#class 1-a crack

[lees-chaotic-brain]

rating things my classmates said/did after my dad died! (feat. class 1-a)

cw: mentions of death obviously, you're a member of class 1-a, crack, hurt/comfort, reader is religiously ambiguous, implied depression ig, some angst but mostly crack

note: guys i swear it's okay to laugh at this! i did!! some may say it's too soon but humor is how i cope and i missed writing so when this little idea invaded my brain while i was rewatching bhna (it's my comfort show) i couldn't resist

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ochako: “if you believe in heaven i would offer to use my quirk on you so you could float up to heaven and visit your dad but i doubt they'd let you in anyways”

9/10

low key made me giggle

iida overheard and was horrified.

izuku: “i'm so sorry for your loss. if you ever need to talk i’m here. i know it’s not the same at all but my dad wasn’t around while i was growing up so i can kinda understand. not that i’m saying you have to talk to me because of that or that i understand or that we should make a dead/missing dad club oh my god i need to stop talking i’m so sorry i’ll leave you alone now bye please tell me if you need anything!” *scurries away*

11/10

sweet cinnamon roll 🥹

we should fs make a dead/missing dads club

todoroki: “i’m so sorry for your loss. if i could make my father trade places with yours i would do it in a heartbeat. unrelated, i heard you and midoriya are starting a dead/missing dads club. may i join? mine is dead to me.”

8/10

right idea i guess 😭😭

it was going so well during the first sentence too…

ps ofc you can join our club

bakugou: stormed into my room and violently ripped me from my depression burrito and dragged me downstairs to force feed me a warm home cooked meal bc he knew i hadn’t left my bed or eaten in the last 24 hours

6/10

i always knew you cared abt me us blasty 🥹🥰

the food was delicious but plz be more gentle abt it next time king 🙏

mineta: “yo your mom is a total milf.”

numbers don’t go low enough to express my feelings towards this one

like at my father’s funeral?? the AUDACITY

jirou: spent hours searching for a very specific song my dad sang to me when i was little and actually found it bc she found m crying bc i couldn’t find it and i wanted to hear it again

♾️/10

i actually love you so much

you have no idea how much this meant to me ❤️

aoyama: stuffed cheese into my mouth while i was crying in my depression burrito

-3/10

wtf man that was actually more traumatizing

it wasn’t even parmesan or brie

tokoyami: went on a long spiel about how we are all destined for the Great Darkness then abruptly ended by saying he was sorry for my father’s early departure and disappearing back into his room

7/10

i think you were trying to make me feel better so i appreciate the effort. i am a little confused tho

kiri: ask me if i wanted a hug. when i started crying he started tearing up too then gave me one of the best bear hugs i’ve ever gotten

20/10

super manly dude. i really needed it at the moment and appreciated it ❤️

gonna end this here. i had a few more but i felt like these were the best ones. not tagging anyone since this is like a personal self comfort one lol

THAT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T WANT YOU GUYS TO LAUGH OR TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK. TRUST IT WILL MAKE ME FEEL BETTER

[whchenlvr]

req: Could you write how the members of the union would react if they accidentally made their girlfriends cry please?

when they accidentally make you cry ;

weak hero union x fem!reader

donald na

➤ royally freaks the fuck out

➤ “wh-what happened?” “YOU.” “ok..”

➤ he got you flowers for no reason. no one had given you flowers before, so you (on your period) couldn’t stop yourself from tearing up a bit :’)

kingsley kwan

➤ panic

➤ “i.. um.. wh-why are you crying..?”

➤ he would apologize profusely, even though the thing he did wrong was buy the wrong snack at the store. you’re more upset that your favorite tv show character died, the snacks were just your breaking point

jake ji

➤ bro starts crying with you

➤ “YOU BROKE MY FAVORITE MUG WAAAA” “IM SORRY, Y/NNNN WAHHHHH”

➤ to make it up to you, jake buys you a “newer, better” mug and makes you all the tea or cocoa you want

dean kwon

➤ he told you he wouldn’t love you if you were a worm. that’s why you cried

➤ “y/n… are you crying?” “WHY DO YOU HATE ME??” “???????”

➤ in the end, dean takes it back and tells you he’d bring your little worm self everywhere with him <3

jimmy bae

➤ he accidentally stepped on your toe

➤ once the first tear rolls out of your eye, jimmy is ready to jump off of the top of the stairs

➤ “jimmy! get down, it’s dangerous up there!” “i hurt you, y/n. i made you cry. i don’t deserve to live.” “JIMMY BAE GET DOWM HERE RIGHT NOW MISTER.”

wolf keum

➤ he said i love you. for the first time

➤ you were the first to say it, and wolf made it clear to you that “i love you” isn’t something he says easily. so when he blurts it out walking home one night, you can’t stop yourself from sniffling

➤ “what’s wrong?” “you love me?” “……. yeah :(“ “WAAA I LOVE YOU TOO WAAAAAAAA”

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Honestly as somebody who has friends who are going through so much more than me esp in their home lives I extremely get Fabian because it’s like yeah it isn’t perfect but it’s a million times better than what they have to deal with so like you just kinda have to be grateful for what you have and try not to complain yknow

[ouch-thats-harsh]

hii!! how r u?? i saw ur BNHA Class1-a w/ an indian reader and i honestly LOVED IT!! i was hoping to request for an indian reader with class 1-a but where they think she is really quiet and shy. HOWEVER, they witness her OTHER side when they see her vibing like crazy to bollywood songs??????????????? thnx<333 hv a good day/nightt!!! :)))

Pairings: none! Just friends and classmates :)

warnings: none! Gn! Reader. Indian reader, the reader is a bit shy

Author's note: Omg, hello!!! It's been a while since I disappeared for no reason😭 I'm sorry I didn't see your ask till now!! I'm so glad you loved the fic, it came from a need, honestly. Also I'm definitely more than rusty at this rn, so please forgive me if this sucks, I'm not the best at English, so i apologise for any mistakes.

A day doesn't pass without your headphones and music. The ghazals, the carnatic music, the hindustani tunes and Bollywood moods to wake your soul up. It was a need for you because more than anything, it was a piece of your home. Their foreign exchange student from India was a specimen worth knowing. Smart, brilliant, gorgeous but also quiet. You being quiet was something they expected, the language barrier guarenteed it! they dubbed your behaviour as that, but turns out thats just the way you were. It added to your charm.

One early Monday, after seemingly a shitty week, everyone had to get back on schedule. Exhausted students pulling themselves out of beds for another tiring week wasn't something new. UA makes it a death week, sometimes literally. Fatigue rolled in by the evening. After letting your friends know that you were ready to turn in for the night, you went straight to your dorm to rest. That was until you got a Google photos notif, from the last time you went to navratri.

Sero was just walking to his room, he was unbothered and chill. Then came your dorm room.

Before long your friends were outside your door

*Knock knock*

from the outside one could hear the faint sound of music and someone singing. They slowly opened the door, to see you, their adorable lovely quiet friend, eyes closed, with loud music, moving your hips to some Bollywood song? the song suited you, thought midoriya as soon as he saw you.

But then the shock came. You danced???

"DAMN GIRL!!" mina's loud outburst alerted you. You froze in place at the sudden yell, "how long have you guys been standing there???" You cried out, a bit embarrassed, maybe too embarrassed. You quickly turned the music off.

"Long enough to see you dance." Kirishima pointed out with a smirk. You felt your face warm. kaminari laughed at the sight of you flustered. Even though the situation was just the material to tease you with, they saw how much you enjoyed it, how carefree you were at that moment.

"What song was that? And you never told me you could move like *that*" mina asked pointing at you. "It's- uhm, it's called" you looked at your phone to get the title right, "tumhi ho bandu... And i- uh could always do that? Haha" the nervousness was evident, probably a result of you hiding this side of yours for so long.

This was a pleasant surprise to them. You looked more alive than they could remember.

Ochaco remembered the times you told her about baraat and gharba, times where you danced as if it was your last breathe of air. You told her about how your lungs would burn, sweat rolling off your head onto the earth. She saw what you meant today, even if it was fleeting. She wanted to join. She picked up your phone and played the next song. The beginning of nachde ne saare played. A memory for you, dancing with your bestfriend back home, unlocked.

You felt shy as the song began, but Ochaco and mina, ever the dancers, began moving, inviting you to do too. The guys were watching until pulled in by the duo, bakugou just stayed in his place, watching and nodding to the beat after a while. You could see some of them puzzled at the words but they swayed nonetheless. You remember this scene from somewhere. What was it? 2 years ago? Tenth farewell party... You remember something just like this, loud music, laughter, flaying arms and someone's horrible attempt at Bhangra. Flashes of old friends transitioned into your new ones, just as precious, loving and loved.

The hour was spent dancing, singing (gibberish more like), before long exhaustion hit all of you."We- *pants* should do this more often" a tired momo said. Satisfied with the whole thing. Some agreed immediately with her, smiling. You all talked a bit after that, letting yourselves relax. "You know, I'm glad i snooped enough to get to see this" sero said amused. "Yeah, i mean, for all we know you could've just hid those hips from us forever." Mina laughed. You chuckled a bit. "Thats called thumke" you told her, happy at the sight of all of them beside you. You went back to your quiet self.

"I do hope we'll get to see you like this more, it's nice to see you so fired up and not only on the battlefield" tooru said as she got up, the others added to her comment agreeing. After her the rest got up and decided to finally go to bed, they all hugged you or just showed their way of being affectionate, so did you.

Your room was silent now. You felt content, somehow at peace at the whole "incident" as they would come to call it from now on.You closed your eyes, the sounds from earlier echoed in your head, though loud, it put you to sleep.

End note: hey, uhm so this was smtg I cooked up after not writing for a long while, so please do leave suggestions on how to improve and yea, thanks for reading! :))

[thefanficdumpster]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Class 1-A & Midoriya Izuku Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsuki, Iida Tenya, Uraraka Ochako, Todoroki Shouto, Satou Rikidou, Ashido Mina, Yaoyorozu Momo, Asui Tsuyu, Aoyama Yuuga, Shuuzenji Chiyo | Recovery Girl, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead Additional Tags: Midoriya Izuku is allergic to peaches, Like deathly, very allergic, Satou is so sweet, i feel very bad for Satou, Midoriya Izuku needs serious help, Midoriya Izuku is immortal, but his class doesn't know, yet - Freeform, Crack, i actually don't think I've ever eaten peach cobbler, i might have had a blueberry one before, not sure, Bakugou Katsuki is not a total asshole, No Romance, it's be hard to have a romantic moment when one of your friends is about to die, Midoriya Izuku is a Little Shit, aizawa does not get paid enough for this shit, Author Is Sleep Deprived, this is absolute trash, Self-Indulgent Series: Part 1 of BNHA Crack One-shots

Summary:

Izuku loves peaches. His body does not.

[bubble-you]

what’s the point of conversation if you aren’t verbally penetrating each other or devouring the other. yes i know you’re probably maintaining friendly and lightheartedly supportive relations with other people and yes i know i regularly am like i WISH people TALKED to me and yes i would be creeped out if i was probed in questions or overshared at by a stranger as if vomiting bile.

i’m just… feeling frustrated.

[comradecowplant]

starting the war on christmas early by noticing this emote on the site formerly known as twitter

[mushr0oms-and-m0ss]

Erm my shoulder blade is concerning me bc i can't lay down on my side without it hurting a lot and I can't tilt my head to the right without it hurting either

somebody send assistance /j

[vamptastic]

god bless my 9th grade spanish teacher señora dishon for telling me that don quixote is the greatest novel ever written and if i want to read something in spanish i should give it a go. alas i fear she overestimated what five years of public school spanish classes can achieve because i find i cannot decipher 1400s spanish literature

[rafey-baby]

clumsy!reader is still bad at yoga and yoga instructor!rafe wants to keep her all to himself...

c/w: rafe being touchy & blatantly flirting w her, him getting jealous, slightly suggestive, reader being oblivious, 18+ mdni!

wc: 1.9k

idk if anyone missed him but he's back & better than ever !! (after a small vacation that ended up being almost 3 months :D)

some parts are more or less inspired by this, this, this & this ask

part 1

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rafe is in the midst of helping someone fix their posture when he hears the gates of heaven opening in the form of a melodious giggle chiming from the back of the room. He lifts his head in order to detect the source of such a vibrant sound; noticing that his favorite client is currently directing her attention towards some guy next to her.  

The joyful expression she’s sporting makes a scowl paint over his features. Why is this random man making her laugh like that?  

“Yeah, you got it. Just keep workin’ on it though,” he quickly dismisses the person he was helping before stomping over to find her practically lying on the floor with the guy’s hands on her calf, along with his mat pulled far too close to hers for Rafe’s liking.   

“I think you should bend it more here, right? I’m honestly not too sure,” the guy chuckles as he tries to figure out what she’s doing wrong.  

“No cause I have no idea how everyone else makes it seem so easy. It’s so hard to get it right, I feel so stupid half the time,” she complains with a huff, not even noticing Rafe looming within earshot.  

“Seriously, I thought this was a beginner’s class but it feels like some of these poses are meant for like literal pros,” he continues with a shake of his head. 

“I know, right?” another peal of laughter bubbles from her throat as she shifts into a seated position, giving up altogether.  

“Everything alright?” Rafe doesn’t mean for his tone to come out so clipped but there’s something in the way the guy’s touching her so freely that makes his hands curl into fists. 

He keeps reminding himself over and over again that this is a client, which means that he can’t just smash his face in— no matter how severely his fingers are itching for it right about now.  

“Oh, I was just trying to help her with this,” the guy explains in tandem with her head turning to look at Rafe. She seems startled.  

“Well, why don’t you focus on your own form for a change? I mean, s’kinda my job to help her, yeah?” he scoffs, making the guy halt his movements in a state of surprise before he's lifting his hands up in apology.  

“Damn, sorry dude,” he mutters out from under his breath while Rafe merely glares at him with the words stay professional bouncing around his skull.  

A tense silence follows, making her grow quiet while she takes slow sips from her water bottle as a distraction; wondering why he seems so bothered to see her talking to someone else.  

However, when he finally turns his attention towards her, she shrugs it off as him merely having a bad day because it seems like the only logical explanation to her. Because at the end of the day, him being jealous makes as much sense to her as her math homework in high school.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rafe is convinced that the universe is purposefully trying to poke and prod at his limits, giving his carefully curated facade opportunities to crack— allowing for the borderline psychotic aspects of his personality to breathe through the crevices. Because only a week later, Rafe sees her entering the gym with another guy she seems to be awfully friendly with. 

“That’s crazy, I don’t even wanna know what Kie said to that,” she rolls her eyes jokingly while he’s showing her something on his phone.  

”Yeeeah, guess you could say she wasn’t the biggest fan,” he laughs in a carefree manner, raking a hand through his disheveled, sand-colored hair.  

“For some reason I’m not surprised,” she mutters out before she notices Rafe standing in the hallway leading to the yoga class. “Oh, gotta go so I’m not late. See you after?” 

“Yeah, I’ll be here. Think Pope said he’s gonna join me for leg day, so we’ll see if I’m still standing when you get back. But you have fun,” he offers her a wave before walking away towards the locker rooms. 

And at last, her warm eyes meet Rafe’s. “Hi,” her voice is soft, nearly shy; a stark contrast to her demeanor only a few seconds ago.  

“Hey,” he greets her in a casual manner, although his mind is somewhere else entirely. “So, that your boyfriend or?” he tries to approach the subject with nonchalance because it’s not necessarily any of his business.  

He’s not even sure why he’s asking— keeps telling himself that he’s just curious and tries to appear friendly by making small talk. After all, some clients have given him feedback on his apparently intimidating aura, claiming they don’t always have the courage to ask for his help because they get anxious he’ll judge them. Therefore, it's something he’s been trying to work on.  

“What? Oh, JJ? No, he’s just a friend. He goes to the gym here, so I usually just tag along with him. Free ride, right?” she answers with a lighthearted tone.  

“Right. Yeah,” he scratches at the back of his neck, contemplating whether or not to ask the next question since he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries. However, there’s something deep in his stomach that grumbles at the prospect of her being in a relationship, makes him feel nearly insane and ultimately, makes the decision for him. 

“You, uh, you got one?”  

“What?” she asks, features coated in confusion. 

“A boyfriend, I mean,” his gaze is unwavering, eager.  

“Oh, um— no, I don’t. Why?” her puzzled eyes flit over the lines of his countenance, seemingly trying to grasp onto his motives. 

“Just, uh…wondering. I mean, he’d be kind of a dick if he’s not drivin’ you here himself,” he shrugs, a strange sort of relief making his shoulders feather-light when she lets out an airy giggle in response.  

“Yeah, honestly sometimes wish I had one just so he could drive me around and stuff,” she jokes while they begin to pad over to the class. 

“You don’t have your license yet?” he raises his brows in surprise.  

“No, I do. I just don’t really like driving. I don’t know why but it’s so stressful to me. Usually try to avoid it as much as I can,” she elaborates while gathering her hair away from her face and securing the strands into a ponytail.   

“Oh yeah? Well, if you ever need a ride home just let me know, alright?” he says, fighting the urge to tuck a loose tendril that has managed to escape the restraints of her hair tie back behind her ear.  

“Really? That’s so sweet of you! But, um, wouldn’t wanna be a bother,” the hesitation is present in her voice.  

“Nah, couldn’t bother me if you tried,” he promises, wishing they could talk for longer. However, the ocean of people flooding inside the room behind them cuts their conversation short.  

“You’re just saying that,” she dismisses him with a playful scoff. 

“M’being for real. You’re my favorite face around here. Plus, makes my job more fun when you’re always stumblin' on your feet,” he can’t help his mouth from twisting upwards at the way her eyes round out in response to his words. 

“Shut up. I’m gonna go set down my mat now, before there’s only space right in front of you,” she offers him a giddy smile that makes him grin like an idiot. Then, she’s tiptoeing away from him in order to locate a vacant spot. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rafe has become awfully familiar with these newfound feelings of fondness for the girl who’s by far the most helpless little bambi he’s ever encountered. He thinks she should honestly pick another hobby at this point, because maybe yoga just isn’t meant for her. However, he’d never say any of that out loud because even the thought of not seeing her getting all flustered while she loses her balance whenever he’s near makes him feel physically unwell.  

He’s not entirely sure whether her apparently oblivious brain simply hasn’t caught onto the fact that he so clearly has a thing for her, or if she’s well aware and merely chooses to be a tease about it. Nonetheless, the moment she walked into the class today, he could feel his workout shorts tightening and all she’d offered him was a simple smile.  

And now she’s right in front of him, all tangled limbs and pretty eyes blinking up at him— practically begging for his guidance and for him to put his hands all over her (something she doesn’t seem to mind all that much).  

“You put this cute little set on just for me, huh?” he rasps out while his thumb smooths over the bubblegum pink fabric; feeling it out as he pinches the stretchy fabric between his fingertips, making her breath get caught in her throat in the process.  

“Oh, um— just wanted to…try out some new stuff I ordered. You think it’s cute?” she stares at him with something bashful glimmering in her eyes. 

“Mhm. Fits you nice,” he mumbles out as his gaze lingers on the way the tight material wraps around her figure, not leaving much to the (his) imagination. He bets it’d be so easy to just rip right through these cute yoga pants and pull her closer with a firm grip on her hips before burying his face between her plush thighs.

“Thanks,” she peeps out, flustered.  

He tries to shake off the improper, filthy thoughts with a clear of his throat when he gets caught staring at her for a little too long.  

“So, you actually wanna bend your leg on the other side of your body on the mat and support your foot with your left arm not the right one. Easy to get them confused,” he chuckles as she shifts her position according to his instructions as best as she can. 

“Like this?” she seeks reassurance with a soft tone.  

“Yeah, just like that, Bambi. Good job,” his mouth quirks up some while her mind begins to cloud over in response to his low cadence. She’s not entirely sure what exactly it is about him that makes her feel so fuzzy on the inside, but she thinks it’s nice, thinks she wants to always have him this close to her— wants him even closer.

She doesn’t remember the last time she’s had such an intense crush on someone— slowly turning into a crazy person by each second of not knowing whether he’s merely flirting with her for his own amusement or because he’s actually into her. However, she thinks she’s embarrassed herself in front of him far too many times for the latter to be true in any reality.  

“Then need you to move your right hand here,” he adjusts her form with a grip on her wrist while he maneuvers her to his liking; tingles erupting all over the skin he skims over with his fingertips.  

Her head is spinning.  

“See? Knew you could do it. Feels nice, hm?” he rumbles out, letting his hands rest on her shoulders for support, despite the position not really requiring it.  

She hums her response because she doesn’t trust for any coherent words to stumble out of her mouth at the moment, all the while Rafe is desperately trying to not pay attention to the nearly painful situation in his pants.

[gutsby]

Honor Among Thieves

Pairing: Mob!Bucky x Reader

Summary: Marrying Brooklyn’s most dangerous man was easy. Divorcing him proves to be a bit harder—particularly when you’re pregnant with his child.

Warnings: 18+. Unprotected p-in-v. Oral (f!receiving). Breeding kink. Hurt/Comfort/We-Almost-Just-Died-Sex. Morning sickness. Manslaughter. Brief coerced kissing. Beefy, mob boss Bucky is a possessive expectant father who just wants to make sure he knocked you up properly

Descriptions of violence throughout

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

“You know exactly what you’re doing.”

Bucky’s words reverberated like a shotgun’s report, skimming across two dozen feet of marble, glass, and stainless steel before reaching your ears on the opposite end of the room. He was standing at the threshold of the kitchen, and your back was turned to him. Lucky thing, too, or else he would’ve seen the smile threatening to tug at both ends of your lips—effectively blowing your cover.

“Really, I don’t have the slightest idea, Barnes,” you told him, and it took everything in you not to laugh. Having just narrowly preserved your composure, you continued, “You keep me locked in this prison all day and expect me not to find ways to entertain myself? Well, this is all it is.”

Like hell it was, you could already hear in Bucky’s head. Feeling him eye you up and down from the archway, take his first steps into the room, loosen his tie, most likely.

“Prison?” You registered a low scoff, and his voice was already so much closer than it’d been five seconds ago.

Your husband was striding as quickly as his smooth, dark, tailored suit would allow, and he was undressing as he walked. You could hear the clothes coming off but pretended not to notice. Instead staring more intently at the crab bisque simmering on the stove before you, you licked the spoon you were holding and hummed a little.

“Yes,” you answered, simply, “Prison.”

Bucky was by your side in no time at all. Up close, he smelled like rosemary, oakmoss, and gunpowder.

“Well, this is news to me,” he said. He dragged out the middle syllables of his words longer than was necessary, likely to make his move sidling up closer to you. The last sound had scarcely died in his throat more than a second or two before you felt an arm loop around your back. A hand coming to rest on your hip, then his voice, again:

“See, I never knew they built ‘prisons’ up in first-class penthouse apartments in Brooklyn. Must be pretty nice.”

Bucky stepped behind you, and you were half-certain the black suit jacket he’d come home wearing was fully removed. Again, you pretended not to see, or care.

“It’s a metaphor, James.” But your voice wavered.

“A metaphor?” Bucky’s head sank into the soft groove between your neck and your shoulder, and he kissed it.

“Yes.”

Your mouth made a sound more akin to a breath than a real, enunciated word, and you knew Bucky felt it too. He sensed this headstrong, no-bullshit façade of yours was sure to come crumbling apart any second, and each new brush of his hands and lips would be making it happen. Knowing this, he wasn’t in a rush to get the rest of his clothes off. He did, however, start to toy with yours.

“Tell me more. Am I really holding you hostage, doll?”

You took a ladle and started to stir, trying to stay cool. Meanwhile, your husband tugged gently on your dress.

“Hostage, housewife, same thing,” you muttered, low.

For once, it was Bucky’s turn to break character, as he laughed. It was short-lived and sweet, and he pressed another kiss to the skin of your neck, as if in apology.

“Right, right. I forgot. You were forced to marry me.”

“Right,” you shook your head, just slightly emboldened by the way you’d made him crack, if only for a moment, “I’m forced to marry you, move into this horrific little shanty in Brooklyn”—gesturing to the multi-million dollar apartment surrounding you both—“and then you leave me here, all by myself, with nothing to do while you go play Godfather with your mobster friends. It’s not fair.”

By the tail end of that last sentence, you and Bucky both were already grinning a little, coming to terms with just how ridiculous it sounded when you phrased it like that. Still, your husband seemed game to keep the bit going.

“Now that’s just not true,” he said, tone all faux offense.

You felt the soft snap of a ribbon coming undone, and in a second realized it was the satin bow holding the back of your dress together. The fabric loosened, and Bucky’s hands slid down your sides, over your front—of course.

“I didn’t leave you ‘by yourself’ at all, doll,” he said, and suddenly, his palms were fanning out, over something, “Gave you this baby to keep you company, didn’t I?”

The ‘something’ he was touching now was your belly. All soft and smooth and protruding out in a perfect little globe beneath your dress, no bigger than when he’d left for work that morning. Bucky treated the bump like it was a novelty all the same—like he was seeing it for the first time and couldn’t believe he was actually the one responsible for making it get like that. It had gotten to be a hobby of his, nearly, just how much he loved watching it grow. He had his fingers splayed out across your tummy virtually every chance he could get, and that didn’t stop whether you were out in public or sharing a moment in the comfort of home; he couldn’t get enough.

Which was why Bucky was right when he’d said you knew exactly what you were doing when he came home that day. You knew just the kind of effect that wearing a tight, white dress while cooking dinner would have on him, and you hoped it would rile him up just like this: with his hands roaming over every inch of your body, making soft, sweet circles along the swell of your belly, and kissing your neck again and again. Biting some, too. Getting so worked up he was all but gnawing at the skin as he drank in your scent and got lost to pure instinct.

If it wasn’t clear that Bucky had had a breeding kink before, you saw it written plain as day across his face every morning and night since he’d first learned you were pregnant. Like all the life force within him was just a byproduct of the knowledge that you were his—and this baby, growing bigger each day, was a mix of you both.

You hated to say it, but fatherhood suited your assassin-trained, mob-heading, bloodlusting husband better than anyone could have predicted in a million years or more.

Presently, Bucky flipped you around and sank to his knees. He slid you over to the counterspace area, away from the stove, and made sure to flip each knob to ‘off’ to make sure there wasn’t a chance you’d get burned. You cast one last look at the crab bisque and knew at once your hard work would have to be put on the back burner for now, because Bucky wasn’t hungry for that.

Still, you kicked a foot in soft, muted protest when you felt him slide his hands up your legs, under your dress, and start to reach for your panties. You let out a breath.

“I spent two hours perfecting the seasoning on that, Barnes,” you chided him, gently and without much admonition in your voice as you pointed to the soup, “You say you want a good little housewife but won’t even leave me un-fucked long enough to try any food I make!”

“And I’m very sorry about that, Mrs. Barnes,” Bucky replied, head disappearing beneath your skirt so he could take your underwear off with his teeth instead.

But, much like your reproach, your husband’s strained apology held less than half of its professed sincerity. Your blue cotton panties were discarded in a second, your hips pushed back against the cool white marble behind it, and Bucky, almost too cheekily, brought his head back up from underneath your dress just to steal a quick look at your belly, then up at you. He was smiling.

“Anything you make tastes amazing, honey. Daddy just needs to eat a little something beforehand, that okay?”

He already knew what you’d say. The sweet, shit-eating grin hovering over your lower half knew all that and more. Bucky just loved to tease, taking the hem of your dress between his index and thumb, and rubbing all the more tenderly, murmuring again, ‘That alright with you, pretty girl?’ and ‘My wife likes getting tonguefucked in the kitchen, doesn’t she?’ while his breaths spread over you.

You nodded that you did. Momentarily forgetting the three-course meal you’d had planned for him since early that morning, you let your knees fall limply apart from one another, and Bucky’s broad form filled the space in between. The fabric of your dress was snug, especially so over your belly. Your husband pushed the material up your hips and let it rest just high enough to expose your warmth to him. Angling your hips back the slightest bit, trailing his fingers up your thighs and inside them, gently, Bucky let out a low groan against your body, and you could feel the vibrations of it travel up your spine.

“I really am mean for keeping you here all day, aren’t I?” he teased, sliding the tips of his fingers between your glistening folds and watching you jolt in response.

“So— so mean. Bucky, please.”

Your voice was far more hoarse than circumstances would seem to beget; your husband had just eaten you out that morning. Nevertheless, your hand was trembling as it reached for his head. Your pull was taut and dire. While your fingers threaded in through his hair and your body opened itself more and more for him, you could feel that kind smile, even if you couldn’t see it. Frankly, the swelling of eight-and-a-half months made it difficult to see much of anything below the waist, but Bucky made sure to let you know he was there. By holding your hand, skimming his lips against your skin, starting, just then, to sink his fingers in toward the heat of your body, and softly pulling his face away so he could look up at you.

“Baby?” he breathed.

Your eyes locked with his as he slid two fingers inside you. The stretch alone was enough to put your brain on the fritz, but, fighting the first shockwaves of pleasure:

“Y-Yeah?”

He withdrew. Pressed them back in and let out a grunt.

“I need you to do something for me.”

You couldn’t fathom what that might be, but you nodded anyway. ‘Anything’ was what you managed to choke out.

“And you might not like it, doll.”

Your eyes widened some.

“O— O-Okay, what?”

Bucky’s fingers curled inside you, and a short, sharp streak of dizzying pleasure pulsed through your body. Your knees felt weak, and your mind even worse, but with what little resolve you had left, you were able to keep your eyes entirely open and fastened to his. A look that struck you as almost bittersweet crossed your husband’s features, and you saw his gaze soften again.

“I need you to wake up,” he said, calmly.

“What?”

Your toes curled tight underneath you, and the warmth between your legs leapt up to over a thousand degrees.

“Melaya, I need you to wake up.”

At the same time, your blood ran cold in your veins. Surely, you couldn’t be hearing him right if the voice he used was so gruff and low—and laden with a Russian lilt.

“Bucky? What— What do you mean?”

But you knew. Or suspected something of it anyway.

Now the sound from your own throat was hardly one that you recognized as yours, so shrill and high and strange—what could he mean by that? Why was he watching you in that way? Your husband wasn’t smiling so brightly anymore, and the once-gratifying conflagration between your legs had grown to an almost scorching degree, no longer nice, generous, or pleasurable in the slightest.

“We need you to wake up now, honey. Right now.”

His tone, too, was distorted. Grating.

“Bucky, I-I don’t underst—”

“WAKE UP!”

“WAKE UP!”

Natasha shook you hard, and it hurt.

She didn’t mean for it to. She just needed you up and out of bed, and you’d been asleep for almost fourteen hours.

You started at the fifth or sixth shake, nearly punching yourself in the face when you tried yanking a set of covers up and over your head and discovered, shortly, that there was none. You were splayed out on a bed in an as-yet unfamiliar home—Steve’s new place—and, while you slept, you’d kicked all of the blankets you’d been given the night before off your body and onto the floor.

Your eyes were wide as saucers as they darted to Nat’s.

There was no need to say what had happened—she knew these dreams were getting worse by the day.

It’d been a week since you fled your Brooklyn apartment in an all-out terror. A week since a senseless, short-sighted idea on your part had led to the discovery that your husband was once part of a HYDRA sleeper cell whose activation phrase turned him into an agent of total destruction at will. A week since you’d seen a half dozen bodies litter your living room floor, more still being bludgeoned by the so-called ‘Winter Soldier,’ as Bucky had formerly been known. A week since you’d sobbed in Natasha’s arms and begged her not to let you go back. A week since you’d been obliged to hide out in Steve Rogers’ new bachelor pad upstate, because, frankly, there was nowhere else you could safely live until this whole ordeal with Bucky was settled—if it ever would be.

A full week since you’d learned you were pregnant, too.

As far as you knew, your husband was wholly unaware of this fact, and of Steve’s most recent real estate purchase up in Buffalo, and you’d been existing in a semi-serene and largely dissociated state for the past seven days.

Your gaze adjusted to the light, and you blinked up at Nat, feeling damp in just about every place on your body. You looked down and found yourself drenched in sweat.

“Hydrate. Please.”

It wasn’t so much a request as it was a standing order: Nat holding out a glass of water and instructing you to drink. Though your first instinct was to make a face and shake your head—you’d found that any new fluids in your body this early in the morning would only get thrown back up when you made your first frantic trip to the toilet—you accepted it anyway. You drank three big gulps to appease the woman standing next to the bed, then wiped your mouth with the back of your hand and smiled

“I’m gonna go puke now,” you said.

“Aim for inside the toilet bowl if you can,” Steve called out from the doorway. By the look on his face, you’d been doing a pretty shit job of aiming vomit lately.

“My bad, Rogers.”

You had a hand on your stomach, slowly easing back up into a seated position, when you heard something being flung across the room, followed by a ‘HEY!’ and a crash.

“Your aim sucks, too, Romanoff,” Steve griped, loudly, “And I was kidding. She can puke wherever she wants.”

By the door, a hefty hardcover book lay open on the floor. Apparently Nat’s options for projectiles had been limited.

“All good, Rogers,” you offered anyway. Fighting a smirk.

You were starting to stand, and your head felt as if you’d just taken your first steps off a rocking boat. Your other hand jumped to your mouth, and you muttered, ‘Fuck’ before brushing past Nat and her outstretched arms.

She held your hair while Steve retrieved the glass of water, as well as a towel. The unsightly first trimester ritual proceeded as it had for all of the last week, with Nat rubbing circles in your back and Steve making well-meaning but completely useless live commentary like, ‘Babies are a real pain in the ass, aren’t they?’ At the conclusion of each new stupid remark, Natasha would shoot a dirty look his way, but you never let her shoo him away. Through no conscious choice of your own, Steve had become something of a comfort blanket over the course of the past chaotic days. At the very least, you two were no longer at each other’s throats flinging accusations and exorbitantly-priced tumblers in the other’s direction, which was a marked improvement from where you were the day after you and Bucky’s wedding.

At length, you lifted your head from the toilet, and he daubed at your cheek with the towel—mostly just trying to wipe off spit and your own queasy-looking expression. He succeeded in clearing away just the former, but you forced a smile all the same, then shared it with Natasha.

Nat couldn’t smile back. In fact, the grimace on her face only etched even deeper, and her forehead creased.

“This is a horrible time to be asking you this, I know—”

“Nat, please.” Steve groaned.

Nat, what? There wasn’t a lot more that could catch you off guard after all the shit you’d come to see that week. Still, Nat’s breaths were both measured and slow, and you could see she was chewing on the inside of her cheek like she wasn’t quite sure how best to phrase her words. This, coming from one of the most astute legal minds this side of the Hudson River, gave you pause.

“Ask anything. I’m pretty numb, if you haven’t noticed.” You rapped on the side of your head for comedic effect, but neither Natasha nor Steve laughed or cracked a grin.

“How do you feel about filing for divorce tomorrow?”

At the sound of Nat’s words, you felt the bile jump back up your throat. You knew there wasn’t enough food or fluid to make much of anything now, but all the same, you craned your neck back over the toilet and retched. When nothing came out, as expected, you turned back.

“What?”

Natasha looked a little ill herself, but still, she continued.

“How do you feel about just…fast-tracking a divorce from him and taking off new? We’ll talk assets later.”

Assets? Fast-track? Divorce? What the fuck?

“What the fuck, Nat?” you repeated as much out loud.

It normally wasn’t your thing to be so blunt with her, but the inquiry certainly seemed to invite some extra candor. You swiped at your mouth for any excess spit that might’ve trickled out, crudely, and in a second, Steve was handing you the towel. Then helping you to your feet, holding your arm and lower back in a grip you could feel was secure. You were unsteady on your legs, so he and Natasha guided you over to the sink, where you could regain your bearings and freshen up a bit. Sneaking a look at your reflection in the mirror was a bad idea; your face was sallow, and the rest of your body had every appearance of being horribly weak, for lack of a better word. You caught a glimpse of a gash sitting just above your left temple and immediately looked away. Stupidly, you hoped Steve and Nat hadn’t seen it.

“He did that to you,” Nat said without missing a beat.

You winced, and you washed your hands, not looking up.

“I thought you said it wasn’t him. Soldat, you told me.” And for a second, your eyes flickered to Steve, whose expression was a touch more sympathetic, if not visibly discomfited now. Like he didn’t want to speak for once.

He did, anyway: “Doesn’t matter if it was Winter or him, really. Point is he hurt you while trying to protect y—”

“And yet, you asked me to forgive him just last week for killing my dad in the same type of rage,” you replied, and instantly regretted the accusatory tone you’d taken on.

Your anger was misdirected at Steve. It wasn’t his fault for sharing the truth about your husband’s—his best friend’s—past when you’d asked him. These were queries you’d made, helping to form justifications for your own decision to stay after what had happened in Madripoor. Obviously, Steve would be biased to help support his friend in a time of need. But now things were different; Bucky had never been activated as soldat and ended up hurting someone he’d loved before. Steve was free to change his mind after seeing that happen and urge you to leave, or at least reconsider, your marriage to Bucky.

The second look you gave him attempted to convey as much, a bit more apologetic as he and Natasha led the way out of the bathroom. Steve smiled and held your arm again, though you probably didn’t need it. You walked downstairs to the kitchen together. Over by the toaster, Sam was inspecting a charred bagel with a scowl

“Rogers, you really need to ditch this shit,” he said, gesturing to the rusted metal contraption that appeared to be from 1918, and had just burnt two bagels to a crisp.

“It was a gift from a friend, piss off,” Steve replied, grinning a little. Reaching for the blackened bread roll and even going so far as to take a bite, crunching loudly.

“Did your friend happen to fight in World War II?” Nat asked. She lent one look to the archaic machine but said nothing further, opting instead to take a seat at the kitchen table, where a sea of papers was strewn about.

Then, to you, “Come. Sit.”

Somewhere in your tentative stroll from where you stood to where she sat, and in the middle of the men’s toaster bickering, Sam called out that he’d have bacon and eggs ready in a second. Steve offered up his singed sesame bagel in the interim, and you told him no thanks. With a still slightly throbbing skull and a nauseous gait, you took the chair next to Nat’s and looked down at her papers.

Honestly, you thought your present condition might warrant some leeway when it came to holding off on the heavy-hitting topics first thing, but, to your surprise, Natasha slid a crisp white packet over almost instantly.

“Nat, what the fuck?” you groaned for the second time.

“Read it. Give it a second to digest, then we can—”

“No!” you cut in, pushing the packet back to her with a little more force than you’d meant, “I-I can’t. Not now.”

On the very first page, in bold and capitalized typeface, there was printed a brief string of words you’d never wanted—or thought you would ever need—to see:

‘VERIFIED COMPLAINT: ACTION FOR DIVORCE’

“It’s just the petition. No harm in taking a look,” Nat said.

You could hear a faintly gentler tone in her voice, even as you shook your head and looked away from the papers.

“I don’t want to. I can’t do this right now.” You kept shaking your head for a couple seconds after, turning your gaze instead to the bay window of Steve’s kitchen.

A nice, sprawling yard stretched as far as you could see. In the distance, a fuzzy white horizon was punctuated the slightest bit by the outline of a wood fence, but apart from that, the land was empty. The lot was secluded. Happy and effervescent in a nearly cloudless sky, the midmorning sun cast its rays without so much as the threat of a storm’s hinderance. You fixed your eyes on the clear expanse above and silently wished it would rain.

Before more than a minute or two had passed like that, Sam was approaching the table with two platters. Steve balanced four more by himself, watching the sway of one plate of scrambled eggs in his arms with a wary look before setting each one of the dishes on the table.

“Bon appétit,” Steve said, butchering his French just about as badly as Sam had the bagels. You and Nat thanked them both anyway and started clearing off the table, pushing papers away in favor of steaming plates. Sam and Steve sat down, and all of you began to eat.

While you dutifully piled on each scoop of eggs, bacon, sausage links, biscuits, gravy, and grits—far more than you knew you could feasibly consume—you wished again for a rainstorm, and maybe a quiet breakfast. One that wasn’t marred by talks of legal separation and lengthy battles in court, if you could help it at all. To this end, and perhaps against your body’s best interest, you shoveled two supersized spoonfuls of egg in your mouth, so that if Nat tried reviving those subjects again, you could put off the conversation by simply continuing to chew. You felt your stomach turn inside you but, stubbornly, ate more.

You had just swallowed it all, about to make way for a warm, flaky buttermilk biscuit, when a sound cut in, and your belly flipped again. Your teeth had barely sunk into the bread a second when Nat set her own food aside, then used two fingers to push something toward you.

“Just skim it. Let me explain what the process can be,” she said, tapping her index on the first line and meeting your eyes as if to plead. She had to have known she’d be met with resistance—from you, of course, but also Steve. She raised a defensive hand to him before he even cut in:

“Come the fuck on, Nat. Will you give her a break?”

“I’m saying this for her sake! I’m doing it for her.”

“And throwing divorce papers in her face over breakfast is really the best way of going about it? Is that for her?”

Sam swallowed whatever he’d been chewing on, glanced down at the top paper, and seemed to brace himself.

“Guys, is now really the right time—” he started.

“That’s what I’m saying!” Steve barked over him.

Natasha ignored the plainly disdainful look from the latter, lifted her hand off the paperwork and instead trained her gaze solely on you. Just like she had in Zurich. Focusing intently on your face, ignoring whatever Steve or Sam were saying in the moment, she turned to you and found your expression was stale. Unmoving. Frankly, half of what was running through your mind right then was how badly you wanted to puke again. As if the eggs had turned rotten in your gut the second they reached their destination in your GI tract, you felt a heavy, oppressive fog of nausea taking shape between your ears, and you just wanted everyone to stop talking.

Sam and Steve continued on without a hitch, agreeing vaguely but also appearing to bicker over other things, like when was the most appropriate time to have this conversation. Natasha was leaning in, reaching for your hand this time, and you knew she meant well. You would bet any large sum of money there wasn’t a malicious bone in her body, and she was doing this for your benefit. All the same, you were grateful when the front door swung back on its hinges, and a new person walked in. Nat, Sam, and Steve all suspended their conversations.

“Hey, wh—” the blissfully unaware, semi-stranger began.

“Sharon!” Steve cried, “Would you tell Romanoff she’s being a goddamn pest with no sense of boundaries?”

Sharon halted at the threshold of the house, skating a look between Nat and Steve at first, then Steve and Sam, then just at you. The look didn’t linger for long, and before you knew it, she was setting down a fistful of grocery bags and twisting her mouth into a frown.

“Will you shut up, Steve?” was her only response.

Sam rose from his chair and pointed as if to say, ‘Yeah, that’ before joining her in the foyer to help carry in the Wegmans bags. Natasha leaned back in her chair with a vaguely pleased look, and Steve just rolled his eyes. He slapped his palm overtop the stack of divorce papers still laying before you and, seemingly undeterred, continued,

“Do you think it’s fair for her to force divorce papers on this poor soul—” pointing to you, the poor soul, apparently, “—when it’s been a week since she left?”

Sharon started handing off the frozen stuff first, sliding a box of Stouffer’s across the counter to Sam, who then deposited it in the freezer. These exchanges took place in relatively quick succession, with Sharon only chancing a look toward the kitchen table once or twice as they did.

“I think she should do whatever the hell she wants,” she said, “And I think their divorce is none of our business.”

Fair enough take. One that you could respect, at the very least, even if you weren’t certain she particularly cared for you at all. You reckoned she had no reason to, and on the whole, appeared to be a pretty reserved person.

You wanted to add a word in her defense, reiterate to Steve that he didn’t have to go to bat for you, the poor, defenseless soul, right now. Instead of being able to speak, though, you felt an upsurge of something heavy in your throat. You clamped a hand to your mouth again, cheeks flushing with the heady sensation and also out of embarrassment, then pushed your chair back and stood.

“I— gotta—” you stammered, just audible to the table, through the wall your fingers had made over your lips.

You sprinted up the stairs without another word.

The first trimester ritual repeated, and ten minutes later, you re-emerged from the bathroom feeling two big spoonfuls of scrambled eggs lighter and still none the happier, healthier, or wiser. You took a peek in the full-length mirror at the other end of the room and discerned from a distance of ten feet that you looked like dogshit.

You flopped down on the bed face-first, heedless of the pool of sweat that still encompassed roughly half of it, and let out a weak, muffled breath into the sheets. Someone had been gracious enough to replace all the blankets and pillows you’d kicked off last night. When you heard a knock on the door, it sounded a lot like Nat’s.

You rolled to the side, eyes screwed shut in frustration.

“If you’ve come to tell me my marriage is a fucking dumpsterfire, I agree completely, Natasha. I’m dumb.”

A little huff of a half-laugh sounded from the doorway. You opened your eyes and saw Sharon standing there.

Up close, she looked a little paler than you’d remembered seeing her last in Switzerland. Soft beads of perspiration dotted her neckline from what had likely been a hot and arduous journey walking up the driveway with all the food, and presently, she seemed tired. She wore a simple gingham blouse that had her eyes shining with vibrance, though, and both hands, you noticed, were full—she had a mug in one and a spoon in the other. She smiled kindly.

“The mob tends to have that effect,” she said, strolling in. Setting the mug on the nightstand and easing the spoon into it, stirring, “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

You had no idea what all she knew about your marriage. You weren’t so sure you could extricate yourself from all the blame of having the thing go up in flames in four short weeks. Nevertheless, you smiled back and offered up something good-humored in return, like, well, I’m not exactly winning wife of the fucking year anytime soon.

Again, Sharon chuckled. It was small. She leaned back against the nearest armchair and, pointing to the cup she’d left to rest on the nightstand, said in a soft voice,

“Give that a minute. It’s hot.”

You glanced over and saw a little string that you guessed was attached to a teabag sitting at the bottom of the mug. The drink smelled like chamomile, maybe. You sat up, readjusted your pyjama top, then slid your socked feet underneath you so you could scoot closer to the edge of the bed. On a deeper inhale, you decided the tea was definitely chamomile. And too hot, as Sharon said.

“Thank you,” you told her.

“It’s not poisoned, I promise,” she replied. Letting out that funny little chuckle of hers—one too low to be considered a full laugh, but very close—and then, seeming to realize what she said might’ve sounded off, “Like— I heard what happened with Schröder. Him trying to drug you after the wedding and all…that. I— I’m sorry.”

Bad time to be making jokes, she appeared to chastise herself, but you just nodded along with the faintest grin.

“It’s OK. I’d pay money to be knocked the fuck out now.”

You grinned bigger, and she smiled too.

“It should make you sleepier, if you wanted to nap.”

You replied that you would, in fact, love to be unconscious right now if it meant not having to put up with all this bullshit morning sickness, and you slowly reached for the mug. Sharon stood up, and while you took your first sips, she fluffed the pillows behind you.

She was right. The tea felt like a hug. You settled under the covers and brought the cup to your lips once more, taking two big draughts before setting the drink aside. Yeah, that shit’ll put you right out, no drugs needed. You sank even further under the sheets and watched Sharon hover between the bed and the doorway, looking around as if trying to find something to do—some way to make herself feel more useful, if you had to guess from the pensive look in her eyes. Finally, she settled closer to the door and gave you one, fairly sanguine look. The warmth of your drink had already begun to nestle inside your weary bones, and your eyelids felt heavier. Still, you tried to return the sunny look before getting fully settled.

“Thanks again, Sharon. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, of course.”

She started to leave. In fact, she’d already made it three-fourths out of the room when something stopped her in her tracks. She turned back to you, and you looked up.

“This…probably doesn’t mean a whole lot coming from me, but—whatever you decide to do with Bucky…is okay. We’ll support you, whether you choose to raise this baby with him or do…whatever it is you want to do. Don’t let Nat or Steve or Sam or anybody tell you differently. It’s your choice, y’know, whether you wanna stay married…”

Sharon trailed off, and somewhere inside, you could tell she meant to finish with words like, ‘…even if you didn’t get to make the choice to get married in the first place.’ You appreciated it. You beamed with just your head poking out from over the covers and thanked her again.

And, before she left, for the second time, she stopped. She walked over to the nightstand and bent slightly at the waist, just enough to set something small down. You turned to the side and saw a vial—a minuscule tube—on the surface. Your eyes widened, realizing what it was.

“Sam picked it up in Madripoor. He said Steve had given this to you…to, uh, give to Schröder, and I thought you should have it back,” she said, pausing, “Just in case.”

You eyed the little vial of poison on the nightstand and nodded, still not completely understanding. Your head throbbed, your stomach was still turning, churning. Your brain was about ten blinks away from logging off entirely and drifting to sleep. All you could do, then, was repeat what Sharon had said as you exchanged one final look.

“Just in case.”

Your eyes closed, and you fell asleep very soon after.

You couldn’t have been out for more than an hour; you were sure of it. However, the next time you glanced over at the clock on the bedside table, you saw it read 11:04.

P.M.

Shit.

SHIT.

That chamomille tea was no fucking joke.

Just as your thoughts drifted back to Sharon, the conversation you’d shared, the drink she’d given you, the poison she’d left behind for you to keep, you heard her voice all over again—and now, not just in your own head.

Presently, she was standing over your bed again, though the room was much darker this time around. She pressed a finger to her lips, hey, please, please, be quiet, alright? At first you wanted to make a sharp and strangled sound. A cry for help? You weren’t sure. Didn’t know. Couldn’t see very much of the woman at all, except for the outline of her face from the moonlight streaming in through the window. She stared and ‘shh’ed’ some more.

And you were contemplating yelling out a loud obscenity in response to it when next she cut in, markedly gentler:

“Keep it quick. Nat and the guys will be back in thirty.”

You blinked hard into the darkness and waited for your vision, or else your still-missing voice, to return. It didn’t. You just stared back, eyelids going up and down and up and down like a goddamn idiot gone sluggish off one too many Quaaludes, and it was several seconds more before she gestured behind her, into the shadows.

You tensed under the covers, chock-full of terror. You squinted, and shrank, and might’ve nearly pissed yourself were it not for the intervening force of a face.

A familiar face.

Bucky’s face.

You leapt up from the bed, displacing each one of Sharon’s cool and careful warnings from your mind all at once. You didn’t mean to, and as soon as she’d shushed you again, you shut your mouth. Fell still. Sharon slipped out of the room, reminding you both, again, that you had to be quiet, and you had to be quick. Then it was just you and Bucky. Silence and slightly less than five feet of space between you two. Then, shortly, no space to spare at all, as you ran to meet each for a hug a second later.

Your head struck his chest, and it was hard. That, alongside the python’s squeeze he wrapped around your body, hugging you to him in the tightest embrace imaginable, had your mind reeling, skull pulsing just a bit. You pulled back and stood smiling up at Bucky, whose eyes were wide, drinking the sight of you in.

‘Are you hurt?’ were his first words.

You shook your head that you weren’t, still unable to talk.

“Why are you— Who— who brought you— I didn’t—”

It seemed Bucky was equally hard-pressed to form a sentence himself, while his eyes were roaming wildly, all over you. Looking for bumps or bruises or cuts, whatever the wound might have been. He stumbled to the lamp and flicked it on. You tilted your head left, reflexively.

“I’m fine, Bucky,” you said. Sudden and swift, “I’m good.”

But you didn’t move your head too far to the right, either, for fear he might see the cut above your temple—the one soldat had caused when he’d pushed you to the floor, trying to protect you from a threat he couldn’t see.

As it was, your husband seemed to be too much in shock to see anything else apart from what stood immediately in front of him. He hugged you again. He kissed the crown of your head. He constricted your body so tight in his arms you felt a pressure start to build behind your eyes, and suddenly you weren’t so much pulling away as you were wrenching your body from him. When you met Bucky’s gaze again, the sweet blue irises were glossy.

“Nat wouldn’t say where you were, just that you were safe and needed to be…be alone for a while, but I—” He stopped, and it was as if he couldn’t even finish with the words, because his breath was stuck in his throat and his eyes were stinging too much. He looked down, briefly.

You wanted to reach for his hand but hesitated. He took yours a second later, holding extra tight as he continued:

“I thought I’d— thought you might’ve…left. I don’t know. I hadn’t been able to sleep, and then she— Sharon, she called me tonight, said you were here, so— so—”

You felt a pang of guilt holding his gaze, seeing how all the hurt that had come to accumulate behind those eyes over the last week went spilling, at length, into emotions he was either too overcome or sleep-deprived to express. The weight of this suffocated him, made him extra quick to speak his mind but slow to make sense of just about anything that was coming out of his mouth. He stopped, sucked in a breath, then pinched your hand in his, and you didn’t know what to do. You had no idea what to say.

“I was scared, Bucky.”

It sounded pathetic coming out of your mouth. Your husband nodded as though you’d just said the most profound thing in the world. His knuckles went white from just how hard he was gripping your hand, his head bobbed along in agreement, and for a moment, you winced to think that he might hug you again. Instead, the fingers tangled between yours just made a tighter knot.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said.

“You scared me,” you added, voice wavering.

Your left hand was going numb. You didn’t want to give him pause—possibly hurt his feelings—by freeing your touch from his, but that grip was brutal. Deathly rigid and unforgiving. Thoughts of Brooklyn and Madripoor came flooding back; Bucky was so much stronger than he realized. His tone, in contrast, was dulcet and soft.

“I didn’t know I’d get like that. I should’ve told you, doll.”

“I shouldn’t have tried the activation in the first place.”

You shouldn’t have tried digging into Bucky’s past all. When all there seemed to be at every turn was a brand new way for him to hurt you, or the people you loved, maybe there came a time when you had to stop asking questions altogether. Maybe that was what his mother and all the women who’d gone before her had known to do, what you had been too stupid to see all along. There was no knowing these men at all, only taking them as they were and learning to cope with what they became.

Bucky shook his head.

“No, doll, it’s not on you,” he murmured low. Still forceful

Thankfully, he released your hand to cup your cheeks, and he kissed your forehead. You felt your pulse in your palm, throbbing from where he’d held it. When he let go the second time, his expression was considerably softer.

“Listen, I’ll take you home, we can talk things over. As long as I know you’re safe, it doesn’t have to— to—”

Hey. He was already halfway toward the door before he realized you weren’t following him. He turned and gestured forward. He beckoned you, brows drawing in.

“Baby? C’mon.”

You didn’t budge.

Your feet were rooted in place, as though cemented to the floor. No matter how much you wanted to appease him, go along with whatever he asked, you couldn’t. You shook your head, and Bucky tilted his own, confused.

“Baby?”

“I’m leaving, Bucky.”

You couldn’t hear your own words slipping out between your teeth, only the blood rushing through your ears. Bucky stopped and turned to face you completely.

“What?”

“I’m leaving.”

“What— what do you mean, ‘you’re leaving’?”

“I want a divorce.”

That part you did hear yourself. You wished you hadn’t.

You wished you hadn’t seen the light break off from Bucky’s eyes, expression going limp the instant your words registered with him. You nearly wished you hadn’t said them at all, seeing just how far his face fell and how hurt he looked by them—but quietly, from somewhere more rational-headed inside yourself, there was a voice reminding the rest of you that it needed to be done. You couldn’t keep pretending like this wasn’t what had had to come next. What you’d been skirting with Nat all day and hadn’t been able to bring yourself to admit before now.

Your husband still didn’t seem to be computing it fully. He walked closer to you, and his gait was unsteady.

“Divorce?”

Your vision was bleary; you hadn’t even realized tears had begun to brim at your waterline as you watched him.

“It’s what we need, Bucky,” you could barely get it out.

“I don’t,” he shot back, not missing a beat, “I don’t.”

“It’s what I need.”

“You don’t mean that.”

His voice was hoarse, face shifting from lax incredulity to one of a wince—screwed up in a way that said he felt ill. You shook your head but couldn’t look away from him.

“You don’t mean that,” he repeated.

“It’s what I want,” you pressed on, just as sick yourself.

“You said what you wanted was me.” Again, Bucky’s voice splintered, and you could feel the pain in it.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me, Bucky.”

Gritting your teeth, unsure where else to fix your stare on his face but those eyes—while your own betrayed their feelings too easily, fraught with wet, rolling tears—you shouldn’t have been surprised when his went wider.

“What are you talking about?”

The question was short, sharp, and biting, spoken with such haste as might be mistaken for anger, but the eyes softened his look at once. The anguish painting them now as he stared back at you were a proof, beyond a doubt, that it was betrayal, not rage, which steered him. He turned, and it was as if he couldn’t see a thing but you; his elbow clipped the lamp and knocked it over, but still, he just stared. In turn, the ceramic appliance rolled onto its side, toppled the mug and the vial beside it, and all three went crashing to the floor. Bucky didn’t blink.

“Wh—” he started again, but you didn’t hear the rest.

You remembered Sharon. Heard a flash of her last admonition in your head—be quiet, be quick—and without thinking, you fell to your knees. You tried retrieving what pieces of chipped lamp and shattered mug you could, quickly. You spotted the small vial on the floor and shoved it in a pocket. Your hands swept over the broken pieces without any real idea of what you were doing—all except needing to clean Bucky’s mess—and then swiftly, stupidly, you tried picking it up by yourself.

Of course, a shard cut you. The little slit that was left in its wake could have been no wider than a fraction of an inch, but still, it bled. You looked down at the cut, just then starting to sprout red from left to right along the side of your palm, when a new sight crossed your vision. It was fast, too. All but thoughtless in the way it broke in, gripping your hand in his, and yanking you to your feet. Bucky hadn’t seen that you’d cut yourself, it seemed, and, out of instinct, had grabbed your hand to help you up. As before, his grasp was like a vice, and his thumb pressed right inside the lacerated flesh, sending a whole new maelstrom of pain shooting up your wrist and arm. Now, as then, he was heedless of his strength and his sheer, brute force, that he didn’t even see the effect of his grip. He just held on, held you, tighter, tighter, and—

“STOP!” you shrieked.

You shoved him off. Pried his touch off your palm and gripped your forearm in your other hand and pored over the sight, seeing the gash almost doubled in size from just where Bucky’s finger had sunk into the fresh wound. You let out a sharp, muffled cry through lips that tried to stay closed—remembering Sharon again. You shook your head, clenched your jaw, and tore off the other direction.

And when your husband reached out, eyes wide with their own shock and apologies, ‘Baby, fuck, I’m so sorr—’ you threw him off again. With your non-bleeding palm, you thrust your hand against his chest and pushed hard:

“Don’t touch me!”

When he reached for you again, as if by force of habit, you held up a defensive arm and sobbed out, ‘Stop!’

‘Don’t touch me, don’t—don’t—don’t fucking touch me.’

You screamed it. You didn’t mean to. Thinking only vaguely of the need to be quiet, and almost entirely on the stabbing pain in your hand, the imprint of Bucky’s touch on your body, and the blood trickling down your forearm, you darted into the bathroom and threw the door closed behind you. You locked it. You meant to.

Twenty minutes might as well have been twenty years in Bucky Barnes’ mind. In a moment like this, following yet another supreme fuck up on his part, he felt powerless. He had had to fight the instinct to barge into the next room over with every fiber of his being, and, making fists by his sides and pacing the floor and hating himself was all that seemed capable of occupying his mind just then.

He’d knocked on the bathroom door at least ten times. He’d been ignored each time, no matter the duration.

He still had your blood on his thumb, and it made him ill.

You said you wouldn’t hurt me, Bucky.

While he uncurled his hand from a fist just long enough to stare at the streaks of red stretched over his finger, he heard those words replay over and over again in his head. He’d said it—swore it—himself, and still your blood was turning a cool, dark, dry shade of crimson on his thumb.

This wasn’t how he’d meant for any of this to go. Still, notwithstanding his best intentions, none of it mattered. He’d seen a sincere look of fear in your eyes looking up at him, and nothing in the world would change what he’d done, or who he was. He’d caused you pain tonight, last week—though his memory of that was still so hazy and dark he hardly knew what else had happened, even now—and above all, he’d failed you as a husband, a protector.

You were likely curled up in a ball by the bathroom sink, cowering in fear because of him. The thought sent another tidal wave of nausea thrumming through his skull, a lump in his throat growing larger alongside it, and before he knew what he was doing, Bucky was striding back to the bathroom door. He banged his fist against it.

“Honey?”

No answer.

“Baby, please open the door.”

More silence.

The moment brought to mind a memory from the night you two had been married. How you’d fled to the en-suite bathroom and locked yourself in it; how Bucky had rattled the whole doorframe with the force of his knocks, demanding you come out. He’d hardly known you then. You hardly knew him now. The realization of this made the weight in his throat all the more excruciating as he stood, and, wincing with pain, Bucky kept knocking.

“I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry.”

Pleading now. His voice was hoarse all over again.

Had he been the slightest bit more desperate and reckless, he might’ve been tempted to muscle through, kick the door in with his boot. But Bucky knew better. He could already guess how much that action would terrify you now, while tending to an injury that he himself had inadvertently made worse. Barreling inside would be neither romantic nor sweet, just sinking what may then be a lethal dose of salt in the deeper, metaphorical wound. He refrained. Instead of continuing to knock, he dropped his forehead to the door and closed his eyes.

“Please believe me, baby,” he tried again.

He’d said it so quietly he feared you might not hear it. Then, a little bit louder, ‘Please, please believe me.’

No sound to be heard inside but running water.

“You mean everything to me, doll.”

By now, his voice was clogged with pain, teetering on the brink of agony as he rested his hands on the door, and willed you to open it. Say something to him. Anything.

“I’d never mean to hurt you. Not in a million years.”

For a moment, he heard nothing more. Just how desperately he needed to hear a voice in reply could not be overstated. Craving a new sound worse than oxygen in his lungs. At first, when he heard something other than himself nearby, it nearly knocked him back with joy.

A voice right next to his ear, “But you did, didn’t you?”

The joy lasted less than a second.

The voice beside him was low. And close. Not coming from the other side of the bathroom door, as he might’ve reasonably expected from you, and not even in the tone of a female’s voice, as he might’ve seen, were Sharon to have appeared by his side. This new voice was deep, and masculine, and in his ear now, chuckling some as a gloved hand pressed the barrel of a gun to his temple.

Bucky didn’t blink.

You stepped outside not wanting to see him.

The bleeding had long since stopped, thanks to the aid of a cool, damp washcloth and a few minutes’ pressure, but even once it ceased, your legs were reluctant to carry you back. You dreaded the thought of having to resume your conversation with Bucky—of having to look him in the eye and tell him all over again that it wasn’t safe for you to be married to him. But you didn’t have much of a choice now, either. This wasn’t your honeymoon, where you could stay locked in the bathroom, try climbing out a window, and hope for the best like you’d done before. You had the man’s child inside you, for fuck’s sake.

That uncomfortable subject and at least a dozen more were already swarming your brain as you made your way out of the bathroom. You’d taken a few extra squares of toilet paper to press into the cut, were looking down at it with a tense, uncertain gaze as you ventured out, when you were obliged to stop just a few steps into the room.

“Hi, honey.”

It wasn’t Bucky.

Your eyes snapped up to the source of the voice in an instant, and, on seeing you were right—that it wasn’t Bucky but a gaunt, grinning blond with a gun to your husband’s head—you almost screamed at the sight.

You’d wanted to scream, anyway. It would’ve been the sane thing to do, and one that nobody could’ve blamed you for in the moment, you reckoned, but strangely the sound never came. You just stared at the two, eyes wide and jaw slightly more lax as your lips made an ‘o’. Bile jumped up in your throat. You wished it would choke you.

‘Please. Don’t.’ was all you could get out.

Johann Schröder’s smile stretched wider.

“Don’t what?”

The question was clearly meant to be derisive, rhetorical. Still, with your fingers trembling, you tried answering:

“Don’t hurt h—”

“Why?”

You watched the gun sink deeper against your husband’s face, and he flinched. Your stomach clenched inside you.

“Why shouldn’t I hurt him, hon? Seems like he’s gotten pretty damn good at doing it to you,” Schröder sneered.

His words stung. The grin didn’t flinch. And, as if to punctuate his sentence, or else remind your husband that he was tied to a chair and entirely at his mercy now, Schröder struck Bucky in the face with the butt of his gun. If an onlooker hadn’t known better, they might’ve mistaken you for the one who’d been hit, though—at last, you unleashed that scream, and you reached out for Bucky, hands open and pathetic and desperate to help.

“Think it hurt as bad as your hand?” Schröder hummed.

Your feet were stumbling forward, “He didn’t mean—”

Another resounding thud against Bucky’s skull, this time hard enough to split his lip in half. If he’d grimaced in the slightest, you would’ve seen the teeth smeared with blood. But, true to form, James Barnes didn’t wince. He hadn’t even seemed to acknowledge the blow as it landed. Just stared at you and, with eyes as hollow and deadened and faintly pleading as you’d ever seen them before, manifested their silent apology to yours—again.

“Bet he didn’t mean to hurt anyone as the Winter Soldier, either. Still couldn’t have felt too good for all the folks he butchered, though.” At that, Schröder’s sick amusement morphed into a laugh, and he was taking Bucky’s collar in his other hand. Shaking him lightly while he spoke.

“Couldn’t have felt all that great for your dad, I bet.”

The diversion turned to you, all toothy smiles and mocking eyes. He didn’t care. He let you stagger another step toward the two of them, even try to get your hands close to Bucky. But when you’d drawn too close, he stopped you cold. Not thinking much else in the moment, you made a move to push Schröder’s arm away, hard, and were shortly rewarded with a shove of your own. He knocked you sideways onto the bed, and you landed on the hand you’d hurt. Before you could let out so much as a sound yourself, Bucky’s voice tore in:

“Schröder.”

Schröder turned. He raised his Ruger to your husband’s head again, as casually as if he’d asked him for the time.

“Yes?”

“Don’t touch her.”

Schröder turned to you. Though he didn’t move the Ruger again, he did point his finger at your form, haplessly curled into itself amidst the covers and pillows.

“Why? Saving all the rough stuff for later, are we?”

You cowered as his free hand reached for you, and just as your husband’s eyes went wide and a vein nearly tore through his skin from how hard it protruded, you cried,

“What do you want?!”

Schröder stopped. He brought his hand to a halt just south of your thigh—and then he dropped his weight on the bed beside you. He gestured indistinctly, almost disbelievingly, toward Bucky. The latter appeared near-apoplectic, nails raking down either arm of the chair.

“What do I want?” Schröder quipped, incredulous, “What do you want, doll? To stay married to him?”

And you knew he’d intended the question to be hurtful; you knew it by the glint in his eye, the goading tone of voice and the look he’d flitted to Bucky—nondescript and yet saying a world more than words could ever convey. He knew what had gone on between you, had likely heard your last conversation in its entirety, and was now using it against you. Mostly to taunt, then to injure your husband with truths he hadn’t yet uncovered himself.

Schröder’s eyes were shining with sadistic delight as he took your hand in his. He didn’t waste another second.

“No, no, that isn’t what you want at all, is it?”

Ignoring the screech of Bucky’s restraints as he tried to lunge out of his chair. Hearing him curse when he failed.

“—you said you’re leaving him, right?”

Schröder slid the thin, glistening ring off the hand he’d been holding before you could even think to stop him.

“—said you want a divorce, is that it?”

Then his grin got so big and conceited and enlivened by the sight of pain working its way onto Bucky’s face that any good sense you’d had left inside you was abandoned in a blink. You didn’t hesitate, or else try and make a pass to retrieve your ring—you just hit the man in the face.

Your fist was small, and his chin was hard. You knew before you ever threw the punch that it’d probably hurt you more than him, but you did it anyway. It succeeded, at the very least, in catching Schröder by surprise and swiftly pissing him off. Seeing this and feeling a bit bolder, you were somehow able to dodge his hands when he lurched for you again. Inside, your own anger flared.

“Why the fuck do you care?” you spat.

You found momentary respite in the corner of the bed, sliding back against a wall that would only protect you for so long. As soon as Schröder regained his bearings, he had you back in his sights and his grasp just as quick.

He dragged you back. He pulled you up. He dug the tips of his fingers so hard into your side that you thought the flesh might tear in two across your ribs. But it didn’t. Crescent-like indentations did leave their mark in a grisly set of five, though. You felt the sting of it as Schröder loosened his grip, then sucked his next breath through his teeth as if calming himself. Your gaze only hardened.

“I care,” he said, once he’d completed this slow inhale. He replaced his touch by pinching your face in one hand and bringing it up to his, expression more like a snarl. Then, raising the gun to your face in his other hand, “because I made a deal with your father. Remember?”

You did. Your head jerked back by force of instinct, but he held it. From every direction, then, you had nothing to hear but the sound of your own pulse thrumming a fast, panicked tempo in your skull. You tasted blood in your mouth without a drop on your tongue. And, had that deafening fear and revulsion been anything less, you likely would’ve heard something else beneath it all.

Would’ve felt it, if you weren’t already so numb: Schröder’s hand sliding its way down your body, diamond ring still stuck to the tip of his index finger. You sensed it as though seeing yourself from another perspective—watching his hand trail lower, lower, lower until something in Bucky split in two and he bellowed:

“SCHRÖDER—”

He said something more after that; you were sure of it. You just couldn’t hear him, or see him, or discern much of anything else but your own racing heart as the man who’d just beat your husband twice and lifted a gun to your head proceeded to press his touch to your belly. Almost conscientious and gentle as he lowered it.

“Was this part of the deal, too, doll?”

Your eyes widened. Realizing—then feeling fear seize you completely. Forgetting the metal at your temple and shaking your head with a force, but slow enough that your husband wouldn’t see it. Meanwhile, across from you both, Bucky seemed more than sufficiently occupied by his own blinding rage—he spit a glob of blood to the floor and, with his teeth bared again, swore he’d kill him.

Over and over and over again, oaths of taking Schröder’s life and making it gruesome and painful and slow filled your ears, but none of it stuck, for either you or Schröder. Instead, your maniacal captor just smiled, leaning in.

“I said, was this part of the deal, Mrs. Barnes?”

The heel of his palm sank into your stomach, and as the shock of his first words began to fade, a pain replaced it. His hand made an impressive demonstration of flattening and forcing itself so hard against the skin that a flurry of stars cropped up in your eyes, and you cried:

“Stop! I-It wasn’t— just— just stop. Stop.”

“Stop? Was it part of the deal or not?”

Schröder bore down even harder.

“It just happened!” you keened. Unsure why you felt compelled to answer for what had gone on at all—addressing the baby in this awful, oblique way—though reckoning it had something to do with the pressure he was applying to your stomach. You tried to squirm back.

But your stuttering pulse and your pleading gaze and the ache in your stomach proved to be all too much for any real progress to be made. You’d scarcely moved off an inch before he drove his palm deeper, and with the agony of a body about to rupture beneath it, a shriek clawed out of your throat. Your mouth fell open, and for once, you couldn’t curtail the pain, or fear. Schröder’s hand had just forced the noise from your mouth, along with some mindless, broken pleas to stop pushing, it hurts, please, please, when the face above yours only brightened. Schröder’s cruel, snide mouth flashed a smile above you, and before you could whine again—

He kissed you.

It couldn’t have lasted for more than a second.

Still, the moment seemed to stretch indefinitely. And felt perverse. So deeply nauseating and unsettling to every last nerve, muscle, tendon, and bone in your body that the response it evoked could be nothing less than visceral. You didn’t need to think at all to shove him off. Whatever might’ve given you pause with a loaded gun to your head was forgotten in a second, and soon enough, you weren’t alone in letting your reproach be known.

It started off with a crack, then a harsh, crude splintering of wood. A violent rift, from what you could hear of it, and when you turned your head, your suspicions were confirmed: Bucky had snapped half the arm of his chair away from the seat, and his right hand was almost freed.

Whatever barrier he faced in being bound more than four times over with rope seemed immaterial to him now. He could strain as hard as he pleased—feel the coarse synthetic fibers dig into his flesh and leave streaks of red, if not break the skin itself—and any pain, as before, hardly appeared to register with your husband at all. He just muscled through it, thrusting his wrist even harder. The whole force of this movement rocked the chair on its legs, and just when you sensed it might collapse beneath his weight, you felt Schröder stand up. The man didn’t need to move too far or do much else other than drop his hold on you and flip his gun to point it at Bucky instead.

Even when he had, though, Bucky didn’t flinch. His hands were in fists and his drive was like a machine’s—he tried forcing his way out of the right hand’s restraints, and the second the wood gave way, he was shoving it off.

Blind to the firearm Schröder was holding, or his words:

“Stay where you are, Barnes.”

Bucky was just then shaking off the rope that had been loosened by the break in the wood, jaw still tight as ever.

“You’ve got three other limbs to free, my friend, just—”

Schröder was still speaking when you saw his finger slip to the trigger, and it seemed to you it was itching to pull.

“James, stop!”

That plea came from you. More of a strangled cry, really—no more pleasant for either man to hear than it was for your throat to shriek. It did, however, stop Bucky cold. Your husband paused just long enough to meet your gaze. And in it, you saw, at least, that he was all there, if not enraged. But not soldat, or anyone else but himself.

You sighed in relief, despite what seeing two red rivers seeping out of Bucky’s mouth might otherwise provoke.

It was him. You might’ve smiled if another hadn’t cut in.

Schröder seized Bucky’s wrist. With it, you saw his hand just as mangled and bloodied as his lips. Knuckles cracked, slit, and soon to be littered with bruises of every shade, he shocked you again by how calmly he took it. Even when Schröder sank a thumb inside a big, gaping crater of a flesh wound he’d found on the back of his hand, your husband didn’t blink; he just looked at you.

‘I’m sorry.’

When the barrel of the gun returned to his head—this time, at the rear, as Schröder had circled back around the half-broken chair and was leaning over him—you could see the apology lodged in his eyes on full display.

“For safekeeping.” The man wielding the gun seemed almost pleased as he dropped your ring inside the breast pocket of your husband’s shirt, before patting it gently:

“Now where were we?”

A beat. Bucky’s right hand twitched beside him, but evidently, he knew better than to move in that moment.

“Right, right—” Schröder pretended to be remembering, tapping steel to Bucky’s skull, “She’s leaving, isn’t she?”

More silence.

You wanted to speak, beg Schröder for mercy, anything.

“Do you know why that is, Bucky?”

But before you could utter even a word of protest, the voice pressed on. Schröder was leaning in his ear.

“—what you did to her?”

The baby. Brooklyn. All the bloodshed that had ensued last week, leaving your husband completely in the dark. Of course, he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t been himself, and was scarcely more able to control his actions as the Winter Soldier than he could in a dream.

To your horror, Schröder reached down for Bucky’s hand, and, still holding the gun to him with the other, lifted it.

Pointed it.

Pushed it closer to you.

“C’mon, Buck. You don’t want me touching her, right? Why don’t you feel for yourself what she’s been hiding?”

Your blood turned to ice. You’d never felt so immobile—paralyzed—in your life, but seeing the hands drift closer and closer and feeling defenseless to their course, your body went numb. Your limbs grew heavier than lead.

And when you felt the smug, smiling blond guide your husband’s touch toward your head, you understood it all.

You were perched at the edge of the bed a foot away. Schröder was nudging Bucky forward in his chair, urging him to reach out and tilt her chin a little, go on, that’s it. And neither one of you had a choice, so he touched you. His fingers, directed by someone else, were obliged to brush the skin of your chin, your jaw, your cheek, and your brow, before finally settling above your left temple.

Your husband felt the cut—touched the stitches.

You winced, but not from any physical pain. It was Bucky’s face as the tips of his fingers skimmed the wound. The look of chagrin that crossed his eyes. Then bewilderment. Fear, as plain as anyone could see it— was he the cause of that? Had the hurt been from him?

You couldn’t bear to answer him, so you looked away. It was Schröder, again, who had all the power to speak.

“Can’t remember pushing her down?” he said, tone dark, “Making her split her head open on the bedside table because soldat didn’t know his own strength—only that he had to keep her safe—and sensed a threat outside?”

Bucky shook his head. His face was grave.

Schröder kept making him prod the skin.

“It’s bruised here, too. You feel it?”

Your husband did, and you thought it might break him. So tender and forlorn were the eyes, raking over every spot where a touch, his touch, had left you hurt before.

If nothing else could bring you back to your senses, the wounded look in Bucky’s gaze was sure to get it done.

You hardly thought again, just croaked: ‘It’s not his fault.’

Schröder’s hand then descended your neck, your torso.

As if he hadn’t heard you at all—

“You already saw what happened to her hand.”

—and forcing Bucky’s touch lower still.

“But what about here?”

Your breath hitched in your throat when you felt your husband’s hand come to rest on your stomach.

It was like a fire had ignited in your lower half, and nothing close to the soft, pleasurable kind. Not the flutter felt in anticipation of a touch from your husband, not the desirous sort. In fact, you dreaded it now; seeing Schröder over his shoulder, urging him closer, making him flatten his big, broad, scorching palm over your belly.

What should’ve been the ecstatic scene you’d conjured in your mind at least a hundred times since marrying him—the picture of domestic bliss as you said it, smiling, I’m pregnant—was now nothing short of torture. Choice all but stripped from you here, forced to emerge inside this terrible place, you found yourself needing to shrink back, shake your head, look to Schröder’s stubborn, unyielding gaze and beg him not to make you do this now. Not now.

Not here, with Bucky’s skin a shade of glacial white and his eyes going wide, taking on a look you’d never seen.

“What do you—”

He stared hard at the hand on your belly, but it didn’t last for long. As if realization were trying to seep in, he couldn’t meet it. His eyes flitted back to your face.

“Baby, what’s—” he tried again, stammering.

“—right, that’s it, Mr. Barnes.” That was Schröder.

Satisfied in the suspense of the moment keeping your husband still, he lifted his hand from Bucky’s and snapped, that’s it, and clapped him over the shoulder.

Congratulating him before the truth had even sunk in.

“A baby, that’s right! You’re going to be a father, Buck.”

And how far was the look on Bucky’s face from the one you’d dreamed before. The lips you’d envisioned in a smile now twisting bleakly, parting slightly, and the eyes you’d once hoped to be bright and elated only staring back with rings of red enveloping the irises. Whatever tears formed at his waterline were decidedly not of joy.

Only guilt.

“You did it.”

Desperation.

More moisture in his eyes as his hand started to tremble across your stomach, voice hoarse and soft, “Is it true?”

You didn’t need to nod. You just watched him, let your own eyes fill with the worst, stinging tears you had felt in your life, and from the silence that followed, Bucky knew.

As if the life beneath his palm were something dear, but still too much for him to comprehend, he shook his head. He stroked his thumb over the cotton of your pyjamas and tried inching closer, as much as his restraints would allow him. Then, with words that were audibly strained, but always gentle, he lowered his voice—as if to keep the communication between you two, despite your position:

“I love you.”

His hand was still on your belly as he said it. He reached up to cup your face. Even lower than before, “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry.

That much was evident from every look he’d given you tonight. Every move he made a de facto apology, all actions in the vein of atonement, it couldn’t possibly escape your mind or his that he knew he’d done wrong. It was only a matter of accepting this—maybe coming to terms with the fact that your life wasn’t safe in his hands—for the guilt plaguing Bucky to multiply. Paralyze him.

There was no better time for Schröder to strike. Just as the anguish had flooded Bucky’s face completely, and his hand had had to lower itself from want of strength, a sound split the air. Bucky was so lost in his thoughts that it didn’t even register at first, but the impact was real, and it was harsh: Schröder punched him squarely in the jaw. The next, swift snap was his nasal bone taking a blow, and breaking beneath it. Blood breezed down and into his mouth. Feeling warm, his lips and chin doused in a second, he sensed nothing else. He might’ve groaned.

He caught another swift right hook, and his mind went blank. Nothing of substance threatened to materialize between his ears, save for the rush of blood through and from his skull and the dim recognition of something ugly.

Something horrific.

He couldn’t protect you.

His body was as much an idle waste as it was a danger. Useless now, as he was tied to this chair, and a risk to your well-being even if he weren’t. The hazard was him.

Schröder hit him again, and Bucky realized that the ringing he’d heard in his ears was your screaming.

“I’m doing her a favor,” Schröder spat before shoving him back in the chair, almost knocking it sideways.

The blond advanced with ease. His knuckles were drenched in blood; none of it was his. When he reached for Bucky again, the resistance was slight, and a simple, firm grip on the collar was all that was needed to drag his frame to sit straight. Bucky was barely upright for a second before the next—and worst—blow struck his face. His whole head rang with it, reeling, but still, he could make out the words as they were spoken to him.

“She’ll never be safe with you, Barnes. Never—” and at the last, Schröder lowered his gun. Started to loosen the rope from Bucky’s left arm, “—I could free you now, and you still wouldn’t get within an inch of what you want.”

He nudged the rope away and let it fall to the floor. Bucky lifted his hand, but the effort was in vain. No sooner had a finger of his stirred than Schröder was delivering a kick to the chair and letting it splinter. Topple. Skitter a half-foot across the hardwood floor with Bucky’s ankles still bound to it, before finally, gracelessly, breaking apart.

Bucky was on the floor, blinking through a stream of blood and a sea of muddied thoughts when Schröder kicked the chair again. The rope slackened some more.

“Her own father knew as much, so he made me a deal to take her off of your hands. Settle his debts the way he should’ve done the first time around,” Schröder said, and now his tone was lower. Lethal as it ever was, and stern.

“I know how much you hate to lose your playthings, Buck, but this one’s better off with me, I promise.”

And, as if to emphasize his point, Schröder turned and reached for you. Bucky’s own hands were slow, fumbling in fits and bursts to get the rope unwound from his ankles, but they were determined. He just couldn’t get the bleeding to stop, the ringing to subside, or his brain, in its concussed state, to let him move with a little more agility. He’d been hit too many times. He could barely lift his head off his shoulders and hold it straight, so he was forced to stay where he was, keep at his task, and listen.

“You’re weak when you’re not soldat.”

Using his knuckles, Schröder brushed the blood that was evidently all Bucky’s across your cheek, and you flinched.

“When you make the switch, still…you’re inhuman.”

Then he tilted your head, making you show them both the mutilated, stitched-up flesh above your temple. Again, you tried to slink away, but his touch was firm.

“Don’t you think your bride deserves better than that? Your child? Forced to live in fear of that thing you are?”

Blood coursed down Bucky’s face, and his lips were curled apart in a grimace, mouth hanging slightly ajar. His eyes fixed their look on you. The rope was undone.

He’d just started to try and stand when the edge of his vision blurred. He felt the lacerations in his face pulse as one, and with it, half his sight went skewed to the left. Schröder couldn’t help but crack a smile seeing him stumble, pitch back, and barely catch himself on the bedside table. When he stood, he was mostly hunched.

“Look at you, Buck. You can’t try and save her like this,” Schröder taunted, drawing you closer, “So stop trying.”

The man’s hand was like ice holding your face. The grip grew tighter when he saw your husband limping your way, and before either one of you could move, the index of Schröder’s other hand had slid down to the trigger. He didn’t wait to give another warning before he did it—just pointed the gun and fired one shot over Bucky’s head.

His aim was good. The bullet missed your husband by less than an inch. The gun had gone off by your ear, and immediately, you seized the side of your head as a sharp, searing pain cropped up. Your skull was still ringing when you heard the thing discharge again, and you realized it had been aimed at Bucky’s neck. He’d ventured another step, and Schröder had fired a second round to graze the top of his shoulder. Crimson bloomed through his shirt.

Bucky should’ve stumbled again. He might’ve staggered back with a grunt of pain, lifted a quick, reflexive hand to feel the wound, but the sense of it all was slow to reach him. The moments that passed him were delayed just the same, as if the world around him were distorted—the fibers of time tugged and stretched before his eyes—and he could hardly keep himself straight. When he got another look down the barrel of the gun, he didn’t blink. Couldn’t see, really. It was all misshapen sights and sounds and a dim recognition that his mind was in a fog.

Somewhere from within that mist, he heard, faintly:

“I’ll go— I’ll go— I’ll go with you, I’ll go— just stop.”

Schröder turned to you, and the smile that he wore was cruel, but Bucky wasn’t able to make out the expression.

All he could see then, to the faintest extent, was you—your face, gripped hard in another man’s hand, eyes pleading and wet with tears, and a slightly slack jaw.

“Leave him for me?” Schröder repeated, sneering.

You nodded. Blinked. Rolled your tongue along the inside of your cheek before pulling it back and biting down once. There was a hint of a wince in your eyes, but, from what Bucky could tell, it vanished just as fast as it came.

Your lips parted again. Your eyes widened a little.

“So the girl has some fucking sense.” That was Schröder.

He’d had his weapon re-holstered and your face firmly seized in both of his hands in no more than a second.

What came next surprised no one, though the sensations of disgust and rage were as quick to turn a stomach as the shock would have done. Schröder bent down and, having pulled your face closer to his, kissed you again.

Schröder’s mouth was glistening with a grin and Bucky’s own blood—smeared all over your face from how hard he’d been holding you—when he looked up and turned.

“Sensible and sweet, isn’t she? Tastes like it, too.”

Bucky saw nothing but red. It wasn’t just blood crowding his vision now but violence and rancor and outright hatred, stirring his limbs to start moving again when the rest of his body was plainly too battered to venture an inch in that condition. He staggered again, watched you again, and had made it almost halfway across the room when another sight slowed him, if only for a moment.

Schröder’s lips were back on yours, as if to mock him, but what startled him, really, was the way you’d opened your mouth. You couldn’t mean it. Clearly. Schröder was gripping your jaw, forcing it open—it had to be—and he was coaxing your tongue out from inside and weaving it with his. Once more, time moved like molasses, and that was all your husband had had to see: you kissing him back, gripping his arm through the thick, black tactical gear, and still parting your lips more and more for him. Like you needed a touch, or something, worse than ever.

That stalled Bucky, though he was nowhere close to stopping now. Briefly preoccupied, and seemingly shocked as well that you’d accepted the kiss so eagerly this time, Schröder didn’t see the approach. If he had, he likely would’ve turned and made a move for his Ruger, but as it was, he had only to blink—and there was Bucky.

He hit him with a force that was blinding, directly to the side of his head so hard that he’d had no choice but to separate from you. Schröder was stunned one second and on the floor in the next. Bucky threw him there, kicked him down, and, wavering for only a moment to cock back the shoulder that’d been shot, he ignored the pain and punched the man again. And again. And again.

There was a callousness, an indolence, and an ease with which he was able to inflict the pain, that much was evident. What didn’t seem so natural, at least in Bucky’s mind, was the weight that was in his hands: Schröder’s body felt limp before he’d even landed the second blow.

The pressure grew heavier and heavier in his hands the harder, and more frequently, he delivered each hit, but for now, he didn’t care. Bucky kept on punching until the face beneath him was gnarled and bloody, and his own fist, too, slashed every which way with more cuts than he was able to count. He would’ve kept going—could’ve ignored the stabbing pain in his shoulder for as long as it would take to ensure the man was dead—but as it was, he refused to ignore the voice he heard. It was yours.

Muffled now, as your body was bent to the side and your head drooped lower still. Your voice was soft but clear:

“Bucky, please, stop.”

He did.

He dropped the man’s collar from his hands as soon as he’d heard you say it, and he turned away as if nothing had transpired behind him at all. His focus was on you.

“Baby—”

To his surprise, he watched you spit on the floor.

Your face was grim and almost sick, and you spit again.

The look grew even worse, and afterward, you didn’t waste a second more; you stood and left the room.

Bucky was stunned at first, and his instinct had been to follow. Then he heard a rattling sound beside him. He glanced down and paled, seeing Schröder there.

His face had turned blue much sooner than Bucky had expected—and not from any bruising but a lack of oxygen in his lungs. He was choking, foaming slightly at the mouth while he gasped for air. Surely, it hadn’t been the hits that caused it. The whites of Schröder’s eyes were as conspicuous as he’d ever seen them. Desperate.

Bucky swiftly got the sense that the life of his former captor was lost, and frankly, he didn’t care enough to watch him die. He left what remained of Schröder’s form to continue writhing on the floor, choking and sputtering for a breath that would never come, and went after you.

Downstairs, he found you hunched over the kitchen sink—spitting, retching, and trembling, too, but breathing.

You let the water from the faucet fill your mouth, and you rinsed again. You winced as something stuck your cheek.

Bucky drew closer, quickly, and when he was right by your side, he saw you spit a shard of glass into the sink. He looked over to the counter, and he spotted three more

They were minuscule, really. Nothing quite the size to leave a wound too deep, but sharp enough to cut your lips, your tongue, or the insides of your cheeks. When Bucky leaned in, he saw droplets of red joining the flow of the water beneath it. You coughed over and over again

“Don’t,” you croaked, seeing Bucky reach for the glass.

Before he could reply: “It’s the poison. From Madripoor.”

Your husband’s blood went cold in his veins. He didn’t touch the glass, but he did press closer to you, feeling his insides churn as the cogs started to turn in his head.

The vial of poison you’d been given to slip in Schröder’s drink at the Foxy Den—how the hell had you gotten it back? Why would you think you needed it, if he— but no, that couldn’t be the case. There wasn’t a shot you just—

“—put it in your mouth?” Bucky couldn’t curb the fear in his voice. He reached for you and spun you to face him.

“Did it kill him?”

Your eyes were wide for entirely different reasons. Bucky couldn’t believe what he was seeing; his mouth was dry.

“I didn’t want to kiss him,” you went on, voice shaking a little, “I didn’t— I just— I couldn’t get him the poison any other way. I knew he’d kiss me again, and when he did—”

“I know,” Bucky said. He smoothed the hair from your face, shaking his head. Feeling his stomach clench with fear and dread as he hurried to get a look in your mouth.

You’d snuck the vial inside your cheek, then crushed it between your teeth before Schröder had kissed you. You’d all but forced him to swallow the poison, shoving your tongue down his throat, but what of the stuff that remained? The rough, trembling fingers of Bucky’s hand were trying to pry your lips apart as gently as they could, ensure all the serum was out, but at present, you wouldn’t let him. You pushed back gently, though not too far to prevent your own touch from roaming his shoulder.

“The bullet—” you started.

“Barely nicked me,” Bucky cut in, “Baby, I need to see—”

That you’re safe. That you won’t be hurt in any way. He couldn’t finish the thought himself, having seen what the poison did to Schröder. Instead, he just held you closer and fought the lump that was starting to form in his throat. Adrenaline had worked well enough to clear his mind of the haze, but the rest of him was all high-strung.

Your clothes clung to you both, wet with blood and sweat. Your breaths were fast. Your expressions were feral, eyes no calmer as they scanned over the other’s form and soaked in every trace of what had happened. Bucky in his formalwear and you in something close to a chemise—like your honeymoon night all over again—you each got a glimpse of the gore ornamenting yourselves and let the room fall quiet, if only for a minute or two.

Your husband was the one to break the silence, at length, with cracked and grisly hands sliding down to your hips.

“You’re okay?”

His touch shifted you back in place to sit on the counter.

“I’m alright.”

You wanted to say more; assure him, in a voice as sedate as you could manage, that this wasn’t his fault. Whether he would believe a word of what you said was a separate question, but, at any rate, it didn’t matter. The next thing you knew, Bucky was slotting himself in the space between your legs and pulling you into his arms.

In spite of himself and all the wounds, he held you tight.

“You’re alright,” he repeated.

His face sank into the crook of your neck, and you felt his muscles contract again—pulling you closer—as he drew a shaky breath against your skin. You hugged him back.

“Are you?” Your voice was small.

In a blink, Bucky resurfaced. He lifted his head from your neck and, still holding you, hadn’t seemed to have heard.

“The baby,” he said quickly.

He stepped back. Lowered his gaze and his hands to trail over your hips and near your stomach, and he stared, as if trying to make sense of something dire. His blue eyes were wide, and they assumed such a look of panic that you feared a blood vessel might actually burst in one.

After all the great lengths he’d gone to, ensuring you were safe and taking extra precautions, on the off-chance you might be pregnant, here you were.

And there he went, sliding his touch lower and lower again until his hand was pressed into your belly, and the gaze you’d once thought soft before had all but melted into tenderness—delicacy. Complete, loving unreserve.

When his eyes met yours a second time, they were shiny.

Wet with the only kind of tears you’d want to see in them.

“You’re really…” he started, just to taper off, blinking.

And then his cheeks were dotted with the tiny, round droplets, and he’d finally ventured a smile for the first time in what seemed like ages and you couldn’t keep from reaching for him. The second you’d lifted your arms you were back in his, lips and nose smushed against the front of his stained white button-up and breathing deep.

Or trying to, anyway. Bucky had you squeezed so tight to his chest you had nothing but his shirt to inhale at first. You didn’t mind, and when he pulled away a moment later, you realized that your eyes, too, were filling up quick. You had to steel yourself against a maelstrom of emotions that threatened to emerge—the aftermath of a half-dozen traumas laid bare over the last hour—but the longer you were here, and the more your husband stared at you like that, the quicker your courage was depleted. In the span of five seconds, your senses were shot to hell. All you could think was what you could feel, and all you felt was Bucky: his arms and his hands and the raw, blistering heat between your bodies. The rest was noise.

It surprised you both when you kissed him. Physically, your mouth and his were hardly up to do it, injured as they were, but the impulse was strong, and it flowed between you. As soon as your lips latched onto his, Bucky was holding your face, molding his body to yours without so much as a second thought, and the mouth you met was sturdy. Hungry in the way it kissed back.

A string of words from Schröder flashed in your mind—‘Never be safe’—and you grit your teeth together, snagging the cusp of Bucky’s lower lip as you did it. He groaned. Before you could even try to apologize, though, he was gripping your face harder in his hands and coaxing your mouth open with his tongue. His front was still flush with yours, and your legs were starting to wind around his hips. Your husband nudged you back against the cabinets, and from the force of that push, you felt it.

Felt him.

Surely, it had had to take two very fucked up individuals to get all hot and bothered from a bloodbath that had just taken place; but, again, here you were—together.

And there you went, grinding your lower half with his.

“Doll?” Bucky broke out, word slurred just a little.

For a second, you thought he was going to stop you. Your eyes scanned his, and you were already planning to apologize for being so horny, it must just be the—

“You know I love you, right?” he breathed.

You blinked. You were about to nod, when you felt the bulge in his slacks start to rub against your barely-clothed heat, and something akin to a shockwave coursed through your frame. It couldn’t be helped. A monsoon of hyper-sensitized pleasure trembled over the skin in a way you’d never felt it before, and suddenly you were letting out a moan: a muffled cry of, ‘Yes, I-I know.’

Your husband swallowed and stared, slightly taken aback by the reaction his erection had produced. He’d never felt that either. At least from what he could remember.

The truth was that he’d never had a pregnant wife before—someone whose body was now extraordinarily responsive to his touch, nearly aching for him.

When you scooted your butt to the edge of the counter and dug your heels in the backs of his legs, humping him, almost, he got the idea. Bucky swallowed again.

“I love you too, I— I—” you started, already out of breath, “I just really need you to fuck me. Can you— please—”

Bucky didn’t need to be asked once, much less twice. He already had his belt, button, and zip undone before you could even look down, and then your own pyjama shorts were sliding off too. The counter was cool against your skin, but your husband’s warmth was more than enough to compensate for the loss. You smiled again, sheepish.

“It’s just…hormones,” you said, quieter toward the end.

You weren’t sure why you felt so ashamed to simply say, ‘James, I’ve been damn near insane with desire ever since you put a baby in me. Can you give me five more?’ But you did. You felt your cheeks start to heat as your lower half was left exposed to the air, and Bucky slipped his hand down between your legs, practically groaning:

“Honey, you’re soaked.”

There wasn’t one iota of shame in his tone.

He was more than happy to find you drenched beneath his touch. He had a smile on his face and a warmth bleeding from every fingertip as he caressed that soft, tender spot. You didn’t need to tell him what was on your mind, either. He sensed something was making you shy, and rather than have you say it aloud, he just touched you gentler, stroked the skin more affectionately, and tilted his head so only you could hear him, quiet as ever:

“That’s my girl. Feeling good for me?”

You felt your heartbeat between your thighs.

“My baby,” Bucky went on, voice dulcet and slow.

Your body was trembling at the edge, waiting. Impatient.

“My wife,” he said that with a smile, into your neck.

He lowered you onto his length, and you whined.

“Mother of my child.” The smile got bigger.

You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it. Feeling him slide inside the most precious, wet, pliable part of you, stretching you out, you couldn’t help the sounds you made. You felt full in a whole new way; the groan Bucky let out when you were impaled down to the base of his cock said he shared the feeling. He throbbed inside you.

“You’re—fuck.” Bucky’s words broke off at the sensation.

Your walls were as slick as ever, your body delicate, rolling your hips to the first gentle thrusts that his shaft carved inside. Neither one of you could last long like this.

Still, at the threat of sublime pleasure, you felt fear, briefly: Schröder’s implacable stare—and the thousands more like him in HYDRA. You couldn’t help but grip Bucky tighter, willing these thoughts away with the rhythm of your body over his. Feeling him fill you up, fuck you with quick, deliberate thrusts and hold you, ‘That’s it, take what you need, sweet girl, you’re okay.’

You wished you were. You wanted to be. With every stab of Bucky’s hips, you hoped this would be the last night you ever feared for you or your child’s life, but deep down, you knew that wasn’t true. This was everything your husband’s varied ‘enterprises’ entailed, and a life with him meant never knowing a day without it—fear.

The head of Bucky’s cock grazed an especially sensitive ridge in your walls, and you whimpered into his shoulder.

You smelled blood.

He pushed you back against the counter and pounded harder, breaths heavy and labored and gruff as he spoke:

“You’re okay, baby, it’s alright.”

Your mind tried clinging to that thought, nodding along as if to convince yourself. The pleasure grew stronger, and your body was hot. Everything was heightened. Bucky couldn’t keep his eyes or his lips or his rough, bloodied touch from roaming you wherever he could reach, and he kept rutting his hips, assuring you gently, again and again, that it was all okay. He was right here.

The pleasure from the depths of your body was beyond your control—you couldn’t help it when the band inside of you snapped. You held Bucky closer and you moaned, more desperate and needy and soaking for him, taking something from him, and knowing the bliss you felt would only steal the dark thoughts for a moment or two.

Bucky’s eyes said it just the same. He couldn’t keep stuffing you full, feeling his pleasure hit its peak, and finally painting your insides without sharing that look.

You were less than halfway down from your highs when you felt him go still, panting fast, then hold your face.

“I love you.”

It was desperate. Hoping for something.

“I love you, too,” you told him, and you meant it.

But there was more. Both of you knew there was more.

“I can’t be married to you, Bucky.”

You didn’t know why it had to come out now, but the emotions were there—his gaze had all but drawn it out.

Still sheathed inside you, your husband tensed. He looked as if he might try and shake his head, but the movement was stalled by his own momentary shock. He’d known the words were coming, but the sound of you saying them now wasn’t any less jarring to hear. Before he could reply, you found yourself cutting back in:

“Not now, at least. We need some…time. To think.”

You weren’t sure what you were saying, just that your lips were moving and every new word was hurting him more.

“Even with Schröder gone, there are so many…dangers for both—or, all—of us, and I don’t know…I just can’t—”

—imagine bringing a child into a world like this. Like his.

You didn’t need to say it.

The pain in Bucky’s eyes already communicated as much, and the conviction in your own only convinced him that you’d meant it—and what you said was the truth. You couldn’t stay in a marriage that wasn’t safe.

Just as you opened your mouth to say something more, the man surprised you when he squeezed your hand.

Nodding, almost imperceptibly, in front of you.

“I can wait,” he said, “Whenever you’re ready, doll.”

His voice was hoarse, words strained from the lump in his throat as he spoke, but the message was sincere.

“Whenever you feel safe,” he added, softly.

You wanted to hold him again. Like before, your eyes began to well with something stinging and harsh, but the look you’d fixed on him was filled with nothing but love. You would’ve reached for him then, if he hadn’t moved his hand to his pocket. He felt around inside it, briefly.

Then Bucky retrieved your wedding ring.

Holding you up against him, pressed snugly into the counter with your legs still wrapped around his lower half, he pinched the silver band between his forefinger and thumb and held it up to you. It glistened in the light.

“The next time you wear it, I want it to be because you chose to marry me. Not for anything, or anyone, else.”

Nothing arranged, no game, no being forced to stay.

You nodded and had to blink through a layer of tears.

Bucky’s thumb traced the moisture, cupping your cheek in one of his hands. He’d had to keep blinking himself, and before you could reach for him, he kissed you.

“I really hope you marry me again one day, Mrs. Barnes.”

You smiled, having parted but still holding on.

“I think I would like that, too. One day.”

The next thing you heard was a sound at the front door: what sounded like a crash. Half a dozen sets of feet stumbling inside, crowding the foyer, making a loud, frantic clamor that you and Bucky knew only too well. The two of you scrambled to get your clothes back on as Steve, Nat, Sam, and Sharon all seemed to yell at once.

You had one hell of a story to tell them.

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[silentwalrus1]

I like to think about what if the Kaminoans just, fucked all the way up and made the clones telepaths on purpose.

Kamino is in the Rishi maze, the equivalent of total buttfuck nowhere. This is like a cattle processing plant in rural Montana manufacturing an order for Shenzhen as outlined by a third party intermediary from Monaco who keeps contact with neither production nor “client” and nobody’s first language is Basic. Jedi are like, totally psychic right? Right. Psychic army for psychic clients, sounds right, checks out. There are whole ass telepathic alien species out there, some of which are also Jedi. Why would they want NON-psychic clones. Get it done, Tally Ho or Nala Says or whatever her name is. Chop chop.

Cue like seven years into production and the Kaminoan project leads are starting to get some… inklings…. that maybe some of the deliverable specs were perhaps not so much well-researched as based off cross-galactic hearsay some underpaid analysts pulled off space reddit. This is a business, okay? You’re not gonna make profit manufacturing two million units of fucking anything if you treat it like a luxury product, but especially not if the product has goddamn childhood development & socialization needs. Of fucking course some shit maybe slipped through the cracks. What are we supposed to fucking do now, Lama goddamn Sue sir, tell the Jedi or the pickled fucking Sith that oopsie woopsie, we got the specs wrong half a decade in and have to start over again?

No. No we are not. We are going to lie our fucking semi-aquatic asses off, is what we’re gonna do, and so will you clones if you know what’s good for you. NONE of you are fucking psychic, and you never were. Got that? Understood?

Fast forward to Jedi pickup D-Day and every time anyone with a lightsaber gets within aural biosystem of choice distance the clones immediately start loudly and dutifully Having Conversations.

Hello Commander Sir, It Is I, Trooper McSoldierClone, What A Weather It Is Today, Ha Ha? Over. Yes Indeed McTrooper One Two Three Four, I Am Agree, Now Here Is An Order To Follow Which I Am Vociferously Giving You, Acknowledge Orally, Over. Every clone making rock-hard sweating eye contact like don’t fuck it up as they mentally chant encouragement and script notes and jeering performance feedback at each other. Cadets trooping to fucking speech practice to learn speaking out loud with all the enthusiasm and skill of the average white suburban Floridian teenager taking their fifth mandatory Spanish 1 class. The jedi are like damn these poor asylum grown freaks are so unsocialized and uncomfortable around us, Their Owners, this is so tragic and horrid and unfortunate and meanwhile every clone standing silently in formation is mentally spectating the 400-person telepathic tetris team sport they invented with the same vibes as a football world cup back alley street party complete with official & unofficial betting pools and expert panel commentary

[islandheartprincess]

bully!rafe x reader - pt. 2 ౨ৎ₊˚⊹ ᡣ𐭩

part 1 ✧ part 2 ✧ part 3˚୨୧⋆｡

summary:you needed rafe, bad, just as much as he needed you. you both hate to admit it. PORN W/ PLOT! senior year of HS, both are of age

c!w:smut smut smuuuttt, dirty talk, fingering, cum eating, school sex, name calling, finger sucking, edging?, spit, semi-public sex, dry humping, swearing, 18+ MDNI

pairing: bully!rafe x sorta sassy innocent reader

after your experience in the bathroom, you couldn't look at rafe the same. unfortunately for you, hearing his desperate moans only made your need for him worse. you needed him in every way possible. all you could do, was wait for the next time he approached you.

you were trying your best to focus on your work in class, yet your mind was drifting to how pathetic he sounded in that stall. it was hard to not think about it, considering he was sitting in the seat behind you. you could feel his eyes on you, fixing your posture as your mind returned to the worksheet in front of you.

rafe, on the other hand, couldn't be less interested in even attempting to pay attention. he was too focused on the curve of your back, and how your ass looked on the seat. he fidgeted with a pencil in his hand, thinking of some way to piss you off and get your attention. he flicked the pencil in your direction, hitting your back.

you turned around, furrowing your brows at him. you stuck up your middle finger, getting a snicker out of him, whispering "sorry princess" under his breath.

you turned back to face your teacher, who was unfortunately looking right at you.

"miss l/n! how inappropriate of you, now focus on your work!" you sighed, looking down as you felt an embarrassing amount of eyes on you. this only motivated rafe more, waiting to catch you out of class.

as the bell rang, you quickly rushed out of class and headed to lunch. your school was pretty big, and you had found yourself in an empty hallway you didn't even know existed. for rafe, who had been following you, this was the perfect opportunity.

the sound of your dainty mary janes clicking filled the empty hallway, before you heard a familiar voice behind you. "hold up, where you headed off to?" you turned around to meet rafe's eyes, fluttering your lashes at him.

"what the hell do you want rafe?" you sighed at him, doing your best to rile him up. "god, you always like this? like, a sticks up your ass or some shit." he said back to you.

"you're the one always fucking following me around, kinda hard to ignore" you sassed him, faking your carelessness.

"wh- you little fuckin- think you can talk to me like that huh? dirty fucking mouth, fucking whore." he spat at you, his anger rising.

you were committed, you knew if you kept up this innocent girl act, he'd crack in seconds. "d'know what you're talkin bout...." you murmured, lifting your hand up to his chest.

"think you're so perfect, i know you're not some fuckin innocent good girl, you're a dirty bitch." his hand raised to your throat, making you feel like your heart was about to shoot out your chest.

"you just do this shit, so, so, someone could just put you in your place, fuck you right." he shouted at you and pushed you backwards, your back slamming against the empty lockers.

you knew how you were making him feel. he was cracking, he just didn't want you to know. all you did was bite your lips, squeezing your thighs together.

he gently squeezed your throat, feeling himself grow impatient, he couldn't wait to ruin you, every part of you. he hesitated a bit, before his hand trailed up your throat, landing on your jaw.

his curiosity got the best of him, he wanted to see how willing you were. his hand squeezed your jaw, looking at your soft, pink, lips and long lashes. he lifted his index and middle finger up to rest on your lips.

"you'd jus do anything for me? right?" he was right, you would. you placed your hand on his wrist, nodding at him and slightly parting your lips.

he took that as a sign to slip his fingers into your mouth. they slid past your tongue, you swirled them around his fingers as they furthened down your throat, making you gag a little. your eyes began tearing up, you squeezed his wrist, but continued to suck on his fingers.

he couldn't have been more hard than he was right now, his trousers uncomfortably tight on his crotch. "such a dirty bitch...." he muttered, pulling his fingers out and wiping them on his blazer. you were so needy, and he noticed. he ran his hand up your skirt, kissing your jaw.

his fingers slipped into your panties, damp and wet. "so wet, fuck, dirty girl, you jus need me so bad." his hot breath on your ear, while you let out small moans uncontrollably. he traced circles on your clit, running his fingers up and down, before easily slipping them into your tight cunt.

his fingers felt horribly amazing, scissoring into you, making you whine with your arms wrapped around his neck, squeezing his shoulder. "rafe, mmh, please please"

he fingered you harder, before stopping completely. a tear rolled down your cheek, gosh he was so mean. "please what? hm? what d'ya need princess?" he taunted you, humping into you. "please rafe! pleas- just- just fuck me please keep going rafe!" he chuckled at your pathetic begging, and continued abusing your cunt, curling his fingers and perfectly hitting your g-spot.

you felt your climax nearing, slapping his back, while he kept humping into you"rafe! god, 'm so close rafey!" you moaned into his ear. "mhm? you gonna cum f'me baby? cum on my fingers" that was all it took for you to let go, all over his fingers.

you breathed heavily, laying your head on his shoulder while he slipped his fingers out of you, covered in cum. he brought his fingers up to his mouth, and licked them clean. it turned you on, rightfully so. your eyes trailed down to his crotch, noticing the wet patch on his pants. all that bullshit he pulls about being in control, hes just as pathetic as you.

before he let go of you, his hand returned to your jaw, "open" he demanded. you opened your mouth, tongue sliding out too. he spat into your mouth, closing your lips and planting a kiss onto your forehead. he muttered into your ear "your only my slut, kay?" he smoothed out his hair, turning his back away from you, and walking away.

you slid down the lockers, closing your eyes, as your heart beat returned normal. you needed him, you admit that. but he needed you just as much, nobody saw the side of him you did. nobody effected him just as much you did.

part 3 (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

[jirsungs]

NO IDEA ☆ l.dh

pairing: loser!donghyuck x fem!reader

no idea synopsis: a story where both you and lee donghyuck seem to get what you want. he's the perfect pawn in making your ex-boyfriend jealous and the smarty pants tutor helping you pass your math class. donghyuck has it easy too, he's finally able to seek out and experience the world of dating through you, his long-devoted crush and surprisingly enthusiastic tutoring student. but then again, when meaningless tutoring sessions soon evolve into reciprocated feelings, is it really that easy?

genre: college au, nonidol au, fake dating au, social media au (includes written chapters), classmates to friends to lovers, he's a nerd & she's a popular cheerleader (you see where this is going), he fell first but she fell harder trope, kinda based off to all the boys i've loved before, fluff, crack/humor, angst, one-sided pining that turns into mutual pining

warnings: explicit language, unrealistic college partying, talks about family issues (this does NOT reflect any of the idol's families!), yuqi has an ex gf, some alcohol consumption, kys and sexual humor, bullying, hyuck and his buds are mistreated ☹️, hyunjin is a bad bf!!!, cheesy af, unrequited love, bad insults that sound like they're from the 2000s, HELLA miscommunication

no idea playlist: btr's no idea, taylor swift's you belong with me, the vamps + demi lovato's somebody to you, james arthur's can i be him, ariana grande's daydreamin, fitz & the tantrums' out of my league, shawn mendes' treat you better, bruno mars' just the way you are, lonely god's marlboro nights, the 1975's i'm in love with you, sam smith's like i can, arctic monkeys' wanna be yours

author's note: FIRST HYUCK SMAUU! how we feeling 😏 i needed to get this idea out of my system! plus, i love this type of trope, and haechan just fits the nerdy role 😭 I HAD TO! but happy reading :D <3

comment if you wish to be tagged for the story's updates!

profiles: "ncu freaks" + jeno 🤔 | gal pals & two men

intro. #manifestationiskey 🩷

ep 1. but a FAILING?

ep 2. i guess i'm her tutor

ep 3. WHY IS HE ATTRACTIVE

ep 4. COUGH y/n bag him COUGH

ep 5. i know i can treat youuu bettterr

ep 6. YNHYUCK PLOT IS FINALLY SAILING!

ep 7. bro texts with his 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 𝓪𝓵𝓹𝓱𝓪 mode on 🐺👅

ep 8. bro fumbled HARD 🤦‍♂️

ep 9. LET THE BOY LIVE!! HES IN LOVE!!

ep 10. THE HARD LAUNCH GOES CRAZY

ep 11. lemme guess, fake boyfriend responsibilities? (written)

ep 12. jeno got me up... plotting

ep 13. AMAZING fake boyfriend

ep 14. meeting the ncu freaks? (written)

ep 15.

ep 16.

ep 17.

ep 18.

more to come. . .!

started: 09/06/24 finished:

© JIRSUNGS. ANY TRANSLATIONS/REPOSTS/PUBLISHES OF MY WORKS ON ANY PLATFORM ARE STRICTLY PROHIBITED! ALL COMMENTS, REBLOGS, LIKES, & FEEDBACK ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED! THANK YOU SO MUCH! I LOVE YOU, MWA! <3

[submattsmxmmy]

roughdom!stepbro!chris x bratty!stepsis!reader

🖤 content warning: smut, stepsibling kink, daddy kink, mentions of porn, posessiveness, praise/degradation, biting, kinda risky, unprotected rough sex

🖤 summary: your stepbrother, chris, gets jealous when he sees you flirting with another man - and not just any man, but one who's nothing like him.

hiiii it's me, @ariestrxsh. if you don't fw the stepcest shit, then idk what to tell you. lmao. don't read this shit. sorry mom, sorry god, and sorry chris sturniolo, if you ever see this deranged, god-forsaken piece of writing.

holdyourbreath

chapters: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

The sun was beginning to descend below the horizon line as Chris turned down his street, indie music playing softly through his speakers.

He didn't think much of the old, beige sedan sitting in the driveway when he got home, except for being slightly annoyed that it was in his spot. He figured you had a girlfriend staying the night who didn't know he always parked there or something.

He let out an agitated sigh as he pulled up beside the curb and cut the engine. He made his way up the driveway with a basketball under his arm and his t-shirt clinging to his sweat-covered chest.

He turned the knob and stepped inside. He cracked a subtle smirk at the sound of your laugh, a noise that once would have made him roll his eyes. He hated that you were secretly growing on him - or maybe he liked it. He wasn't completely sure yet.

The smile on his face faded quickly when he heard a second voice - a man's voice. He quickly made his way into the kitchen, envy already brewing inside of him.

He burst through the door to find you sitting across from a dark-haired boy, batting your lashes and twirling your hair around your finger as you thoughtlessly giggled at every word he said. You jumped as if you were doing something wrong when your eyes flew up and noticed Chris.

You took note of his flushed, pink cheeks, his tired, blue eyes, and his sweaty brown hair sticking to his forehead. You adored the way he looked when he'd just finished up playing basketball or working out, but you didn't let your glance linger for long.

"Hi, Chris," you casually mumbled before turning your attention back to the boy sitting across from you. "Hey. What's up? I'm Josh," the man said, getting up from his chair and extending a hand for Chris to shake.

"You parked in my spot," Chris shot back, peering down at Josh's hand with a look of contempt and silently rejecting his polite gesture.

"Sorry. You'll have to excuse my stepbrother. No one ever taught him manners or how to use the bathroom without getting piss on the toilet seat," you remarked in a snide tone as Chris pushed past him.

"So, uh, what do you think?" Josh asked, redirecting you back to what you two were talking about before Chris interrupted. "I love all your ideas," you giggled, brushing a strand of hair out of your face and licking your lips as you looked at Josh.

The boy across from you may have been oblivious to your flirtatious demeanor, but Chris clocked it right away. "God, could ya be any more fuckin' desperate?" Chris mumbled under his breath as he swung open the door of the fridge.

"What was that?" You wondered, stopping your conversation and turning your attention to your stepbrother who wasn't taking the hint that you wanted to be left alone with Josh, or so you thought.

He actually was getting the hint. He was just blatantly ignoring it.

"I said, what're ya guys workin' on?" Chris asked, but it wasn't so much that he was genuinely curious as much as he was trying to figure out how much longer he was going to have to endure the jealousy of watching you pathetically throw yourself at another man.

"We're working on building our argument for our debate class. We were all paired off, given a controversial topic, and we have to present our arguments next week to the opposing side," you responded, fidgeting with your pencil.

"What's the controversial topic?" Chris asked, a smirk playing in the corner of his mouth. He loved contentious subjects and arguing. "The subject is pornography and whether it's pro or anti-feminist," you replied.

"Oh, yeah?" Chris asked, the topic piquing his interest. "What's your argument, kid?" Chris asked, cracking open a can of Pepsi and leaning against the counter. He was eager to hear your take on the subject.

"Our argument is that it's anti-feminist. It prioritizes male pleasure, gives unhealthy and unrealistic expectations about sex, and it's just overall degrading and exploitative," you casually stated, shrugging your shoulders. Chris scoffed. "Isn't that kinda sexist of you to say?" He shot back, sipping from his Pepsi can.

"What are you talking about?" You huffed back, crossing your arms and glaring in his direction. "Well, isn't it kind of infantalizing to assume that any woman who is in the porn industry is only doin' it because she's bein' exploited? Why can't a woman just become a porn star because she wants to?" Chris asked, sounding rather genuine.

You were at a loss for words, unsure of how to combat Chris' argument. "And what about the girls who like bein' degraded? What about the girls who like watchin' shit like that?" He added.

"What's your point, Chris?" You scoffed. "It's anti-feminist for you to assume that porn only exists for male pleasure when women probably get off to it just as much," Chris stated a valid point before taking a sip of his soda.

"Whatever, Chris. You wouldn't know feminism if it sat on your face," you rolled your eyes, dismissing his comments. "What? You tellin' me you've never gotten off to that shit? Maybe even the rough stuff?" Chris snarked, deviously grinning at you, his eyes scanning you up and down as if he were calculating the exact categories you were into.

Your stare grew wide, and your cheeks grew hot. You couldn't believe Chris was putting you in this position in front of your classmate you were secretly crushing on.

Josh sat quietly, wide-eyed and mouth agape as he listened to the two of you bicker back and forth, astonished that step siblings felt so comfortable talking to each other about hardcore porn.

"Chris! I-," you started to say, but your breath hitched in your throat. "I'm not saying- Look, Chris. We were given a topic and told which side we had to argue for. That's the key to being good at debate, is being able to argue both sides regardless of how you personally feel about the subject. My thoughts on it are completely irrelevant."

"Right, but don't you have to really believe what you're saying to be good at arguing your side? You know my room's right next to yours, right?" Chris shot back, insinuating he knew something. His lips curled into a sadistic smile, knowing he was humiliating you. You huffed and rolled your eyes.

"Chris, can I talk to you in private?" You narrowed your gaze at him. "Yeah, sure. Whatever," he scoffed and rolled his gorgeous, blue eyes.

You excused yourself, and you and Chris headed upstairs. You led him into your bedroom, and you shut the door behind the two of you before you whipped around and glared at him.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" You sternly questioned him. "What the fuck do ya think you're doin'? That guy?" Chris blurted out, surprised that you'd be into such a docile man.

"What? He's a nice guy," you defended Josh. "You don't want a nice guy," Chris chuckled, giving you a dark smirk. "You don't know what I want," you replied. "Sure, I do. I think I know whatcha want better than you do," he cooed, reaching up and softly running his thumb across your bottom lip.

"Chris. I really like him. Please don't embarrass me in front of him," you whispered, giving Chris a somber look. "You'd get bored of him. Bet he could never fuck you as good as I do," Chris purred, stepping closer to you and studying your expression.

"Are you.. jealous?" You wondered, a satisfied grin spreading across your lips. "No," Chris sneered. "Of course I'm not jealous. I just know what ya need better than anyone else." Chris firmly grabbed your jaw and pinned you between the door and his body.

"Chris -" you started to retort, but he cut you off by pressing his lips into yours. You softly moaned into his mouth as his free hand flew to his waistband, pulling his cock free from his shorts.

You immediately felt all your willpower to stop him leave your body, and you relaxed into his kiss. You felt his drooling tip brush against the inside of your thigh as he hiked up your skirt and roughly pulled your panties to the side.

You felt the cool air rush over your exposed heat while Chris ran the head of his cock along your sensitive clit. You shuddered at the sensation. As he slipped it into your entrance, he bit down on the soft flesh of your bottom lip, leaving it swollen and bruised as he slowly pulled away.

"Awh, she's so happy to see me," Chris cooed, smirking up at you as he sunk his length all the way in, feeling the way you stretched around him.

"She thought she was gonna have to settle for that loser downstairs, huh? Don't worry, baby. Daddy's home now," Chris grunted, jerking his hips forward and starting to pump in and out of you at a rough pace as you hooked one leg around his waist.

You threw your head back, and a soft thump sounded as you made contact with the door behind you. A loud moan escaped your lips at the way Chris spoke to you coupled with the way he brutally pounded into you.

He thought about covering your mouth, but a sly smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he imagined the boy downstairs, possibly hearing the two of you. "Can't stay quiet, huh? Is my dick really that good or do ya just really want Josh to know how good I'm fuckin' ya?" Chris chuckled into your ear.

Your eyes rolled back, and a subtle smile crept into your expression. You were too fucked out to even answer him.

"Be a good girl and take it," Chris groaned, leaning in and latching onto your neck. The faint, sweet smell of his natural musk filled your senses, heightening every touch. He began suckling on the soft skin above your collar bone, listening to the pretty sounds that fell from your tender lips.

His fingertips dug into your sides, leaving red prints on your flesh through the fabric of your clothing. You couldn't get enough of the way he manhandled you, the way he touched, licked, and bit at you like it was all that you were good for, marking you up with his perfect teeth while he pounded away.

"You're gonna leave a bruise," you weakly told him, but you said it as more of a lustful observation than a warning or a request for him to let up. You secretly liked the idea of him claiming you as with a hickey in such a visible place, knowing you'd have to hide it from Josh when you got back downstairs.

"That's not the only thing I'm gonna leave bruised," Chris teased you, talking into the crook of your neck. You could already feel the knot forming in the pit of your stomach, a testament to the effect Chris had on you.

Your hands were draped around the back of his neck, clawing at his t-shirt as your legs grew weak. "Daaaddy," your quiet voice trembled like you were talking while driving over a cattleguard due to how mercilessly Chris was fucking you.

"What was that?" Chris inquired through his breathlessness, slowing down his thrusts. "No, no. Please don't stop," you begged through your panting. "Then tell me what you said," Chris murmured, his intense blue eyes locked on yours.

"Nothing," you whispered, feeling your face grow hot from letting that word slip out. You knew you'd never hear the end of it.

"Mhmm. Sure," Chris smirked and narrowed his gaze at you before he went back to his fast, hard movements, bottoming out with every stroke. It didnt take long before you picked up right where you left off, your stomach doing twists and turns as Chris rearranged your guts with his unrelenting cock.

He was going at it so hard that the door was jiggling against the frame and making a sound as if someone was trying to repeatedly open it. Your body started shaking uncontrollably at the whole situation and how Chris didn't care that you had company sitting at the kitchen table. He was going to take you however and whenever he wanted.

"Be a good girl and cum all over daddy's cock," Chris cooed, feeling you begin to rhythmically clench around him. You were fighting for your life, biting back the sensual sounds that desperately wanted to make themselves known as your orgasm tore through you.

The feeling of you finishing onto him caused a ripple effect. His length twitched inside of you, filling you up with his white, sticky cum as he moaned into your ear. He followed it up with a faint chuckle, his breath tickling your neck as he found amusement in how easily you always gave into him.

He pulled himself out of you, leaving his seed leaking onto the inside of your thigh as he did so. "Such a fuckin' slut," Chris teased.

"Okay, don't keep your prude boyfriend waiting too much longer or else he might start suspecting something," Chris winked at you, keeping his voice low. You took a few deep breaths. You tugged down the hem of your skirt, smoothing out the fabric to conceal the mess Chris had made between your legs.

"Chris. Can you please just give me and Josh some privacy while we work on our project?" You asked, considering that was the whole reason you'd asked to talk to him in the first place.

"I'll keep my mouth shut, but I'm not leaving you alone with some other guy. Not a fuckin' chance," Chris answered, his voice thick with jealousy as he bore into your stare with his own.

You spun around, cleared your throat, and popped open the door. Chris delivered a harsh smack on your ass as you stepped out into the hallway. You let out a small squeal and swatted his hand away with your own, but you otherwise ignored his gesture.

The two of you descended the stairs. Chris made his way back over to the fridge to poke around for something to eat. You draped a thick strand of your hair over the red spot on your neck and sucked in your swollen lip as you sat back down across from your classmate.

"Sorry about that. My stepbrother won't be bothering us anymore," you calmly said. "How'd you get him to do that?" Josh asked, furrowing his brow at how quiet Chris was now compared to how loud-mouthed and obnoxious he was being ten minutes ago.

"I have my ways," you replied through a subtle smirk.

(guys don't worry I'll do a part five 💖)

[solxamber]

Making Up After an Argument With: Vice Housewardens + Kalim

part 1 with overblot gang + rollo

more hurt/comfort for the soul!

Trey Clover:

It had been days since your argument with Trey. Days of agonizing silence. Days of avoiding each other in the hallways, sidestepping glances in the cafeteria, and pretending not to exist when you crossed paths in class. It was ridiculous.

You could barely even remember what you had argued about. Something about cake batter consistency? Or was it his relentless calmness in the face of your very valid cake-related frustration? Regardless, this had gone on long enough.

And you? Well, you were dramatic by nature, so if you were going to apologize to Trey, it needed to be big. Monumental. The stuff of legends.

So you did what any normal person would do: you put together an apology that could have come straight out of a Shakespearean tragedy.

The setting: Trey's dorm room.

The plan: Apologize with flair.

The execution? Well… here goes.

You kicked open the door to his room—literally, because who needs normalcy when you’re trying to make a grand entrance?

“TREYYYYY!!!” you wailed, throwing yourself to the floor dramatically as if you had just collapsed under the weight of your own misery. You didn’t even bother getting up—no, you stayed there, prone on the floor, arms stretched out in a cross shape like you were trying to summon a deity.

Trey looked up from his desk, eyes wide in utter disbelief at the absolute spectacle in front of him. His glasses slid down his nose slightly as he blinked, staring at you as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be concerned.

“...what are you doing?” he asked, his voice slow, measured, and cautious. This was so much even for you.

You grabbed a pillow from his bed, clutching it to your chest as you rolled over dramatically, eyes squinted in faux despair. “I have wronged you, dear Trey,” you moaned, as though you were performing an award-winning monologue on stage. “I have been a FOOL, a BRAT, a mere shadow of the decent human I once was. I came here to THROW MYSELF at your FEET and beg for FORGIVENESS!”

Trey blinked again. He was so calm that it almost made you want to scream. This was serious! You were performing your soul out right now!

You pushed yourself up to your knees, crawling a little closer to him, throwing your arms up to the ceiling. “I have spent these past few days in agony,” you continued, voice now filled with the heavy weight of tragic longing. “My life without you has been like a cupcake without frosting! Like tea without sugar! Like—like… a world without your glasses to reflect the sunlight into my soul!”

Trey pressed his lips together, clearly fighting back a smile. You continued, undeterred.

“My heart is broken, shattered, like the eggs we once cracked together to make the finest sponge cake. And now… now, Trey Clover, I come to you, humble and pleading. I ask you to take pity on this poor wretch who was too blind to see the treasure before them. Forgive me, Trey. Please. Don’t let me die from this—this unbearable torment!”

There was a pause. A long one. Trey stared at you with that soft, almost amused expression, and then he sighed, shaking his head as he got up from his desk.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” he said, walking over to you. He crouched down beside you, his tone gentle despite the absurdity of the situation.

Still fully committed to your performance, you grabbed his hands and held them to your chest, staring up at him with wide, imploring eyes. “Ridiculous for you, Trey. Only for you.”

He finally broke, a chuckle escaping his lips as he looked at you, shaking his head. “Alright, alright. Get up. You don’t have to be so over the top.”

You hesitated, playing up the pause before you dramatically threw yourself onto him, burying your face into his stomach like a child seeking forgiveness. “I won’t get up until you forgive me!” you cried, muffled against his shirt.

Trey let out a sigh of fond exasperation, patting the top of your head like you were an unruly puppy. “You’re impossible.”

With a final chuckle, he pulled you up to your feet. “I forgive you. You don’t have to grovel,” he said, his voice warm, but there was something in his eyes that looked a little distant, a little… sad?

That’s when the theatrics faded. You could see it, plain as day, the little dip in his expression, the way his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Something wasn’t right.

You tilted your head, watching him carefully. “Hey… is something wrong?”

Trey blinked, glancing away for a second before letting out a small sigh. “No, it’s… it’s nothing. Really.”

You stepped closer, lowering your voice as you rested a hand on his arm. “Trey, come on. I know you better than that.”

He hesitated, then ran a hand through his hair, glancing out the window before he finally spoke. “It’s just… I didn’t know if you’d come back.” His voice was quieter now, more vulnerable than you’d ever heard it. “I thought… I don’t know, maybe you’d decide that I’m not as interesting or… exciting as some of the other people around here. I’m just the guy who bakes and keeps everything running smoothly.”

You felt your heart twist at his words. Trey, always so calm and collected, always in the background, thinking he wasn’t enough? How wrong he was.

“Trey…” you said softly, stepping even closer now, so close that your forehead was practically brushing his chest. “You’re wrong. You’re everything I want. You’re more than enough.”

He looked down at you, surprised by the sincerity in your voice.

You reached up, cupping his face gently in your hands, making him look directly at you. “You don’t have to be flashy or dramatic or anything else. I don’t want that. I just want you. The Trey who cares, who listens, who’s always there when I need him, even when I’m being a total idiot.” You smiled softly. “You’re steady, and that’s what makes you special. Not everyone else.”

Trey’s eyes softened, and for a moment, he just stared at you, like he was trying to process your words. Then, with a small, almost shy smile, he pulled you into a tight hug, wrapping his arms around you as if he was afraid to let go.

“Thank you,” he murmured into your hair, his voice low and full of emotion.

You squeezed him back, your earlier theatrics now a distant memory as you felt the warmth of his embrace. “I mean it, Trey. You’re perfect the way you are.”

There was a moment of quiet, just the two of you standing there, holding onto each other. It wasn’t grand or dramatic—it was simple, and honest, and perfect.

And then, because you couldn’t help yourself, you whispered, “Plus, your cakes are way better than anyone else’s.”

He laughed softly, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “You really are something else, you know that?”

You grinned against his chest. “Only for you, Trey. Only for you.”

Ruggie Bucchi

The silent treatment between you and Ruggie had stretched on longer than either of you expected. And it was killing you. The worst part? Neither of you was budging. Stubborn as all get-out. But you weren’t just any regular person—you were extra. If you were going to break the silence, you’d do it in the most dramatic, over-the-top way possible.

And what was Ruggie’s greatest weakness?

Food.

So, here you were, standing at the doorstep of Ruggie’s dorm with a feast in your hands. You had collected everything from the cafeteria—pies, cakes, sandwiches, chips—anything edible that would appeal to his sense of taste, because this wasn’t just about an apology; this was an event.

And like any event, you were about to turn this into the most theatrical, food-based apology in the history of NRC.

You knocked on his door three times. The door creaked open slightly, and Ruggie peeked through the gap, eyes narrowing when he saw you standing there. “What do you want?”

He still sounded salty. But, of course, you had prepared for this.

“I come… bearing gifts,” you said, lifting the massive tray of food with all the grandeur of a royal presenting treasure to the king. “A peace offering! An apology! A banquet for the ages!”

Ruggie’s eyes widened as he took in the sheer amount of food. “What is all this?”

“Our reconciliation,” you declared, dramatically. “I come humbly, with my arms full of all that your stomach desires. For I have wronged you, Ruggie Bucchi, and I must beg for forgiveness in the only way I know how—with food.”

Ruggie stared at you, lips twitching as if he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or kick you out. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I know,” you wailed, feigning anguish. “I’m a fool, Ruggie! A foolish, foolish person! But a fool who knows that you won’t stay mad when there’s a perfectly good tray of sandwiches right in front of you.”

He arched a brow. “You’re bribing me with food?”

“Absolutely.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, staring at you as if sizing you up. “What if I say no?”

Without missing a beat, you plopped yourself down on the floor, placing the tray on your lap. “Then I’ll just sit here and eat everything in front of your door until you feel so guilty, you’ll have to forgive me.”

There was a beat of silence before Ruggie snorted, unable to keep the smirk off his face. “You’re crazy.”

“And yet… you haven’t closed the door,” you shot back, giving him a sly smile.

Ruggie let out a long-suffering sigh but stepped aside, allowing you into his dorm room with all your extravagant offerings.

Once inside, you laid the food out on the table as if setting up for a feast. Plates and bowls and trays—everything perfectly arranged in the most ridiculous spread you could muster. You turned to him, arms open wide like a game show host revealing the grand prize.

“For you, my dear, a meal to rival kings!” you announced with a flourish. “And also my heartfelt apology.”

Ruggie eyed the spread, trying to keep his expression neutral, but you could see the gears turning. You knew him. He wasn’t one to say no to free food, no matter how petty he was being.

“I’m listening,” he said, finally, leaning against the table as if he wasn’t already plotting which dish to devour first.

You placed a hand on your heart, staring at him with as much sincerity as you could muster. “Ruggie, I’m sorry. I was being a brat. I didn’t mean to snap at you over something so small, and I definitely didn’t mean to let it drag out like this.” You paused, grabbing a sandwich and holding it out to him as if it were a peace token. “Please forgive me?”

He looked at the sandwich, then at you, and then, after a long moment of hesitation, he snatched it out of your hand. “Fine, fine. You’re lucky I can’t stay mad when there’s food involved.”

You grinned, relief washing over you. “You’re easy to bribe.”

“You’re easy to apologize to,” he shot back, taking a huge bite of the sandwich. “But yeah… I forgive you.”

You relaxed, plopping down into a chair across from him as you watched him devour the food with the same efficiency that he handled everything in life. But there was still something in his eyes—something that looked a little off, even though he was joking around now.

And then, almost as if reading your thoughts, Ruggie spoke.

“Hey,” he said, his voice quieter now, less playful. “I… I gotta admit something.”

You blinked, straightening up a little. “Yeah?”

Ruggie leaned back in his chair, staring down at the sandwich in his hands. “I know we fought over something stupid, but... I’ve been thinking. I was scared, y’know?” He let out a bitter laugh. “I thought maybe you were realizing you could do better than someone like me. I mean, look at me—I’m always hustling, always trying to scrape by. Penny-pinching, scheming… I’m not like all those rich, flashy guys you’re surrounded by.”

His words hung in the air, and your heart squeezed at the vulnerability in his voice.

“Ruggie,” you said softly, standing up and walking over to him. You placed your hands on his shoulders, making him look up at you. “What are you talking about? I don’t care about any of that. I care about you.”

He frowned, glancing away. “Yeah, but… it’s hard not to feel like I’m just some background guy, y’know? Like you’d get tired of me eventually.”

You shook your head, feeling a rush of affection for this boy who always acted like he had the world figured out but was still so worried about being left behind.

“You’re wrong,” you said firmly, cupping his face in your hands. “You’re not just ‘some background guy.’ You’re everything to me. I don’t care about money or schemes or any of that. You’re smart, you’re funny, you make me laugh every day, and you’re always looking out for me, even when I don’t deserve it.”

Ruggie’s eyes softened, his lips parting slightly like he didn’t know what to say.

You smiled, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to his forehead. “And besides,” you whispered, pulling back just enough to meet his gaze, “if you think I’m gonna find someone better than the guy who can steal a whole feast from the cafeteria without getting caught, you’re seriously underestimating how much I value your skills.”

That finally earned a chuckle from him, his shoulders relaxing as he let out a breath he’d been holding. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Only for you,” you teased, planting another kiss on his cheek, then another on the tip of his nose, and then—just because you could—one more on his lips.

Ruggie, now thoroughly kissed, wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you into his lap. “I guess I can’t stay mad at you, huh?” he murmured, his voice soft now, all the tension from earlier melting away.

You smiled, wrapping your arms around his neck as you rested your forehead against his. “Not when I’m this cute.”

He snorted, nuzzling into you. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t make a habit out of fighting with me, or I’m gonna get spoiled from all these fancy apologies.”

You grinned. “Deal. As long as you promise to remember that you’re more than enough for me.”

Ruggie looked up at you, his usual mischievous grin returning, but there was something warmer in his eyes now, something softer. “Yeah. I’ll remember.”

And with that, you pulled him in for another kiss, sealing the apology and the promise with a little extra love.

Jade Leech:

The silent treatment between you and Jade Leech had been going on for far too long now. And, sure, you could be stubborn. You could match his pettiness tit-for-tat. But at some point, even the most ridiculous battles need a ceasefire. And this particular cold war was starting to wear you both down.

The tension had grown so thick it could probably be bottled and sold as premium-grade eelskin moisturizer. You weren't sure what had gotten you both so worked up in the first place—something about a miscommunication over a rare mushroom and your tendency to call out his cryptic grins. It snowballed from there.

But today, you were going to be the bigger person.

Which meant it was time to break the ice. And not with any ordinary apology—oh, no. Jade Leech wasn’t a man swayed by simple words and chocolates. You needed something grander, something that spoke to his peculiar interests and refined tastes.

And that's how you found yourself in the local black market—er, highly exclusive specialty shop—shelling out way too much money for some ultra-rare terrarium material. You didn’t know what it was, exactly. It was glowy, mossy, and something Jade would probably coo over like a proud parent. Perfect.

And you had a plan. Not just any apology plan—oh no, you were going to kill this with a one-two punch of heartfelt apology and a sweet gesture that no petty argument could stand up to.

That evening, you found yourself standing outside Mostro Lounge with your rare terrarium goods tucked under one arm and a small, handmade "I’m Sorry" cake under the other. Because if there’s one thing Jade Leech loves, it's weird, rare plant materials.

The Mostro Lounge was quiet, the perfect setup for your grand gesture. You pushed open the door and slipped inside, only to find Jade sitting at one of the tables, clearly deep in thought.

You cleared your throat loudly, and his eyes flicked up to meet yours, narrowing slightly. Oh, good, he was still feeling salty.

"Jade," you called out in a dramatic, over-the-top tone, walking toward him like you were making a royal entrance. "I come bearing gifts. The finest of gifts." You carefully set the rare terrarium material on the table before pulling the cake out of the box with a flourish.

Jade raised an eyebrow, his expression carefully neutral. ���Ah, how… thoughtful. And what, pray tell, is this?” he asked, eyeing the mossy material as if it were an amusing trinket.

You straightened up, grinning. “A rare moss that only grows under the full moon in the volcanic pits of the Obsidian Islands. I fought off twelve merchants for it. I might have bruised a kidney in the process, but hey, it's worth it for you."

Jade blinked, but his lips twitched. "How charmingly excessive," he said, though his tone was still icy. “And the cake?”

You set the cake down with a proud smile. “Homemade. No eels were harmed in the making of it, I promise. Consider it a peace offering… because, you know… maybe we’ve been a little ridiculous?”

Jade’s eyes slid back to the terrarium material, then back to you, and you could see that familiar glint of amusement cracking through his carefully composed exterior. “A little ridiculous? Hmm, perhaps that’s one way to put it.”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, c’mon, Jade. We’ve both been petty, and it’s getting us nowhere. You don’t want to be in this weird stalemate forever, do you?”

He tilted his head, regarding you with that infuriatingly polite smile. “I was under the impression that this was a competition to see who could hold out the longest. But perhaps I underestimated your resolve.”

You groaned, but before you could say anything snarky back, Jade’s gaze softened. He looked down at the cake, then at the terrarium material, and sighed—a sound so small and uncharacteristically vulnerable that it made your chest tighten.

"Truth be told,” he murmured, “I was beginning to think that this was the final straw. That I had ruined something good by being… well, myself." His voice dropped in volume, and for once, there wasn’t a hint of teasing or sarcasm in it.

You blinked. Wait—what?

Jade Leech thought you were going to leave him? You? Sure, you'd had fights before, but this one was different, wasn’t it? Still, the way he looked at you now—guard down, that polite mask starting to crumble—it hit you like a ton of bricks.

“Jade…” You set the cake aside and moved toward him, gently tugging him into a hug. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t get rid of me that easily.”

For a moment, he was stiff, still clinging to his composure. But then, ever so slowly, his arms wrapped around you, and he buried his face into your shoulder.

“I didn’t realize how much this argument was bothering you,” you said softly, running your fingers through his hair. “I thought we were both being silly, but… I should have known better. I should’ve just apologized sooner.”

Jade was quiet for a few long moments, his arms tightening around you. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than you’d ever heard it. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come back. I thought perhaps you’d realized you deserved better than… well, someone like me. Someone so focused on... mischief."

You leaned back just enough to cup his face, forcing him to meet your eyes. “Jade Leech, do you honestly think I’d walk away because you’re… what, a little mysterious? Please. I love that about you.” You smiled, brushing a thumb over his cheek. “You’re smart, and you make life interesting. You mean the world to me.”

Jade’s eyes widened slightly, and for once, he looked genuinely surprised. Then, slowly, a small smile crept onto his lips—soft, real, and free of his usual smugness.

“You have quite the way with words,” he murmured, leaning into your touch.

“I’ve been practicing,” you teased, before leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his lips.

Jade melted into the kiss, and when you finally pulled back, he looked more at ease than he had in days.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his forehead resting against yours.

You kissed him again, softer this time, before pulling him into another tight hug. “No more silent treatment, okay? Next time, let’s just talk things out before it gets ridiculous.”

Jade chuckled softly, nodding. “Agreed. Though I must say, your dramatic apology was quite entertaining.”

You grinned. “I aim to please.”

And with that, the two of you spent the rest of the evening laughing, eating cake, and—most importantly—making up. The argument was forgotten, and all that remained was the warmth of knowing that, no matter what, you and Jade would always find your way back to each other.

Kalim Al-Asim

It was completely out of character for you and Kalim to fight. Kalim Al-Asim—the boy with the heart as bright as a thousand suns—wasn’t exactly the type to harbor negativity. Arguments just didn’t happen between the two of you. He’d smile, laugh it off, and find some extravagant way to make peace, usually involving some form of spontaneous celebration or showering you with gifts.

But this time, something had gone awry. The fight had left a sour taste in your mouth, and, even more surprising, you had given him the silent treatment for days.

Days! As if that was even possible. Kalim had tried to make things right, sending you lavish gifts, offering up trips to the oasis, and practically begging with those big, shimmering eyes. But you had stood firm, giving him the cold shoulder. It wasn’t until now, while pacing your room, that you realized just how ridiculous it all was.

Kalim wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t even remotely deserving of being treated this way. Life was too short, and giving Kalim the silent treatment was like trying to dim the sun itself. It was painful, unnatural, and only left the world a little darker.

You had to apologize. But you couldn’t just say sorry. Not for Kalim. No, you had to do something that would reach deep into his soul, something that screamed, “I am sorry for being a fool and depriving you of my radiant presence!”—in true Kalim fashion.

The door to Scarabia swung open with a flourish, and you marched in, carrying your “apology” in the most dramatic, over-the-top way possible. In your arms was a golden tray, laden with every dessert known to man.

Sweets from the farthest reaches of the desert, cakes stacked like miniature mountains, and the crown jewel: a massive tower of Baklava, glistening with honey and topped with an edible diamond (you might have gone a little overboard).

Kalim was sitting by the fountain in the common room, looking forlorn. But when he saw you approaching with this ridiculous confectionary masterpiece, his face lit up like a firework display. "Wha—? What’s all this?!" he asked, scrambling to his feet.

You set the tray down with a flourish, sweeping an arm dramatically over the display. “Kalim Al-Asim! I come bearing a humble offering. It may not be enough to express the depths of my regret, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me!”

Kalim’s face softened immediately, the ghost of a grin pulling at his lips. "Aww, you didn’t have to do all this! I was just about to apologize to you, I swear!"

You shook your head dramatically, pretending to wipe a tear. “No, Kalim! I’ve been a fool! Life without your smile is like the desert without water—a barren wasteland of misery! Please, let me make it up to you with this absurdly lavish, entirely unnecessary, but very tasty display of affection.”

He burst into laughter, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Okay, okay, you’re forgiven! You didn’t have to go this far!” He gave you a playful nudge, already eyeing the tower of sweets with a twinkle in his eye.

Naturally, Kalim being Kalim, his first instinct was to throw a party. “This calls for a celebration!” he exclaimed. “Let’s invite everyone over, get the music going, and—"

But something was off. His words were as excited as ever, but his smile—his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Normally, Kalim's enthusiasm was infectious, a hurricane of joy sweeping everyone up in its path. But now, there was a dimness to it, like someone had put a filter over the sunshine that was Kalim Al-Asim.

You narrowed your eyes. “Wait a second.” You grabbed him by the arm, dragging him toward his room without explanation.

Kalim, too surprised to resist, blinked as you pulled him inside, shutting the door behind you. “What’s going on?” he asked, still trying to piece together what was happening.

“Sit,” you commanded, pointing to the bed. He sat, confusion still written all over his face, and you kneeled beside him, hands resting on his knees. “Alright, spill it.”

“Spill what?”

“You know what,” you said, voice softening now. “Your smile… it wasn’t right. That’s not your real smile. What’s wrong, Kalim?”

He hesitated, looking down at his hands for a moment before sighing. “It’s just…” He trailed off, fiddling with the fabric of his pants. “I don’t like it when we fight. And I keep thinking... maybe you deserve someone better. Someone who won’t make you mad in the first place. Someone who’s smarter, more… competent. I always mess up, don’t I? And you shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

Your heart clenched, and you felt a surge of both love and exasperation well up inside you. How could he think that? Him, of all people? You reached out, grabbing his face in both hands and squishing his cheeks together. “Kalim,” you said sternly, “You listen to me, and you listen good.”

His cheeks were smooshed, making him look utterly ridiculous, but he nodded as best as he could under your grip.

“I don’t want someone else. I don’t want someone more ��competent’ or ‘smarter.’ I want you, Kalim Al-Asim. You, with your big heart, your endless optimism, and your ability to turn every day into a celebration. You mean everything to me, and no amount of silly arguments is going to change that.”

You released his cheeks, and he blinked at you, wide-eyed. “Really?” His voice was muffled and still slightly smooshed.

“Really,” you said, smiling warmly. “You’re my sunshine, Kalim. Life would be so boring without you.”

Before he could say anything, you leaned in and peppered his face with kisses—on his cheeks, his forehead, his nose, anywhere you could reach. He laughed, the sound bubbling up from deep within him, and you could finally see that brightness returning to his eyes. The real smile. The one that could light up an entire palace.

“Okay, okay! I believe you!” he managed to say between fits of laughter, his arms wrapping around you in a tight hug.

You buried your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in his familiar warmth. “I’m sorry for being petty,” you murmured. “I love you, Kalim.”

His grip tightened around you, and you could feel him smiling against your hair. “I love you too. And hey, no more fighting, okay?”

You nodded against his chest, feeling the weight of the past few days lift off your shoulders. “No more fighting. And no more throwing parties after apologies, okay? Let’s just… enjoy this.”

He chuckled softly. “Deal. But can we still eat the Baklava tower?”

You pulled back, grinning. “Obviously.”

With that, the two of you sat there for a while longer, tangled in each other’s arms, basking in the warmth of reconciliation. And for the first time in days, everything felt right again.

Rook Hunt

You had been giving Rook the silent treatment for far too long now. At first, it was easy to ignore his poetic attempts at reconciliation—his dramatic speeches and flowers left in odd places (your shoes, under your pillow, even in your lunch). You had to admit, the guy was persistent, but you were stubborn. Stubborn, and maybe a bit petty.

But you missed him.

Which is why, today, you’d decided it was time to apologize. And not just any apology. No, no, no. This was Rook Hunt, the king of extravagance, drama, and all things flamboyant. If you were going to apologize, it had to be big.

You strutted through the hallways with purpose, a plan in place. Rook wouldn’t know what hit him.

When you finally found him, he was in the courtyard, gazing wistfully into the distance like some sort of Renaissance painting brought to life. Of course. Typical Rook.

You cleared your throat loudly, enough to get his attention. When his head snapped toward you, his eyes widening, you saw the hopeful glimmer in them. But you didn’t let him speak—not yet.

“No need for words, Rook Hunt,” you announced dramatically, extending one arm out wide and placing a hand over your heart as if you were in a Shakespearean tragedy. “For today, I come to seek your forgiveness!”

Rook blinked, clearly confused but intrigued. That was your in.

“I have wronged you, my dearest huntsman,” you continued, falling to your knees in a sweeping motion, as if you were collapsing under the weight of your guilt. “I have ignored you, punished you with silence for far too long, and for this, I am truly repentant.”

By now, Rook was staring at you, utterly captivated by your performance, which only encouraged you to go bigger.

“I have been petty, unreasonable, and blind to your affections,” you said, throwing your hands to the sky as if appealing to the heavens themselves. “But today, I seek redemption! I beg of you, O Rook Hunt, forgive me, for I cannot live another day without hearing your flowery prose, without basking in your eccentric glory!”

Rook’s lips twitched, and he brought a hand to his mouth, clearly trying to hold back a laugh. But you weren’t finished.

“To prove my sincerity, I offer you a token,” you declared, reaching into your pocket and pulling out a single, crumpled daisy. You held it up to him with both hands as if it were a royal gift. “A humble flower, to represent the fragile beauty of our love. Please, accept it.”

Rook stared at the flower, then at you, before finally, he cracked. His laughter spilled out, echoing in the courtyard. He dropped to one knee in front of you, his shoulders shaking with amusement. “Mon trésor, only you could outdo even my own dramatics.”

You gave him a triumphant grin, still holding out the flower. “So… am I forgiven?”

Rook’s eyes softened as he reached out, taking the daisy from your hand as if it were the most precious thing in the world. “Forgiven? You were never truly condemned, mon amour.” He leaned forward, pressing a soft kiss to your knuckles, his usual playfulness shining through.

“Good,” you said, relieved. “I was running out of material.”

But just as you were about to stand, Rook moved faster. In a blink, his arms wrapped around you, pulling you into the tightest hug you’d ever experienced. You were practically squished against him, and while you appreciated the affection, it was getting hard to breathe.

“Rook…?” you managed to mumble into his shoulder. “I can’t… breathe.”

But he didn’t let go. If anything, he hugged you tighter, burying his face into the crook of your neck. “I thought I had lost you,” he whispered, his voice low and shaky in a way that caught you off guard.

You paused, your heart sinking at the tone in his voice. Slowly, you pulled away, struggling a bit against his grip until you were able to meet his eyes. “Rook? What’s wrong?”

He sighed, finally loosening his hold just enough to let you move, but he didn’t let go entirely. His gaze flickered to the ground for a moment before he finally spoke. “I was afraid,” he admitted, his voice uncharacteristically small. “Afraid that my eccentricity… my quirks, my passion for the unusual—had finally driven you away.”

You blinked in surprise. Rook, of all people, thinking you would get tired of him? The man whose energy practically radiated confidence, who seemed unshakable?

“Rook…” You reached up, cupping his face in your hands and forcing him to look at you. “I love your quirks. I love how weird and dramatic and over-the-top you are. It’s what makes you you.” You leaned in, planting a kiss on his cheek. “And I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

His eyes widened, but you didn’t stop there. You kissed the other cheek, then his forehead, peppering his face with kisses until he started laughing softly under the onslaught.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered between kisses. “I was being petty, and I took it too far. I never wanted to hurt you like that.”

Rook shook his head slightly, but he didn’t pull away from your affection. “You have no need to apologize, mon cœur. I just… I couldn’t bear the thought of losing your light.”

You pressed a soft kiss to his lips, lingering just long enough to make your point clear. “You’ll never lose me,” you said firmly, your forehead resting against his. “Not for being who you are. I love you, Rook. Every part of you.”

A soft smile spread across his lips as he leaned into you, his arms wrapping around you once more—though much gentler this time. “Je t’aime,” he murmured, his voice full of warmth. “More than words can express.”

You grinned, pulling back just enough to kiss the tip of his nose. “I love you too, you dramatic dork.”

He chuckled, holding you close, and for a long moment, the two of you just stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms, sharing quiet kisses and soft words.

It was, in its own way, the most perfect apology you could’ve ever given.

Lilia Vanrouge:

It had been days since the argument. Days! And you could practically feel your willpower disintegrating with every second that passed.

It was completely out of character for you and Lilia to fight. Normally, Lilia’s mischievous grin could melt away any tension between the two of you, but this time, something had gone awry. The disagreement wasn’t even over anything important, but you both had dug your heels in out of sheer stubbornness. Now, the silence stretched on like a never-ending opera that had lost its charm halfway through Act 2.

You were on the verge of cracking. If there was one thing you couldn’t handle, it was seeing Lilia go a whole day without teasing you or giving one of his random, nonsensical life lessons. And now? There was just silence. Deafening silence.

Even worse, Malleus had started giving you the look. You knew the one: his trademark “kicked puppy” expression, like you had personally thrown a thunderstorm over his parade. Every time you walked by, his wide, draconic eyes would lock onto yours, as if begging for you to fix things with Lilia.

The final straw came one evening, after Malleus lpoked at you like you had just told him all the gargoyles were being demolished.

That was it. You couldn't take it anymore.

Lilia was sitting in the Diasomnia common room, reading some old tome, looking as composed as ever. But you knew him better than that. His usual mischievous sparkle was missing, replaced by an uncharacteristic somberness.

You needed to apologize, but it couldn’t just be any apology. No, this was Lilia Vanrouge. You had to match his energy with something equally as ridiculous and dramatic.

So, you walked into the room, threw yourself onto the ground, and sprawled out like a dramatic character in an ancient tragedy, arms spread wide, face contorted in over-the-top despair. "LILIA!" you wailed, your voice echoing off the stone walls. "I cannot bear it any longer! The weight of my guilt crushes me like a boulder atop my fragile soul! Forgive me, or I shall wither away into nothingness, a mere shadow of the person I once was!"

Lilia looked up from his book, eyes widening slightly at the sheer spectacle of your apology. You threw an arm over your face, dramatically flopping onto your side, as though consumed by your own sorrow.

"If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me," you continued, "then I shall simply expire here and now! Right here, in the common room! My ghost will haunt these halls forever, wailing tragically, and Malleus will be even sadder than before!"

Lilia finally broke into a grin, setting his book down and crossing his arms, clearly amused. "Oh, dearest, you really are laying it on thick, aren’t you?"

"I’m serious!" you declared, sitting up with dramatic flair. "Look at me—this is the face of someone who’s very sorry! And if I have to do more, then I will escalate! I will serenade you in the courtyard! Or... or bake you something!" You paused. "Actually, no. I wouldn't subject you to my cooking. But something dramatic will happen!"

Lilia let out a laugh, the tension that had hung between you two finally dissipating with his amusement. "Alright, alright. I believe you." He stood, walking over to where you were still sprawled out on the floor like some sort of tragedy-stricken poet. "You are forgiven."

You blinked up at him, suddenly feeling a rush of relief. You stood, brushing yourself off and giving him a lopsided grin. "Thanks, Lilia. I missed you."

But just as you were about to revert back to normal, Lilia's expression shifted—his amusement fading into something softer, something deeper. His hands, usually light and playful, gently gripped your arms as he looked at you with an intensity that made your heart ache.

“Though,” he began, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, “there’s something I need to say.”

You blinked, tilting your head as he continued. "Your recklessness... it scares me sometimes," he admitted, his playful tone gone, replaced with genuine vulnerability. "I’ve seen too much, lost too much over the years. And I worry. I worry that one day, you’ll be the one I lose. And I can’t... I can’t stand the thought of that.”

You opened your mouth to respond, but he kept going, his grip tightening slightly. “I’ve lived for so long, but you—you’re the brightness in this endless existence. I never thought I’d find someone like you. And now that I have, the thought of you being the one that got away—” He shook his head, his voice faltering. “It terrifies me. So I’m begging you… stay. Stay with me. Forever.”

Your heart clenched at his words. It was rare for Lilia to be this open, this raw. He always wore his playful mask, but right now, that mask had completely fallen away, leaving only the ancient fae who had seen too much and was so afraid of losing more.

Without thinking, you surged forward and wrapped your arms around him, hugging him tightly. "I’m not going anywhere, Lilia," you whispered into his shoulder, squeezing him as hard as you could. "I promise. As long as you’ll have me, I’m staying."

He clung to you, his small frame surprisingly strong as he hugged you back, as though afraid that if he let go, you might disappear. You could feel his breath hitch, and you pulled back just enough to look at him, your heart breaking at the sight of the unshed tears in his eyes.

Gently, you leaned in and began peppering his face with soft kisses—on his cheeks, his closed eyelids, his lips. “I love you more than words can express, Lilia Vanrouge,” you murmured between kisses. “I’m sorry for being petty, for making you worry. I’m staying. Forever.”

Lilia smiled through his tears, leaning into your affection, his fingers gently brushing your hair as he held you close. “You’re far too good to me,” he whispered, his voice a little shaky. “Thank you.”

You hugged him tightly again, resting your head against his shoulder, and for a long moment, the two of you simply stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms. The fight seemed so far away now, the pettiness and stubbornness replaced with a warmth that filled you both from the inside out.

After a while, Lilia pulled back just enough to look at you, his usual mischievous grin finally returning to his face. “Though, I have to admit, your dramatic apology was rather impressive. I might have to start a new trend of grandiose reconciliations.”

You laughed, feeling lighter than you had in days. “Don’t get any ideas. I don’t think I could top that performance.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Lilia teased, pulling you in for another kiss. “I’ll handle the dramatics from now on.”

And with that, you melted into his arms once again, the fight nothing but a distant memory as you basked in the warmth of each other’s love.

Masterlist