Space's Sanctuary

The seven of you are crammed around the mission table when her hologram flickers to life, blue-lit and infuriatingly composed.

Alexi’s already in his Thunderbolts gear (eager, as always, to be called into a meeting with the boss) Ava’s in last night’s sleep shirt (decidedly not), John’s chewing a protein bar like it owes him money, Yelena’s filing her nails with surgical focus, Bob’s nursing a mug of coffee while listening intently, and Bucky’s scowling like a man who knows – from experience – that whatever this is, it’s going to be beneath him.

You didn’t blame him. Valentina only ever calls meetings this early when she’s about to waste all of your time.

“The objective,” she says, voice bright as a bell and twice as grating, “is to retrieve Project Nereus, currently situated at the abandoned Hydra site off Seastar Cliff. Forward team confirms it’s intact, non-aggressive, but large and… uncooperative.”

A grainy still fills the centre of the table – subterranean cave walls, seawater up to a man’s waist, and in the middle of the space, the shattered remains of a containment tank. A dozen or more tentacles spill from its broken glass lip – pale, glistening, tangled like power cables in a flooded basement.

Bucky squints. “Why?”

Valentina smiled. “Because it was Hydra’s vanity project. And I want it.”

There’s a silence that would be more uncomfortable if it weren’t so familiar.

“I’m sorry,” Yelena says not looking up from where she’s examining her cuticles, “Is this a joke or your midlife crisis?”

Walker grunts. “Looks like a pile of squid. Just call Red Lobster.”

“It’s not a squid,” Ava says without looking up. “Structure’s wrong. Too many muscle groups.”

You slouch over the table and prop your head up with one hand. “So you want us to bag it. Alive.”

“Correct,” Valentina says brightly. “No slicing, no dicing, and absolutely no setting it on fire. That one’s for you, Walker.”

He snorts. “Wasn’t planning on it. Squid’s not even armed.”

“She,” Valentina corrects, with a little too much pleasure. “Or possibly he. Or they. The biomass displays some fascinating dual-responsiveness. Could be reactive, could be reproductive. Either way – it should be preserved.”

Bucky looks like he’s already halfway to a headache. “And our team’s doing this why...?”

“Because it’s going to be part of the archive,” she says, clicking to a new slide. “And because I don’t trust the Vault handlers to not ruin it, or provoke it into a defensive response. It might lay eggs, or worse.”

You look down at the image again. Whatever Nereus was, it wasn’t dead. Even in the stills, it has a sort of… posture. Like it’s curled into itself and gone quiet. Resting, waiting.

You raise an eyebrow. “That’s a thing it can do?”

“We’re not 100% sure yet,” Valentina replies. “Which is why I want it somewhere I can study it properly. Give it the gentle attention it deserves.”

There’s a pause. The rest of the team sits just still enough to imply full insubordination.

Valentina turns her attention to the rest of the room. “But don’t get too excited. This one’s a light op. Ace and Barnes only.”

A collective groan arises. John slouches harder in his seat. Yelena flings her nail file at Valentina’s hologram like she'd been personally insulted. It harmlessly passes through the image and hits John in the face.

“Hey!” he exclaims the same time Ava asks dryly, “Budget cuts?”

“Travel embargo,” Valentina replies without missing a beat. “The rest of you are grounded.”

Ava sniffs. “Is this about the per diem again?”

“You blew the quarterly budget on that hotel in Milan,” Valentina retorts crisply. “The one with the champagne tower in the lobby.”

Alexi mutters, “Embarrassment to the mission. Champagne was excellent.”

“The finance team disagrees. So for now, only Ace and Barnes have travel clearance.”

Bucky doesn’t even pretend to be surprised. “So I’m the muscle, and she’s the...”

“The weirdo with the hands,” Yelena supplies helpfully.

You grin. “Empath. But thanks.”

Valentina’s gaze lingers on you for a beat. “I want your power on this, Ace. We don’t know what Nereus wants – or if it wants anything at all. Touch it, read it, tell me if it’s hungry. Or curious. Or homicidal. The usual.”

You nod. “You know it.”

Valentina flicks to one last slide – a map of the cave system, tide schedule noted in red. “You leave at 1400. Forward team also adds that the specimen is heavy and... stubborn, which is interesting language coming from those folks.”

You raise a brow. “Stubborn.”

She nods. “It refuses to move or fit into any of their containment boxes. But I have faith you’ll figure it out.”

Bucky exhales slowly. “You’re really making us do courier duty.”

“It’s not courier duty,” Valentina says, eyes glittering. “It’s asset retrieval.”

“Same hat, different badge,” he mutters.

She leans in, her hologram glitching slightly at the edges. “Handle it gently, bring it home, and I’ll owe you both one.”

You exchange a glance with Bucky. He looks profoundly unconvinced.

The hologram blinks out with a final shimmer, leaving the mission table dim and humming.

There’s a long pause.

Walker breaks the silence first. “She’s gonna keep it in her office, isn’t she.”

Yelena flops over the table, “Next to the pickled eyeball and the demon cactus.”

Bob takes a fortifying sip of his coffee. “I hope it doesn’t eat anyone.”

Ava gets up with a stretch. “If it eats them, I have dibs on Barnes’ knife.”

Bucky stands, already rubbing a hand down his face. “Let’s just get this over with.”

You roll your shoulders, already reaching for your field pack. “You say that like it’s not your dream job.”

He gives you a flat look. “My dream job doesn’t involve tentacles.”

“Give it time,” you say. “It looks cute.”

Bucky stops dead in his tracks. “Cute?”

You grin. “I love nature!”

***

The descent into the sea cave smells like salt and rust and old things that should have stayed buried. The air bites; cold enough that you breath begins to ghost white between you and Bucky. Water drags against your boots as you push through the flooded access tunnel, light beams slicing the mist in tight white cones. Every footstep lands with a slosh and a hollow echo that rolls away into the dark.

You tilt your head back, studying the stalactites that drip from the ceiling like glass knives. “Are those oysters radioactive?” you ask rhetorically, sloshing around a stray clump of seaweed that’s made a new home for itself in the corridor.

Bucky’s a few steps ahead, every line of his body tight and watchful. “Don’t touch anything.”

“You wound me,” you mutter, hand to heart, although you are going to be touching everything. Everything interesting, at least.  

“Good. Then you’ll stop petting things that twitch.”

“That’s why you keep me around.”

The air gets colder the deeper you go. The path widens into a chamber where the tide has not quite retreated, where floating rainbow film shimmers in patches. The cavern is circular and low-ceilinged, a laboratory fashioned out of the largest cave in the underground system.

At the very centre sits a planter tank the size of a hot tub –  a low steel cylinder rimmed with cracked glass, its interior webbed with tubes and Hydra markings half-erased by corrosion. Spent bullets and their casings dot the ground around it.

Hanging over its lip, pouring out like ribbons, is what remains of Project Nereus.

True to the briefing image, dozens of tentacles lie limp across the stone. Pale mauve, some curled, some splayed, their flesh wet and glass-slick in the low light. They look too soft to be mechanical, too perfect to be natural.

They are half submerged in the shallow water and move with the swish of water creeping in from the tunnel, more breath than twitch, as if the thing dreams in slow motion.

You kneel beside it, knee rippling the puddle. “This is it,” you whisper.

Bucky stops beside you. “Looks dead,” he asses. He keeps a fair distance, weapon lowered but at the ready. “But you’re not takin’ that glove off.”

“Doesn’t feel dead,” you counter as you tug off your gloves in one swift motion, too quickly for Bucky to stop you.

“Ace –” his voice is pained.         

“I’m just checking.”

“Seriously?” Bucky snaps. “You don’t even know what that thing is.”

Your bare hand hovers over the nearest tentacle, then grazes it. The contact isn’t electric – it’s tidal. A strange fizzing sensation crawls up your arm with a prickle that warms slightly before you can pull away.

The conclusion drops into you gut like stone: alive.

As you press your power further, more sensations rise up in your subconscious: salt, emptiness, misery. The creature’s suffering hits so sharply it almost makes you recoil. It’s hungry – but not with a predator’s bloodlust. Something simpler, sadder; for food and drink. It’s clearly been left for dead; but something as basic as starvation would not kill this creature.

Bucky’s voice cuts through your thoughts. “Ace. Back up.”

You hiss, soft but firm, “Shut up, I need to concentrate.”

He does. Immediately. The scrape of his boots stills, and the chamber fills again with nothing but the sound of your breathing and the slow drip of water.

“It’s starving,” you say. “Not hostile – too weak for that.”

The nearest tentacle stirs, dragging itself through the puddle until it curls faintly toward your feet, just enough to reach back. It brushes your ankle with the soft, deliberate weight of something exploring the idea of contact – testing if you might be kind, or cruel.

It leaves the faintest trail of slime on your gear where it touches you. There’s a shimmer in it, and it tingles with a subtle pop where it stains your clothes.

Bucky exhales through his nose, frustrated. “That thing’s not a pet.”

You shrug as you reach into your pack without ceremony. “Good. I’m not very well-trained either.”

The water bottle comes free with a soft clack against your thigh holster.

Bucky clocks your intentions immediately. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Watering it.”

His face does something complicated. “Ace –”

“You said don’t touch anything,” you reply, twisting the cap, “and I’m not. I’m pouring.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“It’s thirsty!”

Bucky takes one step forward, boots sloshing. “You’re giving a Hydra experiment a drink like it’s a houseplant.”

“It practically is.” You angle the bottle downward. “A sad, neglected, genetically modified houseplant. Look,” you gesture at what could be called drainage holes along the base that has crusted over with salt crystals. “Roots! Sort of. It’s half-biological at least. Maybe it just needs a little bit of this.”

You tip the water into the centre of the planter, generously splashing over where the mass of root-tentacles coil in damp loops. The liquid sinks into the dirt, disappearing instantly.

For a moment nothing happens.

Then, like the first breath after drowning, Nereus awakens.

Its tentacles twitch with a ripple, like a current passing through the whole body at once. The largest one begins to unfurl, slow as a stretch after sleep. It jerks toward you – not with threat, with curiosity. It’s thick and glistening, with a stark white underside that is veined and slicked with more of that strange shimmering goo.

Bucky swears under his breath, staring the now activated creature down the scope of his gun. “You watered it. Of course you did.”

“Yep.”

“And now it’s coming to say thank you?”

You grin. “Wouldn’t you?”

It steadies, movement smoothing out, the uncertainty gone. Each shift now has purpose – like muscle memory waking in a body that remembers hunger. The tentacle pauses just a hair’s breath from your outstretched hand.

Bucky’s voice tightens. “Ace. Back. Now.”

You stay where you are, careful not to make any sudden moves. “It’s not attacking.”

A tentacle reaches your outstretched arm and brushes against your sleeve. The contact isn’t rough – it’s feather-light, a glide of texture that’s more exploratory than aggressive. It traces up, up, up – past your wrist, along the inside of your arm, then lingering at the base of your neck.

You glance down: the film it spreads is translucent, faintly iridescent under the dim light. It’s not hostile, your power insists. It’s not afraid. It’s – something else.

The contact spots warm pleasantly, a slow seep of gentle heat through fabric, until warmth pools beneath the seam of your suit. Your pulse starts to chase it, syncing with that faint shimmer spreading under your skin.

“Ace,” Bucky says. “What the hell is it doing.”

You can’t answer right now. That intoxicating heat radiates down your arm in a slow wave, spreading across your body and settling low in your belly, diffuse and heavy.

And then it’s not surface heat anymore – it’s crawling, threading through muscle and marrow. Your heartbeat sounds too loud, too heavy, as if the pulse itself has weight. Each inhale tastes faintly sweet, chemical, and just slightly wrong.

You should be alarmed – but there’s something about Nereus that doesn’t feel cruel, or even dangerous. And maybe that’s why you don’t resist. Instead, your body starts to relax, like you hadn’t even noticed how tight everything was until it began to ease.

The next wave of sensation creeps up. Your tactical suit – engineered to always maintain optimum operational temperature – now feels too warm. Your skin feels too aware. You blink and the axis of your world tilts slightly. The air is syrup-thick; colours pulse at the edges of your vision. Your own hands look foreign, trembling in slow motion. Every drag of breath seems to vibrate inside your ribs.

Again, you know you should be panicking, but the weight of the tentacle on your clavicle is oddly comforting. The tip of that tentacle perks up, brushing lightly against your cheek like a lover’s reassuring touch.

“Hey,” Bucky calls again with increasing alarm. “You’re breathing weird.”

His concern’s not unwarranted. He sees it – the flush crawling up your throat, the sweat beading at your hairline, the half-dazed smile that doesn’t belong on a battlefield.

You laugh – giggle, really – in a voice thinner than you’d like. “Yeah. Just… warm.”

He stares as your breath continues to fog white. “Warm?”

Nereus pulses with a low vibration that hums through the floor. Another tentacle rises – thinner and more flexible – curling lightly behind your knee, looping up your thigh. Iridescent secretion coats your upper quads.

Your muscles seize, a small tremor rippling through your legs. You brace one hand against the planter’s edge, breath caught halfway in your throat.

The tentacle doesn’t stop. It continues curling higher. Not invasive – yet – but exploratory. You inhale reflexively – it feels good, almost too good. Pleasurable. You want it to continue up, up until it presses against the apex of your thighs.

How would tentacles feel pressed up against your clit?

You hear the safety of Bucky’s gun clicking off, but you can’t tear your eyes away from the tentacle’s ascent. “Play time’s over Ace. Get away from it.”

With how fogged out your brain is, you almost forget Bucky’s there – until you hear that voice, low and hard and pissed: “Get away from it.” And god help you, it makes your pussy clench.

You look over. He’s standing there like sin itself, broad and bristling, gun drawn, scowl carved into that perfect fucking face. And all you can think is how good his metal fingers would feel shoved in your mouth. Or deeper.

You whimper. Not from fear. From need. Every nerve ending is a live wire, every glance at Bucky makes it worse. You want him to fuck you through the floor. You want him to see how wet you are and snap.

“I’m fine,” you reassure too quickly.

The tentacle has stopped its ascent at the softest, fleshiest part of your thigh. It just curls itself there nestled comfortably in the warmth. You’re flushed and keening and there’s a growing dampness between your legs that you know has nothing to do with the terrain or Nereus’ slick. Your clit aches, heavy and throbbing.

A thinner tentacle unfurls. It greets you with a wet stroke down the side of your throat, and then the valley between your breasts. It suckers inquisitively at the zipper track down your front, exploring the sensation of new materials. Then it reaches back up, curling two of its suckers gently around the zipper at your throat.

You watch, dazed, as it pulls downwith unnerving precision.

And then, you’re bared from chest to navel, the upper parts of your uniform pushed aside by those tentacles. It hovers just over your perky, exposed, breasts.

You should be embarrassed. You should try and cover up. But you don’t care. There are more pressing things on your mind right now – how you were expecting the cold air to help to ease the heat crawling uncomfortably under your skin – but it doesn't. Exposure only it makes it worse.

Your chest rises too fast. Every breath makes contact – and contact makes you gasp.

The tentacle drags slick up your ribs and over your sternum, leaving a wet trail that cools too fast and makes you shiver. Another brushes just below your breast, featherlight – eliciting a shaky exhale – and then doubles back with focus because it’s just learned something.

They both go for your nipples, latching tight onto your sensitive nubs, and pull.

You should be fucking mortified – writhing like this under a pile of alien limbs, moaning like you don’t know shame. The sap turns every nerve ending into a live wire. Each pull of suction spikes white behind your eyes, pleasure laced with dizziness – like you’re high and burning up at the same time.

You’re not even pretending to hide it anymore – how badly you want to be fucked open and used. Over and over and over.

You make a noise – half-laugh, half-moan – that escapes before you can stop it. “Guess it likes me,” you whisper, face flushed red.  

The chamber’s pin-drop silent, except for the slow drip of water and the measured sound of your heartbeat climbing, climbing, climbing.

Another tentacle finds the heat of your core through the seam of your suit. You jolt.

It doesn’t stop there. It latches on, suckers pulsing, as if it’s trying to drink from your dripping sex, sucking your creamy arousal through the fabric. You can feel the pressure, the obscene insistence of it, like it’s trying to pull the slick from your body molecule by molecule.

The one on your thigh tightens in response. You gasp, hips tilting up into it before you can stop yourself. Every press is slow, deliberate, coaxing your body into helpless compliance.

The tentacles work in tandem, suckling like mouths, pulling in time with the glide of the one outside you. One of them twists, just slightly, flicking your left nipple with just the right amount of force, and you jerk.

You squeak; the multitude of sensations all at once feel so good.

Your whole body tightens.

Your clit throbs.

“Please –” you gasp, unsure if it’s a plea for more or for mercy.

The response is another pull, deeper and longer this time, until your nipples are swollen and slick, aching and stiff from the constant pressure. Your body rocks with it, hips rolling like you’re chasing every point of friction at once.

Nereus takes that as permission.

Another tentacle, thick like a tree trunk, slides across your hips and wraps, snug and perfect. The weight of it is solid, deliberate. It’s steadying you, supporting you – and claiming you.

It squeezes pulses of pleasure right up your spine, and your muscles give up all pretence of tension. Your limbs feel heavy, loose-jointed. Floaty. Your knees give out.

The tentacle at your waist flexes again and suddenly your boots aren’t on the ground anymore. It certainly doesn’t ask. It just does, hoisting you up like you weigh nothing. It cradles most of your weight effortlessly, adjusting you with eerie awareness – as if it’s testing each angle to find the one that elicits your loudest moans.

Your back arches instinctively as the mass of tentacles shifts, drawing you closer to the planter’s centre, until all that fills your vision is a mass of writhing limbs that are all too keen to get tangled up in you.

You should protest. God, you should fight. You should be screaming for backup, demanding Bucky to open fire, something.

But the rational part of you is so far away now – muted beneath the primal heat blooming between your legs and the sticky, itchy, sweetness humming under your skin. Every thought starts with logic and melts into heat, into ache, into the throb between your legs. Whatever’s in Nereus’ sap is rewiring your brain, drowning out everything but want.

You’re going to let it do anything. You want it to. Need it.

The drag of suckers up your thighs.

The press of the thick limb hugging you tighter.

Your hands curl uselessly in the air, then on instinct grab the tentacle around your waist – clutching at it like it’s the only thing keeping you grounded in this assault of senses. It squeezes back in response, like it’s pleased. Like it knows.

All of this, and it’s still not enough to cool the heat in your body. You feel empty, so empty that it’s driving you mad. And you want – you want to be filled.

Somewhere behind you, Bucky breathes your name again – a warning, a plea. But the part of you that hears him? It’s very, very far away.

He’s still standing there, frozen to the spot. His gun is still carefully hoisted, but his finger isn’t on the trigger.

He should shoot, he knows that. The angle is clean, he’s a good shot, the tentacles aren’t covering your vital organs yet. The thing’s distracted and exposed.

And still, he doesn’t fire – only the lord knows why – maybe because you’re not screaming. You’re panting, lips trembling, pupils blown wide open. Enjoying being squeezed and stroked.

Your head lolls slightly as the tentacle that unzipped your suit now strokes your cheek with obscene gentleness, dragging its slick along the planes of your face. Sap, secretion, goo – whatever the fuck it is – smears across your skin in thick, wet streaks. Your mouth parts just slightly at the touch, like you’re not sure whether to sigh or protest.

Bucky’s grip tightens on the gun.

He hates how he’s staring. Hates the sharp pulse of heat that spikes through him as he watches something else touch you. His jaw locks until his teeth ache.

You sway in the air like you’re weightless, boneless, being held just the way your body wants. One tentacle around your waist. Another squeezing your thigh. One curling around the back of your neck, not choking – just there, controlling the angle of your head. Keeping you open and presented, an offering and a temptation rolled into one.

And what a temptation you are. Bucky’s can’t tear his eyes away from you, from your chest; not with the way your tits bounce with every thrust and suction, and the way your nipples are being teased and tormented until your breath hiccups and your thighs shake.

He can hardly comprehend the sight before him.

Oh, who was he kidding? He’s still a man, and he knows what they’re doing – it’s just that his rational mind isn’t quite understanding how you’re able to derive such pleasure from these activities.

But his cock can.

It’s hard. Throbbing. Harder than he’s ever been in his life, and he hasn’t even been touched. Just watching you like this is enough to drive him mad with lust. His cock strains uncomfortably in his pants, begging to be released. Begging to be buried deep in your cunt, where it knows it would be so wet and welcoming.

The realization makes him sick with himself. It shouldn’t be arousing. It shouldn’t feel right. But it is.

For him, and certainly for you.

You catch his eye across the room, and he swears there’s already that feral, fucked-out glint in it – cheeky, cockdrunk, absolutely wrecked. It’s there for just a second before your lashes flutter shut and you let out the prettiest little whimper, helpless and sweet, and it punches straight to his cock.

Your back arches further, preening under his gaze, as a cluster of tentacles make quick work of the rest of your tac suit, shoving it down, peeling it off.

The moment soft skin is revealed, the tentacles latch on with greedy precision, winding around your thighs, squeezing handfuls of meat like they’re claiming you. Bucky watches, transfixed, as they devour you like a prize. He can’t tell where you end and the tentacles start.

Then, two of them loop around your ankles and yank – rough, no warning, dragging your legs open and apart. Your slick cunt glistens, spread wide, and arousal spills straight from you, thick and gloppy, dripping messily onto the pulsing centre mass of tentacles below.

You grunt at the suddenness of the stretch, but are otherwise pliant in its embrace.

Jealousy flares in Bucky’s chest, raw and wrong. The sight of you stretched out like that – slick and shaking, spread wide for something that isn’t him – makes something animal growl inside him. The thing hasn’t earned you. Hasn’t earned the way you let your body go soft, the way you always trust so easily, offer yourself up like you can’t imagine being hurt. That softness is his to ruin, not some fucking creature’s.

Bucky’s voice cracks through the room like a warning shot.

“Ace” he growls. “Get that thing to release you or –”

You cut him off with a breathy moan. “It’s not hurting me.”

And that – somehow – makes it worse.

Your voice is wrecked. Wrecked and pleading.

The sound tears through him – low, needy, wrong. He tells himself it’s the goo making you sound like that.

You lift your head just enough to look at him. Your expression is hazy, blissed-out, but your eyes find his like you know what he’s feeling. Because you feel it too.

“I know what it wants,” you whisper.

His heart stops.

“Really,” you insist, breath catching on the word. “It’s just hungry. Desperate.”

Bucky’s throat clicks as he swallows.

“For what?” he asks. His voice is lower now. Rougher.

Your mouth curves – barely – and then, “Release.”

***

It doesn’t take long to notice the tentacles aren’t uniform at all. They’re a whole ecosystem: some taper to delicate points, others are thick and heavy, others whip-thin and restless. Their textures shift too – glassy-slick, velvet-soft, rubbery with faint ridges, even a few with a leathery underside that rasps when it drags across your skin. Each one feels designed for a different kind of ruin.

And one of the tentacles with suckers – thicker, ridged – finds your clit and latches on like it’s starving. It sucks hard. Sloppy and desperate. It’s rough, brutal, messier than anything a mouth could manage. If not for the slick aphrodisiac humming through your bloodstream, dulling the pain into dizzying pleasure, you’d be sobbing.

They’re not building you up – they’re trying to drag you over the edge whether you're ready or not. Your body jerks, hips twisting in reflex, but the tentacles around your thighs and ribs keep you pinned. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide from the brutal rhythm or the obscene pleasure they’re forcing on you.

The one curled beside your face – gentle, almost playful – nudges your lips like a tease. It strokes over your cheek, then taps against your mouth like it’s coaxing a kiss. A sick parody of comfort, trying to soothe while the others make a mess of your swollen cunt and aching tits.

It softly taps at the corner of your mouth, drawing your fading attention to its presence. Some of the secretion leaks and before you know it the pink tip of your tongue darts out to receive it.

The taste hits you immediately – rich, syrupy, unfamiliar. It’s not just sweet – it’s good. Warm like spiced honey, thick like sap, and laced with something that makes your scattering mind go dumber the second it hits your tongue.

Your eyes flutter and roll back as the world fractures into kaleidoscopic colour – edges ripple, time folds, and everything glows too bright, too soft, too much. It’s like drowning in velvet light, helpless and high on it.

Your tongue chases for more of it – nerves lit up like fourth of July fireworks, every inch hypersensitive and humming, drunk on head and sweetness and need. More tentacles join at your lips, forcing them apart and you don’t even think; you open.

Behind the haze, you hear him call for you. Bucky’s voice – rough, shaky, ruined. And concerned, oh so concerned.

You manage to turn toward him, mouth open, lips shiny with slick. “Let it,” you pant. “Please. I need – mmph –!”

The tentacles force their way past your lips. A little at first, and then so deep into your mouth and down your throat that your jaw stretches wide around it, and your oesophagus tightens automatically, trying to adjust. It’s thick – thicker than anything you’ve ever taken – and long enough that it doesn't stop at the back of your throat. It continues to shove itself in deeper, until you’re gagging on it.

Sensation floods your mouth as you suckle at it. The goo is sweet, yes, but dark now, like fruit gone to wine. And underneath that: salt, ozone, something heady and unfamiliar that makes your thighs twitch and your cunt clench around nothing as you have no choice but to drink what it’s pumping into you.

You try to gasp – startled, overwhelmed – and the sound gets trapped in your throat. You try to draw breath, only for your throat to close around thick tentacles. They throb in delight.

Your eyes snap open as real panic finally kicks in – just as Bucky’s gun goes off.

The sound of your choking is what finally snaps Bucky back into reality. Bucky’s opening salvo is three rounds into the thickest part of the monster, no hesitation.

The bullets hit Nereus dead on – and bounce off it harmlessly as if they’re made of rubber. They clatter off rusted metal and splash into the water, useless and spent.

Everything stops. The tentacles in your mouth recoil immediately, trailing a string of saliva that drips down your chest. It’s not wounded – just very, very offended. It slithers back with a wet snap, retreating like it’s been slapped.

You’re left retching, mouth wide open where the tentacles just were. You sob from the sudden loss of all sensation. You were so close -

You turn toward Bucky, lips still slick, voice rough and aching.

“Why – why did you do that?!”

Bucky can’t believe his ears. You were choking to death on tentacles and you’re staring him like he’s the problem.

He stares back.

Your face is a mess – slick with drool and sap, spit strung from your lips to your chin, pooling at your collarbones and sliding between your breasts like it belongs there. It drips lower, slow and obscene, tracing over the curves of your soaked cunt. You look wrecked. Claimed.

And Bucky can’t fucking breathe. Can’t think. Because all he wants is to touch you, clean you up, make you worse. Rip apart whatever did this – and then tear into you himself.

The gun is still warm in his hand, heartbeat hammering staccato in his ribs. He’s used to your weirdness – hell, he’s come to rely on it. Ace: the freak who can read intent through skin. He’s seen you scared before, seen you burned, bleeding, half-conscious – but never like this. Never desperate.

You’re not just being consumed, you’re being used. And you’re enjoying it so much you’d stake your life to chase your pleasure.

He trusts your judgment. Always has. But it’s clear you’re gone, lost to the thing’s rhythm. Tentacles coil around you with a reverence that makes his chest tighten. They touch you like they’re worshipping. No – like you’re an offering; for them, for him.

His stomach knots. He’s pretty sure his cock, red and angry, is staining the inside of his suit with precum. He doesn’t move.

For one flickering, traitorous second, he just stands there and watches – because his cock’s so hard it hurts and all he can think about is how fucking pretty you look like this. Dripping, ruined, and wide open. His.

He should stop this. Should drag you clear.

Instead, he’s rooted there like a sinner at confession, breath shallow, dick throbbing, pulse in his throat, thinking: Mine. Mine. Fuck, mine.

And that’s when a smaller tentacle slips free from the mass – barely there, as thin as a finger – and nudges his hand. Bucky stares at it. It doesn’t force, but it guides him down, forward, towards you.

He lets it. He fucking lets it. He lets the slick weight of it curl around his metal wrist, steering his hand closer. Lets himself look at you – at your nakedness, at the red and raw rings where the tentacles were sucking you dry. He can smell the musky scent of your arousal and it makes him want to bury his head between your legs and inhale.

Your hips still rock in the thing’s grip, chasing the very last bit of friction to send yourself over the edge – and he imagines what it would feel like to slide his hand inside; right there, right now.

He could curl his fingers inside you – slow, then rough – and fuck them deep until you're shaking around him. Drag your orgasm out until you're sobbing from it. Make you fall apart on him, not these fucking things.

Him.  

His hand twitches forward – just enough for his fingers to graze the inside of your thigh.

Then he rips it back like he’s been scalded.

What the hell is he doing, letting a fucking tentacle guide him like some desperate pervert? What the hell is he doing when you’re clearly not thinking straight? He was supposed to be the one with the rational mind, the control. Not the one twitching at the thought of touching you like this, watching your hips buck like you’d take anything that touches you – like you’d take him.

“Fuck off,” he snarls, batting the tentacle aside.

If bullets don’t work, fine – he’ll tear it off you with his bare hands. Rip it apart until there’s nothing touching you but him.

Metal gleams in the dim cavern light as his vibranium arm flexes. Water sloshes around his boots as he braces himself to pull. Bucky’s jaw is clenched so tight it hurts. He goes for the thick tentacle cinched around your waist, trying to wrench it off you. His grip slides and sap coats him instantly.

His veins light up under skin – cold metal, hot blood, all of it thrumming in time with yours.

Everything shifts.

Nereus flares to life. The entire mass shudders in what can only be described as triumphant delight. Dozens more tentacles stir at once, and they descend on him like they’ve been waiting.

They’re not attacking – they’re welcoming. One wraps gently around his forearm. Another slithers up his back, stroking between his shoulder blades. More wrap around his calves, his hips, his thighs, smearing him in the same iridescent sap that’s already coating you. Every touch is possessive, hungry.

The thick goo clings to his gloves, soaks through the seams of his suit. It moves fast – hot and liquid and sweet – and sinks into his skin. He knows the signs. He’s seen you unravel on it. He can’t – he won’t – let it take hold. Not when he’s already struggling to think straight.

He staggers, almost slipping. “Shit.”

You reach out, breathless, pupils blown wide. “They want you too.”

A small tentacle curls up behind his knee and presses higher, nudging beneath his tactical gear, dragging slick upward with a practiced, unrelenting slide. It presses against the base of his thigh – too warm, too soft – and the heat of it seeps straight through.

Bucky inhales sharply. His head tips back slightly.

You look up at him – writhing in the grasp of tentacles who resumed their ministrations. The pressure between your legs has been building for what feels like hours; a constant, aching throb that pulses in time with every twitch of Nereus beneath you.

The one at your centre presses against your clit, again and again, slippery and precise, slick-coated ridges alternating between rubbing and sucking just right – sometimes slow, sometimes fast, always intentional.

And worse (better?) it's learning. Every moan, every gasp, every little shudder that jerks through your thighs just makes it adjust its rhythm. Closer. Tighter. Deeper pressure.

You gasp out loud as it flattens and grinds exactly where you need it most. Your back arches, hips bucking helplessly into the touch.

The heat in your belly sharpens suddenly – climactic, electric. Your walls clench greedily around nothing.

“No – fuck, wait, I –” Your voice dissolves into a cry. Your thighs clamp down, then spasm. This strange, deep pressure in your lower abdomen builds and you tense up.

You reach for anything – anyone – fingers flexing open into the air, desperate for something to ground you.

Before you could protest further, a new tentacle lashes around your wrists and binds your squirming form in place. Another slides higher up your other thigh and the tentacles tighten around you like a vice, yanking you flush against it. Your stomach tenses.

It’s like Nereus knows that you’re this close to bursting. It picks up the pace, and just as a tentacle tightens around your throat and the big sucker on your clit constricts, the unfamiliar sensation peaks –

And then breaks.

Your first orgasm hits like a lighting strike. That fullness in your bladder bursts over as your cunt convulses and your squirt gushes out from between your legs.  It drenches the tentacles wrapped around your thighs and splatters messily onto the soil below you.

The slick gush dribbles down your thighs, and another tentacle drags across the mess, lapping it up like it’s starving, like it can’t stand to waste a single drop.

Your limbs twitch violently, and you would cry out from how intense it is, but your throat’s stuffed full, locked tight around a tentacle that pulses with every desperate gasp you can’t make.

Nereus shudders with want. The whole creature ripples, like that first taste flipped some buried switch. The walls vibrate as it surges hotter, wetter, the air thickening with sap and hunger. It wants more.

It’s not satisfaction. It’s activation.

Decades of starvation crack open at once. The thing isn’t reacting to your orgasm – it’s consuming it, feeding off it like it’s the first meal in years. The goo ripples brighter, more vivid.

Fleshy tendrils thicken, swell, and writhe with new weight, like wasted muscle flooding with fresh blood. The ones wrapped around your legs tighten. More emerge from the soil, fat and glistening, and start to crawl higher.

Nereus is ravenous.

A tentacle strokes down your belly, still tense and twitching. Another slides between your thigh, dragging slick fingers through the mess and spreading it lower. You whimper as it circles and teases at your entrance.

Your head is still spinning when a second tentacle joins the first at your still-spasming clit. It flicks, and the contact is sharp, searing, and way too much.

You shudder, crying out. “I-I-just-”

But Nereus doesn’t understand mercy. It only knows hunger.

Another round is coming. You can feel it – mounting again beneath your skin, that raw, buzzing heat crawling back up your spine like wildfire. Your limbs are jelly, your body a live wire, and it hasn’t even given you a second to come down.

You lift your head, dazed, eyes glassy.

And find that Bucky’s been watching with an unreadable expression the entire time.

The scent of sex is thick in the air now: sweet, thick, and sharp. It’s impossible to ignore the way it clings to heat rising off your skin

He stares, watching the tentacle dragging slow, wet circles over your throat, watching your head tip back as your lips part again, slack with heat. Your whole body is twitching under the attention, your breath a shallow stutter. You’re soaked, shaking, overwhelmed. You’re gorgeous.

His cock throbs hard against the seam of his pants, leaking precum with every stuttered breath. The tentacles haven’t touched him yet, but he can feel them pulsing nearby, thick and slick and coiled, waiting. Hungry, too. And he knows the second they turn on him, he won’t be able to stop them.

This is a sick joke. Hydra built this thing, probably weaponized it. It should make his stomach turn.

Instead, he wants to sink to his knees and fuck you where you’re hanging – half-swallowed, dripping, trembling – while the tentacles keep you wide open for him.

He gasps, shame hitting hard and fast, but it’s too late to pretend he’s unaffected.

“Please,” you beg him, “don’t make me do this alone.”

And that’s what pushes him over. The moment he hears the ache in your whisper. Not just lust – recognition. Like you’re calling to him.

He exhales with a shaky breath and slowly peels his gloves off. In for a penny, in for a pound.

The tentacles come to life like they’ve already been waiting. One wraps around his ankle, another his bicep, and a third – thick and warm – slaps straight up between his legs, cupping his bulge hard.

He jolts in place, stumbling backward, but there’s nowhere to go. The mass of limbs move like a net. “Fuck –!”

The pressure isn’t gentle – it’s deliberate and punishing. The tentacle presses up and squeezes, as if testing him for ripeness. It doesn’t stop, continuing to

He bites down a groan, but it doesn’t help. The tentacles are everywhere –  stroking his thighs, dragging over his stomach, papillating his balls in seemingly unpredictable patterns – except where he needs them most. Not one of them touches his cock. Not even close.

His cock strains against his gear, leaking and furious, twitching with every teasing pass that misses it on purpose. It’s deliberate. Cruel. Like they’re mocking him for it. Letting him watch, ache, leak, while they play with the both of you.

Another tendril slithers beneath your ass and spreads you wider. You sob. Your thighs tremble. There’s a slick, dragging pressure between them that doesn’t stop – it circles, probes, pushes, coating everything in that sticky, aphrodisiac sap until even the sting feels good.

Your body twitches. One leg kicks. You cry out when it starts again.

A smaller tentacle slides beneath your jaw and tips your chin upward as the tentacles that have been fucking your throat retreat. It’s surprisingly gentle and expectant.

Bucky doesn’t think. He just leans in captures you lips in a bruising kiss.

Your mouth opens on instinct, all heat and glossed-over pleasure, and his tongue drags against yours like it’ll help him understand what the fuck is going on.

He tastes the sap on your tongue – warm, syrupy, heady and intoxicating – and suddenly he wants it everywhere. Wants to drown in it, wants to taste it off your skin and suck it from your mouth until he forgets his own name. It has been years since anything’s hit him like this – not booze, not pills, not even the ice-cold rush of a fight. It smears across his cheek, coats the corner of his mouth.

“Ace,” he sighs into your mouth. “This is insane.”

“I know,” you whisper, lips sticky with sap. “Don’t worry – we’ll take care of you.”

The words punch straight to his gut.

Tentacles are already tugging at his gear. He barely notices it at first – distracted by the softness of your lips, the sound of your contented sighs against his mouth, the way Nereus pushes your soft, warm, flushed body against his – but one slides under his vest and rips the fabric apart at the seam with practiced precision. Another hooks under the waistband of his pants, yanking just enough to expose him to the air. He doesn’t resist. Doesn’t help, either.

You whimper as one of the limbs curled around your thigh lifts – high, higher – until your ankle is well over your shoulder. It exposes the filthy mess between your legs – your pussy, swollen and puffy, your asshole, tight and slick and glistening for attention.

Bucky doesn’t even process how tightly he’s gripping your hips until something pushes down on the back of his head.

He doesn’t fight it as the tentacle forces him lower. When his knees hit the ground, he doesn’t hesitate. His hands brace against your thighs, and Nereus allows him one lungful of breath before it pushes his head into your cunt.

Bucky’s always been task-oriented – and right now, the task is you. He eats you out like it’s the only mission that’s ever mattered. His nose drags against your clit as his tongue works you open, eager, relentless, smearing slick everywhere like he wants to drown in it.

He’s breathless, soaked in your juices, mouth sealed tight around your clit like a man starved. Every lick is hot, possessive – lips locked around you, tongue dragging through your folds with shameless hunger.

Your body answers in kind, aching deep, desperate for more. You rock your hips against his face, chasing friction, chasing heat – the press of his soft lips, the scrape of his days-old beard against your soaked skin, every shift of his jaw sparking bright along your nerves.

And somewhere behind you, another tentacle coils along your spin and dips low. It nestles itself between the crack of your ass cheeks, circling slow and wet. And then it presses in.

Bucky doesn’t even realize how close he is.

His mouth is still on you – messy, relentless, devouring every twitch of your cunt like it’s instinct.

The sounds you’re making are absolutely wrecked now, broken little hiccups of pleasure as tentacles keep you stretched open, arched, fed. You’re trembling under him, breath hot and staggered, your hips grinding helplessly into his mouth.

And all the while, Nereus has him in its grip.

One tentacle is still cupped under his balls, massaging them with obscene precision – rolling, squeezing, kneading him like it wants to milk him dry. Another one – flat, wide, and slick with sap – is wrapped around the base of his cock and stroking.

It’s not delicate.

It’s practiced. Ruthless. Flattened surface dragging up the underside of his shaft with rhythmic, wet pressure. Sap coats everything – sticky and warm – and the glide is unreal. It’s all too much. Too hot. Too tight.

He doesn't even notice the extra tentacle at first.

He's too busy, after all. Your taste is coating his tongue – sweet, slick, laced with that aphrodisiac sap that makes his brain fuzz at the edges. You're squirming under his mouth, thighs trembling around his head, and he’s drowning in the mess of you when something brushes across his chest.

He freezes for half a second. Not because it hurts – god no – but because it's soft. Featherlight. And then it drags lower, circling his left nipple like it's testing a theory.

His breath catches.

The motion repeats. A curl. A press. Then – suction.

A sucker latches onto his nipple and pulls.

His hips buck helplessly into the tentacle still stroking his cock. His groan gets lost between your legs.

“Fuck,” he chokes, head lifting an inch from your cunt. “What the fuck –”

Another sucker finds his other nipple and does the same.

Pull. Release. Flick. Suck.

Bucky shudders. His whole torso jerks like he’s been lit up from the inside.

The suckers are working him like they know what he’ll respond to – short bursts of suction followed by tight pressure, like they’re trying to draw something out of him. His nipples are painfully hard now, wet and swollen from attention, and it shouldn’t feel this good.

But his cock leaks against the tentacle stroking it, his body locked tight in overstimulation.

He’s panting into your skin. Still trying to focus on you. Still licking at your clit with trembling effort while the tendrils tease his chest – humiliate him – by finding another place to make him ache.

He wants to pull away.

He wants to moan into it.

He wants to –

“Look at you,” you pant above him. “Fucking love it.”

He groans with a shake of his head. Another sucker tugs at his left nipple and his hips twitch – an involuntary jerk that makes his cock slap against the tentacle slicking it. Sap strings between them like spit.

And still, Bucky doesn’t stop eating you out. His jaw aches, his nose is wet with your slick, and still he devours you like he’s starving – because maybe he is. Maybe you’re the only thing keeping him tethered while everything else drags him under.

His hips jerk involuntarily. His tongue falters for a second on your clit.

And then it hits him.

He comes with a guttural groan against your pussy – buried there as his orgasm tears through him, the first thick ropes of cum are wrung out of him, hot and heavy. The kind of orgasm that hollows him out and fills him up all at once.

Bucky doesn’t thrust, he thrashes. Every nerve burns as hot cum spills out in thick, wet spurts across Nereus’ glistening centre mass. It’s messy, primal – spurt after spurt, creamy and obscene, smearing across tentacles already coated in your slick.

And Nereus reacts like it’s never been fed so good.

Tentacles ripple. The whole structure sings. Bucky feels it in the way the tentacles around both of you pulse tighter, squeeze harder, start to shift their tempo. One coils tighter around your ankle like it’s bracing you, another shifts to drag through the shared mess between your legs – spreading it, pressing it low, like it wants to feed the soil below.

Mix it. Slick it. Use it.

You come again watching him fall apart.

Your hands are bound, legs spread, chest heaving. And when Bucky glances up through the haze of sap and shame, he sees it: your eyes wide, your body shuddering, and then –

Your orgasm rips through you, vicious and wet – a soaker. It coats Bucky’s face, chin, chest. Spit, sap, slick – it’s everywhere. Bucky’s jaw is slack, mouth open like he’s forgotten how to close it. He laps instinctively, groaning through it, hungry and dazed.

And Nereus snaps. Because your second orgasm didn’t go to it, Nereus is not satisfied.

Another tentacle slips behind Bucky again – coiling under his balls and sliding back, unrelenting.

“Fuck –” he gasps, body arching. “No, no – wait –”

He doesn’t mean it.

Or maybe he does, but Nereus doesn’t care.

The tentacle between his cheeks doesn’t wait this time. It’s rougher now. He stutters – moans – hips jolting forward even as he pants like he’s ashamed of it. Because it hurts. Because it’s too much. Because he’s never been stretched like this, not even close. And his cock stays hard anyway. Harder, even.

Then Nereus jerks him back, pushing him into the floor – into the tide beneath you both. The water is shallow – waves barely cresting over the toe of his boot – but it surges up around his ribs, his chin, splashing high as he lands.

He doesn’t even have time to gasp.

It flips him roughly onto his stomach, presses down between his shoulder blades until he’s pinned there. His cheek smacks the floor, lips breaking the surface, but his nose is under – and it doesn’t matter how shallow the water is when you can’t lift your head.

The stone is slick beneath Bucky. The water is warm and salty, sweetened where there’s your slick and Nereus’s sap. It’s everywhere now – soaking through his hair, beading against his skin. He chokes on it. Coughs. One arm jerks up in reflex, but a thick tentacle coils tight around his wrist, and holds.

And still, Nereus doesn’t stop.

Another tentacle drags beneath his hips – slow, greedy – and curls between his legs again, grinding up between his ass and his aching cock like it owns him. Like it’s checking to see if he’s hard again yet, or punishing him for not being.

Super soldier lung capacity is impressive, but Bucky is still human, and all humans need to breathe.

Water rushes up over his mouth, up his nose. He sputters, trying to lift his head – can’t. He chokes on it, on his own spit, on the mess slicking his throat. Everything is heat and pressure and the cruel rhythm pounding into him, until his body doesn’t know if it’s drowning or coming.

And maybe it’s both.

The tentacle inside him doesn’t relent. It drives in deep, curling upward like it’s trying to split him open from the inside out. Then it finds his prostate – rubs hard – and he jolts, gasping like he’s been shocked. No one’s ever touched him there before. Not like this. Not rough and relentless and mean. It keeps hitting it, over and over, until he’s dripping, shaking, pathetic. And Nereus only presses harder.

You watch his ruin with a strange sort of sadistic delight.

His face half-drowned against the wet stone. Arms pinned. Ass up and trembling as that thick tentacle spears into him again, merciless and deep. Another wraps snug under his balls, pulsing in time – stroking, squeezing – like it’s daring him to break.

You clench down around the pressure inside you, cunt twitching with greedy heat. Watching him like this – so completely helpless, so thoroughly fucked – it lights something awful in you.

And then – he lifts his eyes.

Or tries to.

The second his lashes lift, Nereus yanks his head up by the hair like it’s showing him off, dragging his mouth out of the water with a brutal jerk. Bucky gasps, sputtering, chest heaving as he chokes on air like it burns. Sap and spit drip from his chin. His whole body twitches as he breathes, shoulders tight, hips fucking back onto the thing inside him like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

He groans, low and guttural, like the act of being watched is the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely. His hips jerk as the tentacle inside him curls again, deliberate, deeper. His cock is rock hard, red and leaking, bobbing untouched with every thrust. He doesn’t even try to hide it. The sap in his bloodstream is singing, and the shame of it all makes it worse.

The sounds that tear out of him – low, guttural, desperate – it feeds you.

Your voice is barely a whisper. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

His mouth opens – but words don’t come out.

Just the raw, broken sound of a man being split open, used, fucked too deep for pride.

Nereus holds him there for another moment, like it’s waiting.

He doesn’t answer you. So it shoves his head back down, and you watch it all with sick, hungry pleasure.

And as you watch the water splashing, a low, fucked-out groan bubbling up from his throat, something inside you snaps.

You want more.

Like it hears the thought, Nereus responds.

The tentacles surge beneath you, slick and strong, curling around your waist, your thighs. Your breath catches as you're hauled higher, as the thick one inside you thrusts deeper, right where you're already sore from earlier, dragging a raw little gasp out of you.

You don’t even get to moan. Not really.

The tentacle inside you is already thick – already filling you more than anything ever has, and your body’s clenching around it, desperate to adjust, to hold it in. But Nereus isn’t finished. Not even close.

A second tendril slithers up between your thighs – slick, pulsing with heat – and nudges against your soaked entrance.

“Wait – ah – fuck, it’s – ” you whimper, but the protest melts as the tip begins to force its way in.

It stretches you wide. Wider than you should be. Wider than anyone should ever take.

The first one shifts just to make room, dragging along your raw walls, and the second pushes deeper, slow and merciless. Pressure builds with every inch. Burns. You're so full you think you might split.

Your legs twitch violently, eyes rolling back.

The wet squelch as both tentacles thrust together is obscene. And it only gets worse when they start to move – one dragging back, the other plunging deeper, fucking you in a brutal, alternating rhythm that has your cunt fluttering and clenching like it’s trying to decide which one to milk harder.

You can’t breathe. Can’t think.

Your back arches with the force of it. It’s not even pleasure anymore – it’s need. It’s exhaustion. It’s your cunt fluttering and squeezing around something that never stops moving, never stops pushing deeper, as though trying to reach your womb and stay there.

Somewhere below, you hear Bucky groan.

He’s not faring much better.

Tentacles still paw at his cock – dragging along the shaft, milking the sensitive tip, playing with the heavy weight of his balls like it’s a toy meant for them. He’s leaking again, globs of arousal dripping into the sea water. Slick clings to his thighs, his chest, his face. Sap beads in the hollows of his collarbone. He looks wrecked.

And when another tentacle wraps low around your hips, forces you forward – and forward again – and forward once more, until you’re bucking like an animal on instinct alone –

Bucky breaks, straining towards you; he’d give anything to just get his hands on your skin.

The tentacle gripping the back of his head dunks him under again – water rushing up his nose, into his mouth – and this time it holds him longer. The tentacle around his cock pumps him in slow, deliberate strokes.

Pressure builds like a vice, like a reward, and when his lungs start to really scream for air, when his body jerks in reflexive panic, he’s yanked back up again.

Gasping, spluttering, exposed to air for only a second before something thick drives up into his ass with brutal force. He cries out, wet and raw, but it’s swallowed instantly when he’s plunged down again.

He thrashes. Not to escape, but to come.

Under. Up. Under again. Each cycle worse than the last – no rest, no mercy – until there’s only the drag of lungs robbed of breath, the flood of sap through his veins, the unrelenting pressure of being filled, stretched, stroked, used.

But his eyes find yours.

Soaked, wrecked, dazed – and still so horribly aroused.

You reach out for him without thinking. Just a breathless little sound – maybe his name – and something in Nereus responds.

And then Bucky’s being pulled forward, slamming into your body like gravity wants you fused. Chest to chest, thigh to thigh – cock throbbing between you, his spine still shuddering around the tendrils inside him.

Mouths crash. Teeth knock. His tongue pushes past your lips without finesse – tasting sap, tasting you, tasting himself. You moan into it, dizzy with how hard you’re clenching around your own stretch.

You taste desperation on his tongue.

He drinks relief from yours.

And when your lips part, when your breath hitches against his cheek – he moans like it hurts, like he’s been drowning without you.

Your mouths are still pressed together when another tentacle – not thick, but long and sinuous – snakes up behind your knees and shoves them open, tilting your hips until you’re spread open beneath him.

Bucky groans into your mouth. He’s still kissing you when a tentacle winds tight around his cock, every throb of his arousal wrapped in unnatural muscle.

And he’s right there. Between your legs. Staring down at you like he’s lost the last of his control.

If Bucky was considered big before, now he feels monstrous – his cock is flushed dark, swollen with need, fat with swollen veins and ridges left by the tentacle’s grip.

“Bucky –”

“I know,” he cuts in, voice wrecked. “You can do this. Just – fuck, hold still.”

They continue to stroke his angry red length as he lines himself up with your ready, greedy, pussy that has been stretched out by the two thick tentacles that had taken turns bullying your cunt.

Then he thrusts.

Not careful. Not gentle. Just in. All at once.

You cry out – the stretch is brutal, the ridged pressure filthy – and he groans like he’s dying, hips snapping forward again before you’ve even caught up.

“I’m sorry,” he pants, sinking his cock deeper. “I know it’s too much – but – fuck – I need you.”

He bottoms out with a strangled sound – half groan, half gasp – and then he’s moving. Because he can’t not. The goo is truly well in his blood now, burning through every inch of reason left in him. Every nerve begs for friction, for heat, for release.

You scream his name and get no answer.

What you get is more. More tentacles. More motion. Something glides up your spine and curls behind your neck, dragging you into another kiss while you’re getting fucked from underneath.

Bucky’s hands scrabble uselessly at your thighs – he’s trying to hold on, to anchor himself – but his rhythm is sloppy, erratic, frantic. A tentacle winds around his wrists and pins them behind your back, locking him to you, like it doesn’t trust him not to pull away.

Bucky’s fucking you hard now – really fucking you – thrusts deep and punishing, like he’s trying to fuck the tentacle off his own cock. Except it’s not coming off. It’s wrapped tight, spiralled down the base like a second fist, squeezing every time he bottoms out.

And each time he snaps his hips, you feel it.

You see it –

That thick, obscene bulge that punches into your belly, pressing up from under your cervix like a living, pulsing knot. The tentacle around your middle tightens, hugging the swell of your overstretched abdomen like it’s admiring the damage.

Bucky’s panting grows louder, more erratic. He’s gone – lost in it. Pupils blown, mouth slack, hips moving without thought. The sap’s wrecked him.

His voice is hoarse. “Gonna – fuck, I’m gonna –”

“Me too –” you choke out. “Please – just –”

It hits both of you at the same time – violent and uncontrollable. You clench down around him like a vice just as he jerks inside you, and the tentacle coils pulse in tandem, milking both of you like Nereus planned this.

But you don’t get to ride it out.

Not fully.

Because just as your hips start to shudder – just as your orgasm crests and his cock kicks inside you –

Nereus yanks him back.

A violent jerk. Not cruel, but absolute. Ripped out of you mid-release. Your cunt spasms around nothing – still twitching, still leaking – and Bucky’s cock erupts, unplugged, spraying thick spurts of cum across the slick, writhing mass below.

Yours follows. A gush. A squirt. Everything spilling out of you as if your body’s trying to chase the high he left behind.

The mess lands directly on Nereus’ centre. Hot. Wet. Mixed. Yours and his – sap, sweat, sex – all of it dripping together onto those hungry tendrils.

Nereus pulses.

Shudders.

And the chamber fills with a low, resonant hum – something between satisfaction and hunger.

Tentacles tighten. Not cruelly – but firmly. Reminding you that your pleasure was never its goal, just a by-product of satiating its hunger.

And it’s not finished.

The sap on your skin never dries. It glows faintly in the low light, keeping both of you suspended in that feverish afterglow where arousal doesn’t ebb but only resets.

Minutes collapse into hours, or maybe it’s the other way around – the only thing either of you can register is the endless slick slap of bodies, the stretch, the heat, the way Nereus never. Fucking. Stops.

Tentacles work into every hole they can find. One becomes two, two becomes more. Your ass is stretched wide around writhing girth, slicked and stuffed until you can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but sob and moan and take it.

Bucky’s voice breaks beside you, hoarse from too much gasping, too much begging. He’s trembling, body arching as he gets fucked from both ends – thick tentacles plunging into his ass while another flattens around his cock, jerking him until he’s spilling again, and again, and again.

You’re both so wet, so raw, slicked in fluids you can’t name. Each orgasm only draws more out of you – more need, more filth, more surrender. Nereus doesn’t pause and it certainly doesn’t relent.

It fucks you through each high, uncaring if you’re crying or limp or barely conscious. When you fall slack – too tired to move – it lifts your body like a doll and keeps going. Makes you grind. Ride. Buck.

It uses Bucky the same way. Folds him over you. Makes you fuck each other, dripping and twitching and overstimulated while its own limbs piston into every gap it can find.

You lose count of how many times you’ve cum. You lose your voice. You forget your name. All you know is open – wider – again – please –

And it still doesn’t stop.

It keeps fucking. Keeps feeding. Keeps taking.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until you’re wrung out. Until you’re shaking, dry, sore, ruined. Until your thighs are stuck open and Bucky can’t stop twitching. Until pleasure is pain and pain is the only thing that feels real and even that is slipping.

Until there’s nothing left.

***

At some point – time long since lost – the rhythm stops. Not abruptly. It just… winds down, like a storm burning itself out.

The tentacles slow. One last lazy curl around your thigh, one last tremor of pressure around Bucky’s hips, and then everything goes still. The air is thick with steam and salt and whatever the hell just happened. You can hear the sea again.

Then, with disarming gentleness, Nereus lowers you both to the floor. It’s almost affectionate about it – arranging you side by side, smoothing a slick tendril over your hair like it’s tucking you in.

Bucky’s too dazed to speak. You can feel him breathing beside you, chest hitching, eyes wide and vacant. Sap glistens down the planes of his torso; your body not faring any much better.

And then Nereus… shivers. Once. Twice. Like a satisfied sigh.

Before your eyes, the great writhing mass begins to contract, folding in on itself with wet, satisfied slurps. The tentacles coil tighter, shorter, until what’s left looks almost domestic – a lush, glossy green tangle that’s fern-like, with a few drooping tendrils spilling over the edge of the planter like leaves.

You blink. Bucky blinks. The plant… wiggles.

“Well,” you manage, voice shredded. “Guess it’s, uh, domesticated?”

Bucky just stares at it, jaw working, then finally rasping, “We’re never telling anyone about this.”

Nereus shimmers faintly in agreement.

***

Back at the Watchtower, the elevator doors slide open with a ding that feels almost mocking. The team is arrayed across the couches in various states of boredom. Valentina’s perched like a spider in silk at the head of it all, one manicured brow lifting.

You and Bucky hobble out into the common room, heads held high but moving with the slow dignity of people who have been thoroughly put through the wringer.

You both look like hell: hair damp, clothes dishevelled, bruises in the distinct shape of suction cups dotting every inch of uncovered skin. Bucky’s suit is ripped halfway down the side; one metal shoulder glinting through what used to be tactical black.

He’s got Nereus clutched in both hands, held far away from his body in a cheap orange Home Depot pot, weary if at any moment it might change its mind and lunge at him again. The fern-thing’s glossy tendrils sway with each step, and one of them is looped around your pinky like a child holding hands.

Nobody speaks. Not at first.

John glances up from his phone, takes one look at the state of you both – soaked, bruised, visibly wrecked – and snorts. “Jesus. How badly did you two get fucked by the mission?”

The silence that follows is cavernous.

Nereus rustles. One tendril lifts and gives him a slow, damp little wave. Bob stares in open-mouth wonderment.

You blink at John, voice still hoarse. “Pretty literally, actually.”

Bucky exhales through his nose, sets the pot down on the coffee table like it’s a live grenade. “We’re debriefing never.”

Valentina’s grin is sharp enough to cut glass. “Oh, I’ll be needing a full report,” she purrs. “Preferably with diagrams.”

Bucky turns on his heel and walks out. You trail after him, middle finger raised behind your back.

Nereus’ tentacle-leaves give a happy little shake, like applause.

A/N: i don't need it to be october to be freaked out HAHA! this is a bit heavier than what i usually do, but i hope everyone had a fun time~

ps: if anyone's wondering where the call sign came from, reader is called Ace because in the usual military fashion, it's not meant to be a compliment HAHA - here reader famously flunked an entire series of tests (which hasn't been done before) hence "aced the examinations" but cos her power is too useful, they were willing to keep her around

♡ more bucky from me ♡