chasing a starlight

by enolasholmes

Summary:

“I believe you,” she said, stern and steady. A soft sigh crept through her lips, nearly a gasp. Almost a quivering breath, like she searched for stability. “I am sorry, Bob. I do not mean to—to blame you for something. Accuse you.”

Bob settled. Weight slid off of his shoulders and he ducked his chin, his breath a bit unsteady, his heart pounding so loudly that he could feel it in his kneecaps. Pressure cinched his stomach tight still and he swallowed the sour taste of citric acid.

“I only meant it as an opportunity,” she murmured.

 

or, yelena makes an offer bob can't quite refuse

Notes:

this will be a very classic, short-and-sweet fwb au. shouldn't get too crazy, but i'll include chapter warnings regardless

Chapter 1: love-starved

Notes:

chapter warnings: implied/referenced child abuse, self-esteem issues/self-hatred

 

Sex tasted inaccessible. 

Bob always considered it—tongue to teeth, skin to flesh—as equal to leftovers abandoned in the rear of the refrigerator: too far gone. Rotten. A stomachache in the making and better to evade. Like cherries caving inward, green in the center and rot unfurling. Milk jug deserted, sour and spoiled.  

No matter how far his fingers stretched outward in search of something sweet, sex always escaped him with a snicker beneath its breath. With limbs extended in exploration, still his hunt returned empty-handed. Always he missed by mere millimeters.

Nothing quite so sugar-sweet could ever belong to him: something so tender to the touch, spongy like an organ, sticky like taffy pulled between his fingers. Nothing so good could be his to have nor his to feel. Pleasure could not be his to possess; not when he knew nothing beyond bone-deep pain. 

After all: voids deserved less than little. Black holes, sinking inward; destruction imminent, had not earned the right to euphoria. Its jaws merited blight rather than sucrose. Fungus stuffed the gaps between its teeth, not confection. 

And so he—a void beyond all others; a black hole borne from the death of a golden star—could not possibly possess the tender caress of fingers to flesh. Skin stripped bare. Body seen and known and wanted and loved—loved above all else. 

Bob was nothing to sink one’s teeth into: nothing to bite and chew and swallow. Rather, he was gum on the sole of a shoe. Chewed up and spit out, abandoned and neglected, intended to be peeled away and tossed into the trash. 

Sex became a laughable offense: utterly unattainable. Equally as remote as witnessing a supernova and as sour as citrus forgotten beneath the summer sun. 

 

—

 

The gymnasium stunk of antiseptic: too fresh, too clean. Like bleach and lemons squeezed up and over one another one too many times. Chemicals saturating every spotless, stainless corner. The tiles glittered grey and the walls white. Dust feared the room; cobwebs fled. 

Valentina had tossed funds—thicker than any paycheck he’d hope to see within a decade—and expected nothing less than perfection: stains stripped, grime scraped and scrubbed, deformities prohibited. Were she to stalk the shadows, it’d remain exactly as she intended: pristine. Hygienic. 

But the New Avengers; Thunderbolts; whatever; loathed anything that she even halfway enjoyed. Especially order. The gymnasium had been the first to suffer the consequences: shoes tossed in the corners, lockers stuffed with sweat-slick clothing, water bottles substituted for litres of vodka. 

Top to bottom, corner to shadow, havoc reigned. 

The remnants of the Watchtower followed: pots and pans littered the kitchen counters. Coffee grounds lay abandoned, milk curdling in the rear of the fridge, fruit overspilling and turning soft beneath the sun. A permanent peach bruise resided. 

Though undeniable chaos—a struggle for instruction, a clutter of commotion—Bob thought it tasted equal to home. A sour sort of mouthful, but overwhelming with flavour nonetheless. A tight-knit hug he could not so easily escape: snug and secure. 

Bob only ever knew one home, dotted blue-black and sore with stains. Shame curdled each and every memory of that white-picket fence; pain bloomed around the perimeters of that kitchen table. Hell seemed a better descriptor than home.

Applying a word so throughout doused-through with implications here—with heroes stronger, smarter, better in every sense of the word—bred ill consequences. It felt akin to a trap in the making: a snare eager to close around his ankles, blood spurting and flesh splitting. 

Though utterly aware he’d never even dream of fitting in, he liked to try. Sometimes, on his weaker and more pathetic days, he liked to pretend. 

“Do you wanna give it a go?”

Bob stiffened. Discomfort prickled his skin, scurrying down his spine like a spider fleeing from wadded-up paper. The too-large, too-heavy sweater swamping his frame held heavy to his shoulders as he stared with wide-eyes. The sleeves folded over his knuckles, the collar pressing loose to his throat, slack and shapeless.

Still remained an awful awareness of his body: limbs lean, body thin. No attire, no matter how thick, could conceal the truth of the horrors that lay below. Like a broken bone, crooked and malformed; even the cast stood stark against skin. 

Barnes peered over at him, shoulders stiff and tall and unrelenting. Jaw straight and suit snug and arm gleaming the color of coal. The pinnacle of perfection. Someone of his capabilities belonged here: an actual hero, no matter how speckled with red his past appeared.

Bob shrunk a half-inch smaller beneath the tight furrow of his gaze. Mortification flooded his cheeks red-hot and he shuffled further against the wall, hoping to disappear like a dust bunny; or better yet, a shadow. Invisible and insignificant. 

But Barnes failed to take the bait. 

“You must be bored,” he said, looking—and sounding—rather bored himself. Though that seemed his permanent sort of state: weary to the bone and worn to the marrow. A century over-lived likely did such a thing to a man. “Won’t hurt to try something. Anything.”

Bob sunk his teeth into the vulnerable muscle of his cheek. Blood spurted; copper spread. Wine-red liquid soaked into the gaps between his teeth and he swallowed heavy and hard, uncertain as to the appropriate response.

Participation equaled embarrassment: perhaps serum once spun strings of gold through his veins, but it slept soundly now. Supernova strength sat dormant, settled beside his nerves and buried deep behind his ribcage. 

Now only he remained: Bob. Boring, plain, pathetic Bob. Incapable of throwing a punch or leveling a gun or brandishing a blade. Too scared to scurry away from the wall like a mouse scouring for traps. 

Barnes—Bucky; because each and everyone reminded him time and time again that they required no alias of respect; because they considered him a teammate and friend and family—jerked his chin sideways.

The punching bag in the far corner was tattered around the top corners already, faded red like twizzler left out to grow stale. 

Bob wrung his fingers together. “Oh. No. No, uh. That’s ok—I’m ok.”

No need to humiliate himself any further. Shame curdled his stomach at the mere mention: tossing a punch. Missing. Tripping over his own ankles and twisting into a heap of lithe limbs. 

The body he bore performed poorly in the gym: small and weak. A wimp, his father always said, fingers wrapped tight around his bicep. Stand like a fucking man, stand up and take it.

Barnes—Bucky, Bucky—frowned. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“I could hurt someone,” he said. Or something: perhaps his pride, bruised and battered already. Maybe his ego, diminished to a speck of dust lingering in the cobwebbed corner. 

“Not yourself?”

Bob startled. The voice—as soothing as honey and brittle like toffee—slipped over his shoulder and down the stern line of his spine. Each syllable crept over his vertebrae, twisting tight and refusing release. 

Yelena settled beside him with a crooked and pretty smile. Millimeters remained between their bodies: her shoulder rubbed against his bicep as the bone of her hip knocked against his own. Limb to limb, flesh to flesh. 

Fuzziness filled up the rear end of his skull, akin to having sat out in the sun for too long without hydration: heat settling beneath the skin, a flush itching at his cheeks. Sunburn imminent and vertigo impending. 

“Not so worried for your own safety?” she asked. A taunt rimmed the tips of her words, though he knew it to be playful rather than a jab toward his ribcage. Just a soft and sweet question. 

“I’m more worried for you,” he admitted. The confession sat halfway between a truth and a lie. By now, the serum slept deep behind his ribs, tucked up around his heart. Inaccessible but extant. In all honesty, he worried more for his poor form and clumsy feet. 

Yelena wrinkled her nose. “I can take care of myself.”

Something stuck to the flat of her tongue, unwilling to slip away and into the air: a glimmer of concern, maybe. A flicker of doubt and bone-deep awareness, because she knew what he refused to utter aloud. Though he grit his teeth and bit till blood spurted, she heard his silent shames. 

Being so seen sometimes felt equal to being stripped bare: naked to the nerve. Skin peeled away and all of his ugly, spoiled scars left on display. It hurt to be known so wholly because she knew how sour he truly tasted; how rotten he’d truly become, like a peach bruised with abandonment. 

“So can the rest of us,” Bucky said, tipping his chin toward the faded bag once more. “We protect each other now, right?”

A pause. 

Uncertainty thickened his throat. It sounded—well, it sounded nearly as if Bucky intended to imply an unanimous sort or trust. Reliance that stitched everyone together, including him. Especially him. 

The declaration, bolden and brazen, slipped beneath his skin like a needle. 

Bucky sighed. “Practice never hurts.”

It could, and he knew nothing better than pain. Bruises blue-black and wounds as deep as his nerves. Injuries so split-wide that no suture could ever dream of merging the flesh back together. Pain loitered in every corner, inescapable and inevitable. 

Nothing existed besides bruised bones and sore skin. Nothing could belong to him quite like split-wide wounds and thinned blood. Sugar was a fantasy; pleasure an inaccessible daydream. 

Bob wrung his fingers together. The bones of his knuckles bumped up against one another as he twisted both hands around one another till the skin bleached. An old bruise stained the back of his palm red and raw; a scrape hours old left his wrist rough and peeled away. 

The skin and flesh and bones of his hands appeared as worn-down as the remnants of his body. Littered with wounds. Filthy with flaws. Scarred as all else—and now he stood straight, intending to inflict equal measures of damage. 

To argue served nothing besides further humiliation and so he shuffled up and in front of the equipment. 

Standing so near, the faded red of the punching bag better resembled hard candy—one of the sorts with sour sugar dusting over each bump and groove. A sack of them sat stashed in his otherwise unused locker, sticky on the outside and each a different color of the rainbow. 

Every other day, several would vanish as if having never existed, though he never minded much. The culprit deserved sugar far sweeter than a few suckers. Replenishing the constantly dwindling supply seemed a fair exchange for the sight of her tongue cherry-red and the scent of her breath smelling like tart sugar.

After all: he’d stashed the candies all for her. Just to see the corners of her mouth quirk when she thought she’d gotten away with it yet again. 

Yelena settled behind him, near enough to touch. Mere millimeters remained between their limbs but neither bridged the gap—though he wished to stretch and search for the tips of her fingers. It might soothe the thumping of his heart; or with any luck, lurch his stomach to the point of retching. 

Though she faced the stiff line of his spine, he felt as her gaze bore into him: his shoulders, his nape, his body. It made him feel awfully stripped bare. Naked to the nerve. Known but not wanted. Not kept. 

To see did not equal desire and he knew that better than any. Knew, down to his blood and in the thick of his marrow, that she could never wish to sink her teeth into him. Someone like her—bright and beautiful, sparkling like stardust—had no use for chewed-up gum. 

Bob steeled his spine and swallowed the tart taste of bile.

The first hit curved too far left. Pain flowered up and over his knuckles, sore like pressing down upon a bruise. It lingered for seconds as he hissed, wrist instinctively retracting toward his sternum to evade further contact. 

It hurt, but nothing quite compared to his skull shattered against the countertop in his childhood kitchen; fists beating against his sternum; shame coiling around his spinal cord. Nothing equated to the pain he’d suffered over and over and over again, and bruised knuckles were nothing to weep over. Just another wound to add to the tally.

Yelena murmured an incomprehensible sound. Maybe a hum, maybe something in Russian. The tips of her fingers pressed over the hollow of his back, searching for soothing. Red-hot desire unfurled in his stomach. 

“Again,” said Bucky. “You’re hitting like you think it’ll hit back.”

Bob winced. Old habits died hard, after all. That one in particular liked to rear its ugly head at sunrise and sunset, from dusk till dawn. A habit buried so deep behind his ribs couldn’t be pried out even with a crowbar. 

Fingers pressed hard over his spine for a brief breath. Just for a split-second, the tips of her fingers nudged over bone and he exhaled a steady sound. All of his anxiety wavered beneath her touch and below her flesh. It tasted equal to the strongest of sedatives. 

“Try again,” she murmured. The ghost of her breath floated over the thick fabric of his sweater. The scent of sugar and sour suckers lingered and he set his shoulders, knuckles curdled and jaw taut. 

Again, he struck: harder and straight and the bag swayed. The chains creaked. Faded red fabric jerked, reminiscent of a shared secret of sweets. 

Again and again and again and better each time. Firmer, studier, all the less delay. Pride tickled his sternum and stiffened his spine. A sunny sort of feeling unfolded from the depths of his stomach, warm like a sunburn and bright like confidence. 

With every strike, the serum roused all the more. It split wide across his nerves, dripping wet over his organs. Sunshine burst from the inside out and a supernova commenced deep in his gut. It tasted like melted ice cream on a summer day: sticky and sweet and molten hot.

Starlight pierced his flesh. Strength poured over his body. The serum ticked—a bomb eager to detonate; volatile and explosive—louder, shone brighter, burned all the hotted, and—

Yelena gave a nervous sound through clenched teeth. The toe of her shoe bumped against his ankle, featherlight and purposeful: a means of awareness. Recognition. I am here, I see you. 

Each and every nerve shrieked. White-hot jolts lurched his stomach and sent a splattering of goosebumps up his arms. It felt akin to being struck by lightning in the sternum: electric. Bone-deep and marrow-thick. 

But like a wire short circuited, his system fried itself up all at once. 

Bob struck forward with a last crooked hit, his heart humping so loudly that it reverberated in his eardrums. The taste of sugar coated his teeth, like a sucker stuck to his gums and melted over his tongue. It reminded him of her cherry-red tongue and fruit-filled breath and he hardly noticed as his knuckles split wide open over the punching bag. 

“Oh,” gasped Yelena. It sounded as though she’d chewed up a lemon; her breath high-pitched and her teeth clenched. “Don’t—stay still. Let me look.”

Confusion settled in a thin cloud in the rear end of his skull—until he ducked his chin and saw nothing besides red. The skin overtop his knuckles looked raw, like someone had peeled away flesh till only bone remained. Blood looked eager to spurt and spill though no scrapes split open his skin. 

“Oh,” he said stupidly. 

Yelena crept closer. A palm pressed flat to his spine, smoothing away wrinkles and plotting each bump of bone she encountered. As she peered low, her frown furrowed. “That does not look nice.”

Bob blinked, wide-eyed. One shoulder lifted into a careless shrug. “I didn’t notice.”

A pinch of pain split now that he paid it now, but it mattered little. Worse had been suffered and he’d endure greater wounds once more. Bruised knuckles and red-raw skin were nothing to fuss over. 

Bucky tilted forward with a soft sound but skittered away just as quickly as she hissed something quick and tart and incomprehensible. It forced him sideways with arms raised and his brows furrowed, mumbling something equally unintelligible as he went. 

The skin over his knuckles blushed brighter with every passing split-second. Pain pinched all the deeper, stinging at his skin like a spider’s bite. The wound, no matter how slight, made him wince to watch and he cradled the hand close to his sternum in a dazed sort of wonder.

Yelena’s teeth ticked together. “Ouch.” 

“It doesn’t hurt, not really.”

It tasted nothing like the blue-black bruises of his childhood. Like a scraped knee, knuckles rubbed raw could easily be forgotten—unlike splitting his skull wide open against a countertop. Blood rushing to the surface, spilling red and wet over white granite, fear curdling his stomach. 

Pain clung to the gaps between his teeth, drilling into his gums like a cavity, sticky as taffy pulled between the fingers. Pleasure tasted—well, he wouldn’t know. Like sugar, if he were to guess. Like ice cream melting on a summer morning; suckers stuffed against the cheek. 

Yelena wrapped a hand around his wrist, undeterred. The tips of her fingers applied thin pressure against his pulse-point. He wondered whether she could feel the twisting thump of his heart as it quickened. 

Molten desire dripped down the column of his throat. It settled low in his gut, thick like honey and hot like a lit match. The inside of his stomach began to burn to a crisp and he swallowed hard and heavy, flustered. Nervous. Stuffed-full of want and bursting at the seams with need. 

Bob inhaled an irregular sound; exhaled small and high-pitched. Golden strings knotted tight around his lungs, remnants of the serum. The taste of stardust tickled his throat and he ground his teeth down till they ached down to the root. 

Pleasure puffed up his stomach. The feeling of her skin against his own—flesh to flesh, bone to bone—made him want to do all sorts of stupid things. Like kiss her, maybe. Drop to his knees and offer her sun on a platter made of gold. Offer himself, though she’d likely only sneer at such a pathetic present. 

“Not so bad,” she said. Then, quieter: “Not so fun, either.”

A scar sat over her palm—he could feel it pressed up against the back of his own. When she twisted his knuckles around, searching for blood and scouring for scrapes, he saw a glimmer of its perimeter: it zig-zagged down toward her wrist. Bleached white with age and thin as a needle. Small but likely painful nonetheless. 

Other wounds littered her hands as well. Old bruises flushed her knuckles and dulled scars roughened her skin. With their fingers twisted, he could feel nearly every single one: all the remnants of pain buried within her flesh. The memories of nicks and scrapes her body couldn’t so easily forget. 

Bob huffed a hesitant laugh through his nose. “Fun? Pain doesn’t feel good. Never does.”

“The line is thin,” she said, studying blood blooming beneath his flesh, “between pain and pleasure.”

A pause.

Doubt flowered beneath his flesh. The thought pressed down deep like a bruise, hooking into his innards and sinking its teeth into his marrow. Like a parasite, the notion burrowed and refused release. 

Pain never resembled pleasure, not the way he knew it—and he knew it better than most. Bruises blue-black; wounds split-wide; liquor that left him stumbling to the flood. Meth that gnawed at his marrow. Shame that carved his stomach inward. 

Yelena peered up from beneath her lashes. “Sometimes they do not look so different if you know what to look for.”

“What’s that?”

One shoulder lifted into a careless shrug, but a split-second too late. Discomfort crinkled the corners of her eyes and something dimmed her pupils: something close to fear. Shame, stark and bleach white. 

Dread wormed its way up his stomach. Tart, lemon-like bile coated his teeth and he had to bite down hard to keep from spurting a bit of vomit over their twisted-together fingers. 

Rarely did she unveil the horrors of her past. Sometimes, he thought her heart was stitched over her sleeve. Stripped bare for all to witness, laid naked for all to poke and prod. Red and wet and spongy. As perfect as the rest of her. 

With time, he’d come to understand this to be a lie—or rather, a veil. A mimic. A practiced, performed method of pretend, like a spider luring prey into her web before unhinging her jaws.

Yelena’s eyes welled with tears, but only when she allowed it; her mouth twisted into a snicker or sneer only when she deemed it appropriate; her body softened like taffy only when no one but he remained to see it.

As deep as a hook buried in an eye, she felt; everything all at once. But only when she knew it to be safe, only when it couldn’t be used against her. All practiced, all performed, and he never quite knew whether to draw the line between authentic and artificial. 

Bob dared to twist their fingers together further. The skin of his knuckles prickled with pain as they rubbed up and over her palm, but it mattered less than little. A bruise compared seldom to the softening of her face. 

“A change in the heartbeat,” she said. A finger lifted to tap against his sternum, right against where his heart rested—and beneath the pad of her pointer, the organ quickened. 

Color poured over his cheeks. Molten heat scorched his face, flooding him so fast that he felt nearly dizzy. Were he to peer into a mirror, he’d surely resemble a maraschino cherry: sickly sweet and soaked in artificial sugar. 

Yelena’s smile lifted into something crooked and victorious. The hand at his sternum lifted away and three fingers seized his jaw; her thumb dug deep into bone. It held him sturdy and he felt rather weak in the knees as she hummed low in her throat, studying him in silence. 

A nail scraped against his cheek. 

“A flush of the cheeks.”

Bob blushed all the brighter.

Yelena grinned, wolfish and hungry. Each tooth gleamed pearl-white and he imagined, for a brief and pitiful breath, being swallowed up by her red mouth. Crumbling away beneath her teeth; limbs popping and bones clicking. Melting over the flat of her tongue; blood stretching and marrow spilling. 

What a way to go.

“Sweat,” she said, soft and sweet. Synthetic sugar dripped off of her tongue and made her words sound awfully alluring. “A flinch. Moaning; whimpering. Tears, even. It is all one and the same.”

The sting stretching through his knuckles and up over his palm felt rather dull, now. It had reduced to a blunt sort of ache, easily ignored. Red lingered around the perimeters of the wound, though he paid it little mind.

“How do you know it hurts, then?” he asked, curious. Defiant, too, though less so.

“I don’t.” 

Bob frowned. 

Yelena shrugged one shoulder, careless. The hand holding tight to his jaw fell away to her side, limp. Disappointment flooded him, though he tried not to deflate too obviously. “Don’t you see what I am saying? They act the same—they look alike; identical.”

A fine line. A narrow margin skipped over time and time again, because both sounded rather similar when held up to the sunlight. Like a sucker; sweet at the center, sour around the perimeter. Equal in taste, if only you had the patience. 

But—he never had tasted it. This was all there was left for him: ugly wounds rubbed raw. The body taken and dissected and ruined. Body made punching bag; body made tool.

Monsters like him didn’t deserve pleasure. Black holes that slaughtered stars to live weren’t worthy of tasting sugar and sunlight. 

“I don’t know,” he said. Doubt dribbled down his throat and over his lungs. “I’ve had worse than bruised knuckles. Never better, though.”

The confession crept through his teeth without intention. Shame punched his gut and he shrunk a half-inch, chin ducking as he bit hard and fast into the vulnerable inside of his cheek. It stung and he welcomed the familiar pinch of pain.

Yelena only softend around the edges. Something sticky lingered beside her pupils, like affection that refused to melt away. Taffy pulled between the fingers; adoration as thick as honey. 

“Yes,” she agreed, holding firm to his wrist. “You have known much worse.”

The words fell from her teeth with ease and without hesitation. Like logic, because she thought it to be nothing besides truth. Just history. Just his bruised past. It made him feel an inch better and his shoulders settled. 

Bob licked at his teeth. “I don’t think I’ve ever confused a broken bone with something stitched. I know the difference between hunger and being starved.” 

Starved of everything, really, though he’d never admit such a thing aloud. Not food but affection. Attention. Love—love above all. 

“I can recognize pain from pleasure,” he said, growing a tad more frantic. A bit more agitated with every syllable. “I can. I can.”

A swollen sort of feeling kept growing in his stomach, like a balloon filled with air and eager to pop at any moment: he felt like a bomb about to detonate. Explosives meant to burst. It felt as though she’d stripped him bare and shone a light over his worst wounds, like she’d seen that he’d been starved of anything good for his entire life. 

“I believe you,” she said, stern and steady. A soft sigh crept through her lips, nearly a gasp. Almost a quivering breath, like she searched for stability. “I am sorry, Bob. I do not mean to—to blame you for something. Accuse you.”

Bob settled. Weight slid off of his shoulders and he ducked his chin, his breath a bit unsteady, his heart pounding so loudly that he could feel it in his kneecaps. Pressure cinched his stomach tight still and he swallowed the sour taste of citric acid. 

“I only meant it as an opportunity,” she murmured. 

A breath. 

A pause, stifled and silent.

Then: his chin lifted and his heart thumped and his ribs fractured. Sugar flooded the flat of his tongue as though he’d sucked on a half-dozen candies all at once. Starlight blossomed up and across his lungs, twisting tight around the organs till he could hardly breathe straight.

Doubt knocked at his knees. Suspicion settled into the rear end of his skull. Hope, as brilliant as a supernova, plucked at his skin. 

“What?”

Yelena rocked on her heels. Color flushed her cheeks red and warm. “Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference, when they are so similar. At least, I can’t always tell. I thought you might be the same.”

Bob felt rather dizzy.

“There’s more than pain: your body is worth much more than broken ribs,” she said, and lifted up the wrist still clutched between her fingers. “More than bruised knuckles. There is much pleasure, if you know where to look.”

Awe slipped over his shoulders like silk, trickling down his spine and curling around his limbs. It felt equal to flowers growing up from the root around his body: petals tickling, blossoming, flourishing. Disbelief hooking so deep not even a crowbar could’ve pried it loose. 

“Let me show you,” she said. Something burned in the corners of her gaze, beside her pupils. It looked a bit like desire. Like sticky, warm want. 

Bob’s stomach lurched so fiercely that he felt it in his teeth. 

Hunger carved him empty. It felt hollow from the inside out, barren and deserted. All his guts and bone and blood lay deserted on the floor around his feet, staining the tiles red. Soiling the ground wet. 

Never had he wanted anything like her. His whole body lurched with it: his knuckles curled, his heart pounding, his limbs twitching. Heat coiled up from his gut, licking at his innards, burning him to a crispr from the inside. Were he to be split apart, only molten lava would be found. Sticky desire; an inferno of insatiable need in the shape of her. 

“Show me?”

It seemed absurd. Insane. Impossible on all accounts: he stood to gain everything and she nothing. Pleasure his to take and hers to lose. Someone so perfect—bright as the sun, beautiful as a supernova—was better off tossing him away. Scrubbing him clean. 

Within a split-second, she’d sneer and snicker and confess that it’d all been a joke. A laugh, to see if he’d bite, see how desperate he’d really be for her touch. For the taste of her mouth; her fingers to his flesh; her body against his own. For the sugar only she could provide, were she so willing.

But rather than do anything of the sort, she softened around the edges.

Yelena pressed the flat of her palm against his sternum. “You have known lots of pain, Bob. Why should you not know pleasure, too?” 

A confession crept between the gaps in his teeth: because pleasure was not his to have. Bruised peaches did not beg for another day in the sun because they knew when their centers were too far rotten for return. Cherries turned tart with decay folded inward on themselves, surrendering to the sour sway of death. 

Bob knew he could never taste the sweetness of sugar, even if his body was so starved of it. Even if he dreamt of cherry-red suckers and a toffee-brittle voice. If all he’d ever truly wanted was her: the pinnacle of perfection, the culmination of sunlight. 

Perhaps for once he could pretend. Just as she stitched her heart on her sleeve, he too could flirt with the taste of pleasure and the daydream of bliss. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Show me.”

Yelena grinned so wide that he could count each pearl-white tooth. Weight slipped off of her shoulder that he hadn’t even realized pressed down upon her. The color in her cheeks darkened, unfurling and creeping up toward her lashes as she released his wrist. 

Bob stuttered a shaky breath. Anxiety pounded at his heart, so strong that he wondered whether he’d puke. The tart taste of bile stretched out over the flat of his tongue and he licked over his teeth, trying to ward away the sour stench of vomit. 

But—there. 

The taste of sugar lingered too, in the very rear of his mouth and by the column of his throat. Easily missed, when citric acid overpowered all else. Lemon conquered berries with ease. But if he shut his gaze and kept still, the soft sweetness of overripe cherries and fuzzy peach skin tickled at the backs of his teeth. 

The pressure uncoiled by a half-inch. Bile receded, anxiety subsided, and all that remained was—was pleasure. Sweet fruit and insatiable want. 

Bob swallowed and tasted nothing but sugar. 

 

 

 

Chapter 2: swallow and chew

Notes:

chapter warnings: self-esteem issues/self-hatred, oral sex (m receiving)

 

Wine permeated every corner and crevice of his mouth. Tart around the perimeters, sour and strong; sweet in the center, like cherries doused in sugar. Pleasure and pain in equal measure, though likely only he’d say such a thing. 

Were he to allow the liquor to linger over the flat of his tongue for longer than a split-second, both flowered uniformly. One after the other, inseparable and identical. A twisted, warped mess of acid that he swallowed through a strangled inhaled. The liquid swept through the column of his throat, settling heavy in his stomach and sloshing about his emptied-out insides. 

Bob dug his teeth into the vulnerable inside of his cheek. Pain pinched as he bit hard and heavy but he refused to relent. Rather, he welcomed the familiarity of injury. Just another wound to add to the already overflowing tally. One more scar over his already ruined body. 

But the sharp sting failed to focus his attention. 

If anything, he felt all the fuzzier. Faint and foggy, like he’d drank an entire bottle of wine rather than a single sip. Inhibitions knocked loose and limbs slackened beneath sweet liquor. Pain twisted into pleasure and all because of an innocent offer of opportunity. 

An opportunity that still made less than little sense to him: didn’t she know he was ruined beyond the point of return? Like a peach bruised beneath careless fingers, skin peeled away and only the rotten center left to show. Bubblegum chewed between the teeth, better tossed in the trash than kept on the sole of a shoe. 

Useless. Unwanted. Rotten, spoiled milk that’d upset the stomach if ingested. 

Bob bit all the harder. 

The pain sharpened. Still he felt stuffed-full of cotton candy: weightless and light-headed. Overflowing with thin threads of desire rather than bones and blood. All of his organs had been replaced with honey, thick and sticky. Sugar pervaded him and still he felt empty: starved of her. 

Yelena sliced away at her steak across the table, oblivious to his inner turmoil. Ignorant to the surging swells of insatiable hunger for her sugar-sweet skin. Maybe she knew—she always seemed to know everything lingering in the gaps of his teeth—but just didn’t care to mention it at the dinner table. 

After all, an audience surrounded them. 

“Easy,” Barnes—Bucky—repeated for what had to be the fifth time in a half-hour. Maybe the sixth, though no one seemed keen to listen. “This will be easy and that is the entire reason Valentine asked us to go.”

“Making us go, you mean,” Yelena muttered, stabbing at her steak. 

Bob watched in wonder as she poked and prodded at the meat. Juice dripped red around the corners and onto her fingers as she pushed it sideways, toward the corner of the plate. It looked sticky and wet and she hummed as her thumb caught in a puddle of spilled sauce. 

“We need good PR.” Bucky’s brows pinched as he pierced his own steak into sections. The thin knife appeared closer to a machete in his capable hands. “Three days on the coast is perfect: we get in, we get our intel, we get out.”

Yelena licked at her thumb, cleaning away sticky juice and red liquid. The pink of her tongue darted between her teeth and over her flesh, once and then twice. A soft, sweet hum crept up her throat, likely involuntary but audible nonetheless. 

Desire punched a hole clean through his gut. Molten heat unfurled in his stomach, burning away all the cotton candy to a crisp. Were he to stand, his knees would surely buckle. Were he to open his mouth, a whine might just slip through his teeth. 

Wide-eyed, he ducked his chin and returned his attention to his abandoned glass of wine. Better to focus his efforts on cherry-red liquor than her soft hands—than her molten mouth and wet tongue and pretty teeth.

Bob stared hard and heavy at the wine. 

Rather than settle his nerves, it’d only left him all the more flustered. Every inhale lurched his stomach; every exhale spun his skull in circles. Chewing took several seconds and swallowing twice as long. Adrenaline pounded a baseball bat against his spine every other blink and he felt starved of a sedative. 

“Good PR,” Alexei scoffed. “Good vacation is what we need.”

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose with two metal fingers. “No—”

“We sit on beach. We drink piña colodas.”

Yelena’s nose wrinkled up with disgust—and maybe a bit of stark terror. Nothing seemed worse than tanning on the East Coast beside the Red Guardian in a swimsuit. 

Affection curled around his ribs regardless. The scrunch of her mouth and pinch of her brows always warmed his heart—and flushed his cheeks and softened his gaze and wobbled his knees—no matter the reason for her irritation. 

Bob nudged her ankle beneath her table; a plain and benign means of grasping her attention. Her chin turned and she met his gaze with synthetic horror. 

“Piña coloads,” she repeated below her breath, just loud enough for him to decipher. “You hear?”

One shoulder lifted into a careless, playful shrug. “Could be fun.”

The look that crossed her face—nose wrinkled, mouth twisted, brows pinched: the horror all authentic this time, the amusement stunned and not artificial—pounded his heart so fiercely that it echoed in his eardrums. It beat so swiftly that his ribcage ached with every thump.

“You are crazy,” she hissed, but it sounded swamped in laughter and her teeth gleamed pearl-white as her chin turned away. 

Bob considered it a victory more than anything. 

“Yes,” Alexei shouted, tossing up his arms. The whole table rattled as he banged against it, silverware clinking and plates clattering. Droplets of wine spilled over the sides of their cups and dribbled red across the wood. “Yes! Vacation!”

“Fuck me,” Bucky moaned, utterly defeated and certainly having lost whatever argument had transpired in the past thirty seconds. 

“Mai Tai’s,” Alexei continued, victorious. “Mojito’s!”

Walker frowned. “What are—are we just listing drinks now?”

“We drink till we cannot walk,” Alexei said, fists raised. Groans overlapped the table but he kept hollering ideas, unaware and uncaring. “We find lots of pretty girls. We have fun.”

Bob’s stomach plummeted straight through his flesh and to the tiles. Dread drowned his body from the top of his skull to the soles of his socks. Nausea filtered through the gaps in his teeth, sour as a lemon, sloshing his stomach sideways till he felt rather filled-up with vomit. 

Though absurd, the laughter drained away from him all at once. The sudden, slight splotch of sunlight depleted, darkening into a familiar and heavy shadow that pressed thickly over his shoulders. 

All thoughts of fun drained away at the edges, depleted and bleached of color. Piña coloads and sunlit beaches and coy smiles suddenly sounded equal to a needle inserted into the skin: irritating. A scrape of pinching pain against muscle and nerves. 

While she would soak up the sun and indulge in pretty girls, he’d be sitting alone in the Watchtower. Swallowed by shadows. Starved of everything good in the world. Sour and spoiled. 

Yelena groaned low in her throat, nearly akin to a growl. As the sound crept upward, she tipped back her chin and sent her gaze skyward. It left the long line of her throat exposed. It forced her pulse-point naked, susceptible for the taking. 

A needle-thin line split the sweet and sour taste permeating his mouth: heat flushed his cheeks even as nausea grew all the more acidic around his stomach lining. Want burned as bright as the sun behind his ribcage, scorching the exterior of his heart as it pounded against his bones. Discomfort splashed around his innards, sticky and lemon yellow. 

As sugar coated his teeth, sour shame spoiled his stomach. One couldn’t prevail without the other close behind. 

Bob knew it to be a foolish sort of frustration—only days had passed since she’d offered up a quick fuck and inconsequential pleasure. An educational opportunity of empty sex and already, wires crossed in the spongiest sections of his brain. 

Already, he thinned the lines between pleasure and pain. The hollow offer was just that: hollow; an offer. An opportunity, she’d so deliberately said, nothing more and nothing less. 

“Do not make me sick,” hissed Yelena, jabbing her knife sideways. “There will be no pretty girls.”

The sour prickles of unease settled only slightly. 

“No vacation, either,” Bucky grunted. Two fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose, likely warding away a Red Guardian-sized migraine. The plates in his coal-colored shoulder clicked as he ground his teeth together, a sure sign of irritation. “Focus, please. Missions aren’t supposed to be any fun.”

Ava snorted into her wine. “Have you had any fun in the last century, grandpa?”

Bucky stabbed so viciously at his steak that his left arm creaked around the elbow. Metal ticked and teeth scraped and the meat spurted juice over the side of the plate. Whatever he said next went unheard beneath his breath—and likely for the best. A few more curses soothed no one’s volatile temper. 

Fun always appeared an overpriced form of misery: pain sheathed and shrouded in a costume. Injury buried beneath distorted definitions of entertainment. Wounds waiting to occur just beyond the horizon.

After all: to him, fun had equaled meth gnawing away at his nervous system. Substances injected and erupting and bubbling inside of his bloodstream, spewing euphoria. A graceless crash back toward the ground always followed, and the climb out of the hole that he’d dug for himself was never pretty. 

Everything returned to pain in one blood-stained way or another. 

For so long—years and years and still—he had not even known anything else could be offered to him. That if he wished, sunlight and sweets could yield the same hot rush in the skull as a strong bottle of wine. 

Bob had never known pleasure could be known without a price; without strings attached. Without a debt hanging over his head. Pleasure took a toll on the body, like a hook fitting into the eye socket. It did not fit, not really, and he suffered the consequences trying to drive it all the deeper. 

Beneath the table, a limb knocked up against his own. Just a careless brush of an ankle to his flesh. A sock scraped against his bone, gentle enough that it hardly registered through the thickness of his own. 

Then: the nudge became firmer. Purposeful and tainted with intention. A second ankle wrapped around his; another sock pushed up and against his flesh. 

Bob’s gaze lifted rather steadily. Though he felt a bit weak in the knees, he peered across the table with deliberate steadiness. Far steadier than he felt. In truth, he felt a bit like an animal of prey: one ankle caught in a steel trap. Heart thumping, blood thrashing, body eager to flee. 

Desire licked at his innards, red-hot and wet like lava. Such a simple embrace—two ankles locked around his own; a game of footsie of all things—left him wanting for an ice bath. Maybe to dunk his head in a volcano to cool down. A bullet to the skull would surely leave him less dizzy

Yelena stared sideways still. One elbow came up to nudge at her father’s ribs, attempting to dissuade him from margaritas as she snickered beneath her breath. Nothing within her expression betrayed their twisted limbs, not even a twitch of her brow. 

Only he would be so influenced by ankles knocking together. Only he would be in need of a sedative after such a simple touch. 

“Well.” Yelena stood, shoulders lax and body loose. Entirely at ease, though he felt rather numb as she tucked away her ankles. “As usual, this has sucked. Same time tomorrow.”

That dull feeling crept upwards as she rounded the table, rummaging across the countertop for something too far out of his peripheral. Glassware clinked and the long line of her spine straightened and he felt awfully out of sorts. Like she’d stripped away all the warmth when she’d taken her thick socks and smooth skin from underneath the table. 

It was absurd and he knew it. Utterly stupid and entirely pathetic. 

Still he felt helpless to the insatiable hunger gnawing away at his innards: he’d never wanted anything as badly as her. In any capacity, in any method and manner that she permitted. Just a brush of her fingers or taste of her tongue. A flash of skin and brush of flesh. Anything felt equal to everything when he’d been starved all his life. 

“Ok,” she sighed, circling the table once more till she stood behind her emptied-out seat. A plate sat firm in her fingers now. White cake threatened to topple over the side, sliced thick and oozing with berries. A soft dusting of powdered sugar stained the lip and the pad of her thumb.

Affection twisted up and around his spinal cord. It bit at the muscles of his face but he kept his mouth thin and straight rather than grinning as he wished to. 

Though she’d never so simply admit to it, she indulged in sweets far more often than anyone else on the team. Whenever given the chance, she’d dig her fingers into sticky candies and jam-drenched tarts and fruits soaked through with pigment. 

Choices hadn’t oft been given to her, from dress to decision. Body to mind. If given the chance now, after years of chemicals turning him into something else, he’d likely go for the sweetest thing on the table too. 

Yelena jerked her chin sideways. “Come on, Bob.”

A pause. 

Silence smothered the table for a stilted split-second.

Then: wine sloshed in glasses as cups clicked against wood. Droplets of red stretched wide over the rim, staining bright. Silverware clinked and faces crinkled and fuzzy, foggy bewilderment settled across the seated team, visible in their crinkled noses and pinched brows. 

Bob blinked, wide-eyed. “What?”

Lightning crackled beneath his chest. As if thoughts of bolts of electricity had been registered to his nervous system at once, he twitched and squirmed and wrung his hands together to ward away the urge to flee. 

The direction was not so absurd because a routine had produced itself without intention after that day in New York: proximity that failed to waver, like two magnets drawn toward one another. A planet in orbit around the sun. 

Often, they watched movies and shared sweets and cooked side by side. Bob knew they spent far more time together than the remainder of the team, barring missions. 

But: to blatantly, brashly call attention it was unlike her. To shine a spotlight over their—well, whatever they were. Whatever she’d call them: less than lovers. More than friends, considering her careless offer of pleasure. Toeing the needle-thin line. 

Now she aimed all attention toward that margin. 

“Yes,” she said with a frown. The cake wiggled in her hand. Berries threatened to slip over the lip; frosting shuddered and wobbled. “Do not tell me you forgot. We have plans.”

Bob seized. 

The table settled. Shoulders fell lax, tension depleted. Plans implied nothing less than innocuous: a movie, maybe. Boxed mac and cheese that no one but she ate because she drenched it in such heavy amounts of hot sauce that it gleamed red. Therapy, even—Walker’s designation of any conversation that lasted longer than three minutes. 

Only he identified the truth lingering in the gaps between her teeth. 

Pleasure. Sugar, expressed through the body rather than the thick cut of cake in her hand. Tongue to teeth and skin to flesh. An exploration of bleached-white scars and smoothed over wounds and buried deep pain. 

Yelena’s chin tipped sideways again. A crooked smile curled the corners of her mouth upwards, wolfish and hungry. Playful and teasing. But her gaze looked sticky: warm, gentle. As soft as a wad of pale pink cotton candy. Patient above all else.

This was an invitation, he realized. Yet another opportunity. If he liked, he could refuse her attention with the same sort of bluntness she’d used to beckon him over. If he wished, he could sit sturdy and never speak again of her offer. 

But—

But he did want. More than anything, he wanted. Hunger scooped him hollow and she seemed the only thing in the universe capable of filling him whole again. Only she knew the cure to his empty, vacated chest. 

“Yeah,” he said, soft and shy. “I remember. ‘Course.”

Yelena softened around the edges. Weight slipped off of her shoulders, akin to relief filtering through her bloodstream and knocking away thorns of dread—though that made little sense. The offer stood empty: meaningless. Whether accepted or denied, she gained nothing. Lost nothing. 

Bob stood snail-slow from the table. Still his knees wobbled and his stomach lurched. Adrenaline spurted from the depths of his gut, submerging his innards in sunlight. It tasted like the start of a good high: euphoria settling it, a fuzzy feeling nipping at his skull, his heart skyrocketing with anticipation. 

With any luck, the descent wouldn’t equal a six foot hole to dig himself up out of. 

The elevator chimed softly. 

Together, they stepped inside, side by side. Elbows brushing and hips knocking. Flesh to flesh, concealed beneath thick layers of fabric. A teasing preview of what was to come. The thought left him all the more frantic: heart thumping, blood racing, nerves shrieking. Body eager to flee and feel all at once. 

Anticipation cinched his lungs tight. With every passing split-second, his breath came all the quicker. After tonight, he’d have touched the girl of his dreams. Skin to skin, flesh to flesh. Tasted her tongue and charted her flush. Heard her pleasure. Felt it down to his gut. 

“Hungry?”

Bob jumped. 

The plate bobbed in front of him. Frosting slid sideways but didn’t dare slip over the rim, even as strawberries toppled over one another from the rough movement. The scent of sugar wafted up toward him but rather than soothe his nerves, nausea spiked: too much sugar at once pinched like a migraine. Too much pleasure always felt equal to jumping headfirst into the sun. 

Yelena stared up at him from beneath her lashes. Something overwhelmingly soft—undeniably fond—left her gaze looking warm like lava. Pale pink crept up her cheeks as he found her eyes, less of a flush and more the lingering consequences of wine. Except, she hadn’t had any, had she? But then, the color in her cheeks—

“Angel,” she said, wiggling the plate again. Jam oozed sideways but she appeared utterly unbothered, even as it trickled onto her thumb. “Funny name for cake.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Funny.”

The corners of her mouth split into a smile, so fond and so pretty that he had to duck his chin. Staring straight into her face was equal to looking into the sun: too bright and too sunny. Beautiful and white-hot and dangerous. The human eye everted from eclipses for a reason. 

“Bob,” she said, snail-slow. The single syllable sounded like honey dripping off of her tongue, precious and well-loved. It made him want to curl up beneath a blanket. Why should she say his name in such a way? Why should she pretend such an ugly name had any merit? “You do not look happy.”

Bob shrugged a shoulder. Nerves gnawed at his innards. Nausea soured his stomach. 

A wounded sort of noise crept up her throat, like an animal caught in a trap. It hurt to hear and his heart staggered. Never had he thought such a small, soft sound would leave her lips. 

The elevator chimed, louder than before. The doors slid open into his floor, darkened by shadows and emptied out. 

Yelena hooked three fingers around the crook of his elbow. Even as he jerked, startled, she led him forward and toward the center of the room. Moonlight filtered through the large windows and bathed them in soft white light. Longing jerked him sideways as it submerged her body: she’d never look so pretty.

“Bob,” she repeated, just as soft and sweet as before. It sounded stained with worry this time around, concern bleeding around the edges, but still affection shrouded the name in silk. “You have not spoken all night.”

Despite himself, his teeth dug into the vulnerable muscle of his cheek. Pain pinched and stretched across the heat of his mouth. It only worsened as her eyes darted downwards, toward his cupid’s bow, and she noticed the indent. 

“Don’t,” she breathed, twisting at the torso to settle her plate down. Cake left her skin sticky and she licked at her thumb, cleaning away remnants of red jam and a blotch of white frosting. 

Bob went wide-eyed. Desire coiled his stomach into knots of want, so tight that he could hardly swallow without threat of his gut punching back upwards. Molten heat dripped across his organs, sticky and wet and red like wine. Red like the color of her tongue.

For a split-second, he imagined cleaning away the sticky mess on her behalf: licking away remnants of frosting and fruit. Tasting sugar straight from her skin. Sinking to his knees, if she’d let him, and tasting it straight from the source even. 

“You need to be honest with me,” she said, pressing a palm flat to his throat. The tips of her fingers were a bit sticky, still, either with sugar or spit. It mattered little to him: his heart seized and heat coiled low in his gut. A sticky sort of feeling seeped even lower. “I mean I did not bring you here for cake, you know that.”

“I know,” he murmured. A flush flooded his cheeks at the mere mention of more than tracking his pulse-point; something further than fingers hooked around his elbow. “I know that.”

“But?”

Bob flushed further. Being so seen—down to the marrow, deep in the bones—was equal to being stripped bare. No one had ever known him quite like her. “I’m not unhappy. I’m nervous.”

It felt foolish to admit. Childish, somehow, though wholly ordinary. Sex of all things shouldn’t twist his stomach and knock his heart sideways, but—the girl of his dreams stood in front of him. Patient, tender, eager. Willing to press her bare skin to his own, despite his spoiled nature. 

Yelena peered at him from beneath her lashes. Patient and softened around the edges. Endlessly fond and awaiting his explanation.

“I haven’t,” he scrunched his nose, cleared his throat, “uh, done this. Ever, really.”

“Ever?” she repeated, curious. Tone flattened around the edges, like she knew if she prodded too hard it’d be equal to poking at an old bruise. But it felt far from mocking. It sounded soft, and he knew the truth liked to dig itself out one way or another. “With yourself?”

Bob made a strangled sort of sound. “Uh. Yeah, but. I don’t know. It’s never like everyone says it’s supposed to be.”

Never had he felt punch-drunk: fuzzy and faint. Adrenaline waning beneath the twitch of muscles and tremor of limbs. Sugar only soured with every attempt; colors bleached; electric sparks fizzled around the corners, fried beyond repair. 

It was dehydration on a scorching summer day: throat parched, skull dizzy, skin red and peeling. But rather than a salve, sex only worsened the heat. Crumbled the body. Sunk him further into disappointment. 

“What does everyone say?”

“Fun,” he said, and thought of frosting slipping sideways and berries toppling over one another. Sugar bursting at the seams, wafting up with scent, spilling sideways and leaving a sticky stain in the aftermath. Sugar that swallowed the body whole. “It’s supposed to be fun.”

“You don’t think so?”

Bob smoothed his hand down his throat. “I don’t have the best track record with fun.”

The smile she offered up looked awfully crooked and terribly tender. Something softened further in her gaze. “You are not alone in that.”

Affection spiraled around his spinal cord, twisting so tightly that he could hardly arc without feeling its impression. It felt like silk shoved down his back, cushioning his muscles and cradling his bones. It felt a bit like that warm embrace in New York. 

“We really can eat cake. Like usual.” The flat of her palm pressed higher and her thumb brushed over his jaw. Quieter, close to a whisper, “Cake and nothing else, if you want.”

The taste of sugar could be taken with ease: yellow cake and white frosting and berries dripping wet. Jam that sat sticky over his fingers, fruit that clung to his teeth. A cavity eager to drill into his gums and cling to the gaps between his teeth. 

But: he wanted her. More than anything, he hungered for her pleasure. 

“I want this,” he said, wrapping his fingers around her wrist and tugging her backward an inch. “I want you.”

Yelena went wide-eyed. Color crept up her cheeks, pale but visible. Pink like underripe fruit begging for attention from the sun. A soft and sweet noise erupted from her throat, a sort of hum that sounded pleased and flustered in equal measure. 

“I am all yours,” she said. The flush overtop her cheeks brightened by a margin. “And you are all mine.”

Bob sucked in a sharp breath, heart hammering and face as hot as the sun. 

The possession of it all—the brazen claim of body and person—struck at his sternum like a strike of lightning. White-hot and electric. Thrilling, so much so that he felt his knees wobble a bit. Sticky desire crept low in his gut and itched at his stomach, desperate for release. Eager to split at the seams. 

With three fingers hooked around his elbow, she led him toward his bedroom. 

Every step quickened his heartbeat. Flushed him further. Punched at his gut all the sweeter, desire drilling into him so hard he could hardly stand straight. Anticipation sharpened like a blade, biting at his skin and digging into his flesh. Want left him hungry. 

Yelena steered the both of their bodies toward his bed—and he wondered, with a bit of shame and great deal of excitement, the pace she preferred. The pace she thought appropriate for an educational opportunity: quick and dirty. Fast and rough. Stripped bare of emotional connection but still stuffed full with pleasure. 

But: the flats of her palms softly shoved at his shoulders. 

Bob chased her direction willingly, falling to the edge of the mattress and meeting silk sheets beneath him. Confusion prickled over his skin—desire overwhelmed him just as quickly as she stepped between his opened legs, settling between his knees. 

“Yelena?”

“Bob,” she teased, snail-slow. Honey dripped through the single syllable. Affection poured through her gaze and her split-wide smile. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” he said, brows pinched. Without thought and without hesitation, because trust had burrowed down in his bones since that darkened day in the Vault. Since she’d come for him in New York, shadows swallowing her whole and sunlight at her spine. 

Yelena softened around the edges. “Good.”

Bob stared up at her from beneath his lashes. Like this, she stood inches taller. An ache stretched through the base of his neck as he craned back his chin, searching for speckles of gold in her emerald eyes. Seeking a glimmer of nerves hidden beneath the twitch of her brow. 

“Like this?” he murmured, frowning. “You’re sure?”

All this time, he’d been certain: it’d be him on his knees. Exploring her skin and charting the bleached-white scars across her body. Kissing up her thighs and digging his teeth into her hips and tasting her sweet slick. Adoring her body as he intended because that was pleasure. 

The corners of her mouth twitched. “You said you trust me.”

Rather than kiss him, she twisted sideways. Arced low and ducked inches to the left. The heat of her mouth pressed to his pulse, soft and sweet and—and he jolted. Like flinging himself headfirst into the sun, he felt dipped into red-hot lava. Skin burnt and organs sure to be next. Nerves shrieking and scattering and melting beneath the molten of her lips. 

Yelena laughed a soft sound. It puffed up and over his throat and he twitched, clinging to the sheets below. White-knuckling silk and tasting nothing but sugar. “Your body is not a tool.”

Again, she kissed him. Lower by a half-inch. This time around, he whined through his teeth, high-pitched and desperate for purchase. Heat dug deep into his gut, hooking into his organs. He felt sticky and pliable, like taffy pulled between fingers: desire swathed up beneath a layer of cotton candy. 

“Not a weapon,” she murmured. Another kiss, lower. Right where the base of his neck interlocked with the bone of his shoulder. As she mapped a snail-slow trail, the indents of her teeth left an invisible impression upon his flesh. The memory remained and he felt certain it’d linger for days to come. 

Bob whined. It crept up the column of his throat without permission, thin and reedy and so quiet that a strong gust of wind could’ve swallowed it whole. Want stretched further, leaving him hot and sticky and his hips jerked once. 

“I just see skin,” she said. The tips of her fingers tickled at his torso as she wrapped around the hem of his sweater. Together, they peeled it away—and though he looked scarred and rough and ugly, she said nothing. Just hummed. Kissed lower. Kissed the skin of his sternum and over the space where his heart thumped up against his bones. “Flesh.”

The thick fabric of his sweater fell to the floor, forgotten. A thin breath of air puffed over his naked chest and he shivered: it snaked down his spine and across his hips, ticklish and itchy. 

“Blood.” Another kiss, firmer, over the notches of his ribcage. “Bone.”

By now, she’d settled onto her knees beneath his spread-wide legs and the gesture knocked a baseball bat of emotions into his skull. The flats of her kneecaps would bruise come morning. They’d be sore, the skin pink and scuffed. 

Still she’d lowered without pause and without panic. 

Tears prickled the corners of his eyes, though he refused to let them slip through his lashes. That would certainly make for a pathetic picture: a dozen kisses to his chest, and already he’d turned teary-eyed. Pants still on and cock still untouched, and yet he wept for her. 

But: it felt like worship. Like being seen after a thousand years buried beneath sand; a feast after famine; love after being starved of it for the entirety of his life.

“I see a body,” she said, peering up from beneath her lashes. The tips of her fingers fiddled with the waistband of his too-big, too-grey sweatpants. A coy and sticky sort of look overtook her pupils. “I see you.”

Bob squirmed. 

“If I push hard enough, you will bend.” Yelena looked rather pleased at the thought: flushed with delight. Gaze glittering and body humming. “Bruise. Break.”

Together—without pause, bodies harmonious—they worked to peel away the last of his clothing. Lifted his hips; pried away fabric; tossed it to the floor, abandoned. Unnecessary, compared to what was to come. 

“I see someone very human.”

Bob laughed a trembling, breath-filled sound. “You forget: I’m a god.”

Yelena smiled, wolfish and hungry. Victorious and proud. Even settled on her knees between his spread-wide legs, the both of them knew her to reign all power. The reminder struck at his sternum and sent a fresh flush up his cheeks, hot like lava and red like a basket of cherries. 

One hand slipped low to cup his knee, and she spread him wider. The other lingered high on his thigh, smoothing down patterns with the tips of her fingers. It settled his nerves and nipped at his heart all at once. 

“Not here,” she murmured. Heat burned bright in her gaze. Something else lingered beside her pupils—something dangerously equivalent to adoration. A trick of the light, likely. “Not with me.”

Then: she dipped low and took the head of his cock into her mouth. 

Bob jerked. Each and every muscle seemed to twitch all at once. Molten heat submerged his body from the rear end of his skull to the bottoms of his soles. It felt like a sunburn: skin prickling with warmth, head dizzy with exhaustion, stomach emptied out with need. Body desperate for more. 

“Oh,” he gasped, spine arcing. A hand came down to clench hard over the sheets, searching for purchase. It was a wonder they didn’t tear in two. “Yelena, ah. ‘Lena, please.”

Yelena hummed around the length of him—and he cried out softly, hips twitching and heart pounding. The heat of her mouth overwhelmed him. Too much, too fast, though barely a minute had passed since they’d truly begun. Still he felt punch-drunk and dizzy with desire. 

Tears stung at the corners of his eyes. Heat struck from the depths of his vision to the column of his throat to his shrieking, struck-blind nerves. It felt like he’d bathed in the sun and this the consequence. 

“Please,” he breathed, though he hardly knew what he was asking for. Maybe more: more of her molten mouth, more of her sticky pleasure. More of her in any capacity. “Pl—ah, fuck. Mm, please. Yelena. Please.”

The flat of her palm inched upwards, till her hand rested over the bone of his hip. There, the tips of her fingers continued to trace sweet patterns and rhythmic circles. Gentle, patient reminders of her presence.

Yelena swallowed him deeper, to the root, and he gasped another strangled sort of whine. The sound of her name tripped off of the flat of his tongue, high-pitched and desperate, and she only drew him in further. Devoured him all the more. 

Bob’s hips jerked. “I’m—ah. Close. I’m close, ‘Lena.”

Pressure strung itself tight in his gut. With every passing moment—with every drag of her tongue—it knotted tighter. 

A hand drifted higher, stopping only to settle over his sternum. Beneath the flat of her palm, his heart pounded up against his ribcage. Hand to heart, pulse to pointer. Skin to skin, flesh to flesh. Sharper, hotter heat stung behind his vision and he whined, chin tipping back and spine arcing and hips giving a soft jerk.

The pressure snapped in two. 

Sugar submerged him: coated his teeth like a cavity budding. Blanketed his innards, twisting over his spinal cord and organs. Wrapped up his skin in cotton candy and sweetness. Only the taste of honey remained. Just pleasure, just her. 

Yelena pulled away with a soft, satisfied smile. The back of her hand came up to rub away at the corners of her mouth and he flushed, humiliation prickling at his face. But she only laughed, carefree and low. “See? Not so godlike now.”

Bob panted for breath. It forced his chest a half-inch upwards and then caved in back inwards. The corners of his vision were faint and fuzzy, and he felt as though he’d run a thousand miles backwards. Exhaustion weighed heavy over his shoulders. Pleasure seeped through his blood and bones. It felt—well, human. 

So very human. 

 

 

 

Chapter 3: and hunger after you

 

Bob felt equal to an animal of prey: one foot stuck in a metal trap, blood spurting and flesh splitting. Heart thumping up against his ribs and nerves scattering with every high-pitched breath taken. 

Each and every unsteady inhale taken filtered through his lungs like an electric jolt, startling his organs with white-hot tremors. Torrid shocks tickled at his skin and twitched his muscles, and he was powerless to cease their consequences. Rather, he’d become a bomb eager to detonate. Prepared to splinter at the seams and burst at the perimeters. 

And all thanks to her. 

Yelena drowned in pleasure. Sugar dribbled from her molten mouth: it clung to the flat of her tongue and buried between the gaps of her teeth. Drilled into her gums like cavities at the ready, eager to slither upward and trickle through her voice. 

Not a single half-inch of her body had been spared of sweetness. It lay buried in her gut, smothered behind her tender rib cage, swallowed around her spongy heart. Without pause it poured off of her flesh, embedded into her every hairsbreadth. 

Pleasure stirred in his stomach at the thought of her. Desire tickled his innards and he shuffled his weight between both legs, aching from the inside out. Feeling as sensitive as shattered glass, though neither had touched the other in days. 

Besides commonplace nudges—an accidental bump of the elbows, an intentional brush of the knees—nothing quite so carnal had been indicted toward. Nothing quite as sweet as that dim, red-hot night together by his bed, her knees bruising and his spine arced. Pleasure cresting with an insatiable celerity. 

Nearly a week past, and she had yet to approach him further. 

Perhaps—perhaps nothing more would transpire.

Bob stilled against the countertop, fingers twitching over the pot sat in front of him. The water bubbled with a pop, but the soft sound echoed like a muffled and distant whine. Dread overtook him and the half-cooked pasta seemed to matter less than little in comparison to his abrupt realization: never again would he have her. 

After all: no schedule had been set. No further offers and no promises made beyond that singular, sugar-sweet evening. Just a half-hour of pleasure and nothing else necessary. 

A sour sort of taste permeated his mouth, like having bitten straight into the flesh of a lemon. Tart juice spilled over his teeth and he grit them tight, till an ache spread up and over his jaw. Till he could concentrate on nothing beyond the sore prickling of pain in his face. 

Yelena couldn’t be held responsible for his weak-kneed defects. After all: no one besides him possibly required a tutorial to comprehend the simplicity of sex. No one but him, as rotten as bruised fruit left out in the sun, needed visual proof of skin and flesh and bone. 

Pathetic and pitiful, just as his father has always spit. Defective in all manners of meaning. Incapable of grasping pleasure within his own two hands without the aid of another, no matter how simple a task he knew sex to be. 

Bob returned to his pasta with a ducked chin and fumbling fingers. The water popped louder. The noodles chased one another slowly as he stirred listlessly, heart leaking fluid all over the rest of his innards. Stomach turning inside out and teeth twitching beneath the sour taste of citrus. 

At the very least, the memory remained—and with great persistence. 

It stuck to the corners of his skull like chewed-up gum to the sole of the shoe, eager for attention. Demanding replay. And he felt helpless but to obey, no matter the hour of day. Regardless of his location. 

At breakfast, his mouth dry and his stomach empty, the memory of that evening tickled deep at his gut. In the shower, with water as icy as a frozen-over lake, it struck at his sternum and charred his skin to a crisp. While searching for sleep; amidst his dreams; from dusk to dawn and each hour in between. 

No matter how deep he attempted to bury it, the memory resurfaced with twice as great grit. Desire sunk its teeth into his gut each time. Molten heat trickled over his organs and left him sweltering like a sunburn, but he could do nothing besides wait for the tremors to sink back into his skull. 

Bob sighed softly. 

In the very rear end of his skull, thoughts of that night crept upward. With each passing split-second, a lit match of desire burned all the hotter in the depths of his stomach. Hunger turned carnal. Want turned insatiable. 

Days past and still he could feel the impression of her mouth over his hot flesh. The wet plane of her tongue, the rough pads of her fingers. Skin to skin and flesh to flesh. Pleasure charred like sugar browning into caramel. 

Desire spooned out his insides and replaced his organs with sticky, sweet want. It wobbled his knees and he shifted his weight, trembling and twitching. 

“Hungry?”

Bob flinched. 

Surprise stunned him silent and he retreated inward instinctively, arms tucking close to his chest and shoulders hunched in preparation for a strike. Anxiety thumped up against his chest alongside his racing, quivering heart. 

Old, ugly habits died hard. 

Even as the honey of her voice registered in the spongy bumps of his brain, his muscles twitched with apprehension. Anxiety wobbled his knees and quivered his muscles, and he swung his chin around to meet emerald eyes. 

“Just me,” said Yelena. Worry bled through her teeth, though her expression remained as soft as a wad of cotton candy. Something sticky and overly fond overtook her gaze and he ducked his chin, overwhelmed by the sight of such unbridled affection.

“Yeah,” he said, quick enough that she couldn’t apologize. No need: he’d been the once to wince and wobble. It’d been him incapable of shaking loose age-old habits, not her. “Just you.”

Though he didn’t dare argue such an absurdity aloud, there wasn’t anything just about her. Nothing so simple and nothing so plain as to her presence. Especially after the evening spent together, with her mouth wet and hands hot and fingers tight and—fuck, he had to think about something else. Anything else. 

Furious, he frowned hard at the pot in front of him. Soggy pasta stared back, innocent and overcooked in his distraction. 

“Might be soft,” he said, scooping powdered cheese into the bowl. “Still edible, I hope.”

Yelena pressed a hand to his lower back as she peered over his shoulder. The pads of her fingers dug into the lumps of his vertebrae. A shiver crept down his spine as she applied greater pressure, not unlike spider’s legs scurrying across tile in search of a dusted-over corner. “Mac and cheese is always edible. Very good.”

Want struck hard at his sternum. Every inch of her lay draped over his back, nudged up against his flesh. Through the thick fabric of his too-big sweater, he could feel the impression of bones and the heat of skin. A fuzzy feeling settled into his skull, equal to that of drinking too much wine all at once. 

“We’ll split,” he said softly, cheeks cherry-red.

A pretty, playful sound crept through her teeth, stuck halfway between a hum and a squeak. It sounded thrilled and he twitched, heart thumping up against his ribs with such strength that they turned sore. Affection softened his innards till he felt rather tender to the touch, like a blue-black bruise being pressed down upon. 

Bob pivoted—and at the very same split-second, she tilted forward at the hips. 

Both of their bodies collided, skin to skin and flesh to flesh. Yelena nearly knocked her nose into his shoulder as he hissed a sharp sound, lungs cinched tight with surprise. Both hands flailed backwards, searching for the countertop, scouring for stability—and she pressed the open flats of her own palms to his hips in aid. 

“Don’t trip,” she teased. A hand fluttered upward to smooth away invisible wrinkles in his sweater, while the other squeezed his waist once with enough pressure for him to feel it deep in his gut. 

Electricity sizzled beneath his bones. White-hot jolts struck straight at his organs, stunning him with such force that he winced. Butterflies fluttered across his gut, tickling his innards and gnawing at his muscles. 

Inches remained between them now. They stood so close together that he could count each of her lashes, map the constellation of freckles hidden around her cheeks. If he liked—were he any braver—he’d tilt down and kiss her. It’d take only a split-second. Just a mere moment and far more courage than he’d ever endured. 

Yelena peered up from beneath her lashes. Pale pink colored her cheeks, though he couldn’t quite comprehend the reasoning. Perhaps the thin bones of his hips made her rather uncomfortable. Maybe the evening spent in one another’s company had left the tart taste of bile between her teeth. 

Bob soured every so slightly. 

A thousand and one occasions had passed by between their bodies since that sticky, sugar-sweet night overtop his sheets. Mornings spent knocking elbows over cereal, evenings tucked up against each other sharing blankets on the couch. Passing cutlery at dinner, fingertips brushing and electricity jolting his nerves. Trading suckers at the gymnasium, tongues cherry-red and teeth gleaming pearl-white. 

Still she had yet to indicate toward its occurrence. 

It seemed as though she’d decided it unworthy of mentioning. As though his poor, pathetic performance—mouth open wide in whimpers, spine arced in tremors, pleasure peaking within mere moments—had buried itself into the depths of her mind, too unpleasant to recall. 

Then again her knees hadn’t buckled beneath a white-hot orgasm. Though he’d offered, soft and shy and eager, the corners of her mouth had thinned away with tension. A brisk refusal had been forced through her teeth as she’d turned taut, shoulders drawing inward and knuckles bleaching white. 

Yelena lifted up onto her toes. A soft and sweet hum slithered up from the depths of her throat and the hands spanning his waist crept upwards. One slid sideways, nudging against his lower back through the thick fabric of his sweater. The fingertips of her other flexed, as though her knuckles were spasmed by nerves. 

Astonishment overwhelmed him as she pressed up against his front, flesh to flesh. Sternum squashed against his own, bones brushing bones and hands teasing clothing that swamped his figure. 

Bob dared to wonder whether she’d kiss him. 

Closer she came, till he could smell her breath. Count her lashes. Dissect the blotches of olive green melted in beside her emerald eyes. Closer and closer still, and disbelief knotted his lungs tight. Air came all the more difficult and his next breath sounded strangled, like a high-pitched whine. 

“Bob?”

“Yes?” he exhaled. Anything further would surely require air that his lungs no longer possessed. Even the triple syllables of her name, drowned in sugar and as bright as the sun, seemed heavy suddenly. 

Yelena’s smile stiffened around the corners, though amusement stained her gaze. “The hot sauce. Behind you.”

Bob’s stomach plummeted. Shame curdled his innards, as sour as lemons eaten straight. Bitter like liquor poured directly down his throat. The taste filled up his mouth, flooding his tongue and teeth and gums. 

“Oh,” he said, whirling around. Embarrassment flushed him so hot that he felt it in his eardrums. Were he to stare into a mirror, he’d surely appear the color of a cherry. “Behind me.”

The bottle sat red on the counter, beside the pot—because he’d hoped that she’d come. Because she refused mac and cheese without first soaking the pasta in the condiment and he’d dared to dream of her arrival. Of sharing cutlery and food and company, as if they meant anything to each other. As if that one pathetic performance of pleasure actually meant something to her. 

Fuck, was he stupid. 

“Yes. For dinner.”

“For dinner,” he repeated distantly, offering the bottle up toward her with his gaze averted. Humiliation applied heavy pressure to his lungs. Swallowing required greater effort than ever and he shuffled toward the table with his chin ducked and his cheeks aflame. 

Yelena settled beside him with ease; far more than he’d felt in the last week and perhaps even in the entire duration of his life. The pink in her cheeks dispersed, swallowed up by a satisfied sort of smile. Coy and proud and likely a consequence only of the mac and cheese sat in front of her. 

Bob’s stomach caved further inward. 

A minute passed in near silence. The tip of her fork scraped over the pot, scooping up past with an eagerness adopted only when presented with boxed mac and cheese. Though he attempted to follow suit, knuckles white around his own cutlery, his innards felt rather spongy. A lump sat high up in his throat and swallowing would require more effort than he held the energy for. 

“Not hungry?” she asked, spooning up remnants of cheese still stuck to the bottom of the pan. A clump of it clung to the back of her fork and she licked it away, bright-eyed and content. Shoulders slack and devoid of the weight that so often pressed down upon her. 

Bob averted his gaze, cheeks burning bright at the sight of her tongue poking through her teeth. Heat pooled around the base of his spine as he remembered, with great shame and considerable desire, the feeling of her wet mouth lapping at his cock. The tips of her fingers tracing sweet, soft patterns into his ugly skin. 

Want knotted around his vertebrae, cinching so tight that he stiffened ever so slightly. As molten heat dripped over his gut, his heart swelled up twice in size. Furiously, he shoved the memory to the rear end of his skull, digging his teeth into his cheek to avoid flushing further. 

“I ate earlier,” he said, lazily pushing the remnants of pasta around at the bottom of the pot.

“Why cook, then?”

Bob peered up from beneath his lashes. The confession lingered on the tip of his tongue and thwacked against his heart with such strength that the organ ached. Carefully, he admitted, “I made it for you.”

All for her: because he’d hoped that she’d come. Sit beside him as she ate her favorite meal, no matter how processed and neon the cheese. Spend more than a few meaningless moments in his company and by choice. 

“You’re terrible at feeding yourself,” he said, forcing the words through his teeth with a distinct weightlessness. In truth, the acknowledgment often worried him: she hardly ate if someone didn’t stick a plate in front of her. Alone, she did a poor job of taking care of herself. It seemed they were alike in that matter. “You burn water trying to boil it.”

“That is rude,” she said, but the corners of her mouth wobbled with affection. Something sticky and overtly fond drenched her gaze and she gave a low laugh beneath her breath. The sound struck at his bones like fire crackling. “But true, I guess. I will let it go.”

Bob said nothing, too busy with a string dangling off of his sleeve. Better to pay it attention than her. The softness in his expression made him want to keel over and sob: didn’t she understand how much he wanted her? Didn’t she know, down to her bones and in the thick of her marrow, that his heart pounded only for her?

“Thank you,” she said. Their knees bumped as she twisted to face him; his organs jolted with want. Heat scorched up and around his kneecap, feeling sore and raw like a sunburn left untreated. “For dinner. It was sweet of you.”

Yelena pressed a palm over his knee. That stripped-bare, peeled-open feeling stretched across his body, up toward his thigh and down in the direction of his ankle. The tips of her fingers squeezed, just one, just enough for him to feel it in his gut, and he jerked. 

“Bob?”

Bob hummed, still playing with that stupid string. It twisted around itself between his fingers, as thin as a needle and grey as dust. Misery weighed heavily over his shoulders, applying steady pressure that threatened to splinter his bones. 

“Something is wrong,” she said. The words were flat, a simple statement rather than any sort of accusation. The hand over his knee squeezed again and his lashes fluttered, stomach squeezing into a knot of nerves. “Will you look at me?”

Reluctantly his chin tilted upward till he met her gaze: brows pinched, mouth thin, cheeks pale of color. Gaze as patient as ever and blue with worry. 

Yelena jostled his knee with a pretty smile, searching his own expression. Whatever she found within the flat set of his mouth and furrowed frown of his brows left her stained in concern. The tips of her fingers retreated a half-centimeter, as if in fear that her touch only worsened things—as if he wouldn’t trade his breath and blood for her skin pressed against his flesh. 

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m always quiet,” he said, forcing the corners of his mouth crooked. 

“Not around me,” she said, tapping the pad of her finger over his flesh. Within a moment he realized it to be rhythmic. Slow and steady and once every other breath. A pattern, just like that day in his sheets. His heart seized at the resemblance. “Not anymore.”

Despite himself, affection sloshed around his stomach. Since that shadowed day in New York, he’d crept out of his worn-down shell. Become all-too comfortable. Made a home amongst the team and by her side. 

Yelena’s face scrunched and that age-old weight returned to her body; he saw it in the sudden shrink of her shoulders. “Is this about the other night?” she asked, voice even but face flickering. “About us?”

Despite himself, the thought of him and her and them as an us swelled his heart twice in size. Affection expanded his lungs like air being filled into a balloon, and he wondered whether the organ would pop given the opportunity. 

Bob’s teeth clicked. Apprehension dried up the spit from his tongue. To admit to his want—to his foolish, absurd obsession for her—seemed nonsensical. Entirely pathetic, because how could he so easily confess that a half-hour spent with her mouth around his flesh had left him all the more enamoured? That the aftershocks of single, extraordinary orgasm still pulsed through his body?

Whatever tripped upon his expression left her all the paler. Uncertainty flickered beside her pupils, as swift as a strike of lightning amidst a thunderstorm. The hand over his knee cap lurched and then resumed pressure around his bone just as suddenly, as though unsure whether to hold tight or release. 

“Tell me the truth,” she said, drawing back in her seat. Tension knotted around her shoulders though she held calm and fast. “You know you can say anything. It’s just me, yes?”

Bob’s lungs caught. 

Just her: just the source of his every daydream. The sunshine burning his skin red-hot. Heat dripping in his stomach and desire pooling in his blood, hunger gnawing at his gut and consuming his each and every thought. 

“Was it…” Yelena’s teeth dug into her lip as her voice tapered at the edges, wavering with an emotion he couldn’t confidently place. “Was it as you were used to?”

“Used to?” he repeated, unsure. 

Color splotched high in her cheeks as she gave a nervous hum low in the column of her throat. “You told me it has always felt different than expected. Not fun. Not good.”

Stark, bleach-white horror settled into the depths of his stomach. Wide-eyed, he gaped with little shame as the realization of her troubles truly struck at his sternum, leaving him cold and clammy. 

“No,” he said, tongue tripping over itself in his hurry to explain. In his scramble to rectify the false assumptions made. “No, it—it wasn’t anything like that. ”

Yelena’s face shuddered. The tips of her fingers withdrew another centimeter backward, unconvinced. 

With a hot swell of desperate courage, he clasped his fingers around her own, halting her retreat. Naked skin kissed stripped-bare flesh. The scars over her hands scraped up against him, rough and familiar. 

Awe softened her features. Something equal to affection—more likely bewilderment, were he less deluded—glistened in her eyes as she stared at him, silent and stunned. Rarely did he so freely reach for her, even with a touch as simple as knuckles interlocking. Never had he left her mute beneath his embrace. 

“Yelena, it’s like everything I’ve ever been told,” he admitted, smoothing the pad of his thumb over a scar raised over her knuckle. “Everything I’ve always expected and—and hoped sex to be: fun. More fun than I’ve had my whole life, really.”

The unintentional confession forced a flush to his cheeks. Rather than meet her gaze, certain it’d be sticky and fond and overwhelming with emotion, he stared down toward their twisted-together fingers.

Heat flooded his gut at the sight of their knuckles interlocked, their bones brushing. Desire knotted snug strings around the base of his spine as he imagined touching her further: sweeping a fingertip over her pink cheeks. Tracing scars hidden away beneath her clothing. Tasting the sweet slick between her thighs, should he ever be so lucky. 

“What then?” she asked, very voice stained in pride. Still warm and still fond but undoubtedly soaked through with hunger, and he suppressed a shiver at the sound. “What has you so frightened?”

Bob’s heart trembled. “Us.”

Yelena stilled. 

“You and me,” he murmured, shrugging one careless shoulders, “because I’ve never felt this before, anything like it. I never knew it could feel like this and it scares me how much I want it.”

In truth, he spoke of far more than sex. Beyond the molten of her mouth and sweetness of her tongue, further than the familiar skin of her fingers. Superior to the the red-hot pleasure of an orgasm cresting and hunger finally satiated after years of starvation. 

Though he wouldn’t admit it with a blade pressed to his pulse-point, he spoke of love. Affection that filled him up with cotton candy fluff, warmth that burned brighter in the pit of his stomach each and every day. An appetite stained with want that could never be satisfied so long as he failed to truly have her and she have him. 

“I still want you,” he said, plucking every existent strand of courage up from his body. “I want more.”

Silence stretched. 

Anxiety nipped at his nerves, sending them shrieking across his limbs. Any trace of lingering prowess dispersed, smothered beneath the sour taste of bile settling into his mouth. Humiliation trembled his already twitching muscles with each split-second spreading between them distant bodies. 

Bob wished he could crawl beneath his covers and hide away for a few hours. To swallow down his overwhelming want for her and pretend for a little while longer that he could be hers. That he meant something to her, equal in measure to what she meant to him; an absurd but relentless hope. 

Then: “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

Wide-eyed, he raised his chin. Astonishment drilled into his bones, thumping at his heart like a bat to the sternum. Shock stunned him silent and he dug his teeth into his tongue, searching for a reply that refused to come. Attempting to make sense of her murmur and locating only a dizzy, distracted sensation permeating his skull. 

Yelena grinned, pearl-white and wolfish. Color flushed her cheeks but she hardly seemed to notice as it crept toward her ears. “You should have told me. Could’ve made both our lives easier.”

Disbelief as radiant as sunlight engulfed him, drowning his teeth and tongue in the taste of overwhelming awe. Quickly it drowned away beneath sweet, sticky desire as she swung a thigh over his own and settled into his lap. 

Bob jolted, lungs floundering for air. Stomach starved for her. Body eager and heat pooling low, forming a thick puddle around the base of his spine and in the pit of his gut. 

Their hips sat flush together, separated only by the thickness of their sweats. With every steady inhale filtered through her lungs, her sternum raised a half-centimeter and her pelvis shifted, inadvertent pressure that punched straight at his gut. 

It’d be easy to rock upward into her. To squeeze her waist with both palms and set a slow, steady pace of their hips that left them both gasping for breath and taut with pleasure. Nothing seemed sweeter than the sounds of pleasure dripping off of her lips. 

But: this was her game and her rules and he wanted nothing more than to serve her desires. 

“We could’ve been having fun,” she murmured. The heat of her breath floated over his mouth and he shivered, wide-eyed and intoxicated. Dizzy, as if he’d drunk a dozen bottles of liquor. “You can always ask for more, Bob. Wanting is no crime.”

If only she could comprehend that his want had no boundary and his hunger no satiating. Maybe then she’d find it a carnal, infectious craving. Maybe then she’d turn from him as he’d always expected of her. 

Yelena stretched a hand between their bodies, dipping just beneath his waistband. The tips of her fingers tickled over his abdomen and he jerked, teeth digging into his cheek to ward away a slow-rising whine. 

“Didn’t I promise to show you?” she asked, mouth twisting into a playful pout. 

“Yes,” he gasped, hips jerking upward in search of her hand. The band of his sweats gave way and her fingertips slipped a centimeter below, coming to rest low on his stomach. Pleasure twisted tight around his spinal cord. Desire dripped a slow path down his chest. 

Surprise brightened her expression, as though she hadn’t intended for a verbal reply. It smoothed away into softened satisfaction within moments, and something hungry settled into her gaze. Want lay buried away just beneath: he knew it well enough not to recognize it by now. 

“Let me show you,” she murmured, in that very same soft and sticky tone as when she’d offered in the gymnasium. “Would you like that?”

“Yes,” he said, too quick and too desperate. Red flushed his cheeks and humiliation nipped at his skin and what did that really matter compared to the sight of her proud, pleased smile? “Please. Please, Yelena. Show me.”

Yelena nudged her nose against his with a soft smile. “So polite. So sweet for me.”

Bob’s hips jerked.

The tips of her fingers slipped a half-inch lower. 

“Do you like that?” she asked, sounding all-too delighted at the idea. “Being sweet for me? Being good?”

Bob gave a strangled, smothered whine. 

Pressure knotted tight around his gut and she had yet to even touch his cock. Pleasure overwhelmed him, from the rear end of his skull to the soles of his socks, and he felt helpless but to succumb. Molten heat and sugar-sweet lust soaked his innards, growing all the stronger with every passing split-second. 

The utter possession of her words knocked into him like a baseball bat to the head. For her, he thought, wild and desperate and so terribly in love that he twitched with it. For her: sweet for her, good for her, all for her. 

Yelena’s hand slipped lower. “You are, Bob. So good, so pretty.”

“Please,” he breathed, unsure what he truly even meant to beg for. “Please, ‘Lena.”

The plea unraveled the remnants of her restraint: with an unmistakable blush and a thrilled, heat-soaked grin, she slipped beneath his clothing and wrapped her hand fully around the base of his cock.

Bob jolted. A weak and high-pitched whine crept up his throat as he tipped back his chin, eyes screwed shut and mouth open. Pleasure sunk its teeth deeper into his innards, as sharp as a blade. Heat stretched and spread further in the pit of his stomach, sticky and sweet. 

“Yelena,” he said, helpless to anything besides the honey of her name. Both hands clutched at her waist, desperate for an ounce of sturdy stability amongst the waves of desire flooding his body. “Pl—ah, please.”

“More?” she guessed, a teasing bite to the question. The tempo of her hand—slow and lazy, as though she had nowhere to be besides astride his lap, fucking his cock—stalled on the next upstroke. With her thumb, she circled his weeping head, spreading sticky precum.

A trembling moan dripped off of his tongue as he twitched, his hips squirming upward. Further into her touch, searching for greater pleasure. Desperate to satiate his bottomless, ravenous hunger for her. 

“You’re so good,” she said, soft and sweet. The affection seeped through her words struck straight at his heart and he gasped, lungs feeling smothered of all air. Organs squelching and throat tight. “So, so good for me.”

Tears pickled the corners of his eyes. The possession overwhelmed him with want. The praise submerged him in love. It all felt like too much too fast: too much heat, too much hunger. Too much pressure knotted around his body, pleasure climbing quicker than he knew how to handle. 

Yelena squeezed the base of his cock once, gentle but teasing. A sob lingered on the flat of his tongue and he bit down hard, smothering it away beneath a strangled sort of gasp for air. Tension strung all the tighter around his muscles and he trembled with the force of it. 

“So pretty,” she murmured, earning an upward jerk of his hips and a wet, high-pitched whimper. Rather than deter her, his squirming and sticky sounds seemed to prod her further along—were he of sound mind, he’d likely have wondered the reasoning. Questioned why she faltered before resuming with greater interest. “So perfect.”

“I’m—mm, close. So close.”

Bob squeezed her hips till the tips of his fingers dug hard into her flesh. Distantly, he thought whether or not the imprints of his skin would remain: little pink marks in the shame of his fingertips. Ten pale, harmless reminders of their time spent together. 

The mere idea of it left him dizzy. 

“All mine,” she breathed, and it sounded nearly like an afterthought. Like a secret meant to be kept only between herself and their close-contact bodies, but he heard it well above the buzzing in his ears. 

Bob’s jaw fell open in a strangled, wet whimper. Pressure knotted tight around his gut and heat dripped hot over his innards and tears prickled strong along his lashes and—and all at once, it unfurled. Cracked down the center and burst into thousands of pieces. Crested over his body and submerged him in pleasure. 

The movement of her hand failed to cease, even as he twitched and trembled. As his hips jerked up off the seat and his fingers prodded hard into the flesh of her waist, she remained steady, her pace idle and gentle and perfect. Slow and sweet and equal to the tenderness shared between lovers. 

Yelena pressed a careless kiss to his pulse-point as his body slackened. “Good?”

Bob hummed, too tired to speak. Too crammed-full of love to say anything more, lest he admit to his devastating desire. Still it lingered along the flat of his tongue, eager to be known and heard. Love filled the gaps between his teeth, permeating the entirety of his mouth, till he could taste nothing but sugar.

Nothing but hunger, insatiable and unrequited. 

 

 

 

Chapter 4: fighting cavities

 

Sour turned sweet beneath her steadfast attention. 

Though foolish to truly believe, pleasure bloomed into something familiar. With the passing of each sticky encounter, it hooked its teeth further into his innards. Buried deeper in his gut and knotted tighter around his bones, till it tasted recognizable. 

By now he could taste its flavors in the gaps between his teeth, like a cavity clinging to the gums. Drenched in sugar and dangerous in its delay, but so wonderful as it first hit the tongue. Like euphoria. Like that first dizzy flood of liquor hitting the brain or meth striking the skull. 

Bob tried with all his might to remember this to be temporary. A provisional means of hands-on guidance for his benefits. Above all, artificial. 

Nothing that passed between him and her and them counted as truth. As real, honest desire. No amount of stripped-bare skin or naked flesh made it less of a game of pretend, and it’d serve him better to remember so. 

Sometimes forgetting just tasted so much sweeter. 

Bob gasped, high-pitched and filled to the brim with wavering restraint, as she squeezed the base of his cock. The smooth skin of her palm felt familiar, the rough pads of her fingertips even more so. To be touched by her felt equal to a lover’s embrace: tender and warm and overflowing with affection. 

Were he to clench his eyes shut, he could pretend this to be nothing but skin cradling skin. Flesh to flesh. Something stuffed full with meaning and intention and worth. Blind, he could so easily forget the truth of their circumstances. 

Yelena pumped over his cock soft and slow. Lazy, as though she wished to be nowhere beside him in bed, as though she didn’t still stink of ash and crusted-over blood from a morning spent on the East Coast with Bucky and Ava. 

With each upstroke, she drew circles over his weeping head, spreading sticky precum. Heat prickled behind his lashes. Pleasure tangled tight around his gut, arcing his spine up and off the sheets. 

Yelena murmured something sweet but incomprehensible. It sounded halfway between a hum and the honey of his name. Perhaps even well-aimed praise, should he be so lucky. The thought punched straight at his sternum and his hips jerked, desire dripping all the stronger down his stomach. 

“So good,” she breathed, having spotted the pinch in his brows. Having taken note of the sudden flush in his cheeks and dampness of his eyes. “Like that, Bob. So sweet.”

Bob whined low in his throat. The soft little sound was strangled, as though soaked through in his tears. Unsteady and high-pitched, like pressure was soon to crest. 

With such little time having passed between those first occasions—her mouth hot around his cock and her knees bruised over the floorboards; her thighs spread wide across his lap and her hand stretched low—she’d caught on to him quicker than he’d have liked. 

Encouragement left his mouth sticky with the taste of sweet sugar, like maraschino cherries left to rot between his teeth. Endearment, no matter how soft and shyly spoken, made him shudder and squirm with eyes wet. Praise of any sort dizzied his head with a sharp strike of euphoria. 

Though nothing impressed upon him quite like possession. 

“So pretty,” murmured Yelena, tightening her grip as slick dribbled down the head of his cock. “So pretty for me.”

Bob squirmed. 

A whimper caught in his throat, high-pitched and desperate, at her transparent claim. For her, he repeated in his head, hips jerking upward. Heat pooled lower and desire strung tighter and still all that echoed were those two simple words. So innocent and yet their impact struck as hard as a baseball bat. 

Pressure tangled tighter around his gut, as hot as the center of the sun and the color of a basket of overripe cherries. With each passing split-second, his lungs felt more cramped, like something pressed down upon them. 

“Is it good?” she asked, voice coated in artificial sugar. 

Bob hummed, incapable of coherent speech. Were he to open his mouth, nothing beyond unsteady whines would likely come out. 

“Tell me,” she said, voice soft but grip unforgiving. On the next upstroke, she pressed the flat of her thumb to the dripping head of his cock, stretching pre-cum across his skin and applying firm pressure in equal measure. “Tell me if it’s good.”

“It’s—oh, it’s so,” he gasped, eyes screwed shut and body twitching, “good. Promise. I pr—mm, promise.”

Yelena nudged closer, clearly pleased. Praise seemed to soften her shoulders just as well, though she’d rather bite a bullet than admit it out loud. Likely, she assumed her own desires to be of lesser priority. As if he wanted for anything besides her. 

“I’m—mm, close,” he forced through a whine. “Close, ah.”

Snail-slow, she continued to pump up and down. Lazy and leisurely, as though she had nowhere else to be besides his bed. But more likely, she knew slow and steady left him punch-drunk far more effectively than quick and dirty ever would. 

Rough and hard had their places in sex. Frantic and eager, brimming with unbridled and insatiable hunger, never received many complaints from him. Wet and wild and desperate could be fun, if well-timed and well-aimed. 

But: slow felt sweet.

Though he was loath to linger on the thought, sex unhurried felt all the more gentle. Tender and frail and his to grasp between both hands, rather than an empty expression of bottomless bliss. For a moment, he could shut his eyes and pretend this was something more than an offer of education. 

If he dared to dream, it nearly felt real. 

Bob’s hips jerked. Heat bit harder at his lashes, sinking its teeth into his sternum. Pleasure flooded his gut all the wetter and he gasped, skull sinking into the pillows as the knotted-up strings of want unraveled around the edges. 

Stars burst around his peripheral. A soft sound fell from his throat, weak and high-pitched, and she gripped him harder and fucked him slower. Steady and sweet. Gentle and patient and—

Pressure crackled and crested and soaked the entirety of his body in inescapable waves of sticky sugar, like being dunked in a vat of honey. 

The jerking of his hips came to a slow stop. His spine, arced and trembling, straightened and he collapsed back onto the sheets, lungs cinched tight and air difficult to find. 

Yelena settled backward with a satisfied sort of shimmer circling around her pupils. The corners of her mouth twitched upward though she reigned in whatever sounds settled in the base of her throat. “Good?”

“Good,” he repeated, breath still coming fast and quick. Uneven and high-pitched. “Perfect.”

As if it’d ever be anything less: she was pleasure personified. Sugar embodied. It seemed impossible for her to be capable of anything less than perfection because her poorest performance had wobbled his knees regardless. 

“Perfect,” she said, teeth gleaming pearl-white as she smiled. “High praise.”

Beneath her pride-stained grin, he could see a shy sort of shimmer tucked away, buried just behind her bright irises and coy expression. Though she hid it well, he knew her. Saw her, just as she saw him—and had no need for flushed cheeks or an audible moan to know praise punched at her gut, too. 

“It’s always perfect,” he said, softer than before. One hand came to rest over her knee and he rubbed a snail-slow circle over her skin, hoping to soothe her further. Though she didn’t often allow him to touch her in these moments—she shied away as if nervous, skittish and shy—he sometimes dared to poke and prod. 

Rarely did he stretch his luck past the point of no return, but bravery occasionally struck at his sternum. 

Bob smoothed a hand over her kneecap, tracing the pads of his fingers over an old scar. It looked white with age. Narrow and thin as though she’d tripped over pavement and scraped her skin raw. Blood must have leaked. Pain must have spread. 

“Would you like a turn?” he asked, still stuck staring at the healed-over wound. If he gazed even a half-inch upwards, he’d catch sight of her stare, as bright and beautiful as an eclipse, and all sense of courage would dissipate.

Silence stretched.

For a breath, hope tickled his innards and flushed his organs. 

Never had she allowed him to return the favor. Rather, she preferred to scatter in the aftermath of his sugar-sweet pleasure, darting from the bed within split seconds of pressure cresting in his gut. Tucking away her limbs and folding up her skin, as though the simplest of attention toward her body equaled peril.

“I could. Just this once,” he tried, thumb brushing up and over another scar. Thicker and higher up on her thigh. “If you’d like.”

Little use remained in trying to tell her that he wanted it; and more than anything, really. More than her mouth to his flesh; her hands to his cock; pressure splintering down the middle. More than anything she could ever offer him, because her pleasure was equal to salvation. 

Yelena’s brows pinched. Refusal lingered on the tip of her tongue; he could see it in the thin set of her mouth and the color steadily draining from her cheeks. Wary, unnerved distaste wrinkled her nose and she exhaled a sound stuck halfway between nausea and amusement. 

Bob’s fingers twitched over her thigh, retreating half an inch. Shame curdled his stomach and he licked over his teeth, tasting only citric acid. All sugar had dissolved in the wake of her crinkled, uneasy expression. All pleasure bleached of color beneath her repulsion. 

Rejection hurt little: he’d tasted it once before and would taste it again. Being denied the chance to please her as he’d dreamt of once or twice before—or well over a thousand times, in truth—didn’t matter. Nothing mattered beyond the utter, unfathomable confusion lurking beside her pupils, buried beneath a scoff and furrowed brows. 

To see her so callously toss away a chance for her own pleasure pounded at his skull. It ached to realize she thought it such a worthless endeavor.

“It could be fun,” he tried, soft and sweet, careful not to prod at a blue-black bruise with too much pressure. Coaxing and patient, as she always had been around him. “Never know unless you try. Right?”

A stilted breath of air stretched between their bodies. 

Yelena softened around the edges: her pinched brows smoothed by a hairsbreadth and the corners of her straightened mouth lifted, as though enamoured by his encouragement. Weight slipped away from her taut shoulders and stiffened spine, though still she looked stuffed-full of doubt.

Bob wavered. Dug his teeth into the vulnerable inside of his cheek. Mustered every slippery fragment of courage, and said, “Let me show you.”

The sweetened muscles of her body turned taut once more. Apprehension filled up her expression, leaving her looking all too sour, as though he’d shoved chunks of lemon between her teeth. A frown furrowed her brows and that weight pressed down heavily over her bones again. 

“No,” she said, chin ducking. “You should be sleeping. It is late.”

The sun still sat low in the sky. Cotton candy pink and peach skin orange stained the sky and bathed the both of their bodies in dim light. Neither would sleep for hours and they each knew it, but he knew not to prod any deeper. Poking at blue-black bruises only hurt. Digging into old, sore wounds solved nothing. 

“Right,” he said quietly. “Next time, then.”

The suggestion slipped off of his tongue like honey and he regretted it within a split second. 

Yelena twisted up from the sheets as though he’d struck her sternum, her shoulders hunched and her cheeks bleached of color. Impatience wrinkled her face and she laughed a low, mean sound, equal to that of when she argued with the remainder of the team. Like when she thought Walker had said something absurd and lewd and needed a smack upside the head to right his spinning skull. 

“No, Bob,” she said, teeth grinding so loudly that he heard it from a foot away. “No next time.”

Bob faltered. 

Though she sounded unforgiving, he knew better than to assume her anger. Weeks and weeks prior, he’d have shrunk: ducked his chin and averted his gaze, wrung his hands together and murmured his apologies.

But: something lingered. Something far beyond displeasure.

It looked as though she were bracing herself: limbs taut and body strung tight. Face pinched, cheeks flaring with color. Fingers twitching as though in search of the nearest blade, as though she thought herself in need of protection. 

Yelena looked scared. 

Scared of her own pleasure. Ashamed of its mere mention and nauseated by the implication of her deserving attention. Anxious and apprehensive over the idea of her body dripping with sticky sugar and sweet slick. 

Bob’s stomach fell toward the floor with a wet, ugly splatter. 

“Yelena,” he said slowly, lifting up and off of the sheets. One hand hurried to fix his clothing, stretched far away from his skin. With the other, he did his best to clean away the half-dried remnants of cum still clinging to his abdomen. It mattered little compared to her. “I don’t understand what’s upset you.”

An irritated, impatient sound crept up from the depths of her throat. 

It stung an ounce to hear, but he did his very best to remind himself of the delicate subject matter at hand: sex. Sugar and slick. Pleasure and pain and he knew better than any how heavy they weighed over the body. 

This had to be treated like a bruise: carefully tended to. Brushed over with soft, gentle fingers. Poked and prodded but never pried, never peeled away. Only coaxed and soothed. 

“I’d like to understand,” he tried, shuffling his weight from foot to foot. “I’d like to try it. Touching you, showing you.”

“Why?” she asked, curt. Still angry and still scoffing, though he knew her to be wounded beneath her synthetic show of exasperation. Some age-old injury lay beneath and he intended to shine a spotlight over it, as she’d done for him time and time again. 

“Why?” he repeated, without heat. “To make you feel good, just like you wanted with me. To show you what it can be like, if you do it right.”

Yelena’s face crumbled by half an ounce.

Without intention, he’d dug his fingers straight into the source of her troubles. Peeled away her skin and shone light right over her deepest worries by suggesting that perhaps she has done it wrong once before.

That she knew not how to do it right. 

Bob reached out a hand toward her, intending to soothe. Hoping to salve the skin he’d burned, but she retreated further inward rather than toward him. A scowl twisted up her face and any remnants of vulnerable, spongy pain buried away beneath newfound anger. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she seethed. “I don’t want that. Neither do you.”

Hurt nipped at his innards but he held fast. Brows pinched and heart squelching, he stood steady and strong. Patient and eager to hear whatever she threw his way, no matter how sharp her tongue or bitter her tone. 

“I do,” he said slowly. “I do want that.”

“You don’t,” she said, something sour coating the words. Something far stronger than anger, like acid that had burrowed deep into the body. Shame that had hooked itself into the inner flesh and refused to yield.

Bob steadied himself. 

That shame tasted familiar. Its tart flavor had permeated his mouth for years and a few wonderful weeks with her couldn’t quite dislodge it from his body, no matter how sweet her company. The thought of her enduring the same—humiliating that overwhelmed, pain that overrode pleasure—made him want to crumble. 

“You don’t want it,” she said again, with no less bite than before. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

Yelena shuddered. The sour twist in her face faltered as she studied him, considering the offer. Searching for steel traps and cruel tricks. Considering the words, because she’d never known the best. Never once had it been shown to her without strings attached and blood soaking the skin. 

“Tell me,” he said again, firmer. “Tell me what it’s like. I might not understand but I can try. Just like you did for me.”

“It isn’t the same,” she said, arms crossing. Shielding her sternum, he thought. Protecting her body and forcing him away all in one fell swoop. “Don’t pretend you and I are the same. Not in this.”

Bob considered its implications: him, steeped in blue-black bruises from his childhood. Fingers fumbling and lungs seizing and body crumbling at the first inklings of pleasure. Inexperienced and overwhelmed beneath the first taste of sugar, because he’d been starved of it for so much of his pitiful life. 

And she—just as lonely and bruised and wounded down to her marrow—knew pleasure in this one regard. How strange for her to be so well-adept in sex, when stripped of bliss in every other facet of her life. It seemed an obvious thing to overlook, now that he thought of it. 

“Tell me anyway,” he said. Pleaded, really. 

Yelena wavered. “And if you don’t like what you hear?”

Bob softened around the edges. “We stick together. Isn’t that what you said?”

Amusement crinkled her brows. Affection too lingered in the corners of her pupils, warming the remnants of uncertainty still swimming in her expression. But doubt continued to trickle through her body, turning her muscles taut. 

Both his hands lifted toward her, empty palms coming up to cup her elbows. 

“There’s nothing you could say to change my mind,” he said, steadier than he felt. In truth his heart pounded and his stomach skipped and he hoped with all his might that heat wouldn’t rise to his cheeks. 

“Change your mind?” she asked, soft and sweet. Though he’d never indicate toward it—for fear she’d halt—she tilted forward, further into the heat of his hands. “About sex?”

Desire dizzied his skull. Little proximity remained between them now—it nearly appeared as though she meant to tilt forward and kiss him. It’d require less than a hint of effort to shove forward and do so, and the thought circled around his head with such speed that it spun.

“About everything,” he breathed. “About sex and—and you.”

Something shifted in her expression. Within a blink it’d disappeared, buried away beneath her wide and curious eyes. A trick of the light. Nothing less and nothing more. 

“Me?” she said. The word dripped off of her tongue like syrup, as if dipped in honey and trickling off of her teeth. The whites of her teeth gleamed as she smiled, dangerous and hungry. Stupidly, he felt a thrill of desire rather than a punch of fear at the sight. “What about me, Bob?”

Dread slid through him. Like tripping into a snow storm, he felt his teeth itch and his blood freeze. Frost coated his organs and nipped at his muscles from the inside out, and still he stood and stared and held steady, incapable of release. Unwillingly to loosen his hold. 

Bob swallowed. Braced himself. Admitted, “About wanting you.”

Silence stretched between them. 

Yelena smoothed over all at once: a lake turning flat with ice. The pinch of her brows straightened, the blush in her cheeks whitened, and even the tension in her muscles dulled as his confession settled into her marrow. 

It seemed a terrifying sight to witness; nothing sour nor sweet remained. All feeling buried away beneath a thick coating of practiced frost. Affection and irritation and anything in between lost, unreachable beyond her barbed-wire walls. 

Any real reminder of her heart—of being human, rather than a capable weapon, a tool to be used and discarded at will—was a failure on her part. The Red Room had surely beaten that into her early on, and weakness could not be tolerated. Disease must be purged at the root. 

“Wanting me?” she said, and she sounded rather unlike herself. Flat and unfeeling, but numb as well. And he had never known her not bursting with emotion, red-hot and furious. Soft and sweet. As bright as the sun. Now she sounded rather empty. “Is that what this is about?”

Bob startled, fingers twitching over her elbows. 

“You think you like me?” she asked, empty rather than vicious. Straightforward rather than cruel and callous. 

Uncertainty twisted tight around his lungs. Air came all the more difficult with each passing moment and he clicked his jaw shut, teeth twitching. Mouth dry. Tongue stripped of voice. 

All this time he’d prepared for familiarity: a sharp strike of the fist. Knuckles aiming for flesh and bruises blooming dark. Pain as cutting as a blade, and though he ached to hear her speak so plainly, as if this conversation mattered as little as gum on her shoe, it was not a sort of pain he knew how to remedy. 

“We are not together,” she said, chest rising and falling with equal intervals. Measured. Unaffected. “A few fumbles in the dark does not mean we belong to each other.”

Bob winced. 

Those barbed-wire walls were only a means of protection, he reminded himself. A sharp tongue and strike of the teeth signaled only that fear had wormed its way into her gut. To respond with cruelty only worsened the wounds splitting beneath them. 

“I know,” he said.

“I don’t think you do,” she said with a pinch of a bite. Control slipping, he thought. If he poked and prodded deep enough, she might yield. Speak with candor and perhaps cruelty, but at least with honesty as well. 

Though he had no desire to drive her into a corner, he wished for her to speak plainly. To offer her patience and steady hands and to remind her that she could speak of anything. Sex, sugar, sunlight. Pain and shadows and an empty feeling in the chest that refused to fade. The good and the bad and the ugly and anything she wished. 

With him, she could speak without biting her tongue. And he would not turn from her. 

“Do not confuse good sex with misplaced emotion,” she said, without heat. Like she intended only to guide him toward the truth. Another lesson learnt. 

Despite himself, he shuffled a half-step backward. Both palms fell away from her elbows—something victorious gleamed beside her pupils. Like the rejection of flesh proved her triumphant. Made her proud. 

Bob faltered. 

Whatever passed by his expression—like horror, stark and bleach-white—made her stiffen. Turned her still and silent and she braced herself, preparing for his retaliation. Tension knotted along her shoulders and she lifted her chin a half-centimeter, gaze as raw as ice in the dead of winter. Mouth set and brows straight. Fingers white and firm and eager. 

Preparing for a strike, he realized. Punishment in the physical pattern of blue-black bruises. 

Bob’s stomach fell straight to the floor. 

All this time he’d so wholly concentrated on himself: his own sickening skin and flesh. On the pain burrowed deep in his gut, bleached white with time and still as cutting as a sharpened blade. 

In his selfish absorption, he’d neglected her. Failed to consider that bruises lay beneath her skin as well as across her knuckles, that scars puckered both her organs and naked flesh. In all the weeks spent by her side, never had he thought twice of why she so readily buried away her own pleasure in exchange for his. 

A disgrace on his end, and one he intended not to repeat ever again. 

“Oh, Yelena,” he murmured. The sound of her name tasted as sweet as ice cream melting in the sun. Bruised fruit saved just before its expiration, soft and tender and dripping in juice. “You have no idea. None at all.”

Yelena blinked, stunned. 

Bob stepped toward her. Even as she winced, brows furrowed and knuckles twitching, he approached till he could clasp both hands around her own. Wrapped his wounded and sore palms over the backs of hers, till he could feel the rough and raised scars that lay over her fingers. 

Awe softened her expression, as if startled by the simplest of skin brushed up over hers. Terrified, too: he could see it lingering in the depths of her gaze. Buried deep and reluctant to make itself known, but impossible to fully obscure. 

A shiver crept down his spine at such a vulnerable exhibition of emotion. Though by now she’d seen him in worse conditions—stripped naked, sticky and wet, gaze hot and knuckles white and body hers for the taking—it startled him to witness her likewise exposed. 

But the shiver quickly subsided, because time could be had to linger on her past wounds. Later there’d be a chance to dissect her buried-deep wants and needs, all the things he’d missed prior. All the hunger he’d bypassed for fear of overstepping. 

For now she needed him. 

“If you don’t want this, don’t pretend otherwise. Not for me.”

Weeks stuffed-full of sex had passed: half-hours and stolen moments atop his sheets, tucked in the shadowed corners, even in the sunlight on their more daring and desperate days. Meaningless and careless and bursting with bliss. 

But whatever pleasure he’d tasted could never be worth the pinch of discomfort on her face. If offered the choice, he’d rather starve for the remainder of his years than ever have her pretend for his benefit. If asked, it’d be preferable to never taste sugar again if only for her comfort. 

“I do,” she said, stern. “I want this.”

Bob studied her expression. Though she sounded honest, she said nothing more. Nothing of her wants, needs, hunger. Indicated nothing towards the sharp bite of fear he’d seen stark across her face only minutes prior.

Rather she stood stiff, jaw taut and fingers clenched. Awaiting—something. Something he couldn’t quite be sure of, but something equal to a blue-black bruise nonetheless. 

“If you don’t want me then,” he said, “just say so.”

The word—me, and me alone, him without her—fell off of the flat of his tongue rather surely. With far more sturdiness than he felt, at the very least. In truth his knees felt eager to buckle beneath him, but there’d be time for that later, once she’d gone.

Rejection failed to alarm him. Bob could swallow it down, so long as he could pry the truth from between her teeth. 

Yelena trembled. 

Perhaps in pity. Perhaps she worried over a soft and sweet rejection. 

Just once more, he squeezed her hands. The scars beneath his fingertips felt rough and raised. Familiar, after so much time spent having access only to her stripped-bare hands, even when he’d stood bare to the bone. 

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, gazing at her their twisted together hands with poorly hidden affection. One thumb brushed a circle over the back of hers, slow and gentle. If this were the last chance for him to truly touch her, he wished to savour it. “Not an explanation and definitely not sex. You never have.”

Bob every so slightly cringed. It sounded nearly like a breakup. A gentle parting of ways of two hearts which had never truly twisted together. 

Perhaps she’d been correct all this time: he’d dug himself too deep. Expected too much of her and of them and wanted too much that she wasn’t willing to offer. Love had never been any aspect of this arrangement, after all. 

Regardless, the truth had a way of coming out, one way or another. Burying it deep only worsened both of their lives. 

Bob braced himself, steeling his nerves and sharpening his tongue. “But don’t tell me it’s a misjudgement on my part.”

Were he to offer pleasure, no stone could be left unturned. Whether or not it’d return to bite him, only the truth could be given now. And she had to understand that this was no fluke: to want her was no sudden impulse nor a daydream he’d found himself caught-up in. 

To hunger for her tasted as real as anything else. 

“What?” she breathed, wide-eyed and stunned. 

Everything seemed to settle inside of him. All of his shrieking nerves, his pounding heart, his inside out stomach. Every organ quieted, because finally he tasted clarity. 

“Bob,” she said, slow and cautious. “What does that mean?”

“It means I know what I want,” he said, heart pounding. It thumped up against his ribs till they lurched. It hurt and his entire sternum ached with the force of it, but he understood now the price of love: pain and pleasure. The taste of sugar interlacing sour. One could not live without the other. “It’s you, Yelena.”

Yelena said nothing. Just stared, her cheeks bleached white and her brows smooth. Mouth flat and body void of tension. Measured and controlled, as if expecting the worst of him still. Searching for an escape hatch in the chance that he struck.

Then again, the confession likely hurt worse than any strike. Scared her greater than any blade or bullet ever could, because she’d never been taught what to do besides bury her heart deep. To ask for it exposed was likely nothing she’d ever prepared for. 

 “It’s always been you,” he murmured. 

Thousands of pounds released from his shoulders. The taste of wine permeated his mouth, sweet at the start and sour at the finish. Tart fruit lingered across his teeth, picking at the gaps and making homes around his gums. Hooking their teeth into his flesh, till he tasted nothing but pain and pleasure and everything in between. 

Without the confession hooked inside of his gut, he felt all the lighter. As bright as the sun, as radiant as her. It was as if his innards had been replaced with cotton candy, thin and lightweight. Pale pink like the sunset and fuzzy like intoxication. 

Finally she knew. Finally he’d admitted himself, and whatever happened now was in her hands. 

“Why are you saying this?” she muttered, gaze downcast. Staring toward their hands, he realized, toward the scars over her skin and bruises across her knuckles. Gawking in horror at the exposed wounds of her flesh. “Don’t try to complicate things, please.”

“You being a priority isn’t a complication,” he said gently.

Yelena jerked, but he held fast to her hands. 

“I want to show you what it can feel like,” he said, rubbing his thumbs over the scars around her fingers. Circling her wounds with all the sweet patience she’d awarded him since the darkened day they’d first met. “Only if you’ll let me.”

Though her fingers twitched at the offer, she didn’t attempt to pull away once more. Instead she peered up from beneath her lashes, curious and cautious. Assessing whether his confession equaled a steel trap meant to shut around her ankle. A snare she could not so easily escape from. 

Affection lingered too, though reluctantly. The color in her cheeks returned slowly and steadily, pale but visible. 

“Don’t say anything now,” he said, releasing her hands. “Just think about it. Please?”

Yelena jerked her chin. “Yes. I will think about it.”

Relief softened his innards, and without much though he tilted forward to nuzzle his nose against her hairline.

For a breath, she stiffened. But before he could retreat, she softened once more, tilting a half-inch into his chest. Sloping her spine just enough for his nose to brush up against her blonde hair, an invitation and acceptance all at once. 

Bob squeezed his eyes shut. Breathed, steady and slow. Retreated just far enough to meet her eyes and detect reluctant, terrified affection swimming beside her pupils. 

“You’ve known a lot of pain,” he said, parroting her first words from that day in the gymnasium. Recognition brightened her eyes and lifted the corners of her mouth. “Why shouldn’t you know pleasure, too?”

 

 

 

Notes:

this ch fought back, hopefully it still reads well

Chapter 5: till our stomach’s full

Notes:

chapter warnings: implied/referenced sexual abuse (not at all explicit, occurs in reference to yelena's past with the red room)

 

A cavity infiltrated his mouth. 

The decay had hooked itself into his gums, digging deep into the gaps between his teeth. Drilling without pause. Now he ached with every meal: as he bit and chewed and swallowed, he felt the rot flare up once more. It clung and he could do nothing but allow it to bury itself further into his flesh, because all that sugar had finally caught up to him. 

This was the price of pleasure. 

Bob knew now that this was the cost of sweet sex and sticky affection: a pit in the mouth. A hollowed-out dent in his teeth, always aching and never quite filled. A sunken furrow of infection stretching and spreading to the remainder of the body if untreated, caused by his own desperation to finally satiate his hunger. 

The price of pleasure was pain. One couldn’t live without the other trailing close behind like a shadow. One needed the other to flourish. 

Love required both in equal measure. Perhaps it didn’t blossom over the skin, external and visible for all to bear witness, but he felt it all the same. It left his organs tender, his innards spongy, and he recognized the bruises of pain because he recognized love. 

The good and the bad and everything in between. All the ugly wounds and buried shames and softened affections. Love unearthed it all uniformly, without pity or pride. It left him raw, stripped bare to the bone, but he knew he must be seen to the root. 

Bob only wished that Yelena could be spared the same torment. 

Bruises littered the left half of her face. Pale now beneath the morning sunlight, but they’d turn dark with time. Purple and ugly and sore to the simplest of brushes. Pain percolated throughout her body, inside and out, visible in her fresh wounds and poorly buried behind her ribs. 

From the sunlit corner of the kitchen, he watched as she peeled away the dark leather of her gloves. Stripped bare, her hands shone pink and red. Dried blood crusted over her knuckles but she hardly seemed aware, far too preoccupied feigning ignorance over his presence. 

Weeks prior she’d have come up to him without invitation. Nudged their hips together and dirtied his skin with her own, sharing the heat of their bodies while tucked away into the corner. 

The wounds then would’ve been nothing beyond a meager distraction. A scrape easily ignored in the face of her adrenaline still pumping from a well-fought case on the coastline. Then she’d have shoved him flat to the mattress, eager and impatient and as desperate as ever. 

Bob’s stomach nearly ached at the thought. 

No sweetness remained between them now. Only stale, sour discomfort and the lingering burn of their last conversation: accusations spit, rejection at the ready, distance spreading between them like a wildfire caught on dried up blades of grass. 

“Need any help?” he asked, settling close beside her at the countertop. Each limb folded inward without command, knuckles twitching and elbows tucking close. Careful not to scrape against her skin, lest he invade her space any further. 

Inches upon inches stretched between their bodies. No nudging shoulders, knocking elbows, twisted-together ankles. Just a cold and empty length of distance that hooked its teeth into his bones and refused to shake itself away. 

An ache hollowed out his sternum. Gone were the stolen moments spent counting her lashes and mapping the constellations of her pale, hidden freckles. No longer could he memorize each bump of her bones, and he had not realized such a simple privilege would be missed until long gone. 

Yelena made a soft sound in her throat, half hum and half grunt—and all dismissal. 

Heart in his throat and stomach on the floor, he did his very best not to take it all too personally. To not let that impatient, irritated noise burrow behind his ribcage and sprout its own set of shadows. 

“How about company?” he asked, softer. An edge of sticky sweetness dripped into his tone, eager for her attention and hungry for her proximity. 

Were he not so certain that she’d shrink away—teeth bared and hackles raised, body coiled like a spring, brain equipped for another clash of fists and flesh and bone—he’d shuffle closer. Uncurl his limbs and offer the heat of his chest for her to melt into. 

If he could he’d straighten her spine beneath the flats of his palms. Hold up her bones beneath his fingers and allow her innards to collapse while he kept her skeleton intact. Keep her safe while she let her sorrow fester for a moment, just long enough for her to feel it. 

Yelena faltered. “I wouldn’t make good company.”

Instinct nipped at his tongue to deny such a horrid claim. To reject the weight of her grief pulling heavy at her shoulders, applying thick pressure to her organs. Pain stitched together her skin and bled from every orifice, red and wet and ugly. 

Bob bit hard into his tongue instead. The grief would linger regardless. All of her aches and pains and blue-black bruises would not fade with the force of his love—a band-aid only concealed a wound; it could not cure split skin. 

Rather than attempt to fix—because he couldn’t; because no amount of affection could rid her of her nightmares, mend a bruise, repair a break—he stayed steady and looked. Truly looked, beyond the pretty blonde of her hair and emerald of her gaze and arc of her spine, and toward the remnants of hurt. 

Blood dried over her knuckles, still red but rusting brown around the edges. Bruises layered the skin beneath and he guessed a multitude of more colored her ribs, hips, knees. A sharp clench shadowed her jaw like she meant to bite if he fluttered too close. 

A dog cornered, he thought. Prey desperate to elude predator. Muscles poised to flee—or maybe pounce, and he stupidly softened at the thought. Despite himself and all odds, warmth trickled across his stomach and he clenched his fists to avoid reaching out toward her. No doubt she’d bat him away. Maybe even flinch. 

That was what she saw and knew of herself—a weapon, dangerous and well-equipped for further damage. A blade sharpened and poised for the kill, stripped entirely of sunlight. Something wild and animal and mean, because the Red Room had trained her to be precisely that. 

“Well, that’s fine,” he said, shrugging like his heart didn’t pound to the point of hurting. “I like your bad company, too. Just as much as your good company.”

Yelena blinked. Frowned. Ran her tongue over her teeth like she thought it might split wide open, and when nothing happened, frowned even further in disappointment over her own humanity. 

How often had she chewed up the innards of her mouth, he wondered, in desperate hope of proving herself a little less human? How often had she torn herself to shreds all for proof of her brutality?

A pit formed in the base of his stomach and he busied in his hands in hope of distraction. Without much thought, he reached up past her toward the tall shelving, digging deep into the cabinets for the poorly-hidden sodas stashed behind stale crackers and old cereal. 

“Too much sugar,” Bucky always grumbled, a distinct soda-sized lump protruding from his pocket. “Dentists might be better now than the 40’s, but cavities are still around.”

Still they somehow popped up each and every week regardless, because he—and Bob—knew she liked them. That she’d swapped vodka for sprite and coke and all other sorts of sugar-soaked drinks certain to rot away her gums. 

“Misery breeds company,” Bob said with another shrug. The tab popped easily. Carbonation hissed and bubbles fizzled over the metal top, spilling the smell of sugar upwards. 

Briefly—selfishly—he wondered whether the scent reminded her of him and her and them: of sex on his unmade bed, the taste of candy sticking to his molars. 

The can slid sideways over the countertop, tipping in her direction and coming to a stop only inches from her hands. Rather than allow their fingers to brush as he’d have done weeks prior, he released the soda and tucked his elbows back inward.

Yelena wavered. 

“We can be bad company together,” he murmured. 

The tips of her fingers faltered, still red and still wet. Sticky, not with sex this time around, but the remnants of a fight turned sour—of blood spilled and clinging. 

“Is that what you want?” she asked, wrapping a wet hand around the can. Red smeared over the side of the soda as she settled further against the counter, her hip nudging up and her weight shifting. Bright copper residue; proof of her cruelty should she have her way. 

Bob cocked his chin. 

“Us, together?” Yelena drummed the tips of her fingers across the side of the can. Rhythmic and steady, nearly equivalent to the pounding pace of his heart up against his bones. “Through the good and bad.”

Through pain and pleasure, sugar sweet and acid sour. All the heartache and heavy burdens and shadowed pasts, stretched equally into their hands. Faced together, because he wanted everything she had to offer: the sweet sex and sticky candies and stolen moments; the panicked nightmares and withdrawn silences.

The good and bad and everything else. 

“What is it they say?” she murmured, voice low like sharing a secret. “For better or for worse?”

Vows, he thought wildly. Eternal promises and everlasting commitments and his heart fell to the floor in a wet splatter of shrieking nerves. 

Something held fast in her expression—something bold and brazing. A splash of daring burning up her pupils. Muscles loose as though she cared little for his reply, though her grip tightened all the same with every passing split-second.

Hidden beneath lay a splatter of hope. Tentative but ever so real. Cautious and careful and buried poorly in her pinched brows and set jaw, because he knew every expression she wore better than he knew his own desires and dreams and fears. 

Silence stretched. 

Bob—ever the coward, always so certain a strike lay in wait—said nothing. Swallowed, set his shoulders, and prepared for the worst. Readied himself for her to retract the hopeful tilt to her tongue and replace all her sugar with something sour. 

Already, she knew: of his heart and exactly whose hands it had settled in. The depths of his affection and rock bottom of his stomach, all organized entirely for her taking. It was as if his DNA had been orchestrated for her to capture. 

Yelena knew and so he could not understand what she searched for now. Why her brows pinched and her fingers faltered and a sudden chill overtook her gaze, as if he’d disappointed her. Like she’d found something within his stilled silence worthy of defeat. 

It wasn’t as if she truly wanted him—she couldn’t. She couldn’t.

“Right,” she said, sounding rather distant. Looking rather crestfallen. Twisting away at the hips and staring hard at her blood-soaked, dirty hands: at the evidence of the damage she so carefully caused. At the sticky piles of red liquid staining her knuckles and the bruises layered below. “I guess not, then.”

“Yelena—”

“No,” she said, short and sharp. “You’re right. I’m being—stupid. Unrealistic.”

Bob settled a hand over her spine, refusing to retreat even as she sent a withering scowl in his direction. “I didn’t say any of that.”

“You didn’t say anything,” she corrected, sounding rather miserable. Still she leaned into his palm—likely instinct he thought, without much thought and without any intention at all. The idea warmed his innards. “I can read between the lines.”

Something cracked inside his sternum, a sharp break of his heart that splintered the organ right down the middle. Misery dampened his once-warm insides and he sighed, soft and sad. 

“Last week I told you it’s always been you,” he said. The confession rattled his nerves even if it was the second time around saying so. “It still is. It always will be. Nothing’s changed, not for me.”

Yelena’s gaze drifted downward. When his followed, he found red knuckles and bruised skin. Evidence of damage and hurt and cruelty: none of which he knew her incapable of. After all, he considered himself capable of the same, even if lesser in strength and instruction. 

“What’s changed for you?”

“Nothing,” she said distantly. The word drifted through her teeth like a confession, though he couldn’t comprehend its weight. 

Bob frowned, frustrated. “Yelena.”

“Nothing,” she said again, firmer. “That’s what’s wrong, Bob. Nothing at all has changed.”

Yelena tilted further into the hand running along her spine. The tips of his fingers pressed over her lower back, hopeful to provide an increment of comfort. Even through her clothing he could feel the endless heat of her flesh. 

“You’re you, Bob,” she whispered. “You’re so full of good.”

Impulse told him to recoil. Patience reminded him to allow her the necessary time to let the words drip off of her tongue, off-putting as they sounded. 

“You’re—you’re you,” she said again, sounding defeated by the very thought. Like she couldn’t compare with whatever invisible struggle lay between them. “You’re so much stronger than you think. So much better than you believe yourself to be. I know you think you were made for pain, but—oh, Bob. You’re the sweetest thing I’ve had.”

The words nearly knocked him off balance. As it were he stumbled half an inch, breathing unsteady as his pulse skyrocketed. To hear her say such a thing, and with such ease, was like a baseball bat to the head. 

“What about you?” he dared to wonder.

If she thought him good—if she thought him sweet—then she must be sugar personified. Sweetness dripping from every orifice. Pleasure burgeoning just beneath the surface of her skin, eager to erupt. 

How could he ever compare?

Yelena smiled sadly. Offered up one red, blood-stained hand as if it proved some sort of point. Twisted it around till he could see her bruised knuckles and scarred skin, and when he still frowned, oblivious, she made a sound of incredulity. 

“I’m me,” she said, like that should mean something. Like she wasn't sunshine itself. 

“Yes,” he said. “You’re you. I’m so lucky you’re you. I love the—the you that you are.”

Yelena balked. 

For a moment, he stood unaware. Entirely unsure as to why her cheeks were flaring with color and her body had stiffened like he’d poured ice water over her head.

Then—then the last several seconds registered.

Then he realized, and his heart promptly stopped where it stood. 

“Oh,” she breathed. 

“Oh,” he echoed, frightened and frozen. Nerves shrieking and knees buckling and body eager to flee. Terrified and twitching and ever so certain she’d recoil. But—no turning back now. Because he’d meant it and such a confession couldn’t remain buried. Shouldn’t remain buried. “Yelena—”

“There’s so much you don’t know,” she said slowly. A crease formed between her brows. “About me and about the Red Room. You don’t know so much of what I did there. What I turned into or—or what I still am.”

Again, she offered up her hand: red, wet, and sticky. The blood looked closer to dry than anything by now, though splotches of it around her palm and wrist still shone beneath the kitchen light. It’d be hard to scrub away. Irritating to clean, though she’d likely dealt with worse. 

“If you knew,” she bit into her cheek, turning her hand this way and that—as if it proved something, he thought again, like she wanted him to flinch at the spectacle she presented, “well, if you knew, you might not—love me. I don’t think it’d be possible for you to after.”

Bob cocked his head. “Yelena, I’ve loved you for a long time. Longer than I’d like to admit. It’s a little embarrassing, really, how long. But I have. The whole time.”

Since that day in the bunker, death imminent and her voice soft like cotton candy. Since she’d offered a warm hand despite knowing nothing of him. Chasing him down in the streets even when he sucked her up into his void. Coming back time and time again even when he deserved so much less than. 

“The whole time?” she echoed, voice a bit distant. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed. 

“Yeah,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. It felt strange to discuss such a thing aloud, after so much time spent burying it all away. Even after everything passed between them—skin stripped bare, sex sticky, bodies unveiled—this felt different entirely. Baring his heart was a new sort of vulnerability. “The whole time, ‘Lena.”

The corners of her mouth wobbled upwards. The splotches of color in her cheek flared all the brighter and her hand wavered in midair. The tips of her fingers twitched as if she meant to extend them toward him, maybe even brush up and over his skin—and the thought left him wildly eager. 

Before she could recoil, Bob took her hand in his own.

Yelena visibly faltered. A bit of blood meant the world to her: evidence of her past, a reminder of her time spent in the Red Room. Proof of all she could do to others if only handed a blade and given a good reason. 

But he knew so much of her than the capabilities of her hands. More than a small stain would be needed to make him turn from her. 

“What you mentioned before,” he said, squeezing her fingers in his own, “about for better or worse?”

“Mmhmm?” she said, wide-eyed and flushed and sounding rather distracted. 

“I want that,” he said, soft but stern. Gentle and serious and ever so honest. Baring his heart for her to have, because it’d belonged to her since that grimy afternoon in the bunker. “I want you, Yelena.”

Still she said nothing. Just stared, long and hard and uncertain, at their hands. The blood over her knuckles smeared up against his fingers—he could feel it now, wet and sticky. Uncomfortable and prominent and absolutely worth the privilege of touching her. 

“I want you,” he said again. “All of you.”

Yelena turned her cheek toward him, muscles twitching and knuckles wavering. Skin still sticky and wet and as red as ever, gaze warm and scared. Glittering with an ember of hope that burned like light at the end of an endless tunnel of darkness. 

Again, he said, “All of you, Yelena. I’ve always wanted all of you.”

Never more and never less. Only what she could offer, only what she wished to give. The good and the bad and the ugly and the wonderful. Every wound scraping her skin and those invisible to his eyes, buried behind her ribcage. The secrets too shameful for her to speak and dreams easily passed between them. 

Yelena’s brows crinkled. Distress piled overtop her shoulders as though in utter disbelief. Perhaps overwhelmed; likely doubting the validity of his confession. Love never came easy for people like her and him and them. 

“There’s nothing you could say to change my mind,” he said, squeezing her fingers once, “about you. About us. Nothing in the world could possibly make me stop loving you. That, I promise.”

Yelena’s gaze turned as sticky as her fingers. “You’re sure?”

Bob’s heart split down the middle. 

“I’m sure,” he murmured, shuffling a half-step closer. It forced her chin backwards and he delighted in the reminder of how he towered over her. “I’ve never been as sure of anything as I am of you.”

“You do sound awfully confident,” she said, sounding awfully pleased about it. Thrilled to hear again where he stood—right in front of her, unwavering. At her side without any intention of straying elsewhere. 

“Oh, I am,” he breathed, nodding furiously just to watch her mouth split into a smile. To see the clouds behind her eyes break open. “About this, I am.”

Yelena dug her teeth into the inner muscle of her cheek to ward away a smile, though still he could see a slight flush creeping toward the tops of her ears. Affection drowned her gaze and he softened, feeling rather submerged in love. Exuding sweetness. Having fallen into the sun and now oozing sunshine from every orifice. 

“I am, too.”

Bob blinked. Swallowed. Tipped his head sideways and frowned, unsure how to untangle the words from one another, simple as they were. Short and sweet and yet as baffling as rocket science. 

“I’m sure,” she breathed, tangling their fingers together where they were still pressed overtop the soda can. Condensation dripped down the side but he hardly felt it amongst the already wet pile of blood. With the heat of her hand beneath him, nothing else seemed to matter much at all. “About—well, about us.”

Awe tangled around the column of his throat. Air seemed rather futile at the confession, softly spoken and sweetly said. Color rushed to his cheeks and he sucked in a sharp breath, heart thumping up against his ribs till they threatened to shatter. 

“Us?”

“I know I didn’t say it that night,” she said, turning his way. “But I did think it. I’ve been thinking it every day since.”

Oh.

Then again, he thought: oh. Nothing more came to his mind besides a sharp breath of realization, a jagged split-second of recognition. The confession encased him in soft silk, wrapping up his organs in cotton candy sweetness and enveloping his innards in a layer of fluff. It left him feeling rather untethered to the earth, as though he could float away any moment now.

“You thought it,” he repeated, breathless.

Yelena hummed. “Yes. I just couldn’t—I needed time. Still need more, I guess.”

A sound of understanding crept up his throat. As his chin jerked, he squeezed the tips of her fingers once more, hoping to convey all he meant within a swift brush of flesh to flesh: of course. All the time she needed. Every split-second of the universe was hers to have and hold.

“I just need you to know,” she said. Breathed, really. A strong gust of wind could’ve smothered up the sound of her voice. “You have to know. Even if I can’t—if I need more time, if I can’t let you show me—I still need you to know.”

Bob had never known her to sound so nervous. It left him feeling fond. The desire to wrap her up in the heat of his body tugged at his limbs, but he swallowed it away. For now she needed patience. Time to let the confession fully slip through her teeth. Too much skin enveloping her own would likely stutter her breath. 

Yelena brushed her thumb against his own in a slow circle. Something wet and sticky stained him, though he couldn’t find it within himself to mind. Not when he was rewarded with the heat of her hand and the relief in her expression. Not when her shoulders visibly smoothed down an inch because he failed to retreat. 

“This is real to me, Bob,” she said, squeezing their tangled-together fingers once. “It’s always been real. Even if I couldn’t say it before.”

Bob sucked in a sharp breath. 

“I just needed you to know that—whatever comes next, it’s real,” she said, and set her shoulders straight as if bracing her body for a blow. Jaw straight, teeth clenched, mouth flat. Every muscle held tight like a bow eager to snap for the strike. 

All too eager for rejection, he thought distantly. Despite him having offered up his heart just a week prior. Though he’d said much of the same—it’s real, it’s you, it’s only ever been you, yelena—still she steeled her bones and fortified her heart. 

The tips of her fingers twitched beneath his own, retreating a half-inch backwards as they stood in silence. Fleeing the scene before he could even attempt to try, it seemed. 

Bob suppressed a soft, sweet smile. 

Rather than say anything—confess his love, offer up his thumping heart, remind her that his lungs remained intact only because he wished to breathe her air and count her lashes and indulge in her company—he stepped forward. Took her hand firmly in his own, wet and sticky and stained with red that did not belong to either of them, and guided it straight toward his chest. 

Though she twitched, she allowed him to guide the flat of her palm up and over his sternum, till it rested over his heart. Unsteady and erratic, it beat. Irregular and volatile, it thumped up against her hand, desperate to hump through his chest and into her grip. 

Copper smeared over his sweater, turning the fabric dark where her fingertips pressed to his heartbeat. The scent of salt wafted upwards and he couldn’t find it within himself to even recoil. Couldn’t quite balk, even as red stained his clothing. 

Rather he reveled in the permanence of her presence. 

Yelena went wide-eyed. A soft sound drifted over her lips. Silent as it was, he recognized the shape her mouth made: it looked awfully close to the configuration of his name. A single syllable dipped in honey and tripping through her teeth with bewilderment. 

Before she could retreat even a half-inch, Bob pressed forward and kissed her firmly. 

A moment passed in stiff silence. The tips of her fingers jerked violently over his sternum, startled and always so reluctant to settle, and for a half-breath he wondered whether she’d flee. If she’d retreat far away from him, horrified, all because he’d kissed her for the very first time—and it was, wasn’t it? The very first. 

The very first press of his mouth to hers, despite having had her hand below his waistband a few dozen times. The first taste of her tongue, though she’d sunk her teeth into the flesh of his inner thighs and licked a path up toward his center.

The first kiss shared, because she’d always so strictly avoided his cupid’s bow and canine teeth and flickering smile. Directed all of her attention elsewhere instead, like the much safer column of this throat; apex of his hips. 

Bob stilled, too. Faltered and withdrew as his heart sunk into the depths of his stomach. Perhaps this had been a mistake—perhaps he’d pushed too hard on a bruise meant to be ignored. Maybe she’d never wanted anything more than a meaningless brush of their bodies. 

But: her body thawed as he retreated. The hand over his heart held fast as he shuffled a half-step back, twisting into the fabric and forcing him right back where he’d stood moments prior. A sharp breath left his lungs as she kissed him back, warm and eager and ever so sweetly. 

The taste of her burst over his tongue in increments, like wine as sweet as over-ripened berries. But that tart aftertaste never came, because her sweetness overpowered anything so sour. 

Bob sighed into her mouth. Both hands squeezed over her waist, desperate for more of her. Thrumming with an insatiable hunger finally fed. Nothing could be felt beyond the pounding of her heart tucked up against his chest, her breath shared in sync with his own. 

Nothing could compare. Nothing had ever tasted so real. 

Yelena wrapped her other arm around his nape. Its weight forced him down several inches, closer toward her mouth, further into the heat of her flesh. Front to front, they stood, till he could hardly understand where she began and he ended and one could be severed from the other. 

But in due time, both needed to treat the burn within their lungs.

Bob gave way first, retreating far enough only to tip his forehead against hers. A pleasant ache settled into his chest from having been deprived of air for so long. It stung with every moment he gasped for breath and he revelled in it, rejoiced in the long-lasting reminder of her. 

The taste of her lingered over his tongue still, as sweet as sugar. 

 

—

 

Days and days passed. Much like that first proposition, the past unveiled itself in equal parts sugar and citric acid. Trust offered tentatively and proceeded with caution, wary of ill consequences. 

A plate sat between them, piled up with lemon tart that dripped in its own curd. Crumbs tumbled over the corners as they settled beside one another, the dessert forgotten. Only an easy distraction—somewhere to avert the eyes toward should the conversation sour. A location for the fingers to drift for if in need of a reprieve. 

Bob thought it funny, in truth. That taste had lingered between his teeth for weeks now. Since that very first day, with her hand wrapped around his knuckles and her eyes gleaming with an offer he couldn’t truly comprehend. 

Lemons, tart and sharp. Sugar that came around reluctantly. A mixture of pleasure and pain and all things in between, because one needed the other for survival. 

Yelena stared hard at that muddled plate as she spoke of the Red Room—of sex treated as a tool. Used as a weapon. Taught alongside aiming a gun straight for the temple and a blade directed toward the throat. Treated on par with blood spilled, data collected, a mission victorious. 

“A necessary evil,” she spit with venom, and her voice did not sound much like her own. Rather, like she echoed someone years and years gone. An imitation of an instructor drowned in cruelty. 

Bob kept quiet, even as his heart splintered down the middle. As his bloodstream boiled and he wished for nothing more than to hunt down the source of that echo, to bruise his knuckles till she could no longer hear their voice or instructions. 

“I know how to give,” she said with a pitiful shrug, as if the confession did not make him want to split the world in two. Something in his chest squirmed, eager to erupt. Something that had not made itself known since New York. “Not how to take.”

The fragments clicked further together with each word spoken. Every hushed, humiliated syllable unburied another horrid particle of her blood-stained history. 

Taking; giving. Empty, inconsequential sex because skin pressed to skin had never meant anything to her besides an assignment. Sex treated as worthless because she’d never known it as anything but—as anything besides a necessary evil. 

Bob swallowed down his crumbling, collapsing heart. Steadied his red-hot blood and buried away the urge to bruise his knuckles against the jaw of anyone associated with the horrors he now knew.

And by the end, she looked rather prepared for a defeat. The corners of her mouth had flattened and her shoulders were set with a weight he couldn’t possibly understand. Shame and grief and pain held heavy over her body. 

Bob cupped her cheeks and kissed her firm, hoping to pour every ounce of his affection into the gesture: all of his love. All of his insatiable sentiments, should she understand just how strongly his heart beat for her and her alone. 

“We can learn together,” he said, politely saying nothing of the wet sheen in the corners of her eyes. “You and me. You’re not alone in this, Yelena.”

Yelena tipped forward, nudging her nose up against his. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, one that wobbled with the force of her relief. The gleam in her eyes deepened, not just with tears but hope. Hope for a pain that could be overcome by pleasure. 

 

 

 

Notes:

apologies for the delay. in truth, i've just lost some interest for this fic. i still plan to write/post chapter 6, it'll just take me some time as this chapter did

Chapter 6: turn that cherry out

 

Nothing had ever tasted quite as sweet as Yelena.

Sugar had met its match. 

Bob brushed his mouth over the bone of her jaw and swore that candied confection blossomed over his tongue. A kiss centimeters higher, to the corner of her mouth, and the taste strengthened like wine aging with time. Another to her cheek and all that sugar clung to his teeth, eager to drill a cavity into his gums. 

A small price to pay in return for her company. An affordable cost for her skin and bone and pleasure. 

“You’re taking your time,” she said. Tangled together—legs locked and knees bumping, arms wrapped up in each other and heartbeats harmonizing—he felt each word exhale over the shell of his ear. Halfway impatient and halfway nervous.

“You always did,” he said, nuzzling his nose against her throat just to feel her pulse. It thrummed loud and strong and all the more as he kissed the skin there. Something tender and proud settled into his stomach to know he could evoke such a response—a skip of the heart, a squirm in the bloodstream. “Why shouldn’t I?”

Yelena exhaled a laugh beneath her breath. It caught in her throat as he nestled closer, mouth to her throat and limbs tangled around her own. A hand came up to cradle the vulnerable nape of her skull, steering her further into the heat of his hold. 

“You know I don’t—don’t need slow.”

Bob frowned. Kissed her pulse-point. Pressed the flat of his other, open palm to her spinal cord and hoped she could feel each and every ounce of his affection. That it poured from his fingertips straight into her nervous system. 

“You haven’t been offered slow,” he corrected gently, though a dozen other half-truths tickled the rear end of his skull: she had little patience for it. Disliked it, because to sit and simmer in her pleasure allowed her ample opportunity to settle into the depths of her own head. 

Quick and rough allowed tolerance for such a thing. Desperate and dirty suggested only a single concentration: skin. Flesh. Body and bone and nothing so tender as the heart. 

“You and I have time for everything,” he said, tilting backward. Just far enough to study her frown, his fingers still cupped to her spine and the other to her skull. “For anything.”

“Anything,” she echoed. The furrow between her brows wavered. Though impatience lingered in the flat of her mouth, something settled within her shoulders. An inch of tension smoothing away with every split-second he spent guiding her towards soft sweetness. 

“Anything you want.”

Yelena bit into the inner muscle of her cheek. Likely to ward away a burgeoning smile, though he refused to take too much notice. Any more attention concentrated on her and she might flee. “That’s a big offer.”

Bob’s face crinkled with affection. “Well, I—I’m very generous.”

“Yeah,” she breathed, twisting forward to kiss the corner of his mouth. “I know you are.”

Such simple, sweet words. Such a plain display of devotion. 

So slight and still his heart thumped up against his ribs till they ached. Emotion swelled in his stomach, a sort of unfathomable, overwhelming love he hadn’t always known himself to be capable of. It spread across his body like a sunburn, red and hot and leaving him sweltering. 

“You know I’d give you anything,” he admitted, soft and sweet. Nearly a whisper, because the confession smothered his lungs in cotton candy. Wrapped him up in strings of trembling sugar that left his innards soaked in the taste of her. 

Yelena softened. “I know. And I—you know. You know I’d do anything for you.”

Bob did know. By now, he knew: knew she’d offer him the world if he asked. Capture the sun and present it in her palms if he wished to touch sunlight. No desire too grand, no hunger too big. No need too small. 

The acknowledgement still struck at his sternum, stealing away the remnants of his already wavering breath. The words knocked hard into his heart, forcing it to swell and twitch and turn inside out.

“I know,” he murmured. 

Yelena wrapped an arm around his shoulders with a low, lengthy hum. The tips of her fingers dug into his muscle, as if eager to cradle the bones that lay beneath. Keen to sink her flesh into his own and refuse to separate. 

If he could he’d tangle even their ribs together. Twist their fingers and knuckles and palms till two detached bodies became one. String together their organs and tendons and blood till he couldn’t identify where she began and he ended and the boundary between them lived. 

But he settled for a firm kiss to her mouth, because defying anatomy could always come tomorrow.

Less than a half-breath passed before she surged toward him, licking into the heat of his mouth. Sugar tickled his teeth and he shuddered, hand spasming around her back as she kissed with all the force of the sun. 

Fingers traveled up from his shoulder toward his nape, curling into the curls tangled around his skull. Heat prickled over his scalp as she knotted her hand into his hair, tugging hard enough that it nearly stung. Pulling with enough pressure that he felt a strike of pleasure in the depths of his gut. 

Bob moaned into her mouth. Hunger gnawed at his stomach till a pit formed. Only the taste of her could satiate him now. Only she could fill that endless, gaping void of want and need. 

The sound seemed to trickle through her—she echoed him with a sweet noise of her own, softer and less steady. It wavered around the corners as though she knew nothing of her own pleasure. Like she’d never before made such a sound and she wrestled for control of her own throat. 

It wasn’t a noise he’d heard before, either. Before—with her hand tucked into his sweats, her face pressed to his shoulder—she’d never allowed herself to lose a modicum of control. Never had she faltered in that regard, and now he reveled in her body slackening around the seams.

Heat surged in his stomach. That pit of hunger gaped bigger. Desire dizzied his head and he grappled for solid knees and a sound, steady mind. 

Never before had he imagined her capable of unraveling with pleasure. Turning pliant beneath his touch. Losing—and finding—herself with his careful guidance. 

The thought boiled his innards and he surged closer, kissing her harder, clutching her all the more. Wanting her had never overwhelmed him like this. Perhaps because he knew now that he belonged to her and she to him. Belonging tasted sweeter than he could’ve imagined. Possession was sticky with candied love. 

Yelena twisted a thigh across his hips, settling outright into his lap. Hips pressed to hips, sternums crowded so closely together that he could feel her heartbeat pounding. When she kissed him next, their hips ground against one another. 

Bob made another noise high in his throat. Molten heat poured across his body, hotter and hotter with every second passing. It felt like the sun was buried inside of his chest, burning him up from the inside out. Leaving his innards charred and peeling like the remainder of his control. 

“Yelena,” he breathed.

Though she hummed, attentive, her hips ground down against his again. Harder than the first time. With greater intention and better aim and he choked on a groan, capturing it between his teeth before it could escape into the air. 

“Yelena,” he repeated, the three syllables like thick honey over his teeth. Submerging his mouth in pleasure and sugar. “You know—mm, I said slow.”

“And I said I had no need for it,” she said, though her hips came to a sluggish stop above his own. With each heave of her chest their flesh bumped up against one another again. Each exhale shifted her thighs and forced her closer. 

“Slow,” he said again, stern and deliberate. Both palms settled over her hips, not to trace her bones but to twist her around and lay her flat over the mattress. “Let’s do this slowly.”

“Let’s put me to sleep,” she muttered below her breath, but he took no offense. 

Weeks prior, the words would have stung. Months and months ago, he’d have thought her truthful and hurried his pace, eager to meet any and all demands given. Desperate to please her in the way she wished. 

Now he knew better. Now he understood to dig beneath her performance of impatience and unbury the anxieties hidden below. To detect the splitting cracks in her tongue and spot the nerves she fought tooth and nail to conceal. 

Slow equaled sweet. Unhurried, lingering sex required a sort of attention she didn’t yet know how to cope with. It intended his mouth to every inch of flesh, cataloging every scar and wound and memory of her past. To settle into the sheets and slacken as he adored her body without exception. 

To take without reciprocation. To engage in something real. 

Bob kissed her shoulder once and then twice. Then again, till the taut muscle slackened and she relaxed an inch against the familiar sheets of his bed. “Let’s try it. Just this once.”

Trust me, he asked. 

Yelena’s expression softened around the corners. “Okay. Let’s.”

I do, she promised. 

Bob smiled. Kissed her shoulder once more, quick and frantic and all to hear her exhale a laugh. Twisted sideways to kiss her other and reveled in the fond grin that crinkled her nose and lifted her mouth. The tension bled away further from her body. Still some remained, buried behind her ribs, lingering in her skull, and he swore not to cease till it drained away entirely. 

“You might like it,” he said, peeling away her shirt. With each inch of skin revealed to him, he pressed his mouth flat and firm to her body. First to her stomach, where a scar sat thin and low. To each groove of her ribs. To the space where her heart pounded up against her flesh, nervous and eager in equal measure. “You liked it before.”

“I did,” she said, lifting her hips to strip herself of her sweats—his, actually. Too big and too grey and his heart swelled at the thought of her digging through his drawers without invitation.

Bob held her bare hips between both palms. Kept his gaze straight and steady on hers, even as his fingers twitched against naked skin and hot flesh. Desire swelled like a balloon. Heat burned bright and red and shifted over her, held up by both elbows. Inches away and starved of her. 

“So how come this is so different?”

Yelena huffed. “You know why.”

Though he did know, he wanted to hear it anyway. To push and prod till she gave way. To allow no room for implications or assumptions because she’d never allowed it with him—she’d always dug a hole and created a space for him. Always gave him the time and patience to unburden himself, no matter how long it took. 

And so rather than concede, he waited. 

“Tell me anyway,” he said.

Yelena faltered. Shuddered. Averted her gaze till she could stare a hole into his bones and said, “I liked it then. Taking my time, making sure you felt it. Slow is—is real, and I want it to feel real.”

“But?”

“But,” she echoed, stern and sharp and all too irritated. It made him smile, though it shouldn’t. “That was you, Bob. You, taking. I only gave. I don’t know how to—to sit still and feel it.”

Bob kissed the furrow between her brows, because he couldn’t quite help himself. Because he loved her and every frown and all her gritted teeth and the bite of her jaw, even when aimed in his direction. Because he knew with a bit of poking, prodding, and patience, she’d understand exactly what he already knew: that they were in this together. That he had her through everything, all the good and bad and in between. 

“What did you feel then?” he asked, brushing a thumb over her cheek. 

Yelena met his gaze with a soft, curious frown. “I don’t understand.”

“Even then, when I took and you gave, didn’t you still feel?” 

Something crumbled within her expression. Like lightning had struck directly at her skull and she knew no other way to confront it besides swallowing it back and gritting her teeth. Clenching her jaw and biting into her tongue and tasting blood. 

It looked an awful lot like shame. 

“You felt something,” he said, settling the pad of his thumb over her throat. There, her pulse fluttered a frantic rhythm. “A change in your heartbeat.”

Yelena’s breath caught. It resumed only when he touched her cheek, pink with color beneath his attention. 

“A flush of your cheeks,” he murmured, pressing forward to kiss the other. It flushed brighter as he lingered, nuzzling his nose over her skin. Searching for further methods of allowing her body to just feel. Feel without intention and without an escape plan. 

“You’re copying me,” she said through her teeth. Echoing those words from weeks and weeks prior, when she’d blurred that already-thin line between pleasure and pain. 

“I am,” he said, pleased and ever so in love. “I’m still right.”

A noise escaped her gritted, clamped-tight teeth. It sounded irritated and grumpy and he knew he’d caught her—knew he’d shone a spotlight over the truth she’d wished to remain buried. 

Bob kissed the corner of her mouth. “You felt all of that. Maybe more.”

Yelena clutched tight at his shoulder, hauling him closer to the heat of her body. Though he knew it was only a trick—a way to bury her head against him and hide away her eyes—he hauled her all the closer. Tucked an arm around her waist and breathed her in. 

“Stop smelling me, Bob,” came her muffled voice. 

Bob flushed, caught.

But, then: she snickered against his chest, faint and muted and not nearly as silent as she intended for it to be. 

A half-breath passed with his brows pinched and his nose wrinkled, silent and searching. 

“Yelena.”

“Mm?”

“Are you smelling me, now?”

Yelena shoved at his chest, squirming against the pillows with a red-hot glare. If looks could bury a man six feet deep, he’d be twice that by now. “No! Whatever, Bob. Take some responsibility.”

Bob only grinned, hauling her up around the waist and toward his sternum. Though she squeaked, high-pitched and startled, she failed to twitch away. Rather, she settled against him as he pressed his mouth to her jaw and nose and throat a dozen times till her mouth wobbled with smothered laughter. 

“You’re deflecting,” he said through soft, sweet kisses. 

“Fine,” she said, only half sharp around the edges—and he counted that as victory enough. “I felt it. All of it. Everything I described to you that day, I felt. So what?”

“So,” he echoed, deliberate, “you already know how to feel, Yelena. You’ve already felt pleasure halfway. Trust me with the other half. Please.”

Yelena faltered as she considered. The offer seemed to strike straight at her sternum, where her heart pounded up against her flesh. Shame flickered and panic wavered and she dug her teeth into the inner muscle of her cheek, till blood surely spurted. Salt and copper staining her tongue red with pain. 

“I trust you,” she said slowly. The tips of her fingers traveled low and toward her heart, where his fingers already lingered. It beat steady and strong and she pressed her palm flat overtop his own. Again, with their hands held over her heart, she said, “I trust you and I want this.”

Bob’s smile wobbled around the edges. “I love you.”

Yelena’s gaze burned bright and warm. “I love you too.”

Together, their bodies twisted till she lay flat once more. Till their legs tangled and their elbows brushed and she could peer up at him from beneath her lashes, cheeks pink and fingers twitching and shoulders smoothed clean of any tension. 

Snail-slow, he pressed his mouth to her cheek. Then lower, to the bone of her jaw. Over her pulse that beat strong and steady. Against the hollow of her throat and the flat plane of her sternum, tracing a lazy path downwards. 

Sugar burst over his tongue with each newfound patch of skin discovered. It tasted like adoration and his innards convulsed, so overtly eager to perfect the task. Pleasing her mattered in a way breathing never had. Settling in front of her and bruising his kneecaps for her worship outweighed any and everything.

The thought of more—of finally and truly tasting her with his teeth and tongue, watching her control crumble into sticky remnants, hearing her and having her—struck at his skull. It buckled his knees like a live wire crashing through his nervous system. 

Bob’s heart quickened but he stayed steady. This was no time for hasty, hurried movements. Even as hunger gnawed at his stomach, he kept patient, because she deserved the same composure she’d always awarded him.

Besides: she seemed to favor snail-slow sex just as he did.

With each half-inch that his mouth traveled lower, a shiver faltered up her spine. It remained trapped between her vertebrae, a stilted sort of tremble that she did her best to bury away. But he caught it regardless, even as she tilted away her chin and exhaled into the pillow. 

Pleasure lurked just beyond her fingertips, but she refused to reach for it. Still she remained subdued, unprepared to allow her nerves to scatter free from their carefully curated restraints. 

When his mouth caught on her breast—his tongue flat on her nipple, his fingers brushing a gentle path over her other—she squirmed slightly. Cheeks flushed red, eyes clenched shut, body taut with control that refused to loosen its hold. 

Bob wished to see her break. 

For all of her coiled springs of control to finally unfurl. To hear what would slip past her lips should years and years of buried, burrowed away pleasure scramble to the surface. To witness her crumble, wet and sticky and slick. 

“Let me hear you,” he whispered, his breath warm over her breast. It forced a slight shiver up her spine and he nearly grinned, delighted at the faint display of feeling. “Please. I want to hear everything.”

Yelena gasped, but still it sounded strangled and small. Caught between her teeth as though she couldn’t yet bare to set it free from her throat. 

Again he licked over her skin, his fingers plucking at her other breast. Teasing at her flesh with just enough pressure for her to truly feel it down to her gut. It rewarded him with a high-pitched breath from her sternum and he tucked closer to her body, eager for more. Hungry for all she had to offer and then some. 

Bob crept one hand low, toward her thigh. As his palm lay flat over muscle and scars and otherwise softened skin, he returned to her throat. The pad of his thumb drew a slow, deliberate circle high across her thigh; his teeth scraped over the flutter of her pulse. 

Yelena’s breath hitched into a soft, sweet sound. Not quite a moan—too quiet and too controlled still—but a whine that lay smothered behind her teeth. The very margins of her restraint frayed ever so slightly. 

Heat burst within his stomach in bright, wet spurts. The sound of her struck right at his gut and his knuckles clenched over her thigh, digging tighter into her flesh. 

“Sorry,” she breathed. Shame coated the word. Something stiff returned to her body as she tried to retreat, her limbs inching away from where they’d wrapped around his own. Shrinking away from the first modicum of pleasure offered, because she likely expected pain to soon follow. 

“Don’t,” he said, voice rough and half-muffled against her throat. “Don’t apologize.”

Though she halted in her withdrawal, tension stayed firm within her shoulders. It tucked itself away between the bones and beneath the muscles, burrowing like an unwanted parasite. Latching onto flesh and feeding on all that shame buried within. 

Bob pressed a long, lingering kiss to her throat. The tension eased a half-inch just at that, and he did it again, with teeth and tongue too just to hear that little sound from before: high-pitched and soft. Uncontrolled and involuntary and so perfect that his knees buckled a bit. 

“You’re so beautiful, Yelena,” he murmured, receding enough only to find her gaze. It looked lost and overwhelmed and his heart ached for her. He wondered whether she’d ever even made that sound, unintentionally or otherwise. If anyone had ever attempted to offer her anything close to a gentle hand. “Every sound you make; how you look. You’re so beautiful.”

Yelena softened. “You’re a sweet talker, Bob.”

Bob lowered toward her throat, pressing teeth and tongue to her fluttering pulse. It beat strong and his own surged with the reminder of her mortality. 

“Maybe,” he said, breath wafting warm over her skin. A shiver twisted up her spine, poorly hidden beneath a squirm. “Maybe I’m just honest.”

“Maybe,” she echoed, hopeful.

Sorrow knotted tight around his lungs. It made him feel awfully bruised, blue-black and sore from the inside out. Breathing stung but he did so regardless, because nothing now could ever erase the years she’d spent all too aware of pain that refused to yield.

Again, he kissed her throat, over her pulse. Lingered beside her heartbeat and memorized its strong, steady vibration. No other noise had ever sounded so sweet within his eardrums. 

Lower, he kissed each of her shoulders. One and then the other, then treated her collar bones with the same gentle care. Both bones tasted sweet beneath his tongue and he allowed his teeth to scrape against their edges. 

Yelena squirmed all the while, her fingers tangling tight into his hair. It stung and he welcomed the sharp bite of pain against his scalp. 

Inches below and he found her breasts once more. The flat of his tongue traced a slow path around one flushed nipple; his fingers twisted weakly around the other. 

A soft whine escaped her teeth, sharp like a blade’s edge. It sounded like a string fraying with time: ragged and worn-down. Reduced to a puddle of sticky nerves. 

Heat pooled in his stomach. The perimeters of his own control wavered as hunger gnawed at his stomach, desperate as ever. The sound of her; the taste of her; the feel of her. It all left him trembling, twitching. Like that very first time in his bed, nerves shrieking and heart pounding. 

But still he travelled lower: toward her ribcage, where he counted each one with his mouth. To her stomach, where he found thin and whitened scars. Lower still, till he met her hips. Only there did he pause, gaze shifting upward, stomach dripping with sticky desire. 

“May I?” he asked, breath wafting soft over her skin. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

The truth of it settled over his chest, heavy like stones. This had always been his eager, desperate hope: settled on his knees before her. Hearing the soft sounds that escaped her mouth. Making her breath hitch and her hips stutter and her control snap down the center. 

“This?” she asked, a bit teasing. A bit nervous. Mostly skeptical, and hearing it aloud even now made his heart ache. 

“Yes,” he admitted, kissing the bone of her hip. It made her tremble and he did it again, just to watch her cheeks flush with color and feel her stutter for fraying control. “This. Exactly this.”

Yelena dug her teeth into the inner muscle of her cheek, trying—and failing—to ward away a burgeoning grin. “You’re so strange, Bob.”

Bob said nothing. Just nuzzled his cheek over her thigh and waited, ever so patient. Kissed at her hips and nipped at her skin and dug his teeth hard into her muscle, all to hear that high-pitched sound fall from her mouth again. To reduce her restraint into a wet, sticky puddle. 

Wanting her didn’t seem strange in the slightest. Wanting this—to taste her, hear her, have her—seemed a second sort of nature. Like an instinct that’d been buried away till meeting her in that damp, darkened bunker. 

 “Yes,” she breathed, still nervous and still tense. “Yes, I want—I want this. I want you.”

Bob parted her thighs gently, slow enough to allow her time to retreat. Both palms spread her wide and led her knees atop his shoulders, stretching her open for his taking. But still his gaze remained straight, deliberately stuck onto hers. Clamped tight onto her nervous, pinched-brow expression. Noting her teeth digging into her cheek and her shoulders already rising with tension. 

Anticipation lapped at the column of his throat. Hunger ate away at him. A pit of insatiable starvation left him feeling weak, unsteady, but still he kept still. Allowed her time to acclimate. Let her body slacken and the tension holding so taut ease, even if ever so slightly. 

Only then did he coax her wider, pressing his mouth firm to her inner thigh. Freckles dotted her skin like stars. Old and white scars perched over flesh. 

Yelena inhaled a sharp sound—like a flinch of the lungs. A tremble skirting its way up her throat and around her teeth. 

“Slow,” he murmured. One hand crept upwards toward her hip to hold her steady. “Remember? We’ll do this slowly, Yelena.”

No need for rushing and racing. No point in quick and dirty. Not when he had everything he’d ever dreamed of right in front of him: her control fraying at the corners, her limbs turning slack, her gaze becoming a bit hazy. 

“Right,” she said distantly. “Slow.”

Bob hummed absentmindedly and returned to his task. A half-dozen kisses were plied to the high flesh of her right thigh, twice as many to her left. Another lower, a few higher. Some closer, where he could nearly taste her sweet slick. One last by the scar on her leg, thin and long and faded with so many years of age. 

Only then—once he’d tasted first every inch of her skin, used his tongue and teeth across her flesh till she lay marked in him, when sugar infiltrated his mouth like a cavity eager to rot his gums—did he lick a long, lazy path up the sticky mess between her thighs.

Yelena jerked. The tips of her fingers dug deep enough into his hair, curling tight enough into his scalp, that it stung like a blade. It hurt and he moaned, licking slow and steady again. Tasting her once more over the flat of his tongue. 

Again she twitched, stronger this time. Like a strike of lightning had crashed directly into her sternum, and the remainder of her body was helpless to its consequences. 

A high-pitched, helpless whine left her mouth. It fell through her teeth, soft and full of air. 

Bob gasped gently at the sound, pressing closer and repeating. Licking harder. Longer. Tasting her again, the sweetest of sugar he’d ever had the pleasure of indulging. Heat flooded him, from his stomach to his lungs to his throat. It overwhelmed him, like red-hot desire impossible to smother away. The only cure was her. 

Yelena squirmed beneath him. “Oh—fuck, Bob.”

Ever so eager to please—ever so desperate to hear her—he crept his hand close, till he could press his thumb down hard against her clit. With his other, he held fast to her hip, clutching her tight and keeping her close. 

As intended, she lurched with a gasp.

Bob applied greater pressure. The pad of his thumb drew a slow, ruthless circle. 

“Like that,” she pleaded, voice bursting with breath that wouldn’t come. “Like—ah, just like that.”

And he was nothing if not responsive; nothing if not hers to please and worship. 

Again, he circled her clit with that same hot pressure, so sticky with slick that his knuckles were nearly stained with it. Still he licked up into her, steady and rhythmic. Slow and careful and hard enough for her to feel it. 

Yelena’s hips rocked up against him. She held hard enough to his hair that he wondered whether his skull would bruise. The tension knotted so tightly within her bones had long turned slack, her shoulders loose against the sheets and her hips squirming around his head. 

Seeing her overcome with pleasure made his knees want to buckle. 

Bob lifted a half-inch, circling at her clit with his tongue. Two fingers slipped up inside of her with ease, turning all the more sticky as he fucked her to the second knuckle. 

“Oh,” she gasped, hips stuttering against his mouth. “Don’t—mm. Don’t stop.”

The plea struck straight at his sternum. It dizzied his head and crumpled his body and he surged closer, sealing his mouth around her clit. A third finger slipped inside of her, slow and careful. 

Yelena’s hips jerked.

A high-pitched sound fell from between her teeth—soft like before, but entirely tattered. Control fractured like glass split apart across pavement. Nerves shrieking and muscles slack and pleasure entirely overwhelming.

Pressure crested and crumbled, striking hard and fast. 

Bob kept steady as she trembled beneath him, her hips squirming and thighs twitching. Her breath coming fast and her fingers holding tight. As she called his name, panting, lungs overworked, he lapped at her clit and fucked her to the third knuckle, hungry for her pleasure. 

The frantic rocking of her hips settled within moments. The unsteady, irregular search for breath quieted as her shoulders slackened and her lungs eased away. Everything returned to still silence. 

Bob lifted onto his elbows, kissing a slow and sticky path up her stomach. Up her ribs and sternum and throat till finally, he met her mouth. “Final verdict?”

“Well,” she said, breathless, “I definitely felt that.”

Through a soft laugh, he kissed the corner of her mouth, sticky and sweet. Though she winced and batted at his shoulder, she failed to shove him away. Only tugged him closer, wrapping herself around him. 

When he kissed her next, it tasted only of sugar. 

 

 

 

Notes:

this ch is for sure a little rushed, but hopefully still enjoyable. not my best work sadly, but i wanted to get this ch out there rather than forget about this work entirely

Notes:

kudos/comments always appreciated!
might be slow to update... please be patient with me xo