Archive of Our Own

The lights above your office buzz faintly as you sit behind your desk, sleeves rolled up, glasses nudged down your nose, budget spreadsheets open across three separate holo-screens. Numbers blur together after the fifth hour; requisitions, repairs, emergency funds rerouted again because someone decided to level half a training deck last week. You’re three tabs deep into the quarterly logistics budget, mid-mutter in something deeply unprofessional about vibranium cost inflation, when the door opens without a knock.

You don’t even look up at first. You just sigh softly, your pen still moving across the tablet screen, as you reconcile a supply overage with a deployment requisition. Only one person in the tower ignores the placard on your door that says LOGISTICS DIRECTOR — MEETINGS BY APPOINTMENT.

You know who it is by the weight of the footsteps, the particular confidence of someone who assumes they’re welcome everywhere they go. John’s presence announces itself to you like pressure, like gravity shifting for you to orbit him.

“Logistics Director,” John says, voice warm and smug. “You look busy.”

You snort quietly. “An incredible observation, Agent.”

“Tell me you’re almost done.” His voice is lower, edged with something restless.

You sigh. “If you’re here to distract me, Walker, I will personally redirect your entire armour budget to office plants.”

You hear John grunt, kicking his toe at the foot of your desk.

“Cruel and unusual,” he replies, skating his fingers across the corners of acquisitions and endless spreadsheets splayed out before you.

Your eyes are still locked on the computer screen in front of you. “John,” you say without looking, tone dry. “If you’re here to complain about weapons allocations again, I swear to God—”

He doesn’t let you finish.

He’s behind you before you can swivel your chair. A hand braces on the edge of your desk; the other slides lightly around your jaw, thumb tipping your chin up just enough that you have to look at him.

He’s in uniform—the uniform. U.S. Agent blues pulled taut across his broad frame, seams stretched just enough to hint at the strength beneath them. The jacket sits snug across his shoulders and chest, tailored within an inch of its life and still barely containing him. Dark fabric, sharp lines, polished hardware—everything about it is severe and controlled, all discipline and authority. And then there are his eyes.

Ice blue. Bright and unguarded. A stark, almost unfair contrast against the dark colours of the uniform, made even more striking by the beret angled just so instead of the helmet. It makes him look more human somehow. More approachable.

More dangerous, too.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and then he kisses you.

It’s fast. Heated. His tongue swipes over your lips—teasing yet insistent, breath shaky as you lean into him—but he doesn’t push deeper. His body is tight with restraint—muscles locked, posture rigid like he’s holding himself back by force—but his lips soften against yours almost immediately, like instinct overrides discipline the second you touch him back. It’s all promise and restraint; his tongue swipes again at your lips, like a date he refuses to finish. It’s just enough to steal your breath and leave you chasing the rest.

For a moment, you think—absurdly—that you could stay here all day. Just this. Kissing him between spreadsheets and crisis reports, forgetting the tower, the budgets, the constant emergencies. Let the world burn quietly outside your office while you memorise the way his mouth fits yours.

And then he pulls back.

Cool air rushes in where he’d been, brushing over your lips, your skin suddenly too aware of the absence of him. You make a sound of protest before you can stop yourself, fingers curling instinctively in his uniform, feeling the solid heat beneath the layers of fabric. You blink up at him, heat blooming in your chest and absolutely nowhere else, because he has not earned more than that.

“Oh, that is cruel,” you say flatly. “You can’t kiss me like that and then leave.”

John grins down at you, smug and boyish and wearing his U.S. Agent uniform like it’s second skin. The beret sits at a lazy angle on his head, shadowing his eyes just enough to make him look insufferably pleased with himself.

“Good afternoon to you too, darlin’,” he says. “Also, I absolutely can.”

“You’re supposed to help all civilians,” you point out, swatting at his chest, “not just swoop in here, kiss one senseless and emotionally compromise the Director of Logistics, and just disappear again.”

He hums, pretending to think about it. “Funny you say that.”

Your brows knit together. “Why?”

“Well,” he says casually, leaning back against your desk, crossing his arms, “there was this lady earlier. Asked if she could kiss me after I saved her from fallin’ off a five storey building.”

You stare at him, unimpressed. You reach up and yank the beret clean off his head.

“Hey—!”

You glare. “Unacceptable. I preferred the helmet. You’re way too snarky when I can see your face. Makes me think about you flirting with other women.”

There’s a beat of silence before he laughs, surprised, hands coming up in surrender. “You’re jokin’.”

“Am I?” You grumble, dropping the beret onto your desk. “Because you’re being very smug for a man who just bragged about getting kissed by a stranger.”

“Almost,” he corrects gently.

Then he steps closer, close enough that the arms of your chair bumps into his thighs. You feel him there, solid and warm, before his hands even settle on your shoulders.

He bends, lips brushing the top of your head, then your temple, and finally, slowly and deliberately, the hinge of your jaw. Each kiss lingers longer than the last, grounding you despite yourself.

“You’re it,” he murmurs. “The only woman I could ever dream of.”

Your chest tightens in that familiar, dangerous way. You turn your head, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. “And you’re the only man I’ll ever love.”

John freezes—just for a second, but you feel it.

He exhales, shaky and disbelieving, and when you pull back you see it: the blush spreading from his cheeks, down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his uniform.

It’s sweet—it always is. It never stops being sweet.

“Oh,” you say, smiling. “There it is.”

“Don’t—don’t tease me,” he mutters. His eyes flicker between yours and your lips, heat darkening the blue, hunger there and something softer tangled below it.

Before you can respond, the air beside your desk ripples.

Both of you jump.

Ava phases through the wall, solidifying with a grin already pulling at her mouth. “Wow. Sorry,” she says, sounding entirely not sorry at all, “did not mean to interrupt… whatever that was.”

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack,” John snaps, hand flying to his chest.

Ava laughs. “Please, you’re fine. Anyway—Walker, you’re needed. Mission briefing in ten.”

John groans. “Of course I am.”

He leans down, kisses you again—this one is firm, grounding, no teasing at all.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says.

You nod. “Don’t forget we’re seeing Mrs. Hoskins in a couple days.”

His expression softens immediately. “I know.”

“And you,” you add pointedly, eyes flicking to his beard, “need to tidy that up before seeing her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, rubbing at his beard sheepishly before saluting you with two fingers, grabbing his beret as he walks out.

“Please do!” You call out behind him, right as his hand pushes the door open. Before it can swing shut behind him, you call out one more time: “She’ll judge if you don’t!”

His laugh echoes down the corridor.

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The thing about Logistics is that nothing ever arrives all at once.

It trickles. It staggers. It arrives late, mislabelled, rerouted, or half-destroyed by decisions made three departments away by people who will never have to explain the consequences face-to-face.

You start your mornings early. Too early for most of the tower—lights dimmed, corridors hushed, the city outside still half-asleep. It’s the only time your inbox doesn’t feel like a living thing, multiplying faster than you can kill it.

By 07:00, you had already flagged three discrepancies in the Atlantic supply chain—vibranium composite plating requisitioned twice under two different project codes, a fuel allocation approved without your sign-off, and a medical shipment tagged as nonessential by someone who has clearly never watched a quinjet come back missing half its wing.

You draft emails carefully—firm but neutral, corrective without accusations. You’ve learned that tone can make or break an entire operation.

By the time the tower wakes properly, you’re on your second coffee and fielding calls from department heads who sound far too cheerful for the amount of money they’re about to ask you to move around.

“—we just need it expedited,” one of them says, voice tinny over the speaker. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “It is a problem when expedited means bypassing customs clearance. Again.”

A pause.

“Well, can’t you just—”

“No,” you say calmly. “I can’t just. If we move this shipment without authorisation and something goes wrong, it comes back on me. And on you. And on the people using the equipment when it fails.”

Silence.

Then, grudgingly: “Fine. We’ll wait.”

You hang up and exhale slowly.

This is the job. Not heroics, not headlines, just keeping the machine running without letting it crush anyone underneath.

By the time you leave, the day has worn you thin in small, unglamorous ways. Your shoulders ache. Your head hums. You stop at the market on the way home, pick up something easy for dinner, because you know John will be back late and neither of you will want to think too hard.

John gets back late that night.

You hear him before you see him—the familiar cadence of his steps in the hallway, the soft clink of gear being dropped just inside the door, the exhale he doesn’t realise he makes once he’s home. The door clicks shut behind him, sealing the rest of the world outside.

You’re halfway through reheating leftovers when his arms slide around your waist from behind, solid and warm, his chest fitting against your back like it always has.

“Hey,” he murmurs into your hair, voice low and tired.

You lean back into him automatically, muscle memory taking over, letting his weight ground you. His hands rest at your hips, thumbs pressing lightly, like he’s checking that you’re real.

“Mission okay?” You ask.

“Routine,” he says. “Nobody died. So, yeah, good day.”

You hum, flipping the lid back onto the container, the small domestic choreography seamless. He kisses the side of your head, then your neck, lingering like he’s trying to tuck himself into the space between your skin and your bones.

You eat together at the counter—knees brushing, shoulders touching. He steals a bite of your chicken without asking; you don't comment. You are more than aware that you’re already far too full to finish your plate, but this moment is too precious for you to move. The quiet between you is easy, filled only by the clink of cutlery and the distant city noise filtering through the windows.

He talks while he eats—about the briefing Ava crashed through earlier, about Bucky’s scowl and Yelena’s running commentary, about Bob nearly falling asleep halfway through and jerking awake like he’d been shot. His hands move as he talks, animated even now, even tired.

You laugh at the right moments.

You tell him about the procurement audit, the way one misplaced decimal nearly cost the tower six figures. He listens, really listens—brow furrowed, nodding along even though none of it is his world, even though it’s all numbers and policies and invisible disasters averted.

“That’s why you’re scary,” he says fondly. “People think guns are dangerous. They’ve never met someone who controls the budget.”

You snort, shaking your head, and for a moment—just a moment—the day loosens its grip. The tower fades. The noise recedes. It’s just this: shared food, shared space, the quiet understanding that tomorrow will come whether you’re ready or not, and tonight, at least, you don’t have to face it alone.

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Mrs. Hoskins’ garden feels lived-in rather than curated, the kind of place shaped by habit and affection instead of rigid planning. The earth is dark and rich, freshly turned in places where she’s been working that morning, still holding onto moisture; it smells deep and grounding, loam and decay and life all tangled together. The sun beats down relentlessly, baking the top layer of soil until it cracks in fine lines, heat radiating upward so it clings to your skin. Sweat trickles slowly down your spine, catching at the waistband of your jeans, the air heavy enough that every movement feels deliberate.

Her garden smells like damp earth and roses—rich, loamy soil turned dark by careful watering, sweetened by blooms that have been coaxed into abundance through years of patience rather than force.

The flowerbeds crowd close together in soft, unruly rows. Roses climb trellises along the fence, their petals thick and velvety—cream, blush, deep red—some already shedding onto the soil below. Lavender spills over the stone edging, fragrant and dusty, brushing your calves when you kneel too close. Black-eyed Susans and coneflowers tilt their heavy heads toward the sun, bees wobbling drunkenly between them. Further back, sunflowers stand tall and stubborn, their broad leaves casting pockets of shade over neat rows of vegetables.

Beyond the flowers, the garden turns practical. Tomato vines sag under their own weight, skins taut and fruit still warm from the sun when you brush past them. Courgettes sprawl wide, leaves broad and slightly abrasive against your arms. Peppers glow green and red beneath glossy foliage, while runner beans climb their poles in neat spirals, delicate white and scarlet blossoms giving way to slender pods. Strawberries hide low to the ground, flashes of red beneath thick leaves, tempting but already claimed for later.

Closest to the kitchen wall is Mrs. Hoskins’ herb corner—compact, intentional, laid out for convenience rather than beauty. Rosemary bushes grow thick and woody, their scent sharp and resinous when disturbed. Thyme creeps low between stones, releasing a warm, savoury aroma underfoot. Basil sits fat-leafed and bright in its pot, sweet and green, while parsley and chives cluster nearby, forever reaching for the light. Mint threatens to overtake its container despite her efforts, cool and clean smelling, close enough that she can step out mid-recipe and snip a handful without a second thought.

You work slowly among the beds, fingers stained with soil, the sun pressing down on the back of your neck, sweat slicking your skin. Somewhere behind you, John sits with Mrs. Hoskins on the patio, the scrape of chair legs faint against stone. He’s sprawled a little—legs spread open, forearms resting on his thighs—one broad hand curled loosely at the hem of his shorts, thumb rubbing absently against his skin. His other leg won’t stay still, knee bouncing in quick, restless succession as he listens, tension bleeding through the casual posture no matter how hard he tries to look relaxed.

Mrs. Hoskins leans toward him, teacup cradled in both hands, sunlight catching the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. She looks tired, sicker than she did the last time you saw her—sicker than she’ll ever let on—but her smile is still bright when she laughs at something John says. John nods along, shoulders rolling forward as he listens, that familiar crease forming between his brows. Every now and then he laughs, the sound warm and unguarded, and the jitter in his leg slows for just a moment before starting up again, betraying an undercurrent of energy beneath the surface, even here, even now.

You can’t hear their conversation from where you are, but you catch the rhythm of it—the way John leans forward when he listens; the way she gestures gently as she speaks. They laugh together now and then, and something inside your chest loosens at the sound.

They head inside to wash up, and you finish the last row before stepping onto the patio, only to freeze when voices drift through the open kitchen window.

“That woman is so special, John,” Mrs. Hoskins says gently. “You can’t let her slip through your fingers.”

John exhales. “I know.”

“Get a ring on her before she thinks she’s never got a chance.”

“I know,” he repeats, the words pushed out through his teeth, clipped and restless. The words come out sharper than he seems to mean. “I just… don’t know. Okay?”

“Well, a woman like that can’t wait forever,” she replies. “She’s the one. Lemar would say the same.”

Silence.

“He would,” John murmurs.

You clear your throat loudly and step inside. They both look up like nothing happened—smiles polite, conversation safely rerouted.

The drive home is quiet. Too quiet.

When you get inside, John kisses you like he’s trying to anchor himself—both still streaked in dirt and soil, his hands firm and his voice rough with want, praising you as he tells you how you drive him wild in the garden—and later you let yourself disappear into the familiar rhythm of him, even as something inside you stays strangely distant. It aches somewhere behind your ribs.

I just don’t know. The words ring in your head the whole time, a mantra constantly reminding you that he doesn’t really know how he feels about you—about this, about the two of you, about loving you more than whatever this currently is to him. It sounds absurd, almost unreal, but it’s his own words.

After, you shower alone.

“I’ll cook,” he says softly, watching you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he blinks.

You don’t meet his eyes.

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You don’t realise how loud silence can be until it starts answering you back.

It follows you through the tower in the days after Mrs. Hoskins’ house—lingers in the spaces between conversations, settles into the pauses where you’d normally reach for John without thinking. Nothing has changed, not visibly. He still kisses you goodbye in the mornings, still texts you when he lands somewhere dangerous, still comes home with that same tired smile that shifts into something warmers when he catches sight of you.

But something has shifted.

You catch yourself editing your words more carefully around him, trimming honesty down to something safer. You talk about work in summaries instead of details. You listen more than you speak. You wait.

Waiting has always been familiar to you—waiting for approvals, for shipments, for outcomes you can’t rush no matter how badly you want to—but you’ve just never had to wait like this before.

The days slide by in a blur of meetings and approvals. You sit in rooms full of people who underestimate you until you correct them; who assume Logistics is administrative rather than strategic until you remind them that nothing moves without you.

You negotiate contracts. You reroute shipments. You authorise emergency reserves and deny frivolous requests with equal calm. And, somewhere between the spreadsheets and the signatures, a thread of unease winds itself tighter around your ribs.

John is busy. More missions, more briefings, more overseas treaties enhanced with the New Avengers presence. He comes home exhausted but affectionate—hands warm, voice soft, always reaching for you like a habit he can’t break.

You still catch yourself watching him more closely than before.

The way his jaw tightens when his phone lights up with Olivia’s name, how he steps into the hallway to take the call, voice lowering—not secretive, just considerate. The way he smiles when he talks about their son, pride bright and unguarded.

It shouldn’t bother you.

You tell yourself that over and over, like repetition might make it true.

Your days fill with crisis management after crisis management.

A supplier in Eastern Europe fails to meet quantity requirements for reinforced hull plating, which wouldn’t be an issue except half the Atlantic fleet is due for refit within the month. You spend three hours on calls rerouting stock from secondary depots, eating into emergency reserves you’d hoped never to touch.

By the time you escalate to the company director, your patience is already frayed.

“This is unacceptable,” you say into the speakerphone, keeping your voice level through sheer force of will. “Your contract specifies minimum output. You’re failing to meet it.”

He laughs—actually laughs.

“Listen, sweetheart—”

You cut him off instantly. “If you call me that again, this conversation ends and your contract gets reviewed for termination.”

A beat of stunned silence.

Then, petulant: “We’re doing our best.”

“Your best isn’t enough,” you reply coolly. “Meet your quota or I will find someone who can.”

You hang up before he can respond and stare at the wall for a moment, pulse ticking hard in your throat.

You don’t have the energy to be underestimated today.

All the while, you can hear John saying I just don’t know clear as a bell, as though he’s stood in front of you, trying the words out in his mouth like he’s learning how to speak them before he looks you in the eye and repeats them again and again and again.

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John gets home while you’re still reviewing alternate suppliers.

He drops his bag by the door, leans in to kiss you, and pauses when he feels the tension in your shoulders.

“Long day?” He asks.

“You could say that,” you reply, not looking up.

He hovers for a second, uncertain, before pressing a kiss to your hair and heading for the kitchen. You hear him moving around, the familiar domestic soundtrack grounding and strangely distant all at once.

When he comes back with two beers, he sets one beside your laptop.

“For later,” he says. “You’re in the zone.”

You hum in acknowledgement.

He watches you for a moment longer than necessary.

“You sure you’re okay?” He asks again, quieter this time.

The question lands heavier than it should.

“I’m fine,” you say, sharper than intended.

His brows knit together. “Hey—”

“I said I’m fine,” you repeat, softer but still clipped. “I just need to finish this.”

He nods, backing off immediately. “Okay. I’ll—uh—I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

Guilt flickers through you, quick and unwelcome.

You don’t call him back.

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It’s Olivia’s call that breaks everything open.

You’re halfway through approving an emergency transfer when John’s phone lights up on the counter. He glances at the screen and, for a split second, you can see a shift in him as he exhales—something loosening in his posture.

“I should take this,” he says.

“Of course,” you reply automatically, though that small, stubborn knot tightens itself behind your ribs.

He steps into the hallway, voice dropping the moment he answers.

“Hey—yeah, I got it. No, tomorrow works. I’ll take him to the appointment.”

You try to focus on the screen in front of you, the spreadsheets and memos blurring under your gaze. Your chest contracts with a quiet, aching gnaw.

“Yeah, I remember. Last time was a mess, wasn’t it?” He chuckles, low and easy. When was the last time he laughed like that with you? “No, no, he didn’t cry, but that might’ve been easier. Complained a helluva lot, but that’s just him, ain’t it? Takes after you and how you hate the doctor’s.” There’s a softness there you don’t hear often. Not reserved for you—just different. Familiar in a way that predates you entirely.

“He’s been fine,” John continues, smiling faintly. “Just routine. I’ll text you after.”

He laughs quietly at something she says, and the sound twists painfully in your chest—sharp enough that you have to swallow hard.

You hate yourself for it.

This is his son. His first love. His past and his responsibility.

You have no claim here.

“Yeah, three’s perfect,” he says, and you hear him laugh again—a short, warm sound that makes something hollow in your chest twist—and catch sight of John leaning against the wall with a soft smile on his lips. “I’ll bring him by a little early if you don’t mind. Oh, and thanks for the other night, Liv—you’re a lifesaver. Can’t do this without you.”

You try to convince yourself not to listen, but every word, every laugh, every faint catch in his voice as he talks about his son feels like a reminder: this life existed before you. A life you weren’t born into. A life you can’t compete with.

When he hangs up and turns back to you, the smile fades immediately.

“Hey,” he says carefully. “You alright?”

Your heart tightens so suddenly you think—just for a second—it might actually stop.

Your breath catches in your throat. You want to tell him the truth: that you feel like an intruder in his life; that you’re temporary, a shadow trying to squeeze into a home that already existed; that the woman who raised his son, who knows him from the start, who bore the child you cannot, might still hold his heart.

Instead, you swallow and nod. “Yeah,” you say, forcing it. “Of course.”

He studies you like he doesn’t believe you, but doesn’t know how to push without making it worse.

“Liv just wanted to confirm the paediatric appointment,” he adds, unnecessarily. “I’ll be gone a couple hours tomorrow.”

“I know,” you reply. “It’s fine.” The words feels thin and empty.

He nods slowly, and you see the hesitation in his eyes—the unspoken question of whether you’re okay, or whether you’re silently cracking under the weight of his other life. “Okay.”

Later that night, you lie awake beside him, listening to his breathing even and deep. His arm is heavy across your waist, protective, anchoring.

You stare at the ceiling and catalogue every stupid, spiralling thought in your head.

He hesitated.

He has a family already.

You’re temporary.

You can hear the steady rise and fall of his chest, the calm evenness of his breathing. And yet you can’t stop cataloguing every little thought that threatens to undo you:

He’s been married. Once.

He has a son with his ex-wife.

He used to want her back—maybe he still does, in some quiet, buried corner.

You haven’t borne him a child.

You weren’t there through his history. High school, college, the mistakes, the triumphs, the slow shaping of the man he became.

You didn’t love him then. You didn’t know him then.

The weight of it presses down on your chest. You feel too new, too temporary, too unworthy. How could he ever choose you over a life he built long before you arrived?

You press your face into the pillow, breathing shallowly, trying to convince yourself that this ache is just nerves. That maybe logistics will help you, like it helps with the timing of deliveries, the chaos of schedules. Some things are delayed, yes. Some things never show up at all.

And maybe, you think bitterly, you are one of the things that never should have shown up at all.

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Tension doesn’t announce itself.

It settles; it waits. It learns your routines and then presses exactly where you’re weakest.

You notice it first in the small things.

The way John hesitates before touching you, like he’s checking for permission he never used to need. The way you flinch—not away, but inward—when his hand brushes your lower back. The way conversations trail off before they reach anything substantial, both of you circling the same subject without daring to land on it.

At work, you’re sharper than usual.

You dismantle an entire proposal in under five minutes during a cross-department meeting, pointing out inefficiencies and risk exposure with clinical precision. When someone tries to interrupt you, you don’t slow down.

“You asked for my assessment,” you say coolly. “I’m giving it.”

No one argues.

Later, an analyst pulls you aside, eyes wide. “Are you okay?”

You offer a tight smile. “Perfect.”

You’re lying, but not in a way anyone can prove.

That evening, John cooks again. It’s your special ragù, the one that you taught him nearly two years ago before either of you had an inkling of your future lives together.

It’s a peace offering—you know that much. He moves carefully around the kitchen, deliberate in a way that makes your chest ache. He sets the table properly. Lights a candle like it’s a date instead of a Tuesday night.

You appreciate the effort. You just don’t know how to meet it.

Dinner passes politely. You talk about missions and schedules, about supply reroutes and equipment audits. Nothing personal. Nothing dangerous.

Halfway through, he sets his fork down.

“You’ve been pullin’ away,” he says quietly.

The words hang between you, heavy.

“I haven’t,” you reply automatically.

John doesn’t raise his voice. He never does when he’s serious. “You have. You don’t look at me the same. You don’t—” He stops, jaw tightening. “Did I do somethin’?”

The question hits harder than accusation ever could.

You swallow. “No.”

“Then what is it?” He presses, just a little. “Because it feels like I’m losin’ you and I don’t know why.”

You stand abruptly, chair scraping back against the floor.

“I’ve had a long day,” you say, tone clipped. “I don’t want to do this right now.”

His expression shutters—not angry, just hurt.

“Okay,” he says, too quickly. “I didn’t mean to push.”

You nod, already retreating down the hallway like distance might protect you from what you don’t want to say.

Behind you, the candle flickers.

Sleep doesn’t come easily that night. John had stayed up, freezing leftovers and cleaning up, eventually cracking himself open a beer and turning on the TV. You know he wasn’t actually watching it—the volume was too low, and John only watches TV at a volume that a geriatric grandpa would watch it at. Despite John’s super hearing, he’s incredibly deaf when it comes to anything unrelated to field work.

He came to bed an hour later and immediately wrapped his arm around you, tugging your back to his chest, linking his fingers with yours as he tucked your joined hands between your breasts right where your hear beats.

Your mind churns—numbers, conversations, imagined futures spiralling out of control. You replay the words you overheard at Mrs. Hoskins’ house until they lose all original context, reshaped by fear and exhaustion.

I don’t know.

You don’t hear John get up until the bed dips beside you. His arm lowers, wrapping around your waist carefully, like he’s afraid of startling you. He presses his face into your hair, breath warm and familiar.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry if I pushed earlier.”

Guilt twists in your stomach.

“You didn’t,” you whisper. “I’m just… tired.”

He exhales slowly. “You don’t gotta carry everything alone, you know.”

You close your eyes.

You don’t answer.

The next few days pass in uneasy truce.

John takes his son to a baseball game while you stay late at the tower, deliberately scheduling a procurement review you could have handled remotely. You tell yourself it’s practical. Necessary.

You’re well aware that it’s avoidance.

When he gets back, he tells you about the game—how his team won, how his kid was brave when he fell, how proud he is. You smile. You listen. You even mean it when you say you’re glad.

Later, alone in the bathroom, you grip the edge of the sink and breathe through the ache in your chest.

You don’t want to be jealous.

You just don’t know where you fit.

The argument, when it comes, is small. And, honestly, it’s stupid and you know it.

He forgets to tell you he’ll be late. You’ve waited with dinner cooling on the stove, irritation simmering low. When he finally walks in, apologetic and tired, something in you snaps.

“Would it kill you to send a text?” You ask, sharper than you mean to.

He blinks. “I—I thought I did.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

“I was caught up—”

“And I’m just supposed to wait around?” You interrupt.

He stiffens. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what it feels like, John.”

The silence that follows is thick.

John rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know how to fix this,” he admits quietly. “I feel like every move I make is wrong.”

Your chest tightens.

“I don’t—it’s not you,” you whisper, “it’s me, John. It’s always been me.”

And for the first time since you’ve known him, John looks genuinely lost.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The thing about disasters is that they almost always announce themselves in advance.

Not with sirens or explosions—those come later—but with small failures no one wants to acknowledge. A missed delivery. A delayed response. A system flagged yellow instead of green and quietly ignored because there’s always something more urgent demanding attention.

You see it before anyone else does.

A supplier misses a deadline. Another quietly revises their quantity estimates downward without approval. Security requisitions sit unanswered for twelve hours longer than protocol allows.

You log everything.

You always do.

By mid-morning, you’ve escalated three issues to Facilities and one to Security, attaching documentation and risk assessments that spell out exactly how badly things could go wrong if the gaps aren’t addressed.

The replies come back slow and casual.

We’ll monitor it.

Noted.

Probably nothing.

Probably nothing gets people killed.

You’re in your office when the call comes in—another argument with the same useless company director who still hasn’t grasped that you are not a secretary and you are not bluffing.

“This is an Avengers facility,” you say, voice sharp through the speaker. “If you cannot meet contractual obligations, I will terminate the agreement and blacklist your company from all future federal work.”

“You wouldn’t dare—”

“I already have the paperwork drafted,” you cut in. “This is your final notice.”

He swears. You hang up.

Your hands are shaking when you finally lean back in your chair.

You think about texting John, about telling him you have a bad feeling you can’t quite quantify; a pressure behind your eyes, a sense of something leaning towards collapse.

You don’t.

He’s ten floors down and yet you’ve never felt so apart from him, but you can’t even bring yourself to send a text without a chorus of I just don’t know, I just don’t know, I just don’t know spinning its web in your mind.

Instead, you storm three floors down to Security, tearing their line manager a new asshole as you explain that him “monitoring it” is useless when you have already monitored the situation and have deemed it unsuitable and, quite simply, unacceptable.

You’re back in your office, knee deep in a supply delivery that has turned into a nightmare—quantities off by nearly twenty percent, documentation falsified, the same misogynistic director arguing in circles on loudspeaker.

“This isn’t how this works,” you snap. “You don’t get to decide what acceptable losses are.”

A shout echoes somewhere below.

Then another.

Your blood runs cold.

“What the hell was that?” The man asks.

The team alarm goes off.

Red lights slam on overhead, bathing the walls in violent glow. The calm white florescent flicker wildly—once, then twice—before several of them explode with sharp pops, plunging sections of the corridor outside your office into shadow. Your office lights are last, including the warm coloured lamp in the corner. The air fills with the shrill, teeth rattling wail of alarms layered over one another, deafening even with your hand slapped over your ears.

Someone screams. Someone else yells, “Get medical!”

“—they’ve got guns!” A voice shouts distantly. “They’re in the building!”

You hang up without a word.

A loud bang cracks through the tower, followed by a BOOM that punches through the tower like a fist. The floor lurches beneath you, throwing you sideways as ceiling tiles cascade down. Glass shatters. Paintings tear free from their mounts and crash from the walls. Your desk skids, slamming into the filing cabinets, as everything not bolted down becomes airborne.

Training kicks in.

You’re out of your chair and moving before fear has time to sink it's teeth in, shoving your phone into your pocket as you bolt for the weapons room. Smoke already curls along the ceiling, acrid and metallic. Red lights strobe, painting faces in flashes—panic stricken, disoriented, streaked with tears.

People surge past you in the opposite direction—employees, analysts, interns—all with faces white and sallow, their eyes wide and frantic, hands clawing at the walls as they stumble and run. Some are barefoot, some are bleeding, all of them running. One assistant grabs at you, her manicured nails sinking in, babbling for you to run, that there’s men with guns, but you snatch your arm away before she can anchor herself to you.

Gunshots echo again, closer now.

You duck into the weapons room, palm automatically slapping against the biometric panel. You grab a sidearm, checking the weight, fingers moving in muscle memory.

John taught you this, over and over until it stuck.

The hallway being is chaos.

Several doors along the corridor slam shut without warning—classified areas triggering automatic lockdown protocols. Reinforced glass seals in place as red indicators flash. Inside, people pound on the windows, screaming and begging to be let out, the glass smeared with sweat and blood. You catch eyes with one of them for half a second before the crowd carries you on.

You hit the stairwell and nearly collide with the wall of bodies surging inside it.

People are running down—tripping, sliding, falling over one another in blind terror. Others are forcing their way up, faces twisted with desperation as they flee the sound of gunfire and screaming from below. Someone shouts conflicting orders. Someone else shoves you hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs.

The stairwell becomes a bottleneck of fear.

Gunshots ricochet through the concrete shaft, deafening, impossible to place. The alarms echo until everything blurs together into noise and movement and heat. You shoulder through, shouting, cursing, flashing your weapon just to carve a path forward.

The corridors below are worse.

The smoke is thick enough to sting your eyes; the smell of burning insulation and ozone coats your tongue. You hear shouting—foreign accents, frantic and sharp—and boots pound against tile. Something crashes nearby.

The first intruder rounds the corner and you fire without hesitation.

He goes down hard, weapons clattering against the floor.

The second barely has time to raise his weapon before you put him down too.

The third tries to run. You don’t let him.

Adrenaline surges, white hot and dizzying, hands steady even as your heart hammers so hard that it hurts. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a traitorous thought flickers:

John would be proud.

And then you see him.

He’s on the floor, crushed beneath a support beam torn loose by the explosion, twisted metal pinning him at a brutal angle, the concrete and rebar spider-webbing around it. His shield lays several feet away, scorched and useless.

Blood pools beneath his head, bright and spreading fast, soaking into the grit of the tiles and tangling in his golden hair. One side of his face is smeared red. His chest rises shallowly, unevenly. His face is slack—eyes fluttering, unfocused, lips cracked and parted—barely conscious.

“No,” you whisper, the word tearing out of you like something alive.

You sprint to him, dropping to your knees, hands shaking as you take him in. There’s a gunshot wound high in his chest, hastily packed with gauze that’s already soaked through. Another wound mars his shoulder, bleeding sluggishly, a piece of shrapnel thankfully cutting off the blood seeping out.

His breathing rattles, wet and wrong.

“John,” you sob, afraid to touch him wrong. “Hey—hey, stay with me! Look at me.”

His eyes crack open at the sound of your voice, glassy but recognisable.

“You… shouldn’t be here,” he slurs weakly.

Relief and terror crash together so hard you almost choke on it.

Before you can respond, footsteps thunder into the room. Another intruder barrels through the smoke.

You don’t see him in time.

Pain detonates through your thigh as the bullet punches clean through. White hot agony pierces you, drops you forward with a scream torn from your throat. You fire blindly, vision swimming, and hit him square between the eyes. He drops instantly, body hitting the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

John’s eyes widen in horror. “You’re hit—baby, you gotta go. Get help. Please.”

“Go fuck yourself,” you choke out through tears. “I’m not leaving you.”

You wedge yourself under the higher end of the beam, squatting as it presses into your shoulder blades. Every muscle screams as you try to stand, cold metal biting into your shoulder blades, trying to give him space to pull free—

Footsteps again.

Two more intruders.

Gunfire erupts.

One bullet slams into John’s shoulder. He cries out, body jerking, his head snapping to face you as his skin pales and pupils swallow his irises whole. Another punches you in the stomach, knocking the air from your lungs as you crumple.

For half a second, the world tilts, black creeping in at the edges, but then adrenaline slams through you like a defibrillator. You roar and shoot them both dead before they hit the ground.

Blood pours from you. From him. From both of you. It’s pooled around you both, the cherry red a stark contrast to the sterile white tiles, slick beneath your palms.

You scream and push—with everything you have left, harder than you thought possible—and the beam shifts just enough.

John drags himself free.

You collapse, crawling toward him, limbs barely responding. He leans down, presses his forehead to yours.

He whispers your name.

“It’s okay,” you tell him, voice shaking. “I’ve got you. I’ll get us out.”

John goes limp in your arms.

You drag him, inch by inch, toward the emergency lift you memorised months ago during a routine audit no one else thought mattered. You punch in the code with trembling fingers and haul both of you inside.

The doors slide shut.

You slump beside him, vision fading.

As the lift begins to descend, you see something slip from his pocket—a small black box, tumbling across the floor.

Then everything goes dark.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Consciousness returns in fragments.

Not all at once—never kindly—but in jagged pieces that don’t quite fit together. Sound comes first: a soft, rhythmic beeping that drills straight into the back of your skull. It’s steady. Persistent. Too regular to be comforting, too clinical to ignore. It threads itself through everything else, anchoring you whether you want it to or not.

There’s a smell, too—sharp antiseptic layered over something metallic. Your mouth tastes like copper and chemicals, tongue thick and useless when you try to swallow. It feels like your body belongs to someone else, like you’ve been poured back into it wrong.

You blink.

Light punches behind your eyes. The ceiling swims into focus—white and glaring, edges blurring and doubling as though it can’t decide which version of itself to be. Tubes trail from your arms, taped down with practised precision. You register them dimly, distantly, the way you’d notice furniture in a stranger’s house.

Pain exists, but it’s muted, cushioned by something heavy and artificial flowing through your veins. Beneath it, though, you feel it: a low, insistent current, like pressure building behind a dam. Something aches deep in your abdomen, tight and sore, and your thigh throbs with a slow, pulsing heat that flares when you try to shift. Nausea rolls through you, thick and sudden, and you still instinctively despite yourself.

Hospital.

The word lands fully formed, heavy with understanding.

And then memory surges back without warning.

The tower.

Red lights.

Smoke.

Gunfire.

John.

Your breath catches sharply, panic clawing up your throat before you can stop it. Your heart kicks hard against your ribs as you try to sit up, every instinct screaming move, find him, now—

Pain detonates in response. White hot for half a second before the haze drags it back under. Somewhere nearby, a monitor chirps angrily, protesting the movement.

“Hey—hey, easy.”

The voice cuts through the noise, grounding and unmistakable.

You turn your head slowly and see Bucky standing beside the bed. His arms are folded tight across his chest, shoulders hunched like he’s bracing for impact that never came. His expression is too careful. Too serious.

Your stomach drops.

“John,” you croak. Your throat burns, voice scraped raw. “Is—”

“He made it,” Bucky says immediately, like he knew the question before you finished forming it. “Barely—but he’s alive.”

The words knock the air out of you.

Relief hits first—violent and overwhelming—followed immediately by everything else. Your chest caves in on itself as a sob tears loose, ugly and unfiltered. You don’t try to stop it. Tears spill hot and relentless, soaking into the pillow as weeks’ worth of terror and restraint collapse all at once.

Images flash behind your closed eyes, uninvited and sharp:

John pinned beneath the beam. Blood everywhere—too much blood. His face slack, eyes fluttering.

You screaming his name, convinced you were already too late.

In one flash, worse than the rest, you see it the other way around—him dying because you didn’t make it back in time. The beam crushing him down. His hand reaching out for someone who never comes.

Your breath stutters violently.

“They said you were both basically dead when they found you,” Bucky continues, voice low, steady, like he’s anchoring himself as much as you. “Trauma team didn’t think either of you were gonna pull through.”

You let out a weak, breathless laugh through tears. “Figures.”

He huffs once—something like a smile flickering at the corner of his mouth before it disappears. “You don’t do things halfway, do you?”

You shake your head minutely and immediately regret it, a spike of pain blooming behind your eyes. “Can I see him?”

Bucky hesitates.

Before he can answer, the curtain shifts and a nurse steps in, calm and composed, movements efficient without being cold. She checks the monitors with a practised glance, adjusts something at your IV.

“Not yet,” she says gently but firmly. “You both need more rest. Your blood loss was extensive—you’re lucky you made it out at all.”

Lucky.

The word feels hollow. Wrong. You think of the people locked behind those security doors. Of the chaos. Of how close everything came to ending permanently.

Your eyes slide shut again as exhaustion crashes over you, heavy and inevitable. The painkillers pull tighter, dragging you back toward the edge of sleep—but not before another memory slips through.

A nurse earlier. Different shift. Sitting quietly by your bed, checking vitals, fingers warm against your wrist. She’d been humming under her breath—soft, absent-minded. A melody you hadn’t heard in years.

The song your mother used to sing while washing dishes.

The one she sang quieter after your sister died.

You remember wanting to cry then, too—wanting to ask her to keep humming, afraid the sound would disappear if you acknowledged it.

“Okay,” you whisper now, voice barely there. “Just—just tell him I’m awake. Please.”

Bucky nods without hesitation. “I will.”

The beeping steadies again. The pain dulls. And as sleep pulls you under once more, the last thing you hold onto is the certainty that John is alive—and that, for now, is enough.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Time stretches strangely after that.

It doesn’t move forward as much as it folds in on itself—minutes stretching into something viscous, hours dissolving into nothing at all. You drift in and out of sleep, painkillers blurring the sharp edges of reality until everything feels like you’re watching your own life through fogged glass. Faces come and go—doctors with clipped voices and kind eyes; nurses checking vitals, adjusting drips, murmuring reassurances when you twist in the sheets like a reflex; a therapist who sits at your bedside at one point, voice low and careful, talking gently about trauma responses and shock like it’s something you can pencil in between physio appointments and medication schedules.

When you wake properly again, it’s to the sound of voices.

Bob is the first one you focus on. He’s sitting awkwardly in a chair by your bed, posture stiff like anything here could break him. He’s clutching your favourite blanket—one that you’re fairly certain he stole from you while you and John moved out of the Tower and into your own home together—with both hands, skin pulled taut over his knuckles, almost like it might bite him. He brightens immediately when he sees your eyes open, unfiltered relief glowing across his cheeks.

“Hey,” he says. “I brought this. They said you were cold.”

He tucks it around you with exaggerated care, like he’s handling something fragile. Your chest tightens despite yourself.

Yelena is perched on the edge of the bed with a bag of contraband snacks, unapologetic, and entirely unbothered by hospital rules. She holds it up proudly when she catches you looking.

“Hospital food is crime,” she declares. “I am humanitarian aid.”

You huff a weak laugh, the sound rough but genuine.

Alexei looms just behind her, arms crossed, vibrating with barely contained energy. “You should see footage,” he booms, already leaning forward. “Very inspiring. I replayed it six times. You squat like champion weightlifter.”

Your brow furrows. “Footage?”

“Oh yes,” he continues, delighted. “Security cameras survived. There is moment—very good moment—where you lift support beam. Two hundred and fifty kilos!” He slaps his chest proudly, as if he did it. “John is trapped like crushed beetle, and you—” He makes an explosive lifting motion. “—just decide no.”

Yelena grins sharply. “He would not stop cheering. Nurses very unhappy.”

Alexei ignores this. “You hold it long enough for him to crawl free. This is strength. Real strength. Not serum nonsense.”

Ava leans against the wall, arms crossed, eyes bright with something fierce and proud. “Security only just released the rest of the footage,” she says. “You were so badarse.”

You snort, immediately wincing when it jolts every part of your body. “Did you just—”

“Badarse,” she repeats cheerfully. “British pronunciation. Much scarier.”

Bob laughs first, a startled sound like he didn’t mean to. Yelena follows, then Alexei, who doesn’t understand the joke but enjoys the energy anyway. Even you manage a crooked smile.

Ava pushes off the wall, stepping closer. “You took down three intruders on your own,” she adds, quieter now. “Disarmed one with a fire extinguisher. Another you kicked down a stairwell. We didn’t even realise half of it was you until the timestamps lined up.”

Yelena tilts her head, appraising you. “You are our secret Avenger,” she decides. “No costume. Just rage and excellent timing.”

Alexei nods solemnly. “Very dangerous combination.”

For a moment—just a moment—the weight lifts. The room feels warmer. Safer. The laughter is careful, restrained by IV lines and healing bones, but it’s real. It settles something in your chest you didn’t realise was shaking loose.

They stay for a while. Talk around the worst parts, orbiting the edges without crossing them. Stories, small updates, gossip from the Tower; they fill the space with warmth and presence until, eventually, exhaustion creeps in like a tide. Your eyelids grow heavy. A nurse appears, gentle but firm, ushering them out with practised efficiency and quiet smiles.

Bob squeezes your hand before he leaves. Ava mouths rest. Yelena taps your foot lightly, affectionate in her own way. Alexei promises to bring more footage.

The door closes.

The room quiets again.

And inevitably—mercilessly—your thoughts drift back to him.

Alive.

Barely.

You see it again in flashes: John slumped and bleeding, barely conscious, his weight dead and dragging. How much it took out of you to haul him across the floor, your muscles screaming in protest, your vision tunnelling at the edges. How every metre to the emergency lift felt impossible.

You remember thinking—cold and detached in the back of your mind—that you wouldn’t make it. That another intruder would come hurtling around the corner. That you’d collapse before cover. That you’d both die there because you couldn’t drag him any faster.

You remember not caring about yourself at all, only that you couldn’t let go.

The machines hum softly beside you, steady and alive. Somewhere else in the hospital, John is breathing. Healing. Surviving.

You close your eyes and hold onto that truth, even as the echo of fear lingers, heavy and unshakable, behind your ribs.

You don’t see John for another two days. When you finally do, it’s because he insists.

You’re propped up in bed, half-awake, when the door opens, and there he is.

He looks wrecked.

Bruised, stitched, arm in a sling, moving with the careful, pained precision of someone whose body betrayed them recently. Crutches clatter to the floor the second his eyes land on you.

“John—!” You start, alarmed.

He doesn’t listen.

He stumbles across the room and leans over you, forehead pressing to yours, breath shaking.

“I thought I lost you,” he whispers.

Your throat tightens painfully. “I thought I lost you.”

He lets out a broken sound and you tug him closer, guiding him carefully onto the edge of the bed. He curls toward you instinctively, like he’s afraid to let go now that he has you again.

“I was never gonna leave you there,” you say fiercely. “Never.”

He swallows hard. “Thought you were gonna leave me before.”

You pull back just enough to look at him, confusion knitting your brows. “What?”

He shakes his head, trying to wave it off. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does,” you insist gently. “What do you mean, baby?”

His hands tremble as they trace slow, grounding lines up and down your arm.

“You pulled away from me,” he admits quietly. “After we saw Lemar’s mom… you stopped lookin’ at me. I thought—” His voice breaks. “I thought I did somethin’ wrong. Or you realised you deserved better than me and just didn’t know how to say it.”

Tears spill over, unchecked now. “I thought that was the end of us.”

Your own sob answers him.

“Oh my god—John, no,” you whisper, cupping his face and kissing his cheeks, his brow, anywhere you can reach. “I was just—I overheard you talking to Mrs. Hoskins about a ring, and you hesitated. I thought it meant you didn’t want that. Didn’t want me.”

He lets out a shaky laugh through tears. “Darlin’—”

“And then Olivia’s been around more,” you continue, voice cracking. “And she’s the mother of your child, and I got scared. I thought it’d hurt less if I pulled away first.”

Something in his expression shifts.

Realisation.

He reaches into the pocket of his hoodie slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid of spooking you, and pulls out a small black velvet box.

Your breath catches.

The same box you saw tumble across the lift floor. You see now that it’s velvet—deep and dark, the kind that drinks in light—and finished with delicate gold hinges and a small gold latch at the front, polished smooth from being opened and closed too many times by nervous fingers. John holds it like it carries weight beyond its size, shoulders squared but breath uneven. He glances up at you once, eyes flicking to your face and back again, a soft, almost boyish smile tugging at his mouth before he finally opens it.

John eases the small velvet box open like it’s something alive—something that might spook if handled too roughly. The hinges give a quiet, breathy click, intimate and final, and the lid folds back in a slow, careful arc.

The light catches first.

A clean, luminous shimmer blooms across the stone, scattering fine sparks that skate over the inside of the box and across John’s knuckles. The band is warm-toned gold, polished to a soft, liquid gleam; not ostentatious, not sharp, but shaped in a gentle, continuous curve that feels purposeful—meant to be worn, meant to stay. It looks solid without being heavy, like a promise that understands longevity.

The diamond rests in a delicate setting, lifted just enough to let it breathe. Each facet is precise and impossibly clear, edges sharp in a way that speaks of careful craftsmanship rather than flash. It doesn’t scream for attention; it glows instead—steady, assured, certain of its place. The kind of brilliance that feels intimate, like it’s meant to be noticed only by the person who wears it.

Your chest tightens as you take it in.

It’s beautiful, yes, but more than that, it’s thoughtful. Nothing excessive, nothing performative. Just intention made tangible. You can almost see John in it: the restraint, the quiet certainty, the way he loves without spectacle but with everything he has.

He swallows beside you, thumb brushing the edge of the box as if to ground himself. “I saw it,” he says softly, voice rough around the edges, “and I just—” He exhales, a shaky little breath. “It felt like you.”

The ring waits between you, patient and shining; a small, perfect thing holding the weight of a future neither of you can quite speak aloud yet.

“Darlin’,” he says quietly, voice breaking on the word, a smile fighting through the tears that cling stubbornly to his lashes. His thumb brushes over your knuckles like he needs the reminder that you’re real, that this moment isn’t something he’ll wake up from. “I didn’t hesitate because I don’t wanna marry you.” He swallows hard, jaw flexing as emotion tightens there. “I hesitated ‘cause I’ve been scared—scared of waitin’ for the right time and missin’ it altogether.”

A breathy laugh slips out of him, thin and fragile, nothing like his usual bravado. “I’ve almost asked you seven times now,” he admits, shaking his head at himself. “Seven. Every time I thought—not yet. What if I jinx it? What if I don’t get to keep you?” His eyes shine openly now, unguarded and earnest in a way that feels devastating. “Kept chickenin’ out.”

Something inside you gives way completely.

You let out a sound that’s half-laugh, half-sob, and then you’re grabbing him—careless of wires and IV lines, of aching muscles and tender bruises—pulling him down to you as your mouth crashes into his. It’s desperate and messy, salt and breath and relief all tangled together. His hands come up instinctively, clutching at you like he’s afraid you might slip through his fingers if he doesn’t hold tight enough.

The heart monitor erupts into protest, sharp and insistent.

“Hey—” he huffs against your mouth, laughing through tears. “Easy—”

“Ask me,” you plead, breathless, forehead pressed to his, your voice shaking with too many feelings all trying to escape at once. “Please, John, ask me.”

He draws back just enough to look at you, eyes flicking over your face like he’s memorising it all over again. He opens his mouth.

“I—”

“Yes,” you say immediately, voice cracking as relief floods through you. “Yes. A thousand times, yes.”

His face crumples in the most beautiful way—pure, unfiltered joy breaking through exhaustion and fear. He laughs, a wet, disbelieving sound, and leans his forehead against yours, eyes squeezed shut as if he’s holding back another wave of tears.

“Guess I should’ve finished the question,” he murmurs, breath warm against your lips.

Later—when the room has settled back into quiet, when the lights are dimmed and the machines hum softly instead of screaming—you shift carefully toward him, mindful of sore muscles and healing skin. He adjusts without being asked, arm coming around you with gentle certainty, his hand warm and steady in yours.

You rest your forehead against his, eyes closing as you breathe him in.

Whatever comes next can wait—plans, timelines, the world outside this room.

You’re still here.

So is he.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Healing is not a straight line—you learn that quickly.

It doesn’t move forward so much as it circles, doubles back, stalls without warning. Some mornings you wake clear-headed, pain muted to a dull, tolerable throb, optimism fragile but present—something you can cup carefully in your hands. Other mornings your body feels like it’s betraying you all over again—muscles stiff and uncooperative, scars pulling tight beneath your skin, memories pressing in too close for comfort. The doctors call it normal; it is a trauma response, your nervous system relearning that the danger has passed.

You hate how much sense that makes.

John visits every day once they allow it. At first, it’s awkward—two hospital beds pushed too close together, IV poles and monitors tangling where intimacy used to be easy. You’re both learning the limits of your bodies again, mapping new boundaries with care instead of instinct. He heals faster; everyone expected that. The serum woven into his cells does what it was designed to do—knits bone, repairs muscle, accelerates recovery like time itself has been bent in his favour.

But it doesn’t touch his mind.

You see it in the way he startles when machines beep too sharply; in how his jaw locks when a gurney rattles past too fast. He sleeps in short, fractured bursts, breath hitching like he’s still pinned beneath the weight of that beam. Sometimes he wakes already apologising, already reaching for you like he needs to check that you’re still here.

You do the same.

Neither of you talk about it at first—the flashes of memory that arrive uninvited, the way your hands shake when you imagine how close you came to not making it in time; how close he came to dying alone, thinking you’d never reach him. Instead, you take note of each other’s tells. When he goes quiet, you press your foot against his calf, grounding him. When you drift too far inward, he nudges your hand, thumb tracing slow, steady circles against your skin until your breathing evens out again.

He never complains—not about the pain, not about the nightmares, not even about the fear that sits heavy behind his eyes when he thinks you’re not looking.

He helps you sit up. Adjusts your blankets. Brings you terrible coffee and apologises like it’s a moral failing. Sometimes you just sit together in silence, hands linked, letting presence do the work words can’t. The quiet becomes its own kind of medicine.

You notice how careful he is with you now.

Not distant—never that—but reverent. Like he understands exactly how close he came to losing you and isn’t willing to take a single second for granted.

His touch is steady, deliberate; every kiss placed like a promise. It scares you a little.

It also makes you love him harder.

The tower doesn’t pause just because you nearly died. Within a week, messages start trickling in—carefully worded emails from department heads, Security briefings marked for when you’re ready, Facilities reports apologising for gaps they should have taken seriously earlier. You read them all. You always do.

From your hospital bed, you review incident logs and cross-reference your own flagged warnings, documenting timelines with the same precision you bring to everything else. You don’t do it out of bitterness.

You do it because accountability matters.

When Bucky sees what you’re working on, he exhales slowly. “You know you don’t have to do this yet.”

“I do,” you reply quietly. “This can’t happen again.”

He nods. He understands.

Logistics isn’t just about moving things—it’s about making sure the cracks don’t widen into graves.

John watches you work sometimes, expression soft and awed; something like pride and fear and love all tangled together. “You lifted a damn beam off me,” he says one afternoon, still shaking his head like the idea hasn’t fully landed. “Shot three guys. Took down the rest. Got shot twice. And now you’re auditing security response times from a hospital bed.”

You glance up at him dryly. “I’m very efficient.”

He laughs, then sobers; his fingers tighten around yours just a fraction. “I don’t tell you this enough, but I’m proud of you. Not just for what you did. For who you are.”

Your throat tightens.

“John,” you say softly. “I don’t need you to put me on a pedestal.”

“I know,” he replies immediately. “That’s why I’m tellin’ you like this.”

He leans in, pressing a kiss to your temple.

You heal together—not quickly or cleanly, but deliberately; you learn how to hold the weight of what happened without letting it crush you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The ring stays hidden for now.

Not because you’re unsure—never that—but because you want the moment to belong to you, not the machinery that swallows everything the two of you touch. You want a stretch of time where the promise lives quietly between your hands, where it’s allowed to be tender and ordinary instead of polished into a press release. John understands immediately. He always does with things like this; the big emotions, the fragile ones. He presses his thumb over the place on your finger where the band will eventually sit, like he’s memorising the shape of it already.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says. Not if. Never if.

Recovery stretches on in its strange, uneven way—appointments stacked on appointments, physio sessions that leave you shaking and breathless, long nights where sleep comes in pieces and dreams come sharp. The ring stays tucked into the velvet box in John’s bedside drawer, wrapped in a pair of your socks because he doesn’t trust himself not to knock it over otherwise. Sometimes you take it out together, sitting cross-legged on the bed, just to look at it. You don’t put it on yet. It feels ceremonial, like a threshold you’ll step over together when the world stops tilting quite so violently beneath your feet.

In the meantime, life insists on continuing.

You tell the team eventually, in pieces. It starts small, almost accidental. Ava notices first—she always does. You’re in the common area of the tower, leg propped up on a chair while you review a security schematic, when she squints at your hands.

“Hold on,” she says slowly, eyes narrowing with theatrical suspicion. “Why does John keep looking at your left hand like it personally offended him?”

You freeze.

John, across the room, drops his coffee.

There’s a beat of silence—one of those suspended moments where the universe seems to hold its breath.

Then Ava gasps, loud and unrestrained. “Oh my God,” she shrieks, clapping her hands together. “You’re engaged!”

“Technically not public knowledge,” you say, wincing as she barrels toward you.

Too late.

She grabs your shoulders carefully—she’s learned, at least—and beams at you like she’s personally responsible for the event. “This is incredible. This is iconic. This is—” She stops abruptly, eyes flicking to John. “Wait. How long have you been sitting on this?”

John rubs the back of his neck, ears turning red. “Couple weeks.”

Her jaw drops. “You absolute monsters! I could’ve been screaming about this for weeks.”

“You scream about most things,” he points out mildly.

She ignores him. “I need pictures. When do I get pictures?”

“When I’m not in physio sweatpants,” you reply dryly.

She accepts this with a dramatic sigh. “Fine. But I’m planning something. Don’t ask what, just know it’s happening.”

You tell Yelena next—or rather, John does, because he makes the mistake of mentioning it casually while she’s sharpening a knife in the kitchen.

She goes very still.

Then she looks up, eyes glittering. “Show me.”

John blinks. “What?”

“The ring,” she says flatly. “Now.”

You comply, sliding the velvet box across the counter. She opens it with reverence, examines the ring closely, then nods once.

“Acceptable,” she declares. “If it were ugly, I would have had to kill you.”

John snorts. “Good to know.”

She snaps the box shut and shoves it back toward you. “Pictures. Many pictures. And I get to help plan something—does not matter what you say.”

“We’re not planning a wedding right now,” you protest.

Yelena smiles sweetly. “You think this is about a wedding?”

Bob is last—and the most unexpected.

You’re sitting with him in the lounge, both of you half-watching something forgettable on the screen. He keeps glancing at you, fidgeting like there’s something stuck in his throat.

“What?” You ask gently.

He takes a breath. “Are you… are you wearing new jewellery?”

You blink. Then you laugh softly, because of course he noticed.

You tell him. He stares at you for a second, processing, then his face crumples entirely. He covers his mouth, eyes filling as a broken sound escapes him.

“Oh,” he says thickly. “That’s—oh, that’s so good.”

He pulls you into a careful hug, shaking with it. “I’m so happy for you. You deserve this. Both of you.”

You let him cry. You don’t rush him. You know better than anyone how much he’s been holding onto.

You video call your parents and brothers next. Your pop—who has never had the strongest of emotions—let's out a gruff, “least he asked me first,” and your mom sharply elbows him in response as a tearfully happy grin grows on her face. She warbles out a quick, “congratulations!” before she breaks down in tears and begs you to wear her own wedding dress. You grimace quickly, forcing a tight smile and a nod, fully knowing you would never wear that atrocious 80s full-length sleeve garb even if you had a gun to your head.

John’s parents were next on the list. You hadn't expected much fanfare, not after what he had explained about his family, how the aftermath of the house fire cracked a chasm between him and his parents’—his mom, in particular—and how they all rarely speak.

Mrs. Hoskins is last.

You don’t plan it—it just happens. You and John drive out to see her on a quiet afternoon, the kind of day that feels borrowed and gentle. She’s sitting in her garden when you arrive, hat perched crookedly on her head, pruning shears resting in her lap. The roses are in bloom; everything smells like sun-warmed earth and lavender.

She looks up and smiles when she sees you. “There you are,” she says fondly. “Was wonderin’ when you’d come by.”

You sit with her on the bench. John hovers for a moment, then settles on the grass at her feet, leaning back on his hands like he’s done a thousand times before. The three of you talk about nothing at first—about the weather, about the tomatoes refusing to ripen, about a neighbour’s dog that keeps digging up the herb patch.

Eventually, you take a breath.

“There’s something we wanted to tell you,” you say softly.

She turns to you, immediately attentive. “Alright.”

You hold out your hand.

She sees the ring before you say a word.

Her breath catches. She brings a hand to her mouth, eyes shining as she looks between you and John. “Oh,” she whispers. Then she’s crying—open, unrestrained tears spilling down her cheeks as she cups your face in her hands.

“Took him long enough,” she says through a watery laugh.

John groans, dropping his head back against the bench. “I knew you were gonna say that.”

You laugh, tears slipping free of your own as she pulls you into a careful hug. “I’m so happy,” she murmurs. “So happy for you both.”

She reaches for John then, gripping his hand with surprising strength. “You don’t let this one go,” she tells him firmly.

He squeezes back. “Never planned to.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The proposal doesn’t happen the way people expect it to.

There’s no crowd gathering instinctively, no hush falling over a room full of strangers waiting for a cue. No phones lifted, no lights dimmed for effect, no carefully staged choreography designed to turn something private into something consumable. There’s no kneeling on polished stone floors, no nervous laughter meant to soften spectacle.

It doesn’t feel like a moment so much as it feels like a continuation.

It happens quietly—because quiet has always been enough for the two of you.

It happens on a Tuesday.

You’re back at work full time now—still easing, still pacing yourself through longer days, but undeniably yourself again. The ache that once lived constantly beneath your skin has softened into something manageable, something familiar. Scars pull now and then when you move too quickly; pain flares and fades like weather. You know how to listen to it without letting it dictate you.

The tower hums around you, alive but no longer oppressive. You’ve noticed the shift gradually—the way its rhythms have changed now that systems are reinforced, redundancies doubled, oversight sharpened. Supply chains are stabilised. Procurement audits read cleaner. Security briefings no longer sound like apologies delivered too late, but plans built to prevent the worst from ever needing to happen.

You stand in your office at the end of the day, jacket slung over the back of your chair, reviewing a final report when John appears in the doorway.

There’s a subtle shift in the space—pressure redistributing, gravity still and always adjusting slightly to accommodate him. When you glance up, he’s leaning against the doorframe, broad shoulders relaxed, arms loose at his sides. He’s still in uniform, beret tucked under one arm, the dark fabric pulled taut across his frame in a way that makes him look carved rather than dressed.

He doesn’t interrupt. He learned the shape of your focus early on; learned that breaking it feels like pulling a thread that unravels more than just the moment. He waits instead, watching you with that quiet attentiveness that still catches you off guard. Like he’s rediscovering you in moments you’re not performing anything for him—when you’re just you, elbows-deep in systems and solutions.

“You ready?” He asks eventually.

You glance up, smiling faintly. “Five minutes.”

He nods, patient, and disappears again.

You finish what you’re doing because you always finish what you start. Some habits are flaws; others are foundations. John has never tried to dismantle yours, only learned how to build himself alongside them.

When you step out into the corridor, the tower is quieter than usual—shift change rolling through, lights dimmed slightly, the city outside glowing low and gold through the glass.

John waits by the lift.

He offers you his arm without thinking.

You take it without hesitation.

Dinner is simple. Not rushed, not ceremonial—just familiar food eaten slowly, conversation wandering between work and nothing at all. He tells you about a training run that went poorly because someone misjudged a landing zone; about the way he had to bite his tongue through a debrief that felt like it missed the point entirely. You tell him about an intern who caught a discrepancy early enough to prevent a six-figure error; about how proud you were that they trusted their instincts enough to escalate it.

“You’re rubbing off on people,” he says fondly.

“That’s terrifying,” you reply dryly.

He laughs, warm and unrestrained, the sound settling into you the way it always does—like gravity finding its centre.

Later, you curl together on the couch, legs tangled in a way that has nothing to do with need but everything to do with comfort. The TV murmurs quietly, a forgotten background noise, the quiet stretching comfortably between you. His thumb traces slow, idle circles against the back of your hand, grounding in a way that still feels miraculous.

This is how he loves you—not loudly, not extravagantly. In presence. In patience. In showing up again and again, even when there’s nothing dramatic to prove. In learning when to speak and when to stay quiet. In knowing when you need a hand at your back and when you need space to breathe.

And you love him the same way.

You love him in the quiet mornings when he brings you coffee without asking. In the evenings where you sit side by side doing entirely separate things, content in shared silence. In the way you watch each other heal—not trying to fix, not trying to rush, just staying.

There’s no dramatic pause when he speaks again. Just certainty.

“I don’t wanna wait anymore,” he says quietly, eyes fixed on the place where his thumb meets your skin.

You turn toward him, heart steady rather than racing. There’s no jolt of panic in you, no sense of being cornered by expectation or a timeline.

“I know,” you reply.

He exhales a soft laugh, relief threaded through it. “Good.”

He reaches into his pocket—not hurried, not nervous this time. The velvet box appears between you, familiar now; not heavy with doubt, but warm with meaning. He doesn’t fumble. His hands are steady, sure.

He doesn’t kneel, he just takes your hand in both of his, grounding and real.

“I don’t need a perfect time,” he says. “I don’t need things to be easy. I just need you—choosin’ me, every day. Like I’m choosin’ you.”

Your chest aches, sweet and full.

“You already know my answer,” you say softly.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I do.”

You take the ring from the box and slide it onto your finger yourself—because this has never been about being asked so much as it’s been about deciding. About stepping forward together deliberately. About choosing a future not because it looks impressive from the outside, but because it feels right on the inside.

The gold settles against your skin like it belongs there.

John’s breath stutters just slightly when he sees it in place.

He kisses you then. It starts as a soft press of his mouth against yours, a seal of the promise just made. His lips are warm, a little dry, moving with a tenderness that makes your throat tighten. His hand comes up to cradle your jaw, his thumb stroking the line of your cheekbone. You can feel the slight tremor in his fingers, holding you as if you could disappear beside him. You kiss him back, letting your lips part just enough to taste him—coffee and the mint he’d popped earlier, and underneath it, just John.

It deepens, turns hungry in the space between one heartbeat and the next. His other arm wraps around your waist, pressing you against him until there’s no space left. The softness vanishes, replaced by a consuming need. His tongue slides into your mouth—not asking, just taking—and you open for him with a low sound that gets swallowed by his kiss. He tastes like want, like a thirst finally being slaked after too long a drought. Your hands fist in the soft cotton of his t-shirt, pulling him closer, needing him nearer.

You break apart, gasping for air. Your forehead rests against his, your breaths mingling in the scant inch between your mouths.

“Take me to bed, John,” you whisper, the words rough.

He doesn’t answer with words. He just stands, his arms sliding under your knees and behind your back in one fluid motion, and lifts you from the sofa. You wrap your arms around his neck, burying your face against the warm skin of his throat, kissing the freckles along the column of his throat, breathing him in as he carries you through the up the stairs to your shared bedroom. His steps are sure, his hold on you unbreakable.

He doesn’t lay you on the bed so much as he places you in the centre of it, following you down without breaking contact. The mattress dips under his weight as he settles over you, his hips slotting between your thighs even through the layers of your comfy clothes. He’s looking down at you, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide.

His eyes cut down quick, skimming across the stretch of fabric over your hips. His lips part, tongue dipping out to wet them; his cheeks flush darker, extending down his throat and below the collar of his t-shirt.

“Look at you,” he says, voice thick. “Just… look at you.”

He kisses you again, and this time there’s no softness left. He’s kissing you like a stray dog tearing into a piece of meat, rabid and uncontrollable; his hands grasp at any part of you they can, fingers pressing into your skin hard enough to leave bruises. You arch into him, meeting that wildness with your own, your nails scraping down his back. You can feel the hard ridge of his cock straining against his sweatpants, pressing insistently at the junction of your thighs.

Your hands find the hem of his t-shirt and yank it up without ceremony, impatience burning through you in a way that feels almost dizzying. He breaks the kiss only long enough to pull it over his head and toss it somewhere behind him, forgotten the second it leaves his hands.

John rests there above you, bare-chested in front of you—solid, and unapologetically real. His shoulders are broad enough to cast you in shadow when he leans in, muscle built not for show but for impact, for bracing and holding and enduring. His chest is wide and powerful, rising and falling already with uneven breaths, the faint sheen of sweat catching the light. Dark hair dusts across him, thicker at the centre of his chest before trailing down over his stomach in a soft, natural line. There’s a subtle curve at his belly—not weakness, just humanity—where the hair grows denser before disappearing beneath the loose waistband of his sweatpants. It makes something low and needy coil tight inside you.

Your palms slide over him, reverent and greedy all at once, mapping warm skin and solid planes. Muscle jumps beneath your touch instinctively, a reflex he never quite lost; strength answering contact without thought. He shudders when your fingers spread over his ribs, thumbs brushing the edges of scars that barely mark him anymore.

You see them now if you look closely—faint, pale lines where bullets once tore through him. Evidence of violence softened by time and serum, his cells rebuilt so thoroughly they refused to remember the damage properly. The super serum healed him fast, clean, almost unfairly; but it didn’t erase the knowledge of what those wounds meant. Didn’t erase the memory of how close he came to bleeding out beneath a fallen beam, pinned and helpless, eyes glassy with shock as the world burned around him.

The thought hits you sideways, sharp and sudden.

A flash of red lights. Smoke. Blood slicking his skin. Your hands slipping as you dragged him, inch by inch, convinced with every second that you were too slow, too weak, that another intruder would round the corner and end it all before you could get him to cover. The memory hums at the back of your mind, distant but insistent, like a bruise you keep pressing without meaning to.

Your grip tightens on him.

The want that floods you is overwhelming—not just desire, but need. A desperate, grounding urge to feel him here, solid and breathing and warm beneath your hands. To remind yourself that he’s alive. That you’re alive. That the world didn’t take this from you.

John’s breathing turns ragged as he looks down at you, ice blue eyes darkened with something fierce and unguarded. His hands hover at your waist like he’s afraid to hold too tightly, like he’s still learning that he can touch you without breaking you—and that you won’t disappear if he does.

“You okay?” He murmurs, voice rough, low.

You nod, even as your chest aches. “I just—” Your hands splay over his heart, feeling the steady, stubborn beat beneath your palm. “I need you.”

Something in his expression breaks open at that. Relief, want, devotion—all tangled together. He leans his forehead against yours, breath mingling with yours, and for a moment the world narrows down to skin and heat and the simple miracle of shared space.

Your own shirt is next.

John doesn’t rush it, but there’s nothing gentle about the want behind his hands. He grips the soft fabric at your waist and pushes it up, fingers flexing like he needs to feel the act of taking it from you. The movement is rough edged, urgent, driven by something deeper than hunger. You lift your arms without being asked, heart thudding as he drags the shirt over your ribs, over your shoulders, until it’s gone and forgotten somewhere on the floor.

He freezes for half a second.

Not because of modesty, but because seeing you like this still hits him like a physical blow. His breath catches audibly. The flush that’s already spread across his chest deepens, climbing his throat, touching the sharp line of his jaw. His eyes drop to your breasts, held in a simple cotton bra, and something reverent settles into his expression. Like he’s looking at something sacred rather than something he’s entitled to.

“God,” he exhales, barely a word.

His hands come up again, slower now, palms warm as they skim your sides. There’s a tremor in them you feel immediately—not weakness, but restraint stretched thin. He presses his forehead briefly to your shoulder, grounding himself, before his lips follow.

His mouth presses to your skin—soft, lingering kisses that leave warmth blooming in their wake. He moves deliberately, carefully, as though every inch of you deserves attention. When he reaches the faint scars that map your torso, his breath stutters. He pauses there, lips hovering, eyes dark and shining.

These are the marks the world left on you.

The ones he almost lost you to.

“These…” He whispers. “These scare the hell outta me.”

He kisses them anyway.

One by one, slow and reverent, his lips trembling just slightly as they press to healed skin. The touch is so careful it aches. His thumb follows, tracing gentle lines between each scar, connecting them instinctively, like he’s drawing meaning where there was once only violence. A constellation only he knows how to read; a map of survival, of stubbornness, of you still being here.

“I hate that you have these,” he murmurs quietly, thumb brushing one pale line again. “But I love that you lived.”

Your throat tightens.

He looks up at you then, eyes fierce with devotion, with relief, with a depth of feeling he doesn’t bother trying to hide anymore. His hands slide to your back, holding you close

“So pretty,” he murmurs, the words almost a groan. He bends his head again, his mouth closing over the fabric covering your nipple. The heat of his mouth, the dampness seeping through, makes you cry out. He sucks hard through the material, his teeth grazing the sensitive peak until it’s a tight, aching point. His hand finds your other breast, kneading, his thumb rubbing circles over the nipple until it’s just as hard.

You fumble with the ties of his sweatpants, pushing them and his boxers down over his hips. He kicks them off, and then he’s naked above you. You look down between your bodies.

His cock springs free, thick and already fully hard, curving up toward his stomach. The skin is a shade darker than the rest of him, smooth and stretched taut over the prominent veins that run along its length. The head is flushed a deep, ruddy red, beading with moisture at the slit. It’s a heavy, solid weight in your hand when you wrap your fingers around him, and he makes a choked sound, his hips jerking forward into your grip.

“Your turn,” he growls, and his hands are on your leggings, dragging them and your panties down your legs in one impatient pull. The cool air of the room hits your skin, but it’s nothing compared to the heat of his gaze as he looks his fill.

You’re spread open before him, completely bare. Your folds are slick, glistening in the low light, a deeper colour than the skin of your inner thighs. The outer lips are full, parting slightly to reveal the softer, wetter skin within. You’re sensitive and pulsing inside, desperate for John to touch you. He stares, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Christ,” he breathes. “Look at you. All for me.” One of his hands comes down, not touching you yet, just hovering over the thatch of hair above your pussy. “So perfect. So fuckin’ ready.”

He finally touches you, one blunt fingertip sliding through your slickness from the top of your slit all the way down to your entrance. You jolt, a sharp gasp tearing from your throat. He does it again, slower, collecting the wetness, then brings his finger to his mouth and sucks it clean, his eyes rolling back.

“Taste so good, baby. Always taste so good.”

He doesn’t make you wait. He lowers his head between your thighs, his breath hot against your skin a second before his mouth is on you. His tongue is flat and broad, licking a long, slow stripe from your entrance up to your clit. You cry out, your back bowing off the bed. He does it again, and again, until you’re shaking, your hands fisted in the sheets.

Then he focuses on your clit, sucking the little bundle of nerves into his mouth, flicking his tongue over it with a relentless, perfect rhythm. One of his hands slides under your ass, lifting you into his mouth, while two fingers of his other hand push inside you, curling, searching. They find the spot inside you that makes you see white, and he presses there, rubbing in time with the suction of his mouth.

“John—John, please—” You’re begging, but you don’t know for what—for him to stop, to never stop, it doesn’t matter.

John let’s go off your ass and you look below to see his arm moving beneath him, the muscles in his shoulder and bicep rippling with each movement. Listening closely, you can hear a wet, slick slide of skin on skin, and you realise that John is jerking himself off to the taste of you.

Your head flings back and you moan out into the cool air of the bedroom, your eyes rolling back in your head, vision bleaching out, your body twisting under his fervent ministrations.

He growls against you, the vibration shooting through your entire body. You glance back down and see John’s eyes roll back as he slides his tongue into you, slurping obscenely at your wetness. His breath hitches against you and his tongue falters when he hisses out a low moan, followed by a whine that dissolves into a whimper. His hips twitch and thrust into his palm before they stutter and still. You can feel the heat of his cum splash against your thighs, soaking the sheets below him.

He pauses only for a few seconds before he delves back into you, his hand coming back up to grip your hip; the fingers of his other hand twist deeper inside you, curling up to press firmly into that spongy spot that is so desperate for contact.

“Please, John, wanna come,” you manage to keen out, head thrashing side to side on the pillow. You reach down to grab at his shoulders, his hair, nails scraping along his skin until red marks trail where you’ve held him. He grunts into you, suctioning his lips around your clit, sucking the peak of it into his mouth, tongue laving hot strokes along it all the while. It punches a whip sharp whine out of you, and every muscle and sinew in your body tenses, back arching up off the mattress, mouth dropping open in a silent scream.

“Come for me, darlin’. Let me feel it. Be my good girl and come on my tongue.”

The words, the praise, the relentless pressure of his mouth and fingers, it shatters you. Your orgasm rips through you—a violent, pulsing wave that makes your thighs clamp around his head. You scream, the sound raw and broken. He doesn’t let up, drinking you in, licking you through the convulsions until you’re sobbing, pushing weakly at his shoulders.

He crawls back up your body, his mouth wet with you, his cock leaking against your stomach. He kisses you, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.

“Need to be inside you,” he pants against your lips. “Right now.”

You nod, unable to form words. He reaches between you, guiding himself to your entrance. The broad head of his cock presses against you, spreading your swollen lips. He pushes in, just an inch, and you both groan in unison. He’s so thick, always stretching you exquisitely. He holds there, his whole body trembling with the effort.

“Look at me,” he says, his voice strained.

You open your eyes, meeting his. They’re black with need, his face a mask of desperate control.

He sinks the rest of the way into you in one long, slow, devastating slide that fills you completely. You feel every inch of him, the hot, hard length of him buried to the hilt. Your inner muscles flutter around him, trying to adjust, and he drops his forehead to yours with a shattered groan.

“So good. You take me so good. So fuckin’ tight and perfect for me.”

He starts to move, pulling out almost all the way before driving back in. The pace is slow, deep, each thrust a deliberate claiming. You wrap your legs around his waist, locking your ankles at the small of his back, pulling him deeper. The new angle makes him brush against that spot inside you with every stroke, and little sparks of pleasure begin to build again, low in your belly.

“Are you gonna take care of me, John? Hmm? You're gonna put a ring on me, claim me? Then fill me up until I’m crying your name and my belly’s all round? Is that it?”

“Fuck, yes, darlin',” John pants into your mouth, his tongue lolling and drool pooling at the corners of his lips. “‘M gonna fuck you full, again and again. Everyone’s gonna know I’m yours, what I do to you—” He growls low in his chest, sharp enough that it punches out of him, when you tug at the hair at the nape of his neck. You see his eyes roll back and the drool trickle down his chin.

“So good to me, baby. I’ll do anything for you, John.”

His next thrust is harder, pushing deeper into you; a sudden, jolting twitch of his hips that shunts you further up the sheet until he pulls you back into his hips.

“Feel so good ‘round me. So fuckin’ good. You’re gonna wear my ring, carry my babies,” he’s babbling, unable to stop talking as he thrusts faster into you, “and I’m gonna be your man—”

“My husband.” You cut him off, and he snarls like an animal locked onto its prey. He brings one hand down the skin of your torso, stopping briefly to knead your breast and pinch a nipple, taking the skin into his mouth to suckle on it.

“My wife. Mine.”

The word unleashes something in him. His thrusts lose all rhythm, becoming frantic, pounding. The bed frame knocks against the wall with a steady, urgent thud. You can feel the slap of his skin against yours, the wet, slick sounds of him moving in and out of you. You’re both slick with sweat, sliding against each other. The coil inside you winds tighter and tighter, fed by his words, by the possessive fury of his movements, by the feel of the new ring on your finger digging into his shoulder where your hand is braced.

“Gonna come,” he grunts, the words slurred. “Gonna fill you up. Wanna feel it, baby? Wanna feel my come inside you?”

“Yes, yes, please, John—”

“Such a good girl. My perfect, good girl. Take it. Take all of me.”

His rhythm stutters. He drives into you one last time, burying himself so deep you feel him in your throat, and holds. A raw, ragged shout tears from his chest. You feel the first hot, liquid pulse deep inside you, a sudden flood of warmth. Then another, and another, a relentless series of spurts that seem to go on and on, painting your walls with his cum. His whole body locks up, muscles corded and rigid, as he empties himself into you.

The sensation of him coming—the feel of that hot rush, the filthy, perfect words falling from his lips—tips you over the edge again. Your own orgasm crashes over you, less sharp than the first but deeper, a rolling wave of pleasure that makes you clamp down around his still spurting cock, milking him for every last drop. You sob his name, your body convulsing under his.

He collapses on top of you, his weight a welcome anchor. You can feel his heart hammering against your chest, feel the rapid puff of his breath against your neck. He’s still inside you, softening now, but he makes no move to pull out. His arms come around you, holding you so tight it’s almost painful.

You don’t know how long you lie there, tangled together, slick and spent. The only sounds are your slowing breaths and the distant hum of the house.

Finally, he shifts, lifting his head to look at you. His eyes are soft now, hazy with satisfaction. He brushes sweat damp hair from your forehead.

“You okay, darlin’?” He asks, his voice rough.

You nod, a slow smile spreading across your face. “More than okay.”

He smiles back, a lazy, contented thing. He glances down at your hand, still splayed on his shoulder. The gold band glints in the dim light. He brings your hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the ring, then to your palm.

“Mine,” he says again, but this time it’s a vow, not a claim.

“Yours,” you agree.

He finally slips out of you, and you feel the immediate, warm trickle of his release between your thighs. He doesn’t go far, just rolls to his side, pulling you with him so your back is against his chest. His arm wraps around your waist, his hand splaying possessively over your lower belly.

“Gonna clean you up in a minute,” he mumbles into your hair, his voice already thick with sleep. “Just… wanna hold you like this.”

You settle against him, the solid warmth of his body surrounding you. Your eyes drift closed, the scent of sex and sweat and him filling your senses. The last thing you feel before sleep takes you is the gentle weight of his hand on your stomach, possessive and firm, and the cool metal of the ring on your finger.