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the vocal economy.

pairing. rockstar!bucky barnes x popstar!reader synopsis. after a chance encounter at paris fashion week, you find yourself entangled in a web of sex, lies, and watchful eyes alongside the drummer of beloved rock band the howling commandos. a problematic boyfriend is a rite of passage for every pop-girlie… but bucky barnes is not your boyfriend, he’s your drug. no matter how hard you try, can you truly quit him? warnings. smut (multiple sex scenes, switch!bucky, unprotected piv, oral sex - f + m receiving, public sex, pussy pronouns, dirty talk, use of slut, exhibitionism, spit, licking?, breeding kink, nipple play, hair pulling - f + m receiving, sex tapes, light degradation, cum eating, cockwarming, dacryphilia, biting, overstimulation, messy sex??, he has a massive dick because i said so!!), no use of y/n, idiots in love, age gap, very toxic behaviour, jealousy, possessiveness, drug/substance abuse, addiction, misogyny, revenge porn, attachment avoidance, dead parent, so much yearning, angst, fluff, & more. reader inclusivity. the reader has hair that can be pulled and an assigned nickname. wordcount. 24k (it's big, but you can take it baby, can't you?) hyde's input. throwing this slop at the wall and hoping it sticks... okay but i also want to give a really big thanks to my bwamily for putting up with listening to me whinge, and stress, and ramble about this fic more than i should have/needed to. every fic that's been written for this collab has been amazing, i'm so happy to have taken part in something with so many talented writers, but i’m even happier to call you guys my friends. you're all amazing, i am in constant awe of you all. ps. take a shot every time i reference bwa in this fic. bwa collab masterlist. - read & reblog every fic or istg i'm deactivating (/j... but also /srs)

There comes a point where you have to question your self-respect.

Or, better said, your lack of self-respect.

Every kid has big dreams. Take little Tommy L. for example: first day of elementary school, he got up on a chair and proclaimed to the class that he would be the first person to step foot on Jupiter. Everyone applauded his bravery, a cheerful ruckus of whiny children egging on the fantasies of a dreamer. No one dared to dampen the mood by pointing out the fact that Jupiter is made of gas and therefore cannot be stepped on — this, of course, was not out of consideration for his feelings, but out of the sheer ignorance that comes with being young and unaware.

The next person that comes to mind is Natasha R. Head-strong and confident, not once in the ten years of knowing her have you doubted her ability to make her dreams a reality. Mostly because her dreams were relatively simple, to the point, and oh-so Nat: I just want to get payed to boss idiots around.

Low and behold, you are now that idiot she gets payed to boss around.

Because only an idiot would find herself in a public bathroom, squandering her dream away for Bucky fucking Barnes.

“Christ alive,” speak of the devil, and he shall moan in your ear — or however that saying goes. It’s a little hard to remember, or care, in your current predickament. “How’s she getting tighter?”

Blunt nails dig into skin, scratching off the body glitter sprayed over you by a team of stylists. If they could see you now, bent over a sink with the frilly shorts of a matching, custom, two-piece set billowing out around your ankles, while a mirror forces you to confront the state you’re in: eyeliner smudging at waterlines, a tangled web of dishevelled extensions, and a hue of lipstick now staining the mouth of rock legend, James Buchanan Barnes… Well, they would not be surprised, but they would certainly be disappointed.

“Wider, baby. Theeeere we go,” steel-toed boots push against dainty heels, forcing you into a state of compliance in which your legs spread further apart and you feel the tip of his cock nudge a part of you that previously you had not known existed. “Need to stretch her out again, don’t I?”

The only need you should have right now is to get back to your table. To sit with Nat on your right, a labelmate on your left, and the impeccably dressed CEO of Thunderbolt Records directly across from you, hawk-eyed and waiting to see if his newest protégé takes home the award of Best New Artist.

“Figured a pretty slut like you wouldn’t have this issue,” against your own best intentions, you grind back against Bucky, walls squeezing him in a momentary vice. Worst of all, he doesn’t gasp, or groan, or giveaway the slightest sign of surprise — because he expects this, knows what kind of a reaction his degrading pet names rouse from you. “Them other guys not been fucking my girl’s pussy right, hmm?”

My.

Ownership, possessive. An object belonging to he who speaks it.

Bucky says it with conviction, no waver in the familiar rasp that takes over his voice during times of pleasure. He means it and believes it, almost in spite of the fact it could not be further from the truth. You are not his, this has been made clear more than once throughout these twisted sexcapades you’ve allowed yourself to indulge in — your better judgement has not taken the backseat but, instead, has been fully booted out of the car.

A cruel laughter rips through his chest and cuts straight into your own, a gash that threatens to bleed all over the bathroom floor. Instead of blood, a tear of arousal drips onto the ground.

“Or have you been savin’ her for me? Yeah, bet you been keeping her nice and tight. Just wanted to relive the memory of me splitting you open that first time in Paris, didn’t ya?”

Like any ego-maniac, coke-fuelled jukebox hero, Bucky Barnes is a man in love with the sound of his own voice.

“Shouldn’t you be- Aah!” Mission failed: you reach for your voice and, consequently, Bucky reaches for your hair.

His chest presses flush against your back, your head meets his shoulder, and ring clad fingers tangle themselves in the mess of your hair, tugging just enough to rouse a sting over your scalp. Liberation is found in the pain; a reminder that Bucky can hurt you, that pleasure is not the only thing his touch can bring. What is the virtue of pleasure to a thousand vices?

“You’re so stupid sometimes, you know? Can’t even finish a simple sentence once I get you all cockdrunk,” there’s an irritation in his voice that you almost believe, like he can’t stand seeing you act this way. Like he’s not the one to blame, rolling his hips slowly only to snap back into you, filling the tiled room with the squelch of your soaked walls. “Go on, finish what you started. Shouldn’t I be what?”

He’s evil.

And, sadly, you’re more than accustomed to him by now, “Shouldn’t you be saving your voice? Fans- Oh god!”

“Not quite God, baby,” something about the condescension injected into each syllable has your eyes rolling back, fingers shooting out in search of something to stabilise your sanity with. Your torturer grants you this small favour, binding his hand to yours in a collision of flesh that almost mimics a lover, so woefully contradictory to the manner in which he’s fucking you. “But if you wanna call me that, go right ahead.”

“You’re annoying,” you gasp, half in frustration and half in shock, eyes growing wider the longer you stare at your reflection.

Never once had you thought yourself a voyeur, so used to hiding from the visual un-pleasantries of sex beneath dimmed lights and bedsheets and placid lovers… Then came along the devil to drag you down a path of temptation, fucking you into the silk sheets of his bed. You had not only felt the act, but watched it too: a performance mirrored onto the ceiling, your face of ecstasy peeking out from his left shoulder while Bucky buried himself in your neck and your cunt.

The image haunted you for weeks, through rehearsals and studio sessions, the memories of your ankles interlocked at his back while his unjustly perky ass rocked back and forth with his thrusts plagued your waking hours; until, at last, your paths crossed again and he gave you a new sexcapade to reminisce over. Now here you are, months later, back in front of a mirror and dreading the fact you will never look at your reflection the same way.

A version of your name is groaned into your ear, as the mirror displays the frantic speed overtaking his hips, a final burst of energy to sprint towards his finishing line.

“Shut up,” your voice is pathetic, reducing your command to a pitiful request. The last thing you want is to be haunted by the sound of your own name tearing through his throat in a destructive crescendo of lust. “Save your voice for your- Ngh! Your performance.”

Bucky relieves your scalp of pressure, hand skirting down the length of your body, over the dips of your hips, and between the valley of your thighs. Frozen on the reflection, your eyes are entranced by how the static, overhead white-light catches on the grey steel of his rings as his fingers continue their descent. While his thumb takes to circling your clit in slow, torturous movements, his index and middle finger spread your folds apart. You try to run from the sight, from the shame of watching how he fills you so easily, how your tight opening hugs his girth, but you can’t, he won’t let you.

“Stars like me don’t perform at these things, pretty girl,” he drops your hand in favour of clutching your face, callouses built over decades of plucking strings now pressing into the soft of your cheek and holding your face in place, pinning your stare to his own in the glass. “That’s for rookies like you. Still need to sell yourself like a whore to the masses.”

Five years in the game amounts to nothing and slips down the drain. His words are a short and unsweet reminder that, despite the time and effort already put into your career, you’re still new to this part: the glitz and the glamour, the screaming fans and the intrusive paparazzi, the late-night shows and early-morning radios. A once heathen indie artist, now the gods of success have baptised you in their waters. The corporate machine of the industry treats you like a wilted flower, at last warmed by the spotlight of a main-stage and watered by the profits of a record deal.

“Need to cum.” The words are terse, not quite a request, not quite a warning. The mirror holds no secrets, laying you both bare for the other to see: the twitch of your thighs as the circles he teases your clit with grow harsher; the exertion of his body fucking into yours causing tears of sweat to run down his face, smudging the messy charcoal lining his eyes; the parting of his lips as he turns his face into yours, nose pressing into your cheek and his breath hitting your skin. “Gonna let me cum in you, hmm? Fill you up, like you deserve? C’mon, know you want it, don’t you? Wanna feel me seeping out this pussy, all sticky and warm, staining your panties while you’re up on that stage.”

What you intend to be a protest, a denial of his outlandish claims, quickly devolves into a whine of his name, hand meeting the one between your thighs. To pull him away, to hold him place, to just feel how the bones, muscles, ligaments of his fingers all work together to send you towards a maddening spiral, nirvana born only at his touch.

“Of all the pretty girls that chant my name, you’re definitely my favourite,” is Bucky’s twisted version of a compliment, something to make you swoon and weak in the knees. Instead, it makes you sick to your stomach, flash-images of every faceless body he’s taken his pent-up frustrations and post-performance high out on. Groupies and band bunnies, faceless shapes in crowds that got lucky and captured his attention from behind the drum kit. You’re no better than any of them, nor more important, yet a knife twists in your chest like you should be. You should be more than that, more than a cheap fuck in a public bathroom, more than a desperate quickie amidst the award show you’ve dreamed your whole life of attending. “‘S only fair of my favourite girl to let me cum in her. Wanna watch you doing your cutesy dancing across the stage and know your walls are wearing me like a good luck charm. Hell, you win that little award and we can make a tradition out of it, make sure I fuck you full of me every award show.”

“Do it,” your chest heaves, and you tell yourself this is you giving in, this is you letting him get his way, one last time. Not because you’re weak, and certainly not because you want him to cum inside, but because you want him to stop talking like your lives are interlinked, like any form of a future exists where you two have private pre-show rituals or good luck charms. “Fuck, James- Cum in me, please! Just get it over-”

A hand clamps over your mouth, fingers wet with you and staining your lips in the taste of lust, while Bucky’s voice hits your ear in a harsh whisper, “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, you little slut. Take what I’m giving you like the gift it is, and make sure you thank me in that speech of yours, when you’re holding that award in your hands and my cum in your cunt.”

Seconds later, Bucky tips over the edge. Warmth floods your insides, melting away the part of you that can think clearly, and leaving nothing but the desperate soul that strives for some form of human connection, something a little deeper than niceties and handshakes. Your walls clamp down around his cock, a spasm creeping up the length of your spine as he continues to grind into you, feeding his cum deeper while you ride out the waves of your orgasm, head thrown back against his shoulder and eyes blinking up at the now blurry ceiling.

Seconds pass. Maybe minutes. Time warps, bending to the will of Bucky’s existence while he holds you pressed against him. Breaths fall in sync, deep and heavy and exhausted. You faintly register the brush of his lips along your skin: your shoulder, your jaw, your cheek, your neck, your forehead. He’s relentless, smothering you in the musk of day-old cigarettes, burnt whisky, and expensive cologne.

You take the initiative to part ways, shifting forward to lean one palm flat on the sink and the other against his torso, shoving him back in a weak effort. He grants your request, slipping out of you with a hiss. Despite the shame that overwhelms your heart, you still can’t help but moan when you feel his index and middle finger swipe through your folds, collecting the spill of his own spend. He fucks it back inside slowly, rings kissing against your puffy lips.

“We can’t keep-” You pause, trying to gather all the willpower you have to inject it into your wavering conviction. “Doing this. I don’t want to. Not anymore. Please.”

“You’re pleading, baby,” he muses, fingers curling up ever so slightly just to give him the pleasure of watching you clamp down on your bottom lip, trapping a whine inside. Bucky chuckles, mockery imbued into it, and your traitor of a stomach flips. “Acting like you didn’t come running to meet me here.”

You want to tell him that it shouldn’t flatter him. That he should not mistake your eagerness for enjoyment. You come running to Bucky like a moth flies towards a flame: entranced and yet wholly unaware of its incoming destruction.

“I mean it, James.” That was good. Well done. You almost believed yourself, which means you’re halfway to convincing him too. “This is it. The last time. I don’t want to see you, ever again.”

“Ever again? ‘S a bit harsh, sweetheart. We work in the same industry, under the same record label. Gonna have to see me at some point,” his fingers depart from you, Hallelujah!

Only to shatter your joy when you spot Bucky in the mirror, wrapping his lips around them and savouring the taste of you both on his tongue. Instead of reacting how the feral animal inside of you longs to — bending over the sink and inviting him to take a taste straight from the source — you take to pulling your shorts back up, trying your best to manufacture a composed, talented, busy woman out of the wreck of a girl he’s made of you.

Bucky speaks up before your hand can hit the door handle, halting you in your tracks, “Not even gonna answer me? You’re breaking my heart here, baby.”

Your shoulders lift with a deep breath and then you’re wrenching the door open and taking a single step out into the backstage halls, not even bothering to glance back at him, “Delete my number, James.”

The first time you met Bucky Barnes, you were in a sheer dress and a state of utter panic.

Seven months have passed in the blink of an eye, yet even now you can still recall every detail.

The uncomfortable quiet of the hotel’s lobby, the blood rushing to your cheeks as you catch your heel on the carpet, the bracing for impact of both the floor and everyone’s attention. And then a grip wrapping itself around your arm, an effortless tug back against a solid figure, and a condescending laugh ringing in your ears.

“Careful, sweetheart, don’t want you bruising those pretty knees,” a voice like caramel, sweet but sickly, threatening to erode not only your teeth but your mental well-being. In an act that would have the suffragettes tutting in shame, a tornado of butterflies swipes through the valley of your loins. “At least not like this. Would rather see them put to good use first.”

The last person you expect to see leering at you, as you turn to assess your dirty-minded saviour, was rock legend James Buchanan Barnes, founding member and drummer of ‘The Howling Commandos’. Unlike you, he’s far from dressed for the nines: hair an unbrushed mess, face in desperate need of a shave, sporting a miscellaneous stain on his hoodie and a pair of untied basketball shorts that, if you were looking — and you aren’t — you would notice his thigh tattoo peeking out at the bottom.

With a stuttered apology, and a glance over your shoulder to assure your nerves that no one had noticed your near-mishap, you stumble back and inflate the space between you both. Though he makes no attempt to secure his grip, hand dropping back to his side at the first sign of you fleeing its touch, his eyes pin you beneath his stare, the blue of his irises a near perfect match to the designer dress clinging to your curves.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Barely five minutes into unofficially knowing him and he has already caught you off-guard twice, a feat which should be an omen for the future trajectory of your complicated relationship. Instead of acknowledging that right now, you’re too busy feeling starstruck by the fact he possibly knows who you are. “Yeah, I do, don’t I?”

Your attempt to make eye-contact is abandoned instantly, the intensity of his stare too much for you to handle, “Uh… I don’t know. Maybe? We’ve never actually met-”

“Course we haven’t, I’d never forget meeting that pretty face of yours,” against your better nature and the voice screaming at you that a man like him flirts with anything with a pulse, you regrettably feel yourself smile shyly in his direction, fingers fiddling with the borrowed ring sitting snug around your index finger. “You’re Thunderbolt’s golden girl, aren’t you? His shiny new toy.”

Once again in retrospect, the lighting bolt of surprise that strikes through you is unjustified.

Bucky Barnes has every right to know of you and your position within the industry. And not just because you are still riding the wave of becoming an ‘overnight success’, your sophomore album hitting number 1 on the global charts and your presence in the industry suddenly becoming a lot more noticed by fans and media like. No, he has every right to know you through the simple fact that you are both under the same record label.

Half of the enigma surrounding Thunderbolt Records is focused on the matter of how, in less than two decades, they have grown from indie label to household name — the Oxford University of music labels, a company that every up and coming artist dreams of signing with.

Rumours have forever surrounded the illusive CEO; ludicrous tales ranging from him being born into generational wealth, to internet theories speculating on the uncanny resemblance between him and a high-ranking member of the Ruska Roma family. But, no matter what people believe when it comes to the company’s origins, the whole world can agree on this: the musical legacy of the company lies in the calloused hands of The Howling Commandos… A musical legacy you are now inscribed upon.

“I don’t know if golden girl is the right term,” a wolfish grin overcomes his face, tongue swiping over his bottom lip and slipping back into his mouth. He hums, pleasured, like he can taste you in the air, a snake locking onto the scent of new prey. “Rusty bucket is more up my avenue.”

There is a distorted laugh that comes with wealth and power; one that is loud, and abrasive, and shamelessly punctuates one’s presence. That’s exactly how Bucky laughs at your self-deprecating claims: head thrown back, hand splayed over his torso, nose ring shaking slightly as exaggerated humour scrunches up his face. He shows no care for the fact the clock has hardly passed ten in the morning, or that the decadently decorated hotel lobby carries an air of sophistication and library-level silence. Why would a man who’s had the whole world grovelling at his feet care for decorum?

“So, what brings you to Paris, goldie?” There are his eyes again, trailing down the length of you. As he lingers over your chest, you begin to question your stylist, Wanda’s decision to have you go bra-less, leaving the hue of your nipples perfectly visible beneath the see-though fabric. “Dressed like that, I’m guessing Fashion Week. Channel?”

A shake of your head, “Dior.”

The brand still tastes strange in your mouth. Foreign, like it belongs anywhere but between your teeth. A girlish part of you, the one that is still very much a fan in the presence of her celebrities, almost wants to ask Bucky if he had felt this way at the start of his stardom. If the sound of his name in strangers’ voices had felt intrusive, if looking up at the stage lights had felt like staring at the barrel of a gun, if the glitz and glam still felt like borrowed garments on his skin.

Somehow, you find the will to not sound like a complete loser, and instead adopted the attitude of someone speaking to just another co-worker… If you forget about the fact that said co-worker has just been announced as Sexiest Man of the Year and is known for making more than hearts throb.

“What brand are you here with?”

“Oh, me? Fashion Week’s not really my scene, too many people kissing up to Wilson for my liking.”

Sam Wilson, full-time guitarist and fellow member of The Howling Commandos, part-time runway model. He’s become a staple figure in male fashion, one of the top-to-watch at any MET Gala or red-carpet event. With a face sculpted by the hands of angels, it’s not hard to understand why every fashion house wrestles for a morsel of his attention. Amidst all this, he’s also known as the member James Barnes shares the strangest relationship with, both forever taking harmless jabs at each other in the press, only to go for blood the minute anyone else dares to throw dirt on their names.

“This is just a little treat, a vacation before the band heads back out on tour,” Barnes explains, after assessing the confusion on your visage. At the mention of tour, his eyes light up, like he’s just remembered the most interesting story in the world. “Congrats on your album, by the way. Yelena said the launch party was quite the rager. Sorry I couldn’t make it, I was busy.”

Busy was a cute way of putting it.

Photographed on a yacht off the Canary Islands, with a hand-full of super-models and enough drugs to put a pharmacy to shame was a better reflection of the truth.

“Thanks!” Whatever demon is ruled by anxiety possesses you, forcing a burst of energy in your voice that not only has you flinching, but the rockstar in front of you too. “Uh, for the congratulations. Oh, and the flowers you sent. They were beautiful, lasted a whole two weeks before they started to wilt. I don’t know how you guessed my favourite-”

“My assistant organised the flowers, doll, I just covered the bill.” Well, that shuts you right up… And invites in another anxious demon, doubling the dose in your veins and inflicting you with an overdose of nerves. You try to exorcise it, knee bouncing the back of your heel onto the carpet in a hope to work out that nervous energy he conjures within you. “Tell you what though, why don’t you tell me how long you’re in the city and we can try organise a night where I can take you for dinner. That sound like something you’d like?”

“Oh. I don’t know if-”

“Back off, Barnes,” Natasha is by your side in the blink of an eye, smoothing out the wrinkles in her suit jacket and pinning the man with a warning stare, the kind you only ever see her shoot towards intrusive interviewers and pushy paparazzi. “Don’t you have some other innocent victim you can go harass with your presence?”

“Good to see you as always, Nat,” unfazed by her diss and her glare, Bucky renews the intensity under which he studies you, picking you apart more and more with each blink. “What’s so wrong about a senior in the industry wanting to get to know the sparkly new thing under his record label?”

“Exactly what you just said. You’re her senior. A man your age should be looking for a wife, not terrorising the youth.” With the way Nat’s talking, you’d think you were freshly eighteen and still frightened of the world, and Bucky a man twice your age. Instead, your frontal lobe is months away from full-development, with a decade or so separating you from Bucky’s life experience. “And you-” Oh no, there she is pointing fingers at you, though her eyes have softened and there’s no longer an angry wrinkle cutting across her otherwise flawless forehead. “Quit being polite and learn to tell creeps like him to shove it where the sun don’t shine-”

“For the record, I really would like to take you to dinner-”

“Uh-huh, and what were you thinking of eating for dessert? Her? Get lost, Barnes, before I call Tony and tell him to put his star on a leash.” Nat’s hand lands between your shoulder blades, guiding you away from James Barnes without so much as a goodbye. Curiosity, your greatest nemesis, entices you to glance back, only to find him doing the very same, shooting you a cheeky wink while he waits for the elevator doors to welcome him in. “You’re late. Your first big brand event and you’re about to arrive late. I swear, someone’s getting fired once I find out who fucked up the hotel pick up-”

“How do you know him?” You interrupt Natasha, head already splitting with your own stress, the ache only growing as she rambles on.

“Who? Bucky?” The Parisian wind cuts at your cheek as the two of you pour out of revolving doors onto the street. A flash of blinding lights, a handful of photographers already crowding around the hotel entrance, has you wishing your outfit came with a matching pair of sunglasses. Nat keeps a hand clasped around your elbow, guiding you towards the open door of a car before shoving you both inside, out of the chaos and onto the leather seats. “He’s unfortunately my friend. I used to babysit Yelena Belova, she’s like a sister to me. Blame it on her that I have to know that idiot.”

Maybe that’s how Bucky got your number: he called in a favour from The Howling Commandos front-woman, Yelena Belova.

However he pulled off such a feat doesn’t matter in the grand-scheme of things. What does matter is that he called you the next morning, put the dinner offer back on the table, and convinced you to meet him in the hotel lobby at eight pm.

Right where you left me yesterday, goldie. Meet me there.

Dinner winds up being drinks, and a congratulations from Bucky Barnes winds up being you spread out in the middle of his suite, your vision going blurry while his tongue worked magic against you. By the time the time morning comes, so have you… A handful of times, no inch of you left untouched by him. While he snores away on a well-fluffed pillow, you make your great escape with your heels clutched to your chest and an ache between your thighs.

What should have been a one-time thing, another notch in both your bedposts, perhaps even a flirty line for a future song, has since spiralled into a car crash; the kind you can only hope that tossing yourself out the window can save you from the impending collision.

Which is exactly why you have blocked his number.

“Helloooo, earth to kiddo!”

You snap out of the reminiscent daydream to find Clint Barton waving in front of your face, something written across his features, as close to worry as he ever gets. Thrust back into the present, the studio comes back into full-view as your eyes skirt over the soundboard in front of you before at last settling on the screen where Clint has pulled up the latest demo you’ve both been working on.

He’s watching you expectantly, on the edge of his seat and on the verge of calling out to you again, “Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes!” You lie out of pure instinct, a defensive mechanism that you sometimes forget to disengage around him. “Actually, no, sorry. Can you repeat whatev-”

“You sleeping okay, kid?”

“I- Why? Do I look like I’m not?”

“You look like you haven’t been sleeping, full stop.” Concern is customary when it comes to Clint, now more than ever since he’s become a father.

Much like Natasha, he’s been with you since Day 1 — if Day 1 began the evening you sat down and decided you were going to release your debut album, sans label and backed by nothing but a low-wage job at the local zoo, a kick-starter, and a dream. Enter stage left Clint Barton, genius producer hiding amongst the low-lives in a dive bar.

“Is that what you asked me?”

“What? No,” Clint shakes his head, head turning back to the screen after taking an extra second or two to study your supposedly exhausted features. “I was asking about your thoughts on the track. Do we like it? Are we scrapping it? Is it lead-single material?”

The questions fly at you like a checklist he’s been ordered to fill out, and you have no doubt who put him up to this.

“He’s been emailing you again, hasn’t he?” The he in question is, of course, none other than your beloved CEO.

“Him and his assistant-slash-girlfriend are currently away on a business trip,” Clint slumps back in his chair, springs screeching at the same time as your phone buzzes on the table. “We have until Wednesday to confirm a lead single. They want to announce your next album before the end of the month.”

“Already? I feel like we just put out the last one!”

“You’re a hot commodity, kid,” he nods over at the anointed trophy cupboard where, perched upon the top shelf and shining in a way that seems to be mocking you, sits your latest and greatest award: Best New Artist. “Gotta strike while the iron is hot, and all that crap they say. That’s just Hollywood!”

“Hollywood is the movie business, you idiot,” though you roll your eyes, you can’t ignore the fact he’s soothing away those beginning embers of anger in your chest.

Another buzz from your phone.

Clint is back on the screen, mouse in hand as he moves around the layering of your vocals.

“Point is,” his voice drowns out another buzz, but it does not halt you from reaching for the device. “We need to come up with something before the boss-man throws us in the capitalist grinder and turn us into minced-meat. Minced-musicians!”

Poor Clint is left high and dry, not even a pity giggle thrown at his cheesy joke.

Because your attention is glued to your phone screen, heart lurching up into your throat as you scan over the notification bar, reading and re-reading with the hope that the words on the screen will disappear if you look long enough.

instagram barnesonly: you blocked my number, that hurt me and not-so-mini barnes’ feelings.

instagram barnesonly: i’m willing to forgive you if you meet me for dinner tomorrow, 8pm.

instagram barnesonly: we can call it your early-birthday present to me.

His birthday is months away, absolutely nowhere near to passing.

You know that. You remind yourself of it by opening your browser and searching. Low and behold: James Buchanan Barnes was born 10th of March, 19… And yet, even with this staring you right in the eye, you swipe down, tap on the notifications, and open up your chat history.

Most of it features him responding to your stories with some variation of the thirsty emoji, with the occasional congratulations. Never once have you responded, leaving the infamous James Barnes to appear as nothing more than a mere fanboy, instead of a world-renowned, lady-adored musician. Before you can even dare pop your chat-cherry, he’s typing again, unknowingly answering the question you were about to ask.

barnesonly: i booked us a reservation at chateau barnes.

The restaurant is far from what you expect.

With Bucky, overindulgence is everything. No half-measures, no settling for a more palatable price, no cutting corners to get a cheap deal. Since the moment you met him, he’s tossed cash around as easily as he’s tossed you around in bed, manhandling the cards in his wallet and taking any excuse to flaunt his wealth. At first, it was attractive, a regrettable staple of his persona that only seemed to make you weaker in the knees and wetter between your thighs. Then, with time and the state of your questionable relationship, it soured and turned into something crass, a piece of him that turned your stomach.

You assumed tonight would be no different. He would take you to eat at a place where imposter syndrome would cage you in from every wall, where the menu is an amalgamation of dishes you’d sooner keel over and die than try — what is it with rich people and thinking the more obscure the food, the better it tastes?

Decadent is not the word you would use to describe Chateau Barnes. Comfy, quaint, cute all fall far more in line with the establishment, lively with customers yet not stuffy in atmosphere. This alone unwinds some of the knots in your gut, just unfortunately not enough for you to tolerate Bucky Barnes’ wandering stare.

“… Medium-rare, and d’ya think you could ask your chef to be generous with the peppercorn sauce?” He’s hardly looking the waitress in the eye, gaze flickering between the pad in her hand and the burst of cleavage peeking out the top of her shirt.

“The chef’s a bit of a grump here,” you watch the girl throw a look over her shoulder. Following her trail, you catch the back of a dark haired man through the kitchen window. Strangely, he looks like a cleaner-cut version of the man sitting across from you, whose lips are stained with red wine and eyes are widened from a trip to the gentleman’s room. “You’re in luck, though. Our sous chef is a sweetheart, I’ll ask him to pour you a little extra sauce.”

“Thanks, sugar,” with a parting wink from Bucky, the waitress almost seems to skip away to put in your order.

The glass on the table calls out to you, a siren tempting you to down it’s remnants of wine; to drown your sorrows in the aged grape juice until they are dead and gone. You give in, far too easily for a woman determined to keep her wits about her tonight, and swallow it down in one fowl gulp. Across the table, Bucky watches you attentively, like you hold the key to everything he’s been missing.

That is basically what he had said, right? When you sat down in the chair and let him tuck you in against the table, mouth dipping to press a chaste kiss on the crown of your head before a whispered confession met your ear: Missed my golden girl.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he takes the initiative of refilling your glass, the neck of the bottle hitting the rim with a soft clink as his unsteady hand hovers it over the dainty cup. “Not sure if I told you that yet.”

“You did.” It comes out colder than the late-night air blowing outside, your words clipped of any niceties as you watch him struggle to sit still. “Four times.”

“See?” Bottle back on the table, his fingers slide across the white cloth and tangle themselves in your own. Despite the nausea bubbling in the back of your throat, a part of you still wavers at his touch. “You’re just so damn pretty, I can’t get enough of telling you. Can’t get enough of looking at you.”

“Is that why you were perving on the waitresses’ tits?”

His spine straightens yet his hand does not flee from yours. Instead, it stresses its presence, pulsing a soft squeeze once, then twice, like he’s fighting to remind you that he’s here with you. It seems Bucky doesn’t realise that he is the one who needs reminding of it.

A pink tongue, now stained mauve, pokes out to wet his bottom lip, his jaw tenses and he turns his face to the left, eyes breaking away from your own to look toward a nearby table. A couple sit in a booth, impervious to the social norms of sitting across a table, and instead opting to snuggle side by side, too busy gazing into each other’s eyes to notice how their food is going cold. Bucky pulls in a breath, slow and through his nose, inflating his shoulders and, likely, his ego, before turning back to face you.

“What do you want from me?”

When you envisioned a scenario in which you wound up choking tonight, you hadn’t imagined it would be on your wine. Quelling your cough, you find the outrage in your system, “Excuse me? You invited me here, asshole.”

“Not talking ‘bout tonight,” something glassy overcomes his eyes, reflecting the twinkling of the restaurant’s low-lights. He squeezes your hand, instinctively, stabilising himself in holding you. It’s not enough to ease the shakes rippling throughout him, like wind over water. “You’re playing me like an instrument, baby. Dodging my calls, swearing you never wanna see me again, then you go and get pissy with me looking at another girl.”

“Playing you like an instrument? Quit being cryptic, Bucky, it doesn’t suit-”

“Last time I checked, it was me who was begging you for something more, something real. Practically served my heart to you on a platter,” finally, his fingers slip back over the cloth and settle at his side. A cold rushes in at the loss of contact but you tell yourself to ignore it, to clench your fist shut and sit a little taller in your seat. “Then you chewed it up, spat it out, and told me it wasn’t good enough.”

“Think you’re being a little dramatic there, Buc-”

“Am I? I told you I was serious about us and you laughed.”

You don’t mean to, you swear, but you can’t help the laugh that finds its way passed your lips this time either, “Because you’re full of shit, Barnes. You wouldn’t know serious if it slapped you in the face.”

“How do you know that? You won’t even give me the chance to take you on a proper date, and so here we are, acting like we don’t both feel this-”

“How do I know? Look at your history, James! You’re not exactly a symbol of monogamy and fidelity,” your voice attracts an unwanted amount of attention from a neighbouring table, to which you quickly dip your head and pray they don’t recognise either of you. “Remind me, how many time have you been caught cheating? Four? Five? Si-”

“That’s different. How I felt about them wasn’t this,” Bucky flattens a palm against his chest, right over where his heart lays. If you search hard enough through the archives of your mind, you can hear the beat of it beneath your ear, slowing from frantic to a steady thump, a melody played for no one other than you. “I could try, if it were us. If it were for you.”

You hate him. More than fire hates water, more than the Sun hates Moon, more than Moriarty hates Sherlock. If only you could will it, you would choose to never look him in those pathetically weepy eyes again…

Now, if you could only say all of that to him and not sound like you’re lying through your teeth, that would be great.

“I’m not a loyalty test for you to ace,” over his shoulder, you spot the waitress from earlier balancing your order in her hands, weaving past tables effortlessly. Your gaze fixates on her a few seconds longer than needed, but you’re just not quite ready to look at Bucky again. When you are, you find him scowling. “We aren’t lab partners, okay? I don’t want to be part of your experiment.”

“Stop twisting my fucking words-” His anger is intercepted by an overly joyous voice.

While you have enough etiquette in your bones to smile politely and thank the waitress as she delivers your plates and cheerfully tells you to Enjoy! Bucky remains seated and seething like a toddler, tattooed arms crossed over his chest and a damn near humph falling from his wine-sullied lips.

Even like this, looking pathetic and aggravating, something coils around your gut as you take in the swell of his biceps. Try as much as you do to fight it, your thoughts spiral down into memory after memory of watching those same arms, glistening in sweat and covered in ink, gliding over a drum kit and hitting every beat effortlessly, a man-shaped machine built for music who somehow still finds the time to wink at the audience the moment he feels the camera pointed at him. He also manages to find the energy, off stage and back in the safety of his dressing room, to bend you over a chaise lounge and smack his drum kits against something else.

Treating your brain like an Etch A Sketch, you shake it and watch the memories fade away, dragging yourself back into the present where the last thing you want is to be bent over by Bucky Barnes.

“I know this might be hard for that big head of yours to understand,” across from you, his lip teases a smile. You can practically smell the dirty joke defrosting in his brain, slowly spinning around like a dish inside a microwave, just waiting for the timer to ding and give him the go ahead to unleash it. “But not everything is about you. I wasn’t pissy at you for checking the waitress out, I was trying to defend an innocent girl from your pervy gaze.”

Steak knife in hand, he scoffs down at his plate, confirming the state of the meat before bothering himself, and subsequently you, with a response, “Innocent girl, my ass. She knows what she’s doing, practically shoving her tits in my face.”

“She’s doing her job!”

“And her job just so happens to involve slutting herself out for tips,” a splatter of watered-down blood bursts out of the steak as Bucky stabs it with his fork, crudely shoving the bite in his mouth before continuing to talk. “She was practically asking for me to look at her!”

James Barnes is such a peculiar brand of douchebag that you often forget how, beneath the layer of all his little quirks and mannerisms that make your blood boil, he is merely a man at his core. Therefore, he is bound to say something so despicable with an air of righteousness and a dismissive shrug of his shoulders.

If there weren’t a table between you and a room full of people who could recognise either of you at any moment, you would reach across the table and slap the food right out of his rotten mouth.

Instead, you wrinkle your nose and stick to twirling pasta onto your fork, “You’re actually despicable.”

“Yeah, well,” he shoots you a tight-lipped smile, as fake as the ones you shoot while being hounded on the streets by strangers shoving their phones into your face. “I’d say you love it, but we both know how you feel about that word.”

He stumps you into silence.

Bucky isn’t supposed to know about that.

About the way that word keeps you awake at night, twisting knots in your stomach and choking down your breath with boulders in your throat. About how it looms over you like a cloud, drapes off of you like a shadow, sits across from you at a table-of-one every morning as you eat breakfast. About how it feels like your personal Everest, a mountain that you will either die trying to climb or, worse, you will reach its peak only to find it wasn’t worth all the hassle that went into the climb. Bucky isn’t supposed to know the things you don’t vocalise to him; he is not supposed to read you like the pages of a book that is wide open, on display for his eyes to skim over and through.

Your defences activate, a bitterness overcoming you as you drop your fork. It clangs down onto the porcelain plate and his eyes flicker down to watch, only to shoot back up to yours and find themselves caught in your vengeful stare.

“Do you want to know the real reason we’d never work, Barnes?” As expected, he nods eagerly, elbows pressing down on the table as he leans a little closer towards you, awaiting to hear what opinion of yours he has to burden himself with changing. “Because we’ve been here for less than an hour and you’ve already been to the bathroom five times.”

“Harsh, sweetheart,” his lips kiss against his teeth, before stretching into a teasing grin. He’s not taking you seriously. “Didn’t know you had a thing against small bladders.”

“Don’t try bullshit your way out of this, James.”

“Now look who’s being cryptic-”

“You’re high.”

That shuts him up instantly.

The noise of the restaurant seems to double and pops the bubble surrounding you both. Conversations bleed into an amalgamation of unintelligible voices, cutlery scrapes against plates and grates at your ears, and footsteps fall like heavy weights on the floor.

Bucky is the first to clear his throat, eyelids suddenly looking a little heavier, like he’s hoping to conceal his blown-out pupils. “Let’s not go around throwing accusations, baby-”

“Oh so I just hallucinated you wiping powder off your nostril when you came back to the table?” Though you sit taller and more confident now than you have all evening, your skin crawls and you want to erase the weight of guilt that falls over you as you watch him shrink in on himself. “Next I assume you’re going to tell me your eyes aren’t bloodshot, I’m just colour blind.”

A sigh rips itself from his soul and tears into yours — and still you refuse to dampen the faux confidence in your features.

“Look, I know I’m an…” Bucky’s confessions is lost somewhere between his tongue and his teeth, voice faltering under the pressure of his jaw clenching shut. He swallows back whatever lump fills his throat. “But I’m working on it.”

“Working on it how? By sniffing up every last morsel until your dealer’s all dried up and has no bags left to sell you?” You may as well have reached over that table and slapped him, just like you had imagined doing, for Bucky flinches like you’ve actually wounded him. Worst of all, you don’t feel satisfied, you just feel pity. For both of you. “So, yeah, forgive me for not believing you can commit to me. From where I’m sitting, you seem pretty committed to cocaine.”

The night should end there.

You should throw a wad of cash on the table, wish him a happy way-too-fucking-early birthday, and storm out of the restaurant with that little bite of dignity still in your mouth.

Instead, you both eat in silence. You both drink in silence. You both drive back to his place in silence.

Past the threshold of double doors, the barrier of sound breaks around you both as Bucky let’s you put him in his place, eyes widened and bloodstream high on you instead of those thin white lines.

A necklace made of your hand tightened around his throat, your mouth around his cock, and the echo of his moans bouncing off the walls as you curl your fingers against his g-spot.

Just like Paris, you leave before he wakes, and tell yourself it won’t happen again.

The question haunts you from your phone screen in the back of a cab, as you wait to be delivered back to your apartment building without any wandering eyes noticing you.

instagram are you sure you want to block barnesonly?

You press ‘confirm’ and tell yourself this is the end of the story.

It takes three weeks for you to cave.

You do not do so at your own volition but, more aptly, your hand is forced. Mid-rehearsals, clothes stained in far too much sweat than the public would ever wish to see dripping off a popstar — you learned fairly quickly how pristine of an image the public expects you to have, heaven forbid you do something human like sweat!

Wiping at your brow with a towel and excusing yourself from Maria’s choreography instructions, you open up your phone to find an alarming text from Natasha.

nat-attack: What the fuck did you do? 13:17

Ominous.

Not exactly the kind of message you want to receive from your manager; even less the kind of message you want to receive from your best friend. Heartbeat in your throat, you barely register your thumbs typing out a response.

is this about the lead single? you said you liked it’s in the woods more than the other demo? 13:23

Natasha is typing before your message has even been delivered, striking another wave of panic through you. At this point, your heart is in your mouth and you are one shocking piece of news away from spitting it onto the dance-halls polished floors.

nat-attack: Barnes instagram story. Check it. 13:23

Your thumb hits N, and another chat bubble appears on the screen.

nat-attack: NOW. 13:24

So, really, you can’t be blamed for breaking your own rules. After all, Nat wanted to boss idiots around, and you are her idiot.

At the very least, you don’t unblock him, no. You do the far more mature, absolutely justifiable act of making a whole new account just to immediately type his user into the search bar. Low and behold, that familiar pink-hued ring sits snug around a picture of him behind his beloved drums, tempting you with the knowledge of whatever could possibly have Nat on the brink of killing you so early in the day. Finger shaking, you tap his icon and wait for his story to load.

Regret may be your oldest and dearest friend, for she wraps herself around you with so much familiarity, you have no choice but to embrace her back. The known discomfort is the only thing preventing you from crashing out in front of your entire team of dancers as you come to terms with the image staring back at you.

The most striking feature is the red lace. Bright and commanding attention, it sits atop a set of hips and peeks down into the space between two ass cheeks. The owner of the hips is standing out of frame, the top left corner of the screen filled with the expanse of a naked back and the tiniest hint of under-boob. That’s hardly the most eye-catching part of the image, however. The spotlight is all on him, one hand spread open along the faceless back while the other snaps the crass selfie of his bite sinking into flesh, carving out the shape of his teeth into one of the cheeks.

Jealousy is not the emotion overcoming you. It’s shame, red-hot and coursing through your veins, as you feel yourself sink back into the past.

A hotel room in London. A brand launch party you both wound up at. A bottle or two of tequila… And then the stumble through your door, his voice in your ear begging so sweetly that it eroded any willpower you possessed to say no.

Please baby, don’t get to see you enough. Want something to remember you by, while you’re off making me proud and performing for all those crowds. C’mon, lemme put you on film. Pinky promise I won’t share it. Can you do that, just f’me?

Well, Bucky Barnes is clearly a fucking liar. Because there he goes posting a screenshot of the moment right before he pulled that lace to the side and buried his tongue between your cheeks to an account of 34.8m followers. While, yes, there is not a single identifiable trace of you on the screen for any stranger to distinguish your identity, that red lace is enough for Natasha to know.

Note to self: Never buy matching lingerie with Nat. Ever again.

You push aside the voice that nitpicks, telling you it should be something more along the lines of Note to self: Never sleep with Bucky Barnes. Ever Again.

When in doubt, it’s time to pull out the tried and tested method of deny, deny, deny.

checked it. don’t see what’s so surprising about bucky barnes posting a raunchy picture. isn’t that guy forever being linked to new women? 13:31

Either you are the world’s greatest actress or Natasha Romanoff decides you’ve suffered enough for one day, because she drops the subject and never brings Barnes up again… Until a song drops.

This time, she phones you.

Three forty seven in the morning, eyes finally shut and sleep secured after a gruelling day in the studio, you’re torn from the relaxing plains of a dreamless night by the only ringtone that can strike both love and fear through your heart in as little as one ring. You pick up on the fourth, vision still blurry and mind still laying on the pillow as you shrug off the sheets and sit up in bed.

“Why am I being wakened by the woman who kicked me out the studio to get my quote-unquote much needed beauty sleep?”

“Be thankful I called,” Nat’s tone tells you she means business, clipped and entirely uninterested in the light-hearted mood you’re trying to set. Whatever has happened, you’re certifiably screwed. “Instead of breaking into your apartment and slapping you awake, like I originally planned.”

Settling in for what no doubt is about to be a long conversation, you throw your legs over the side of the bed and search blindly for your slippers. “Pray tell, what have I done this time to warrant such abuse from my best friend?”

“Oh no, don’t try sucking up to me right now, missy. Not when you’re the reason I’m about to go prematurely grey!” Oh no. Oh no. The fear of every god strikes through you, just as your feet slip into the fluffy warmth of your house-shoes. If there is anything Natasha Romanoff takes immense pride in — apart from her killer business instinct and that time she floored a man in a boxing ring — it’s the fiery shade of her beautiful hair. Heaven forbid you be the reason she looses it, you might as well start packing you bags to flee the country now. “What did I tell you about getting involved with Bucky Barnes?”

“That it would be like playing Russian Roulette but the bullet is an STD.”

“And what else?”

“That it would be a safety hazard on my image?”

You’ve made your way out into the kitchen, balancing the phone between your ear and your shoulder while two hands occupy themselves with filling the kettle. By the time you switch it on, Nat’s in your ear again.

“Oh, so you do listen when I speak!”

You wince, pulling the speaker back from your ear as she barks a little too loudly down the line. Despite the laid-back demeanour you are wrestling to uphold, an inevitable fear strikes through you. Has he posted more screenshots? The whole video? Surely not. Bucky is many things, but he’s not cruel enough to harass you with full-blown revenge porn just because you blocked him out of your life… Right?

“Nat, listen-”

“Oh! I’ve done enough listening, thank you!” You can picture her eye roll so clearly, it’s like she’s in the kitchen with you, standing by your fruit bowl and nervously peeling the skin off an orange to avoid digging her nails into something else — ie. your neck. “Barnes released a song.”

“O…Kay?” The kettle, now boiled, tilts and expels water into your mug, steeping the chamomile teabag. “I really don’t know why you’re keeping me updated on everything that guy does, I mean he’s basically a stranger to me-”

“Oh, a stranger? Is that why he tagged you as a feature on the song?”

Your grip on the mug falters and it smashes on the floor, hot tea splashing up your leg and over your foot. The reaction is instant, a slew of curses falling from your mouth as you hop over to the bathroom and throw yourself into the shower cubicle, pointing the shower head at your leg and switching on the tap. All the while Nat is in your ear, ire on the back-burner while worry overtakes her voice.

“Are you okay? That yelp was pretty loud-”

“Yeah. I think,” you hiss, the cold water soothing the burn momentarily before the sting multiplies and rouses tears in your eyes. “Maybe not? I think I might’ve just given myself a third degree burn.”

“Shit. Okay. I’ll be at yours in 10, okay? We’ll take you to the emergency room.”

“Okay. I’m sor-”

“And don’t apologise or so help me God, I’ll give you a different reason to visit the hospital”

Nat hangs up before you get the chance to apologise for apologising — a habit she might just kill you over one day. While you wait for her to arrive and let herself in, you do what you do best: self-sabotage.

By which, of course, means you open up the first streaming platform you can find, type in that bastard’s name, and click on the most recent song you can find.

The song has no real name, just a date. A date that conjures too much recognition in you to be a mere coincidence. Pair that with the way your name sits pretty next to Feat., and suddenly the pain of your leg is the least of your concerns.

After an initial listen, you feel your shoulders immediately relax: at no point is your voice featured in the track. Then, because you must have an unknown vendetta against your own sanity, you press play again and swear, up and down, that it has nothing to with the fact you’ve missed hearing his voice. On your third listen, you catch it.

Subtle, soft, smothered between layers of bass and background vocals. You swear you hallucinate it, until you slide the song back and let it replay. A familiar cry plays, one that has your thighs clenching, as it melds into words you’ve tasted one too many times.

Please… Touch me… Harder… Bucky.

You weren’t supposed to meet him at the band’s studio that day. You weren’t supposed to meet him at all, really.

A shitty day of press and a headache pounding against the walls of your skull, you shutdown his offer of a midnight rendezvous with the excuse of needing rest. Then he promised you rest and sent you the door number of his studio… What were you supposed to do? You were already in the Thunderbolt Records’ building, what difference did it really make if you went home to lay your head on a pillow, or if your went up a few flights of stairs to rest your head in his lap?

Bucky’s fingers carding through your hair while he worked away on new music had been enough to lull you to sleep. When you awoke, alone on the couch and with his jacket draped over your shoulders, you sat up to find him behind the glass of the studio, soundproofing preventing you from hearing whatever tempo he was banging at the drums. But at least you could see him.

Shirtless and sweat-slicked, the overgrown locks of his hair clung to his forehead. Transfixed by the twirling of sticks in his hand, you inched your way quietly over to the door, only to startle when his eyes found yours through the glass port and his hand beckoned you in.

C’mere, doll. Been waiting for you to wake up, got something I was hoping to give you.

Low and behold, ten minutes later you were perched in his lap, thighs brushing over either side of his waist, head resting on his shoulder while he kept you stuffed full of his cock.

Helps me concentrate better. Less likely to keep fucking up my takes if I know I get to cum in this sweet pussy as soon as I’m done.

Nothing if not helpful and desperate to aid a fellow musician in the pains of recording the same thing, over and over, it was through pure charity that you let yourself sink down atop him. He managed three failed attempts at recording, whines pouring off your lip and the clench of your cunt around him with every jolt of his foot playing the bass-drum, before he finally gave into both your debauched desires and traded banging the drums for banging you.

At the time, it didn’t seem to matter that the recording light was still on. But now, listening to the faintest layering of your own voice pleading for him, you wish you had just gone home that night.

By some miracle, you haven’t given yourself a third degree burn — it’s barely even first degree.

The miracle in question is just the fact you’re a giant baby with the pain tolerance of a thousand exposed nerves. He had made fun of you once for it, teasing you after you hit him with a million questions about all the ink decorating his arms and the countless loops of metal pierced through his skin.

You ever get the courage to get a tattoo, gonna need to make sure you take me with you, goldie. I’ll let you squeeze my hand, even if the needle’s not actually touched you yet.

While Bucky should not be at the forefront of your mind, again, life keeps finding a way to bring him forth. This time, it’s not by force of him scaring Nat into a state of panic, but by an overly-smiley interviewer bringing him up while you do your best to stand still and look pretty for the camera.

Wrapped in a dress so tight it’s hard to breath, it’s no wonder you have to ask her to repeat herself, mind numbed between trying to pose and trying not to pass out. When are they going to call lunch?

“You’ve mentioned a few times how you’re still new to fame,” her voice cuts through the sound of the head stylist yelling at an intern, a sight you’re struggling to stand idly by and watch. “You’ve been photographed with the members of Firing Stars and Umbreoni, and even the Uni! Big, big names. Most recently, James Barnes was cited claiming you two are friends. I mean, how does it feel to go from a small town artist to brushing shoulders with someone as big as James Barnes?”

The second time she says his name, it’s stressed, like she’s trying to remind you how much of a nobody you are compared to the likes of him. Maybe it’s the high-pitched voice, or the bright lipstick on her lips, or maybe it’s just the fact you’ve spent too long quietly letting Bucky prod and poke at you as you continue to ignore his existence, but something vengeful in you snaps.

“Oh, he’s not that big. Average, if I’m being generous- Oh!” The surprise on your face is disingenuous, but the interviewer’s not even paying enough attention to notice, pen scribbling away at something in her notepad. Good, let her quote you. Hopefully the magazine will land itself in Bucky’s lap and he can get a nice slice of humble pie… Even if the pie is baked in lies. “Sorry, you mean big as in famous and not… My bad!”

It’s amazing how much people are willing to dismiss if you just giggle and shoot them a ditsy smile.

Things fall into place, like puzzles pieces at last reuniting with each other, and life feels good again.

In November, you release a new single. It hits number one on the charts.

In December, you announce a new album, set to release in June, Born With Anger — though you’ve been calling it BWA for short.

In January, you bag a 2 week break. Instead of home, you head south for a girls’ trip, and drag Natasha and your new assistant, Kate, with you.

In February, you find yourself entangled in your first real scandal. Unknowingly photographed on a late night walk with an actor friend, you wind up the front page of every gossip blog and TikTok page.

And then, in March, reality finally knocks on your door.

You originally have no intention of answering, snuggled into a blanket on your couch and watching The Princess Bride for what could easily be the hundredth time in your life. The sound echoes off the oak-wood door and you sink deeper into your comfort in protest, hoping that, if you wrap the dark grey fluff around you tight enough, whoever is at your door will slip away with the night and leave you be.

But the knock comes again. And again. And again.

It does not grow more frantic, nor does it grow louder, yet it affects you more each time, grating on your ears until you’re practically slapping the pause button, tossing the blanket aside, and marching over to your apartment door with one thing in mind: a very unpleasant fuck-off.

The door handle hits the wall with a thud and you prepare yourself to chew out whatever idiot decided it would be a good idea to disturb your peace at nearly two in the morning… Only to freeze the moment he melts into you.

“There’s my golden girl.”

Throwing himself forward in a trust-fall, Bucky cushions himself in your arms as you open them for him, a knee-jerk reaction to his body barrelling towards you. It’s been months since you last saw him, and the first thing you notice is the layer of red hair peaking out beneath the usual mess of dark brown.

Actually, it hasn’t been months since you last saw him.

The last time you really saw him was two weeks ago, his sharp jaw and bright eyes projected onto a number of screens while you stood in the artists’ tent of a festival. The Howling Commandos were headlining the very same stage as you had the night before, a feat which Bucky had no problem reminding you and the crowd of as they approached the final quarter of their set, his voice cutting in over the mic for the first time all night, greeted with a wave of screaming fans.

‘Fore we close this night out, I just wanna give a little shout-out to a special someone. She was amazing on this stage last night, and I just need her to know I couldn’t be any prouder. I don’t know if she’s in the crowd tonight, so I need you guys to sing as loud as you can so we can make sure she hears it, no matter where she is. This next song goes out to my golden girl.

If you didn’t have Clint dragging you out to the Flock & Feather’s after-party, you likely would have caved and unblocked him that night. Or, worse, waited for him backstage.

But now he’s here, dripping rain water onto your doormat and hiding his face in your neck. The tip of his nose is cold as it drags along your skin, but his hands are warm as they haphazardly rub your back at the first shiver that runs down it.

“Miss you,” he speaks so softly, you’re unsure of who he’s trying to not scare away: you or himself. “So much. Keep havin’ these dreams where you’re laying next to me and I make you happy.”

Longing unloads on you with no warning. Like a soda bottle shaken one too many times, someone has at last unscrewed the lid and a mess now lies — both in it’s wake and in your arms.

You drag him inside, trying your best to manoeuvre you both while being mindful to not slam the door. It’s late, after all, and your upstairs neighbours have a kid. As soon as you twist the lock, you’re pulling back from Bucky, only for him to chase after you with immediacy, head shaking in the crook of your neck.

“James-” You try to adopt a serious tone, but it falters the moment he interrupts you.

“Please don’t,” he pleads like a man begging for life, for respite, for salvation. The hands around your back are suddenly clinging onto your shirt, pulling you tighter against him. “Don’t send me away. Just… Let me be here, be yours, for the night.”

When silence persists from you, pensive as you shuffle a few steps further into your apartment with the hunk of muscles around you matching each step, Bucky attempts one last ditched effort.

“It’s my birthday. Don’t make me spend it alone.”

Not even a man made of the mythical metal known as Vibranium — from the world renowned fantasy series, Wildflowers and Vibraniun — could resist such a request, and so you let Bucky stay.

You don’t tell him with words, opting to instead wrap your arms around him. The embrace lasts for minutes, hours, as long as he needs it to. Hearts beat towards one another, magnets at last reunited through layers of cotton and flesh. His shoulders shake, every inhale a gust of wind against his fragile hold on reality. And all the while you bite your tongue, and ignore the fact that he stinks of alcohol, that his hands are shaky against your waist, that his eyes are more pupil than iris.

“Come on,” you whisper, two hands cupping his cheeks and finally getting a proper look at his face. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

The bathwater is warm but not scalding, the perfect temperature for Bucky to sink his aching limbs into — with the help of you, both hands holding his frame steady through his descent into the tub.

All plans of watching the rest of your movie are abandoned as you settle down on the tiled floor, back pressed against the wall and arms folded over your knees. It pains you to see him like this, as much as you try to will yourself to not care. His head is tilted back against the porcelain basin, eyes shutting out the offensively bright light, and his breathing keeps exploding out of him in heavy puffs of air, rippling the water as his chest bobs up and down.

Bucky Barnes is too beautiful for his own good, otherwise someone would have slapped him silly and told him to clean up his act by now… Or has he just not listened? God knows you tried to tell him, in your own vengeful, messy way.

“Think it finally dawned on me,” the words are soft-spoken, carefully put out into the space between you both.

“What did?” You call back to him, feet skating a little closer to the end where his head lays, hunching over your legs as your back unsticks from the wall.

“Why you don’t wanna be with me.”

Out of all the things you expected him to bring up, that was not one of them.

A part of you assumed he had moved on from his conquest of turning you both into something serious. A part of you had hoped he did, for his sake as much as your own. Months of no contact should have been enough to let the concept of you and Bucky disappear, a fantasy long faded into dust-particles and blown away with the winds of winter.

But now Bucky is inside your apartment, naked and high as a kite in your bath tub, and his eyes are reopening to pin you with a look so saturated in affection, you feel yourself ache. For him, for yourself, for both of you.

“You’re too good for me.” He doesn’t speak in search of pity, voice steadfast as he watches you from the tub, calm and collected, entirely decided in the stance he’s taken. You, on the other hand, have tears kissing your lashes and are dragging yourself a few inches further up the length of the tub. “Can’t let you be another thing I ruin.”

Whatever higher power sent him stumbling to your door tonight has not sent you the James Barnes you love to hate; the abrasive man with too many leather pants for a man of his age and an ego inflated through the roof. Instead, you sit face to face with something realer than you’ve seen of him before; a man stitched together by misery and mistakes, blinking back sadness before it can pour down his cheeks. His face is tired, his shoulders heavy, and his soul is infected with desperation.

No longer is James Barnes hungry with lust, but haunted by it. Hunted by it, prey to the very thing he predates with.

You reach for him with a sigh, only to falter and let your touch fall upon the tub’s edge, “You wouldn’t ruin me, Buck. ‘M not that fragile.”

“But you are that precious,” Bucky shifts, bending at the waist and sitting up in the bath. The movement causes a ripple effect that leads to water pouring over the the side of the tub, wetting your fingers and the floor. “Just wish I was the kinda man who knew how to treat you right.”

Then be that guy. For me. You can practically taste the words in your mouth, feel your tongue moulding to their shape, readying yourself to speak. Bucky continues before you get the chance.

“I know you don’t wanna be on my mind. I’ve tried forcing you out of it,” the bath water moves with him, dripping off the arm he reaches out for you with. Pruned fingers lock around your wrist and remind you, for the first time in months, what it feels like to be touched, handled, cradled. He guides your fingers away from the porcelain edge and over towards him. “But I don’t know how to get you out of here.”

Bucky presses your hand to his chest and it’s like a knife has been shoved in your own, twisted for extra measure before promptly being ripped out and leaving you to bleed to death. There’s insistence in the way he holds you against him, his larger hand clutching your own even tighter against him. His heartbeat dances against your palm, singing your name.

You can’t remember when you turned fully toward him, but suddenly your knees are bumping against the body of the tub.

“Can you tell me how, baby? Wanna do at least something right by you,” he’s come to you weak and defeated, a warrior trading in his sword and commanding you to drive it through him. “I thought seeing you with someone else would help. I don’t usually have the patience for jealousy. But… God, doll, when I saw those stories about you and Walker… Well, you’re looking right at my reaction, went out and got a hold of the first bag I could find.”

If you weren’t so afraid of hearing it falter, you would use your words to plead for his silence.

If Bucky were any more sober, you would slap him across the face.

The guilt unweighed atop of you is enough to suffocate, to bury you alive, six feet deep in a well of shame and blame. How dare he insinuate you are a cause of his addiction, a vehicle through which he turns to rot himself into a living corpse? Selfish, cruel, inconsiderate. All the big words one can pin onto rock legend James Barnes come flying back to the forefront of your mind, pickaxes that chip away at the empathy crystallizing around your heart.

And, then Bucky — sweet, pitiful, human Bucky — drags your hand up to his mouth and places the softest kiss against your fingers, “I love you.”

His eyes are two black pinholes, staring at parts of you that you do not even recognise, watching as you lay your head down on the porcelain edge and let the sleeve of your cardigan soak itself as you reach for his other hand. He looks at you like any ordinary man would look at the dawn, like a new day and a new life has begun simply because you have returned the light to him at last, after six months of darkness.

Beneath the buzzing of a bathroom light, with one hand pressed to his mouth and the other nestled between the spaces of his scarred knuckles, you want nothing more than to be his Sun, to soothe his worries with the warmth of rays, to truly become his golden girl. But your lips part and the words won’t come out.

“Don’t need you to say it back,” Bucky peppers a few more pecks over your palm, laying your fingers flat on his cheek. Days old stubble scratches at your skin and takes you back to simpler times between you both, where feelings had not yet been addressed and relationships had not been denied. There was no mess to be cleaned up back then; just you, perched on his bathroom sink, and Bucky standing between your legs as you dragged a razor over his cheek and left him rocking the kind of goatee only an 80s porno movie would dare curse the world with. “I’m stubborn enough to love you anyway.”

In an ideal world, you both stumble to bed that night as lovers do.

Bucky pulls you into his arms, you stake claim over his skin as a place to rest your head, while he marks his territory with a kiss to your forehead and a sigh of your name. Not even in sleep do you depart each others side, using one another as life jackets to wade through the dark sea of unconsciousness. When morning comes, eyes reopen to find one another and blink back longing stares that spill I missed yous down your features. He reminds you that he loves you, and you return the favour at last, and life is finally good again.

But, in the real world, you lay restless in your own bed while Bucky drools against your shoulder. And you wake before him to reach for his phone. And you watch him stumble out of your bedroom with Tony Stark dragging him by the scruff of his neck, cursing at him to ‘Get your act together, Barnes, or I’ll have you kicked out the band.’

By April, you no longer pay attention to the headlines you make, too busy focusing on his.

James Barnes, drummer of ‘The Howling Commandos’, checks into rehab.

The world comes crashing down on a Friday.

Or, at least that’s how it feels.

Like any and every woman in the industry, there comes a point where the general public decides they are no longer comfortable with your success. You have surpassed the sell-by date slapped onto you by them, and now it is time to tear you off the pedestal they mounted you upon.

All it takes is one post to turn the tides and, overnight, you go from most beloved to most despicable; from proof anyone can achieve their dreams to just another industry plant being shoved onto everybody’s screen.

Natasha had warned you before you even got the chance to stumble upon it.

nat-attack: Look, this happens. We were expecting it. I know it’s tempting to check, but stay off your phone while this passes. Once the album drops, they’ll be back to loving you, trust me. 07:52

Clint was next in line, not to warn you but to distract you.

clit: the barton family are heading out to a spa retreat this weekend, wanna join? we have room for one more in the car. 08:33

Even the CEO of Thunderbolt reached out to you, albeit not to comfort but inform you of news.

The Boss Man: Due to the current circumstances, myself and your team have agreed it is in your best interest to stay offline. Kate Bishop will continue to run your socials, though we have changed the passwords in an effort to ensure you do not engage in the wave of hate. Take care of yourself. See you at next month’s meeting. Kind regards, J.B.B. 08:47

When Bucky doesn’t reach out, you have to remind yourself that it’s your own doing, that his number is still blocked.

No matter how many loving messages you receive, however, that doesn’t stop you from spiralling. Now, three days after the shit-storm began, you’re sprawled over your mattress — instagram opened with the very same account you had used to check Bucky’s story — scrolling through the comments of your most recent post.

stopthepop not to be that person but i never got the hype abt her anyway

sunflowerrrs her music isn’t deep, her fans just salivate at mediocrity 😭

superbassbuck you guys are literally sheep, hating on her just because the rest of internet decided to. smh, get a fucking life.

mornpony okay so can we now address how she’s so male centred??? idk, i just find it weird that she’s always singing about a man.

opheliabbarnes @mornpony wtf do you want her to sing about, the sociopolitical state of the world? she’s a popstar! hop off her dick, you freak.

iamthatonefangirl hi, i just wanted to say i’m really looking forward to your next album. you’re amazing, please don’t let the hate get to you x

biscu1t55 idk the music’s just kind of mid, innit

lilcherubbutt cant dance, cant sing, no stage presence, body not tea, and this is who you guys stan?

54nboo @lilcherubbutt i’m exploding you with my mind rn.

juniebjonesin i have a g*n, girl. let me know if you need me to use it on any of these weirdos/j, but also srs

The phone drops out your hand as a loud noise startles you. Two seconds pass, and then it happens again, enticing you out of bed and into the living room.

Deja-vu slaps you over the head as you approach the front door, a third knock already landing against the wood as you twist the key and hesitantly open the door, expecting to meet Nat and 21 questions on why you’ve been dodging her calls.

Instead, there’s just him, carrying a smile and a bouquet of poppies.

Bucky is far from the man that left your apartment all those months ago. There is a brightness in his eyes, no longer weighed down by exhaustion nor widened by drugs. His hair is perfectly styled, not damp from rain nor messed by fingers. The clothes he wears are clean, the shoes he wears are polished, and if it weren’t for the nose ring and the lick of ink poking out from his sweater, you’d almost think this was Bucky Barnes secret, unrockified twin.

But no, it’s him, in the flesh and more present in his own body than you’ve ever seen him. Rehab has clearly served its intended purpose. Too much pride and a wounded ego intercept you telling him as much.

You settle for a question injected with sarcasm, yet fully intend for the grin you stretch across your cheeks to come off as sincere,“Did your assistant pick those out too?”

“This was all me. Had to scour through my payment history,” he waves the bouquet, too focused on you to notice the red petal falling to the floor. “Wanted to make sure I got your favourite ones.”

The admission is what undoes you.

Your lips falter, the mask slips off your face, and the dam breaks.

Like a dying star, you implode. Your arms collapse around your waist, embracing you as though they possess any chance of holding the frame of you together. You feel a sob lurch from somewhere deep within and your knees begin to buckle, only for Bucky to catch your fall.

The plastic wrapping around the flowers crinkles as he brings you in against him, enveloping you in the safety of a steady figure. The door clicks quietly shut, his foot nudging it into place while he guides you through the perilous waves of distress rolling over you, threatening to pull you under.

In the span of 3 months, nothing and everything has changed: you both still stand in the entryway of your apartment, locked in comfort, yet it is now him who has become the lighthouse, the bright light to guide you to the safety of shore.

“I got you, goldie,” you feel the unmistakable pressure of his lips meeting the crown of your head and soften deeper into his hold, nose pushing against the smell of clean cotton and fresh aftershave. Had he gotten himself all dressed up, just to see you? “Been missing you so damn much, you know that? My notebook’s getting sick of me scribbling down songs about you.”

Your unwilling response is another sob, hiccuping out of you as a hand soothes up your spine, a rhythm so gentle you feel yourself longing to sway to it.

Much to your surprise, Bucky doesn’t hush you, doesn’t tell you to bottle it all back inside.He just holds you against him and let’s you spill it all onto his sweater. The stress, the anxiety, the self-pity. Everything that has stolen bites out of your sanity these past few days is finally spewing it’s teary guts out.

“Think you can do me a favour?” Bucky asks, another kiss engraved onto your skin. This one meets the space between your eyes. You nod, voice still thick with emotion. “Pack your bag, wanna take you somewhere.”

Somewhere turns out to be New York.

A six hour flight and a cab ride spits you out onto a street in Brooklyn. You barely find the time to notice if any fellow travellers fixate a camera lens on either of you, attention placed solely in the palm of Bucky’s hand as he entwines it with yours. Clasped in his other hand is your duffel bag, packed in a blurry hurry and with no real clue of what he intended to do with you.

Even now, following him up a set of steps like a loyal disciple, you have no real clue what stands behind the door he raps his knuckles against. Like he can smell the nervous energy, he trades your hand for your jaw, cradling it in his hold and inflating his lips with a reassuring smile.

“Relax, they don’t bite,” he punctuates it with a kiss against your forehead, lips lingering long enough for you jolt back in surprise when hinges creak open.

On the other side stands an older woman, with hair a stylish shade of ash and the kind of glint in her eye that screams of a mischievous youth. She smells of plum wine and home-cooked meals, and joy pours out of her pores like a fountain, promising to drench you in the feeling.

“James!” The woman wastes no time in pulling him down into her embrace.

“Hey ma,” He hugs her back, mindful of the bag still in his grasp. “Where’s pa?”

“Kitchen,” she responds, both hands rubbing over his back with the affection only a mother’s love could possibly conjure. “I locked him in there, he can come out once he’s done mashing the potatoes.”

“We’ve been over this, you can’t keep confining him. One o’ these days, he’s gonna call the cops on you!” The laugh the pair share is infectious, seeping into you and forcing a giggle to shake through your own frame. You regret it immediately, as both faces turn towards where you stand, four eyes as blue as the ocean pinning you beneath their stare. Bucky clears his throat, “I brought a guest.”

The past two years of performing for the faceless masses, of walking down carpets in heels that threaten your balance, of ripping out the loose threads of your soul and stitching them together into music… It all amounts to nothing when you meet the spotlight of her gaze.

“I mean, if that’s okay,” squirming slightly where you stand, you shift your weight from one leg to another and give your best attempt at a sheepish smile. “I don’t want to intrude.”

Bucky and his mother exchange a look, something unintelligible passing between them, information shared through nothing but a glance. And then, before you can brace yourself for impact, you’re enveloped in her arms.

“Don’t be silly,” she says, soothing your back with the very same affection she’d given her son. “There’s always room at our table.”

Muscles freed from a tension you’ve been holding in for who knows how long, you catch the wink Bucky shoots you over her shoulder, only for the peaceful exchange on the doorstep to be interrupted by an excited squeal.

“Uncle Bucky!”A blur of motion throws itself at him, and emerges in Bucky’s hold as a young boy — who has paired the superheroes of his Earth’s Mightiest Benders shirt with a plastic tiara.

“Well if it isn’t the birthday boy,” Bucky secures an arm beneath his nephew, letting the boy dangle his legs on either side of his waist, and straightens the crown atop the boy’s head. “D’you wanna tell my friend what big age you’re turning, Jamie?”

Made aware of your presence, Jamie takes barely a glance your way before he’s hiding his face in his uncle’s neck, the tips of his little ears blushing red.

Bucky chuckles as his nephew mumbles something you don’t quite catch, face full of affection as he looks at you, “You’re right, kiddo. She is very pretty.”

The Barneses welcome you in with open arms, full plates, and absolutely no questions. With Bucky on your right and his sister on your left, you slot seamlessly into the family. Smiles and side plates are passed over a table of seven, while music and laughter play on in the background.

Time passes slowly. Dinner transitions into a game night, hours spent with cards in hand, and Charade prompts, and the warmth of Bucky’s fingers drawing patterns over your knee. By the end of the night, your legs are sprawled over his lap alongside his nephew, who stakes claim of his left shoulder… So much so that, at one point, Bucky leans down to whisper in your ear, “Think you’re gonna have to cut this arm off’a me, goldie. Jamie’s showing no signs of letting go.”

When the wine comes out and the birthday boy begins to snore, sheltered safely beneath the blanket of Bucky’s tattooed arm, you find the courage to check your phone. Of all the missed calls and unanswered messages, the only one that captures your attention is the link to an article, sent by none-other than your endearing little stress-head.

nat-attack: www.rosesaintsnews.com/A-Pop-Rock-Romance-:-James-Barnes-Spotted-Hand-in-Hand-With-It-Girl 19:51

nat-attack: Are you being HBB? 19:52

am i what?! 22:17

nat-attack: Held By Barnes. HBB. 22:19

of all the things you decide to abbreviate in text… you choose that? 22:24

nat-attack: It irks me to type his name. 22:27

nat-attack: But I guess I have to thank him for finally getting a response from you. Have fun, be safe, use protection! Or… are you just BB tonight? 22:29

you can’t just keep inventing shit and expecting me to understand. 22:48

nat-attack: Blowing Barnes, BB. Get with the program. 23:01

It’s not until after ‘goodbyes’ are bid and you find yourself staring up at the ceiling of Bucky’s childhood bedroom, a comforter clutched around your tired limbs and the steady sound of his breathing filling the room, that your voice crawls out of your throat.

“Your mom’s really nice,” you’re hesitant to speak too loud, afraid to wake him from any possible slumber. You hear movement from the floor — despite your insistence on sharing, he had stressed there wasn’t enough space on the twin bed and took up residency atop a blow-up mattress — and use it as your queue to keep talking. “Your whole family is, actually.”

“They’re pretty great,” you can hear the smile in his voice and finally drag your eyes down from the ceiling.

Moonlight has slipped through the cracks of curtains, casting a blueish glow around the room. The walls are a mess, scrap-art in the form of magazine clippings and band posters. Not even the closet is safe, decorated with scribbled lyrics and the names of Bucky’s favourite bands. A baby-sized drum kit takes up space on the left side of the bed — where several guitars and a bass hang from the wall — while the right side sports a nightstand housing a collage of photographs from Bucky’s earliest years, and the presence of the air-mattress. Who would ever think that, tucked away in the suburbs of New York, sits a time-capsule of rock-legend James Barnes’ childhood?

Just the thought of it is enough to rouse melancholy you possess no ownership of, an imposter staking claim over somebody else’s memories.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bucky speaks up, tearing you away from the tears threatening your eyes. “How am I such a screw up, when I come from a family like that?”

Your thoughts sound so sinful aloud, invasive in a way you have always denied yourself of being when it comes to Bucky, “I’m sorry-”

“Don’t be. You deserve to know,” the mattress sighs beneath him as he rolls over onto his side, elbow digging into it as he props his head up. Shadows dance over his silhouette, mimicking the blinking of his lashes and exaggerating the sharpness of his nose. You follow suit and roll over, gazing down at him from the bed-frame. “There’s no big story, though. Just… A kid who got to live out his wildest dreams, and then crashed and burned in the middle of it. The band, we blew up so fast, so young, we didn’t really have the time to process it. One minute, we were playing for our high school prom, the next minute we’re on a world tour.”

You bite your tongue, swallow down the urge to confess how you went to one of their shows. How it was your first ever concert. How you stood in the crowd, gazing up at the man behind the drum kit, and fell in love with the thought of pursuing music.

Now is not the time.

You’ll tell him someday, in the future.

“The first time I tried it was at an after party. I was barely even drinking age, and I was surrounded by my idols. There was no hope in hell that I was about to refuse when one of them offered me a line,” Bucky laughs, like the story is funny and not devastating. Barbwire made of anger wraps itself around your heart, ripping it open with every contraction and letting the feeling fester throughout your bloodstream as you picture a bright-eyed, blank-canvas, younger Bucky being corrupted with something as rotten as addiction at the reckless hands of his heroes. “Then it just became a way to stay awake. Keep up the rockstar image, you know? Far as I was concerned, I could quit at any point… Did I ever tell you I’m an idiot?”

This time, you are the one that laughs, a choked out noise that you muffle into the pillow beneath your head, “I’ve definitely called you one.”

“‘Course you have, goldie,” he inches closer, nearing the edge of his makeshift mattress. “Thankfully I met the sweetest, smartest girl, who could knock me on my ass with the truth. Wouldn’t have wound up in rehab, otherwise… I thought about you in there.”

Head shooting up in shock, you somehow find the blue of his eyes in the unlit room, “You did?”

“Why’re you so surprised? I always think about you.”

A lump makes itself at home in your throat. Heavy, noted, emotion filled, “Oh.”

Bucky speaks so plainly, no gimmick or hidden agenda in his voice, that you have no choice but to believe him, believe that there is a tab open in his mind that forever features you, in moving colour and perfect memory. The revelation brings forth your own realisation that he is there too, in your mind, like a melody that plays on repeat in your head.

“There’s this thing in rehab, part of the road to sobriety, where you have to right your wrongs,” Bucky picks back up where he left off, distracting you before the balloon of emotions swelling in your chest gets the chance to explode. “I know I’ve given you more wrongs than you can count, so let me just start with the most recent. That night, what I told you in your apartment-”

“Don’t even mention it, Buck. Water under the bridge, okay? I know you weren’t in the right state of mind, saying things you didn’t really mean-”

“I meant it. Still do,” how is he even closer than before? If you wanted to, you could reach down and touch his face. Or his arm. Or his hand, intertwine it with yours and tug him up onto the single-bed. “I shouldn’t have told you. Not like that. It was selfish of me, knowing that you’re not- That you don’t feel that.”

You fall silent and the room fills with his breathing again.

Sinking back down onto the pillow, your eyes meet the ceiling once more. Sleep entices you, promising you safety and freedom from the pressure on your chest, the waver of your heartbeat, the ache in your soul that calls for no other but him to soothe it.

Those four letters take shape above your head, looming over you like a threat. Love. A nightmare on display in your waking hours. It terrifies you into a state of freeze, with nowhere left to run, and leaves you in the direct sight of your assailant, primed and readied to be consumed.

“It’s not that I don’t feel it, I just-” the hitch in your voice is unexpected, forcing you to pause. You find strength in the soft hum that leaves Bucky, followed by another squeak of his mattress deflating beneath his body. “I didn’t grow up in a home like yours… My parents, they, uh- They should’ve gotten divorced. But they loved me too much.”

Something cuts through Bucky’s inhale, strangling the descent of oxygen as he listens to you. In the dark of the night, you find yourself in a confession booth, spilling your guilt out your mouth for a faceless, forgiving figure by your side, who makes no attempt to interrupt yet reassures you of his presence with minute signs of life.

“They thought they were doing me a favour, keeping the family unit together, under one roof. And all it done was hurt me,” the sting in your eyes has grown too great for you to continue ignoring, and so you are forced to finally blink, only to send a tidal wave of hot tears pouring down your face and onto the pillow. “I was a kid but I wasn’t stupid. I saw it when I would sleep at my friends’ houses, how their parents looked at each other, spoke to each other, cared for each other. Then I would go home to snarky comments from my mother and lipstick stains on my father’s collar. All they wanted was to do what they thought was best for me, and even if they made themselves miserable in the process… I don’t want to end up like that. I can’t.”

Bucky cuts in, when the time is right and your voice has faltered, “What about now?”

“Now?” You echo back to him, wiping a hand over your wet cheek as a sniffle leaves your nose. “My dad passed a few years ago. My mom is getting remarried, next fall, and she’s happy. Happier than I’ve ever seen her.”

“I make a surprisingly good impression on parents,” he proclaims, so seriously that you can’t help scoffing in humour. Outside, a stranger beeps their horn, obnoxiously loud and prolonged. In the quiet of the bedroom, it feels like the firing of a starter’s gun, marking the beginning of a race — instead of running from Bucky, maybe it’s time to start running towards him. “Just, y’know, if you’re needing someone to keep you company at the wedding.”

“My mom already likes you. She’s a howler, or whatever your fans call themselves,” you sigh at the thought, turning on your side to face him again, one arm slipping under the pillow while the other drifts towards the edge of the bed. You swallow down hesitation, blink back tears, and mentally fall back into the confession booth, “I just wish my dad got that… To move on, be happy, instead of forcing himself to stay in a loveless marriage. Instead of spending the end of his life trapped and unhappy, all because of me-”

“Hey, no, none of that,” he takes the first step onto the field, it seems, his touch landing atop your outstretched hand and anchoring you in him before guilty thoughts get the chance to sweep you out to sea. “They were the adults, you were the kid. Them sticking things out for you, even if it did make them unhappy, that’s not your burden to bare. You hear me? Their misery was not your fault.”

You’ve lost all the willpower to fight off the sickness of emotions, burrowing yourself into his blankets and clutching your fingers around his own. No matter how tight you squeeze, he does not falter; he simply continues soothing his thumb over your knuckles and holding what little he can reach from mattress of the floor.

“I bet your parents woke up everyday thankful that, despite all their problems, at least you exist,” his voice delivers you into the arms of exhaustion, letting it envelop you for the night as you shift a little closer to the edge of the bed and pull your interlocked hands against your beating chest. “Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve done the same.”

The sleep is dreamless and swift; the kind that feels like a blink and then you’re awake again, eyes opening to find your hands still intertwined while he brushes an eyelash from your cheek with the other.

Fully clothed and ready for the day, Bucky leans over your sleeping figure and greets you with a smile, “Come on, sleepyhead, time to get up.”

Eyes squinting to block out the golden sun, haloing him from behind, you groan and hide your face in the pillow, “What time is it?”

“Early, but I told you, goldie,” he lands a kiss on your naked shoulder, sharing affection as casually as he had passed you the salt at the table last night. “Got someplace I wanna take you.”

“What the hell is this?”

“This,” Bucky, having almost flown over the car bonnet to open you door, slams it shut behind you. “Is the first thing I bought after the band got big.”

Stones crunch beneath feet as you both begin the ascent up a driveway. Before you lays a villa, made up of brown bricks, arched windows, and overgrown ivy. A dock sits outstretched on the left side of the house, leading out onto a lake filled with crystalline waters and a family of ducks. Up a staircase of dark wood sits a porch, circling the entirety of the house and decorated by several plant pots and a swing-chair fit for two.

In short, the building looks like something plucked right out of a fairytale or an animated movie. You half expect someone to open one of the windows and leave a homemade pie out to cool on the ledge.

Without even noticing, your jaw has gone slack, lips parting as you take in the sight of the building. Fingers, less calloused after months of relaxation and rehabilitation, draw a line over the side of your face before finding purchase under your chin and easing your mouth closed.

Out of force of habit, Bucky’s thumb brushes over your bottom lip, dragging it down with just enough pressure for it to spring back into place when his thumb releases it.

The action is familiar, something he’s done time and time again in the throes of pleasure — taking you from behind with one arm hooked over your torso, pinning you flush against him and tweaking at your nipples, while the other one pries open your lips and readies you to receive an offering from his mouth, spit dripping down like syrup onto your tongue.

It lingers between you, gazes meeting with an unspoken understanding: you are both recalling the ways you used to exchange body heat, the way neither of you has touched the other in half a year. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows back whatever thoughts are swirling behind the storms of his eyes, and takes the initiative to move two steps back; de-invading your space and allowing the cold breeze to fall over your skin.

“Well,” bringing his hand up, Bucky brushes back a handful of hair and devastates you with the sight of one strand falling perfectly over his forehead, framing the art that is his face. “Do you want the house tour?”

The house is more furnished than you expect.

Not with sharply cut and oddly shaped pieces plucked out of a home-decor magazine, worth so much money it feels wrong to do anything other than stare at them. No, the home is a fusion of comfort and style: a living room centred by an antique fireplace, a bathroom adorned with a row of rubber ducks along the tub, a dining room where the sun beams in and warms the table, a hallway filled with knick-knacks. Despite the dust and the cobwebs, the house feels lived in, feels like a home.

It’s in the kitchen that you’re stunned into silence, coming to a halt and forcing poor Bucky to stumble into you as a gasp tumbles out your mouth. Between the double-door fridge, the speckled marble counter-tops, the colourful azulejo designed tiles lining the wall, and the breakfast bar facing out onto the lake, you hardly know what to begin looking at first.

So you settle for none and instead spin around to face Bucky.

“Please tell me that you brought me here to hand over the keys so I can live here for the rest of my life.”

He coughs out a chuckle, taking hold of your shoulder to manoeuvre you both out of the doorway and fully into the room, explaining along the way that, “You’re welcome to stay, goldie, but that’s not why I brought you here.”

With an exasperated sigh, which you conjure up with the acting skills you honed after a 2 week stint in your school’s drama club, you cave and finally ask: “Then, why did you bring me here?”

Your question is met with a shrug, at first, as Bucky drifts away from your side. Strolling the length of the kitchen, he wipes a hand over the marble surface before finally coming to a pause, leaning back against the counter, pinning you beneath his interrogative stare, and crossing his arms over his chest.

Goddamn it, his arms look great, threatening the cotton prison of the faded Metallica shirt wrapped around them.

“Figured you could use a distraction,” he clears his throat, and you wonder if you’re making the great James Buchanan Barnes nervous. “I know things can get… Ugly, when the world turns against you overnight. Guess I didn’t want you resorting to any of my bad habits. So, when I got the approval from Nat, I decided to go fetch you and drag you away from the epicentre of the chaos, take you as far away from that part of our lives as I could get you.”

As obvious as it should have been, your mind finally begins to connect the dots: travelling to the opposite coast, surrounding you in the domesticity of his family, dragging you out to the middle of nowhere and showing you a personal gem he keeps hidden away from the public.

Every tiny action in the past twenty-four hours or so has been perfectly curated to get your mind away from the anarchy against your name taking place online.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Then don’t, cause I don’t want you to,” Bucky shifts, body turning as his eyes follow you through the room while you approach the breakfast bar. “Told you right from the start, you’re Thunderbolt’s golden girl. As much as you may want to, you can’t just let yourself rust.”

Compliments sometimes feel as difficult of a mountain to climb as that pesky L word, which is why you choose to run from the sincerity in his voice and instead turn the conversation onto him.

“How come you have this place? Is it like, a vacation home? Or-” Mock-shock in the form of an outraged cry, you widen your eyes and do your best impression of disgust. “Don’t tell me you’re the devil incarnate… Don’t tell me you’re a landlord, Barnes!”

“You’ve been spending too much time with that actor o’ yours, y’know that?” Your confusion at his statement is kicked to the curb instantly, as Bucky proceeds to explain. “Our parents told us to choose our first big spend wisely, to make it something we would remember. Where Steve bought himself a guitar, and Ava went out and spent pennies on getting her tongue pierced, I bought this place. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but I wasn’t really in a rush to move in. Now, I’m just… Waiting, I guess.”

“For what?”

“You’re not aloud to laugh, okay? You’ve given my ego enough lashings through the years,” if anyone else were to say such a thing, a sickly kind of guilt would overcome you. Instead, watching a wicked grin bleed onto his face has you matching it with your own, a girlish giggle squirming it’s way up your throat. Hands up as a quiet sign of your surrender, Bucky confesses, “A family. That’s why I bought it, wanted to find someone and spend the rest of our lives living under a roof I earned with the one good thing I’ve done in my life: music.”

Visions of a life flash before your eyes: children running through the kitchen, evenings spent curled up by the fireplace, swimming through the lake in summer and skating atop it during winter. It’s nothing you ever imagined yourself wanting, yet it clenches around your heart like an iron fist.

And then you spot the wall. A tiny bump of a foundational pillar, jutting out from beside the grandiose window.

“My dad used to mark my height against a wall in our kitchen. He said he was keeping a visual record, to remind himself one day of how far I’ve come from the little girl throwing tantrums before bedtime,” It isn’t often that you manage a full sentence about your father without a pinch in your voice, yet this time you muster a smile as you brush your fingertips against the pillar. “This would be a good spot to measure height, right? We could even-”

“No. You can’t do that.” You almost jump out of your skin, turning to find him no longer leaning against the kitchen but right at your back, towering over your figure and just about caging you between the pillar and the sunshine piercing through the glass. Bucky shakes his head, tongue darting out to swipe over his bottom lip, “Can’t talk about my future, goldie, like you’re going to be part of it.”

When did the sun get so warm?

It’s prickling your skin, rousing sweat between the neckline of your jumper. Not only is it heating you up, but it’s quickening your breathing, driving it from a steady inhale-exhale to an unsure waver of oxygen rolling in and carbon dioxide rolling out. And it’s turning you light headed, commanding your legs to sway forward, right into Bucky’s receiving palm, hovering over your cheek like touching you might burn.

Bucky’s face is closer than you remember, consequence of a magnet force that draws you both in. There’s a ghost of a touch when his head dips an inch, the cool metal of his nose-ring bumping against your nostril and the brush of his breath hitting your cheekbone. You watch as his eyes slip shut- No, squeeze shut, like a physical pain has overcome him and he’s fighting back a complaint.

“I’m trying real hard to be a good man, okay?” And yet he says it with all the frustration of a sinner, of someone salivating with the desire to consume. “Trying to turn a new leaf, to not force you to become the thing you criticised me for. So just… Work with me, goldie, help me be a good man.”

“What are you talking-”

“Walker,” he practically spits the name out, body slumping forward only for him to hold out a hand and catch his fall before he can fully collide against you. Which would be great, if it did not leave you now even more trapped, now between the pillar and his bicep. “John, the actor guy. I know you guys are… You know, together. And I’m trying to respect that, I really am, but baby, you’re putting me through hell here.”

Like an overheated computer, you shutdown.

It takes a minute or two for the power to come back on in your brain. For his words to slot themselves into place, for you to realise what nonsense he’s spewing, for the magazine covers and the social media comments to come flooding back in. The late-night walk, the unfounded rumours, the continued speculation…

“Bucky,” you cross the invisible threshold between you both, flattening your palm against his face and watching as you coax his eyes open with a tender brush of your thumb along his cheek. “I’m not seeing Walker. I’m not seeing anyone. Not since…” you.

Maybe saying it is too real, too close to that other word you won’t say. Despite this, you watch Bucky register the implication.

“So you’re single?” You nod as slowly as he speaks, vocally processing the news you just delivered. “Which means I’m free to…”

Whatever the end of his thought sounds like, you don’t hear it.

Instead, you find out just how much warmer the sun feels when you’re pressed up against the window.

Of all the people you’ve kissed, none have ever done so with as much hunger as Bucky.

He does not press, he tastes.

Soft lips pulling your own into an unrehearsed dance that, somehow, you both know how to move to. Thick tongue breaching into your mouth, laving over the shyer movements of your own. Sharp teeth grazing the threat of a bite over your skin, ripping an unexpected whine from you as he clamps down on your lower lip, pulling away just to dive back in with reinforcements.

The hand by your cheek has finally made contact, slipping down and around to the back of your neck, and tilting your head further back with a sharp tug at the roots of your hair. His tongues reaches deeper, savours the flavour of you as your fist balls up around his shirts and beckons him closer.

“Missed you,” he somehow finds the time to mutter, between all-consuming kisses and desperate hands scraping up all the pieces of you they can find, like you are moments away from slipping between his fingers. “Missed my golden-”

Quack.

The pair of you physically jump back from the window, lips swollen from one another and pupils dilated with horror as you come face to face with a duck, stood right at the window and staring at you both like you are today’s entertainment.

Another quack is muffled by the window.

“We should probably, uh, continue the tour,” never has Bucky sounded so sheepish, pink staining the tips of his ears as he looks anywhere but the invasive avian. “Lemme show you the upstairs.”

You don’t make it upstairs.

Not fully, at least.

“Buck-aah!” Your moan reverberates off the walls, echoing down the grand stairwell. “Oh my- Please!”

Three steps from the top is where you find yourself, one hand gripping the wooden banister and the other tangling it’s fingers in Bucky’s hair. You’re bare from the waist down, pants tossed over the side of the railing in his eagerness to get his mouth on you. A few stairs further down and sprawled upward is where he lays, a man who has ascended the staircase, parted the gates of your thighs, and is now devouring heaven with his tongue.

For all the fervour put into his kiss, it only ever seems to double once he properly gets his mouth on you.

His tongue drags up the expanse of your cunt, the velvet texture of it perfectly riling up your senses as it licks over folds. His lips pucker around your clit, giving the pearl of you just the right pressure of suction before his tongue joins the fray, tensing to a point and flicking over the sensitive nub. Tender-tipped fingers spread you open, put you on pull display to his hungry eyes and, without a doubt every time, Bucky groans as you clench around nothing and your hole winks at him, as though tempting him to dive in.

A cacophony of moans and groans are plucked from the both of you, the most sinful duet ever known to man. There’s eyes rolling to the back of skulls, breaths hitching, and a whole load of spit as Bucky watches you get wetter, shinier, a smoother yet messier surface for him to work his mouth over.

When his tongue dips in, game-over is practically hovering over you in flashing neon lights as your imminent slip and slide into an orgasm approaches over the horizon… Which is exactly why Bucky always chooses to get mouthy at this point, cutting off the high he’s building just to mutter profanities.

“‘S like drinkin’ sunlight,” Bucky’s eyes are on you. The look on him can only be described as wrecked, the lower half of his face glistening with your arousal, lips swollen from exertion, his eyes slipping back ever-so-slightly as you impatiently pull at his hair and try to drag him back down to finish his meal. “My pretty golden girl, hmm? Always so fuckin’ sweet.”

He’s barely finishing sentences, consonants slipping away as the need for propriety and enunciation disappears with your own ability to think about anything beyond the man between your legs.

“Know what she tastes like, goldie?” Whatever response you have is lost when Bucky plunges two fingers into you, giving no pause between the stretch and the way he curls them inside of you, pushing against the spongy softness of your walls. “Like she’s mine. Ain’t she?”

“Yours. Y-yeah,” you can’t get the words out quick enough, the culmination waiting far too long to just give in and lay all your cards on the table. No more hiding, no more feigning frustrations, no more pretending it doesn’t leave your pussy, your heart, and your soul aching to hear him so proudly call you his. “Yours, yours. All yours.”

You cum with the flavour of surrender in your mouth, foot accidentally kicking against his back as Bucky perches your knees onto his shoulders and dives deeper into you, unrelenting in his attention as he lets you ride out the orgasm, grinding up against his mouth and indulging in the the subtle brush of his nose against your clit.

By the time Bucky takes his mouth off of you, you’re panting with every breath, seeing nothing but stars, and trying to flea up the stairs from the overstimulation he unloads onto you.

He’s in no better state, lips parted for breath and brushing over your right thigh as he turns his head into it, staining your skin in your own lust. Like he has not savoured you enough, his tongue presses hot against you.

“James,” oh, and don’t you just sound like the most pathetic little thing? A whisper for a voice, as shaky as a leaf blowing in the destructive winds of fall. Bucky hums in acknowledgement, stormy blues flickering up to your face as he licks a strip up the length of your thigh, all the way up to your hip before he takes a bite, tattooing his teeth into your flesh. “How much is-”

You’re forced to pause, to recenter yourself and find the ability to speak while his mouth continues over your torso; one hand slipping under your sweater, fingertips slipping beneath the band of your bra and teasing himself with the promise of your soft breasts.

“How much is left of the tour?” You deserve a medal for finally getting the words right. “Can’t we just skip to the master bedroom?”

The pair of you are more tangle than tease, stumbling down the hallway and passing door after door. Hand in hand the entire journey, it only serves to complicate the attempts you both make at undressing one another. Yet, each time you pull away to slip a shirt down his arm or discard your bra on the floor, your fingers can’t find one another again fast enough.

Bucky finally comes to a halt outside a door, turning to cradle your jaw and pull you in for a kiss. Chaste yet lingering, he shoots you one of those heart-wrenching smiles right after he pulls back and twists the handle open.

While you want to take in the room — the plush carpeted floors, the vintage chandelier light, the perfect view out onto the lake — the sex-pest in your brain has you zeroing in on nothing but the four poster bed. Complete with curtains and a cushioned headboard, it is primed and ready for the upper echelons of society, aristocrats or royalty, to slumber within it.

But it’s you who crawls atop the mattress, squealing and tripping over yourself when Bucky lands a slap against the back of your thigh. You turn to face him on all fours and find him tugging down the waistband of his boxers, just in time to watch his cock spring free — literally spring up against his lower abdomen, freed from the shackles of Calvin Klein.

The sight of him alone is enough to have your thighs clenching and pussy pulsing: the vein that begs to be traced by your tongue, the almost angry red flush of his tip, the shine of precum beckoning you to taste, and the shape of him — longer than you should be able to fit inside of you, and the kind of thickness you can already imagine your walls stretching around just by looking at it. And then, waiting patiently beneath, lay two heavy balls, the weight of which you’ve memorised with both your hands and your mouth.

Unsurprised and nonchalant, Bucky welcomes you around his dick like he was expecting it, one hand sliding over your jaw to cup the back of your neck. Warm to the touch and soft against your tongue, you slip into the familiar gratification of watching how easily Bucky melts, turned to putty in your hands — well, your mouth, in this case.

“Come on, baby,” he croons from above, chin kissing his sternum as he stares down at you on the bed, lips wrapped halfway down his cock and a hand full of the rest of his length. “We both know you can do better than that. Relax that pretty jaw, and take me deeper.”

Thumb reaching over from behind your neck, he soothes the corner of your jawbone and, as you force it a little more slack, his hips jut forward to sink a further into your mouth, not hitting the back of your throat, yet still far enough for tears to sting at your eyes. You do nothing to hide them, to fight them off when the head of his dick finally breaches your throat, because you know crying won’t deter him.

No, crying will only make him…

“Fuck. Look so delicate when ya cry for me, like I could break you if I don’t handle you carefully.” He catches one of your tears, but not with his hand. Cock slipping out of your mouth, he bends down and laves his tongue up the side of your face, collecting the salted sweetness born from the mouthwatering pain he’s causing you. “Don’t need that, do you, though? To be touched gently. My good little slut likes it when it hurts.”

“Mhmm,” you hum, swallowing him back down with your mouth and relishing in how he gathers up your hair, fist clenching it into a makeshift ponytail. He pulls on it, sharply, just enough to make your scalp burn and your cunt clench around nothing, a teardrop of arousal running down the expanse of your thigh and dripping onto the bedsheets.

Reigns secured, Bucky wastes no time in pushing the boundaries of your limits and begins bobbing your head down on him, hips rocking forward just to fuck himself that little more down your throat and relish in the sickly, wet sounds of him hitting your gag reflex. Saliva spills past your lips and down your chin.

The bed is five minutes away from possessing it’s own lake, composed of all the fluids spilling out of you. Tears, drool, cum, pouring like a fountain. It’s messy, and sloppy, and exactly how Bucky likes it: when he can see just how desperate you are to get him off, to have him paint your mouth white and feed his cum down your oesophagus.

A depraved relief overwhelms your heart and a heavier set of tears spill down your cheeks as Bucky grants you your reward, balls pulling tight against him as he floods your mouth full of cum.

“Uh-uh,” he tuts, pulling at your hair until you release his dick from your mouth with a wet pop. “Don’t you dare swallow, lemme see the mess I made o’ you first.”

Your lips part to his command, tongue slipping over the bottom one and putting the dirty painting of hot saliva and thick cum on display. Thighs squeezed against one another, you grind carelessly down against your own flesh, cunt drooling all over yourself as he continues to study you.

Then, with a groan of approval and a good fuckin’ girl, Bucky pulls you up for a kiss and relishes in his own taste.

It’s you who entices him onto the bed, too desperate to function without your hands shaking and too wet to wait any longer. And all the while the cruel bastard is chuckling at you, stalling the moment with tender smooches trailed over your neck and possessive bites and bruises being mapped over your breasts.

“So eager,” he muses, leaning back on his haunches and wrapping a hand around his already-hardening cock, no refractory period needed when the sight before him is his golden girl, wide eyed and cockdrunk. “Think you need to show me just how bad you want me. I deserve it, after these months of hell without you.”

Bucky guides you by the hips, helping you slot yourself atop his body, your knees indenting the mattress on either side him. Your hands curl over his shoulders, propping yourself up until you feel the head of him waiting at your entrance, pleading you to sink right down until it’s somewhere in your guts, rearranging the layout of your organs just to fit the whole length of him inside.

A light bulb goes off above your head, just as Bucky teases you both, forcing you to sit on his thighs and rolling you forward to feel the first sparks of friction, folds slipping over his hardness, “I’ve not taken my birth control. Didn’t- Aah! Didn’t think I’d need it.”

You watch the words wash over his features and swear you see more of that soul-stealing black consume the blue of his iris. His answer comes through clenched teeth and with his tip rubbing up against your clit, forcing your head to fall back and leaving your chest on display for his wandering hands.

“You already know I don’t have any rubbers, goldie,” his thumb and pointer finger take to rolling one of your nipples, while the other is greeted with the heat of his kiss, sucking the peak into his mouth. “Never want somethin’ in the way when it comes to you.”

“Me neither,” you must be truly gone, a lost cause, to so freely admit secrets you usually shove away with an eye-roll and a chastising lilt that tells Bucky to get on with it already. “But we shouldn’t…”

You trial off at no fault of your own, voice stolen from you by a gasp as he lines himself up against your hole, the tip of him knocking now at the door of heaven and begging to be let inside.

“Yeah…” He whispers, just as wrecked as you are, mouth falling open as a moan festers in the back of his throat, just waiting for a real reason to breech the surface of his lips. “We shouldn’t, should we? ‘S risky.”

And despite the fact the reply is pregnant with understanding, that sure doesn’t stop him from testing the waters. From making use of your drooling cunt to seamlessly fill you with just the tip.

Your thighs tense up as you fight the urge sit right down and let him fill you to the brim, all the while his mouth is back on your chest, mouthing mayhem into your skin in the form of sloppy kisses and desperate bites, like he cannot risk a second being wasted on inaction while you are here in his arms.

“But y’like risky,” he peers up at you, dark hair framing his eyes and forcing you to brush it out the way so you can fully relish in the sight of him mouthing at your nipples, covering them in his spit. “Like testing how good of a boy I can be for you, like seeing me struggle to not cum inside o’ her. Pretty please, sweetheart, let me show you how good I can behave, I’ll cum wherever you tell me to.”

A wiser woman would say no.

A stronger woman would send him out to retrieve condoms from the nearest gas station.

A better woman probably wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Thankfully, you are none of those things, and are instead feeling his cock split you open as you sink flush into his lap, the swell of his sack kissing against the globe of your ass as you pause and savour the fullness, mouth empty and open in a gasp. Bucky fills it with his tongue, licking into your mouth with a grunt as you squeeze around his cock.

“Well if you do that, I’m gonna paint your walls,” despite the threatening tone to his words, you feel more thrill than chill, excitement dancing up your spine as you finally start to ride him.

The rhythm is steady, your skin is sweaty, and there is a perpetual rise and fall of your body against his. Your thighs burn with every bounce, yet the pain only drives you to work harder, to wind down on him slower, deeper, pulling moans, and groans, and earth-shattering whimpers out of Bucky.

He’s more lost-cause than he is a man at this point, pawing up the length of your back, nestling his face as deep as he can in the valley of your chest, bruising his fingerprints into your hips as he squeezes and eases some of the tension from your muscles, doing the heavy lifting for you and fucking you down onto his cock.

“Buck,” you sigh, hand cupping his face. Where you mean to soothe his skin, he has other plans, tongue dragging over the pad of your thumb before his mouth envelops it, an erotic display of how far gone he is, lost in the dessert wasteland of lust and relishing in the oasis that is you. You pull out a different name, hoping to catch his attention, “Pretty boy. Are you close?”

His reaction is nearly instant: a hazy eyed nod and a cut off moan.

“Yeah?” You taunt him, even if you don’t need to, like digging for gold after already finding diamonds. “Bet you’re thinking about what it would be like to cum inside me, fill me up like only you know how to do. Have me drowning in you, no wall untouched.”

“St-op,” torture has never looked better than on James Barnes, eyebrows furrowing and jaw clenching in a last ditch effort to hold his focus, to not stuff you full despite how badly his body craves it. “Please, doll, be nice.”

“Be nice? I’m sitting on your dick, baby, how could I be any nicer?” You feel him press against a part of you so deep it has even you descending into chaos for a moment, jaw falling slack as you lean into the feeling and grind your hips down. “Maybe if I let you cum in her, hmm? Don’t you like reminding me how this pussy is yours? Surely a man like you, a big bad rockstar, would take what’s his and ruin it whatever way he pleases.”

His hand lands at the back of your neck, pulling your forehead down to meet his. You take in how his eyes are squeezed shut, like he can block out the feeling of you gripping the life out of him and the wet sounds of your cunt, “Christ alive, you’re mean, you know that? Evil.”

“Hmm, don’t you need me to be bad, so you can prove you’re good?” Your nails bite into his shoulder and you can feel the finish line approaching, mind threatening to fray at the edges and slip into the same wrecked nature that’s overcome him. “This house isn’t gonna fill itself with kids, Buck. And there’s no time like the present...”

“You mean it? Shit- Baby. Goldie. Don’t say that if you don’t-”

“How much clearer do you need me to be, James?” You don’t even have to ask for him to take over, he’s studied the way you move for years, knows the tell-tale signs of exhaustion and overwhelm. And so quietly, without ceremony, his touch finds your waist and suddenly he’s the one winding you down onto him, guiding you closer and closer to the cliff where, if you toss yourself over, ecstasy awaits below for you to crash into her. “Cum in your pussy.”

The final syllable has barely parted ways from your mouth when Bucky succumbs at last, his arms moulding around your body, caging you against him. Through the turbulent pleasure of his orgasm shaking him to the core, his hips keep rocking up and into you, driving every spurt of his hot, thick cum further inside.

You soothe him as best you can, palms flattened against his naked back, mouth placing kisses over the ink on his arms, chest slumping into him and bidding him to anchor himself in the rapid beat of your heart.

“Wait, wait,” he’s muttering to himself, arms sliding his grip up to slot itself in your armpits and lift you off his cock, forcing you to hover over his abs. “Just wanna- Lemme see it.”

No further instruction is needed for you to give him what he wants.

Clenching the muscles of your pelvic floor, you stave off a squirm as you feel his cum spill out of your cunt, dripping down onto his torso. Bucky is entranced, spreading your folds apart and watching the whole ordeal like you’re Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa… Only for him to smear his fingers in your masterpiece and deliver it up to your mouth.

Without a word, you open up and obey, let him lather his spill over your taste buds again. A kiss lands on your jawline, tender and careful, like he’s engraving a thank you into your flesh.

“I love you.”

Both of you freeze.

All that remains is the ragged sounds of your breaths, filling the gap of silence between you.

The words marinate in the air, swell both in weight and flavour. It reminds you of stepping off stage after a show and ripping your earpiece out, expecting silence only to find there is a persistent ringing in your ear that lingers even once your limbs find the comfort of your bed, tucked away from the screaming crowds yet plagued by more noise than ever.

Bucky is the first to move, face pulling back to find yours. To touch yours, hand falling over your cheek. His gaze assesses your features, as if scanning for signs that something is wrong, or different, or not quite real. Like, any moment now, he’ll blink and wake to find himself alone in bed, nothing but the faintest smell of your perfume on his sheet.

“D’you actually mean it?” When you nod, he forces your head to stay still. “Words. Use them, wanna hear you.”

“I love you, James,” the second time feels less scary, less like a grenade you have tossed into the air, and more like loaded gun you have pointed toward yourself. So you say it again, and hope the third time takes away even more of the threat. “I love you.”

“Huh,” despite the fact he’s not said it back, you’re not worried. You can see it, stitched into his eyes and curling over his lips, a fondness that parallels the one gripping hold of your heart and crushing it into submission. “I didn’t even make you cum, so you must mean it.”

“Aren’t you just the luckiest man?”

“Shit, I didn’t- You never came.”

And so you wind up on your back, knees pinned against your chest and Bucky smothering you from above, hips barely pulling fully back before they’re thrusting back into you, pouring noises of pleasure all over the bedroom floor.

Everything is warm, and sticky, and overwhelming, but at least you have him whining in your ear and working you towards nirvana.

“My golden girl,” just listening to him, breathy and aching from overstimulation — cock having pushed past the limits of his own biology to harden for a third time in a row — is enough to have you reaching that crescendo, one final shove all that remains to have your walls clamping around him. “Love you so much, you’ve no idea. Gonna be the man you need, okay? Keep you safe, and cared for, and satisfied, and-”

Say less, you’re already there.

You don’t even get the chance to warn him, walls clamping down on him in a vice grip as your orgasm joins the short list of things that are tearing you in two — his cock being the only other item on said list.

“God- Look at you, perfect, gonna- Fuck,” Bucky is barely intelligible, sensitive and aching, yet he continues rocking into you, shallow juts of his hips. “She’s milkin’ me, baby. I’m sorry, I need to- Aah! Fill you again. Sorry, I’m sorry, sorry-”

Bucky does not crack, he shatters completely.

The pieces of him that remain are laid bare in your arms, are filling you to the brim, are pouring out in thick rivulets with every barely-there thrust he re-burrows himself into you with.

Under the shine of a shared afterglow, limbs so light you fear they’ll float away from you, you’re more than compliant when Bucky rolls you both over, laying on his back and holding you down against his chest.

“Let’s just stay here,” he begs, fingers already playing in your hair. He’s still inside of you, plugging you full and keeping you warm. “Just want to feel you for a while. Forever.”

Morning arrives slowly.

The light of dawn washes over the room in an orange hue and teases your eyelids awake only to find Bucky wrapped around you. Dead to the world, he snores gently and holds you closer when you shift. At some point in the night, he slipped out of you and now the inside of your thighs are stained in him. Your heart is to, his name forever tattooed on it.

Your eyes slip shut for a moment, and you can picture it so easily.

A future where you wake tangled together, where you race home just to see one another sooner. Where you fill those empty bedrooms with race-car beds, and princess dolls, and the giddy laughter of a child who knows love in only the purest and truest of forms. Where you feed the ducks, and he mows the lawn, and both of you grow teary eyed, one glass of wine too deep, as you stand in front of that wall in the kitchen and come to terms with how quickly your baby has grown.

It is real, and visceral, and plausible, you know it.

But it is your future, not your present, for a reason.

Because you know the man in that bed is no doubt the closest thing to a soulmate you will ever have, but that the timing for either of you is not quite yet right.

Because you know there is still a part of you that craves the chase, that wants the excitement of running from love just to time how long it takes for it to catch you.

Because you know about the bag of white powder in his glove compartment.

In the greatest escape to date, you tiptoe away from Bucky Barnes once more, shoes clutched to your chest and an ache in both your thighs and your heart.

Sitting timid and with your head low in the back of a cab, you pull out your phone and take a deep breath.

And then you unblock his number.

i love you. 07:47

see you somewhere down the line. 07:49

+ extra hyde !

· … and with that, i am retiring my keyboard and never writing another thing. goodbye cruel world of writing, i will not miss you./j · after reading this, is it obvious that silver springs is my favourite song? · please be gentle, i really struggled to write this and idk why. maybe because it felt a little different to fics i've written before? idk, either way this fic put me through the ringer but i'm happy with how it turned out. thank you for reading <3 · a special thank you to @chateaubarnes and @blowingbarnes for helping me with a sentence i got stuck on, and to @unificsation and @flockoff-featherface and every other member of the bwamily who locked in with me on stream <3

( 🥁 ) taglist. @54nboo @aydamaq @barnesandashes @basicallynotbreathing @barnesonly @blowingbarnes @buckyfmd @chateaubarnes @demiebarnes @dollaems @earthsmightiestbenders @esunarint @firingstars @flockoff-featherface @heldbybarnes @iamthatonefangirl @icantfindanamenottakenn @its-in-the-woods @kissesforbucky @letterstodevil @lavhandoll @lilyyyy2005 @metal-armed-muse @moodswriting @ohgloriousmoon @opheliabbarnes @peachessprincess @pinksplace @prettyliittleviolets @sassandscribbles @sergeantsebastian @stanmarvelous @superbassbuck @tw1sters @unificsation @umbreoni @wandanatissuperior @wifeofbarnes

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