noot noot

The lights in the bar are dim. The crowd is noisy. It’s the kind of place that has sticky floors and good enough vibes to ignore them; a place that celebrates and mourns every tick of the minute hand.

Nothing could stop life from messily oozing out every breath in these four walls. Not even the larger-than-life presence of Earth’s mightiest heroes.

After the difficult mission they just completed, their first order of business is to feel something.

You’re surprised you’re here, an agent tagging alongside others who are admittedly more familiar with this environment. But Natasha and free cocktails are enough to persuade you. Before long, you’re on your fourth drink (or is it fifth? They’re surprisingly delicious), tracing people’s silhouettes to pass the time, trading the health of your eardrums to do so.

Everyone is outlined with red neon.

The bass thumps louder than your heart. It reverberates in your chest, almost replacing the organ entirely with song. There’s smoke emanating from a corner that paints the scene with ethereality you’ve only seen in blurry pictures from yesteryear.

As your eyes sweep across the room, you realize you’re not the only introvert who’s people-watching.

Person-watching would be more accurate: Bucky’s gaze catches yours all the way from the counter where he sits, like it usually does. Somehow it always does. His staring problem is for everyone, but that look is intended for you and you alone.

Around him are Sam, Steve, and a boisterous Thor, who gestures like he’s challenging everyone to one drinking game or another. As if the God of Thunder needed more booze in his system—regular alcohol barely works on him, and he’s loud enough as is.

Bucky, on the other hand.

Quiet, brooding Bucky looks handsome tonight, with or without the sensuous light: leather jacket, boots, metal hand coiled around a whisky glass. The devilish red that casts a glow over the room should be polluting his blue eyes, but they remain brilliantly clear as they pin you to the wall. Like he’s amused to see you rooted there.

You look back from the rim of your glass and take a sip.

Something in his face softens. Enough that you can tell, even from this distance.

Then a second later, you’re stolen by Natasha’s hand around your wrist. She leads you to the dance floor.

You’re not sober enough to say no.

The ground under your boots is sticky, and the air is thick with sweat, heavy with unthinking optimism.

Strange, because in the heavy throng of limbs, every part of you feels light as a feather—save for your chest. You don’t know if it’s your wild heart or the bassline it has melded with, but something within that godforsaken cavity tugs you to where your feet aren’t.

It leads your eyes to the bar where he is.

Where he watches you.

You don’t look his way again for the rest of the night.

Because it’s—he’s—a little too much to handle for the fragile organ caged by your ribs. Unlike him, you’re sure the alcohol has begun to influence your faculties, threatening your stoic mask to reveal something honest—and because honesty is the weak link in a professional spy’s chains, you avoid him.

Another drink is placed in your hand. Nat.

Time starts tunneling around your conscious by the time you down it.

Before long, the dance floor suffocates, the voices grate, and you awkwardly weave your way towards the exit for some air. Sobriety marks every step.

By the time you’re outside, everything’s muffled, and you feel the ring of silence in your ear for the first time in hours. Breathing in the cold air kind of stings, but it’s nice. It’s refreshing.

It’s peaceful.

You count your heartbeat to ground yourself to the peace you shed blood for.

Bucky makes himself known to you on count twenty-two.

“You alright?”

His voice cuts the silence. There’s concern in it. You turn to see him look at you, hovering in front of the doorway, and briefly wonder what you look like in his eyes.

“Tipsy and a little overstimulated,” the words tumble out, measured, but unplanned. There’s that honesty you tried so hard to evade, except you don’t feel like you’re out of control. The sensation is subtle. Realizing it isn’t.

Deep down, you’re okay with the truth—because it’s Bucky you’re telling the truth to.

And because it’s him who’s out here with you, of course he has your coat in a grip. He’s already wrapping the wool of it around your shoulders.

You look down, feeling the hem brush over your clothed thigh. The fabric almost moves in slow motion.

“Thanks, Bucky.” You slip your arms in the sleeves.

Without being asked to, he’s buttoning it up for you.

You struggle to recall the day the ice broke between you and him. For as long as you can remember, he’s always been kind to you, even if he’s quiet about it. Almost like he’d prefer to be a hidden hand, someone who takes care of things from the backstage, needing no reward nor recognition: a cup of coffee the way you like it, a hand pulling you up from the training mat, the warmth of a blanket when you wake in the common room, unaware that you even fell asleep.

It used to be a poorly kept secret. Now he’s being kind to your face.

Bucky’s fingers work deftly at the front of your coat, clasping three buttons down your chest—enough to keep you warm for the time being.

If the night had shadows, his would fall on you with how close he’s standing. You’re allowed a few seconds to admire the length of his lashes. It’s unfair how beautiful he is.

The thought reinforces itself when those blue eyes look back up at you.

“You’re welcome.”

He says your name like it means something. Or perhaps everything.

The feeling that comes after is split-second, crystal clear: you don’t want him to leave, not yet. So you open your mouth, hoping for him to linger, to replace the warm buzz in your system with something more potent—his attention.

His fingers fix your sleeve. It says the same want in your veins out loud, translated differently.

You smile. “Bet you aren’t drunk at all.”

He smiles back. “They tried.”

There’s a lie in the easy lilt of his voice. His eyes are glazed with a layer you’re all too familiar with. Intoxication. Not the kind induced by alcohol—he’s basically immune, thanks to the serum.

Maybe it’s whatever Thor had. You buy time. If you don’t know what he’s drunk on, at least you get to watch him a little longer.

“You know, Bucky, I’m surprised you’re even here.”

The single, soft huff of a laugh he lets out is so boyish, his face appears a decade younger. You think he looks more like the pictures they show at the Smithsonian: not free of his own share of cares, but carefree in his own way.

Innocent, almost.

Then the chuckle dies down. He looks at you like you hurt him, and a twinge captures your chest.

His thumb brushes your cheek and you stop breathing.

You swallow instead. His eyes catch your throat move.

The rest of his hand, large and callused, cups your jaw, gently directing you to keep looking up at him—to keep looking at him.

“I’m here because you are, doll.”

The small ‘oh’ of realization is hitched on his cheek.

What happens next isn’t a surprise, but your heart hammers loudly anyway.

He slants his face over yours, fast in closing the distance, but slow when he actually kisses you. He hovers an inch away for one second, two, then three—prolonging the final moments of not knowing your taste—before he gives everything up.

Capitulation comes after one shared breath, bated and stolen just as he slots himself into you.

You welcome him and this moment that’s long been part of your dreams, hands snaking up his arms. He wraps them around you, the hand on your face sliding to the back of your head as if counteracting an escape. Why he thinks you’d run, you don’t know. The tips of your boots scrape his.

He pulls away with a soft sound that has your lashes fluttering, and your body shivers in protest at the loss of him, but then he’s on you again.

Deeper this time. You return it equally.

When you steal a breath, it’s with a relief that echoes a Quinjet ride ago: the two of you were crouched behind a concrete wall waiting for the rain of bullets to die down. He held you close while frantically scanning your person, eyes darting from one vital point to another, making sure you’re okay you’re not hurt you’re alive—all things he didn’t say out loud.

The relief of kissing him is double what you felt coming out of that battle alive. The relief of him kissing you back is a hundred times more.

You sigh his name. It pulls a sound from his chest, something ragged that gets poured right into your mouth.

His fingers in your hair card deeper. You tiptoe into him. He holds you closer, steadying you.

While your lips lock again and again, you faintly register his fingers drawing shapes on your neck. You do the same. The lines don’t make sense. Just strokes that spell desperation, like a poor attempt at signing your lives away to each other.

The sidewalk is your only witness.

Around the precarious dance that is a relationship, there is a veil. It keeps people within it safe from pain, content with shallow affection, while those who pass through it are rewarded with a burning bounty of a lifetime.

For you and Bucky, it takes time for the veil to lift.

But time is a funny thing—stretching around moments, making them last longer than they should, then racing like the wind when it feels like it.

It’s been months since you last wore your own clothes to bed. Months since he first brought it up, never to speak of it again.

You look good in his t-shirt.

Since that night at the bar, you rediscover how attractive he is: not just in the devastation of watching his form lean against a doorway, or in the cyclical metamorphoses of his hair, but also in the absolute pull when he’s around. It’s what attractive means, isn’t it? And how natural it is to be swept away by the gravity of him—like a wave to his shores.

Thankfully he’s no different. Constantly circling around you when there’s more than enough room in the kitchen, fingers brushing yours in the simple pass of a coffee cup.

The dance turns into a spin soon enough. Its centrifuge glues you together.

Limbs tangle in the dark, repeating the same dance under bedsheets and morning light. He whispers honeyed words into your ear while you say his name and monosyllabic words. More. Please. Yes. He eats them up one by one, tongue in your mouth, before moving to some other place that drools just as much.

Your body isn’t really yours anymore by the time hipbones kiss—but you’re happy to surrender it to him.

The hands that ruin you also put you back together with the help of warm, running water. They make you toast the morning after. It turns out a little burnt. You tease him about it.

What you get is the most earnest look on his face when he says: “You’re so distracting.”

Time spent with him teaches you of a force that was once foreign. It’s the same one that drives poets to ink and paper. The same one that keeps the two of you answering battle calls.

Somewhere along the way, the reason you risk your lives is whittled down into a singular point: each other.

It doesn’t matter what kind of fight it is—the kind with bullets or with words. You and Bucky will always end up side-by-side, breathing shared air. Air that reminds you where you are, why you are.

Repaired. Alive. Together.

It’s always these vulnerable moments that fuse your souls.

You like sharing a bed with him. It’s where you exchange pasts in whispers. Hold hands in the darkness. Look up at the ceiling and pretend you’re stargazing, what with how small you feel when faced with a primordial thing that’s doomed many who dared seek it.

The emotion hangs heavy in the space between your bodies—even if there isn’t much.

Even if it’s just four letters wide.

He murmurs into your cheek one night.

“…you’re my best friend.”

A pang hits you between your breastbone, so clean and unmistakable you almost gasp.

Instead, you squeeze the hand that wraps around your naked waist.

“Steve would be pissed if he heard that,” you hum.

He smiles, face in front of yours, gaze lingering on your features like he doesn’t have them memorized already. You feel warmth without touch: on your cheek, your nose, your lips.

Then he looks up, and you see eye to eye.

There’s never a time when you’re not on the same page, and tonight’s the same.

It just feels different.

Tonight, you’re bound by ink carved on a line. It writes out that four-letter word and closes the gap between you forever.

Neither of you say it. Neither of you have to.

The gunshot is strangely quiet.

You don’t hear the shouts, or his body hitting the ground.

Like a movie that’s lost its sound, everything is silenced when your eyes widen at the scene: he’s ten feet in front of you, falling backwards at the impact of a bullet that sinks right into his chest.

Except it’s not a movie. It’s real. The threat is known to everyone on that battlefield, screamed through the comms. Comms that you’re connected to—that he’s connected to.

He just decided to put himself in front of you.

There’s no ringing in your ear, no rapid pump of your heart. Just dust and a growing hole in the bottom of your gut as you leap towards him despite your weak legs. Your lips part, but there’s no scream. No words.

Not yet, at least. Not until you fall on your knees next to him, hand on his chest—peeling it away, you see blood.

Blood that should’ve been yours.

Your eyes lock. His begin to close.

Then the words spill.

“Bucky, baby, look at me, look at me—” you choke, putting pressure on the wound.

Life doesn’t stop gushing from under your palm. The comms blare—Sam, Nat, everyone—but despite being in your ear, they all sound so far away.

Bucky’s head sways to look at you. You don’t like the effort in that small movement: like he’s giving everything to show you he’s listening.

You scream for a medic. You don’t recognize your own voice.

“Hey,” he husks, the complete opposite of your desperation, too weak to be a good sign.

It sounds like acceptance.

Your vision cuts to a Bucky in the same position, bathed in blue. Laid down the same way in front of you, except he was on your lap: a scene from some morning that feels far away. The Bucky in your memory moves his lips—his voice carries the same kind of rasp as waking up…

Morning, sweetheart.

…or going to sleep.

“It’s okay—” he continues, but the tail end of it is sputtered out and your breath stops, too. Unlike the blood that still trickles out of him. The warmth sends a chill in your soul.

There’s wetness dripping onto his dirt-marred tac suit, darkening the Kevlar.

One drop, then two.

You only realize you’re crying when he thumbs at your cheek.

Again, your consciousness shocks you.

It pulls you further back this time: to a cold night, a sidewalk outside a certain bar.

He touched your cheek that night. Just like this. It was the first time he ever did it.

The first time he kissed you.

“No,” you shake your head, voice cracked. “No, you can’t, you don’t get to—”

He smiles up at you, but you barely see him past the tears. His hand—the flesh one that’s shaky and turning cold—cups your jaw.

You hold it there.

He buttoned your coat with these fingers.

“I love you,” he rasps. His breath sounds thin. “I’m sorry it took this long.”

“I love you, too,” you cry, “so much, Bucky, d-don’t—you’ll get to say it again, please—”

He shakes his head. In defiance, you kiss him once, then pull away…

…just as he mouths those three words again. Voiceless this time.

His blue eyes slowly grow cold, but the smile doesn’t fade.

As if he wants to keep looking at you, even if he’s dead.

Time won’t fly. It keeps you hostage, paralyzed, feet frozen while the rest of the world moved past you.

Before long, you’ve lost him longer than you had him.

When the month of his passing rolls around, you realize just how much pain you’re feeling.

It starts right as you wake. The first deep breath doesn’t relieve you. Neither does the second.

You step out to the kitchen and smell toast. Burnt. Three seconds later, you realize it’s just a figment of your imagination.

You haven’t made toast in a long time. Not since the sight of bread sitting on the kitchen counter tricked you into thinking he was home: how silly, the way your knees lost their strength when you remembered, how you broke down on the tiled floors right then and there.

It’s never really quiet anymore. You swear you hear his voice. The sound of his laugh after every joke made with the hopes of lifting your spirits.

Sometimes, when you’re on the way home, you think he’d be there.

You’d open the door, and he’d immediately launch into a complaint about running out of detergent so soon after the last grocery run. Halfway through the rant, he’d pause, and really look at you. Then he’d scoop you in his arms, kissing you: one peck on each cheek, then a big one on your lips.

“But I’m okay now. My baby’s here.”

Sleeping with the night light on makes you think he’s sitting next to you, reading. You threw the thing away immediately.

A million nights after, alone in the darkest dark, you still see his eyes.

You close yours. Sleep comes eventually, but not before the tears.

You wake up with an aching, hissed-in breath.

The sheets are warm, much warmer than you’re used to. In the daze of slowly dispelling slumber, your skin tingles, wondering if the heat is an oncoming fever or the morning weather being very unusual.

You feel a draft. It makes you realize that you’re no longer under the covers. The air gently kisses your bare shoulder and thigh.

There’s something different in the beat of your heart. It pulses in your ear. Steady. Healthy. Like it’s ready to take on the day instead of encumbered by it before it even began.

Then your next inhale doesn’t hurt, and you know something is different.

“Morning.”

His rasp widens your eyes, and you turn to see his.

Blue, but warm. Awake.

Alive.

The sight of him hits you like a mallet on a bell: the first pang hurts the most, but the pain doesn’t stop echoing. Its impact is unending, witnessing his smile like this. Like nothing ever happened to him. Like he never stopped breathing.

Waves of emotion course through you unrelentingly, one feeling after another. Disbelief, longing, relief that cycles back to the shock of him—until you realize the sheets under your head is damp with tears, and Bucky looks at you with concern wrapped in softness.

“Hey, hey, what happened?”

He takes you into his arms like he has a million times before, yet you melt like it’s the first. The tears seep into the edges of his white tank top, near his collarbones. You don’t care. He doesn’t seem to mind. Never did. Instead, he coaxes your head closer to his body with a large palm and strokes your hair, cooing sweet words at you.

“Ssh. It’s okay, honey, you’re okay.”

It takes a while, but when your choked sobs finally slow, his fingers cup your jaw, gently guiding them up to look at him.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong, baby?”

Your lips part. What’s wrong?

“Everything,” you breathed, and his brows knitted. The crease of it is like a familiar song. Unbidden, your fingers lift to trace its shape, his face, the parts of him you knew by heart until your heart was the only place he truly existed.

He tightens his hold on you.

Your whisper shakes even through his grounding touch.

“Bucky, you died.”

He doesn’t say anything. Not at first. Not until after you take him through the whole thing with barely-words that stutter the dream out loud: the mission that went sideways, the bullet that hit his chest, how you can still recall the sound of air that he struggled to keep when he finally said those three words.

Remembering makes you cry again, but he doesn’t stop you, just holds you through it. A large palm on your back draws calming circles, fighting against your body’s subtle tremors. Then a thumb on your cheek to wipe the tears away.

“—I was so scared, you were gone, you did it for me—and—” you choke, before swallowing a breath and willing your voice to stop trembling. “…I still am. I’m still so scared, Bucky.”

He kisses you before he speaks. Once on your brow bone, another on your crown, then three down your temple, cheek, and jaw. You count each one and memorize what the brush of his lips feels like.

You used to think he’d kiss you all the time. Now you know those kisses are numbered.

Just like his days are. And yours, too.

“You know,” he begins, as quiet as parting clouds, “it will happen one day.”

Death.

You look up at him. “That’s why I’m scared.”

Like he’s admitting a secret, he presses his words into your ear with another kiss.

“I’m scared, too.”

When you part, his eyes shine. The dawn begins to break. The sun’s first rays shine through the windows, illuminating him as though they owe him a personal favor to make him look even more beautiful.

And he does look more beautiful. You don’t know how that’s possible.

“But I love you,” he says, “more than I’m scared of losing you. That’s why we’re here. Together. Right?”

He is right. So you nod. He smiles, thumbing your lower lip. Then, with the innocence of a child and the touch of a lover, he asks:

“Say it back for me?”

And yet his mouth is already on yours. You close your eyes, returning the kiss. There’s no choice but to feed your reply into him.

“I love you, too, Bucky.”

An alarm blares, high-pitched and sharp, and you open your eyes.

You wake up for a second time.

There’s no warmth when you wake. No Bucky. Just the cold, hard reality that the morning slams you into.

But this time, you’re not numb to it.

You cry.

You’ve dreamed of him too many times. Memories, mostly. That night you sat and stared at the sea together. Him walking around your room barefoot. A corny joke. His voice.

This time, it’s a dream with him, not just of him. A new scene designed to torture you, a fragment of what could have been.

Strange—the Sorcerer Supreme, not the adjective—told you about the cosmos once.

He talked about how it works. How, like a thread, it’s made up of much smaller fibers, infinite yet equally important to the whole. Many, but one. How each holds a reality—one that is as real as the one you’re living in.

How dreams are mirrors to your other lives in the multiverse.

He’s alive, your thoughts scream as you sob into your hands. Just not here. Not now. Not with you.

It’s been a long time since that bullet plunged into his heart and stopped it. Everyone’s already talked about him in past tense.

Everyone except you.

Because he’s not here anymore, but you hear him, see him, feel him.

Because he’s not here, but you are still in love.

@its-in-the-woods i love you krys

@anocious I"M SORRY THANK YOU FOR READING </3

@pandasslol some call it the "watching a train wreck" syndrome, i call it the "reading an angst fic" syndrome (it hurts but you can't stop) (thank you for reading!)

@tofuonfaiya omg thank you for reading and i'm sorry </3

The lights in the bar are dim. The crowd is noisy. It’s the kind of place that has sticky floors and good enough vibes to ignore them; a place that celebrates and mourns every tick of the minute hand.

Nothing could stop life from messily oozing out every breath in these four walls. Not even the larger-than-life presence of Earth’s mightiest heroes.

After the difficult mission they just completed, their first order of business is to feel something.

You’re surprised you’re here, an agent tagging alongside others who are admittedly more familiar with this environment. But Natasha and free cocktails are enough to persuade you. Before long, you’re on your fourth drink (or is it fifth? They’re surprisingly delicious), tracing people’s silhouettes to pass the time, trading the health of your eardrums to do so.

Everyone is outlined with red neon.

The bass thumps louder than your heart. It reverberates in your chest, almost replacing the organ entirely with song. There’s smoke emanating from a corner that paints the scene with ethereality you’ve only seen in blurry pictures from yesteryear.

As your eyes sweep across the room, you realize you’re not the only introvert who’s people-watching.

Person-watching would be more accurate: Bucky’s gaze catches yours all the way from the counter where he sits, like it usually does. Somehow it always does. His staring problem is for everyone, but that look is intended for you and you alone.

Around him are Sam, Steve, and a boisterous Thor, who gestures like he’s challenging everyone to one drinking game or another. As if the God of Thunder needed more booze in his system—regular alcohol barely works on him, and he’s loud enough as is.

Bucky, on the other hand.

Quiet, brooding Bucky looks handsome tonight, with or without the sensuous light: leather jacket, boots, metal hand coiled around a whisky glass. The devilish red that casts a glow over the room should be polluting his blue eyes, but they remain brilliantly clear as they pin you to the wall. Like he’s amused to see you rooted there.

You look back from the rim of your glass and take a sip.

Something in his face softens. Enough that you can tell, even from this distance.

Then a second later, you’re stolen by Natasha’s hand around your wrist. She leads you to the dance floor.

You’re not sober enough to say no.

The ground under your boots is sticky, and the air is thick with sweat, heavy with unthinking optimism.

Strange, because in the heavy throng of limbs, every part of you feels light as a feather—save for your chest. You don’t know if it’s your wild heart or the bassline it has melded with, but something within that godforsaken cavity tugs you to where your feet aren’t.

It leads your eyes to the bar where he is.

Where he watches you.

You don’t look his way again for the rest of the night.

Because it’s—he’s—a little too much to handle for the fragile organ caged by your ribs. Unlike him, you’re sure the alcohol has begun to influence your faculties, threatening your stoic mask to reveal something honest—and because honesty is the weak link in a professional spy’s chains, you avoid him.

Another drink is placed in your hand. Nat.

Time starts tunneling around your conscious by the time you down it.

Before long, the dance floor suffocates, the voices grate, and you awkwardly weave your way towards the exit for some air. Sobriety marks every step.

By the time you’re outside, everything’s muffled, and you feel the ring of silence in your ear for the first time in hours. Breathing in the cold air kind of stings, but it’s nice. It’s refreshing.

It’s peaceful.

You count your heartbeat to ground yourself to the peace you shed blood for.

Bucky makes himself known to you on count twenty-two.

“You alright?”

His voice cuts the silence. There’s concern in it. You turn to see him look at you, hovering in front of the doorway, and briefly wonder what you look like in his eyes.

“Tipsy and a little overstimulated,” the words tumble out, measured, but unplanned. There’s that honesty you tried so hard to evade, except you don’t feel like you’re out of control. The sensation is subtle. Realizing it isn’t.

Deep down, you’re okay with the truth—because it’s Bucky you’re telling the truth to.

And because it’s him who’s out here with you, of course he has your coat in a grip. He’s already wrapping the wool of it around your shoulders.

You look down, feeling the hem brush over your clothed thigh. The fabric almost moves in slow motion.

“Thanks, Bucky.” You slip your arms in the sleeves.

Without being asked to, he’s buttoning it up for you.

You struggle to recall the day the ice broke between you and him. For as long as you can remember, he’s always been kind to you, even if he’s quiet about it. Almost like he’d prefer to be a hidden hand, someone who takes care of things from the backstage, needing no reward nor recognition: a cup of coffee the way you like it, a hand pulling you up from the training mat, the warmth of a blanket when you wake in the common room, unaware that you even fell asleep.

It used to be a poorly kept secret. Now he’s being kind to your face.

Bucky’s fingers work deftly at the front of your coat, clasping three buttons down your chest—enough to keep you warm for the time being.

If the night had shadows, his would fall on you with how close he’s standing. You’re allowed a few seconds to admire the length of his lashes. It’s unfair how beautiful he is.

The thought reinforces itself when those blue eyes look back up at you.

“You’re welcome.”

He says your name like it means something. Or perhaps everything.

The feeling that comes after is split-second, crystal clear: you don’t want him to leave, not yet. So you open your mouth, hoping for him to linger, to replace the warm buzz in your system with something more potent—his attention.

His fingers fix your sleeve. It says the same want in your veins out loud, translated differently.

You smile. “Bet you aren’t drunk at all.”

He smiles back. “They tried.”

There’s a lie in the easy lilt of his voice. His eyes are glazed with a layer you’re all too familiar with. Intoxication. Not the kind induced by alcohol—he’s basically immune, thanks to the serum.

Maybe it’s whatever Thor had. You buy time. If you don’t know what he’s drunk on, at least you get to watch him a little longer.

“You know, Bucky, I’m surprised you’re even here.”

The single, soft huff of a laugh he lets out is so boyish, his face appears a decade younger. You think he looks more like the pictures they show at the Smithsonian: not free of his own share of cares, but carefree in his own way.

Innocent, almost.

Then the chuckle dies down. He looks at you like you hurt him, and a twinge captures your chest.

His thumb brushes your cheek and you stop breathing.

You swallow instead. His eyes catch your throat move.

The rest of his hand, large and callused, cups your jaw, gently directing you to keep looking up at him—to keep looking at him.

“I’m here because you are, doll.”

The small ‘oh’ of realization is hitched on his cheek.

What happens next isn’t a surprise, but your heart hammers loudly anyway.

He slants his face over yours, fast in closing the distance, but slow when he actually kisses you. He hovers an inch away for one second, two, then three—prolonging the final moments of not knowing your taste—before he gives everything up.

Capitulation comes after one shared breath, bated and stolen just as he slots himself into you.

You welcome him and this moment that’s long been part of your dreams, hands snaking up his arms. He wraps them around you, the hand on your face sliding to the back of your head as if counteracting an escape. Why he thinks you’d run, you don’t know. The tips of your boots scrape his.

He pulls away with a soft sound that has your lashes fluttering, and your body shivers in protest at the loss of him, but then he’s on you again.

Deeper this time. You return it equally.

When you steal a breath, it’s with a relief that echoes a Quinjet ride ago: the two of you were crouched behind a concrete wall waiting for the rain of bullets to die down. He held you close while frantically scanning your person, eyes darting from one vital point to another, making sure you’re okay you’re not hurt you’re alive—all things he didn’t say out loud.

The relief of kissing him is double what you felt coming out of that battle alive. The relief of him kissing you back is a hundred times more.

You sigh his name. It pulls a sound from his chest, something ragged that gets poured right into your mouth.

His fingers in your hair card deeper. You tiptoe into him. He holds you closer, steadying you.

While your lips lock again and again, you faintly register his fingers drawing shapes on your neck. You do the same. The lines don’t make sense. Just strokes that spell desperation, like a poor attempt at signing your lives away to each other.

The sidewalk is your only witness.

Around the precarious dance that is a relationship, there is a veil. It keeps people within it safe from pain, content with shallow affection, while those who pass through it are rewarded with a burning bounty of a lifetime.

For you and Bucky, it takes time for the veil to lift.

But time is a funny thing—stretching around moments, making them last longer than they should, then racing like the wind when it feels like it.

It’s been months since you last wore your own clothes to bed. Months since he first brought it up, never to speak of it again.

You look good in his t-shirt.

Since that night at the bar, you rediscover how attractive he is: not just in the devastation of watching his form lean against a doorway, or in the cyclical metamorphoses of his hair, but also in the absolute pull when he’s around. It’s what attractive means, isn’t it? And how natural it is to be swept away by the gravity of him—like a wave to his shores.

Thankfully he’s no different. Constantly circling around you when there’s more than enough room in the kitchen, fingers brushing yours in the simple pass of a coffee cup.

The dance turns into a spin soon enough. Its centrifuge glues you together.

Limbs tangle in the dark, repeating the same dance under bedsheets and morning light. He whispers honeyed words into your ear while you say his name and monosyllabic words. More. Please. Yes. He eats them up one by one, tongue in your mouth, before moving to some other place that drools just as much.

Your body isn’t really yours anymore by the time hipbones kiss—but you’re happy to surrender it to him.

The hands that ruin you also put you back together with the help of warm, running water. They make you toast the morning after. It turns out a little burnt. You tease him about it.

What you get is the most earnest look on his face when he says: “You’re so distracting.”

Time spent with him teaches you of a force that was once foreign. It’s the same one that drives poets to ink and paper. The same one that keeps the two of you answering battle calls.

Somewhere along the way, the reason you risk your lives is whittled down into a singular point: each other.

It doesn’t matter what kind of fight it is—the kind with bullets or with words. You and Bucky will always end up side-by-side, breathing shared air. Air that reminds you where you are, why you are.

Repaired. Alive. Together.

It’s always these vulnerable moments that fuse your souls.

You like sharing a bed with him. It’s where you exchange pasts in whispers. Hold hands in the darkness. Look up at the ceiling and pretend you’re stargazing, what with how small you feel when faced with a primordial thing that’s doomed many who dared seek it.

The emotion hangs heavy in the space between your bodies—even if there isn’t much.

Even if it’s just four letters wide.

He murmurs into your cheek one night.

“…you’re my best friend.”

A pang hits you between your breastbone, so clean and unmistakable you almost gasp.

Instead, you squeeze the hand that wraps around your naked waist.

“Steve would be pissed if he heard that,” you hum.

He smiles, face in front of yours, gaze lingering on your features like he doesn’t have them memorized already. You feel warmth without touch: on your cheek, your nose, your lips.

Then he looks up, and you see eye to eye.

There’s never a time when you’re not on the same page, and tonight’s the same.

It just feels different.

Tonight, you’re bound by ink carved on a line. It writes out that four-letter word and closes the gap between you forever.

Neither of you say it. Neither of you have to.

The gunshot is strangely quiet.

You don’t hear the shouts, or his body hitting the ground.

Like a movie that’s lost its sound, everything is silenced when your eyes widen at the scene: he’s ten feet in front of you, falling backwards at the impact of a bullet that sinks right into his chest.

Except it’s not a movie. It’s real. The threat is known to everyone on that battlefield, screamed through the comms. Comms that you’re connected to—that he’s connected to.

He just decided to put himself in front of you.

There’s no ringing in your ear, no rapid pump of your heart. Just dust and a growing hole in the bottom of your gut as you leap towards him despite your weak legs. Your lips part, but there’s no scream. No words.

Not yet, at least. Not until you fall on your knees next to him, hand on his chest—peeling it away, you see blood.

Blood that should’ve been yours.

Your eyes lock. His begin to close.

Then the words spill.

“Bucky, baby, look at me, look at me—” you choke, putting pressure on the wound.

Life doesn’t stop gushing from under your palm. The comms blare—Sam, Nat, everyone—but despite being in your ear, they all sound so far away.

Bucky’s head sways to look at you. You don’t like the effort in that small movement: like he’s giving everything to show you he’s listening.

You scream for a medic. You don’t recognize your own voice.

“Hey,” he husks, the complete opposite of your desperation, too weak to be a good sign.

It sounds like acceptance.

Your vision cuts to a Bucky in the same position, bathed in blue. Laid down the same way in front of you, except he was on your lap: a scene from some morning that feels far away. The Bucky in your memory moves his lips—his voice carries the same kind of rasp as waking up…

Morning, sweetheart.

…or going to sleep.

“It’s okay—” he continues, but the tail end of it is sputtered out and your breath stops, too. Unlike the blood that still trickles out of him. The warmth sends a chill in your soul.

There’s wetness dripping onto his dirt-marred tac suit, darkening the Kevlar.

One drop, then two.

You only realize you’re crying when he thumbs at your cheek.

Again, your consciousness shocks you.

It pulls you further back this time: to a cold night, a sidewalk outside a certain bar.

He touched your cheek that night. Just like this. It was the first time he ever did it.

The first time he kissed you.

“No,” you shake your head, voice cracked. “No, you can’t, you don’t get to—”

He smiles up at you, but you barely see him past the tears. His hand—the flesh one that’s shaky and turning cold—cups your jaw.

You hold it there.

He buttoned your coat with these fingers.

“I love you,” he rasps. His breath sounds thin. “I’m sorry it took this long.”

“I love you, too,” you cry, “so much, Bucky, d-don’t—you’ll get to say it again, please—”

He shakes his head. In defiance, you kiss him once, then pull away…

…just as he mouths those three words again. Voiceless this time.

His blue eyes slowly grow cold, but the smile doesn’t fade.

As if he wants to keep looking at you, even if he’s dead.

Time won’t fly. It keeps you hostage, paralyzed, feet frozen while the rest of the world moved past you.

Before long, you’ve lost him longer than you had him.

When the month of his passing rolls around, you realize just how much pain you’re feeling.

It starts right as you wake. The first deep breath doesn’t relieve you. Neither does the second.

You step out to the kitchen and smell toast. Burnt. Three seconds later, you realize it’s just a figment of your imagination.

You haven’t made toast in a long time. Not since the sight of bread sitting on the kitchen counter tricked you into thinking he was home: how silly, the way your knees lost their strength when you remembered, how you broke down on the tiled floors right then and there.

It’s never really quiet anymore. You swear you hear his voice. The sound of his laugh after every joke made with the hopes of lifting your spirits.

Sometimes, when you’re on the way home, you think he’d be there.

You’d open the door, and he’d immediately launch into a complaint about running out of detergent so soon after the last grocery run. Halfway through the rant, he’d pause, and really look at you. Then he’d scoop you in his arms, kissing you: one peck on each cheek, then a big one on your lips.

“But I’m okay now. My baby’s here.”

Sleeping with the night light on makes you think he’s sitting next to you, reading. You threw the thing away immediately.

A million nights after, alone in the darkest dark, you still see his eyes.

You close yours. Sleep comes eventually, but not before the tears.

You wake up with an aching, hissed-in breath.

The sheets are warm, much warmer than you’re used to. In the daze of slowly dispelling slumber, your skin tingles, wondering if the heat is an oncoming fever or the morning weather being very unusual.

You feel a draft. It makes you realize that you’re no longer under the covers. The air gently kisses your bare shoulder and thigh.

There’s something different in the beat of your heart. It pulses in your ear. Steady. Healthy. Like it’s ready to take on the day instead of encumbered by it before it even began.

Then your next inhale doesn’t hurt, and you know something is different.

“Morning.”

His rasp widens your eyes, and you turn to see his.

Blue, but warm. Awake.

Alive.

The sight of him hits you like a mallet on a bell: the first pang hurts the most, but the pain doesn’t stop echoing. Its impact is unending, witnessing his smile like this. Like nothing ever happened to him. Like he never stopped breathing.

Waves of emotion course through you unrelentingly, one feeling after another. Disbelief, longing, relief that cycles back to the shock of him—until you realize the sheets under your head is damp with tears, and Bucky looks at you with concern wrapped in softness.

“Hey, hey, what happened?”

He takes you into his arms like he has a million times before, yet you melt like it’s the first. The tears seep into the edges of his white tank top, near his collarbones. You don’t care. He doesn’t seem to mind. Never did. Instead, he coaxes your head closer to his body with a large palm and strokes your hair, cooing sweet words at you.

“Ssh. It’s okay, honey, you’re okay.”

It takes a while, but when your choked sobs finally slow, his fingers cup your jaw, gently guiding them up to look at him.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong, baby?”

Your lips part. What’s wrong?

“Everything,” you breathed, and his brows knitted. The crease of it is like a familiar song. Unbidden, your fingers lift to trace its shape, his face, the parts of him you knew by heart until your heart was the only place he truly existed.

He tightens his hold on you.

Your whisper shakes even through his grounding touch.

“Bucky, you died.”

He doesn’t say anything. Not at first. Not until after you take him through the whole thing with barely-words that stutter the dream out loud: the mission that went sideways, the bullet that hit his chest, how you can still recall the sound of air that he struggled to keep when he finally said those three words.

Remembering makes you cry again, but he doesn’t stop you, just holds you through it. A large palm on your back draws calming circles, fighting against your body’s subtle tremors. Then a thumb on your cheek to wipe the tears away.

“—I was so scared, you were gone, you did it for me—and—” you choke, before swallowing a breath and willing your voice to stop trembling. “…I still am. I’m still so scared, Bucky.”

He kisses you before he speaks. Once on your brow bone, another on your crown, then three down your temple, cheek, and jaw. You count each one and memorize what the brush of his lips feels like.

You used to think he’d kiss you all the time. Now you know those kisses are numbered.

Just like his days are. And yours, too.

“You know,” he begins, as quiet as parting clouds, “it will happen one day.”

Death.

You look up at him. “That’s why I’m scared.”

Like he’s admitting a secret, he presses his words into your ear with another kiss.

“I’m scared, too.”

When you part, his eyes shine. The dawn begins to break. The sun’s first rays shine through the windows, illuminating him as though they owe him a personal favor to make him look even more beautiful.

And he does look more beautiful. You don’t know how that’s possible.

“But I love you,” he says, “more than I’m scared of losing you. That’s why we’re here. Together. Right?”

He is right. So you nod. He smiles, thumbing your lower lip. Then, with the innocence of a child and the touch of a lover, he asks:

“Say it back for me?”

And yet his mouth is already on yours. You close your eyes, returning the kiss. There’s no choice but to feed your reply into him.

“I love you, too, Bucky.”

An alarm blares, high-pitched and sharp, and you open your eyes.

You wake up for a second time.

There’s no warmth when you wake. No Bucky. Just the cold, hard reality that the morning slams you into.

But this time, you’re not numb to it.

You cry.

You’ve dreamed of him too many times. Memories, mostly. That night you sat and stared at the sea together. Him walking around your room barefoot. A corny joke. His voice.

This time, it’s a dream with him, not just of him. A new scene designed to torture you, a fragment of what could have been.

Strange—the Sorcerer Supreme, not the adjective—told you about the cosmos once.

He talked about how it works. How, like a thread, it’s made up of much smaller fibers, infinite yet equally important to the whole. Many, but one. How each holds a reality—one that is as real as the one you’re living in.

How dreams are mirrors to your other lives in the multiverse.

He’s alive, your thoughts scream as you sob into your hands. Just not here. Not now. Not with you.

It’s been a long time since that bullet plunged into his heart and stopped it. Everyone’s already talked about him in past tense.

Everyone except you.

Because he’s not here anymore, but you hear him, see him, feel him.

Because he’s not here, but you are still in love.

Note: Each story will have its own set of content warnings, including NSFW — please read thoroughly before proceeding! More fics may be added beyond the dates/songs listed for this current collab in the future <3

▸ You are in Love — @unificsation (August 6)

You, Bucky, and a feeling that doesn't end. — inspired by 'you are in love'

▸ Dirty Little Secret — @blowingbarnes (August 13)

"I'm like Six Flags. I'm a fun ride. Everyone wants their turn, and they move on to the next park. And that's fine by me." You tilted your head at his words, eyes slightly narrowing in his direction like you'd slip through one of the cracks and see the real Bucky. "Is it?" — inspired by 'how you get the girl'

▸ Bad Blood — @tw1sters (August 20)

Interning with your ex-boyfriend’s brother wasn’t how you imagined your summer, but somewhere between the long hours and conversations over late-night takeouts, he’s becoming harder to hate. — inspired by 'bad blood'

▸ Welcome to New York — @epiphanyrogers (August 24)

New York has always been a city of fresh starts. That’s what Bucky Barnes is counting on when he moves back home for the first time in eighty years. except so far he’s only figured out three things: the subway still runs late, Brooklyn has gotten expensive, and he is spectacularly bad at modern dating. Enter, you: an entirely off limits matchmaker who somehow becomes the best part of his life, one terrible first date at a time. Or, Bucky almost gives up on dating until he meets you — inspired by 'welcome to new york'

▸ I Know Places — @pinksplace (August 26)

While the rest of the world searches for Bucky Barnes, the two of you carve out a life in the shadows. Some love stories are written in grand gestures. Yours is written in escape routes. — inspired by 'i know places'

▸ Everything but You — @love-stucky (August 28)

Bucky spent years making sure you never went without, but he never noticed how often you went without him. — inspired by 'all you had to do was stay'

▸ Wild Knights, Wilder Dreams — @houseofhyde (September 6)

War is afoot, blood stains the streets, and by your side stands your husband's sworn knight. With a command to flee the city, you stick close to his side with the blind assumption that he is operating under your husband's orders. But as weeks pass and distance grows between you and the bloodshed, you discover there is something selfish in the protective glares and scowling words Ser Barnes casts your way; a devotion so carnal, the realm shuns it as deadly. — inspired by 'wildest dreams'

An ode to old taylor songs from one of our favorite albums! Please look forward to all the stories. If you enjoyed reading it, please be sure to reblog, comment, and like! Every single interaction is very much appreciated and treasured, particularly when you share your lovely thoughts and reactions <3 this masterlist may grow again in the future if the writers choose to add more!

A very big thank you to my friends for agreeing to participate in this lil activity <3 I'm glad we can all suffer through the writing process together while crying to Taylor Swift

You’re used to being alone with Bucky in a corridor of a dilapidated power plant, shadows entwined and guns raised. In a black SUV, him at the passenger seat and you behind the wheel, sharing stale air as a stakeout bleeds through the hours. On a training mat while your feet and his trace watchful circles, patiently waiting for the first pounce.

This kind of alone is different.

No context to hide behind. Just two complicated people in simple silence, doing the little dance of strangers in a grocery store aisle. The unspoken, delicate measures of am I taking up too much space, are you passing me by, are we reaching out for the same thing?

A dance you’ve been doing for far too long.

You’re past the “can’t sleep?” conversation. It died seconds after it started—the two of you cross paths like this way too many times to the point where asking feels like a pointless formality. So many nights where his bedroom feels like a cage. As many as the ones where your bloodstream pronounces your thoughts out loud.

He’s always there first.

Always standing by the window, looking down at the city that’s just as awake as he is, as if staring at it long enough will reveal some kind of answer. Always looking at you when you walk in.

Tonight is the same.

You make tea—the flowery one Yelena bought for you. She claims it’s calming.

“Want some?” you ask, pouring boiling water into a cup with a teabag. Steam begins to waft, and so does a faint chamomile scent, the softness of it almost out of place against minimalist concrete curves.

“It doesn’t work,” he replies.

“I’m not drinking it because it does.”

A beat. Then, whispered quietly, “yeah, sure.”

That’s how you end up hanging around the kitchen island with him, sipping floral tea past midnight while exchanging sentences that barely count as small talk.

Like grieving mothers. Not knowing the words, yet understanding so fully what it feels like.

In the dimly lit room, you catch the glint of his metal arm, fully exposed thanks to his standard issue black t-shirt. Gold markings on sleek Wakandan vibranium ripple and glow when he rests his arm on the counter, plates shifting quietly.

Despite the many times you’ve seen it, it’s still mesmerizing. Especially tonight.

Maybe it’s the hour. Maybe it’s your lucidity, or lack thereof.

It must be a heavy thing, the arm, literally and figuratively. How it carries his past.

You’ve seen Ava lug it like a pipe. Seen him wind it up when it reattaches. Heard the sound it makes. Learned how it affects his gait and reveals vulnerabilities on his right side—the side you always cover when you’re assigned to him. The side you prefer to stand on.

But more than that, you’ve felt it. Not just brush of his fingers when he returned a dagger he borrowed from you—but on your forehead, firm and real. The weight of it reassuring, the coolness of it almost soothing.

“Remember Brunei?”

You say it so soft, like you don’t mean to say it out loud to him. He looks at you, standing almost right in front of you across the island. The room seems to shrink.

“The paralytic agent?”

You nod as you replay the way that mission went sideways just two weeks ago.

The two of you and Yelena, John at the jet. An illicit research facility deep within a rainforest. How you caught a microdose of something potent through a hollow-tip dart to the neck while extracting yourself from the scene. How the hundred-degree fever hit one minute after, too fast to be harmless.

Walker had his hands full piloting the take off, rocky and bullet-riddled. Bucky noticed the signs first: your thousand yard stare and the flush on your cheeks.

“What is it?” Yelena asked, eyes darting.

His vibranium hand was on your forehead in an instant. Flesh hand on your pulse. A status check.

“You’re burning up,” he whispered, scrambling to strap you in your seat before barking all military-like at Walker—something about going faster.

You blacked out after that.

In the kitchen, you nod with your chin towards the metal arm.

“You can feel temperature?” you ask behind the rim of your mug, all casual, like you haven’t thought about it for the past fourteen days.

He glances down. The plates flex, as if they don’t appreciate the attention.

“And other indicators,” he answers quietly. “Nano-receptors. I can feel if something so much as hovers over it.”

There’s a pause before he continues. “Helps with reflexes.”

You put down your drink, not taking your eyes off dark metallic fingers against the smooth marble countertop.

“Can I touch it?”

The air is sucked out of the room into a cold vacuum. You realize what you just let escape from your mouth.

Your eyes snap to his. They’re blue and just a fraction wider than usual. Your lips part, eyelids fluttering as you avert your gaze to everywhere except him, unsure of how you’re going to glue back the moment you just shattered into pieces on the floor. How will he ever trust you again?

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking—”

“You can.”

It takes a second for his words to register. Two. Three.

Even after they do, the world is still stopped on its axis.

Your eyes find his again, searching in them the balm to your mortification, and it’s there. A look. Soft and wavering, as if he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying, just like you.

But his palm is still upturned. Open. For you.

And then your hand moves, a motion so subtle you swear it’s not your own, like it got pulled by a gravitational force emanating from where his hand sits. Your fingertips stop above his, an inch apart, and you feel it.

The electricity. A kind of energy that’s not just alchemical reaction of two warm bodies, but a spark elusive enough to be craved, too real to be hallucinated.

You realize it has always been right there, in the space between your existence and his.

In every furtive post-mission glance, cataloging each other’s wounds from afar, how looking away feels as difficult as a ten-step containment protocol.

It’s there in the circles you draw around each other on the training mat, prolonging a tightrope tension that was never just about sparring.

It’s in the look on his face when you woke up in the med bay, the first thing you saw after tilted Bruneian skies. Steel blue silencing a brand of suffering you recognized as his. Like his sanity was tested while you slept.

You’ve ignored this for so long, it can only be blamed on negligence. A conscious carelessness towards your own feelings—and his—just so you can move on through life with a false sense of security.

Tenderness means both sweetness and an ache. If avoiding it means not hurting, then that’s what you’ll do.

That was your intention, and you have a feeling it was his, too. But you can’t run, not now.

You’re not sure you want to anymore.

Your fingers brush against his before you slide them down to hold his knuckles in your palm. Bucky breathes out like he hasn’t for the past minute. You sigh. He’s cold and hot at the same time, foreign but familiar.

The air crackles with heat, condensed to a fine point that coalesces in your point of contact. Your thumb brushes slowly down the back of his index finger, tracing cybernetic knuckles.

His eyes follow your movement.

Bucky tries to even out his breathing, he really does, but there’s not enough and too much air in his lungs. Box-breathing doesn’t work when you’re touching him like this.

You caress his hand like it’s made of glass and not a thousand crimes, touch so featherlight he almost thinks you’re testing its sensitivity. Like you want to find out the softest thing he can feel.

The answer is you. You are.

Bucky feels goosebumps forming on his other arm instead.

You study him like you’ll never get the chance to again, running your fingers down his with the lightest of touches—did he just shiver?—until you’re left with his pinky. You gently grab the pad of it between your thumb and index, tugging.

Like a child who wants to play, a lover who begs to stay.

He breathes your name. You look at him, lips suddenly dry. His pupils are dilated.

“Tell me to stop,” you whisper, walking round the island to stand next to him.

The thought of stopping makes him ache.

He doesn’t say anything. Just shifts, his body aligning with yours like a magnet finding its match.

The metal arm moves to your face, gently guiding your chin up to meet his gaze. Your knees are close to buckling. Intoxicated by a single look.

Bucky brushes his thumb across your lower lip, taking his turn to study you. The motion is both patient and indulgent, slow and sensual, betraying a deeper want in the way the metal pad of his finger catches against the plush of your lip.

The pronounced ‘thump’ behind his ribs cracks the facade. He camouflages as a silent observer, a shadow in the corner of the room, a colleague who only looks at your six for threats—when between God and himself, he’s stared at your lips like he’s memorizing the shape of them to feed his dreams at night.

And he has dreamed of them. Just never as dangerous as this.

His thumb parts your bottom lip slightly. Your breath hitches.

Then you turn your head just enough to kiss his palm.

A quiet groan escapes him, one that sends rushing warmth through every nerve in your body. You stand there, hand gently keeping his in place as your mouth traces reverently across precise indentations, down to the inside of his wrist.

Your lips are supplicant against gold veins, slow and light like a private prayer.

There’s fire in his body, a holy purge or hellish torment, he’s not sure. He just knows he wants more. His heart is overwhelmed with feeling. Thanksgiving to the Wakandans who allowed this to happen. Disbelief at the sweet, sweet way you twist his hand. Salvation for every sin he’s ever drowned in.

You kiss the back of his hand first—three trailing up—then his knuckles last. One by one, your mouth closes around each protrusion with affection so pure it’s nearly erotic.

He’ll worship every part of you like that, too, if you’ll let him.

In a moment of impatience, he cradles your face again, forcing you to look at him. This time his flesh hand is on your other cheek.

You’ve never seen Bucky look so lost.

“How does it feel?” you whisper. Earnest.

Then he leans down, breathing the same air as you. He’s so close—broad chest brushing against yours—you swear you can count his eyelashes from here.

He exhales and you grow dizzy.

“Like I’m losing my mind,” he rasps, thumb swiping your bottom lip again.

Your hands move to his chest, compensating for the sudden weakness in your legs, painfully aware of the inches between your lips and his—almost zero.

“You didn’t ask me to stop.”

His eyes contemplate yours with a look that barely barricades a flood. Waves of silent secrets and denied desire thrash beneath blue rings, waiting to be let out, to be known. They scream I want you and you’re the most precious thing I don’t deserve to have in the same silence.

“I’d be stupid to,” he replies, voice low.

The electricity sparks. You can’t take it anymore.

“Bucky…”

Half-lidded eyes stare up into his, voicelessly spelling out the five letters that make the word please, the eight that make I need you, the very many that tell him there’s no going back from this.

He seems to understand.

Time stands still.

Three weeks passed.

You told Vicki and Isha the mission was a success twelve hours after leaving that brownstone apartment near Midtown.

You weren’t as excited as you thought you’d be.

Texts flooded your phone the minute you announced it.

🥊 vicki: SPILL THE GODDAMN TEA LIKE ITS 1773 🥊 vicki: IF YOU DONT ISTG MY SPARRING PARTNER WONT SURVIVE

Maybe before this happened, you’d tell them everything. Written back a thousands words with clear headings denoting the sequence of events, an objective post-mortem with no details spared. The kind of text you’d have to plot out on your Notes app and proofread twice.

And you did, except you found yourself pressing backspace a lot more, wanting selfishly to keep some memories to yourself. Memories of the little things, the kind that slips through fingers.

You mask them with language.

“I liked the way he said things to me.” You didn’t tell them his words alone made you writhe. Made you addicted to how he said your name.

“I gave him a blowjob.” You didn’t say how much you relished ruining him.

“He was really kind and checked in often.” You didn’t mention the way his eyes would attend to you like he’d rather kill himself than cause you pain.

“He was really good,” when really you meant he was nothing short of perfect.

Even in the one-hour phone call that played out a lot like a police interrogation, you managed to weasel your way out of questions too loaded to answer.

“Would you date him?”

“I’m not sure if he’s Secret Service or under witness protection. Does that answer your question?” I’d knock on his door right now, if I weren’t so chicken.

“Are you gonna see him again?”

“Isha, I thought you valued portfolio diversification.” He probably doesn’t want to. Or worse, he doesn’t care.

“Ooh. Does that mean you’re gonna sleep with other people?”

That one stopped you in your tracks. You settled for a cryptic answer.

“Maybe. After enough self-reflection.” After I forget about him, which increasingly looks like never.

You never forget your first—that’s what people say.

Then you changed the group name back to charlie’s hoes😇 as if it could convince you that nothing happened, other than bribery-tainted trivia. As if the sight of a stranger in a leather jacket didn’t immediately remind you of him and what he did to you.

As if you didn’t picture his smile every now and then.

But time does a good job of going too fast. It’s usually a tragic thing, but in your case, it’s one of life’s small consolations.

Because suddenly it’s been 23 days since you left his place at Midtown.

And today you’re in the area—by force, not by choice. The cheapest place to repair your phone is the T-Mobile on Sixth Avenue.

You’re in a local coffee shop, the one you like the most within a twenty-block perimeter, waiting for your order.

You starkly remember the argument. Maybe it’s more appropriate to call it an amicable disagreement, seeing as how you ended up in his bed that night.

It was on the way to his apartment, beer-stained shirt sticking on your stomach. The topic of coffee transpired just as the two of you began to emerge out of 45th Street into Sixth Avenue. He said he found the espresso at this place ‘ashy’, which launched you into a lawyer-level defense for the cafe’s honor.

He asked if you were sponsored. You told him it’s your favorite coffee place in Midtown.

You sigh. A deadly dose of caffeine should slap a modicum of sense into you. This is the literal heart of Manhattan, where its beat ends and begins.

You can’t just think of him every time you’re here.

The barista calls your name. You offer a quiet thanks and take the paper cup, ready to get out of the half-a-mile radius that surrounds a certain apartment you fail to forget.

As you exit the cafe, a hand grips your wrist. The bell on the door jingles mid-motion.

You look back—and freeze. The latte you just bought almost falls out of your grip.

Apparently these days you just need to think of the devil for him to appear.

“James.”

He looks good, as if he just stepped out an Esquire cover: tight black tee under a leather jacket in a seventy-something degree August afternoon. The kind of handsome that invites self-consciousness about your own state of dress—white tank top and gym shorts for an errand day. 23 days hasn’t changed him much, his eyes still as blue as Lake Tahoe in summer.

His metal hand is holding yours.

His face awakens loitering feelings in your chest—the same ones you tried to lock up by leaving.

But the look on his face is one that you haven’t seen before.

A stony stare, nostrils flaring subtly, lips tight. You can’t decide if he looks mad or if he’s holding back a broken dam.

“Hi,” you say quietly, testing the waters.

“Hi,” he replies. The weight of the word sinks to the bottom of the atmosphere.

The two of you stand like that for a few seconds, frozen in time.

Then a customer shimmies in, shooting a dirty look at the two of you for blocking the door.

You stammer an apology. Bucky leads you outside by the hand on your wrist, grip firm but not painful, like he’s afraid you’d vanish if he holds on too tight or lets go.

There’s a bench outside. You sit there.

The silence is not unlike the one that lingers that morning when you left him.

“What are you doing here?” you ask.

He drinks the coffee he doesn’t like.

“Getting an espresso.”

A bruise forms, except it’s under flesh and bone—right on the thing that’s beating wildly under your ribs.

“You hate this place.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Why are you really here, James?” you ask quietly. People and traffic pass by in the foreground. You don’t take your eyes off him.

He doesn’t return your gaze, looking forward. “You still call me that.'“

“Call you what?”

“James,” he looks at you then, putting his cup down. “You asked why my friends called me ‘Bucky’ and then you called me James anyway.”

You hide your mouth behind your paper cup. “I just didn’t want to be rude.”

“Is that why you washed the dishes when you left?”

You blink.

Stare at a crack on the pavement beneath your feet. Calculate the chances of you getting up and walking away. The odds aren’t good—he would simply grab you by the hand before you could so much as uncross your legs.

You consider bolting anyway.

“I was taught to clean up after myself,” you reply.

“Did I hurt you?”

Oxygen leaves your lungs. You part your lips, brows furrowed. You eventually manage one word.

“…What?”

He registers the confusion on your face, then smiles, laced with disdain. His voice is thick with torment when he speaks.

“You left like you were never there. Thought I dreamed everything up—that night, you. Then I saw the washing machine and Alpine staring at the door and I knew it was real.”

He licks his lips and drags his gaze to you.

“You have no idea how much it ate at me. Still eats at me. It was your first time, I thought I hurt you, and that’s why you—I was so—fuck, I was so worried.”

Your eyelids flutter, stunned. He thought that? You shake your head, the truth escaping your lips before you can even think.

“You didn’t. It was perfect.”

“Then why’d you leave?”

A stitch opens on your chest, the botched result of an amateur emotional surgery. The suture starts bleeding. You realize there’s no way out of this.

“I…” you swallow, “I promised I wouldn’t bother you, remember?”

“Yeah, that,” he huffs out a humorless laugh, looking at his lap. “I still don’t fucking get why you said that.”

“I-I didn’t want to be that kind of girl, that, that clings onto the first person they sleep with.” You stammer. “It’s just sex. Just two people wanting to feel good.”

Liar, a voice whispers in your head. Hypocrite.

He looks straight at you. Into you.

“If it’s really just sex, why’d you kiss me like that?”

The depths of his eyes look more like anguish than ice, but your blood runs cold anyway.

No.

No, no, no. There’s no way. He was asleep.

Your deflection wavers. “What are you talking about? You kissed me first.”

He’s the opposite—steady, a missile homing in on its target.

“You know what I’m talking about.”

And you do know. Still remember, despite your best efforts to bury it deep under your day-to-day: back-to-back meetings, unpaid overtime, side projects. An extra hour scrolling on your phone, finding memes to send to Vicki or Isha. Walking slowly down the aisles of a Trader Joe’s like you don’t already have everything you need in your basket.

Entertained attention from men in bars, only to blink and be rudely reminded that they don’t have his eyes. You never stayed longer than a drink.

Being buried doesn’t mean being forgotten—especially if you buried treasure. And treasure is how your subconscious treats the memory of him.

“I really don’t,” you whisper, “know what you’re talking about.”

It’s a pathetic attempt at bailing yourself out. At begging him to stop without using those exact words.

He smirks, tired.

“You just don’t get it, do you, doll.”

He turns to fully face you.

“For days I thought it was my fault. Thought I missed something when I checked in on you after we were done—that maybe you were hurting and I didn’t see it. Had me replaying every single second of it, wondering where my stupid ass went wrong. If I was too much.”

He breathes.

“But then I couldn’t find it. Can’t find anything wrong with that night. With the way you writhed and sung for me…”

You hold back a shiver. His hand grips yours over your thigh. The cool metal almost makes you sigh. His eyes darken as if taken over by visions.

“It was perfect. You were perfect, you were so damn good for me, and I…”

The words are rasped like a secret. Lands like a whip.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Your heart nearly stops.

“Kept remembering your voice. How you spoke to Nat and Sam. To me. To Alp. Thought about you, dreamed of you. Your hands, your body, your mouth—you know I can’t fucking sleep? Keep waking up hard ‘cause of you?”

“James—” you tremble.

His smile is tortured. “Too polite to call me Bucky, even now. Like you don’t wanna cross a line. Like we haven’t tasted each other. Except we have, huh, baby?”

Your eyes widen, a heat rushing to your face and neck and between your legs like he just triggered a self-destruct sequence you didn’t know existed. But the warmth shooting down south is all too familiar.

Because like him, you’ve dreamed it too. Vague scenes of that night, rendered in color, nestled in the space between you and your morning alarm. They feel just like the real thing. Make you twist in your sheets. Wake you with the ghost of his touch on your legs and wetness between them.

He cups your cheek, not letting you look away.

“Leaving after kissing me like that… like you’re sorry to go, like you regret letting me take all of you,” he whispers. “just—tell me why. I want to know why.”

“I thought you were asleep,” you whisper.

“I wasn’t. Not enough, at least. Bed was cold without you.”

You look at him, silent, tasting bile on your mouth as you watch a flurry of emotions wreck his face. It’s the same flavor as the one on your tongue the morning after.

Guilt.

You’ve lived long enough to know that the only way to wash it out of your mouth is by confessing.

So you do, or try to, at least. Lips part to find the right words to form.

“I—” you breathe, “All my life I’ve set this… really high standard for everyone. Including myself. Thought I could avoid getting hurt if I did. But I spend a troubling amount of time and effort just to be okay with myself.”

You smile bitterly. “Did you know I have this long document—compiled research, just to make sure my first time having sex isn’t shit? Asked for my friends’ advice. Color-coded their input. Read articles. Tainted my search history.”

He watches you. You ignore his stare and watch traffic go by instead, afraid of finding judgment in his eyes.

“And then someone like you comes along, clears the bar like it’s nothing… and I don’t know how to deal with that.”

You chew your lip. “You’re handsome. Kind. Funny in a way that I’ve never found attractive in other people and you don’t even try and I just… I don’t know how to deal with how perfect you are.”

A breath. You look down at his hand on yours.

“That’s why I left. Because nothing’s wrong with you, and that means I’m the problem. Because the alternative is staying, only for you to be disappointed.”

Your smile is shaky. “But I really, really wanted you to like me. The way I like you. Isn’t that stupid? I barely know you.”

You look at him, eyes stinging at the clog in your chest. He stares back as if considering your truth.

The silence is tense, the kind that suggests a loaded gun right around the corner. It has you bracing yourself for the bullet—the pulling away, the polite apology, the ‘I don’t see you that way’.

When he does pull the trigger, it’s not in the way you expect.

He stares at you, soft and patient, like you didn’t just break down at the sidewalk in front of a cafe with shitty roast.

“Sam wants the four of us at Connolly’s again next Friday. Said he wants revenge, wants to wipe the floor with that cheating team. And yesterday, Nat texted me saying her sister’s in town, and that she’d love for you to meet her.”

“I… I don’t understand,” you whisper, barely audible above car honks and distant hammer drills that mimic your pounding heart.

“You know me enough, doll. Told you about Steve and I selling lemonades to pay for his new baseball glove. You met my cat and she loved you. My friends talk about you like you’re already mine. I can’t even tell them I don’t have your number.”

He smiles and it breaks your heart.

“If it’s stupid to like you, then I’ll gladly be the dumbest person on earth.”

You’re outdoors, but there’s no air. Only ache seeps from the space between your ribs.

“You said I was perfect. Did you forget about my Tinder date walking out on me? The way I spilled beer on the pretty girl I tried to flirt with all night?”

His hand moves to your chin, making you look at him the way he did in bed.

“Instead of me being perfect, have you considered that we might be perfect for each other?”

“James—”

He shakes his head, staring at you. You stop.

Somehow you understand what he’s asking for.

“Bucky,” you whisper, trying out the name on your tongue.

He groans. Eyes pinned on your lips.

“I don’t give a damn about your little virginity report. I just wanna kiss you again.”

You look at him, still reeling.

Then you slot your lips against his and it’s indefinable. Paradoxical.

Sweet but sinfully deep, the languid pull of him melting into teeth and tugs that betray simmering impatience. His hand moves to your hair at the base of your skull, keeping you where he likes you. You let him, softly moaning into his mouth, hands holding on to his leather jacket.

He pulls away too soon. Your gaze is already blank.

“Missed this so much. Missed you,” he pants, eyes dark. “Come back to mine?”

You nod enthusiastically and he smiles that roguish smile, pulling you up from your seat.

“Not gonna let you play with Alpine when we get back,” he murmurs against your ear before walking like he can’t wait, fingers still laced with yours. You shiver.

Two coffee cups sit forgotten on the bench.

He’s true to his word.

Lips crash into yours the moment you pass the threshold into his home, giving you no time or space to seek out his little white cat. You don’t plan to. Not when he has your back against the door, slamming it closed.

You can’t think. He kisses you like a storm, hands all over you: under your tank top, on your thigh, groping, tugging, squeezing like he wants to wreck every inch of you.

“God, this fucking body,” he rasps, “got me going crazy, just dreaming about it...”

Fingers comb through his hair and it feels like home.

You pant, “Please—”

“You missed this too, baby? Missed my hands on you?”

“Yes, so much… want you so bad—"

Your hands are on him too, helping him take off his jacket, letting it fall to the floor. His teeth sink into your neck, sinking gently into your flesh.

“Wanna taste you, baby. Needto, have to—please,” he rasps.

That’s all it takes for the two of you to tumble across the threshold of the apartment, limbs tangled, mouths hungry. It’s nothing like your first time here. No pleasantries, only desperation.

Your tote bag is dropped somewhere on the floor. There’s a trail of clothes—his black t-shirt, your gym shorts—leading to the kitchen counter, where you’re perched.

The marble is cold on your hips, but the rest of your body burns.

Because Bucky is a vision as he kneels between your spread legs, all taut muscle and rippling metal. Your legs are hooked on broad shoulders shaped like sinewed sin. A whine escapes you when he pulls your panties to the side, revealing your sopping cunt to the cool air of the room.

Every inhale is thick with want.

He looks at you like you’re all he craves.

“So fucking pretty, baby,” he murmurs, before tonguing the seam of your pussy.

You quake.

He eats as if he won’t ever get another chance to. Sobs escape you as his mouth overwhelms you with pleasure, sending fingers to tangle in his hair. His voice is muffled, moaned against your core, musings of a less than virtuous man.

“Couldn’t stop thinking about how you taste,” he dips his tongue into your pussy, pulling out only to press an open-mouthed kiss, “about how you might’ve let some other guy have this… have you? Tell me.”

Your cry out your answer, spine arched. “N-no one, there’s been no one—!”

He growls. “Good.”

But then he laps, swirls, sucks like he’s mad at you, still holding a grudge against you for leaving. One hand glides up to your breast from under your top, his grip greedy, You feel lightheaded, every part of you falling open and melting just so he can take more.

A ragdoll in the jowls of a beast.

When he captures your clit in his hot mouth, you moan his name.

Not James. The one his closest friends call him.

“Bucky, please…”

The noise that’s ripped out of him reverberates against you.

“Fuck, that’s it, angel—say that again. Come on my fucking tongue.”

You come with his name on your mouth, orgasm spasming through you as if summoned by him. Consciousness falters, and so does your breath and the strength in your legs, every sensation giving way to shockwaves. There’s a heady scent of sex. Your chest heaves, labored, lost.

But he doesn’t stop.

Hasn’t stopped toying with your breast, metal hand insistent, groping underneath your bra, thumbing your nipple. Hasn’t pulled his face away from your cunt, nosing your clit like you aren’t already a weeping mess on top of him.

He’s relentless. You’re crumbling.

Bucky continues to coax every ounce of pleasure out of you, pushing you until you’re toeing the line of overstimulation. The beginnings of a stubble burn on your skin. How he looks up at you. The way he slips a finger inside, mouth on your clit, other hand pinching and rolling and twisting your nipple—

“Fuck, I can’t, I c-can’t…!” you choke out sobbing, the hand in his hair pulling at the strands.

“You can, I know you can,” he moans, knuckle-deep in you. “Give it to me.”

Then your hips jerk and he has the gall to smile against you while you come all over his face again.

Sweat mists your skin. Your vision is still blurry when he stands up between your legs, mouth red and drooling, drunk on what you gave him. His hands grip your waist, sitting you further down the counter before unbuckling his belt.

Your tank top is on the floor. A large hand palms your tit while he grinds against you, feeling the slick of you smear on his jeans. It’s like he physically can’t stop touching you.

“You want this? Want me to fuck you on my cock?”

You nod, eyes glazed, arms around his neck.

“Say it out loud, pretty.”

“Want it. Please.”

A hard thrust, pressing the hard line of him on your pussy. The friction is debilitating.

“Want what, baby?”

“Your cock. You. Want you to fuck me, Bucky,” you break.

He shudders. Stares at you. His arms move to take off your tank top before hands slides to squeeze your breasts, licking his lips while he watches your face contort right in front of his.

Your head drops to his shoulder. Mewl when he yanks your bra up, pinching your exposed nipples. It’s too much but not enough, the space between your legs aching to be filled.

To be owned.

“Please, Bucky, need you—”

Just as you think he’s giving in, he digs a hand in his pocket and presses something cool on your sternum.

You look down.

An iPhone.

Eyes snap to his, only to find that he’s already staring at you.

“You want me to fuck you?”

You nod, dazed.

“Call your phone.”

“What?” you whisper.

“You heard me. Call your phone.”

He pushes his jeans and boxers down at one go. Your throat clogs up at the sight of him in the daylight.

It’s so different from the time in his bedroom, only bathed in the dim light of his bedside lamp. Here in broad daylight, you can see every vein that runs down his length. The shade of pink and red that’s all him, the glisten of precum.

He drags you to the edge, kissing the wet tip of his cock against your entrance.

“Bucky,” you breathe, legs eagerly wrapping around his waist, but he pulls away just enough, hands still gripping your hips.

“Call your damn phone. Now,” he mutters, leaning down to suck a tit into his mouth. Your head jerks back. “unless you don’t want me to fuck you.”

You pant, shaky thumb tapping digits on the screen while his mouth laves hot paths on your chest. It’s a miracle you remember your own number.

You press the call button.

A bright ringtone plays somewhere close by. Your phone vibrates in your tote bag, its sound muffled from within. He parts, rising up to press his forehead to yours.

And drives into you with one smooth thrust.

You scream, limbs scrambling to hold on to him. His phone clatters somewhere on the counter. Neither of you care.

“There,” he huffs, a fucked out smile on his face as he stuffs you full. You whimper. There’s a glow in the way his brows sweat, a sort of glisten round his open mouth—your slick, his drool—while he stares at you, a halo you can’t help but stare at.

The chime of your phone feels so far away, like it belongs in a different world.

“Still remember how to make you feel good,” he grins at you, hazy, hypnotized. “Let me show you.”

And he does, sending you into a flurry of unintelligible murmurs as he cants his hips just right. Like a teacher admonishing his student, instilling a repeat lesson. Blue rings and black pupils watch your every move, reads the rise and fall of your breaths, intent on your ruin.

Each rock of his hips into yours is a claim. Each thrust a promise.

You can taste the shape of his words against your lips.

“Can’t run away from me now, doll,” he moans, “won’t let you disappear again. Ever.”

The dial tone ends. Your ringtone dies.

He continues to take. Speaks assertions into your ear—how good you feel, how he’ll take care of you, how you’re made for him. Worships you hard and fast and deep on the kitchen counter, molding your walls to the shape of his length, as if he won’t ever allow you to feel another.

As if he’s marking you.

You sink your nails onto his skin. Drag reddening lines down his spine that make him groan.

Claim him back.

Call him yours.

One month later, you tell the group chat you have a boyfriend.

Bucky tells you to send them a picture of him instead.

Where they come from is a mystery—you suppose the investigative journalists didn’t survive long enough to find out whether it was an exotic fungus, a manufactured virus, or an ancient disease trapped in the Arctic icebergs that caused these creatures.

The only thing that is everyone knows for certain is that the dregs are terrifying creatures: husks that were once people, faces familiar even through the rot, blunt nails that can’t stop clawing. Death by one of them would be both painful and unlucky—because you’d end up getting turned.

Just like how dregs came to be, becoming a dreg is not a well-documented phenomenon, and rightfully so. All you’ve heard is pain that doesn’t end even when consciousness does. What strikes you most is an underscoring sorrow beneath each account of transformation: a sadness that comes with losing not just one’s life, but one’s life as a human.

Maybe that’s why the dregs moan: they mourn at the loss of what true death brings.

Peace.

As you look out the den’s window, mug of coffee in hand, still in your nightgown, peace is the name of the morning.

Today, the landscape is green: summer has arrived. From this house on a hill—a stone inn called the Overlook Lodge, where travelers used to find rest before they headed deeper into the state park—you can see mountains, the lake at its base, and the bridge across Hudson River. The upstream part, not the Manhattan part. It’s wilder here, with less trash in its waters.

The scenery is still. Lazy, almost. Not even the clouds find it in them to move.

You don’t hear birds. They all left last year.

Today—five years since the first human turned—this silence, too, twists itself into something cursed. Something entirely loud.

You hear things you shouldn’t. Electricity. A clock. The slightest creak of the wooden floors.

Footsteps. The pattern tells you who they belong to.

Before three knocks pass, you call out. “Come in.”

The door opens. You spare a glance in its direction.

As you suspected, it’s Benjamin Poindexter. The man cursed with your orders and blessed with the obedience to execute them. He wears a crisp suit that doesn’t look like it has ever had blood splattered on it.

“I’ve told you that dressing up is optional,” you sip your coffee.

He closes the door, expression neutral. “You’re clearly leading by example.”

You look down at the slip.

It’s satin and pretty, the color of pearl, but also does a shabby job hiding the shape of you.

But you shrug. “It’s barely 9AM and already ninety-four degrees. Just give me the report, please.”

He begins to speak. You don’t need to be looking at him to know he’s standing at attention—probably subconsciously, force of habit—as he gives you the rundown of activities.

The world may stop, but the mafia doesn’t.

“Dreg sighting reported by the patrol at downstream Hudson fifty miles from here, yesterday afternoon.”

“How many?”

“A horde.” He pauses. “At least a hundred and fifty.”

That settles in your stomach a little heavy. 150 is a sizeable horde: not impossible to fight off with your current fortifications, but alarming nonetheless. Their congregations grow bigger each time you encounter them.

“Their movements?”

“Slow but steady. It’ll take two-three days if they mean to head up here.”

You hum. “I hope zombies hate hiking. Chokepoints?”

“I was getting to that,” he grumbles. “All clear for now, including the bridge. There were signs of survivors across the river. Campfire remains at the Appalachian Trail near the highway.”

“Big group?”

“Nine people,” but then Dex pauses before: “one child.”

You nod. Dex falls silent.

The room suffuses itself with a quiet charge. It’s hard to pinpoint what it is: a letdown, a pity, despair.

Then you say, “Resources, please,” and the world spins again.

Dex rights himself. “Water reserves all clear, stockpiling is business-as-usual. We’re at almost ten thousand liters for emergency.”

“And the farmlands?”

“Barton secured a new plot just off the 6,” says Dex, “and the city squad came back with more supplies.”

“Good,” the string around your throat since the mention of the child loosens slightly, “which means we’re good on hydrogen peroxide and antibiotics?”

“Those and more.”

For the first time this morning, you smile.

“That’s great news.”

“Thank the Maximoffs,” he replies.

“Get them home and I’ll see to it personally,” you survey the changing sunlight beyond the window, head tilted, “Barton, too. We ought to fortify before the hoard arrives.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

For a crime organization, yours is rather unique. Unlike the Irish, the Italians, or the Russians, the Syndicate you were born into isn’t bonded by blood, but by an appreciation for profitability.

Those traditional groups are truly missing out on DE&I benefits.

Because instead of hiring by heritage, your family hires talent. It’s almost corporate—moreso than other mafias, at least. Departments are clearly defined. Those with keen senses gather whispers from the shadows, those who charm have dinner with important names, and those who’s less talking more doing…

Well, safe to say they do things. Dex is one such person.

Together, the Syndicate operated in many things—things that are too varied to pin down: money laundering, high-tech fraud, dealings of some fashion drugs coveted by celebrities. Things that are profitable.

Then the dregs arrived. While life certainly changed, strangely, some parts of it didn’t. Having an established network of resources largely unknown to the once ever-failing, now non-existent government meant you were placed in a position to rule.

And you’re doing a not too shabby job, if you may say so yourself.

Here you are, sequestered in the edges of a state park with a number of survivor colonies under your care, and more than enough resources to keep them safe. Under control.

For now.

While your Syndicate is unique, it certainly isn’t the only one to adopt such a structure.

The only other organization that mirrors yours is miles and miles away now, occupying a side of Manhattan you’d deemed too dangerous to inhabit at the time. You know, dense population equals more zombies. So sure, your pride took a blow when they not only survived but thrived.

In any case, they’re far away, both in geography and memory.

Funny how being so alike with someone can make you hate them. That must’ve been what happened.

Who struck first remains a mystery. At least your father and Jimmy Barnes were spared from the displeasure of seeing their family tear each other apart.

They were too dead to watch it happen.

But as cold as blood runs between the Syndicate and the Barnes family, these two parties were close, once. So close to being brought into one; a scenario in which you were one of the main leads.

Your mind sweeps you away in a whirlwind of memories, a deep wormhole at the brush of a thought:

Your hands cradling someone’s face, mere inches away. You can only see a handsome chin and the dark stubble covering it.

“We probably shouldn’t be doing this,” you whispered, lips close to his, before you kissed.

More accurately, you were kissed.

Whatever resistance your words put up was proven false: the man’s form covered yours as he leans down, mouth slanted, hand on the curve of your hip. He made no space between or around you, trapping you between his body and the wall. His arms tugged you close where he wanted you, pelvic bones meeting over clothes.

And he wanted you. You could tell by the tongue that slipped to dance with yours, the groan that rumbled in his chest at your hitched breath. His fingers raked through your hair, stopping you from pulling away even to breathe. It didn’t take long for your mind to grow hazy with desire.

Because despite the consequences that his body on yours would bring, you wanted him back. And his mouth was good at making you forget.

Forget the time and place you’re in. Forget your place—your responsibilities.

Forget that you’ll be skinned alive if your families found you like this.

When he pulled away, all you could see was the black circles that ate into his irises, now dark as his hair. A string of spit connected his lips to yours.

Perhaps that was how his voice traveled into you: full-bodied like wine, rough like torture.

“Yeah, we probably shouldn’t.”

But he leaned down and kissed you senseless again, and your senses were lost in return.

“Are you listening?”

Dex’s question snaps you back to the present. The landscape blinks back into focus: forests and a lake framed by your office window.

“Apparently not,” you sigh. “Could you repeat that?”

From the corner of your eye, you see Dex clench his jaw. Unlike you, he’s not very good at pretending to be unbothered.

“It’s the West Point Range.”

That fully grabs your attention. You turn to Dex.

The West Point Range is a military base that sits on a vast 16,000 acres of land, high up the mountains—the expanse of which includes hard-to-trek nature. But being a base camp also means it is a gold mine of valuables, sitting idly and seeing no use. It’s guaranteed that the campus hosts a medical wing, an abundance of bandages in their first-aid kits. Spare bullets and rows of guns conveniently placed in the same room. Maybe even armored vehicles, if you’re lucky.

For it to fall to the dregs would be a waste. For it to fall under the control of someone other than you would be stupid. The only reason you haven’t already claimed it is the amount of men you have: too little to spare for reconnaissance up a forested mountain, let alone securing such a vast territory.

“What about it?”

“The Barnes family sent word.”

Dex stares at you like a marksman hunting for emotion.

That name uttered out loud is akin to a well of feelings surging to the surface. You school your emotions like trying to bury the source with a broken shovel: the split-second effort is laborious, and the rest of your energy is expended on a short syllable, which thankfully escapes before your mouth dries up from the shock.

“And?”

“With ‘humanity’s survival at stake’, they’d like to share,” Dex replies, “Their exact words.”

“Of course,” you scoff before you can even think of it, “What can they give us, anyway?”

Dex’s shoulders move in the slightest of shrugs. “You should ask them yourself.”

You blink at him, heart in throat.

“They’ve asked for a meeting. First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Bucky?”

“Hm?”

“Hold out your hand.”

James Buchanan Barnes is 15 years old, the age where a boy has to roll his eyes at anything a little girl says. But he does no such thing.

Instead, he studies your expression. You’re clearly holding back something mirthful.

He smiles back with a gleam of interest and does as you say.

Not a second later, you whip your hand out from behind your back—propelled as if you were an impatient spring trap. The weight that lands on his palm is nonexistent, but you’ve certainly placed something there.

“A daisy chain?”

With his other hand, he picks it up carefully: delicate stems wrought and twisted together to form what looks like a bracelet. Your face breaks into a full-forced grin and for a second he understands why the flowers bloom.

“For you!”

“For me?” He sounds like an idiot now, speaking only in questions, but he’s smiling too.

You nod, looking so pleased it’s contagious.

“It’s a promise—to always be together.”

Bucky hums, slipping the thing on slowly, as if breaking a single petal would damage something in you. He wears the juxtaposition with affection bursting in his chest. White and yellow contrast the sleeve of his dark suit, the daisies hang like innocence on his wrist.

Your fingers fuss over some scrunched petals near his skin, straightening them out. He smiles.

“And where’s yours?”

You look up.

It feels strange for a split second. Your mouth and voice don’t match—a movie that’s edited wrong. The only thing he hears you say is three words: light, playful, and entirely too far away.

“It’s right here.”

He furrows his brow, gaze drifting to your hands. Empty.

“Where?”

“Here,” you say again, but your voice isn’t yours.

Then he blinks, and you’re gone.

“Bucky! Wake up, man. We’re here.”

James Buchanan Barnes jolts in the back seat, eyes wide, legs sore from insufficient width. He is no longer 15 years old. His aching back tells him that, but from sleeping weirdly in a moving car more than aging.

Sam Wilson is behind the steering wheel in the seat in front of him, slowing the jeep up a path. Gravels crunch under big rubber tires. The car stops just before the weatherworn sign that says The Overlook Lodge. The morning sun peeks through from its rotten gaps.

Brown eyes meet blue through the rear-view mirror.

“You sure about this?” Sam barks, gesturing to the stone building up ahead. “In there are the sons of bitches that just robbed us clean of hydrogen peroxide.”

“Thanks for letting me nap,” Bucky’s reply comes strained, righting himself. As he swallows the lump in his throat, even through closed windows, he can tell the mountain air tastes different.

Sam scoffs. “I’m bein’ serious, man. These guys actively fuck us up.”

“Only because we do the same to them.”

“Then how exactly is this a good idea, again?” That’s what Sam says, but he’s driving. The car rolls into the driveway.

“She knows better than to keep trading blows,” Bucky adjusts his tie, watching the scenery that greets the jeep by the gravel roundabout. The sole entrance to the inn is guarded by a man and a woman, their faces handsomely young but weathered. “Now let’s see if I can talk some sense into her.”

Sam leans back on the headrest, breathing out slow from his mouth. “Let’s hope she even remembers you.”

The two guards approach. Sam parks the car.

“She has to,” Bucky whispers.

He pictures your face.

What if you don’t remember him? You were young. Still are—compared to him, anyway. The gap between his age and yours was hard to define: he’s a little too old to be a brother, much too young to be an uncle.

Turns out it was just enough to be a friend. In place of the distance between age was a lack of it in your relationship. You found in him a role model and a confidant all in one. He found in you the sweetest soul to ever be part of something so sinful.

Locating you next to Bucky would be like finding a fork in the kitchen: wholly expected, except forks didn’t cling onto him like you did. And you were much too adorable to be compared to a utensil, let alone a pointy one.

You did more than just stick around. By being around him, he could breathe deeper, as if you emanated a kind of calm that expands his lungs. Before you, he had never felt haze and clarity all at once—thoughts of you run like a mountain river: clean and never-ending; water that tastes so good you don’t mind being thirsty just for another sip.

He’d say that to describe kissing you, too. Touching you. Tasting you.

Then the feud happened, and your fathers… well.

The rift between your families opened long before the dregs came into the picture. How one went from young lovebirds to strictly no-contact overnight was an occurrence unique to your situation.

Mafia families betray each other all the time. One would think he’d get used to the hurt, but this one cut deep.

Suddenly, it’s been a whole decade since you last saw each other.

But the West Point Range is too important of an asset to ignore, and he’d be stupid not to try to reach out… or so he thinks. Though this family feud should fade with time, the damage your men deal to each other keep the hatred alive. It’s backyard rules: someone hits, the other hits back harder, repeat ad infinitum. Whether the Syndicate does so under your command or independently remains to be seen.

The grudge might as well be a myth at this point, but the pain is very much real.

The car doors open. Bucky’s boots and Sam’s hit the gravel. The two guards approach. Despite the different hair color, Bucky vaguely sees a resemblance between the two.

“They really showed up,” the woman muses, almost to herself: a redhead in a dark gray jacket over skinny jeans. Old blood covers the jacket in swaths, taking cotton hostage and making a trophy out of it at the same time. “James Barnes and his right hand. Come a long way, hm?”

“It’s an hour drive,” Bucky deadpans.

One perk of the zombie apocalypse is that there’s no traffic to complain about.

The man—a muscular blonde in a T-shirt and sweats, taller than the woman—eyes them head to toe with an distrusting look that’s strangely laced with respect.

“Either they’re stupid, or they have a death wish.”

“It was your boss who told us we could come play,” Sam barks back, “let us through.”

“He’s right, Pietro,” the redhead backs up and gestures forward with her head. “Welcome to the Overlook Lodge, gentlemen. She’s waiting for you upstairs.”

Bucky doesn’t know why, but the first thing he does before stepping inside is fix his suit.

That’s a lie. He knows why. Even with most of the world dead, his feelings for you aren’t.

And maybe, like the dregs, they’ll claw out from under the earth and show themselves to you in broad daylight.

The walk isn’t far until Bucky and Sam got their weapons checked at a door by a blonde man with strong jaw. The hallway feels small for the three of them. Like the two at the main entrance, Bucky doesn’t know who this person is, but by the way the man is dressed (also in a suit) and the place he’s stationed (the door beyond which you exist), it takes a special ignorance to think he’s an unimportant goon.

The decidedly important character opens the door for them. Bucky catches Sam’s focused stare at the last second.

The door reveals a vast room.

Rustic is the word that comes to mind. Wooden beams zig-zag on the ceiling, dressed with a single chandelier at the very center. The walls are rough but tasteful stone. A fireplace sits dead at one corner.

The room is large, once designed to hold an entire fully-booked inn, but now a long dining table remains, running the vertical length of parallel walls dotted with faded rectangles—paler paint where pictures used to hang.

You’re seated at its end, looking straight at him.

“Long time no see, James.”

Three realizations hit Bucky at once.

One: this might be a dining room, but for all intents and purposes, it is now a war room.

Two: you don’t call him Bucky anymore.

Three: you’ve grown. And god, look how you’ve grown.

The young girl haunting his mind is erased by the woman reflected in his eyes. Chains you used to fashion out of flowers are usurped for those made of precious metal, a single one tastefully adorning your neck, its pendant resting between your clavicle. The teardrop shape drags his eyes down to the tops of your dress: elegant and dangerous, like a knife.

You’ve changed. A tragedy, how he didn’t get to see you fit into your skin.

An equal tragedy is you taking your eyes off him. He follows your gaze across the room.

“Weapons, Dex?”

Of course the blonde man from before is still here. ‘Dex’ holds up both glocks—Bucky and Sam’s—and puts them in a vault in the wall. The steel closes with a heavy ka-thunk that resounds through even heavier air.

Only when the handguns are stored do you look at Bucky again. It’s a stare that dries his mouth, both for the way it sinks into his soul’s crevices, and for how the sight of you robs the voice away from him.

In turn, yours fill the vacuum, nodding to Sam. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wilson.”

“Likewise,” Sam responds, though his face appears the opposite of pleasure.

“I’ll admit, I thought Steve would be attending.”

Bucky clears his throat, watching you shift your gaze back at him.

“Steve’s in the city. He gives orders while I’m away.”

You stretch a hand towards the chairs, beckoning: “I see. Please, sit.”

It’s unnerving to Bucky how unaffected you seem. After that initial stare, your gaze passes him by like he’s something to look through rather than at. It makes him feel like he’s not fully here.

Like he’s a ghost.

“This is Poindexter, my right-hand,” you gesture towards the blond who aptly sits to your right. Bucky and Sam mirror your positions on the opposite side of the table.

“Pleasure,” the blonde smiles, though the expression rings hollow.

Sam points a thumb. “This the guy that stole our hydrogen peroxide?”

Bucky shoots a stern glance at his friend, only for Sam to pretend not to notice.

“No, that would be the twins,” you answer coolly, “You met them at the entrance.”

“I see,” Sam chuckles. “We got a full med bay for a week, thanks to them.”

“And we had to ration water for two weeks thanks to your people, too, so I’d say it’s even,” Dex cuts in.

You look at Bucky and he feels seen. Unlike your aide, there’s no empty smile on your face; just the familiar lines that should become a distant memory after a decade. Yet here he is, remembering the old days—you wear the same faintly displeased expression as you did back then, chastising him for being late to tea-time.

“Is this what you came here for, James?” you say, “To air grievances?”

“No.” He doesn’t know if you realize he’s looking at the answer to your question—you, he came here for you—“We’re serious about West Point.”

“I know you are. How badly do you want it?”

You liked to giggle back then, with him, because of him. Now you’re bold, timbre dipping low and husky: the suggestion in your voice is meant for casual intimidation, but Bucky took it as seduction all the same.

He can’t really help being seduced. He wants West Point. That sort of resource under his name would secure the survival of many for a long, long time.

That’s what he tells himself, at least.

“Half of Manhattan’s recovered fuel, a ton of corn per month, and full access to I-80,” he says.

You laugh, and a shot of delight suffuses his brain when it shouldn’t. You’re mocking him, after all, but if him being the butt of a joke is what it takes to hear that sound again, he’d do it.

You cross your legs underneath the table. “We don’t need your trash pellets. Or your food.”

He smiles. Of course. A location like this meant that facilities were likely unequipped for alternative fuel, anyway.

“Of course. Fossil fuel, then. A barrel a month.”

“I don’t think you understand, Barnes,” you reply, “We’re doing just fine on our own.”

The word choice is meant to hurt, he’s so sure of it. The truth of it all rings heavy in his chest—you are doing fine on your own. Scratch that: you are doing fine on your own. From your side of the chess board he may look like he is, too, but he out of all people would know that he’s the opposite of fine.

You speak again. “Cut to the chase, will you? I don’t have time for textbook negotiations.”

So he crosses his legs too, clasped hands on one knee.

“Full access to all highways.”

“Taxed?”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “For you? ‘Course not.”

“What else?”

“Open borders. You tell me what you need instead of steal from me. And we fight anyone else who isn’t us.”

Sam tenses to his right, but Bucky’s voice doesn’t waver.

“Sounds like a mutual defense pact,” you reply.

He nods easily. He might as well be saying if that’s what it takes out loud.

Because Bucky wants West Point, but he wants you a thousand times more. He just hopes the charge in the room doesn’t give it away.

Meanwhile, you’re watching past the stoicism of his face. Studying signs you once read like a fluent language. No tick of his jaw, not yet. Although it’s been a decade since you last met, he’s still the person you spent a lot of your youth with. Your former friend. Or lover. You know, it was really unclear because he never asked you to be anything, just loved and loved and loved—

“Does that mean my men need to work for you, too?” you ask, more to distract yourself from memories than to bargain.

His eyes are hot on your face, it’s a certain brand of infuriating.

“As much as mine work for yours.”

You pick at a nail. “I told you we’re doing fine on our own.”

“For now, maybe,” Bucky’s hand rests on the table in front of him, fingers thrumming, “The hordes grow larger. Bolder. They cross waters now. Soon they’ll cross the Hudson. Didn’t you learn from what happened in Ossining?”

You freeze, except for your eyes that snap to Poindexter, accusatory and unpleasant surprise all at once. His frown deepens slightly, as if offended that you think he leaked that sort of information. Him. The man who owes his life to your father.

You snap. “I want access to your watersheds.”

“Which one?” he replies.

You wonder if he’s pretending not to hear the plural in your demand. “All of them.”

“Like hell we’re going to—”

The scrape of Sam’s chair as he stands is followed by a cold click of steel. Poindexter already has a gun drawn and pointed at the other end of the table, promptly cutting the other man off.

You sigh, head tipped back.

“Jesus. Out. Both of you,” you bark. “And don’t try anything funny. That goes to you too, Dex.”

The response from Poindexter is an almost disheartened yes, ma’am. Sam stays silent. You watch as the two walk out of the room, the latter making eye contact with Bucky as if telepathically relaying a message.

Then the door closes with a slam. No footsteps follow. They’re standing guard.

While the slam echoes, you stand up, footsteps clacking towards an alcove along the windowed wall where a liquor cabinet is situated. You open it, pluck a bottle of something gold and a glass for it to go into.

Bucky’s eyes trace your movements, the sensation warmer than the whiskey you pour for yourself. Without looking behind you, you can tell he’s stood up, too.

Before he can ask, you pour a second, and hope that your eyes don’t betray your heart. Only after steeling yourself do you turn around.

“You know, you could’ve called.”

It’s your best attempt at nonchalance in the past ten years. The hand that dangles the drink to him helps—like if dropping the glass doesn’t affect you in the slightest, him stabbing a shard of sharp words back at you wouldn’t, too.

He takes the whiskey from you and sips, eyes trained on your face. You fill the silence to ignore how blue they look.

“Shame that it takes West Point for you to visit.”

Bucky licks the wetness from his lips and your heart jumps at the pink of his tongue.

“You never replied to my messages.”

You crack a smile in genuine amusement. “Don’t lie. It’s embarrassing.”

He steps forward once and you’re made aware of how close he is. Your whiskey glass and his nearly meet—except they’re gone, because he plucks the crystal out of your hand and places both on the cabinet behind you.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“Why would I lie to you?”

In another time and place, you’d tease him for answering a question with another.

In the here and now, your breath fails you, running off and getting lost at the sound of his voice: a soft, hoarse whisper—the kind that takes over someone after a loss.

If only he knew how much you’ve lost. Bucky Barnes still counts as one person, but with the hole he left in you, you might mistake him for your whole world. You should brand him a mass murderer for the amount of memories he put to the grave by staying silent for ten years.

And yet, when asked that damned question, you still don’t know why he’d lie to you.

Did he really send word, all this time? Between the raids and dreg attacks? Why did you not receive a single one? Perhaps it was intercepted by another Syndicate member—they hate his family for what was done to them, it’s certainly not impossible for a note to ‘go missing’.

Ten years is a long time to carry a score. To the people living through it, the prospect of peace must be disturbing.

But here he is, standing in front of you—so close—with a look in his eyes that hasn’t changed.

It’s his eyes that beguile you to allow his hand to move, raising to barely meet your skin in a moment of quiet permission-seeking, before he eventually cups your face in his palm.

The sensation is eventuality manifest. In that moment you’re taken to another—ten years ago to be precise, when your families declared war on each other. In a way, the two of you went through a war yourselves—a different kind that raged in your ribcages, driving him to ravage your body with his, taking you prisoner.

Today, you realize you’re still chained to him. You realize you’re still willing.

He swipes a thumb on your cheek, then on your lips to part them. He did the same that night, too, before slanting his mouth over yours and kissing you stupid.

You wonder if he’s played with another girl’s mouth since then.

Bucky still thumbs your lip slow when he speaks:

“You never call me either, but I think about you all the time.”

Nothing about you is strong now, not like this, but you try to appear otherwise.

“If you think doing this will give you West Point,” you breathe, shaking from the taste of his mouth so close to yours, “you’re wrong.”

Your noses brush. Suddenly a decade never passed.

“Sweetheart,” the nickname comes quick and devastating, like cold water and honey down your spine, “I’m not doing this for anyone except myself.”

He leans down.

Your hands on his chest press him away, but then your fingers betray you: they come to grip the front of his linen suit. His breath is warm on your face—so is the ice blue eyes searching you. You watch his lips move.

Baby, he mouths without voice.

“We can’t do this,” you whisper, still holding him close.

His face breaks into a handsome grin, beaming past his salt-and-pepper beard. Then his nose meets your jaw, before dragging up, mouth-to-ear:

“You keep saying that, but you never stopped me once.”

You look at him as he leans back. Maybe it’s the sunlight through the windows, but he looks like a different person. A more familiar one.

“Bucky.”

There it is, the capitulation he seeks that triggers his own. His knees almost buckles at the breath that spells his name, the one you choose to moan in his ear while he sinks himself into you again and again and again, a secret moment you couldn’t bear to silence. Not James, man of the Family, but Bucky, the man in love with you.

Your man.

“Fuck West Point,” he sighs, “I just want you.”

Then your lips crash and so do the memories, wave upon wave laving against the coast of right now.

You let out a sound that’s half yearning, half the release of it: the relief comes from him smothering his lips against yours, tongue snaking into your mouth, stealing air and lucidity. The kiss awakens an old claim in your body, rousing an instinct for his touch that you’ve tried to unlearn—thought you unlearned, only for him to come and prove you’re still his.

Hands snake around you, face, shoulder, torso, before cupping the curve of your hip to make you feel him grind into you.

“God, I miss this,” he moans, “miss you…”

It should be pathetic, the way that spot between your legs throb with immediate need. But there’s no time to shame yourself when he’s drinking from your mouth like a man driven to the desert, no space in your head with how he cradles the back of it, as if making sure you won’t run.

“Miss you, too, Bucky,” you breathe between gasps, “so much…”

He slurs words into your mouth, “‘m gonna marry you, make you mine—” then bites at your bottom lip, before he feeds his tongue into you again, “You want that? Wanna be my wife?”

A siren breaks the hot air, its high pitch slamming into you like a whip. You jump away from each other in shock. Wide eyes meet his, darting across his face, then out the window.

The door slams open.

“Dreg horde,” Poindexter barks, “Scout says three-hundred.”

You stare back, baffled. “That’s double from yesterday. How’d they get here so fast?”

“It’s not the one from downstream. This one’s from the north.”

Thoughts run through you, a hundred a second. Three hundred dregs emerging from a forest while you preoccupy yourself on the river—because logically, they’d come from Manhattan, not from over the peaks. How can there be so many undead in such an isolated area? How are their decayed legs strong enough to cross a mountain? Have they killed anyone in your camp?

An errant part of you screams: you just kissed Bucky Barnes. You just kissed Bucky Barnes when you’re supposed to negotiate.

Can they see how wet your lips are?

“Give us weapons and high ground,” the mouth that devoured yours speaks, “we’ll fight with you.”

Poindexter looks at you for permission. The alarm still blares in the background.

You clench your jaw and give the command.

“Barnes is a good shot. Let him take the perch.”

“Better than me?” That’s Dex with a misplaced levity.

“Of course not,” you placate, “but I need you on ground. Mr. Wilson, weapon of preference?”

“As long a range you can give me,” Sam huffs nervously, “and a machete when it’s really necessary.”

“Good,” you nod, “Dex, call the evac and open the bunker. We’ll see you at the armory.”

As if your sentence ended with a whistle blow, the two rush down the hall, boots heavy with urgency upon old wooden floors. Just like that, you’re alone with Bucky again. Being under his shadow is more dangerous than being under a dreg attack.

He tugs at your wrist. When you look over, something is affixed to it. Something cool on your skin.

A daisy chain. Not real flowers, but a bracelet of what looks like white gold, delicate petals dangling between metal links.

You look up at him. The question escapes even when you know the answer.

“What’s this?”

He smiles. His voice sounds like a memory.

“It’s a promise. To always be together.”

Bucky kisses you, this time with more feeling than passion.

Then the hand around your wrist pulls you to a hasted run. You take the lead a few steps in, leading him towards the armory and perhaps your shared doom—which is what it feels like every time you face the dregs, no matter how many times you’ve done so.

There are yells from outside. Calls to arms. A commotion builds.

But Bucky’s here, and you’re strangely okay. You’ll feel okay anywhere, just as long as he’s there.

That anywhere might be an uncertain future, although what about the future is ever certain? The dregs you’ll face might have mutated into something stronger to have travelled so far, so fast. Even if you survive this ordeal, there’s the negotiation to talk about (which, looking back at recent history, could mean another hour of making out with him), and that thing he said.

He proposed. With a bracelet, granted, but it’s no error—just a way of saying he remembers.

He also said he was gonna marry you. And you’re going to say yes, because you love him.

Or so he thinks.

Ten years is a long time to carry a score. It’s also enough time to plan a way to settle it.

But really, the plan started cooking yesterday, just as Dex gave his morning report.

“Separate from the one downstream, we spotted another horde approaching from the north. About two, three hundred strong.”

“That’s a lot. Estimated arrival?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

The gears in your head turned.

It was almost too perfect: a dreg horde and the Syndicate’s arch-nemesis arriving at the same time. Surely Bucky will try to tug on your heartstrings during negotiations: except he doesn’t know you’ve done away with your heart, let alone its strings.

You’ve read his messages. All of them. Seen how they get shorter with each snuffed effort to reconnect. There has to be a reason why things turned out this way between our families. We can’t solve this by not speaking to each other. Please just respond to me.

He never gave up trying, not even until the last few that were sparsely worded.

You can’t decide which will give you more pleasure. If he falls in battle, he’ll turn into a dreg, and you get to kill him twice. If he survives, you’ll fool him until his dying breath, when he’ll see the truth while choking on some poison or another.

You remember the daisy chain promise. Always be together.

It makes sense for him to die, then, because you already did a long time ago.

And yet, although the kiss he gave you wasn’t a surprise, the heat your body responded with was. You thought that part of you was buried—the part that felt something.

Funny how nothing dead stays buried these days. That part of you threatens to resurface, ugly fingers clawing through dirt and rot, just like the dregs.

But you’ll kill that part of you. You have to.

The same way Bucky killed your father.

bonus, because i ain’t writing more of this:

➤ in a mega plot twist i wanted to reveal that reader also killed bucky's dad :)

➤ in a mega mega plot twist, it turns out that neither of them killed each other's dads: maybe the evidence was tampered with, the camera footage was doctored, blablabla...

➤ all this time a secret third family has been profiting from their feud. (it's de fontaine. it's always de fontaine.)

➤ anyway <3 it's too late when bucky and reader find out and they've put each other in some sort of death situation <3

➤ i hadn't thought about what the ending of that would be, but either 1) they outsmart valentina and escape the trap they set for each other, riding off into a sunset and have sex with a decade-long pent-up energy, or 2) they both die like in romeo and juliet :)

A waiter is there: young and blonde with a face that spelled jadedness earned from countless shifts toiling in this restaurant. He’s clearly walked into worse in his career.

“More water?” he offers, tone deadpan.

“I’m good, thanks,” you smile sweetly in response, “but please get me another bottle of soju.”

“One soju, then,” he repeats, before stepping away from your table.

Meanwhile, Clark sits across you with his face on fire. He manages an apologetic look at the waiter before throwing his gaze up, silently thanking the company for booking you a private room.

A warm pendant light looks back at him.

The Korean barbecue dinner is billable to Planet Publishing for two reasons: your birthday, and the success of your second novel under the house’s wing.

It’s the book you have open in your hands: Owls on a Moonlit Marsh, a gateway drug to fantasy for romance readers, and a steamy page-turner for fantasy readers.

Now Clark didn’t edit that book. He’s just invited to this company-expensed dinner because the two of you were in Gotham for a creative writing event, in which you were one of the panelists.

And you certainly didn’t let his politeness deter you from dragging him along, pushing past his insistence that you should spend Planet Publishing’s money with someone special—maybe a boyfriend.

(Was it rude to feel relief when you told him you didn’t have one?)

So, here he is. With you. Slightly full from an extremely delicious assortment of meats and banchan, listening to you complain about the pain in writing pleasure.

Clark Kent convinces himself that you brought him along because it’s the kind thing to do. The convenient thing, even. For once, you’re in Gotham, and this place has crossed your socials too many times. He just happened to be on a business trip with you.

That dress you are wearing isn’t low-cut to seduce him so much as to make yourself look beautiful. (And God, do you look beautiful.) It’s not flirtation that flashes in your eyes, just everyday mischief. Maybe soju-induced intoxication.

But that smile… The curl of it is so dangerously familiar, he finds his eyes averting from it to not provoke any untoward ideas—because the only ideas he’s getting are rather untoward.

Between the thoughts Clark Kent thinks to avoid heartbreak, there’s no way to misinterpret that smile.

Six months of working with someone is enough time to figure out whether you’re into them. Except Clark—if he were to admit at gunpoint—would say that being ‘into’ you is a massively understated way of expressing the specific feeling he’s dealing with.

You’re under his skin like an influence.

“Now where was I…?” you hum, scanning the page of an open book.

You point at the page. “Oh, right. His shaft.”

Once again, thank God and Perry White for the private room. Otherwise, saying the word ‘shaft’ while you read smut out loud might get you kicked out of this sleek restaurant.

“That scene was good,” Clark coughs. And he doesn’t just say that because he likes you, but in all honesty. “It’s sexy. And vulnerable.”

The main characters have gone through a literal book-load of feelings, which culminated into what has been described by Tumblr users as a “clit-throbbing” smut scene. In working with you for half a year, he deeply understands—the first part about going through a lot of feelings, that is.

The latter part? He can only dream.

“Thanks, Clark. Flattery gets you everywhere,” you beam. “I have a praise kink.”

Gosh, it’s so darn warm in here. (The charcoal’s been dead for a while now.)

“I was being serious.”

“Really? You think it was good?” you reply so earnestly he sits up straighter at the attention. “I was worried we were getting repetitive—M and I could only substitute the word ‘cock’ so many times.”

Clark nearly chokes on his rice wine.

If the publishing house let you loose with your word choices, people will get ID’ed at the counter for wanting to buy your books.

And M? She’s the reason he’s working with you: the editor for your first two novels, now on maternity leave.

M stands for Mary, but only those closest to her would know that her full given name is Mary Magdalene.

Alanis Morissette would like a word.

“I’m sure ‘thrust’ is the same,” Clark murmurs, fixing his glasses.

You give the comment a thought. “Actually, not really.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” you nod. The green soju bottle glints in the dim as you swirl it around. “I suppose… it’s the sensation that I find difficult to write.”

Clark tries to school his heartbeat. Be professional. That’s the one thing he vowed when taking up this job: you can’t edit a critically acclaimed romantasy if you don’t take it seriously.

And the two of you haven’t gotten there. Writing the sex, he means, not having sex. There’s nowhere for you and him to go on that part. And he definitely has not thought about it. Not in the slightest.

Professional, Clark scolds himself internally.

“How so?” he asks.

Your gaze shifts away from his. That’s rare.

“Well,” you begin, tone light as a feather, “it’s hard to write about something I haven’t felt before.”

A beat of silence. Then two.

“Sorry, what?” he pipes up, voice comically tiny. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

There’s nothing for him to be nervous about, though, because you’re grinning back at him like that wasn’t a dropped bomb. He’d blame it on the alcohol in your veins, but even while sober, you’re the kind of woman who just… shoots it straight.

God knows he loves it—his heart blooms in secret joy with every flash of honesty.

Like right now.

“I think you did, Clark,” you giggle, “and now you’re getting shy about it.”

“It’s the makgeolli,” he defends, though feebly.

“I’m a virgin,” you announce.

As if it’s the Declaration of Independence.

As if the waiter didn’t just enter and place another bottle of soju on your table.

You throw him a thank you with a pretty smile, to which the young man nodded. He leaves the room without asking if you need anything else.

You have the decency to continue after the door slides shut.

“And I mean that in the PIV sense. Not that the notion of virginity makes any sense, let alone penetrative virginity.”

“No, yes, of course,” Clark stammers in reply, all while his mind asks what have you done, then, and how do I stop picturing you doing it?

Because you did things with someone else. At some point in time, you were doing things with someone else. That makes him jealous.

Clark Kent doesn’t like feeling that green thing.

He’s jolted out of his slightly bitter reverie by a nudge on his calf.

It’s the tip of your high-heeled shoe. He doesn’t need to peek under the table to see, he can picture it just fine: maroon patent leather with a pointed tip brushing short, playful strokes over the fabric of his dress pants.

His heartbeat snags. The pulse floods south.

“But with your experience, Mr. Editor,” you smile coyly, “you’ll ensure my written work is as accurate as possible, yes?”

Call it in vino veritas, or call it Ma and Pa’s education, but Clark Kent can’t lie. Not well, anyway. The truth stumbles out of his lips soon as you stop talking.

He tries to make it sound casual.

“You know, I haven’t done it, either.”

Your eyes widen, gasping out in drunken surprise.

“Really. A catch like you? The world truly is ending.”

There are many graces offered to Clark Kent tonight, and maybe the small kindnesses he did in the past are paid back in this exact moment: the waiter saunters in again to announce that the restaurant is closing soon, giving Clark a second or two to collect himself after your remark.

A catch, you called him, while he catches his breath and gathers your coats from their hangers, while his heart flies away on wings of joy. You think he’s a catch.

Or maybe you’re just being nice.

You stand and turn around. He helps you with your sleeves.

“The meal was fantastic,” you tell the waiter on your way out, appearing completely sober—save for the warm lilt in your voice.

The subject is dropped just like that.

Meanwhile, on the short walk back to the hotel, Clark Kent can only think of how you’ve never.

And how you know he’s never, either.

୨୧

When you reach the hotel, he’s not sure if you’ll even remember anything in the morning, because you’re giggling in the elevator up when the height pops your ears.

He’s not just walking you to your room, but walking himself inside your room—to make sure you’re safe, of course.

The bedroom is a mirrored layout of his just next door. He watches as you cross the threshold, dump your coat on the floor, and kick your heels off before jumping face-first onto the queen bed.

He shakes his head, but everything he does bleeds affection: he hangs up your coat and places your shoes neatly onto the side.

Then you sigh into the cold sheets, as if laying there is the best feeling in the world, and Clark tenses.

You’re safe. He isn’t.

Because that sigh reminds him of another sound.

A moan—airy, short.

Yours.

It happened last night. He could only hear it because the hotel walls aren’t as thick as he thought, or maybe because your beds were pressed up on the same side. It wasn’t loud—just him being really cognizant that your private existence and his are separated by one slab.

A concrete slab, sure, but still.

And his mind got the better of him, as it always does when you’re involved. The little noise was enough to make him think about you touching yourself. The image alone inspired him to do the same in the shower.

He’d spent a long time after feeling guilty for morphing that beautiful sound into something that resembled his name—that’s how inconceivable it is, a person like you being into a person like him.

Still, if he has a character flaw, it would be the endless hope that pours out of him. It’s in the way he tucks you under the covers and fixes a strand of your hair after.

He’s about to leave when you grab his hand.

“Don’t go,” you murmur, eyes half-closed. Even so, he sees them glazed—with both alcohol and a brand of loneliness he can’t bare to subject you to—and he folds easily.

The smile you smile when he slips under the covers is just about worth the torture of holding you in your bed.

You snuggle up into him, face buried in his chest.

But then you go and make things even harder for him. Something you keep doing even while drunk.

“Clark?” you slur.

“Hm?”

“You know I’d give it to you, right?”

“Give me what?”

“My virginity.”

Oh.

How cruel, he thinks to himself. The things people say under the influence.

“Go to sleep,” he says softly, stroking the top of your head. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, is what he tells himself to keep the feelings at bay.

But his mind recalls the shape of your moan, and how perhaps he didn’t make it sound like his name.

You murmur something unintelligible. He wonders if you can hear the wild bang of his heart. Your prolonged silence and even breaths mean no.

He drifts off soon after.

2

You wake up feeling like a person in a daytime pad commercial who just slept like a person in a nighttime pad commercial.

That is to say: you wake up comfortable because you slept amazing. The only minor complaint would be the lack of bodily warmth on your sheets.

On the other side of the bed are wrinkled sheets, suspiciously Clark-shaped. Flashes of last night play in your head: the Korean barbecue, alcohol burning your throat, the smell of him under your sheets…

…and the things you told him.

Oh.

Well, you said what you said. It certainly isn’t the first time you embarrassed yourself just to make him look your way. The dress last night is another recent example.

Life goes on, and you figure your colleague-slash-friend probably returned to his room right after he woke, most likely flustered even with no one looking.

On the nightstand is a tall glass of water and Advil. Must be Clark’s doing.

You drink the medicine down despite 1) feeling in perfect health and 2) knowing that the water won’t quench the thirst you have for the man who poured the glass for you.

And boy, does Clark look like a tall glass of water when you see him again in the lobby, seated in one of the plush armchairs. You keep telling yourself it’s the suit, but the hotel receptionist is wearing the same color and cut—yet you’re not salivating at the sight.

“Good morning,” you chirp, wheeling your small suitcase while you walk towards Clark.

He stands. He always does when you enter a room. Those manners and looks in one person would incur panic upon suburban mothers everywhere.

“Thanks for the Advil.”

“It’s no problem.” He smiles back at you. You sense immense politeness—more than usual. “How did you sleep?”

“Really well. You?”

“Yup, out like a light.”

“Must be the alcohol,” you reply.

It would’ve been a decent lie, if not for the whole beat that passed silently before Clark coughs out a response equally weak to yours.

“Yes, it was… really good alcohol.”

You agree that the soju was excellent, but the better the booze, the worse the sleep.

You know you slept well because he was in your bed. You just don’t know if this is his normal display of shyness or if he’d rather die than admit it.

Either way, it’s just who he is: Clark is too kind to turn you down and too professional to ever address what you told him last night.

Lucky for you, there’s plenty of time to lick your wounds.

The two of you drive back to Metropolis. Clark sits behind the wheel of his car. The traffic leading up to the Interstate is egregiously heavy, just like the air inside the vehicle.

Small talk makes it worse—and for the record, the two of you usually converse just fine. His mindless distraction is changing radio stations as if he knows what he wants to listen to. Meanwhile, you pretend to do something productive on your laptop: developments for your third novel, the last of the installment.

Developments. Psh. All you have are bullet points.

ves forced into divine deal with zalrythar god of secrets

she can’t tell anyone including cass

figure out b plot

cass thinks ves is pulling away and confronts her

she obv stonewalls

angst haha

resolve b plot

cass and ves both end up in god-mandated sex

That takes you less than a minute to type out. The car hasn’t moved for the last seven.

You spend the next three staring at his hands on the steering wheel.

୨୧

Even when traffic eases as you reach Metropolis, the tension doesn’t. It thickens the closer he gets to your destination, palpable by the time Clark turns into your street. The GPS lady shuts up at this point, leaving you and him to stew in silence.

Your apartment is just up ahead. He’s slowing the car down and you internally curse yourself.

There’s no way you can take any more of this, the tip-toeing a shared truth like it’s a secret. There’s no way he isn’t aware—he wouldn’t be so quiet otherwise. And you’ve seen him truly oblivious: someone would ask him out to dinner and he’d think it’s because they want to talk business.

If you do this, he’s probably going to think you’re even more shameless than he initially thought.

What he doesn’t know is that you want to be an honest person around him. Just your luck that, in your case, being honest means shamelessly wanting him.

“Clark?” you call out as he tugs at the handbrake. Your voice isn’t fully gathered, underused in the silence of the ride back, and you sound a little less sure than you’re used to.

“Hm?” he hums back, looking over at you. The car hums, too.

You shift your body to face his, seatbelt clicked free, like that’s going to help you breathe in better.

“Something happened yesterday.”

His jaws clench once. Eyes widen a fraction. You aren’t asking a question.

“Yes. We slept toge—I mean, I fell asleep on your bed.”

Clark Kent isn’t a good liar by nature, but you’d be lying, too, if you said you didn’t pay special attention to his voice. The words come out too fast, and there’s a slight pinched quality to his voice that clues you in on his farce. You’ve known him long enough to learn his tells.

“And?” you ask.

He thrums his fingers on the steering wheel.

“You also told me… you’re a virgin.”

You don’t spare a beat, lest he finds a way to escape this situation.

“And so are you.”

He nods. “Yep.” There’s a pop on the ‘p’, heavy with an acceptance of his fate.

Your lip twitches up in amusement—he looks so close to spontaneous combustion, the tapping of his fingers like a ticking time bomb.

“Gosh,” Clark smiles, the shaky, worried kind, “you don’t think that’s funny, do you?”

That catches you off-guard and a little offended. “Why would I? We’re in the same boat.”

“No, yes, of course,” he stammers. “I'm sorry, I just—"

“—thought an erotic novelist can’t possibly be a virgin?"

There’s a pause.

" Yes,” he admits. “I mean, it’s my fault. I assumed. From your books, of course! Not from anything else.”

You laugh a little at his jitteriness, and funnily enough, he seems to relax.

“It’s okay. I was just—” you search for the right word, “tickled. Two virgins writing and editing paperback smut.”

He laughs this time. You take in the dimples of his cheeks, and suddenly the totally silent car ride home fizzles out like a distant memory.

“Not that I think sex is a prerequisite, by the way,” you add, just to make sure you’re not staring at him too much. “You’re a good editor, Clark.”

He seems to be taken aback, eyes locked on yours.

“That’s because you’re a great writer.”

He ends that sentence with your name, spoken it’s holy. Something in you cracks open.

The reality is that writing comes easy because he fuels your dreams. All you do is extend them. You take every little thing he gives you in real life, surgically pluck it out of context, and blow it out of proportion. The lingering brush of his hand after a hug. A touch on your lower back in a crowded room. Him leaning down to hear you better.

He’s the fire that kindles your prose. Inspires your imagination until he’s shaped like a man who wants you.

Writing is the highest form of wishful thinking, after all.

You used to think Clark Kent wanting you is an impossible thing, but now? Maybe it’s not.

Because his face takes on a kind of expression you’ve only written about.

His eyes darken.

“Clark?”

“Yes?” he replies, a microsecond too fast. He’s scared. Or nervous. Or both.

Either way, you are too—because there’s no turning back after this.

“That’s not all I told you, was it?”

You catch his throat bob. When he speaks, his voice is taut, like the air in the car.

“No.”

Your fingers twitch from seeing his jaw clench.

The urge to touch him wins out, and you find yourself moving both hands to cradle his face, thumbing at the tense spot. His breath visibly hitches: you can tell from the rise of his chest when you bridge the gap between your seats.

“I meant what I said, you know,” you murmur, not even looking him in the eye anymore. Your gaze lands lower.

His lips are parted so beautifully… but you make sure to stare straight into him when you nail your own coffin shut.

“I’d give it to you.”

He needs to know you mean it.

As if those words were permission, he leaned down and closed the gap entirely, kissing you.

He’s more sure than you thought he’d be—and God, that’s past tense, because you now know how he kisses: slow, deep, with the rumbly beginning of a groan brewing in his chest. You melt into his body as much as the car will allow, the hand on his face slipping back to card through dark locks.

That’s when he feeds the sound straight into your mouth.

The groan isn’t the only thing that travels. His hands do too. One drags a path up your side to tug you closer. Another snakes to your nape, as if the kiss could get any deeper.

Your tongues dance and you moan at his taste.

“Fuck,” you breathe, lips still on his. You nip at his bottom lip in between words. “You want it? Want me to give it to you?”

His reply is hazy above all yes, like he just woke from a dream or is drifting into one.

“Yes. Please. I want it—want you.”

“Good,” you smile, releasing his lip with a pop, “wanna take yours, too.”

The look on his face is something you wish you could photograph.

He’s red—just from kissing—lips swollen and rosy, a tiny, faint pool of drool out one corner. His glasses are askew.

You fix it with a smile.

“Come upstairs.”

3

Upstairs takes an elevator ride where he stands behind you to hide his boner—just in case someone walks in, he reasons—but you make it through your door soon enough.

Not without you fumbling with your keys and giggling into his mouth.

By the time Clark tumbles into your bed, bringing you down with him, he’s already painfully hard under his slacks.

Everything smells like you.

Your hand on his chest draws a cheeky line down his stomach past his belt, and he sighs in relief. You sit back on your haunches, still straddling him, finally palming the tent that’s formed in his pants.

He gasps at the touch, mouth open, already missing your lips on his.

“So hard already,” you murmur. “Take this belt off.”

He obeys, quiet except for the clink of metal. The belt drops somewhere on the floor with a thunk. Your pretty hands work his zip, tugging just enough to reveal a dark blue pair of boxer-briefs.

Then he feels your weight shift on the bed. Watches you move down until you’re face-to-cock with his still-clothed erection.

“How far have you gone, Clark?” you ask, light as a feather, breath warm against the fibers of his underwear. The sight of you smiling between his legs is so dizzying, he grips the sheets for anchor. “Did you at least get blown?”

“Yea—ah,” he pants, because your hand is on his cock again. Palming. Squeezing.

You hum. Fingertips playfully stroke down his length from over the boxer-briefs, fondling his balls. “When was the last time?”

“Don’t know,” is his immediate, husked-out answer. There’s no past in his mind. Just the present, as unbelievable as it is—your bed, you, your hand, your pretty face… “Don’t care, just, please—”

As if triggered by his begging, you sit back up, leaving his cock completely touch-starved.

He sighs, because you’re thumbing his bottom lip. The touch isn’t kind. As a matter of fact, it’s a little mean: your finger is pushing his lip to the side, teasing the plush of it, pulling it down just a bit before letting it bounce back.

He likes it.

You chuckle when he takes your thumb in his mouth, even before you push it past his lips.

“So eager,” you drone, your other hand stroking his hair. “You want it that bad?”

“Yes,” he says, except it sounds more like mmph with his mouth occupied.

He lets your thumb go, only to kiss at your open palm. One quiet sound after the other, he presses his lips into your hand more—until very soon, he’s literally making out with it. His own hand is gripping yours close to his face, keeping you still.

“What exactly do you want, Clark?” Your words carry more breath than voice, and his blood sings.

“Anything you’d give to me,” he answers.

It’s at that point you choose to wrest your hand away, settling back down between his legs. You lean down to peck on his hard-on—it jumps excitedly under the fabric. You laugh, thumbing at the waistband.

Then you pull his boxer-briefs down, and there he is.

All of his inches, eight or nine, you’re not sure, but the exact measurement doesn’t matter—not when he’s relatively equal to the length of your forearm.

Surprise, surprise. Your big sloppy crush has a big fucking dick.

A dick so pretty you might cry—especially because it’s already crying a pearly bead at the tip. You trace a prominent vein that runs on the underside, lick your lips as he bucks into your hand.

You look at his face and a cruel amusement takes over you: Clark is propped on his elbows, cheeks bathed red, jaw slack like he’s just ran up fifty flights of stairs.

And you haven’t even done anything.

Rising up to your knees, you move to his face. A kiss on his lips, slow and deep. Then ten more light ones all over his cheekbone, jaw, neck, throat, up to his ears, at which point he’s stuttering out the beginnings of your name.

Your hands part his legs wider, letting you situate yourself more comfortably between them. He gulps. You move back down to the center of his expanse. Your head tilts, mouth a dangerous distance from where he’s most sensitive.

“Can I kiss you here?”

Your fingerpad teases the tip. Pre meets your skin, warm and sticky. You smear it on his fat head.

“Yes.”

Christ, was that a whine? Your little smile turns devious, nose nudging his cock. It twitches again, as if autonomous from the rest of him—like it’s developed its own mind and is begging you greedily to give it more.

“You’re so big, Clark. Will you even fit?” you muse, fingers curling around him, pumping once, twice. He throws his head back with a grunt, the movement so sharp you think he might be pulled at with a leash.

Well. You’ll figure out the answer to that later. For now, you should play with your meal.

You slip the tip into his mouth and watch shivers wrack his body. After swirling your tongue on it once, you let go with a pop, purring.

“So sensitive. What am I gonna do with you?”

Meanwhile, Clark is losing his mind.

“Your—f-fuhh—fault,” comes his raspy reply just as you descend one, two, three inches more. Gosh, your mouth is so warm, so tight…

You chuckle, and the vibrations rattle him up to his ribcage. It occurs to him that he might’ve said those things about your mouth out loud. Rather than mortification, he feels elation, because even when you move up and the warmth is gone, you’re teasing his tip with your tongue again, and it feels so good he might cry.

The circles in his vision must be mimicking your wet heat drawing patterns on him.

One of his hand sinks into a pillow, the other cards digits through your hair.

An expletive escapes the moment you hollow your cheeks, far too sudden for him to take back.

“Fuck,” he gasps, the sound tailing off with dumb, repeated attempts of forming your name. Most of his brain is in his hips now as they swivel in hopes to get more of him in your mouth, but your fingers splay beautifully on the rippling muscles of his abdomen.

“Uh-uh. Stay still.”

Following orders is usually a thing he’s good at. Just not today. Not now.

Now, all he can think of is how good it feels—his mouth echoes those thoughts with babbles of “so good, feels so g-good, you’re perfect”—and how if you keep this up, he’ll come in an embarrassing amount of time.

It’s already taking everything in him not to let that happen.

But then he catches you look up at him.

The sun’s still out, bathing the room with enough light to show him exactly what makes him nearly crumble:

Your pretty lips, wrapped around his thick cock, head bobbing up and down to reveal the glisten on him—a mix of precum and spit—your hair messy around his hand.

“Stop,” he groans, holding your skull still so he can gently pull himself out of you. There’s a line of drool that connects your mouth and his cock. “Stop, don’t wanna come—”

The surprised tinge in your reply almost breaks his heart. “You don’t want to?”

He shakes his head, reconstructing his breaths. “Not until I’m inside you.”

For once in his life, you don’t talk back, and he’d be damned to let the opportunity slip.

Clark Kent grew up learning how to take things into his own hands. He puts that into practice with you, grabbing you up by the waist, laying you down on the bed. He takes your clothes off: slowly, because every inch of bare skin is the closest he’s been to heaven, because he wants to savor this, because he thinks you’re beautiful.

Says it too, even if it’s whispered.

He has you in your underwear, teasing the strap of your bra. “Can I take this off, sweetheart?”

You nod instead of giving him mouth. A rarity.

He’ll give you mouth, instead: by kissing you as he unclasps your bra with one hand (still no comment from you). Once it’s off, he drags his lips down your throat, then collarbone, then your heaving chest, where he lets himself stare for once. His warm breath caresses your skin, while heat pours out from his gaze.

He finally leans down, laving at a nipple. Polite first, hungry just two seconds later. His entire mouth is involved: sucking at your chest, a large hand squeezing around your flesh to feed more into him. Your hand digs into his curls when he hums, teeth grazing playfully as you arch for more.

He looks up.

You’re a dream. He’s sure he’s dreamed of this once—except instead of blurred images and hazy glows that tortures him at night, the scene is crystal. He sees everything through his glasses: each strand of lashes on your pretty eyes, the color of your skin against the sheets, how your hair splays on the pillows.

Actually, speaking of pillows—and dreams…

“Here,” he wrests one from under your head and taps the side of your hips, “lift your hips up for me.”

You do it, but it seems you’ve found your voice again. The cheeky retort comes out breathless.

“Really, Clark? You’re gonna use that line on me?”

He adjusts you on the pillow, lips pursed—both from your tease and the sight of you, naked, save for the cute underwear raised up to meet him.

It’s already wet at the gusset. There isn’t much for him left to imagine.

“Just because you’re a writer doesn’t mean you’re immune to it,” he hums, peeling the material off of you. You instantly fall silent.

He groans at the sight of you clenching around nothing, slick threatening to dirty the pillowcase you’re resting on.

Two fingers drag a path down your mound to your wet entrance. Two moans erupt when he circles there—yours higher pitched than his, because he touches like it’s payback for some unseen grudge. Surely you don’t know how long he’s thought of you like this, how long he’s struggled with the guilt of fantasizing about his hot colleague, only to find this.

Your soaked cunt winking at him.

“You’re so wet,” his digits dip, collecting your juices. Your hips buck. “Is this from sucking me off?”

“No, I was thinking about winning the lottery,” you moan, betraying your impatience, “yes, it’s because of you, stupid!”

He laughs. He’s wanted you way too long—you can wait a little longer.

“Need to prep you,” a thumb pushes the hood off your clit, only for him to do nothing but look at it.

You shiver under his gaze, tease audibly lacking the bite. “Is this how you do it—stare?”

His eyes meet yours, blue eyes almost burning. Your throat bobs. That’s what fuels him.

“You tell me,” he murmurs, “you’re the erotic novelist.”

Fingers explore again, barely touching, always circling, and he bites back a moan at the sight of you arched like that, like your hips are hungry for more. His touch doesn’t relent, although it’s taking everything in him not to take every part of you right then and there.

“Clark—”

“You wrote something like this before,” his thumb swipes your clit. His name on your lips breaks, but those eyes on your face never does. “Page 347 of Owls. ‘When his finger sinks inside her, she gasps like she’s never breathed air’…”

Just then, he does as he says. His middle finger stretches you, one knuckle deep at first, then two, then all the way in. You writhe, stuttering a moan at how slow he is, before the sound dies in your throat with a gasp.

The base of his palm presses against your clit.

Clark catalogs your reactions with the precision of a machine. The warmth of his touch is anything but. So is the slight crinkle between his brows: signs that he’s testing his own boundaries by stretching yours so slowly.

“Or is it the next page? ‘The rhythm he sets replaces the beat of her heart—except nothing about the slow scrape of his fingers echoes the relentless thumping in her chest.’”

When he moves his fingers, the dimples on his cheeks begin to show. He smiles down at you, free from the pretense of professionalism:

He doesn’t commit your lines to memory because he’s a dedicated editor. He does it because he thinks about doing those things with you—so, so often.

“Fuck—Clark—” you whimper, the syllables choked out as his other hand pins your hip.

One finger becomes two, but the pace doesn’t change. Still arduous, still torture. Clark’s eyes are glazed: in watching you lose your mind underneath him, he loses his in trying to erase true words laced with alcohol. Your voice floats in his memory:

And I mean that in the PIV sense.

Does that mean you’ve done this before, with men who aren’t him? Were they any good? Did you like them, or did you let them in your bed just to use them? Doesn’t make a difference, Clark decides, because they still got to be with you. Were they the reason you wrote passion so well, or was it because they were so shit at it you had to take matters into your own hands?

Speaking of taking matters into your own hands, your voice floats in his memory again. Not words this time.

“You touched yourself, didn’t you?” Clark grunts, fingertips kissing your cervix at the word touched, “Two nights ago. In the hotel.”

You don’t answer, but your widened eyes said enough.

He leans down. Presses his forehead against yours.

“Heard you through the wall. Sound so sweet. Wanna hear it again.”

He kisses your lips once before moving down the expanse of you, flat on the bed between your very open legs—thanks to his gentle grip around one ankle, spreading you out for him to see.

But before you can shiver at the loss of his warm shadow, his lips closes around your clit, and you give him what he wants.

An open moan, loud enough to bounce off the walls.

Clark moans, too. The sound vibrates directly onto your cunt, you can’t help but spasm. He doesn’t stop. The flat of his tongue presses entirely on you, never really still: soon, he starts sucking and licking and teasing your poor clit. He tastes you, and a steady stream of muffled groans leak from his mouth—the same way your pussy leaks juices around his thrusting fingers, the squelch squelch squelch growing faster and louder in the room.

“You wrote about this so many times,” he murmurs against your slick, “d’you like it that much?”

Your answer is an unintelligibly keen noise.

“I love it,” Clark is purring now, hazy with your taste, “I’ll help you write lines later, m’kay? Want you to soak my hand, my tongue—”

Your body must’ve mistook that as an order, because the orgasm hits you out of nowhere, hot-white and sparking off your every nerve. You arch, convulse, slurring his name like you can’t speak while your pussy gushes around his fingers as they thrust through your spasms, unrelenting.

He breathes out a blasphemy, the first “oh my God” you’ve ever heard coming out of his mouth. Your senses are only starting to come back, but he replaces his fingers with his tongue, and you can’t hear anything past your own scream.

He fucks you just like that, lapping at your juices like he hasn’t drank in ages.

Something within you unstitches, and you feel your body leaping past overstimulation to overwhelming pleasure. You don’t tell him to stop—how can you, when he’s so clearly drunk on your pussy? He moans words into you like it’s a pet, coos of “You’re so pretty when you come”, “Tastes so good for me” vibrating against your core.

The cool frame of his glasses bumping against your inner thigh only makes everything feel better.

“Clark,” you cry, and he already knows. Already mumbling encouragements into your cunt.

“Want you to come again, honey, c’mon, you can do it, yeah?”

You do. The crest tugs at your spine like a string, and your hips seek his mouth as if looking for a place to give.

He takes it—slurping, licking, kissing.

When your white-edged vision comes back from the dappled blurs, he’s already shirtless and sitting on his heels, looking down at something.

You follow his gaze.

It stops at his cock resting on your stomach—the exact measure of how deep he’ll be.

There’s a smile on Clark’s face. Kind, but not kind enough that he won’t fuck you into the mattress.

“See that, sweetheart?” he leans down, feeding the words straight into your ear. “We’ll make sure you take everything, m’kay?”

When you whimper and close your eyes—because how is that thing going inside you?—he tuts once. Cups your jaw with a broad palm, still sticky with your juices. Another time and place, you’d scold him, but now?

“You need to watch,” he says, “so you can write about it.”

Your eyes blink open, only to find his pupils blown out black.

Now you’re screwed—or just about to be.

The fat head of his cock rubs against your hole, hot, smearing precum on your cunt. You mewl, eyes fluttering shut again, but he tightens his hold on your jaw, whispering “c’mon, honey, look at me” like his voice doesn’t make things worse.

Like he’s not just as wrecked.

Lips slick, parted, and a little swollen, hazy eyes half-lidded, Clark Kent is the picture they put next to the definition of lust.

But you’re the same, because his cock nudges your clit again and you melt, stammering your truest wish into his mouth:

“Please, Clark, please fuck me, need you to fuck me—”

How he isn’t already cumming all over you is beyond his comprehension.

“Oh, attagirl,” he breathes, before finally sinking in.

The stretch isn’t as painful as you thought it’d be, but maybe that’s just how desperate you are for him. Clark doesn’t seem to be holding up so well, though: he’s panting just a breath away from your lips, exhales shaky at the tightness that wraps around him, holding back the need to just slam into your perfect heat.

Inch by excruciating inch, he sinks into you, then stops. You gasp at the feeling: full. How you managed to take him all so easily is a mystery.

You call his name, clenching around him. His answer is strained, brows knitted.

“I’m only halfway in, baby.”

A wave of desire and dread washes over you at the realization. Those blue eyes, though black now from dilated pupils, drift momentarily down, before they lock onto yours again.

He pushes in.

Your jaw falls slack in disbelief, walls stretched by the veiny ridges of him. His girth bullies your cunt to take his shape. He watches as he thrusts the thickest part of him inside you, studying each twitch and blink and stutter, looking out for pain, but finding pleasure above all else.

This time, you know he’s all the way in. Your vision blacks out a little at the heft.

“There we go, good girl, so good for me, you’re perfect…”

Those words come tumbling out, both a reassurance for you and a distraction for Clark—because you’re so warm and tight and wet around him, he might lose himself if he doesn’t focus.

“Breathe for me,” he hums, but he’s not breathing right either.

This is it. His cock is inside of you—the first one to ruin you, if he doesn’t mess this up and ruin himself first.

Meanwhile, you watch Clark pant above you, his forearms flexing as they bracket your head, face red from restraint.

The sight makes you clench and he moans.

“D-Don’t—a—ah,” his chest heaves.

That pulls a grin out of you, weak as it is. You clench again, this time intentionally.

He grits your name out between teeth. “I said, don’t.”

“Why?” you husk, even though you know the answer.

“Gonna make me c-come.”

You stroke his cheek to guise the fact that you’re not doing much better yourself—not with all eight, nine inches of his hard cock pulsing directly against your walls like that.

The thought strikes you then: this is the closest you’ve ever been to someone—quite literally speaking.

And it’s Clark who’s holding you right now. Clark. Endlessly polite and often sweet Clark. Easily ragebaited into a rant Clark. Charming without meaning to, helps with the best of intentions Clark.

It’s precisely because you’re with him that your mouth decides to say something stupid. Call it a defense mechanism—from what, you’re not sure, because he’s already inside you, what the fuck are you defending yourself from?—but the words slither out anyway.

Playful. Teasing. You say it right by his lips, the exact opposite of what you had in mind.

“You can cum, Clark. I’ll just find someone else to help me write my book.”

When in fact you’ll never let anyone else between your legs ever again.

Something in Clark shifts. His throat bobs with it, eyes sharpening past the haze of lust.

Then he’s on his knees, gripping your hips with both hands, before thrusting up without pulling out even an inch—like deeper is possible. You feel him in your lungs. He does it again.

This time, both your eyes and his snap down to the faint bulge near your stomach.

The view doesn’t stay for long. He drags his inches out of you, slowly, all the way to the tip, before plunging deep once more.

“Fuck—!”

You’re busy crying out when he leans back down. His hand gathers your wrists above your head, the other firm on the side of your hip—both anchors to the slow pace he builds.

“‘s this what you need?” he rasps, voice broken between lazy thrusts that ring loud, “Writing—nmm—material?”

“Aah—”

“You gonna write about how,” thrust, “he’s so deep, she can see him in her stomach?”

Your eyes widen, first at the bulge on your lower belly, then at him.

“About how she cries out for him?” Thrust.

“—a-nghh—”

“How she’s clenching around him,” he mouths against your ear, words slurred, “like she doesn’t want him to leave?”

The cant of his hips pick up speed, and soon there are plap plap plaps of his balls slapping your ass under your moans and his. His hand on your wrists becomes a lever from which he thrusts.

The air hangs heavy with sweat and a heady scent. The bed begins to creak.

You’re rutting up into him, the swivel of your hips growing more and more desperate with each murmur of his name—he watches you the entire time, entranced by the roll of your bodies.

“Fuck, look at you,” he whines at the sight, eyes glazed over.

“Wanna touch,” you mumble, drool beginning to pool on one side of your lip. Your fingers claw the air. “Please, let me touch—”

He lets go of your hands. You drag him into a kiss that tangles your moans together, all while his hipbone bumps into yours again and again.

The freedom he gives you damns him: your hands raking down his chest makes him shiver, so do your nails digging into his bicep. The worst part happens when you tug at his hair: a response to one particular slam that hits a spot in you, in turn drawing a garbled moan out of him.

You can’t stop touching him, and he’s all the worse for it.

With each fuse of your hips and his, your walls clutch him like you’re trying to keep him inside. Out to the tip, in to the hilt, splitting you open with each store, coating his cock with you while he bullies that spot that makes you beg so beautifully: “yes, Clark, please!”

It’s clear you’re close. It hasn’t been long since Clark got acquainted with your pretty pussy, but the way she clenches is enough to clue him in.

He’s not doing any better: eyes dark behind glasses that sit askew, swollen lips parted. His only hope now is to pound into that gummy spot in you again and again and again while he spews praise in your ear—make you come before he does, because it’s too good for him not too: he’s so hard and you’re squeezing him so tight, rubbing delicious friction that’s all at once too much and not enough.

You respond with nails raked down his naked back, the mantra of ‘Clark Clark Clark’ shooting ecstasy straight to his head, fueling the piston of his hips.

The sounds of your bodies aren’t helping him hold on: wet slaps betray the mess he’s making out of your pussy. Every thrust makes him yours. Make you his.

He groans at the thought. Depraved as it is, his cock being the first to ruin your pussy does something indescribable to him. At the tail end of that thought is something sweeter:

The same way that he’s your first, you’re his. He doesn’t want any other.

He paraphrases professions of love into everything else but the words he loves working with. Instead he employs a language said by the body: through his hips now ramming deep strokes into you, the way his arms wrap around you until you can’t see anything except him. Your heels drag on his back now—he spares a second to hook one over his shoulder before plunging back into you, deepening the angle.

He glances down. Your nails sink into his arms. They look pretty.

You look pretty: eyes blank, hair a mess, skin misted with sweat as you lay arched underneath him…

“God, you’re perfect,” he breathes.

Meanwhile, you're so full your brain decides to empty itself. Its only care right now is your basest of needs.

“So good,” you whimper, “Clark you feel so good, gonna cum…”

“Yeah? Me too, honey,” he pants, voice reedy, “where do you want me?”

“Inside, p-please, need you inside—”

That answer unspools all restraint in him, and he lets his hips go of their very last bit of restraint: he pistons into you with abandon as he siphons groans into your lips in exchange for your climbing moans, the two of you feeding into each other’s lust until your heat is too much.

“I can’t, honey, I—”

It’s too late: he’s spurting all the way inside you, breathlessly gasping your name.

“Gah—nggh—”

The flooding sensation of his orgasm, hot and sticky, triggers your own. The tension shatters in your body: your legs quiver on his shoulder and around his waist, voice broken as your nerves turn into livewires that burn bright at the edges of your vision, electrifying everything to white.

He’s on you the entire time you come, breath warming your ear. The spurts don’t stop. You’ve never been fuller—until he pulls out of you and you moan, not just from the loss of his cock, but also the messy splatter of him on your stomach and tits.

The thought is faint, but the sensations are real: he’s still fucking cumming.

Now you’re just not quivering, you’re a quivering mess. Even with your senses flashbanged, slowly reconstructing themselves from that orgasm, you register the warmth that drips down your hole and onto the bedsheets.

Then the quiet lands. Your breaths even. He still hovers over you, glasses fully fogged up and crooked. The sight is stupidly hot, but you don’t like that you can’t see him.

You slowly take them off.

Blue eyes look back at you. His pupils aren’t so dilated now, and you see a different emotion in them as they widen.

Concern.

“Gosh—I—are you okay? did I hurt you? ”

He thumbs at your cheek. It’s wet. When did you start crying?

“No, no,” you stammer, “I’m fine. It’s just… that was—”

You stare, wordless. He stares back.

“It’s perfect. You’re perfect, Clark.”

His shoulders drop with heavy relief, warm breath fanning your face as he leans over you again.

“Thank goodness.”

That makes you giggle.

“Don’t laugh. I’ve wanted you for so long, I can’t possibly mess this up.”

A beat. You blink up at him. “You have?”

He doesn’t answer. Just buries his face in your neck, undoubtedly redder than before. His voice is muffled against your skin.

“I just—I like you so much it hurts.”

You huff in amusement, raking your fingers through his hair. A silent plea for him to look up at you.

He obeys. You smile, thumbing the fat of his cheek.

“When I touched myself two nights ago, I was thinking about you.”

His eyes widen, though just a fraction. Maybe it’s not so unbelievable, after all—but he allows himself to expend the last ounce of his surprise.

You raise your brow. “Is it really that unexpected?”

He kisses your fingers. Sweetly this time. “I… It’s an outcome I’ve never considered.”

You lean up. The peck lands on his chin. “Why else would I invite you to an expensive Korean barbecue, silly?”

Clark smiles so earnestly it almost blinds you. Thank God he hides in your neck again.

“So you like me, too?”

“Yep. Like, a lot.”

୨୧

Ten minutes later, you’re in the bathtub, back pressed against his chest.

The sun is setting outside, the drawn blinds creating light serrations that spill across your bathroom tiles. Metropolis is strangely quiet. The only thing you perceive is the lazy drip of the faucet into the water’s surface.

Maybe you’re just preoccupied by the replaying of your memories. Every little detail collects in the forefront like the soap suds Clark massages into your shoulders—before you know it, you’re stringing together words in your head, a momentum you can’t stop even if you wanted to.

Huh. You’re… inspired.

Maybe you should do this more often.

Clark kisses the nape of your neck as you bask in the silence. The sensation grounds you back to reality, and a realization dawns. You sit up straighter in the water.

He notices.

You turn to face him.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“My suitcase,” you say, “it’s still in your car.”

He smiles so warmly you think you might melt and be one with the bath water. The expression looks so sweet and innocent on him… except you feel his cock hardening against your ass.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think you’ll be needing clothes for a while.” 

THREE MONTHS LATER 

“C’mon, write something,” Clark pants playfully, hands on your hips, driving his cock into your weeping cunt as he watches the fat of your ass bounce with each thrust, “You can do it—you’re a smart girl, aren’t you?”

Time doesn’t make any sense, not when he’s rubbing against your walls so good, but you do know you’ve been at this for a while. Your body can’t even hold itself up: chest glued to the damp sheets, ass held up by his hands, arms limp in front of you.

Your hands rest above the keypad of a laptop. On its screen is a word processor, its typing cursor blinking back at you tauntingly. The page’s contents are measly, only about halfway filled—unlike your cunt that’s full with his length.

It’s your fault for planning so many sex scenes. But it’s the final installment of your trilogy, the perfect breeding ground for emotional sex.

You’re guessing that breeding ground is what Clark thinks about you, too, aside from his undying respect for you: because his thrusts are getting messier the way you know he’s about to cum, and sure enough, with his chest against your back and his mouth sputtering “that’s it, take it, gonna fill you up, sweetheart, you’ll let me?” in your ear.

He waits for your pathetic mewl of an okay to spill inside you.

His orgasm pulls a weak one out of you, because God knows how many times he’s made you. You shake underneath him, gasping for air while he does the same.

Then it begins: the delicious replay your mind does after every tangle with him. While the shivers ebb, your memory picks up the details…

Your feeble fingers begin to type. Slowly, as if each key ignites a thing he said not ten minutes ago.

You can hear Clark smile in his voice. He buries his lips in your hair.

“One week till the manuscript deadline,” he husks. “Let’s work hard together, yeah?”

Then his hand drifts down to play with your clit and you lose your train of thought.

Oh, well. Surely Planet Publishing can extend a deadline for their bestselling writer.

BONUS

Herons Under Sycamore Shade — Author Interview with Cat Grant

Q: Speaking of sex, there’s a lot more this time around.

A: Well, it’s the last book. I wanted it to go out with a bang, so to speak.

Q: This is a personal opinion of mine, having read all three, but you should also know that many reviewers thought the quality of erotica was somehow better in this one. To quote the Gotham Gazette: “…breathtakingly real while making you forget about reality.”

A: That’s such high praise. Thank you!

Q: What changed (between the first two installments)?

At this point, the author smiles in a way that I can only describe as coy. Don’t believe me? Ask the photographer.

A: Let’s just say I have good source material.

A waiter is there: young and blonde with a face that spelled jadedness earned from countless shifts toiling in this restaurant. He’s clearly walked into worse in his career.

“More water?” he offers, tone deadpan.

“I’m good, thanks,” you smile sweetly in response, “but please get me another bottle of soju.”

“One soju, then,” he repeats, before stepping away from your table.

Meanwhile, Clark sits across you with his face on fire. He manages an apologetic look at the waiter before throwing his gaze up, silently thanking the company for booking you a private room.

A warm pendant light looks back at him.

The Korean barbecue dinner is billable to Planet Publishing for two reasons: your birthday, and the success of your second novel under the house’s wing.

It’s the book you have open in your hands: Owls on a Moonlit Marsh, a gateway drug to fantasy for romance readers, and a steamy page-turner for fantasy readers.

Now Clark didn’t edit that book. He’s just invited to this company-expensed dinner because the two of you were in Gotham for a creative writing event, in which you were one of the panelists.

And you certainly didn’t let his politeness deter you from dragging him along, pushing past his insistence that you should spend Planet Publishing’s money with someone special—maybe a boyfriend.

(Was it rude to feel relief when you told him you didn’t have one?)

So, here he is. With you. Slightly full from an extremely delicious assortment of meats and banchan, listening to you complain about the pain in writing pleasure.

Clark Kent convinces himself that you brought him along because it’s the kind thing to do. The convenient thing, even. For once, you’re in Gotham, and this place has crossed your socials too many times. He just happened to be on a business trip with you.

That dress you are wearing isn’t low-cut to seduce him so much as to make yourself look beautiful. (And God, do you look beautiful.) It’s not flirtation that flashes in your eyes, just everyday mischief. Maybe soju-induced intoxication.

But that smile… The curl of it is so dangerously familiar, he finds his eyes averting from it to not provoke any untoward ideas—because the only ideas he’s getting are rather untoward.

Between the thoughts Clark Kent thinks to avoid heartbreak, there’s no way to misinterpret that smile.

Six months of working with someone is enough time to figure out whether you’re into them. Except Clark—if he were to admit at gunpoint—would say that being ‘into’ you is a massively understated way of expressing the specific feeling he’s dealing with.

You’re under his skin like an influence.

“Now where was I…?” you hum, scanning the page of an open book.

You point at the page. “Oh, right. His shaft.”

Once again, thank God and Perry White for the private room. Otherwise, saying the word ‘shaft’ while you read smut out loud might get you kicked out of this sleek restaurant.

“That scene was good,” Clark coughs. And he doesn’t just say that because he likes you, but in all honesty. “It’s sexy. And vulnerable.”

The main characters have gone through a literal book-load of feelings, which culminated into what has been described by Tumblr users as a “clit-throbbing” smut scene. In working with you for half a year, he deeply understands—the first part about going through a lot of feelings, that is.

The latter part? He can only dream.

“Thanks, Clark. Flattery gets you everywhere,” you beam. “I have a praise kink.”

Gosh, it’s so darn warm in here. (The charcoal’s been dead for a while now.)

“I was being serious.”

“Really? You think it was good?” you reply so earnestly he sits up straighter at the attention. “I was worried we were getting repetitive—M and I could only substitute the word ‘cock’ so many times.”

Clark nearly chokes on his rice wine.

If the publishing house let you loose with your word choices, people will get ID’ed at the counter for wanting to buy your books.

And M? She’s the reason he’s working with you: the editor for your first two novels, now on maternity leave.

M stands for Mary, but only those closest to her would know that her full given name is Mary Magdalene.

Alanis Morissette would like a word.

“I’m sure ‘thrust’ is the same,” Clark murmurs, fixing his glasses.

You give the comment a thought. “Actually, not really.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm,” you nod. The green soju bottle glints in the dim as you swirl it around. “I suppose… it’s the sensation that I find difficult to write.”

Clark tries to school his heartbeat. Be professional. That’s the one thing he vowed when taking up this job: you can’t edit a critically acclaimed romantasy if you don’t take it seriously.

And the two of you haven’t gotten there. Writing the sex, he means, not having sex. There’s nowhere for you and him to go on that part. And he definitely has not thought about it. Not in the slightest.

Professional, Clark scolds himself internally.

“How so?” he asks.

Your gaze shifts away from his. That’s rare.

“Well,” you begin, tone light as a feather, “it’s hard to write about something I haven’t felt before.”

A beat of silence. Then two.

“Sorry, what?” he pipes up, voice comically tiny. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

There’s nothing for him to be nervous about, though, because you’re grinning back at him like that wasn’t a dropped bomb. He’d blame it on the alcohol in your veins, but even while sober, you’re the kind of woman who just… shoots it straight.

God knows he loves it—his heart blooms in secret joy with every flash of honesty.

Like right now.

“I think you did, Clark,” you giggle, “and now you’re getting shy about it.”

“It’s the makgeolli,” he defends, though feebly.

“I’m a virgin,” you announce.

As if it’s the Declaration of Independence.

As if the waiter didn’t just enter and place another bottle of soju on your table.

You throw him a thank you with a pretty smile, to which the young man nodded. He leaves the room without asking if you need anything else.

You have the decency to continue after the door slides shut.

“And I mean that in the PIV sense. Not that the notion of virginity makes any sense, let alone penetrative virginity.”

“No, yes, of course,” Clark stammers in reply, all while his mind asks what have you done, then, and how do I stop picturing you doing it?

Because you did things with someone else. At some point in time, you were doing things with someone else. That makes him jealous.

Clark Kent doesn’t like feeling that green thing.

He’s jolted out of his slightly bitter reverie by a nudge on his calf.

It’s the tip of your high-heeled shoe. He doesn’t need to peek under the table to see, he can picture it just fine: maroon patent leather with a pointed tip brushing short, playful strokes over the fabric of his dress pants.

His heartbeat snags. The pulse floods south.

“But with your experience, Mr. Editor,” you smile coyly, “you’ll ensure my written work is as accurate as possible, yes?”

Call it in vino veritas, or call it Ma and Pa’s education, but Clark Kent can’t lie. Not well, anyway. The truth stumbles out of his lips soon as you stop talking.

He tries to make it sound casual.

“You know, I haven’t done it, either.”

Your eyes widen, gasping out in drunken surprise.

“Really. A catch like you? The world truly is ending.”

There are many graces offered to Clark Kent tonight, and maybe the small kindnesses he did in the past are paid back in this exact moment: the waiter saunters in again to announce that the restaurant is closing soon, giving Clark a second or two to collect himself after your remark.

A catch, you called him, while he catches his breath and gathers your coats from their hangers, while his heart flies away on wings of joy. You think he’s a catch.

Or maybe you’re just being nice.

You stand and turn around. He helps you with your sleeves.

“The meal was fantastic,” you tell the waiter on your way out, appearing completely sober—save for the warm lilt in your voice.

The subject is dropped just like that.

Meanwhile, on the short walk back to the hotel, Clark Kent can only think of how you’ve never.

And how you know he’s never, either.

୨୧

When you reach the hotel, he’s not sure if you’ll even remember anything in the morning, because you’re giggling in the elevator up when the height pops your ears.

He’s not just walking you to your room, but walking himself inside your room—to make sure you’re safe, of course.

The bedroom is a mirrored layout of his just next door. He watches as you cross the threshold, dump your coat on the floor, and kick your heels off before jumping face-first onto the queen bed.

He shakes his head, but everything he does bleeds affection: he hangs up your coat and places your shoes neatly onto the side.

Then you sigh into the cold sheets, as if laying there is the best feeling in the world, and Clark tenses.

You’re safe. He isn’t.

Because that sigh reminds him of another sound.

A moan—airy, short.

Yours.

It happened last night. He could only hear it because the hotel walls aren’t as thick as he thought, or maybe because your beds were pressed up on the same side. It wasn’t loud—just him being really cognizant that your private existence and his are separated by one slab.

A concrete slab, sure, but still.

And his mind got the better of him, as it always does when you’re involved. The little noise was enough to make him think about you touching yourself. The image alone inspired him to do the same in the shower.

He’d spent a long time after feeling guilty for morphing that beautiful sound into something that resembled his name—that’s how inconceivable it is, a person like you being into a person like him.

Still, if he has a character flaw, it would be the endless hope that pours out of him. It’s in the way he tucks you under the covers and fixes a strand of your hair after.

He’s about to leave when you grab his hand.

“Don’t go,” you murmur, eyes half-closed. Even so, he sees them glazed—with both alcohol and a brand of loneliness he can’t bare to subject you to—and he folds easily.

The smile you smile when he slips under the covers is just about worth the torture of holding you in your bed.

You snuggle up into him, face buried in his chest.

But then you go and make things even harder for him. Something you keep doing even while drunk.

“Clark?” you slur.

“Hm?”

“You know I’d give it to you, right?”

“Give me what?”

“My virginity.”

Oh.

How cruel, he thinks to himself. The things people say under the influence.

“Go to sleep,” he says softly, stroking the top of your head. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, is what he tells himself to keep the feelings at bay.

But his mind recalls the shape of your moan, and how perhaps he didn’t make it sound like his name.

You murmur something unintelligible. He wonders if you can hear the wild bang of his heart. Your prolonged silence and even breaths mean no.

He drifts off soon after.

2

You wake up feeling like a person in a daytime pad commercial who just slept like a person in a nighttime pad commercial.

That is to say: you wake up comfortable because you slept amazing. The only minor complaint would be the lack of bodily warmth on your sheets.

On the other side of the bed are wrinkled sheets, suspiciously Clark-shaped. Flashes of last night play in your head: the Korean barbecue, alcohol burning your throat, the smell of him under your sheets…

…and the things you told him.

Oh.

Well, you said what you said. It certainly isn’t the first time you embarrassed yourself just to make him look your way. The dress last night is another recent example.

Life goes on, and you figure your colleague-slash-friend probably returned to his room right after he woke, most likely flustered even with no one looking.

On the nightstand is a tall glass of water and Advil. Must be Clark’s doing.

You drink the medicine down despite 1) feeling in perfect health and 2) knowing that the water won’t quench the thirst you have for the man who poured the glass for you.

And boy, does Clark look like a tall glass of water when you see him again in the lobby, seated in one of the plush armchairs. You keep telling yourself it’s the suit, but the hotel receptionist is wearing the same color and cut—yet you’re not salivating at the sight.

“Good morning,” you chirp, wheeling your small suitcase while you walk towards Clark.

He stands. He always does when you enter a room. Those manners and looks in one person would incur panic upon suburban mothers everywhere.

“Thanks for the Advil.”

“It’s no problem.” He smiles back at you. You sense immense politeness—more than usual. “How did you sleep?”

“Really well. You?”

“Yup, out like a light.”

“Must be the alcohol,” you reply.

It would’ve been a decent lie, if not for the whole beat that passed silently before Clark coughs out a response equally weak to yours.

“Yes, it was… really good alcohol.”

You agree that the soju was excellent, but the better the booze, the worse the sleep.

You know you slept well because he was in your bed. You just don’t know if this is his normal display of shyness or if he’d rather die than admit it.

Either way, it’s just who he is: Clark is too kind to turn you down and too professional to ever address what you told him last night.

Lucky for you, there’s plenty of time to lick your wounds.

The two of you drive back to Metropolis. Clark sits behind the wheel of his car. The traffic leading up to the Interstate is egregiously heavy, just like the air inside the vehicle.

Small talk makes it worse—and for the record, the two of you usually converse just fine. His mindless distraction is changing radio stations as if he knows what he wants to listen to. Meanwhile, you pretend to do something productive on your laptop: developments for your third novel, the last of the installment.

Developments. Psh. All you have are bullet points.

ves forced into divine deal with zalrythar god of secrets

she can’t tell anyone including cass

figure out b plot

cass thinks ves is pulling away and confronts her

she obv stonewalls

angst haha

resolve b plot

cass and ves both end up in god-mandated sex

That takes you less than a minute to type out. The car hasn’t moved for the last seven.

You spend the next three staring at his hands on the steering wheel.

୨୧

Even when traffic eases as you reach Metropolis, the tension doesn’t. It thickens the closer he gets to your destination, palpable by the time Clark turns into your street. The GPS lady shuts up at this point, leaving you and him to stew in silence.

Your apartment is just up ahead. He’s slowing the car down and you internally curse yourself.

There’s no way you can take any more of this, the tip-toeing a shared truth like it’s a secret. There’s no way he isn’t aware—he wouldn’t be so quiet otherwise. And you’ve seen him truly oblivious: someone would ask him out to dinner and he’d think it’s because they want to talk business.

If you do this, he’s probably going to think you’re even more shameless than he initially thought.

What he doesn’t know is that you want to be an honest person around him. Just your luck that, in your case, being honest means shamelessly wanting him.

“Clark?” you call out as he tugs at the handbrake. Your voice isn’t fully gathered, underused in the silence of the ride back, and you sound a little less sure than you’re used to.

“Hm?” he hums back, looking over at you. The car hums, too.

You shift your body to face his, seatbelt clicked free, like that’s going to help you breathe in better.

“Something happened yesterday.”

His jaws clench once. Eyes widen a fraction. You aren’t asking a question.

“Yes. We slept toge—I mean, I fell asleep on your bed.”

Clark Kent isn’t a good liar by nature, but you’d be lying, too, if you said you didn’t pay special attention to his voice. The words come out too fast, and there’s a slight pinched quality to his voice that clues you in on his farce. You’ve known him long enough to learn his tells.

“And?” you ask.

He thrums his fingers on the steering wheel.

“You also told me… you’re a virgin.”

You don’t spare a beat, lest he finds a way to escape this situation.

“And so are you.”

He nods. “Yep.” There’s a pop on the ‘p’, heavy with an acceptance of his fate.

Your lip twitches up in amusement—he looks so close to spontaneous combustion, the tapping of his fingers like a ticking time bomb.

“Gosh,” Clark smiles, the shaky, worried kind, “you don’t think that’s funny, do you?”

That catches you off-guard and a little offended. “Why would I? We’re in the same boat.”

“No, yes, of course,” he stammers. “I'm sorry, I just—"

“—thought an erotic novelist can’t possibly be a virgin?"

There’s a pause.

" Yes,” he admits. “I mean, it’s my fault. I assumed. From your books, of course! Not from anything else.”

You laugh a little at his jitteriness, and funnily enough, he seems to relax.

“It’s okay. I was just—” you search for the right word, “tickled. Two virgins writing and editing paperback smut.”

He laughs this time. You take in the dimples of his cheeks, and suddenly the totally silent car ride home fizzles out like a distant memory.

“Not that I think sex is a prerequisite, by the way,” you add, just to make sure you’re not staring at him too much. “You’re a good editor, Clark.”

He seems to be taken aback, eyes locked on yours.

“That’s because you’re a great writer.”

He ends that sentence with your name, spoken it’s holy. Something in you cracks open.

The reality is that writing comes easy because he fuels your dreams. All you do is extend them. You take every little thing he gives you in real life, surgically pluck it out of context, and blow it out of proportion. The lingering brush of his hand after a hug. A touch on your lower back in a crowded room. Him leaning down to hear you better.

He’s the fire that kindles your prose. Inspires your imagination until he’s shaped like a man who wants you.

Writing is the highest form of wishful thinking, after all.

You used to think Clark Kent wanting you is an impossible thing, but now? Maybe it’s not.

Because his face takes on a kind of expression you’ve only written about.

His eyes darken.

“Clark?”

“Yes?” he replies, a microsecond too fast. He’s scared. Or nervous. Or both.

Either way, you are too—because there’s no turning back after this.

“That’s not all I told you, was it?”

You catch his throat bob. When he speaks, his voice is taut, like the air in the car.

“No.”

Your fingers twitch from seeing his jaw clench.

The urge to touch him wins out, and you find yourself moving both hands to cradle his face, thumbing at the tense spot. His breath visibly hitches: you can tell from the rise of his chest when you bridge the gap between your seats.

“I meant what I said, you know,” you murmur, not even looking him in the eye anymore. Your gaze lands lower.

His lips are parted so beautifully… but you make sure to stare straight into him when you nail your own coffin shut.

“I’d give it to you.”

He needs to know you mean it.

As if those words were permission, he leaned down and closed the gap entirely, kissing you.

He’s more sure than you thought he’d be—and God, that’s past tense, because you now know how he kisses: slow, deep, with the rumbly beginning of a groan brewing in his chest. You melt into his body as much as the car will allow, the hand on his face slipping back to card through dark locks.

That’s when he feeds the sound straight into your mouth.

The groan isn’t the only thing that travels. His hands do too. One drags a path up your side to tug you closer. Another snakes to your nape, as if the kiss could get any deeper.

Your tongues dance and you moan at his taste.

“Fuck,” you breathe, lips still on his. You nip at his bottom lip in between words. “You want it? Want me to give it to you?”

His reply is hazy above all yes, like he just woke from a dream or is drifting into one.

“Yes. Please. I want it—want you.”

“Good,” you smile, releasing his lip with a pop, “wanna take yours, too.”

The look on his face is something you wish you could photograph.

He’s red—just from kissing—lips swollen and rosy, a tiny, faint pool of drool out one corner. His glasses are askew.

You fix it with a smile.

“Come upstairs.”

3

Upstairs takes an elevator ride where he stands behind you to hide his boner—just in case someone walks in, he reasons—but you make it through your door soon enough.

Not without you fumbling with your keys and giggling into his mouth.

By the time Clark tumbles into your bed, bringing you down with him, he’s already painfully hard under his slacks.

Everything smells like you.

Your hand on his chest draws a cheeky line down his stomach past his belt, and he sighs in relief. You sit back on your haunches, still straddling him, finally palming the tent that’s formed in his pants.

He gasps at the touch, mouth open, already missing your lips on his.

“So hard already,” you murmur. “Take this belt off.”

He obeys, quiet except for the clink of metal. The belt drops somewhere on the floor with a thunk. Your pretty hands work his zip, tugging just enough to reveal a dark blue pair of boxer-briefs.

Then he feels your weight shift on the bed. Watches you move down until you’re face-to-cock with his still-clothed erection.

“How far have you gone, Clark?” you ask, light as a feather, breath warm against the fibers of his underwear. The sight of you smiling between his legs is so dizzying, he grips the sheets for anchor. “Did you at least get blown?”

“Yea—ah,” he pants, because your hand is on his cock again. Palming. Squeezing.

You hum. Fingertips playfully stroke down his length from over the boxer-briefs, fondling his balls. “When was the last time?”

“Don’t know,” is his immediate, husked-out answer. There’s no past in his mind. Just the present, as unbelievable as it is—your bed, you, your hand, your pretty face… “Don’t care, just, please—”

As if triggered by his begging, you sit back up, leaving his cock completely touch-starved.

He sighs, because you’re thumbing his bottom lip. The touch isn’t kind. As a matter of fact, it’s a little mean: your finger is pushing his lip to the side, teasing the plush of it, pulling it down just a bit before letting it bounce back.

He likes it.

You chuckle when he takes your thumb in his mouth, even before you push it past his lips.

“So eager,” you drone, your other hand stroking his hair. “You want it that bad?”

“Yes,” he says, except it sounds more like mmph with his mouth occupied.

He lets your thumb go, only to kiss at your open palm. One quiet sound after the other, he presses his lips into your hand more—until very soon, he’s literally making out with it. His own hand is gripping yours close to his face, keeping you still.

“What exactly do you want, Clark?” Your words carry more breath than voice, and his blood sings.

“Anything you’d give to me,” he answers.

It’s at that point you choose to wrest your hand away, settling back down between his legs. You lean down to peck on his hard-on—it jumps excitedly under the fabric. You laugh, thumbing at the waistband.

Then you pull his boxer-briefs down, and there he is.

All of his inches, eight or nine, you’re not sure, but the exact measurement doesn’t matter—not when he’s relatively equal to the length of your forearm.

Surprise, surprise. Your big sloppy crush has a big fucking dick.

A dick so pretty you might cry—especially because it’s already crying a pearly bead at the tip. You trace a prominent vein that runs on the underside, lick your lips as he bucks into your hand.

You look at his face and a cruel amusement takes over you: Clark is propped on his elbows, cheeks bathed red, jaw slack like he’s just ran up fifty flights of stairs.

And you haven’t even done anything.

Rising up to your knees, you move to his face. A kiss on his lips, slow and deep. Then ten more light ones all over his cheekbone, jaw, neck, throat, up to his ears, at which point he’s stuttering out the beginnings of your name.

Your hands part his legs wider, letting you situate yourself more comfortably between them. He gulps. You move back down to the center of his expanse. Your head tilts, mouth a dangerous distance from where he’s most sensitive.

“Can I kiss you here?”

Your fingerpad teases the tip. Pre meets your skin, warm and sticky. You smear it on his fat head.

“Yes.”

Christ, was that a whine? Your little smile turns devious, nose nudging his cock. It twitches again, as if autonomous from the rest of him—like it’s developed its own mind and is begging you greedily to give it more.

“You’re so big, Clark. Will you even fit?” you muse, fingers curling around him, pumping once, twice. He throws his head back with a grunt, the movement so sharp you think he might be pulled at with a leash.

Well. You’ll figure out the answer to that later. For now, you should play with your meal.

You slip the tip into his mouth and watch shivers wrack his body. After swirling your tongue on it once, you let go with a pop, purring.

“So sensitive. What am I gonna do with you?”

Meanwhile, Clark is losing his mind.

“Your—f-fuhh—fault,” comes his raspy reply just as you descend one, two, three inches more. Gosh, your mouth is so warm, so tight…

You chuckle, and the vibrations rattle him up to his ribcage. It occurs to him that he might’ve said those things about your mouth out loud. Rather than mortification, he feels elation, because even when you move up and the warmth is gone, you’re teasing his tip with your tongue again, and it feels so good he might cry.

The circles in his vision must be mimicking your wet heat drawing patterns on him.

One of his hand sinks into a pillow, the other cards digits through your hair.

An expletive escapes the moment you hollow your cheeks, far too sudden for him to take back.

“Fuck,” he gasps, the sound tailing off with dumb, repeated attempts of forming your name. Most of his brain is in his hips now as they swivel in hopes to get more of him in your mouth, but your fingers splay beautifully on the rippling muscles of his abdomen.

“Uh-uh. Stay still.”

Following orders is usually a thing he’s good at. Just not today. Not now.

Now, all he can think of is how good it feels—his mouth echoes those thoughts with babbles of “so good, feels so g-good, you’re perfect”—and how if you keep this up, he’ll come in an embarrassing amount of time.

It’s already taking everything in him not to let that happen.

But then he catches you look up at him.

The sun’s still out, bathing the room with enough light to show him exactly what makes him nearly crumble:

Your pretty lips, wrapped around his thick cock, head bobbing up and down to reveal the glisten on him—a mix of precum and spit—your hair messy around his hand.

“Stop,” he groans, holding your skull still so he can gently pull himself out of you. There’s a line of drool that connects your mouth and his cock. “Stop, don’t wanna come—”

The surprised tinge in your reply almost breaks his heart. “You don’t want to?”

He shakes his head, reconstructing his breaths. “Not until I’m inside you.”

For once in his life, you don’t talk back, and he’d be damned to let the opportunity slip.

Clark Kent grew up learning how to take things into his own hands. He puts that into practice with you, grabbing you up by the waist, laying you down on the bed. He takes your clothes off: slowly, because every inch of bare skin is the closest he’s been to heaven, because he wants to savor this, because he thinks you’re beautiful.

Says it too, even if it’s whispered.

He has you in your underwear, teasing the strap of your bra. “Can I take this off, sweetheart?”

You nod instead of giving him mouth. A rarity.

He’ll give you mouth, instead: by kissing you as he unclasps your bra with one hand (still no comment from you). Once it’s off, he drags his lips down your throat, then collarbone, then your heaving chest, where he lets himself stare for once. His warm breath caresses your skin, while heat pours out from his gaze.

He finally leans down, laving at a nipple. Polite first, hungry just two seconds later. His entire mouth is involved: sucking at your chest, a large hand squeezing around your flesh to feed more into him. Your hand digs into his curls when he hums, teeth grazing playfully as you arch for more.

He looks up.

You’re a dream. He’s sure he’s dreamed of this once—except instead of blurred images and hazy glows that tortures him at night, the scene is crystal. He sees everything through his glasses: each strand of lashes on your pretty eyes, the color of your skin against the sheets, how your hair splays on the pillows.

Actually, speaking of pillows—and dreams…

“Here,” he wrests one from under your head and taps the side of your hips, “lift your hips up for me.”

You do it, but it seems you’ve found your voice again. The cheeky retort comes out breathless.

“Really, Clark? You’re gonna use that line on me?”

He adjusts you on the pillow, lips pursed—both from your tease and the sight of you, naked, save for the cute underwear raised up to meet him.

It’s already wet at the gusset. There isn’t much for him left to imagine.

“Just because you’re a writer doesn’t mean you’re immune to it,” he hums, peeling the material off of you. You instantly fall silent.

He groans at the sight of you clenching around nothing, slick threatening to dirty the pillowcase you’re resting on.

Two fingers drag a path down your mound to your wet entrance. Two moans erupt when he circles there—yours higher pitched than his, because he touches like it’s payback for some unseen grudge. Surely you don’t know how long he’s thought of you like this, how long he’s struggled with the guilt of fantasizing about his hot colleague, only to find this.

Your soaked cunt winking at him.

“You’re so wet,” his digits dip, collecting your juices. Your hips buck. “Is this from sucking me off?”

“No, I was thinking about winning the lottery,” you moan, betraying your impatience, “yes, it’s because of you, stupid!”

He laughs. He’s wanted you way too long—you can wait a little longer.

“Need to prep you,” a thumb pushes the hood off your clit, only for him to do nothing but look at it.

You shiver under his gaze, tease audibly lacking the bite. “Is this how you do it—stare?”

His eyes meet yours, blue eyes almost burning. Your throat bobs. That’s what fuels him.

“You tell me,” he murmurs, “you’re the erotic novelist.”

Fingers explore again, barely touching, always circling, and he bites back a moan at the sight of you arched like that, like your hips are hungry for more. His touch doesn’t relent, although it’s taking everything in him not to take every part of you right then and there.

“Clark—”

“You wrote something like this before,” his thumb swipes your clit. His name on your lips breaks, but those eyes on your face never does. “Page 347 of Owls. ‘When his finger sinks inside her, she gasps like she’s never breathed air’…”

Just then, he does as he says. His middle finger stretches you, one knuckle deep at first, then two, then all the way in. You writhe, stuttering a moan at how slow he is, before the sound dies in your throat with a gasp.

The base of his palm presses against your clit.

Clark catalogs your reactions with the precision of a machine. The warmth of his touch is anything but. So is the slight crinkle between his brows: signs that he’s testing his own boundaries by stretching yours so slowly.

“Or is it the next page? ‘The rhythm he sets replaces the beat of her heart—except nothing about the slow scrape of his fingers echoes the relentless thumping in her chest.’”

When he moves his fingers, the dimples on his cheeks begin to show. He smiles down at you, free from the pretense of professionalism:

He doesn’t commit your lines to memory because he’s a dedicated editor. He does it because he thinks about doing those things with you—so, so often.

“Fuck—Clark—” you whimper, the syllables choked out as his other hand pins your hip.

One finger becomes two, but the pace doesn’t change. Still arduous, still torture. Clark’s eyes are glazed: in watching you lose your mind underneath him, he loses his in trying to erase true words laced with alcohol. Your voice floats in his memory:

And I mean that in the PIV sense.

Does that mean you’ve done this before, with men who aren’t him? Were they any good? Did you like them, or did you let them in your bed just to use them? Doesn’t make a difference, Clark decides, because they still got to be with you. Were they the reason you wrote passion so well, or was it because they were so shit at it you had to take matters into your own hands?

Speaking of taking matters into your own hands, your voice floats in his memory again. Not words this time.

“You touched yourself, didn’t you?” Clark grunts, fingertips kissing your cervix at the word touched, “Two nights ago. In the hotel.”

You don’t answer, but your widened eyes said enough.

He leans down. Presses his forehead against yours.

“Heard you through the wall. Sound so sweet. Wanna hear it again.”

He kisses your lips once before moving down the expanse of you, flat on the bed between your very open legs—thanks to his gentle grip around one ankle, spreading you out for him to see.

But before you can shiver at the loss of his warm shadow, his lips closes around your clit, and you give him what he wants.

An open moan, loud enough to bounce off the walls.

Clark moans, too. The sound vibrates directly onto your cunt, you can’t help but spasm. He doesn’t stop. The flat of his tongue presses entirely on you, never really still: soon, he starts sucking and licking and teasing your poor clit. He tastes you, and a steady stream of muffled groans leak from his mouth—the same way your pussy leaks juices around his thrusting fingers, the squelch squelch squelch growing faster and louder in the room.

“You wrote about this so many times,” he murmurs against your slick, “d’you like it that much?”

Your answer is an unintelligibly keen noise.

“I love it,” Clark is purring now, hazy with your taste, “I’ll help you write lines later, m’kay? Want you to soak my hand, my tongue—”

Your body must’ve mistook that as an order, because the orgasm hits you out of nowhere, hot-white and sparking off your every nerve. You arch, convulse, slurring his name like you can’t speak while your pussy gushes around his fingers as they thrust through your spasms, unrelenting.

He breathes out a blasphemy, the first “oh my God” you’ve ever heard coming out of his mouth. Your senses are only starting to come back, but he replaces his fingers with his tongue, and you can’t hear anything past your own scream.

He fucks you just like that, lapping at your juices like he hasn’t drank in ages.

Something within you unstitches, and you feel your body leaping past overstimulation to overwhelming pleasure. You don’t tell him to stop—how can you, when he’s so clearly drunk on your pussy? He moans words into you like it’s a pet, coos of “You’re so pretty when you come”, “Tastes so good for me” vibrating against your core.

The cool frame of his glasses bumping against your inner thigh only makes everything feel better.

“Clark,” you cry, and he already knows. Already mumbling encouragements into your cunt.

“Want you to come again, honey, c’mon, you can do it, yeah?”

You do. The crest tugs at your spine like a string, and your hips seek his mouth as if looking for a place to give.

He takes it—slurping, licking, kissing.

When your white-edged vision comes back from the dappled blurs, he’s already shirtless and sitting on his heels, looking down at something.

You follow his gaze.

It stops at his cock resting on your stomach—the exact measure of how deep he’ll be.

There’s a smile on Clark’s face. Kind, but not kind enough that he won’t fuck you into the mattress.

“See that, sweetheart?” he leans down, feeding the words straight into your ear. “We’ll make sure you take everything, m’kay?”

When you whimper and close your eyes—because how is that thing going inside you?—he tuts once. Cups your jaw with a broad palm, still sticky with your juices. Another time and place, you’d scold him, but now?

“You need to watch,” he says, “so you can write about it.”

Your eyes blink open, only to find his pupils blown out black.

Now you’re screwed—or just about to be.

The fat head of his cock rubs against your hole, hot, smearing precum on your cunt. You mewl, eyes fluttering shut again, but he tightens his hold on your jaw, whispering “c’mon, honey, look at me” like his voice doesn’t make things worse.

Like he’s not just as wrecked.

Lips slick, parted, and a little swollen, hazy eyes half-lidded, Clark Kent is the picture they put next to the definition of lust.

But you’re the same, because his cock nudges your clit again and you melt, stammering your truest wish into his mouth:

“Please, Clark, please fuck me, need you to fuck me—”

How he isn’t already cumming all over you is beyond his comprehension.

“Oh, attagirl,” he breathes, before finally sinking in.

The stretch isn’t as painful as you thought it’d be, but maybe that’s just how desperate you are for him. Clark doesn’t seem to be holding up so well, though: he’s panting just a breath away from your lips, exhales shaky at the tightness that wraps around him, holding back the need to just slam into your perfect heat.

Inch by excruciating inch, he sinks into you, then stops. You gasp at the feeling: full. How you managed to take him all so easily is a mystery.

You call his name, clenching around him. His answer is strained, brows knitted.

“I’m only halfway in, baby.”

A wave of desire and dread washes over you at the realization. Those blue eyes, though black now from dilated pupils, drift momentarily down, before they lock onto yours again.

He pushes in.

Your jaw falls slack in disbelief, walls stretched by the veiny ridges of him. His girth bullies your cunt to take his shape. He watches as he thrusts the thickest part of him inside you, studying each twitch and blink and stutter, looking out for pain, but finding pleasure above all else.

This time, you know he’s all the way in. Your vision blacks out a little at the heft.

“There we go, good girl, so good for me, you’re perfect…”

Those words come tumbling out, both a reassurance for you and a distraction for Clark—because you’re so warm and tight and wet around him, he might lose himself if he doesn’t focus.

“Breathe for me,” he hums, but he’s not breathing right either.

This is it. His cock is inside of you—the first one to ruin you, if he doesn’t mess this up and ruin himself first.

Meanwhile, you watch Clark pant above you, his forearms flexing as they bracket your head, face red from restraint.

The sight makes you clench and he moans.

“D-Don’t—a—ah,” his chest heaves.

That pulls a grin out of you, weak as it is. You clench again, this time intentionally.

He grits your name out between teeth. “I said, don’t.”

“Why?” you husk, even though you know the answer.

“Gonna make me c-come.”

You stroke his cheek to guise the fact that you’re not doing much better yourself—not with all eight, nine inches of his hard cock pulsing directly against your walls like that.

The thought strikes you then: this is the closest you’ve ever been to someone—quite literally speaking.

And it’s Clark who’s holding you right now. Clark. Endlessly polite and often sweet Clark. Easily ragebaited into a rant Clark. Charming without meaning to, helps with the best of intentions Clark.

It’s precisely because you’re with him that your mouth decides to say something stupid. Call it a defense mechanism—from what, you’re not sure, because he’s already inside you, what the fuck are you defending yourself from?—but the words slither out anyway.

Playful. Teasing. You say it right by his lips, the exact opposite of what you had in mind.

“You can cum, Clark. I’ll just find someone else to help me write my book.”

When in fact you’ll never let anyone else between your legs ever again.

Something in Clark shifts. His throat bobs with it, eyes sharpening past the haze of lust.

Then he’s on his knees, gripping your hips with both hands, before thrusting up without pulling out even an inch—like deeper is possible. You feel him in your lungs. He does it again.

This time, both your eyes and his snap down to the faint bulge near your stomach.

The view doesn’t stay for long. He drags his inches out of you, slowly, all the way to the tip, before plunging deep once more.

“Fuck—!”

You’re busy crying out when he leans back down. His hand gathers your wrists above your head, the other firm on the side of your hip—both anchors to the slow pace he builds.

“‘s this what you need?” he rasps, voice broken between lazy thrusts that ring loud, “Writing—nmm—material?”

“Aah—”

“You gonna write about how,” thrust, “he’s so deep, she can see him in her stomach?”

Your eyes widen, first at the bulge on your lower belly, then at him.

“About how she cries out for him?” Thrust.

“—a-nghh—”

“How she’s clenching around him,” he mouths against your ear, words slurred, “like she doesn’t want him to leave?”

The cant of his hips pick up speed, and soon there are plap plap plaps of his balls slapping your ass under your moans and his. His hand on your wrists becomes a lever from which he thrusts.

The air hangs heavy with sweat and a heady scent. The bed begins to creak.

You’re rutting up into him, the swivel of your hips growing more and more desperate with each murmur of his name—he watches you the entire time, entranced by the roll of your bodies.

“Fuck, look at you,” he whines at the sight, eyes glazed over.

“Wanna touch,” you mumble, drool beginning to pool on one side of your lip. Your fingers claw the air. “Please, let me touch—”

He lets go of your hands. You drag him into a kiss that tangles your moans together, all while his hipbone bumps into yours again and again.

The freedom he gives you damns him: your hands raking down his chest makes him shiver, so do your nails digging into his bicep. The worst part happens when you tug at his hair: a response to one particular slam that hits a spot in you, in turn drawing a garbled moan out of him.

You can’t stop touching him, and he’s all the worse for it.

With each fuse of your hips and his, your walls clutch him like you’re trying to keep him inside. Out to the tip, in to the hilt, splitting you open with each store, coating his cock with you while he bullies that spot that makes you beg so beautifully: “yes, Clark, please!”

It’s clear you’re close. It hasn’t been long since Clark got acquainted with your pretty pussy, but the way she clenches is enough to clue him in.

He’s not doing any better: eyes dark behind glasses that sit askew, swollen lips parted. His only hope now is to pound into that gummy spot in you again and again and again while he spews praise in your ear—make you come before he does, because it’s too good for him not too: he’s so hard and you’re squeezing him so tight, rubbing delicious friction that’s all at once too much and not enough.

You respond with nails raked down his naked back, the mantra of ‘Clark Clark Clark’ shooting ecstasy straight to his head, fueling the piston of his hips.

The sounds of your bodies aren’t helping him hold on: wet slaps betray the mess he’s making out of your pussy. Every thrust makes him yours. Make you his.

He groans at the thought. Depraved as it is, his cock being the first to ruin your pussy does something indescribable to him. At the tail end of that thought is something sweeter:

The same way that he’s your first, you’re his. He doesn’t want any other.

He paraphrases professions of love into everything else but the words he loves working with. Instead he employs a language said by the body: through his hips now ramming deep strokes into you, the way his arms wrap around you until you can’t see anything except him. Your heels drag on his back now—he spares a second to hook one over his shoulder before plunging back into you, deepening the angle.

He glances down. Your nails sink into his arms. They look pretty.

You look pretty: eyes blank, hair a mess, skin misted with sweat as you lay arched underneath him…

“God, you’re perfect,” he breathes.

Meanwhile, you're so full your brain decides to empty itself. Its only care right now is your basest of needs.

“So good,” you whimper, “Clark you feel so good, gonna cum…”

“Yeah? Me too, honey,” he pants, voice reedy, “where do you want me?”

“Inside, p-please, need you inside—”

That answer unspools all restraint in him, and he lets his hips go of their very last bit of restraint: he pistons into you with abandon as he siphons groans into your lips in exchange for your climbing moans, the two of you feeding into each other’s lust until your heat is too much.

“I can’t, honey, I—”

It’s too late: he’s spurting all the way inside you, breathlessly gasping your name.

“Gah—nggh—”

The flooding sensation of his orgasm, hot and sticky, triggers your own. The tension shatters in your body: your legs quiver on his shoulder and around his waist, voice broken as your nerves turn into livewires that burn bright at the edges of your vision, electrifying everything to white.

He’s on you the entire time you come, breath warming your ear. The spurts don’t stop. You’ve never been fuller—until he pulls out of you and you moan, not just from the loss of his cock, but also the messy splatter of him on your stomach and tits.

The thought is faint, but the sensations are real: he’s still fucking cumming.

Now you’re just not quivering, you’re a quivering mess. Even with your senses flashbanged, slowly reconstructing themselves from that orgasm, you register the warmth that drips down your hole and onto the bedsheets.

Then the quiet lands. Your breaths even. He still hovers over you, glasses fully fogged up and crooked. The sight is stupidly hot, but you don’t like that you can’t see him.

You slowly take them off.

Blue eyes look back at you. His pupils aren’t so dilated now, and you see a different emotion in them as they widen.

Concern.

“Gosh—I—are you okay? did I hurt you? ”

He thumbs at your cheek. It’s wet. When did you start crying?

“No, no,” you stammer, “I’m fine. It’s just… that was—”

You stare, wordless. He stares back.

“It’s perfect. You’re perfect, Clark.”

His shoulders drop with heavy relief, warm breath fanning your face as he leans over you again.

“Thank goodness.”

That makes you giggle.

“Don’t laugh. I’ve wanted you for so long, I can’t possibly mess this up.”

A beat. You blink up at him. “You have?”

He doesn’t answer. Just buries his face in your neck, undoubtedly redder than before. His voice is muffled against your skin.

“I just—I like you so much it hurts.”

You huff in amusement, raking your fingers through his hair. A silent plea for him to look up at you.

He obeys. You smile, thumbing the fat of his cheek.

“When I touched myself two nights ago, I was thinking about you.”

His eyes widen, though just a fraction. Maybe it’s not so unbelievable, after all—but he allows himself to expend the last ounce of his surprise.

You raise your brow. “Is it really that unexpected?”

He kisses your fingers. Sweetly this time. “I… It’s an outcome I’ve never considered.”

You lean up. The peck lands on his chin. “Why else would I invite you to an expensive Korean barbecue, silly?”

Clark smiles so earnestly it almost blinds you. Thank God he hides in your neck again.

“So you like me, too?”

“Yep. Like, a lot.”

୨୧

Ten minutes later, you’re in the bathtub, back pressed against his chest.

The sun is setting outside, the drawn blinds creating light serrations that spill across your bathroom tiles. Metropolis is strangely quiet. The only thing you perceive is the lazy drip of the faucet into the water’s surface.

Maybe you’re just preoccupied by the replaying of your memories. Every little detail collects in the forefront like the soap suds Clark massages into your shoulders—before you know it, you’re stringing together words in your head, a momentum you can’t stop even if you wanted to.

Huh. You’re… inspired.

Maybe you should do this more often.

Clark kisses the nape of your neck as you bask in the silence. The sensation grounds you back to reality, and a realization dawns. You sit up straighter in the water.

He notices.

You turn to face him.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“My suitcase,” you say, “it’s still in your car.”

He smiles so warmly you think you might melt and be one with the bath water. The expression looks so sweet and innocent on him… except you feel his cock hardening against your ass.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think you’ll be needing clothes for a while.” 

THREE MONTHS LATER 

“C’mon, write something,” Clark pants playfully, hands on your hips, driving his cock into your weeping cunt as he watches the fat of your ass bounce with each thrust, “You can do it—you’re a smart girl, aren’t you?”

Time doesn’t make any sense, not when he’s rubbing against your walls so good, but you do know you’ve been at this for a while. Your body can’t even hold itself up: chest glued to the damp sheets, ass held up by his hands, arms limp in front of you.

Your hands rest above the keypad of a laptop. On its screen is a word processor, its typing cursor blinking back at you tauntingly. The page’s contents are measly, only about halfway filled—unlike your cunt that’s full with his length.

It’s your fault for planning so many sex scenes. But it’s the final installment of your trilogy, the perfect breeding ground for emotional sex.

You’re guessing that breeding ground is what Clark thinks about you, too, aside from his undying respect for you: because his thrusts are getting messier the way you know he’s about to cum, and sure enough, with his chest against your back and his mouth sputtering “that’s it, take it, gonna fill you up, sweetheart, you’ll let me?” in your ear.

He waits for your pathetic mewl of an okay to spill inside you.

His orgasm pulls a weak one out of you, because God knows how many times he’s made you. You shake underneath him, gasping for air while he does the same.

Then it begins: the delicious replay your mind does after every tangle with him. While the shivers ebb, your memory picks up the details…

Your feeble fingers begin to type. Slowly, as if each key ignites a thing he said not ten minutes ago.

You can hear Clark smile in his voice. He buries his lips in your hair.

“One week till the manuscript deadline,” he husks. “Let’s work hard together, yeah?”

Then his hand drifts down to play with your clit and you lose your train of thought.

Oh, well. Surely Planet Publishing can extend a deadline for their bestselling writer.

BONUS

Herons Under Sycamore Shade — Author Interview with Cat Grant

Q: Speaking of sex, there’s a lot more this time around.

A: Well, it’s the last book. I wanted it to go out with a bang, so to speak.

Q: This is a personal opinion of mine, having read all three, but you should also know that many reviewers thought the quality of erotica was somehow better in this one. To quote the Gotham Gazette: “…breathtakingly real while making you forget about reality.”

A: That’s such high praise. Thank you!

Q: What changed (between the first two installments)?

At this point, the author smiles in a way that I can only describe as coy. Don’t believe me? Ask the photographer.

A: Let’s just say I have good source material.

@cryptictongues i giggled in an evil way when i wrote that bit <3 ahhh im sorry about the reading slump (i know how you feel truly), i hope this was worth your time!

@aparalleliwouldlaymylifeon THANK YOU FOR READING <3

@arsmut31 "i kept thinking it was over" reader did too girl. thank you for readingggg

@anocious ani ani are you ok. are you ok. are you ok ani. /j

I LOVE YOU AND NOT JUST BECAUSE OF YOUR TAGS BUT ALSO HOW FREAKING FUNNY YOU ARE OMG. the sucker punch is not from me but the demon that possesses me while i write the smut, swear to god. (it's me. i'm my own demon.) and it's absolutely okay to take your time reading stuff <3 i'm glad you enjoyed it! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING DON"T DIE

This happens every two months or so. You love the man, but he needs to stop trolling at this point. After this rewatch, you’ll probably regurgitate Val Kilmer’s lines while you brush your teeth in the morning.

Wanda rolls her eyes so hard you think they might get stuck like that forever.

“This is the last time, Sam!”

But Sam smiles through the crowd’s boos. Even while the team complains, they take their positions on and around the couch anyway. Yourself included.

Because everyone loves him, and it’s just your fucking luck he loves Top Gun.

Two: find a comfortable surface.

The common room couch? Real nice surface. Of course a government-funded cohabitation facility for their top operatives can afford Egyptian cotton-upholstered furniture.

Three: be extremely tired.

The most recent mission you completed just finished debriefing in the afternoon—a few hours before movie night. It was a track-and-extract of a trafficking ring, except you got assigned the track part, and that was a lot less fun. The stakeouts were long, and the car you sat in had aged leather seats that dampened the already stale air. No air conditioning—can’t risk turning on the engine. No activity around the building you watched, either.

Stretch that out for some days, and naturally, all you wanted upon touchdown was a hot shower and a bed with springs.

Top Gun, a soft couch, and fatigue. Those three variables are enough to force you asleep, but just to be as empirical as possible, you have to list down another.

Four:

Get Steve Rogers to sit next to you.

Technically you didn’t get him to. He sauntered in late, saw the only open spot, and helped himself.

Suspicious, come to think of it. Why did nobody sit next to you? Nat and you would whisper quipped commentaries at each other. Wanda and you are close enough friends to cuddle. Sam would take the opportunity to further grind your gears by manspreading—his hobby is grinding people’s gears.

“Comfy?”

Steve is dressed in gray sweats and a simple t-shirt, its deep blue bringing out his eyes.

He’s the one who looks comfortable, if anything. You’re tempted to thumb at his shirt sleeve and ask about the thread count, but like a normal human being, you nod your yes and watch the opening credits roll.

You can feel his blue eyes on the side of your cheek before he looks at the screen, too.

The moment the movie begins proper, you find yourself muttering the opening line.

“Ghost Rider, this is Strike. We have unknown contact. Inbound Mustang. Your vector zero nine zero for bogey.”

Steve chuckles next to you and the warm sound coaxes your eyes to meet.

What happens next is automatic: seeing him smile makes you do the same.

The movie continues on, but its familiarity begs your attentions to wander. They instead pay dues to the gravity of his forearm, which nearly brushes yours. In the dim, you catch a glimpse of a vein that runs down one side like a river, and file the image away as inappropriate.

That’s Steve Rogers. Captain America. Your boss, good friend, and the entire nation’s moral compass, who keeps a list of the best places to get apple pie. You will direct your gaze with the respect he deserves.

And you do. Except in schooling your vision, your other senses betray you.

He smells good.

That thought feels way more inappropriate than looking at his forearm—which, for the record, you have seen and touched, all in a professional capacity. So you chose to stare at his hand again and hold your brain back from cataloging the scent of his soap, shampoo, or whatever combination of product that has your heart kicking like it wants out of your chest.

Steve Rogers doesn’t cure insomnia. He worsens it—or so you think.

Sleepy is the last thing you are, until the minutes tick by and sleep claims you anyway. You remember yawning while watching the nightclub scene. Iceman wore a pair of aviators indoors.

By the time the flying part of Top Gun rolls around, you don’t get to watch it: you’re knocked out cold.

─ ·✶· ─

When you wake up, cold is the last thing you are. Partly because the common room is designed to bleed with sunlight.

It’s morning, just the top of—yellow rays cut through the windows, no cloud in the sky to block its path.

Your skin feels warm.

It’s really no surprise. Steve Rogers is lying next to you.

How he is lying next to you is a surprise. The man’s broad frame looks cramped on the inside part of the couch, but nothing on his face betrays discomfort. He’s sound asleep, one arm folded under his head, the other slung loosely on your waist—not quite encircling it, just resting. His chest rises and falls slow. You realize this because you have both hands on that exact part of him.

Oh, shit. You’re touching his chest.

It turns out you shifted your palms a little too quickly, because Steve begins to stir. His tendency for alertness quickly revealed blue eyes that blinked once, twice, thrice—before his gaze eventually focuses on you. He doesn’t yawn, perhaps as confused as you are.

“Morning,” you whisper, almost sheepish.

He hums back. “Morning.”

“Uh… What happened?”

It’s quiet for a bit. You’re not sure if his brain has caught up. He’s staring—not the kind of stare you see on the field. Softer. Blue eyes study your face, then the position you’re in, piecing together the scene.

“You fell asleep last night,” he finally says, running his fingers through his hair. They fall across his forehead like the most good-looking bad news you’ve ever laid your eyes on. “Guess I must’ve fallen asleep, too.”

The untangling happens slowly. He lifts his arm away from your waist, props himself up on one elbow. You take the chance to sit and stretch, pretending that a tight neck is your number one concern and not the growing warmth on your cheeks.

“Can’t believe none of them woke us up,” you murmur. “Sam should be banned from picking Top Gun ever again.”

He chuckles. The sound still hits you like it did last night, amplified now by the lack of distance between you. But Steve finally stands up, folds his arms behind his head, then extends them. He repeats the motion a few times. You feel bad—his circulation must be damn near cut off after sleeping weird the entire night on a couch far too small for two.

“Well… at least we’re well-rested.”

You blink, taken aback.

“You slept well?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he nods, “you?”

Now that the question ricocheted back, you realize you don’t feel shitty where you should. Your limbs aren’t particularly sore. Your head feels clear after the initial fog.

Well-rested. Is this what it feels like?

“I think so,” you reply. There’s a smile on his face when you look back at him: small and slightly lopsided. He looks handsome.

Then he extends a hand, as if he knew that smile would make your knees buckle.

“C’mon, I’ll make you coffee.”

The second time happens two weeks later.

The Quinjet’s hum was almost an alien silence after the fight.

It was tough. Only three operatives were deployed: you, Nat, and Steve—top operatives, yes, but still only three. You went up against a swarm of mercenaries, their guns blazing, while the team’s equipment was mostly stealth gear not even half the enemy’s firepower.

You managed by the skin of the edge of your teeth. The word barely doesn’t quite cover it.

After putting the jet on autopilot and complaining about rancid intel with adrenaline-flooded veins, the three of you fall quiet.

Fatigue creeps in.

Last part of the mission: get through a five-hour flight back to New York.

Natasha sits in front of you, rebuilding her usual mask of nonchalance—you can see it in her sigh as she buckles up. The earlier combat chipped at her cool, and reasonably so: being in this line of work for most of her life doesn’t change the fact that it only takes one bullet to end it.

And boy, were there quite the number of bullets.

Steve chose the spot next to you, despite all the empty space in the cabin. You thought maybe he wanted to huddle, talk about the mission, see how you held up. You were the only non-Avenger in this assignment—it was reasonable to assume you wouldn’t be as used to this as they are.

But it’s been a good ten minutes and he hasn’t said a word.

A moment of uncertainty grips you. Post-mission, he’s usually corralling the team, checking morale, doing a small debrief of his own. Granted, there’s only you and Nat, so maybe there’s no need for that, but…

…is he alright?

Just as you look over to your side, concerned, you feel warmth, weight, and a brush of something soft.

You can no longer move.

Because Steve is asleep, and his head was on your shoulder.

His seat isn’t exactly glued next to yours, but close enough for him to bridge the gap. You watch the blonde strands of his hair press against the black of your tac suit and think about all the times you felt his weight on you—the most recent being his back glued to your chest while he shielded you from a bullet hail, just before you managed a rocky takeoff.

Aside from that? Fingers around your wrist during training. “Nice try,” he said once, as if your uppercut wasn’t the most predictable move ever. A friendly hand patting your shoulder after.

But never like this.

It takes a lot of effort for you to stare at something else that isn’t him.

Your gaze unfortunately lands on Nat, less than five feet in front of you.

She’s already smirking.

You look down on your lap, slightly embarrassed and left with nothing you can do. A little less than five hours to go on this flight.

Might as well get some shut-eye.

─ ·✶· ─

“Hey.”

You blink awake, nearly jumping upright. Natasha chuckles, patting her hand on your shoulder.

“Easy, there,” she nods towards the cockpit. You see a familiar sight.

“We arrived. Get some real rest after the debrief.”

You rub the sleep away from your eyes. “Thanks.”

You glance at Steve. He’s already in the middle of getting out of his seat.

You wonder if his head on your shoulder was part of a dream.

At least the third time happens somewhere with a bed, which of course you argue over.

Steve starts it.

“I’ll take the couch.”

You thumb the hem of your tank top. “You know, I was going to say that.”

“That’s kind of you,” he smiles, “but please.”

He gestures to the bed the both of you are ever-so-politely “no, you”-ing over: it’s rickety and is clothed in the thinnest sheets ever, sure, but there’s only one of it, so naturally this battle of politeness has to be fought.

You raise a brow challengingly. “If you take the couch, I’ll take the floor.”

Steve’s expression hardens like he took that personally. “No way am I gonna let you.”

“Then take the bed.”

“Where will you sleep?”

“The couch.”

“But it’ll be uncomfortable.”

“Aha,” your lips curl into a smile, “so you admit that the couch is uncomfortable.”

He looks away. You can tell he’s holding back his face from breaking out into a disbelieving grin.

Eventually, like an overly-used television trope, the inevitable consensus is that you are going to share instead.

Funny how—even during the back-and-forth—it felt like it was always going to come to this. Like you’d surrendered sharing the bed as an eventuality rather than a possibility.

Funny how you could feel him thinking the same.

Which leads you to this point in time:

Two hours past midnight, T-minus five hours before your mission starts. Nothing high stakes—it’s just the two of you—but still, at this rate, you’ll be running on fumes tomorrow.

The night coats the safehouse in darkness, bedroom included: the curtains are drawn and the night light is off to hide you better.

Even in the dim, you can glimpse the outline of him. He’s in a t-shirt and sweats again.

His weight on the bed next to you is unmistakable. You try to recall the last time you didn’t sleep alone—except for the times you fell asleep with him.

You can’t remember.

He breaks the silence thirty minutes after you said your good nights.

You’re counting.

“Can’t sleep?”

You shift from your side to your back.

“You caught me. You?”

He’s seated instead of lying down, spine pressed against the brittle headboard.

“Same.”

You pause. Look at him from your spot on the pillow. His profile is sharp where the dark should dull it, or maybe you’ve just memorized it so well. Still, there’s something unreadable about him.

“Does it happen often?” you ask.

He looks down at you, blue eyes soft. “Sometimes. Often enough.”

You let the answer sink in—Steve Rogers, super soldier, can’t sleep—and shoot him a wry smile.

“Maybe you ought to lie down, if you want to try and sleep?”

He let out a quiet, humorous huff. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Then he makes himself comfortable next to you, head finally touching the pillow. You feel the cotton of his shirt brush against your bare shoulder. His weight is more prominent now, and there’s a faint smell that reminds you of a forest after the rain. The blonde of his hair brings you back to the Quinjet—weeks ago at this point, but your eyes remember.

He’s so close. If your fingers even so much as twitch, they’ll probably kiss his.

“Why can’t you sleep?” he asks, voice low.

You stare at him. The last time you saw him sideways like this was after movie night.

Why can’t you sleep? It’s been such a big part of your life, you forget why.

“It’s just difficult for me,” you start, “but these days… I’m not sure.”

He lets you find the thread, shifting so he’s facing you. You begin to face him, too—like your shoulder blades and his are long lost twins.

You finally tell him.

“I get a feeling that something is going to happen, and I need to be ready for it.”

Something in his eyes shines just then: a mosaic mix of regret and recognition.

Thirty-three minutes since ‘good night’, and in this nocturnal darkness, you see a kind of light.

On the surface, Steve couldn’t be more unlike you. Yet you find that the two of you are more similar than you initially thought.

You’re both soldiers who are good at your job, partly because of this: the alertness in your souls that demands one eye ever-watchful. The spirit of a sentinel that doesn’t know what peace is because it’s never learned.

They say there’s no rest for the wicked. Here he is, the truest heart of them all, not even sleepy.

In his wordless glance is an understanding. You have no need to explain.

But then his eyes start to wander and you wish he would say more, because the trace of his gaze feels too intimate for teammates.

Yet it tastes familiar.

Has he looked at you like this before? Ocean blues drag a path down your face, brushing past your lips in a swoop so secret you’d miss it if you blinked. His gaze veers off the side, but not away from you. Is he studying your cheek? The shell of your ear?

What on earth does he see in you?

You speak because the space between your ribcage hurts.

“We’re gonna be so fucked tomorrow morning.”

His laugh is quiet, more apparent in his face instead of the volume of his voice. There it is, the distraction you needed—except the sensation in your chest tugs stronger. Just once, but enough for you to notice.

Of course you’d fallen for him. There’s no way you wouldn’t.

But you’re a soldier, and so is he, and there’s work to do tomorrow.

To your mild surprise—and his, in the small shine in his eyes—you yawn.

It’s strange. It should keep you up, this proximity with him. Though your relationship with Steve is comfortable, the context around this situation should make you feel more uptight rather than relax.

You think about the man in the meeting room and the man you spar with. He advocates for calm decision-making, but eggs you on with a cheeky “that all you got, agent?” on the training mat. Both versions of him are here with you. In bed. A decision he made calmly.

How is it possible to be nervous and unwind at the same time?

A few seconds pass, and you yawn again.

“That’s your cue,” he smiles wryly. It shoots an arrow through you.

“Yeah. Try to get some sleep,” you smile back, turning to face away from him before he sees the crack in it. “Good night, Steve.”

“Good night.” He says your name, and that’s the last thing you hear.

Your lullaby.

You don’t know he falls asleep right after.

─ ·✶· ─

Steve wakes up first—he has a tendency of doing that. It means he’s the first witness to a softness that wrecks him.

Somewhere in the night, your bodies turned to face each other.

It reminds him of sunflowers.

Unlike that time after movie night, there’s more space between you. A part of him mourns the distance, though sharing a bed already signals a lack of.

Another part of him is happy he gets to see your face.

You look peaceful like this. Not that you look troubled when you’re awake. Just… something about your eyes closed, the space between your brows completely relaxed, your lips ever-so-slightly parted—it’s not a sight he gets to see often, especially not in this sort of terrain.

You might be in a safehouse, and the bed springs might be rusted by age, but the thin line between consciousness and sleep encourages the mind to wander—and for a man of discipline, wandering is dangerous. It tempts him with thoughts that taste more like dreams.

What if you weren’t in a safehouse? What if this was your bed—yours and his—and sharing it wasn’t birthed out of politeness?

What if this is just something he gets to see every morning?

You stir gently. A stray strand of hair falls on your face. He lifts his hand up to tuck it back.

Stubbornly, it slips back to where it landed before. He smiles.

This dream will soon end, he realizes. In a matter of minutes, he feels the sun rising behind his back, a treacherous thing that beckons another fight for someone else’s future.

When you open your eyes, you’ll go back to being soldiers. You’ll call him Cap on the field.

Last night’s memory surfaces. He holds on to the shape of his name in your voice.

The bright morning erases long shadows. For once, he wishes it didn’t.

He allows himself one final thing.

Fingers cradle your cheek, thumb brushing the soft of it. In your sleep, you lean into his touch. His breath snags, and so does his heartbeat.

Then, after the pang’s echoes die down, Steve rests a hand on your shoulder to wake you.

The fourth time happens because you ask for it.

He’s been up reading by the lamplight, only one chapter in when he started, now halfway through—a sign that the hour is later than he thinks it is. The book isn’t a particularly riveting one, either: time passed in a crawling pace with each page. Where he thought his ambivalence towards the subject matter would put him to sleep, here he is.

Wide awake on page 257.

Awake to hear the knock on his door. Three times. Soft, almost imperceptible.

Steve stares like he knows who it is already. The book is placed on the nightstand.

He opens the door to see you.

The sight tears him two ways.

You’re in short shorts and an oversized tee that has seen better days. He would see the print on the front if you weren’t hugging a folded-up blanket against your chest. There’s a sting on his sternum—from how you trust him enough to appear at his doorstep halfway through dawn, and from the look on your face.

It’s the look of someone who’s trying their best to sleep, but can’t.