cock. For a brief moment, Bucky wonders where you learned this, who you’d practiced on at school, and the thought turns him a little bit feral.

You stay where you are for a moment, your throat tensing and relaxing as you struggle to accommodate him. And all of a sudden, Bucky becomes a man possessed.

His other hand tangles into your hair alongside the first. his hips twitching with the effort of keeping still, and he begs in a wrecked voice, “Sweetheart, please, I need— I need to—“

Your hands slip to the backs of his thighs, squeezing lightly as you hum your encouragement.

With your permission granted, Bucky takes control. With his hands fisted in your hair, he fucks your face with with as much control as he can muster. He’s far gone, but not quite far enough where he can bear the idea of really hurting you.

You gaze up at him with hazy, dark eyes as you let him use you, saliva pooling at the corners of your mouth as he feeds his cock down your throat.

“That's it,” Bucky groans, low and filthy. “You take it so fuckin’ good.”

He starts to lose the fight for control, his thrusts becoming a little rougher, a little sloppier. Tears collect at the corners of those wide eyes, and he can feel and hear you gag around him.

“I know, honey, I’m sorry, I — I’m almost done,” he gasps, teetering on the edge, guilt and shame and arousal swirling in his gut. 

You gag again, and even though Bucky is seconds away from finishing, he loosens his grip on your head to give you room to pull away. He warns you in a strangled voice, “I’m gonna come, baby, fuck—“

Your grip tightens on the back of his thighs. Stubborn and determined in spite of your need for air, you take him down your throat again, eyes locked on his. Bucky shoves his fist into his mouth to muffle his groan as he comes down your throat, shuddering as he feels you gag and swallow around him. You take every single drop, only pulling off when there’s nothing left to take. You cough and gasp for air and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.

Bucky gazes down at you in disbelief — you on your knees in front of him, hair wrecked, face flushed, lips swollen. Guilt surging hot through his veins, he gently helps you to your feet.

“Honey, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Don’t be.” Those lips curl into a satisfied smirk.

“You taste even nicer than I thought.”

Bucky stands there in shock as you stretch up onto your toes to kiss him again, and he moans softly when he tastes himself on you. He responds with just as much enthusiasm, just as much hunger as before, in spite of how thoroughly you’ve wrecked him. 

You pull away first, and he chases after your lips, still starving for more of you. Gently pressing one last kiss to the corner of his mouth, you murmur, “People are gonna be wondering where we are.”

His arms tighten around your waist as he protests, “What about you?”

“Later.” 

Bucky hisses as you gently tuck him back into his shorts, straightening out his clothes and hair with a smile.

“Meet me at the dock after everyone’s asleep.”

You turn to the mirror and fix your own face, smoothing out your hair to look slightly less debauched.

“Okay,” Bucky replies, a little bewildered.

Nudging him out of the way, you pull the door open, looking much more composed than he feels. “Wait a couple minutes before you follow me out.”

You slip out of the bathroom without another word.

When Bucky finally leaves the bathroom, he grabs another six pack of beer and tries not to look too visibly shaken as he heads back out of the cabin. You're already laughing with the group like the past five minutes didn’t even happen. Steve throws an arm around Bucky’s shoulders when he sits back down, and it seems that nobody suspects a thing.

When your eyes meet his across the fire pit, they still glimmer with mischief and desire and the promise of more to come. And Bucky can already feel his body stirring in response, his hunger for you only momentarily sated. 

It's only the beginning.

The moon is a spotlight on the water as you look out from the dock.

The bonfire smoldered out about two hours ago, and you’d snuck out almost an hour ago after your cousins had collapsed onto the air mattress, exhausted. The night air is cooler than it has been, a breeze coaxing goosebumps up the back of your neck. 

And you wait. It's made tolerable by the fact that you know you won’t be waiting much longer.

Underneath the cicada’s song, you hear footsteps coming down the path. Bucky approaches, clad in a hoodie and pajama pants, looking almost shy with his hands in his pockets. A thrill of excitement runs down your spine just at the sight of him.

You lean back on your hands, looking him over openly. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

“I'm not that much of an asshole,” He chuckles sheepishly. Walking about halfway down the dock towards you, he stops for a moment, still hesitating after everything that has passed between you.

It's a little endearing and, at the same time, almost frustrating. Most of all, it makes you hungry. 

“You just gonna stand there, or are you gonna come kiss me?” you ask, a smile playing at your lips.

Bucky rises to the challenge, closing the distance and sitting next to you on the wooden dock. He reaches out a careful hand, brushing your hair back from your face in a surprisingly tender gesture, considering what transpired in the bathroom earlier. Maybe because of it. Maybe he feels a little guilty about it, though you know he shouldn't. He wouldn’t feel that way if he knew how much it had turned you on.

This time, he kisses you first, slow and sweet and entirely too patient for how long you’ve been waiting for this.

Your fingers curl into his hoodie, pulling him closer. You invite him in, opening your mouth for him and letting out a soft whimper when he accepts the invitation, his tongue sliding against yours. 

It doesn’t take long for the kiss to turn messy, needy, heated. You’re not sure whose idea it is for you to climb into his lap, who exactly initiated that particular move. But there you are, your hips flush against him, his cock already rising to the occasion and pressing where you’ve been aching for him all night.

“You got any idea,” he mumbles against your lips, “how crazy you’ve made me these last few days?”

You pull back with a smirk.

“Consider it payback.”

“Payback for what?”

“All those years I was following you around like a lovesick puppy,” you explain as you play with the strings of his hoodie, “and you didn’t even look in my direction.”

“Yeah?” For the first time since the two of you arrived at the cabin, he breaks out into that boyish grin you’ve always adored, the one that made you fall for him in the first place. He leans in and kisses the soft skin just below your jaw. “You had a crush on me?”

“Don't pretend you didn’t know, you dick!” You smack his chest playfully, fighting a sigh as he drags his lips along your neck. You can feel the ghost of that smile against your skin as he laughs softly.

“Okay, okay,” he concedes. “I might have had an inkling.” Another kiss, this one pressed to the hollow beneath your ear, earning another quiet whimper from you. “But I didn’t want to encourage you.”

You like how playful he’s being with you now. It's how things always should have been between you — easy, familiar, natural, without all that guilt in the way. Without your brother’s masculine pride and overprotective nature looming over your heads.

“This is pretty encouraging,” you reply breathlessly, rolling your hips against his. His hard cock grinds into your clit through the layers of clothing between you, and you both gasp nearly in unison.

“Jesus.” Bucky grasps your hips to still you, looking at you seriously for a moment. “If we do this… we can’t tell Steve."

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

You wish he’d let you move again, but his eyes grow worried. “I don't… I don't have anything with me. I wasn't exactly expecting...”

Leaning to press a brief kiss to his lips, you whisper, “I'm clean. And on the pill.”

His eyes darken with want. “You really have grown up, sweetheart,” he remarks, chasing after your lips again.

Bucky loosens his grip on you, and his breath hitches as you slowly grind in his lap again.

“I’m clean, too,” he murmurs, pulling back far enough to get a good look at your face. “But only if you’re sure.”

You nod as you reach for the zipper of his hoodie. “I’m sure.”

You’ve never been more sure of anything in your life.

Bucky generously allows you to remove his hoodie and tug off his shirt, even more generously allows you to look your fill. You’ve seen him shirtless probably dozens of times over the years, but it never fails to spark your excitement. You run your hands down his chest, his abs, your nails dragging just slightly. He groans under his breath, the sound an echo of the ones he’d made in the bathroom.

Only now, the two of you don’t have to be quiet. You're far enough away from the cabin that your moans are swallowed up by the cicadas in the trees.

Warm, calloused fingers curl beneath the hem of your t-shirt as Bucky's lips brush against your sternum. He peels the garment off of you, his eyes full of wonder and desire as he takes them over your bare chest. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he mutters, cupping your breasts in each hand.

His mouth descends to one, his hand idly exploring the other, and your gasp pierces the night air. You've waited years, a decade and some change, for him to touch you like this. His tongue carefully strokes your nipple, and it makes you ache and pulse and want him so badly you can barely breathe right.

You want to let him take his time, to stretch this moment as long as it can last. But his ministrations soon have you rocking rhythmically in his lap, seeking relief as the ache between your legs builds.

“Bucky,” you whimper, “please.” 

Bucky reluctantly breaks away from worshipping your chest, and a small crease forms between his eyebrows. For a moment, you worry that the old hesitation is back, that things will stall.

“Just… gimme a second here,” he mumbles as he reaches for his hoodie.

He shifts you off his lap and spreads the hoodie out on the cool wood of the dock. Then he guides you backwards until you’re laid on top of it. The gesture makes you giggle affectionately.

“Such a gentleman,” you tease.

But he doesn’t laugh. He wears a hangdog expression as he leans over you, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I'm sorry. You deserve nicer than this.”

You tilt your head. You're exactly where you want to be. What could be nicer than this?

Sensing your confusion, he rubs the back of his neck and addresses the trees. “Inside, in a real bed. Not a secret hookup in the middle of the woods.”

You can see the guilt, the shame resurfacing his eyes, and you’ll have none of that. So you reach up and take his face in your hands.

“Bucky. Look at me.”

He does, albeit reluctantly.

“This is perfect. I'm under the stars, in my favorite place in the world, with someone I trust.” You weave your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, hoping that honesty will break through the guilt. Softly, you amend your statement. “Someone I love.”

It might be too much, but it’s true. You've loved him for practically your whole life. As a friend, and as more than a friend. As a fixture in your life as constant as the sun. And it feels right to tell him, even though part of you is worried that it could ruin everything.

Bucky is silent for a moment, realization filling his eyes. There's something else, too — something like discovery, like finding something.

The silence extends long enough that it starts to make you nervous.

“Too much?” you ask, so quiet it barely disturbs the night air.

“No,” Bucky replies. “Not at all.”

His mouth dips to meet yours again, and you don’t even mind that he doesn’t say it back. You know that he loves you, even if it’s not the exact same way, and you can feel how he wants you. That's more than enough. 

Fingers slip past the waistband of your pajama shorts, past the fabric of your underwear, until they drag through the slick mess gathered between your legs. The sound you make in response is equal parts relief and need.

Ever the gentleman, Bucky works you open, not exactly rushing, but not exactly taking his sweet time either. You can feel how bad he wants this as his hard cock nudges at your thigh, that he wants this just as bad as you do.

Then he drags your shorts and underwear down, down, until you’re naked underneath him, under the stars and the moon, in the open night air where anyone could see you if they happened to walk by. You don’t give a damn in the slightest, because Bucky is looking at you like you invented having a body, like he can’t believe you’re real.

At last, Bucky settles between your legs, shoving his pajama pants down just far enough to free himself. A slow drag of his cock against you coats him in your wetness, both of you panting in anticipation.

 Carefully as he can manage, he pushes inside, and you gasp at the sudden fullness. It's overwhelming and right and everything you knew it would be.

Bucky's forehead drops to your shoulder, clearly struggling to keep it together, breath ragged. “Jesus christ, you’re so fuckin’ tight.”

“You feel so —“ You cut yourself off with a moan when he moves, hips withdrawing and then snapping them into yours, driving himself into you. “—so good, Buck.”

“Baby,” he nearly growls, hips snapping perfectly against yours once again, “you feel like you were made for me.”

As he moves inside you, everything else disappears — the trees, the dock underneath you, the stars above you. You could be in a five star hotel, as far as you’re concerned. You're on cloud nine, because after years of dreaming of this moment, it’s finally real. Bucky on top of you, inside of you, his moans and encouragement and endless praise on your ear. Every sound, every word, every thrust driving you closer and closer to climax.

His hand slips between your bodies, finding your clit and making your body arch beneath him as he rubs tight little circles into it. Your body clenches around him as you cry out, your pleasure climbing higher and higher. His words turn to stream-of-consciousness, rambles of pleasure and praise.

Somewhere in the middle of it, something slips out that sends you reeling through space.

“So good,” he groans softly, his mouth lowering to taste the sweat on your neck. “Love you so much, honey.”

You’re not sure if he even meant to say it out loud, but the effect is immediate and all-consuming. You clutch him against you, your heart swelling, your lips crying his name as you come apart around him. 

A wrecked moan spills out of him as his rhythm falters, thrusts turning sloppy and rough. “Fuck, i’m close,” he pants, his eyes finding yours. “You want me to—“

“Inside,” you beg, clutching him tighter, aftershocks of pleasure still pulsing through you. “Please, I want it.”

With a shudder and a curse, he buries himself inside you, hot pulses of his spend filling you as he thrusts shallowly to push it deeper. You feel claimed, marked, owned. What a glorious thing, to be claimed by him. You think if you could see yourself from the outside, you’d be glowing all over like a bonfire.

As the two of you come back to yourselves, Bucky brushes a tender kiss against your jaw and carefully pulls out of you. He rolls off of you, his back meeting the wood of the dock, his chest still heaving as he recovers.

For a few moments, the two of you stare up at the glittering sky, the reality of the situation settling in now that the intensity of sensation wanes.

You turn, curling into his side, and his arm drifts around you on instinct, natural as breathing.

“Did you… did you mean it?” you ask quietly.

It could have been the heat of the moment, and you wouldn’t blame him if it had been. People say all kinds of things when they’re about to come, things that look different in the afterglow and in the light of day. You know he cares about you. But you need to know how much truth lived in those words.

“Yeah.” He looks down at you, his eyes so soft and affectionate that it almost makes you want to climb on top of him again. His hand finds yours, fingers weaving together and resting against his chest. “I did.”

That's when it sinks in. This isn’t a one-time, clandestine rendezvous in the woods that you’ll both carry to the grave. It’s not something that will fade in the daylight. It will repeat itself. It will make demands. It will not keep to the shadows. It will not be easy to hide.

You sigh. “We have to tell Steve, don’t we?”

Bucky's sigh mirrors yours. “Yeah.”

“He’s gonna kill you.”

“Yeah.” 

His lips brush against the crown of your head, his voice already resigned to his fate. “Still worth it.”

He had a system at home.

A good system.

Coffee. Silence. Alpine curled beside him on the couch like a tiny judgmental loaf of bread. Maybe a movie he wouldn’t pay attention to. Minimal human interaction.

Peace.

Instead, Sam showed up at his apartment an hour ago carrying cupcakes and bad intentions.

“You can’t stay inside that apartment forever with Alpine,” Sam says now, like he’s continuing an old argument. “That cat is starting to absorb your personality.”

“She likes me.”

“She bites everyone else.”

“That sounds like a them problem.”

Steve hides a smile.

Bucky leans his head back against the seat with a groan. “Why am I even needed at this thing?”

“It’s Morgan’s birthday,” Steve says.

Sam grins. “Family event. It will be good for you.”

Bucky flips him off without looking.

The car goes quiet for a minute.

Not awkward quiet. Just familiar.

The kind built over years of near-death experiences and too many shared memories.

Outside, the city slowly shifts into larger houses, quieter streets, cleaner sidewalks.

Rich people territory.

Bucky already hates it.

“You could try having fun,” Steve says eventually.

Bucky stares at him like he personally insulted his ancestors.

“Why are you saying that like it’s easy?”

Steve glances at him briefly. “Because staying miserable on purpose gets exhausting after a while.”

That lands harder than Bucky wants it to. He crosses his arms, glaring out the window again while they pull through the massive Stark gates.

Lights glow across the property ahead, warm against the dark evening sky.

Music drifts faintly through the air.

Too many people.

Too much noise.

He already wants to leave.

Sam unbuckles first and points at him before he can move. “And no disappearing after ten minutes.”

“I never do that.”

“You vanished through a bathroom window last time.”

“It was efficient.”

“You’re impossible.”

Bucky pushes the car door open. “Yet here you are. Voluntarily spending time with me.”

Sam throws an arm around his shoulders immediately, dragging him toward the house despite his complaints.

“That’s because underneath all the grumpy murder grandpa stuff,” Sam says, “you secretly love us.”

“I could bench press you into traffic.”

“But you won’t.”

Bucky doesn’t answer.

Mostly because Steve opens the front doors right then—

And somewhere inside the house, faint and warm and distant, he hears someone singing.

— 15 minutes earlier —

The dressing room is chaos.

Cheap rhinestones scattered across the counter. Someone in the hallway yelling about balloons. Someone else asking where the cake table went.

And Dylan is pacing.

“No, no, no,” he mutters, tugging at the ridiculous blue Beast jacket stretched across his shoulders. “I can’t do this.”

You pause halfway through putting on your gloves. “Dylan—”

“I’m serious.” He points toward the door like the answer is waiting outside. “Do you know whose house this is?”

“Yes,” you say carefully.

“It’s the Starks.”

You stare at him through the mirror. “Tony Stark is literally paying us to sing to children, not dismantle a bomb.”

“That’s worse.”

You snort despite yourself, adjusting the off-the-shoulder yellow gown. It’s prettier than you expected when the agency shoved the costume bag into your arms this morning. Layers of gold satin spill around your feet, catching the light every time you move.

For one stupid second, you almost feel like Belle.

Dylan doesn’t.

“I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“You’re not gonna throw up.”

“What if the Avengers are there?”

You stop.

Okay. Fair point.

The knot in your stomach tightens instantly.

You need this job. Rent is due in four days, your audition last week went nowhere, and the commercial you filmed still hasn’t paid you. Which means you absolutely cannot afford to panic now.

So you grab Dylan by the shoulders.

“Listen to me,” you say firmly. “You need to calm down. Do you know how much we’re getting paid for this?”

“Yes, but—”

“And if you ruin this for me, I will personally feed you to the Hulk.”

That earns a weak laugh.

“Pretty sure he’s off-world,” Dylan mutters.

“Then I’ll wait.”

Another laugh. Better this time.

You smooth nonexistent wrinkles from his jacket. “We go in there, smile, sing, wave at rich children, and leave with enough money to survive another month. That’s it.”

A knock hits the door before he can answer.

“Princess Belle? They’re ready for you.”

Your stomach flips.

Dylan immediately pales again.

You squeeze his arm once before stepping away. “Breathe.”

Then you lift your chin, paste on a princess smile, and walk out.

The Stark house looks less like a house and more like a museum designed by someone with unlimited money and zero restraint.

Everything gleams.

Soft golden lights wrap around the enormous backyard. Staff members move through the crowd carrying trays of tiny desserts that probably cost more than your electric bill. Children run across the lawn wearing paper crowns and superhero masks.

And near the center of it all—

“Mama! Belle’s here!”

Morgan Stark barrels toward you at full speed.

You barely have time to crouch before she crashes into your arms, giggling wildly.

“Oh my gosh,” you say in your best princess voice, warm and bright. “Princess Morgan! I’ve heard so much about you.”

Her gasp is immediate. “Really?”

“Of course. The castle talks about little else.”

She beams.

And just like that, the nerves disappear.

Because this part—you know this part.

You know how to soften your voice until children lean closer to hear you. You know how to make wonder feel real. You know how to turn exhaustion into magic for two hours at a time.

Morgan takes your hand immediately and drags you toward the other kids.

“Belle, can you sing?”

“Can you dance?”

“Where’s Beast?”

“Oh, he’ll join us later,” you say smoothly, praying Dylan survives the next ten minutes. “But for now…” You straighten dramatically. “Who would like to hear a story?”

A chorus of screams answers you.

Then you start singing.

And the entire party quiets.

Not because you’re loud.

Because you’re good.

Your voice carries softly through the backyard while the kids sit cross-legged around you, completely enchanted. You smile at each of them like they matter individually. Like this isn’t just another exhausting gig at the end of a long week.

Across the lawn, Bucky looks up almost by accident.

And immediately regrets it.

Because now he’s looking at you.

Fairy lights glow softly above your head while children crowd around your skirts, completely enchanted by every word that leaves your mouth. You laugh at something one of them says, bright and easy and real enough that it reaches him even from across the yard.

And for one strange second—

You don’t look like someone pretending to be a princess.

You look like one.

Then your eyes lift suddenly.

Find his across the crowd.

Bucky expects the usual reaction instantly.

The hesitation. The recognition. That brief flicker people always get when they realize who he is.

Instead, your expression softens.

Just slightly.

Like seeing him standing there alone somehow matters to you more than it should.

And the smile you give him—

God.

It’s small.

Almost shy.

But warm enough that he actually feels it.

Like sunlight slipping through something cracked open.

You hold his gaze for one tiny, suspended second longer than necessary before turning back to the children beside you.

But now your heartbeat feels different too.

Because there was something unexpectedly gentle in the way he looked at you.

Bucky watches Morgan stare at you like you hung the damn moon.

Watches you stay perfectly in character when another kid spills juice on the hem of your dress.

You don’t even flinch.

“Accidents happen,” you tell the horrified child gently. “Even in castles.”

Something in his chest shifts unpleasantly.

Or pleasantly.

He hasn’t decided yet.

Because normally, people trying too hard to be sweet annoys him.

But you kneel to talk to the children at eye level. You remember every single name they tell you. When Morgan grabs your hand during the story, you squeeze back automatically without breaking character once.

None of it feels fake.

Which is exactly the problem.

Bucky exhales slowly through his nose, already irritated with himself.

You’re midway through teaching Morgan and three other children how to properly curtsy when your phone starts vibrating inside the hidden pocket sewn into your dress.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Your stomach drops instantly.

Because only one person would call you repeatedly during a job.

“Princess Belle,” Morgan says seriously, tugging your glove, “Amelia says princesses aren’t allowed to eat chicken nuggets.”

You crouch slightly. “Amelia has clearly never met a princess after a long day.”

Morgan gasps. “You eat nuggets?”

“In alarming quantities.”

The children dissolve into laughter.

Your phone buzzes again.

Definitely Dylan.

“Excuse me one moment,” you say gently. “The castle may be under attack.”

Morgan grabs your skirt dramatically. “By who?”

You glance at the phone screen.

Dylan: I THINK IM DYING

“…the French.”

You slip away before the kids can ask further questions.

The second you push through the side doors into the hallway, you answer.

“What happened?”

“I threw up.”

You stop walking. “What?”

“I told you I was gonna throw up.”

“Oh my God.”

“Also,” he says weakly, “I think I have a fever.”

You press your fingers to your forehead.

Of course he does.

Of course this happens at Tony Stark’s house.

“Can you still come out for the photos at least?”

A miserable pause.

“…if I move too fast I think I’ll see God.”

“Great.”

“I’m so sorry.”

And the worst part?

He genuinely sounds devastated.

You sigh, leaning against the wall. “It’s okay. Stay in the dressing room. Drink water. Don’t die before I get paid.”

“That’s fair.”

You hang up.

Then immediately turn and nearly collide with Pepper Potts.

“Oh!” she says. “There you are. Morgan’s asking for—” She stops instantly. “What’s wrong?”

You try to smile professionally.

It must fail horribly.

“The Beast actor is sick.”

Pepper blinks once.

“Oh no.”

“Yeah.”

“He can’t come out at all?”

“He’s currently fighting for his life in the dressing room bathroom.”

Pepper’s face cycles rapidly through concern, stress, and the specific exhaustion only rich parents hosting children’s parties can achieve.

Because unfortunately, the timing is terrible.

Kids are already gathering near the photo backdrop.

Morgan keeps asking when Beast is coming.

And somewhere nearby, you hear Tony Stark loudly saying, “I can absolutely do it.”

Pepper turns sharply. “No.”

From the other room: “Why not? I have range.”

“You have an ego.”

“I can roar.”

“You have to greet people.”

“I can greet people as Beast.”

Pepper pinches the bridge of her nose.

You almost laugh despite yourself.

Then another voice joins in.

“…Tony’s right, though.”

You glance toward the doorway and nearly choke on your own heartbeat.

Because standing there casually like this is a completely normal Tuesday are two actual Avengers.

Captain America himself stands beside a man you recognize from the News. Sam Wilson.

You suddenly become intensely aware that you’re dressed as a Disney princess while holding a phone that still has Dylan: I THINK IM DYING on the screen.

This cannot be your life.

Sam leans against the doorway easily, looking far too entertained by the situation already.

But it’s the man beside him that catches your attention.

The same man from earlier.

The one who looked at you across the backyard like he’d forgotten, for a second, where he was.

Dark hair. Tall. Broad shoulders filling out a black Henley. Arms crossed tightly over his chest like he already wants no part in whatever conversation this is.

And yet somehow, standing this close to him now, you still feel that strange little pull from earlier.

Unlike the others, he isn’t smiling. If anything, he looks like he’d rather walk directly back out the door.

Sam’s eyes flick briefly toward you before landing on Pepper.

“All due respect,” he says, “I think we found a better option.”

Bucky narrows his eyes immediately, like he already knows where this is going.

Steve nods slowly, already betraying him. “Actually…”

Pepper looks between them hopefully. “Wait.”

Sam grins.

“Oh, this is perfect.”

Bucky straightens immediately. “Absolutely not.”

“You’re tall,” Sam says helpfully.

“So is Steve.”

Almost on cue, Morgan’s voice suddenly rings through the backyard.

“UNCLE AMERICA!”

Steve barely has time to react before a tiny blur in pink slams into his legs.

“There he is,” Bucky mutters.

Morgan grabs Steve’s hand immediately. “Come see my castle!”

And Steve actually lets himself get dragged away.

“You’re abandoning me?” Bucky calls after him.

Steve only throws him an apologetic smile over his shoulder before disappearing outside with Morgan.

Bucky looks deeply betrayed.

Sam looks delighted.

“You were saying?” Sam asks.

Bucky glares at him. “I hope your wings fall off.”

Pepper is visibly trying not to laugh now.

Meanwhile, you’re standing there clutching your phone like your entire career is collapsing in front of you.

“I really don’t want to cause trouble,” you say quickly. “I can just explain to Morgan that Beast got delayed—”

“Morgan’s seven,” Pepper says softly. “She’s been talking about this dance all week.”

Guilt hits instantly.

Bucky notices.

And unfortunately for him, Sam notices Bucky noticing.

Which means it’s over.

“Buck,” Sam says, suddenly far too smug, “you wouldn’t even have to talk much.”

“No.”

“You’d just stand there looking grumpy.”

“No.”

“You already do that recreationally.”

 “Why don’t you do it?” Bucky shoots back immediately.

Sam places a hand dramatically over his chest. “Because I’m beautiful in a completely different genre.”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

“See? Beast energy.”

Bucky looks at you then.

Really looks at you for the first time up close.

The gold dress.

The nervous expression you’re trying to hide.

The way your hands twist together for half a second before you force yourself still again.

You look exhausted.

But somehow you’re still worried about disappointing a little girl.

And that annoying feeling in his chest returns.

Stronger this time.

Pepper steps closer carefully. “Bucky,” she says softly, “could you help us out? Just for a little while.”

He exhales slowly.

Looks toward the backyard where Morgan’s laughter drifts through the open doors.

Then back at you.

“…I hate all of you,” he mutters.

Sam lights up instantly. “That’s not a no.”

“It should be.”

Pepper smiles hopefully. “Bucky?”

He closes his eyes briefly like a man accepting his fate.

“…fine.”

The room goes silent.

You blink. “Wait. Really?”

Bucky points at you immediately. “This doesn’t leave this house.”

Sam nearly folds in half laughing.

And ten minutes later, you’re backstage beside a very grumpy Beast while trying to adjust the dark blue coat around his shoulders.

The costume department clearly did not account for super soldiers.

The fabric pulls tight across his chest every time he moves.

Bucky notices you staring immediately.

You step closer carefully, adjusting the fur near the collar.

“I’m sorry if the costume’s too tight,” you murmur. “The actor who usually plays Beast is… significantly less built.”

Bucky huffs quietly.

“That’s one way to say it.”

Up close, he’s unfairly intimidating.

Dark blue fabric stretched over muscle. Gloves hiding the metal hand completely.

Even the ridiculous Beast mask somehow makes him look dangerous.

Which feels deeply unfair for a Disney prince.

“You know,” you say gently while fixing one of the gold buttons, “you really don’t have to do this.”

Bucky looks down at you.

Then toward the backyard where Morgan’s excited voice carries faintly through the doors.

“…yeah,” he says quietly.

A pause.

“I kinda do.”

Before either of you can say anything else, the dressing room door swings open and Morgan storms in dramatically.

“BEAST!”

The little girl launches herself directly at Bucky.

Every muscle in his body visibly locks.

You almost panic for him.

But then, carefully, awkwardly, he catches her before she can crash face-first into the costume.

Morgan gasps, completely enchanted. “You’re so tall.”

Bucky looks at you, and somehow you know that beneath the mask, he looks completely helpless.

You grin. “That’s Beast.”

Morgan grabs his gloved hand immediately. “Belle said you were late because of a curse.”

Bucky looks down at her.

“…yeah,” he says after a second. “Traffic curse.”

You snort so suddenly you choke on air.

Morgan is already dragging him toward the doors with alarming strength for a seven-year-old.

You smooth your dress quickly before following after them, trying to slip back into character.

But it’s harder now for some reason.

Because this doesn’t feel like part of the performance anymore.

You barely know him.

You know he looks permanently annoyed at the world. You know children somehow trust him instantly despite the terrifying resting expression.

And you know he agreed to wear a giant Beast costume for a little girl he clearly adores.

Which is doing unfortunate things to your brain.

The backyard erupts the second Morgan reappears with him.

“BEAST!”

Children swarm immediately.

Bucky freezes.

Again.

You quickly step beside him before the poor man fully short-circuits.

“Oh dear,” you say brightly in Belle’s voice, slipping naturally into the scene. “The Beast seems overwhelmed.”

“I wonder why,” he mutters under his breath.

You hide another smile.

The next twenty minutes become complete chaos.

Children asking Bucky impossible questions.

“Do you live in the castle?”

“Can you roar?”

“Why are your hands so big?”

One tiny girl stares at him suspiciously before asking, “Are you hairy everywhere?”

You nearly inhale your own tongue trying not to laugh.

Bucky looks ready to walk directly into the ocean.

But somehow he stays.

He does the photos.

Lets kids hold his hands.

Even growls once after Morgan begs him to.

The children lose their minds.

Across the yard, Sam is recording the whole thing while Steve laughs so hard he has to sit down.

You catch Pepper wiping tears from her eyes at one point.

Probably from laughing.

Probably.

Then the music changes.

Soft piano drifting through the speakers.

Your stomach drops instantly.

The dance scene.

Morgan gasps dramatically. “NOW!”

Bucky goes still beside you.

“No.”

“Oh yes,” you say, smiling at him through clenched teeth.

“I don’t dance.”

“You’re literally a prince.”

“I’m literally not.”

Morgan grabs both your hands and shoves them together before either of you can react.

And suddenly—

Oh.

Your gloved hand lands against his.

His hand settles carefully at your waist.

The other wraps around your fingers.

You feel him hesitate.

Not because he doesn’t know how to dance.

Because he’s trying not to hurt you.

The realization hits instantly.

“It’s okay,” you say softly before thinking better of it.

His gaze flicks down to yours through the mask.

The world around you keeps moving, kids laughing, phones taking pictures, Sam yelling something obnoxious in the background, but for one strange second, it narrows into just this.

The warmth of his hand.

The carefulness in the way he’s holding you.

The fact that he smells faintly like coffee under all the costume fabric.

“You trust people too easy,” he says quietly.

You blink.

“That’s a weird thing to say during a Disney dance.”

“You didn’t answer.”

You should probably make a joke.

Instead, your eyes catch briefly on his gloved fingers resting against your waist.

Gentle despite the strength behind them.

Then Morgan yells, “KISS HER!”

Both of you jump apart instantly.

“Nope,” Bucky says immediately.

“Absolutely not,” you add at the exact same time.

The music softens around you, warm piano drifting through the backyard while fairy lights glow overhead.

Bucky Barnes keeps one hand at your waist, the other holding yours carefully as he guides you through the slow steps.

Too carefully.

Like he’s afraid to press too hard.

Like he’s constantly aware of himself.

His hand tightens at your waist without warning, pulling you just a little closer each time. Close enough that you can feel the heat of him even through the heavy costume layers. And whenever he leans down to hear you over the music, a shiver runs all the way down your spine.

The music softens around you, warm piano drifting through the backyard while fairy lights glow overhead.

You glance up at him just as he looks down at your feet.

“…am I doin’ this right?” he asks quietly.

His voice comes out rough and muffled beneath the Beast mask, low enough that you almost don’t hear it over the music.

The question catches you completely off guard.

Because he sounds genuinely unsure.

You blink once. “You know how to dance.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Something warm twists painfully in your chest.

His grip tightens slightly at your waist.

“Don’t wanna mess this up.”

You smile softly. “You know, most princes are a little more confident during the ballroom scene.”

“Yeah, well.” He exhales quietly. “Pretty sure this prince skipped rehearsal.”

That pulls a laugh out of you.

Bucky’s gaze lifts at the sound immediately.

Not to the children.

Not to the crowd.

Just you.

And for one strange second, the dance stops feeling like part of the performance at all.

Then, quieter this time:

“…seriously, though,” he murmurs, thumb shifting faintly against your waist, “I’m not crushin’ your feet, am I?”

Your heartbeat stumbles embarrassingly hard.

“No,” you whisper. “You’re perfect.”

This is getting dangerous. Because somewhere between the dancing and the quiet way he keeps looking at you, this stopped feeling like part of the job.

You clear your throat quickly and pull back just enough to look over his shoulder.

“Morgan!” you call brightly.

Across the dance floor, Morgan gasps dramatically like she’s been summoned by destiny itself.

“Princess Morgan,” you say sweetly, already stepping away from Bucky before your brain completely melts, “I believe the Beast owes you a dance.”

Morgan screams.

Actually screams.

Bucky looks at you immediately.

You give him your most innocent Belle smile.

His eyes narrow under the mask. “You’re ditching me.”

“I would never.”

“You literally are right now.”

Morgan crashes into him before he can argue further, grabbing both his hands excitedly.

“C’MON BEAST!”

Bucky looks at you one last time over her head.

“You’re trouble,” he says flatly.

Your pulse jumps embarrassingly hard.

Before you can answer, Morgan drags him away into the crowd of children demanding another dance.

The second he’s gone, you exhale.

Hard.

Then across the dance floor, Morgan spins dramatically beneath Bucky’s arm while he awkwardly tries to keep up without stepping on tiny children.

And despite the giant Beast costume and permanent grumpy expression he’s laughing.

You watch him crouch slightly when she talks so he can hear her better through the music. Watch him steady her automatically every time she nearly trips over her dress. Watch one huge gloved hand settle carefully at her back while she spins herself dizzy.

The Beast mask should make him look ridiculous.

Instead, somehow, it only makes the contrast worse.

Big and intimidating and visibly dangerous even under layers of fake fur—

Yet impossibly gentle with her.

Your chest tightens unexpectedly.

“Well,” a voice says beside you, “you’re lookin’ at him exactly the same way the kids are.”

You nearly jump.

Sam Wilson grins knowingly as he reaches for a cupcake from the dessert table.

“I am not.”

“Hm.”

“I don’t even know him.”

“That’s never stopped anybody before.”

You glare at him.

He grins wider.

Somehow, hours later, Morgan Stark still has enough energy to power a small country.

“Belle,” she says for what must be the twentieth time that night, “are you gonna stay forever?”

You smile tiredly, smoothing a hand over her hair. “I don’t think your dad has enough snacks for that.”

Tony points from across the yard. “I absolutely do.”

Pepper immediately says, “No, we don’t.”

Morgan giggles.

And beside her, the Beast exhales dramatically before lowering himself onto one knee with the exhaustion of a war veteran returning from battle.

“I’m old,” he mutters.

You laugh softly. “You danced with children for two hours.”

“I fought in actual wars that were easier than this.”

“You’re doing amazing, sweetie,” Sam calls from somewhere behind him.

The Beast lifts a gloved hand without looking and flips him off.

Morgan gasps.

You gasp louder. “Beast!”

Sam nearly collapses laughing.

“Sorry,” the Beast says flatly. “The curse slipped.”

Morgan thinks this is the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life.

Honestly?

You do too.

A little later, Pepper gently steals Morgan away, leaving you alone beside the Beast for the first time all evening.

And suddenly the silence feels… different.

Not awkward exactly.

Just noticeable.

You become very aware of the night air against your skin. Of the weight of the wig pinned to your head. Of him sitting beside you with the Beast mask pushed up, revealing his face.

Which turns out to be a mistake.

Because he’s unfairly handsome.

You look away immediately.

“So,” you say, mostly to stop your brain from malfunctioning, “thanks again for saving my job tonight.”

He huffs quietly beside you. “Wasn’t for your job.”

Your eyes flick back to him.

“Morgan?”

“Morgan,” he confirms.

A beat passes.

Then, quieter:

“…you too, I guess.”

Your heart does something deeply irritating.

The corners of his mouth twitch slightly like he regrets admitting it already.

You smile before you can stop yourself.

“Careful,” you murmur. “You’re almost being nice to me.”

“That’s the mask.”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

“The fur changes a man.”

That earns another laugh out of you.

And again, that look crosses his face.

That brief pause like he wasn’t expecting the sound but likes it anyway.

You notice it this time.

From across the yard, Steve walks by carrying three children at once somehow.

“You surviving?” he asks.

The Beast sighs. “Barely.”

Steve grins, eyes flicking briefly between the two of you.

You suddenly get the horrible feeling everyone here knows each other too well.

Including whatever this weird thing currently happening between you and the grumpy fake prince is.

“So,” you say carefully after Steve leaves, “do you always volunteer for emergency Disney prince duty?”

He snorts softly.

“First time.”

“You seemed pretty experienced.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You handled the kids well.”

For a second, he doesn’t answer.

His gaze drifts toward Morgan laughing beside Pepper near the cake table.

Then he shrugs slightly.

“They’re easier than adults.”

You blink.

“…that’s actually the most concerning thing anyone’s said to me tonight.”

That finally gets a real smile out of him. Small. Crooked. Gone almost instantly.

But you saw it.

And unfortunately for your sanity, now you want to see it again.

“Cake!” Morgan announces like a war cry.

The children erupt instantly.

You barely have time to laugh before Morgan grabs both your hand and the Beast’s clawed one at the same time.

“C’mon!”

Bucky visibly braces himself.

Morgan leads you directly toward a tiny plastic table surrounded by miniature pink chairs.

Bucky stops walking immediately.

“No.”

Morgan gasps. “What?”

“I can’t fit in that.”

“You have to sit with Belle!”

Children nearby immediately begin chanting:

“BEAST! BEAST! BEAST!”

Bucky looks personally betrayed by every child present.

You press your lips together hard, trying not to laugh while lowering yourself carefully into one of the tiny chairs.

The skirt of your dress spills around you in soft yellow satin.

Across from you, Bucky stares at the chair like it insulted his family.

“You’re doing great,” you tell him helpfully.

“I hate you.”

“That’s not very princely.”

“That’s because I’m not a prince.”

Morgan points dramatically at the seat.

Bucky sighs like a man moments from death.

Then lowers himself carefully into the tiny chair.

The plastic creaks ominously.

Every child at the table gasps.

You fully choke on a laugh.

Bucky turns toward you slowly through the Beast mask.

Morgan shoves paper plates toward both of you proudly while Pepper begins passing out cake.

And honestly?

It’s cute.

Ridiculously cute.

Children talking over each other excitedly. Frosting everywhere. Morgan sitting between you and Bucky like she personally arranged a royal wedding.

Then Morgan accidentally gets blue frosting across her own cheek.

“Oh no!” she gasps.

You laugh softly, grabbing a napkin. “Hold still, princess.”

While you wipe frosting from Morgan’s face, you completely miss the tiny streak of blue icing that ended up on your own cheek.

Bucky notices immediately.

And unfortunately—

Now he can’t stop looking at it.

You’re talking to Morgan about castles or books or something, but he’s not listening anymore.

Because there’s frosting on your face, near the corner of your mouth.

And somehow that feels more distracting than the dress.

Than the dancing.

Than literally anything else tonight.

“You got somethin’ there,” he says suddenly.

You blink. “What?”

He gestures vaguely toward his own cheek with one giant clawed glove.

“…there.”

You try wiping it away blindly.

“Did I get it?”

“No.”

“Great.”

Bucky stares at the stupid oversized Beast gloves for a second like he’s reconsidering every decision that led him here tonight.

Then, carefully, he reaches across the tiny table.

His claw brushes softly against your cheek.

Warm despite the gloves.

You stop breathing entirely.

He tries wiping the frosting away—

Except the giant fake claw only smears it worse across your skin.

You stare at him.

He stares at the disaster he just created.

Then, very flatly:

“…I made it worse.”

From somewhere behind him, you hear Sam make a noise suspiciously close to choking.

Your laugh slips out before you can stop it.

Soft at first.

Then brighter.

“It’s okay,” you manage between laughs. “You tried.”

And before you can think better of it, you lean forward slightly.

“There,” you murmur.

Your fingers brush gently against the corner of his mouth, wiping away a streak of blue frosting Morgan must’ve gotten on him earlier.

The second you touch him—

He freezes.

Completely.

Your smile falters just slightly.

Because suddenly you’re very aware of how quiet he got.

How still.

How carefully he’s looking at you now.

Like your hand against his face means something bigger than it should.

Morgan looks between both of you while happily shoving cake into her mouth.

“…you guys are weird.”

Sam immediately loses his mind laughing somewhere behind the table.

And Bucky?

Bucky can’t even argue with her.

The party finally begins to quiet down sometime after cake.

Children are asleep on couches inside the house. Half-deflated balloons drift lazily across the backyard. Someone turned the music low enough that it blends into the warm night air instead of filling it.

And Morgan Stark is fully asleep in Bucky Barnes’s arms.

It happens slowly.

One minute she’s still talking sleepily about whether Belle and Beast would survive a zombie apocalypse and the next, her head slips against his shoulder mid-sentence.

Out cold.

You smile before you can stop yourself.

Bucky looks down at her carefully, adjusting his hold automatically so she settles more comfortably against his chest.

The Beast gloves are gone now.

The mask too.

And without them, he somehow looks softer and more dangerous at the same time.

Dark hair messy from wearing the costume all night. Sleeves pushed up slightly. Tired eyes watching Morgan with this quiet kind of patience that makes something ache in your chest.

Pepper appears beside you with the expression of a woman who’s one minor inconvenience away from sleeping for three days.

“Oh no,” she whispers fondly. “She’s done.”

Bucky huffs quietly. “Yeah.”

Pepper reaches for Morgan carefully. “I’ll take her upstairs.”

For a second, Morgan stirs slightly against him.

Then tiny fingers grab weakly at the front of his shirt.

“No,” she mumbles sleepily. “Beast stays.”

Your heart actually hurts.

Bucky goes very still.

Pepper looks dangerously close to emotional already.

And after a tiny pause, Bucky murmurs:

“Alright. I’m stayin’.”

Morgan settles instantly.

You swear Pepper might love him a little for that.

Eventually, between the three of you, Morgan is successfully transferred upstairs without waking again.

And then—

The silence.

Just you and him standing alone beneath strings of warm lights while the last few party guests drift out through the gates.

The yellow skirts of your dress brush softly against your legs every time the wind moves.

Bucky looks at you for a second too long.

Then looks away.

Then back again.

“You know,” he says quietly, voice rougher now without the mask muffling it, “that dress is kinda unfair.”

Your breath catches embarrassingly fast.

Because he says it like it slipped out accidentally.

Like he didn’t mean to say it aloud.

Heat crawls up your neck immediately.

So naturally, you deflect.

“Good thing the costume covered your face then.”

A tiny smile pulls at the corner of his mouth.

Then his gaze shifts briefly past you.

Toward the tables scattered across the backyard.

Most of the candles have burned low by now. Half-empty glasses abandoned beside crumpled napkins. Flower centerpieces beginning to droop after hours in the heat.

And right in the middle of one arrangement there is a single rose.

Bucky tilts his head slightly. “Thought Belle was supposed to have a rose.”

You blink, caught off guard by the comment.

Then laugh softly. “You know the story?”

He gives you a look.

“Steve made me watch animated movies for cultural rehabilitation.”

A laugh slips out of you instantly. “That cannot be a real sentence.”

“It absolutely is.”

“You poor thing.”

“I survived.”

“Barely.”

You laugh again.

One large hand closes around the stem of a red rose tucked between candles and gold ribbon.

And without ceremony he pulls it free.

You stare as he turns back toward you, holding it out casually like this isn’t doing very dangerous things to your heartbeat. You shake your head, smiling as you take the rose carefully from his hand.

His fingers brush yours for half a second.

Warm.

Gentle.

And somehow that tiny touch feels worse than the dancing did.

 “You just stole from Tony Stark,” you murmur.

“He’ll survive.”

“You’re a criminal.”

“I’ve been told.”

And for one soft, dangerous second the fairy tale feels a little too real.

And suddenly the air feels too warm.

The fairy lights above you blur softly while your heartbeat pounds hard enough to be embarrassing.

Because there’s something very unfair about the way he looks at you now.

Not like Belle.

Not like part of the performance.

Like you.

And the worst part?

You think maybe he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

A nervous laugh escapes you quietly. “You flirt a lot for someone who looked physically offended to be here earlier.”

“I was physically offended.”

“You’re doing better now.”

“That’s debatable.”

You smile.

His eyes drop briefly to your mouth.

And there it is.

That terrible, dangerous pause.

The kind that changes things.

Your heartbeat stumbles.

One more inch and—

Bucky steps back first.

Like the thought alone startled him. He glances toward the house, jaw tightening once when he realizes he doesn’t know how to do this anymore.

Doesn’t know how to stand in soft light with a beautiful girl dressed like a princess smiling at him like he’s someone safe to be around.

Not after everything.

Not when she still looks at him with warmth instead of caution.

Someone like you should probably meet someone normal.

Someone uncomplicated.

Not a man who spent half the evening hiding behind a Beast mask because it somehow felt easier than being himself.

And maybe that’s why, after a long pause, he just says quietly:

“You should get home. It’s late.”

The words hit harder than they should.

But you still smile softly. “Yeah. Probably.”

Neither of you move right away.

Then finally, you step back.

“Goodnight,” you say gently.

Bucky nods once.

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

The nickname lands directly in your chest.

And then you leave.

Just like that.

No number exchanged.

No big moment.

Bucky watches until your taillights disappear through the gates.

And something in his chest feels suddenly, violently empty.

“…you are the dumbest man alive.”

Bucky closes his eyes immediately.

Of course Sam Wilson is still here.

“I don’t wanna hear it.”

“You didn’t even ask for her number!”

Bucky drags a hand down his face tiredly. “Sam.”

“No, seriously,” Sam says, horrified. “What was your plan here? Just suffer forever?”

Bucky glares at him. “I’m serious.”

“And I’m devastated for you.”

“I don’t—” He exhales sharply. “She’s sweet.”

Sam blinks once.

“…that’s your argument?”

“She deserves someone normal.”

“None of us are normal.”

“That’s different.”

Sam opens his mouth—

Then pauses suddenly.

His eyes drop toward the patio floor near Bucky’s boots.

“…hold on.”

Bucky frowns. “What.”

Sam points dramatically.

And there, half-hidden beneath one of the chairs, sits a pair of gold heels.

Tiny.

Definitely not his.

Bucky stares at them for a second.

Then something in his expression shifts almost immediately.

Because he remembers you wincing every few steps near the end of the party. Remembers you carrying the shoes in one hand while walking barefoot through the grass. Remembers the yellow dress brushing around your ankles while fairy lights reflected softly against your skin.

A quiet laugh escapes him before he can stop it.

Sam looks deeply offended by the existence of this emotion.

“Oh my God,” he says. “I thought she was Belle, not Cinderella.”

Bucky shoots him a look while bending to pick up the heels carefully.

They’re ridiculously delicate in his hands.

Sam watches the whole thing with growing horror.

“You are gone,” he says.

Bucky ignores him, thumb brushing absently over the gold strap.

Then, before he can think too hard about why he’s doing it, he glances toward the gates one last time.

Like maybe you’ll magically come running back for them.

Sam stares at him for a long moment.

Then slowly reaches into his pocket.

Bucky narrows his eyes immediately. “What’s that.”

Without answering, Sam holds out a small business card.

The princess company logo printed across the front.

Bucky looks at it.

Then at Sam.

Then back at the card.

“…you stole this?”

“I networked.”

“That’s not what networking is.”

Sam grins.

And after a long, dangerous pause—

The Colosseum is a home for bloodbaths.

There is a symphony of cheers and screams that rings throughout the entire dome. Swords clash against swords, sweat and blood dance together, dirt kicks into the air, and alcohol and spit shoot out of patrons’ mouths.

It is meaningless—all of it just a cruel form of entertainment for the emperor and his family.

You are thankful that you hadn’t been born a male to be pushed into these silly games, but instead, you are a woman—and that might be worse. But for now, despite all the screaming happening outdoors, you find solitude and a somewhat sense of peace near the barracks, sweeping debris and scrubbing the blood and grime off the floors from the defeated champions who walked away, already on the verge of death.

“Look at them,” you breathe. You pause your sweeping, wiping a strand of sweaty hair out of your face as your eyes peer through the wide holes of the wooden gates. “Animals. The whole lot of them.”

Livia does not need to look up to know what them you are referring to. There is only one kind of ruthless animal in the world—and that is men.

“Do not stare,” she warns you quietly. “If they catch you looking, they’ll punish you.”

“Please,” you scoff. “Their heads are too far up their own egos to notice us.”

“Big egos, yes.” Livia’s golden eyes glance over her shoulder from where she kneels on the floor, scrubbing grime. “And bodies. They are also quite handsome.”

Your eyes snap to her in revulsion. “Handsome? How can you say such a thing!” You glance back at the two men battling in the center of the dome. “Look at them. They are monsters.”

In the center is a man that you recognize—Bucky Barnes, the reigning champion for years. The White Wolf, is what the Emperor likes to call him. He is fighting another man, not much bigger than him, and certainly a man you do not recognize, meaning a man who will soon be falling to his doom beneath Bucky’s swords.

You have to admit, however, the man was giving The White Wolf a run for his money.

Finally, the man kneels before Bucky in defeat. Bucky raises his sword and delivers the final blow that sends the man to his grave.

Cheers erupt inside the dome. People jump out of their seats to shout and stomp. More debris and dust fall from above, landing on your and Livia’s faces—making you both cough.

The gates of the dome rattle as the herald’s voice shouts over the roaring crowd.

“Victory belongs to the undefeated! Behold your champion—The White Wolf!”

Thousands of voices chant his name as the dome thumps in a cadence that shakes the stone foundations around you. Through the wooden slats of the gate, you watch Bucky raise his blood-slicked sword to the sky. Unlike the other victors, he doesn’t smile. He never smiles.

Livia wipes the dust off her brow. “Another one to his name. He truly is unstoppable.”

You pull your gaze away. “He is a butcher,” you mutter.

Livia pushes herself off the floor with a light groan. She lifts the empty wooden basin to her chest. “I am going to refill this,” she says. “We’re going to need a lot of water to wash the victor up. I will be back.”

The wooden gate in front of you begins to groan as it slowly lifts. You grip your broom tight, moving to the side to make space for the blood-soaked victor to return back inside.

When Bucky steps in, the cool shade of the barracks is pure bliss against his hot body. Behind him steps the herald, adjusting his fine robes and wiping a pristine handkerchief over his sweaty brow, while the champion in front of him bleeds everywhere.

Bucky drops onto a wooden bench, and it creaks beneath his large body. His chest heaves as he catches his breath. With eyes still fueled by the adrenaline of battle, he watches as you approach him with a damp cloth and drop to your knees, wiping the splattered blood from his shins and boots.

“A magnificent display, White Wolf,” the herald boasts, pacing the floor and waving a hand dismissively in your direction as if you were just another piece of furniture. “The Emperor was thoroughly pleased. The coin will be transferred to your keeper, of course, but the Emperor insists on a personal reward for his favorite fighter tonight. A token of appreciation. Wine? A feast? Or perhaps a woman from the upper courts?”

Bucky does not answer the herald.

You try to keep your eyes down, working on scrubbing the crimson off his leather armor, but you can feel his cold stare watching your every movement, tracing the line of your shoulders and the curve of your vulnerable and exposed neck.

“We have the finest women prepared,” the herald continues, oblivious. “You have earned the right to take whatever, or whomever, you please.”

A massive and calloused hand suddenly shoots out. His fingers lock around your fragile wrist, making you wince and drop the rag.

“This one.”

You meet the champion’s eyes, and the spirit behind them terrifies you.

Bucky looks at you, not the way he stares at his opponents, but with something far more lethal. He looks at you as if you are roasted meat served on a silver platter by the Emperor himself. It sends shivers down your spine, and you avert your gaze.

The herald stands confused beside him.

“Her?” the herald sputters, looking down at you in disbelief. “White Wolf, she is a mere servant. A floor scrubber. The Emperor offered you a lady of the court. Someone fit for a powerful champion, such as yourself!”

The way the herald utters the word lady sounds like an insult to you—as if insinuating you’re not woman enough for a man like Barnes.

Bucky’s grip on your wrist tightens again as he gives your arm a rough shake, forcing your attention back to him with a gasp.

“Want her,” Bucky grunts, his tone leaving no room for argument.

The herald blinks, his eyes flickering down to you where you kneel before the champion. He clears his throat uncomfortably. “You must be mistaken, champion. She is nothing but a dirty servant—”

Bucky’s leather gloves creak as he tightens his hand on the hilt of his sword, and the herald falls silent, taking that slight movement from the gladiator as a threat to shut up.

“Fine, fine,” the herald mutters with a defeated sigh. “If that is what pleases you, then she is at your disposal.”

Your eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets. You hadn’t expected the herald to give you up so easily. You had hoped he would insist Bucky find a better woman—someone of higher value, and nowhere near your station.

“Wait, sir—you can’t possibly—!”

“I will let the Emperor know of your decision.” The herald turns on his heel, continuing to talk as if you aren’t even present. “He will be very amused. Though… it does make my job easier, finding another prize… I shall consider this a win for the both of us!”

The herald scratches his beard and shrugs as he continues to walk away. You feel like your life is already flashing before your eyes. There are horror stories of men like Bucky—men who just take and take without remorse. You are no exception. You don’t even want to imagine the kind of things he would do to a woman like you once the herald leaves you two alone. Ignoring Bucky entirely, you try to pry your weak arm away from the fighter’s grip and get to your feet.

“Sir, wait! Don’t leave me here with him!”

But Bucky’s grip remains tight. He hauls you against his broad, bare chest as he stands up. You collide into him with a yelp as he pins you still.

“Mine now,” he rumbles deeply.

You try to pull back, your heels digging into the grime stained floor, but it’s like trying to move a stone pillar. “Let me go! I have to finish cleaning, I have to—”

Without a word, he crouches before you and wraps both strong arms over your legs, hauling you like nothing and propping you over his shoulder like a prize he rightfully deserves.

“Come,” Bucky barks without a single opportunity for defiance. “Take you home.”

Your voice is dry from all the shouting and begging for him to release you. Your fists are weak from pounding his back in an attempt to make him let you go. Now, as you sit at the edge of his worn bed in his small home—which feels like it’s being held up by nothing but sticks and tapestry—you realize all of it was futile.

Tears streak your dirty cheeks as you wipe at them pathetically. You couldn’t even say goodbye to your dear friend, Livia. She must be worrying herself sick about you.

Bucky stands large and imposing in the center of the already tiny home. He wastes no time as he strips himself of his clothes, eyes locked onto your trembling frame. This man in front of you has no sense of shame as he leaves himself completely bare, his cock already hard and springing to his muscular lower belly.

You glance up, your breath catching in your throat at his size.

He is huge, his tip already gorging into an angry red while pre-cum dribbles out from the slit. Your eyes follow the veins that decorate his shaft up until you reach the base of his cock, where dark curls sit unruly and trail thinner up to his belly button.

“Good,” he grunts in approval. “Look at me. Only me.”

Bucky’s strong legs stalk forward to meet you at the edge of the bed. All you can do is stare at him with wide eyes. The campfire flickering behind him casts a warm light, highlighting his muscles and the sharpness of his features.

As he gets closer, you scramble backward. His knees dip and creak the bed as he crawls after you. To him, this is a game of cat and mouse—and he doesn’t mind one bit. You’re terrified, but he sees this as foreplay. The two of you continue this until your back hits the stone wall, leaving you nowhere else to run.

“Please,” you whimper. “Don’t do this.”

Then, without warning, his hand shoots out to grab the neckline of your dress. With a simple tug, his mere strength tears right through it.

“No!” you shriek, your hands coming up to cover your breasts before he even catches a glimpse. “Stop!”

Bucky furrows his brows. Your cries and actions only confuse him. His hands grab your arms, trying to pry them away from your chest. He is so much stronger than you; he could easily break you if he wanted to.

“No! Stop! I’m not ready!” you cry again, shaking your head as you gather all your strength to fight back. “I said, I’m not ready—!”

With your hand acting on a mind of its own, it reaches out and delivers a hard slap across the gladiator’s face.

Bucky’s head whips to the side, his dark, matted hair covering the features of his face—you can’t make out his expression at all.

Your eyes go wide, and your hand weakly retreats back to your chest. If you hadn’t thought Bucky was going to kill you before, you are certain he is going to skip the sexual act and kill you right now instead.

But, being as stubborn as you are, you hold onto the shovel that digs your very grave.

“I told you to stop,” your voice is shaky, but you try to find your footing. “I said no. Countless times. I did not give you my consent. Don’t you know what that word means?”

This is foolish, you think to yourself. Talking to a gladiator like Bucky is like talking to a brick wall. Your words will just go in one ear and out the other.

Bucky slowly turns his head back to you, his gaze locking onto yours with eyes so sharp you could swallow the blade. This is it. You’re certain this is where you die.

He makes an expression—not a pained one, but confused. His jaw is tight where your hand just struck him. He doesn’t move to strike back like you think he will, and he doesn’t wrap his hands around your throat to kill you.

He tilts his head, his face scrunched now in a way that makes him look almost like a kicked puppy.

“No?” he repeats, treating it like a question.

The syllable sounds clunky, foreign, and deeply awkward rolling off his tongue.

He looks down at your hands, still clamped tightly over your torn dress, and then back up to your glassy eyes.

“Consent?” he tries the next word, his brows furrowing from how unusual it sounds.

You nod, holding your breath. “Yes. Consent. I did not give it to you.”

Bucky blinks as the cogs work—or try to—in his head.

The reigning champion of the Colosseum, the brute of a man who knows exactly how to sever someone’s limb or take a prize by force, looks completely lost. For his entire life, the rules were simple: fight, win, take. No one had ever told him ‘no.’ No one had ever given him a choice, and he had never given anyone else one either.

“Consent,” he tastes the word again, as if trying to see if he likes it or not. Then, he shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Now, you are just as confused as he is.

You stare at the gladiator who kneels before you on the bed. He is probably the most feared man in the empire, yet he sits there naked and baffled by such a basic concept.

“You don’t know?” you whisper. “You don’t know what the word consent means?”

Bucky shakes his head, his broad shoulders slumping a fraction. He looks down at his own massive hands, then back at you, looking almost defeated and unsure of what to do from here.

You let out a trembling breath, slowly adjusting your grip on your torn dress to keep yourself covered as you try to find the words to explain it to a man raised only for slaughter.

“It means... permission,” you explain softly. “It means that my body belongs to me, just like yours belongs to you. To take a woman to bed, she has to want it too. She has to say yes.” You gesture weakly between the two of you. “If I say no, or if I say stop, you have to stop. Otherwise, you are just hurting me. You are just forcing me.”

Bucky listens intently, his dark eyes watching your lips as you speak.

“Don’t want to hurt you,” he answers, his voice rough and strained.

That catches you by surprise. You didn’t expect that kind of softness out of him. Then, he meets your eyes again and continues. “Not yet, at least.”

You pull the torn dress tighter against your chest with a slight frown, and Bucky notices. He shifts awkwardly on the back of his heels—his cock still hard but his mind just as confused.

“How do I get you to want it?” He rests his hand on your bare ankle, tugging you gently. “Like how I want you?”

You swallow hard as you stare at his large hand wrapped around your ankle. He could grab you and break you—mold you and bend you so easily to his will—but he doesn’t.

“You have to… court me,” you try to explain. “You have to make me feel safe, and you have to make me want it.”

Bucky tilts his head. Everything you have just said—even the word safe—feels alien to him.

Your teeth worry your bottom lip as you continue. “It means you don’t just take what you want. You touch softly. You talk to me, and you kiss me.” You point a trembling finger to your mouth, then to his. “With your lips. To show me that you care about how I feel, not just what you want.”

“Touch softly,” Bucky repeats, drilling the instruction into his mind.

You shudder as his hand, once wrapped around your ankle, turns into a gentle caress with his fingertips.

Up and down, his calloused fingertips trace your foot up to your bare calf. He leans over your body, forcing you to lie down beneath him as he hikes up the hem of your skirt. He flattens his palm so it rests heavy against your bare thigh.

“Kiss,” he murmurs, his blue eyes tracing the curve of your lip. “Make you safe.”

He lowers his head, his dark, unruly hair brushing against your cheeks as he brings his face inches from yours.

He hesitates for a second, his nostrils flaring like an animal as he breathes you in. Then, with an awkward, slow movement that he isn’t at all used to, Bucky presses his lips to yours.

The kiss is clumsy and far too hard at first, but as much as he wants to, he doesn’t force his way inside. He doesn’t push his tongue into your mouth, demanding dominance. He keeps his mouth pressed against yours, his lips slightly parted, mimicking the action as best as his instincts allow. It is gentle, surprisingly soft, and very wet—he might’ve even been drooling, aching to kiss you.

He pulls away just a fraction and searches your face for any sign of fear.

“Like this?” he murmurs, his breath hot against your mouth. “Safe?”

Your heart flutters wildly in your chest, except this time it has nothing to do with fear. You stare up at the man before you with wide eyes and wet lips. Bucky studies your face, trying to make out if what he did was right or wrong.

“Y—yes,” you breathe out. “That was good.”

Satisfied with your answer, he leans back down and kisses you again. One hand rises up—slowly, to avoid startling you—and cups your cheek gently. His thumb grazes over the curve of your cheek while his lips explore yours.

A soft, needy sound leaves your lips before you can stop it, and Bucky answers with a deep groan. While one hand cradles your cheek, his other hand slowly rises beneath your dress to grip your smooth hip.

You find yourself unexpectedly leaning into the kiss, matching him until his tongue pokes past your lips and swirls around yours. The two of you breathe heavily, moaning softly against each other as Bucky positions himself between your legs. His cock grows even harder, poking against your warm inner thigh.

He can’t take it anymore. Each moan that leaves your lips sounds like yes, yes, yes to his ears. His desperate hands find the waistband of your panties, threatening to tear them.

You suddenly pull away from the kiss with a gasp, catching your breath. Your hand presses against his bare chest, stopping him.

“No,” you pant as you stare up at him. “Stop. Not yet. You have to be patient.”

At the word stop, Bucky freezes. A snarl rips from the back of his throat, and his face twists in frustration. His jaw clenches so hard, his muscles twitch. You wince back into the pillows in fear, thinking you are in over your head and have pushed him too far.

You brace yourself, closing your eyes tightly.

“I’m trying,” he growls, the words tearing past his teeth. “What do I have to do? Tell me.”

You open your eyes and see him hovering over you. His large body acts as a blanket of warmth while one strong arm props him up, the muscles straining under his own weight and restraint.

“You have to touch me,” you explain gently, pulling his hand away from your underwear and bringing it up to your chest. “Like this.”

Bucky’s eyes follow your movement. Your smaller hand rests over his as you guide him to squeeze your breasts. His breathing grows heavier as his fingers tug and start to play with your budded nipple, relishing the way you moan and arch your back into his touch.

“Like that,” you moan softly. “Good—good boy.”

He groans loudly at your praise. His dark, unruly hair brushes your skin before his mouth closes over your budded nipple. He begins to lick and suck hungrily, his tongue swirling around the sensitive peak while his teeth graze the edge.

“Mm…” Your eyes flutter shut at the pleasure, your head tossing back against the pillow while he makes love to your tits.

Encouraged by your sounds, he grinds his thick hard cock firmly against the smooth skin of your bare thigh, seeking any kind of friction to relieve the ache between his legs.

One hand leaves your breast to grip your hip, digging his fingers into your skin to hold you still while he ruts against you like an animal. He whimpers against your chest, drunk on your scent and the high of your soft moans.

“Please,” he begs, his stubble tickling your bare chest. “Say yes. Let me have you. Now.”

The way he pleads sends a warm rush through your lower belly, a feeling that leaves you craving him just as badly. The man who is used to taking whatever he wants without remorse is reduced to being entirely at your mercy between your legs. A sensation settles inside you that you never thought you would harbor.

Control.

Just one word—one breathless little “yes”—would send Bucky over the edge. His pleasure and his craving are both held in your hands.

“Okay,” you say, giving him a small nod, satisfied with how well he has done. “You can have me.”

A growl rips from his chest. Driven by instinct, his large hands grip the waistband of your panties once more, his knuckles pulling taut as he prepares to shred the flimsy fabric to pieces.

“No,” you interject quickly, slapping his hands away. “Don’t rip them! That’s rude!”

He scowls as he draws his hand back, a whine of frustration catching in his throat like a disappointed hound. It’s clear he is unhappy about facing another rule when he is so close to the edge, yet he listens.

“Pull them down slowly,” you instruct.

Using every ounce of restraint in his veins, he resists the urge to tear the cloth. He hooks his thick fingers into the sides and slowly pulls the fabric down past your hips and thighs until you are completely bare beneath him.

“There you go,” you sigh softly, pleased with his gentle movements. “Good boy.”

Bucky’s eyes drop to the slick heat waiting for him. He hovers over your body, his heavy breathing filling the space between you as he positions the thick head of his cock right at your entrance. He rubs himself up and down against you, soaking his length in your arousal and sucking in a breath at the heat of your touch.

He is too big—impossibly so—and you aren’t sure if he will fit.

“Need to fuck you,” he grits through clenched teeth. “Hard.”

Holding himself at the base, he works at your entrance. His tip slowly slides in, stretching the opening and pushing deep enough to make you arch your back off the bed with a painful hiss.

He pauses at the sound.

“No,” you whimper, blinking tears away as you peer down at him. “If you’re going to have sex with me, you have to be gentle.”

His face twists into a strained expression, but he reluctantly abides.

One hand steadies your hip while the other holds his heavy cock, sliding into your warm, tight walls. Your body is so tight, not used to accommodating such a size, but he relents and continues pushing in.

You cry out, eyes squeezing shut as your arms rest on his shoulders for support.

“Look at me,” Bucky commands in a rough, deep voice. When you don’t listen, he tilts his head down so he is in your line of sight and tries again. “I said look at me.”

You finally do, and his eyes search yours intently. The ring of blue demands that you look at him, and him only.

“Keep them open,” he instructs. “Look at me. It will feel better.”

So, you do.

You both stare into each other’s eyes while he slides himself even deeper. As his cock stretches you wide, his brows furrow and his face twists into a snarl, baring his teeth at the tightness of your body until he finally sheathes himself fully inside with a groan.

“Gentle,” he rasps brokenly. “Gentle. Gotta be gentle.” He repeats the words as if he’s trying to remind himself.

Your legs shake around him, your body trying to get used to his size.

He hasn’t moved yet, but you already feel impossibly full. Your walls embrace him, and you feel your body slowly opening up to let him in. As his cock settles deep inside you, pleasure slowly overwhelms your senses.

For Bucky, it feels like pure torture. Your body is snug and warm—like a wet, tight fist wrapped around his cock, so much better than what he’s used to with his own calloused hands.

“Need to move,” he curses. “Need to fuck. Say yes.”

His voice comes out rough and crude, but he refuses to move without your consent.

“Hold on,” you whimper, still adjusting to his size. You shift your hips slightly, trying to get comfortable, but the movement only makes him groan in pleasure.

“Fine,” he grunts, squeezing your hip.

After what feels like forever, you finally nod your head.

“Okay,” you whisper. “I’m ready.”

And just like that, you open the pearly white gates to heaven for him.

With a hungry growl, he draws his hips back until only half of him remains, and then he slides himself back in. Your lips part in a gasp as he fills you again—his cock sinking even deeper, kissing your cervix.

“Tight,” Bucky clicks his tongue, growing frustrated. “Too tight.”

He pulls out halfway before slamming into you again, and again, and again. Each thrust grows harder and more unrelenting, forcing your body to yield to his cock.

“A—ah! It’s… s’too much—”

“Want me to stop?” he groans out painfully and reluctantly, like he doesn’t want you to answer with a ‘yes’.

“No,” you manage to breathe out. “Don’t stop.”

Moans and gasps spill from your lips every time he fills you. His girth splits you open with every savage thrust, his strong thighs forcing your legs wider for him.

His eyes never tear away from yours. Every time you try to squeeze your eyes shut from the force of his thrusts, he grabs your chin roughly and shakes you, forcing you to look back at him.

“Eyes. On. Me,” he hisses angrily.

Squeezing your cheeks to force your lips apart, he drags his thumb down your lower lip to pry them wider. He leans down, his hot breath tickling your skin while his damp strands of dark hair dance over your face.

He spits into your mouth, the traces of it dripping from his lips down to his chin, slicking your open mouth. It’s wild and savage, unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. Without giving you the opportunity to pull away, his lips cover yours as he forces his saliva to swallow down your throat.

His tongue dances around yours again while he fucks you deeply, each move threatening to break both you and the bed.

Your eyes roll back so far in your skull while your legs dangle helplessly around his hips. Every thrust feels like a punishment for making him wait. Your nerves are crying out for release—and eventually, you give in. Your cunt spasms violently around Bucky’s length as bliss overwhelms every single sense.

“Oh my god,” you cry. “I’m gonna cum—!”

Your cries fill the small house as your back arches off the damp bed. Bucky insists on making eye contact with you, holding your jaw and forcing you to look at him while he fucks you through your climax.

You clench him tightly, your pussy pulsing in loving beats and squeezing him for every last drop.

“Fuck. Yes. Good, feels so good,” he rasps angrily, his thrusts becoming harder and more desperate.

His balls slap vulgarly against your wet pussy, traces of your slick clinging to him every time he bottoms out. His balls churn with pent-up seed, aching to fill you deep. Your cries grow louder, your hips shifting around to accommodate the overstimulation—but it’s no use.

Bucky’s close, so close. While his eyes bore into yours, his pupils dilate with desire. He just needs to get deeper, to fuck you at an impossible angle to pump you full…

“Wait,” you dig your nails deep into his back, making him gasp in pain. “Slow down—it’s too much…”

He snarls angrily, his hips slowing down just a fraction, but not entirely.

The sound that leaves your lips is a cocktail of pain and bliss. It’s a sultry sound that encourages him to continue, to take what he wants, but the words leaving your mouth say otherwise.

“No,” you shake your head. “Stop, please. It’s too much for me. You’re going to break me—”

His hands release your cheeks roughly as his head drops to press his sweaty forehead against yours. Another animalistic sound tears through him as he forces his hips to come to a stop. His cock stills inside you—pulsing for any form of friction. Just a few more thrusts, and he’ll cum. He’ll cum hard. But he stops, because you asked him to.

“Need to cum,” he pants against your face, taking in the way your eyes have gone teary. “So close.”

“I know,” you say with a soft sigh, your eyes fluttering shut for just a moment. “I know. I just… just need a minute.”

You let your fingers trail up and down his back, and he shudders at the feeling.

The two of you lie there, tangled in each other’s limbs while you catch your breath. Bucky waits impatiently—his heart beating so fast in his chest as he uses every ounce of restraint in his blood to refrain from fucking you right through the bed.

Your pussy is already swollen and puffy from his size, and the longer he remains stuffed inside you, the tighter your body squeezes around him.

With his forehead pressed against yours, he shifts his knees and hips slightly to get comfortable, but even those tiny, forced movements are agonizing. Breathy moans and grunts escape both your lips, shared in the tight space between you. It’s sex without the vulgar movements, and it feels far too intimate for a ruthless man like Bucky.

Finally, you grant him permission.

Staring into his eyes, you give him a small nod to let him continue. And the moment you do, the last thread holding Bucky’s control snaps.

He grabs your legs and shoves them high over your shoulders, splitting you wide and pinning you down into a deep mating press. “Need to go deeper. Hold still.”

You had just gotten used to his size, and the sudden change in position makes your eyes fly open. Your mouth falls open in a gasp as he draws his hips back before bottoming out completely inside you.

His heavy, sweaty body crushes down on yours as he begins to fuck you hard and fast. Every draw of his hips fills you impossibly deep, your stretched cunt molding helplessly around his thick length. He works his hips in a wild, frantic rhythm, chasing his release at full speed before you can say another word to stop him.

“Mine,” he rasps through gritted teeth, his chest heaving as his sweat drips onto your skin. “Say it. Tell me you’re mine—”

The force of his hips slamming against yours knocks the breath right out of you, your moans coming out as breathless gasps while he pounds into you. His eyes bore into yours, waiting for you to finally give in.

“Tell me you’re mine. Say it.”

You blink through tears of bliss. “I—I’m yours—” you manage to stammer out.

His face twists in pleasure, baring his teeth as he pins your legs against your chest while the tip of his cock works deep against your cervix. “Good. A perfect sleeve for my cock. Look at me while I cum inside you.”

The sight of your face scrunched in pleasure and vulnerability sends a wave of heat coursing from his lower gut to the very tips of his toes. His cock pulses and throbs inside, slicking your walls with his pre-cum—a warning before giving you the real thing.

“Pump my cum,” his large palm settles over your lower belly. “All in here.”

The thought of you walking around the house barefoot and round with his children—growing up to be champions just like their father—makes his head spin and his balls grow heavy.

“Close. So close,” he curses and groans over and over, speaking more than he ever has. “Hold still. Take it all for me, wife.”

Bucky buries himself as deep as his length will go, pinning you down as his entire body locks tight. His cock pulses, pumping wave after thick wave of his hot seed deep inside your womb.

His head drops into the crook of your neck, his large, sweaty chest heaving against yours as he rides out his pleasure.

He releases your legs for a moment until both your rapid hearts finally slow to a steady beat. Slowly, agonizingly so, he draws his thick length back, pulling out of your slick, overstimulated cunt with a wet suction sound.

You let out a soft, breathless gasp at the sudden empty feeling. A ring of creamy white circles the base of his cock, and his seed dribbles between your folds—physical proof of what he just did to you.

Without a word, he grips both your ankles with one large hand, pinning your thighs together and pressing your legs straight up into the air to hold them suspended above you.

You blink at him—dazed, exhausted, and thoroughly used. His cock rests half-limp between his strong legs, so he clearly isn’t going for another round.

“What are you doing…?” you whisper softly, confused.

He holds your legs firmly in place as his dark eyes scan your bare, trembling body.

“Make sure it takes,” he grunts out, his voice rough from satisfaction. He uses his free hand to trace a warm, possessive line down to your lower belly, pressing down gently right over your womb. “Keep your belly round with my sons.”

You stare up at him in disbelief while your legs are held helplessly aloft by his massive hand. You’re too exhausted to argue, your brain still foggy from your orgasm. Still, you manage an incredulous laugh.

Does he seriously think propping your legs up like a pair of stilts is going to magically guarantee a pregnancy?

He looks so proud of himself that you don’t even have the heart to argue. He squeezes your ankles slightly, letting out a satisfied hum from his chest once he’s convinced his little trick did the job. The smile on his face is almost boyish in a way that does not belong to a rough man like him.

“Good wife,” he praises you. “Birth me healthy champions.”

You let out a soft sigh, fluttering your eyelids shut as fatigue finally crawls its way into your bones.

As you drift into slumber, you make a mental note to teach this brute a lesson on how gravity works. And right after that, you’ll teach him what aftercare is—especially if he plans on keeping you forever and making you his wife.

if you've made it this far, as always thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. interactions are always appreciated, I love reading every bit of them!

I do not have a tag list. to get notified for fic updates, please follow @notify-superbassbuck and turn on notifications.