What He Sees
content warning: reader's body image + self-esteem issues; reader's negative self-talk
They’d known each other since the first week of sixth grade. He remembered it like a movie scene—her standing at the edge of the blacktop in worn sneakers, backpack two sizes too big, and an expression that said: I don’t need you, but I dare you to try me anyway.
She was the new kid—quiet, sharp-eyed, tongue like a whip when she did speak. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, it was either brilliant or brutal. Joaquin had never seen someone shut down a bully with just a look, a dry “you done?” and a casual walk away that somehow felt more powerful than any punch. She was fire in the shape of a girl, and Joaquin had been in awe of her since the beginning.
By high school, she’d carved an incredible reputation: smartest in the class, quickest to call out bullshit, the kind of girl teachers were afraid to underestimate. Valedictorian. A brain that made Ivy League recruiters chase her. But she’d chosen him—chosen to enlist with him, to fly beside him, to be part of something bigger together.
“Where you go, I go,” she had said nonchalantly when they signed their contracts, her fingers intertwining with his under the metal desk in the recruiting office—and she meant it. She always did.
Years passed. Bases changed. They got older, better, stronger. And then Sam Wilson called. The Falcon wanted a team. Joaquin said yes before the sentence was finished. She followed without blinking—signed on as Chief of Intel and Tech. By then, she’d already burned through her bachelor's at MIT—finished early, of course, because of course she did.
She was in the final stretch of a dual MA/PhD in advanced systems engineering and cyber intelligence when Sam Wilson called. The week before she and Joaquin reported for duty, she defended her dissertation. Passed with flying colors. Walked out of the room with two new degrees and the quiet, satisfied kind of pride that only came from surviving something grueling on her own terms.
They celebrated the way she liked best: no fanfare, no chaos—just a quiet beach in Mexico, two hammocks, good tequila, and their phones turned off for seventy-two straight hours. Joaquin had kissed her under a star-choked sky, sand clinging to their legs, murmuring, “The world can wait for once.”
Now, with boots on the ground and Sam's team forming around them, she was right where she belonged—exactly where she’d always chosen to be. And Joaquin still looked at her like he couldn’t believe he’d gotten this lucky. She was beautiful, but not in the way anyone expected. Thick dark curls—curls that defied gravity, expectation, and nearly every military regulation she'd ever danced around—framed a face full of sharp edges and smarter eyes. Her skin was warm brown, soft and sun-kissed from years of being outdoors.
Latina, like Joaquin, fluent in the same Spanish he spoke at home, but she also spoke flawless French, courtesy of her Haitian paternal grandparents, and Arabic with near-native ease thanks to the MIT immersion program she'd been accepted into her freshman year of high school. Joaquin used to joke she was fluent in half the languages on the damn security clearance list. She used to roll her eyes and call him “tonto” for acting impressed, even though she secretly loved it.
Because beneath the fire, the fight, and the fierce independence, she’d always trusted him to see her fully—not just the genius, not just the soldier. She trusted him to see the girl who used to sit next to him at lunch with tangled curls, ripped notebooks, and eyes that never missed anything. And he still did. That’s how they got here: three months into something brand new, and yet nearly two decades in the making.
Now she was sitting on the edge of the bed, hair damp from the shower, wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, her bare thighs brushing the sheets. Joaquin was behind her, sprawled lazily, elbow bent as he watched her without her knowing. He had quickly noted how she’d been unusually quiet tonight. She wasn’t cold—never cold, always tauntingly sweet; rather she was distant in that way he recognized from their younger years. She was in her own head and that usually meant she was picking herself apart.
When she finally turned toward him, her eyes flicked down to her body—just for a second—but it was enough. Her gaze dipped low, scanned the oversized shirt that clung slightly to the swell of her waist, then quickly darted away like she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to. Like her own reflection startled her.
He noticed the shift immediately. The subtle tension in her shoulders, the way her hands fidgeted with the hem of his shirt that she was wearing like she was trying to cover more skin. That was the tell—her tell. She only did that when something was clawing at her thoughts and refusing to let go.
Joaquin sat up a little, the casual ease in his posture replaced with quiet attention. He watched her closely now, not in the way a man looks at the woman he’s in love with—though, God, that too—but the way you look at someone when you know them. When you’ve seen their armor and know exactly how to spot the cracks.
“Hey,” he said softly, his voice low, like it was meant to carry between just the two of them. “Where’d you go just now?”
She didn’t answer at first. Her eyes stayed down, fingers still picking at the fabric of the shirt—his shirt, which she’d worn a dozen times before without a second thought. But tonight, it was different. He could feel it.
“Talk to me, carñio.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his tone gentle but grounded. “You’re not really here.”
Her jaw tensed, just for a moment. Then she exhaled and lifted her chin—but not enough to meet his eyes.
“Do you ever wish I looked different?” she asked, shame dripping in her voice.
The question landed like a weight in the air between them. Not because he didn’t have an answer—but because the question itself was so foreign to him, so far from how he saw her, it took him a second to realize she meant it seriously.
“No way … different how, baby?”
She let out a small, humorless laugh. “I don’t know. Just... different.”
But she did know. He could see it in the way her hands now folded across her stomach, arms crossing in a reflexive self-conscious curl. The way she was trying to shrink—not physically, but emotionally. The way she was pulling in, curling within herself to hide.
“I’ve always had curves, right?” she said, voice quieter now. “Hips, thighs, all that. But my chest never caught up. I’m barely a B cup. My boobs are far apart, and they’re not the perky kind—they kind of… point. And when I lie down, they flatten out completely. I just feel like I’m missing something that everyone else has.”
She finally looked at him then, eyes wide and open and vulnerable in a way she never showed anyone else.
“Sometimes I feel like I look like a boy from the chest up. Especially when we’re…” she paused, lips tightening. “... especially when we’re close. Like, when we’re making out—or almost there. I feel like you’ll look at me and wonder why I don’t look like other girls. Like I’m not enough.”
Her voice cracked at the end, and Joaquin felt it echo in his chest like something breaking. He reached out, gently, palm resting on her thigh to ground her.
“Mi cielo…” Joaquin started, but she looked away again, shoulders tense. So he moved closer, sat up straighter, and let the quiet stretch just long enough to be intentional. “You’re not wrong. Not one single inch of you is wrong.”
She scoffed, quiet and self-deprecating. He hated that sound.
“You think I don’t see you?” he asked, voice low, raw. “You think I haven’t been looking at you every day since middle school like you hung the stars yourself? You think I’ve been waiting years—literal years—just to get close to you, only to be disappointed when I finally do? Do you think I’m not obsessed with the way you look? Because I am. Every part of you.”
She closed her eyes, almost like she didn’t believe him—but he caught the tremble in her lip before she could hide it.
“You’ve always had this way of walking into a room like you don’t owe it anything,” he said. “Like you’re there because you chose to be, and the space should be grateful. And I watch you—every damn time—and I swear to God I forget how to breathe. And when we’re close?” He leaned in, brushing her curls back from her face with quiet reverence. “That’s not when you look like less. That’s when you look the most real. The most yours.”
Joaquin leaned forward slowly, reaching for her hand. “Hey. Look at me.”
She did. She blinked, caught off guard by the intensity in his voice.
“I love your body,” he continued, gentler now. “I love the way you walk into a room and take up space like you belong there—because you do. I love your hips and your thighs and the way you always curl on your side with one leg over me when you fall asleep. I love that little stretch mark on your waist you always try to hide, and the curve of your back, and the way my shirt barely covers your ass.”
Her mouth twitched upward at that, a small smile threatening to form.
“And your chest?” He reached up, brushing his knuckles against the edge of her breast through the shirt, reverent. “I love these. They’re soft and warm and real, and I hate that the world ever convinced you they’re not enough because to me, they are. You—god yes you, baby—you are more than enough, mi amor.”
She leaned into his touch without realizing it.
“And when you lie down?” He kissed her shoulder. “That’s when you’re the most beautiful. Because you’re vulnerable. Because you trust me. You look like you. And I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed hard.
“I don’t always feel that way,” she admitted. “Sometimes I feel like I have to compensate. Be smarter. Be tougher. Be louder. Because I’ll never be the girl with the perfectly shaped, push-up-ready, porn-star boobs.”
Joaquin chuckled softly, shaking his head.
“I didn’t fall in love with you because of your bra size, mi cielo. I fell in love with the girl who stood up to assholes twice her size in middle school. The one who called me out for being too nice to recruiters, who made fun of my haircut during basic, who blew me out of the water at combat training and chess. You’re the smartest person I know, the fiercest, the most loyal—and yes, you’re sexy as hell. You just don’t see it.”
Her eyes were glassy now, but her lips curled into a trembling smile. He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone, then leaned forward and kissed her softly. The kiss wasn’t rushed or heated; just slow and sure, like he meant every word that came before it. When he pulled back, she pressed her forehead to his. She trailed her free hand up his arm, reveling in the goosebumps she left in her wake, and rested her palm on his cheek.
“You always make me feel safe,” she murmured, tears in her eyes. Her other hand squeezed his hand firmly.
“That’s the only thing I ever want to do,” he whispered. He squeezed her hand back. “And if I can help you see even half of what I see when I look at you… I’ll never stop trying.”
He let his hand rest against her side, settling just around her ribcage, the pad of his thumb tracing small shapes just below the swell of her breast over the shirt. She didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, but she wasn’t looking at him either—not quite—like some part of her still didn’t believe he meant it. That the words were just comfort, not truth. So he gave her what she’d always respected most: honesty.
“You’re not some checklist I’m working through,” he said quietly. “You’re not a collection of parts I’m ranking in my head. You’re the woman I’ve trusted with my life since we were twelve. The smartest person I’ve ever met. The one who drags me out of my own head when I spiral. The one who still makes me nervous sometimes when you look at me a certain way.”
A small sound escaped her, half a breath, half a laugh.
“And yeah,” Joaquin added, “you’re the one I’ve wanted more than anyone for my entire life. Exactly the way you are. I love your body because it’s yours. Not in spite of it.”
Her eyes finally lifted to his. There was something softer in them now—not fully convinced, maybe, but open. Receptive.
“That shirt you’re wearing?” he said, mouth tilting into a half-grin. “You’ve had it on for two hours, and I’ve already had to mentally talk myself down from about six different thoughts.”
She snorted, nose wrinkling just a little, and shook her head.
“I’m serious. You walk around like that and then act surprised when I stare at you like you’re made of magic. I’m barely hanging on here.”
She rolled her eyes, but her shoulders relaxed. Her hand moved from his cheek to the back of his head, fingers sliding through his curls, like a breath of relief.
“I don’t know how to shut it off,” she murmured. “The voices. The comparisons. The stupid, spiraling thoughts.”
“You don’t have to,” he assured her. “You just have to let me be here when they get loud.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she exhaled—slow and steady—like she was finally setting down a weight she’d carried too long. And she leaned forward, curling into him, her forehead pressing against the curve of his neck. Joaquin wrapped his arms around her without hesitation, holding her the way he always did—like he meant it. Like he wasn’t going anywhere.
And maybe that was the whole point. She had spent her life proving herself, earning every seat at every table, breaking the mold, outrunning expectations. But with him? She didn’t have to prove anything; she didn’t have to fight to be seen. With him, she was already enough. And when he kissed the top of her head and murmured, “You’re beautiful, mi amor.”
And she let herself believe it. Not because she needed him to say it—but because, somehow, she finally knew he meant it.
