to make things a little more organized I will be listing my favourite Bucky fics in the links below. I'd be happy if you checked them out and rewarded the wonderful and talented writers :)
Every fic and series has clear warnings. If anything might trigger you, be cautious. Minors do not interact. There is 18+ content.
I am a writer myself, so if your are interested in reading my work, check out this Masterlist of my main blog @marvelstoriesepic
summary: The problem of living with Bucky is that he makes it impossible not to fall in love with him. Even though you could list several hundred reasons why it’s a bad idea. And you have.
pairing: roommate!bucky barnes x reader
word count: 5.7k
warnings: pining idiots in love, slightly questionable roomie behaviour, simultaneously the softest and cockiest bucky i've written so far, blink and you miss it throwing shade at iron fist
please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.
a/n: this is my very late submission for kathie's (@pellucid-constellations) love letters writing challenge <3 thank you for this lovely idea, writing this was a challenge indeed but that is, as they say, a me problem. also huge shoutout to @barnesafterglow and @sweetascanbee, this really and truly would still not be done without you. love you both 💛
masterlist | read on ao3
You’re screwed. You know that you’re screwed.
Surely, there’s a rule book for these kinds of situations, and rule number one tells you in big, blinking neon letters that you should absolutely, under no circumstances, not ever fall in love with your roommate. Especially not if he also happens to be your best friend.
And yet.
Trouble is that Bucky Barnes is the type of guy that makes it very, very difficult not to fall for him.
Honestly, you should have known better when Nat had suggested the two of you move in together, that night at the bar right after college, “since you’re both new in town and all”. You’d almost spat your drink in her face when she waved him over to where you were sitting, because there was no way in hell a man called James looked like that.
“Friends call me Bucky, actually,” he’d said, a smirk on his lips that went straight to your core.
Natasha glanced between the two of you with that smug look of hers, and you shot her a warning glare because she knew. She knew from the moment you awkwardly shook Bucky’s hand that he was gonna mean trouble for you, with his leather jacket and his blue eyes and his fucking horrible tendency to be both suave and sheepish within the same sentence.
So how are you supposed to say no after that?
It’s so easy to grow close to him, too. Way too easy. You fall into a routine with such effortlessness it has you wonder how you've ever managed without him at all. Grocery runs after work and movie nights on tired Friday evenings, conversations that would be nonsensical to anyone eavesdropping, dreary-eyed breakfast at 2 p.m. Quickly, it becomes difficult to remember a time in your life that didn’t include Bucky.
Needless to say, it’s a struggle.
Thankfully, you come up with a brilliant plan about a month into your new living arrangement. Or rather, your friends do.
“You should kill him.”
“Darcy!”
“What?” Darcy tucks into her mozzarella sticks. “We’d claim temporary insanity in court, if he’s that hot, there’s no way the jury wouldn’t understand.”
“You’d make an awful lawyer,” Colleen says drily, continuing to pat your head awkwardly.
Darcy raises one impeccable eyebrow. “Got some better idea to save Y/N from Barnes’ death grip, buzzkill?”
“Remember before I broke up with Danny?”
You snort at the visceral shudder that goes through Darcy. “Those were the dark days.”
“Hah.” Colleen rolls her eyes. “Anyway. I wrote down every single time he did something that pissed me off, and whenever I felt myself falling into old habits, I went over the list. Worked like a charm. I was over him like that.” She snaps her fingers.
“And thus, another national holiday was born,” Darcy says, clinking her bottle against Colleen’s. “May we always commemorate Independrandce Day to remind ourselves that bad times don’t last.”
“All the things that piss me off?” you ask doubtfully. “I want my crush to go away, not make my apartment unbearable to live in.”
“Just try it for a while, then,” Colleen shrugs. “If it doesn’t work, you can still resort to physical violence. There’s an open spot in my Thursday class.”
You’re busy Thursdays.
It’s almost surprising how little time passes until you need to take your friend’s advice. You’re just headed into the kitchen to grab a snack before you leave for work when you screech to a halt.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Bucky turns around slowly, having the audacity to look confused even as he’s still holding the bottle. “Having a drink?”
“Of milk?” you say, trying not to actually gag. He’s lucky you’re not a milk-sharing household or you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from going off.
“Gotta keep my bones strong.” There’s a glint in his eye as he says it, too, because at this point he already knows exactly how to rile you up. He loves seeing you explode.
This time, though, you won’t give him the satisfaction.
Slowly, an empty smile on your face, you pull out your phone. Bucky, you are an actual horrible disgusting psychopath, you type with a forced sense of serenity. who tf drinks milk straight from the bottle.
You feel strangely better after that and another deep breath.
“I’m gonna go now,” you tell him a bit too sharply and turn on your heels. You’ll get food on your way.
It quickly turns into a habit. Every time he does something small that would normally set you off, you open your notes app and write it out, instead. It helps at least somewhat to stop romanticizing your situation. Level things out a little.
Because the truth is, Bucky Barnes absolutely aggravates you sometimes, and it’s good to remind yourself of those times when he’s once again wandering around the apartment in nothing but his sweatpants.
“Jesus, Buck,” you say, slumping down on the couch a few feet away from him. “Would it kill you to wear a shirt every once in a while?”
“It’s like a hundred degrees in here,” Bucky whines, not moving from where he’s reading.
“So? You don’t see me strip naked.”
His smile is lazy, but his eyes sparkle with amusement as he turns his page. “I know, and it’s a shame.”
“Fuck off, Barnes.” Your cheeks are on fire and you can only hope he can’t tell. “Nat’s gonna be here in five minutes.”
“Okay,” he says, not moving an inch.
You stare at him incredulously. “Can you please put some clothes on?”
“I am wearing clothes,” Bucky states dryly. “Besides, Nat won’t mind.”
“Dot might,” you mumble, but he ignores you. Not that you expected him to; his on-again, off-again relationship has been a topic of contention for a while now, and not because of you.
Truly, you’ve been doing a lot better lately, keeping a lid on your feelings. Which is why you’re able to look at him and his naked torso and his arms and be completely fine. Really. You pull your gaze to the book he’s holding and frown.
“Is that mine?”
Bucky finally glances at you, looking almost bashful. “You said it was good.”
You blink in surprise. You did say that, but not to him. You remember telling Colleen how much you loved it the last time you were facetiming in the living room while Bucky was perched at the kitchen counter with a bored, absent expression on his face as he silently scrolled through something on his phone.
The fact that he listened makes you choose to ignore that he’s definitely going to ruin the spine if he keeps holding the book like that.
“How do you like it?” you ask, voice slightly higher than usual.
“It’s great.” His smile returns, and you will never be sick of him looking like that, looking at you like that. So content.
The doorbell wakes you from your trance with a start.
Bucky sighs quietly as he carefully places a bookmark between the pages and gets up from the couch, rolling his shoulders. You watch him as he shuffles away to his room without another word, sweat making the hair stick to his neck. It takes you another moment to stand up yourself.
You pull out your phone as you wait for Nat to get upstairs, hesitating for a moment before you open your notes app. The feeling in your stomach uncoils.
***
There are days, despite your best efforts, that you still let yourself hope. Like when Bucky makes enough pancakes for dinner to feed an entire football team and you talk about the book he’s borrowed over maple syrup and jam until it’s eleven at night. Or when you’re out with your mutual group of friends and his gaze always finds yours after he’s made a joke, as if to gage your reaction, as if to make sure to catch a spark of amusement in your eyes.
Other times, like right now, you simply don’t have the time to question your relationship too much.
While the prospect of your upcoming promotion is great, it leaves you with an almost insurmountable pile of work that’s to be done as soon as possible, and the long hours make you putter around the apartment like a zombie. Thankfully, Bucky’s been avoiding you while you’re in this state, spending his days at Dot’s, or at Steve’s. You’re sure he’s told you at some point, but you don’t really remember.
You’ve set up your little work space in the living room, because it’s the only room with proper light in it. Most of your time is spent on the couch, noise-canceling headphones on and trying to focus on what feels like seven different projects at once. You miss feeling the sun on your skin.
As you’re trying to get your eyes to focus on the numbers and nonsensical reports flickering over your laptop screen, you notice movement in your peripheral vision. You flinch, pulling off your headphones, and then blink.
Bucky freezes mid turn, clearly not having expected you to notice him. “Sorry,” he says. “I just got home.”
Your stare remains fixed on the table. Your favorite mug is filled to the brim with tea, placed delicately on the previously empty coaster next to your pile of books.
“You looked like you needed it,” he continues, and your heart swells.
“Thank you,” you mumble and he shrugs.
“Dinner should be here in twenty, if you want some.”
You nod, watching the steam curl when he leaves you to your reports again. Strange, how easy it is to suddenly overthink a cup of tea.
You wait a couple of minutes for it to cool, then take a tentative sip. Your nose scrunches up.
He’s oversteeped it to the point of no return.
Still, you find yourself drinking most of it, because for some reason you can’t bring yourself to just pour it down the drain. It’s like you can’t quite let go of the gesture.
When the week is finally over, you both sit on the fire escape with a drink in your hands and breathe in the cool early night air. There’s undone dishes and at least three machines’ worth of laundry and a thousand other things demanding your attention, but for now, for this one evening, you’re finally content to do absolutely nothing and do it guilt-free.
It’s nice to just sit next to each other in utter silence as you watch the people below hurry along home through the traffic. The streets smell like spilled gasoline and the very last fringes of summer. The sun is setting at a deliciously lazy pace.
Bucky nudges you and points to the other side of the street. You coo as you watch the corgi waddle around the corner, almost itching for your phone to take a picture. Instead, you look up.
The sky looks beautiful, as if someone had softly smudged the deepest blue ink while it was still drying and dabbed the most glorious shades of pink and orange at the edges. A plane goes by overhead, blinking and leaving a trail of gray across the vast firmament.
“You know,” you say, leaning your head against the wall. “When I was little, I used to think these clouds were made of cotton candy.”
Bucky doesn’t laugh, but you feel the smile radiating from him without even turning. It’s like that, between you. Random thoughts are never weird. Only there to be outweirded.
“I used to think the moon was made of cheese,” he offers tonight.
You do laugh, then, short and loud. When you meet his eyes again, they’re the color of the darkest parts of the sky, and the look on his face is indescribable. Almost like surprise. It sends a chill through you.
“What?” you say, and he shakes his head.
A car alarm goes off in the distance, and you avert your gaze again, pulling the blanket tighter around your shoulders. Bucky’s phone vibrates with a message, but he doesn’t duck inside like you expect him to. Instead, you both sit there until the sun has fully disappeared, and something seems to settle.
It’s a setback that follows you well into the next year.
“I vote arsen or arsenic,” Darcy says. “You have insurance, right?”
She reaches over to grab your phone, swiftly entering the pincode with that set frown of hers as if she’s trying to hack into the pentagon again.
“I doubt they cover homicide,” you deadpan.
“Manslaughter, actually” she reads from your phone. “In the first degree. Ow!” She rubs her shin.
“Who are we getting rid of?” Natasha asks, sliding back into the booth next to you.
“No one,” you say at the same time as Darcy says, “Barnes, duh.” You give her a sharp look. She sticks her tongue out at you.
Nat bumps her shoulder against yours. “How long has it been, coming up two years in June?”
“Shut up,” you murmur, taking another sip of your milkshake. “Darce, what are you doing with my phone?”
“Well, I’m done googling, I wanna see if you actually made that list.”
“What list?” Natasha asks.
“Okay, give me that.” You try to grab your phone back, but Darcy snatches it out of your reach quickly.
“Come on, you never tell me these things anymore,” Darcy complains and continues scrolling. “We used to have so much fun! Does he snore? Does he leave his socks all over the floor? I have a need to know!”
“And it’s making you rhyme, too.”
She’s still dodging your efforts to get your phone back while she’s talking. Natasha watches both of you in amusement, eating her cheesy fries.
“Hah!” Darcy exclaims and your heart drops. “I knew it, he seems like the type to break a spine. I can always tell.”
“Darcy,” you say warningly.
She gasps theatrically. “He killed Fernadette? You said it was an accident!”
“Plants die, Darce, it’s not a big deal.”
In the moment of her outraged distraction, Nat plucks your phone from her hands. She scrolls down once, smirks, and finally hands it back to you. “Change your passcode, WikiLeaks.”
You throw the phone back in your bag resolutely, cheeks burning.
Darcy pouts. “I didn’t even get to the good stuff.”
“You know,” Natasha says, dipping her fry into the melting whipped cream on your shake. “Some of this stuff you should probably tell him.”
“It’s fine,” you say through gritted teeth. “I’m fine. We’re both still alive, aren’t we?”
“Only because you’re boring,” Darcy rolls her eyes.
Natasha lifts her glass. “To two years’ survival in June,” she grins innocently at you.
As you clink your glasses together, there’s something in her eyes that makes you feel like you’re toasting an ultimatum.
***
It’s irrevocably over with Dot when Bucky officially breaks up with her the day before Valentine’s, which is a bit extreme even by your standards, and you’ve never liked Dot.
Matter of fact, it would have made the list anyway, but all the more so when he decides to wreck your following evening as well in the process.
Being eternally single, you’d planned a nice, relaxing night home alone with a movie and some takeout to keep you from obsessively refreshing Instagram as a way to torture yourself. Cozy, quiet, totally not alone forever.
Instead, you now have a sullen-faced Bucky to contend with.
“If you’re gonna be moping all night, you can do it in your room,” you finally snap after he’s complained about your choice of food, the candle you wanted to burn in the living room, and how you decided to eat the giant box of chocolates you’d treated yourself to.
“I’m not,” Bucky says mopingly.
You roll your eyes. “Seriously, you couldn’t have chosen literally any other day of the year to break things off with her? There are a lot of them, you know.”
Bucky throws a pile of chocolate wrappers at you. You retaliate with a pillow to his face.
There’s a second for you to laugh at his expression, when he’s still too stunned to react, before the pillow comes flying back to hit you in the temple and you almost fall off the couch with a shriek.
“Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me?” Bucky asks, grabbing a pillow in each hand to use as defense.
“Pretty sure that’s a dumpee privilege,” you say, mimicking what he’s doing.
You stare at each other for a second, then Bucky throws one of the pillows he’s holding at your head. It lands on the floor as you block it with your own, taking the unlit candle down with it. You smack another of your pillows at his face.
Finally, there’s a little glint in his eye again. “I thought you didn’t like her.”
“Doesn’t mean she deserves to be dumped on February thirteenth,” you say. The second pillow misses and Bucky’s grin turns feline. Shit.
Slowly, you put one foot on the floor, Bucky watching your every move. You can see the pillow on the floor out of the corner of your eye.
You dart towards it and Bucky throws his second pillow. You duck. Your chocolates go flying to the ground, scattering everywhere. Both of you grab the floor pillow at the same time, struggling for it.
“Dickhead,” you gasp, thinking of your nice ruined chocolates. You twist to wrangle the pillow out of his grasp, but in doing so stumble. Bucky, to his credit, tries to stop your fall, but you only take him down with you, landing uncomfortably on top of each other on the couch.
Your breath hitches when you feel his weight on you, closer to him than you’ve ever dared before. There’s something in the depths of his eyes that makes it very hard to have a single coherent thought.
“Maybe,” Bucky says, and there’s a tiny crack in his voice as if he knows it, too, “I was sick of pretending.”
Time seems to freeze. He doesn’t move, and his face doesn’t change as he looks at you, not really. It’s just Bucky. Just … everything.
You can feel heat rising.
The doorbell saves you from embarrassing yourself further. You can hear Bucky cursing under his breath as you gently shove him off you and hurry to the door, your heart still thundering.
It’s a moment you keep replaying in your mind obsessively even weeks later, as if remembering it as often as possible would change the outcome at all. Would stop your food from arriving at that exact moment, and instead …
Going down that line of thought is a dangerous game, especially now that you’ve seen the freckle next to his mouth up close, delicately placed there like a dimple, like it was painted with the softest brush. It begs to be kissed.
Sam’s voice calling your name snaps you back to the present and you lock your phone, sharply turning on your heel and almost spilling the buckets of popcorn you’re precariously holding in one arm while attempting to balance the nachos with the other.
“Isn’t that a lot of snacks for four people?” Bucky asks, taking some of the stuff off you.
You don’t meet his eye and frown instead. “Why four people?”
“Nat just sent a text,” Sam says, his arm still around Misty’s waist. “Apparently Steve’s got a cold and they’re staying home.”
And with Joaquín still in Mexico and Darcy running so late at work she’d meet you at the bar later, your group of eight had just been reduced to a date with a plus two. Wonderful.
“Did you only get salty?” Bucky asks, already eating as you make your way to your seats.
“Of course not,” you say, keeping the second bucket out of his reach. “But we’re sharing these. Every time I trust you with the popcorn they’re mysteriously gone ten minutes into the movie.”
“Ain’t no mystery about it,” Bucky says. “Gimme some.”
“No!” You sit down between him and Sam. “You can wait until the trailer show at least.”
“That might be hours! I could starve by then!” He looks at you with his saddest puppy dog eyes, and it might have worked on you, too, had you not had this exact discussion several times before. “Please?”
You cross your arms over the bucket so that he won’t just reach over. “Nope.”
Sam grins. “You got a ruthless one there, Buck.”
The lights go down before anyone can notice the slight twitch in your expression.
Bucky does make it all the way through the trailer show before he starts shifting in his seat, softly tugging at your sleeve. You keep staring at the screen.
“Come on, sweets,” he whispers and you swear you feel all the hairs in your neck stand up. You don’t turn your head or move your arms. He leans over until his head is basically on your shoulder, his knee nudging yours, his hand sneaking for the bucket in your lap.
“The popcorn. Stays. With me,” you hiss. You’re tempted to slap his fingers away, but you find yourself completely immobilized.
“You said you’d share,” Bucky says into your ear. His entire arm is pressed against yours now, and it takes everything in you not to tremble. “Just let me have what’s mine.”
You can only hope no one will ask you about any particulars of the movie later on.
***
You don’t expect it all to fall apart so soon after that.
“Well,” Darcy says as the five of you huddle underneath the tiny awning in front of the bar. “I sure am glad I still came out tonight.”
It’s pouring down in buckets, the wind tearing at your jackets, the sky pitch black. The nearest subway station is a seven minute walk away, and you share a total of two umbrellas between you, one of them snatched from the lost and found box at Luke’s.
“Any of us going in the same direction?” Misty asks, opening her own umbrella. Sam takes it out of her hand to cover them both.
“Not really,” you answer, looking at Bucky. “Uber?”
He nods. “My phone’s empty, though.”
“Jesus, why isn’t this working?”
You snort, unlocking your phone without looking and pressing it into Bucky’s hand before hurrying to assist Darcy in her fight with the lent umbrella. “You need to hold it against the wind. Seriously, for someone with two PhDs—”
It finally snaps open, cutting off Darcy’s cussing. Her glasses are already blurred with raindrops.
“Well,” Sam says. “We’d offer to wait with you, but I don’t think this is gonna get better any time soon, so …”
“Just go,” you reassure him. “I’m sure we won’t be long, either. Right, Buck?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and the unexpected iciness in his tone makes you turn around slowly.
You have never seen this kind of look on his face, that coldness skewing his beautiful features into an ugly mask. In his eyes, there’s nothing, not even a trace of the fondness that swirled in them less than a minute ago. Your heart drops.
“Are you alright?” you ask softly.
“Great,” he says brusquely, shoving your phone back in your hand. “In fact, I think I might go on a walk.”
And without a word of goodbye, without a second glance, Bucky walks out into the opened floodgates.
For a moment, none of you can do anything but gape after him in disbelief. He doesn’t turn when you call his name, doesn’t seem to hear it at all. His hair is wet through immediately, sticking heavily to his neck, but it’s like he doesn’t notice the rain, his hands shoved into his pockets as he turns a corner and disappears out of your sight.
“What’s wrong with him?” Sam asks, and even though you understand why the question is directed at you, it feels like an accusation.
“I don’t know, I—”
It’s then that you glance at your phone, still opened to your notes app, and your stomach plummets again as you read your own angry, frustrated words. I actually hate you, you know that? Hells even wrong with you.
Your vision blurs.
You want to vomit, vomit or cry or both, but there’s no time.
“Take this,” you say to Darcy, pushing your phone and bag into her startled hands before you run. The wind and rain whip in your face, but you don’t care.
You have to find Bucky. You have to tell him that this is all a misunderstanding, a terrible, terrible error.
Youre such a fucking idiot.
Your boots splash water in all directions as they hit the pavement. Slow. You’re too slow. “Bucky!”
This was a mistake. I shouldve never moved in with you.
When you reach the corner of the street, Bucky is long gone.
***
You’re not sure how long you stand there in the rain before they catch up with you, huddling you between them and their two umbrellas until you stop crying long enough to get into the car they’ve called for you.
Darcy climbs into the seat beside you, and by the look on her face you can tell that this time, she’s read the entire thing.
She doesn’t say anything about it, for once keeping her mouth shut as she fishes for your keys and lets you both into the empty apartment. She’s offered to take you to her place for the night, but you shook your head so vehemently at the thought you got dizzy with it.
Maybe he’d come home. Maybe there’s still a chance to clear this thing up.
But his shoes aren’t there when you stumble through the door, and it’s cold in here. As cold as the look in Bucky’s eyes had been.
Darcy forces you into the shower, and when you get back out, there’s a steaming cup of tea waiting in your favorite mug. Of course, she still doesn’t quite understand why that only makes you cry again.
“I fucked up, didn’t I?” you whisper as she wraps her arms around you.
There’s a long pause before Darcy says, “He’s got no clue what he’s walking away from.”
You don’t plan on moving from the couch, so you get Darcy to agree to use your bed for the night. She seems hesitant to leave you, even if it’s just down the hall. You stay where you are, half-seated and huddled in the patchwork blanket Bucky’s mom had sent from Shelbyville. It smells like dust and homemade cookies.
The hours seem to tick by ever so slowly, and the only noises you hear are those of the city. You doze off every now and then, for no more than a couple of minutes at a time, your head turned towards the hall.
It’s very, very early in the morning when the soft click of the front door wakes you. The rain has reduced to a drizzle, the first hesitant rays of sunshine glimmering through.
“Bucky?” you call out quietly. His steps halt for a moment, as if he’s not expected you to be here, but he comes in anyway.
He looks terrible. The rain has molten off the terrible cold mask, but his expression underneath is even worse. He doesn’t meet your eye, doesn’t even acknowledge you sitting there as he walks past you, his dark circles not quite hiding the shattered, matted blue of his eyes.
He doesn’t react to your saying his name again, and the bathroom door closes behind him before you can get up.
You stand there, unsure what to do next, how to make him look at you, talk to you again. You’re still standing there, twisting your phone between your hands, when he comes out of the bathroom again only to vanish into his bedroom without so much as a glance at you.
Two minutes, you decide. You’d give him two minutes to get dressed and sit down.
The eternity of that time span seemingly flies by, and you make yourself move.
“Bucky?” you say quietly, putting your palm against his door.
Of course, he doesn’t answer. He’s not pacing, either, like he usually does when he’s upset, but in this case, you’re not sure if that’s better or worse. Swallowing hard, you open the door.
Bucky’s sitting on the edge of the bed, as if he’s been waiting for you, his head leaning heavy against his arms. He looks terribly small like this.
“Hi,” you whisper, awkwardly. Your face feels like it’s about to melt off. “Can we talk?”
He lifts his head slowly, as if each degree it takes costs too much energy. When he finally looks at you, it almost makes you flinch.
There’s a sadness inside them, mixed with tiredness, that you’ve only caught in your own reflection.
For a long moment, you just stare at each other, before Bucky finally says, “Do you want me to move out?”
Of all the things you expected, this is not one of them. Particularly not with this hoarseness in his voice.
“I want to explain,” you say, taking a tentative step closer.
Bucky huffs a dry breath, pressing the palm of his hand to his eye. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory that you think I’m the ‘biggest pain in the ass the world has ever seen’.”
You cross your arms in front of your chest to keep them from shaking. “I know I wrote that, but I—Colleen said I should—that it would help.”
“Help what?”
“Make it easier,” you say, so, so quietly, but he still hears you.
“And did it?”
You shake your head slowly, uncrossing your arms. “It pretty much backfired.” You unlock your phone again. “You see, I was supposed to write down all the things you did that made me crazy, but at some point … at some point I started adding the things that made me crazy about you.”
Nothing but confusion in Bucky’s eyes as he stares at you, then at your phone. “What are you saying?” he asks softly.
You close your eyes. “You should continue reading.”
Your hands are trembling so hard now he has to take the phone from your hands to make out any of the words. The silence that follows is unbearable, but you don’t dare look at him. So you talk.
“Like, remember when you went to IKEA with Steve and I couldn’t come with you, so you got me one of those shark plushies and a whole almond cake?” You can’t help but chuckle, even though you don’t feel like it. “I tried reading into that for so long, if it was his idea or if I just got stuck in your mind.”
Bucky doesn’t say anything, so you continue, still not opening your eyes.
“Or when Dot used to stay over and you’d make me an extra batch of waffles to make sure I wouldn’t feel left out. Or when we stayed up until 4 to make those Christmas cookies, even though it was September?”
He huffs again. “I broke up with her that day.”
You do look at him, then. “No, you didn’t.”
Bucky’s still staring at the list on your phone. “I brought her the last of her stuff before Valentine’s Day. I don’t think it’d hit her before then, that she could be nasty about it all now.”
His eyes are very blue again when he turns them towards you, clear and focused entirely on you. It’s hard to keep your knees from buckling.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
And there it is. The question that’s been haunting you for almost two years now, that’s been unspoken in Natasha’s gaze and in Darcy’s hug, even though they knew the answer.
Because you’re a coward.
“You’re my best friend, Buck,” you say quietly, your eyes burning. “I just didn’t … I don’t want to lose that.”
“Hey.” He stands in front of you before you even notice him moving, his hands cupping your face and turning it towards his. A shuddering breath falls from your lips. “You,” Bucky continues, “could never, ever do anything to lose me.”
“I almost did today,” you whisper and his face falls.
“I’m sorry I ran away.”
You shake your head and he pulls you into an embrace. His hair is still damp, but soft from his shower. He doesn’t smell like city rain, only the way he always does. As if it all had never happened.
And when he finally draws back to look at you with that glint in his eye, hands still loosely gripping your waist, it almost feels like a bad dream.
“So,” he says, and the cadence in his voice makes your heart stutter. You inadvertently move backwards, out of his grasp, and a wicked grin appears on Bucky’s lips. It’s impossible to look away. “She ‘didn’t deserve me’, huh?”
“She didn’t,” you say warily, watching him. He takes a step closer and you retreat.
“At least she never ‘wanted to burn all my shirts’.”
“And how would you know?” He’s still coming closer. “Just because no one’s done it …” You trail off.
Bucky hums. “No one’s ever told me my eyes ‘look criminal in this light’, either. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Bad,” you say, wincing as you bump into his dresser. “So bad.”
He’s very close to you now, his arms trapping you on both sides, towering over you. Your eyes flit between his own and his lips. That freckle.
The look on his face reminds you of late evenings on a fire escape.
Bucky’s nose bumps against yours, once, twice, as if testing the waters. You don’t think you can breathe. His eyes are so dark when he looks at you, the longing suddenly bursting through the surface, and you realize you’ve both been pretending for far too long.
His brows are knitted slightly, contemplative, as if he’s trying to commit you to memory. If he weren’t standing so close, you’d be shaking.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and the words explode into a million butterflies in your stomach. “You did get stuck in my head.”
And then he kisses you.
The rain stops.
thank you so much for reading!! please don't forget to leave a comment or a reblog if you enjoyed this 💛 if you want to see more of my writing, check out my masterlist or follow @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications!!
Summary: As it turns out, you can’t outrun a monster in his own home. You can, however, learn to question whether he was ever a monster at all.
Word Count: 17.7k
Warnings: real big emotions and confrontations; secrecy in a relationship; lots of panic/anxiety/fear/insecurities; weapons (guns, knife); minor injury (cut); references to criminal activity and violence; Bucky is possessive and protective and in love; emotional manipulation (perceived/debated)
Author’s Note: Here we are my lovelies, the second part to His Name Was Never Just Bucky. Honestly, I’m so relieved it’s finally done and I can return to other projects. This took me so incredibly long, but it’s rewarding to have it completed and I’m so proud I didn’t end up abandoning it like so many other things before. I truly hope you enjoy where I took the story ♡
Masterlist | part one
This was probably the worst decision you have ever made.
But, hell, now you officially jumped without a parachute, the ledge is gone, the air is passing by quickly, and your only hope is that you’ll somehow learn how to fly on the way down and you’ll be able to land on your feet.
The hallway outside has lost its symmetry, as you have lost your sanity, and now nothing seems to make sense anymore. Everything seems longer and crueler, your panic stretching the hallways into a long, suffocating throat. Each of your hectic footsteps makes you feel too exposed in this big mansion, they seem to echo your exact coordinates throughout the floors. Every hallway hears you, the walls themselves are turning their heads.
You take the first turn on instinct, then another, and another, trying to remember the route, trying to retrace the thread that brought you here, but your terror and all that bottled-up panic smashes sequence, steals direction, leaves you with nothing but speed because you know that if you stop, you’re done.
Your feel your heart everywhere. In your throat, in your ears, behind your eyes, beating against your teeth.
You blow past a side table where a cluster of pale lilies sits, blooming so aggressively, looking so wrong and even ugly in the corner of your eye, you have to take another turn.
You’re no longer thinking, you’re just running.
Your chest is a hollow chamber and all you hear is your own pants when you pass a maid who startles and calls something you don’t catch. You pass a window tall as a church promise and for one insane second consider throwing yourself through it.
Somewhere behind you, from the office, you hear a loud crash. His voice follows. His voice. It sounds so much more blood-curdling now.
He’s calling your name. Loud and baffled and then sharper. He doesn’t sound angry yet, but definitely alarmed in a way that makes every warning bell inside you turn rabid. Because there is something uniquely petrifying about hearing alarm in the voice of a man like him. It means you have disrupted the script. It means he does not understand. It means he is coming.
You run harder, every nerve in your body overflowing with adrenaline.
But, as expected, the house doesn’t simply spit you out. Corridors feed into corridors, archways into alcoves, burnished halls into rooms you have never seen, and every choice you make seems to slide you deeper into the belly of the place instead of toward freedom.
With a ragged and desperate breath, you shove through one swinging door expecting another passage, and stumble instead into a kitchen vast enough to feed a wedding. There is all this gleaming steel and those butcher-block islands and hanging copper, bright under the lights in a way that feels grotesque after the dim severity of the office.
It is wrong, all wrong, too open and yet somehow still a trap, because there is no front hall here, no visible exit, only counters and cabinets and startled staff, and you realize with a sick plunge of your stomach, that you have run yourself into a dead end dressed as luxury.
This is bad, this is so bad.
You stop abruptly, spinning around helplessly. The breath tears in and out of you like it is trying to escape without the rest of your body. The halls behind you are full of pounding footsteps, and you know it’s just one single set, but you also know it’s him.
He’s advancing and you can’t keep escaping.
A woman near the far counter goes still with a mixing bowl in her hands. Another man freezes by the sink with his hands in water. No one speaks. No one moves. The whole room seems to hold itself in suspension around your panic, everyone watching without watching, and then from somewhere behind you in the corridor comes Bucky’s voice sounds again, practically yelling your name—no confusion left now, only alertness, apprehension; and it punches you in the gut. It rings through you, through the kitchen, through the bright metal and tile and silence, and you know it has all been for nothing.
But before there is anything you can do, before the ground can open a portal for you to fall through, Bucky appears in the kitchen doorway, looking like an avalanche with a name. A big name. A dangerous name. A name that will be the end of you.
He doesn’t look raging in the obvious way, but he’s lost a bit of control. And for the man that he is, you don’t know how to survive it. And this intensity with which he came thundering after you is so extremely frightening because it looks expensive on him, tailored to fit, like one of his suits, like one of his watches, like all the impeccable and dangerous things he wears so naturally you once mistook them for elegance instead of that blaring warning sign they actually are.
Why just have you been so stupid, my god.
He’s totally got you wrapped around his finger—and dick, as embarrassing and daunting as it is—or you would have maybe been able to open your eyes for a second, you idiot.
But now they are open, wide, wide open, and you see him. You see him as the man he is. But maybe it’s a little too late now.
He stops the moment he sees you pressed half-backward against the dark island, sees the way your hands have come up slightly as if your body has decided on defense without consulting you, sees the wet shine gathering in your eyes, the terror you are no longer managing to powder over, and something happens to his face that is so brief and so devastating, but all you can do is stare at him so you see that clean strike of realization.
He doesn’t look confused anymore, and it makes him even more menacing.
He knows. He knows that you know. And he probably knows what he’s going to do to you now but you don’t know if you want to know that.
The air seems to cinch around you, seems to wrap itself around your throat, and squeezes. You can’t breathe. You don’t try to.
Bucky—James, your mind insists now with a sick recoil, James Buchanan Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, biggest crime boss in the city—does not look away from you when he tilts his face to the staff. That, more than anything, makes your blood run strange. His attention stays fixed on you with a steadiness so absolute it feels like a physical thing, a hand at the back of your neck, while his voice turns toward everyone else in the room and comes out low and unquestionable. “Everyone out.”
His command is dropped into the kitchen and nobody argues. The immediate obedience of his people makes you visibly shudder.
A woman near the stove sets down a towel with trembling fingers. The man by the sink lowers his eyes and moves. Another staff member glances at you once with a quick look that seems almost guilty, almost pitying, and you feel the pulse of it pounding all around you, everywhere inside you.
Nobody looks at you too long, nobody does anything besides leaving the fucking room. They won’t meet your fear and they won’t step between it and the source. Nobody here belongs to themselves enough to choose you over him. But it’s clear that they don’t. They’re his people for a reason. Nobody here will be on your side, whatever happens.
A door swings. The kitchen empties in a matter of seconds, everyone slipping out with the furtive speed of people evacuating a room where something dangerous has just unsheathed itself. They leave with the scene in their eyes. They leave you with him. And the silence after the last one goes is so sudden it roars.
You take another step back and only feel the unhelpfully solid press of marble against your spine. There is nowhere else to go unless you want to climb onto the counter like a cornered animal, and for one hysterical beat of a second, the idea does not even seem ridiculous.
You keep your eyes on him because looking away feels somehow more chilling, but your gaze is frantic within that line of sight, darting to the side entrance, to the swinging service door, to the corridor beyond him, to windows that suddenly seem decorative rather than useful, to every possible seam in the room where escape might be hiding in miniature.
There is none. The whole kitchen gleams at you with pitiless order that’s just full of steel and stone and copper, knives in their block and pots all around.
He notices you looking, but you can’t care; all you have to care about is the distance between you and him, the distance between you and anything that might become escape if panic suddenly grew wings.
Could you run past him? Maybe, if he were anyone else. Maybe, if this were some ordinary man with ordinary reflexes and an ordinary body and an ordinary life.
But he is none of those things. You’re in this damn situation because he’s none of those things.
He fills the doorway without even trying. He stands there in the collectedness of his dark clothes and encroaching presence, looking at you as if he can hear your thoughts tripping over each other and your fear has turned you transparent.
His shadow has finally caught up to his skin and you now realize how dark it is.
Even if you got around him, where would you go? The front hall might as well be on another continent. Every corridor in this house has already left you stranded. There is no map in your mind now, only panic. No way out.
The knowledge gathers in your chest until it hurts. Behind your eyes, heat stings. Your throat tightens around a lump and only something choked leaves your lips.
And Bucky sees all of it. You keep trying to shrink back from him because his very outline has now become a threat, and it doesn’t make your situation better, but he already knows, so you don’t have to pretend anymore.
And his face alters. It’s as if the floor has given way under him. As if he had stepped expecting hard tiles and found air.
He does not advance. That should help. It does not. He stays where he is, one hand dropping slowly from the doorframe to his side, as if he understands that any sudden movement from him might send you straight through the nearest pane of glass.
There is a fervor to him now that feels different from the one you knew in bed, at dinner, in the soft-lit luxury of his attention. It has made you feel protected, loved, worshipped.
But there is no feeling of that anymore, none of that, because now it’s stripped of adornment, revealed as what it perhaps always was beneath all that heat and gentleness. It’s focus. Pure and frightening focus.
His eyes are on you in that unwavering, devastating way of his, but the expression in them is nothing easy. There is something dark in there, something grim and braced, something that knows a door has just slammed shut and is already calculating what can still be salvaged from the wreckage.
His mouth is set. His jaw is hard enough to cast shadows. He looks, absurdly, heartbreakingly, like a man who has been struck and is refusing to touch the bruise. But he stands, and he’s still so tall, much taller than you thought he could become, and he is not the man you thought you knew.
He stands there with his hands visible, shoulders squared but not aggressive, and the intensity in him is bridled.
His stare does not feel like a threat in the crude sense, but it’s so full of attention, too much attention, because total attention from a man like him is its own species of fear.
“Sweetheart.”
His voice has changed. It is calm but only in pretense. It is soft, technically, but not the way it was before. Before, his softness had warmth in it, a hand held out in the dark.
But this is lower. Straighter. It has gone cool around the edges. It’s not vicious or unkind in any sense, but your body clocks it instantly. It’s almost formal in its restraint, as though he’s speaking across the lip of something that’s close to breaking and he’s trying not to widen the crack.
And that nickname makes you want to let the tears fall. Whatever he tries to achieve by calling you that, it doesn’t work. It’s just torture how familiar he tries to make it sound.
His gaze falls in fast snaps over your face, your posture, your trembling hands. “This looks bad,” he concedes roughly. His throat works once before he continues. “I know it does. But it isn’t what you think it is.”
The words land in you and do nothing. They just sink. Sit there.
He studies your face, sees he has not reached you at all. “What did you see, baby? What has you—” He breaks off with a crack, shakes his head slowly, and lets out a shuddering breath, eyes still on you. “Tell me what you saw.”
What answer could you possibly give him?
That you are looking at his mouth and thinking of all the times it softened around your name, and your own mind keeps turning traitor and overlaying that tenderness with headlines, with whispers, with ravening rumor?
That the same voice which once coaxed and soothed now sounds capable of making rooms empty and men obey and whole situations forgotten? That the current version of his voice is a masterclass in control and it terrifies you to no end?
That his hands are hanging open at his sides, looking so damn human and ordinary, as though they’ve never done anything wrong?
Which is a lie, you now know, a lie that runs deep and leaves you scarred, because all you can think is that these bare hands are the same hands you’ve had under your chin, lifting your face to his, tucking hair behind your ear, buttoning you up against the cold, and you’ve had them gripping you tight in the dark, moving inside you until you couldn't breathe, wrecking you in the best way possible.
These hands were your favorite things.
But looking at them now, you picture what they are doing when you aren’t around. Doing the dirty work, the ugly work, the unspeakable work, hidden back in the blacked-out corners of a life he kept under lock and key.
Your throat feels too dry to talk and you stay quiet, letting the stillness in the room ripen, letting your lack of words and the fear in your eyes speak for themselves.
A hard, hollow tension knots his face, makes his jaw grind, and look as solid as a piece of rock. His hands ball into fists and when your eyes snap to them immediately, your body already flinching, he flexes them, but it seems forced. There is an almost brute rigidity to his throat, a silent scream of dread choked down only barely.
“What do you know?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
The question is gentle in shape and brutal in substance. It makes your stomach turn. Because it sounds like a test. It sounds like inventory. It sounds like the kind of thing a ruthless man would ask before deciding what to do with the damage.
You let your fingers grip the edge of the counter. You can’t answer him. All you can do is try to breathe. All you can do is stare at the exit behind him, and his body standing between it.
He draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “Look at me, Y/n. Please.”
You didn’t know some part of you would still obey, but you notice too late. Maybe it’s better this way. Your eyes lift fully to his.
And you can actually see the way he has lost his grip. It’s right there in his eyes. If you were to describe it you’d say it looks distraught. As if he’s lost, his entire biography that’s been neatly written on paper now ripped away and he can’t find the next line.
Judging by the way you act and look at him, he knows you know something, he just doesn't know what, and the mystery is eating him alive. Just for one disorienting second he doesn’t look that much like this untouchable figure from all those disturbing rumors, but rather like a simple man who knows that if he tries to force his way out of this, he’s just confirming your worst fears about him.
“My name,” he starts with a little hesitance. The gravelly low timbre of his voice makes you shudder, “is James Buchanan Barnes.”
Something in your face gives you away.
You feel it the moment it happens. Some tiny involuntary flinch. Some helpless widening.
Because something crosses his expression, his throat bobs hard enough to show that everything inside him is suddenly in pieces.
He sees that the name is not new to you. He sees that you are already standing several steps ahead of where he hoped this conversation was.
He goes very still.
“You knew that already,” he acknowledges, and it almost hurts how he tries to sound calm about it all.
Your mouth is dry. Your whole body feels like a struck match. You let out a pitiful small breath.
He takes one careful step forward, and it’s not really a step, not even truly an advance, but you recoil so sharply, you ram your whole body against the wall of marble behind you. Your back stings, but your eyes sting more.
His face changes with your reaction, something like pain flashing through the severe framework of him before he reins it back in.
“How?” he asks, and he’s no longer trying for calm. He ducks his head, pleading eyes on you, and he speaks with a wounded quiet. “Sweetheart, how did you find out?”
Your throat works around the answer. “Your tags.” It comes out so faint it is almost nothing, just a shaking breath that accidentally caught a few letters on the way out.
For a second he shuts his eyes. For just one cut of time.
His head tips back the slightest amount, and he deflates. A breath of air leaves him in a hitching, rattling shudder, like he’s finally run out of things to hold onto.
He looks back at you and seems briefly at a loss. James Buchanan Barnes, man of closed doors and fixed outcomes, with no ready sentence in his hands.
It is strange and unnerving and it makes you talk more, bracing for him to yell and threaten and turn cold.
“And,” you whisper, voice wobbling and blundering around in your mouth, “there was a gun.“
You want to explain, want to urge that you didn’t mean to find it, didn’t mean to come across anything at all. You want him to know you would like to dump your eyes in a container of white paint so your vision is a blank canvas and you can color it with other pictures, but it’s too late, and your words already seem to break across him, differently.
He does not move at first. He almost flinches, but catches it halfway, as if his body forgot for a moment to be disciplined.
His eyes stay on you, and all that’s in there are things you’ve never seen in him before. Or in anyone, really. It is a stricken grief, resulting from the way every new piece of your fear is arriving inside him one by one and finding purchase.
He looks at you like he can see the exact route your mind took from one discovery to the next, and hates every mile of it.
“Baby, I—” he croaks, having to pause. Instead, he starts toward you again, even slower this time, palms open a little, perhaps meaning only to soothe, perhaps meaning only to be nearer, but simply more trepidation triggers in you before thought can intervene. “Please listen to me—”
Your gaze snags on the knife block.
The sleek black handles. The bright clean suggestion of defense. It’s without thought that you run to grab one.
It is graceless and frantic and you don’t brandish it like someone brave in a film. You don’t know how to do this well enough for that and you don’t have the nerve to think about it.
Your hand shakes around the handle almost immediately, and you pull it close to your chest, because fighting this vile man would be ludicrous considering who he is and who you are, knife or not, but you use it to protect yourself with the mere fact of holding something sharp. Hopeful that this thing will keep your horror from spilling out of your body altogether.
The blade catches the light and makes it meaner. You hate that you have done this. You hate more that you had to.
Bucky stops dead.
The whole room seems to stop with him.
His eyes go first to the knife, then back to your face, and what crosses his expression then is so nakedly agonizing it is difficult to bear.
Because he sees that you are not trying to threaten him, unlike how someone in danger might.
You are not foolish enough to think a kitchen knife turns you into his equal. You are holding it because your body needs one small fiction to survive on—the fiction that you are not entirely empty-handed in a room with a man who could ruin you if he chose to. The fiction that you still belong, in some tiny harrowed way, to yourself.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice cracks clean through the middle of the word.
You have never heard that happen to him before. Never heard his composure split like badly fired glass.
His stare stays locked on yours, but now there is no distance in it, no coolness, no stranger’s cadence. Just a visceral, human ache. “Hey,” he says again, softer, but it sounds so incredibly heavy. It’s the way you’d talk to someone who’s just woken up from a nightmare and doesn't know where they are yet. “I’m— I’m not going to hurt you.”
Your grip tightens. The knife trembles visibly. “Don’t come closer.”
He stops breathing for half a beat and nods slowly.
“Okay.” The word is a single rasp. “I won’t.” He swallows. You see the muscle move hard in his throat. “I won’t come any closer.”
You cannot stop shaking, no matter how hard you try, because a man with his power shouldn’t see you be so obviously afraid, but there is nothing you can do.
“Please believe me, sweetheart, when I say that I never intended to hurt you,” he swears, and there is no command in him now, none of that cold-sounding authority from a moment ago when he emptied the room with few syllables.
This is worse, in its own way. This undone version of him, this man trying to hold himself very still because the sight of you recoiling has clearly perturbed something structural inside him. “I have a thousand sins on my head, and it’s no use to claim otherwise now,” he speaks with a vulnerability in his tone that washes past you. “I’ve done a lot of things I can’t take back, but hurting you was never on the table. Okay? It was never even a possibility. You were supposed to be the only thing I didn’t ruin,” he ends with a lacerated wince.
You stare at him and have no idea how you can understand anything at all.
The knife handle bites into your palm. Your chest rises and falls too fast. The kitchen is suddenly too loud with all that humming of the refrigerator, the lights, the distant bloodstream of the mansion; and in the center of it all he stands facing you with that wrecked look in his eyes, as if your fear is not merely inconvenient to him but unbearable, and he’d rather be struck than watched this way by you.
And in a world that wasn't currently collapsing, maybe you’d actually care, maybe you’d actually notice how he would take a bullet to the chest just to stop you from flinching, but all you can think is that you are standing in the house of James Buchanan Barnes, with a knife against your own ribs as much as against him, and the man looking at you like heartbreak has found him at last is still the same man the city says should never be underestimated.
It’s so silent all of a sudden that the kitchen seems to be held in a trance. It feels as if there is a vacuum pressing against the walls and now the molecules of the room are terrified to touch the mess of what’s happening.
The last bit of help you could have possibly still leaned on due to your desperation has vanished, echoes of footsteps now pull back into the depths of this mansion.
The overheads feel hostile, throwing down a flat glare that skims over the stainless steel and floorboards with an inert eye.
And centered in that manufactured peace is him.
James Buchanan Barnes.
The name has already erupted once inside your chest, but it keeps echoing, reverberating through your bones in smaller aftershocks. It feels strange to attach it to the man standing in front of you, when his hands have mapped every part of you—right to the most intimate ones—you’ve come to recognize his voice even in half-sleep and his laugh once wound through the cage of your ribs, vibrating against the bone until you couldn't tell its rhythm from your own heartbeat.
It feels like a wronged ownership. It feels like a glitch, an error in the logic of the world, but who are you to find a way out of it. Surrounded by him, in a mansion that is now suddenly as big as the world itself.
But you see it now. And god, it’s so painfully clear. So agonizingly obvious.
You were delusional, you know that. It’s what hurts so terribly bad. You know exactly how this looks to anyone else. After all, this all started with you dating a guy for over a month and not even knowing his actual, legal name. But when you’re used to being nobody, a little bit of hyper-focused attention feels like a drug. He looked at you as if you were the only person in the room, and you would get this tight, anxious knot in your throat, thinking don’t ruin this. Asking for a last name or a background check felt like a quick way to feel high-maintenance, and you didn’t want to give him a reason to feel uncomfortable and walk away.
It was a habit born of pure insecurity, being so grateful for the crumbs of love that you don’t dare ask who’s baking the bread. He must have picked up on that on day one. He must have realized right away that as long as he kept making you feel special, you’d keep your mouth shut and let him stay hidden.
He used your loneliness, your blind spots. You were so desperately hoping to be seen, that you fell for the most obvious trap. And it’s your own fault, really. But it still makes you feel completely hollow, like someone scooped the air right out of your lungs with a cold spoon.
Now you have to live with the shame of that mistake.
Your jaw aches from clenching it, trying to swallow down the urge to throw up right there on the kitchen floor.
His presence alone seems to pull at the corners of the ceiling, dragging it down to squash you like a grape. He anchors the room to his foundation, consumes it with all he has, and tracks you with a pinpoint focus that has you shivering and sweating, because his gaze is treating the harsh thudding of your pulse as more vital than the massive, blood-stained kingdom currently cooling its heels on the other side of the door.
The roar in your ears turns outwards, seemingly engulfing the whole room with your panicked pulse. Your vision narrows down until the room stops spinning, and for the first time, you actually feel the air in the kitchen
And in the quiet, your awareness gives you the alarm that there is still something jarringly chilling resting just above your heart. It takes you a moment to realize it’s something physical. There is a weight there that now suddenly feels so deeply misplaced.
Your hand moves on its own, your fingers lifting toward your throat to find the source of that cold, sinister pressure.
The tips of your fingers brush pearls.
And for a moment, you stay frozen there, grazing the smooth curve of one luminous bead where the necklace drapes across your throat.
It once made you smile, had your shoulders drop in ease when you made contact with this present of Bucky. But it no longer feels like a present at all, it feels like a bribe, a hook, a trap because its ultimate purpose surely wasn’t meant as a gift but rather to restrict your freedom and keep you bound to him.
This necklace, these shiny pearls, they aren’t about you. Honestly, you don’t think anything is about you. It never was. It’s just a reflection of what he wants you to be, confining you in his version of your identity.
He manipulated you and stole you and wanted to make you believe you’re the luckiest damn girl in the world.
And you had been. But now you’re just the stupidest.
And you keep on being, because your mind just continues jumping back to the evening he gave it to you, how it felt so soft and intimate, something chosen carefully and fastened around your neck with that glint of pride that lived in Bucky’s eyes. And you want to cry and break down at the way he stood there in front of you so awkwardly with the luxurious velvet box in his hand like it was something far more serious than jewelry. The way his voice had gone rough when he said he saw them and thought of you.
And now, sitting against your collarbone all cold, these are no longer gems, but tiny hooks sinking deeper into your skin, reminding you with every little sting, that you walked into this prison willingly.
You let James Buchanan Barnes clasp it around your neck. The man whose name crawls across newspapers like a stain. The man whose stories carry blood and conspiracies and savagery in their wake.
Somehow you manage to close your fingers around the strand despite of their shakiness.
Across the kitchen, Bucky’s gaze drops to your hand the moment it moves.
The necklace feels impossibly smooth beneath your touch, each pearl round and shining like a row of innocent little moons.
A gift.
From a man you didn’t know.
Or maybe a man you knew too well, just not in the way the world did.
Your throat feels hot suddenly and you know it's the cursed pearls burning holes there, pressing into your pulse with every overwhelmed beat of your heart.
You cannot stand it.
Your fingers curl harder.
Bucky's gaze snaps up to your face, then quickly back to your hands, and then he goes still. But still in the way of an animal that sensed the crack of a branch in the forest. Every line of him tightens in subtle increments, his shoulders locking, his breathing halting so abruptly you see the pause ruffle through his chest.
He knows what your heart doesn’t yet.
His attention sharpens and his eyes grow wide. It almost seems like he’s about to move toward you.
“Hey—” he starts softly, though the word is unfinished, frail, fearing the direction your thoughts are taking.
But your brain is no longer interested in choosing to make decisions carefully.
The necklace feels oppressive, every inch of it tied to a truth you did not have when he first placed it there, and so you can’t think or react any differently.
Your hand jerks in one swift motion just as Bucky releases a desperate choking sound.
The strand snaps free from your neck with a sharp little noise, like a thread breaking under too much strain, and now the pearls explode outward from your hand and scatter across the kitchen floor like a sudden spill of tiny white stars. They strike the tile with a bright, haphazard clatter that echoes far too loudly in the empty room.
tik—tik—tik—tik—
Some bounce high, ricocheting against cabinet legs. Others roll wildly across the floor, spinning in spasmodic circles before coming to a stop beneath stainless steel counters and chair legs.
The sound fills the kitchen in poignant, crystalline bursts.
A rain of little impacts.
A beautiful mess.
For a second you don’t even breathe.
You just stare at them—those small, perfect pearls—rolling farther and farther away from each other, punctuating the heartbreak in the air.
Across from you, Bucky doesn’t move. Something is breaking across his face. His breath leaves him in a soft, stunned exhale, and all he can do is stare with his eyes unguarded. It startles you.
He takes a step back. Not a deliberate one. More like his body forgot the floor was there. His boot slides half a pace behind him as though the sound of those pearls hitting the tile physically pushed him away from you.
His mouth parts.
For a moment he looks like he cannot quite process what he just witnessed.
His eyes—those confident, storm-colored eyes that usually hold such controlled intensity—have widened in a way you have never seen before. It doesn’t seem to look like anger, or anything like it.
It looks like hurt. Pure, unhidden hurt.
His gaze falls to the floor, tracking the scattered pearls skittering across the kitchen tiles, watching them roll away from where you stand with that look in his eyes that says he never wished to see them destroyed.
Then his eyes return to you. Slowly. And the expression there is devastating.
Because it is not rage.
It is not even disappointment.
It is heartbreak so unexpected and unfiltered it seems to hollow his chest from the inside.
His jaw tightens as if he tries to speak, but no words come immediately. The muscles along his throat move with a hard swallow, his chest rising and falling once in a slow, unsteady breath.
You realize then that he is looking at your bare throat.
The place where the necklace used to rest, and he stares at the place with sullen eyes.
Then his eyes lift again, meeting yours, and they are still wide, still aching.
For the first time since you’ve known him, Bucky Barnes looks like a man who has just watched something precious fall apart in his hands and realized too late that he cannot gather the pieces fast enough to put it back together.
And in the bright, echoing kitchen, the last pearl finishes rolling.
Tick.
Then silence returns, and your dread turns harrowing and now Bucky doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands, which is such a small, irrational thing to notice in the middle of your terror and yet your mind notices it anyway, because this is a man who has always seemed like a structure that was built out of conviction, who has been a straight line for you to follow in your world of scribbles, a man who enters every room as though the room had the good sense to expect him, and now he stands before you with your fear pointed at him in the shape of a kitchen knife and looks, inarguably, like he has been shoved off-script and dropped into the crack that formed in his foundation and now he is walled in by the very bricks he laid.
His eyes stay on your face, then the knife, then your face again, careful, heartbroken, alert in that frighteningly intense way of his, and you feel yourself shiver as he is tracking every tremor in your fingers, every drag of your breath, every microscopic shift in your balance in case you bolt again or collapse or cut yourself by accident on the trembling edge of your own panic.
“What you think you know about me,” he starts, and his voice is lower now, roughened at the seams, “what you’ve heard… what people say, it isn’t the whole truth. It isn’t even most of it.”
You barely hear the words. They hit the air and fall uselessly to the floor. Because what else would a man like him say, standing in a cathedral-sized kitchen in a house full of people who obey him before he finishes speaking, after you found the gun and the tags and the name that can turn a city’s rumor mill rabid by itself?
No matter what he says, no matter that he looks so unbelievably shattered—the shape of him is wrong now. That is what your body keeps insisting on. Wrong in the doorway, wrong under these lights, wrong with that caution and that gentleness still trying to live in his face as if it is genuine. You cannot make him fit into one meaning anymore. He is split down the middle in your mind—tender and terrible, gentle and catastrophic—and the fracture is making noise inside you.
He takes a breath, slow, as if he is trying not to startle you even with the sound of his lungs working. “I know how this looks.”
A cough breaks in your throat, or maybe it's a huff or a wet laugh, or whatever, but it hurts coming up and out of your throat. Your hand shakes so badly the knife glints in nervous little flashes. “You used me.”
The sentence leaves you wheezy and small and much too true-feeling inside your own head. But they are out, and you take a whimpering breath, and two tears fall. They don’t arrive elegantly, and they sure as hell don’t spill subtly. They feel hot and you feel humiliated and betrayed, so deeply betrayed, and you hate that they are coming in front of him, giving him the satisfaction because your body is not able to choose a fight, to give you steel and armor and an exit and a miracle. All it can provide you with is dread and tears, and a terribly shaking kitchen knife in your unpractical hands. Your whole body has become an argument against calm and there is nothing you can do.
His face changes so sharply it is almost like watching a flame twist drastically in wind.
“No,” he gets out quickly, and his voice trips over itself. It is denial stripped to the bone. Pure and cruel because he’s genuinely the greatest actor on earth. “No,” he chokes out again, softer and somehow more desperate. “No, no, I— It's not— I never—” He swallows, the line of his throat moving hard. He looks like he is about to walk barefoot through broken glass without letting you see the blood. “You matter to me. You— God, shit, that doesn’t even come close to—”
“Stop,” you whimper while a fresh tear slips down. You shake your head because the words feel obscene now, feel almost insulting in their tenderness, like someone laying roses on a crime scene.
“I’m not pretending.”
“Stop.”
His jaw flexes. He looks toward the ceiling for half a second, and it seems like he is trying to gather language before it deserts him entirely, and when his gaze comes back to you there is something naked in it, something grim and pleading and painfully real. He seems to grope for something that keeps him standing.
“I wanted to tell you,” he despairs, voice scratchy. “I was going to.”
You stare at him through your blurred vision. Every instinct in you rejects the sentence on impact. It sounds nonsensical. The knife quivers against your chest with each breath you are somehow able to take, but they are shuddering.
“When?” you choke out. “After what? After I was stupid enough? After I—”
“No.” He takes a step before remembering himself and stopping immediately, hands opening at his sides. “No. When it was safe.”
The word safe almost makes you laugh, except there is nothing funny left in you.
He hears how deranged it sounds in this room, and grief moves across his face in one dark, swift shadow. “Listen to me,” he presses, and his voice cracks, stripped of that expensive control he wears so well. “I know this life is ugly from the outside. I know what my name sounds like to people. I know what kind of stories get told. I knew if I handed you all of it too soon, all at once, you’d run before you ever had the chance to know what was real.”
Your tears keep coming and you don’t have it in you to wipe them away. You fear your heart won’t ever be able to unclench again after this day. If you even make it out of here. “So you thought you’d just let me” —fall in love first— “into your life the way you did?”
He closes his eyes, and you know the sentence hit exactly where it meant to. When he looks at you again there is nothing smooth or seamless about him, and you have never seen him this way. Because you have never really known him. He is no longer buttoned-up and bulletproof. He honestly looks about ready to be hit in the heart one final, fatal time. “I thought I would give you time,” he supplicates quietly, voice husky. “I thought I would let you know me before the rest of it ruined everything.” The breath that follows his words sounds full of sorrow and a deeply seated regret. “Which it seems like it has.”
Yes, it has. Yes, he ruined it. But would you have felt any other way if you found out another way? In another setting, maybe while you were tangled in the sheets together, or while he was holding your hands? You don’t know because it didn’t happen that way and you found out the way you did and now the world is upside down and all wrong-angled, and your mind is spinning in a room with no corners, completely unanchored by a lie you never saw coming, or maybe you have, because a guy like him couldn’t ever want a girl like you, and perhaps first and foremost you’re just mad at yourself.
Your throat has gone tight with crying, with fear, with the dizzying effort of keeping your body upright when your whole nervous system is trying to flee in eight directions at once. He sees you struggling and looks halfway to moving again, then stops himself so hard the restraint shows all over him.
“I’m a patient man,” he keeps going, and you just want to run past him, out of this hell. You don’t hear how there is no pride in his voice, no menace, just a worn sort of honesty, as if this is the one truth he can still offer without it breaking on impact. “I would have waited. As long as I needed to. I was waiting for the right moment, for when you felt safe with me, for when I knew you wouldn’t hear my name and only hear every lie this city tells itself at night.” His voice lowers further. “For when you loved me enough to at least stay in the room while I explained.”
You blink at him as if he has said something in a language your body no longer speaks.
And then, because this nightmare apparently still has room to worsen, he says, very softly, “Because I love you.”
All you can do is stare at this stranger, and it feels like you are looking at him through a broken window.
It is not the first time he has said it, not at all, and you had loved how he had no shame in telling you, how he pressed those very words into your skin night after night, even this early into your relationship.
Gosh, you had cherished it, fallen deeper for him because of it, and now you know it's all been part of his manipulation. So what else should it be now. But at the same time—why should he still be saying it? How can he still say that? How can he say that now, after all of this, after you know who he is, after the room has filled with the bomb of revelation? What kind of man says I love you while being the very thing you are trying to escape from?
You don’t understand him. You have no clue about who this man is and it is making your hands sweat around the handle. You don’t understand how his eyes can look this shattered, how his voice can sound this human, how his face can hold this much pain and still belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
The knife is still trembling against your chest. Your arm aches from holding it so tightly. The tears keep slipping down no matter how furiously you blink. He stands there with grief in his eyes and power in every line of his body, and both things are true at once, and both things are hurting worse because no single version of him will stay still long enough to be hated cleanly.
“I was going to ease you into it,” he explains achingly, as if confession has broken loose now and cannot be coaxed back in. “Slowly. Over time. I was going to tell you what I could, when I could, and let you decide what to do with it piece by piece. I was never going to throw you into the deep end and watch you drown in it.” His throat works. “Y/n, I’m so fucking sorry you had to find out like this.”
But you are not really listening anymore. Or rather, you hear every word and none of them settle. They clatter against your panic and bounce off immediately only to land in a repressed corner of your mind.
Because maybe he means them. Maybe that is the tragedy of it. Maybe he means every single inconceivable word. But meaning them does not open the door. Meaning them does not make this house less of a trap or his name less of a threat or your pulse any less palpitating in your throat. Meaning them does not undo the gun, the tags, the scathingly smooth way everyone in this place disappears when he tells them to. Meaning them does not turn James Buchanan Barnes back into only Bucky, back into the man whose shirt you wanted to pull on because it smelled like him.
All you need now is a way out.
You don’t want justice, or answers, or even the damn truth. You just want a way out of this. You want to get the hell away from him and everything that smells and looks like him. And the room starts reorganizing itself around that instinct. The service door behind him. The hallway to the left. The distance to the far counter. Whether he is standing on the balls of his feet or flat. Whether the island might slow him for a second. Whether dropping the knife would help or harm you. Whether there is any point at all in planning when this is his house, his kingdom, his maze, and you are just a girl crying in the center of it with shaking hands and nowhere good to go.
He sees your eyes move and something in his face folds inward with understanding, with woe, with the excruciating knowledge that while he is pouring his heart out in rough little pieces, all you are doing is looking for exits. He looks completely emptied out, as if his ribs had been pried open and the only soft part of him had been torn away.
“Baby—” And now he just sounds pleading. But he doesn’t get the chance to keep on going with his drama.
The kitchen ignites with noise before you even understand what you are hearing. There was just you with your messy breathing and Bucky standing a few feet away with that awfully gutted look on his face and then the door slams open so hard the plaster cracks and the sound ricochets against your nervous system.
A crowd of men comes flooding through the opening, like a breach in a dam, so fast and threatening and all of them primed for dirtier work than anyone should ever have to do. The floor shudders under their hard slam of boots. Nobody hesitates and nobody asks questions. They all just move on some sick instinct, weapons out and raised in the space of a single heartbeat.
And now all of them are pointed at you.
The sound that hitches in your throat is not at all dignified or brave. You wish you could stare at the end of your life with at least a small sense of bravery, but it doesn’t seem like it. Every weapon these uniformed men hold is fixed on your ribs, your throat, your eyes, and the paring knife you are gripping feels pathetic. It is a useless piece of household metal against a wall of black iron, against men who don’t care that you are small and fearful.
Even so, your knuckles go numb around the handle from how hard you are gripping it. Your fingers lock up, your skin flashing from freezing cold to scorching hot while your heart thrashes against your ribs.
You think, irrationally, that this is how it happens then. There is no big speech, no lightning strike from the sky. It is just going to happen here on the linoleum, next to a bowl of apples on the counter, and a row of clean water glasses that are catching the light of the kitchen while strangers decide to put bullets in you.
Bucky pivots.
It happens so quickly it feels supernatural, like a weather change, like the room altering under the weight of him. He steps in front of you without quite blocking you, but enough that every single man in that doorway seems to remember all at once who exactly they have just disobeyed.
His expression does not merely harden; it shears. Whatever softness had remained in his face a moment ago is gone so completely it is frightening, scraped away until all that remains is authority in its most lethal form.
You feel fused to the counter behind you. You wish you would be.
He fixes his stare on his men and his eyes become glacial, pale and freezing, incandescent with a fury that somehow feels far more menacing than an outburst. He speaks, and the volume is so low that the room has to go completely breathless to catch it.
“Guns down.”
The response isn’t fast enough. No one moves quickly enough. One of the guards hesitates—just a fraction, just long enough to die for it in any other circumstance—and Bucky’s gaze lands on him so heavily, it’s as if he is deciding where to leave the body.
“I said,” he repeats, and his voice comes out with a rough friction, stripped of any emotion except the promise to do harm, “if any one of you ever points a weapon at my girl again, I’ll put you in the ground myself and make sure nobody bothers digging you back up. Do you understand me?”
His words are deadly. It doesn’t even sound like he’s acting at all, he just sounds absolutely lethal. He talks as though he has already buried people before and wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.
Around you, the momentum of the raid falters. The guards look genuinely unnerved, expressions switching so quickly between shame, panic, and obedience in ugly little flashes. Guns lower and now point toward the floorboards. A muted apology gets muttered into the silence and some of them take a step back. But it is too late, far too late, because the last thread inside you has already snapped, and your body no longer cares about reason.
You run.
There is no time for anything else; you simply hurl yourself at the nearest gap in the room, toward the delusive hope of open space, of slipping between bodies, of somehow becoming smoke, becoming speed, becoming anything but this cornered and shaking thing inside your own skin.
You aim for the narrow corridor between Bucky and the island counter, convinced by sheer panic that if you can just get past him this once, just this once, the house might cleft and let you go. Your shoulder twists, your breath catches, your feet slip against tile and then catch again, and the world blurs into motion and noise and the blood-bright animal need to escape.
But Bucky is faster.
His arms hook around your waist in one brutal, seamless movement, and it yanks you backward before you’ve even made it past his shoulder. Suddenly you are no longer running, your feet lose the air, leaving you floating for half a heartbeat, before you are driven hard into the breadth and heat of his chest.
The cry you let out this time actually tears your throat. You thrash on instinct, your body fighting him with the full deranged force of your mind freaking out, and somewhere in that struggle your hand jerks.
The knife you have been using as a means of senseless protection, hits resistance. It slides cleanly, sinking into skin and it makes you gasp sharply, your lungs suddenly jamming. It’s not your skin.
The blade has opened a shallow red line across his forearm.
And that’s gotta be it. You’re now totally and completely fucked.
The knife drops from your hand and clatters to the floor.
For one aghast second you stare at the bead of red welling against his skin, bright as a neon sign, and horror crashes through you so adamantly it almost eclipses your fear.
But Bucky does not let go. He does not even flinch properly or draw back his arms. His wounded arm stiffens only enough to keep you from pitching forward, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, not pinning now so much as containing, as if he is trying to physically keep something from breaking apart right there in his grip.
He seemingly is completely blind to his own bleeding skin, as if the knife you were holding was never a danger to his life and only a threat to yours. Even with his blood on the floorboards, his only instinct is to pull you deeper into his chest.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he calls, and the transformation in his voice makes your head spin, because the man who just threatened death into a roomful of armed soldiers is gone again, folded away, leaving only this hoarse, pleading tenderness that feels almost more agonizing. His mouth is at your temple, right at your hairline, his breath gasping against your skin. “Baby, baby, stop. Please—please, don’t do this, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
You fight him anyway because your body refuses to do anything else. Your hands shove uselessly at his chest, your shoulders wrench, your whole body convulses with the effort of getting free. But he is built like a locked gate, and every single push only burns through the last of your energy. Tears pour hot and shamefully down your face. Your lungs burn. The room swims at the edges. Somewhere nearby, boots shuffle, and Bucky snarls over your head without releasing you.
“Out.”
It is one word, but every person in the kitchen obeys it instantly. You hear the kitchen staff backing away, hear the door open and shut, feel the room empty until there is no one left but you and him and the sound of your own sobbing.
Bucky’s hold eases just a fraction, softening the pressure so you can actually draw in air even if inhaling right now feels like swallowing water. He presses his cheek against your hair for one heavy second, and when he speaks again his voice is breaking in places you have never heard it break before.
“Listen to me,” he murmurs, each word roughened by strain, by remorse, by something that sounds so heartbreakingly sincere you almost hate him for it. “Hear me out, sweetheart, please. I got you. I got you. Nobody’s gonna touch you, nobody’s gonna lay a hand on you. I won’t! I would never. You hear me? You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word is a total deformity. It is so grotesque in this moment you could probably laugh, except it comes out as a broken cry instead.
You feel the way his body tenses around the sound, how it seems to travel straight through him with his heart as the target. He bows his head, his lips brushing your temple by accident or desperation, you cannot tell which.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and now there is nothing controlled left in him, no command, no careful poise, only a man fraying in real time. “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry. I wanted you to know, doll, I did, just—not like this. Fuck, not like this. You mean everything to me. You gotta believe that. You are everything.”
You shake your head against his chest, small and uncoordinated, feeling spent. You do not know whether you are denying him, begging him, or simply coming apart. His shirt is damp beneath your face now, whether from your tears or the sweat chilled over your skin or the blood from his arm, whatever it is, it feels symbolic somehow—one more blurred line in a night made of them.
“I wasn’t gonna let anybody hurt you,” he whispers, and even that seems to drag through his throat, hitting the walls of it. “Nobody would ever be able to hurt you. Especially me, my love, especially me! I swear to God.” His forehead grinds into yours until you can taste the heat of his skin. “I’m still the same guy who kissed you this morning. I don't care if I’m a monster to the rest of the world, but not to you, sweetheart, please not to you. I would never—god, I would cut my own hands off before I ever used them to hurt you. You have to believe me, darling, please!”
But your body no longer knows the language of swearing, or soothing, or reason. Your muscles don’t translate his pleading into safety. Your body only knows that he is stronger than you, and that the arms holding you are the same arms that can dismantle a life without raising his pulse. The palm mapped so carefully across the curve of your head is the exact same hand that commands a firing squad, directs the local precincts, and seals fates with a slight tilt of his chin.
Every touch from him now delivers a repulsive duality—a rescue that feels like an arrest, a stroke that resembles a chokehold, an overwhelming affection that wears the exact outline of a cell.
You can feel how easy this is for him, how negligible his effort is in keeping you contained even while he tries his best to appear harmless. That insulting fact finally starves out the last bit of resistance left in your veins. Your nervous system runs out of fuel, leaving your body to go completely toothless against his chest, without actually surrendering or any returning trust. Your body is simply done.
Your fingers drop their useless leverage against his chest, your joints go limp and your knees refuse to carry your weight anymore.
You sag in his hold all at once. The sobs keep coming, but weaker now, thinning out, scraping instead of breaking. Bucky feels the change immediately. His grip loosens just enough to become support instead of restraint, his palm rubbing between your shoulder blades in one of those soothing motions you used to love so much and it makes your chest ache with a fresh wave of grief.
“That’s it,” he coos, though his voice sounds completely mangled by the words. “That’s it, honey. I know. I know.”
You don’t know what he means by that. You’re not sure he does either. Perhaps he simply recognizes that your stamina has bottomed out, that even the sharpest panic has its boundaries, and that the rush of survival instincts always burns hot and fast, leaving behind this full-body collapse.
He holds your dead weight upright anyway. He keeps murmuring into your hair but it doesn’t glue your broken pieces back together or erase the reality of what he is, what this fortress hides, and what you stumbled into. His sliced arm stays locked around your waist. You can feel the sticky warmth of his blood soaking through your clothes. It is startlingly human, and it should probably make him look less like a monster, the simple fact that he can bleed. But it makes every detail about your situation so real and dreadful.
When your body finally ceases its rebellion entirely, it isn't an act of submission. It is pure depletion.
And Bucky, keeping you pinned against the wall of his chest, seems to grasp that exhaustion better than anyone else could. His lungs expand and contract in uneven hitching motions. He drops his chin heavily onto the crown of your head. He closes you in not like a conqueror taking a prize but like a man trying, too late, to keep a catastrophe from widening under his hands.
Beyond the kitchen threshold, the entire estate drops into a dead, listening sort of silence, as if the plaster and timber have cocked an ear to the room.
He keeps holding you as if you are something he has no right to touch anymore and still cannot seem to make himself release, and it’s crazy that even like this, even with your body rigid from all the things you have learned too quickly and too late, he is still somehow heartbreakingly careful, his hand spread wide and warm between your shoulder blades, his hold immovable but never bruising, his mouth close to your temple as though he cannot bear to put distance between you if distance means losing you for good.
It is all just so utterly confusing because this is not entirely what you had expected would happen.
“The way you looked at me,” he continues, and his voice comes out rough as gravel dragged through water, ruined by restraint, by panic, by the sheer effort of trying not to frighten you further with the depth of what is in him. He does not sound like the man in the hallway, not like the man who commands rooms into silence with a glance, not like the man whose name can make other people blanch and step backward and say yes, sir, with their pulse all up in their throats. He sounds flayed open. He sounds like the sight of your fear has gone into him like shrapnel and lodged somewhere vital. “The way you looked at me in there—” He stops, breathes in shallowly, like he has run straight into a blade and is trying not to lean on it harder. “Christ. I’ve taken bullets that didn’t hit like that. To have you look at me like I’m something you need to survive.”
Your face is turned into his chest, your tears soaking through the expensive dark fabric of his shirt, and still your whole body is listening against your will, because his voice is all around you now, low and urgent and splintering in places that make something cold move through you.
His hand slides back up the back of your head, not forcing, only cradling, his fingers threading carefully into your hair as though the gesture itself aches. When he speaks again, there is something almost disbelieving in him, some stunned grief that does not seem feigned, cannot possibly be feigned for this long without becoming madness.
“If I could do it over, I would do every goddamn thing different,” he breathes brokenhearted. “Every part of it. I would tell you sooner. I’d tell you cleaner. Shit, I should’ve just told you. I should’ve given it to you straight before it got this messy and before you had to figure it out by yourself and piece me together out of all the worst parts with nobody there to shield you. I would have died before I let it happen like this. I swear.” He swallows hard enough that you feel it where your cheek presses near his sternum.
The kitchen is too bright and everything is stinging so harshly with those clean counters, the severe gleam of copper pans above the island, the neat little arrangement of knives in their block where one slot is now empty, the overhead lights turning everything brutally visible.
There is nowhere for your agony to hide. It shivers right out in the open, lives in the tightness of your lungs and the salt on your mouth, and the fact that every soft word from him only makes the unreality of this more baffling. Because he sounds sincere. He sounds devastated. He sounds like a man speaking over the body of something precious he helped kill.
He says all of this like he’s offering you his throat, while all around you the evidence of his power still glints and twinkles from every glazed surface, every distant footstep, every forced silence in a house built to keep his secrets and carry out his will.
He is talking with all the gentleness he has. He is nearly breaking with it. And still, inside you, fear sits and it pants and it is unconvinced, because love does not make a cage less locked simply because the hands closing it are shaking.
You make a small sound then—not a word, not even close, just some thin and wrecked little fracture of breath—and he tightens around you reflexively, then instantly checks himself, as if terrified you will read force into even that involuntary movement.
His next words come faster, crowding each other, not panicked exactly but pressed by urgency, by the sense that you are slipping through his hands even while he is still physically holding you.
“I know what I am.” He breaks off again, and this time you feel the tremor that runs through him. “I know what kind of man I’ve been, what people say about me, what they’re right about. I know exactly what it looks like from where you’re standing.” His voice goes raw. “But, darling, I never meant for you to be afraid of me. This was never supposed to happen.”
The words enter you but you just don’t know where to store them. There is something so naked in the way he says them that your mind keeps tripping over it, keeps trying and failing to fit it beside the other truth—the guns, the guards, the coldness in his authority, the name that belongs in whispers, the empire standing tall all around you in all its obedience. Or maybe it’s just loyalty. Respect? What even is it?
It’s hard to acknowledge that he still sounds like himself. James or Bucky, the man who kissed sleep into your skin and tucked blankets around your legs and pressed absent-minded kisses to your shoulder while reading beside you in bed still exists inside this other, larger, more terrible man. He has not vanished cleanly enough to make your fear simple. You give a small whimper.
“I was selfish,” he rasps, and now the confession lands without defense. “That’s the truth. I was selfish as hell. Because I wanted you anyway. I wanted you even knowing I should’ve stayed away from you. I know I should’ve left you out of all this. A girl like you deserves something clean and safe, and I’m neither of those things. I knew that. Fuck, I knew that. And it’s been killing me. I let myself have you and it’s been so fucking selfish.”
His breath hitches around the last word, and the grief in it is so unexpectedly torturous it almost makes you nauseous. His forehead lowers for a second against your hair, and he scarily looks so weary, suddenly too full of feeling to carry it elegantly.
“Because you are...” He exhales a broken laugh with no amusement in it whatsoever. “Christ, sweetheart, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You couldn’t ever imagine what you walking into my life did to it.”
Your eyes squeeze shut and fresh tears slip out anyway. Somewhere inside you, some tired and furious part wants to scream at him for speaking like this now, for laying tenderness over terror as if one can cancel the other out, as if love—even if it is love, even if it is real and not just another instrument in his alluring hands—can unmake what you know. But before you can push any of that into sound, he keeps going, quieter, the words drawn so close to your skin they seem less spoken than confessed into it.
“If you want to go,” he states, and there is a pause before it, the kind that tells you the sentence is costing him blood, “I’ll let you go.”
Your breath snags. You don’t trust it nor believe it instantly, but even imagining the words coming out of him feels like a tectonic event, a mountain bowing. He does not release you yet, but his body changes with the promise, some iron set inside him going rigid with the effort of saying it and meaning it.
“I will,” he says, with more force now, as if he knows you don’t believe him and cannot bear that either. “If that’s what you want, I will. I’m not gonna keep you somewhere you don’t wanna be. I’m not gonna turn into that for you. But, baby—” and here his voice gives way altogether, drops into something so human and stripped down it hardly seems to belong to the same man who froze a room full of armed guards with one look, “—I am begging you not to make that choice before you hear me. I am begging you. Stay this one night, give me one chance to explain it all to you, to answer every possible question you could have. One chance to do this right, even if I already did it all wrong.”
Begging. The word would sound absurd from almost any other man. From him, it sounds cataclysmic. His hand shakes at the back of your head before steadying, his chest rises too sharply under your cheek, and he continues speaking as if silence might kill him.
“I love you too much to let this be the end of it if there’s anything I can do to stop it,” he croaks. “Too much to let you walk out of here thinking none of it was real. It was real. Every second of it was real. Me wanting you, loving you, worrying about you, making room for you in my life in ways I never made room for anybody—none of that was a lie. The only lie was thinking I could hold both worlds apart long enough to protect you from what I am. That was the lie. That was my arrogance. My mistake.”
The mansion remains hushed in that eerie, cathedral-like way that comes after a disturbance, as if everyone occupying this huge mansion is pretending not to hear the aftershocks.
But here in the kitchen, everything feels narrowed to his voice and your breathing and the blood drying on his forearm and the fact that he is speaking to you like a man on his knees, even if he is still standing, even if his arms are still around you, even if his kind of desperation does not know how to unclench fully.
There is a daunting sincerity in him now, not because it is soft but because it is not. Because it is fierce. Because even his tenderness carries the shape of obsession, of decision, of something chosen with his whole irreversible heart.
What can you possible answer here. What can you possibly think.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.” He sounds so full of conviction. Technically, the words are quiet, but there is a hard core somewhere in his tone, and it glows fiercely. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again. To prove this to you. To earn back one inch of your trust. I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t care what you ask for, I don’t care what I have to lay down at your feet. I’ll do it. I will.” He takes a beat and the next words are so low you almost miss them. “I know I don’t deserve another chance and you have all the best reasons to run, but I’m asking for it anyway, Y/n.“
At that, finally, he leans back just enough to look at you. It’s not much, but the hand at the back of your head can guide your face up with painful gentleness, giving you every opening to pull away if you need to, though you are too wrung out now to do much except tremble.
His eyes find yours and stay there, and the sight of his face nearly brings you to your knees all over again. There is no coldness in him. No cruelty. No mockery. Only a kind of bereft intensity, a ravaged devotion, and beneath it the severe understanding that he is seeing himself reflected in your fear and cannot survive the image.
The whole fact of how broken he sounds starts to mess with your head. It cracks the armor of your panic, if only just a little bit. You’re trying to hate him. Because, honestly, you want to. You want the fear to be this insurmountable wall between you, but his voice keeps crumbling pieces of it.
The worst part is that you can’t just flick a switch and stop loving the guy you were tangled up with this morning. You fell for him so fast, so completely, because his version of happy felt like the safest place on earth. But with all those shocking revelations, that same love feels like a trapdoor that just dropped you into a cellar, and you are so angry at your own heart for still wanting him to hold you.
Underneath the exhaustion, there is a nauseating doubt starting to rot everything you remember about the last few weeks, and you really don’t need your mind going that far, but it does. You start wondering if you ever actually loved him, or if you were just hooked on the way he looked at you.
He treated you like you were the only important thing in the world, and you just hung off that affection, soaking up the protective way he took care of you. Even though he’s standing here right now, bleeding and hollowed out, swearing that every single touch was real, how can you ever be sure? Every memory you have is suddenly poisoned by the thought that it was just a beautifully built illusion, and the whole thing makes you feel completely seasick.
It’s just too much to handle all at once. Your brain is trying to hold two completely different men in the same space—the gentle guy who tucked the blankets around your feet in the dark, and the boss who froze a kitchen full of killers with one word. They are both real. They are both right here in front of you, and the fact that he isn't a cartoon villain makes it a hundred times worse.
If he were just a monster, you could run. But he’s a monster who tells you he loves you with this gut-wrenching, unyielding honesty, and looking at his ruined face, all your willpower just turns to mush.
“I should have asked more questions,” you whisper, and still, your voice breaks, the words tumbling out of you like loose gravel. You aren’t trying to be eloquent anymore, you are just trying to get the noise out of your head before it chokes you. “From the start, I— When you wouldn’t tell me things. I— I don't know, I was scared, I guess.”
Your fingers tighten into the expensive wool of his lapels just to keep your knees from giving out. Letting this mob boss know about your fears is probably a bad idea. But your life consists of you making bad decisions and so your mouth keeps opening. “I think I just liked the way you were to me too much to risk messing it up.”
The words drag themselves out of you like they do not want to be born, like each one has to force its way through the knot in your throat and the salt on your tongue and the simple, mind-numbing fact that nothing in you knows where to place anything anymore—not him, not yourself, not the last weeks, not the hands that held you so tenderly and the empire those same hands command with a flick of the wrist.
Bucky’s gaze is piercing as he looks down at you, listening with his breath visibly held.
“But I— I still don’t understand. I think.“ Your voice comes thin at first, scraped nearly transparent by crying, but it sharpens on pain the way a blade sharpens on a whetstone. “I just— I saw this gun, and—,” you blur out, the memory making your heart do that awful stutter against your ribs again while Bucky nearly flinches. His eyes go wide, pupils shrinking until they look like two dark pinpricks. “It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. I was just— you told me to grab a shirt of yours but I couldn’t reach up your wardrobe and so I was just going to go grab the shirt you've been wearing, but your jacket was there and then it just fell out. And I— I completely lost my mind because I realized I didn’t actually know anything about you, and I’ve been so stupid, and I’m really not good at this. I'm not good at talking things out or figuring out the right things to say. It’s just— this is so much to take in.”
Bucky´s chest hitches, a rough, dry stutter or air that sounds like he just took a fist to the solar plexus. His face looks almost unrecognizable with the pain plastered on it. You feel his hands tremble against you and he slowly takes them away, putting himself at a small distance to perhaps give you some space. His palms stay open, as do his eyes. He looks entirely unhinged by the clumsiness of his own life seeping into yours.
How could anyone understand how a man can kiss your forehead like a saint and still have blood and fear braided into his name. It’s so hard to understand how someone can look at you the way he is looking at you now—like you are both miracle and mortal wound—and still have lied, still have omitted, still have arranged the world around you so skillfully that you walked through it unknowing, barefoot and bright-hearted, straight into the center of his hidden life.
You do not understand what parts were real and what parts were merely curated, and worst of all, there is a terrible little splinter of you that already suspects the answer is not clean enough to save you. That some unbearable amount of it was real.
Your mouth trembles and you know that he can see it.
“You lied to me,” you sob, and although you mean for it to, it doesn’t sound like a weapon you’re throwing at him. It just sounds sad. “You made it so easy. I didn’t even think about it. I just— I just woke up every day and trusted the way you looked at me. And the whole time, I didn’t even know you.”
You look down at his chest so you can stop having to meet those devastatingly sunken eyes. “You let me fall in love with you not knowing who you were.” Your sentence has a shape now, the grief in you finally managing to find a spine. But you still can’t make your words sound all that accusing. Because you got yourself into this situation. You’re supposed to be furious at yourself first.
You haven’t used the word love before. You just dropped it, being the first time it cleared your teeth and the timing of it feels completely disastrous.
And Bucky suddenly undergoes a drastic freeze, as if his nervous system has been struck by lightning. He seems to tip back just a tiny bit but stays in your orbit. He stares down at you, his mouth parted, his chest stalling on an intake of air that he forgets to let back out.
The fact that you love him—and that you are saying it right now, while covered with dread and shivering nearly against his chest—seems to completely break his brain.
There is a dark heat flooding his face, his jaw tight enough to snap a tooth. He looks agonizingly vulnerable like this, the dangerous mob boss utterly gutted by four letters. His fingers twitch where they are now hovering near your neck, desperately wanting to bury themselves in your hair and pull you back into his skin, but he forces his hands down to his sides, his knuckles trembling against his tailored trousers.
“You…,” he starts, eyes burning with a starved intensity that makes the air in the kitchen feel boiling hot. He swallows loudly, taking a moment, staring out into some space behind you, and switching focus back to you. “Don’t call yourself stupid,” he goes on, voice dropping into a rasp that shakes with the failure of his own arrogance. “None of what you told me and none of what you felt makes you stupid.”
His face leans closer to yours and somehow you only shrink back a tiny bit, not really at all. You can feel the wavering rhythm of his breath against your lips. He looks thoroughly undone by his own greed, stuck in the realization that he won the only thing he ever wanted, right at the exact moment he stopped being the man who holds you in the dark and turned into the reason you’re afraid of the dark.
“The love was real,” he sounds so convinced. His face is breaking, but his voice is not. He knows what he is saying. “Every single second of it was real. I am the one who ruined it. But what I feel, and what we have, that isn’t a lie. I swear to you on my life, it was never a lie.” His eyes close briefly, and it looks like he is losing his footing somewhere internal. “I know how it feels from where you’re standing. But I wasn’t playing some game with you. I wasn’t trying to—” He drags a hand over his face, and for an instant he looks older than you have ever seen him, not in years but in burden, in wear. “I wanted more time. That was my sin in it. I wanted time. I wanted to tell you in a way that didn’t make you look at me like this.”
Like this.
The phrase feels unkind. Because yes—there it is again, the damn nucleus of the whole thing. The way your eyes have changed on him. The way he has noticed every flicker of fear in you as if each one were a cut and he keeps taking your terror not as an insult to his pride but as an injury to something much more private and much more vulnerable. And that, more than any fake excuse could have, is so hard to process. 
Because men who only know cruelty do not usually grieve like this over being feared by the woman they supposedly love. Men who are only monstrous do not usually look half-unmade by it.
You don’t want that thought, you honestly don’t, but it does arrive.
Because he has not hurt you. He hasn’t done a single thing to hurt you, and that makes him so much more complicated at the exact moment you most need him to stay simple.
He has had a thousand opportunities by now to become the thing you are bracing against. In the hallway. In the office. In the kitchen. When you ran. When you fought. When you took the knife. When you cut him. At every turn, there has been room for rage, for punishment, for the kind of retaliatory violence your frightened mind keeps expecting from a man like him, and instead he has done nothing but hold himself on a brutal leash, speak softly, plead, bleed, look at you as if your fear is the one thing in this world he has no defenses against.
And it makes you weaker.
Because fear is easier when it is clean. Outrage is easier when there are no counterweights. But now your thoughts begin to buckle under the strain of contradiction, and you feel yourself growing tired in some deeper way, not merely from running or crying or panic, but from the effort of sustaining one total version of him against the evidence of another.
The story you are trying to tell yourself—that he is simply bad, simply dangerous, simply false—keeps snagging on the memory of his hands shaking when he begged, on the way he threw his men out for aiming guns at you, on the heartache in his face now, open and unarmored and miserable with not knowing how to reach you.
None of it erases anything, how could it this fast, but still it matters, and still some fatal hope flares.
Your lungs are burning. You become dimly aware that your body is leaning, not exactly by choice, but because exhaustion is making choices for you now. The kitchen feels too bright and too far away at the same time. Your fingers feel chilled, your knees unreliable, your heart still overworked from all that horror. Even your anger is beginning to lose its clean edges, dissolving into something wetter and more helpless.
“I don’t know what to do,” you admit, and there is no strength in it at all.
The sentence is barely more than breath, but it changes him instantly, makes his misery seem softer, as if your confusion pains him almost as much as your fear did. His gaze searches your face carefully, greedily, looking for any sign that you have not vanished completely from him.
“You don’t have to know right now,” he comforts, and this time his voice is gentler still, worn down to the most tender parts of his body. “You don’t have to decide anything this second. I know I dropped all of this on you in the worst possible way. I know you’re overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed. The word is so pitifully insufficient you want to cry some more, but the sound catches and turns to another shivery exhale instead.
Overwhelmed is a rainstorm. A bad day. A missed train. This is seismic. This is having the floor beneath your life cleave open and discovering it was built over a fault line all along.
Still, you know what he means.
Because beneath all the fear, and the betrayal and the urgent need to flee, there is now also this leaden, disorienting fatigue, this collapse of certainty.
You cannot keep all your alarms ringing at once forever. The body is not made for it. At some point even terror begins to sag under its own weight, and in that sagging comes the most dangerous thing of all. Maybe not trust or forgiveness yet, but confusion. A human confusion. The realization that if he truly meant to destroy you, perhaps he would have done it already. That if cruelty were the point, he has passed up too many easy chances. That whatever else he is—and God, he is still intimidating, still hidden, still a man with too much power and too many locked rooms in his life—his feelings for you do not look counterfeit. They look catastrophic. They look real enough to have ruined him too.
He had every opportunity to end this argument with force, not even making his hands dirty in a physical sense. But he didn’t, and that roughened sincerity that seems so deeply wounded keeps gnawing at all the things you thought you found out about this man, the stereotype you made him out to be. It makes a guilty stone drop into your belly and land with damaging intentions.
And you do not know what to do with all this honesty and realness, when real arrives dressed as the very thing you were trying to escape.
But you have to acknowledge that your lack of strength is not the only reason why you have stopped fighting him, stopped trying to get away.
Bucky seems to read some fragment of this in your face, because he does not press harder. He does not crowd you with arguments. He simply stays where he is, close enough for warmth, far enough now that his care has space to breathe. His injured arm hangs at his side, blood drying in a dark seam along his skin, ignored. His other hand lifts as if to touch your cheek, then stops halfway and falls again when he sees the flicker in your eyes. That tiny restraint breaks something in you all over again.
“I know I lied by not telling you,” he says quietly. “I know that. I’m not asking you to call it something prettier. I’m just telling you it wasn’t because you meant nothing. It was because you meant too goddamn much, and I was trying to find a way to bring you closer without making you run.”
The honesty of it is so ugly, so naked, so free of self-congratulation that it feels like he just threw a wet sandbag right at your chest, knocking every scrap of air straight out of your lungs. It’s not an excuse, not quite. More like the shape of the selfishness itself, held out in his own hands for you to look at. He wanted you. He kept you. He delayed the truth because he was afraid the truth would cost him the one bright thing he had allowed himself to love. There is no innocence in that. But there is something crushingly human.
Your eyes burn again and your grip on your own certainty loosens another inch.
You hate that, too, because, damnit, it would be easier to stand here shaking and loathing him if he would just become less tender and less heartbreakingly earnest in his regret. But he stays persistently, ruinously genuine, and all at once you feel not only afraid, not only betrayed, but emptied out by the effort of trying to hold every contradiction at once. He is a bad man. He may also love you. He lied. He is also hurting. He hid things from you. He is also standing here looking like your fear is flaying him alive. None of these truths cancels the others. They just crowd together until your thoughts feel waterlogged, too swollen to separate.
So all that is left is the simplest truth again.
You really are overwhelmed.
You are so overwhelmed that language itself seems too heavy to lift.
Your breathing has started to slowly settle in increments, like a storm reluctantly retreating from a coastline it battered too long. It feels like there are bruises left behind in your lungs, but it no longer aches with each inhale.
Your fear has ebbed enough to make you think again, to make you see again, to make you look at him not as the single monstrous shape your panic tried to build, but as the complicated, human contradiction standing in front of you now.
His shoulders are still too tight, drawn up, and perhaps trying to seem smaller. He keeps his hands visible and loose at his sides to perhaps avoid startling you. The cut along his forearm has darkened into a narrow seam of red, drying in flaking lines against his skin and remaining completely ignored by the man attached to it.
His focus hasn’t left your face. And in that focus, there is not an ounce of triumph. Rather, the opposite. There is only pain. Such a grave torment that lives in the corners of his mouth, the prominent crease between his brows, in the cautious way he keeps tracking your movements as though you still might shove him away and try bolting for the door again.
You swallow and feel the ballast of everything press back down on your chest.
“I—” you start, timidly, using every last scrap of your bravery. You don’t meet his eyes, staring at the floor beside him. “I’ve seen them.” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, small but a little bit more poised now, like glass that hasn’t shattered but still remembers the impact. “I've seen the news, and the headlines. All the stories about you.”
The words suspend themselves in the space between you.
Bucky takes a moment to answer. His gaze drifts downward, just briefly, as if the floor might offer him something easier to look at than the defenselessness sitting in your eyes. The vulnerable questions there. When he exhales it is long and tired, and it sounds like all the versions of himself he has spent years outrunning are catching up to him anyway.
“Yeah,” he mutters out breathily. But a little flat. There is no denial in it or some sort of excuse. He drags a hand across the back of his neck, his jaw flexing slightly before he speaks again. “I figured you probably had.” He takes a shivering breath, his whole chest lifting. “They’re not all lies.”
You hold your breath, but don’t step back, don’t let fear take its seat at the forefront of your mind again.
He lifts his eyes back to yours then, and the seriousness in them deepens, intensifying into something resolute.
“I’m not gonna stand here and tell you I’m a good man,” he says. The words come slowly, and his eyes are searching yours while he talks. He is placing them carefully like he’s building something honest out of wreckage. “I’m not.”
Your heart stumbles in your chest, but you still keep your feet grounded and meet his eyes.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things most people wouldn’t forgive if they knew the full story.” His voice lowers slightly. His eyes are full of sorrow. Despite the things he’s saying he unexpectedly doesn’t look threatening at all and it makes something startle abruptly in your chest. “And yeah, I’ll probably keep doing some of those things.” He doesn’t force anything into his tone that maybe should be there. He´s not saying those things with pride or arrogance or even threat. He has just accepted the callous contours that make his life the way it is. “But not for the reasons people think.”
His eyes soften then, slightly. And it makes you realize that they’ve actually been soft all along.
“I do what I do because there are people in this world who deserve protection. People who don’t have the power to protect themselves.” His gaze holds yours a little more firmly now. “And sometimes the only way to keep those people safe is to be the guy willing to do the ugly work.”
Your throat tightens.
“I’d do just about anything to protect you, Y/n. Even if it’s me you want protection from.”
The kitchen feels very still.
You don’t know what to say to that. You’re not even sure there is something to say. The statement isn’t a justification so much as a window, and looking through it leaves you with more thoughts to sort through and you’ve already gone through so many. But you hear him. You really do.
And he seems to notice that you’re listening now—maybe not agreeing, not forgiving, but truly listening, hearing him out—and some small measure of relief loosens the tension in his shoulders.
He doesn’t move a single muscle, standing before you like a brick wall, his legs pinned wide on the kitchen tiles, his frame perfectly still except for the anxious heave of his chest. His arms are hanging at his side, and shit, your gaze just has to focus on that bloody trail on his forearm. Because right, you’ve cut James Buchanan Barnes through his expensive suit enough to make him bleed. The redness runs from his wrist to his knuckles and you see some dots on the floor. The fabric of his suit is soaking it up, turning a dark wet black around the tear.
He still doesn’t glance down at it. He’s still so entirely anchored to your face, his broad shoulders squared as if he’s trying to shield you from the very room he owns. The survival instinct that had you clawing at the air drops away and now there is a sudden freezing emptiness in your head. And in that blank space, something takes place.
You look at the knife on the linoleum, then at the wet red tracking down his arm, and your stomach completely plummets through the ground. The panic you felt earlier didn’t protect you, it turned you clumsy and ignorant.
“Oh, no,” you choke out, gaze fixed on his arm, your words hacking up from your chest miserably. “Bucky, I— Your arm, I— I didn’t mean— This is my fault, I swear I didn’t mean to—”
“Hey,” he cuts in, his voice lowering into a rough, immediate hush that clips the words right out of your mouth. “Hey, no, sweetheart. No.” He steps back into your space and his huge palms come up, traveling slowly until they map themselves carefully across your jawline.
His fingers are trembling and the pressure is incredibly light. His skin is warm, smelling of that same familiar soap from upstairs, and his thumbs softly brush the wet tear tracks off your cheekbones, forcing you to look straight into his eyes. He doesn’t even spare a glance at his forearm.
“You don’t ever apologize to me for that,” he whispers hoarsely, his chest hitching against yours as he tries to get his breathing normal. There is so much regret in his voice, it is too much for your heart to handle. “You were scared out of your mind and I did that to you. That?” He tilts his arm toward you, indicating that he is talking about the cut. “That is nothing, sweetheart. Nothing.” The corner of his mouth lifts faintly, but the expression is gentler and definitely much more somber than humorous. “I’ve taken hits that should’ve put me in the ground, and none of them touched me.”
You shake your head in his palms. “But, I—”
“Doll,” he shushes, his arms keeping your chin locked, but not firm at all. His gaze is drilling into yours and it feels like he’s bleeding more from the inside and not the outside. “That little scratch hurts a hell of a lot less than watching you run from me.”
Your hands slowly stop trying to find leverage against his chest. The heat of his palms against your jaw feels like a grounding force, something so familiar but also completely new. It’s not entirely unpleasant in its newness.
You look up into his eyes, seeing the complete lack of the monster he just unleashed on his guards, and you can’t help but feel a little unmoored.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” you admit breathily, your voice cracking as your forehead drops forward to rest against his tie.
Bucky lets out a long, ragged exhale, his chin resting against the top of your head as his arms wrap around your shoulders, pulling you into a hold that feels firm but unforced.
“You don’t have to figure it out right now, darling,” he eases, his words spoken with a splintered scrape into your hair. “You don’t have to decide anything today, or tomorrow, or next week. Take all the time you need. Turn it over in your head. Think about everything you saw, everything I am. And whatever you choose to do—if you want to pack your bags, and disappear, if you never want to see my face again—I will let you go. I will make sure you are safe, and I will support whatever choice you make. I swear it.”
He pulls back just an inch, his thumbs gently guiding your face up again so he can look straight into your eyes. There is something desperately begging in his stare, but he keeps his posture completely still, refusing to pressure you.
“But please.“ His knuckles tremble slightly against your cheek. “Just stay the night. Don't run out now while this is all still so new. Stay until morning. As soon as the sun’s up, the car is yours,” he promises sorrowfully, his thumbs catching the last of the dampness on your cheek. “If you want to leave, you leave. You can walk out of here and never look back, and I won’t follow you. I won’t look for you. If that’s what it takes to make you feel safe, I’ll let you go.”
He stops, his jaw clamping tight for a second, a sharp, jumbled hitch in his ribs breaking his breathing.
“But god, I hope you don't,” he shoves the words past the tightness in his throat, his eyes wide and burning into yours so achingly. “I will spend every single day of my life doing whatever it takes to fix this. I’ll earn back an inch of your trust at a time. I’ll show you the rest of me—the real parts—if you just give me the chance to try. I want you to love me again. I want that more than anything.”
He hitches his weight just a fraction closer, his large hands still framing your jaw with agonizingly slow caution.
“But just stay this single night,” he pleads with a strain in his voice, his forehead dropping down to rest lightly against yours. “Just stay until morning. Let me get you out of this kitchen, and you can just sleep. That’s all. Just tonight.”
You stare at the dark red crusting on his wool cuff, then look into that heavy, broken-down look in his eyes. Trying to picture next week or even tomorrow feels like watching a knotted ball of wire and not finding out where to start untying it.
But right now, your muscles are just running on empty, completely flattened and powerless from feeling all that panic. You let out one long shudder of air, asking your awareness for any reasons why you should still try to get the hell away from this guy, and come up with nothing yet. It’s all too fresh to truly give this some thought and right now all you want to do is curl up in those silky sheets and sleep it all off.
You give him a small nod. “Okay. Okay, Bucky, I’ll stay the night.”
Bucky’s shoulders drop with a massive, rattling relief. He doesn't say anything else, he just tucks your head back under his chin, his big arms closing around you to carry your weight out of the quiet kitchen, leaving the knife and the blood behind on the floorboards.
You don’t know what comes when the sun is up. You don’t know what loving a man like him means. You don’t know if the life he lives can ever exist beside the life you thought you wanted.
You don’t know if trust can grow again from the cracked ground beneath your feet, and considering your decision making skills, you shouldn’t let your heart handle things anymore.
But, frighteningly and also not all that much surprisingly after all, when you imagine leaving now—truly leaving, turning your back on him and walking out of this mansion forever—the image doesn’t bring relief.
It brings something bleak.
Because for all the discoveries of tonight and all that fear, all that shock, and the trust that has been abruptly broken, there is a bullheaded part of you that understands something you can’t yet put into words for him to hear.
You could run from this house.
You could run from his name.
But you are not sure you could run from him.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”
- Oscar Wilde
A/n: Looking at the word count now, I honestly probably could’ve turned this into a mini series but because this whole thing is essentially one long scene, splitting it up even more just didn’t feel right to me. So I guess I just have to admit that this became an unexpectedly long two-parter lmao.
As always, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this continuation, if it gave you hope, or even if you expected something different to happen. I always enjoy hearing your interpretations and feelings after reading ♡
I also wanted to gently address something else. I’ve received a few critical comments regarding certain reactions, choices, and dynamics in the story, and I truly hope this second part helped answer some questions or at least offered a little more perspective. If it didn’t, that’s completely okay too.
What I want you to know, I genuinely do appreciate helpful criticism, especially when it comes to my writing itself, because I’m always trying to improve and become better at what I do. Constructive feedback that gives me something to work with is always welcome and appreciated. But if something in the story simply wasn’t for you, or you personally disliked a choice I made, then sometimes it’s okay to just move on from it instead of tearing it apart. And if you do choose to criticize something, I just ask that you do it kindly. We’re still a community here, and there’s no reason to be harsh or blunt. Talk to me like a human being.
I put a lot of time, emotion, and effort into these stories, not to be told this makes no sense or this is weird without any real conversation behind it. Sometimes I don’t think through every single detail deeply because at the end of the day, this is still fiction born from messy little ideas in my head, written for comfort, entertainment, and emotion—not perfection!
Still, thank you to everyone who continues to boost me and my work and helped me stay motivated to finish this part ♡
And if you enjoyed my work, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi ♡
pairing: foreman!Bucky Barnes x ranch owner!Reader
summary: You were born to run the ranch, Bucky was raised to work the land. Somewhere between exhausting days of work, barn hookups and ten months of something neither of you dared to name you've crossed a line you can't uncross. But love doesn't mean the same thing to both of you. And when pride, class, and everything Bucky thinks he should be start pulling him away from you you realize loving him might not be enough to make him stay.
word count: 19.8 k (longest one posted yet omg)
warnings: +18 MNI explicit sexual content, unprotected p in v, oral sex (f receiving), secret affair, angst, mutual pining, class difference, miscommunication, power imbalance, harassment, attempted intimidation, physical violence, alcohol use, happy ending. | english is not my first language so I'm sorry for any grammar mistake or mystipo
a/n: as some of you may or may not know, I'm from Mexico so that means I grew up watching telenovelas full of drama and all of that, this idea came to me when I suddenly saw a picture in pinterest and my mind started thinking a lot of what if? I hope you enjoy it! dividers by @saradika-graphics & beta read by my girls @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysdecaflove & Denice ꨄ︎
read in AO3
The sun hasn't cleared the horizon when you step onto the porch, coffee mug in hand. The ranch is already awake. You can hear the low murmur of cattle in the distance, the sharp whistle of someone calling the dogs, the creak of the barn doors and machinery coming to life. This was your ranch. Your responsibility. Your pride.
You'd grown up with dirt under your fingernails and hay in your hair, your father's shadow stretching long over every fence post and pasture. He'd raised you to run this place since you were little. Mainly, because you were his only child, but also because he knew you would take care of the land accordingly.
Now the shadow is yours and you wear it well.
"Morning, wildfire."
The voice comes from near the equipment barn. You don't have to look to know who it is—you'd recognize that low rasp anywhere, the way he says that nickname with practiced ease.
Bucky Barnes leans against the fence, one boot propped on the lower rail, his work shirt already dusty though the day's barely started. His dark hair is combed back, a few strands escaping to frame his face, and his blue eyes track you as you descend the porch steps.
"Morning," you say, keeping your voice level professional. "Crew's here?"
"Most of 'em. Sanchez is running late—truck trouble. I sent Pete to pick him up." He straightens, falling into step beside you as you head toward the barn. "We're rotating the herd to the north pasture today. Fencing's solid, checked it myself yesterday."
"Good." You pause at the barn entrance, turning to face him. "What about the irrigation system? Johnson said there was a blockage in sector three."
"Already working on it, it should be cleared by noon."
You nod, taking a sip of your coffee. This is how it always goes—Bucky anticipating problems before you have to ask, handling details before they become emergencies. Your father had hired his dad twenty years ago, and when the old man got sick, Bucky stepped into the role like he'd be born for it.
Which in a way, he had been.
"You're thinking too hard," Bucky says, his mouth quirking. "I can see those gears turning."
"Well, I'm always thinking. Kind of part of my job."
"Yeah, well." He shifts his weight and for a moment, something flickers across his face, something soft and unguarded… you blink and it's gone. "Try to not hurt yourself."
You shoot him a look that would wilt lesser man. He just grins and tips an imaginary hat before heading toward the equipment barn, leaving you with your coffee and the creeping warmth in your chest that you refuse to name.
By midday, you're elbow-deep in the business of running the ranch, fielding calls from suppliers, reviewing feed costs, checking the schedule for the county livestock show next month. Your office is a converted tack room in the main barn, all exposed beams and the faint smell of leather and hay. You liked it here. It feels real in a way that glass and steel never could.
You're on the phone with the feed supplier, arguing about bulk pricing, when Bucky appears in the doorway. He doesn't interrupt, just leans against the frame and waits, and you're hyper-aware of his presence in a way that's become second nature over the past— how long has it been? Ten months since that first kiss in the summer heat, all sweat and impulse and that kid of chemistry that burns.
Ten months of this thing between you that has no name, no rules, no promises.
You finish the call—a victory, 10% discount— and set the phone down. "What's up?"
"Got a situation with the new colt. He's favoring his left foreleg, might be nothing, but I want you to take a look before I call the vet."
You're already standing. "Show me."
The colt is in the training pen, a gorgeous chestnut with a white blaze and too much attitude for his own good. You'd purchased him at auction three months ago, saw the potential in his bloodline and the fire in his eyes. Now he's limping, and your stomach tightens.
Bucky's already in the pen, speaking low and calm as he approaches the colt. The animal sidesteps, nervous, but Bucky doesn't rush. Just keeps talking, that steady murmur that works in horses and people alike, until the colt allows him close enough to run a hand down his neck.
"Easy, buddy."
You slip through the fence rails and approach from the other side, moving slow. The colt's ears flick toward you, but he doesn't spook. Between you and Bucky, he's boxed in by a kind of trust, and after a moment he settles.
"I've got his head," Bucky says. "Check the leg."
You crouch, running your hands carefully down the colt's foreleg, feeling for heat, for swelling, for anything out of place. The colt shifts but doesn't pull away, and you can feel Bucky's presence above you, solid and grounding.
"There," you murmur, fingers finding a tender spot just above the fetlock. "Minor strain, I think… it's not serious, but he needs rest."
"Figured." Bucky's voice is close—closer than you expected. You glance up and find him watching you with an expression you can't quite read. "You want me to call Doc Johnson anyway?"
"Yeah, better be safe than sorry." You straighten, brushing dirt from your jeans. "Good catch."
"Just doing my job."
"You do it well."
Something passes between you— a look, a breath, the weight of words unsaid. The colt stamps impatiently, breaking the moment, and you step back.
"I'll handle the rest of the rotations," Bucky says, his tone careful and neutral. "You've got that conference call at two, right?"
You'd forgotten. "Shit, yeah. Thanks."
"Anytime, wildfire."
There it is again. That nickname. The way he says it—affectionate and just a little bit awed, like you're something bright and untamed and worth admiring from a careful distance.
You walk away before you can do something stupid like ask him what it means, why he started calling you that. If it means what you think it might.
That evenings you stop by Miller's feed store in town to pick up supplements. Bucky's with you—he'd been checking on a part for the tractor at the hardware store next door.
Old Miller's behind the counter, and his eyes light up when he sees you.
"Well if it isn't the lady rancher herself," he says warmly. "How's business?"
"Good, been busy lately." You hand him your list. "Need these loaded up when you get a chance."
"You got it," he glances at Bucky. "And how's your foreman treating you" Working you too hard?"
It's a joke, everyone knows you're the one who sets the pace, but you see Bucky's jaw tighten slightly.
"Bucky runs a tight ship," you say. "Couldn't do it without him."
"That's good, that's good. 'Course your daddy always said the Barnes men were the best workers in the county." Miller starts pulling items from shelves. "You keeping busy, Bucky? Staying out of trouble?"
"Yes, sir" Bucky says evenly.
"Good man," Miller chuckles. "Though I gotta say, at your age, figured you'd have your own spread by now. Following in your old man's footsteps is fine work, but eventually a man wants something of his own, you know? Something to build on."
The words are casual, friendly even, but you see Bucky's shoulders stiffen.
"I'm exactly where I want to be," Bucky says, but there's an edge to it.
You pay quickly and get out of there, but the damage is done. Bucky's quiet on the drive back, staring out the window with that same look from earlier.
"Miller's an old gossip," you say. "Don't listen to him."
"He's not wrong though." Bucky's voice is carefully neutral. "I'm thirty-two and I don't own anything but a truck and a cabin on someone else's land."
"You own half the knowledge that keeps this ranch running," you counter. "That's worth more than—"
"It's not the same," he cuts you off gently. "And you know it."
You don't know what to say to that. Because in the world you both live in—where land equals legacy and property equals status— maybe he has a point.
But it doesn't make it right.
By the time the crew clocks out, the sky is bruising purple and gold, the heat of the day giving way to the cool promise of night. You make your rounds, checking that everything's secured, the animals settled, the equipment stored. It's a ritual, this final sweep and you always find peace in it.
You're in the main barn, running through inventory counts one last time, when you hear footsteps behind you.
You don't turn around. "Thought you left already."
"Had some things to finish." Bucky's voice is low in a way that sends heat curling through your belly. "Saw your truck was still here, figured you were doing your obsessive end-of-day check."
"It's not obsessive, it's thorough."
"Right." He's closer now, close enough that you can smell him—sweat and hay and something uniquely Bucky that makes you want to turn around and close the distance, and— "You done?" he asks and there's an edge to his voice that makes your pulse quicken.
You set down the clipboard and turn to face him.
He's still in his work clothes, shirt untucked and streaked with dust, hair falling loose from its tie. There's smudge of grease on his jaw and his eyes are dark in the dim light of the barn, and you know this look. Know what comes next.
"Yeah," you say, your voice already dropping to something lower. "I'm done."
The space between you evaporates. You don't know who moves first—maybe it doesn't matter. His hands find your hips, fingers digging in with just enough pressure to make you gasp, and your fingers curl into his shirt, yanking him closer. Then his mouth is on yours, hot and demanding, and you open for him immediately.
God, you'll never get tired of kissing him. The way he tastes like coffee and the mint he chews when he's working, the way his stubble scrapes against your skin, the way he kisses like he's starving for you.
His tongue slides against yours and you moan into his mouth, pressing closer, needing more. His hands slide from your hips to your ass, squeezing, lifting, and suddenly your feet aren't touching the ground anymore. You wrap your legs around his waist instinctively, feeling the hard length of him pressed against your core even through layers of denim, and the friction makes you both groan.
"Fuck," he breathes against your mouth, walking you backward "You feel—"
"Don't talk," you manage, biting his lower lip hard enough to make him hiss. "Just—"
Your back hits the wall of the tack room and he pins you there with his hips, grinding against you making your head fall back and desperate sounds tear from your throat. His mouth moves to your neck, teeth and tongue and the kind of rough attention that you crave. Your hands are already fumbling with his belt, impatient, needing him out of these fucking clothes.
"Wildfire," he murmurs against your throat, and the nickname sounds different now. "Let me—"
He sets you down just long enough to yank your shirt over your head, his flannel following seconds later. Then his hands are on your breasts, thumbs brushing over your nipples through the fabric of your bra, and the sensation shoots straight between your legs.
"Off," you demand, reaching behind yourself to unhook it, and he helps, tossing it aside before his mouth replaces his hands.
The first pull of his lips around your nipple makes your knees buckle, makes you grab his hair to stay upright. He works you with his mouth—sucking, biting, soothing with his tongue—while his hands work open the button of your jeans. You're already shoving them down your hips, kicking off your boots in a graceless rush, and then you're standing there in nothing but your underwear, while he's still mostly dressed.
"Not fair," you gasp and he pulls back just enough to flash you a wicked grin before dropping to his knees. Oh. "Bucky—"
"Let me," he says again, and this time it's not a question. His hands slide up your thighs, thumbs tracing the edge of your underwear, and when he leans forward and presses his mouth against you through the fabric, you nearly come apart right there.
"Jesus Christ," you manage, fingers tightening in his hair as he mouths at you, the friction not nearly enough. "Stop teasing."
He hooks his fingers into the waistband and drags your underwear down, helping you step out of them, and then he's right there, face level with your cunt, looking up at you like you're something sacred.
"You're so fucking wet already," he murmurs and then his tongue is on you and coherent thought becomes impossible.
He eats you out like it's his religion—long, slow strokes of his tongue followed by focused attention on your clit that makes you shake. Your fingers are fisted in his hair, hips rocking against his face, and he takes it all, groaning like your pleasure is his, like this is what he needs.
When he slides two fingers inside you, curling them just right, you cry out his name.
"That's it," he encourages, voice muffled against you. "Let me hear you, wildfire. Let me—"
The orgasm hits you like a lightning strike, sudden and devastating, and you come with his name on your lips and your legs shaking and his fingers still working inside you, drawing it out until you're oversensitive and trembling.
He pulls back, mouth glistening, and the look on his face is pure hunger.
"I need you," you manage, still catching your breath. "Now."
He's on his feet in seconds, shedding his jeans and boxer in quick, efficient movements, and then he's sitting on the old wooden bench and you're straddling him, lining him up, sinking down onto him in one smooth motion that makes you both groan.
He feels so good, thick and hard and perfectly filling, the stretch of him always just on the edge of too much in the best possible way.
"Christ," Bucky grits out, hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise. "You're fucking perfect."
You start to move, rolling your hips, finding the rhythm that works, and his head falls back against the wall, throat exposed, jaw clenched. You lean forward and bite the tendon in his neck, and his hips buck up involuntarily.
"Harder," you demand against his skin. "Don't hold back."
His hands tighten on your hips and he starts to thrust up into you, meeting your movements, and the angle is perfect—hitting that spot inside you that makes your vision blur. You brace your hands on his shoulders and ride him harder, chasing the pleasure building in your core, and he watches you with dark, hungry eyes.
"So fucking beautiful," he murmurs, one hand leaving your hip to cup your breast, thumb circling your nipple. "You look so beautiful like this, taking what you need from me—"
"Bucky," you gasp, rhythm faltering as the pleasure builds. "I'm—"
"I know, wildfire, I can feel that pretty cunt of you squeezing me so tight…" His other hand slides between you, thumb finding your clit, and the added stimulation makes you cry out. "There you go, come for me wildfire. Wanna feel you come on my cock."
His touch and relentless thrust sends you over the edge and the orgasm crashes through you, walls clenching around him. You can hear him curse as he follows you over, spilling inside you with your name broken on his lips.
For a moment, neither of you moves. You just lay down breathing, tangled together in the half-dark of the barn, the smell of hay and sex and the summer breeze in the air, your bodies still joined, hearts pounding against each other.
Then—and this is different, this is new—Bucky doesn't pull away immediately.
His arms wrap around you, pulling you against his chest, and your head finds the curve of his shoulder like it was made to rest there. His hand slides up yous spine, tracing patterns on your bare back, and you feel him press a kiss to your temple.
That wasn't part of your routine. The sex? Yes. The intensity? Definitely. But this tenderness, this soft aftermath… that was new territory.
"Hey," you say quietly, not moving from where you're tucked against him.
"Mm?"
"You okay?"
He's quiet for a moment, then his hand finds your hair, fingers threading through the stray strands absentmindedly.
"Yeah," he says, but his voice sounds strange. "Yeah, I'm just… catching my breath."
You pull back just enough to look at him, and what you see in his face makes your chest tighten. There's something unguarded there, something raw and almost frightened, like he's said too much, shown to much.
His hand comes up to cup your jaw, thumb brushing your cheekbone, and for a second you think he's going to say something important, something that will change the shape of this thing between you.
But then he blinks and the moment fractures.
He lifts you gently, helping you off him, and you both reach for your clothes in a silence that feels heavier than before. You watch him dress—jeans first, then his shirt, fingers working the buttons with a focus that seems excessive for such a simple task. He doesn't glance at you once.
"Same time tomorrow?" You ask, trying to sound casual, trying to rebuild the easy rhythm that's kept this simple for ten months.
He stills, shirt half-buttoned, and for a long moment he doesn't answer.
When he finally looks at you, there's something in his eyes that makes your stomach drop. Something that looks like longing and resignation all tangled together.
"Yeah, sure."
Not "same time, wildfire" with that hint of warmth. Just "yeah, sure". Like you're asking him to check the fences, not meet you here tomorrow night.
He finishes dressing in silence, and you pull on your own clothes, hyper-aware of every movement, every breath. When you're both decent again, he moves toward the door. Just before he reaches it, he pauses. Doesn't turn around.
"You know Miller's not wrong," he says quietly. "About… a man wanting something of his own."
Your stomach drops. "Bucky—"
"I'm just the foreman," he continues, still not looking at you. "Always will be. That's—" He shakes his head. "That's just how it is."
"That's not—you're more than—"
"Goodnight, wildfire."
The nickname sounds wrong in his mouth now. Distant like he's already pulling away.
Then he's gone, the door swinging shut behind him, and you're left in the tack room, fully dressed now but somehow feeling more exposed than when you were naked.
You sink onto the bench, hand drifting to where his thumb had traced patterns on your back, and Miller's words echo in your head.
Eventually a man wants something of his own.
And Bucky's response: I'm just a foreman, always will be.
Like that's all he'll ever be. Like that's all he thinks he's worth. Like loving you—if that's what this is— means settling for scraps instead of building something real.
The thought settles in your chest like a stone, and you realize with creeping dread that something's changed. And if Bucky's convinced himself he's not good enough, that he can't give you what you deserve because he doesn't own land or have money or status… you don't know how to fight that. Or if he'll even let you.
The first sign that something's wrong comes three days after that night in the tack room. You're going over breeding schedules when Bucky comes in to report on the north pasture rotation. He's all business, standing near the door instead of leaning against the frame like usual, keeps his eyes on the clipboard in his hand.
"Rotation's complete," he says. "Moved the last of the herd this morning without issues."
"Good," you wait for more—the usual back and forth, the easy conversation that filled spaces between work tasks, but he just nods.
"Need anything else?" He asks instead.
You, you want to say. I need you to look at me like you did three nights ago. I need you to stop acting like a stranger.
"No," you say instead. "That's all."
He's gone before you can figure out how to ask what's wrong.
Within the days, things get worse.
Bucky starts sending Pete or Sanchez to give you reports instead of coming himself. When you do see him, he's never alone; he's always with the crew, always busy, always with a reason he can't try for long. The nickname disappears entirely. Now he calls you by your name, said in a tone so professional it feels like a reprimand.
Meals with the crew become exercises in studied avoidance. He sits at the opposite end of the table, talks to everyone but you and leaves as soon as he's done eating.
The nights are the worst. You wait in the barn like always, telling yourself you're just finishing paperwork, but he doesn't come. Not that night,not the next, not the one after that.
On the fifth night, you stop waiting.
On the sixth day, you corner him in the equipment barn.
"We need to talk," you say, closing the door behind you.
He doesn't look up from the harness he's mending. "Kind of busy."
"Bucky, what the hell is going on?"
"Nothing's going on, just work."
"That's bullshit," you move closer and he shifts away and the retreat stings. "You've been avoiding me for almost a week, you won't look at me, won't talk to me—"
"I talk to you every day, about work."
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
His jaw tightens. "Don't know what else you expect from me."
"I want you to tell me what changed!" Your voice rises despite yourself. "I want you to tell me why you're acting like—like we're nothing to each other."
"We're not nothing." He finally looks at you, and his eyes are so carefully blank it makes your chest ache. "You're my boss, I'm your foreman, that's what we are."
"That's not— we're more than that. You know we are."
"Are we?" He sets down the harness, standing up. "Or was it just convenient? You scratch an itch, I scratch an itch, nobody has to call it anything more?"
The words hit like a slap.
"You don't mean that."
"Don't I?" His voice is even, controlled, and somehow makes it worse than if he was yelling. "Been thinking about it, about what this is, and maybe Miller was right, maybe it's time I figure out what I want instead of just—" He gestures vaguely. "Instead of this."
"Instead of me, you mean."
Something flickers across his face—pain, maybe— but it's gone too fast to be sure.
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to." You're trying to keep your voice steady and failing. "If you want to end this, Bucky, just say it. Don't make up excuses about figuring out what you want."
"I'm to making excuses." His hands clench at his sides. "You're running a multi-million dollar operation, you're smart, successful and I'm just—"
"Stop." You know where this is going and you can't stand to hear it. "Don't you dare finish that sentence."
"I'm the hired help," he says anyway. "That's the reality, and maybe it;s time we both stopped pretending it's anything else."
You laugh, but it's an ugly sound. "Is that really what you think you are to me? After everything we—"
"After everything, that's still what I am." His voice is flat. "That's all I'll ever be."
You stare at him, at this man you've known for years, loved for months even if you haven't said it out loud… and you don't recognize the stranger looking back at you.
"You're a coward," you say quietly.
He flinches. "Maybe I am."
"This isn't about what you are, this is about you being too scared to—"
"I need to finish this repair," he cuts you off, turning back to the harness. "Was there something work-related that you needed?"
The dismissal is clear and absolute.
You leave before he can see you cry.
The Hillside County Livestock Show is your least favorite event of the year, and that's saying something considering you spend most of your life covered in dust and dealing with literal bullshit. But there's something about the forced socializing, the political maneuvering disguised as friendly conversation, the way everyone sizes up everyone else's cattle like they're comparing dick sizes—it grates.
Still, you go. Because your ranch has a reputation to maintain, and because your breeding program produces some of the best cattle in three counties, and because your father never missed a year and neither will you.
You're standing near the action ring, catalog in hand, watching a decent Angus heifer go for more than she's worth, when you feel someone approach from your left.
"Impressive animal," a voice says. Deep, smooth, with the kind of confidence that comes from never being told no. "Though I'd say she's overvalued by at least fifteen percent, maybe is some sentimental bidding."
You glance over. The man beside you is older, mid forties probably, with silver threading through dark hair and a smile that has probably charmed plenty of people. Expensive boots, custom shirt, a watch that costs more than most people's trucks. Everything about him screams money.
"Sentimental bidding keeps the market interesting," you reply neutrally, turning back to the ring. "Besides, she's got excellent bloodlines, she'll be worth the premium to the right buyer."
"Spoken like someone who knows her stock," he extends a hand. "My name is Clayton Sheridan, I just purchased the Meadow brook Ranch, east of your property."
So this was your new neighbor. You'd heard someone bought old man Peterson's spread after he retired to Arizona, but you hadn't paid much attention to the details.
You shake his hand briefly. "Welcome to the area."
"Thank you, I've heard impressive things about your operation, fastest-growing herd in the county, certification for quality genetics…" His hand lingers a moment too long before you pull away. "It's rare to see a woman running a ranch this size… and running it so well."
There it is. There it's the compliment wrapped in condescension, the implication you're an exception rather than simply capable.
"My father raised me for it," you say, voice cool. "Gender doesn't have much to do with whether you can read a market or manage a land."
"Of course, of course." His smile doesn't falter. "I didn't mean to imply otherwise, just… admiration. It must keep you very busy, handling everything by yourself."
"I have an excellent crew."
"Ah yes, your foreman Barnes, isn't it? Son of your father's foreman?" Something in his tone makes your jaw tighten. "Lucky to have someone who knows the place so well, family legacy and all that."
You're trying to formulate a response that's polite but firm when you catch movement in your peripheral vision. Bucky, standing near the equipment displays about thirty feet away, his attention locked on you and Clayton with an expression you can't quite read.
Even from there, you can see the tension in his shoulders.
"Excuse me," you say to Clayton, not waiting for a response before you start walking toward Bucky.
But by the time you navigate through the crowd, he's already gone.
You get home from the show late, exhausted and frustrated. The house is dark and empty, and you should go to bed, but instead you find yourself walking to the stables.
Copper's in his usual stall, the big bay gelding lifting his head when you approach. Twenty-two now, long retired, but still your father's horse.
"Hey, old man," you murmur, letting yourself in. He presses his nose into your palm, warm and familiar, and you lean your forehead against his neck. "Long day."
He huffs softly, patient like always.
You're running your hand down his shoulder when you hear footsteps.
"Thought I saw the lights on."
Bucky's in the stable entrance, hands in his pockets.
"Couldn't sleep," you say.
"Yeah, me neither." He shifts his weight. "How's old Copper doing?"
"Good, little stiff in the mornings." You stroke the horse's neck. "I should take him out to pasture more."
"I can do it tomorrow if you want," Bucky offers quietly. "Give him a good walk, let him stretch his legs."
Something in your chest aches at the offer. Even with all this distance between you, he's still thinking about what you need.
"You don't have to."
"I know," he takes a step closer. "But Copper's important to you."
"My dad's horse," you say quietly. "He was the first horse I rode."
"I know," his voice is gentle. "I remember."
For a moment, the walls between you feel thinner. Like maybe you could reach across this space, say what needs saying. Then Copper shifts, and Bucky clears his throat.
"I should let you finish up. Just wanted to check you were okay."
"I'm fine."
It's obviously a lie, but he doesn't call you on it.
"Goodnight, wildfire," he says softly, and then he's gone.
"He still cares," you tell the horse. "He wouldn't check on me if he didn't, right?"
Copper just snorts and goes back to his hay.
You stay a while longer, taking comfort in the familiar routine of checking water, running your hands over Copper's legs to make sure he's sound, whispering all the things you can't say to Buck into the horse's patient ear.
When you finally head back to the house, you see Bucky's cabin light is still on.
Neither of you is sleeping tonight.
Clayton Sheridan doesn't understand the concept of boundaries, as you discover the next two weeks.
The flowers arrive first, expensive arrangements delivered to your door with cards that are just on the edge of appropriate.
Looking forward to being neighbors.
Thinking of you.
You throw most of them away.
Then, he starts showing up: at the feed store when you're picking up supplies, at the diner where you grab Saturday breakfast, at the county planning meeting where you're discussing water management.
"What a coincidence," he says every time, with that practiced smile.
It's not a coincidence and you both know it, but he keeps playing his game.
The gifts escalate: wine, a leather portfolio with your ranch name embossed, an invitation to some charity gala in the city, hand-delivered.
"I think we'd make quite an impression together," Clayton says when he drops off the invitation. "Power couple of the ranching community."
You haven't even said yes to coffee.
"I'll think about it," you answer, because outright rejection seems to make him more persistent.
Through it all, Bucky gets quieter, more distant. Like he's disappearing piece by piece.
You catch him watching sometimes— watching Clayton talk to you, watching the gifts arrive, watching you navigate the attention with gritted-teeth politeness. And every time, his expression is the same: resigned, like he's watching something inevitable play out.
Like he's already decided how this story ends.
Three weeks into Clayton's courtship, you're in the barn doing evening checks when Bucky appears in the doorway. Your heart jumps at the sight of him. This is the first time he's sought you out in almost a month.
"Hey," you say carefully.
"Hey." He shifts his weight, not quite meeting your eyes. "Wanted to let you know… the mare's showing signs, probably foaling tonight or tomorrow."
"Okay, you need help monitoring?"
"No, I got it." He starts to turn away, then pauses. "Your neighbor came by today. Sheridan, he was looking for you."
Your stomach sinks. "What did he want?"
"Didn't say, just asked where you were, when you'd be back." Bucky's jaw tightens. "Seemed pretty comfortable helping himself to the property."
"I'll talk to him."
"Sure." Another pause. "He seems… interested."
"Bucky—"
"Just an observation." His voice is carefully neutral. "A guy like that— successful, established. Probably looking to settle down with the right person."
"I don't care what he's looking for."
"Maybe you should." Bucky finally looks at you and there's something in his eyes that makes your breath catch. "Opportunities like this don't come around often."
"Opportunity?" You stare at him. "He's a stranger who won't take a hint, that's not an opportunity, that's a problem."
"Is it?" Bucky's voice is soft, almost sad. "Or is it exactly what someone in your position should be looking for?"
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Means he can give you things, things I—" He cuts himself off, jaw clenching again. "Just think about it."
He's gone before you can respond, leaving you alone in the barn with a sick feeling in your stomach.
Clayton makes his move the following week. You're at Miller's feed store, alone for once, when he corners near the grain.
"I was hoping to run into you," he says, blocking your path to the checkout. "Saved me a trip to your property."
"I'm kind of in a hurry—"
"It'll just take a moment." He steps closer, and you resist the urge to step back. "I've been patient, I think. Given you time to get to know me. And I'd like to think we've developed a… bond."
"Clayton—"
"Let me take you to dinner." It's phrased like a request, but it feels like a demand. "A real dinner, not as neighbors, not as business associates… a date."
"I appreciate the offer, but—"
"I know I can give you what you need," he continues, like you haven't spoken. "Partnership, stability. A merger of our operations could be incredibly beneficial for both of us. I know you're a smart woman, you have to see the potential."
There it is, the assumption that this is about business, about strategy, like you're an asset to be acquired.
"I'm not interested," you say clearly. "In dinner, in partnership, in any of it. Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but—"
"The wrong impression?" He interrupts you again, his smile doesn't reach his eyes. "You've been accepting my gifts, letting me court you."
"I've been polite, there's a difference."
"Is there?" He is closer now, close enough that you can smell his cologne. "Or are you just playing hard to get? Because I have to tell you, it's getting old."
"I'm not playing anything," your voice goes cold. "I said no. That's final."
Something flickers across his face—surprise, then anger, quickly masked.
"You're making a mistake," he says quietly.
"That's my choice to make."
"Is it?" He glances toward the window, where your truck is parked. "Or does your foreman make your choices for you?"
Your blood runs cold. "That's none of your business."
"In a town this size, everything is everyone's business." His smile turns cruel. "You're fucking the help, everyone knows it. So stop acting high and mighty with me when you're spreading your legs for some ranch hand who'll never be able to give you what a real man could—"
"That's enough." The voice comes from behind you. Miller is standing at the end of the aisle with a bag of feed in his arms and steel in his eyes. "Mr. Sheridan, I think it's time for you to leave my store."
Clayton's expression smooths back into charm "We're just having a conversation—"
"I heard what kind of conversation you were having." Miller sets the feed down with a heavy thump. "And I won't have you speaking to a lady like that in my establishment. Time to go."
"This is ridiculous—"
"Now." Miller's voice is firm. "Before I call sheriff Morrison and have you removed for harassment."
Clayton looks between you and Miller, jaw tight with barely contained rage. Then, he smooths his expression into something coldly polite.
"Of course, my apologies if I caused any… discomfort." But his eyes hold a dark promise when they land on you. "We'll continue this conversation another time."
He's gone before you can tell him there won't be another time. Miller waits until the door closes before turning to you with concern.
"You alright, honey?"
You nod, but your hands are shaking. "Thank you for stepping in."
"That man's got a mean streak under all that polish," Miller says. "My wife had a cousin who dated a man like that once, all charm until you say no, then…" He shakes his head. "You be careful. Men like that don't handle rejection well."
"I will."
"And for what it's worth?" Miller's voice gentles. "Whatever that jackass said about you and Bucky? That's your business and nobody else's. Young Barnes is a good man, his father was good people and he is too. Don't let anyone tell you different."
The kindness breaks something in you and your eyes sting. "Thank you, Mr. Miller."
"Call me if you need anything. And tell Bucky to keep an eye on that one, Clayton Sheridan strikes me as the type to hold a grudge."
You pay for your supplies in a daze and load them into your truck with shaking hands. You should go home, go straight to your bed. Instead, you park near the stables.
Copper's in his stall, and he lifts his head when you approach, nickering softly.
"Hey, old man," you manage, voice cracking.
You let yourself into the stall and he immediately presses his nose to your chest, and that's when you break.
You cry into Copper's neck—from anger, from humiliation, from the way Clayton looked at you like you were something he could buy or break. From the fear that maybe he's right, that everyone is talking about you and Bucky, judging you, seeing something shameful in what feels sacred.
"He doesn't know anything," you whisper into Copper's mane. "He doesn't know us, doesn't know what we—"
But even as you say it, Clayton's words echo: Fucking the help.
Is that what people see? Not two people who care about each other, but something tawdry and wrong?
You're still crying when you hear footsteps.
"Wildfire?"
You straighten quickly, wiping at your eyes, but it's too late. Bucky's standing at the stall entrance, and even in the dim light, you notice he's been drinking. Not drunk yet, but there's a flush on his cheeks, a looseness to his shoulders that means he's had a few. And his eyes look sad, pained.
"You heard," you say flatly.
"Whole town's heard by now," his voice is rough. "Was at the diner grabbing lunch and Pete and Sanchez were with me. Table next to us was talking about how Sheridan got turned down by the ice queen rancher who's too busy fucking her foreman to see a real opportunity."
You flinch at his words.
"They didn't know we were there," Bucky continues, stepping into the stall. "Didn't know Pete and Sanchez were ready to flip the table. I had to practically drag them out before they started throwing punches."
"Bucky—"
"Then I heard the rest of it, how you rejected him at Miller's, how he got nasty about it, how old Miller had to throw him out." His jaw clenches. "And I wasn't there, I was checking fence posts while he cornered you and I wasn't fucking there."
"You couldn't have known—"
"I should've been there!" The words burst out of him. "I should've been the one telling him to back off, to leave alone, to—" He stops, hands clenching into fists. "But I can't, can I? Can't defend you publicly without everyone knowing exactly what we are to each other. Can't step in without proving every goddamn thing they're saying about us. Can't stand next to you in town and tell assholes like Clayton Sheridan that you're mine."
"I don't need you to—"
"Well maybe you should." His voice drops. "Maybe you should have someone who can do all that, someone who can take you out without counting cents."
"Stop," you cut him off, voice shaking.
"Why? He's right about one thing, wildfire. I can't give you what someone like him could. Can't give you respectability, or stability, I can't give—"
You cross the stall in two strides and kiss him hard. He freezes for half a second, then he's kissing you back something that feels like desperation… and fear.
His hands fist in your hair and you grab his shirt, pulling him closer, needing to erase Clayton's words, the town's gossip, the shame trying to creep into something that's never felt shameful before.
"I don't want respectable," you gasp against his mouth. "I don't want public dinners, or whatever the hell you think I need. I want you."
"You're upset."
"I'm fucking furious," you correct. "At Clayton for being an entitled asshole, furious at this stupid town for their gossip, furious for you thinking any of it matters—"
He kisses you again, harder this time, walking you backward until your back hits the stall wall. His body presses against yours and you can feel how much he wants this despite all his protests about what you deserve.
"We shouldn't," he breathes against your neck. "You're upset, I've been drinking, this is—"
"I don't care," your hands work at his belt. "I need this, I need you, please Bucky—"
Something breaks in him. He lifts you and you wrap your legs around his waist, and then you're fumbling with clothes, desperate and graceless. When he pushes inside you, you both groan like it's a homecoming and a goodbye all at once.
The sex is different this time. Rougher, more desperate. Like you're both trying to prove or forget something. Or like you're trying to hold onto something that feels like it's slipping away.
When you come, it's with his name on your lips and tears on your cheeks. He follows moments later, your name broken and his forehead against your shoulder. For a moment, you stay like that, connected, breathing hard, coexisting in the same space. Then he sets you down carefully and reality crashes back in.
You both fix your clothes in silence. The air feels heavy, charged with everything still unsaid.
"I'm sorry," Bucky says finally. "For drinking, for not being there when Clayton—"
"Stop apologizing." Your voice comes out sharper than intended. "You didn't do anything wrong."
"Didn't I?" He won't look at you. "Miller threw him out, Miller defended you. And where was I?Where the fuck was I?"
"You were working, doing your job."
"My job." He laughs, but it's bitter. "Right, because that's what I am. The foreman, the employee, not the—"
"Not the what?" You push. "Say it."
"Not the boyfriend," he says quietly. "I heard what he said about you, about us. And I wanted to kill him, wanted to drive straight to his ranch and—"
"But you didn't."
"Because what would that accomplish? Everyone would know then, would see exactly what we are and—" He runs a hand through his hair. "Maybe they're right to gossip, maybe we are—"
"Would you please stop?" You grab his arm, forcing him to look at you. "Don't let him do this, don't let their gossip make this into something shameful."
"It's not shameful," he says. "But it's not right either. You deserve better than barn hookups and secrets, you deserve someone who can stand next to you proudly, take you to dinner, court you the way you should be courted—"
"I don't wanna be courted by anyone else!"
"Well maybe you should! Maybe you should want someone who can give you a normal relationship, someone who's—" He swallows hard. "Someone who's your equal."
"You think you're not my equal," you say slowly.
"I know I'm not." His voice is flat. "I'm the foreman, you're the owner. And no matter what we feel, that's the reality, that's what everyone sees when they look at us."
"I don't care what they see—"
"Well, maybe I do." He's breathing hard. "Maybe I care that I can't defend you without it looking like the hired help overstepping. Maybe I care that men like Clayton can say whatever they want about you and I have to just— just take it because what am I? What right do I have?"
"The right of someone who loves me," you say, and watch his face go white.
"Don't," he whispers.
"Why not? It's true, isn't it?" You step closer. "You love me, and I—"
"Don't say it," he backs away, hands up like he's warding off a blow. "Please don't say it."
"Why not?"
"Because it doesn't change anything!" His voice breaks. "It doesn't change that I can't give you what you deserve. It doesn't change that I will never be enough. I'll never be enough for you, wildfire. And the sooner we both accept that, the—"
He doesn't finish, just turns and walks out of the stall, leaving you standing there with Copper and the ruins of your heart. You sink down onto the bench and Copper nuzzles your shoulder gently.
"He's wrong," you tell the horse. "He's so wrong."
But the words feel hollow even as you say them. Because how do you fight someone who's convinced themselves they're not worth fighting for?
You threw yourself into work because work didn't require you to think about the way Bucky's jaw had tightened when you'd said the word "love".
Work was spreadsheets and feed orders and the county extension agent calling about soil testing. Work was quantifiable, solvable, something you could actually control… unlike the man who was currently avoiding you like you carried some contagious disease.
It had been two weeks since the stable. Two weeks of Bucky sending Pete or Sanchez to deliver reports that he used to give himself, two weeks of catching glimpses of him across the property—always busy, always moving, always just out of reach. When you did cross paths, his eyes would slide past you like you were part of the landscape, something to navigate around rather than toward.
"Boss?" Pete stood in your office doorway, hat in hand. "Bucky wanted me to tell you the irrigation system's back online, no more issues in sector three."
Bucky wanted me to tell you. Not "Bucky said", or "Bucky asked", like even the mention of his name in connection with you required careful phrasing.
"Thanks, Pete." You kept your voice level. "Anything else?"
"No, ma'am, that's all." He hesitated. "Though uh… if you need anything else, I can—"
"I'm fine," the lie came easily now. "Tell the crew I'll do the evening walk-through myself tonight."
After Pete left, you sat back in your chair and let your eyes drift to the window. You could see the training pen from here, the fence where you and Bucky had worked with the colt just weeks ago, where his hands had been steady on the animal's neck, his voice low and soothing, and the three of you—you, him, the skittish colt— were the only things that mattered in the world.
Your mind drifted before you could stop it, reaching back to a different summer. You'd been sixteen, and Bucky had been nineteen, home from community college for the summer to help his dad with the heavy work.
Your father had sent you both to check the fence line at the north property border, and you'd spent the whole afternoon trying not to stare at the way Bucky's shirt stuck to his back in the heat, the flex of his forearms as he drove new posts into the hard ground. He'd caught you looking once and grinned—that easy, boyish grin that always made your stomach flip—and you'd turned away so fast you nearly tripped over the wire spool.
Later, sitting in the shade of the truck bed sharing a canteen of water, he'd looked at you differently. Not like his boss' daughter, not like the kid who used to chase him around the barn.
"You've got dirt on your face," he'd said.
"Where?"
Instead of answering, he'd reached out and brushed his thumb across your cheekbone, so gentle it barely counted as touch. Your breath had caught, and then… so quick you almost thought you'd imagined it, he'd leaned in and pressed his lips to yours.
Just a peck, soft and sweet and over in a heartbeat.
He'd pulled back immediately, eyes wide. "I shouldn't have—"
"It's okay," you'd whispered.
But he was already climbing out of the truck bed, putting distance between you, and the rest of the drive back had been silent. Neither of you mentioned it again, not that summer, not the next. By the time he came back to work full-time after his dad got sick, you'd both learned how to pretend it never happened.
Except you've never forgotten.
And now, seventeen years later, he was looking at you the same way: like you were something he wanted but couldn't let himself have. Only this time it wasn't because you were too young, or because he was overstepping with the boss' daughter. This time he'd convinced himself you were too good for him.
You pressed your palms against your eyes, willing yourself not to cry in your office in the middle of the workday.
Your phone buzzed, another text from Clayton Sheridan that you immediately deleted without reading. He'd been trying to "apologize" for a week now, messages that sounded sincere until you read between the lines and saw the entitlement still lurking here.
The afternoon sun slanted through the window, dust motes dancing in the golden light, and you forced yourself back to the feed cost analysis spreadsheet on your screen. Work didn't ask questions you couldn't answer, work didn't look at you with resignation and longing tangled together… work was safe.
So you buried yourself in it and pretended you couldn't feel the Bucky-shaped hole in your chest getting wider every day.
Bucky sat at his kitchen table with his laptop open and a beer he hadn't touched going warm beside him. The numbers on the screen hadn't changed in the last hour, no matter how many times he refreshed the page or recalculated his math.
$58,000 in savings. Fifteen years of hard work, of living cheap and saving steady, and that's what he had to show for it.
He pulled up another tab showing land listings in the county. The cheapest viable spread was listed at $425,000. The nicer properties started at $650,000 and went up from there.
He took a long pull from the beer, grimacing at the taste. The smart move would be to look further out, maybe two counties over where land was cheaper, but that would mean leaving the ranch, leaving you, and what was fucking point of building something if you weren't part of it?
His phone sat face-down on the table. He'd been staring at it for twenty minutes, trying to decide if he should call his cousin Hugh. He had made something of himself, built a successful business in Denver, bought a house. Hugh would probably tell him to forget the ranch work, come to the city, learn a trade that paid better..
But Bucky wasn't Hugh. He didn't want an office or a crew of subcontractors or a house in the suburbs. He wanted land, cattle and horses and the kind of legacy his father had helped build for someone else's family. He wanted to be able to stand next to you and not feel like he was taking something he hadn't earned.
His father's voice echoed in his head, rough from years of cigarettes and dust: A man provides for his family, son. You work hard, build something and give your wife and kids a life worth living.
His old man worked himself into an early grave trying to live up to that standard, died at sixty-two with nothing but a paid off truck and a pension that barely covered his medical bills. Bucky's mother had held it together with grit and his father's life insurance, but she's had to move into town and had to make herself smaller to fit into what was left.
Bucky had sworn he'd never put a woman in that position, that he'd build something solid before thinking about settling down… and then you'd kissed him in the barn last summer with dirt on your jeans and challenge in your eyes, and every promise he'd made to himself had evaporated.
Ten months of telling himself it was just physical, just chemistry, just two people scratching an itch. Ten months of lying to himself and to you and pretending it wouldn't end in exactly this kind of pain,
He opened a new tab for job listings this time. Foreman positions at other ranches—most paid about what he was making now, maybe five thousand more if he was lucky. Manager positions required degrees he didn't have. The oil and gas jobs paid better but required months away at a time, and what good was money if he couldn't be near you?
He closed the laptop harder than necessary.
This was about building something with you, about not being that guy who moved into your house, worked your land, lived off your success. He'd seen it before: men who married into ranching families and became permanent accessories, useful but ultimately replaceable.
His pride wouldn't let him become that.
But how the hell was he supposed to close a $400,00 gap? Even if he worked himself into the ground, saved every penny, made all the right moves he'd still be forty before he had enough to buy anything worth having.
And you'd be what? Waiting around for him to get his shit together? Turning down men like Clayton Sheridan who could give you everything right now? The thought of you with Sheridan made him want to put his fist through the wall, made him want to drive to that bastard's ranch and make it crystal clear that he'd never speak to you like that again.
But he hadn't, because what right did he have? He wasn't your boyfriend or your husband. He was just an employee, the man who was too proud to be with you on your terms and too poor to offer his own.
His phone buzzed, it was a text from Pete:
Boss asked me to tell you she's doing the evening rounds herself tonight, thought you should know.
Bucky's chest tightened. You were avoiding the crew now, doing the work yourself rather than risk running into him. Or maybe you didn't trust him to do his job anymore.
He typed back: Thanks, I'll check the north pasture, make sure everything's locked down.
It was cowardice, making sure he'd be on the opposite end of the property when you made your rounds. But he wasn't strong enough yet to see you and not break, he wasn't ready to look into your eyes and see the hurt he'd put there.
Not until he had a plan and could offer you something more than apologies and empty promises.
Bucky drained the flat beer and got back to work on the numbers. Somewhere in these spreadsheets, in these listings, in the careful mathematics of sacrifice and saving, there had to be an answer, there had to be a way to become the man you deserved… he just had to find it.
You found him in the equipment barn three days later, and this time you didn't let him walk away. You were done avoiding him.
He was replacing the hydraulic line on one of the tractors, his shirt off in the afternoon heat, and for a moment you just watched him work, watched the flex of his shoulders, the concentration on his face, the competent sureness of his hands. This was the Bucky you'd grown up with, the one who could fix anything, who moved through the wold with quiet capability.
The one you'd loved since you were sixteen years old.
"We need to talk," you said.
His hands stilled on the wrench, but he didn't look up. "Kind of in the middle of something."
"I don't care." You stepped into the barn, letting the door swing shut behind you. "You've been avoiding me for three weeks, I'm done pretending this isn't happening."
"Nothing's happening," his voice was carefully flat. "I'm working, you're working, that's all there is."
"That's bullshit and you know it."
He finally looked at you, and the exhaustion in his eyes made your chest ache. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to stop running," you move closer. "I want you to stop deciding what's best for me without asking me what I actually want."
"I know what you want."
"Do you? Because from where I'm standing, it seems like you've built this whole story in your head about what I need and what you can't give me."
His jaw tightened. "You deserve someone who can give you a real future."
"I deserve someone who loves me," you countered. "Everything else is just details."
"They're not just details!" His voice rose, frustration finally breaking through. "They're the difference between being your partner and your charity case. I don't want to just be the guy who lives in your mansion, works your land and gets to be with you because you're generous enough not to care that he's got nothing to offer."
"That's not—"
"It is, though." He set down the wrench, finally giving you his full attention. "You're telling me the money doesn't matter, that the land doesn't matter, that I don't need to be able to provide anything because you've already got it all covered. You're telling me to just… accept the fact that I'll never contribute equally to this relationship, that I'll always be the hired help who got lucky enough to fuck the boss."
The crudeness of it made you flinch. "Don't talk about us like that."
"Why not? That's what everyone else is saying." His laugh was bitter. "And maybe they're right. Maybe that's exactly what this is—you slumming it with the help because it's convenient and exciting, and me being too stupid to see that I'm just a phase before you settle down with someone appropriate."
The accusation stung like a slap. "You think you're just a phase to me?"
"I don't know what I am to you!" His voice cracked. "Because you keep saying it doesn't matter, that we'll figure it out,that love is enough, but it's not! Not when I lie awake every night doing math that doesn't add up, not when I have to watch men like Clayton Sheridan circle you like sharks because I can't protect you… not when I know that staying with me means you'll never have a man who can stand beside you on his own as an equal—"
"You're my equal—"
"I'm your foreman! I earn in one year what you make in one month! We're not equals, no matter how much you want to pretend we are."
"Money doesn't make someone more or less valuable, Bucky. We—"
"It's not about value!" He ran both hands through his hair, pulling slightly like he wanted to tear something out. "It's about being able to build something together, about me being able to contribute more than just labor and good intentions… about not feeling like a kept man every time you solve a problem I can't afford to fix."
"So what do you want from me?" Your voice shook. "You want me to pretend I don't have money? Want me to apologize for inheriting this ranch? To make myself smaller so you can feel more like a man?"
"No! Christ, no, it's completely the opposite. I want—" He stopped, his jaw working. "I want to be worthy of you, I want to look at you without feeling like I'm stealing something that should belong to someone better. But I can't do that with fifty-eight thousand dollars in savings and a truck I've had since college."
Fifty-eight thousand dollars. That number hit you like a gut punch. He'd been counting, calculating, measuring himself against some impossible standard and finding himself lacking.
"Bucky," you said softly, stepping toward him. "I don't care how much money you have, or if you own land or if you live in that cabin for the rest of your life. I care about you because I love—"
"Don't," he backed away, hands up. "Please don't say that again."
"Why not? It is the truth."
"Because it doesn't change anything!" His voice was ragged. "You saying you love me doesn't change the fact that I can't give you what you deserve, doesn't change that I wake up every morning knowing I'm not enough or that I want to be the kind of man who can take care of you."
"I don't need you to take care of me, I can take care of myself, I just… I just need you to be here, to stop running from our love, to—"
"That's exactly the problem." His voice went quiet, deadly calm. "You don't need me, not really. You need a good foreman and a warm body in your bed, and I can be both of these things but that's not what I want to be. I want to be necessary, I want to provide for you. I want to build you a life instead of just existing in the one you already have. And you telling me none of that matters, that I should just be grateful that you want me anyway…"
He laughed, but it sounded like something breaking.
"I don't need your pity, ma'am."
The formality hit like a physical blow. Not wildfire, not your name, not even a cold distant boss. Just ma'am, with all the professional distance that implied, with all the class and power differential laid bare.
Your throat closed. "That's not— I'm not pitying you, Bucky, I'm trying to tell you that I love you—"
"And I'm trying to tell you that's not enough. Not when loving you means giving up every shred of pride and self-respect I have left."
"So what?" Your voice broke. "You'd rather have your pride than have me?"
"I'd rather become someone worthy of having you." He picked up his shirt, pulling it on with sharp, angry movements. "And I won't let you settle for less than you deserve just because you think you love me."
"I don't think I love you, I know I love you, I've been in love with you since I was sixteen years old." He froze, shirt half buttoned. "That kiss by the north fence, you think I forgot about it? You think I didn't spend the last decade wondering what would've happened if you hadn't pulled away?"
"Stop," the world was barely a whisper. "Don't do this."
"Don't tell me what I feel, Bucky, don't tell me I'm wrong about loving you, and don't you dare walk away just because you've convinced yourself matters more than—"
"Don't you understand? It's not about the money!" He shouted, and you'd never heard him yell like that, not in twenty years. "It's about what the money represents, about being able to look my father's ghost and say I built something… it's about not being the guy who couldn't make it on his own, so he shacked up with the rich girl who felt sorry for him. It's about not being enough, and I'm not, not yet. I have to at least try to become someone who can stand next to you without shame."
You stared at him, this stubborn, proud, heartbroken man and realized you were fighting a ghost. Not just his father's expectations, but generations of them… every man in his family who'd worked someone else's land and dreamed of their own. Every lesson about what it meant to be a provider, the man of the house.
"And what if you never have enough?" You asked. "If the math never adds up and the land prices keep rising and you're still chasing this impossible standard in ten years? What then?"
His silence was answer enough.
"You're going to let this destroy us," you said. "You're going to choose pride over love, over happiness, over us, because you can't accept that maybe your father's way isn't the only way. That maybe I don't need you to own land to prove you're worthy of me."
"It's not about what you need," he said quietly. "It's about what I need. And I need to be able to respect myself when I look in the mirror, which I can't do right now."
He moved past you toward the door, and you didn't stop him this time. At the threshold, he paused, but didn't turn around.
"I'm sorry, wildfire," he said and the nickname sounded like a goodbye. "I'm sorry I'm not the man you think I am."
Then he was gone, and you were alone in the equipment barn with the smell of motor oil and the wreckage of your heart scattered across the concrete floor. You sank down onto the workbench, pressing your palms against your eyes and let yourself finally break.
Because he was right about one thing: love wasn't enough. Not when one person had already decided they weren't worthy of it.
You were in your office when you heard a truck. The engine was too loud, too aggressive, not the familiar sounds of Pete, Sanchez or Bucky's trucks. Something was wrong.
You looked up as footsteps approached, uneven and heavy on the gravel outside, and Clayton Sheridan appeared on your doorway. The smell of whiskey hit you before his expression did.
"There you are," his words spurred slightly at the edges. "Been looking for you."
Your hand moved toward your phone on the desk, but he saw the movement and stepped fully into the small office, blocking the only exit. The space suddenly felt suffocatingly small.
"Clayton, you need to leave." Your voice came out steady, but without its usual steel. You were so tired lately, tired of fighting, of hurting, tired of everything. "You're drunk, this isn't—“
"This isn't what?" He moved closer, and you stood up instinctively, chair scraping back. "Isn't appropriate? Since when do you care about appropriate? You've been fucking your foreman for months, don't talk to me about appropriate."
"Get out of my office."
"Or what?" He was close enough that you could see the anger in his bloodshot eyes, the mean set of his jaw. "You gonna call your cowboy to come save you? Oh, wait. I heard you two had a falling out, guess even he figured out you're not worth the trouble."
The words hit hard, landing right on the wound Bucky had left bleeding. Your breath caught, and Clayton saw the flinch, the way you'd gone still.
"That's it, isn't it?" His voice dropped, almost soothing, which made it worse. "He finally wised up, left you all alone in this big ranch, and now you're realizing what a mistake you made by turning down a real man for some hired hand who couldn't even stick around."
You should tell him to leave again, move past him, get out of this small room, get your phone, do something. But you felt frozen, hollowed out, like all the fight had been burned out of you in that equipment barn when Bucky had called you ma'am and walked away.
Clayton took another step, you backed up until your hip hit the desk.
"I'm trying to be reasonable here," he was so close, invading your space, using his size to intimidate. "Trying to give you another chance, because despite you embarrassing me, rejecting me and making me look like a fool, I'm still willing to overlook it. Still willing to offer you a real partnership."
"I don't want—" Your voice came smaller than intended, and you hated how weak you sounded. But you were so empty, so worn down by weeks of heartbreak and loneliness and loving someone who'd convinced himself he wasn't worthy of being loved back.
"Don't want what?" Clayton's hand came up, palm flat against the wall beside your head, caging you in. "Don't want stability? Success? A man who can actually provide for you instead of living off your charity?"
You turned your head away, trying to duck under his arm, but he shifted and suddenly you were truly cornered, desk behind you, Clayton in front, his other hand coming up to block your escape route.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you," his voice had gone hard. "I've been patient, I've been courteous. I've given you space and time and you've thrown it back in my face over and over, and I'm done being nice.
"Let me go," you tried to put command in it, but it came out defeated.
"Not until you listen and understand what you're throwing away by being stubborn about some ridiculous idea of love with a man who has already given up on you. He doesn't want you enough to fight for you, but I do. So you're going to stop being difficult and—"
"Get your fucking hands off her."
The voice came from the doorway, low and lethal, and you'd never heard Bucky sound like that. Clayton turned, hands dropping, and you could see him trying to recalibrate, trying to pull on charm or authority, but he didn't get the chance. Bucky had already crossed the small office and his fist connected with Clayton's jaw with a sickening crack.
Clayton staggered backward and hit the wall. "What the hell—"
"You don't fucking touch her." Bucky hit him again, this time in the ribs and Clayton doubled over with a wheeze. "You don't corner her, or come to her property drunk and put your hands near her talking like she's something you can intimidate into—"
He grabbed Clayton by the shirt and hauled him toward the door. Clayton tried to swing back, caught Bucky's cheek with a glancing blow, but Bucky barely seemed to notice. He shoved Clayton out into the barn aisle, following him out.
You stood frozen in the office, watching through the doorway as Bucky grabbed Clayton again and drove his fist into his stomach. Clayton crumpled, coughing and Bucky dragged him upright.
"You ever come near her again," Bucky's voice was shaking with barely controlled rage, "and I will fucking end you. I don't care about consequences, or going to jail, you don't get to scare her and make her feel small. Are we clear?"
"You're insane—" Clayton choked out.
Bucky shoved him toward the barn entrance. "Get the hell out."
He punctuated it with a kick to Clayton's ass that sent him stumbling forward. Clayton caught himself, turned back like he might try to fight, but whatever he saw in Bucky's face made him think better of it. He spat blood onto the barn floor and shot you a look full of venom before limping toward the exit.
"This isn't over," Clayton said.
"Yeah, it is." Bucky's voice was flat. "You're done. Now get the fuck off this property before I make you."
Clayton left, and you could hear his truck start up moments later, tires spitting gravel as he sped away.
Silence filled the barn. You were still standing in the office doorway, arms wrapped around yourself, shaking. Not from fear but from shock, from the crash of adrenaline, from everything finally being too much. Bucky turned to look at you, and his expression crumpled.
"Did he hurt you?" He stayed where he was, like he was afraid to get closer. "Did he touch you?"
You shook your head, the words wouldn't come.
"Jesus Christ," he ran both hands through his hair, pulling hard. "I was just walking back from the equipment barn, heard his voice and— If I hadn't been walking by, if I hadn't heard him say that shit about you, if he'd—"
He couldn't finish, his hands were shaking, knuckles already swelling and split.
"Bucky—" You managed, but your voice sounded wrong and distant, like it belonged to someone else.
"Boss!" Pete appeared in the barn entrance, Sanchez right behind him. They must've seen or heard the commotion. Pete took in the scene: you trembling in the office doorway, Bucky with blood on his knuckles, the tension still cracking in the air. "What happened?"
"Sheridan," Bucky's jaw was tight. "Showed up drunk, cornered her in the office. I handled it."
"Handled it?" Sanchez was looking at Bucky's hands. "Jesus, man."
"Is he gone?" Pete asked.
"Yeah," Bucky's eyes hadn't left you. "He's gone."
Pete moved toward you carefully, like you might spook. "Boss? You okay?"
You nodded, but it was a lie and everyone knew it. You weren't okay, hadn't been for weeks, and this had just broken something that was already cracked.
"Why don't you come with me?" Peter said gently. "Maria's at home, she can make you some tea, you can get away from here for a bit."
"I'm fine," but your voice shook on the words. "I don't need—"
"I insist," Pete said. "Just for a few hours, let us make sure Sheridan doesn't try to come back, let yourself breathe."
You wanted to argue, stay here and deal with this yourself, prove you didn't need protecting, but you were so tired of fighting, so tired of being strong. And the thought of Pete's warm, comfortable house, of his wife Maria's kind presence, of being somewhere that felt safe for just a little while…
"Okay," you whispered.
Bucky's face did something complicated. "I can stay here, keep watch—"
"No." Pete's voice was firm. "You need to clean up and cool down. Sanchez and I will handle security, you go home."
For a moment you thought Bucky would argue, but then he just nodded. His eyes met yours one more time, and the guilt and longing and helplessness in them made your chest ache. But he didn't say anything, he walked away, disappearing into the darkness beyond the barn, and you felt the distance between you like a physical wound.
Pete's house was warm and lived-in, smelling like the chicken Maria had roasted for dinner and the vanilla candles she loved. She met you at the door with soft hands and softer eyes, asked no questions, just guided you to the kitchen table where a chamomile tea was already waiting for you.
"Pete called ahead," she said settling into the chair across from you. "Said you had a rough evening."
"You could say that," your hands wrapped around the mug, seeking warmth even though you weren't cold. You were shaking again, small tremors you couldn't control.
Maria reached across the table and covered your hand with hers. "You're safe here, mija. Whatever happened, you're safe now."
You nodded, throat tight. Through the window, you could see Pete outside, on the phone—probably coordinating with Sanchez, making sure your property was secure. Making sure Clayton wouldn't come back.
The simple care of it broke something loose in your chest.
"Pete's a good man."
"The best," Maria's smile was soft, full of easy affection. "Drives me crazy sometimes, leaves his boots in the middle of the floor and falls asleep during every movie, but he's good all the way through"
You watched Pete through the window, the way he moved with easy confidence, the way he glanced back at the house, checking on his wife to make sure she was okay. There was something so simple about it, so uncomplicated.
"How do you make it look so easy?" The words came out before you could stop them. "Being together."
Maria tilted her head, studying you. "It's not always easy. We've had our share of hard times—money troubles, my mother getting sick, that year Pete threw his back out and couldn't wait for three months. But we're partners, you know? We figure it out together."
Partners. That word sat heavily on your chest.
"What if one person thinks they're not good enough?" You stared into your tea. "What if two people love each other but one of them is convinced… they don't have enough to offer?"
Maria was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. "This is about Bucky, isn't it?" You looked up, startled. She smiled sadly. "Honey, everyone knows you two have been circling each other for months, and everyone can see you're both miserable right now. Whatever he thinks he doesn't have… does it matter to you?"
"No," the answer came immediately. "It doesn't matter at all, I don't care about money or land or any of it. I just want him."
"Have you told him that?"
"Yes, multiple times, but he won't listen. He's convinced that loving me means being able to provide for me the way his father provided for his mother, the way—" Your voice broke. "The way Pete provides for you, and he can't. At least not in the way he thinks he should, so… he'd rather let me go than accept that maybe I don't need what he's supposed to give me."
Maria's eyes were sad. "Men and their pride, especially the good ones. They get these ideas in their heads about what it means to be a man, what they owe the women they love, and sometimes those ideas do more harm than good."
"So what do I do?" You hated how desperate you sounded. "How do I fight someone who's already decided he's not enough?"
"I don't know if you can, mija." She said it kindly, but it still hurt. "Sometimes people have to figure things out for themselves, have to learn that love isn't about what you can provide in dollars and cents.It's about showing up, being present, building a life together even when it's hard… But you can't force someone to believe they're worthy of love, that's something they have to find on their own."
You felt tears prick your eyes. "What if he never does?"
"Then that's his loss. Because from where I'm sitting, he's throwing away something real and good because he's too stubborn to see that you already chose him, that you'd choose him every day if he'd let you."
The tears spilled over then, you tried to wipe them away, embarrassed, but Maria just moved her chair closer and pulled you into a hug. You let yourself cry against her shoulder—for Bucky, for the relationship that was dying before it ever really lived, for the loneliness that had become your constant companion.
"I love him," you whispered into her shoulder. "I've been in love with him since I was sixteen years old and I don't know how to stop."
"Oh, sweetheart." Maria rubbed your back. "Maybe you're not supposed to stop, maybe you just have to love him from a distance while he figures things out. And maybe he'll figure it out on time… but you can't sacrifice yourself while you wait. Can't make yourself smaller or quieter just to make him comfortable with loving you."
You pulled back, wiping your eyes. "I don't know how to do this."
"None of us do," she smiled sadly. "We're all just making it up as we go."
Pete came back inside then, took in your tear-stained face and his wife's protective posture, and his expression softened.
"Everything's secure, Sanchez is doing perimeter checks, but the property's locked down tight." He hesitated. "You're welcome to stay here tonight, the guest room is ready."
You shook your head. "I appreciate the offer, but I should go home. I can't let Clayton chase me out of my own house."
"You sure?" Maria asked.
"Yeah," you stood, steadier now. "I'm sure."
They walked you to your truck, Pete insisting on following you back to make sure you got inside safely. The drive was short, and when you pulled up to your dark house, Pete waited until you unlocked the door and turned on the lights before giving you a wave and heading back to his own home.
You stood in your empty living room and felt the silence press in. You've always loved this house and all the memories that it contained, but lately it felt too big and lonely. Tonight it was just you and the weight of everything that happened.
You should eat something, shower or try to sleep.
Instead, you sank onto the couch and let yourself feel everything you'd been holding back—the fear from Clayton's visit, the heartbreak from Bucky's rejection, the bone-deep exhaustion of loving someone who wouldn't let himself be loved.
Eventually you dragged yourself upstairs, changed into sleep clothes and crawled into bed. The house settled around you with familiar creaks and sighs, and slowly, finally, you drifted into an uneasy sleep.
The smell woke you first. Acrid, wrong, burning.
You sat up in bed, disoriented. The clock read 2:17 AM. For a moment you thought you were dreaming, but then you heard it— the panicked whinnying of horses, the sharp crack of wood giving way. Fire.
You were out of bed and running before conscious though kicked in, flying down the stairs in your sleep clothes, your slippers hitting the porch steps, and then you saw it: the stables lit up against the night sky, flames already consuming the east side of the building, spreading fast through the old dry wood.
The horses.
Copper.
You didn't think or stop to call for help or consider the danger. You just ran.
The heat hit you when you reached the stable doors, but you ripped your shirt up over your nose and mouth and plunged inside anyway. The smoke was thick, black, choking, but you knew this building like you knew your own heartbeat, knew exactly where each stall was, which horses were where.
"I'm coming!" You shouted, voice muffled through the fabric. "I'm coming, it's okay!"
The first stall was Daisy's, the chestnut mare. You fumbled with the latch, hands shaking,a nod shoved the door open. She reared back, eyes rolling white with terror, but you grabbed her halter and dragged her toward the entrance. "Go, go, go!"
She bolted past you into the night, and you were already moving to the next stall. Juniper, the bay mare heavy with foal. She was screaming, hooves striking the stall door, and you got it open just as part of the roof above groaned ominously.
"Out!" You slapped her hindquarters and she ran, coat slick with sweat and far.
The smoke was getting thicker. You couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you, couldn't breathe without coughing, but you kept moving. Duke and Ranger in the double stall, the two yearling colts next, skittish and terrified but moving when you shouted at them.
Your lungs were burning. Each breath felt like inhaling glass, and your eyes streamed tears from the smoke, but you pushed deeper into the stable. Eight horses out. Copper was the only one missing.
His stall was in the back, farthest from the entrance, and the fire was spreading fast. You could feel the heat on your skin, could hear the ceiling beams cracking and shifting. You should leave, get out while you still could, but Copper was your father's horse. Your first horse. The only living reminder of him, and you wouldn't leave him.
"I'm coming, old man!" You choked on smoke, stumbled, caught yourself against a stall door. "I'm coming!"
You found his stall by memory more than sight. The smoke was too thick now, the world reduced to burning shapes. Your fingers found the latch and you yanked it open. "Copper! Come on, baby, we gotta go—"
He was pressed into the back corner, wild-eyed, making sounds you'd never heard from him before. You grabbed his halter, pulled, but he wouldn't move.
"Please," you begged, coughing so hard you nearly doubled over. "Please, Copper, please—"
He finally moved, and you were leading him toward where you thought the entrance was, one hand on his hater and one hand trailing the wall, it the smoke was everywhere now. You couldn't see or breathe properly anymore.
Your foot caught on something and you went down hard, hand ripping free from Copper's halter. You heard him bolt, heard his hooves on the concrete floor, and you tried to get up and call after him, but your lungs wouldn't work. The smoke was too thick and the world was starting to gray at the edges.
Get up, you told yourself. Get up, you have to get out.
But your arms wouldn't hold you. You collapsed face-down on the concrete floor near what you thought was the entrance, and distantly you realized you were going to die here in the stable. On the land you loved.
You couldn't breathe anymore, couldn't move. The smoke filled your lungs and the world went soft and strange, and the last thought before everything went black was of Bucky's face when he told you he wasn't enough for you and walked away.
Then nothing.
Bucky had been awake when the fire started.
He'd been lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the way you'd looked when Clayton had you cornered in that office. The fear in your eyes, the way you seemed so small, so defeated, like all the fight had been burned out of you.
It was all his fault. If he hadn't pushed you away, if he hadn't been so goddamn stubborn about his pride and his plans, maybe you wouldn't have been so vulnerable when that bastard showed up.
He was still stewing in guilt and self-loathing when he smelled the smoke.
For a second, he thought maybe someone was burning trash, but it was 2 AM and the smell was too strong. He got out of bed and looked out his window toward his property.
His heart stopped.
The stables were on fire, visible even from his cabin, and he was running before his brain fully processed what he was seeing. Running toward the fire in just his sleep pants and boots he grabbed by the door, no shirt, no phone, nothing but pure animal panic driving him forward.
The horses were scattered in the yard, wild-eyed and panicked, and his first thought was relief—someone got them out, they were safe—but then he got closer and saw the stables entrance and his world tilted sideways.
You were lying face-down just inside the doorway, smoke billowing around you, and you weren't moving.
"No!" The scream tore out of him, raw and animal. He was at the entrance in seconds, dropping to his knees, hands on your back. "No, no, no, please—"
You weren't breathing. Your skin was gray, lips tinged blue, and there was ash in your hair and you weren't fucking breathing.
"Help!' He screamed it into the night, voice breaking. "Help! Someone call 911! Please help!"
He got his arms under you and lifted, staggering away from the entrance as part of the roof collapsed inward with a shower of sparks. You weren't breathing limp in his arms, a horrible dead weight, and he couldn't—
"Please, don't be dead, please wildfire, please—"
He laid you down on the grass far from the fire, hands shaking so hard he could barely function. Tilted your head back, checking for breathing… nothing. He pressed his fingers to your throat, searching desperately for a pulse.
There. Weak and thready, but there.
"Call 911!" He screamed it again, looking around wildly, but no one was there. Everyone was asleep or too far away to hear. "Somebody please help us!"
He started CPR, hands laced over your sternum, counting compressions like the training he'd taken years ago. Thirty compressions, two breaths. Your lips were so cold under his, and you still weren't breathing on your own, and he was going to lose you before he ever got the chance to tell you, that he'd been an idiot, that his pride meant nothing compared to you.
"Come on, baby, come on," he begged between breaths. "Breathe for me, please breathe. I'm sorry, I love you, please don't leave me, please—"
He continued, thirty compressions, two breaths. Your chest rose and fell when he breathed for you, but then nothing. No response.
"HELP!" His voice was wrecked, tears streaming down his face. "Please, someone help!"
Lights flickered on in the distance. There was a truck approaching. Thank god.
Thirty compressions, two breaths.
"You don't get to do this," he told you, voice breaking. "You don't get to die because I was too fucking stupid to tell you I love you. Come on, wildfire, fight, I know you're strong."
Another thirty compressions, two more breaths.
Your body jerked and you coughed, harsh and wet and he rolled you onto your side as you vomited up smoke and ash. You gasped, a horrible wheezing sound, but you were breathing. Your eyes fluttered but didn't open, and your breathing was labored and wrong, but you were alive.
"That's it, that it baby, breathe." He was sobbing openly now, one hand on your back and one stroking your hair. "You're okay, you're gonna be okay, just keep breathing for me."
Pete's truck roared up, and he was out and running before it fully stopped. "Jesus Christ— what happened?"
"She went in," Bucky choked out. "She went into the fucking fire, got the horses out and she— call 911, she's not breathing right, she needs oxygen."
Pete already had his phone out and was shouting into it about the address and fire and person down.
Sanchez appeared from somewhere, still pulling on his shirt. "Holy shit— is she—"
"She's breathing, but barely." Bucky couldn't stop touching you, couldn't stop checking your pulse like it might disappear if he looked away. "She inhaled too much smoke, she was unconscious—"
You coughed again, weaker this time, and made a sound like you were trying to speak.
"Don't talk," Bucky said. "Don't try to talk, just breathe, help is coming, you're gonna be fine—"
But you weren't fine. Your breathing was getting worse, more labored, and your skin was still that terrible gray color. He gathered you against his chest and pressed his forehead to yours.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so fucking sorry, I love you, I was just too stupid and proud and scared to—" His voice broke completely. "You have to be okay, because I can't do this without you, wildfire, I can't."
Sirens in the distance getting closer. The volunteer fire department, the ambulance. Pete was directing them, shouting coordinates.
You made another small sound, and your eyes opened just a crack. "Bucky," you breathed, barely audible.
"I'm here," he was crying so hard he could barely see. "I'm right here, I've got you, you're gonna be fine."
"Copper—"
"He's fine, all the horses are fine. You got them all out, you crazy, brave, stubborn—" He couldn't finish, just held you tight as the ambulance pulled up, as EMT's swarmed with oxygen and equipment.
They tried to take you from him but he couldn't let go, couldn't release you until one of them put a hand on his shoulder.
"We've got her," she said gently. "Let us help her."
He forced himself to release you, watched as they got an oxygen mask on your face, loaded you onto a gurney. Your eyes found his one more time before they put you in the ambulance, and he saw fear there.
"I'm coming with you," he told the EMTs.
They didn't argue. He climbed into the ambulance and took your hand, and as they pulled away, he pressed his lips to your knuckles and made you a promise.
"You're gonna be okay," he said. "And when you are, I'm gonna tell you every single day for the rest of my life that I love you. Gonna prove to you that I can be the man you deserve, that my pride was bullshit, that yore all that matters. Just— don't leave me before I get the chance. Please, wildfire, please don't leave."
Your fingers twitched in his, the barest squeeze and he held on like you were the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth.
The first thing you became aware of was the beeping. Steady, rhythmic, accompanied by a mechanical hiss that matched the uncomfortable pressure around your face. The second thing was the voice.
"—and I know I don't deserve it, I know I fucked everything up, but if you wake up, I swear to God, I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Proving that I can be the man you think I am, even if I don't believe it yet."
That was Bucky's voice, coming from somewhere to your left.
"I'm sorry I pushed you away, I'm sorry I let my pride and my own stubbornness matter more than you, I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention when the fire started. I'm sorry for all of it."
You tried to open your eyes but they felt crusted shut, heavy. Your throat burned like you'd swallowed razor blades, and breathing hurt in a way that suggested your lungs had been through something awful. And then you remembered it all: the fire, the stables, Copper.
You tried to move or speak, but all that came out was a rough sound that might have been a cough.
There was movement immediately, a warm hand closing around yours. "Wildfire? Hey, hey, don't try to talk. You've got an oxygen mask on, your lungs need time to heal. Just— just squeeze my hand if you can hear me."
You squeezed, or at least tried to. Your hand felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"Thank god," his voice broke on the words. "You scared the hell out of me, I've aged like ten years tonight."
You managed to get your eyes open finally, blinking against the harsh hospital lights. Everything was blurry at first, but slowly it resolved: white ceiling tiles, an IV stand, medical equipment beeping away. And Bucky, sitting in a chair pulled up close to your bed, still shirtless under the blanket someone had draped over his shoulders, covered in soot and ash, eyes red-rimmed.
He looked like he'd been crying. Bucky Barnes, who you'd never seen cry, not even when his father died, had been crying over you.
"Hey," he said softly, and his thumb traced circles on the back of your hand. "Welcome back."
You tried to speak, but the oxygen mask muffled everything, and your throat was too raw anyway. You lifted your other hand weakly, gesturing at the mask.
"No way," he caught your hand gently, brought it back down. "Doctor said you need to keep that on for at least another few hours, your oxygen levels were scary low when you came in, you inhaled a lot of smoke."
You made a frustrated sound, and he actually smiled. "I know, I know, wildfire. But just rest, okay? Everything else can wait."
But you didn't want to wait. You'd heard him confessing, apologizing, saying things you'd been desperate to hear for weeks. You needed him to know you'd heard and needed to respond, needed—
The door opened and a nurse came in, checked your vitals with practiced efficiency. "Good to see those eyes open. How's the pain level? Blink once for manageable, twice for severe."
You blinked once. Everything hurt, but it was distant, muted by whatever they had you on.
"Good, the doctor will be in soon to check on you." She adjusted something on your IV. "You're very lucky, young lady. Another minute or two in that smoke and we'd be having a very different conversation." Her eyes cut to Bucky. "And you should probably get checked out too. That cough doesn't sound good."
"I'm fine," Bucky said automatically.
"You performed CPR for several minutes and you've been breathing smoke residue all night, at least let me listen to yous lungs."
He looked like he wanted to argue, but the nurse had already pulled out her stethoscope with a look that said she wasn't asking. While she checked him over—pronounced him "borderline but not critical"— you watched him. Catalogued the soot in his hair, the redness along his eyes, the exhaustion in his body… He'd stayed all night.
After the nurse left, silence fell between you. Bucky was still holding your hand, his thumb still stroking your knuckles, but he was looking down at your joined hands like he was afraid to meet your eyes.
"The horses are all okay," he said finally. "Pete's got them in the training paddock and the north pasture. Copper's fine—spooked but fine. You got every single one out before you…" He swallowed hard. "Before you collapsed."
You squeezed his hand.
"The stable's gone, total loss. But Sanchez thinks the fire was deliberately set, he found evidence of accelerant near the east wall. The sheriff's already investigating, smart money's o Sheridan."
That should have made you angry, should've sparked fear or rage, but you just felt tired. You'd deal with Clayton later. Right now, all you cared about was the man sitting beside your bed, still covered in ash from pulling you out of the fire.
You tugged weakly at the oxygen mask, and this time Bucky didn't stop you, just helped you pull it down to rest under your chin.
"Wildfire—"
"Did you mean it?" Your voice came out as a rasp, barely audible, your throat shredded but you needed to know. "What you said earlier, did you mean it?"
His eyes finally met yours, and they were so raw it hurt to look at. "Every word, I love you. I've been in love with you for so long I can't remember what it felt like not to love you. And I'm sorry I let my pride and y stupid hang-ups about money and worth keep me from saying it. I'm sorry when I pushed you away when all you wanted was—"
"Bucky," you interrupted him, voice still rough. "I'm not gonna die."
He blinked. "What?"
"I'm not gonna die," you repeated. "So you can stop with the dramatic deathbed confessions."
For a second he just stared at you, then incredibly, he laughed. "You almost died and you're making jokes?"
"Someone has to lighten the mood." You tried to smile but your face felt stiff. "You look like shit, by the way."
"Yeah, well." He scrubbed a hand over his face, smearing the soot. "Watching the woman you love nearly die in a fire will do that to you."
The woman you love. He'd said it again, and this time the words settled in your chest like something warm and permanent.
"I heard you," you said quietly. "In the ambulance, and when I first woke up, I heard you."
His hand tightened on yours. "Then you heard me say I'm sorry, that I was an idiot, and that I'm going to spend every day proving I can be man you—"
"You already are." You cut him off. "You've always been, that was never the problem."
"Then what was?"
"You not believing it." You coughed, wincing at the pain in your chest. "You letting your father's expectations and your own pride convince you that you weren't enough… but you were always enough, Bucky, you were always more than enough."
He was quiet for a moment, just looking at you with those blue eyes full of things he'd never let himself say out loud.
"I thought I needed to build something first," he said finally. "Thought I needed to have land, money, something concrete to offer you, something that would make me your equal instead of just… the foreman who got lucky."
"I never wanted an equal. I don't want a business partner or a merger, or someone who can match my net worth. I just want you, the guy who checks on Copper because he knows the horse matters to me. The guy who fixes problems before I know they exist, the guy who punched Sheridan for cornering me and then ran into a burning building to save me even though—" Your voice cracked. "Even though I'd already gotten myself out."
"Barely," he said roughly. "You barely got yourself out, and when I found you lying there not breathing, I—" He stopped, jaw working. "I couldn't breathe either, felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. And all I could think was that I'd wasted so much time, weeks we could have had together because I was too proud to accept that maybe love doesn't care about bank balances and property."
You brought your other hand up to cup his face, felt the scrape of stubble and the warmth of his skin. "Life's too short."
"Yeah, it is." He said leaning into your touch.
"I was at Pete and Maria's house yesterday before the fire," you ran your thumb along his cheekbone. "Watched them together, the way they move around each other, the easy affection, how simply it all looked… and I just wanted that with you so badly it hurt. Just simple love, coming home to each other, building a life together without all the weight and the expectations and the fear."
"I want that too," he said quietly. "But I don't know if I know how to do simple. Don't know if I can turn off the voice in my head that says I should be providing more."
"Then we'll figure it out together." You held his gaze. "I'm not asking you to change overnight. I'm not asking you to suddenly be okay with everything you're not okay with, but I need you to try. Need you to let me in instead of pushing me away when it gets hard."
His eyes were bright again. "What if I fuck it up?"
"You will," you smiled slightly. "And I'll fuck it up too. We'll fight and disagree and drive each other crazy, but we'll do it together."
He was quiet, and you could see him wrestling with it—the pride and the fear, but also hope, all tangled together in a know he'd spent his whole life tying.
"I don't have much," he said finally. "Don't have some grand plan, damn, I don't even have a shirt on right now, but I love you, wildfire. I love you so much it terrifies me. And if you're willing to take a chance on a stubborn idiot who almost lost you because he couldn't get out of his own way—"
"I'd give it all up," you interrupted. "The ranch, the money, the legacy… all of it. If it meant I could have something like what Pete and Maria have, If it meant I could have you."
His breath caught. "You don't mean that."
"I do," you held his eyes, let him see the truth "I love the ranch, the work, the land… but I would walk away from all of it tomorrow if it meant having a simple life with you. A small place, horses we actually have time to ride, mornings where we drink coffee together. I'd trade the empire for the everyday, Bucky, every single time."
"Don't say things like that, wildfire." He pressed is forehead to yours, careful with the oxygen tubes and the IV lines.
"Why not?"
"Because it makes me want to take you up on it, makes me want to say fuck the ranch and the town and everyone's expectations and let's just run away together."
"Maybe we should," you said.
He pulled back to look at you. "You're delirious from smoke inhalation."
"I'm serious," and you were. "Not today, or tomorrow, but maybe eventually."
"You'd really leave?" He searched your face. "You'd really walk away from everything you've built."
"For us?" You smiled. "In a heartbeat."
He kissed you then, gentle and careful with your injuries, tasting like smoke and salt and promise. When he pulled back, his eyes were wet again.
"I don't deserve you."
"Probably not," you agreed and he huffed a laugh. "But you love me anyway."
"I do," he said it like a vow. "God help me, I do."
"Then that's enough," you laced your fingers through his. "We'll figure out the rest, but right now, can we just… be?"
"Be what?"
"Together." You squeezed his hand. "Just two people who love each other… just us."
He settled back into the chair, brought your joined hands up to press a kiss to your knuckles. "Yeah, wildfire. We can do that."
You drifted off to sleep with his hand in yours and his voice soft in the darkness, telling you about how Copper had tried to break back into the paddock, about how Pete was already talking to contractors about rebuilding the stable, about how the sun was going to rise soon, and when it did, everything would look better.
One year later
You woke up to the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window and the smell of coffee drifting up from downstairs. For a moment, you just lay there, hand drifting to your still-flat stomach, the secret sitting warm in your chest.
You've known for three weeks, ever since you'd taken the test in the bathroom of the main house while Bucky was out checking the irrigation system. You'd been waiting for the right moment to tell him, something that matched the enormity of it.
You are going to be a father.
The other side of the bed was rumpled and empty, Bucky's watch still on the nightstand beside a book about investment strategies he's been reading. Your husband had surprised you over the past year while you've been scaling back the ranch operations, he'd been building something of his own. Nothing that took him away from you, nothing that required sacrifice or absence, but careful investments in stocks, a small stake in a friend's agricultural tech startup, some rental properties two counties over that he managed remotely.
"Not trying to match you," he said when he first told you about it, almost shy. "Just building something for us, for the future."
And now there was a very specific future growing inside you.
You pulled on one of Bucky's old flannel shirts, over your sleep clothes and padded downstairs barefoot. He was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter in jeans and nothing else, two mugs of coffee already poured.
Well, one mug of coffee… the other was herbal tea.
Your heart stuttered. Had he noticed? You've been so careful, switching to decaf when he wasn't looking, making excuses about wanting to cut back on caffeine.
"Morning, wildfire." He turned and smiled, and you searched his face for signs that he knew. But he just looked like himself—happy, relaxed, the permanent tension he used to carry finally gone from his shoulders.
"Morning, husband." You crossed to him, let him pull you in for a kiss that tasted like coffee and mint toothpaste. "You made me tea?"
"Figured you might want something different." He handed you the mug."You've been drinking less coffee lately, thought maybe you were getting tired of it."
Not suspicious, then. Just Bucky taking care of you the way he always did, paying attention to the small details.
"Thank you," you took a sip. "You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep." His hands settled on your hips. "Kept thinking about that trail ride you promised me."
"Did I promise you a trail ride?"
"You definitely did," he kissed your temple. "Said something about finally having time to actually ride horses instead of just breeding and training them."
He wasn't wrong. In the year since the fire, things had changed. You hired two additional hands, promoted Pete to co-manager, and started actually delegating tasks. The ranch still ran beautifully, but you and Bucky had something you'd never had before: time.
And soon, you'd need that time for something else entirely.
Your hand drifted to your stomach before you could stop it, and you caught yourself, turning the gesture into smoothing down the shirt. But your mind was already spinning—would you still be able to ride in a few months? Would Bucky insist you stop? Would he be overprotective, or excited or scared or—
"Wildfire?" Bucky's voice pulled you back. "You okay? You look a little pale."
"I'm fine," you smiled, probably too brightly. "I'm just hungry, should eat something before we ride."
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he just nodded. "I'll make breakfast, you sit."
You perched on one of the kitchen stools and watched him move around the kitchen with easy familiarity. This was your favorite part of the new life you'd built, mornings like this, just the two of you before the day really started.
Soon there would be three of you, and the thought made your chest tight with joy and terror in equal measure.
"Actually," you said as he cracked eggs into a pan, "what if we skip the trail ride this morning? We could go this afternoon instead, make a whole thing of it… pack a picnic, ride out to the creek, spend a few hours just existing."
He glanced over his shoulder a bit surprised. "Yeah? You want to play hooky from ranch work on a Tuesday?"
"We're the bosses, we're allowed." You wrapped both hands around your mug. "Besides, when was the last time we just took an afternoon for ourselves?"
"Good point," he played the eggs, added toast and brought it over to you. "We can do the morning checks, make sure everything's running smooth, then disappear for a few hours."
"Perfect."
The world came out soft, full of meaning he didn't quite catch yet, but he would. This afternoon, by the creek, you'd tell him about the baby, about your future, about how everything was about to change in the best possible way.
You just had to make it through the morning without giving it away.
By noon, you'd packed a basket with sandwiches, fruit, and the fancy cheese Bucky loved from the market in town. You'd also packed ginger cookies for the nausea that had been creeping in the past week, and a bottle of sparkling cider that you hoped would work for a toast.
Bucky was tacking up Duke and Ranger, and you were trying to calm your racing heart. You've told people difficult things before, you've fired employees, negotiated contracts, stood up to your father when he was being stubborn, but this felt bigger than all of that.
"Ready?" Bucky appeared in the tack room doorway, looking unfairly handsome in his worn jeans and work shirt, hair pushed back from his face.
"Ready," you grabbed the basket and let him help you mount Ranger.
You rode out in comfortable silence, taking the familiar trail north toward the creek. The autumn day was perfect—cool but not cold, the leaves just starting to turn gold and red. When you reached the creek, Bucky dismounted first and came to help you down, hands lingering at your waist a moment longer than necessary.
"You sure you're okay?" he asked. "You've seemed… I don't know, different today. Nervous, maybe?"
Damn his observant nature. "I'm fine, just happy."
"Yeah?" He smiled, some of the concern easing. "Me too."
You spread out the blanket you'd fought while Bucky loosened the horses' girths and let them graze nearby. The creek burbled softly, and the sun filtered through the trees in dappled patterns, and everything felt almost too perfect.
"This was a good idea," Bucky said settling beside you on the blanket. "We should do this more often, just disappear for a few hours."
"We should," you busied yourself unpacking the basket, hands shaking slightly. "Especially now that you've got your investments working for you, Pete can handle more of the daily operations."
"Speaking of which," he took the sandwich you handed him. "I wanted to talk about that. Remember the tech startup I invested in? They're doing really well, better than projected. My stake has almost doubled in value, and—" He paused, looking almost shy. "I've been thinking about diversifying more, maybe some agriculture projects or another rental property, something that can generate passive income."
"That's amazing, Bucky." And it was. You'd watched him transform over the past year from someone who measured his worth in sweat equity to someone who understood there were other ways to build security.
"Yeah, well." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I know I used to be weird about money, but this feels different. Feels like I'm building something that's ours without sacrificing time with you. Without having to choose between being present and being a provider."
"You've always been a provider." You set down your untouched sandwich. "But I'm proud of you for finding a way to do it that works for you."
"I had a good teacher," he kissed your temple. "You taught me that there's ore than one way to build a life together."
This was it. This was the moment. Your heart was pounding so hard you wee sure he could hear it.
"Speaking of building a life together," you started, voice shaking slightly. "There's something I need to tell you."
He set down his sandwich, his attention immediately focused on you. "What's wrong? Are you sick? Is it the ranch? Is—"
"Nothing's wrong." You took his hand, pressed it against your still-flat stomach. "Everything's right, actually. Everything is… perfect."
He froze and you watched understanding dawn slowly: the tea instead of coffee, the fact that you'd been tired lately, the way you'd been careful about lifting heavy things. All the small signs he'd noticed but hadn't put together.
"Wildfire," he breathed. "Are you—"
"I'm pregnant." The words came out in a rush, nervous and excited all at once. "About six weeks. I found out three weeks ago and I've been trying to find the right moment to tell you and I thought here, by the creek, it felt—"
He cut you off with a kiss, so deep and full of joy so pure it made your chest ache. When he used back, his eyes were bright with tears.
"You're pregnant," he said, like he was testing the words. "We are having a baby."
"We're having a baby," you were crying now too, laughing through the tears. "I know we didn't plan this, we haven't even talked about kids yet, but I'm so happy, I'm so—"
"Happy," he finished for you, his hands coming up to frame your face. "God, I'm so happy I can't even— I don't have words, I don't know what else to say except I love you and this is everything."
He pulled you into his arms, held you tight against his chest, and you could feel him shaking.
"Holy shit, I'm going to be a dad" he whispered into your hair.
"You're gonna be a great dad," you pulled back to look at him.
"I know, thanks to you. And this baby is gonna have everything they need, not because of money or any of that shit I used to obsess over, but because we'll be their parents."
"Yeah," you covered his hand with yours. "Yeah, they will."
"How are you feeling? Are you sick? Do you need to see a doctor? Should you even be riding? Jesus, should I have let you get on a horse—"
"Bucky," you laughed, cutting off his spiral. "I'm fine, I saw the doctor two weeks ago, everything looks good. I can ride for another few months as long as I'm careful. The morning sickness is mild, just some nausea, nothing terrible. I'm healthy, baby's healthy, everything's perfect."
"Everything's perfect," he repeated, and then his eyes went wide again. "Wait, does anyone else know? Pete? Maria? Have you been keeping this secret by yourself."
"Just me," you squeezed his hand. "I wanted you to be the first to know, wanted it to be just us, just this moment."
"Best moment of my life," he kissed you again, soft and sweet. "Well, second best, first was marrying you."
"Third best was punching Sheridan's face."
He laughed, loud and bright, and the sound of it made your heart soar. This was the man you'd fallen in love with, the one who could still laugh, who could let go of his pride and just be happy, just be present in the moment.
"We should celebrate." He reached for the basket, pulled out the sparkling cider you'd packed. "Did you plan this?"
"I hoped," you watched him pour two glasses. "Hoped you'd be happy, and this would be the right way to tell you."
"It's perfect." He handed you a glass, raised his own. "To our future."
You clinked glasses, sipped the sweet fizz, and then he was kissing you again, laying you back on the blanket with careful hands.
You laid there together as the afternoon sun shifted through the trees, talking about names and nursery colors and whether you'd find out the gender or be surprised. About how the ranch would need some adjustments, but nothing you couldn't handle. About how Pete and Maria would be thrilled, how the crew would rally around you, how this baby would grow up surrounded by love.
About the future you were building, not just the two of you anymore, but three.
He placed his hand over your stomach, and you covered it with yours, and for a long moment, you just sat there together, listening to the creek and the horses and the perfect silence of a life finally fully lived.
When you finally rode back, the ranch was settling into evening—crew heading home, lights coming on in the main house, the familiar rhythm of end of the day routines. But everything looked different now, felt different.
Because you weren't just coming home to the ranch you ran together. You were coming home to the place where you'd raise your child, whey you would see their first steps, teach how to ride their first horse, learn what it meant to work hard and love harder. Where they'd grow p knowing their parents chose each other every day and created a life worth living.
Bucky helped you dismount, hands lingering in your waist, his eyes soft with wonder and love and barely contained joy.
"Ready to tell everyone?" You asked.
"Ready," he laced his fingers through yours. "Let's go tell our family."
Pairing:Racer!Bucky x Ex!Childhood Best Friend!Reader
Summary: James Bucky “Bullet” Barnes hasn’t taken a proper break from his professional racing career in years. Feeling homesick and a little lost in life, he decides to take an extended break and return to his hometown. What he doesn’t expect to learn when he gets back, is that you and his sister Becca are no longer best friends. Not only that, but no one’s heard from you in years. And Bucky fears his biggest regret, a mistake he made in his sophomore year of college, is the cause of that.
WC: 13.3k
Contains: 18+ mdni / fluff / angst / smut / female reader / childhood friends to enemies to …? / ex!best friend’s brother / miscommunication / misunderstandings / reunion & revenge / street racing (I did some research, but I took some liberties for plot purposes) / bucky is clueless and down bad / illegal activities tied to street racing / not everything is as it seems / lots of back and forth between these two idiots in love / backseat car protected p in v / dream sequence that takes bucky down memory lane / fun cameos / buckys pov so the truth of it all isn't revealed until the end
a/n hi barbies! 💗 this fic is for @stantastic-association's barbie collab! thank you to our darling @miraclediviner for putting this gorgeous collab together 💗 And thank you to the prettiest barbie of them all, my bestie @thelomlbuckybarnes who listened to me yap endlessly about this fic until it was ready for everyone to read. 💞 Thank you for reading! ₊˚⊹♡ Likes, comments, and reblogs are much appreciated!! ♡♡♡
bucky's dreamhouse | bucky masterlist | main masterlist
This was it.
Bucky was home.
Nostalgia should be hitting him the hardest right now. The longing pull to be back in his childhood home with his Ma's cooking, his Pa's laughter, stupid arguments he can only get into with his sister that always end with Bucky giving her the reason. Sleeping in until his body feels like waking up, getting to pick what he wants to do in the day instead of sticking to a tight schedule—being able to just exist instead of only living for the sake of his career. He should be looking forward to all of that and more right now.
And he is, to some extent.
Underneath the nostalgia, there's an persistent thrum beneath his ribcage. Poking at a part of his heart that's been deeply tucked away within him for years. It made itself known the moment he decided to take a break from racing and come home. It followed him through press conferences and meetings, to his apartment while he was packing his bags and preparing to head to the airport. The thrumming only got louder, harder to ignore, the second he landed in his home town.
And it has your name written all over it.
"Hey! James! Over here!" Rebecca’s voice can be heard from somewhere in the distance, pulling Bucky from his thoughts. The airport was bustling with activity, people rushing to catch their flights or make it home. Bucky maneuvers through the crowd, his suitcase in tow, scanning faces at the arrivals bay until he finally spots his sister. Only half a year has gone by since he's last seen her, and yet she looks different, more grown up if that's even possible. It makes his chest squeeze slightly with the uncomfortable reality of this being one of many things he misses while he's gone.
"Hey Becs," his greeting comes in the form of a smothering hug, the kind only big brother's know how to give. She whines dramatically about him ruining the sign she made for him, pushing at his chest. He looks down at the piece of poster paper squished between them and chuckles. It's a small cheesy welcome home sign, clearly written in haste as most of the letters are wonky and the glitter thrown at it looks half-assed. He pulls away, grabbing it from her hands and smoothening it out before giving it back, "See, all better." She rolls her eyes, slapping at his arm and grumbling under her breath, "You big buffoon, learn to be more careful." Bucky barks out a laugh in response that only serves to annoy his sister more. Oh, how he's missed this.
He ignores her protests as he slings an arm around her shoulders, pushing them past the crowd of people in the direction of the elevators. "Folks didn't come?" He asks her as they get in and she shakes her head, pressing the button labeled L2, "Ma wanted to stay home and cook you up something nice for tonight. She's driving us all crazy making sure everything's perfect for you." Bucky frowns, and Becca looks at him like she's said too much, "Everything?"
The elevator doors open and they step out. "Yeah, you know how Ma gets about her cooking," Rebecca replies, waving her hand in the air like it's no big deal. He decides it's best not to press the issue, it's just dinner after all.
The conversation changes as they make their way to her car. Rebecca catches his up on her life post graduation. She talks about her new job in the city over, the apartment she's renting with a couple roommates, the coworker she doesn't get along with, how she still visits their parents on the weekends and oh, how can she forget to mention how ridiculously in love her roommates are with his teammate and friend, Steve Rogers.
"You have to get me tickets when you go back. I don't think they'll forgive me if I don't give them a chance to meet him," she mentions, and he hums in response, not fully paying attention as he places his suitcase in the backseat. But it's not like she has anything to worry about, her little sister privileges always win over Bucky in the end.
"Let me drive," he offers, closing the backseat door. Rebecca looks at him like he just asked her something atrocious. "Absolutely not. My car, I drive. Now get in," she orders, not hearing him out at all and getting into the driver's seat. Bucky is too tired to argue, so he heads over to the passenger seat and reluctantly buckles in. But as she's pulling out of the parking lot he realizes, there's something, no, someone she hasn't mentioned at all.
Bucky says your name out loud, pretty as always, but foreign on his tongue as he hasn't heard it anywhere, but in his head for years. Rebecca's body goes rigid, and he doesn't notice at first as he asks, "How's she doing?" He knows he has no right to ask. He knows he has no right to pry into your life or know anything about you now, but he can't help it. He needs to know. Maybe if he knows that insistent thrum beneath his ribcage will finally go away.
Rebecca stares straight ahead at the traffic on the road like it's the most interesting thing she's seen in a long time, exhaling apprehensively, "I don't know."
Well that's shocking.
"You don't know?" Bucky echoes, face pulling in a frown of disbelief. Rebecca's hold on the steering tightens ever so slightly, clearly uncomfortable with the topic of conversation being you. "Yeah, I don't know. We haven't been friends for years. Why would I keep up with her?" At that revelation, Bucky can practically feel the way his eyes bulge out of their sockets, a dreadful feeling creeping in to his system.
"Wait—hold on. You haven't been friends with her for years? When did that happen?" He's trying his best to wrap his head around it all. His brain picking out every memory from the last few years, holidays and birthdays he attended and not once did anyone mention you and his sister no longer being friends. Well, no one mentioned you at all, and your absence was felt, but he thought your absence had to do with what happened between you and him, not what apparently happened between you and Becca.
"Years ago," she replies simply.
"Becca."
"What? You asked, I answered."
Bucky stays silent, staring at his sister expectantly. She glances at him briefly, biting the inside of her lip knowing her brother is too stubborn to not keep pushing for more answers. "We stopped being friends after our first year of college. Things were already rocky when we started, but… I don't know we drifted apart—things happened." Her response was vague, like it took effort to reach into the past and look for a proper explanation.
"Things?" He couldn't help, but keep pushing.
Rebecca sighs, "Yeah, things. New friends, boyfriends, different schedules—look, it was a lot of things, but mainly she changed. A lot."
"What do you mean she changed?"
She rolls her eyes, Bucky evidently having pushed her too much, "God, what's with all the questions? Why do you even care?"
The truth is on the tip of his tongue, but he's too much of a coward to let it out. "I don't know, maybe because the three of us were best friends from the moment you two were put in the same kindergarten class. Because we were basically like family to each other."
"Yeah, well, that's in the past now."
The sadness in her voice tugs at Bucky's heart, watching her slump in her seat. It's obvious she wants the conversation to end, retreating into herself the way that she is. Whatever happened between you still weighs heavy on her heart. Whatever Bucky hoped to learn about you upon his return will have to wait. He thought his sister would be the one to give him answers, but all she managed to do was raise more questions.
Bucky turns to face the window, deciding it's best to not bring you up anymore. Rebecca's shoulders relax at that, reaching over to turn on the radio so the music can fill the tense silence. He closes his eyes, trying to focus on the music, but nothing can stop his thoughts from drifting to things he's been avoiding.
When he first decided to take a longer break than he usually gives himself, it was to give himself a chance to figure out what comes next. Racing professionally had always been his dream, but once he achieved it, he felt lost on the after. His racing career took off when he was young, too young to understand when something takes off so fast and bigger than himself, some people get left behind in the dust.
For years, his racing career was overwhelming in the best way. Making a name for himself, proving he was good enough, was all he strived for. His parents and sister had always been supportive, even when certain family members gave their unwanted opinions on how he'd never make it, certain he'd fail. And even though they only got to see him during the holidays or when he flew them out to one of his competitions, his parents and Rebecca cheered him on every step of the way. Promotions, sponsorships, media events, touring—it took up all his time for over half a decade.
But when he finally has made a name for himself, when he finally has the fame, the recognition, when he always wins… what's the next big thing he has to look forward to?
That question brought him back here, back home. Feeling lost on his purpose and fulfillment in life made him come back to where it all started. But being back here brings him back to you. And back to the biggest regret of his entire life.
Beyond the window of the car, the streets stretch out into something more familiar. They pass his old high school, the local bakery his mother used to send him to get fresh bread every week, the street that leads to his father's office, the corner store where your first boyfriend used to work, a sleazy guy he remembers punching the hell out of in that very corner for breaking your heart. They pass a park that's been here for ages, the rusty almost rundown playground evidence of its lack of maintenance, but all the years of usage. He remembers taking you and Becca there all the time when you were kids. Chasing you two with his friends around the playground, or pushing you on the wings just a little harder every time to hear you laugh harder. Every inch of this town were where his roots were founded on and surely it must have the answers to what he's looking for.
It takes another fifteen minutes before Becca pulls into the driveway of their childhood home, a cozy light blue two story building with his mother's meticulously cared for flower beds with blue and pink hydrangeas proudly displayed in the front. There's more cars on the street than he last remembered, but he guesses the number neighbors must have grown since the last time he's been here. It wouldn't be the only thing that's changed since then.
Bucky steps out of the car, wondering if maybe he has a chance to take a nap before dinner. He vaguely listens to his sister ramble on about their mother's plans for tonight as he opens the backseat door to get his suitcase. Becca is whining about how they'll probably have to play Yahtzee for the millionth time, when he gathers his things and follows behind her.
His sister walks to the side of the house, confusing Bucky until she explains. "Gotta use the side door, the front's stuck again." Right. At least that's another thing that stayed consistent. No matter how many times his father or Bucky put in the effort to fix the door, it somehow always managed to get stuck. And his father was always too stubborn to replace it no matter how many time his mother asked him to. Stubbornness seems to run in the family.
They step into the backyard, and Bucky was halfway through making an amused comment about his father not fixing that damn door when a loud cacophony of the word surprise startles him. When Becca had mentioned the word everything earlier, when it came to what their parents had prepared for him, what she meant was a welcome party. Various family members and friends of the family were all gathered to welcome him home at least forty people. Tables were set up in neat rows decorated with blue race car table covers to match the balloons tied to each ends. Blue pennant banners were strewn from tree to tree, and whatever his parents were cooking at the grill had his stomach growling like he hadn't eaten in weeks.
So much for hoping to take a nap.
Bucky is touched by the effort his family put in to welcome him home. Although, from the moment he stepped into the backyard he isn't left alone. His mother comes over to engulf him in a hug that is larger than life itself. His father gives him a welcoming hug too before insisting he needs to sit down and eat. Bucky lost count on how many cousins, uncles, aunts, family friends, and others came up to him to welcome him home, hugging him, patting him on the back, and passing him around from greeting to greeting. Once he finally gets a moment to sit down his parents pile up enough cheeseburgers on his plate to stuff him full for a whole week.
The celebrations are enough to keep his mind off of other things for awhile. Between savoring some home cooked food, sharing stories and catching up his cousins on his adventures, and being pulled into a game of dodgeball, he barely has time to think of anything else. And yet, every so often, his eyes drift to different sections of the party as if they were searching for something. He could lie to himself about not what, but who he was searching for. Someone he foolishly hoped would be hear despite what he was told.
By the time the sun starts to set in the sky, Bucky can feel his energy deplete to a point where he can no longer hide it. It's an exhaustion that goes beyond having to evade dodgeballs to the face. Things have started to settle and everyone's migrated to their own corner of the yard depending on whether they wanted to keep playing games, relax by the bonfire, or eat leftovers. He spots his mother at the grill heating up leftovers and he makes his way over to her.
"Need some help, Ma?" He asks, grabbing one of the tongs not waiting for her answer. His mother shakes her head, "I got it, hun. You go back to having fun." She tries to get him back to the party, but at that Bucky shakes his head, scrunching his face up with a clear I don't want to look. His mother laughs at his expression and then instructs him to help out with the burger patties. She starts asking him about his travel here and how he's been liking his party, little things and start conversation. Bucky's giving her simple answers when he looks out at the guests one more time, biting on his bottom lip absentmindedly. His mother can tell he's distracted, and more than that. It seems like she knows exactly what's going on in his head.
"She wasn't invited," she starts, causing Bucky to whip his head in her direction, eyes wide like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing as she continues, "It's not like your dad and I didn't want to, but your sister was against it."
"What?" Bucky sounds and looks dumbfounded, and his mother can only respond with a short exhale. She says your name, and Bucky's heart races and breaks all in one. "How did you—?"
"You can't hide things from your mother, James," his mother interjects as if it were obvious. He gaze locks with his mother's for a moment, and there's something close to pity in them. She's right. He was never one to lie to his mother, much less be able to.
A defeated sigh slips past his lips, "Is it stupid I thought she'd be here?" His mother prepares another leftover plate as she responds, "No, not at all," she hands the plate to one of his younger cousins who scurries off with it. "She wouldn't have come if she had been invited anyway."
Bucky clears his throat, suddenly feeling like there's something stuck in it. "Why not?" His mother gives him a look, like she has something to say, but no explanation for it. "I talk to her mom every so often, maybe once a month. She's told me they barely have any contact with her. No one really knows where she is."
"What? And no one's gone looking for her?" Bucky can't believe what he's hearing. His question has no short of worry in it, and he doesn't bother to hide it. The thought of you being out there somewhere and no one knowing—no one even bothering to look—it didn't sit right with him. It settles within him as well as poison would.
His mother's lips draw into a thin line, a somber look in her eyes. "I'm sure they've tried. I know her parents have, but it's not easy when your kids shut you out. Especially when they're in trouble." Bucky's heart sinks, "Trouble? What trouble?" His mother starts preparing another plate, like she needs something to do, "I'm not sure, hun. Her parents don't know and even your sister hasn't been forthcoming with the way things ended between them. All I know is she got mixed in with the wrong crowd and ended up dropping out of college. The last time I saw her was when Becca found out and they had a screaming match over it. I don't think I've ever seen your sister so angry…"
Out of all the thing Bucky could have been preparing himself to hear about you from his mother, none of this would have ever come close. There's something sickly brewing in his stomach and he thinks if he hears another word of your apparent disappearance, he'll spill his dinner all over the grill.
His mother can tell something is off, so she promptly sends him to bed. He wants to protest until he realizes he burned the burger patty he had been reheating and agrees some rest would be for the best. His mother gives him a goodnight hug and he presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head. Everyone at the gathering is still preoccupied with their own things, so Bucky forgoes any farewells and instead slips inside the house without anyone noticing. Every step up the stairs and toward his childhood bedroom feels heavier than the last.
When he enters his room, there's an appreciative smile that appears on his face when he realizes not much has changed in here either. He can tell his mother has changed the sheets and installed one of those little air freshener devices in preparation for his coming home. And besides his suitcase in the corner, which he still has to thank his father for bringing it up for him, everything else is exactly the same. Which isn't saying much since he's always kept his room simple the older he got. A few racing posters on his walls, shelves decorated with knickknacks, a bookcase filled with books he has yet to revisit, there's not much besides that.
He strips out of his clothes lazily just wanting to get into bed already, when his eyes stray to his desk. He knows why they did. He knows what he'll find when he looks. And yet, he walks over to it anyway, feeling the lump in his throat grow when he sees it's been left untouched. Above his desk on the wall there's a bulletin board frozen in time to the last time he ever used it. He has pictures pinned all across it, happy memories from his childhood with you with him in almost all of them. Every birthday card and letter you ever wrote him is pinned on the board too. Anything you ever gave him he saved and treasured down to the smallest thing. Even to the four leaf clover you once found, gently tucking it between tape for safe keeping. Giving it to him as a good luck charm, promising him it would help him win every race he ever dreamed up as long as he kept it close.
He keeps it in his wallet to this day.
Bucky blinks away the tears he can feel forming in the corner of his eyes. He finds himself more than upset now, maybe even bordering on an anxious frustration as he wills himself to look away. He hastily strips out of his clothes and climbs into his bed, hoping that his mind can quiet once he's bundled up in it. But of course that's not the case. All he can think about now is you. Why would you disappear? Why would you leave and tell no one? Why does no one know where you are? Why did you and Becca get into a big fight and stop being friends?
And why does he feel like it's all his fault?
As he drifts off into a restless slumber, there's a final image that haunts him. It's you. Holding back tears as you look at him with the kind of ire he deserved, but never excepted he would ever have caused you.
That image takes him back to where it all ended.
It happened at his parent's lake house, the summer after his sophomore year of college concluded. The summer you and Becca graduated high school, and had to adjust transitioning into adulthood and newfound independence. Your families had thrown a big graduation party for the two of you, but it was a little too family friendly for Bucky's liking. So without telling his parents, a couple weeks later, he threw a massive party at his parent's lake house in celebration of you two.
You had always held a special place in Bucky's heart, there was no denying that. Whether you or Bucky acknowledged it was another thing entirely. Your friendship with Bucky was just as deeply bonded as yours and Rebecca's, but it was different in its own way. Somehow you found yourself being more vulnerable with Bucky about your fears of the future, about school and life. There were times you wanted to appear strong or dependable to Becca when she was going through a rough patch, and yet Bucky was always able to crumble down your walls almost as if those walls didn't exist when it came to him. From patching up a cut on your knee you'd gotten when you were six while playing hopscotch, to holding you close and soothing you when you cried over your first boyfriend breaking your heart—Bucky had always been there for you. The trust between you ran deep, deep in a way that felt rooted in something tied to your souls.
Perhaps that's what always frightened him about acting on his feelings. If he ever told you how he truly felt, that he loved you in ways that went far beyond just friends, and you didn't feel the same or it didn't work out—he'd lose you for good. And the thought of that, he couldn't even imagine it. Not having you in his life. He honestly thought he'd never survive that.
Nothing was supposed to happen that night. He kept his drinks to a minimum, not wanting to get drunk so he could watch over the party guests. He threw it without his parents knowledge or permission, the last thing he needed was to have an accident happen that he couldn't explain away. You hadn't been drinking much, if at all, either. Mingling throughout the party a little lost since Becca had been hanging out with her boyfriend at the time. Bucky shouldn't have gone over to you when you were standing in the corner by yourself, but he did. He shouldn't have invited you to dance, but he wanted to so badly, so he did.
But he should've known things would end in more than a dance. Having you so close, your body pressed against his, touching him, all over him—it drove him crazy. Careful touches at your hips and waist turned into greedy handfuls that couldn't be satisfied despite the lack of distance. It lead to you two kissing for the first time, desperate and inevitable. And that one kiss led to two then three, until the two of you stumbled up the stairs, not being able to keep your hands or lips off of each other as you made your way to Bucky's bedroom. It led to Bucky caging you underneath him on his bed, kissing you senselessly until the heat between you became too much and you slept together for the first time.
The next morning, you were tucked into his side with his arms wrapped around you, holding you tight to his chest like it would hurt him to let you go. You looked so peaceful in your sleep, beautiful as the morning sunlight blanketed your form. Bucky didn't want to get up, but he knew he had to survey whatever potential damage was leftover from the party and possibly kick out anyone who overstayed their welcome. He kissed your forehead, whispering a promise of not taking too long before slipping on a pair of sweatpants. He groaned inwardly as he made his way downstairs, hoping the damage wasn't too bad. But a quick survey of the house settled his worry. Every room was trashed, but at least nothing seemed broken or irreparably stained. When Bucky made his way back to the living room he noticed Sam, his closest friend, stirring awake on the crouch.
"You crashed on the couch?" Bucky eyed his friend weirdly, he hated sleeping on couches. Sam yawned, stretching dramatically, "Yeah, figured you'd need help cleaning up."
"Aw, aren't you sweet."
"Shut up."
Sam threw a pillow at Bucky's head, which he dodged at the last second. Sam sat up on the couch, scratching the back of his head like he was still trying to come to, "Saw you two go up to your room last night. Congrats on finally getting the guts to make a move—thought you'd never do it. I can hear the bells already," Sam teased, humming out the tune for 'here comes the bride' while wiggling his brows at Bucky suggestively. Bucky can't remember why, can't understand why, but he panicked in that moment. The image of you in a wedding dress and saying I do freaked him out so badly because for the first time it dawned on him that's something that he wanted. But you were both still so young, with so much life and experiences to love ahead of you. He knew he was getting ahead of himself. He didn't even know if you liked him like he loved you.
Fuck, he's in love with you.
Bucky tried to play it cool. Tried to ignore the way his heart squeezed uncomfortably with the truth. He shook his head, playing it down, "Nah, it… it was just an itch I had to scratch. Nothing more. Just something I needed to get out of my system…" Sam was not amused by his lies, painfully seeing through them, "Bullshit. You and I both know you're hopelessly in love with that girl." Bucky's mouth opened to deny it, but another hard look from Sam had him crumbling.
"I know I know. And I think I messed everything up." Bucky slumped on the couch next to Sam, a devastated look on his face. Sam definitely was judging him. "You did not mess anything up, Buck."
"No I did. I wanted to do this the right way, ask her out on a date. Treat her right, like she deserves to be. Show her what she means to me—" A couch pillow hit Bucky square in the face, stopping him mid sentence. "Buck, you're spiraling, stop it. You didn't mess anything up. Trust me, just go up there and tell her how you feel."
Bucky rubbed at his face, soothing it from the hit, "But what if she doesn't feel the same?" Sam looked like he was two seconds from throwing another pillow, "I'm starting to think those engine fumes have caused you to go stupid or blind. Buck, that girl is so in love with you."
For a brief moment, Bucky dared to hope that Sam was right. That you do feel the same. That you'd want it to work out between you as much as he does. But then the image of you in a wedding dress flashed across his mind again, and that unrelenting voice in his head made him doubt everything once more. A voice that strangely sounded like his uncles. His father's brothers who constantly let him know how his racing career would never work out. How he'll never make good enough money and he'll just disappoint his parents. How he should just play it safe, smart. Become an accountant like his father and get rid of those silly childhood dreams because his parents didn't give up everything for him just to go "play racer." Scolding him like a child to stop being so ungrateful with his parents and get a proper job so he can take care of them like they took care of him. Voices of people who were supposed to love and encourage him and instead reminded him everyday that he wasn't good enough to ever achieve his dreams.
And if he wasn't good enough for his dreams, then he certainly wasn't good enough for you.
"Even if she is," Bucky swallowed hard, the words feeling bitter on his tongue, "even if we are, she deserves so much more than what I can give her right now."
"Buck."
"No, I mean it. Her life's just starting Sam. She's going to her dream college, finally getting away from this town like she's always wanted to," Bucky shook his head, like admitting his fears cost him something, "I'm pursuing something I don't even know will work out. And if it doesn't… I don't want to drag her into that. I don't want to drag her into my failures."
Sam sighed, feeling for his friend, "You're not going to fail, Buck. And even if you do—loves so much more than the good times. It's being there despite what happens, despite the obstacles." Bucky mulls over his friend's words knowing there's some truth to them. But, unfortunately, the voice in the back of his mind refused to let him go.
"Yeah, but loves also about walking away when the timing isn't right."
"Not when, if. You don't know which one it is yet."
With those last words, Bucky managed to find the courage to go back up those steps and back to you. With his heart on his sleeve, his hopes in the palm of your hands, and his blood pumping a mile a minute. But when he opened the door to his room, you were already making your way out of it. Eyes wide and teary when they narrowed on him.
"Hey, baby, hey," he reached out to cup your face, "What's wrong?" You flinched back from his hold like his hands were made of ice, his heart stopped. "Nothing. I'm fine," you bite out, clearly holding back. He stood his ground, "You know you've never been able to lie to me, come on tell me what's wrong." He pleaded, feeling distressed at your change in attitude.
"Nothing is wrong, just let me through already," you tried pushing past him, but his arm shot out between you and the doorway. "No. Not until we talk. Not until you tells me what's going on." He tried to get you to look at him, but your eyes were on everything but him.
"Bucky—" He cut you off by saying your name in a way that sounded somewhere between utter devotion and utter devastation. You sighed, broken and like you had something caught in your throat. "There's nothing we have to talk about, nothing important anyway."
Now that stung. Bucky would have preferred you slapping him across the face instead.
"What? So did last night mean nothing to you?" Bucky didn't stop the anger that was seeping through his hurt. You looked like you didn't know what to say or did and just didn't want to, "That's not what I said. And it doesn't matter what I think of it anyway. You got what you wanted." Bucky stared at you, scoffing in offense, "I got what I wanted? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You know what I mean," you said with a finality that caused him to panic. You tried evading his arm by ducking below it. But he was faster than you and stopped you from getting past him. He was frustrated by your vagueness and confused on what you tried telling him without really telling him anything. This was a complete switch up from last night and he didn't know how to handle it.
"Look, I don't know where this is coming from, but just listen to me, sweetheart. I know I can't… I know I'm not," He ran his free hand through his hair, frustrated that he couldn't put his vulnerabilities into words, "My career's just starting. There's big opportunities ahead of me and I know I'm not guaranteed success. I'm not thinking of…I don't want to make any mistakes—" That last word, he should've never used that word. Because you didn't even let him finish when something between a cynical laugh and broken sob came out of you. "I get it. I was a mistake."
Bucky was quick in his attempt to shut that accusation down, "No! No! Absolutely not, that is not what I said," you tried to squeeze past him again, but this time he held onto your arm, "Would you please just listen to me?" You pushed at his chest, hard enough to hurt, the ire in your eyes and tone made his blood run cold. "Don't touch me." There was something close to hatred in your voice and that had him stunned, frozen in place. He was so stunned he could only watch you walk away to the guest bedroom. By the time he came to on what happened, he ran to chase after you only to have you slam the door right in his face. And no matter how hard he knocked, how long he waited, how much he pleaded into the wooden oak for you to talk to him, you never responded.
He was heartbroken beyond what you could every imagine. He couldn't understand where everything went wrong and why you were so upset. He wanted to talk to you, but he also knew he needed to give you space to cool down. He figured at some point in the day he'd be able to get you aside for a private conversation and clear things up.
He was wrong.
That small glimpse of you before the door slammed in his face was the last time he saw you for the next six whole years.
Reliving that moment in his dream was so vivid it startles him awake. Chest heaving, and face covered in sweat as the memory of that regretful morning resurfaces. Thinking back to the way you looked at him, to the way you spoke to him—it's enough to rip his heart to pieces all over again.
Even after all these years he still doesn't understand what happened back then, what had you so upset. At first he thought it was over his slip up and using that damn word, mistake. But thinking back on that moment throughout the years, he realized you had been upset before that. Something happened between falling asleep that night and him going up those stairs the next morning to confess to you that had set you off. And to this day he hasn't figured out what it was. The absence of you in his life, the hollow cavity losing you left in his chest—that's all he's really come to understand.
Bucky is surrounded by the darkness of his room, the crescent moon in the sky not providing much light to filter in through the window. His room suddenly feels stuffy, and the ache in his chest seems like it's going nowhere any time soon, so he gets up and decides to take a hot shower. Hoping maybe that can help him relax. He's in and out before he knows it, careful to not make too much noise in the hallway as to not wake his parents or his sister in case she stayed for the night. Thankfully, the bathroom's right across the hall from him, so there's not much noise he can make anyway.
By the time Bucky's back in his room he catches the screen on his phone light up. He reaches for it where it lies on his nightstand, seeing he's gotten a couple recent messages. He frowns when he looks at the time, it's just past midnight. Who could be texting him at this hour?
Mini Falcon: Heard you're back in town! You do not want to miss this.
Mini Falcon: [Attachment: 1 movie]
Bucky has an idea of what he's going to find when he opens the video from his old street racing friend. When he clicks on the video, sure enough it's Joaquin showing off a car meet he's at. There's a crowd of people already forming, showing off their cars and probably figuring out who's going to race tonight. He plays the video a few times, reminiscing on his street racing days, and a little envious at how nice some of the cars have gotten. God, there's no amount of money he wouldn't have bet to get a chance to race against some of those machines.
On one of his rewinds, he spots someone in the background that catches his eye. No, not someone, not just anyone.
It's you.
Bucky's jaw drop comically, pausing the video and hating how pixelated it looks when he zooms in, but even through the blurriness he swears that's you. An older you for sure, but it's still you nonetheless. He's recognize you anywhere. You're laughing with a brunette and a blonde, he thinks maybe they're you're friends.
But what the hell are you doing there? Since when are you involved in the street racing scene?
Bucky's mind is working a mile a minute, but if that is you—which he sure it is—he can't miss this opportunity to see you. Especially not after finding out no one knows where you are. If he's found you, then he's taking the chance to bring you home.
Bucky texts Joaquin back asking for the location of the car meet. He's scrambling to look decent, throwing open his suitcase and putting on the first outfit he finds, a matching pair of black sweatpants and hoodie, topping it off with a jean jacket and cap for good measure.
When he looks at his phone again Joaquin's sent him the location of the car meet, and when he puts it in his phone's maps it shows it's being held at an abandoned industrial complex in the next town, over thirty minutes away. With his skills he knows he can get there in half the time, so he wastes no more in getting ready and heading out the door. Extremely grateful that his father kept up with the maintence of his first car, a modified Honda Civic, and he has something of his own to get him there.
Just as he thought, he's able to get to the meet in half the expected time. He vaguely remembers racing here once or twice, which means he also remembers how it's one of the easier spots to get caught at because of the parameters of the race. He decides to park his car a few blocks away, hidden and tucked into a parking lot, a large patch of overgrown foliage and trees obstructing the view of it to anyone passing by. He makes his way over to the car meet on foot, locating it by the booming music echoing throughout the abandoned walls of the complex.
And yet, despite the music and all the engine revving getting louder as he approaches, he can still hear Joaquin's laugh above all that.
When Joaquin spots Bucky, he excitedly waves him over to where he's resting on the hood of what Bucky assumes is his car. "Bucky, man you made it!" They greet each other with one of those hand clasping, one armed embraces that guys do. "Yeah, after seeing the video you sent I knew I couldn't miss it." Bucky responds, making Joaquin grin, "Told you," he points to the guy next to him, "This is my friend Bob. Bob this is Bucky thee legendary Bullet." The man standing next to Joaquin turns to Bucky impressed, his doe eyes wide in awe as they greet each other. Bucky shakes his head, side eyeing Joaquin as if saying 'he's exaggerating'.
"He used to win all the races back in the day, he set all the records," Joaquin adds.
Bucky was going to say something when Bob beat him to it, "All the records Blitz beat?"
"Blitz?" Bucky inquires, not remembering that name in the roster of racers he knew back when he was racing here. Joaquin nods to the car positioned in the middle of the lineup race, a gorgeous blue Nissan GT-R Bucky's sure has been tuned up like hell. "That's what they call her. She's part of Rumlow's crew."
That catches Bucky's attention, "Rumlow's got a crew now?"
Joaquin hums in confirmation, "A few years back he got into a nasty car wreck. Car went up in flames and fucked up his body. He can't race now, so he got a crew to do that and his dirty work for him."
"Dirty work?"
Joaquin shrugs, "Don't know much about it. I just know he imports illegal parts from overseas to modify his cars, but I stay out of whatever they got going on."Bucky makes a clicking noise with his tongue, feeling sorry for any unlucky bastard that got stuck working for Rumlow.
"His crew hard to beat?" Bucky can't help but ask, reminiscing on all the times he beat Rumlow in a race. If his crews anything like him, then they're probably not that good. Bob is the one who answers his question, "Nope. Blitz is the best racer he's got. When he wants a certified win he has her race." Bucky takes that information in. If at any point he wanted to relive his street racing days, then it seems Blitz is the one to beat.
The three of them chat for another while. Bucky learns that Bob races too—for a team called the Thunderbolts—although he's still pretty new at it, so there's much he has to learn. Bucky offers to teach Bob a few things while he's in town and Bob seems more than eager to learn from him. Joaquin and Bob try to catch Bucky up on all the new faces in the racing scene, but it's too many names at once for him to really take anything in. Once the race starts, Bucky excuses himself from them, pretending like he saw someone he wanted to go catch up with so he could step away.
In reality, he's going back to concentrate on what he really came for. To find you.
He weaves through the crowds of people gathered, being careful not to bump into any of the showcase vehicles. As much as his eyes want to stray to admire them, he keeps his mind focused on you. He pays close attention to every single face he passes, hope blooming and then dying in his chest when he walks past someone that looks like you. When he circles back to where he started he's distraught at the realization that he might've missed you.
He goes back to Joaquin feeling dejected and like he has to start all over again with something he never really started. Bob is no longer standing with Joaquin, and Bucky barely catches the finish of the race. As expected by what he was told, Blitz comes in first with Yelena, one of Bob's teammates he pointed out to Bucky earlier, coming in a close second. He can't remember the names of the other races and quite frankly he doesn't care. They're not why he came here.
Although, even though Bucky only got a glimpse of how the race finished and a bit of the start, he's seen enough to know that whoever is racing for Rumlow is good—really good. Blitz drives like the car she's in is an extension of her body and she knows how to get it to do exactly what she wants it to. She's got the kind of control he's only seen with a handful of drivers. Him being one of them.
He finds it impressive.
Blitz's car door opens, and there's a small part of him that's anticipating putting a face to the name. And when Blitz steps out of the car, he finds himself receiving the shock of a lifetime for the second time that night.
You are the one to step out of the car.
You are Blitz.
That means, you're the one who's part of Rumlow's crew.
Shit.
What the fuck have you gotten yourself into?
Bucky is convinced this has to be a dream, he's rubbing the hell out of his eyes in hopes that it is. But it's not. You're standing by your car with a self-satisfied smile on your face as you're handed the winnings of the race. Yelena steps out of her car and heads toward you with a giant grin, congratulating you on your win. It's clear you two are friends. You look every part of belonging here and he doesn't know what to do with that.
Bucky clears his throat, bumping Joaquin's shoulder, "Hey, is that..?" He can't even finish the sentence, but Joaquin doesn't need him to as he follows the direction Bucky is looking in. "Blitz? Yeah, that's her." Joaquin's confirmation only makes the pit in Bucky's stomach grow. "And you said she's part of Rumlow's crew?"
Joaquin nods, not understanding the weight of what Bucky is asking. "Yeah, I don't know much about what else she does for him, but she's his main racer. Any time he wants a guaranteed win he sends her." Bucky's scared to know, but he has to ask, "And when you mention that Rumlow's got some shady business going on, how shady are we talking?"
"Class B felonies dude," Joaquin says it like it's gossip and not the worst news he could've possibly given Bucky. At his silence, Joaquin gives Bucky a look over. "Are you good? Bro, you look like you're about to spill your guts—literally." Joaquin steps back a bit just in case Bucky does.
"I know her."
"Who?"
"Blitz." He says your real name after. The name he knows you by, the name he knew you by.
"Oh shit." Joaquin doesn't know what to say. Not with Bucky looking like he's seen a ghost. "Look, dude, she's friends with Yelena and Kate, they're good friends of mine and I know they're always looking out for her. I'm sure she's okay. Maybe Rumlow's only got her racing, not in his other shit." Joaquin attempts to comfort Bucky, but it doesn't seem like what he said did at all.
"Yeah, maybe…"
"Are you gonna go talk to her or just stare at her with your mouth open?" Joaquin teases, trying to lighten the mood. Bucky shuts his mouth and glares at Joaquin causing him to laugh. Bucky roles his eyes at him, Joaquin might've grown up, but he's still like that annoying little brother he remembers. He won't tell him, but Bucky is a grateful to have that unchanged connection to his old friend.
Joaquin's words might've not done much to comfort Bucky, but his teasing was enough to give Bucky the push to walk away from him and toward you. Joaquin whistles to cheer Bucky on, throwing some words his way that resemble good luck. Bucky shakes his head, wondering how crazy you're going to think he is for finding you here.
Every step closer Bucky is to you throws his nerves into high gear. You've already gotten your car and yourself away from the concrete race track. Somewhere over by the corner where a cluster of smaller buildings and a smaller group of people were in. He really doesn't know what to expect once he finally reaches you, or what he'll say, but he knows he can't leave without trying.
The moment you spot him approaching time seems to freeze, your eyes widening and your lips parting like you can't believe what your eyes are seeing. But just as fast as the shock hits your face, you mask it with indifference, but the iciness in your gaze is something he feels penetrate down to his bones.
He sees the door slamming in his face again. The look you gave him the last time he saw you, staring at him through the closing door like he had reached into your chest and snatched your heart right out of its cavity. And now? Now, you were glowering at him like you would put a bullet through his head and not bat an eye. Eyes looking at him with such a disdain it makes him feel physically ill.
When he finally reaches you, Bucky can only come up with one word, "Hey." He says lamely, quietly like there's an obstruction in his throat. You blink at him, crossing your arms as your friends at your side give him wary glances.
"You." Is all you say back, the word coming out almost like an accusation. Bucky grimaces, but he knows he deserves that so he tries to stay calm. He doesn't say anything else, but he glances at Yelena and who he guesses is Kate next to you, before his eyes find yours again, feeling a bit awkward at involving anyone else in your conversation.
You sigh, taking the hint, turning to your friends to ask them for a bit of space. The girls don't look happy about it, but they listen to you. Kate doesn't spare him another glance while Yelena makes sure to give him one hard glare, acting like she'd break his arm if you asked her to.
He really hopes you don't.
"Please, don't look at me like that," he finds himself saying, to which you barely react to. There's clearly a wall you've built between you, one he doesn't know how to lower for the first time in his life.
"Like what."
"Like I'm the last person you'd wanna see here."
"Well," you shrug like that's enough of an answer. Bucky takes a tentative step closer to you, making you tense up. Your reaction makes something break inside him. He steps back, feeling too many emotions all at once. A frustration at you running away, fear at you working for Rumlow, disheartened at the way you're acting like he's a stranger—confusion over everything that has and hasn't happened in the last six years. It all accumulates the second he has you this close again.
"What the hell are you even doing here?" He didn't mean for the question to come out as harsh as it did. "Excuse me? What the hell are you doing here?" You throw the question back at him with bit of venom in your tone. He elects to ignore it.
"Looking for you," he replies honestly. And that catches you off guard, he can see it written all over your face. "A friend invited me to come watch the race, sent me a video and everything. I saw you in the background of it and I thought I was seeing things. But I had to come see for myself only to find out that not only are you a racer, but you're racing for fucking Rumlow of all people. What the hell is that about?"
You wave him off, "It's none of your concern." He says your name like you're testing his patience. "It's not," you reiterate, rolling your eyes and leaning on the hood of your car, “It’s not even that big of a deal.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Bucky growls out with something deeper than frustration, debating on whether or not he should just drag your ass back home instead of trying to reason with you. You stare at him like you could bite his head off. "I haven't seen you in years and all of a sudden you want to show up here and act like you're looking out for me? Fuck off, Bucky," you raise your voice at him, your own anger increasing by the minute. Bucky's arms shoot out in exasperation, tired of you twisting his actions and words into something negative, "I am looking out for you! I did all my life and that care doesn't just go away because I left for some time."
"Six years," you correct him, the heaviness of all the time apart settling between you like a wound that hasn't healed. He swallows hard, letting out a shaky breath, "Doesn't matter, sweetheart. I thought about you all the damn time during those years. I cared about you then, and I care about you now."
You don't believe him, scoffing, "I'm sure you do." He doesn't know how to get through to you. Feeling as though his efforts are going nowhere. "I'm serious. I've been thinking about you all damn day since I got here—its been driving me crazy. Especially after Becca told me you two stopped being friends. What happened there?"
"It's none of your business," you're quick to say—too quick.
He says your name again, but this time in a plea, but you're done talking. "I'm serious, Bucky, fuck off. None of this is of your concern, none of this is your business. Leave me alone."
"No."
Before you can even start ripping him a new one, the music is cut off. Someone's voice can be heard yelling, warning everyone to get the hell out as the cops are on their way. Bucky doesn't hesitate, having through this same scenario many times before. You don't even see it coming, how fast he swipes the keys from your hand, rushing over to the driver's side of your car.
"Get in the car," he urges, and you're smart enough not to argue with him over this. He can tell you're biting your tongue as you get in the passenger's side of the car, not at all happy with him being the driver. Bucky turns on the ignition and speeds out of the industrial complex while others still scramble to get into their cars and do the same. He doesn't drive in the same direction as everyone else. Making a swift u-turn in the opposite direction everyone else is going. He ignores your protests directing him on which way to go and drives the car in the direction he left his. You don't know what he's doing until he ends up back in the secluded parking lot, parking right next to his car. There's no doubt you recognize it, having been in it more times than he can count. He shuts off the engine, making everything go quiet. There's only one streetlight working, the light flickering every so often making it even harder to see the cars past the foliage. If anyone were to drive by at this time of night, there's absolutely no chance you'd be seen.
The tension in the car is palpable, thick with everything left there is to say between you. Bucky's holding his breath like even his breathing could set you off at any moment.
"You can get out now," you say after a painfully long silence. "Not until we talk," Bucky sees the way the word spark that anger in you again. "I don't want to talk." Bucky shrugs, leaning back in the seat like he's got at all night to go back and forth, "That's too damn bad, 'cause I'm not leaving until we do." He pockets your keys in the chest pocket of his jacket, not giving you a chance to take them back.
"You're fucking unbelievable," you growl out, getting out of the car and slamming the door closed. You practically stomp your way to the other side, yanking the driver door open. "Get out," you grind out through gritted teeth.
"Don't want to."
"James."
You used his first name, clearly he's pushing you past your limits, and truthfully he doesn't want that. He just wants you to talk to him, that's all he wants. He wants to get to the bottom of whats going on with you in hopes he can help you in some way. So he gets out of the car, slower than you'd like him to, stepping to the side to give you enough room to look inside and notice your keys are missing.
"Barnes, give me my keys."
"Not until we talk."
"Are you serious?
"Deadly."
You let the door shut, before holding out your hand expectantly, ignoring his request. "Bucky give me back the keys, the car isn't mine. I have to take it back to Rumlow." Bucky's worry only grows at your words, "Why are you working for him? How did you get involved with him?"
"It's a long story."
"I got time."
"Well I don't."
You're at a stand still, neither of you willing to budge. But in the interest of moving things along, you're the first to break. "My ex got me into this mess alright? Now I gotta get myself out of it. It's that simple," you explain, but Bucky isn't satisfied with just that. "What mess?"
You take a deep breath before confessing, eyes lowering to the ground, "I dated Rumlow's cousin for about a year. I didn't know they were cousins back then, and I didn't know about the family business. He swiped some money from Rumlow and then disappeared. Since I was the girlfriend, Rumlow made me responsible for paying off the money my ex stole." At the revelation of your predicament, of you being taken advantage of, Bucky has to take a deep breath and reign in his anger before he takes his car over to Rumlow's and finishes off what the car wreck didn't.
"How much?" He's apprehensive to ask, but he needs to know. You shrug, "I don't know the exact amount. I just know it's in the six figures." Bucky's heart drops, blood running cold with dread, "Fuck, sweetheart," a beat passes as his head wraps around the amount of debt Rumlow's put you in, "How much do you have left to pay off?" You shrug again, "I don't know, Rumlow adds interest every time I race with one of his cars or some other bullshit reason. I don't think he's gonna let me go any time soon." His jaw clenches so tight, you'd think he's about to break a tooth.
"Let me go with you, let me talk to him," he says it not like he's asking you, but like he's letting you know in advance you're not doing this alone. You shake your head, refusing, "No, absolutely not."
"He knows me. I used to race against him all the time. Stop being so goddamn stubborn and let me help you." They weren't friends by any means, but there had always been a mutual respect between them.
"I don't want your help. I don't need your help." You deny, but Bucky isn't having any of that. "Yes you do. Look at you. You run away from home, you drop out of college, no one knows where you are, and Rumlow's got you racing and doing his dirty work." You bristle at being reminded of your situation. Like if it were the first time anyone's said it out loud and addressed it head on with you.
"And why do you give a fuck? I'm not your responsibility, Bucky," you spit out, making Bucky feel like he's back to square one with you. But this time, you've ran through the last of his patience. "Fuck, this isn't about that! I give a fuck because I care! I give a fuck because despite all these years you still mean everything to me! Because the thought of anything happening to you would actually kill me." His admission causes you to lock eyes with him and within yours he can see something is cracking, he's getting through to you.
"Shut up, and go," you whisper out the words weakly, but he shakes his head, "No. I'm not leaving you. Not again," he cups your face, brushing away a stray tear from your cheek, "I don't fully understand why you ran, although I can take a pretty good guess its got to do with that piece of shit…," a horrifying thought strikes him, "Is he threatening you?"
You tense in his hold, "Bucky drop it."
"He is, isn't he?"
Your silence is the only confirmation he needs.
A few things finally start connecting for him, "That's why your parents don't know where you are, why you barley contact them. Is he also why you and Becca stopped being friends?" The mention of Becca has you stepping out of grasp, his hands falling reluctantly to his sides, "Becca and I stopped being friends before that. So you don't have to worry about her being mixed up in this mess."
"So why did you? Is it because of us? Because of what happened between us?" He doesn't think he's ready for the answer. But he should know better by now that answers from you don't come easily.
"Nothing happened between us."
"No, don't brush it off like it meant nothing."
"Well I wouldn't be the first to do that."
There you go again being vague and cryptic—and sounding accusatory toward him when he doesn't even know what he did. "Are you saying that because of the whole mistake thing? You don't even know what I was actually going to say. You didn't even let me finish what I wanted to say back then. Not before you stormed out of my room and slammed that door in my face. Before you blocked me on everything and I couldn't even reach out to talk to you."
His grievances don't seem to move you, "Seems like you still haven't gotten the hint." Bucky doesn't know how many more of your dismissals he can take, so he decides to leave it all out in the open once and for all. "No I haven't, and I won't because I was so hopelessly in love with you and you left my room like what happened between us meant nothing to you. You left and took my heart with you. And now that I have it back I have some things I want to say to you."
His confession throws you off balance, stumbling over your own footing as you take a step back. But he's not letting you get away this time, he's saying his peace like it's the last time you two might ever speak. "That night scared the absolute shit out of me. Because it was the first time in my life I felt as alive as I do when I'm behind the wheel. The thought of you feeling the same way I did brought that out in me and I didn't know how to handle it, and that's on me."
"Bucky, please stop."
He doesn't.
"That morning, I was trying to tell you that deep down I knew I wasn't good enough for you. I was still getting my shit together, still trying to prove myself to people who didn't give a damn about me. But on the off chance that you felt the same way, I would've dropped everything for you. I would've pursued something that would've had me better off, something close to home, close to you. I would've done what I could to help you pursue your dreams and—" this time you don't cut him off with words, but with your lips crashing against his, hard and with purpose. Knocking the cap right off his head. He's taken by surprise, but when your lips press harder, insistent on not being ignored, he kiss you back. His hands landing at your waist to keep him grounded to you.
You pull away slightly out of breath, "I just wanted you to shut up," you tease, and Bucky takes in a shaky breath staring down at your lips like he wants another taste, "You wanna shut me up again?" You don't hesitate to take the invitation, kissing him again with a passion bordering on hunger. You're stumbling backwards, pulling him in as he's crashing full force into you, lips parting to let him fully in. You're making out, your back pressed against his car, as you pull sounds out from each other that echo in the night air. He takes a moment to tell you this conversation isn't over, but you quickly shush him with another kiss. The heat between you is growing quickly, and it's no surprise when you find yourselves stumbling into the backseat of his car to take things further.
The door shuts behind you with a soft click, his body hovering over yours. One of his knees slots between your legs, deliberately pressing on your core causing you to whine. You can feel the way you've soaked through your panties and tights already. He helps you take off your leather jacket and matching shorts, and he can't help himself as he tears away at your tights, making you gasp. "Bucky, what the—" He kisses you, mumbling into your lips, "I'll buy you as many new pairs as you want, sweetheart." His answer seems to quell your annoyance for now.
His hand reaches down to rub you through your panties, finding out just how soaked you are for him. He grins wolfishly into the kiss, "Fuck, baby. Didn't know fighting with me would turn you on so much." His tease is met with a slap to his bicep, which only makes him press harder along your slit making you cry out. He kisses your lips one last time, trailing featherlight kisses to cheek and jaw, all the way down to your neck where he nips at the skin. His fingers brush upwards toward your sensitive bundle of nerves to continue his ministrations there.
You only let him have his way for a few more seconds before you're pushing impatiently at his chest. He's already dazed by just a few kisses from you, so when you tell him to sit back he listens without putting up a fight. He sits back in the seat, watching you with something close to devotion as you go to straddle his lap, bracketing his thick thighs with your legs. You strip him of his jean jacket and hoodie, throwing it on the car floor somewhere, raking your nails down his chest with just enough pressure to make him bite down on his lip, looking like he's moments away from coming undone.
You start to grind on him, making a mess of his sweatpants, but he doesn't care, it feels too good to care. His cock twitches beneath you and with the way you smirk at him he knows you felt it. You're making him go crazy, drunk on you, and you're living for every second of it.
One hand snakes it's way beneath your white tee to palm at your breasts, while the other grips your hip to press you down on him harder. A deep groan leaves his chest, and it mingles with your own as you crash your lips to his again, biting down on his bottom lip hard enough to make him whine. Your hips continue their grinding motion, leaving you both breathing heavily enough to start fogging up the windows of the car. One of your hands finds the back of his head and tugs at his hair, pulling his attention long enough to slip your other hands into his sweats, giving him a teasing squeeze that his seems stars with how hard he's holding back from coming undone so embarrassingly soon.
"Oh, fuck," a deep groan rumbles with his chest when you squeeze him again, "Wait, baby, I can't. I don't got a condom on me," he grabs your wrist to stop you, "Just let me make you feel good okay? Let tonight be all about you." He tries to coax you, his hand leaving your wrist to bring the attention back to your cunt when you swat his hand away. He pouts, confused as he watches you pull your white tee off and reach into your bra to grab a condom out it.
His eyes narrow at you, "Why the hell do you have that there?"
You huff, the jealousy in his tone not getting past you, "Don't ask what you don't wanna know, Barnes."
Whether or not he wants to pry into that detail, you don't let him. Making his breath catch in his throat as you tear the condom wrapper with your teeth—an action he found incredibly hot.
He takes himself out of his sweats, squeezing the base of his cock to get himself under control. He's already leaking as you hastily roll the condom down his length. You're getting yourself into position when he stops you. Your gazes meet, a questioning look in your eyes. "You sure about this? We can stop if you're not. It's okay." He assures you, needing you to confirm you really want this. When you realize what he's asking, you smile at him. Taking his lips in a softer kiss, one that conveys how sure you are of this happening. "I'm sure, Bucky. I want this."
That's all Bucky needed to hear.
He rubs your folds through your panties a few more times before his fingers hook into the fabric of your panties and push them to the side. He helps guide himself inside you as you lower yourself down on him, inch by inch. "Baby, you're squeezing the hell outta me—fuck," he curses under his breath, urging you to take it slow. He hasn't told you, but it's been a long time since it's been anything other than his hand and him. And he feels every bit of that longing as your walls squeeze him tighter the more of him you take.
"Sweetheart, you gotta give me a minute. I can't. I don't want this to end so soon," he's pleading with you, breathing heavily as the need to thrust up into you gets harder to restrain. You cup his face, making sure he's staring right into your eyes as you lower yourself completely. His breath his hot against your mouth as he gasps, the sound turn into a moan the second you start riding him. Not giving him any time to adjust as if this were your way of getting payback for the way he pushed your buttons all night.
"Fuck, you feel so good," he grits out, guiding your hips with his hands to move you in ways that have you both moaning out for each other. Your arms wrap around his shoulders, pulling him in for a makeout that's all tongue and teeth—messy and passionate all in one. Breathing each other in like the only source of air you need can be found within each other. And that's when Bucky feels it again, his heart soaring with how right this feels, just like the first time you slept together.
"I missed you, I—" he mumbles into your lips, but when you pick up your pace, he forgets what he was going to say. You've got him pussy drunk and wrapped around your finger—right where he wants to be.
He can tell he won't last much longer at this pace, and he needs you to come before he does. His hand goes to where you're connected, pressing circles onto your clit in the way he knows you like, making you mewl. "That's it baby, you're doing so good for me, pretty girl." His other hand grips you tighter, keeping you steady as he starts fucking up into you, meeting your hips. You whine at how deep he's going, one of your hands shooting out to the fogged up glass like that'll help anchor you. He can feel how close you are, so he doubles down, fucking up into you harder and increasing the pressure on your clit. "Come on, baby, give it to me. Let go, sweetheart, I got you," he whispers affectionately and wrecked, bringing you in for another kiss that undoes you. You come hard, crying out his name, and he follows suit, coming harder than he has in years. You got him seeing stars with the way your cunt squeezes him for all he's got.
You're both panting in the aftermath, his head resting against the backseat as he tries to catch his breath. Your head drops onto his shoulder, his hand gently rubbing at your back to help you with the aftershocks of your coupling. He kisses your temple reverently, whispering soft praises and sweet nothings as you both come down from your highs. For a few minutes, the car is quiet with a tranquility Bucky wasn't sure you two would ever get to again.
Your head rises from his shoulder, moments later, a dopey smile on your face. He laughs fondly, his hand rising to stroke your cheek affectionately, "You're so beautiful." He doesn't know if it's what he says or the way he said it, but your smile no longer reaches your eyes. It makes his heart squeeze in his chest uncomfortably.
"Everything okay?" He's looking you over to make sure you're okay, fearing he might've been a little rough with you. You clear your throat, wincing, "Yeah, it's just—I'm feeling a bit sure already." His eyes widen at that and he apologizes right away, helping you gently off of him as you both wince, sensitive at the disconnection.
You start redressing yourself, confusing him, but he didn't question you. He had hoped you two could stay together a little longer in the backseat, talk a few things out and just enjoy this pocket of happiness you had granted each other. But whatever spell you two were under seemed to be broken. And faster than Bucky could process it, you were already dressed and getting out of his car. He scrambled to clean himself up with what he had at his disposal, tucking himself back in his sweats and hastily slipping on his hoodie just as he heard the engine to your car turn on.
He gets out of his car, rushing over to you and knocking on the window for you to lower it. You do, staring at him in a way that he can't read, but it makes him uneasy nonetheless.
"You're leaving already?" Bucky can't hide the disappointment in his tone. You sigh, picking at a nonexistent thread on your jacket to keep your eyes somewhere that isn't on him. "I told you I have to return the car to Rumlow, it's not mine. He's got trackers on all his cars, so I have to return it before he comes looking for it."
"I can go with—"
"No, you'd only make things worse for me, okay? It's best if you just stay out of this."
He can't accept that, leaving you to deal with this on your own. Especially after being the only one who knows exactly how much trouble you're in. "I dont know how to help you, but I want to. Maybe I can't help, but maybe I can find someone who can."
"No, Bucky, just drop it," your tone made it clear you weren't budging from this. And maybe he couldn't make you budge on this now, but later, later he could fully convince you to let him help. "Fine, I will—for now. But, there's still some stuff I want to talk about," you give him a look and he's quick to dispel your apprehension, "Not now, I know you have to go. But later I'd like to have a proper talk. About us."
Something about you changes in this moment. Bucky can almost see it in the way you straighten up in the driver's seat, in the way your eyes glaze over with something deeply broken crawling it's way to the surface. Something meant to hurt him just as badly as he once hurt you.
"Us? Bucky, there is no us. Tonight… you were just an itch I had to scratch. Something I had to get out of my system, so thanks for that," your voice doesn't sound like your own when you say that. It sounds distant and cold, like you're trying your best to keep yourself together. However, the way in which you said certain things rings alarms bells inside his head. He's barley able to stutter out a reply when you pull back and drive off, leaving him in the dust of the engine fumes.
Those words. He's heard them before, but not from you, no, from his own mouth. He's replayed those words time and time again in his mind for the last six years. The things he once said to Sam way back then when he stupidly was trying to deny how he felt about you. You used those exact words against him tonight. It dawns on him, horrifically, that you heard him say that back then. Your anger and frustration—the heartbreak of that morning. It came from you thinking you weren't anything, but a one night stand for him.
And now youd done the same thing to him, as if trying to make things even. Maybe you had.
Bucky slumps against his car, sliding down it until he hits the floor. Pieces of a puzzle he could never solve slowly start clicking together until he gets a better picture of what happened. He had messed everything up like he feared he would. And it wasn't something he had done, it was something he had said. He wanted to kick himself for ever saying those things. If you were still angry at him all these years later, then you must have not heard the rest of the conversation. You only heard the part that broke your heart and made you hate him all this time.
Was there ever a possibility you would forgive him?
Could you forgive him?
Bucky doesn't know the answers to those questions, but what he does know is that he won't find out unless he tries to earn it.
a/n Well my darling barbies, you now have a choice to make. If you decide to not forgive Bucky, then your story ends here. If you decide to give him a second chance, then you're in luck! A part two is already in the works. Once again, comments and reblogs are so appreciated! ♡♡♡
bucky's dreamhouse | bucky masterlist | main masterlist | purple divider by @/cursed-carmine ݁⋆⭒˚.⋆
Summary: Falling for a mysterious man has been exhilarating, until you discover his biggest secret and realize you’ve been loving the most dangerous man in the city. But can you run from a monster in his own home when his eyes and ears are everywhere?
Word Count: 22.8k
Warnings: 18+ (mdni); smut (oral f receiving—but just in the beginning so you could skip it if you want); lots and lots of panic/anxiety/paranoia (reader); moral shock; huge misunderstanding; fear of being trapped; secrecy in a relationship; discovery of hidden identity; unequal power dynamics (implicit); manipulation (perceived); weapons (guns); Bucky might be a little possessive, but we love it; references to violence and criminal activity; Bucky is soft only for you; Bucky is down bad
Author’s Note: Oh my gosh, my first fic of the year, I’m so proud!! Mob Bucky has had me in a chokehold y’all and I’m so happy I finally get to share this. It took me what feels like an eternity. There is a second part to this coming up shortly. I fully planned on packing all of it into a oneshot but it’s gotten way out of hand and I don’t think tumblr would even let me get it out in one go. I also didn’t want to cut anything down because I already spent so much time trying to get everything the way I wanted it, and removing parts would’ve sent me right back into editing hell, so here we are. The second part is already in progress and should be up in a few days once I finish it properly. I hope you enjoy! ♡
Masterlist | part two
You surely are about to taste your own blood on your tongue any second now if you keep biting your lip so hard. But all you do is tighten your grip on those messy, dark hair your fingers are knotted into, and you can’t fight the reflex to shift your hips away an inch so that the embarrassing sob that is growing in your throat won’t make it out.
Though you should have known that that would make him stop. His mouth pauses against your clit, and you squeeze your eyes shut.
His hands remain firmly at your thighs, thumbs soothing those slow and drowsy circles against your skin. But his eyes lift to yours, the usual bright blue of them gone dark and concentrated in the dimness of his bedroom. His gaze is fierce enough to make your breath hitch, but melted into its depths is that softness you know is there just for you.
With his gaze still on yours, he begins to kiss a languid path up your stomach, pausing just beneath your ribs and letting his eyes flutter when worshiping your breasts with his skilled tongue. Your mind and soul are soaring up to his high ceilings.
Your teeth are imprinted upon your bottom lip, and you hope you can continue keeping your breathing as even as possible, though you’re not managing all that well.
His hands move slowly across the skin of your hips, pinning you to the mattress. He doesn’t use all his strength but enough for you to feel stuck in his hold.
He crawls further up your body with that deliberate drag that leaves you shivering and panting. He hovers over you and his bare chest brushes your heaving breasts.
His face is now inches from yours, his stubble grazing your cheek, smelling like vanilla and something like cardamom, and you breathe it in automatically. His pupils are blown as they sear into yours.
“Stop that,” he orders, though his voice is a warm whisper. He reaches up, his thumb catching your bottom lip and tugging it out from between your teeth. He soothes the imprint. “Don't you hide those pretty sounds from me.”
“Bucky, the guards,” you breathe out, your voice trembling, still weak from the way he used his tongue on you. Your face burns. The room feels enormous again, full of listening walls. “Your people. They will hear. They will think—”
Something flits across his expression. It seems to be something proud, even possessive. You could say it looks dangerous, but being the person that you are, and considering the sweet albeit intense person that he is, it turns you the hell on and makes you sigh.
“I don't care what they think. I want them to know.” He leans down, his lips hovering over yours, his breath hot and smelling of you. “I want every man on my payroll to hear the way you sound when I’m the only thing on your mind. I want them to hear who I’m answering to tonight. And every other night from now on.”
With a stunned shake of your head, you stare up at him, a huff of embarrassment trying to bubble up and fall out of your mouth but it fails because his mouth is on yours, kissing you aggressively before he dives back down, not waiting for you to argue. You’re entirely overwhelmed, but damn, not in a bad way at all.
His hands lock you into place, and the way he’s eating you out has you flying straight to heaven with a one-way ticket. He’s being greedy. He’s using his tongue with a blunt, feverish sort of worship that makes your head hit his pillow with a thud.
He’s a businessman, that’s what he told you. But as his mouth works over you with all that bottled-up intensity he carries around all day, you feel the latent power he usually keeps veiled behind a tie. He’s a man who takes what he wants, and right now, what he wants is to hear you break, and you might actually, because god is he good, so incredibly good, you could definitely get used to it. Maybe you already are, but who’s to blame you for it.
The first real moan tears out of you, and you cringe internally at how loud and breathy it sounds, the way it vibrates in the cavernous room, landing in the farthest corners of the high ceilings.
Bucky grunts against you, and it sounds so purely satisfied, it even seems to rumble within your own body. You gasp, trying to suppress another moan, and he only presses harder, licking and sucking and slurping, and it makes you feel like you’re the only meal on his plate.
His thumbs dent the soft give of your hips to make sure you’re pinned the way he wants you, the way he has the best access to all of you. It’s dizzying, it makes your gut lurch in the best possible way, and you feel like a queen and a ruin all at once. He’s gentle, yeah, but it seems to be the gentle kind you would use on a porcelain heirloom right before testing its breaking point.
Your hands don’t know what to do with themselves. Gripping the sheets or pillows, touching yourself—it all doesn’t feel like enough, so you go back to sliding your fingers into his hair and basically watch them disappear in it. You feel powerful and helpless, and oh god you should really keep those noises down or you won’t be able to look at his people anymore.
He is a mountain of a man, intimidating in ways you don’t understand yet, full of secrets; and yet here he is, kneeling for you and eating you out as if that’s all he’s been waiting for his whole life.
Damn, you’re a lucky girl.
He is drinking you in, his mouth molding to you with a suction that feels like he’s trying to draw your very soul to the surface.
It feels as though each individual bristle of his stubble is caressing your inner thigh, and it's abrasive and burning but also so damn good. It makes the gliding heat of his tongue feel so soft and vivid, and it pulls the tension right out of your bones.
He tracks you through his lashes, and you’re careful not to meet his eyes or that dark gaze of his would surely make you come already. But he doesn’t stop documenting you and the way you react to him. He thrives on it, so very much that it doesn’t seem to embarrass him in the slightest.
Then he dives past your entrance, his tongue finding that soft, sharp intake of your breath. And your spine bows upward out of pure blinding pleasure. The sound that leaves you is startled, too loud for your liking and so you try to clamp your hand over your lips.
He catches your wrist.
He’s not harsh with it, but he brings your hand down to the mattress and pins it there decisively. His fingers lace through yours.
“What’d I say,” he warns, voice low, husky.
You swallow, your eyes are fluttering. “Bucky—”
“Make the noise,” he whispers as he kisses along your inner thigh, eyes on you. “All of it.”
His free hand slowly wanders upward and it almost feels possessive how he ascends your heated skin. You glimpse that little hint of something feral, something prehistoric in the trail of his eyes. You’ve seen it before, and as always, it pulls you under completely. His ferocity isn’t some thrashing kind of wild, honestly, he seems perfectly comfortable with his position, as though he’s already done the math but there’s no clear solution and he just has to keep calculating. Has to keep going.
He lunges back and buries his face in your heat, his tongue flat and broad, applying a rhythmic pressure that whites out your vision and has you moaning without thought. It’s thorough and hungry, his mouth drawing you in eagerly, and it feels like he’s trying to pull the very center of you into his throat.
“Bucky—,” you gasp, your fingers tightly clamping around his, knuckles white.
He growls, and it rattles his entire chest, it vibrates against your sensitive skin. He uses his teeth—just a graze, a tiny, sharp nip that sends a scalding current straight to your core. Your hips jerk reflexively, his hands are pinning you open, and you are forced to take every unsparing lap of his tongue.
He shifts his weight, his nose dragging through your wetness as he focuses his attention on the very top of your nub. He works his tongue in a cadence so constant it sends the pressure straight to the back of your skull until the room dissolves behind your eyelids. It feels almost like a breaking point, but hell, you would throw yourself out of those high windows if he were to stop now.
He’s fast and skilled and you’re made to take it.
“Open up,” he commands against your skin, his voice muffled and wet although you couldn’t possible open up more for him.
There is no more warning before he fills you with two fingers, sliding them deep inside you and stretching you while his thumb maintains that dizzying pressure, and the friction burns a hole through your focus. The two sensations fight for room in your head, effectively demolishing whatever was left of your pride and it makes you let out the highest moan. You’re straining upward, seeking the release he’s dangling just out of reach.
He looks up at you, his face flushed, his breathing ragged against your thigh. A stray, damp shimmer glistens on the curve of his lower lip, and he licks it clean. You watch mesmerized and utterly overdrawn. His gaze is stripped of any pretense, it’s dark and appeased and entirely fixed on the way your face is breaking.
"That's it," he coos, watching your chest heave. "Scream for me, sweetheart. I'm not stopping until you do."
He dives back in, his tongue swirling deep inside you before curling back to hook against your clit, and suddenly there is no perspective on anything anymore, and the floors are walls and the walls are floors, and—
And then his phone begins vibrating against the mahogany nightstand. It’s a sharp and intrusive sound and it’s stripping the air of its heat.
Bucky doesn’t seem to care, though. He doesn’t so much as glance over at it. His gaze stays welded to yours, his pupils taking up the beautiful blue. His thumb continues trailing your heat, collecting your slick, and he turns to watch in amazement, as he licks a long stripe up your center, making you choke on your spit.
The vibration of his phone still ringing grates against the wood, loud enough to feel like a physical itch.
Bucky is a man who has built an empire on timing, yet he seems perfectly content to let the world outside the bedroom door spontaneously combust.
The phone dies.
He keeps sucking, you keep moaning.
Then, it begins again, more insistent this time. His phone is pulsing. It seems urgent.
You feel his jaw tighten against you. Feel the shift you’ve come to recognize but never quite know what to do with. The air around him thickens by a single degree. The temperature of him changes, not in heat but in authority. Somewhere beyond these walls, the world is knocking its head against his patience.
“Bucky,” you breathe, the word leaning on the dryness in your throat. Your chest is still heaving, your skin flushed a beautiful pink. You softly pull at his hair to make him look at you, a weak gesture that feels like trying to move a mountain. “You should get that.”
His eyes meet yours. There are galaxies in them and something darker orbiting behind them. He leans in and presses a slow, devastating kiss to the inside of your thigh, all calm and relaxed while the phone continues vibrating angrily.
“It can wait,” he decides, voice an octave lower and threaded with promise as he trails a line of punishingly soft kisses along your skin.
Another buzz, the sound now an impatient thrum that seems to vibrate the very legs of the bed. It feels like a summons, a reminder of the business that pays for the guards and the maids and the high ceilings.
He exhales through his nose and lets out a rumble of annoyance. His thumb strokes a calming line along your hip, as if reassuring you that his irritation belongs elsewhere. He looks like some wild animal being interrupted mid-meal.
“Bucky—,” you start, carefully, your hand sliding to cup his face, feeling the heat of his skin, but he clicks his tongue to interrupt you.
“My girl deserves to get off first,” he hums, not letting his lips off your skin, his stubble a deliberate, intoxicating scrape against your thigh.
And when his tongue drives home, flat and strong against that hyper-sensitized knot of nerves, it doesn’t take long for that jolting pleasure to cloud your vision and bleach the dark corners of his bedroom into a searing, blinding white.
Your spine arches and snaps and leaves you suspended between the silk sheets and the cold air, held down only by his weight.
The embarrassing sob you were trying to hide earlier finally tears free, but it isn’t a sob anymore. It’s a melodic wail that echoes off the shadows-drenched ceiling. It climbs high and rings out with a clarity that makes the idea of guards and business feel like a fever dream from another life.
Your body is trying to crush his fingers in a desperate pulse that feels like a heart beating where it shouldn't.
And Bucky drinks it all in. He keeps his head down, jaw locked against you, refusing to let the moment end. That rough graze of his stubble is brutal but it keeps you somewhat in the room. He is taking the time with the mess he made, leaning into the way you are trembling, his mouth ensuring that every last bit of your control is gone.
By the time your vision starts to clear at the edges, and the room starts to solidify back into reality, you feel hollowed out, as if he’d reached inside and pulled the very soul of you to the surface. You slump into the mattress, your limbs too heavy to even twitch, your lungs burning with the effort of remembering how to breathe.
When you begin to squirm in his hold, Bucky finally pulls back, his expression bluntly victorious. He is breathing hard, his lips stained, his eyes trained on the way your ribs are still hitching with those dying tremors. His hand tightens at your hip.
Then he rises over you in one fast movement, bracing himself above you with his weight carefully balanced. You don’t need any more physical proof that he wants you, considering how hard and ready you can feel him against your leg, with his control barely in check; and it makes your lungs seize up.
Wordlessly, he leans down to pull you into a slow kiss that goes so deep, your thoughts evaporate and your fingers tangle in his hair. He groans against your lips, breathing your name. You feel him twitch against you as he lets his hand slide back between your bodies—when the door rattles with a knock.
Bucky stills with his forehead on yours, eyes still closed, jaw a block of ice. “Boss?” a slightly hesitant voice comes through the door.
His nose presses into the crook of your neck. For a long second, he just breathes you in, a deep, possessive inhalation as if he is trying to pull in all of your scent to survive the coming interruption.
With a low curse that is more a growl than a word, he rolls onto his side and promptly pulls you with him, tucking you into his chest. His body angles slightly toward the door, building an instinctive shield. His arms remain draped over you, his left hand splayed protectively across your back.
“What,” he calls, voice suddenly stripped of warmth. There is a pause on the other side.
“Sorry, boss,” The voice is male. Sounding even more hesitant now. And definitely embarrassed. “But, uh— it’s important. You are needed.”
You want to let out a heavy sigh. But you’ve seen this coming, really.
Bucky closes his eyes briefly and there is something pinched around them. He’s not usually a short-tempered man, at least not with you, but right now he looks ready to snap at the door.
“I’m busy,” he replies flatly, and you believe his voice is only calm for your sake.
Another pause. The poor man outside is probably staring at the door waiting for it to shoot him.
“It’s Sam,” he explains carefully, seemingly afraid to say too much.
You know Sam. Or, you have heard Bucky mention Sam. Sam, the colleague. The one your boyfriend refers to with a mix of irritation and reluctant brotherhood. A pain in the ass, he told you with a half-smile. But loyal. Does good work. One of the few men he trusts to argue with him and live. You had laughed at the way he said it so seriously. He hadn't really laughed with you, but he kissed you stupid afterwards and so you no longer thought of it.
Bucky gives a long exhale.
“Give me five.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hurried footsteps retreat down the corridor.
And Bucky doesn’t make a single attempt to leave your side. He just peppers your neck with tiny kisses.
You try to turn to his face. “Bucky, you should go.”
His eyes meet yours, and the stoicism buckles immediately. Back is the softness.
“You come first,” he hums, and his thumb brushes your cheek. There is something apologetic in the gesture, though he hasn’t done anything wrong.
You smile faintly and let a slow pout form on your lips. “I don’t want to hold you back from work.”
“You’re not,” he reassures you softly, leaning down to kiss you with a lack of the urgency he should probably be feeling right now.
But then he’s shifting away, sitting up on the edge of the bed, and the loss of his heat is a stinging chill. The chandelier light spills over his naked back, over the breadth of his shoulders. Your eyes glide down the tiny pink scars on his left shoulder with a sinking feeling in your stomach—those scars are another mystery he hasn’t let you into yet. But all you want to do is kiss them and hope to make it better, even if just a little.
You watch the way he runs a hand through his hair, reassembling himself piece by piece. By the time he stands, he has edges. He always seems different when he’s no longer touching you.
He pulls on a pair of dark trousers and doesn’t bother with a shirt. The phone is in his hand now. He checks the screen, jaw grinding briefly before he glances back at you. And the hardness that stepped into his eyes softens again, dissolving the moment they meet your face. It’s almost ridiculous, how quickly it happens. Like watching a knife remember it was once a piece of silver meant for candlelight.
You’re still half-sunk into the bed, hair falling around your shoulders, limbs loose, and sheets wound around your naked body. Around you, it smells of cedar, expensive soap, and Bucky himself, which is somehow warmer than both.
“Stay here,” he says gently. “I’ll handle it.”
Handle it.
The words mean spreadsheets and contracts in your mind. Annoying colleagues. Late- night negotiations.
He walks back to his bed to press a tender kiss to your forehead.
You push yourself up slightly on your elbows, the blanket sliding down your side. And you definitely see the way his gaze drifts for an appreciative and unashamed moment before it returns to your eyes. There is a small smile tugging at his mouth, and it’s the one you always get to see when you’re the only audience.
“Make yourself at home while I’m gone, yeah?” he whispers, nodding toward the massive wardrobe along the far wall, keeping his attention on you. “If you get cold, grab a shirt of mine. Top shelf on the left.”
You smile at him, nodding softly.
His eyes move over you slowly, and there is something warmly adoring in them that makes your chest tighten in a strange, bright way. He reaches out to brush his fingers along your jaw. The touch is thorough, absentmindedly tender, soothing out something only he can see.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he adds, voice rougher now. Reluctant. “Didn’t plan on having to step out. Told Sam he better handle his own ass today. Should’ve known better, though.”
“You’re the boss, Bucky,” you ease lightly. “I assume dramatic interruptions are part of the brand.”
His mouth curves.
“Unfortunately.”
He kisses your forehead once more, lingering long enough to make your lashes flutter.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he murmurs sweetly. “Soon as I’m done with this.” His thumb traces your cheek. “I’m coming right back. Gonna give you my full attention.” His eyes darken slightly, voice dipping just enough to send a warm shiver through you. “Cuddle you properly. Maybe take things a little further.”
Your stomach does a small, excited flip. “Maybe?”you tease, leaning into his touch.
He presses his smirk against yours. “Definitely.”
With that, he pulls back and straightens, that sovereign steel slipping back over him piece by piece. It’s almost visible, the way he steps into whatever role the rest of his world knows him for. The man who answers phones about Sam and things that sound suspiciously more complicated than spreadsheets.
At the door, he glances back once more. Same softness, just for you. “Lock it behind me, doll.”
The door opens. His phone lifts to his ear.
His voice changes instantly as he steps into the hallway.
“Get Wilson on the line,” he demands, tone clipped. “Now.” And then the door shuts.
You’re left in the echo of him and his scent in the sheets, his warmth still imprinted on your skin.
You don’t get up immediately to lock the door. He can get just a little too protective sometimes, so you don’t deem it necessary to lock the door when he’s just out taking a call. And you’re sure his guards would be in much worse trouble if they were to enter and see you nakedly spread out in his bed.
So you flop back into the mattress—that certainly was expensive too, due to the way it feels—and stare at the ceiling for a moment.
Then you laugh, incredulously. A quiet little wheeze of disbelief escaping into the big room.
Because really. What on earth.
You roll onto your side, pulling the blanket with you, and glance around the bedroom again like maybe you hallucinated the last two hours. Or the last two months.
The place is obscene.
And not in a tacky-rich, or gold-fountain rich kind of way. This is the quiet kind of wealth. Everything is polished wood and deep colors and furniture that probably has a historical backstory longer than your résumé.
There’s a fireplace bigger than your entire first apartment. A chandelier that looks like it was handcrafted by depressed angels.
And somewhere downstairs, there are actual maids.
Maids.
And guards.
Actual human beings whose job description probably includes phrases like protect the property and stand menacingly near large gates.
Meanwhile, you used to eat instant noodles on a couch that leaned slightly to the left like it had given up on life.
And somehow—how the fuck—you have ended up in the bed of a man who owns more suits than you own pairs of socks. A man who is tall and broad and so absurdly handsome, who steps into those razor-sharp tailored suits as though they were invented solely for him. Who wears that self-confident authority in his voice that makes the people around him straighten without realizing why.
And yet, he was on his knees for you just moments ago.
The thought sends heat creeping up your neck again. But in a giddy way.
You bury your face briefly into the pillow with a muffled groan. Because honestly, how did you pull that.
A man like Bucky should logically be dating a diplomat. Or a CEO. Or some terrifyingly poised woman who drinks champagne for breakfast and owns fifteen languages.
Instead, he found you.
You.
Who once tripped over a grocery store display and apologized to the oranges. And yet he looks at you like you hung the moon with questionable hardware.
You grin into the pillow.
Also—objectively speaking—the man is incredible in bed. Like, it’s crazy.
Biting your lip and staring up at the ceiling, you wonder if the chandelier is as baffled by your luck as you are. It’s like winning the lottery without buying a ticket, and you’re silently pleading with the laws of probability to stay bent in your favor just a little while longer; at least until he realizes you’re a mere mortal and not the goddess he’s treating you as.
It’s weird that a man like him noticed you. Weird that he’s so sharp with the world but so gentle with you. Weird that he lives in this fortress of wealth and power and still tells you to steal his shirts if you’re getting cold.
Your eyes drift toward the wardrobe.
Top shelf on the left, he said.
You imagine one of his massive shirts swallowing you as a whole, and snort softly.
Yeah.
You definitely pulled a mob-boss-looking, suit-wearing, ridiculously attentive gentleman who apparently worships the ground you lie naked on.
Weird. Very weird. But you’re not complaining. You’re just mentally haggling with the universe, offering to never ask for another favor again if it just promises not to reclaim its prize or realize he’s a solid ten and you’re way out of his league.
He told you he runs a company.
You imagine glass walls and long tables and men in suits who nod too quickly while he stands in front of them all in his suit, looking all delicious and hot. You imagine paperwork, meetings, a name etched into metal on an office door. He never corrects you. He only smiles in that small way of his—enigmatic, a little asymmetrical, a little careful, as if the smile is something he built from spare parts and polished until it gleamed.
You’ve been dating for a short time. And considering the mystery he surrounds himself with, you guess it’s going to take a while until you truly get to know him. Until he truly starts telling you how his day has been and what he has been up to—and what taking a call means in his business.
But he kisses as though he’s been starving in a snowstorm. As though warmth is an endangered species and your mouth is the last sanctuary. His hands are large and soothing, and they never wander without purpose. He touches and handles you like the first blossom of a century-plant, something that has spent a hundred years preparing to bloom for a single day. And he looks at you as if you are that miracle. As if you are the only soft thing in a life built of stone.
And so, you tell yourself, you can wait for him to be ready to talk.
You don’t know what he does after midnight. You only know he sometimes steps onto the balcony to take calls. His voice changes there. It drops. He doesn’t smooth over his words and instead lets the corners stay pointy. You just never catch his words. The only thing you can do is admire the way the city lights flicker behind him like they’re afraid of him. Or in awe.
And when he comes back inside, he presses his forehead to yours as if he’s returning from war.
Contemplating, you lie there for a moment longer, staring at the ceiling. Then you sit up.
It’s not cold, the room is perfectly climate-controlled in that rich-people way where seasons are merely decorative suggestions outside the window; but you suddenly want one of his shirts.
Not for warmth, but for him, for the smell of him, for the proof that this is all actually happening and you are actually here with him somewhere out there in this huge mansion, waiting to get his mouth back on you. For the possibility that his detergent—whatever luxury forest-scented nonsense it probably is—might trick your brain into thinking he’s still right there.
You glance toward the wardrobe.
It’s enormous, who would have guessed. Cathedral enormous. Dark wood doors that probably cost more than your childhood bedroom set. It suggests that Bucky owns multiple versions of the same devastatingly expensive suit.
You slide out of bed and pad across the carpet, which is so soft it feels apologetic for touching your feet. Putting on your underwear for comfort, you make your way over to his wardrobe. The doors open without making a single sound.
You step inside and it feels like even the air is filtered for perfection. It’s a humbling difference to your own apartment, where the dresser functions less like furniture and more like a high-stakes game of Tetris, with your favorite sweaters perpetually losing the battle against a jammed bottom drawer, and where finding a matching pair of socks requires the luck of a seasoned treasure hunter.
There are rows of shirts, jackets, trousers. Everything spaced just enough apart to breathe. Everything immaculate. A faint scent of sandalwood and something clean and expensive drifts forward to greet you.
You tilt your head up.
The shirt shelf is ambitious.
You stand on your toes but you don’t reach anything. You reach higher, basically for nothing. Your fingers waggle uselessly in the air, far away from touching anything.
You sigh.
Because obviously, the man built like a six-foot-something war monument thinks a shelf near the ceiling is perfectly reasonable.
You walk out of the wardrobe and glance back toward the bed. Then toward the chair near the window.
His jacket is draped there. It looks like it belongs at the head of a mahogany table, brokering peace or declaring war with a single sharp lapel. And in between there’s the shirt he’s tossed aside as soon as you both entered his room, with an untidiness that feels like a glitch in his otherwise perfect Matrix.
It’s the shirt he didn’t bother to put back on when leaving you here. You grin.
Well.
That works too. Perfectly, even.
You wander over, the carpet not letting any sound free. The chair sits near the tall windows, moonlight cascading across the floor in long silver rectangles. It looks graceful somehow. His jacket catches the light along its seams, and you shiver at the thought of how elegant and powerful it makes him look.
You reach for it, intending to lift it aside and claim the bunched shirt.
But the moment you grab the jacket, something feels off. It’s heavy. Not normal-jacket heavy. Weighted. You frown faintly, adjusting your grip. You pick it up fully, wanting to fold it neatly, when something slips out of it.
There’s a short, dense thud against the floor. It makes you freeze.
The object lands on the dark carpet inches from your toe; a short, metallic punctuation mark in the silence. It drinks in the chandelier’s glow and spits it back out with a cold, silver arrogance. It ignites an unmistakable shimmer that makes the air in the room feel ten degrees colder.
Your brain takes a second to translate the shape.
It’s a gun.
You stare at it.
The word sits adamantly on the floor of your mind and turns the room into a crime scene before anything has even happened. It’s a sharp fracture in the timeline—there is the version of you from five seconds ago, and the version of you staring at a hunk of lethal metal.
This thing is real. Very real. Not movie-real. Not plastic-prop-real. More like heavy-metal-object-that-could-alter-the-entire-direction-of-a Tuesday-real.
Your knees grow weak and you crouch down so very slowly. Who knows, maybe sudden movements can already trigger it. You’ve never seen a real gun. You never expected you would, not like this, at least. This feels pretty surreal.
The jacket still hangs half off the chair behind you. The shirt you wanted is crumpled innocently beneath it, but you’re not grabbing it.
Your attention remains on the gun. You don’t touch it.
It’s not like your heart is racing noticeably, but there is a new tightness in your chest and it’s making you feel as though your thoughts all have quietly stood up at once.
Because. Right. Of course.
You know Bucky runs a company.
You know he’s wealthy enough to own a mansion that probably requires a map and a tour guide.
You know he has guards. Actual guards. You knew all that.
But with this gun sitting there on the carpet, it feels like looking through a new lens that snaps the blurry facts you know of this man into a slightly different focus.
If it’s frightening, you’re not sure, but it’s definitely clarifying.
You sit back on your heels for a moment, staring at it. He carried this in his jacket pocket. Casually. Just around. Like a wallet. Or keys.
Your mind tries to rewind through the past weeks. The way he watches exits. The midnight phone calls. The men who seem oddly respectful around him. The commanding note in his voice when he tells someone to do something.
You bite your lip, a hectic internal editor trying to bridge the gap between the little you know about the man and the metal you’ve found. You tell yourself not to panic, because panicking won’t give you any answers. And there’s no need to panic, because he’s just a man with power, a man who’s a boss and bosses tend to have people who don’t like them.
That’s no reason to use a gun on anyone, but it’s probably just a formality. A piece of insurance stored away like a fire extinguisher you hope to never use. Maybe it’s not meant for violence at all, just for peace of mind.
He’s protective. You’ve seen and felt it. Just last week, he was absolutely livid, after one of his guards stepped out of line with one of his maids, who’s this sweet old woman who had been with his family since his father’s time. He was in such a blind tailspin over it, and your soothing touch was the only thing that was able to pull him back to earth.
He would build a wall around everyone he cares about just to keep the wind from blowing too hard. Perhaps this gun is just part of that wall, a safety he keeps close so he never has to feel helpless. It doesn't have to mean he’s dangerous. It just means he’s prepared. It’s a precaution, a tool, a just in case that will likely collect dust until the end of time.
You try to settle the thought, but it feels like trying to pin a map against your chest in a storm; the harder you flatten your palms against the paper, the more wind tunnels through the gaps, ballooning the center and snatching the corners from your grip. If you manage to squash one section still, the air pockets behind the rest, turning the whole thing into a thrashing thing that fights to fold itself back up or fly away entirely. No matter what you do, no matter how much you lean into it, the wind will always be a second faster. The wind will always have the upper hand, hollowing out the space between your hands and the whole truth you are trying to read.
You just have to believe that the man who touches his girl so carefully is the same man who would only ever use that steel to keep the world at bay.
Your gaze lingers on it.
You don’t know much about guns. Your knowledge is mostly assembled from movies, news articles, and the vague understanding that they belong firmly in the category of things you should probably treat with respect. And it definitely belongs to a world you’ve never really stepped into before.
But apparently, Bucky lives there.
You glance toward the door he disappeared through. This is the guy who permitted you to steal his clothes, who pressed a kiss to your forehead with the softest lips. When he looks at you, it’s with that specific focus, that startled sort of wonder that always makes you feel so over-exposed, but also exponentially adored.
Your chest softens despite yourself. Still.
You eye the gun again, and one thing has become very clear in the last thirty seconds. You might be dating a man you know less about than you thought.
And that realization sits in the room with you now, waiting for you to act on it.
But you don’t know how. You simply keep staring. The chandelier light kisses its metal edges until they gleam faintly, indifferent to the fact that your brain is currently eroding into a new shape.
You swallow, and even that sounds strange in the imposing space, like it wandered too far from home.
Leaving this thing on the floor feels wrong.
And if Bucky comes back and sees it there... You don’t know why, but the thought makes your stomach tighten.
So you reach down, only now seeing that your hands are slightly wavering. Your fingers close around the grip, and the first thing you notice is the weight. It’s heavier than it looks, solid in a way that makes your palm immediately aware that this object was designed with very serious intentions.
You lift it slowly. Nothing happens, obviously. The world doesn’t explode. The chandelier doesn’t shatter. The mansion continues breathing its wealthy breath around you.
But holding it still feels like stepping one inch deeper into a room you didn’t know existed.
You turn it slightly, meaning only to orient it so you can slide it neatly back into the inside pocket of his jacket, but you spot an engraving, small letters carved into the dark handle.
JBB
Your brow furrows. You stare at them for a moment, tracing the edges with your eyes.
The metal around the letters looks softened. Not scratched exactly, but worn in the way objects get when they’ve lived in someone’s hand for a long time. Like a favorite pen. Or a well-loved watch.
If guns can look old, this one does. It’s not antique-old, but familiar-old.
You tilt your head. JBB. You try to assemble a name around the letters. The only name you know for the man currently pacing somewhere in this mansion making serious phone calls is Bucky.
Just Bucky.
You don’t know his last name, you realize suddenly, and you don’t like that.
You know his favorite whiskey. You know the exact shape of the scar on his shoulder. You know the way he presses his nose into your hair when he tries to calm himself down.
But his last name leaves a blank space in your mind. You glance down at the gun again.
JBB.
Maybe it belongs to someone else. Someone with a J. Jake? James? John? Jacob?
Maybe it’s a family thing. Maybe it belonged to his father. Maybe it’s one of those rich-man- heirloom objects that get passed down through generations alongside cufflinks and complicated legacies.
You exhale quietly.
That explanation sounds reasonable enough that you decide to borrow it for the moment.
Very carefully, and with explicit intent, you slide the gun back into the inside pocket of his jacket. The fabric settles around it like it knows exactly where it’s needed.
You smooth the lapel automatically.
There.
No evidence.
Your fingers linger on the jacket for a second longer than you want.
It still smells like him. Clean soap. Dried tobacco. Something stronger beneath it that you can’t put a name to but always recognize immediately as Bucky.
You step back, and suddenly the room feels different. Not threatening, but it does feel larger still.
Because now your brain is busy counting the things you don’t know.
You don’t know his last name.
You don’t really know what his company does.
You don’t know why men knock on his bedroom door looking nervous.
You don’t know why he carries a gun like it’s just another accessory.
You rub your arms lightly, because now there is a faint prickle of awareness crawling along your thoughts and it is spreading throughout your body.
You’ve been dating for six weeks. Is this long enough to demand answers? To justify interrogations? Gosh, you’re not sure. You’re not sure about a lot of things right now, really. You’ve been floating through the beginning part—the sweet, dizzy, honeymoon fog where the only facts that matter are the ones you feel.
But now there’s a small string of sunlight sliding through the fog. A string of curiosity. You turn back toward the bed where your clothes lie in a small, careless pile.
Maybe you’re overthinking this.
Maybe.
Still.
You pull your shirt over your head, the fabric rustling softly in the quiet room. Your jeans follow, and then your fingers reach automatically for the necklace resting on the nightstand.
The pearls catch the light when you lift them. Bucky gave it to you two weeks ago.
It’s delicate. Real pearls, because he just can. Everything about him seems to come with an expensive quality attached.
You remember the way he looked when he gave it to you. Almost shy, which was deeply unfair considering how the man is built.
Saw it and thought of you, he’d said. Think about you all the time, he’d added.
Which had melted approximately seventy percent of your internal structure. You fasten the necklace and touch it lightly now.
Gentleman.
Ridiculously good in bed.
Mysterious.
Possibly carrying engraved guns.
You sigh.
You feel a little guilty. Because what you’re about to do is technically snooping. And snooping is not great. Your mother would absolutely deliver a lecture about boundaries if she could see you right now.
You glance around the massive room again. The desk by the window. The bookshelves. The curated neatness of everything.
You bite your lip. You’re not looking for secrets. You’re just looking for context. A clue. A name.
Something that tells you who Bucky is when he isn’t kissing your forehead and telling you to raid his closet.
Your feet move before your conscience can finish filing complaints.
Your steps make no sound as you move across the carpet, wandering deeper into the room and scanning the shelves and surfaces with a caution that can’t suppress your intrigue.
You don’t need all the answers. Just one or two. So you start with the obvious places.
Drawers.
It feels less intrusive somehow; opening something that was clearly meant to be opened. You move slowly, like a guest in a museum after hours, careful fingers, quiet breath, a mild sense that the walls might be watching.
The first drawer slides out with a wooden noise and even that sounds rich. Inside, there are watches. Several of them, lined neatly in velvet compartments. Dark metal, silver, leather straps. You don’t know brands, but you know enough to guess that each one probably costs more than your car.
You close the drawer.
The next one holds cufflinks. Rows of them. Small polished things that look important and serious and entirely uninterested in your investigation.
And it only goes on this way. You open drawer after drawer, and there is nothing strange. Nothing suspicious. Just the belongings of a very wealthy man who liked things neat.
Your shoulders loosen a little. Maybe you overreacted. Maybe the gun is just a rich man's security thing. The guards downstairs carry them too, probably. It doesn’t automatically mean anything bad.
You open another drawer.
Paperwork. Boring looking things. A passport tucked neatly inside a leather sleeve. You hesitate for half a second before closing it again.
That one definitely feels like crossing a line.
You step away from the wardrobe and wander toward the nightstand instead.
The wood gleams darkly under the chandelier.
You pull open the top drawer.
More ordinary things. Wallets. Sunglasses. A small tray of rings.
Further back in the drawer, you find a small stack of Polaroids. You fish them out, because you recognize the first picture. It’s a picture of Bucky and you from a few weeks ago. You had found an old Polaroid camera and wanted to try it out, practically levering him into the frame while he grumbled about how he wasn’t photogenic which was total bullshit in your eyes. But he isn’t even looking at the camera in the photo. He is looking at you with a fond little half-smile.
Looking at a few others, you realize they are of you. All of them. One is a shot of your back as you walk toward a sunset, another is a blurred profile of you sleeping on his shoulder.
There is a warmth prickling at the back of your neck and you feel something slacken inside your stomach as you slowly lower the photos back where they were.
Nothing about all of this screams crime lord. Your nerves ease another notch.
You almost laugh at yourself. Your brain likes to get dramatic. Bucky is archiving your relationship, he is sweet and protective and tender and just—
As you are about to pull your hand out, your fingers brush against something cold and metallic near the back of the drawer.
You pause.
It’s partially hidden beneath a folded black cloth. Just the faint glint of a chain catching the light.
Curiosity taps gently on your shoulder.
You slide the cloth aside and notice the silver chain. It’s thin and tangled loosely like it’s been dropped there without much thought.
You hook your finger under it and lift. Something heavier at the end slips free. Two small metal plates fall against each other with a quiet clink.
Dog tags.
You blink.
That’s not strange, exactly. Lots of people keep sentimental things. Maybe Bucky served in the military. That would even make him hotter, to be real. But it does feel a little hurtful that he didn’t share this information with you.
You turn the tags over idly, expecting to see a name you don’t recognize. However, though, you do recognize the name that’s neatly spelled out on the metal plate. And it has the air in your lungs turn to stone, refusing to move a single inch.
James Buchanan Barnes.
Your stomach drops in such a harsh way, there is no ending to the fall. Your internal organs are unmoored and everything about you feels dizzy and weightless. It’s like stepping down a staircase that isn’t there. You’re still gripping the metal, but the connection between your brain and your hands has been cut, and now your fingers feel distant and wooden, filled with a needling sensation you know comes right before they start to shake.
And they do shake.
A thin tremor at first, then worse, until the tags begin to chatter against each other. Each sharp nick of the steel feels so biting and loud, broadcasting the exact moment you are losing it.
Your mind flips through memory like rifling a deck of cards too fast.
News headlines.
Conversations overheard in cafés.
Podcasts about organized crime.
New York’s most notorious mob boss.
The man whose name floats through the city like a ghost story told after midnight. James Buchanan Barnes.
JBB.
Heat rushes up the back of your neck while the rest of you goes ice-cold. It feels like standing in two climates at once—your skin clammy, your spine rigid, a cold sweat blooming between your shoulder blades.
Every breath you pull in is labored and metallic, coating your lungs in a film of disbelief that makes your chest ache. You can almost hear the gears of your reality grinding to a convulsive, screeching halt, stripping the teeth right off the life you thought you were living.
Your pulse is a furious SOS tapped out against the underside of your throat; a muddled, thrumming reminder that you are standing in the epicenter of a storm you didn't even know was brewing. You feel thin, translucent, like a sketch of a person that someone could erase with a single, hard look.
Your fingers tighten around the dog tags. No.
No no no.
Your brain scrambles to reject it. Because that’s outrageous.
That man—the one people call dangerous in all kinds of languages, the one whose operations stretch across half the city, the one who apparently runs things so carefully that no one has ever managed to pin a crime on him—
That man is a myth.
A shadow.
A name in newspapers. No photos. No confirmed identity.
Just whispers.
James Buchanan Barnes.
JBB
You stare at the letters again. You recall the way his initials were engraved in the gun.
Your mind scrambles for explanations—wrong tags, coincidence, someone else with the same name—but every attempt at reason breaks apart in your hands.
Bucky. James. Bucky. James.
James Bucky Barnes.
Your eyes drift slowly across the room.
The suits.
The mansion.
The guards.
The midnight phone calls.
The seriousness.
The gun.
Your hands are shaking tremendously. JBB.
James.
Buchanan.
Barnes.
Your mind repeats it over and over again. The math is suddenly very simple.
He kissed your forehead fifteen minutes ago. He told you to steal his shirt if you get cold. He gifted you present after present because he simply could. He spoke your name as if he had ingrained it on his tongue.
He is the most dangerous man in the city.
Something uncomfortably glaring and stinging climbs up the back of your neck, and it’s making you feel watched by a predator you once mistook for a protector.
You’ve heard the stories. Everyone has. Illegal shipments. Rival gangs disappearing overnight. Entire businesses quietly changing ownership after one meeting with Barnes.
And yet there is no evidence. Never evidence. Just the name. James Buchanan Barnes. The general public doesn’t know what he looks like. There are no confirmed photographs. Just rumors.
But you know exactly what he looks like. You know the way his hair falls into his eyes when he’s tired. You know the scars on his body, know his reactions to your lips on them. You know the exact sound he makes when you laugh unexpectedly.
You are standing in the bedroom of the most notorious mob boss in New York. Wearing the pearl necklace he gave you.
Sleeping in his bed.
Dating him.
For fucks sake, he’s been inside you. You came on the most wanted dick in this city.
The walls of his seemingly huge room, so pristine and elegant, now seem to turn from a sanctuary into a beautifully curated cage.
You have been falling for the most dangerous man in the entire city and until two minutes ago, you had absolutely no idea.
Your hand moves to put the dog tags back in their place, but it’s like you’ve switched to autopilot. Your fingers operate with a sense of detachment while your mind is still a mile behind, screaming.
You lower the chain back into the velvet-lined dark with a tremble you can’t shake. You should crush it in your fist, should throw it at the ground and stomp around on it, should spit on it for what this man did—to the world, to you—but all you can do is handle it with a carefulness that is usually reserved for unexploded ordnance.
The metal hits the bottom with a tiny clink. The sound is so small, yet it feels like a heavy iron gate slamming shut between who you were five minutes ago and who you are now.
You slide the drawer shut, the wood-on-wood glide sounding like a long, slow exhale of a secret that’s finally been caught. You do it with agonizing slowness, as if by moving quietly enough, you can trick the universe into rewinding the last sixty seconds, or rather the last months so you could have avoided stumbling into his strong but deceiving arms.
And immediately, your brain begins doing what brains do best when frightened—it rewrites the past with fresh ink.
Everything changes. Everything. You look around the bedroom again. But it’s not the same room anymore. It’s not a beautiful space where you spent evenings laughing and tangled in sheets with a man who handled you like he was scared to hurt you.
Now it’s a room belonging to James Buchanan Barnes. Mob boss. Ruler of the underworld. The man people whisper about like saying his name too loudly might summon him like the devil.
Your stomach is curled into a hard stone, your fingers still numb. And suddenly every memory of the last few weeks starts recoding itself.
You remember the first gift he gave you. Not the pearls. The flowers. Three dozen white lilies delivered to your apartment door a day after your first date.
You’d laughed at the absurdity of it, calling him to tell him that this is too much, way too much, but he had smirked over the phone, so soft and unabashed, only replying that you deserve it, that you deserve way more than that.
At the time it felt romantic. But now your mind shears the memory, leaving the colors bled and the angles wrong. You turn all the memories of him over in the light until the shadows fall differently, until they take on shapes that start to build a picture.
Maybe it wasn’t romance. Maybe it was a strategy. Because that’s what men like him do, right? They buy people. They build golden cages out of small, glittering gestures.
You rub your arms slowly.
Another memory surfaces. The restaurant. The one with the insane skyline view where the waiters treated him like visiting royalty.
You’d joked about it. Do you secretly own this place?
He’d smiled that slow, mysterious smile of his and simply offered you more wine. He had looked so pleased.
Tension coils behind your ribs, but your mind keeps going.
The necklace. The pearls. One month together and he gives you something that probably cost more than your entire wardrobe.
You had protested. He’d looked almost offended. He pouted at you. He looked so adorably soft, so hopeful you would take this gift from him, that you thought it to be sweet.
Maybe a little over-the-top.
But that was just Bucky, is what you thought. A little intense. A little larger than life.
However, now the thought hatches, its spindly legs prickling against your focus.
He wasn’t spoiling you, he was buying you. Buying your affection. Buying your trust. Buying your silence.
Heat floods your face. Shame webs across your heart in a dark lace of regret. You feel so embarrassed. It spreads across your whole chest and even stains the air around you.
Because you fell for it. You idiot fell for it.
Hook, line, and embarrassingly enthusiastic sinker.
You believed the soft way he looked at you. The way his voice dropped when he said your name. The way he kissed you like he had been wandering the desert and you were the first water he’d seen in years.
You believed the way he listened to you ramble about dumb things like your coworkers, your favorite movies, the stupid podcast you liked.
You believed the way he touched you. Gentle and devoted, and it all seemed so loving.
Your throat is tight, turned into parchment, the soft tissue shrinking and hardening until it feels ready to crack. Because all that might have been a performance. A simple performance to fool you.
Of course, he would know how to act. Of course, he would know how to charm someone. Men like that survive on manipulation.
But you don’t understand why it’s you. Why you of all people? You’re not wealthy. Not powerful. Not connected.
Which somehow makes it all the more humiliating because maybe that’s exactly why. You imagine the possibilities, and each one feels worse than the last.
Maybe he needed someone clean. Someone with no ties to his world. Someone who could unknowingly hold something for him. Transport something. Sign something. Test something.
Maybe you were never a girlfriend, but a tool. A pawn. A convenient, smiling civilian. Someone harmless enough that no one would suspect anything.
Your hand flies to your mouth to stifle a sound that hasn’t even formed, but you cannot lock out your mind, and a keener thought pushes through.
What if he didn’t need you for anything practical at all? What if you were just entertainment?
A normal girl to play house with for a few weeks. A soft distraction between grating business meetings and dangerous deals.
Your eyes and cheeks burn at the thought that somewhere behind those soft eyes and tender hands, he might have been laughing at how easily you melted. How quickly you trusted him.
You feel sick. Your stomach heaves in a frantic attempt to purge the very air you breathe. It drags liquid heat up from your gut to your searing cheeks.
Your gaze drifts to the chair by the window. His jacket still hangs there. Inside it, the gun rests quietly.
Your stomach flips again.
Because suddenly it feels impossible that the man who carried that gun tonight was the same man who tucked the blanket around you earlier, who swiped his tongue against your pussy this deliciously and stopped you from hiding your reactions.
It was simply a power play, and god, are you a stupid girl.
You hear his voice in your head again. Stay here. Lock the door.
A shiver runs down your spine. Because now the words sound different. There is none of that protective and caring cadence. All you hear is a command. Containment. Showing you he is the one with the power, he is the one dealing the cards.
Oh, god. What have you gotten yourself into. This is definitely the worst thing yet.
You know you have to get the hell out of here. High-tail it. Let your panic lend wings to your feet to carry you the fuck out of the devil’s quarters.
You absolutely cannot still be in this room when he comes back. Pretending you didn’t notice the gun was one thing. Pretending you didn’t discover who he actually is, is another thing entirely.
The lie would be too large. It would sit between you like a loaded weapon much deeper and more fatal than that damned gun.
Your pulse is a vibrating scream inside your throat, your chest, your whole body, because what happens when he sees that you know?
What does a man like James Buchanan Barnes do with loose ends?
Fear and dread pin your lungs against your ribs and make the hairs on your arms stand up.
You don’t want to find out. You grab your phone from the nightstand with shaking hands. Inside your mind, your thoughts are colliding and yelling at one another, memories reshaping themselves into something darker.
He was so worshipful. So attentive. So careful with you.
And it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad.
He really is the best actor you’ve ever met.
You glance once more around the room. The bed. The wardrobe. The luxury of everything.
Then you head for the door. Because whatever this was, whatever he was, you need to be gone before James Buchanan Barnes comes back.
There is that low, now seemingly threatening rattle vibrating through the wood of the door. Somewhere down the long dark of the hallway, a mess of voices spills out—too muffled to catch the words, just a low drone. Then there’s the sound of footsteps on the marble, over and over, like a pendulum, until it gets softened by the rugs.
It’s eerie how this place just functions. No clanking, no friction. Just the invisible, midnight grinding of a house that knows exactly how to keep itself running while everyone else is dead to the world.
Bucky's house.
No—your mind corrects strictly.
James Buchanan Barnes’s house.
You inhale slowly, steadying yourself, and turn the handle.
The door gives a tiny, smug click, and you step out slowly, looking around to see nobody.
Ahead, the hallway just stretches out forever, all that dark, expensive wood shimmering under these wall lamps that just stare at you, glowing like something waiting for its turn to speak.
It’s wide enough that you expect a massive echo, but the carpet is so thick it just eats your footsteps. It’s unsettling. The whole place feels like it’s sucked in its gut, just holding its breath, waiting to see if you’ll decide to jump through the floor-to-ceiling windows to your right in your desperation to leave this place.
The door closes behind you, and even though it doesn’t really make a sound, you flinch so hard, your little jump through the window plan might be accidental.
Your heart begins to pound harder now that you’ve left the safety—no, the illusion—of the bedroom.
Because this house feels much larger and colder out here. Maybe you should have taken the gun with you. But you don’t know how to use such a thing, because you’re a normal person, and normal people don’t carry those things around like an innocent handbag.
You take a few unsure steps and it feels like you’ve stepped backstage at a theater and suddenly realized the play you were enjoying might actually be a crime scene.
You know the way to the front door.
He walked you through the mansion when you first visited, his hand resting lightly at the small of your back, guiding you through endless rooms and hallways with an easy familiarity that felt charming at the time.
But you know better and realize he was just showing you the cage. But at least you were paying attention. Every turn, every hallway he bragged about is burned into your head. That charming tour just became the only map out of here.
Two hallways down. Past the staircase. Through the long gallery with the ample paintings.
Then the front entrance.
Simple.
Except for the fact that his mansion is apparently populated by a small army.
Maids. Guards. Staff who move through the house like quiet satellites orbiting the gravity of one man.
These were all signs you simply overlooked because he’s handsome. You bite the inside of your cheek out of frustration with yourself. How can one person be so fucking blind.
You start walking.
Your footsteps are soft, but your heartbeat is anything but.
A maid appears at the far end of the corridor just as you round the corner, and everything inside you locks up.
She pauses when she sees you, instantly throwing you a smile that genuinely looks pleasant. She recognizes you. You don’t recognize her. Your stomach turns and turns until it is knotted too tight to even be able to move.
“Miss,” she starts politely. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
You force a smile that you hope doesn’t look like it’s made entirely of nerves and the urge to run down this hall, disappearing out of sight.
“Hi,” you say, keeping your voice light, a little apologetic. “Sorry— I just... I think I need some fresh air. I have a bit of a headache.”
The lie comes out smoother than you expected. Maybe panic is a good acting coach.
The maid’s expression softens immediately. She even looks a little too concerned for you for whatever reason.
“Of course,” she says sweetly, and you actually feel bad for lying to her. Does she know who she’s working for? Does she know who you are supposed to be for the man who is her boss? Maybe you could ask her. Maybe she would shoot you for it, who knows. Maybe everyone in this godforsaken building owns a gun, ready to use it. “Would you like me to call the boss—”
“No,” you interrupt quickly, then soften the urgency with a small laugh. “No, it’s fine. He’s busy with work, right? I don’t want to bother him.”
You hate how natural the sentence sounds. How easily you can say work when you now know that word hides a thousand darker things.
The maid nods, but she does seem a little hesitant. “Of course.” Thankfully, she leaves it at that.
With the wish for you to feel better soon, and an awkward thank you from your side, you continue walking.
One corridor.
Then another.
Your mind keeps racing ahead of your body, building plans like emergency scaffolding.
It all suddenly looks so terrifyingly menacing. Especially in the dark. It feels so much like a trap. The lights are down and the shadows feel like they’re actually reaching for you. There’s this dreadful, suffocating weight pressing out from the walls, like the house itself is holding a grudge. Your skin is crawling, and the air feels too thick to actually get into your lungs. It’s stale, as though it’s been sitting in a basement for a hundred years, and now the building has finally stopped pretending to be a home and turned into a giant cave with only dead ends so you will never have a way out and will end up as a rotting corpse in some forgotten corner.
The dark walls feel like they are crowding your shoulders. Those deep red carpets are laid out just a little too perfectly, too insistent on keeping you in the center of the floor. Walking down those corridors feels like being threaded through a needle.
And it’s not that the place is ever actually quiet, it’s just that every sound here is on a leash. There is the clink of glass coming from somewhere deep in the gut of the mansion. The dry, dusty thud of footsteps on rugs that are probably more worth than your life in the eyes of the mob boss. Voices that stay low and thick, never quite hitting the walls. It’s too disciplined. It’s a silence that’s been trained to keep its mouth shut.
He probably won’t notice you slinking out of his home. However, what he will definitely notice, is that you will never see him again, or answer his texts or calls. So that will be a problem.
The man owns a gun, and whatever else he can kill people with. So you can’t go home, is what you think as you descend the wide staircase. When you get out of here, you can’t flee to your apartment.
Because he knows where you live. He picked you up there. Dropped you off there. Walked you to your door like the perfect gentleman.
You almost laugh at the bitter irony.
The most dangerous man in the city knows your address. He played the perfect gentleman just to find out where and how you live.
Which means going home would be like walking back into a trap you’ve just barely escaped.
But you know just who is badass enough to help you out of this situation. Natasha.
Natasha lives across town. Natasha answers calls at ungodly hours. Natasha once helped you move apartments at two in the morning with nothing but her wry commentary and a borrowed truck.
You could stay with her. For a few days, weeks, maybe even longer. You know she won’t mind. She’s just that kind of friend.
You could figure things out from there.
Your hand tightens slightly around your phone as you reach the bottom of the stairs.
You’ll text her once you’re outside.
Not before.
Because paranoia is part of your bloodstream now, and who knows who might glance at your screen, who might casually mention later that they saw you messaging someone.
So you keep walking until the entrance hall opens before you like the lobby of a five-star hotel. It’s extensive, with vast floors and tall ceilings and capacious doors at the far end like the exit to another world, a world you want so desperately to be a part of again.
You wipe your clammy hands on your thighs and try to mentally prepare yourself for this last step.
You cross the obsidian floor toward the doors with what you hope resembles casual determination.
Not too fast. Fast looks guilty. Not too slow. Slow looks hesitant.
You aim for something in between—the walk of a woman with a mild headache and absolutely no catastrophic revelations fluttering around inside her skull.
God, everything about the place seems so much darker now. The darkness even slinks upward into the walls, which are paneled in matte-finished ebony that drinks the light before it can reach the corners. There is no glow, not the one you imagined when you first walked in here, hand in hand with a man you thought you could fall so deeply for and would be safe with. But everything now feels iterative and cold and to feel safe means to leave and never return.
The guards notice you immediately.
Two of them stand beside the colossal front doors, tall shapes in dark suits, shoulders squared in that particular way men stand when their job description includes the possibility of violence. They’ve always been polite to you before. Quietly respectful. The way staff are supposed to be with someone important to the man who owns the house. You only now know the direction this importance takes.
They both straighten slightly when you approach.
“Ma’am,” the left one says with a deep voice that gives nothing away.
You offer another careful smile, layering it with just enough exhaustion to make your earlier excuse believable.
“I’m heading out,” you say, keeping your tone breezy, like this is the most normal thing in the world to do in the middle of the night after spending hours in their boss’s bed. “I have a headache, and don’t want to interrupt Bucky while he’s working.”
Your voice nearly stumbles over the name.
Bucky.
The harmless version.
The one that belongs to the man who kissed you like you mattered. Not the one attached to James Buchanan Barnes.
The guard on the left side of the door glances at the other one. It’s subtle, but you see it. A quick trade of communication.
Then he looks back at you.
“Boss aware you’re leaving, ma’am?”
The way he uses the word boss makes bile rise up your throat. You are actually getting a headache.
You force yourself to keep smiling.
“Oh, he’s busy,” you say lightly, waving a hand as if this entire situation is mildly inconvenient but otherwise harmless. “I would feel bad for bothering him while he’s working. And I could use some fresh air and a little rest. So I thought I would just head home.”
Neither guard moves. The doors remain closed.
You swallow tightly, and it feels like there’s a stone coming down your throat along with it, which makes your limbs feel heavier.
“I will call him,” the second guard offers, already reaching toward the small device clipped at his belt.
“No,” you blurt too quickly.
Both men look at you again, and your pulse tumbles when you feel a subtle shift sliding into place, into the invisible perimeter around this house, the machinery of control that keeps things exactly where James Buchanan Barnes wants them.
Your throat feels dry. Your voice tries to find a hiding place inside the hallway of your throat. You pull yourself together as best you can. “That’s really not necessary,” you add, softer this time, trying to patch over the crack you just made in your own story. “It’s just a headache. I don’t want him to be distracted by that. You can just let him know I left once he is done.”
The first guard studies you more closely now. He doesn’t seem suspicious exactly, but he does seem cautious.
And suddenly the hallway behind you feels very long. Too long. Because if they call him, and he walks in here while you’re standing at the door trying to escape his mansion—
Your thoughts spiral into vile possibilities faster than you can control them.
What does a mob boss do to a girl like you when he realizes she has discovered his identity? Certainly no good things.
Your heart pounds so loudly, it’s a single roar all around your skull. You feel hot, so hot, you could burst into flames.
The second guard lifts the radio slightly, eyes on you. “Sir—”
“Baby?”
The voice comes from behind you and it sounds so soft. Confused.
Your insides startle into a panic so bright, you turn blind for a second.
Your entire body freezes up.
Baby.
A freezing shiver breaks loose at the base of your skull and slides all the way down to your heels.
Baby.
The word traces the line of your back, making every hair stand up.
Baby.
You know you have to react in other ways than fear to your so-called boyfriend, so you turn around slowly, trying to unpin your strained expression.
He’s standing halfway across the hall.
Except, now he looks like a stranger.
While he was gone and taking that business phone call, he had changed into one of his perfectly tailored suits. The charcoal wool is stiff and sits snugly, and it would have ignited a heated flutter in your lower belly just an hour earlier, but now it just makes him look malevolent. He looks terrifying in his elegance. So symmetrical, your lungs are wheezing out of sheer fright.
The sweat on your skin, once warm from him, has now turned into a layer of ice. You look at him and think that no, this man doesn’t love you. All you have been to him is a soft room he stepped into to wash off the smell of whatever he does in that suit.
The business he talked about isn’t spreadsheets and meetings. It’s the way the two guards behind you have gone absolutely still, like dogs waiting for a whistle.
He looks dangerous. You have never associated Bucky with direct danger, only with protecting you from danger. But this is not a boyfriend’s posture, it’s a king’s. Even that softly confused frown he is giving you doesn’t make him seem less threatening. It’s just the look of a man who owns everything he sees and knows what to do with it.
Bucky.
Except now your brain whispers the other name.
James.
Every inch of that expensive tailoring screams that he could have you erased before his morning coffee, and he wouldn’t even get a crease in his trousers.
While you were falling in love, he was just managing a distraction.
Your heart is breaking all over again.
“What are you doing down here?” His voice sounds the same as always, and yet it doesn’t.
The guards immediately straighten although he is talking to you, though you wish he wouldn’t.
“Sir,” one of them starts, but Bucky lifts a hand slightly without even looking at them, silencing whatever explanation they were about to offer.
His eyes are on you. Only you. Concern tightens his face almost immediately.
There is a cold needle threading through your nerves. You feel like a deer that has been eating out of a hunter’s hand, only just now noticing the rifle leaning against the tree.
“I—” Your voice nearly betrays you, cracking halfway through the first syllable. Act. You have to act. You drag in a breath and force your shoulders to loosen, shoving your face into something resembling mild embarrassment rather than existential terror. “I wasn’t feeling well,” you lie, carefully smoothing your tone. “I didn’t want to interrupt you. It seemed pretty important.” You look toward the door, turning your body slightly with it in a gesture of longing. “So I planned on just heading home.”
His brows only pull further together, his expression turning deeper, and it doesn’t make this better at all. “You’re the only important thing, sweetheart. You know that.” His voice is low, but how does he manage to make it sound this gentle? Even soft.
Oh god, he’s coming closer. Of course, he’s coming closer, he’s your boyfriend, pretending to be your boyfriend, pretending to be worried, because his girl allegedly has a headache and wants to leave when he promised earlier to continue pleasing her in bed and asked her to stay and lock the door behind him because he doesn’t expect her to leave in the middle of the night.
But that doesn’t make it any easier for you to handle, doesn’t make your body react less in the horrifying way that this scary man is moving toward you, and he doesn’t know you know what kind of scary he is.
You feel your body fight against itself. You want to swirl around, run, bolt, fly through the door outside into the night, never to be seen again. Or at least not by him and his people. But you can’t. You have to stay, you have to remain planted to the floor. Even taking one step back would be a fatal mistake.
And suddenly he’s right there with all his tallness and built, and he still looks warm, but so much more intimidating.
You feel your insides shrink into themselves, your heart slipping into a corner somewhere deep.
The sheer scale of him in that suit makes your stomach drop. He is not a man, he is an entire system of brutality hidden behind a charming smile and gold cufflinks.
You shiver at the fact that your boyfriend could end a life with a nod of his head, and then come home and press his face into your neck as if his hands were clean.
“You’re not feeling well?” His voice drops into a frequency that is meant to be gentle and soothing, but for you, it just sounds like the rumble of an engine. The furrow in his brow grows shadows on his forehead. His eyes shift between yours so fast and piercing, with such a concentrated focus, scanning for the source of your pain as if he could kill it for you.
His hand comes up instinctively, the same way it always does when he’s worried about you, or when he’s not. It’s just normal for him to touch you. But watching his hand move toward you this time makes your back stiffen and a ring of alarm sounds out in your skull, shrill and poignant.
His fingers brush your cheek.
Your skin crawls of its own accord, and you flinch. You force your reaction to be small, but you can’t suppress it entirely. Your brain blanks, and your heart strikes high.
His hand stills, and so does your heart as it feels like.
Bucky notices everything. You guess it comes in handy with being the most wanted crime boss in the city.
His eyes sharpen slightly, and his concern turns more piercing. He looks at his hand still hovering awkwardly, then at you. His eyes are distraught, hinting at something deeper that just broke in two. And he looks so deeply puzzled.
“Hey,” he lets out, and it sounds a little raspy. You scramble.
“I’m sorry,” you breathe quickly, forcing a small laugh that sounds thin even to your own ears. “I’m just a little dizzy, I think.”
He studies you for a long moment.
The guards are silent now and you feel them watching from behind your back.
The house feels too quiet, too attentive, too alert.
James’ hand lowers slowly, though his gaze doesn’t leave your face.
“You’re pale,” he acknowledges, his voice grainy. He sounds like he is holding his breath.
You shrug weakly. “Yeah, well. Not my best look.”
He’s not smiling, and you start sweating. How did you never notice just how scary this man looks.
He’s thinking. You can see it. Pieces moving behind that stormy gaze. Your heart hammers harder.
Please don’t see it.
Please don’t see that you know.
He exhales slowly, then reaches for your hand, and he doesn’t do it possessively, nor roughly, just tenderly closing his fingers around yours.
“Come with me,” he says quietly, and it could sound like a plea if he weren’t the man that he is.
Your skin is a furnace. You might explode. You force a shaky breath, praying he doesn’t hear the way your heart is trying to kick its way out of your ribs.
“Bucky, I really just—”
“I know,” he cuts in softly, but there is something thick and hunted in the way he talks. “Just a minute.”
He looms over you with his whole presence and those intensely fevered eyes and he sucks the oxygen clean out of your lungs.
He nods toward the hallway behind him.
“My office is right there. We’ll sit down for a second, make sure you’re okay. And if you think I’d let you go home alone with a headache you can think again, doll.”
Doll.
God, you really have been stupid. Doll.
This is not a sweet endearment. This is literal. You are a thing made of porcelain that he is scared of dropping—or since a man like him isn’t scared of anything—you’re a thing he realized he can break.
Your pulse spikes.
Office.
Private.
Closed door.
Every alarm bell in your body begins ringing at once.
In his office, the rules of the outside world—the rules where you are safe—don’t apply. It’s where the blood gets mopped up.
But the guards are watching. The exit is behind them.
They aren’t moving a muscle and stand there like gargoyles, guarding your only hope for escape.
And Bucky—James—is standing right in front of you, his thumb brushing lightly across your knuckles.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs, concern weaving through his quiet tone.
Well, you’re shaking because you can feel the callouses on his hands, the strength in his grip that suggests he could snap your wrist without his expression changing. He knows you are vibrating with nerves, but he has misdiagnosed the fever.
You force yourself to breathe. To smile. To pretend. Just like he has all these weeks. Just like he does now.
“Just the headache,” you whisper, and it’s tasting like bile.
He studies you for another long second, and for a moment you think he might see the truth. You think the mask is going to be ripped away right here in the hallway.
Then he squeezes your hand gently. “Come on, sweetheart.”
He turns you away from the door that would bring you to safety, moving his hand to the small of your back, and it is the gentlest thing in the world. But that somehow makes it so harrowing, because there is nothing rough in the gesture, nothing that could be called force by anyone watching, nothing but warmth and assurance, leading you into the heart of his house with the grace of a protector, and yet your whole body reads it like a sentence being handed down.
You are now thoroughly trapped, you realize while swallowing down the rising tide of bile. It feels like a master painter adding the final, darkening stroke to a portrait you can no longer step out of.
But there is nothing you can do. You let him steer you away from the door because what else are you supposed to do? Rip away, run, scream? That seems impossible in a house that breathes his name through every vent and doorway. A house where even the air seems employed by him.
The mansion appears to lengthen as you walk through it, as if corridors are being pulled like taffy just to spite you, just to show you how laughably far the front door already is, how absurd it was to think you could simply walk out with a polite excuse and a swallowed scream in your throat, hoping nobody heard it rattling behind your teeth, pretending you were still a girl who had a choice in where she slept tonight.
You try to pay attention. You try to mark the route the way people do in movies when they’re kidnapped or hunted or trying not to fall off the edge of the earth—left at the long console with the black granite top, right at the staggering painting in the gilded frame, straight past the alcove with the antique lamp and the white flowers that smell expensive and funereal at once.
But panic is a vandal and it is paralyzing and it comes in and smashes every useful thought with a chair.
Your heart is beating too hard, your blood too loud, your mind too busy manufacturing horrors to do something practical like remember turns. Foyer, hall, archway, staircase, another hall. No—was it staircase first? Was the office past the library, or past that room with the dark green walls?
Oh god, this is horrible. You're really starting to feel lost and this might be a catastrophic blow to your faith.
You try to pin each detail to the inside of your skull, but they slide off slick as fish, and every second spent trying to memorize the geography of this place only makes you more conscious of the fact that you are being walked farther and farther from the only exit you knew.
Why would he take you this far? The question lets sweat collect at the base of your neck. Why not the room just off the main hall? Why not one of the closer offices? Why not let you leave if you are only dizzy, only pale, only under the weather the way you claimed?
Does he suspect something? Has he already seen it, the wrongness in your face, the recoil you were too slow to hide, the way your voice came out laced too tight? And worse than that, more awful than suspicion because it drips with intention—was there always going to be a moment like this? Had he always been walking you here in one way or another, from the first date, from the first gift, from the first time he looked at you as if you were worth the chase?
Maybe this is what men like him do. Maybe he had a plan long before you ever had a clue. Maybe there has never been a single unarranged second between you, and you were just too lovesick and dazzled to notice the rails under your feet.
His hand stays at your back the entire time, broad and warm, but it makes you want to shove him away from you. When you hesitate, the pressure spikes just enough to remind you which way the door isn't. He is leading you forward and it would have felt gentle, but it doesn’t. No longer.
His thumb-strokes across your back don’t feel comforting at all and more like he is smoothing out a wrinkle in his own sleeve or the way he might polish a piece of silver he has decided to keep.
You suppress a chilling shiver he surely would have felt.
When you glance at him, because some abhorrent part of you still does, still wants to; you find concern in his face and it nearly brings you to the floor. You can’t glimpse any coldness, no strategic thinking whatsoever. At least not the kind you expected to see. His eyes aren’t narrowed and sharpened with discovery, there is no clipped impatience, no telltale crack in the mask.
He looks at you the way he has always looked at you when something seemed off, with his little frown and that determination, as if your problems are things he would like to drag outside and beat to death with his bare hands.
His gaze moves over your face with the same intimate concentration that once made your stomach warm for all the right reasons. It does not help. It makes everything worse.
Because if this is performance, then he is monstrous at it. If this is an act, he’s lived in the skin of it for a lifetime.
A lie shouldn’t feel this solid, shouldn’t have a thumb that knows exactly where your tension hides.
If he is acting, then he deserves a stage and an audience and perhaps a crown.
You can barely stand it, this collision between what you know and what he appears to be. A man can’t look at you like that and still be the most feared name in the city. Except apparently he can. Apparently, men can be two things at once. Apparently, the universe is vulgar enough to make both true.
You pass a maid coming the other way—a small, neat woman in a crisp uniform. She is carrying folded lines in her arms, and Bucky acknowledges her with nothing more than a curt nod, and she responds with a warm little smile aimed at you and the faintest dip of her head—something halfway between greeting and curtsey, so practiced it is almost invisible, but not invisible enough, not to you, not now.
It makes your breath hitch, how he doesn’t swell with importance, or doesn’t put on a show of his control.
He’s so comfortable in his power that he doesn't even need to show it off; he just steers you onward, knowing nobody will do a single thing to stop him.
And your stomach lurches so suddenly it feels as if your bones have missed a step. Because there it is. There, in one small exchange, is the whole persona of him. He is not loud or cartoony with his power, he just has it. It’s real. It doesn’t need to announce itself because everyone in its radius already knows where to bend.
The maid’s smile is kind, almost affectionate, and that somehow shames you more, because it suggests this has been obvious to everyone but you.
They all know what he is. The guards know. The staff knows. The men at the gate, the drivers, the strangers in tailored suits who always nod to him with instant stillness in their spines—they all know.
And you, meanwhile, had been floating around this house in your pretty little ignorance, accepting tea on silver trays, accepting jewelry in velvet boxes, accepting his mouth and his hands and his delicious attention as if you had simply stumbled into the arms of an intense, rich man with old-fashioned manners and a dangerous face completely by accident.
You would like to face palm yourself, but this is a bad moment.
Natasha will definitely do it for you once you get out of here and manage to escape to her apartment.
You had looked at the signs and called them charm. You had looked at vigilance and called it romance. You had looked at fear arranged into etiquette and thought that wow, he really runs this company proficiently.
The embarrassment of it blooms hot under your skin, nearly as painful as the fear. You have been blind. Worse—willingly blind. Blind not by accident but by appetite, by wanting. Love, or whatever this early ferocious thing is, has wrapped a hand-woven scarf around your eyes and led you smiling into a cathedral built from warning signs and decorated with red flags.
And the humiliating part, the part that makes you feel like you could peel yourself out of your own skin from sheer mortification, is that you had even congratulated yourself for being so unbothered by his world.
Look at you, cool girl extraordinaire, dating the beautiful, mysterious executive in his deluxe mansion, pretending not to notice the guards and the driver and the way everyone waited half a beat too long for his approval before moving.
You had thought you were being mature. Sophisticated. Unruffled. Meanwhile, you were essentially a decorative houseplant with a pulse, sitting in the sun of his attention and calling it insight. It would almost be funny if it weren’t your life currently doing a slow and terrible cartwheel off a cliff.
How could you have ever believed that a guy like him would be interested in that naive, silly girl that you are.
Honestly, if you survive this ordeal, you will end up in some corner of your small, meager apartment, bawling your eyes out, and keep living that unlucky life of yours.
He glances at you again as you walk on that burgundy red carpet deeper into the hole that is another hallway, and his hand presses a little more firmly between your shoulder blades. It’s protective rather than possessive to anyone looking in from the outside, but the gesture sends another flare of panic through you anyway.
You wonder if he can feel the fear on you, if it comes off your skin. You wonder if men like him are trained by experience to smell a lie the way dogs smell storms. You wonder whether he is leading you to comfort or containment. Every room you pass seems too opulent to be real with those chandeliers like frozen explosions, rugs plush enough to kill the sound of literally anything, the dark wood twinkling creepily under low gold light, paintings in heavy frames, looming over everything, looking down their painted noses at anyone not born into the frame.
The place no longer looks luxurious so much as fortified. You see the thickness of doors now. The depth of corridors. The strategic sightlines. The subtle placement of people. This house is not merely beautiful. It is defensible. It is a kingdom in disguise.
And you had been letting yourself be loved in it. You stupid girl had let him come way, way too close to you.
But it’s what makes every step hurt more than it should. Because despite everything, despite the gun and the initials and the name on the tags and the avalanche of terror crushing common sense into powder, there is still some small perfidious corner of you that keeps stumbling over the memory of how gentle he was, how attentive, how he watched your face as if your feelings were weather and he meant to learn every season.
You hate that part of yourself right now, and that it even exists in the first place after everything you found out about the man and what knowing him entails.
You want cleaner fear, simpler fear, fear without ache in it. But your fear is contaminated by affection. By memory. By the wrenching possibility that whatever else he is, whatever blood has dried invisibly on his hands, the softness he’s shown you may have been real. And if that is real, then the rest is not easier to understand. It is harder. Infinitely harder. It means the monster did not wear a mask. It means the monster kissed your forehead and tucked blankets around your legs and remembered how you take your coffee. But your brain can’t follow all of that.
Another turn. Another corridor. Another room you cannot catalogue fast enough.
You try again to memorize the path, because panic may be a vandal but desperation is stubborn.
The wall here is paneled more deeply. There is a bronze wolf on a pedestal. A narrow window at the end of the hall. A runner rug patterned in deep red, almost the color of old cherries, almost the color of dried blood if your mind is in the mood to be cruel, which it surely is.
Your thoughts keep darting ahead of you and slam themselves against every worst-case future they can find. If he knows you know, what does that mean? If he does not know you know, what then? Which is safer? Is there a safer version of this at all?
You imagine phones taken gently from your hand. Doors locked with apologetic clicks. Promises made in that low warm voice while your life narrows to the width of his will.
The terrible thing is that none of your imaginings need to be loud to be horrifying. A man like him does not need spectacles. He has infrastructure.
By the time he slows in front of a set of double doors farther inside the mansion than you have ever been allowed, or invited, to go; your nerves are so frayed they feel almost luminous, every sound oppressive, every movement enlarged.
He looks down at you, his face still threaded with worry, and sweeps his hand from your back to your elbow in a gesture so careful it would be beautiful in any other universe. In this one it only makes your chest tighten until breathing feels like work. He leans slightly closer, and his voice drops, intimate as a hand at your throat, though there is nothing harsh in it.
“What’re you thinking about, baby,” he asks quietly, searching your face.
Well, you’re thinking about the front door.
It’s where you left your mind.
Or maybe it was lost in his room already. Maybe it stayed with the gun on his carpet.
And the other, the more rational part of your mind, the one that told you this couldn’t have been true anyway, because you are you and he is him, lingers in every news story you ever half listened to.
You are inside the tormenting, glittering realization that you have not just fallen for a dangerous man, but for the dangerous man, and that all the softness you took as sanctuary may have only been the most exquisite blindfold ever tied.
“Nothing, Bucky,” you reply weakly, trying to ease, but your voice is shaking just that tiny bit, and judging by the uncomfortable twist of his mouth, he caught it.
You’re too lost in your stupidity that you’re hardly present when he opens his wooden office door and ushers you inside, again with the most tender movements.
The office is warmer than the hall, quieter too, and it makes goosebumps rise on your arms and the hairs stand tall at the back of your neck because this room is built to keep any sound inside and secrets fat and sleeping in the walls. Everywhere you look there is dark wood and low amber light and books lined up in stern, handsome rows as if knowledge itself has been drafted into his service.
You feel the world shrink from cathedral to chamber, from public performance to something confined, more dangerous, more indiscreet, because now there are no guards, no maids, no witnesses to help keep either of you inside your assigned role.
There is only him, only you, only that soft snick of the door as he shuts it behind him; and that small, tidy sound feels like it’s happening inside your own chest. You watch his hand leave the brass knob, and the logic in your head just gives up. There’s only a hysterical, messy scramble of thoughts, all of them howling at once and all of them useless.
He turns back to you immediately, all his attention gathering around you with that familiar chilling completeness, and before you can decide whether to stand very still or bolt like a startled animal with nowhere sensible to run, he is guiding you toward the couch near the fireplace with one hand steady at your waist and the other brushing over your arm, then your back again. He’s never forcing or gripping hard, but he’s just not letting go of you and it makes you want to jump against the wall in hopes it’ll crack and you’ll land on the other side because his touch is making you more and more nervous.
He treats you as if he thinks you might faint at any second.
It is infuriating, that gentleness. It feels like a kind of torture that’s impossible to fight because your skin has a longer memory than your head. Your body still knows him first as safety. It still recognizes the heat of his palm and the strength of him, the way he moves as though you’re the center of the room.
And now every instinct is splitting at the seams. All you want to do is run, you want him away from you, you want to be far gone from all of this, you want to scream and scream some more, but the other half of you is remembering how carefully he tucked a blanket over your legs last week when you fell asleep during a movie or the way he has checked you for bruises after literally making love to you with that distressed frown upon his face, scared he’s been too rough with you.
The collision makes you dizzy enough that, absurdly, he may not be wrong. You might actually faint. Just from the sheer vertigo of finding out that the man who kissed you so devotedly has a name the whole city says with a tremble in their voices.
“Sit down for me,” he coaxes, and his voice is low, soft, carrying none of the steel you used to hear when he dealt with his men, and that contrast nearly makes your skin crawl.
You lower yourself onto the couch because your knees are not reliable enough to argue with him. The room seems to have acquired a faint sway, because the blood in your veins feels thin and feverish, and he stays right there, close enough that his thigh nearly brushes yours before he drops into a crouch in front of you.
The sight of this dangerous man folding all that height and breadth down to your level, gaze lifted to your face with plain concern would have melted you an hour ago.
But all it does now is frighten you some more. It feels too intimate, too earnest, too much like care, and care from a man like him is no simple thing. It is not a ribbon. It is a chain in softer clothing.
You swallow hard and that alone almost makes you flinch.
His eyes move over you with increasing worry, taking inventory in little silent increments. Your face is pale, you feel the damp shine of stress at your temples, you can’t keep your fingers still in your lap, and you can’t quite tame the uneven hitch in your breath.
He reaches up and lays the back of his hand against your forehead, then your cheek, his brows knitting tighter, and his mouth presses into a serious line. “You’re sweating,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you, as if he would like to issue orders to your body until it starts behaving properly.
His thumb grazes the curve of your jaw, feather-light, and you have to stop yourself from jerking away too sharply. You have to refrain yourself from slapping his hand away.
He notices even the version of restraint. You guessed, he does. A man like him has to. A man like him would. But it does worsen your situation.
A chill spreads along the base of your neck.
His eyes sharpen, not with suspicion exactly, but with apprehension deepening into something more searching, more troubled. “Talk to me, baby,” he pleads, softer still. “Did something happen? Did I do something?”
You stare at him.
For a moment the question does not make sense, your mind too busy running in circles with sirens in its hair, but you notice the shadow in his face, the hunch, the way his gaze jumps to your mouth, your throat, your posture curled too tight, and it seems bizarre because he honestly looks as though he might dread he pushed you too far, touched you too much, misread your body, took a liberty you weren’t ready for.
The absurdity of that nearly splits your head open because earlier when he—god, when he had his criminal tongue on your pussy—he acted so attentive, he seemed genuinely careful and devastatingly patient, and yet now, knowing what you know, even that lightness now hardens into a new breed of atrocity.
Because if this is him being careful, if this is him holding himself in check, then what does rough look like in a man built the way he is, in a man whose name can make grown men go quiet? What shape does cruelty take when it belongs to someone with this much power and this little need to raise his voice?
“No,” you answer too fast, the word skidding out of you. “No, you didn’t— nothing like that.”
Well, he did do something. A lot, really. Things that would put him in a cell never to be let out.
But he didn’t do anything to you yet. Yet. He might, if you don’t get your shit together.
His shoulders loosen by a fraction, but not enough. Not nearly enough. He still looks wound up. He still looks a little perturbed.
“Are you sure?” he asks, and there is something sincere in his voice, it is disorienting. “Because, honey, you can tell me if I was too much. If I missed something. If I—” He stops, swallows, and the hand at your cheek gentles further, as if he is trying to make himself seem safer. Funny. “I need to know. Need to know if there was ever a moment when you didn’t feel good.”
Something is dipping in the air around you, and everything feels distorted. Your head is hazy and a complete maze, because how is he even doing it this well?
You pull back then, small at first, because having his hands on you for longer will surely drive you insane. You don’t shove him off, or smack his hand away, you simply move out of his palms enough to break the line of his touch, but even that has him looking at you more closely.
You gather your hands together in your lap so he won’t see them tremble and shake your head with a smile that feels stapled on, brittle and thin, and one wrong breath away from snapping in half. “I’m okay,” you say, aiming for sheepish, for embarrassed, for normal. “I just need some sleep, I think. That’s all. It’s probably stupid. I’m probably just a little exhausted and overreacting.”
He doesn’t buy it.
You can tell immediately, and you hate that you can tell, but you notice how his whole face changes in that subtle way his face does when he has decided something is amiss and he is not going to stop until he gets to the bottom of it.
He shifts closer, forearms braced loosely on his thighs, his attention absolute. “Then sleep here,” he deadpans. As if this is simply the answer to all the problems in the world. “You don’t need to go anywhere tonight. 'Specially when you’re not feeling well.”
Your stomach contracts into a hard, cold knot, and it feels like there’s a displacement in your chest. It’s the sensation of a staircase ending one step too soon and you didn’t notice so now you’re hitting air instead of floor with a heart-shaking jolt. It is jarring. It is petrifying, because it means you’re not getting out of here that easily. You might not be getting out of here at all if he continues to look at you like that.
Sleep here.
Stay here.
In his house. In his reach. In the center of the web.
Your pulse stutters so hard it hurts.
“I should go home,” you try, and even to your own ears it sounds small, unconvincing, more instinct than argument.
His frown deepens, utterly baffled by your insistence in the face of what he clearly sees as a solvable problem. “Why?” he asks quietly, and his voice sound a tad hoarse. “If you feel bad, why would I let you leave?”
Your lungs can’t seem to catch any air although it’s all around you.
Why would I let you
He didn’t say why would you leave, no he said why would I let you.
Good god, you really have been a stupid girl. The signs were all in front of you, weren’t they? They were literally speaking to you.
He’s talking in a tender tone, making his voice all soft and gentle, even soothing and so concerned, but that’s just the outside. You never paid attention to what lay underneath, hidden deep inside, because the outside was pretty and alluring enough. And maybe you are imagining it now, the gravelly implications in his tone, maybe your body’s just trying to see and hear things that aren’t there, but perhaps it truly has been there all the time and you were too wrapped in him to notice it.
You stand up quickly.
And you shouldn’t have done that because he will think what the hell you’re doing now, but your body decided and now your body is doing it.
The room sways, your vision going soft at the edges for one humiliating second, and his hands are on you—one at your elbow, one at your waist, and there is no shaking them off.
You flinch despite yourself and he stills as if you have struck him. You know he doesn’t understand your reactions, how could he.
“Hey,” he coos, his voice lowering even further, and there is definitely something thick in his voice. “Easy.”
“I’m fine,” you insist, too breathless, too papery, trying to peel his hands off you without making it look like peeling, which is impossible, because every move feels too fast or too urgent, every instinct either too frightened or too telling. “Really, Bucky, I’m just tired. I’m probably being ridiculous.”
His gaze searches yours with such intensity it feels almost physical. “You’re trying to get away from me.”
The words are quiet, and although there is no anger in them, no threat at all, it has your mouth go dry.
“No,” you answer, and it is not a good lie. “No, Bucky. Of course not. My head’s just really hurting.”
Something in him clicks into a higher gear—not a lack of trust or anything like that, but a kind of piercing, automated focus. Something in his eyes snaps into high definition. All that soft, vague concern is gone, replaced by an attention so bright and infiltrating it feels like being pinned to a board under a microscope.
Carefully, he makes you sit back down on the couch and lands right beside you. You feel the heat of him pressing into your side, though he does give you a bit of space.
His hand comes to your upper arm, stroking once, and you hate your own pulse for noticing how familiar it feels despite it having lost its appeal. “Look at me,” he presses, and it almost sounds like an order. His voice seems serious enough to make you shiver in fear.
You look at him because you have to and refusing would be louder than screaming.
His eyes are so damn blue in this weirdly dim light, clear and intent and lined with such deep worry. He’s definitely denser, his concern losing its fluff, but not its patience. There still is no trace of coldness, no roughness, nothing that is overly intimidating despite the man he is.
Just that same irksome softness, that same look like your distress is something he wants to fix with both hands, with all of himself if necessary.
It rattles you more than if he had come in hard and sharp and monstrous. A monster would be easier. A monster would let your fear stand up straight. But this man looking at you like your pain pains him is a labyrinth with no clean exits.
And it feels foreboding. It has you more on edge. It’s the way the woods go quiet right before something heavy steps out of the brush; a sudden, absolute alignment of intent.
Maybe he knows you know and now he’s waiting for the right moment to pounce. You do your best to keep your fright behind your eyes.
“You can sleep here tonight,” he offers again, gentler now, and it seems as though he believes repetition might soothe you into agreement. “I’ll stay with you. Or I won’t, if you want space. I’ll get you water, food, whatever you need. But I’m not sending you home like this.”
Not sending.
Again that wordless, soft-toned authority.
Again that sense that his care and his control are fused so tightly together they share a bloodstream.
You are running out of room inside your own face. Running out of expressions that can pass for normal. Running out of ways to keep the panic from drawing its blade.
So you do the only thing you can think of, the stupidest thing, the most desperate thing—you lean in and kiss him.
It’s short and small and only meant to reassure, to smooth over, to redirect. Your lips meet his and every cell in your body revolts.
And it’s not at all because he kisses badly, god no. Even startled, even worried, he receives you with immediate tenderness, one hand lifting to cradle your jaw, his mouth warm and careful and heartbreakingly familiar but also so, so foreign, a cold shiver seizes your back.
It is what makes nausea roll through you so suddenly you nearly choke on it. Because this is James Buchanan Barnes.
This is the name on the dog tags, the name on the news, the name people lower their voices around as if it might hear them and turn its head.
This is the most feared man in the city and his mouth is still the same mouth that kissed the corner of your smile with one of his own.
Your stomach turns so sharply you have to concentrate not to pull away in disgust too soon, not to betray yourself with the wrong kind of urgency.
You kiss him once, twice, tasting dread under the memory of want, and every instinct in you screams that you are pressing your lips to a loaded weapon and pretending it is a rose.
When you ease back, you make yourself smile.
It feels gargantuan, the effort of it.
“I’m okay,” you whisper, like that explains anything, like that proves you are only tired and not terrified, only overwhelmed and not trying to survive. “I promise. I can go home like this.”
His thumb brushes under your eye so lightly, and you run your tongue over your lip, trying to get that uncomfortable tingling to go away.
But he still looks unconvinced.
More than unconvinced, actually. Plagued. As if the kiss reassured him of your affection but not your state, and now that mismatch is bothering him in ways he can’t make sense of.
His gaze lingers on your face, then your mouth, then your hands clenched too tightly in your lap. He takes one of them and turns it gently palm-up, his fingers closing around yours. You can feel how much bigger his hand is. You can feel how easily it encloses.
And all at once the room feels narrow as a throat, the walls leaning in, the lamplight too gold, the air too warm, and you are sitting inches from a man who could ruin your life before breakfast and is looking at you like the only thing he wants in this world is to make you feel safe.
“What’s going on, doll?” His voice could even be pleading, just a little bit. It’s definitely croaky. “I— I get the feeling—”
“I told you, Bucky. It’s just a headache.” He sighs to that, but all you can think about is how completely his hand closes over the bones of your own. How easy it would be for those fingers to tighten from comfort into command, from tenderness into something unarguable.
His other palm is at your arm, and your body does this awful arithmetic without your permission, subtracting your strength from his and arriving, every single time, at the same answer—none.
There is none. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
You notice things you never let yourself notice before because before they were part of romance, of safety, of the warm relief of being cared for by someone larger and more grounded than you.
Now those same details come back rearranged into something atrocious. The width of his shoulders. The thickness of his thighs where they bracket the edge of the couch. The controlled way he moves, never wasted, never sloppy, suggesting he has long ago become intimate with force and no longer needs to flaunt it.
Even the gentleness feels frightening because it is so deliberate. You can feel, in every cautious touch, that he is handling you lightly not because he must, but because he chooses to. And choice is a nightmarish thing when done by a man like him. Choice means there are other versions of him. Choice means there are rooms in him you have never seen. Choice means the tenderness is not the whole house, only one lit window.
You sit very still because being still feels safer than moving, and panic has made your limbs feel both too heavy and too ready to misfire. While he studies your face with that immensely worried crease between his brows, your thoughts keep slipping sideways into grotesque little visions of what would happen if he decided to stop being soft.
Not even dramatic visions. That would almost be easier. Nothing so loud as being thrown or shouted at. Your fear is smarter than that now. It imagines quieter things. A wrist caught before you can pull away. A door closed with no visible hurry. Your name said in that low voice while every route out of the room gently, politely disappears.
You hate yourself for thinking it, hate the way your pulse kicks harder with each new image, hate most of all that his touch remains careful through all of it, remains incessantly kind, so that your fear begins to feel almost counterfeit in the face of what he is actually doing, and then the next thought corrects you suddenly—no, not counterfeit. Instinct. Instinct finally dragging itself awake after weeks of sleeping with its face turned to his chest.
He must notice something fresh pass through you, some new tremor or tightening, because his jaw flexes and then he reaches into his pocket for his phone.
He is glancing at the screen and some shutter drops behind his eyes. It doesn’t slam, it just falls shut, as simple as that. Just sliding into place as neatly as a blade returning to its sheath.
He lifts the phone, says a name you don’t catch because your ears are too loud with your heartbeat, and when the person on the other end answers, his voice changes so completely that a chill runs over your skin.
“Bring cold towels to my office. And painkillers. Water too.” That is all.
Simple words. Ordinary words.
But the voice that carries them is stripped clean of softness, and that is what makes your blood curdle. There is no gentle edge worn smooth for your benefit. It is a voice pared down to function, to expectation, to command. Not loud, not theatrical, not cruel in any obvious way, it is just cold the way a simple black stone is cold. Cold the way a locked gate is cold.
There is no room in it for hesitation, no room in it for mishearing, no suggestion that obedience is a favor rather than the natural order of things. Whoever is on the other end responds immediately, and he ends the call without another word, already moving to set the phone aside, already turning back toward you, and your whole body has gone thin with dread because all you can think, stupidly, helplessly, is this is how he speaks when he is not pretending to be gentle.
And if this is his ordinary command voice, then what would he sound like if he knew? If he looked at you and saw recognition staring back, saw the name James Buchanan Barnes fully formed in your eyes, saw that you had found the gun and the initials and the tags and had welded them all together into the truth? Would his voice sharpen? Flatten further?
Would he say your name with that same smooth authority and turn it into a thing that could pin you in place?
The thought is a beaded sweat of ice trailing down the ladder of your back.
You try not to react. You fail a little. He sees the shiver, he sees, because he is James Buchanan Barnes for goodness sake, and immediately his focus softens again as he leans a fraction closer, anguish returning to his face as if the colder version of him never existed at all.
The door catches your eye over his shoulder.
It is simply there. Closed, but not locked, at least not that you can see. Dark wood, brass handle, a square of possibility in a room rapidly losing oxygen.
And once you look at it, you cannot stop.
Your gaze keeps darting back like something hooked. You begin to map the distance with desperate measurements.
If you stood up now—no, not stood, launched—if you shoved him hard enough to buy yourself one puzzled second, maybe two, could you make it? Out the office, into the hall, left or right—God, which one had you come from?—and then what? Down one corridor, past another, through that impassable warren of pragmatic but pristine floors and expensive silence and armed loyalty, praying that your body would remember what your mind failed to memorize?
You picture it anyway. You can’t help it. You picture yourself bolting, slipping on gleaming floors, turning wrong and wrong again, heart exploding in your throat while the mansion multiplies around you like a bad dream, each hallway birthing three more, each staircase leading not to freedom but to another floor full of his money and his people and his reach.
Still, the image won’t leave you. It grows instead, takes on velocity. You imagine the first breath of motion, the clean scary choice of it. The couch under you unweighting. The door handle cold in your palm. The sudden crash of everything becoming honest.
You don’t have a lot of choices here. So maybe fate would take pity on you. Maybe panic would become a compass. Maybe your body would remember a route your mind cannot hold. Maybe the front hall would be merciful and simply appear in front of you, all that dark wood and those massive doors and the guards too startled to stop you before you ripped yourself out into the night. It is preposterous. It is probably impossible. It becomes, nevertheless, the brightest thought in the room. Bright enough to burn.
You are too poised on the edge of movement now, too taut, every nerve drawn tight as wire.
“Baby,” Bucky starts, a little alarmed, and he shifts closer again, one hand lifting instinctively, probably to touch your face, your shoulder, your wrist, some place he thinks he can soothe.
But the sight of that hand coming toward you almost does it. Almost tips you over from imagining escape into choosing it. You can feel your muscles gathering without permission, your body preparing itself in secret, a rabbit under the hawk’s shadow. Run, run, run. For one crazed second you are already halfway gone in your mind—up off the couch, around the table, through the door, don’t think, just move, just run, run, run—
And then his fingers brush your arm, so lightly, so soft, but it breaks something inside you because you want his sweet touch, you want him to hold you, to soothe you, to love you, but you don’t want it to be James Buchanan Barnes, you want it to be Bucky, but he’s no longer Bucky, he won’t ever be anymore, and so you simply react.
You jerk, shoving his hand away before you can stop yourself, not enough to really hurt, but enough that the gesture hangs in the air between you like a shattered glass note.
Your breath is now gone entirely.
There are a few beats where simply nothing happens.
Then his hand drops back.
You stare at him, your own hand hovering stupidly in midair as if all you have to do is snip your finger to turn back the time.
And Bucky—James—just looks at you. For a small moment, he simply looks startled, like a deer in the headlights of your rejection. He looks so tremendously confused, his face totally unglued, but then his eyes shift gears, shift into alarm, shift into a concern so much deeper than before. It seems as if your recoil has unhinged him. As if it has frightened him for an entirely different reason than the one clawing its way through your chest. As if it has confirmed something he’s only lived in a nightmare before.
His features warp into something resembling desperation, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide and asking, and it is nauseating to watch—the way he’s already cobbling together a version of reality where he isn’t the monster you’re trying to run from.
He is misinterpreting your panic and it makes you sick.
He isn't thinking She knows what I am. His mind is sprinting in the exact opposite direction to protect itself.
He thinks the headache is actually a migraine that has you reacting strangely, or it’s a panic attack, or some hidden trauma he didn’t know about, and he is already frantically building a scenario where he gets to fix it. His mouth stays slightly open, his breath hitching as if he’s about to choke on his own breath. He looks around the empty office with this desperate, wild squint, his eyes darting to the corners of the room as if he expects to find a physical monster standing there—something he can actually put a bullet in to make you stop shaking.
“Alright,” he lets out, and his voice is completely broken, a rough, dry scrape that sounds like it is tearing his throat.
He doesn’t lunge for you or do something big. Instead, he actually hitches his weight backward, trying to make himself smaller, which is harrowing because he is still twice your size and wearing a suit that could be sprinkled with blood in under an hour. His hands stay out in front of him, palms up, fingers twitching with this jittery, helpless energy. He is looking at you with this forlorn begging in his widened eyes, practically pleading with them for you to blame it on the lights, or the noise, or anything else in the world—because the alternative is that he is the thing making you look at him like he’s an executioner.
You might be running out of time to pretend.
“I’m sorry, Bucky, I— I’m so sorry, I don’t—” You don’t even know what explanation you are going to give him now, only that you are suddenly full of the clumsy need to fill the room with words before the room fills with something worse, and so your mouth opens on instinct, on panic, on the miserable little scraps of sanity still fluttering inside you. You hear yourself stammer out some thin, transparent nonsense about feeling strange, about maybe being overwhelmed, about maybe needing air, maybe needing to go home, maybe nothing, because every excuse sounds flimsy the second it leaves you, and every sentence makes your spirit mulch and dissolve into a gray slurry that won’t hold a shape.
And Bucky is still so close and still so beautiful and still so racked with his brows pinched into a severe, pained knot. His eyes are full of shadows, and this is all so bad.
His softness somehow makes all of this worse, not better, because if he were cruel already, if he were cold already, if he gave you even one clean villain’s grin, one sharp look, one thread of honest menace, maybe your fear would have somewhere proper to sit.
But he only examines your features as though it truly physically aches him to see you like this, as though your panic has reached inside him and laid a dirty hand around his heart.
“Don’t apologize, sweetheart,” he starts, and he says it so quietly, with so much care, still, but also with a mounting unease that is just about to reach its peak. “I just wanna know what’s going on. Talk to me, baby. Please. I—” he breaks off with a sigh, his jaw grinding. “If something’s wrong, if something’s going on, then I gotta know.”
You swallow hard in hopes that anything might help soothe the sting behind your eyes. You don’t believe him, not fully anymore, but some humiliating, hopelessly romantic part of you still recognizes the cadence of the man who kissed your forehead this morning, the man who tucked a strand of hair behind your ear with the most tender hands, the man who remembered how you take your tea and which side you prefer to sleep on and the fact that you hate when socks twist inside your shoes.
It is unimaginable, it is desolating how tenderness can survive in the same body as terror, how your heart can continue making a fool of itself even while your mind is setting the whole house on fire.
“Bucky, really, I’m just...” Your voice hitches, the words sticking like thistles in your throat. You look down at his hands and they are so huge and capable, currently flexing with an empty urge to hold you. You know those hands have held weapons. You know they’ve ended lives and carried blood. But right now they are trembling because you won’t let them touch you.
You can feel yourself growing sharper and shakier by the second, every nerve in you pulled too tight, every breath arriving shallow and unhelpful, and still he keeps speaking to you in that quiet and gentle tone, asking whether it was something earlier, whether he pushed too far, whether he missed something, where exactly it hurts. You can’t tell him it’s your heart and not your head that is currently in shambles.
The concern in him seems real. That is the terrible part. It seems real enough to bruise. You shake your head too quickly. You try to smile and feel it crack before it even fully forms. You say you are just tired. You say you do not know. You say you are fine with the kind of desperate brightness you would use when standing on the edge of a roof insisting you are only admiring the view.
His gaze drops to the space you are slowly clearing between you, and his expression hardens. Gears are grinding behind his eyes and suddenly he looks like the man in the hallway, filled with command and so fucking terrifying, your pulse spikes to unhealthy numbers. He doesn’t look at you, he turns his head to look in the direction of the closed door, his posture squared.
“Did someone say something to you?” He asks, his tone dropping into a low, scraping register that makes the hairs on your arms stand up. “In the hall? Before I came out?”
You blink at him in disbelief. Does he think someone threatened you? Does he think one of his own men, or some interloper in his kingdom, stepped out of line with you? The fact that that would cause such an intense reaction in him makes you want to be catapulted straight out of here because this is genuinely just getting all too much. He seems about ready to tear his own house down to find the monster that scared you, completely unaware that he is the one wearing the monster’s skin.
You are about to open your mouth to improvise your way to freedom, when there is a brisk knock on the oak door and it makes your entire body jerk.
Bucky turns toward the noise, but not before you catch the brief, hot flare of irritation that darkens his features. He rises with all his coiled grace and contained force, and for half a second you just stare at his back, seeing even that differently now. He really is a tall man. He is immense. Broad. Space seems to make room for him as he steps to the door. God, what the hell did you walk yourself into. The only thought that gives you a tiny bit of ease is that there surely have to be other girls out there who would have fallen for it all, looking at him.
He cracks the door open. A man stands in the corridor holding a tray balanced with a folded stack of damp, cold towels, a bottle of water, and a blister pack of painkillers. And it’s weird how this would have struck you as absurdly thoughtful just hours before but now it feels sinister. It is purely ominous. It is comfort orchestrated by absolute authority; a display of care that only exists because of total, unquestioning submission.
Bucky, or James, or the most wanted mob boss of all time; thanks him, quickly, absently, not unkind but distracted, his thoughts still hooked to you so visibly that even the man at the door registers the tension.
And that man glances inside just enough to catch sight of you on the couch, sitting there sweating, pale, rigid as a hunted thing.
A manic urge strikes you to scream for help. You want to yell at this stranger to run, to call the precinct, or to simply throw you over his shoulder and get you the hell out of this building. But the impulse dies in your throat. It would be entirely useless. Every single person under this roof operates on his frequency. This man wouldn't take a single order from you even if it would be more of a plea than anything else. All of these people in this damn building listen to his every word. He wouldn’t do a thing to help you.
And before you can even let go of the fantasy, the man immediately drops his eyes again and leaves, because everyone in this house seems trained in the art of not seeing too much.
But you see too much now. That is the problem. That is the irreversible thing.
Because while Bucky’s back is turned, while he takes the tray and shuts the door with his shoulder and crosses toward the sideboard, your gaze begins to snag on the office around you with new eyes, and suddenly nothing is only furniture anymore.
Nothing is only decoration. All the wood in here is dark and expensive, perhaps even that is getting paid to stay silent, and there are details you would once have filed away as masculine and stylish.
But now everything is imposing. Everything reads as evidence.
Like that locked cabinet that is too reinforced to hold unimportant paperwork. There is a map pinned behind glass with inked markings that look less like commerce and more like a tactical grid. A stack of files sits bound with a suspicious kind of neatness. Then there is a heavy antique letter opener glinting on the desk like a civilized version of a threat.
Even the art on the walls seems changed, the frames too severe, the subjects too stern, everything in here curated by a man who does not simply possess things but controls them. He dictates outcomes. He governs people. His office is a single spider web woven from all this darkened wood and his suits, and you are the only thing inside it that is still vibrating, sending signals straight to the center where he stands, and it is making your skin grow cold in patches.
He is opening the water bottle for you.
That tiny, stupid gesture nearly does it—the torturous way he makes this all so normal and so intimate when he says, “Here, baby,” without turning yet, as if this is still salvageable, as if you are merely unwell and he is merely worried and the world has not already split clean down the middle.
Something primitive detonates inside you, and perhaps if it were a conscious thought or a decision or just some other thing in a civilized sense, maybe you wouldn’t do what you are doing, but your body is revolting before your mind can dress the fear in language, and you’re up.
Oh god, you’re up.
You’re off the couch, you’re on your feet, and now there’s no going back, now there’s no sitting down because now you sprang up and now you will run. You will run because the suddenness of your own movement has chosen the path for you.
Without looking back, without another word, your feet move you to the door and they move so fast, the room is moving with you, your vision is filled with streaks. Your hand fumbles blindly before finding the door handle, wrenching it open, and then you are sprinting.
“You love me, you say. You love me, you say. You love me, you say. Then why are you shaking?”
- Richard Siken
A/n: I know this is basically one single scene and I truly don’t know how I managed to make it this long. I always add unnecessary details and emotional spirals wherever possible but I worry that I sit in the emotions for too long sometimes.
So please feel free to let me know if the emotional introspection and all those feelings got to be a little too much at any point because I know I tend to ramble and take a while getting to the point in my writing and it’s getting a little frustrating. Hearing what you guys think would be really helpful 🫶🏻
And if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, please feel free to consider my ko-fi
pairing | Veterinarian!Bucky Barnes x f!Reader
summary | After years of traveling abroad, you are called back to your hometown to help settle your grandmother's estate. You expected to quickly sell the house and return to your life in the city, but an injured bunny leads you straight back to your high school sweetheart...and a life you thought you wanted to leave behind.
warnings | MDNI; 18+ Barbies ONLY please 💗 | modern AU, hurt/comfort, angst, slow burn, high school sweethearts to strangers to lovers, mentions of relative death (grandma), grief, Bucky lost his arm and it's briefly described (non-graphic), jealous partner (not Bucky), Bucky Barnes is a yearner, slight description of an animal injury (non life threatening), mentions of pet euthanasia (not described, just the feelings around it), Bucky Barnes is a beggar, but also a tease, oral f! and m! receiving, pussy pronouns, slow, passionate unprotected p in v, these two yap way too much as does the author, Bucky can lift reader and is described as being bigger than her, nicknames used: bunny and sweetheart, reader has a relevant tattoo of something, somewhere, no use of y/n, please let me know if i missed anything
word count | 18k (i did say the long way, didn't i?)
phoenix chirps | hooollllyyyyyyy fucking shit, i did it. my longest fic to date, who let me yap this much??? my second fic for the @stantastic-association Barbie collab ❤️💗 this one...i'll talk about after. there's a lore drop at the end where i'll yap your ear off even more. for now...please enjoy my favorite fic i've ever written 🫶 oh and if this flops i'm ending it all. kidding. maybe.
Main Masterlist | Barbie Dreamhouse Masterlist | AO3
When did casseroles become the standard of care when someone was grieving?
Surely there had to be something better than canned ingredients thrown into Tupperware dishes to give the surviving members of a family? The unlabeled containers felt like a tower of misguided sympathy as you stacked them in the passenger seat of your car. The reception had cleared out minutes ago, each of your grandmother's friends handing you a dish and saying "sorry for your loss" or "she's in a better place" before going off to their own lives.
Words that were meant to bring comfort, yet hit a concrete wall that you had erected around the feelings death brought. Smiling as sadly as you could, you accepted each one gratefully. Social norms telling you anything but that would be rude and inappropriate. So now, not only were you still holding back tears that you didn't want to shed in the presence of others, you had to play Tetris so they wouldn't topple over on the drive.
Still though, it was easier to focus on them than the grief that was clawing at your insides, you supposed. Easier to focus on the contents of casseroles than the oddity of returning to a place you thought you'd left in the dust when you decided to broaden your horizons.
As you drove, your mind picked out familiar things. The tree-lined streets that looked like they belonged on postcards were still the shining star of the sleepy town, impeccably manicured as always. Yet the landscape around them had changed in the decade since you'd laid eyes on it. The diner you used to get a quick bite to eat at after school had gotten a new coat of paint that made you wrinkle your nose. The library where you once pored over travel magazines and occasionally studied had gotten a new neon sign and updated the flower beds with limestone facades. The singular convenience store where everyone did their grocery shopping had gotten a modern facelift with new signage.
Time had seemed to touch everything except the layout, making everything both familiar and new at once. The nursery that was at the end of the street your grandmother lived on was just putting out their spring plants. A fresh wave of despair hit you square in the chest at the realization you wouldn't get to hear your grandmother lovingly describe what she picked to plant in her garden that season.
The stack of Tupperware leaned dangerously when you turned onto the road you learned to ride a bike on, and once knew all of the neighbors. Memory alone got you from the reception hall to now idling on the unpaved driveway of your grandmother's house, body working on autopilot the second you had passed the nursery. The house looked the same, in theory. Though there was a looming darkness where your grandma's presence would've normally brightened. Like the soul of the house had been snatched with her passing.
The plush leather seats seemed to have magnetized your clothing, your hands not able to move from the steering wheel. Of all the tasks you needed to take care of since you got the news, somehow getting out of the car and crossing the threshold to a quiet house where your grandmother no longer occupied was definitely the hardest.
Yet, it was your cross to bear as her sole heir. Her last wishes were for you to clean up the house that had been in your family for generations, and make sure whoever bought it would treat it with the same care as she did. And there was no way you could fulfill that if you didn't gather the courage to walk through the door.
Yanking your suitcase free from the backseat, you moved to face the front door, casseroles forgotten in their stacked configuration of the passenger seat. With trembling fingers, you finally unlocked the heavy wooden door and pushed in.
The scent of muted rose perfume and lemon pledge hit you first, and your mind briefly played a phantom memory of your grandmother. Rounding the corner from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel before she opened her arms for an all encompassing embrace that could cure all ailments. Pressing a hand to your heart to stop the ache as you took in the dim entry way, moving to the living room. The rooms and hallways looked the same as they did in your childhood memory only…smaller. Like you had outgrown the space, but not the feeling of comfort.
A fresh tinge of guilt wrapped around your throat as you saw the signs of your grandmother's aging. Pill bottles on the small end table, lined up in an orderly fashion. A walker stood at the ready next to her favorite arm chair that had a handmade throw blanket you sent her from a remote village of Machu Picchu. An unfinished crossword sat on the small coffee table that made your lip tremble. It would likely stay unfinished for all of eternity.
With a deep breath you moved to the bedrooms, taking in the changes that you had only heard from your grandmother when she visited you or spoke about on the phone. The kitchen had gotten a much needed upgrade from the old 70s appliances that were truthfully on their last leg for awhile.
Your childhood room had amassed some boxes, but remained for the most part untouched. That's where your suitcase landed, hoping what you packed would be enough until you could get the house ready to sell.
The heels you wore to the funeral clicked on the worn hardwood, and you could almost hear your grandmother's voice asking you how you walked in those things. The last room you hadn't inspected yet was hers. And the closer you got to the door at the end of the hallway, the stronger the scent of her perfume became.
Memories flooded in one by one as you dared to reach for the door knob. Cuddling up next to her while awful soap operas played on an ancient TV with a lace doily draped over it. Gossiping about the townspeople like they were characters in her own personal drama series. Your grandmother always made it a point to know everyone's business.
Dropping your hand from the knob, you bolted for air. For space to breathe that wasn't bashing you over the head with guilt. Guilt for not coming back as she aged even though you could have. Guilt for your selfishness of always flying her to you on your travels instead of relaxing with her in the home you basically grew up in.
The sliding glass door squeaked as you stepped into the backyard oasis that was still thankfully maintained to perfection. The sun was just dipping below the trees, casting everything in a soft orange glow, and birds were calling somewhere off in the distance. Out here, your thoughts always seemed to halt.
In the summer, wildflowers would bloom along the fence line, fruit trees towards the back of the property would produce lemons and cherries for pies that would be baked from scratch or preserved. Rows of raised flowerbeds held all manners of vegetables, herbs, and fruits. Even in her old age, your grandmother had continued its upkeep insisting that it helped her feel young again.
And when her body began to wither with the throes of time, she hired trusted gardeners and landscapers from around town to keep its spirit alive. Something you were tasked to ensure the next owners of the house would do. Even now, the thought of this space still overflowing with life being redone in a trendy minimalist aesthetic brought a strange surge of anger in your veins.
Just as you took a deep breath, you heard a rustling sound from a raised flower bed to your left. Something too loud to be from the light spring breeze. Slowly making your way over, you saw the source of the sound. Nestled between the stalks of herbs that had survived the winter frost, was a small, tawny bunny with wide black eyes trying to burrow for safety. Yet, she was ensnared in what appeared to be fishing line, an angry red mark visible against her fur where it dug into her back leg. She stopped at the sight of you, going completely still except for the rapid twitching of her nose.
You shrugged off your black cardigan without a second thought, draping it over her body in hopes of keeping her warm. You couldn't bear anymore thoughts of death today if you could help it. Dashing inside, heels briefly getting caught in the grass, your thumbs were already flying over your phone screen to find the closest vet. It wasn't lost on you that you used to know this town — and the vet clinic — like the back of your hand. And now you needed to Google a place you used to call home because you didn't trust your mind to remember where it was.
Grabbing a small shoebox from the kitchen counter, you returned to the bunny. Gently snapping the fishing line so as not to disturb the wound, you wrapped the cardigan completely around her and placed her in the box. "Hold on for me, okay?" you pleaded, securing her as best you could before making your way back to the car. "I've got you."
The casserole dishes you had been too drained to move still sat in the front seat, a glaring reminder that you hadn't been able to stomach anything real since the news of your grandmother's passing. But you had more pressing matters to attend to.
Based on your search, there was still a singular vet in town. The street address was the same as well, familiar now that it was staring back at you. Summers spent at that very address using every spare minute to nurture your passion for animals. And while you should know how to get there, you didn't trust the decade old map in your head while a life hung in the balance.
Pulling up to the clinic was like opening a time capsule. The name had changed to "White Wolf Animal Hospital", proudly displayed on a wooden sign. The front facade had been redone, upgraded slightly with a modern undertone though still keeping the rustic charm. The big oak tree you used to sit underneath during hot summer afternoons still stood, branches larger and broader now.
Carefully scooping up the box, you pulled open the clinic door, a bell announcing your arrival with a faint clink. The reception area was empty and quiet, though the overhead lights were still on indicating that it should have been occupied. It was odd that no one was manning the front, a position you used to fill during your free time, so you knew how important it was.
You checked your watch to see if you were too late for their working hours (you weren't), then chanced a glance at the bunny. She was still in a state of shock, eyes blinked slowly up at you. Sighing, you set the box down on the high counter, close to convincing yourself that you could go to the back and use your limited knowledge to maybe help the little creature.
Surely this place wasn't closed yet if the door was unlocked? And if it was, what kind of person bought the clinic and was managing it so inadequately?
"Hello?" You called into the emptiness, heels continuing to click with each step. The clinic wasn't that big, surely if anyone was here, they would have heard you. Picking up the box again, you moved to start opening doors to exam rooms until you found anyone to help, when the farthest one swung open, a man in a lab coat stepping through.
"Ma'am, I'm so sorry, but we're —"
Time froze as soon as blue eyes you never thought you'd see again met yours. Your heartbeat increased wildly, just as it used to when you saw him. Of all the people you had expected to be running the old vet clinic, Bucky Barnes was the absolute last one.
He looked nearly the same as he did in your memories of him, somehow. A little older, a little more muscular, with wisps of incoming grays in his dark hair and stubble around his jaw as the only things to show any time had passed since you had said goodbye. When the relationship between two young and dumb kids couldn't stand the test of long distance and an amicable breakup followed, you thought that would be it. And the 20 year old you left behind would be the forever image you held of your first love.
But now here you were, shaking free his own memories if the way his eyes darted around your figure were any indication.
"Bunny?" he asked, breathless.
Stepping closer, you held the box out for him to see, you almost asked how he knew what you had brought him. Until you realized he wasn't referencing the injured animal. He was talking to you.
A nickname bestowed to you once upon a time. When the stars twinkled brighter and your futures weren't yet decided, a silly thing based on an inside joke of an inside joke that you couldn't remember the origin of. Hearing it from him was in and of itself, another kind of shock.
"Oh," you both said in unison, chuckling awkwardly, trying to figure out where to go next. Because, truthfully, what words were there to say to someone after ten years and barely a birthday or holiday card? You weren't even planning on looking him up, not wanting to disturb whatever peace he had built by showing up unannounced. And yet an injured bunny sent those plans to crumble.
His gaze dropped to the cardigan in the box, then to the modest black dress and heels you hadn't bothered to change out of. His features morphed, worry lines deepening as he came to a quiet conclusion as to why you had returned in the first place.
"I…found a bunny in grandma's garden. It looks like she got caught up in some fishing line," you explained, breaking the silence. You moved closer, box still held out like a peace offering in hopes of getting his calculating stare off of you and towards the more pressing matter.
"Come on back," Bucky motioned with his head to the exam room behind him, holding the door open for you and letting you go in first.
Suddenly incredibly aware of the clack you made with each step, and how you were trying to breathe calmly and not breathe in the familiar aroma of his cologne. You placed the box onto the metal exam table, stepping back to give him space to perform the exam.
"Alright little one, let's see what you've gotten yourself into." Bucky's voice still held that gentle quality you remembered falling in love with. It was surprising how much you missed it, when something that faded over time without you realizing it was suddenly back with clarity.
His hands moved carefully, cradling the small animal that somehow seemed even smaller once it was in his palm. The glint of black and gold on his left hand caught your eye then, a sleek and modern prosthetic that had your chest clenching, mind reeling with scenarios of what could have happened for him to lose his arm. Vaguely, you did remember your grandmother telling you briefly of how there was a fire at the animal clinic, and that someone had been injured. She just hadn't told you how or…who.
Bucky's voice calling your name snapped you from trying to decipher the mystery and defrost any more memories. He was looking at you expectantly, probably asked a question you didn't hear and therefore couldn't answer. "Sorry, what?"
A soft chuckle left his mouth, making your heart melt just a bit further. "Do you know how she got wrapped up like this?"
"No," you answered, arms wrapping around your waist. "I was getting some air in the backyard when I heard her rustling in between the rosemary and parsley. I'm not even sure where the fishing line came from, grandma didn't use it for this very reason."
"Well she's lucky you found her." Bucky smiled in your general direction, but he hadn't met your eyes since the nickname faux pas. Turning, he grabbed some cleaning solution and gauze.
You watched as he tried to dress the wound, but the bunny was wriggling to the point it had become a struggle of not injuring her further. "Let me help," you offered softly, already pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. Helping to hold the bunny still, Bucky was able to get her patched up. Based on your limited knowledge, the wound didn't appear that deep, but without your intervention there was no way the poor thing would have survived.
Putting the thought of anymore death out of your head, you turned to dispose of the gloves and let Bucky do a final wellness check. Ignoring the familiarity of what just happened by reaching up to fidget with the pendant of your necklace.
Bucky barely looked over at you, but still asked: "When's the last time you ate anything?"
"Oh, about…twelve hours ago," you answered truthfully, but when he leveled you with a pointed stare, you felt the need to ramble in defense. "But I have…casseroles. In the car. For…later."
"Casseroles," he deadpanned, now moving his attention to bringing out a small cage and preparing it with straw and bowls from various cupboards.
"The backseat is full of Tupperware containers. Apparently all of grandma's friends thought the best way for me to deal with her death was by pouring a bunch of ingredients into a dish and letting me play a guessing game of what I thought was in it."
His lips twitched into a barely there smile, placing the bunny into her temporary home where she immediately hopped to the corner, snuggling into a tight ball. "I'm going to keep her here for observation for a few days, and contact some wildlife rehab centers in the morning."
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his lab coat, he rocked onto the balls of his feet. "In the meantime, let me take you to dinner. We can catch up."
It was a simple request, one you could deflect again. You did have casseroles…but they likely weren't even good anymore, considering they should've been refrigerated as soon as you got to the house. But as it neared 6 pm, you'd been running on empty for hours without realizing it. And your stomach was growling in protest of being ignored.
"Okay," you agreed, continuing to fidget with your necklace. It was a simple agreement. And yet nothing was going to be simple about bridging a decade of non-communication into one dinner.
"We can go to Frankie's up the road, just give me a couple of minutes to close up," Bucky suggested, nodding towards the door to the front.
You nodded, the name of the old diner hitting you like a force field. Memories of past dates, post homecoming and prom nights, and…the night you had both decided that the relationship wouldn't work if you left. There were no fireworks, not even a fight or careless words thrown. Just two people mature enough to realize that the life you wanted was one that he couldn't follow you into. And loving each other enough to say it instead of forcing someone to give up their dream.
Initially, you thought it would be easier to sever ties completely. Considering there would be long stretches where you didn't know where you would land, you didn't want to lead him on when you also didn't know if you'd be back.
Yet every year you'd look at important dates on your calendar just a little bit longer. A birthday, anniversaries of first kisses or relationship milestones that no longer meant anything hoping that you had made the right decision by putting yourself first and that Bucky was at least happy. Because that's all you'd ever wanted for him.
"Ready?" Bucky asked, returning to you with keys twirling around a finger easily. The lab coat was gone, giving a closer glimpse of his broad shoulders stretching the plaid button-down shirt he was wearing as he grabbed a jacket from a hook behind the reception desk.
You nodded, following him out of the clinic and onto the sidewalk. The streetlights were just coming on, bathing everything in an amber glow, with the soft chirps of crickets providing ambiance as you began walking.
It was absurd if you thought about it for too long. How normal this would've been had you not had to cure the wanderlust of your soul.
"So…" you both started awkwardly, chuckling at your timing. Perhaps this sort of clumsiness was just what ten years apart does to two people who used to finish each other's sentences.
"So, how long are you in town for?" Bucky asked, keeping a respectful distance with his hands shoved into his pockets and focusing on the ground in front of him.
You matched his pace, heels scraping along the sidewalk while your hands weren't really sure what to do with themselves, the anxious habit of twisting the pendant the only thing you were able to think of. "Only until grandma's house sells. Her will specified that I need to stay there while it's on the market, something about making sure it goes to the right person," you explained calmly. "You know how particular she was about that garden of hers."
Bucky nodded thoughtfully, a few pieces of hair bouncing as he did so. The uncomfortable silence lingered again, pressing inwards like it knew it shouldn't be here. There was the sense that there were several thousand words unsaid, and yet none were rising to the surface.
"So…how long are you in town for?" you asked, looking at him out of the corner of your eye.
He smiled fully then, lines around his eyes and mouth a little deeper than you remembered. "Quite a while, I think."
You stopped next to him in front of the diner, nose wrinkling in slight disgust as you saw the new paint job it had been given. A bright cherry red and white awning with bright, electric blue signage, where there was once a soft yellow storefront with inviting turquoise accents. Who decided that your favorite diner needed to look like a bomb pop had exploded? Only…was it really your favorite diner anymore?
"Don't worry. It may have gotten a botched facelift, but the food is still good," Bucky assured, holding the door open for you, the still familiar smell of fryer grease and salt with the undertones of ground coffee even this late in the evening wafted out.
There was once a time you recognized everyone who worked at Frankie's, including the owner, who named it after his late father. But now, only new faces blinked back at you while you were shown to a booth in the corner.
Just like your grandmother's house, the booths felt and looked the same, yet seemed…smaller. You had anticipated that after ten years of growing, yet you didn't think you'd ever outgrow a place that meant so much to you.
The Formica tabletop had been refinished, probably at the same time the awful paint job had occurred outside. This corner booth was one you would frequently sit at, and one your fifteen year old self had boldly carved your and Bucky's initials into, like it was going to be as permanent as what you thought your relationship was.
"What can I get ya, Doc?" a waitress asked, stopping by the table with a pen and notepad in hand. She smiled warmly at you briefly, but her attention was focused mainly on Bucky. A habit of people from a town where everyone knew everyone.
It was strange to hear Bucky of all people be referred to as 'doc'. Technically, it was his title, and you knew that. It just took a stranger saying it out loud to make it click that the boy who used to shotgun energy drinks, demolish your high score in Guitar Hero, and whisper sweet nothings against your skin was an actual doctor. Even if it was for animals.
"Two coffees please, Joyce, and I'll have my usual," he answered, not even glancing at the menu.
You rattled off a simple sandwich and French fry order, settling on the first familiar thing you saw. A little grateful that not everything had changed.
Joyce returned with two mugs of steaming coffee, and you wrapped a hand around one, letting the warmth seep into your palms.
"So, where did you end up going?" Bucky asked, pushing the tin of sugar towards you before you had a chance to grab for it.
"Ah, all over really? Spent a couple of years traveling around central Europe picking up odd jobs. Learned how to ask for directions and where the bathroom is in about eight languages," you explained, focusing more on the slow turn of your spoon.
He nodded again, eyes finally freely roaming over you when he thought your gaze was downcast. Up until now, he'd really focused on anything that wasn't your face. It made something in your chest twist, knowing that your surprise appearance was just as big a shock for him as it was for you.
Guilt, like bile, settled in the back of your throat. You had promised to come back, in this very booth actually. Sure it was before you knew where your life would take you, but still. You could have visited.
Your eye caught the black and gold glint of his left arm again, heart hammering to know how exactly that came to be. You hadn't really stopped wondering, but didn't know how to bring it up. You tried taking a sip of your coffee, averting your eyes back to Bucky's, but he was giving you a small, knowing smile.
"About a year after you left," he began, leaning back in the booth like he was reliving the memory in real time. "A fire broke out from some faulty wiring. Almost lost the whole building."
You put that into a quick perspective, trying to figure out what you were so busy doing while something so horrible was happening to a person you claimed to care about.
"All the animals got out," he continued, drumming his fingers against the table top. "I went back in to get the old clinic cat. Stubborn thing was hiding in the back storage room. I was able to get her out, but got pinned in the process."
You swallowed thickly, guilt still radiating outward. "Grandma told me about the fire, but never the extent of it."
"She probably just didn't want you worrying," he answered, sipping his coffee.
Your eyes finally met his since the first time at the clinic, cataloguing freely the changes age and the stress of running a business had caused. And his did the same to you. "Bucky, I'm - "
You were cut off from an improvised and too late apology by Joyce, dropping the food off at the table.
Shoulders dropping, you didn't even know what you would've said anyway. Something like that should be more thought out so you could get out everything you needed to say.
"So old Doc Hensley finally retired then? Any idea where he ended up?" you asked, steering the conversation away from a haphazard apology.
Bucky huffed a chuckle, popping a fry into his mouth. "Bought a timeshare in Cabo. Left me with the clinic once he knew I could handle it after I got my degree."
The image of walking into an empty reception area had your head tilting slightly. "Can you…handle it?" you asked gently, remembering just how difficult it could be to run the whole operation by yourself.
One of his shoulders raised slightly, the corner of his mouth tipping up like he knew what you were really asking. "It's been harder recently. Lost my front desk associate after he decided to choose a different career path."
You knew he didn't mean anything by the words. That was just the story of what happened, but still, an apology tried to worm its way free again. Like he wouldn't have this problem had you stayed…
"And where did you finally end up? Or are you still traveling?" he asked, and you wondered if he could see where your mind was wandering, and he had looked for a way to bring it back to the present.
"I'm working in the tech field now, based out of New York City, where I live. Mostly remote stuff, so I could keep traveling around if I want. I took a bereavement leave to get the house sorted," you paused to look at the darkening sky, realizing you had not made a dent in packing up the house or contacting a realtor to begin the process of putting it on the market.
"Do you like it in the city?"
"It's good, I suppose. The apartment is tiny, but it's in a great neighborhood, and my - " you paused briefly because it really hadn't hit you how awkward this next glimpse into your new life would be. "- my boyfriend likes living there."
Bucky stilled, coffee cup halfway to his lips as a mix of emotions quickly flickered over his eyes., before he shifted his gaze downwards. "How long has that been going on?"
Chewing your lip at the sudden change in demeanor, hand that wasn't occupied with the coffee mug flying to the pendant necklace again. "About two years."
He nodded his head once, like it was something final, and you couldn't help feeling like you had just sucker-punched him with that news. "Is he good to you?"
It was your turn to nod with a small smile when you answered, "Yeah, he is."
You should have expected this reveal to land awkwardly, as everything else had with him since you ran into his clinic. But in practice, it felt so much worse for reasons you didn't currently want to dwell on. Especially when every single turn of events since the funeral - except for saving that bunny - had made guilt become the leading emotion for the foreseeable future.
Turning your mug in your hands, you fought against the urge to fill the silence. Even as Joyce came to take away your empty plates and drop off the check, you still wanted to say something. But what could you say to someone whose feelings you hurt twice in the span of a decade? In the very same diner, no less.
You turned to dig in your purse to put some money down, but Bucky had already placed cash on the table and leveled you with a look that crossed a decade. Enough that you knew whatever small argument was about to happen, you would not win.
"Thank you for dinner. You really didn't have to," you protested, scooting out of your side of the booth and following him out of the diner.
He smiled gently, something unguarded now in his expression. "You ran into my clinic in what I'm assuming are your funeral clothes with an injured bunny. It's the least I could do."
Out on the sidewalk, the temperature had dipped considerably now that the sun had set. The moon had risen, providing a silver haze mingling with the amber pools of light of the streetlamps.
The silence between you and Bucky no longer felt like it was begging to be filled with awkward questions and small talk, it had become slightly more manageable. The dinner was successful, if that bar was measured by divulging big life events and evading the pitfalls of a reunion neither party was prepared to make.
You shivered against the chill during the short walk, slightly berating yourself for leaving the cardigan you had worn earlier with the bunny.
Bucky cleared his throat, draping his jacket over your shoulders without question or ceremony. He used to do something similar on cold nights, walking down these same sidewalks. Only it was his Letterman jacket he'd put over your shoulders and then wrap a hand around yours. His hand didn't find yours though in the present.
"How are you doing? With…everything?" he asked gently. It was a loaded question in the loaded silence while your hand was itching with the phantom feeling of his. Gone was the formality of catching up, and he was genuinely asking. Looking for an honest answer that none of the funeral goers earlier in the day would have wanted.
You let out a shaky sigh, guilt in the back of your throat being replaced with a heavy hollowness. Tears really hadn't fallen since you got the news, and some form of robotic numbness had taken up residence where emotion should be, and you didn't want tears to fall now. "Okay, I suppose. Being back in the house was hard. Didn't really have time to dwell too hard on it when I found the bunny."
Bucky glanced sideways at you, something in his expression shifting at your answer. You must have worn your sadness plainly enough now. "Do you need any help? Boxing things up or anything?"
You were approaching the clinic's parking lot where your car was waiting. "I don't know where to start, really. I couldn't even open her bedroom door," you paused to rifle through your purse for the keys. "The whole place feels like a giant game of Minesweeper, and I just keep stepping on mines instead of flagging safe spots."
"Well…" Bucky sighed, stepping back to give you space to open the door to your car. The wafting smell of casseroles made you grimace, thankful that you had taken Bucky's offer to get some real food tonight. "The clinic could use some help. If you ever want somewhere to be that isn't the house."
You faced him fully then, leaning against the car, tilting your head back to look at him. The passage of time had been kind to him. And maybe in another life, this date - if that's what you could even call it - would've ended with him gently pressing you against the car, his hand at the nape of your neck. It would be comforting even now, yet impossible for you to ask for on several counts.
"I'm not even licensed for anything clinical, Buck," you sighed, looking back down at your shoes, worried about getting too lost in his eyes. "I'd just get in the way."
"I'm aware," he answered simply, "and no, you wouldn't."
You kicked a small pebble with your toe, watching it bounce between his feet. Deep down, you knew he wasn't expecting an answer right now. He really wasn't even expecting you to do it. It was just an offer of a distraction so you didn't wallow in grief.
"I'll think about it," you finally answered with a small smile, gaze tracking over his face.
He nodded, opening the car door for you further so you could slide in. "Try to get some sleep. It really was good to see you."
"You too."
Shutting the door and driving away with an easy wave, you mulled over the last few hours in your mind. How little building blocks had all snapped into place so you could end up here. It wasn't until you turned onto the road home that you realized his jacket was still draped around your shoulders. And now that if the heaviness of going through your grandmother's things got to be too much, you had a sliver of an excuse to show up and slide behind the reception desk as if no time had passed at all.
Sleep evaded you, like it always did in a new place. Ghosts of your childhood and the things you left behind had you tossing and turning for most of the night. If you had managed to drift off, it was dreamless, and interrupted by sounds of the house settling that you were no longer used to. You rose before the sun, intending to at least start clearing some of the easier parts of the house.
The kitchen felt like the safest place to start. Not to mention if you were going to tackle anything on your to do list, copious amounts of caffeine were going to be a necessity.
The cupboard always held seven mugs, six were from the set of china your grandmother had acquired on her wedding day. The single out of place mug was a chipped butter-yellow with lopsided daisies hand painted on it. One that you had presented her when you were no more than seven years old. And ever since then, you watched her pour coffee into it every morning, reserving the 'fancier' mugs for company.
No one was ever allowed to use it while your grandmother was alive…and you decided you'd like to keep it that way. Setting it on the counter, the flagship of the 'keep' pile, you started the ancient coffee maker and let the aroma of fresh coffee fill the kitchen.
There were only a couple of texts from Nick asking how you were. A fresh pang of guilt knocked against your ribs that you hadn't responded. That you were too busy reliving the past to fully remember the present. You sent off a simple response…
You [7:39 AM]
Morning! Slept OK, but it's been a lot to take in…hoping to make progress with the realtor today. Miss you xx
With your coffee mug in hand, your feet carried you to the solace of the backyard while you drafted an email to the local realtor in your head. The sun was still hiding behind the trees, but must've been barely over the horizon, as the sky was lightening to a pale purple.
Glancing sideways at the small herb garden where you'd found the bunny, there was a small indent in the greenery still visible. A small frown tugged at your lips. You didn't really know how the bunny was doing this morning after her little ordeal. Sure the wounds weren't that bad, and the fact that she survived the car ride alone should've been enough to calm your mind. Yet, as you moved back inside going room to room to take stock of what you needed to accomplish, the poor bunny still lingered in the back of your mind.
Along with the image of an empty reception area. If Bucky was truly short-staffed, who was going to be checking on her throughout the day? Considering you were the one to drop her in his lap, maybe you should just…
Then, your eyes landed on the borrowed jacket that had been draped over your shoulders last night, where it now laid on the back of the couch. You should return it, at least, and when you did that's when you could check in on the bunny.
You should also start adding more to the 'keep' pile and clean up a few of the more personal effects of your grandmother's so listing photos could be taken. But the thought of doing that felt insurmountable when you were worried about the little creature. And Bucky trying to run that place on his own…
So, with a half-drafted email waiting to be sent in your outbox and memories that you didn't have the mental capacity to untangle yet, you grabbed the jacket and your keys and left all responsibilities to wait.
The drive to the clinic was familiar now. You pulled into the parking lot just in time to see Bucky emerging from a house next door to the clinic, juggling a bag and a travel coffee mug, his keys held between his teeth while he situated everything into a comfortable hold.
Stepping out of your car, you waved sheepishly at him, fiddling with your own key chain. "You live around here?" you asked, once he was in earshot.
Really, you expected to surprise him, seeing as this was your second time showing up unannounced in less than 24 hours. Yet there were no signs of shock on his face, just a knowing smile and the hint of relief in his piercing gaze. "I live next door," he gestured to the house, key sliding into the lock. "Easier and faster to get here in case of an emergency. What are you doin' here?"
You held the jacket out like a peace offering, "I didn't want to steal your jacket, and…I was worried about the bunny."
His lips twitched at the corners while he held the door to the clinic open for you to pass through first. "I checked on her last night before I turned in, and she was doing great. You can go see for yourself if you'd like."
You walked to the back, lights flicking on overhead as Bucky wordlessly prepared his clinic for the day. The bunny was awake, moving as gingerly as she could through her bedding of straw to get to a small food bowl. She caught sight of you, twitching her nose as she ate. The bandages you had helped place were still intact, though you suspected Bucky would need help changing them soon.
Your cardigan had been folded carefully and placed next to the cage, no longer needed now that the bunny was safe and warm. Moving to pick it up, your eyes caught sight of a small placard that would normally get filled out during intake. In Bucky's semi-neat handwriting was the name 'Rosemary' along with a few progress notes.
"See? She's a real trooper; the first night is always the one to watch."
"Bucky you…you named her?" you asked, turning to look at him while he adjusted his lab coat over his shoulders.
"I did. Figured she might be staying a bit until she gets her strength up, and we can find a wildlife center to help us release her."
For a moment, you didn't say anything, turning to look back down at the tawny bunny - Rosemary - instead. You could sense Bucky pick up on something being wrong as he moved closer behind you. "Was that okay?" he asked, voice dipping now in concern.
Nodding quickly, you turned the cardigan over in your hands. "It's just….I mean…you named her after my grandmother?"
Bucky's composure completely faltered as he finally connected it, eyes going wide with surprise. "Oh! I - fuck - I only named her that because you said you found her in the herbs, and I didn't - I'm sorry."
You huffed a small laugh at his stumbling, really unnecessary apology. It wasn't like your grandma liked being called Rosemary anyway. She much preferred everyone call her 'Rose' or 'Grandma', even if they had no relation to her. "It's really fine, I just…wasn't expecting it. It suits her, though."
Bucky's mouth opened like he had more to say, but just outside the room, the bell jingled to announce that the first client had come in for their appointment. "Well, that's me. You'll be okay back here?"
Nodding, you glanced back at your cardigan in your hands.
"Hey," he said, hand already braced on the door to the front. "Seriously, you can stay as long as you need to."
"Thanks," you murmured, knowing what that offer was. Stay somewhere neutral if the house is getting too loud. And you really were grateful for it. The crushing weight of responsibility still sat in your chest, but it was easier here when glaring memories of the past weren't around every corner.
But sitting in a room with your thoughts while the bell jingled twice more, and the sound of an overexcited dog came from beyond the door, wasn't really helping either. A different kind of guilt hit then, when you knew you could help. You knew, roughly, where the client files were. You knew how to soothe owners when something slightly traumatic happened, and they were worried. You knew some patients would take longer, and a backlog would happen if intake forms weren't completed before Bucky saw them.
Setting the cardigan back down next to Rosemary's cage, where she had already curled up for a nap, you pushed your way to the front. Bucky was bent over the reception desk, fingers rifling through folders. "Let me," you said gently, moving to nudge him out of the way, but he had already stepped back before you got too close.
He gave a grateful smile, but didn't dwell further, showing the dog and her owner to one of the exam rooms. Orienting yourself was easy enough, or would have been. But whoever Bucky had manning the front had completely obliterated your filing system that you spent your entire last summer here working on.
"Who fuckin' organized these?" you grumbled under your breath, knowing you'd need to get this back into shape at some point. Even if you didn't plan on staying, the need to create efficiency was already eating away at you.
The bell jingled again, and you looked up to see an elderly woman with a cat carrier clutched tightly. "Well, I'll be, I didn't expect to see Rose's granddaughter here ever again."
You chuckled softly, recognizing her as one of the many whom you met at the funeral the day before. "Just getting my mind off things. What brings you in today?"
A sympathetic smile creased her face. "We're here for Figg's annual checkup." She raised the cat carrier a bit.
Nodding, you pulled the paperwork free, and began the simple process. Asking questions if anything was concerning or anything had changed since last time. "Take a seat and Doctor Barnes will be out here shortly." The line out of your mouth was standard once the paperwork was completed. Though it used to be 'Hensley' you said, and Bucky's surname coming from your lips felt a little foreign. Still, you couldn't stop the flare of warmth in your chest at knowing he fulfilled a dream he'd talked about since you were kids.
"You know, these used to be organized to perfection," you groused, sliding Figg's client folder to Bucky when he emerged from an exam room.
A look of amusement danced across his eyes as he picked up the folder. "I do know."
You settled behind the desk once they were out of sight, starting to reimplement everything back to perfection. Something about doing something menial with little emotional consequence was healing. Giving you the space to maybe come to terms with having to go through every one of your grandma's belongings.
The day began to run smoothly. You sorted paperwork, greeted patients as they came in, and tried to get your mind to clear as much as possible. It was a little alarming if you stopped to think about it too much. How easy it had been to slip back into a persona and exist in Bucky's presence. Despite the initial awkwardness of dinner the previous night, and a few moments where the space between you narrowed too close, the stiffness had dissipated slightly, leaning more towards two people who had always known how to coexist in the same space.
It wasn't until your phone buzzed under a particularly thick stack of papers that reality came to a head.
Texts from Nick asking how things were coming along had been sitting unanswered, and you'd been too caught up to respond. Right. You had been in the middle of an email when you had decided you'd needed to be anywhere else.
With a lull in the day, you opened the half-drafted email back up on your phone. But just as you were double-checking the contents before sending it, Bucky's voice pulled your attention.
"Would you mind helping me redress Rosemary's bandages?"
And just like that, your phone lay forgotten once more, a more important task needing your full attention.
Once the last patient of the day left, the clinic lights had been dimmed, and the front door locked, you returned to Rosemary for one last check-in.
"Thank you for staying. " Bucky said, with this being the first real chance the two of you had to be alone. "You really didn't have to."
"I did, though. Couldn't leave you stranded when all I was going to do was stand frozen in the hallway of grandma's house."
You were aware of his proximity as he moved closer, while he carefully deduced what an appropriate amount of space there should be between you. "The offer still stands, you know. With the house. I have the weekends free if you need an extra pair of hands."
"Speaking of an extra pair of hands, could I…come back tomorrow? It was nice getting away from the house." You hated how timid your voice sounded, asking for permission to be in a place he'd already said you could be. But you really didn't want to get in the way or cause a distraction. "I figured I'd rather sort through paperwork rather than grandma's things…"
You caught the small twitch of Bucky's fingers from your periphery. Like he wanted to reach for you in comfort, but wasn't sure if he should. "You don't have to ask, you know. Just show up if you want to."
There was a long, white box waiting on the doorstep of your grandmother's house when you arrived. Picking it up and seeing it was from a local florist, your first instinct was that this was a late funeral arrangement. Someone that your grandmother had befriended on her travels with you, who couldn't make it to this small town.
Already gathering a vase from the linen closet, your eyes were finally able to start making mental notes of what to do with the contents after clearing your head at the clinic that day. But when you opened the box, you didn't see what appeared to be a funeral arrangement. There were a few dozen pink and white tulips nestled in brown kraft paper, wrapped with a delicate lace ribbon.
Plucking the card carefully from the greenery before situating them in the vase, your heart thumped just slightly harder at the familiar scrawl on the white stationery.
Hope these help you smile. You'll be okay. - B
Your favorite flowers from an ex of the past, yet maybe… a friend of the present had your mind reeling. Though you couldn't linger on what the feeling of being seen in such a vulnerable way, without having to word it for too long.
Your phone buzzed in your pocket, another dose of reality being poured down your throat for what felt like the thousandth time that day had just arrived.
Nick [6:42 PM]
What did the realtor say?
It was never meant to be something long-term. Maybe a week of clinic work at most until your head cleared enough to tackle the responsibilities of selling your grandmother's house. But by the second week of working a structured Monday through Friday, 8 to 5…a routine had been established.
You would arrive just as Bucky stepped out of his front door. Both of you would tackle the opening tasks separately, with you checking in on Rosemary, who was getting stronger every day.
The once messy files were now put back to their original glory, ready to be handed off to whoever Bucky decided to hire for this position. Who would hopefully keep it at least more organized than when you found it.
It became easier to breathe in the charm of the small town. Most everyone who came in recognized you as Rose's granddaughter, and would want to regale you with their favorite tales of your grandmother. Sometimes you'd be able to handle it, but others, Bucky learned to step in and redirect the conversation to the pet that was being seen. You weren't sure when he'd begun recognizing your grief was about to spill over unintentionally, but it was welcome. Like he'd never stopped knowing when to protect you, but the skill had waned while not in your orbit, only to sharpen with each day you kept showing up.
Sometime in that second week, the space you and Bucky carefully kept between you seemed to shrink. Until one day, poring over the appointment book to try to find room for a last-minute call in, the distance was nonexistent. Close enough that you registered the warmth radiating off of him, and practically feel the fabric of his shirt against your arm.
Neither of you moved to fix it, or place the wedge back. But you didn't acknowledge that something had shifted from when you first showed up with an injured bunny, either. The moment fleeting, as you solved the problem of squeezing in an appointment, and both resuming your separate tasks that didn't require such tight proximity.
In the middle of the third week, you realized that bereavement for your job that helped pay rent for an apartment in the city would be coming to an end soon, and you'd need to make arrangements. That combined with an onslaught of texts from Nick had reality continuing to press in from all sides.
Nick [11:23 AM]
How's the house coming along?
You [11:24 AM]
It's coming…still kind of hard to go into some rooms.
Nick [2:47 PM]
Did you ever hear back from the realtor?
You [2:58 PM]
Not yet, I still need to get some more cleaning done :(
Nick [7:15 PM]
Let me know if you need help finding an agent, I can pull some strings.
You [7:42 PM]
I think someone more local would be best, but I appreciate it. Love you xx
Somewhere along the way, his texts had become less about with your well-being, and more concerned that you hadn't been working towards the end goal of selling the house.
You still hadn't mentioned why you weren't really able to get much cleaning done. It wasn't a lie really, just a careful omission. You still hadn't been able to work up the nerve to go into your grandmother's room. Things did need to be cleaned for staging photos to be taken, but by the time you got back from a long day at the clinic, you didn't have the strength.
Not to mention, how were you supposed explain to your boyfriend of three years that the reason you're avoiding the house is because you're essentially working for your ex? You couldn't even explain to yourself why going to the clinic saved you from an emotional spiral that would've inevitably kept you rooted to your bed, and you didn't feel like you should until you had a concrete answer.
One weekend with the clinic closed, the storm clouds of your mind finally began to clear. The haphazard boxes that you'd started to stage around the rooms didn't seem quite so insurmountable. Determination flared the moment your eyes opened to the now familiar slatted ceiling and soft light filtering through the blinds, like the soul of the house had finally awoken and said 'let's start healing now'.
The living room was an easier place to begin, and maybe if you came home to visible progress, you'd be more inclined to keep moving ahead. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, you began with the bookshelf that stretched from the ceiling to the floor along half of the wall, filled to the brim with cookbooks, knickknacks, framed pictures, and the occasional phone book.
Three boxes marked 'donate', 'New York', and 'discard' followed you as you worked along the shelves, sneezing every so often as clouds of dust broke free. Just as you neared the top shelf closest to grandma's favorite arm chair, you spied a bundle of postcards tied with twine, wedged between two thick mystery novels. Once you got them free, a wave of emotion hit, paralyzing any more of the progress you would make today.
Dropping to the soft rug with your legs crossed you began flipping through them. Every single postcard you had ever sent your grandmother was saved in this bundle. Tangible evidence of everywhere you'd been able to explore now lay in front of you.
Lisbon, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro…
Reykjavík, Iceland. You ran a finger over the glossy image of a waterfall you'd seen in person, remembering the moment you got to cross it off your bucket list. Roughly a year after you left…the same time Bucky would've been -
You didn't allow yourself to finish that thought. Instead, you wrapped the postcards back up, gently set them in the New York box, and didn't sort anything else for the rest of the weekend.
That Thursday was what Doctor Hensley would call 'a hard luck kinda day'. Like no matter what happened, a disaster was around every corner. The culmination came when Bucky's last appointment ran longer than it should've. When he had to pause at the door of the exam room after some X-rays came back, and the news he had to deliver was going to be one of the most devastating things a pet owner had to hear.
Regrettably, you'd forgotten this part. How sometimes this job asked you to hold someone together while simultaneously tearing them apart. You sighed heavily, hearing a muffled cry from beyond the exam door. With no more appointments that evening, you locked the front door, dimmed the lights, and silenced the desk phone.
It never got easier, no matter how many times you'd witnessed it, but you would try your hardest to make the owner comfortable when they left.
And when they did, it was with a tear-stained face and a strangled goodbye, a leash twisted around their hands that no longer had a purpose. Bucky emerged a minute later, a look of pure devastation etched deeply into his face. "Can you - "
"I've already called the cremation facility." You answered before he had a chance to ask. "They'll be here in a half hour at most."
Bucky nodded, eyes downcast. "Thank you, bunny," he whispered before turning and making his way out of the back of the clinic. The nickname caught you off guard, touching a nerve that was connected directly to your heart. He hadn't called you that since it had slipped out when you first showed up at the clinic with Rosemary.
You left the reception desk, finding him sitting on the short concrete steps that led out of the back door. He looked smaller somehow, his shoulders sagging inwards like he'd forgotten why he'd wanted to get into this profession in the first place.
His eyes were glassy when he glanced sideways at you when you sat down on the steps beside him. Crystal clear and bluer than the sky after a rainstorm. Deciding that now was when the space between you narrowed into nothing in an attempt to comfort, your shoulder brushed his.
"They were one of the first clients that came in after I took over," Bucky whispered, looking down at his hands clasped between his knees. "I watched them grow up, and just…"
You knew no words would help at this moment in the grieving process, having heard all of the canned idioms people thought they should say when a soul passes on a few weeks ago at your grandmother's funeral. They still didn't help now if people tried to give them. Instead, your knuckles gently brushed against the back of his hand, ignoring the slight flare of anxiety and welling of emotion at the familiarity of it. When he didn't shrink back, your fingers worked in between his palms, freeing one of his hands from the other and putting yours in its place.
He didn't say anything more, but squeezed your hand a little tighter in thanks, while you both watched the sun set beyond the treeline.
That next morning, you lay in bed for longer than you meant to, replaying the scene from the evening before. Something had shifted the minute you decided to comfort Bucky with touch rather than words. Or maybe it had shifted before that, and your brain was only now catching up. Seeing each other for eight hours a day, five days a week so suddenly after a decade of silence was enough to close any distance you thought would still be here. You didn't want to examine that too closely, almost afraid of what it could mean.
So instead, you made coffee and went to the clinic like normal, pushing whatever feelings were rising back down where they belonged.
In the week that followed, Nick's texts took on a different edge. Like he was trying tactic after tactic to get you to hurry up and move on like you were a client of his he was trying to sway.
Nick [10:14 AM]
Seriously though, how long do you think this is going to take? I miss you.
You [11:58 AM]
She has a lot of stuff and I want to do this properly…I'll be back as soon as I can, I miss you too.
Nick [12:01 PM]
Well, my buddy knows a good real estate lawyer if you need a referral to see if this can get settled faster?
You [3:47 PM]
No, I think it'll be okay. There's really nothing to settle except some memories, and it's still a bit raw for me.
Nick [3:49 PM]
I just feel like I haven't properly talked to you in days…
You [6:07 PM]
I know, I'm sorry babe…I'll try to make it up to you soon.
Nick hadn't been completely wrong, when you thought about it. On your phone calls, you hadn't been fully present, and you knew it. But when the only thing he wanted to talk about was how the house was coming along and if you had emailed the realtor (you still hadn't), it became more of a performance to speak to him. Especially when you hadn't touched a single box since you had found the postcards and you still hadn't mentioned the clinic.
The realtor email was something that felt like a finality that you'd been putting off. Like the second you sent it, it was going to put into motion that you'd be leaving once again, and that there was going to be a deadline attached to your time here.
But being reminded over and over by Nick….something snapped in you during a midday lull.
The draft had been sitting in your outbox since the morning you had decided to return the jacket and check on Rosemary instead. You added a few extra sentences, that above all, whoever bought it had to have your full blessing before any papers would be signed. The 'woosh' sound that it had finally been sent felt almost like a cold bucket of water being dumped over your head.
It should have felt like relief. One less thing off your plate. But it felt like the opposite. Your sudden change in mood must've been clearly written on your face, or Bucky had simply relearned how to read you.
"Everything okay?" he asked gently, leaning against the reception desk.
"Yeah, just…just sent an email."
He didn't respond, only gave a single nod, and changed the subject. But the corners of his mouth tilted down like he already knew what the email could be and what it meant for him.
Anxiety began to loom once again as soon as the realtor responded with suggestions of open houses, staging times, and a listing price. You tried to ignore it, but it was like any excuses you afforded yourself had finally run dry. That weekend, you reached through the invisible barrier your mind had placed over your grandmother's bedroom and finally opened the door.
It looked perfectly preserved, like it had been waiting for her to come back. Her perfume was strongest in here, having been sealed in with you unable to open the door. The vintage-looking crystal bottle that held the perfume in question was sitting on the dresser, primed for use. With trembling fingers, you allowed yourself to pick up the bottle, running your thumb over the beveled edges, remembering how it was to sit in this room and watch her get ready for the day.
You sprayed a small amount on your inner wrist, the urge to bolt again for fresh air still prevalent, but not quite as urgent as it had been that very first day. And with it, every time you moved, the perfume wafted around you, like the spirit of your grandmother was indeed still here.
It helped you move through the room. Opening the closet to assess what needed to go where once the boxes were brought in, immediately placing her jewelry box in a makeshift 'New York' pile. Trying not to feel like you were snooping as you opened drawers that you would've never looked in if your grandmother were still around.
It was in the nightstand that you felt the beginning of an avalanche you didn't know how to stop.
Your grandmother's planner was in the top drawer. She always said she liked to make sure she crossed off every to do at night, and look at the day ahead when she woke up. Among the mundane things like doctor's appointments, planting schedules, and get-togethers she had planned, your name appeared every Sunday at 2 pm without fail. A weekly ritual you hadn't really forgotten, but had just chosen not to think too much on in fear of what it would do when you realized you no longer had it.
The Sunday after she passed, your name was underlined with a small note that said 'Ask her to come home.'
She never did ask you to come back. Instead, always packing a bag and making a trip to where you were in the world, and never once making you feel guilty for it. And even if she had asked, would you have brushed it off and said this place was behind you? Calling it a chapter of your life you'd already finished? Cradling the planner, you sank onto the bed, where you would often curl up against her side.
You still hadn't properly cried since you got the news and began funeral preparations. Always keeping your mind and hands busy…the clinic, filing, packing. Because falling apart normally meant that what had happened was a finality. And you hadn't been ready to let go of your grandmother in that way yet.
In the end, all it took was realizing that she wanted you to come back and that she was probably in some other plane of existence where people go when they leave, regretting that she never got to ask.
And in that moment, you lay against the pillows that had a lingering scent of her shampoo mingling with the borrowed perfume on your wrist and finally let the tears fall.
You cried until there was nothing left, whispering apologies to the room like your grandmother could hear you. Even though you knew she'd tell you there was nothing to apologize for, and that your journey would've wound up exactly where you were always supposed to be eventually.
That next morning felt lighter, once the weight of tears you'd been carrying had been shed. Only made brighter when you walked into the clinic to do your standard check-in on Rosemary. Her wounds had healed to the point that no more bandages were needed, and she had developed her own routine as soon as the lights of that room flicked on.
The moment she heard your voice, she hopped to the front of the hutch, having learned that your presence meant either food or attention. And she loved both.
"Oh, the rehab center called and said they'd be able to do an assessment on her next week," Bucky said from the doorway while you started to clean her cage. You could feel his eyes on you while you worked, quietly assessing your reaction to the news.
Nodding, you held your hand in the cage for a second longer than necessary, letting Rosemary nuzzle into your fingers before she moved to her food bowl. "I guess we'll see how she does," you smiled up at him before making your way to the reception desk to set up the files for the day's appointments.
It wasn't until you arrived home that evening, sinking onto the couch with a glass of wine, that you had the chance to finally check your phone. Your stomach dropping slightly at the number of notifications you had waiting.
Nick [9:04 AM]
Morning love <3
Any word from the realtor?
Nick [11:23 AM]
Do you know when you'll have a timeline?
Nick [3:21 PM]
I miss you…
I don't like that you're still there all by yourself.
Nick [4:10 PM]
What's actually going on over there?
Nick [5:39 PM]
When are you coming back?
Nick [6:08 PM]
Wait, did you extend your leave? How much longer is this going to take?
You [6:42 PM]
I did…I just couldn't balance that work with the house and wouldn't have been able to give it my all. My performance would've suffered.
Nick [6:44 PM]
OK…
Conflicted didn't even begin to cover the pressure in your chest. You truly didn't have an answer as to when you'd be back or how much longer it was going to take.
And the days were flying by at a breakneck speed to the point that you had become comfortable in the house and with your current routine. Gone were the days of slouching over a keyboard, staring at three different monitors while noises of the city hummed beyond your too-small apartment.
Here, there was…peace. A calm you didn't know you missed until you allowed yourself to stop and appreciate it. You weren't sure when you'd begun to miss the hustle and bustle of the city, or when the image of your apartment had become too fuzzy to remember.
Or when you stopped looking forward to the thought of leaving again.
The thing with making someone wait for your attention was that eventually…they became too big to ignore.
In the middle of sending out email reminders for appointments and vaccine schedules, the bell above the door jingled.
Not even looking up, you began your standard greeting. "Welcome in, we'll be right - "
"Finally, I've been looking all over for you."
Your fingers stalled on the keys, the voice familiar, yet didn't belong in this realm of your world because you hadn't invited him in yet.
Nick stood expectantly in the middle of the clinic, dressed like he'd caught the first flight out after a long day at the office, with the rich scent of his aftershave so out of place it made your head spin.
It took several beats for your brain to catch up with what your eyes were seeing, and that you should register the feeling of happiness of seeing your boyfriend after weeks of being apart. But you only felt confusion and a slight annoyance as to why he was here in the first place.
He cleared his throat, opening his arms further, obviously expecting a much warmer greeting.
"What….what are you doing here?" you asked, finally rounding the desk and returning his embrace.
"I missed you?" he phrased it like a question and that it was the most obvious answer before pressing a quick kiss to your lips. "I thought you could use some help so you could come home sooner."
Nick's hands landed on your shoulders to hold you at arm's length, performing a quiet assessment like he would an asset before making an offer. "And imagine my surprise when I didn't find you at your grandmother's house and," he paused to wave his hands around the space that felt smaller with him occupying it, "here."
His sharp gaze met yours, and then you realized he was waiting for you to explain what here was. "I'm just…helping out. They were short handed and - "
"You've been working here?" His dark eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Instead of - "
"Helping," you corrected quickly, placing your hands on his chest. "It's not - I really just needed somewhere to be that…wasn't the house."
"Love, you - "
That was the moment Bucky had seemingly decided to exit an exam room, cutting off Nick's sentence. "Hey, did the Bartons confirm or - oh."
It was like watching worlds collide in front of your eyes after the swinging of a door.
Realizing it was you who was in charge of introductions, you piped up to fill the awkward silence. "Oh, Bucky, this is my boyfriend, Nick. Nick that's - "
"Doctor Barnes," Bucky interrupted with the same tone you knew he reserved for difficult patients, extending a hand to Nick.
"Nick Fowler." The handshake was civil and brief, both men's smile not really meeting their eyes.
Bucky nodded. "I'll let you two catch up." And with that, he disappeared through the same door he'd just come out of.
Nick watched where he had disappeared for just a second longer than you thought necessary.
"Uhm, we can get lunch," you offered quickly, grabbing for your purse. "I'll show you the town."
Sitting in a booth at Frankie's, you quickly remembered that Nick always had loud opinions. And those were normally fine when dulled by the equally loud buzz of New York. But here, where things were quieter. And it made him stick out obnoxiously.
"It's…cute," was Nick's only praise while he barely looked up from his phone, food sitting untouched in front of him. "But I have some thoughts about the listing price of the house."
And that was all he said about a place that had been your solace for weeks. Cute. It shouldn't have landed wrong, it was a compliment after all. But he said it like it was an insult. Like he was a parent praising a child's finger painting.
That night, Nick had tried to convince you to go to his hotel. Stating something about it being weird to stay in the house and that he was already missing the amenities of the city. Strangely, he hadn't really said he missed you. You didn't push him to stay where he didn't want to be, but you felt the gap being widened between you and him even if this was the closest distance wise you had been in weeks.
The next morning, he showed up at the house bright and early, an easy smile on his face. "I figured I'd come help you pack," he offered, letting himself in without waiting to be invited. You knew he meant well, but it really was beginning to feel like he didn't want to be here longer than necessary while you were trying to get him to see the charm of this place.
"Nick, I have to go into the clinic today…"
"Oh, you're still - okay, um," he paused, hands on his hips as he looked around. "I'll go to the cafe then, I've got to get some work done anyway."
And that was that. His lips brushed yours in a rushed goodbye as he walked away, already talking on the phone to settle some sales pitch.
It wasn't until you stepped into the clinic that you realized you could breathe fully. Like you weren't walking on eggshells or performing or worried you were going to say the wrong thing. Bucky gave you a tight smile, but neither of you addressed the very clearly Nick shaped wedge that had surfaced. Instead, you worked around each other like normal. Letting the routine heal the staggering nerves that had for some reason started clawing at your insides.
That evening when Nick was helping you sort through a few boxes, taping them up and getting them ready to ship, he made the comment you'd been expecting. "You know you don't have to keep doing that. Volunteering for him."
"I know, but…I like it and the clinic does need help until someone fills that position."
Nick nodded like he understood, but you doubted he did.
The day of Rosemary's wildlife rehab assessment came, and when you mentioned it over breakfast to Nick, the only thing he managed to say was "So you'll be done at that clinic soon, then?" before directing the conversation to potential owners he had found for the house.
The foundation of your relationship with Nick continued to crack after that.
You watched with bated breath as the wildlife rehabilitator carefully took Rosemary out of her cage. He examined the now fully healed wounds where the fur was just beginning to grow back, jotting something down on a clipboard. Once she was set back down on the metal exam table, Rosemary hopped straight to you. She sat back on her haunches and looked at you expectantly, nose twitching with what you supposed was indignation of being handled by a stranger and to remind you that her breakfast was late.
The wildlife rehabilitator immediately confirmed what you'd probably already known. Rosemary had become too accustomed to humans and wouldn't survive on her own in the wild if released. You and Bucky exchanged a glance, a silent conversation happening with one single stare. "I"ll keep her," Bucky offered, watching you cradle Rosemary before gently putting her back in the safety of her cage.
Over dinner, you told Nick about your day, casually mentioning that Rosemary would be staying with Bucky for the foreseeable future.
"How well do you know him? Barnes," Nick asked, focusing on something on his fork instead of you.
You bristled only slightly, giving the bare minimum. "Pretty well, we went to the same high school, and worked at the clinic together."
He nodded, corners of his lips downturned, and didn't say more about Bucky. But did continue to make arrangements around 'the asset' as he had begun calling the house.
The cracks became fully noticeable and not something you thought you could fix when Nick showed up unannounced at the clinic the next day, offering to take you to lunch.
You had already agreed, standing to go let Bucky know that you'd be right back when he appeared from the back, head too buried in a file to notice Nick was there. "Hey bunny, did you get the Maximoffs their vaccine records they requested or - " he stopped as you stiffened. The nickname ringing through the clinic like a death knell. Ever since that evening on the steps after the euthanasia, he had tentatively begun calling you that again. And - a minor fault of yours - you let him. Allowing yourself to be swept away with the comfort it gave you.
To Nick's credit, he didn't cause a scene then and there, but there was a storm swirling behind the stare he shot at Bucky.
"I'm so sorry - didn't really realize - I'll - " and with that, Bucky disappeared to the back again, but the damage had well and truly been done. Maybe it had been done for a while, but you were trying to hold the foundation together with temporary band-aids.
Nick cleared his throat, giving you a once-over before saying, "I'll just see you tonight."
He came to the house that evening after your shift like he had been doing since he arrived. Normally, he picked up dinner, and had his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. But tonight, he was empty handed.
The door had barely shut before he said it. "Bunny."
You had been braced all day for this fight the second bunny slipped from Bucky's mouth. "It's just a nickname," you tried to play it off.
He folded his arms across his chest, head dropping like he was trying to solve some sort of puzzle. "Why did he call you that, though? That's not something you call an employee. Or volunteer or whatever the hell it is you're doing."
"It's just a silly nickname, it doesn't mean anything."
Nick shook his head briefly, still not meeting your eyes. "From when?"
He was backing you further and further into a corner. "High school," you answered.
"Did you date him?"
You looked up at the ceiling with a deep sigh. "Yep." There really was no sense in lying about it now.
"So you've been working for an ex-boyfriend for weeks and you didn't think that was something I needed to know?" his voice sharpened.
"I really didn't think you'd understand. We worked at the clinic together in high school and - "
"Bunny," he said again, cutting you off, something calculating behind his narrowing eyes once again. "Like your tattoo."
Your hand brushed over the spot on your hip almost like a shield, where you did indeed have a small bunny tattoo. No one had questioned it before, because they thought it was something you got on a silly whim. And yet here it was, the true meaning behind it being cracked open.
"How long have you had it?" he asked, eyes trained to where your hand lay over it.
You chewed your bottom lip. "A while."
His voice quieted. "Did you get it for him?"
Shutting your eyes, you nodded quickly.
"This is just," Nick shook his head again in disbelief, turning away from you. "You had a life, a real career. And you're talking about throwing it away to file paperwork for…for him."
"I came back for my grandmother. This is not about him," you clarified.
"We've been together two fucking years, and you never brought him up. Or this boring ass town. And yet all of a sudden, your grandma dies and you want to be back here? For what? Help me understand, because this all just seems like a dead end."
"See, that's the problem isn't it?" you asked, voice raising in pitch to match his. "You don't understand. All you've done since you got here is try to sell the house and belittle every fucking thing without trying to see it from my perspective first."
"I thought that's what you wanted! When you left you said you just needed to settle your grandma's estate and you'd be back."
"Maybe what I wanted changed!"
"Does that include me?"
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed. As you tried to reach for the most diplomatic answer. Though to Nick, your silence must have been answer enough, as you averted your eyes further. Because at this point, after watching him interact with a place you had fallen in love with again, you realized you couldn't be with someone who looked down on this town the way that he did.
"I see," he whispered. "Guess we're done then." he said it like he'd won a prize. Like he'd been expecting this and had been waiting for the culmination of it for longer than just today.
You gave a single nod, eyes looking down at the rug instead of him. "I guess so."
He scoffed, brushing past you to the front door. "I'll mail you your stuff so I don't inconvenience you by asking you to leave this place again."
And with a final door slam, rattling the pictures on the walls, he was gone. The silence he left behind deafening. But as finite and heavy as the silence felt, it was nothing compared to the weight that had been lifted off your shoulders. Of trying to live two separate lives at once while ignoring what felt like an inevitability.
Though losing a relationship in such an explosive way was never easy, and what you really needed before you spiraled into an uncontrollable mess was…
You picked up your car keys, hoping to go to the only place of comfort you had ever known.
You sat in the parking lot of the clinic longer than you probably meant to. Worried that you were disturbing Bucky after a long day. Probably made longer after your relationship with Nick silently imploded midday and you hadn't returned.
Soft light was filtering onto the flowerbeds from the curtained windows, so you at least knew he was awake and home. You approached the door like it might bite you, or tell you to get lost and that you no longer had claim to the comfort he brought you. But Bucky's words of 'if you ever need to be somewhere that isn't the house' echoed in your head. Sure he may have been talking about the clinic, but your mind had equated that to him as well, and how the thoughts quieted in his presence.
When you knocked, he opened the door not long after. Hair messy like he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly, dressed in a black t shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders, and dark sweatpants.
A look of wide eyed confusion flickered across his face while he took in your appearance, not all that different from the first time you dropped into the clinic unannounced.
"I…didn't know where else to go," you shrugged, looking down at your feet.
"That's okay, come in." he assured, opening the door wider and letting you pass.
The living room felt like the embodiment of him, warm and minimally decorated. Cozy in the same way a cup of coffee is during a fall rainstorm. A lamp was on in the corner next to a record player that was spinning something, but the needle had been lifted so no sound was coming out.
"Can I get you anything?" he offered, watching you orient yourself in his space.
Several things ran through your mind at once of what you wanted, each seemingly more and more unattainable. Sinking onto the couch with wobbly knees, wrapping your arms around your body like a shield. "A drink would be nice."
"What do you drink now?" he asked quietly. "Surely your tastes have changed from the dollar store boxed wine you used to sneak."
You mustered as close to a smile as you could , eyes watering at the fact that he remembered the rebellious teenager you used to be. "Whatever you're having is fine."
Bucky returned with two small tumblers of amber liquid, placing one in your hands. You murmured a thanks, turning the glass between your palms when you heard him fiddle with the record player in the corner of the room, lifting the needle back onto something soft and ethereal.
He settled beside you, as far away on the couch as he could, just enough to give you some space if you needed it.
"Nick and I broke up," you finally said, taking a large sip of what you deduced to be whiskey, the liquid immediately warming your chest.
Bucky nodded, slowly swirling his own glass in his hand like he had already known the second he opened the door to find you standing there. "I figured, after…my mess up earlier. Are you okay?"
"Not really," you huffed a dry chuckle, finishing the whiskey. "And it wasn't your fault."
The silence lingered like it had the first night the two of you went to the diner. But this wasn't awkward or loaded with expectations. Silence between you and Bucky had morphed over the past few weeks into something you found comforting. It's probably why you subconsciously decided to show up at his doorstep. Yet after everything that had transpired with Nick the past few days, it felt like something finally had to give and you needed to fill it.
"I owe you an apology," you sighed, leaning forward to put the glass on the table.
"You don't - "
"I do, Buck, I - please just let me," you turned towards him, something still guarded in his expression.
His eyes roamed your figure, sensing the determination behind your words and he sat back against the couch cushions. "Okay."
You stood, unable to say the hard parts while sitting still. Maybe that's why you weren't able to do it in the diner. There wasn't enough room to get your thoughts out.
"I'm sorry for never coming back like I promised," you started, beginning to walk back and forth in front of the couch where he sat. "I'm sorry I left in the first place, that was really fucking selfish, but - I should've at least called. Sent you a card or something on your birthday or the holidays instead of just - "
Your hands found your hips, eyes glaring at some nondescript spot in the dim room, before you began pacing again.
"I was in fucking…Iceland," you blurted, waving a hand at nothing. "When the fire happened. I figured it out a few weeks ago when I found some postcards I sent and - " you stopped, letting out a frustrated laugh. "I was standing in front of a waterfall I'd been dreaming about for years and you were - "
"Don't apologize for that," Bucky tried to interject, but the thread you were currently unraveling couldn't be stopped.
"I know you made peace with it, I know you know there's nothing that I could've done, but I would've…if grandma would've told me - " you stopped again, the thoughts now not coming out in the correct order, brain working faster than your mouth could move.
"She had 'ask her to come home' written in her planner for the Sunday after she died. She was going to ask me to come back. And - and she never got to. I don't know what had changed for her want to ask me that. And it just feels like - " Tears were now free falling, words tumbling out even faster.
"Hey," Bucky's voice finally broke through your own, and he was standing in front of you. "I know," he nodded. His hands raised settling on your shoulders first and then drifting up to cradle your face. "I know."
"No, that's - I don't - "
"It's okay, we're okay," he said, softer this time. Thumbs wiping away the tears that were collecting on your cheeks. His hands were a welcome weight on your skin. One familiar, one not, the cool touch of the prosthetic felt different, but not wrong. Still…him.
Bucky was now closer than he had ever been, your chest brushing his with each shuddering inhale. There was something unguarded in his expression when you opened your mouth to start the spiral again, but he shook his head, thumb brushing over your lower lip. "We've always been okay."
"You can't mean that. Not after I just…disappeared."
"We both agreed all those years ago that was best," he reminded you. "Might've been slightly misguided, but…"
His voice trailed off, something left lingering between you as he stepped closer, body pressed to yours completely. "I never stopped loving you, you know."
The words hung in the air. Suspended by the dreamlike reverb of whatever record he had chosen. Rendering you speechless after you had just spilled the contents of your heart.
A rush of memories flashed in your vision. The first time he had said 'I love you' in history class when you were barely sixteen, the times he whispered it against your hairline during school dances and beyond, the first time you'd given each other everything, the last time you had heard it in that diner booth before you started to travel…and yet, him saying it now had healed twenty-year-old you who thought you'd never get to hear those words from his lips again.
"You - " you thought about repeating it, but with everything that had happened since that morning, it was a snap decision to start acting on your feelings instead of continuing the spiral that had kept you frozen from your true desires for far too long.
Your own hands lifted to mirror his hold, cradling his jaw the way he cradled yours. His eyes hadn't stopped darting around your face ever since he had said those seven words. Like he was worried you were going to disappear when they finally registered in your brain.
And when they did, you didn't run like you had been recently whenever things got too weighted. Instead, you leaned forward, pressing your lips to his, allowing yourself to finally melt into him fully.
An explosion of time and fate, your mind had finally caught up to what you had been barrelling blindly toward for weeks now. His hands dropped from your face, arms wrapping tightly around your back like he planned to keep you there for all of eternity.
Bucky kissed you back, carefully at first, a sound of surprise escaping his throat like he couldn't believe what was happening. His lips tasted of whiskey, but underneath that, familiarity and comfort. Your arms wove around his neck, pressing your body to his, needing space to no longer exist between you.
The heat, the lingering tension of two people who had once given each other everything was rising steadily. His lips wandered from yours slowly, moving to your jaw, to your cheeks, tongue daring to erase the salt lines of your now dried tears. And you let him. Allowing him to explore the terrain of your features while your fingers twisted in the soft material of his shirt; an exploration of your own occurring along the muscles of his chest as he began to walk you backwards towards the couch.
"I've been wanting to kiss you since you walked into the clinic," he whispered, maybe more to himself than you as the backs of your knees hit the cushions. Each word was punctuated by a kiss somewhere on your skin, like his lips were magnetized and could not spend more than a second away.
A fire flared low in your belly, radiating out to your fingertips that had gotten bolder, taking the journey traveled so often underneath his shirt, tracing the ridges and dips of his skin. Once known completely by memory.
When you sank onto the plush couch, Bucky followed. His knees hit the rug, slotting himself between your thighs immediately. His mouth had moved to your neck, searching for the spots that used to leave you shaky and breathless, testing to see if they still did.
His hands radiated with unbridled tension as they trembled where they landed on your waist. Fingers dared to slide under your shirt, a sigh escaped from his mouth against your skin like he'd been waiting for this moment for far too long. "Can I?" he whispered in your ear, goosebumps erupting down your neck and arms.
You nodded quickly, leaning back so he could fling your shirt across the room. His mouth was back on you, restraint waning with each passing second, continuing a slow, almost agonizing descent. Moving over the swell of your breasts, down your sternum, teeth occasionally grazing your sensitive skin until his fingers dipped below the waistband of your jeans.
"C'mon bunny," he pleaded to the barrier of your jeans, fidgeting with the button and zipper. "Please let me, I've missed her."
Huffing a laugh, you ran a hand through his hair, reveling in the desperation behind his widened pupils and kiss swollen lips. "Go ahead," you chuckled, the sound quickly replaced by a sharp inhale when he pulled you to the edge of the couch.
A low, desperate but barely there growl sounded from between his teeth. With permission, his fingers made quick work sliding the denim off. Bucky's head lowered to continue working down your body. Until he saw the faded ink of your tattoo in the low light.
His jaw slackened on an inhale, like he wanted to say something, but words escaped him. He briefly shook his head instead, thumbs hooking into your panties to draw them down your legs.
Bucky's lips parted, tongue brushing over the tattoo briefly and then moved closer to your aching center. It was slightly frustrating, to say the least. He seemed to be taking his time, while your body had been missing his for ten years. "Bucky…" you whined softly, trying to use your thigh to push him where you needed him, but his arms were faster. Wrapping under your thighs so you couldn't move.
"When'd you get it?" he asked, not looking up, focused instead on your lower belly, kissing right above your clit.
"What?" Every one of your nerve endings was on edge and he wanted to talk about this now?
His finger tapped twice on the tattoo just as his tongue finally grazed your clit. Your body jolted, legs straining against his hold. "Please tell me when you got it," he pleaded again, voice deeper as his tongue ran through your folds once more.
"Uh - I - fuck…" you gritted out as he continued the slow, even movement. He may have forgotten how to exist in your presence momentarily, but there was no denying that he had never forgotten how to please you.
"C'mon bunny, tell me," his dark gaze lifted, meeting your glazed eyes while he continued to tease. A smirk raised the corners of his mouth, one thick finger circling your entrance, moving in tandem with the devastating pace he'd set.
"Two years after I -" you managed, but got cut off by a moan when that finger slid slowly in, lips sealing around your clit.
Bucky pulled back, leaning his head against your thigh. His blue eyes now dancing with amusement watching you squirm while his finger never ceased the slow curling motion that had your back arching for more. "After you left?" he finished for you.
He kissed along your inner thigh, stubble leaving a slight scratch in his wake while he moved back to the tattoo.
You nodded, reaching for him, to put his head back where it belonged between your thighs, but he resisted, batting your hands out of the way with his that wasn't slowly driving you to madness.
"Why?" he asked innocently, thumb now circling along the bundle of nerves with featherlight pressure.
You whined in frustration. "Do we really have to do this now?"
"Yeah, think we do. Bunny," he laughed softly against your skin, kissing the tattoo once more, and then turned his head, finally flattening his tongue along your clit. "Go on, now."
He finally stopped teasing, allowing your hands to fly to his hair in muscle memory. "I - I missed you," you stuttered out, the languid pace feeling more like he was savoring a feast.
"Mhm," he hummed, the vibrations of it making head fall back and thoughts to scatter.
"I was in - " you moaned something that might have been considered Bucky's name, "I don't remember, but I -" you stopped to cry out again. He pushed another finger in, like he thought the problem with you blanking on the story was that you weren't full enough of him.
"It was your birthday and I was sad I wasn't here for it, so I got it on a whim to make you feel closer to me while I traveled, and fuck please don't stop." The words spilled out in one breath as your thighs shook next to his ears.
Your answer seemingly satisfied his curiosity, gone was the slow pace he'd set replaced by a hunger that hadn't been satisfied in a decade. His name fell from the tip of your tongue like it had been perched there for the same amount of time, as sparks flared up your spine, release crashing over you in rocking waves.
His fingers and tongue slowed, withdrawing completely. His hands found your waist again, lips kissing the tattoo one more time before traveling back up to your mouth. Still trying to catch your breath, you draped your arms limply over his shoulders, returning the kiss. He groaned into your mouth, his own arms snaking around your middle to pull you against him.
"Bedroom?" he asked, voice sounding hopeful and wrecked while you were still hazy, mind fuzzy, savoring your own taste on his lips.
"Bedroom," you confirmed. With a deep grunt, he lifted you off the couch. Your legs locked around him on instinct while he staggered through the house until he nudged open the door to his bedroom. Turning, he sank onto the bed, situating you on his lap.
A slight impatience took over your movements, yanking the hem of his shirt over his head. It was then you caught the first glimpse of the extent of his injury, making you pause. A clean scar sat where his shoulder used to continue, where the black and gold prosthetic was attached. "Can - " you didn't finish the question, fingertips already ghosting over the raised edges. "Does - can - "
"I can feel things," he confirmed, letting you come to terms with this new part of him at your own pace. "Even if I couldn't, I don't think I could forget what you feel like."
You gently guided him down to lay on the bed, kissing his mouth first, then moving in your own familiar path down places you knew made him impatient. But not before pressing your lips against the scar tissue, offering an apology. Whispering it in your mind and transferring it from skin to skin.
Continuing down over the planes of his chest that had grown hair since you last visited them. Teeth gently sinking into the soft skin over hard muscle of his belly. A trail of coarser hair disappeared under the waistband. You didn't ask permission, as your thumbs dipped below, smiling against his skin at his sharp intake of breath. Permission was given in the form of his hips raising and you tugging his pants down.
His cock landed heavy against his stomach, flushed, hard, and leaking for you already. Mouth watering, having already wasted too much time not being here you leaned forward, tongue dragging slowly from the base to the tip.
Bucky tensed under your touch, letting out a strangled sound. Your eyes flicked up to his face, smiling while you wrapped a hand around his length, seeing the veins protrude from his neck and arm while trying to keep some form of composure. Your thumb swirled along the reddened tip, spreading the precum before your lips parted, pressing a kiss in the mess you made. A near involuntary moan left your throat at his taste.
He inhaled sharply again, his hand finding purchase on your head, brushing any stray hairs away from your face. With your tongue resting on the thick vein on the underside, you allowed your mouth to part, taking his length fully into your mouth.
He let out a dulcet grunt, fingers flexing against your scalp. "Oh fuck I've missed your mouth," he breathed while you slowly bobbed your head up and down on his cock. The taste of him had always been addictive to you, something you didn't realize how much you missed until you had gone without it for so long.
Bucky had been vocal, you remembered. But his voice was deeper now, taking on a sharper edge while you worked, sending heat rushing through you all over again. The second he hit the back of your throat, his hands moved, patting your arms and grabbing your chin with a gentle urgency. "Can't be finishing in your mouth like a teenager, sweetheart, hop up here. I need to feel you."
You laughed, letting him pull you back onto his lap. He adjusted, back hitting the headboard while your thighs landed on either side of his hips. There wasn't a preamble to be had anymore, one of his hands guiding your hips down, the other fisting his cock to line it up with your entrance.
Sinking down onto him felt like you were finally coming home. Like it was a missing piece of a puzzle you'd tried to solve in a different room. Your forehead dropped, leaning against his, allowing your body to adjust to the welcomed stretch.
"She feels just like I remember," Bucky whispered, hips bucking slightly like he couldn't help it. "Perfectly fucking made for me."
In such an intimate position, overwhelming pleasure and devotion trickled down your spine. Feeling the passion radiating from his embrace as his arms wove around your back, one warm resting on your shoulder, the other slightly cooler, holding you steady on your waist. You moved slowly, wanting to savor the sweetness of finally being where you were supposed to be for as long as possible. And he let you, allowing you to set the pace with only slight twitches of his cock when it dragged against a certain spot.
"Why didn't you ever come back?" he exhaled shakily, breath mingling with yours. You were sure he was rambling. Asking a question to the room and not really expecting an answer.
You hummed, already gasping broken moans quietly as your hips circled. "I didn't think you wanted to see me ever again." The answer honest, finally breaking free.
The hand on your shoulder drifted to the nape of your neck, coaxing you to look at him fully. "You've always been it for me, bunny." His blue eyes two crystalline pools of vulnerability, laying his emotions out raw and hoping that you wouldn't try to run again. "No matter how long you were gone.
"You've always been it for me too." You said, hands coming up to cradle his face. "I'm sorry it took me so long to realize it."
His palm guided you forward, mouths meeting again as the pace became less about savoring, more about letting everything go that you'd been holding back for a decade.
Whispered words of love, of devotion, of pleasure mixed with the sound of skin on skin. A new desperation took over. Bucky held your hips, slamming up over and over, his cock hitting the spot only he knew how to reach that had your mind blanking except for his name over and over again.
Breathless moans turned ragged, until your body clamped down on his, fingers dug into each other's skin like the fact that he wasn't buried as deep as he could be was close enough. You felt the twitch and throb of his cock as he held you against his body, the heady feeling of his own release right after yours spreading through your veins until you slumped forward into the safety of his embrace.
In the afterglow, Bucky held you close, sliding down the headboard to lay flat against the pillows. All the while peppering any skin he could with gentle kisses like it was impossible for him to not to have his lips on you. Like he was making sure you were actually here.
The only thought you could muster in that moment as sheets were pulled over your bodies and your brain was still soft around the edges was that this was what home should feel like. This was the feeling you had been chasing around the world, and it took you leaving first to realize it.
"I'm done running, I think," you whispered into the crook of Bucky's neck.
"Yeah?" even behind the tiredness of his voice, the hope that you were finally coming back here, back to him was unmistakable.
You nodded, fingers tracing over his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart that you had somehow never forgotten. The rhythm lulling you into a deep, even sleep.
One Year Later
A chipped butter yellow coffee cup with hand-painted daisies clinked down on the metal outdoor table next to a vase of fresh pink and white tulips. Steam curled into the early morning air as Bucky sat down in the patio chair next to yours.
"I found a good flight to Iceland, by the way," his voice broke through your drifting thoughts while you watched Rosemary happily hop around in her handmade hutch situated by the herb garden where she had been rescued. "We would leave right after the reception."
You smiled, twirling the ring around your left finger. Vacating your chair, you planted yourself on his lap instead. "Yeah? I can't wait for you to see it," you whispered against his lips.
Bucky's head tilted back to look at you fully. The rising sun catching the look of pure adoration and contentment in his eyes. With a slow smile spreading across his face, while he wrapped his arms further around your waist, "And I can't wait to be married to you."
Lore Drop (as promised): On August 21, 2025, I had to make the incredibly difficult and unexpected decision to put my soul dog to sleep. Anyone who's ever lost a pet knows that this emotional pain is really unlike any other. I still cry every day about him, and miss him more than I can really put into words. I named the diner in this fic after him as a small memento. Suffice it to say that when I spun the wheel we used to choose our Barbie Bucky careers and I got veterinarian, my first instinct was to channel the grief of losing an animal and having Veterinarian Bucky be there to make it better. I sincerely hope everyone enjoyed this story way more than whatever grief fest I almost dragged y'all into lmao. A massive, giant thank you to @miraclediviner again for putting this together. Another thank you to Stantastic for welcoming me in with open arms when they asked me to join. I really don't know where I'd be without any of y'all, and I'm so grateful to have all of you in my life.
Pairing: Landscaper!Bucky Barnes x Home Owner!Female Reader
Summary: You never planned to return to the quiet countryside, let alone inherit your late grandmother’s weathered cottage and overgrown garden. Stressed and city-worn, you hire local landscaper Bucky Barnes to tame the chaos in order to honor her memory. But what begins as a simple restoration blooms into shared stories of loss, second chances and a path to starting over.
Word count: 15.5k
Tags/warnings: hurt/comfort; grief & mourning; death of a family member (grandmother); mentions of reader being burnt out; cottage core; strangers to lovers; unrequited feelings (briefly, if you squint, not really but kinda); slow burn; she falls first/he falls harder; lemonade as a love language (I’m serious); smut; oral sex (f receiving); p in v; unprotected sex; comeplay; fingering; happy ending
Notes: welcome to April, the month of the most incredible, funny, groundbreaking, earthshattering collab you've seen in recent times! In all seriousness, I could not be more excited to start off Bucky's Dreamhouse Collab at @stantastic-association with my baby landscaper!Bucky 😊 this fic kicked my ass (i haven't written over 10k words in?? how long??) but i am so happy to finally be able to share it with you 💕finally, a big thank you to @miraclediviner who was our guiding light for this collab!
Blue light from your laptop bleeds into the darkness of your apartment, reflecting off the plastic lid of a container of cold Thai food that has been sitting there since… well, you aren’t actually sure. It’s 1 AM on a Tuesday—actually, Wednesday— and the city outside your windows lives in the middle of sirens and subway vibrations that rattle the bones of the building. For the past three hours, you have been staring at a spreadsheet until the cells began blurring into gray bars, eyes aching with a fatigue that not even sleep could touch.
You’re not tired today, you’re not tired of your job. Rather, you are worn out. Like the never-ending noises from the city have settled inside you, too, but instead of getting used to them, every single cell in you has started rejecting them like foreign objects. That description has been in your brain for weeks, now; close to a medical diagnosis you haven’t quite admitted to yet, denial before acceptance.
Your phone buzzes in the middle of another spiraling of staring at a screen that is not going to change unless you press meaningless keys. Whatever moment you were going through, though, didn’t quite prepare you for what follows.
Seeing your mother’s name on the small screen at this hour doesn’t bring a sense of alarm. It instead brings a hollow tightness to your chest, the kind of heavy stillness that usually precedes a car crash. And when you pick up the phone, come the news, even though they don’t quite feel like that when they sound through the tiny speaker. It’s a physical weight, a heavy stone dropped into a pool, sending ripples that touch every single branch of your current life.
Your grandmother is gone.
The woman who used to smell like peppermint and potting soil, whose voice was the only thing that had ever truly made the world feel quiet. You had spent countless summers with her, back in the countryside, hands in the dirt as she taught you the right way to plant a rose, how to prune a tree so it could grow stronger. Suddenly, the spreadsheet still bright on your computer has shifted from a boring task to a full-on insult. How could the numbers and columns still be there, rigid and demanding, when the person who taught you how to breathe through a heatwave on a July afternoon is simply… gone?
Are you supposed to simply go back to your life as you think of her kitchen, of the way the sunlight always seemed to pool on the linoleum in a buttery square where her cat would always sleep? Or as you are swarmed with the memory of her hands, mapped with veins like the very rivers she lived near, strong enough to haul buckets of compost and yet still gentle enough to braid your hair?
Still on the phone, your mother tells you she has left behind the weathered cottage and the garden to your name. In your mind’s eye, you could already see it surrendering to the weeds way before her heart stopped beating. No one ever cared for it the way she did, even though it had been in your family for generations. Your grandmother had been sick for a while, now, and you’re sure no one else had taken the time to care for the one thing she always did. It was yours, now.
You spend the rest of that Wednesday night in a state of suspended animation. There’s no crying, at least not yet, but you move through your apartment like a ghost, packing a back with a mechanical efficiency you’re sure would scare your mother, folding clothes you haven’t worn in years. The decision to leave doesn’t come from a sense of duty, of being present for your mother or the clinical logistics of a funeral that always feel too heavy for people mourning. It is simply survival instinct, one that hits you so sharp and sudden it almost knocks the breath out of you. Looking around your cramped apartment, filled with ergonomic furniture you don’t really like and unfinished documents, you realized tonight you were running on empty. There was no more fuel to give the city. Your grandmother’s passing was the only trigger you needed to leave it behind. You needed to go back to the only place that still holds the scent of something real, even if that reality is currently buried under layers of grief.
And by dawn, your suitcase is thrown into the trunk of your car and you are leaving the city behind.
The drive is a blur of highway static and caffeine-induced insomnia until the asphalt finally gives way to the gray ribbons of the backroads. The further you get from the skyline, from the tall buildings that framed your every day for years now, the more the silence starts to ring in your ears, echoing the emptiness in your chest. Silence used to be nice. Whenever you visited your grandmother, left the busy days behind for maybe a week or two, the silence was comforting. A heated blanket, a balm that helped you heal.
But now, as you finally pull into the gravel drive of the cottage, silence is no longer the peaceful sanctuary you had promised yourself. It’s heavy. The house looks smaller than you remember, tired, as if without her spirit to hold it up, the walls are finally starting to give in to gravity.
When you stop your car and step out, you don’t go inside immediately. Instead, you walk around the side of the house, drawn to the back where the heart of her life used to beat.
And just like the silence you had craved, the peace you had always felt here crumbles, too, the moment you lay your eyes on the yard. The garden isn’t overgrown; you think you prefer calling it a green monster. It’s aggressive, a sprawling graveyard of things your grandmother used to love. Waist-high weeds have completely swallowed the lavender path, and the wild blackberry thorns have woven themselves into an impenetrable wall. The trellis, where her prized roses used to climb in disciplined rows, is now buckling under the weight of strangling vines that look like they’re trying to pull the cottage back into the earth. An old fountain is overrun.
Standing on the bottom step of the back porch, the scale of the neglect is paralyzing. Leaves you to wonder how long had been since your grandmother had been physically able to care for her own things. How long she had kept away from the flowers and plants that had always breathed happiness into her. Just like your own mind, her space, now yours, is tangled and messy, far too gone for one person to ever hope to fix. You look at your own hands, too soft and lacking callouses, and realize you don’t even know where to start. How are you supposed to honor her memory? When you don’t know the difference between tools, the right time to plant the seeds? Guilt hits you, then, with the kind of edge that drags a cold sweat down your spine. In her absence, the wild had claimed her legacy while you were busy in the city filling spreadsheets that mattered to no one. You want to make this house a home once more. But how does one do that with an empty heart?
The first two days are spent in a state of mourning that feels exactly like static, gray and thick. You stay inside, unable to look out the windows at the chaos, and move through the cottage like a diver underwater, every motion resisted by the weight of silence.
Tea goes cold before you remember to sip it. You stare at the floral wallpaper in the hallway until the patterns begin to resemble the columns and rows of your old work, except this wallpaper doesn’t scream at you in approaching deadlines. Here, time has no teeth. It doesn’t bite, just swallows.
For the last two nights, you’ve slept in the guest bed. Your old room feels too much like a museum of a person you outgrew and no longer recognize, and her room feels like hallowed ground you are nowhere near holy enough to tread upon.
By next morning, you find yourself in the kitchen, the buttery square of sunlight hitting the linoleum exactly as you remember it, except there isn’t a cat any longer. Hands begin to aimlessly open drawers, finding yourself needing a distraction, or trying to look for something, anything. Matches for a candle. A reason to stay despite finding this place so different from the one you’d once called your second home once. And you find it, tucked between a ball of twine and a stack of expired coupons, right in the middle of the junk drawer: grandma’s old address book with a faded floral cover that still smells faintly of the rose-scented hand cream she used every night. The edges of the pages are frayed, paper slightly yellowed. A small business card falls to the floor halfway through flicking through the pages.
Barnes Landscaping & Restoration
Something in your heart flips. Not because you recognize the name, but because you immediately see her familiar handwriting in it. Another piece of her left behind that now you get to keep.
“Good lad. Strong hands and he listens to the earth.”
A sharp lump forms in your throat. This small note, mindless, written by your grandmother at a time she needed to keep a reminder, is the first thing that managed to pierce the numbness since the phone call announcing her passing. You can almost hear her voice saying it, the appreciative tone she used for people who worked with their backs and not just their mouths. And even though the grief cannot be fixed by a landscaper, you know now that there’s a flicker of hope of fixing everything else around here. You aren’t a gardener, just a person used to staring at gray bars on a screen. But an extra pair of professional hands surely will be perfect to help you face the thorns outside the house.
After you pick up the phone on the wall and dial the number, there’s two rings and then the line clicks open.
“Barnes,” the voice on the other side says. You freeze for half a second, like now you’re unsure what you’re even supposed to ask for.
“Hi,” you start, voice cracking slightly from days of disuse. You realize you haven’t said a single word since you’ve come here days ago. “I’m… I’m calling about the property on the old creek road. It’s my grandmother’s, Caroline… was. Sorry. She’s passed and I’ve just inherited the place and—” You look out the window at the waist-high weeds and strangling vines. “I think the garden has gone to war and I don’t have a way of winning that fight.”
There is a long pause on the other end. You hear the faint sound of a truck engine idling.
“Caroline was a very sweet woman. I’m sorry for your loss,” the man says, voice softening a fraction. “She spoke about you a lot. Said you were lost in the city.”
That stings a little. Mostly because it’s true.
“I’m not in the city anymore. This is my home now,” you whisper.
Another silence.
“If you’d like, I can come over this afternoon. Take a look at the garden, you can tell me what you’d like to do with it. First consultation is free for Caroline’s granddaughter.”
The afternoon sun is thick and syrupy, casting long shadows across the linoleum, when the silence of the old creak road is finally broken. You stay tucked behind the lace curtains of the kitchen window, watching heavy tires roll over unkempt gravel. A beat-up, dark blue truck pulls into view, a workhorse of a vehicle, mottled with patches of primer and the red clay of the country. The engine cuts out, and when the door creaks open, he steps out.
Barnes.
He doesn’t look like any type of contractor you’ve ever hired in the city. There’s no clipboard, no neon safety vest. He stands by the door of his truck for a long beat, hands sliding into the pockets of his dirt-stained denim, eyes surveying the “green monster” you were apparently too terrified of. From your vantage point, you see how his yellow plaid shirt, faded from too many washes and too much sun, first buttons open to reveal a white top underneath, stretches taut across a pair of shoulders that look like they were built for the sole purpose of carrying the heaviest of weights. But that’s not where your eyes linger.
Instead, they stay glued to his left arm. You don’t mean to stare. Not really. But the silver metal shines when the sunlight hits it and holds your gaze even if you try to look away. Spread across fingers, forearm, bicep, until it disappears under the short sleeve of his shirt. While watching him, you find no attempt on his side to hide that arm.
Barnes lets out a heavy sigh. Not a sigh of annoyance, or at least you don’t recognize it as such. He looks at the tangle of weeds and the buckling trellis not as nuisance, but as an old friend who has lost their way. There’s no rush to get the job done, no immediate knock on the door to get your attention. He is simply there, rounding the front of his truck as he looks around for details that surely escape you. Barnes looks like he belongs to the dirt, like the mud on his boots is a permanent part of his skin. He adjusts the brim of his cap, a movement that causes the fabric of his shirt to pull against the muscles of his back. There’s a quiet power in him, a “man of muscle” persona that’s just utilitarian, like he is a tool designed for this specific job. You can’t imagine him anywhere but here, amidst the messy chaos of your late grandma’s garden.
He touches a dry stalk, eyes some dead plants. The words from the address book return: he listens to the earth.
The door creaks behind you as you finally step out onto the porch, sneakers sinking slightly into the uneven boards, which have been worn down by years of sun and wind. You wrap your arms around yourself, though the day isn’t cold, just more of a habit that you’ve developed to shield yourself from the vastness of the yard that feels like it’s swallowing the cottage whole.
Barnes turns at the sound of you, and you then notice how he’s taller up close, broad through the shoulders in a way that makes the yellow plaid look borrowed from a smaller man. You don’t look at his metal arm again, and he doesn’t try to hide it or tuck it behind his body. It’s right there, part of him, gleaming faintly.
“Ma’am,” he says, removing his cap as a gesture all too long lost by men who called themselves gentlemen. The action reveals a sweep of dark hair damp at the temples from the heat, and without obstruction, you find it easier to see his eyes now, blue, color of ocean water. There’s no attempt to offer a handshake, and he doesn’t say anything more.
You offer your name back like it’s a gesture of gratitude. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Mister Barnes.”
“No need for the formalities. Haven’t been a Mister of much,” he corrects quietly. “I’m James. Most folks call me Bucky.”
His gaze drifts back to the yard, lingering on the strangled trellis. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Been a while since I was out here. Last time… must’ve been early summer. Told me the roses were coming in strong, wanted me to come trim the climbers before they got away from her. But I used to be here all the time. Helped her with some drainage plannin’, built the trellis for her.”
There’s a pause, and you see him narrow his eyes at a patch of what might once have been… well, anything, now lost under a sea of bindweed. “Should’ve checked when she went quiet. Figured she was just busy with her cannin’ or had some family visitin’. Didn’t feel right to push.”
You recognize the weight in the words. Guilt. A stranger who wasn’t a stranger to your grandmother, feeling the heaviness of not having visited her more often. It’s particular, how grief has a way of finding everyone who loved the same person and handing each of them their own particular version of it.
“She was good people. Always had coffee waitin’, strong enough to wake the dead. Talked about her grandaughter, well, you, a lot. Always said you were the prettiest girl in the big city. ‘suppose she wasn’t wrong.”
That lands too close to the bone while the numbness in your chest holds firm, a gray fog that keeps any sharper feelings at bay. Another time, in the city, you would have found Mister Barnes, James, Bucky, an incredibly handsome man. Maybe you would have said something warmer to him. You’re impressed, distantly, by the solid build, the quiet competence that radiates without needing to announce itself. But the grief sits too heavy, a stone lodged between your ribs. Flirting feels like a language from another life, one spoken under different air. Here, it doesn’t occur to you.
Bucky seems to interpret the silence on your end as discomfort. He clears his throat and gestures toward the almost collapsing trellis. “She loved those roses. So we’ll build them back up. Cut back what’s chokin’ ‘em, give the roots some air. They’re tougher than they look.”
We.
You don’t know what to do with that word. It does something to the wall of numbness you’ve been operating behind, finds a hairline crack and sits there. Something about the way he says it, not a sales pitch, not an empty promise to bill you later. This isn’t just a job for him. It’s a mission, a way to set right something that had slipped away while he wasn’t watching.
You nod, the motion feeling distant. “I don’t even know where to start. It’s a lot. And I’m not her, I barely know anything about this.”
He nods, once. Accepts that.
“It's a big job," Bucky says, back to practical. “Months, probably, before it looks like anythin’.” He glances at you sideways. "Depends what you want to do with the place."
You look at the cottage behind you, at the lace curtains still visible through the kitchen window.
“I want it to feel like her again,” you say. “Doesn’t need to be perfect. I just want it to feel like it has a reason to still be standing.”
Barnes is quiet for a moment. Then he says: “That's a good enough reason to start.”
The sound of a trunk horn wakes you up before the alarm goes off.
Your body registers it first of all, pulling you up from the unreliable sleep you’ve been managing since you arrived, and for one disoriented second, suspended in the gray space between dreaming and waking, your mind can barely place it itself. Then the floral wallpaper swims into focus, then the smell of old wood.
The clock on the nightstand reads 7:12. Outside, the truck engine cuts, a door swings open and closed, and then silence again. You lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, listening in to the silence.
Bucky didn’t say he’d come this early. He didn’t say much at all, in full honesty. But you can already recognize the sounds of someone beginning to work in the garden that is now yours.
There is something deeply strange about it, a man like him moving through the wreckage of your grief at 7 in the morning while you are still horizontal and unwashed, yet the strangeness has an undertone to it that you can’t quite name. Maybe the particular relief of knowing that a problem is being faced even when you are not yet capable of facing it yourself.
By the time you manage to get up and get downstairs, you have pulled your hair back and traded yesterday’s clothes for something cleaner, which feels like the upper limit of what you can reasonably ask of yourself before 8 AM. The kitchen is exactly as you left it when you enter it to fill the kettle and set it on the burner before standing at the window.
Bucky is already deep into it.
He has positioned himself in front of the trellis, the worst of it, the structure that had looked to you like a lost cause from the moment you first saw it. Strangling vines have grown over it in layers, and he is working from the top down with a pair of long-handled shears, cutting in sections, pulling the severed lengths away and piling them to the side. The patience with which he does it makes it look like a delicate surgery.
You watch him work the way you watched him last time from this same window, with the glass serving the necessary distance for someone who is not yet ready to be in the middle of things. He reaches up to cut a particularly stubborn length of vine and the motion pulls his shirt taut across his back. You notice, again, the funny implausibility of his size relative to the delicacy of what he is doing. Hands, one flesh, one metal, moving through the overgrowth with the precision of someone looking for something they don’t want to damage in the finding.
The kettle whistles.
You make two cups of coffee on autopilot, as if the memory has already been embedded into you.
The back door opens just as you finish pouring the two cups, and Bucky walks over, registers you, then the cups, but he remains impassive.
“Mornin’. Didn’t expect you up this early,” he says. Doesn’t apologize for arriving at 7 AM, you notice. He’s just a man who assumed starting before the heat peaked was a given.
“I heard the horn.” With careful steps, you walk towards him and offer him a mug. “Grandma always had coffee waiting. Would feel wrong not to do the same.”
He takes the mug you extend with his right hand, wrapping his fingers around it, and you notice then the state of them. The knuckles. The deep lines of the palm, the hardened skin at the base of each finger, the kind of callouses that take years to build, sustained by the repeated act of choosing hard work.
“Thank you,” is all he gives you. Without being told, you realize that this isn’t the kind of man who fills silences out of politeness. That you can stand here and drink your coffee and not be expected to perform conversation, and that this is, somehow, the most considerate thing he could offer you right now. So you do just that. Stand there. Drink your coffee.
Eventually, Bucky finishes his coffee and then he’s back out the door, and back to work. You follow him this time, trailing behind him as you look at vines he’s begun working with. Up close, the damage is more visible than it was from the window. The vines have threaded themselves through every joint, every crossbar, working their way into the structure the way roots look for water by branching out and filling every small gap. But the trellis itself, the bone of it all, is still standing. Barely, but there, in a very unexpected way.
“You built this, right?” And even though it’s a question it sounds more like a statement because you remember what he told you already.
“Few years back,” he crouches to free a length of vine from the base, pulling steadily, working it loose rather than snapping it. “Your grandma wanted something that could hold the climbers through winter. Most prefab wouldn’t cut it.” Bucky glances up at the structure appraisingly, and you recognize the look of someone looking at something they’ve made a long time ago and are no longer sure what to think of it now. “Needs a few joints repaired, but the frame’s sound.”
Through the morning, he works and you watch, still keeping to the edge of things, mug gradually emptying before you fill it back. In the meantime, Bucky has uncovered a significant section of the trellis frame, and it is in this newly exposed stretch that he stops, crouches low, and puts the shears down.
What he’s looking at is a rose cane; or rather, what remains of one. It is gray-brown and leafless and looks, to an untrained eye like yours, like everything else in this garden, something that has long given up. But Bucky is looking at it with a particular kind of focus, one that makes you wonder if he’s reading something written in a language you definitely don’t speak, his metal fingers hovering just above the bark without quite touching.
“Is it…” Dead? That word cannot even slip past your lips.
“Dormant,” he corrects hastily. “There’s a difference.”
Then, his fingers pinch a small section of the outer bark away from the cane and he shows you the inside, which is very unmistakably green.
Alive.
“Oh.”
He stands back up, retrieves his shears and keeps working. You stay where you are a little longer, looking at the exposed cane with it secret green interior.
“She had a catalogue. Like mail-order flowers or somethin’. Used to argue about it,” Bucky says after a while, from slightly above and to your left, his attention still on the vine he’s cutting. He doesn’t feel like he’s making conversation, more like he’s just thinking out loud. “There was this one climber she’d ordered, I forget the name, she was convinced it would come back every year without any help. I told her it wouldn’t survive the first frost without protection. Stubborn thing, planted it anyway, said she’d take her chances.”
“Did it survive?”
Scanning the remaining vines with a slow eye, Bucky points to the largest dormant canes, one that is thicker than the others at the base.
“Third year runnin’.”
He doesn’t say it smiling. But the corner of his mouth does something, a small upward shift, before he ducks his chin slightly like he is trying not to make a thing of it; then goes back to cutting.
You stand there for another moment, before going back inside to refill the kettle, because the alternative is to stand there, in the middle of his work, like you belong there, and you’re not quite ready to believe that yet.
Making him tea is an accident, the first time.
You hadn’t planned it. You are in the kitchen, making a cup for yourself, the way you have been every afternoon since you arrived, and your hand simply reaches for a second mug. Muscle memory, maybe, or the particular guilt of drinking something warm while a man is pulling thorns out of the ground thirty feet away. You bring it out without overthinking it, set it on the porch railing and go back inside before he has to acknowledge it.
Bucky leaves the mug empty on the railing when he leaves.
The second time is less accidental.
A lavender path runs along the south side of the garden and is entirely invisible under a season’s worth of bindweed and creeping grass. Bucky has moved on to it after working on the trellis for a while, and he approaches it with the same care he approached the roses.
You have been watching from the porch for most of the morning, cup of tea gone cold in your hands, when he stops and looks back over his shoulders at you.
“You could help with this part,” he says, a statement of fact he’s choosing to share. You look down at your hands, then back at him.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know. Doesn’t matter for this, you’re just pulling.”
So you go in.
He hands you a pair of gloves without comment, the thick gardening kind, slightly too large, and you understand when you pull the first weed that this is why; the bindweed has thorns worked into it, a little too vicious, finding skin without any warning. You work at the edge of the path while he takes the denser middle section, and for a long stretch of time the only sounds are the pull and tear of vegetation.
The quiet between you has changed since the first day. It has lost the quality of two strangers being careful around each other, and it’s something simpler now. Still as quiet, but more comfortable now, like you’ve both established, without many words, that you trust each other enough to be silent together. You find that you can think in it, without the static that has followed you since the news broke.
“Is this one?” You hold up a stem you’re not sure about, something with small dark leaves that doesn’t quiet look like the rest of the weeds, but you also haven’t seen before.
Bucky glances over from where he’s kneeling. “Clover. Leave it.”
“…Why?”
“Pollinators like it. And it’s not hurtin’ anythin’.”
You put it back down carefully, tamping the soil around the base the way you’ve watched him do it, pressing with two fingers. There’s no comment from him on the imitation but you have the sense, even without looking his way, that he notices it. That’s the thing about Bucky, you’ve come to realize; he notices most things without making you feel watched.
Noticing without watching is a quality you have been trying put words to since the first day, when he looked at the rose cane the way most people look at something they love that has been damaged. There is a particular kind of attention he gives to things that is completely different from the attention you grew up being taught to pay. In the city, attention was a performance. In meetings, you looked at whoever was speaking to show them you were present, notes taken to demonstrate engagement. But here, Bucky’s attention is a different thing entirely. It is simply where his interest is. No performance, no proof. He looks at a plant and you believe that looking is the entire point of what he is doing.
And for the first time since his arrival, you find yourself wondering what it would feel like to have that quality of attention turned on you fully. Not the sideways glances you’ve caught, but the whole thing. If he’d find the flaws in your build, or if he’d look for the green under the bark.
Then you pull another weed, because this is not the time.
You are both working toward the center of the path from opposite ends when your hands converge on the same section, and you find the first live lavender stem. Bucky sees it first, a small cluster of gray-green stems, flattened under the weight of everything that has grown over them, but intact. He stops your hand and points.
“There.”
You lean closer, seeing the almost unrecognizable lavender, pressed flat and pale from the lack of light, but the leaves are still soft when you touch them, still releasing a faint dry fragrance that hits you all too softly. Then you hear him make a sound, like something has just occurred to him.
You glance over.
He is still looking at the ground, at the lavender next to you, an expression on his face like he’s actively deciding whether or not to let out whatever thought has come to mind.
Then, without looking up, without any preamble whatsoever:
"Why can't the flower ride his bike?"
You blink twice. Bucky’s jaw is set, expression aggressively neutral, like he has not just said what he said.
“… What?”
“… It’s just somethin’ that came to mind. An old joke I told your grandmother once.”
A pause hangs, your face doesn’t move except for your slightly furrowed brows.
“Okay. Why can’t the flower ride his bike?”
“Lost his petals.”
Bucky says it completely straight, the same tone he uses to tell you about drainage ingredients and soil composition and which weeds are worth keeping.
The laugh comes from somewhere so far down that it immediately surprises you on the way out. Not a small involuntary thing, but a bigger, louder laugh, one that takes over your whole chest and makes your eyes water before you’ve caught up to it. There’s no dignity to the sound that comes out of you, that escapes before grief has any chance to intervene. You press the back of your wrist to your mouth and it makes no difference at all.
Meanwhile, Bucky’s looking at you like he’s fighting very hard not smile, and losing that battle.
“That is the worst joke I have ever heard,” you manage, when you can speak again.
“Yeah. But you laughed. Was about time.”
The smile is still on your face when it happens.
It arrives quietly, the way the worst things do. One moment you are laughing, the sound of it still warm in your chest, and then something catches, a foot finding a loose board in the dark, and the warmth quickly dissipates.
Because the laughter had felt good. Physically good, the first thing in weeks that has cut cleanly through the haze, and the goodness of it is exactly what undoes you. The thought arrives fully formed and merciless: she will never hear you laugh again. Will never know you were here, in her garden, laughing at a terrible joke told by a man she liked very much.
The tears come before you can stop them.
You turn away from him immediately, a reflex, one hand coming up to cover your face. Tears that had been waiting, pressurized, behind the numbness for days, weeks, and are finally seeping through a moment of weakness. You try to breathe through it and can’t quite manage, and now you’re crying without much composure, without careful management you’ve been applying over your grief like a bandage of the wrong size.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be—”
“You don’t have to be.”
You don’t answer. You keep your hand over your face because looking at anything feels impossible right now.
“It’s not right,” you get out, eventually. “That I can laugh when she’s— I shouldn’t be laughing yet, it’s too soon, it means I’ve already started—”
“No.”
Bucky settles into stillness beside you, not touching, just present.
“Doesn’t work like that. Laughin’ doesn’t mean you’re done grievin’, or that you’re lettin’ go of anythin’. Just means you’re still here.”
You try to breathe.
“She would have wanted you to laugh. Grief will sometimes be loud, and then quiet, and then loud again. That’s okay.”
The tears are still coming but something in your chest has eased, just slightly. Finally, you lower your hand, and the garden comes back into focus. Bucky is giving you the courtesy of not watching you reassemble yourself, staring at something else which is, you think, exactly what your grandmother meant when she wrote that he listens to the earth. You’re part of it, too.
You wipe your face with the sleeve of your shirt and exhale slowly.
“I’ve been holding that in for a while,” you say.
“I can tell.” Another pause. “You know your grandma had no patience for held-in things. Would’ve had you cryin’ into a cup of coffee on the first mornin’.” The corner of his mouth gives up the fight entirely, shows a real smile, there and then gone just as quickly. “You want to keep goin' or call it for today?”
“Let's keep going,” you say.
He nods, once. Puts his gloves back on and you do the same.
From then on, every afternoon, somewhere around the point when the sun peaks and the garden becomes briefly inhospitable, Bucky takes a break he doesn’t announce and appears at the edge of the porch. You have started timing the kettle to it, which you admit only to yourself and no one else. You sit on the steps, he leans against the railing, and the conversation comes in the same way everything does with him: unhurried, arriving when it arrives.
He tells you things about himself. Careful, not because he doesn’t want to share them, but because you can tell he’s not sure whether you want to hear them. (You do, you come to find out.) Then tells you things about the garden and about your grandmother in the same tone, as if they are the same subject. That she once spent an entire afternoon arguing with him about the correct way to stake a climbing rose, and he let her win, and she knew he let her win and never brought it up again.
“She said something about you,” you tell him eventually. “In the address book, next to your number. I don’t know if you’d want to know.”
Bucky just looks at you.
‘Good lad. Strong hands and he listens to the earth,' you tell him. Exactly as she wrote it.
He looks away, out at the garden. Pulls the brim of his cap down a fraction, which you have figured is exactly what he does when something lands somewhere tender. There’s a long enough silence that you start to worry you’ve misstepped.
But then, quiet: “That’s good to know.”
That’s all.
The worrying starts a month in, and it announces itself in the most ordinary way.
You are inside the house when you hear it, a single sharp sound from somewhere in the garden, metal against stone, followed by a silence that has a different quality than the usual working silence.
When you move to the back door, what you find is Bucky standing very still beside the railing with his left hand pressed flat against his right forearm, metal protecting the flesh.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” He says it so quickly and flatly that it’s very obviously a lie.
“Bucky.”
He looks at you then, a brief evaluating look, and something about whatever he finds in your expression makes him relent. He lifts his metal hand to show you: a long shallow scratch along the inside of his forearm, from a piece of broken border edging he had been repositioning. Doesn’t look deep from where you’re standing, but the way he’d been holding it suggested it had stung considerably more than nothing.
“I have a first aid kit inside,” you say."
“It’s fine.”
“I didn’t ask,” You say it the same way he says most things. A fact, not an argument. “Come inside.”
He does, and sits at the kitchen table carefully, as a man who has learned to take up the right amount of space and no more, while you find the first aid kit in the cupboard where your grandmother always kept it, between the spare candles and the batteries.
The scratch is genuinely minor. You clean it without ceremony and he watches the process with patience, and you are aware, more than you have been at any point working alongside him in the garden, of how close you are. The kitchen is small. His flesh arm is resting on the table and you are sitting in front of him, and the afternoon light is coming through the window at an angle that does something very specific to the planes of his face. It highlights the blue in his eyes, too.
You focus on the first aid kit instead.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says, but there’s no mention that he wants you to stop. Maybe he just feels required to offer you the exit.
“She’d have done it,” you say simply.
His eyes move to the window. “You’re not her.”
A small thing. It doesn’t need to be more than it is. But he finishes it in a way that makes it harder to simplify it: “I like that about you.”
You press a small strip of gauze into place with your thumb, smoothing the tape at the edges. There is no logical reason to take this long finishing a minor scratch. You both seem to know that, but neither of you moves away.
Your eyes travel, briefly and without meaning to, to where his metal arm rests next to his body. The afternoon light catches the articulated joints, the way it sits completely still the way flesh and bone rarely does. Your eyes drift away before it becomes a thing, but he sees it.
“You can look,” Bucky says. Not an invitation exactly. He’s just handing you a door you didn’t know you were standing in front of. “Most people do. Just usually they try harder to pretend they don’t.”
“I wasn’t—” you start, and then stop, because you were, a little. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’ve been one of the only people in a long while who just… let it be there. First day I came out, you looked and moved on. Treated it like it was part of a person instead of the whole story of one.”
You don’t know what to do with that, so you stay quiet and let him have the floor.
“Most people either stare and can’t stop, or they work so hard at not lookin’ that it becomes its own kind of starin’. Both make a man feel like a curiosity. You just… handed me coffee.”
“Seemed like the right thing to do.”
The corner of his mouth moves. “People don’t always do the right thing.”
Another silence, but it’s more comfortable now. There’s no need to fill it, you’ve both learned how to live inside it, but you continue anyway. A breach in his persona that you intend to explore, if he’ll let you.
“How long have you had it?” you ask, and you say it to his arm, because starting there feels like less an inconvenience than meeting his eyes.
“Fifteen years, give or take.”
The number lands heavier than you expect. Fifteen years is long enough to become the shape of a person. Long enough that you cannot picture the version of him that preceded it, and you suspect, that maybe he can’t always either.
“Work accident,” he adds, not because you asked. Just because the words are sitting there and he’s decided to pick them up. “Land clearin’ job, upstate. Big contract, the kind you don’t turn down when you’re twenty-five and tryin’ to build somethin’ from nothin’. There was an equipment failure. It was fast. Everythin’ else after was slow, though.”
You don’t say sorry, because something tells you he has a particular and well-earned exhaustion with that phrase. Instead, you ask: “What was the hardest part? After.”
He considers it for a bit.
“Knowin’ what my hands were supposed to do and not being able to trust them to do it anymore.” Bucky glances down at his right hand, the lines in the palm, the built callouses. “I’ve worked since I was seventeen. This kind of work, specifically. It’s the one thing I knew how to be. For a while I genuinely didn’t know who I was without it. Or if there was a version of me that existed separate from it.”
“But there was,” you finish for him.
“Took some convincin’. And a lot of broken things. Broke more fence posts learnin’ to calibrate the grip on that side than I care to admit. Had to relearn the pressure for everythin’. Soil density, stone, root systems. The sensitivity is different, temperature reads different. But some things are easier now. The metal doesn’t tire, doesn’t cramp in the cold.” He makes a face then, without self-pity, but still a bit funny. “Other… things are still being figured out, ‘til this day.”
“Fifteen years in and still figuring it out?”
“Most things worth doin’ take longer than that.”
You sit with that for a moment.
“I used to think that people would always see it first and everythin’ else second. That it would just be the thing that preceded me into every room,” he says, arriving at something he doesn’t often take out into the world. “But I have found that some people make it easy to forget it ever felt like a problem.”
Although he doesn’t look directly at you when he says it, his eyes now on his metal arm, you know he means you, even through the subtext.
You smooth the edge of the bandage one more time, a gesture with no remaining practical purpose, and then you fold your hands in your lap.
“For what it’s worth… from where I’m standing, it’s a good arm.”
He blinks. It's the closest to caught off guard you've ever seen him.
“Beg your pardon?”
“The arm. It’s good. Found the green inside the rose cane, pulled the lavender out without breaking it. It’s done something good. Just thought someone should say it.”
“… Thank you.”
And he means every syllable.
When he leaves that afternoon and you stand at the kitchen window watching the truck back out over the gravel, you notice something funny that takes you a moment to identify, unfamiliar after weeks of weight.
You are already thinking about tomorrow.
Not with dread. Not with the gray, flat, nothing that has colored every day since you arrived. It’s hopeful. You want tomorrow to come because that means you’ll see him again.
It’s a Thursday morning when Bucky announces he’ll start working on the fountain at the center of the garden. You’d looked at it weeks ago, and it was left on standby to be dealt with eventually. That eventually is today, which is how you both end up here, on your knees in the dirt, staring at the vines that have overtaken it.
“Pull toward you,” Bucky says (for the third time) because you keep pulling sideaways and the vine system underneath is apparently connected in a way that means you’re undoing his work every time you do. “The root runs that direction. You’re fighting it.”
You scoff. “I know I’m fighting it, I’m trying to remove it.”
“You remove it by not fighting it.”
“… Very zen for someone covered in mud,” you shoot back, even though technically he’s not covered in mud. But there’s a streak of it along his jaw where he’d wiped his face with the back of his wrist without thinking, and his shirt has long given up on any pretense of cleanliness. He looks at you, patience of a woman who has decided not to rise to it, and then reaches across and repositions your hands on the vine, both of his hands, flesh and metal, bracketing yours briefly.
“There, now pull.”
You pull, and the vine comes away from the stone in one satisfying length, roots and all.
“Oh.”
The fountain is old. Limestone, you think, or something like it, pale gray and carved simply, a wide basin sitting on a short column. Someone, maybe your grandmother, maybe your grandmother with Bucky’s help, had planted climbing things around its base and they had done exactly what climbing things do when left without guidance: they engulfed it entirely.
Clearing it takes the better part of the morning.
The heat is real today, thick, settling into the back of your neck and staying. You’ve both abandoned the idea of breaks, working through the mess in sections, passing the shears back and forth without needing to ask. You’re working closer together than you have been before; when he reaches past you to get a root system threading the far side of the basin, his metal arm crosses your line of sight close enough that you could close your hand around it if you moved a few inches to the left.
“Hand me the trowel?”
Find it, pass it over, and he takes it with his right hand, the left braced flat against the side of the basin to keep his balance while he works at the base and you watch the metal fingers spread against the stone for a moment before you make yourself look at something else.
And by noon, the fountain is mostly exposed.
You both sit back on your heels and look at it. The limestone is dark with old moisture in places, and there’s green algae mapped across the north face where the water must have pooled and sat. The pipe inlet at the base of the column is corroded but present.
“Think it still works?” you ask.
“Possibly. I imagine the line was shut off some time ago. If it hasn’t cracked in the cold and the pump is still… Where’s the external water shutoff?”
Which is how you end up in the small utility space beside the back door, the two of you shoulder to shoulder in a space that was clearly not designed for more than one person, while Bucky shines his phone torch at the copper pipework running along the wall and explains what you’re looking at and what he intends to do with it.
You are not listening to him as carefully as you usually do.
This is new, and you’re aware of it as a thing that is new. In the early weeks, Bucky’s presence had been a comfort primarily because it was a constant and because it was directed outward, at the garden, at the definable and fixable concrete. You could absorb the company without it requiring anything of you. Somewhere in the middle weeks, it became something you looked forward to specifically, the two cups of coffee and the particular silence that had grown familiar.
But this, right now, is something else again.
It’s the awareness of him as him, in a utility cupboard, explaining the gate valve, and something in you has oriented toward the way he moves and talks to you. Helplessly and without drama, just the natural consequence of conditions.
There is a difference between dormant and dead.
You’d thought it applied only to your garden.
“—so if you turn this one first, counterclockwise, and then the secondary valve gives, you’ll know the line is intact—”
“Bucky.”
“—and if it doesn’t, then we’re lookin’ at—”
“Bucky.”
He stops, looks at you, which in this space means looking at you closely.
“Sorry,” you say. “I missed the last part. Which one first?”
A brief pause, and then: “This one.” He takes your hand, your right and his right, and guides your fingers to the valve. “Counterclockwise. Slow.”
There’s a shudder in the pipework when you turn it, a gargle and the sound of water moving through old joints, and then: nothing catastrophic.
“Secondary,” Bucky continues, and you feel him behind your shoulder, leaning in to watch.
You turn the second valve, and the pipe hisses.
“Give it a minute.”
You give it a minute.
When you both walk back out to the garden, the fountain is running.
The water comes up through the basin inlet in a steady, narrow column, spills over itself and begins to fill the basin slowly, moving over the algae and the old stone. The sound of it is small and even and has been absent from this garden for long enough that it sounds almost strange to your ears.
Both of you dirty, both of you tired, you stand beside each other watching it, heat still pressing down from above.
“It works,” you say.
“It works,” he agrees.
Neither of you says anything else for a while.
You think about your grandmother's hands on this stone, over decades, the same hands that braided your hair and hauled compost and pressed the seeds into the earth. You think about Bucky standing at the edge of her overgrown garden on the first day.
Still here. That’s what he’d said when you’d been crying on the lavender path. Laughing doesn't mean you're done grieving. It means you're still here.
You are still here.
And you, here, don’t make a decision, exactly. Or if you do, it isn’t the kind you feel yourself making. It’s more like you just stop holding something.
Whatever small distance remains between you and Bucky as you watch the fountain is quickly closed when you shift toward him and kiss him.
It’s all too brief. Soft. His cheek is warm from the sun when you touch it, and he smells like turned earth, but nothing really compares to how his lips taste against yours. To how he kisses you back, for a full second, and you swear you can feel his body leaning in, and maybe you’ve got the power of sight because even with closed eyes, you can feel his metal hand hovering and reaching for your waist.
Except he doesn’t. He goes completely still and then steps back.
Bucky’s not unkind in the way he does it, but he does it nonetheless. One step that reestablishes a distance. Very briefly, he looks like a man who has just pressed his hand to a bruise he’d forgotten about.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it, which somehow makes it worse.
There’s warmth in your face when you look at him now, but not from the heat. “No, I’m sorry, that was…”
Was… what?
“This isn’t a good idea.”
This is the part where you say something, a distant corner of your mind observes. But the embarrassment has arrived, sudden, and you’re caught between it and the question of what he had done in that one still second before he moved away. Because it had not been nothing. You are certain, with the certainty of someone who has spent the last weeks learning how to read a careful person, that the way he kissed you back, even for a split moment, had not been nothing.
“Okay.”
It’s the only word small enough not to make it worse.
Days later, you make lemonade for the first time. You don’t examine the decision too closely. It’s hot, genuinely hot, the first real heat of the season pressing down on the cottage and the garden like a hand, and lemonade makes sense in a way that has nothing to do with anything else. You bought lemons a few days ago after finding a recipe with your grandmother’s handwriting tucked inside a cookbook. You follow it exactly, including the ungodly amounts of sugar mentioned at the end.
When you carry the pitcher and two glasses out to the porch, Bucky is working at the far end of the garden on the vegetable patch and he sees you from a distance. Straightens up. Looks at you. Walks across the garden toward the porch.
There’s something different about watching him move toward you versus watching him work, something you register without deciding to. He takes the glass you pour and drinks most of it standing up, deeply thirsty, then looks at you with mild surprise.
“Tastes exactly like your grandmother’s.”
“Found the recipe in the cookbook.”
You pour him another glass when he hands you his empty one, a silent request for more. Then he sits on the porch steps instead of leaning on the railing, which he hasn't done before, and you sit beside him at a reasonable distance.
This isn’t so different from the first day you stood side by side looking at the green monster. Of course, the garden is changed now, less of a green monster and more of a slight green inconvenience, nowhere near finished, but visibly different. The trellis is cleared and the roses are staked and the lavender path is at least recognizable. There is structure reappearing where before there was only chaos. Clear evidence of work. Evidence that things can be found again if one is willing to look.
You sit on the porch steps and drink too-sweet lemonade that tastes like every summer you spent here, and beside you Bucky is quiet in the way he is always quiet, which is to say completely and without apology, and it makes you think about the lavender pressing itself flat in the dark for years and still releasing fragrance when someone touched it.
There is a difference between dormant and dead.
You’re on the porch when a storm announces itself with the first roll of thunder somewhere past the treeline. Crouched by the vegetable patch, Bucky hears it too, and you see him pause his work and tilt his head back slightly, reading the lines of the sky.
The first drops are fat and isolated, hitting the porch boards, and then between one breath and the next, the sky opens entirely.
Bucky runs toward the porch steps in a few strides, and you both stand under the narrow overhang and watch the garden disappear into gray curtains of rain. The tin roof above you turns the downpour into something enormous, a sound that swallows everything else, and the smell of wet earth hits almost overwhelmingly.
“That came fast,” you almost yell over the rain.
“Saw it coming from the ridge about an hour ago. Didn’t think it’d move this quick.”
Wind picks up and drives the rain sideways under the overhang in a fine spray that finds your arms and your face, and Bucky shifts in front of you, blocking some of it.
“Come inside, there’s no point standing out here.”
The kitchen is dim with the storm light, and the sound of water on the roof fills the cottage from wall to wall. With careful hands, you put the kettle on, because that’s what you do, and Bucky leans against the doorframe that separates the kitchen from the hallway, carrying some self-containment of a man in someone else’s house, even after months.
You’ve noticed that he does this, chooses doorframes and porch railings and the edge of things, rather than the middle. Somehow, that makes you impatient today.
“You can sit down. You’ve been here every day for months.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to wear out the chair.”
In an act that almost feels like rebellion, he doesn’t move, and you turn back to the kettle. Rain is relentless against the roof, and the kitchen feels smaller than it usually does, storm drawing in the walls somehow.
After the water has boiled, you set his mug on the table and sit, before Bucky crosses to the table, pulls out a chair and sits with the kind of particular quietness he always does since the other week’s incident. He’s always too careful around you, now, since that kiss. Like you’re an explosive device he’s terrified of setting off.
He drinks his tea. You sit down across from him and drink your own.
This should be comfortable. They used to be, your silences, for long enough that you’d stopped noticing them as silences. But this one has something in it, something that has been building in the open field of your garden. Things changed that day at the fountain; nothing broke, not fully, but something bent, and now both of you have been carefully working around it, pretending it doesn’t change the entire geometry of your relationship.
“Roses are gonna need checkin’ after this,” he says eventually, trying to loosen up the air just a fraction. Another time, you would have appreciated the gesture, but right now it makes something unsettling burn in your throat. “Heavy rain on new stakes can—”
“Can we not?”
A pause. Bucky looks genuinely confused.
“Not what?”
“Talk about the garden. For like ten minutes. Can we just sit here and not make it about the garden?”
A brief recalibration moves across his face. “All right.”
“Look, I need to say something,” you start, and you hadn’t planned to start saying anything at all, but the storm and weeks of careful distance have apparently reached some sort of threshold. “About the fact that you come here every morning and we work together, and talk about my grandmother, and your arm, and roses, and yet… you still sit across the table from me like you’re deciding whether you’re allowed to be in the room or not.”
His jaw does the small ticking thing while he chooses his next words very carefully.
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to be…” He stops, then starts again. “There’s a line.”
“What line?”
Bucky exhales, slow. “You hired me to do a job. You were grieving’, no, you are grievin’. There’s a power in that, in me bein’ here every day while you’re in the middle of somethin’ that hard, and I have no interest in bein’ the kind of man who takes advantage of a situation because he—”
“Bucky, I kissed you.”
There it is, words laid on the table along with any dignity you might have left. Bucky looks at you with an expression you haven’t seen before, stripped of its usual careful management. Whatever he’s feeling, however, he’s trying hard to not let it show.
“I know.”
“And you stepped back.”
“I know that too.”
“I’m not asking for an explanation.” (You are, a little.) “I just… you said it wasn’t a good idea, but every day you come and you drink my tea and talk to me and notice everything while not saying anything and I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with you, with the fact that you didn’t want that.”
Rain is at its peak now, the downpour making the world outside the window entirely abstract and the kitchen feels like the only room left on earth.
Bucky has both hands around his mug, flesh and metal, and he’s looking at them rather than at you.
“Look… it’s not that I didn’t want to. That wasn’t the problem.”
“Then I don’t think I understand what the problem is.”
His expression does something complicated that you don’t find the vocabulary for. It isn’t closed, by any means, and that’s the thing that stays with you afterward, turning it over in the sleepless stretch of the night. It isn’t the face of a man who doesn’t feel anything. It’s the face of a man who feels something but has decided, for reasons you don’t have access to yet, that the feeling isn’t safe to act on.
The storm moves on eventually, and Bucky goes back outside as soon as the rain eases, checking the rose stakes just as he said he would.
Nothing, technically, changes in the following days. Nothing you can give a name to, anyway.
Bucky still comes at seven. The truck sounds the same on the gravel, the door swings open and closed with its own strange creak. Coffee gets made sometimes, other times tea (never again the lemonade). Work gets done.
But something shifts anyway.
He talks less. There’s no way to read it as a punishment, because it isn’t one, or as sulking. It’s not that. Afternoons on the porch steps, which had become part of the day you oriented toward without admitting it, still happen, but they’re shorter, and the conversation stays closer to a surface level. You talk about the garden and what needs to be done next week.
There’s nothing else that stretches into deeper roots, like the time he told you about how he lost his arm. Never again does he ask anything personal about you. Never mentions your grandmother again. Whatever personal territory he had slowly opened over weeks closed again as a quiet act of privacy.
It hits harder than you had expected it to.
Because he is scrupulous about the distance, about leaving every day at the same time, leaving no room for hope of a longer evening. There’s no more pause at the truck door before getting in, a small delay that wasn’t forgetfulness. He just leaves, now, and you stand on your porch watching him go.
And then comes an ordinary day when something breaks open.
It’s a regular Friday. You have been inside most of the morning, working through the last of your grandmother’s paperwork at the kitchen table, the administrative aftermath of a life that keeps arriving in envelopes even months after the fact.
You bring Bucky coffee after lunch, and when you come around the side of the cottage you find him crouched at the base of the climbing rose, admiring something fascinating: it’s blooming.
Pale red buds cracked open at the tips, three or four of them along the highest cane, reaching toward the afternoon light. You stand there with the mug in your hands, looking at the roses while something rises in your chest. This is the beginning of something. A second chance.
Bucky rises to his height next to you and you hand him his coffee without looking away from the roses. The quiet distance that has been maintained for weeks is gone, dissolved in the warmth of this moment, because there is no architecture of caution that holds up against the first bloom of something you’ve rebuilt together.
When you finally turn to look at him, he’s already looking at you.
And that’s really all it takes, comically. That is the entire mechanism of it, managed silence and dormancy coming apart at the seams with one look too full of things he has been keeping behind professionalism and boundaries.
This time, Bucky’s the one who closes the distance between the two of you.
His mouth finds yours without hurry, without the frantic quality of something held back too long. He moves with intention, giving you every opportunity to see it coming, and his hand comes up to your face, warm, rough-palmed, cupping your jaw too quickly like he has thought about this a hundred times already.
You stop thinking, because what else is there to think but the touch of his lips on yours?
The paperwork on the kitchen table and the Wednesday night phone call that tore your life apart all recede to somewhere very far away, and what remains is only this. The smell of earth and roses, the solid pressure of him under your fingertips when your hands steady themselves on his chest.
He kisses you the same way he tends to things, with attention that isn’t performance, letting the kiss exist completely in itself without rushing toward anything else. Flesh thumb moves once along your cheekbone, tongue presses against the entrance of your mouth and allows itself in because you let him, and his metal arm snakes around your waist and brings you closer because you let him.
Your fingers curl into the worn fabric of his shirt while time does something strange. Loses its forward momentum and simply rests, hanging, until you decide to make it move again.
There’s nothing to say to improve the silence when he pulls back only a few inches, forehead dropping to yours. Morning birds are suddenly very loud, and the fountain is running, and the roses are blooming right there, and his breath is slow and warm against your mouth, and…
Tasting the way your mind runs ahead of your thumping heart, Bucky squeezes your hip gently, bringing you back to him. You're thinking about your grandmother's handwriting on the back of the business card.
He listens to the earth.
He knows how to listen to you, too.
“I tried,” he says, very quietly. Rough at the edges, like he’s been struggling to keep the words down. “I want you to know that. I tried real hard.”
“I know,” you say against his mouth. Deep in your gut, you know what he means. Tried to stay away.
“Kept tellin’ myself that it wasn’t right. That you were grievin’, that you’d come here to heal somethin’ and I was just the man hired to fix your garden, it wasn’t my place to—”
“Bucky,” you interrupt, fingers tightening around his shirt and leaning that much closer again that you’re almost kissing when you speak. “Come inside with me.”
Hesitation is gone when he follows you inside, through the back door and into the dim warmth of the cottage. Walking together through the hallway, Bucky closes the distance and doesn’t let go of you the whole time, while heavy steps sound on the floor and you walk him with a very specific location in mind.
He kisses you differently when you get there. Outside, by the roses, it was a start. Now, walking past the door of your bedroom, his right hand finds your face again, with the same instinct, but he exhales against your mouth and kisses you harder. Desperate, a man who pushes his lips against yours like he has never wanted to kiss anyone else in his entire life. Kisses your mouth and the soft place at the corner of it, and the line of your jaw when he pulls back, then your temple, then back to your lips again because stopping seems impossible.
Your hands find his shoulders, the dark hair at his nape, and every point of contact registers with a vividness that makes the last months feel like an absurdity. Like you had both kept yourselves from drinking water on the premise that you weren’t sure you deserved to be thirsty.
Bucky sits on the edge of the bed and draws you toward him, keeping you standing between his legs as he stares up at you. His right hand moves with certainty when he reaches for one of your wrists and brings it to your lips, kissing the skin. Blue eyes watch his own fingers move across your skin before they close, feeling you warm and real and present, and he keeps having to relearn this fact from the beginning every few seconds, because a part of him has not yet fully accepted that you are here and that you are letting him do this.
His left arm, however, stays where it is.
At his side, against the bed. And of course you notice it, so you reach for his left hand anyway while you move to sit on his lap, straddling him. Half of him freezes; his right hand moves over your collarbone, dips under your shirt to trace your shoulders. His left side, in the meantime, feels like it’s been dipped in a bucket of ice-cold water.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.” You turn the metal hand over in both of yours, the articulated joints and cool weight of it, and you kiss it slowly, dragging your lips over every ridge, mapping every inch of the metal. Under your touch, Bucky almost crumbles, breathing unsteady, and you swear you almost feel him shaking.
“…Fifteen years. I haven’t… I never trusted it enough. The calibration for—” He’s looking for the word, but can’t seem to locate it in any comfortable dictionary while your lips trace his hand like it’s sacred. “This. I don’t know what I’m doin’ with this hand when it comes to this.”
“You found the green inside the rose cane,” you remind him again, just like the last time you talked about his arm. “Pulled the lavender out without breaking it.” Both your hands bring his metal palm flat against your face, warm skin against cool metal, and you watch his blue eyes build up a storm. You hold very still so he can feel that you are not afraid, that there’s nothing in you rejecting any of him. “You already know how.”
Metal fingers move then, slowly, tracing the hinge of your jaw, and he watches them, or watches you, reading the feedback, adjusting. You barely move at all, except for a shiver that runs through your spine when the metal touches the back of your neck, but the fingers quickly curling in his hair to pull him closer are enough indication that this shiver has nothing to do with fear. Fifteen years, and some things still aren’t figured out. You feel more than inclined to help him.
Both his arms move to wrap around you and he pulls you close, pressing his mouth to your hair before he lays you down.
His right hand moves through your hair, across your ribs through your shirt, learning you with the patience he gives everything, and his metal hand follows (more carefully, but follows nonetheless). The cool metal traces the same path a heartbeat later, fingertips gliding like he’s afraid the warmth of your skin might burn him if he presses too hard.
It’s strange to be on your back on the bed that used to be yours as a child (you were never brave enough to take over your grandmother’s bedroom, but you did manage to move out of the guest bedroom), the quilt soft and familiar beneath you, while Bucky is above you. But the strangeness doesn’t make you falter, not even when his flesh hand slips under the hem of your shirt and spreads, palm flat against the bare skin of your stomach.
He finds the bottom of your shirt and lifts it, inch by inch, and when the fabric clears your head, he sets it aside carefully before returning both hands to you. Flesh and metal cradling your ribs, thumbs brushing the undersides of your breasts as if the shape of you is a miracle he never expected to hold.
His voice says things while he worships you, words that he has been carrying too long in his chest. That he had felt it early, earlier than made sense, that he’d genuinely tried to stay away, that he believed he was doing the right thing because you were in the middle of grieving.
“I kept thinkin’ that if I just kept my head down long enough it’d go away. That I could go home and sleep it off like a cold,” he says, his mouth at your temple. Then leans down and presses his mouth to the center of your chest, right over your heart.
He kisses lower, open-mouthed, while his hands keep moving, always touching. The right hand slips beneath the waistband of your pants, easing the fabric down with a care that makes your breath catch. The metal hand helps, fingertips hooking the other side, sliding the material away as though he’s afraid even the brush of denim might mark you. When you’re bare beneath him, he sits back on his heels for a moment, just looking. Both hands rest on your thighs and he strokes upward in perfect unison, reverent drags of fingers that leave trails of heat and coolness in their wake.
“You’re so beautiful. I never let myself believe I’d get to touch you like this.”
Open mouth follows the path his hands have already started, kissing the curve of your breast, the soft plane of your stomach, the dip of your hip, while his fingers never stop. They trace over the hollow of your throat, then come down over your sternum, finding your breasts and pushing the fabric of your bra aside. His flesh hand cups one breast with impossible gentleness, thumb brushing over the peak until you arch into him, sighing his name. It hardens under his touch and he looks at you smiling, like he’s proud of his achievement, or maybe just in awe that his rough hands still have enough soft touch in them to make you feel good.
Either way, you barely notice when he settles between your legs, still not rushing there either. He kisses the inside of your thigh first, both hands moving to cradle your hips and spreading you open, then higher, until his nose is tickling the space between your thigh and your panties, where a wet patch has formed. Metal fingers curl around the soft fabric and push it down your legs in a gentle motion, and then without warning, without fireworks, his mouth finds you, warm and delicate.
“Bucky…” You sing his name in a soft melody, legs closing around his head instinctively, but his metal hand curls around your thigh and pushes it open again, not forcefully, but with enough firmness to keep you in place. His tongue speaks a new language into the wetness of your cunt, licking every whisper of your wetness, a stripe, then smaller hits, then focusing on your clit until you are almost begging for mercy.
You thread your fingers into his dark hair and pull, and mercy is not an option when he groans against you, the sound vibrating through your bones. Tug, pull, push, legs shaking around his head as he throws both your legs over his shoulders and goes to town as if staying alive depended on it.
‘Bucky’, you call again, needier this time, a dying whine on your lips, and he closes his eyes as if savoring the sound, but never relenting.
Even when your hips start to buck and your fingers tighten almost painfully in his hair, Bucky stays right where he is, a devoted lover, too focused on your pleasure. The flat of his tongue drags up the center of you in a long stripe, then circles your clit with patient pressure until something starts to burn behind your eyelids: not stars, maybe an all-out supernova.
“Bucky, oh my god,” your voice cracks in the middle and he answers by sliding his metal fingers into one of your hands, pulling it from his hair and instead lacing your fingers together against the mattress. In eating you out he never takes more than you can give, as if he knows exactly what the limit of your pleasure is, but he toes it with every lick until he seals his lips around your clit and sucks, soft, warm, until you can almost swear your slick is now a mix of your wetness and his own drool.
You come hard, sudden and overwhelming, like you haven’t in a while, in maybe too long, with his name on your mouth sounding more like a pathetic plea. It’s been a minute since your voice sounded like this for anyone. It’s been a minute since you’ve allowed yourself to feel anything at all. Bucky doesn’t pull away until you’re trembling and soft and breathless, and even then he only replaces the warmth of your cunt with other skin for his mouth to touch as he kisses up your body with slick-covered lips.
“Still with me?” he whispers against your stomach, kissing the sweat away.
You nod, heart thundering in your chest. “That was… you’re… God. Bucky.”
A chuckle slips past his lips, which is just as surprising to you as anything else happening today, because when have you ever heard this man this carefree in all the months you’ve spent together?
“I’m not God. But it’s good to know I still got what it takes to please my woman.”
That makes you pause, only a little, and you move the one hand still in his hair to press over his heart.
“Is that what I am now? Your woman?”
Bucky looks up from your stomach, eyes finding yours in the dim afternoon light, blue and steady.
“If you want to. I’ll take whatever you want to give me.” His right hand moves to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “A friendship. A warm bed. Somethin’ in between. I’m not a man who needs a lot, but I’m not gonna pretend I don’t have a preference.”
“And what’s your preference?”
“You,” he says, too simply. “All of you. In my arm, next time I go to town to get some supplies. So I can take you to see a movie, or out for dinner, or both if you want. In my bed, so I can pull from you every night the same faces you just did.”
That makes you chuckle, and you realize you are still more out of breath than you thought.
“I like your preference,” you whisper to him. “I think it's mine, too.”
Bucky Barnes, a man on the edge of his own composure, finally pushes himself up and reaches for the buttons of his shirt, but his fingers are clumsy, the tremor of want making a simple task all too difficult. Through the haze of your recent pleasure, you reach up, covering his hands with yours.
“Let me.”
You undo them one by one, and as the fabric falls away, the breadth of him is almost overwhelming. Years of hard work have carved muscle into his frame, but there are scars, too, old ones, pale and faded, mapping stories across his skin. There’s a line where the flesh meets metal on his left shoulder, almost screaming at you, but you don’t react, don’t even flinch. Instead, your fingers trace the edge of it gently, the same way you touch any other part of him, and you lean up to kiss the scarred skin. Bucky is attempting to kick his boots off when you do, and you feel him stagger right there, as if it’s too unexpected, too soon despite it being on his body for fifteen years now.
You wait for the anger, for him to ask you to stop. Instead he exhales slowly, sheds his pants and boxers and lies down over you, mattress dipping under your combined weight. His body against yours is a revelation; strong and thick, radiating heat that rivals the summer sun.
You open your arms and he comes to you, settling between your legs with a care that very few men have ever shown you. Between your bodies, you feel the hard length of him, pressing not all subtly between your folds, not yet pushing in, but resting there. Blue eyes meet yours again, his brows furrowed in what seems to be a man deeply lost in thought. One of your hands reaches up, strokes the spread of his cheek.
“You are incredible. So beautiful,” he whispers against your temple, closing his eyes as he inhales the scent of your hair.
“You’ve said,” you reply, letting humor make the moment feel less heavy. Bucky grips your thighs a little harder.
“Don’t mock an old man laying his heart out to you,” he says back, the same amount of lighthearted fun in his tone, but you know he means it, deep down.
Before you have a chance to reply, he leans forward and kisses you deeply as he lines himself up, the blunt head of his cock nudging against your entrance. He doesn’t push in right away, instead just rocks gently while your mouths work together, sliding through your slick folds and coating himself. You moan against him and he swallows it in a breath, and that’s when he finally presses forward, inch by careful inch. Soft praises are whispered against your lips when he pulls back, and he moves slowly, giving you time to adjust, but your body still struggles to keep up, given how sensitive you still are.
Bucky moves with soulful patience, metal hand buried in the pillow next to your head and flesh hand gripping your hip, and every thrust feels like a question that is answered with the way you wrap your legs tighter around his waist every time, feet digging into the small of his back.
“You’re okay?” he gasps, searching your eyes for any trace of discomfort. Is the metal too cold, is he too heavy?
“I’m okay,” you breathe. “I’m okay, Bucky, keep going.”
The thrusts start slow, metal arm braced beside you, fresh hand cradling the back of your head with his fingers threaded through your hair. He angles his hips just right, grinding against that stop deep inside you that sets sparks lighting up behind your eyes. You meet him thrust for thrust, hands roaming where they can reach, nails digging into the hard muscles of his back, his shoulders, holding on to his biceps and he kisses your neck, your collarbone, mouth open and wet.
The pace stays unhurried, passionate in its restraint. Every slide of his cock drags deliciously, building heat low in your belly, and soon enough you can feel another orgasm begin to coil, slower this time. But Bucky’s control is fraying, obvious in the way his breaths turn ragged, in the slight stutter of his hips. It’s been too long for him, and you’re too warm, too wet, too many years of self-imposed winter, and the sound of your voice calling out his name is a catalyst he can’t fight.
His teeth graze your shoulder, eyes blown wide.
“I can’t… fuck—” he chokes out. “I’m gonna—”
He realizes he’s at a point of no return before he’s ready to be. With a frustrated groan, he braces himself with his metal hand and pulls out, the friction of the exit making you cry out in protest. Hot stripes of cum spill across your stomach in thick pulses, painting your skin as he weakly strokes himself through it with a shaky hand. His eyes are squeezed shut, mouth open on a silent gasp.
When the last spasm of his body fades he slumps forward, landing on his forearms so he doesn’t crush you.
“I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry, that was… I swear I can last longer, just… has been a while…,” he rasps, breath still coming in harsh pants. “I didn’t even—I wanted to ask you where… where you wanted it and I—”
“Inside,” you say, breathless but slightly deadpan.
“… What?” His voice is tentative, as if he’s sure he’s misheard you through the gaze of his own orgasm.
“If you had asked, I would have told you to come inside me.”
Bucky exhales, though there’s barely oxygen left in his lungs after you’ve punched it out of him with those words.
“Do you wanna fuckin’ kill me?” he breathes against your mouth, and it would sound like half a laugh if he wasn’t almost breaking apart.
That’s when you feel him moving again, right hand slipping between your bodies and tracing feather-light patterns over the sticky mess on your stomach before gathering it on his fingers. Two thick fingers are now shiny with it, and he brings them down between your legs without hesitation, rubbing them over your swollen clit in one slow circle. Immediately, your hips jerk, a sharp gasp punching out of you.
Bucky doesn’t tease, just pushes those two fingers inside you in one smooth stroke, feeding his own release back into your cunt. The wet sound it makes is obscene in the quiet room, mixing your arousal with his release, his fingers stretching you open around them as they curl and search for that same spot his cock had hit not too long ago.
“Bucky,” you whimper, thighs trembling around his wrist.
His eyes are locked on where his fingers disappear inside you, dragging his cum deeper with every thrust of his fingers. “Promise I’ll fill you up proper next time. Just take my fingers for now.”
A third finger is added to the others, stretching you fuller, and his thumb finds your clit again, circling in time with the curl of his fingers. Pressure builds fast, too fast, burning hot in your belly. Every time your slick drools from inside you, he coats his fingers in it and fucks it right back inside you, making it messier.
It hits you not long after like a storm crashing over your garden, all too overwhelming and sudden, pulling you under. Your cunt clamps down around his fingers and you come with a loud cry and Bucky doesn’t stop. Just keeps fucking you through every spasm, drawing it out while he murmurs soft praise against your neck until you’re oversensitive and still clenching around him like your body refuses to let him go.
You don’t know this yet, but tonight you’ll fall asleep in his arms, and it’ll only be the first of many nights.
A year later
You and Bucky have finished the garden. Well, sure, Bucky has told you enough times that gardens are never truly done because living things require continued attention and presence, the willingness to show up before the heat peaks and stay past the point of easy. But it at least looks like itself again, the place it was always trying to be underneath all the strangling vines.
On a Tuesday afternoon, you are standing in front of the fountain with your second cup of tea of the day when Bucky comes around to meet you, cap on backward, shirt damp from the exertion of honest work.
“Finished your tea without me,” he says by way of greeting.
"I made you a cup. It's on the porch."
Bucky doesn’t move toward it. Instead, his hands slide firmly around your waist and with a sudden huff of effort, he hoists you clean off the ground. He doesn’t just lift you, he sweeps you into a wide twirl and the garden blurs into a smear of lavender purple and rose red.
“Bucky!” you gasp, laughing as your feet dangle and your head is thrown back with the afternoon sun dancing through the trees. Eventually he sets you down again, then steals you a breathtaking kiss.
“Had to get you out of your mind. You had that look.”
You raise an eyebrow, still feeling a bit dizzy. “What look?”
"The one where you're thinkin' something and decidin' whether to say it."
You huff in fake disapproval before you start making your way back to your porch, Bucky following right behind.
“I don't have a look,” you say just as you sit on the first few steps, watching the garden ahead of you.
“You have about twelve looks.” He comes to sit beside you, close enough that his shoulder presses against yours. “I’ve memorized all of them. That’s number four.”
“Bucky, you did not catalogue my looks.”
“You got the happy look, mad look, thinkin’ about your grandmother look, somethin’s on your mind look—”
“You’re making those up.”
“—stubborn look, which looks exactly the same as your grandmother’s stubborn look, for the record—”
“Absolutely not—”
“—lemonade look, which you think I don’t notice but you always make lemonade when you wanna ask me somethin’ you think I’ll say no to, I’ve verified this over twelve months of data—”
You laugh, an undignified full-chest sound, something that still surprises you because you can’t quite believe, all this time later, that it comes this easily when you’re around him. How little it costs you to just be happy when he’s with you.
“Anyway, number four. What’s on your mind.”
A Wednesday night in a city apartment, spreadsheets blurring into gray bars. A phone call that broke the world open. A business card in a phonebook. Two cups of coffee made without intention. Dormant, dead, the green inside the rose cane. A man who showed up and didn’t stop showing up. How life will look like five years from now. Ten. Eighteen.
“I’ve been thinking,” you start.
“You’ve been thinkin’ since about six this morning, based on when you stopped bein’ asleep next to me and started starin’ at the ceiling.” His right hand finds yours on the step between you and covers it. “Take your time.”
“The garden looks good,” you say.
A pause. He knows you well enough to let you take the long way round.
“It does,” he agrees.
"It feels like her."
He is quiet for a moment, that particular quality of quiet that you know now is not absence but presence, the whole of his attention given without requiring you to perform for it. Then he offers you an out; he continues for you.
“Everything’s growin’ fast,” he says, eyes scanning the spread of the garden before settling back on your face. “We’re gonna need a bigger fence. Probably more hands to help by next season.”
That makes you smile, and you lean in until your head is resting against his shoulder. “Yeah, I know. But we’ve already taken care of the extra set of hands. They’re just… attached to a body currently about the size of a lemon.”
His gaze softens impossibly at that. His metal hand reaches out, rests flat and protective against your stomach, a motion he has repeated every day since the news was confirmed by a doctor appointment.
“A lemon? Did you see that on your app?”
“Yep,” you say, chuckling. “Was thinking about the nursery this morning. When we should start building it.”
The two of you stay like that on the porch steps while the afternoon moves around you and the garden your grandmother had loved and left you lives on with you.
Slowly, things have gone back to normal, roses blooming, lavender coloring the path.
Things that are worth having will sometimes take longer to come. But they arrive, anyway, so long as you tend them and give them water and time to grow.
You’ve always had one rule: never date your residents — and it’s been easy — until Bucky shows up with his steady hands and deep blue eyes, making you question everything you’ve built and everything you’ve sought to protect.
▸ PAIRING: Bucky Barnes x Mayor F!Reader
▸ WARNINGS: NSFW 18+, oral (f!receiving), one-sided enemies to lovers, fluff, stardew world mostly for vibes, bucky uses pet names and pussy pronouns, reader passes out once, this goes out to all the eldest daughters everywhere
▸ WORD COUNT: 14.8K
▸ A/N: ok so i barely know stardew, i've only seen other people play so forgive the inaccuracies and changes <3 but thank you so much miss @pinksplace for hosting this lovely lil collab!!! be sure to check out the other fics in the ml below. shoutout to yari for giving me a screenshot to make my chicken dividers heheh. if you enjoyed this, i appreciate any reblogs / comments / likes!
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In a land far, far away from urban jungles and big city lights sits a valley. This valley is lush with an abundance of untouched forests and greenery that stretches for acres. The air here is crisp with a touch of sea breeze that blows in from the shore. In a place like this, one would never think that our dear mother Earth is struggling. This is the kind of place that hosts fairytales and magical creatures, should they exist.
The valley is, however, small in population. It is home to a handful of residents, their houses passed down through generations — cottages that look as though they were lifted straight from Van Gogh and painted onto this land. Everyone knows each other by name, and they know their parents and their grandparents, and all those who lived before them.
These residents live in a tiny town called Pelican Town.
Many may describe this place as a slice of heaven on earth. An oblivious sort of peace that can only exist in the isolation of this small town. In a place like Pelican Town, rarely does anything groundbreaking occur. The only stories that trickle through the town are which neighbors are bickering and what groceries are for sale.
Because Pelican Town is not where one goes to vacation or to chase their dreams. Pelican Town is a place where you go to settle.
This is why news tends to travel fast — particularly when it involves a stranger. A new face. In all your years, you’ve welcomed only a handful of new people to town and they usually are relatives of existing townspeople. Like any other place, Pelican Town loves its gossip.
When the whispers crescendo of a new resident in town, the place comes alive. The air vibrates with a nervous, entralled energy as the streets flutter to life. Residents flit from shop to shop, business owners peek out their windows, and nosy neighbors traipse around in the hopes of catching a glimpse of this newcomer.
As mayor, you make it your business to know everything that happens in this town. You hear about every little tiff, every little snag, and work your magic to iron out any wrinkles that appear in the community. You make everyone’s happiness your personal responsibility.
This includes any new residents who move into town, especially those who are apparently doing construction without proper permits from City Hall.
However, you do note that the atmosphere around this news has shifted; there is an anxious tint to everyone’s movements, peering over their shoulders warily as they hurry down cobblestone paths.
“He moved into that old wreck of a farmhouse.”
“I heard he’s killed people.”
“He’s got a metal arm!”
The rumor mill is not the most reliable source of information. Despite the proximity in which information travels, you know your people well enough to understand the temptation to exaggerate. When you live in a town like this, a bit of dramatic flair is needed to keep yourself entertained. So you decide it may be best to visit them yourself, give them an official welcome.
Even if the hearsay about his metal arm makes you slightly apprehensive.
The farmhouse sits on the outskirts of town, at the end of a winding dirt path that nobody ventures down. It is a dilapidated, practically unlivable piece of infrastructure that hasn’t been occupied since Arthur Barnes passed nearly a decade ago. Everyone always assumed he had no next of kin; the man was a widower and, while kind, he never had any visitors and kept to himself. Your father was the only one who spoke to him.
Since his funeral organized by your father, the farmhouse has been relatively untouched. While your father checked on it occasionally, he never shared much. The one thing he did tell you was that the land shouldn’t be handed over to anyone — no residents and certainly no developers. The farmhouse and the surrounding land belonged to the Barnes family.
You wanted to ask what Barnes family but your father’s mind seemed set in stone, so you never questioned it further.
Even after your father passed and the farmhouse continued to sit there rotting away through the changing seasons, it didn’t seem right to sell it to anyone else.
Now, as you make your way to the farmhouse, you feel the first spike of worry. You’ve never had to welcome a new resident throughout your years as mayor. The people here know you to be reliable, beloved, respected. People like you. Even if no one was gunning for the position, you were confident in your approval ratings.
It’s nerve-wracking to pitch yourself again to someone new, to see whether they will even like you.
When the farmhouse finally comes into view, you force yourself to exhale. The house looks as it has always been. Same worn wooden walls with cracks and chips, a single window facing the outside shielded by a set of curtains, copper tiles on the roof with stains from weathering storms. It appears nearly exactly the same as you saw it last, which was fifteen years ago. If it weren’t for the rustling from inside the house, you would’ve thought that it was still deserted.
You tug on your reins to pull Mac into a halt in front of the house, dismounting your horse and patting her to grant her permission to wander the patches of grass to graze. After all, you can’t really stray too far in the valley.
Wiping your sweaty palms on your jeans, you jog up the steps. The porch stairs creak beneath your weight, practically announcing your arrival. The sounds from inside abruptly stop. You bring your first to the door and knock firmly.
For a while, there is only silence. It doesn’t seem as if whoever is in there is interested in greeting you. But you’re nothing if not persistent, so you knock again. Firmer.
More silence, but only for a couple of seconds.
Then you hear footsteps and you take a single step back. The sound of the lock being unlatched before the door opens with a whoosh.
And there he is. Your new resident.
The first thing you notice is that his eyes are a stark blue, bluer than the ocean in the summertime. They sparkle in the sunlight, flickering a shade closer to the brighter sky. They are curious and wide as they appraise you. His midnight hair is cropped short, the sweat lining his skin messing up the strands, compounded with the humidity close to the hottest seasons of the year. His lips are pink where they part soundlessly, framed by his neat, trimmed beard. His strong brows are puckered into a befuddled frown.
A frown directed at you.
But all you can focus on is one truth: he’s… handsome.
Handsome enough that you feel heat creeping up your neck the more he stares — and he really does stare.
“Hi,” you chirp, politician-ready smile plastered across your face.
He doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare.
It has your skin itching with unease.
You introduce yourself by name and follow it with, “I’m the mayor of Pelican Town. It’s so nice to meet you!”
Once again, he doesn’t say anything. So you start rambling.
“Well, I heard you just moved into this farmhouse and it’s been so long since anyone’s lived here so I wanted to come by and check in and make sure everything’s okay. I assume you’ll be doing some repairs and construction, do you have big plans for it?”
“Can I help you with something?”
Oh, his voice is deep. Deep enough to make you swallow that thick lump in your throat. Deep enough to have you subtly pressing your legs together.
There are very few eligible bachelors in town. Even fewer when you really consider the good-looking ones. Zero when you think about how you would never date any of your residents to avoid any an it’s complicated situation.
Basically, you’ve doomed yourself to a life of voluntary solitude and you’ve accepted that fate. As long as you’re mayor, you don’t plan to involve yourself in any romantic entanglements with anyone in the valley — and it seems like you’ll be mayor for a very long time.
Regardless, you’re now more concentrated on his gruff voice. He doesn’t sound pleased to see you.
You hide your hands behind your back, smile wavering only slightly as you wring your fingers together. “I just wanted to welcome you to town. I do this for everyone new!”
Your justification seems to leave him more amused than anything. He stands straighter, broad shoulders spreading, before he crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the doorjamb. Your gaze falls briefly to his biceps where they flex, stretching his red Henley.
It’s ridiculous how attractive that one little act is. You don’t think that fabric is meant to be tested for the strength of its threads against pure muscle.
“You get a lot of new people around here?” He asks, one eyebrow going up lazily. His tone is lighter now, more teasing.
Your mouth dries, cheeks warm. “No, not really.”
Then he’s quiet again, the look in his eyes almost contemplative, and the two of you are left in this odd standoff where he looks at you, you look at him, he keeps looking at you, and you finally look away.
“Was there anything else?” The man grunts, glancing back to his house as if he’s more than ready to leave this conversation.
“Well, if you need anything, I’m around! But no, there was nothing spec—”
“Have a good day, ma’am.”
Then the door is slamming shut in your face before the sounds resume inside.
You stand there, speechless and shocked.
No one — and you mean no one, not even that old grouch Mr. Jenkins — in Pelican Town is this rude. Hell, none of them are rude, period. Yet, here comes this man — new to town, bad rumors floating around him like flies, and yet he still acts like he’s too good for a conversation. A simple welcome. He didn’t even tell you his name.
There’s only one word that comes to mind to describe him.
Dick.
Growing up as the mayor’s only child means that you’ve had to learn how to behave prim and proper early on. Your father emphasized the need to put on a strong front to everyone in town. After your mother passed away, he grew lonely and instead poured his entire heart into developing this town into one worth living in — one worth staying in.
You were approaching your teenage years when you began to calculate the hours he spent at City Hall, watching the clock to see what time he returned home at the end of the day — if he came home at all. You watched how he dedicated himself to every resident; mornings tilling the fields with Mr. Jenkins, afternoons resolving Mrs. Evers and Mrs. Yan’s daily debates, and evenings cooking dinner for Mr. Kirby who couldn’t be trusted near an open fire. This doesn’t include the official work he has as mayor and the countless hours he spends just listening to people.
No was not part of his vocabulary. It’s the same language he taught you growing up.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” he would say. As mayor, it’s your duty to ensure that all of your residents are happy in your town.
When age caught up to him, years of backbreaking labor finally evident beyond the calluses of his palms, he floated the idea of you taking over his responsibilities. Of you becoming mayor.
“You’ve got a good heart. That’s something this town needs. I need to know that this place will be in good hands after I’m gone.”
That conversation occurred as you were on the precipice of graduating high school, when you were slowly building the courage to tell your father that you wanted to venture outside of the valley, outside of this tiny town you’ve always called home.
However, when your father looked at you with those hopeful eyes — eyes that believed in something good for this place, you could only swallow what little conviction you had. You glanced at the dreams you had no right to have, tucked them away in a corner of your mind to gather dust, and you never looked back.
You were barely eighteen, going around town to ensure that you were front and center for everyone. Your father was well-known and well-loved; he wanted to make sure you were the same. You practiced your smiles, learned how to apply concealer to cover the shadows under your eyes, and repeated “How can I help you today?” over and over again until your tongue was trained to the shape of the syllables.
Here you are today — still here. Your father buried right next to your mother in the cemetery further north.
This morning, you’ve already had to resolve shipping disputes for the general store, and the museum was struggling with an overabundance of crickets (not sure why they decided to keep crickets as an exhibit). It’s barely ten and you already feel a yawn coming, particularly since resident comments for the new community center proposal kept you up.
“Oh dear.”
Your ears immediately perk up, your instinct to smile settling on your face, as you turn to face Mrs. Evers who’s staring woefully at the bags of fertilizer for her flower shop up front. You test your knees, having slightly hurt them just a week ago when you were fixing Mr. Lansing’s roof.
“Mrs. Evers, can I help you with that?”
You spend the remainder of your morning getting your hands dirty — lifting bags of fertilizer, adding them to her garden, yanking weeds out. She thanks you with a cup of tea. Glancing at the clock, you’re running a little too close to the summer festival planning committee meeting that’s happening in City Hall.
The summer festival is the valley’s biggest event of the year. Small businesses and residents come together for a month-long celebration at the beach. It involves family-friendly activities, food stalls, a small farmer’s market, and much more. You even have plenty of visitors from outside the valley attending. It’s quite the extravaganza and it’s your legacy, having pitched and started it from a small weekend event to this one that requires an actual team to plan it.
Speaking of the team, you have to meet them now.
So much for lunch. You quickly bid her adieu before rushing over to your office.
The meeting goes as expected — which is nowhere. No one can agree on anything, things are over budget, and the deadline is breathing down your neck.
If this keeps up, you may have to take matters into your own hands and plan the entire damn thing yourself. It isn’t ideal, but it’s the only way to get things to work around here.
By the time the committee is adjourned, it’s well into the afternoon and your stomach protests. Loudly. You haven’t had time to cook as of late, so you may have to just run down to the saloon and pick up something. Steve usually gives you discounts, which you insist on not taking, but he is much more persistent, especially when he knows you’re too pressed for time to argue.
However, before you can make your way there, you spot a familiar yet slightly unwelcome face by the bulletin board. Residents use the board to request and sell their services around town. There are announcements for town events and occasional oversharing of pet photos by Mrs. Yan.
Smile. You can do this. You shouldn’t let one bad interaction sour the opportunity to engage him.
You move towards him, approaching cautiously. The man reminds you of a cat — a little lazy, a little skittish, and a whole lot of grumpy. You’re just trying not to get scratched.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
The man jumps and whirls around to face you. His eyes are even bluer out in the open like this. His hair is neater now and he smells like clean detergent. He’s got a blue long-sleeve this time that makes his eyes pop.
“I never got your name, you know,” you coax slowly.
He blinks at you, expression cool and indifferent. “Bucky.”
He doesn’t give you a last name.
“Nice to meet you, Bucky. Are you part of the Barnes family?”
He shifts uncomfortably.
“I knew Arthur. My father was a good friend of his.”
Bucky’s eyes light up in recognition. “I see,” he murmurs, “he’s my grandfather.”
“Oh, I never realized he had kids.”
He only shrugs. A man of very few words, very different from the chatty people in this town.
“Did you need any help? The town can be difficult to navigate at times, but we have maps at City Hall if you need them. If you need a guide to introduce you to people, I’m more than happy to do that. Making friends can go a long way in Pelican Town!”
A flicker of amusement crosses his eyes. “I’ll manage.”
You clear your throat, directing your gaze to the board instead as your hands gesture wildly over the flyers. It’s easier than attempting to hold eye contact with his professional stare. “Right, uhm, we have many events going on. I know we’re a small town but we do our best to keep things lively. Is anything catching your eye? People are always looking for ways to get involved and that’s also a great way to meet the rest of the town! We’ve got the summer festival happening soon, we’re planning it right now. You should definitely come. It’ll be tons of fun and everyone will be there.”
The resounding silence is deafening. You almost feel awkward having said so much only to receive so little. You’re still smiling wide at him, glance flying back and forth between him and the board, and Bucky just regards you impassively. There’s a calculating look in his eyes that makes you squirm but you don’t give in, you keep your spirits up.
He just keeps staring, a heartbeat then two, before he opens his mouth.
“Don’t you ever get tired of smiling?”
The corners of your lips twitch, nearly dropping, but you press them upwards again. Smile. Just keep smiling. Don’t show how he’s getting to you.
Clearing your throat, you intertwine your fingers behind your back again. Your nails dig into your palms. “What do you mean?”
He is quiet again for a second, seemingly thinking about how he should respond before he decides against it. Instead, he grunts out a “never mind”, turns on his heel, and walks away.
In all your years in Pelican Town, you’ve never had a problem with any of the residents. Your proactive, helpful nature and consistent optimism are well-received. Mr. Jenkins is the most difficult person you’ve had to face and you conquered that by baking his favorite Earl Grey cookies that you’ve perfected over time.
Every resident has their ticks. You always have a way in.
You’re starting to think that nothing is going to get through to Bucky. Regardless of how much help you try to offer or even the small talk you try to initiate, Bucky always looks at you with a gaze that screams that he doesn’t care.
You see him prowling all over town, buying supplies and bringing them back home on his horse. His face becomes familiar to everyone, especially now that it’s public that he’s working on the old Barnes home.
What is jarring to you, however, is how much good people have to say about him.
“Bucky is such a sweetheart. He helped me pick up the fresh tuna from the fish shop this morning.”
“Oh, he’s so kind. Very knowledgeable. He got my tractor running again.”
“We played chess until the wee hours last night. Maybe we should start a chess tournament with him around!”
This man, regardless of your attempts to engage, has said two words to you since he moved in. But you weren’t raised a quitter, so you tried time and time again to talk to him. Each time, he deflects, shuts you down, or straight up walks away from you.
Maybe it’s just you that he hates. Maybe he simply hates authority figures and you’ve gone ahead and introduced yourself as mayor of this town, as if that says everything about who you are. You don’t know how to remedy this situation. It’s not as if you’ve been terrible to him. Maybe you’ve been too demanding with him. Too insistent.
Groaning, you let your head thunk on the wooden table.
Wanda shakes her head when she sees your miserable state. “What you need is a break.”
“What I need is answers. Why does he like everyone but me?”
“Why do you need him to like you?” Wanda throws right back, tossing in something green and alive into her cauldron.
It’s a fair question, one you have also asked yourself. It’s not as if it’s a requirement for everyone to like you, you’ve seen the state of politics in the rest of the nation. What is one man to the dozens of others you have living in this town?
But you can’t help yourself. You’ve taken it upon yourself to be helpful to everyone, sometimes biting off more than you can chew, but you always make it work. There’s probably something to work through there, but it’s not an issue you want to reckon with today. Not when your friend is brewing god knows what in her living room.
“I just want to help. I don’t understand why he’s so cold to me. Am I an asshole?”
“On your good days,” Wanda smirks in jest.
To everyone else in town, you are the good mayor who never complains, who gets shit done. You have a smile on your face and you do everything happily. Only Wanda has really seen what you truly are — exhausted, burnt out, and irritable.
When you became mayor, you did what your father never did. You explored the valley to conduct outreach to other residents in the area. Cindersap Forest was always home to plenty of resources that kept the town running but beyond the ranch, nobody really speaks to anyone there.
Especially not the witch that lives in the tower.
Wanda lives on the western edge of the forest, mostly as a recluse. People had been initially wary, avoiding her like the plague. But the more she was seen around town with you, the more they warmed up to her. Now Wanda crafts all sorts of solutions for people in town — magical skincare, enhanced farming equipment, and fun toys, some of which are questionable to parents.
She’s a good soul and people can see that in her. You’re pleased with that because Wanda’s become your closest friend in town. The only one who really knows you. It’s why you spend what little free time you have in her tower, watching her cook up all sorts of concoctions.
“Listen, I wouldn’t stress too much about him. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re a disgustingly likable person. I’m sure he’ll come around.”
You highly doubt it.
“What you need is to relax. Take some time off. Get a drink. When was the last time you had a drink?”
That sip of wine when you turned twenty-one and celebrated your birthday in the quiet of your office because you still had to reorganize the community calendar for the year.
So, years ago.
“Come on. Let’s get something other than one of Steve’s sandwiches at the saloon.”
It’s a tempting idea, one you entertain for a hot second until dread sinks in your stomach again. “What will people think of me if I’m there? They’re going to think I don’t have enough to do, that I can’t help them tomorrow.”
“People will think that you’re living your youth and having a good time.” Wanda rolls her eyes. She grabs her cloak and drapes it over her shoulders. “Come on, I could use some of his mulled wine. There’s no magic in that, but I’m convinced Rogers made a deal with the devil to create something that good.”
The saloon is as alive as it could be — regulars you’ve seen coming in and out packing the booths, occasional visitors hanging onto the bar in the hopes of getting Steve’s attention, and— fuck, is that Bucky? You try not to stare at him too much, dragging your eyes instead to the saloon owner who has now spotted you across the bar.
He immediately leaves behind the group of now-disappointed ladies clustered on the other end of the bar to greet you and Wanda.
“Wanda. Ma’am,” he nods at you.
“Call me ma’am again and I might have to strip you off your liquor license,” you warn him lightheartedly.
“Noted, Madam Mayor,” he pokes right back with that charming grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here outside of lunch and dinner before.”
“Don’t point it out, she’s already stressed enough as it is at the idea of relaxing,” Wanda grunts as she slides onto one of the stools. “I’ll get your mulled wine and a tequila soda. She will have whatever is your top-shelf liquor that will knock her out in two seconds flat.”
You give her a look as you settle in next to her. “Funny.”
“I was being serious.”
“Mulled wine and tequila soda coming right up,” Steve nods at Wanda then turns to you, “what kind of drink do you like? Beer? Cocktails? Straight liquor?”
Considering you haven’t really had the chance to explore alcohol, the question is a daunting one. You don’t know what you like. What are people supposed to like at your age? Something that tastes good or something that tastes like jet fuel?
Steve seems to grasp your dilemma and instead prompts, “You like sweets? I could make you something fruity, sweeter.”
“I could do with something fruity and sweet,” you breathe out in relief.
He confirms your orders then goes to throw it together.
“Not so bad right?” Wanda bumps your shoulder.
“For now,” you mumble. “I still have a stack of documents to review for that community center. Town budget isn’t looking so hot.”
“Let work go for one night. Trust me. Just one.”
Work is your life. How can she ask you to let go of your life?
Steve comes back around and places the drinks in front of you. Yours is this pale blue liquid in a triangular glass. He nods at you with a smile, encouraging you to give it a try. “If you don’t like it, I can make you something else.”
Your fingers delicately hold the stem as you raise it to your lips. The cocktail is cool on your lips and saccharine on your tongue with a hint of tartness. There are citrus and floral notes, but the combination is divine. Maybe Wanda was right, he’s got to have made a deal to be this good.
“Good?”
“Terrific,” you confirm, “thank you.”
“‘Course,” he beams. “First round is on the house.”
“Steve, absolutely not,” you blanch, reaching for your wallet.
“If you take that wallet out right now, I’m going to have to make your drinks free the rest of the night.”
Wincing, you extract your hand away from your pockets and settle them on the bar.
“Good,” he nods proudly. “I’ll be here all night so let me know if you want anything else, alright?”
Wanda begins telling you about this new recipe she’s working on; you try not to focus too much on the ingredients she lists lest they become a legal liability for you. As she does so, you let your eyes roam around the bar.
Your gaze darts from corner to corner, worry creasing your forehead. Your heart is practically threatening to jump out of your chest as you take another sip of your drink. However, much to your relief and dismay, everyone’s busy nursing their own drinks. Nobody even spares you a glance. Maybe your paranoia about your image has really gotten out of hand.
When unrecognizable laughter rings across the room, you jump. You nearly get whiplash from how hard you turn around to the source.
Imagine your surprise when you see Bucky on the other end of it. He has his head thrown back, his entire body leaning into his chair as he clutches his chest. You’ve never heard him laugh before; it’s beautiful. The sort of laughter that has pleasure tingling your fingertips. He looks almost boyish, the lines on his face smoothing out with his eyes crinkling in delight.
He’s at Peter and Tony’s table, the duo that runs StarkMart on the other side of town. Tony’s a tough man to impress or please, it took you a while to get on his good side, particularly as it’s helpful to convince him to sponsor some of the town initiatives. There Bucky was, smiling and laughing with the two like they’ve always been friends.
So the man is a charmer — just not with you.
It’s incredibly disconcerting that he seems to get along with everyone except you — the one person who actually tried. You end up taking bigger and bigger swigs of your drink, licking your lips of the syrupy flavor each time.
“You might want to slow down on that,” Wanda eyes you questioningly. “It may seem innocent but it packs quite the punch. Plus, you haven’t had a drink in forever.”
“It’s just good,” you shrug.
When the last drop hits your tongue, you set the glass down and ready yourself to flag Steve for another. What’s one night to relax right? You can go back to being the good, responsible mayor tomorrow.
But, before you can do so, another drink lands in front of you. It’s pink this time. “Oh, thank you. Let me pay you now.”
“No need,” Steve waves you off.
“Steve,” you start sternly.
“No, it’s paid for. Someone sent a drink over.”
Wanda lets out a little ooh while Steve keeps standing there with a smug smirk on his face. Warmth crawls up your neck. “Who was it?”
“Can’t tell you. He asked for it to be anonymous.”
Your friend’s eyes are positively glimmering with delight. “Sugar daddy wants to stay anonymous.”
Balking at her, you chuck a napkin her way. “Gross, Wanda.”
“Give us a hint, Steve. Come on.”
“Well, I’ll say that he’s perhaps a man who’s trying to get in your good graces.”
Your good graces? You’ve never had a problem with anyone, you can’t even begin to imagine who would try to send you a peace offer— oh. Oh. But that can’t be. Why would he, of all people, send you a drink?
“You know who it is.”
You scan the room again, finding only Tony and Peter left in the corner booth. When your eyes land on the door, you catch a flash of black and gray disappearing out the door. Pursing your lips, you slide off your seat. “I’ll be right back.”
Wanda tries to protest but Steve just shushes her.
The spring air is nice and cool on your skin when you step outside. Music and chatter from the saloon are muffled the moment the front door closes. You look around to find the illuminated pathways desserted, not a soul in sight.
It is only when you hear clicking off to the side that you notice the silhouette leaning against the side of the building.
Bucky stands there, long frame stretched with his back pressed up against the wall. He’s halfway through pulling out a cigarette, his sharp blue eyes already trained on you as he does so. Your lips pinch at the sight of the vice. Bucky taps it once against the carton as his lips slowly curl up.
“Can I help you with something?”
His words are an echo of your first meeting. It sounds like a jab.
You could smile, simply thank him for the drink, and go about your day. You could ask him again how he’s finding the town, if he has any complaints or ideas for you to consider. You could do all the things you’re supposed to do, except, what leaves your mouth is—
“What did you mean that day? When you asked me if I ever got tired of smiling.”
Bucky is quiet for a moment, gaze flicking up to meet yours. “What do you think I meant?”
You bite back the urge to roll your eyes, lips pursing instead in annoyance, His focus drops to your mouth before coming back up. “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.”
You’re hoping that your irritation doesn’t shine through your voice, but based on the humored look on Bucky’s face, you’re not doing a very good job. “Why does it matter what I think?”
That’s always the big question. It’s the same one that Wanda asked — why do you need him to like you? You don’t know why, but you do care. You want to know what he thinks. He’s the first new face in town, sue you for wanting to know how the place you’ve built appears to outsiders.
But there’s something else. Something deeper you’re not yet sure you want to acknowledge. Maybe it’s the thoughtful look in his eyes whenever he regards you; not the automatic respect or resentment that you’re used to the moment they find out you’re mayor. Rather, it’s softer, more akin to curiosity than anything else.
You’ve never had anyone curious about you. It has always been the other way around, your job to know and learn more about other people so you can serve them better.
The way Bucky stares is unnerving, like he’s picking apart pieces of you so he can learn how to put you back together. His very own jigsaw puzzle.
Still, you can’t admit all this to him.
“You’re a resident in my town. Of course, I care.”
His lips tug up. “That’s a lot of caring to do.”
“It’s part of the job.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
Your skin prickles. “I have a lot of responsibilities, is that so bad?”
“Maybe what you need is a man to fuck that responsibility out of you.”
Your heart smashes against your ribcage, jolting every nerve inside you to life. Your lungs constrict and suddenly you’re stark sober as you look at him. The world before you begins to spin and you can’t tell why it’s even happening, how you’re feeling.
So you settle for outrage. “Excuse me?”
Bucky’s tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, the cogs in his mind turning as he debates his response. His eyes glaze over, eyelids drooping as he squints. “What I mean is that you need to relax. This town isn’t going anywhere and it seems like neither are you, so why don’t you slow it down a little?”
“That’s still incredibly inappropriate to say,” you scowl, jaw clenched.
He doesn’t seem affected by your change in attitude. It seems to only… please him. A smile stretches across his lips. “That’s the face I was looking for. Doesn’t that feel better?”
“You’re a condescending prick,” you let slip before you can stop yourself. Dread drops hard and fast in the pit of your stomach.
Oh god, what have you done? You’ve just called one of your residents a prick. If this gets out, and apparently Bucky is loved enough as is, people will hate you. They won’t trust you. What happens then?
However, Bucky only laughs — the sound ringing clear in the quiet night. He flips open his cigarette box instead, slipping the single stick back in. “So I’ve been told before,” he drawls casually.
You grit your teeth to stop yourself from opening your big mouth again. Perhaps you do need to consider picking up meditation, especially if Bucky plans on sticking around.
“Anything else, Madam Mayor?”
Heat flushes your skin again. “No,” you almost spit out, “just… be safe getting home.”
“Should say the same to you.” He nods then waves his hand over his shoulder as he ambles away from you.
That’s when you remember why you even came out here in the first place. “And thank you,” you call out, slightly embarrassed, “for the drink.”
Bucky turns around with a smile, and you swear it looks genuine. “Anytime. If you need my help, you know where to find me.”
Somehow, you have a feeling he isn’t talking about the town.
This summer festival is never going to be planned, not with the way these people are handling the meetings. You end up taking it upon yourself to lead these meetings, structuring an agenda and making sure that at least one decision gets made today — even if it takes a full day of the team being either distracted or arguing amongst themselves.
The only time you step outside today is to get lunch for everyone since no progress had been made and they’ve already started moaning about being hungry. When the sun finally kisses your skin for the first time that day, you take a deep breath.
This is going to be a very long day.
You look across the street and find Bucky there, bags of his purchases dangling from those thick hands. When his eyes snag on your figure, he moves all of them to one hand and waves. You give him a small wave back in return before scurrying inside.
That feels like progress.
You don’t need to think about his words from last night. You’ve lost enough sleep because of them as it is.
Thankfully, the rest of the meeting proceeds seamlessly. A few more hours and you’ve got owners for all the action items on your list. Now, you just have to make sure they actually do it. After they leave, you spend a few more hours going through your actual work — reviewing permit requests, resident proposals, and the occasional note that Wanda sneaks in for you to take a break.
By the time you look up, the letters are blurring together before your eyes and moonlight streaks across your wooden floors. It’s pitch black outside and you don’t even want to check the time; god forbid you’ve turned into your father. As good as a man he was, he had no semblance of work-life balance — and it seems you’re well on your way to proving the phrase like father, like daughter.
You quickly pack your things and lock up the office. You’re mentally running through your to-do list for tomorrow when you slam into something solid. Something extremely solid. Your eyes fly up to meet familiar, bright baby blues. Bucky’s hands are gripping you by your arms, careful enough not to hurt you but firm enough so that you don’t hurt him.
“Jesus, Bucky, what’re you doing out here?”
“I was heading home.”
“At this hour?”
He coughs, “Well, I was going to walk you home first then go back, but I didn’t realize how late you worked.”
“Time got away from me,” you say sheepishly, “you don’t have to walk me home. I don’t live too far from here.”
“Even more of a reason,” Bucky shrugs, “shall we?”
You would think that walking with Bucky would be awkward, particularly given your history or lack thereof, but he’s a decent conversationalist. You can see why the townspeople adore him; he’s good at listening, making you feel like whatever you’re saying is important. Despite the gruffness of his voice, Bucky’s presence puts you at ease. He makes you comfortable enough to let your guard down.
It’s a terrifying revelation.
Still, you doubt that he wanted to walk you home to make small talk.
“Alright, do you want to tell me what this is about? I doubt you waited for me for hours just to ask me about my favorite pie in town.”
“Hey, that’s a critical piece of information. I love pies,” Bucky teases. You give him a look. “Okay, okay. I wanted to actually apologize—” you cock an eyebrow in question, “—for yesterday.”
Oh. His words ricochet in your eardrums again.
Maybe what you need is a man to fuck that responsibility out of you.
Your face heats up at the memory.
“That was incredibly rude of me. I may have had a little too much to drink but that is no excuse. Sometimes, I have no filter and god knows that mouth’s gotten me into more trouble before. But that’s no way to speak to you and I am sorry.”
You’re not.
Not entirely. You went home thinking about that last night. You don’t really think about your dearth of a sex life. While you don’t feel shame about having zero sexual experiences at your age, you do sometimes wonder if you’re missing out on the greater pleasures of life.
Or so Wanda has claimed. You don’t even know who she’s been seeing when you hear all the gossip in this town.
And the thought of Bucky being the first to— no, you should not go there. You slam on the brakes of that thought and instead rasp out your response.
“It’s fine.”
Bucky cocks an eyebrow. “Surprisingly tame response. Is it really fine?”
“Yeah,” you nod, wondering why the hell it’s feeling this warm when it’s this late.
His footsteps cease and you look back to where he’s stopped. His brows furrowed. “You really shouldn’t let anyone talk to you like that, including me.” He pauses, “At least, not outside of bed.”
Your heart stutters, you nearly slip.
The implication is there — Bucky can be and is willing to be mean in bed, should you desire it. That’s food for thought.
Clearing your throat, you throw your gaze into the distance. “I know. It’s not as if I don’t have a backbone. I just— I sort of understand your intentions, even if you are terrible with your words. I appreciate your concern, but I can handle myself just fine.”
When the two of you finally come to a stop in front of your home, you smile at him then at his horse who’s been walking alongside him. “What’s her name?”
“Her name’s Winter.”
“Winter,” you murmur, your hand reaching up to stroke her gently on the neck. Winter gives a little neigh and a little kick as she nuzzles into your touch. “Such a good girl. Make sure you get Bucky home carefully, okay?”
You turn back to face him, his expression molten as he looks at you.
You don’t know what to make of that. “Have a good night, Bucky. Thank you for walking me.”
“Anytime. Like I said, you ever need anything, you let me know.”
It’s the week leading up to the festival. You can’t believe that this group has managed to set aside their differences and put together an extravagant event with detailed plans.
“You really need to have more faith in us,” Mr. Lansing says with a teasing grin. You laugh and agree.
However, with the event just around the corner, coordination requirements are at an all-time high — which means your workload has simply doubled. The others have offered their assistance but you want them to focus on the fun aspects of this bonanza, leave it to you to deal with the boring logistical things.
This means you barely have even a minute to sneak in a small bite or sleep long enough that your body manages to rest without conjuring up images of World War III striking the beach on d-day. Through it all, you keep your confident smile tattooed on your face. You’re not going to let them see you panic, regardless of how much anxiety this event gives you every year.
Not to mention, if you’re stressed, it’ll only agitate the others, which means more arguments, which means more work for you.
You’re piecing together the layout with the construction team on the beach, giving a full rundown to the vendors on how to set up and run their booths, and finding answers to every single additional question that comes up.
“Where do I put this massive sign?”
“Who’s going to be running the fireworks?”
“What are we going to do if it rains?”
All legitimate questions. All exhausting questions.
You don’t think much about your work or how drained you are or how the world is spinning— the world is spinning?
Then it all goes to black.
You’re on a bed, the mattress firm underneath you, sheets tangled around your legs. Sweat beads your forehead from an unconscious force pressing against your brain. Your fingers tighten on the duvet.
The clinic. This is Banner’s Clinic. Good god.
Speak of the angel, Bruce peeks around the curtain cautiously. “You’re safe. You’re fine.”
“What happened?”
“You passed out at the beach.”
Your stomach sinks. Oh god. You still had so much to go over with everyone, especially the construction crew that’s supposed to be building all the booths. The material is coming very last minute so they need to know exactly what needs to be done so it gets completed.
“I have to go—” you start, swinging your legs over the bed.
The room turns on its axis. You nearly go cross-eyed when Bruce jumps to your rescue, pressing you back into the pillow. “You need to rest,” he emphasizes with a stern look that feels like a parent scolding a child.
“There’s so much to be done.”
“And they will get done but not in this state.”
You deflate with a sigh. “How’d I even get here?”
“Barnes. Bucky carried you here.”
Bucky had— oh no. You’re quick to feel the flames of humiliation lick your face. After last night’s conversation, you’re even more embarrassed at looking so helpless now. “I really need to go,” you insist weakly.
Bruce sighs, “He said you were going to be stubborn about this. Alright, eat the sandwich first, rest for another hour, then I’ll get him to come pick you up.”
“No!” You interrupt loudly enough that Bruce jumps. “I mean, I can get there fine. Sandwich would be great.”
“I don’t think I need to remind you of this but you need sleep and sustenance. I know there’s a lot to do around the festival but we also have enough hands to go around. You need to take better care of yourself, Mayor.”
“Yes, sir,” you mumble quietly.
He leaves you then to indulge in your first proper meal in days. You see the packaging from Steve’s saloon. It’s one of your favorite sandwiches from there and that first bite feels like heaven. The textures and delicate balance of flavors on your tongue. Incredibly nice of him to drop this off, terribly embarrassing for him to know what happened.
You feel much, much better already.
By the time you make your way back to the beach, your contentment has melted away into sheer shame. How are you supposed to face everyone now? You had passed out! You were supposed to be the person everyone could rely on and now you’ve disappointed them. There’s much to catch up on, so you’re hoping the venue is not too much of a mess.
However, what greets you at the beach is… organization. A steady rhythm of work and conversations to map out how this festival will happen. Everyone from the planning committee are actively engaging vendors, animatedly sharing all the great things they have planned.
At the center of it all — Bucky.
He’s listening and nodding attentively to the construction lead, responding thoughtfully. He’s dressed more casually today with the warmer weather now settling in the valley. A white tank and a pair of shorts. His arms are visible in the near-evening sun, the metal winking at you. Your belly flips.
When his eyes spot you, his face pinches with worry first. He excuses himself from the conversation and hurries over to you. “What are you doing here?”
“I have to wrap things up,” you say.
“No, what you have to do is rest. Bruce let you out?”
You playfully scowl at him. “I don’t need Bruce to let me do anything.” He gives you a stern look. “I insisted that an additional hour after I woke up would be enough. I’ll catch up on sleep tonight.”
Bucky still looks far from convinced.
“I’ll be fine. I promise. If I feel ill again, I will let you know.” That softens him a little bit. “Now, tell me what’s been happening.”
He begins giving you a detailed rundown of everything that’s happened. The construction team is briefed. All the vendors are fully aware of the rules. A temporary weather plan has been set in place with the committee. All you have to do is clean up the finer details and make some of the more critical calls.
“That’s— wow. You guys did a lot.”
Bucky smirks. “There’s a lot you can do when you’ve got plenty of hands to help.” He inhales deeply. “How are you feeling really?”
Your smile picks up an inch slightly. “Good, great!” He glares at you. “Okay, I’m tired, but I really am fine now. The sandwich helped. First meal in days.”
“That’s terrible,” he spits out with a vexed frown, “but I’m glad Steve ended up bringing it over. He mentioned that was one of your go-to orders.”
“Oh, did you order that for me? How much do I owe you?”
He gives you a stern look that says that’s not fucking happening.
“Bucky.”
“It’s a sandwich, doll. Let it go.”
“Doll? Really?”
A humored expression forms on his face. “You don’t like it?”
“Feels a bit objectifying.”
“Sometimes I wish you could turn into a doll so you would sit still and not move for two seconds.”
“I—” you stop, “I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“Wasn’t meant to get a response,” he mutters.
Then you finally ask the question you’ve been dying to know. “Did everyone see it happen?”
Bucky is silent. You groan.
“Shit. Did I fall face down or up?”
He looks away for a second. “Which one is worse?”
“Bucky!”
“It was fine. People were more worried that you had a seizure or something. They were both relieved and upset to know that you’ve just been terrible at taking care of yourself. That’s why we’re all here, chipping in.”
“That’s still so embarrassing,” you moan, rubbing your face. “They must think I’m so stupid.”
Bucky tugs your hand away from your face, drawing it towards his chest. “Nobody thinks you’re stupid and it’s not embarrassing. People here love you and they are more concerned with you being kind to yourself, which you clearly have not been. Stop worrying so much about everyone else, start thinking about yourself.”
“Sounds awfully selfish,” you huff as you look towards the crowds still milling around in preparation.
“Well, sometimes you need to be selfish,” he grins easily.
Your heart thrums beneath your veins. He really has such a handsome smile. Even more so when it’s directed at you.
Before you can formulate another response, some of the residents are whisking you away to check on you. They’ve got their hands on your elbow to drive you away from where all the action is happening, insisting that you go home. You protest this notion and they protest against your protest.
All that time, Bucky watches you with a small smile from afar.
Later that week, you swing by Bucky’s farmhouse.
He opens the door. Shirtless. Abs in full display, every line deepened by the afternoon shadows. His body is practically shining, like he’s put oil all over himself with the sweat. His left arm, a steely midnight with gold lines, gleams quietly. You never thought that the prosthetic was terrifying; instead, it gives him character. A part of his history made permanent on his body.
It makes him beautiful.
Your brain nearly fizzles out when he straightens his shoulders, lips stretching into a salacious grin with his teeth peeking out. God, he’s unfairly good-looking.
“What brings you around, Madam Mayor?”
You hold up the box in your hand. Blueberry pie. You’ve asked around and the fruit stall owner claims that Bucky’s always buying a fresh box of blueberries every week. It seemed like a safe bet.
“And what is this?” He accepts the box, curiously looking through the transparent lid.
“Blueberry pie. You said you like pies.”
Bucky looks thrilled. “I love pies, but what’s the occasion?”
“To thank you. For this week. For everything.”
You don’t expect the conflicted look on his face.
“What is it?”
“You know I can do something nice without expecting anything back.”
You squirm, “Yeah.”
“But you got me pie?”
Fidgeting again, you look away. “Yeah.”
“Is this because you think you owe me for the other day?”
“No.” Absolutely yes.
Bucky sighs, “I’m not taking this pie if this is what it’s about. This whole thing isn’t meant to be transactional. The town needed help so I stepped up, but so did everyone else. I don’t want you twisting it in your head into an act that you have to feel indebted to me for. You get me?”
“I get you,” you mumble. “Let’s just say this is a pie to officially welcome you to town and for being a great participant in the community.”
Bucky leans against his door again, looking every bit as delicious as ever. He chuckles low and shakes his head. “Fucking unbelievable.”
“What is?”
“You.”
You frown. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he grins, “now, if there’s nothing else, I’m going to finish up on the bathroom upstairs, then heat up a slice of pie and wash it down with some warm milk.”
“That… sounds like a plan.”
“Thanks for the pie, doll.”
You whisper, “Anytime,” just as Bucky closes the door.
Of all the things that could go wrong, somehow the world decided that one thing wouldn’t be enough, so it hits you with all of them. A landslide hits the valley two days before the festival is meant to kickoff. This means that the major and main route to get into town is blocked off by a pile of dirt and boulders. This also means that delivery of stall materials cannot make it in. There is no way around it. That is strike number one.
Secondly, vendors are now wary about the turnout and whether it’s even worth it to stand up a booth to sell their goods. The committee member in charge of vendors forgot to collect deposits and you might be in the red preparing for this event that may not happen if everyone backs out.
Third, you see that storm cloud rolling across the horizon. A frosty gust of wind whips through the beach, tearing down the decorations that have been put into place. There are rips on the garlands, the big sign is hanging halfway down the poles, and wooden signs have flipped over into the sea. The hurricane is inevitable.
Now, everyone’s coming to you with questions. What do we do? How should we handle this? What if we don’t make the money back? Who’s going to be held responsible? Once again, all very good, legitimate questions. They are simply questions you do not have answers to.
Your mind is rattling with the endless number of things you have to do — that you have to fix. You can’t be here. Your heart is racing at a million beats per minute and people keep piling on inquiry after inquiry.
“I—” you start, trying your best not to wheeze, and everyone goes silent, “I need to think about this. Please put together your list of questions and email them to me. Thank you.”
Then you’re gone. You’re hopping on Mac and she’s off.
The wind in your ears keeps your brain from completely destroying itself. The kiss of mist on your skin, the rustling of leaves as you rush past. You don’t know where you’re going — or, you thought you didn’t — until Mac comes to a stop.
The sun is just barely starting to set, illuminating the farmhouse in an orange hue. Bucky’s put some work into it. You still see the cracks but they feel more intentional now, like an artistic choice. But the house hums with life you haven’t seen in quite some time. Through the window, you get a glimpse of Bucky moving around his kitchen, a dishrag over his shoulder.
You shouldn’t do this. You’ve been doing so well so far. You didn’t need anyone. However, the temptation is too much to resist so you lift your hand and rap on the door.
Your heart hammers in your chest, a loud staccato in your ears.
You hear the latch and lock click before Bucky opens the door and greets you with a quiet raise of his brow. He must see the look on your face because he is then wordlessly opening the door wider. With a hand hovering on the low of your back, he guides you towards his kitchen and pulls out one of his counter stools for you.
He doesn’t question you. He simply lets you be.
Your eyes trail him around the kitchen as he chops vegetables and herbs. Your ears tune in to the rhythmic tapping of his knife against the board, the sizzle of them on his stove. Your nose follows the changing aromas as the spices cook down, filling the air with a fragrant combination of garlic and pepper and butter. Your mouth salivates as you can practically taste the dripping steak on your tongue mixed in with the sauce. Your hands — you’re itching to reach for him. To find his steady presence.
It’s an unnerving thought, so you ball your hands together and settle them on your lap.
Then he’s plating the steak sliced in front of you with an assortment of vegetables and roasted potatoes. He drizzles the herby dressing on top before handing you a knife and fork.
Through it all, he doesn’t say a word. Through it all, you don’t have to think.
It’s a pleasant feeling, one you haven’t experienced in a while. Your mind has been running in full force ever since your father raised the idea of you taking over his mayoral duties. It’s one thing after another, back to back. Even in slumber, you are restless, your brain constantly working to solve puzzles in your state of unconsicousness.
However, right here, with only the sounds of the world around you, and the slice of peace that you have been offered, you can breathe — and damn if that doesn’t feel good.
Bucky chews on his own plate but he keeps his eyes on you, as if he’s waiting to see if you’re about to fall apart any second now. It is only when you’re on your last bite of steak does he finally cut through the silence.
“Good?” He murmurs.
You swallow, savoring the tender texture of the meat with the refreshing herbs. “Good.”
He hesitates for a second before chancing another question. “Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking?”
You shake your head.
Bucky doesn’t push, only nods.
Once dinner is completed and you’ve devoured a bowl of Bucky’s delicious, and apparently homemade, caramel ice cream, you stack the dishes and turn on the kitchen sink. Bucky stops you then and there, grabbing everything from your hands before he manhandles you into the living room, easing you onto the couch with a steaming cup of tea and the fireplace running.
You throw him a quizzical look which he chooses not to respond to before he returns to the kitchen, and you hear the sink start to run again with the clinking of plates. You should be relaxing, but you can’t get your shoulders to untense, the tea feels like it’s boiling on your fingertips, and your knee won’t stop bouncing.
“Fuck it,” you mutter to yourself before setting it down and going to find him.
You bump him with your hip to make room for you. Bucky frowns, “I told you—”
“Let me help. Please.”
He assesses you for a second, searching your eyes for a sign that this perhaps is the final straw for you. When he finds nothing but weariness, he finally caves. “I’ll wash. You rinse and rack.”
The two of you work in tandem, silent and in sync. You watch as the muscles on his arm ripple as he’s scrubbing down the pan, jaw clenched in focus. The veins rise and fall like waves as he makes sure every inch of it is spotless before he carefully hands it to you. You don’t realize how warm you’ve gotten until you brush fingers and his touch is much too cool on your skin.
Once that’s all done, Bucky does lead you back to the living room and tuck you in nice and cozy with the softest blanket over your legs. He leans back next to you, watching you from his periphery as you watch the flames flicker with ash and light.
“Why do you have your fireplace on when it’s summer?” You ask quietly.
Bucky chuckles low, “Figured it would help with the mood. I like things warm. Are you too hot?”
You shake your head, “No, just curious.”
“Do you wanna talk now or do you wanna sleep first?”
Enticing offer for the latter. You have zero inclination to do the former. However, what you really want is an unsaid third option. One you don’t know if Bucky even wants.
You turn to face him, lips parting. His gaze falls to it, leaps back to meet yours. Your heart skips a beat. Gently, he slides his large flesh palm around the back of your neck, lifting to grab at the hairs and tug your head back. A gasp falls from your lips.
Suddenly, he’s right in front of you, his breath is ghosting yours, lips barely grazing. You can smell that earthy scent on him, like fresh grass on a spring morning. But you can feel the warmth of his sighs against your mouth.
“Tell me to stop,” Bucky growls low.
You don’t.
You don’t want him to.
So you shake your head.
Bucky lets out a final groan before he drags his lips over yours, deep and hungry. This is a man who has been waiting, a predator waiting on the sidelines for you to give your green light to ambush. He kisses like he’s seeking to devour you, every press of his lips intentional, an attempt to pull out the whines from your throat as you lean into him. Bucky pushes you back onto the couch, your chest rising and falling with your nervous breaths.
“This okay?” He rumbles, an index finger landing between your collarbones before drifting down towards your tantalizing cleavage peeking out from your tank top. Your breath hitches in your throat, sternum lifting, and you nod. “So fucking beautiful.”
A jittery laugh escapes your throat. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
“No, saw you on day one, couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Your face pinches in confusion. “You hated me on day one.”
It’s his turn to frown at you. “Never hated you. What makes you say that?”
“You closed the door on my face. Barely said two words to me. Every time I tried to talk to you, you’d shut me down.”
His fingertip traces the curve of your breast. He hums, “I didn’t know how to talk to a pretty lady.”
“Barnes, don’t lie to me.”
“‘M not lying,” he chuckles, “I came home from war to my grandfather’s letter about this farm. Thought he was crazy, sending me to the middle of nowhere for a second chance. Didn’t know that second chance would land on my doorstep day one with a gorgeous smile.”
You lick your lips, “You asked me if I ever got tired of smiling.”
“Because you were forcing yourself. You were always doing too much for other people. I saw you push yourself to the brink every single day. I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to put up a front with me.”
“Terrible way of communicating,” you mutter.
His lips tug up. “I’m working on it.”
Bucky dips his head as he props himself up above you, an arm sliding underneath your neck to tilt your face up to look at him. He slants his lips over yours again, licking into your mouth when you gasp. Groaning, he runs his other hand down your sides, over the planes of your waist, your hips, and your legs.
“When was the last time you let anyone do this to you?”
Embarrassment claws at your skin. You try not to let your humiliation show but Bucky catches your chin to look at him again.
“When? Anyone touch you since I’ve been here?”
“Nobody,” you rasp.
“When was the last time, doll?”
You shake your head, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. “Never.”
Bucky freezes and you feel his disappointment bite into your chest. Your first instinct is to draw away from him, attempt to wriggle out from underneath him, but he tightens his grip, keeping you in place. “You’re telling me you never had anyone touch you?”
“Stop, this is embarrassing.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” he emphasizes. “You’re telling me I’m first man who gets to have you like this? Who gets to see what you look like when you cum?”
Oh my. Your jaw practically falls open with his words. Crude, unexpectedly sexy.
“Answer me.”
“Yes,” you squeak, “I just— I never wanted to date anyone here. It would complicate things.”
“Never said anything about dating. Not even a one-night stand? Not even with Stevie?”
“Stevie—” you pause, “oh. Steve? No. He’s a really good friend.”
“He’s attracted to you.”
“He is not!” You gasp, swatting his chest.
Bucky chuckles, “He is. So is Tony and even that kid Peter has a crush on you.”
“Now you’re just making things up to make me feel better,” you groan, “can we drop this?”
“I can promise you, I’m not making anything up. You don’t realize how beautiful you are. How goddamn sexy you are. Every time you walk into a room, all eyes follow you. I feel as if I need to start a fight for your attention.”
The revelation is surprising. Sure, you noticed when you were younger when people had a crush on you – but those were your teenage years when boys were pulling on your metaphorical pigtails. As an adult, you knew you were too stubborn, too strong-minded for your own good. Too independent. You didn’t think anyone would find that attractive.
“Hope you know that after tonight, I’m not letting anyone else touch you. Not even gonna let anyone look at you.”
You swallow thickly, your gaze finding his blue eyes dark as he drinks you in. “Awfully possessive of you.”
“I protect what’s mine, doll,” he begins, lips curling into a Cheshire grin, “plus, you like it that way, don’t you?”
You blink in question.
“You do so much already. All that thinking, all that work. Don’t you want to just come home and relax? Have me take care of you? Could cook you dinner every night, give you massages when that knot in your neck comes back, kiss you as much as you want, fuck you until you can’t stand.”
His last words have your heart shoving against the seams of your chest.
“I could do all that for you,” he murmurs, breath tickling your neck as he leans down and begins to pepper sweet, wet kisses along the column of your neck. “My sweet girl. You don’t have to worry about a thing when you’re here with me. I won’t let anything touch you.”
That sounds nice. Your eyes slide shut as you let his soft lips wander along the expanse of your neck, down to your chest where he tugs your top up and above your head, leaving you completely bare. You can’t tell if you should curse or thank built-in bras. Your arms begin to wind around you on instinct but Bucky clicks his tongue disapprovingly.
“You’re stunning, I want to see all of you.”
He pushes himself down along your body, hand sliding to cup your breast as the other one whispers kisses around your nipple. The air is cool on your heated skin, you feel yourself arch into his touch, seeking more contact.
“So needy,” Bucky murmurs against your breast as he draws closer and closer to your actual peak. His tongue darts out for a taste, coarse against your skin, and you gasp. “So responsive. I always knew you’d be like this — soft, pliant, so… obedient in bed.”
You should argue against this. You should absolutely tell him off for being so patronizing, but you can’t seem to find your voice, particularly when he wraps his lips around your nipple and sucks. His mouth is hot on your skin, tongue wet as it draws circles to trace the shape of it. Even in the warmth before the fireplace, you feel your skin getting hotter.
You’re burning like the summer sun as you cave into his touch, body shifting against his in complementary motions. Every ripple of your muscle feels involuntary, like you’re a boat drifting at sea with the waves pushing you in whatever direction they please.
Bucky moans against your tit and you see his tongue stick out of his mouth as he continues to lave at you, his blue eyes finding yours. The erotic sight has you clenching your stomach tight, your legs pressing together in the hopes of finding some sort of reprieve.
Your hands slide up his firm chest and bury in his hair to push him down deeper against your chest. “God, Bucky, that feels so good.”
“Mhmm, let all those worries melt away, sweet thing. I’m here, I’ll take care of all of it for you.”
There’s not a single ounce of energy left in your brain to process any of your problems, not when you’re too focused on the lights dancing behind your eyes every time Bucky squeezes, every time he nips and licks. He worships your breasts like they’re a god-given gift.
Bucky’s other hand slips away from behind your neck and snakes between your legs, pressing against the denim that stands between him and the heat in your core. You let out a little whine at the friction, thick fabric digging against your pussy.
“She wants me, doesn’t she?” Bucky coos.
You should really tell him to piss off. Tell him that it’s completely inappropriate to use pronouns like that. But again, you can’t. Not when it has you absentmindedly nodding, desperate for his approval and attention.
“Bet she’s so wet, doll. You haven’t been taking care of her, have you? You don’t have the time or energy.”
He’s not wrong. You haven’t touched yourself in so long; even now, you only do it out of necessity when the urges overwhelm you. It’s never quite satisfying when you have too many worries plaguing your mind. However, right here, right now with Bucky, all you can focus on is the stimulation he’s providing all over your body.
His thick hair tickling your chin, his mouth on your tits, breath hot on your skin, and his fingers insistent between your legs. You barely register him popping your pants button open, his hand sliding underneath the first layer to find the flimsy fabric of your panties. His touch is light, delicate, as he drags a fingertip on your clothed slit.
“So wet,” he groans, hips rutting down against your legs. “God, you’re soaked. Bet I could slide right in there. Even if you’ve never had anyone, I could stretch you out so easy. Your pussy will swallow me right up, you’re gonna be dripping all over my cock.”
Your hips lift again as you cry out.
“I wanna taste her, doll. Will you let me?”
Oh. Your cheeks flood with an uncomfortable fever. “I don’t know, I haven’t— I don’t know how people prepare.”
“All you gotta do is spread your legs and let me eat.”
Jesus. Where did he learn to talk like this? WIth your bottom lip still clamped between your teeth, you nod slowly.
“Good girl,” he murmurs then shimmies further down so he can drag your pants off and let them pool on his floor. He looks up again when he pinches the hem of your panties, eyes seeking permission. When you give him another nod, he eases it down your legs. But, instead of dropping it, he smiles quietly at it before tucking it in his back pocket.
Your stomach turns with desire.
“Souvenir,” he teases.
Your foot swings at his chest, he grabs it and flattens it there. Your lips press together in a thin, shy line. “You’re mean.”
“Doesn’t sound like a complaint to me,” he grins boyishly. “Now, let me see her.”
“Wait,” you interrupt. You hesitate for a second, gaze darting away as you debate your next request. If you’ve already gone this far— “can you, uhm, can you take your shirt off?”
Bucky looks momentarily stunned before a pleased smirk curves on his lips. “I could do that.”
You roll your eyes. “Don’t look so smug. Just doesn’t seem fair that I’m fully nude when you’re fully dressed.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t want to make a mess on my shirt.” Make a mess on his— oh. You didn’t think your face could get any warmer and he proves you wrong as he tugs it over his head. “You could squirt on my couch though, soak it, I’ll sit right here smelling you while I wrap my hand around my dick, thinking about how good this pussy tastes.”
“Bucky,” you whine, hands flying up to cover your face.
He laughs and settles in, kissing the inside of your thigh. “So fucking cute.” He’s gentle with you, slow. You see his eyes flicking up to check on you every once in a while, make sure you’re still okay. “If you ever want me to stop, you tell me to stop, okay? I don’t need you to use any other words other than that. At any point. You get me?”
“I get you,” you murmur.
“Good girl,” he mumbles against your skin.
You lean back, forcing yourself to relax, but even with your eyes wide open, you can practically hear your heart threatening to burst out of your chest. Your nerves are running haywire the closer the gets to your core. Bucky’s arms push underneath your legs to prop you up and you feel his warm breath ghost your core, the cool slick absorbing the breeze.
“She’s so pretty, wish you could see her,” Bucky whispers, thumbs spreading out your cunt by the lips. “I can see her moving, squeezing. She’s excited, isn’t she?”
His name rolls off your tongue again in protest. It’s a sound that morphs into a choke when he drags a tentatively lick along your slit. Your legs try to close on instinct but Bucky keeps you open. With his arms wrapped around your thighs, fingers digging into the flesh, he mouths ravenously at your spread pussy. His fingers slide over your pussy lips, prying them open further so he could lick further inside your dripping cunt.
Bucky groans against your core, the vibrations rattling every atom inside your body. He sounds so… hungry. The lewd noises rising from his throat as he continues to lick at your lips, sucking on your skin, has you squeezing around him. You can see his eyes slide shut for a second as he relishes in the bliss of being trapped between your legs, your honey drizzling on his tongue.
You can’t help yourself, your elbows prop you up so you can get a good look at him. He seems to be taking far too much pleasure in pleasing you, hearing the little whimpers that fall from your lips as your cunt squeezes around his tongue. He licks at every last drop, mouthing at you, sucking on your clit until you see stars on his ceiling.
Then blue flashes bright, directed right at you. He’s watching you, watching every little reaction on your face, as he continues to bury his face in your pussy. Your lips part in a sharp inhale. His thumb presses down on your clit as his mouth continues its magic.
“Bucky, please,” you whine quietly.
“She’s so sweet, doll. I could eat you for days. I could suck on this pussy for weeks. Gonna have to keep you right here so I can have my dessert every single day.”
Your pussy tightens again with his words.
“You’d want that too, wouldn’t you? Don’t need to worry yourself with this town anymore. You can just stay right here, be my sweet, pretty little pussy. I’ll take good care of you. You don’t need to even think anymore. I’ll do all of that for you.”
Oh, oh, that does sound nice. Stay here forever, blissful with Bucky’s lips on you, between your legs. Pleasing you.
Bucky kisses your inner thighs again and when you look down on him, you see the way his mouth glistens with your slick. His fingers spread open your folds again and, for a moment, he just stares at it in awe. The way it pulses with his attention.
“It’s like seeing your heartbeat down here. Like she’s begging me to put my mouth on her again.”
“Please,” you gulp, “please.”
With another guttural groan, he dives back in and licks you all over, sucking on every sensitive part of your skin until you’re squirming in his hold. The pleasure moves all around you, from the sound buzzing in your ears to the way your toes tingle as he continues to touch you. Then your stomach twists, grabbing a hold of you as you sink your fingers into the cushions. A gasp wrenches out of your chest as Bucky presses in deeper, licks faster and harder, and then you’re coming apart, shuddering in his hands as he tries to keep your legs wide open for him.
He slows down only when you start weeping, the overstimulation clenching at your heart. He murmurs comforting words, kissing the soft flesh of your thighs as you melt back into the couch. You twitch with the last jolts of your orgasm and eventually let your legs collapse against his head. He nuzzles into your thigh, beard scratching your skin, as he smiles up at you.
“Good?”
As if he didn’t just deliver the most mind-numbing orgasm you’ve ever experienced.
“Good,” you exhale slowly.
“Let me get you cleaned up.”
You frown, lurching up as he comes to a stand. “Wait, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You haven’t, uhm,” you clear your throat, “you haven’t finished.”
Bucky chuckles as he leans forward to kiss you on the lips, taste of you on his tongue. “Doll, I’m going to ease you into this. Don’t need you to finish me.” Oh. “Not in that way,” he quickly adds, “I’d love to finish with you, but I’m taking my time with you. No need to rush. I’m not going anywhere.”
You lick your lips, tasting that slight tang. “I know, but I kind of… want to.”
His throat moves as he swallows. You see the war in his eyes, that self-control flickering, before a wall slams up and he shakes his head. “Next time, I promise.”
That finicky little feeling comes crawling back. That little voice inside your head that can’t seem to grasp why he wouldn’t want you here and now. “Okay,” you say quietly as you come to a stand on your wobbly legs. You reach for your shirt and slide it on.
Bucky sighs, then his hand is on your chin, tipping your face up to look at him. “I don’t think I like what’s going on in that head of yours. I really like you, doll. Think you’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Right,” you cough, “you just… won’t fuck me.”
“That’s not—” Bucky breathes in through his nose, “I want to. I do. I need to be patient with you.”
“Didn’t ask you to be.”
“It’s for me, trust me.”
You frown. “Is it because you’re not turned on?”
He groans, hand coming up to furiously rub his face. “What in the ever-loving fuck gave you that idea?” You purse your lips. “Sweetheart, if I even thought about fucking you right now, I might cum on the spot. I’m being patient because I’m so goddamn hard and the last thing I want to be is a two-pump chump.”
“Two-pump—” Your lips form an o in understanding as your eyes fall to the bulge in his pants. It’s noticeable, enough to make your mouth salivate. You almost want to reach out and touch it, feel how big it is, how it would fit in your palm.
Bucky grabs your chin again to drag your focus back to his eyes. “So, to answer your unsaid, ridiculous question, I want to fuck you. I will fuck you. But not today. Today, I want to run you a bath so you can relax, then you can tell me your problems so I can fix them. Then, I’m going to get you to sleep in my bed, right next to me. You get me?”
Your cheeks are aching from biting down on your grin. “I get you.”
“Good, now come on.” Bucky swoops low and throws you over his shoulder, your squeal bouncing off the walls. He swats your naked behind. “Now, do you want lavender or coconut?”
You don’t think you’ve ever struggled waking up a day in your life, not when you have so many things to do. That has always been your priority. But when your eyelids flutter open this morning and you hear the birds chirping and sunlight soaking the silky sheets beneath you, all you want to do is bury yourself back under the covers.
All you want to do is forget about all the problems you have to deal with outside, especially with the festival starting tomorrow.
Alas, reality does not work that way and you must rise to the challenge.
First, you have to find Bucky.
The sheets are cool next to you, which means that he’s been gone for quite some time. That man functions like a human heater and you were practically sweltering wrapped up in his arms last night.
The two of you had spoken for a bit right before sleep pulled you under.
You’re tucked into his chest, fingertips tracing circles on his bare chest. Sighing, you murmured, “I’m tired.”
“Let’s get you to sleep then. I’ll turn off the lights.”
“Not like that,” you chuckled, “I didn’t realize how tired I was until… you mentioned it. There’s always something to do and I feel like, if I don’t do it, it’ll never get done. Then today, when everything happened, something inside me just… snapped.”
“I’m sorry,” Bucky mumbled against your forehead, “I wasn’t trying to make your life harder.”
“It’s not your fault. I feel as though that comeuppance was a long time coming. It was either that or I spontaneously combust and apparently I was halfway there when I finally passed out that one time.”
Bucky’s grip tightened around your shoulders.
Once you started talking, you couldn’t seem to stop. “I was always taught that the people in this town were my responsibility. They trusted me to lead them, so I should be there for them. I need them to know that I’m reliable, that they can depend on me at any time. Because if I’m not, then who am I really?”
His lips pressed another gentle kiss to your temple, then to your cheek. “Doll, your worth is not defined by how much you give people. If you give and you give, what’s going to be left of you?”
“My father gave his life to this town. Who am I to do any differently?”
“You are not your father. Didn’t you have dreams? Things that you wanted to do beyond this life. This is your job, it shouldn’t be the entirety of who you are. You can have a life outside of this, find love, find adventure.”
“Shelved those dreams a long time ago,” you sighed.
“Tell me about them.” Heat creeps up the back of your neck again. “Come on, it’s me.”
So you told him, about how you wished you could travel beyond this valley. You’ve never ventured beyond this region, only once or twice when you sought after resources unavailable in town. However, there are cities — countries — that you only read about in textbooks. Ones that you wished you could explore in person, touch the ground, touch the buildings.
“You can still do all that, you know.”
“I can’t just up and leave this town.”
“There are good people here, doll. People who care about this place.”
You doubted that, Bucky could tell. It’s not as if you didn’t believe they were good but it took a lot to run a town and that’s not a responsibility you could place on someone else’s shoulders.
“For now, let’s sleep. Tomorrow’s a new day.”
And here you are today, Bucky nowhere in sight. The idea of facing the townspeople today after you promised them that you would think of solutions, but instead you spent your night with Bucky’s face between your legs, has your cheeks warm — both from the memory but also the embarrassment of coming in empty-handed.
On the bedside table sits a note:
I’m at the beach. Eat your breakfast and then come down to meet me. Not before. — B
Smiling, you make your way downstairs and find a covered plate with an omelette. Ketchup on top in the shape of a heart. How cute.
You do as you’re told before you hop on Mac, who has been thoroughly fed and groomed, and gallop down to the beach. The trek is short but you hear them before you see them — the sound of life and none of them sound like complaints.
People are hustling and bustling about, carrying tables and chairs and signs, and getting them all ready. The sun is shining bright overhead with not a single cloud in the sky. The seabreeze is cool on your skin as you approach. Your residents chirp good morning as they pass before they go on their way.
No questions asked.
When you finally spot Bucky, he’s talking to the committee before they all disperse. He catches your eye and smiles as he walks over to you. He still looks as good as he did last night. Same shirt too.
“Good morning,” he murmurs, pecking you on the cheek.
Your eyes dart around to find no one paying attention to the two of you.
“Morning,” you say slowly. “What’s going on?”
“Met with the committee this morning. We figured out temporary solutions until things get cleared out. Getting tables from the community for now, we got kids working on the new banners too, and materials for the booths should be coming in next couple of days so we can get them set up for next weekend.”
“Oh.”
Bucky grins, “Nothing to worry about. You’ve been doing this for so long, I knew you’d be able to do handle it, but figured I’ll take one thing off your plate. You can confirm the final plans with them. Speaking of plates, you finish breakfast?”
“Yes, thank you, it was delicious,” you murmur, still a little stunned.
“Like I said, doll, good people.”
You soften against his side as he holds you close. “Now, when all of this is over, we’re going to start making plans. We’re gonna hire a vice mayor who can take things over when you’re gone. We’re gonna set some mandatory vacation policies. Most importantly, we’re going to plan where we’re going first.”
You whip up to look at him, “We?”
He stiffens, smile fading. “Well, of course, only if you want me there. Happy to show you around if I’ve been there, but I also understand if you want to do some exploring on your own.”
“The company would be nice,” you whisper.
“Then I’ll be there. Whenever, wherever you want me.”
“That would be terribly selfish of me, wouldn’t it?”
Bucky laughs, “Doll, I really hope you build up the appetite to be selfish with me. Because I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.”
You smile.
“So, where should we go first?”
+ sam: sorry to stardew fans if i butchered it too much :') but hope you still enjoy the story itself!! be sure to give the other fics in the collab so so much love!!!!! <3
Pairing:Racer!Bucky x Ex!Childhood Best Friend!Reader
Summary: James Bucky “Bullet” Barnes hasn’t taken a proper break from his professional racing career in years. Feeling homesick and a little lost in life, he decides to take an extended break and return to his hometown. What he doesn’t expect to learn when he gets back, is that you and his sister Becca are no longer best friends. Not only that, but no one’s heard from you in years. And Bucky fears his biggest regret, a mistake he made in his sophomore year of college, is the cause of that.
WC: 13.3k
Contains: 18+ mdni / fluff / angst / smut / female reader / childhood friends to enemies to …? / ex!best friend’s brother / miscommunication / misunderstandings / reunion & revenge / street racing (I did some research, but I took some liberties for plot purposes) / bucky is clueless and down bad / illegal activities tied to street racing / not everything is as it seems / lots of back and forth between these two idiots in love / backseat car protected p in v / dream sequence that takes bucky down memory lane / fun cameos / buckys pov so the truth of it all isn't revealed until the end
a/n hi barbies! 💗 this fic is for @stantastic-association's barbie collab! thank you to our darling @miraclediviner for putting this gorgeous collab together 💗 And thank you to the prettiest barbie of them all, my bestie @thelomlbuckybarnes who listened to me yap endlessly about this fic until it was ready for everyone to read. 💞 Thank you for reading! ₊˚⊹♡ Likes, comments, and reblogs are much appreciated!! ♡♡♡
bucky's dreamhouse | bucky masterlist | main masterlist
This was it.
Bucky was home.
Nostalgia should be hitting him the hardest right now. The longing pull to be back in his childhood home with his Ma's cooking, his Pa's laughter, stupid arguments he can only get into with his sister that always end with Bucky giving her the reason. Sleeping in until his body feels like waking up, getting to pick what he wants to do in the day instead of sticking to a tight schedule—being able to just exist instead of only living for the sake of his career. He should be looking forward to all of that and more right now.
And he is, to some extent.
Underneath the nostalgia, there's an persistent thrum beneath his ribcage. Poking at a part of his heart that's been deeply tucked away within him for years. It made itself known the moment he decided to take a break from racing and come home. It followed him through press conferences and meetings, to his apartment while he was packing his bags and preparing to head to the airport. The thrumming only got louder, harder to ignore, the second he landed in his home town.
And it has your name written all over it.
"Hey! James! Over here!" Rebecca’s voice can be heard from somewhere in the distance, pulling Bucky from his thoughts. The airport was bustling with activity, people rushing to catch their flights or make it home. Bucky maneuvers through the crowd, his suitcase in tow, scanning faces at the arrivals bay until he finally spots his sister. Only half a year has gone by since he's last seen her, and yet she looks different, more grown up if that's even possible. It makes his chest squeeze slightly with the uncomfortable reality of this being one of many things he misses while he's gone.
"Hey Becs," his greeting comes in the form of a smothering hug, the kind only big brother's know how to give. She whines dramatically about him ruining the sign she made for him, pushing at his chest. He looks down at the piece of poster paper squished between them and chuckles. It's a small cheesy welcome home sign, clearly written in haste as most of the letters are wonky and the glitter thrown at it looks half-assed. He pulls away, grabbing it from her hands and smoothening it out before giving it back, "See, all better." She rolls her eyes, slapping at his arm and grumbling under her breath, "You big buffoon, learn to be more careful." Bucky barks out a laugh in response that only serves to annoy his sister more. Oh, how he's missed this.
He ignores her protests as he slings an arm around her shoulders, pushing them past the crowd of people in the direction of the elevators. "Folks didn't come?" He asks her as they get in and she shakes her head, pressing the button labeled L2, "Ma wanted to stay home and cook you up something nice for tonight. She's driving us all crazy making sure everything's perfect for you." Bucky frowns, and Becca looks at him like she's said too much, "Everything?"
The elevator doors open and they step out. "Yeah, you know how Ma gets about her cooking," Rebecca replies, waving her hand in the air like it's no big deal. He decides it's best not to press the issue, it's just dinner after all.
The conversation changes as they make their way to her car. Rebecca catches his up on her life post graduation. She talks about her new job in the city over, the apartment she's renting with a couple roommates, the coworker she doesn't get along with, how she still visits their parents on the weekends and oh, how can she forget to mention how ridiculously in love her roommates are with his teammate and friend, Steve Rogers.
"You have to get me tickets when you go back. I don't think they'll forgive me if I don't give them a chance to meet him," she mentions, and he hums in response, not fully paying attention as he places his suitcase in the backseat. But it's not like she has anything to worry about, her little sister privileges always win over Bucky in the end.
"Let me drive," he offers, closing the backseat door. Rebecca looks at him like he just asked her something atrocious. "Absolutely not. My car, I drive. Now get in," she orders, not hearing him out at all and getting into the driver's seat. Bucky is too tired to argue, so he heads over to the passenger seat and reluctantly buckles in. But as she's pulling out of the parking lot he realizes, there's something, no, someone she hasn't mentioned at all.
Bucky says your name out loud, pretty as always, but foreign on his tongue as he hasn't heard it anywhere, but in his head for years. Rebecca's body goes rigid, and he doesn't notice at first as he asks, "How's she doing?" He knows he has no right to ask. He knows he has no right to pry into your life or know anything about you now, but he can't help it. He needs to know. Maybe if he knows that insistent thrum beneath his ribcage will finally go away.
Rebecca stares straight ahead at the traffic on the road like it's the most interesting thing she's seen in a long time, exhaling apprehensively, "I don't know."
Well that's shocking.
"You don't know?" Bucky echoes, face pulling in a frown of disbelief. Rebecca's hold on the steering tightens ever so slightly, clearly uncomfortable with the topic of conversation being you. "Yeah, I don't know. We haven't been friends for years. Why would I keep up with her?" At that revelation, Bucky can practically feel the way his eyes bulge out of their sockets, a dreadful feeling creeping in to his system.
"Wait—hold on. You haven't been friends with her for years? When did that happen?" He's trying his best to wrap his head around it all. His brain picking out every memory from the last few years, holidays and birthdays he attended and not once did anyone mention you and his sister no longer being friends. Well, no one mentioned you at all, and your absence was felt, but he thought your absence had to do with what happened between you and him, not what apparently happened between you and Becca.
"Years ago," she replies simply.
"Becca."
"What? You asked, I answered."
Bucky stays silent, staring at his sister expectantly. She glances at him briefly, biting the inside of her lip knowing her brother is too stubborn to not keep pushing for more answers. "We stopped being friends after our first year of college. Things were already rocky when we started, but… I don't know we drifted apart—things happened." Her response was vague, like it took effort to reach into the past and look for a proper explanation.
"Things?" He couldn't help, but keep pushing.
Rebecca sighs, "Yeah, things. New friends, boyfriends, different schedules—look, it was a lot of things, but mainly she changed. A lot."
"What do you mean she changed?"
She rolls her eyes, Bucky evidently having pushed her too much, "God, what's with all the questions? Why do you even care?"
The truth is on the tip of his tongue, but he's too much of a coward to let it out. "I don't know, maybe because the three of us were best friends from the moment you two were put in the same kindergarten class. Because we were basically like family to each other."
"Yeah, well, that's in the past now."
The sadness in her voice tugs at Bucky's heart, watching her slump in her seat. It's obvious she wants the conversation to end, retreating into herself the way that she is. Whatever happened between you still weighs heavy on her heart. Whatever Bucky hoped to learn about you upon his return will have to wait. He thought his sister would be the one to give him answers, but all she managed to do was raise more questions.
Bucky turns to face the window, deciding it's best to not bring you up anymore. Rebecca's shoulders relax at that, reaching over to turn on the radio so the music can fill the tense silence. He closes his eyes, trying to focus on the music, but nothing can stop his thoughts from drifting to things he's been avoiding.
When he first decided to take a longer break than he usually gives himself, it was to give himself a chance to figure out what comes next. Racing professionally had always been his dream, but once he achieved it, he felt lost on the after. His racing career took off when he was young, too young to understand when something takes off so fast and bigger than himself, some people get left behind in the dust.
For years, his racing career was overwhelming in the best way. Making a name for himself, proving he was good enough, was all he strived for. His parents and sister had always been supportive, even when certain family members gave their unwanted opinions on how he'd never make it, certain he'd fail. And even though they only got to see him during the holidays or when he flew them out to one of his competitions, his parents and Rebecca cheered him on every step of the way. Promotions, sponsorships, media events, touring—it took up all his time for over half a decade.
But when he finally has made a name for himself, when he finally has the fame, the recognition, when he always wins… what's the next big thing he has to look forward to?
That question brought him back here, back home. Feeling lost on his purpose and fulfillment in life made him come back to where it all started. But being back here brings him back to you. And back to the biggest regret of his entire life.
Beyond the window of the car, the streets stretch out into something more familiar. They pass his old high school, the local bakery his mother used to send him to get fresh bread every week, the street that leads to his father's office, the corner store where your first boyfriend used to work, a sleazy guy he remembers punching the hell out of in that very corner for breaking your heart. They pass a park that's been here for ages, the rusty almost rundown playground evidence of its lack of maintenance, but all the years of usage. He remembers taking you and Becca there all the time when you were kids. Chasing you two with his friends around the playground, or pushing you on the wings just a little harder every time to hear you laugh harder. Every inch of this town were where his roots were founded on and surely it must have the answers to what he's looking for.
It takes another fifteen minutes before Becca pulls into the driveway of their childhood home, a cozy light blue two story building with his mother's meticulously cared for flower beds with blue and pink hydrangeas proudly displayed in the front. There's more cars on the street than he last remembered, but he guesses the number neighbors must have grown since the last time he's been here. It wouldn't be the only thing that's changed since then.
Bucky steps out of the car, wondering if maybe he has a chance to take a nap before dinner. He vaguely listens to his sister ramble on about their mother's plans for tonight as he opens the backseat door to get his suitcase. Becca is whining about how they'll probably have to play Yahtzee for the millionth time, when he gathers his things and follows behind her.
His sister walks to the side of the house, confusing Bucky until she explains. "Gotta use the side door, the front's stuck again." Right. At least that's another thing that stayed consistent. No matter how many times his father or Bucky put in the effort to fix the door, it somehow always managed to get stuck. And his father was always too stubborn to replace it no matter how many time his mother asked him to. Stubbornness seems to run in the family.
They step into the backyard, and Bucky was halfway through making an amused comment about his father not fixing that damn door when a loud cacophony of the word surprise startles him. When Becca had mentioned the word everything earlier, when it came to what their parents had prepared for him, what she meant was a welcome party. Various family members and friends of the family were all gathered to welcome him home at least forty people. Tables were set up in neat rows decorated with blue race car table covers to match the balloons tied to each ends. Blue pennant banners were strewn from tree to tree, and whatever his parents were cooking at the grill had his stomach growling like he hadn't eaten in weeks.
So much for hoping to take a nap.
Bucky is touched by the effort his family put in to welcome him home. Although, from the moment he stepped into the backyard he isn't left alone. His mother comes over to engulf him in a hug that is larger than life itself. His father gives him a welcoming hug too before insisting he needs to sit down and eat. Bucky lost count on how many cousins, uncles, aunts, family friends, and others came up to him to welcome him home, hugging him, patting him on the back, and passing him around from greeting to greeting. Once he finally gets a moment to sit down his parents pile up enough cheeseburgers on his plate to stuff him full for a whole week.
The celebrations are enough to keep his mind off of other things for awhile. Between savoring some home cooked food, sharing stories and catching up his cousins on his adventures, and being pulled into a game of dodgeball, he barely has time to think of anything else. And yet, every so often, his eyes drift to different sections of the party as if they were searching for something. He could lie to himself about not what, but who he was searching for. Someone he foolishly hoped would be hear despite what he was told.
By the time the sun starts to set in the sky, Bucky can feel his energy deplete to a point where he can no longer hide it. It's an exhaustion that goes beyond having to evade dodgeballs to the face. Things have started to settle and everyone's migrated to their own corner of the yard depending on whether they wanted to keep playing games, relax by the bonfire, or eat leftovers. He spots his mother at the grill heating up leftovers and he makes his way over to her.
"Need some help, Ma?" He asks, grabbing one of the tongs not waiting for her answer. His mother shakes her head, "I got it, hun. You go back to having fun." She tries to get him back to the party, but at that Bucky shakes his head, scrunching his face up with a clear I don't want to look. His mother laughs at his expression and then instructs him to help out with the burger patties. She starts asking him about his travel here and how he's been liking his party, little things and start conversation. Bucky's giving her simple answers when he looks out at the guests one more time, biting on his bottom lip absentmindedly. His mother can tell he's distracted, and more than that. It seems like she knows exactly what's going on in his head.
"She wasn't invited," she starts, causing Bucky to whip his head in her direction, eyes wide like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing as she continues, "It's not like your dad and I didn't want to, but your sister was against it."
"What?" Bucky sounds and looks dumbfounded, and his mother can only respond with a short exhale. She says your name, and Bucky's heart races and breaks all in one. "How did you—?"
"You can't hide things from your mother, James," his mother interjects as if it were obvious. He gaze locks with his mother's for a moment, and there's something close to pity in them. She's right. He was never one to lie to his mother, much less be able to.
A defeated sigh slips past his lips, "Is it stupid I thought she'd be here?" His mother prepares another leftover plate as she responds, "No, not at all," she hands the plate to one of his younger cousins who scurries off with it. "She wouldn't have come if she had been invited anyway."
Bucky clears his throat, suddenly feeling like there's something stuck in it. "Why not?" His mother gives him a look, like she has something to say, but no explanation for it. "I talk to her mom every so often, maybe once a month. She's told me they barely have any contact with her. No one really knows where she is."
"What? And no one's gone looking for her?" Bucky can't believe what he's hearing. His question has no short of worry in it, and he doesn't bother to hide it. The thought of you being out there somewhere and no one knowing—no one even bothering to look—it didn't sit right with him. It settles within him as well as poison would.
His mother's lips draw into a thin line, a somber look in her eyes. "I'm sure they've tried. I know her parents have, but it's not easy when your kids shut you out. Especially when they're in trouble." Bucky's heart sinks, "Trouble? What trouble?" His mother starts preparing another plate, like she needs something to do, "I'm not sure, hun. Her parents don't know and even your sister hasn't been forthcoming with the way things ended between them. All I know is she got mixed in with the wrong crowd and ended up dropping out of college. The last time I saw her was when Becca found out and they had a screaming match over it. I don't think I've ever seen your sister so angry…"
Out of all the thing Bucky could have been preparing himself to hear about you from his mother, none of this would have ever come close. There's something sickly brewing in his stomach and he thinks if he hears another word of your apparent disappearance, he'll spill his dinner all over the grill.
His mother can tell something is off, so she promptly sends him to bed. He wants to protest until he realizes he burned the burger patty he had been reheating and agrees some rest would be for the best. His mother gives him a goodnight hug and he presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head. Everyone at the gathering is still preoccupied with their own things, so Bucky forgoes any farewells and instead slips inside the house without anyone noticing. Every step up the stairs and toward his childhood bedroom feels heavier than the last.
When he enters his room, there's an appreciative smile that appears on his face when he realizes not much has changed in here either. He can tell his mother has changed the sheets and installed one of those little air freshener devices in preparation for his coming home. And besides his suitcase in the corner, which he still has to thank his father for bringing it up for him, everything else is exactly the same. Which isn't saying much since he's always kept his room simple the older he got. A few racing posters on his walls, shelves decorated with knickknacks, a bookcase filled with books he has yet to revisit, there's not much besides that.
He strips out of his clothes lazily just wanting to get into bed already, when his eyes stray to his desk. He knows why they did. He knows what he'll find when he looks. And yet, he walks over to it anyway, feeling the lump in his throat grow when he sees it's been left untouched. Above his desk on the wall there's a bulletin board frozen in time to the last time he ever used it. He has pictures pinned all across it, happy memories from his childhood with you with him in almost all of them. Every birthday card and letter you ever wrote him is pinned on the board too. Anything you ever gave him he saved and treasured down to the smallest thing. Even to the four leaf clover you once found, gently tucking it between tape for safe keeping. Giving it to him as a good luck charm, promising him it would help him win every race he ever dreamed up as long as he kept it close.
He keeps it in his wallet to this day.
Bucky blinks away the tears he can feel forming in the corner of his eyes. He finds himself more than upset now, maybe even bordering on an anxious frustration as he wills himself to look away. He hastily strips out of his clothes and climbs into his bed, hoping that his mind can quiet once he's bundled up in it. But of course that's not the case. All he can think about now is you. Why would you disappear? Why would you leave and tell no one? Why does no one know where you are? Why did you and Becca get into a big fight and stop being friends?
And why does he feel like it's all his fault?
As he drifts off into a restless slumber, there's a final image that haunts him. It's you. Holding back tears as you look at him with the kind of ire he deserved, but never excepted he would ever have caused you.
That image takes him back to where it all ended.
It happened at his parent's lake house, the summer after his sophomore year of college concluded. The summer you and Becca graduated high school, and had to adjust transitioning into adulthood and newfound independence. Your families had thrown a big graduation party for the two of you, but it was a little too family friendly for Bucky's liking. So without telling his parents, a couple weeks later, he threw a massive party at his parent's lake house in celebration of you two.
You had always held a special place in Bucky's heart, there was no denying that. Whether you or Bucky acknowledged it was another thing entirely. Your friendship with Bucky was just as deeply bonded as yours and Rebecca's, but it was different in its own way. Somehow you found yourself being more vulnerable with Bucky about your fears of the future, about school and life. There were times you wanted to appear strong or dependable to Becca when she was going through a rough patch, and yet Bucky was always able to crumble down your walls almost as if those walls didn't exist when it came to him. From patching up a cut on your knee you'd gotten when you were six while playing hopscotch, to holding you close and soothing you when you cried over your first boyfriend breaking your heart—Bucky had always been there for you. The trust between you ran deep, deep in a way that felt rooted in something tied to your souls.
Perhaps that's what always frightened him about acting on his feelings. If he ever told you how he truly felt, that he loved you in ways that went far beyond just friends, and you didn't feel the same or it didn't work out—he'd lose you for good. And the thought of that, he couldn't even imagine it. Not having you in his life. He honestly thought he'd never survive that.
Nothing was supposed to happen that night. He kept his drinks to a minimum, not wanting to get drunk so he could watch over the party guests. He threw it without his parents knowledge or permission, the last thing he needed was to have an accident happen that he couldn't explain away. You hadn't been drinking much, if at all, either. Mingling throughout the party a little lost since Becca had been hanging out with her boyfriend at the time. Bucky shouldn't have gone over to you when you were standing in the corner by yourself, but he did. He shouldn't have invited you to dance, but he wanted to so badly, so he did.
But he should've known things would end in more than a dance. Having you so close, your body pressed against his, touching him, all over him—it drove him crazy. Careful touches at your hips and waist turned into greedy handfuls that couldn't be satisfied despite the lack of distance. It lead to you two kissing for the first time, desperate and inevitable. And that one kiss led to two then three, until the two of you stumbled up the stairs, not being able to keep your hands or lips off of each other as you made your way to Bucky's bedroom. It led to Bucky caging you underneath him on his bed, kissing you senselessly until the heat between you became too much and you slept together for the first time.
The next morning, you were tucked into his side with his arms wrapped around you, holding you tight to his chest like it would hurt him to let you go. You looked so peaceful in your sleep, beautiful as the morning sunlight blanketed your form. Bucky didn't want to get up, but he knew he had to survey whatever potential damage was leftover from the party and possibly kick out anyone who overstayed their welcome. He kissed your forehead, whispering a promise of not taking too long before slipping on a pair of sweatpants. He groaned inwardly as he made his way downstairs, hoping the damage wasn't too bad. But a quick survey of the house settled his worry. Every room was trashed, but at least nothing seemed broken or irreparably stained. When Bucky made his way back to the living room he noticed Sam, his closest friend, stirring awake on the crouch.
"You crashed on the couch?" Bucky eyed his friend weirdly, he hated sleeping on couches. Sam yawned, stretching dramatically, "Yeah, figured you'd need help cleaning up."
"Aw, aren't you sweet."
"Shut up."
Sam threw a pillow at Bucky's head, which he dodged at the last second. Sam sat up on the couch, scratching the back of his head like he was still trying to come to, "Saw you two go up to your room last night. Congrats on finally getting the guts to make a move—thought you'd never do it. I can hear the bells already," Sam teased, humming out the tune for 'here comes the bride' while wiggling his brows at Bucky suggestively. Bucky can't remember why, can't understand why, but he panicked in that moment. The image of you in a wedding dress and saying I do freaked him out so badly because for the first time it dawned on him that's something that he wanted. But you were both still so young, with so much life and experiences to love ahead of you. He knew he was getting ahead of himself. He didn't even know if you liked him like he loved you.
Fuck, he's in love with you.
Bucky tried to play it cool. Tried to ignore the way his heart squeezed uncomfortably with the truth. He shook his head, playing it down, "Nah, it… it was just an itch I had to scratch. Nothing more. Just something I needed to get out of my system…" Sam was not amused by his lies, painfully seeing through them, "Bullshit. You and I both know you're hopelessly in love with that girl." Bucky's mouth opened to deny it, but another hard look from Sam had him crumbling.
"I know I know. And I think I messed everything up." Bucky slumped on the couch next to Sam, a devastated look on his face. Sam definitely was judging him. "You did not mess anything up, Buck."
"No I did. I wanted to do this the right way, ask her out on a date. Treat her right, like she deserves to be. Show her what she means to me—" A couch pillow hit Bucky square in the face, stopping him mid sentence. "Buck, you're spiraling, stop it. You didn't mess anything up. Trust me, just go up there and tell her how you feel."
Bucky rubbed at his face, soothing it from the hit, "But what if she doesn't feel the same?" Sam looked like he was two seconds from throwing another pillow, "I'm starting to think those engine fumes have caused you to go stupid or blind. Buck, that girl is so in love with you."
For a brief moment, Bucky dared to hope that Sam was right. That you do feel the same. That you'd want it to work out between you as much as he does. But then the image of you in a wedding dress flashed across his mind again, and that unrelenting voice in his head made him doubt everything once more. A voice that strangely sounded like his uncles. His father's brothers who constantly let him know how his racing career would never work out. How he'll never make good enough money and he'll just disappoint his parents. How he should just play it safe, smart. Become an accountant like his father and get rid of those silly childhood dreams because his parents didn't give up everything for him just to go "play racer." Scolding him like a child to stop being so ungrateful with his parents and get a proper job so he can take care of them like they took care of him. Voices of people who were supposed to love and encourage him and instead reminded him everyday that he wasn't good enough to ever achieve his dreams.
And if he wasn't good enough for his dreams, then he certainly wasn't good enough for you.
"Even if she is," Bucky swallowed hard, the words feeling bitter on his tongue, "even if we are, she deserves so much more than what I can give her right now."
"Buck."
"No, I mean it. Her life's just starting Sam. She's going to her dream college, finally getting away from this town like she's always wanted to," Bucky shook his head, like admitting his fears cost him something, "I'm pursuing something I don't even know will work out. And if it doesn't… I don't want to drag her into that. I don't want to drag her into my failures."
Sam sighed, feeling for his friend, "You're not going to fail, Buck. And even if you do—loves so much more than the good times. It's being there despite what happens, despite the obstacles." Bucky mulls over his friend's words knowing there's some truth to them. But, unfortunately, the voice in the back of his mind refused to let him go.
"Yeah, but loves also about walking away when the timing isn't right."
"Not when, if. You don't know which one it is yet."
With those last words, Bucky managed to find the courage to go back up those steps and back to you. With his heart on his sleeve, his hopes in the palm of your hands, and his blood pumping a mile a minute. But when he opened the door to his room, you were already making your way out of it. Eyes wide and teary when they narrowed on him.
"Hey, baby, hey," he reached out to cup your face, "What's wrong?" You flinched back from his hold like his hands were made of ice, his heart stopped. "Nothing. I'm fine," you bite out, clearly holding back. He stood his ground, "You know you've never been able to lie to me, come on tell me what's wrong." He pleaded, feeling distressed at your change in attitude.
"Nothing is wrong, just let me through already," you tried pushing past him, but his arm shot out between you and the doorway. "No. Not until we talk. Not until you tells me what's going on." He tried to get you to look at him, but your eyes were on everything but him.
"Bucky—" He cut you off by saying your name in a way that sounded somewhere between utter devotion and utter devastation. You sighed, broken and like you had something caught in your throat. "There's nothing we have to talk about, nothing important anyway."
Now that stung. Bucky would have preferred you slapping him across the face instead.
"What? So did last night mean nothing to you?" Bucky didn't stop the anger that was seeping through his hurt. You looked like you didn't know what to say or did and just didn't want to, "That's not what I said. And it doesn't matter what I think of it anyway. You got what you wanted." Bucky stared at you, scoffing in offense, "I got what I wanted? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You know what I mean," you said with a finality that caused him to panic. You tried evading his arm by ducking below it. But he was faster than you and stopped you from getting past him. He was frustrated by your vagueness and confused on what you tried telling him without really telling him anything. This was a complete switch up from last night and he didn't know how to handle it.
"Look, I don't know where this is coming from, but just listen to me, sweetheart. I know I can't… I know I'm not," He ran his free hand through his hair, frustrated that he couldn't put his vulnerabilities into words, "My career's just starting. There's big opportunities ahead of me and I know I'm not guaranteed success. I'm not thinking of…I don't want to make any mistakes—" That last word, he should've never used that word. Because you didn't even let him finish when something between a cynical laugh and broken sob came out of you. "I get it. I was a mistake."
Bucky was quick in his attempt to shut that accusation down, "No! No! Absolutely not, that is not what I said," you tried to squeeze past him again, but this time he held onto your arm, "Would you please just listen to me?" You pushed at his chest, hard enough to hurt, the ire in your eyes and tone made his blood run cold. "Don't touch me." There was something close to hatred in your voice and that had him stunned, frozen in place. He was so stunned he could only watch you walk away to the guest bedroom. By the time he came to on what happened, he ran to chase after you only to have you slam the door right in his face. And no matter how hard he knocked, how long he waited, how much he pleaded into the wooden oak for you to talk to him, you never responded.
He was heartbroken beyond what you could every imagine. He couldn't understand where everything went wrong and why you were so upset. He wanted to talk to you, but he also knew he needed to give you space to cool down. He figured at some point in the day he'd be able to get you aside for a private conversation and clear things up.
He was wrong.
That small glimpse of you before the door slammed in his face was the last time he saw you for the next six whole years.
Reliving that moment in his dream was so vivid it startles him awake. Chest heaving, and face covered in sweat as the memory of that regretful morning resurfaces. Thinking back to the way you looked at him, to the way you spoke to him—it's enough to rip his heart to pieces all over again.
Even after all these years he still doesn't understand what happened back then, what had you so upset. At first he thought it was over his slip up and using that damn word, mistake. But thinking back on that moment throughout the years, he realized you had been upset before that. Something happened between falling asleep that night and him going up those stairs the next morning to confess to you that had set you off. And to this day he hasn't figured out what it was. The absence of you in his life, the hollow cavity losing you left in his chest—that's all he's really come to understand.
Bucky is surrounded by the darkness of his room, the crescent moon in the sky not providing much light to filter in through the window. His room suddenly feels stuffy, and the ache in his chest seems like it's going nowhere any time soon, so he gets up and decides to take a hot shower. Hoping maybe that can help him relax. He's in and out before he knows it, careful to not make too much noise in the hallway as to not wake his parents or his sister in case she stayed for the night. Thankfully, the bathroom's right across the hall from him, so there's not much noise he can make anyway.
By the time Bucky's back in his room he catches the screen on his phone light up. He reaches for it where it lies on his nightstand, seeing he's gotten a couple recent messages. He frowns when he looks at the time, it's just past midnight. Who could be texting him at this hour?
Mini Falcon: Heard you're back in town! You do not want to miss this.
Mini Falcon: [Attachment: 1 movie]
Bucky has an idea of what he's going to find when he opens the video from his old street racing friend. When he clicks on the video, sure enough it's Joaquin showing off a car meet he's at. There's a crowd of people already forming, showing off their cars and probably figuring out who's going to race tonight. He plays the video a few times, reminiscing on his street racing days, and a little envious at how nice some of the cars have gotten. God, there's no amount of money he wouldn't have bet to get a chance to race against some of those machines.
On one of his rewinds, he spots someone in the background that catches his eye. No, not someone, not just anyone.
It's you.
Bucky's jaw drop comically, pausing the video and hating how pixelated it looks when he zooms in, but even through the blurriness he swears that's you. An older you for sure, but it's still you nonetheless. He's recognize you anywhere. You're laughing with a brunette and a blonde, he thinks maybe they're you're friends.
But what the hell are you doing there? Since when are you involved in the street racing scene?
Bucky's mind is working a mile a minute, but if that is you—which he sure it is—he can't miss this opportunity to see you. Especially not after finding out no one knows where you are. If he's found you, then he's taking the chance to bring you home.
Bucky texts Joaquin back asking for the location of the car meet. He's scrambling to look decent, throwing open his suitcase and putting on the first outfit he finds, a matching pair of black sweatpants and hoodie, topping it off with a jean jacket and cap for good measure.
When he looks at his phone again Joaquin's sent him the location of the car meet, and when he puts it in his phone's maps it shows it's being held at an abandoned industrial complex in the next town, over thirty minutes away. With his skills he knows he can get there in half the time, so he wastes no more in getting ready and heading out the door. Extremely grateful that his father kept up with the maintence of his first car, a modified Honda Civic, and he has something of his own to get him there.
Just as he thought, he's able to get to the meet in half the expected time. He vaguely remembers racing here once or twice, which means he also remembers how it's one of the easier spots to get caught at because of the parameters of the race. He decides to park his car a few blocks away, hidden and tucked into a parking lot, a large patch of overgrown foliage and trees obstructing the view of it to anyone passing by. He makes his way over to the car meet on foot, locating it by the booming music echoing throughout the abandoned walls of the complex.
And yet, despite the music and all the engine revving getting louder as he approaches, he can still hear Joaquin's laugh above all that.
When Joaquin spots Bucky, he excitedly waves him over to where he's resting on the hood of what Bucky assumes is his car. "Bucky, man you made it!" They greet each other with one of those hand clasping, one armed embraces that guys do. "Yeah, after seeing the video you sent I knew I couldn't miss it." Bucky responds, making Joaquin grin, "Told you," he points to the guy next to him, "This is my friend Bob. Bob this is Bucky thee legendary Bullet." The man standing next to Joaquin turns to Bucky impressed, his doe eyes wide in awe as they greet each other. Bucky shakes his head, side eyeing Joaquin as if saying 'he's exaggerating'.
"He used to win all the races back in the day, he set all the records," Joaquin adds.
Bucky was going to say something when Bob beat him to it, "All the records Blitz beat?"
"Blitz?" Bucky inquires, not remembering that name in the roster of racers he knew back when he was racing here. Joaquin nods to the car positioned in the middle of the lineup race, a gorgeous blue Nissan GT-R Bucky's sure has been tuned up like hell. "That's what they call her. She's part of Rumlow's crew."
That catches Bucky's attention, "Rumlow's got a crew now?"
Joaquin hums in confirmation, "A few years back he got into a nasty car wreck. Car went up in flames and fucked up his body. He can't race now, so he got a crew to do that and his dirty work for him."
"Dirty work?"
Joaquin shrugs, "Don't know much about it. I just know he imports illegal parts from overseas to modify his cars, but I stay out of whatever they got going on."Bucky makes a clicking noise with his tongue, feeling sorry for any unlucky bastard that got stuck working for Rumlow.
"His crew hard to beat?" Bucky can't help but ask, reminiscing on all the times he beat Rumlow in a race. If his crews anything like him, then they're probably not that good. Bob is the one who answers his question, "Nope. Blitz is the best racer he's got. When he wants a certified win he has her race." Bucky takes that information in. If at any point he wanted to relive his street racing days, then it seems Blitz is the one to beat.
The three of them chat for another while. Bucky learns that Bob races too—for a team called the Thunderbolts—although he's still pretty new at it, so there's much he has to learn. Bucky offers to teach Bob a few things while he's in town and Bob seems more than eager to learn from him. Joaquin and Bob try to catch Bucky up on all the new faces in the racing scene, but it's too many names at once for him to really take anything in. Once the race starts, Bucky excuses himself from them, pretending like he saw someone he wanted to go catch up with so he could step away.
In reality, he's going back to concentrate on what he really came for. To find you.
He weaves through the crowds of people gathered, being careful not to bump into any of the showcase vehicles. As much as his eyes want to stray to admire them, he keeps his mind focused on you. He pays close attention to every single face he passes, hope blooming and then dying in his chest when he walks past someone that looks like you. When he circles back to where he started he's distraught at the realization that he might've missed you.
He goes back to Joaquin feeling dejected and like he has to start all over again with something he never really started. Bob is no longer standing with Joaquin, and Bucky barely catches the finish of the race. As expected by what he was told, Blitz comes in first with Yelena, one of Bob's teammates he pointed out to Bucky earlier, coming in a close second. He can't remember the names of the other races and quite frankly he doesn't care. They're not why he came here.
Although, even though Bucky only got a glimpse of how the race finished and a bit of the start, he's seen enough to know that whoever is racing for Rumlow is good—really good. Blitz drives like the car she's in is an extension of her body and she knows how to get it to do exactly what she wants it to. She's got the kind of control he's only seen with a handful of drivers. Him being one of them.
He finds it impressive.
Blitz's car door opens, and there's a small part of him that's anticipating putting a face to the name. And when Blitz steps out of the car, he finds himself receiving the shock of a lifetime for the second time that night.
You are the one to step out of the car.
You are Blitz.
That means, you're the one who's part of Rumlow's crew.
Shit.
What the fuck have you gotten yourself into?
Bucky is convinced this has to be a dream, he's rubbing the hell out of his eyes in hopes that it is. But it's not. You're standing by your car with a self-satisfied smile on your face as you're handed the winnings of the race. Yelena steps out of her car and heads toward you with a giant grin, congratulating you on your win. It's clear you two are friends. You look every part of belonging here and he doesn't know what to do with that.
Bucky clears his throat, bumping Joaquin's shoulder, "Hey, is that..?" He can't even finish the sentence, but Joaquin doesn't need him to as he follows the direction Bucky is looking in. "Blitz? Yeah, that's her." Joaquin's confirmation only makes the pit in Bucky's stomach grow. "And you said she's part of Rumlow's crew?"
Joaquin nods, not understanding the weight of what Bucky is asking. "Yeah, I don't know much about what else she does for him, but she's his main racer. Any time he wants a guaranteed win he sends her." Bucky's scared to know, but he has to ask, "And when you mention that Rumlow's got some shady business going on, how shady are we talking?"
"Class B felonies dude," Joaquin says it like it's gossip and not the worst news he could've possibly given Bucky. At his silence, Joaquin gives Bucky a look over. "Are you good? Bro, you look like you're about to spill your guts—literally." Joaquin steps back a bit just in case Bucky does.
"I know her."
"Who?"
"Blitz." He says your real name after. The name he knows you by, the name he knew you by.
"Oh shit." Joaquin doesn't know what to say. Not with Bucky looking like he's seen a ghost. "Look, dude, she's friends with Yelena and Kate, they're good friends of mine and I know they're always looking out for her. I'm sure she's okay. Maybe Rumlow's only got her racing, not in his other shit." Joaquin attempts to comfort Bucky, but it doesn't seem like what he said did at all.
"Yeah, maybe…"
"Are you gonna go talk to her or just stare at her with your mouth open?" Joaquin teases, trying to lighten the mood. Bucky shuts his mouth and glares at Joaquin causing him to laugh. Bucky roles his eyes at him, Joaquin might've grown up, but he's still like that annoying little brother he remembers. He won't tell him, but Bucky is a grateful to have that unchanged connection to his old friend.
Joaquin's words might've not done much to comfort Bucky, but his teasing was enough to give Bucky the push to walk away from him and toward you. Joaquin whistles to cheer Bucky on, throwing some words his way that resemble good luck. Bucky shakes his head, wondering how crazy you're going to think he is for finding you here.
Every step closer Bucky is to you throws his nerves into high gear. You've already gotten your car and yourself away from the concrete race track. Somewhere over by the corner where a cluster of smaller buildings and a smaller group of people were in. He really doesn't know what to expect once he finally reaches you, or what he'll say, but he knows he can't leave without trying.
The moment you spot him approaching time seems to freeze, your eyes widening and your lips parting like you can't believe what your eyes are seeing. But just as fast as the shock hits your face, you mask it with indifference, but the iciness in your gaze is something he feels penetrate down to his bones.
He sees the door slamming in his face again. The look you gave him the last time he saw you, staring at him through the closing door like he had reached into your chest and snatched your heart right out of its cavity. And now? Now, you were glowering at him like you would put a bullet through his head and not bat an eye. Eyes looking at him with such a disdain it makes him feel physically ill.
When he finally reaches you, Bucky can only come up with one word, "Hey." He says lamely, quietly like there's an obstruction in his throat. You blink at him, crossing your arms as your friends at your side give him wary glances.
"You." Is all you say back, the word coming out almost like an accusation. Bucky grimaces, but he knows he deserves that so he tries to stay calm. He doesn't say anything else, but he glances at Yelena and who he guesses is Kate next to you, before his eyes find yours again, feeling a bit awkward at involving anyone else in your conversation.
You sigh, taking the hint, turning to your friends to ask them for a bit of space. The girls don't look happy about it, but they listen to you. Kate doesn't spare him another glance while Yelena makes sure to give him one hard glare, acting like she'd break his arm if you asked her to.
He really hopes you don't.
"Please, don't look at me like that," he finds himself saying, to which you barely react to. There's clearly a wall you've built between you, one he doesn't know how to lower for the first time in his life.
"Like what."
"Like I'm the last person you'd wanna see here."
"Well," you shrug like that's enough of an answer. Bucky takes a tentative step closer to you, making you tense up. Your reaction makes something break inside him. He steps back, feeling too many emotions all at once. A frustration at you running away, fear at you working for Rumlow, disheartened at the way you're acting like he's a stranger—confusion over everything that has and hasn't happened in the last six years. It all accumulates the second he has you this close again.
"What the hell are you even doing here?" He didn't mean for the question to come out as harsh as it did. "Excuse me? What the hell are you doing here?" You throw the question back at him with bit of venom in your tone. He elects to ignore it.
"Looking for you," he replies honestly. And that catches you off guard, he can see it written all over your face. "A friend invited me to come watch the race, sent me a video and everything. I saw you in the background of it and I thought I was seeing things. But I had to come see for myself only to find out that not only are you a racer, but you're racing for fucking Rumlow of all people. What the hell is that about?"
You wave him off, "It's none of your concern." He says your name like you're testing his patience. "It's not," you reiterate, rolling your eyes and leaning on the hood of your car, “It’s not even that big of a deal.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Bucky growls out with something deeper than frustration, debating on whether or not he should just drag your ass back home instead of trying to reason with you. You stare at him like you could bite his head off. "I haven't seen you in years and all of a sudden you want to show up here and act like you're looking out for me? Fuck off, Bucky," you raise your voice at him, your own anger increasing by the minute. Bucky's arms shoot out in exasperation, tired of you twisting his actions and words into something negative, "I am looking out for you! I did all my life and that care doesn't just go away because I left for some time."
"Six years," you correct him, the heaviness of all the time apart settling between you like a wound that hasn't healed. He swallows hard, letting out a shaky breath, "Doesn't matter, sweetheart. I thought about you all the damn time during those years. I cared about you then, and I care about you now."
You don't believe him, scoffing, "I'm sure you do." He doesn't know how to get through to you. Feeling as though his efforts are going nowhere. "I'm serious. I've been thinking about you all damn day since I got here—its been driving me crazy. Especially after Becca told me you two stopped being friends. What happened there?"
"It's none of your business," you're quick to say—too quick.
He says your name again, but this time in a plea, but you're done talking. "I'm serious, Bucky, fuck off. None of this is of your concern, none of this is your business. Leave me alone."
"No."
Before you can even start ripping him a new one, the music is cut off. Someone's voice can be heard yelling, warning everyone to get the hell out as the cops are on their way. Bucky doesn't hesitate, having through this same scenario many times before. You don't even see it coming, how fast he swipes the keys from your hand, rushing over to the driver's side of your car.
"Get in the car," he urges, and you're smart enough not to argue with him over this. He can tell you're biting your tongue as you get in the passenger's side of the car, not at all happy with him being the driver. Bucky turns on the ignition and speeds out of the industrial complex while others still scramble to get into their cars and do the same. He doesn't drive in the same direction as everyone else. Making a swift u-turn in the opposite direction everyone else is going. He ignores your protests directing him on which way to go and drives the car in the direction he left his. You don't know what he's doing until he ends up back in the secluded parking lot, parking right next to his car. There's no doubt you recognize it, having been in it more times than he can count. He shuts off the engine, making everything go quiet. There's only one streetlight working, the light flickering every so often making it even harder to see the cars past the foliage. If anyone were to drive by at this time of night, there's absolutely no chance you'd be seen.
The tension in the car is palpable, thick with everything left there is to say between you. Bucky's holding his breath like even his breathing could set you off at any moment.
"You can get out now," you say after a painfully long silence. "Not until we talk," Bucky sees the way the word spark that anger in you again. "I don't want to talk." Bucky shrugs, leaning back in the seat like he's got at all night to go back and forth, "That's too damn bad, 'cause I'm not leaving until we do." He pockets your keys in the chest pocket of his jacket, not giving you a chance to take them back.
"You're fucking unbelievable," you growl out, getting out of the car and slamming the door closed. You practically stomp your way to the other side, yanking the driver door open. "Get out," you grind out through gritted teeth.
"Don't want to."
"James."
You used his first name, clearly he's pushing you past your limits, and truthfully he doesn't want that. He just wants you to talk to him, that's all he wants. He wants to get to the bottom of whats going on with you in hopes he can help you in some way. So he gets out of the car, slower than you'd like him to, stepping to the side to give you enough room to look inside and notice your keys are missing.
"Barnes, give me my keys."
"Not until we talk."
"Are you serious?
"Deadly."
You let the door shut, before holding out your hand expectantly, ignoring his request. "Bucky give me back the keys, the car isn't mine. I have to take it back to Rumlow." Bucky's worry only grows at your words, "Why are you working for him? How did you get involved with him?"
"It's a long story."
"I got time."
"Well I don't."
You're at a stand still, neither of you willing to budge. But in the interest of moving things along, you're the first to break. "My ex got me into this mess alright? Now I gotta get myself out of it. It's that simple," you explain, but Bucky isn't satisfied with just that. "What mess?"
You take a deep breath before confessing, eyes lowering to the ground, "I dated Rumlow's cousin for about a year. I didn't know they were cousins back then, and I didn't know about the family business. He swiped some money from Rumlow and then disappeared. Since I was the girlfriend, Rumlow made me responsible for paying off the money my ex stole." At the revelation of your predicament, of you being taken advantage of, Bucky has to take a deep breath and reign in his anger before he takes his car over to Rumlow's and finishes off what the car wreck didn't.
"How much?" He's apprehensive to ask, but he needs to know. You shrug, "I don't know the exact amount. I just know it's in the six figures." Bucky's heart drops, blood running cold with dread, "Fuck, sweetheart," a beat passes as his head wraps around the amount of debt Rumlow's put you in, "How much do you have left to pay off?" You shrug again, "I don't know, Rumlow adds interest every time I race with one of his cars or some other bullshit reason. I don't think he's gonna let me go any time soon." His jaw clenches so tight, you'd think he's about to break a tooth.
"Let me go with you, let me talk to him," he says it not like he's asking you, but like he's letting you know in advance you're not doing this alone. You shake your head, refusing, "No, absolutely not."
"He knows me. I used to race against him all the time. Stop being so goddamn stubborn and let me help you." They weren't friends by any means, but there had always been a mutual respect between them.
"I don't want your help. I don't need your help." You deny, but Bucky isn't having any of that. "Yes you do. Look at you. You run away from home, you drop out of college, no one knows where you are, and Rumlow's got you racing and doing his dirty work." You bristle at being reminded of your situation. Like if it were the first time anyone's said it out loud and addressed it head on with you.
"And why do you give a fuck? I'm not your responsibility, Bucky," you spit out, making Bucky feel like he's back to square one with you. But this time, you've ran through the last of his patience. "Fuck, this isn't about that! I give a fuck because I care! I give a fuck because despite all these years you still mean everything to me! Because the thought of anything happening to you would actually kill me." His admission causes you to lock eyes with him and within yours he can see something is cracking, he's getting through to you.
"Shut up, and go," you whisper out the words weakly, but he shakes his head, "No. I'm not leaving you. Not again," he cups your face, brushing away a stray tear from your cheek, "I don't fully understand why you ran, although I can take a pretty good guess its got to do with that piece of shit…," a horrifying thought strikes him, "Is he threatening you?"
You tense in his hold, "Bucky drop it."
"He is, isn't he?"
Your silence is the only confirmation he needs.
A few things finally start connecting for him, "That's why your parents don't know where you are, why you barley contact them. Is he also why you and Becca stopped being friends?" The mention of Becca has you stepping out of grasp, his hands falling reluctantly to his sides, "Becca and I stopped being friends before that. So you don't have to worry about her being mixed up in this mess."
"So why did you? Is it because of us? Because of what happened between us?" He doesn't think he's ready for the answer. But he should know better by now that answers from you don't come easily.
"Nothing happened between us."
"No, don't brush it off like it meant nothing."
"Well I wouldn't be the first to do that."
There you go again being vague and cryptic—and sounding accusatory toward him when he doesn't even know what he did. "Are you saying that because of the whole mistake thing? You don't even know what I was actually going to say. You didn't even let me finish what I wanted to say back then. Not before you stormed out of my room and slammed that door in my face. Before you blocked me on everything and I couldn't even reach out to talk to you."
His grievances don't seem to move you, "Seems like you still haven't gotten the hint." Bucky doesn't know how many more of your dismissals he can take, so he decides to leave it all out in the open once and for all. "No I haven't, and I won't because I was so hopelessly in love with you and you left my room like what happened between us meant nothing to you. You left and took my heart with you. And now that I have it back I have some things I want to say to you."
His confession throws you off balance, stumbling over your own footing as you take a step back. But he's not letting you get away this time, he's saying his peace like it's the last time you two might ever speak. "That night scared the absolute shit out of me. Because it was the first time in my life I felt as alive as I do when I'm behind the wheel. The thought of you feeling the same way I did brought that out in me and I didn't know how to handle it, and that's on me."
"Bucky, please stop."
He doesn't.
"That morning, I was trying to tell you that deep down I knew I wasn't good enough for you. I was still getting my shit together, still trying to prove myself to people who didn't give a damn about me. But on the off chance that you felt the same way, I would've dropped everything for you. I would've pursued something that would've had me better off, something close to home, close to you. I would've done what I could to help you pursue your dreams and—" this time you don't cut him off with words, but with your lips crashing against his, hard and with purpose. Knocking the cap right off his head. He's taken by surprise, but when your lips press harder, insistent on not being ignored, he kiss you back. His hands landing at your waist to keep him grounded to you.
You pull away slightly out of breath, "I just wanted you to shut up," you tease, and Bucky takes in a shaky breath staring down at your lips like he wants another taste, "You wanna shut me up again?" You don't hesitate to take the invitation, kissing him again with a passion bordering on hunger. You're stumbling backwards, pulling him in as he's crashing full force into you, lips parting to let him fully in. You're making out, your back pressed against his car, as you pull sounds out from each other that echo in the night air. He takes a moment to tell you this conversation isn't over, but you quickly shush him with another kiss. The heat between you is growing quickly, and it's no surprise when you find yourselves stumbling into the backseat of his car to take things further.
The door shuts behind you with a soft click, his body hovering over yours. One of his knees slots between your legs, deliberately pressing on your core causing you to whine. You can feel the way you've soaked through your panties and tights already. He helps you take off your leather jacket and matching shorts, and he can't help himself as he tears away at your tights, making you gasp. "Bucky, what the—" He kisses you, mumbling into your lips, "I'll buy you as many new pairs as you want, sweetheart." His answer seems to quell your annoyance for now.
His hand reaches down to rub you through your panties, finding out just how soaked you are for him. He grins wolfishly into the kiss, "Fuck, baby. Didn't know fighting with me would turn you on so much." His tease is met with a slap to his bicep, which only makes him press harder along your slit making you cry out. He kisses your lips one last time, trailing featherlight kisses to cheek and jaw, all the way down to your neck where he nips at the skin. His fingers brush upwards toward your sensitive bundle of nerves to continue his ministrations there.
You only let him have his way for a few more seconds before you're pushing impatiently at his chest. He's already dazed by just a few kisses from you, so when you tell him to sit back he listens without putting up a fight. He sits back in the seat, watching you with something close to devotion as you go to straddle his lap, bracketing his thick thighs with your legs. You strip him of his jean jacket and hoodie, throwing it on the car floor somewhere, raking your nails down his chest with just enough pressure to make him bite down on his lip, looking like he's moments away from coming undone.
You start to grind on him, making a mess of his sweatpants, but he doesn't care, it feels too good to care. His cock twitches beneath you and with the way you smirk at him he knows you felt it. You're making him go crazy, drunk on you, and you're living for every second of it.
One hand snakes it's way beneath your white tee to palm at your breasts, while the other grips your hip to press you down on him harder. A deep groan leaves his chest, and it mingles with your own as you crash your lips to his again, biting down on his bottom lip hard enough to make him whine. Your hips continue their grinding motion, leaving you both breathing heavily enough to start fogging up the windows of the car. One of your hands finds the back of his head and tugs at his hair, pulling his attention long enough to slip your other hands into his sweats, giving him a teasing squeeze that his seems stars with how hard he's holding back from coming undone so embarrassingly soon.
"Oh, fuck," a deep groan rumbles with his chest when you squeeze him again, "Wait, baby, I can't. I don't got a condom on me," he grabs your wrist to stop you, "Just let me make you feel good okay? Let tonight be all about you." He tries to coax you, his hand leaving your wrist to bring the attention back to your cunt when you swat his hand away. He pouts, confused as he watches you pull your white tee off and reach into your bra to grab a condom out it.
His eyes narrow at you, "Why the hell do you have that there?"
You huff, the jealousy in his tone not getting past you, "Don't ask what you don't wanna know, Barnes."
Whether or not he wants to pry into that detail, you don't let him. Making his breath catch in his throat as you tear the condom wrapper with your teeth—an action he found incredibly hot.
He takes himself out of his sweats, squeezing the base of his cock to get himself under control. He's already leaking as you hastily roll the condom down his length. You're getting yourself into position when he stops you. Your gazes meet, a questioning look in your eyes. "You sure about this? We can stop if you're not. It's okay." He assures you, needing you to confirm you really want this. When you realize what he's asking, you smile at him. Taking his lips in a softer kiss, one that conveys how sure you are of this happening. "I'm sure, Bucky. I want this."
That's all Bucky needed to hear.
He rubs your folds through your panties a few more times before his fingers hook into the fabric of your panties and push them to the side. He helps guide himself inside you as you lower yourself down on him, inch by inch. "Baby, you're squeezing the hell outta me—fuck," he curses under his breath, urging you to take it slow. He hasn't told you, but it's been a long time since it's been anything other than his hand and him. And he feels every bit of that longing as your walls squeeze him tighter the more of him you take.
"Sweetheart, you gotta give me a minute. I can't. I don't want this to end so soon," he's pleading with you, breathing heavily as the need to thrust up into you gets harder to restrain. You cup his face, making sure he's staring right into your eyes as you lower yourself completely. His breath his hot against your mouth as he gasps, the sound turn into a moan the second you start riding him. Not giving him any time to adjust as if this were your way of getting payback for the way he pushed your buttons all night.
"Fuck, you feel so good," he grits out, guiding your hips with his hands to move you in ways that have you both moaning out for each other. Your arms wrap around his shoulders, pulling him in for a makeout that's all tongue and teeth—messy and passionate all in one. Breathing each other in like the only source of air you need can be found within each other. And that's when Bucky feels it again, his heart soaring with how right this feels, just like the first time you slept together.
"I missed you, I—" he mumbles into your lips, but when you pick up your pace, he forgets what he was going to say. You've got him pussy drunk and wrapped around your finger—right where he wants to be.
He can tell he won't last much longer at this pace, and he needs you to come before he does. His hand goes to where you're connected, pressing circles onto your clit in the way he knows you like, making you mewl. "That's it baby, you're doing so good for me, pretty girl." His other hand grips you tighter, keeping you steady as he starts fucking up into you, meeting your hips. You whine at how deep he's going, one of your hands shooting out to the fogged up glass like that'll help anchor you. He can feel how close you are, so he doubles down, fucking up into you harder and increasing the pressure on your clit. "Come on, baby, give it to me. Let go, sweetheart, I got you," he whispers affectionately and wrecked, bringing you in for another kiss that undoes you. You come hard, crying out his name, and he follows suit, coming harder than he has in years. You got him seeing stars with the way your cunt squeezes him for all he's got.
You're both panting in the aftermath, his head resting against the backseat as he tries to catch his breath. Your head drops onto his shoulder, his hand gently rubbing at your back to help you with the aftershocks of your coupling. He kisses your temple reverently, whispering soft praises and sweet nothings as you both come down from your highs. For a few minutes, the car is quiet with a tranquility Bucky wasn't sure you two would ever get to again.
Your head rises from his shoulder, moments later, a dopey smile on your face. He laughs fondly, his hand rising to stroke your cheek affectionately, "You're so beautiful." He doesn't know if it's what he says or the way he said it, but your smile no longer reaches your eyes. It makes his heart squeeze in his chest uncomfortably.
"Everything okay?" He's looking you over to make sure you're okay, fearing he might've been a little rough with you. You clear your throat, wincing, "Yeah, it's just—I'm feeling a bit sure already." His eyes widen at that and he apologizes right away, helping you gently off of him as you both wince, sensitive at the disconnection.
You start redressing yourself, confusing him, but he didn't question you. He had hoped you two could stay together a little longer in the backseat, talk a few things out and just enjoy this pocket of happiness you had granted each other. But whatever spell you two were under seemed to be broken. And faster than Bucky could process it, you were already dressed and getting out of his car. He scrambled to clean himself up with what he had at his disposal, tucking himself back in his sweats and hastily slipping on his hoodie just as he heard the engine to your car turn on.
He gets out of his car, rushing over to you and knocking on the window for you to lower it. You do, staring at him in a way that he can't read, but it makes him uneasy nonetheless.
"You're leaving already?" Bucky can't hide the disappointment in his tone. You sigh, picking at a nonexistent thread on your jacket to keep your eyes somewhere that isn't on him. "I told you I have to return the car to Rumlow, it's not mine. He's got trackers on all his cars, so I have to return it before he comes looking for it."
"I can go with—"
"No, you'd only make things worse for me, okay? It's best if you just stay out of this."
He can't accept that, leaving you to deal with this on your own. Especially after being the only one who knows exactly how much trouble you're in. "I dont know how to help you, but I want to. Maybe I can't help, but maybe I can find someone who can."
"No, Bucky, just drop it," your tone made it clear you weren't budging from this. And maybe he couldn't make you budge on this now, but later, later he could fully convince you to let him help. "Fine, I will—for now. But, there's still some stuff I want to talk about," you give him a look and he's quick to dispel your apprehension, "Not now, I know you have to go. But later I'd like to have a proper talk. About us."
Something about you changes in this moment. Bucky can almost see it in the way you straighten up in the driver's seat, in the way your eyes glaze over with something deeply broken crawling it's way to the surface. Something meant to hurt him just as badly as he once hurt you.
"Us? Bucky, there is no us. Tonight… you were just an itch I had to scratch. Something I had to get out of my system, so thanks for that," your voice doesn't sound like your own when you say that. It sounds distant and cold, like you're trying your best to keep yourself together. However, the way in which you said certain things rings alarms bells inside his head. He's barley able to stutter out a reply when you pull back and drive off, leaving him in the dust of the engine fumes.
Those words. He's heard them before, but not from you, no, from his own mouth. He's replayed those words time and time again in his mind for the last six years. The things he once said to Sam way back then when he stupidly was trying to deny how he felt about you. You used those exact words against him tonight. It dawns on him, horrifically, that you heard him say that back then. Your anger and frustration—the heartbreak of that morning. It came from you thinking you weren't anything, but a one night stand for him.
And now youd done the same thing to him, as if trying to make things even. Maybe you had.
Bucky slumps against his car, sliding down it until he hits the floor. Pieces of a puzzle he could never solve slowly start clicking together until he gets a better picture of what happened. He had messed everything up like he feared he would. And it wasn't something he had done, it was something he had said. He wanted to kick himself for ever saying those things. If you were still angry at him all these years later, then you must have not heard the rest of the conversation. You only heard the part that broke your heart and made you hate him all this time.
Was there ever a possibility you would forgive him?
Could you forgive him?
Bucky doesn't know the answers to those questions, but what he does know is that he won't find out unless he tries to earn it.
a/n Well my darling barbies, you now have a choice to make. If you decide to not forgive Bucky, then your story ends here. If you decide to give him a second chance, then you're in luck! A part two is already in the works. Once again, comments and reblogs are so appreciated! ♡♡♡
bucky's dreamhouse | bucky masterlist | main masterlist | purple divider by @/cursed-carmine ݁⋆⭒˚.⋆
Your infatuation with one firefighter brings you to the station every day. That is, until you hear him call you a handful.
▸ PAIRING & WC: Firefighter!Bucky Barnes x F!Reader — 3K
▸ WARNINGS: Hurt/comfort, fluff, miscommunication!!!
▸ A/N: i was reading dear @heldbybarnes' delicious firefighter bucky and got hit with inspo to write this in an hour at 2am. just my good ol friends miscommunication and yearning! hope you enjoy, any comments, reblogs, and likes are appreciated <3
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You meet Bucky by accident. Setting off the fire alarm in your building when you’re reverse searing a steak that billows smoke like it’s nobody’s business until it touches your finicky little thing. The alarm blares loud, waking up the entire building judging by the way your neighbors are complaining through your walls — even the ones above you.
You’re wincing in apology as you open up your windows and your door, standing on one of your rickety dining chairs and attempting to shut the damn thing up.
That’s when he comes in.
Sharp lines, blue eyes that could cut you like a diamond. Shoulders that could probably body you to the ground — and you’d thank him for it. “Are you alright, ma’am?” Oh, and that goes straight between your legs.
You’ve never really been in love before. You’ve never even really dated. Your college life was spent with tearstains on your textbooks and essay papers until each piece of work contained a fat, red ‘A’ and added up to your perfect GPA. Countless hours networking with people to wriggle yourself into your dream job and now those hours are wasted behind a desk with a career that gives you carpal tunnel.
Point is — when you set your mind on something, you obsess over it until you achieve it.
Your current target? One Sergeant Bucky Barnes from FDNY Engine 205.
From the moment he stepped in and delivered that question, to the second he looked into your eyes and grinned, those sapphire eyes twinkling as he said — “That dinner looks delicious, what I’d kill for a homecooked meal,” you knew you were done for.
Ask and you shall receive.
Now, on your work breaks, you find yourself stopping by with a platter of something new you’ve whipped up. Whether it’s a hearty protein-topped salad or a smoked barbecue selection or an array of sweet treats, you bring it as an offering to the local station.
Every. Single. Day.
The first day, one guy looks at you reluctantly at your foil-covered container and you had to stand there in shame as he told you that they couldn’t accept it due to health and safety concerns.
Your cheeks were hot as you held the tray closer to your chest, ready to hightail out of there before you can embarrass yourself further, when that familiar voice came.
“Steak alarm.”
Your gaze lifted to find Bucky standing there. He’s wiping his hands on a dirty dishrag, tight shirt clinging onto his body with the sweat and… general fit of the fabric, as he made his way towards you.
He lifted the foil and his gaze widened. It felt like you were taking a nosedive straight off a cliff into the Pacific — and you enjoyed every second of it.
“Now that’s a meal.”
Then he was summoning the rest of the station to take a gander at what you’ve prepared and suddenly they’re all picking away at it and thanking you for the first proper meal they’ve had in days.
And when Bucky once again flashed you that charming smile, one that would probably set off all the alarms in this station, it was over for you.
You should be embarrassed with being so obvious — some of the other firefighters have caught on to your teensy crush. Natasha, who’s probably the most badass person you’ve ever met, shoots you lopsided smiles every time you stare at Bucky. Sam and Steve are a little less subtle as they make comments like “your wife’s here, Barnes!” and you have to flail and panic until Bucky damns them with warning glares.
It’s not as if you talk to him. They’re much too busy for that. One of those days, you walk in and they’re actually gearing up to leave. Bucky had apologized profusely before he hopped in the truck and was on his way.
Instead, you yearn silently. You tell yourself it’s enough that you can see Bucky smile every day, that you can watch him devour whatever new thing you’ve made.
But the more you see him, the greedier you get.
When he does have time, he talks you through the mechanics of his job or describes the truck in great detail — until Sam yells at him, “Nobody wants to hear about your damn truck, Buck!” Then he’s flushing and saying sorry for boring you. You tell him in honesty that he could never bore you.
Suddenly, your days seem a little brighter. Instead of the humdrum life you’ve crafted for yourself, your pulse skips every time you think of something new to make for the station. You think of them as new friends. All of them know you by name and welcome you in with no hesitation.
It feels as if you’re making strides in getting to know Bucky, in getting him to actually like you. Not necessarily in a romantic way, just as two people becoming friends.
However, as you’re approaching the station late one day (your oven was being difficult), you find that the team is already on the upper level of the base having lunch. You reach for the stairway when you hear it.
“Come on, Buck, you know she’s got a crush on you,” Sam teases. The others titter in agreement.
Heat floods your cheeks.
“Quit it, Wilson,” Bucky growls.
“What? She too much for you?” Sam presses with a chuckle.
“She’s a handful, that’s for sure,” you hear Bucky mutter.
You hear your heart hit the ground. Laughter ripples through the space but there’s a ringing in your ears and your feet are moving before you can think twice.
Handful. A handful.
All this time, you thought you were doing something nice, but you didn’t realize you were actually bothering them. The street before you blurs as tears prick your eyes. Your breaths come out shallow as you trudge all the way home, the baked goods in your hands suddenly feeling like deadweight.
It’s only when you’re in the safety of your apartment that you allow yourself to breathe. At least as much as you can. You end up clearing out that tray on your own that evening with a depressing movie on screen.
From that point, you can’t imagine coming in to face them. You can’t bear the thought of pitying looks from the team or how Bucky is probably forced to smile to welcome you. Public servants and all. The last thing you want to do is inconvenience them when they’ve got a lot on their plates.
So you stop coming. You instead bury yourself in work, taking on more responsibility to keep your mind distracted — far away from the thought of being a handful. There are some nights when that melancholy morphs into irritation, how you wish you could spite him for not telling you the truth sooner. And then you realize that it’s not on him; you chose to do this. He was simply being kind.
You had mistaken that kindness for something more.
It’s been a few days since you last came and none of them have said a thing. It’s not as if you ever traded phone numbers. At least this will be a clean slate. You can forget this fluke ever happened.
You’re trying a new chicken recipe, frowning at your box of butter, when a knock sounds on your door. Your instinct is to sniff the air, wondering if the scent has permeated through the halls and your neighbor Mr. Tilman is here to complain again.
Wiping your hands on your kitchen towel, you swing the door open to find… not Mr. Tilman.
Instead, Bucky stands at your door.
He’s still in his fire station t-shirt.
He still looks delicious.
Those eyes that you’ve grown to adore light up when they see you. He smiles softly, “Hey.”
Your throat is dry. “Uh, hi.”
He looks you up and down and you realize now your disheveled state. Hair a mess, your oversized shirt is ratty and ends at your thighs. You reach up instinctively to try and fix yourself.
“You open your door to everyone like that?” His gaze flicks to your bare legs before going back up, cheeks a little pinker.
“Um, I thought you were Mr. Tilman. He doesn’t like it when I use too many spices.”
“You open your door to Mr. Tilman like that?” Bucky cocks an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth quirked up in amusement.
You fight back a smile and shake your head. “No, not usually. I was still distracted with my cooking when you knocked. Can I help you with something?”
Bucky shifts a little nervously then and you finally notice the crinkling plastic bag in his hands. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I thought you were sick so I brought over some chicken soup. I can’t cook for the life of me so I bought it. I can promise it’s safe.”
Dammit. How are you supposed to get over this man when he does things like this?
“Oh, thank you,” you swallow thickly.
“You don’t look sick though.”
“I’m… not,” you say slowly, unsure of how to approach this situation.
Your feet shuffle closer together as you look down at them instead of him. “Yeah, it’s been busy.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
You look up and laugh awkwardly. The lie goes straight past your teeth. “No, no. Just work.”
Bucky’s eyes narrow, lips tightening. He knows. You should’ve spent the past few days learning how to fib instead of moping. “Is something wrong?”
“What? No. Why would something be wrong?”
Real smooth.
Saved by the bell, your fire alarm begins beeping aggressively. You’ve forgotten your chicken. A curse slips past your lips as you hurry back in but Bucky beats you to it. He’s switching off your stove, telling you not to touch the pan, and reaching over to toggle with the alarm.
And now the two of you are in your kitchen, standing side by side watching as the oil pops in your pan and your chicken is completely burnt to a crisp.
“Well, guess that recipe didn’t work,” you joke to break the tension.
Bucky is silent for a moment before he asks quietly, “Did I do something?”
“What?” You whip up to face him.
“Is work really the reason why you haven’t been coming around?”
Your heart slams against your ribs. “Yeah,” you choke out a laugh again, “of course.”
The smile he gives you is almost sorrowful. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Flinching, you shift your gaze away this time.
“If I did something, I want to apologize. I’d appreciate it if you told me so I can properly say sorry and so I don’t do it again.”
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” you shake your head, “believe me. It’s fine.”
“Then why?”
Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, teeth sinking into your bottom one. Bucky’s gaze falls briefly again to your mouth before it returns to you. “I just don’t want to be a bother.”
His eyes flicker in surprise. “Why would you be a bother?”
“You guys are obviously busy and I don’t want to intrude—”
“You don’t— you could never intrude,” Bucky interjects softly, “what would give you that idea?”
You clear your throat and shrug.
“I lo—” he stops, flushing lightly, “We love having you there. All of us. We look forward to your visits, you know. Sam won’t shut up about everything you make. We might’ve taken you for granted and I am sorry for that, but I want you to know that you could never be a bother.”
“Thank you,” you murmur softly. “I’ll, um, come by tomorrow maybe.”
“And you don’t have to bring anything all the time. You must be busy with work too. Could just swing by to chat with us. Steve also hosts weekly game nights with Nat and you’re more than welcome to join us.”
Now it’s your turn to be flustered as you wave him off. “No, no, that’s for your team.”
“People bring their plus ones too, it’s very casual.”
“Yeah, but I’m not really anyone’s plus one,” you laugh lightly.
Bucky digs his fingers into his pockets and you see that his neck and ears are stained red. His gaze shifts around the room before they fly back to you. Honest blue eyes. “You could be mine.”
Your heart skips.
“I mean, you don’t have to— I just, you know, it would be nice. Of course, you don’t have to be my plus one. You could be someone else’s — scratch that, you could be the team’s overall plus one, but I think it would be nice if you were mine…” Bucky trails off and his usually tanned skin flushes a deeper and deeper shade of scarlet.
You’re not sure how to respond to this. Just days ago, you heard him call you a handful. You thought you were too much. You don’t know what to make of this.
Is he just being kind? Maybe he feels bad that you’ve spent weeks coming around and now he wants to repay the favor.
“You know you don’t have to feel bad and invite me,” you gently say.
“I don’t—” he looks taken aback, “I’m not inviting you because I feel bad. I’m, shit, I’m inviting you because I want you there.”
“Why?”
Bucky rubs his face aggressively, groaning silently to himself. “I feel like I’m going about this the wrong way. I… really like you.” Your heart stutters again, your breath hitching in your throat. “I wanted to ask you out properly, but I wasn’t sure if that would cross any professional boundaries, given how we met. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. If I’ve misinterpreted anything you’ve done, please let me know. I just— you were coming around and the team was saying that you came around to see me — and I guess I got my hopes up.”
You’re silent, and your nonresponse makes him squirm.
Why would he— this doesn’t make any sense. You heard him loud and clear at the station, right?
“But I thought you thought I was a handful,” you whisper.
“What?” He blanches, “What would make you think that?”
“I heard you,” you admit shamefully, “last time I came around the station. I thought— I figured I was being a nuisance so I didn’t want to overstep anymore.”
The gears are turning in his mind as he seemingly retraces his steps. You see the moment he remembers. His face pales. “Oh, fuck, oh god. No, shit. No, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay! Look, it’s totally fine. I get it. I can be intense and I don’t want to put that pressure on you.”
Bucky takes a deep breath, his eyes are kind and stern at the same time as he delivers his explanation. “I only said you’re a handful because you do so much and I don’t know if I could ever do enough to return the favor. I’ve been thinking about asking you out and I haven’t really… dated in a while — or ever for that matter — and I wanted to do it right. I wanted to do right by you. Fuck, I didn’t mean handful in that way, I swear.”
“Oh.”
“God, I’m an idiot,” Bucky moans, “I’m so sorry. Shit, you must’ve thought— I’m sorry. I never want you to think you’re a bother. You’re not. You’re the best part of my day. Every day, I look forward to coming into work knowing I was going to see you in the afternoon. I prayed so that we wouldn’t get called out during those hours.”
Your lips part.
He takes a deep breath, “That first day you didn’t come, I was worried that something happened, but the others thought I would be too much if I stopped by. Not to mention, incredibly inappropriate since I know your address from that first time. But shit, I missed you that day. I didn’t realize how much I loved seeing you every day until that first day. Then you stopped coming and I couldn’t stop worrying so Nat finally unofficially greenlit me to check on you and I came straight here. But then I thought that you were sick so I stopped by to get soup and— now I’m rambling. You didn’t ask for all that. I just need you to know that you could never be a bother to me. Never. Even if you were a handful, I can’t imagine anyone else taking care of you— I don’t want to imagine that.”
“Bucky—”
“And that makes me really selfish right? But I want to be the first person you call if anything happens. If something good or bad happens, I want you to tell me first. Because I like you so, so much. I should’ve made that clear earlier. But, again, if all this makes you uncomfortable, then tell me. I’ll leave. No hard feelings.”
“Bucky!”
“Yes,” he shuts up.
“I—” you realize now that you should’ve prepared what to say, but how are you expected to respond to that? “Thank you, um, for clarifying. I don’t even know what to say. I can confirm that I was coming around mainly to see you,” you say, embarrassment written all over your face at your confession, “you’re the best part of my day too. I should’ve just talked to you instead of jumping to conclusions.”
His face is marred by a wince as he offers you an apologetic look. “No, I understand why you did. I should’ve phrased it better.”
“Well, at least that’s cleared up,” you smile, “but I do… like you too, that is. Professional code be damned, I would’ve said yes if you asked me on a date.”
The smile he gives you is blinding and you vow then and there that you would spend the rest of your life making sure he keeps that expression on his face.
“Well, since your dinner is… unsalvagable,” Bucky begins, glancing briefly at the mess on your stove, “how about I take you out for dinner? As a date.”
My god, this was an amazing read. I love firefighter!Bucky so much and this just scratched something in my brain perfectly. This is exactly what I've been missing 🙌💖
From the moment he stepped in and delivered that question, to the second he looked into your eyes and grinned, those sapphire eyes twinkling as he said — “That dinner looks delicious, what I’d kill for a homecooked meal,” you knew you were done for.
How did I fall for him so fast, omg 😭
“Now that’s a meal.”
Honestly, I'm such a bad cook, but I would spend my whole life learning it just to hear that come out of his mouth
You should be embarrassed with being so obvious — some of the other firefighters have caught on to your teensy crush. Natasha, who’s probably the most badass person you’ve ever met, shoots you lopsided smiles every time you stare at Bucky. Sam and Steve are a little less subtle as they make comments like “your wife’s here, Barnes!” and you have to flail and panic until Bucky damns them with warning glares.
I love them all, they make it so cozy. Natasha probably was the first to catch up 👀
When he does have time, he talks you through the mechanics of his job or describes the truck in great detail — until Sam yells at him, “Nobody wants to hear about your damn truck, Buck!” Then he’s flushing and saying sorry for boring you. You tell him in honesty that he could never bore you.
No 'cause he is so damn adorable oh my gooosh! I need him so bad. You can talk to me about your truck all damn day, babe.
“She’s a handful, that’s for sure,” you hear Bucky mutter.
I was so hurt when I read this, damn. I would feel absolutely embarrassed 🥺
“You open your door to Mr. Tilman like that?” Bucky cocks an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth quirked up in amusement.
Oh wouldn’t he like to know 🤭
Bucky’s eyes narrow, lips tightening. He knows. You should’ve spent the past few days learning how to fib instead of moping. “Is something wrong?”
I love that he caught up to something being wrong and he felt the need to ask.
Bucky digs his fingers into his pockets and you see that his neck and ears are stained red. His gaze shifts around the room before they fly back to you. Honest blue eyes. “You could be mine.”
AHHH I'm screaming, he is so soft and sweet and this made my stomach flutter 💕💕
“I mean, you don’t have to— I just, you know, it would be nice. Of course, you don’t have to be my plus one. You could be someone else’s — scratch that, you could be the team’s overall plus one, but I think it would be nice if you were mine…” Bucky trails off and his usually tanned skin flushes a deeper and deeper shade of scarlet.
I know I'm repeating myself, but I love that he is so adorable 😫 He's the man, wrap it up.
“You know you don’t have to feel bad and invite me,” you gently say.
I like that she’s still so unsure and hurt even after what he already said. It fits so well and makes it so real. This would definitely be me
Bucky rubs his face aggressively, groaning silently to himself. “I feel like I’m going about this the wrong way. I… really like you.” Your heart stutters again, your breath hitching in your throat. “I wanted to ask you out properly, but I wasn’t sure if that would cross any professional boundaries, given how we met. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. If I’ve misinterpreted anything you’ve done, please let me know. I just— you were coming around and the team was saying that you came around to see me — and I guess I got my hopes up.”
I loved this part so much! The way he talks is perfectly matching to his character. You genuinely wrote him SO well!
“God, I’m an idiot,” Bucky moans, “I’m so sorry. Shit, you must’ve thought— I’m sorry. I never want you to think you’re a bother. You’re not. You’re the best part of my day. Every day, I look forward to coming into work knowing I was going to see you in the afternoon. I prayed so that we wouldn’t get called out during those hours.”
Omg I LOVED his rambling!! The way he just kind of spills everthing and you can tell he's been holding it in and overthinking it. I could feel my heart squeezing the whole time. Like he kept going and digging himself deeper but in the most endearing way!! And him saying "You're the best part of my day" 😭 Sir, do you know what you’re doing to me???
The smile he gives you is blinding and you vow then and there that you would spend the rest of your life making sure he keeps that expression on his face.
They are just so perfect for each other, I am melting!!
Truly, this was such a highlight for me. I actually really like the miscommunication trope, despite not having written anything for it myself yet. But this whole thing felt so warm and a little domestic but still has that tension and yearning underneath it. Everything about this felt so genuine, and I will definitely come back to this 💖
You knew Bucky was up to something the moment you heard the forties music echoing through the cabin. You just finished having a nice warm shower after spending a couple hours in the hot tub with Bucky. You changed into your comfiest sleepwear, wanting to cuddle for a bit by the fireplace before heading to bed. That was until you entered the main living space, the soft lights of the cabin along with the music setting a cozy mood. You only took a few steps in before Bucky seemingly appeared out of nowhere and took your hand, led you over by the fireplace where the music was the strongest, and pulled you into his chest to softly sway you to the music. A laugh escapes you at the sudden motion, causing Bucky to smile at you affectionately.
He hums along to the song as you dance, staring at you like you're the only thing in this world that matters to him—the adoration in his eyes taking your breath away. You're basking in it when he gently pulls you away just enough to twirl you a few times. When he pulls you back in the look in his eyes is more intense, and he leaves you speechless when he whispers a question rooted in devotion.
"Marry me?"
He says it so soft and genuine, and with the slightest hint of trepidation as if a part deep down inside him believed you could say no. Not because you would, but because there are days he still can't believe you gave him a chance and fell in love with every part of him. The good, the bad, the ugly, and even the parts he hates. You love all of him just like he loves every bit of you, and nothing would make him happier or more complete than spending the rest of his life with you.
You tear up, doing your best to hold back your happy tears just long enough to breathlessly respond with an over joyous yes. Bucky immediately pulls you in closer to kiss you deeply, the kind of kiss you feel all the way to your soul. The kiss initiating a new chapter of your lives together.
This would definitely end up as the highlight of your trip.
My darling Mon, you keep sending in the loveliest moodboard requests! 🥹💕 This one was so sweet to write 🥹 I hope you liked it!! Thank you so much for sending this in for my sleepover @thelomlbuckybarnes!! ♡♡♡
✦Bucky Masterlist - Main Masterlist - Read on aO3!✦
✦summary: bucky isn't your boss, but he's still off limits. and even if he wasn't, there's no way he'd ever go for someone like you. weird that he matched with you on a dating app then, isn't it?✦
✦warnings/tags: bucky barnes x female!reader, modern!au, ceo!bucky, no use of y/n, mutual pining, virgin!reader, dating apps, no description of reader (pictures for aesthetic only), fluff, angst, love confessions, kinda boss x secretary, plot to earn porn, feral level smut, (fingering, teasing, stripping, soft dom!bucky, dirty talk, mean bucky but you're into it, teasing, possiveness, mutual masturbation, pussy spanking, praise kink, manhandling, dumbification, big dick bucky, p in v sex, creampie), soft!bucky outside of smut✦
✦wc: 13.9k✦
✦Author's Note: this one is for all my wound up "want love but afraid of intimacy girlies". we go through it. Enjoy!✦
Bucky Barnes is ruining your life, and he doesn’t even know it.
You wish you could blame him. Slash his tires and scream in his face, maybe drain the oil from his bike or mess up his lunch order. But he wouldn’t deserve that, and you’d just end up homeless on the street. You’d have to sell your body, but you’ve never been that good at sales, and begging Steve for your job back wouldn’t get you anywhere when you’d just given his best friend food poisoning.
And Bucky wouldn’t deserve that. He’s perfect. He’s a mountain you’d love to scale, if you hadn’t always been horrid at climbing. You’d dig your nails into his chest, and maybe just keep him at eye level forever. So you could watch that quiet joy that only shines for the people he really, truly likes.
You’re a member of that rare club. It’s taken years of small kindness’ and lingering in Steve’s shadow to get there.
Even if you wanted to, you’d never risk ruining that just because of some schoolgirl crush. Not when Bucky might make your heart stumble and your face heat, but he hasn’t taken away your wits.
The same wits that tell you, it’s not worth the risk.
It will never be worth the risk. You worked too hard to get where you are. It’s too good a job, to burn up because you have a few fantasies. Steve Rogers famously went through assistant after assistant, before you. When you’d asked Natasha why—Steve’s a perfect boss, he lets you take hour long lunches and use sick time as PTO, as long as you don’t tell HR—she’d just shrugged.
“It’s not Steve that’s making them quit.” She’d hummed, like you were supposed to know exactly what that meant.
You hadn’t. You still don’t. Best guess, he thinks that everyone can keep up with him and forgets to slow down and match pace. But you can keep up with him just fine. Without breaking a sweat. Sometimes you out-pace him, and that earns you a loud, approving laugh and small smirk from Bucky.
Bucky.
James. You’re trying to call him James, in your head. It’s more formal. Creates a larger gap, between private fantasy and reality.
In fantasy, Bucky is a hazy voice that creeps into your dreams and rough stubble that brushes over your cheek. You tangle the sheets and blankets between your legs in bed, and pretend he’s there, holding you tight. Dreams and scenarios play out before you go to sleep, where he backs you against a wall and declares that he’s loved you since he first saw you. Or he shows up at your door in the middle of the night, pleading because he can’t take being away from you anymore. Maybe all his stares at conferences and meetings finally amount to something, and he grabs your jaw and kisses you so brutally you both just fall onto that soft couch in his office.
But Bucky doesn’t just stare at you. It’s one of his weird little quirks that Steve calls just Bucky, and Sam calls creepy and weird, he’s lucky we love him.
You do love him.
Bucky’s perfect. When you’d met him, he’d seemed as if he’d fallen out of a silver screen or leather-bound book. You’d never understood fantasies about powerful men, until one with the brilliance of fifty suns had been adjusting his cuffs in front of you. You’d barely been able to breathe, and it’s only gotten harder since you’ve known him.
At first look, Bucky’s a sharp jawline, dark hair, and eyes that follow you into your sleep. He’s cold and standoffish in that annoying way that makes the fool in your heart babble about how you could melt him. He snaps and orders and doesn’t waste time on things that don’t matter, and you’d like to hear how his voice could go soft, if you could make it.
That fool in your heart is loud. It tends to get the better of you, until the object of it’s fleeting obsession shatters the illusion by itself. Most of your crushes take a sledgehammer and destroy the heroic visage you’ve made of them in a second. You just have to wait for it, and they save you from themselves.
But Bucky likes to ruin your life.
It’s been a year, since Steve hired you. Fresh out of college, nervous, and with what Natasha called doe-eyes.
You love Bucky more than you did at the start, and it’s incredibly rude that he won’t just cut it out so you can focus.
“How’s your mother?” You ask one night, when it’s just you and Bucky.
James. When you’re alone in a room with him, and the white sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to show off obnoxious muscles, it’s important to remember you should be calling him James.
“My… Mother.”
He’s staring at you like you’re crazy. Heat floods your cheeks, but you just nod. He doesn’t get to win.
“You said she was moving.” You shrug, and Bucky’s tongue flicks over his lips.
“I did say that.”
“Yeah. I know.” You pretend to turn over a paper. “I was there.”
Bucky snorts, and it’s enough to yank your attention up. He’s shaking his head with that tiny curve of a smile, and it makes your heart do something that might resemble overdrive.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“What-“
“My mother’s doin’ just fine.” Bucky says, staring at you across the room. “She loved those muffins you made her. Got me and my sisters in a lotta trouble, for not bothering to make her a housewarming gift.”
You swallow. “Oh, I- I didn’t mean to-“
“Don’t hurt yourself.” Bucky—James, but it’s impossible to remember when he looks at you like that—smirks. “I’d want you over me every time, too.”
There’s no possible response you can think of, to that. Not one that makes sense, and isn’t humiliating. You look back to your papers, mumble a thank you, and try not to let Bucky’s low chuckle pool heat between your thighs.
You don’t succeed.
But that’s a problem for your vibrator to worry about, when you get home.
Because that’s where the fantasy. And the reality is always starker. Harder to escape.
Bucky is a mountain of a man, but you’ve never climbed anything at all. Not a tiny hill, not a slope, not even a bump in the road. The most basic things, that most people get out of the way in middle school, you’ve never even brushed against. Not on purpose. It’s just… Never happened. And you’re certainly not going to start doing anything now. With your older pseudo-boss and sort of friend. You don’t have a death wish, and you’re certain that rejection will kill you with the humiliation alone.
So in reality, you’re never going to risk anything. You’ve never had health insurance this good before. Steve buys you lunch every day—technically he buys himself lunch, but you’re allowed to get whatever you want—and you got to move out of your rundown apartment with the landlady who kept getting mad you dared to have trash, but refused to fix your broken heater. In New York.
You haven’t had freezing fingers in a year. Because now, you could afford gloves. And in the harsh cold of reality, no dick is worth more than a nice pair of gloves.
Bucky’s might be. Bucky and his smile and low laugh and nobleness and silent kindness and-
No.
Nothing’s worth it. Not when Bucky wouldn’t even want you anyway.
You’d rather have the gloves.
“You get a plus one to this event, you know?”
You look at Steve over the desk, frowning slightly. “Huh?”
Steve’s lips twitch. “You get a plus one.”
“Okay?”
“Wasn’t sure you knew.” He shrugs. Your frown deepens.
“Of course I knew. I send out all the invitations.”
“Hm.”
“What’s hm? What does hm mean?”
“Just hm. Do you have the numbers, about-“
“They’re in front of you, Steven.” You narrow your eyes. “What’s hm mean.”
“Told you, nothing-“
“What.”
Sam says that there are only three people Steve is afraid of. Natasha, Bucky’s mother, and you. At the time, you’d laughed it off and rolled your eyes.
With how his throat bobs and he avoids your gaze, you’re starting to think that last part might be true.
“You’ve just always had that plus one offered.” Steve mutters, looking at the reports like they’ve suddenly turned into something interesting. “Noticed you never used it. Wanted to, uh- Make sure you knew.”
“I knew.” You snap, and Steve sighs.
“Yeah, I thought you did.”
“Then why’d you ask-“
“You wanna get lunch?” Steve’s voice raises, and the conversation is clearly over. “I think I could go for some sushi, or- Mexican. Maybe acai?”
Those are three very different things, and it is your job to figure out which one he really wants. But you can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.
You have never used your plus one. You’ve never needed to.
There’s never been anyone worth using it on, except for one, dumb, handsome man who already has his own invitation to every event, and never has a problem finding his own date. You’ve spent dozens of nights lingering at Steve’s side—because he can tell you all he wants to enjoy yourself, you’ll slack when you’re dead—and glaring daggers at the model hanging off of Bucky’s arm. Giggling at everything he says and trying to drift closer than the polite, respectable distance he keeps them at.
He lets you sit closer to him than he lets them. And they are all a little younger, so maybe he wouldn’t mind that you’re not experienced and-
You stamp those thoughts under your heel. Not worth it.
But is Steve’s noticed how you never bring anyone, maybe he’s noticed how you stare at Bucky as well. And if he’s noticed that, he might start looking closer. And if he looks closer, he’s going to realize that you’re in love with his best friend, and he’s going to tell Bucky, and you’re going to get fired, and lose your cool apartment and fuck, you aren’t emotionally prepared to be a prostitute-
You need a date.
It’s the safest, most logical conclusion. You study Steve across the room, and quickly decide against asking to be set up. That might get back to Bucky, and you don’t want him to know for reason that defy common sense. You can’t ask anyone at work, but all your friends are your co-workers. You could go out to a bar, but that sounds dangerous and exhausting, and you’re not even sure where you’d find the time.
Which leaves one option.
Dating apps.
There are millions of them. You know from college friends and social media that there are about five worth having. You download all of them, and spend the rest of your lunch setting up your profile. You’re by no means ugly, and you’ve got plenty of pictures in exciting locations thanks to Steve being unable to get through any work event without you there. You put down that you’re not sure what you’re looking for, because you’re really not. You lie about your job, because when you tell people you’re Steve Roger’s personal assistant, they usually get weird. You settle just secretary, even though Steve and Natasha would shout at you if they saw.
They won’t see. None of them will see.
And you’ll get a nice, boring date to the next event, and everything is going to be fine.
“You never tell me about your family.”
Bucky’s words are so low you almost don’t hear them. You look up at him in surprise, and hope the dim lighting hides your flush.
“You never ask.”
His lips twitch down. “I’ve told you about my family.”
“So?”
“Usually.” He mutters, glaring at his papers like the did something to personally offend him. “When you tell someone about yourself, it’s an… Exchange of information.”
“An exchange of information?” You snort. “Is that a CIA thing?”
“Not everything I do is a CIA thing.”
“Everything Natasha does is a CIA thing. And you were in the CIA together.”
“Nat was better at it than I was.” He grumbles. His brow does a tight-knit wrinkle thing, when he’s frustrated. For a grown man, it’s always rather adorable. “I’d like to know about your family.”
“I…” You blink at him, your brain turning fuzzy and useless.
He’s staring at you. Saying those words like they matter, and you can barely understand them at all.
“Why?”
“Because. We’ve worked together a while. I know… A lot about you.” He takes a deep breath through his nose, giving you a strange look. “You know about me.”
“Uh huh. That’s usually how being friends works.”
Bucky sighs. “Yeah, well. You’ve met my mother. She adores you.”
“She doesn’t adore me-“
“She adores you.”
He says it like it’s really not up for debate. You flush. “Oh- Okay.”
“Everyone you meet adores you.” Bucky grumbles, like that complete lie of a statement infuriates him. “And I tell you everything about me.”
You don’t think that’s true either. You know a lot about Bucky, but not everything. Steve says Bucky’s just like that—not big on sharing—so you hoard every bit of information he offers you like a dragon with gold, but it’s far from everything. “Bu- James-“
“Bucky.” He corrects, and you sigh.
He’s not making that part easy, either.
“Bucky.” You say, smooth and careful. “You know everything about me that Steve knows. I- I can tell you more. But I’m not all that interesting.”
“I disagree.” He mutters. “You’re impossibly interesting.”
You can only hum, pressing your thighs together as he just keeps staring at you. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that. It makes your brain slow down and all your thoughts turn honeyed and gooey. His hands are right in your eyeline, and he’s got those big, deft fingers that you’ve imagined tracing over your hips and lips, and he’s giving you compliments. Compliments like they’re just breathing, like he doesn’t even have to think about them because you could be all he sees.
“What do you want to know?” You mumble, desperate to move the conversation away from this. If you offer yourself too much of his attention, it’s going to drag you under like quicksand.
“What’s your favorite kind of flower?”
“My favorite flower-“
Bucky grunts, nodding tightly. You take a deep, slow breath, careful not to look him in the eyes.
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”
Bucky grunts. “Well, what kinda flowers have people gotten you before.”
“I- I’ve never been given flowers.”
“You’ve never-“ Bucky cuts himself off, and you risk a glance up to see him scowling. “Ever?”
You can hear the what about that he won’t say. What about a boyfriend.
If he’s not brave enough to ask it—although you don’t understand why he’d care—you don’t have to be brave enough to answer it.
“No. Never ever.” You mumble, and you might dissolve into a mist of humid humiliation and confusing arousal.
You have Bucky’s attention, and you both wish he’d take it back and never want him to stop pushing. You’ve never had someone poke at you this much. It makes your core ache, and you’d rally rather not explore what that means right now.
“You need to sign these.” You shove some papers across the desk, staring at Bucky’s hands again.
They’re curled in fists. You’d like them inside you-
You mentally slap yourself, and force a smile onto your face, nodding to the papers. “Steve told me not to let you go home, until you did.”
Bucky chuckles at that, though there’s still a strange look in his eyes. “Not let me go home, huh.”
“Yes, sir.” You drawl.
Bucky’s knuckles go white. You could swear his voice gets lower.
“And how would you stop me from gettin’ home, kid?”
“With lots of talent.” You shrug, giving him a tiny smile. “And my body.”
Bucky coughs, and the desk jerks suddenly. His knee must’ve slammed against it. You shoot to your feet, ready to check on him, but he waves you quickly back down.
“Fine. I’m fine.” He scowls, scooting forward in his chair. “Papers.”
He makes a beckoning gesture, and you just stare at him.
“James, are you-“
“Bucky.” He grunts. “Papers, sweetheart.”
You nod stupidly, shoving the papers into his hands. You’re not sure what’s happening. Your thoughts are all still made of candy-clouds and goo, so you don’t want to overthink it.
It’s only when you get home, that you realize what he called you. I
Sweetheart.
You can’t blame him. He can’t know what that does to you.
You really need to find that date.
It happens in the middle of work. The worst possible place for it to happen.
Steve’s on a conference call, and you’re lying on his couch, swiping through dating apps. You’re only there in case he forgets something, and you don’t have to pay much attention for that. The voices of old, annoying men drone on and on and on in the background, and you have everything memorized so well that when Steve calls your name, you answer without even realty paying attention to what you’re saying.
The call is three hours for no good reason at all. You get bored.
Hence, the dating apps.
It’s almost as mindless as the call itself. All in all, the experience is turning out to be more of a fun game than an actual method to find a date. The next gala is creeping up, though. You refuse to give up.
But you’re also picky. And you keep comparing every profile you see to Bucky, which is deeply counterproductive.
Michael is handsome, and the exact same height as Bucky, but he’s built with corded muscle instead of the softer, thicker strength you’ve seen straining through Bucky’s suit. Henry has a picture of himself with kids—his sister’s, according to the caption—but you look at it and just think of when Bucky and Steve went to the children’s hospital, and Bucky had become such a soft and approachable person you’d been worried you’d get pregnant watching him.
Leon has nice eyes, but they’re not as pretty as Bucky’s. Cal is in the military, but he’s beaming about it in a way that makes you think he joined so he could run around with a big gun, while Bucky joined because his family needed the healthcare. Jake has a sweet smile, but it doesn’t make you feel bubbly like Bucky’s. Asher and Kyle both have high paying jobs—all their photos showing them driving Maserati’s and drinking expensive whiskey—but one of the things you’ve always loved about Bucky is how he doesn’t brag. His suits are less expensive and more well-tailored. His watch costs $150—he always grumbles that he just needs it to tell time—and he drives a motorcycle that Sam says he built from scratch.
You squint at Damien’s profile, and he’s got a motorcycle too. His caption says that he built it himself, and you don’t know anything about motorcycles, but you doubt he built it as well as Bucky did.
You swipe left with a sigh, and go onto the next profile.
James. 41. Business Manager. You give the picture a quick glance—beefy, shirtless chest that makes you drool a little, only the sharp, bearded jawline of the owner visible in the photo—and squint at the bio. Wealthy bachelor looking for his Queen.
You snort, and scroll lazily down. James’ Interests include music, cars, technology, dancing, family. No kids, but wants them. Looking for casual fun—you can’t be causal, or have fun, but it’s always nice to pretend—located thirty feet away, pet cat, smokes and drinks socially-
Located thirty feet away.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
You sit up suddenly, rapidly scrolling back up to the photos and main bio. James, 41, Business Manager.
Fucking- Fuck-
You click frantically through the photos, somehow burning alive and freezing to your bones all at once. James’ next photo doesn’t show his face either, instead displaying a fluffy white cat on his bare chest. You know that cat. You’ve fed and pet her, paying her more attention than Bucky himself whenever he brings her to the office. Alpine adores you. You have more photos of her on your phone than you do of yourself.
Next photo.
Bucky drinking at that Italian place he, Steve, and Sam always go to for celebrations. In the background, you can see Natasha flirting with the bartender. You remember that night. She’d taken him home, and you’d heard far too many details about how hot and submissive he was in the morning. You’d been happy for her, and sick with jealousy. You’d spent all of that night standing next to her, trying not to stare at Bucky while he and Steve drank.
Which means-
You pinch in on the photo, feeling a little sick when you find it. Shrouded enough in the background that you can only see it if you look, but you can definitely fucking see it.
Your lovelorn, sad expression as you stare at Bucky like he’s made of stars.
He’s seen this photo. Everyone who’s been on his dating profile has seen this photo.
You feel sick. You unpinch the photo, ready to maybe just fall back into the couch cushions and have them swallow you whole, and then it fucking happens.
Your thumb drifts a little to the right.
You swipe yes on Bucky’s profile.
And a little heart graphic overtakes your screen, the bolded words It’s a Match! Shoved into your face.
You scream, and throw your phone across the room.
Steve looks at you like you’re insane. You feel insane.
“Are you-“
“I need to go to the bathroom!” You shout, and Steve opens his mouth, but you’re already running.
You have to pass Bucky’s office—right next to Steve’s—to get to the bathroom. You pause to stare at him, unable to form any coherent thoughts but fuck and Bucky.
He’s on his phone. Reading something with a knit brow. You might actually be about to throw up.
Like he can sense you, he looks up.
Your eyes meet.
And you run away, as fast as you fucking can.
Steve is a lovely boss. When you tell him you need a week off for vague personal reasons, but that you can still work remotely, he tells you not to bother and just take the time without work.
“But- I can help-“
“I know. I’m telling you not to.” He gives you a small smile. “You’ve earned the break.”
“Steve-“
“You’re allowed to just rest,” he says your name kindly, and you shake your head. No. You’re not.
“Please give me something to do.” You plead, and Steve sighs.
“Kid, you don’t have to prove something-“
“Please.” If you don’t have anything, you’re just going to stare at your match with Bucky the whole time. And that’s a harrowing, deadly prospect of a way to spend your week.
Steve sighs, and gives in. You get a bunch of emails to send, and they’re just enough to distract you.
Barely.
Sometimes, you still manage to falter, and open up the app. Stare at the you matched with James three days ago! Banner at the top of the screen. Maybe he hasn’t seen it at all, and you’re hiding for no reason. He could be someone who never even checks who he matches with unless they message first, because he just gets so many matches. Jealousy stabs through your heart, sour and sharp, and you sigh.
It’s your best hope. That he’ll just never know.
But he matched with you, too.
He could just swipe right on every girl he sees. That’s a thing you hear men do.
Bucky’s not the type to do that.
He’s also not the type to be looking for his Queen. Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought you did.
But you’re pretty sure you do.
This is making your head hurt.
Your real best bet is that someone’s been catfishing as James Barnes, but there’s no real hope of that with the bar photo. You’re going to have to quit your job and change your name. Maybe Steve can reference you to another similar job if you apologize enough. Maybe you can move to Alaska and learn how to be a fisherwoman. You’re not very patient. And you’re not going to be able to afford your nice gloves anymore. Maybe you should just die. The best option might just be dying-
Your phone buzzes.
Message from James.
You throw your phone again. He knows.
Death is looking lovely right now.
Your days off turn into a week off. Steve checks on you, but doesn’t push you to come back. If anything, he’s still trying to convince you to just take a real vacation.
“It’s going to help more than… What you’re doing right now.” He stands in the middle of your apartment, gesturing at your ice cream and the mess of clothing on the floor.
“This is helping plenty.” You mutter. Steve sighs.
“Look, I’m really not mad about you taking the time. I know you. You wouldn’t take it if you didn’t need it.”
“But?” You give him a pointed look, and his jaw ticks.
“But I wish you’d tell me what was goin’ on.” He says, sounding more sad than annoyed. “So I could help.”
You give him a tight smile. “Steve-“
“Anything you need. If I can’t get it, I’m sure Bucky or Nat could-“
“Steve.” You don’t want to hear about how Bucky can help you. Not when he knows perfectly well why you’ve gone into hiding. “I- I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Steve frowns, but lets it go. In the Steve way, where he keeps asking every time he visits, but always takes the no in stride.
“Can you at least tell me what I should be saying to everyone else?” He asks after a week. “People are noticing I’m missing my brain.”
You laugh softly. “I’m sick.”
“But you’re not.”
Not visibly. Your heart feels sick. Bucky’s sent you two more messages on the app, one into your personal number, and none on Teams, and you’ve read none of them. You don’t want to hear his gentle rejection, because it’s going to crush you into fine, little pieces.
“We’re worried about you.” Steve says. “And again, no rush to come back, but I don’t know how to work my own schedule and Bucky’s started pacing whenever I try to do your job, so-“
“Bucky’s pacing?” You blurt, and Steve blinks.
“Yeah? Think he misses you, too.”
You swallow, and glance at your phone. The unread messages.
Bucky only paces when he feels like something is wrong. Really wrong.
And you don’t want to know. That he’s been thinking about. That he’s been pacing. Because it all ends the same anyway.
“I’ll be back soon.” You mumble, flipping your phone face down. You don’t want to know. “Just- A few more days.”
Steve looks at you like he doesn’t believe you. You don’t believe you.
But you’re a big girl. You can survive a little rejection, and it doesn’t have to be anything at all.
You’re going to keep going, and this won’t have to have been anything at all.
Nobody asks, when you get back to the office. Nat and Sam check in that you’re okay, and Steve lets you pick lunch three days in a row—and you think he’s blaming himself for everything, which at least tells you that Bucky hasn’t snitched about anything—but the only thing waiting for you is a phone full of voicemails and a crowded calendar.
And Bucky.
Bucky, who almost acts like nothing even happened at all.
Almost.
He’s staring more than he used to, and he’d always stared quite a lot. When you’re left alone in a room together, he stares until you look up at him, before immediately coughing and looking back to his own papers. He lingers outside of Steve’s office until you ask if he needs to talk, and he shakes his head and runs off like a teenager caught trying to buy drinks. Nat shouts at him after two meetings where he wasn’t paying attention, and he mutters that he was distracted.
“What?! What could you possibly have been so distracted by that you missed every cue Sam gave you, five times in a row?”
He just shrugs, and you can feel his gaze burning straight into your heart. You bow your head, and pretend you don’t see it.
You still haven’t looked at the messages. You’re not going to. And he hasn’t brought it up, so it’s like nothing ever happened.
Like nothing ever happened.
But it happened. The world ended, but it also just kept spinning, and now you’re suspended in a world where Bucky doesn’t even treat you like a friend anymore.
Steve notices. Of course he does. Asshole.
“Did something happen?” He asks softly. “Did Bucky… Say something to you?”
You look up with wide eyes, mouth going dry. “Wha- What? No, Bucky- James and I, it’s fine.” You laugh, high and nervous. “Everything’s fine.”
Steve hums, and he doesn’t believe you. You can see it, shining in his eyes. “You know… I’ve known Bucky a long time.”
“I know. I’ve read the about page.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “No. I mean, yes, but-“ He sighs. “Bucky’s not good at… Talking. When something matters to him, he shows it.”
“Okay.” He’s shown you nothing but silence and stares.
“And he, um- He’s a good guy-“
“I’m aware.”
“I know you are, but-“ Steve sighs, slumping in his chair. “Just, if Bucky ever says something to you, or asks you to do something, and you don’t want to, don’t. I’d rather you piss him off then feel pressured. Not that he’d pressure you,” he adds quickly. “But if there’s ever… Anything. And I’ve been wrong about… Stuff. Just know you’re as valuable as he is.”
He’s speaking in riddles. This has been a long few weeks. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Steve nods, taking in a deep breath. “And is there… Anything you want to tell me? As my friend?”
It’s a mean card to play. You almost want to. Steve’s kind, and he gives good advice, and you believe him. You know that if you confessed your silent, raging love for Bucky, Steve would just support you.
But you don’t need someone to support you right now. You need someone to smack you in the face and tell you to stop being a baby about your crush not liking you back.
“No.” You give him a strained smile, and it hurts on your face. “Why, is there something you need to tell me?”
Steve stares at you for a moment, then slowly shakes his head. “No. Just… You were missed.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and Steve clears his throat.
“By everyone.”
You nod, useless tears stinging at your eyes, and look back to your work.
Later that day, Bucky goes into Steve’s office and they talk for two hours. You want to eavesdrop, but that would be a new, pathetic low.
You stare at Bucky’s head through the glass, and chew on a pencil until it snaps in half.
When Bucky leaves the office, he stops in front of your desk and lingers. You can feel the heat from his body, and you’d like to fall into it. He clears his throat, and you look up like he’d grabbed your chin and demanded it.
His eyes are shining on yours, and you’ve never seen his jaw clenched so tight. As if he’s disgusted, just from the sight of you.
“You look nice.” He rasps, and you can’t tell if you’re glowing or burning out.
“Thank you.”
He nods, looking up to the ceiling, then back to you. “We all missed you.”
“I’ve been told-“
“I missed you.” He says those words firmer. They sink into your core, molten and demanding, so overwhelming you’re not even sure what to do with yourself.
You’ve been staring at him too long. Words are failing you, thoughts are failing you, and-
“I, uh- I’ll leave you to it-“
“You too.” You breathe out, and Bucky stumbles back like you hit him. “I- I missed you too.”
He blinks. His nostrils flare, and he gapes at you with a red face. For a second, you don’t see the calm, collected man you know and adore so well. You see something closer to a teenage boy, fumbling and gaping and unsure what to do with his own strength.
You like him, just as much as you like the rest of Bucky. Love it.
Endlessly and uselessly love it.
Bucky turns on his heels, and almost runs back to his office. Your nails dig into your palms, and you force your attention back to your work.
It will pass. All of this, like every storm, is going to have to pass.
You get a night off. Steve has a date, and it’s the one part of his life you have and want nothing to do with. You were going to use the evening to catch up on more voicemails, until Sam shooed you out of the building like a bird. Go rest, woman.
You are resting.
By catching up on emails.
There’s a knock on your door, long after anyone should be out doing anything. You don’t move from the couch at first, because you think it’s a mistake.
Then the knock repeats. Louder than the first time. And someone shouts your name, muffled through the door.
Not a mistake.
Bucky. That’s Bucky’s voice.
You fall, trying to get up. Your knees feel like jelly, and you haven’t even seen him yet, but he’s already doing that thing where his attention makes you feel like you’re made of electric static. Sensitive and empty-headed in the best and worst way. You can barely stand it. You can’t really stand at all.
When you finally—somehow—make it to the door, Bucky’s standing on the other side like he’s awaiting inspection. Tall and silent, shoulders squared and arms behind his back, looking at you like you’re holding his life in your hands.
You stare at him. He stares back, and you can measure your every breath in heartbeats. Louder and louder in your ears.
“Hi.” You finally say, shifting on your feet, and his throat bobs.
“Hey.”
“What’re you-“
“I wanted to check on you.” He blurts, and you freeze. “And- Talk.”
You ignore that last part. It’s the last thing you want to do. “I’m fine.”
Bucky’s pretty lips tug down. “You took two weeks off.” He mutters. “You don’t even take sick days.”
You swallow. “I- I was trying to take care of myself-“
“By working the whole time?” He looks past you again, and you follow his gaze.
Right to your laptop, open on an email draft.
“You’re supposed to be takin’ tonight off too.” He says, a little scolding, and you stiffen.
“You’re not my boss.”
Bucky chuckles. Low and deep, shivering up your spine. “Trust me, doll. I’m fully aware of that.”
Oh. That does something nice to your core. You think you might be getting a fever.
“James…”
“Bucky.” He grunts, and you take an unsteady breath. Staring at his chest seems to be the most effective way to speak to him.
“Bucky, I- I’m fine, really-“
“I brought you flowers.” He says suddenly, and his hands shoot out from behind his back.
He’s holding out a large bouquet of roses and lilies, each in about three different colors. It’s a stark contrast to his black suit and neatly pressed white shirt, petals spilling and little bits of yellow pollen clinging to the stems. To the cuffs of his sleeves.
Bucky clears his throat, pushing the flowers a little further forward. You take them with shaking hands, a little worried they’ll dissolve the moment you touch them. They don’t. And Bucky clears his throat.
“I, uh- I gave you options, and-“ He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Can I come in? Please?”
You can’t think of a good reason to say no. You don’t even think you’d get out the words, if you tried. So you nod, and step to the side.
And now Bucky’s in your apartment. Looking around at your things and licking his lips, nodding slowly. He fits into it, like a puzzle piece being slowly slotted in, and-
No.
You can’t think like that. It’s not going to help anyone, not by far.
He brought you flowers.
To apologize for breaking your heart.
Bucky looks back to you, bracing his hands on his hips. You swallow, hugging yourself tight, and neither of you dare to move. Bucky takes a ragged breath, looks to the side, and back to you with the strangest, most anguished expression you’ve ever seen on his handsome face.
“Tell me if I’m steppin’ over the line.” He starts, urgent and pleading. “You gotta tell me if I’m steppin’ over the line.”
“Bucky-“
“We both know why I’m here.” He takes a step forward. You take a step back.
Bucky freezes, and you take a shaking breath, staring at his shoes.
“I- I’m sorry.” You mumble. “I didn’t mean to-“
“You didn’t?” Bucky cuts you off, and you glance up to see him frowning. “At all?”
You blink. “No, I- I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you meant it?”
You nod, and Bucky’s jaw works tight.
“Could you?”
“What?”
“Could you mean it?” He rasps, and your mouth falls uselessly open.
“Ja- Bucky.” You shake your head, stepping further back. If this is a trick, you’re too fragile to fall for it. “I- I don’t know.”
“Why not?” He takes a step forward, your eyes trapped together. “Is it me?”
“Is it you?”
“Yeah, I- I mean- You don’t really date.” He clears his throat. “And Stevie’s never told me why, ‘cause- I’m not your boss, but I’m not not your boss- ‘s what Sam says-“
You’ve never heard him ramble. Never heard him speak like he’s not sure of the next work. It’s just as endearing as the display at the desk, but you’re even less sure what to do with it. “Bucky-“
“If it’s just me that you’re not- That’s the reason.” He’s standing over you now. Bowing his head. “Then that’s fine. I’m not gonna be an ass about it. But…” His shoulders slump. “If it’s not that. Then I- I’d like to…”
He trails off, giving you a hopeful look.
But you’re lost. Nothing he’s saying is making sense, and you’re almost being dragged under by the current of his words.
“What?” You repeat, more pleading than before. Bucky sighs.
“You never answered my messages.” He mutters. “Figured I’d need to ask in person. Needed to hear it.” He clears his throat, lips twitching. “Even if it’s a no.”
“Even…” You frown. “Even if what’s a no?”
His head shoots up, and his frown deepens. “I’m… Asking you out. On a date?”
Oh.
What.
Your surprise must be written all over your face, because Bucky looks bewildered. He can join the club.
You just keep staring at him stupidly, and he says your name, slow and measured.
“You read my messages, right?”
You shake your head, and he groans.
“I- I’m sorry-“
“No, it’s- It’s my fault.” He mutters. “Nat told me you were oblivious-“
You cut him off indignantly. “I am not oblivious-“
“We matched on a dating app.” He drawls, lips twitching slightly. “And you’re shocked I’m askin’ you out.”
You scowl, hugging yourself tighter. “I thought you made a mistake.” You grumble, and Bucky chuckles.
He takes another step forward. Close enough that you can smell him, smell his cologne and aftershave and something deeper that’s just Bucky. You step back more out of fear that you were about to fall forward.
Bucky follows you.
Suddenly your pinned against your counters, Bucky’s arms braced on either side of your body. You swallow. Bucky’s tongue darts over his lips, and you think you did drown in his everything. You’ve been swept out to sea, and there’s no hope of being dragged out to shore.
And with how Bucky’s looking at you, you’re not sure you’d ever ask to be saved.
“You.” Bucky reaches up, brushing hair out of your eyes with a small smile. “Are not a mistake. And if someone’s been tellin’ you that you are.” He leans down, until your lips are almost brushing. “They’re damn lucky you’re lettin’ them make it.”
Dear God. You’re not strong enough for this.
“James…” You breathe out, and his brows knit. “Bucky. Don’t.”
He tenses around you. “Don’t?”
“Don’t.” You whisper, eyes dropping to his lips. They look so soft. “Don’t do this.”
Bucky leans a little back, but doesn’t pull fully away. “Why not? I told you, if it’s not ‘cause of me, we can work it out-“
“Bucky-“
“I’ll quit.” He says suddenly, and you gape.
“You’re the boss, you can’t quit-“
“There are like, four bosses.” Bucky waves you off. “Five if we’re countin’ you, which I am, and you do twice the fuckin’ work. I’ll just quit, and you can have my job, and we can-“
“Bucky.” You grab his shirt, and he falls silent immediately. “Just- Stop. You can’t quit, you shouldn’t-“ You take a deep breath, trying to focus on speaking instead of crying.
Bucky says your name softly, and big hands thread through your hair as you start to sniffle. It’s so pathetic, but you’re tired and overwhelmed and you can’t take him doing this to you twice. You’re not the kind of girl Bucky Barnes is going to want. Not for real. Not for long. And you can’t handle him pretending you are.
“It’s not nice.” You whimper, even as he tugs you into his chest.
Pressing your face into his chest is just as amazing as you’d always imagined. You wish you weren’t crying when it finally happened.
“What’s not nice.” Bucky prompts gently, and you swallow.
“You.”
“Me?”
You nod, wrapping your arms around his torso. Bucky pets the back of your head, words low and cautious.
“What about me isn’t nice?”
You shake your head, hugging him tighter. You can’t stop. It’s like a reflex. “You can’t- You can’t say that stuff. ‘S mean.”
“Me tellin’ you I’d quit for you is mean?”
“You don’t mean it.”
Bucky tenses. “I do mean it-“
“No, it’s not- I’m not-“ You swallow, breathing him in. “I don’t just wanna be…”
You trail off. Bucky prompts you softly. “Be what?”
“Be fun.” You mumble. “I can’t do fun, you know than, and- And if you’re not serious, then-“
“I’m dead serious.” Bucky grunts, and you swallow.
“James-“
“No. Listen to me.” He picks you up without a warning, sitting you on the counter so you’re at his eye level. You grab his shoulders, and he keeps his hands planted on your hips, almost holding you under his words.
Forcing you to hear them, as he watches you like you’re the most important thing in the world.
“I am serious about this. About you.” He grabs one of your hands, holding it between your bodies. “I have wanted you since I met you. Don’t look at me like that,” he squeezes your hand when you give him a doubtful frown. “I have. You are beautiful and smart and bossy, and I’ve been obsessed with you so much, Nat’s slapped me about it twice.”
You swallow, closing your eyes tight. You can’t look at him right now. “Your profile said looking for casual.” You mutter, and Bucky snorts.
“Last year, Sam made that thing for me. ‘Cause I was obsessed with Stevie’s new PA, and I needed to get under someone to get over it.”
“Hm.” You peek at him. He looks sincere. “Did you?”
“I got under many someone’s.” He shrugs. “Didn’t have Sam’s intended effect. Think I just wanted you more, after every time.”
You swallow. That does explain a lot about the profile, in hindsight. Those were all very Sam things to say.
“I want you.” Bucky murmurs, pressing a little closer. Your noses are bumping, and he’s still not looking away. “You’re in my dreams, and days without you are nightmares. Just- One shot. It’s all I need. Please.”
And God, you want to give it to him. More than anything. You want to tell him that he doesn’t even need his shot, he hit a bullseye a year ago and you’ve just been waiting for him to realize it since.
But-
“I’m a virgin.” You blurt, and Bucky blinks.
“Okay-“
“I can’t do what others can. For you. And I- I don’t know how anything works- Well, I know how sex works, I got an A in health class, but everyone got an A in health, but I got an A and paid attention, and-“ You’re rambling. “I just don’t know how dating works, or- Or relationships, and I’m not- You’re very- You.”
You gesture over his everything, and Bucky’s lips twitch.
“That a problem, doll?”
“No. God, no. You’re perfect, I’m just- Not? And that’s not really fair to you-“
Bucky grabs your face, and your cut off in a kiss.
You’ve seen kissing in the movies and on TV. Read about it a million times. It’s always all sweet and romantic, with swelling music and breeze and passion.
And nothing has done it justice at all.
Kissing Bucky is awkward for a second—his lips slotted over yours, your whole body frozen as it shuts down, then reboots—and then it’s like breathing. Your hands fly back to his shoulders, your legs spread so you can lean further forwards, and your lips move without a thought. Pressing against Bucky’s, moving in a dance he seems more than happy to lead, chasing at the slight chance that you could have just a little more.
One of Bucky’s hands finds this back of your head, and the other grabs your waist. Dragging you further forward until your chests are pressed tight, massaging the softness there in rhythm with his lips. You sigh, breathy and content, and Bucky presses further down. He’s all you can feel, muscle under your hands and love pounding in your heart. You nails scrape his neck, and he groans into the kiss.
The sound vibrates against your spread thighs. His hand on your waist flexes, fingers digging into the softness, and you gasp.
Bucky pulls back too fast, and you follow. Tugging him back, unwilling to let him go just yet. He follows for a second, tongue tracing over your lower lip, then yanks himself back.
His brow presses against yours, and you both breathe raggedly.
“I like you.” Bucky almost growls. His thumb presses over your swollen lips, palm cupping your cheek, and you melt further into him than you already were.
“Bucky-“
“You’re what I want.” He leans forward, demanding and pleading all at once. “Your body.” He pushes his hand under your shirt, rough fingers dragging against sensitive skin. “Is a bonus.”
You shiver, whimpering softly. You feel pliant. Dizzy, in a way that no flirting or video has ever rendered you before. You think Bucky might’ve sucked your soul out with that kiss. You’d like him to do it again.
But when you try to lean up, Bucky pushes you gently back down. You whine, and his lips twitch.
“You like me too.” He mutters, watching you like he’s somehow still unsure.
“Mhm.” You say, and he stands a little taller.
“How long-“
“The same.”
“Oh.” He grins. “Good. That’s- Good-“
You slam back up, kissing him with an open mouth and sloppy need. Bucky responds immediately, and heat is starting to build between your thighs. It’s not just going to go away with a little touching and petting. It’s almost painful. You need him.
Bucky pulls away again. You’re going to punch him.
“Jesus.” He mutters, staring down at your desperate expression. “You gotta slow down, baby-“
“Don’t want to.” You breathe, pulling at his shirt. “Want you, Bucky. Want you now.”
His throat bobs, eyes darkening, but he remains composed. “You… You’re a virgin-“
“Then show me.”
Bucky says your name, and now he’s the one begging. But you’re not letting him off this easy.
“Show me, Bucky.” You rest your chin on his chest, giving him your best pout.
He grabs your face between big hands, chest heaving as he stares at you. You offer a sweet smile, and his nostrils flare.
“Please.” You whisper. “Anything. I just want to feel you.”
“Feel me.” He echoes, like he can’t believe it. “You wanna feel me?”
You nod, and he presses his brow over yours his, his eyes squeezed shut.
“And you want me to show you.” He rasps. “All the different ways I can make you feel good.”
You nod frantically, almost clawing at his shirt. Bucky’s eyes shoot open.
“Yeah?” He grunts, and you whine.
“Yeah. Yes. Please-“
He grabs your jaw, grip hard and unyielding, folds over you like he’s trying to fuse your bodies together. His lips move, harsh and hungry, and his hand on your hip starts to knead the skin like he’s trying to leave a mark.
“Wanted this for so long.” He grunts, dragging his hand down to squeeze your ass. “Wanted you. So fuckin’ bad.”
You moan into his mouth, and Bucky sucks on your lower lip. You can’t have enough of him. He’s warm and leaves little fires everywhere he touches. You’d like them to sweep through you, overtake you and send you higher.
“So gorgeous.” Bucky’s hand moves lower, resting on your upper thigh. “Thought about you all the time, hated bein’ in a room and not getting to touch you, was so sure I was going to lose my damn mind not havin’ you be mine.”
“I- I wanted you too.” You breathe out, almost delirious from his kisses. “Always wanted it to be you, never- Oh-“
You lose your ability to speak for a second, when Bucky starts to kiss under your ear. Your body goes pliant and soft, and his growl against your skin sends a shiver up your spine. He’s holding the back of your neck now, guiding it to offer himself better access. You tug on his hair and he moans. It makes your knees wobbly.
“Never anyone else,” you breathe, and he seems to like that. The massive hand on your thigh shifts slightly, so Bucky’s thick fingers are grazing your core through your clothing.
It’s a perfect pressure where you’d been craving any of his attention, and it’s a promise of more later. Your legs give out, eyes fluttering as your brain short circuits with arousal.
Bucky picks you up like you weigh nothing. Your nails dig into the back of his neck as he sits you on the counter, back arching as he captures your mouth in another kiss.
“No one else.” He mutters, hand on your neck slowly, possessively moving down your spine. “Never gonna be anyone else, doll. Not for you,” he nips at your jaw, hand on your thigh teasing the sensitivity under your shirt. “Sure as shit not for me. Been no one else since I started thinkin’ of you.”
Your breath hitches, and you lean back with wide eyes. “Bucky, you don’t have to-“
“I’m not lying.” He says firmly, dropping his brow against yours. You try to lean back, but he grabs your chin, forcing your eyes back together.
You blink at him hopelessly, grabbing at the collar of his shirt like you’re looking for balance. Bucky gives you a tiny smile, pressing his lips sweetly over yours. Another, softer promise.
“No one,” he murmurs. “Was ever gonna live up to you. First few months I’d fuck a girl and feel sick the next day. Like I’d done you wrong.”
“You- You didn’t-“
“Yeah, I did. We coulda been doin’ this a lot sooner.”
You flush, looking down to where your bodies are pressed so tight together. Bucky’s dress shirt and hidden muscle, both hard and gentle all at once. Your sleeping clothes and bare feet, swinging off the counter. You lean a little further into him, suddenly feeling rather small.
“What if I’m not…” You take a deep breath, frowning at the floor. “What if I don’t-“
Bucky says your name, concerned and caring, and you shake your head.
“What if I’m not the fantasy, Bucky.” You look back up with your best pleading eyes. “What if that- That idea of me isn’t worth what you thought?”
His brows knit tight, and you try to shirk away as he studies you. You can’t tell if you like it or not, but you know you feel bare. And you both want him to look away, and never go where you can’t reach him again.
Bucky’s lips twitch. He leans forward slowly, kissing each corner of your mouth before taking it fully under his. The kiss is hot and commanding, almost forcing your brain to slow back down. You dissolve into it, your thoughts a nice haze of Bucky. He guides your legs a little further apart, and takes both of your wrists in one of his hands, pinning them behind you.
“I love you,” he mutters. “I told you. And remember,” he pulls back with that lovely, secret smile. “I’m helpin’ you through it, right?”
You nod, and Bucky leans back forward, bumping your noses together.
“Trust me?”
“Yes.” You breathe, and he grins.
“Good girl.”
Heat floods between your legs, and oh. You like that. You’re shaking a little bit, you like it so much. Want it so much. Want Bucky.
Like he’s reading your mind, he rasps against your lips. “You enjoyed other things before?”
You nod, unable to tell if that’s another flush or just how turned on you are, and Bucky smirks.
“Like what?” He kisses your cheek, massaging your thighs. “Tell me what you like, sweetheart. What you want.”
“I- I want to be under.” You whisper, and you think his hands might be magic. Pulling answers out of you that you would’ve rather died with an hour ago. “Want you over me. Tell- Telling me what to do.”
Bucky hums, nosing at your neck. You close your eyes, forcing on.
“Tell- Tell me how good I’m doing. And- Other stuff.”
He leans back, and your core throbs at the shine in his eyes. Like he’s going to eat you alive. “Other stuff?” He rasps, and you nod weakly.
“If you can- Can do that.” It’s hard to focus, between his piercing gaze and the hand wandering between your legs. Teasing your inner thigh, until you’re voice is high and breathy. “Do that, and- and be-“
“Be a little mean?” He coos, thumb pressing over your aching button. You swallow, and nod.
“A little mean.” You echo, and Bucky grins.
“Yes, ma’am.” He kisses you again, slow and romantic, and you barely notice his hand moving away. “Think that’s enough outta you for now.”
“Wha- Bucky-“
He steps away. Without warning, Bucky just backs up, and you almost fall off the counter trying to chase him. He laughs, and pushing you back into place in a second, then moves away again. Where you can’t follow.
“Bucky, come back-“
“Nope.” He grins, like he knows you’re already too lost to chase him. He probably does. Asshole. “You want me to show you?”
You scowl. “James-“
“Call me whatever you want, baby. You ain’t gonna be able to talk at the end, anyway.” He braces his hands on his hips, raising a brow. “Want me to show you.”
He won’t come back until you answer, so you just nod, crossing your arms like a scolded child. Bucky grins, and you’re hoping for another good girl and kiss, but he doesn’t even lean closer.
“Alright.” He stands a little taller. “Strip.”
You blink at him. “What?”
“Strip.”
“Like, completely?”
“Hm.” He pauses, raking over your body in a way that really shouldn’t make you feel more turned on. “Yep. All of this, off.”
He waves to your body, and gives you a silent, challenging look. Like he’s expecting you to go back, and ask for that date first.
But at this point, you’re going to explode if he doesn’t make you cum. And you’ve never backed down from him before. You have no interest in starting now.
Slowly, you peel off your sweater. Your shirt. The cold air hits your bare chest, and not wearing a bra was the right choice. Bucky’s looking at you like he wants to eat you alive, the evidence of your effect on him straining through his pants.
Your nipples are peaked, and you awkwardly palm at them the way you’ve seen in porn. Bucky shifts on his feet, hand flexing like he’s trying not to reach for you, so you repeat the motion again.
“Pants.” He grunts, and you smile sweetly.
“Please?”
Bucky chuckles, like he can’t believe you. “Jesus, woman-“
“It’s polite-“
“If you don’t take your pants off.” He grunts, giving you a firm look. “I’m gonna rip off your pants and fuck you on this counter right now.”
You swallow. That doesn’t sound all that bad, but-
Something foolish and lovesick inside of your chest demands that tonight be special. So you move on from your breast, but give Bucky a nervous smile.
“Next time?”
He softens slightly, and nods. “Next time. Pants.”
You smile, and he smiles back. But the expression quickly shifts back into desire, as you shuffle out of your pants. You take your underwear down in one motion as well, leaving you completely exposed. At Bucky’s mercy.
And he’s just watching you.
Watching you and rubbing his crotch, where an erection is demanding attention. The lewd sight makes you fuzzy in all the right places, your own legs spreading a little wider apart.
You need him so bad it hurts. Your fingers dip into your wet pussy, clumsily rubbing your clit, and Bucky groans.
Suddenly he’s back against you, staring at your hand between your legs and panting like a dog.
“Look at you.” He groans, dragging his gaze back up your naked body. “Better than a dream.”
“Thank you.” Your hips buck up against your own, suddenly flimsy and useless hand. You’ve touched yourself before. With Bucky all around you, it’s simply not enough. “Bucky- You-You need to touch me-“
“I know.” He grunts, lips ghosting over yours. “Need you to be ready, just-“
His throat bobs as he cuts himself off, his hand on his own hard dick suddenly pressing against your pussy. A spasm shoots through your body, and you almost fly off the counter.
Bucky presses further down, attaching his lips to your neck and collarbone. His tongue flicks against a pulse point as he spreads your pussy lips. Rubbing up and down while his thumb circles around your clit, working you up and up and up. You’re panting in his ear, vulnerable and dazed, and Bucky hums against your skin.
“Shirt.” He grunts. “Get my shirt off.”
You nod, and it should be a simple task. But Bucky’s relentless. He suckles on your neck, leaving possessive bruises on your skin all while working your pussy and drawling in your ear.
“I know exactly how I want you, pretty girl.” He mutters, flicking your clit with his thumb. “Told you I’ve been thinkin’ about it forever. ‘Bout every single way I’d take you if I got the chance. And I’m gonna show you all of them,” he kisses over a bruise, teasing two fingers against your fluttering core. “But tonight, we’re takin’ it easy.”
You whine, fumbling with just the top button of his shirt. “I- I don’t want easy-“
“I know, baby.” He presses just the tip of his finger into your cunt, and you clench around him with a whine. “But you’re so sensitive.”
If you had the power right now, you’d hit him for saying it like that. All mocking and syrupy. Making you try to fuck your hips down onto his fingers. But Bucky just pulls fully out, moving his attention back to your swollen clit.
“You need to take care of the buttons.” He whispers, pushing down hard on the bundle of nerves. “They need a little extra attention.” He rubs his thumb back and forth. “Before we get goin’.”
“Fuck- Bucky-“ You breathe, almost slumped against his chest. Your fingers are shaking, desperate to just hold onto something as thighs spread as wide as they can go. “Fuck you-“
He chuckles, kissing the side of your head as his thumb picks up speed. “We’re getting there, needy girl.”
You scrape at his forearm, one hand still trying to pry his shirt open with no real resolve at all. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you, the asshole. Driving you insane with the teasing over your exposed entrance, never fully offering relief. You manage to get the top button open, but then Bucky pushes down hard on your clit, and an open moan falls from your lips as you double over.
“That’s it.” Bucky laughs, low and dangerous in your ear. “Doesn’t that feel good, baby?”
You nod, watching him move on you. “Bu- Bucky-“ You pull on his collar. “Help…”
“You’ve got it.” He says simply, spreading two fingers and dragging them between your pussy lips. “Just keep tryin’.”
There is no world where you have it, but Bucky’s words are enough for you to keep grasping fruitlessly at the fabric. Your head drops onto his shoulder, as you paw at his shirt. He laughs, rumbling through his chest, and slows his pace on your clit.
“All the ways I’ve pictured havin’ you.” He mutters. “This is the prettiest. Got you nice and ready, barely even touched you.”
“You’re- You’re touching me-“
“Not like I could touch you.” He says, a deep promise in his voice. “Told you, I’m going easy on my best girl. But if I wanted…”
He chuckles, kissing the side of your head. Pushing on your clit as your body starts to wiggle, trying to find more relief. “Bucky-“
“Every time I’ve seen you, layin’ on the couch.” He presses further forward, his bulge against your thigh. “I’ve thought about putting my hands all over your perfect fuckin’ body. Touching these tits,” he ducks his head, and your breath hitches as he kisses over the curve of your breast. “Touchin’ this sweet little pussy.” He plays with your clit like it a toy. “And makin’ you squirt all over Stevie’s nice cushions.”
“I’d look at you.” You gasp, holding onto his shirt for dear life. “In your chair. Wanted to sit on your lap.”
Bucky groans, hips jerking slightly. “Shit, I’ve thought about that too. Pinning you on my cock ‘till you’re sobbing, fucking you over my desk- Christ, whenever you’d bend over I’d just want to drag your ass back and fuck it ‘till you were drooling.”
“Fuck, yes.” You’ve given up on the shirt.
Your hand is wandering down between your bodies, and you rub against Bucky’s crotch, trying to return some of the favor. Bucky moans into your ear, pressing his hand flat over your cunt.
“Shit, you- Can’t just fuckin’-“ Bucky grunts your name, and you roll your hips against his hand.
“Need it. Need it, Bucky- Just- Your fingers, please-“
“No.” He mutters, his own voice gravelly as you squeeze him. “Can’t be patient, can you, sweetheart? Want this cock so bad you’re just grabbin’ for it, wasn’t even able to get my shirt off-“
“It’s a mean game.” You breathe, and he laughs, pushing his lips back over yours.
“You started it.” He brushes the hair from your face, easily moving you backwards until you’re just groping for something of him to hold onto.
“Why can’t you just- Just fuck me-“
“Because you wanted to be a good girl.” Bucky’s kisses are turning slow. Lazy. He’s groping your pussy again, but with far less purpose.
Just spreading your arousal and teasing everywhere you need him, driving you up to an edge you think might take away your mind. A mind you’d be happy to lose for him, if he’d just take it.
“And I want to show you.” Bucky rests his thumb over your entrance, his free hand pushing on your abdomen. Forcing you to stay still. “But you’ve got a greedy pussy, sweet girl. Think you need a little break?”
You shake your head—you do not want a break—but Bucky pushes his thumb a little harder, and you squeak.
“Bu- Bucky-“
“Look at me.” He orders, and you don’t have another choice. His voice is magnetic.
With just the top button exposing his sweaty collarbone and his erection evidence that he cares about this as much as you do, all of Bucky is magnetic. Gravitational. And it makes you feel so unbelievably good, just to be seen by him.
Being fucked by him might kill you.
It’s a risk you’re willing to take.
“Hi.” He smiles, and your lips wobble with need.
“Hi.”
“You still in this?”
You nod, and Bucky’s throat bobs.
“I’d like you to say it-“
“Yes, sir.” You can’t help yourself from saying it.
It’s supposed to be mocking. But your voice is still high, and Bucky looks at you like you’ve lost your mind.
“You’re lucky you’re so pretty.” He shakes his head, tone something between amused and exhausted. “Otherwise you’d be a really fuckin’ brat.”
You flush violently, and Bucky slaps your pussy once. Just enough to make you feel like you’ve been struck by lightning, and mold back into his whims.
“One day.” He drawls, one knuckle pushing up to press on your clit. “I’m gonna get you on my face. Let you ride me, fuckin’ suffocate between your legs.”
You’re shaking, watching him. He’s talking like he’s predicting the weather, but your head is running wild. The image of Bucky under you, forcing your cunt onto his generous mouth. It would be hot and wet, his hands would leave bruises, and, and-
“You’re so reactive,” he mutters, using featherlight swipes of his thumb against your clit. “Think I could make you squirt on me. It’ll be like this,” he starts to move in tiny, rapid motions back and forth. “Like this. But my tongue,” he licks up your neck, nipping at the underside of your jaw. “And your needy clit bein’ sucked like I’ve got some fuckin’ candy.”
He pinches your clit, and starts to roll it back and forth. You can feel a pressure, building and building. It’s almost blindingly good.
“You’re makin’ such nice sounds for me.” Bucky mutters. “Bet you’ll sound even better, coming apart all over my cock.”
You nod, humping into his hand. You need more, but just when you think it’s going to snap, Bucky’s hand moves back down.
“You feel this, baby?” He circles his thumb against your hole, and you hum, eyes flutters. “She’s ready for me.”
“Yes.” You breathe. “Ready, Bucky, please- Wait-“
You almost whine when he pulls away again, but this time it’s for a good cause. Bucky rips his shirt off, tossing it to an unimportant corner of the room.
He’s a work of art. All thick, tanned muscle and scars from his time in the army. They ripple when he moves, decorate him like earned tattoos, and you want to map each one with your fingers. His arms are fucking tanks, reaching out for you, and you tumble into them without a thought.
Bucky hauls you into his arms, hooking under your ass and dragging you off the counter with only a grunt.
“Legs around me.” He orders, and you obey. It’s nice to be this close to him.
Plus the bonus, of getting to try and ride his chest while he carries you to your room. You stumble and giggle, trying to give him directions. Bucky shoves open your door with his shoulder, and you laugh as he walks backwards to the bed, his knees hitting the mattress and sending you both tumbling down.
“Shit- Bucky!” You shriek with delight as Bucky rolls you over, trapping you under his broad body. “Oh- Ooh-“
Your words fall off as he kisses you into the mattress, settling between your spread legs quickly. Your hands wander over the expanse of his back, and it’s a nice wealth to be crushed under. You’re losing cognitive function again, as Bucky ruts his still covered erection against your wet core. You don’t know how he’s kept it together so long. You feel like you’re going to cry with desperation, and you’re fully at his whims.
This is nice, though. It’s a hot pressure—still far from what you need, but enough to tide you over—and Bucky’s wall of muscle around might be the best things you’ve ever felt. Your tits pressed against his chest, his arms braced by your head as you just make out like teenagers. He glides one hand down, rolling your nipple between calloused fingers, and you gasp softly.
“Bu- Bucky-“
“I’m gonna start slow.” He murmurs, low and commanding. “Then pick it up. Fuck you ‘till you can’t walk, baby. Give you what you deserve.” He drops his hips, forcing you to stop grinding up. “That sound good?”
You nod, blinking hopelessly up at him, and he smiles.
“Good girl.” You get a sweet kiss on your cheek, his beard tickling softly. “Stay down.”
You don’t understand the request until he’s moving again, and suddenly it seems impossible. Being naked in front of him had been one thing. Naked, sprawled out in bed below him, and watching him strip is another thing.
Bucky sits up on his knees, never breaking eye contact as he pulls off his belt. You start to chew on your lower lip, and he moves back forward, stopping you with a gentle press of his thumb.
“Easy.” He murmurs. “Relax.”
You whimper, but try to. For Bucky.
And you think you might be turning into a puddle anyway, under the reverence in his gaze.
Bucky gets his pants off with practiced ease, and your mouth falls open.
His cock is thick and big. Veiny in a way you want to feel dragging against you, the head red and angry. Your breath catches as he starts to stroke it, just watching you wait for him.
Your legs close, trying to rub together for some friction. Bucky grabs your knee, and drags them back apart.
“Let me see you.” His thumb rubs in small circles. In a perfect rhythm, with his hand beating his cock. “Nice and relaxed for me, doll. Need you to be relaxed.”
You hum, watching him under hooded eyes. You can’t stop yourself from glancing down to his dick again. You feel empty, waiting for him. You’ve been waiting long enough as it is.
Bucky follows your gaze, and his lips twitch.
“You just walk around all the time?” He teases. “Waiting for some cock to fill you up.”
You nod, breathing through your mouth, and Bucky’s throat bobs.
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.” You whisper, dragging your gaze back to his. “Need to feel you, Bucky. Pleeease.”
He swears under his breath. “Legs a little wider. Now.”
You listen quickly, and Bucky lowers down. He drags his cock between the puffed, slick lips of your pussy, the head bumping against your clit.
“Dirty girl.” He hovers over you, watching your every breath as he plays with you. “So fuckin’ pretty, should be stuffed with cock all the time, shouldn’t you. Gonna keep you in my bed, fuck you full of me.” He kisses you quickly, his words getting rough. “My smart fuckin’ baby, begging for my cock.”
“Don’t- Don’t tease-“ You mumble, and Bucky grins.
“But you’re so pretty when I do.”
He kisses your cheek, and you feel raw. A live nerve, open for him and almost vibrating with desire. But Bucky’s hands are gentle against you. And you know.
He’s going to treat you well.
“You think you can let go for me?” His question is gentle. Almost soft. “Always workin’ so hard.” He notches himself at your entrance, and your breath catches. “I’m gonna take care of you, aren’t I.”
“Yes.” You whisper. “Please.”
Bucky grins, and kisses your lips. “That’s right. You just gotta take it.”
You don’t get to even nod, before Bucky starts to push in.
And you’re not a blushing nun. You’ve used your fingers, and even some toys. Tried to see what the big deal was. But it had just felt like something was inside of you, and kind of heavy, and mostly just annoying.
This is different.
Bucky splits you open, and it knocks the air from your lungs.
“Breathe.” He grunts in your ear, and you nod uselessly. “Breathe, baby.”
You gasp for air, burying your face in the crook of Bucky’s neck, and clawing at his shoulders.
He mutters your name, and you try to arch your back up, inviting more. You need more. Everywhere he isn’t feels cold and hollow. Bucky needs to smear himself all over you, or you’re going to lose your mind.
“More.” You manage to croak out, and Bucky grunts.
“Are you-“
“Yes- Fuuuuck-“
You moan, loud and shameless, as Bucky presses deeper in. He bullies your pussy open, thick cock pressing deep into you and making your feel more full than you could’ve ever felt possible. Your body feels like it’s singing, a shiver of delight pushing up your spine as he hits that spot inside you that you weren’t even sure was real.
Your pussy clenches involuntarily, and Bucky hisses in your ear.
“Shit- Relax.” His thumb snakes between your bodies, massaging your clit. “Let me in, babydoll, come on-“
The massaging helps. You melt into him with a shaking breath, head tipping back when he bottoms out.
Bucky’s head drops into your chest, his breath hot against your breasts. You’re just sitting in each other, in the sticky, feverish heat that might drive you insane.
“You feel… fuckin’ perfect.”
Bucky’s voice is a rasp, and he sounds like a man ruined.
You might have already lost your mind.
“You too.” You breathe out, and he chuckles.
The sound is a vibration, and you bite your lip as pleasure rushes right down to your toes.
“Oh… God.” You squeeze your eyes shut, clenching again, and Bucky grabs your hips.
“You gotta stop doin’ that-“
“Can’t.” You whine. “’S- You did it, you spent forever working me up, and- And now-“
His muscles shift around you, and that’s enough for your body to keen. Your back arches, pussy squeezing, and Bucky makes a guttural sound from his chest.
You squeak, when he pulls the tiniest amount out and slams back in. Your body goes completely limp, and Bucky pushes up over you, his cock still buried deep inside as he stares down at you.
“For someone who asked me to teach her, you’re bad at takin’ directions.”
“You- Bucky-“ He’s fucking you, shallow and slow. Just dragging back and forth. You might cry over it. “You- You knew that already-“
“I did.” He muses, pressing your hips further down. Forcing you to feel every thrust of his cock against your cervix. “It’s something that I love about you, y’know? So sweet and mouthy, all at once. My dream girl. So far outta my reach.”
He angles you a little up, letting him rut against your g-spot, and any chance of a sassy retort is knocked out of your head.
“Not right now, though.” His lips twitch. “Bet you’d tell me anythin’ right now, if I fucked you nice and properly. Fucked you like you deserve?”
Your head bobs, words slurred on lust. “Any- Anything, Bucky, oh my god- mmmmh-“
His thumb swipes your clit, and it’s like a tiny shock you can’t even react to. Your body jerks, but Bucky just pins you back into the mattress.
“Think I don’t want you to talk right now.” Bucky leans down, smirking as you blink with teary eyes. “We’re a little past that, aren’t we sweetheart?”
There’s something mean and powerful, radiating off of him right now. He really knows exactly where he has you right now. And you have no desire to be anywhere else.
“Ye- Yes.”
“Might’ve fucked you nicely, if we’d just talked a month ago.” He raises his brows. “But you made me wait for this pretty pussy. Hurting us both, baby.”
“I- I was-“
“I know.” He kisses your nose. “You are a fuckin’ brat. Bet you thought about this every time you touched yourself.”
“I- I did.” You confess. “Needed your cock, Bucky. You’re- You’re so big-“
You mewl, as he rolls his hips and slams back in. He kisses you, open-mouthed and sloppy, and you can feel your slick need running down your ass. Or just Bucky’s sweat, as he tenses with the effort to hold himself back.
Effort is visibly, slowly slipping.
“You feel that? Feel this dick inside of you?” He fucks a little harder, and your head rolls. “All yours, babydoll. This hard, just for you.”
You whine, and Bucky sucks on a soft spot at the base of your throat.
“You’re a natural.” He groans against your skin. “Made for this cock, made to be my pretty doll, and- shit-“
He rises back up, watching you with a dark, hungry gaze.
“You’re trying so hard, aren’t you. To not choke my dick with your tight little pussy.”
“I- I am, Bucky- Please-“
“You gonna be good and listen to me, now?”
You nod, doe-eyed and cockdrunk, and Bucky hums in satisfaction.
“Hands on my shoulders.” He instructs, and your body somehow finds the strength to listen. “Mouth open. No holding back, wanna hear how you like it. Hear you scream my name.”
He kisses under your jaw, and you moan loudly. Bucky’s lips curve, and he pulls a little further out than before.
“Just like that. Good, isn’t it?”
“So good.” You whine, and Bucky hums.
“Stay just like this for me, doll.” He drags fully out, then slams back in. You think you see stars behind your eyes, and a sound you didn’t know you could make is pulled from your chest.
“Buuccky-“
“I know. Needy girl, wound up so tight.” He sets a slow but brutal pace, his hands bruising into your hips as he holds you down. “I’ve got you now.”
And he does.
Bucky’s got you so good, you’re already ruined for anyone else.
He fucks you the same way he’s been kissing and touching you. Like he’s trying to lay a claim. Make it so there’s no question what he wants, no doubt in your head that this is anything but serious. His hips piston against you, but it’s not rapid. It’s the measured, strong work of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.
If there’s a pleasure point on your body, Bucky’s finding it and using it. You babble, as he abuses your g-spot with the thick head of his cock. His kisses swallow your every moan and plea, and you can’t think beyond his massive body, completely draped over yours. You’re tangled together, his balls slapping your ass and hands wandering over your body like he owns it.
He drags your knees up to your chest, helping him hit even deeper. You’re so wet it’s smearing all over his cock, and the sight of him driving in and out of you is enough to make that pressure in your tummy feel like it’s going to explode.
Bucky’s beyond words himself, hunching over your and taking one of your nipples in his mouth as he grabs at the other. You mewl, eyes glazed over and body overwhelmed with the need to cum. You might scream if you don’t. You’re probably already screaming.
“I- I need- Bucky, please, please, fuck-“
You scratch at his shoulder, so close to toppling over the edge but unable to figure out how to just fall. Bucky grunts, slamming down harder. His tongue swirls your nipple, sucking the peak between full lips before he crashes back up. His kiss is sloppy and open. You’re writhing in the sheet, edged into complete oblivion and on the verge of tears.
“You having some trouble, babydoll?” Bucky teases, throaty and wrecked.
You nod, shaking with the need to snap. Bucky hums, kissing you too sweetly to be productive.
“Let go for me.” He squeezes your ass. “Just let go.”
Bucky finds your clit, and barely even offers more than a tease before you’re coming with a scream of his name.
Your back flies off the mattress, your hips bucking, and you’ve never cum this hard in your life. The tension in you burst like fireworks, heat pooling down your pussy and your body trembling. Your vision goes white. You might black out for a second, the daze of pleasure clouding your gaze.
There’s nothing but Bucky, still pounding into you. The obscene sounds of it, his guttural moans and the slide of his cock through your spasming cunt. His thrusts are jagged and uneven, his mouth kissing you everywhere he can seem to reach.
He follows you quickly, thick ropes of cum painting your insides and dribbling out of your pussy.
Bucky kisses you one more time, before he pulls out. It’s slower, like he’s trying to memorize you. You reach up to cup his face, smiling against his lips, and he lets out a heavy breath.
“That wasn’t too-“
“Perfect.” You whisper, and he relaxes.
“Good. Good.” He rises back up, brushing away the hair stuck to your face.
For a second, you just watch each other.
And with Bucky looking at you like you’re the most beautiful thing in the universe, you feel like it.
He certainly treats you like it, too. Cleaning you up like you’re a princess, a treatment you never thought you’d want until it was Bucky offering. A warm, wet cloth between your thighs and a glass of water. He carries you into the bathroom, changes the sheets, then brings you back to bed.
He pauses after he sets you down, hovering around the mattress with a frown.
You scoot a little to the side, give him a hopeful look, and his shoulders slump.
He crawls into bed next to you, pressing his face into your breasts and holding you tight.
“We got things to talk about.” He mutters, and you hum, playing with his hair between your fingers.
“I know.”
“I was serious, about all of it-“
“I believe you.”
Bucky looks up at you with tired, but happy eyes. You smile, and they crinkle when he returns it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the most anything in the world.
To him, you seem to be the world. And that’s more than enough.
“I’d like to take you out.” He says. “On a real date. Then the gala, too. If you-“
“Yes.” You beam. “Yes, please. I’d like that a lot.”
✦End note: bucky on a dating app has haunted me since tfatws. glad to do something with that.✦
✦If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3✦
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Summary : Bucky’s a little in love with you. He’s also a little scared of admitting it. In the meantime, he’ll let you fall asleep on his shoulders.
Pairing : New Avengers!Bucky Barnes x New Avengers!reader (she/her)
Warnings/tags : Tower fic!!! Food. Just two oblivious people crushing on each other. Post-mission talk, brief mention of reader's past. Set after Thunderbolts* (Let me know if I missed anything!)
Word count : 2.6k
Note : Sorry for not posting for a while, I’ve been so busy, but enjoy!
The mission had gone fine.
There were no casualties, only minimal damage, and the target was secured. It was just one of those missions that got filed quickly and forgotten even faster.
But missions were never just fine, at least not really. They clung to you by the gunpowder in your clothes, adrenaline under your skin, and the faint tremor in your hands you can’t seem to get rid off.
Which was probably why neither you nor Bucky had gone to your rooms.
Instead, you ended up in the kitchen.
At… whatever time it was. 12AM? Maybe 12.30. Either way, it was late enough that the compound had gone eerily quiet. The lights were dimmed and the world narrowed down to the hum of the refrigerator and the buzz of the overhead lamp.
Bucky set the Chinese takeaway bag on the counter like it was precious cargo. “Got you your favourite.”
“You didn’t have to,” you said, leaning back against the opposite counter, arms loosely crossed. Your voice was softer than usual, and Bucky took note of that.
He shrugged, already pulling containers out. “You forgot to eat before the mission.”
You rolled your eyes, but there was no aggression behind it. “I had a protein bar.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It does if I say it does.”
Bucky glanced at you, the corner of his mouth tugging up. “Yeah, well. You’d say anything counts if it means you don’t have to admit you’re wrong.”
You huffed out an amused laugh.
There it was, that comfortable rapport you and Bucky got going on. It always came there, no matter how the mission went. It was… nice, for lack of a better word.
He slid one of the containers toward you without asking.
Your favorite, the wonton soup.
Of course it was.
You looked down at it, then back up at him. “You remembered.”
He didn’t look at you this time, focusing instead on unwrapping his own food. “You order the same thing every time.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“It’s not,” you insisted, but your voice had gone softer again, almost thoughtful. “Sometimes I get the other thing.”
“What? The egg drop soup?” Bucky finally glanced up, lifting an eyebrow. “You complain about it every time you get it and say you should’ve gotten this instead.”
You paused. He did have a point.
His mouth twitched up again only barely, like he was trying not to let himself smile too much.
And then, because you couldn’t help yourself, you smiled too.
You both settled around the small coffee table on the corner of the room, the one that was technically too small for two people but somehow always ended up being shared anyway.
Bucky leaned back slightly in his chair, stretching one arm along the backrest beside him. The metal of his other hand rested on the table, fingers tapping once, then twice.
“You did good today,” you said after a moment, stirring at your soup more than actually eating it.
“So did you.”
“I almost missed that shot.”
“You didn’t.”
“Almost.”
“Doesn’t count.”
You huffed softly, glancing up at him. “Right,” you muttered, looking back down, even though you could still feel his eyes on you.
A moment passed in silence, until it was too uncomfortable for either of you to bear.
“You didn’t have to—” you started again, nodding toward the food, like you needed to circle back to a safer topic. “—do this.”
Bucky leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the table now.“It’s just food.”
“It’s not just food,” you took a bite full of wonton, then swallowed, “and you know it.”
He did. He could’ve just heated up frozen pizza. Or put on some fries in the new air fryer Val got. Instead, he went through all the effort to get you your favourite takeout.
He shrugged, “You were running on empty.”
You laughed, almost in disbelief. “That’s not your problem.”
Bucky can only smile. “Yeah,” he said, “I know.”
You looked up again, and he was already looking at you.
And for a second it felt like something that had been brewing between you for months might actually be said. It’s almost as if one wrong move might break it, or fix it, or—
You nudged his foot lightly under the table.
“Eat your food, Barnes,” you said, gentler now, but with that teasing edge still. “You’re gonna get all grumpy if you don’t.”
He tilted his head. “Already grumpy.”
“No, you’re not.” You nudged him again. “Not when you’re with me.”
You didn’t even know what you meant by that, but he didn’t move his foot away.
Instead, his eyes dropped briefly to where your feet touched under the table, then back up to your face.
“You worry too much,” he said.
You nodded your head. “Someone has to.”
Bucky let out a huff, almost like a laugh.
By the time the food was gone, neither of you had moved much.
Your containers sat empty, pushed off to the side. The common room had gone quieter, if that was even possible.
Bucky was still leaning back in his chair, one arm hooked over the back, the other resting on the table.
It was getting late. You should go to bed. You didn’t, though.
Bucky cleared his throat. “Uh—”
You looked up.
He was already looking at you, but the second your eyes met, his gaze flicked away, suddenly shy. His fingers tapped once against the table.
“You, uh…” He shifted slightly in his chair. “You wanna watch a movie or something?”
The words came out a little too nervous to be casual. It was like he was aiming for easy and landed just shy of it.
“Okay,” you said.
His shoulders dropped just a fraction.“Yeah?”
“Mhm.”
“Okay,” he repeated, like he needed to hear it twice.
—
That was how you ended up on the couch.
The TV lit up the room in soft blue light as the menu screen flickered to life.
Bucky handed you the remote. “Your pick.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. “That’s a trap.”
“It’s not a trap.”
“If I pick something bad, you’re gonna judge me.”
“I don’t—” he started, then paused. “I don’t judge.”
You just looked at him.
He sighed. “…Okay, I judge a little.”
“Exactly.”
You turned your attention back to the screen, scrolling through options.
Rows of movies passed by. You hovered over one— Hachiko, a dog movie.
Bucky leaned slightly closer to see. “…No. The book is better.”
You turned to him. “I didn’t even pick it yet.”
“You were thinking about it.”
You scoffed. “You don’t know my thought process.”
“I do.”
“Oh, do you?”
“Yeah,” he said, a little too confidently. “You pick something sad, then pretend you’re ‘fine’ the whole time.”
“I am fine.”
“You cried at that other dog movie.”
“Airbud was emotional!”
“The dog was fine at the end.”
“That’s not the point!”
Bucky chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re not picking that.”
“Oh, so now I don’t get to pick at all?”
“You can pick,” he said, gesturing toward the screen. “Just not that.”
You stared at him for a second, then hovered over it again just to get on his nerves.
Bucky leaned forward instantly. “Don’t.”
You grinned, pretending to press the button dramatically.
“Don’t.”
You clicked away at the last second, satisfied.
“Wow,” he muttered. “Real mature.”
“Thank you.”
You kept scrolling and paused over one of the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies.
Bucky leaned in to you, close enough that you could feel his warmth, the brush of his arm against yours.
“Are you kidding?” he said.
“You didn’t even read which one it was!”
“I don’t need to,” he said stubbornly, “the books are better.”
“You’re fucking impossible, old man,” you said, faking an annoyance.
“You have terrible taste.” He didn’t really mean it.
You sunk back on the couch. “Whatever.”
Five minutes later, you were still scrolling.
Five minutes turned to ten minutes. Then fifteen.
Lego Movie? Pass. Lego Batman? Pass. Alien? Meh. Predator. Seen that too many times.
“This is getting ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath.
“You keep vetoing everything,” you shook your head.
“Everything you pick is concerning.”
You turned to him. “You suggested a documentary about trains last time.”
“It was interesting.”
“It was two hours of trains, Bucky.”
“They were different trains.”
You stared at him. He stared back.
“I’m not watching that again.”
“Your loss.”
You rolled your eyes, then kept scrolling to another row… another..
And then—
You stopped.
You slowly turned your head toward him.
“No,” you both said, in perfect sync, though neither sounded convinced.
You looked back at the screen, before looking back at each other.
“Okay, but…” you started.
“It’s a stupid choice to make,” he said.
“I know.”
“It’s really stupid. We could do better”
“I know.”
Then, quieter, like he was giving in despite himself, he broke the silence. “…You wanna watch it?”
Your smile spread immediately. “Yeah.”
He huffed. You pressed it and the movie started.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.
Sam had made him watch the first one after all. He had pretended not to like it, but it became one of his guilty pleasures.
It wasn’t longer before you slapped a hand over your mouth after you snorted at a scene. “I’m sorry.”
Bucky shook his head, already smiling. “No, no. it’s—”
Another ridiculous scene played, and you both lost it.
At one point, you leaned into him without thinking, your shoulder pressing fully against his as you laughed.
Bucky froze for half a second, before relaxing into it.
His arm shifted slightly, not quite around you, but close. Close enough that if either of you moved just a little more…
But neither of you did.
The movie played on, ridiculous and dumb and perfect in a way neither of you would admit out loud.
—
The movie had been playing for, what— thirty minutes? Maybe forty.
Bucky couldn’t tell anymore, because he was now frozen.
Just two minutes ago, he was laughing at a corny joke saying something stupid about segways, when he realised you weren’t answering.
He looked to the side and saw that you were leaning on his human shoulders.
He hadn’t dared move, hadn’t even trusted himself to breathe normally. He was hyper-aware of everything: the warmth of being so close to you, the weight leaning into his arm, the faint scent of oil you couldn’t quite get out of your hair. Every nerve in his body felt like it had been switched on at once.
Your head tipped.
And before he could even process it, before he could decide whether to panic or not… his mind supplied helpfully, that you were asleep.
You were asleep on him.
Bucky stared straight ahead at the TV like it might detonate if he looked away.
Okay.
Okay, this was fine.
An adorably small exhale left you, and your head slid just slightly more onto his shoulder, settling there.
There was a very important decision to make here.
He could wake you.
That would be the normal thing to do. It was the reasonable thing to do. He should gently nudge you, say your name, pretend his heart wasn’t currently trying to punch its way out of his chest.
Or…
He glanced down, carefully.
Your cheek was pressed against his shoulder, your face relaxed in sleep. You were peaceful. Comfortable. With him.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew your past and the mental toll that came with it. He knew you were paranoid and hyper vigilant— you told him that yourself. Once, you even told him people made you uncomfortable and uneasy.
But evidently, not him.
His throat went dry.
Or… he could not wake you.
Bucky reached very, very carefully for the remote and paused the movie. The screen froze mid-scene, some convention that Blart was currently attending in the background.
He set the remote aside like it might make noise if he wasn’t cautious enough.
And then he stayed. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe in too deep. And he didn’t even dare adjust his human arm, even though it was already starting to go a little numb.
At some point, your breathing evened out into that steady rhythm of deep sleep. You shifted slightly, and Bucky tensed, worried you’d wake, but instead you just settled more comfortably against him.
Your lips parted just a little.
Aaaand you were definitely drooling on him.
Bucky still did not move. If anything, his shoulders somehow squared further, like he was bracing himself against the concept of ever disturbing you.
Time passed, and Bucky didn’t even check the clock. His arm had long since gone numb, pins and needles creeping down into his fingers, but he refused to shift even an inch.
This was fine. He’d survived worse with Hydra, cryo, decades of nightmares… He could surely survive being a human pillow.
The door whooshed open at around 3 AM.
Bucky didn’t react. It wasn't unusual for one of the team members to get hungry and raid the kitchen before everyone else was awake.
“Hey, Buck…” Bob’s voice cut off mid-sentence. “…What are you doing?”
Bucky stared straight ahead at the frozen TV screen. “Watching a movie.”
Bob walked further into the room.“The movie is paused.”
“We’re uh… taking a break.” Bucky was obviously trying to whispers
Bob looked between the TV and you.
Then he looked back at Bucky, sitting ramrod straight like a statue, arm clearly trapped but making absolutely no attempt to fix it.
Bob raised an eyebrow. “How long have you been…?”
Bucky hesitated. “Not long.”
Bob glanced at the clock, knowing you came back from the mission little less than four hours ago.. “Are you sure?”
“Maybe an hour,” Bucky gulped.
Bob just chuckled. “You’ve been sitting there, not moving… For an hour.”
Bucky said nothing.
“Your arm is literally dead, isn’t it?”
“I can’t feel my fingers.” He admitted dryly.
“And you’re just… okay with that,” Bob tilted his head curiously.
“Yeah.”
Bob let out a small innocent laugh, reaching for sweets in the jar on the table behind them. Bob knew Bucky, and he knew you. He knew that Bucky was very particular about his personal space, and he hated the invasion of it. This, however, was less of an invasion and more of a please come into my space and stay there forever. “Have you tried telling her you’re in love with her?” He suggested, trying to be helpful.
Bucky’s head snapped toward him so fast it was almost alarming. “I’m not—”
Prompt: “Oh what are you doing here? The sun is up!” for the January Jumble Scribbles Challenge
Warnings: implied sexual activities, fluff
Word count: 400
A/N: banners by @vase-of-lilies, title from the song I’ll Get the Coffee by Kathryn Gallagher
Masterlist | Ask me anything! | Library | AO3
Your eyes flutter open, not to the sound of the alarm you set the night before, but the feeling of an arm wrapping tighter around your midriff.
It takes a moment for the realisation to hit you that Bucky, your one hundred year old, vampire situationship (because he hasn’t yet asked you to be anything more), who cannot be out in direct sunlight, is still in your bed from your carnal activities the previous night, rather than back in the gothic, cave like mansion which he calls home.
“What are you still doing here?” Panic fills your voice and your chest as Bucky opens his eyes for the first time that morning, squinting at how bright the room has become. “The sun is up!”
The obnoxiously handsome man, who prior to today had left without a peep before sunrise every night he spent at your place, simply smiles warmly, seemingly not a care in the world, as you jump out of the tangle of bed sheets to pull your curtains across fully.
“It’s not going to burn me to a crisp, dearest.” He chuckles, but silently swoons at how concerned you are for him. “It’s more like a mild allergic reaction - a bad hay fever.”
Your features soften at this news, and Bucky’s insides do a type of somersault in response to your somewhat embarrassed smile he hasn’t felt in over a century. One which appraises the deep feelings he has been trying to push out of his non beating heart for weeks.
Because there would be nothing more painful than watching someone you love grow old and die, then living quite literally an eternity without them.
“The sun hasn’t made you feel ill, has it?” You ask tentatively, cupping his face as if to check his temperature, clearly forgetting he doesn’t have blood running through his veins to cause a fever.
“Nothing that a kiss from you couldn’t heal.”
And that’s exactly what you do. Luscious, sensual and, if Bucky were still technically alive to give his beating heart to another, soul stealing.
He may have promised himself to never fall in love with a mortal again, not when he now walked with the undead, but the more you kiss him the more Bucky believes he might just have to break that vow for you.
🔞💋🌺 Mob!Bucky’s Honeymoon Series Masterlist (18.4k) *complete [Mob!Bucky Barnes x Wife!Reader]
Bucky takes you on the ultimate European honeymoon, where you not only get to explore all the sites, but also each other.
🔞🌟🌺 He’s Hazardous To My Health Series Masterlist (48.8k) *on going [Paramedic!Bucky Barnes x Resident!Fem!Reader]
Bucky Barnes is a beefy paramedic with a traumatic past, who has left a trail of broken hearts behind him. You are a resident doctor new to town, who barely has time to date between long shifts. When your paths cross in your ER during a disaster, is it the start of something magical, or are you destined to be just another of Bucky’s former flames?
🌟🌺 Everyone’s Watching Him (But He’s Looking At Her) Series Masterlist (14.1k) *complete [Actor!Bucky Barnes x Assistant!Fem!Reader]
The entire world’s eyes are on movie star Bucky Barnes, what he’s wearing, who he’s dating, even the mystery behind why he needs a prosthetic arm - but Bucky doesn’t care about all that, he’s only got one thing on his mind, you.
🔞🌸 It Started With A Smile Series Masterlist (17.6k) *on hiatus [Bridgerton AU Duke!Bucky Barnes]
At the start of the new social season, Lady Whistledown predicts this will finally be the year solitary Duke James Barnes finds a wife. After a chance meeting at Lady Danbury’s ball, can you and the Duke overcome all obstacles thrown in your path by his scandalous past and your overbearing mother insistent against your match?
🔞🌺 Keeping Me Up Series Masterlist (11.3k) *complete [Neighbour!Bucky Barnes]
When Bucky moves in next door, you seem to get much less sleep than when your previous neighbour lived in apartment 4a.
Two Parts:
The One That Got Away [Thunderbolts!Ex!Bucky Barnes]
🔞🌺 Part One (3.8k)
SPOILERS for Thunderbolts*. When Bucky enters the void, he expects his memories as The Winter Soldier to haunt him, or perhaps even death itself, instead, he finds himself face to face with you the night you broke up.
& 🔞 Part Two (3.0k)
SPOILERS for Thunderbolts*. After reliving your break up as his shame room experience, Bucky goes to deliver an overdue apology to you - what he doesn’t expect to find out is you suffered through the same worst memory.
Right Here, Waiting [Roommate!Bucky Barnes x Curvy!Fem!Reader]
🔞🌟🌺 Part One (3.6k)
You’re pining after your insanely attractive roommate, but are convinced he doesn’t feel the same way.
& 🔞🌸 Part Two (4.3k)
While out with Bucky’s friends for Sam’s birthday, someone makes a rude comment about your body, leading Bucky to prove just how beautiful he thinks you are.
One Shots:
🎄 The Stake Out Snow In (4.3k)
Being forced to spend the holidays with Bucky when you get snowed in during a mission initially seems like the worst way to end your year, but the forced proximity, and reminiscing about 1930’s Christmases, has you seeing him in a different light.
🌸 She Looks Nothing Like Me (1.3k) [Curvy!Fem!Reader]
You get insecure when you find out you’re the complete opposite of Bucky’s usual type.
🔞🌟🌺 Bed Chem (2.7k) [Roommate!Bucky Barnes x Boyfriend!Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader]
Your roommate Bucky walks in on your sexy Valentine’s Day plans with boyfriend Steve, and you ask him to join.
🌸 Take Me Home (1.0k)
Bucky starts fiddling with his dog tags while out with your friends.
🌺 A Solid Foundation (2.4k) [Builder!Bucky Barnes]
Your best friend suspects your fiancé of having an affair when he starts working late, but Bucky would never cheat on you, right?
🌸 Dear January (1.9k) [Enhanced!Avenger!Reader]
While everyone else is celebrating the new year, all Bucky can think about is his resolution and you, though the two are inextricably linked.
🌺 The Third Wheel (2.2k) [40’s!Bucky Barnes]
When Bucky finally asks you out on a date, the last thing you expect is for his high school crush Connie to also have been invited.
🌸 It’s All In The Eyes (1.3k) [Biker!Bucky Barnes]
When home becomes a person, not a place.
🔞🌺 Nights Like This (1.5k) [FWB!Fuckboy!Bucky Barnes]
There are rules for friends with benefits, and you’ve broken the most important one: don’t fall in love with him.
🌟🌺 Liability (6.7k) [Agent!Reader]
Bucky takes you under his wing when you become the outcast of the new special forces team working with the Avengers.
🌺 If This Is The Last Time (1.3k) [Avenger!Reader]
Bucky finds you bleeding out and he fears it will be his last opportunity to tell you how much he cares.
🌸 Rescue You (3.3k) [GN!Avenger!Reader]
After a mission is compromised, you risk it all to save the one you can’t live without.
Drabbles:
God, You Look So Good in the Morning (400) [Vampire!Bucky]
“Oh what are you doing here? The sun is up!”
🔞 Tangled Between (300) [Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader]
“Oh, we're not done yet”
🔞 One Last Night (350) [40’s!Bucky Barnes]
“Keep those eyes on me”
🔞 My Thesis of You (300) [Nerd!College!Bucky Barnes x College!Fem!Reader]
“You’re going to make me come again.”
🔞🌟 She Who Tames The Beast (350) [Mob!Bucky Barnes]
“Squeeze me baby, squeeze my cock.”
🔞 Our Dirty Little Secret (300) [Congressman!Bucky Barnes]
“Can you be good for me?”
🔞 Swelling Tides (300) [Pirate Captain!Bucky Barnes x Pirate!Fem!Reader]
“Sweetest pussy I’ve ever tasted.”
Beans and Badges (800) [Detective!Bucky Barnes x Barista!Fem!Reader]
Bucky is smitten with his local barista and the doodles she draws just for him.
As the Sun Goes Down (600) [GN!Reader]
Bucky struggles to let anyone in.
Pimple Patches (800) [GN!Reader]
Bucky feels left out when he notices you’re wearing star pimple patches.
🌸🎄 In The Margins (700) [GN!Reader]
At first you’re confused by Bucky’s choice of gift for you, until you look a little deeper.
Hold Me Close (100) [GN!Reader]
You love Bucky, particularly through all the pain.
🎄 The Holiday Grouch (850)
Decorating + “What are you looking at?” + “Um, I got you something” + “Your hands are freezing” + “Here, take my coat”
🎄 Eggnog Cake Shenanigans (600)
Mistletoe + “You got a little something, right there”
🌟🎄 Babies First Ice Skate (600) [Dad!Bucky Barnes]
