Chapter Text
There was someone in his bed.
He stopped short in the doorway to his bedroom as soon as he saw the person-shaped lump under his covers, its side slowly rising and falling with sleeping breaths.
He should have been alarmed. The adrenaline from taking down another HYDRA base hadn’t fully left him when he had stepped off the jet, his body still tense and rigid, his mind still on full alert. But for some reason, the sight of this figure lying peacefully on his bed didn’t spark any panic or urgency in him. Quite the opposite, actually.
He could feel the tension leech out of his muscles, his heart taking on another rhythm, slow and warm, a feeling that washed over him from head to toe. He let out an involuntary sigh, one that sounded more wistful than it should have in a situation like this, more relieved than it should have been at the sight of a stranger in his room.
And despite the logical part of his brain telling him he should alert JARVIS to the break-in, or at the very least Tony, he found himself taking light steps towards the edge of his bed, kneeling down until he could see the soft face peeking out from under his duvet.
He smiled.
It came so easily, he hardly registered what his face was doing. But he was smiling, big, and wide, and toothy, and the relief he had felt before bloomed violently at the center of his chest, so much so that he thought he might cry, a strangled sort of chuckle escaping his throat.
That woke the stranger up with a jolt, their head lifting off of his pillow, their eyes blinking rapidly against the morning light beginning to spill from his window.
“Sorry,” he whispered, as if he were the one intruding, leaning back a little to give his guest some more space. Again, the logical part of his brain told him he should start trying to corral them out of the Compound, but instead, he waited and watched as they rubbed at their eyes, sitting up and stretching their arms before they finally looked at him.
And the stranger smiled.
It was sleepy and lopsided, but it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen, and he could feel his own tugging hard at his cheeks to the point of tearing apart.
“You’re back,” you said softly, pushing aside his covers and revealing that you were wearing one of his old, oversized SHIELD t-shirts, the one with the small hole at the collar.
Shame washed over him at the quick and dirty thought that flashed through his mind at the sight of you in his clothes, and he fought to keep his composure as his brain scrambled to come up with an appropriate answer to you.
“I am back,” was all he could come up with, and he wanted to fling himself into oncoming traffic.
You huffed out a laugh, your hand reaching out towards him, but you pulled it back suddenly, as if you were about to touch something on fire. He kept himself from pulling your hand back to him, from pulling your entire body towards him and squeezing tight, but only just barely.
Your eyes searched his face carefully, the smallest wrinkle forming between your brows briefly, but you shook off whatever you had been thinking, keeping the smile on your face, though the light in your eyes dimmed. He had a strong ache to brighten them again, to destroy any and everything that might make that smile less radiant than it had been before. He knew he would do anything for your smile, even if he couldn’t understand where that feeling stemmed from.
“I missed you,” you said, uncertainty swimming beneath your tone, like there was something else you had wanted to say instead.
“You did?”
You nodded, and his heart did a funny little jig. Realization flooded through him then, the gears in his brain churning and piecing together a picture that was a little foggy, yet still recognizable.
“I missed you too,” he said, and it surprised him how much he meant it.
“You did?” you asked, bouncing his own question back to him.
He nodded, the fog clearing more and more by the second. “I…I felt anxious the whole mission. Anxious, and worried, and a bit sad. I had no clue why until…” he trailed off, but you seemed to fill in the blanks for him, some of that precious light returning to your eyes.
That’s when he remembered it. “I missed you, Y/n.”
His hand moved of its own accord, his willpower deteriorating, but he managed to stop himself before his palm made contact with your cheek.
“You can touch me,” you whispered, looking straight at him, and a shiver ran down his spine in the best way possible.
He fulfilled your request, your face molding against his fingers, your breath fluttering against his wrist, right over his pulse. Your own hand came up to meet his, your fingers braiding together, and you hummed contentedly as you leaned into his touch.
But his body told him that wasn’t enough, that he had been deprived for two whole weeks of this and how unacceptable that was. It took everything in him not to consume you entirely, to absorb you through his skin and weld you to his bones because logically he had just met you only minutes ago, though a deeper part of him knew that wasn’t true, that you were a much bigger part of him than his mind would let him let think.
“You can kiss me, too,” you whispered, as if you could read his mind.
And in that moment, he didn’t care if you actually could. Instinct took over, and he leaned forward, his heart bursting at the feel of your soft lips against his. The kiss was gentle at first, but he couldn’t stop himself from indulging more than he should, his tongue sliding over yours in such a deliberate way that he knew he had done this before, knew that he would pull a breathless moan from you if he did it just so.
His chivalry bubbled up again, heat rushing to his cheeks as he pulled away abruptly, before he could something you’d both regret. You laughed at him, shaking your head as you looked at him with something sweeter and more tender than anything he’d ever known.
“What?” he asked, his head still reeling, his body protesting the loss of contact.
“You’re always such a gentleman when you come back,” you teased, glancing down at his tingling mouth.
He wasn’t too dumb not to take that for the invitation it was, leaning forward again and pressing a couple more kisses onto your lips, your chin, your neck.
“Have we ever…” he breathed the unfinished question onto your shoulder, his hands burning with the itch to explore.
He felt you nod slowly. “We have.”
“Can we now?” he asked, pulling away just enough to look up at your radiant, ethereal face.
“We can,” you said, a laugh hidden somewhere under your words, your hands already at the hem of the t-shirt you adopted.
He had to admit, it looked better on his bedroom floor.