#askpen

You flicked on the lights, the clink of keys on the entry table a ritual, and Steve followed, a little at sea in your space for the first time even though he’d been here before—movie nights, friend dinners, paint-the-wall days. But not like this. Never like this.

“I don’t even know if you deserve grilled cheese,” you exclaimed, taking the bag Steve had insisted on carrying and setting it on the counter. “You were a total pain about the bread, Steve.”

He scoffed. “You said to get a loaf with ‘sturdy crumb’ and ‘integrity.’ What does that even mean? And how am I supposed to pick the right bread when I know the judge is going to be an actual baker? I would have been fine as long as we picked one that wasn't made from wood pulp!”

“That’s possibly even worse!” you laugh. You have to respect the sandwich,” you told him, plunking a skillet on the stove. “A good sandwich is a structural marvel. It cannot—must not—fall apart, and the bread is the foundation.”

But despite your ribbing, the two of you set to making sandwiches together anyway. You stand together at the counter, shoulder to shoulder sharing knives and ingredients. The air smells like butter and cheese and bread and the sweet scent of summer flowers sneaking in through the cracked window.

You find yourself narrating each step as if Steve is the TV audience and you are hosting the world’s weirdest, smallest cooking show. “Now,” you intone in your best documentary voice, “after shredding the cheddar, which will lend to a more even melt while cooking, we add a scandalous amount of cheese to the bread beds, and—no, more than that—yes, even more,” and Steve, with exaggerated seriousness, piles on.

He tries to kiss your cheek but you poke him in the side instead. “Concentrate! Don’t mess up our sandwiches!”

He laughs, “Alright, alright!”

He butters the pan with both exaggeration and a surgeon’s care, brow furrowed. “You’re just going to stand there and judge, huh?”

“Absolutely,” you said, watching him drop the sandwiches into the pan with geometric precision.

He shakes his head, but once they’re safely in the pan, he raises both hands and says, “Handing it off to you now, chef.”

You step forward, and he steps back, leaning up against the island counter.

You can feel him watching you, the way people do when they can’t quite believe they’re allowed to watch so openly. It flusters you and makes you want to show off even more, which is how you end up flipping both sandwiches one-handed, channeling your inner Julia Child for flipping bravery, and somehow the flip goes off beautifully, and you and Steve both cheer more than is probably necessary. But the jubilance is part of this heady happiness of being so newly together.

You love it.

You love him watching you, being in your kitchen, that you’re going to spend the evening together.

You let the sandwiches toast, the sizzle and brown buttery smell setting both your mouths watering. When you plate them (with a flourish—“presentation counts, Steve!”—which only makes him roll his eyes with a fondness so palpable it slows your hands), you add the other absurdity: a layer of jam across the top, and swirls of mustard over that. You give your sandwich the full treatment but only subject one half of his to your preference. He leans over to inspect and says, “If this ruins grilled cheese for me, I’m suing.”

You sit on the couch, knees touching, legs curled toward each other. He’s skeptical, but you dare him to taste his sandwich, and with a deep, melodramatic sigh, he does—the jam and mustard in one bite, mixing the civilized and the unthinkable. He chews. He goes silent. His eyes widen a little, then close, then he laughs like he can barely stand how happy he is to be surprised by you.

“That’s,” he says, swallowing, “stupidly good. That’s dastardly and shameful and should not work, but it does.”

“I know,” you crow around a mouthful of your own bite.

You both eat in silence for a minute, thick with the awe of culinary transgression and the hush of two people who’ve just realized they can be as loud or as quiet as they want, forever if they’d like. After two bites, you say, “I have to know what happened today. Like, why now? You’re in my shop nearly every day, we spend time together nearly every weekend now, and you pick today to…” You gesture with the sandwich, not sure what verb to use for what happened between you, so you let it dangle.

Steve wipes his mouth and leans his back against the couch. For a second he looks like he’s searching the ceiling for the answer, but then he glances at you with a kind of embarrassment that is so rare for him, it might as well be a parallel version of him from some other universe.

“Bucky’s been on my ass,” he says. “He’s been telling me for, I don’t know, forever, that I was going to wait too long and then some other guy was going to swoop in and steal you.” He laughed, but he seemed to be waiting for your reaction, like maybe you’d flinch at the idea that someone else might even be in the running.

You grinned at him, not even bothering to hide the little spike of self-satisfaction. “And you believed him?”

Steve shrugged, biting into another corner of grilled cheese, almost sheepish. “I mean, it’s not impossible! You’re—look, you’re incredible. He kept saying if I let it go too long, you’d think I only wanted to be your best friend, but then…” He gestured toward the air. “He gave the unnamed potential competition a face. He said Dan was going to get there first.”

You nearly choked on your next bite. “Dan the produce guy?”

Steve nodded, setting his sandwich down with a pointed look. “And on top of that I didn’t want to screw it up. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who can’t handle not getting what he wants.”

You finish your bite, feeling a knot in your chest that is not unpleasant, just strange and tight, like hope and nostalgia at the same time. “You really thought I’d say no to you?”

“Yeah.”

“God, we’re both stupid.”

He laughed, one that felt like he was releasing some of the tension with your admission. “Yeah. But it was Bucky’s dumb theory that Dan was going to make a move that made me realize I’d be stupider if I let you get away.”

You set the plate aside, feigning a long, solemn consideration. “Honestly, Dan does have amazing forearms. And he always knows when the peaches are actually ripe—”

Steve’s glare is instant and volcanic. He narrows his eyes, sets his jaw, and makes a growling noise that is almost comical until he lunges across the couch, pinning you down in a blur of tattooed forearms and muscle. You shriek, half laughing, half helpless, as he pins your hands above your head with one hand and presses you into the cushions with the solid weight of him.

“Take it back,” he whispers, just shy of your ear, breath tickling. “Dan’s not even a contender.”

You can feel the warmth of his body, the press of his hands holding you still, and it’s all you can do not to dissolve into a puddle then and there. “No,” you confess, no hesitation. “No one compares to you.”

He lifts his head, and you’re already moving to meet him. The first press of lips is gentle for maybe a millisecond, then opens into a hungry, unguarded thing that’s all teeth and desperate yes, and you don’t know who’s more startled by the force of it—maybe both of you. His free hand runs up the length of your side, and you arch up to him, the tension in your arms winding everything tighter.

He lets go of your wrists, but you leave them above your head, inviting him to pin you again if he wants, surrender made easy by how safe he’s always felt.

His hands roam from your wrists to your face, cupping your jaw, thumbs stroking the hinge of your cheeks, and then down, one hand bracing at your shoulder, the other smoothing over your side, taking in the dimensionality of you, the physical realness of you, as if he’s been blue-balled by possibility for so long he needs to confirm—yes, you are here, yes, you want this too.

Your hands slide down, fingers threading through his hair, then over his bare arms. Your hands are under his shirt before you realize it, thumbs skating over the hard lines of his ribs, the curve where his stomach dips in. He is so warm, warmer than you expected his body could be. You want to taste the salt and the heat there, to see if his skin matches the way he smells—coffee, ink, a little street dust from the long walk here.

Steve pulls back first, propped on his elbows so he doesn’t crush you. His face is flushed, pupils wide, mouth at a tilt you haven’t seen before, but you like. He looks at you like he wants to devour you, but also as if he’s just opened a perfect, impossible gift and is hesitant to touch it for fear it will vanish.

You’re both still for a second, his breath on your neck, your hands resting on his shoulders, a band of electricity between your bodies. Then you both laugh, first quietly, then helplessly, the intensity breaking like a yoke and running everywhere at once.

It is so easy, you think, as he lowers his head to press small, eager kisses along your jaw. So easy you don’t understand what took three years, or why every other day you’ve spent together feels now like it was leading to this one, the day you both finally agreed to just take what you’d been holding back.

You shift under him, rolling just enough to tangle your legs together on the couch. He hums contentment, arms going around your ribs, holding you so close you can feel the gallop of his heart. When you drag your fingers up the nape of his neck and into his hair, he shudders; it’s the most vulnerable thing you’ve seen in a man who spends his days needling art into the skin of every tough guy in the city. You pull him down for another slow, long kiss. There is no choreography—just hunger and the years of not touching, not knowing, unsaid things now released and flying. It is the opposite of careful.

When you finally come up for air, his face is buried in your neck and he is breathing you in like you’re oxygen. “Holy shit,” he says, muffled against your skin. His voice is lower, heavier, more intimate than you’ve ever heard it.

You laugh, but your voice wobbles. “Yeah, I know.”

He shifts, looking down at you, nose barely an inch from yours. “You want to go slow or…” he starts, then laughs, shaking his head. “I mean, I haven’t even offered you coffee or dessert. Or, I don’t know, marriage?”

You groan, “If you propose to me before we even really date, I might have to punch you.”

His soft chuckle is so easy, so warm.

And you know, absolutely, that you will wake up tomorrow and every day after that wanting exactly this: the shape of him, and this wild, simple happiness.

Even though you’re both too breathless to keep kissing in this moment, you can’t stop touching—fingers brushing earlobe, tracing tattoo lines, linking hands. He nuzzles your jaw. “I’ve waited so long,” he says into your hair, voice a little rough, “I don’t know if I remember how to slow down.”

You answer him without thinking, “Maybe we don’t have to slow down.” You roll him onto his back and straddle him, knees bracketing his hips on the couch, the edge of his thigh pressing everywhere it needs to. He looks up at you, reverent, like you’re sunlight after the longest winter, and your heart is a balloon, too big, floating, dangerous.

It’s not like you haven’t been here before—with someone, with hope, with that fever-dream of possibility. But with Steve it’s different: the intensity, the history, your own knowledge of every scar on his hands and so many of the stories behind his eyes. The way he says your name like it’s an element of the universe. The way you know, with a bone-deep certainty, that he will never leave you reeling or alone.

You put both hands on his chest, feeling his heart slam like a fist against your palms. “You’re not scared?” you ask.

“Oh, I’m scared as hell, but I know I don’t want anything else but you,” he says, and then he’s kissing you again, and this time it’s almost clumsy with how hard you both want it. You let yourself fall into him. You let yourself forget all the ways you’d ever tried to keep from hoping for exactly this.

You stay straddled on his lap, legs twined around him, and let yourself catalog the details: the sandpaper brush of his beard, the snowmelt blue of his eyes, the calluses on his hands where he holds your face so gently it makes something inside you ache. You let him touch you everywhere, your back, your hips, the tops of your thighs, but it isn’t frantic—you’ve both waited so long, you want the waiting to last as long as you can bear.

Steve’s hands grip your hips, hard enough to leave prints, and with a quick, almost startled grunt of laughter, he twists, rolls, and suddenly there’s a thump and the breath leaves your body in a delighted little gasp. You land on the rug, shoulders pressing into the edge of the old hardwood, and he’s half atop you, the heat of him everywhere, mouth already at your collarbone, and then lower. You can feel the thrum of his pulse, the tremor in the way his hands find your wrists and pin them overhead, making a cage for your body that is all muscle, all intent.

There's a question in his eyes—a split second of hesitation, a hesitation you could break with a word. Instead, you arch toward him, and he answers you with a groan that is equal parts relief and hunger. He kisses you, mouth bruising on yours, and the taste of salt and butter and jam blooms between your teeth. You can’t stop smiling, even when your lips can barely open, even as you are so out of breath you think you might faint. He is like gravity, and for once, it is bliss to fall.

He kisses down the column of your throat, skimming your pulse, and you feel like a starved animal under him—three years of restraint dissolving in a single hour. You gasp when he slides your shirt up and the callused drag of his hands meets your skin, and your hands clutch him back, clawing at his shirt, wanting to find some symmetry of nakedness. He lets you, lets you pull his shirt off and throw it, lets you flatten your palm over the huge, hot plane of his chest, the inked geometry and animal lines stark against the pale of his skin.

You pause, because it’s nearly overwhelming, how beautiful he is, how much you want to see him, memorize him. He looks down at you with sun-drunk eyes, and his expression says it’s the same for him, the awe and the appetite.

You are nearly bare from the ribs up now, soft and sprawling on your own rug, and his eyes drink in the whole of you—the curve of your arms, the roundness of your belly, bra covering full and round breasts—and you can see, with crystalline clarity, that he wants every last inch of it.

"God, you're beautiful," he says, voice gone hoarse. He says it like it's a revelation, and you want to laugh, or maybe cry, because you can tell it's the first time he's allowed himself to say the words out loud, and maybe the first time you've ever really believed them.

He puts his forehead to yours, both of you panting, flushed. “I really do want to go slow, but right now I am seconds from losing my fucking mind if I don’t get to be inside you.” He says it with a split grin, half apology, half dare, his teeth bared, eyes wild. Your answering laugh is pure release, and you reach for him, already unfastening the button on your jeans with one hand, dragging his hand down with the other, guiding him exactly where you wanted him.

“We can go slow the rest of the night,” you breathe, “but right now I want you to fuck me.” The words spill out, raw and urgent, and you delight in the way they make his whole body go rigid.

“You sure?” he barely manages, voice scraping low.

“Steve, I swear to God, if you don’t do it I’ll—I’ll literally walk myself over to Dan the produce guy right now and reenact an entire forbidden fruit scenario in aisle three.”

He laughs, head thrown back, and the sound was insane and bright and so full of disbelief it tipped into something almost gentle. “You’re the biggest menace I’ve ever met,” he says, and then he is kissing you again, this time with a kind of single-mindedness that makes you forget every clever thing you’d ever planned to say.

It isn’t careful but it is kind—how he strips your jeans and underwear in a single motion, how he stops to press a kiss to each hipbone, how his hands never leave your skin, how he asks, “You’re good?” as he touches you for the first time between your legs. You want to tell him yes, yes, yes, but you have lost English for a minute and can only answer by clutching his arm, digging nails into the painted sleeve of his bicep.

You are already wet, soaked and ready in a way that makes you want to claw your own face from how long you’ve waited. He freezes long enough to register it, then lets out a low, barely-civilized sound from his throat—a sound you want to bottle and inhale every morning for the rest of your life.

He pauses, one knuckle hooked in the curve of you. “Hang on,” and you think he’s about to make some dorky, considerate joke, but instead, he kisses the inside of your wrist, then your elbow, then the strawberry bandage.

You reach down for his belt and the clasp of his jeans, and he quickly finishes the task, unzipping and shucking them off with his boxers.

His cock is obscenely… not beautiful, but appealing—a bit bigger than you’d anticipated, but not so much it alarms you. Just enough to be a touch intimidating. You bite your lip, ready to savor the blunt stretch of him. He sees the look on your face and grins, nervy and cocky all at once, but then it fades when you reach to stroke him, slow, measuring his weight, his heat in your hand.

“Jesus,” he whispers, kneeling over you, bracing himself on his hands so he doesn’t crush you, and dropping his head to your shoulder.

You give him another slow stroke, so eager, but savoring just one more moment of this.

Then he lifts his head, meeting your heady gaze, and you can read the meaning in it—the wanting, the certainty, the total, electric dare of it. “I want to fuck you bare.” The words should be ugly but they are not, not from him, not in this moment. “I want all of you, no latex, no filter. I want to come in you, feel you take it.”

You can’t believe how much you want that, how right it is. The thought makes you dizzy, not just for the sex but for the simple, reckless intimacy—three years of playful distance and you want the messy, nerve-exposed now. You nod, and your hand finds his jaw, bringing his face to yours. “Me too,” you say, and there is a solemnity in it, but also an eager wildness. “Want you to fill me up.”

He lines himself up, one palm cradling the side of your neck, the other angled low to guide himself to you. He sinks into you in a single, measured push, and you gasp so hard your eyes prick with tears. Not from pain—even though the stretch burns sweetly, the way a new piercing does—but from relief, some ancient tension breaking like a fever. Steve buries his face in your neck, moaning your name low, and you rake your hands up his back, needing to the shape of him.

He sets a punishing rhythm, all that restraint and patience abandoned for the animal need to claim you, to mark you as his, after too many years of closing the shop door on his own hunger. The first few thrusts are almost desperate, hips snapping against you as if he could make up for all the time lost in a single, obliterating fuck. You barely recognize the sound in your own throat, some high sharp keening that doesn’t sound like you but is. He’s so deep it’s almost too much, or maybe exactly enough; you can feel his breath on your face with every push, the sweat starting at his hairline, the tension in his jaw as you take everything he has to give.

You brace your legs around his waist, anchoring yourself, wanting as much of him as you can handle. He pistons into you, hard, and deep, bruising your hips with his and biting your shoulder when the pleasure gets too intense for him to hold in any other way. All you can see is the world going slightly white around the edges, the flicker and blur of heat lightning at the edge of your vision, the animal echo of both your voices overlapping in the tiny room. His hair is in his eyes, sweat dripping down his temples, and you want his mouth, so you grab him by the neck and pull him down to you again, tongues desperate, messy, swallowing moans until it starts to unravel, a cord inside you being twisted tighter and tighter until you’re either going to snap or float away.

He is relentless, holding you by the back of your thighs now, opening you, and you let him, let yourself be taken as thoroughly as you’ve always wanted, as you’ve always imagined when you watched him work in his own shop, sleeves rolled up and forearms tensed, the words yes, yes, please, more repeating in your skull like a prayer. The rhythm turns dizzying, the slap of skin and the grind of bone on bone, and you clutch Steve’s biceps so hard he’ll have bruises tomorrow.

Your voice comes out broken. “Right there—Steve, yes, god—” and he laughs a little in your neck, like he likes hearing you finally fall apart for him. He changes the angle and it’s perfect, so sharp and direct you can barely keep your eyes open. You drag your nails down his back and he hisses, going faster for a dozen wild thrusts until you clamp down, the whole world going prism-bright behind your eyelids as you come, hard, arching up under him.

You feel him slow, trembling, then grind out your name just as he shudders and sinks all the way in, heat pulsing deep as he lets go. His body locks around you, burying his face in your neck and breathing in, huge and ragged, as if he needs to inhale your existence to continue existing.

For a minute neither of you moves—your body pinned beneath his, skin to skin, joined and exhausted and pulsing with something neither of you has ever felt, even in the hundreds of times you’ve stood together in silence or laughter. He’s still inside you, and when he shifts, just a little, it sends an aftershock through your belly, up your chest. It makes you gasp, a tiny noise, and he kisses the sound right out of your mouth.

You’re not sure how long you lie like that, tangled and sticky and barely able to think. The light from the kitchen window had gone golden, then amber. When Steve finally props himself up, he looks dazed—stunned into some new, softer version of himself—and you want to wrap your arms around that feeling and never let it go.

He studies you, expression open, so vulnerable you could reach inside and touch the next beat of his heart if you wanted. He traces a finger down your collarbone, over your chest. For once, you don’t think about how you look, what’s at the surface; you just feel him seeing you, all of the you, and liking it.

“Hey.” His voice is quiet but thrum-rich. “You okay?”

You laugh, a small, shattered thing. “I am way better than okay. Are you going to stay over?” like it’s nothing, like you’re asking him to crash on your couch after a party, not like you’re already planning to spend every night together from now on if you can.

One of his hands is still braced on your ribcage, thumb stroking thoughtlessly over your skin as if he’d mapped you in a former life. He cocks an eyebrow, then lets his mouth curve into a smirk, cocky and bashful at once. “Didn’t know that was in doubt. Unless you want me to go.”

You snort—something not quite dignified, but honest. “No. I want you to stay. And also, I think I’m going to need help getting off the floor, because I literally have no bones left in my body.”

He laughs, a real laugh that’s all belly and teeth, and you know you’re never going to get tired of that sound. He leverages you both upright, then deposits his face in the crook of your neck, muttering, “We should probably at least move to the bed.”

You manage to stagger up and herd him into your bedroom, not bothering to turn on the lamp because the city light coming through the window is honeyed and soft, the same color as the safety you feel around him.

He steers you backwards until the bedclothes hit the backs of your thighs, and you break apart only to collapse together onto the mess of pillows and wrinkled linens.

He’s gentler now, kissing you like he can’t stop, like the world might end if he doesn’t keep his mouth on your skin, but you don’t mind. You want his hands everywhere, and he gives them to you: slow sweeps down your arms, lazy mapping of your curves, a thumb tracing the afterglow into the softest places on your stomach, your thighs, your chest. He even finds the strawberry bandage and presses his mouth to it again, once, reverent.

You say, “I’m never letting you go, you know.”

Steve smiles, lazy and bright. “You better not.” For a while, you just lie there, entangled, feeling the beat of his heart slow and sync with your own. Your body aches gently, everything saturated and alive.

If there are words for the quiet after, you don’t have them, so you hold his hand instead. It’s ridiculous how big it is, how certain. He rubs circles on the inside of your wrist, over the veins, over the pulse, and you want him to keep count of every single beat.

He’s the first to speak. “You know I’m never going to be normal about you, right?”

The admission is stark. It is also everything you’d ever wanted. “Good,” you say, and kiss the side of his mouth, the place where he smiles truest. “Normal’s boring. Boring is for people who never eat grilled cheese with jam and mustard.”

He huffs a laugh, a huff that says he’s ready for anything and everything.

The fatigue catching up to you both, you slip under the covers, letting the city’s late blue hush filter through the open window. You curl yourself around his body, limbs knotted, the last of your tension draining away into the mattress. His skin is hot, slick with the pleasant aftermath, and you press your face into the crook of his neck, breathing the newness and the always of it.

Steve runs a thumb over your arm, tracing circles around the little strawberry, and then, when he thinks you are asleep, he whispers, “I really fucking love you.” It is so quiet, you could pretend you hadn’t heard it—but you did. It goes through you like light in a dark room, a split-second of clarity that leaves your whole self humming.

“Love you, too,” you murmur back, lips just over his heart. “Just slightly more than Dan,” you add with a smirk.

Steve laughs, chest vibrating against your cheek. “Gonna be bringing produce-related jealousy up forever, aren’t you?”

“Guaranteed.”

Because after three years of both of you being idiots, forever sounds just about right.

next part: I Already Know

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest Chris-Mas in July | Steve Rogers Collection

The morning sun filtered through the half-drawn blinds, casting golden stripes across your bedroom. You stirred slowly, consciousness creeping in like the daylight. Your body felt deliciously sore, a pleasant reminder of the night before. 

After the drive-in, neither of you had wanted the night to end. What started as "Do you want to come in for coffee?" as you rode up the elevator together in your shared apartment building had evolved into heated kisses against your apartment door, fumbling with keys, clothes discarded in a trail leading to your bedroom. 

The warmth pressed against your back shifted slightly, a strong arm tightening around your waist. Bucky's slow, steady breathing tickled the nape of your neck, his chest rising and falling against your back. You smiled, remembering how he'd held you just like this as you'd fallen asleep, his lips pressed softly to your shoulder. 

You carefully turned in his embrace, not wanting to wake him yet. His face was relaxed in sleep, long lashes fanned against his cheeks, his usually perfect hair delightfully mussed. A shadow of stubble darkened his jaw, and you resisted the urge to run your fingers along it. 

Instead, you simply watched him, still hardly believing that stupid hot Bucky Barnes was here, in your bed, after a night that had far exceeded any fantasy you'd conjured during those "accidental" laundry room encounters. 

As if sensing your gaze, Bucky's eyes fluttered open, blue and hazy with sleep. When they focused on you, his lips curved into a slow, lazy smile that made your heart skip. 

"Morning," he murmured, voice rough with sleep. 

"Morning," you whispered back, suddenly shy despite everything you'd done together just hours before. 

Bucky's hand slid up your bare back, leaving a trail of warmth as he pulled you closer. "Sleep okay?" he asked, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. 

"Mmm, better than okay," you murmured, allowing yourself to sink into his embrace. Your fingers traced idle patterns on his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath your palm. 

"No nightmares about masked killers?" he teased, his voice still rough with sleep. 

You laughed softly. "Surprisingly, no. I was thoroughly distracted." 

His chest rumbled with laughter. "Good. That was the plan." 

You tilted your head back to look at him properly, taking in his tousled hair and sleepy blue eyes. The morning light cast shadows that accentuated his strong jawline, making him even more devastatingly handsome. It seemed unfair that a hunk like him should exist in real life and in your neighborhood of all places, but if this was some kind of dream, you’d stay blissfully inside of it for as long as you could. 

"You know," Bucky murmured, "I'm really glad you came out with me last night."

"Me too," you whispered.

"I've been wanting to do this for a long time - just spend time with you. But now you're driving me crazy, and I can't keep my hands off you."

Your breath hitched as his hand slowly slid down your arm, savoring every curve and dip. "Then don't," you responded. You slipped your leg up over his thigh, tangling your limbs together.

His touch was gentle yet purposeful, exploring the softness of your skin. You felt your pulse quicken as his fingers ghosted over your hip, his thumb tracing small circles that sent shivers through your body. 

"You're so beautiful in the morning," Bucky murmured, his eyes drinking you in. "Even more beautiful than I imagined." 

Your cheeks warmed at his words. "You've imagined me in the morning?" 

A slight blush colored his cheeks, making him look boyish and vulnerable. "More times than I'd like to admit," he confessed. "All those times in the laundry room, the elevator..."

You smiled against his chest. "We were both pretty ridiculous, weren't we?"

"Speak for yourself," he teased, his hand sliding lower to cup your ass. "I was playing the long game."

You laughed, the sound muffled against his skin. "Oh, is that what you call it?"

In one swift movement, Bucky rolled you onto your back, hovering above you with a playful gleam in his eyes. "Strategy," he said, lowering his head to press lips to your collar bone, your shoulder, your chest. 

His touch was gentle yet purposeful, exploring the softness of your skin. You felt your pulse quicken as his fingers ghosted over the swell of your hip, squeezing lightly. 

"I love how you feel," he whispered, his voice husky. "So soft, so perfect." 

His hand continued its journey, caressing the generous curve of your waist. You couldn't help but lean into his touch, craving more. Bucky's fingers splayed across your stomach, appreciating the plush roundness there. 

"Let's take it slow this morning," he suggested, his free hand moving down to line up his cock to your cunt. He rubbed the tip up and down over your slick folds. 

You gasped softly as he teased your entrance, the blunt head of his cock parting your folds but not yet pressing inside. Your eyes locked with his, and something in his gaze shifted – the playfulness giving way to something deeper, more intense.

There was something profoundly intimate about seeing the desire swimming in those blue depths, knowing he was seeing the same reflected in yours.

"Is this okay?" Bucky asked, his voice rough with want yet tender with care.

You nodded, reaching up to cup his face. "Yes," you breathed. "I want to feel you."

Slowly, achingly slowly, Bucky pressed forward. You both gasped as he entered you, the sensation entirely different from the urgent coupling of the night before. This was deliberate, mindful—a gradual claiming of your body that made every nerve ending sing.

Bucky stilled when he was fully seated within you, his forehead dropping to rest against yours. His eyes, now dark with passion, remained fixed on your face as he began to move with languid, rolling thrusts. Each movement was measured, deliberate, as if he was savoring every sensation. 

"God, you feel amazing," he murmured, his voice husky with desire. 

You wrapped your legs around his waist, ankles crossing at the small of his back, allowing him to sink even deeper. A soft moan escaped your lips at the delicious fullness. Your hands roamed his broad shoulders, feeling the muscles flex and shift with each controlled thrust. 

This was nothing like the frantic passion of last night. This was slow, tender, almost reverent. Bucky maintained the unhurried pace, his hands exploring your body with gentle appreciation. His fingers traced the curve of your breast, thumb rubbing over your peaked nipple. 

You arched into his touch, sighing with pleasure as he lowered his head to replace his thumb with his mouth. The warm, wet heat of his tongue sent shivers through your body. His hips never stopped their steady rhythm, each thrust hitting a delicious spot inside you that had your pleasure mounting, powerfully but at his slow, controlled pace. It made you start to feel almost tipsy with the pleasure. 

This was intentional, mindful torture—a gradual claiming of your body that made every nerve ending sing. 

Bucky's lips found your neck, trailing soft kisses along the sensitive skin as he continued his languid pace. Your fingers tangled in his hair, holding him close as pleasure built slowly but steadily within you. The weight of his body on yours, the gentle rock of his hips, the warmth of his breath against your skin—it all combined into something that felt startlingly close to perfection. 

"Bucky," you pleaded, his name falling from your lips like a prayer. 

He lifted his head to meet your gaze again, his blue eyes dark with desire but soft with something else—something that made your heart flutter in your chest. His thumb traced your lower lip, and you caught it between your teeth, drawing a groan from deep in his chest.

"You're incredible," he murmured, his voice rough. "And I mean it, I've wanted this—wanted you—for so long."

The confession sent a wave of warmth through your chest, different from the heat of desire. You cupped his face in your hands, pulling him down for a kiss that was tender and deep, trying to pour everything you couldn't yet say into it. 

Bucky responded in kind, his lips moving against yours with gentle passion as his hips maintained their steady rhythm. His hand slipped between your bodies, fingers finding where you were joined, circling that sensitive bundle of nerves with just the right pressure. 

You gasped into his mouth, your body arching beneath him. His cock moving inside you and his fingers working against your clit pushed you closer to bliss. 

"You feel so good around me," Bucky whispered against your lips, his rhythm never faltering. "So perfect." 

The pressure was building inside you, a slow-burning fire that spread through your veins. Your hands slid down his back, feeling the play of muscles beneath smooth skin as he moved. The intimacy of the moment—this unhurried lovemaking in the gentle morning light—was almost overwhelming. 

Bucky's breathing grew heavier, his thrusts maintaining that deliberate pace but gaining intensity. You felt yourself climbing higher, closer to that precipice. Your fingernails dug lightly into his shoulders as your body tightened around him. 

"Let go for me," he encouraged, his voice strained with his own restraint. His fingers moved more purposefully against your sensitive flesh, drawing tight circles that had you gasping.

Your release washed over you like a gentle tide rather than a crashing wave, a slow-building pleasure that radiated through your entire body. You clung to Bucky, soft moans escaping your lips as you trembled beneath him. The intensity of it made your vision blur, your toes curl, your back arch beautifully off the mattress. 

"That's it," Bucky breathed, his voice thick with awe as he watched your face. "You're so beautiful like this." 

Your inner walls pulsed around him, drawing him deeper. Bucky's controlled rhythm finally faltered as he chased his own release, his thrusts becoming more urgent but still mindful. His forehead pressed against yours, his breath mingling with yours in the small space between your lips. 

"I'm close," he warned, his voice strained. 

You wrapped your legs tighter around him, urging him deeper. "Stay," you whispered against his lips. "I want you inside me."

His eyes, dark and intense, locked with yours as his rhythm faltered. With a deep groan that you felt in your very core, Bucky shuddered against you, inside you, his release flooding your body with warmth. You held him through it, hands stroking his back, lips pressing soft kisses to his shoulder, his neck, anywhere you could reach. 

For several long moments, you stayed connected, your bodies still joined as your breathing gradually slowed. Bucky's weight pressed you into the mattress, but you welcomed it, this physical reminder that he was real and here and yours—at least for this morning. 

Eventually, he shifted, carefully withdrawing from your body before collapsing beside you. His arm immediately reached for you, pulling you against his chest as if he couldn't bear any distance between you. You nestled against him, your head finding that perfect spot on his shoulder as his fingers traced lazy patterns on your skin.

The morning light had strengthened, filling the room with a golden glow that made everything feel dreamlike. Outside your window, the city was coming alive—distant car horns, the murmur of voices on the sidewalk below—but in here, time seemed suspended in amber. 

"That was..." Bucky's voice trailed off, apparently at a loss for words. 

You smiled against his chest. "Yeah," you agreed, understanding completely. "It was." 

His hand continued its gentle exploration, fingertips skimming over your shoulder, down your arm, across the curve of your waist. Not with intent this time, but with appreciation, as if he was committing the landscape of your body to memory. 

"Are you hungry?" he asked. 

You nestled closer, reluctant to leave the warm cocoon of your bed. "Mmm, starving actually." 

Bucky chuckled, the sound vibrating through his chest against your cheek. "I could make you breakfast," he offered, his fingers still tracing idle patterns on your skin. "I make a pretty mean omelet." 

"You cook too?" you asked, propping yourself up on one elbow to look at him. "Is there anything you're not good at, Barnes?" 

A playful smirk curved his lips. "I'm terrible at pretending I'm not interested in the cute neighbor who always seems to do laundry when I do." 

Heat bloomed in your cheeks. "You noticed that, huh?" 

"From day one," he admitted, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. His touch lingered, fingers trailing down your jaw. 

"Well, an omelet sounds perfect," you murmured, shifting the subject back to safer waters, but you made no move to get up. Neither did Bucky. His fingers continued their gentle exploration of your skin, tracing invisible patterns along your back.

"Five more minutes," he whispered, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

Five minutes stretched into ten, then fifteen, both of you reluctant to break the spell that seemed to cocoon your bed from the outside world.

Soft, snoozy, lazy weekend mornings had always been a favorite indulgence of yours, but if there were going to be more like this with Bucky Barnes between the sheets with you, you imagined you’d be hard pressed to leave the comfort of your bed ever again. 

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

It could've been a nightmare, but honestly? He's not insanely different than the types of guys your friends and the other girls in your town set their sights on.

The turnaround time for the engagement and wedding are really quick.

Steve attends your wedding.

Your husband's dad invited some of his associates and rivals - it's customary to invite anyone who isn't an outright sworn enemy (show off, potentially curry new favor/interest for alliances).

It's an afternoon wedding with plans to go straight to the wedding dinner and reception.

Steve was invited, but he doesn't attend the ceremony.

You've just made your grand entrance into the reception hall at the seaside hotel/resort that's been bought out exclusively for the wedding when Steve's and his men descend on the scene.

It's not a full bloodbath, but there's fights, chaos, danger, shooting, all the guests are scattered.

You're snatched by some of Steve's men and taken to some side room.

Once everyone is cleared out and dealt with, you're brought back into the reception hall, all the flowers and decorations and tables mostly still intact. There's champagne spilled across the floor, some trays of food spilled here and there as there had been cocktails and appetizers circulating when everything went down.

Steve's men march/escort you to their boss who's standing at the table where you and the rest of the wedding party would have been seated. He's polishing a gun that he holsters when you're deposited at his feet.

He tsks at the men that there's no reason to treat you harshly.

But you hardly register that because just beyond Steve, the man who just became your father-in-law only maybe two hours ago at this point is in a crumpled heap, his blood spilled out around him.

He has two of his men clear the old mafia boss out while your husband is brought in - he wants the heir to see exactly what he's done so he knows Steve's serious about business.

All the while, Steve watches you too closely.

It makes you shiver.

In fear, yes, but also with something else because this man is more man than you've ever encountered in your life. You know he's dangerous, you know it, but you can't help this pull he seems to have.

They throw your husband at Steve's feet, too, and he's tied up, but Steve doesn't seem to care so much about that.

Steve explains that it's simple business. Steve wants the port. Steve was already looking at the port and wanted the port before your dad made the deal with the other mafia boss. He tried to undercut Steve. Thought he could get away with it.

Steve wants to be very clear about how wrong it was to underestimate him.

He says this as he steps far too close to you, and draws his fingers along the neckline of your wedding dress.

He says you would both do well to think of your family and friends and their safety as you consider business tonight.

He has you put your hands on the table, then lifts your dress up around your waist, admires your pretty garter, the pretty lingerie, traces it with his fingers, then fucks you from behind while he makes your husband watch.

And you hate it for feeling so good. You're panting and grasping and wanting. And he makes you cum embarrassingly quickly in front of the other man. And you slump down and bury your head on your arms in humiliation.

Steve states plainly that he's taking over the deal. He will have the port.

If the heir agrees to the deal without a fuss, Steve will spare his life, his mom, his sisters. Steve gives him the choice of swearing loyalty or relocating.

He says they'll relocate and he wants no repercussions, and for $25 million, he'll willingly give Steve all the books and connections.

Steve agrees, cuts him loose. Says he's not going to hold him accountable for the sins of his father, especially when he's amenable to resolving this so smoothly.

Your husband moves to reach for you, but Steve is quick to step in his way.

"We agreed that I'm taking over the deal for the port. That includes her."

Your eyes go wide. The man you just married opens his mouth and closes it again.

"You're dismissed," Steve commands, flexing his jaw and taking a wider stance in front of you/blocking you completely.

The other man nods, then walks out.

Neither of you watch him.

Your eyes are on Steve, and Steve turns back to stare at you while the other man leaves.

When the door closes behind him, Steve sweeps you up bridal style without another word and takes you to the honeymoon suite.

There he rips off your dress and has his way with you and all your holes until you pass out from exhaustion. You were thoroughly used, many times pleased despite your fear and the reluctance you know you were supposed to have but couldn't seem to fully muster while he touched you.

In the morning, he hands you the annulment papers to dissolve your unconsummated marriage, and replaces the ring you had with something bigger and better and the promise of a wedding later this afternoon in front of his friends and family - and whoever you want, they can arrange to be there, too.

He assures you this is going to be an infinitely better deal for everyone involved. Steve gets use of the port. He lets you know he's going to pay your father double what his other deal had been (a deal that was going to unfairly pay him only enough to barely keep his shipping operation afloat).

"And it will be so much better for you, too, little bride," he says as he runs his fingers along your slick folds and into your aching cunt.

*blinks and fans self*

um

It was physically impossible to get Steve through a door without kissing him. He barely has time to close the door before you are on him, both hands at his face, taking his mouth like you could inhale all the air in the room through him. You taste the birthday cake’s chocolate frosting. The bed is only three steps away but you’re already climbing your boyfriend like a tree, so he hauls you up with a growl, turns, and pins you between the door and his mouth. You wrap your legs around his hips like you were made for this, for holding and being held. The frosting is sweet on his tongue but the rest is heat and teeth.

You whine into his mouth, your body already humming, already frantic with how fast it’s moving because you know what you want, there is no script to follow here. He drags his hands up under your dress, and you yank at his belt, fumbling. Your hands are shaking, but he doesn’t notice because his fingers are under your panties, finding you already wet, and you gasp into his mouth.

“God, you—” His voice is gone, throat-thick, and it comes out as a rasp. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

You want his clothes off. You want your clothes off.

But there’s no time for that.

Steve’s hips are grinding between your thighs and his tongue is doing a thing that absolutely derails your brain. His hand finds the side of your throat, heat radiating from his palm, thumb stroking in a way that is almost possessive. The contact alone could undo you.

You arch up into him, greedy for moment of contact, hungry for the friction. He presses you hard against the wall, caging you in, and when you yank your dress up around your waist, he pulls back just enough to laugh, wild and giddy, before burying his face in your neck.

“Couldn’t wait, huh?”

You’re breathless, laughing, feral with wanting. “I want you to fuck me,” you say, and you say it clearly because you want him to know it’s not a dare or a joke but a goddamn need. But as you say it, the rest of the words flood out, unstoppable, not even a heartbeat to hesitate. “I want you to fuck your baby into me, Steve.”

He goes very still. His hand tightens on your thigh, the world narrowing to the press of his body and your words vibrating in the space between your mouths.

His hips are pressed to yours so hard it hurts. He’s breathing in hard shallow bursts, like he’s trying to reconstruct your words atom by atom. “Say it again,” he grinds out, and the roughness of his voice sets off an earthquake somewhere in your chest.

You let go of the doorframe and use both hands to cup the hot, stunned side of his face, as if you could cradle his heart in your palms. “No more birth control. Tossing it tonight,” you say, and you don’t even try to keep the tremble out of your voice. “I want you to fuck your baby into me.”

He closes his eyes like it physically hurts to hear you, tilts his head back and swears a wet fuck, then looks at you, the kind of looking that’s raw and pleading. “You’re sure?”

You nod, can’t stop nodding, and run your hands down his chest over his shirt, feeling the wild thud of his heart. “I want it, Steve. So fucking much.” The sound that leaves his chest is somewhere between a groan and prayer. He’s got you off-balance, one leg hooked around his waist, but it’s not enough—you need him closer, need the rush of skin on skin, the absolute reality of what’s about to happen.

“I haven’t even put a ring on you yet, but I want everything with you,” he swears.

“Everything,” you echo desperately against his lips.

He’s not gentle. He’s never been careless, not once, but right now he’s electric, unspooling at the edges, every restraint cut loose because you’ve just handed him the world. He fumbles the fly of his jeans, shoving them down just to his thighs, and you barely manage to hook your panties aside before he’s there, blunt head nudging at you, and the stretch and intrusion is so delicious you gasp, toes curling hard into his back. Steve is thrumming with energy, barely holding himself back, and when he pushes in it’s one long, shuddering motion that leaves you seeing fireworks. You’re so slick he glides right up to the hilt, and the noise you make is obscene. He echoes it, mouth open against the slope of your throat.

You’re not even pretending to play it cool. Your nails are sunk into his shoulders through his shirt. You want to be filled, ruined, split open and bred by him. He fucks you with desperate, piston-sharp thrusts, so hard your head knocks back against the door, but you don’t care, not with the way he fills you, the way his hand is on your jaw, his eyes locked on yours, like you’re the only thing left in the world that matters.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he gasps, forehead pressed to yours, sweat slicking your hairline where he cages you against the wood. “You want me to fill you up? Want it so bad?”

The words are a chemical, rushing through your blood, making every nerve at your center throb wild. You nod, frantic, and seize his mouth with yours, biting at his lower lip, and he takes it—lets you take every ounce of him—hands braced under your ass to keep you from sliding off his cock. He keeps you impaled there, like he wants every part of your body open, wanting, his.

He grinds hard, every thrust more urgent. You feel the scrape of denim where his jeans are barely hanging on, but you can’t be bothered by it, too desperate for each thrust, the thick, punishing length of him slamming through you, harder, deeper, staking a new claim.

You tip your head back, jaw slack, trying to moan his name but only managing a stuttered syllable. Steve mirrors it, his mouth on the damp hollow of your throat, tongue catching the racing pulse. He is relentless, holding you in place and feeding his cock into your cunt.

“Can you feel me?” he growls, hand at the back of your neck, tilting you to meet the drive of his hips. “Fuck, you’re taking me so good—”

You answer with your body, with the vise of your cunt and the shaking in your legs. You are so close, the thought of his come flooding you, clenching down on him, that it’s almost too much. Almost.

“Harder,” you gasp, and he gives it to you—gives it all, hips pistoning up as your back slides up and down the wall. You let your head fall back, eyes closed, mouth wide, and Steve bites your jaw, gentle but raw, a line of heat that connects every nerve between your face and cunt. You feel the start of it, the edge of the fall, climbing and climbing and climbing, and just when you think you can’t take another second, when your thighs are burning and your lungs are empty of anything but Steve, he shifts, tilts your pelvis and drives in so deep you swear you’ll split apart.

And you do.

You come so hard you black out for a blink, body seizing, a white-hot supernova that ricochets from your cunt to the soles of your feet to the crown of your skull. Your scream is silent—thankfully—because you’re absolutely gone.

Your whole body jerks tight, fluttering around him in urgent, hungry pulses. Steve keeps moving, chasing you through it, unrelenting, grinding out his own pleasure at the edge of your aftershocks. You want to hold him still, force him to stay right there forever, but he is moving, desperate, rutting up until he finally slams in and holds, muscle corded, every inch of him vibrating.

You feel him come, hot and thick, and the sensation sends another ripple through you, echoing the first, even more intense. For a moment you both just cling to each other, breathing hard. He holds you against the door like you’re his anchor and his shipwreck.

He’s the first to move, hands trembling as he cups your cheeks, kissing you once, twice, soft and reverent. “God, I love you so fucking much.”

You can only laugh—giddy and wet-eyed, both of you still in a cling of sweat and tangled dress and gray cotton boxer briefs around his thighs. You are shaking, heart emptying every last beat into your veins, and when you watch Steve’s face—flushed, disbelieving, greedy—your own body goes soft and alive for him, all over again.

“Jesus,” you whisper, forehead to his, and your breath comes in humid pants. “I meant it. I want you to do that every night until…” You bite your lip, embarrassed by the thought. “Until we’re old. And it’s just us and a bunch of kids running around.”

He grins, dizzied, and readjusts you in his arms. “I like the sound of that.”

He’s still inside you, the slip and heat of him all-consuming. Then Steve kisses you again, slow and lazy for another moment, until the point you know you’ll both somehow have to figure out how to get back out to that party.

Phew. I wasn't ready for that.

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

You went barefoot, toes digging in the mud, and thought that the strange itch developing under your skin was maybe not so strange, not in the grand scheme of things.

Curtis said your body would change. Maybe you had outgrown your skin and your home, until the only thing left to do was to come here and wait to be collected. The urge was stronger than ever, and you could no longer resist, only yield.

The waterline was lower than you remembered, the silt and reeds exposed in the flickering starlight. You waded in ankle-deep, sinking, sensing the soft sucking of the mud as it accepted your feet. The air was loud with crickets, the occasional splash of fish, the far-off call of some night bird. The moon was gone, but the stars provided enough light to see the expanse of the lake, sprawling out imposingly.

And yet the lapping of the water around your ankles soothed in a way you hadn’t felt in weeks. You’ve felt dry in your skin, and these last days even your veins feel like hollowed-out reeds beneath the surface.

It had been eighty-three days since Curtis climbed through your window, the second night he filled you with his seed. It had been one hundred and twenty-three days since the night he claimed your body and pumped you with pleasure and with his spend all night, marked you in ways no mother’s salve could erase, left you shivering on the shore, his seed rooted in your womb.

You kept going, wading past the reeds and the brambles, the hem of your nightdress dragging through the shallows, soaking up moonless water and pond scum.

Even now, you told yourself you’re out here only to see the stars, but you knew you were lying.

The changes in your body had become more pronounced and less deniable. Soon you would no longer be able to hide the swell of your belly, blossoming with the taut dome of new life. The skin had grown soft but oddly cold, even through the high summer.

Your eyes started to reflect light in a way that makes children in the street shy away from your gaze. Your sister, ever helpful, insisted you were simply tired, that the sleepless nights were just exhaustion from your job at the bakery, the endless cycles of flour and heat, the constant lifting and kneading. Your sister believed what she said, but you sensed her growing unease—the way she looked at your belly with furtive suspicion, the way she muttered prayers when she thought you could not hear.

Curtis has not returned. The absence of him was a wound that festered.

You thought, in the aftermath, that Curtis would return often, if not every night. You thought he would haunt your window, your dreams, your shadows. But he was true to his word: he gave you space. There were nights you sat up in the window seat, knuckles white on the wood, waiting to see the gleam of blue scales or the shimmer of his eyes, and nothing appeared but the unbroken dark. Sometimes you convinced yourself this was a mercy, a kindness, and that you hadn’t wanted any of it to begin with. Other nights, you pressed your face to the glass and called his name softly into the silence the night, and the longer he hasn’t come, the more your spirit has withered.

Surely he hadn’t abandoned you.

He had seemed so insistent.

And yet… he was not here, and you were, and inside you the child of him grew steadily, unerringly, as night follows the tides. The thought left you hollow, as if your body had already begun to be carved away by the thing inside it, making you less yourself with each passing week. You felt it now, even as you shivered in the shallows; a dull, aquatic ache that stretched through your hips and lower belly, encompassing all that you were meant to be, and all that you no longer were.

There was only the wind and the water, and you, marooned between them. No answers. Only a hunger, like a current, dragging you under.

You stood, shivering in your thin shift, despite the cloak around your shoulders, and waited.

Waited for—

You didn’t know.

But after some time, you trekked back to the shore. Your body seemed to know where it wanted you to go, and you are not surprised to find yourself back near the trees where it all began, where he both ravished and worshipped your body.

You crouched into the hollow of trees and planted yourself at the base of the trunk. It was humid and close under the branches, the sweet, sharp tang of decaying leaves pressed into the earth, and beneath that, the mineral wet of the lake. You pulled your knees to your chest and listened for footsteps, for anything, but in the night the whole world was quieted to only the whisper of leaves, your own uneven breathing, and the persistent lap of water against the shore.

Though you were well-hidden, there was a break in the trees that gave you a view of the lake. You watched as the surface quivered, reflecting back the warped face of the stars, and you wondered if you were supposed to do something more. If there was a ritual to summon him, or if all of this—the ache, the hunger, the uncertainty—was part of the summoning. You dropped your face into your knees and breathed deeply, searching for any scent of him, any hint that Curtis still lingered on the edges of this world. All you tasted was old wood and lake rot and something soft and almost metallic—a scent that felt like memory.

If you closed your eyes, you could remember the weight of his hands on your skin, the dark press of his body against yours, the way his voice was both threat and comfort. You wanted to hate him for what he did, for what he made of you, but you couldn’t. Not when your own body, traitorous and tender, mourned him even as it craved his presence.

The ache spiked, sharper this time, radiating from the place where your child grew. It was not pain, exactly. More an insistence, like a call you were unable to answer. You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself. But as the night wore on, your body loosened, drooped, gave into sleep—one of the things it had long been craving.

Something woke you in the deep hours, something more than cold or discomfort. You peeled yourself off the ground, stiff and numb, leaned against the tree trunk, and then instantly sensed the difference in the air. It was charged, vibrating with static, and the reeds at the water’s edge were shivering where no wind stirred them. Your heart stammered, your mouth tasted copper, and for a moment you were sure you were only dreaming.

Curtis was there, just outside the ring of trees that sheltered you. He stood perfectly motionless at the water’s edge, as if he’d been carved from the dark itself, a shadow with a suggestion of scales and the faintest luminescence tracing the lines of his body. His eyes shone out of his face, impossibly blue, fixed on you with a ferocity so wild and so focused it made you flinch. You had not heard him arrive. You wondered how long he’d been standing there, waiting for you to open your eyes.

You found that you are not afraid, not in the way you expected. It was something else, a tension like a drawn bow. His tail was flicking behind him, the tip slicing dangerous curves through the humid air.

He moved toward you in an unhurried, even elegant way, each step deliberate, his weight barely imprinting the mud despite his hulking form, so much larger than a human man’s. He didn’t speak; you realized suddenly that he never had to. He only needed to look at you, and your body would answer.

He took your face in his hands—not soft, not gentle, but not cruel either, and tilted your head so he could look into your eyes. You saw the hunger there, a desperation that matched your own, but also a grief, and something nearly like relief.

He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t even speak. His lips crashed into yours, sharp and cold and tasting of brine. It was nothing like human kisses, but you leaned in, lips parting, swallowing the taste of him, that deep, mineral tang, the way his teeth scraped across your lower lip. When he broke off, you gasped for air, surprised at how much of your hunger was for oxygen and how much for something else entirely. His tail snapped up behind you, coiling around your back and waist, pinning you to him so you could not slip away even if you wanted to.

You shivered, but it wasn’t from cold. A sound escaped you, a wet, hungry sob, and your arms went around his shoulders before you could think better of it. You expected roughness; you found yourself enveloped, cradled against a chest so wide and firm that you could hardly breathe for the way it trapped the air in your lungs. He held you like a cherished and broken thing, and you felt the hardness of his excitement against your hip, the way it pressed through both your clothes and his. The scent of him, seawater and something sweetly corrupt, filled your nose, and you worried, briefly, that you would drown on land.

His hands went to your shoulders, then your arms, then he pulled the damp cloak from your body and let it drop to the forest floor. He was more impatient with your shift, ripping the collar so the rest of the garment could fall away and pool at your feet. The shock of air on your bare skin made you gasp, but you didn’t try to cover yourself. Curtis bent down and sniffed you, pressing his face into the hollow where your neck and shoulder met.

He inhaled deeply, pulled a low, vibrating groan from somewhere in the cage of his chest, and just like that, you were entirely, murderously desperate for him, for the feeling of his mouth and the slick pressure of his tongue, for the pain of his teeth and the searing cold of his hands sliding up your thighs. His breath fogged against your skin, cool and alive, and just hearing the ragged need in it was enough to make your knees threaten mutiny.

“Curtis,” you managed, syllables fractured and spilling out before you could stop them.

He growled, the sound vibrating through your chest, resonant and urgent. His claws grazed your shoulders as he shrugged the cloak away from you, letting it slide to the ground where it slumped darkly into the leaf mold. His hands found your waist, spanning it with impossible ease, and then his palms moved, mapping the curvature of your ribs, your breasts, then down, down, his fingers raking over your belly. He lingered on your midsection, ran his knuckles with surprising care over the curve of it, fascination and triumph wrestling for dominance in his gaze.

His hands encircled your belly and held there, as though placing a spell, or as though he expected the child to respond to his pulse. Maybe it did. You thought you felt it, some answering quiver, and you tried not to flinch. You shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want him, but when his mouth found your collarbone you choked on nothing, a breathless exhale that turned into a moan.

His mouth was cold against your skin but his tongue wet and shockingly warm, as if the heat of desire tunneled underneath his icy exterior, a core of molten need blazing inside him. Teeth pressed, not quite biting, then scraped a line along your clavicle, leaving a trail of sensation so bright it bordered on pain. Your hands went, almost stupidly, to his biceps: smooth, firm, scaled over in patches, reminding you he belonged to the lake.

Your stomach ached, low and deep, with a hunger you refused to call by name. You wanted this, you wanted him, you wanted him to take you apart, fill you until your bones dissolved, until the self you’d been before dissolved in the brine of his touch.

His lips found your throat and sucked until you thought you were being hollowed out, all feeling compressed to the bright ring where his mouth met your skin. His hands splayed at your ass, cupping and kneading, moving you against him until you both groaned in time, a shared, strangled note that seemed to ring out over the water.

He barely bothered to undress himself, simply tore away the layers of sodden cloth as if they were nothing, exposing his torso and hips until the heat of him seared into you. His cock, thick and strange and ridged with whorls of blue-black skin, already pulsed against your thigh. He backed you up against the trunk of the tree and pinned you there, one massive arm braced next to your head, and dipped his head to your chest.

His tongue rasped along the curve of your breast, a wet, hungry line, and when his teeth found your nipple, you cried out, the sound trapped between your tongue and his. He bit, just hard enough to mark, then soothed it with that impossible tongue, flicking and sucking until your head spun and a firecracking ache tethered itself from breast to cunt.

His hand was already between your legs before you could breathe out his name, and his fingers--long, ridged, preternaturally strong--slid through the wetness between your thighs. He pressed in, tasted how ready you were, and when he drew his hand away, he brought two glistening fingers to his mouth and licked them clean with a noise so greedy, so hungry, it made your core tighten almost painfully.

“The desperate smell of your want was intoxicating enough, little one,” he growled, “but your taste?”

His claws sank into the flesh of your hips and he yanked you off your feet, spinning you so fast your head swam. You landed, hands and knees in the leaf mulch, your bare ass exposed to the night and to him, your thighs smeared with your own want. His grip found your shoulder and pressed you down, arching your back, planting you so firmly into the earth you could feel the cool dampness rising through your palms and shins. You didn’t fight when he spread your legs wider. If anything, you shuddered in relief, because this, this was what you needed.

His breath was a frigid fog against your skin, and then the blunt, slick head of his cock was nudging at your entrance, so wide it seemed impossible to take him. You whimpered against the moss, torn between terror and a nearly painful anticipation. Though he had your entrance amply slick with your own arousal, the size of him was still enough to make you gasp when he breached you, slow and relentless. You felt yourself stretch, felt the ache of it, but he did not yield.

He slid in further, relentless, unyielding, and your entire body shuddered around the breach. You scrambled for purchase, fingers digging furrows in the loam, and then his hand was at the base of your spine, stroking small, slow circles in a semblance of comfort.

“Look at you,” he growled, voice low in your ear as he bottomed out with a shudder that rocked you forward. “You were made for me. You fit like a custom-forged scabbard, little one. I could breed you a thousand times and never get tired of the way you clench around me.”

His cock pulsed inside you, impossibly thick, and every subtle drag and shift of his hips sent a shiver through your entire body. He held you there, immovable, his weight pinning you to the mud and leaf litter, fucking into you with a slow, brutal rhythm that left you gasping every time he drove home. Each thrust felt like it would split you, stretch you beyond your limit, and each time you bent, pliant, desperate to be filled further, to be ruined in the same way again and again.

His tail wrapped around your left ankle, hoisting the leg upward and outward, so you were splayed wide, offered to him and the lake and the night. He leaned forward, his chest pressing between your shoulders, bent over you, mouth at your ear now, voice ragged and low. “Little one,” he growled, “I will never let you forget how you felt this night. No matter how many times I take you, I’ll always want to take you again.”

You didn’t bother to hide your noises now; any vestige of shame was gone, burned away by the friction and fullness and the way his hands gripped you with such claiming certainty. You felt yourself dripping down your thighs, making a mess of the ground beneath, and you thought it fitting, to mark the earth as you were marked, to leave nothing untouched by him.

“If the lake had not insisted on a bloodline to restore balance, I would have demanded it. You are the only thing I want in all this world, and every drop of you belongs to me.”

He fucked you harder, faster, driving you into the ground with abandon. Each thrust made you whine, made your elbows buckle and your head drop forward, hair stuck to your face with sweat and dew. He reached around and slid two fingers to your clit, rubbing in tight, ruthless circles that sent the world spinning white-hot.

You came so hard your vision narrowed to a single bright point. Your limbs splayed and trembled, nails sinking into the dirt and your ass bucking up to meet every brutal blow, savoring the way it forced you open, greedily cradling his cock to the hilt with every cycle. Curtis growled so low and animal it vibrated the whole length of you, and his hands tightened on your hips, guiding you, fucking you back onto him, making sure you took every last centimeter his body offered.

You wanted to scream with it. You wanted to howl his name so loud they’d hear it in every village around the lake. But you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but let him use you, let the rhythm of his rutting into you become the only pulse that mattered. All sense of the world dropped away, and there was only the slap of skin, the wet, hungry noises of your cunt taking his cock, the raw, animal sound of your own voice every time the head of him pressed so deep it made your belly ache.

Curtis—no longer the stranger, never just the creature—was everything: the air, the ache, the axis about which you spun. Every time he slurred your name into your ear, mangling the syllables with his animal tongue, a fresh ripple shuddered through you. He rutted you in the dirt, rutting away the remnants of your old life, seeding you so deeply you could feel it pooling hot inside where the child already grew.

He never relented. Even as your body tried to collapse, he pinned you, forced you to take more, forced you beyond your own edge, made it impossible to know where you ended and he began. He held you through it, every time you tried to shudder or twitch away, his hands locked your hips exactly where he needed them, pulling on the strings of want and need until you unspooled every last thread, the tip of his tail tormenting your throbbing clit.

If you had thought yourself hollowed by his absence, you were now made whole by his invasion, every place inside you mapped and remade by him, by this act of mating, of possession. He bit the back of your neck, just at the nape, so hard you cried out and the sound split the night open, echoing off the trees and out to the water, where every living thing had to know what he was doing to you. The air rang with your sounds, and the taste of copper and earth and salt was on your tongue, and you felt the sharp crackle of him biting through the flesh just enough to breach the skin, a mark so carnal it would never fade. You wanted to be marked. You wanted to be his—no, you were his, and always would be, because some part of you had never belonged to anything else, and he simply reminded your body whose it was.

And then he came. You felt it, the flood of cold and the clutching, almost electrical pulse. His cock throbbed inside you, filling you even as you clenched and spasmed around him, milked every last drop of his seed so there could be no doubt, none, what your purpose was. He stayed like that, locked to you, fused to your body as if he could keep you in place for the rest of eternity by the sheer force of want. All up your spine, his scales left the faintest scratch, the imprint of his cooler body temperature, a memory of friction that anointed you as singularly his. Curtis kept you there, cock still embedded in you, his weight almost comforting, the way he spread over you like a shield against the cold and the dark and anything else that could try to threaten you.

Eventually, he shifted, rolling you gently onto your back as though conscious of your fragility. His cock slid from your body with a raw, slippery sound, and you felt some of his spend leak from your fluttering cunt, soaking the ground beneath you.

He hovered over you, gaze unblinking, so close you could see the reflection of your own trembling, ruined face in his eyes. The hard line of his body pressed you flat to the earth, and you felt every inch of him, every scale and muscle, the brutal weight of his presence. He let his hands roam your stomach and your hips, drawing slow, reverent circles, memorizing the curves of your form that he already knew too intimately. For a moment, you thought he was going to say something soft, something almost human. Instead, his mouth settled by your ear and he said, voice stripped to its essential hunger, “You come with me now.”

His tail curled around your thigh, not as a threat but as a matter-of-fact assertion of what would happen next. You were dizzy from the way he’d taken you, your cunt still raw and throbbing.

He lifted you, all at once, as if you weighed nothing. You were limp in his arms, boneless from the waves of pleasure, trailing wetness and ruin as he carried you back to the water. It should have been cold, but when the lake closed around your body it was only a relief, a soft, enveloping embrace that soothed the raw places. He held you afloat, one powerful arm under your knees, the other bracing your back, until your eyes unblurred and you could see his face above you, illuminated by the briefest shimmer of phosphorescence off the water. His eyes were luminous, impossible in the dark.

He kissed you again, more gently this time, and you let your head fall against his chest. He began to swim, slow and tireless, propelling you through the black, star-pocked surface and into the heart of the lake.

Hope you enjoyed a bit of monster-fucking Monday.

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You're staying at the Skulsfjord Dome.

To see the Northern Lights.

And it's beyond breathtaking.

And you go on a reindeer sleigh ride on Saturday.

The whole weekend is cozy and relaxed and wonderful.

And the second night in the glass igloo is just as magical as the first.

You're curled up in bed together, naked after a couple of orgasms, staring up at the gorgeous sky, when Steve nuzzles the top of your head and asks, "Are you ready to be my wife yet?"

Your gasp and your heart stutter stops in your chest.

He chuckles and shifts onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow to look down at you. He trails his large, calloused but warm hand over your stomach, up your sternum, and over to rest over your heart. He leaves it there, the weight of it an anchor—steady, grounding, a warmth that makes everything in your chest flutter. You wrack your brain for something clever and dismissive to stay, but the words snag on the spike of feeling that the question rips through your center. Is it a joke? It doesn’t feel like a joke. He’s looking at you with the same blend of intensity and hope that he saves for only the most private, most unguarded moments between you.

"You don't even have a ring," you ultimately say, poking his jaw with your index finger. You mean it to be a tease, but the way he catches your hand with his, pressing your palm flat to his chest, you feel the honest, vulnerable drumbeat of his heart. It makes you shy all at once.

"Who says I need one to make a claim?" He dips his head and kisses your temple, a sweep of nose and lips over your pulse. “I just want you to know I want you. Always. In every way.” His hand, splayed over your heart, is an anchor—steady, unhurried, quietly certain.

You savor it, biting the inner arch of your cheek against the ridiculous surge of giddy warmth. This is insane, and yet somehow it’s also not. You are not a princess—technically you’re a mafia queen, yes—but you are not the sort of girl who gets proposed to in an ice-lit bed, under the aurora, by a man with flour-dusted hands and a weaponized jaw. You aren’t, but here you are, squirming under the weight of your should-be rival Steve’s too-handsome-to-be-believed face and the certainty in his voice.

He waits. He knows you too well, so he knows you—a little too well, if you’re honest with yourself. He’s got your number when it comes to displays of affection, and he’s learned not to press too hard, not to corner you, not to tip you into the old panic that set in every time an ex tried to pull you in tight and close off all your exits. He knows you require flight routes in every room. He knows you second-guess anything that feels too easy, too soft, too unconditional. You can’t help it. Girls like you get taught, from a very young age, that love is a liability, and you have an advanced degree in self-preservation.

There’s no pressure to answer, not the kind you’re used to, but you can read a certainty—a knowing in the set of his mouth, the heavy comfort of his hand.

You have never been a person who trusts quick, or deep. You were taught to armor every soft part of yourself, to never show your hand before the other guy does. Play the clever and witty entertainer, always keep the upper hand.

But although you and Steve banter and spar, it’s not for any kind of show anymore. So, too, has fallen away any battle for an upper hand.

With Steve, the risk is less about your heart and more about the thrill of finding someone who actually understands every dangerous, sharp edge of you and just wants to admire the blade. Sometimes you think that's the only real way to be loved: with the open-eyed clarity that you might cut back, that you might, at any moment, become the person everyone else is rightly afraid of.

You sink further into the coziness of the bed and let the aurora dance over the scene, the neon ripples spilling green and violet through the glass. Your hand slides up over his knuckles until your finger finds that little dent in the back of his hand, the callus that’s new. You press it, just for the excuse to touch him, and say, "You’re awfully sure of yourself, Rogers."

Steve grins and shrugs. "I’d say it was confidence, but with you, it’s more a surety that’s been seeping into my bones since the first night we spent together.”

It’s less about daring you to say yes and more about telling you he knows what’s going to happen, eventually. Whether it’s now, or next week, or three years from now. That it’s you, and him, and nothing else ever made as much sense.

“Marry me then,” you huff, but softness edges every bit of it.

He snorts, like you’ve said something both adorable and irreverent. “You know I will,” he promises, and pulls you in under his chest until his breath warms the bottoms of your ears. “Tomorrow or in a year, you say the word and it’s done.”

The wordless hush after is something you want to live in forever. Maybe you do. The lights slowly swirl on the horizon, and Steve presses trails kisses up your jaw to your lips. You kiss him back, slow and deep, savoring the luxury of the time you have here together in this weekend of escape. Steve tastes like mint and desire and—unbelievably—hope, like the honest possibility that you were meant to find each other, to share every bit of this.

When you finally break apart, the sky outside has pulsed into a crazed spiral of color. His palm coasts down, teasing over the slope of your hip, then between your thighs, and then—without breaking eye contact—he drags his cock up the seam of your cunt, rocking it forward just enough to catch and press at your entrance. He’s thick and hot, impossible not to feel even before he’s inside, but he’s so gentle it nearly undoes you. You don’t look away, not even as he fills you slow, one inch at a time, splitting you open with a deliberate, almost reverent patience.

You let out a long, open-mouthed exhale, body melting and yearning for more. Your entire body throbs beneath him, legs falling apart in invitation. He bends over you, bracing his forearm beside your head and touching his lips to the pulse at your throat. You grip his biceps, breath shuddering, thighs splayed wide to cradle the slow, steady invasion.

He goes slow, keeps his weight off you, and the only sound is the low, open-mouthed groan he makes as he fills you the rest of the way. You don’t know whose moan is louder, honestly. There’s always been something about the way you go soft for him, the way your body responds—pliant, greedy, hungry for every careful inch.

“Oh, you always feel so goddamn fucking good,” he nearly growls. He pulls back, slow, and pushes in again, every drag controlled. There’s nothing to prove except how much both of you want this, how good you both are at giving in. His jaw is tight, his eyes never leaving yours, and the gentle thrill of being that seen, that consumed, unspools all the retorts and one-liners that usually barricade you against sensation.

You arch into his next thrust, angling your hips so he hits deeper, the ache blissful. He sets a slow, devastating rhythm. You don’t bother stifling the sounds that slips from your chest. Steve’s grin, pressed to your neck, goes feral at the encouragement, and his hand migrates from your ribs down to your thigh, palm squeezing you just above the knee, and you shiver at the contact.

You want to murmur “harder” or “faster,” to jockey for even a sliver of control, but it seems fitting—poetic, even—to just let yourself be unraveled at this pace, slow enough your whole body aches anew for every half-stroke. You’ve never wanted to surrender anything—let alone everything—to someone else.

Only Steve.

He keeps you right there, balanced on the exquisite edge between pleasure and need, rhythm impossibly careful, controlled, relentless. You can’t keep your hands off him, nor do you want to to. You never do. You drag your nails over his back, sink them into the tense knots of his shoulders, feel the torque of every slow, leveled thrust as he fills you again and again.

It’s bizarre, the way the hunger and the tenderness braid together—no violence, no dominance, just heat and the deep, echoing relief of being wanted, being made to feel important, essential to each other. The truth you’d been trying to put off time and time again, not trusting that it could be real.

But the more honest you are, laid bare here beneath him, you can’t deny it any more than you can stop breathing that it’s him. He’s everything you will ever want or need, and looks at you like you’re every bit of everything to him. It won’t be perfect—neither of you is naive enough to think that—but you know you will face any storms or threats together.

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But it wasn’t the crullers or croissants or even the goddamn Italian grinder on focaccia that kept him coming back. It was you. The breeze-in-the-door, flour-on-your-elbow, permanent half-exasperation-half-kindness etched onto your face, you.

He had been so drawn in by how you interacted with everyone. He had almost been skeptical of it at first because you were nice to everyone the same way. Not flirty per se, but buoyant, capable of making anyone—stuffy old lawyers, the construction crews in Carhartts, the hungover art students—feel cared about in the extremely brief window they interacted with you. Steve liked to think he wasn’t a sucker for that kind of thing, but here he was: a sucker, on the hook, and you didn’t have a clue.

You were friendly as hell with your regulars, that was true. But you were flirtatious—almost aggressively so—with every single one of them except Steve, whom you treated with something so close to total neutrality it had become a running joke, and yet he sometimes wanted to tip the pastry case over from sheer frustration.

He’d seen you ask the UPS driver if he’d modeled for their calendar, shoot finger guns at the tow truck lady and tell her she “looks like she can handle any kind of heavy machinery,” compliment the city inspector’s mustache, and wink at a grandma with such easy, unpretentious charm the air sparkled around you. Meanwhile, you’d slide a mug of coffee his way with a smile so mild and familial Steve sometimes checked his arms for the label reading “brother” you must surely see when you looked at him.

Maybe he’d grown soft in his late thirties. He was a long way from sneaking into clubs with fake ID’s and joyriding tattoo machines over his own knuckles. He’d traded in the tough-kid sneer for business owner’s collected-ness, for rolling out the appointment books and chatting roof repairs with his landlord, even for sitting through Sunday markets week after week with you as you went from stall to stall.

Not that that was any kind of chore.

No, the only thing that made your weekly tradition a true torture was that he couldn’t twine his fingers with yours or put his hand on the small of your back while the two of you made the rounds. But he wouldn’t give up those trips for anything. It was the time when the two of you got to talk about real things, where you went from friends to best friends. The place where you’d shared once that you took over the lease on this place because nothing else made sense after your mom died, that the ritual of mixing and stirring and proofing was the thing that helped you feel connected to her since you’d done so much baking with her growing up.

The way you’d said it—casually, like a punchline to a dumb joke—had stuck to him ever since: “I used to think I’d be an engineer, and now I fold dough like it’s a religion. Mom would laugh her ass off.” He’d wanted to reach for you then, but you were already three strides ahead, drifting toward the honey vendor.

He didn’t know if you realized how much you let him in, even as you left him out. Sometimes he caught you watching him when you thought he wasn’t looking, but the minute your eyes met, you’d toss him a snarky remark and breeze away, leaving an invisible cord attached to his chest.

So it made sense, in its own way, that when Steve’s dog died, you were the one who managed to talk him out of being stoic about it.

He’d mentioned it only in passing—“Yeah, lost her last night. She was old”—but you’d read the extra tightness in his jaw and marched yourself around the counter, grabbed his elbow, and told him, “I need a second set of hands in the kitchen. No, I don’t care if you’re good at it.” You deposited him in front of a thirty-pound sack of flour. Twenty minutes later, up to your elbows in wet dough, you handed him a wad and said, “Punch it, real hard,” so he did, and he cried a little, and you punched it too, and said, “She was a good dog.” You talked about his mutt for two hours while prepping for the next day’s bake.

Even after that, the next morning, you handed over his coffee in that same noncommittal, platonic style and told him to “try not to spill it.”

He’d been through enough relationships to know when someone wasn’t interested—god, had he ever—but, like a stubborn weed, hope kept growing sideways through the cracks. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he just needed to cut to the core of you. Maybe nobody tried. Maybe nobody lasted beyond the coffee smell and the hard mornings and the rising up at dawn.

Three years of best-friending it.

Steve had been dating someone when he first met you, but that had run its course and ended a few months later. You had been dating someone pretty seriously until a year ago when it crashed out in a blaze of epic proportions that you had needed time to move on from.

But now…

Well, maybe it was still not time, but Bucky had raked him over the coals, yet again, for continuing to stay on the sidelines.

So today is it.

Today he will ask you to go to dinner with him.

It’s a Tuesday, which means the shop will be slow enough by three that you’ll let your one of your reliable midday employees close.

Steve shows up at quarter to, trying not to hover while you count the till. The place is nearly empty except for one guy scrolling a phone over an untouched scone. You are hunting coins under the register when you say, “Hey. You got a sec?”

It is not at all what he’d planned, because suddenly you are the one doing the asking, voice serious, and he is off-balance enough to just follow you through the kitchen, down the warped-tile hallway lined with racks of cooling cookies, and out the heavy back door to the alley.

Behind the bakery, the city’s hum is muffled by dumpsters and the ancient brick walls, a secret place infused with the warm yeast smell and the drip of the condenser. You turn, arms folded, pinning him with a look that banishes any notion of easy banter.

“I have a weird favor to ask,” and he tries to hide how his heart just leapt, because even if it wasn’t what he hoped, being needed is pretty much all he wants, in any form. “Don’t laugh, but I need a tattoo. Like, right away.”

He blinks. “Yeah, that’s—actually, that’s not weird at all. I am a tattoo artist.”

You give a sharp laugh, then take in a deep breath before slowly exhaling. “It’s kind of for my mom. I know, very basic. I just… every year I think I’ll finally do something about it. Then the anniversary comes and I can’t decide on anything. But this morning I just… I think I know what I want. Can you fit me in this afternoon?”

“Absolutely,” he said, quickly. “You don’t even have to ask. We can go now.”

You tugged the sleeves of your shirt down over your wrists, suddenly embarrassed. “I don’t want it to be a big thing, though. I don’t want everyone in the shop to see me cry like an idiot.”

He almost told you, right there, that he’d never thought you could be an idiot if you tried, but instead he said, “We’ll do it upstairs. Private room. I’ll lock the door, threaten to murder anyone who knocks. You can ugly-cry all you want, I promise.”

You smiled. “If I cry, you’re fired as my friend.”

“I accept those terms,” he said solemnly, but something lighter bloomed in your expression and he wanted to keep it going, to keep you right here with him, right now.

You shifted from one foot to the other. “So, do you want me to come with you now, or… Oh, you came here first! Did you want something? We can take it to go—”

Steve reached out and squeezed your arm, awkward with how casual it felt but very aware of the heat in your skin. "Naw, I’m not hungry now, but maybe later…” he hedged. Dinner after a tattoo would be a natural potential bridge to a next or something more, but this was more important. “Let’s do this for you first.”

Conversation on the walk over to Obsidian is easy between the two of you. A few of the guys say hello as Steve walks you past their stations and to the back to head upstairs, but to their intuition and credit, none of them make a fuss. They might all suspect, but only Bucky knows that you hang the sun and moon for him.

It’s a narrow flight to the second floor, freshly painted but with old bannister rails, and the studio up here is like entering a greenhouse at dusk—half-shaded by big ferns, incense from the main shop drifting up, dust motes floating in lazy parabola, tattered sketchbooks on the shelves. He’s used it only for the clients who can’t abide by the patter or music of the downstairs crowd. Some part of him is always startled by how peaceful it feels after the buzz and bustle of downstairs.

He pulls out his supplies and sets up his station with the ease of a thousand repetitions, and you just sit, perched on the edge of the armchair, collecting your words.

“I want a strawberry,” you blurt, the minute the silence stretches a touch too long. “On my inside arm, like here.” You point to the vulnerable pale spot above your elbow, the skin everyone calls ‘the kiss’ because it smarts the most.

Steve cracks a smile. “Not a rolling pin, or a whisk, or a Mom heart?”

You shake your head, serious. “She used to put half a strawberry on my cereal every morning, even when we were broke, even when I was too old for doting on.”

“You’re never too old to be doted on,” he says immediately, wondering who made you feel that way, wanting to dote on you for the rest of your life.

His nostrils flare at that thought because, sure, it’s probably true, but he hasn’t even taken you to dinner yet. When he looks up, you’re biting your lip.

There’s another beat of silence, and then you blink, and say, “So, I want it small. Maybe here?” You point at the exact spot inside of your left elbow, so close to the vein.

He leans in, careful, and the air between you grows electric. You’ve given him this moment, so he mustn’t fuck it up—he commits your pointing fingertip and the angle of your arm to memory, because the giving of a tattoo is as much about trust as design.

“Strawberry,” he murmurs, “tastefully tiny, right there.” His hand hovers, not quite touching, respectful of boundaries you never invited him past. “Do you want leaves? Seeds? A little flower?” He’s listening, but his pencil is already skittering across thin tracing paper with deft, sure lines.

You consider. “Maybe just the berry. Like it’s about to be eaten, but not yet. The anticipation.”

He nods, continuing to sketch: a pop of red, a sliver of green leaf, the pale seeded dots. “I can do that. Color, or—?”

“Color,” you say, and then, dropping your shoulder, add, “Obnoxiously bright. Cartoonish, even.”

He laughs, “I can do that.” You’re watching his hands, and he wonders if you can see how steady they are despite the tremor that comes with being near you like this.

He sketches in silence for a minute, and then holds the design up.

“That’s it,” you say. “That’s her,” and you crack a laugh.

He laughs, and busies his hands with the ritual: gloves, ink caps, needle packets, a small array of rainbow inks, and some washable ink pens to do a quick freehand of the design on your skin before he makes it permanent.

He’s never been nervous to tattoo anyone, but his hands feel too big now, too clumsy all of a sudden. But when he marks the spot, rounds the perfect oval red and gives it poppy green leaves and a stem, your arm does not flinch away. You prop your chin on the opposite palm and let him work, letting out an occasional warm, shaky breath.

You say, finally, “My mom had one on her ankle. Not a strawberry, but a little flower. She got it in the seventies and it looked like a bruise most of the time. She hated it, but she never covered it up.”

He keeps his head down, the machine a hum in the soft air. “Because it was a memory?”

You nod. “Because it was what made her different from all the other moms in our suburb. Even if she never wore skirts.”

The needle makes a short, sweet whine as he inks the tiny shape to your skin. You watch, not blinking. He wants to joke that you can look away, but something in the set of your jaw makes him respect it, so he lets you watch. At the last line of green, your eyes glass a little but you don’t brush it away, don’t make a sound.

After he blots it and wipes it down, you hold your arm up and flex, then stare at the tiny bandage like it’s a miracle. “It’s perfect,” you say, and your smile—unfiltered, raw—swells some private, breakable thing in Steve’s chest.

You don’t say anything for a minute, then, “I can’t tell if I’m about to cry or laugh.”

He grins, peels off his gloves, and lets himself look at you. “You can do both. It’s allowed.”

And you didn’t need his permission, but it’s like him saying it allows you to release all the feeling—excitement, nostalgia, longing, contentment, being singularly still for so long—and you laugh and cry. “I said crying would get you fired as my friend though.”

Steve considers for half a heartbeat, but it’s too perfect a shot not to take it.

“Maybe it’s about damn time.”

“What?” you blink up at him.

“No more friends. I want more. With you,” Steve says. The words are airless, nothing like he planned or how he’d ever said anything to anyone, but the rawness of your eyes and the trembling in your hands make him think maybe this is the only way to say something like that. The only way to be true.

The light shifting through the upstairs window fractures across your face, and your mouth is rounded in a little surprise. Steve’s stomach somersaults as you wrap your arms around your own ribcage, like you’re trying to keep all the words inside.

He says, gently, “Sorry. Too much. Ignore me if you—”

But you cut him off with a snort that is half delight, half incredulity. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

He laughs, unoffended, but also uncertain and caught off guard. “What?”

“Of course I want more with you. How could you not know that?”

Steve coughs out a laugh, equal parts stunned and relieved, and rubs his hand over his bearded jaw. “You never flirted with me,” he says, and the words, spoken out loud, sound a little sad, a little foolish. But he has to say them. “Not once. I thought I was, you know, on your ‘good neighbor’ list. Like, honorary grandma status.”

You stare at him, incredulity turning your face to something vivid. “Steve, you absolute moron. I flirt with everyone because I don’t care if I ever see them again. You’re the only one I couldn’t pull that with. You’re my best friend.” There’s a hush in your voice, suddenly vulnerable. “And what if I screwed it up?”

He lets that sink in. The shape of your logic is so backwards it makes perfect sense. “I’m scared of screwing it up too,” he says. “It’s terrifying to want one thing, one person, more than you want to even breathe.”

You both go silent again, this time full of an almost giddy electricity, nervous and new.

You stand up. It looks like maybe you’re about to pace. Instead you circle around his worktable and come to stand in front of him. He plants both of his hands on your waist, bringing you in closer, and your hands go softly to his shoulders. You’re searching his face for a sign, one last double-check that he means it, and he tries to meet you—steady, open, unafraid.

“I think I need you to kiss me now,” you say, and Steve nearly laughs because that’s what he’s wanted to do for at least two solid years.

He does. Careful at first—he may be a tattoo artist, but this is a more delicate first touch than any needle to skin. Your lips are soft and earnest, matching his own hunger.

He doesn’t let go, not for a while. When you finally separate, you’re both smiling so hard your cheeks hurt.

“Wow,” you say. “You’re a pro at that, too?”

He shrugs, mock casual. “I do my best.”

“Is this what you were planning when you came to the shop today?”

He looks at you, all artifice gone. “Honestly? I was going to ask you to have dinner with me. But maybe we can go beyond that, now.”

“No,” you say firmly, and lower yourself to sit on his thigh, his arms still around you, “I definitely want dinner,” you insist. “I’m starving.”

He grins. “Fair enough, but then afterwards, maybe I show you what else I’m a pro at.”

“Oh, are there more sketchbooks at your house?”

He laughs. “No, you little menace. Well, there are, but that’s not,” he stops himself and shakes his head. Then he gives you a scrutinizing look. “Awfully bold, assuming I’m taking you back to my place already tonight. We haven’t even gone on a first date yet.”

You pluck a tattoo pen off his table and poke his chest before he can finish the thought, and he grins wider, snatching it easily from your hands.

“We’ve had basically three years of dates, Steve. I think we can skip a formality or two.” You hold his gaze, and it’s like you’ve both been set loose from something: the orbit of expectation, the inertia of being just friends. “I want you, Steve. All the time. And I want grilled cheese.”

He runs both hands up your arms, careful to miss the fresh wrap, and shakes his head in mock exasperation. “You’re an impossible woman,” he says. “But I am bringing you home tonight. And I’ll even make grilled cheese.”

“With raspberry jam,” you say.

He shakes his head, familiar with your quirky love of that salty and sweet pairing. “Not strawberry?” he asks.

“Nope, raspberry is the top tier choice. And a bit of mustard.”

“Mustard?” he scoffs. “When did you discover this?”

“Take me home and maybe I’ll tell you the glorious tale, Rogers.”

“Deal,” he says, then pulls you in for another kiss, the best and only way he wants to seal it.

I've known the shape of Steve's story for a long time. I don't know why I didn't write it sooner, but when I saw this early this morning, it just sort of captured my day and spilled out here, and I'm so glad it did!

And I think we might see a little more of them... if we'd like that.

smutty part two: Put Your Sweet Lips on My Lips

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