#advanced research methods

[iamthepulta]

Can't write but functional enough to want to do work, so I'm picking up Alum for the first time in a while.

Right now, I'm suddenly questioning the method of nitrate production. Somehow nitrates/ammonium is tied into this process because this book is mentioning ammonium used in the process. This shouldn't be necessary. Water is enough to leach the alkaline ion from its site, and it worked well enough for 5000 years. So why are they using pee/ammonium now? More efficient?

Also, pee/ammonium was a hot commodity circa 1500 because gunpowder was becoming popular and the technology was trickling over from the Turks.... Do the leaching processes coincide...? to make KNO3 do you oxidize(??) the nitrogen from pee via the aluminum sulfate...??

[mellomadness]

I just fell down a rabbit hole about (legal) body disposal and part of me is so anxious wishing I could tell the FBI agent monitoring my internet searches that I’m just morbidly curious and I’m not planning on dying anytime soon (or planning anything ELSE, for that matter)

[idontmindifuforgetme]

I thought you liked physics ?

yes I do. I love physics. I love it bc I was raised by a brainiac engineer mother who taught me to see math as fun from a very young age. and sometimes it pisses me off bc I don’t understand concepts immediately and my ego is HURT but then I humble myself and learn it and I’m back to adoring it again

[connectedaero]

Top 5 Google Search Tricks For Developers:

1) filetype: (ex: git cheat sheet filetype:pdf)

2) Keywords, not sentences (react network request).

3) Exact phrase: ("css grid javascript").

4) Site-specific: (site:http://sitename.com keyword)

5) Time filter (Click on "Tools")

Read More on Reddit \/

[ismailfazil1-blog]

Excavating Adventure: A Comprehensive Guide to Treasure Hunting Strategies

"Excavating Adventure" is your ultimate guide to the thrilling world of treasure hunting. This comprehensive book explores various strategies, from traditional methods to cutting-edge technologies, ensuring treasure seekers of all levels have the tools they need to uncover hidden riches.

Dive into the rich history and techniques of treasure hunting, starting with decoding ancient clues and using modern metal detectors. Explore the depths with underwater exploration and magnet fishing, or embark on a digital quest through geocaching. Discover the mysteries beneath urban landscapes through urban exploring and geophysical surveys, while advanced methods like satellite imaging and sonar technology offer new perspectives on uncovering the past.

In addition to practical techniques, "Excavating Adventure" delves into the world of archaeological excavation, meteorite hunting, and fossil discovery, bridging the gap between science and adventure. The book also addresses crucial legal considerations, ensuring that treasure hunters remain within the bounds of the law as they pursue their passion.

Concluding with a captivating history of the world's most expensive treasures and ancient methods of discovery, this guide provides a wealth of knowledge for anyone eager to embark on their own treasure-hunting journey. Whether you're a seasoned adventurer or a curious beginner, *Excavating Adventure* equips you with the skills and knowledge to turn your quest for treasure into a successful and thrilling adventure.

[in-sightpublishing]

On High-Range Test Construction 8: Bob Williams, The Tools of Intelligence Research

                    Publisher: In-Sight Publishing Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014 Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal Journal Founding: August 2, 2012 Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed Access: Electronic/Digital & Open…

[reasonsforhope]

"A medical technology company in Australia is aiming for a world-first: it wants to launch a blood test for endometriosis (sometimes called 'endo' for short) within the first half of this year [2025].

In a recent peer-reviewed trial, its novel test proved 99.7 percent accurate at distinguishing severe cases of endometriosis from patients without the disease but with similar symptoms.

Even in the early stages of the disease, when blood markers may be harder to pick out, the test's accuracy remained over 85 percent.

The company behind the patent, Proteomics International, says it is currently adapting the method "for use in a clinical environment," with a target launch date in Australia for the second quarter of this year [2025].

The test is called PromarkerEndo.

"This advancement marks a significant step toward non-invasive, personalized care for a condition that has long been underserved by current medical approaches," managing director of Proteomics International Richard Lipscombe said in a press release from December 30.

Endometriosis is a common inflammatory disease that occurs when tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the body, forming lesions. The disease can be very painful, and yet the average patient often suffers debilitating symptoms for up to seven years before they are properly diagnosed.

While there are numerous reasons for such a long delay, symptoms of endometriosis are often highly variable, unpredictable, difficult to measure or describe, and dismissed or overlooked by doctors.

Today, the only definitive way to diagnose endometriosis is via keyhole surgery called a laparoscopy, which is expensive, invasive, and carries risks.

Proteomics International is hoping to change that.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Women's Hospital, the company compared the bloodwork data from 749 participants of mostly European descent.

Some had endometriosis and others had symptoms that were similar to endo but without the lesions. All participants had a laparoscopy to confirm the presence or absence of the disease.

Sifting through the bloodwork, researchers ran several different algorithms to figure out which proteins in the blood were best at predicting endometriosis of varying stages.

Building on previous research, a panel of 10 proteins showed a "clear association" with endometriosis.

For years now, scientists have investigated possible blood biomarkers of endometriosis to see if they could differentiate between those who have endo and those who do not. Similar to cancerous tumors, endo lesions can establish their own blood supply, and if cervical cancer can be diagnosed via a blood test, it seemed possible that endometriosis could be, too...

Proteomics International claims patents for PromarkerEndo are "pending in all major jurisdictions," starting first in Australia.

It remains to be seen if the company's blood test lives up to the hype and is approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). But that's not outside the realm of possibility.

In November of 2023, some researchers predicted that a "reliable non-invasive biomarker for endometriosis is highly likely in the coming years."

Perhaps this is the year."

-via ScienceAlert, January 9, 2025

--

Note: As someone with endometriosis, let me say that this is a HUGE deal. The condition is incredibly common, incredibly understudied, and incredibly often dismissed. Massive sexism at work here.

I got very lucky and got diagnosed after about 6 months of chronic pain (and extra extra lucky, because my pain went away with medication). But as the article says, the average time to diagnosis is seven years.

Being able to confirm endometriosis diagnoses/rates without invasive surgery will also lead to huge progress in studying/creating treatments for endo.

And fyi: If you have a period that is so painful that you can't stand up, or have to go home from school/work, or vomit, or anything else debilitating (or if any of those things apply if you forget to take pain meds), that is NOT NORMAL, and you should talk to a competent gynecologist asap.

[nbspacegay]

Also this is... not new. At least in psychology, like we been knew. This has been taught in psychology research programs for at least the last ten years. What this means is, is that many people have spent an awful lot of time and effort teaching psychology students ethical research practices and the ability to critically evaluate research and look for data manipulation. It also means that many journals and researchers are moving to make their data more accessible to people who want to verify their work. It means that there are journals dedicated to taking that research that was stuffed in a drawer because it didn't support current findings.

Just like, things are being done. We've been working on this for a while. The fact that you are hearing about studies that are not well supported is actually evidence that we are moving towards a solution because a big part of the problem is that that information was not being made available.

Isn't psychology suffering from a HUGE replication crisis? Like I know other fields are too, but it seems that about every big psych study I've heard about in the 2010s has been disproven at this point. Like psychology is genuinely more difficult to study and design studies for since it involves people. I think there's definitely reasons to not 100% trust what psychology is saying, because lbr it is not at a great place right now.

BUT YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THAT'S A FIELD OF STUDY BASED IN SOMETHING A LOT MORE SUBSTANTIAL THAN ASTROLOGY RIGHT. LIKE YOU CAN SEE THE VERY OBVIOUS POINT THAT THE HUMAN MIND DEMONSTRABLY HAS A LOT MORE SWAY OVER OUR BEHAVIOR THAN ✨ THE STARS ✨ RIGHT. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THIS WHOLE CONVO IS ABOUT.

[tanadrin]

@grimogretricks

For people saying that airport security is wholly theatre and that it doesn't do any good- certainly it seems they've gone overboard on certain things, but what is your explanation as to why hijackings and terrorist attacks involving planes are MUCH less common than they used to be?

Sorry that this is mostly off the dome, and has less references than I would like. We argued this stuff to death in the aughts, though ultimately the political incentives in favor of security theater were just too great. Everyone is terrified of the potential backlash of not being seen to do enough in advance of the next big terrorist attack, I guess. And to be clear, we are talking mostly about post-9/11 airport security measures as being security theater. Some degree of airport security has been necessary since people started getting on airplanes with guns and informing the pilot that, hey, guess what, we're going to Cuba instead of Miami today.

But the big reduction in airplane hijackings came with the institution of metal detectors to keep guns off airplanes after a couple high-profile hijackings in the 1970s. But remember that these incidents were of a very different character than what we now think of as the risk to airplanes: they were certainly a problem, but the modus operandi of hijackers in this era was to force the plane to fly to a non-extradition country and land safely. 9/11-style hijackings, that used the plane as a bomb and killed everyone aboard, were on nobody's radar--when the goal was blowing up the plane and killing passengers, bombers generally used bombs planted in checked baggage, which requires different security measures from passenger screening.

Two security changes occurred after 9/11 that made future such hijackings basically impossible: one, probably most importantly, was that passengers understood they no longer could count on hijackers having an interest in surviving the hijacking. This change in passenger behavior was immediate: later that same year when a guy tried to bomb an airplane (using a really ineffective device hidden in his shoe) passengers immediately acted to restrain him. The second important change was reinforcing cockpit doors and keeping them locked: this makes hijacking airplanes with knives (the only major modality left to most would-be hijackers) functionally impossible.

All the other intense passenger screening and security measures implemented after 9/11 has been repeatedly shown by security researchers to be pretty ineffective, not even very reliable at stuff like keeping knives off airplanes. For years after 9/11 there were endless news stories about law enforcement running drills at airports and weapons making their way through security. A lot of later security measures, like liquid limits in carry-on baggage, came from terrorist plots that didn't even make it off the drawing board (and are unlikely to have ever worked anyway), and seem mostly to be overzealous ass-covering by transportation security officials.

And, finally, we should note that the real security threats to airplanes in the post-9/11 era seem to have come come from two sources that are basically impossible to protect against using traditional security methods, and for which passenger-based security screening is useless: anti-aircraft missiles and suicidal pilots (plus an honorable mention to aircraft companies trying to skirt certain regulatory requirements).

Despite what decades of American media would have you believe, elaborate plots targeting transportation infrastructure and involving like a dozen people are actually not at the top of the list of terrorist methodologies--why time and money training members of your organization to fly planes into buildings, when you can just use social media to convince a guy to drive a car into a crowd of bystanders, or stab somebody on the street? It's much cheaper, and much, much harder to guard against. Random lone-wolf terrorism is, unlike the kind of elaborate plots portrayed on TV, and one-off real-life examples like 9/11, basically impossible for security services to guard against in advance. But in order to justify the war on terror, and large budgets for security services on anti-terrorism grounds, it was necessary to play up the threat of such plots, even if by its very nature 9/11 was impossible to repeat. For similar reasons, the post-9/11 era also played up the threat of Islamic extremism and large overseas terrorist networks, even though far-right extremists acting in small groups also have managed to kill huge numbers of people in spectacular ways.

So for all these reasons, and those noted at the top, the political incentives around transportation security means that passenger screening measures in airports are almost guaranteed to be a one-way ratchet, even if they don't work. It's a bit like the fabled anti-tiger amulet--it's easy to say the lack of tigers is proof it's working! Even if the real reason there are no tigers about is that you live in Ohio. The media environment post-War on Terror helped create a public appetite for and approval of such anti-tiger amulets, too, of course. This was not by any means a purely top-down phenomenon.

[buckyschair]

FLIRTING NEVER GOT YOU NOWHERE

Pairing: Azriel x Day Court! Reader

Summary: You’re an archivist from Day Court visiting Velaris, what happens when you visit a nightclub and things go wrong? Or do they go oh so right? AKA you flirt with Azriel in a bar and sex ensues !

read part 2 now - AFTERGLOW

A/N: I’m lowkey tired of shy insecure self insert fics so I wanted to write a piece about a bold unapologetic bitch who gets what she wants :) This is a very self indulgent fantasy based on rude things men have said to me at bars and how I wish someone had shown up for me. Like yeah I can stand for myself but also what if Azriel stepped up. I also made her bisexual because I’m gay 💅

Content Warnings: smut, cunnilingus & oral (so like m&f receiving), unprotected PIV sex (I am not going to spend my one precious life researching faerie contraceptive methods, so just imagine you’re on magic birth control or whatever. Or don’t, if you’re into that!), female reader (w nipple piercings ooo), gross liberties taken with whatever Day court has going on, unwanted advances from a guy in a bar, uhhh minor gay slur, it’s maybee more OC than self insert cause I gave her a lot of personality, shamelessly self indulgent, no use of Y/N

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. AND I MEAN IT !

Word Count: 12.4k

read on AO3

The flashing lights and lively music that had been a tonic just minutes ago now pounded through your skull, as jarring as the words you’d exchanged with some dipshit at the bar moments ago. You set your eyes back on the dance floor. Where was that group of females you’d mixed with earlier to save you now? You’d come to Rita’s to let loose a little after being cooped up in dusty corners of libraries for weeks now. You wanted to experience Velaris’ famed nightlife. Despite this place coming highly recommended, you were beginning to wonder if you shouldn’t have trusted that shy priestess’ taste in nightclubs.  

“Come on, what’s wrong with you?” The male’s whiny voice didn’t quite hit the macho tenor he was aiming for as he yelled after you. You whip back around, incredulity written on your face.

“What’s wrong with me?” you snarl. “I’m so glad you asked, buddy ,” you see his pretty boy attitude shift into a sneer at the moniker, “cause I am not the one. What the fuck is your problem?” 

Two steps and you’re back up in his space, just as he had invaded yours moments earlier when you’d rejected his advances. He didn’t seem to enjoy the treatment either, now that it was clear you wouldn’t stand for his shit. You could buy your own liquor. Especially when the other offer came from someone who thought appropriate eye contact involved breasts and an introduction equated to wandering hands. 

“What, are you one of those carpet munchers or something?” he tries to deflect. Your eyes narrow. This fucker is in for it now. You can’t blame a guy for wanting to get his dick wet. However, you can blame him for being an entitled bigot about it. 

“You son of a bitch,” you start, your face hardening into a sneer, your stance subconsciously shifting to a defensive position. At this, his eyes widen and his mouth parts but before he can speak– “You think just because someone doesn’t want you, they must be categorically repulsed by males?” You snort, eyeing him up and down. “I’m surprised you haven’t been laughed out of this bar yet. I’ve seen dog’s piss land more artfully than your attempts with females tonight. If you’ve somehow hidden some sense behind that ego, I suggest you take it with you when you leave.” 

He chokes on air, eyes wide and face taught. Okay. Weird. You know you can be ruthless, but typically your feminine stature in a mini skirt meant you had to work harder than that to make a bastard sweat in fear. 

His glassy eyes are focused over your shoulder. You turn your head, keeping the corner of your eye on the sorry male in front of you. When you catch the hulking Illyrian form behind you, you lose that focus as you take in wide shoulders and simmering rage. Rage directed at the whelp still pissing himself behind you at the bar. This new male’s face is a hard mask, his lip curling in disdain.  

“You heard the lady.” Your stomach drops at his voice, deep and resolute. “I suggest you take her advice.”

Azriel watches the slimy bastard hightail it out of the crowded club. You miss the pathetic scene of his flight, only catching how the male in front of you relaxes when his target finally makes an exit. You’re glad he’s been keeping his eyes on the other guy, cause you’ve been staring in shock. His muscled arms, toned chest, looming wings, thick thighs– okay. That you could handle. Under ordinary circumstances. But two shots deep, in your most revealing outfit, and through the swirling lights, seeing the tattoos that peak out over the top of his vest at his collarbones and pecs… you swallow, forcing your mind back to the situation at hand as his eyes shift from the figure disappearing behind you. 

His pinched brows relax as he takes you in. “Looks like you had it under control,” he says, raising one eyebrow- one glorious eyebrow, a hesitant grin making its way onto his face, as if he was impressed. 

“Not the first time I’ve had to put someone in their place,” you shrug, off balance from the abruptly ended confrontation. Before this male appeared, you’d been gearing up for a fight. Boundaries are simple for you. Cross one and you remind them where you stand. He nods, his face solemn in understanding. 

“I saw things getting heated. He looked like he was about to… grab you.” His lips twitch, like he still hasn’t decided if he should do something permanent about it. “Then you were removing yourself from him. And here we are.” 

“Here we are,” you repeat. His words, simple as they were, made your spine itch. “Thanks for having my back.” You meant it. You know you could have handled him on your own, but nonetheless, it was nice to have the cavalry arrive right on time.

He flashes you a brief tight lipped smile, the picture of courtesy, “Anytime.” He shifts, like he means to leave you to yourself now that the drama had concluded without any blood. 

“Can I buy you a drink?” you blurt out, almost in reflex at the male now in front of you. “As thanks.” 

His eyebrows raise momentarily in surprise. Curious, you think. Surely the hunk of male was used to females showering him in liquor and more. You notice the lights around him go blurry– oh shit. Those are shadows. Fuck. 

Realization hits you. No fucking way you just asked the High Lord’s inner court shadowsinger if you could buy him a drink. You kick yourself inwardly, but keep your face a mask of coy request. 

“There’s no need to thank me,” he says genuinely, slightly shaking his head, even as his cheeks flush lightly, his eyes skirting up your figure. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Of course I don’t,” you smirk, confidence rushing through you at his reaction. “Consider it an unnecessary but kind gesture, tit for tat,” you tease, since you both know that his presence alone certainly scared off the unwanted male, even if he didn’t need to lift a finger. He cracks a grin at that, the minor barb landing exactly as you’d intended.

“Sure,” he shrugs.

A simple acceptance, so casually offered, lands you deeper than you ever could have expected to get with a high ranking member of a foreign Court. He lets you order him something neat, grunting in appreciation when he catches a whiff of the dark liquid in his glass, same as yours. 

“Cheers.” You clink your glass to his, hiding your smile with a drink. It burns down your throat, grounding you. His hand had gently hovered over your lower back as you’d taken your seat at the bar again, ready to help but also blocking anyone’s view. Even though he hadn’t touched you, the ghost of his hand may as well have scorched your skin for how you felt it.   

“What’s your name?” you ask, suddenly realizing that while you know who he is, you’d never caught his name. Was it confidential information?

“Azriel,” he replies. “Yours?” You tell him, and he hums, repeating it. Your name on his mouth makes your insides burn, but you remind yourself it’s probably just the liquor. 

“Am I allowed to say your name out loud? Or is it a court secret?” you ask, and he graces you with another grin. He looks around conspiratorially before leaning in, which sends a thrill through you. 

“My friends call me Az,” he murmurs lowly. “Just to be safe in the eyes of the law,” he adds with utter seriousness, only betrayed by the glimmer in his eyes. You laugh at that, excited apprehension making you sensitive to his every word. 

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Az.” You swear his shadows twitch at your words. You’re enjoying sitting here with him next to you, his body curved towards yours, knees almost touching. Your body relaxes, all the tension of the evening’s events replaced with a pleasant thrum of vitality.

“Likewise,” he says gruffly. You wonder if he feels the same intoxicating energy between you. His hazel eyes blaze even in the dim light of the quiet corner of the bar, his soft hair sticking slightly to his forehead in the heat of the packed bar. You want to brush it away, but you resist the sudden urge. You’re not sure what to say next. Ordinarily, you’re adept at conversation, but the powerful presence before you renders your mind blank.  

You’re relieved when he says, “I haven’t seen you here before.” His gaze pins you. What is he seeing? What is he looking for? You’re not sure what he finds that causes him to elaborate, “I would have noticed you.” 

“I would have noticed you, too,” you breathe.

“Doubtful,” he drawls in a playfully contrarian tone. His shadows dance along his wings over his shoulders, swirling almost in arrogance around the horns at their apex. 

“What? Do they normally keep you hidden in the shadows?” you prod, flashing your teeth. He exhales sharply from his nose, rolling his eyes at your ridiculous implication. Encouraged, you place your hand on his knee under the bar top. 

“Do they bully you?” you ask sweetly, dropping your voice quietly in mock concern. 

He coughs a little laugh at that, then schools his features into a pained expression. 

“Yes. Yes, they bully me.” You bite your lip at the image of him playing fragile, wounded. Your hand on his thigh is on fire. “Horribly,” he adds, voice wobbling.

“Let me know if you need help with that,” you tell him, with equal sobriety. “I could lend you my services, I have a certain skill in intimidation.” 

His composure breaks at that, and he laughs from his gut this time, and you join him. The sound is prettier than any music.

“My hero!” he exclaims, gasping through his laughter, grabbing the hand that you pull away from his knee. You giggle as he grasps your hand securely, bringing them to rest together at his knee. His thumb brushes your knuckles while he smiles at you. It takes all your discipline to fight the shudder that threatens your body. 

“This is my first time here,” you answer his initial prompt, gesturing around the lively bar. “I’m actually visiting from Day Court.” He quirks his head at that. He looks strangely adorable like this, curiosity cracking his typically closed off expression. 

“You’re from Day?” 

“Yeah.” Several of his shadows break away from his form to explore you, like you’ve suddenly become an irresistible object of interest to them. “I was an archivist at one of the central public libraries, and recently… I’ve been brought on to work in my Lord’s personal collection.” Azriel looks curious at that, so you continue, “Lord Helion is a generous boss.” His eyebrows shoot up at that. 

“Not like that!” you defend, blushing, aware of his reputation. “He trusts me,” you amend. 

“So I’m here for your libraries. After…” You’re remiss to mention Amarantha, despite her destruction coloring every sphere of your work. “Well. We all lost something, didn’t we? Now my role is to see what information can be recovered and preserved in my Court once more.”

Azriel listens intently, seeming to understand exactly what gave you pause. He nods as you finish. He also works in information, he tells you, although his intelligence operates in a different arena. You tell him more about your research when he prompts; the long hours in dimly lit rooms, the sweet but introverted colleagues, and, despite what an endless endeavor it was, the excitement when you discover just the right source. 

If someone had asked you that morning, you’d have been certain that an archivist’s work would bore anyone with such a high profile role as his, but he sees the heart of your contribution, the valuable work of recovery. 

His concentration on your every word would be unnerving, if it weren’t so enthralling. He maintains eye contact even as you gesture wildly with your free hand, snorts at all your jokes, and asks questions to keep you talking. It doesn’t escape you how he poses these questions just as the conversation might have naturally turned towards him. He deftly pulls information out of you with subtle cues, a question here, a curious look there. Once you’ve dazzled him with stories of your life back in Day and bored him with the details of your work, (although you did your best to pepper in your favorite stories, like the time you discovered an entire catalogue of ancient erotic court poetry), you dare to ask him about his own life here at the Night Court. 

You expected him to continue deflecting, as he’d been so fascinated by your home court, but he actually responds with some substance. Azriel pauses before pointing out his family, a group of equally breathtaking and imposing fae in a booth at the other end of the bar. He keeps it brief, but shares how he met Cassian and Rhys in a training camp and hasn’t known a moment's peace since. Despite his harsh words, you catch the tenderness even as he grumbles on about Mor and Feyre, and Amren, who isn’t here tonight, which he says you can detect by the lack of frightened screams. You’re equally shocked and delighted by the casual humor with which he treats them all. 

It’s not lost on you that he’s just told you about his family when you had asked about him. Yet between his calculated words and their meaningful tone, he’s actually sketched quite an intimate picture of his life and his values. 

You like the rhythm of his curt words, how he says a lot with a little. Occasionally, his dry humor will catch you by surprise, and he’ll grace you with a wry smile as you laugh. The spymaster can be quite unexpectedly cavalier at moments, much to your delight. He meets your playful verbal sparring with just as much fire.  

After chatting amiably for a while, a comfortable silence falls between you as you nurse your drinks. Azriel surveys the crowded room, ever on alert. You take the chance to brazenly observe him. You can’t pick what to focus on. The slope of his nose fascinates you, you wish you could reach out and trace it. The elegant planes of his face are punctuated by strong features, his brows, chin, and jaw all bold. You wonder how he’s such a successful spy when he’s built so distractingly. Especially with such expansive wings, currently tucked behind where he perches on his stool. His careful arrangement of them does little to hide their imposing glory. You suddenly wish you could see them splayed out in full spectacle. 

Over the duration of your research at Night Court, you’d come across descriptions of Illyrians, read about their culture, their physical traits. Their wings were closely guarded, sensitive parts. You were curious about flying, what it felt like, if they enjoyed it. You feel his rough hand on yours still, noticing their size and the thick veins under his scars. You force yourself to reel your mind out of the gutter, instead diverting to wonder at the marks that cross his hands. When you look back to his face, his unreasonably fashionable lashes flutter as he finally catches you observing him. You see high color in his cheeks, but he doesn’t call you out. You finish your drink, noting that his glass is also empty.

You motion your glass to the bartender, chatting briefly while he pours you two fresh ones. You can barely focus on the pleasantries you exchange, aware of Azriel’s eyes on you. His expression is soft, yet heady. Intense. His gaze traces your features in the same way you had just admired him. 

You turn back to him eventually to push his drink into his hand. His eyes reluctantly move from your exposed back and briefly over your lips before meeting your eyes. You immediately look away, scanning the bar absentmindedly as you flick your hair over your shoulder. The motion exposes your neck, testing, aware of his gaze still on you. He takes a long, slow drink, his eyes never leaving you. When you swallow, you see his eyes follow the movement of your throat.

“Is this a gay bar?” you ask abruptly.

He chokes, coughing into his arm. “What?” 

“Is this a gay bar?” you repeat, your nose scrunching in a wince at his reaction. You’ve never seen him so caught off guard, didn’t know it was possible. He catches your grimace, and quickly recovers, wiping his nose as he recovers from his coughing fit. He nods in confirmation. 

“You must think us horrible,” he says, referring to his court, compared to Day, which was much more open around sexual attraction and orientation, he guessed, if their High Lord was any indication. He thought of Helion’s history of advances to him, and Mor and Cassian for that matter. “First, that bastard talks to you like that. Then–”

“No!” you interject. “No, your people are just more… reserved. I didn’t see anything indicating it… but I noticed a few ladies sitting together like we are. So I wondered…” you flounder. It’s his turn to wince.

“Why?” he asks. “Are you looking for a lucky lady?”

“Not tonight.” You hide your grin behind a sip, as his eyes widen almost imperceptibly at your meaning, his pupils dilating. You’d enjoyed your fair share of females, males, others… Your eyes narrow on him then. “Wait, why are you here then?” 

“It’s Mor’s favorite club.” He shrugs. “And I don’t mind playing security in case any oblivious males wander in with big ideas in the wrong way.” 

“Ahh. So you don’t usually come to the gay club to pick up females?” 

He just snorts at that, shaking his head at your nonsense. You don’t miss how his shadows perk up at your choice of words. You grin, showing him your teeth as you prod further. 

“So I should feel special then?”

You hear his sharp intake of breath, the only sign he understands your implication. He sets his drink down, his eyes on yours, questioning. Your heart thuds heavily in your chest as you watch his motions, tense with anticipation. You meet his gaze, confident and steady. You’d seen how he had devoured you with his gaze moments ago. 

“What are you implying?” he grunts, voice thick. 

“I think you’re smart enough to figure it out,” you whisper, your eyes on his. 

He only hums, his hand coming to cradle your face, caressing your jaw. The touch arouses your senses, a slow flame flickering to life in your abdomen. His pupils are blown wide, like he’s found a mystical reality in your eyes. It’s his gaze flickering to your lips before finding your eyes again, imploring, that causes you to break. “Are you gonna make me say it?” 

“Yes.” He squints, unyielding. 

You whine. You whine . You’ve never whined for a male in your life. There’s a first time for everything, you suppose. After all, you were sent here for research. A new experience such as this could certainly fall within that wheelhouse. Azriel was generously helping you with your research, exploring your capacity to keen for someone in desperation. You take in his capable hands, his broad shoulders and wings, his delicate lips. The fantasies flashing in your mind force you to confront your desire. It’s been brewing all night. 

“I want you,” you speak with utter clarity. 

That’s all it takes and he’s tossing back the rest of his drink, his hand sliding down to catch your arm, unwilling to break contact. And then he’s ushering you out of your chair, ever the gentleman, and rushing you through the crowd until you hit the fresh air, your feet on the cobblestone street for the barest moment before he sweeps you up again, one hand gripping your hip, the other placed firmly on your jaw. His breath comes in short pants as his flared eyes meet yours, again questioning, allowing you control. 

In answer, you angle your head up to meet his mouth in a furious kiss. Your hands circle his neck, grasping his hair, blindly trying to find purchase as your lips connect. All your sensory experience fades save for the burn of his mouth on yours, and the feeling of his hands pressed to your body. You taste the lingering spice of the liquor you’d shared and beneath it, something earthier, the taste of him. You pour all your passion and need into the contact, and you feel the same charge from him. His ravenous kiss is a window to the tempest inside, his desperation evident in every move of his powerful jaw against yours. 

When he pulls away, he’s panting hard, a grin threatening to overtake his majestic features, his lips swollen and shining in the starlight. 

“We doing this on the street, or…?” you prompt breathlessly.

He takes in the thankfully deserted street outside the noisy club. “Good a place as any,” he shrugs. 

You scrunch your nose and tug his hair. His laughter dissolves into a groan at your actions. “Fuck. You’re killing me,” he breathes.

“I’m about to,” you say, exasperated with the delicious male entangled with you. 

“My place?” he asks. You nod quickly, in desperation for his touch as much as desire to get out of the public area. He hums again, “And here I was thinking that you Day Court fae were so much more open and shameless about these things.” 

You scoff at his words. 

“You’d better be worth the trouble,” you grumble, hiding your mirth. He flashes you the cockiest grin, and you’d smack him if you didn’t want to preserve his mouth’s function for better uses. 

“Trust me, baby, I am.” 

“Prove it.” 

His eyes flash at your taunting. “Hold on,” he growls.

You swallow a scream as his wings extend, and his legs bend briefly before leaping into flight. His arms wrap tightly around your frame, and you cling to his neck fiercely. You recall your fantasy about his wings from earlier in the evening. As you soar into the night sky, you find yourself admiring them once more, their power and his deft command of them. 

“I can’t believe you’re admiring me instead of the view.” His voice interrupts your thoughts.

“If I look at the view, we might be seeing some of that whiskey from earlier again,” you admit, your stomach dancing from so many different stimuli on your nervous system. The flying, the anticipation of sex, the sheer proximity with the stunning male who carried you now. 

“We’re not far away,” he assures. Sure enough, when you risk looking away from his elegant, aerodynamic form, you see the city below rising into the cliffside where the court’s residence was perched. 

You barely have a moment to take in the magnificent columns and lavish ornamentation of the palace balcony after he sets you down before he reconnects your lips. His blistering appetite sets your own aflame again, his hands sliding along your form, pausing briefly at your exposed midriff. 

When he first appeared behind you in the bar, he had been gallant and polite, the perfect picture of a noble courtier. As you’d flirted over your drinks, his wry humor had surfaced, and now this unbridled passion had emerged. There certainly was more to the shadowsinger than met the eye. Your insides fluttered at the intimacy of your insight into the divine male who you were currently swapping spit with. You thanked the Mother that you’d dedicated yourself to flirting all these years in good faith, without ever knowing that your dedication would be rewarded in such fine form. Against your will, your mouth began to curve into a smile against his. 

With backbreaking effort, you break away from his lips. He goes to follow your lips, but you stop him with a chaste kiss before pressing kisses along his jaw and down his throat.

“Sorry for the turbulence,” he gasps out as you continue your assault on his neck. “I needed us to get here. F-fast.” 

Your only acknowledgement of his words is the flick of your tongue over the spot under his jaw you’d just marked. How considerate of him. Even when he’s melting beneath you, he maintains his manners. The devil inside you wonders what it would take for him to abandon his civility. Between kisses, you glance down to see his leathers barely restraining him. You figure you might not need an elaborate plot to find out after all.

He growls as you notice his arousal. You look up from the crook of his neck, and his expression turns your core molten, desire written plainly across his face. His hands had wandered down to your ass, where he now taps gently, urging you up into his strong arms. Your heart leaps as he picks you up, but he doesn’t take off flying this time. He carries you further into the interior, your legs coming to wrap around his midsection, your arms secured again around his neck. He’s holding you by your thighs like your weight is nothing, causing you to burn in anticipation of how he might throw you around later.   

Fire throttles through your veins at the incessant touch of his wet lips on your neck. He’s dedicated to returning the favor of your vicious attack on him moments ago. You have no idea how he successfully navigates the hallways despite being buried under your jaw, for all you know he’s using your moans and whines to echolocate. 

It’s a short trip, but right when you were about to beg for him to just take you in the hallway, he walks you into a simply furnished room with expansive windows and another balcony that offers a sweeping view of the city. Starlight streams in, painting the room and the male carrying you in a silver glow. The breathtaking midnight ambiance does nothing to distract the soldier currently working through your meager defenses via bruising open mouthed kisses to your collarbone. His fervor makes your skin dance, it's been a while since your body has received such attentions.

“Fuck, am I glad I caused a scene with that bastard earlier. Got your attention an’ all.” You mean it as a joke, but his expression darkens with reserved aggression. 

“That was meant in jest,” you clarify. 

“He was leering at you all night,” Azriel growls, between wet kisses to your neck. “I still might tear his throat out.” 

His words go straight to your core. 

“He’s long gone,” you force yourself to say casually, despite how his words affected you. Between that and his tongue, it’s a wonder you’re still stringing together coherent syllables. “How would you even find him?” you laugh, attempting to divert the male’s intensity. 

He pulls away from your neck and gives you a pointed look. “It’s… kind of my job,” he says.

“Oh,” you say foolishly. Right. Azriel is the court’s Spymaster. He probably has his shadows tailing the bastard at this very moment to make sure he doesn’t bother anyone else. He could easily eliminate anyone he so chose. “Right.” 

He shakes his head at your antics, finally walking you over to the bed. In your research, you never came across anything about shadowsingers, so you’re not sure if his shadows had read your mind – but he throws you on the bed exactly as you’d fantasized, powerfully and precisely, your body bouncing as you gasp in shock and delight before he follows you, crawling onto the bed to hover over you. 

His wings flare slightly as his legs settle between yours, one of his knees hooking under your leg, exposing your clothed core to his every brush. 

“Do you want me to kill him for you?” he purrs into your skin. You gasp, at his words as much as the twisted thrill they send through you. You look into his eyes, and slap his shoulder at the mischief you see in his expression. He laughs at your indignation. 

“I would if you wanted me to,” he reiterates, an arrogant grin spreading across his face. “I might do it just because it seems like it would turn you on.” You gasp again at his words, face flushing in embarrassment. “No need to be embarrassed, baby.” He returns to placing lazy kisses along your neck as you moan beneath him. 

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, voice heady. You almost can’t bear it. He’s making you feel so good with just his mouth on your neck. You’re not sure how you’ll survive the night. 

Azriel must be determined to take you within an inch of your life, you think. His next dizzying move is to grab your hands from where they’d begun exploring his body to trap them above your head. To your relief, he ends his siege on your neck, instead serving slow torture as he reconnects your lips in a sensuous kiss, your body singing as you lay pinned beneath him. You feel his hard length press into your thigh. By his quiet moans, you recognize the same ardor he displayed earlier, though at an easier pace now that he has you where he wants you. That just wouldn’t do. He can’t have all that muscle mass just to keep it covered, poised tantalizingly out of sight above you. 

He’s reading your mind again, you think, as his fingers toy with the hem of your top in silent question. You sit up rapidly, his quick reflexes narrowly avoiding your head colliding with his nose. 

“Yes, please! Finally,” you nod, his laughter echoing in reply at your eagerness. “You want to help?” you ask. His face is flushed from your activities but you swear it deepens at your words. You raise your arms, allowing him to lift the silky black material from your form. He’s silent, starlight flashing on the dark expanse of his pupils, blown wide. You would be unnerved if it weren't for the way his chest is rising and falling dramatically, the hunger in his gaze, in his parted lips. You see him start to crisply fold the slim fabric before his brain kicks in and he throws it aside haphazardly. While you love a tidy male, you do prefer one with such a proper sense of priorities. 

“Good boy,” you coo absently, preoccupied with absorbing every detail of his reaction to your lace clad chest. 

“You’re fucking perfect,” he sighs finally, his eyes flickering to yours as his hands hover above your breasts. You bite your lip and grab his hands to connect them to your waiting chest.

“Touch me, Az. Don’t be shy with that mouth either,” you order as he scowls playfully, already palming your tits with zeal. You see his eyes widen as he feels them, specifically the bars in your nipples. His mouth falls open, and it's your turn to flash him a smug grin even as he has you writhing from just his rough hands playing with your chest. 

“I’m not shy,” he grumbles brattily. You allow his attitude given how he quickly follows it up by placing his mouth back to your chest, this time exploring further from your collarbones, moving to skim the tops of your bra and the valley between your breasts. 

“It’s not my fault you make me crazy,” he groans, his eyes glistening like the spit dangling deliciously between his mouth and your skin. 

You just moan in response. How are you supposed to respond to that coherently? Especially as he cruelly pulls away for a brief moment to shrug off his vest, revealing the inked expanse of his chest and the curling hair trailed low on his stomach to disappear beneath his leathers. 

“Can I taste you, baby?” Scratch that thought. How are you supposed to respond to that coherently? “Gonna let me make you feel good, huh?” Azriel begs, his voice thick with need. You nod, delirious at the mere suggestion. 

“I need to hear your words, angel,” he smiles, seeing the fog in your eyes, needing to know it's all for the right reasons.

“Yes, Az. Yes, please,” you manage. He presses a quick kiss to your lips, humming in satisfaction, before moving his touches down your body. 

He handles you like you’re the most cherished thing he’s ever beheld, but not like you’re fragile. You can’t remember the last time a male handled you with such awe and respect. You whine as he kisses your stomach, making your center melt. You’re sure you’re dripping at this point, but you can’t be bothered to feel embarrassment in the presence of the Illyrian kneeling before you in reverence, his mussed hair a dark halo, his leathers conspicuously strained at his crotch. 

He tugs you to the edge of the bed, carefully situating you with a pillow as he kneels on the floor. You feel like a boxing dummy that he’s strategically setting up just to destroy. 

“I’ve been looking forward to this all night,” he admits as he sets your knees over his shoulders, your feet kicking his wings lightly. You realize you haven’t even taken off your boots, you’re not even sure when he took his off, but as you go to mention your shoes and your skirt, he kisses the inside of your knee and the words die in your throat. 

He rubs his hands over the tops of your thighs, pulling pretty moans from you as he kisses along the inside of your legs, towards where you need him most. You’re really not sure what his plan is with your skirt and underwear– until he dives right in, licking you over your clothed center, eliciting a garbled sound you hardly recognize as yours. 

Your skirt is so short it offers no real barrier, except slightly obscuring the tip of his nose as it digs salaciously into your clit. A shadow curls around his ear, and he makes eye contact with you as he hikes your skirt up slightly, so you can see his every move. 

“Eyes on me, angel,” he commands softly, and any response you might have had chokes and dies on your lips. He deftly hooks his fingers in your undergarments, aggressively pulling them to the side. And then his mouth is back on your core, and it’s an overwhelming sensation, his warm tongue licking a stripe up your center, then relaying to repeat the motion down to your opening. You grip the sheets in a feeble attempt to ground yourself. One of his hands strokes your thigh while the other keeps your wild hips pressed firmly into the mattress. 

He pauses only to murmur soft praises as you tremble at his caresses. At this point you’re seriously concerned about your erotic future. What if this male ruins you for everyone else? What if you can never successfully pleasure yourself again? You know you’ll never be able to replicate the bliss he’s currently delivering. His mouth scorches you, he’s taken on a slow and steady rhythm, lapping and sucking, that’s unstringing your body from your soul. You’re not sure that you’ll ever recover. You’re grateful that you have no plans tomorrow because you’re not sure you’ll be able to walk. Maybe you’ll be able to roll yourself down the palace’s endless steps and to the library where one of the priestesses might take mercy on you and nurse you back to health. You could pay them by recounting this experience, surely this prime fuel for fantasy would equate to some kind of currency. With a generous exchange rate. 

Your eyes shoot open as his mouth leaves you, your moans taking on a pained note at the visceral loss. 

“Baby,” Azriel chides. “I asked you to keep your eyes on me.” 

You hadn’t even realized you’d closed your eyes as you’d been calculating the exchange rate of sexual fantasy fodder to gold. You will yourself out of the delirium, but his glistening mouth isn’t helping. 

“Stay with me, angel,” he murmurs, thumb rubbing encouraging circles on your inner thigh as you babble something rude about his upbringing while he takes the moment to slip your ruined undergarment down your legs. 

He’d given up on holding you down, so you grind into his face as he resumes his merciless consumption of your molten pussy. The vibrations of his moans on your core multiply your pleasure delectably. The whole glorious sky of the Night Court seemingly flashes across your vision as he lowers his rough fingers to add pressure to your sensitive bud, swirling pleasure explosive as shooting stars. 

“You taste so good, baby,” he praises. “This all for me?” he asks as he gathers your slick with his fingers before resuming his strokes. All you can do is moan helplessly in affirmation. 

When he finally sucks your clit into his mouth, the pressure has you gasping, gripping his hair to anchor yourself to him, to the pleasure he’s delivering straight to your weeping core. He alternates between licking and sucking your clit while he teases you with his thick digits. He looks utterly engrossed, devoted to your trembling form, working you meticulously. 

“Azriel,” you warn. Your breath quickens just before your body stills, broken noises escaping your lips, falling like a beautiful reward on his waiting ears. The release is more powerful than anything you’ve experienced in recent memory, rocking you to your teeth. 

He works you through the aftershock of your orgasm, continuing to lick and thrust until your spasms quiet, your breathing calmed from its fervent staccato as he cleans you out. 

“Hey, are you still with me?” he asks, concerned. 

You realize you haven’t said anything and he’s been sitting rubbing the tops of your thighs softly while you come down from your high. Too tired for words, you bend to guide his head up to meet yours in a luxurious kiss. It invigorates you, languid as it is, his tongue exploring the backs of your teeth as he sucks in a long breath before moaning into your mouth. 

His arms come to cup your face, dislodging one of your legs that remain thrown over his shoulder. It falls with a loud thud as your booted heel meets the floor, your limbs like lead. The sound makes him jump and pull away guiltily as he takes in your state of collapse. 

“I’ve never been better,” you confess candidly. 

He smiles at that, ruddiness in his cheeks deepening at your declaration. 

“I can’t believe they let you walk free about the lands,” you continue, egging him on, shaking your head. “You’re a goddamn menace! That mouth should be regulated! I should have gotten security clearance to have that experience.” 

He buries his head in your knee, his shoulders shaking in mirth as he hides from your praise. He kisses your knee and you curse the rubber feeling in your legs, wishing you could kick him for his insolence. Instead you pet the back of his neck, soaking in the sight of him between your legs. 

You don’t know it, but he’s soaking in your image as much as you are his. You look ethereal splayed out above him, his shadows skirting around the silver light glowing on your scalp, creating a kinetic halo fit for a queen. In your bra and hiked up skirt, catching your breath on his bed, your vitality is on full display for Azriel’s keen eyes, your pulsing life form beating and raw to his senses. Even in your state of undress, your appearance is regal, striking in command above him. He feels his shadows writhing in excitement, thrilled with your energy, matching the gravitational anomaly in his gut. 

Azriel is reminded of the gravity of battle, how for centuries he has waded through enemies time and time again in a familiar yet shapeless pattern of destruction. Despite the wrathful chaos, there’s a rhythm he’s come to anticipate. Amidst the waves of common soldiers, every division or so, he will fall into the gravity of a real threat, usually an enemy commander, an opportunity to face a real contender. Their paths of destruction will orbit briefly before colliding in gruesome ruin. He knows he’s been lucky to emerge in the land of the living after these conflicts. 

At this moment, he’s strangely reminded of that repulsive kind of attraction, of power to power, as he once again faces a real contender. It’s a total inverse, yet your magnitude presents a similarly brilliant polarity. The aftershock of your pleasure is a welcome sequence compared to the grim aftermath of such a battle. He much prefers your sacred subversion of that profane impact. As you stroke his hair, it feels like redemption. It feels like his twisted history of bloodshed could be transformed and redeemed as justice under your tender hand. 

He kisses your knee once more, blinking away the stinging in his eyes. His thoughts return to the present as you shift above him, sinking to his level on the carpet to capture his lips with a kiss once more. You hum, tasting yourself on him now that your senses have recovered from his euphoric torment. 

The impatient male lifts you up effortlessly, and you let him stand the two of you, until he moves to take you back to the bed. You twist, and Azriel allows you to spin him so that you’re backing him towards the cushions. He groans into the kiss as your fingers brush his lower abdomen, skimming the edge of his leathers. You feel the reverberation of it in your own stomach. 

“Are you going to let me return the favor?” you ask with a devilish grin. The sight of your soft tongue and sharp canines makes his wings twitch, willing his shadows to relax their riot, but they betray him. His eyes shine with need, breath hitching as you dip a finger under the waistband of his pants. 

“I need to hear your words, angel,” you mimic his earlier words. 

“Do your worst,” Azriel grunts, instantly regretting his words as he catches your wicked look. 

You push his shoulders so he throws himself dramatically against the bed, wings flared slightly in anticipation. His mouth falls open as you move away from him, but his protests die as he sees you reach behind your torso to unclasp your bra, finally revealing your chest to him fully. His throat thickens, fists clenching in the sheets as you run your hands along your form, massaging your breasts, relieved to be unconstricted at last. The moonlight glitters on the jewelry in your hard nipples, attractively ornamenting some of your favorite features. Looking at the male barely restraining himself in front of you, you almost feel bad for how riled up he is. 

Taking pity on the simmering Illyrian, you cut your strip tease short, planting a slow kiss on his lips before kneeling before him. If Azriel was concerned about your magnetism earlier, he’s certain it’s fatal now. Your fluffed hair, dislodged skirt, and bare chest all poised to drive him insane with want. When you finally slide his leathers down his thighs, he’s relying on his centuries of training to keep himself under control. The sight of his impressive length, swollen and rigid against his stomach, has your thighs clenching.    

You stroke his upper thighs, kissing along the inside of his knees. His dick twitches as you wrap your hand around its swollen girth. Your first experimental tug elicits a deep stuttering groan from the male. His expression is almost flustered, skin flushed and damp. Despite the sweat you’ve both broken, it’s not doing anything for the chafing. Dissatisfied with the dry friction, you use your brain, quickly locating the nearest source of wetness, which happens to be between your legs. Azriel’s jaw looks like it's about to break from tension, his eyes wide as he follows your hand disappearing under your skimpy skirt. When you grip his cock again, it’s to spread the slickness along his member. You look up at him innocently as you continue pumping, finding a satisfying rhythm. 

“You like that?” you ask teasingly. 

“You’re gonna kill me, angel.” He can’t contain the shudder that racks his body at the image and sensation of your firm hand pumping his dick. He’s worried about losing brain function with the lack of blood circulating anywhere else in his body. His chest heaves, and he forces himself to focus on breathing regularly as you drag your hand up and down him, squeezing occasionally at the base. When you lick flat along the underside of his length, his wings flap in a brief frenzy. 

“Just like that,” he cries. 

You grin at his reactions, his broken moans and spasms only encouraging your actions. After he just rewrote your pussy’s worldview with his tongue, you’re delighted to serve him the same experience. 

“You look so stunning on your knees for me.” 

He grasps your scalp, keeping a light hold on your hair as you bend to place shallow licks at his head. His strangled groan has you wrapping your lips fully around his neglected tip. 

“Fuck,” he exhales. 

The salty musk of him fills your mouth as you breathe through your nose to focus on his sensitive head. You use your hand to pleasure him from the shaft as you suck lightly on the end of his cock, swirling your tongue. His moans of rapture send thrills through you. You look up at him, entranced by the pleasure written on his face. You bob your head, taking him in further, causing him to curse again. You don’t bother with taking all of him, you’re not trying to choke and die even on this divine dick, and your mouth is full as it is, tears threatening your waterline. Your saliva mixes with your slick, coating him, delivering layers of pleasure through Azriel, vibrating from his spine to his toes. The wetness of your mouth and the warmth of your hand ease him stroke by stroke into his ecstasy. 

When Azriel feels his wings seize up and his toes begin to curl, he tightens his fist on the back of your neck, pulling you abruptly off of his cock. You glance back up at him, appreciating his delirious arousal, his flexing thighs. His inked chest shines, slick with exertion, his whole form sharpened into an enticing point fit just for you. 

“Sorry,” he wheezes. “I didn’t want to finish like this, I want to feel you.” 

You nod, biting your lip. 

“This isn’t over,” you promise in a whisper to his furiously hard member, placing one last tender kiss at the base of his cock. He shudders at the abrupt touch, and you laugh at your own antics. His eyes shine with humor and lust. 

“Come here,” he begs, pointlessly, since he pulls you up to his lap effortlessly, and you offer no resistance. Your bent knees rest on either side of his thighs, your cores separated by mere inches as you straddle him, your feet coming to rest against his shins. He presses kisses into your mouth, jaw, and collarbone in manic succession, your hands coming to tangle in his hair. 

“Fuck. Don’t tease now,” you chastise him as his mouth finds your nipple, flicking his tongue over the sensitive bud, your back arching instinctively into his touch. 

“What do you want from me?” he retorts, continuing his biting caresses. 

“I want you to fuck me, Azriel,” you order, emphasizing your words with a sharp tug on his dark locks. He snarls against your chest, hips bucking involuntarily. 

“I thought you liked putting in some work, baby. You sure seemed to enjoy being on your knees for me just now,” he taunts.  

“You need me to do the work, huh?” you muse, and his motions pause at your jab. “Fine by me,” you sigh, swiftly gripping his length and sliding over him before he can comment. His head whips up from your chest, fiery response dying in a whimper at the sensation. You notch him at your entrance, pausing to make sure he approves your actions. 

He catches your look, but instead of replying he takes advantage of your hesitance to grab your hips and rub himself against your folds, both of you groaning at the delicious feeling of your collision. 

“Come on, baby. If you’re so tough, have your way with me,” he coaxes, the brazen words lacking any real bite as he strains beneath you. With shaking hands, you reach between your bodies, your skirt ridden up again to fully expose your dripping core, where you finally guide him to your entrance. His head falls into your shoulder as you take him in, moaning noisily as you adjust to his size and girth. 

“Shit,” you pant, overwhelmed on all fronts between his groans nuzzling into your neck, his strong hands grabbing at your hips, and his delicious length stuffing you so completely. 

“Baby. Oh, angel,” he chokes, equally impaired with pleasure. 

You shift your hips tentatively, gasping. He throws his head back in bliss, his hands tightening on your hips. 

“You feel so good around me. You feel so good,” Azriel chants. 

His eyes squeeze shut as he rides the waves of euphoria from you swiveling in his lap. As absorbed as he is with his own pleasure, he’s still acutely aware of your body’s every response. Your breathy whines and moans, your clenching walls, your stuttering hips. You find a rhythm rocking against him, not so much thrusting as grinding, but your choking walls and the spectacle of your chest bouncing in his line of sight are doing it for him just fine. 

“That’s it. Use me, baby,” he urges, moaning filthy encouragements as you ride him.

When your hips start to falter, he coos in sympathy, seeing your frustrated need. He uses his hands to guide your hips over him, leaning back so he can angle thrusts to meet each motion. 

Your body feels like it’s fully alive, awakened by his actions. He meets your urgency with an unrelenting pace. His concentration is dead set on where your bodies join, watching his cock disappearing into you over and over. He loves this feeling, of giving himself over to you, using his body to create pleasure instead of pain. 

“Let me hear you. Is this what you needed, huh, baby?” he coaxes. 

The familiar burning sensation builds in your abdomen. When he hears your cries pitch higher, your restraint spent, he knows you’re close. It takes all your concentration to meet his blistering kiss as he fucks into you at a frenzied pace. You cry into his mouth as one of his hands comes to circle your clit, sending waves of pleasure deep into your core. There isn’t an inch of your body unaffected by his assault. You feel the pull of pleasure even in your teeth as it burns in your thighs and licks up your spine. 

The pressure in your core builds until one particularly hard thrust has you seeing stars behind your eyelids, bringing your release crashing over you. 

He fucks you through it, concentration moving to your face, to see every stage of your satisfaction play out. The severity of his gaze only heightens your sensitivity as you ride out your second orgasm of the night. You might have to give him an award or something if he keeps this up. You’re still shaking when his hands release your hips to rest on your thighs, stroking them in reassurance while you catch your breath. You feel him still hard inside you. You’re not sure what else you’re in for tonight, but you know your tenure on top is just about over, your stamina exhausted. He must see it written on your face because a lazy grin spreads over his stupidly charming face, his thriving male ego on full display.

“Don’t start,” you blush. 

“What? I didn’t say anything,” he laughs, looking at you playfully from under his eyelids. You see a shadow slipping away from his ear. The fuckers! Have they been informing him on your feelings all night, telling him exactly what will drive you crazy?

“Okay, big boy,” you drawl. “How about using that endless stamina for a good cause,” you suggest wolfishly, signalling that you’re not waving a white flag just because you got a little winded. 

“Is this arrangement contingent on the boots staying on, or…?” he searches, quirking a brow, still stroking your thighs that rest atop his. Your heart leaps, you totally had forgotten that you were still half dressed. You’re still wearing your skirt– well, you suppose wearing would be a generous description, seeing how it had scrunched into a thin band at your waist– but your boots were decidedly still on your feet. You’re surprised that your aggressive physical activities hadn’t dislodged them. 

“Yeah, sorry. Boots stay on,” you shrug, swallowing a laugh. “Why? Aren’t you into them?”

Azriel laughs at that, and the sound and its vibration remind you that he’s still very much buried inside you. You clench around him and he groans, capturing your hip with a hand as he twitches.

“I’m very much into them,” he sits up fully to murmur into your cheek, humor muted by his evident desire. “You look dead sexy. I just wonder if they might hinder our joint agility,” he begins tactfully. 

You laugh at his diplomatic words, and he chuckles along. 

“I can’t believe they didn’t come off!” you admit. 

He laughs at that, and soon the two of you are reduced to howling tears at how long you’ve managed to keep your shoes on. He wipes his eyes, shaking his head and mumbling about what an inappropriate yet compelling endorsement you could make for the responsible cobbler, sending you into another fit as he lifts you off of him, perching you on the edge of the cushions. 

He stands to pull the laces of your stomper boots, delicately slipping them from your feet, your socks following, his hands rubbing soothing patterns along your calves. His actions are innocent, yet the look in his eye is anything but. He looks ravenous, but he’s giving you a moment. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy this bit as much as what came next. Azriel just made you come twice and then belly laugh in quick succession. You know he’s fully employed too. He is turning out to be a man of many useful talents. This is dangerous territory. 

“I am a little sad to see them go,” he sighs, jokingly, once your shoes were finally sitting on the floor next to him.

“You know, if you want me to wear them in your bed, you could just fly me all around the city so they never get dirty,” you joke from your position laid on the cushions. He rolls his eyes, but he’s beaming at you as he comes to stand between your thighs, and you can’t help but grin back. It’s been a while since you’ve had this much fun with someone. Nor is it lost on either of you that you’d just implied you might end up in his bed again. You don’t mind the admission, even as it hangs in the air. He’s a spymaster anyways, one way or another he’d figure out what you’re thinking. 

“Noted,” is all he replies to that. “Lift your hips for me, angel.” 

You feel your breathing hitch, affected in unladylike ways by his respectful words. You lift up slightly so he can slip your skirt down from your waist. 

The simple movement dissolves the momentary limbo of your activities, and all the passion of the evening returns to you in full effect as you lay nude before him. He leans over you from where he stands, his hulking form and silhouetted wings imposing. His appetite is apparent, his massive length waiting and ready at his abdomen, angry at having been abused without satisfaction. Azriel has been fighting all night, you realize, and now he’s poised to claim his rightful glory. 

You reach out to pull him towards you. As he crawls over you, his wings flutter shut, as if he means to tuck them safely behind his form for the rest of the night. 

“Don’t you dare put those away!” you huff in frantic offense. 

“What?”

“Your wings!” you exclaim. 

“My wings?” he repeats. 

“I’d like to look at them,” you request, quite nicely, you think, as he settles between your legs. 

Azriel isn’t fooled by your innocent expression. He captures your lips in a bruising kiss, jaw working to claim every inch of fleshy territory. Without warning, his wings flare out, fanning your face with a rush. Your eyes shoot open to see your spoils, the leathery panes blocking the dim light from reaching your entwined forms. Heat rushes through you as you examine them, the thin veins and small scars whispering of stories he has yet to tell. His mouth works along your jaw as you revel in his illustrious form above you, fully claiming you into his world of shadows. He pauses by your ear, scraping his teeth along the sensitive shell before speaking lowly.

“You think wings and murder are sexy, you keep your boots on while you’re getting fucked… My girl is a freak.” Your heart soars at his words. 

“Your girl?” you question. He freezes in his next kiss, ego vanishing, as if he’s not sure if he should be bashful. “I like it,” you declare. He pulls back to see the honesty of it in your eyes, and you know your face is sporting a twin banner of blush. 

“Of course you do, you freak,” he says affectionately. 

Your resounding grin fades into a groan as he runs a scarred hand up the inside of your thigh. He looks at you expectantly, the question in his eyes.  

“I do think your wings are sexy,” you admit. He snorts, and you know that’s not the answer he was looking for. 

 “Are you planning to just lie there, perfect and naked on my bed all night, or are you going to let me fuck you properly?” he huffs out in desperation, not one to be outdone. 

His hips grind against your thigh in emphasis. He is well and done with your larking. 

“Well, gods, let me think about it, at least!” you shoot back mischievously. 

You’re just toying with him now, but in your defense, he makes it so fun. 

Azriel’s head falls to your shoulder, growling. But his gnarled hand vanishes from your thigh and his hips pause their motions. You feel a rush knowing that if you decided you were done, he would stop everything, despite his evident need. All night, he’s been so generous with his energy, from defending you back at the bar, to helping you get off as you struggled to ride him. Your pussy throbs at the power he’s offering up to your pleasure, freely and without expectation. You don’t quite know why you’re being mean, he certainly hasn’t earned it. 

He looks up at you, his cheeks ruddy, his shining eyes searching, and you find your answer. It was simply empowering to see Azriel, a male usually so meticulous in his presentation, fall entirely apart for you. Everything about him was tantalizing, but watching him wield his historic power for your pleasure was the most grievous indulgence.

“Tell me,” he urges, seeing the whirl of emotions on your face. 

“I need you inside me,” you relent. 

His growl is the only warning you get before he sheathes himself inside you in one swift movement, relieved to obey your command. Groans fall from both your lips at the feeling of him pressed into you so spectacularly. 

“Oh, oh , Az,” you revel in the feeling.

“That’s it, baby,” Azriel coaxes. 

He eases you into it with gentle thrusts, placing kisses down your chest. His pace is slow, languid, like he wants to take his time with you, tearing you apart with precision, thrust by thrust. His hands clutch your hips in an attempt to still your thrashing. 

“You’re doing so good for me,” he coos. 

Your hands are all over, his hair, his shoulders, his arms, urging him to move, move, move. He blows a hot exhale across your breasts where he’s been occupied, steadying himself mentally before looking into your face. What you see only fuels you further. In his gaze is raw desire, desire that he’s keeping carefully controlled as he gives you what he thinks you need. Even buried inside you, he reigns himself in, commanding his passion in preservation of your comfort. His mind is screaming at him to drive faster, so much so that it drowns out your sounds of agreement in his ears. His slow strokes are a torment to you both, a needless sacrifice on his end. 

Typically, you might appreciate how considerate he was being. But also, typically, you didn’t have a male buried inside you while you claw at whatever part of his largeness you can reach. What you need right now isn’t his courtesy, what you need is the full force of his passion, unchecked, to do battle with your own. You aren’t used to settling for less than what you want, so everything in you feels confident when you pull his face up to yours, noses brushing as he gasps into your open mouth.

“Az. I need more,” you state clearly. His hooded eyes flare as he finally sees the enormity of your fervor, how it matches perfectly blow for blow with his own. 

“Hold on,” he breathes, pressing a kiss to your mouth in acknowledgement. 

You don’t know if he means it literally or not, but you’re taking no chances as you cling to him. He pulls out slightly more, just enough to give him room to angle your leg up, his muscled arm holding your bent knee, allowing his hips unfettered access to your center. The shift has you whining against him, writhing as he gives you exactly what you asked for. You’ve never felt anyone so deep inside you, kindling that burn so deliciously. 

And then he’s pounding into you at full charge. 

“Come on, baby, give it to me,” he gasps. 

In the throes of your pleasure, you note how his chest heaves, though the steadily punishing pace of his hips never falters. Your legs are numb in some places where you had feeling earlier. You chase your high together in an uphill battle, both worn and equally dedicated to seeing this through to its fateful conclusion. 

“Doing so good for me, angel,” he encourages, and you mumble curses at his tender tone while he sets a brutal rhythm on your cunt. Your hot breath mingles, his forehead pressed to yours, like he needs every part of you to be connected, like when he draws out of you, he’s acutely pained for that moment it takes before he’s enveloped by you again. Watching him is intoxicating. Raw, starved agony tightens the elegant planes of his face as your leg scrapes lightly against the edge of his wing over his shoulder, and he shudders. 

The contact evidently rouses something deep within him, his shadows writhing impishly along his wings. They slip invisibly over his shoulders, under the canopy of his wings to trace infuriatingly over your torso. One ravishes your breast, phantom pleasure coursing down to meet the brimming well of your desire. Their delight at your convulsing form under their ghostly caress is only matched by Azriel’s own fixation. His stare borders on obsessed, eyes blown out. He blinks, failing to clear his carnal fixation, pressing a maddening kiss to your mouth in drunken bliss, muttering your name like a prayer. 

“That feel good, baby?” he grunts. 

“Yes, Azriel, please,” you cry, not even sure what you’re asking for. 

His pace is ruthless, and, far from quieting your own ache, it's successfully unpinning your every inhibition. It's as if his shadows are scouting every crevice of your being to shake out a thrill from any and every forgotten corner. Something shakes loose deep inside your chest as his brutal magnetism pulls pleasure from you. You set it aside to focus on the ecstasy being painstakingly, greedily delivered to your drenched core. You moan his name at the heat pulsing through you. 

Azriel looks fucked out, his brows slick with tension and his mouth gaping as he absorbs you with equal adoration. You see your own need reflected in his face, and you feel like you’ve taken a hand mirror into a reflecting pool for how endlessly your bliss echoes between you. It’s mind bending, how it drives you crazy knowing he’s crazy for how he drives you crazy– you could almost laugh at the absurdity of it if you had any remaining breath. And if it didn’t feel so riveting, the symmetry of your hunger.  

“I’m close,” you hiccup, body heavy with expectation, the smoldering heat growing to a fever pitch as he pummels you. 

“I’m with you, baby. I’m right here with you,” he gasps. 

One of his hands snakes down to encourage your clit with tight, fast circles. His attention, though, is on your face, watching the way elation plays across your features. The added sensation sends you over the edge, your third release blowing through you in scalding waves.

You cry out as your orgasm staggers you, hands blindly tugging his hair, holding him to you as you shatter. The pulsing grip of your cunt pulls him along the edge as he works you with quick thrusts. 

At the sharp scrape of your nails on his scalp, his own pleasure snaps, waves of bliss cresting over you both in lock step, smoothing twin grooves of delight in your souls. He fucks you through it, his face buried in the side of your neck, his kiss biting with teeth as he tries messily to stifle his groans. The guttural noise of his cries shakes the room, your own heartbeat barely perceptible in its wake. When the quaking stops, he slumps down over you, totally spent. 

You lay there in a daze for gods know how long, struggling for air together. He presses kisses into your shoulder until your cries quiet down and your breathing comes more easily. Azriel has definitely fucked before, so he doesn’t know why his heart is beating so wildly at this encounter, why he’s still greedily tasting your skin, why he’s so reluctant to pull out of you. When he feels like he has it under control, he peeks his head out from your neck. A grin is plastered on his gorgeous face, his hair sticking up in a stupidly charming fashion, his eyes shining with frightening levels of energy and mirth despite his limp form atop you. 

“I can’t believe I found you in a gay bar,” he states. You flick his ear, nose scrunching at his audacity. 

“You are ridiculous. Is that really all you have to say?” you accuse breathlessly, still gone soft in a delicious haze. 

Azriel chuckles, shifting over you, so that his head hovers over yours again. 

“No,” he says carefully. He slides his hand to move yours from his hair, bringing it to rest on the cushions above your head, his fingers twining with yours. Your brows furrow at the delicate gesture, you’d blush if he wasn’t literally inside you still. 

“I just thought ‘holy fuck, please marry me?’ might be a little intense to lead with,” he offers, and what you see dancing in his eyes holds too much gravity to be mistaken for pure humor.

Your insides flutter again at his words, dumbfounded. 

He means it as a joke, but there’s something in his eyes you wouldn’t mind waking up to every day for the rest of your life that feels dangerous. This was a fun, sexy adventure with a fun, oversized Illyrian, you rationalize. You’d reassess that flicker in your chest again after you were fed, rested, and bathed.  

Azriel has similar ideas it seems. He slips out of you, your body protesting at the loss. He must sense this because he places a mollifying kiss to your stomach as he gets up from the bed. He returns shortly to find you still splayed out in total content, and hands you a tall glass of cool water. You didn’t realize how parched you were until you drank half the glass in several gulps, refreshing your dry throat. Azriel appears again with some towels. 

He takes the glass when you offer it back, but instead of setting it aside he brings it to his own lips, finishing it off in one long drink. Your mouth goes dry again at the sight. You’re well and truly fucked if the sight of him finishing your water gets you excited. It’s not like you hadn’t just swapped spit with him in more exciting ways. You’re certain he notices you staring, but he doesn’t comment. 

“Can I clean you up? Or do you want to…” he gently motions with the damp towel once he’s done torturing you with his pornographic drinking. You allow him to wipe you down, his gentle motions confident and efficient. It makes your body hum in a new way, how he handles you with casual reverence, hands skimming your flesh to check for tender spots before he cleanses there. You see your own glow reflected in him, one of utter contentment. 

He crawls onto the bed with you, pulling back the blankets and cushions around you in a swaddled sort of cocoon before settling on your chest, his arms wrapping around you, wings coming to rest on either side of your form. You brush his wild hair from his forehead, and he hums as he nudges his head more firmly into your palm. He lets loose a long sigh when you brush your hands through his dark locks, eyes closing in contentment. His sore muscles loosen as he curls into you. It’s a powerful image, the hulking Illyrian sprawled lazily atop you in utter calm. 

“Bed time,” he declares, much to your amusement. His nose brushes your sternum, and he sleepily kisses your skin before cracking a yawn. His swirling shadows quiet as he drops his guard for the night. Your eyelids begin to sink, despite your determination to memorize your position tangled with him. You swear you hear a whisper in the dark, a wordless plea in your ear, stay . Not that you have much choice with his bulky form practically trapping you against his bed. 

“Good night, Azriel,” you murmur. 

Sleep must have taken you seamlessly after that because next thing you know, the cool light of dawn is streaming in his open windows, illuminating the peaceful figure still resting on your chest. You wonder what the protocol for this is, if he expects you to slip out before he awakes. On your occasional hook ups, you’d never slept over before. Usually you would have left after, or woken up in the night and skipped. This time, you didn’t have the same avoidant fear marching you out the door. 

In the night, Azriel had shifted, so now he lay with only one leg slotted between yours, his grip on your waist loosened. You try adjusting your back so that your head can lay more comfortably on his pillow– his soft and supple pillow, you note. His grip tightens on your waist at your movements, his brows furrowing in irritation in his sleep. 

A grin blooms on your lips at his unconscious gesture. You relax into his large bed, pride singing in your veins. He was certainly decisive about your spending the night, and now with the prospect of a quiet, intimate morning before you... You know it was an involuntary movement, but all the same. You’re starting to think he might be into you. And you’re definitely into his mattress, you muse, closing your eyes to submit to the allure of his plush bed. Though it’s his pleasant weight resting over you that really lulls you into sleep. 

When you wake up later in the full light of morning, you find Azriel watching you with appreciation. 

“Good morning,” you mumble, feeling your face flush. 

“Good morning,” he agrees, his voice rough with sleep, pulling you into his chest. 

Your muscles protest, still sore, but it's a pleasant sting, you decide as you relax into him. You could spend all morning like this, wrapped in his strong arms. 

“Did you sleep well?” he asks sweetly.

You nod, sleepily praising how comfortable his bed is. He’s shifted to press you against his firm chest, his hand coming to rest on your back. As you shift to nuzzle into his shoulder, you feel his half hard cock digging into your hip. His words from the night before rise to mind amid the heated memories of your shared activities. My girl , he’d called you. You figure you should act like it. If you work this right, this could be the first of many mornings spent in his bed.

You press your hips into his growing erection, and his eyes flash in warning. The sleep fades from his gaze as his hand at your back holds you in place against him. 

You begin meaningfully, “I don’t have any plans today–”

“Thank the Mother!” Azriel growls, capturing your mouth in a searing kiss. Warmth flares in your chest at his eagerness. Little do you know how Azriel is plotting similar schemes even as you lose yourselves to the magnetic bliss of your connection. You’d always been a flirt, but it had never earned you such a glorious reward. 

“Did you enjoy yourself last night?” you ask teasingly. 

“You know I did.”

“Well don’t push yourself now, I don’t expect you to be able to outdo last night,” you sigh mockingly. 

His expression unnerves you, the challenge registering on his face in a slow, wickedly sensual smile. 

“Oh, but I intend to.” 

_

A/N: THANKS FOR READING!! This is the first fic I’ve ever "published"! I really enjoyed writing Azriel, he’s fun to play with. Also yeah maybe I implied that they were soulmates cause I am a lover and casual isn’t in my vocabulary, baby! Let me know what you think, I meant it to be flirty and then smutty and then it became kinda sweet, so hopefully you enjoyed the ride :) Let me know if you want part 2 ??

[cubicalone]

X-Ray Search Like a Pro: 5 Tips to Navigate the Web with Precision

In the vast expanse of the internet, finding specific information quickly and efficiently can be a daunting task. Regular Google searches often inundate us with a flood of results, making it challenging to pinpoint the exact data we need. However, fear not! There’s a powerful tool at your disposal – Google X-ray Search. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of…

[houseofhyde]

tear you down, wear you out.

pairing. bucky barnes x fem!reader mcu timeline. post-thunderbolts. synopsis. to everyone else on the team, you're a ball of sunshine, a quick-thinking spy, a genius pair of eyes keeping track of anything suspicious during missions. to bucky, however, you are the bane of his existence, the knife in his back, the ire in his blood. he'll stop at nothing to get you kicked off the team, even if it means risking his own life. unfortunately, he never planned for this: you pinned beneath him on the training mat, wide-eyed and fully aware how hard he is against your thigh. based on this request. warnings. smut ( switch/dom-leaning!bucky, unprotected piv, oral - m & f receving, 69ing, fingering, face riding, ab riding, knifeplay - m receiving, manhandling, biting, dirty talk, dick+pussy pronouns, spit, one spank, like a second of thigh fucking + choking, voyeursim/mirror kink? idfk basically they are fucking and watching, bucky puts the reader in a headlock :), backshots ayo! honestly they're kind of fighting and fucking at the same time? idk just read it pls, i'm baring my horny soul to you here! ) bucky's pov & he's so annoying (i love him), one-sided enemies to lovers bc bucky's a loser and you're literally just vibing, spy!reader, lowkey himbo!bucky, bickering, jealousy, unwanted sexual advances ( not from bucky ), angst, fluff, gun violence, description of injuries + blood, a bad guy that i made up in my head therefore he sucks and has a very lame name :) for the purpose of plot: bucky is the 'leader' of the thunderbolts* reader inclusivity. some implications of the reader being shorter/smaller than bucky, reader has a specific fear + a specific scar. word count. 14.3k hyde’s input. pray for me y'all, i'm going through something unimaginable 😔 (attempting to write a new fic after peaking w/ manchild)

Gun to his head and a demand to say one good thing about you? Bucky is taking the bullet.

In every sense of the word, you’re a good person. You’re a reliable partner, a shadow that lurks among crowds and keeps an eye out for your teammates. You’re patient, always the last to raise your voice when tensions are high and the others are divulging into a cacophony of outrage. You help Bob with the dishes, you give John tips on how to get blood out of his suit, you invest your time into researching methods to ease Ava’s chronic pain, you take care of Yelena’s guinea pig when she’s away on missions, and you encourage Alexei on all of his awful PR stunt misadventures.

It’s no wonder that the rest of the team adores you, yet, for reasons he can’t explain, Bucky can barely tolerate your presence for more than a minute without breaking out in hives and debating putting his own skull through a wall. The worst thing about hating you is knowing it’s irrational. 

“Someone’s approaching your nine, James,” maybe, he ponders as your voice speaks through his earpiece, it’s your peculiar insistence on using his first name. “Roland Andrews, big shot lawyer and son of tech billionaire, William Andrews. His father has been accused of tax fraud more times than you clean your knives yet he always seems to get away with it, scot-free.”

Sure enough, the stout figure of a prematurely balding man is creeping along the left of  Bucky’s peripheral. The champagne in his hand isn’t sweet enough to mask the bitter taste of admitting you’re correct.

“Thanks for the encyclopedia dump, what’s it to me?” Or maybe it’s the fact you make him irresponsible, nerves too frazzled to remember to be discreet when he speaks over the comms — the couple to his right are staring at him confused, surely wondering why he’s talking to himself.

“His father has been linked to the likes of Kingpin and, more relevantly, Hydra. So if we’re hoping to investigate the rumours of their resurgence…” As if your voice in his ear isn’t enough, fate chooses the perfect moment to have him spot you over the rim of his champagne flute, standing across the museum hall, sparkling beneath the chandelier. Your eyes are somewhere else; unlike how the small crowd surrounding you has busied themselves with focusing on their own reflections in the glass, you seem to take genuine interest in the exhibit behind the pane.  “Sorry, I assumed you read the mission brief.”

No, he hadn’t. In fact, the time that should have been dedicated to reading the brief had been wasted on watching you. Specifically, the way your knee bounced across from him on the Quinjet. Had the plane not landed when it did, Bucky would have leaped over and put a stop to your distracting movement.

“I was busy,” this time he makes sure it’s but a whisper, loud enough for only the mic to pick up. “What do we know about his father’s links to Hydra?”

“Not much, unfortunately. Rumours, at best. An entire history of funding them, at worst,” the man grows closer while your voice grows more distant over the earpiece, an interference of two strangers conversing near-by. “He’s closing in on you. Leave the line open.”

Bucky wants to disobey.

He wants to turn off his mic and drop it into the remaining bubbling liquid in his glass. He wants to rip out the earpiece and crush it beneath the heel of his italian leather shoes. He wants to make a big scene, point down the length of the display hall and announce your presence to each and every overly-wealthy, underly-empathetic tech-head and government body within the vicinity.

It matters little that he would be blowing your cover, unveiling your role as a quiet partner of the Avengers, and subsequently putting the oligarchs in the room on edge. It would all be worth it, even the part where he’d be risking his own place within the team, if it meant you would get the boot and no longer be here, hovering in his peripheral like a persistent, buzzing little bee.

Unfortunately, a baritone voice stops him from giving into his wildest fantasy.

“Good evening, Congressman Barnes,” Roland Andrews is every bit the image of a hot-shot lawyer, right down to the Rolex living obnoxiously on his wrist and the bottle of cologne he appears to have doused himself in. “Though I suppose it’s just Barnes now. Avenger Barnes? It’s hard to keep up with all those… heroic names.”

“I know he’s insufferable, James, but unclench your hand. You’re a second away from snapping the innocent neck of that champagne flute.”

His fingers almost tighten as you whisper through his earpiece.

“Do they call you Lawyer Andrews-”

“You’re being hostile!” Bucky can feel your eyes on him, unnerving him.

He bites back a scoff, coughs up a plastic smile, “Just call me Mr Barnes.”

“So, you've heard of me,” of course that is all a man like Roland would pick up on, salivating at his mouth for that little morsel of validation to feed his ego’s belief in his right to be in a room like this, surrounded by the other ‘big-deals’ who managed to wrangle themselves an invite to the exclusive event.

“It’s hard to tell from all the way over here but I swear you knowing his name has got him so excited, he’s popped a boner,” you’re in his ear again, just as Bucky takes a sip of his drink.

The sharp inhale he pulls almost causes him to choke and, for a moment, he can’t help but shoot a quick glare your way.

A glare you don’t even notice, too invested at blinding a stranger with your aggravating smile.

“Yeah, well, don’t go feeling too flattered,” a twisted feeling of satisfaction nestles itself in his gut as he watches the man’s face fall to a frown. “I know your father.”

If decades of being a puppet through which others’ enacted evil and bloodspill had taught James Buchanan Barnes anything, it was to notice everything. The way his shoulders straighten a little at the mention of his father. The way his weight shifts from his right foot onto both. The way the pupils of his alcohol-stained eyes stretch an inch, growing with his interest.

For a lawyer, he’s got an awful poker face.

“Is that so?” While the man’s mouth is stoic, his voice is laced in intrigue.

“Well done, you’ve got him hooked. Now, reel him in.”

Bucky is really wishing he’d shut off the line.

“We once worked together,” there’s always a bitter aftertaste that comes with a lie, that’s what Bucky has come to learn, like his mouth is physically rejecting his own dishonesty. “You could even say, we’re old friends.”

“My father and you,” he’s familiar with that tone behind the lawyer’s words. Not disbelief but disgust, the kind one stares down at a wretched bug with. “Worked together? He never told me he’d taken any interest in your campaign for congress.”

“You know what you have to do,” you’re watching again. He knows it because the hairs on the back of his neck rise and his chest feels tight, like it’s boxing his lungs in.

“Like I said, old friends,” Bucky had thought the scheming and the calculated words would all come to an end alongside his term in congress. It’s missions like this that remind him it never ends, not when he’s stuck inside a sandbox full of snakes, waiting for him to turn his back on them for a chance to take a bite. “Our organization met some obstacles a few years back. But, what’s that old saying? Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”

There Mr Andrews goes again, spilling all his secrets onto his visage. There’s a subtle stilling of his breath, a twitch in his left brow, a parting of his lips.

Recognition stares Bucky in the eye. And, for the first time since he regained his mind, it seems Hydra is staring at him too.

The torture, the mind control, the words that turned him into an unfeeling monster…

“Say it,” you’re there to cut off his next thought, his next memory.

As easy as slipping on a tailored suit, those old words roll off Bucky’s tongue, “Hail Hydra.”

Like a wave, ice cold and chilling to the bone, nausea washes over him. He blinks and, behind his eyelids, a montage of violence that wears his face yet lacks his soul. Pain shoots up his left arm, nonsensical and impossible in every way, yet it's there all the same, stabbing at his metal arm and lingering along the missing nerves.

What a punch in the guts it is — after so many years of working on himself, bettering himself, remembering himself — to be cruelly reminded of his inability to ever fully escape his past. No pardon and no psychologist could ever suck the evil fully out of James Buchanan Barnes, so long as he was living beyond his lifetime and walking amongst the collateral victims of his violence.

Instinct commands him to reach for two things.

First, a glance over at you. Closer than before, hovering among a crowd of eager-eyed suits. Just like the rest of his team, you have them effortlessly wrapped around your finger, clinging onto every ounce of attention you fill their cups with.

A sneer on his lips, the soldier looks away.

And, secondly, he tilts his glass up and reaches for a final sip.

“Good boy, James,” this time, he does choke.

Champagne burns the back of his throat and his neck nearly snaps at the speed his head turns to you, still playing your cards of flattery to your crowd of loyal watchers and completely unaware of the paleness taking over Bucky’s face, the anger clenching its fist around his heart, and the heat melting his loins.

Why would you say such a thing? How could you say such a thing, and have the gall to not even be looking at him? It isn’t fair, in any universe, for you to be so unaffected while you nearly kill him with three words. You must not be human, must not be real, must not be trusted.

There, that’s what it is.

Bucky doesn’t trust you, that must be why he wants you gone.

“Beautiful woman,” Rolland Andrews commands Bucky’s attention back to him, and that’s when the soldier realises his mistake.

He’s been staring at you, openly and undoubtedly, making the subject of your investigation not only aware of your existence but of Bucky’s interest in your whereabouts.

His right palm is growing sweaty.

“You think?” Bucky makes a point of taking two steps to the right, blocking the view of you over his shoulder and forcing a load of eye contact onto the lawyer. If he plays his cards right, he can pivot the conversation away from you and back over to the point of the mission. “I hadn’t noticed. She’s just-”

“His assistant,” there’s your voice again, but it isn’t in his ear. It’s by his side and accompanied by you coming fully into view between the two men. Bucky watches your hand shake the outstretched paw of Mr Andrews before you turn your attention onto him, a mellow smile pairing well with the red of your lipstick. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr Barnes, but there’s been an incident downtown that requires your assistance.”

He doesn’t mean for his eyes to narrow, but that’s just the kind of reaction you inspire in him: confusion and disgruntlement.

“What a shame,” there’s nothing confusing about the way the lawyer’s leopard-like eyes are glued to the neckline of your dress. Perhaps the soldier’s jacket would be of better use over your shoulders. “You’re stealing him away just when our conversation was getting interesting.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir!” You slip right past Bucky’s attempt to grab your forearm, and lay a hand on the man’s shoulder, a faux apology in your gaze. “But this really is a pressing matter. Here,” you’re back to keeping your hands to yourself, too busy rifling through your clutch to entertain whatever perverse thoughts are growing in Andrew’s mind. “Take Mr Barnes’ card, perhaps we can arrange for you both to continue this conversation somewhere a little more private.”

As easy as a dog herds sheep, you escort a bewildered Bucky Barnes away from the target.

You lead the charge, weaving through the clusters of people so effortlessly that he struggles to keep up, his path occasionally thwarted by an unmoving mass and forcing him to watch as you continue your pursuit of the up-ahead, leaving nothing but the shape of your dress to follow. It’s only once the chill of the night bites at exposed skin that he manages to catch a hold of you, halfway down the entrance staircase.

“What was that?” He seethes into your ear from one step behind, hand wound around your arm.

“Smile, James,” you glance back at him, “unless you want to end up on the front page of the news with accusations of mistreating your poor assistant.”

Waiting beneath the staircase sits a promenade of black cars and personal drivers, queuing up to collect their decorated debt otherwise known as their employers. Alongside the white light of burning headlights, there’s the incessant flash of cameras going off, a wall of photographers and journalists hungry to catch a glimpse and steal a moment from those attempting to flea the event’s festivities.

“You’re not taking another step until you answer my question,” he mutters all the same, grip reinforcing itself on your arm.

Despite that, Bucky doesn’t stop you from journeying down another two stairs.

“Your question wasn’t very clear,” at this point he’s certain you must be doing it on purpose, picking and choosing the words you need to drive the soldier up the wall.

“I had him right where we wanted him, and you-”

“I what?” Again, you’re looking back at him, and again, you’re smiling perfectly for the cameras, manoeuvring him to loosen his grip on your arm and switch to locking elbows instead, just in time for the press to take notice of his presence and begin turning their lenses. “Come on, use that caveman brain of yours.”

“Do you get a kick out of ruining my missions?” He registers a shout of his name, and then another, and then another.

Like a pack of starved vultures, the press scramble to gather at the bottom of the stairs, microphones and cameras grasped in their talons as they screech out questions he has no intention of answering.

“We’ve been over this before, James,” if you’ve noticed the fact he is descending slower in light of the chaos that awaits, you say nothing. You simply match his pace. “I get a kick out of helping.”

Bucky remembers the last time you said those very words, both of you lost in the outskirts of France and struggling to find any signal. When he was sure that would get you reprimanded for inefficiency, you pulled through and managed to salvage the mission.

Before that, there was a late night in Tokyo, where you and Walker boarded the jet with blood drying into the cracks of your fingernails. Despite the bloodshed, the mission was a success, and Bucky’s chastising words aimed at you fell upon deaf ears.

In truth, he still the first time you said those words, two days into the job and faced with his interrogative eyes in the dark of the kitchen whilst you were trying to sneak away with a midnight snack.

“Funny, cause you never seem to help.”

“Roland Andrews may be an obnoxious asshole but he’s not an idiot,” as you lift your foot to tackle another step, the heel of your shoe catches on the hem of your dress. His elbow locks and his vibranium hand is steadying you before he can even ponder what a satisfactory sight it would be to watch you roll down the stairs and strike out the press in some twisted game of bowling. Much to his own disgruntlement, his subconscious doesn’t know how to let harm come your way. “He wasn’t about to confess in the middle of the Smithsonian that your old torturers are planning a resurgence. Thanks to me, he has your card. Which means he has your number, which means he’ll call.”

His pride won’t give in and allow him to tell you it’s a good plan, so he narrows his eyes and questions it instead, “Why are you so sure?”

The press are so close now, a mere three steps below, yet he hears you perfectly clear among all their harmonious yelling.

“Like you said, you had him right where we wanted him,” his eyes follow your own as they glance backwards. At the top of the stairs, Rolland Andrews stands watching you both leave. “Trust me, he’ll call.”

Five weeks pass before the call arrives.

On a Thursday morning, six forty three am, with dawn smearing the horizon in shades of tangerine, Bucky wakes from a dream he can’t quite remember. There is light, there is laughter, and there is someone laying by his side, keeping count of his heartbeat while he traces constellations over a naked thigh. Then, the phone rings and he’s thrust back into his body, sweating beneath sheets and consumed by the empty space to his right.

On the other end of the line is not the most-anticipated Roland Andrews. It’s his assistant, with a voice as chirpy as a bird singing its morning song, relaying a short list of demands veiled as an invitation — one of which leads him to now, four hours later, pacing the living room while you wax poetic about your genius, world-saving, revolutionary plan.

The very same plan that’s going to send Bucky to his belated grave.

“Absolutely not,” he says for what feels like the millionth time, metal fingers tangling themselves in the web of his hair. The sting against his scalp is the only thing that seems to ground him, aiding him in holding back even a modicum of the frustration your persistence is simmering within him. “Over my dead body.”

“It makes perfect sense, James,” in opposition to his own rabid demeanor, you’re cool as ice, spread out atop the couch and sipping away at your morning coffee. Movement is occasional, optional — in the desperate times when he’s intercepting the path between your eyes and the television, where reruns of some awful reality show hold your attention captive. “Come on, you know my plans always work.”

They do, and he hates it. Despises it. Wishes you would hurry up and screw up enough to stop being put in harm’s way. But no, you just have to be perfect at everything.

“How many more times do I have to say it? No,” like a broken record or an ever-looping echo, he’s repeating words, over and over, all in the futile hope you’ll sniff out the suspicious nature of Andrews’ demand and agree to Bucky’s terms instead.

“You’re being stubborn,” you lean to the left, trying to catch a glimpse at the screen past his stoic stance.

Perhaps a little overzealous, Bucky had hoped your proposal of continuing the conversation somewhere private would be just that: private. It seems the lawyer and his different definition of privacy had other plans in the form of a summoning to attend an exclusive gala at his family’s estate. The point of contention, however, is the request tacked on at the end of the invite: Mr Andrews requests your assistant come too, as his personal date for the evening.

“And you’re being reckless!”

“Newsflash, that’s kind of my job.”

The first thing Bucky learnt about you was your history — better said, your lack of history.

A life lived in silence. Quaint and quiet are pretty synonyms for invisible. Your existence is nothing but a blank, untraceable slate, up until you at last appear on the proverbial map of agents and demons, as merely a drop in the ocean formerly known as S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sometimes, Bucky thinks he remembers seeing you. Just once, with the Winter Soldier shielded by shadows in Pierce’s office. You stood on the other side of bulletproof glass, a mournful Steve to the right of you and the despicable mass of Alexander Pierce in front of you, face painted in faux sympathy and a hand squeezing down on your shoulder. But the waters of his memory are murky and leave him needing to come up for air before he can ever make a real shape out of anything.

After the downfall of Hydra, you returned to being a ghost. Unheard from and inactive, until the war between heroes, a silent partner in Sharon Carter’s ploy to steal back Steve’s shield and Sam’s wings. While Bucky was turned back to ice, you were running around Europe, protecting the whereabouts of the men who fought for his freedom. Then came the dark days, after half the world turned to dust. Somewhere along the record books, you became a mercenary.

An agent turned killer for hire, and one of the top earners under Valentina’s payroll. When the time came for her to do away with all the loose-ends of her crimes, you were lucky enough — or just busy enough — to ignore her deadly invitation into the furnace that housed Bob. Seven weeks after he was declared an Avenger, Miss De Fontaine turned up at the tower’s door with you. Sweet smile, sharp senses, one job: look out for the team.

From agent, to mercenary, to glorified babysitter.

“Your job is to gather intel, to be an informant, to keep a close eye,” the pacing has seized and Bucky has now taken to facing you, right knee popped out and hands on his hips, the very image of a parental figure mid-lecture. “It’s not your job to answer to some daddy’s boy on a power trip.”

“This might be our only chance to get a lead on the Hydra rumours,” whether it’s prompted by the change in his stance or by your own disinterest, you reach for the control and turn the television off. “You owe it to yourself to let me help.”

The only noise that remains is you two bickering, while the rest of the tower’s inhabitants are sleeping away their morning how you had hoped to — before a certain soldier pulled you out of your slumber—: undisturbed and uninterrupted. 

“I’m going alone,” before he can even fully commit to his sentence, you’re standing up and rounding the coffee table.

“Please, just take a minute, breathe, and think about this rationally,” your approach is one that calls for peace, the demeanour of someone trying to calm a street cat: hands stretched out in front of you and a plea in your eyes that screams ‘please don’t run away’. “Andrews isn’t just inviting you to one of his posh parties, James. He’s testing you, trying to see how easily you’ll grant his request. He wants to see how much he can trust you. I’m tougher than I look, okay? Let me be the collateral to you getting the answers we need.”

One of the worst things about you is your ability to make a good point, even out of a damn circle. Your argument is just the correct mixture of rational, impactful, and personal to almost have him giving in and accepting your offer to help.

But, why should you have to be tougher than you look? Last time Bucky checked, your skill is stealth and brains, not muscle — he is all the muscle you, or, better said, any mission could ever need.

Though frozen in thought, the soldier can see those open arms growing closer, and closer, and closer. You’re two inches away from resting your hand on his hunk of vibranium when Bucky finally reacts, flinching out of a touch he doesn’t quite get to feel and turning away from you.

“I’m not pimping you out,” he shakes his head, voice stern and brow furrowed. “Not to Andrews. Not to anyone. You’re an agent, not an escort.”

“Honey traps have existed since way before your day and age-”

“I’m the leader of this team, my word is final,” for his own self-preservation, he’ll pretend he doesn’t notice the smile sliping down your face. “You’re not coming.”

Bucky’s beginning to doubt this team knows the definition of the word ‘leader’.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be dressed to the nines and looking like a ten, people-watching out the tinted window of a car in an effort to distract himself from your reflection in the glass and the cloud of titillating spice your perfume floats his way.

Of course you end up coming with him to Mr Andrews’ event, and so Bucky Barnes has to result to gaslighting himself into believing this is what he really wanted all along: him in another suit, you in another dress, and nothing between you but the thinning space of a middle seat. The illusion shatters each time he recalls that the silk resting atop your skin has been hand picked by the lawyer himself, delivered to Bucky’s office with a note that conveniently never found its way to you — For that pretty assistant of yours, Barnes. Tell her to wear nothing beneath.

The subtle strain of your hardened nipples has him uncomfortably aware that you’ve complied with Roland’s request, despite being none the wiser to its existence.

“Don’t drink anything you’re not there to witness being poured,” his throat is raw from the lack of use, the forty minute drive in silence nearly coming to an end as the grand gates to an estate come into view. “I don’t trust Rolland Andrews, there’s something… off.”

“Yes, James, that’s why we’re here.”

“Did you just-” His head finally turns away from the window to look at your image in full dimension, something more than just a poor-man’s imitation of you in the window. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

“Roll my eyes at you? Never, my dear leader!” And you have the audacity to offer him a mint, hand mid-rifle through your purse. He accepts it, and prays the sharp flavour on his tongue will be enough to calm the jitterbug traversing through his veins. “I was trying to catch a glimpse at my brain, that’s all.”

“The only chance of seeing your brain is with a microscope,” the gates open slowly, dramatically, and do nothing to aid in the soldier’s uneasy feeling.

“Have you ever considered becoming a motivational speaker?” You chirp, and cross your right leg over the other. “With words as kind as that, I feel empowered to take on the world!”

Once more, you’re a liability to Bucky, a distraction in the shape of a shin peeking out. He’s not usually so bothered by a woman’s skin… But when it belongs to someone he loathes entirely, it’s hard not to seeth at the sight of it.

At the top of an obnoxiously long driveway sits the Andrews estate, a courtyard mansion stripped right out of the Renaissance and sticking out like a sore thumb atop nine acres of flat terrain. Cars are queued up, one after the other, slowly rounding a central water feature, disposing of their passengers, and driving back out of the expensive lot. Unlike the Smithsonian, not a single member of the press is circling the masses with screeching questions or invasive cameras, and, in a twist not even the soldier expects, he almost wishes there was someone, if only to document whatever evil may take place beyond those walls.

“Tell little miss Totally-Spies she looks pretty,” for a moment, Bucky mistakes the voice for his subconscious… But no, it’s just Yelena, no doubt laughing at him all the way over on the Quinjet.

“What? No she doesn’t,” something bitter comes over his tongue. “Tell her yourself.”

“How can I tell her when she is not wearing a wire, genius?” Bucky takes a mental note, adding Yel to the list of women who have rolled their eyes at him this evening — so far, it's two for two. “Oh, and do you copy? Walker says to check our connections before you two step into your high-school Hydra reunion.”

“Of course I fucking copy-” He should have retired to a farm when he had the chance.

The evening does not unfold in the disastrous way Bucky anticipates — it’s even worse.

Barely a foot in the door, the man of the hour conjures before you both as if from thin air. He greets you first, hands laying themselves over all the right places to rile Bucky’s nerves as the man pulls you in to press a sloppy kiss against your cheek. The smile you shoot at the soldier is one of pacifism, a non-verbose reminder to remain calm and focus on the object of your mission.

Since he cannot spare you from Andrews’ wandering touch, Bucky intercepts the wine glass he attempts to hand you, swallowing it down in one large gulp with the blind hope that his super soldier serum has any possible inbuilt date-rape repellent.

Rolland Andrews is possessive, infectious  — an invasive species that is destroying the already endangered ecosystem of Bucky’s tolerance. As the night unfurls, he wears you like the watch on his wrist, a silent jewel perched on his arm and paraded throughout the room. Expected to smile and encouraged to stay quiet, you play your role to perfection. Bucky can’t help but watch you, study the way you shapeshift into someone he’s never met, a chameleon whose nature it is to blend in with her surroundings.

For hours, he’s forced to watch the light shade of your dress be eclipsed by the lawyer’s dark tux. Across the room or stood among the same circle of oligarchs, the sight of you burns his eyes all the same. To add salt into the agitated wound, he has yet to achieve a moment of real privacy with Andrews. And, so, the soldier decides you are not a distraction, but an obstruction.

If Bucky’s eyes stick to you like glue, it must be for two very simple, extremely logical, and completely impersonal reasons.

Firstly, despite the lack of respect he’s afforded by you all, he’s a good leader — a man made of responsibility, who has sworn to take care of his agents, no matter how often he flirts with the idea of you being kicked off the team. And, secondly, in hopes that you’ll notice the panicked widening of his eyes and help steer the lawyer into taking Bucky someplace private to resume their dealings from the Smithsonian’s gala.

It’s not until he finds himself in the mansion’s central courtyard, lost in a mass of swaying bodies and nursing his fourth whiskey on the rocks, that Bucky loses sight of you.

You’re gone, until you’re not. A glimmer of light in the corner of the soldier’s eye, beckoning him to look up. Row after row of empty balconies protrude from the mansion’s walls, staring down onto the festivities below. When he finally spots you, his stomach drops.

“Something’s wrong,” he reaches for the comms like it’s a crutch, something that will steady this uneasy feeling.

“Don’t be cryptic, Bucky,” Yelena’s voice rings through within a moment, somehow sounding equally alert as she is bored. “It does not suit you.”

Traveling over quicksand is easier than moving through this crowd — Bucky would know. He makes it seven steps, sight glued to you, before a solid figure forces him to look away.

After carving out a new path to get inside the home, his eyes find you right where they left you, “She’s on a top-floor balcony.”

“O…Kay? Are you worried she is going to fall in love with the view and betray us?”

“No!” His sudden outburst garners a few looks. Bucky pushes harder through the rows of bodies, neck tilting to watch how your dress dances in the wind. “No. It’s just… weird.”

To the left of you Bucky notices the blurry shape of Rolland Andrews. Were he as logical as you, perhaps he’d see this as the perfect opportunity to snatch a moment alone with the lawyer. Instead, all he sees is a threat at your side, causing a fresh wave of nausea to crash over him and his footsteps to fall a little faster.

“Why?”

“Because she’s afraid of heights,” the words are a reflex, pouring out of Bucky with no thought put behind them — the only thought he seems capable of is you.

“She is?” Walker jumps on the line. “When did she mention that?”

“She didn’t mention it,” an elbow digs into him as a woman stumbles over her heels and, suddenly, a martini glass smashes to pieces on the floor and the stench of vermouth stains his clothes. “I just noticed.”

“Oh, so you notice things now?”

“Don’t say it like that,” he quietly chastises Yelena as he side steps both the woman profusely apologising and the stranger approaching him with tissues in their hands.

There’s no time for interruptions or distractions, he needs to keep moving.

“Like what? This is just my voice.”

“Like there’s something you’re not saying.”

“Busted,” the Widow’s tone conjures outrage inside him, and stains his ears in hues of red. There’s a tight feeling in his chest, in his throat, uncomfortable and unwelcome as she continues to speak. “I’m just thinking how much someone needs to watch her to notice that.”

It only takes him a second to notice you are uncomfortable, cornered against the balcony’s ledge while the target of your mission hides his face in the crook of your neck, arms much stronger than your own caging you in.

Perhaps this is all the makings of Bucky’s own feelings, his own discomfort at the sight of an agent under his care being put in this position, somehow being irrationally projected up onto you. Too good at your job for your own good, never once has he known you to let your guard slip. Does your disdain of heights affect you so viscerally that it’s now cracking away at your hard-shell exterior?

A throat clears itself over the comms.

“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly hard to tell when you sit through a six hour flight with her bouncing her knee,” remembering to reply grows harder as he continues to search for a break in the crowd of foreign faces.

There’s an ache in Bucky’s neck, one that promises to be unforgiving when he wakes up tomorrow morning. Putting his pain on the backburner, he tilts his head back further.

“It must have been so hard for you,” something curls up inside his loins, ashamed, as Walker speaks, mockery bleeding through the speaker. “Wishing she was bouncing on your dick inste-”

“I’m going up. Get the jet as close as you can.”

The pieces fall into place in perfect harmony: a doorway back inside the mansion appears on his right, just as Rolland disappears off the balcony and leaves you all by yourself.

The ascent is one of desperation, a disgraced angel scrapping its way back up the stairway to Heaven. Bucky tackles the marble steps in pairs of twos and threes, using the length of his legs and the strength in his muscles as an advantage to cut down time. When he reaches the top floor, each breath is the result of a heaving chest and sweat is pooling at the base of his neck.

The third room on the left is where he finds you, back turned on the view of the courtyard and lip caught between your teeth.

“What are you doing out here?” He doesn’t mean to startle you, to have your shoulders jump in surprise at the sudden appearance of his voice, but it’s like he just can’t help himself, he cannot stand another moment of seeing you like this — hunched in on yourself, itching to be anywhere but where you stand.

“James,” amidst your fear, you’re still more level-headed than he’s ever been around you. While most see your disregard of your feelings and fright as another testament to your skills, he’s increasingly finding it to be a sign of recklessness. Would it kill you to put yourself first, for once? “Get lost! If Andrews comes back and finds-”

“Finds what?” Bucky challenges as he steps out onto the balcony. There’s your perfume to greet him, again, washing over him with the breeze of the night. “Me speaking to my assistant?”

A stare-off ensues, one that gives him far too much time to notice how the moon sits reflected amidst a pool of stars in your eyes, then you finally huff in defeat, “Dammit, you’re right.”

“For once.”

“Feels nice, doesn’t it?”

Something else feels nice when he catches a glimpse of your smile.

Not the sly, temptress curls of your lips you’ve been shooting at Rolland all night, but the loud smile — the one that puts your teeth on display, and pushes the swells of your cheeks up, and wrinkles the corners of your eyes. Bright and real, the kind that lights up the whole tower when it's an ungodly hour and you spot Bucky emerging into view as you dig into your usual midnight snacks.

A heavy gust of wind arrives to remind you of where you are, sweeping the smile right off your lips.

Anxious feet dance beneath the trail of your dress, the click of heel upon marble reaching his ears. As any good leader should, he takes a step closer and takes a hold of your wrist, too aware of the shake in your hands to fully envelope them with his own. He moves one step back towards the room and beckons you to follow.

“Come on, let’s get you away from the ledge-”

“Wait, just a second,” you’re turning to fully face him, invading his space.

For a moment, it feels like the world is caving in around you both, the walls of the universe nullifying the distance between you with a force greater than gravity. All he can see, all he can smell, all he can feel is you. His lungs are running out of oxygen. When was the last time he took a breath?

You’re in the air, and in his eyes, and pressing a single finger to his cheek.

“You’ve got something on your face, righttt… Here!” You inch back enough to display your pride and joy to him, a single eyelash perched on the tip of your finger. How is it that something so tiny, so inconsequential can capture your attention so easily, while Bucky — for all his power, and all his valor, and all his strength — can barely get you to look at him most days? “Make a wish.”

A myriad of words dangle off the tip of his tongue, thoughts that have echoed through his head from the moment you stepped foot into his life — not just as a ghost in Steve’s stories, but as someone tangible, and real, and blood-boiling. I wish you would… Leave the team, stop helping, notice when I clean your gun, realise it’s not Bob who keeps ordering all the food you like, acknowledge that I don’t like you, inch closer and kiss me.

He doesn’t get to make a single wish.

All he gets is the harrowing view of playful eyes staring at him, unaware of the glowing red dot dancing up the length of your face before coming to a halt at your temple.

With no time to alert you, Bucky pulls your frame against his and dives back into the room as a bullet cuts through the air. Both of you tumble to the ground in a tangle of limbs before the soldier hauls you behind the wall. With the comfort of you hovering at his back, tucked safely against him, he peeks his head out just in time to catch the sniper’s laser stretched out across the courtyard. A second shot is fired, and a window is blown to smithereens.

“We’ve got an active shooter situation,” he barks into his microphone, ducking out for another glimpse at the sniper’s location. “Third floor, west wing, can’t tell which room.”

“James,” he barely registers the soft call of his name.

“On it,” Yelena responds, a thread of ease to weave his fraying mind back together.

“James.”

“You two get to the roof, I’m bringing the jet around,” as John’s voice fills the line, so does the sound of the plane’s engine.

Selfish as he is, Bucky can’t just walk away from tonight, can’t let you being put in harm’s way, again, all be for nothing.

“Leaving compromises the mission, Walker. I need to speak with Andrews first-”

“Bucky!”

The soldier’s neck snaps to look at you, a rush of whiplash burning down the left side. The yell knocks something out of you, your back slowly descending down the length of the wall while your legs give out beneath you. Like a mirror, he mimics your movements, coming to a crouch beside you on the cold floor.

Bucky can no longer smell the spice of your perfume. Now there is only metal, something sticky that drags down his throat upon inhaling and fights its way out of him. Sickly sweet and traumatically familiar, his limbs freeze in its presence.

“You’re bleeding,” he speaks with wonder, disgust, disbelief as a river of red flows down the length of your left leg.

“Listen to me,” there’s an eerie calm in the way you’re speaking, one that does not pair well with the way your hands tremble through their attempts to drag your dress up. Four hands work faster than two, and so his own join you in your mission, flinching to grab at the meat of your thigh upon the wound coming into view. “I need you to make me a tourniquet.”

“Andrews set this up,” his eyes feel like they’re about to fall out their sockets, opened wide and refusing to blink as his brain short circuits out of control. Nothing seems to be making sense. He spotted the sniper, just in time, and got you away from the danger. So why is there a bullet lodged in your upper thigh and why are his hands stained with your blood? “That sniper was meant to kill-”

“Hey!” There’s a sharp sting against his scalp and his attention jumps right up to your face. “Snap out of it. You keep saying you’re the leader of our team, yeah?” He nods into the grip of your fingers, letting the tension of straining strands knock the sense back into him “So be a leader, cut off the bleeding, and get us both out of here. Alive.”

The skirt of your dress winds up ripped in half and tightened in a knot around your upper thigh. You shoulder the pain like a champion, quiet and unbothered if not for the grip he lets your nails dig into his arms with, and the permanent indent of your teeth clamping down onto your lip. Eased back onto your feet, the soldier tolerates a total of three winced steps before he’s scooping you up into his arms and against his chest, silencing your protests with a pointed look.

“There’s a door at the end of this hallway, around the corner,” your voice is methodical, running through words like they’re programmed to come out of you rather than something you’re conjuring with your own mind. “That should get us up to the roof.”

“How do you know that?” He’s moving as carefully as he can, painfully aware of your blood drying into his skin. 

“Lesson one, James,” the return of his first name has never stung so much. “Always know the layout before you enter a building.”

A shot rings out from behind before he can respond.

Emerging from the stairway is one of Andrews’ bodyguards, weapon on display as he openly fires at you both. Bucky doesn’t even have to tell you to reach into the hidden compartment of his suit, your fingers already fishing out his gun and pointing it over his shoulder.

The guard fires again and Bucky ducks to the right, leaving the bullet to lodge itself in the wall. As he picks up his pace, you fire a few rounds back at your attacker.

“Instead of wasting our bullets, maybe try aiming next time,” Bucky snaps as you blow out a window.

“Sorry, aims a little shaky right now on account of the whole bleeding out thing,” you fire and miss, again. “They don’t exactly teach you this at spy school!”

“Spy school?” He parrots back, readjusting his grip on you.

The end of the hallway is close enough he can taste the sweetness of freedom and the chill of the night air.

“Less questioning my methods of distracting myself with humour,” a final shot rings out in Bucky’s ear before he hears the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor. “More getting us to safety.”

Yelena is already awaiting you both as you reach the rooftop, a spray of someone else’s blood across her cheek. The pair work in unison to move you onto Bucky’s back and, as the familiar shape of the jet comes into view, the soldier warns you to hold on tight before grabbing hold of the dangling rope ladder. Climbing his way up to safety, Yelena follows close behind.

“Get us out of here, Walker!” Bucky’s quietly thankful for the blonde’s outburst, too busy tending to you to take control of the situation.

Guiding your frame down to the floor, his hand finds your face, your skin cold to touch despite the sweat dripping down your forehead.

“Tell me again how your plans always work,” he says in an effort to keep you awake, the weight of your eyelids growing with each slow blink you take.

The war zone of your leg is too much to handle, yet something compels him to take a peak, turning his own stomach at the bloody wound. Were he more sane of mind, he’d question why it’s affecting him so gravely after a whole century of working in the field of guts and gore. Tightening the bloodied scraps of your dress is of far more immediate concern to the soldier.

“Don’t go throwing your ‘I told you so’ party yet,” your voice is weaker than he’s used to, none of that calm confidence that shakes up his bones. Uneasy fingers tear the necklace off your neck and drop it into his palm, flipping the feature gemstone over and presenting a nearly unnoticeable bug microphone. “Let’s just say Andrews gets mouthy when he gets touchy.”

Bucky replaces you with a new enemy — time.

Where it used to fly, now, clipped of its wings, it crawls. There’s a drag behind every second, a noticeable existence surrounds every minute. Hours turn to days, and days fade into weeks. Midday in the tower is chaos, no level-headed voice to break through the yelling egos, while his midnights are quiet, somber, absent of any loud smiles when he creeps into the kitchen for a glass of water.

You being kicked off the team was never supposed to go like this.

It was supposed to be harm-free, a necessary solution to the problem of your hazardous lifestyle. It wasn’t supposed to be due to a bullet slicing right through your thigh, forcing you into temporary sick leave.

Worst of all, Valentina refuses to give up your location — citing some bullshit excuse about protecting your rehabilitation from any distractions. The soldier would sooner believe it’s the team she means to save from distraction, prying their focus away from whatever awful, stomach-turning, mind-numbing state you’re in.

Five months have passed, winter has brought destitution, and the team has slowly winnowed down those involved in the Andrews’ conspiracy to reestablish Hydra. Thanks to your little bugging trick, Rolland’s hands now only touch the steel bars of a jail cell, his father’s enterprise of tax fraud has at last been brought down, and any real hope of seeing you fully removed from your role as spy has fled Bucky’s grasp.

What is in his grasp, however, is the handle to your bedroom.

One turn of the latch and he confirms what he already knows awaits him beyond the door: an empty room full of your absence. It’s a cruel ritual that takes place when the soldier finds himself alone in the tower — John is visiting his kid, Ava and Yelena are somewhere in Europe working on extraditing someone, Alexei and Bob are in the West Coast negotiating PR deals. And Bucky is completely alone. Or, at least, he should be.

Until he hears a crash followed by a slew of words a nun would never dare repeat.

Knife in hand, Bucky treads through the tower with practiced ease, a silence in his steps reminiscent of his days as an assassin. He sticks to shadows, avoids any sparse ray of sunshine bleeding in through the windows as he clears the place, room by room. On his way past the empty maintenance room, the intruder makes noise once more and alerts him to their location: the training room.

Carefully pushing the door open, the last thing he expects is a high-pitched scream.

“Oh my god, James!” Hand clutched to your chest, your back is hunched over in search of both a steady heartbeat and breath. “Why are you sneaking around like some crazed serial killer?”

“Me?” The heavy door slams behind him as he pushes further into the room, the mirrors that circle the room reflecting his slow approach towards you and the way he safely tucks his knife away. “You’re the one banging around the place like a burglar!”

“Oh please, who on Earth- No, actually, in the entire universe would want to steal your stinky vests and rusty weights?”

He knows that he should reply, that he shouldn’t settle for you speaking to him in such a way. But he can’t. Not when you step out fully from behind the leg press and put your skin on display, the tiniest pair of black running shorts clinging to the plush of your thighs.

The visible loss of muscle definition is to be expected, yet it still hits him in the chest like a sledgehammer, knocking the wind right out of his lungs. The lack of usual bruising should be a comfort, yet it pulls on one of his heartstrings until it snaps, another reminder of how you’ve been out of commission. And then there is the scar.

Resting atop the outside of your left thigh is a patch of fresh skin. It stands out in both its colour and texture — an almost waxy, freshly polished finish behind the way it reflects the angry white lights of the training room ceiling. The scar tissue is new, gnarly, and squeezing at his throat with its existence.

You weren’t supposed to get hurt.

“What are you doing here anyway?” He forces himself to speak, and rips his eyes away from your thighs in search of distraction.

“I was going to do some weight training but, as you can see,” your outstretched hands point at the cluster of fallen weight disks. “The whole thing decided to collapse on me.”

“You’re supposed to be on medical leave,” there’s a pinch in Bucky’s forehead as he pries you away from picking up the mess, the permanent frown you rouse in him at long last returned. “How are you still finding ways to be a nuisance?”

An evil torturer wrapped in lycra, you reach for something to the right of him as he’s knelt down to grab the final disk, putting your legs perfectly on display before him.

“It’s all for the love of the game, James.” At your airy giggle, he looks up and finds you smiling down at him, one hand slipping inside a familiar boxing glove before you’re landing a cushioned, mock-punch against his cheek. “We should spar.”

You’ve changed your shower gel. Bucky can smell it on your skin: once a wall of musk and earth, now layers of something fruity and floral. The deep inhale that follows is intended to stabilise him but only seems to unnerve him even more.

“Not happening,” he tries to grab at your wrist, but you twist it out of the way, leaving his hand to brush over your midriff. “Leave.”

“But I just got here,” you whine, and Bucky must be suffering from an injury of his own — a concussion, perhaps — because something carnal is melting into his loins at the sound, sight, smell of you. “Do you know how hard it was to get Valentina off my back? C’mon, train with me.”

“I’m not fighting you,” at last successfully grabbing a hold of you, he rips his boxing glove off your hand and tosses it over his shoulder to land elsewhere in the room. “You’re injured.”

There’s a downside to capturing you: you’re touching him now, too, prying his hand off your wrist and leading it southbound.

“Pft, that was a flesh wound! See?” You press him against your thigh, the ghost of a gunshot beneath his fingertips almost enough to distract him from the warmth of your flesh. Almost, because he feels it, just like he feels you: alive, present, tempting. “I’m fine, so fight me, Barnes.”

A lingering brush along your thigh follows the soldier’s ascent, snagging on the hem of your shorts as he rises off his knees and towers over you. His hand snaps back to his side like it’s just touched open flame, skin blistering under the heat of feeling you, rebuking your touch.

“No,” he brushes past you, shoulder bumping shoulder, and manages no more than five steps.

“Winner chooses the punishment,” you barter, delicate fingers grasping around Bucky’s forearm and holding him in place in the centre of the training room. It doesn’t matter where his eyes run to hide, he sees you in every mirrored crevice of the walls. “Any punishment.”

The fighting tug he puts up against you is powerless, a flicker of the strength coursing through the livewires of his veins, but it’s easier than letting himself believe he’s giving himself up to your will.

A pause of intense staring between you both persists until the soldier cracks like an egg, “As soon as you surrender, you’re going back on sick leave.”

“Surrender’s a big word for you, James,” you wink and he feels himself falter. “Better get used to the shape of it in your mouth.”

Bucky’s not at all disappointed when you drop his arm in exchange for stretching out your muscles. Not one bit. That deepening of his frown? It’s nothing more than a side effect of realising he truly has to fight you just to get you to obey.

Facing each other, hands raised to the level of your eyes, the faux battle commences. Where the soldier pulls his strength, resulting to grappling with your punches and blocking the swipes to take at his feet, you ram full speed ahead. A kick to his shin, a knee to his guts, a failed attempt at tangling your legs around his neck — it seems Yelena has been training you in the Widows’ specialty.

You get the better of Bucky, eventually, taking advantage of the pause in his strategy that comes at the flinch of returning your injured leg to the ground. His right foot goes first, kicked out from behind, and then your shoulder shoves into him and knocks him on his ass.

“Best of three,” and he’s back on his feet within seconds, cutting off your incoming declaration of victory.

The second round is tougher, longer, one that doesn’t feature Bucky being as delicate as before. Still playing nothing but defense, his hands simply grab a little rougher, hold a little tighter, restrict your movements a little harder than before. You lift your leg and attempt to swing it at his face but the soldier is faster, grabbing your ankle with a firm squeeze and flipping you over.

But you like to play dirty.

A hand balling at his shirt, fingers that tighten their grip and rip him down alongside you. The cotton tears in two, all the while his vibranium arm flies out just in time to break his fall and save you from shouldering the entirety of his weight collapsing atop you.

Two chests that move in perfect sync — for each of his inhales, you exhale, and vice versa. Your limbs are both a tangled web of legs and arms, and your faces are suffocatingly slow, the warmth of your breath melting at his skin until a bead of his sweat drips down and lands on your lips. Holding his gaze with your own, your tongue licks off his residue and reaffirms why Bucky Barnes will always hate you.

“You’re reckless,” he seethes in your face, teeth bared like a feral animal as he slowly presses more of his weight down onto you — not completely, just enough to make you struggle through your next breath and give you a burn of the fire you insist on playing with. “You know that? Conceited, too, always bragging about your little plans that only work when something goes wrong.”

A light flickers overhead and his shadow casts over you a little darker, a little more all consuming, smothering you beneath the figurative weight of his outline. 

“And you’re selfish,” he continues with no protest from you, lips slightly parted as you gaze up at him from your brows, a salacious parody of the famed Kubrick stare. “You don’t give a shit about how you distract me from doing my job when you go off script and make me worry about you.”

His mouth is a loose cannon, firing off thoughts he’s kept hidden under lock and key for far too long. It’s electrifying, freeing, sending a buzz of pent up energy right down to his toes as he spreads your legs with his own and presses even more of himself against you, pinning you to the foam mat beneath.

Motionless and trapped, you blink up at him with the desperation of prey longing to be free.

“You thinking of saying anything,” he quirks a brow, biting back the satisfied smile twitching at his cheek. “Or are you just going to keep fawning at me like a little doe?”

The glaze over your eyes fades away into something far more sinful, far more daring, as a fit of giggles bubbles out from your chest.

“Can’t you feel it, James?” You shift beneath him. “You’re hard.”

Denial is freezing cold, turning him into an iceberg — the real danger lurks beneath the surface of his Calvin Klein’s and is currently poking against your inner thigh.

Fury resolved through friction, you roll your hips up into him and render him useless, mouth agape in a broken attempt at capturing a grounding breath.

That’s all it takes for Bucky’s entire world to tilt over its axis as he’s flipped onto his back. Instead of the ceiling, his eyes find you, sitting atop his torso and pinning him between your legs. He tries to tilt his head down, better his view of your shorts riding up, but he’s met with an immovable force pressed against his neck.

“Close your mouth, James,” your hips swivel, inching up his body, and the blade of his own knife tickles his skin. “You’ll catch a doe. Or, actually, the doe will catch you.”

Try as he might, he can’t seem to pick up his jaw as you struggle to get comfortable atop him, the search for a seat quickly dissolving into a search for traction, your knees digging into the mat on either side of him while you cant your pelvis back and forth.

You pry off the tattered remains of his shirt with one hand while reinforcing the other’s grip on Bucky’s knife, the sweet sting of an almost cut teasing at his neck.

“I thought we were fighting,” an expert at self-sabotage, the soldier can think of nothing better to say to ruin this moment.

“Who says we’re not?” You chirp, tilting your head to the side and gifting him the inquisitive look of a puppy. “I am holding a knife to your throat.”

The blade scrapes at his skin as he swallows down a ball of nerves, a sharpened edge that effortlessly slices along his three-day long stubble. His body, more treacherous to itself than the days of mind-control, responds to you grinding against him by tightening the strain beneath the layers of gym shorts and boxers.

“Then hurry up and put me out of my misery,” he grits out, unsure of how exactly he wants you to do so.

Would slicing his neck work? It would certainly be a finite solution, if you did it right, a permanent end to his days of playing the role of dog herding up the headless sheep of so-called New Avengers. Maybe his request is not quite as dramatic, an exaggerated plea to be put back on his feet to spar with you one last time before he sends you on your un-merry way back to quiet nights and days of rehabilitation.

“I suppose, if you’re bored, you could always just…” you pause for dramatic effect, rolling your hips as you roll your tongue. “Surrender.”

The fever brewing in his loins, in his chest, all over his body has him fearing the worst — that he wants you like this, mounted atop him, one hand to his throat and the other laid flat above his racing heart.

No sooner than that wave of fear crashes over him, the knife begins to journey down his skin. Delicate as glass, you drag its pointed edge over the curve of his collarbone, through the valley of his chest, over the bumps and ridges of his abdomen. When the blade reaches the blockade of your body, you let it dance over your skin too. The soldier holds his breath as he watches it slip over your scar.

“You’re so good at sharpening knives, James. I bet this could just-” hooking his knife beneath the waistband of your shorts, an effortless flick of your wrist is all it takes to bring the fabric to ruins. “Cut right through cloth.”

When Bucky woke up this morning, he went back to bed.

Not for long, barely clocking in an extra twenty minutes of sleep. Realistically, he had not truly been tired — it was about principle, about enjoying one morning to himself where no one was going to interrupt him with news of the kitchen burning down or a world-ending crisis.

Right now, as he flickers all over the shape of you — naked from the waist down, pussy slicked by your own arousal and hovering a few inches above his skin — the soldier’s not so sure he ever did wake up.

You must be a dream.

“Fucking Christ,” is the tamest of things that come to his mind as he watches you.

And, oh, does he watch.

Eyes turned to steal, a metal force that locks them in place, unmoving and unblinking as you bring the knife to your core. Flat on its side, the sharp edge and its pointed tip angled safely away from the puffy, delicate, desperate flesh of your cunt, you draw the weapon up over the glistening folds and against the hidden pearl of your clit.

“Say ah,” is your only command as you bring the knife up to his mouth, where instinct has betrayed him and presented his tongue to you.

The taste of you stains his blade, a mouthwatering tingle against his taste buds that hijacks his system and hardwires a new addiction into him. Never again will he sink his knife into an opponent and not think of this, of you. You’ve cursed him forever, a hindrance that will haunt him even when you don’t.

You’re back to grinding against him, skin pressed to skin. Over his abdomen is a trail of your wetness that, upon noticing it, has his arm gripping at your undulating hips and guiding them down harder against him. There’s something magnetic in the way you move, holding his focus to every half-gasped moan that ripples out of you, and every strain of your muscles, and every roll back of your eyes.

It’s all so appetising, he could eat you.

“If you’re going to rut against me like a bitch in heat, at least do it on my face.”

“That’s no way to speak to a woman wielding a weapon,” despite the warning, you give no protest to the way his hands are leading you up and over his body.

Your knees now knocking at each side of his neck, the soldier salivates as you sit against his chest, your sweet pussy teasing him, too close and not close enough.

“What are you waiting for?” Bucky gruffs out, all his confusing feelings drowning in the pools of your eyes.

“Nothing,” the gentle shift in your voice has him stilling, heart sucked up into a mini-tornado before it lurches back into his chest. When your hand cups his face, he wonders what he did to deserve it. “Just admiring the view.”

“You can admire it from here,” the soldier regains some of his sanity in manoeuvring you up to his mouth.

You sink down onto his face and Bucky goes to heaven. Quite literally dies and meets his god — goddess.

Flattening his tongue, the soldier licks a tentative stripe up your cunt, hands squeezing tight against your waist and halting your attempt to flee from his touch. Once you’re secured in his hold, he’s diving deeper, tongue claiming ownership of your body for as long as you’ll allow him.

Sweet and heady, he smells your arousal all around him as your hips rejoin the dance in honour of your pleasure, the tip of his nose bumping against your clit once, then twice, then a third prolonged time while he presses you fully down on his face.

“God, James,” a full-chested moan ripples out of you and his knife at last slips out your grasp, meeting the floor with a cushioned thud.

Bucky has always known you would be the death of him, he just never imagined he would die like this. Tongue buried in the tight walls of your cunt, nose nestling into the repeated ruts of your clit, the all-consuming, brain-melting, life-changing weight of you pushed down on his face. If he’s to suffocate between your thighs, he’ll go happily into whatever after-life awaits him.

The soldier shifts his legs, bending them at the knee and planting both feet on the ground, driving your lustful stare away from his and glancing over your shoulder instead.

“Are you pitching that tent just for me,” you turn further around, one hand sliding over the expanse of his abdomen and dipping its fingers beneath his waistband. “Or are you always this hard during fights?”

Much to his own reluctance, Bucky lifts you off his mouth.

“Bit of both,” a featherlike touch brushes over the tip of his aching cock and nearly drives him feral, a hiss caught between his teeth before he sinks them into the meat of your thigh. “Fighting’s an adrenaline rush.”

“Then what am I?” You barely manage, voice divulging into a gasp as he bites you again, harder, tattooing indents of his teeth into your supple skin.

“You,” he drags the word out, just like he drags a soothing lick of his tongue over his bite mark. “Are a pain in the ass.”

The soldier can feel you trying to tug down his shorts but the angle is awkward and, for every inch of skin you reveal, the waistband slips up another two inches. And while it rouses a frustrated sigh out of you, it’s fully driving him into the depths of desperation, the epicentre of his heartbeat shifting from a thump in his chest to a throb in his dick.

So he’s more than complicit when you do a one-eighty.

“Since I’m such a pain in the ass,” you arch your back, pawing your way down the expanse of him, and Bucky swears he witnesses your hole wink at him, sticky and wet and inviting him back in for another taste as it hovers above his face. “Enjoy the view of mine.”

Each side of you sinks down on him in sync, your cunt against his lips and your mouth around his cock. You become everything, all his, grinding your hips against his tongue while your own lathers itself in the salty taste of his skin, gliding up the length of his dick.

Bucky’s left hand grips at your thigh while the other imprints his fingertips into the globe of your ass cheek, grounding himself with a squeeze of your flesh amidst the hazy clouds of pleasure that threaten to swallow you both whole.

The soldier decides you must be a masterpiece, crafted by the hands of a visionary genius and lost to the hands of time, only to wind up here, tangled atop the training mat with him, feeding him with a honey of sin and moulding something new out of him with a hand steadying the base of his cock while you swallow down all you can take of him. Even then, it’s not enough for Bucky.

His own hips lift off the floor, feeding an inch of two more into your gaping mouth before he soon hits the back of your throat.

“Wish I could see it,” the rasp in his throat makes it hard to speak, while the feeling of you gagging on his dick makes it hard to think. “That pretty little mouth of yours finally being put to good use.”

His fingers seek you out, passing over the puckered hole of your ass before burrowing themselves — middle and ring — into your cunt. While your hand busies itself massaging your drool along his shaft and over his balls, he’s switching between beckoning you towards him with curling fingers, pressing against the gummy walls of your pussy, and scissoring you open while his tongue laps up the molten pleasure you spill over his knuckles.

“There you go, doll,” there’s a thrill to running his mouth, unabashed and unguarded, spewing out the first obscenity that pops in his head and watching how you viscerally react, a whining, moaning, desperate thing falling apart just for him, because of him. “Take him as deep as you need. Practically begging me to paint that mouth white, aren’t you?”

You bob your head over him, the vibrations of your moans shooting right down to his base and pulling his balls tight and desperate for release.

“Want you to cum down my throat, James,” you grind back against him as he mouths at your clit. “Wanna taste how you surrender.”

That word snaps Bucky’s mind back into place, awakens him like a sleeper agent.

In a matter of seconds, you go from straddling his face to being shoved onto all fours atop the training mat, manhandled like the perfect ragdoll he wants you to be. Malleable and manipulated into whatever position, angle, hole he wants from you.

Even a saint, when faced with the sight of your arching back, couldn’t hold themselves back from landing a skin-tingling slap against your ass — and the soldier is no saint. The spank is not enough to bruise, just enough to have you choking on a breath and keening back into the apologetic kiss he soothes the stinging flesh with.

“Please, oh god,” you moan when, for old times sakes, Bucky helps himself to another taste of you, tongue prodding at your hole from behind.

“Don’t reckon he’s willing to save you now,” he punctuates his snark by spitting on your hole — not because you need the extra lubrication, but because he craves to see you dripping in at least one of his fluids.

You melt away the minute his cock enters you — one fatal thrust of his hips that burrows him all the way to the hilt inside of your dripping pussy — your arms giving out beneath the weight of your body and winding up outstretched along the floor as your face meets the ground too.

One shallow thrust, a barely-there roll back of his hips, and he feels your walls squeezing to hold him inside.

“‘S this what you were needing, huh?” The hand gripping at your waist is gentle, soothing, his thumb rubbing over your skin, yet his tone is anything but — authoritative, chastising, in charge. “All those times I berated you over your misactions, who knew I should’ve just tried fucking some sense into you.”

“Bucky,” your voice is muffled against the foam mat.

“Oh so now you want to call me that,” he tries another thrust, eyes glued to the view of his length retreating from the grip of your pussy lips, covered in your juices. “Finally feel close enough to me now that I’ve got you stuffed full?”

“So full,” you’re babbling and drooling, a wet patch forming just below where you press your cheek against the floor and glance back at him.

“You wanted to fight me, so go on,” it nearly kills him to pry his hands off you. “Use those hips like a fucking weapon.”

The soldier can tell it takes a moment for you to process his words, eyes glazed over as you gape at him from the floor, but you catch on eventually. Clench your walls, take a deep breath, and at last begin moving.

You fuck yourself back against his cock in slow, stuttered movements, fingers flexing along the floor in search of a piece of reality to grip at while your nails press into the foam, permanently marking the training room with evidence of your reckoning. The view is enthralling and tongue-tying, driving him mad in search of appraising words that falter into nothing but pleased hums.

His hands resist the urge to touch you, to guide you back against him, too stubborn in his desire to see you work for it, work for him. A pathetic mess sprawled out on the floor, yearning for any friction you can get from holding his cock snug within your walls and rutting your hips back against his own.

Bucky can only deny temptation for so long.

“Shh, atta girl,” every drop of mockery in his tone is intentional, heartfelt, his pity for you only going far enough to rouse a faux pout on his lips as he starts to meet your cunt with thrusts of his own and watches you start to sing a broken melody of moans and whines. “I know he’s big but you’re taking him like a champ, she’s taking me like a champ.”

A hand skirts down the expanse of your spine, enhancing the arch of your back as his hips slowly start to dig out a rhythm, fucking you deeper, harder, better. By the time his fingers reach the back of your neck, he’s forcing your head down against the ground and relishing in the sound of his balls slapping against your soaked folds as he works his dick inside of you.

One glance ahead sends Bucky down a new avenue of desire, something more primal and carnal stirring in his guts.

“Look at us,” his words are drawn out by wonder as the hand at your neck rearranges your head until your chin is pressing into the mat and your eyes face forward, meeting his steely blues in the mirror. “This is how it’s supposed to be. The leader on top, and you grovelling on your knees.”

Your reflections are nothing but sin, capturing every movement that passes between you both. The perfect dance of how your body welcomes him in. The way the soldier’s mouth gapes open, firing off capricious words and man-whore moans. The way your eyes are borderline lost behind your eyelids.

That last one has Bucky outraged, resolute to change the attention you give to the mirror.

The hand at your neck curls around the front and hooks you in the grasp of his elbow, before Bucky’s yanking you up, your back to his chest while he holds you in a headlock.

“You’re too perfect like this to miss, sweetheart,” he croons in your ear, eyes pinned to both your reflections. “So look.”

“James,” his name sounds like a blessing, brought out in your time of need.

He echoes your own name back to you, pleased to find your eyes blown wide open and equally as enraptured as he is by the show you’re both putting on. 

Your hands find his bicep and cradle the capture it’s taken over your throat. Bucky finds himself wishing he’d peeled your top off, the tight fit compression gear denying him the luxury of watching your breasts bounce alongside his ministrations. Before he can lament for too long, his free hand graces over the scar in your thigh and there’s something more pressing that upsets him.

“That bullet was meant for your head,” a gasped out confession, interrupted by your hips grinding down on him. “I nearly watched you die. You think that’s fair?”

He hates the way you shrug, like the prospect of being permanently gone means nothing to you, “You still would’ve- Ahh- Caught Andrews.”

“I didn’t give a shit about him,” his face turns towards yours, nose flattened against the side of your temple as his lips brush over your cheek, breathing you in. “It would’ve all been for nothing if I lost you.”

“James,” you whisper, his thrusts brought to a complete halt under the intensity of your eyes — your real eyes, not a reflection — finding his own when you turn to face him. “I’m right here.”

He blinks, slow, and when his eyelids reopen, you’re still there for him to behold. Infuriating, blood-curling, heart-shaking you and that loud smile.

You give him what he needs most, hand finding his jaw and your lips meeting his. The kiss is careful and composed, an explorative union of mouths, until it’s not. Until he’s desperate, hungering for more of you, his tongue brushing into your awaiting mouth and his lips moulding themselves against yours in hopes they fuse you both together, forever.

Bucky finds it impossible to turn away from you, so you do it for him, fingers gripping at his jaw and forcing his gaze forward again, bringing him back to where he needs to be. In this room, with you in his arms and him in your cunt, equal players in this game of pleasure.

One last kiss seared down into your shoulder and the soldier’s back to fucking you properly, winding his hips back just to admire the way you welcome his whole length, embrace his whole girth so pliantly. There’s an end in sight, one that promises momentary bliss, and all he wants is to take you there, to the very brink of ecstasy.

“D’you want to cum?” He slurs in your ear, the hand at your thigh snaking its way over to pinch at your clit. “Yeah? Then say you surrender.”

“You surrender,” and, oh, you must feel so smart, his beautiful vixen, a choir of giggles spilling out of you.

He tightens his hold around your throat, flexes the muscle in his arm, and watches how the silence is choked into you, no noise remaining but a broken moan.

“C’mon, baby,” Bucky needs it, just as much as you do, that greenlight to finally let himself explode. “Wanna feel her squeeze me real tight. Say it, for me.”

“I sur-” You’re cut off by your own pleasure, a half-shrieked scream that rips out of you while the soldier does the impossible and, tilting at a new angle, fucks deeper, tip bumping against what has to be your cervix.

“Uh-huh, that’s it,” the mirror spills all his secrets and feeds you the sight of his kisses being peppered up your neck, against your cheek, and sweat-soaked strands of hair that sit glued to his forehead. “Say it nice and clear for me.”

“I surrender,” you manage the full word, barely, and Bucky’s so proud of it, of you.

Of how you fall apart for him, hands grabbing at his arm in search of something grounding amidst the chaos of your shaky legs, and spasming walls, and weepy eyes. Of how you give yourself up to him, let him guide you through the blinding haze of your orgasm, cunt swallowing every subtle nudge his dick bullies into it. Of how pretty you gasp his names for him, a spillage of Jameses and Buckys all over the training room floor.

And of how, as his own orgasm crashes over him, you help him too, don’t even protest when his cock leaves you empty, slipping out only to search for friction between your two thighs. You squeeze them around him, marvel at the blush of his leaking tip as it rocks back and forth up to your clit.

When Bucky spills at last, it’s with his teeth clamped down on your shoulder and a hand clutching at your thigh as the thick, hot, white ropes of his cum paint your skin.

Exhaustion melts you both to the floor. A few moments in grasping at breaths pass before his hands are turning you around, in search of your face. When he finds it, there’s still a challenge in your eye.

“I lost,” you concede. “What’s my punishment, sergeant?”

The only response he can muster is to roll his hips.

Seasons ebb and flow into new ones.

Spring blooms and brings flowers into Bucky’s life, a handful a week delivered discreetly in the dark of a midnight rendezvous. With summer comes the heat — in both the temperature and the accusatory looks from the team each time his hand lingers on you during debriefs. In autumn, the leaves come crashing down alongside the truth, a pile of ‘I knew it!’s mixed in with the disgruntled paying of debts to Alexei for winning the ‘When Will They Tell Us?’ betting pool. And now, a whole year passed in the blink of four eyes, winter has returned.

More aggressive than ever, it seems, as Bucky stares out the window to a sea of desolate white.

Perhaps it's not so much about the season as it is about his location, the clue very much being in the name: Iceland.

“Come back to bed,” a soft drawl from behind him, the gentle rustle of limbs stretching over a mattress. “It’s cold, James.”

Of course you’re cold, naked atop the wrinkled sheets with his fingerprints burned into your skin and his cum leaking out your slit.

The soldier rolls his eyes in feigned annoyance, turning away from the fogged up window and crossing over the creaking floorboards to rejoin you, grabbing the blanket — discarded during earlier activities — off the ground.

“That snow’s showing no sign of stopping,” he shares the observation as he crawls up the bed to you, lips brushing over your skin as he goes. At the top of your thigh, he pauses, takes the effort to kiss the marred skin gently, a silent ritual where he gets to thank whatever power in the universe delivered the bullet there instead of your skull. “We’ll be trapped here at least another night.”

“Oh no, what a shame!” Grabby hands that hook under his arms to drag him the rest of the way up to you. “I guess we’ll just have to keep warm somehow.”

The soldier holds you how he knows you like it best: his left arm as your pillow, his right one resting at your neck, and his legs tangled in yours in an indecipherable mess. Silence lasts but a second or two before his thoughts get the better of him, memories of how wrong the first part of today had gone with the arrival of the blizzard.

“Am I allowed to say I told you so yet?” Even with your eyes closed, he knows you’re aware of the teasing smile on his face.

“Do you really think I don’t know how to check a weather app?” 

“You’re seriously stalling us both here while there’s bad guys to be caught.”

“There’s always bad guys to be caught,” your fingers flex in the grasp of his own, a satisfied sigh sweeping through your chest as you find warmth at last. Not from any blanket resting heavy on you, but from him and the way he holds you. “There’s not always a snowed-in cabin, or time to enjoy having my half-naked hunk in bed with me.”

“You’re making me irresponsible,” still, Bucky’s resting further into the pillow beneath his head, eyes welcoming the dark.

“When it comes to me, you’ve always been irresponsible.”

He has, and he hates it. Loathes it with every fibre of his being.

The worst thing about loving you is how entirely it consumes him.

“...Six, seven, eight,” you whisper out into the dark of the cabin.

“Mhmm,” a hand finds your thigh, fingertips tracing manmade constellations into your skin. “What are you counting?”

“Your heartbeat.”

+ extra hyde.

· my headcanon of bucky being incapable of processing emotions manifests in two ways: 1) unspoken yet undying devotion (manchild!bucky) and 2) deducing that any positive feeling must actually be a negative one because that's all he's ever known & thus mistaking love for hatred (the loser bucky present in this fic) · besties, somebody needs to throw me an intervention on how to properly list warnings on a fic, it's getting ridiculous. · dear anon who requested this: i hope you enjoyed, i'm sorry if you didn't! i know your request wanted banter, however, i was kind of worried too much banter would just turn this into the exact same reader i wrote in manchild and i didn't want to do that ( probably did it anyway by accident, oopsy daisy!)🧍‍♂️ · anyway i'm about to hit post like its a detonate button and the only safety distance from the explosion is to log out of tumblr for 24 hours, see you on the other side <3 · lore accurate photo of bucky in this fic;;

[paarksunghoon]

Jake finally taking you after months of uncertainty whether you like him or not. Pushing you against a wall, rough and passionate making out, and him being a softdom. Pleaseeeeeeee.

It all started with a stupid semester project.

Jake hates group work. He hates relying on people and he hates when his partners don’t complete their portion of the work. Jake thinks they’re lazy and good-for-nothing, even though he knows he’s being dramatic. He hates being the only person to contribute to the Google doc and he loathes it when the grade is dependent on everyone as a whole and not individually.

He meets you in Advanced Research Methods. It’s a required class for mathematical and physics majors in order to graduate, and Jake has pushed off taking it for as long as he could because he hates the idea of researching data with a partner. He knows the professor well enough to assume that there would be group work (he assumes correctly) but absolutely nothing could’ve prepared him from laying eyes on you for the first time.

When Dr. Kang announces the partners for the semester-long research project, Jake’s tapping his pen against his leg when he starts to hear names being called out. His ears perk up when he hears his own. When your name is said, Jake looks up and finds that you’re staring right at him.

You look so put together. Jake doesn’t know what it is about you that makes you look like you’ve got it all figured out. Maybe it’s because your hair looks particularly neat compared to all of the other people sitting around him. Perhaps it’s your laptop and notebook right next to it. Whatever it is, he finds himself a bit nervous to inevitably approach you in order to begin working on the project.

Dr. Kang allows the students to mingle and get to know one their project partners during the last ten minutes of class to exchange information. When you take initiative to walk to where Jake is sitting and occupy the seat next to him, he finds himself stuttering.

“H-Hey,” he says pathetically. You’re prettier up close.

“Hi! Jake, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Here’s my phone. Why don’t you put your number in.”

Jake’s hands are almost shaking as he holds your phone between his hands and settles with ‘Jake Sim - Research Methods’ as his contact so you remember him. When he hands it back to you, he watches you type away before he feels his own phone buzz.

Unknown Number: hi! it’s yn.

He saves the contact quickly before class ends and the two of you decide to wait until the next class to set a time to meet to work on the project.

Jake’s worries about group projects disappear when he begins working with you. You’re punctual, never a minute late when the two of you agree to meet after classes to work on it. You contribute to brainstorming sessions and crunch data numbers like you’re the best at it. Jake finds that he’s able to divide up the work evenly and sleeps at a decent hour because he doesn’t have to stay up late to finish an extra portion.

Your intellect is attractive to him. You’re able to explain difficult theories and statistical processes to him better than any professor he’s ever hard. Only, it becomes hard to listen to you talk because he keeps staring at your lips.

They’re so kissable. Jake wonders what they must feel like against his own. He imagines grabbing your face with his hands and planting one on you when you talk about SPSS but he doesn’t act on it, fearing that he may make you uncomfortable. Jake loves it when you start to wear shorter dresses and skirts because the weather is warming up. He likes seeing your thighs stick to the seats and watching you pull the fabric down to prevent flashing everybody.

As the months go by, he realizes he’s learned a lot about you. You’re not from around and you dream of working in astrophysics one day. You love the color green and you’re obsessed with tangerines to the point where he bought a bag just to present you with one at every session. You’re a night owl and you love all kinds of music except country, and you prefer coffee over tea.

Jake also knows that your body is gorgeous. Your legs look stunning in shorter skirts and your tits look beautiful when they almost spill out of your crop tops. He knows what your thighs look like when you sit and how your skirt rides up to accommodate the new angle you’ve put yourself in.

It messes with his head because sometimes, he swears you might like him, too.

You laugh at his corny math jokes and ask him to hang out with you on the weekends. You let him buy you coffee and meals when it’s late into the night. You let him walk you home and you even allow Jake to nap on your bed when he comes over to work on the project after long, hot days.

It all comes to a boiling point one Thursday evening when he’s alone with you in your dorm. Your roommate is gone until Monday and Jake is sitting on the bed whilst you’re sitting on the desk chair, stretching your arms above your head until your shirt rides up. He can see your skin and wonders how soft you must be.

For just a moment, Jake wonders what your bare skin would feel like against his palms. Your breasts look plush to the touch and he’d bet anything that your pussy would feel so amazing against his fingers and cock when you’re wet. He imagines sliding his dick in and out of your tight hole, pumping until he’s coming inside of you and making you messier than before.

But he regrets this thought because he’s half hard in his sweatpants and there’s no way to hide it.

“I, uh, think I’m gonna head back to my dorm,” Jake announces as he puts a notebook in front of his crotch.

“Already?” You turn around and pout at him. “But you got here thirty minutes ago.”

Jake shuffles to the door. “Sorry, Y/N. I think I’ll do my portion there.”

“Jake, I really need you here to complete my part. We’re supposed to turn in the second half of the report this week and I need your help to do it.”

God, you sound so hot when you’re asking him to stay.

He panics when you stand from your seat to approach him as he motions to open the door. The sound of your chair scraping against the floor startles him until he drops the notebook that’s been covering his semi-hard dick. You gasp.

“Are you hard?”

Bashfully, Jake sighs and tries to back away from you. “This I why I wanted to leave, okay? I…I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

You look at his crotch and then back up at him. “Why are you hard?”

Jake’s face heats up even more. “I-I don’t know.”

“Jaeyun.” Your voice sounds so delicate saying his name like that.

“It’s because I like you and you’re wearing shorts that leave nothing to the imagination, okay?!” He sighs. “I’ve liked you since the second time we worked on the project because that’s when I knew I could rely on you. Everything else was just circumstance and now I need to go to my dorm so I can take care of this.”

“I can help,” you tell him. You say it just shy of confidently and he can’t tell if you feel bad for him or not.

“You don’t have to say or do anything. I already made this weird.”

You force yourself to stop looking at his cock. Knowing Jake, he’s too embarrassed to realize that your proposition is genuine and that you’ve harbored a crush on him since becoming partners with him too. So you muster up enough courage to press your lips to his and hope the message is clear.

Jake’s eyes widen against your mouth and you pull back after a few seconds to see the astonished look on his face. “I like you too, dummy. Have since you started bringing me tangerines after knowing me for two weeks.”

“Really?”

You nod. “Mhm. Can I kiss you again?”

Jake captures your mouth in a kiss the way he wants to—his hands grab your jaw and he pushes his lips against yours until he’s turning you. You feel your back hit the hard wall and gasp into the kiss, allowing Jake to lick your bottom lip with his tongue. The sensation dances across your chest and you gush out a stream of wetness at Jake’s urgency.

“Could’ve been kissing you all this time,” he mutters against your neck as he drags his lips down your skin. “Feel what you do to me.”

Without detaching himself from you, Jake puts your hand on his hardened cock and hears you whimper at the feeling. He coaxes you to squeeze him through the fabric and moans against your neck when you do.

“Such a good girl, listening to me like that.” He pulls away and pushes his hips into your palm. “I’m always hard for you.”

“R-Really?”

“You’re so hot, Y/N. You have to know that.”

Jake doesn’t let you respond. He grips your waist and pushes his plump lips back on yours and kisses you with fervor until your own lips have become swollen. The two of you emit breathy moans in the quiet of your dorm room and your free hand pushes Jake’s sweats down until his cock springs free. The hand around his dick collects the precum that has oozed from his swollen head and you smear it over his skin.

“Fuck me,” he moans to himself. “You’re perfect.”

“Your cock is perfect,” you choke. “So big.”

“Yeah? Can you spit on it for me?” You do as he says, leaning forward until a wad of it touches his slit. Jake smiles at you lustfully and squeezes your hips. “Good girl. Always so good, aren’t you? Makes me wonder how good you’ll be for me when I fuck you.”

“I’ll be so good,” you whine as you twist your hand up and down his length. Jake resumes kissing your neck and the electricity makes your pussy quiver. “I want you inside of me now.”

“Now? You think you’re wet enough?” You nod. “We’ll just have to see, now won’t we?”

Jake’s movements are hurried as he pushes your shorts down until they’re at your knees. You aren’t lying. You’re really wet. The cute baby pink panties you wear are soiled and he feels it when his fingers come in contact with the fabric.

The short whimper you let out is enough for Jake to short circuit. He doesn’t believe this is real. Even less so when you maneuver his cock until the tip it pushing against your covered core, gathering your wetness to coat his cock.

“Fuck, you really are perfect,” Jake whispers against you. He pulls back to watch as you stroke him while keeping the tip plush against you as if to coax him into fucking your hole. Jake’s mouth hangs open at the delicious sensation of the wet fabric against his cock head and decides you’re wet enough to take all of him.

He relishes in your gasp when he forces you to turn around. You push your ass towards him and Jake slaps your right ass cheek with his big hands until the sound reverberates in the room. Jake pulls your panties down until they join your shorts halfway down your legs and pushes his cock against you.

“How are you so fucking wet?” he mutters.

“It’s all for you.”

“Fuck yes it is.”

Without bothering to pull his sweatpants off, Jake uses his hand to slide the tip up and down your slit until you’re arching your back and clutching the wall to the best of your ability. The wet splashes make him even hornier and he pushes the head into you until you envelop him.

Slowly, Jake pushes into you inch by inch and holds you by the waist. He rubs your bare skin and coos at you when you wiggle your ass to get more of him. The pain feels exceptional. You can’t remember a time where you fucked someone as big as Jake and you don’t want to live without his cock inside of you like this.

Jake takes his shirt off to prevent it from obstructing the view of his cock disappearing into your pussy. He pushes himself inside of you until he’s completely sheathed and catches you by surprise. Jake silences your moan with a kiss to your mouth and rubs soothing circles on your waist, kissing you like his life depends on it while you get used to the new stretch.

He pushes his tongue against yours and uses the spit to coat his lips. You taste exactly like the pink lemonade you’ve been drinking all night and the innocent flavor makes his hips buck into you.

“Fuck me,” you beg. “Please, Jake. Don’t make me wait.”

He obliges. Jake fucks into you with all his might and his strong, muscular arms hold you in place as you push your chest against the wall and hold onto the door handle. The string of moans you let out is surely loud enough to let the neighbors know what’s happening behind the door but neither of you care about that right now. Jake wants to make you come and he’s slinging his hips into you from an upward angle, bending his knees to make sure his cock impales your g-spot.

“You’re so hot,” he moans. “I think about fucking you all the time.”

“M-Me too,” you confess.

“Yeah? What do you think about?”

“I think about—Ah!—Fingering me in class and eating my pussy.”

“Fuck yeah. I can do that for you.” Jake grips your hips tighter. “I can make you cum.”

“Make me cum, Jaeyun,” you plead, pushing your ass back. “I wanna cum on your cock.”

Jake pistons his hips into you until you’re parallel to the floor, holding onto the handle for dear life. He pushes into you so hard that you’re afraid you’d fall if it weren’t for his strong grip on you. Jake pushes and pushes, saving his orgasm until you come first.

It hits you like a tidal wave crashing over the shore. Your orgasm is long and drawn out as he keeps his brutal pace. Your release seeps from between the two or you and drips down his balls. Jake bites his lip at the tingling sensation and smacks your ass when you clench around him.

“Use me to make yourself cum,” you tell him. “Please, Jake. Please cum for me.”

“Say less, Princess.”

His orgasm follows shortly behind yours. Jake pulls out after five more thrust and pumps his cock until his cum spurts all over the globes of your ass. The warm, thick liquid feels so good against your skin that you push your bare pussy against him until Jake is letting his hot cock rest on you too.

When he regains his breath, he spots a roll of paper towels and gives your cheek a quick kiss before cleaning the both of you up. His touch is gentle, juxtaposed to his fucking just a few minutes prior. Jake cleans himself up before wiping the cum off of you and wiping your pussy gently too. He coaxes you to change into fresh undergarments and lets you collapse onto the bed with your eyes on him.

“I really do like you,” Jake says. “I didn’t say that just to fuck you.”

You pull him down and kiss him until all that’s left is soft pecks and the sound of lips smacking. Jake lets you pull away to lay on top of his chest and you feel him kiss the crown of your head.

“Sleep, Y/N. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

***

comments and reblogs are appreciated! x

[astrogossipp]

mercury notes. 💅🏻

Disclaimer. these observations do not have to resonate with everyone and everything, all expressed in this post is based on personal experience and research.

masterlist🍡

mercury signs and their characteristics 🍭

🫧 aries mercury

You're blunt and direct because you deeply care about your loved ones and want what's best for them, even if it initially hurts. You're a reliable friend who values mental stimulation over constant chatter. You're quick-witted and passionate, often diving into new interests headfirst, even if you haven't mastered them yet. Challenges excite you, and you prefer things that make you think hard. You can get obsessed until you figure something out, and once you do, you stick with it. However, you might get competitive or jealous when others are better at something you're passionate about. Plus, all that thinking can give you headaches. But ultimately, your bluntness stems from a place of caring, and your loyalty and agility of mind make you a valuable friend.

🫧 taurus mercury

Your laidback nature stems from your focus on what truly matters to you. You're guarded because you've learned to prioritize your goals and rely only on yourself, leading to a preference for a small, trustworthy circle. While emotional, your rationality guides you to offer practical advice sought by many. When you love, you do so intensely, either fully invested or not at all, which can leave you drained in communication and occasionally introverted, causing concern among others. You're honest and direct, with an appreciation for the beauty of words, possibly drawn to poetry. In youth, you might have easily developed crushes and possess a melodious voice, possibly skilled in singing. With Taurus Mercury, your communication style is stable and methodical, marked by a reserved demeanor and a tendency to carefully analyze your thoughts and opinions. While you may appear stubborn, others view you as thoughtful and reliable due to your grounded approach to communication.

🫧 gemini mercury

With your mind always buzzing, you might need to work on organizing to avoid getting overwhelmed easily. You're a sponge for information, possibly even having some psychic intuition. Your ability to grasp concepts quickly lets you talk your way through things effortlessly, even if you haven't fully digested them. People trust whatever you say, even if it's random, thanks to your charm. Your hunger for knowledge keeps you everywhere, possibly juggling multiple social media accounts or interests, making you intriguing yet hard to pin down. From a young age, you displayed advanced intellect, impressing others with your wisdom beyond years. However, your thirst for new knowledge can lead to forgetting old ones, making exams a struggle unless you study hard. Despite this, you're generous and respectful, always open to communication, which earns you many acquaintances but perhaps few deep emotional bonds, leaving you somewhat detached. You're expressive, likely talking with your hands and body to drive your point home. With a Gemini Mercury, you're curious and talkative, overflowing with ideas and a penchant for witty, sarcastic communication. You enjoy delving into topics deeply and playfully, often expressing yourself through clever wordplay and puns.

🫧 cancer mercury

Cancer Mercuries are often misunderstood due to the crybaby stereotype, but they're much more than that. They have a knack for sensing emotions, especially in their loved ones, and their words carry a depth that reflects their own experiences and wounds. They have a remarkable memory for emotional moments, often recalling cringey or painful events vividly while forgetting trivial details easily. These folks lean towards introversion and need plenty of alone time to recharge, thriving best among their loved ones. Clear communication is crucial with them as they can sense insincerity. Despite their emotional nature, they keep their feelings guarded and may use self-deprecating humor to deflect. Once they trust you, though, they're fiercely loyal and offer comfort and support with their words. With a Cancer Mercury, communication is deeply compassionate and intuitive, rooted in empathy and a desire to nurture and support others. They express themselves poetically and creatively, understanding others' pain and offering unwavering support.

🫧 leo mercury

Individuals with Leo Mercury express their love and affection through communication, showing warmth and making others feel like instant best friends. They can get obsessive about their interests and crushes, giving them intense focus. In learning environments, they need joy and fun to stay engaged. They value actions over words, so if you claim to love them, you better show it. Their charming communication style attracts attention, but they must be mindful of what they say as people tend to magnify their words. They're prone to checking up on loved ones frequently, regardless of how much time has passed, as attention is their love language. However, a downside is their reluctance to consider others' viewpoints, often believing they're always right. With Leo Mercury, communication is energetic, confident, and direct, with a charismatic and engaging flair. They enjoy being the center of attention and aren't afraid to assert themselves, making them natural leaders in communication.

🫧 virgo mercury

Virgo Mercuries are like the champions of communication, always making sure their words are well put together and hard to argue against, reminiscent of those kids who constantly won spelling bees. They're high achievers from a young age, constantly seeking logic and truth in everything, which can lead them to get lost in details and feel overwhelmed. Even in chaos, they handle things maturely with logic, earning them the reputation of wise advisors. However, their attention to detail can lead to overthinking, as they scrutinize even the smallest actions and texts, making it hard to deceive them. Suspicious by nature, they'll do thorough research, even stalking if needed, to uncover the truth. They should trust themselves more and boost their self-confidence to overcome intrusive thoughts. With a Virgo Mercury, communication is analytical and critical, driven by a desire for perfection and precision. They analyze everything before speaking, taking a methodical and logical approach that can sometimes lead to overthinking. Patience and self-discipline are key for them to manage their overactive minds effectively.

🫧 libra mercury

Libra Mercuries thrive on peace and harmony in their daily lives, feeling unsettled when things are out of order. While they're adept at seeing both sides of a story, they can get lost in trying to maintain balance. However, they've learned it's okay to embrace chaos occasionally, especially since they easily get bored. Despite their indecisive nature, they possess objective intelligence, making them skilled at solving problems from different perspectives, which suits careers in law or similar fields. Yet, their desire for justice can lead to complicated situations due to their reluctance to choose sides. This indecision may strain friendships, although they can also be seen as loyal and reliable if positively manifested. They have a thirst for knowledge and are drawn to what stimulates their minds, enjoying romance books or shows and even finding amusement in chaotic situations, despite not being naturally chaotic themselves. A positively manifested Libra Mercury is a great friend to have, always supportive and having your back. In communication, they're charming and balanced, adept at friendly and diplomatic interactions. They enjoy engaging with others, keeping conversations light and positive, and prefer to avoid confrontation or conflict, prioritizing harmony and balance in their relationships.

🫧 scorpio mercury

Scorpio Mercuries are enigmatic and hard to decipher. They're private and move in silence, carefully displaying only what they want others to see to avoid suspicion. With high emotional intelligence and intense intuition, they can easily fall into destructive thought patterns, including intrusive or sexual thoughts, and fear being exposed. Despite their suspicion of others' intentions, they strive to maintain a high vibrational image. In love, they're fiercely loyal and keep secrets close, but they can be ruthless if wronged. They delve deeply into thoughts, even overanalyzing simple problems and pondering existential questions. Their intuition often reveals truths they'd rather not know, making hiding things from them futile. Obsessed with what stimulates them, they can become stubborn and refuse to let go of harmful things. They find meaning in everything, holding onto items or information they believe will be useful. While loyal, they keep themselves guarded, trusting only themselves. Others may find them intimidating or blunt, and they enjoy playing with power due to their ability to easily gain trust. A Scorpio Mercury communicates sensitively and perceptively, reading into hidden meanings and subtext. They tend to keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves, balancing expression with restraint. They possess strong intuition and mental energy but may struggle with overthinking.

🫧 sagittarius mercury

Individuals with Sagittarius Mercury are warm and nonjudgmental, making others feel at home and giving them the best time of their lives. They're open-minded and objective, often surprising people with their vast knowledge and random facts, although they may feel insecure about their intelligence. They tend to see the best in everyone and can easily be taken advantage of due to their desire to do the right thing. They're great listeners and offer wise, unbiased advice, drawing people to them for venting sessions. Growing up, they were likely interested in solving larger problems, but they can get stressed easily and lost in knowledge and details. They're open to new experiences and friends but are put off by judgmental or arrogant people. They have a playful sense of humor and enjoy sharing random facts with friends, but they don't like being told what to do and can be unreliable if they're not truly interested in something. Their attention span is short, making it difficult to focus, and meditation may be challenging due to their constantly active minds. With Sagittarius Mercury, communication is playful and positive, marked by quick wit, humor, and a talent for uplifting conversations. They bring a bright and lively energy to any interaction, making people laugh and bringing joy to any situation.

🫧 capricorn mercury

Capricorn Mercuries are reserved and only share what's necessary, commanding respect with their directness, which can sometimes be mistaken for rudeness. They avoid drama and focus on their own pursuits, maintaining a private and reserved demeanor. Their knowledge comes from life experiences and karma, often shaped by past struggles and moments of loneliness. While typically kind, they have clear boundaries and won't hesitate to assert themselves when pushed too far. They're calculated and loyal, often taking on a protective role, especially with siblings. With a mature outlook on life, they exude old soul vibes and may seem like natural teachers. They excel at planning and methodical tasks, dedicating themselves fully to their responsibilities. Despite being social, they prioritize duty and future success over socializing, often retreating to recharge. They value trustworthiness and responsibility in others but have little tolerance for foolishness. Communication for Capricorn Mercuries is pragmatic and logical, characterized by a clear and ordered approach. They prefer speaking with precision and clarity, often overthinking decisions and striving for perfection.

🫧 aquarius mercury

Aquarius Mercuries possess vivid imaginations and creative minds, often thinking far ahead but struggling with simple concepts. They may excel in unconventional roles while finding day-to-day tasks boring and easily becoming distracted. Despite being social, they struggle to open up and may feel neglected or misunderstood for their ideas. Their innovative nature draws admiration, but they may attract copycats without calling them out due to their kind demeanor. They have a random but fun sense of humor, often sending memes or random comfort items. Their accepting nature and detachment make them intriguing to others, who are drawn to their unique perspective and lack of judgment. They may be interested in the occult or unconventional topics. Getting to know them is a hit or miss, as they either click with someone completely or don't connect at all. Communication for Aquarius Mercuries is unique and inventive, characterized by creative and original thinking, often outside the box. They may get lost in their thoughts and should strive for more grounded and effective communication.

🫧 pisces mercury

Pisces Mercuries possess vast knowledge and ideas but may struggle with insecurity and seek validation. They have an old, wise soul, often knowing things intuitively and feeling deeply. They are sacrificial and generous, prone to being taken advantage of due to their kindness. In love, they may overlook red flags and defend their passions fervently. Drawn to beauty and gentleness, they have a creative sense of humor and may struggle with mundane tasks. Their relationships with siblings can be complex, ranging from intuitive understanding to manipulation. When expressing their darker side, they can be manipulative or prone to self-deception. Words of affirmation are important to them, as they have a vivid imagination but are often misunderstood. Pisces Mercuries approach communication intuitively and emotionally, valuing creativity and empathy but sometimes struggling with logic and detail.

this post was created by @astrogossipp on tumblr <3 if reposting my work please give credits.

pics by @vmstv

[nopanamaman]

How do mutants in the Facility live?

Patreon Loredump. August 2023

One of the most frequent types of questions I get are about life in the Facility. So it seems like a good topic to start my loredumping series with! 

Apologies in advance for all the photo examples, I hope they work fine for getting the vibes across.

Overview

The facility dome is visible in the distance.

The facility in general – or, as it’s officially known, the Zh. I. Alferov National Institute of Anomalous Research – is a large structure located on the border of the Zone. Its most notable feature is the massive dome surrounded by an outside wall.

The wall. In real life, the famous building of НИЦЭВТ.

The latter is a building in itself, containing offices, lecture halls, resting and dining quarters for researchers, as well as minor labs. All entrances are supervised, though not totally closed off to the public. Excursions, official meetings, TV reports – all of those happen within the wall.

But you will not find any mutants here. As you may have already guessed, all the major laboratories, anomalous artefacts, and, of course, mutants are housed in the dome. The entrances to the dome are monitored and equipped with anomaly scanners, allowing only authorised personnel and mutants to travel between its sectors.

Mutants cannot traverse the facility unsupervised.

What is the mutant classification system?

Depending on their anomalous characteristics, cooperability and method of containment, mutants are sorted into types and numbered groups. Individual mutant numbers usually look like XT000-000.

Let’s use Dmitry as an example.

Dima’s serial number is DT001-319.

The type constitutes the first part of the mutant’s number. Dima’s mutation is Directional Type, hence the letters DT at the start (for the record, KT stands for Kernel Type).

Next we have the 00X number. Mutants are assigned a 001, 002, 003 or 004 class depending on the potency and containability of their mutation – kinda like SCPs, yeah. Dima has a very powerful mutation he has good control over, plus he is sound of mind, making him suitable for 001 containment.

The last three digits are the overall number of the mutant within their type. So if Dima’s are 319, the facility has had 318 directional-type mutants on record prior to his arrival. This does not mean they were as powerful or had the same level of control over their telekinesis, just that they possessed a similar mutation to some extent.

How do different mutant classes live?

001

001 quarters example. Not too different from a hospital or sanatorium

Subjects ranked as 001 are extremely powerful, have good control over their powers and are, most importantly, docile. Since their mutations are very potent and difficult to forcefully contain, the go-to approach is making them not want to leave.

001s spend most (if not all) of their conscious lives surrounded by doctors. The latter foster a particular mindset in their subjects, where the world outside is presented as a place that is unanimously hostile to mutants. This is done by means of propaganda, reminders about their family’s supposed mistreatment and, in case a mutant has some favourable recollections of their childhood, gaslighting. Additionally, subjects are never left alone with each other.

001s get very luxurious treatment by facility's standards, with much bigger, more comfortable rooms than other mutant types. They're even allowed to have gaming consoles, TVs with VHS and video players, and their own bookshelves. Each mutant has their own separate room, which is kept under constant camera surveillance with the toilet being the only blind spot.

Special folders are issued to 001s before experiments with lower-ranked mutants.

Experiments held on 001s are relatively humane so as not to discourage them from staying at the facility. They do undergo daily checkups mostly designed to monitor their mental state. 001s are also active participants in experimentation on lower-ranked mutants, who they are taught and encouraged to treat as lesser beings.

001s are a high-risk investment, so their numbers are far smaller than those of 002 and 003-class mutants. Additionally, because of the potential danger they present, the institute is quick to dispose of 001 subjects by either termination or reclassification to 004. Though, if a 001 manages to stay cooperative long-term, they can become a very valuable asset for the facility.

002 and 003

002 and 003 quarters example. Though, they’re typically not as well-kept

002 and 003 mutant classes can be grouped together, since their treatment is largely the same. Both of these types’ mutations are easy to forcibly contain. The difference is their danger levels. 003s require close monitoring to not be harmful to others, while 002s are borderline harmless. Both types are characterised by general cooperability.

002s live in wards for 2 to 4 people, while 003s are more commonly placed in single-person wards to prevent accidents. A standard room includes a bed, a desk and a small bathroom (multiple beds and two desks in bigger wards).

KT got to take a dinosaur plushie to her room for good behaviour.

Mutants are allowed to borrow books from the library, as well as get drawing and writing materials. If they behave well, they can get a toy or even be lent a handheld console for a few days. 

002s and 003s have breakfasts, lunches and dinners together, and can spend some time in the playroom with other mutants (that’s also where they can play computer games and watch TV) – all under very strict surveillance, of course.

In some ways, their treatment is much less cruel than that of the elite 001 subjects.

KT before the DT experiment.

Though, not when it comes to experiments. 002s and 003s are very common, and are thus treated as disposable material in a scientific sense. The people holding experiments on them are a lot less concerned with minimising the subject’s pain or discomfort. Consequently, it’s not uncommon for mutants of these classes to sustain serious injuries or die as a result of experimentation.

That said, 002s have the highest likelihood of getting released from the facility, given they meet the conditions for it (more on that below).

004

004 quarters example. Basically a prison bunker

004 is a special category reserved for powerful mutants that refuse or physically cannot cooperate. This number can also be issued as a temporary or permanent punishment to misbehaving mutants. The 004 quarters are located underground and have the highest level of security, acting as a sort of bunker for the most dangerous subjects the facility has.

004 rooms are even more barebones than those of 002 and 003s. They have no access to entertainment (unless it is somehow required to contain their mutation) and cannot leave their room under any circumstances. They are more weapons than test subjects.

Do mutants receive education?

All mutants from class 003 and above receive basic education, learning to read, write and count. They additionally get curated history and sociology lessons. Some mutants, namely 001s, attend mandatory classes in certain disciplines to better apply their mutation. For example, Dmitry studied anatomy to know the precise positioning of internal organs.

Mutants are also free to study whatever sciences interest them in their free time by asking for educational materials at the library. Needless to say, most kids aren’t too interested in that, and are very uneducated compared to their outside peers.

Is there censorship in the facility?

All the media mutants are exposed to at the facility is strictly controlled.

6 y.o. Dima and his politically correct PSP.

The only movies, cartoons, comics, books and games allowed are those that either don't feature the Zone or mutants at all, those that show the discrimination mutants face outside, or those that are very obvious anti-mutant propaganda.

In essence, there are no positive depictions of human-to-mutant interaction, aside from ones between mutants and noble scientists. And, of course, nothing that goes against the general government ideology.

Can mutants be released from the facility?

It is generally assumed that mutants that go into the dome do not come out.

While they are largely dehumanised, the facility is still publicly presented as a sort of scientific sanatorium and hospice for those that cannot safely exist in society. Releasing mutants that know the truth behind the institute’s experiments into the wild is simply of no benefit to the government. So the majority are terminated once their scientific potential is exhausted or if they become too expensive to contain. As a result, few mutants live to adulthood.

Though, there are exceptions to the rule. Occasionally, mutants deemed non-hazardous can be released back into society. This is applicable to mutants that have not experienced significant mistreatment from the facility, lack the ability to talk about their experiences and optimally have been brainwashed by an appropriate 001 subject.

Have other mutants before DT and KT ever escaped?

The funny thing is, escapes aren’t a particularly rare occurrence.

Dmitry and Katya’s escape in KT’s Official Guide to Coolness.

Despite getting a lot of funding, the facility itself is very disorganised. Most of the money is blatantly pocketed by the higher-ups, so a lot of its structures and equipment are subpar – this includes its outdated safety systems. To top it all off, the security staff isn’t especially well-paid, so their diligence is highly questionable.

With all that piling up, there are around 3 cases of low-level escapes every year. Because of tight budgets and plenty of work to do as is, these escapes are generally brushed under the rug. The institute still keeps tabs on the escapees in case they happen to show up on the radar, but it rarely organises active searches or alerts the public for that matter.

DT and KT’s escape stood out because it was anything but low-level, and pretty bombastic at that. But even that didn’t warrant a public announcement for fear of panic and reputational damage. So if you’re an 003 mutant looking for an opportunity to sneak out… Hell, man, just go for it.

Wrap-up

That’s about all I can say about mutants’ life in the research centre, scratch some small factoids here and there. I tried to answer the most common questions regarding the topic, so I hope your curiosity was satisfied!

[avelera]

(Arcane Meta) "Why do you persist?" And the Character Flaw of Viktor's Tendency Towards Non-Confrontation

After writing this post I had something of a brainwave about a character flaw of Viktor's that had previously never occurred to me before. Namely, that of his habit of simply removing himself from moments of disagreement or confrontations, rather than sticking around to fight harder for his causes or negotiating to reach a compromise.

I've spoken elsewhere about how Viktor comes across as fairly flaw-free after Season 1, so one thing I found really interesting about getting his full arc in S2 is that we can begin to see his character flaws brought into focus.

And I should clarify, a literary character flaw is not the same thing as a real life character flaw. A literary character flaw is when there is something about the character that stands in the way of them achieving their goal in the story. For example, being clumsy is not a "character flaw" in a real person, it's simply a trait of neutral moral value, but it could be a character flaw in a story about a person who wants to become a ballerina, something they need to work to overcome.

So, I would and have argued that these are a few of Viktor's character flaws, personality traits of his that get in the way of him achieving his character's goals in Arcane:

Political disinterest: despite the fact that Viktor has a stated goal of helping the undercity, he never looks to other methods for improving life down there outside his personal skillset of science. Even when his close partner, Jayce, becomes a Councilor, able to enact political change with a wave of his hand, Viktor is dismissive of this avenue as a waste of time even though he is proven wrong in this assessment by the Zaun independence vote (at least, until outside forces like Jinx's rocket interfere).

Self-isolation: Viktor is plagued by loneliness that appears to be so painful to him that it eventually sets him on his villain path. However, he is also surrounded by people who care for him, especially Jayce and Sky who are literally willing to risk their lives for him. But Viktor seems either unaware of their affection in Sky's case or actively pushing it away in Jayce's case. He's not actually alone, he just thinks he's alone because of his habit of self-isolation when he is focused on his work or (very reasonably) stressed about things like his imminent mortality. This is also a flaw when it comes to his goals as a scientist, because Viktor pushes away potential collaborators. He's not aware of Sky's research towards his goal of improving lives in the undercity until after she dies. He's so skittish about Jayce potentially shutting down his research into the Hexcore and by extension saving his own life that he doesn't bring in his best scientific partner in on the work when Jayce could probably accelerate or even solve the problems Viktor is facing if he knew about them. Heck, he doesn't even tell Jayce he's dying but still shows resentment towards Jayce not spending time with him or helping him in the lab!

Single-mindedness/Intractability: It's Viktor's way or the highway. He doesn't compromise, or negotiate, in order to advance his own goals. This is in some ways a virtue, he refuses to bow in the face of pressure to turn his creation into a weapon, which is laudable. However, as stated above, he also has blinders on when it comes to other methods for achieving his stated goals, like improving lives in the undercity. Viktor sets his mind on a course of action and cannot be swayed by any argument. If he sees a confrontation he can't win, that brings us to the final flaw I wanted to address in this essay:

Non-confrontation: Viktor does not fight for his beliefs or persist in searching for a solution in partnership with others, even Jayce. This isn't to say he never engages in argument. He states his position, but like many intellectuals, he seems to believe that simply stating his position is enough and then he refuses to budge. If he doesn't get his way after a certain amount of time, he shows his displeasure by removing himself from the situation entirely rather than looking for common ground or alternate paths.

I want to reiterate, these are character flaws for a fictional character. In a real life person, I wouldn't think of this as necessarily a flaw at all. Viktor's stance could even be a virtue in a real person, an unwillingness to bend the pressures of the world, and the maturity to not get involved in ugly fights but instead simply step away from a situation he no longer wishes to be a part of.

It is a mature and intellectual response but, when it comes to the problems Viktor faces in Arcane, it is a symptom of his pacifism that actively gets in the way of him achieving his stated goals.

Viktor doesn't fight again Hextech weapons. He simply states his disapproval and then removes himself from the debate, leaving the decision entirely in Jayce's hands.

Viktor doesn't fight Heimerdinger for the removal of safeguards or defend his research into the Hexcore. Once again, he makes his argument and then seems to wilt in the face of doing anything more than that. Jayce ends up fighting that fight in his place but even worse, Viktor doesn't seem to know about or acknowledge that Jayce fights this battle on his behalf, which in turn contributes to Viktor's sense of isolation and not having anyone in his corner, even though Jayce just overthrew the government for him.

Viktor is noted to frequently disappear for long stretches of time, without letting Jayce know where he went. Which is entirely his right as a real person, but given his character's patterns of behavior, it does heavily imply that he's hiding something, perhaps his failing health, from his partner. We know he actively avoids telling Jayce about the full extent of his health issues, given his own lack of surprise at his own prognosis when he collapses and Jayce's utter shock.

Viktor also avoids the spotlight and doesn't partake in the public aspects of promoting Hextech or even seem all that eager to put his name on things he created however, he also notes with despair that no one will remember him after he is gone. This one has always puzzled me a bit, I suppose he wants his inventions to be so groundbreaking they speak for themselves, but he not only makes no effort to attach his name to their work in Hextech, he actively refuses to go on stage even as a silent partner to Jayce to present himself as the co-creator of Hextech. This to me is another symptom of his habit of avoidance: he simply wants people to find their own way to his view, in this case acknowledging his work, without making any effort to persuade or even present himself to them.

But finally, and most salient to the point I'd like to make: Viktor after emerging from the Hex-goop making his greatest avoidance of all by removing himself from his partnership with Jayce, having decided that they have passed the breaking point of their partnership and have no choice but to go their separate ways.

The thing is, from a Doylist angle, this moment is necessary for furthering the plot. I actually think it's a rather clumsy beat in retrospect for how visible the hand of the author is in making it happen, because Jayce doesn't, for example, stop a naked Viktor from departing, which would be a reasonable thing to do under the circumstances when Viktor is clearly in shock, nor does Jayce offer to go with him, which feels particularly out of character given how unhinged Jayce is and his own wedding-vow like promises of devotion only moments before, offering to give up everything he's been working on to be by Viktor's side.

I suppose shock could explain it on both sides, or that Jayce just wanted to go back to how things were, not forge a new path, but regardless, the outcome is that Viktor once again removes himself from a situation he's decided is untenable, rather than asking for, say, some guarantees from Jayce that he is sincere, or negotiating for some concessions from Jayce, or even delivering an ultimatum for what Jayce needs to do to stay by his side.

I suppose you could argue that Hextech weapons was the line, and Viktor is so uncompromising that once it's crossed, that line cannot be uncrossed in his mind, even in the face of Jayce's regrets and desire to make it right by whatever path Viktor sets for him, perhaps reasonable given Jayce has ignored other requests by Viktor up to this point, like not destroying the Hexcore. But this all gets thrown aside when later, Viktor invites Jayce to the commune (if we even believe that's Viktor and not the Hexcore, as I've argued elsewhere, it's all a bit muddy and we can guess at many reasons Viktor left that day, one of which might have been to protect Jayce from the Hexcore and himself).

I bring up the question of how much the Hexcore is controlling Viktor being an active question, because I'm going to undermine my own point here for a moment. I'm arguing that Viktor tends to state his position and then retreat from any sort of compromise or negotiation with other parties, removing himself rather than yielding if he doesn't get his way, but he does persist in trying to make contact with Jayce during his villain arc. I'd argue that insofar as it is Viktor at all, the Hexcore's modifications have given him the confidence for the first time to fight for Jayce, and despite Jayce killing Salo, shooting Viktor, and destroying his robot self, Viktor as the Machine Herald is still pleased to see Jayce (what a simp) and does still seem to want Jayce to come to his way of viewing things. Arguably for the first time, Viktor is persistent in an argument or debate, but he still refuses to budge in what the outcome will be. He wants to persuade Jayce, but he doesn't want to change his position or consider Jayce's side of things at all, maybe because the Hexcore is in control, or maybe because Viktor has always approached academic debates in this way: by refusing to listen to the other side or change his position.

Ok, so this brings me, F I N A L L Y to the point I've been wanting to make:

"Why do you persist, after everything I've done?"

^^ Viktor's genuine confusion about Jayce's persistence.

I think his confusion is, as we've seen if you made it this far, very much in line with his character and this is what I just realized. Viktor doesn't understand why Jayce keeps trying to confront Viktor even though apparently they have opposing views. If Jayce isn't going to come around to Viktor's way of doing things, why are they still even engaging in a confrontation? Why doesn't Jayce just remove himself, the way Viktor would?

In his villain arc, Viktor is more persistent, but he's not more willing to negotiate. If anything, being a villain just gives Viktor the power to not need to avoid people who don't come around to his way of thinking, but to actively, forcefully change their minds against their will. Not by persuasion, or diplomacy, or sophistry. Not by making an argument. But simply like many engineers he thinks that his solution is best and the data will miraculously speak for itself and there's something inherently wrong with people who don't agree with his view.

Machine Herald Viktor firmly believes he's in the right, his mind cannot be changed, it's never been changed in the past (except by Jayce, by the way, when he made the argument for Hextech that seduced Viktor into being his partner in the first place. Once again, Jayce is the exception) so why does Jayce keep fighting?

And I think I'm correct in identifying Viktor's intractability, his unwillingness to accept any view but his own as correct or to hear opposing arguments, as a character flaw because it does get addressed by the end of the story and we see him recognize this and change. He sees Jayce was right, the path he was on was evil, it was going to lead to widespread destruction, not salvation. Viktor sets out to make it right. And once again, he tries to go it alone, without inviting his partner in on the process, and here too we see a flaw addressed: Viktor finally lets Jayce in. He lets Jayce help him and he doesn't run from the difference of positions, or self-isolate in the face of someone who cares for him, or try to solve the problem alone, secure in his incorrect belief that he must do everything alone.

It's a brief scene, but finally at the end, we address these deep character flaws Viktor has been carrying throughout the story of Arcane, and only then can he at least achieve his goal of destroying the Hexcore, with Jayce.