#womp womp ig

And fuck, your smell. That quiet warmth he only ever finds here. The fabric of your shirt soft against his skin. Your fingers brush in his hair without needing to be asked. He presses his face in further, breathes deeper, lets his arms slide around your waist and up your ribs and stay there, holding the rise and fall of your lungs in his palms. His thumb brushes the smallest motion along the proof that you’re still here. That he’s still here. Your heartbeat’s in his ear, and he counts the beats like a lifeline.

He tangles his legs with yours, big frame curling in like he wants to crawl into the space where you exist and never leave where there’s no mission, no gunfire, no blood he couldn’t stop. Just stay in the place where your chest rises and falls and rises again, and the way your body always makes room for him.

He doesn’t cry, but he thinks maybe if you said his name right now--soft, like you mean it--he just might.

So instead, he whispers yours, quiet, like a prayer. And when you breathe deep, slow and steady, he lets himself match it. He lets your rhythm become his anchor. He lets your hands in his hair bring him home.

... smut below ...

He doesn’t plan on asking for anything, doesn’t plan on taking, or moving, or talking. He just needed to feel your chest rise and fall beneath him. He needed your warmth to bleed into his skin and remind him he’s alive, that he came home, again and again, to you.

But then your fingers slip under his shirt, brushing the bare skin of his back, tracing an old scar at his hip--warm and gentle and familiar--and his whole body shudders with pure relief.

Your touch travels slow, up from the scar to the top of his shoulder blade. It moves featherlight down the line of his spine, then up again, smoothing over the tension in his shoulders. He breathes out hard--chest trembling against yours--and presses his mouth to your sternum, open and reverent, just a kiss, just him saying thank you without needing to speak.

Your hand moves from his hair to cradle his cheek. You tip his chin up, give that one, soft smile, and he’s unmade.

He shifts, pushes up on his arms to hover above you, his big hands bracing either side of your waist. For a moment he just looks, studies the way your lips part, the way your skin glows in the low light, the way your eyes hold him like you want all of him... like he’s not too much.

His hands move slow. He undoes the buttons of your shirt one by one, like unwrapping something precious. His fingers are light, shaking, moving not to get it off fast, but to savor it. Every inch of skin revealed is met with his mouth, soft kisses to your collarbone, your ribs, the inside curve of your waist. You feel his beard drag, the scratch of it rough, every brush a reminder that he's here.

“Let me,” he murmurs, voice low and hoarse.

You nod, and that’s all he needs.

He kisses down your stomach like he could live in the space between his lips and your skin. His hands massage your thighs, slow circles with his thumbs, and when he parts your legs, it’s with reverence.

He's still for a long moment, just looks at you, eyes meeting yours through his lashes. He breathes against your skin, rests his head on your thigh, lets you feel how much he wants this, how much he needs to give. Then his mouth lowers, and he starts slow. Long, languid movements of his tongue, gentle kisses to the inside of your thigh in between, murmured nothings and praises half-swallowed by the way he holds you open for him.

He stays there, mouth devoted, until you’re trembling with it, until your fingers are in his hair, tugging, until you whisper his name like it’s a secret only he deserves. And even then, he takes his time.

When he finally comes back up, he's meeting your soft, blissed smile with his own. He kisses you slow, like he’s savoring your taste on his tongue, like he wants you to know what you do to him and what you mean to him.

You help him out of the rest of his clothes, soft touches and kisses exchanged in the quiet between breaths. When he finally slides into you, it’s deep and deliberate--one long press that has both of you gasping into the space between your mouths.

“Fuck,” he whispers, lips against your cheek.

"Romantic, John," you whisper, all tease in your voice.

He hums, happily pressed as close as he can be, warm skin against warm skin. Your hands slide up his chest, fingers brushing through the course hairs there until they lock behind his back.

He finally moves, barely any space between where your hips meet before he's back again. He just rocks into you, slow and steady, his whole body wrapped around yours like he could shield you from the world and could hide here, in you, forever.

He murmurs your name, over and over. He tells you you’re perfect, tells you you’re his.

You come apart beneath him, soft, and gasping, and so beautiful--you know because he tells you so--he follows with a low moan and a stuttering breath, clutching you to him like a drowning man finding shore. He stays inside you for a while, presses his forehead to yours and breathes with you. He only moves away when you're both ready, sighing longingly at the seperation.

His hands settle once again at your waist, just as they did when he walked through the door, feeling your breath rise and fall beneath his palms. His head rests over your heart. And after a few moments he sleeps. Despite the sweat and spend--and grime still on him--you don't dare move because he's yours and he’s safe and he’s home.