#what branches does your prey hide in? from where do your own predators creep? the world is flat and shifting

[frogspawned]

i cannot think of a creature less suited to climbing than kangaroos. and yet the tree kangaroo endures

[animetrashlord-007]

A Knock At Midnight;; Tanjiro

Word Count;; 1.1k

Genre;; Yandere

Pairing;; Demon!Tanjiro x Reader [Demon Slayer]

Summary;;

There's a monster hunting you. Every night it comes knocking on your door, pressing your limits and toying with your sanity.

Request;;

Anon said: Can I request 15 in the summer creepy prompt with Tanjiro

Prompt 15 = The Knock!

Warnings;;

Demon!Tanjiro, horror elements, predator / prey, branding, blood

Notes;;

I'm not a fan of making characters into the thing they hate but it also just kind of wrote itself that way

My Masterlist

   It comes every night.

   Heavy knuckles rapping against your door, sharp nails scraping the log panelling of your cabin, open palms eliciting moans as the windows threaten to shatter beneath them; it comes every night, emboldened by your passivity. No matter how still you are, hands clamped over your mouth to prevent even the tremble of your lips, it always knows where you are. Shadows do little to camouflage you. When it wants you, it finds you.

   The first knock came at midnight – one loud bang that rattled the door on its hinges. Harrowed by the appearance of a stranger so far into the wilderness, you pretended you weren't home. It seemed to work, and silence fell across your property. Not a single animal dared make a sound. Not even you.

   When the sun rose and your restless sleep came to an end, you had planned to move on from the whole incident. There was no reason to dwell on it. It wasn't scary unless you allowed it to be. That had been your mindset when you swung your front door open but your resolution wavered once you saw the scorch mark branded upon the dark wood.

   It came every night henceforth.

   Even now as the clock strikes midnight and bile rises in your throat, you know it'll come. Sometimes it waits until your guard is down, arriving early or waiting until dawn is near, but it always comes. Without fail, it haunts your every night.

   And it's growing more brazen with every passing day.

   Ravenous growls flood through the crack beneath the door, followed by incessant inhalations as it sniffs you out. Your eyes flicker to the trembling wood. Groaning under the pressure of the body pressed against it, hairline fractures materialise.

   The knocking begins. It reverberates inside your skull, rattling your brain until your eyes sting. Covering your ears does naught to dampen the sound. The beast pounds against the walls without reprieve as it creeps toward your hiding spot. Past the main hall and living room and around the corner to your bedroom, taunting you all while closing the distance. Fists loosen to open palms and it's the screech of nails against wood that breaks you.

   "Go away, go away, go away," you whimper, the words wet with tears. "God, please, just leave me alone!"

   It pauses and the silence is heaven-sent.

   Taking a deep breath, you hold the air until it burns. Shivers tear down your spine. Releasing a shaky exhale, you repeat the process, willing your nerves to settle. For the first time in weeks you're able to think with some clarity. Did it leave? Did your cries satisfy it for the night? A glimmer of hope passes through your mind as you look toward the bedroom window.

   Darkness.

   There's only darkness.

   Standing on unsteady feet, you wipe away tears and snot with the back of your sleeve. You've never seen the beast, always too scared to face it. Would it be monstrous and grotesque? Would the mere sight of it petrify your very soul, sealing you within this endless nightmare? Only something truly hideous down to the core could be so relentless in its torture.

   You need to see it.

   You need to know what face it wears.

   When you reach the windowsill you expect a jumpscare, for it to reach in and rip you away from the sanctity of your home. There's nothing. No movement, no marks, no trace of the monster. You strain your eyes to catch sight of anything abnormal. It should be easy to tell – it's your own land after all – but everything looks wrong.

   Finger-like branches lurch toward you, eager to snatch you up the moment you flee. The garden pulses with a beating heart. Clouds open wide to swallow the moonlight, allowing shadows to expand along the tree line.

   If it's anywhere, it'll be there. Watching. Waiting.

   You squint into the distance.

   All is quiet.

   Leaning forward, your breath fogs the pane. With a quick swipe of your arm, you scour the landscape. Forest stretches for miles in every direction. A thick ball of saliva threatens to stick in your throat. You gulp it down before propping yourself up on your tiptoes. Your hands rest against the sill to support your endeavour, old paint flaking under your fingertips.

   Pressing your cheek against the cold window, you search the distance for any sign of movement. Moisture slides up your face. You're still, not moving even when you gasp, and yet the glass continues to lick your skin. A chilled breeze wisps past your stomach. The deafening silence of the great outdoors invades your bedroom.

   Dropping your gaze, a scream tears past your lips. Claws snap forth from shadow to wrap around your wrist. Tight enough to break skin, the hand yanks you forward. Fissures explode across the window as your face slams into the glass.

   "Caught you," your monster purrs.

   Searing pain etches into your skin where it holds you. It burns through the muscle all the way down to the bone. Your shoulder threatens to dislocate when you try to pull away. It's too strong, unnaturally so. There's a loud crack and for a moment you fear it's your wrist snapping in two but the stench of iron is coming from your cheek, not your arm. Warm blood stains the glass, creating a kaleidoscope of reds and pinks as your tears mix with it.

   Splinters break off into your hand as you push against the window, creating some space between your eye and a shard large enough to blind. When your leverage gives way you yelp. To your surprise, the beast's grounding hold is gone, and with nothing to keep you upright you crash toward the hard ground.

   Squeezing your eyes shut, you await your next dose of pain.

   It doesn't come.

   Your chest shakes as you cry, knowing what you'll see long before you force your eyes open. One limb at a time he invites himself in, bending at angles that defy the laws of nature. Your shirt tears under his jagged claws as he holds you upright. His second hand reaches for you, petting the top of your head like one would a puppy. Sharp teeth protrude from his widening lips.

   Your monster is like you, young and human and far from menacing.

   Or he was at some point at least.

   There's nothing humane in the way he regards you. To drive this point home he grabs both of your wrists, indifferent to how you wince as he inspects them. Small drops of blood trickle down one hand while the other throbs.

   Twisting the limb within his grasp, your eyes widen when you catch sight of the damage he’s left behind. The same symbol scorched upon your front door now decorates your wrist like a brand.

   "Caught you," he repeats, licking your bloody hand. "Now the real fun begins."

– If you enjoyed this, please consider liking, commenting, reblogging, and/or following! Thank you! ♡ –

[maddiewritesstucky]

Snare Me His Shadow

Pairing: Steve/Bucky

Rating: Explicit 18+

Words: 4.5k

Tags: Primal Play, Prey/Predator Kink, Fighting As Foreplay, Rough Sex, Biting, Choking, Dom/Sub Undertones, Come Swapping, Anal Sex, Overstimulation, Fucking Outdoors, Storm Sex, Poetry As An Aphrodisiac, R18 Hide And Seek

So a million years ago, @howdoyousleep3 passed on an ask from her inbox that read:

[I dont know if you’re familiar with primal play, but it’s so fucking hot. Yeah, I know, Steve is all muscle and ability, he’s strong he’s fast, he’s smart, he is not prey. Usually. But Bucky - the winter soldier - is a hunter. The best, in fact. He loves a good hunt]

...This one possessed me. Please heed the tags, this is an entirely consensual and agreed-upon game between Steve and Bucky, but it is very much a hunter/prey type situation 😈

It’s electric, like this.

Barefoot on the damp earth, navigating by muscle memory more than sight, because darkness settles that much denser beneath the tree canopy.

Steve could move faster, could take this barely-worn path through the woods behind the compound at a sprint. But fast is loud. 

Fast is leaves cracking and branches splintering, and the muted thud of footfalls on the forest floor. It’s eyes fixed only ahead so you don’t stumble, and nothing but the sound of your own exhales in your ears.

‘Fast’ gets you caught. 

The in-rolling storm crackles humid in the air, sparking against Steve’s skin as he weaves through the underbrush. He throws his every sense outwards, searching and sifting through those faint currents of movement around him, those quiet signs of life. But it’s all life out here; birds and insects and creatures who can’t bear the light, all just playing the same game he is, and every last one of them pricks at his awareness. 

Every last one of them kicks at his pulse and drip-feeds new adrenaline into his bloodstream, because experience echoes a warning way down in his cells - the apex predator comes silent as a spider. 

There’s so many eyes on him, the weight of being watched pressing down on him from all sides. He digs the heel of his hand into his arousal and pulls in a lungful of air on the cusp of rain; feels himself splintering between his warring desires to put up a worthy chase, and to drop down belly-up in the dirt.

It’s a choice that will be made for him, eventually. 

He might be strength, and speed, and strategy. But out here, he is prey. 

Out here, in these weeping woods that stretch endless into the night, Steve is achingly, exquisitely outmatched by the hunter who lies in wait; biding his time, unseen, and slipping ever closer. 

Dressed in black from head to toe, or skin bared to the shivering pulses of the forest; empty handed, or palms laden with the urge to grab and pin and possess…

The Winter Soldier is out there, and Steve’s blood runs so much hotter for the knowledge that he won’t see or hear or feel him coming until it’s too late. 

He winds his way amongst the weathered trunks, hugging the shadows and pawing at the lines of his own body; stroking his thighs and pulling at his nipples, raking fingernails over the bare skin of his stomach. It’s rough and absent and frantic all at once, a weak precursor to what he’s evading.

The dissonance of it is dizzying, hiding from the thing he wants most. He wants to cry out, to make for the clearing in the middle of the woods and sprawl shameless in the open until he’s found, but he knows the rules - run, hide, don’t make it easy.

Pursuit is the purpose, and capture is a pleasure that must be earned, no matter how raw his skin is screaming for touch. And it is screaming - he’s a copper wire stripped bare, and he shivers for every stinging snap of branch and damp drag of leaf against his body as he picks his way through the darkness. 

Hard limits apply, he’d told Bucky, the rest is up to you. 

He shudders for it now, those words and the way Bucky’s eyes had darkened for them; the way he’d leaned in to kiss his sugar-laced threat right onto Steve’s waiting lips - I will find you.

It’s only a matter of time. The forest is vast, and countless months have passed since they last played this game, but Bucky is a blade that never dulls. 

Bucky is razor-sharp, in wit, beauty, and battle; made up of midnight and silent strides when he so chooses, and he will find Steve. 

He might have had eyes on Steve this entire time; ten soundless steps behind, watching Steve’s slow descent into desperation with a smile on his face, and the mere possibility has Steve’s cock weeping through the thin fabric of his shorts. 

His fingertips dip beneath his waistband and sweep through the wetness beading at his tip; stroke that sensitive spot just beneath the head. His palm slips to press at the heavy throb in his balls and it makes his breath catch too loud in the confines of his chest, has a moan slipping out past his gritted teeth. 

He knows it’s foolish, knows he’s only making himself easier to track. But every step he takes is winding the hunt toward its inevitable climax, and intellect is giving way to instinct. 

His consciousness is beginning that steady downward drip, sinking from logic and reason to settle and swim with the dense heat pooling at the base of his spine. Soon, he’ll be nothing more than the urge rippling under his skin, the tight-squeezed air in his lungs and the thrum of blood between his thighs, and every brush of his own hands is permission to slip a little further to it. 

So he doesn’t stop. 

His feet and his fingers keep moving; his body acting now on his mind’s behalf to draw towards the river's edge, where his desperate sounds will be swept away by the unending rush of water over rock, because this is about preservation now.

It’s about surviving the voracity of his own need until he is found, until Bucky catches him, and then…god, then...

The rest is up to you.

The beginning of rainfall winds its way down through the tree canopy, and it does nothing to quell the heat radiating off Steve. He’s burning so hot for this, so hungry for it; his need only growing sharper as the atmosphere curls in thick and charged with the promise of thunder. 

It’s rumbling in the distance already, too faint for non-enhanced ears but creeping closer; a rolling bass beneath the surge of the fast flowing river up ahead. He can see the diluted black of open space through the trees now, can hear the clack of wet-tumbling stones, and it’s nothing short of delusion, the way it feels like he’s headed for sanctuary. 

Logic knows it’s a weak veil of auditory cover at best, and an outright plea for ambush at worst.

Steve knows, down in his gut, exactly which one he’s hoping for, and he sprints for it with the last of his tactical thought seeping out through the soles of his feet. 

He breaks through the tree line, hitching a gasp as he stumbles out into the full force of the downpour. It’s coming down heavy, sluicing at the fever-sweat clinging to his skin, and he tilts his face up towards it; lets his eyes drift shut and his shoulders drop as he bares his throat to the purple-black sky. 

His pulse riots for the sheer abandon of the gesture, of shifting his posture to one of invitation in the midst of evasion. It only spurs him on, makes him want to find out just how shrill that siren in his cells will wail when he refuses to curl in on himself. 

He forces his hands open at his sides, turns his palms outwards and walks further out onto the exposed riverbank. He stands ankle deep in the river with his heart in his throat, soaked to the bone and all but shaking with the desire to drop to his knees in submission.

And that’s when he hears it. 

The slow-whistled high note, followed by a low; the signal that shivers from the top of Steve’s spine to the cradle of his hips.

Found you. 

It’s a question as much as a warning, that signal; a chance for Steve to respond in their shared language of gesture whether he wants the chase, or the fight. 

As if he hadn’t made up his mind the moment they agreed to play tonight.

As if he’s not done for either way. 

He pulls in a shuddering breath, his skin prickling with the presence he can sense now off to his left. Survival instinct begs him to open his eyes, to scour his surroundings and prepare for what’s coming, but he only shuts them tighter. 

He grins up at the pelting rain, curls his quivering right hand into a fist, and beats it against his drenched, heaving chest.

Take me down where I stand. 

Thunder rumbles overhead and shakes the stones underfoot. Steve’s blood beats frantic in his ears, one heartbeat stumbling over the next, and he waits, waits for the blow he doesn’t want to see coming.

A foot to the back of his knees, an arm wrapped around his throat, a strike of unyielding metal between his shoulder blades...it’s never the same twice, and it’s always better than the time before, and he can’t stop the desperate whimper that falls from his parted, rain-slick lips.

“Bucky!” he pleads, hurling it into the current of the storm raging around him.

“Steve,” comes the answer from directly behind him; the word falling across his skin in the split second before teeth sink deep into the meat of his shoulder.

It’s nothing short of wanton, the way Steve cries out with it. 

Five fingers curl a punishing grip around the column of his throat and a soaking wet body plasters against his back, and Steve doesn’t even try to hold his centre of gravity as he’s wrestled down to the riverbank.

It’s a messy takedown, raw force over skill; dripping all the same desperation that’s been twisting hot in Steve’s gut all night. Bucky pins him belly-down against the stones at the river’s edge, the full weight of his body draped over him, and Steve knows the tremor he can feel humming through Bucky’s muscles has nothing to do with the cold.

“The river,” Bucky growls; metal forearm jammed against the back of Steve's neck, “of course you came to the river.”

Steve squirms giddy beneath Bucky’s mass, beneath that deep-thrumming power crushing down on him. 

The storm-swollen current reaches up the bank to wash shallow and frigid beneath Steve’s cheek, his chest; against his nipples and his thighs and his cock inside his drenched shorts. It’s cold enough to draw gooseflesh across the bared expanse of his skin, but fuck if that persistent rush doesn’t feel like getting tongued; like every single time Bucky’s ever slipped an ice cube in his mouth and sucked him off just to see him hit the ceiling. 

“Buck...” 

It’s the only word that makes sense anymore. Steve gets his elbows under himself and pushes his body up, but only so much as to feel the stifling weight of Bucky on top of him. 

Bucky’s hand slips to the front of his throat and grips him tight up under the line of his jaw; tips his head back to get his lips and teeth pressed hard against Steve’s ear.

“Steven...did you even try?” 

The rain and the river aren’t enough to sweep away the mockery in his tone. He’s shifting himself on top of Steve, putting scant inches of space between their bodies, and Steve knows this cue; grins bright and breathless for it.

He digs his hands in against the riverbed, plants his knees and shoves upwards. He heaves his weight forward and Bucky’s grip loosens just enough to let it happen, to let Steve crawl and clamber a few meager feet forwards.

Steve knows it’s a false freedom but he laughs half-hysterical for it anyway, and even more so when Bucky’s hands are catching him again, clamping bruising tight at his hips and grappling him onto the flat of his back. 

He winces at the battering strike of rain against his face, but it’s just as soon blocked by the cover of Bucky caging him in; replaced by the tepid drips rolling off Bucky’s perpetually warm skin. 

Steve’s body reacts the way it thinks it’s supposed to, going through the motions of trying to throw Bucky off - strength funneled into a forearm arm pressing here, a knee striking there. But it’s pointless; sabotaged by the underlying truth that the only place Steve really wants to be is stuck exactly where he finds himself - pinned pliant beneath his predator.

He lets himself look, then; lets his gaze slip down between them to drag over the length of Bucky’s body. He’s bared to the elements just the same as Steve - not a stitch on him save for running shorts that barely hit at mid-thigh. His hair is pulled back, and he’s soaked to the bone, and when lightning splits the darkness in two and catches on the angles of his face, that raw perilous beauty strikes a blow all of its own to the center of Steve’s chest.

“You win,” Steve rasps, dragging his voice up from the pit of his billowing lungs.

Bucky’s answering laugh is darker than the wet-ink midnight pressing in on them, and it shudders all the way to Steve’s bones when Bucky sinks down to purr ominous against the vulnerable stretch of his neck.

“Not yet, I haven’t.”

The ravenous clamp of teeth on his throat sends Steve’s body bowing, writhing for that merciless bite that doesn’t break the skin, but makes purpled ruin of what lies beneath. Fascia and blood vessels and Steve’s sanity, all broken down in the transcendent grind of Bucky’s jaw, the heat of his mouth; all over Steve’s neck and his chest and his belly, and it’s so feral, the way Steve wants it. 

He wants the shred of busted stitching and the shock of rain against newly bared skin as his shorts are torn from his body.

He wants the red welts raked down his rib cage, the kiss-split lip and the deep set imprints of Bucky’s teeth all up the insides of his thighs. 

Bucky’s touch is heavy and he means it to be; his shifting, squeezing grip claiming handfuls of Steve’s willing flesh wherever he can get it. And he can get it everywhere - every last inch of Steve’s body splayed out for him in tribute to his prowess, and Steve wants him to take it. 

He wants Bucky to make sacrilege of it out here under the split-open skies, until it feels like heaven itself is sobbing for it. 

“Fuck me,” ruin me, desecrate me, arch-backed and bleeding-lipped in the dirt, “Bucky, fuck me…” 

Steve begs with all of himself, legs split and arms thrown above his head; dripping sweat and storm and half-crazed surrender. Like he actually has to plead for this, like Bucky’s not already stuffing searching fingers up between his cheeks to grope for the base-end of silicone that says Steve’s body is primed for the taking.

Bucky bites taunting denial into his skin, over and over. ‘No,’ even as he pulls the plug from Steve’s body and replaces it with his fingers. ‘No’ growled against Steve’s body every time he begs now, and please, and I’m ready, just to fray that tenuous thread of Steve’s resolve. 

Steve’s delirious with it, crying out high and sharp for the stretch of cold metal inside him and the drip of remnant lube. He chants Bucky’s name and reaches out with clinging, clawing hands that only get batted away; that get caught at the wrists and pinned down, and Bucky’s laughing at him. 

Bucky is toying with him, leaving him empty and climbing back up over his body to graze teeth over Steve’s cheekbones, to whisper sweet mockery against Steve’s lips before he kisses them bruising-hard.

“Tell me you want it,” Bucky coos, clamping his hand over Steve’s mouth and pushing the clothed head of his cock up against Steve’s hole. 

Steve sobs against his palm. He forces the words out wet and incomprehensible onto Bucky’s skin; again and again as Bucky tuts and tells him to speak the fuck up. 

Tears are streaming free from the corners of his eyes and his legs are hooking desperately around Bucky’s waist, and he knows that Bucky wants this just as bad. He can feel Bucky shaking and shuddering under the strain of holding back and holding out, trying to push Steve closer to his breaking point just because that’s what Steve wants; devotion at its most deranged.

“Don’t cry, baby,” Bucky laps at the tears tracking down Steve’s face, letting up his hand from Steve’s mouth only to settle it heavy on his throat. 

He slips his other hand down between them to shove at his shorts, fighting the clinging fabric down far enough to get his cock free, and then they’re both groaning for the rub of naked skin on skin. 

“Buck,” Steve chokes out a half-strangled cry as Bucky sinks his whole weight onto him, dragging his stomach over Steve’s weeping cock and rocking his own into the crease of Steve’s hip. 

“Tell me you want it?” Bucky says again, a question this time instead of a taunt. 

Steve’s rasp of yes, fuck, do it barely makes it past his lips before Bucky’s cock is pushing into him.

There’s no hesitance, no pretense of patience to it. Bucky doesn’t finesse it and Steve doesn’t want him to - he didn’t spend half the night skulking through the woods in the middle of a fucking thunderstorm just to get taken the way he would be in the sanctity of their bed.

Steve came out here to get fucked vicious, and Bucky knows better than to pull his punches.

He shoves brutal and punishing into the tight heat of Steve’s body, knocking the air from Steve’s lungs and the sense from his psyche. 

He’s tucking words up against Steve’s ear, something lilting and familiar, and the roar of Steve’s own blood and the groaning sky above don’t drown out Bucky’s voice so much as darken it’s edges; slip a rumbling bass beneath it’s baritone. Steve loses himself in the well-worn rhythm long before the words catch up to sink hooks into his ribcage.

“O Hunter, snare me his shadow,” Bucky hums, “O Nightingale, catch me his strain…else moonstruck with music and madness...I track him in vain.”

Steve would weep, if he had it in him to do anything other than lay there flat on his back and take it. 

Bucky grinds in blinding-deep and stays there, rocks there; drips poetry all over the side of Steve’s neck like he’s not fucking him fit to kill.

He squeezes Steve’s throat until his eyes roll back, swats at Steve’s cheek and pulls merciless on his hair. He stuffs fingers into Steve’s gaping mouth deep enough to gag on, and hinges Steve’s jaw open so he has no choice but to set loose every raw, wrecked sound Bucky knocks out of him. 

It’s fucking flawless.

“Give me one,” Bucky growls. 

Steve needs no clarification beyond the spearing of Bucky’s cock into his prostate, and he reaches down between their bodies to jerk himself frantic and heavy-handed. 

It should be pitiful, how little it takes. But it’s been mounting for what feels like hours, and when Bucky wrenches himself abruptly from Steve’s body to slap a hand down square over Steve’s balls and his slick, aching asshole, that orgasm crests with near-painful force.

“Fuck!” Steve’s wracked with it, shuddering and flinching from it like it’s not the makings of his very own flesh and blood. 

Bucky doesn’t even wait for it to be over before he’s dipping down to lap at it; rubbing his cheek and his chest and his belly through Steve’s release on his slow crawl back up to spit it into Steve’s mouth.

“Don’t you fuckin’ swallow it,” he warns, pressing his thumb to the seam of Steve’s lips, “I want it back.” 

Steve’s body is sparking chaotic, crying too soon and too much just as loud as it’s screaming too good as Bucky grips him by his sodden hair and buries his cock back inside him; falling into rhythm like he never stopped thrusting in the first place.

He wants to moan, wants to cry out for that welcome knifepoint of forced pleasure building within him, but the desperate sounds creeping onto his tongue are every bit as caged as the come he can’t swallow. 

Which is the whole point, Steve flushes submissive to realize - Bucky’s got him gagged without even touching him. 

He twines his limbs up around Bucky’s body, groping and pulling at him like there’s still an insufferable distance left to close. The guttural moans Bucky’s spilling into the crook of his neck only render Steve’s own noises even more pathetic; huffing high and reedy the longer they remain trapped in his throat. 

“Christ, listen to you...”

Bucky pushes up onto his elbows to stare down at Steve, to watch the play of desperation on his face. 

He’s no less transparent himself in how affected he is, a lifetime of ceaseless want spelled out in his gaze; hunger and rapture and the kind of adoration Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever fully earn, not really.

But it’s all right there, in the way Bucky’s looking at him; the way he’s bearing the howling force of the storm against his back just to give Steve this, and Steve is sunk.

Steve is nothing more than the sweet ruin of his body and the near painful swell of his heart for the multitudes that Bucky contains. A death sentence if you ask the history books and still the better half of Steve’s soul, Bucky is the boundless shadow and blinding light of Steve’s entire existence; his every reason for being and doing and fucking trying, after all these years. 

It would be terrifying, if Steve weren’t bone-deep certain that he’s the axis Bucky’s world spins on, too.

“You found me...” 

The words are almost a sob hitching off Steve’s tongue, pitched fuck-drunk and slurred around his mouthful of himself. 

He’s breaking the rules and he knows it; half hopes for the crack of an open palm against his cheek for it. But the look Bucky hits him with lands harder than any physical strike could hope to; taking Steve’s face firm between his hands and staring down at him like there’s never been a truth so vital, so dire.

“I will always find you, Steve.” 

And that’s just it, isn’t it? The one thing their shared existence will always narrow down to. There’s nowhere either of them could go that the other wouldn’t tear the world apart to get to, and the scant inches of distance between them right now might as well be oceans for all Steve’s burning inside to cross them. 

He cups his hands around Bucky’s neck and arches up, pulls him down; pleading with everything but words for Bucky’s mouth on his, and Bucky doesn’t make him wait. He meets Steve right there in the delirium with lips and tongue and moans that rival the swelling thunder; sucking the taste of Steve off his tongue and dripping a starved groan into his mouth in its place.

“I wanna make you come,” he says, like he hasn’t already dragged one out of him, “tell me you’re gonna come.” 

“Fuck, I am, I’m gonna come...” 

“Say it’s for me, Steve, tell me it’s mine.” 

Steve nods so hard, he can feel a bruise bloom at the base of his skull where it grates against the riverstone. Of course it’s for Bucky, everything’s for Bucky; every breath in his lungs and every beat of his stricken, obsessed heart. The sensations within him are mounting too immense, too desperate to be named pleasure, but they’re careening all the same towards the one thing Bucky wants from him, and it will only ever be Bucky’s, this perfect agony of coming undone.

“It’s yours,” he sobs, voice weak and body shaking. "Just—fuckin’ take it from me, Buck.”

He gives up all conscious hold on himself; submits entirely to the relentless drag of Bucky’s dick against his insides and the wet rasp of rock against his back as Bucky drives deep into his surrendered body, chasing that climax for the both of them.

It burns so bright, when it hits Steve; wrenched from his core and rolling sharp through the splay of his trembling frame. He cries out with it, but the storm cries louder, Bucky cries louder; moving ceaselessly through the spasms of Steve’s orgasm and drowning in the give of Steve’s body beneath him. 

“Fuck, Steve, I—” 

“Do it,” Steve slurs, needing nothing more than the tell-tale shudder of Bucky’s body and the way he gasps Steve’s name like a warning. “In me, Buck. Do it.” 

Bucky cusses sharp, pulsing his hips as he lets go inside Steve like he can bury that seed deep enough to stick. And fuck, Steve wants it to. It’s all raw nerve on the inside but Steve never wants this to end; possessed by the slick grind of Bucky’s twitching cock and the heaving half-moans of Bucky’s breath. 

“Don’t stop,” he pleads, reaching fingertips down to where their bodies are joined, where Bucky’s stuffed into him and leaking out of him. “Keep fucking me, just—just keep—” 

Keep coming. 

Be that monstrous entity in the woods who fucks me like it’s a haunting, ’til not even an exorcism would rid me of you. 

He prods at the stretch of his swollen rim, drags his fingers through the warmth seeping out around Bucky’s cock. He wants it everywhere; brings those slick fingers up to smear over the pulse point on his neck, down the line of his throat, and Bucky heaves a moan dragged right from the marrow of his bones. 

“I won’t stop,” he grits out through clattering teeth, rocking into Steve graceless and starving. “Not gonna stop, Steve.”

It sounds as much like threat as it does promise. 

They’re both quaking with it, overstimulated and frigid cold and too achingly, crushingly lost in each other. For all the serum may have made them both to defy science and probability, to withstand war and stall the ravages of aging, it still couldn’t create a vessel vast enough to contain this - this raw, insatiable need for one another. 

“Bucky…” 

Steve looks up from the flat of his back; tips his head to offer up the stretch of his throat as he offers up a tremulous verse — a challenge — into the space between them. 

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep...” 

Recognition sparks dark and joyous in Bucky’s gaze. He catches Steve’s hands in his and threads their fingers together, palm against palm in a too-tight grip.

“But I have promises to keep,” he grins, “and miles to go before I sleep…” 

His lips are turning up wolfish; the roll of his hips turning to something liquid and long-haul, and the rain beats down just as violent as it ever did. 

Steve lets his eyes slip closed, lets the final refrain slip from his tongue before he surrenders, smiling, to the slow closing of Bucky’s teeth around his windpipe.

“...And miles to go before I sleep.” 

If you’re at all curious, the poems they quote are ‘In The Forest�� by Oscar Wilde, and ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost 😘