Hey, we’re in line for some absurd temperatures here in the southwest this week. This is very important to know and keep in mind. Be safe, stay hydrated, stay out of the sun as much as you can.
Additional you can also put them on your palms, also, make sure to always use a light towel or kitchen paper and don’t put the ice bags directly onto your skin!
HOLD ON TO THE MEMORIES, THEY WILL HOLD ON TO YOU... AND I WILL HOLD ON TO YOU
Pairing Bucky Barnes x Reader
Word Count 4.2 k
Note I have been thinking about this idea and wemm, what is Bucky Barnes without a bit of angst? I am sorry, they're so in love and are each other's anchor but sometimes... things happen but I swear they're gonna be okay... maybe.
The thing about Bucky Barnes was that he remembered too much. That was the problem everyone expected. The seventy years of ice and fire, the ghost of a face on a train, the cold whisper of a voice that wasn’t his own telling him who he was supposed to be. The weight of it was a physical thing, a granite slab on his chest that made the simple act of drawing breath a conscious effort on the bad days.
You had known about that weight from the start. You’d seen it in the way he’d sometimes stare at a steaming cup of coffee, his flesh hand frozen halfway to the handle, his eyes seeing not the chipped ceramic but the snows of the Alps. You’d learned to navigate those moments with a quiet that was louder than any words, a gentle press of your hand to the small of his back, a low hum of a song you knew he’d liked from a time before. You were patient. You were a shoreline, and he was a battered ship, and you let him come to rest against you in his own time.
But what neither of you had anticipated, what the files in Wakanda and the gentle questions from Dr. Raynor hadn’t fully prepared you for, was the forgetting.
It wasn’t the big, dramatic erasures of his past. It was the small things. The tiny, silverfish moments of the life you were painstakingly building together that would sometimes slip through the cracks of his miraculously repaired but still irrevocably damaged mind.
The first time it happened, you’d been together for eight months. He’d walked into the kitchen, a threadbare grey henley clinging to his shoulders, his hair still damp from the shower, and he’d opened the refrigerator. He’d stood there for a long moment, the cold air ghosting over his face, before pulling out a jar of pickles. Not just any pickles—the brand of spicy bread-and-butter pickles that you had spent three weeks searching for after he’d mentioned, in a rare moment of unguarded nostalgia, that his Ma used to make something like them.
He held the jar up, turning it over in his metal hand, a faint line appearing between his brows. “Hey,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep. “Since when do we have these?”
You looked up from the stove where you were scrambling eggs, a spatula frozen mid-air. Your heart gave a strange, lurching stumble. “Since last Tuesday, love,” you said, keeping your voice light, your eyes searching his face. “We went to that farmer’s market in Park Slope, remember? You said they were the closest you’d found to your mom’s.”
He stared at the jar for another beat, then at you. The confusion in his eyes was not the deep, haunted fog of a PTSD episode. It was… blank. A tiny, pristine patch of white where a memory should have been. “Park Slope?” he echoed, the words tentative.
You set the spatula down, wiping your hands on your jeans. “Yeah,” you said, moving to stand beside him. You didn’t touch him, not yet, just leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator. “You told me about the time you and Steve tried to make her recipe and nearly burned the whole apartment down.”
He looked from your face back to the jar. For a terrifying second, the blankness remained, a void that made your stomach clench. Then, slowly, something flickered in his eyes. A spark, then a glow. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, a sound that was still too rare. “Right,” he said, the word a quiet exhalation. “The fire department came. Mrs. O’Malley from downstairs was convinced we were running a bootleg operation.” He put the jar back on the shelf and closed the fridge door, turning to face you. He didn’t apologize. You’d agreed early on; No apologies for the scars the world had carved into him. Instead, he reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear, his flesh fingers lingering on the curve of it. “Scrambled eggs?” he asked, his voice soft, the question a gentle redirection, a way of saying I’m back.
You leaned into his touch for a second, letting the solid warmth of him reassure the frantic beat of your heart. “With the good cheese.” you confirmed, and went back to the stove, your movements deliberate.
That was the pattern. It wasn’t a deluge; it was a slow, persistent drip. A leak in the foundation of his present.
A month later, you were on the couch, a documentary about deep-sea creatures playing on the TV. He was sprawled out, his head in your lap, your fingers absently carding through his hair, which was getting long enough to curl at the ends. You loved this, these quiet evenings where the world outside your apartment ceased to exist. He was relaxed, a rare and precious state, his vibranium arm a cool, heavy weight across your thighs, his flesh hand resting on your knee, thumb tracing lazy circles on your jeans.
“Look at that,” you murmured, as a bioluminescent jellyfish bloomed across the screen, a cascade of otherworldly light in the abyssal dark. “It’s like a tiny galaxy.”
He hummed in agreement, his eyes half-lidded. “Steve would’ve hated this,” he said, a hint of old affection in his voice. “Too quiet. He’d be itching to go fight it.”
You smiled. “Not everything needs to be fought, Buck.”
“Tell that to him,” he muttered, but there was a smile tugging at his lips.
A comfortable silence settled over you, broken only by the narrator’s low voice and the crackle of the sea. Your fingers continued their path through his hair, tracing the shell of his ear, the strong line of his jaw. You felt the exact moment it happened. The thumb on your knee stopped its circling. His body, which had been loose-limbed and heavy, went taut, just for a second.
He sat up slowly, his movements careful, as if navigating a room in the dark. He looked at the TV, then around the living room—at the framed print of a French market you’d hung, at the well-worn copy of The Hobbit on the coffee table he’d been rereading, at the soft throw blanket you’d bought because he was always cold.
He looked at you.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice was different. It wasn’t panicked, but it was… cautious. As if he was testing the ground. “What are we watching?”
You felt the familiar lurch in your chest, but you’d learned to hide it, to smooth it over with a calm you’d had to cultivate. “Deep-sea documentary,” you said, keeping your voice as even as the ocean the narrator was describing. “The one about the Mariana Trench.”
He nodded slowly, his brow furrowed. He looked from your face to the TV and back again. He lifted his metal hand, looking at it as if it might provide answers. “Right,” he said, but it was hollow. He didn’t remember.
You didn’t reach for him. You’d learned that, too. Sometimes, touch felt like a trap when his mind was playing tricks on him. “You picked it,” you said, a gentle prompt. “You said you wanted to see if they’d finally found anything weirder than a Hydra science division.”
His gaze sharpened on you, a flicker of the old Bucky—the one with the sharp wit and the quick grin—cutting through the fog. “That’s a low bar,” he said, the ghost of a sardonic edge to his voice. He looked at the screen again, where a frilled shark was gliding through the inky water, its prehistoric form eerie and magnificent. “I… I remember the shark,” he said slowly, the words coming with effort, like he was pulling them up from a deep well. “The one with the… the frilly teeth.”
You nodded, a small smile on your face, your heart aching. “You said it looked like something that would’ve given Steve nightmares.”
A real laugh then, short and rusty, but real. He rubbed a hand over his face, the gesture exhausted. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, I did.” He leaned back against the couch, not quite returning to his previous position, but settling his shoulder against yours. He let his head fall back, staring at the ceiling. “It’s gone,” he said, the admission a whisper. “I was watching it. The jellyfish. The pretty ones that look like stars. And then… it just… wasn’t there anymore.”
You turned your head, your cheek almost brushing his arm. You could feel the tension still humming through him, a low-voltage current of frustration and fear. “It came back,” you said. “The shark. The joke about Steve.”
“It did,” he agreed, his jaw tight. He turned his head to look at you, and in the dim light of the TV, he looked younger, and more lost than you’d ever seen him. “But what if next time it doesn’t?”
It was the question that hung between you, unspoken, every time. The fear that one day, the blank spaces wouldn’t just be about pickles and documentaries. That he’d look at you and see a stranger. That the life you’d so carefully woven together would unravel in his mind, thread by thread.
You didn’t give him platitudes. You’d never lied to him. “Then we’ll build it again,” you said simply. “We’re good at that.”
He stared at you for a long, breathless moment. Then, slowly, the tension in his jaw eased. He reached for your hand, his flesh fingers intertwining with yours, squeezing tight. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t need to. He just pulled your hand to his chest, pressing your palm flat over the steady, sturdy beat of his heart, and turned his attention back to the screen, where the trench was giving way to a coral reef, a riot of color and life in the sunlit shallows.
The worst one, the one that carved a new worry-line beside your mouth, happened on a Sunday.
It was a good day. The best kind. You’d woken up late, tangled in the sheets, the morning sun painting golden stripes across the bedroom floor. He’d made breakfast—actual pancakes, from scratch, a recipe he said his sister Rebecca used to make—and the apartment had smelled of vanilla and maple syrup. You’d eaten on the small balcony, even though it was October and the air was crisp, huddled together in a thick blanket, sharing a mug of coffee. He’d been laughing, really laughing, at some story you were telling about your own disastrous attempt to impress a high school crush with homemade pasta, his smile wide and unburdened, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
It was in the afternoon that it slipped.
You were cleaning up. A mundane, domestic task. You were at the sink, washing the pancake-mottled mixing bowl, humming a song that had been stuck in your head all week. He was beside you, drying a plate with a dish towel, the easy rhythm of your bodies moving in the small space a choreography born of months of proximity.
He was telling you about a new training protocol Sam had been developing, something about aerial combat maneuvers that sounded, in his words, "like a recipe for a spectacularly painful face-plant".
You laughed, rinsing the bowl. “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, well, ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ are two very different things when a vibranium wing pack is involved,” he grumbled, but there was no heat in it. He set the plate in the cabinet, his movements easy.
You handed him the now-clean bowl, and as he took it, his fingers brushed yours. A casual, everyday touch. His hand paused on the bowl. He didn’t take it.
You looked up, expecting to see him lost in another memory, a distant look in his eyes. But his gaze wasn’t distant. It was focused entirely on you, but with an intensity that was new, unsettling. He was looking at your face as if he were seeing it for the first time.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft, questioning. He put the bowl down on the counter without looking. His flesh hand came up, hovering just by your cheek, not quite touching. “You’ve got… there’s flour, honey.” He gestured vaguely. “On your… here.” His fingertip finally made contact, brushing gently over the apple of your cheek.
You smiled, leaning into the touch. “I know. You’re the one who flicked it at me, remember? When I said the batter was too runny?”
He blinked. His hand dropped back to his side. The flicker of confusion was there, the blank patch spreading across his features like a stain. He looked from your face to the bowl, to the batter-splattered counter, to the sun streaming in from the balcony where you’d been huddled together not two hours ago. It was all there, the evidence of your shared morning, but his eyes said it didn’t compute.
“We… made pancakes?” he asked, the question small, uncertain.
Your stomach dropped. This was different. This wasn’t a detail from a week ago. This was just couple hours ago. A memory still warm, still fragrant with maple syrup, and it was dissolving in his mind.
“Yeah,” you said, keeping your voice steady, though your hand trembled slightly as you reached for the dish towel. “You made your sister Rebecca’s recipe. You said she used to make them on Sundays when your parents were at church.”
He stared at you, a war playing out behind his eyes. You could see him reaching, grasping for the thread of it. His jaw worked, a muscle ticking in his temple. He looked at his own hands, the flesh one and the metal one, as if they might hold the answer.
“Rebecca,” he repeated, the name grounding him, a rock in the shifting sands. “Becca.” His gaze softened, a memory of the memory taking hold. “My Becks, she—she would always put too many chocolate chips in mine. Ma would get mad at the mess.”
“You put chocolate chips in mine this morning,” you said, your voice barely a whisper. You took a step closer, closing the small distance between you. You placed your hand on his chest, over his heart, feeling the rapid, anxious beat. “And then you flicked flour at me.”
He closed his eyes. His hand came up to cover yours, pressing it harder against his chest. He stood there for a long moment, just breathing, his forehead dipping to rest against yours. You could feel the fine tremor running through him, the sheer force of will it was taking for him to hold onto the present moment.
“I’m sorry,” he finally rasped, the words you’d told him he never had to say.
“Don’t,” you said, your own voice thick. “What did we say?”
“No apologies,” he recited, the words automatic, but his voice was strained, cracking at the edges. He pulled back just enough to look at you, and the expression on his face was one of raw, unvarnished terror. “It’s getting worse.”
“It’s not getting worse,” you countered, though a cold tendril of fear coiled in your own gut. “It’s the same. It’s just… it’s a good day, Buck. A really good day. Your brain is…” you searched for the right word, “…relaxed. Sometimes the holes are bigger when you’re relaxed.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “A great system. I have to be on guard against happiness.”
You framed his face with your hands, your thumbs stroking the sharp line of his cheekbones. “No,” you said firmly. “You don’t. Because I’m here. And I’ll remember for both of us.”
He looked at you for a long, agonizing moment, the fear slowly receding from his eyes, replaced by something deeper, something that looked like gratitude and love and a bone-deep exhaustion all mixed together. He turned his head, pressing a kiss to your palm.
“The pancakes were good,” he said, his voice hoarse but steadier now. “Becca’s recipe. I remember… I remember they were good.”
You smiled, and it was watery, but it was real. “They were perfect.”
He pulled you into his arms then, a full-body embrace, wrapping himself around you like you were the only solid thing in a world made of shifting sand. You held him back just as tightly, your cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow from its frantic pace to a steady, grounding rhythm.
It became your secret. Yours alone. He didn’t tell Sam, who would look at him with that earnest, worried frown and start talking about support groups and neurology specialists. He didn’t tell Steve, who was on the moon or in another dimension or whatever it was that retired super-soldiers did, and who would drop everything to come back and try to fix it with a stubborn optimism that Bucky no longer had the energy for. He didn’t tell the Wakandans, who would see it as a flaw in their programming, a bug to be fixed, and would whisk him away to a sterile lab.
He told only you.
And you held it for him. You held the memories of the Saturday mornings and the spontaneous walks in the park and the inside jokes that were born and died in the span of a single conversation. You became the archivist of your life together.
You kept a journal. Not a secret one, but one you left on the coffee table, its cover worn, its pages filled with your neat handwriting. You’d never told him about it, but you knew he’d seen it. He’d never said anything, but you’d seen the way his eyes would linger on it sometimes, a mix of curiosity and something like relief.
It was a safety net. A map back.
October 14th: Tried to make Becca’s pancakes. Bucky flicked flour at me. I retaliated with maple syrup. The kitchen is a disaster zone. Worth it.
October 21st: Walked to the pier. Bucky fed the seagulls even though I told him not to. He says they’re “veterans of the sky.” One of them stole his hat.
November 5th: Movie night. He picked 'Mean Girls' just because. He laughed at all the right parts. He held my hand the whole time. He said Regina Georgehas nothing on him. I said I know.
November 18th: Found him standing in front of the open fridge again, staring at the pickles. He asked if we’d always had them. I said yes. I told him the story about the farmer’s market again, and about Steve and the fire department. He listened like it was the first time he’d ever heard it. When I finished, he said, “You have a good memory.” I said, “I have to. One of us does.” He didn’t laugh. He just pulled me into a hug and held on for a long, long time.
Some nights, he’d find you writing in it. He’d lean against the doorframe of the living room, arms crossed over his chest, watching the pen move across the page. He never asked what you were writing. He didn’t need to.
One night, he walked over and sat on the couch beside you, close enough that his thigh pressed against yours. He was quiet for a long moment, the weight of him a familiar, comforting presence. Then, without a word, he reached for the journal.
You let him take it, your heart suddenly pounding in your chest.
He didn’t open it. He just held it in his hands, running his flesh thumb over the worn cover, feeling the impressions your pen had left on the pages beneath. He stared at it for a long, silent minute, the lamplight catching the blue of his eyes, making them look almost translucent.
“I’m scared,” he said, his voice so low it was almost lost in the quiet hum of the apartment. “That one day I’ll look at you and I won’t just forget the pancakes or the pickles or the damn jellyfish.” He finally looked up, meeting your eyes. “I’m scared I’ll forget… this. Us. What it feels like to… to be here. With you.”
Your throat tightened. You’d had this fear too, of course you had, but hearing him say it, hearing the raw, unguarded terror in his voice, made it real in a way you’d been fighting to keep at bay.
You reached out, taking the journal from his hands and setting it aside on the coffee table. Then you took his face in your hands, the same way you had in the kitchen that Sunday, forcing him to look at you.
“Then I’ll remind you,” you said, your voice fierce despite the tears you could feel pricking at your eyes. “Every single day. I’ll tell you about the first time you let me touch your metal arm. I’ll tell you about the way you look when you laugh at your own jokes, even when they’re not funny. I’ll tell you about the night you woke up screaming and I held you for three hours and you told me about Steve, about falling, about all of it, and then you fell asleep with your head in my lap and I never moved, not once, because I didn’t want you to wake up alone.”
A tear slipped down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away.
“I’ll tell you,” you continued, your voice breaking, “about how you make pancakes on Sundays and flick flour at me. About how you think seagulls are veterans of the sky. About how you hold my hand when we watch old movies. I’ll tell you until my voice gives out, Buck. I’ll tell you until you remember, or I’ll tell you until it becomes a new memory, and then I’ll tell you again. I’m not going anywhere.”
He made a sound then, something between a sob and a laugh, and he pulled you into him, burying his face in your hair. His arms wrapped around you, the metal arm cool through your shirt, the flesh arm burning hot, and he held you like you were the only thing anchoring him to the earth.
“I love you,” he whispered into your hair, the words muffled but unmistakable. “I don’t want to forget that I love you.”
You squeezed your eyes shut, the tears finally falling, soaking into his shirt. “You won’t,” you said, and you willed it to be true with every fiber of your being. “Because I’ll be here to remind you. Every day. As many times as you need.”
He held you tighter, and for a long time, neither of you spoke. The only sounds were the soft hum of the refrigerator, the distant wail of a siren from the street below, and the steady, synchronizing rhythm of your breathing.
Eventually, he pulled back, just enough to look at you. His eyes were red-rimmed, his cheeks wet, but there was something in his face that hadn’t been there before. A loosening. A letting go. He looked at you—really looked—and a small, tremulous smile touched his lips.
“You have flour on your cheek,” he said, his voice rough.
You let out a startled laugh, wiping at your face with the back of your hand. “It’s not flour, it’s—“
“I know,” he said softly. He reached up, his flesh hand cupping your jaw, his thumb brushing away a tear. “I’m just… I’m making a new memory.”
Your breath caught in your throat. You stared at him, at the man who had been broken and rebuilt and broken again, who had more reasons than anyone to give up, and you saw him choosing, in this moment, to hold on. To you. To this. To the life you were building in the spaces between the seconds he lost.
You turned your head, pressing a kiss to his palm. “That’s a good one,” you whispered. “A really good one.”
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against yours, and for a moment, the world outside the small circle of lamplight ceased to exist. There was no Hydra, no Winter Soldier, no blank spaces or lost memories. There was only him, and you, and the quiet, radical act of staying.
“Tell me another one,” he murmured, his eyes falling closed. “From the journal. The one about the seagull.”
You smiled, shifting closer, letting your body curve into his. Your fingers found his, intertwining, and you began to speak, your voice a low, steady current in the quiet room.
“October 21st,” you said, and you could feel him settle against you, the tension draining from his shoulders, his breath evening out. “Walked to the pier. Bucky fed the seagulls even though I told him not to…”
And as you spoke the memory back into existence, weaving it into the air between you with the patient, practiced ease of someone who had become fluent in the language of remembering, you felt him squeeze your hand.
I'm trying not to post too many/often so I'm cutting back on how many I post at a time. And I only post new ones after 100 notes on the previous post so there's not too much Seb on your timeline. HAHAHA Like there could be too much Seb anywhere.
turns out i wasn't making that up, his name is Dr. Toru Miyazaki! he also wrote a book called "The Day Cats Live To Be Thirty", so cats are kind of his thing.
apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.
As they age, almost all cats develop kidney disease, from which they eventually die. Just as in humans, kidney disease i
Dr. Toru Miyazaki’s AIM injection for cat kidney disease enters trials in 2025, aiming for a 2027 release. Greycoat Research supports the sc
whoa wait i actually read the articles and it's so much cooler than just that!!
dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!
although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!
on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.
furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.
annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D
man just think, not only could our kitties start living longer, healthier lives, but just maybe dialysis will become as rare and obsolete as the iron lung is for people. what a badass Dr. Toru is!
summary: when sam gets injured during a mission and isn’t able to go to a hospital, bucky brings him and natasha to his own home to get cared for by his girlfriend, y/n, who he’s been keeping a secret.
a/n: this is my first time writing for bucky! reblogs and replies are super appreciated! also here i’m going to pretend that bucky didn’t get snapped so you started dating during the blip and natasha didn’t die
word count: 2.9k
warnings: mentions of blood, sam getting shot, fluff
A/n: You know how sometimes when you’re having a breakdown and nothing is helping but then something completely unrelated and stupid just does it for no reason. This is that. With pot brownies and kissing. Bucky is recovering and reader is an moron with a heart of gold.
Angst, hurt/comfort, humor. Reader/Bucky. 3k words
Warnings: Marijuana use; conversations about trauma, particularly food-related; language.
-
The path leading away from the cabin is littered with wet patches of morning. Rime colors of miserable winter in sludge grey are starting to be overtaken by sprouts of green, yellow, and brisk dew, springtime optimism come to life.
Pepper’s got the front of her house looking like a farmer’s market flower stand. Pots of tulips and daffodils explode up the steps and tri-color ribbons connecting porch-light to porch-light. The magnolia tree is soon to bud, and she’s hung hummingbird feeders and birdhouses all around.
When the cars start rolling in for the quarter-yearly potluck, you hang out near the garden, rocking back and forth on your feet. You'd shown up early but didn’t know what to do around a toddler, so outside it was.
The familiar Range Rover halts to a stop, Sam’s door opening as he makes his way out, holding ceramic handles of an enormous crockpot.
You call, “Bring your famous chili?”
“Damn right, I did,” he beams, “you bring your appetite?”
You waggle your eyebrows before looking to the SUV he hopped out of, Steve lingering by the back door with a brown paper box tucked beneath his arm, knocking on the heavily tinted windows with a long-suffering sigh. “C’mon, Buck. Up and at ‘em.”
A loud, decisive knock thumps back at him and Steve rolls his big, pitiful, puppy dog eyes in your direction. Beneath the blue of his left orbital is what looks suspiciously like the fading ochre stain of either an almost healed bruise or a newly forming one, which only makes Steve’s silent call for aid more pathetic and urgent.
Damn, okay. Since you’re kind of on thin ice already, this could go one of two ways.
Sliding up, you crack your knuckles.
“Barnes,” you call, “I got something illegal for you. Wanna see?”
“Dead body.” He responds from behind the still shut door, and you’re not sure if that’s a question. Steve glares at you accusatory, as if you’d actually bring a dead body to a potluck, good grief.
“Uh, no.”
“Knife.”
Steve shoots you another look—which is just ridiculous at this point, the both of them.
“Knives aren’t illegal.”
“Depends.”
Steve shifts the box of what looks to be cherry turnovers and mouths phrase day, which means that Barnes decided to stop talking in complete sentences sometime between when he woke up and probably when Steve over-crowded him and is now reducing all communication to two or three words as both a method of punishment for Steve and self-preservation for Barnes.
“It’ll make you feel better,” you urge, “Loads better.”
“Sex.” He rolls down the window just enough for you to get a glimpse of his eyes, narrowed and steely. “Drugs?”
You mouth bingo, outrightly ignoring the fact that it feels like Bucky Barnes nearly solicited you for sex, and Steve puts his hand over his own face, about to quip until he realizes that he’s probably said too much already—which is what got him in this predicament to begin with—and simply drags himself toward the house.
Barnes watches him go wordlessly before he opens the door and steps out, looking down at you, lightly shivering in the cold, and says, still one-worded, “Okay.”
-
He pops three brownies into his mouth and chews, opening just enough to get out a muffled, “too sweet” before returning to grinding down like he’s cracking pecan shells in there.
“I know you have like,” you make panicked motions with your fingers, snapping the red Tupperware lid back down frantically, “hella metabolism, but pump the brakes or you’re going to flip.”
“Flip,” he concludes, determined. He squirrels about two more in before you can do anything about it.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I was going to let you take those home later—oh my god, I’m going to get into so much trouble.”
The two of you are stopped at one of those cutesy stone birdbaths around the perimeter, leaning on the lip as Barnes licks remaining chocolate off his fingers, looking as pleased as punch. As much as he can look, anyway, you think, since you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him smile at anything other than the time Steve stubbed his toe bad enough on Tony’s kitchen island that he doubled over.
“Did you say sex earlier?” You suddenly remember the flash of silver from the darkness of the SUV. “Wait, actually, I wanna go back even before that—did you really think I’d have a dead body?”
He shrugs.
“Cool,” you reply, “cool, cool, cool, cool. I think I should be more concerned, but you know what, I like it. Feels like a vote of confidence.”
A wide grin stretches across your face and you temporarily forget that Bucky fucking Barnes has eaten about half a pan of brownies with 25 grams of pot baked into them, that in about 15 minutes you’re both expected to sit down like normal people and have a nice dinner without anyone doing… whatever it is that he might do when he’s blazed to high heaven.
You shake the thought of Steve’s disappointment out of your head. Maybe it’d be best to keep acting natural, get him into some kind of headspace.
“So,” you whistle, “what’d you bring to the potluck?”
He gives you a sidelong stare and if there were Olympics for how someone can convey eat shit and die without moving anything but their eyes, he’d win every 8 years for the rest of his unnaturally long life.
“Well, I brought myself,” you curtsy, starting back down the trail again, figuring that you’ve got five minutes walking forward before it’d be time to turn back to the house, “and your present,” to which he gives you a short nod, “and an empty stomach. You excited for Sam’s chili?”
“Spicy.”
“Spicy?” you recoil, suddenly finding the prospect of a man who gave Captain America a black eye last week or possibly this morning—the monster who ate half of your most lethal bake—panting and sweating over a bowl of chili astoundingly inconceivable.
“Oh wait, you live with Rogers. What’s he feeding you at home? Steamed chicken?”
“Baked.”
You sigh, “God, you’re fucked. Nat brought something with Carolina Reaper infused honey glaze. Barnes... we’ll have to do a prayer circle for your ass.”
His face twists into a look of disgust before he starts to notice his lips, pressing them together, pulling them apart. After a few more motions like he’s discovering his body, bit by bit, he turns to you, and announces, “Feeling it.”
You laugh, jealous, because although you had a bite about 30 minutes before he even arrived, the brownie hasn’t hit you yet. “Good,” you say anyway, “that’s good, right?”
He only apathetically regards a sparrow flying past. You suppress a chortle when Barnes repeatedly licks his lips and rubs at the sleeves of his sweater.
“Have you ever been high before?” You correct, “In the fun, recreational, consensual way?”
Another listless shrug before he turns his head. You push yourself off a nearby log and make a show of stomping through haphazard piles of sticks and dead leaves, curling your fingers in a come along motion.
He follows, boots crunching, steps short and patternless, making a racket behind your back. He looks like a kid, fingers tucked up into his long sleeves, bouncy knees as he attempts to splash into every puddle as he possibly can before catching up. He’s almost got a grin when he looks at you, remembering where he is again, and there’s a light brush of color along the tops of his cheeks from the chill.
Around a small bend in the path, you duck under a branch, hop over a stone, and when you land back on both feet, the ground wobbles just enough to notice.
The air smells nice. Your eyelids feel heavy in a good way.
“Steve really piss you off this morning, didn’t he?”
Barnes lands a couple of feet away, his face dropping into an exhausted expression at the question, which you can’t fault him for because Steve’s a lot of things. Simple things, on the surface, but Barnes has known him longer than most anyone else and you imagine all of his noble qualities—his longstanding patience and willpower and belief in the goodness in everything and everyone—you imagine that shit gets old.
Hell, it gets at you on occasion, and you’re not even the brainwashed best friend who’s probably hearing a hundred voices in his head and is too tired to hear one more no matter how well-intentioned it might be.
Sometimes, being inundated by language just breaks it all back into foreign, incomprehensible script. And sometimes, being exceedingly plied with something you can’t make any sense of makes you turn inward, makes you bare your teeth in self-defense.
Which makes you realize you probably should ease up, too, talk less, but then he takes a long step with his ridiculous legs and is by your side, walking as if you two do this all the time.
“He’s a fixer.” Bucky’s brows are scrunched together, hands buried in his pockets. You nod quickly, not wanting him to go into any more detail than that because it’s not news that the entire population is still wary of Bucky Barnes’ re-emergence as a United States citizen when he was, up until very recently, a—uh, Russian one.
This, obviously, puts many things at odds with each other, including Steve, who is Mr. United States himself. The Avengers, too, who are mostly Team United States, considering the location and overwhelming population. But most of all, Bucky, who is still cobbling together bits and pieces of his life each day, is faced with the knowledge that everyone in the world knows more about him than he does.
You rub the back of your neck sympathetically because that shit would kill your heart so fast.
“You know what.” You shake the Tupperware at him, “Have the rest of these. You deserve it. And like, a million hugs.”
He barks a laugh, gladly gulps down the rest, and there’s a dapple of fudge on his chin looking so silly and sweet as he chews.
Ah, shoot. You avert your gaze, feeling very bad ideas break out up your arms and neck, and the shudder that is about to overtake you seems less about Barnes’ sweet face and more about Steve’s disappointed one. Like, he’s going to read your mind and know you’re having ideas about his best friend. And he’s going to do that thing where his eyebrows drop and his lips press together as he attempts to hold back a few choice words. Until later, probably, when he corners you somewhere and unleashes them anyway.
What were you thinking?, he’ll hiss. Are you capable of thinking rationally?
“What?” Barnes prods. “What is it?”
“Nothin’” you take a leap forward, herding the both of you back. The closer you are to the cabin the more you’ll remember that you’re at a family event, with friends, who should all stay in the friend territory.
But you blurt anyway, “You said sex earlier!” Because you’re a whole ass idiot.
He makes a small noise, says, “Yeah,” like that’s any help.
“Are you…” what the fuck, your head is spinning, “like, in… need of some?” Your face feels hot.
“Maybe. My body is…” he frowns, so weirdly open right now, and then he looks at you with half is face in a weary grin, the other half lost and confused. “Responding to stimuli in ways I haven’t— responded to in... Trying to fix it. Steve wants me to be fixed.”
He tilts his face to the sky, glaring at it. “Can’t get it out.”
You’re trying to force your rabbiting heart down to a manageable pace. You’ve never had any in-depth discussions with him about anything, much less his sex drive. The most interaction the two of you get is the occasional mission or get-together where you crack jokes and get shitfaced when the job’s done. You’ve been told you’re sort of a pain and haven’t given a fuck too much to change that.
You’re sort of in trouble right now, having been “irrational” during the last mission, running across the iced lake instead of taking the planned route and falling in. It ended up working out, since you got to the enemy helicopter before the enemies, but then there was the stabbing because you were sort of outnumbered and the pneumonia afterwards because you fell into the fucking lake…
There was a massive chewing out. Steve and his many, disappointed words.
Something about motor-mouths and low-object permanence but sure, good on the inside when it counts.
You hope this is one of those times where it counts.
“Listen,” you start. “Take as long as you need, there’s no rush on recovery and pushing yourself too hard is detrimental to your health. It’s not a straight line.”
“I hit him.”
Your wheeling brain is making a sharp left, trying to figure out where Barnes is driving toward. Oh. The black eye.
“Aw, Steve?” You wave your hand, swatting nothing. “He’s a big boy.”
“I’m hungry. Then I’m not.”
“I mean, that sounds normal—“
“No, a lot. Fast. Cyclical. Endless.”
It must be his metabolism adjusting. The realization of his relationship with food comes fast, almost visceral. Scarce when he was young, then rationed during the war before it was taken from him altogether. He was given the bare minimum with Hydra—protein slurry, tube-fed—then purged—stomach pumped—before being put on ice.
For decades.
Starvation must have truly felt endless.
And now with food being a surplus, with his body readjusting to it, yet his mind still struggling with habits—it must be so confusing. Another seemingly natural function to be confused about.
“Ah,” you manage, a lump in your throat like a blockade.
“I get nightmares.” He’s glaring at his hands, one flesh, one metal, opening and closing his fist like trying to get a grip on himself, and his voice is so small and pained. “These thoughts. All sorts. Can’t sleep.”
You extend your hands, shake off the dry sob that wants to erupt from your chest, and declare with flourish, “On the fourth day, God made Purple Kush, and it was good. So, we can—we can fix that.”
He takes another one of those long looks, through his lashes, lips quirked in quiet humor.
“You’re not really a fixer.”
He shakes the container of crumbs in your face.
You gasp, snatching it back in offense. “I can fix… some things! I replaced the utility light in the kitchen yesterday!“
Your cheeks are hot, face twitching like a broken screen because all you can think about is how handsome he is, out here like this, nose blushing, eyes lazy and crescent shaped, the heavy creases beneath them less pained and more relaxed.
And how he’s teasing you—- and he’s kind of a little shit.
“You fucker,” you say.
He grins—all big and silent, and for a second you count your blessings that he’s not going to say anything else shitty until he quips, “Not unless you’re offering.”
He’s staring at you intently, a curious expression winding its way up his face. His eyes are huge and blue and the most alert, glazed-over, pair of bloodshot, redder-than-the-devil’s-dick eyes you’ve ever seen on anyone stoned halfway to the moon.
His tongue darts out, sweeps a slow, careful line over the width of his bottom lip, practically asking, and you’re just the simple idiot who openly gawks at him.
“Ah,” you nod. “Yeah you’re definitely right. I’m—“ you gulp, “more of a fuck-up.”
Because what’s another fuck up to add onto the long-running list of fuck ups you’ve had recently, anyway? Kissing Barnes might count as a really serious one, sure, but at least it’s not pneumonia.
It’d make him feel better, probably, it’d make him feel something, at least. Steve would appreciate that, if Barnes came to the dinner table verbal, maybe even laughing. No one has to tell Steve that his best pal kissed your face off in the woods.
The idea of your face being kissed off is doing a number on you. The idea of Bucky Barnes, this gorgeous, miserable, godly, tragic contradiction, your at-arm’s-length teammate, your quickly-becoming friend, kissing your face off because he needs to feel something soft in the midst of the rest of the horrible, jagged things he already feels every second of his life—and he can get it from you.
You’re stupid and simple and how could anyone say no to that? So you take one last second to steel your heart, push forward, and lean in.
It’s, frankly, bizarre.
He kisses you gently, fantastically, inconsistently, wavering from assured one second to apprehensive the next, like he remembers how but can’t quite execute.
You meet him where you can, respond to the parting of his lips with your own, adjust to his tension with grace, and when he starts feeling like he’s getting the hang of it, like muscle memory has finally settled into his body, you let him lead.
One hand finds the base of your skull, the other placing itself on your waist. His kisses grow greedy, like he remembers desire is a thing that occurs to him. He tilts his head down, kisses up like he wants to swallow every sigh between your lips, like he’s hungry for the sounds you make—and you’re making, embarrassingly, a lot of them. He’s good—dominant but kind, mouth wide, lips full, tongue cocoa-sweet and clever as it strokes yours again and again.
When he backs you up into a tree, you barely register it. His hand has moved to cushion your head, and he’s urging his entire body forward into yours, grip tight at your hipbone, moving his mouth to your jaw, then your neck, and you stutter a string of letters that refuse to make words.
Barnes is expertly sucking marks beneath your collar, right beneath the neckline, his breath hot and coming out in a near snarl and when he scrapes his teeth down, sinking them into the soft skin of your chest, you yelp loud enough to send a few birds scattering from the trees.
He jumps off like he’s burned you, eyes frantic, afraid.
“No—” you clear your throat, hands out, “Hold on.”
He’s blinking, head clearing, head trying to assess what he’s done, the situation, the pulled loose neckline, the wet shine of his spit up your throat.
“S-sorry—”
“No, don’t be sorry.” You give him his distance but take a small step forward. “That was hot. But,”
He blinks, confused, and this whole thing could easily go pear-shaped, your well-intentioned explanation might turn into unintelligible speech at any moment, but you have to try or else he’ll tailspin into catastrophe, and you suddenly feel so sorry for Steve, the poor fuck who’s doing this every day, clinging onto the hope that what he’s saying doesn’t set Bucky off, doesn’t push his boulder back downhill.
He's still stuttering sorry, starting to pace.
“Listen,” you say firmly, clipping your own panic, “that was wow, let me tell you. But if you don’t stop, I’m going to like— hotwire a car.”
Somehow this stops him in his tracks, “What?”
“Well, I didn’t drive here. Because you know, I was going to like, get really shitfaced.”
“What?”
“Yeah, and like, take you to a hotel or something.”
He frowns, obviously completely lost. “Why?”
It’s your turn to be lost. Both of you open-mouthed and panting at each other like two dumb dogs chasing each others’ tail in an ouroboros of idiocy.
“Huh? What do you mean why? You just tongue-fucked me, do you think I’m immune to getting on my knees for that?”
Now you can see it happening—the incomprehensible speech like a marquee as it runs across Barnes’ brain. Tongue-fuck, immune to getting on my knees. He doesn’t understand any of that, and god bless any soul who can. What language are you even speaking right now other than hot-brained, hot-skinned, hot-hearted to him, who’s still struggling to defrost?
“Never mind,” you redact, “ignore that.” You put your hands on his shoulders to ground yourself, vaguely thinking that maybe you shouldn’t touch him but the firm slap of your palms seems to break him out of his new trance. “Can we kiss again, later?”
He blinks, staring at you, at your hands on him, at your lips all swollen up.
“Yes.”
You sigh, relieved and thankful that other than you, no one’s freaking out, that your plan to get Bucky Barnes high worked out after all, and that he has agreed to make out later because he’s really, really good at it.
“Wonderful. Let’s go back now? Are you ready?”
He mulls it over and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Sure, but I’m not eating chili.”
“Well, you’re in luck, there’s plenty of chicken.”
He grimaces, cuts a sharp look up to you before a twinkle settles in his blue, blue eyes. “Okay,” he agrees, “guess we should do a prayer circle for my ass.”
You clap your hands together and recite Our Father.
-
“It was sex, wasn’t it?”
Sam’s got one hand over his belly, snickering. Everyone else looks your way, gullible, scandalized, and you can’t blame them since the two of you were gone an awfully long time and came back extremely disheveled.
Bucky had walked in dutifully behind you, wiped off his boots, sat down at the dinner table, and asked for seconds saying please and thank you and he even threw in a that was delicious just to watch Steve’s head explode.
And Bucky, who you’ve come to realize is genuinely a shit— still one-worded and knowing full well the repercussions of his one word— only shrugs and responds, “Yes.”
The room erupts into shouting as you throw a buttered roll at his head. He catches it easily and brings it up to his grinning mouth, shimmer of spit glossy and fantastic on his lips.
first, i LOVE the grumpy bucky trope. but let me say it’s not just because it’s funny but because of the underlying notions of trauma you write so well here. NOT that i’m trying to fetishize it but it adds an extra layer of dimension to his character where you feel you can relate to experiencing trauma and expressing it through your personality.
“Both of you open-mouthed and panting at each other like two dumb dogs chasing each others’ tail in an ouroboros of idiocy.”
This is such a well crafted sentence and i feel like it perfectly encapsulates this fic lol. absolutely LOVED this read thank you for writing it!!
Bucky Barnes x F!Reader [10.5k]
SUMMARY: Out of all the outcomes for his life, Bucky never expected this. In his mind, being a partner, a friend, and a father was never an option. Too much trauma on the table, not enough mind on his shoulders for such a thing. When you crash into his life after one of his missions, he never expects you to be the person to give it all to him, but he should’ve known something big was coming the second you silenced all the voices in his head just by simply being there. Now, Bucky gets to make you family. Maybe he does get a happy ending, after all.
📝 Reblogs and comments are much appreciated and motivational. This is part two of the story, and there is a part one.
🏷️ Fluff, happy ending, dad!Bucky, Avenger family.
read on ao3 | masterlist
It turns out the future arrives only months after that discussion.
Your birthday passes without a hitch. No trench coats or big news shared during dinner this time, no surprise gods of thunder at Mr. Yagi’s door; there’s only a request from Bucky—”Would you come to the Institute for Lorna’s second birthday? It’s gonna be in December. Lots of the kids are gonna be traveling for winter break and—I want you to meet her. She’s great. I think you’re gonna love my little bug.”
He’s right, of course.
The months leading up to Lorna’s birthday are spent with you asking yourself the only question that matters—the one your best friend poses to you the second you share the news that Bucky wants to be a family.
“You think he’s gonna want to adopt the cute Dane girl?” Athena’s question comes directly followed by the reason why it plagues your mind for the weeks leading up to your visit to the Institute. “I know you don’t want anything to do with the super slash mutant chaos he lives surrounded by.”
The super slash mutant chaos is the only thing that takes your sleep away.
It’s what made Bucky bleed many times, it’s what takes away his sleep at certain occasions and, truth to Athena’s words, something you’d like to keep a distance from, to the best of your abilities.
Being Bucky’s safe haven is not something that was written in the plans but happened anyway, and part of why your home and yourself bring him so much comfort is that it gives him a sense of normalcy. You wanted nothing that took away Bucky’s peace and, so far in life, anything related to mutants also meant chaos.
It takes one visit to the Xavier Institute to understand how Lorna is none of that. The answer to your question comes in that visit, too.
Lorna Dane is a two year old mutant with the abilities of electromagnetic spectrum manipulation, partially resistant to ionizing radiation and she can fly. That’s what Charles tells you as he leads you and Bucky to the sound of children laughing and running, and any of your fears swallowed down disappear into thin air when the thick wooden doors open to reveal the party.
Whatever it is your mind expected, it’s certainly not what it faces you.
First, the kids are all… different. Even the ones who look “human”, after the first initial glance, are not. All you need is to look at one of them for longer than ten seconds to catch something unusual happening, and the normalcy of their difference settles in much quicker than you hoped it would.
Lorna can be found in the back of the room in the arms of a ginger head girl, holding your book.
‘To The Moon and Back’ is on her lap and when you approach, you can hear the girl humming Billie Holiday’s Blue Moon to her until she spots the newcomers and her face brightens up.
“Hi, James!” she turns her caramel eyes to you. “Hey! I’m Jean.”
“Hello, Jean.” Your eyes feel glued to the green-haired baby sitting in her lap, and Jean looks like she minds not one bit.
Blue Moon is Bucky’s doing and you know that without even asking the question. It’s his go-to song whenever you ask him to sing you something to sleep, and despite mocking anyone during the daylight who asks him if he can sing, Bucky’s soft and melodic voice can carry it out really well.
Lorna looks up to you with her leaf-green eyes and that’s it.
You get it.
“Hello, Lorna Sally.” The little girl’s attention leaves the book and zeros on you. This is the girl Bucky told you was found in her dead mother’s arms. The one who was almost captured, whose file is almost as extensive as her fugitive father’s—the one who’s a target to the likes of Hydra. Bucky told you only some of the experiments they wanted to have it done on her before you had to ask him to stop. “Aren’t you beautiful,” you smile softly, appreciating how gorgeous the green of her eyes are.
She’s clearly different, much like Bucky is.
Due to her nature, Lorna will forever be unable to hide it—like Bucky and his disability.
She can’t “pass” as normal, whatever that is, and still, with one look in her green eyes, you know she can be much more than what’s stigmatized for her. Her eyes are kind and gentle, and when she giggles, it’s a bubbly thing that creates a domino effect.
She grips one of your fingers before saying your name, “is you,” in that cute baby voice of hers, and you look up at Bucky with admiration.
He shrugs his shoulders. “I talk about you a lot.” He points to your hair. “She probably recognized the pin.”
That afternoon, you, Bucky and all the kids take turns in making Lorna feel loved and celebrated, playing all sorts of games with her. You adore being surrounded by those kids and the specialness in their genes—it’s hilarious, and exciting, and while it can be dangerous, you know better than to expect danger only from what’s different.
Lorna is kind, and funny, and a little quiet on the side, but she warms up to you by the end of the afternoon. She isolates you and Bucky in several instances to show both of you the stars she drew or the constellation she and another kid made in one of the art classes.
It takes a while, but once all the kids are on their beds and the adults are sharing a drink, Xavier finally lets out why the bags under his eyes are the size they are or why he went out of his way to make this a big occasion.
Lorna’s biological father was captured months ago and now, Charles found him.
“He’s dead,” he croaks out. It weighs on the room and your heart aches for the way Charles looks heartbroken saying it, but the news creates a whole other feeling inside of you.
Athena’s question comes back to you when you and Bucky ride home.
“You think he’s gonna want to adopt the cute Dane girl?”
If the chances were high before, they have just sky-rocketed.
And when he asks you, there’s gonna be only one doubt on your lips: will her room be sky blue, or forest green?
As all things are with Bucky, this one that at start seems to come out of nowhere, with a blink, it’s all you can see.
Bucky is the type of change in life that feels like a sharp u-turn; a movie scene where the gentleman snatches the lady out of the street into a dark alley with him to hide from the oncoming dangers, their bodies pressed together while the rain falls.
Sometimes in sharper bursts—there are more dramatic outtakes of this euphoria at the pit of your stomach, ones where there’s blood, disappearances, worry.
Other times, times like this, it’s just a nice surprise around the corner.
And this surprise comes in your own personal sea of cyan.
Lorna and Bucky were once separate entities in your mind that soon became a unit.
In the span of three months Lorna changes your name to different nicknames at least four times, always adapting to what she hears around her, simulating and mimicking people’s reactions around you like she too wants to be part of this secret.
First, you’re Y/n. Next, you’re little Y/n, because one afternoon Bucky hugs you both and with a kiss to each of your temples calls you little Lorna Sally and little Y/n button, and Lorna loves doing the things Bucky does or saying the things Bucky says, so you’re little Y/n to her, too. At last, you’re my Y/n after Charles Xavier welcomes you once with ‘our sweet Doctor, hello’ and Lorna corrects him.
If it wasn’t for the way her face clicked like a puzzle piece in your heart when first seeing, the way she hugged you and rubbed her soft head against your legs like a kitten and dragged you to places of the mansion to tell you things about a storm of lightings or the bugs she’s collecting.
“I see why you call her bug,” you tell Bucky.
He watches Lorna climbing the tree in confidence through her pulses of green electromagnetic orbs and nods to you. “She’s gonna be like… flying very soon. That’s—terrifying.”
“Terrifying,” you say at the same time. “Yeah.”
Lorna takes to you to the point of convincing Xavier to let her call you when you’re at break during a hospital shift and— that’s your baby. How could it not be? You feel it when Bucky has her in his arms or his eyes fall on her frame among his students at the Institute—that’s Bucky’s girl, and now it’s yours too.
Xavier sets the preposition on the four months after you meet her, having tea with you and Bucky in his kitchen.
“She could start spending some nights at your place, if you’d like.” You and Bucky turn your heads to him and he continues with a small smile. “What? You want to take her to the game and this one is coming to pick her up two days later to take her to the kitten rescue fair? Just take her home. I know she’d love to spend a night with you and truly—we both know it’s coming. Lorna seeks your presence naturally already.”
Given how Xavier is her official guardian, it’s the first step in something that he was right—it was coming.
With two months of visits, her place in your home looks as natural as the sun streaming through the kitchen windows.
Bucky looks at you one night after dinner and asks, “Wouldn’t my office look… much better in cyan?” and that is it.
Lorna gets a room.
The transition days between Lorna being just another kid in this world to your kid are a lot shorter than most people who make the decision of adopting a child into their lives. It was a privilege of yours granted by luck, circumstance and a lot of money — and lawyers, a courtesy of one and only Tony Stark, of course — that Lorna could transit from the school to yours and Bucky’s apartment.
But it was also inevitable. A piece of fate too good to deny, and too in the nose to look away from.
The moment you and Bucky decide that you’re meant to be a family only allows for the window to open and the drifts of family to breeze into your lives, and the windows lead to doors.
The door that opened on Lorna’s birthday and presented to you a gifted child with dark memories and a weight in this world few people could withstand as your partner, your Bucky held her with his metal arm. No struggle, no strain. Just his forearm and that child who looked at him like he was everything; a mountain and a safe beacon and the most hilarious nerd all wrapped into one.
When Bucky asks to paint his office cyan the meaning underneath is crystal clear to you and there’s only one decision to make—”What are we gonna to decorate it?”
He smiles wide.
You two stand in his empty room as he points to each of the walls and paints you the picture.
“Alright, I know all the pictures on Pinterest and the entire internet, apparently, are cheesy as hell and fail to portray a good or at least decent picture of what I mean, but hear me out.” He points to the biggest wall on the left. “Navy, perhaps even darker shade—regardless. A dark background. A moonlit sky .”
The Bucky enunciated each of those three words with the wonder of a boy who’s thinking about the coolest idea ever makes you want to smother him in kisses, but you just smile and nod along so he’ll continue.
“I’m not talking about the moonlit sky in the modern or realistic way, though. That’s too heavy for a two-year-old’s room. I’m talking—20’s? 40’s style? Soft, tiny stars, pretty and slim traces.”
He looked unsure at the last part, but unsure of himself—more of a hopeless wince of someone who’s expecting to be met with disagreement.
“That sounds lovely,” you smiled truthfully. Honestly, you were too dumbstruck by how excited your Bucky was talking about children’s room decor to be too judgemental, but his idea did sound lovely so far.
He smiled wider again, confident now that he saw you were still on board. “Okay. So you know how Steve got really good at metalsmithing and has been crafting those pretty pieces? I thought he could make a starry constellation for her bed—”
“Steve could paint the room, babe,” you pitch.
Bucky stops and looks at the wall. “I mean. Yeah.” He smiles at you. “He would totally love that, right?”
That time you were unable to hold back. You kissed the glow out of Bucky’s mouth until it was replaced by an entirely different glow, and then laid on his chest talking about all the tiny details you two could look into to make her room cute and functional.
Bucky loved every idea, and you wondered if it was because he heard them all or was too sleepy and happy to stop agreeing and humming along to anything you said.
As you imagined, Steve jumps to the thought of helping you two with the room and soon sets to drawing different options to run by you until he has a design to work on, and the next thing you know, you’re three months away from Lorna’s third birthday, the papers are almost ready to be signed and Steve is in the office-turned-bedroom with his overalls painted in navy blue and some glittery gloss for the special paint which will do the overcoat asking you for more beers.
You stop varnishing the dresser cabinet and go do what he asks, wondering how much you two will have it done before Bucky comes home from work at the Compound.
Steve’s sitting in front of his drawings rolling a cigarette of what looks like a mixture of herbs. Some of them you doubt are even from Earth.
“You were saying about Bucky’s ranting?” He prompts you. When you hand him the opened beer, he smiles until his dimples pop. “Thanks.”
You sit down in front of him watching as his artistic and slender fingers roll the thing with smooth precision. “I’m saying you never told me how much of a fucking nerd he could be.”
“Of course I did,” Steve scoffs.
“Nuh huh.”
“Yuh huh.”
“Nuh huh. Not like this,” you laugh. Steve looks up with raised eyebrows, so you elaborate. “Remember how I finally convinced him to watch Euphoria?”
“Vividly.” Steve rolls his eyes with a face of pleasure, and you stifle a giggle. Steve dreams of Bucky letting him do a full eye set of make-up on him, but you think Bucky wouldn’t feel as pretty in neon eyeliner as Steve sometimes does. “I still dream about the cloud eye look.”
“I’ll see what I can do about that, I promise.” This wasn’t the first time you two talked about it. Steve nods to you. “So when the show started he was being all—frowny face. Blank looks and stuff. He had plenty of critiques. Some valid, like the excess of nudity, some meh—he thinks some of the scenes are boring. I can see the point.” Steve cocks his head while making a face and you know what that means, so you laugh before continuing. “He had good points about it being funny on how it portrays the silliness of being that age, but then—oh,” you start laughing.
“Shit started getting real,” Steve predicts.
You laugh harder. “Shit started getting real.”
“He’s too impatient.”
“I know!” You two laugh together. “He was being so judgemental, I swear. He’s never that hesitant watching things I recommend, he knows I have good taste—”
“True.”
“—thank you, but this one, oh god.”
“It’s ‘cause they’re teenagers,” Steve clicks his tongue.
“Yeah, I know. Then when the plot truly kicks in, my god. He complimented the show , he complimented Zee’s acting , he was going on and on about the soundtrack and the way it mixes with some key scenes and the feeling those sees invoke of being that age and the magnitude of that problem or fact being your entire fucking life.”
Steve smiles at you, drinks a long sip and nods with vigor. “Nerd.” He lights up his pretty herbal thing rolled in lilac silk. “And he’s right. It’s a masterpiece.”
“It really is.” You two mocked him, but watching and hearing Bucky interact with modern media was one of your biggest pleasures. “I loved him talking about how important and crucial it is for someone—for a show to approach all these big and real shit that teens today have, amplified by a million. He gave me the book, too.”
“Wow, that book’s going around the circle like a passed fucking joint,” Steve laughs, and then extends the cigarrete to you. “Speaking off—you want?”
“Isn’t half of that thing alien weed?”
“What can I say,” Steve shrugs his shoulders. “Thor’s a good mate.”
You stare at him blankly, then burst out laughing. “Are you trying to kill me? Do you want my mind to ascend to the fifth dimension with some of the Edgy Lords you meet in space or something?”
Steve bursts out laughing at you, and you wonder if the substances are as strong as you think, if he’s a lightweight, or if it’s just Steve.
“Shut up,” he says between giggles. “It’s not strong. I wouldn’t fucking kill you—put at least some faith in me.”
You knew he would never, but teasing Steve was almost as good as you two teasing Bucky. “Wow. I feel so safe right now.”
“This is better than what Tony offers at Christmas parties,” Steve wiggles, smirking. “I’d never kill you before Bucky proposed, stop being a goody-two shoes, Doc.”
The thing about teasing Steve is that he teased back, and when you kick a supersoldier on the chin — retired or not, as evidence with Bucky showed you — it hurts you and not them.
“Ow. I am not a goody two-shoes, you’re ridiculous. I locked three grown men in a room with poison sipping from the vents.”
Steve’s smirk turned fond as if you were talking about a love letter and not one of your darkest memories. “Awn. They were trying to kill Buck and I, though.” He sends you a kiss in the air. “You’re right, you are very badass. You’re just a lady, I’m tryna make you a bad girl at least before you go full mom on me.”
That made you both soft and resigned. You took his damn space herbal joint, the lighter and took one drag before passing it back to him.
It made you cough, but at least you’d shut him up.
And one puff wouldn’t kill.
You wait a few heartbeats in silence while Steve smokes more and you drink from the beer, and there’s something like magic in your veins. You can feel it.
It’s… tingly. Warm and melted, like cocoa made of stardust.
“Hey, Stevie.”
“Yeah, babe?”
“You’re gonna tell me before he does it, right?” You look at Steve behind your beer can, and watch his smile turn brighter. “So I can do my nails.”
Steve giggles. “I’ll tell you.”
If there was one person who would know before Bucky proposed, it’d be Steve.
Just like when Sam proposed, Bucky would know. You couldn’t wait ‘till Bucky came home with that news because blessed be the gods, your baby could do many things, but a hold a secret from you was not among that list.
“I think last week he wanted to ask me to go ring shopping but he just… quit midway. Then asked me to go pick a gift for his honor student’s graduation,” he scoffed, laughing at his poor best friend.
Being in the process of retiring from active duty as Captain America’s official partner — the spot would be handled by none other than Joaquin Torres — Bucky was now working at the Avengers Compound training one of the nation’s top and most impossible courses to enter and graduate from—the SHIELD agents, as a direct request from none other than Nick Fury himself.
This was his first group and for that reason, they were special.
Of course he’d buy his best student an adorable present.
“He’s getting better at gift giving,” you smile.
“Yeah.” Steve finishes his beer with one gulp and squishes the can into a flat disc. “Thank you for that. You’re still the hardest one for him ‘cause he always loves you to be all awwwn and Bucky it’s perfect! so he thinks the hardest, but it turns him into a beast.” Steve grins. “He beat Tony the last two Christmas parties in making everyone all emotional with their gifts and now they have a whole fucking competition going on.”
“Oh my god.”
“I know ! They’re so fucking funny.”
“I can’t believe I’m gonna witness that,” you laughed. This year’s Christmas celebration would count with your presence because now Tony Stark counted his presence to your home whenever he felt like it.
You two had become friends.
It turned out underneath all the ego of the genius, he was a pretty lonely and nerdy introvert, too. Tony knew everyone, but that was different from being close to them. When he found someone who could keep up with his brain and his personality, he latched onto the person and showed all the silly and cool undertones of the person behind the steel mask.
Tony was also funny as shit.
“I need to see Tony losing,” you whispered in awe. Tony was also a shit loser, and it made for very funny nights in Mario Kart or games that required at least a little bit of luck. If it involved brains only, everyone else was fucked.
“It’s pretty pleasing.”
“I can imagine.” Your eyes catch Steve’s and he looks so happy with his face stained by paint. “Are you and Sam coming to Lorna’s party?”
“That’s months away, babe,” he laughs. The blush on his cheek and the fact this is a reaction instead of dodging the question with an ‘why me and Sam’ is a great step forward.
“Just planning in advance,” you shrug.
By the time Bucky comes home the wall is painted, the dark wood dresser is varnished and the bed is painted with the same tone to match it. Steve helped you and he helped to clean up the whole mess afterwards, leaving the room with the bed, dresser, walls and rocking chair all in their place.
The details would come later.
Bucky finds you two sitting on the floor where the rug would be, sipping on the last beers and watching a documentary he wanted to show you.
He loves the painting and you know it in your bones his best friend nailed to bring to life the image he wanted. The mural is perfect, and Bucky gives him a tight hug after admiring it for a few moments.
“Thanks, punk,” you hear him say on Steve’s neck.
“My pleasure.” He pats the side of Bucky’s head when they part. “You see the talent?” He points to his creation, nodding in pleasure. “I told everyone I’m better for more than just posing and chasing some people around.”
“Steve.” That’s Bucky’s scolding tone. “Don’t listen to them. You know the board’s full of shit. And they’ve been pissed off since they let you get on social media and you’ve been… you know.”
Terrorizing the world. “Making me a happier woman,” you laugh. Steve made the headlines almost every week. “I don’t know what Fury expected from putting you on Twitter or asking you to take front in press interviews with a bunch of conservatory journalists, but I imagine he can’t be one of the people who are pissed off because he’s smart enough to know that wouldn’t end well.”
Steve Rogers was not the person to have in the mornings news with other white men and their expectations of what an American behavior must be from the previous Captain of their Nation, and he certainly wasn’t the person for self proclaimed ‘woke’ young journalists to preach about the word ‘queer’, telling him he could or could not use it.
What’d’ya man I can’t say ‘queer’? I’m fucking GAY! trended on Twitter for more than 24h.
You had a bumper sticker with it on your car.
“I know that’s right,” Steve scoffs with you, giving Bucky a look. “I’m not listening to them, it’s just—it’s hard working with them and trying to find an angle from where I can help and still feel… at peace with myself.”
“Fury’s trying, Steve,” you knock your foot against his. “He’ll find a way to let you do what you want without either of you having to compromise too much.”
Steve hums out loud. “I guess. It’s just that it looks like he never trusts me with the shit he should. And the stuff I rarely ask to be involved with, he always seems to think it’s ‘best suited for my hands’.”
“They’re pretty capable hands,” Bucky adds like an afterthought, picking Steve’s hands between his and examining them.
Steve shrugs them off of Bucky’s hands, laughing. “Shut up.” He looks between you two. “If I just quit it all and become a carpenter, will you always buy me cool and expensive machines?” He pouts. “I’ve got expensive tastes now. Stark spoiled me, it’s a one way street in life.”
You and Bucky do one of your rare sessions of using Steve as the target of the teasing session, and he gets up to leave and get your take-outs when Bucky starts poking his sides.
In his absence, Bucky pulls you by the waist to sit pressed close to his chest, and your smile fades when you see the little heart on his top lip.
He’s only that serious when thinking of something important, so you lean in for a short kiss and ask, “What’s wrong?” The worry can be heard even in your whisper.
“How d’you know something’s wrong?” He whispers back, a sad smile on his left corner.
“I know your lips.”
The smile gets bigger. “That’s cute.” He leans down and kisses your nose, then takes a really deep breath, his whole chest expanding, and exhales. “Something’s off with Peter.”
You lean your head back. “With Peter? What’s wrong with Peter?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs his shoulder. “He hasn’t answered his phone. Claire said he showed up really bruised last week—I’m scared he’s trying to help Matt with something. You know Matt’s side of town. You know stuff there’s gritty in different ways, I don’t want Peter around this kind of problems.”
True to Bucky’s words, Murdock and the circles he walked around, the places his life had been in — as far as you knew — revolved with old things, traditions and family formed with lots of blood and burdens no seventeen year old should be around. “I agree,” you said. “We should talk to him. Try to take him out for a bite first; he shouldn’t just be looking for trouble.”
Bucky smiles at you. “I know, baby.” He kisses you again. “You think he’d listen to us?”
“I can say something more than once if it doesn’t click.”
That makes Bucky laugh. “Persistent. I like it.”
You knew he did—persistence, according to Bucky, was a crucial trait in someone involved in the life of people like him. A little on the weird, the magical, the cursed side.
“We’ll talk to him.”
Three days later, the assumption that Peter isn’t okay is confirmed when you invite Peter out to eat a meatball sub when you leave the hospital and he visualizes the text, but never answers.
That’s unlike Peter and it sets all the alarms off in your brain.
The night’s mission goes from getting the best meatball on this side of town to finding Peter Parker, and contrary to the first one, the new goal is not optional.
One of the first things you do is ring Bucky. He picks up after two beeps, “Hi, baby.”
“I’m gonna find Peter,” you say, not bothering with a hello. The sense of urgency driving you towards the first place you think he could be in tells you he’s not only not okay, but he’s running away from even trying to be and that is not on the table.
“Now? ”
“Now.” In seconds, the mental list of the first five places you need to check on town are made and you start making the easiest way between all of them. “I invited him for a meatball sub and he read my text, but didn’t reply. I’m gonna start looking at the Freudian rooftop, the bridge, if he’s not at those two I’ll text you.”
“Fuck.” Bucky groans. “Okay. I’m gonna let them go early here—none of them completed the request anyway. I’ll split, I’ll look at the other three places.”
“Perfect. We find him, text each other and meet outside the Moon Carnival?”
“See you.”
“See you. Love you.”
“Love you, Button.”
Finding Peter takes only two tries, thank god. You’re tired from a long shift, your boss has been a little mean since he’s sad you’ll be leaving the hospital now to work only at the VA and with Xavier at the Institute, and the worries that started as small only grow bigger inside of you the more you look.
Peter grew really close to Bucky, really fast. After the entire Thanos incident, Tony retracted to total reclusion for longer than a year. Peter messed with Strange, then started feeling more alone than ever and decided to reach out to the Compound in search of Steve, but stumbled into someone unexpected before—Bucky.
It was typical of him to keep things to himself. All superheroes and soldiers shared the trace of a god-like complex, which most people confused with being a martyr. They all believed in some degree they could just fix this thing here alone, they could do it.
Taking loads bigger than their shoulders was their curse, but you’d like at least the people around you to be freed from mirroring Atlas in such a way.
When you find Peter, there’s why—it isn’t Atlas. He’s far from cursed and while calling him a ‘child’ would be misleading and not up to par with his growth, Peter was young. A lot from being a kid had been taken from him, too.
“Hi, young man.”
Peter bites his lip at your hello, but looks in your direction. “Hey.”
There’s more broodiness in his aura than you expected it, but you’re fixing this tonight. “C’mon. We’re getting some food and then heading to Payton’s.” You nod with your head and turn back, walking back where you came from.
“I don’t play tonight,” he says behind you.
“You’ll change your mind when you eat.” He often did. It was rare for Peter to not want to play.
He sighs. “Okay.”
Bucky finds you two in front of the food trailer and grabs something for him to eat too before joining you both at the table at the park.
Peter answers your questions and Bucky, even making small talk as if nothing’s happened for a good minute. He’s good at dodging the problem or procrastinating what he wants to say. It’s what got him in the biggest trouble he’s in right now—talking and knowing one of his old friends, Ned, but not having the courage to say what he wants.
That’s without even getting to the topic of MJ.
It’s only when Bucky suggests Payton’s again and asks Peter for a round of neon paintball and Peter says no that he cracks. Not because he wants to, but because he sees the drop in Bucky’s face, and Peter’s facade that he is okay does, too.
“I’m sorry.” The crack in his voice freezes you and Bucky on your spot, and you can see him trying to string the words in his head before he puts them out. “I’ve… I don’t do really well with change, lately. And I’m trying to get used to how things are gonna change with you—with us, I mean. But I’m a little jealous. And—that’s awful, I know. I shouldn’t be, you’re not my parents. I lived without parents for seventeen years of my life. I’m not just gonna project that on you guys.But I kinda…I hate losing people, even if it’s just a little bit, but that’s for me to work on. I just. I don’t wanna be around when I’m being such—such a downer, you know?”
I hate losing people.
You and Bucky exchange a look, and your stomach may as well be stones or crystals, full of sharp edges and heavier than they look.
You get up from the table and walk to Peter, stopping only when you’re right in front of him. Putting both of your hands on his shoulder to make him look at you, you ask. “Who are you losing?”
Peter shakes his head. “You.” He looks behind your shoulders, where Bucky is. “Not… losing. It’s just. You’ll be parents now. I know we can’t—you can’t take me to places every weekend, I can’t—I’m not gonna be at your place when I’m trying to hide from university shit or, or Goblings— ”
“Peter.” It’s Bucky who interrupts him, and he’s closer than before. You can feel him behind your right shoulder, and it makes you want to put Peter between you two before sealing him in a hug. “You can. And you will. Actually, if you stop hanging out with us, that’s when there’s gonna be a problem.”
“You see, you’re coming from the assumption that Lorna is gonna change something in this dynamic here,” you add when Bucky’s done. “But in reality, she’s just gonna—add. Be there, too. It’s why we’ve been trying to tell you to come on a free weekend to meet her.”
“Remember when I told you we’re here?” Bucky asks.
Peter looks between you two, his eyes sparkling under the streetlight. “Yeah.”
“We meant that,” Bucky adds, pressing his lips together in a tight smile.
“And Peter?” You ask, deciding that fuck it. This kid deserves to hear it, to say the least.
“Yeah?”
“I know we’re not your parents,” you swallow a knot on your throat, and the hand Bucky places on your back tells you to go on. “and I know you were raised just fine without them. But the reality is, you have many more years ahead of you and if one day you do want to call us that, it would be our pleasure and honor.” The water that was pooling on his eyes slides down his cheeks, and it makes you start seeing a little glassy as well. “And if you ever hold back something that’s bothering you again or something that’s on your mind because you dare think for one second we don’t care, I’ll paint your spidey suit bright neon as punishment. I swear I will.”
Peter bursts out laughing between his tears, and when he pulls you and Bucky into a hug while laughing you think that’s it, things are gonna be okay.
“Are you serious?” He says to your surprise. He looks up in the hug. “You guys would let me?”
Bucky nods at him, and you think he’s not daring to open his mouth because he’ll cry if he does.
Peter nods in reflex, then goes back to stuffing his face in your jackets while he hugs.
It’s not a request, but it’s an opening road of possibility.
The feeling you get when you and Bucky smile at each other from above Peter’s head ignites a sense of deja vu in your mind, and that makes you want to cry even harder. You hope it is. You hope this scene and everything in it repeats multiple times across life, so much that you’ll end up feeling imprinted by it the best times when they do.
The thing about Tony is that when he’s meeting new people, he’s curious until second notice. Unless the person in question proves to not be worthy of his intrigue — which is the case for most people — then after the first step in curiously surrounding the territory, he wants to prode while he wants to impress.
It’s not a good combo.
With Carol Danvers, his curiosity is at a peak.
It’s Christmas dinner at the Avengers Tower, Lorna is spending her first holiday with you and Bucky and the official papers giving her guardianship to you both should be out after the year changes and the rush of holidays pass. It’s a happy moment, but you still sit at the edge of your seat knowing that one of the most powerful beings in the universe will be attending dinner, dressed all casual and making small talk just like everyone else.
When she shows up, she’s walking side by side with Thor dressed in an black suit and a beautiful corset underneath.
Thor introduces her to everyone, and you and Wanda sit on the couch with Lorna still playing Operation , waiting for them to make their way there eventually.
“It’s crazy how the energy in the room changes when she’s present,” Wanda muses out loud.
Lorna’s third year came with a lot of questions, and her little brain helps her a lot to participate in conversations. “When who’s p’esent?” She’s not the best
Wanda points in the direction where Carol is, standing in front of the kitchen aisle between Steve and Tony, succeeding in making both men smile.
“That woman.” Wanda speaks in a whisper, as if telling Lorna a secret. Probably because Lorna loves secrets and Wanda knows almost half of the people present, Carol included, can hear her just fine. “Her name’s Carol.”
“I have a friend in school. Her name’s Carol too.” Lorna’s Rs and Ls are still spoken in that cute baby language, something you know will disappear soon and you’ll miss it.
“Really?” asks Wanda. “What’s Carol like?”
Lorna starts listing all of her friend’s Carol’s qualities and you make eye contact with the other Carol meanwhile. You two have never met before. The only thing you can tell from the distance is that she exudes power—her presence feels bigger than any of the human presences around the room, much like Wanda had when you first met her, or Thor.
Your grandmother called your perception and your eyes crystal clear ever since you were a kid.
‘You can see the world just as it is, sweets. Never doubt that.’ It was a nice thing to say to a kid, and you always trusted her to be right.
Carol eventually approaches the living room area right after the game of Operation ends and Lorna’s attention span redirects to one of Stark’s holographic computer games; it’s a children’s curated game, one he made for his daughter Morgan and you could see the appeal of having a genius father programming a game designed to appease visually to children all while teaching them about shapes, weather, cultures and science all in one.
She gets there when Lorna’s back is turned to you and Wanda, concentrating on the game, and she lifts her champagne glass to you two. “Good evening.”
“Hi.” You extend your hand. A handshake is another good way of meeting a person, and she shakes it with a firm grip, offering your name. "Nice to meet you.”
“You’re Bucky’s partner, right?” Carol smiles. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
“I am, yeah.”
“Hello, Wanda,” Carol and Wanda exchange an awkward and a little charged greeting, and then Carol sits down in one of the empty chairs. “That’s little Lorna, I imagine.”
Your head turns to her. “Yup. Lorna Sally.”
“She’s gorgeous,” Carol tells you with a smile. “What are her powers?”
“Electromagnetic spectrum manipulation,” you answer.
“Wish is a fancy way of saying this, but green,” Wanda teases, making one of her spectrum energy balls.
“Wow.” Carol’s eyes carry genuine surprise and if a warrior from another planet is surprised, you’re happy. “That’s a lot of power.”
“It is. She’s kinda resistant to radiation, too,” you add. Knowing how Charles arrived at that conclusion was not something you were interested in learning. “Ah! And she’ll eventually get the grasp of flying, we think.”
“We know,” corrects Wanda. You groan in response, and Carol laughs, looking between you two. “It comes with the territory.”
“Don’t worry, it’s safer than it looks,” Carol says, looking at you, and it’s nice of her to try and comfort your worries, but it makes you both laugh when you give her a look in response. “Relatively safe,” she corrects herself.
“It’s fine.” You shake your hands in the air dismissively. Whether you like it or not, you’ll have to get used to the dangers that Lorna will face her whole life. “I’ll get used to it, right?”
“Right.” Carol’s nods and Wanda’s agreement are a good momentary band-aid. Now all Lorna has to do is grow up, never fall unconscious while flying and/or never fight someone else with the same abilities who’ll throw her body miles away to fall and knock against something. “She’s in good hands, anyway.” Carol cranes her neck to look back at where most of the group is at the table, waiting for dinner and exchanging drinks. “Tony’s been doing a good job of keeping this group together.”
“Retiring and hiring therapists for half of us was a good first step,” says Wanda in a tone that is mocking, but carries the dark humor of truth.
You three laugh together, and drink to that. “When Bucky tells me of the problems they all faced together before, I think not even he realizes how many of them came because they were all straining apart, further and further.”
The supersoldier ears in the floor all had heard this straight from your lips, which was the reason why you said it out loud without worry.
Carol looks back at you. “You think so?”
You nod. “It must be fucking horrible to different to a point where only a select handful of people on the planet share the same problems, and fears, and horrible nightmares as you.” Take Steve for example, you thought. Or Wanda. Your eyes go to her, as if pulled by magnets. “The last mission Bucky got involved in brought this woman to our house—Yelena. I know she’s the sister of Natasha, the fallen Black Widow. And—I made her a drink and stitched her up while she and Bucky talked. I—he doesn’t know this, but I lost sleep for at least two days.”
“Why?” Carol’s frowning, her whole attention on you.
“The little things I could get from what she was asking Bucky involved things that… I’d never even think about it if it weren’t for movies, and when I do think about it, they paralyze me. And that’s her life. All the time. Horrors, and betrayal.” Looking over Carol’s shoulder, your eyes find the tall and imposing shoulders of Thor, who’s laughing behind the meat grill at the center of the table, saying something and pointing with enthusiasm to Peter. “Same as Thor. When I met him—which, by the way, the most disastrous meeting possible—we had a conversation that morning before he left. That man is five thousand years old. He’s a himbo, sure, but he also has this wisdom just lodged in his brain all the time, about hundreds of things none of us ever dreamed about, and that’s… his life.”
“Wow.” This time, the wow comes out deeper. Carol’s looking at you with a mesmerized smile, and you blush at the realization you went off on a tangent.
“Sorry. Thor brought stuff that Valkyrie had from old Asgard, apparently, and I made the mistake of drinking it,” you apologize to them, putting the glass down.
Both Carol and Wanda shake their heads and hands at you, assuring you that everything’s fine. “You’re completely right, it’s just crazy that you have this perception about everyone,” says Wanda. “I mean—take me. Wasn’t it for Steve, I’d probably be insane right now. I wasn’t—” she stops herself, and clears her throat. “The final battle took a toll on me.” Her voice lowers. “I thought I needed to be alone, but I see now that if I’d been alone, I would’ve drowned in grief.”
“So would he,” you say. Carol looks at you surprised. “Steve had been fighting for too long. He needed time off to be a person before he went insane.”
They all did, you think, and then you feel a tingle on your nape that makes you look up. Bucky’s looking at you and when your eyes find his, you can hear the silent question of is everything okay. You smile at him and he winks back.
“He’s been a good company,” Wanda chuckles.
“Is Bucky a good company?” Carol asks you, and the question makes you feel like it always does.
Whenever someone asks you about Bucky, a little bit of color takes life on your cheeks and you feel the coy happiness of someone who suddenly gains a magical glow.
By the look on Carol’s and Wanda’s face, the glee sipping out from your pores is as visible as you imagine it, but you take the opportunity anyway.
Talking about Bucky is an opportunity you never miss, and he is incredible company.
Bucky is the company who teaches you to sing Moon River because his favorite lullaby is also Lorna’s favorite lullaby, and as it turns out, it works just fine in putting Peter to sleep too when he crashes at your place after spending ridiculous hours cramping for finals.
He’s the company who buys leather bound books and asks Steve to build safe shelves — ‘they gotta be safe, Stevie, I don’t want books dropping on her head and traumatizing her’ — so Lorna will have books in her room.
Not only good company, he’s a good partner.
In crime, in good-deeds, in laughter and tears.
He’s the one who helps you to convince Peter to talk to MJ once again, even if she’s going out with a guy now at her university because that doesn’t matter.
When Lorna starts spending more days at the apartment, he’s good company to her just as he is to you, and working with his students gives him more confidence to take care of all the aspects in his life. He takes Steve bowling, you and Wanda roller skating, he tries to learn how to bake.
The failed attempt is great, but the pictures and polaroids you have of that day are much better.
He’s a great partner and a perceptive one, too, because when your drink is done, he comes from the table area to where you and the women are with a new one and joins the conversation.
He and Carol speak the same kind of dry sarcasm with no laughter to indicate how much they’re enjoying the whole thing, only their pleased looks and the glint in their eyes.
The conversation goes from relationships to kingdoms, then to Lorna and Stark’s ability to create great video games, a topic which pulls Peter into the group — Bucky calls him to explain better to Carol something he doesn’t get it — and before the food arrives, you four are laughing out loud like any other group in this floor of the Tower, taking turns teasing the older members of the Avengers.
Bucky’s sitting on the armchair while you sit on the armrest, and his hand around your waist is the only thing that stops you from falling to the side when Bucky defends his and Steve’s decades, but does so by shooting himself on the foot with, “It’s not that we’re old, okay, if anything we’re one of the young ones around here. It’s just my soul, I’m old inside. It’s got nothin’ to do with the serum. We age slowly just like you, Denvers, or you Wanda, but my inside’s been grumpy and sullen since I was 23.”
Your laughter is partially due to how funny Bucky sounds saying all of that with all the seriousness he has, and how much Wanda is laughing too.
At least you’re not the only one affected by the drinks tonight, and Bucky must share your opinion when he saves you from falling to the side.
“Oops,” Carol’s teasing smile turns from Bucky to you. “This is why we shouldn’t mix alcohol from different planets.”
“She’s a tough gal,” Bucky sticks up for you, smiling back at you. Louder so she’ll hear it, he asks. “Hey, Lorna, isn’t Y/n a tough girl?”
“Y/n’s a tough gal!” Lorna screams without even turning her face from the game.
“Well if Lorna said it,” Carol nods.
“She’s been adventurous like that lately because Steve’s a horrible influence,” Wanda laughs. “I’d know! He’s the one who gave me this.” She wiggles her glass, also empty now.
“Yeah, he got my girl high a few months ago,” Bucky nods.
The memory of you and Steve giggling to each other when painting and preparing Lorna’s room makes your heart warm and you go, “Awwwn, he did!” to Bucky, and hear the laughter it brings out.
“Terrible influence,” Bucky nods to Wanda.
“Hey, giggly bunch! Food’s ready,” announces Tony loud enough for you all to hear it. “Lorna Sallyyyyy! Wash wash time. You and Morgan, hit the bathroom and then take a seat, girls.”
Morgan — who was quietly helping and enjoying to play with Lorna — gets up and offers her hand to your baby, and the sight seems to be caught by everyone’s eyes.
“Oh, food,” you hum pleased.
Bucky walks behind you with his hand on your waist, then kisses the top of your head softly. “Eat up, cookie.”
“Yes, Sargeant,” you tease.
His laugh tickles your hair, and you turn around to capture his lips in a soft kiss before joining everyone at the table.
All the adults wait until both kids are back and sitting on their place before digging in, a nice gesture that almost renders you to a couple of tears. The bubbling sense of family surrounding the main dining table is so strong that it’s making you emotional, but thanks to the food, most of the alcohol is flushed out of your system by the end of your plate, leaving behind only the happiness and peace of watching everyone interact.
Lorna behaves well most of the night, demanding attention only as midnight approaches and the giddiness to open presents starts wiring her brain. Even though she and Morgan want to stay awake with everything in their tiny bodies, routine gets to both of them at around twenty to one and within ten minutes of the Tchakovsky concert Tony puts to play, both are knocked out.
With the children tucked in bed, Christmas dinner takes a turn for the adults.
One of the biggest privileges of partying at the Tower, with Tony Stark as a close friend and your Bucky always a few steps away at most, you can let loose in ways you rarely can.
Lorna is safe and tucked under blankets by Morgan’s side and their room is without a doubt the safest in the whole building, your sweet Peter is now eighteen and because he’s surrounded by adults is permitted a few drinks, so everyone is at least a little bit happy.
Happy enough to sing karaoke, happy enough to play darts and engage in activities that are probably not the safest. Simply happy.
At one point, Peter’s hugging you while Sam’s team takes their turn in Pictionary.
He looks up at you, smiling with his caramel hair all tousled and a little curly. “Y/n?”
“Hm?” You look down at him.
“It was real nice of you, you know.”
“What was, darlin’?”
Peter ducks his head. “Saying I could have you and Bucky as parents if I wanted to.” He shrugs his smile to the corner. “I guess… I just never think about how I still have like—the rest of my life to live. And I was thinking about… how nice it’d be to have a dad to help me pick suits, and stuff, and a mom who’ll teach me how to shoot.”
The words remind you of when you offered that to him a couple of weeks prior. Peter was sleep deprived and sulking after discovering MJ went on a date, the papers of all the things he had to study spread out in front of him, whining about how he was second placed in his university course, only losing in the board to a girl named Gwen, and it came to you. “You know what really calmed me down? When my mom taught me how to shoot. You wanna do it, buddy? I’ll teach you how to shoot.”
You’re soberer than you were a couple of hours ago, but this statement makes you tear up again.
“I’ll teach you how to shoot,” you tell him, sniffing the tears before they fall.
Peter nods. “Cool.” His smile is almost as big as his face now. “D’you think Stark would help me with some project ideas? Maybe I can beat Gwen before the next semester.”
“That’s the spirit!” You had no idea who this Gwen person was, but something that lit a fire under Peter’s ass to do bigger and better for himself, even if it had a little of pettiness attached to the motivation, was something welcomed in your home. “We’ll ask him tomorrow.”
“We’re sleeping here?” he asks.
“Hell yeah we are, buddy. You thought we were gonna go back home?” You cackle. “How?!”
“That’s true. You’re drunk,” Peter laughs.
“I’m not drunk , I resent that. I was drunk before dinner, and now I am tipsy,” you correct him.
“Hey, Buck!” Peter calls out. Bucky’s sitting on the sofa — barely — with his hands over his mouth, eyes glued to the gigantic notepad and trying his hardest to decipher Sam’s poor artistic attempt at something. “Where’s Y/n’s new drink?”
“Huh?” Bucky looks away for only a second, then looks back. “ Brokeback Mountain! What IS that? ”
“Brokeback—boy, where the fuck do you see a mountain here?” Sam shrieks, then goes back to his drawing.
“I don’t see anything there!” Bucky yells back. “That’s the point! What the fuck are you drawing, Wilson?!”
“I am drawing what it asked me to! Look at it! Pay attention, look, I’m adding something important.”
You whisper in Peter’s ear. “I think he’s busy.”
The fact is hilarious for many reasons, mainly because Bucky is playing after explicitly stating how much he did not want to play and how much he now looks more invested in this than anyone else.
They’re winning, somehow—Sam and Bucky work together with a flawless harmony now. It comes in weird waves since no one expects so much yelling and apparent disagreement, but it’s only the way they communicate on the surface. In the end, it works for them.
Peter’s turn comes and when he joins the teams, you decide to take a walk on the balcony outside to get some fresh air. You grab a tall glass of water and ice and go sit in one of the comfortable chairs in the open area.
In technical terms this is still ‘inside’ because no one can see, hear or interact with people even if they are in the open common areas of the Tower, but the fresh air feels the same and that’s all you care about.
That’s where Bucky finds you, and you feel his presence before you open your eyes.
He’s walking with his hands inside his pockets and a lot more composure than he had ten minutes ago.
You two smile at each other and instead of sitting by your side, he walks to the head of your lounge chair, slides one leg over the other side and sits behind you, slotting his chest against your back.
“I felt your absence,” he whispers in your ear.
You adjust your bodies, hugging his arms around your waist and leaning your head on his shoulder. “Just wanted fresh air.”
He kisses your neck. “Can I stay?”
You chuckle. “Always.”
Bucky sits in silence behind you, and you bask in the calmness he brings. He sips from your water with you, until you both finish the glass. The combination of a breeze, water and Bucky gives the lucidity you craved back to this beautiful night.
“Hey—,” his whisper brings you back to the present, and you open your eyes. “Would you go with me to Asgard?”
The question catches you off guard. “Where’s Earth’s Asgard again?”
The surprise amplifies when Bucky shakes his head. “No, not the one here—the planet Asgard.” Seeing the confusion in your eyes, Bucky smiles. “Thor told me the planet started to heal. Valkyrie and he went back there because the bridge suddenly opened again for it, and they found it like… a desert land. They explained how time there’s different, especially if no one’s around to mess with things, and now it’s like a big, baby planet. Some monsters, which they have to fight in order to protect the ecosystem.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know,” he laughs. “They built a safe house there, which thinking back on it now, will probably be the future location for the main castle when they have a whole population again and that’s crazy .”
“That’s crazy? You’re inviting me to go to another planet!” You laugh.
“I’m not, Thor is,” he corrects you, poking the tip of your nose with the tip of his finger. “He and I were talking about it and he said that he and Valkyrie are inviting all the mighty warriors they know to go there, both to visit and to help in battle if they’d like. Something about mighty souls bringing good omens to a land.”
“That sounds very mystical,” you muse.
“Yup. And when he said he’d love to take me and Steve, I asked if you could come along ‘cause you know I’m not crazy enough to go anywhere that far without you, and you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘the mighty Y/n? Of course she could! We Asgardians value the work and the powerful hands of a Healer more than most, and she’s not only a Healer, she’s also a fighter!’. ” His impression of Thor could use a little work, but the god of thunder himself was even nicer than you imagined at first, and that’s saying something. He smiles when he sees the embarrassment and shyness on your face. “He’s a flatterer, but one can’t deny that he’s always got a point.”
“He’s so nice,” you chuckle. “And you’d go?”
“Depends if you come with me.”
Bucky states it so simply that it makes you smile with your heart, and you’d go with him anywhere. “That’s a big trip.”
“It is.” It was all hypothetical until now, but an offer such as this came to the lives of very few, you imagined. “I know we’ve got children now to think about, but I also really like thinking about you in those traditional Asgardian gowns—d’you know what they’re like? Has Thor shown you?” At the shake of your head, he explains. “Picture Greek, mixed with Egyptian. Make it classier. That’s it.”
“Wow,” that sounded gorgeous.
You loved how Bucky said you two had children now, in the plural, because while one of them was yours by law and everything now, the other was only starting to come to terms with the fact he had a family.
People who would not leave him behind, no matter what he thought.
“We do have children,” you agree with a smile filled with love. “But I’d love a trip with you, anytime. Even to Asgard.”
“You’d go with me?” Bucky asks, smiling from ear to ear.
“I’d go with you anywhere, Buck.” He knows that. You told him before, but having a measure of one’s love, trust, devotion—it felt different. “To the moon and back.”
“Even to another planet,” he whispers in awe. Bucky’s hand grips the back of your neck and pulls you in for a kiss, and you fill the measures of his infinite adoration for you in the way he kisses you without holding back, no walls between you and him.
When he pulls back, eyes still closed, you breathe in deep to feel the smell of his cologne.
“He said today he’d love to have parents,” you whisper to him.
There’s no need for a name, and Bucky’s smile so close to yours is a personal window of luxury. No one can see the way this man looks like when he’s high on love, rubbing the tip of his nose against yours and shaking his head to himself as if he can’t believe what he hears.
People know he’s charming and that his touch has a lot of power. What they don’t know is that his metal hand can be as soft as his flesh one, and that he cried when Peter gifted Lorna Goodnight Lab and Goodnight Moon for her third birthday.
“Good.” The word is a statement, and Bucky seals it with a kiss. “That means he won’t be too embarrassed a few years from now when we’re at his next graduation yelling ‘that’s our kid!’.”
You could picture it easily.
“He’ll just be like ‘ugh, that’s my mom and dad, I’m sorry guys’.” Your impression of Peter trying to play cool and chill is as bad as Bucky’s impression of Thor, but he laughs at you either way.
“I can’t wait for it.”
This time, you’re the one to initiate the kiss.
You two have to go back inside and join everyone, but for now, you’ll stay in your bubble. For now, you’ll swim in the sea of Bucky’s love and everything that it brought—the waves of light, of peace, of family. The tide of happiness that washes over your shore every day during sunset. The infinitude of blue that somehow, despite infinite, all belongs to you.
Joel Miller x Reader
Warnings: Reader is sick, pill taking, food mention (brief), trouble sleeping.
A/N: I just wrote this because I'm currently sick AF and would like Joel Miller to look after me pls n thank. It's mostly just fluff tbh. No use of Y/N, no race or gender coding, reader is pretty much a blank slate.
700~ Words | [AO3]
You groan as you stir awake for the hundredth time tonight, pain arcing behind your eyelids as you struggle to rouse yourself. You’re freezing cold despite the warm body pressed to your back. You desperately pull the covers around you as you try and fight the chill that wracks through your body.
“Hey?” Joel whispers in your ear as you feel him pull you to him, his thin scruff scraping along the plane of your shoulder, “You ok darlin’?”
You curse yourself inwardly at the soft voice in your ear. The thickness in his voice sends a pleasant shiver through you as you wrap your arms around his strong forearm as it holds you firm against him.
“No,” you whimper feebly as you hear the cloying distortion to your voice, even with just one syllable it’s obvious you’re sick. You’d been feeling under the weather all week, but it seems it’s finally caught up to you. On a Saturday no less.
“Shh,” Joel hushes you softly as he wriggles his other arm free, you feel his strong palm press against your forehead from behind as he shifts up on the pillows behind you, “Shit, you’re burning up.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” you grumble as you let out a hacking cough as your chest burns.
“Stay here,” he says softly as he places a gentle kiss to your temple.
You whine as he slides out of bed before tucking the covers around you tightly. You grunt helplessly as he shuts the door behind him, missing his body heat already as you burrow down into the sheets. Your eyes flutter shut and your brow furrows at the pain in your skull, amplified only by the way your rattling cough seems to jostle your head.
It could have been minutes, or hours, but when Joel comes back you smile feebly up at him from the cocoon you have crafted around you. He’s a vision of tan skin and grey boxer briefs as he carries in a tray with water, cold medicine, and a few bags of your favourite snacks.
“Poor baby,” Joel coos softly as he sets down the tray on the nightstand, “Can you sit up for me?”
“Sure,” you say meekly as you shuffle yourself up into a seating position, “Thank you.”
“Don’t need to thank me,” he says as he smiles fondly at you, “But you do need to take your medicine,” he frowns playfully at you as he wags a finger in your direction. Your heart swells as you look up into his deep brown eyes as he looks you over. Worry forms in the crow’s feet around his eyes and the semi-permanent crease in his brow. Your stomach flutters and you can’t help but smile.
“Ah shit,” you groan as you realise what day it is, “The party at Maria and Tommy’s.”
“Don’t fret, I’ve already called Tommy,” Joel says as he hands you a couple of cold and flu tablets and a glass of water, “Poor bastard wasn’t even awake yet, I forgot to check the time before I called.”
Once you’ve got a secure hold on the medication and water Joel sits on the edge of the bed before dropping a broad hand to your knee. He rubs soothingly up your thigh as he watches you intently. You sigh peacefully at the ministrations of his hand as you gulp down the water and tablets.
“What time is it?” You ask as your head spins, you relax immediately as you feel Joel slide into bed beside you, sitting up as he pulls you back against his chest. You lay there, head lolled back on his shoulder as you close your eyes.
“Early,” he hums as he gently lays down, pulling you with him, “But don’t worry about that now, get some rest, I’m right here.”
“Ok,” you sigh as another cough rocks your body, prompting Joel to hold you tight against his chest.
“Love you darlin’, get some sleep.”
“Love you too,” you mutter as the lure of unconsciousness becomes too hard to ignore.
You’re not sure if it’s the cold medicine, or the way that Joel nuzzles into the crook of your neck, but you finally feel a little relief as you let out a shuddering sigh before falling into a deep sleep.
Din’s partner figures out they’re pregnant, and is terrified. They aren’t married, this is the worst time possible, Din already has so much responsibility on his shoulders. But they have to tell him. Because Din deserves to know. She’s terrified of what his reaction might be, if he’d be angry, or excited, or dismissive, etc.
How do you think that scene plays out?
AN: I loved this prompt so much. I haven’t written anything like this yet, but is 100% in line with the unwritten fics in my head 😂And honestly, I think we all deserve a wholesome wonderful moment with this absolute sweetheart. Thanks to @deceiverofgodss for beta reading and brainstorming for our dear Mandalorian 💛 I hope you enjoy!!
Content Disclaimer!! This is a story about pregnancy, and most of it was written a few weeks ago, so there is mention and discussion of termination and/or carrying it to term. If that makes you uncomfortable, or you’d rather not think about that right now, please do not read. But if you wanna escape to a world without recent political events, me too friends, lets go ✨
Warnings: mild cursing, pregnancy, discussion of termination, helmetless Din (I had to i'm sorry), med center/hospital setting, nervous reader, its a little angsty and about a serious topic but otherwise I can't think of any warnings? Please let me know if I missed any!!
Word count: 3k - 4.2k (there’s a split ending…)
“As you’ll be able to see on your scan, you’re in perfect health,” the Med droid explained in its cheerfully programmed inflection, and you took the chip from its outstretched limb to plug into your data pad. Din had always found them eerie, but after enough check-ups on your adventures, their strangely soothing presence was starting to grow on you. “All cuts have healed, no internal or neural injuries, and the baby is doing well.”
Your brain short-circuited as your data pad illuminated your face, snapping your head up at the droid.
“What?”
“You sustained no neural injuries, and all-”
“No, not that. Did you say baby?” you snapped. You’re usually much nicer with the med droids, but right now your mind is swirling and it just needs to get to the damn point.
“Your little one is five weeks along, and in perfect health. It’s too early to determine much, but its heart seems to be forming very strong!” Your throat felt tight as you listened with a blank expression, looking down at the scan in your hands it kept referring to. You zoomed in on the model of your body, right to your abdominal region, and saw a handful of popup passages link themselves to…
A baby.
“At this stage, they are no bigger than a citrus fruit seed, and just starting to develop essential systems. You may be feeling some of the effects already…” You tuned out the droid as it droned on about sensitivity to smell and other elaborate terms for the classic, bordering on cliche symptom; morning sickness.
It definitely explained why you’d been so queasy the last few times you made the jump to hyperspace, and why you had felt sick when Din had prepped your favorite ration pack. The smell was so intense, but you couldn’t figure out how to explain what it was that made it so off-putting. Your sweet Mandalorian had been so attentive, trying to figure out what it was that seemed to be affecting you, only you. At least you could give him an answer now.
How the hell were you going to tell him?
"I sense a shift in your demeanor. Is this news unpleasant?" The droid’s concerned – though mechanical– voice pattern took you out of your thoughts, and you did your best to put on a fake smile but it didn’t stay there long.
"No, I just- well… I don't know,” you rambled, looking back down at the pad in your hands. You couldn’t stop looking at it, both in awe of the fact that a baby is growing inside of you… and nervous about how your partner would respond.
You knew Din inside and out. You knew what each tilt of his helmet meant, the meticulous steps he took when removing his armor, you felt like you could hear the thoughts in his head as they appeared. You fit to him as if you were a layer between the Beskar that protected him from the outside world, and the heart beating underneath it, and that’s just where he liked you. But now?
You weren’t married. You drove in separate cruisers after having lost the Razor Crest. You had no home and hardly any money, keeping Grogu safe in this crazy life you two led was challenging enough. For the first time in a long time, you had no idea what Din would think.
"It's normal to be nervous. You will find information about prenatal care installed on the chip, information for termination, and resources for support. You are not alone."
Dank farrik… there it was, clear as day. You were either going to care for this child, or you weren’t. Either way, you’d have to make a choice. And you didn’t exactly have all the time in the world to do it with Din waiting for you outside, and a baby actively starting to form inside you.
“Oh… thank you,” you said lamely, not sure what else to do as your brain seemed just to start filling with thoughts in every direction.
"I still sense some unease... are you safe in your home?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes… yes!” You were quick to assure the droid so as not to start running through any of their pre-programmed protocols on dealing with unsavory hospital guests. It was a sneaky code you’d found installed in the droids at any med center worth a damn, the prime loophole objective being to ensure a safe environment for all patients.
You’d learned this the hard way once on some big city planet, Din’s rough Beskar exterior intimidating a good many of the people he passed, which left you doing extensive scans on your own before you could go through the ordeal of bypassing the protocol. He’d been so worried about you that day; even after being escorted away and held in an interrogation room, his only concern had been about you.
“My partner is… he’s wonderful, I couldn’t be in better hands,” you gushed, relieved when you could tell the droid was making no move to act. “It just caught me by surprise, I guess. I don't uh… well, I don’t quite know what to do."
"Informing your partner may allow them the opportunity to support you, but if you feel you are unable to do that, there are more resources we can provide to you,” It explained not unkindly.
“No, I’ll tell him. Thank you.”
But that was easier said than done.
Your body was moving but your mind was numb as the droid led you out into the hallway, immediately noticing the large wall of shining silver that shot up out of one of the seats, a green bean secure in the bag on his shoulder. A bag… why did either of you start putting him in a bag? That can’t hardly be comfortable. What if he hits his little head? Where were these thoughts coming from?
You braced for impact, mustering the energy to face them with a reassuring smile as you reached out for the little one, holding him close to your chest. Goddamn hormones… Little hands on either side of your face and a soft coo from Grogu, and you had to fight so incredibly hard to keep from getting emotional over his big eyes.
“Mesh’la, how did it go?” Din voiced as he took you in his arms, one hand at your hip while the other rested across his foundling’s back in your arms. You picked up on the way he said the Mando’a word, a nickname he’d given you that never fails to make you smile; he’s nearly whined it, clearly not a fan of the way they opted to keep the rest of your crew waiting outside. He liked to be right where the action was, knowing he could protect you at any chance you needed him, whether it was in battle or in the examination room.
“It’s uh… good. Everything is good,” you managed, doing your best to tame his need to watch over you while navigating your own nerves. You could tell by the slight cock of his helmet that he wasn’t buying it, he knew something was off. The man knew you too damn well. He looked up at the med droid and nodded to assure it that you were safe in his hands, and only once it had left the vicinity did he speak up again.
“What’s going on? Talk to me,” he pleaded softly, his grip on you never faltering, and acting as a sort of tether to reality. Your heart was caught in your throat, and you did your best to swallow it down just enough to calm his immediate worries.
“Everything is fine, I’m fine, I just…” You stared at your own reflection in the darkness of his visor, trained on you as he was no doubt scouring your features for any hint of what was preventing your usual cheery and comforting attitude from surfacing like it normally would in these situations. You had always been excited to leave the med centers, scooping up your foundling and dragging your Mandalorian out the doors.
“Do you want to go back to the Inn? Or do we need to find a place here?” he asked calmly, his deep voice familiar and soothing as it came through the modulator. Maker, did you love him… Always at your beck and call, reading you like an open book.
“The Inn.” He gave a short nod to your response and stayed close as he led you out the door.
You weren’t staying far, it would have normally been a very short walk but you were sure you weren’t the only one affected by the anticipation, making it feel like a destination that couldn’t come into view soon enough. You held Grogu securely in your arms, rubbing a hand across his back as he gurgled contentedly, playing with the necklace Din had gotten you a few planets back. Din’s hand between your shoulder blades allowed you to keep your focus on the swamp rat in your arms, trusting him to lead you safely through the streets of the quaint town.
“Me'vaar ti gar?” He asked after a while, a question you recognized; the Mando’a equivalent of ‘how are you,’ but meant exactly as such. He used the foreign phrase when he wanted a straight answer from you, no fluff, no beating around the bush, and no judgments in return.
“Naas,” you quickly replied with what he’d taught you to be the complacent response, a confirmation that nothing had changed. “I just want to be somewhere quiet,” you continued, trying to communicate your sense of urgency without worrying him about the reason. His gloved hand rubbed a gentle circle across your back, doing what he could to soothe you.
“We’re almost there, mesh’la.” He pulled you a little closer, and his pace picked up a little, going as fast as he could while making sure you could keep up in a comfortable stride.
What could only have been a ten-minute walk felt like an eternity, and you only realized you’d been holding in tight breaths once you crossed the threshold into your small room and felt relieved enough for air to properly fill your lungs again. But with your ease of breath, your mind began reeling again, feeling much like you had the first moment you’d stepped out into the hall to find him waiting for you.
The weight in your arms lifted as Grogu happily went to his father, deposited onto the cocoon of blankets and toys that had been made for him when your party had first arrived. Then you watched in what felt like slow motion as Din began removing his gloves, discarding the excess bulk on his body now that you could settle into your private space, and turned to find you still standing just inside the doorway.
“You’re worrying me, cyar'ika,” he spoke softly, just barely coming through the helmet in a smooth transmission. His warm hands found yours, encompassing them as he led you towards the bed in the middle of the room. “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”
You were gonna have to, sooner or later. As he spoke, your mouth felt dry, hands clammy, and you couldn’t have uttered anything coherent even if you’d wanted to. But you watched with adoration as he tilted his helmet up to meet your eyes, sitting on the edge of the bed while he waited patiently for some kind of sign.
Words weren’t going to get you anywhere, you didn’t have any to help you.
You nodded gently to give him a response, before slowly slipping your hands out of his large ones. He kept his palms open to signal his willingness to listen and receive, and it made you melt. You reached around to grab the data pad from earlier, opening up your medical scan – the collection of pixels in your abdomen a beacon now that you knew it was there – and placed the device in his hands.
He hesitated before looking down at the pad in his hands, and you could tell that for a moment, he was confused about what he was looking at. One hand began perusing the scan, pinching in to take a closer look at the details starting from the top down. Always so methodical… but in this instance, he had permission to skip about. Your head, your shoulders, and your chest passed the screen. He stopped to read the passage about your heart, fingers hovering delicately as he read the positives.
And then you saw the familiar set of passages appear, his hands freeze, and your heart skip.
The baby.
Your baby.
His baby.
You couldn’t take your eyes off the screen as you saw his helmet look up to you in your peripherals. Your chest felt tight, but you kept your composure, lest you worry him about the wrong thing.
“Five weeks… Was that…?”
“Naboo,” you answered. A faint smile hit the corner of your lips as flashes of the trip entered your mind; lush greens, clear waters, as tempting a place as ever to let loose with your Mandalorian. He’d been on too many hunts that had taken a toll on his body, and it hadn’t taken hardly any convincing for him to let you take care of him... “I went in on the first day of the trip, my ear was bothering me. I think-”
“The meds must have counteracted your…” he started at nearly the same time you would have finished it for him. Your wonderful, clever, observant lover, getting to the root of your surprise crew member in mere moments. “Pregnant?” He breathed, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. You didn’t know how to interpret it.
“Pregnant.”
“How long have you known?” You could only manage to shake your head slowly; you hadn’t known.
You stared at each other for Maker knows how long, and you were only briefly aware of the fact that he’d set the data pad aside before watching his shoulders rise and fall with a shaky breath, holding his hand out to you. You let him pull you into his lap, the familiar feeling of his thigh plates against the back of your legs as you straddled him, hands resting tentatively against the beskar on his chest.
A shiver ran down your spine as he started rubbing circles on your back, and you could tell there was a lot going on inside that helmet, you just wished you knew what. The uncertainty was killing you. Din had to have felt it because it didn’t take long for him to rest his forehead against yours. The cool of the beskar was relaxing, and the intimacy urged you to close your eyes and release the breath you were holding.
“I’m sorry.”
“What could you possibly have to be sorry about?” His brashness contrasted his words and intent, something that had startled you when you first met. Now it was a comfort, not having to guess what was going on; he meant what he said, and he said it with purpose. It was something you had admired about him for a long time.
“This is… I didn’t see this coming,” you continued with a quiet and shaky voice. The tears couldn’t be far behind as your body was coming down from its high, all of your emotions crashing down on you with a brutal force. “Din, I’m sorry. I’m so-”
“Don’t you dare apologize for this.” His voice was quiet but it was strong, full of conviction. Somehow, it steadied you. His body shifted ever so slightly, and you could tell that he was looking at you through his visor as your foreheads touched, though you still couldn’t open yours. “We did this together. Everything that happens with this… we do together. We take responsibility together.”
You couldn’t stop your tears from falling now. The pad of his thumb brushed over your cheek to stop it from trickling very far, and he held the back of your neck as he tucked you into the crook of his neck, tilting his head up for you to fit comfortably in the space.
“I’ll be here, no matter what you choose. I’ll help you raise this child, to be the father it deserves… if that is what you wish.” He hesitated for a moment, and if you trusted your ears, he took in a difficult breath. “And if you don’t, I’ll be beside you at every step. But this first choice is yours, mesh’la.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Exactly the opposite.” You stilled for a moment, feeling his chest rise and fall with his deep breaths, knowing he was making a strong effort to keep them so even. “I… Children – and foundlings – are the way of the Mandalore. But… but it is something you must choose, for yourself and for the child in your care. It cannot be forced, it diminishes the choice to follow the Resol’nare…”
“This is the way,” you said quietly, assuming that would be what followed after his explanation. It was not the first time he had shared the intricacies of his lifestyle, nor would it be the last, and it had given you the ability to admire his choice to follow his creed. But as you expected him to say the well-used phrase, he was silent.
“The decision is yours to make. And I will be here to help you, whatever you choose. This is the way.” You rose from your spot tucked into him, sitting straighter to be able to look into the black of his visor, already trained on you. Your heart jumped in your throat as you imagined what expression might be hiding on the face behind the mask.
Though you supposed he was probably glad he was wearing it, forcing you to have to make up your own mind as your reflection stared back at you, thoughts teeming about what to do with the little one developing inside you.
“Everything that happens with this, we do together,” you started, finding a semblance of courage to pick your voice up barely above a whisper. You brought your hands to either side of his helmet as if you were cupping his face in your hands, bracing both of you for what came next. “What do you want to do, Din?”
“That’s not my-”
“I know what I want,” you cut him off, surprising yourself with the gumption your words had found. “But only if you want to do it with me. What do you want?”
The room was covered in a blanket of silence so thick that you were certain a war could have broken out outside and you wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Your heart was thumping in your ears as Din seemed to be looking over you with that meticulous eye of his, one hand holding you close while the other caressed your cheek.
“Please, ner’karta…” he just about whined, his grip tightening on you as your hands flew to his neck, pulling him close for another Keldabe kiss.
You were having a baby.
“We’re having a baby,” you managed through the smile spreading across your cheeks, disrupting the path of the tears beginning to fall. You heard his chuckle break through the modulator, and couldn’t help but return it.
When his hands left your body you instinctively sat back, though you closed your eyes just as quickly as you had opened them when you saw his hands move to the lip of his helmet, a familiar dance the two of you had shared time and time again. Lips ghosted across yours, the prickly scruff on his cheeks tickling your skin as your hands flew to his messy curls.
“Mesh’la… open your eyes.” If it hadn’t been for his lips crashing into yours, you would have retorted back. Instead, you sat in a confused sort of bliss as he poured his soul into you, simultaneously breathing in your very essence. “Please, I want you to see me.”
“Your creed-”
“I am already on my way to restore the living waters of Mandalore for that creed. My foundling has seen my face when I feared I would never see him again.” You started to squirm at the implication of his words, and his strong hands found you again to ease your thoughts, tangling one in your hair as the other found a home resting gently over your abdomen. “I think the mother of my child has the right to see me, just this once… before we are married.”
Against every instinct you had taught yourself during your relationship with Din, those words made your eyes flutter open.
And Maker he was beautiful.
Warm, expressive brown eyes looked up at you from under concerned brows as he put his heart in your hands. Your eyes danced across his features, finally getting to see the prominent nose and pouty lips you had felt so many times before. As you brought your hands up to play with the scruff on his cheeks, his lips curled up in a smile that made something warm bloom inside of you, your own smile growing with it.
“Do you like what you see, cyar’ika?” he giggled, and you felt it rumble through his chest. Instead of answering you leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose, delighted when you leaned back and watched his eyes flutter back open from your affection.
“You want to marry me?” you replied, and the blissed-out expression faded from his face for half a second to don a more serious one. Being graced with the opportunity to look upon your lover's face had made you realize how expressive he was, wearing his emotions plain as day the second they came to him. You figured that must have been a benefit to wearing the helmet for so many years.
“I have for a while.” He spoke so reverently, gazing upon you like you were the Maker herself. But even in such a tender moment, you couldn’t refrain from poking fun at your Mandalorian.
“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?” His smile returned as he released a breath of amusement, shaking his head softly as you continued. “Don’t let this baby force you into anything you-”
“I have wanted to marry you, to remove my helmet in front of you, for a long time. I was saving up to take you away, ask you somewhere you’d always wanted to go,” he admitted, and you were basking in his ramblings. As a man of so few words, you loved when he shared his with you, when he let you into the head on his broad shoulders.
“What were you waiting for?”
“We picked up a womp rat. Kind of threw off my timeline.” He gave a disgruntled look in the direction of his green child, still happily playing with the toys in his little cocoon in the time your world had been torn down and rebuilt in front of him. “I’m not about to let this child keep me from it any longer.”
You giggled as his grip shifted down to focus on your abdomen, overjoyed with the situation you found yourself in, happy and cozy with your little mismatched family. Din began to laugh with you, holding you closer to him as he stood from the bed and turned to lay you down gently amongst the pillows. He made to crawl over you, but something stopped him, getting back to his feet and walking over to the chair opposite Grogu.
Before you could ask what he was doing, he began the process of removing his beskar, which you were all too familiar with. Propping yourself up on your elbows you watched him meticulously release every strap, weapon, plate, and vambrace. He caught your glance and gave you a boyish grin as he untucked the duraweave top and lifted it over his head.
“Din, I love you, but are we really doing this right now? I mean, Grogu is right there,” you teased, the foundling perking his ears and looking over at you as you said his name. Your snarky comment earned you a deep belly laugh as he shook his head exasperatedly, making his way back over to the bed.
“I want to hold you. I don’t want to hurt the baby,” he said seriously as he crawled over you once more, settling himself between your legs so that he could be closer to your stomach, lifting your shirt and resting his bare arms on either side of your hips.
“I don’t think the armor would have-”
“They need skin-to-skin contact, mesh’la.”
“After they’re born, Din.”
“Well I’m going to start now,” he argued with conviction, a playful grin on his handsome face as you laughed at his antics. But your heart melted when his lips met your stomach, a series of soft pecks scattered across every inch he could reach, and going back over again when your fingers began toying with his soft curls.
Din had told you once about an Mando’a phrase, jatne manda. He had said it was a specific way to describe your good mood, “a complex sense of being at one with your clan and life.” When Grogu had come to you, you thought you understood what that meant. But just as you once thought you couldn’t love Din in any greater capacity, you were proven wrong. This moment, was your jatne manda. And you were certain, with another little warrior on the way, you would find more moments just like this. This is the way.
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Pairing: Post-Engame!Bucky Barnes x DreamWitch!Reader
Word Count: TBD
Summary: Looking for something to aide his sleepless nights, Bucky searches for you, the dream witch of New York. You're known for helping vets with PTSD have terrorless nights and being a home to the gifted mutants of the city. What Bucky didn't expect, was for you to be so captivating, or for him to open up to easily around you. But to have the powers you do, you've got to be more than just a mutant, right?
Series Warnings: mentions of ptsd, anxiety, nightmares, angst, fluff (as more chapters come out, more warnings will be added if necessary)
A/N: hey the title rhymes. Hi angels! Part 2 is finally here, by heavy demand! And uh... for those who thought I was gonna fix everything with this part?? No, I'm here to make it worse! Woo! (Don't hate me, I did warn you lmao). So, enjoy the angst! Hope it's worth the wait x
Summary: continuing on from Part 1 - You return after the ‘blip’. Five years is a long time, and a lot of things can happen in that time. Where does that leave you now?
Word count: somewhere in the 2.7k zone idk
Warnings: ANGST. Angst squared, if you will. Broken hearts everywhere. Broken hearted reader. Broken hearted Matty. A brief broken hearted Frank coming in for the rescue. Not a happy ending. Mentions of divorce and the religious thoughts surrounding that, the Blip and the devastation it would've caused, break ups, brief jealousy, heavy denial, anxiety, lots of crying and I just want to hold onto him forever & ever. This is unedited coz I'm lazy and like to just throw things out into the void and die like a warrior.
There’s a vicious, relentless pounding behind your temples when you finally begin to feel the darkness pulling at your mind recede. With the constant stab of pain, everything returns—the apparent lost time, the strange new world that had grown during your absence, the relationships that had also changed during those five years.
Five whole years.
It might as well have been an eternity.
Your whole life, everything you knew—gone. It doesn’t seem real, it’s just not possible, and yet here you are. Here you are in a world that still feels so familiar, and sickeningly not. Your thoughts are a vicious storm in your mind, merely intensifying the throb running along your forehead. Your system flutters between confusion, denial, mourning.
It’s enough to make you want to simply fall back into the blissful void of unconsciousness, until—
“Sweetheart?”
Matt.
Your heart still jumps at his gentle rasp, a part of you longing to just soften into his hold and cling to him like you’d done so many times before, but you can’t. He’s not—he’s not your Matt. Not anymore.
It’s hard to pull away from the fingers tracing your cheek, and when you open your eyes, they wince from the light shining through the large windows. He’s knelt on the floor beside you, a frown of concern creasing his brows as you slowly shift on weak limbs until you’re sitting upright on the leather.
You study his features through raw, hazy eyes, and it’s only now you notice the subtle changes you had missed upon your return to the apartment—the few more creases lining his face, the extra spatterings of grey strands amongst his dark tresses. His hair… it’s shorter too, now that you’re really looking. How had you not seen that? Not noticed?
Maybe it was the panic. It had to have been. You didn’t notice anything else when you ran in. Your surroundings had changed within a second, everything was all just so confusing and mad—you had just wanted him, you wanted home. Turns out, you had no home to return to. No one to return to.
There must be so many others. The pain must be immense throughout the world. Lovers returning to mere memories. Parents returning to kids left behind, now years older and practically strangers. Children returning to homes that were no longer there, lost amongst the new world and without anyone familiar around them to find comfort in. God, they must be so scared.
Matt’s hand returns to your face, the backs of his fingers testing the feel of your forehead before ever so slowly trailing away until they rest where your pulse thrums through the skin of your throat. It’s not necessary—he’d hear it across town. Maybe he’s seeking physical reassurance that you’re really here, right in front of him.
“Talk to me,” he pleads quietly, “say something, anything.”
You find nothing worth speaking. You doubt you’d even have the strength to speak with how dry and heavy your tongue feels in your mouth. His hand moves, fingers hot on your skin as he cups the underside of your jaw and this time, you don’t quite have the strength to pull away.
All you want is this.
His touch, his presence—him.
“Sweetheart, I—” he stops, head tilting ever so slightly towards the door.
You watch him stiffen, tension rolling through his shoulders as he rises from his knelt position before turning towards the door to the apartment expectantly. It takes longer for your senses to catch up, but eventually the dull thud of boots hitting the flooring outside of the apartment hits your ears—
Frank.
Where was he through all of this? Had he been left to carry on with life, trying to make sense of a world left in ruin? Or had he been washed away with the breeze, just like half the planet? Universe? You want to ask Matt, but words seem to fade away on your tongue.
He doesn’t bother knocking—he never has.
While there had been some stirrings of indifference between him and Matt after everything that happened, there was still a solid foundation of respect, which quickly extended to you the more you attempted to coax the beaten and bloodied man into your clutches for some much needed medical treatment. You were more than acquaintances, a little less than friends—just close enough for him to feel comfortable coming and going from the apartment should he have ever needed patching up.
“Apparently it’s been a while,” Frank mutters gruffly as a somewhat greeting once he’s stepped into the apartment, and you feel the same air of confusion and denial radiating from him.
He had been gone then, like you. How is he handling this? Does he feel as lost as you? As scared? You’d always thought him to be someone not exactly immune to the feeling, but at least stronger than others. As much as you feel for him, hurt for him, knowing exactly the type of thoughts and feelings that plague him, you find comfort in the fact that you weren’t alone in this.
Matt doesn’t respond, and Frank sighs tiredly, eyes flashing briefly to the side under his heavily bruised and swollen brow.
“I ain’t here to fight, Red.”
Matt’s tongue flicks over his lips and he gives a humourless huff, still not relaxing from his defensive stance. Maybe he was expecting Frank to be pissed and burst in like a raging bull with red in his vision, seeing as he and Karen had something brewing slowly between them all those years ago, but Frank doesn’t seem to be interested in any violence whatsoever.
You’re not even entirely sure what he’s here for.
“Well, Karen’s not here—”
“I know, she was with me,” Frank rumbles deeply, head tilting as he appraises Matt, “told me the happy news—congrats.”
It’s not insincere, but it’s damn near close.
His gaze moves to you.
He studies the way you sit, drawn in on yourself and cuddling your chest in an effort to hold yourself together. You can feel how raw and swollen your eyes are, and when you finally manage to tiredly lift them to meet his, Frank seems to soften.
It’s only slight, imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know his mannerisms well, but you see it.
“I was thinkin’ you might need a place, after hearin’ about—” he swallows, jaw rolling ever so slightly. He exhales sharply and shifts on his feet, “You got anywhere to go?”
He’s here for you?
Matt intervenes immediately. “She’s staying here, Frank—”
Staying here? In the apartment you used to live in? That he now lives in with another woman? Was his idea to leave you sleeping on the couch alone, while they sleep in your bed together? No, it’s not your bed anymore. It’s their bed. Their apartment.
Five years of Daredevil and regular concussions must’ve really killed some of his brain cells. Is he even still Daredevil? Maybe married life changed his perspective on his dangerous nightly habits. Maybe his perspective changed on a lot of things. Is he even the same Matt you had left behind?
Frank’s head tilts, his eyes narrowing into a scowl as they flick back to Matt. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t askin’ you—was I, Red?”
“No,” you finally rasp in reply to his earlier question before Matt could retort, voice rough and weak in your throat, “no, I don’t.”
He nods, expecting your answer. “You got a bag?”
“I don’t know if I have any things left,” you mutter, bitterly wondering where your belongings went. Storage? Donated? The trash? How long did they leave it, did Matt leave it before tossing it all away? Like you’d never even existed, like you’d never even mattered. “Do I have anything here, Matt?”
Matt baulks at the ice coating your tone, and it’s unfair. You know that. Deep down you know you’re being unfair, a part of your mind gently reminding you that you probably would’ve thought and done the same in his position should it have been reversed, but you don’t care.
The familiar bite of anger, pain, still stirs relentlessly in your system and it trumps all reason and logic.
You had a life, and now it’s in complete ruins.
What are you supposed to do with that?
Frank nods sagely, “We’ll get you some things, ain’t gotta worry about that. You comin’?”
As much as you want to reject the idea of leaving, as much as your heart screams at you to stay with Matt because he’s all you know, he’s all you have, and he was telling you how much he loved you only mere hours ago… you give a minimal nod, and shift to stand from the couch.
It wasn’t hours ago—it was five years.
Five years.
Matt instinctively steps in front of you to keep you from moving any further, his tongue darting across his lips in an apparent panic, “You’re going with him?”
“Can you give us a minute? I won’t be long,” you ask Frank quietly, aching at the way Matt’s anxiety seems to heighten at your words.
Frank gives a single nod, and then slips out, the door clicking quietly shut behind him. Matt ignores it, every sense focused in on you and the way your heart beats a broken rhythm in your chest, the way your nails pick at the cotton of your sleeves, the way fresh tears smell building on your lash line—
“I have nowhere else to go,” you mutter, body now numb to feeling and just utterly exhausted from the onslaught of emotions the day had thrust upon you. “I can’t stay here, Matt. I can’t. Seeing you two—God, it’ll kill me. I can’t do it.”
Why you? Why did it have to be you?
A part of you wishes it would’ve been Karen in your place, uncaringly and unknowingly torn from her life to leave everything she ever loved behind, only to return to a world that had survived, that had moved on without her… and you don’t even have the energy to feel guilty for such a thought yet.
It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t even Matt’s.
“Sweetheart,” Matt pleads softly, hands seeking and taking your hands tightly, “just—just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
The thought is immediate—would he leave her? Could you ask that of him? Could you expect him to just drop and abandon everything he’s built during your absence?
You want to.
You want to tell him to break it off with her as soon as physically possible, to kick her out so you could be at home where you’re comfortable and with him and just act like nothing happened—
—but you can’t.
You can’t bring yourself to say the words.
What would he think of you asking a question like that? Would he even do it? You know how he feels about divorce, what his religion thinks of divorce. His whole belief system, his life, his God… would he abandon it all for you?
Looking at him now, how he physically pleads with you with those soft, lost eyes looking for guidance, you believe that maybe, just maybe, he would.
But you can’t ask that of him.
You could never, and would never, ask that of him.
Unless—
“Were you happy?” You ask softly, eyes bouncing between his where they rest just left of your face.
He blinks, a slight frown forming between his eyes in an effort to make sense of your unexpected words, “What?”
“Before I—” you take a breath, tongue rolling along your lips to moisten the sudden dry skin, “—before I just materialised back onto the street… were you happy? With your life? With her?”
Without me?
Say no.
God, please say no.
You begin to wonder why you asked. Maybe you’re a glutton for punishment, maybe you think nothing could possibly hurt any more than it already does, but when his expression falters, when his mouth opens and nothing seems to make it past his lips, you know that’s not possible.
This… this seems to hit the hardest.
He was happy.
He was happy before you came back.
He was happy without you.
And it’s… good.
It is.
Of course you don’t want him to be anything but that. He had found what he wanted from life—some normality, some peace, and it’s with that understanding that you realise you have no place here anymore. At least not with him. You have no part in his life now, and it shreds that last little untouched piece of your hopeful heart to absolute ruins.
Denial still pulls at your mind, still blatantly refuses to accept that five years had actually passed. You’d been nothing but a distant memory to him, to your friends, to the world, and yet, everything is still so vividly fresh for you. You only got out of bed, held him, kissed him, a few hours ago—a few fucking hours!
Five years.
“It’s okay,” you mutter, as his saddened eyes flutter in a panic, “I want that for you, Matt. I’ve always wanted that for you, even if that means I’m not—that we’re not—”
You ache at the thought of being apart from him, a feeling he had already experienced and endured.
“Three years,” he says quietly, brokenly, a slow gathering of tears building along his lash line, “three years I searched, I waited, I prayed… if I had known—if I had known you… I wouldn’t have—”
—moved on.
You envision Matt lost in the organised pews with dozens of other faceless mourners, on his knees and weeping into his closed hands, begging for the strength to finally let you go. He was granted it, after enduring agony for such a stretch of time, and now it’s all fallen to pieces at your return.
“It’s okay,” you repeat softly, the feeling of your heart beating in your throat choking the words, “it’s okay.”
“No,” he shakes his head, face creasing as the tears begin to make their way down his cheeks, “no, it’s not. I’ve only just gotten you back. You’re back, and now—now I—God. I can’t say goodbye. Not again. I can’t.”
“So don’t,” you say simply, a fresh build of your own tears streaking your cheeks, “we won’t say goodbye. Just… just forget. Forget I ever came back, Matt. Everything will be as it was.”
He recoils sharply, as if you physically struck him. “I can’t do that—”
“Yes, you can. You have to, we all have to.”
“No, I won’t—”
“You told me to tell you,” you croak weakly, the feel of his coarse stubble piercing the soft skin of your palm as you cradle his cheek, “you told me to tell you what to do, and that you’ll do it. Well, this is it, Matt. This is what I’m telling you to do—forget I ever came back. It’ll be easier for everyone. You can keep what you had—what you have, and I—”
And you?
What will you do?
Where will you go?
Your hand falls from his face, only for it to be snatched up and returned to its previous spot with his own pressed tightly against it to keep it there. His tears smear against your skin, the evidence of his heartbreak an obvious reminder that he never let go completely.
There’s something still held for you within him, it just wasn’t the same as when you left.
His forehead comes to rest against your own, and you weaken into the familiar comfort of his touch, just for a moment. You don’t want to let go, don’t even know if you can. There's nothing left to be said, nothing left to be worked out. This is just it.
Why does it have to be this way? Your stomach churns at the idea of walking out for good. How can you? Nothing has changed for you—everything you feel for him is right there, right there where it’s always been, and you can’t do anything with it.
You indulge in the moment a little longer, stretching out to softly press your lips to his with the bittersweet taste of a loving goodbye—one last time. You savour the feel of him, his lips, so warm, so soft and sweet and familiar—
—and then pull away, the air filling the space between you lingering with the memory of what could have been.
He lets your hand fall away this time, pained haunted eyes scrunching closed as you further the distance between you until you’re at the door to the apartment. The quiet exhale of a sob reaches your ears as you open the door, and you dare not look back at Matt falling apart as you close it softly behind you.
𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬
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𝐣𝐨𝐞𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 (𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒔)
❅ all joel miller
❅ all joel smut
❅ all joel fluff
❅ all joel angst
❅ all joel x gn reader
❅ all joel x male reader
❅ all joel x plus size reader
Summary: Based off the prompt "Don't go where I can't follow. . . I thought I lost you." requested by anon.
Warnings: angst, happy ending kinda?, that's really it lol
A/N: this is unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own. I know it's not fantastic lol but i just wanted it done
The wind from outside whipped against your face as you stood with the quinjet door open, the jet hovering over the collapsing building.
Your breath was stuck in your chest, your throat clenched tight as your watering eyes remained locked on the crumbling structure.
You'd just been in there on a mission, sent to retrieve anything of value left behind by a small HYDRA group that remained just out of your team's grasp. You had been sent in with Bucky while Natasha waited in the jet for a quick escape.
She'd recently injured herself on another mission and was on strict "flying the jet only" orders. They were really bed rest orders, but she'd convinced the higher ups to at least let her be your escort to and from missions.
You'd been in the building, about a third of the way through clearing it when a large boom set your ears ringing as the ground shook, knocking you off your feet.
Coming to the conclusion that the building had been rigged to self destruct, you and Bucky had bolted back the way you entered, racing against time as it began to fall apart.
He must've seen it before you, the chunk of concrete wall that was bound to block the way out. You remembered hands colliding with your back. Hands who'd never shown you anything but gentle kindness, shoving you so hard the air had been knocked from your lungs, leaving you stunned as you fell out of the building and rolled along the dirt.
It took only a second for you to whip your head back around to see the doorway blocked and you crawled your way over and up back to your feet as you called for Bucky on your ear piece, only getting static in return.
Nat's worried voice filled your ear, asking what happened, that she'd felt the shaking and was headed your way, but you ignored her. Your eyes were scanning the surface of the building as fast as they could, searching for any crack in that building to see through. To try and see Bucky.
You eventually saw what looked like movement through the smallest crack in the wall and you rushed to it, again calling his name.
It was only a moment, but it felt like eons as you waited to hear a response. But suddenly, the timbre of his voice flowed from the crack.
"Are you okay?" He asked, as if he wasn't the one stuck.
"I'm fine, but don't you ever do that again." You'd demanded. "We need to get you out, and fast."
"I know the layout, I studied the schematics of the facility before we got here," His voice called, "There's another exit around the southwest end of the structure. I can make it."
A dark sense of dread wrapped around your heart and you wanted to argue with him, but there was no other choice and no time. The building was unstable, and he needed to get moving. Now.
"Go," You ordered, "I'll get Nat over there with the jet, we'll meet you there."
You heard him shuffle, as if he was hesitating, before the scuffle of his feet grew quieter and you relayed the information to Natasha who met you at the southwest exit Bucky had mentioned.
That's where you now waited, every second passing feeding that sense of dread in your chest until all you could do was think about it.
Ever since you two had been paired together on your first mission with SHIELD, you'd never been separated. You stuck by each other's sides, never leaving the room without the other, back to back even in certain situations. There wasn't one mission where you split up.
Until now. And it didn't feel right. Something was wrong.
You would go back in, scour the place until you either found Bucky or died trying, but there was a reason that Natasha kept the jet in the air. She knew you too well. So you watched in agonizing silence as you waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The last of the building was falling, quickly racing for that door and you swear your heart stopped as your grip on the hand hold tightened until your knuckles were white and your hand went numb.
Suddenly, the door burst open, a familiar form clad in black tumbling out, rolling back on his feet and running from the building. Only when he was far enough from the building to have absolutely no chance of being injured did your body allow you to breathe.
Nat brought the jet to him, hovering over the ground as he jumped in before she took off back towards New York.
He laid on the ground at your feet, your wide eyes locked on him as he heaved, his brow shining in sweat.
"Told you I could make it," he panted with a half smile. You heard Nat mutter his name, and watched as his head tilted up to see her. The grin was instantly wiped from his face as his attention turned back to you.
His brows furrowed as he sat up, reaching for your hand that hung limp at your side.
"Hey," he whispered, "Talk to me, what's wrong?" His eyes did a quick scan of your rigid stance before returning to your eyes, "Are you hurt?"
You felt the warmth of tears sliding down your cheeks, your hand aching as you continued to grip the hand hold, even though the door was closed now - it was the only thing holding you up. You noticed the panic rise in Bucky as he moved to kneel in front of you, his eyes darting around your face.
"Hey, hey, hey," He rushed, "Smartie, what's wrong?"
The nickname was your doom, all the air rushed from your lungs in a wet sob and your hand gave out, your knees hitting the floor as he did his best to catch you.
You'd been so close to never hearing him call you that again. To never touching him or hearing him or smelling him. To never seeing him. The weight of all of it crushed your chest as your hands pushed and gripped his shoulders, your own body not knowing whether to hold him close or push him away.
"What were you thinking?" You wetly demanded, your vision blurry from your tears, but he was clear. He always would be. "Why would you do that?"
Of course he knew what you were talking about as his eyes softened. Hell, he probably expected you to bring it up later, but not so soon. "You were going to get crushed. I had to make sure you got out."
"Not at the expense of you," You ground out through gritted teeth, "Never at the expense of you."
His eyes softened before he pulled you in, folding your fighting arms against his chest and tucking your head under his chin.
Your fingers gripped his kevlar suit, gripping it tight as you muttered to him, "Don't you ever go where I can't follow." You pulled back, looking up at him and seeing his eyes welling with tears, "I thought I lost you."
"You didn't lose me," He whispered, "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
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