i know it's been a while since i've been on here, i was actually just opening the app to talk about it. my grandmother had been really sick this past month and she lived an hour away, so between that and my own work i had to visit her between getting my assignments done and my work. she passed away on saturday and i just wanted to take a break from being on here, but i'll still try to write/update on here as writing helps me take my mind off of things. i really appreciate every one of you and hope you can all understand. some of you (mutuals kayla cough cough) i'll still be messaging in my dms and stuff. i'll try to write / cook something up. me being in this state means i'll probably write some fluff shit of our fav super soldier taking care of us during hard times. nonetheless, i hopefully won't be gone long. it's just a shock to me that all of this happened, i've never lost someone that close to me and i'm trying to figure out my life and how to safely move on in a healthy way.
i love each and everyone of you all so much and i'll be back asap !!!
every time I see someone act rude, entitled or disrespectful towards a fanfic writer and/or the fics, I think the writer should be legally allowed to kill them
includes: childhood bestfriends ⊱ lovers. slight yearning. fluff-fest. reader is bill's daughter. reader owns a stuffed bunny named after my own, and michael later buys her a real one as a birthday gift (not mentioned). best-friends michael & reader. reader is close with the family. younger michael & reader, still teenagers, adults in part 2.
a/n: never in my life did i think i'd be writing this, yet here we are. gang i've loved mj since i was five idk how to explain how much i love him as a person and as a musical artist. here we go. i don't usually write in caps (as u can tell) so if it looks a little messy, you know why. there will be a part two to this & if it's kinda shitty i wrote it in three hours and decided not to sleep until i finished this part. (it's 12:17am on a monday now tuesday).
"𝒟addy, are we going for donuts?" You whispered as you looked over at your father, his eyes hidden and concentrated on the road as he continued to drive.
"No, bug." He sighed, his tongue swiped the side of his mouth. Your fingers laced around your stuffed bunny's ears. "Where are we going then?"
"Well, since you asked, I'm taking you to work with me." He grunted, turning onto a new road. You looked up through the window at the long sign, and the words 'Hayvenhurst Ave'.
"But what about donuts?" You mumbled meekly, already aware of the concerned look on your father's face. "We'll see, bug."
"Now, I gotta tell you something," he mumbled, driving up the road, "this isn't just any 'take your kid t'work day', I can't have you touching things or running around, alright, kiddo?" He explained, glancing over at you every few seconds.
"Okay." You nodded, "can I take Whip with me?" You looked up as he slowed down near a tall, black gate. "Sure, just don't forget 'em." He smiled, as the gate slowly opened. You nodded in excitement as your eyes watched over the big house ahead of you only get larger as you got nearer.
"That's such a big house!" You smiled as Bill turned to you, "Bug, you don't go saying those things to people." He muttered as you sat back, "not even to you?" You mumbled, awaiting his response, he broke into a smile, "Alright, maybe to me, but not to others."
As the two of you walked up to the door, your eyes wandered, admiring the home. The trees, the spiral staircase on the far end of the home, and your favorite—the beautiful stone tile fountain.
As the maids let you into the house, you smiled in awe at the cool colored stone floor and the wooden structures that adorned the foyer.
As you looked back to your father, who turned to the sound of a woman walking into the hall. "Hi, Bill," the woman smiled, "The boys are upstairs, make yourself comfortable."
You hadn't even realized that you were now standing right beside your father, hand wrapped around his calf. Your right hand gripped his trousers, and the other, curled around the waist of your stuffed bunny.
"And who's this charming girl?" She smiled down at you, as you only tucked your face into the side of your dad's leg, hugging your bunny tighter.
"She's my daughter." Bill mumbled with a smile, "C'mon Bug, she doesn't bite." He whispered, as you hesitated, peeking out a bit to smile at the woman.
"Oh, I'm sure she'll get along just fine with Michael." The woman smiled, "besides, he does need a friend his age, how old is she?" She asked as your father replied, "Just turned four."
"How sweet," She looked back down to you, smiling and waving bye, "Well, I'll see you two around." She hummed as your father tipped his hat.
Just as you saw the last of her heel leave your vision, the sound of children running around caught your attention. Your father walked to the back of the house, as you followed.
One boy after the next, seemingly in order of height, pooled into the house, each nodding with a; "Hi, Bill. Hey, Bill. How do you do, Bill."
Until the smallest walked into the door, looking up at your father. "Hello, Bill." His eyes lit up looking at your father, "Hello there, Michael."
Just as he was about to follow his brothers, his eyes caught yours, and he turned almost immediately.
"Michael!" A voice called, as you took your place behind your father's leg once again, the bunny's small arm you brought up, resting just below your nose. You saw woman from before.
"Oh there you are, Bill—" She paused, eyes catching the light pink of your stuffed bunny once more. "Ah," She smiled, as she looked down at Michael. "Michael, this is Bill's daughter."
You watched as the boys eyes immediately shot up to your father, a smile ghosting his lips. His cheeks were full of some sort of joy. You looked up at the woman once more, before you felt a hand on your head.
"C'mon, bug."
And that was it, you stepped forward, eyes trained on your feet as your father patted your shoulder. "She's shy's, all." He muttered as the woman smiled, "Well not to worry, Michael seems the same."
You only found yourself looking up when you saw a shadow project just in front of your own vision. "I'm Michael," he whispered, as he stuck his hand out.
Your eyes found his as you looked at his hair, then his shirt, then his outfit.
"Bug." You heard your father speak, and your breath caught your throat, "Sorry." You whispered ever so quietly.
"It's okay," the boy smiled. "Do you like bunnies?" He asked quietly, as you nodded. "I like them too." He nodded with a grin.
"Really? Do you think pink ones are real too?" You asked as he shrugged, "There's lots of colored birds and fish. So there's gotta be pink bunnies."
You'd never smiled harder in your life.
From that moment on, wherever Michael went, you were a step behind.
If the Jacksons were playing basketball on a sunny weekend morning, you'd follow little Michael out into the backyard, trying to catch the ball too in the commotion. Wanting to go wherever he was without getting into trouble.
The boys would groan and click their tongues as you smiled with the rough ball in your hands, looking over at Michael who waved for you to pass the big ball to him.
Eventually they'd stopped passing the ball to you or Michael, you'd only ever pass it to each other.
"Why don't we go play a game or something?" He'd suggest, and you'd nod, following him inside, playing hide and seek on the bottom floor of the mansion or playing Tic Tac Toe in a notebook for hours.
When you'd find each other you'd laugh and smile, and the first time you played you had whispered, "Your house is so big and fun." Before smacking your hands over your mouth confusing him.
"What's wrong?" He asked as you shook your head, "Daddy said not to say those things."
"It's alright, I won't tell." He'd shrug with a small, loyal smile.
When the Jacksons were free, the two of you would wander around the gardens, and make wishes with throwing flower petals into the fountain. You'd play with Ben, giggling and shrieking with you felt his whiskers tickle you as you fed him small blocks of cheese.
When the Jacksons would go to the studio to sing, you'd be smiling next to your father, looking for Michael and hearing him before you could see him behind the glass. You'd memorize just what everyones voice sounded like, without even having to see them.
You'd stay up for hours, hating to leave when you and Michael would be narrating the many tales of Peter Pan, you hugging your bunny and changing your voice to be Tinkerbell for Whip, and playing Wendy yourself.
"The end." You whispered, as Michael's fingers petted Whips belly gently, "maybe if we read it all again really fast, you can convince Bill to stay a little longer."
"Okay, okay, hurry—" the two of you would giggle, staring over and reading as fast as humanly possible, cackling at the way the words would sound when read so quickly.
"C'mon, bug, time to go. Michael's gotta sleep too."
"But Daddy, just five more minutes?" You'd ask, and Michael would nod, "Please, Bill, we're almost finished."
And he'd sigh and nod and close the door.
He'd come back five minutes later to find the two of you knocked out—either on the carpet, or on the bed, both holding onto an arm of Whip.
Your eyes fluttered open, seeing nothing but the lightly lit room. You turned your aching neck to see none other than your best friend, knocked out just beside you, the unfinished puzzle you'd just bought left on the bed; pieces askew all over the duvet.
"Mike," you whispered, pulling a piece out of his hand, hearing the radio on his shelf talk of news and songs. "Michael."
"Mike!" You whisper shouted, carefully sliding a small clipboard beneath the progress of the puzzle, and gathering the stray pieces back into the box.
You counted the pieces up, closing the box and turning back to the boy asleep on the bed. "Michael, get up."
"What time is it?" You mumbled, checking your watch, seeing that it was fifteen minutes to nine. "Shit."
"Mike!" you whisper shouted, hand smacking his forearm as your eyes scanned his room for your bag.
Out of nowhere you felt two hands grasp onto your arm, pulling you back as a loud roaring sound collided with your shriek.
"Michael!" You sighed, your heads hitting the pillows as he laughed, "it was funny."
"It was not." You rolled your eyes with a smile, adjusting your head to look at him. "Did you finish the puzzle?" He asked, as you closed your eyes with a small shake of your head.
"We'll finish it tomorrow," you muttered, "or whenever you have time."
"I have time tomorrow," he immediately replied, "we can finish it then." He smiled, flicking your hand with his fingers, restlessly. You nodded, sitting up.
"I've gotta go," You sighed, sitting up as he quickly followed, "go where? This is like a home for you too y'know." He mumbled, tugging on your wrist.
"As much as I appreciate that and am flattered, Whip's probably hungry by now, gotta take her home too." You tried to tug your arm back every few moments but it wasn't working, "can I have my wrist back?"
"Come on, just leave Whip here for a night. I'm her daddy." He flashed you a smile as you rolled your eyes for probably the hundredth time today at his stupid comments. "What am I not? You'd still be carrying about a stuffed bunny if it hadn't been for me."
"Oh so what I'm hearing is you don't actually care for Whip, you just saved her to prove something to me?" You mumbled, looking away as you hid your knowing smile. He immediately let go of your arm and scrambled to explain.
"Of course not, and don't mess with me like that. I love Whip as much as you do, therefore, she should stay with her father for the night."
"Well her mother hasn't had the chance to go home and feed her the treats she bought her this morning, because she's been stuck here all day." You crossed your arms as his tongue clicked, "you love it here."
"That I do."
"So? Stay." He flopped back onto the bed beside you, staring at you as he waited for you to change your mind and fall back beside him.
"I can't, Mikey. You've got a demo to record tomorrow, and I may have to go to school."
"But you hate school." He countered.
That, you did.
The night you stood in front of the door of the Jackson's home, was nearly the best night you'd ever had. It was the end of summer, and Katherine had arranged for the kids to have a day by the pool before everyone would have to get ready for the new act Joeseph had arranged for the boys down in the city.
There were fruit salads and some ice cream, popcorn and movies, it might've been the most fun they'd ever had. The most fun you'd ever had.
Maybe it was because it was nearly 100 degrees in Los Angeles.
Or maybe it was because it was the day your father had told you, you would have to start school.
You spent all day in the pool, running around and getting your hair braided by Latoya. You'd found and picked some flowers, and wished with Michael for no more records, no school, and days like these for years to come.
In the evening when Bill had informed Katherine, and she'd told the kids, Michael felt that it wasn't important. That maybe like the nights they'd stay up and read, he and you could beg your father, and he'd let you stay a while longer.
But by the end of the night, when he began to see Marlon and Jermaine hug you and say they'd miss you, he began to understand that this wasn't something as easy to get out of as a five minute home trip delay.
Once you dried off and ate with the rest of the children, you hair braided and clothes on, you hugged everyone goodbye, but Michael was nowhere in sight.
"He's probably too upset to come out," Tito muttered as Jackie nodded.
"Well then, you best be on your way." Katherine spoke, "We don't want to delay you, you've got school in the morning. You'll need all the rest you can get." She smiled, patting your shoulder.
But no matter how much they smiled and joked about how tired you'd be, you were always awake enough to see Michael.
"Where's Michael?" You asked Marlon, "You heard Tito, he's probably just upset."
"I just wanna see him before I go." You answered, holding onto your bag and Whip for dear life. You wished on every petal you forgot to throw in the fountain he'd come out before you could go.
When you heard the familiar footsteps race down the corridor, and heard, "Hold on!" You'd never felt more relieved.
"Here, take this." Michael smiled, holding out the Peter Pan storybook the two of you would read hundreds of times a day.
In shock you shook your head, "I can't Michael, it's yours."
"It's also yours." He shrugged, as you shook your head firmly. "Nuh-uh."
"Mhm, take it. When we're older, I'll write you letters that Bill can give you. I'll see you maybe when we get back from the shows."
"Please? You can read it when you feel lonely." He asked, as you sighed, "okay." You nodded, holding the book close to you.
Micheal then leaned forward and wrapped his arms around your shoulders, hugging you so tight that the book nearly crushed both of your ribs.
"Mike—Mikey!" You laughed, "it hurts!" You'd smile as he let go, "If it hurt you wouldn't be laughing, silly." He smiled poking your hand as you shook your head.
As you and Bill got in the car, you waved to the Jacksons harder than ever before, but your eyes stayed trained on Michaels face, and when you got far enough, just his puff of hair in the distance. You twisted and turned in your seat to see them until you couldn't anymore.
On your first day of school, it was something extraordinary. The building was humongous, unlike anything you'd ever seen before, with murals and colorful structures, balls and hoola-hoops, kids in colorful clothes. It looked like Candyland.
You were excited to go, but it wasn't Hayvenhurst. The kids weren't Michael, or Ben, or Marlon, or Latoya, or Jermaine, or Jackie. And the worst part? Whip couldn't be taken out during class time.
But Whip went with you everywhere. No Whip. No Michael. Could this day get any worse?
Well, it did. When you read the book Michael had given you during break time, the kids thought you were making it up that you'd been to the Jacksons, that it was Michael Jackson's book, and that you were best friends with him.
"It's true! My Daddy works there! Just yesterday was the best, we swam in the pool, and—"
"Yeah, yeah, big talk, new girl." One boy said, "I bet this is just her book and she just wants to seem cool." Another girl said.
"No, I'm telling the truth, the book is Michael's—"
"What's next, you sing with them?"
"Well, sometimes I hear them when I go with my Daddy to the recording sessions. I know what Jackie sounds like, and Tito, and Jermaine—"
"This is any old book, it's nothing special." Another child spoke, snatching the book from your arms as you held onto it with everything in your five-year old arms.
"Give it back!" You cried, "Please!"
But it was too late. The first page had torn. Peter pan was half way ripped down the middle.
The tears were streaming down your face before you'd even registered that the book had ripped, and the next thing you knew, you were pushing and shoving kids all around you.
This was your gift. From your best friend.
That first day was the worst day of your life.
Or at least that's what you tell yourself.
Eventually your father tried a different home school approach with a tutor he paid, but that didn't work, so he figured you could change schools and start over, which did work at first.
But when kids found out you knew the Jackson family, they slowly transitioned from making fun of you, to bombarding you with questions you didn't even know about.
As you grew up you learned to ignore and zone out, eventually reading and reading every book you could come across in Michael's room or the library and reading and reading until you forgot you were even surrounded by other kids.
You were now in 10th grade, and so was Michael, but he didn't have to go to school the way you did.
"Think about it! I can ask for a tutor especially for you, you and Bill could stay here everyday!" Michael explained as you packed your bag and pulled on your shoes.
"He's outside, Mike. I'm pretty sure he can hear you."
"Good, I'll have someone look into a tutor for you. Here, tomorrow."
"Not needed, Thank you." You smiled, patting his arm as you turned to the door, only for him to yank you back.
"You're gonna tear my limbs off one of these days." You winced as he rubbed your wrist where he pulled it, quickly resuming what he was saying, "Just give it some thought. I think you don't even need to go to school—"
"Well, I'm flattered but I'm not like you. I need the qualifications of my education, Michael. I only have two years left." You told him, dusting off your clothes and leaning in to hug him, "now kiss Louie goodnight for me, and give Janet the doll I brought earlier."
He hugged you back, patting your back as you pulled away, "What if I kiss you goodnight for Louie," he muttered under his breath as your hand pulled the doorknob again, "What?"
"Wha—nothing. Nothing, I didn't say anything." He shrugged, crossing his arms, which was a telltale sign that he was lying.
"You're a terrible liar, Mikey." You smiled, shaking your head as you pulled the door open.
"You don't make it any easier," he whispered as he watched you walk to the car, waving to you and Bill.
𝑫𝑰𝑹𝑻𝒀 𝑯𝑨𝑳𝑶 You’re pearls and untouched lace; he’s factory grit and stolen breaths. Blackout swallows the city and his calloused hands find the heaven he’ll never deserve. You let him take it, hard, desperate, sacred, before the war rips him from your skin.
1940s!bucky barnes x fem!reader
word count : 14k
warnings 18+ : the hair in the picture does not describe reader’s hair in the story!! no use of y/n, angst, explicit sexual content, virginity loss, oral (f receiving), dry humping, impregnation kink, major character “death” (bucky presumed dead for 70 years), grief/mourning, arranged marriage, infidelity (emotional), period-typical classism & snobbery, familial emotional abuse/manipulation, chronic illness & death, themes of guilt, self-loathing, religious guilt, internalised class shame, alcohol use, pregnancy
author’s note : WELL HELLO 🤠 I don’t even wanna explain myself for this one but just know I legit shed a few tears while writing it… 40s bucky owns my whole entire heart, also I TRIEDDD to make the dates as accurate as possible so pls don’t come for me if they’re off 💔💔💔 hope you enjoyyy <33
The air in the Stark plant doesn’t just hang; it presses, a living thing made of heat and iron and the stink of men who know tomorrow might kill them. Cordite, scorched steel, the sharp ammonia of fear-sweat, and underneath it all the sour ghost of yesterday’s coffee. Every breath coats your tongue like licking a battery.
The white fox fur at your throat is already soaked through, clinging to your skin like a pelt that’s decided it belongs to someone else.
You shoulder through the side door with the crate balanced on your hip, Lucky Strikes, Camels, a rolled-up USO poster whose pin-up girl leers at you with lipstick the color of fresh blood.
The noise hits next: drop-hammers pounding in perfect, merciless rhythm, each blow rattling your teeth, vibrating up through the soles of your pumps and into the cradle of your hips. You feel it between your legs like a second heartbeat.
Eyes find you. Always do.
You’re the only splash of cream and crimson in a world painted war-drab and black with grease. Glances flick over, hungry, curious, dismissive, then slide away fast, the way men look at something they want but know they’ll never be allowed to touch.
Then you see him, and every other man in the building disappears.
He’s perched on a waist-high stack of brass shell casings like a king on a filthy throne, one boot planted, the other leg swinging lazy. Sleeves shoved to the elbow, forearms corded and gleaming with sweat and oil. Dog tags nestled in the hollow of his throat flash under the arc-lamps, cheap nickel turned sinful.
He’s dragging a red mechanic’s rag across his knuckles, slow, deliberate, pulling your eyes down the thick vein that runs over the back of his hand, over scars you suddenly want to taste, to the half-moons of black grime under every nail.
Your heel catches the edge of a warped floor grate. Time stutters. The crate tips. Cartons of cigarettes explode across the concrete in a bright, obscene avalanche, green, white, gold, bouncing and spinning like spent brass. The sound is too sharp, too loud; heads snap around. Someone whistles low.
He moves like violence wrapped in silk. One second he’s ten feet away, the next he’s on his knees in the soot beside you, gathering packs with hands that shouldn’t be allowed to look that graceful doing something so mundane. Grease streaks across the cellophane, dark fingerprints branding every pack he touches. When he stands, the space between you is gone. He’s close enough that you feel the furnace heat pouring off his skin, cutting through the plant’s stifling air like a blade.
He smells like wintergreen chew, machine oil, cordite and something darker, something that makes your knees want to fold. His fingers close over yours as he presses the last crumpled pack into your palm. Calluses drag across the thin leather of your gloves. His hand trembles, just once, so slight you might have imagined it but you didn’t. You feel that tremor echo straight between your thighs.
“Careful, doll,” he says, voice rough as the Brooklyn streets he crawled out of, pitched low, secret. “Floor’s got teeth.”
The words are ordinary. The way he says them is not. His eyes are storm-blue and fixed on you like you’re the only real thing in this whole screaming factory. Like he’s already memorizing the shape of your mouth in the dark.
Your heart is slamming so hard you’re shocked the fox fur isn’t jumping with it. Good girls say thank you and retreat. Good girls do not lean in. Good girls do not let their gaze drop to the pulse hammering at the base of his throat and wonder what it would feel like under their tongue.
You lean in.
“I’ve handled worse than teeth,” you murmur. Your voice doesn’t shake. You’re proud of that. Terrified, but proud.
His grin comes slow, crooked, dangerous, the kind of smile that starts wars and ends marriages. “Didn’t say you couldn’t handle ’em,” he says. His thumb sweeps once, once, across the inside of your wrist where your pulse is rioting. The touch is feather-light and deliberate as sin. “Just said they bite.”
Somewhere behind you the foreman bellows, “Barnes, I swear to Christ, if you don’t get your ass back on the line-”
Bucky doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink. Just holds your eyes for one more reckless second, then tips two blackened fingers to his brow in a salute that feels like a promise and a threat all at once. He turns away. The absence of his heat feels like stepping naked into snow.
You walk the rest of your route half-blind, clutching the crate so hard the wood bites half-moons into your palms. The plant noise swallows everything, but you feel his stare on your back like a brand sinking through wool, through silk, through skin, straight to bone.
Later, Rosie the riveter corners you by the punch-clock, cigarette dangling from lips painted Victory Red.
“That one,” she says, tipping her chin toward the assembly line where Bucky’s bent over a lathe, shoulders flexed tight, “is trouble carved in pretty marble. They call him Bucky ’cause James don’t sound dangerous enough. Got held back from shipping out with the rest of his unit, busted hand still healing.”
She exhales smoke like a warning. “Boys who know the boat’s coming any day got nothin’ left to lose, sugar. And that one? He looks at you like you’re already his last meal.”
You smile the way you were taught, cool, untouchable, Park Avenue ice but your voice comes out rougher than you want.
“Maybe I’m tired of being hungry for something I’m not allowed to taste.”
Rosie’s eyebrows climb. She looks almost sorry for you.
That night you’re back where you belong: the mansion on East 72nd, marble floors cold enough to burn barefoot, the hush of old money that smells like beeswax and judgment.
Your mother is at the Colony Club; your father is wherever men like him go to decide which boys die next. The staff pretends not to notice you came in late, smelling of iron and another man’s sweat.
You sit at the vanity in your childhood bedroom, silk wallpaper, canopied bed, a window that overlooks Central Park like it’s your personal kingdom and unbutton the ruined gloves one finger at a time. Black streaks, permanent. Evidence.
You bring your bare wrist to your lips and breathe him in anyway: oil, cordite, wintergreen, man. The ghost of his thumb is still there, a brand under the skin you asked for.
Downstairs, the grandfather clock strikes two. Somewhere across the river, Bucky Barnes is probably lying awake in a flat that reeks of cabbage and despair, staring at the ceiling and thinking about a girl in white fox fur he has no business wanting.
You are thinking about him too, hard enough that it hurts.
He’s still here. For now. And every tomorrow he stays is another tomorrow you might run into him again.
Tonight you’re on your knees in Chanel heels and pearls, and he hasn’t even kissed you yet.
God help you both.
Five days after the cigarettes scatter across the concrete like bright shrapnel, you realize the plant is suddenly too small.
He’s everywhere you turn.
Leaning against a stamping press with a cup of coffee he’s not drinking, eyes tracking you over the rim. Perched on a catwalk above the line, pretending to tighten a bolt while he watches you hand out donuts and smiles that never reach the men who take them.
Once, when the break whistle screams, you look up and catch him staring so hard the cigarette between his fingers burns down untouched until it sears his skin. He doesn’t flinch. Just lets it fall, crushes it beneath his boot heel, and keeps looking.
You start timing your routes so you’ll drift past locker 217.
The first note you leave is almost cowardly: a single peppermint wrapped in a scrap of pale lavender notepaper that still carries the ghost of your perfume. You slide it through the vent slit with shaking fingers and walk away so fast your heels click like gunfire on the concrete.
Next morning the peppermint is gone.
Tucked inside the cuff of your left glove, where only you will find it, is a white gardenia already bruised from the heat of his body and a folded square of cheap lined paper.
You don’t belong in all this dirt, angel. - J.B.
Your breath stops. You hide in the ladies’ room and press the flower to your lips just to taste where his fingers have been.
That afternoon you steal a sheet of your father’s heavy cream stationery, the kind with the family crest embossed in gold and write in careful ink:
Meet me after the whistle. Behind the scrap bins where the light still burns. - The girl who isn’t supposed to be here.
You fold it tiny, slide it through the vent, and spend the rest of the shift praying no one saw.
When the final whistle blows and the plant empties, you wait until the corridors are black and echoing, then slip out the side gate like a thief. The night air is sharp enough to cut. The machines tick as they cool, slow metallic heartbeats in the dark. Your stockings whisper; the pearls at your throat feel like a noose made of money.
He’s already there.
He stands under the single bulb over the scrap bins, hands shoved so deep in his peacoat pockets he looks like he’s holding his own ribs together. The light turns the grease on his knuckles into wet scars and carves hollows under eyes that have new shadows tonight.
“You came,” he says, hoarse, like he never really believed you would.
“I told you I would, Jamie.”
He flinches at the name, just once, then closes his eyes like it hurts.
“Don’t,” he whispers. “Don’t say it like that. Makes me feel like I still got a right to it.”
You step closer. The cold is nothing against the heat rolling off him.
“I live in a cold-water flat with five other guys and a toilet that only works when it feels like it,” he says to the ground between your shoes.
“Ma takes in laundry till her hands bleed. I got nothing to give you but dirty hands and a mouth full of sins I ain’t confessed yet. And you-” His gaze drags up the camelhair coat, the kid gloves, the pearls glowing soft against your skin.
“You’re Park Avenue and debutante balls and a future some Princeton boy’s already got mapped out. I touch you, I leave marks. Permanent ones.”
His voice cracks on the last word.
“I know exactly what I am, angel. And I still came here tonight. Still stood here like a goddamn fool hopin’ you’d be crazy enough to show up and let me ruin you.”
The guilt is a living thing in his throat; you can hear it clawing.
You close the last distance.
Your gloved hands cup his face, force him to look at you. His stubble rasps against the leather; his skin is furnace-hot.
“I’m here,” you say quietly. “I’m here because every time I close my eyes I still taste wintergreen and machine oil and the way you trembled when you handed me that last pack of Luckies. I’m tired of being untouchable, Jamie. Touch me.”
A broken sound escapes him. One angry, ashamed tear cuts a clean line through the soot on his cheek.
“I’m goin’ straight to hell for this.”
“Then I’ll meet you there.”
He makes a noise like surrender and crashes into you.
His mouth finds yours clumsy and desperate, teeth, breath, guilt and want all tangled. He tastes like smoke and salt and every rule he was ever taught to follow. When you open for him he groans like a dying man granted absolution, licking slow and reverent into your mouth, hands fisted in your coat so tight the seams protest. He never lets them wander lower than your waist, like he’s terrified one inch more will damn him forever.
When you pull back just enough to breathe, his forehead stays pressed to yours.
“I hate myself for wantin’ you this much,” he rasps. “Hate that I’d let you throw everything away just so I could keep doin’ this.”
You slide your palms inside his coat, over the frantic thunder of his heart.
“Then stop hating,” you whisper against his lips, “and kiss me again before the night ends and the world remembers who we’re supposed to be.”
He does.
He kisses you until the cold is a memory, until the only thing left is the salt of his guilt on your tongue and the promise pressed between your bodies: tomorrow night the locker vent will have another note, and the night after that, and the night after that, until the war or your father or simple decency finally drags one of you away.
Until then, he is helplessly, damnably, gloriously yours.
And you have never felt more alive.
The orders come on a Thursday, typed on cheap War Department paper and shoved under the door of his boarding house like a coward’s bullet. Monday. Four days.
He doesn’t sleep. He sits on the edge of his cot all night, chain-smoking until the room swims in blue haze and the ashtray overflows onto the floor, staring at that single line like it’s a death sentence: Report to Pier 92, 0600, 17 June 1943. Every drag of the cigarette burns his lungs, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in his chest when he thinks of you, your white fox fur, your Park Avenue pearls, the way you whispered Jamie like absolution.
He pictures you round with his child, belly swelling under silk dresses while your father disowns you and society spits at your feet. The image makes him hard and sick with guilt all at once. He hates himself for wanting to ruin you like that, for dreaming of planting his seed in you and watching it take root, binding you to him forever when he might not even come back to claim it. By dawn, his hands are shaking so bad he can barely light another smoke.
Friday afternoon he waits for you outside the women’s locker room, back pressed to the wall like he’s facing execution. When you step out, hair pinned under a kerchief, cheeks flushed from the heat of the presses, looking so clean it hurts, he catches your wrist before you can pass. His fingers are ice despite the plant’s inferno, gripping too tight, leaving faint bruises he’ll regret later.
He doesn’t speak, can’t trust his voice not to break. Just presses a folded scrap of brown paper bag into your palm and curls your fingers around it like it’s a grenade. His hand trembles violently; the paper crinkles like gunfire.
Meet me tonight. Sands Street, above the bar. Room 3A. Key under the mat. If you come, I’ll know what that means and I’ll hate myself for it. If you don’t, I’ll understand. Save yourself, angel. Please. - your Jamie
You read it twice right there in the corridor, men brushing past with wolf-whistles and jeers he barely registers. He watches your face crumple, watches the tears well up, and it feels like shrapnel twisting in his gut.
When you look at him, pleading, he can’t bear it, turns and walks away before you can say a word, shoulders hunched under the weight of what he’s asking, what he’s begging you not to give.
You go. God help you, you go.
You lie to your parents about a sick friend in Queens, slip out in the plainest navy dress you own, no stockings, no jewelry, but the pearls he once called a rosary around your throat, and walk the twenty blocks to the Brooklyn Navy Yard because every step delays the inevitable heartbreak.
Your heart hammers the whole way, a frantic rhythm of want and terror, wanting him inside you, filling you, claiming you in the only way that feels permanent; terrified he’ll do it and leave you alone with the consequences or worse, that he won’t and the war will take him before you can carry any piece of him.
The Sands Street rooming house reeks of stale beer, urine-soaked alleys, and the desperate laughter of sailors drowning their last nights in rotgut whiskey. The bar downstairs throbs with off-key songs and shattering glass. You climb the narrow back stairs on legs that threaten to buckle, each creak of the wood echoing your guilt. The key is under the mat, brass and warm, like it’s been waiting for your touch.
He yanks the door open before your knuckles graze it.
He looks like a ghost already: eyes bloodshot and hollow, uniform unbuttoned at the throat exposing dog tags that glint like a noose, stubble shadowing a jaw clenched against the scream building in his chest.
When he sees you, really sees you, standing there in your plain dress like you’re trying to blend into his world, something in him shatters. He hauls you inside with a grip that bruises, slams the door, bolts it, and sags against the wood for a ragged breath, eyes squeezed shut like he’s fighting a demon.
Then he turns, and the desperation crashes over you both like a wave.
“I can’t do gentle tonight,” he chokes out, voice raw and gravel-rough from cigarettes and unshed tears. “Can’t pretend this ain’t goodbye. I got four days left, angel, and every second I’m not buried in you feels like hell but I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t drag you down with me.”
His eyes rake over you, hungry and haunted. “But Christ, I need you. Need to feel you clench around me, need to spill so deep you can’t wash me out. Need to think about you back home, belly growing with my kid while I’m bleeding out in some foxhole. Tell me to stop. Tell me no.”
You answer by reaching up with trembling hands, pulling the pins from your hair until it tumbles free. The kerchief drops. Then the buttons of your dress, fumbling, exposing the white cotton slip beneath, the dried gardenia from his first note pressed flat against your breast like a relic. The pearls gleam mockingly in the low light.
He makes a sound like he’s dying, low, guttural, broken.
He crosses the room in two predatory strides, cups your face in calloused hands that shake with restraint, and kisses you like he’s trying to devour your soul before the devil claims his. It’s frantic, messy, teeth scraping, tongues clashing, breath stolen in desperate gasps.
You taste tobacco, salt, and the bitter edge of his terror, the fear that he’ll die without ever knowing what it feels like to breed you proper, to watch his seed take and change you forever. Tears mingle on your tongues; his or yours, it doesn’t matter.
He backs you toward the bed, hands never leaving your skin, mapping every curve like he’s committing it to memory for the cold nights ahead. The iron frame screams when you collapse onto it together, springs protesting like witnesses to blasphemy. The mattress sags under your weight, thin and unforgiving, reeking of bleach and faded sins, but it fades to nothing because Bucky is on you, heavy, trembling, pressing down with the full force of his body like he can imprint himself into your very marrow.
His dog tags swing cold between your breasts, a reminder of the uniform that owns him now. You clutch them desperately, the chain biting into your palm like a vow.
He wedges himself between your thighs, the space yielding like it was made for him alone. The rough wool of his trousers abrades the sensitive skin above your garters; the rigid, aching length of him grinds against your soaked cotton panties, dragging slow and deliberate until your back bows and a whimper tears from your throat into his devouring mouth. He’s leaking already, you feel the damp heat seeping through the fabric, marking you even now.
Sweat slicks every point of contact, turning the air humid and heavy with the sour-sweet rot of the bar below, the metallic tang of your shared desperation, the faint ozone of impending storm outside. The red neon sign from the street pulses through a crack in the blackout curtain, painting his sweat-sheened temple, his bitten lower lip, the tear tracks on his cheeks in hellish crimson.
He freezes abruptly, every muscle coiling tight as a spring. His forehead collides with yours, too hard, the pain a sharp anchor in the haze and he gasps like he’s been gutted.
“Angel,” he rasps, voice fracturing on the word, thick with tears and torment, “tell me true. Are you pure… have you ever let anyone…?”
“I’m a virgin, Jamie,” you sob. “I’ve been saving myself… I’ve never let anyone touch me. Only you. It’s only ever been you.”
The sound that rips from his throat is primal, half sob, half roar, raw enough to flay you both open. You feel him pulse against you, scalding and insistent, the wet spot on his trousers growing as he leaks helplessly at the thought of being your first, your only. His arms quake on either side of your head, veins bulging with the herculean effort of holding back.
“Jamie,” you plead, voice cracking into a desperate whine, hips rocking up against him, “tonight… please… take me. I want you inside me. I want you to give me a baby before you go… so I’ll still have a part of you if you don’t come home.”
“No,” he snarls against your neck, teeth sinking into the tendon there hard enough to draw blood, his hips jerking once, twice, grinding that weeping hardness against your core until stars explode behind your eyes and you both cry out in agonized unison.
“Not here. Not like this. Not when I ship out Monday and might come back in a pine box with my guts spilled across Europe.” His breath scorches your skin; his tears soak your collarbone, hot and accusing.
“When I breed you- when I finally pin you down and pump you so full of my cum you can’t move without feeling it drip out, when I knock you up and watch that perfect belly swell with my bastard kid, proof that a dirty Brooklyn boy ruined heaven itself, it’s gonna be right. Clean sheets in a real bed. My ring choking your finger. My ma’s rosary on the nightstand, begging forgiveness for what I’m about to do to you every night. Not in this filthy hole with drunks screaming downstairs and the blackout hiding our shame.”
The words ignite something feral in you, a ache so deep it borders on pain. You sob harder, wrenching, ugly cries that rack your body, because you crave it, the ruin, the scandal, the swell of your belly under judgment’s gaze, the child with his storm-blue eyes staring back at you while he’s gone. You want him to break you open, flood you until you’re marked inside and out, carrying his legacy while the world calls you whore.
He kisses every tear, tongue lapping salt from your skin like communion, murmuring fractured apologies and filthy promises into your ear: “Gonna come home and breed you proper, angel. Gonna fill that tight little cunt every day until it takes. Gonna watch you get big and soft, tits leaking milk for our baby, and I’ll suck ’em dry while I fuck another one into you.”
His hand shoves under your slip, rough palm cupping your soaked heat through the cotton. Two fingers press merciless circles over your clit, calluses dragging just right until your hips buck wildly and your nails score his back through his shirt.
“Come for me like this,” he growls, voice hoarse with his own torment, tears still falling. “Clench on nothing, baby, save that sweet virgin cunt for when I can breed it right. Let me feel heaven weep while I still can.”
You shatter with a keening wail, his name fracturing on your lips, thighs vise-tight around his wrist, back arched so violently the bedframe groans in protest.
The release is brutal, endless waves of almost-pleasure tainted by the emptiness inside, the knowledge that he’s denying you what you both crave most.
He follows with a guttural curse, hips slamming against your thigh as he spills hot and profuse inside his trousers, every pulse a wasted promise soaking through to your skin. It feels like sacrilege, his seed spent on fabric instead of buried deep where it belongs.
Afterward, he collapses onto you, face buried in your neck, arms banded around your ribs like iron shackles. His sobs shake you both now, wet and ragged against your skin.
“I mean it,” he whispers brokenly, hand splaying possessively over your flat belly. “When I come home, if God lets a sinner like me come home, I’m putting my baby in you first thing. Gonna breed you until you’re dripping with it, until everyone knows you let me ruin you. Gonna keep you full forever.”
You cradle his head, fingers tangling in sweat-damp hair, your own tears silent and steady.
“Then come back to me, Jamie,” you breathe, lips ghosting his ear. “Come back and give me a baby like you promised. I’ll wait for you… empty, aching, only yours. Just come home.”
Outside, the drunk sailor slurs “I’ll Be Seeing You” like a dirge.
Inside, you cling to each other in the ruins of restraint, counting the ticking hours until Monday rips him away, with your virtue intact but your soul stained, his breeding dreams echoing like gunfire in the space between your bodies.
Four days. Four nights of agony. And the war already devouring you both from the inside out.
Two days before he ships out, the house is a mausoleum of lilies and old money. Your mother ordered the flowers because they “read well in newsprint,” but they smell like a wake. Every breath is cloying, funereal, a reminder that something is already dying.
At three o’clock you are summoned.
Your mother sits on the brocade settee like a queen on a throne, navy silk severe, pearls triple-knotted, the diamond V brooch flashing like a bayonet. The tea service is untouched; the biscuits are arranged in perfect, untouched spirals. She doesn’t look up from the heavy cream envelope in her manicured hand.
“Darling,” she says, voice honey over broken glass, “it’s settled. Charles Langford the Third is coming to dinner next Friday. Harvard ’39, captain in the Army Air Forces, already decorated twice. His father owns half the shipyards on the East River.” She smiles, small and satisfied. “He’s perfect.”
The name lands between you like a live grenade.
You’re standing at the tall window, knuckles white in the velvet drapery, staring out at the dead garden. Forty-eight hours ago Jamie’s tears were dripping onto your throat while he swore he’d come home and breed you proper. Now forever has a new name, a new date, a new ring that isn’t his.
“Mother-”
One arched brow silences you.
“You’re twenty-two and the war has thinned the herd considerably. Charles has agreed to overlook your… patriotic dabbling at the factory.” Her gaze flicks over you, clinical. “Charity is charming, darling, but one mustn’t let the lower classes get ideas above their station. Or anywhere else.”
Your stomach lurches. The bruise on your collarbone (his teeth, two nights ago, when he was shaking too hard to be careful) throbs under the high neck of your sweater. You feel it like a brand.
She folds the letter with a crisp snap.
“His mother and I have decided on December. St. Thomas, naturally. White roses, stephanotis, the family veil.” She rises, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. “You’ll be exquisite.”
December. Six months. He leaves in forty-eight hours.
You picture him on the troop ship: your red ribbon tied tight around his upper arm beneath the olive drab, the one you’re planning to slip there Monday morning at three o’clock in the black heart of the night, right before he ships out, whispering, “So you’ll always have a piece of me.”
“I don’t love him,” you say. The words come out raw, cracked open.
Your mother laughs, delicate, lethal, the sound of crystal shattering in slow motion.
“Love is vulgar, darling. Security is eternal. Charles Langford will give you a life that doesn’t reek of cordite and cold-water flats.”
She steps close, cups your chin with cool, perfumed fingers, and tilts your face to the light. Her eyes drop to the faint purple bloom just visible above your collar and her mouth thins to a razor.
“I trust,” she murmurs, voice soft as poison, “there will be no more unsightly souvenirs by Friday.”
She releases you and sweeps out, already calling for the maid about her mink stole, heels clicking like a firing squad.
You stay at the window long after the door closes, palm pressed flat to your stomach, still flat, still empty, still aching with the ghost of a promise he hasn’t kept yet.
The grandfather clock ticks like a detonator.
Tonight your parents will be at the Waldorf until dawn, drinking champagne and buying war bonds while the war takes everything that matters.
Tonight the house will be empty.
Tonight the side door in the pantry will be unlatched.
Tonight Bucky will come, grease still under his nails, dog tags cold against his chest, eyes wild with the knowledge that Monday is coming to rip him away forever.
Tonight you will give him the only thing left that still belongs to you.
Tonight you will lie back on your childhood bed under the silk canopy and the portrait of your debutante self and beg him to ruin you completely, to spill so deep inside you that no amount of Park Avenue soap can wash him out, to plant his child in the cradle of your hips so that when they force Charles Langford’s ring on your finger there will already be a Barnes growing beneath it.
You press your forehead to the cold glass and whisper into the lily-heavy air:
“I’m already stained, Mother. Tonight I’m going to let him finish what he started. Tonight I’m going to let him breed me on your Belgian linen and your thousand-dollar mattress and your precious family veil, and when you walk into my room tomorrow morning you’ll smell him on every surface and you’ll know you were too late.”
The lilies droop heavier, as if they understand.
Two days. One night. And then the war can have what’s left.
The Packard’s taillights bleed red into the darkness as it disappears down the drive at eight-fifteen, carrying your parents to the Waldorf where they’ll sip champagne and auction off war bonds while the real war rages in your chest. By eight-forty, the last maid has retreated to her attic room, her footsteps fading like a distant echo. The house settles into a heavy, judgmental silence, the kind of quiet only old money can afford, thick with the scent of lilies wilting in crystal vases and the faint polish of silver that’s never known a calloused hand.
At eight-fifty-five, the side door in the pantry creaks open with a sound like cracking bone. Bucky slips inside like a shadow, a thief come to steal the only thing in this gilded cage worth taking: you.
You’re waiting in the kitchen, barefoot on the cold marble floor, wrapped in your pale-blue satin robe that whispers against your skin with every shallow breath. Your hair falls loose down your back, still damp from the bath you took to wash away the day’s pretense.
He stops dead in the kitchen doorway when he sees you, eyes widening as they sweep over the gleaming marble counters, the towering crystal cabinet filled with heirloom glassware, and the silver tea service still laid out from this afternoon. His breath catches. For a moment he just stands there, looking completely out of place, like he’s stepped into a cathedral he was never meant to enter.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, voice raw and ragged, thick with something deeper, guilt, maybe or awe. “You live in this? This ain’t a house, doll… this is a goddamn palace.”
You don’t answer with words. You can’t, your throat is too tight with the storm building inside you. Instead, you cross the floor on silent feet, take his ice-cold hand (grease still etched under the nails like permanent ink, knuckles scraped raw from the assembly line), and pull him toward the back stairs before he can bolt, before the reality of this place chases him away. His fingers tremble in yours, rough and hesitant, as if touching you here might shatter everything.
The servants’ stairs are narrow, shadowed, the wood worn smooth by generations of invisible hands. You lead him up in silence, heart slamming against your ribs like it’s trying to escape and run to him first. Every step heightens the tension, the forbidden weight of his boots on the polished oak, the faint creak of the house protesting this intruder from the wrong side of the river. You feel his eyes on your back, burning through the thin satin, and the air between you thickens with unspoken terror: two days until he ships out, two days until the war claims him, and tonight might be all you ever get.
Your bedroom door shuts with the softest click, a sound that echoes like a gunshot in your ears. Moonlight floods through the lace curtains, turning the white counterpane on your canopied bed to liquid silver, the pearls on your dressing table into scattered, cold moons. The room smells of lavender sachets and beeswax polish, but underneath it all lingers the faint rot of lilies from downstairs, a reminder that everything beautiful here is already dying. Bucky stands frozen in the middle of the Aubusson rug, hands shoved deep in his peacoat pockets, shoulders hunched like he’s afraid one wrong step will leave a permanent, unforgivable stain on this pristine world.
You tell him everything then, the words spilling out in a rush while you step close and start unbuttoning his peacoat with fingers that won’t stop shaking. Your mother’s decree, Charles Langford the Third with his Harvard polish and Air Force captain’s bars, the dinner next Friday, the wedding in December at St. Thomas with white roses and stephanotis and the family veil that’s been worn by every untouchable bride in your line. Each detail lands like a blade twisting between his ribs, his face darkens with every word, storm-blue eyes turning wet and murderous, jaw clenching so hard you see the muscle jump under the stubble.
By the time you reach “the family veil,” his coat is open and he’s trembling, not from cold, but from rage and heartbreak so raw it fills the room like smoke.
“They don’t get you,” he growls low, voice shaking with barely contained fury, hands fisting at his sides. “They don’t get to decide who you open your legs for. They don’t get to hand you off like some prize while I’m bleeding out in a foxhole halfway across the world.”
You let the robe slide off your shoulders then, deliberate and slow. It pools at your feet like spilled milk, satin whispering against your skin one last time. You’re naked underneath, completely bare, vulnerable, the moonlight painting your body in pale glows and shadows, every curve exposed to his starving gaze.
His breath stops entirely. The air goes still, charged, like the moment before lightning strikes. His eyes rake over you, wide and desperate, drinking in the sight as if committing it to memory for the cold nights ahead, your breasts, the dip of your waist, the soft triangle between your thighs. A tear slips down his cheek, unashamed.
You step closer, close enough that the furnace heat rolling off him cuts through the warm June night still clinging to your skin. The contrast is electric, his rough wool uniform brushing your bare arms, his dog tags cool where they graze your collarbone.
“You promised me clean sheets, Bucky,” you whisper, voice breaking on his name, hands rising to cup his wet face. “You promised you’d ruin me right. Tonight the house is empty. Tonight I’m begging you, take what they think they own. Make me yours before they can give me away.”
He drops to his knees on the rug then, a sudden, broken motion that wrenches a sob from your throat. His arms wrap around your hips, strong and possessive, pulling you flush against him. His face presses to the soft skin just below your navel, stubble scraping like a delicious burn, his tears soaking into you hot and fast. He’s shaking now, violent tremors that rock you both, as if the weight of this moment is finally crushing him.
“I’m filthy, doll,” he chokes against your belly, voice muffled and wrecked, hands splaying wide over your lower back like he’s trying to hold you together. “I’m a filthy, greedy bastard from the wrong side of everything, and you’re- you’re sacred. This room, this bed… it’s all too good for me. I’ll burn in hell for even thinking about staining it with my dirt.”
You sink your fingers into his sweat-damp hair, tilting his face up until moonlight catches the tears glittering on his lashes, turning his eyes to shattered glass.
“Then ruin me, Bucky,” you plead, voice raw with desperation, thumbs brushing his tears away only for more to fall. “Stain me so deep no amount of white roses or family veils can ever wash it out. Make it so when Charles touches me, he’ll feel you there, under my skin, in my blood, forever.”
The sound that tears out of him is inhuman, half sob, half growl, primal and broken. He surges to his feet in one fluid motion, lifts you like you weigh nothing, and lays you on the bed so gently the mattress barely sighs under your weight. The sheets are cool, crisp cotton that cost more than he earns in a month, sliding like silk against your heated skin. The canopy overhead looms like a judgment, the debutante portrait on the wall staring down with painted disapproval.
He strips with shaking hands, uniform peeling away layer by layer, peacoat, shirt, trousers until he’s bare above you, moonlight carving shadows over the hard planes of his chest, the corded muscles of his arms, the faint scars from factory accidents and street fights. His dog tags dangle cold and silver against his flushed skin, the only thing left, glinting like a reminder of the war waiting to claim him.
He takes his time with you then, drawing out the agony, like the world outside has already ended and all that’s left is this slow, reverent unraveling.
He starts at your throat, open-mouthed kisses that turn into deep, deliberate sucks, branding you with dark, blooming bruises no high collar will hide tomorrow. Lower, he worships your breasts the same way, slow, hungry pulls of his mouth, tongue flicking over each hardened peak until you’re trembling beneath him, until you feel the wet heat of his tears mixing with his saliva, marking every inch of skin that’s never known a man’s touch.
The tension builds unbearably, your hands clutch at his shoulders, nails digging half-moons into his skin, begging wordlessly for more, but he holds back, drawing it out, making you feel every second of the forbidden. “Gonna remember this,” he murmurs against your sternum, voice hoarse with unshed sobs. “Gonna carry the taste of you into hell, doll. Every bullet, every bomb- your name on my lips.”
When he finally settles between your thighs, the air crackles with drama, your heart pounding so hard you’re sure the maids can hear it floors away. He spreads you open with his fingers first, warm and careful, thumbs stroking the soft, slick folds like he’s unveiling a miracle. His breath hitches, eyes darkening to near-black as he stares, transfixed.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he breathes, voice ragged with awe and torment, a tear slipping down his cheek to land hot on your inner thigh. “Look at you. Look how greedy my girl is already- dripping for a nobody like me in her princess bed.”
He leans in, nose brushing your clit, and inhales deep, a shudder running through his whole body like he’s finally found salvation. The first slow lick is flat and broad, dragging from your entrance all the way up, and your back arches so violently the canopy sways above you.
“Bucky-” Your voice cracks, a desperate plea.
“Shh, sweetheart. Let me say hi properly. Let me confess every sin on my knees.”
He groans low in his throat, the vibration humming through you, and seals his mouth over your core. No teasing, no mercy, just the slow, filthy worship of a man who’s been starving for months and finally broken. His tongue pushes inside you, thick and deliberate, curling deep like he’s trying to etch himself into your very walls. When he pulls back, it’s only to speak right against your dripping heat, lips brushing you with every filthy word, breath hot and ragged.
“So fuckin’ soft… sweetest thing I ever tasted. You hear how wet you are for me, doll? Greedy little pussy can’t stop crying on my tongue- begging for a Brooklyn boy to ruin it forever.”
He spreads you wider, thumbs holding you open obscenely while he licks deeper, slower, like he’s terrified the dawn will steal you away if he rushes. His tongue circles your clit in lazy, worshipful figure-eights, then flattens and sucks, gentle at first, then harder, relentless, until your thighs quake around his ears and tears burn your own eyes from the overwhelming intensity.
You’ve never felt anything like this, nothing has ever been this wet, this hot, this filthy and tender all at once, the contrast of his rough stubble against your softness driving you mad. Your hands fist the sheets, hips rolling helplessly into his mouth, chasing the edge of something cataclysmic, but the drama of it all, the forbidden lover in your childhood bed, the ticking clock of his departure, makes every sensation sharper, more agonizing.
“That’s it,” he growls against you, voice muffled and vibrating straight to your core. “Feed her to me. Soak my fuckin’ face, baby. Want you dripping down my chin when I’m done, want the taste of you haunting me across the ocean.”
He slides two fingers inside you just to feel you clench, curling them perfectly while his mouth never leaves your clit; he sucks it slow and steady, tongue flicking in time with the thrust of his hand. The sounds are obscene, wet, sloppy, echoing in the opulent room like blasphemy, every whimper from you met with his approving hum, the vibration shooting lightning through your veins.
The tension snaps hard and sudden; you come with a broken cry muffled against your wrist, hips jerking wildly against his tongue, the canopy bed shaking as waves crash over you. He doesn’t stop, gentles his licks but laps through every pulse, drinking you down like holy water, his tears mixing with your release until you’re boneless, gasping, shattered.
Only then does he crawl back up, mouth shiny and slick with you, kissing every tear that slipped free from your eyes without you noticing. “Taste yourself on me later,” he whispers against your lips, voice hoarse with reverence and regret. “Gonna keep you wet and open all night, sweetheart. Not done praying yet. Not by a long shot.”
“Look at me,” he begs, positioning himself above you, trembling so violently the headboard rattles like a warning.
You do, eyes locked on his, seeing the storm of love, guilt, and desperation swirling there.
He lines up, the blunt heat of him nudging your entrance, and you both stop breathing. The moment hangs, stretched taut with drama, the war, your mother’s plans, the empty house, the lilies downstairs all converging into this one forbidden act.
“Tell me to stop,” he pleads, voice shredded to nothing, tears falling freely now. “Tell me and I’ll walk out that door, leave you clean for that bastard Langford.”
You pull him down instead, wrapping your legs high around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, and take him in one slow, burning slide that rips the air from both your lungs.
The sound he makes is wrecked, guttural, reverent, broken beyond repair. He bottoms out and stills, forehead pressed to yours, tears dripping onto your cheeks like baptism.
“You’re letting a dirty Brooklyn boy inside heaven,” he chokes, hips twitching helplessly. “I don’t deserve- I don’t-”
You clench around him, drawing a shattered groan from his throat. “Move, James. Love me. Ruin me before they can stop us.”
He does, slow at first, agonizing, reverent strokes that drag broken noises from deep in your chests, the bed creaking softly beneath the weight of everything you’re stealing from fate. Then faster, deeper, the rhythm turning desperate as the tension coils tighter, the knowledge that this might be goodbye fueling every thrust, every gasp. Moonlight paints sweat on his shoulders, on the flex of his back as he drives into you like he’s trying to fuse your souls forever, his dog tags swinging cold between your breasts like a pendulum counting down to dawn.
You come again with his hand between you, fingers circling slick and perfect, his mouth fused to yours swallowing every cry as the world narrows to just this, just him filling you, claiming you in the heart of everything that’s supposed to keep you apart.
He pulls out at the last second, even though you beg through tears, even though you lock your ankles and sob “inside me, please- give me your baby now,” because he won’t risk leaving you ruined and alone. He rears back on his knees, fist wrapped tight around himself, and spills in thick, endless ropes across your breasts, your throat, the hollow between your collarbones. The heat of it brands you; the sight of it, pearly streaks glowing in the moonlight rips a guttural groan from him as he watches himself mark you, tears streaming down his face.
He collapses forward, mouth open against your skin, licking his own release from your nipple like he’s trying to reclaim the sin, to spare you the evidence. His tears mix with everything else, salt and spend and the faint metallic taste of terror, as he whispers “I’m sorry” over and over, kissing every sticky streak like penance.
“I’m so fucking sorry I can’t give you my baby tonight,” he sobs into your neck, hand splaying possessively over your empty belly. “Can’t stay and watch you grow round with what I put in you- can’t be there when our kid kicks and you glow like the angel you are.”
You thread fingers through his sweat-damp hair and hold him tight, your own tears silent and hot. “You gave me you,” you breathe, voice cracking. “That’s enough- for now.”
You fall asleep tangled in the ruined sheets, his dog tags cool against your breast, his spend drying sticky on your skin, the faint smell of lilies finally drowned out by sex and smoke and him. His arms band around you like iron, as if he can hold back the dawn.
At the first hint of gray in the sky, he stirs. You feel it like a physical tear when he slips from the bed, the cold rushing in where his heat was. He dresses in silence, every movement careful, deliberate, like the room is a sacred space and he’s terrified of desecrating it further. His hands shake as he buttons his shirt, eyes never leaving your face, memorizing every detail for the hell ahead.
At the door, he drops to his knees again, presses one last, lingering kiss to your bare stomach, right over the womb he’s claimed in spirit if not yet in seed. His tears soak your skin anew.
“I’ll come back,” he whispers against you, voice hoarse from crying all night. “I’ll come back and finish what we started. Clean sheets. My ring on your finger. My baby swelling that perfect belly. All of it. Just wait for me, angel- don’t let them erase what we did here.”
You nod, throat too tight for words, fingers clutching his hair one last time.
He leaves before the sun can catch him, slipping out the side door like the ghost he’s about to become.
The sheets are cold where he was. You pull them to your face and breathe him in, machine oil, wintergreen, sex, and the salt of both your tears, until the maid knocks at seven with her cheerful “Good morning, miss,” and you have to pretend you’re still the girl who belongs in this house, unmarked and untaken.
You are not.
You never will be.
Monday morning, three o’clock in the black heart of the night. The whole city is holding its breath. Every window is dark, every street empty, every clock ticking toward the moment the troop ships leave Pier 92 at dawn. Only the two of you are awake in the entire world.
You left the side gate unlatched hours ago.
Now you wait in the garden, barefoot in the cool grass, a light coat pulled around your shoulders. The ivy trellis is lush and heavy with summer leaves, swaying gently in the warm night breeze. The air is thick with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and damp earth, but none of it matters.
You’d stand here until sunrise if it meant one more minute with him.
Three-oh-three.
The gate creaks, just once, and Bucky steps through.
Dress uniform pressed sharp enough to cut, duffel slung heavy over one shoulder, cap tucked under his arm because he can’t bear anything between his eyes and you tonight. Moonlight catches the brass on his collar, the polished buttons, the wet shine on his cheeks he hasn’t bothered to hide. He looks older than twenty-six. He looks like a man walking to his own execution.
The duffel hits the ground with a dull thud.
He crosses the moonlit lawn in four strides and you collide so hard your teeth click, mouths already open, desperate, tasting salt and smoke and six sleepless hours of terror on his tongue. His arms crush you to him like he’s trying to crawl inside your skin and stay there. Your coat falls open; his gloved hands slide inside, palms flattening against the bare skin of your back beneath your thin nightgown, fingers splaying wide as if he could memorize every vertebra before they tear him away.
You break apart only when your lungs scream for air. Foreheads still pressed together, breath mingling in frantic white clouds.
He reaches into his collar with shaking fingers and pulls out the dog tags. The chain is warm, almost hot from resting against his heart. He presses them into your palm, closes your fingers over the metal until the edges bite.
“So part of me stays with you,” he whispers, voice cracked wide open, raw as a wound. “So you remember who you belong to when they try to put another man’s ring on your finger.”
You curl your fist around them until blood wells in your palm. JAMES B. BARNES stamped into your skin like a brand.
Then you reach up with trembling hands and untie the red silk ribbon from your hair, the same one you wore the night he first kissed you behind the scrap bins, the one that’s been tied around your wrist every day since. Your hair spills loose over your shoulders, catching the moonlight like spilled ink.
You take his left wrist, push back the stiff olive-drab sleeve, expose the frantic pulse hammering there, and tie the ribbon in a careful, perfect bow just above the vein.
“So part of me goes with you,” you manage, voice splintering on every word. “So you remember who’s waiting. So you come home.”
He makes a sound like a sob punched out of him, brings your wrist to his mouth and kisses the place where the dog tags will rest tomorrow, lips trembling against your skin. Then he presses his forehead to yours, eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking from beneath his lashes to drip onto your cheeks and mingle with your own.
“If I die over there,” he breathes, so quietly the wind almost steals it, “bury me with this ribbon on me. Let ’em put me in the ground knowin’ an angel let this filthy man love her. Let that be the last thing I ever feel.”
You kiss him to stop the words, slow and deliberate and devastating, pouring every unsaid I love you, every please come back, every I’m already yours into his mouth. He tastes like coffee and terror and the mint gum he chewed to hide the cigarettes from the sergeant. His duffel lies forgotten in the frost while you hold each other under the dead ivy, trading breaths like oxygen is about to be rationed forever, like if you just keep kissing you can stop time.
The sky begins to pale, that sick, pearl-gray just before true dawn, and you feel it in your bones: the moment the world starts moving again.
He pulls back one last time. His thumb smears the tears across your cheek, trying to wipe them away and only making them worse.
“Keep the tags against your heart,” he says, voice hoarse and fierce. “Sleep with ’em. Dream with ’em. And keep yourself for me, angel. Every night you’re lonely, touch yourself and pretend it’s my hand. Stay waiting for me… untouched, aching, only mine. Because I’m coming back. I’m coming back to marry you in whatever dress you’re wearing. I’m coming back to give you my baby the same damn night. I swear on every star left in this shitty sky.”
You nod, throat too tight for sound, tears streaming so hard you can barely see him.
He shoulders the duffel with shaking arms, presses one final kiss to your forehead, hard, fierce, branding, like he’s trying to burn the shape of his mouth into your skin forever.
Then he turns and walks through the gate without looking back.
If he looks back, he won’t go.
You both know it.
You stay under the trellis until the sun comes up, until the dew-soaked grass chills your bare feet, until the dog tags burn cold against your heart and the pale-blue ribbon disappears around the corner with the only man you will ever love.
He ships out with your ribbon hidden under his sleeve, pressed to the pulse that beats your name.
You stay behind with his tags around your neck and the warmth of him still leaking slow and perfect between your thighs from six hours ago, when he broke every promise except the one that matters.
Come back to me, Jamie.
Come back and finish what we started.
The first letter comes on a Tuesday in early July, three weeks and four days after Pier 92 swallowed him whole.
The envelope is so thin you can see the shadow of ink through it, already soft at the edges from being carried against his heart for days before it ever saw a mailbag. The postmark is a smudged APO number somewhere in England he isn’t allowed to name. You steal it from the silver tray in the hall before the maid can carry the post upstairs, fingers trembling so badly you nearly drop it twice.
You lock yourself in the bathroom, sit on the edge of the cold porcelain tub, and rip it open like it’s the last breath you’ll ever take.
Angel,
It’s so damn hot here my uniform sticks to my skin like it’s painted on. Everything smells like wet wool, cordite, sweat, and the kind of fear that never washes off. I sleep with your ribbon tied around my wrist so tight the skin underneath is raw. The guys think I’ve gone soft or religious. They’re not wrong. It’s the only thing keeping me sane.
I close my eyes and I’m back in your garden at three am, your mouth on mine, your tears on my tongue. I can still taste you, angel. I swear I can still taste you like communion wine I’m not worthy of. Some nights I wake up hard and aching and I have to bite my fist so I don’t say your name out loud and give the whole damn barracks the truth.
Tell me you still wear my tags against your heart.
Tell me you still touch yourself thinking of me.
Tell me I didn’t ruin the most beautiful thing I ever touched and then leave you to pay for it alone.
I dream about you every night. Dream about coming home and walking through that side gate and finding you barefoot in the grass again. Dream about laying you down on those clean sheets and putting my baby in you slow, watching your belly grow round with proof that a dirty kid from Brooklyn got to keep heaven. Dream about waking up every morning for the rest of my life with my hand on what we made.
If I die here, bury me with your ribbon. Let it be the last thing they wrap me in. Let me go into the ground knowing an angel let this filthy man love her.
Tell me you’re still waiting.
Tell me I’m still allowed to dream of you.
Forever yours, no matter what,
Jamie
You read it until the paper warps from your tears and the bathtub water you never turned on goes cold around your ankles. Then you hide it inside the false bottom of your jewelry box, beneath the pearl earrings you’ll never wear again because they feel like chains.
Your reply is written on the back of factory inventory sheets you smuggle home inside your brassiere because your mother has started searching your desk. You write it in the dark, by the thin blade of light under your bedroom door, pen digging so deep it tears the paper in places.
Jamie,
I wore your tags to bed last night and woke up with your name bruised between my breasts like a brand. I can’t take them off. I won’t. They’re the only thing that still feels warm in this house.
I touch myself every night the way you taught me, slow circles, two fingers, pretending they’re yours, pretending you’re still buried so deep inside me I can feel you for days. I come whispering “Sergeant” into my pillow so the maid doesn’t hear, biting the sheets so hard I taste blood, and it’s still not enough. It’s never enough.
The trains rattle past at 2:14 am and I swear I still feel you between my thighs, thick and perfect and mine, spilling inside me like a promise. I’m keeping myself clean the way you asked. No one else will ever have what you claimed. I’d rather die than let another man touch what’s yours.
I went to the garden last night and knelt in the exact spot we said goodbye. The grass was still warm from the day. I stayed there for hours, pretending your hands were the ones holding my hips, pretending you were behind me, inside me, marking me again. I came just from the memory of your voice telling me you’d give me a baby one day.
Come home and do it, Jamie.
Come home and ruin me all over again.
Come home and put your baby in me so deep the whole world knows who I belong to.
I’m still your angel.
I’ll always be your angel.
Even if you never come back, I’ll carry you inside me for the rest of my life.
Wait for me the way I’m waiting for you.
Come home and stain me forever.
All my love, all my nights, all my prayers,
Your angel
You seal it with red wax and the imprint of your lips, mail it from the drugstore on Madison so the postmark can’t betray you.
The letters grow longer, rawer, more desperate as summer fades into a cold, gray autumn and winter settles heavy over Europe.
He writes from foxholes that smell of piss and terror, from bombed-out barns where the cows are dead and the rafters drip blood:
I jerked off in my helmet last night thinking of your tits covered in me, the way you begged me not to pull out. I came so hard I saw stars and still hated myself for wasting it. Tell me you still taste me when you swallow. Tell me you’re wet right now reading this, fingers inside yourself, pretending it’s me.
Another letter arrives smelling faintly of blood and wet earth, the paper water-stained and trembling in your hands:
We lost half the platoon yesterday. I kept your ribbon clenched in my fist the whole time so tight it cut me. If I die tomorrow, know the last thing I’ll think of is your legs wrapped around my waist and the sound you made when I spilled inside you. Know I’ll die smiling because I got to love you, even if it was only once. Tell me you’re still waiting. Tell me I’m still allowed to come home and breed you proper like I promised.
You write back with tears blurring the ink until the words swim:
I waited on my knees in the garden again until the grass stained my skin green and my knees bled. I came just thinking about your hands holding me open, your voice telling me to take it, take every drop. I will wait every night until you come back and put your baby in me. I’ll wait until my body forgets how to want anything else. I am yours, Jamie. Only yours. Always. Even if the war keeps you forever, I’ll never let another man touch me. I’d rather burn.
Winter drags on, bitter and endless, before finally loosening its grip into a cold, gray spring. The letters grow slower, then stop for weeks at a time. You start wearing his dog tags openly under your dresses, the chain long enough that the metal rests between your breasts like a second heartbeat. You catch your reflection in store windows and barely recognize the hollow-eyed girl staring back.
In March your mother finds one of the tamer letters, something about gardenias and clean sheets and coming home to you, slipped between the pages of a book you left in the drawing room. She reads it aloud in a voice like breaking ice, face going white with fury and disgust.
You stand there while she screams about disgrace, about Charles Langford, about the wedding that’s already being planned for next winter whether you like it or not. When she’s finished you walk to the fireplace, strike a match, and burn every letter you still have, one by one, watching the flames curl the words into smoke that rises up the chimney like prayers no priest will ever hear.
“It was nothing,” you tell her, voice flat and dead. “Just a soldier I gave coffee to at the factory.”
She believes you because she needs to. Because the alternative is unbearable.
That night you lock your door, gather the ashes into a small velvet pouch, and sleep with it under your pillow. The faint smell of smoke clings to your hair for days.
You still wear the tags.
You still touch yourself every night whispering his name into the dark.
You still kneel in the garden when the moon is thin and the wind is cruel, pressing the metal to your lips and praying to whatever god listens to ruined girls.
Somewhere across the ocean, a red silk ribbon is frayed to threads against a wrist that hasn’t stopped bleeding for months.
And every night, in two different kinds of darkness, you both whisper the same broken prayer:
Tell me you’re still my angel.
Tell me I’m still allowed to dream of you.
Tell me you’re waiting.
Tell me you’ll come home and finish what we started.
The war in Europe is over.
The boys are coming home.
You hear it on the radio while you’re pouring coffee you don’t taste. The announcer’s voice is bright, triumphant, like he’s reading the guest list for a wedding. The 107th is docking tomorrow. Captain America himself is bringing them in. Your mother claps her hands, already talking about a parade, about yellow ribbons and victory cake. Your father lights a cigar and says something about the country getting back to business.
You drop the cup. It explodes across the floor like a grenade. Porcelain and coffee everywhere. Nobody notices you can’t breathe.
Jamie is alive.
Jamie is coming home.
That night your father finds the letter.
He doesn’t knock. He never does. The door slams open so hard the hinges scream. He’s holding the paper like it’s on fire, veins standing out in his neck, face the color of raw meat.
“James Buchanan Barnes,” he spits, reading your name off the envelope like it’s an obscenity. “Sergeant. Some grease-stained mick from the wrong side of the bridge thinks he can put his hands on my daughter.”
Your mother makes a small animal sound and clutches the doorframe.
He doesn’t yell. That’s worse. His voice is low, flat, the same tone he uses when he fires a man and ruins his life before lunch.
“I warned you,” he says. “I told you what happens to little girls who forget their place.”
He tears the letter in half, then quarters, lets the pieces drift to the rug like dead leaves.
“Tomorrow the golden boy docks. Day after that, Charles Langford is taking you to dinner. You will smile. You will let him put a ring on your finger before Christmas. Or I swear on my mother’s grave I will have that sergeant dragged off that ship in irons and shot for desertion. They still do that, you know. Even for heroes.”
He steps closer. You smell the cigar on his breath.
“You want to play whore for a factory rat? Fine. I’ll treat you like one. You’ll never see him again.”
He leaves the torn letter on the floor and walks out.
You don’t sleep.
At eleven-thirty you slip out the service door in your brother’s old peacoat, scarf over your hair, heels traded for boots. The streets are cold and wet. You take three buses and walk the last mile to the yard.
Dock 39 smells of diesel and dead fish. A single bulb swings overhead, throwing shadows that crawl.
He’s already there.
Bucky looks worse than any photograph ever could. Uniform hanging off him, eyes sunken, a new scar carving down from his hairline like someone tried to split his skull and changed their mind. He’s smoking with shaking fingers, flask glinting at his hip.
He sees you and the cigarette falls from his lips.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers. “You shouldn’t-”
You slap him. Hard. The crack echoes off the crates.
He doesn’t move. Just closes his eyes like he’s been waiting for it.
“Your old man find out?” he asks, voice hoarse.
You can’t speak. You just nod.
He laughs once, bitter, and it turns into a cough. “Good. Good. Maybe now you’ll listen.”
He steps back, hands up like he’s surrendering.
“Go home, angel. Marry the rich kid. Have the life you were born for. I’m done dragging you through the mud.”
You hit him again, fist this time, right in the sternum. He grunts but doesn’t stop you.
“You think that’s what I want?!” Your voice cracks open, raw. “You think I give a damn about daddy’s money when you’re-” You can’t finish. The words choke you.
He looks at you like you’re a ghost he’s terrified to touch.
“I’m leaving again,” he says quietly. “Not tomorrow. Tonight. Steve’s got a mission. Something classified. Off the books. They need shooters who don’t ask questions.” He swallows. “I volunteered.”
The world tilts.
“You what?”
“I’m not coming back to Brooklyn,” he says. “Not ever. Not like this.” He gestures at himself, at the tremor in his hands, the hollows under his eyes, the man the war already half-killed. “You deserve better than what’s left of me.”
You grab his coat with both fists and shake him.
“Don’t you dare,” you hiss. “Don’t you fucking dare decide for me.”
He cups your face with hands that won’t stop shaking. His thumbs smear tears you didn’t feel fall.
“I love you so much it’s killing me,” he says, voice breaking. “And I’m too much of a coward to watch it kill you slower.”
You kiss him like you’re trying to bruise the truth out of him. He kisses back like he’s starving, teeth clashing, a choked sound ripping out of his throat. You taste blood and gin and the Atlantic Ocean he’s about to disappear into.
When you finally pull apart, he’s crying too.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your mouth. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Headlights sweep across the dock. A jeep. Two silhouettes, one with a shield strapped to his back. Steve.
Bucky steps away from you like you burn.
You notice it then: the fresh, shiny dog tags around his neck, glinting under the lamplight. New ones. His old ones are still warm against your own chest, hidden beneath your coat. But the red ribbon is still tied tight around his left wrist, just visible beneath his sleeve.
“Go,” he says, voice shredded. “Before I beg you to come with me and get us both shot.”
You can’t move.
He backs up until the darkness swallows him, the new dog tags catching the light one last time before he’s gone.
Steve’s voice carries on the wind, gentle but urgent. “Buck, we’re late.”
You hear Bucky’s answer, cracked and final.
“Coming.”
The jeep door slams. The engine roars. Tires spit gravel.
You stand there until the sound fades and the fog closes in.
He left you.
He left you wearing his old tags while he carried your ribbon into hell.
He left you to go fight with Captain America again, like you never mattered enough to stay for.
Your father won the war after all.
And somewhere out in the dark, Bucky Barnes is running toward death because living with what he did to you hurts worse.
You press his dog tags so hard into your palm the edges cut.
You don’t scream.
You don’t cry anymore.
You just bleed, quiet and slow, while the city sleeps and the heroes sail away without you.
The train lurches violently on the icy track.
Bucky reaches for the railing.
It snaps.
He falls.
He does not die.
He wakes up in hell with no memory of heaven.
Screaming in a language that scrapes his throat raw, one arm gone, replaced by cold metal and pain that never ends. The red ribbon you tied around his wrist is cut away with the rest of his uniform. His dog tags are melted down for scrap. Everything that made him Jamie, everything that made him yours, is stripped, burned and buried under layers of ice and lies.
James Buchanan Barnes is declared dead on a piece of paper somewhere in Washington.
You never know.
You never know that for the next seventy years, a ghost wearing your lover’s face is dragged through blood and frost and electric fire. They wipe him clean again and again, scraping his mind until it bleeds, until the only thing left is violence.
But no matter how many times they hollow him out, something stubborn and sacred still clings to life deep inside the wreckage, a soft, broken whisper of angel. A faint scent of summer skin and pearls. The ghost of your voice calling him Jamie in the dark.
They have to dig deeper every single time.
And still, somewhere beneath the Winter Soldier’s empty eyes, a dying fragment of Bucky Barnes keeps reaching for you across decades of ice and forgetting, never quite able to let go of the only heaven he ever touched.
He never stops falling.
And you never stop waiting.
The telegram arrives at four-seventeen on a Tuesday that smells of snow and endings.
Your father is waiting in the marble foyer when the Western Union boy rings. He signs for the yellow envelope himself, tips the boy a dime, and closes the heavy door with the soft finality of a coffin lid.
You are halfway down the stairs in your navy coat, the one with the fur collar you wore the day you met James, when your father steps forward and reads the words aloud in a voice stripped of all feeling:
“The War Department regrets to inform you that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is missing following enemy action in the Alps and must be presumed dead…”
He does not look at you. He has never once said James’ name without disgust curling his mouth, as if the very syllables taste of the factory floor.
When he finishes, he folds the paper once, twice, and slips it into his breast pocket like a victory.
“I warned you,” he says, cold and quiet. “Boys like that don’t come home. They fall off trains and leave girls like you ruined.”
Your mother appears behind him, already dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief for show. She reaches for you.
You stumble back so hard your shoulder blades crack against the banister.
“Don’t,” you rasp. “Don’t touch me.”
Your father’s face goes the color of old ash.
“You will wear mourning for one year,” he declares. “After that, Charles Langford has agreed to overlook this… sordid little affair. The wedding will happen. The subject is closed.”
You laugh, a raw, ugly sound that makes your mother flinch.
“Closed?” You rip open your coat. The dog tags swing free, catching the chandelier light like a blade. “You think this is closed?”
Your father’s eyes fix on the metal resting between your breasts and something venomous flashes across his face.
“That filth will be removed from this house tonight.”
You close your fist around the tags until blood beads beneath the metal.
“Touch them,” you whisper, voice shaking with decades of unshed rage, “and I swear on every god you pretend to believe in, I will burn this house down with all of us inside it.”
For the first time in your life, they step back.
You wear black for exactly one year, not for propriety, but because every other color feels like betrayal.
St. Thomas smells of pine and hypocrisy. Charles kisses you after the vows and you taste nothing. Under fifteen thousand dollars of Brussels lace, the dog tags lie cold against the groove they have worn into your skin.
Your father toasts “new beginnings.” Your mother cries prettily into her champagne. You smile the vacant, perfect smile you have practiced until it no longer feels like a lie.
1951
Your daughter is born with your reckless smile and soft hair. Charles claims the resemblance is “Langford through and through.” You name her Rebecca, after the little sister Bucky lost to sickness when he was young.
The first time her chubby fingers reach for the glint of metal at your throat, something inside you splinters clean in two.
You press her palm over his name stamped into the steel and whisper, so low only the two of you can hear, “That’s your daddy, sweetheart. He’s just late coming home.”
Then you smile the vacant Langford-wife smile you have perfected, and no one in the room sees the way your heart breaks all over again.
1955
Rebecca is four years old, all wild dark curls and bright, curious eyes.
She’s sitting on the edge of the tub, kicking her legs while you bathe her. Soap bubbles cling to her skin. Suddenly her small hand reaches out and touches the dog tags resting between your breasts.
“Mommy,” she asks, head tilted, “why don’t you ever take that necklace off? Not even in the bath?”
You set the washcloth down and kneel on the cold tile so you’re eye-level with her. Water soaks into your robe.
“Because it belongs to a soldier who loved me very much,” you tell her softly. “He gave it to me before he went away to war. And promises… promises are heavy things, Becca. You don’t put them down just because your arms get tired.”
She thinks about this with the solemn seriousness only a four-year-old can manage. Then she leans in and presses a gentle, soapy kiss to the metal.
“Night-night, soldier,” she whispers.
Your heart twists so sharply you have to bite your lip to keep from making a sound.
Charles appears in the doorway just as you’re wrapping her in a towel. His gaze drops to the dog tags, then to Rebecca’s tiny fingers still curled around them. His mouth presses into a thin, irritated line.
That night, after she’s asleep, he pours a scotch and says without looking at you, “It’s been ten years. Maybe it’s time to let the dead stay dead.”
You give him the same empty smile you’ve given him for a decade.
“Of course, darling.”
Later, alone in the dark, you press the tags hard between your breasts, right over the heart that still belongs to a man who never got to come home.
Rebecca is Charles Langford’s daughter by blood.
But every time you look at her, you see the ghost of the only man you ever loved.
1974
The call comes at three in the morning. Charles collapsed at the Stork Club, they say. In the arms of a twenty-three-year-old redhead who still calls you “ma’am.”
You listen to the doctor, thank him politely, and hang up.
The funeral is tasteful, packed with men who shake your hand and tell you what a tragedy it is to lose such a fine man so young.
You nod in your black veil and think: he was fifty-one. James never made it to twenty-eight.
Seven days later you fold the last black dress into a box for charity. You stand in front of the mirror in a soft gray sweater, dog tags glinting against your collarbone like they never left.
Then you pour yourself a drink, light a cigarette, and stop pretending.
1989
Rebecca is thirty-eight when she finds the old cedar box in the attic.
She brings it downstairs and sits beside you on the couch, carefully pulling out the photographs. Her fingers linger on the one of you and Bucky laughing outside the Stark plant, then on the solo shot of him in uniform, smiling that crooked smile you never forgot.
She looks up at you, eyes soft and genuinely curious.
“Mom… who was he?”
You feel your throat tighten. For a moment you just look at the pictures with her.
“He was James Barnes,” you say quietly. “But I always called him Jamie. He worked at the factory during the war. He was… everything.”
Rebecca leans in closer, studying his face like she’s trying to memorize it.
“What was he like?”
A small, sad smile tugs at your lips.
“He was loud and gentle at the same time. He had the filthiest hands from working the line, but he touched me like I was made of glass. He called me ‘angel’ like he really believed it.” Your voice cracks. “He was funny. Brave. Scared. He made me feel alive in a way no one else ever has.”
You pause, brushing a thumb over the photo.
“I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone. And I wished… every single day… that he could have been your father.”
Rebecca’s eyes fill with tears. She doesn’t pull away. Instead she leans her head against your shoulder, still holding the photograph.
“Tell me more about him,” she whispers.
And for the first time in decades, you do.
1991
You are seventy, lungs ruined from decades of chasing the ghost of wintergreen and machine oil in cigarette smoke. Cancer takes you quickly.
The night before you die, you sew Jamie’s dog tags into the hem of the dress they will bury you in, stitching them carefully over your heart where they belong. The nurse thinks the delirium has set in when you clutch her hand with surprising strength and whisper, “Tell Jamie I waited. Tell him I kept them close… that I kept myself for him.”
They close the casket.
They lower you into the frozen February ground beside people who never knew the real shape of your heart.
Beneath layers of silk and soil, Jamie’s dog tags rest against your chest, still warm from your skin, still carrying the only love you ever truly knew.
2014
The Asset finishes his reconnaissance of the Captain America exhibit at 02:14.
He is turning to leave when the life-size photograph stops him like a bullet to the spine.
Coney Island boardwalk. A girl in a navy coat with a white fox fur collar is laughing so hard her eyes are squeezed shut, head thrown back in pure joy. Beside her stands a sergeant with messy dark hair and a smile sharp enough to cut glass, looking at her like she is the only source of light he has ever known in his entire miserable life.
The Asset’s breath fogs the glass.
His chest, armored, hollow, engineered for killing, gives one violent, impossible spasm. Something deep inside him twists, like a rusted gear trying to turn after seventy years of being frozen.
He does not understand why his metal hand lifts on its own and presses against the glass, palm covering the girl’s laughing face as if he could reach through decades and touch warm skin. As if he could still feel the way she used to tremble when he whispered angel against her throat.
He turns the small placard with mechanical precision.
On the back, in faded fountain-pen ink that somehow still feels alive:
For my angel. I’m gonna come home and claim you so proper, darling. Forever yours, Jamie.
Something behind his eyes detonates without sound.
A fracture. A hairline crack racing through seventy years of ice and programming and pain. For one terrifying moment the Winter Soldier is gone and there is only the ache, vast, endless, unbearable of something that used to be human reaching for a girl who called him Jamie like a prayer.
He stands there in the growing darkness as the motion sensors kill the lights one by one. The museum falls into silence. Emergency LEDs cast long blue shadows across the floor. Still he does not move. His metal fingers stay pressed to the glass like a dying man clutching the last warm thing in the world.
Finally, with the care of someone defusing a bomb, he removes the photograph from its frame. He folds it once, twice, small and careful, then slips it inside his tactical suit, directly over the place where a heart used to beat.
The handlers’ voices crackle sharply in his earpiece, demanding immediate return to base.
He does not answer.
He walks out into the cold Washington night carrying the first thing in seventy years that feels like it belongs to him.
Somewhere beneath frozen Brooklyn soil, a woman who never stopped being twenty-two lies still with his old dog tags sewn against her chest and a faded blue ribbon clutched in her hands. She waited forty-six years after he fell. She died still whispering his name.
The Asset does not know any of this.
He only knows the folded photograph is warm against his skin, and the crack inside his chest is spreading so wide it might finally let something human bleed through.
He whispers a single word into the freezing night air, a word that tastes like blood and wintergreen and home.
“Angel.”
He does not know why it hurts so much.
He does not know she has been waiting under the ground for twenty-three years with his name still locked behind her teeth.
here's a flower to show my appreciation to you for being such a wonderful person🌹i hope you're enjoying your day! send this to 10 other bloggers to add some positivity to their inbox
I love you margo 🍬💓💓 thank you sooo much!!! also I’m obsessed with the ari & seb theme it’s literally so cute <33
BRO HI WTF. I THOGUHT I SENT THIS OUT & ITS IN MY DRAFTS???
SORRY LILI & THANK UUU !!! i'd been waiting to use it and when she announced the new petal album i was like yes this is my chance + ur theme motivated me so thank u for that as well <3
you write college bucky SOOO GOODD he’s exactly how I imagined him! they’re all amazing I read every one of them to sleep ❤️🩹 amazing work! do more!!!!!! i’m here for it 💓
i'm so beyond happy you like it !!!! i love writing it just as much as you enjoy reading it <3 this literally excites me to write more work thank you sm. xo, margo
dirtbag roomie!college bucky barnes x academic!roomie reader
summary. ⌇ you steal your unfathomable secret roommate's t-shirt & expect a week's worth of blackmailing, but to your surprise he cares less about what you're wearing & more about what you're not. he's not the one complaining when he's taking what he can get—even if it risks blowing your cover.
word count.⌇6k.
warnings. ⌇ pervy bucky (duh, we love). not proof read <3 built up tension turned to a fuck session. pepper appearance! (love my girl) non-established mutual pining. this basically happens frequently but shhh we don't know that. 18+ MDNI. teasing, fingering, overstimulation, oral (f. recieving), tit worship, improper use of honey, unprotected p in v (use protection), handjob, reader is on the pill, makeout sesh, reader puppy sits (wink-wink).
margo's notes. ⌇oh my god i can't even express how much i adore bucky as a band member. like as a nerd, as a dirtbag, as a roommate, as anything, he would def rock the drums rather than a guitar. i also think he'd be a really interesting (to say the least) roommate. i'm making a longer fic series based off of this, with an original character, and this is kind of like a headcannon for them i guess, but with a reader.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 of your apartment quietly hissed with steam as you turned the knob of the shower off. you shuddered quietly at the contrast of the cold metal amidst your skin you'd worked hard to warm up beneath the scalding water.
it was two in the afternoon, and as far as you knew, you'd had the apartment to yourself.
three months of living with your loud, obnoxious roommate it seemed. it almost felt like a reward when he wasn't home, and to you it didn't matter if he was busy banging drums with his band, or screwing some girl on the third floor—you were just content with having the place to yourself.
see after a lease scandal that had happened during your desperate hunt for an apartment, you'd decided to invest in the small apartment just south of your university's campus that you'd seen up on craigslist.
it was small, an alright view, and two bedrooms that you'd figure you'd keep to yourself. one as an office, and the other as a bedroom.
now the first mistake was craigslist. how desperate can one be to look for an apartment, so soon to the beginning of the first semester in college, that you actually bought the apartment off of craigslist.
the second—quite obviously—was thinking it was true.
i mean c'mon, a two bedroom, one bath apartment for the price of 2.8k? any other place in brooklyn would've costed five-thousand or more on your own.
now unbeknownst to you, you weren't the only college student looking for an apartment to yourself, close to the campus.
funny enough, the other student happened to attend your college. which meant it was likely that the two of you had met before. which hopefully insinuated that perhaps the two of you would get along.
but moving along to the night where you were sat on the counter, stirring some peppermint tea for yourself. you were almost curious upon hearing the knock on your door that echoed through your quiet matchbox of an apartment.
it was nearing midnight, who would want you at this hour?
well, you soon found out when you opened the door just an inch to see none other than the james buchanan barnes himself.
freshman dirtbag surrounded by almost all the losers who'd just made it onto campus. drum sticks tucked into his back pocket, a duffel bag and a backpack strung on each shoulder, he chewed on his gum menacingly, staring right back at you as if you were supposed to fix a problem of his.
"hey, i know it's late," he sighed, checking down the hall again, "but i'm here for apartment number nine." he muttered as your brows furrowed, "you're uh.. you're that girl from the campus aren't you?" he mumbled under his breath, stormy eyes scanning you down.
and that's when you remembered you were standing in a small lacey nightgown, topped with a sheer little robe that barely covered anything. you tucked the robe over your chest, crossing your arms for good measure as the messy bun atop your head shook with your confusion.
"yeah—you, um," you mumbled, eyes raking over his.. messy state. "you must have the wrong place. i live here." you explained briefly, as he pulled the key out of his back pocket, staring at the little scribbled tag.
as brought it up to your face, the jingling echoed through the hall, "nope." the brunette shrugged cheeks tinging pink as his eyes landed back on the cut of your dress where a hint of your cleavage teased him. as he dropped his duffel right beside the door, you stepped back a pace, literally taken aback.
"bought this place like two weeks ago, just been—hopping around since." he mumbled, as his arm flexed the door futher open into your bubble.
"wha—no!" you cried, "you can't just barge in here! this is my apartment, loser." you yelled as he stared back with the same look, avoiding your pissed eye contact.
"where the hell am i supposed to go then?" he asked, as you paused, "i don't know!" you argued as he sighed, "you better have a plan princess. 'cause i've got a key, and i paid for this place, fair and square."
"i don't care!" you scoffed, arms crossing tighter over your chest as his scuffed converse inched into the polished hardwood floor. "i just—i just mopped there." you whispered as he looked down, rolling his eyes and stepping back out.
and it did take some time. almost a week to sit down with greg, the broker—who did nothing as to convince you that this was a mixup, but much rather smiled at the angry confusion and two foot barrier between where you two sat, across from him at the coffee shop.
"look, i don't blame you two for falling for this. but the paid difference is paid. there aren't any refunds on apartments kiddos." he mumbled, thick fingers comming up to smooth down the lightly balded top of his head.
"the full price for the place was five-thousand. with both of your costs put together, it comes out to about the same price. so like it or not, either one of you pays the price and lives elsewhere, or you two suck it up and live together."
cue present tense—where things are moving along.
between sharing an apartment with bucky, and being on opposite ends of a social circle, the two of you are managing quite.. reasonably.
from ushering the other one out of the house when one has plans and booked the apartment for the day, or distributing chores and meal preps, the two of you have worked out well enough, and somehow this past month hasn't been too unkind to either of you.
well you could suppose that'd be until today; where you step out of the shower, pedicured feel flush against the fluffy carpet you picked out, and pushing the lightning bolt shower curtain he picked out.
your eyes rolled hard at the stupid curtain, reminding yourself that you were going to have friends over for a study session before a party you were going to afterwards, that you had to change it back to your pink striped one before they came over.
as you wrapped the towel around yourself, you looked around, sighing at the fact that you'd forgotten clothes to wear after the shower.
head peeking out into the hallway, your eyes met with the whicker basket filled with fresh laundry, as the other loads were still in, and you'd tossed almost three weeks worth into the machine earlier.
it was your turn to do laundry, so since you'd done bucky's clothes earlier, you'd figured he wouldn't mind if you'd just borrowed something.
so as you lathered up with lotion, and pulled his smithsonians t-shirt over your freshly washed hair, you paused for a moment, catching the scent of his cologne and a small scent of something metallic.
you hummed to yourself, walking out with nothing but that and a lacy set you'd picked out earlier in your room and brought over before showering.
the apartment was quiet. and you liked it that way. no drums boosting, meaning no noise complaints from neighbors. no dirty shoes scattered against your clean floor, meaning no reminding the asshole, or kicking his shoes in a closet.
you felt at peace.
and you were.
until you closed the door to the bathroom quietly, and turned around to be faced with the agonizing sound of creaking from the bedroom door that neighbored your own.
you watched him, pajama pants strung low enough you could see his boxers peeking up from just below his hip bones, a john lennon t-shirt crumpled over his chest and a hand running through his hair as he stared down at the glass he'd probably just finished drinking orange juice in.
your lips pursed almost immediately, was it too late to crawl back into the bathroom? shower for another two hours until you'd cried every tear out of yourself? you were sure you'd been home alone, so why was he standing right in front of you?
it was bad enough that he was here, three feet away, but it was worse that he was quiet.
because james was never quiet.
his eyes raked over you, from your damp hair, down to your chest, where his eyebrows raised quietly at his band's print, and then down to your smooth legs, and pedicured feet.
"that's... new." he mumbled, as your cheeks flamed. "i-i just—needed something to wear." you countered as he smiled, "imagine if anyone at school saw this, 'girl swears she'd be caught dead wearing a grunge band t-shirt, walks out after showering and looks just fine'." he headlined, as you spun on your heels, rolling you eyes hard after remembering you didn't have to be a part of this embarrassment ritual.
"look my laundry was in the washer, asshole." you sighed, walking into the kitchen and grabbing your white mug, with the print of a black cat with a crown between its ears. sorry alpine.
"yeah? well you said you'd only wear something of mine 'over your dead body'." bucky trailed behind you, the smile inevitable in his voice.
"fuck off, barnes." you hissed, filling the cup with heated water from the kettle. "never," he grinned, as you felt his chest bump into your shoulders, his voice was rough, and laced with something you'd heard only on desperate nights, "you look.. good."
you fingers reached for the box of green tea as your cheeks burned hotter than the water in your cup. "almost illegal," he purred, fingers carefully finding your waist as he watched you make your tea.
"hm," you hummed, going about your business as his nose poked the damp hair just behind your ears.
"james," you warned, as he sighed into your hair, fingers tightening their grasp on your waist, "no, no, it's fine. it looks great on you. keep it." he whispers, as you roll your eyes, "don't be ridiculous, i wouldn't—"
"be caught dead wearing my stuff, i'm well aware, pretty." bucky hummed, eyes closing as he tips his head against yours.
"but you're wearing it now," he smiled, lowering his nose onto your shoulder as he pulls you flush against his front, and that's when you feel it.
"are you fucking serious, james?" you asked, heat blooming down your neck, on your hands and between your legs. "what is it, baby?" he mumbled, careless to the fact that your fuming.
"you're hard over me wearing your fucking shirt, that's what." scoffing, "pathetic." stirring the honey into your tea as you mumbled. "s' not pathetic," he murmured in response, euphoric as his right hand left your waist, trailing down to the hem of the shirt, lifting it up gingerly.
"y'barely got anything on under here, doll." he mumbled, darkened eyes raking over the lace of your cheeky underwear as you gasped. you turned around instantly in shock, smacking his hand away. "bucky!" you choked as he chuckled, eyes remaining glued to your thighs.
"seen you in less than that, angel. m' surprised you're shocked." bucky whispered, leaning in close to you, "you're gonna... ruin my tea." you mumbled, voice just above a whisper as you nudged the cup back, behind you.
"not the only thing m'gonna ruin," he grinned a near sinful glint in his eyes that made your fingers grip the counter—as if that's supposed to ground you.
"something wrong, pretty girl?" bucky murmured, nose brushing your cheek as he pressed a kiss to your skin, "hm, cat got your tongue?" he whispered as your hands planted themselves on his chest, knowing what'll follow.
"n-no, don't be stupid." you huffed, as his lips trail further south, nipping at your supple skin as you let out an involuntary noise at the contact of his two-day old stubble against your skin.
"bucky—" you whisper, fingers curling into his shoulders as he hums against your jaw, breath ghosting over your skin, tickling you as your neck cranes to keep him out, "god, you owe me for this," he smiles against your skin as you pause, eyes widening.
"look this—shirt, thing—better not become some—" you sigh defeatedly, "james!" you finally whine as he groans, "hmmm, what?" he whispers, pulling away.
but not for long, his eyes quickly circle back to your chest beneath his t-shirt, where the shirt pulls up and falls back down over the rest of your body as you breathe.
your manicured fingers quickly find his jaw, pulling it back up to face you, "eyes on me," you mumble as a wicked smile paints its way back onto his flushed, pink, lips. "oh they're on you don't wor—"
"i'm serious, bucky." you grit through your teeth. his free hand squeezes your waist, reminding you it's still there as his thumb brushes over you. "this t-shirt better not be some excuse for me to give you seconds of dinner i order, o-or the remote thirty-minutes earlier—"
"oh?" he hums, cutting you off, "so what you're saying is, i should just let you take my things, and walk around all pretty in 'em?" he whispers, his other hand trailing down to your thigh, fingers resting pertly just beneath the cleft of your ass.
"buc—"
"c'mon, answer me, princess." he whispers, nose brushing back against your cheek as he closes back in on the crook of your neck, wafting in the intoxicating scent of your bodywash.
"fuck, you always smell so good, baby." he mumbled into your skin, and your eyes close as your fingers subconsciously trail up to the nape of his neck. he hums and moans at the feeling of your fingers running through his shaggy hair.
"look—y-you want an answer?" you muttered, pushing him off you. bucky stumbled back just an inch as he watched you pull the shirt over your head, slamming it into his chest. "there's, your answer." you mutter, crossing your arms over your lacey bra.
but your arms do nothing, because bucky's eyes have zeroed on the bounce and push up of your cleavage, the shine of the light above the kitchen and the overcast weather outside glowing in from the window.
"shit." he whispers—almost painfully—and your eyes trail down to the straining bulge in his pants. "shit. that must hurt, huh? freak." you mumble, lips curling as your eyes bat up at him, "cat got your tongue, sweetheart?" you whisper with a click of your tongue as you step past him.
before you could walk even a foot further, two arms wrapped around your waist, coaxing an immediate shriek from your lips as your bare back is met with the cold sting of the fridge. just as quickly as your lips had opened to protest with a whimper—they were sealed shut with his, clashing against you.
"you're—" he muttered, lips sliding off of yours as a string of spit dissolving between them, "gonna help me," he whispered, before lunging back, lips and teeth clashing as you groaned again.
his tongue danced with yours, and unable to get a word in, you quickly became a mess.
words stuck in your throat, turned to moans as he tilted your neck with care, deepening the kiss as your fingers found his his neck again, one hand tugged gently on his hair, the other curled into his shirt.
his lips left yours and peppered your lips once more with a kiss before he rested his forehead on your shoulder. hand wrapping around the smaller hand of yours that lazily gripped the fabric of his t-shirt. his eyes fluttered shut as he brought it up to his lips, kissing your knuckles before he guided it back down the the growing hard-on in his pants.
your lips parted at the touch of him, you almost wanted to wriggle your fingers from his grasp and push him on the couch and help him.
the right way—they do say, 'if you want it done right, do it yourself'.
but what were you? crazy?
"fix, this." bucky whispered against your ear, teeth pressing against your collarbone as he left marks on your freshly washed skin.
"you're so perfect. i wanna ruin you right on this shiny fucking counter. you'd hate that, wouldn't you princess?" he whispered, his hand left yours, grabbing your waist before he hauled your legs into his arms.
in one motion, he pulled you onto the counter, pushing your legs apart as his fingers pressed against your pulsing core. "hmm, she's been ready for me, hasn't she?" he whispered, lowering himself to kiss just beneath your bra, trailing all the way down to the strap of your panties.
"fuck, bucky." you whispered, nearly a whine whil your fingers tangled in his hair as you watched him lift your legs over his shoulders. he rose up just enough to bury his nose between your tits.
his fingers danced down to the lacy underwear you wore, his lips were busy elsewhere, sucking and planting kisses and marks all over the jelly smooth skin of your breasts.
a whine left your lips as your hand found his neck, pulling him closer greedily as he groaned into your plush tits.
just as you were about to speak, the landline rung, and you felt the man between your legs freeze.
"shit," you muttered beneath your breath, you laid your back down on the counter, arm above your head as you reached for the phone.
bucky watched you carefully, stretched out on the counter. the same one you argued daily about keeping clean.
your hair was messily splayed all over the smooth surface, torso heaving up and down breathlessly as you arched to reach the phone off the receiver.
you paused as a female voice could be heard across the other end, "yeah?" you hummed as bucky licked his lips, pulling his t-shirt off and throwing it on your face before lowering himself to pull your panties down slowly.
he smiled as the gasp that left your lips echoed throughout the room, pressing kisses all over your thighs as he pushed your legs apart, you, stubbornly trying to keep them close.
"i-i can't," he heard you mumble on the phone, unconcerned as he kissed your mound delicately, fingers parting your wet folds quietly as he smiled against your clit, tongue covering it with just the right amount of pressure.
all this with him.
the man you made sure to exhibit your hatred for constantly.
"fuck, you're so wet for me, baby." he mumbled into your wetness, muffled by your thighs as you propped yourself up on your elbows, eyebrows crinkled together as you gave him a look that only guaranteed a lecture later.
"no, not right now." you spoke back into the phone, eyeing your manicure as bucky worked through your cunt, fingers circling your clit as you shuddered beneath his touch, his lips coated in your arousal.
"n-no," you huffed as he gazed up just enough to catch your painfully aroused look, "you look so pretty like this, angel." he muttered as you nudged his torso with your heel, ushering him to quiet down.
"i can't come over, i-i'm—" you hummed, covering the receiver with your hand as you laid back down, your back burned against the cool counter, arching as you bit down on your lip to refrain from making too much noise.
as bucky's fingers messed with your clit and your hole, you fumbled with the phone, looking for the mute button and pressing it sloppily before pepper on the other end could hear the mess going on in your apartment.
you'd be ruined if anyone knew you lived with bucky barnes let alone fucked him.
"b-bucky—" you gasped, your free hand searched the flat counter for something—anything—to grab onto to keep yourself from coiling all over the counter.
"fuck!" you whined loud, upon feeling his lips latch onto your clit and tongue lapping through your arousal. your legs pressed instinctively against his soft hair and you not only heard, but felt him groan against your core, a shiver surging straight through your body as your hand found his locks.
"bucky i—" you twisted, eyes squeezing shut as his tongue dipped into you while curling into a soft spot that had you shaking.
on the other end, pepper was sighing something incoherent to you about an essay deadline for tomorrow morning, as well as the journalism article's mock interview.
"are you there?" you heard her ask as bucky fit a second finger into you, "so tight, fuck." he whispered, kissing your bud before rubbing it with his free fingers. his arms hooked around you, pulling you close enough to him in hopes his mouth could easily access your cunt.
"gotta fuck you—warm you up, honey, my cock's aching for you, y'know these things take time." bucky hummed against your thigh, "fuck off—ah—wise guy," you let out softly.
his breath ghosted over your skin as his fingers fucked you at a steady pace, the kisses he pressed across your inner thigh had you gasping and mewling senselessly.
and bucky loved it.
"so responsive, you're always so sensitive." you felt his lips smiling against you, stubble scraping against your soft skin as you kicked his shoulder, "shut up." you huffed as he curled his fingers with a soft smile, eyes darkening as you whined.
"pep, i-i can't, i know—i—i know," you muttered, unmuting, he watched, scissoring his fingers inside of you as you clenched around them. "i'll come over, la—ter," you quieted down, as his thumb circling your clit as his tongue replaced his two fingers. "—i'm puppy sitting," you mumbled.
and that did it.
his head perked up, blue eyes all that you could see while the rest of his face was buried to the hilt in your pussy.
"puppy sitting?" pepper's voice cut through the silence, as you smiled, head thudding back down on the counter, "hmm—very, good puppy actually." you muttered, back arching against the counter as his mouth sucked your cunt off with a small, wet, pop.
your eyes fluttered shut as you held your hand over your lips, biting back any hum you were close to making, you could feel his saliva and your slick dripping down through you and onto the counter.
"h-he does everything—i tell him to," you continued, as he pulled his pants lower, leaving you staring at your ceiling with a small smile, still covered by your hand.
as you craned your head to the side, you watched him grab the honey, pulling his pants down and stepping out of them as he walked over you. your eyes forever stuck on the painfully hard cock you knew you'd been the culprit of.
"get off the phone, sweetheart." you heard him mutter, voice gravelly as he pulled your legs half off the counter quickly, a noise somewhere between a laugh and shriek leaving your plush lips.
"pepper, i'm serious." you exhaled, as his fingers worked at your bra. it was a front clasp, you thought smiling. how would he get out of this one?
bucky pulled you up carefully by your back, hands traveling against your torso as his fingers searched gently for the clasp. his tongue swiped across the inside of his cheek as his fingers caressed the soft, frilly, lace of your bra.
without a single word, his brows crinkled, and not once did his eyes find at you for help. instead, they landed back on the front of your bra, looking at the small, metallic clasp of the flimsy fabric.
he snapped it open eagerly, working your hands out of the straps delicately as he bent forward, peppering the valley between you tits and cupping both of them, thumbs brushing over your perky nipples.
"he's s-such, a good bo-y!" you gasped, free hand grabbing his head to steady yourself as you watched his lips attach at one nipple. you held the phone away from you, humming unevenly to hide the lewd sighs and moans the two of you were letting out.
as he detached his lips from yours, you turned back to the phone, "m-mhm," you hummed, dazed. when you looked back at him, his boxers were gone, and in it's place, was his hand, wrapped around a long, hard cock that made your lips part and your thighs press together.
his eyes found yours, watching as your eyes zoned out on the flushed, pink tip. "hungry, sweetheart?" he asked as your eyes flickered back up to his, lips sealing shut immediately.
"mm-mm." you shook your head, biting down on your lip to hide your stupid grin, one that you knew would piss him right off.
"yeah, well i'll call you back, pep." you hummed, kicking your feet. as he walked over, leaning you back, you stared at him. he was so focused on your tits, opening the bottle of honey and still focused on them.
honey?
as fast as you'd noticed he'd opened the honey and brought it up to your tits, you'd instantly forgotten you were on the phone, "no—no! you can't be serious, jamie!" you scolded, holding his wrist as his eyes widened on the phone in your hand.
"wha—" you paused, realizing.
"who's jamie?" pepper's voice muttered through the phone, as your ears dusted pink, "i-i—the dog, my puppy." you quickly covered, as he rolled his eyes, letting the honey drizzle right over your hardened nipples.
you gasped quietly, "what's he doing?" he heard pepper ask, a malicious smile forming on his lips as he set the honey down, wiping a bit off your stomach and licking it off his finger.
"he—he's—" you stammered, and before you could finish your sentence, his lips were on you yet again.
he suckled on the sweetness of your tits, loudly lapping up the stickiness of it and swirling his tongue around the head of your nipple, fingers coating the other one softly in the substance.
"he's—making a mess," you divulged, fingers running through his hair as his tongue flicked all around you, "all over my—ah!" you hummed, "i-i gotta go, he's chewing me—my uh, bag."
"mhm, bye, mh—y-yeah, talk to you later." as you quickly gasped, beeping the phone off. he cleaned the sweet-sticky attack on one side of your chest, moving on to the other side briskly.
"so hungry, aren't you, baby?" you hummed, hand running through his hair as you watched his hand work himself, "c'mere, i'll help you, honey."
he split your legs apart, moving himself easily between them as your hand replaced his, running up and down the length of his slick, hardened cock. "so focused, aren't you? if only you'd be this focused on keeping the floors clean." you mumble, watching his head tip up, pretty blue eyes gazing up at you.
you smiled, quickening your pace on his cock, rubbing him up and down and smearing the pre-cum on the tip with your thumb. his moan so pretty your legs squeezed against each side of him.
"fuck, good boy, jamie." you breathed with a soft smile.
and just like that, his hands tugged at you, pulling you feverishly close, an arm hooking around your waist as his free hand held your legs apart, finger rubbing your clit again.
bucky messed with you everywhere.
you gasped, craning neck giving him access as he bit down on your velvety skin. you felt his lips attach to the small space just below your ear, hearing him hum as he sucked a dark spot you'd have to blame on your straightener tomorrow.
"bucky—"
"i want you on my cock," he whispered, breath sending goosebumps down your skin as he pulled you up against him. your hand immediately flailed to grasp onto his broad shoulders as he walked the two of you over, adjusting himself on the couch. his hands were large, a bit calloused due to the drumsticks he was constantly gripping along with the wrenches used to fix the plumbing.
they held your ass pertly, leaving marks of his fingers digging into the plush of your skin. your fingers flexed against his shoulders at the feeling.
bucky held you on his lap perfectly, "you're so easy to carry," he whispered, burying his face back in your tits, fingers finding your ass as he squeezed the curve of your cheeks apart, "fuck, imagine if i just threw you over my shoulder every time you argue about my shoes 'nd shit on the fucking floor."
you laughed, completely unintentional, throwing him of guard from your usual scowl-like reaction to him.
"you're such an idiot, barnes." you whispered, lips pursed to hide your fond smile as your fingers smoothed his hair out of his face as he pulled away to fix his cock to your wet slit, "hold still for me, pretty."
"you're too—" you paused, pursing your lips as he tipped his head back up to you, "too what, baby?" he smiled, knowing what was just on the tip of your tongue. wishing it was him.
"nothing," you whispered, avoiding his gaze as he turned back to his cock, running the tip softly against your folds, fixating especially on your pulsing clit.
"ah—hmm!" you hissed, eyes shut as he pressed a kiss to your sternum, "too what, princess, tell me. i wanna know." he hummed as your fingers dug into his shoulders.
"just shut up and get over with it, asshole!" you groaned, "nuh-uh, am i too.. big for you?" he hummed. you could sense the smile in his voice for the hundredth time today, "n-no."
"i see you're trying not to smile." he murmured as you shook your head, hair falling in your face to hide your face, "ah-ah," bucky laughed, brushing your hair out of your face, "too late."
"shut up. jerk." you panted, tossing the hair in front of your face with a soft smile. you didn't wait for him before adjusting yourself and sinking yourself onto him.
the stretch felt eternal, he was big. you'd hated to admit it him. his ego would be blasting through the walls your room and drumming down the floor for weeks.
"at least you think there's something good about me," he whispered, resting his head on your shoulder as his hands trailed further, spreading your ass apart as you moaned at the feeling.
"i think—t-there's plenty good about—you." you whispered, fingers sliding through his locks as your second hand came up to hold his face.
"you're a good cook, for someone who wastes his talent on grilled cheese and scrambled eggs six days a week." you whispered as he laughed against your shoulder, pulling you close and kissing you there.
"and y-you clean the shower well, i hate doing dishes and you do those. you fix the—hm—pipes." you whispered, his fingers pressed into your hips as he refrained from letting out a noise at every twitch of your hips.
your breath hitched as you felt his cock bury itself in your cervix, "i-i can't—" you huffed, "it hurts?" he asked, eyes pooled with concern you didn't think he'd have. you paused immediately, you could take him.
right..?
"s'—fine, i'm fine, it feels good." you hummed, moving meticulously as you adjusted to the heat of him. his voice seemed to collect in the heat that bloomed in your gut, humming, hissing and groaning at every roll of your hips. as the two of you picked up your pace, skin slapping was the only sound that could be heard beside the hum of the dryer the hall.
"you're so tight, i—" bucky panted, holding his breath as he adjusted to your gummy walls, tightening every time you moved to adjust yourself, "i can't do this—i'm gonna cum and you just—sat down."
"agh!" you groaned, fingers digging marks into his skin, "so wet, you're warm," his breath tickling your collar, as he trailed his fingers down your torso, back to your clit like a safe house.
bucky's free hand dug deeper into your ass. he watched in awe as it bounced in sync with your tits every time you dropped back onto his cock, your core meeting his base with a wet shlick.
"w-we're not using a condom," he whispered, you nodded, "you still on the pill?" he asked, moving your hair off your shoulders, putting your perked up tits on full display, you nodded again.
just as your core bloomed with a sensation burning you with pleasure, your eyes squeezed shut, fingers trembling as they held tight onto his biceps. a whine bubbled in the back of your throat as bucky smiled in satisfaction. you leaned forward against him for support as the arousal built up into you.
"i-i'm gonna cum, bucky—" you whined, head burying itself in his neck as he rubbed your back, slapping your ass as you gasped, pushing yourself off his chest, "what the hell?!"
"you're so pretty, princess." he smiled, winking before he fluttered his eyes shut, "everywhere, i could fuck you, anywhere. ruin you all over this stupid apartment, anywhere i want to." you hummed at his words, kissing just below his jaw, leaving small wet kisses trailing down his neck.
"fuck, angel—i-i'm close," he breathed, eyes closing as his head tipped back against the arm rest. "sssso close," you nodded quickly in agreement, whining against neck softly as he smiled, exhaling.
"ja—jamie," you gasped, back arching as his hands held you steady, your fingers tugged on his hair, and he groaned, the euphoric sounds overtaking the walls of your living room.
your walls clenched around his cock for the last time, milking him as a guttural moan escaped you, pink lips forming an 'o' as he circled your clit once more with his thumb, your stomach coiled.
the pleasure overtook every one of your senses. your fingers dug into his biceps hard, lungs unable to catch up to your breathing, and your eyes squeezing themselves open to stare at the boy in front of you.
"oh fuck," bucky whispered, head tossing back as he bottomed out, his seed filling you satisfaction. you felt the warmth of him coating his cock and your walls as quickly as it was gone.
"that was amazing," you sighed, head falling against his collarbone as his hand ran up and down your side soothingly. "oh, was it?" he perked up, smiling smartly.
"yes, it was, james." you sighed, eyes closed as you nestled into him further. "yeah, s'what i thought." his eyes—dazed—closed, "nobody's ever gonna fill you up and fuck you as good as i did, that right baby?" he whispered, eyes fluttering back open as he pressed a kiss to your hairline. you smiled, hiding it in the crook of his neck.
"shut up." you mumbled, muffled by his chest as he laughed, "better get cleaned up, got food coming in ten."
"ten?!" you shrieked, "when the fuck did you order food? and don't tell me it's some take out, i just had a salad this morning, i'd like to keep that streak. i've got a yoga class tomorrow."
"relax, princess," he whispered, hauling you up close, kissing your neck as you scoffed, "what are we eating, james?"
"soft tacos."
"you're kidding me." you sighed as he smiled against your neck, "you'll be glad i'm not."
"what kind?" you asked, crossing your arms as he pulled you even closer, "don't worry about that. you'll love 'em, me and the band get these ones all the time after gigs."
"they've got avocado in them." he hummed, shrugging, pulling away as you paused, letting out a sigh. "fine, shower first."
"yay," he watched you get up, wincing softly. "awh, looks like you're gonna need some help in that shower, huh, pretty girl?" he taunted, just as you turned around.
before you can retort back, his arms wrapped around you, pulling you up into his arms as you erupted into a fit of gasps and laughter.
"oh, and don't forget to change the shower curtain back to my pink one, it's in the laundry cabinet. i've got company tonight so you might have to camp out with your friends." you whispered, staring at him as he nodded, head dipping low enough to whisper in your ear, "don't worry your pretty little head about it."
he smiled, turning the tap on as you held onto his hand, "next weekend i'm eating you out, with honey."
"in your dreams, jackass." you rolled your eyes, stepping into the bathtub. he trailed right behind you like a puppy, grinning boyishly, "or maybe i'll just eat you out in here."
"yeah? then you'll be too full for a meal." you rolled your eyes, stepping under the water for the second time today.
he huffed, smiling as his hands wrapped around your waist, nudging your head beneath his chin, "you should steal my shirts more often."
hihi!!! hope everyone enjoyed, this was partially based on this:
i'm loving this shit man, eating it the fuck up. also, preferences, should i write my fics in the subscript (this smaller) font, or do you guys like this bigger one? lmk! i really feel like writing a full fic like this, i've already published an intro on wattpad, (the matchbox) but i'll likely write it on here or ao3, i'm very new to that so it's gonna take me a bit, and i'm also trying to take a break so everythings tbd as of now. hope you enjoyed ! happy house tour!!
oc ( rhea, who the reader's based off) playlist, the matchbox / house tour playlist, bucky's playlist.
1000 likes on a post is something i've never gotten before is it safe to say im hyperventilating holyshitholyshittt
i'm cramming for exam szn rn but i promise i will be back as soon as the next week 2-3 weeks are over, genuinely have had the urge to write so bad the past few days, but my projects and exams are literally binding me in my place
thank you to everyperson who liked, reblogged, shared and for your love <3 mwah !!!
Only Ratatouille is not on the same level of sadness as the others...
tag (idk who does it): @singulartoast @starburstbarnes @sassandscribbles @chateaubarnes @tw1sters @stanmarvelous @slutdier @daydreamgoddess14 @elixirfromthestars @buckytakethewheel
thank you for the tags @bedriddenbarnes @slutdier @metal-armed-muse @winteryn @phoenix-in-writing @sunday-bug im so sorry for being late nvjdfjfghdj i love you guys :")
Here is a flower to show my appreciation to you for being such a wonderful person 💐 I hope you're enjoying your day! send this to 10 other bloggers to add some positivity to their inbox 😗
here's a flower to show my appreciation to you for being such a wonderful person🌹i hope you're enjoying your day! send this to 10 other bloggers to add some positivity to their inbox
aw ໒꒰՞ ܸ. .ܸ՞꒱ა
thank you so much lexa, you're such a sweetheart !
i'll try to get this into 10 inboxs, hopefully i can do it by the end of today <. 3
dirtbag roomie!college bucky barnes x academic!roomie reader
summary. ⌇ you steal your unfathomable secret roommate's t-shirt & expect a week's worth of blackmailing, but to your surprise he cares less about what you're wearing & more about what you're not. he's not the one complaining when he's taking what he can get—even if it risks blowing your cover.
word count.⌇6k.
warnings. ⌇ pervy bucky (duh, we love). not proof read <3 built up tension turned to a fuck session. pepper appearance! (love my girl) non-established mutual pining. this basically happens frequently but shhh we don't know that. 18+ MDNI. teasing, fingering, overstimulation, oral (f. recieving), tit worship, improper use of honey, unprotected p in v (use protection), handjob, reader is on the pill, makeout sesh, reader puppy sits (wink-wink).
margo's notes. ⌇oh my god i can't even express how much i adore bucky as a band member. like as a nerd, as a dirtbag, as a roommate, as anything, he would def rock the drums rather than a guitar. i also think he'd be a really interesting (to say the least) roommate. i'm making a longer fic series based off of this, with an original character, and this is kind of like a headcannon for them i guess, but with a reader.
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 of your apartment quietly hissed with steam as you turned the knob of the shower off. you shuddered quietly at the contrast of the cold metal amidst your skin you'd worked hard to warm up beneath the scalding water.
it was two in the afternoon, and as far as you knew, you'd had the apartment to yourself.
three months of living with your loud, obnoxious roommate it seemed. it almost felt like a reward when he wasn't home, and to you it didn't matter if he was busy banging drums with his band, or screwing some girl on the third floor—you were just content with having the place to yourself.
see after a lease scandal that had happened during your desperate hunt for an apartment, you'd decided to invest in the small apartment just south of your university's campus that you'd seen up on craigslist.
it was small, an alright view, and two bedrooms that you'd figure you'd keep to yourself. one as an office, and the other as a bedroom.
now the first mistake was craigslist. how desperate can one be to look for an apartment, so soon to the beginning of the first semester in college, that you actually bought the apartment off of craigslist.
the second—quite obviously—was thinking it was true.
i mean c'mon, a two bedroom, one bath apartment for the price of 2.8k? any other place in brooklyn would've costed five-thousand or more on your own.
now unbeknownst to you, you weren't the only college student looking for an apartment to yourself, close to the campus.
funny enough, the other student happened to attend your college. which meant it was likely that the two of you had met before. which hopefully insinuated that perhaps the two of you would get along.
but moving along to the night where you were sat on the counter, stirring some peppermint tea for yourself. you were almost curious upon hearing the knock on your door that echoed through your quiet matchbox of an apartment.
it was nearing midnight, who would want you at this hour?
well, you soon found out when you opened the door just an inch to see none other than the james buchanan barnes himself.
freshman dirtbag surrounded by almost all the losers who'd just made it onto campus. drum sticks tucked into his back pocket, a duffel bag and a backpack strung on each shoulder, he chewed on his gum menacingly, staring right back at you as if you were supposed to fix a problem of his.
"hey, i know it's late," he sighed, checking down the hall again, "but i'm here for apartment number nine." he muttered as your brows furrowed, "you're uh.. you're that girl from the campus aren't you?" he mumbled under his breath, stormy eyes scanning you down.
and that's when you remembered you were standing in a small lacey nightgown, topped with a sheer little robe that barely covered anything. you tucked the robe over your chest, crossing your arms for good measure as the messy bun atop your head shook with your confusion.
"yeah—you, um," you mumbled, eyes raking over his.. messy state. "you must have the wrong place. i live here." you explained briefly, as he pulled the key out of his back pocket, staring at the little scribbled tag.
as brought it up to your face, the jingling echoed through the hall, "nope." the brunette shrugged cheeks tinging pink as his eyes landed back on the cut of your dress where a hint of your cleavage teased him. as he dropped his duffel right beside the door, you stepped back a pace, literally taken aback.
"bought this place like two weeks ago, just been—hopping around since." he mumbled, as his arm flexed the door futher open into your bubble.
"wha—no!" you cried, "you can't just barge in here! this is my apartment, loser." you yelled as he stared back with the same look, avoiding your pissed eye contact.
"where the hell am i supposed to go then?" he asked, as you paused, "i don't know!" you argued as he sighed, "you better have a plan princess. 'cause i've got a key, and i paid for this place, fair and square."
"i don't care!" you scoffed, arms crossing tighter over your chest as his scuffed converse inched into the polished hardwood floor. "i just—i just mopped there." you whispered as he looked down, rolling his eyes and stepping back out.
and it did take some time. almost a week to sit down with greg, the broker—who did nothing as to convince you that this was a mixup, but much rather smiled at the angry confusion and two foot barrier between where you two sat, across from him at the coffee shop.
"look, i don't blame you two for falling for this. but the paid difference is paid. there aren't any refunds on apartments kiddos." he mumbled, thick fingers comming up to smooth down the lightly balded top of his head.
"the full price for the place was five-thousand. with both of your costs put together, it comes out to about the same price. so like it or not, either one of you pays the price and lives elsewhere, or you two suck it up and live together."
cue present tense—where things are moving along.
between sharing an apartment with bucky, and being on opposite ends of a social circle, the two of you are managing quite.. reasonably.
from ushering the other one out of the house when one has plans and booked the apartment for the day, or distributing chores and meal preps, the two of you have worked out well enough, and somehow this past month hasn't been too unkind to either of you.
well you could suppose that'd be until today; where you step out of the shower, pedicured feel flush against the fluffy carpet you picked out, and pushing the lightning bolt shower curtain he picked out.
your eyes rolled hard at the stupid curtain, reminding yourself that you were going to have friends over for a study session before a party you were going to afterwards, that you had to change it back to your pink striped one before they came over.
as you wrapped the towel around yourself, you looked around, sighing at the fact that you'd forgotten clothes to wear after the shower.
head peeking out into the hallway, your eyes met with the whicker basket filled with fresh laundry, as the other loads were still in, and you'd tossed almost three weeks worth into the machine earlier.
it was your turn to do laundry, so since you'd done bucky's clothes earlier, you'd figured he wouldn't mind if you'd just borrowed something.
so as you lathered up with lotion, and pulled his smithsonians t-shirt over your freshly washed hair, you paused for a moment, catching the scent of his cologne and a small scent of something metallic.
you hummed to yourself, walking out with nothing but that and a lacy set you'd picked out earlier in your room and brought over before showering.
the apartment was quiet. and you liked it that way. no drums boosting, meaning no noise complaints from neighbors. no dirty shoes scattered against your clean floor, meaning no reminding the asshole, or kicking his shoes in a closet.
you felt at peace.
and you were.
until you closed the door to the bathroom quietly, and turned around to be faced with the agonizing sound of creaking from the bedroom door that neighbored your own.
you watched him, pajama pants strung low enough you could see his boxers peeking up from just below his hip bones, a john lennon t-shirt crumpled over his chest and a hand running through his hair as he stared down at the glass he'd probably just finished drinking orange juice in.
your lips pursed almost immediately, was it too late to crawl back into the bathroom? shower for another two hours until you'd cried every tear out of yourself? you were sure you'd been home alone, so why was he standing right in front of you?
it was bad enough that he was here, three feet away, but it was worse that he was quiet.
because james was never quiet.
his eyes raked over you, from your damp hair, down to your chest, where his eyebrows raised quietly at his band's print, and then down to your smooth legs, and pedicured feet.
"that's... new." he mumbled, as your cheeks flamed. "i-i just—needed something to wear." you countered as he smiled, "imagine if anyone at school saw this, 'girl swears she'd be caught dead wearing a grunge band t-shirt, walks out after showering and looks just fine'." he headlined, as you spun on your heels, rolling you eyes hard after remembering you didn't have to be a part of this embarrassment ritual.
"look my laundry was in the washer, asshole." you sighed, walking into the kitchen and grabbing your white mug, with the print of a black cat with a crown between its ears. sorry alpine.
"yeah? well you said you'd only wear something of mine 'over your dead body'." bucky trailed behind you, the smile inevitable in his voice.
"fuck off, barnes." you hissed, filling the cup with heated water from the kettle. "never," he grinned, as you felt his chest bump into your shoulders, his voice was rough, and laced with something you'd heard only on desperate nights, "you look.. good."
you fingers reached for the box of green tea as your cheeks burned hotter than the water in your cup. "almost illegal," he purred, fingers carefully finding your waist as he watched you make your tea.
"hm," you hummed, going about your business as his nose poked the damp hair just behind your ears.
"james," you warned, as he sighed into your hair, fingers tightening their grasp on your waist, "no, no, it's fine. it looks great on you. keep it." he whispers, as you roll your eyes, "don't be ridiculous, i wouldn't—"
"be caught dead wearing my stuff, i'm well aware, pretty." bucky hummed, eyes closing as he tips his head against yours.
"but you're wearing it now," he smiled, lowering his nose onto your shoulder as he pulls you flush against his front, and that's when you feel it.
"are you fucking serious, james?" you asked, heat blooming down your neck, on your hands and between your legs. "what is it, baby?" he mumbled, careless to the fact that your fuming.
"you're hard over me wearing your fucking shirt, that's what." scoffing, "pathetic." stirring the honey into your tea as you mumbled. "s' not pathetic," he murmured in response, euphoric as his right hand left your waist, trailing down to the hem of the shirt, lifting it up gingerly.
"y'barely got anything on under here, doll." he mumbled, darkened eyes raking over the lace of your cheeky underwear as you gasped. you turned around instantly in shock, smacking his hand away. "bucky!" you choked as he chuckled, eyes remaining glued to your thighs.
"seen you in less than that, angel. m' surprised you're shocked." bucky whispered, leaning in close to you, "you're gonna... ruin my tea." you mumbled, voice just above a whisper as you nudged the cup back, behind you.
"not the only thing m'gonna ruin," he grinned a near sinful glint in his eyes that made your fingers grip the counter—as if that's supposed to ground you.
"something wrong, pretty girl?" bucky murmured, nose brushing your cheek as he pressed a kiss to your skin, "hm, cat got your tongue?" he whispered as your hands planted themselves on his chest, knowing what'll follow.
"n-no, don't be stupid." you huffed, as his lips trail further south, nipping at your supple skin as you let out an involuntary noise at the contact of his two-day old stubble against your skin.
"bucky—" you whisper, fingers curling into his shoulders as he hums against your jaw, breath ghosting over your skin, tickling you as your neck cranes to keep him out, "god, you owe me for this," he smiles against your skin as you pause, eyes widening.
"look this—shirt, thing—better not become some—" you sigh defeatedly, "james!" you finally whine as he groans, "hmmm, what?" he whispers, pulling away.
but not for long, his eyes quickly circle back to your chest beneath his t-shirt, where the shirt pulls up and falls back down over the rest of your body as you breathe.
your manicured fingers quickly find his jaw, pulling it back up to face you, "eyes on me," you mumble as a wicked smile paints its way back onto his flushed, pink, lips. "oh they're on you don't wor—"
"i'm serious, bucky." you grit through your teeth. his free hand squeezes your waist, reminding you it's still there as his thumb brushes over you. "this t-shirt better not be some excuse for me to give you seconds of dinner i order, o-or the remote thirty-minutes earlier—"
"oh?" he hums, cutting you off, "so what you're saying is, i should just let you take my things, and walk around all pretty in 'em?" he whispers, his other hand trailing down to your thigh, fingers resting pertly just beneath the cleft of your ass.
"buc—"
"c'mon, answer me, princess." he whispers, nose brushing back against your cheek as he closes back in on the crook of your neck, wafting in the intoxicating scent of your bodywash.
"fuck, you always smell so good, baby." he mumbled into your skin, and your eyes close as your fingers subconsciously trail up to the nape of his neck. he hums and moans at the feeling of your fingers running through his shaggy hair.
"look—y-you want an answer?" you muttered, pushing him off you. bucky stumbled back just an inch as he watched you pull the shirt over your head, slamming it into his chest. "there's, your answer." you mutter, crossing your arms over your lacey bra.
but your arms do nothing, because bucky's eyes have zeroed on the bounce and push up of your cleavage, the shine of the light above the kitchen and the overcast weather outside glowing in from the window.
"shit." he whispers—almost painfully—and your eyes trail down to the straining bulge in his pants. "shit. that must hurt, huh? freak." you mumble, lips curling as your eyes bat up at him, "cat got your tongue, sweetheart?" you whisper with a click of your tongue as you step past him.
before you could walk even a foot further, two arms wrapped around your waist, coaxing an immediate shriek from your lips as your bare back is met with the cold sting of the fridge. just as quickly as your lips had opened to protest with a whimper—they were sealed shut with his, clashing against you.
"you're—" he muttered, lips sliding off of yours as a string of spit dissolving between them, "gonna help me," he whispered, before lunging back, lips and teeth clashing as you groaned again.
his tongue danced with yours, and unable to get a word in, you quickly became a mess.
words stuck in your throat, turned to moans as he tilted your neck with care, deepening the kiss as your fingers found his his neck again, one hand tugged gently on his hair, the other curled into his shirt.
his lips left yours and peppered your lips once more with a kiss before he rested his forehead on your shoulder. hand wrapping around the smaller hand of yours that lazily gripped the fabric of his t-shirt. his eyes fluttered shut as he brought it up to his lips, kissing your knuckles before he guided it back down the the growing hard-on in his pants.
your lips parted at the touch of him, you almost wanted to wriggle your fingers from his grasp and push him on the couch and help him.
the right way—they do say, 'if you want it done right, do it yourself'.
but what were you? crazy?
"fix, this." bucky whispered against your ear, teeth pressing against your collarbone as he left marks on your freshly washed skin.
"you're so perfect. i wanna ruin you right on this shiny fucking counter. you'd hate that, wouldn't you princess?" he whispered, his hand left yours, grabbing your waist before he hauled your legs into his arms.
in one motion, he pulled you onto the counter, pushing your legs apart as his fingers pressed against your pulsing core. "hmm, she's been ready for me, hasn't she?" he whispered, lowering himself to kiss just beneath your bra, trailing all the way down to the strap of your panties.
"fuck, bucky." you whispered, nearly a whine whil your fingers tangled in his hair as you watched him lift your legs over his shoulders. he rose up just enough to bury his nose between your tits.
his fingers danced down to the lacy underwear you wore, his lips were busy elsewhere, sucking and planting kisses and marks all over the jelly smooth skin of your breasts.
a whine left your lips as your hand found his neck, pulling him closer greedily as he groaned into your plush tits.
just as you were about to speak, the landline rung, and you felt the man between your legs freeze.
"shit," you muttered beneath your breath, you laid your back down on the counter, arm above your head as you reached for the phone.
bucky watched you carefully, stretched out on the counter. the same one you argued daily about keeping clean.
your hair was messily splayed all over the smooth surface, torso heaving up and down breathlessly as you arched to reach the phone off the receiver.
you paused as a female voice could be heard across the other end, "yeah?" you hummed as bucky licked his lips, pulling his t-shirt off and throwing it on your face before lowering himself to pull your panties down slowly.
he smiled as the gasp that left your lips echoed throughout the room, pressing kisses all over your thighs as he pushed your legs apart, you, stubbornly trying to keep them close.
"i-i can't," he heard you mumble on the phone, unconcerned as he kissed your mound delicately, fingers parting your wet folds quietly as he smiled against your clit, tongue covering it with just the right amount of pressure.
all this with him.
the man you made sure to exhibit your hatred for constantly.
"fuck, you're so wet for me, baby." he mumbled into your wetness, muffled by your thighs as you propped yourself up on your elbows, eyebrows crinkled together as you gave him a look that only guaranteed a lecture later.
"no, not right now." you spoke back into the phone, eyeing your manicure as bucky worked through your cunt, fingers circling your clit as you shuddered beneath his touch, his lips coated in your arousal.
"n-no," you huffed as he gazed up just enough to catch your painfully aroused look, "you look so pretty like this, angel." he muttered as you nudged his torso with your heel, ushering him to quiet down.
"i can't come over, i-i'm—" you hummed, covering the receiver with your hand as you laid back down, your back burned against the cool counter, arching as you bit down on your lip to refrain from making too much noise.
as bucky's fingers messed with your clit and your hole, you fumbled with the phone, looking for the mute button and pressing it sloppily before pepper on the other end could hear the mess going on in your apartment.
you'd be ruined if anyone knew you lived with bucky barnes let alone fucked him.
"b-bucky—" you gasped, your free hand searched the flat counter for something—anything—to grab onto to keep yourself from coiling all over the counter.
"fuck!" you whined loud, upon feeling his lips latch onto your clit and tongue lapping through your arousal. your legs pressed instinctively against his soft hair and you not only heard, but felt him groan against your core, a shiver surging straight through your body as your hand found his locks.
"bucky i—" you twisted, eyes squeezing shut as his tongue dipped into you while curling into a soft spot that had you shaking.
on the other end, pepper was sighing something incoherent to you about an essay deadline for tomorrow morning, as well as the journalism article's mock interview.
"are you there?" you heard her ask as bucky fit a second finger into you, "so tight, fuck." he whispered, kissing your bud before rubbing it with his free fingers. his arms hooked around you, pulling you close enough to him in hopes his mouth could easily access your cunt.
"gotta fuck you—warm you up, honey, my cock's aching for you, y'know these things take time." bucky hummed against your thigh, "fuck off—ah—wise guy," you let out softly.
his breath ghosted over your skin as his fingers fucked you at a steady pace, the kisses he pressed across your inner thigh had you gasping and mewling senselessly.
and bucky loved it.
"so responsive, you're always so sensitive." you felt his lips smiling against you, stubble scraping against your soft skin as you kicked his shoulder, "shut up." you huffed as he curled his fingers with a soft smile, eyes darkening as you whined.
"pep, i-i can't, i know—i—i know," you muttered, unmuting, he watched, scissoring his fingers inside of you as you clenched around them. "i'll come over, la—ter," you quieted down, as his thumb circling your clit as his tongue replaced his two fingers. "—i'm puppy sitting," you mumbled.
and that did it.
his head perked up, blue eyes all that you could see while the rest of his face was buried to the hilt in your pussy.
"puppy sitting?" pepper's voice cut through the silence, as you smiled, head thudding back down on the counter, "hmm—very, good puppy actually." you muttered, back arching against the counter as his mouth sucked your cunt off with a small, wet, pop.
your eyes fluttered shut as you held your hand over your lips, biting back any hum you were close to making, you could feel his saliva and your slick dripping down through you and onto the counter.
"h-he does everything—i tell him to," you continued, as he pulled his pants lower, leaving you staring at your ceiling with a small smile, still covered by your hand.
as you craned your head to the side, you watched him grab the honey, pulling his pants down and stepping out of them as he walked over you. your eyes forever stuck on the painfully hard cock you knew you'd been the culprit of.
"get off the phone, sweetheart." you heard him mutter, voice gravelly as he pulled your legs half off the counter quickly, a noise somewhere between a laugh and shriek leaving your plush lips.
"pepper, i'm serious." you exhaled, as his fingers worked at your bra. it was a front clasp, you thought smiling. how would he get out of this one?
bucky pulled you up carefully by your back, hands traveling against your torso as his fingers searched gently for the clasp. his tongue swiped across the inside of his cheek as his fingers caressed the soft, frilly, lace of your bra.
without a single word, his brows crinkled, and not once did his eyes find at you for help. instead, they landed back on the front of your bra, looking at the small, metallic clasp of the flimsy fabric.
he snapped it open eagerly, working your hands out of the straps delicately as he bent forward, peppering the valley between you tits and cupping both of them, thumbs brushing over your perky nipples.
"he's s-such, a good bo-y!" you gasped, free hand grabbing his head to steady yourself as you watched his lips attach at one nipple. you held the phone away from you, humming unevenly to hide the lewd sighs and moans the two of you were letting out.
as he detached his lips from yours, you turned back to the phone, "m-mhm," you hummed, dazed. when you looked back at him, his boxers were gone, and in it's place, was his hand, wrapped around a long, hard cock that made your lips part and your thighs press together.
his eyes found yours, watching as your eyes zoned out on the flushed, pink tip. "hungry, sweetheart?" he asked as your eyes flickered back up to his, lips sealing shut immediately.
"mm-mm." you shook your head, biting down on your lip to hide your stupid grin, one that you knew would piss him right off.
"yeah, well i'll call you back, pep." you hummed, kicking your feet. as he walked over, leaning you back, you stared at him. he was so focused on your tits, opening the bottle of honey and still focused on them.
honey?
as fast as you'd noticed he'd opened the honey and brought it up to your tits, you'd instantly forgotten you were on the phone, "no—no! you can't be serious, jamie!" you scolded, holding his wrist as his eyes widened on the phone in your hand.
"wha—" you paused, realizing.
"who's jamie?" pepper's voice muttered through the phone, as your ears dusted pink, "i-i—the dog, my puppy." you quickly covered, as he rolled his eyes, letting the honey drizzle right over your hardened nipples.
you gasped quietly, "what's he doing?" he heard pepper ask, a malicious smile forming on his lips as he set the honey down, wiping a bit off your stomach and licking it off his finger.
"he—he's—" you stammered, and before you could finish your sentence, his lips were on you yet again.
he suckled on the sweetness of your tits, loudly lapping up the stickiness of it and swirling his tongue around the head of your nipple, fingers coating the other one softly in the substance.
"he's—making a mess," you divulged, fingers running through his hair as his tongue flicked all around you, "all over my—ah!" you hummed, "i-i gotta go, he's chewing me—my uh, bag."
"mhm, bye, mh—y-yeah, talk to you later." as you quickly gasped, beeping the phone off. he cleaned the sweet-sticky attack on one side of your chest, moving on to the other side briskly.
"so hungry, aren't you, baby?" you hummed, hand running through his hair as you watched his hand work himself, "c'mere, i'll help you, honey."
he split your legs apart, moving himself easily between them as your hand replaced his, running up and down the length of his slick, hardened cock. "so focused, aren't you? if only you'd be this focused on keeping the floors clean." you mumble, watching his head tip up, pretty blue eyes gazing up at you.
you smiled, quickening your pace on his cock, rubbing him up and down and smearing the pre-cum on the tip with your thumb. his moan so pretty your legs squeezed against each side of him.
"fuck, good boy, jamie." you breathed with a soft smile.
and just like that, his hands tugged at you, pulling you feverishly close, an arm hooking around your waist as his free hand held your legs apart, finger rubbing your clit again.
bucky messed with you everywhere.
you gasped, craning neck giving him access as he bit down on your velvety skin. you felt his lips attach to the small space just below your ear, hearing him hum as he sucked a dark spot you'd have to blame on your straightener tomorrow.
"bucky—"
"i want you on my cock," he whispered, breath sending goosebumps down your skin as he pulled you up against him. your hand immediately flailed to grasp onto his broad shoulders as he walked the two of you over, adjusting himself on the couch. his hands were large, a bit calloused due to the drumsticks he was constantly gripping along with the wrenches used to fix the plumbing.
they held your ass pertly, leaving marks of his fingers digging into the plush of your skin. your fingers flexed against his shoulders at the feeling.
bucky held you on his lap perfectly, "you're so easy to carry," he whispered, burying his face back in your tits, fingers finding your ass as he squeezed the curve of your cheeks apart, "fuck, imagine if i just threw you over my shoulder every time you argue about my shoes 'nd shit on the fucking floor."
you laughed, completely unintentional, throwing him of guard from your usual scowl-like reaction to him.
"you're such an idiot, barnes." you whispered, lips pursed to hide your fond smile as your fingers smoothed his hair out of his face as he pulled away to fix his cock to your wet slit, "hold still for me, pretty."
"you're too—" you paused, pursing your lips as he tipped his head back up to you, "too what, baby?" he smiled, knowing what was just on the tip of your tongue. wishing it was him.
"nothing," you whispered, avoiding his gaze as he turned back to his cock, running the tip softly against your folds, fixating especially on your pulsing clit.
"ah—hmm!" you hissed, eyes shut as he pressed a kiss to your sternum, "too what, princess, tell me. i wanna know." he hummed as your fingers dug into his shoulders.
"just shut up and get over with it, asshole!" you groaned, "nuh-uh, am i too.. big for you?" he hummed. you could sense the smile in his voice for the hundredth time today, "n-no."
"i see you're trying not to smile." he murmured as you shook your head, hair falling in your face to hide your face, "ah-ah," bucky laughed, brushing your hair out of your face, "too late."
"shut up. jerk." you panted, tossing the hair in front of your face with a soft smile. you didn't wait for him before adjusting yourself and sinking yourself onto him.
the stretch felt eternal, he was big. you'd hated to admit it him. his ego would be blasting through the walls your room and drumming down the floor for weeks.
"at least you think there's something good about me," he whispered, resting his head on your shoulder as his hands trailed further, spreading your ass apart as you moaned at the feeling.
"i think—t-there's plenty good about—you." you whispered, fingers sliding through his locks as your second hand came up to hold his face.
"you're a good cook, for someone who wastes his talent on grilled cheese and scrambled eggs six days a week." you whispered as he laughed against your shoulder, pulling you close and kissing you there.
"and y-you clean the shower well, i hate doing dishes and you do those. you fix the—hm—pipes." you whispered, his fingers pressed into your hips as he refrained from letting out a noise at every twitch of your hips.
your breath hitched as you felt his cock bury itself in your cervix, "i-i can't—" you huffed, "it hurts?" he asked, eyes pooled with concern you didn't think he'd have. you paused immediately, you could take him.
right..?
"s'—fine, i'm fine, it feels good." you hummed, moving meticulously as you adjusted to the heat of him. his voice seemed to collect in the heat that bloomed in your gut, humming, hissing and groaning at every roll of your hips. as the two of you picked up your pace, skin slapping was the only sound that could be heard beside the hum of the dryer the hall.
"you're so tight, i—" bucky panted, holding his breath as he adjusted to your gummy walls, tightening every time you moved to adjust yourself, "i can't do this—i'm gonna cum and you just—sat down."
"agh!" you groaned, fingers digging marks into his skin, "so wet, you're warm," his breath tickling your collar, as he trailed his fingers down your torso, back to your clit like a safe house.
bucky's free hand dug deeper into your ass. he watched in awe as it bounced in sync with your tits every time you dropped back onto his cock, your core meeting his base with a wet shlick.
"w-we're not using a condom," he whispered, you nodded, "you still on the pill?" he asked, moving your hair off your shoulders, putting your perked up tits on full display, you nodded again.
just as your core bloomed with a sensation burning you with pleasure, your eyes squeezed shut, fingers trembling as they held tight onto his biceps. a whine bubbled in the back of your throat as bucky smiled in satisfaction. you leaned forward against him for support as the arousal built up into you.
"i-i'm gonna cum, bucky—" you whined, head burying itself in his neck as he rubbed your back, slapping your ass as you gasped, pushing yourself off his chest, "what the hell?!"
"you're so pretty, princess." he smiled, winking before he fluttered his eyes shut, "everywhere, i could fuck you, anywhere. ruin you all over this stupid apartment, anywhere i want to." you hummed at his words, kissing just below his jaw, leaving small wet kisses trailing down his neck.
"fuck, angel—i-i'm close," he breathed, eyes closing as his head tipped back against the arm rest. "sssso close," you nodded quickly in agreement, whining against neck softly as he smiled, exhaling.
"ja—jamie," you gasped, back arching as his hands held you steady, your fingers tugged on his hair, and he groaned, the euphoric sounds overtaking the walls of your living room.
your walls clenched around his cock for the last time, milking him as a guttural moan escaped you, pink lips forming an 'o' as he circled your clit once more with his thumb, your stomach coiled.
the pleasure overtook every one of your senses. your fingers dug into his biceps hard, lungs unable to catch up to your breathing, and your eyes squeezing themselves open to stare at the boy in front of you.
"oh fuck," bucky whispered, head tossing back as he bottomed out, his seed filling you satisfaction. you felt the warmth of him coating his cock and your walls as quickly as it was gone.
"that was amazing," you sighed, head falling against his collarbone as his hand ran up and down your side soothingly. "oh, was it?" he perked up, smiling smartly.
"yes, it was, james." you sighed, eyes closed as you nestled into him further. "yeah, s'what i thought." his eyes—dazed—closed, "nobody's ever gonna fill you up and fuck you as good as i did, that right baby?" he whispered, eyes fluttering back open as he pressed a kiss to your hairline. you smiled, hiding it in the crook of his neck.
"shut up." you mumbled, muffled by his chest as he laughed, "better get cleaned up, got food coming in ten."
"ten?!" you shrieked, "when the fuck did you order food? and don't tell me it's some take out, i just had a salad this morning, i'd like to keep that streak. i've got a yoga class tomorrow."
"relax, princess," he whispered, hauling you up close, kissing your neck as you scoffed, "what are we eating, james?"
"soft tacos."
"you're kidding me." you sighed as he smiled against your neck, "you'll be glad i'm not."
"what kind?" you asked, crossing your arms as he pulled you even closer, "don't worry about that. you'll love 'em, me and the band get these ones all the time after gigs."
"they've got avocado in them." he hummed, shrugging, pulling away as you paused, letting out a sigh. "fine, shower first."
"yay," he watched you get up, wincing softly. "awh, looks like you're gonna need some help in that shower, huh, pretty girl?" he taunted, just as you turned around.
before you can retort back, his arms wrapped around you, pulling you up into his arms as you erupted into a fit of gasps and laughter.
"oh, and don't forget to change the shower curtain back to my pink one, it's in the laundry cabinet. i've got company tonight so you might have to camp out with your friends." you whispered, staring at him as he nodded, head dipping low enough to whisper in your ear, "don't worry your pretty little head about it."
he smiled, turning the tap on as you held onto his hand, "next weekend i'm eating you out, with honey."
"in your dreams, jackass." you rolled your eyes, stepping into the bathtub. he trailed right behind you like a puppy, grinning boyishly, "or maybe i'll just eat you out in here."
"yeah? then you'll be too full for a meal." you rolled your eyes, stepping under the water for the second time today.
he huffed, smiling as his hands wrapped around your waist, nudging your head beneath his chin, "you should steal my shirts more often."
hihi!!! hope everyone enjoyed, this was partially based on this:
i'm loving this shit man, eating it the fuck up. also, preferences, should i write my fics in the subscript (this smaller) font, or do you guys like this bigger one? lmk! i really feel like writing a full fic like this, i've already published an intro on wattpad, (the matchbox) but i'll likely write it on here or ao3, i'm very new to that so it's gonna take me a bit, and i'm also trying to take a break so everythings tbd as of now. hope you enjoyed ! happy house tour!!
oc ( rhea, who the reader's based off) playlist, the matchbox / house tour playlist, bucky's playlist.
as a drummer myself I can 100000% confirm, bucky is indeed a drummer. guitar never fits quite right for him although I'm sure he could pick out a few tunes. 🥵
THIS WAS SO HOT UGH I HATE EVERYTHING I WANT HIM INSIDE ME
