#since the short hair was his hair for so so long

[m0netm0netxo12]

Honestly I am not a writer but was thinking about the paternal side of smoke when he taught the little girl about negotiating! It was an epic part of the film that I think shows so much of his character as a father figure.. so what if his baby girl would’ve lived. I think that scene showed parallels to if she would’ve lived, how he would have been in a way. Idk my first ever anything !

“ Papa!! Papa look what I got “ the young girl shrilled excitedly as she ran into the front yard. Smoke had turned to quickly see his baby girl barreling towards him. He snatched her up before she could run face front into his lower half.

“ whoa slow down baby girl, you nearly knocked papa off his feet” he said with a chuckle. “ awe papa nobody can knock YOU down, not even uncle stack!“ his little girls faced twisted in a sly grin that mirrored his twin as she looked at him & said “cept mama.” she beamed at her papa and he looked at her bashfully knowing she was telling the truth.

“ what’s got you so in a hurry ? “ he asked his beautiful little girl. She slowly opened her tiny hand to show him the nickel that lay upon it. Smoke raised his eyebrows and scrunched his face in mild confusion. Not that he didn’t know what a nickel was, but because he didn’t understand the cats meow about a nickel. He had always given his baby girl the world. She never knew what it felt like to wake up before God to go and pick cotton, she never had to feel the burn of the Mississippi sun beating down on her back and she didn’t have to feel the blood drip from her hands because of the hard dried pericarp of cotton. And as long as he lived and breathed she would never know that life, sharecropper was another word for slave, and she would never know the feeling of being either. She was down right spoiled, let her mama tell it. “ she’ont know the meaning of the word no when it comes to you Elijah” he could hear Annie telling him when he brought her home a new doll or teddy. This was his purpose though, when he found out Annie was pregnant it grounded him.

She and the baby stabilized him. He realized he could no longer be the man who cared about nothing except protecting his brother, he had to protect himself so he could be there to protect his wife & little one. He had decided he was done with robbing and scheming and the money he had saved up he opened a shop, a shop by day servicing the black folk of the community and a juke joint by night, giving freedom to hard day and week they put in. It was so successful stack even had to invest in the business. So it puzzled him because his baby girl had plenty of nickels in the jar her mama gave her as a piggy bank, what was so special about this one?

“You got a nickel from ya bank ?” Smoke asked his little girl. She shook her head and said “ no papa, I got it from cousin Sammie” “Sammie ?” Smoke question raising his right eyebrow, what Sammie give you a nickel for ? “

“ he tried to give me a wooden nickel, said he needed me to watch out for uncle Jed while he go walk a lady down the road.” Smokes brows raised high to meet the lining of his hair he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “ he wanted you to do what now ?” “ but I told him I’m not watchin less he give me a real nickel, then he said he give me two wooden nickels.” She raised her index and her middle fingers to emphasize the number two. Smoke stared in disbelief as his daughter recounted the story. “I said 1 nickel or I’m not watching for you. He aint want too but he gave me the nickel see papa” Alisha ( Ali for short) held the nickel in between her and her papa eyeing it with pride. He couldn’t help but smile a big wide grin. Both of their deep dimples showing while he held her as she looked at the nickel and he looked at her. His heart burst with love. Ever since she could talk, which was the age of 3 , he started teaching her the ways to negotiate and stand up for herself. He would always be there, but he knew he carried a lot of sins from his past and one day that might catch up. So he wanted to teach her everything he knew so she wouldn’t be vulnerable to the ways of man. Negotiating was the first lesson. Knowing your worth and what you have to offer. He beamed with pride as he kissed her little dimple and held her close and said “ that’s papas baby girl”

[deltarogers]

FRENZY

PAIRING: Boyfriend!Steve Rogers x Female!Reader

SUMMARY: Steve comes home to you from a mission after being hit with some sort of powder. Turns out it’s an aphrodisiac…and it’s strong.

WARNINGS: PURE SMUT, no plot really, 18+, MDNI, SHORT AND NOT PROOFREAD.

A/N: I was craving some depraved Steve, so here! I had this in the drafts and decided to finish it. I hope you guys enjoy! I have more plot thick fics coming out soon!

You were curled on the couch with a half-finished mug of tea, a blanket draped across your legs and your phone dimming with a forgotten text thread. The apartment was quiet, soft city sounds bleeding through the windows…too quiet without him.

Missions always made you anxious. Steve could take a punch better than anyone, but still... he was your safe place, your constant, and when he was gone, it felt like the world had lost color.

He was late. And not in the usual "had to stop by HQ for debrief" kind of way. No, this was hours.

Long enough that you'd started pacing. Long enough that when the front door finally clicked open, your breath caught in your throat, heart thudding.

He was staring at you like he hadn't seen you in years. Like he was starving. His fingers flexed at his sides, and he didn't speak, didn't drop his duffel, just closed the door behind him and locked it with a decisive click.

"Steve?" You were hesitant. "Are you okay?"

He was not. At least, not by your standards. His chest was rising and falling faster than it should've been for someone who'd just walked in. Sweat beaded at his temples. His voice was rough when he finally spoke.

"They hit us with something. Some kind of fuck- I don't even know. Red powder. Natasha said it was a hallucinogen. But it's not. Not really. It's..." His eyes dragged over your body like a caress.

"It's something else."

You were swallowing thickly, heart racing as you stepped closer. "What do you mean something else?"

He was already moving. One second, you were standing near the kitchen island, next, your back was pressed against it, and he was crowding into your space, heat pouring off him in waves.

"I can't stop thinking about you," he was growling now, words bitten off between clenched teeth. "Since it hit me. Can't breathe right unless I'm near you. My skin hurts. Everything hurts, except when I think about touching you. Being inside you."

You were breathless. Scorched. Wet already, embarrassingly fast, and he hadn't even laid a hand on you yet. "Steve-"

He was kissing you before you could finish, mouth crashing into yours. Desperate. Messy. He groaned like it hurt to kiss you, like it hurt not to. His hands grabbed at your hips, your waist, your thighs, like he couldn't decide where to touch first.

You were melting. Your fingers slid into his hair, tugged hard, and this made him growl into your mouth.

"Bedroom…" You tried to say

"No time," he was gasping, already pulling your sleep shirt up, hands greedy and trembling. "I need you now. Right now."

You were half-lifted onto the counter, legs parting for him automatically, instinctively, as if your body had already made the decision for you.

He tore at his suit, too frenzied for finesse, groaning low in his throat as he freed his cock…thick, hard, already dripping.

He was out of his mind. Kissing you like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to Earth.

Pressing the blunt head of his cock against you, slick with your arousal. "You smell like heaven," he said. "Taste better. Fuck- gonna die if I don't-“ He mumbled, not able to finish a single thought as you consumed him.

You were gasping as he pushed himself inside of you, your nails digging into his back, anchoring him there. He filled you in one slow, torturous stroke…too big, too good, hitting deep.

He was panting against your throat, rocking into you with bruising, punishing thrusts, his control shot to hell. "So warm. So tight. You were made for me- fuck- made just for me."

You’d never seen him this desperate. He was normally a perfect gentleman, preferring to make love to you, taking you nice and slow. But this- this was feral, this was unhinged for him.

But you loved it.

You were clinging to him, sobbing his name, the edge coming faster than you could handle, everything inside you tightening like a bowstring.

And he held you so tenderly, making sure you weren’t hurt from the counter. You didn’t know how he was multi tasking…not like this.

He was relentless. Worshipping and ruining you in equal measure. "Not gonna last," he growled.

It hadn’t even been five minutes.

He normally had good stamina, and lasted a while before he came. The powder, whatever it was had to be behind this.

"It's the powder- I can't-shit, I need-need to cum inside of you, please-"

You were already there, already falling apart, moaning loud enough for the neighbors to complain, not that you cared. Not when Steve was grinding deep, chasing his own release, spilling hot and thick inside you with a broken sound.

He was trembling when he kissed you again, forehead pressed to yours, breath ragged. He rode you both through your high, pressing his head to your chest.

As you both stilled, you wrapped your arms around his neck, running your fingers through his hair.

“I’m- I’m so sorry, sweetheart” He said after a few seconds, his breathing still uneven.

You shook your head, still out of breath as well. “You have nothing to be sorry for” You said softly, nodding “I really enjoyed whatever that was…” You admitted and he looked up to meet your eyes.

“Really?”

“Really, honey” You confirmed “I love when you’re gentle, but this…I’m speechless” You said and after that, you felt him get hard inside of you again.

The poor Super Soldier let out a whine. “I don’t know how long this is going to last” He said and you gently cupped his face in your hands.

“You can take whatever you need, honey” You said “As long as it lasts…” You assured.

And with that, round two began….

FIN.

A/N: This was an old draft but I spiffed it up a bit. I hop you guys enjoyed!!

[shangchiswife]

bucky barnes- sweeter than pie

summary: you take care of Bucky without question, and he shows just how much he appreciates his sweet wife.

bucky barnes x fem!reader

warnings: smut, cursing

word count: 1908

...

Bucky Barnes had a throbbing headache.

It had been a long day filled with endless meetings, stacks of paperwork, and the kind of political back-and-forth that drained the life out of him. All he wanted now was to be home with you, his sweet, unwaveringly supportive wife.

He knew that once he saw you, the pounding ache in his head would vanish instantly.

You’d been by his side since the very beginning, long before he ever stepped foot into Congress. And once he did, your support never wavered. You accompanied him at galas, brought him coffee and snacks on those late nights, and even gave him nice massages because lord knew he needed those.

Bucky felt bad. He knew he hadn’t been giving you much attention due to his career but you never once complained. You made it easy for him by always being so patient and understanding.

The moment Bucky stepped into your shared home, he was enveloped by the warm, sweet scent of something baking.

Without a word, he shrugged off his coat, let it fall onto the rack, and dropped his briefcase to the floor with a soft thud. 

He needed to see you.

He needed to see you now.

He made his way to the kitchen, and there you were, bent over the oven observing whatever was inside it.

You were wearing that red gingham dress, the short one that clung to you just right, barely covering the curve of your ass. You wore it because you knew exactly what it did to him, and judging by the way he suddenly forgot about his headache, it worked like a charm.

Right as you closed the oven, Bucky immediately wrapped his arms around your waist, pressing a kiss to your neck.

“Bucky,” you gasped, caught off guard, but your hand moved to the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair.

He spun you around, cupped your cheeks and gave you a long kiss that left you breathless.

“Hi sweetheart,” he said, looking you up and down shamelessly.

You felt your cheeks heat up at his sultry gaze.

“I made you apple pie,” you said with a smile that made his knees weak. “Put it in a while ago.”

His grin widened as he pulled you in closer, his hands settling on your hips.

“You trying to spoil me, doll?” he murmured, brushing his nose against yours. “Because it’s working.”

You laughed softly, your fingers playing with the ends of his hair. “You’ve had a long day. I figured you deserved something sweet.”

If only you knew what you did to him.

“I already got something sweet,” he said, giving you another kiss, slower this time, like he wasn’t in any rush to let you go.

You leaned into him, smiling against his lips. “That pie’s going to burn if you keep distracting me.”

He smirked, tilting his head. “Let it. I’ve got something way more tempting in front of me.”

He latched his lips to your neck, kissing softly at first, then deeper, making you sigh in bliss.

“Bucky,” you murmured, your voice breathy, but he didn’t stop, his hands roaming all over your waist.

“Bucky,” you said again, this time laughing as you gently lifted his chin to meet his eyes.

“What are you doing, honey?” you asked, an amused smile playing on your lips.

“Can’t a man treat his wife?” he replied with a crooked smirk, voice low and warm. Before you could respond, his mouth was back on your neck, more insistent now, like he was trying to make up for every minute he’d missed you.

“You’re insatiable,” you teased, giggling as his hands gripped your hips.

“Only when it comes to you,” he murmured, voice thick with love and longing.

His fingers fondled with your clothed breasts making you bite back a moan.

“Uh huh, honey,” he murmured, lips brushing hot against your jaw. “Don’t hold back on me. I want to hear all those pretty sounds you make.”

You nodded, breath hitching as your fingers slipped into his hair, tugging him even closer, needing more of him, needing all of him.

He chuckled softly, that low, gravelly sound that always sent shivers down your spine. You could feel his lips curl into a smirk against your neck before he latched onto your skin, sucking with a hunger that made your knees weak.

“You put this dress on, made my favorite pie, stood there looking like that,” he muttered, his voice low and rough, “and thought I’d just say thank you and walk away?”

His words sent a pool of heat into your lower stomach.

His hands slid down the curve of your body, gripping the backs of your thighs as he lifted you up onto the counter effortlessly. The cool surface made you shiver, a sharp contrast to the warmth blazing between you.

“I was just trying to take care of you,” you whispered, your lips brushing his as you spoke.

“And I’m trying to take care of you,” he replied, kissing you deeply, slowly, like he needed to taste every part of you. His hands roamed your waist, thumbs caressing your skin beneath the hem of your dress.

You moaned softly into his mouth, clutching at his shoulders as he pressed himself against you.

“You’re everything, you know that?” he said against your lips, voice thick with desire. “The only thing that gets me through the day.”

Your heart fluttered at his words, and you wrapped your arms around his neck, holding him close, whispering, “I’m not going anywhere, Bucky. I’m yours.”

“Good,” he breathed, kissing you again, slower this time, savoring it like a man who had been starving for far too long. “Because I’m never letting you go.”

His hands slid beneath the hem of your dress, fingers brushing against bare skin making your breath hitch. 

He slowly lifted the fabric, revealing your soaked panties, his gaze darkening the moment he saw you.

He licked his lips at the sight.

“Oh baby, I’ve barely even touched you and you’re already so wet,” he cooed, making you whimper.

“Please,” 

Your body ached for him.

“Please what, baby? You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” he teased, giving you a smug and infuriating grin.

Fucking tease.

“Please touch me,” you practically pleaded, guiding his hand over to your clothed core.

He chuckled lowly, his eyes gleaming with hunger.

“Well how could I ever say no to my beautiful wife?" he hooked his fingers with the waistband of your panties and pulled them down, immediately shoving it in his pocket like a prize before gently pushing two fingers inside of you.

“Fuck,” you moaned, gripping the counter.

The sound spurred him on, his fingers beginning a steady rhythm, thrusting deep over and over.

“Oh my god Bucky keep on doing that,” your breathy sighs made his cock throb in the confines of his pants.

He watched you closely, completely entranced by the way your face contorted with pleasure.

He wants to remember the exact shape your mouth makes when you breathe his name, the way your eyes darken when they meet his, the way your expression softens in a way it never does for anyone else.

His fingers move even faster if that was possible as you grip the counter even harder, your knuckles turning white.

“Bucky I’m gonna-” you slur looking down at him as his thumb started to rub your clit.

Your stomach coiled and your thighs started to tense.

“Go on honey, come for me,” his voice was low as you rocked against his hand chasing the pleasure.

And you did, falling apart with a choked cry as the heat in your belly snapped and surged through you in waves.

“Oh my god that was-” you didn’t even get another word in before Bucky started burying his face in between your thighs.

His nose brushed against your clit making you gasp.

Without wasting any time, his tongue glided along your folds.

Bucky’s tongue was merciless as always as he feasted on you like he was a starving man.

Your fingers tangled in his hair as your hips rolled forward, chasing the pressure.

He hummed into you with contentment, the vibration sending a fresh ripple of pleasure through your spine. You were sure heaven felt like this.

He then started to suck on your clit which made your eyes roll back in pleasure.

“Oh my god Bucky,” you let out a loud moan which made him pick up the pace, circling your clit with his tongue.

“Taste so fucking sweet,” he groaned, his eyes closed with bliss as his tongue never stopped moving.

His tongue continued to trace patterns on you as you could feel yourself getting close again.

Your thighs squeezed his head.

“Such a good fucking wife,” he growled, tugging his zipper down with one hand while stroking himself. “Letting me eat her out whenever I want.”

You felt your walls flutter at his filthy words.

“Bucky,” you mewled, tears pricking your eyes as his strokes sped up, his mouth still locked onto your pussy.

“Come with me, honey,” he hissed, pumping his cock faster.

You squeezed your eyes shut as your climax hit again like a tidal wave making you let out a scream in ecstasy.

Bucky groaned against you, coming undone a moment later, his name still on your lips.

Your breathing slowly began to steady as Bucky pressed gentle kisses to your inner thigh.

When he finally looked up, his eyes were warm and full of love making your heart soar.

He stood, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you into his chest. You sank into him without hesitation, arms winding around his neck, your body fitting against his like home.

“Sweetheart,” he said quietly, letting out a small laugh as he leaned his forehead against yours. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

You smiled, still catching your breath, brushing your nose against his. “I think I might.”

He laughed again, the sound low and soft, his fingers tracing slow circles against your lower back. 

The kitchen was quiet except for the low hum of the oven, but everything felt still, like time had paused just for the two of you.

At that moment, the timer went off, the soft ding breaking the quiet and reminding you both of the pie still baking in the oven.

After a few seconds, you leaned back a little to look into his eyes. “So… pie?”

He smiled, his thumb brushing your cheek. “Yeah, but I’m not sure what I want more now.”

You kissed him again, slow and sweet, then pulled back with a playful glint in your eyes. “Later, Bucky, I want some pie.”

You hopped down from the counter with a satisfied grin and turned to grab the plates. 

As you reached up into the cabinet, your dress lifted slightly, just enough for him to see the bare skin underneath, a clear reminder that your panties were still tucked safely in his pocket.

His breath caught, and he stepped closer, voice low and thick with desire.

“Let’s eat,” he said, his eyes fixed on you, “before I forget why we’re here.”

“As long as you promise not to steal my slice.” You said, handing him a fork with a teasing smile. 

He kissed your temple, his laugh soft and warm.

“No promises, but I’ll try.”

[smutmind]

Monster ft. Yujin

IVE Yujin X Her Dad's BFF ----

a little prequel to this

----

He waited for her to grow up.

Not out of morality—but to make the timing easier to defend.

Not to protect her—but to protect himself.

Jae had always been close to the family—her father’s best friend since school, always around. He brought birthday gifts. Picked her up from practice when her dad couldn’t. Laughed at her awkward, growing-in smile.

And somewhere between fifteen and seventeen, she’d stopped being a child in his eyes.

He noticed when her shorts got shorter. When her legs got longer. When her voice deepened just slightly, her hips tilted just differently.

He noticed.

And he waited.

Until now.

Until she came back from university for the summer—, legally grown, emotionally unmoored. Still soft in the eyes, still unsure when she smiled.

Still his to take, if he moved carefully.

And tonight, he moved.

The house was quiet. Her father was away for a late night duty. She came into the kitchen in a long T-shirt, no bra, looking for water.

She didn’t know he was still awake.

“Didn’t expect you up,” she said, startled.

“I never sleep early.”

She smiled. Faint. Awkward. Her hand curled around the fridge door.

He watched her.

Too long.

Too closely.

“Uncle?” she asked, voice tight.

“You filled out.”

She froze.

“That’s not something you say to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because of who you are to my family.”

“And what you are to me.”

She swallowed. “You’re almost like my dad’s real brother.”

“No,” he said. “I’m the one who’s seen you become this.”

Her back hit the counter.

He stepped forward.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I think,” he said, reaching out, brushing hair from her face, “you’re scared because you feel it too.”

“I don’t—Jae, please—”

“You’ve looked at me,” he said, eyes dark. “I’ve seen it.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“But you didn’t stop.”

He leaned in.

She turned her face. “Please, don’t kiss me.”

He paused—then smiled.

“I won’t.”

Instead, his hand slid beneath her shirt.

Yujin gasped. “No—don’t—”

“You want me to tell your father?”

She went still.

His thumb brushed her nipple.

“You want him to know what you did last summer? That little thing you think no one saw?”

Tears stung her eyes.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“But you did.”

His mouth hovered at her ear.

“You made a mistake. You got caught. This is how you fix it.”

Her breath hitched. “Please don’t make me—”

“I’m not making you,” he whispered. “I’m offering you a way out.”

Her eyes shut.

He knelt in front of her. Hands on her thighs.

“You say stop,” he said, voice quiet now. “And I’ll tell him everything.”

She trembled.

“…No.”

“No what?”

“Don’t tell him.”

“Then spread your legs.”

Her knees parted. Slowly.

Ashamed.

Tense.

Bare beneath.

He breathed in. “There’s my good girl.”

And when his mouth touched her for the first time, she didn’t cry.

She just whispered, “You're a monster”

He smiled against her skin.

And said nothing..

His silence stretched, deliberate—tactile in its own right, like a hand pressing just under her ribs. She felt it there. Heavy. Hot.

Yujin lay back, knees drawn but rigid, her chest tight with shallow, panicked breaths. Her eyes followed the slow descent of his head, every inch he traveled sparking dread she couldn’t swallow.

Jae, terrifyingly composed, dragged his mouth along the sharp curve of her hip. “You’re shaking, sweetheart” he said, voice low, lips brushing the ridge of bone. “That’s better.”

She jerked, breath hiccupping. “I-I’m not—”

“You are,” he said simply, and kissed lower.

Her skin, all nerves and young fear, flinched under each stroke. Every touch rattled her, like keys turning in locks she didn’t know existed. She’d never been this exposed—never known her body could be so vulnerable.

When he reached her breasts, he stopped, staring like he had all the time in the world. His hand cupped one, thumb brushing the nipple until it stiffened. She gasped—sharp, startled.

“That much?” he murmured, almost to himself.

“I’m scared—Jae, stop—please…” she whispered, arms tight at her sides.

He didn’t answer. His mouth closed around the nipple, sucking hard.

Yujin cried out—high and panicked. Her hands jerked to his hair, not to pull him closer, but to hold on. Her back arched off the bed, instinct more than invitation. The feeling lit through her like an electric wire, too sharp, too sudden.

Jae groaned low, almost pleased, and shifted to the other. This time, he licked with slow, dragging intent. Then sucked—deeper. Yujin thrashed beneath him, breath catching, fingers shaking as they clung to him without knowing why.

“Too much—too much—” she gasped, but kept pressing her palms against his shoulders, trying—failing—to hold him back.

“You’ll take it,” he said, voice dark velvet. “You want to take it.”

She wasn’t sure. Maybe—but her legs wouldn’t stay still. Her body kept twitching like it wanted to run. No one had ever touched her like this—never looked at her like she was something to take apart.

His mouth returned to her nipples, relentless—flicking, sucking, pulling startled sounds from her lips. She whimpered when he pinched one, his tongue circling the other with slow, exacting pressure.

She didn’t understand what was happening. It built too fast, no control, just heat flooding her hips and spine. Her body seized before she could stop it, legs jerking as something sharp and blinding tore through her.

Jae looked up, his lips wet and eyes darker than she’d ever seen them.

“Already?” he murmured.

“I-I don’t know what that was—” she gasped. Her thighs twitched. “I can’t—I can’t stop shaking—”

“Good.” He kissed her stomach, tracing sweat-slick skin. “You’re not done.”

His hand moved between her thighs, and she stiffened—too aware, too bare. The first press of his fingers dragged a cry from her, sharp and startled. His thumb found her clit, circling slow, cruel patterns. Her hips jerked, unsure whether to flee or stay frozen.

When he pushed one thick finger in, she gasped—a wet, broken sound. Her body clamped down around him on instinct, everything inside her too tight, too hot, too much.

“Fuck,” he groaned, more to himself. “So tight.”

Yujin bit her lip. Her eyes fluttered. “Y-you’re going too fast—slow down—”

He didn’t. He added another finger. Curved them. Her whole body arched like it was begging for something her mouth hadn’t learned to name. The slaps of his palm against her slick skin filled the room.

Then he did something different—he leaned down and sucked her nipple again while pumping into her with slow, relentless rhythm.

She screamed.

It shattered something. Her body convulsed, liquid gushing around his fingers. She squirted—violently, helplessly, her voice high and breaking.

Jae didn’t stop until she’d wrung herself empty against his hand.

Only then did he lift his head, lips red and wet.

“You’re ready now,” he said.

Jae didn’t move at first. He watched her. Watched the way her chest hitched, the tension creeping into her limbs. Her thighs stayed parted but trembled, uncertain. Her skin glowed with sweat, but her eyes—wide, glassy—didn’t hold heat. They held hesitation.

Yujin blinked up at him, pulse fluttering at her throat. “You told him I was safe with you”

“You are,” he said quietly. Not cruel. Not soft. Inevitable.

He stood with a slowness that made her insides twist, hands moving to his belt. The sound of the zipper made her flinch. When he freed himself, her gaze dropped—and froze.

Her breath hitched. He was big. Too big.

She swallowed. Her fingers curled into the sheets. ““H-How is that supposed to go inside me?”

Jae’s hand wrapped around the base, lazy. “It will.” His voice lowered. “But it’s going to hurt first.”

He climbed over her, bracing his arms to either side of her head. She froze. The weight of him, the shadow he cast—it pressed her flat. Her breath caught in her throat.

The heat pouring off his skin felt suffocating now, like fire too close. She smelled musk and sweat and something older—raw, feral, metallic. Cedar and iron.

Her eyes flicked up to his, wide and shining. She didn’t speak. Her body did—tensing beneath him, trembling in silence.

She wasn’t sure if it was the scent… or the look in his eyes that scared her more.

He reached down, guiding himself to her entrance.

“No turning back now,” he muttered, more to himself than her—like her answer didn’t matter.

His grip tightened on her thigh. He didn’t wait.

The first press stole her breath. The width of him dragged against her raw nerves, still tender from coming undone. She whimpered—then gasped as he pushed deeper, inch by aching inch. Her walls stretched, struggling, fluttering around him.

“God, you’re tight,” Jae growled. “Like you were made for this.”

She tried to speak. Failed. Her nails dug into his arms.

Halfway in, he didn’t stop—just ground deeper, like he was claiming space inside her. His breath tore through his teeth, rough and ragged, each thrust more like a conquest than a rhythm.

“You feel that? Stretching around me like you were made for it.?” he asked, voice not quite steady.

Jae leaned in, kissed the side of her face, and pushed the rest of the way. She cried out—sharp and startled—clutching him like she might fall apart.

“Breathe,” he whispered. “I love watching you break open around me.”

She did. God, she did.

He started to move. Shallow thrusts at first, hips grinding slow. Each one lit a new spark, pulling whimpers from her mouth she couldn’t stop. She was too full, too stretched, every inch of him stroking something she didn’t know she had.

Her legs wrapped around him without thought—traitorous, trembling. Her body clung, wet and eager, even as her mind screamed no.

She hated the way it felt good. Hated the heat curling low in her belly, the pulse that answered every thrust.

But her body didn’t care. It opened. It begged.

Then he fucked her.

The rhythm changed—deeper, harder. His pelvis slapped against her ass, loud and wet. She screamed again, the sound high and real, hands fisting the sheets. She could feel herself tightening around him, slick and raw.

Jae groaned, face pressed to her neck. “You’re squeezing me like you want to keep me.”

“Jae—Jae, I can’t—” she gasped.

“You will,” he growled. “Take it. Take all of it.”

He reached between them again, thumb pressing her clit. Her whole body jerked. She was so wet, so swollen, the touch sent lightning through her.

“I’m gonna—again, I’m—”

“Let go.”

She shattered.

The orgasm ripped through her—louder, rougher than the first. She screamed his name, back arching, body convulsing. She felt herself gush again, hot and out of control. Her pussy clamped around his cock, milking him.

Jae cursed, deep and guttural—like the sound had been clawed from his chest. His hips snapped forward, once, twice, driving the last of his control into her heat. Then he pulled out abruptly, his cock slick and twitching in his fist.

Yujin gasped, still trembling beneath him, her stomach rising and falling in broken rhythm.

He stroked himself hard—fast—hovering above her. His jaw clenched. His breath caught.

Then he came.

Thick, hot spurts landed across her belly, her ribs, her breasts. Some hit her chin. It was messy, possessive, final. He groaned through it, eyes locked on the ruin he’d made of her body—slick, marked, still quivering.

She didn’t move. She couldn’t.

And he just watched her, breathing heavy. Like she was something he’d conquered.

She let out a bitter, broken sound—not a laugh. “I hated every second of that.” Her voice was raw, trembling. “I want you to know that.”

Jae just chuckled, low and dark, wiping sweat from his brow.

He shifted higher, hand fisting the base of his cock, guiding it toward her face—, just hovering. A silent, loaded pause.

She didn’t move at first—her breath shallow, eyes locked on his. But when he said, “Lick,” she obeyed. Hesitant, trembling, her tongue flicked out, tracing the length like she hated herself for it.

He leaned in, lips grazing her ear. “You’re mine now. Doesn’t matter what you think.”

[puck-luck]

hi pooks i would like to order an americano with peppermint and cold foam with luke hughes pls pls pls thinking new relationship (1-2 months) where luke is on a roadie and is …doing his thang (ur words not mine)😛😛 i will leave the rest for the private dms to keep this short ok love u

-mattias anon

dedicated to my queen mattias anon and to the birthday girl star2fishmeg!!!! my lukey girls <3 this is for u two (luke is soooooo and i need him soooooooooooooo)

Luke scrolls to the next image of you, phone balanced precariously in his right hand. His eyes go wide and his mouth drops open, saliva gathering on his tongue that he has to swallow down. 

“Fuck,” he whispers to himself, gaze fixed on the image of you. It’s been about a week since he saw you last, with both of your schedules as busy as they are, and Luke just wanted to look at you. That’s why he’s stalking your Instagram. He’s not a creep. Just ignore what his left hand is doing.

You’ve been going out with Luke for about two months now. The relationship is new and you’re barely official, simply exclusive. When he’s around more, he’ll lock you down. In the meantime, you guys text and FaceTime and meet up when you can and Luke will continue looking at your pictures when it’s too late at night to send you a message. He doesn’t want you to know he’s thinking about you so late. You’ll know and it’s too early for that.

The picture on his screen is of you in your bathroom last summer. You posted it to your story and added it to your highlights and Luke sees why– you’re tan, your hair is blown out, your makeup is done, and your outfit is incredible. Your shirt ties in the front and accentuates your boobs and holy hell Luke likes your tits. He wishes he could touch them, play with them, suck on them, put his cock between them and thrust… the possibilities are endless.

He stares at the line of your cleavage and strokes himself faster, spreading the precum from his slit all over his tip and speeding up even more. His arm flies with motion, constantly providing friction to his pulating cock, and he throws his head back onto his pillow, moaning to an empty room.

There’s a slick sound that accompanies his moaning, rhythmically matching his pace. Luke holds himself firmly in his left hand, picking his head up and looking again at the image on the screen. He should’ve gone to bed a long time ago, with the clock on his phone showing that it’s nearly midnight, but he had to do this. He couldn’t stop thinking about you and his cock grew too hard to ignore.

Your tits– fuck, Luke imagines how they’d bounce in front of his face as you ride him, and that makes him drop his phone to his side. Your mouth would be open, panting and telling him that it’s so good, Luke, fuck, your cock is so big. He’d be looking up at you, trying not to come before you because he’s a gentleman, damn it, and he wants to make you feel good before he focuses on his own pleasure. Luke would look at your chest by mistake and become mesmerized, tongue heavy with a need to mark and suck the unblemished skin. Your pussy would feel so, so good around him, he can’t wait to experience it in real life, you’d be so fucking perfect for him–

His stomach flexes, abs clenching and straining because of the pressure in the pit of his abdomen, and Luke feels himself snap like a guitar string. His climax bursts from his slit in long white strips, landing all over his knuckles, stomach, and up to his ribcage. His hips chase after the pleasure, fucking into his fist in aborted movements because Luke can’t stop himself, can’t control his body when he feels so good. 

His groan is haggard as he forces himself to slow down. He runs his hand along his cock, desperately seeking out any remaining pleasure, but it’s all faded into a dim glow that surrounds him. He feels cocooned, warm in the aftermath of his orgasm. 

In his hazy bliss, he picks his phone up and looks at your picture again. His hand moves before his mind does, thumb going to the bottom corner of the screen and pressing the little heart.

The second after he does it, his brain catches up. Luke’s heart drops so far into his stomach that he thinks he might pass it like a kidney stone the next time he goes to the bathroom. He just liked a picture of yours from your highlights, from before he even met you, late at night. He’s fucking screwed. Even if he unlikes the picture now, which he does as if he can reverse his actions, you’ll still get the notification that he interacted with you.

It’s so over. Luke is done for. He throws his phone in his bedside drawer and moves to clean himself up, riddled with shame over his actions now that he accidentally revealed himself. You’re going to think he’s a weirdo and you’re never going to want to see him again. Luke understands, to be honest. He did something stupid and he’ll pay for it.

He dares one last peek at his phone before he goes to bed, hoping the shame will be gone when he wakes up in the morning. He freezes again– there’s a text from you.

Liking my thirst trap so late, Lu? U know u can just call me next time ;)

[martygraciesversion381]

SPORTS CAR

lando norris x piastri!reader

warnings: smut, pnv, car sex, bit of angst, awkard time!!!!, fluffy, start of something (don't wanna spoil but it's a huge part of the plot)

summary: you're Oscar Piastri's little sister and you and Lando always hated each other. So how did you end up in this weird situation with him? That's what you're asking yourself too

song: sports car by tate mcrae

a/n: chapter two!!! still smutty as fuckkk!!! (yes i'm a whore for this man) ft. singapore pics because lando in singapore just hits different. ty sm for all the love that you guys have shown to cut my hair i promise i'll try to update it more i just have so much to do an all. i rlly hope the smut is good cause i'm not sure AT ALL! love uuuu

requests[closed for now]

masterlist

series masterlist

(divider by @kodaswrld)

Singapore gran prix, one of the best races of the season. You walked into the paddock hand in hand with your brother Oscar. You were wearing a short papaya dress (as he insisted to call it) as you both made your way to the mclaren garage.

The first face you saw when you entered it was Lando whose eyes immediately went back to his data after he spotted you. What a coward.

You rolled your eyes as you made your way to your brother's side of the garage, this was gonna be a long day.

______________________________________________________________

Lando won...even if you were on your brother's side of the garage you couldn't help your happiness as you were dragged under the podium to see him get his well deserved trophy.

What you weren't ready for was the sight of him on the podium because holy fuck he looked majestic. Your thoughts went back to that night in Zandvoort and you found yourself wanting to create it again.

The anthem and trophy giving passed quickly and you soon found yourself back waiting for your brother in front of his driver room when a very sweaty and very hot Lando walked in the hallway.

He was surprised to see you but then spoke calmly. "Osc left early cause he has an early flight tomorrow."

"Seriously? He was supposed to drive me!" you huffed out in frustration.

"If you give me fifteen minutes I'll drive you" he offered.

You were shocked by his proposition but you accepted it anyways that's how you found yourself waiting in front of Lando's bringht orange, or papaya as he insisted, McLaren.

He came over about five minutes later with a white button up on with the last buttons undone leaving you a small sight of his tanned chest. His hair was messy because of the race and he had a smirk on his face.

"Ready to go?" he asked and you nodded climbing onto the passenger sit.

Lando got in the car and started it, you hummed as you felt it come to life under you. While Lando drove to car, you kept shifting in your seat trying to find a comfortable position because the car might've been luxious the seats weren't that comfy.

Halfway into the drive Lando pulled over in an empty parking.

"Stop it will ya?" he said lightly irritated.

"What? I'm just getting comfy!" you defended yourself feeling annoyance creeping up on you before you spotted the bulge in his pants and a smirk made its way on your face. "Me shifting got you worked up Norris?"

He blushed and muttered a small shut up. He was so cute how was it even possible to be cute and hot at the same time?

"Need help?" you asked and he nodded so you moved to straddle his lap.

Lando looked up at you with wide eyes before he captured your lips with his in a deep hungry kiss just like last time except this one felt more real since you were both sober.

He tangled one of his hands in your hair as the other one gripped your waist tightly as if he was afraid that you'd slip away if he didn't hold you. Your hands were in his curls tugging on them making him groan between pleasure and pain.

Lando pulled back to trail kisses down your neck as his hands made their way between the both of you brushing over your panties in the process. You gasped and he smirked feeling how wet you were.

"Y'want this huh? Need me s'bad don't you pretty girl?" he purred and all you could do was nod and whimper.

He unziped his pants pulling them down and freeing his dick from his boxers as it bounced against his stomach standing red and tall. You licked your lips as you lifted your hips up pushing your panties to the side before he guided himself into your warmth.

You both moaned as he bottomed out fully a small bulge visible on your lower stomach. You started to rock on him before setting a pace of bouncing up and down with him thrusting up into you.

The sound of your moans and skin slapping against skin. He looked so hot still flushed from the heat outside. Soon, Lando's hand came down to your clit and you tightened around him feeling the knot building in your stomach.

Lando rubbed harsh circles and your orgasm washed over you without any warning as Lando followed you quickly.

You both stayed there panting with your head now lying on Lando's chest. He broke the silence.

"Listen....I've thought about it...What if we start something exclusive? No strings attached just us and no one else mh?"

You took a moment to consider the pros and cons because you would surely fall for him but in your post orgasm state all you could do was nod and agree because honestly sex with him was amazing.

tagglist:

@cinderellawithashoe @itzzgillianj27 @motorsportbarbie13 @gorgeusreputation16 @swiftlyconehead @g00d--vibes @linnygirl09 @itsleslie1998 @rd14 @safeplaceholland @f1fantasys @rendezvoushn @lilorose25 @softhyunieeee @powerlinevallies @imboredway2much

[rhaenyraeri]

Co-Star Tensions Part 3 - Jack O’Connell

minors dni, 18+!!

Part 1, Part 2, Interlude, Part 3

listen to trash magic by lana del rey while reading bc it’s what inspired a bit of this hehe

Pairing: Jack O’Connell x fem!Reader

Summary: Your relationship with Jack is rocky, having been long distance since the week of reshoots. But it’s finally the Sinners premiere day, and you get to reunite with the cast, and most importantly, Jack. Will the spark still be there?

Warnings: filth. oral (fem!recieving), dirty talk, teasing, dry humping, swearing, unprotected sex (pls wrap before you tap)

Word Count: 4.4k+

Note: this is the final part of co-star tensions :( but never fear! i got a need for jack o’connell and a want to write so i’ll have more fics soon hehe but thank you all sm for the love given to this short little series <3

Since reshoots ended, you and Jack had gone on a couple of dates. The two of you decided to go slow with the relationship seeing as it started on the terms it did, wanting to just take time to be with each other and grow a good, comfortable bond. You were in contact extremely often with him, some days calling for hours on end. Reshoots ended a couple of months ago, and today was the first day of press, which means it’s the first time since a week after filming ended that you’d saw Jack in person. Both of you had projects that were starting, so you were forced to be long distance. He was in England for a new show, and you in the States, preparing for a movie you’d scored while filming Sinners.

But tonight, finally, the two of you were to be reunited, during the red carpet premiere for the movie. It’d been too long since you last saw him, the late night calls due to time zones weren’t cutting it. To have a conversation with him that wasn’t over the phone or to talk about each other’s days without yearning to trace your fingers on his arm. It’s all you both could think of. You weren’t technically official, but it was kind of unspoken knowledge that you two were head over heels for one another.

Your stylist made a few final touch ups to your hair and makeup before deeming herself content with your look, and she lead you outside her hotel room and back to yours to grab your jewelry. You were to meet up with your best friends, Wunmi and Hailee, in the lobby and arrive together. As you made your way out of your room, you stopped to look at yourself in the mirror, admiring the work your stylist had done on you. She made you look flawless, and you were so grateful to have such a wonderful stylist. She smiled as you mentally praised her work, and grabbed your hand to lead you to the elevator. “Thank you so much, I feel like I look red carpet worthy,” you praised her, placing a hand on her arm lightly. “It’s because you are. You’re gonna look amazing out there tonight. I’m so honored to be your stylist.” The elevator opened as you thanked her once more, bragging on her job well done. As the doors opened, you saw your friends talking with Michael and Ryan near the entrance. They all looked amazing, and you couldn’t help but feel so much pride for how hard this team worked on this movie, and tonight the world would finally be able to see that work pay off. Ryan and Michael went on ahead so they could get there for the interviews early, knowing the lines of reporters and interviewers would be double the amount the rest of the cast expected due to the most important roles they played in the film, as director and main protagonists. You, Hailee, and Wunmi walked out with your arms linked, cameras flashing and calling your names as you entered the black SUV.

A few short exchanges with the drivers and assistants were spoken, before a relaxed silence filled the car. “So, you ready to see your man tonight?,” Hailee started, obviously excited for you to openly show your relationship after months of pining. A light blush warmed your face as you smiled, and Wunmi smiled brightly at you, “How long has it been? 2 months since filming basically?”

“Yeah. around that. We had a couple dates before he had to go back to the U.K. for a project. I’m so excited to see him tonight, girls.”

They smiled warmly at you, knowing your feelings about him all too well, and they were glad that you didn’t have to hide behind the awkwardness during filming. They knew you like a book by now, and they could tell by your demeanor tonight that you were more than ready to see him. The two women were your best friends, and the fact that they both were so encouraging and supportive of your relationship with Jack made you love them more. They never judged, never spoke negative. If it made you happy, then that was all that mattered. You couldn’t be more thankful for them or the rest of the crew for how welcome and loved you felt on this set. Tonight, you were finally able to voice your passion for this project to the audiences.

———

The drive to the red carpet felt like an eternity, anticipation slowing time down as you looked out of the window, taking in the sites of New York City. When the SUV stopped, you were zoned out, and the only thing pulling you from your thoughts was Wunmi grabbing your hand and giving it a shake before whispering something you couldn’t make out, then turning to her assistant. You snapped out of it and looked towards her, the flashing lights and red carpet illuminating behind her. Chills ran down your spine; sure, you’ve been to red carpets before, quite a few actually. But this one was your first one for a horror film, antagonist role, and overall the biggest role you’ve had to date. As you slid out of the back seat, a hand reach out in front of you.

“Would you like a hand, my love?”

You audibly gasped, immediately taking Jack’s hand to guide you the rest of the way out of the SUV. He grabbed your arm with his other hand, helping you down like you were a princess. As soon as your feet hit the ground, you wrapped your arms around him.

“Oh, it’s so good to finally see you again, Jack! I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you more darling, I’m sure. You look absolutely breathtaking tonight, such a beauty,” he admired. It’s been so long since you’ve saw him not through a phone screen, or heard his voice not through muffled earbud speakers, or since you’ve touched him, felt him, embraced him. You pulled away to look into his eyes, and put your hand on his cheek.

“And you look even more handsome than the last day we spent together. I didn’t even think that was possible.” He leaned in to kiss you, and you felt his hand grab your waist. Bright lights shuttered rapidly as you kissed, which prompted you both to pull away as you realized the press were all now looking at you. There were most definitely going to be questions about that tonight, articles tomorrow, and a high conversation for the days, maybe even weeks, to come of the premiere events. You laughed as you looked at the interviewers on the carpet, most looking at the two of you. “We’ve already given them something to talk about, huh?”

“Yeah, well, what’s one more, eh?” You turned to look at him, and he cupped your face to give you another kiss. This one with more excitement than the last, more fervent, probably from the attention, and finally being able to show your feelings for each other. The cameras flashed again, this time making you both laugh. You slid your hand into his, and the two of you made your way onto the red carpet.

———

For the most part, the questions you faced were about your performance in the movie, and a few unique questions from some influencers. Of course, as expected, you were asked about the kiss. You were truthful obviously.. for the most part. True that you were together for a couple months, but not how the relationship came to be. As far as you could tell, Jack experienced the same types of questions, and for that you were grateful.

Before the movie premiere started, everyone lined up to take photos for the press in front of the Sinners display. As you met back up with Jack, his hand immediately slid around your waist to bring you into his side. He leaned close and whispered, “Love, you have no idea what you do to me. Lookin’ the way you do.. so fucking gorgeous,” before kissing your forehead and smiling sweetly at you, like he didn’t just turn you on in front of hundreds of people. He looked you up and down, scanning the way the dress laid on your body. He wanted you then and there, and thankfully he remembered the crowd watching, or else it would’ve been damning. You smiled for the pictures, and turned back to him to whisper, “Oh, I think I know, honey. I’ve got a pretty damn good idea.” To everyone watching, it was a sweet interaction, you fixing his tie, and him planting a loving kiss to your forehead. To you, it was teasing, pulling his tie just enough to antagonize the need he had for you. To him, it was blissful to see you get riled up before him, like you did that first time months ago. All those weeks prior, riding his thigh on set in costume, in character.

The two of you were sat away from each other when the movie began, seeing as no one knew of the relationship, resorting to how it was before; stolen glances and longing stares across your fellow co-stars. You couldn’t focus on watching for thinking about how you wanted to be sat next to him, to hold his hand and lean your head on his shoulder. But here you were, 5 co-stars apart. When the scene at the juke joint of Remmick telling Grace that he ‘knew how she liked to be licked,’ came on the screen, you felt eyes piercing straight through your soul. You glanced over, and the sheer lust covering his face made your heart flutter. He knew how you liked to be licked. For damn sure, he knew. The rest of the movie felt different after that, the more you tried to not focus on that, the more you ended up thinking about it.

Finally, the movie ended, and the audience cheered, giving a standing ovation for 6 minutes. Slowly, your senses came back to you, and you reveled in the praise that the crowd was giving you and the cast. The two of you, once more, stood next to each other, with his arm around your waist. The grip he had this time was more firm than earlier at the start of the premiere. His thumb rubbed your side, hand moving up and down to feel how perfect your body was to him. How it felt in his hand, how he wanted to hold you like that forever. Most of the post-movie questions were pointed towards Michael, Wunmi, Hailee, and Miles. Towards the end, the questions were asked to you and Jack, thankfully avoiding the kiss on the red carpet, but still asking about the scenes the two of you had.

When the premiere ended, you signed some items for fans and press alike, and got into the SUV. You were the only one from your car ride down that was ready to go back to the hotel, so the driver went ahead and took you back to give Wunmi and Hailee time to sign the copious items that were offered and to do a few more quick answering of passing questions. You brushed your dress off once you were in, and took a deep breath. “What a night,” you muttered under your breath. Your assistant laughed and said, “I’d say so. You shook me up, too. How long?” You gave her a good idea as an answer, but dodged the more private details. She just looked at you and smirked, almost like she knew but didn’t want to pry entirely. As the SUV pulled up to the hotel entrance, you made your way into the lobby and she excused herself to speak with some other cast members’ assistants. You told her good night, and pressed the elevator button. While you waited, you thought about what he did you to tonight, making you a mess underneath your calm composure. You planned to call him when you got to your room, to see if he would be free to hang out tomorrow at either of your hotel rooms. You messed with your rings as you waited, and finally the elevator dinged.

You looked up, and there he was. Already there, waiting for you in the elevator. You stepped in, keeping yourself calm until the doors closed. You pressed the button for your floor and turned to him. Before you could get a word out, both of his hands cupped your face. He kissed you with fervency, desperation, and desire. You ran a hand to his hair, giving it a light tug before lightly pushing him against the wall, matching his desperation with your own. One of his hands left your face and went to your ass, giving it a firm squeeze before running back up to your waist. The elevator stopped, the ding disrupting you. You turned to see if anyone was there, but thankfully there was no one. He kissed your neck as you scanned the hallway, biting a little as he went. He broke from you just long enough for you to lead him to your room, and as you went to reach into your dress pocket for your key card, the hand on your waist had already slid in and got it. You turned against the door, returning the favor of kissing his neck as he unlocked it. As the door swung open, you immediately got to work undoing his tie. He kicked back to shut the door, and started taking his suit jacket off. Backing further into the room, he turned you so that he was in front of the bad, and sat down, breaking the kiss. You stood between his legs, and he grabbed a fist full of your dress.

“Oh, fuck, love. That fuckin’ dress had me bothered all night, but I need it off. Now.”

You opened your mouth to tease him, but decided it’s not the time for that. You reach down to grab the bottom of the dress, and he leaned back onto his elbows to watch how your body stretched as the fabric unveiled the figure before him. His breathing got heavier, his mind racing with what he wanted you to do to him next and what he wanted to with you. You kicked your heels off to across the room, before moving to put your body on top of his, pushing him fully onto his back. Your lips met his, the passion hotter and messier than before. His left hand ran up your back, and into your hair, gripping a fist full of it tight. You moaned into the kiss, causing him to growl at the sound of your pleasure. You crawled onto the bed more, breaking your kiss, your legs now straddling his waist. He looked up, cursing at the sight of you.

“Your shirt. Take it off. Now,” you demanded in the same tone as he did to you, voice dripping with desperation and words laced with passion. His fingers worked to unbutton but that took too long, so you reach down and ripped it apart the rest of the way. “Tell your stylist it was an accident.”

He nodded absentmindedly, slid it off his arms, and threw it onto the floor beside the bed. You bent down to run a hand up his now exposed stomach and chest, and then back down, working on his belt. You unbuckled it, but stopped. He looked up at you, mild confusion on his face but soon turned to pleasure as you started to grind your underwear clad pussy on his still completely clothed erection. His hands grabbed your waist, rolling you on him at the right pace. “Fuck, baby, look at you. Grindin’ on me like that, keep going baby, feels so fuckin’ good,” he praised. Your soaked pussy has wet his pants, the sensation instinctively making him grind back into your hips. Your moans mix with whines, each rut against him matched with his own thrust. “I need you so fucking bad, baby. Mmm, so bad.” “Yeah? You need me? Keep fuckin’ riding me like that, gonna take real good care of you love.” He sat up, his hands still on your waist. A low, gutteral moan leaves him as he slightly repositions himself. His grip on your waist tightened, rolling you against him even deeper, to where you can feel outline of his dick rubbing between your pussy. He puts his face between your breasts, biting your bra lightly. “Take the damn thing off,” he demanded, and you obeyed, reaching your hands behind you to undo the latch. Before you could even drop the bra, his mouth latched onto your neck, then down between your breasts. He kissed between them, slowly biting, then the left, and back over to the right, giving each a good suck, making sure to leave a mark on each one.

“I’m.. I’m gonna cum, Jack,” you moaned out, getting lost in the sensation of his mouth on your chest and your soaked pussy getting close to an orgasm. “Uh-uh, not yet,” he abruptly stopped you from continuing, standing the two of you up before turning you around so that you were now in front of the bed. He lightly pushed you back onto the it, taking a second to look at you before him. Your hair disheveled from the rough grip he had, your chest red with bite marks and hickeys, and your underwear soaked into a darker color from humping him. There was nothing more beautiful than this, your body ruined by his touch, reveling in what he caused. He looked down at you for a while longer, before he moved to lay half on the bed to get face level with your pussy, pulling your legs apart a little to get a look.

“Look at that, she’s soaked for me. All this ‘cause of me? Fuckin’ hell, you can’t keep her covered from me all night, right, love?” You stayed silent, breathing heavy but you gave a quick head shake of ‘no’. “Nah, that’s not enough. I need you to speak to me, darling. Use your words.”

“No. No, I can’t.. I need you, please.” With that, your hips rolled at the demand of his touch. “Since you asked so nicely,” he pulled your underwear off and spread your legs farther, his tongue darting out to get to work on you. Oh, that sweet, sweet taste that he missed so much. He could spend the rest of his days between your thighs, drinking up every little bit of pleasure you released. The sounds of your slick and his mouth filled the otherwise quiet hotel room. Your hips bucked up to get more access, and he growled, laying an arm across them to hold you down. He got deeper and deeper with his tongue, farther into your pussy than you ever thought possible. He sucked against our clit, moaning against you with each attempt you made to buck against his mouth. You moved your leg onto his shoulder, wanting to give him better access to his favorite meal. Instead, he stops, pulling away from you before standing up. His face is covered in your slick, licking his lips to clean up a little bit of the mess. “Look at you, literally wet as water for me. I need more, darlin’.” He grabs your legs and pulls you to the edge of the bed. You squeal from the sudden movement, and look to meet him the eyes just as he gets on his knees in front of you. He throws one leg over his shoulder and then the other, and spits on your pussy. “There we go, that’s more like it,” he shoves his face right back into your pussy, rutting his tongue into you like you’re the last water source on earth and he’s dying of thirst. He sucks your clit, savoring the taste of you like he’ll never eat your sweet pussy again, like it’s the last time he’ll ever get the chance to have your thighs on his shoulders. His fingers grip your thighs, holding you in place. The sounds from you become more sinful, more desperate for him to be even further into you. He licks further down your center, so far that his nose brushed against your clit, and the moan practically screamed out of you, your pussy clenched at the feeling. The more he did, the closer you got to your orgasm. “I’m.. I’m so fucking close.. Please let me cum, fuck..” you plea, as your thighs tremble like earthquakes on his shoulders. He moans a “mm-hmm” against you as an answer, and a few deep ruts of his tongue later, you cum, harder than you have before in your relationship, your moans loud and almost pornographic. He’s still between your legs, cleaning up the mess as he feels some of your release drop onto his chest. “Jack, please, I’m too sensitive..”

He gives a displeased “mmm” against you one last time before pulling off with a pop, completely out of breath and face red, lips swollen. You look down at him with your mouth open at the sight. He swallows deeply before moving your aching thighs off of his shoulders one by one. He stood up, taking in your body once more. “Fuckin’ hell, baby. You taste like heaven.” He looks down on his chest af the little bit of your slick mixed with his spit that dripped onto his chest. He ran two fingers over it, collecting it for you, “Open.” You did as he said and he put his fingers into your mouth, tasting yourself and his spit, running your tongue over and between his fingers. He pulled them out, immediately replacing them with his own mouth, kissing you hard, your slick now on your own face too. He stood back up, reaching for his belt. He pulled it through the loops in one movement, thanks to you unbuckling it earlier, and tossed it across the room, taking his pants and underwear off in one swift motion. Your heart rate quickened, your body warmed up, and your breathing became labored. The look he had locked onto you was filled with desire, his eyes dark from lust. You backed onto the bed a little to give him access, and he crawled up to hover over you, and kissed you messily, sloppy, even. You both moan into the kiss, deepening it. Your hand grabbed his hair again, forcing his face to be as close to yours as possible. He slides a hand down your body, then to his dick. He breaks the kiss and pushes himself into your still soaked pussy, making sure to keep his eyes on you as he entered you. Your face contorted into sheer pleasure as you finally, finally felt him inside you. The times during reshoots satisfied the cravings but did nothing in the long run, but now you both are struck with pleasure that has been built up for months. You open your eyes to meet his, and your faces match each other, the sensation of finally having sex was intense. The tension that built up during the first round of filming was one thing, then the reshoots, then the time on set, in the prop closet.. nothing compared to this. His thrusts were slow and first, just reveling in the moment, before you both could tell you needed more. His pace began to quicken, his grunts getting louder in your ear. He props himself up over you with one hand on the headboard and the other finding its way to your own hand, holding it lovingly but tightly beside your head. You put your right leg over his back, giving him the indication to go deeper. “Oh, fuck Jack, you treat me so well,” you praised him, words coming out more as moans than cohesive words.

“You feel like fuckin’ heaven love. Fuck, you’re so tight. Mmm, so warm, so good for me, so fuckin’ beautiful.”

He growls in your ear, leaning closer to your neck before kissing it. Your moans became more rapid, more sensual, and whinier. He bites on your neck, then sucks, getting to work to mark you with hickies. The hand in his hair grips even hard, invoking a grunt from him as he sped up even more. “Fuck, baby, I’m so close, fuck,” you say between moans, your words barely cohesive to your own ears. All you can focus on are the sounds of his hips slapping into yours and his own moans and grunts in your ear. “Me too, love, Goddamn, you’re so fucking perfect for me.”

With a throaty “fuuuuck,” he releases into you, and you follow immediately after with the whiniest, fucked out moan into his ear. He leans down to kiss you, both of you still out of breath but still want to keep that touch. He pulls out of you and lays down beside you, pulling your exhausted figure into his side. There’s moments of silence, aside from your breaths slowly calming down and the air conditioner quietly turning on. You move to lay your head on his chest, looking up at his face. His free hand grabs the small blanket that almost got knocked off the bed and lays it over the two of you, the hand rubbing your arm pulling it farther over.

“So, we’re uh, we’re gonna need a hotel room together the rest of this promotion. There’s no way around that,” you laugh. You were staying in the same hotel room but there was no way that after tonight, you would be able to stand being separated.

“Absolutely. We need to get on that as soon as we can. Oh, and uh, I’ve finished filming in London for the series. I figure I could stay in the States with you for a while, if you’ll have me?”

“Are you kidding? I’d love that, Jack. I can’t stand being away from you, this has been driving me insane.”

There was no way either of you could handle any more of the long distance, the months apart felt like years. No one would understand the connection you two had from your events on set or over the phone for months, but it ended up working for you.

“You know I love you, right?,” he whispers before kissing your forehead. You look up at him, giving him a slight smile and kissing his jaw.

“I do, you know I love you too, right?”

“Yeah, of course I do, my darling’.”

—

Taglist: @moyavsemoya, @faephoria, @carriemill, @livlifehope

[sugarushwriting]

cherry popper jake x reader

🍒 part 3

adult contented featured | read at your own discretion

jake was NOT happy with you. as usual per lately. seems to be the trend the past month and a half. once again you’ve grown distant. not gone into hiding and completely ignoring him, but giving him short replies, hanging out with your other friends (he was shocked to know you had other friends other than him), or choosing your school work over him.

jake, your bestie. your bestie who you’ve had sex with twice now. really all you could do was blame yourself though.

you knew how jake was. he was a flirt. a big flirt. did you really think he could keep it in his pants and for you?

here you were, poor old you, trying to keep your tears at bay in your class, surrounded by 50 other students who were just focused on the professor rambling about economics.

all you could focus on was finding jake hiding away with a red hair chick, her lips locked on his neck, his hands locked on her hips.

his big hands, long, thick fingers. those veins.

get it together!

your phone buzzed in your pocket, breaking your thoughts, but your frown only got bigger if possible.

jakey jakey: food?

you put your phone screen face down on the table to try and focus on the lecture. by the end of it, all you could remember was no homework and just to prepare for the exam in two weeks.

jake found you leaving your lecture with a frown on your face, and he frowned himself. you clearly saw his message as your eyes were glued to your phone. why were you ignoring him, again?

“why do i have to remind you to not ignore me after everytime we have sex?” jake said coming up beside you.

“i wasn’t ignoring you. i was focused in lecture.” you shrugged.

“well, do you want to get food?”

you shook your head. “can’t, i promised eric i would help him with his paper for literature.”

jake nearly stopped in his tracks. “since when do you hang with eric?”

“since his friend sunwoo accidentally kicked the soccer ball in my face, and eric ran to me apologizing on his behalf.” you chuckled, shifting the straps of your bag on your shoulders.

this time jake did stop in his tracks. “excuse me?” jake was seeing red. since when were you hanging with other guys? sunwoo and eric of all people? jake had a reputation for sure, but those two weren’t too far behind.

you turned to jake, seeing jealousy yourself. why were you jealous? maybe more embarrassed than anything for allowing yourself to fall for your bestie.

“you heard me jake. me and you? just friends. now why don’t you go fuck that little red hair chick of yours like we both know you want to. sorry i bore you so much.” you said and turned sharply away and to where you had agreed to meet eric before jake could catch up to you.

jake stood still in his spot, shocked by what you said. red hair chick? what in the world? then he remembered earlier. julie cornered him stating she had missed him. before he could push her away her lips attached to his neck.

he wanted to explain but you were gone. and he didn’t know where you were meeting eric. smacking himself on the forehead, he dragged his feet back to his shared place, seeing sunghoon and heeseung playing video games.

“why looking so glum jakey?” sunghoon asked.

heeseung chuckled with a smirk, “what did you do this time?”

jake huffed, blowing his hair out of his eyes. “what makes you think i did something?”

heeseung and sunghoon stared at each other then at jake. jake slumped in the chair. with a groan, “she saw another girl—julie, sucking on my neck. and now, she’s out smooching away with eric of all people.”

“first off, she’s probably not doing that, she’s not like that, jake. even if she was, you deserved it.” heeseung said.

“how the fuck did she see a girl sucking your neck?”

heeseung held up a finger, “the real question is, why? you like her, why was julie sucking on your neck?”

jake rubbed his face in frustration. “julie caught me by surprise, i didn’t have time to react and push her away. cherry girl must’ve saw julie on me before i pushed her away.”

“yeah, because you didn’t push julie away fast enough asshat.” sunghoon snorted. “julie shouldn’t have had the chance in the first place to have her lips near you.”

heeseung sighed, “when are you going to tell her you like her?”

jake shrugged. “ive done so. thought she got the hint.”

“subtle hints is not telling her, sim.” heeseung pointed. “you need to tell her straight up. women don’t like hints or guessing games. you have to tell her.”

“she told me we were just friends.”

sunghoon got up from his spot on the couch and smacked jake’s head. “dummy.”

heeseung laughed. “she only told you that to save herself. poor girl going through heart break.” heeseung mocked with his hands as if a heart was breaking in two.

“if we’re talking about who i think we are, she’s doing just fine.” jake heard jay say as he came into the living room.

jakes ears perked. “what?”

“how did you know we were talking about her?” sunghoon asked.

“please, she’s all jake talks about, even more since he’s deflowered her.”

jake stood up from the chair, “what do you mean she’s doing just fine?”

“oh,” jay began, but took a dramatic pause as he took a sip of his water from his bottle, “i saw her with eric and sunwoo walking towards her apartment. looked like she had more than a few drinks she could handle.”

jake was putting on his shoes, grabbing his wallet and phone when jay mentioned other men going to your apartment. his body was heating with jealousy when drinks came into play.

weren’t you and eric supposed to just work on a damn paper? how did drinking get involved? and where did sunwoo come from?

jake quickly got into his old jeep, driving the short distance to your apartment, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight, his knuckles turned white.

not even parking straight into the parking space, he took out his phone and began spam calling you as he walked up to your door. it just rang, no answer.

he knocked, no banged, demanding an answer from the door. he was ready to start swinging when he saw sunwoo answer the door, but seemed confused and concerned when relief flushed over both sunwoo and eric’s face.

“oh thank heavens you are here!” sunwoo nearly cried.

“come get her! now!” eric groaned from your living room.

jake walked into your apartment passing sunwoo, seeing you passed out on eric’s lap.

“what happened to her helping you with that paper?” jake threw eric an accusatory look.

“ask her!” eric pointed down to your sleeping figure. “she showed up barely able to stand on her own. i had to call sunwoo to help me walk her to her apartment.”

“your friend jay was no help.” sunwoo scoffed. “just told us to take her home and he’d do the rest, whatever that meant.”

eric lifted your head off his lap, you groaned in annoyance, but went back to sleep. “whatever you did to her, fix it. i need her to help me.”

“why do you think—,”

“our entire walk im pretty sure she put a curse on you if she could.” eric said.

before jake could speak further, eric and sunwoo gathered their belongings, rushing out of your apartment.

jake went straight into caring for you. he helped you into your bed, changing you out of your outside clothes into something more comfortable. using your makeup remover to remove any makeup or excess dirt from your skin for the day.

he grabbed your favorite hang over meds and a cup of water to set beside your bed. he made sure you had your favorite blanket and snack beside you as well, along with a garbage can.

he took the opportunity to shuffle through your closet, finding clothes you’ve stolen from him to put on. he undressed, keeping his boxers on, but putting on a different shirt. slipping into bed beside you, he kissed the top of your head.

“i like you. no i love you. and more than a friend, my love, my cherry. always have, always will. no need to be jealous of any girls, not julie, not karina, not yuqi, not rosie, not—,”

“i get it, you don’t have to name every one of them.” your breath tickled his neck. you were still half asleep, but heard him. “and i was not jealous.”

“whatever you say.” jake laughed, his finger tips rubbing softly up and down your back.

jake leaned down to kiss your lips, tasting like his favorite soda. it was supposed to be sweet, but with how soft you were, jake couldn’t help but want to feel your tongue. his tongue brushed by your lips, and you let him.

“jakey, im tired.” you sighed into his lips.

“it’s ok, i’ll do the work, cherry.” jake says, as he kisses your lips, your jaw, and down your neck. his kisses travel to the hem of your shorts he put you in, and he kisses the bare skin of your stomach before lifting the shirt.

the shirt is soon lifted just enough to wear jakes head can fit underneath and his lips attach to one of your nipples sending shivers down your spine. soft sighs escape your lips, as your hand tirelessly pulls at his locks.

jakes lips attaches to the other nipple, tugging, his hand teasing the one his mouth just had to neglect.

the wet kisses travel back down, him sliding your shorts and underwear off in one fluid motion, and throwing them over his shoulder.

“just my tongue and fingers tonight, my cherry. you get my cock in the morning.”

“please wake me up with it?” you asked timidly, not sure if jake would be open to it.

“anything my girl wants, my girl gets.”

before you could overthink, jakes hot tongue was flat against your folds, his pointed finger and middle finger already protruding into your wet hole.

“always so ready for me.”

his nose rubbed just right against your clit, and with him knowing just all the right pressure points for you, you were gonna come and go to sleep in no time.

“i want you to come for me, cherry. come all over your jakey’s tongue. mark me cherry. i only belong to you.” jake continued spewing his hot talk, one hand lazily gripping his hair, the other gripping your sheets.

“that’s my cherry, you’re close, aren’t you?”

“yes jakey.” you moaned aloud. “so close. please—please don’t stop.”

“wouldn’t dream of it.” jakes tongue flattened more against your folds, and aggressively licked while his fingers pointed upwards sending you over the edge.

with a loud cry, you came, not realizing jake was jacking himself off with you and to you, and he came in his boxers.

“so tired jake.” you couldn’t fight yo keep your eyes open.

“go to sleep cherry, i’ll clean you up.”

“i love you, jake.” you mumbled.

“i love you more.”

ᓚᘏᗢ

© work of sugarushwriting | do not repost as your own or translate

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[agentlizardofowca]

Short fic: Winifred Fletcher beats up Mrs Doofenshmirtz

That's it, that's the fic. Established relationship, takes place after the show. Enjoy. ----

It was his birthday. Heinz was turning 50, and because he was turning 50, this birthday was a big deal. 

His 49th birthday had been simple, easy. A piece of cake and an afternoon spent with Perry. Vanessa had visited and handed him a present: One of those phone case handheld thingies that he could play with. A few people had rung their doorbell to shake his hand and congratulate him. By the time dinner rolled around, everything was back to normal.

But not this year. Fifty was a big number! But anyone who said that just made him feel impossibly old. 

Heinz never would’ve guessed he would hold out this long; even as a teen, he assumed he'd die tragically. A few times his life had flashed before his eyes, like when he was trapped under that boulder, the night Charlene took Vanessa and left for real, and the first time he sat on a self-destruct button. But here he was: losing his hair, with a sore back, but breathing and happier than he'd been in years. The big five-oh.

The Flynn-Fletchers had insisted on a real party, but Heinz was very reluctant. Eventually, there was some sort of compromise, and now their house was stuffed with more people than they had seats. Their visitors didn't mind; Groups of neighbours stood around eating cake and the kids all agreed they’d rather be outside than in. 

Someone had invited Roger, who made polite conversation with his reluctant brother for five minutes before he'd disappeared into the crowd to go kiss some stranger's baby or something.

"Heinz, ol' boy! Who would’ve thought you'd be an old geezer in such a jiffy!"

He turned towards the strange noise and came face to face with Reginald Fletcher, Perry's adoptive father, and a man with such a strange and unusual English accent that he wondered how people even understood the man. Beside him was his wife Winniefred, smiling pleasantly.

"Reg, Winnie", Heinz smiled and offered them his hand. "Thank you so much for coming. You only have a few days here in the states, I'm sure there are many things you'd rather do." 

"Nonsense! Winnie loves a good party, don't you, dear? Besides, our Perry's man only turns fifty once, right? I remember when I was a spry young lad like you!" 

"To celebrate, he walked a tightrope across the Thames," Winniefred agreed.

"Well, my balance has never been that good," Heinz chuckled, suddenly afraid that people expected him to do something, since this was his party. He didn’t know if there were rules for something like that.

"A slice of cake seems like a great alternative." Winifred agreed. "Our Perry wouldn't like you if you did silly things like that. He needs someone a bit more laid back." 

"If there's one thing I'm good at, it's lying back." Heinz chuckled, only realising that sounded vaguely sexual when it was too late to change the course of that sentence.

Winifred didn't seem to mind though, she cackled loudly. "Oh, I'm sure you do!" 

Heinz would've been embarrassed if his new mother-in-law hadn't seemed absolutely delighted by his little mistake. Reg was smiling too, but more so at his wife's delight than anything else. It made Heinz hopeful that he and Perry could also be content together when they grew old. Perhaps there was a way to save his dignity once Winifred stopped laughing, but it was probably easiest to just let it go and enjoy the joke for what it was. "Did Perry get you a drink?" 

"Not yet," Reginald explained. "We just got here, and we wanted to congratulate you first." 

"Well, I can get Perry to get you something," Heinz hated hosting. Honestly, he would just as happily shove everybody in this house out the door right now, but Perry's parents were kind to him from the start, and also old, so they probably needed caffeine or something, right? He turned to scan the crowd for Perry's bright teal hair, but instead, he turned and startled, and almost shouted. "AH!" 

His mother was in his house. And she was right in front of him. Her face was as stoic as always, and she didn’t seem very enthused to be here.

"Ah. Heinz," She said. "There you are." 

"Mother!" Heinz almost stuttered, but he knew she disapproved of that. "You came to visit? On my birthday?" She had never done that before.

"Heinz," His mother replied coolly. "Have you seen Roger?"

He sighed and looked around the room. Perhaps if he could include his brother in the conversation, that would help him somehow. "I think he's outside."

His mother was about to reply to that when Winifred took this as the opportune moment to introduce herself. "You must be Heinz's mother?" She interrupted. "I am Winiefred, I am Perry's mother." 

Mother Doofenshmirtz allowed her hand to be shaken. Unimpressed, she looked the other woman up and down. "Pleasure," She lied.

"I don't believe we've met before, but it was only a matter of time after my Perry snatched up your son, right?" 

"Perry?" Heinz's mother replied distantly. "Oh yes, his little friend." 

"Little, that sure is an apt description of our Perry," Reginald chuckled, unaware of the general mood of the conversation, which had plummeted to awkward almost instantly.

"Friend?" Winniefred parrotted. "That seems like an old-fashioned type of description."

"Well, I suppose I am old-fashioned, then." The other woman replied curtly. "If Heinz-" 

"Oh look, Mother!" said son interrupted, his voice higher-pitched than usual and quite loud. "Roger is right over there! Let me just-" And he moved as if he was about to guide his mother away from the conversation.

"Heinz dear, hold this for me, will you?" Winnifred said instead, and she handed Heinz her handbag, which was so much heavier than he expected that he almost toppled over.

“Careful there, Lad. Winnie brought her prize-winning fruit cake. You don’t want to smush that.” Reginald helped steady him, but didn’t even attempt to take the bag from his hands. “The price is that it’s the heaviest fruitcake in the world.”

“I can tell,” Heinz gasped as he clutched the bag to his chest like a bag of rocks. “It’s really quite impressive.” 

“There are over twenty apples in that thing.” Reginald was very obviously proud of his wife, who was long-nose, to long-nose with Heinz’s mother at the moment. His mother, whom Heinz had failed to remove from the conversation. To make things worse, Roger hadn’t even been in the corner he pointed out, he just wanted to avoid whatever this conversation was going to be. No matter what his mother was going to say next, it wouldn’t paint him in a good light, and Heinz truly wanted Perry’s parents to like him.

“Now, you’ll have to excuse me. My hearing aids need tuning.” Winnifred said in the overly polite tone British women used when they wanted nothing more than to call someone a bad word. “But I believe you were saying something about your son.” 

“I was saying,” The other woman replied in a tone like hellfire. “That if Heinz wants to pretend to have found love in your sodomist son, then he can do that. But he won’t be convincing me that this is about anything but perverse gratification!” 

“My son, the what?” Finnifred asked, mostly angered by the other woman, but also finding the situation just a little bit funny.

Instead of answering the other woman, Mother Doofenshmirtz turned to her son and announced, “You know I don’t approve of whatever this vulgar choice of yours is. You can dress it up with a cute little house, and invite everybody for a little birthday party, but you know you’re disgusting and-”

“Disgusting?!” Winnifred shouted, loud enough that the party around them fell silent as they noticed the commotion. “That is your son, right there! And you believe you can talk to him like that!” 

“If you like him so much, you can have him! He’s been nothing but a thorn in my side for fifty years!” Mrs Doofenshmirtz replied with eye contact as if she was trying to prove something.

Heinz watched his mother say this without even glancing his way. She said it as if he weren’t even there, because she didn’t care. She never had. “Mother, the party-” He interjected, but his voice came out too sad and pathetic to be heard over the jaunty music that still played over the stereo.

“Reginald, hold my glasses!” Winnifred took them off, folded them and handed her delicate frames to her husband, who was ready to accept them as if he was waiting for this.

“I’ve got your glasses dear, kick her ass.” 

“Oh, believe me, I will!” 

And then Heinz was too confused, amazed, and flabbergasted to be sad, because Winnifred Fletcher, 74 years of age, and usually nothing but polite and friendly, shoved his mother to the floor with a swing of her arm and then continued to pummel her with great pleasure.

Unsure of what to do, Heinz just stood there, clutching the dear woman’s purse to his chest, and watching as she single-handedly managed to ruin his mother’s eternally tight hair bun.

Beside him, Regionald was shadow boxing along, hooting and hollering to his wife what she should do next.

“Oh dear,” Someone said on the other side of him. “Dad, why is my mummy punching Heinz’s elderly mother?” Lawrence had caught wind of the situation and came to investigate, but just like everybody else, he did not seem ready to intervene. 

“Mother? Mother! Heinz’s, do something!” Roger also appeared from somewhere in the crowd, and unlike all the other people, who had gathered around to watch two old women roll over the floor as they attempted to snatch each other’s earrings, he immediately jumped in to try and separate them. All he managed to do was that he got scratched in the face, and three red lines appeared along his cheek. “Oh, my god! Mother!”

“heh.” A raspy chuckle, barely loud enough to be heard over the noise of the fight.

Heinz turned, finding that his boyfriend, the sodomist, had also noticed the disturbance. “Perry the platypus, your mother just bit my mother!” 

Perry seemed reluctant to look away from the fight, but he managed to; his expression was a lot less severe than the situation warranted. In fact, if he could, Perry probably would’ve been hooting and hollering along with his dad.

“Perry, lad, I think it’s time we intervene before someone loses an earring, or an eye!” Lawrence announced. “I’ll clear the way, but you grab her. My back, you know.” 

Heinz did not know for sure, but he recognised a poor excuse when he heard one; Lawrence wasn’t confident he could come out the other side of this fight unscathed.

Speaking of scathed, Roger was still trying to extract their mother, but like Winifred, his mother didn’t seem too keen on stopping this violence, even though it was becoming quite clear that she was not winning.

With more bravery than any other man in this room, Perry inserted himself between the two bickering grannies and managed to push his mother to the one side, and Mrs Doofenshmirtz to the other. Quickly, Roger heaved his mother upright; her hair was a wild mess, her lip had split, and a bruise was already blooming across her chin, but she wasn’t giving up. As Roger pulled her, against her will, towards the front of the house, she struggled and huffed. “I’ll get you, Fotze! You’re dead! Fick dich!”

“Here’s a tip! Mother to Mother!” Winnifred replied, also dishevelled and bleeding from her nose, but proud and clearly victorious. “If your son likes bumming, that’s fine! You should try it sometime, maybe it’ll help you be less of a stuck up bitch!”

“Fick dich ins Knie!” Heinz heard his mother reply before Roger finally managed to work her out of the house.

As the door slammed shut behind them, the room fell completely silent. The entire party watched the door for a moment, as if Mrs Doofenshmirtz was about to burst back in and continue the fight.

“Well,” Winnie announced, and she adjusted her dress back into place. “Your mother surely is an interesting woman, but if you’re ever in need of some real motherly love, feel free to call me Heinz. I may not be perfect, but I’ll surely do a better job than that manky munter.” 

“...What?” Heinz replied, still trying to progress the situation.

“Congratulations, boy,” Reginald agreed. “You’re our son now. Look, honey. He has your nose!” 

“Perry, I’ve been here for a solid fifteen minutes, and I haven’t had a spot of tea yet. Are you trying to kill your poor old mother?” Winifred then laughed happily, as if there wasn’t fresh blood under her fingernails.

“Perry, you never told me you took after your mother,” Heinz joked, because he honestly wasn’t sure what else to say. He wasn’t even sure if he was mad about what had just happened; he had a feeling he was smiling, but he wasn’t really sure why, or how to stop. 

「Happy Birthday,」 Perry replied instead. He was also smiling.

[sushirrrry]

FRONTLINES - PART ONE. a harry styles x original character story. word count: 21,746 content warning: soldier PTSD, descriptions of injury, discussions of death, survivors guilt, war trauma, graphic details of WWII.

summary: a WWII hospital nurse and a wounded air force lieutenant form a bond in his recovery, stealing intimate moments that help them both heal.

author note - this is one of my favorite things I've ever written & I hope that you enjoy this as much as I've enjoyed writing it! this was going to be over 40k words, but I decided to give you two parts instead (that's more fun!)

disclaimer!! I have done a bit of research, but this is not a story based in reality or to be consistently based in research on 1940s England. so if there are some things that are not 100% correct, please know that it is just for fiction reasons.

so, with that, here is part one of Harry and Clare's story. enjoy.

____________________________

February, 1943.

England.

Harry came to his senses with a jolt that never quite made it to his limbs. It was a quick jolt – an electricity that urged him back into existence on Earth.

He was alive, that was certain.

His body was still, but inside, everything was moving—heart racing, thoughts spinning, lungs gulping air like he’d run ten miles. The ceiling above him was stark white, slightly stained in the corners, pulsing with the artificial flicker of overhead light. The air was thick with antiseptic and starch, too clean. It all felt too still. There was no wind, no sky, no engine hum. There’s pressure across his chest and an ache roaring in his shoulders, his side, his legs—everywhere.

His fingers twitched. Or maybe they didn’t. He couldn’t be sure.

His ears rang faintly, as if the explosion had followed him here. For a moment, he thought he was still mid-fall, that the burning smell clinging to his skin meant the wreckage was still around him. But no—there were sheets under him, not dirt. The heat came from bandages, not fire. And someone nearby was speaking.

“…waking up,” a man’s voice spoke off into the distance. “That’s something.”

“Shouldn’t be long now. Morphine’s wearing off,” said another unfamiliar voice, this one female. The sense of worry in her tone was there, but she held her own. She had seen this far too many times.

But then it was silence again. Or maybe it was just the roar in his own head.

He tried to speak, but his mouth was dry as paper. His tongue felt too thick, too numb. The only sound that escaped him was a rasp, almost like a growl. His limbs felt too heavy to lift. Every inch of his body ached—shoulders, legs, chest. His right side burned, not just skin-deep, but inside, like the muscles themselves were torn and blistered.

He opened his eyes as much as he could manage and blinked again, this time slower, and the world came into view in patches.

White walls. A window with blackout curtains barely cracked open. A curtain rail. A clipboard hanging from the foot of the bed.

He tried to sit up but the agony bloomed sharp and immediate across his ribs and down his side. His breath caught in his throat, and a low, involuntary noise rumbled from deep within him. A hand came to rest gently but firmly on his shoulder.

“Easy, Lieutenant,” It was the same woman’s voice this time; it was much closer this time. “Don’t move. You’re safe. You’re back in England.”

England.

The word hit him like diving into a pool of cold water. How long had it been since the crash? He turned his head just enough where he wasn’t in immense, shell-shocking pain.

In his short vision, she was a nurse. Early to mid-twenties, maybe, if he could guess. She had dark hair swept back in a twist, not a strand out of place. Her uniform was crisp, the navy collar straight, and her name tag flashed briefly before his eyes blurred again. She had a narrow face, pale from the overhead light, but steady.

She was in control of the situation as she moved around him now, knowing that he had woken up and may have to deal with questions and situations that were far too upsetting for most. She seemed to be the kind of person who could stare down chaos and not flinch.

“You’ve been sedated, quite heavily,” she told him briefly, checking on the bag of IV. “You were brought in from the field hospital in Calais. Can you tell me your name?”

His mouth worked, his lips were parting, but the words didn’t come easily as he blinked to try and make sense of what he needed to say. His throat burned like he’d swallowed smoke; he coughed then, everything hurt in a way that he hadn’t felt before in his life.

“Plane,” he managed out through the coughing, completely ignoring her question. “Went down. Over France.”

“Yes.” Her expression didn’t shift. Not with sympathy, not with surprise. Only the slightest flicker of her eyes betrayed her listening. “You were ejected midair; your plane went down. Ground team found you a few miles outside the wreckage.”

He let his eyes drift shut again. The memory was fractured with shards of color and sound. The red glow of the warning light. The wrenching scream of the fuselage breaking apart. Dean yelling. Bennett fumbling with the hatch. John screaming at them to eject.

“My crew,” he croaked, opening his eyes to try and get answers. “Where are they? Are they here?”

The nurse’s hands stilled as she tried to come up with a response that wouldn’t send him into a spiral – it happened quite often, upsetting them too quickly after they had woken up. That was the trauma of the war – it was the terrible aspect of life that had disrupted their lives.

“There’s no confirmation yet,” she told him in honesty, “You’re the only one they’ve recovered so far. It-“ She cleared her throat, “There was a lot of planes down, and many men were sent many places. It will take a while to get confirmations.”

He closed his eyes again, not from sleep this time but from something heavier. Something he didn’t want to face because that was how this war was.

Dean had a girl waiting for him in Bristol – he always carried her picture on him. Bennett used to whistle in the hangar like it annoyed everyone, even though they all secretly liked it. John could down beers and laugh with the best of them.

They couldn’t just be—

“They’ll find them,” the nurse reminded him. But there was no promise in her voice, only practice. Harry turned his face away as much as he could physically manage.

Silence settled between them; he didn’t want to be bothered, and she didn’t seem that she was going to give him the answers he was looking for. She moved around the bed, adjusting something at the IV stand. He heard the clink of glass and metal, the rustle of paper.

The movements were efficient, distant—like she was used to handling broken men in quiet rooms. The exhaustion that hit him was overwhelming, but he knew that when he closed his eyes he would just see the nightmare again and again.

“How bad is it?” he asked after a moment. She didn’t answer right away, just scribbled on the paper that was left by his bed.

“Well, you have burns along the right shoulder and ribs,” she told him; her eyes lifted to meet his. “Some deeper muscle damage in the thigh. More than likely a concussion from the fall. Fracture in your wrist. You’ll recover just fine, but you are quite beaten up.”

There wasn’t another beat before his eyes tried to meet hers: “Will I fly again?”

A pause.

“That’s not my call,” she said gently, but professionally. This time, he could tell that her empathy had been tested one too many times. “But you survived.”

As if that was the miracle it sounded to be.

Harry gave a humorless half-smile; it was then that he could feel he had a cut on his lip, probably along his eyebrow, as well. It felt foreign on his face. “Not sure if that’s lucky or not.”

The nurse didn’t answer; she didn’t say a single word.

Instead, she approached with a syringe, her touch brisk but not rough. “I’m giving you something for the pain. You’re shaking a bit. The adrenaline only kicks in every once in a while, but I suspect that you will be feeling it quite shortly.”

“I’m not—” But he was. He hadn’t noticed until her hand touched his forearm, steadying it on the small, bedded cot in the hospital ward. His skin felt too hot and too cold at once, fevered, electric. His breath came in shallow gulps.

She didn’t flinch, just pushed the needle in slowly. It was another thing he just chose not to feel, because it felt better that way. “It’ll ease off in a moment, just give it some time. You’ve had quite a long journey.”

“I don’t even know your name,” he swallowed, a bit of a slur in his voice as he felt the haze of the morphine already curling at the edges of his vision as he tried to focus in on her.

The woman gave him a quick, unabashed smile as she focused in on him. “Clare.”

He tried to hold onto that, Clare, but the drug moved fast, like warmth spreading through frozen limbs. The lights above him swam to create the blurriest lines in the worst way. His head lolled slightly to the side, and through half-lidded eyes, he saw her one last time.

She watched him fade, knowing that she had given him the relief that he was desperately asking for. Without another word, Clare let the air filter out of her lungs as she watched him fall into darkness. She was the only thing that didn’t hurt. For that, she was thankful.

+++

It had only been three days since the crash, though time passed differently in hospital wards.

Harry no longer woke in a blur of pain and morphine. He was more alert now, unfortunately more aware of every ache, every shift in the light, every passing moment that he wasn’t given any answers.

His burns were healing in increments he couldn’t feel, and the torn muscles in his thigh were no longer on fire, just throbbing due to the heavy medications they had him on. Still, he couldn't sit up on his own. His chest tightened every time he breathed too deep, and a nurse had told him – a blonde one with far too much joy, that his ribs were “knitting nicely.”

He’d snapped at her without meaning to. The guilt lingered, but not enough to make him apologize. He hadn’t seen that nurse again. In all certainty, he couldn’t stand the pity and the smile and the happiness that came with being alive.

The ward he was in only had twelve beds, though only seven were filled. It was one of the smaller military hospitals in the area. Most of the other men were in worse shape than he was—one with bandages wrapped around his entire head, another with a leg amputated just below the knee. Some slept all day, others groaned through their nightmares, sometimes waking up the whole ward in fits of screams and cries that were more than upsetting.

A few were like ghosts even while awake, eyes hollow, refusing to speak on what they had seen out there. Harry hated that he wasn’t the worst of them.

He hated the silence in the gaps between coughs and groans and footsteps. He hated the absence of his uniform and the new hospital clothes that they had put on his body while he was unconscious, removing his suit that was covered in blood and tears. Hated the sound of his own heartbeat, which was steady and undeserving, he knew. He hated thinking —

“Tea?”

It was a voice that came from his left – seeing a nurse standing there in her white. The navy collar around her neck, the pinned back dark hair that had felt so familiar to him. He had been startled slightly by the voice, but tried not to show it.

It was the night nurse again - Clare, he remembered. She stood at his bedside with a metal tray, a chipped mug in one hand, a folded cloth in the other. Her hair was pinned back again, and the shadows under her eyes were more pronounced tonight. He wondered if she ever slept, or if she just floated between wards.

“Only if there’s whisky in it,” he muttered, voice raspier than intended. He realized that he hadn’t spoken much, his throat feeling dryer than ever.

Clare didn’t smile, but one corner of her mouth quirked at the small bit of humor, barely there. “Not quite regulation, I’m afraid.”

She set the tray down on the bedside table and pulled a chair closer, settling into it with a sigh that sounded more out of habit than weariness. She didn’t look at him right away, just adjusted the angle of the lamp, the slope of his blanket.

Harry practically hadn't sleep here – he didn’t want to close his eyes. Most of the sleeping was due to medications. These nights were mostly spent sitting awake with his own thoughts, watching as the nurses would go from person to person, waiting for their medications or for something terrible to happen to bring in a bunch of soldiers.

All twelve of the beds hadn’t been completely filled since Harry had gotten there, which was a good thing, he supposed. But that may have just meant that they were dying out in the fields instead.

He could feel her watching him in the way trained people did—without making it obvious. She was checking his color, his alertness. The way his fingers twitched when he thought he was being still.

“Your color’s better,” he said, concluding his assumptions. “Are you sleeping?”

Harry shrugged in a nonchalance like he didn’t know how to respond, though it hurt to do it. “Enough.”

“You’re not feverish anymore,” she told him, nodding a few times. 

“Fantastic.”

That bitterness was back in his voice—he could hear it, taste it, but it still kept slipping out like a reflex.

Clare didn’t flinch at his roughness. She simply picked up a small cloth and dipped it into the water basin that had sat next to his bed, wringing it out over the tray. She was quiet for a while, the kind of quiet that didn’t demand conversation but made Harry guilty for snapping at her too.

Harry stared at the ceiling, trying not to think too much about it.

“Have they heard anything?” he asked, too quickly, too suddenly. “About Majors Rosenthal and Connolly? Or Tupolo?”

She paused; she knew from other nurses that he asked daily, almost multiple times a day, about his colleagues. About the men he had gone up in the plane with and hadn’t come down with.

“There’s been no word yet that I'm aware of.”

Her tone was gentle, but not soft. She didn’t look away. She didn’t coat it in false hope; he was happy that she didn’t lie to his face. That’s what made it worse.

Harry nodded a few times as he stared at the ceiling, feeling the water from the rag press against the cut on his brow. He felt the press of something sharp behind his ribs, too, and not the kind that came from injury.

“They were better than me,” he let out after a long moment. “More experienced. Dean could land a plane blind, and Bennett… Bennett’s the kind of lad who always has a cigarette, even when no one else does. He’s the one people follow,” He paused again, “And John was just a fucking kid.”

Clare didn’t interrupt as he started to talk about the men who he may have shared last minutes with. From the other nurses, they hadn’t heard much out of him, so his time to talk must have been at night rather than during the day.

“And me?” He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “I got ejected like bloody cargo. Popped out the side door and fell into a field while they went down in flames. And now, here I am.”

Clare was quick with her response, “You didn’t choose that.”

“No,” he snapped, eyes moving to look up at her. “But I survived it, didn’t I?”

His voice rose, just a little, enough to make the man in the next bed stir. Harry winced and turned his face away. Clare’s expression didn’t change, but she took the cloth from against his skin and rinse the muslin in the small basin. He exhaled through his nose, trying to push the anger back down.

“I keep thinking maybe if I’d stayed… if I’d tried harder to reach the cockpit, or—hell, if I’d stayed on the radio one second longer—”

“What was your duty station?” Clare’s initial attempt to change the conversation worked for a moment as he cleared his throat to give her an answer.

“Engineer,” Harry nodded, staring at the ceiling for a moment. “The – I mean, the last thing I can remember is we were shot from behind and the wing was damaged. We were falling out of the sky, but Bennett couldn’t – uh, he just couldn’t get the leverage to be able to land it, and – “

“You did everything that you could.” She told him in honesty, that’s what she had to say to these soldiers. There was nothing that could have been done – they were following their orders, they were young men in the world trying to make a difference and to fight for their freedoms.

“Did I?” He turned toward her, frustration lighting his eyes as he practically seethed at the question. “Maybe I would’ve burned with them. And maybe that would’ve made more sense.”

Clare met his gaze and held it; she didn’t shy away from making contact with him because that helped neither of them.

“And maybe it wouldn’t,” she told him, something in her eyes that made Harry close his mouth. “But you’re here. And that’s what we have to work with.”

Harry looked away first. When he did, Clare let go of the breath she held to stay strong.

The anger drained as quickly as it had come, leaving only the echo of it, hollow in his chest. The worst part wasn’t that he didn’t know where his crewmates were - it was that he couldn’t help them. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but lie in this quiet room surrounded by dying men and pitying nurses and wonder why he’d been spared.

Harry sat and wondered if they were out there laying in a field, dying. If they had someone to hold their hand and recite their last prayers to the almighty God.

Clare stood and placed the cloth gently on his forehead. It was cool, damp, soothing in a way that he wanted to reject, but didn’t.

“Most of the men who come through here,” she said, voice low to keep the other men from awaking around them, “They wake up disoriented, in tremendous pain. Screaming,” she cleared her throat “They don’t remember where they are, sometimes who they are - some don’t know their own names. You’re lucid. You’re angry. That’s not failing.”

Harry’s jaw was tight as he swallowed. “You sound like you’ve said that before.”

“I have.” Clare said, nodding. “It’s a reminder for the ones who lived. Thankfully, many have, but many are taking away the same nightmares.”

She took the mug from the tray and handed it to him. His hands were steadier than they’d been a few days ago, though the left one trembled slightly from the burns. The tea was always a bit of a trick to make sure that they were steady and there hadn’t been anymore shaking. He took the tea, even though it burned a bit.

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” he admitted after a long silence, possibly a bit overwhelmed with the situation. A bit muffed with how everything had turned out. He hadn’t had any information, or any way to get information. He didn’t know if they knew he was alive or dead – he didn’t know anything.

Clare pulled the chair a little closer, crossing her legs as she sat with him for a moment. “You rest. You heal.”

With a quick response, he shook his head, “That’s not enough.”

“For now, it has to be.”

The quick and emotionless duties of her responses were eerie in some ways. Now that Harry could sit here and look at her, he recognized how absolutely stunning she was – dark features, pink lips. Her eyes were cerulean, which popped against her dark hair that was pinned back.

But there was something about her that seemed troubled, almost just as stubborn and hurt as he could have been. Instead of making her night worse, he decided to possibly dive into the company.

As he took a sip of the tea, he looked over at her. “Is it hard?”

“What?” She asked him, checking over his paperwork that was next to his bed.

“This job. Seeing people like this.”

Clare didn’t answer him at first, because there really wasn’t a response to give. Hard was subjective; the job itself was easy because she knew how to handle tough situations, and she knew how to attend to the patients. But was it mentally draining, of course it was.

She glanced around the ward, her gaze briefly landing on the man two beds down who moaned softly in his sleep. That man had been shot in the head; he was barely hanging onto life as he knew it. He was only twenty-one.

“Yes,” she said eventually, giving him an answer. “But it’s harder when they don’t make it. Or when they do, but they give up.”

Harry didn’t reply, he didn’t want to look at her with that response, either. It felt pointed, almost like he was being punished for feeling sad. He sipped the tea—it was bitter and weak, but it grounded him.

The heat of the ceramic, the feel of his own breath fogging the rim, reminded him that he was real. That he was here. Not in the wreckage. Not floating over fields in a parachute. Not burning.

No, he was lying in a warm, hospital ward with a beautiful woman next to him as he had antibiotic medication soothing his burns. He took a deep breath in through his nose and settled against the pillow.

Clare stood again. She checked his chart, made a note, then paused. “Would you like me to bring you a book next time I’m on shift? To pass the time?"

He blinked at her, a bit unsure of where her question had come from.

“What sort of book?” He asked her, blinking a few more times to feel the tiredness in him.

“Hm,” she hummed, “You tell me.”

He thought for a moment, a bit of humor in his tone. “Nothing heroic. No war stories, please.”

She nodded, appreciating the bit of humor that he gave her. It had been nothing but pointed jabs and pessimism from him, but she could handle it. “Understood.”

As she turned to go, Harry called out, quietly, “Clare?”

She looked back at him, carrying the tray with her as she went. The man she was looking at was broken, he was physically and emotionally scarred, and she knew that there was built up anger and resentment. She didn’t hold that against him in the slightest bit; she knew it was just an uphill battle.

So, she gave him a bit of grace. She looked at the broken man giving him the grace and prosperity that he deserved.

“I’m not always like this, you know..”

She gave him a small, tired smile. Taking in a deep breath, she held the metal tray to her chest. “Neither am I.”

Then, without another word, she was gone. Her steps quiet on the polished floor, her silhouette swallowed by the dim light near the ward doors.

Harry lay back slowly, wincing as his side tensed. He stared at the ceiling again, but the pressure in his chest was softer now—less like a vise, more like a hand.

He thought of Bennett’s laugh. Of Dean swearing at the radio. Of the way the clouds looked from above, blinding and soft. Those were the most precious memories that he could hold. It was a euphoric feeling of being high above the cloud, through the clouds, being up that high gave you a sense of purpose.

But then there was the feeling of falling, then waking, and seeing her standing over him like a lighthouse in the smoke. What a way to awaken from the haunted visions.

He hadn’t seen the plane crash to the ground. But he’d survived it. And maybe, somehow, that would have to be enough.

Maybe, somehow, the others would have, as well.

+++

The next evening, Harry had been finishing up some of his supper – some meat, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots cooked in a sort of gravy sauce. It wasn’t the best meal he’s ever eaten, but it satisfied the pain in his stomach. He needed to continue to eat, or the medicine would make him sick to his stomach, he was told by the doctors.

But as he was finishing his meal, Clare returned with a book tucked under one arm. She had practically snuck it into the ward, keeping it away from the other soldiers and nurses, as if to make him feel special.

Harry noticed immediately. Not just the book—but her. The way she carried herself through the ward, less like a nurse and more like someone who belonged there. Someone who moved through pain without absorbing it. He didn’t understand it, not fully, but he was beginning to recognize it.

“Something told me you wouldn’t be one for poetry,” she said by way of greeting. She held out the book, letting the lopsided grin of hers take over her face.

He took it, eyebrows lifting at the cover. The Thirty-Nine Steps.

“Adventure. Espionage. No heroism,” she added, “Just as requested.”

Harry smirked faintly as he took it from her fingers. “I’m very glad you remembered,” he said to her, “I’ve been bored out of my mind.”

She pulled the chair closer again and sat, her posture a little more relaxed this time. It was getting easier to look at her without feeling like he might break.

“Thank you,” he said after a beat.

At this point, Clare looked around at his paperwork next to his bed – checking all the other nurses had properly done his medicines, changed his bandages, bathed him, and done right by him. “For the book?”

“For not treating me like a broken watch.” Harry pushed his tray away; Clare took it from his lap and set it down on another table as she noticed how he may have been in a bit more pain that day.

Clare smiled softly, her attitude may have been giving him the right to smile and feel better. “I wouldn’t know how to fix one of those, either.”

He gave a low laugh, but it turned quickly into a wince. His side still pulled tight if he moved too quickly. The way that his nose scrunched made her look worried, which was the most she had given to him empathetically. Clare breathed out, turning the conversation back to a different topic.

“I read that one when I was sixteen,” Clare continued, “My brother snuck it to me. My mother thought it was much too improper.”

“Because it had spies?”

“Because it had adventure,” she said, grinning now. “My mother was a schoolteacher. Believed anything fast and unrealistic was indecent.”

Harry opened the book with care but didn’t read any of the words yet. He liked the feel of it in his hands. Something to hold onto; it made him realize that his hands may have hurt a bit more than he had recalled from doing nothing with them. Something with a beginning and an end. Something someone else had finished.

He didn’t ask about her brother. Before he could speak again, the ward doors opened suddenly with pace and loud conversation that caught everyone’s attention.

A pair of orderlies wheeled in a stretcher, occupied by a soldier. The man on it was unconscious, his skin pallid, lips chapped, and a deep bandage wrapped around his upper thigh. One arm was splinted and strapped to his chest; his leg was covered in blood through the bandages.

Harry’s heart clenched when he watched the man be placed practically across from him.

“John?” he whispered before he could stop himself.

Clare looked up when she noticed that Harry’s demeanor had changed. “Do you know him, then?”

Harry nodded, stunned and unsure if his medications were playing a trick on him. “That’s- that’s John. Captain Tupolo. H-He was with my unit. He was our bombardier on the plane.”

The orderlies settled John into the bed across from Harry and pulled the curtain halfway; he was unable to see any longer, but his heart beat expeditiously. A nurse followed with a clipboard. There was quiet movement—vitals, tags, whispered instructions.

“Found him in a hedgerow,” one orderly muttered to another. “Alive, somehow. Someone must’ve moved him over there and thought he was a goner.”

Clare stood and crossed the room briefly, speaking in low tones with the nurse at John’s side. Harry tried to listen, but his ears buzzed too much, blood rushing with a new kind of urgency.

When Clare returned, her expression was cautious, but she gave him a smile.

“He’s stable, but in rough shape,” she told him gently, “Dislocated shoulder. His leg is badly infected and cut very deeply. But he’s lucid. He’s here.”

Harry exhaled a breath that he hadn’t been sure he had been holding in until it felt good to release. “Can I—”

“Soon. Let him wake fully.” Clare placed another quilt on the bottom of Harry’s cot, using her hands to make sure that he was comfortable.

She didn't sit again, and didn’t speak further, letting him sit with the information as she moved her way out of his space. Harry didn’t know what to do with the relief and the dread, crashing together like waves. Two men accounted for. Two still missing. He closed his eyes.

An hour passed. Then two. Another could have, but Harry had stopped keeping track. His sleep hadn't come.

Clare’s shift ended the next morning as usual, and another nurse took her place. But she’d left a note tucked into the book’s first page as soon as Harry had opened it when he was eating breakfast the following morning: If it gets too dull, tell me. I won’t take it personally. I’ll bring another one.

He read the first chapter, but his thoughts drifted. It felt silly to be reading about a world where this wasn't happening.

Across the room, John stirred on his own cot. A soft groan and a rustle of sheets made Harry’s eyes move towards the curtain that they had closed around him. Harry had learned that the worse cases got the longest curtain.

The nurse approached and murmured something before he realized that she was pulling the curtain away to let some daylight into the ward from the day, which allowed Harry see John for the first time.

“John,” Harry could see his friend, not far at all, right across from him. The man had been sat up, probably to keep the blood flow moving.

John’s voice came in a hoarse whisper as he really opened his eyes to see Harry sitting across from him; his eyes were swollen and he looked like he had a lot of trauma to the face, scrapes, brusing: “Styles?”

Harry snapped upright, then winced at the pain in such a movement.

“Bloody hell, mate,” he breathed, giving a humorless laugh before shaking his head, “You look like you lost a fight with a train.”

John gave a faint, broken laugh himself. “Takes one to know one.”

His eyes were sunken but sharp, and though pain was etched in every feature, he was unmistakably John. Harry wanted to ask a thousand things at once but didn’t know where to start – he didn’t know if he had any answers, or if he had anything further to discuss.

In some ways, he didn’t want to have John relive through moments that were probably horrifyingly troublesome.

“You’re here,” he said instead.

“Not for lack of trying otherwise.”

Harry stared, hands starting to shake as he had flashes of what had happened. “How the hell did you make it?”

“Got thrown clear when the fuselage split. Landed in a bog.” He paused, breath catching. “Stayed down. Played dead for a while because I couldn't move, could hear them around me. Some farmer found me and helped.”

“Jesus.” Harry breathed out, shaking his head. If that had happened, he had so much more hope for the other two.

After another moment, John cleared his own throat. “Figured you were gone, mate.”

Harry swallowed hard, holding onto the quilt Clare had put at the foot of his bed, but his hands were taped with gauze and he could barely hold anything tightly. “I thought the same about you.”

A heavy silence settled between them, almost like they both knew what the other was about to say. Harry made it there first.

“What about—” Harry started to speak but couldn’t say Dean’s name, Bennett's name was stuck in his throat, too. His throat closed; eyes welling up as he thought about the inevitable truth of possibly losing a friend.

John’s expression shifted but stayed rather bare.

“Bennett made it out. Got burns on his hands, think he had major damage to his skull. They airlifted him to another hospital up north. Some place near Leeds, I think. I heard that when I was being transported here.”

Relief and grief collided again, but Harry felt his mouth go dry. Three survived. “And Dean?”

John didn’t speak for a long time, but when he did, Harry heard the way that his voice broke at the first words.

“I saw it happen,” he said finally. “He tried to get the radio working again. Refused to bail. Last thing I heard was him shouting coordinates at me, but I –“ He paused for a moment, “I was pulled out before the plane exploded.”

Harry stared at the ceiling, blinking hard because crying meant losing. It meant he was giving up the façade the soliders built so hard to be respected for.

“I’m sorry, mate.” John said quietly; he had known that Dean and Harry had made their way through the unit trainings together, flying many trips. They had gone up multiple times in the year that they had been together – so, it hurt to know that one moment took Dean away forever.

Harry nodded slowly with his jaw clenched, thinking of the girl that Dean held with him in his pocket in a photo memory. “He was the best of us. I’m sure Rebecca got word, then”

“I’m sure she did.”

Silence. Thick, heavy, full of memories neither could voice. They didn’t talk again that night.

+++

The next day, Harry woke to find Clare back, sitting in the same chair with a steaming mug of tea and a handful of letters she was sorting through, looking for ones for him. When she didn't find any, she sat them down on the bedside table.

“You’ve got a roommate,” she said, nodding toward the next bed.

“Saw him,” Harry murmured out, a bit dazed. “Didn’t sleep much after.”

Clare studied him for a moment. “Must've been some relief to see him.”

Harry nodded, not knowing if he had much to say about it. It just made him think about other things. “Glad he made it out.”

Her eyes softened. She handed him the tea, watching as his hands still shook when he held it. “That’s something.”

He wanted to thank her again—he wasn’t sure why. Maybe for the way she didn’t ask too much but gave just enough acknowledgement for it to mean something. Maybe for always knowing when to sit in silence, or to let him grieve.

Instead, he said, “Do you always volunteer for the night shifts?”

She lifted her eyes to him, clearing her throat. “I don’t mind them." He could tell that there was something else there

“But?” He questioned.

Clare tilted her head. “But there’s a kind of quiet here at night that feels… honest.”

Harry sipped his tea - stronger today, which was good. “Is that what you look for?”

“Most days," she told him, shrugging with a smirk, "I'm not one for bullshit."

He considered her for a moment. The curve of her shoulders. The quiet steadiness in her eyes. There was something strong in her that had nothing to do with uniforms or rules. Something she carried into the room each time she walked in.

“You’ve seen a lot, haven’t you?” he asked her, feeling chattier the more she sat around him. Something about her made him want to know all of it.

Clare didn’t answer immediately. “I started as a nurse’s aide at seventeen. The men used to joke that I still looked like someone’s little sister.”

Harry's eyes traced her, really looking at her like he couldn't take his eyes off of her. “You don’t now.”

She raised an eyebrow, maybe feeling a bit of flush on her cheeks. “Is that a compliment or a comment on the war?”

“Both.”

She smiled again, but just barely, and stood. “You’ll need rest. The doctor wants you to try standing with assistance by week’s end.”

Harry groaned, feeling his eyes roll gently before he set his tea down. “Are they trying to kill me properly?”

Clare leaned in, adjusting his blanket. “No, Lieutenant. They’re trying to send you home.”

Her touch lingered briefly on his arm before she pulled back.

Harry watched her move to the next bed, speaking softly to John. The two of them exchanged a few words, and he heard Clare laugh—quiet, real. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he liked that sound.

He lay back, the book still on his lap.

Dean was gone. Bennett was alive. John was here.

And Clare—Clare was becoming something he didn’t know how to name. A tether, maybe. A warmth in a room full of wounds.

He didn’t know what was next. But for the first time since falling from the sky, he wasn’t completely afraid to find out.

+++

It was nearing half-past nine on a grey, sluggish evening when Clare found herself seated at the far end of the nurses’ station, a cup of tea cooling beside her half-finished patient chart. Rain tapped softly against the windowpanes, a rhythmic background to the scratch of pens, murmured updates, and the occasional weary yawn.

The night shift had bled into day like watercolor over damp paper—blurred, endless, quiet in that strange, exhausted way hospitals always were after dawn.

She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, the nape of her neck damp from the heat of the ward and tried to focus on finishing her notes for bed two—an older gentleman with a broken hip and an exceptional fondness for singing hymns at four in the morning.

Across the desk, Nurse Margaret tilted her chair back and fanned herself with a clipboard. “Lord, if I have to change one more dressing soaked through with iodine and self-pity…”

Nurse Ruth, sorting some medical supplies beside her, chuckled. “You mean the charming Mr. Abrams in ward six? He winked at me yesterday, said I’ve got the hands of a pianist and the face of a war bride.”

“You going to write him back when he leaves?” Margaret teased, giving a knowing eye.

“Oh, absolutely,” Ruth deadpanned back, “right after I put some bleach in my eyes.”

The small group of nurses laughed at that. Clare gave a quiet smile but didn’t join in. Her fingers remained poised on her own chart she was to complete for the doctors reference, her expression composed as her eyes fell over the name: Lt. Styles, Harry.

“It’s strange,” Ruth continued, sliding onto a stool as she tucked her ankles together. “Some of them flirt like it’s the only thing keeping them breathing. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I think it helps. Reminds them they’re still human. But it feels… I don’t know.”

“Like a game, maybe?” Clare offered softly to the conversation.

Ruth looked at her, surprised at her joining in. “Exactly. Like they’re playing dress-up in their own tragedy. To step away from the tragedy.”

Clare nodded once, not unkindly, her eyes drifting back to the chart. She didn’t say what she was thinking, that it didn’t always feel like a game to the men.

Sometimes, it was desperation disguised as charm. A last-ditch attempt to feel young, or funny, or alive again because they would leave here to go back to their units or back home to something that didn't matter anymore. Sometimes it was innocent. Sometimes it wasn’t. But always, it left a mark.

Margaret leaned forward, lowering her voice with a conspiratorial grin. “Speaking of inappropriate affections, has anyone noticed how Lieutenant Styles doesn’t respond to anyone except Clare?”

That earned a few lifted brows and a round of curious glances, maybe even a few gawks. Clare blinked slowly but didn’t lift her head as she tried to ignore the conspiracy altogether.

“Oh, come on,” Margaret continued, trying to push Clare, “I gave him his meds yesterday morning and he just nodded. Didn’t even thank me or give me the time of day. But you come near his bed and he sits up straighter than a schoolboy reciting Latin.”

“He’s quiet with everyone else,” Ruth said, more thoughtfully. “But he listens when Clare speaks.”

Clare gave a mild shrug, eyes still on the paperwork. “Perhaps he simply finds comfort in routine.”

“Comfort, sure. But the way he watches you…” Margaret trailed off with a knowing smirk.

“Like a man writing poetry in his head,” Nurse Helen chimed in from the corner. “I saw it myself last week when you leaned in to check his shoulder dressing. His eyes didn’t blink the entire time – it was like he was memorizing you!”

“I think I blushed for you,” Ruth added with a simple giggle; she must have been kicking her feet under the chair.

Clare rolled her eyes, but the flush rising to her cheeks betrayed her from keeping quiet or not saying too much. She closed her chart with deliberate care and sipped her now-cold tea. “You lot spend far too much time crafting romances out of fever dreams, it seems.”

“We’re overworked, underpaid, and in the middle of a war, Clare,” Margaret said breezily, shaking her hand at her. “Let us have our stories.”

“He’s a patient.” Clare defended, trying to brush off the stares and the eyes knowing that they would but placed on them more heavily now.

“Yes,” Ruth said, watching her carefully, tilting her head, “but he’s also a man. And you’re not made of stone, especially with a face like that.”

Clare didn’t answer right away – her facial expression gave it away, surely. Her gaze dropped to her hands, stilling on a faint smear of ink on her palm. She rubbed it absentmindedly against her skirt, then finally looked up.

“It’s not that I don’t see it,” she said, with a calm tone. “The way he watches. I’d have to be blind not to. But don’t mistake that for anything more than what it is.”

“And what’s that?” Helen asked gently – the other girls leaning in to listen to her answer, surely wanting a bit more gossip than there was to give.

“Recognition,” Clare replied. “Of someone who’s walked into the fire and come back. Someone who knows what it costs,” She stood from her spot, shaking her head as she did it. “He’s a hero, and I’m just making sure he feels recognized for what he’s done. Especially when many of them feel like failures.”

The room quieted for a moment at her words; maybe even a bit of guilt from everyone as Clare felt guilty for bringing the mood down, but the girls may have felt a bit guilty for making a joke out of their duties.

Ruth nodded slowly, tucking her hands into her apron. “That’s fair.”

But, Margaret couldn’t resist one more jab, albeit softer this time. “Still, if he asks you to run off with him to the coast, at least let us know so we can throw you a proper goodbye party to relinquish you from your duties.”

Clare smiled faintly at that, shaking her head. “If he ever manages to walk across the ward without tripping over his IV line, I may consider it.”

That earned another round of laughter, and this time Clare let herself join in with it.

Still, when she returned to the ward twenty minutes later, chart tucked under her arm, her gaze wandered to the almost inevitable site where, near the bed corner window, the one screened slightly for privacy, was Harry’s bed.

And, as usual for this time of night, he was awake. Propped up on one elbow, book in hand. He wasn’t reading, though. He was watching her.

Not in the way a soldier watched a nurse, waiting for meds or instructions or for some sort of reaction of feeling needed. Not even in the way a man watched a woman he found pretty. No—it was quieter than that. It was much more present than that – like she was the only thing in the room he didn’t want to miss.

Clare held his gaze for a second longer than she meant to, tilting her chin forward to suggest she had been going to him for a reason. Then she turned and walked toward him, heart tapping a little too hard in her chest, voice steady as ever.

“Lieutenant Styles,” she said lightly with a sigh, quietly to allow the other men to sleep, “don’t tell me you’re pretending to read again.”

He smirked, the edge of it sharp and crooked, just for her. “Not pretending at all. Just distracted for a moment.”

“I wonder by what.” She asked him, quietly moving to fluff the pillow that sat behind his back, making sure that his posture was not taking a beating for the way that he sat.

Harry’s eyes reverted to the book in front of him, nodding a few times as he allowed the smirk to stay present on his face, “I think you know.”

She rolled her eyes again—but this time, she smiled as she did. And he saw it.

+++

The ward was quiet, the kind of quiet that settled only in the deepest stretch of night—when the men who could sleep, did, and the others tossed in silence, chasing ghosts behind their closed eyes.

Harry was somewhere in between those moments – he felt that sleep was to take him, but he struggled with falling.

He’d dozed off around midnight, propped up slightly on the pillows Clare had fluffed for him, her voice still echoing faintly in his head. “Try to get some rest. I’ll be on until morning if you need anything.”

She’d smiled before drawing the curtain halfway shut around his bed, promising safety in that gentle, practiced way of hers. But sleep wasn’t a peaceful place. Not anymore, at least.

He twitched once, then again, face tightening as his breath caught.

There he was back in the sky—cramped in the bomber’s gut, metal rattling all around him. There was smoke… fire. His oxygen mask tight against his face as the machine shook and rattled and adrenaline struck through his veins.

Someone was shouting over the intercom—Styles? Tupolo? He couldn’t tell; his senses were heightened, but the adrenaline and pulse was louder. The plane bucked beneath them like a dying animal, the nose tipping unnaturally downward as he tried to hold onto the side to try and escape from where he sat, gravity pulling against him.

Then—an explosion. Light, hot and blinding, consumed everything.

“Engine two’s out! We’ve got fire! We’ve got fire—Mayday! We need to eject!”

Harry was trying to move – every inch of him was trying to get to Dean who was stuck in the rear, thrown backwards by the explosion. His harness was caught; he couldn’t remove it.

He was screaming.

The heat was everywhere; the sound was everywhere. The fuselage was tearing open above his head. Sparks rained down. Dean’s voice was screaming his name—no, not screaming.

Gurgling. Like something inside him had broken. And it had; a piece of the plane had him pinned to the wall, blood circling around his abdomen as he fought The numbness felt like he couldn't move, but he needed to. He needed to get out, he needed to move.

“Bail out, Styles! Bail out!” John's voice called over the sound of the plane falling from the sky. Falling deeper and moving faster.

His hands fumbled to get himself out of the door. His shoulder screamed in protest. The world tipped again, violently, and his body hit the fuselage wall hard.

Red. Everything was red. And then, nothing. Freefall. He was falling.

Cold air against his face.

A silent, endless drop.

Harry jerked awake with a ragged gasp, his hands clutching the blanket twisted over his chest, heart pounding like it was trying to break through his ribs. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his shoulder seizing up with pain from the way he’d thrashed. He blinked rapidly into the dark, half-lost in the nightmare still clinging to his skin like smoke.

He tried to sit up but couldn’t. His body trembled violently, his breathing sharp and fast and wrong.

“Harry—”

The curtain rustled and Clare appeared in a second, hair pinned up but a few strands loose now, face open with concern. She was still in her uniform, though the collar was unbuttoned at the throat almost like she had been taking a break before hearing his struggling.

She didn’t speak again at first, just came to his bedside and placed a hand gently on his arm.

“You’re alright. It was just a dream. You’re safe.”

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, voice quivering just at the thought of the sounds, the noises, the sounds, the feeling of it – seeing Dean’s face. “I—I saw it – I almost,”

“I know,” she murmured, holding his hand, softly coaxing him to come to a manageable place. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” His voice cracked, quiet and raw, his throat felt right as he tried to whisper but the feeling of tears releasing from the sides of his eyes only made him want to speak less. “Dean didn’t make it. I saw - I left him in there. I left him, Clare.”

Clare pulled a chair up to the side of his bed and reached for his hand, wrapping her fingers firmly around his. Her touch felt like the burning.

“You didn’t leave him,” she told him flatly, “You were ordered to bail. You survived. That doesn’t make it wrong. That makes you human.”

His hand shook in hers, jaw clenched hard like he was trying to force the rest of it down. His hands hurt, he could practically feel the burn on them from hitting the side of the plane on the way down.

“I hear him sometimes. Even when I’m awake. It’s like—like he’s stuck in the moment I lost him.”

Clare exhaled softly and moved to the supply drawer by his bed, retrieving a small vial and a paper cup with practiced ease. Like she had done this hundreds of times. “This will help calm your nerves. Just enough to let your body rest, okay?”

“I don’t want to forget,” he said as she prepared the dose, watching her with a calmer notion. The feeling of her there was calming, it was helpful to not be alone when he felt so incredibly alone.

“You won’t,” her words were gentle with him, “But you won’t relive it over and over like this either.”

She handed him the cup, the small medications. His fingers were still trembling, so she steadied his hand as he drank.

When he was done, she eased him back against the pillow, brushing the damp curls from his forehead. Her touch was tender, but not fragile—like someone who had learned to be steady because the world wasn’t.

“I used to wait for the telegram,” she said after a while, voice barely above a whisper. “Every day for two years. My brother went straight to Germany. I thought if I stayed busy, if I worked hard enough, it wouldn’t come.”

Harry’s gaze shifted to her face, eyes focusing on the way that she held stoic and cold. Like showing emotion revolving around herself would hurt him more.

“They found his body six months ago,” she said, swallowing hard, nodding – a dry laugh left her as she turned away from him for a moment. “Sometimes I still wake up thinking he’s on leave and just forgot to write. I just get so wrapped up in staying busy that I feel guilty that I forget every once in a while.”

He didn’t speak, just watched her in the pale moonlight spilling through the window, her profile etched in soft blue and silver from the outside.

“You and I,” she shook her head, “we didn’t start this war. But we live in the middle of it, and we carry what it leaves behind.”

She looked back down at him, eyes deep and steady and full of a wisdom he hadn’t been ready to hear. “That’s not weakness, Harry. That’s survival.”

His throat tightened at her words, blinking at her with a mindful watch. “How do you do it? Keep your hands from shaking?”

“I don’t,” she admitted to him gently, showing him the shake in her right hand. “I just have to keep using them, anyways.”

The medication had started to work, dulling the edges of his panic. Harry had started to feel his body ease, though the grief hadn’t left—it just wasn’t screaming quite so loud anymore. There wasn’t a voice anymore, but just a noble reason.

Clare stood and tucked the blanket back around him, tucking it into his legs to keep him warm in the cold ward. “Try to sleep now. I’ll stay until you do.”

“You don’t have to.” He told her, watching as she took another seat next to him. Her eyes looked at the book that sat on his bedside table, dog-eared on the places that he stopped.

“I want to.”

He didn’t argue with that. His eyes drifted closed, and for the first time in days, when he exhaled, it didn’t feel like he was breathing through fire.

Clare sat beside him, her hand resting lightly on the edge of his bed, not holding on, but certainly not letting go either.

+++

There was rain by the midafternoon, pattering gently against the long windows that lined the ward. Outside, the grounds were turning a muddy brown, leaves wet and heavy from the wind. Inside, the heat in the woodstove ticked, and the scent of antiseptic still clung to every linen.

Harry sat upright in bed, legs over the edge, his hands gripping the frame for balance.

Every inch of movement still hurt—just less than it had a week ago. It had been almost two weeks now that Harry was here. His muscles ached, his burns were starting to heal as best as they could in the short time– the ones that were down to the bone were struggling, but there was progress. His hips were starting to get sore the more he sat around, waiting for the muscles to heal

The burns along his ribs itched under the bandages. But the doctors had informed him that he could start to walk now. Stand without help, even if he had to hold the wall. He’d taken six steps that morning, and felt like he could have collapsed. It felt like a bloody marathon.

“I heard you made it to the door and back,” Clare said, appearing beside him with a folded blanket. He hadn’t realized that she was back so soon – the day must have started to really fade from him.

“You forgot to mention how bloody far the door is.”

She grinned at his nonsense. “You can take it up with the nurse who designed the floor plan.”

“I will. Just as soon as I can walk without feeling like a newborn deer.”

He looked at her, and wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. There was something different about Clare today. Her shoulders were drawn in slightly, her smile a little thinner.

“Everything alright?” he asked. He could see that there was a look in her face that may have been more somber than before.

She nodded. “Just tired, I guess.”

Harry watched her for a beat longer, then glanced at the book on his side table. He’d nearly finished it now—stolen chapters late at night, flipping the pages when his thoughts turned too heavy.

“You’re off tonight, yeah?” he asked; Harry was quite chatty in normal conversation, maybe it didn’t seem that way when he was in here. He didn’t really know what to say, but he felt a bit more normal today as he was able to get up and walk around.

Clare paused what she had been doing before nodding back at him with a pressed smile. “I am, for a few days.”

“Going home?” He asked her quietly, watching as she readied his medicines.

A soft exhale. “Um, yes, I’m – going to see my father, I guess,” she bit on her lip softly, “The first time I’m seeing him since George died,” she paused for a moment, “Just the two of us. Mum died of influenza years ago now, so I just imagine it will be difficult.”

He nodded, thinking to himself. Then: “Clare?”

She looked back over at him without another word, as his words had drawn her in.

“You said once your brother gave you that book. The first time you read it. You didn’t have to give it to me, you know.”

Her smile faded. Harry didn’t speak. He didn’t have to.

“We were very close. Closer than most siblings, I guess. We used to sneak up to the roof of our childhood flat and watch the people pass below, pretending we could read their thoughts. He used to say the only thing worse than being ordinary was being forgettable.”

She folded the blanket with slow, deliberate hands.

“I think about him when the ward goes quiet,” she blinks at him before she writes something on his chart, “Reminds me quite a bit of you, actually. He was very cheeky.”

Harry let her talk, watching as she grabbed the stethoscope to listen to his lungs, moving closer to him before her eyes were naturally in front of his, “I see his face in every boy who flinches in his sleep. And every time someone dies, I wonder if he had someone like me with him when -”

Harry swallowed, his voice tight, nodding. “He did.”

She looked at him, startled at his confirmation – the positivity in his voice. It was new, so she blinked at him for a moment almost not catching his new comfort.

“I wasn’t there,” Harry said, “but I know he did. Someone held his hand. Someone stayed with him.”

The silence between them stretched, but it wasn’t empty. It was thick, humming with what neither of them had said aloud yet. He went to stand slowly, muscles protesting as he pushed himself off of the cot and pushed his shoulders back.

“Still hurts like hell,” he muttered, stretching out his back.

Clare stepped toward him on instinct, almost like she was going to catch him if he fell, “Careful—”

But the problem with that was that Harry was quite taller than Clare, not by too much, but she would definitely not be able to lift him if he fell.

He waved her off with a tired smile, shaking his head as his hair fell into his eyes. “I’m alright, love. I just needed to stand while you talked about him. Felt like… like I should.”

She nodded, eyes shining before she studied him for a moment.

“Since you’re up, do you want to sit outside for a bit?” she asked. “The garden’s just through the hall.”

Harry blinked, a bit confused by her question. “You’re allowed to take patients for walks outside?”

“No,” she said, he could tell there was a bit of nonchalance in her voice, maybe a bit of weariness, “But you’re not a patient. You’re a soldier with a limp and poor judgment, and I feel it's the least we can do.”

He smiled back at her. “And you’re clearly a very bad nurse for not following protocol.”

“I’m the worst,” she said, already moving to grab an extra blanket to place around his shoulders in lieu of a jacket.

They made their way slowly through the corridor, Harry bracing himself on the walls when needed, Clare walking beside him like she wasn’t watching every breath he took. When they reached the door to the small, enclosed garden, she opened it gently and helped him step out.

The air was crisp, earthy with rain. The garden wasn’t large—just a few benches, some ivy climbing the walls, a rusted fountain with no water. But it was quiet. And private. Clare moved them over towards where they sat on a bench tucked near the back, out of sight from the windows.

Clare pulled her coat tighter. Harry tilted his face toward the sky; there wasn’t a cloud above them.

“I forgot what clean air smelled like.”

Clare watched him, making sure he was okay to maneuver before she helped him down on the bench. They sat on the wood for a moment, elbow to elbow, while she heard Harry take a few deep breaths. It was enough for him, she thought.

“I thought about writing my parents,” he said after a while. “But I don’t know what I’d say. They sent me off a whole son and I came back a cracked one.”

“You came back,” she said gently; her frustration didn’t lie with him, but with the situation. She knew he didn’t mean anything by it, and she allowed his own frustration to take over when he was obviously thinking of what happened in the sky. “That’s what matters.”

“For what? John’s still stuck in that bed. Dean’s gone. I was supposed to get us back – I was supposed to fix the plane.”

“You think you failed them,” Clare said matter-of-factly.

“I know I did.”

She shook her head. “You can’t keep measuring your worth by who did and didn't survive around you.”

“And how the hell should I measure it, then?” He was quick with his quip, turning his head to look at her and catching a glimmer in her eye.

“By who you still are.”

He looked at her, jaw tight. He noticed that there may have been a tear in her eye, so he backed down a bit quieter. “I can’t be who I was before.”

“Good,” Clare said, nodding, scoffing a bit. “He was probably full of himself.”

Harry gave a surprised laugh, sudden and short at the way she delivered that with such wit.

“I mean it,” she said, serious. Harry’s smile wiped away. “The man sitting here now? He’s still carrying everyone else’s weight. Still angry enough to walk, stubborn enough to argue. Still kind enough to ask about my brother. That sounds like someone I’d trust.”

He looked down at his hands. The backs of them were still healing, one wrapped loosely where the burns hadn’t closed yet. Her eyes looked down at them as he did.

Harry drew in a breath as he kept his voice to a whisper, “Do you ever think about what happens after?”

She didn’t ask what he meant – she didn’t have to.

“All the time,” she said. “And it scares the hell out of me.”

Harry nodded. “I think about being normal again. About laughing and meaning it. About sleeping through the night. But it feels like something only other people get to have.”

They sat in silence, the quiet between them thicker than the fog curling in the cool night air. The sky above was smudged with stars, barely visible behind drifting clouds, and the damp scent of earth and smoke hung in the air. The bench beneath them was cold, but Clare hadn’t moved. Neither had he.

Harry shifted slightly, only then realizing just how close they were. Her shoulder nearly brushed his. Her breath, soft and steady, fogged in the space between them.

“Do you believe in second chances?” he asked, voice low for just her to hear.

Clare didn’t look away. Her eyes, always steady, were darker in the twilight—watchful and unreadable, yet somehow gentle.

“I don’t know if I believe in chances at all,” she said finally, shaking her head. “But I believe in choosing. When something feels right, you choose it. Even if it’s only once.”

His breath caught, barely audible. Their fingers touched. Not by accident - she had reached for him, deliberate but featherlight, the back of her hand brushing his like a secret passage that only they both could see.

“I don’t know where I go from here,” Harry said quietly, eyes fixed on the ground. “I feel like I’m still falling in the sky.”

“You don’t have to know yet,” Clare said to him, honesty laced like honey around her words. “You’re allowed to just… be here.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough.”

Her voice softened, almost a whisper. “Harry.”

It was then that he looked at her. Really looked – it was a look that she had never seen before on someone. Her hair had loosened from its pins in the breeze, strands clinging to her cheek.

There was a smudge of ash near her collarbone from lighting the woodstove, and her coat wasn’t buttoned properly. For once, she didn’t fix it. She didn’t retreat behind the neat uniform, the calm nurse’s mask. Out here, she was only Clare.

It was the only person that she wanted Harry to see. Not the broken nurse who was looking for sympathy, or the girl who was losing everyone in her life at rapid rates.

“What?” he asked, barely above a breath. She could see his breath in the cold fog of the air.

She reached up, her fingers brushing his cheek. Not the raw, healing side—she didn’t flinch or pity. She chose the other, smooth and still familiar, as if to remind him that he hadn’t been erased. Her touch was warm against his cold skin; he noticed the shake in her fingers as she lifted her.

“If you asked me to stay,” she murmured, “I would.”

His throat worked around the lump that rose there. He stared at her, trying not to fall apart from something as simple and devastating as that.

And then he leaned in. Tentative. Careful. Like she was something fragile and holy and he was still learning how to hold anything without breaking it. Their foreheads touched – it was a bare touch, a touch she could have passed off as intimate. A breath passed between them, then another. His hand found her knee, grounding himself.

He didn’t kiss her.

But he could feel it—that pulse beneath the quiet longing that both of them held between them. The terrifying, beautiful possibility of being seen and chosen anyway.

Clare’s eyes drifted closed, only for a second, just a beat. Then she pulled back, slowly, as if severing something delicate.

“We should go in,” she said, voice hushed but with need. She needed to move away, or she would do something she could regret, “Your doctor would have my head if I let you catch cold.”

Harry swallowed, nodding. His chest ached, but not from pain this time. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, and for the first time in weeks, he rose without stumbling.

And Clare didn’t step away from him for a second, holding around his waist to help with movements. His legs and his body just hurt. It was hard to maneuver, but it was good for him to move like this.

They returned to the ward in silence, the corridor dimly lit by amber lamps – most of the soldiers were asleep, they made sure of it. Harry walked more steadily now, the rhythm of his steps echoing off the walls. Clare didn’t offer to hold his arm once they got inside—she didn’t have to. Something between them had already shifted, quiet but undeniable.

When they reached his small space—a small, curtained-off space tucked just past the main ward—he paused at the threshold.

“You can come in,” he said, turning his head to look at her then.

Clare hesitated only a second before following him. The room was quiet, softly lit by the lamp at his bedside. Compared to the ward, it felt warmer. More human. Harry had started to collect a few books from a few of the doctors and nurses, they were stacked neatly on the side table. An extra blanket folded at the foot of the bed, one that Clare had brought the other day. A small radio Harry never touched.

He sat on the edge of the bed, and Clare remained standing as she held her hands in front of her.

“Stay a moment?” he asked.

She nodded, drawing the curtain fully closed behind her.

The corridor had been quiet, the bustle of the hospital dimming quite drastically. Clare had just helped Harry back into bed, his body still stiff with the slow, frustrating ache of healing. She fluffed his pillow with practiced ease, smoothing the blanket over his lap as the ward had started to feel cold since the winter months were upon them.

“Fuck,” Harry cursed under his breath, shaking his head as he winced at the feeling of his leg stretching out. “God – fuck.”

“You’re wincing,” she countered, rolling her eyes at his face, “and you’re too proud to – “

He opened his mouth to retort, but then it happened— the noise was sharp and clear, the rising whine of a siren split the silence, its cry climbing like a scream into the darkening sky.

Harry froze; Clare’s head turned quickly towards the windows with a breath let out. His fingers clenched the edge of the blanket. “Bloody hell…”

Clare snapped towards the window that sat near Harry’s bed, where the thin lavender light of evening had turned grey and dark even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. That should have been their first warning.

Air raids never happened in cloudy conditions.

“That’s the second time this week,” she said, breath catching as she tried to remain calm. “They must be heading toward the docks again.”

“Always the bloody docks,” Harry muttered, but his voice had thinned. He wasn’t there anymore—not really; his brain had started to feel odd, like parts of him were there and other parts weren’t. He was back above the Channel, the smell of smoke in his nose, the thunder of anti-aircraft guns all around, Dean slumped beside him.

The siren wailed louder, and he pressed his palm against his forehead to stop the noise – he needed all of it to stop.

Clare turned quickly, flicking off the bedside lamp to plunge the room into shadows. “Harry— Harry, please, look at me.”

His eyes were glassy, unfocused. Her heart dropped at the way that he looked at her. She stepped closer, taking his hands, grounding him to stare at her for a moment while she spoke to him.

“We’re safe here. The ward is reinforced, and if we must move downstairs, we’ll do it quickly. I promise. We – you, you’re safe.”

Then came a sound he hadn’t realized he feared until it filled the room—the long, low thrum of engines. Dozens of them. Close. The windowpanes began to tremble in their frames.

Harry flinched, his hands beginning to shake as he felt a scream so internal and loud and completely overpowering overwhelming his thoughts. “I can’t— Clare—”

Ruth appeared in the doorway, face pale as Clare turned around to notice that many people had started to gather. “We need you, now. Casualties incoming. Triage staff first – we must move quickly.”

Clare’s grip on his hand tightened. He shook his head, almost like a child. “Please don’t leave me here—”

“I have to go,” she said, heart twisting at the mere promise that she had stated to him just before this – she would stay if he asked her to. But she had to go. “But I’ll be back. As soon as I can. Lie flat and stay away from the windows, alright? I will be back.”

His lips parted to protest, but she’d already gone, sprinting into the dim corridor, her silhouette swallowed by the chaos. The door clicked shut behind her as she walked out of the ward, and silence swept in, heavy and total—except for the rumble of the engines above.

The lights flickered. Harry stared at the ceiling, each second stretching like wire pulled taut. Then, from across the room, a low voice began to speak out into the darkness. Harry laid as flat as he could, pulling the blanket over him to try and silence the monsters that lay beyond him.

“Our Father, who art in heaven…”

Harry turned his head. It was John, in the next bed, voice shaking but steady in its rhythm. “Hallowed be Thy name…”

The floor beneath them gave a subtle tremor, distant, but real.

They were bombing.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut to try and push away the thoughts that were racking in his brain. He could feel it in his chest again—the fire, the fall, the absence of Dean’s voice.

“Thy kingdom come…”

He didn’t pray often, but now, he mouthed the words too. Not for himself. For Clare. For Dean. For Bennett. For the kid in his squad whose name he never learned, only the way he cried for his mother when they dragged him from the wreckage with barely an arm attached to him.

Another boom sounded—closer.

“Deliver us from evil…”

Harry pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and took a shuddering breath. He felt like he was made of glass, every breath threatening to splinter him from the inside. Then he thought of Clare. Of her voice. Her hand on his and the feeling that it left; the burning sensation from her touch rather than from the sheer pain of trauma. Her eyes when she promised she’d be back.

The fear didn’t leave him. But it no longer had full control.

A few hours had passed; he hadn’t been sure of it. Harry laid awake under the covers, eyes heavy as hell, but refusing to shut completely. The bombing and the sirens had shut off; it had ended. They had made it through another night.

Clare returned hours later, past midnight, her apron streaked with soot and blood, her face pale but calm as she approached his bedside. She noticed that he was still underneath, possibly not seeing her approach.

Without a touch that may spook him, she spoke into the universe: “I told you I’d come back.”

And he, without hesitation, pulled the covers away from his eyes to see Clare standing there, and whispered, “You’re the only thing I believe in anymore.”

With tears in her eyes, her evening had been filled with different spectrums of emotions. Her eyes told a terror; Harry could see it from the way that she stood. Someone’s blood on her hands, her own hands still shaking.

Harry bit his lip as he looked at her but knew that words weren’t enough for her right now.

“Go get some rest,” he told her softly, knowing that it was the one thing she’d say to him. “You need to rest.”

Clare let a single tear run down her face, a sniffle followed as she gave him a tight smile, “I will.”

And with that, she turned to leave his small space– one day older, and another day further.

+++

It had been a few nights since Harry had laid eyes on Clare.

Most of the men had drifted into uneasy naps, the hush broken only by the hum of distant footsteps, the occasional clatter of a tray, and the low murmur of birdsong outside the tall windowpanes.

Clare had lingered after her rounds. Not out of duty, though she told herself that was part of it.

Harry had been awake all morning, his wounds no longer fresh enough to draw constant pain but still healing, still temperamental. He’d walked a full circuit of the ward that morning, joking gruffly with one of the orderlies, pushing through the ache in his thigh like it owed him something. He looked less like a patient and more like a man waiting for orders that wouldn’t come.

Now, with the curtains half-drawn and sunlight painting lazy patterns across the floor, Clare pulled a chair to the side of his bed. No chart in hand. No task pending. Just… company.

She didn’t speak at first. She didn’t need to.

Harry sat up slowly, back against the raised bed frame, and looked at her with that same unreadable expression he often wore when he was too tired to be guarded but too proud to ask for kindness.

The air raid had passed, though the ward still trembled with the tension it left behind. There were more men than before, and Harry had noticed that there was a lot more movement around the ward.

Outside, the clouds had begun to thin, but the scent of smoke clung stubbornly to the windowpanes, like something that didn’t want to be forgotten. Inside, the ward was dim again, lit only by a few low bulbs strung across the beams and the occasional flicker of light through the curtains.

Harry sat up in his cot, blanket gathered loosely around his waist, legs bent as he leaned forward over the small wooden crate they’d turned into a makeshift table. Cards lay scattered between them, worn at the edges from too many rounds. Clare sat across from him on a low stool, knees drawn together, her uniform sleeves pushed to her elbows.

Her fingers moved over the cards with quiet precision, shuffling them into a clean stack. He’d already lost two hands in a row.

“You’re ruthless,” Harry muttered, eyeing the cards she had just dealt him.

Clare gave him a half-smile, barely more than a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Have to be."

But something was off. She wasn’t gloating like usual. Her movements were slower, less sharp. And though her posture remained straight, her eyes weren’t quite focused.

Harry narrowed his gaze. “Everything alright?”

She kept her eyes on her cards, lips parted as if to respond—but didn’t.

The silence grew, coiled between them like a thin thread stretched too tight.

Clare laid her cards down. Not folded. Just… placed, side by side with delicate care. Her hands remained on the table for a long moment before she spoke.

“There was a man,” she said, her voice low, steady. “The night of the raid. In one of the overflow tents.”

Harry didn’t speak, only let her continue.

“Shrapnel in the abdomen,” she added, swallowing deeply. “Deep. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

Her gaze drifted down to her lap, where her fingers had clasped together. White-knuckled as she recalled.

“He kept calling for his wife,” she said, her voice even, measured. As if she’d rehearsed it to try to keep herself composed. “Didn’t know where he was. Just… cried out for her. Like if he said her name enough times, maybe she’d appear.”

Harry swallowed as the images came too easily to him. Too vividly. He knew what that looked like.

“I told him she was on her way,” Clare said, quieter now, staring at her hands. “That she’d gotten his letter. That she was coming to take him home.”

She looked up, then, just a flick of her gaze toward the window, as if she could see that other tent from that morning. That man.

“He smiled,” she said. “Right at the end. He said she made ginger cake on Sundays and always wore a yellow scarf in the spring.” Her mouth twitched, something between a laugh and a breath. “He smelled like blood – I’m not one to get lightheaded, but I felt ill.”

Harry’s chest tightened at her observation, the way she spoke and he let her speak. He didn't interrupt, he looked at her with pity but the kind that made him feel worse for bitching the way he did.

“I don’t cry with patients,” Clare went on, shaking her head. “Not once. Not even when they scream. Not even when they’re alone.”

She paused, but it was then, a single tear traced the curve of her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Her face remained composed, still.

“But he…” she murmured, her voice wobbly. “He was the same age as my brother.”

Harry reached across the crate slowly, deliberately. His fingers found hers and held them there, gently. No pressure, no urgency—just warmth in the palm of his hand. Contact.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough.

Clare didn’t look at him immediately. She was breathing through her nose, quiet and slow, as if trying to pull all the emotion back in before it escaped.

“I didn’t want to upset you,” she said, pushing the tear away, “I– I just needed to talk about it.”

“You didn’t – the war is affecting us all, I –“

She shook her head, almost feeling silly for bringing it up to him, “I just… I didn’t want to forget it happened.”

“You won’t,” Harry told her. “Neither will I.”

Another tear fell, catching on her chin before she pulled in a deep breath, as though that small moment of release had to be enough.

She turned her hand beneath his, palm up now, fingers curling lightly around his. Her eyes met his—tired, honest, but dry again.

Then she let out a shaky exhale and, with a soft sniff, picked up her cards.

“You’re still losing, by the way,” she said, her voice steadier, teasing just enough to make it believable.

Harry grinned faintly, the lopsided grin that she had come to know fondly. “Don’t rub it in.”

“I’d never.” She looked up from under her lashes.

“You bloody would.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Only if I thought you could take it.”

And for a little while longer, they played their quiet game, their fingers occasionally brushing across the table when they would go to pick up a card or set one down, the warmth between them chasing away just enough of the cold that lingered in the corners of the night.

“I didn’t plan on making it back,” he said, voice low. “For a while, I didn’t even want to.”

Clare blinked, then looked at him fully. His face was thinner now, sharper in profile, the hollows beneath his cheekbones dark from restless nights. But his eyes were clearer. Still tired, still storm-swept—but clear.

The color green was undeniable; something she had come to miss when she wasn't on shift. She loved the way the green danced over her when she walked, like his eyes were magnets.

“You’re not alone in that,” she replied softly.

He nodded once, setting down a pair of hearts. “I think about them all the time. The ones who didn’t come back.”

His hand, wrapped lightly in gauze over the knuckles, drifted to the side, where a book she’d lent him sat closed on the nightstand. He tapped it once.

“I write their names down sometimes. When it’s quiet. Not because I’m afraid I’ll forget—but because I already feel like the world has.”

Clare leaned in slightly. “You don’t owe them your silence, Harry.”

He gave a short, dry laugh. “No. But I owe them something.”

He looked away, toward the window, where darkness has started to overcome them, pressed against the glass.

“I’ve got a sister back home. Older than me. Sharp as anything. She’s got two little ones—Alfie and Beth. My niece is five. She sent me a letter written in pink crayon. Told me she thinks soldiers are superheroes. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we’re not.”

Clare’s chest tightened, not just at the way he opened to her but the way that he seemed to love to talk about his loved ones – something in him lighting up just at the thought of them.

“My mum’s been trying to keep herself busy. Sewing circles, church things. My dad’s a quiet man, but he’s proud – I can tell. When he thinks no one’s looking, he’ll keep my letters folded in his shirt pocket like they’re medals. Pull ‘em out and tell his mates all about my travels.”

There was a long pause.

Clare’s voice was barely above a whisper. “They’ll be so glad to have you home.”

Harry didn’t respond right away. His jaw flexed, eyes still fixed on some distant point outside.

“I’m not married,” he said finally. “No sweetheart. No children. And I still made it home. But the others… so many of them had people waiting. Wives. Toddlers. Boys who were just learning to speak themselves, really.”

Clare felt it then—his guilt settling over the room like dust.

“I know it’s not fair,” he continued. “I know it’s war. Goddamn random and cruel. But sometimes I sit up at night and think—why me? What did I do to deserve walking away when they didn’t even get to send a goodbye?”

Clare reached for his hand before she could second-guess it – she missed it between her fingers again, and even though she knew better, she was playing a game she wasn't sure she could win. She didn’t take it fully, just touched her fingers to the edge of his wrist, warm and steady.

“Harry,” she said, firm now. “You didn’t take their place. You didn’t steal their breath. You survived. And surviving doesn’t make you guilty. It makes you human.”

He looked at her. Really looked.

The hurt was there, but so was the gratitude. And something else—soft, unspoken. Like maybe, for the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel quite so hollow.

He breathed in slowly. Let it out, breathing and taking in a breath. She hesitated.

“When my brother was still alive, we'd made plans. Where we’d travel, the books we’d read. The people we’d meet. Then he was gone, and the world felt smaller.”

He said nothing, but his hand turned slightly beneath hers, palm upward. This time, she took it.

“I don’t know if I believe in fate or destiny,” she said, quieter now, continuing. “But I do believe in timing. And in second chances. Maybe that’s what you have now.”

His thumb brushed over her fingers.

“What if I don’t know what to do with it?”

Clare gave a small, half-smile.

“Then maybe you take it one day at a time. Maybe you meet someone for a drink. Maybe you walk your niece to school and help your sister with her garden. Maybe you learn to live without apologizing for it, maybe you stay in London or see a new city," She swallowed, "Maybe you find yourself a sweetheart."

Harry leaned back slightly, as if the weight in his chest had eased just by her giving him choice and permission to move forward. The noise of the ward had returned, faintly—a distant conversation, a nurse laughing two rooms over.

But for a moment, everything else was still.

Clare reached for the book on his nightstand and opened it. Inside the front cover was her note—short, handwritten, her script looping in soft curves.

He looked down at the words, then back at her.

“Wasn't boring, by the way.” He told her, setting his cards down. “Was quite good.”

“Ready for another one, then?” Clare asked, setting the book back down.

Harry nodded with confirmation, giving her a faint smile. “Always ready.”

+++

It was late. The kind of late where the world went still, and the only sound in the ward was the rhythmic ticking of the clock above the supply cabinets and the soft, wheezy breath of a soldier two beds down.

Harry sat propped up in his cot, a dim reading lamp clipped to the shelf beside him. The book Clare had brought him weeks ago lay open on his lap, though his eyes hadn’t touched the words in some time. His thoughts kept drifting—to the war, to home, and mostly, to her.

Clare stepped into the ward quietly, her shoes silent on the polished floor. She wasn’t on shift. Not technically. But her hair was down and there was no clipboard in her hands, just a plain mug of tea and a knowing look.

Harry watched her approach like someone watching a secret arrive.

“You always drink a cup this late?” he asked, voice low so it wouldn’t carry.

“Only when I know someone’s still awake pretending to read, and I can sit with them for a bit.”

She offered the mug, and he took it with a small smile. “What gave me away?”

“You were on the same page when I checked an hour ago.”

He smirked, taking a sip of the tea. “Observant.”

“I’m a nurse. Comes with the territory. It's why you're getting better so quickly.”

Clare sat on the edge of the nearby supply bench, facing him. She didn’t look tired. Just quiet, thoughtful.

“I heard the brass came in today,” she said gently. “Paperwork’s through?”

Harry nodded, trying his best to put on a good face. “Yeah. I’m out in two days. Failed my physical test."

There was a long pause, then, like she was waiting for him to remember how good it would feel to leave, but knew how disappointed he had been in himself. Clare glanced down, twisting the ring on her finger that wasn’t for anyone. “You’ll be glad to get home, I’m sure.”

“Sure,” he said, a little too quickly, almost like he was lying to himself. Then, slower: “Yeah. I mean… it’s home, right?”

But the words hung there like something unfinished.

She looked up at him, keeping her eyes still. “You’ve got people waiting on you to return in one piece.”

“Haven’t seen them in… God, over two years now.” He gave a soft laugh. “They probably won’t even recognize me. Which might be for the best. No need to scare them off with all this.”

Clare frowned, her gaze flicking over the healing burns along his neck, the tension in his shoulders that came with healing.

“They’ll be proud,” she told him, honestly in her voice. He could see that she was trying to keep her hands busy, but didn’t know how to make it not obvious. “You came home, that's all that matters to them.”

Harry looked at her then, and something in his face shifted. That sharp, dry wit gave way to something bare and unsettled.

“Some of them didn’t,” he said, reminding her. “Men with wives. Children. And I’m the one packing my things.”

“Don’t do that,” Clare said softly – he could tell that he may have made a mistake in talking about men who had died, who weren’t there, “Don’t carry the guilt of being alive. You’ve carried enough,” she shook her head. “You don’t have to be brave in here.”

He was quiet for a long time, not knowing if he needed to respond, not knowing what he should say.

Then: “Feels heavier at night.”

She stood slowly, walked the few steps to his bedside, and sat beside him on the edge of the mattress. They didn’t touch. Not yet. But their arms were close enough that the warmth between them was unmistakable.

Harry’s voice was rough when he spoke. “It’s easier when you’re near.”

That silence again—thick and blooming with a charge neither of them could explain.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Clare said, but it was barely a whisper.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll want to believe them.”

His hand shifted slightly on the blanket, like he was fighting the urge to reach for hers. But she leaned in first—just enough that their shoulders brushed, their breaths mingled. Her perfume was faint but familiar by now, notes of soft lavender. Clean linen.

She turned her head and looked at him, mouth parted as if she might say something. But she didn’t. Her eyes stared at his parted lips as if remembering what it would feel like to reach out and touch them. She couldn’t recall the last time she was touched like that.

Harry leaned just slightly closer, to the point where their noses almost touched. Her hand rested on the edge of the blanket, fingers curled loosely, and for a moment he thought—hoped—she might reach for him too.

But she pulled back a heartbeat before anything could happen.

“I should go,” she said quietly, standing without another word as she smoothed down her apron.

“Clare—” he started, voice thick. His hand reached out to grab at her, but he wasn’t quick enough. A sharp pain in his shoulder radiated before he winced quietly.

She looked back at him, something complicated shining in her eyes. It was a goodbye that she wasn’t prepared for, but somehow, knowing it was coming hurt more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

And then she was gone, the soft sound of her footsteps fading down the corridor.

Harry stared at the door for a long time, heart pounding like he was still falling from the sky. It was weird how it did that – weird how feeling that way could make him feel like living and dying and loving were all synonymous.

But was glad that his heart could feel, even if his brain struggled.

+++

Five weeks.

That’s how long it had been since Harry was dragged unconscious into the military hospital—burned, broken, half-lucid, and gripping the fading image of a smoking French sky.

Now he could walk without assistance, eat without pain, and sit in the quiet without flinching every time the wind hit the windows wrong. Physically, he’d mended well enough. But the wound that mattered most—the empty space left by Dean, the weight of a crew scattered like ash—was nowhere near healing.

Tomorrow morning, he would be discharged. He would be sent back to Manchester.

The orders sat like a stone in his stomach.

The matron had delivered the final orders that afternoon. He was being sent back home to Manchester—no reassignment, no further duty. His left shoulder was too damaged to meet active service standards, the muscle strain and scar tissue compromising his full range of motion. His service to the Royal Air Force was officially complete.

Honorable discharge, they'd called it. But it didn't feel like honor. It felt like being sent home from a war he hadn’t finished fighting.

He sat at the edge of his bed in his small private space, elbows on knees, listening to the clatter of dishes down the hall, the distant crack of a radio playing swing music somewhere. The curtain was half drawn, the soft light of early evening stretching golden fingers across the tiled floor.

A half-packed satchel sat by his nightstand—just a few changes of clothes, the worn book Clare had lent him, and a letter John had helped him send to Bennett’s hospital.

He turned the book over in his hands now, thumb brushing the corner of the faded cover. A Farewell to Arms. Ironic, really. He'd finished it two days ago and hadn’t stopped thinking about the ending since.

There was a gentle knock on the frame outside the curtain. His heart reacted before his voice did because he knew that someone had come to say their goodbyes.

“Yeah?”

Clare stepped inside, her cap slightly askew, cheeks warm with color. She was out of uniform now—just her soft cardigan and skirt, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows.

“I thought you might still be here,” she said.

“I haven’t been sleeping much.” Harry told her, putting down a few of his items that he had been holding to pack away.

She nodded like she understood, then smiled faintly. Her breath was deep as she tilted her chin up, almost like she was trying to keep it together. “I heard it’s your last night.”

“That’s what they’re telling me.”

She reached into her bag and handed him a parcel wrapped in brown paper and twine. “I brought you something.”

Harry stood then, taking it in his hands. He opened it slowly, careful not to tear it. Inside was a copy of A Farewell to Arms, a different edition than the hospital’s—hardcover, older, with a clothbound spine. He looked up at her.

“Couldn’t keep you reading the ward’s tattered one,” she said, shrugging. “Figured you’d need something to throw across the room when you get angry at the ending again.”

He huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Still not over it.”

“I know.”

He opened the cover, looking over the edition that she had given him and caught sight of her handwriting on the inside flap. Neat, but a little slanted, like she’d written it quickly.

Harry— Until you find your next story. —Clare

His throat caught around something he couldn’t quite name, eyebrows narrowing at it before he bit the inside of his cheek.

“Thanks,” he said, quieter than he meant.

“I was hoping you might write to me.” She moved to lean against the nearby dresser, arms crossed, but not defensively. More like she didn’t know what else to do with her hands. “I’d like to know how Manchester treats you once you arrive home.”

He glanced up, studying her. There was something deliberately casual in her tone, but her eyes were shining slightly. She was trying not to cry. That alone undid him.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” he admitted to her before he let his shoulders settle.

Clare nodded, shrugging with a small smile. “You’re not supposed to know.”

“They gave me this medal,” he said, showing her the item that was tucked into his satchel now. “Told me I’d shown bravery. I think they needed a reason to sign me off and not feel guilty.”

“You were brave.” Clare told him – a reminder she would give him forever, if he let her.

“I was lucky. That’s all.” Harry ran a hand through his hair then, sighing.

“Sometimes,” Clare said, stepping forward as she adjusted the collar of his shirt that he had been given; something different than the hospital wear, “surviving is harder than dying.”

That struck something in him, deep and cold. The kind of truth you only recognize after war has carved a hollow into you, but the way that her near him felt electrifying. Clare gave him a look before going to tuck her skirt beneath her knees, sitting on the edge of his bed. He followed.

He closed the book and set it on his lap, then looked up at her. “I want to take you for a drink sometime.”

That made her smile, slow and uncertain and lovely – not wanting to make it obvious that it was one of the things that she had wished for.

“You’d come to London?” she asked.

“I’ll make the trip,” he said. “Promise I’ll wear a clean shirt and everything.”

“Well,” she teased, “now I’m tempted to see what that looks like.”

He reached for her hand. She didn’t hesitate to give it to him.

Her fingers curled gently between his, and for a while, neither of them said anything. The hospital faded around them—the clatter and coughs, the smell of antiseptic, the ghost sounds of war.

“I don’t want this to be it,” he said finally, ghost of a whisper on his breath as he held her hand on his lap.

“It doesn’t have to be.” Her eyes were filled with tears; knowing that the five weeks together were the ones that kept her the sanest.

“But it might be.”

She didn’t argue. Clare was never the sort to make promises she couldn’t keep.

“This past month…” she began, then stopped. “It’s been different with you here, you know.”

“Better or worse?” The lopsided grin was back; eyes searching hers when they turned to face one another.

“Both,” she said, smiling gently. “But mostly better.”

He wanted to kiss her – he had never wanted to kiss her more than he had right now. But the room felt too still, too full of goodbye.

So instead, he whispered, “Will you write me back?”

Clare let out a dry laugh, shaking her head as she tried to keep her tears behind her eyelids, unsure of how she was doing it up until then, “Of course.”

Then, as if something cracked open inside him, he added, “You’re the only reason I didn’t lose my mind here.”

Clare exhaled, and the breath trembled. “I think you’re the reason I’ve lost mine.”

It was then that she found the utter need for the push and pull to draw her into him. She searched his lips, parted slightly before she allowed her hand to fall on the back of his neck, drawing her lips to his. She kissed him then—slowly, properly, like the space between them had finally closed.

When she pulled away, her hands lingered at his jaw, and her voice was low. “Don’t let this war define you. You get to choose who you are after this.”

Harry nodded, his eyes locked on hers.

“And when you’re ready,” she added, her eyes still laying on his lips as their foreheads pushed together, “come find me.”

With finality, she heard some steps around his room – she moved to her feet to move apart as she smoothed down her skirt. She stepped back, her silhouette framed by the curtain’s edge as she turned around for one last look.

“Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight, Clare.”

She slipped out into the corridor, the curtain fluttering softly behind her. Harry stayed there long after she was gone, the book resting in his hands. He opened it again, rereading her note.

Until you find your next story.

He didn’t know where to start yet. But maybe—just maybe—it began with a letter.

+++

The train to Manchester had felt like it had taken one hundred years.

When Harry stepped off the train, satchel in hand, the air had smelled of coal smoke and cold steel, the same scent he'd known since boyhood. But everything else felt sharper, more fragile—like he was walking through a memory that hadn’t quite settled back into place. This didn’t feel like home anymore, it felt stranger than that.

His mum had cried as soon as she saw him. Not loud or dramatic, just a quiet kind of weeping, her hands wrapped around his face like she couldn’t believe it was real. His dad stood behind her, stiff-backed, his eyes red, though he never said why. When he finally clapped Harry on the shoulder, it was with the strength of a man who’d held back every emotion for four weeks too long.

His sister, Nora, had nearly tackled him, Alfie and Beth tumbling behind her like puppies, shouting “Uncle Harry!” and pulling at his coat like they thought he might vanish if they let go.

He’d sat at the kitchen table that night, the old kettle hissing in the background, and listened to them talk over one another. Every story, every small detail, felt like a lifeline anchoring him back to the living.

But underneath it all was the ache.

Because when Nora kissed her children goodnight, he thought about Dean, who would never see his own grow up. When his father poured him a glass of whisky, hand trembling just slightly, he thought of Bennett and wondered if he’d been able to write home yet. And when Beth handed him a drawing of the two of them standing under a rainbow, he had to turn away for a moment so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

He was home, he was where he grew up and his family was. But part of him still felt like he hadn’t landed. Not completely. Not until he made his way to London.

Not until Clare.

+++

Three Months Later.

May, 1943. London.

The train rocked gently beneath Clare’s feet, a lull in the evening rhythm that almost matched the flutter in her chest. She sat by the window, a coat in her lap for the chilly evenings, a letter in her gloved hands. She had read it more times than she could count, but tonight—on her way to see him—it felt different.

It felt real.

Clare had been able to take the train back to her flat in London for the weekend, getting a break from the hospital. She didn’t tell the other nurses about this particular meet up – she'd be teased endlessly, but she knew that they had an inkling when she started messing with lipstick in her bag.

London was a few hours away, and somewhere in the maze of its streets, Harry was waiting for her.

She found a compartment with a few older women and a quiet soldier who nodded once in her direction and returned to his paper. The train lurched forward, wheels shrieking against the tracks, and Clare leaned her forehead against the cool windowpane. Fields slipped by, blurred in the bit of drizzle, but her mind was miles ahead, already at the corner of a pub, searching the crowd.

The journey stretched long and winding, as though time itself resisted her reunion with him. The envelope was soft now, its edges creased, and corners worn from being tucked into coat pockets and beside her pillow. His handwriting filled the page in a neat, deliberate scrawl, like he had taken his time, like he wasn’t used to writing anything that wasn’t a flight log or a report.

He was writing something a bit more important to him than those.

- Postmarked - May 5th, 1943 – Manchester Lt. Styles, Harry E.

My dearest Clare,

I’ve been trying to start this letter for days, but nothing felt quite right. Every piece of paper that I started got crumpled and thrown away because I needed this to be perfect. I wrote quite a lot to my friends and family during training, but those didn’t mean as much as this does.

Manchester is colder than I remember. My mum won’t stop feeding me, but my sister and father are very happy to have me home. I can tell that they’re proud of me. Dad has been keeping me busy with putting me to work on fixing things that aren’t broken, but I know he cares and wants me to be better. The people in town stare at me like I came back missing a limb instead of just not going back at all. But you were right. I do get to decide who I am after this.

I’ve decided I’m the sort of man who keeps his promises.

So, I’m writing because I’ll be in London for a few days come next week, Thursday through Sunday. I’ll be at The Red Lion on Argyle Street Thursday evening, around seven.

If you don’t come, I will assume that what we had shared in those difficult weeks was meant to shape me for who I am and was just a small part of the story I’m supposed to be writing for myself. I will make ends with that, and I wish you all the best. You gave me hope, and I will forever be grateful for every conversation we shared. I will move on, and so will you, but I will always think of this chapter.

If you do come, I will know that everything I felt then was real, and that you felt it too. I will recognize that who I am now is stronger than who I thought I was then. I would love to see you again, Clare. I’ll be the one trying not to look like I ironed my shirt just for you.

I hope you’re well, Clare. Truly. I hope your hands are warm and you’ve found ways to sleep through the nights. I hope your laughter still comes easily after everything you’ve seen. You deserve to smile, and the world needs to see it now more than ever.

Yours, always,

H

Clare folded the letter slowly, sliding it back into her bag as the train hissed to a halt. Her breathing was uneven, as she thought of his hands scribbling against the paper, wanting to feel something so badly.

By the time the train hissed into King’s Cross, her limbs were stiff and her mouth dry from nerves. She navigated the narrow corridor and stepped off into the crowded station, swallowed by the shuffle of coats and caps, voices and suitcases thudding along the stone. There was something about London, even in the midst of a terrible war, it hummed with movement, life refusing to be quieted.

The streets outside were still wet from afternoon rain, puddles reflecting the glow of gas lamps and storefronts. She walked with purpose, her heels clicking quietly against cobblestones, heart hammering beneath her navy-blue dress—the one her friend had helped her choose, the one she hadn’t worn since before the war began.

The color matched her eyes, her hair pinned neatly away from her face.

When she reached the pub, warm light spilled from the windows, the sound of music and soft laughter carrying into the street. She hesitated at the door for just a second, smoothing the fabric of her coat, and then stepped inside. The pub was warm and crowded, the floor a scuffed checkerboard of dancing feet and shuffled boots. Men in uniform leaned over pints. Women in soft cardigans and bright lipstick sat in small groups or danced between tables.

Clare scanned the room, her heart suddenly thrumming too loudly to hear the music.

He was already there. At a table near the back, turned slightly toward the door, Harry looked up the moment she walked in.

His uniform was clean, pressed to perfection. His RAF jacket fit perfectly against his broad shoulders as he sat, hands around a pint almost like he was more anxious than her – there was no doubt, he was. His hair was combed back, though it curled a little stubbornly at the nape of his neck.

But then his eyes saw her; he didn’t move at first, almost like he had thought it was a dream. He stood when he saw her, slower than a man without pain but steady on his feet, and smiled—a little unsure, a little shy, but unmistakably him with the dimple creeping into his cheek.

He moved toward her, weaving between people without a word, the pint glass abandoned. Clare met him halfway, her pulse loud in her ears, breath catching just before she said his name.

“Clare,” he said, greeting her softly, saying her name like a prayer. It was the one thing that felt rooted in God.

“Harry.”

For a moment, neither moved. Neither of them could imagine a world where they saw each other outside of the bubble they had created behind the curtains of his hospital bed.

But, here was their moment – here was the moment that Clare had referenced in survival. Every moment that had led to this was a moment that Harry couldn’t have accounted for.

Then she crossed the room, and he pulled her into a careful embrace—his good arm around her waist, the other resting gently at her back. They stood like that longer than was proper, longer than anyone else in the pub noticed, hearts pressed close as if they were still in the silence of that hospital ward.

“I,” He stopped for a moment; the scent of her perfume was overwhelming in a way that he couldn’t have imagined, “I didn’t know you’d come”

Clare held onto his jacket, pressed in the embrace as she took in the smell of tobacco, the smell of soap and warmth of smoke that wafted from the material like he had smoked a full pack before she arrived in anticipation, holding onto him like she didn’t know how to let go.

But for a moment, it was quiet between them. Still. The kind of still that doesn’t feel empty, but full with things unsaid, things still blooming.

She only looked at him, really looked, and saw the faint shadow of the man he’d been in the hospital: pale, exhausted, trying to stitch himself back into something whole. That memory curled beside the man now standing before her, eyes soft, shoulders no longer burdened quite the same. He had color in his cheeks. He had a glint in his eye that hadn’t been there in the ward, when the light had felt too far away.

And she hadn’t realized, until this moment landing between his arms, how much she’d needed this. How much she’d needed him.

Not just the man she missed, but the very act of missing someone. Of longing. Of hoping. Of standing in a room of strangers and seeing one face that made everything feel… rooted again. Like something could begin, even now. Even after everything.

Across from her, Harry couldn’t stop looking at her — like if he blinked, the vision might vanish. His fingers curled tighter around her, grounding himself in the reality of her warmth. In the scent of her hair and the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled up at him like that.

He had been prepared for her not to come. When he had written that letter with equal parts courage and resignation, he realized that there was disappointment in life – he knew that more than anyone. But now, standing here with her hand in his and her breath still on his lips, he felt something collapse inside of him. A tension held too long. A question finally answered.

She came. She was here. She still wanted him — not the airman he used to be, but the man he was now. Scars and all.

They didn’t need to speak again just yet. There would be time for that. For stories. For apologies. For everything they hadn’t said in the soft ache of two months apart. But for now, they just stood — folded into one another like a secret, quiet and whole — while the rest of the world went on, none the wiser.

And Clare thought, as she let her head rest against his shoulder and he pressed a steady kiss to her temple,

So this is what it feels like… to be known, and still wanted. To arrive somewhere, and be seen.

She closed her eyes. She hadn’t known how much she’d needed to be held by someone who had missed her just as much. And she took a deep breath in that feeling, to know that there was something to look forward to.

Them.

[caitlinsnicket]

bob reynolds relationship headcanons part. 2

warnings: smut under the cut, reader has a vagina and boobs, bob is a cute little pervert and we love him for it, oral sex, fingering, hair play, non sexual tickling, bob being soft

a/n: this is the most obssessed i've been with a character in a long time seriously its not funny anymore. A PART 3 IS COMING HOLD ONTO YOUR PANTIES

masterlist | 🍉 | ko-fi | part. 1 | part. 3

you walk into the kitchen on afternoon, and it takes bob a second to fully notice what you're wearing: one of his old, too worn sweaters, and big shorts that go below your knees and seem to be a second away from falling. he stares for a second, trying to understand what he's seeing, and when he does he can't help but ask out loud about your outfit

you brush him off saying you were just doing laundry so you stole his clothes as to not have to be naked while waiting for them to dry out. he barely hears you, noticing how the fabric looks against your skin and how hot his face feels right now. you pretend not to notice, going about your day as normal, but his presence lingers in hallways and rooms, still looking at you. he feels an ache on his chest then, because someone loves him enough to be in the same space he once was, and he's never felt as thetered to earth as in that moment

if you ever wear only one of his shirts or sweaters, soft legs on display, he'll subtly (not really) get you to sit or lay down so he can lay his head on them, nose and mouth nudging you softly. sometimes he's going to fall asleep, eyes fluttering and lips slightly parted, so content he's even smiling a little. other times, his mouth keeps wandering, eyes hooded with sleep and something else, making your skin shiver. he keeps running his mouth over your thighs, mumbling things like "so soft" and "just a lick, please?" until his head is buried between your legs, hands still wandering your ass and thighs, tongue lazily licking at your wetness, so slow you see stars and pull on his hair so he will go faster

he has fallen asleep with his mouth on you before, and it will happen again!

he also has this funny habit of fingering you out of nowhere. maybe the two of you will be watching a movie on your bedroom, or doing some light paperwork in one of the dozens of offices the tower has, and his hands will start to get fidgety until they reach your thighs, moving up and up until he can rest his fingers comfortably inside your panties

it's not even a sexual thing at this point, it's almost like your pussy is his personal fidget spinner: whenever he has nothing to occupy his hands, one of them drifts to the middle of your legs and he starts playing with you, only stopping when he starts to hear you moan. then he kind of snaps out of whatever he's doing and stammers a bit, but before he can take his fingers out of your fluttering hole, you hold his hand in place and tell him to finish what he's started. he happily does so, kissing you silly at the same time, and he looks so sweet while he's at it that you can't help but cum embarassingly quickly

will spend an embarassing amount of time (embarassing for you, he's proud of it) sucking his fingers clean after, and might ask you for a little taste. honestly if he could just have you on him all day he would

one time you put him on his knees in front of you after a party where he looked a little too delectable and had him eat you out while you praised him because he's such a good little puppy, and he came on his pants. he didn't say anything, but you noticed it, and ever since then you reserve manhandling him for special occasions, like his birthday or the first time he managed to actually fly without having a void incident

playing with his hair is a great past time activity for you in general, but pull on it while the two of you are getting busy and he becomes such a whiny mess he can't help but buckle his hips against yours and show you his neck so you kiss it. his hair is so sensitive, you accidentally riled him up in his sleep once, just by passing your hands through it. he says it's a little mortifying that he's that weak and responsive, but to you it's like he's constantly giving you candy when you've been craving it

in an attempt to get him used to touching in general, combined with the efforts of the rest of the team, you also start touching him under his clothes casually. it starts soft, just on the edge of them and he barely notices it, but then your fingers nudge themselves between the cloth and his skin and you run them around there, his skin hot under your touch. he tries to act normal, but it just feels so good he leans into it and sighs contently.

maybe it's breakfast time and the two of you and the group are having your meal quietly, and your hand just barely brushes the skin of his wrist under his sleeve. he smiles then, cheeks full of pancakes and syrup, and leans on your touch. maybe the two of you are in mission debriefing and he's fidgety, and you put your arm behind his neck and brush your fingers on the base of his neck. you bite back a smile at the little gasp he lets out then, eyes running to your face quickly, his head telling him to stop with the pda, his body making him inch closer

although you must admit, sometimes it's just for your own enjoyment

along with the subtle touching that plagues most of his waking thoughts, there are also bold touches that happen when it's just the two of you in the comfort of your bedroom, lights low and head dizzy with affection. your hands crawl up his sides, his surprisingly toned muscles and tender skin, and he hides his eyes with his forearm, trying not to pass out

he regrets not telling you this before (that's what he tells himself), but his whole abdomen is super sensitive: whenever someone as much as brushes him there, he has to stop himself from making sounds. It's not that he's ticklish, and more about how much more he feels in that specific part of his body. It's why, whenever you're on top of him, your weight making a loopy smile appear on his face, and your hands start going lower and lower on his body, he has to physically stop himself from jumping and gasping

you notice it one day, after you've fucked him out so good he hasn't opened his eyes yet, that he has little freckles speckled everywhere. and as he's coming down from his high, still panting a little, you kiss each one of them, his gasps softer when your lips touch the skin on his sides. when you're done, you can swear he's glowing a little, his eyes a different shade than before. every now and then you randomly take off his shirt or just pull it up to take a peek at the freckles you've come to love so much, and he has to turn away to hide his blush from you

there are other times, when the two of you are not being needy for each other, that you just press against him on his side, and he flinches and lets out a strangled giggle. that's when he stares at you wide eyed, and before he can tell you not to, you're already tickling him with all your might, fingers digging in the soft material of his clothes, his own cheeks burning and eyes glistening. you swear his laughter is the sweetest sound you'e ever heard

gets embarassed at any praise you give him in the begining, both because he kind of doesn't believe you, and because this has never happened to him before: the mere idea that someone could actually think something good about him makes his heart do a little leap. so you hold his face up to yours, eyes bearing into his, and make him stare back at you as you tell him how pretty he is, how kind, how nice, and how perfect he is. and after a while, he takes it, with burning cheeks and babbling words

[cherry-blossom-honey]

Melted (Bucky Barnes x F! Reader)

Where the reader tells Bucky how much his metal arm turns her on 👀🦾

A/n: Uh, yeah. This is the infamous 5am smut I told you guys about, enjoy! :)

Warnings: Mentions of insecurities, fingering, implied age gap, temperature play if you squint, Sergeant kink

—There goes the last drop. We've got another dead soldier here!— Bucky said with a hint of comical drama in his voice— They used to call empty bottles that way in the 1800s.

—Oh, were you there when it first happened?— You laughed at your own joke while taking a sip of white wine.

It's been a long time since James Buchanan Barnes had a relationship. You made him feel safe, younger, human.

Now that the second bottle was gone, the conversations deepened.

People have left the Winter Soldier and his atrocities behind. He was just Bucky Barnes, sometimes a hero, but certainly not a villain.

But there was one thing he couldn't stop thinking about...

—This shit— he sighed, looking sadly at his metal arm— Y'know, even if kids say it's cool... I still don't feel like it's a part of me, it's hard to look in the mirror and see it.

It was the first time you heard him opening up his heart like that. The situation making you experience a mix of pride and pain.

Standing up, you got closer to the blue eyed man to sit on his lap, kissing him softly.

—Thanks for telling me this, Buck. I know it's not easy for you— He nodded, giving you a sad smile in return. —Can I tell you a secret too?

—Go ahead. Won't tell anyone if you don't tell 'em I'm a crybaby.

You smirked, ready to whisper in his ear.

—I think your metal arm is hot.

—Do you, doll?— Bucky's face changed completely to a lustful expression.

You weren't lying. For many nights, you fantasized about how good it would feel touching your body.

—Please. Do something about it, Sergeant Barnes— you whimpered, biting your lip.

—Take off your shorts and panties, now— he commanded, following your intentions.

—Yes, Sergeant

After you did what he said, Bucky invited you to his lap once again.

—C'mere, beautiful

This time, you straddled him, devouring his lips in the process. Then, he took one of your hands to put it on his clothed, painfully hard cock.

—See what you do to me?— Bucky panted— But tonight's about you, doll.

Your eyes widened as you saw him taking two metal fingers to meet your soaked folds.

—So wet. You'd like me to finger you with this hand, yeah?

—Y-yes— you moaned, already unable to form a sentence.

—Yes, what?— he said, grabbing your chin firmly with his free hand.

—Yes, Sergeant Barnes!

—Good girl

One.

Two.

Three fingers.

The contrast between Bucky's cold metal digits and your burning insides was driving you crazy. His actions turned you into a moaning mess on top of him.

Without any warning, the dark haired man untied the knot of your top.

—No bra? What a naughty little doll you are.

Bucky smirked right before attacking one of your breasts with his mouth, making you scream at the sensation and unintentionally pull his hair.

When your walls started squeezing him, he switched to the other breast.

Diabolical.

—B-bucky. Need to cum, please!

—You're gonna make a mess all over my pants, doll. Cum for me.

Crying out his first name, you followed his orders, realizing by the sticky feeling under you that the man also came in his pants.

—Never been so proud of being called James in my entire life— he laughed after catching his breath— You've never called me that before.

—Guess it was just the heat of the moment, Sergeant Barnes. I like your name.

[mvst4far]

hmmmm what about a headcanon for AJ casually playing with your hair?? post-sex, curled up on the couch—doesn’t matter. he just always has his hands in it if he can. definitely feel like he’s the type. would love to see what you do with it!! 🫶

AJ MLIST

warnings ─ mentions of previous sex (obviously), slight smut but there's warnings, and lots of fluff!

a/n ─ i hope this was what you meant 😭

AJ is definitely the kind of guy to smoke cigarettes after having sex. Sometimes, would even let you have a few puffs yourself. He believed that it was unhealthy (despite him smoking) to smoke after such intimate activities, which was why he rarely let you have any.

AJ's hands wouldn't sit still once being curled up in each other's embrace. Either tracing small circles on your back, running his fingers through your hair, or grazing the pad of his thumb over your cheek.

After being the most roughest and dirtiest man beneath the sheets, AJ's pupils would be dilated with pure awe as he watched you attempt to tame your tousled hair. Catching him staring, he would just drift his gaze away and act like he wasn't staring at you like you were some sort of an angel.

If the two of you were to watch a movie afterwards, AJ would let you pick whatever sappy romance. In his opinion, they were unrealistic, boring, and ended all the same. But, if it made you happy, then he was happy.

AJ is huge on aftercare. Sure, he appeared tough and cold, but with you, he was a whole new man. Giving your aching back, shoulders, or legs massages after having sex to help your tense muscles relax a little.

When it came to having a bath, AJ would fill the bath up with a bunch of bubbles, sprinkle a few rose petals around, and light a couple of candles. He'd have your back pressed against his chest the whole time, his lips never leaving your bare shoulders, and the side of your neck.

If the two of you were taking a shower instead, AJ would wash your hair, and body for you. He knew that you were very much capable of doing it yourself, but he couldn't help but take care of his favorite girl.

"C'mon, baby, just let me wash your hair for you." He sighs, squeezing the shampoo into the palm of his hand.

"I can do it myself, you know," You grumble, pushing his hand away. "You're treating me like I'm some broken doll."

AJ watches as you scoff and roll your eyes, purposely being difficult to spite him. "Broken doll? That's not what I'm trying to do." He turns you around, his long fingers making their way into your hair. "I'm just lookin' after you, since I completely destroyed you in bed." A teasing smirk made its way across his lips.

You huff but couldn't deny the small smile curving over your lips.

God, he was so irritating but hot at the same time.

AJ who would make you a warm cup of tea afterwards. He'd want to make sure your throat was warm and not itchy (yk why).

AJ, whispering sweet nothings into your ear after having sex. The gentle praises, and comforting words, filling your ears perfectly. He'd tell you over, and over how beautiful you are, and how well you did for him.

Speaking about whispering sweet nothings, AJ would also be praising you with the most dirtiest words ever. Saying you were such a good girl for him, being on your best behaviour, how your gummy walls were clenching around his large, veiny dick perfectly, and your tits bouncing in the most perfect way ever as he plowed into you.

After shooting his warm seed inside of you, both of your juices mixing, AJ would lean down and kiss, suck, and slurp your pussy clean. Why use towels when he had a perfectly good tongue?

If you were situated on top and riding AJ, he would make sure to pay special attention to your thighs. Knowing that riding could completely tire you out, he'd lay you down short after and kiss your legs all over.

"Stay still," AJ chuckles against your thigh, attempting to still your squirming. He knew that kissing your bare legs could be quite ticklish, but he was determined to keep you satisfied.

"It tickles!" You giggle, smile wide with pearly white teeth showing.

He nods in acknowledgment, tracing invisible circles over your knee. "I know, baby, I know." He murmurs between kisses. "But, I need you still for me, okay? You're going to accidentally kick me in the nose if you keep this up."

After a few more seconds, you began to slowly calm down and let him press feathery kisses all over. But, as time continues on, he began to become a little more bold.

Kisses becoming more rough, beginning to suck on your skin and leave bruises, and slowly inching closer to where you needed him the most..

taglist: @alealuvshayden @anakinstwinklebunny @divineani @estranged-girl @fredswrite

[hollyhomburg]

Before I Leave You (Pt.83)

(Sneak Peek) (Omegaverse au, Mafia au, Bts x Reader)

Summary: soulmate bonds come in many shapes- like matching tattoos, picking the same house color, and mating bites... but those are no big deal right?

Tags: Hurt/comfort, Angst, Fluff, Discussions of past trauma, the good type of crying, lots of bickering, an attempt at humor brief blood, mating bites, discussion of asexual episodes/coping mechanisms

W/c: 20.6k

A/n: wow its been a moment since i've updated bily! i've been working on another series too- hold your breath and count to seven, if you've ever wanted to see what hobi would be like as a pack alpha- i think you'll like it alot. it's also referenced a little bit that its an alternative universe of bily so! i feel like i should mention it here.

Previous part- Masterlist - First part

The moon is high in the sky, winking like Hobi's crooked smile. The sound of crickets litters the tall grass, and the peepers across the way make for pleasant background noise.

Summer is here and in full swing. Is it August or July? Does it matter at all when summer always feels like this, always tastes like lemonade and sunshine? Noodle is sitting on the stone wall, tail wagging, pink collar catching the light from the living room, the kitchen, and upstairs. Every light in the house is on. Moths buzz around the streetlight.

The pack has taken to hanging curtains on the porch to keep the pollen out and off of the furniture, the stand still in the lack of breeze. Hobi's big Boston ferns hang between the translucent fabric. And the whole space has this light and airy, almost fantasy-like atmosphere with Jungkook's fairy lights and Tae's pink outdoor furniture. now still and unfilled under the cover of darkness.

Noodle's eyes narrow at the fireflies hovering over Hobi's garden beds. Overflowing with winding tomatoes, heavy and sweet.

His tail flicks.

You and Hoseok burst out onto the porch when the thunder of footsteps. Noodle scatters with a belabored yowel. The curtains ripple with your movement. Giggles stifled behind hands, your hand in his, him pulling you along, down the steps and over the stones, shoes untied because you’d pulled them on in a hurry.

“Hurry! Before they figure it out!”

Maybe it’s just your imagination, but you swear you almost hear something when you start the car, maybe just Namjoon’s concerned tone from the upstairs as you escape unnoticed. Hoseok backs out sloppily, almost hitting your mailbox while you click your seatbelt. half falling over the center console.

He reaches over the console to take your hand in his, lifts it to his mouth as he turns out of your street one handed. Smile stretching against your skin.

Hoseok always looks particularly good at nighttime. The way that shadows wrap his elegant face, like a bud that’s barely blooming. You love his smile lines, his tousled hair, the crack of his giggle in the air. Everything.

You love everything about him, you tell him. The back of your hand still pressed to his lips.

“I love you. Don’t make it weird.” Hoseok licks the back of your hand, “gah!” you squirm trying to pull your hand away but his grip on you only strengthens. He doesn’t even reply.

He’s just turning down the steep hill when he realizes, letting go of your hand to pat his side, then the other. “Ah fuck- forgot my wallet.”

“I’ve got mine.” You say, holding up the fluffy bunny purse shoved in the middle pocket of his sweatshirt. The same one that jimin and tae gave you on your first date so long ago. It's ears flop in the wind, the windows down to let in the nighttime air.

“Need my ID for this.”

“Oh? Yeah you might be right...”

You’ve cut your hair shorter for summer. Hoseok likes it, you and Tae are opposites now, you with short hair and her with long. Hoseok tugs on one of the locks as he turns. By the time he rolls to a smooth stop in front of the house you stiffen.

Yoongi is already waiting there tapping his foot. Noodle by his side and curling around his ankle, looking mad at himself for the affection or maybe at you for startling him. Tail flicking agitated.

He's in his matching pjs, a black and white gingham top and bottom, a translucent face mask over his face, a bowl of Oreo ice cream in one hand, and Hoseok’s wallet in the other.

You roll to a stop in front of him, both of you grinning uneasily. Yoongi doesn't make any expression, just blinks at both of you. Substantially unimpressed.

Coming Saturday May 24th @ 5pm EST (Time Zone Adjustments Below)

[aftertheleaving]

IMPULSE CONTROL III

Pairing: Aged up!Damian Wayne x Reader

Genre: Angst to softness, slow burn-ish

Word Count: 422

Warnings: Emotional repression, overthinking, mentions of distance/travel, typical Batfam miscommunication

Notes: Part 3 of the Impulse Control series! Damian navigates the two weeks of her absence—and realizes love is... persistent. You can read this as a standalone, but it hits better if you've read parts i and ii.

It’s been exactly two weeks since she left. Three, if you count from the day she told him. Not that he’s counting. He’s just aware. Precisely. Painfully.

She said it was temporary — a month abroad for an opportunity she “couldn’t pass up,” and of course, he hadn’t tried to stop her. That would’ve been selfish. And he wasn’t selfish.

Except, maybe, he is.

Because he still replays the words in his head every night. Still remembers the look on her face, soft with excitement and the tiniest bit of worry. Still remembers how he’d stood there in the lobby of that damn museum, hands balled in his pockets, jaw tight as he simply nodded.

No protest. No confession. No reason for her to stay.

Now here he is, in the Batcave, suited up too early for patrol, pacing like a caged thing while Alfred quietly pretends not to notice. His comm is quiet. His brothers are late. That’s when he feels it again — the restlessness, the static in his chest that only ever showed up since she left.

He sinks onto the ledge near the monitor bank and exhales sharply through his nose.

It’s stupid. It’s pathetic.

He already knows he’s in love with her — had admitted that much to himself after the third night he’d stared up at her lit window from the rooftop, half hoping she’d magically be there again, scrawling into that notebook with the calm steadiness he used to mock and now finds himself missing.

But somehow it still surprises him, the depth of it. It’s not lessening with time. It’s sharpening.

That’s what pisses him off most.

He scowls, running a hand through his hair. His phone — which he’s not supposed to have during mission prep — buzzes in his utility belt. He considers ignoring it, until he sees her name flash across the lockscreen.

His pulse stutters. Then he reads:

> "Cutting trip short. Something exploded over here and everyone's being sent back. Be back in 3 days, Wayne."

That’s all it says. Short. Direct. So her.

He stares at the message for a long moment. Then a slow, involuntary breath slips out of him — not a sigh, not really a laugh — just relief, so raw and unexpected it startles him. His grip on the phone tightens.

He doesn’t reply. Not yet.

But the grin tugging at the edge of his mouth doesn’t leave for the rest of the night.

I believe @ur-mums-house asked for a pt 2 on pt 2 of Impulse Control soooo here is PART 3.

[cherrywriterrr]

Haunted (chapter one)

bodyguard!rafe x reader series

strong language, smut (18+ explicit content), graphic violence, blood/injury, captivity, emotional manipulation, talking about death, trauma responses, unhealthy relationship dynamics, age gap (consensual, adult) ,mentions of sexual assault (not between main characters), sexual tension (consensual, but intense), dark themes overall.

readers discretion is strongly advised. mdni. 18+ only.

introduction

➽──────────────❥

he’s leaning against your bedroom door like it personally insulted him.

backwards cap, jaw tight, gloved hand twitching against the grip of the gun holstered at his hip like he wants someone to break in. you wouldn’t be surprised if he staged it himself just for the thrill.

you’re half in bed, half out. one bare leg kicked free of the silk sheets, a white tank top and no bra — because you can.

“you could at least knock,” you mutter, twisting your hair up in one lazy fist just to feel his eyes move. “or do the hired thugs just walk in now?”

“not a thug,” he says flatly. “a babysitter.”

you roll your eyes, lips parting into a spoiled, mocking smile. “mm, right. my personal stalker. forgot.”

his jaw clenches again. if it were anyone else, it might be fear. with him, it’s something meaner. something hotter.

he hates you.

you give him a reason to.

he’s only here because your father didn’t want you alone. not today.

today marks three years. three years since your mother’s throat was slit in a hotel elevator — and the security footage was leaked before the coroner even zipped her up. your father was abroad. you were home. and there were enough pills in the marble bathroom sink to make headlines.

you survived, though. of course you did.

because perfect, arrogant, untouchable girls don’t die — they haunt.

and your punishment for living is him.

rafe fucking cameron.

he’s barely older than you. just enough for it to piss you off. tall, southern, clean trigger record with a dirtier mouth than you’ve ever heard. a body that makes security cameras glitch. hands that belong on weapons or waistlines and nowhere in between. and he’s made it very clear he thinks you’re unbearable.

“you don’t have to stare,” you mutter now, tipping your head toward the window, the moonlight slicing through your thighs like porcelain. “i’m not gonna jump.”

he doesn’t move.

you smile again, slow and poisonous. “what, scared i’ll land on your truck? dent your precious masculinity?”

he doesn’t bite. doesn’t blink.

instead, he moves forward — slow, precise steps, the kind that come from training. or rage. or both.

he stops just short of the bed.

“you took too many once,” he says, voice low and gravelled. “so don’t expect me to look away. not tonight.”

you freeze, lashes fluttering. something in your stomach twists — embarrassment? guilt?

no. you don’t feel guilt anymore.

“that was a long time ago,” you say. “i don’t even remember it.”

“i do.”

you look at him.

he looks back like he could kill you if he wanted. like he wants to.

and god, it does something to you.

“what’s the matter, cameron?” you purr. “tired of guarding your favorite brat?”

his nostrils flare.

you sit up a little, letting the strap of your tank fall off your shoulder like an accident. “your voice gets all low when you’re mad. it’s kinda hot.”

“shut up.”

you grin. “make me.”

rafe exhales sharply through his nose. his jaw ticks. his eyes drop to your mouth and stay there.

and suddenly the air between you goes nuclear.

because it’s not just hate. not just history. not just a rich girl in grief and a bodyguard with a bruised soul. it’s something else now. something no one dares to name.

“you’re not special, princess,” he says quietly, voice coated in contempt. “just another arrogant little girl with daddy’s money and too much time.”

“then why are you still standing here?”

“because if you take one fucking pill tonight, it’s my head on the block.”

“is that the only reason?” you ask, tilting your head, hair falling like honey against your shoulder. “not because you like watching me squirm?”

rafe’s hands curl into fists.

“you think you’re so powerful,” he mutters. “because you smile while you bleed.”

“maybe i am.”

“you’re not. you’re just broken. and bored. and so fucking used to being worshipped that you don’t know what it means when someone actually sees you.”

your breath catches.

he leans in.

“and i see you.”

silence.

the tension is thick, hot, awful. you swallow it like venom.

he straightens again, backing off. jaw tight, eyes colder.

“get some sleep,” he says. “your father wants you alive tomorrow.”

and then he turns — walks out without a second glance.

your legs are still shaking.

you let him go. for five whole seconds.

and then you’re slipping out of bed like sin itself, bare feet silent against the hardwood as you pad out into the hall.

the mansion is quiet. dark. all marble and echo and curated grief.

he’s halfway to the staircase when you speak.

“you gonna kiss me goodnight, or what?”

he stops. his back tenses.

slowly, rafe turns. his mouth is a straight, dangerous line.

“go back to bed.”

you raise a brow. arms folded under your tits, which you know are sitting real nice in that thin little tank. “aw. don’t be shy now. you wanted to be in here five minutes ago.”

he stares at you.

you tip your head. innocent. infuriating. “what, cat got your tongue?”

rafe doesn’t say a word. just stalks back down the hallway toward you, his boots heavy against the floor like threats.

you stay planted.

he gets in your face. you feel him before you even see him — heat and leather and danger. he’s close enough to taste. close enough that if you leaned in, your mouths would brush.

“you don’t fucking get it, do you?” he mutters, voice barely a growl.

“oh, i get it,” you hum. “you’re obsessed with me.”

“i’m this close,” he hisses, holding up two fingers, “to putting your spoiled ass back in that bed myself.”

you smile, slow and smug. “jeez, cam. take a girl to dinner first.”

his eye twitches.

and before you can blink, he grabs your wrist. not rough — but firm. solid enough to make your breath catch.

“fine,” he snaps. “you wanna act like a brat? i’ll treat you like one.”

you let out a surprised laugh as he turns and drags you back toward your bedroom. “jesus, okay! get a grip!”

“i’ve got a grip,” he mutters. “you should be fucking scared of what happens when i lose it.”

you’re still grinning. too delighted for your own good. god, he’s mad.

he kicks your bedroom door open with his boot and pulls you inside.

you stumble, laughing.

he turns and shuts it with a thud, stepping into your space again — way too close.

your pulse is thrumming.

“you keep pushing me,” rafe says, eyes dark, voice low. “and i swear to god, if i catch you outside that bed again tonight…”

he pauses. looks you dead in the eye.

“i’ll sleep in here. on that fucking chair. all night. you want that, princess? wanna wake up to me in the corner every morning until your daddy says otherwise?”

you stare at him.

your mouth opens — then closes. then opens again.

because fuck, you want it. and he knows it.

and worst of all? he wants it too.

you smile. not sweet this time. something twisted. breathless.

“well,” you whisper. “if you’re gonna keep threatening me like that…”

he stares at your mouth. your lips. that sliver of your thigh peeking out from the tank hem.

“…maybe i’ll start misbehaving on purpose.”

he doesn’t flinch at first.

just stands there, jaw ticking, arms crossed, watching you with a look that could skin a man alive. he’s not stupid — he knows what you’re doing. poking. pushing. peeling the scab until it bleeds.

“jesus christ,” he mutters. “you’re exhausting.”

you just grin, all sharp teeth and sin. “you’re obsessed with me.”

“delusional,” he fires back.

“dominant.”

“insufferable.”

you lean forward on your toes, lips parted like a fucking promise.

“you’re gonna crack one day, cameron,” you whisper. “and when you do? it’s gonna be messy.”

he rolls his eyes and turns toward the door again, like if he doesn’t look at you, he might not fucking strangle you.

and that’s when you say it.

quiet. careless.

“maybe i’ll just take the pills again.”

he freezes.

you tilt your head. “leave a cute little note this time. real poetic. maybe in lipstick.”

his back is stone.

you don’t stop.

“will say you did it, of course,” you smile, walking toward him. “that you were obsessed with me. couldn’t handle the rejection. couldn’t take no for an answer.”

he turns around.

and for the first time tonight, rafe looks dangerous.

“don’t fuck around like that,” he says lowly, voice thick with something that’s not anger. not exactly.

you shrug. “i’m just saying. it’d make a good story.”

“you think this is a joke?”

“you’re here to make sure i don’t do anything, aren’t you?” you blink up at him, wide-eyed and wicked. “so do your job, cam. or don’t.”

he’s across the room in seconds. grabbing your face.

not rough, not gentle — somewhere in the middle. fingers on your jaw, breathing through his teeth like it’s taking every ounce of strength not to do something worse.

his eyes are raging.

“don’t say shit like that,” he snarls. “not even to fuck with me.”

you blink, lashes brushing his knuckles. “i fuck with you all the time.”

“that was different.”

you don’t look scared. not even close.

your mouth tips into a smile. small. deadly.

“so you do care.”

he lets you go like you burned him. backs off, jaw clenched, breathing shallow.

you don’t move. just stare.

“don’t flatter yourself,” he mutters.

you say nothing. because you both know it’s a lie.

➽──────────────❥

“you’re really fucking sleeping in here?”

he doesn’t even look up. just grunts from the chair by your window, legs stretched out, one boot already kicked off, the other hanging loose.

his gun is still strapped to his thigh like he’s expecting the devil to climb through the walls, and his stupid hat is tilted low over his eyes like this is some kind of sleepover.

“don’t flatter yourself,” he mumbles.

you cross your arms. “seriously?”

he doesn’t answer. adjusts his belt, shifts in the chair, and exhales like he owns the place.

you glare at him. “you know that chair cost more than your fucking salary, right?”

“good. comfortable enough to watch your spoiled ass all night then.”

“fuck you.”

he huffs a dry laugh. “tried that already. you’re not my type.”

“please,” you snort. “your type’s whatever makes you feel like a man for five seconds.”

“and yours is whatever breathes near a bank account.”

the silence after that is thick. not empty—just waiting. like the moment before a car crash. like thunder holding its breath.

you crawl into bed, spine to the wall, refusing to look at him.

and yet—you feel him. heavy. still. an itch under your skin you can’t scratch.

the moonlight cuts a silver line across the room and lands on him. his neck. his hands. one of them flexes, knuckles tight, jaw moving like he’s chewing glass.

you close your eyes.

then open them again.

“you gonna stare at me all night?”

“not if you stay in bed.”

“you’d love that, huh?” you smile into the dark. “me nice and quiet. legs closed. mouth shut.”

“jesus,” he mutters, running a hand down his face. “you ever stop?”

“nope.”

he mutters something under his breath. something that sounds a lot like fucking brat.

you roll onto your side, dragging the sheets with you.

the room’s too hot. your mouth’s too dry. and you can hear everything — the creak of the leather under his weight, the way he exhales through his nose, the slow, measured breathing of a man who’s trying real fucking hard not to snap.

you smile.

“sweet dreams, cam.”

he doesn’t say a word.

but his fingers twitch on the trigger.

you open your eyes again, voice low but sharp, slicing through the quiet like a blade.

“if someone comes in here to kill me, just let ’em. tell my dad you tried your best, whatever the fuck that means. at least i’d be spared the misery of living like this.”

he stills.

slowly straightens up in the chair like a rope’s been pulled through his spine, jaw locking tight. the lazy, half-asleep look he wore a second ago is gone—replaced by something colder. harder.

“what misery?” he snaps. “you’ve got everything anyone could ever wish for. a house the size of a goddamn hotel. people who move when you blink. closets full of shit you don’t even wear. what the hell do you mean ‘misery’?”

you sit up, blanket pooling around your hips. “oh, so that’s what you think, huh? that money and nameplates make someone happy? that i’m just some rich bitch who cries for attention?”

“you said it, not me.”

“fuck you, rafe.”

“don’t,” he growls, standing now. “don’t act like you’re the only person who’s ever had it hard. i’m not saying what happened to you isn’t real. but don’t come at me with this ‘let me die’ bullshit like you’re some helpless girl trapped in a tower. you’re not.”

you stare at him, chest rising, heat blooming behind your ribs.

“you think watching you waste yourself would be easy for me?” his voice drops now, tighter. lower. “you think i wouldn’t have to carry that with me for the rest of my life?”

you blink.

“cam…”

he steps back, shaking his head, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to physically pull himself together. “just… shut up and go to sleep.”

“you’re the one yelling.”

“yeah,” he mutters. “because you make me crazy.”

you lie back down. eyes fixed on the ceiling. the air between you still sharp, but quieter now. he doesn’t sit back down in the chair, just stands there in the shadows, breathing hard like he’s run a mile.

and somehow, knowing he’s still there makes it easier to close your eyes again.

the silence stretches.

not soft, not comforting. it buzzes.

you’re almost asleep when he speaks up again.

“why do you never show your back?”

his voice is low. not aggressive this time. not teasing either. it’s… something else.

your eyes snap open, breath hitching.

“what?”

“you heard me.”

he’s leaning on the edge of the chair now, elbows on his knees, watching you in that way that makes your skin itch. “you’ll wear a dress with your ass out and a neckline that’s one wrong move from a scandal, but god forbid i see your back.”

you sit up instantly, sheet clutched to your chest like you’ve been caught naked.

“jesus, are you keeping a log of my wardrobe now?”

he shrugs. “i’m observant.”

“no, you’re nosy.”

“no,” he echoes flatly, “i just don’t trust people with secrets.”

you scoff. “good thing i don’t trust you with them either.”

but your voice is off. a little tight. a little too quick.

his eyes narrow just slightly. “so what is it?”

you cross your arms. “drop it, cam.”

he doesn’t. of course he fucking doesn’t.

“you act like you’re untouchable, like nothing sticks. but whatever it is, it’s got you spooked.”

“you’re imagining things.”

“am i?”

he’s standing again.

you glare. “i said drop it.”

but it’s too late—there’s heat creeping up your neck, your hands gripping the blanket tighter, like he might somehow see through the cotton, see you.

his voice softens, which somehow makes it worse.

“i didn’t ask to hurt you. i just asked why.”

you look away. swallow. “some things aren’t meant for people like you to see.”

he watches you for a beat.

then sits again.

and—for the first time since he showed up at your door with a loaded weapon and a dead stare—you feel like he actually saw something real.

and that’s what scares you more than anything.

he leans forward again, elbows digging into his knees like he’s bracing himself for something. voice low, slow, baiting you like he always does when he wants to get under your skin.

“what does that mean, huh?” his eyes flicker, tone sharp but steady. “does your dad know why you’re hiding your back?”

you stiffen. there’s a pause.

and then—quiet, dangerous—you say,

“no. he doesn’t.” your fingers tighten around the blanket. “and he won’t. not from me. not from anyone.”

rafe raises a brow, not even pretending to hide the way he’s studying you now”

“never say a word about what, exactly?”

you shake your head, eyes flashing. “you don’t get to ask that.”

“the fuck i don’t.”

“you’re my bodyguard, not my priest,” you snap. “and definitely not my therapist.”

his mouth twitches like he’s about to smirk—but doesn’t.

“so it’s something bad then,” he says. not a question. just an observation. “something you think would ruin the little princess image if it ever got out.”

you sit straighter, jaw clenched.

“i said drop it, cameron.”

he tilts his head, still watching. not pushing now—just waiting.

so you throw the covers over your head. not like a child—but like someone seconds away from unraveling, and desperate to protect what’s left.

you don’t see his expression change.

but you feel the air shift when he finally says—

“fine. keep your secrets. but don’t act like they won’t eat you alive eventually.”

and somehow…

it sounds less like a warning,

and more like he would know.

tags: 🏷️ @rafesbabygirlx @rafesfavegf @pluviophilis