#plus size reader insert

Prologue: The Gospel of Glass

You have spent your whole life apologizing for the space you take up.

It started young—younger than anyone should have to learn the geometry of their own diminishing. Seven years old, standing on a bathroom stool, pinching the flesh of your belly between thumb and forefinger, wondering why your body didn't slope the way the girls on television did. Twelve, and you learned to suck in your stomach like a prayer, holding your breath in hallways and classrooms, a perpetual act of shrinking. Fifteen, and the word fat stopped being a descriptor and became a sentence—life without parole, handed down by a jury of peers who measured your worth in waistlines and collarbones and the gap between your thighs.

Sixteen. Seventeen. The years blurred together like watercolors left in the rain, each one washing out a little more of the girl you might have been. You learned a language no one should have to speak: the language of dressing room meltdowns, of sizes that didn't go high enough, of mirrors that reflected back a stranger warped by the funhouse of a culture that profitted from your pain. You learned that beauty was a country whose borders were drawn without you, and the passport required a body you did not inhabit.

The world had a thousand ways to tell you that you were wrong, and each one left a mark—not on your skin, but somewhere deeper. Somewhere that bled without showing. You tried to carve yourself into acceptability with the quiet knives of restriction and denial, the small cruelties that women are taught to inflict upon themselves in the name of love. Beauty is pain, they said, as if suffering were a cosmetic. As if starvation were a skincare routine. As if the road to loveliness were paved with the gravel of your own self-esteem.

What they never told you was that the road had no destination. That every pound shed was a mirage, and the oasis was always ten pounds away. That the woman in the magazine was a fiction—a collage of lighting and angles and digital erasure—and you were breaking your very real bones against her very unreal perfection.

You were drowning in a room full of people who couldn't see water.

And then you fell—through a portal, through a looking glass, through the cracked lens of a world that shouldn't exist—and landed in a place where magic was real and the rules of reality bent like reeds in the wind. Twisted Wonderland. A world of dark mirrors and older contracts, where the flowers conspired and the portraits judged.

But the mirrors here lied too. The beauty standards here had claws and fangs and centuries of tradition behind them. And you, the magicless girl from a world that had already deemed you insufficient, arrived in this new realm carrying the same old wounds.

The body you inhabited did not change just because the world did.

I. The Anchor — Leona Kingscholar

The heat of the Savanaclaw dormitory was a living thing—it pressed against your skin like a third body, heavy and slow and drowsy with the scent of sun-baked stone and wild grass. You were sprawled across Leona's bed, a tangle of limbs and borrowed silence, while the afternoon sun striped the floor through half-shuttered windows. He was dozing beside you, as he always was—the great, unbothered lion, his breathing a low, rhythmic rumble that vibrated through the mattress.

You were not sleeping. You were performing the ancient, agonizing ritual of Stillness—the art of lying perfectly, carefully still so that your body didn't spread. So that the softness of your stomach didn't pool outward, so that your thighs didn't press against each other with that fleshy insistence that made you want to crawl out of your own skin. You were holding your breath, literally holding it, your diaphragm locked in a perpetual suck-in, and you had been doing it for so long that your ribs ached from the effort of making yourself small.

The pillow was your shield. You'd drawn it across your midsection when you'd lain down—a casual gesture, or so you'd tried to make it seem. A buffer between his eyes and the part of you that you hated most. He hadn't commented on it. Leona never commented on things. He simply observed them, filed them away, and waited with the patience of an apex predator for the right moment to strike.

That moment came when you shifted—just slightly—and the pillow slipped.

You felt the air hit the strip of skin where your shirt had ridden up, and you flinched. It was involuntary, a full-body spasm of shame that yanked the pillow back into place and sucked your stomach in so hard your vision spotted at the edges. You held your breath. Your heart slammed against your ribs.

A hand closed around your wrist.

Not tight enough to hurt. Just tight enough to stop you.

"Don't."

Leona's voice was a low, sandpaper growl, rough with sleep and something else—something harder, angrier. His eyes were still half-closed, his ears flat against his head, but his grip on your wrist was absolute. He pulled your hand—and the pillow it clutched—away from your body with a lazy, inexorable strength that you couldn't have resisted if you'd tried.

"Leona—"

"Shut up." He tossed the pillow off the bed entirely. It landed somewhere on the floor with a soft, damning thump. Then he rolled over, and the full, devastating weight of him settled across your body.

He was heavy. That was the first thing you registered—heavy in a way that pressed you into the mattress, heavy in a way that forced every ounce of air from your lungs, heavy in a way that made it impossible to suck in. Your stomach was flattened against his, your softness pressed against his lean, muscled hardness, and there was nothing—nothing—you could do to hide.

You panicked. Your hands came up against his chest, pushing weakly, your breath coming in short, shallow gasps that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the screaming, spiraling terror of being seen. "I can't—you can't—please, I look—"

"Look at what?" He dropped his head, his nose brushing the curve of your jaw, and inhaled. A long, slow breath that dragged your scent into his lungs like he was memorizing it. "Look at this?" His hand slid down your side, over the ridge of your ribs, down to the swell of your hip, and he gripped—not gently, not delicately, but with the rough possessiveness of a beast claiming its kill. His claws dimpled your skin through the thin fabric of your shirt. "This?" He pressed his palm flat against your belly—the belly you'd spent a lifetime trying to erase—and held it there, warm and steady and immovable.

"Stop," you whispered, and your voice cracked on the word like glass on stone. "Please. I hate it."

His ears flicked back, and a sound came from his throat—not a purr, not a growl, but something in between, something that vibrated through your entire body like a seismic event. "You hate it," he repeated flatly. "And what do you think I hate? Hm? I'll tell you what I hate." He lifted his head and opened his eyes—those slitted, emerald eyes that saw through every defense you'd ever constructed like it was tissue paper. "I hate watching you strangle yourself. I hate watching you hold your breath every time you lie next to me, like you think the air isn't meant for you. I hate that you'd rather break your own ribs than let me feel you breathe."

The words hit you like a physical blow, and the tears came—hot and fast and furious, spilling down your temples into the pillow. You turned your face away, but he caught your chin in his hand and held you still.

"Herbivore." His voice dropped to a register that you felt more than heard. "In the Savanaclaw, we don't starve to look pretty for the vultures. Soft means fed. Soft means strong enough to survive the dry season. Soft means healthy." His thumb traced the wet track of your tears. "Do you think a lion wants a mate who crumbles in the wind? I want flesh that yields. I want warmth that bleeds into my bones. I want—" He broke off, his jaw clenching, and something raw and almost vulnerable flickered behind his eyes before he shuttered it away. "I want you. Not the version you think you should be. You."

He kissed you then—not gently, not tenderly, but with the fierce, consuming hunger of a creature that had waited too long and would wait no longer. His mouth took yours like it was taking territory, his teeth catching your lower lip, his tongue sweeping past your defenses with a ruthless efficiency that left you gasping. And still he didn't lift his weight from you. He kept you pinned, kept you grounded, a deadweight anchor that would not let you float away on the tide of your own self-loathing.

His hands moved with purpose now, pushing your shirt up, and when his palm met the bare skin of your stomach, you convulsed—an involuntary, desperate attempt to shrink, to flee, to disappear. But he was there, heavy and immovable, and he simply pressed harder, flattening his hand over the curve of your belly and holding you down.

"Breathe," he commanded against your mouth. "Breathe out. Stop holding it in. I want to feel you."

A sob broke from your chest, raw and ugly and real, and you breathed out—really, truly breathed out—and felt the full, unashamed roundness of yourself settle against him. He groaned. It was a deep, chest-rattling sound of satisfaction, and his hips pressed down against yours, and you felt the hard, unmistakable heat of him through his uniform pants.

"Feel that?" He rolled his hips, a slow, deliberate grind that made your vision blur. "That's what you do to me. Not some carved-out shadow. This. You."

He rid you of your clothes with an efficiency that bordered on impatience—not hurried, but decisive, the way a beast strips meat from bone. He didn't avert his eyes. He looked, and kept looking, and every instinct screamed at you to cover yourself, to cross your arms over your chest, to turn away from the scrutiny of that piercing green gaze. But he wouldn't let you. He caught your wrists when you tried, pinned them above your head with one hand, and held you there—exposed, trembling, seen.

"You have no idea," he said, his voice hoarse and thick, his free hand tracing the curve from your hip to your knee with a reverence that made your chest ache. "No idea what it does to me. This—" He squeezed the flesh of your outer thigh, his claws pricking lightly. "This is what a queen looks like."

He descended on you like a feast.

His mouth found every place you'd been taught to hide—the soft skin beneath your breasts, the stretch marks that silvered your hips, the swell of your belly that he kissed with a devotion that bordered on worship. He bit down gently on the meat of your thigh, and you keened, your back arching off the bed. He licked the sting away, his tail flicking lazily behind him, and looked up at you with those predator's eyes—dark with want, blazing with something that was not pity but fury on your behalf.

When he finally, finally slid into you, it was a slow, inexorable claiming—a heavy, pressing intrusion that stole the breath from your lungs and replaced it with something else. Something full. He draped himself over you completely, chest to chest, hip to hip, his weight driving him deeper with every slow, rolling thrust. There was no space between you. No room to hide, no room to shrink, no room to be anything other than exactly what you were—soft and full and wanted.

"This is mine," he growled against your throat, his hips snapping forward with a force that made the bed creak. "This—" Another thrust. "—is mine. And I don't let anyone take what's mine. Not even you."

You came apart beneath him not with a shatter but with a surrender—a letting go of something you'd been clutching so tightly for so long that your hands were cramped around it. He caught the sound in his mouth, swallowing your cry, his rhythm growing erratic, chasing his own release with the single-minded intensity of a beast closing in on its prey. When he spent himself inside you, he buried his face in the crook of your neck and roared—muffled, private, and devastating.

He didn't pull out. He didn't move. He simply lay there, heavy and warm and present, his heart hammering against your chest, his breath hot and ragged in your ear. And for the first time in as long as you could remember, you didn't want to disappear. You wanted to stay right here, pinned beneath the weight of someone who saw you—all of you—and didn't flinch.

His arm tightened around your waist, his claws tracing idle patterns on the curve of your hip. "Sleep," he mumbled into your hair. "And if I catch you holding your breath again, I'll bite you."

You almost laughed. It came out as a wet, broken sound, but it was closer to a laugh than anything you'd managed in weeks.

You woke in the amber light of late afternoon, and for a moment—just a moment—the old terror surged back. You were exposed. Your shirt was still rucked up around your ribs, your stomach bare and round in the warm light, and you could see it—the full, unedited landscape of your body, laid bare without the mercy of shadow.

But Leona's hand was still there. Heavy and warm, draped over the curve of your belly, rising and falling with each breath you took. He was still asleep, his face slack and unguarded, his ears twitching at some dream-sound. And his palm—his palm was flat against the part of you that you hated most, pressed to it like it was something worth holding.

You looked at your own body through his hands, and for the first time, the geometry of yourself didn't add up to a deficit.

II. The Waltz — Lilia Vanrouge

It was the Night Raven College annual gala—a spectacle of candlelight and enchantment, where the chandeliers floated overhead like captive constellations and the music wove through the air like an intoxicating spell. You were there because duty demanded it, swathed in a dress that you'd bought two sizes too small because the store hadn't carried your size and you'd convinced yourself that this time, this one, you could make it work.

You'd been wrong.

The dress was a velvet cage, its seams biting into the flesh of your arms, its zipper a held breath away from surrender. You'd spent the entire evening with your back against the wall—literally against the wall, the cold stone the only thing keeping the fabric from splitting—your arms crossed over your midsection, your smile held in place by nothing but sheer, brittle will. Every woman in the room seemed to move through the space like water, their bodies streamlined and weightless, and you felt like a boulder in a river of silk.

So you shrank. You pressed yourself into the shadow between two marble pillars, your shoulders hunched, your chin tucked, your entire body folded inward like a paper crane. You made yourself as small as you possibly could, and you prayed for invisibility—the superpower you'd never been granted but had spent a lifetime cultivating.

"Well, well," said a voice like a music box left slightly open. "What have we here? A wallflower wilting in the dark?"

Lilia Vanrouge materialized from the shadows as if he'd been born from them, his red eyes gleaming with a light that was equal parts mischief and something far, far older. He was resplendent in his formal uniform, his hair fell like a spill of black ink, his smile sharp enough to cut glass. He looked like something out of a storybook—the kind of creature that lured travelers off the path and into the woods.

And he was looking at you with an intensity that made you want to dissolve.

"Dance?" you said, too quickly, too desperately, because you'd rather light yourself on fire than have him see you as you were now. "I don't—I can't—people will see—"

"People will see what?" He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing—not with malice, but with curiosity, as if you'd spoken in a language he was trying to parse. "A woman standing in the corner like she's been sentenced to it? Yes, they'll see that. They've been seeing it all evening."

The words landed like a slap, and you recoiled. "I'm not—"

"You are." He stepped closer, and the scent of him washed over you—night-blooming jasmine and something older, earthier, like the smell of ancient libraries after rain. "You are shrinking. Folding in on yourself like a dying star. I have watched you all evening, little blossom, and I have watched you make yourself smaller and smaller and smaller, as if the world is a room with a ceiling that's pressing down on you."

Tears stung your eyes, and you blinked them back furiously. "You don't understand. You're—you're you. You've never had to—"

"I have lived for seven hundred years," Lilia said, and the playfulness dropped from his voice like a mask, revealing something underneath that was ancient and terrible and gentle. "I have worn corsets that cracked my ribs. I have painted my skin with lead and arsenic to meet the standard of a court that would have burned me at the stake for the color of my eyes. I have been the monster under the bed and the beauty on the pedestal, and I am telling you—" He reached out and took your hand. "—that neither is worth dying for."

He pulled you away from the wall.

You stumbled—your heels catching on the hem of your too-tight dress, your body ungainly and off-balance—and he caught you, his small hands surprisingly strong, his grip unyielding. He didn't let you retreat. He drew you into the center of the room, where the other couples swirled in their endless, graceful orbits, and he positioned your hand on his shoulder with the precision of a maestro tuning an orchestra.

"Now," he said, his smile returning—softer now, but no less luminous. "Dance with me."

"I'll step on your feet."

"You'll step on the air. I'm much too quick for that."

He moved, and you had no choice but to follow.

The waltz was a spell—a spiraling, breathless, terrifying spell that pulled you out of the shadows and into the light. Lilia moved like water, like smoke, like a dream you were half-afraid to wake from, and he guided you through the steps with a surety that brooked no argument. Your dress pulled at your seams. Your body jiggled in ways that made you want to scream. People were looking.

"Stop looking at them," Lilia murmured, his hand firm on the small of your back—pressing, guiding, refusing to let you retreat. "Look at me."

"I can't—"

"Look at me."

You looked. His red eyes held you captive, and in their depths you saw not pity, not assessment, not the measuring gaze of a world that wanted to carve you down—you saw awe. Pure, unguarded, seven-hundred-year-old awe, as if you were the most extraordinary thing he had encountered in all his centuries of existence.

"There you are," he breathed, and his smile was incandescent. "There is the woman I see when I look at you. Do you feel it? Do you feel how your body moves? How it breathes and bends and lives?"

You did feel it. Against your will, against every instinct that screamed at you to shrink and hide, you felt it—the music in your bones, the rhythm of your blood, the sheer, undeniable aliveness of having a body that could move through space. Your feet found the beat. Your hips swayed. The dress strained, and you didn't care, because Lilia was looking at you like you'd hung the moon, and for a moment—just a moment—the noise of the world went quiet.

He spun you. You laughed—a real, genuine, startled laugh that bubbled up from somewhere you'd thought was sealed shut. He pulled you back in, and the momentum carried you against his chest, and suddenly the music had slowed to a murmur and you were standing in the circle of his arms, your forehead nearly touching his, your breath mingling with his in the narrow space between your mouths.

"You take up space," he whispered, and his voice was fierce and tender and old enough to know better and young enough to still believe. "You take up space, and it is glorious. Never apologize for the room you fill. The world is vast enough for your magnificence."

He kissed you.

It was not the kiss of a boy—it was the kiss of a creature who had loved and lost and loved again across centuries, who knew the terrible brevity of beautiful things and chose to cherish them anyway. His lips moved against yours with a reverence that made your knees weak, his fangs grazing your lower lip with a delicious, dangerous pressure. His hands mapped the landscape of your back—sliding down to the curve of your waist, the flare of your hips, resting there with a proprietary warmth that said I have you, I see you, I will not let you fall.

The crowd had vanished. The music had faded. There was only Lilia—his ancient, gentle hands and his devastating mouth and the way he held you like you were made of starlight and gossamer instead of flesh and bone and all the things you'd been taught to hate.

He walked you backward, step by step, never breaking the kiss, until your shoulders met the cold marble of a pillar at the edge of the ballroom. The shock of the stone against your back made you gasp, and he swallowed the sound, his body pressing against yours—small and hard and impossibly present, a counterweight to the vast, terrifying lightness of being seen.

"Feel that?" he murmured against your jaw, his lips trailing down to the racing pulse in your throat. "Feel your heart? Feel how it beats? That is the only rhythm you were ever meant to follow."

His hand slid down, down, down—over the straining velvet of your dress, over the curve of your hip, down to the hem that was riding up your thigh. His fingers slipped beneath it, cool and certain, tracing the warm skin of your inner thigh with a delicacy that made you tremble.

"Lilia—" Your voice was barely a whisper. "Someone will see—"

"Then they will see something beautiful," he said, and his eyes were molten, burning with a light that predated the stars. "Let them see."

He kissed you again, slower this time, his fingers drawing maddening, feather-light patterns on the sensitive skin of your thigh. He didn't go further—not here, not in the hall with its watching shadows. But the promise was there, woven into the press of his mouth and the grip of his hand and the way he whispered magnificent against your lips like a benediction.

When he pulled back, his eyes were bright with unshed tears that he would never, ever admit to. He straightened your dress with nimble, practiced fingers, smoothed your hair, and tucked your hand into the crook of his arm with a theatrical flourish.

"Come, my star," he said, his voice bright and clear and carrying. "The night is young, and I have not yet shown you the proper way to waltz."

He didn't let you go when the music ended. He kept his hand firm on the small of your back, guiding you through the parting crowd, out of the ballroom, and through the winding, moonlit halls of Diasomnia—as if he were leading you out of a dream you had been sleeping in for far too long.

Later—in his room, in the dark, with the moonlight streaming through the window like liquid silver—he laid you out on his bed like a manuscript he'd been waiting centuries to read. He undressed you with the care of an archivist handling a priceless text, his fingers tracing every mark and curve and fold of skin as if committing it to memory.

"You are not too much," he said, pressing a kiss to the inside of your wrist, where old scars lay faint and silver. "You are precisely enough. You are more than enough. You are abundant."

He made love to you with his mouth first—tasting you, teasing you, his clever tongue drawing sounds from you that you didn't know you could make. And when he finally slid into you, it was with a sigh that carried the weight of centuries—a sound of homecoming, as if he'd been searching for this warmth for seven hundred years and had finally, finally found it.

He moved like a dancer still—fluid and precise, each roll of his hips a pirouette, each thrust a grand jeté. He was small but relentless, his hands gripping your hips, his body arching above you like a bow. And when you came, it was with a sob that was half his name and half a prayer of thanks—thanks for the ancient, impossible creature who had looked at you in all your too-muchness and called it glorious.

Morning. The light was gray and tender, and you lay in the tangle of his sheets, watching the dust motes drift. The old familiar impulse stirred—the urge to pull the covers up, to hide, to disappear—but his arm was around your waist, his fingers tracing idle, sleep-warm circles on your stomach.

"You're doing it again," he mumbled, his eyes still closed. "Thinking too loud."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. Just stop." He pulled you closer, his small body curling around your soft one like a parenthesis enclosing a beloved phrase. "Stay."

You stayed.

III. The Depth — Azul Ashengrotto

The contract lay on the desk between you—not a magical one, not really, just a piece of paper that said you'd agreed to work at the Monstro Lounge three nights a week to pay off a debt you'd incurred through the simple crime of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you weren't thinking about the contract. You were thinking about the chair.

Specifically, the fact that the chair—a delicate, gilded thing that would have looked at home in an undersea palace—creaked when you sat in it. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a small, furtive, mortifying groan of wood under weight, and it was barely audible over the ambient music, and Azul hadn't even looked up from his paperwork, but your face burned like you'd been branded.

You shifted your weight. The chair creaked again. You froze.

"Your pen hasn't moved in three minutes," Azul observed without looking up. His voice was smooth as glass, measured as a metronome—the voice of a businessman who missed nothing. "Is the contract not to your liking?"

"No, it's—" You signed quickly, sloppily, just to have something to do with your traitorous hands, and pushed the paper across the desk. Then you stood, because the chair was a liability and your legs were safer ground.

Except your legs weren't safer ground. Your legs were the thing you'd been fighting all night—the way your thighs pressed together when you stood, the way the skirt of your uniform rode up, the way you could feel the seam straining across your hips. You tugged at the hem, a quick, automatic gesture, and then another, and then you were doing the thing—pulling and adjusting and trying to create coverage where there was none, a frantic, futile rearrangement of fabric that wouldn't cover what you needed it to cover because there was too much of you and not enough cloth in the world to—

"Stop."

Azul's voice cracked like a whip, and you jumped, your hands flying away from your skirt as if it had burned you. He was looking at you now—really looking, his eyes sharp and piercing over the rims of his glasses, his silver hair catching the blue light of the aquarium that lined the walls of his office. Behind him, fish drifted like living jewels, and the light played over his face in shifting, watery patterns, and his expression was—

Not disgust. Not pity. Something rawer. Something that looked almost like pain.

"Come here," he said quietly.

You didn't move. "Azul, I should really get back to—"

"Come. Here."

You went. Your feet carried you around the desk on autopilot, and you stopped in front of his chair, your arms wrapped around yourself, your chin tucked, your shoulders hunched—the full architecture of shame, built in real time. He looked up at you, and his gaze traveled down your body and back up, and every inch of the journey was a slow, excruciating exposure.

"You're doing it again," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Hiding. Compensating. Performing the impossible mathematics of making yourself smaller." He took off his glasses and set them on the desk, and without them, his eyes were larger, more vulnerable, more human. "I know what that looks like. I've been that."

Your breath caught. Because of course he had—Azul, who had been the octopus in the tank, the thing that children pointed at and laughed, the creature who had signed away pieces of himself in desperate, grasping attempts to become something acceptable. Azul, who had built an empire on the foundation of his own self-hatred and called it ambition.

"Azul—" Your voice wavered. "It's not the same. You changed. You became—"

"What? Beautiful?" His laugh was short and sharp and brittle around the edges. "I became presentable. I learned to wear the right clothes and say the right words and project the right image. But the inkling in the tank is still here." He pressed a hand to his chest. "He is always here. And he remembers what it felt like to be looked at like you're looking at yourself right now."

You hadn't realized you were crying until the tear hit your lip.

He stood, and his hands found yours, and he held them with a tenderness that seemed impossible from a man who dealt in contracts and leverage. "The surface world teaches you that beauty is a shell," he said, his voice dropping to the low, urgent murmur of a secret. "That it's the exterior that matters—the smoothness, the symmetry, the conformity to a shape that someone else drew. But down in the deep, beauty is something else entirely. Down in the deep, the most beautiful things are soft. Unfathomable. Luminous." He lifted your hands to his lips and kissed your knuckles, one by one. "You are the pearl they were too blind to cultivate."

He kissed you then—softly, hesitantly, with the trembling uncertainty of someone who had spent so long building walls that he'd forgotten how to open a door. You tasted salt on his lips, and you realized with a start that he was crying too—silently, stoically, the tears tracking down his cheeks and disappearing into the collar of his immaculate shirt.

You reached for him, and he flinched—just as you had flinched, just as you always flinched—and the mirror of it cracked something open in your chest. You cupped his face in your hands and kissed him back, and he made a sound against your mouth that was half sob and half relief, and his hands came up to grip your waist with a desperation that bordered on violence.

He walked you backward until your shoulders hit the cold glass of the aquarium wall, and the shock of it—the cold on your bare skin, the warm press of his body, the fish drifting lazily behind you like spectators at a coronation—made you gasp. He swallowed the gasp, his mouth hungry and searching, his hands roaming your body with an urgency that said I need to know you're real, I need to know I'm real, I need to feel something that isn't the crushing pressure of the deep.

"Let me—" His voice was ragged, his composure shattered like a ship on the rocks. "Let me show you. Let me show you what I see."

He undressed you slowly, each inch of revealed skin met with a kiss, a murmur, a reverent exhalation. He kissed the stretch marks on your thighs and the soft swell of your belly and the tender skin beneath your breasts, and with each kiss, he whispered something—beautiful, exquisite, perfect, mine. His hands trembled as they mapped your curves, and his eyes—those deep, ocean-dark eyes—never left your face, watching every flicker of emotion that crossed it.

When he laid you down on the leather settee, he shed his own clothes with a vulnerability that laid him bare in every sense—not just the pale, marked skin of his body, but the quiver in his jaw, the way his hands shook as he unbuttoned his shirt, the way he looked at you for permission before every step. He was giving you the same power over him that he was asking you to surrender—the power to see, to judge, to accept or reject.

He moved like the tide when he entered you—a relentless, seeking pressure that drove the air from your lungs. Slow at first, then deeper, harder, a rhythm that ebbed and flowed with the inevitability of the sea. His hands braced on either side of your head, his silver hair falling around your face like a curtain, and his eyes—his eyes were burning, filled with a desperate, drowning need that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the soul-deep hunger to be held by someone who understood the crushing weight of the water.

"I've got you," he gasped, his hips rolling forward in a way that made your back arch off the leather. "I've got you. You're not drowning. You're not—ah—you're not alone."

The pressure built like a wave, rising and rising, and when it crested, it was like breaching the surface after a lifetime underwater—gasping, desperate, and blindingly bright. You came with his name on your lips, and he followed moments later, his body going rigid, his forehead pressed to yours, his moan a sound of salvation.

He collapsed against you, his weight slight but present, his breath coming in harsh, broken gasps against your neck. And for a long time, neither of you moved, and the fish drifted behind the glass, and the light played over your tangled bodies in shifting, watery patterns, and the silence was not empty but full—full of understanding, full of shared pain, full of the slow, tentative scaffolding of self-worth being built in the dark.

Morning. The office smelled of salt and leather, and Azul was already at his desk, his glasses perched on his nose, his face composed into its usual mask of professional detachment. But when you stirred on the settee, he looked up, and the mask slipped—just for a moment—and you saw the inkling in the tank, smiling at you with an openness that made your chest ache.

"Coffee?" he offered, and his voice was steady, but his hand trembled slightly as he poured.

You took the cup, and his fingers lingered on yours. "Thank you," you said, and you meant it for more than the coffee.

"I'm a businessman," he said, adjusting his glasses with a familiar, self-conscious gesture. "I don't give things away for free. So you should know that this—" He gestured between the two of you. "—comes with terms. Non-negotiable. You are not permitted to speak poorly of the merchandise. The merchandise is you."

You laughed—really, truly laughed—and it echoed off the aquarium walls like music.

IV. The Feast — Ruggie Bucchi

The cafeteria was a battlefield, and you were losing.

It wasn't the food—Night Raven College's dining hall was a marvel of magical gastronomy, the tables groaning under the weight of dishes that would have made a Michelin-starred chef weep with envy. It was the eating. The public, visible, undeniable act of putting food in your mouth and chewing and swallowing while the world watched and judged and whispered.

You'd gotten a salad. A sad, anemic thing, mostly lettuce and regret, because you'd learned—the hard way, the cruel way, the way that leaves marks that don't show—that a fat girl eating in public was an invitation for commentary. Does she really need that? Shouldn't she be watching her figure? Imagine what she looks like when she's alone.

You'd been pushing it around your plate for fifteen minutes, arranging the leaves into increasingly elaborate patterns, when a shadow fell across your table.

"Shishishi. That's the saddest thing I've ever seen, and I grew up in the Slums."

Ruggie slid into the seat across from you with the boneless grace of a creature who'd learned to move through spaces that didn't want him. His ears were perked, his grin sharp and crooked, and his plate was loaded with an obscene amount of food—meat, bread, pasta, a mountain of calories that made your jaw clench with envy and self-loathing in equal measure.

"I'm not hungry," you lied, and your stomach chose that exact moment to growl—a loud, prolonged, devastating growl that echoed off the cafeteria walls like a foghorn.

Ruggie's grin widened. "Your stomach's calling you a liar." He stabbed a piece of roast meat with his fork and held it out across the table. "Eat."

"I don't want—"

"Eat."

"Ruggie, I can't." The words came out sharper than you intended, edged with a panic that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the room full of people who could see you, who were watching, who were waiting for the fat girl to take a bite so they could confirm what they already knew—that she was greedy, that she was undisciplined, that she was everything the world told her she was.

His ears flattened, and for a moment, the grin disappeared entirely. "Yeah," he said quietly. "You can. You just think you don't deserve to."

Your eyes burned. "You don't understand—"

"I don't understand?" He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a register that was low and fierce and utterly without pretense. "I grew up in a place where food was a luxury. Where kids went to bed with their bellies aching not because they chose to, but because there was nothing. Nothing to eat, nothing to feed them, nothing but dust and broken promises." His hand closed around the fork, his knuckles white. "And you're sitting here, with a feast in front of you, and you're starving yourself because someone told you that taking up space is a sin?"

"I'm not starving myself," you whispered, but even as you said it, you knew it was a lie. You'd been starving yourself for years—not in the dramatic, hospitalizing way that made after-school specials, but in the quiet, quotidian way that so many women did. Skipping breakfast. Picking at lunch. Eating nothing but air and apology until the hunger became a permanent resident, a low, keeling emptiness that you'd learned to mistake for virtue.

"Yes, you are." He pushed the plate across the table. "And I won't watch it. Not today. Not ever."

The tears fell then, dropping onto the tablecloth, and you didn't bother to wipe them away because there were too many and they were coming too fast. Ruggie didn't flinch. He didn't offer platitudes or gentle reassurances. He simply picked up a piece of bread, tore it in half, and held one half out to you.

"Take it," he said. "Not because I'm telling you to. Because you're hungry, and being hungry isn't a crime."

You took the bread. You bit into it, and it was warm and soft and impossibly, devastatingly good, and the taste of it broke something loose in your chest—a dam that had been holding back years of denied want, and the floodgates opened. You chewed, and you swallowed, and Ruggie watched you with a fierce, protective pride that made you feel like you'd just won a war.

"Good," he said. "More."

He fed you.

It was the most intimate act you'd ever experienced—more intimate than any kiss, more intimate than any touch. He held each bite out to you on his fork, piece by piece, morsel by morsel, and you took them, one by one, your eyes locked on his. The roast meat, rich and succulent. The bread, warm and yielding. The vegetables, glistening with butter. Each bite was a small, defiant act of self-love, and each time you swallowed, he smiled—not his usual sharp, hyena grin, but something softer, something that looked almost like wonder.

"There you go," he murmured, his hand resting on your knee beneath the table, warm and steady and grounding. "There you go. That's it. That's my girl."

The cafeteria had fallen away. The watching eyes, the judging whispers, the crushing weight of a world that wanted you to disappear—all of it had dissolved into the simple, primal act of eating, and being fed, and being seen by someone who understood that hunger was not a moral failing but a biological imperative that you had every right to satisfy.

When the plate was empty, he wiped a crumb from the corner of your mouth with his thumb, and he leaned in and kissed you—soft and quick and tasting of bread and butter and salt, and you realized that this was what it felt like to be nourished. Not just fed. Nourished. Body and soul.

"Next time," he said, his forehead pressed to yours, his breath warm on your lips, "I'm making you seconds."

You laughed—a wet, shaky, incredulous sound—and he kissed you again, and this time it was deeper, his tongue slipping past your lips to taste the remnants of the meal you'd shared. His hands found your waist—your thick, full, fed waist—and he squeezed, pulling you closer, and the growl in his throat was not a hyena's laugh but a creature's promise.

"You're not too much," he said against your mouth, with the fierce, unvarnished conviction of someone who had known true scarcity and would not stand for manufactured lack. "You're not enough yet. I want to see you full. I want to see you satisfied."

That evening, in his cramped room in the Savanaclaw dormitory, he cooked for you—simple food, poor man's food, the kind of meal he'd grown up on: a stew made from whatever was in the kitchen, thick and hearty and fragrant with herbs. He sat across from you on the floor, the bowl between you, and you ate together, knee to knee, his hand on your thigh, your fingers intertwined, and the warmth in your belly had nothing to do with the stew and everything to do with the boy who had looked at your hunger and called it sacred.

V. The Canvas — Vil Schoenheit

The bathroom was a crime scene, and you were the perpetrator.

You stood before the mirror in Vil's personal suite—a bathroom of alabaster and gold, lit by floating crystals that cast a merciless, unforgiving light—and you were at war with your reflection. The dress lay in a pool of silk on the floor, discarded after twenty minutes of tugging and adjusting and nearly dislocating your shoulder trying to zip it up, and you were left in your underwear, and the mirror would not stop showing you things.

The roll of flesh above your bra. The width of your hips. The way your thighs touched from hip to knee. The soft, rounded landscape of your belly, the dimples on your legs, the arms that jiggled when you moved. Every flaw, every imperfection, every deviation from the architectural ideal that Vil Schoenheit embodied—it was all there, catalogued and displayed in high-definition clarity.

You grabbed a towel and covered the mirror.

"Undo that," said a voice from the doorway, sharp and commanding as a crack of thunder.

You spun. Vil stood in the doorway, his golden hair loose around his shoulders, his beauty so overwhelming that it made your chest hurt. He was looking at the towel-draped mirror, and then at you, and his expression was a tempest—fury and tenderness and something that looked almost like grief, all warring for dominance beneath the flawless mask of his features.

"I can't look at it," you said, and your voice was thin and brittle as spun sugar. "I can't—I'm not—Vil, look at you. And look at me. I can't be what you need."

He crossed the room in three strides, and his hand closed around the towel, and he ripped it from the mirror with a violence that made you flinch. The glass was exposed again, and your reflection stared back at you, and you squeezed your eyes shut because you couldn't—couldn't—

"Open your eyes."

"No—"

"Open your eyes." His voice was iron wrapped in silk, and it brooked no argument, and you opened them because Vil Schoenheit had never once allowed you to lie to him, and you would not start now.

He stood behind you, his hands on your shoulders, his reflection towering over yours in the mirror. The contrast was devastating—him, all sharp angles and golden light; you, all soft curves and shadowed corners. You couldn't look at it. You tried to turn away, but his grip tightened, holding you in place.

"Look," he commanded.

"I am looking—"

"You are judging. That is not the same thing." His eyes met yours in the mirror, and they were blazing—not with anger, but with a fierce, ferocious conviction that burned like a brand. "You look at yourself through the eyes of a world that profits from your self-hatred. Look through my eyes."

His hands slid down your arms, over the soft flesh that you'd tried so hard to erase, and when they reached your waist, you flinched—a full-body, involuntary recoil that sucked your stomach in and pulled your shoulders forward and made you as small as you possibly could.

Vil stopped.

His hands paused on your waist, and his expression shifted—the fury giving way to something rawer, something that looked almost like heartbreak. He had been on the receiving end of a thousand cruel assessments, a thousand unkind comparisons, a thousand judgments that reduced a person to the sum of their parts. But he had never—never—stood by and watched someone do it to themselves.

"Stop retreating," he said softly.

"What?"

"You suck in your breath and curl your spine every time I touch you. You are constantly trying to disappear." His hands pressed gently but firmly against your waist, a counterpressure to your instinct to shrink. "I want to see you. Not the compressed version. Not the apologizing version. Stand in the light and let me look at you."

You trembled. Every fiber of your being screamed at you to hold on, to stay small, to keep the armor of sucked-in breath and tensed muscles between yourself and his judgment. But his hands were warm and steady and insistent, and his eyes in the mirror were not measuring you—they were beholding you.

You breathed out.

Your body settled into itself—your belly soft and round, your hips wide, your thighs pressing together, your whole unedited, unapologetic self filling the frame of the mirror. And Vil—Vil sighed, a sound of such profound, aching tenderness that it undid you completely.

"There you are," he murmured, and his lips brushed the shell of your ear. "There is the woman I see. Do you know what I see when I look at you? Not flaws. Not imperfections. I see abundance. I see warmth and softness and life, and I see a beauty that the world is too blind to recognize because it has never learned to look past the surface." His hands moved, gliding over your curves with the reverence of a sculptor encountering marble that was already a masterpiece. "The world's beauty is cheap, you know. A mask of powder and bone. It washes off at the end of the day. But this—" He pressed his palm flat against your stomach, feeling the rise and fall of your breath. "This is not cheap. This is not washable. This is enduring."

His hands traveled upward, unclasping your bra with deft, practiced fingers, and it fell away, and you were bare from the waist up, and the mirror showed you everything, and you wanted to vanish, to dematerialize, to be anywhere but here, exposed and vulnerable and—

"Look," Vil said again, and his voice cracked on the word, and you realized with a shock that his eyes were bright with tears—Vil Schoenheit, the fairest of them all, the untouchable idol, was crying. "Look at what I see. Look at what has held me captive since the day I met you."

He turned you to face him, and his hands framed your face, and his thumbs brushed the tears from your cheeks, and his lips met yours with a desperation that stole the breath from your body. It was not a kiss of conquest—it was a kiss of revelation, each movement of his mouth a wordless refutation of every lie you'd ever been told.

He walked you backward, out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, and the sheets were silk and the light was golden and he laid you down on the bed like a painter laying a canvas on an easel. He undressed himself with a deliberate slowness that was not performance but vulnerability—offering you his own body, his own imperfections, the small scars and blemishes that even his magic couldn't entirely erase. And then he undressed you, with the same careful, unhurried attention, pressing a kiss to every inch of skin he revealed.

"Look at me," he said, positioning himself above you, his golden hair falling in a curtain around your face. "Don't close your eyes. I want you to see."

He angled the full-length mirror beside the bed—a deliberate, devastating placement—and you could see yourself, could see both of you—your soft body against his lean one, his hands on your curves, the way your flesh yielded beneath his touch. It was too much. It was everything.

"Look at how beautiful you are when you take me," he said, and his voice was a trembling chord, and he slid into you with a slow, agonizing tenderness that made your vision blur.

The mirror didn't lie this time. It showed you the truth—not the warped, funhouse truth of your own self-loathing, but the objective, undeniable truth of Vil Schoenheit's face as he moved inside you: the way his jaw went slack, the way his eyes rolled back, the way his body shuddered with the effort of restraint, as if you were something precious and powerful and devastating. It showed you the way his hands worshipped your body—not with the clinical assessment of a critic, but with the hungry, helpless reverence of a man on his knees before a goddess.

"You see?" he gasped, his hips rolling forward in a rhythm that was building, building, building. "You see what you do to me? You see how irresistible you are?"

You came with his name on your lips and your eyes open, watching the mirror, watching the woman in the glass—the soft, round, beautiful woman—who was arching off the bed in the arms of the fairest man in the world, and he was looking at her like she was the only thing that existed.

When he followed you over the edge, his cry was not a roar or a growl but a sob—raw and unguarded, pressed into the curve of your neck, and his tears fell on your skin like baptism.

Morning. The light was white and honest, and it fell across the bed in unforgiving bars, and you lay in Vil's arms and felt the familiar, icy fingers of dread close around your heart. In the daylight, without the mercy of shadow, every flaw would be visible. Every curve, every dimple, every imperfection that the night had hidden would be laid bare, and he would see you—really see you—and the spell would break.

But his arm tightened around your waist, and his hand settled on your stomach—your bare, exposed, un-sucked-in stomach—and he pressed his lips to your shoulder.

"Don't," he said, his voice still rough with sleep. "Whatever you're thinking, don't."

"I'm just—"

"You're composing a list of everything you hate. I can hear it." He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at you, and his eyes were clear and fierce and utterly without illusion. "The light is different now. I know. The morning is the most honest time, and honesty is terrifying when you've spent your life running from the truth." His fingers traced the curve of your hip, the swell of your breast, the softness of your belly. "But the truth is not your enemy. The truth is this: that I am looking at you in the full light of day, and I am not looking away."

He kissed you, slow and deep and certain, and the morning lost its power to wound.

Epilogue: The Sculptor

You walked to the mirror the next morning—alone, this time, in the quiet of your own room. The glass, the great and terrible liar, waited to whisper its poison. You stood before it, bare, your shoulders squared against the judgment of a world that had spent your whole life trying to carve you into something smaller.

But this time, you did not look through the eyes of the society that had raised you. You looked through Leona's hunger—through the way his weight had anchored you, heavy and sure and insistent, refusing to let you drift away on the tide of your own erasure. You looked through Lilia's reverence—through the way his ancient hands had held you like a text worth reading, the way he had spoken the word glorious like it was the only word that mattered. You looked through Azul's devotion—through the way he had wept against your skin, the way his contract had demanded you stop speaking poorly of the merchandise. You looked through Ruggie's greed—through the way he had fed you, bite by bite, the way he had called your hunger sacred. You looked through Vil's pride—through the way he had forced you to look, had refused to let you hide, had wept at the sight of you as if you were a masterpiece he had been waiting his whole life to behold.

You traced the curve of your hip, the soft swell of your belly. The stretch marks that silvered your skin like river tributaries on a map of a country that belonged to no one but you. The dimples, the folds, the fullness that the world had called excess and these men had called enough.

And you realized—with a slow, dawning, earth-shaking clarity—that their eyes were not the ones you needed to see yourself through. They were the bridge, not the destination. They had shown you that you could be seen, that you could be wanted, that you could be loved—but the final, most powerful gaze was your own.

The world had spent a lifetime trying to carve you down, handing you chisels and saying, Here, do it yourself. It'll hurt less if you do it. And you had believed them. You had taken the tools of your own destruction and called them self-improvement. You had mistaken shrinking for growing, and starvation for strength, and the world's applause for your own heartbeat.

But no more.

You were not the marble that refused to fit the mold. You were the sculptor now. You held the chisel, and you decided what shape to carve—not the shape the world demanded, but the shape that felt like home. The shape that breathed and moved and danced and ate and lived. The shape that took up space without apology, that filled rooms and hearts and the spaces between stars.

You were the cosmos carved into curves, a constellation of scars and stars, and as you finally met your own gaze in the glass—truly met it, without flinching, without shrinking, without the desperate, suffocating need to be anything other than what you were—you smiled.

Not because the world had changed. Not because the beauty standards had fallen, not because the magazines had started featuring women who looked like you, not because the whispers had stopped. They hadn't. They wouldn't. The world was still the world—sharp and cruel and hungry for your self-hatred, because a woman who hated herself was a woman who could be sold to.

But you were no longer for sale.

You pressed your palm flat against the glass, and your reflection pressed back, and for the first time, you recognized her. Not as the enemy. Not as the problem. Not as the body that needed to be fixed. As yourself. As the woman who had survived every cruel word, every skipped meal, every night of pressing her fingers into her skin and wishing it would yield to a different shape. The woman who had been told she was too much and had finally, finally, decided to believe it.

Let the world weep for the beauty it was too blind to behold.

Putting the knife I was using to carve down, I looked at my pumpkin and grimanced. He might have a point. The pumpkin had jagged and crocked triangle eyes and a lopsided mouth, the cuts being harsh and rough instead of the precise cuts I wanted to do so I could get that traditional carved pumpkin look.

"You've never been good at cutting anything really (Y/N)." He laughed at his own words and pulled back, placing his hands on your soft hips.

I looked down at my hands, small cuts adorning them from how I was trying to carve my pumpkin. I tried to pull away from Howl, my soft, round face defeated, but he didn't let me pull away as he gripped my hips keeping me in place.

Hot breath hit my ear, his hands sliding up my plump sides. "You know I hate to see that beautiful face in a frown sweetheart, here..." Grabbing the knife and putting it in my hand, his own covered mine as he lifted it up to my messed up pumpkin. "Let me help you, okay?" He nibbled my ear gently making me shiver as he pulled back and focused on showing me how to fix my pumpkin.

My plump body was a bit stiff at first, but with a few playful words and nips from Howl, I relaxed and soon he placed my hand down as I let go of the knife. I smiled as I looked at my pumpkin. It looked exactly like how I imagined it.

Turning in Howl's hold I embraced him properly. "Thank you Howl...I guess I should really leave all things that need to be cut to you." I flush as he laughed and kissed my forehead.

"I think I enjoy helping you cut things like that, being close to you, teasing you, feeling you pressed against me..." His hands slid down my soft back and gripped my bottom making me blush.

"Pervert!" He just laughed and leaned down to capture my lips in a soft, chaste kiss. Breaking the kiss, he beamed down at me.

It was late one night, you were taking over a shift for one of the lifeguards that left sick, so you were graced with the beauty of the DA himself as he swam. His arms moved so gracefully against the water, his toned body flexing and relaxing. You wanted so bad for him to fuck you over your desk, or hell, even the pool would be hotter. Feeling his hot, wet body against yours…

You shivered at the thought, snapping yourself out of your inappropriate thoughts. It was wrong of you to have these thoughts, the man was married for god sakes. You didn’t notice his eyes on you as you were internally scolding yourself, not until he swam to the edge where you sat on the lifeguard stool. He took the goggles he had worn off, staring deep into your eyes.

An audible gulp left your throat as he pulled himself from the water, droplets of water cascaded down his beautiful body. You couldn’t take your eyes away, not that you wanted to. However, Andy was having equally filthy thoughts as he watched you sit in the skimpy lifeguard uniform that highlighted your curves deliciously. He wanted to fuck you right there, make you scream so everyone in the building knew just who was fucking you so good.

He almost lost his senses when you took your bottom lip between your teeth, a feral growl leaving his chest. Your thighs clenched together, trying to relieve the feeling of how badly you wanted him. You both were snapped out of the moment when another patron entered the pool area.

“What time do you leave?” he gruffed, angry at the asshole that interrupted.

“I-I leave in 30.” you stammered as you climbed down the ladder.

“I’ll be at your office, don’t change.” he ordered, a terrified squeak escaped your lips as he patted your ass in passing to the men's locker room.

Andy changed back into his clothes, groaning as he pulled his pants over his raging boner. All he could think about was finally getting that sweet pussy of yours, he’d waited so long. He’d deal with the complications later, Laurie was the last thing he was thinking of right now. He stared at his wedding ring, walking over to a stall. Andy dropped the ring in the toilet, and flushed it. Their marriage had been over for a long time now, the divorce papers were already signed. As far as he was concerned, he was a free man. All he needed was a judge to make that official, which wouldn’t be hard to find…he had connections.

He took his leave to your office, his arousal growing with each step. You had a large tshirt covering your bathing suit, startled when you heard Andy’s hum of approval. He threw his stuff on one of the chairs in your office after making sure the door was locked, your eyes never leaving his. Andy walked closer, caging you between him and the front of your desk with his big arms.

“Andy, I-I can’t do this.” you said in a very unconvincing tone.

He clearly didn’t care as his pretty head descended into the curve of your neck, peppering soft kisses. Your breath caught in your throat, doubt swirling in your gut. His lips met yours, abruptly shutting down the next remark you were about to say. You tried to push at his shoulders, but his hands grabbed yours in his and looped them around his neck. They stayed there, one of your hands even sifting through his damp hair.

“I’ve waited long enough for you little one.” Andy growled against your lips as he pulled you closer.

“Andy, you-you’re married, I-I can’t-” you whined as his hand dipped into your bottoms, feeling how drenched you’d become.

“Fuck me baby, all this for me?” he groaned, swiftly inserting two fingers inside of you.

“No! No, Andy-fuck-please!” you gasped, involuntarily swiveling your hips down on his hand.

You were disgusted with how much you enjoyed his fingers fucking you, reaching that spot inside you that had you seeing stars. Andy was in awe, watching you fall apart on his fingers, and the way you clinged on to him. He smirked at the whiny moan you let out when he pulled his fingers out, he needed a taste. Andy groaned as he sucked you off his fingers, you were divine, the most delectable sweet honey he’d ever had.

“I really wanna taste from the source baby, but fuck I can’t wait any longer to be inside you.” he snarled, shoving his pants and boxers down.

He tilted your hips up on your desk, pulling your bottoms to the side. He’d fuck you properly another time, right now, this was pure need.

“Andy, this-this isn’t right! Your wife-!” you exclaimed, interrupted when his tip nudged your opening.

Andy snatched your throat, your mind acutely aware of his naked ring finger. Where was his ring? Your mind started whirring, but you could no longer think of that as Andy slipped himself inside of you.

“You are my wife.” he hissed, squeezing your airway as your moan came out a choked gargle.

“An-dy,” you gasped as his hips plowed into you, not giving you time to adjust to his well endowed size.

“My pretty little wife, can’t wait to get a new home, and fill you with my babies.” Andy rambled as he fucked you mercilessly.

“No, no, no! Andy I-no I can’t!” you cried, pushing at his abdomen.

This only made Andy more keen on making you his, using the hand he had on your neck, he took both your wrists behind your back. This made him lean more against you, meaning his cock hit even deeper inside you. Stars were appearing in your vision at this point, he felt so fucking good. He gave you orgasm after orgasm, not letting up once.

“Doesn’t matter what you want honey, you belong to me now.” he grinned sinisterly.

You couldn’t form the strength to fight him anymore, his cock had you in a complete bliss. Your body sagged as more orgasms flew from you, coating his cock in your delicious juices. Andy felt a thrill from your submission, slamming his hips only a few more times before he let go inside of you. He stilled, making sure his cum stayed in.

Everything hit you at once, what happened, what you just did, what Andy said…

Did he really mean all of it?

You got your answer when Andy scooped you in his arms, and carried you out to his car…

You woke up in your bed a few hours later, startled. You moved your bed sheet, seeing a huge wet spot underneath you. Tears gathered in your eyes as you realized Andy had taken you more in your sleep, even seeing a tinge of blood from how rough he was.

“Hi baby, I was waiting for you to wake up sleepy head.” Andy smiled as he leaned on the door frame.

“You-what did you do?” your voice shook as you got the courage to meet his eyes.

“I wanted to make sure it took honey, I told you what was going to happen.” he chuckled, walking until he got on the bed.

You whimpered as he crawled on top of you, caging himself between your legs. He snuggled into your breasts, his large hands caressing your waist and hips.

“Andy-” you whispered, hoping he wasn’t trying to have another round.

“Just loving on my girl baby.” he murmured, kissing up your sternum until he met your lips.

“How-what-but…Laurie and-and your son.” you babbled, questions flying out of your mouth.

Andy shut you up with a hard kiss, prying your mouth open so he could play with your tongue. You gasped at the action, a shiver running down your spine as he kissed you breathless.

“I’ll deal with them later, Laurie and I are officially divorced, and my son…well, he will just have to get used to the change.” Andy shrugged, paying the thought no more mind as he lifted off of you.

“Wh-Where are you going?” you asked, suddenly missing his warmth.

You cursed yourself for giving in, but you couldn’t help it. You’d wanted him for so long, and now you could finally call him yours. He was right, the two of you belonged together…

“Making a bath for me and my wifey.” he winked, smiling at how you turned away shyly.

Everything was how it should be now…until it wasn’t…

“Peter! You’re here!” you cried, moving to go hug him but he stood still, only movement being that of his hand pulling his mask from his face, revealing his greatly saddened features to your desperate eyes. Your movements ceased as you saw his face, a realization clicking into place as you stilled, hands dropping from where they had been reaching for a hug to go and tug at the loose and frayed string of your old t-shirt. “How long have you been here?” you looked up at him through the webs of your lashes, voice weak as you prayed he hadn’t seen you play torturer and victim with your own skin, that he hadn’t had to witness the contortions of your belly as you twisted yourself in the mirror in nothing more than an attempt to look like there was less of you.

“Long enough, what were you doing?” he brushed past your inquiry, knowing the reasoning behind the question but he needed answers, even if they knew that they would break his heart.

“Oh I, well I was just looking at myself” you whispered, going to sit on the edge of your bed as you trained your eyes to the suddenly very interesting palms.

“That didn’t look like just looking at yourself” Peter’s voice was gentle now, dancing on the edge of frayed as he tried to hold himself together. Still dawning in the suit Peter took a place between your thighs, grabbing your hands in his own as he tried to pull your attention to his adoring eyes but you avoided them. “Y/n, please look at me” he was begging and he was unashamed of the fact, he needed your attention and he needed to assure you that you were his definition of beauty. Your eyes tore from where his suit clad fingers had intertwined with your own, the threading seemingly less intense than the conversation at hand but there was only so long that you could ignore the elephant in the room. His brown eyes were warm when you met them, dancing with hues of heartbreak. “I love you” his voice trailed with love, still begging to hold your gaze as you tried to pull it away.

“Why?” your voice was breaking, everything was breaking and you wished you could be nothing but dust in the wind.

“Because you are perfect” his words were cliched but held true in his heart, you were perfect, to him you were, there was nothing more correct for him than you.

“Peter I am not perfect” you pushed his hands away, standing up and hiking up your shirt, your belly becoming exposed to the chill of your room, a shiver etching up your spine. “I am terrible, I just, Im too much, there is too fucking much of me and I want it to stop, I want it to disappear and I just-I want to be beautiful, I want to be beautiful for you because you are perfect!” you let out, your voice laced with tears as you grip into your skin, but your hands were quickly pulled away, Peter’s grip on your hands pulled you back to your bed, letting you fall back down on the comforter. His lips immediately melding with the exposed skin of your belly, placing a soft chaste kiss to your skin and looking up at you with his wide puppy dog eyes.

“If I don’t get to call you perfect, you don’t get to call me perfect,” he asserted, his hands covering the soft expanse of your belly, kissing the crescent shaped marks of your fingernails with the gentle touch of his fingers. “I love every single inch of you, it's all perfect, all of it” his lips pressed just below your belly button. “You’re perfect”

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Bucky glanced at you every few seconds, needing to make sure that you were still with him and needing to know that you were okay. So far, you hadn’t quite moved from your spot of staring out of the car window, hell, you’d barely even blinked. He had asked you a few times if you were okay but each question was met with silence as its answer. He was worried about you, worried about the state of your mind after tonight’s events. Bucky had long since been used to the violence and the attempts on his life but you weren’t, you’d never known a life of violence and death and Bucky was worried that you might not be able to cope with it all. He wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t cope, it was a lot to take in mentally and emotionally, it took him a long time to bring himself down from that place when he came to after the Winter Soldier situation. He hated that he was used to it; hated that he was desensitised to situations like this but he couldn’t help it. 

Bucky continued to drive. It was late at night which meant he could drive that bit faster to get further from Hydra who would absolutely be hot on their trail. He had no idea how they’d found the two of you so fast. Maybe they’d been on you from the start and had just been toying with you? Maybe they got information from the car dealer at the airport? The old lady from the markets? Who knows? All Bucky knew was that you weren’t safe anymore and he had to get you out of there as soon as possible. The plan had changed since he started driving, he was going to take you someplace else (he had actually set up three safe houses in different states) but he realised that no matter what, they would keep hunting and you’d need to keep running. He knew what he had to do. He had to take you home. 

Home wasn’t safe but nowhere was safe now. If he took you home, you’d at least have more people around to protect and look out for you. It was weird, Bucky knew that was what was best but he almost didn’t want to. He had enjoyed this time alone with you and he was worried about what would happen when you went home. You weren’t his girlfriend, you were Steve’s but Bucky was in love with you. He wasn’t sure how or when it really happened, all he did know was that you were the most important thing to him and he didn’t want to lose you. You had almost kissed, that much was true, but was that just a ‘we just survived something horrific and I want to get out my pent up aggression so let’s kiss’ kiss? Or was it a ‘recently I’ve been developing feelings for you and this is a terrible time for it but let’s kiss’ kiss? God knows. Bucky rubbed his face tiredly with his hand. When he was younger, in the 40s with Steve, he was much more capable of figuring out feelings and being open with them but now... now his heart had almost turned to stone.

Over the last nearly three weeks, you and Bucky had grown much closer than you both anticipated. Bucky knew that you felt something for him too, he knew you did, he’d seen the way you reacted when so close to him earlier. He smiled to himself as he thought about it but he knew that nothing could ever happen. You were Steve’s girlfriend and Bucky didn’t want to step in the way of his best friend’s relationship. For now though, Bucky would enjoy the fact that it was just you and him for a while longer.

It took you around 40 minutes of staring in silence out of the forwards facing window. Your eyes burned at the lack of blinking and your throat hurt from the hoarse crying, you cleared your throat and Bucky’s head snapped to you, “Hey,” he said quietly, “Lost you for a while there.” When you didn’t reply he told you that there was a bottle of water in the bag at your feet, “I didn’t have time to grab much so there’s just some water in the bag.”

You reached down, grabbing the bag and finding the water. It reminded you of the trip here. You’d cried so much that you had almost given yourself a migraine and Bucky had packed water. Now, not three weeks later, you were leaving although much sooner and in much worse condition. You downed the water before settling into your seat. Bucky reached behind him, grabbing his knitted blanket that you’d got him and his jacket, he set them on your knees gently, “I’m going to be driving a while so if you want to go back to sleep, feel free.” At the mention of sleep, you shot upwards, eyes wide with panic and heart immediately beating faster.

Bucky did a double take, “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?” He asked, seeing the immediate panic in your eyes and all over your face.

“If I’m sleeping, what- what if you’re not there and something happens? What- What happens if they come back and find me?”

God, Bucky just wanted to hug you. He wanted to hold you close and tell you that he wouldn’t let anything happen to you. The way you looked, so sad and scared, made his heart absolutely ache. He shook his head, “I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’m driving to the next state and then I’ll find a payphone and call home. When I get out of the car, I’ll be no less than two feet away from you, I promise you.”

You were terrified, terrified of him leaving, terrified of anything happening again, “You’ll stay the whole time? You’ll-You’ll stay with me?”

Bucky nodded, “I promise,” his voice was soft and so gentle, he knew how badly you needed that comfort and he would do anything to give it to you, “Get some rest, (y/n). I promise, I’ll be here when you wake up.”

After taking a deep breath, and making Bucky promise he wouldn’t leave two more times, you settled into your seat, the blanket draped over your knees but it was Bucky’s heavy leather jacket that you pulled around your torso and your face. You had the jacket gathered around your face, breathing it in. You didn’t really register what you were doing, too much in shock to really pay close attention, all you knew was that Bucky’s jacket smelled nice, it smelled of leather with a mix of pine, citrus and cologne. It was a comforting smell and soon, you were fast asleep cuddled into his jacket. Bucky glanced over at you one last time with a smile.

It was a few hours later when Bucky had driven well into another state that he felt comfortable stopping for a short while. He stopped on an empty highway which conveniently had a payphone. He pulled up a lot closer to the payphone than he should have but since he’d promised you no more than two feet then he really didn’t want to break that promise. He hoped that in stopping for a while, he wouldn’t let Hydra catch up but he’d driven hundreds of miles by now in a much faster speed so he hoped that it would be okay. He stretched when he got out of the car before checking his gun and knife were still in place before pulling out some money and punching in the one number that he knew by heart. It rang twice before they answered.

“Hello?”

“Steve, it’s me.”

“Bucky?” Steve Rogers said incredulously, “Why are you calling? What’s happened? Is (y/n) okay? Are you okay?” Steve fired question after question at him. He hadn’t been expecting Bucky to be in contact for at least a month and yet, not even three weeks later, he was calling him up.

“They found us,” Bucky said as he looked around, making sure no one else was there, “Two men broke into the cabin we were at during the night. (y/n)’s alive but... god, Steve, she’s really shaken up.”

“What happened? Can I talk to her?”

“She’s asleep just now,” Bucky watched you through the car window as he spoke, “You need to send a jet for us. We need to come home. It’s not safe now.”

“What happened, Buck?”

"Later,” Bucky said gruffly, “You need to send us a jet.” He didn’t want to waste time talking, he needed someone to come and get the two of you. Bucky glanced at you through the car window, he needed to protect you. As Steve’s questioning relented, Bucky recited the exact route he was on.

Steve told him that Nat, who had been in the same room as him whilst taking the call, was on the phone to Fury and, “Nat’s taking the jet, she should be there in around thirty minutes. Can you wait that long?”

Bucky glanced around, “We’ll wait, I’ll call you if anything else happens.” They hung up without exchanging another word, Bucky hadn’t wanted to stay on the phone too long. When he heard Steve’s voice, he had an overwhelming sense of guilt. He felt horrible about everything, about what happened, about his feelings for you... it was awful. Bucky hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. He was perfectly okay seeing life without colour if that meant things weren’t awkward and complicated. He just couldn’t bare it. He looked at you through the car window again and for a split second a thought appeared. She’s worth it. 

After a minute of getting fresh air, Bucky went back into the car. He let you sleep another twenty minutes or so before he gently began to say your name to wake you up,  “(y/n)?”

You shot upwards, terrified thinking that someone else was about to attack, Bucky was quick to calm you, “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s just me. (y/n), everything’s okay.” God, he hated seeing that fear in your eyes.

Your hands reached out, grabbing onto his arm tightly, “Bucky,” you whispered as you tried to catch your breath, “Everything’s okay?” You looked at him with worry in your eyes.

Bucky was quick to nod, giving your hand a small pat, “Everything’s fine.” He let you take a few calming breaths as he watched you carefully. He felt responsible for all of this, he should’ve eliminated the risk before you even knew about it but he couldn’t and he didn’t, “I called Steve.”

The mention of Steve made you frown, Steve... it took a few seconds before you remembered Steve. You were still in shock, too focused on what had happened mere hours ago so Bucky doesn’t take it to heart when you seemingly don’t remember your own boyfriend. When it hits you, you look up at Bucky,  “He’s coming?”

Bucky shook his head, “He’s sending a jet and it’ll take us to the hospital.” Your panic spiked again but Bucky explained it would be routine, “You’re in shock and you need to be looked over. Me too. Hospital’s the safest place right now.” You nodded slowly and asked when they’d be here, Bucky shrugged and gave you a rough estimate of half an hour, “Are we safe?”

Bucky nodded, “Yeah. We are. I didn’t stop driving until we got here, we’ve been here for a while. I predict that they’d still be a couple hours behind us.” That estimate was a guess, he hoped that they’d be a couple hours behind but Hydra were sneaky and you could never truly figure them out.

It was then you realised that you were still holding onto Bucky’s arm. Quickly, as your cheeks burned, you let him go, apologising softly, “Hey,” Bucky said quietly, so gently and so carefully, “It’s okay, doll. Everything’s going to be okay.” You looked up at him, looking into those dark blue eyes, feeling yourself getting carried away in thoughts that could not ever happen. You felt as though he could really see you when you looked at him, like he could see into your soul, read your thoughts; it was silly, it was extremely ridiculous but that’s what a soulmate felt like. It felt like the last piece of your puzzle was right there, sitting in the car beside you, eyes boring into your own...

“(y/n)...” Bucky murmured softly. He had stopped himself from kissing you once before and now, he wasn’t sure if he could stop himself again. The pull was too strong, the pull was too much. You looked at him with the kindest eyes that he hadn’t seen in a long time, not since the 40s at least and all he wanted to do was tell you how he felt. He wanted to tell you that he was in love with you, tell you everything you made him feel and that he was wholly and irrevocably in love with you and you know what? You wanted him to. You wanted him to kiss you, you wanted him to tell you every feeling he felt for you, every reason why he felt it...

As Bucky moved closer, eyes fleeting between your lips and your eyes in a silent question of ‘is this okay?’, you began to hear a distant noise that began to get louder and louder. You and Bucky pulled apart, leaning forwards to look out of the window, “It’s the jet,” you said, recognising the S.H.I.E.L.D owned jet. You didn’t know why you felt a pang of sadness. Without a word, Bucky got out of the car, waving at arm at the jet to make sure it knew that you were here and grabbed the bags out of the trunk. You watched him get out and sighed before following suit and leaving the car as well. It took another minute or two before the jet had landed safely about 50 feet away from you.

You and Bucky stood beside each other, Bucky’s hand was on his gun just in case but a moment later, a familiar face appeared and was soon walking towards you. It was Nat. She wore a large smile, “When Steve told me that you were coming home, I had to be the one to come get you,” she said, loudly over the noise of the jet as she approached. Natasha Romanoff was not a very emotional or touchy feely person but when she got up close, she wrapped you in the tightest hug imaginable. You didn’t hug her back. You were thankful that she had came but you couldn’t give her that sort of emotion yet, you were in shock; you were traumatised. She pulled away with a frown, “You okay?”

Quickly, you glanced to Bucky who recognised your look as one of ‘help’ and he took over the conversation, “We need to get going,” he told Nat gruffly, “we don’t know how far out they’ll be.” Nat nodded, glancing back at you once more before she opened the back of the jet for you and Bucky to climb into. The other pilot was a S.H.I.E.L.D agent that you didn’t recognise.

“Strap yourselves in,” he instructed, “make sure the bags are secure as well.”

Bucky strapped in the bags as you strapped yourself in and he went to sit across from you but quickly, your arm shot outwards, grabbing his metal hand. He instinctively wrapped his vibranium fingers around your hand, “Sit beside me,” you said quietly, “please.” 

Bucky nodded, dropping your hand, choosing not to think about how nice it felt to have you touch his metal arm and strapped himself in beside you. There was about 8 spaces in the back of the jet to sit and yet, you and Bucky were pressed against each other. You didn’t know why but you needed him beside you, you needed to feel him next to you, needed to feel that he was there with you always. You blamed it on what had happened, that you were still scared and fragile and needed someone there but as Nat prepared for take off, she looked at the pair of you and realised that it was far more than simply being scared; it was called being in love.

As Nat began to ready for take off, you dropped your head onto Bucky’s shoulder and closed your eyes. There was something so comforting about him, so peaceful and gentle, a side that he rarely got to show the world these days. Bucky hated planes, he hated flying and jets and all of that but when Nat took off, he barely registered that you were all in the air and instead, was more focused on the fact that you were falling asleep on his shoulder. He rested his head on the headrest, closing his eyes and enjoying the short while of peaceful time that the two of you would have left together.

He thought of Steve and what would happen when you saw him again. Would you completely drop Bucky? Would your feelings have changed for Steve? He had no clue. It was selfish of him to want you to stick around but he didn’t expect you to. What was three weeks with you to Steve’s year with you? It felt nice that you were so comfortable around him now, that you were depending on him to help you.  For now, he would enjoy what little time he had left with you.

Getting from the jet to the hospital was all a bit of a blur. You and Bucky were rushed from the jet and rushed into the hospital. They had tried to separate the two of you but you refused point blank to go anywhere without him there. You lost Nat in the crowds of people who were checking you both over, forcing you to drink water and making you do all sorts of reaction tests. After that, you and Bucky were taken to a room with one hospital bed in it and a chair.

“Mr Barnes, if you’d like to follow me I’ll take you to your room,” the nurse said.

“No!” You exclaimed grabbing at Bucky and tugging him to your side. The way you gripped his arm and pulled him with all of your strength surprised Bucky, that you were so desperate to keep him there beside you; he was the only comfort right now, the only thing that stopped you from spiralling.

“Mr Barnes has a room of his own, it’s just beside yours. You can visit whenever you like.”

“No, he stays.”

“His room is next door.”

“Then wheel the bed in here.” Bucky couldn’t help but smirk at your stubborn responses.

The nurse, who was becoming more and more irritated by your demands, looked at Bucky and Bucky stepped forwards. Your hand fell to his and he wrapped his fingers around yours immediately. The two of you couldn’t help but notice how right it felt to be touching each other and to be holding hands but Bucky snapped out of it quickly, “Look, Nurse...” he trailed off reading the name on her badge, “Owens. Nurse Owens, we’ve been through something pretty awful and we’d appreciate it if we could just share a room. I’ll wheel the bed in, I’ll set it up, you won’t have to do anything.”

“I’m under orders from Director Fury to-”

“Who gives a shit about what he says, am I right?” Bucky scoffed out a laugh, “If he has an issue with it, tell him to come and see me.”

After a few more back and forths, Nurse Owens relented and asked two student nurses to wheel Bucky’s bed into your room, “Thank you, Nurse Owens!” Bucky called from the door once the student nurses were finished. You heard her huff ‘bloody superheroes’ from down the hallway. He closed the door behind him before taking a couple of steps towards you, “How you doing?” He dipped his head to meet your eyes and his voice, god, his voice was so soft and gentle like warm syrup drizzling over some pancakes on a warm Sunday morning.

“Sorry, I know I keep grabbing you and pulling you,” you apologised quietly, “I just...” You didn’t know what to tell him without telling him too much, “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

Bucky nodded, “It’s okay, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”

It was a while later when Natasha knocked on the door and walked in. She had been pre-warned by Nurse Owens that Bucky was in there with you also, “I brought you both some clothes,” Nat said holding up two bags, “(y/n), I stopped by your apartment and lifted some of your own clothes. Barnes, I didn’t go to your apartment instead I got Clint to give me some of his for you.” She smiled sarcastically at you both.

“Thanks, Nat,” you said quietly. It was Bucky who got up to collect the bags from her. Nat frowned, you weren’t acting like yourself. She didn’t know what happened, no one knew but whatever it was, it must’ve been bad for you to not be able to look her in the eye.

“Oh, there’s toiletries and things in the bags as well. I thought that you’d probably want to take a shower. Barnes, I was told that you can go shower next door so that (y/n) can shower in here.”

Your head shot up, “No,” you said quickly. Nat’s frown deepened. She knew that fear in your eyes, she also knew that look in your eyes when you looked at Bucky... that was the look of love. 

“I’ll stay here,” Bucky said, glancing back at you. He could tell by Natasha’s face that she was trying to figure out the relationship between the two of you, trying to figure out what was going on so he quickly said, “I’ll let (y/n) shower and get ready first, I’ll wait out here and then I’ll take a turn.” Natasha eyed the two of you carefully. Something was going on between you and Bucky and as your friend, she was determined to find out what was going on.

“If you need anything, I’ll be around.” She left with one last glance at you. Bucky closed the door and came to give you the bag of clothes that she’d brought for you. You thanked him quietly.

“You want to shower first?” He asked.

You nodded, taking your bag and walking into the adjoined shower room. For some reason, you were terrified as you walked into the shower room. You closed the door behind you before popping your head out a second later. Bucky looked over at you, “Can you pull that chair over and sit outside the shower room?” You asked him quietly, “Just so I know that no one will come in or-”

Bucky cut you off by dropping his belongings on the bed and pulling the chair over to sit outside the shower room. He gave you a soft smile as he did so, “I’ll be here, I promise.”

You breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he’d be there to keep you safe, and you felt comfortable to shut the door and turn on the shower. As you turned to take your top off, you realised that there was a slight spray of dried blood over your clothes. It was still a dark red though it was turning that sickly dried brown colour. Oh I wish I couldn’t see that colour. Bile rose in your throat as you looked at yourself before you quickly pulled your clothes off, dumping them in the bin before looking back to the mirror. You almost didn’t recognise yourself. You had dark bags under your bloodshot eyes, blanched skin and bruises on your body. The bruises would’ve been from jumping out of the closest and landing on that Hydra agent. It was your body, the same curves, the same stretchmarks and freckles but it was different now; it had been through something unbelievably terrifying. With a sigh, you stepped under the shower, letting the scalding water wash away some of the trauma.

As you showered, Natasha walked into your joint hospital room. She had a couple more bags, “Brought food, where’s (y/n)?”

“Showering.”

She frowned, “Why are you sitting directly outside?”

“She asked me to.” The two assassins stared each other down, stubborn as each other, “Thanks for the food.”

“Listen, Barnes, I don’t know your game plan here, I don’t know if you’re trying to break up (y/n) and Steve but they don’t need you interfering with them.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, “I’m not trying to interfere.”

“You’re in love with her, that’s so freaking obvious.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Wait until you stay awake half the night, not because you can’t sleep or because of a nightmare, but because you can’t stop watching her. Then come talk to me about who’s in love or not.” She gave him a sarcastic smile, “Just know that (y/n) is one of my closest friends and she’s been through enough. She might have gotten confused when you were away because it was only you and her and you’re apparently soulmates but don’t let that fool you. She loves Steve.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and took a step towards her, “Why don’t you let (y/n) decide who she wants?”

Natasha smirked slightly, “So you do love her. Okay, just checking.” With that, she turned on her heel and left, leaving Bucky more confused than ever. With a sigh, he went back to his chair and sat down, thinking about what that exchange was all about.

You weren’t sure how long you showered for; minutes? Hours? Who knew? All you knew was that the feeling of the water hitting your skin, warm and fast, was therapeutic. You scrubbed at your skin until it was red raw and washed your hair once, twice, three times until you were certain that there was no grime, no blood and no trace of last night on your skin. Once you felt sufficiently clean, you turned the shower off. You glanced towards the door, “Bucky?”

“Yeah, doll?” He called, he sounded close, he was still sitting outside.

“I like that,” you replied, “I like when you call me that.”

“I like calling you it.” He smiled. God help me, I’m in love with my best friend’s girl. 

As you got your bag with all of your clothes you couldn’t have been happier. Thank you Natasha Romanoff! She had packed your skin care and moisturiser along with some perfume and your own clothes. She was a saint. You moisturised your face before pulling on your own clothes. As you pulled them over your head, you realised they smelled like home; like you and like Steve. You inhaled the smell deeply, god, you forgot how much you missed that smell. Before you left the shower room, you looked at yourself in the mirror and realised that you looked and felt a lot better; you felt and looked more like yourself. The bags were still prominent under your eyes but you didn’t look so pale and didn’t look so terrified. Plus wearing clothes that were your own that suited your body and your curves was always a bonus.

You left a moment later to see Bucky sitting just outside. He got up and pulled the chair out of the way before drinking you in, “Wow,” he said softly, “you look... you look beautiful.”

“Oh, shut up,” you scoffed, rolling your eyes, “I’m wearing Christmas pyjamas in the middle of May!”

“No, I mean it,” Bucky said seriously, “You’re just lovely.”

You sucked in a deep breath as you looked at him, relishing in the way that he looked at you before snapping out of it, “Your turn,” you said, passing him a towel, “Do you mind if I sit here when you’re in too?”

He shook his head, giving you a smile, knowing that you needed to feel safe and if that meant you would be sitting right outside as he showered, so be it, “Go ahead.”

Bucky showered quickly, he was never a ‘stay and think’ in the shower kind of guy, so it wasn’t long before he was back outside, sitting on the foot of your bed as you sat at the top playing cards which he’d managed to get off one of the nurses.

The rest of the night went by peacefully. Steve hadn’t visited yet because he was in the middle of safeguarding the apartment again and getting things in place for that. Natasha was in the hospital, monitoring you and Bucky and checking on you routinely. You and Bucky played some cards until you started to yawn,  “Don’t tell me that you’ll be sleeping on the floor in here,” you said to him as he climbed off of your bed and let you get settled.

He gave a short laugh, “Nah... I’ll be lying on the bed. Hospital beds are just as uncomfortable as the floor.”

As the pair of you settled into your beds, you found yourself staring up at the ceiling, staring into the darkness, “Bucky?” You asked.

“Yeah, (y/n)?” 

“How do you deal with it?”

Bucky thought for a moment, “Therapy’s helped a lot, honestly. You know me, doll, you know that I still have nightmares. I didn’t deal with it for a long time and that shows. I go see my therapist and it doesn’t make everything perfect but it takes some of the mental toll away... To be honest, I don’t know if my nightmares and things will ever truly go away. I isolated myself from everyone... don’t do what I did.”

The two of you were silent for a long time, “You’re not going to leave after this, are you?” You asked him, “You won’t go back to Wakanda or anything?”

He peered over at you, seeing you looking at him, “I’m not going to leave, I promise.”

“I know that when we found out we were... you know,” soulmates, “that we were going to not see each other but...”

“Sweetheart, I don’t think I could stay away from you if I tried,” Bucky scoffed, turning to lie on his side so that he was facing you, “You’re under my skin, (y/n). No going back now.” It was some form of admission but the laugh that accompanied it made it feel a lot less serious than what it was.

“Tell me I’m going to be okay.”

“You’re going to be absolutely fine, (y/n).”

“Night, James,” you yawned, rolling over so that you were facing him. You gave him a smile before closing your eyes. Surprisingly, it didn’t take you too long to fall asleep. You thought that you’d struggle but your mind was a lot clearer and with Bucky there, you felt a lot safer.

Bucky watched you, listened to your breathing and your slight snores, he looked at the strand of hair that had fallen in front of your face, tickling at your nose and he cursed Natasha Romanoff for being right. He watched you for a long time, finding you so peaceful even when you snored, before he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

You woke up in the same exact position that you’d fallen asleep in. You woke up to see Bucky sound asleep which surprised you. You thought that he would’ve been awake before you, usually he was up and ready by the time you were just stirring. He looked strangely peaceful when he was sleeping, no frown lines, no seriousness; just peaceful. It was almost as though he could feel you staring at him when he frowned and opened one eye, “Why are you watching me?” He asked, voice groggy

“I am not watching you!” You rolled your eyes, sitting up, “I just happened to be facing that way and opened my eyes!”

He rolled over, “Yeah, okay, doll. You were too busy ogling me again.”

“Shut up, Barnes.”

After getting up and getting dressed, Director Fury walked into your joint hospital room, “Now, who in the hell was arguing with my nurses?” He asked, arms crossed over his chest. He was intimidating; reminding you of when you were at school and were caught chatting to your friend when you weren’t meant to.

“Uh... the two of us?” You offered.

“Nurse Owens is now demanding a pay rise telling me that she doesn’t deserve to be looking after demanding superheroes.” Ugh, we’re not even superheroes.

You and Bucky glanced at each other, trying to hold in laughter. Director Fury rolled his eyes, “I’ve been told that the two of you are fine to be discharged this morning. We’ve been unable to track down Rumlow and his men but we’re still looking.” At the mention of Rumlow, your smile fell and you remembered all of the shit that had happened, “We’ve not figured out how they tracked you both down yet, Agent Hill is sourcing the car as we speak so I’ll update you soon on that front. Any questions?”

The two of you shook your heads.

“Good, ain’t got no time for stupid damn questions,” Fury grumbled, “I need to take your accounts of what happened but you have a very persuasive boyfriend, Miss (Y/L/N). Captain Rogers has asked on both of your accounts to get back home, get settled and then tell us tomorrow.”

“Steve?” You asked quietly, “Is he here?” Bucky’s face flashed an unreadable emotion but quickly changed to that of his normal stony look.

Fury shook his head, “He’ll be here later with Agent Romanoff to collect you both.”

“Is home safe?” Bucky asked, “Will (y/n) be safe?”

“Rogers is setting up more precautions, we’ve evacuated half of the apartment building. The whole floor that you and Steve live on is full of SHIELD agents. We have a new door entry system, new cameras with facial recognition technology. If anyone comes in or out, we’ll know about it and we’ll know everything about them in twenty seconds.” 

It honestly made you feel a little uncomfortable. All of this protection for you. You weren’t that special that you deserved this treatment. You didn’t feel as though you deserved this much attention or time. Steve would’ve pressed for Fury to put more guards and more security in the apartment building. This seemed a bit like overkill though but you wouldn’t say no to extra protection.

Fury left after telling you that he’d be in contact the next day. Bucky glanced at you, “Jeez, he’s a bit serious, isn’t he?”

You smiled slightly, “Just a bit.”

After having breakfast, unbeknownst to either of you, Natasha Romanoff stood down the hall, looking into the window of your joint room. She watched as you and Bucky played cards, laughing and smiling. Footsteps came up from behind her, “Are they here?”

She turned to meet Steve Rogers, “Yeah. They’ve been checked over and monitored all night. Fury was worried about (y/n) because she was really shaken up but she seems to be doing better now.”

Steve tapped his foot impatiently. It wasn’t like the Super Soldier to be nervous but he was terrified. He needed to make sure that you were okay, he was terrified in case you weren’t and he was terrified in care you were okay... okay with Bucky that is, “Can I see her?”

“Steve, before you do, I think you need to know something,” Nat said with a frown. Steve’s heart sank and his shoulders sagged, “Now, I don’t know what happened but it was bad. (y/n) wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t hug me, would barely speak to me. She only wants him by her side, she refused to leave his side, fought a nurse over it as well because they tried to give them separate rooms. I don’t know if it’s a trauma related thing or a soulmate related thing but I wanted to prepare you for it just in case-”

Steve glanced up, spying you through the window. You looked beautiful as ever as you sat on the bed playing cards. He’d missed that sight, you with your hair down and laughing. Bucky sat at the end of the bed and he was... laughing? In recent years, Bucky wasn’t one to open up to anyone much and he rarely ever laughed but as Steve watched the two of you, he saw the little details. He saw Bucky lean forwards, closer to you to put down a card and you didn’t move away, he saw you touch his hand and Bucky didn’t flinch but most of all, he saw the smiles the two of you wore.

“She looks happy,” he said softly, “they both do.”

“She’s just as happy with you, you know,” Nat reminded him, nudging his side, “We don’t know what’s happened or what’s went on between the two of them so we can’t jump to conclusions.”

It was then that you happened to glance out of the window before looking back to your cards. Wait. You threw your head to the side to look out of the window again. There he was, in all of his six foot something glory, “Steve,” you whispered. Bucky’s head whipped to the side. You dropped the playing cards on the bed, the game abandoned as you clambered upwards, “Steve!” You threw open the hospital door, “Steve!”

You took off running for him, tears filling your eyes as your heart hammered in your chest. Steve’s face broke into a large grin seeing you rushing towards him, he opened his arms and readied himself for your impact. You crashed into him, throwing your arms around his neck, sobbing into his chest. You hadn’t realised how much you’d missed him, how much you needed to feel him, needed to smell his cologne and needed to touch him. He held you tightly, lifting you easily despite your weight because that’s the fun in having a Super Soldier as a boyfriend.

With one hand he stroked back your hair whispering soft words of encouragement, “I’ve got you, sweetheart, it’s okay now.” You wept into his chest, everything overwhelming you again; all of the trauma, all of the fear, all of the guilt over Bucky... everything was pouring out now. God, you missed him. Here he was, in the flesh, holding you tightly and telling you that everything was okay. You hadn’t realised how much you’d needed to hear that.

Bucky looked on as you reconnected with Steve. It hurt, it hurt a lot more than he thought it would. He wanted you to be that happy to see him, he wanted to hold you like that; he wanted you. Natasha watched him, gauging his reactions, before she approached him and casually said, “Get a good sleep?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, walking towards you and Steve. When you pulled away from Steve, Steve saw Bucky. They embraced for a moment before Steve went back to hold you, “Are you okay?” Steve asked you and then looked to Bucky, “Are the two of you okay?”

Bucky nodded, “We will be.”

Steve pressed a soft kiss to your forehead, “You ready to go home?”

You glanced to Bucky, locking eyes for a second. He wore an expression that you’d never seen him wear before... was that sadness? There was a look in his eyes, a look of pain or anguish and the way he looked at you almost screamed  ‘don’t go’.

“Sweetheart?” Steve asked breaking you from your trance.

You looked to him and back to Bucky but when you turned to Bucky, he was his usual stony self, no emotion and unreadable, “Yeah,” you said eventually, “Yeah let’s go.”

“You coming, Buck?” Steve asked as he took your bags off of Bucky, “I’ll drop you off at your apartment.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just walk it.”

“Your apartment is like five miles from here,” you said with a frown, “Why don’t you just come with us?”

Bucky forced a smile, “I’ll walk, (y/n). Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Could do with clearing my head a bit anyway... Will you let me know when you’ve got home safe?” He directed the question to Steve.

Steve nodded, “Sure. Tomorrow, Fury wants to get the full story from you both. We could talk after that, Buck, catch up?”

Bucky nodded, taking a step backwards, “Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you later.”

Steve began to walk away, his hand leading you in the opposite direction. You turned around, eyes meeting Bucky’s and there was that sad expression. God, you wanted to rush up to him and hug him, you wanted to stop him and say something; you wanted to do something but instead, you let Steve lead you out of the hospital and into his car.

Steve spoke softly to you, telling you some lighter pieces of news that had been happening, “Nat will probably want to tell you herself but she and Banner finally made it official...” You hummed in response, “Pepper found out that she’s expecting a little girl. Tony’s beside himself.” You hummed again. Steve glanced at you, concerned.

It didn’t take long before you were outside your apartment building and your heart began to speed up. You hadn’t been here in only three weeks but it felt like a lifetime ago that you were leaving with Bucky. Steve asked if you were okay to which you replied by shaking your head. He grabbed your bags and held your hand tightly, “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered as you slowly approached the looming building.

The new entry system asked your name and apartment number and scanned your fingerprints. Overkill. Soon, you were heading up the stairs and to your apartment. Your palms were sweaty and you felt like your heart was going to burst out of your ribcage at any minute. You didn’t know why you were so scared, was it because of what happened with Rumlow here or when you left? Whatever it was, it was taking all of your willpower to put one foot in front of the other and force yourself to walk to your apartment.

Steve unlocked the door and swung it open. You took a deep breath as the door opened to reveal... your apartment. You breathed out. There were no bad guys, no guns, no Hydra or SHIELD agents, it was simply yours and Steve’s apartment. Slowly, you walked inside. Steve let you test the waters first, he let you slowly re-enter your home and re-enter normality. He didn’t expect you to be instantly okay now that you were home. You’d had numerous traumatic experiences which had led up to this moment so he knew that you had to go at your own pace. 

“Can you check the rooms?” You asked quietly, “Make sure it’s safe.” Steve didn’t even question it. Instead, he scouted every room and made sure that he’d checked every possible hiding place, “Thank you,” you whispered when he’d finished.

Gently, he took your hand and led you into the bedroom, “Get changed into comfortable clothes and I’ll make us something to eat, how does that sound?”

You nodded, “Sounds great actually.”

Steve had dropped your bags onto the bed, neither of you noticed the open letter slipping out and landing on the bed. You rifled your wardrobe, picking our some pyjamas before telling Steve that you were going for a shower. You could hear him shuffling around the house, clanging of pots and pans reassuring you that he was still close by. You didn’t need him by your side at all times, not like with Bucky. You tried to push Bucky out of your head, tried to make yourself stop thinking about him but it was becoming a bit futile now.

You were in the shower for a while, enjoying the water hitting down on your body. You skipped washing your hair this time which cut down your time significantly but by the time you were out, Steve had whipped up a quick meal of pasta for the two of you, “Smells amazing!” You said as you walked back into the bedroom to see Steve sitting on the bed with something in his hands, “You okay?”

It was then that you realised what was in his hands; his letter. He had told you to only open it if you started to feel something for Bucky Barnes, his best friend, and it had been torn open confirming his worst fears. You had developed some sort of feelings for Bucky and there was nothing Steve could do about it. He looked up at you, eyes so sad, “You opened it...” he said quietly, “You opened it.”