★୨⎯ Hey!!! I'm Dany ⎯୧★
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@buckysbunnny
★୨⎯ Hey!!! I'm Dany ⎯୧★
Twenty • She/Her • MDNI • Theater Lover • Latina
You will survive finals!!!! Good luck darling ❤️
I really hope so! Thanks, don’t miss me so much! <3
TASTE TEST
EXECUTIVE CHEF! BUCKY X SOUS CHEF! F!READER
SUMMARY. Bucky Barnes doesn’t lose control. He doesn’t blur lines. But when his new sous chef looks at him differently, control doesn’t feel so important.
WORD COUNT. 17.8k (she’s biiiig, i’m sorry) WARNINGS. workplace romance, age gap, power imbalance, lowk grump! bucky, switching povs, smut, lowkey love/lust at first sight, MDNI, 18+, male masturbation, oral (f receiving), soft dom! bucky, unprotected pnv, tit play, food play, public-ish sex, misogyny and sexism in workplace (not from Bucky or Steve), miscommunication, angst, no use of y/n. Switching povs - Reader is always referred to in second person — you/your, Bucky is always referred to in third person — he/him. Reader is able-bodied, has hair, has a scar on her right hand (needed for plot) from a kitchen accident. It’s mentioned a couple of times. Bucky doesn’t have a metal arm, there’s a scar instead. Hierarchy in the kitchen goes like this — executive chef > head chef > sous chef >>> line cooks. ‘Pass’ is the area/counter where finished dishes are kept to be picked up. NOTES. Baby’s first collab yayy. I am beyond excited to participate in the Bucky’s dream house collab with these amazingly talented authors of the @stantastic-association. Thank you @miraclediviner for organising this and making it a reality and a success. I’ll always adore you. Also thank you for the ‘scar on Bucky’s arm’ idea, I owe you baby. Ilysm ❤️
READ ON AO3
BUCKY’S DREAM HOUSE MASTERLIST
Brooklyn's Taste opened three years ago on a Sunday when it wouldn't stop raining.
Bucky remembers standing outside in the downpour at 4 in the morning, staring at the sign above the door thinking he was going to throw up. Steve had been next to him, soaked through his jacket, grinning like an idiot. "We did it," Steve had said.
Bucky hadn't been able to say anything back.
Now the restaurant has three Michelin stars and a six-month wait list, and Bucky still feels like throwing up most mornings. Different reasons, though. Now, it comes from wanting something so badly it hurts, from knowing he has it and being terrified he will fuck it up.
He's got plans. Big ones. A whole chain of them someday, Brooklyn's Taste locations in every major city, his name synonymous with the best food anyone would ever put in their mouth.
It keeps him up at night. The planning. The obsessing. The constant loop of what if and what next. That and the fact he can't turn his brain off, ever.
5.30 AM and Bucky's already awake, lying in bed watching shadows move across his ceiling. The apartment's quiet except for Alpine purring somewhere near his feet. She's a small white ball of fur he found five years ago outside his previous workplace. Back when Brooklyn's Taste was still a fantasy and he was working himself half to death at some other asshole's kitchen. She'd been a tiny rain-soaked bundle, hissing and scared. He'd scooped her right up and taken her home. Now she's the only thing in his life that doesn't stress him out.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Steve: You up?
Bucky: Yeah
Steve: Coffee in 10
Steve's got a key to the apartment, has had one since Bucky moved in three years ago. The place is right above the restaurant. It stays sleek and minimal, Bucky's never home long enough to decorate. There's a couch, a bed, a kitchen he barely uses. Photos on one wall. Him and Steve through the years, the night they got their first, second and third stars, Alpine in a patch of sunlight.
Everything else is downstairs.
True to his word, Steve lets himself in ten minutes later with coffees and a bag of bagels. He looks annoyingly awake for this hour. "You look like shit," Steve says, setting everything on the counter.
"Thanks."
"When's the last time you slept more than five hours?"
Bucky doesn't dignify that with an answer. Taking his coffee, he drinks it black.
Alpine's already abandoned him for Steve. The traitor. She's perched between his legs and purring loud enough to echo in the quiet apartment.
"You need to hire someone for the sous position," Steve says, pulling out a bagel. "We're drowning."
"I know."
"Interviews are today, right?"
"Yeah." Bucky grimaces. He hates interviews. Hates the whole song and dance of it, sitting across from people who think they want to work in a Michelin kitchen but have no idea what they're signing up for. Half of them quit within a month. "Got three lined up."
"Try not to scare them off this time."
"I don't scare people off."
Steve gives him a look. The one that says 'you absolutely do and you know it.'
They eat in comfortable silence, comes from knowing someone since you were kids.
Steve's been there through everything. The shitty apartment in Brooklyn when they were teenagers, culinary school, the restaurants that fired Bucky for having a mouth on him, the ones that kept him because he was too good to let go. When Bucky said he wanted to open his own place, Steve had been the first one to say 'I'm in.'
Now Steve runs the kitchen when Bucky can't. Head chef. The person Bucky trusts more than anyone.
"You think about seeing anyone?" Steve asks suddenly.
Bucky nearly chokes on his coffee. It's too much talk for this early morning. "What?"
"You know. Dating. Relationships. Human connection, the sorts."
"Fuck off."
"I'm serious." Steve's leaning against the counter, doing his concerned best friend routine. "When's the last time you went on a date?"
Bucky thinks about it. There was that girl three years ago, the one who'd lasted maybe a week before she got tired of him canceling plans because of the restaurant. Then a few one-night things that hadn't gone anywhere because Bucky couldn't turn his brain off long enough to pretend he cared about anything other than work.
Now it's been... a while. Long enough that his right hand and some website with questionable production value have become his primary source of release.
"I don't have time for that shit," Bucky mutters.
"You mean you won't make time."
"Same thing."
"It's really —"
"Steve." Bucky sets his coffee down, runs a hand through his hair. It's getting long, past his neck now. He should cut it. "The restaurant is the priority. You know that."
"I know you're gonna burn out if you don't let yourself have something outside of this place."
"I have Alpine."
"Your cat doesn't count."
Alpine meows, like she's offended.
They drop it after that, but Bucky can feel Steve watching him as they head downstairs.
The kitchen's dark and cold, stainless steel gleaming when Bucky hits the lights. This is his favorite part of the day. Before anyone else shows up, when it's quiet and full of possibility.
The kitchen starts filling up around seven. Line cooks filter in one by one, tying aprons and prepping their stations. Bucky watches from his spot near the pass, drinking more coffee, mentally preparing for service. Lunch is in a few hours. Then the interviews. Then dinner service.
Then he'll go upstairs and do it all over again tomorrow.
"You ever think about what you'd be doing if you weren't here?" Bucky asks Steve, the question coming out of nowhere.
Steve glances up from where he's working. "No. Why?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I think about it. Like what if I'd done something else."
"You'd be miserable."
"Probably."
"Definitely." A grin works up into Steve's face. "You're not built for anything other than this, Buck. It's like — you know how some people are good at things? You were made for this. Big difference."
Bucky wants to argue, but he can't.
Steve's right.
The kitchen is the only place that's ever made sense to him. The only place he doesn't have to explain himself or apologize for being intense or obsessive. Everyone here gets it. They're all a little fucked up, all chasing the same high of a perfect plate, a perfect service, a perfect night.
Brooklyn's Taste is his baby. His dream. The thing he's wanted since he was a kid watching cooking shows and thinking 'I could do that better.'
And he has.
The three Michelin stars prove it.
The first two interviews are disasters.
One guy shows up in a wrinkled shirt, can't answer basic questions about technique, kept calling Bucky 'boss' like they're on a construction site.
The second one's a girl fresh out of culinary school who talks about her 'passion for the craft' but goes quiet when Bucky asks her to describe how she'd handle a dinner rush.
By the time the second one leaves, Bucky's temple is throbbing.
He's got one more. Some girl from New England Culinary Institute, resume says she's done time at Rolo's and Per Se. Probably another disaster waiting to happen. He's subconsciously drafting the text to Steve: we're fucked, none of them can do it.
There's a knock on the door. "Come in," Bucky calls, not looking up from where he's scribbling notes.
The door opens followed by footsteps, quieter than the last two. Someone settling into the chair across from his desk.
"Give me a second," he mutters.
"Sure."
Something about your voice makes him look up.
Oh.
Oh.
You're pretty. That's the first thing his brain registers, and it is completely unhelpful. The second thing is that you're sitting there with perfect posture, hands folded in your lap, looking directly at him without that nervous energy the other two had. There's a defiance about it, like you're daring him to find fault.
Your resume's in front of him. He glances down at it, then back up at you. "You worked at Per Se," he states.
"For a year."
"Why'd you leave?"
"Wanted something smaller, more control over what I was doing. Plus the exec chef there was kind of an asshole."
Bucky almost laughs. Almost. "And you think I'm not?"
"You probably are. But at least you're an asshole about things that matter."
That does make him laugh.
You've read about him. Obviously. There's this way you hold yourself, confident without being cocky. Like you know exactly what you're worth and aren't interested in pretending otherwise. "What are you looking for in this position?"
"Honestly? A place that gives a shit. I'm tired of working in kitchens where it's all about the image and none of the substance. I want to make food that matters."
Bucky's quiet for a moment. That's... exactly what he would've said. Word for word.
"You know what it's like here." It's not a question. "Three stars means three times the pressure. Every plate has to be perfect. Every service. There's no room for error."
"I know."
"Most people quit all the time because they can't handle it."
"I'm not most people."
Bucky should laugh at this, send you out. If anyone else would've said this, he would've laughed. But there's a challenge in the way you say it, he feels something. Interest, maybe. Curiosity. Something he hasn't felt in a while when it comes to potential hires. "Why do you want to work here specifically?" Bucky prodes.
"Because I've eaten here twice. Both times I left thinking about the food for weeks. That doesn't happen often… Also because I want to learn from someone who actually knows what they're doing."
Flattery. But you say it like you mean it.
Bucky's eyes drop to your resume again, scanning the details he'd already read three times. Rolo's, Per Se, a semester in Paris. All good signs. He should ask more questions, grill you on technique, on how you'd handle specific situations, on —
"What happened to your arm?"
That startles and amuses him in equal measure. You're looking at his left forearm, where the scar runs from wrist to elbow, impossible to miss. He did not expect that. "Kitchen accident. Culinary school. Vapour burn."
Everyone has looked at him with pity. Not you. You're looking at it with something closer to understanding. Like you've got your own scars hidden somewhere.
"Does it hurt?" you ask.
"Sometimes."
"When you're stressed?"
Bucky's eyes bore into yours. That's when it hurts. How the fuck did you —
"I've got one on my hand," you say, holding up your right hand. There's a broad scar across your palm. "Culinary school too. Partner spilled oil on my hand. Happens when I'm tired."
There's an intimacy in this, trading scars like secrets. Bucky doesn't talk about his arm, doesn't like when people ask. Where people have been looking at him like fragile and broken, you look at him like you get it.
"You start Monday," he hears himself say.
"What?"
"Monday. 7 AM. Don't be late."
A slow smile spreads across your face, Bucky notices it more than he should. "I won't be."
Standing abruptly, you extend your hand across the desk. Bucky takes it, your palm warm against his, the slight ridge of the thickened skin. When you pull away, he can still feel the ghost of your touch.
"Thank you, Chef." You walk away with footsteps as soft as they were when you entered.
Bucky sits there for a full minute after you're gone, staring at the door.
If there's a worst day to wake up late, it's Thursday. And Bucky wakes up late on a Thursday. Steve's day off, which means the kitchen is running without either of them there, chaos ensuing already.
He checks his phone — 8:47 AM, fuck — and rolls out of bed, ready to practically run down the stairs. Alpine meows as he rushes past without noticing her.
The kitchen would be a disaster. People scrambling, stations a mess, someone probably crying in the walk-in. Bucky is expecting the worst.
Instead, it's... fine?
Everyone's at their station, prepping quietly. There's music playing low in the background. Was that Jazz in his kitchen?
Standing near the pass, organizing tickets that haven't even come in yet, is you. Unfazed expression on your face when you greet him, "Morning, Chef."
"What —"
"Deliveries came in an hour ago. I checked everything, sent back the fish because the eyes were cloudy. Produce is good."
"It's your second day."
"Third, technically. But who's counting." Your mouth tips, just a little, Bucky notices, though he shouldn't.
"How did you —"
"I got here at six. Figured I'd get a head start."
Six in the morning. On your third day. When you could've slacked off, could've waited for someone to tell you what to do.
Bucky's eyes land on your lips, not knowing what to say.
"Coffee?" You bring him back to reality.
"What?"
"Do you want coffee? You look like you need it."
He does. Desperately. "Yeah. Thanks."
You pour him a cup from the pot near the pass, hand it to him. Your fingers brush his for half a second, Bucky loses sight of his thoughts, the touch electric enough to freeze his brain.
"Sugar?"
"Black's fine."
"Of course it is." You're smiling again. Bucky's starting to realize that your smile is dangerous. Makes him forget what he was thinking about. Again.
"Chef, can you taste this?" Bucky's elbow-deep in prep when you appear next to him with a spoon in front of his face, with some kind of herb sauce pooled in it. You're holding it at mouth level, like this is completely normal.
Bucky eyes go from you — your face —, to the spoon, and then back to you. "What are you doing?"
You look confused by the question, head tilting slightly, which will drive him insane if you keep doing it.
The distance between you is too close, close enough that he can smell your shampoo, that same scent that's been distracting him all week. The spoon is still hovering in front of his mouth, attached to you looking at him like he's the one being weird here.
"I can —" He gestures vaguely at the spoon.
"Oh." A shy but sheepish smile blooms on your face, he has to press his lips together so he doesn't mirror it right back. "Sorry, at my last place we always just —"
The explanation makes sense. He knows of places that do it like this. But nobody's ever done it here because Bucky's never allowed it. The thought of someone just… feeding him feels too intimate for a professional kitchen.
But there's no attempt on your part to give him the spoon. The expression in your eyes is soft, makes him confused and mad and wants to let you do whatever you want.
"Right. Yeah. Okay." Just as he leans forward, you lift the spoon to meet him, his mouth. The movement is simple, but Bucky's heart is erratic in his chest. Your fingers are right there, practically brushing his chin. He can see the small scar on your palm.
The sauce hits his tongue and he forgets to think for a second. It's good. Really fucking good. Makes him want another taste immediately.
Pulling the spoon back, you watch his face, like if you do it with intent, you might be able to figure out his thoughts. Bucky really hopes you can't because most of them involve how pretty you look when you're nervous.
"Well?"
"It's good… really good. What'd you put in it?"
You rattle out an endless number of herbs and spices, which does not reach Bucky's ears. He can only see that you're smiling now, pleased with yourself. Somehow, that's even worse for his concentration. "I wasn't sure if you'd like it."
Bucky's brain helpfully supplies that he'd probably like anything you made, which is a deeply unhelpful — not to mention inappropriate — thought to have about his new sous chef. "It's perfect. Use it for the chicken tonight."
"Really?"
"Really."
You're beaming at him now. Bucky needs you to stop doing that immediately. He's supposed to be professional and not think about how your whole face lights up when you smile.
"Thank you, Chef." You turn to walk away and Bucky's brain finally catches up with what just happened. You fed him. With a spoon. Like it was nothing. And he took it. Like he was your golden retriever.
"Wait," he calls before he can stop himself.
You turn to look at him.
"Don't —" How does he phrase this without sounding insane? "The spoon thing. You're not putting that back in the sauce, right?"
Amusement coats your face as you try to mask a laugh. "Of course not. That would be a health code violation."
"Right. J-Just checking." Did he just fucking stutter?
You're definitely laughing at him now, he can see it in your eyes even though you're still trying to hide it. "Don't worry, Chef. I know how kitchens work."
Bucky's left standing there like an idiot trying to remember what he was doing before you appeared with your spoon and your smile and your complete disregard for his sanity.
"You good, Buck?" Steve materializes at his elbow, with the knowing look on his face that Bucky doesn't appreciate.
"Fine."
"You've been staring at the same onion for like thirty seconds."
Bucky looks down. He has, in fact, been staring at an onion for thirty seconds. "I'm thinking."
"About onions?"
"About the menu."
"The menu. That's what you're thinking about." Steve's definitely smirking now.
"Fuck off."
"Just saying, she's good."
"I know she's good. I hired her."
"That's not what I —" Steve stops, that grin getting wider. "Yeah, okay. Sure. The food's good, alright."
Bucky finishes his notes, checks the walk-in one more time, makes sure everything's locked down for the night. The kitchen empties out slowly. He can hear voices from the changing room, people saying goodnight, the back door opening and closing as they filter out into the cold.
He's putting his jacket on when you emerge. The first thing he notices is that you've changed. Obviously. You're in jeans now and an extremely thin sweater, with your hair down instead of tied back. You look different like this. Softer. Without the chef's whites, without anything to hide yourself behind.
The second thing he notices — and fuck, he really wishes he hadn't — is that it's cold in the kitchen. The sweater you're wearing is thin, and your nipples are hard.
Bucky's eyes drop before he can stop them. The sweater's fitted enough that he can see the outline clearly, and his brain just... stops working. Everything narrows down to that one detail, that one absolutely inappropriate thing he should not be looking at. He coughs, tries to hide that he wasn't looking at your tits, and looks away.
You're slinging your bag over your shoulder, completely oblivious. "Goodnight, Chef. It was a great day."
"Yeah. Goodnight."
You walk past him toward the back door, that clean, light shampoo mixed with the lingering smell of the kitchen reaches his nose.
The door opens, letting in a blast of cold air, and then you're gone.
Bucky stands there in the empty kitchen, staring at nothing. His pants are getting tight. "Fuck."
This is bad. This is really fucking bad. He's got a hard-on for his sous chef, the woman he hired less than a week ago, the one who's been nothing but professional and competent. And the one who's completely unaware that she's driving him insane.
You're at least ten years younger than him. Probably more. Way too young for him to be standing here with his dick hard just because he saw the hard outline of your nipples through your sweater. He's too old for this shit, too old to be crushing on someone like a fucking teenager.
But no.
Bucky adjusts himself. He needs to go upstairs. Maybe take a cold shower to forget this ever happened. He has to get his shit together before he does something monumentally stupid. Locking up, he heads upstairs to his apartment, thankful Steve wasn't there to witness any of that.
Alpine's waiting for him on the couch, curled up in a little ball. "Don't look at me like that," Bucky mutters.
She doesn't look at him at all.
Bucky strips off his jacket and shirt, heads to the bathroom. The shower has to be ice cold, to kill whatever this is before it becomes a problem.
But he shoves his pants and boxers down in record speed, and his hand's already on his cock.
Fuck it.
He's has been half-hard since the kitchen, and it takes almost nothing to get fully there. When he closes his eyes, he sees you, in that sweater, the outline of your nipples, hard from the cold. He wonders what they'd look like without the sweater, without anything.
His hand moves faster on his dick. He imagines peeling that sweater off you. You'd be in just your jeans, bare from the waist up. Your nipples would be hard peaks, he thinks. Taut and hard, begging to be touched, to be sucked. "Fuck."
In his head, you're in his apartment, on his bed, looking at him with that same defiant confidence you had in the interview, daring him to touch you. He'd start with his hands, palms cupping your tits, thumbs brushing over your nipples until you gasped. And then he'd use his mouth, tongue flicking over each peak, sucking them until you were squirming beneath him.
Would you be loud? Or quiet? Would you arch into his touch or try to stay composed?
His grip tightens. He's leaking slick now, desperate to blow. He imagines you on your knees. That's what breaks him, the thought of you looking up at him with those eyes while you take him in your mouth, those perfect lips wrapped around his cock, tongue doing things that should be illegal.
Or maybe you'd be on your back, legs spread, letting him taste you. He'd make you come on his tongue first. Wouldn't even touch himself, just focus on you, on making you fall apart.
Then he'd fuck you. Slow at first, just to watch your face. Then harder when you ask for it. And you would ask for it, he's sure of that. You're not the type to stay quiet about what you want.
The image of you underneath him, your nipples hard against his chest, your breath coming in gasps —
Bucky comes with a groan, spilling over his hand and onto the floor. The orgasm hits hard enough that his knees almost buckle, that he has to brace himself against the wall. He just stands there, breathing hard, covered in his own cum.
Then reality crashes back in. He just jerked off thinking about his sous chef. The woman who works for him, who trusts him to be professional. "Fuck."
The water's cold. He stands under the spray and tries to figure out what the fuck he's going to do. This isn't going away. Whatever this is — this desperate want, this intense need — it's not going to disappear just because he got off once. If anything, it's worse now. Now that he knows what it feels like to imagine you, to picture you in his hands.
Bucky has been in a shit mood all day, snapping at people for things that wouldn't normally bother him. The fish is fine but he sends it back. When a line cook asks him a question, he bites their head off. Steve keeps giving him looks from across the kitchen, which says 'what crawled up your ass and died', but Bucky ignores him.
The problem is that he jerked off last night thinking about you. Now every time he looks at you, his brain goes straight back to that moment in the shower, and he hates himself for it.
You're his sous chef. His employee. Off limits in about a hundred different ways. Still doesn't stop his dick from getting interested every time you walk past him though.
Service goes fine. Better than fine, actually. You're good at your job. Great, even. And that somehow makes it worse. Now he can't even pretend you're incompetent to convince himself to not want you.
Post-service debrief happens in the kitchen like always. Everyone gathers around, tired and wired, waiting for Bucky to tell them what they fucked up and how exactly. He's halfway through talking about the timing on table two when he realizes you're not there. Bucky stops mid-sentence, scanning the group. "Where's my sous?"
Everyone looks around. Blank faces.
"She was here like two minutes ago," Steve offers.
"Well she's not here now. Nobody leaves before the debrief. That's the rule."
"Maybe she went to the bathroom?" one of the line cooks suggests.
"I don't care if she had to take a piss. She waits."
Steve gives him another look. Bucky ignores it and finishes the debrief quickly, distracted now, annoyed that you'd just disappear without saying anything. That's not like you. You've been nothing but professional since you started. "Alright, we're done. Good work tonight." He dismisses everyone and heads for the back door, needing air and also needing to figure out where the hell you went.
The cold hits him immediately when he steps out. And there you are standing with your back to him, still in your whites. Bucky's about to lose his shit.
You missed the debrief to stand outside?
"Are you fucking serious right now?" The words come out harder than he's ever used with you. "You just left?"
When you turn around, Bucky's brain stutters to a halt because Alpine's in your arms.
There's genuine panic on your face. "I'm sorry. She — She almost got into the kitchen and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just let her walk in there."
Fuck, you weren't ditching the debrief. You were keeping his cat from causing about fifteen health code violations.
"I — Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't — I shouldn't have yelled at you." Bucky can see that Alpine's purring, completely content in your arms.
You're holding her carefully, one hand under her butt and the other supporting her back. "It's okay. I should've told someone, but she was about to go through the door and I just grabbed her."
"No, you did the right thing." Bucky's close enough now that he can see the way the cold has settled on your eyelashes. "I'm sorry I screamed at you."
"You didn't scream."
"I raised my voice."
"Barely." You smile a little, Alpine headbutts your chin. "Besides, I get it. The debrief's important."
"Not more important than —" Bucky gestures at Alpine. "You probably saved me from getting shut down."
A soft laugh leaves you. "I wouldn't let that happen to you, Chef." There's no hesitation in your voice, none at all. It catches him off guard, tight, right in his chest.
"She's really sweet." You're scratching under Alpine's chin. "I didn't know you had a cat."
"Yeah. Five years now."
"What's her name?"
"It's a he," Bucky doesn't know why he says that, only that he can't help himself, a smile slipping past.
"Wait, he?" You look down at Alpine, mortified now. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I saw the white fur and just assumed —"
"I'm kidding." Bucky's full-on grinning, a rarity. "It is a she. Her name's Alpine."
"Oh. You're terrible."
"Sorry."
"Nope. You're not."
Alpine meows, and you adjust your grip on her. She's not a small cat, Bucky's been feeding her too much. He can see the way you're starting to struggle with her weight. "You must be freezing," he says. He just wants you to get you in first, take Alpine off your hands. But his eyes drift lower. Can't help it. Your whites are barely thicker than that sweater from yesterday, but it's still cold enough here that he'd be able to tell if —
Nope. No. Fuck. Not doing this again.
"I'm okay," you say.
"You're in kitchen whites. Those aren't meant for standing outside in the cold."
"I've survived worse."
Bucky wants to ask what that means, wants to know everything about you actually, but Alpine chooses that moment to squirm in your arms. "I can take her… If she's getting heavy."
You pull back like you're offended, your acting mediocre at best. "Excuse me? Heavy? You take that back right now."
"What?"
"She's perfect. She's the perfect amount of chunky." There's a smile on your lips, and Alpine's looking between you both like she's enjoying this.
"I didn't —"
"No, the damage is done. Alpine and I are very offended."
"Are you two ganging up on me?" Bucky laughs. He can't help it. You're standing there in the freezing cold, holding his cat, giving him shit about calling her heavy, and he's laughing for the second time today. Both times because of you.
Alpine's staring at you with this dreamy expression, the same one she gives Bucky when she wants treats. Looks like he's not the only one developing a crush. "She likes you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She doesn't usually take to people this fast."
"Well I'm very likable." You say it with a straight face. Bucky has to bite back another smile.
The back door opens and Steve sticks his head out. "Oh good, you found her." When he sees Alpine, his eyebrows go up. "What's Alpine doing out here?"
"Almost went into the kitchen. She caught her," Bucky explains.
Steve looks between you and Bucky, sort of an understanding crossing his face. "Right. Well, I'm heading out. You two should too. It's late and we've got an early morning."
"Yeah, just — give me a sec."
Steve's smirking as he goes back inside. Bucky knows he's going to hear about this tomorrow. When the door closes, it's just you, Bucky and Alpine in the cold. "He's right though. You should get home. It's late."
"Yeah… here." You seem reluctant, but you step closer to hand Alpine over. The transfer is awkward. Your hands brush his as you manoeuvre the cat between you, and Alpine protests the movement with a loud meow. For a second you're both holding her, your fingers tangled with his in her fur, close enough that Bucky can smell your shampoo again. Then Alpine's in his arms and you're stepping back. "Goodnight, Chef."
Bucky just nods. Anything else feels like it'd come out wrong.
The door swings shut behind you, the sound lingering in the quiet, as you head back inside. He's still standing, Alpine heavy in his arms, her tail flicking lazily against his chest like nothing just happened. Bucky exhales, a soft sigh, shifts his grip on her without really thinking about it. He can still feel the warmth where your hands brushed his a second ago, like it didn't quite leave with you. "I'm so fucked," he mutters, more to the cold air than anything else.
Alpine just purrs, completely unbothered. "Yeah, real helpful," he adds, scratching under her chin anyway.
Rushing back to his apartment, he makes a beeline to the window. But you're already gone. The buzzing of his phone brings him back to the room.
Steve: You're in trouble
Bucky: Fuck off
Steve: She's pretty Steve: And she saved alpine Steve: And you looked at her like she hung the moon
Bucky: I said fuck off
Steve: Good luck buddy
He's not attracted to you. He's not. You're his sous chef and you're young and you're off-limits and he's not doing this. But…
You're working on your station, breaking down vegetables for the service, when you catch movement in your peripheral vision. Bucky's at the stove testing a new recipe — you think —, his sleeves are pushed to his elbows. Forearms are on full display, tanned and muscular with veins running up under the skin and disappearing into the fabric bunched at his arms. There's the scar, cutting across his left arm. When he stirs the pan, his forearm flexes, the tendons shifting under skin, distracting you from whatever the hell you were just doing.
You've seen arms before. You work in a kitchen. Everyone's got their sleeves rolled up and everyone's got arms.
But this is different. This is Bucky's arms, and you're staring like you've never seen a man cook before in your entire life. He reaches for something on the shelf above the stove, the muscle making its existence known again. You almost make a noise.
But Bucky glances over and your eyes meet.
Did you moan out loud in the kitchen? Fuck.
He caught you. He absolutely caught you staring at his arms like some kind of pervert, eyebrows doing that thing where it quirks up slightly. Turning the heat down, he starts walking towards you. Your heart's trying to break out of your ribcage.
"You good?" he stops right next to your station. Close. Too close.
"Yeah. Yep. Totally fine." The words make their way out faster than it needs to be.
"You sure? You look a little flustered."
"It's hot in here."
He's not even pretending he doesn't know. "Is it? Could've sworn we fixed the ventilation."
"Must be coming down with something."
"Right." Bucky leans against the counter, crossing his arms to the front. That just makes it worse because now the veins are even more pronounced. "You were staring."
"I wasn't —"
"You were definitely staring."
Your mouth opens and closes, brain scrambling for literally anything to say that won't make this worse. "You have veins."
Bucky's eyelashes do a slow dance as he blinks, like he didn't hear you right. "What?"
"Veins. On your arms. They're very — I've never noticed them before. The veins, I mean. I've noticed your arms obviously because you have arms, everyone has arms, but the veins specifically are —" You're spiraling. You know you're spiraling, can't stop though. "It's the lighting in here. Makes them more visible. Or maybe you're dehydrated? You should drink more water. Hydration is important —"
Bucky leans in, close enough that his breath ghosts across your ear, making your entire body go rigid. "You're just digging your grave deeper, sweetheart."
Like he didn't just stop your heart, he's gone. Walks back to the stove, leaving you standing there holding a knife and a half-cut carrot, unable to move.
Service is a blur. You go through the motions, with your brain stuck on the way Bucky's voice sounded in your ear. Sweetheart. He called you sweetheart.
That's not a chef thing. That's a thing thing.
By the time service ends and the kitchen's cleaned down, you're wound so tight you might snap. You change quickly, needing to get out of here before you do something fucking dumb.
Like jump your boss.
You're heading for the back door when you hear footsteps behind you.
"Hey."
When you turn, Bucky's there. Changed out of his whites, wearing jeans and a dark henley that you immediately want to take off. "Hey."
"You rushing off?"
"Just — long day."
"Yeah." He's got his hands in his pockets, there's a nervousness about the gesture, kind of insane because Bucky Barnes doesn't get nervous. "So — uh — Alpine misses you."
If there's a loading screen on your brain, you just wish it doesn't show up on your face. "What?"
"Alpine. She's been sitting by the door all week waiting for you to come back."
"That so?" You can't help but smile.
"Yeah. Won't stop meowing about it." He shifts his weight, you wonder ig he really is nervous. "Thought maybe you could come say hi? If you're not too tired."
This is a terrible idea. You know it's a terrible idea. Going to Bucky's apartment, alone, is possibly the worst decision you could make. But there's no hesitation when you answer, "sure."
Bucky's face breaks into an expression you've never seen on him. Relief? "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, can't leave Alpine hanging."
"Right. For Alpine."
"For Alpine," you repeat.
There's a beat where you both just stand there.
"C'mon… She's upstairs."
You follow him through the kitchen and up the back stairs you've never been allowed to use before, the ones that lead to his apartment. Your heart's pounding so hard you're surprised he can't hear it.
Bucky unlocks the door and pushes it open, stepping aside to let you in first. The apartment is somehow exactly what you expected. Minimal with large windows overlooking the street, couch, a kitchen that looks barely used, and some photos on the wall. It doesn't help that it smells like him. "It's nice," you say.
"It's —"
Alpine comes tearing around the corner, meowing loudly, making a beeline straight for you.
"Oh my god, hi baby." You crouch down as she headbutts your hand. "Did you miss me? I missed you too."
Bucky's watching you with this expression you can't read, soft and a little awed. "She really did miss you."
"I can tell." Alpine flops onto her back, demanding belly rubs, you comply immediately. "She's perfect. Aren't you perfect? Yes you are."
"I'm starting to think she likes you more than me."
"Well, I am very likable."
"So you've mentioned."
"Bears repeating." You scratch under Alpine's chin as she stretches out longer, completely blissed out. "So, does she have a story?"
"Found her outside a restaurant."
"And she just — came home with you?"
"She didn't have much choice. Was soaking wet and scared." Bucky moves to the kitchen. There's the sound of cabinets opening. "She hissed at me for like three days straight. Eventually she warmed up. Now she's spoiled rotten."
"As she should be. You're living your best life, aren't you sweetie?"
When you glance up, Bucky's leaning against the kitchen counter with two glasses of water, watching you play with his cat, the usual look in his eyes replaced by softness.
"What?" you ask.
"Nothing." He crosses the room and hands you a glass. "You looked thirsty."
"Thanks." Your fingers brush when you take it, the electric feeling you've been feeling shoots up your arm.
Bucky sits on the floor next to you instead of on the couch, close enough that your shoulders are almost touching. "She never does this with anyone else."
"Does what?"
"The belly rub thing. She barely tolerates Steve."
"Maybe she has good taste."
"That she does."
Alpine rolls over to climb into your lap, circling twice before settling. The weight of her is warm and grounding.
"I think you've been claimed," Bucky smiles, it makes him look younger.
"I'm okay with that."
You're sitting on the floor of your boss' apartment with his cat in your lap, with him close enough to touch. An excuse to flee the scene should be on the tip of your tongue. The reality is anything but as you find yourself leaning into Alpine more.
"Can I ask you something?" Bucky's voice is careful.
"Mhmm."
"Earlier. In the kitchen… What were you looking at?"
"I —"
"Because you were definitely looking at something."
"I wasn't — okay, yes. I was looking." You can't bring yourself to meet his eyes. "Your arms. The veins. It's — you were cooking and your sleeves were up and I don't know, it was distracting."
"Distracting," he repeats, like he's pleased with your answer.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Sound so smug about it."
"I'm not smug."
"You're absolutely smug right now."
Bucky laughs, and you risk a glance at him. He's closer than you thought. Close enough that you can feel warmth radiating off him, smell him, see those little flecks of grey in his blue eyes.
"For what it's worth, I think it's cute." His voice is barely a whisper.
"What is?"
"That you were staring. That you got all flustered, started rambling about hydration."
"I wasn't rambling."
"You were definitely rambling."
"I was making valid points about water intake —"
Alpine pads off toward her food bowl, offended she's not getting enough attention, leaving you and Bucky sitting on the floor with nothing between you. The space feels smaller suddenly, or maybe he feels closer. You're hyperaware of every detail, how he's looking at you, how his hand is resting on his knee just inches from yours, how you're alone with him in his space and your brain won't shut up about it.
When Bucky shifts, your eyes drop to his mouth without permission. You look back up to see he's staring at your lips too. "Can I —" He gulps, building courage. "Can I kiss you?"
"Yes." It comes out way too fast, borderline desperate, but you can't seem to care.
One second, you're a safe distance apart and the next, his hand is cupping your jaw and he's kissing you.
Oh god, he's kissing you.
His lips are soft, sure. It's everything you've been thinking about for weeks. You kiss him back, probably too eager, definitely too hungry, and he makes this low noise in his throat that goes straight between your legs. His other hand finds your waist, pulling you closer. You go willingly, let him tilt your head exactly how he wants it, let him kiss you deeper, let him take whatever he needs. When he pulls back, you're both breathing hard.
"Fuck. I've wanted to do that for weeks." He kisses you again, shorter this time. "Since the interview."
"You hired me and immediately wanted to kiss me?"
"Something like that."
"That's very unprofessional, Chef."
"Don't care." He's moving before you can answer, hauling you up and then higher, until your balance goes and you're grabbing onto him just to steady yourself.
"Bucky — I — "
"Bedroom," is all he says as he carries you down the hall.
He sets you down on the bed — his bed — and immediately his mouth is on yours again, kissing you like he'll die if he stops. His hands find the hem of your sweater, breaking the kiss just long enough to pull it over your head. "Lie down."
You obey. You'd probably do anything he asked right now.
Bucky follows you onto the bed, settling between your legs as he starts kissing down your neck, sucking little marks into your skin, dragging his mouth over your collarbones and the soft swell between your breasts. His hands work your jeans open, you lift your hips to help him slide them down.
"These too," his fingers hook into your underwear. A soft whimper slips out of you, making him smirk. He strips them off and tosses them somewhere behind him. He's pressing hot, open mouthed kisses up the inside of your thighs, stubble scraping your skin as he works higher toward your aching pussy.
Your brain finally catches up to what's about to happen. "Oh my god."
"Relax," Bucky murmurs against your skin. "Let me take care of you." His breath ghosts over where you're already wet for him, your hips bucking into his face involuntarily.
The first slow, filthy drag of his tongue through your slick folds makes you gasp, back bowing off the bed. He groans like you taste good, like this is doing something for him too, then he's devouring your cunt with single-minded hunger, tongue fucking deep before switching to tight circles on your clit.
Your hands fly to his hair, tangling in the strands. That doesn't faze him in anyway, he just keeps working you with his tongue, alternating between broad strokes and tight circles that make your thighs shake.
He pulls back just enough to speak. "Fuck, your pussy tastes so goddamn good, sweetheart." His mouth attaches to your clit this time, making you cry out. He's ruthless about it, sucking hard on your swollen clit while his tongue lashes it. When you try to close your legs at the overwhelming sensation, he keeps them spread with his hands on your thighs, holding you exactly where he wants you.
"I can't — Buck — It's too much —"
"You can take it. C'mon, baby. Let me feel you cum."
Two fingers slide inside your soaked cunt. It's immediate how your breath stutters to come to a halt, the tight coil in your belly snapping without warning, pleasure rolling through you in waves while Bucky works you through it with his mouth and fingers. It goes on forever, ebbing and flowing, until you're boneless.
When you can finally think again, Bucky's kissing his way back up your body, chin wet with your slick, looking at you like you're the best thing he's ever seen.
When he kisses you this time, you can taste yourself on his tongue, impossibly hot. Your hands find his shirt and start pulling at it. "Off. This needs to be off."
Bucky sits back and yanks it over his head in one smooth motion, and you get your first full look at his chest. Broad and muscled with a trail of dark hair leading down to what you most want now.
He's working his jeans open now, shoving them down his hips along with his boxers. His cock is rock hard, flushed, and leaking precum at the tip.
"Oh my god."
"What?" He's smirking.
"That's — you're —" Your brain's stopped working again.
Bucky wraps a hand around himself and gives a slow stroke, and you watch like you're hypnotized. The veins running along his length stand out, prominent and thick. Like he's read your mind, "how about the veins on my cock? Like 'em?"
If you could, you'd hide yourself. "Bucky!"
"What?" He's fully grinning, looking way too pleased with himself. "You seemed interested in veins earlier."
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
"I really — oh —"
He's positioned himself between your legs, the head of his cock dragging through your soaked folds, teasing your entrance by coming close enough, but not quite in. Whatever you were about to say dies in your throat.
"Still hate me?" he asks, this time bumping your clit with the fat tip.
"Y-yeah."
"I'm so glad you cook better than you lie, you're a terrible liar."
He taps his cock against your clit once more and you nearly come off the bed. It's too much and not enough and you need him inside you right fucking now. "Bucky, please —"
"Please what?"
"Fuck me. Please fuck me."
"Well — Since you asked so nicely."
He pushes in slowly, the stretch perfect. You're so wet that he slides in easy, inch by inch, until he's fully seated and you're both groaning.
"Fuck," Bucky breathes. "You feel — fuck."
You can only hold onto his shoulders and try to remember how breathing works while he starts to move.
The first thrust punches the air from your lungs. The second makes you see stars. By the third you're moaning openly, not even trying to be quiet. "That's it," Bucky snaps his hips to yours, his cock . "Let me hear you."
Bucky fucks you like it's the only thing on his mind. Deep and perfect, dragging his cock along your most sensitive spots. One hand is braced by your head, the other gripping your hip so tight you'll probably bruise. "You're so tight," he groans. "So fucking perfect." Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper. "Fuck — Do that again."
Squeezing around him, you feel his hips stutter, so does yours.
"Fuck — you feel incredible, sweetheart."
Bucky shifts the angle and suddenly he's hitting something inside you that makes you cry out. "There?" he asks.
"There — fuck, right there —"
He just keeps hitting that spot over and over until you're climbing toward another orgasm embarrassingly fast. "Bucky, I'm —"
"I know. I can feel it." His thumb finds your clit to run frantic but perfect circles over it. "Cum for me, sweetheart. Cum on my cock."
The combination of his cock, his thumb and his voice is too much. You come apart, clenching around him, and he fucks you through it, just keeps going until you're almost sobbing from how good it feels.
"Where?" he grits out.
It takes you a second to understand what he's asking. "Inside. I'm on birth control — inside, please —"
Bucky groans and buries himself deep, pulsing until thick ropes of cum floods you, saying your name over and over again. Without pulling from you, he collapses next to you. "Holy shit."
You turn your head to look at him. He's looking at you, hair a mess, lips swollen, looking thoroughly fucked.
He reaches over to pull you close, your body finds his willingly, curl into his side like you belong there.
You wake up to Alpine sitting on your chest, staring directly into your soul. For a second you're disoriented, brain trying to catch up with where you are. Then, it does. The arm draped across your waist belongs to Bucky, who's still dead asleep next to you, face buried in the pillow.
Alpine chooses that minute to meow, loud enough that you're worried she'll wake him.
"Okay, okay," you whisper, carefully extracting yourself from Bucky's hold. He makes a small noise of protest in his sleep but doesn't wake. Instead, he reaches for the pillow you were using and pulls it close to his chest.
It's stupidly endearing.
Alpine leads you straight to her food bowl. Like she knows you'll give in. Which you will, because you're weak for both Barnes in this apartment.
The food's in the cabinet above the sink. You've stayed over enough times that you know where everything is.
It's been two weeks since that first night, and you still haven't talked about what this is and what you're doing. You just keep falling into bed together after service, wake up tangled in his sheets and pretend everything's normal while you're at work. It's easier that way. Safer. Putting a name to this thing between you, feels dangerous, like it'll make it real in a way you're not sure you're ready for.
Alpine crunches her food happily while you stand in Bucky's kitchen at six in the morning, barefoot and wearing his shirt from yesterday, trying not to think too hard about how domestic this feels.
"You're up early." Bucky's leaning against the bedroom doorframe, shirtless, wearing only the sweatpants he'd pulled on. His hair's a disaster, there's a crease on his cheek from the pillow. The most breathtaking thing about this is that he has a smile on his face.
"Your cat's very demanding," you say.
"Yeah, she gets that from me." He crosses the kitchen to wrap his arms around you from behind, chin hooking over your shoulder. The weight of him is familiar now, comforting, making you lean back without a second thought, without hesitation.
This is the part that scares you. How easy it is. How right it feels to stand here in his space while he holds you like this is something you do every day, like you belong here.
"You staying for breakfast?" His voice is still rough with sleep.
"I should go home. Need to change before work."
"You could keep clothes here."
The offer sounds casual, practical. But you know what he's really asking. If you'll stay. If this is more than just convenient.
"Mhmm, don't like seeing me in your clothes?" Deflection comes easy to you.
"I think I love it a little too much." His hands slide down to your hips, thumbs rubbing small circles through the fabric of his shirt.
"That so?"
He presses a kiss to your neck, right below your ear. You have to close your eyes against the rush of warmth that floods through you. "Looks good on you."
"Everything looks good on me."
"Can't argue with that."
You turn in his arms, his hands settling on your waist. "I'll think about it." The clothes thing. The staying thing. All of it.
The walk-in freezer is a blessed relief from the heat of the kitchen, even if you're hunting for duck at eight o'clock on a busy night. Your breath fogs in front of your face as you scan the shelves, fingers already going numb. There's a faraway sound of the door opening and clicking shut behind you.
"Can you tell the chef we were low on shallots —" you call over your shoulder, to whoever it may be.
A hand lands firm on your ass. "Found something way better than shallots." Bucky's voice is smug behind you. When you whip around, he's standing there, looking at you like you're what he wants to devour.
"Are you insane?" Heat floods through you despite the cold. "We're working."
His hand slides to your hip, over the kitchen whites. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I won't tell your boss."
There's a little smirk playing at his mouth, it makes you want to smack him and kiss him in equal measure. "You're the worst," it comes out breathy.
"Yeah?" His other hand joins the first, sliding down to cup your ass properly, squeezing hard enough to make you gasp. "Doesn't seem like you mind."
You think about pushing him back. There's staff right outside and this is wildly unprofessional even by your standards. It doesn't stick, though. Your hands bunch in his coat, pulling him closer.
Bucky grins, his hand draws back and cracks across your ass. The yelp that escapes you is mortifying. So is the way your pussy clenches at the sharp sting, the way you lean into him instead of away. He does it again, other cheek this time, and you bite down on your lip to keep from making another sound. "You've been thinking about this all day, haven't you? Everytime you looked at me during service."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
The audacity of this man. Leaning on your tiptoes, you kiss him. Hard and graceless, you taste the coffee he'd been drinking, he kisses you back, returning the same ferocity.
His hands knead your ass through your work pants, making you aware of how empty you feel, how badly you want his fingers, his cock, anything to fill the ache that's been building between your legs. Your hand drops down to palm him through his pants, already hard, thick and straining against the fabric. The groan he makes against your mouth goes straight to your heat.
"Fuck," Bucky breathes. His hips rock into your touch, shameless in its pursuit. His own hand slides between your thighs now, cupping you through the layers, but it's not nearly enough. You find yourself grinding against his palm like you've lost all self-respect, chasing the friction.
"Jesus, you're soaked already." His fingers press harder, rubbing over where your clit throbs. "Can almost feel it through your pants. You been walking around the kitchen like this all night? Drippin' wet for me?"
Ever since he brushed past you during prep, you've been aching for him. It's pathetic how easily he gets you like this.
"Answer me, sweetheart." He nips at your jaw. Your hand works him faster through his pants while he grinds the heel of his palm against you. "Tell me how wet that pussy is."
"So wet," you gasp out, head falling back against the shelf. "Bucky —"
"Want me to fuck you right here? Bend you over, make you scream where anyone could walk in and hear what a mess you are for me?"
Your fingers slip against his belt, not as steady as you want them to be. "Yes, please —"
Too engrossed, neither of you hear the door swinging open.
"Hey Buck, we need you on the — Oh my god." Steve stands frozen in the doorway. You watch in real time as his brain tries to process what he's seeing.
Bucky's hand is between your legs. Your hand is on Bucky's cock. Both of you look disheveled and panting. For half a second, it says that way.
Steve's face goes bright red. "I'm — fuck —I didn't—" He's backing away, hands up like he's been burned. "I'm leaving. Leaving right now. I didn't see anything. Bye."
The door slams hard enough to rattle the shelves, just stillness remaining. Bucky's pressed into you, forehead to your shoulder, shaking for a reason you don't yet know.
"Oh my god. Steve just — he saw us —" you gasp.
"Yep."
You owe Steve an apology. Probably several. Maybe a bottle of expensive whiskey. "Your bestfriend is gonna think I'm corrupting you."
"You are corrupting me."
"Shut up."
The difference in testing new recipes at Bucky's apartment is that his kitchen is a bit smaller than the one at the restaurant. Which means you're constantly in each other's space, brushing past each other to grab ingredients, hands colliding, his arm pressing against yours while you work side by side at the counter.
You're supposed to be perfecting a glaze for the spring menu. Something with honey that'll complement the duck without overpowering it. Bucky's doing the actual cooking part while you handle the sauce.
Everything's going fine until you try to pour honey from the jar into your saucepan. The jar, heavier than you thought, drips the golden stream of honey onto your hand, your skin, more than the saucepan. Like any sane person, you decide to clean yourself.
Angling your hand over the sink, you're trying to wash the honey off, when Bucky appears next to you. He grabs your wrist to bring it to his mouth, lips wrapping around your index finger, sucking the honey off, tongue swirling around your skin. Heat shoots straight between your legs.
His eyes are locked on yours the whole time. As he moves to your next finger, you forget how to breathe. He takes his time with each one. Licking. Sucking. Making sure he gets every drop of honey while you stand there trying to remember your own name. When he finally releases your hand, his voice comes out rough. "That tastes so much better than regular honey."
"It's — It's the same honey," you reply dumbly.
"No. It's not."
"Bucky —"
"I need more." The hunger, the possessiveness in his voice goes straight to your cunt. "Get on the counter."
There is a brief second where you wonder if reminding him would be better, that you're both working, that you have to get this sauce done before anything else. But your body has other plans, complying itself as he lifts you onto air and places you on the counter.
The granite's cold against your thighs. Bucky positions himself between your legs, and reaches for the honey jar with one hand, while the other stays rooted to your hip. Like you'd move if he moves. You won't. "What are you doing?" you ask, even though part of you already knows.
"Testing a theory." He dips two fingers into the honey and pulls them out, watching the way it drips. "About whether everything tastes better on you."
Honey coated fingers move across your throat, right over the dip of your collarbone, pulling a gasp out of you. Bucky leans in to lick a long stripe across your skin, following the honey trail with his tongue. "Fuck. I was right."
"Bucky — "
"What?" He has the audacity to look innocent. "This is an experiment." He's pulling your shirt over your head, tossing it over the barstool. Your bra follows seconds later. What's left is you half-naked in his kitchen while he looks at you like he wants to eat you.
"This is not an experiment."
"Sure it is." More honey on his fingers, he drizzles it just above your breasts. "Hypothesis: you make everything taste better."
Before you can respond, his mouth descends, tongue tracing the path of honey across your skin. He's meticulous about it, making sure he gets every drop. The combination of his tongue and the sticky sweetness has you squirming on the counter. "Bucky, please —"
"Please what?" He pulls back to look at you, pupils blown so wide his eyes look black. "Tell me what you want."
"More. I want —" The words die on your tongue when he drizzles honey between your breasts, watching it slide down your skin.
"Want this?" He leans down and licks up the valley.
"Yes —" you whimper.
"You taste so fucking good." He's lost to it now, completely focused on chasing every drop of honey on your skin. "Better than anything I've ever made." That's probably the highest compliment you'll ever receive.
"That's —" Your words cut off in a moan when he drizzles more directly onto your nipple. "Oh fuck —"
The honey sticks to the peak, driping down the curve of your breast. Bucky catches it with his mouth, tongue circling your nipple before taking it between his lips to suck.
"Bucky —" Your hands are in his hair now, holding him against you. "Please —"
Your back arches, pushing your chest more towards his mouth. He relishes in the invitation, tongue flicking over your nipple while he sucks, teeth grazing just enough to make you grind towards nothing in search of friction. "Oh my god —"
Bucky chases every drop with his tongue, until you're making sounds you've never made before. That doesn't seem to affect him, he casually moves to your other breast and does it all over again. More honey. More of his mouth. More of that devastating tongue. "You taste so fucking good," he says against your skin. "Could do this all day."
"We're supposed to be working —"
"We are working." He bites down gently on your nipple, making you cry out. "I'm working very hard right now."
Your laugh turns into a moan when his hand slides up your thigh. "These are in my way." He's working your shorts open. You lift your hips to help him shove them down along with your underwear. Completely naked on his kitchen counter, with him fully dressed and kneeling between your legs, Bucky speaks, "spread wider."
The way he looks at you, at how wet you already are, makes you clench around nothing. Bucky angles you so that your back is planted on the counter, and drizzles honey on your inner thigh, high enough that with the help of gravity, it drips down toward where you're aching for him.
Leaning in, he starts at your knee, working his way up with a patience that's going to kill you. His tongue is hot against your skin, chasing the trail once again. By the time he gets halfway up your thigh, you're ready to beg. "Bucky —"
"Mhmm?" He keeps licking, getting closer to where you need him but not close enough.
"Oh god —"
"Just me, baby." The smugness in his voice is a thing you'd like to hate, you would try if you weren't already too far gone.
"Please — Buck — touch me. P-please touch me."
"I am touching you." His breath ghosts over your cunt, sobs threaten to spill from you.
"You — You know what I mean —"
He reaches for the honey again, about to pour it on your other thigh — you think — but something in you snaps right before. Lifting up your body with purpose and determination, your hand shoots out to grab his collar. "If you don't fuck me right now —"
"But, I'm not done —"
"Barnes." You use your other hand now, pulling him up to your eye level. "Shut up and fuck me."
His mouth pulls into a grin that's all teeth, enjoying this a little too much. "Yes ma'am."
While he's working his belt open, you're pulling at his shirt, trying to get it off him. His cock finally springs free, a moan escaping you from just seeing it. "This what you want?" Bucky fists himself, giving a slow stroke that makes your mouth water.
"Yes. God, yes —"
"How bad?"
"So bad, I'm gonna die if you don't get inside me in the next ten seconds —"
Thankfully, he doesn't make you wait more, he lines himself up and pushes in, one hard thrust that punches the air from your lungs. The stretch is perfect and exactly what you needed.
Both of you groan at the same time, relief spilling past shamelessly. "Fuck — You feel — Jesus fucking Christ —"
He pulls out almost all the way and slams back in, hitting your cervix, making you scream. He's so deep like this, deep inside you, that your vision blurs.
"That's it," he groans against your neck. "Let me hear you." Bucky is fucking you in earnest, while you hold on to his shoulders and try not to fall apart. The lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin is mixed with your desperate noises and his low groans.
"Been thinking about this all mornin'," Bucky pants. "Watchin' you work, being all professional about the sauce — wanted to — fuck — wanted to bend you over the counter so fucking bad —"
You love his dirty talk. God knows you love it. But there's this intense need to be filled up, and his talking is currently slowing his dick. "Less talking," you gasp. "More fucking—"
Smirking, he shifts the angle, suddenly hitting that spot inside you that makes you see stars, makes you sob. "Right there?" he asks, but he knows, could tell from the way you're clenching around him.
"Don't stop — please —"
When his thumb finds your clit, you nearly come off the counter. Between that, his cock and the filthy sounds he's making, you're not going to last. "I'm close, Buck — I'm so close —"
"Yeah? You gonna cum on my cock? C'mon, sweetheart. Let me feel it."
His words and one more thrust sends you over the edge. You come hard, clenching around him. Bucky fucks you through it while cursing under his breath. Not long after, he buries himself deep. You can feel him pulsing inside you, filling you up.
There's something dripping down your thighs, you don't know if it's honey, cum or sweat. Probably all mixed together, but you can't bring yourself to care.
When Bucky pulls out, you both wince at the loss. He looks down at the mess you've made, there's honey smeared on your skin, cum dripping out of you onto his counter. He lets out a breathless laugh. "We're disgusting."
"Your fault."
"My fault? You're the one who told me to shut up and fuck you."
"You're the one who started the whole honey thing."
"You're the one who spilled it."
"Accidentally."
"Sure. Accidentally." He kisses you, slow, sweet. You kiss him back, tasting honey off his tongue.
You should probably be mortified of the scene Alpine might walk into, but all you can think about is how you want to do this again. "We really need to clean up," you try being the responsible adult despite what you're feeling.
"Probably." But he's kissing your neck again. "In a minute."
"Bucky —"
"Just one more taste."
"Alpine, no — that's not food." You're trying to rescue a hair tie from Alpine's paws while Bucky makes coffee in the kitchen.
It's early enough that the sun's barely up, that grey-blue light filtering through the windows of his apartment.
"She thinks everything's food," Bucky calls from the kitchen. "Found her trying to eat a receipt yesterday."
"She's going to make herself sick." Alpine bats at your hand, completely unrepentant. "You're a menace. You know that?"
She meows like she's arguing with you.
Bucky appears with two mugs, handing you one before sitting on the floor next to you. Alpine immediately abandons the hair tie to climb into his lap. "Traitor," you mutter.
The coffee's perfect. He's figured out how you take it. Same way you know he likes his black. "What time do we need to leave?" you ask.
"Hour. Maybe less if we want to prep early."
"We always prep early."
"Force of habit." He's scratching behind Alpine's ears, that absent-minded gesture he does when he's thinking. "You staying tonight too?"
The question should feel loaded but it doesn't. It's Bucky asking if you're staying, like he wants you to, like he's gotten used to you being here.
"If that's okay."
"It's okay. I like when you're here." His voice is soft.
You think about your apartment across town. How you haven't slept there in forever. How your fridge is empty and your bed feels too big and too quiet. How this feels more like home than anywhere you've lived in years.
"I like being here," you admit.
He pulls you closer with his free arm. You lean against his shoulder, coffee warming your hands, and let yourself have this.
"We should go soon," you say eventually. "Delivery comes at seven."
"Five more minutes."
"Bucky —"
"Five minutes. Please. Just want to sit here with you."
Alpine whips her head towards him, a 'did I hear that right?' look plastered on her face.
"And you too," Bucky admits, pulling you both closer.
"I'm just saying, the timing's convenient for her." The words make you freeze with your hand on the door. Jason's voice carries from somewhere near the dish station. It's so casual, the way guys get when they think they're being clever.
"What timing?" That's the new line cook. Miller? You can't remember his name and right now you don't care.
"Come on. Hired on spot? That's fast even for someone good."
"Maybe she is good."
Jason laughs like he doesn't care about what he's saying. "Oh, she's good. Question is what she's good at." The new guy laughs too, your stomach dropping straight through the floor.
"Oldest trick in the book," Jason continues. "Want a job in the best kitchen? Fuck the chef. Worked for her."
"Barnes seems smarter than that."
"Barnes is a guy. And you've seen her."
You probably should walk away. The opposite direction of all of this. You should not stand here and listen to them talk about you like you're not a person, like you're just a body that fucked its way into a position you spent years working toward.
But you can't move, can't breathe.
"Either way, smart play on her part. Get on your knees, get ahead."
They're still laughing when you finally force your legs to work, turning and walking in the opposite direction before they can see you, before they can know you heard every fucking word.
Your hands are shaking when you reach the prep station. Your chest feels tight, like someone's wrapped steel bands around your ribs and pulled them taut. Pressing your palms flat against the counter, you try to breathe normally.
Three weeks. That's all it took for people to start talking. To start assuming. To start reducing everything you've accomplished to who you're sleeping with.
And the worst part is if anyone finds out about you and Bucky, that's exactly what they'll think. Every single person in this kitchen will look at your position and assume you earned it on your back. They'll question Bucky's judgment, his professionalism, and whether he's running his restaurant based on merit or based on who's warming his bed.
You can't let that happen. You can't be the reason Brooklyn's Taste's reputation gets dragged through the mud, can't be the reason people stop trusting Bucky's decisions. Which means this thing between you — whatever it is, whatever it was becoming — has to stop.
Your throat burns but you swallow it down. You force yourself to get through the rest of prep, to plate during service like your world hasn't just shifted sideways. It almost kills you to smile and pretend everything's fine when Bucky catches your eye across the kitchen and mouths 'you okay?'
All you can do is nod. It's a lie. He probably knows it's a lie from the way his eyebrows pull together, but there's service and no time to get into this.
You tell yourself you'll deal with it later.
But when later comes, you're slipping out the back door before Bucky can corner you and ask what's wrong. You can't look him in the eye and pretend you didn't hear someone reduce your entire career to a transaction.
Bucky catches you by the lockers after service the next night. There's a doubt in his tone, like he already knows the answer. "You comin' up?"
"Can't tonight." You're pulling your jacket on, trying very hard not to look at him. "I'm not feeling great."
"What's wrong? Do you need —"
"Just tired. Long week."
It's Wednesday.
Bucky doesn't point that out but you can tell he wants to. You can see it in the way his jaw tightens, his hand comes up like he's going to touch you and then falls back to his side.
"Okay… feel better, okay?"
You leave before the guilt can stop you. You'll break down and tell him everything if you don't walk, the confusion in his eyes will kill you.
Your toothbrush is still in his bathroom. Your clothes are still in his closet. There's a drawer full of your shit in his dresser, your shampoo in his shower and probably a hair tie on his bedside table.
But you can't go back, can't step foot in that apartment again. If you do, you'll crack. You'll tell him what you heard and he'll say it doesn't matter and you'll believe him because you want to believe him so fucking badly it hurts.
But it does matter. It matters that people are already talking, that your relationship could damage his restaurant — his life. It matters that every time someone questions your abilities, they'll be questioning his judgment too.
So you go home to your empty apartment and try not to think about how Alpine's probably waiting by the door for you.
It gets easier after that. Or maybe it gets harder and you just get better at it. You start showing up to work right on time instead of early. You make excuses when he texts — headache, early morning, catching up on sleep. All technically true, all curated to create distance.
Bucky notices, of course. He's not stupid. "What's going on with you?"
You're in the office doing inventory counts, and he's standing in the doorway looking at you like you're a puzzle he can't solve. Maybe if he stares long enough, he'll figure out what broke.
"Nothing's going on."
"You haven't stayed over in a week."
"I've been tired."
"You're avoiding me."
"I'm not —"
"You are." He steps into the office and closes the door behind him. The small space suddenly feels smaller. "Did I do something? Because if I did, just tell me so I can fix it."
You did everything right, you want to say. He made space for you in his life. In his home, his bed, his routine. Now that space is a liability, ammunition for anyone who wants to question whether you earned your position or fucked your way into it.
He looks so worried, so confused. All you want to do is cross the room and kiss him, tell him it's not his fault, scream about Jason and the new guy and the sick feeling that's been living in your stomach for days.
But you can't. Telling him means admitting the relationship is a problem, and admitting it's a problem means either ending it or ignoring it. You can't do either.
"You didn't do anything. I just need space."
You watch Bucky's face change, as he tries to hide the hurt, nod even though you can tell he doesn't understand.
When he leaves, you sit there staring at inventory sheets you can't read anymore because your eyes are burning.
Bucky brings Alpine to you a week later. You hear her distinctive meow that makes your heart clench, before you can even see her. When you turn around, he's holding her like an offering. "She missed you."
Alpine's purring, looking at you with those big blue eyes. You want to take her and bury your face in her soft fur, breathe in that familiar smell and pretend everything's okay. "Bucky —"
His voice is soft, pleading. "Just for a minute… please."
You wipe your hands on your apron and take her before you can think better of it. She immediately curls into your chest, purring loud enough to vibrate your whole ribcage. Your hand runs down her back automatically, that familiar motion you've done a hundred times in Bucky's apartment. "Hey, baby," you murmur. "Hi, sweet girl."
When you look up, Bucky's watching you, eyes glassy. There's so much longing there, so much confusion and hurt, and you can see him trying to understand why you're doing this. Why you're pulling away, why you won't talk to him.
"I miss you… Alpine's not the only one."
"Buck —"
"Come over tonight. Please. Even just for five minutes, I don't care, I just — I hate that you're not there."
The apartment must feel so empty without you, frozen in time waiting for you to come back. Except you're not. You can't, not when being with him means people will assume the worst about both of you. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"I just can't."
"That's not an answer."
Alpine headbutts your chin, demanding attention. You focus on her instead of the way Bucky's looking at you.
"Something's wrong," he says.
"Nothing's wrong."
"Everything's wrong!" An octave rise in his tone, desperation bleeding through as frustration.
Alpine meows softly, like she can sense the tension. You hand her back to Bucky before you do something stupid like cry. "I need to get back to work."
"Wait —"
"Please don't make this harder than it already is." You walk away before he can respond. You cannot see the devastation on his face, you will completely fall apart in the middle of the kitchen.
Behind you, Alpine meows again, sad and confused, and you hear Bucky's quiet, broken, "I know, baby."
Bucky looks like shit. There are dark circles under his eyes, hair's a mess like he didn't bother combing it, and he's wearing the same shirt he wore yesterday, a small stain on the collar from the sauce he was testing last night.
He barely looks at you during prep, barely speaks except to call out orders. And when Steve asks him a question, Bucky just stares at him for a solid five seconds before answering like he forgot how words work.
You did this. You're the reason Bucky looks like he hasn't slept in a week. The reason he's moving through his own kitchen like a ghost.
You're in dry storage counting inventory when Steve finds you. "We need to talk."
You don't look up from your clipboard, you can't. You can't lie to one more person. "I'm working."
"So am I. And part of my job is making sure this kitchen runs smoothly, which it's not doing right now."
"Everything's fine."
"Really? Because Bucky's been a mess for three weeks and you look like you're about to cry every time you're in the same room as him. So either tell me what's going on or I'm going to assume the worst."
"There's nothing to tell."
"Bullshit."
"Steve —"
"Did he do something?" Steve's voice goes rough, restrained. "Because if he crossed a line or made you uncomfortable —"
"No." The denial comes out quick. Nothing of that sort should even be spoken into existence. "No, of course not. It's — it's nothing like that."
"Then what?"
"It's personal."
"Personal is affecting professional. So it's my business."
Looking at Steve is hard. Talking about this is hard. So you turn back to the shelves. "Can you just drop it?"
"No."
"Steve —"
"He's my best friend. I've known him since we were kids and I've never seen him like this. He won't eat, he barely sleeps, and yesterday I caught him just standing in his apartment staring at nothing. So no, I'm not going to drop it."
Words refuse to come out, but you force them. "He'll be fine."
"Will he? Because from where I'm standing, you're both miserable and too stubborn to do anything about it."
"You don't understand —"
"So, help me understand. Explain it to me."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because it's complicated."
"Try me."
You slam the clipboard down on the shelf. "Because if people find out about us, they'll think I slept my way into this kitchen. Happy?"
Steve looks at you with confusion. "What?"
"You heard me."
"Who the hell would think that?"
"Everyone, Steve. Everyone will think that. Woman gets a competitive job? Must've fucked the boss." A laugh comes out, it's anything but humourous.
"That's — no one here would —"
"They already are."
Steve goes very still, like he cannot believe his own ears. "What?"
You shouldn't tell him. You should probably keep your mouth shut and let this go. But you're so tired of carrying this alone, so tired of pretending it doesn't hurt.
"I heard Jason and that new line cook talking. About how convenient the timing was. How I must be 'good at my job', if you know…" Your voice cracks, a hiccup in your words, you can't help it. "They laughed about it. About me." Tears well up in your eyes.
"Son of a bitch. When was this?" Steve's knuckles go white, even though he doesn't have anything in his hand. Purely from rage.
He should've been able to make out the timeline, but you know he's stressed. "Three weeks ago."
"And you didn't tell anyone?"
"Who was I supposed to tell? Bucky? So he could fire them and prove their point?"
"Their point is bullshit —"
"Is it? Because if people find out about me and Bucky, that's exactly what they'll think. Every single person in this kitchen will assume I fucked my way in. And worse, they'll think Bucky's judgment is compromised. That he's not professional, and running this place based on who he's with, instead of who's qualified."
Steve lets out a sigh, you know he's not seeing your point. "So your solution is to break up with him?"
"We weren't together."
"Bullshit."
"Fine. It doesn't matter what we were. It matters what it looks like."
"To who? Jason? Some asshole line cook who's probably jealous he's not good enough to make sous?"
"To everyone. To food critics and investors and other chefs, to everyone who's watching Brooklyn's Taste and waiting for Bucky to fuck up. I can't be the reason his reputation gets ruined."
"His reputation? What about yours? And what about happiness? Both of yours?"
You ignore the latter. "My reputation doesn't matter —"
"The hell it doesn't."
"Steve —"
"You think hiding this is going to make it better? You think people are going to stop talking just because you and Bucky aren't together?"
You don't have an answer for that.
His voice softens slightly. "Look, I get it. People are assholes. But you're not protecting him by shutting him out. You're just making him miserable."
"Better miserable than —"
"Than what? Happy? Than having something good for once in his life?" Steve runs a hand through his hair and lowers his voice again. "Do you know what he said to me when you started seeing each other? He said he finally understood what everyone meant about coming home to someone. That for the first time in years, he wasn't coming home to an empty apartment."
Blurry eyes make it hard for you to see him. "Steve —"
"He's in love with you. Even if he hasn't said it yet, it's obvious. And you're killing him."
"I'm trying to protect him."
"From what? From people talking? They're going to talk anyway. People always talk."
"Not if there's nothing to talk about."
"You really think that's going to work? You really think you can just walk away and everything goes back to normal?"
"I don't know. I — I don't know, okay? I'm just trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing is being honest with him."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if I tell him, he'll want to fix it. He'll either fire Jason or reprimand him or do something that'll just make everything worse." You swipe at your eyes fast. "Any way this goes, it makes him look bad. If he fires them, people will say he's protecting his girlfriend. If he ignores it, the rumors get worse. There's no winning here."
"So you're just going to keep avoiding him? Keep pretending nothing's wrong?"
"I don't know what else to do."
Steve's quiet for a long moment. "You could try trusting him."
"I do trust him —"
"No, you trust him to cook, to run his kitchen. But you don't trust him to handle this. He's stronger than you think. And he deserves to know what's going on."
"If I tell him —"
"He'll want to fight for you. Yeah. That's what people do when they care about someone."
You close your eyes and let the tears fall freely now.
Bucky's going through the motions of prep when Steve walks back into the kitchen looking like someone just punched him in the gut.
"What's wrong with you?" The question comes out automatically, that reflexive check-in he's been doing since they were kids.
"We need to talk. Office. C'mon."
"I'm working —"
"Now, Buck."
Steve never uses that tone unless something's seriously wrong. Wordless, Bucky puts down his knife and follows Steve into the office. The door closes behind them with a click that sounds too loud in the small space. "What happened? Someone quit?"
"No. But I just talked to her."
Bucky wants to speak, but words fail him. His jaw clenches so hard his teeth hurt.
"And I know why she's been avoiding you," Steve continues.
"Why?" Three weeks of emotions bundled into one single word.
Steve runs a hand through his hair, clearly debating how to say whatever he's about to say. "Jason and one of the new guys were talking shit, about her. Said she… slept her way into your kitchen."
The words don't register first. Bucky's brain refuses to process them, like if he doesn't acknowledge what Steve just said then it won't be real. "They said what?"
"She overheard them three weeks ago. That's why she's been pulling away. She thinks if people find out about you two, everyone will assume the same thing."
"That's —" The rage building in his chest is so intense he can barely form coherent thoughts, much less sentences. "That's — that's fucking insane. She earned that position before we ever — we weren't even —"
"I know."
"She's the best cook I've had here in years. She works harder than anyone. She —" His hands are trembling with the effort of not putting his fist through the wall. He shoves them in his pockets. "Who the fuck do they think they are?"
"Assholes. But that's not the point —"
"They're talking about her like she's — like she —" The sentence dies in his throat. Saying it out loud will make it real, will make him lose the last thread of control he's got. "I'm firing them. Both of them. Today."
"That's exactly what she said you'd do."
"Good. Then she knows me."
"Buck —"
"No. You don't talk about people like that. You don't —" Bucky's palm connects with the desk hard enough to rattle the papers on it. "Fuck. Does she really think I'd let anyone believe that? Does she think I give a shit what people say?"
"She's trying to protect your reputation."
"My reputation? What about hers?" The question comes out louder than he means it to, weeks of frustration packed into a question. "She's been dealing with this alone for three fucking weeks because she was worried about what — me?"
"Yeah."
"That's — Why didn't she tell me?" He starts pacing. Standing still feels impossible right now, all this energy with nowhere to go.
"Because she knew you'd react exactly like this."
"Like what? Like someone who gives a shit?"
"Like someone who's in love with her."
Steve is watching him with this knowing expression that makes Bucky want to punch him, mostly for being right. "Steve —"
"You're in love with her. Anyone with eyes can see it. The way you look at her, the way you —"
"I know. Fuck, I know, okay? I'm in love with her." Bucky finally, finally admits. But saying it out loud doesn't make it easier. If anything, it makes his chest ache worse, knowing you're out there thinking you have to protect him from gossip while he's in here realizing he'd burn this whole place down if it meant keeping you safe.
Steve's expression softens. "Yeah. I know."
"And she's been avoiding me because she thinks — what? That I care more about what some asshole line cook thinks than I care about her?"
"No. She thinks she's protecting you."
"From what? From being happy?" Bucky lets out a humourless laugh. "I finally — for the first time in years I actually wanted to come home. Wanted to wake up. And she thinks I'm going to choose this place over her?"
Bucky loves his restaurant. Built it from nothing, bled for it. But it’s never felt like this, like something pulling him forward instead of just giving him somewhere to stand. This is the first time in a long while he's felt more than just getting through the day.
"She thinks if people find out, it makes you look bad. Like you compromised your standards."
"My standards?" Bucky's voice goes sharp. "She exceeds every fucking standard I have. She's brilliant and she works her ass off and she —" He takes a breath to calm down. "I hired her because she's good. The best. Everything after that was just — it was just us."
"I know. She knows that too, I think. But she's scared of what everyone else will think."
"I don't give a fuck what everyone else thinks."
"She does. Or at least she cares about how it affects you."
Bucky sinks into his desk chair. "So what do I do?"
"Talk to her."
"I've tried. She won't — every time I try, she shuts down."
"Try harder."
"Steve —"
"You love her, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then fight for her. Make her understand that you don't care what people think. That you're not going anywhere."
Bucky looks up at his best friend. "And if she still won't listen?"
"Then you keep trying until she does. Because that's what you do when you love someone." Steve moves away towards the door. "But first you need to deal with Jason and whoever else was talking shit."
"I'm firing them."
"I figured." Steve pauses with his hand on the doorknob. "For what it's worth? She's miserable too. I've never seen someone look that sad while trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing would be talking to me."
"Yeah. But she's scared… and in love. Those people? They tend to do stupid things."
When Steve leaves, Bucky sits there in his office, trying to breathe through the mess of emotions churning in his gut.
Three weeks. Three weeks you've been carrying this alone because you were trying to protect him. Three weeks of him lying awake wondering what he did wrong, replaying every conversation, every touch, trying to figure out where he fucked up. And the whole time you were just scared, of people talking, of damaging his reputation, of being reduced to some cheap rumour.
He gets it. He does. The world's not kind to women in kitchens, not kind to women who get ahead. But what he doesn't get is why you thought you had to handle it alone, why you thought he wouldn't fight for you.
Because he would. He will.
He's in love with you. Has been for weeks, maybe longer. Since the interview, probably, when you looked at him like you could see right through all his bullshit. Since that first night when you fell asleep in his bed and he laid there watching you breathe, thinking this is what he'd been missing his whole life.
He's in love with you and you're out there thinking you have to protect him.
And some asshole has been running his mouth about you and still working in his fucking kitchen.
Bucky stands up. His hands are still shaking for a different reason now, pure, concentrated rage.
When he walks into the kitchen, everyone's in the middle of prep, focused on their stations, and the familiar sounds of chopping and sizzling fill the space.
Bucky's voice cuts through the noise. "Everyone stop what you're doing. Meeting. Now."
The sudden silence is almost jarring. People look up from their stations, confusion flickering across faces that quickly shift to wariness when they clock his expression. They start gathering near the pass, wiping their hands on their aprons.
You're standing near the back. When Bucky's eyes find you, his heart breaks clean in two. You look exhausted. Scared. Like you're bracing for whatever's about to happen.
He tears his gaze away from you and focuses on the rest of the kitchen. "Someone want to tell me," Bucky keeps his voice calm even though he wants to scream, "what gives anyone the right to talk about their coworkers like they're pieces of meat? In my kitchen?"
Silence. He watches a few people shift their weight, suddenly fascinated with the floor.
"No? No one? Let me be more specific then. Someone — multiple someones, apparently — have been running their mouths about my sous. Starting rumours in my kitchen."
More uncomfortable shifting.
"You know what the really fucked up part is? She earned this job. She's got more talent in her fucking pinkie than most of you have in your entire bodies. And instead of respecting that, instead of learning from someone who's better than you, you reduce her to a cheap rumour."
"Chef —" Jason starts.
"I'm not done. This kitchen runs on two things. Talent and respect. You need both to work here. Both. Not one or the other. I don't care if you're the best cook I've ever seen. If you can't treat your coworkers with basic fucking human decency, you don't belong here."
Bucky's eyes scan the group, making contact with each person individually. He wants them to understand this isn't just talk. "This is me telling you how this kitchen works. How it's always worked. This isn't negotiable. And if you have a problem with that, there's the door."
No one seems to move.
"I've spent years building this place. Years earning the stars, making sure every plate that leaves this kitchen is perfect. And I will not let anyone ruin that because they can't keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves."
He turns to look at Jason directly. "Especially when those opinions are rooted in misogynistic bullshit that has no place in my kitchen."
Jason's face goes from pale to flushed red in seconds, stain of embarrassment creeping up his neck. "I didn't —"
"You did. I know you did. And you know what really pisses me off?" Bucky takes a step closer and watches Jason try not to flinch. "You made her feel like she had to hide. Like being good at her job wasn't enough, like she had to prove herself over and over again because assholes like you can't accept that a woman earned something on her own merit."
"Chef, I —"
"Save it. You're fired. Clear out your station and get out of my kitchen."
Jason's mouth works like a fish out of water, opening and closing without any sound. "You can't —"
"I can. I just did. Out. Now."
"This is bullshit —"
"It's consequence. There's a difference. And whoever else was part of this conversation? You know who you are. You've got two minutes to come forward."
The new line cook — Miller, Bucky thinks his name is — raises his hand like he's in grade school. "I'll resign."
"Smart choice."
Jason's still rooted to the spot, eyes darting around the kitchen like he's waiting for someone to come to his defense. But there's only silence. Nobody meets his gaze.
"I said out," Bucky repeats.
Jason rips off his apron and throws it on the ground, storming toward the back door. The new guy follows him. When the door slams behind them, the kitchen stays silent.
"The rest of you, get back to work. We've got service in three hours and we're down two people. Figure it out."
The kitchen erupts back into motion immediately, everyone returning to their stations like they can't get away fast enough.
Bucky's eyes find you again. You're staring at him with an expression he can't quite read, makes his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. There's shock there, definitely. Disbelief. But underneath it all there's something that looks like it might be hope. It's breaking his heart and healing it at the same time.
He wants to go to you, pull you aside and tell you that you didn't have to protect him, that he would've done this two weeks ago if you'd just told him, and firing Jason is one of the easiest decisions he's made ever.
But the kitchen's watching. Bucky knows better than to push right now. He just holds your gaze, trying to pour everything he can't say into that single look. Then he turns and heads back toward his office before he does something dumb like forget where he is and kiss you in front of everyone.
Bucky's staring at his laptop screen without actually seeing anything, waiting for the kitchen to clear out, to come find you.
When the office door opens and you step in, he cannot believe his eyes. You close the door behind you and stand there frozen on spot.
You both are. Waiting for the other to make the first move. It's stupid, honestly, the two of you stuck on opposite sides of this tiny office like there's some invisible line neither of you knows how to cross first.
The human heart is a wonderful organ, capable of supplying the entire body without missing a beat. Bucky's heart, though, trips over itself right now, like it forgot how this is supposed to work.
Thankfully, you're crossing the small space in three strides and he's standing, reaching for you, every tense muscle in his body finally remembering how to relax, his heart knowing how to function properly again.
Your arms wrap around his waist, bury your face in his chest, hard enough he feels the shape of your nose, your forehead. You're shaking, just this fine tremor he can feel everywhere you're touching him. Like you're trying really hard not to fall apart and it's not quite working. His arms come around you immediately, one hand cradling the back of your head while the other presses flat against your spine. "I'm here," he murmurs into your hair. God, you smell the same. Like the shampoo he's still got in his shower, the one you left behind three weeks ago. "I'm here, baby. Please don't cry."
Crying like this is hardly strong. But his arms are around you and he smells like home, and the last thing you want to be is strong. You've missed him so much it physically hurts. The sob that escapes you is wet against his shirt, "I missed you. I missed you so much."
"Yeah? Whose fault is that?" There's a soft, familiar teasing in his tone, makes you pull back just enough to look at him. Your lips jut out before you can help it, the one that only comes out when it's just him, when you don't have to keep your guard up. Everyone else thinks you're tough and competent, and you are, but with Bucky you've never had to pretend you don't also want to be soft sometimes.
He wants to kiss that pout off your face. Wants to do a lot of things, actually, but first he needs to make sure you're okay. His thumb comes up to wipe under your eyes, catching tears.
"You're being mean." Your lips are still doing the thing he adores most.
"You're the one who disappeared on me for two weeks."
"I had a reason —"
"A stupid reason."
You want to argue but he's smiling at you. One of those real smiles that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. You've missed that smile so much you ache with it. "It wasn't stupid. I was trying to protect you."
"I know." His expression goes serious but still soft. "I'm sorry for doing that without asking you first. The meeting, firing Jason — all of it. But I was so fucking mad, and I would never let anyone talk about you like that. Never."
The fierceness in his voice does something to your chest, makes it warm and painful at once. "I know. I just — I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I should've told you."
"Yeah, you should've." But his voice is gentle, at odds with the words, hands never leaving you, holding you like you're something precious even though you fucked this up. The tears start again, harder this time, and you hate it. You hate crying, feeling this vulnerable, that you can't just pull it together for two seconds.
"Sweetheart, no —" Panic flashes across his face, knows he's said the wrong thing and scrambling to make it right. "No, baby, I'm sorry. I'm stupid. I shouldn't have — I should've just read your mind or something —"
That startles a laugh out of you, wet and a little broken but still a laugh. "You're not a mind reader."
"Clearly. Would've saved us both a lot of trouble if I was."
"You would've been horrified by what I was thinking."
His eyebrows go up, that interested look he gets. "Oh yeah? What were you thinking?"
"That I was in love with you and terrified you'd figure it out." The words come out before you can stop them, honest and raw and so vulnerable it makes you want to grab the words back out of the air and shove them back in your throat. But you don't, you can't. Not when Bucky's looking at you like that.
"You're in love with me?"
You can feel your face heating up, but you nod. "Yeah. I am. Have been for — I don't know. A while."
"Mhmm, that's good. Because I'm in love with you too."
The relief that floods through you is so intense you actually sway a little, his hands tightening to keep you straight. "You are?"
"Yeah. I am. Have been for — I don't know. A while." He's using your words back at you, a soft smirk playing on his lips. You want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure.
"Don't make fun of me."
"I'm not. I'm —" How does he explain this? That he's been miserable without you? That his apartment felt wrong? That Alpine's been waiting by the door every night? "I've been going crazy without you. Alpine too. Keeps waiting for you."
Guilt speaks for you, "I'm sorry. I should've —"
"Stop apologizing." His hands frame your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones. "We both fucked up. You should've told me what Jason said. I should've pressed more."
Standing in his cramped office with your faces inches apart, it feels like you can finally breathe again after weeks of suffocation. "I missed this."
"Yeah?" His thumb traces your bottom lip and your breath catches. "What specifically?"
"You being annoying. Me wanting to hit you. The usual."
A soft smile curves his lips as you study his face, taking in details you'd memorized weeks ago. The small scar on his chin you liked to trace, the way his hair falls across his forehead. But now there's darkness under his eyes, that you've caused. "You look tired."
"Haven't been sleeping."
You pull him closer, words failing, conveying what you want through touch alone. Bucky seems to understand, a soft kiss placed on your temple as he speaks, "we're really bad at this."
"At what?"
"Being apart." He says it like a confession, like admitting weakness, but his hands are still gentle on your face. "I don't want to do it again."
"I don't want to do it again either."
Bucky has to kiss you now. Can't not kiss you when you're looking at him like that, all soft and more importantly, his.
The apartment looks exactly the same as you remember. The book you were reading is still on the table. There's your coffee mug on the counter. From the faint ring outside, it looks like Bucky's been using it.
Alpine appears the second you step inside, meowing so loud it's almost accusatory. She's looking at you like you personally betrayed her. You sink down onto the floor right there in the living room, don't even make it to the couch, Alpine immediately climbing into your lap. She's purring, that rumbling engine sound that always makes you smile. "I'm sorry, baby," you murmur, scratching behind her ears. "I missed you too."
Bucky watches the way you curl around Alpine like you're trying to make yourself small enough to fit in her world. This is what he wanted. This. You in his space, in his world, with his cat, looking like you belong here. Without a second thought, he's drops down next to you, close enough that his thigh presses against yours, arms around both of you. One around your shoulders, pulling you into his side, and the other joining yours in Alpine's fur.
You let yourself lean into him, head finding that spot on his chest that feels like it was made specifically for you. Alpine's purring gets louder, pleased to have both her people back where they belong. "This is nice," you say.
His chin rests on top of your head. "Yeah. It is."
"I'm sorry I left."
"I'm sorry too. Can we stop apologising now?"
The laugh out of you, however soft, startles Alpine enough that she whips her head around to glare at you, but she recovers and nuzzles back into you, apparently deciding to forgive the disruption.
It's the most peace you've felt in weeks. Possibly longer. Alpine's warm weight in your lap, Bucky's arm solid around your shoulders.
"I was thinking," Bucky says eventually.
"Mhmm, dangerous."
He pinches your side gently, making you yelp and squirm in his grasp. "I was thinking you should move in."
"What?"
"Your stuff's already here. Work's downstairs. Commute's easier. Just makes sense."
"That's very romantic."
"I'm in love with you and I want you here all the time. Better?"
You're smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. "A little better."
"Is that a yes?"
You think about your empty apartment, waking up alone, not having this — Bucky and Alpine and home. "Yeah. That's a yes."
The kiss he presses to your temple is soft and lingering. "Thank God. Because I actually cleared out more drawer space — you know, before all this."
Alpine meows, annoyed at being squished between you, and you both laugh. But neither of you move. Neither of you want to.
"I love you," you say. Testing the words out loud now that you can, now that you know how to say it, and that he feels the same.
His arm tightens around you. "I love you too." He's smiling. You can feel it, the curve of his lips on the top of your head.
Alpine purrs louder, like she's agreeing, and you let yourself sink into this. Into Bucky and Alpine and the feeling of home.
COLLAB MASTERLIST ✧ MY MASTERLIST
EXTRAS. Thank you so much for reading! Please do support all the amazing authors who are participating in this collab! Did I know anything about chefs? No. Did I one day watch a random ass movie and decide chefs are hot? You know.
TAGLIST. @sheriff-bodecker @honeysucklewatr @demiebarnes @kqtholins @amoremarveloustime @colettebarnes @barnes-babydoll @miraclediviner @of-sanguine-eyes @biaswreckedbybuckybarnes @manly-man-whore @indigo123789 @wasa-bby @biggestfangirl @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysbunnny @highhopes1008 @castielscaplan @ornateglass @grumpysunnybarnes @luvyoupxmimi @slutdier @yes-ilovetowrite @cautiouscas17 @astridphantom @delusionalwomsn @cinnamon-girl-writes @wherewinterblooms @stifflyspeedyquirk @sassandscribbles @marvelouslyme96 @stesha02 @floatingvalhallasea @goobers-mcgee @t1redphoenix @vickynguyennn @bluellamacheesecake-blog @serenityrjd @pitabread79 @galaxygoddess30 @biggestfangirl @chenoadouble-o7 @phoenix-in-writing @ceoofdisappointment @ladymiseryy @wherewinterblooms @avgdestitute @lunexiax + TO GET ADDED TO THE TAGLIST!
continued taglist. @punkrockrr @pascalsryissa @ichosemightydays @moodshiftandrandomtoughts @bbarnesss @buckysdecaflove @escuzimwa @hello-emma @mathcat345 @alymorsh3 @atsumubabe @idkbeautiful @semigothnerd1 @dragonoftheshadows @wikedfun9 @sebastians-love @placeforcoolusername @erina00 @moonstoneandmoonlight @sivanstreasure @camillechan @mariialahti00 @hellinsidethecathedral @artisticmindsunite-blog @little-sluvixen @abbsrussos-blog @imaprofessional @jessiecakes777 @nameless-ken @stressed-lala @prettybubblesintheair87 @drdbnkl2008 @juliebluehufflepuff @millietozier @no-not-without-you-blog @mysteriousduckprincess @randomfanpage @peachiestevie @dreamersweb92 @tendertulip @buckyscaptain
YES!!! this is what I was looking for when I downloaded this app
DANY HI I MISSED SEEING YOU 🥺❤️
hi kie! uni and work has me slammed:( hopefully i’ll be back soon (or not, we’ll see if I survive finals). missed reading you, though:D
TASTE TEST
EXECUTIVE CHEF! BUCKY X SOUS CHEF! F!READER
SUMMARY. Bucky Barnes doesn’t lose control. He doesn’t blur lines. But when his new sous chef looks at him differently, control doesn’t feel so important.
WORD COUNT. 17.8k (she’s biiiig, i’m sorry) WARNINGS. workplace romance, age gap, power imbalance, lowk grump! bucky, switching povs, smut, lowkey love/lust at first sight, MDNI, 18+, male masturbation, oral (f receiving), soft dom! bucky, unprotected pnv, tit play, food play, public-ish sex, misogyny and sexism in workplace (not from Bucky or Steve), miscommunication, angst, no use of y/n. Switching povs - Reader is always referred to in second person — you/your, Bucky is always referred to in third person — he/him. Reader is able-bodied, has hair, has a scar on her right hand (needed for plot) from a kitchen accident. It’s mentioned a couple of times. Bucky doesn’t have a metal arm, there’s a scar instead. Hierarchy in the kitchen goes like this — executive chef > head chef > sous chef >>> line cooks. ‘Pass’ is the area/counter where finished dishes are kept to be picked up. NOTES. Baby’s first collab yayy. I am beyond excited to participate in the Bucky’s dream house collab with these amazingly talented authors of the @stantastic-association. Thank you @miraclediviner for organising this and making it a reality and a success. I’ll always adore you. Also thank you for the ‘scar on Bucky’s arm’ idea, I owe you baby. Ilysm ❤️
READ ON AO3
BUCKY’S DREAM HOUSE MASTERLIST
Brooklyn's Taste opened three years ago on a Sunday when it wouldn't stop raining.
Bucky remembers standing outside in the downpour at 4 in the morning, staring at the sign above the door thinking he was going to throw up. Steve had been next to him, soaked through his jacket, grinning like an idiot. "We did it," Steve had said.
Bucky hadn't been able to say anything back.
Now the restaurant has three Michelin stars and a six-month wait list, and Bucky still feels like throwing up most mornings. Different reasons, though. Now, it comes from wanting something so badly it hurts, from knowing he has it and being terrified he will fuck it up.
He's got plans. Big ones. A whole chain of them someday, Brooklyn's Taste locations in every major city, his name synonymous with the best food anyone would ever put in their mouth.
It keeps him up at night. The planning. The obsessing. The constant loop of what if and what next. That and the fact he can't turn his brain off, ever.
5.30 AM and Bucky's already awake, lying in bed watching shadows move across his ceiling. The apartment's quiet except for Alpine purring somewhere near his feet. She's a small white ball of fur he found five years ago outside his previous workplace. Back when Brooklyn's Taste was still a fantasy and he was working himself half to death at some other asshole's kitchen. She'd been a tiny rain-soaked bundle, hissing and scared. He'd scooped her right up and taken her home. Now she's the only thing in his life that doesn't stress him out.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Steve: You up?
Bucky: Yeah
Steve: Coffee in 10
Steve's got a key to the apartment, has had one since Bucky moved in three years ago. The place is right above the restaurant. It stays sleek and minimal, Bucky's never home long enough to decorate. There's a couch, a bed, a kitchen he barely uses. Photos on one wall. Him and Steve through the years, the night they got their first, second and third stars, Alpine in a patch of sunlight.
Everything else is downstairs.
True to his word, Steve lets himself in ten minutes later with coffees and a bag of bagels. He looks annoyingly awake for this hour. "You look like shit," Steve says, setting everything on the counter.
"Thanks."
"When's the last time you slept more than five hours?"
Bucky doesn't dignify that with an answer. Taking his coffee, he drinks it black.
Alpine's already abandoned him for Steve. The traitor. She's perched between his legs and purring loud enough to echo in the quiet apartment.
"You need to hire someone for the sous position," Steve says, pulling out a bagel. "We're drowning."
"I know."
"Interviews are today, right?"
"Yeah." Bucky grimaces. He hates interviews. Hates the whole song and dance of it, sitting across from people who think they want to work in a Michelin kitchen but have no idea what they're signing up for. Half of them quit within a month. "Got three lined up."
"Try not to scare them off this time."
"I don't scare people off."
Steve gives him a look. The one that says 'you absolutely do and you know it.'
They eat in comfortable silence, comes from knowing someone since you were kids.
Steve's been there through everything. The shitty apartment in Brooklyn when they were teenagers, culinary school, the restaurants that fired Bucky for having a mouth on him, the ones that kept him because he was too good to let go. When Bucky said he wanted to open his own place, Steve had been the first one to say 'I'm in.'
Now Steve runs the kitchen when Bucky can't. Head chef. The person Bucky trusts more than anyone.
"You think about seeing anyone?" Steve asks suddenly.
Bucky nearly chokes on his coffee. It's too much talk for this early morning. "What?"
"You know. Dating. Relationships. Human connection, the sorts."
"Fuck off."
"I'm serious." Steve's leaning against the counter, doing his concerned best friend routine. "When's the last time you went on a date?"
Bucky thinks about it. There was that girl three years ago, the one who'd lasted maybe a week before she got tired of him canceling plans because of the restaurant. Then a few one-night things that hadn't gone anywhere because Bucky couldn't turn his brain off long enough to pretend he cared about anything other than work.
Now it's been... a while. Long enough that his right hand and some website with questionable production value have become his primary source of release.
"I don't have time for that shit," Bucky mutters.
"You mean you won't make time."
"Same thing."
"It's really —"
"Steve." Bucky sets his coffee down, runs a hand through his hair. It's getting long, past his neck now. He should cut it. "The restaurant is the priority. You know that."
"I know you're gonna burn out if you don't let yourself have something outside of this place."
"I have Alpine."
"Your cat doesn't count."
Alpine meows, like she's offended.
They drop it after that, but Bucky can feel Steve watching him as they head downstairs.
The kitchen's dark and cold, stainless steel gleaming when Bucky hits the lights. This is his favorite part of the day. Before anyone else shows up, when it's quiet and full of possibility.
The kitchen starts filling up around seven. Line cooks filter in one by one, tying aprons and prepping their stations. Bucky watches from his spot near the pass, drinking more coffee, mentally preparing for service. Lunch is in a few hours. Then the interviews. Then dinner service.
Then he'll go upstairs and do it all over again tomorrow.
"You ever think about what you'd be doing if you weren't here?" Bucky asks Steve, the question coming out of nowhere.
Steve glances up from where he's working. "No. Why?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I think about it. Like what if I'd done something else."
"You'd be miserable."
"Probably."
"Definitely." A grin works up into Steve's face. "You're not built for anything other than this, Buck. It's like — you know how some people are good at things? You were made for this. Big difference."
Bucky wants to argue, but he can't.
Steve's right.
The kitchen is the only place that's ever made sense to him. The only place he doesn't have to explain himself or apologize for being intense or obsessive. Everyone here gets it. They're all a little fucked up, all chasing the same high of a perfect plate, a perfect service, a perfect night.
Brooklyn's Taste is his baby. His dream. The thing he's wanted since he was a kid watching cooking shows and thinking 'I could do that better.'
And he has.
The three Michelin stars prove it.
The first two interviews are disasters.
One guy shows up in a wrinkled shirt, can't answer basic questions about technique, kept calling Bucky 'boss' like they're on a construction site.
The second one's a girl fresh out of culinary school who talks about her 'passion for the craft' but goes quiet when Bucky asks her to describe how she'd handle a dinner rush.
By the time the second one leaves, Bucky's temple is throbbing.
He's got one more. Some girl from New England Culinary Institute, resume says she's done time at Rolo's and Per Se. Probably another disaster waiting to happen. He's subconsciously drafting the text to Steve: we're fucked, none of them can do it.
There's a knock on the door. "Come in," Bucky calls, not looking up from where he's scribbling notes.
The door opens followed by footsteps, quieter than the last two. Someone settling into the chair across from his desk.
"Give me a second," he mutters.
"Sure."
Something about your voice makes him look up.
Oh.
Oh.
You're pretty. That's the first thing his brain registers, and it is completely unhelpful. The second thing is that you're sitting there with perfect posture, hands folded in your lap, looking directly at him without that nervous energy the other two had. There's a defiance about it, like you're daring him to find fault.
Your resume's in front of him. He glances down at it, then back up at you. "You worked at Per Se," he states.
"For a year."
"Why'd you leave?"
"Wanted something smaller, more control over what I was doing. Plus the exec chef there was kind of an asshole."
Bucky almost laughs. Almost. "And you think I'm not?"
"You probably are. But at least you're an asshole about things that matter."
That does make him laugh.
You've read about him. Obviously. There's this way you hold yourself, confident without being cocky. Like you know exactly what you're worth and aren't interested in pretending otherwise. "What are you looking for in this position?"
"Honestly? A place that gives a shit. I'm tired of working in kitchens where it's all about the image and none of the substance. I want to make food that matters."
Bucky's quiet for a moment. That's... exactly what he would've said. Word for word.
"You know what it's like here." It's not a question. "Three stars means three times the pressure. Every plate has to be perfect. Every service. There's no room for error."
"I know."
"Most people quit all the time because they can't handle it."
"I'm not most people."
Bucky should laugh at this, send you out. If anyone else would've said this, he would've laughed. But there's a challenge in the way you say it, he feels something. Interest, maybe. Curiosity. Something he hasn't felt in a while when it comes to potential hires. "Why do you want to work here specifically?" Bucky prodes.
"Because I've eaten here twice. Both times I left thinking about the food for weeks. That doesn't happen often… Also because I want to learn from someone who actually knows what they're doing."
Flattery. But you say it like you mean it.
Bucky's eyes drop to your resume again, scanning the details he'd already read three times. Rolo's, Per Se, a semester in Paris. All good signs. He should ask more questions, grill you on technique, on how you'd handle specific situations, on —
"What happened to your arm?"
That startles and amuses him in equal measure. You're looking at his left forearm, where the scar runs from wrist to elbow, impossible to miss. He did not expect that. "Kitchen accident. Culinary school. Vapour burn."
Everyone has looked at him with pity. Not you. You're looking at it with something closer to understanding. Like you've got your own scars hidden somewhere.
"Does it hurt?" you ask.
"Sometimes."
"When you're stressed?"
Bucky's eyes bore into yours. That's when it hurts. How the fuck did you —
"I've got one on my hand," you say, holding up your right hand. There's a broad scar across your palm. "Culinary school too. Partner spilled oil on my hand. Happens when I'm tired."
There's an intimacy in this, trading scars like secrets. Bucky doesn't talk about his arm, doesn't like when people ask. Where people have been looking at him like fragile and broken, you look at him like you get it.
"You start Monday," he hears himself say.
"What?"
"Monday. 7 AM. Don't be late."
A slow smile spreads across your face, Bucky notices it more than he should. "I won't be."
Standing abruptly, you extend your hand across the desk. Bucky takes it, your palm warm against his, the slight ridge of the thickened skin. When you pull away, he can still feel the ghost of your touch.
"Thank you, Chef." You walk away with footsteps as soft as they were when you entered.
Bucky sits there for a full minute after you're gone, staring at the door.
If there's a worst day to wake up late, it's Thursday. And Bucky wakes up late on a Thursday. Steve's day off, which means the kitchen is running without either of them there, chaos ensuing already.
He checks his phone — 8:47 AM, fuck — and rolls out of bed, ready to practically run down the stairs. Alpine meows as he rushes past without noticing her.
The kitchen would be a disaster. People scrambling, stations a mess, someone probably crying in the walk-in. Bucky is expecting the worst.
Instead, it's... fine?
Everyone's at their station, prepping quietly. There's music playing low in the background. Was that Jazz in his kitchen?
Standing near the pass, organizing tickets that haven't even come in yet, is you. Unfazed expression on your face when you greet him, "Morning, Chef."
"What —"
"Deliveries came in an hour ago. I checked everything, sent back the fish because the eyes were cloudy. Produce is good."
"It's your second day."
"Third, technically. But who's counting." Your mouth tips, just a little, Bucky notices, though he shouldn't.
"How did you —"
"I got here at six. Figured I'd get a head start."
Six in the morning. On your third day. When you could've slacked off, could've waited for someone to tell you what to do.
Bucky's eyes land on your lips, not knowing what to say.
"Coffee?" You bring him back to reality.
"What?"
"Do you want coffee? You look like you need it."
He does. Desperately. "Yeah. Thanks."
You pour him a cup from the pot near the pass, hand it to him. Your fingers brush his for half a second, Bucky loses sight of his thoughts, the touch electric enough to freeze his brain.
"Sugar?"
"Black's fine."
"Of course it is." You're smiling again. Bucky's starting to realize that your smile is dangerous. Makes him forget what he was thinking about. Again.
"Chef, can you taste this?" Bucky's elbow-deep in prep when you appear next to him with a spoon in front of his face, with some kind of herb sauce pooled in it. You're holding it at mouth level, like this is completely normal.
Bucky eyes go from you — your face —, to the spoon, and then back to you. "What are you doing?"
You look confused by the question, head tilting slightly, which will drive him insane if you keep doing it.
The distance between you is too close, close enough that he can smell your shampoo, that same scent that's been distracting him all week. The spoon is still hovering in front of his mouth, attached to you looking at him like he's the one being weird here.
"I can —" He gestures vaguely at the spoon.
"Oh." A shy but sheepish smile blooms on your face, he has to press his lips together so he doesn't mirror it right back. "Sorry, at my last place we always just —"
The explanation makes sense. He knows of places that do it like this. But nobody's ever done it here because Bucky's never allowed it. The thought of someone just… feeding him feels too intimate for a professional kitchen.
But there's no attempt on your part to give him the spoon. The expression in your eyes is soft, makes him confused and mad and wants to let you do whatever you want.
"Right. Yeah. Okay." Just as he leans forward, you lift the spoon to meet him, his mouth. The movement is simple, but Bucky's heart is erratic in his chest. Your fingers are right there, practically brushing his chin. He can see the small scar on your palm.
The sauce hits his tongue and he forgets to think for a second. It's good. Really fucking good. Makes him want another taste immediately.
Pulling the spoon back, you watch his face, like if you do it with intent, you might be able to figure out his thoughts. Bucky really hopes you can't because most of them involve how pretty you look when you're nervous.
"Well?"
"It's good… really good. What'd you put in it?"
You rattle out an endless number of herbs and spices, which does not reach Bucky's ears. He can only see that you're smiling now, pleased with yourself. Somehow, that's even worse for his concentration. "I wasn't sure if you'd like it."
Bucky's brain helpfully supplies that he'd probably like anything you made, which is a deeply unhelpful — not to mention inappropriate — thought to have about his new sous chef. "It's perfect. Use it for the chicken tonight."
"Really?"
"Really."
You're beaming at him now. Bucky needs you to stop doing that immediately. He's supposed to be professional and not think about how your whole face lights up when you smile.
"Thank you, Chef." You turn to walk away and Bucky's brain finally catches up with what just happened. You fed him. With a spoon. Like it was nothing. And he took it. Like he was your golden retriever.
"Wait," he calls before he can stop himself.
You turn to look at him.
"Don't —" How does he phrase this without sounding insane? "The spoon thing. You're not putting that back in the sauce, right?"
Amusement coats your face as you try to mask a laugh. "Of course not. That would be a health code violation."
"Right. J-Just checking." Did he just fucking stutter?
You're definitely laughing at him now, he can see it in your eyes even though you're still trying to hide it. "Don't worry, Chef. I know how kitchens work."
Bucky's left standing there like an idiot trying to remember what he was doing before you appeared with your spoon and your smile and your complete disregard for his sanity.
"You good, Buck?" Steve materializes at his elbow, with the knowing look on his face that Bucky doesn't appreciate.
"Fine."
"You've been staring at the same onion for like thirty seconds."
Bucky looks down. He has, in fact, been staring at an onion for thirty seconds. "I'm thinking."
"About onions?"
"About the menu."
"The menu. That's what you're thinking about." Steve's definitely smirking now.
"Fuck off."
"Just saying, she's good."
"I know she's good. I hired her."
"That's not what I —" Steve stops, that grin getting wider. "Yeah, okay. Sure. The food's good, alright."
Bucky finishes his notes, checks the walk-in one more time, makes sure everything's locked down for the night. The kitchen empties out slowly. He can hear voices from the changing room, people saying goodnight, the back door opening and closing as they filter out into the cold.
He's putting his jacket on when you emerge. The first thing he notices is that you've changed. Obviously. You're in jeans now and an extremely thin sweater, with your hair down instead of tied back. You look different like this. Softer. Without the chef's whites, without anything to hide yourself behind.
The second thing he notices — and fuck, he really wishes he hadn't — is that it's cold in the kitchen. The sweater you're wearing is thin, and your nipples are hard.
Bucky's eyes drop before he can stop them. The sweater's fitted enough that he can see the outline clearly, and his brain just... stops working. Everything narrows down to that one detail, that one absolutely inappropriate thing he should not be looking at. He coughs, tries to hide that he wasn't looking at your tits, and looks away.
You're slinging your bag over your shoulder, completely oblivious. "Goodnight, Chef. It was a great day."
"Yeah. Goodnight."
You walk past him toward the back door, that clean, light shampoo mixed with the lingering smell of the kitchen reaches his nose.
The door opens, letting in a blast of cold air, and then you're gone.
Bucky stands there in the empty kitchen, staring at nothing. His pants are getting tight. "Fuck."
This is bad. This is really fucking bad. He's got a hard-on for his sous chef, the woman he hired less than a week ago, the one who's been nothing but professional and competent. And the one who's completely unaware that she's driving him insane.
You're at least ten years younger than him. Probably more. Way too young for him to be standing here with his dick hard just because he saw the hard outline of your nipples through your sweater. He's too old for this shit, too old to be crushing on someone like a fucking teenager.
But no.
Bucky adjusts himself. He needs to go upstairs. Maybe take a cold shower to forget this ever happened. He has to get his shit together before he does something monumentally stupid. Locking up, he heads upstairs to his apartment, thankful Steve wasn't there to witness any of that.
Alpine's waiting for him on the couch, curled up in a little ball. "Don't look at me like that," Bucky mutters.
She doesn't look at him at all.
Bucky strips off his jacket and shirt, heads to the bathroom. The shower has to be ice cold, to kill whatever this is before it becomes a problem.
But he shoves his pants and boxers down in record speed, and his hand's already on his cock.
Fuck it.
He's has been half-hard since the kitchen, and it takes almost nothing to get fully there. When he closes his eyes, he sees you, in that sweater, the outline of your nipples, hard from the cold. He wonders what they'd look like without the sweater, without anything.
His hand moves faster on his dick. He imagines peeling that sweater off you. You'd be in just your jeans, bare from the waist up. Your nipples would be hard peaks, he thinks. Taut and hard, begging to be touched, to be sucked. "Fuck."
In his head, you're in his apartment, on his bed, looking at him with that same defiant confidence you had in the interview, daring him to touch you. He'd start with his hands, palms cupping your tits, thumbs brushing over your nipples until you gasped. And then he'd use his mouth, tongue flicking over each peak, sucking them until you were squirming beneath him.
Would you be loud? Or quiet? Would you arch into his touch or try to stay composed?
His grip tightens. He's leaking slick now, desperate to blow. He imagines you on your knees. That's what breaks him, the thought of you looking up at him with those eyes while you take him in your mouth, those perfect lips wrapped around his cock, tongue doing things that should be illegal.
Or maybe you'd be on your back, legs spread, letting him taste you. He'd make you come on his tongue first. Wouldn't even touch himself, just focus on you, on making you fall apart.
Then he'd fuck you. Slow at first, just to watch your face. Then harder when you ask for it. And you would ask for it, he's sure of that. You're not the type to stay quiet about what you want.
The image of you underneath him, your nipples hard against his chest, your breath coming in gasps —
Bucky comes with a groan, spilling over his hand and onto the floor. The orgasm hits hard enough that his knees almost buckle, that he has to brace himself against the wall. He just stands there, breathing hard, covered in his own cum.
Then reality crashes back in. He just jerked off thinking about his sous chef. The woman who works for him, who trusts him to be professional. "Fuck."
The water's cold. He stands under the spray and tries to figure out what the fuck he's going to do. This isn't going away. Whatever this is — this desperate want, this intense need — it's not going to disappear just because he got off once. If anything, it's worse now. Now that he knows what it feels like to imagine you, to picture you in his hands.
Bucky has been in a shit mood all day, snapping at people for things that wouldn't normally bother him. The fish is fine but he sends it back. When a line cook asks him a question, he bites their head off. Steve keeps giving him looks from across the kitchen, which says 'what crawled up your ass and died', but Bucky ignores him.
The problem is that he jerked off last night thinking about you. Now every time he looks at you, his brain goes straight back to that moment in the shower, and he hates himself for it.
You're his sous chef. His employee. Off limits in about a hundred different ways. Still doesn't stop his dick from getting interested every time you walk past him though.
Service goes fine. Better than fine, actually. You're good at your job. Great, even. And that somehow makes it worse. Now he can't even pretend you're incompetent to convince himself to not want you.
Post-service debrief happens in the kitchen like always. Everyone gathers around, tired and wired, waiting for Bucky to tell them what they fucked up and how exactly. He's halfway through talking about the timing on table two when he realizes you're not there. Bucky stops mid-sentence, scanning the group. "Where's my sous?"
Everyone looks around. Blank faces.
"She was here like two minutes ago," Steve offers.
"Well she's not here now. Nobody leaves before the debrief. That's the rule."
"Maybe she went to the bathroom?" one of the line cooks suggests.
"I don't care if she had to take a piss. She waits."
Steve gives him another look. Bucky ignores it and finishes the debrief quickly, distracted now, annoyed that you'd just disappear without saying anything. That's not like you. You've been nothing but professional since you started. "Alright, we're done. Good work tonight." He dismisses everyone and heads for the back door, needing air and also needing to figure out where the hell you went.
The cold hits him immediately when he steps out. And there you are standing with your back to him, still in your whites. Bucky's about to lose his shit.
You missed the debrief to stand outside?
"Are you fucking serious right now?" The words come out harder than he's ever used with you. "You just left?"
When you turn around, Bucky's brain stutters to a halt because Alpine's in your arms.
There's genuine panic on your face. "I'm sorry. She — She almost got into the kitchen and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just let her walk in there."
Fuck, you weren't ditching the debrief. You were keeping his cat from causing about fifteen health code violations.
"I — Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't — I shouldn't have yelled at you." Bucky can see that Alpine's purring, completely content in your arms.
You're holding her carefully, one hand under her butt and the other supporting her back. "It's okay. I should've told someone, but she was about to go through the door and I just grabbed her."
"No, you did the right thing." Bucky's close enough now that he can see the way the cold has settled on your eyelashes. "I'm sorry I screamed at you."
"You didn't scream."
"I raised my voice."
"Barely." You smile a little, Alpine headbutts your chin. "Besides, I get it. The debrief's important."
"Not more important than —" Bucky gestures at Alpine. "You probably saved me from getting shut down."
A soft laugh leaves you. "I wouldn't let that happen to you, Chef." There's no hesitation in your voice, none at all. It catches him off guard, tight, right in his chest.
"She's really sweet." You're scratching under Alpine's chin. "I didn't know you had a cat."
"Yeah. Five years now."
"What's her name?"
"It's a he," Bucky doesn't know why he says that, only that he can't help himself, a smile slipping past.
"Wait, he?" You look down at Alpine, mortified now. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I saw the white fur and just assumed —"
"I'm kidding." Bucky's full-on grinning, a rarity. "It is a she. Her name's Alpine."
"Oh. You're terrible."
"Sorry."
"Nope. You're not."
Alpine meows, and you adjust your grip on her. She's not a small cat, Bucky's been feeding her too much. He can see the way you're starting to struggle with her weight. "You must be freezing," he says. He just wants you to get you in first, take Alpine off your hands. But his eyes drift lower. Can't help it. Your whites are barely thicker than that sweater from yesterday, but it's still cold enough here that he'd be able to tell if —
Nope. No. Fuck. Not doing this again.
"I'm okay," you say.
"You're in kitchen whites. Those aren't meant for standing outside in the cold."
"I've survived worse."
Bucky wants to ask what that means, wants to know everything about you actually, but Alpine chooses that moment to squirm in your arms. "I can take her… If she's getting heavy."
You pull back like you're offended, your acting mediocre at best. "Excuse me? Heavy? You take that back right now."
"What?"
"She's perfect. She's the perfect amount of chunky." There's a smile on your lips, and Alpine's looking between you both like she's enjoying this.
"I didn't —"
"No, the damage is done. Alpine and I are very offended."
"Are you two ganging up on me?" Bucky laughs. He can't help it. You're standing there in the freezing cold, holding his cat, giving him shit about calling her heavy, and he's laughing for the second time today. Both times because of you.
Alpine's staring at you with this dreamy expression, the same one she gives Bucky when she wants treats. Looks like he's not the only one developing a crush. "She likes you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She doesn't usually take to people this fast."
"Well I'm very likable." You say it with a straight face. Bucky has to bite back another smile.
The back door opens and Steve sticks his head out. "Oh good, you found her." When he sees Alpine, his eyebrows go up. "What's Alpine doing out here?"
"Almost went into the kitchen. She caught her," Bucky explains.
Steve looks between you and Bucky, sort of an understanding crossing his face. "Right. Well, I'm heading out. You two should too. It's late and we've got an early morning."
"Yeah, just — give me a sec."
Steve's smirking as he goes back inside. Bucky knows he's going to hear about this tomorrow. When the door closes, it's just you, Bucky and Alpine in the cold. "He's right though. You should get home. It's late."
"Yeah… here." You seem reluctant, but you step closer to hand Alpine over. The transfer is awkward. Your hands brush his as you manoeuvre the cat between you, and Alpine protests the movement with a loud meow. For a second you're both holding her, your fingers tangled with his in her fur, close enough that Bucky can smell your shampoo again. Then Alpine's in his arms and you're stepping back. "Goodnight, Chef."
Bucky just nods. Anything else feels like it'd come out wrong.
The door swings shut behind you, the sound lingering in the quiet, as you head back inside. He's still standing, Alpine heavy in his arms, her tail flicking lazily against his chest like nothing just happened. Bucky exhales, a soft sigh, shifts his grip on her without really thinking about it. He can still feel the warmth where your hands brushed his a second ago, like it didn't quite leave with you. "I'm so fucked," he mutters, more to the cold air than anything else.
Alpine just purrs, completely unbothered. "Yeah, real helpful," he adds, scratching under her chin anyway.
Rushing back to his apartment, he makes a beeline to the window. But you're already gone. The buzzing of his phone brings him back to the room.
Steve: You're in trouble
Bucky: Fuck off
Steve: She's pretty Steve: And she saved alpine Steve: And you looked at her like she hung the moon
Bucky: I said fuck off
Steve: Good luck buddy
He's not attracted to you. He's not. You're his sous chef and you're young and you're off-limits and he's not doing this. But…
You're working on your station, breaking down vegetables for the service, when you catch movement in your peripheral vision. Bucky's at the stove testing a new recipe — you think —, his sleeves are pushed to his elbows. Forearms are on full display, tanned and muscular with veins running up under the skin and disappearing into the fabric bunched at his arms. There's the scar, cutting across his left arm. When he stirs the pan, his forearm flexes, the tendons shifting under skin, distracting you from whatever the hell you were just doing.
You've seen arms before. You work in a kitchen. Everyone's got their sleeves rolled up and everyone's got arms.
But this is different. This is Bucky's arms, and you're staring like you've never seen a man cook before in your entire life. He reaches for something on the shelf above the stove, the muscle making its existence known again. You almost make a noise.
But Bucky glances over and your eyes meet.
Did you moan out loud in the kitchen? Fuck.
He caught you. He absolutely caught you staring at his arms like some kind of pervert, eyebrows doing that thing where it quirks up slightly. Turning the heat down, he starts walking towards you. Your heart's trying to break out of your ribcage.
"You good?" he stops right next to your station. Close. Too close.
"Yeah. Yep. Totally fine." The words make their way out faster than it needs to be.
"You sure? You look a little flustered."
"It's hot in here."
He's not even pretending he doesn't know. "Is it? Could've sworn we fixed the ventilation."
"Must be coming down with something."
"Right." Bucky leans against the counter, crossing his arms to the front. That just makes it worse because now the veins are even more pronounced. "You were staring."
"I wasn't —"
"You were definitely staring."
Your mouth opens and closes, brain scrambling for literally anything to say that won't make this worse. "You have veins."
Bucky's eyelashes do a slow dance as he blinks, like he didn't hear you right. "What?"
"Veins. On your arms. They're very — I've never noticed them before. The veins, I mean. I've noticed your arms obviously because you have arms, everyone has arms, but the veins specifically are —" You're spiraling. You know you're spiraling, can't stop though. "It's the lighting in here. Makes them more visible. Or maybe you're dehydrated? You should drink more water. Hydration is important —"
Bucky leans in, close enough that his breath ghosts across your ear, making your entire body go rigid. "You're just digging your grave deeper, sweetheart."
Like he didn't just stop your heart, he's gone. Walks back to the stove, leaving you standing there holding a knife and a half-cut carrot, unable to move.
Service is a blur. You go through the motions, with your brain stuck on the way Bucky's voice sounded in your ear. Sweetheart. He called you sweetheart.
That's not a chef thing. That's a thing thing.
By the time service ends and the kitchen's cleaned down, you're wound so tight you might snap. You change quickly, needing to get out of here before you do something fucking dumb.
Like jump your boss.
You're heading for the back door when you hear footsteps behind you.
"Hey."
When you turn, Bucky's there. Changed out of his whites, wearing jeans and a dark henley that you immediately want to take off. "Hey."
"You rushing off?"
"Just — long day."
"Yeah." He's got his hands in his pockets, there's a nervousness about the gesture, kind of insane because Bucky Barnes doesn't get nervous. "So — uh — Alpine misses you."
If there's a loading screen on your brain, you just wish it doesn't show up on your face. "What?"
"Alpine. She's been sitting by the door all week waiting for you to come back."
"That so?" You can't help but smile.
"Yeah. Won't stop meowing about it." He shifts his weight, you wonder ig he really is nervous. "Thought maybe you could come say hi? If you're not too tired."
This is a terrible idea. You know it's a terrible idea. Going to Bucky's apartment, alone, is possibly the worst decision you could make. But there's no hesitation when you answer, "sure."
Bucky's face breaks into an expression you've never seen on him. Relief? "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, can't leave Alpine hanging."
"Right. For Alpine."
"For Alpine," you repeat.
There's a beat where you both just stand there.
"C'mon… She's upstairs."
You follow him through the kitchen and up the back stairs you've never been allowed to use before, the ones that lead to his apartment. Your heart's pounding so hard you're surprised he can't hear it.
Bucky unlocks the door and pushes it open, stepping aside to let you in first. The apartment is somehow exactly what you expected. Minimal with large windows overlooking the street, couch, a kitchen that looks barely used, and some photos on the wall. It doesn't help that it smells like him. "It's nice," you say.
"It's —"
Alpine comes tearing around the corner, meowing loudly, making a beeline straight for you.
"Oh my god, hi baby." You crouch down as she headbutts your hand. "Did you miss me? I missed you too."
Bucky's watching you with this expression you can't read, soft and a little awed. "She really did miss you."
"I can tell." Alpine flops onto her back, demanding belly rubs, you comply immediately. "She's perfect. Aren't you perfect? Yes you are."
"I'm starting to think she likes you more than me."
"Well, I am very likable."
"So you've mentioned."
"Bears repeating." You scratch under Alpine's chin as she stretches out longer, completely blissed out. "So, does she have a story?"
"Found her outside a restaurant."
"And she just — came home with you?"
"She didn't have much choice. Was soaking wet and scared." Bucky moves to the kitchen. There's the sound of cabinets opening. "She hissed at me for like three days straight. Eventually she warmed up. Now she's spoiled rotten."
"As she should be. You're living your best life, aren't you sweetie?"
When you glance up, Bucky's leaning against the kitchen counter with two glasses of water, watching you play with his cat, the usual look in his eyes replaced by softness.
"What?" you ask.
"Nothing." He crosses the room and hands you a glass. "You looked thirsty."
"Thanks." Your fingers brush when you take it, the electric feeling you've been feeling shoots up your arm.
Bucky sits on the floor next to you instead of on the couch, close enough that your shoulders are almost touching. "She never does this with anyone else."
"Does what?"
"The belly rub thing. She barely tolerates Steve."
"Maybe she has good taste."
"That she does."
Alpine rolls over to climb into your lap, circling twice before settling. The weight of her is warm and grounding.
"I think you've been claimed," Bucky smiles, it makes him look younger.
"I'm okay with that."
You're sitting on the floor of your boss' apartment with his cat in your lap, with him close enough to touch. An excuse to flee the scene should be on the tip of your tongue. The reality is anything but as you find yourself leaning into Alpine more.
"Can I ask you something?" Bucky's voice is careful.
"Mhmm."
"Earlier. In the kitchen… What were you looking at?"
"I —"
"Because you were definitely looking at something."
"I wasn't — okay, yes. I was looking." You can't bring yourself to meet his eyes. "Your arms. The veins. It's — you were cooking and your sleeves were up and I don't know, it was distracting."
"Distracting," he repeats, like he's pleased with your answer.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Sound so smug about it."
"I'm not smug."
"You're absolutely smug right now."
Bucky laughs, and you risk a glance at him. He's closer than you thought. Close enough that you can feel warmth radiating off him, smell him, see those little flecks of grey in his blue eyes.
"For what it's worth, I think it's cute." His voice is barely a whisper.
"What is?"
"That you were staring. That you got all flustered, started rambling about hydration."
"I wasn't rambling."
"You were definitely rambling."
"I was making valid points about water intake —"
Alpine pads off toward her food bowl, offended she's not getting enough attention, leaving you and Bucky sitting on the floor with nothing between you. The space feels smaller suddenly, or maybe he feels closer. You're hyperaware of every detail, how he's looking at you, how his hand is resting on his knee just inches from yours, how you're alone with him in his space and your brain won't shut up about it.
When Bucky shifts, your eyes drop to his mouth without permission. You look back up to see he's staring at your lips too. "Can I —" He gulps, building courage. "Can I kiss you?"
"Yes." It comes out way too fast, borderline desperate, but you can't seem to care.
One second, you're a safe distance apart and the next, his hand is cupping your jaw and he's kissing you.
Oh god, he's kissing you.
His lips are soft, sure. It's everything you've been thinking about for weeks. You kiss him back, probably too eager, definitely too hungry, and he makes this low noise in his throat that goes straight between your legs. His other hand finds your waist, pulling you closer. You go willingly, let him tilt your head exactly how he wants it, let him kiss you deeper, let him take whatever he needs. When he pulls back, you're both breathing hard.
"Fuck. I've wanted to do that for weeks." He kisses you again, shorter this time. "Since the interview."
"You hired me and immediately wanted to kiss me?"
"Something like that."
"That's very unprofessional, Chef."
"Don't care." He's moving before you can answer, hauling you up and then higher, until your balance goes and you're grabbing onto him just to steady yourself.
"Bucky — I — "
"Bedroom," is all he says as he carries you down the hall.
He sets you down on the bed — his bed — and immediately his mouth is on yours again, kissing you like he'll die if he stops. His hands find the hem of your sweater, breaking the kiss just long enough to pull it over your head. "Lie down."
You obey. You'd probably do anything he asked right now.
Bucky follows you onto the bed, settling between your legs as he starts kissing down your neck, sucking little marks into your skin, dragging his mouth over your collarbones and the soft swell between your breasts. His hands work your jeans open, you lift your hips to help him slide them down.
"These too," his fingers hook into your underwear. A soft whimper slips out of you, making him smirk. He strips them off and tosses them somewhere behind him. He's pressing hot, open mouthed kisses up the inside of your thighs, stubble scraping your skin as he works higher toward your aching pussy.
Your brain finally catches up to what's about to happen. "Oh my god."
"Relax," Bucky murmurs against your skin. "Let me take care of you." His breath ghosts over where you're already wet for him, your hips bucking into his face involuntarily.
The first slow, filthy drag of his tongue through your slick folds makes you gasp, back bowing off the bed. He groans like you taste good, like this is doing something for him too, then he's devouring your cunt with single-minded hunger, tongue fucking deep before switching to tight circles on your clit.
Your hands fly to his hair, tangling in the strands. That doesn't faze him in anyway, he just keeps working you with his tongue, alternating between broad strokes and tight circles that make your thighs shake.
He pulls back just enough to speak. "Fuck, your pussy tastes so goddamn good, sweetheart." His mouth attaches to your clit this time, making you cry out. He's ruthless about it, sucking hard on your swollen clit while his tongue lashes it. When you try to close your legs at the overwhelming sensation, he keeps them spread with his hands on your thighs, holding you exactly where he wants you.
"I can't — Buck — It's too much —"
"You can take it. C'mon, baby. Let me feel you cum."
Two fingers slide inside your soaked cunt. It's immediate how your breath stutters to come to a halt, the tight coil in your belly snapping without warning, pleasure rolling through you in waves while Bucky works you through it with his mouth and fingers. It goes on forever, ebbing and flowing, until you're boneless.
When you can finally think again, Bucky's kissing his way back up your body, chin wet with your slick, looking at you like you're the best thing he's ever seen.
When he kisses you this time, you can taste yourself on his tongue, impossibly hot. Your hands find his shirt and start pulling at it. "Off. This needs to be off."
Bucky sits back and yanks it over his head in one smooth motion, and you get your first full look at his chest. Broad and muscled with a trail of dark hair leading down to what you most want now.
He's working his jeans open now, shoving them down his hips along with his boxers. His cock is rock hard, flushed, and leaking precum at the tip.
"Oh my god."
"What?" He's smirking.
"That's — you're —" Your brain's stopped working again.
Bucky wraps a hand around himself and gives a slow stroke, and you watch like you're hypnotized. The veins running along his length stand out, prominent and thick. Like he's read your mind, "how about the veins on my cock? Like 'em?"
If you could, you'd hide yourself. "Bucky!"
"What?" He's fully grinning, looking way too pleased with himself. "You seemed interested in veins earlier."
"I hate you."
"No you don't."
"I really — oh —"
He's positioned himself between your legs, the head of his cock dragging through your soaked folds, teasing your entrance by coming close enough, but not quite in. Whatever you were about to say dies in your throat.
"Still hate me?" he asks, this time bumping your clit with the fat tip.
"Y-yeah."
"I'm so glad you cook better than you lie, you're a terrible liar."
He taps his cock against your clit once more and you nearly come off the bed. It's too much and not enough and you need him inside you right fucking now. "Bucky, please —"
"Please what?"
"Fuck me. Please fuck me."
"Well — Since you asked so nicely."
He pushes in slowly, the stretch perfect. You're so wet that he slides in easy, inch by inch, until he's fully seated and you're both groaning.
"Fuck," Bucky breathes. "You feel — fuck."
You can only hold onto his shoulders and try to remember how breathing works while he starts to move.
The first thrust punches the air from your lungs. The second makes you see stars. By the third you're moaning openly, not even trying to be quiet. "That's it," Bucky snaps his hips to yours, his cock . "Let me hear you."
Bucky fucks you like it's the only thing on his mind. Deep and perfect, dragging his cock along your most sensitive spots. One hand is braced by your head, the other gripping your hip so tight you'll probably bruise. "You're so tight," he groans. "So fucking perfect." Your legs wrap around his waist, pulling him deeper. "Fuck — Do that again."
Squeezing around him, you feel his hips stutter, so does yours.
"Fuck — you feel incredible, sweetheart."
Bucky shifts the angle and suddenly he's hitting something inside you that makes you cry out. "There?" he asks.
"There — fuck, right there —"
He just keeps hitting that spot over and over until you're climbing toward another orgasm embarrassingly fast. "Bucky, I'm —"
"I know. I can feel it." His thumb finds your clit to run frantic but perfect circles over it. "Cum for me, sweetheart. Cum on my cock."
The combination of his cock, his thumb and his voice is too much. You come apart, clenching around him, and he fucks you through it, just keeps going until you're almost sobbing from how good it feels.
"Where?" he grits out.
It takes you a second to understand what he's asking. "Inside. I'm on birth control — inside, please —"
Bucky groans and buries himself deep, pulsing until thick ropes of cum floods you, saying your name over and over again. Without pulling from you, he collapses next to you. "Holy shit."
You turn your head to look at him. He's looking at you, hair a mess, lips swollen, looking thoroughly fucked.
He reaches over to pull you close, your body finds his willingly, curl into his side like you belong there.
You wake up to Alpine sitting on your chest, staring directly into your soul. For a second you're disoriented, brain trying to catch up with where you are. Then, it does. The arm draped across your waist belongs to Bucky, who's still dead asleep next to you, face buried in the pillow.
Alpine chooses that minute to meow, loud enough that you're worried she'll wake him.
"Okay, okay," you whisper, carefully extracting yourself from Bucky's hold. He makes a small noise of protest in his sleep but doesn't wake. Instead, he reaches for the pillow you were using and pulls it close to his chest.
It's stupidly endearing.
Alpine leads you straight to her food bowl. Like she knows you'll give in. Which you will, because you're weak for both Barnes in this apartment.
The food's in the cabinet above the sink. You've stayed over enough times that you know where everything is.
It's been two weeks since that first night, and you still haven't talked about what this is and what you're doing. You just keep falling into bed together after service, wake up tangled in his sheets and pretend everything's normal while you're at work. It's easier that way. Safer. Putting a name to this thing between you, feels dangerous, like it'll make it real in a way you're not sure you're ready for.
Alpine crunches her food happily while you stand in Bucky's kitchen at six in the morning, barefoot and wearing his shirt from yesterday, trying not to think too hard about how domestic this feels.
"You're up early." Bucky's leaning against the bedroom doorframe, shirtless, wearing only the sweatpants he'd pulled on. His hair's a disaster, there's a crease on his cheek from the pillow. The most breathtaking thing about this is that he has a smile on his face.
"Your cat's very demanding," you say.
"Yeah, she gets that from me." He crosses the kitchen to wrap his arms around you from behind, chin hooking over your shoulder. The weight of him is familiar now, comforting, making you lean back without a second thought, without hesitation.
This is the part that scares you. How easy it is. How right it feels to stand here in his space while he holds you like this is something you do every day, like you belong here.
"You staying for breakfast?" His voice is still rough with sleep.
"I should go home. Need to change before work."
"You could keep clothes here."
The offer sounds casual, practical. But you know what he's really asking. If you'll stay. If this is more than just convenient.
"Mhmm, don't like seeing me in your clothes?" Deflection comes easy to you.
"I think I love it a little too much." His hands slide down to your hips, thumbs rubbing small circles through the fabric of his shirt.
"That so?"
He presses a kiss to your neck, right below your ear. You have to close your eyes against the rush of warmth that floods through you. "Looks good on you."
"Everything looks good on me."
"Can't argue with that."
You turn in his arms, his hands settling on your waist. "I'll think about it." The clothes thing. The staying thing. All of it.
The walk-in freezer is a blessed relief from the heat of the kitchen, even if you're hunting for duck at eight o'clock on a busy night. Your breath fogs in front of your face as you scan the shelves, fingers already going numb. There's a faraway sound of the door opening and clicking shut behind you.
"Can you tell the chef we were low on shallots —" you call over your shoulder, to whoever it may be.
A hand lands firm on your ass. "Found something way better than shallots." Bucky's voice is smug behind you. When you whip around, he's standing there, looking at you like you're what he wants to devour.
"Are you insane?" Heat floods through you despite the cold. "We're working."
His hand slides to your hip, over the kitchen whites. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I won't tell your boss."
There's a little smirk playing at his mouth, it makes you want to smack him and kiss him in equal measure. "You're the worst," it comes out breathy.
"Yeah?" His other hand joins the first, sliding down to cup your ass properly, squeezing hard enough to make you gasp. "Doesn't seem like you mind."
You think about pushing him back. There's staff right outside and this is wildly unprofessional even by your standards. It doesn't stick, though. Your hands bunch in his coat, pulling him closer.
Bucky grins, his hand draws back and cracks across your ass. The yelp that escapes you is mortifying. So is the way your pussy clenches at the sharp sting, the way you lean into him instead of away. He does it again, other cheek this time, and you bite down on your lip to keep from making another sound. "You've been thinking about this all day, haven't you? Everytime you looked at me during service."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
The audacity of this man. Leaning on your tiptoes, you kiss him. Hard and graceless, you taste the coffee he'd been drinking, he kisses you back, returning the same ferocity.
His hands knead your ass through your work pants, making you aware of how empty you feel, how badly you want his fingers, his cock, anything to fill the ache that's been building between your legs. Your hand drops down to palm him through his pants, already hard, thick and straining against the fabric. The groan he makes against your mouth goes straight to your heat.
"Fuck," Bucky breathes. His hips rock into your touch, shameless in its pursuit. His own hand slides between your thighs now, cupping you through the layers, but it's not nearly enough. You find yourself grinding against his palm like you've lost all self-respect, chasing the friction.
"Jesus, you're soaked already." His fingers press harder, rubbing over where your clit throbs. "Can almost feel it through your pants. You been walking around the kitchen like this all night? Drippin' wet for me?"
Ever since he brushed past you during prep, you've been aching for him. It's pathetic how easily he gets you like this.
"Answer me, sweetheart." He nips at your jaw. Your hand works him faster through his pants while he grinds the heel of his palm against you. "Tell me how wet that pussy is."
"So wet," you gasp out, head falling back against the shelf. "Bucky —"
"Want me to fuck you right here? Bend you over, make you scream where anyone could walk in and hear what a mess you are for me?"
Your fingers slip against his belt, not as steady as you want them to be. "Yes, please —"
Too engrossed, neither of you hear the door swinging open.
"Hey Buck, we need you on the — Oh my god." Steve stands frozen in the doorway. You watch in real time as his brain tries to process what he's seeing.
Bucky's hand is between your legs. Your hand is on Bucky's cock. Both of you look disheveled and panting. For half a second, it says that way.
Steve's face goes bright red. "I'm — fuck —I didn't—" He's backing away, hands up like he's been burned. "I'm leaving. Leaving right now. I didn't see anything. Bye."
The door slams hard enough to rattle the shelves, just stillness remaining. Bucky's pressed into you, forehead to your shoulder, shaking for a reason you don't yet know.
"Oh my god. Steve just — he saw us —" you gasp.
"Yep."
You owe Steve an apology. Probably several. Maybe a bottle of expensive whiskey. "Your bestfriend is gonna think I'm corrupting you."
"You are corrupting me."
"Shut up."
The difference in testing new recipes at Bucky's apartment is that his kitchen is a bit smaller than the one at the restaurant. Which means you're constantly in each other's space, brushing past each other to grab ingredients, hands colliding, his arm pressing against yours while you work side by side at the counter.
You're supposed to be perfecting a glaze for the spring menu. Something with honey that'll complement the duck without overpowering it. Bucky's doing the actual cooking part while you handle the sauce.
Everything's going fine until you try to pour honey from the jar into your saucepan. The jar, heavier than you thought, drips the golden stream of honey onto your hand, your skin, more than the saucepan. Like any sane person, you decide to clean yourself.
Angling your hand over the sink, you're trying to wash the honey off, when Bucky appears next to you. He grabs your wrist to bring it to his mouth, lips wrapping around your index finger, sucking the honey off, tongue swirling around your skin. Heat shoots straight between your legs.
His eyes are locked on yours the whole time. As he moves to your next finger, you forget how to breathe. He takes his time with each one. Licking. Sucking. Making sure he gets every drop of honey while you stand there trying to remember your own name. When he finally releases your hand, his voice comes out rough. "That tastes so much better than regular honey."
"It's — It's the same honey," you reply dumbly.
"No. It's not."
"Bucky —"
"I need more." The hunger, the possessiveness in his voice goes straight to your cunt. "Get on the counter."
There is a brief second where you wonder if reminding him would be better, that you're both working, that you have to get this sauce done before anything else. But your body has other plans, complying itself as he lifts you onto air and places you on the counter.
The granite's cold against your thighs. Bucky positions himself between your legs, and reaches for the honey jar with one hand, while the other stays rooted to your hip. Like you'd move if he moves. You won't. "What are you doing?" you ask, even though part of you already knows.
"Testing a theory." He dips two fingers into the honey and pulls them out, watching the way it drips. "About whether everything tastes better on you."
Honey coated fingers move across your throat, right over the dip of your collarbone, pulling a gasp out of you. Bucky leans in to lick a long stripe across your skin, following the honey trail with his tongue. "Fuck. I was right."
"Bucky — "
"What?" He has the audacity to look innocent. "This is an experiment." He's pulling your shirt over your head, tossing it over the barstool. Your bra follows seconds later. What's left is you half-naked in his kitchen while he looks at you like he wants to eat you.
"This is not an experiment."
"Sure it is." More honey on his fingers, he drizzles it just above your breasts. "Hypothesis: you make everything taste better."
Before you can respond, his mouth descends, tongue tracing the path of honey across your skin. He's meticulous about it, making sure he gets every drop. The combination of his tongue and the sticky sweetness has you squirming on the counter. "Bucky, please —"
"Please what?" He pulls back to look at you, pupils blown so wide his eyes look black. "Tell me what you want."
"More. I want —" The words die on your tongue when he drizzles honey between your breasts, watching it slide down your skin.
"Want this?" He leans down and licks up the valley.
"Yes —" you whimper.
"You taste so fucking good." He's lost to it now, completely focused on chasing every drop of honey on your skin. "Better than anything I've ever made." That's probably the highest compliment you'll ever receive.
"That's —" Your words cut off in a moan when he drizzles more directly onto your nipple. "Oh fuck —"
The honey sticks to the peak, driping down the curve of your breast. Bucky catches it with his mouth, tongue circling your nipple before taking it between his lips to suck.
"Bucky —" Your hands are in his hair now, holding him against you. "Please —"
Your back arches, pushing your chest more towards his mouth. He relishes in the invitation, tongue flicking over your nipple while he sucks, teeth grazing just enough to make you grind towards nothing in search of friction. "Oh my god —"
Bucky chases every drop with his tongue, until you're making sounds you've never made before. That doesn't seem to affect him, he casually moves to your other breast and does it all over again. More honey. More of his mouth. More of that devastating tongue. "You taste so fucking good," he says against your skin. "Could do this all day."
"We're supposed to be working —"
"We are working." He bites down gently on your nipple, making you cry out. "I'm working very hard right now."
Your laugh turns into a moan when his hand slides up your thigh. "These are in my way." He's working your shorts open. You lift your hips to help him shove them down along with your underwear. Completely naked on his kitchen counter, with him fully dressed and kneeling between your legs, Bucky speaks, "spread wider."
The way he looks at you, at how wet you already are, makes you clench around nothing. Bucky angles you so that your back is planted on the counter, and drizzles honey on your inner thigh, high enough that with the help of gravity, it drips down toward where you're aching for him.
Leaning in, he starts at your knee, working his way up with a patience that's going to kill you. His tongue is hot against your skin, chasing the trail once again. By the time he gets halfway up your thigh, you're ready to beg. "Bucky —"
"Mhmm?" He keeps licking, getting closer to where you need him but not close enough.
"Oh god —"
"Just me, baby." The smugness in his voice is a thing you'd like to hate, you would try if you weren't already too far gone.
"Please — Buck — touch me. P-please touch me."
"I am touching you." His breath ghosts over your cunt, sobs threaten to spill from you.
"You — You know what I mean —"
He reaches for the honey again, about to pour it on your other thigh — you think — but something in you snaps right before. Lifting up your body with purpose and determination, your hand shoots out to grab his collar. "If you don't fuck me right now —"
"But, I'm not done —"
"Barnes." You use your other hand now, pulling him up to your eye level. "Shut up and fuck me."
His mouth pulls into a grin that's all teeth, enjoying this a little too much. "Yes ma'am."
While he's working his belt open, you're pulling at his shirt, trying to get it off him. His cock finally springs free, a moan escaping you from just seeing it. "This what you want?" Bucky fists himself, giving a slow stroke that makes your mouth water.
"Yes. God, yes —"
"How bad?"
"So bad, I'm gonna die if you don't get inside me in the next ten seconds —"
Thankfully, he doesn't make you wait more, he lines himself up and pushes in, one hard thrust that punches the air from your lungs. The stretch is perfect and exactly what you needed.
Both of you groan at the same time, relief spilling past shamelessly. "Fuck — You feel — Jesus fucking Christ —"
He pulls out almost all the way and slams back in, hitting your cervix, making you scream. He's so deep like this, deep inside you, that your vision blurs.
"That's it," he groans against your neck. "Let me hear you." Bucky is fucking you in earnest, while you hold on to his shoulders and try not to fall apart. The lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin is mixed with your desperate noises and his low groans.
"Been thinking about this all mornin'," Bucky pants. "Watchin' you work, being all professional about the sauce — wanted to — fuck — wanted to bend you over the counter so fucking bad —"
You love his dirty talk. God knows you love it. But there's this intense need to be filled up, and his talking is currently slowing his dick. "Less talking," you gasp. "More fucking—"
Smirking, he shifts the angle, suddenly hitting that spot inside you that makes you see stars, makes you sob. "Right there?" he asks, but he knows, could tell from the way you're clenching around him.
"Don't stop — please —"
When his thumb finds your clit, you nearly come off the counter. Between that, his cock and the filthy sounds he's making, you're not going to last. "I'm close, Buck — I'm so close —"
"Yeah? You gonna cum on my cock? C'mon, sweetheart. Let me feel it."
His words and one more thrust sends you over the edge. You come hard, clenching around him. Bucky fucks you through it while cursing under his breath. Not long after, he buries himself deep. You can feel him pulsing inside you, filling you up.
There's something dripping down your thighs, you don't know if it's honey, cum or sweat. Probably all mixed together, but you can't bring yourself to care.
When Bucky pulls out, you both wince at the loss. He looks down at the mess you've made, there's honey smeared on your skin, cum dripping out of you onto his counter. He lets out a breathless laugh. "We're disgusting."
"Your fault."
"My fault? You're the one who told me to shut up and fuck you."
"You're the one who started the whole honey thing."
"You're the one who spilled it."
"Accidentally."
"Sure. Accidentally." He kisses you, slow, sweet. You kiss him back, tasting honey off his tongue.
You should probably be mortified of the scene Alpine might walk into, but all you can think about is how you want to do this again. "We really need to clean up," you try being the responsible adult despite what you're feeling.
"Probably." But he's kissing your neck again. "In a minute."
"Bucky —"
"Just one more taste."
"Alpine, no — that's not food." You're trying to rescue a hair tie from Alpine's paws while Bucky makes coffee in the kitchen.
It's early enough that the sun's barely up, that grey-blue light filtering through the windows of his apartment.
"She thinks everything's food," Bucky calls from the kitchen. "Found her trying to eat a receipt yesterday."
"She's going to make herself sick." Alpine bats at your hand, completely unrepentant. "You're a menace. You know that?"
She meows like she's arguing with you.
Bucky appears with two mugs, handing you one before sitting on the floor next to you. Alpine immediately abandons the hair tie to climb into his lap. "Traitor," you mutter.
The coffee's perfect. He's figured out how you take it. Same way you know he likes his black. "What time do we need to leave?" you ask.
"Hour. Maybe less if we want to prep early."
"We always prep early."
"Force of habit." He's scratching behind Alpine's ears, that absent-minded gesture he does when he's thinking. "You staying tonight too?"
The question should feel loaded but it doesn't. It's Bucky asking if you're staying, like he wants you to, like he's gotten used to you being here.
"If that's okay."
"It's okay. I like when you're here." His voice is soft.
You think about your apartment across town. How you haven't slept there in forever. How your fridge is empty and your bed feels too big and too quiet. How this feels more like home than anywhere you've lived in years.
"I like being here," you admit.
He pulls you closer with his free arm. You lean against his shoulder, coffee warming your hands, and let yourself have this.
"We should go soon," you say eventually. "Delivery comes at seven."
"Five more minutes."
"Bucky —"
"Five minutes. Please. Just want to sit here with you."
Alpine whips her head towards him, a 'did I hear that right?' look plastered on her face.
"And you too," Bucky admits, pulling you both closer.
"I'm just saying, the timing's convenient for her." The words make you freeze with your hand on the door. Jason's voice carries from somewhere near the dish station. It's so casual, the way guys get when they think they're being clever.
"What timing?" That's the new line cook. Miller? You can't remember his name and right now you don't care.
"Come on. Hired on spot? That's fast even for someone good."
"Maybe she is good."
Jason laughs like he doesn't care about what he's saying. "Oh, she's good. Question is what she's good at." The new guy laughs too, your stomach dropping straight through the floor.
"Oldest trick in the book," Jason continues. "Want a job in the best kitchen? Fuck the chef. Worked for her."
"Barnes seems smarter than that."
"Barnes is a guy. And you've seen her."
You probably should walk away. The opposite direction of all of this. You should not stand here and listen to them talk about you like you're not a person, like you're just a body that fucked its way into a position you spent years working toward.
But you can't move, can't breathe.
"Either way, smart play on her part. Get on your knees, get ahead."
They're still laughing when you finally force your legs to work, turning and walking in the opposite direction before they can see you, before they can know you heard every fucking word.
Your hands are shaking when you reach the prep station. Your chest feels tight, like someone's wrapped steel bands around your ribs and pulled them taut. Pressing your palms flat against the counter, you try to breathe normally.
Three weeks. That's all it took for people to start talking. To start assuming. To start reducing everything you've accomplished to who you're sleeping with.
And the worst part is if anyone finds out about you and Bucky, that's exactly what they'll think. Every single person in this kitchen will look at your position and assume you earned it on your back. They'll question Bucky's judgment, his professionalism, and whether he's running his restaurant based on merit or based on who's warming his bed.
You can't let that happen. You can't be the reason Brooklyn's Taste's reputation gets dragged through the mud, can't be the reason people stop trusting Bucky's decisions. Which means this thing between you — whatever it is, whatever it was becoming — has to stop.
Your throat burns but you swallow it down. You force yourself to get through the rest of prep, to plate during service like your world hasn't just shifted sideways. It almost kills you to smile and pretend everything's fine when Bucky catches your eye across the kitchen and mouths 'you okay?'
All you can do is nod. It's a lie. He probably knows it's a lie from the way his eyebrows pull together, but there's service and no time to get into this.
You tell yourself you'll deal with it later.
But when later comes, you're slipping out the back door before Bucky can corner you and ask what's wrong. You can't look him in the eye and pretend you didn't hear someone reduce your entire career to a transaction.
Bucky catches you by the lockers after service the next night. There's a doubt in his tone, like he already knows the answer. "You comin' up?"
"Can't tonight." You're pulling your jacket on, trying very hard not to look at him. "I'm not feeling great."
"What's wrong? Do you need —"
"Just tired. Long week."
It's Wednesday.
Bucky doesn't point that out but you can tell he wants to. You can see it in the way his jaw tightens, his hand comes up like he's going to touch you and then falls back to his side.
"Okay… feel better, okay?"
You leave before the guilt can stop you. You'll break down and tell him everything if you don't walk, the confusion in his eyes will kill you.
Your toothbrush is still in his bathroom. Your clothes are still in his closet. There's a drawer full of your shit in his dresser, your shampoo in his shower and probably a hair tie on his bedside table.
But you can't go back, can't step foot in that apartment again. If you do, you'll crack. You'll tell him what you heard and he'll say it doesn't matter and you'll believe him because you want to believe him so fucking badly it hurts.
But it does matter. It matters that people are already talking, that your relationship could damage his restaurant — his life. It matters that every time someone questions your abilities, they'll be questioning his judgment too.
So you go home to your empty apartment and try not to think about how Alpine's probably waiting by the door for you.
It gets easier after that. Or maybe it gets harder and you just get better at it. You start showing up to work right on time instead of early. You make excuses when he texts — headache, early morning, catching up on sleep. All technically true, all curated to create distance.
Bucky notices, of course. He's not stupid. "What's going on with you?"
You're in the office doing inventory counts, and he's standing in the doorway looking at you like you're a puzzle he can't solve. Maybe if he stares long enough, he'll figure out what broke.
"Nothing's going on."
"You haven't stayed over in a week."
"I've been tired."
"You're avoiding me."
"I'm not —"
"You are." He steps into the office and closes the door behind him. The small space suddenly feels smaller. "Did I do something? Because if I did, just tell me so I can fix it."
You did everything right, you want to say. He made space for you in his life. In his home, his bed, his routine. Now that space is a liability, ammunition for anyone who wants to question whether you earned your position or fucked your way into it.
He looks so worried, so confused. All you want to do is cross the room and kiss him, tell him it's not his fault, scream about Jason and the new guy and the sick feeling that's been living in your stomach for days.
But you can't. Telling him means admitting the relationship is a problem, and admitting it's a problem means either ending it or ignoring it. You can't do either.
"You didn't do anything. I just need space."
You watch Bucky's face change, as he tries to hide the hurt, nod even though you can tell he doesn't understand.
When he leaves, you sit there staring at inventory sheets you can't read anymore because your eyes are burning.
Bucky brings Alpine to you a week later. You hear her distinctive meow that makes your heart clench, before you can even see her. When you turn around, he's holding her like an offering. "She missed you."
Alpine's purring, looking at you with those big blue eyes. You want to take her and bury your face in her soft fur, breathe in that familiar smell and pretend everything's okay. "Bucky —"
His voice is soft, pleading. "Just for a minute… please."
You wipe your hands on your apron and take her before you can think better of it. She immediately curls into your chest, purring loud enough to vibrate your whole ribcage. Your hand runs down her back automatically, that familiar motion you've done a hundred times in Bucky's apartment. "Hey, baby," you murmur. "Hi, sweet girl."
When you look up, Bucky's watching you, eyes glassy. There's so much longing there, so much confusion and hurt, and you can see him trying to understand why you're doing this. Why you're pulling away, why you won't talk to him.
"I miss you… Alpine's not the only one."
"Buck —"
"Come over tonight. Please. Even just for five minutes, I don't care, I just — I hate that you're not there."
The apartment must feel so empty without you, frozen in time waiting for you to come back. Except you're not. You can't, not when being with him means people will assume the worst about both of you. "I can't."
"Why not?"
"I just can't."
"That's not an answer."
Alpine headbutts your chin, demanding attention. You focus on her instead of the way Bucky's looking at you.
"Something's wrong," he says.
"Nothing's wrong."
"Everything's wrong!" An octave rise in his tone, desperation bleeding through as frustration.
Alpine meows softly, like she can sense the tension. You hand her back to Bucky before you do something stupid like cry. "I need to get back to work."
"Wait —"
"Please don't make this harder than it already is." You walk away before he can respond. You cannot see the devastation on his face, you will completely fall apart in the middle of the kitchen.
Behind you, Alpine meows again, sad and confused, and you hear Bucky's quiet, broken, "I know, baby."
Bucky looks like shit. There are dark circles under his eyes, hair's a mess like he didn't bother combing it, and he's wearing the same shirt he wore yesterday, a small stain on the collar from the sauce he was testing last night.
He barely looks at you during prep, barely speaks except to call out orders. And when Steve asks him a question, Bucky just stares at him for a solid five seconds before answering like he forgot how words work.
You did this. You're the reason Bucky looks like he hasn't slept in a week. The reason he's moving through his own kitchen like a ghost.
You're in dry storage counting inventory when Steve finds you. "We need to talk."
You don't look up from your clipboard, you can't. You can't lie to one more person. "I'm working."
"So am I. And part of my job is making sure this kitchen runs smoothly, which it's not doing right now."
"Everything's fine."
"Really? Because Bucky's been a mess for three weeks and you look like you're about to cry every time you're in the same room as him. So either tell me what's going on or I'm going to assume the worst."
"There's nothing to tell."
"Bullshit."
"Steve —"
"Did he do something?" Steve's voice goes rough, restrained. "Because if he crossed a line or made you uncomfortable —"
"No." The denial comes out quick. Nothing of that sort should even be spoken into existence. "No, of course not. It's — it's nothing like that."
"Then what?"
"It's personal."
"Personal is affecting professional. So it's my business."
Looking at Steve is hard. Talking about this is hard. So you turn back to the shelves. "Can you just drop it?"
"No."
"Steve —"
"He's my best friend. I've known him since we were kids and I've never seen him like this. He won't eat, he barely sleeps, and yesterday I caught him just standing in his apartment staring at nothing. So no, I'm not going to drop it."
Words refuse to come out, but you force them. "He'll be fine."
"Will he? Because from where I'm standing, you're both miserable and too stubborn to do anything about it."
"You don't understand —"
"So, help me understand. Explain it to me."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because it's complicated."
"Try me."
You slam the clipboard down on the shelf. "Because if people find out about us, they'll think I slept my way into this kitchen. Happy?"
Steve looks at you with confusion. "What?"
"You heard me."
"Who the hell would think that?"
"Everyone, Steve. Everyone will think that. Woman gets a competitive job? Must've fucked the boss." A laugh comes out, it's anything but humourous.
"That's — no one here would —"
"They already are."
Steve goes very still, like he cannot believe his own ears. "What?"
You shouldn't tell him. You should probably keep your mouth shut and let this go. But you're so tired of carrying this alone, so tired of pretending it doesn't hurt.
"I heard Jason and that new line cook talking. About how convenient the timing was. How I must be 'good at my job', if you know…" Your voice cracks, a hiccup in your words, you can't help it. "They laughed about it. About me." Tears well up in your eyes.
"Son of a bitch. When was this?" Steve's knuckles go white, even though he doesn't have anything in his hand. Purely from rage.
He should've been able to make out the timeline, but you know he's stressed. "Three weeks ago."
"And you didn't tell anyone?"
"Who was I supposed to tell? Bucky? So he could fire them and prove their point?"
"Their point is bullshit —"
"Is it? Because if people find out about me and Bucky, that's exactly what they'll think. Every single person in this kitchen will assume I fucked my way in. And worse, they'll think Bucky's judgment is compromised. That he's not professional, and running this place based on who he's with, instead of who's qualified."
Steve lets out a sigh, you know he's not seeing your point. "So your solution is to break up with him?"
"We weren't together."
"Bullshit."
"Fine. It doesn't matter what we were. It matters what it looks like."
"To who? Jason? Some asshole line cook who's probably jealous he's not good enough to make sous?"
"To everyone. To food critics and investors and other chefs, to everyone who's watching Brooklyn's Taste and waiting for Bucky to fuck up. I can't be the reason his reputation gets ruined."
"His reputation? What about yours? And what about happiness? Both of yours?"
You ignore the latter. "My reputation doesn't matter —"
"The hell it doesn't."
"Steve —"
"You think hiding this is going to make it better? You think people are going to stop talking just because you and Bucky aren't together?"
You don't have an answer for that.
His voice softens slightly. "Look, I get it. People are assholes. But you're not protecting him by shutting him out. You're just making him miserable."
"Better miserable than —"
"Than what? Happy? Than having something good for once in his life?" Steve runs a hand through his hair and lowers his voice again. "Do you know what he said to me when you started seeing each other? He said he finally understood what everyone meant about coming home to someone. That for the first time in years, he wasn't coming home to an empty apartment."
Blurry eyes make it hard for you to see him. "Steve —"
"He's in love with you. Even if he hasn't said it yet, it's obvious. And you're killing him."
"I'm trying to protect him."
"From what? From people talking? They're going to talk anyway. People always talk."
"Not if there's nothing to talk about."
"You really think that's going to work? You really think you can just walk away and everything goes back to normal?"
"I don't know. I — I don't know, okay? I'm just trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing is being honest with him."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if I tell him, he'll want to fix it. He'll either fire Jason or reprimand him or do something that'll just make everything worse." You swipe at your eyes fast. "Any way this goes, it makes him look bad. If he fires them, people will say he's protecting his girlfriend. If he ignores it, the rumors get worse. There's no winning here."
"So you're just going to keep avoiding him? Keep pretending nothing's wrong?"
"I don't know what else to do."
Steve's quiet for a long moment. "You could try trusting him."
"I do trust him —"
"No, you trust him to cook, to run his kitchen. But you don't trust him to handle this. He's stronger than you think. And he deserves to know what's going on."
"If I tell him —"
"He'll want to fight for you. Yeah. That's what people do when they care about someone."
You close your eyes and let the tears fall freely now.
Bucky's going through the motions of prep when Steve walks back into the kitchen looking like someone just punched him in the gut.
"What's wrong with you?" The question comes out automatically, that reflexive check-in he's been doing since they were kids.
"We need to talk. Office. C'mon."
"I'm working —"
"Now, Buck."
Steve never uses that tone unless something's seriously wrong. Wordless, Bucky puts down his knife and follows Steve into the office. The door closes behind them with a click that sounds too loud in the small space. "What happened? Someone quit?"
"No. But I just talked to her."
Bucky wants to speak, but words fail him. His jaw clenches so hard his teeth hurt.
"And I know why she's been avoiding you," Steve continues.
"Why?" Three weeks of emotions bundled into one single word.
Steve runs a hand through his hair, clearly debating how to say whatever he's about to say. "Jason and one of the new guys were talking shit, about her. Said she… slept her way into your kitchen."
The words don't register first. Bucky's brain refuses to process them, like if he doesn't acknowledge what Steve just said then it won't be real. "They said what?"
"She overheard them three weeks ago. That's why she's been pulling away. She thinks if people find out about you two, everyone will assume the same thing."
"That's —" The rage building in his chest is so intense he can barely form coherent thoughts, much less sentences. "That's — that's fucking insane. She earned that position before we ever — we weren't even —"
"I know."
"She's the best cook I've had here in years. She works harder than anyone. She —" His hands are trembling with the effort of not putting his fist through the wall. He shoves them in his pockets. "Who the fuck do they think they are?"
"Assholes. But that's not the point —"
"They're talking about her like she's — like she —" The sentence dies in his throat. Saying it out loud will make it real, will make him lose the last thread of control he's got. "I'm firing them. Both of them. Today."
"That's exactly what she said you'd do."
"Good. Then she knows me."
"Buck —"
"No. You don't talk about people like that. You don't —" Bucky's palm connects with the desk hard enough to rattle the papers on it. "Fuck. Does she really think I'd let anyone believe that? Does she think I give a shit what people say?"
"She's trying to protect your reputation."
"My reputation? What about hers?" The question comes out louder than he means it to, weeks of frustration packed into a question. "She's been dealing with this alone for three fucking weeks because she was worried about what — me?"
"Yeah."
"That's — Why didn't she tell me?" He starts pacing. Standing still feels impossible right now, all this energy with nowhere to go.
"Because she knew you'd react exactly like this."
"Like what? Like someone who gives a shit?"
"Like someone who's in love with her."
Steve is watching him with this knowing expression that makes Bucky want to punch him, mostly for being right. "Steve —"
"You're in love with her. Anyone with eyes can see it. The way you look at her, the way you —"
"I know. Fuck, I know, okay? I'm in love with her." Bucky finally, finally admits. But saying it out loud doesn't make it easier. If anything, it makes his chest ache worse, knowing you're out there thinking you have to protect him from gossip while he's in here realizing he'd burn this whole place down if it meant keeping you safe.
Steve's expression softens. "Yeah. I know."
"And she's been avoiding me because she thinks — what? That I care more about what some asshole line cook thinks than I care about her?"
"No. She thinks she's protecting you."
"From what? From being happy?" Bucky lets out a humourless laugh. "I finally — for the first time in years I actually wanted to come home. Wanted to wake up. And she thinks I'm going to choose this place over her?"
Bucky loves his restaurant. Built it from nothing, bled for it. But it’s never felt like this, like something pulling him forward instead of just giving him somewhere to stand. This is the first time in a long while he's felt more than just getting through the day.
"She thinks if people find out, it makes you look bad. Like you compromised your standards."
"My standards?" Bucky's voice goes sharp. "She exceeds every fucking standard I have. She's brilliant and she works her ass off and she —" He takes a breath to calm down. "I hired her because she's good. The best. Everything after that was just — it was just us."
"I know. She knows that too, I think. But she's scared of what everyone else will think."
"I don't give a fuck what everyone else thinks."
"She does. Or at least she cares about how it affects you."
Bucky sinks into his desk chair. "So what do I do?"
"Talk to her."
"I've tried. She won't — every time I try, she shuts down."
"Try harder."
"Steve —"
"You love her, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then fight for her. Make her understand that you don't care what people think. That you're not going anywhere."
Bucky looks up at his best friend. "And if she still won't listen?"
"Then you keep trying until she does. Because that's what you do when you love someone." Steve moves away towards the door. "But first you need to deal with Jason and whoever else was talking shit."
"I'm firing them."
"I figured." Steve pauses with his hand on the doorknob. "For what it's worth? She's miserable too. I've never seen someone look that sad while trying to do the right thing."
"The right thing would be talking to me."
"Yeah. But she's scared… and in love. Those people? They tend to do stupid things."
When Steve leaves, Bucky sits there in his office, trying to breathe through the mess of emotions churning in his gut.
Three weeks. Three weeks you've been carrying this alone because you were trying to protect him. Three weeks of him lying awake wondering what he did wrong, replaying every conversation, every touch, trying to figure out where he fucked up. And the whole time you were just scared, of people talking, of damaging his reputation, of being reduced to some cheap rumour.
He gets it. He does. The world's not kind to women in kitchens, not kind to women who get ahead. But what he doesn't get is why you thought you had to handle it alone, why you thought he wouldn't fight for you.
Because he would. He will.
He's in love with you. Has been for weeks, maybe longer. Since the interview, probably, when you looked at him like you could see right through all his bullshit. Since that first night when you fell asleep in his bed and he laid there watching you breathe, thinking this is what he'd been missing his whole life.
He's in love with you and you're out there thinking you have to protect him.
And some asshole has been running his mouth about you and still working in his fucking kitchen.
Bucky stands up. His hands are still shaking for a different reason now, pure, concentrated rage.
When he walks into the kitchen, everyone's in the middle of prep, focused on their stations, and the familiar sounds of chopping and sizzling fill the space.
Bucky's voice cuts through the noise. "Everyone stop what you're doing. Meeting. Now."
The sudden silence is almost jarring. People look up from their stations, confusion flickering across faces that quickly shift to wariness when they clock his expression. They start gathering near the pass, wiping their hands on their aprons.
You're standing near the back. When Bucky's eyes find you, his heart breaks clean in two. You look exhausted. Scared. Like you're bracing for whatever's about to happen.
He tears his gaze away from you and focuses on the rest of the kitchen. "Someone want to tell me," Bucky keeps his voice calm even though he wants to scream, "what gives anyone the right to talk about their coworkers like they're pieces of meat? In my kitchen?"
Silence. He watches a few people shift their weight, suddenly fascinated with the floor.
"No? No one? Let me be more specific then. Someone — multiple someones, apparently — have been running their mouths about my sous. Starting rumours in my kitchen."
More uncomfortable shifting.
"You know what the really fucked up part is? She earned this job. She's got more talent in her fucking pinkie than most of you have in your entire bodies. And instead of respecting that, instead of learning from someone who's better than you, you reduce her to a cheap rumour."
"Chef —" Jason starts.
"I'm not done. This kitchen runs on two things. Talent and respect. You need both to work here. Both. Not one or the other. I don't care if you're the best cook I've ever seen. If you can't treat your coworkers with basic fucking human decency, you don't belong here."
Bucky's eyes scan the group, making contact with each person individually. He wants them to understand this isn't just talk. "This is me telling you how this kitchen works. How it's always worked. This isn't negotiable. And if you have a problem with that, there's the door."
No one seems to move.
"I've spent years building this place. Years earning the stars, making sure every plate that leaves this kitchen is perfect. And I will not let anyone ruin that because they can't keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves."
He turns to look at Jason directly. "Especially when those opinions are rooted in misogynistic bullshit that has no place in my kitchen."
Jason's face goes from pale to flushed red in seconds, stain of embarrassment creeping up his neck. "I didn't —"
"You did. I know you did. And you know what really pisses me off?" Bucky takes a step closer and watches Jason try not to flinch. "You made her feel like she had to hide. Like being good at her job wasn't enough, like she had to prove herself over and over again because assholes like you can't accept that a woman earned something on her own merit."
"Chef, I —"
"Save it. You're fired. Clear out your station and get out of my kitchen."
Jason's mouth works like a fish out of water, opening and closing without any sound. "You can't —"
"I can. I just did. Out. Now."
"This is bullshit —"
"It's consequence. There's a difference. And whoever else was part of this conversation? You know who you are. You've got two minutes to come forward."
The new line cook — Miller, Bucky thinks his name is — raises his hand like he's in grade school. "I'll resign."
"Smart choice."
Jason's still rooted to the spot, eyes darting around the kitchen like he's waiting for someone to come to his defense. But there's only silence. Nobody meets his gaze.
"I said out," Bucky repeats.
Jason rips off his apron and throws it on the ground, storming toward the back door. The new guy follows him. When the door slams behind them, the kitchen stays silent.
"The rest of you, get back to work. We've got service in three hours and we're down two people. Figure it out."
The kitchen erupts back into motion immediately, everyone returning to their stations like they can't get away fast enough.
Bucky's eyes find you again. You're staring at him with an expression he can't quite read, makes his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. There's shock there, definitely. Disbelief. But underneath it all there's something that looks like it might be hope. It's breaking his heart and healing it at the same time.
He wants to go to you, pull you aside and tell you that you didn't have to protect him, that he would've done this two weeks ago if you'd just told him, and firing Jason is one of the easiest decisions he's made ever.
But the kitchen's watching. Bucky knows better than to push right now. He just holds your gaze, trying to pour everything he can't say into that single look. Then he turns and heads back toward his office before he does something dumb like forget where he is and kiss you in front of everyone.
Bucky's staring at his laptop screen without actually seeing anything, waiting for the kitchen to clear out, to come find you.
When the office door opens and you step in, he cannot believe his eyes. You close the door behind you and stand there frozen on spot.
You both are. Waiting for the other to make the first move. It's stupid, honestly, the two of you stuck on opposite sides of this tiny office like there's some invisible line neither of you knows how to cross first.
The human heart is a wonderful organ, capable of supplying the entire body without missing a beat. Bucky's heart, though, trips over itself right now, like it forgot how this is supposed to work.
Thankfully, you're crossing the small space in three strides and he's standing, reaching for you, every tense muscle in his body finally remembering how to relax, his heart knowing how to function properly again.
Your arms wrap around his waist, bury your face in his chest, hard enough he feels the shape of your nose, your forehead. You're shaking, just this fine tremor he can feel everywhere you're touching him. Like you're trying really hard not to fall apart and it's not quite working. His arms come around you immediately, one hand cradling the back of your head while the other presses flat against your spine. "I'm here," he murmurs into your hair. God, you smell the same. Like the shampoo he's still got in his shower, the one you left behind three weeks ago. "I'm here, baby. Please don't cry."
Crying like this is hardly strong. But his arms are around you and he smells like home, and the last thing you want to be is strong. You've missed him so much it physically hurts. The sob that escapes you is wet against his shirt, "I missed you. I missed you so much."
"Yeah? Whose fault is that?" There's a soft, familiar teasing in his tone, makes you pull back just enough to look at him. Your lips jut out before you can help it, the one that only comes out when it's just him, when you don't have to keep your guard up. Everyone else thinks you're tough and competent, and you are, but with Bucky you've never had to pretend you don't also want to be soft sometimes.
He wants to kiss that pout off your face. Wants to do a lot of things, actually, but first he needs to make sure you're okay. His thumb comes up to wipe under your eyes, catching tears.
"You're being mean." Your lips are still doing the thing he adores most.
"You're the one who disappeared on me for two weeks."
"I had a reason —"
"A stupid reason."
You want to argue but he's smiling at you. One of those real smiles that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. You've missed that smile so much you ache with it. "It wasn't stupid. I was trying to protect you."
"I know." His expression goes serious but still soft. "I'm sorry for doing that without asking you first. The meeting, firing Jason — all of it. But I was so fucking mad, and I would never let anyone talk about you like that. Never."
The fierceness in his voice does something to your chest, makes it warm and painful at once. "I know. I just — I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I should've told you."
"Yeah, you should've." But his voice is gentle, at odds with the words, hands never leaving you, holding you like you're something precious even though you fucked this up. The tears start again, harder this time, and you hate it. You hate crying, feeling this vulnerable, that you can't just pull it together for two seconds.
"Sweetheart, no —" Panic flashes across his face, knows he's said the wrong thing and scrambling to make it right. "No, baby, I'm sorry. I'm stupid. I shouldn't have — I should've just read your mind or something —"
That startles a laugh out of you, wet and a little broken but still a laugh. "You're not a mind reader."
"Clearly. Would've saved us both a lot of trouble if I was."
"You would've been horrified by what I was thinking."
His eyebrows go up, that interested look he gets. "Oh yeah? What were you thinking?"
"That I was in love with you and terrified you'd figure it out." The words come out before you can stop them, honest and raw and so vulnerable it makes you want to grab the words back out of the air and shove them back in your throat. But you don't, you can't. Not when Bucky's looking at you like that.
"You're in love with me?"
You can feel your face heating up, but you nod. "Yeah. I am. Have been for — I don't know. A while."
"Mhmm, that's good. Because I'm in love with you too."
The relief that floods through you is so intense you actually sway a little, his hands tightening to keep you straight. "You are?"
"Yeah. I am. Have been for — I don't know. A while." He's using your words back at you, a soft smirk playing on his lips. You want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure.
"Don't make fun of me."
"I'm not. I'm —" How does he explain this? That he's been miserable without you? That his apartment felt wrong? That Alpine's been waiting by the door every night? "I've been going crazy without you. Alpine too. Keeps waiting for you."
Guilt speaks for you, "I'm sorry. I should've —"
"Stop apologizing." His hands frame your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones. "We both fucked up. You should've told me what Jason said. I should've pressed more."
Standing in his cramped office with your faces inches apart, it feels like you can finally breathe again after weeks of suffocation. "I missed this."
"Yeah?" His thumb traces your bottom lip and your breath catches. "What specifically?"
"You being annoying. Me wanting to hit you. The usual."
A soft smile curves his lips as you study his face, taking in details you'd memorized weeks ago. The small scar on his chin you liked to trace, the way his hair falls across his forehead. But now there's darkness under his eyes, that you've caused. "You look tired."
"Haven't been sleeping."
You pull him closer, words failing, conveying what you want through touch alone. Bucky seems to understand, a soft kiss placed on your temple as he speaks, "we're really bad at this."
"At what?"
"Being apart." He says it like a confession, like admitting weakness, but his hands are still gentle on your face. "I don't want to do it again."
"I don't want to do it again either."
Bucky has to kiss you now. Can't not kiss you when you're looking at him like that, all soft and more importantly, his.
The apartment looks exactly the same as you remember. The book you were reading is still on the table. There's your coffee mug on the counter. From the faint ring outside, it looks like Bucky's been using it.
Alpine appears the second you step inside, meowing so loud it's almost accusatory. She's looking at you like you personally betrayed her. You sink down onto the floor right there in the living room, don't even make it to the couch, Alpine immediately climbing into your lap. She's purring, that rumbling engine sound that always makes you smile. "I'm sorry, baby," you murmur, scratching behind her ears. "I missed you too."
Bucky watches the way you curl around Alpine like you're trying to make yourself small enough to fit in her world. This is what he wanted. This. You in his space, in his world, with his cat, looking like you belong here. Without a second thought, he's drops down next to you, close enough that his thigh presses against yours, arms around both of you. One around your shoulders, pulling you into his side, and the other joining yours in Alpine's fur.
You let yourself lean into him, head finding that spot on his chest that feels like it was made specifically for you. Alpine's purring gets louder, pleased to have both her people back where they belong. "This is nice," you say.
His chin rests on top of your head. "Yeah. It is."
"I'm sorry I left."
"I'm sorry too. Can we stop apologising now?"
The laugh out of you, however soft, startles Alpine enough that she whips her head around to glare at you, but she recovers and nuzzles back into you, apparently deciding to forgive the disruption.
It's the most peace you've felt in weeks. Possibly longer. Alpine's warm weight in your lap, Bucky's arm solid around your shoulders.
"I was thinking," Bucky says eventually.
"Mhmm, dangerous."
He pinches your side gently, making you yelp and squirm in his grasp. "I was thinking you should move in."
"What?"
"Your stuff's already here. Work's downstairs. Commute's easier. Just makes sense."
"That's very romantic."
"I'm in love with you and I want you here all the time. Better?"
You're smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. "A little better."
"Is that a yes?"
You think about your empty apartment, waking up alone, not having this — Bucky and Alpine and home. "Yeah. That's a yes."
The kiss he presses to your temple is soft and lingering. "Thank God. Because I actually cleared out more drawer space — you know, before all this."
Alpine meows, annoyed at being squished between you, and you both laugh. But neither of you move. Neither of you want to.
"I love you," you say. Testing the words out loud now that you can, now that you know how to say it, and that he feels the same.
His arm tightens around you. "I love you too." He's smiling. You can feel it, the curve of his lips on the top of your head.
Alpine purrs louder, like she's agreeing, and you let yourself sink into this. Into Bucky and Alpine and the feeling of home.
COLLAB MASTERLIST ✧ MY MASTERLIST
EXTRAS. Thank you so much for reading! Please do support all the amazing authors who are participating in this collab! Did I know anything about chefs? No. Did I one day watch a random ass movie and decide chefs are hot? You know.
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YES!!! this is what I was looking for when I downloaded this app
Reblog if its okay to message you on anon until I am comfortable enough to reveal myself to you
fit check
SECOND CHANCES
congressman barnes x female med resident! reader
summary. one stolen night with congressman barnes leaves you with more than memories: a positive test and a man who's determined to prove he's worth a second chance.
word count. 19.5k warnings. age gap, accidental pregnancy, smut, MDNI, 18+, angst, bucky is an asshole for a second, pregnancy hormones, protected and unprotected pnv, pregnancy sex, oral (f receiving), no use of y/n. notes. reader is said to have a blocked lactation duct and one of the treatment options is manual suction. it’s a little embellished for plot.
READ ON AO3
This is not your scene. The chandelier must have cost a fortune just to hang there and look pretty. You know this because you spent the better part of your first ten minutes staring up at it with your mouth slightly open, trying to calculate how many months of your salary it would take to even come close. You stopped at four years because it was getting depressing. Sarah had promised you open bar and good food. She had failed to mention that you’d feel like a fraud the entire time. “You look fine,” Sarah had said this evening, watching you smooth down the front of your dress in the mirror of her condo. You had gone back and forth for longer than you’d like to admit. The dress is nice. It’s the kind of nice where you’d wear it to a birthday dinner, maybe a date somewhere with cloth napkins. It is not, by any stretch, gala nice. The other women in this room are in floor-length gowns with jewellery that probably has names, and here you are in a midi dress off a sale rack. “You’re a guest of a congressman’s daughter,” She’d reminded you, fixing her own earring. “Nobody’s gonna care.” Nobody might care, but you sure do notice. There’s an ease to the way these people move around each other. There’s air kissing, the laughing at things that aren’t funny, the way they hold their champagne glasses by the stem like it’s second nature. You hold yours like you’re scared of dropping it, which you are, because you’re fairly certain the glasses alone are worth more than your monthly metro card. Still. Free champagne. That part, at least, Sarah had been right about. You’ve had two glasses and are working steadily on your third, which is making the whole scene considerably more bearable. The food is also ungodly good. You had swiped four of the little crab toast thingies off a passing tray and felt zero shame about it. You were coming off a forty-eight hour shift two days ago. You deserved the crab toasts. Sarah, for her part, has completely abandoned you. Her father is a congressman from Virginia and this is his world, so she knows everyone in a twenty foot radius of wherever she stands. It hadn’t taken long before she was absorbed into a circle of people you didn’t know.
She’d shot you an apologetic look over someone’s shoulder, and you’d waved her off.
You’re fine. You’re a grown adult. You can stand by the tall cocktail table near the windows and people-watch by yourself like a normal person.
The problem with people-watching, as it turns out, is that occasionally the people watch back.
He’s been drifting in your periphery for a few minutes now. You clocked him when he walked in, because he’s the kind of man you can’t not clock when he walks into a room.
Easy forties, maybe pushing further than that, with dark hair and the kind of jaw that belongs on something carved out of stone. He’s in a suit that fits him the way suits are supposed to fit, which is to say, perfectly. There’s a slight silver threading through the dark at his temples. His left arm is gloved, metal just barely visible at the cuff. You know who he is, vaguely. Congressman James Barnes. Before that, the Winter Soldier. You’ve seen him on the news twice and found him credible both times, which is not something you say lightly. Not that this is relevant. You’re just noting that he’s across the room. That’s it. Just noting.
What is relevant, however, is the man currently sidling up next to you, because the man currently sidling up next to you has had considerably more of the open bar than you have, and he smells like it. “Lovely evening,” he says, in the way that people say things when they are not actually talking about the evening. You give him the polite smile. The one that says I see you, and I’m too tired to be rude. “It is.” “You here with anyone?” “My friend,” you answer, with a pointed glance across the room in Sarah’s general direction. “She’s just over there.” He follows your gaze, disinterested, and then looks back at you. He introduces himself as something, and you honestly don’t catch it because your brain has already filed him under do not engage. He’s maybe mid-fifties, the kind of man who introduces himself at parties by his job title, and his eyes haven’t quite been at eye level this whole conversation. “What do you do?” “I’m in medicine,” you say, keeping it deliberately vague. In your experience, the vague answer is the one that ends conversations faster. It does not, in this case, end the conversation. In fact, it seems to invite more of it. His hand lands on the cocktail table next to yours, he leans in like you’d asked him to, and the smell gets considerably worse. “Beautiful and smart,” he says. “That’s dangerous.” Gag.
“Mm,” you say, which is not agreement, but which he takes as agreement. His shoulder shifts incrementally closer to yours, and your brain is already doing the math. How do you extract yourself from this without making a scene, because making a scene at a congressman’s fundraiser gala, at which you are a guest of a congressman’s daughter, feels inadvisable at best and catastrophic at worst. You can’t exactly do what you’d do at a regular bar, which would be to simply say not interested and walk away, because this is not a regular bar and these are not regular people and you’re suddenly very aware that the champagne glass you’re holding probably costs two hundred dollars. The man leans in further. “Can I get you a drink?” “I have one,” you say, lifting your glass, which is clearly almost empty, which he also clearly notices. “Let me get you another, then.” And that is when, for the second time tonight, you make eye contact with Congressman Barnes. He’s a little closer now, not by much though. He’s watching the scene with an expression that you can’t quite place. It’s not pity, exactly. Not amusement either. It’s more like someone who has correctly identified a problem and is turning over how to address it. You do the only thing that seems sane to you in this moment. You hold his gaze, and your expression says, if you speak even one word of fluent English right now I will owe you forever. He receives it. You can tell by the slight shift in his posture, the barely perceptible nod. Then he’s making his way over, like he’s just wandering and it happens to be in your direction. “Sorry,” he says, stopping at your side. Not to the drunk man. To you. Like he’s the one who’s late. “Got caught up.”
His voice is … nice. A lot different from TV. The drunk man recalibrates visibly. He looks at Congressman Barnes, recognises him the same way you did. There’s that small double-take of oh, him, and suddenly the lean is gone, the arm is pulled back, the proximity becomes appropriate. “Congressman,” the man says, in a completely different register than the one he’d been using on you. “Didn’t realize you two—” “Good to see you.” Congressman Barnes’ voice is perfectly pleasant, perfectly even. He extends his hand and the drunk man shakes it, quietly excuses himself to the bar, which is where he should have stayed to begin with. “Thank you,” you say, once he’s out of earshot. “I really didn’t want to make a thing of it.” “I could tell.” His eyes are blue. A shade darker than you’d expected, up close. “He giving you trouble for long?” “Long enough.” You take a sip of your champagne to have something to do with your hands. “I’m not really sure of the etiquette for telling a middle-aged man to leave you alone at a formal event.” “Usually just telling him works.” The corner of his mouth pulls up, barely. “But I get it.” He reaches past you for the appetizer that a passing server is offering, takes one of the small bruschetta thingies, and doesn’t immediately move away.
You notice that. He doesn’t immediately move away. “You’re Sarah’s friend,” he says. It’s not really a question. “Jackson’s daughter.” “Yeah.” You blink. “How’d you—” “He mentioned his daughter was bringing someone tonight.” A small lift of a shoulder. “I know Richard well. He’s a good man.” “He is,” you agree, which is true, having met Sarah’s father a grand total of three times. “She didn’t warn me that good meant—” you gesture vaguely at the chandelier, the room, the twelve-piece orchestra, “—all this.” His face looks like he found that funny, but he also looks like he doesn’t want to give you the satisfaction. “First time at one of these?” “That obvious?” “Little bit. He doesn’t say it unkindly. “You’ve been staring at the chandelier for the most part.” Your face does something embarrassing. “I was doing math.” “Math.” “About how long it would take me to afford it. On my salary.” You stop yourself, because that is possibly the most un-gala thing you could have said, and he is a congressman, and you are already wearing the wrong dress. “Which — never mind. I’m a resident. I don’t have the money for light fixtures.” He does laugh at that, quietly, more of an exhale than a real laugh, but it counts. “What kind of medicine?”
“Emergency.” You set your now-empty glass down on the nearest surface. “I’m in my third year.” “Long hours.” “Long doesn’t really cover it.” You glance sideways at him. Up, technically, because he has several inches on you and you’re in heels. “But I’m not going to complain at a gala. It seems rude.” “You can complain… I don’t care.” Something about the way he says it is disarming, and you weren’t expecting that. You’d expected… you’re not entirely sure what you’d expected. Polished, maybe. The kind of conversation that sounds like a conversation but is really just two people exchanging pleasantries until someone finds a more useful person to talk to. That’s what galas are, as far as you can tell. This doesn’t feel like that. “How long have you been doing this? The congressman thing.” “Six momths.” He picks up a glass from a passing tray. Water, not champagne. You notice that too. “Why?” “I saw a clip of you once. About pharmaceutical pricing.” You pause, aware that this is maybe strange to bring up. “You didn’t let him deflect.” He looks at you for a moment, and you can’t quite tell what he’s thinking. His face is not an easy read. “Most people don’t bring that up.”
“Most people here probably benefit from him deflecting.” Another one of those almost-laughs. You’re starting to like those unreasonably. “Fair.” He turns slightly toward you, weight shifting, and it’s the kind of body language that says I’m not going anywhere yet, which you are reading, as positive. Possibly incorrectly. “What made you go into emergency medicine?” “I like knowing the answer fast.” It is the honest version. “Other specialties… you wait for labs, wait for imaging, wait for rounds. Emergency, you have to think right now, decide right now. I like that. Also I’m bad at small talk, so at least in the ER nobody expects it from me.” “You’re not bad at it.” “I’ve been talking about chandeliers and my salary.” “I liked it,” he says, like that settles it, and the frankness of it catches you off guard enough that you don’t have an immediate response, which almost never happens to you. You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. The orchestra has transitioned to something slightly livelier and a few couples have migrated toward the cleared floor at the center of the room. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?” The words come out before you can dress them up more politely, you wince slightly at the delivery. You’re three champagnes deep and apparently that’s what three champagnes does.
He doesn’t look thrown by it. If anything, he looks like he’s deciding how to answer, which is its own answer. “Forty-four or biologically a hundred and eight.”
You do the math without meaning to. The math is not small. “Right.”
“How old are you? Just so we’re both working with the same information.”
“Twenty-eight.”
He doesn’t look away from you. “So… age change anything for you?” His voice is quiet enough that it doesn’t carry anywhere.
Oh. We are going there straight. Okay. The warmth that works its way up your neck is something, that even the air conditioning can’t seem to help with. You look down at your empty glass and think about how Sarah is absolutely going to scream when you tell her about this tomorrow. “That’s—” you start. And then Sarah materializes at your elbow like she has a sixth sense for inconvenient timing, slightly flushed and smelling like champagne and grabbing your arm with both hands. “There you are! My dad wants to say hi, he knows you’re here—” She clocks Congressman Barnes. Her eyes go very wide and then very carefully neutral, which is the least neutral expression you’ve ever seen on a human face. “Congressman Barnes, hi, I’m so sorry to interrupt—” “You’re not,” he says easily, and he means it, you can tell, which is somehow worse than if he were being polite. He looks at you. “It was good talking to you.” “Yeah.” Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. “It was.” He holds eye contact for exactly one beat longer. And then he nods, and turns, and Sarah is already dragging you in the opposite direction with her grip iron-tight on your wrist. “Oh my god,” she hisses, the second there’s enough ambient noise to cover it. “Oh my God—” “It was just talking.” “It was not just talking—” “Sarah—”
“He’s so hot,” she says, almost mournful. “He’s so hot and he was talking to only you for like twenty minutes and I need you to know that Bucky Barnes does not do that—” “Bucky,” you say, and your stomach does a small stupid thing. “His name is Bucky?” She stares at you. “Please tell me you got his number.”
You didn’t. You are, the longer you stand here being dragged toward Sarah’s father, increasingly annoyed about that.
You find him again by accident. That’s the part you’ll tell Sarah later. That it was an accident and she will not believe you, and she will be partially right not to.
Because when you excused yourself from the conversation with Sarah’s father after approximately nine minutes, you were not not looking for Congressman Barnes. You were getting another drink. Those are two different things that happened to involve the same direction.
The bar is less crowded, so there’s an actual open stretch of marble counter to stand at. You order a club soda because your limit is three champagnes and you reached it. You’re stirring it with the little cocktail straw and staring at the ice like it did something to you when someone stops next to you. Not just anyone. You know before you look, from the proximity, from the particular way the air in the vicinity shifts. “Club soda,” Bucky says, nodding at your glass. “Smart.” “I’m a doctor… In theory.” “In theory?” “I mean residency.” You glance up at him. He’s looking straight ahead at the bar, not at you, and yet every part of you is acutely aware of him. “I know my limits.” “Three glasses?” He sounds like he already knows. “How’d you— Were you watching me?” He doesn’t answer immediately. He signals the bartender for something and then he turns his head to look at you. The look on his face is the least congressman-like look you’ve seen from him all evening. It’s quieter than that. More direct. “Yeah… I was.”
The bartender sets his glass down. You notice that it’s water again.
But Bucky doesn’t reach for it yet. He’s still looking at you. You have been through four years of medical school and almost three years of residency, which means you have stood in front of attendings who looked at you like you were a problem they needed to solve, and you did not flinch. You are flinching a little now. Just a little. “You didn’t come find me,” you try to keep your voice even. “You were with Richard.” “For like eight minutes.” Something moves across his face. Not quite a smile but in the neighborhood. “Were you counting?” “I’m not answering that.” He reaches for his water, finally, and takes a drink. You watch his jaw because you’re only human. There’s a scar that runs just beneath his jaw. You have the reflexive urge to ask how he got it, which is the emergency medicine in you, and also probably something else. “I thought about asking for your number,” he says, and he says it the same way he says everything, like he just decided to set the thing down in front of you and see what you do with it. “What stopped you?” He considers you for a moment. “Didn’t want to do it in front of Sarah. Felt like a thing that shouldn’t have an audience.” “That’s—” you press your lips together. “That’s actually reasonable.” “I have my moments.” The orchestra finishes something and starts something else, slower, and the lights in the ballroom dim imperceptibly.
You should go back. Sarah is probably wondering where you are. You have a club soda to finish and heels that are beginning to make their unhappiness known and a 6 AM shift on Wednesday that is always at the back of your mind. His hand finds the bar just next to yours. The same way the drunk man’s hand had, earlier. Except nothing about it feels the same. Not even close. “I have a suite upstairs… I stay here when I’m in the city for these.” A pause. “I’m not— that’s not—” “I know what you’re saying.” He looks at you. “Yeah?” “Yeah.” His pinky finger moves. Just barely. Just enough to press against the side of your hand, the lightest possible contact, and you feel it everywhere. “Tell me if I’m reading this wrong.”
You look down at where his hand is next to yours. You look back up at him. And then you do the most impulsive thing you have done since you signed a lease on an apartment you couldn’t afford because it had good light. “You’re not reading it wrong.” He walks slightly behind you toward the elevator, which is not nothing. It is discrete, and you appreciate that without saying so. His hand presses briefly to the small of your back as you reach the elevator, guiding you left. Even through the fabric of your dress, the warmth of his palm is enough to make your brain go briefly offline. The elevator ride is quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that’s loud. He’s not looking at you. He’s looking at the floor numbers. You’re doing the same. The back of his hand grazes yours and neither of you moves away, and by the sixth floor you have resigned yourself to the fact that you are going to be completely useless. The suite is significant. Of course. You take approximately two seconds to register that the entryway alone is bigger than your apartment’s living room before you stop looking at the suite. He closes the door. Turns around. And the way he looks at you when it’s just the two of you, without a ballroom background, is different. There’s nothing measured about his eyes right now. “Hi,” you say stupidly, because your brain has officially handed in its notice. “Hi.” And then he’s crossing the room and his hands are on your face and he’s kissing you. It is hungry in a way that makes your knees register a complaint.
Both of your hands come up to grip the lapels of his jacket just to have somewhere to put them. He pulls back just enough to breathe. His thumbs are at your jaw. “Okay?” he asks.
“Very,” you manage. He kisses you again, slower this time but no less certain, and his hands slide from your jaw to your waist. He walks you backward until your shoulders meet the wall. You make a soft sound against his mouth that you are immediately embarrassed by. “Don’t,” he says against your lips. “Don’t what?” “Do that thing where you get embarrassed.” He pulls back to look at you, properly. “Don’t.” You open your mouth and close it. He’s still in the full suit — jacket, tie, the whole shebang — and you are suddenly very, very aware of that.
His hands find the zipper at the back of your dress. Watching your face the whole time like he’s making absolutely sure. The zipper gives and you feel the fabric loosen across your back, cool air reaching your skin. “Arms up,” he says. You raise your arms and he lifts the dress over your head, and sets it on the chair behind him like it matters, like he’s thinking about the fact that it’s the only dress you brought. Something about that short, practical gesture does more to you than it should. And then he takes you in. It’s for a long moment. His eyes move over you and there’s not a single thing performative about how he looks at you. It’s not the look of someone who is trying to make you feel good, it’s the look of someone who genuinely cannot help himself. You are standing in front of a congressman in a four-hundred-dollar-a-night suite in a bralette from Target and underwear that does not match it, and you are acutely aware of this fact. “These don’t match.” Your face goes hot. “I wasn’t exactly planning this.” “No?” “I was planning on eating canapes and going home by ten.” Your voice comes out more defensive than you intend. “So no, I didn’t— I didn’t put on a matching set, I just—” “Hey.” He says it gently, and his hand comes up to tip your chin. “I’m not complaining.” “You literally just pointed it out—” “Because it’s cute.” His thumb traces your jaw. “Because you’re standing there looking like you can’t decide whether to be embarrassed or annoyed, and it’s—” something moves through his expression, “—it’s really cute is all. And I’m flattered” You stare at him. “You’re a congressman.” “I’m aware.” “You give floor speeches.” “Also aware.” “You can’t just… say things are cute.” “Sure I can.” He’s guiding you back toward the bed, and the backs of your knees hit the mattress and you sit down. He doesn’t follow you down. He just stands there, looks at you, still fully dressed, tie still knotted, and goes to his knees. Oh.
Oh. His hands slide up your calves, and he watches you watch him. You’re gripping the duvet with both hands because he hasn’t even done anything yet and you already feel like the floor dropped out. “You don’t have to—” you start. He looks up at you, and his eyes are very, very dark. “I want to.” His fingers find the waistband of your underwear and pulls them down your legs with an efficiency that should not be as attractive as it is. Then his hands are on your inner thighs, pushing them apart. He looks at you one more time like he’s checking in, which he clearly is.
“Good?” “Please,” you say, which answers nothing and everything. He lowers his head. The first press of his mouth to your cunt makes you bite down on your lip hard enough that you taste something. He takes his time with it. There’s nothing hurried here, nothing obligatory, he moves against you like he has absolutely nowhere else to be and no interest in being there anyway. His tongue finds the bundle of nerves at your center and stays there, slow and devastating, and you have to press the back of your hand to your mouth to keep the sound in. “Don’t,” he says, again, pulling back just enough. His breath is warm against you and it’s its own kind of torture. “I want to hear you.” “There are other rooms on this floor—” “Thick walls,” he says, and then he’s back at it. You stop thinking about the other rooms. He’s good at this in the way that makes you forget your own name temporarily. His hands are on your hips, keeping you from squirming away when it gets to be too much, which it does, quickly, because he has apparently decided to be completely merciless about this.
You have your fingers in his hair now. His perfectly styled hair, which you’re currently ruining, but do not care. And you are saying his name at a volume that would embarrass you under any other circumstances. “James—” you breathe, and then, when he does that specific thing with his tongue, laving at your entrance, “—God, Bucky, please—” He makes a sound against you that you feel everywhere. His fingers find the slick of you, and he looks up at you from where he is, which should be illegal, the visual of this is going to live in your brain for years. “This okay?” he murmurs.
“Yes, please, yes—”
He sinks two fingers into you slowly, and your head drops back. He works them against your walls while his mouth moves on your clit and you grip his hair tighter and he doesn’t tell you to let go.
The tension builds fast. Faster than you’d like, because you’d like this to never stop. When it breaks it breaks completely, your whole body pulls tight and then releases, the sound you make is completely beyond your control. He works you through it. Every last second of it. His fingers slow but don’t stop, his mouth gentles but stays, until you’re twitching away from the sensitivity and pressing weakly at his shoulder, and only then does he pull back. He stands, and he looks… composed, almost, except for the flush at the collar of his very nice shirt, the slick in his beard and the way his hair is thoroughly destroyed.
He’s still in the full suit. The tie is still knotted. You are lying on his hotel bed having just come completely apart and he looks like he’s about to chair a subcommittee meeting. “That’s unfair,” you say to the ceiling.
“What is?”
“You.” You lift your head to look at him. “The suit. All of that.” Chuckling, he reaches up and loosens the tie, pulls it over his head, starts on the buttons of his shirt. You push yourself up to sitting, because if he’s going to do that, you are watching.
He shrugs out of the shirt and underneath is a white undershirt, and underneath the undershirt — well. You were not unprepared for the shoulders. You were unprepared for everything else. “Hi,” you say again. He should be tired of hearing it. He isn’t. He almost smiles. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, and comes up with his wallet, and from his wallet— “You just… carry that?” you ask. “I was hoping,” he says.
Something about the admission makes your chest do a complicated thing. You reach for him as he comes down onto the bed, pulling him in. He braces his forearm by your head and kisses you and you can taste yourself on his mouth, which makes the complicated thing in your chest considerably worse.
“Tell me if anything’s—”
“I will… I trust you.”
He pulls back to look at you at that. Just for a second. Something moves through his eyes that you don’t quite have a word for.
“Okay.”
He takes his time. He works you back up with his hands first, until you’re arching into him and your nails are at his back and the patience of it is making you slightly insane, and when he finally rolls the condom on and shifts over you and pushes in—
The noise you make is entirely involuntary. Because he’s big. No, that would be an understatement.
“Still with me?” Right by your ear.
“More than with you,” you get out, and he exhales a short laugh into your neck and then starts to move, and you stop being capable of full sentences.
He’s thorough about it in a way that makes your brain melt clean out of your head. He learned what makes you gasp and then does that thing again. His hand slides under your ass and tilts your hips and hits something that makes you dig your nails in hard enough that he hisses.
“Right there,” you say, uselessly, since he clearly already knows.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t stop—”
He doesn’t stop. He does exactly that, again, and you’re gripping his shoulders with both hands and talking without fully knowing what you’re saying.
He’s got his face pressed to your temple and his breathing is not steady anymore, which is information you file away with tremendous satisfaction.
“You feel—” he starts, and stops, like he doesn’t finish that sentence with people often.
“Tell me.”
He pulls back to look at your face. His hips don’t slow. “Perfect,” he says, like it’s a simple fact.
Your whole body clenches around him at that and he groans. His rhythm shifts. Deeper, more insistent, and you have completely stopped worrying about the other rooms on this floor.
His thumb finds your clit and you cry out. He watches your face while he does it, and there is something about being looked at like that, while he’s inside you, while he’s taking you completely apart for the second time—
You come with your face buried in his neck and his name on your lips and his hand pressed flat to your lower back like he’s trying to keep you together while he undoes you.
He follows not long after with a groan against your temple, his whole body tensing.
Then he’s still, and the room is just the sound of both of you breathing.
He doesn’t move immediately. He stays where he is, most of his weight on his forearm, his other hand moving to push your hair away from your face. It’s a gentle thing, automatic, like he did it without thinking. Like it was just the natural next thing to do.
You stare up at the very expensive ceiling of the very expensive suite.
“I came here for canapes,” you say.
He laughs. A real one this tim. Not the almost-laugh from downstairs, an actual laugh, and it does something devastating to his face. “How’d that work out?”
“Better than expected.”
He presses his lips to your temple, and it’s soft. It lingers for a second, and when he pulls back he’s looking at you with that look again. The one you don’t have a word for yet.
He gets up to deal with the condom, comes back with a glass of water that he sets on the nightstand next to you, and gets back into bed like he does this, like this is just a thing he does, take someone apart completely and then bring them water after.
He’s pulled on his undershirt and his briefs and he looks unfairly good in both, and you’re in nothing, and neither of you seems to have a problem with this.
“Bucky.”
“Mm.”
“What actually made you come over? Downstairs. Earlier.” You turn your head to look at him. “Before that drunken guy. You were watching me before that.”
He’s quiet for a moment. He’s on his back, looking at the ceiling, and his jaw shifts slightly the way it does when he’s thinking.
“You were looking at the chandelier,” he says. “Everyone in that room was pretending they belonged there. You were just standing there, looking up, in the wrong dress. I liked that.”
You look at him for a long moment. “I got it on a sale,” you say.
“I like that too.”
You press your face into the pillow so he can’t see you smiling, and he doesn’t say anything about it, which is possibly the most considerate thing anyone has ever done for you.
Light is the first thing you register. It’s not the thin, grey light that seeps through your blackout curtain at home. This is different, the kind that comes from curtains that cost more than they should and don’t quite meet in the middle.
For a moment you don’t know where you are, which is a feeling you’re familiar with from overnight call, that brief horrible second of complete disorientation before your brain catches up.
Then it catches up.
The sheets are softer than yours. The room is too quiet. And the other side of the bed, when you reach for it without opening your eyes—
Empty.
You open your eyes anyway. On the off chance. The suite looks the same as it had last night except for the light, and the way the silence in it has a different quality now. A full kind of silence. The kind where someone has recently left.
His jacket is gone from the chair. Your dress is still on it, folded carefully over the back. So carefully, actually, that it takes you a second to really process the image. He’d folded your dress before he left. Which means he’d been here, moving around the room, and you’d slept through it.
The glass of water he’d set on the nightstand is still there, half full or half empty or whatever. You stare at it for longer than you need to.
You didn’t expect anything. That’s not entirely true; you’re a grown adult and you know the difference between what you expected and what you’d maybe hoped, and those two things are not the same thing, and it’s fine, it was one night, it was always going to be one night, you knew that going in.
Still. You look around the room. Almost wanting to find something. A note on hotel stationery, his business card under the water glass, anything.
Some small proof that it happened to him too, that you didn’t imagine the careful way he pushed your hair back.
Nothing.
You check the bathroom. The bathroom is pristine and smells faintly like whatever he’d used from the amenity shelf, and there is no note on the mirror, no nothing.
Of course there isn’t. He’s a congressman. He has a schedule. He was probably on a 7 AM call somewhere, probably has a driver waiting downstairs, probably has twelve things on his agenda and last night was just one of them. Item six, maybe, between a donor dinner and a briefing.
You sit back on the bed. You pick up the glass of water and drink the rest of it.
Fine.
You find your underwear, the mismatched ones, and even now that makes your cheeks do something. And then your dress, and your heels, and you check your phone.
Three texts from Sarah that escalate in punctuation, one from your roommate asking if you’re alive. Nothing from a number you don’t recognize.
Obviously.
The elevator ride down is considerably less charged than the one going up. The lobby is already busy, morning check-outs and businessmen with rolling luggage, and you walk through it in last night’s dress and last night’s heels with your chin up, because you are an emergency medicine resident and you have walked into much worse rooms than this.
The glass of water, though. He’d gotten up and gotten you a glass of water and now he was just… gone. Without a word.
That part stings a little. You’d be lying if you said otherwise.
Seventeen days later, you are standing in your kitchen at six in the morning counting backwards on your fingers, and the number you keep landing on is not the number you want.
Your period is late. Not a little late. Late enough that you’ve noticed, which takes something, because your cycle has always run regular, every twenty-eight days, reliable enough that you’ve never had to think about it.
You think about it now. You’ve been thinking about it for four days with increasing focus, telling yourself it was stress, it was the hours, it was the back-to-back overnight shifts that had wrecked your sleep, because that’s what happens to residents, your hormones get strange when your cortisol stays high, it happens.
Except.
Except that two weeks before your missed period, which would put it at about a week after the gala, you’d had spotting. You had noted it the way you noted things and filed it under irregular and moved on, because you’d had a fourteen-hour shift and the last thing you wanted to do was think about your own body on top of everything else. You’d thought mid-cycle spotting, stress, nothing.
And the fatigue. God, the fatigue had been something else, but again you’re a third year resident. Fatigue is the baseline. Fatigue is just Tuesday.
Except implantation spotting typically occurs six to twelve days after fertilization. Except you are standing in your kitchen doing obstetric math at six in the morning, and the number you keep landing on is seventeen days post-ovulation, which is—
That’s too late for it to be stress.
You know this. You know this the way you know things you don’t want to know yet, the way you knew a patient’s CT wasn’t going to be clean before the radiologist called. You just know.
You get to the hospital forty minutes early, which is easy enough to explain away to anyone who asks. You’re always early, everyone knows you’re always early.
You take a detour to the ground floor pharmacy. You stand in the family planning aisle for probably thirty seconds longer than a person who is confident about what they’re grabbing would stand there.
You take one off the shelf and tuck it under your arm, and take the stairs up to the third floor resident bathroom, which has a lock that works and more importantly, privacy.
The instructions are not complicated. You’re a doctor. You know what two lines mean.
You sit on the edge of the closed toilet lid you look at the water stain on the ceiling tile for the full three minutes.
There’s a crack in it that branches from the fixture in a way that looks like the course of the facial nerve in the middle ear. You have stared at this ceiling before during bad shifts, during the kind of nights where someone didn’t make it and you had to go somewhere quiet for six minutes, and it has never felt quite like this.
You turn the test over.
Two lines.
Both of them dark. Two unambiguous, immediate, definitive lines.
You sit with that for a long moment. The tile. The test.
You’re pregnant.
You are twenty-eight years old and you are a resident and you had a one-night stand with a congressman whose number you do not have and you are pregnant.
You turn the test face-down again. Pick it up. Put it in a cover at the bottom of your bag under your stethoscope, which feels insane but you’re not leaving it in the trash where someone could see it.
You look at yourself in the mirror. Your face looks the same as it always does. That’s somehow the strangest part.
You unlock the bathroom door. You have a shift to get to.
But one thing you’re sure about is that, you want this baby. Be it a maternal impulse, or whatever it is you don’t have a name for it yet. You want this baby. You need this baby.
Two days of carrying it around inside you like a stone in your chest, and by the third morning you’ve made the decision, or the decision makes you.
Either way, you’re sitting on your bathroom floor at midnight with your back against the tub and the thing is settled.
He needs to know. Whatever happens after that is not something you can fully think about yet, but the part where he doesn’t know is no longer something you can live inside of.
The problem is getting to him.
You try the obvious thing first. His official website has a contact form. For constituents, it says, and you are technically not his constituent, but you fill it out anyway and it autoresponds within thirty seconds with something about being committed to responding within five to seven business days, and you close the laptop.
Five to seven business days.
His office number is listed publicly and you call it the next day on your lunch break. It rings three times before someone picks up.
“Congressman Barnes’ office, how can I help you?”
“Hi.” You try to keep your voice level. “I’m — I’m trying to reach Congressman Barnes. It’s a personal matter.”
There’s a small pause on the other end. “The Congressman has a full schedule. Can I take your name and a callback number? Please describe the nature of your inquiry.”
Right. The nature of your inquiry. “It’s — it’s a private matter. I’d really need to speak with him directly.”
“Ma’am, any personal correspondence for the Congressman goes through his office. If you can describe—”
“I know him personally.” You are aware of how this sounds. You are aware that people who call congressional offices claiming to know the congressman personally are, in fact, not people who know the congressman personally. “I’m not a — I’m not a constituent with a complaint. I’m a personal acquaintance and it’s urgent.”
“I understand,” the woman says, in the tone of someone who does not entirely believe you. “I can pass your information along and someone will follow up.”
Someone. Not him.
“Okay.” You give her your name and your number. You know with complete certainty that you will not hear back.
You dissociate for a minute after you hang up, and then you text Sarah.
You : Hey. Random question. Completely unrelated to anything. How hard would it be for you to get Barnes’ personal number from your dad
Three minutes of silence, which for Sarah is practically geological time.
Sarah: why
You: Sarah please.
Sarah: whyyyy
You: I'll explain later. Is it possible?
Sarah: my dad would notice if i asked. but his phone’s usually just sitting on the counter when he’s in the shower soooo. give me 12 hours and a good reason
You: I promise I'll explain everything.
Sarah: oh this is GOOD. this is so good. okayy
You put your phone in your coat pocket and go back inside.
Sarah texts at eleven seventeen the following night, which means Richard Jackson apparently showers late, and the text is just a phone number and then:
Sarah: okay i need the full story. not a summary. the FULL story. what did you DO??????
You look at the number for a long time.
You: Thank you. I’ll explain everything soon I promise.
Sarah: are you okay??
You think about the test at the bottom of your bag. The ceiling tile with the crack in it. The empty side of the bed with the sheets still warm from him.
You: Yeah. I'm okay. Thank you Sarah.
You add the number to your phone. You just stare at the digits, and your chest is doing the complicated thing again, and you have no idea what you’re going to say when he picks up.
If he picks up.
The first time, it rings five times and goes to voicemail.
His voicemail. His actual voice, which you were not prepared for. You hang up before the beep because you don’t know what you’d say and you can’t practice it out loud yet. The words exist inside your head in a specific order that you’ve rearranged a hundred times since eleven seventeen last night, and none of the arrangements feel right.
You set your phone face-down on your kitchen table. You make coffee you don’t drink. You sit there for twenty minutes and then you pick your phone back up.
It rings three times. You are working out, specifically, how to begin. Not hi, too casual. Not hello, Congressman, too formal and possibly insane. Maybe just his name, just Bucky, like you have any right to—
“Hello.”
Just that. One word. And your heart does something it has absolutely no business doing.
“Hi. This is— It’s — we met at the fundraiser, I mean the gala. About three weeks ago. Sarah Jackson’s friend.” A pause, because you can’t tell if any of this is registering. “The one in the wrong dress.”
“I know who you are.”
Something in his voice. Something that is not nothing. You press your free hand flat to the kitchen table just to have something solid.
“Okay. Good. Hi.”
“Hi.” And there it is, threaded through the single syllable — a smile. The same almost-smile from downstairs at the bar. “It’s good to hear from you.”
You close your eyes for a second. You had not let yourself think about whether it would be good or awkward or somewhere cold in between, because thinking about it felt like jinxing it.
“I need to—” The arrangements in your head are all wrong again. “Is there any chance we could meet? In person. I have something I need to tell you, and I’d rather not do it over the phone.”
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out before you can think about whether it’s true. “I just — it’s better in person. I think.”
“I can do tomorrow. I am free tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow works.” Your voice is admirably steady, and you are giving yourself full credit for that. “Wherever’s easiest for you.”
“There’s a place on 54th. Briar something — Briar & Co. You know it?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Two o’clock,” you confirm. And then neither of you say anything for a second, and you don’t know who should end this.
“It’s good to hear from you,” he says again. Quieter this time, like maybe he’s saying it more to himself than to you.
You don’t know what to say to that. “Right. See you tomorrow.”
You hang up.
You sit back down at your kitchen table, look at your untouched coffee going cold. You breathe in and out very carefully for a minute, and you do not let yourself think about what it meant that he said it twice.
You’re not going to do that. You’re going to be a reasonable adult who goes to work and eats lunch and sleeps normal amounts, and tomorrow you are going to sit across from Bucky Barnes in a coffee shop and say the thing that needs to be said.
That is the plan.
You’re three minutes late. When you push through the glass door and scan the room you find him immediately, because he’s not a man that takes effort to find.
He’s already there. Of course he’s already there, he’s probably never been late to a thing in his life.
He looks like something out of a campaign ad, which is annoying, because you are in your off-duty jeans and the overcoat you’ve had since forever.
He’s at a corner table, which is a thing you file away and he’s got a coffee in front of him already.
He looks up before you reach him. Like he sensed it.
You pull out the chair across from him, sit down and unwrap your scarf. The whole time he’s watching you with an expression you cannot read, which is the same as before, which should not feel as familiar as it does.
“Finally,” he says.
You blink. “Am I late? I thought I was only — what time is it?”
“You’re not late.” The corner of his mouth pulls into a smile. “I’ve just been— Never mind.”
He said finally like he was waiting for you. But he wasn’t waiting long. Does that mean he meant that you finally called? But how would you call if he didn’t leave a number?
No. Nope. You’re not going there.
You look down at the menu you don’t need and tell yourself firmly that it doesn’t mean anything, that he is a politician and politicians are good at making people feel like the only person in the room, it is literally a professional skill.
You’ve rehearsed this. You’ve rehearsed it on the subway here, in the shower last night. You had a version that started with some context, that built up gradually, that eased both of you into it. That version is somewhere on the sidewalk because you don’t have access to it right now.
“I have to tell you something.”
He sets his cup down. “Okay.”
“It’s—” You press your hands flat to your thighs under the table. “It’s not a small thing.”
“Okay.” The steadiness of it is almost its own problem.
Just say it. Say the thing. Spit it out.
You have said hard things before. You have sat across from people and told them their person wasn’t coming home, you have held those conversations together with nothing but your hands and your voice, you can say six words to one man in a coffee shop on 54th Street.
“I’m pregnant.” The words land flat on the table between you. “It’s yours. It’s from — from the gala. That night.”
Silence. Absolute deafening silence.
Not the kind that means he’s gathering himself to respond, or the kind that means he missed it. You can tell from his face that he didn’t miss it. It’s a longer silence. The kind you have to sit with no idea what’s on the other side.
You watch his face. You had run through versions of this moment in your head. There’s shock, the obvious thing, or anger, or some careful measured political blankness.
But it isn’t quite any of those. His jaw is tight and his eyes are on you and he is… not here, quite. He’s somewhere slightly behind his eyes, somewhere you don’t have access to.
“Bucky,” you say, because the silence is going somewhere you don’t like.
He comes back. Just slightly. His hand around his coffee cup tightens and releases.
“Are you sure it’s mine?”
You hear the words. You take a second to make sure you heard them correctly.
“I wore a condom,” he says, and his voice has changed. It’s careful, like he’s walking on ice. “I just — I want to be sure that we’re—”
“Yes.” The word comes out sharp, which you didn’t mean, or maybe you did. “Yes, it’s yours. I’m sure.” You make yourself hold his gaze. “I haven’t slept with anyone else.”
Something shifts in his expression. You can’t tell if it’s belief or the beginning of it or something else entirely.
“We can do a paternity test,” you say, and your voice is admirably level and you hate that you have to say this, you hate that you’re sitting here offering this like it’s a reasonable next step. “If you want confirmation. That’s — that’s available to you. I understand.”
Then you both speak at the same time.
“I didn’t come here asking for anything,” you say.
“What do you want?” he asks.
If only you’d spoken a moment sooner.
Four words. They’re not unkind, exactly. But they land cold, because of what they assume, maybe, or because of what they don’t. What do you want.
As if the only reason you’d be here is because you want something from him specifically, as if this is a transaction he’s being presented with rather than a fact of his life, as if you’d spent three weeks carrying this alone and called his number and rearranged the words a hundred different ways just to want something.
You feel it move through your chest before you can stop it.
“Nothing… I don’t want anything.”
You can clearly see his face change. “That’s not what I—”
“I have to go.” You reach for your scarf. Your hands are steady and you’re glad for it. “I shouldn’t have — I thought you should know. That was the only reason. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“That’s not—hey—” He’s half out of his seat. “That’s not what I meant—”
“It’s fine.” You stand. You loop your scarf once around your neck and your body is doing the automatic things while your brain is somewhere else entirely, somewhere a little removed and glassy. “I’ll be in touch about next steps. Whatever you want to do. If you want the test, just—” You stop yourself before you finish the sentence because your voice is doing something you don’t want it to do. “I’ll be in touch.”
And then you’re walking. Through the small tables, out through the glass door that lets in a rush of cold air that you are grateful for because it hits your face and gives you something to feel that isn’t this.
The sidewalk is busy, you merge into it and walk because walking is something you can do. You’re not going anywhere in particular. You’re just walking.
“Hey.” His voice is behind you. Close. “Just — stop.”
You don’t stop immediately. You take two more steps, which is honest.
“Please.” His hand closes around your arm, just above your elbow. There’s barely any pressure in his grip, but you stop because ‘please’ is not a word he uses easily, you’ve already gathered that, and the way he said it is not a politician’s please.
He’s standing there without his coat. He left it inside, apparently, didn’t stop to grab it. He looks like a person, suddenly. Not a congressman anymore.
“That came out wrong.”
“It’s fine.” It’s something you have said twice now, which is increasingly not true.
“It’s not.” He runs a hand through his hair. The same dark hair you’d pulled at in a hotel suite three weeks ago, but you cannot think about that right now. “I panicked. I said something stupid and it came out wrong and I— I’m sorry.”
“You asked me what I want,” you keep your voice low. “Like I was — like this was something I came to negotiate.”
“I —”
“I’ve been sitting with this for two weeks by myself.” You hadn’t meant to say that part, hadn’t meant to let him know, but there it is. “Two weeks of figuring out how to even find your number, two weeks of—” You stop. You are not going to do this on 54th Street, you are absolutely not. “I’m not asking you for anything. I just thought you deserved to know.”
He’s looking at you with an expression that you can’t name and have never seen on him before. Something stripped of the careful management, the controlled stillness.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The wind picks up and he doesn’t even flinch at it, no coat, and you look at him and you are… tired. You are so, so tired, and you don’t have the energy to hold onto any of this out here on the street.
“I have to get back. I have a shift.”
“Can we— Can we try this again? Somewhere. When you’re ready.” He holds your gaze. “I’d like to do that right. If you’ll let me.”
You look at him for a long moment. The sweater. The cold. The line of his jaw that you’d had your hand against on a different night in a different context. The fact that the two things are the same person is almost too much to hold at once.
“I’ll think about it.”
It is not a yes. It is not quite a no. He seems to understand this, because he doesn’t push.
You turn and don’t look back. You get half a block when your phone buzzes in your pocket.
Bucky: I’m sorry. I mean it.
The phone is an inconvenience right now. It’s him.
You stare at it for two full rings.
Then you pick up, because you are apparently a person who does that.
“Hey.” The same voice that said I’m sorry on a windy sidewalk six hours ago, except now it’s evening and you’ve been on your feet since noon and you have considerably less patience available than you did then.
“I’m in the middle of a shift,” you say, instead of hello.
“I know, I just— Have you eaten?”
You open your mouth. Close it. Look up at the ceiling for a moment, which is a habit you’re developing, apparently. Ceilings when you need a second to not say the first thing that comes to mind. “Bucky.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“It is not a simple question, it is a—” You lower your voice because a nurse just walked past and you do not need this. “Can you just not, please? I’m working.”
“Have you eaten?” he repeats, like he didn’t hear the second half of what you said, or heard it and decided it wasn’t load-bearing.
“I had lunch.”
“It’s 8 PM, I’m not asking about lunch—”
“I’m a resident. Having lunch is a privilege.” You hear an ambulance. “Gotta go.”
“I’ll —”
You don’t let him finish.
At eleven thirty, one of the nurses at the front desk — Maya — stops you in the hallway with an expression that is doing something specific.
“There’s a guy at the front desk.”
“…Okay.”
“He brought food.” She pauses. “A lot of food.”
You look at her. She looks back at you with the energy of someone who has decided this is the best thing that has happened on this shift and possibly this month. “He’s very—” She searches for the word.
“Maya.”
“He’s asking for you specifically.”
You close your eyes for exactly one second. Then you go to the front desk.
There’s a paper bag on the desk in front of Bucky and he’s talking to the security guard with the easy manner of a man who talks to people for a living.
When he sees you coming, his expression shifts into something that is not quite relief but is in the direction of it.
“You didn’t have to do this,” you say, before he can say anything.
“I—”
You don’t let him finish. “I’m working.”
“I’m not staying.” He nods at the bag. “It’s just food. You said you hadn’t eaten.”
You look at the bag. You look at him. Maya, behind you, is doing an absolutely terrible job of pretending to type something. “You didn’t have to drive here.” You keep your voice quiet enough that it stays between the two of you. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
His jaw does the tight-release thing. “Because after you left I felt like an ass… and I need you to know that I’m sorry. Not over a text. In person.” He pushes the bag slightly toward you. “And because you said you hadn’t eaten.”
You stare at the bag. Thai food, from the smell of it, something with lemongrass. Your stomach, which has been ignoring you all evening, suddenly has opinions.
“This doesn’t fix what you said.”
“I’m not trying to fix it. I’m trying to—” He stops himself, and you can see him editing, which is strange to watch on a man who normally seems to say the exact amount he means to. “I’m showing you I’m sorry. That’s all.”
The energy to process this is something you don’t possess now. You pick up the bag. It’s heavier than it looked. “Thank you.” It comes out stiff and you don’t have the bandwidth to soften it. “You should go home.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. You don’t have to — this isn’t something you have to do. Standing in hospital lobbies with Thai food isn’t gonna be your thing, okay? We’re not— that’s not what this is.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Get some food in you.”
“I was going to,” you say, which is not strictly true, and he seems to know it. But he doesn’t say so, which you are choosing to be grateful for.
He nods once, and walks back toward the entrance. You watch him go for exactly two seconds before you make yourself turn around and go back to work.
Maya spins her chair to face you the moment you’re within range. You point at her before she can speak.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Maya.”
“He’s so—”
“I will give you a terrible evaluation.”
She turns back to her computer, failing entirely to hide her smile, and you take the bag to the break room and eat the whole thing. It’s very good, which you resent.
Six hours later, at ten past two, you come out of the hospital into the cold. Your brain is running on fumes, and the black car in the far corner of the parking lot does not immediately register.
Then the door opens.
“You have got to be kidding me,” you say, to no one in particular. To the night. To whatever version of your life this is.
He gets out slowly, like he hasn’t spent six hours in a parking lot. He’s in the same coat and he looks it. A little, around the eyes.
“Bucky.” Your voice comes out flatter than you intend.
“I—”
There’s a pattern developing here, the way you don’t let him finish talking. “You’ve been here this whole time.”
“I fell asleep for a bit.”
“In your car. In the hospital parking lot. Why?”
He stops a few feet from you. His face looks tired in a way it hadn’t the other night, something honest about it. “I wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
“I do that everyday… I’ve been doing that everyday for almost three years.”
“Right.”
“Then why—” You stop. You’re too tired for this. The cold is getting into your coat and your feet hurt and you are twenty-eight years old and you do not have the reserves for whatever this is. “Go home, Bucky. Please. Get some actual sleep.”
“Let me drive you.”
“I have my car.”
“You’ve been on your feet for—”
“I have my car.” You hitch your bag up on your shoulder. “Thank you for the food. I mean that. But you can’t just— sit outside my hospital all night, that’s not— you can’t do that.”
He’s looking at you with that expression again. The unreadable one that isn’t quite unreadable anymore, or maybe you’re just too tired to not see it. “I handled it badly yesterday… or today — I don’t know — I said something that I would take back if I could.”
“I know. You said that.”
“I’m saying it again.”
“Bucky—”
“I need you to understand that I’m not— I’m not the guy who says something like that and means it. What I said, the way it sounded. I need you to know that’s not— that isn’t who I am.”
You look at him for a long moment. The parking lot is quiet. A couple of birds somewhere. A car turning out onto the street.
“I know.” Because you do, or you think you do, or you’d like to. “I just need you to give me some room to figure out—” You gesture vaguely between you. “All of this. Okay? I can’t think straight when you’re standing in my parking lot.”
Something moves through his expression at that. He looks down at the ground and then back at you, and the corner of his mouth shifts. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“Thank you.”
He holds eye contact a beat. “Drive safe.”
“You too,” you say, which is automatic, which is ridiculous, and you turn before your face can do anything about it.
You think about him walking to his car in an empty parking lot, and you think about him falling asleep in there, and you don’t do anything with that. You file it somewhere.
You go home. You sleep for nine hours straight. It’s the best you’ve slept in three weeks.
He calls two days later.
You’re off shift, sitting on your couch with an unopened anatomy refresher on the cushion next to you because you’d told yourself you were going to be productive and had instead been staring at nowhere in particular.
You pick up on the second ring. “Hi.” His voice is the same, which isn’t entirely a good thing to your composure.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Tired, but that’s— that’s normal.”
“Oh?”
“The fatigue is normal first trimester. The nausea I’ve been managing, mostly… I’m not telling you this to update you, I’m just— you asked.”
“I’m glad you told me.” His voice is quiet. Careful in a way that doesn’t feel like walking on ice anymore, more like he’s choosing things with intention. “I want to know how you’re doing.”
When you don’t say anything, he continues. “I want to come to your appointment.”
You close your eyes. “Bucky.”
“Hear me out—”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I — I want to.”
“You said that in the parking lot too, about the food, and I told you—”
“This is different. This is— this matters. I want to be there. I know I gave you every reason to tell me to stay out of it. What I said at the coffee shop— I know. But I’m asking you to let me— I’m asking… please”
For some reason, you think about the hotel room. The folded dress. The empty bed. The water glass. You think about a parking lot at two past midnight and a man who fell asleep in his car because he wanted to make sure you got home safe.
“It’s at my hospital… next Tuesday. Eleven.”
“Eleven,” he repeats.
“And if you say anything—” You hadn’t meant to go there, but you’re going there. “If you say anything like what you said on that day, I will walk out. And that’ll be it. I mean that.”
“That’s fair.” Without hesitation. Like he expected it and meant to agree to it.
“I’m serious, Bucky.”
“I know you are. I know.”
You nod, even though he can’t see it. “Okay. Tuesday.”
“Okay… Thank you.”
You don’t say you’re welcome. You don’t say anything for a second.
“Get some sleep,” he says. It’s like the water glass. The automatic thing, the thing that comes out before he decides whether to say it.
“You too.” This time it doesn’t feel ridiculous.
You hang up and open the textbook on whim. You read four pages before you fall asleep on the couch with the lamp still on.
He’s standing at your door at ten thirty with peonies.
Actual peonies, fat and pale pink, the kind that look like someone made a decision.
You open the door in your coat already because you’d been about to leave, keys in hand, and the two of you look at each other for a second in the doorway.
“How do you know where I live?”
“Sarah.”
Of course. You make a mental note to have a word with Sarah, except Sarah will laugh at you and you both know it.
You look at the flowers and then at him and he has the decency to look slightly uncertain, which is the most uncertain you’ve seen him look, and it does something small and involuntary to your chest.
“You didn’t have to—”
He just holds them out, without saying anything.
You take them because leaving them in his hands would be strange. They smell like something expensive and vaguely like outside, and you stand there for a second not knowing what to do with them.
You turn back into the apartment and find a glass in the cabinet and fill it with water, which is not a vase but it will have to do.
Setting them on the counter, you look at them. White and pink against your very normal kitchen, and something about the image makes you feel things you don’t have the time or inclination to examine.
The waiting room at the OB practice is warm and aggressively neutral, the kind of beige that has been carefully selected to be soothing. It achieves the opposite.
You sign in at the front. Bucky sits beside you, and he doesn’t make small talk, which you’re grateful for. He’s looking at something on his phone with the focused stillness of a person who is trying to be unobtrusive, and you watch the fish tank in the corner for lack of anything else to do with your eyes.
Your name gets called and you both stand. There’s a second, while walking towards the exam room, where you’re very aware of him behind you and you don’t know what to do about that.
The room is what it always is. Exam table with the paper that crinkles, the blood pressure cuff on the wall, the small screen angled toward the bed. You hop up on the table without being asked.
The nurse takes your vitals and says the doctor will be in shortly. Then it’s just the two of you in the room.
Bucky takes the chair in the corner.
“You can sit closer,” you say, because the chair in the corner feels like he’s been sent there. “You don’t have to be all the way over there.”
He moves the chair, just enough, and sits back down.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. Same question as the phone call, except in person it is different.
“Okay. A little nauseous this morning but it passed.” You look at your hands. “I have to go back on in the afternoon so I’m hoping the appointment doesn’t run long.”
“I can have you back by one.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” Right. That’s his line.
You don’t argue with it this time.
Dr. Reyes comes in five minutes later and doesn’t react to Bucky’s presence in any visible way, which you appreciate, because you’d anticipated some version of aren’t you. Congressman Barnes or Winter Soldier.
You did not want to deal with that today.
She’s warm and efficient in the way of someone who has done this enough times, and she goes through the questions with you and you answer them like the doctor you are. Last menstrual period, no significant history. Bucky stays quiet in his chair and you don’t look at him.
Then Dr. Reyes reaches for the gel.
“This’ll be cold,” she says, and you nod. She picks up the transducer and you are doing the thing you planned to do. Stay clinical.
Except your resident-brain has never been on this end of a transabdominal ultrasound before and it turns out those are two different things.
The screen fills with the grey static of it. Dr. Reyes adjusts the angle, and—
There.
The flicker. Fast and insistent, one hundred and fifty beats per minute or close to it, the cardiac activity clear enough on the doppler even before she turns the sound on, but then she does turn the sound on.
It’s the sound that gets you.
You’ve heard fetal heart tones a hundred times. A thousand times. You’ve stood in rooms while other women heard this for the first time and you’ve read the chart and noted the rate and moved on, because it was clinical, because it was data.
Except right now your body is doing something entirely outside of your control, something warm moving through your chest without asking permission, and you press your lips together and breathe.
“Strong heartbeat,” Dr. Reyes says, with the particular quiet of someone who knows what this moment is. “Right around a hundred and fifty-four. Looking good.”
You nod. Your throat is doing something it shouldn’t.
From the chair beside you, you hear Bucky exhale. Like he’d been holding something and set it down.
You turn your head and look at him.
He’s looking at the screen, not at you, and his jaw is tight and his hands are braced against his knee. His expression is… soft. You know because it’s the same on your own face.
“Can I—” His voice comes out different than you’ve heard it. Rougher. He clears his throat. “Can I get a copy of that? The image.”
Dr. Reyes glances between you, and you nod. “Of course,” she says.
He looks at you then. Quick, like he’s checking whether that was okay. When you nod, he immediately turns back to the screen.
Dr. Reyes does the measurements. Everything is how it should be, and she gives you the due date. Mid-July. Which you’d already calculated, but hearing it out loud is its own thing.
She goes through the first trimester expectations with you and you listen to all of it with the clinical half of your brain taking notes while the other half is somewhere else, somewhere watching the flicker on the screen and not knowing quite what to do with itself.
When she hands you the printout of the image, you put it in your bag. She hands one to Bucky too, without being asked again, and he takes it with both hands and looks at it for a second before sliding it into his inside coat pocket. Like it’s something he doesn’t want to bend.
He drives you back. You sit in the passenger seat and watch the city go by.
Neither of you speaks for a while, which is fine. Which is easy, actually, and you resent that a little.
You’d like to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is useful.
“Thank you. For letting me be there.” He’s the one to break the silence.
“You asked,” you say. Which is true, but not the full answer, and you both know it.
He doesn’t push.
In front of your building, he puts it in park. “Do you need anything? For the apartment, or groceries, or I could pick stuff up—”
“I’m okay.” You’re already half out of the seat.
“Prenatal vitamins, or—”
“Bucky.” You pause with one foot on the curb. “I have prenatal vitamins. I ordered them the morning after I tested. I’m a doctor. I know what I need.”
He has a hand on the steering wheel and he’s looking at you, and there’s something in his face that isn’t quite hurt and isn’t quite frustration. More like a person who wants to do something and doesn’t know how.
“I know you do.”
“I’m not—” There’s a version of this that comes out wrong, and you navigate around it. “I’m not keeping you out of it. That’s not what this is. I just— I don’t need you to manage things. Okay?” You look at him. “I’ll call you when there’s something to call you about.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Okay.”
“The heartbeat. That was… yeah. It was good.” You don’t know why you said that, only you didn’t want that to be the last thing you told him.
You’re already inside your place by the time you hear his car pull away.
The peonies are still in the glass on your counter when you get back in, and you stand there looking at them.
You are a person who has her prenatal vitamins already ordered and her charting caught up and her shifts covered, and you are also a person who left a one-night stand’s flowers in a water glass because they were too nice to throw out.
You said no three times.
The first time was on the phone, two days after the appointment, when he called with what he’d clearly prepared as a reasonable proposition. He delivered in the tone of someone who has won arguments in rooms full of people who didn’t want to lose.
His apartment was twelve minutes from your hospital by cab. Your commute was forty, on a good day. The first trimester fatigue was going to get worse before it got better. He had a spare bedroom. It was just practical.
The second time was a week after that, in person, when he’d swung by your hospital on his way from somewhere official to somewhere else official. He’d shown up in your break room with a coffee you hadn’t asked for and had the conversation again.
He laid it out like he was briefing someone. The proximity to your hospital, the fact that his building had a doorman and a parking garage and an elevator, the fact that your building had none of those things and three flights of stairs that were already becoming a thing you noticed at the end of a long shift.
The third time was on a Tuesday when you’d gotten home at midnight and stood at the bottom of your stairs for longer than you’d like to admit before making yourself go up them.
You’d texted Sarah about it not entirely meaning to, and Sarah had apparently mentioned it to her father, and her father had apparently mentioned it to Bucky. Your phone had rung at twelve fifteen.
How does news travel so fast?
The fourth time you said no it was because you’d run out of actual reasons and had to fall back on principle, which he received with the patience of someone who understood the difference and was content to wait.
That patience, somehow, was the thing that wore you down. Not the logic of it.
He’d just set the option on the table and waited with his hands in his pockets while you turned it over and found fewer and fewer things wrong with it.
That time you’d said, “Fine. A month. We’ll see how it goes.”
His apartment is on the fourteenth floor of a building that has a lobby with actual plants in it and a doorman named Gerald who learned your name on the second day and now says ‘good morning’ like he means it.
The spare bedroom has a window that faces east, which you hadn’t expected to care about. But find that you do, when the morning light comes in early and clean.
The first few days felt like moving around a furniture arrangement that hadn’t fully settled. Two people with established routines in one space, both of you figuring out the other.
You learned that he woke up early, always, and that the coffee was made before you came out of your room.
You learned that he watched the news in the living room in the evenings with the sound low and that he didn’t talk during it. Which suited you fine because you had charts to finish.
You learned that he stocked the fridge with things you’d mentioned offhand once, twice, in passing.
The ginger tea appeared on the third day, on the shelf above your coffee mug. You hadn’t said you needed it. But you’d been slightly more nauseous every morning and apparently he’d noticed, because there it was, three boxes of it, like it had always been there.
You’re fourteen weeks now. Which means you’d started to show in the way that is noticeable if you know what you’re looking for, the small firm curve of it below your navel that your regular clothes are beginning to politely argue with.
Looking down at it in the mirror still does something to you that you don’t have a clean word for.
Bucky doesn’t comment on it. That might be the thing you appreciate most.
What he does is quietly rearrange things. The stuff on the highest shelves moved down without discussion. A non-slip mat appeared in the shower.
He started being in the kitchen when you came home late, putting something together, and there was always enough for two.
You’d tried to protest the first time and he’d handed you a bowl of whatever it was and said ‘sit down, eat’, and something about the directness of it had short-circuited your objection.
The dynamic between you had shifted in a way that was hard to articulate. He made you laugh twice last week, genuinely. Once about something on the news and once about something Gerald had said in the lobby. You’d felt the laugh leave your body and thought afterward, with some surprise, that you hadn’t been performing it.
You still felt the thing from the coffee shop, underneath. You didn’t think you’d stop feeling that for a while. It is something that won’t stop hurting when you think of it often, and you think of it often.
Tuesday morning, you’re off until noon.
Off, for a resident, means you slept until eight instead of five and only have emails to deal with instead of a full shift, but still.
You come out of your room in your robe and your thick socks, hair in the kind of chaos that only nine hours of actual sleep can produce, and you’re running through the schedule of the day in your head when you turn the corner into the kitchen and stop.
Bucky is at the stove.
In a towel.
Just a towel. White, knotted at his hip, his hair still damp against the back of his neck. He clearly just stepped out of the shower and he’s got the skillet on and he’s doing something with eggs, fully concentrated on it.
You should say something. You should announce yourself, the way a normal person would, and give you both a second to reorient.
You don’t.
You’ve seen him in suits, casuals at home, you’ve seen him in the sweater from the coffee shop, you’ve seen him in the dark of a hotel room. But this is different in a way that your body is entirely on board with and your brain is slightly behind on.
He’s solid, broad across the back and tapered down, and the towel sits low on his hips and the morning light in the kitchen is doing things you’d like it to stop doing.
His left arm, the metal one, catches the light differently than his right, the lines of it tracing the shape of a shoulder, a forearm, fingers curled around the handle of the pan.
You’ve always been a normal amount of attracted to him. You’ve been telling yourself that it was circumstantial. Hormones, proximity, those things. And that it would settle down, because that was the sensible thing for it to do.
It is not settling down.
You press your lips together and look at the ceiling briefly and remind yourself that you are a grown adult in her first trimester who is going to behave appropriately. The first trimester is notoriously unkind when it comes to this, your body does not always know what’s good for it.
“Morning,” you say.
He turns around. To his credit, he doesn’t look particularly thrown. A little caught, maybe, but he rolls with it. “Hey. Sorry… I was running late, I figured I’d just start breakfast before I—” He gestures vaguely at himself with the spatula, which you choose not to find charming. “Didn’t hear you get up.”
“It’s fine,” you say, and you get yourself to the coffee maker and give yourself something to do with your hands. “What time is it?”
“Eight-forty.” He turns back to the eggs. “I would’ve had it ready before you got up usually. Woke up late.”
“You know you don’t have to make me breakfast every single day.”
He shifts the pan off the heat. “I was making eggs anyway. Seemed wasteful not to.”
You look at his back. His very… whatever. You pour your coffee. “Are you going to put clothes on?”
“Yeah, I— are the eggs okay first or should I—”
“The eggs are fine,” you say, which possibly comes out with slightly more feeling than the eggs require, and you turn and look very deliberately at your mug.
He dishes the eggs onto two plates, sets yours on the counter in front of you with a piece of toast that has appeared from somewhere.
Then he takes himself and his towel situation to his room.
You sit at the kitchen counter and stare at your eggs and feel extremely normal about everything.
Hormones. First trimester. Completely explicable.
You eat your eggs. They’re good. They’re always good, which is its own kind of inconvenience.
He comes back in grey sweatpants and a t-shirt with his damp hair and sits across the counter from you with his own plate.
The thing about Bucky Barnes in grey sweatpants is that it is somehow worse than the towel because you cannot blame it on anything. You cannot say you were caught off guard.
He is just sitting there in normal clothes eating scrambled eggs and looking at his phone. This is just your morning now. This is what your mornings are.
“You have the afternoon appointment Friday?” he asks, not looking up from his phone.
“Two o’clock.”
He nods. Puts his phone down. Picks up his coffee. “I can drive you.”
“I can get there.”
“I want to be there.”
You consider pointing out that he says that a lot. You decide not to. “Okay.”
The scrubs have been sitting in the bottom of your bag for three weeks. The dark navy set, the ones you’d bought in your first year when you finally had enough shifts under your belt to feel like they were earned.
You’d packed them when you left your apartment and told yourself it was practical, that you’d need them before the end of your residency, that they’d still fit by then.
Today is the final week. Last stretch before your exams, before whatever comes after, and you’d woken up this morning with the particular weight of an ending sitting on your chest. The bittersweet kind, the kind that doesn’t fully resolve into either sad or glad and just sits there asking you to feel both.
You’d thought about your locker at the hospital, the mug you kept in the break room, the nurses who knew your name and your coffee order and the specific way you liked your charts organized. You’d thought about who you’d been when you started, which felt like another person’s life viewed through glass.
The scrubs had seemed right. Nostalgic. The way you might put on an old sweater, or drive past your childhood home. Just to remember what it felt like.
That was the theory.
In practice, you’re standing in front your mirror at eight in the morning and the scrub top is bunched at your midsection, stuck there, going neither up nor down.
Your stomach has done what stomachs do at nineteen weeks. It is present, unmistakably, the firm round curve of it that you’d spent weeks watching appear like something surfacing through water.
The scrub top, which had been fitted-ish even before, has no interest in accommodating it. The fabric is straining across your chest in a way that would be funny in a different context, because your chest has also done what chests do, which is become something you are still getting used to seeing in mirrors.
The whole picture is that the scrub is basically a crop top, currently. The bottom six inches of your stomach are exposed. It will not go down.
You already know. You knew the moment you got it over your arms.
Still. Something cracks anyway.
It’s not rational. You’re a doctor, you understand what’s happening to your body better than most people get to. You’d read the weekly summaries without sentimentality. You’d taken your vitamins and gone to your appointments and been, all things considered, fairly functional about the whole thing.
But there’s something about the scrubs specifically that you hadn’t accounted for. Three years of who you were, and they don’t fit. You cannot explain why that particular fact is the one that finds the crack, except that it does. And your eyes are burning before you’ve fully registered that they’re going to.
You pull at the hem once more anyway. Just to try. It doesn’t move.
“Hey—” Bucky, in the hallway, knocking twice before he pushes the door slightly open. He does that, announces himself before the door, which you’d noticed in the first week and filed away as a thing you appreciated without saying so. “Breakfast is—” He stops.
You’re not crying. You’re at the stage just before, the one where your face is doing something you can’t control and your eyes are bright and your throat has that specific tightness. And you’re wearing a scrub top bunched up to your ribcage with your stomach completely exposed and your bra visible and your hands still fisted in the fabric.
He comes into your room properly, and stands behind you. You look at him in the mirror. He looks at you.
“The scrubs don’t fit.” Your voice comes out steadier than you expected.
“Yeah,” he says. Like he’s agreeing with whatever the real sentence is underneath the one you said.
“I know they weren’t going to.” You let go of the hem. “I don’t know why I thought—” You press your lips together. The burning behind your eyes is doing what it wants to regardless, and you look up at the ceiling briefly and breathe.
“It’s the last week,” you say, after a second.
Bucky doesn’t say anything right away. Your eyes meet in the mirror and there’s nothing in his face that looks like he doesn’t understand.
“I know.”
The simplicity of it helps more than anything elaborate would have. You breathe again and feel the tightness in your throat ease a fraction.
His hands find the hem of the scrub top, and he looks at your face in the mirror first. When you give the smallest nod, he eases it up and over and off.
You stand there in your bra and maternity leggings.
In the mirror, his eyes make a trip south that he doesn’t intend you to catch. Quick and involuntary and immediately corrected, back to your face. But you caught it. The fraction of a second where they landed, where they stayed, before he pulled them back up.
You don’t say anything.
You’d spent weeks rearranging your sense of your own body, cataloguing the changes the way you would with a patient.
Maintaining the clinical distance had always been your competence.
But clinical distance has a way of not applying when someone’s eyes do what his just did.
This is not the hungry look from a hotel room. This is the helpless half-second kind. The involuntary kind. The honest kind, the kind a person can’t manufacture.
The fact that it was involuntary is the part that does something.
“Breakfast is probably cold,” you say, because you have to say something and the other things aren’t available yet.
“I can reheat it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll reheat it.”
You look at yourself in the mirror. You don’t look like yourself in the way you’ve always expected to look like yourself.
And you can’t tell yet whether that’s loss or just change, whether there’s even a meaningful difference between those two things.
“Bucky…. Thank you.” For the way he’d come in and just stood there and let the thing be what it was without trying to fix it or reframe it or promise you it would be fine.
The anatomy scan is at twenty weeks, which you know from the part of your brain that has been doing obstetric math since the positive test.
It is the one where they can tell you. If you want to know. If you ask.
You hadn’t decided, going in.
Bucky hadn’t asked whether you were going to find out, which you’d appreciated. He’d just shown up, same as always, jacket and the particular stillness that he brought into medical spaces with him.
The scan takes twenty minutes. You lie on your back with the transducer moving over your stomach while Dr. Reyes takes her measurements and narrates in the calm voice she has.
Bucky sits in the chair and watches the screen.
The anatomy is normal. All of it—the cardiac chambers, the spine, the cerebellum, the face. You listen to Dr. Reyes confirm each structure and your brain files it the way it always does, methodical.
Underneath the methodology there is something that is not methodology. something that has been building since the first scan, something that you have been calling various things and none of them have been entirely right.
“Do you want to know the sex?” Dr. Reyes asks.
You look at the ceiling. Then you look at Bucky.
He looks back at you. His expression says it’s up to you, the same way it said that about the apartment, about the appointments, about all of it.
He’d been very careful, the whole time, not to lean on decisions that were yours to make. You’d noticed. You’d been noticing for months.
“Yeah.”
Dr. Reyes smiles, and moves the transducer.
A girl.
You hadn’t had a preference, or you’d told yourself you hadn’t, but when she said it you understood something, like—oh. Oh, of course. Of course it’s her.
You don’t cry in the office. You make it to the elevator.
Its the sudden, quick kind. Two breaths worth, your hand pressed to your mouth, and then it passes.
You’re left standing in an elevator with your eyes bright, and Bucky is beside you looking at your face with the expression that isn’t unreadable anymore.
“Sorry,” you say, which is stupid, crying is a completely normal response to—
“Don’t.” He puts his arm around your shoulder and you let him.
By the time you’re in the lobby you’re fine, or close enough.
“A girl,” you say out loud, just to hear it.
“A girl.” Something in his voice makes you look at his face, and what’s there stops you. He’s looking straight ahead, jaw working slightly, and he looks like a man who has just understood the full size of something and is very quietly being changed by it.
His arm comes down from your shoulder but his hand finds yours briefly, just for a moment.
The first kick happens on a Thursday evening at twenty-three weeks.
You’re on the couch. You’ve been on the couch for an hour, which has become a thing you do now. Come home and decompose horizontally for a while before you can face anything requiring vertical effort.
Bucky is somewhere in his officr and you’re watching something on the television that you’re not fully watching.
It’s not what you’d expected. It isn’t a kick exactly, it’s more like something — someone really — turning over. A rolling flutter from the inside, unmistakable once it happens, unmistakable in the way that means you’d know it anywhere forever.
You go completely still.
It happens again. Clearer this time. More definite.
“Bucky.” You don’t mean to say it at volume. It just comes out.
Following footsteps, you see him. He reads your face immediately and crouches beside the couch without asking ‘what’s wrong’, because whatever your face is doing right now clearly isn’t wrong.
“She’s moving.”
His eyes go to your hands on your stomach. “Now?”
“Just now. She—” It happens again, and your face does something you’re completely not in control of. “There.”
He looks up at you and then at your stomach and then at you again. “Can I?”
“Yeah.” You take his hand and put it where yours is, your palm over the back of his.
For a moment nothing happens, and you think maybe it’s stopped, and then—
His face.
You’ve catalogued Bucky’s expressions for months. You know the almost-smile and the real one and the careful one and the behind-the-eyes one, but this is none of them.
This is something you haven’t seen before and can’t name, something stripped entirely of everything else, just… pure. Open in a way his face almost never is. His eyes are bright and he is looking at your stomach like it is the most astonishing thing he has ever encountered.
“That’s her.” His voice is not steady.
“That’s her.”
He doesn’t move his hand. You don’t move yours. The kick comes again. The two of you stay like that on the couch, with his hand under yours, her making herself known between you.
There are things between you still. Not resolved, the coffee shop, his words you seem to can’t get past.
But right now it’s quiet.
“She’s strong,” he eventually says. A little undone. Trying not to show it and not quite succeeding, which you love. Which you note, quietly, that you love.
He looks up at you and something passes between you that doesn’t need words, something that would have been impossible five months ago.
His thumb moves slightly on your stomach, a small unconscious thing, a hello from the outside. You let your head fall back against the cushion and close your eyes and feel her move again.
Today you notice that your left breast is tender in a specific way. Your colostrum has been leaking for the better part of five days.
Now there’s this localised tenderness. You press two fingers against it, and find the spot immediately.
Blocked duct. Clean and obvious. You’d diagnosed it in approximately four seconds.
The knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.
You get in the shower and let the hot water run directly on it, and you work at the tissue the way you know. Gentle, firm strokes toward the nipple, drained before it blocks further.
It helps a little. Enough to get dressed and eat breakfast and tell yourself it would resolve on its own by afternoon, which it might, which blocked ducts sometimes do when caught early.
By afternoon it hasn’t resolved.
By evening it’s worse.
Bucky makes dinner and breakfast and lunch. It’s something he took it upon himself, and no matter what you did, he insisted he wanted to. You decided that was the least he could do, since you’re already growing a whole human.
You’re on the couch when he brings you your plate, but don’t really eat it, which he notices. Because Bucky notices things. That is one of the more inconvenient facts about living with him.
“You’re not eating.” An observation.
“I’m eating.” You take a bite to demonstrate.
He sits down on his end of the couch, his own plate, and looks at you in the way he looks at things when he’s decided something. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been holding your left side since you sat down.”
You look at him. You hadn’t realized you were doing that. Your hand is braced just below your ribs on the left, the pressure of it a reflex you hadn’t consciously authorized. You move it to your lap.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He eats a bite of his dinner. “What’s wrong?”
The repetition startles a short laugh out of you. “Bucky.”
“I’ve got time.”
You look at your plate. The thing about the past several months is that you’d stopped performing fine quite so much. You still did it sometimes. Habit, mostly.
But the effort of maintaining it in the face of someone who was going to sit there and wait it out had started to feel like more work than just saying the thing.
“Blocked duct.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means one of the milk ducts is… blocked”
“You’re… producing?”
“Yeah, for like five days. It’s normal. Don’t worry.”
“Normal? You’re in pain.”
“The milk part is normal. The blocked part is not normal even after delivery.”
“So, what do we do? What’s the treatment?”
Of course. Of course that’s the immediate question. You set your fork down. “Warm compress, massage, expression. In that order.”
“Have you tried all of that?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And it’s… helping. Some. Not fully resolved.”
He’s quiet for a second, and you can hear him thinking, which is a thing you’ve learned to recognize. “Do you want me to— I could help with the massage. If that’s— if it would help.”
Something happens to your body that you are immediately and completely dismissive of. You are thirty-eight weeks pregnant and you are sitting on a couch across from the man who is the father of your child and who is also just a person asking a practical question.
Your body’s response to that question is frankly embarrassing and entirely the fault of the third trimester hormonal profile.
“I’m fine,” you say, for the third time, which even you can tell is getting less convincing.
“You said that.” He puts his plate on the coffee table. “What else is there?”
“What do you mean?”
“For the duct. If massage doesn’t work, what else is there?”
Your face does something you are not responsible for. You think about how to answer this question, which should be simple, which is a medical question with a factual answer, and yet.
“Suction.”
“A pump?” He’s already standing with his not even half finished place. “I’ll go buy one—”
“It’s not the pump.” The words come out before you’ve decided to say them. You look at him.
He looks back at you.
“Tell me what it is.” His voice is even.
You hold his gaze for a second. There are thirty-eight weeks of something between the two of you, not all of it clean, most of it good, and you are in pain that has a solution that you are not asking for.
“Manual suction would be equally effective than the pump. It’s also direct. You don’t have to— I don’t need you to do anything. It’ll resolve.”
He’s very still. “Will it?”
“Probably.”
“Probably,” he echoes.
“Yes.”
He’s looking at you with the expression that isn’t unreadable anymore, hasn’t been for a while, the one that means he’s made a decision and is waiting to see if you’ll come to the same one. “You’re in pain.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that four times and eaten approximately one bite of dinner.” His voice is quiet and not unkind and leaves absolutely no room. “You’re in pain, and there’s something that would help, and you’re sitting there not asking for it. So I’m asking. Do you want me to help?”
“It’s not— This isn’t—”
“I know what it is and what it isn’t. I’m asking if you want me to help.”
The honesty of the question, the way he’s asking plainly if you want him to, does something to the knot of your refusal, loosens it.
“Okay.”
The bedroom lamp is on low, which you’re grateful for. You’re sitting against the headboard in just your tank top because bra is compression and compression makes the pain worse.
Bucky is sitting beside you. You’ve walked him through it in the voice you use for medical explanations. Impersonal, methodical, this is the direction of drainage, this much is the pressure we’re aiming for. He’d listened the way he listens to everything, completely, without interrupting.
“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”
“You’re not.” You’d watched his hands and the technique was right, working from the periphery inward the way you’d told him.
The heat of it was immediate, the specific relief of pressure moving in the right direction, and you let your head fall back against the headboard and breathe through it.
It hurts. It hurts in the way that relief sometimes hurts, the way that unkinking something that’s been kinked for too long. You press your lips together and exhale.
“Still okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” Your voice is not entirely steady. “Keep going.”
The blocked duct is stubborn in the way they get when they’ve been compressing for a day. The massage alone was never going to be enough, you’d known that, you’d known it since Wednesday morning and done it anyway because asking was harder.
But his hands are warmer than yours, the pressure more sustained, and the way his fingers glide over your swollen skin sends an unexpected shiver through you, the warmth pooling not just in relief but in a deeper, aching need between your thighs.
When his mouth closes over the nipple, the sensation is overwhelming at first.
The sound you make is entirely involuntary and you press your hand to your own mouth immediately.
His hand stills on your ribs. He doesn’t stop. The suction is careful and rhythmic and nothing about the way he’s doing this is anything other than what it is.
Yet your body does not seem to fully understand the assignment. The wet heat of his mouth envelops you, his tongue pressing softly against the sensitive peak as he draws gently, each pull sending a spark of unwelcome arousal straight to your core, making you clench involuntarily around nothing.
You tell yourself you’re not turned on by him relieving your pain. You’re wrong.
Just for a fleeting moment, you wonder, if it's affecting him too. If the intimate act of tasting you, feeling your body respond under his lips, is stirring something in him the way it's unraveling you.
With continued suction, the colostrum releases slowly, the hard cord of tissue beginning to soften under his hand. You feel the pressure shifting, the acute point of pain diffusing.
And your eyes fill without your permission, the specific relief of it after a day of something that just quietly hurt and hurt and hurt.
“There.” Your voice breaks on it, just slightly.
He pulls back. Looks at your face. And then without discussion he puts his arm around you and pulls you into his side carefully. His hand finds the top of your bump in the way he does sometimes without thinking and you let him.
“You’re okay,” he says into your hair. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
You breathe. The ache is fading and you are okay.
But the lingering warmth of his mouth on your skin, the ghost of his breath against your nipple, has left you throbbing with need.
There’s this heat in you that has nothing to do with pain or hurt or blocked ducts. And everything to do with him and his proximity. You don’t think you can blame it on your hormones anymore.
You’re focused on not doing anything more. Because you don’t know how he feels. Just because he’d offered to help doesn’t mean he’s into this. Into you.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
You don’t know what he is talking about.
You lift your head a little. “What?”
His hand moves slightly on your back, a small motion, like he’s deciding how to continue. “The morning after the gala.” He’s not looking at you directly. “I had an early call. I had to be out by 5.30. I didn’t want to wake you.”
That morning comes rushing back like it was yesterday. The empty side. The folded dress on the chair. The glass of water.
“I left my number on the hotel notepad, by the lamp. I thought— I thought you’d call.”
“What—”
“Left side of the lamp. I figured maybe you didn’t want to. And then weeks went by and I thought—” He doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t have to. “And then you called. And I picked up and heard your voice and I thought, okay. Okay, she called.”
If only you’d looked properly.
You close your eyes. Your brain does the math. How close you’d been to something, how much the last eight months might have looked different… if only you’d looked properly.
“And then the coffee shop. I said something— I said something I would take back ten times over if I could. The look on your face.” He finally glances down at you, and his expression is the honest one, the one stripped of the management. “I’d been thinking about you for weeks, and then there you were, telling me something that big, and I panicked and I said the worst possible thing, and I’ve been—”
“Bucky…”
“I’ve been trying to show you that I’m not that… Since then. That — that isn’t who I am.”
“I know.” You mean it fully. “I know.”
His hand hasn’t stopped moving on your back and you’ve gone completely loose against his side.
You turn your face slightly into his shoulder. He smells like the same thing he always smells like.
Something clean, something his.
You look up. He’s looking down. At you.
”I looked, I searched… I — I am so sorry, Bucky.”
He shakes his head, “you have nothing to be sorry about.” His voice is a whisper, gently wiping something off your face, only then do you realise you’d been crying.
Later if you thought about it, you could not have said who moved first. Maybe it was you, maybe it was just the proximity and the angle and months and months of near misses.
But his mouth is on yours and it is nothing like the hotel room. Nothing at all like that.
That had been hunger and dark and mutual want in its simplest form, and this is something else, something that has been earned in increments. When you kiss him back you feel the whole weight of it.
His hand comes up to your jaw, the right one, and he kisses you the way he does things when he means them. Slow. Sure. Like he is not going anywhere and wants you to know it. This time there’s no tears.
When you pull back, his thumb is on your cheek and your foreheads are together and you’re both breathing.
“Hi,” you say, which is what you always seem to say when he takes you off guard.
Something changes in his expression. Soft and a little helpless and very, very him. “Hi.”
You kiss him again, slower, and his hand slides from your jaw to your neck, and when you shift against him you feel him go still.
“I don’t want to—” He pulls back enough to look at you, and his face is flushed, and he’s trying to be responsible about something and finding it difficult. His eyes go briefly, helplessly, to your stomach, and then back to your face. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
You look at him. Something warm and fond moves through you, which is perhaps not the most practical emotion for this particular moment, but there it is.
“Sex is not contraindicated,” you say.
His brow furrows slightly. “How do you—”
“Bucky.”
“I just—”
“It’s actively encouraged in the two weeks before the due date.” You hold his gaze. “Prostaglandins in semen help with cervical ripening. And orgasm stimulates uterine contractility, which—”
“Okay.”
“—can help initiate labour at term, which is why—”
“Okay.” He’s slightly flushed. “I get it.”
“Do you? Because I can explain the mechanism—”
“How do you know that?” He asks with the expression of a man who has already realized the answer.
You cock your eyebrow.
“Right. You’re a doctor.” He looks like he’s genuinely embarrassed, with the kind of blush you have never seen on him before in eight months of looking at his face. “Sorry.”
You press your lips together so you don’t smile too much, because this is not the moment for I told you so, except that it is a little. “It’s okay.”
“I just—I didn’t want to—”
“I know.” You put your hand on his jaw, the same way you’d put it on his jaw in a hotel room eight months ago in a completely different life. “I know. She’s safe. I’m safe. Okay?”
This is different from the hotel room in every way that matters.
“You’re beautiful.” He says it simply, like it’s the truth.
“I’m enormous.”
“Yeah.” He says it like those are the same sentence. Like enormous is included in beautiful, like the distinction doesn’t exist.
You pull his shirt over his head and he lets you, and then his hands find your tank top and he eases it off fully. His eyes move over you the way they’d moved that day in the mirror, except now there is nothing to look away from, and he doesn’t.
“Tell me what feels good. Tell me what doesn’t.”
“You’re going to make me talk the whole time?”
“I’m going to make you talk when I need to know something.” His mouth moves to your jaw, your throat, and his voice is warm against your skin. “Which will be often.”
Your hands find his hair and you hold on.
His hands learn it the way you’d watch him learn anything else. With attention, nothing half-done.
He finds your hip, your thigh, and his fingers trail up the inside of it with the unhurried patience of a man who is not going anywhere. When they reach the apex of your thighs and slip between your folds, finding you slick and swollen, he exhales slowly against your neck.
“Jesus.”
“I told you it was—”
“Not the physiology… Just— you.” His fingers part you gently, circling your clit with soft strokes, and your grip on his hair tightens. “This.”
You stop talking.
His fingers are gentle in a way that is its own undoing. He’s learning, finding the places that make your breath change and staying there, pressing and rubbing with just enough pressure to send heat pooling low in your belly.
You’re on your side, which is where he’d guided you with the easy practicality of someone who’d done their research and wasn’t going to make a thing of it.
His chest is warm against your back and his hand is over your hip and everything about the angle lets his fingers delve deeper, one sliding inside you while his thumb works your clit.
He keeps going until your thighs are shaking and you’re saying his name with your face pressed to the pillow and when his fingers slow, you make an undignified sound
“Don’t stop—”
“I’m not stopping,” he says into your shoulder. “Just changing.”
He shifts, settling behind you, and you feel the warm blunt pressure of his cock at your entrance, the head nudging against your wetness.
He pauses there. His hand is on your hip, his mouth is at your temple. “Okay?”
“Yes… Please.”
He pushes in slowly. All the way slow, inch by inch, stretching you, giving you time to feel every ridge and vein as he fills you completely. You exhale through it and he stays still when he’s fully seated, buried to the hilt. You feel his chest chest rising and falling against your back. “Okay?” he asks again.
“More than okay,” you manage, which makes him exhale a short, warm laugh against your neck.
He moves. The kind of pace that builds rather than rushes, his cock sliding out almost to the tip before thrusting back in. His hand on your hip holds you in place, and you feel every movement everywhere, the particular fullness of him inside you, pressing against that sensitive spot with each stroke, the particular closeness of his body wrapped around yours.
His hand slides from your hip to your stomach and just rests there and something about that, the fact that he thought to do that, his palm warm and open on the curve of your belly while his cock moves inside you, does something to you that is beyond physical.
“Bucky.” It’s not a request for anything, just his name in your mouth, just needing to say it.
“I’m here.” His arm tightens around you. “I’ve got you.”
His other hand finds your clit again, fingers slick with your arousal, rubbing in tight, slow circles that match the rhythm of his hips. You feel the tension building in slow long waves, nothing like the urgent snap of the hotel room, this is the accumulative kind, the kind that climbs and climbs, your walls clenching around him with each thrusts.
His mouth is at your ear and he’s saying your name, just your name.
When you come, you come with his name on your lips and his arms around you and his hand on your belly.
It moves through you like something warm breaking loose from somewhere it had been held for a long time, your body pulsing around his cock, drawing him deeper. You feel it in your chest as much as anywhere else.
His hips stutter and slow and he presses his face into your neck and follows you, spills inside you. His arm fully wraps around you, and then everything is still.
You lie there with his heartbeat at your back, fast still and slowing.
This time there’s no condom to dispose. But he does move, and comes back with a washcloth and a glass of water. A glass of water, again.
His hands are soft and his touch gentle when he cleans you, wiping away the mix of your release and his from between your thighs.
After a while, after he’s made you drink half a glass of water, and you’re settled into him, his hand moves on your stomach. “Hey,” he says. To her. Like a hello.
You press your hand over his.
Something moves under your palms and you realise it’s a hello back from the inside.
my masterlist !
extras. if this flops, i’ll cry. also why was this so long lmao 😭
permanent taglist. @devililithh @buckyfmd @sheriff-bodecker @honeysucklewatr @demiebarnes @solivagant-reverie @kqtholins @amoremarveloustime @colettebarnes @barnes-babydoll @miraclediviner @of-sanguine-eyes @biaswreckedbybuckybarnes @manly-man-whore @indigo123789 @wasa-bby @biggestfangirl @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysbunnny @highhopes1008 @castielscaplan @ornateglass @grumpysunnybarnes @luvyoupxmimi @slutdier @yes-ilovetowrite @cautiouscas17 @astridphantom @delusionalwomsn @cinnamon-girl-writes @wherewinterblooms @stifflyspeedyquirk @sassandscribbles @marvelouslyme96 @stesha02 @floatingvalhallasea @goobers-mcgee @t1redphoenix @vickynguyennn @bluellamacheesecake-blog @serenityrjd @pitabread79 @galaxygoddess30 @biggestfangirl @chenoadouble-o7 @phoenix-in-writing @ceoofdisappointment @ladymiseryy @wherewinterblooms @avgdestitute @lunexiax @akthoughtss + to get added to the taglist!
oh good lord that man was really yearning for her to forgive him, he deserved that though.
we had been blessed by kie’s work yet again I LOVED THIS OMG
SECOND CHANCES
congressman barnes x female med resident! reader
summary. one stolen night with congressman barnes leaves you with more than memories: a positive test and a man who's determined to prove he's worth a second chance.
word count. 19.5k warnings. age gap, accidental pregnancy, smut, MDNI, 18+, angst, bucky is an asshole for a second, pregnancy hormones, protected and unprotected pnv, pregnancy sex, oral (f receiving), no use of y/n. notes. reader is said to have a blocked lactation duct and one of the treatment options is manual suction. it’s a little embellished for plot.
READ ON AO3
This is not your scene. The chandelier must have cost a fortune just to hang there and look pretty. You know this because you spent the better part of your first ten minutes staring up at it with your mouth slightly open, trying to calculate how many months of your salary it would take to even come close. You stopped at four years because it was getting depressing. Sarah had promised you open bar and good food. She had failed to mention that you’d feel like a fraud the entire time. “You look fine,” Sarah had said this evening, watching you smooth down the front of your dress in the mirror of her condo. You had gone back and forth for longer than you’d like to admit. The dress is nice. It’s the kind of nice where you’d wear it to a birthday dinner, maybe a date somewhere with cloth napkins. It is not, by any stretch, gala nice. The other women in this room are in floor-length gowns with jewellery that probably has names, and here you are in a midi dress off a sale rack. “You’re a guest of a congressman’s daughter,” She’d reminded you, fixing her own earring. “Nobody’s gonna care.” Nobody might care, but you sure do notice. There’s an ease to the way these people move around each other. There’s air kissing, the laughing at things that aren’t funny, the way they hold their champagne glasses by the stem like it’s second nature. You hold yours like you’re scared of dropping it, which you are, because you’re fairly certain the glasses alone are worth more than your monthly metro card. Still. Free champagne. That part, at least, Sarah had been right about. You’ve had two glasses and are working steadily on your third, which is making the whole scene considerably more bearable. The food is also ungodly good. You had swiped four of the little crab toast thingies off a passing tray and felt zero shame about it. You were coming off a forty-eight hour shift two days ago. You deserved the crab toasts. Sarah, for her part, has completely abandoned you. Her father is a congressman from Virginia and this is his world, so she knows everyone in a twenty foot radius of wherever she stands. It hadn’t taken long before she was absorbed into a circle of people you didn’t know.
She’d shot you an apologetic look over someone’s shoulder, and you’d waved her off.
You’re fine. You’re a grown adult. You can stand by the tall cocktail table near the windows and people-watch by yourself like a normal person.
The problem with people-watching, as it turns out, is that occasionally the people watch back.
He’s been drifting in your periphery for a few minutes now. You clocked him when he walked in, because he’s the kind of man you can’t not clock when he walks into a room.
Easy forties, maybe pushing further than that, with dark hair and the kind of jaw that belongs on something carved out of stone. He’s in a suit that fits him the way suits are supposed to fit, which is to say, perfectly. There’s a slight silver threading through the dark at his temples. His left arm is gloved, metal just barely visible at the cuff. You know who he is, vaguely. Congressman James Barnes. Before that, the Winter Soldier. You’ve seen him on the news twice and found him credible both times, which is not something you say lightly. Not that this is relevant. You’re just noting that he’s across the room. That’s it. Just noting.
What is relevant, however, is the man currently sidling up next to you, because the man currently sidling up next to you has had considerably more of the open bar than you have, and he smells like it. “Lovely evening,” he says, in the way that people say things when they are not actually talking about the evening. You give him the polite smile. The one that says I see you, and I’m too tired to be rude. “It is.” “You here with anyone?” “My friend,” you answer, with a pointed glance across the room in Sarah’s general direction. “She’s just over there.” He follows your gaze, disinterested, and then looks back at you. He introduces himself as something, and you honestly don’t catch it because your brain has already filed him under do not engage. He’s maybe mid-fifties, the kind of man who introduces himself at parties by his job title, and his eyes haven’t quite been at eye level this whole conversation. “What do you do?” “I’m in medicine,” you say, keeping it deliberately vague. In your experience, the vague answer is the one that ends conversations faster. It does not, in this case, end the conversation. In fact, it seems to invite more of it. His hand lands on the cocktail table next to yours, he leans in like you’d asked him to, and the smell gets considerably worse. “Beautiful and smart,” he says. “That’s dangerous.” Gag.
“Mm,” you say, which is not agreement, but which he takes as agreement. His shoulder shifts incrementally closer to yours, and your brain is already doing the math. How do you extract yourself from this without making a scene, because making a scene at a congressman’s fundraiser gala, at which you are a guest of a congressman’s daughter, feels inadvisable at best and catastrophic at worst. You can’t exactly do what you’d do at a regular bar, which would be to simply say not interested and walk away, because this is not a regular bar and these are not regular people and you’re suddenly very aware that the champagne glass you’re holding probably costs two hundred dollars. The man leans in further. “Can I get you a drink?” “I have one,” you say, lifting your glass, which is clearly almost empty, which he also clearly notices. “Let me get you another, then.” And that is when, for the second time tonight, you make eye contact with Congressman Barnes. He’s a little closer now, not by much though. He’s watching the scene with an expression that you can’t quite place. It’s not pity, exactly. Not amusement either. It’s more like someone who has correctly identified a problem and is turning over how to address it. You do the only thing that seems sane to you in this moment. You hold his gaze, and your expression says, if you speak even one word of fluent English right now I will owe you forever. He receives it. You can tell by the slight shift in his posture, the barely perceptible nod. Then he’s making his way over, like he’s just wandering and it happens to be in your direction. “Sorry,” he says, stopping at your side. Not to the drunk man. To you. Like he’s the one who’s late. “Got caught up.”
His voice is … nice. A lot different from TV. The drunk man recalibrates visibly. He looks at Congressman Barnes, recognises him the same way you did. There’s that small double-take of oh, him, and suddenly the lean is gone, the arm is pulled back, the proximity becomes appropriate. “Congressman,” the man says, in a completely different register than the one he’d been using on you. “Didn’t realize you two—” “Good to see you.” Congressman Barnes’ voice is perfectly pleasant, perfectly even. He extends his hand and the drunk man shakes it, quietly excuses himself to the bar, which is where he should have stayed to begin with. “Thank you,” you say, once he’s out of earshot. “I really didn’t want to make a thing of it.” “I could tell.” His eyes are blue. A shade darker than you’d expected, up close. “He giving you trouble for long?” “Long enough.” You take a sip of your champagne to have something to do with your hands. “I’m not really sure of the etiquette for telling a middle-aged man to leave you alone at a formal event.” “Usually just telling him works.” The corner of his mouth pulls up, barely. “But I get it.” He reaches past you for the appetizer that a passing server is offering, takes one of the small bruschetta thingies, and doesn’t immediately move away.
You notice that. He doesn’t immediately move away. “You’re Sarah’s friend,” he says. It’s not really a question. “Jackson’s daughter.” “Yeah.” You blink. “How’d you—” “He mentioned his daughter was bringing someone tonight.” A small lift of a shoulder. “I know Richard well. He’s a good man.” “He is,” you agree, which is true, having met Sarah’s father a grand total of three times. “She didn’t warn me that good meant—” you gesture vaguely at the chandelier, the room, the twelve-piece orchestra, “—all this.” His face looks like he found that funny, but he also looks like he doesn’t want to give you the satisfaction. “First time at one of these?” “That obvious?” “Little bit. He doesn’t say it unkindly. “You’ve been staring at the chandelier for the most part.” Your face does something embarrassing. “I was doing math.” “Math.” “About how long it would take me to afford it. On my salary.” You stop yourself, because that is possibly the most un-gala thing you could have said, and he is a congressman, and you are already wearing the wrong dress. “Which — never mind. I’m a resident. I don’t have the money for light fixtures.” He does laugh at that, quietly, more of an exhale than a real laugh, but it counts. “What kind of medicine?”
“Emergency.” You set your now-empty glass down on the nearest surface. “I’m in my third year.” “Long hours.” “Long doesn’t really cover it.” You glance sideways at him. Up, technically, because he has several inches on you and you’re in heels. “But I’m not going to complain at a gala. It seems rude.” “You can complain… I don’t care.” Something about the way he says it is disarming, and you weren’t expecting that. You’d expected… you’re not entirely sure what you’d expected. Polished, maybe. The kind of conversation that sounds like a conversation but is really just two people exchanging pleasantries until someone finds a more useful person to talk to. That’s what galas are, as far as you can tell. This doesn’t feel like that. “How long have you been doing this? The congressman thing.” “Six momths.” He picks up a glass from a passing tray. Water, not champagne. You notice that too. “Why?” “I saw a clip of you once. About pharmaceutical pricing.” You pause, aware that this is maybe strange to bring up. “You didn’t let him deflect.” He looks at you for a moment, and you can’t quite tell what he’s thinking. His face is not an easy read. “Most people don’t bring that up.”
“Most people here probably benefit from him deflecting.” Another one of those almost-laughs. You’re starting to like those unreasonably. “Fair.” He turns slightly toward you, weight shifting, and it’s the kind of body language that says I’m not going anywhere yet, which you are reading, as positive. Possibly incorrectly. “What made you go into emergency medicine?” “I like knowing the answer fast.” It is the honest version. “Other specialties… you wait for labs, wait for imaging, wait for rounds. Emergency, you have to think right now, decide right now. I like that. Also I’m bad at small talk, so at least in the ER nobody expects it from me.” “You’re not bad at it.” “I’ve been talking about chandeliers and my salary.” “I liked it,” he says, like that settles it, and the frankness of it catches you off guard enough that you don’t have an immediate response, which almost never happens to you. You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. The orchestra has transitioned to something slightly livelier and a few couples have migrated toward the cleared floor at the center of the room. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?” The words come out before you can dress them up more politely, you wince slightly at the delivery. You’re three champagnes deep and apparently that’s what three champagnes does.
He doesn’t look thrown by it. If anything, he looks like he’s deciding how to answer, which is its own answer. “Forty-four or biologically a hundred and eight.”
You do the math without meaning to. The math is not small. “Right.”
“How old are you? Just so we’re both working with the same information.”
“Twenty-eight.”
He doesn’t look away from you. “So… age change anything for you?” His voice is quiet enough that it doesn’t carry anywhere.
Oh. We are going there straight. Okay. The warmth that works its way up your neck is something, that even the air conditioning can’t seem to help with. You look down at your empty glass and think about how Sarah is absolutely going to scream when you tell her about this tomorrow. “That’s—” you start. And then Sarah materializes at your elbow like she has a sixth sense for inconvenient timing, slightly flushed and smelling like champagne and grabbing your arm with both hands. “There you are! My dad wants to say hi, he knows you’re here—” She clocks Congressman Barnes. Her eyes go very wide and then very carefully neutral, which is the least neutral expression you’ve ever seen on a human face. “Congressman Barnes, hi, I’m so sorry to interrupt—” “You’re not,” he says easily, and he means it, you can tell, which is somehow worse than if he were being polite. He looks at you. “It was good talking to you.” “Yeah.” Your voice comes out smaller than you want it to. “It was.” He holds eye contact for exactly one beat longer. And then he nods, and turns, and Sarah is already dragging you in the opposite direction with her grip iron-tight on your wrist. “Oh my god,” she hisses, the second there’s enough ambient noise to cover it. “Oh my God—” “It was just talking.” “It was not just talking—” “Sarah—”
“He’s so hot,” she says, almost mournful. “He’s so hot and he was talking to only you for like twenty minutes and I need you to know that Bucky Barnes does not do that—” “Bucky,” you say, and your stomach does a small stupid thing. “His name is Bucky?” She stares at you. “Please tell me you got his number.”
You didn’t. You are, the longer you stand here being dragged toward Sarah’s father, increasingly annoyed about that.
You find him again by accident. That’s the part you’ll tell Sarah later. That it was an accident and she will not believe you, and she will be partially right not to.
Because when you excused yourself from the conversation with Sarah’s father after approximately nine minutes, you were not not looking for Congressman Barnes. You were getting another drink. Those are two different things that happened to involve the same direction.
The bar is less crowded, so there’s an actual open stretch of marble counter to stand at. You order a club soda because your limit is three champagnes and you reached it. You’re stirring it with the little cocktail straw and staring at the ice like it did something to you when someone stops next to you. Not just anyone. You know before you look, from the proximity, from the particular way the air in the vicinity shifts. “Club soda,” Bucky says, nodding at your glass. “Smart.” “I’m a doctor… In theory.” “In theory?” “I mean residency.” You glance up at him. He’s looking straight ahead at the bar, not at you, and yet every part of you is acutely aware of him. “I know my limits.” “Three glasses?” He sounds like he already knows. “How’d you— Were you watching me?” He doesn’t answer immediately. He signals the bartender for something and then he turns his head to look at you. The look on his face is the least congressman-like look you’ve seen from him all evening. It’s quieter than that. More direct. “Yeah… I was.”
The bartender sets his glass down. You notice that it’s water again.
But Bucky doesn’t reach for it yet. He’s still looking at you. You have been through four years of medical school and almost three years of residency, which means you have stood in front of attendings who looked at you like you were a problem they needed to solve, and you did not flinch. You are flinching a little now. Just a little. “You didn’t come find me,” you try to keep your voice even. “You were with Richard.” “For like eight minutes.” Something moves across his face. Not quite a smile but in the neighborhood. “Were you counting?” “I’m not answering that.” He reaches for his water, finally, and takes a drink. You watch his jaw because you’re only human. There’s a scar that runs just beneath his jaw. You have the reflexive urge to ask how he got it, which is the emergency medicine in you, and also probably something else. “I thought about asking for your number,” he says, and he says it the same way he says everything, like he just decided to set the thing down in front of you and see what you do with it. “What stopped you?” He considers you for a moment. “Didn’t want to do it in front of Sarah. Felt like a thing that shouldn’t have an audience.” “That’s—” you press your lips together. “That’s actually reasonable.” “I have my moments.” The orchestra finishes something and starts something else, slower, and the lights in the ballroom dim imperceptibly.
You should go back. Sarah is probably wondering where you are. You have a club soda to finish and heels that are beginning to make their unhappiness known and a 6 AM shift on Wednesday that is always at the back of your mind. His hand finds the bar just next to yours. The same way the drunk man’s hand had, earlier. Except nothing about it feels the same. Not even close. “I have a suite upstairs… I stay here when I’m in the city for these.” A pause. “I’m not— that’s not—” “I know what you’re saying.” He looks at you. “Yeah?” “Yeah.” His pinky finger moves. Just barely. Just enough to press against the side of your hand, the lightest possible contact, and you feel it everywhere. “Tell me if I’m reading this wrong.”
You look down at where his hand is next to yours. You look back up at him. And then you do the most impulsive thing you have done since you signed a lease on an apartment you couldn’t afford because it had good light. “You’re not reading it wrong.” He walks slightly behind you toward the elevator, which is not nothing. It is discrete, and you appreciate that without saying so. His hand presses briefly to the small of your back as you reach the elevator, guiding you left. Even through the fabric of your dress, the warmth of his palm is enough to make your brain go briefly offline. The elevator ride is quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that’s loud. He’s not looking at you. He’s looking at the floor numbers. You’re doing the same. The back of his hand grazes yours and neither of you moves away, and by the sixth floor you have resigned yourself to the fact that you are going to be completely useless. The suite is significant. Of course. You take approximately two seconds to register that the entryway alone is bigger than your apartment’s living room before you stop looking at the suite. He closes the door. Turns around. And the way he looks at you when it’s just the two of you, without a ballroom background, is different. There’s nothing measured about his eyes right now. “Hi,” you say stupidly, because your brain has officially handed in its notice. “Hi.” And then he’s crossing the room and his hands are on your face and he’s kissing you. It is hungry in a way that makes your knees register a complaint.
Both of your hands come up to grip the lapels of his jacket just to have somewhere to put them. He pulls back just enough to breathe. His thumbs are at your jaw. “Okay?” he asks.
“Very,” you manage. He kisses you again, slower this time but no less certain, and his hands slide from your jaw to your waist. He walks you backward until your shoulders meet the wall. You make a soft sound against his mouth that you are immediately embarrassed by. “Don’t,” he says against your lips. “Don’t what?” “Do that thing where you get embarrassed.” He pulls back to look at you, properly. “Don’t.” You open your mouth and close it. He’s still in the full suit — jacket, tie, the whole shebang — and you are suddenly very, very aware of that.
His hands find the zipper at the back of your dress. Watching your face the whole time like he’s making absolutely sure. The zipper gives and you feel the fabric loosen across your back, cool air reaching your skin. “Arms up,” he says. You raise your arms and he lifts the dress over your head, and sets it on the chair behind him like it matters, like he’s thinking about the fact that it’s the only dress you brought. Something about that short, practical gesture does more to you than it should. And then he takes you in. It’s for a long moment. His eyes move over you and there’s not a single thing performative about how he looks at you. It’s not the look of someone who is trying to make you feel good, it’s the look of someone who genuinely cannot help himself. You are standing in front of a congressman in a four-hundred-dollar-a-night suite in a bralette from Target and underwear that does not match it, and you are acutely aware of this fact. “These don’t match.” Your face goes hot. “I wasn’t exactly planning this.” “No?” “I was planning on eating canapes and going home by ten.” Your voice comes out more defensive than you intend. “So no, I didn’t— I didn’t put on a matching set, I just—” “Hey.” He says it gently, and his hand comes up to tip your chin. “I’m not complaining.” “You literally just pointed it out—” “Because it’s cute.” His thumb traces your jaw. “Because you’re standing there looking like you can’t decide whether to be embarrassed or annoyed, and it’s—” something moves through his expression, “—it’s really cute is all. And I’m flattered” You stare at him. “You’re a congressman.” “I’m aware.” “You give floor speeches.” “Also aware.” “You can’t just… say things are cute.” “Sure I can.” He’s guiding you back toward the bed, and the backs of your knees hit the mattress and you sit down. He doesn’t follow you down. He just stands there, looks at you, still fully dressed, tie still knotted, and goes to his knees. Oh.
Oh. His hands slide up your calves, and he watches you watch him. You’re gripping the duvet with both hands because he hasn’t even done anything yet and you already feel like the floor dropped out. “You don’t have to—” you start. He looks up at you, and his eyes are very, very dark. “I want to.” His fingers find the waistband of your underwear and pulls them down your legs with an efficiency that should not be as attractive as it is. Then his hands are on your inner thighs, pushing them apart. He looks at you one more time like he’s checking in, which he clearly is.
“Good?” “Please,” you say, which answers nothing and everything. He lowers his head. The first press of his mouth to your cunt makes you bite down on your lip hard enough that you taste something. He takes his time with it. There’s nothing hurried here, nothing obligatory, he moves against you like he has absolutely nowhere else to be and no interest in being there anyway. His tongue finds the bundle of nerves at your center and stays there, slow and devastating, and you have to press the back of your hand to your mouth to keep the sound in. “Don’t,” he says, again, pulling back just enough. His breath is warm against you and it’s its own kind of torture. “I want to hear you.” “There are other rooms on this floor—” “Thick walls,” he says, and then he’s back at it. You stop thinking about the other rooms. He’s good at this in the way that makes you forget your own name temporarily. His hands are on your hips, keeping you from squirming away when it gets to be too much, which it does, quickly, because he has apparently decided to be completely merciless about this.
You have your fingers in his hair now. His perfectly styled hair, which you’re currently ruining, but do not care. And you are saying his name at a volume that would embarrass you under any other circumstances. “James—” you breathe, and then, when he does that specific thing with his tongue, laving at your entrance, “—God, Bucky, please—” He makes a sound against you that you feel everywhere. His fingers find the slick of you, and he looks up at you from where he is, which should be illegal, the visual of this is going to live in your brain for years. “This okay?” he murmurs.
“Yes, please, yes—”
He sinks two fingers into you slowly, and your head drops back. He works them against your walls while his mouth moves on your clit and you grip his hair tighter and he doesn’t tell you to let go.
The tension builds fast. Faster than you’d like, because you’d like this to never stop. When it breaks it breaks completely, your whole body pulls tight and then releases, the sound you make is completely beyond your control. He works you through it. Every last second of it. His fingers slow but don’t stop, his mouth gentles but stays, until you’re twitching away from the sensitivity and pressing weakly at his shoulder, and only then does he pull back. He stands, and he looks… composed, almost, except for the flush at the collar of his very nice shirt, the slick in his beard and the way his hair is thoroughly destroyed.
He’s still in the full suit. The tie is still knotted. You are lying on his hotel bed having just come completely apart and he looks like he’s about to chair a subcommittee meeting. “That’s unfair,” you say to the ceiling.
“What is?”
“You.” You lift your head to look at him. “The suit. All of that.” Chuckling, he reaches up and loosens the tie, pulls it over his head, starts on the buttons of his shirt. You push yourself up to sitting, because if he’s going to do that, you are watching.
He shrugs out of the shirt and underneath is a white undershirt, and underneath the undershirt — well. You were not unprepared for the shoulders. You were unprepared for everything else. “Hi,” you say again. He should be tired of hearing it. He isn’t. He almost smiles. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, and comes up with his wallet, and from his wallet— “You just… carry that?” you ask. “I was hoping,” he says.
Something about the admission makes your chest do a complicated thing. You reach for him as he comes down onto the bed, pulling him in. He braces his forearm by your head and kisses you and you can taste yourself on his mouth, which makes the complicated thing in your chest considerably worse.
“Tell me if anything’s—”
“I will… I trust you.”
He pulls back to look at you at that. Just for a second. Something moves through his eyes that you don’t quite have a word for.
“Okay.”
He takes his time. He works you back up with his hands first, until you’re arching into him and your nails are at his back and the patience of it is making you slightly insane, and when he finally rolls the condom on and shifts over you and pushes in—
The noise you make is entirely involuntary. Because he’s big. No, that would be an understatement.
“Still with me?” Right by your ear.
“More than with you,” you get out, and he exhales a short laugh into your neck and then starts to move, and you stop being capable of full sentences.
He’s thorough about it in a way that makes your brain melt clean out of your head. He learned what makes you gasp and then does that thing again. His hand slides under your ass and tilts your hips and hits something that makes you dig your nails in hard enough that he hisses.
“Right there,” you say, uselessly, since he clearly already knows.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t stop—”
He doesn’t stop. He does exactly that, again, and you’re gripping his shoulders with both hands and talking without fully knowing what you’re saying.
He’s got his face pressed to your temple and his breathing is not steady anymore, which is information you file away with tremendous satisfaction.
“You feel—” he starts, and stops, like he doesn’t finish that sentence with people often.
“Tell me.”
He pulls back to look at your face. His hips don’t slow. “Perfect,” he says, like it’s a simple fact.
Your whole body clenches around him at that and he groans. His rhythm shifts. Deeper, more insistent, and you have completely stopped worrying about the other rooms on this floor.
His thumb finds your clit and you cry out. He watches your face while he does it, and there is something about being looked at like that, while he’s inside you, while he’s taking you completely apart for the second time—
You come with your face buried in his neck and his name on your lips and his hand pressed flat to your lower back like he’s trying to keep you together while he undoes you.
He follows not long after with a groan against your temple, his whole body tensing.
Then he’s still, and the room is just the sound of both of you breathing.
He doesn’t move immediately. He stays where he is, most of his weight on his forearm, his other hand moving to push your hair away from your face. It’s a gentle thing, automatic, like he did it without thinking. Like it was just the natural next thing to do.
You stare up at the very expensive ceiling of the very expensive suite.
“I came here for canapes,” you say.
He laughs. A real one this tim. Not the almost-laugh from downstairs, an actual laugh, and it does something devastating to his face. “How’d that work out?”
“Better than expected.”
He presses his lips to your temple, and it’s soft. It lingers for a second, and when he pulls back he’s looking at you with that look again. The one you don’t have a word for yet.
He gets up to deal with the condom, comes back with a glass of water that he sets on the nightstand next to you, and gets back into bed like he does this, like this is just a thing he does, take someone apart completely and then bring them water after.
He’s pulled on his undershirt and his briefs and he looks unfairly good in both, and you’re in nothing, and neither of you seems to have a problem with this.
“Bucky.”
“Mm.”
“What actually made you come over? Downstairs. Earlier.” You turn your head to look at him. “Before that drunken guy. You were watching me before that.”
He’s quiet for a moment. He’s on his back, looking at the ceiling, and his jaw shifts slightly the way it does when he’s thinking.
“You were looking at the chandelier,” he says. “Everyone in that room was pretending they belonged there. You were just standing there, looking up, in the wrong dress. I liked that.”
You look at him for a long moment. “I got it on a sale,” you say.
“I like that too.”
You press your face into the pillow so he can’t see you smiling, and he doesn’t say anything about it, which is possibly the most considerate thing anyone has ever done for you.
Light is the first thing you register. It’s not the thin, grey light that seeps through your blackout curtain at home. This is different, the kind that comes from curtains that cost more than they should and don’t quite meet in the middle.
For a moment you don’t know where you are, which is a feeling you’re familiar with from overnight call, that brief horrible second of complete disorientation before your brain catches up.
Then it catches up.
The sheets are softer than yours. The room is too quiet. And the other side of the bed, when you reach for it without opening your eyes—
Empty.
You open your eyes anyway. On the off chance. The suite looks the same as it had last night except for the light, and the way the silence in it has a different quality now. A full kind of silence. The kind where someone has recently left.
His jacket is gone from the chair. Your dress is still on it, folded carefully over the back. So carefully, actually, that it takes you a second to really process the image. He’d folded your dress before he left. Which means he’d been here, moving around the room, and you’d slept through it.
The glass of water he’d set on the nightstand is still there, half full or half empty or whatever. You stare at it for longer than you need to.
You didn’t expect anything. That’s not entirely true; you’re a grown adult and you know the difference between what you expected and what you’d maybe hoped, and those two things are not the same thing, and it’s fine, it was one night, it was always going to be one night, you knew that going in.
Still. You look around the room. Almost wanting to find something. A note on hotel stationery, his business card under the water glass, anything.
Some small proof that it happened to him too, that you didn’t imagine the careful way he pushed your hair back.
Nothing.
You check the bathroom. The bathroom is pristine and smells faintly like whatever he’d used from the amenity shelf, and there is no note on the mirror, no nothing.
Of course there isn’t. He’s a congressman. He has a schedule. He was probably on a 7 AM call somewhere, probably has a driver waiting downstairs, probably has twelve things on his agenda and last night was just one of them. Item six, maybe, between a donor dinner and a briefing.
You sit back on the bed. You pick up the glass of water and drink the rest of it.
Fine.
You find your underwear, the mismatched ones, and even now that makes your cheeks do something. And then your dress, and your heels, and you check your phone.
Three texts from Sarah that escalate in punctuation, one from your roommate asking if you’re alive. Nothing from a number you don’t recognize.
Obviously.
The elevator ride down is considerably less charged than the one going up. The lobby is already busy, morning check-outs and businessmen with rolling luggage, and you walk through it in last night’s dress and last night’s heels with your chin up, because you are an emergency medicine resident and you have walked into much worse rooms than this.
The glass of water, though. He’d gotten up and gotten you a glass of water and now he was just… gone. Without a word.
That part stings a little. You’d be lying if you said otherwise.
Seventeen days later, you are standing in your kitchen at six in the morning counting backwards on your fingers, and the number you keep landing on is not the number you want.
Your period is late. Not a little late. Late enough that you’ve noticed, which takes something, because your cycle has always run regular, every twenty-eight days, reliable enough that you’ve never had to think about it.
You think about it now. You’ve been thinking about it for four days with increasing focus, telling yourself it was stress, it was the hours, it was the back-to-back overnight shifts that had wrecked your sleep, because that’s what happens to residents, your hormones get strange when your cortisol stays high, it happens.
Except.
Except that two weeks before your missed period, which would put it at about a week after the gala, you’d had spotting. You had noted it the way you noted things and filed it under irregular and moved on, because you’d had a fourteen-hour shift and the last thing you wanted to do was think about your own body on top of everything else. You’d thought mid-cycle spotting, stress, nothing.
And the fatigue. God, the fatigue had been something else, but again you’re a third year resident. Fatigue is the baseline. Fatigue is just Tuesday.
Except implantation spotting typically occurs six to twelve days after fertilization. Except you are standing in your kitchen doing obstetric math at six in the morning, and the number you keep landing on is seventeen days post-ovulation, which is—
That’s too late for it to be stress.
You know this. You know this the way you know things you don’t want to know yet, the way you knew a patient’s CT wasn’t going to be clean before the radiologist called. You just know.
You get to the hospital forty minutes early, which is easy enough to explain away to anyone who asks. You’re always early, everyone knows you’re always early.
You take a detour to the ground floor pharmacy. You stand in the family planning aisle for probably thirty seconds longer than a person who is confident about what they’re grabbing would stand there.
You take one off the shelf and tuck it under your arm, and take the stairs up to the third floor resident bathroom, which has a lock that works and more importantly, privacy.
The instructions are not complicated. You’re a doctor. You know what two lines mean.
You sit on the edge of the closed toilet lid you look at the water stain on the ceiling tile for the full three minutes.
There’s a crack in it that branches from the fixture in a way that looks like the course of the facial nerve in the middle ear. You have stared at this ceiling before during bad shifts, during the kind of nights where someone didn’t make it and you had to go somewhere quiet for six minutes, and it has never felt quite like this.
You turn the test over.
Two lines.
Both of them dark. Two unambiguous, immediate, definitive lines.
You sit with that for a long moment. The tile. The test.
You’re pregnant.
You are twenty-eight years old and you are a resident and you had a one-night stand with a congressman whose number you do not have and you are pregnant.
You turn the test face-down again. Pick it up. Put it in a cover at the bottom of your bag under your stethoscope, which feels insane but you’re not leaving it in the trash where someone could see it.
You look at yourself in the mirror. Your face looks the same as it always does. That’s somehow the strangest part.
You unlock the bathroom door. You have a shift to get to.
But one thing you’re sure about is that, you want this baby. Be it a maternal impulse, or whatever it is you don’t have a name for it yet. You want this baby. You need this baby.
Two days of carrying it around inside you like a stone in your chest, and by the third morning you’ve made the decision, or the decision makes you.
Either way, you’re sitting on your bathroom floor at midnight with your back against the tub and the thing is settled.
He needs to know. Whatever happens after that is not something you can fully think about yet, but the part where he doesn’t know is no longer something you can live inside of.
The problem is getting to him.
You try the obvious thing first. His official website has a contact form. For constituents, it says, and you are technically not his constituent, but you fill it out anyway and it autoresponds within thirty seconds with something about being committed to responding within five to seven business days, and you close the laptop.
Five to seven business days.
His office number is listed publicly and you call it the next day on your lunch break. It rings three times before someone picks up.
“Congressman Barnes’ office, how can I help you?”
“Hi.” You try to keep your voice level. “I’m — I’m trying to reach Congressman Barnes. It’s a personal matter.”
There’s a small pause on the other end. “The Congressman has a full schedule. Can I take your name and a callback number? Please describe the nature of your inquiry.”
Right. The nature of your inquiry. “It’s — it’s a private matter. I’d really need to speak with him directly.”
“Ma’am, any personal correspondence for the Congressman goes through his office. If you can describe—”
“I know him personally.” You are aware of how this sounds. You are aware that people who call congressional offices claiming to know the congressman personally are, in fact, not people who know the congressman personally. “I’m not a — I’m not a constituent with a complaint. I’m a personal acquaintance and it’s urgent.”
“I understand,” the woman says, in the tone of someone who does not entirely believe you. “I can pass your information along and someone will follow up.”
Someone. Not him.
“Okay.” You give her your name and your number. You know with complete certainty that you will not hear back.
You dissociate for a minute after you hang up, and then you text Sarah.
You : Hey. Random question. Completely unrelated to anything. How hard would it be for you to get Barnes’ personal number from your dad
Three minutes of silence, which for Sarah is practically geological time.
Sarah: why
You: Sarah please.
Sarah: whyyyy
You: I'll explain later. Is it possible?
Sarah: my dad would notice if i asked. but his phone’s usually just sitting on the counter when he’s in the shower soooo. give me 12 hours and a good reason
You: I promise I'll explain everything.
Sarah: oh this is GOOD. this is so good. okayy
You put your phone in your coat pocket and go back inside.
Sarah texts at eleven seventeen the following night, which means Richard Jackson apparently showers late, and the text is just a phone number and then:
Sarah: okay i need the full story. not a summary. the FULL story. what did you DO??????
You look at the number for a long time.
You: Thank you. I’ll explain everything soon I promise.
Sarah: are you okay??
You think about the test at the bottom of your bag. The ceiling tile with the crack in it. The empty side of the bed with the sheets still warm from him.
You: Yeah. I'm okay. Thank you Sarah.
You add the number to your phone. You just stare at the digits, and your chest is doing the complicated thing again, and you have no idea what you’re going to say when he picks up.
If he picks up.
The first time, it rings five times and goes to voicemail.
His voicemail. His actual voice, which you were not prepared for. You hang up before the beep because you don’t know what you’d say and you can’t practice it out loud yet. The words exist inside your head in a specific order that you’ve rearranged a hundred times since eleven seventeen last night, and none of the arrangements feel right.
You set your phone face-down on your kitchen table. You make coffee you don’t drink. You sit there for twenty minutes and then you pick your phone back up.
It rings three times. You are working out, specifically, how to begin. Not hi, too casual. Not hello, Congressman, too formal and possibly insane. Maybe just his name, just Bucky, like you have any right to—
“Hello.”
Just that. One word. And your heart does something it has absolutely no business doing.
“Hi. This is— It’s — we met at the fundraiser, I mean the gala. About three weeks ago. Sarah Jackson’s friend.” A pause, because you can’t tell if any of this is registering. “The one in the wrong dress.”
“I know who you are.”
Something in his voice. Something that is not nothing. You press your free hand flat to the kitchen table just to have something solid.
“Okay. Good. Hi.”
“Hi.” And there it is, threaded through the single syllable — a smile. The same almost-smile from downstairs at the bar. “It’s good to hear from you.”
You close your eyes for a second. You had not let yourself think about whether it would be good or awkward or somewhere cold in between, because thinking about it felt like jinxing it.
“I need to—” The arrangements in your head are all wrong again. “Is there any chance we could meet? In person. I have something I need to tell you, and I’d rather not do it over the phone.”
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah.” The word comes out before you can think about whether it’s true. “I just — it’s better in person. I think.”
“I can do tomorrow. I am free tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow works.” Your voice is admirably steady, and you are giving yourself full credit for that. “Wherever’s easiest for you.”
“There’s a place on 54th. Briar something — Briar & Co. You know it?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Two o’clock,” you confirm. And then neither of you say anything for a second, and you don’t know who should end this.
“It’s good to hear from you,” he says again. Quieter this time, like maybe he’s saying it more to himself than to you.
You don’t know what to say to that. “Right. See you tomorrow.”
You hang up.
You sit back down at your kitchen table, look at your untouched coffee going cold. You breathe in and out very carefully for a minute, and you do not let yourself think about what it meant that he said it twice.
You’re not going to do that. You’re going to be a reasonable adult who goes to work and eats lunch and sleeps normal amounts, and tomorrow you are going to sit across from Bucky Barnes in a coffee shop and say the thing that needs to be said.
That is the plan.
You’re three minutes late. When you push through the glass door and scan the room you find him immediately, because he’s not a man that takes effort to find.
He’s already there. Of course he’s already there, he’s probably never been late to a thing in his life.
He looks like something out of a campaign ad, which is annoying, because you are in your off-duty jeans and the overcoat you’ve had since forever.
He’s at a corner table, which is a thing you file away and he’s got a coffee in front of him already.
He looks up before you reach him. Like he sensed it.
You pull out the chair across from him, sit down and unwrap your scarf. The whole time he’s watching you with an expression you cannot read, which is the same as before, which should not feel as familiar as it does.
“Finally,” he says.
You blink. “Am I late? I thought I was only — what time is it?”
“You’re not late.” The corner of his mouth pulls into a smile. “I’ve just been— Never mind.”
He said finally like he was waiting for you. But he wasn’t waiting long. Does that mean he meant that you finally called? But how would you call if he didn’t leave a number?
No. Nope. You’re not going there.
You look down at the menu you don’t need and tell yourself firmly that it doesn’t mean anything, that he is a politician and politicians are good at making people feel like the only person in the room, it is literally a professional skill.
You’ve rehearsed this. You’ve rehearsed it on the subway here, in the shower last night. You had a version that started with some context, that built up gradually, that eased both of you into it. That version is somewhere on the sidewalk because you don’t have access to it right now.
“I have to tell you something.”
He sets his cup down. “Okay.”
“It’s—” You press your hands flat to your thighs under the table. “It’s not a small thing.”
“Okay.” The steadiness of it is almost its own problem.
Just say it. Say the thing. Spit it out.
You have said hard things before. You have sat across from people and told them their person wasn’t coming home, you have held those conversations together with nothing but your hands and your voice, you can say six words to one man in a coffee shop on 54th Street.
“I’m pregnant.” The words land flat on the table between you. “It’s yours. It’s from — from the gala. That night.”
Silence. Absolute deafening silence.
Not the kind that means he’s gathering himself to respond, or the kind that means he missed it. You can tell from his face that he didn’t miss it. It’s a longer silence. The kind you have to sit with no idea what’s on the other side.
You watch his face. You had run through versions of this moment in your head. There’s shock, the obvious thing, or anger, or some careful measured political blankness.
But it isn’t quite any of those. His jaw is tight and his eyes are on you and he is… not here, quite. He’s somewhere slightly behind his eyes, somewhere you don’t have access to.
“Bucky,” you say, because the silence is going somewhere you don’t like.
He comes back. Just slightly. His hand around his coffee cup tightens and releases.
“Are you sure it’s mine?”
You hear the words. You take a second to make sure you heard them correctly.
“I wore a condom,” he says, and his voice has changed. It’s careful, like he’s walking on ice. “I just — I want to be sure that we’re—”
“Yes.” The word comes out sharp, which you didn’t mean, or maybe you did. “Yes, it’s yours. I’m sure.” You make yourself hold his gaze. “I haven’t slept with anyone else.”
Something shifts in his expression. You can’t tell if it’s belief or the beginning of it or something else entirely.
“We can do a paternity test,” you say, and your voice is admirably level and you hate that you have to say this, you hate that you’re sitting here offering this like it’s a reasonable next step. “If you want confirmation. That’s — that’s available to you. I understand.”
Then you both speak at the same time.
“I didn’t come here asking for anything,” you say.
“What do you want?” he asks.
If only you’d spoken a moment sooner.
Four words. They’re not unkind, exactly. But they land cold, because of what they assume, maybe, or because of what they don’t. What do you want.
As if the only reason you’d be here is because you want something from him specifically, as if this is a transaction he’s being presented with rather than a fact of his life, as if you’d spent three weeks carrying this alone and called his number and rearranged the words a hundred different ways just to want something.
You feel it move through your chest before you can stop it.
“Nothing… I don’t want anything.”
You can clearly see his face change. “That’s not what I—”
“I have to go.” You reach for your scarf. Your hands are steady and you’re glad for it. “I shouldn’t have — I thought you should know. That was the only reason. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“That’s not—hey—” He’s half out of his seat. “That’s not what I meant—”
“It’s fine.” You stand. You loop your scarf once around your neck and your body is doing the automatic things while your brain is somewhere else entirely, somewhere a little removed and glassy. “I’ll be in touch about next steps. Whatever you want to do. If you want the test, just—” You stop yourself before you finish the sentence because your voice is doing something you don’t want it to do. “I’ll be in touch.”
And then you’re walking. Through the small tables, out through the glass door that lets in a rush of cold air that you are grateful for because it hits your face and gives you something to feel that isn’t this.
The sidewalk is busy, you merge into it and walk because walking is something you can do. You’re not going anywhere in particular. You’re just walking.
“Hey.” His voice is behind you. Close. “Just — stop.”
You don’t stop immediately. You take two more steps, which is honest.
“Please.” His hand closes around your arm, just above your elbow. There’s barely any pressure in his grip, but you stop because ‘please’ is not a word he uses easily, you’ve already gathered that, and the way he said it is not a politician’s please.
He’s standing there without his coat. He left it inside, apparently, didn’t stop to grab it. He looks like a person, suddenly. Not a congressman anymore.
“That came out wrong.”
“It’s fine.” It’s something you have said twice now, which is increasingly not true.
“It’s not.” He runs a hand through his hair. The same dark hair you’d pulled at in a hotel suite three weeks ago, but you cannot think about that right now. “I panicked. I said something stupid and it came out wrong and I— I’m sorry.”
“You asked me what I want,” you keep your voice low. “Like I was — like this was something I came to negotiate.”
“I —”
“I’ve been sitting with this for two weeks by myself.” You hadn’t meant to say that part, hadn’t meant to let him know, but there it is. “Two weeks of figuring out how to even find your number, two weeks of—” You stop. You are not going to do this on 54th Street, you are absolutely not. “I’m not asking you for anything. I just thought you deserved to know.”
He’s looking at you with an expression that you can’t name and have never seen on him before. Something stripped of the careful management, the controlled stillness.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The wind picks up and he doesn’t even flinch at it, no coat, and you look at him and you are… tired. You are so, so tired, and you don’t have the energy to hold onto any of this out here on the street.
“I have to get back. I have a shift.”
“Can we— Can we try this again? Somewhere. When you’re ready.” He holds your gaze. “I’d like to do that right. If you’ll let me.”
You look at him for a long moment. The sweater. The cold. The line of his jaw that you’d had your hand against on a different night in a different context. The fact that the two things are the same person is almost too much to hold at once.
“I’ll think about it.”
It is not a yes. It is not quite a no. He seems to understand this, because he doesn’t push.
You turn and don’t look back. You get half a block when your phone buzzes in your pocket.
Bucky: I’m sorry. I mean it.
The phone is an inconvenience right now. It’s him.
You stare at it for two full rings.
Then you pick up, because you are apparently a person who does that.
“Hey.” The same voice that said I’m sorry on a windy sidewalk six hours ago, except now it’s evening and you’ve been on your feet since noon and you have considerably less patience available than you did then.
“I’m in the middle of a shift,” you say, instead of hello.
“I know, I just— Have you eaten?”
You open your mouth. Close it. Look up at the ceiling for a moment, which is a habit you’re developing, apparently. Ceilings when you need a second to not say the first thing that comes to mind. “Bucky.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“It is not a simple question, it is a—” You lower your voice because a nurse just walked past and you do not need this. “Can you just not, please? I’m working.”
“Have you eaten?” he repeats, like he didn’t hear the second half of what you said, or heard it and decided it wasn’t load-bearing.
“I had lunch.”
“It’s 8 PM, I’m not asking about lunch—”
“I’m a resident. Having lunch is a privilege.” You hear an ambulance. “Gotta go.”
“I’ll —”
You don’t let him finish.
At eleven thirty, one of the nurses at the front desk — Maya — stops you in the hallway with an expression that is doing something specific.
“There’s a guy at the front desk.”
“…Okay.”
“He brought food.” She pauses. “A lot of food.”
You look at her. She looks back at you with the energy of someone who has decided this is the best thing that has happened on this shift and possibly this month. “He’s very—” She searches for the word.
“Maya.”
“He’s asking for you specifically.”
You close your eyes for exactly one second. Then you go to the front desk.
There’s a paper bag on the desk in front of Bucky and he’s talking to the security guard with the easy manner of a man who talks to people for a living.
When he sees you coming, his expression shifts into something that is not quite relief but is in the direction of it.
“You didn’t have to do this,” you say, before he can say anything.
“I—”
You don’t let him finish. “I’m working.”
“I’m not staying.” He nods at the bag. “It’s just food. You said you hadn’t eaten.”
You look at the bag. You look at him. Maya, behind you, is doing an absolutely terrible job of pretending to type something. “You didn’t have to drive here.” You keep your voice quiet enough that it stays between the two of you. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
His jaw does the tight-release thing. “Because after you left I felt like an ass… and I need you to know that I’m sorry. Not over a text. In person.” He pushes the bag slightly toward you. “And because you said you hadn’t eaten.”
You stare at the bag. Thai food, from the smell of it, something with lemongrass. Your stomach, which has been ignoring you all evening, suddenly has opinions.
“This doesn’t fix what you said.”
“I’m not trying to fix it. I’m trying to—” He stops himself, and you can see him editing, which is strange to watch on a man who normally seems to say the exact amount he means to. “I’m showing you I’m sorry. That’s all.”
The energy to process this is something you don’t possess now. You pick up the bag. It’s heavier than it looked. “Thank you.” It comes out stiff and you don’t have the bandwidth to soften it. “You should go home.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. You don’t have to — this isn’t something you have to do. Standing in hospital lobbies with Thai food isn’t gonna be your thing, okay? We’re not— that’s not what this is.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Get some food in you.”
“I was going to,” you say, which is not strictly true, and he seems to know it. But he doesn’t say so, which you are choosing to be grateful for.
He nods once, and walks back toward the entrance. You watch him go for exactly two seconds before you make yourself turn around and go back to work.
Maya spins her chair to face you the moment you’re within range. You point at her before she can speak.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Maya.”
“He’s so—”
“I will give you a terrible evaluation.”
She turns back to her computer, failing entirely to hide her smile, and you take the bag to the break room and eat the whole thing. It’s very good, which you resent.
Six hours later, at ten past two, you come out of the hospital into the cold. Your brain is running on fumes, and the black car in the far corner of the parking lot does not immediately register.
Then the door opens.
“You have got to be kidding me,” you say, to no one in particular. To the night. To whatever version of your life this is.
He gets out slowly, like he hasn’t spent six hours in a parking lot. He’s in the same coat and he looks it. A little, around the eyes.
“Bucky.” Your voice comes out flatter than you intend.
“I—”
There’s a pattern developing here, the way you don’t let him finish talking. “You’ve been here this whole time.”
“I fell asleep for a bit.”
“In your car. In the hospital parking lot. Why?”
He stops a few feet from you. His face looks tired in a way it hadn’t the other night, something honest about it. “I wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
“I do that everyday… I’ve been doing that everyday for almost three years.”
“Right.”
“Then why—” You stop. You’re too tired for this. The cold is getting into your coat and your feet hurt and you are twenty-eight years old and you do not have the reserves for whatever this is. “Go home, Bucky. Please. Get some actual sleep.”
“Let me drive you.”
“I have my car.”
“You’ve been on your feet for—”
“I have my car.” You hitch your bag up on your shoulder. “Thank you for the food. I mean that. But you can’t just— sit outside my hospital all night, that’s not— you can’t do that.”
He’s looking at you with that expression again. The unreadable one that isn’t quite unreadable anymore, or maybe you’re just too tired to not see it. “I handled it badly yesterday… or today — I don’t know — I said something that I would take back if I could.”
“I know. You said that.”
“I’m saying it again.”
“Bucky—”
“I need you to understand that I’m not— I’m not the guy who says something like that and means it. What I said, the way it sounded. I need you to know that’s not— that isn’t who I am.”
You look at him for a long moment. The parking lot is quiet. A couple of birds somewhere. A car turning out onto the street.
“I know.” Because you do, or you think you do, or you’d like to. “I just need you to give me some room to figure out—” You gesture vaguely between you. “All of this. Okay? I can’t think straight when you’re standing in my parking lot.”
Something moves through his expression at that. He looks down at the ground and then back at you, and the corner of his mouth shifts. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“Thank you.”
He holds eye contact a beat. “Drive safe.”
“You too,” you say, which is automatic, which is ridiculous, and you turn before your face can do anything about it.
You think about him walking to his car in an empty parking lot, and you think about him falling asleep in there, and you don’t do anything with that. You file it somewhere.
You go home. You sleep for nine hours straight. It’s the best you’ve slept in three weeks.
He calls two days later.
You’re off shift, sitting on your couch with an unopened anatomy refresher on the cushion next to you because you’d told yourself you were going to be productive and had instead been staring at nowhere in particular.
You pick up on the second ring. “Hi.” His voice is the same, which isn’t entirely a good thing to your composure.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Tired, but that’s— that’s normal.”
“Oh?”
“The fatigue is normal first trimester. The nausea I’ve been managing, mostly… I’m not telling you this to update you, I’m just— you asked.”
“I’m glad you told me.” His voice is quiet. Careful in a way that doesn’t feel like walking on ice anymore, more like he’s choosing things with intention. “I want to know how you’re doing.”
When you don’t say anything, he continues. “I want to come to your appointment.”
You close your eyes. “Bucky.”
“Hear me out—”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I — I want to.”
“You said that in the parking lot too, about the food, and I told you—”
“This is different. This is— this matters. I want to be there. I know I gave you every reason to tell me to stay out of it. What I said at the coffee shop— I know. But I’m asking you to let me— I’m asking… please”
For some reason, you think about the hotel room. The folded dress. The empty bed. The water glass. You think about a parking lot at two past midnight and a man who fell asleep in his car because he wanted to make sure you got home safe.
“It’s at my hospital… next Tuesday. Eleven.”
“Eleven,” he repeats.
“And if you say anything—” You hadn’t meant to go there, but you’re going there. “If you say anything like what you said on that day, I will walk out. And that’ll be it. I mean that.”
“That’s fair.” Without hesitation. Like he expected it and meant to agree to it.
“I’m serious, Bucky.”
“I know you are. I know.”
You nod, even though he can’t see it. “Okay. Tuesday.”
“Okay… Thank you.”
You don’t say you’re welcome. You don’t say anything for a second.
“Get some sleep,” he says. It’s like the water glass. The automatic thing, the thing that comes out before he decides whether to say it.
“You too.” This time it doesn’t feel ridiculous.
You hang up and open the textbook on whim. You read four pages before you fall asleep on the couch with the lamp still on.
He’s standing at your door at ten thirty with peonies.
Actual peonies, fat and pale pink, the kind that look like someone made a decision.
You open the door in your coat already because you’d been about to leave, keys in hand, and the two of you look at each other for a second in the doorway.
“How do you know where I live?”
“Sarah.”
Of course. You make a mental note to have a word with Sarah, except Sarah will laugh at you and you both know it.
You look at the flowers and then at him and he has the decency to look slightly uncertain, which is the most uncertain you’ve seen him look, and it does something small and involuntary to your chest.
“You didn’t have to—”
He just holds them out, without saying anything.
You take them because leaving them in his hands would be strange. They smell like something expensive and vaguely like outside, and you stand there for a second not knowing what to do with them.
You turn back into the apartment and find a glass in the cabinet and fill it with water, which is not a vase but it will have to do.
Setting them on the counter, you look at them. White and pink against your very normal kitchen, and something about the image makes you feel things you don’t have the time or inclination to examine.
The waiting room at the OB practice is warm and aggressively neutral, the kind of beige that has been carefully selected to be soothing. It achieves the opposite.
You sign in at the front. Bucky sits beside you, and he doesn’t make small talk, which you’re grateful for. He’s looking at something on his phone with the focused stillness of a person who is trying to be unobtrusive, and you watch the fish tank in the corner for lack of anything else to do with your eyes.
Your name gets called and you both stand. There’s a second, while walking towards the exam room, where you’re very aware of him behind you and you don’t know what to do about that.
The room is what it always is. Exam table with the paper that crinkles, the blood pressure cuff on the wall, the small screen angled toward the bed. You hop up on the table without being asked.
The nurse takes your vitals and says the doctor will be in shortly. Then it’s just the two of you in the room.
Bucky takes the chair in the corner.
“You can sit closer,” you say, because the chair in the corner feels like he’s been sent there. “You don’t have to be all the way over there.”
He moves the chair, just enough, and sits back down.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. Same question as the phone call, except in person it is different.
“Okay. A little nauseous this morning but it passed.” You look at your hands. “I have to go back on in the afternoon so I’m hoping the appointment doesn’t run long.”
“I can have you back by one.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” Right. That’s his line.
You don’t argue with it this time.
Dr. Reyes comes in five minutes later and doesn’t react to Bucky’s presence in any visible way, which you appreciate, because you’d anticipated some version of aren’t you. Congressman Barnes or Winter Soldier.
You did not want to deal with that today.
She’s warm and efficient in the way of someone who has done this enough times, and she goes through the questions with you and you answer them like the doctor you are. Last menstrual period, no significant history. Bucky stays quiet in his chair and you don’t look at him.
Then Dr. Reyes reaches for the gel.
“This’ll be cold,” she says, and you nod. She picks up the transducer and you are doing the thing you planned to do. Stay clinical.
Except your resident-brain has never been on this end of a transabdominal ultrasound before and it turns out those are two different things.
The screen fills with the grey static of it. Dr. Reyes adjusts the angle, and—
There.
The flicker. Fast and insistent, one hundred and fifty beats per minute or close to it, the cardiac activity clear enough on the doppler even before she turns the sound on, but then she does turn the sound on.
It’s the sound that gets you.
You’ve heard fetal heart tones a hundred times. A thousand times. You’ve stood in rooms while other women heard this for the first time and you’ve read the chart and noted the rate and moved on, because it was clinical, because it was data.
Except right now your body is doing something entirely outside of your control, something warm moving through your chest without asking permission, and you press your lips together and breathe.
“Strong heartbeat,” Dr. Reyes says, with the particular quiet of someone who knows what this moment is. “Right around a hundred and fifty-four. Looking good.”
You nod. Your throat is doing something it shouldn’t.
From the chair beside you, you hear Bucky exhale. Like he’d been holding something and set it down.
You turn your head and look at him.
He’s looking at the screen, not at you, and his jaw is tight and his hands are braced against his knee. His expression is… soft. You know because it’s the same on your own face.
“Can I—” His voice comes out different than you’ve heard it. Rougher. He clears his throat. “Can I get a copy of that? The image.”
Dr. Reyes glances between you, and you nod. “Of course,” she says.
He looks at you then. Quick, like he’s checking whether that was okay. When you nod, he immediately turns back to the screen.
Dr. Reyes does the measurements. Everything is how it should be, and she gives you the due date. Mid-July. Which you’d already calculated, but hearing it out loud is its own thing.
She goes through the first trimester expectations with you and you listen to all of it with the clinical half of your brain taking notes while the other half is somewhere else, somewhere watching the flicker on the screen and not knowing quite what to do with itself.
When she hands you the printout of the image, you put it in your bag. She hands one to Bucky too, without being asked again, and he takes it with both hands and looks at it for a second before sliding it into his inside coat pocket. Like it’s something he doesn’t want to bend.
He drives you back. You sit in the passenger seat and watch the city go by.
Neither of you speaks for a while, which is fine. Which is easy, actually, and you resent that a little.
You’d like to be uncomfortable. Discomfort is useful.
“Thank you. For letting me be there.” He’s the one to break the silence.
“You asked,” you say. Which is true, but not the full answer, and you both know it.
He doesn’t push.
In front of your building, he puts it in park. “Do you need anything? For the apartment, or groceries, or I could pick stuff up—”
“I’m okay.” You’re already half out of the seat.
“Prenatal vitamins, or—”
“Bucky.” You pause with one foot on the curb. “I have prenatal vitamins. I ordered them the morning after I tested. I’m a doctor. I know what I need.”
He has a hand on the steering wheel and he’s looking at you, and there’s something in his face that isn’t quite hurt and isn’t quite frustration. More like a person who wants to do something and doesn’t know how.
“I know you do.”
“I’m not—” There’s a version of this that comes out wrong, and you navigate around it. “I’m not keeping you out of it. That’s not what this is. I just— I don’t need you to manage things. Okay?” You look at him. “I’ll call you when there’s something to call you about.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Okay.”
“The heartbeat. That was… yeah. It was good.” You don’t know why you said that, only you didn’t want that to be the last thing you told him.
You’re already inside your place by the time you hear his car pull away.
The peonies are still in the glass on your counter when you get back in, and you stand there looking at them.
You are a person who has her prenatal vitamins already ordered and her charting caught up and her shifts covered, and you are also a person who left a one-night stand’s flowers in a water glass because they were too nice to throw out.
You said no three times.
The first time was on the phone, two days after the appointment, when he called with what he’d clearly prepared as a reasonable proposition. He delivered in the tone of someone who has won arguments in rooms full of people who didn’t want to lose.
His apartment was twelve minutes from your hospital by cab. Your commute was forty, on a good day. The first trimester fatigue was going to get worse before it got better. He had a spare bedroom. It was just practical.
The second time was a week after that, in person, when he’d swung by your hospital on his way from somewhere official to somewhere else official. He’d shown up in your break room with a coffee you hadn’t asked for and had the conversation again.
He laid it out like he was briefing someone. The proximity to your hospital, the fact that his building had a doorman and a parking garage and an elevator, the fact that your building had none of those things and three flights of stairs that were already becoming a thing you noticed at the end of a long shift.
The third time was on a Tuesday when you’d gotten home at midnight and stood at the bottom of your stairs for longer than you’d like to admit before making yourself go up them.
You’d texted Sarah about it not entirely meaning to, and Sarah had apparently mentioned it to her father, and her father had apparently mentioned it to Bucky. Your phone had rung at twelve fifteen.
How does news travel so fast?
The fourth time you said no it was because you’d run out of actual reasons and had to fall back on principle, which he received with the patience of someone who understood the difference and was content to wait.
That patience, somehow, was the thing that wore you down. Not the logic of it.
He’d just set the option on the table and waited with his hands in his pockets while you turned it over and found fewer and fewer things wrong with it.
That time you’d said, “Fine. A month. We’ll see how it goes.”
His apartment is on the fourteenth floor of a building that has a lobby with actual plants in it and a doorman named Gerald who learned your name on the second day and now says ‘good morning’ like he means it.
The spare bedroom has a window that faces east, which you hadn’t expected to care about. But find that you do, when the morning light comes in early and clean.
The first few days felt like moving around a furniture arrangement that hadn’t fully settled. Two people with established routines in one space, both of you figuring out the other.
You learned that he woke up early, always, and that the coffee was made before you came out of your room.
You learned that he watched the news in the living room in the evenings with the sound low and that he didn’t talk during it. Which suited you fine because you had charts to finish.
You learned that he stocked the fridge with things you’d mentioned offhand once, twice, in passing.
The ginger tea appeared on the third day, on the shelf above your coffee mug. You hadn’t said you needed it. But you’d been slightly more nauseous every morning and apparently he’d noticed, because there it was, three boxes of it, like it had always been there.
You’re fourteen weeks now. Which means you’d started to show in the way that is noticeable if you know what you’re looking for, the small firm curve of it below your navel that your regular clothes are beginning to politely argue with.
Looking down at it in the mirror still does something to you that you don’t have a clean word for.
Bucky doesn’t comment on it. That might be the thing you appreciate most.
What he does is quietly rearrange things. The stuff on the highest shelves moved down without discussion. A non-slip mat appeared in the shower.
He started being in the kitchen when you came home late, putting something together, and there was always enough for two.
You’d tried to protest the first time and he’d handed you a bowl of whatever it was and said ‘sit down, eat’, and something about the directness of it had short-circuited your objection.
The dynamic between you had shifted in a way that was hard to articulate. He made you laugh twice last week, genuinely. Once about something on the news and once about something Gerald had said in the lobby. You’d felt the laugh leave your body and thought afterward, with some surprise, that you hadn’t been performing it.
You still felt the thing from the coffee shop, underneath. You didn’t think you’d stop feeling that for a while. It is something that won’t stop hurting when you think of it often, and you think of it often.
Tuesday morning, you’re off until noon.
Off, for a resident, means you slept until eight instead of five and only have emails to deal with instead of a full shift, but still.
You come out of your room in your robe and your thick socks, hair in the kind of chaos that only nine hours of actual sleep can produce, and you’re running through the schedule of the day in your head when you turn the corner into the kitchen and stop.
Bucky is at the stove.
In a towel.
Just a towel. White, knotted at his hip, his hair still damp against the back of his neck. He clearly just stepped out of the shower and he’s got the skillet on and he’s doing something with eggs, fully concentrated on it.
You should say something. You should announce yourself, the way a normal person would, and give you both a second to reorient.
You don’t.
You’ve seen him in suits, casuals at home, you’ve seen him in the sweater from the coffee shop, you’ve seen him in the dark of a hotel room. But this is different in a way that your body is entirely on board with and your brain is slightly behind on.
He’s solid, broad across the back and tapered down, and the towel sits low on his hips and the morning light in the kitchen is doing things you’d like it to stop doing.
His left arm, the metal one, catches the light differently than his right, the lines of it tracing the shape of a shoulder, a forearm, fingers curled around the handle of the pan.
You’ve always been a normal amount of attracted to him. You’ve been telling yourself that it was circumstantial. Hormones, proximity, those things. And that it would settle down, because that was the sensible thing for it to do.
It is not settling down.
You press your lips together and look at the ceiling briefly and remind yourself that you are a grown adult in her first trimester who is going to behave appropriately. The first trimester is notoriously unkind when it comes to this, your body does not always know what’s good for it.
“Morning,” you say.
He turns around. To his credit, he doesn’t look particularly thrown. A little caught, maybe, but he rolls with it. “Hey. Sorry… I was running late, I figured I’d just start breakfast before I—” He gestures vaguely at himself with the spatula, which you choose not to find charming. “Didn’t hear you get up.”
“It’s fine,” you say, and you get yourself to the coffee maker and give yourself something to do with your hands. “What time is it?”
“Eight-forty.” He turns back to the eggs. “I would’ve had it ready before you got up usually. Woke up late.”
“You know you don’t have to make me breakfast every single day.”
He shifts the pan off the heat. “I was making eggs anyway. Seemed wasteful not to.”
You look at his back. His very… whatever. You pour your coffee. “Are you going to put clothes on?”
“Yeah, I— are the eggs okay first or should I—”
“The eggs are fine,” you say, which possibly comes out with slightly more feeling than the eggs require, and you turn and look very deliberately at your mug.
He dishes the eggs onto two plates, sets yours on the counter in front of you with a piece of toast that has appeared from somewhere.
Then he takes himself and his towel situation to his room.
You sit at the kitchen counter and stare at your eggs and feel extremely normal about everything.
Hormones. First trimester. Completely explicable.
You eat your eggs. They’re good. They’re always good, which is its own kind of inconvenience.
He comes back in grey sweatpants and a t-shirt with his damp hair and sits across the counter from you with his own plate.
The thing about Bucky Barnes in grey sweatpants is that it is somehow worse than the towel because you cannot blame it on anything. You cannot say you were caught off guard.
He is just sitting there in normal clothes eating scrambled eggs and looking at his phone. This is just your morning now. This is what your mornings are.
“You have the afternoon appointment Friday?” he asks, not looking up from his phone.
“Two o’clock.”
He nods. Puts his phone down. Picks up his coffee. “I can drive you.”
“I can get there.”
“I want to be there.”
You consider pointing out that he says that a lot. You decide not to. “Okay.”
The scrubs have been sitting in the bottom of your bag for three weeks. The dark navy set, the ones you’d bought in your first year when you finally had enough shifts under your belt to feel like they were earned.
You’d packed them when you left your apartment and told yourself it was practical, that you’d need them before the end of your residency, that they’d still fit by then.
Today is the final week. Last stretch before your exams, before whatever comes after, and you’d woken up this morning with the particular weight of an ending sitting on your chest. The bittersweet kind, the kind that doesn’t fully resolve into either sad or glad and just sits there asking you to feel both.
You’d thought about your locker at the hospital, the mug you kept in the break room, the nurses who knew your name and your coffee order and the specific way you liked your charts organized. You’d thought about who you’d been when you started, which felt like another person’s life viewed through glass.
The scrubs had seemed right. Nostalgic. The way you might put on an old sweater, or drive past your childhood home. Just to remember what it felt like.
That was the theory.
In practice, you’re standing in front your mirror at eight in the morning and the scrub top is bunched at your midsection, stuck there, going neither up nor down.
Your stomach has done what stomachs do at nineteen weeks. It is present, unmistakably, the firm round curve of it that you’d spent weeks watching appear like something surfacing through water.
The scrub top, which had been fitted-ish even before, has no interest in accommodating it. The fabric is straining across your chest in a way that would be funny in a different context, because your chest has also done what chests do, which is become something you are still getting used to seeing in mirrors.
The whole picture is that the scrub is basically a crop top, currently. The bottom six inches of your stomach are exposed. It will not go down.
You already know. You knew the moment you got it over your arms.
Still. Something cracks anyway.
It’s not rational. You’re a doctor, you understand what’s happening to your body better than most people get to. You’d read the weekly summaries without sentimentality. You’d taken your vitamins and gone to your appointments and been, all things considered, fairly functional about the whole thing.
But there’s something about the scrubs specifically that you hadn’t accounted for. Three years of who you were, and they don’t fit. You cannot explain why that particular fact is the one that finds the crack, except that it does. And your eyes are burning before you’ve fully registered that they’re going to.
You pull at the hem once more anyway. Just to try. It doesn’t move.
“Hey—” Bucky, in the hallway, knocking twice before he pushes the door slightly open. He does that, announces himself before the door, which you’d noticed in the first week and filed away as a thing you appreciated without saying so. “Breakfast is—” He stops.
You’re not crying. You’re at the stage just before, the one where your face is doing something you can’t control and your eyes are bright and your throat has that specific tightness. And you’re wearing a scrub top bunched up to your ribcage with your stomach completely exposed and your bra visible and your hands still fisted in the fabric.
He comes into your room properly, and stands behind you. You look at him in the mirror. He looks at you.
“The scrubs don’t fit.” Your voice comes out steadier than you expected.
“Yeah,” he says. Like he’s agreeing with whatever the real sentence is underneath the one you said.
“I know they weren’t going to.” You let go of the hem. “I don’t know why I thought—” You press your lips together. The burning behind your eyes is doing what it wants to regardless, and you look up at the ceiling briefly and breathe.
“It’s the last week,” you say, after a second.
Bucky doesn’t say anything right away. Your eyes meet in the mirror and there’s nothing in his face that looks like he doesn’t understand.
“I know.”
The simplicity of it helps more than anything elaborate would have. You breathe again and feel the tightness in your throat ease a fraction.
His hands find the hem of the scrub top, and he looks at your face in the mirror first. When you give the smallest nod, he eases it up and over and off.
You stand there in your bra and maternity leggings.
In the mirror, his eyes make a trip south that he doesn’t intend you to catch. Quick and involuntary and immediately corrected, back to your face. But you caught it. The fraction of a second where they landed, where they stayed, before he pulled them back up.
You don’t say anything.
You’d spent weeks rearranging your sense of your own body, cataloguing the changes the way you would with a patient.
Maintaining the clinical distance had always been your competence.
But clinical distance has a way of not applying when someone’s eyes do what his just did.
This is not the hungry look from a hotel room. This is the helpless half-second kind. The involuntary kind. The honest kind, the kind a person can’t manufacture.
The fact that it was involuntary is the part that does something.
“Breakfast is probably cold,” you say, because you have to say something and the other things aren’t available yet.
“I can reheat it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll reheat it.”
You look at yourself in the mirror. You don’t look like yourself in the way you’ve always expected to look like yourself.
And you can’t tell yet whether that’s loss or just change, whether there’s even a meaningful difference between those two things.
“Bucky…. Thank you.” For the way he’d come in and just stood there and let the thing be what it was without trying to fix it or reframe it or promise you it would be fine.
The anatomy scan is at twenty weeks, which you know from the part of your brain that has been doing obstetric math since the positive test.
It is the one where they can tell you. If you want to know. If you ask.
You hadn’t decided, going in.
Bucky hadn’t asked whether you were going to find out, which you’d appreciated. He’d just shown up, same as always, jacket and the particular stillness that he brought into medical spaces with him.
The scan takes twenty minutes. You lie on your back with the transducer moving over your stomach while Dr. Reyes takes her measurements and narrates in the calm voice she has.
Bucky sits in the chair and watches the screen.
The anatomy is normal. All of it—the cardiac chambers, the spine, the cerebellum, the face. You listen to Dr. Reyes confirm each structure and your brain files it the way it always does, methodical.
Underneath the methodology there is something that is not methodology. something that has been building since the first scan, something that you have been calling various things and none of them have been entirely right.
“Do you want to know the sex?” Dr. Reyes asks.
You look at the ceiling. Then you look at Bucky.
He looks back at you. His expression says it’s up to you, the same way it said that about the apartment, about the appointments, about all of it.
He’d been very careful, the whole time, not to lean on decisions that were yours to make. You’d noticed. You’d been noticing for months.
“Yeah.”
Dr. Reyes smiles, and moves the transducer.
A girl.
You hadn’t had a preference, or you’d told yourself you hadn’t, but when she said it you understood something, like—oh. Oh, of course. Of course it’s her.
You don’t cry in the office. You make it to the elevator.
Its the sudden, quick kind. Two breaths worth, your hand pressed to your mouth, and then it passes.
You’re left standing in an elevator with your eyes bright, and Bucky is beside you looking at your face with the expression that isn’t unreadable anymore.
“Sorry,” you say, which is stupid, crying is a completely normal response to—
“Don’t.” He puts his arm around your shoulder and you let him.
By the time you’re in the lobby you’re fine, or close enough.
“A girl,” you say out loud, just to hear it.
“A girl.” Something in his voice makes you look at his face, and what’s there stops you. He’s looking straight ahead, jaw working slightly, and he looks like a man who has just understood the full size of something and is very quietly being changed by it.
His arm comes down from your shoulder but his hand finds yours briefly, just for a moment.
The first kick happens on a Thursday evening at twenty-three weeks.
You’re on the couch. You’ve been on the couch for an hour, which has become a thing you do now. Come home and decompose horizontally for a while before you can face anything requiring vertical effort.
Bucky is somewhere in his officr and you’re watching something on the television that you’re not fully watching.
It’s not what you’d expected. It isn’t a kick exactly, it’s more like something — someone really — turning over. A rolling flutter from the inside, unmistakable once it happens, unmistakable in the way that means you’d know it anywhere forever.
You go completely still.
It happens again. Clearer this time. More definite.
“Bucky.” You don’t mean to say it at volume. It just comes out.
Following footsteps, you see him. He reads your face immediately and crouches beside the couch without asking ‘what’s wrong’, because whatever your face is doing right now clearly isn’t wrong.
“She’s moving.”
His eyes go to your hands on your stomach. “Now?”
“Just now. She—” It happens again, and your face does something you’re completely not in control of. “There.”
He looks up at you and then at your stomach and then at you again. “Can I?”
“Yeah.” You take his hand and put it where yours is, your palm over the back of his.
For a moment nothing happens, and you think maybe it’s stopped, and then—
His face.
You’ve catalogued Bucky’s expressions for months. You know the almost-smile and the real one and the careful one and the behind-the-eyes one, but this is none of them.
This is something you haven’t seen before and can’t name, something stripped entirely of everything else, just… pure. Open in a way his face almost never is. His eyes are bright and he is looking at your stomach like it is the most astonishing thing he has ever encountered.
“That’s her.” His voice is not steady.
“That’s her.”
He doesn’t move his hand. You don’t move yours. The kick comes again. The two of you stay like that on the couch, with his hand under yours, her making herself known between you.
There are things between you still. Not resolved, the coffee shop, his words you seem to can’t get past.
But right now it’s quiet.
“She’s strong,” he eventually says. A little undone. Trying not to show it and not quite succeeding, which you love. Which you note, quietly, that you love.
He looks up at you and something passes between you that doesn’t need words, something that would have been impossible five months ago.
His thumb moves slightly on your stomach, a small unconscious thing, a hello from the outside. You let your head fall back against the cushion and close your eyes and feel her move again.
Today you notice that your left breast is tender in a specific way. Your colostrum has been leaking for the better part of five days.
Now there’s this localised tenderness. You press two fingers against it, and find the spot immediately.
Blocked duct. Clean and obvious. You’d diagnosed it in approximately four seconds.
The knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.
You get in the shower and let the hot water run directly on it, and you work at the tissue the way you know. Gentle, firm strokes toward the nipple, drained before it blocks further.
It helps a little. Enough to get dressed and eat breakfast and tell yourself it would resolve on its own by afternoon, which it might, which blocked ducts sometimes do when caught early.
By afternoon it hasn’t resolved.
By evening it’s worse.
Bucky makes dinner and breakfast and lunch. It’s something he took it upon himself, and no matter what you did, he insisted he wanted to. You decided that was the least he could do, since you’re already growing a whole human.
You’re on the couch when he brings you your plate, but don’t really eat it, which he notices. Because Bucky notices things. That is one of the more inconvenient facts about living with him.
“You’re not eating.” An observation.
“I’m eating.” You take a bite to demonstrate.
He sits down on his end of the couch, his own plate, and looks at you in the way he looks at things when he’s decided something. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been holding your left side since you sat down.”
You look at him. You hadn’t realized you were doing that. Your hand is braced just below your ribs on the left, the pressure of it a reflex you hadn’t consciously authorized. You move it to your lap.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He eats a bite of his dinner. “What’s wrong?”
The repetition startles a short laugh out of you. “Bucky.”
“I’ve got time.”
You look at your plate. The thing about the past several months is that you’d stopped performing fine quite so much. You still did it sometimes. Habit, mostly.
But the effort of maintaining it in the face of someone who was going to sit there and wait it out had started to feel like more work than just saying the thing.
“Blocked duct.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means one of the milk ducts is… blocked”
“You’re… producing?”
“Yeah, for like five days. It’s normal. Don’t worry.”
“Normal? You’re in pain.”
“The milk part is normal. The blocked part is not normal even after delivery.”
“So, what do we do? What’s the treatment?”
Of course. Of course that’s the immediate question. You set your fork down. “Warm compress, massage, expression. In that order.”
“Have you tried all of that?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And it’s… helping. Some. Not fully resolved.”
He’s quiet for a second, and you can hear him thinking, which is a thing you’ve learned to recognize. “Do you want me to— I could help with the massage. If that’s— if it would help.”
Something happens to your body that you are immediately and completely dismissive of. You are thirty-eight weeks pregnant and you are sitting on a couch across from the man who is the father of your child and who is also just a person asking a practical question.
Your body’s response to that question is frankly embarrassing and entirely the fault of the third trimester hormonal profile.
“I’m fine,” you say, for the third time, which even you can tell is getting less convincing.
“You said that.” He puts his plate on the coffee table. “What else is there?”
“What do you mean?”
“For the duct. If massage doesn’t work, what else is there?”
Your face does something you are not responsible for. You think about how to answer this question, which should be simple, which is a medical question with a factual answer, and yet.
“Suction.”
“A pump?” He’s already standing with his not even half finished place. “I’ll go buy one—”
“It’s not the pump.” The words come out before you’ve decided to say them. You look at him.
He looks back at you.
“Tell me what it is.” His voice is even.
You hold his gaze for a second. There are thirty-eight weeks of something between the two of you, not all of it clean, most of it good, and you are in pain that has a solution that you are not asking for.
“Manual suction would be equally effective than the pump. It’s also direct. You don’t have to— I don’t need you to do anything. It’ll resolve.”
He’s very still. “Will it?”
“Probably.”
“Probably,” he echoes.
“Yes.”
He’s looking at you with the expression that isn’t unreadable anymore, hasn’t been for a while, the one that means he’s made a decision and is waiting to see if you’ll come to the same one. “You’re in pain.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that four times and eaten approximately one bite of dinner.” His voice is quiet and not unkind and leaves absolutely no room. “You’re in pain, and there’s something that would help, and you’re sitting there not asking for it. So I’m asking. Do you want me to help?”
“It’s not— This isn’t—”
“I know what it is and what it isn’t. I’m asking if you want me to help.”
The honesty of the question, the way he’s asking plainly if you want him to, does something to the knot of your refusal, loosens it.
“Okay.”
The bedroom lamp is on low, which you’re grateful for. You’re sitting against the headboard in just your tank top because bra is compression and compression makes the pain worse.
Bucky is sitting beside you. You’ve walked him through it in the voice you use for medical explanations. Impersonal, methodical, this is the direction of drainage, this much is the pressure we’re aiming for. He’d listened the way he listens to everything, completely, without interrupting.
“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”
“You’re not.” You’d watched his hands and the technique was right, working from the periphery inward the way you’d told him.
The heat of it was immediate, the specific relief of pressure moving in the right direction, and you let your head fall back against the headboard and breathe through it.
It hurts. It hurts in the way that relief sometimes hurts, the way that unkinking something that’s been kinked for too long. You press your lips together and exhale.
“Still okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” Your voice is not entirely steady. “Keep going.”
The blocked duct is stubborn in the way they get when they’ve been compressing for a day. The massage alone was never going to be enough, you’d known that, you’d known it since Wednesday morning and done it anyway because asking was harder.
But his hands are warmer than yours, the pressure more sustained, and the way his fingers glide over your swollen skin sends an unexpected shiver through you, the warmth pooling not just in relief but in a deeper, aching need between your thighs.
When his mouth closes over the nipple, the sensation is overwhelming at first.
The sound you make is entirely involuntary and you press your hand to your own mouth immediately.
His hand stills on your ribs. He doesn’t stop. The suction is careful and rhythmic and nothing about the way he’s doing this is anything other than what it is.
Yet your body does not seem to fully understand the assignment. The wet heat of his mouth envelops you, his tongue pressing softly against the sensitive peak as he draws gently, each pull sending a spark of unwelcome arousal straight to your core, making you clench involuntarily around nothing.
You tell yourself you’re not turned on by him relieving your pain. You’re wrong.
Just for a fleeting moment, you wonder, if it's affecting him too. If the intimate act of tasting you, feeling your body respond under his lips, is stirring something in him the way it's unraveling you.
With continued suction, the colostrum releases slowly, the hard cord of tissue beginning to soften under his hand. You feel the pressure shifting, the acute point of pain diffusing.
And your eyes fill without your permission, the specific relief of it after a day of something that just quietly hurt and hurt and hurt.
“There.” Your voice breaks on it, just slightly.
He pulls back. Looks at your face. And then without discussion he puts his arm around you and pulls you into his side carefully. His hand finds the top of your bump in the way he does sometimes without thinking and you let him.
“You’re okay,” he says into your hair. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
You breathe. The ache is fading and you are okay.
But the lingering warmth of his mouth on your skin, the ghost of his breath against your nipple, has left you throbbing with need.
There’s this heat in you that has nothing to do with pain or hurt or blocked ducts. And everything to do with him and his proximity. You don’t think you can blame it on your hormones anymore.
You’re focused on not doing anything more. Because you don’t know how he feels. Just because he’d offered to help doesn’t mean he’s into this. Into you.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
You don’t know what he is talking about.
You lift your head a little. “What?”
His hand moves slightly on your back, a small motion, like he’s deciding how to continue. “The morning after the gala.” He’s not looking at you directly. “I had an early call. I had to be out by 5.30. I didn’t want to wake you.”
That morning comes rushing back like it was yesterday. The empty side. The folded dress on the chair. The glass of water.
“I left my number on the hotel notepad, by the lamp. I thought— I thought you’d call.”
“What—”
“Left side of the lamp. I figured maybe you didn’t want to. And then weeks went by and I thought—” He doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t have to. “And then you called. And I picked up and heard your voice and I thought, okay. Okay, she called.”
If only you’d looked properly.
You close your eyes. Your brain does the math. How close you’d been to something, how much the last eight months might have looked different… if only you’d looked properly.
“And then the coffee shop. I said something— I said something I would take back ten times over if I could. The look on your face.” He finally glances down at you, and his expression is the honest one, the one stripped of the management. “I’d been thinking about you for weeks, and then there you were, telling me something that big, and I panicked and I said the worst possible thing, and I’ve been—”
“Bucky…”
“I’ve been trying to show you that I’m not that… Since then. That — that isn’t who I am.”
“I know.” You mean it fully. “I know.”
His hand hasn’t stopped moving on your back and you’ve gone completely loose against his side.
You turn your face slightly into his shoulder. He smells like the same thing he always smells like.
Something clean, something his.
You look up. He’s looking down. At you.
”I looked, I searched… I — I am so sorry, Bucky.”
He shakes his head, “you have nothing to be sorry about.” His voice is a whisper, gently wiping something off your face, only then do you realise you’d been crying.
Later if you thought about it, you could not have said who moved first. Maybe it was you, maybe it was just the proximity and the angle and months and months of near misses.
But his mouth is on yours and it is nothing like the hotel room. Nothing at all like that.
That had been hunger and dark and mutual want in its simplest form, and this is something else, something that has been earned in increments. When you kiss him back you feel the whole weight of it.
His hand comes up to your jaw, the right one, and he kisses you the way he does things when he means them. Slow. Sure. Like he is not going anywhere and wants you to know it. This time there’s no tears.
When you pull back, his thumb is on your cheek and your foreheads are together and you’re both breathing.
“Hi,” you say, which is what you always seem to say when he takes you off guard.
Something changes in his expression. Soft and a little helpless and very, very him. “Hi.”
You kiss him again, slower, and his hand slides from your jaw to your neck, and when you shift against him you feel him go still.
“I don’t want to—” He pulls back enough to look at you, and his face is flushed, and he’s trying to be responsible about something and finding it difficult. His eyes go briefly, helplessly, to your stomach, and then back to your face. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
You look at him. Something warm and fond moves through you, which is perhaps not the most practical emotion for this particular moment, but there it is.
“Sex is not contraindicated,” you say.
His brow furrows slightly. “How do you—”
“Bucky.”
“I just—”
“It’s actively encouraged in the two weeks before the due date.” You hold his gaze. “Prostaglandins in semen help with cervical ripening. And orgasm stimulates uterine contractility, which—”
“Okay.”
“—can help initiate labour at term, which is why—”
“Okay.” He’s slightly flushed. “I get it.”
“Do you? Because I can explain the mechanism—”
“How do you know that?” He asks with the expression of a man who has already realized the answer.
You cock your eyebrow.
“Right. You’re a doctor.” He looks like he’s genuinely embarrassed, with the kind of blush you have never seen on him before in eight months of looking at his face. “Sorry.”
You press your lips together so you don’t smile too much, because this is not the moment for I told you so, except that it is a little. “It’s okay.”
“I just—I didn’t want to—”
“I know.” You put your hand on his jaw, the same way you’d put it on his jaw in a hotel room eight months ago in a completely different life. “I know. She’s safe. I’m safe. Okay?”
This is different from the hotel room in every way that matters.
“You’re beautiful.” He says it simply, like it’s the truth.
“I’m enormous.”
“Yeah.” He says it like those are the same sentence. Like enormous is included in beautiful, like the distinction doesn’t exist.
You pull his shirt over his head and he lets you, and then his hands find your tank top and he eases it off fully. His eyes move over you the way they’d moved that day in the mirror, except now there is nothing to look away from, and he doesn’t.
“Tell me what feels good. Tell me what doesn’t.”
“You’re going to make me talk the whole time?”
“I’m going to make you talk when I need to know something.” His mouth moves to your jaw, your throat, and his voice is warm against your skin. “Which will be often.”
Your hands find his hair and you hold on.
His hands learn it the way you’d watch him learn anything else. With attention, nothing half-done.
He finds your hip, your thigh, and his fingers trail up the inside of it with the unhurried patience of a man who is not going anywhere. When they reach the apex of your thighs and slip between your folds, finding you slick and swollen, he exhales slowly against your neck.
“Jesus.”
“I told you it was—”
“Not the physiology… Just— you.” His fingers part you gently, circling your clit with soft strokes, and your grip on his hair tightens. “This.”
You stop talking.
His fingers are gentle in a way that is its own undoing. He’s learning, finding the places that make your breath change and staying there, pressing and rubbing with just enough pressure to send heat pooling low in your belly.
You’re on your side, which is where he’d guided you with the easy practicality of someone who’d done their research and wasn’t going to make a thing of it.
His chest is warm against your back and his hand is over your hip and everything about the angle lets his fingers delve deeper, one sliding inside you while his thumb works your clit.
He keeps going until your thighs are shaking and you’re saying his name with your face pressed to the pillow and when his fingers slow, you make an undignified sound
“Don’t stop—”
“I’m not stopping,” he says into your shoulder. “Just changing.”
He shifts, settling behind you, and you feel the warm blunt pressure of his cock at your entrance, the head nudging against your wetness.
He pauses there. His hand is on your hip, his mouth is at your temple. “Okay?”
“Yes… Please.”
He pushes in slowly. All the way slow, inch by inch, stretching you, giving you time to feel every ridge and vein as he fills you completely. You exhale through it and he stays still when he’s fully seated, buried to the hilt. You feel his chest chest rising and falling against your back. “Okay?” he asks again.
“More than okay,” you manage, which makes him exhale a short, warm laugh against your neck.
He moves. The kind of pace that builds rather than rushes, his cock sliding out almost to the tip before thrusting back in. His hand on your hip holds you in place, and you feel every movement everywhere, the particular fullness of him inside you, pressing against that sensitive spot with each stroke, the particular closeness of his body wrapped around yours.
His hand slides from your hip to your stomach and just rests there and something about that, the fact that he thought to do that, his palm warm and open on the curve of your belly while his cock moves inside you, does something to you that is beyond physical.
“Bucky.” It’s not a request for anything, just his name in your mouth, just needing to say it.
“I’m here.” His arm tightens around you. “I’ve got you.”
His other hand finds your clit again, fingers slick with your arousal, rubbing in tight, slow circles that match the rhythm of his hips. You feel the tension building in slow long waves, nothing like the urgent snap of the hotel room, this is the accumulative kind, the kind that climbs and climbs, your walls clenching around him with each thrusts.
His mouth is at your ear and he’s saying your name, just your name.
When you come, you come with his name on your lips and his arms around you and his hand on your belly.
It moves through you like something warm breaking loose from somewhere it had been held for a long time, your body pulsing around his cock, drawing him deeper. You feel it in your chest as much as anywhere else.
His hips stutter and slow and he presses his face into your neck and follows you, spills inside you. His arm fully wraps around you, and then everything is still.
You lie there with his heartbeat at your back, fast still and slowing.
This time there’s no condom to dispose. But he does move, and comes back with a washcloth and a glass of water. A glass of water, again.
His hands are soft and his touch gentle when he cleans you, wiping away the mix of your release and his from between your thighs.
After a while, after he’s made you drink half a glass of water, and you’re settled into him, his hand moves on your stomach. “Hey,” he says. To her. Like a hello.
You press your hand over his.
Something moves under your palms and you realise it’s a hello back from the inside.
my masterlist !
extras. if this flops, i’ll cry. also why was this so long lmao 😭
permanent taglist. @devililithh @buckyfmd @sheriff-bodecker @honeysucklewatr @demiebarnes @solivagant-reverie @kqtholins @amoremarveloustime @colettebarnes @barnes-babydoll @miraclediviner @of-sanguine-eyes @biaswreckedbybuckybarnes @manly-man-whore @indigo123789 @wasa-bby @biggestfangirl @herejustforbuckybarnes @buckysbunnny @highhopes1008 @castielscaplan @ornateglass @grumpysunnybarnes @luvyoupxmimi @slutdier @yes-ilovetowrite @cautiouscas17 @astridphantom @delusionalwomsn @cinnamon-girl-writes @wherewinterblooms @stifflyspeedyquirk @sassandscribbles @marvelouslyme96 @stesha02 @floatingvalhallasea @goobers-mcgee @t1redphoenix @vickynguyennn @bluellamacheesecake-blog @serenityrjd @pitabread79 @galaxygoddess30 @biggestfangirl @chenoadouble-o7 @phoenix-in-writing @ceoofdisappointment @ladymiseryy @wherewinterblooms @avgdestitute @lunexiax @akthoughtss + to get added to the taglist!
overtime , bucky barnes x reader
summary. hell yeah more fucking with loser!bucky
content. loser!bucky x fem!reader, mdni (+18), bucky is a certified FREAK i’m telling u, dom!bucky, face-off sex position, missionary, praise kink, unprotected sex (wrap ur willy pls), giggly sex, big d!ck bucky, pet names (baby, angel), porn with little to no plot, lmk if i missed anything! not proofread no sir
word count. 3.8k
from lia. literally just the summary. ending this mini-series with filthy smut. don't know how it took me a month to shit out only almost 4k words but oh well
part two masterpost
“it never really crossed my mind that you and white wolf were the same person.” you traced along bucky’s surprisingly toned back, his breath was warm against the flesh connecting your neck to your shoulder. he was comfortably flat on top of you like a weighted blanket, pretty much covering your entire body.
“it makes me feel kinda stupid, now that i think about it.” you heaved, breath still stuttering and your chest pulsing up and down like your life depended on it—and you could say that it really did.
“i could say the same.” bucky mumbled, hands gripping your bruised hips gently. “it was right in front of me, too. but at least—now that i know the cute girl from valorant and the pretty girl from class are the same person, that saved me from the massive monumental headache of feelings i’m not sure i’ll ever be ready to process.” he continued, “i actually have no idea what i’d do if that happened, thank god the world decided to go easy on me.”
an airy chuckle breathed from your lips, chest now suddenly quickening at the image of you, laying naked in james—bucky’s bed, talking about feelings. “though now i kinda feel guilty emily had to be on the receiving end of all my whining.”
your eyes pressed closed for a second before sighing, “guess we’re the same font of stupid, after all.” the words slewed out of your mouth tiredly, you pressed your head closer to bucky as if he wasn’t already hiding between where your neck meets shoulder—his nose snuggly hiding in said space.
“can’t believe i felt...stupid for liking you. like i just made the biggest mistake ever that i'll probably regret for the rest of my college life and—and then it turns out, you and “bucky” are the same fucking person! i hate you.”
“that’s not fair.” he mumbled into you, “you don’t actually, right?”
laughing, you circled his back once more. “no. no, i don’t, james.”
“did you actually never thought about me and white wolf being the same person?”
“you sounded different, i swear!” you rebutted, voice laced with defensiveness. “in real life, you sound like a major loser—like—no offense-“
“none taken.”
“-and then in game, you…you sound so- so—“
bucky already knew what you were about to say with how red your cheeks were slowly becoming—it was gently stretching towards your ears, too. and he knew better than to tease you for it, he wanted to relish at the sight of you blushing in his arms. instead, he opted to egg you on.
“so…?” he trailed, his tone silently egging you to go on.
for a split second, you sucked in a breath—hesitant and slightly embarrassed. you contemplated whether or not you should tell james just how much you liked his voice, but you were already pouring out your feelings—and you’ve already fucked, him finding out you took a huge liking to his voice isn’t that big of a deal. you exhaled through your nose before pushing out the words that were dangling on the tip of your tongue.
“sexy.” you deadpanned—cheeks blushing red as you took another deep breath in, “there, i said it. your voice sounded hot. i half expected for you to sound like a twink and-and then you go sounding like that.”
“oh.” bucky shifted a tiny bit to prop himself up on his elbows, wanting to take a good look at your pretty face. “for real?”
“yeah, i—i- um…” you mumbled, suddenly going shy underneath his gaze. you racked your brain for a new topic to change the subject, not wanting to admit how much of a sucker you were for his voice right now. “your mic sounded crisp to boot, too. it was dead giveaway that you were either a streamer, or a no life valorant player who spends too much money on improving their specs.” you teased, that earned you a deep hearty laugh from him as he stuck his nose back into your neck. “but you’re already one of the two.”
a pregnant pause draped over the both of you. it wasn’t uncomfortable—it was far from that. you were relishing the feeling of finally being able to embrace and bask in each other’s arms, without holding anything back or cutting yourself off from saying words that you were too afraid to say in risk of your friendship.
“i knew from the moment i saw you, from walking into that classroom,” bucky started, “i’d have the biggest, fattest crush on you. still do.”
your eyebrows shot in surprise, slightly taken aback—because who wouldn’t be? “what? no way!”
“way. call it fate, but you were genuinely the first person my eyes landed on when i walked in.”
“really? i was judging you first thing.”
“wow.”
shrugging, you pinched the flesh of his shoulder with a teasing smile. “god forbid a girl have an opinion.”
the rain pounded harder on the window as you laughed your asses off, the light coming from his monitor being the only thing illuminating the dim room bucky’s room that no longer smelled of dirty laundry and left over energy drinks, it now smelled of sex. sweaty, filthy sex.
“did i uh—go too rough?” he shyly whispered into the crook of your neck, hands snaking through your limbs to wrap his arms around you tighter—pulling you impossibly closer as if you two weren’t already attached to each other’s stomachs. he breathed in the smell of your skin, before peppering kisses on the marks he littered all over your throat down to your shoulder.
“no, you’re good. you were really good.”
bucky’s heart pounded louder at your words. he would never have thought that the pretty girl from his class was also the pretty girl he met online—and he got the opportunity to absolutely rail you within an inch or your life just earlier.
his lips quirked into a smile, “do you want me to get you anything? water? a towel? oh wait—i’ll just get those anyway-“
you held onto his arm before he could fully sit up from his bed, “nooo…don’t leave me.” you tugged at his forearms, wrapping your tired limbs around his neck to bring him back down closer to you to cling onto him.
“but you’re still kind of wet from the rain!" bucky reasoned, muttering your name exasperatedly as if you were a small child, "and you’ve got my cum all over your thighs- oh god. you smell like me.” he leaned down to look at your thighs, eyes slightly wide.
you let your hold on him loosen to allow him a better access, savoring the feeling of bucky’s fingers gently prying your sensitive thighs open. a small hum reverberated from your chest as your very sore legs spread wide for him—revealing your sopping cunt still drooling with his seed.
the auburn haired boy felt his heart rate rise impossibly high, “oh—oh shit.”
he watched your cunt squelch around nothing, pushing out his cum and onto his damp bedsheets. bucky felt his cock slowly start to spring up into action again just from watching your legs quiver in his grasp. bucky could’ve whimpered at the sight.
he turned his head to the side in deep thought. on one hand, he wanted to give you time to rest and recuperate and dry you off of all the rain water and sweat that lingered your body, but on the other hand, he wanted to fuck you on top of his lap. and guess which one was weighing heavier in his head?
“okay…i won’t leave you.”
bucky was borderline singing the words with that familiar tone he always used when he’s trying to hide what he truly wants to say. and he’s never been good at hiding.
you eyed him, eyes squinting in suspicion, “…what’s with the tone…?”
“…what tone?” he murmured, pecking you on the tip of your nose before quickly retreating back into the crook of your neck.
“…that tone.” you muttered in between giggles, hand coming up to run your fingers through his auburn locks. “you’re—you’re thinking of something. scheming even.”
just as the words left your lips, you felt him shift his body against yours, his bare figure molding in to fit your touch. and that’s when you felt it, something prodding against you—poking at your flesh. it was his cock, his hardening cock, to be precise—resting on the inside of your thigh. awake and active and ready for another round.
you stopped dead in your tracks, hand stilling in his hair. “…”
“…?”
“…james.”
you tugged at his head slightly, forcing him to look up and reveal his features—he was giving you what looks like the best pouty face he could give you. and you hate to admit it, but it’s working.
“you can’t be serious.”
“i—i can’t help it! you know we can’t help it!”
“are you seriously-“
“cut me some slack! your-your pussy’s fucking—dripping with my cum.” you watched bucky’s eyes drift from yours where he held eye contact down towards your lips, his pupils slowly dilating into something mischievous, teasing even. “that gets me going.”
“you’re such a fucking freak, holy shit.” you shook your head, “and your response to seeing cum overflow out of me is to shove more inside?”
“exactly.”
you leaned in close, lips barely brushing over his, “you’re unbelievable.” you murmured before finally closing the distance.
his hands roamed up and down your spine, gently caressing the area before settling on your hips. his rough hands squeezing the flesh whilst your lips sloppily moved against his. bucky let out a low groan when he felt you lift your hips up closer towards his abdomen, his cock now full on hard and flush against his stomach.
you were just about to pull him deeper into the kiss before his hands suddenly slid between the bedsheets and the skin of your ass to grip the thick muscle, swiftly hauling you upwards while simultaneously going up on his knees.
in one swift motion, you were now suddenly straddling him. it all happened so fast you barely had enough time to register the fact that bucky’s cock was sandwiched between you and his belly, your clit rubbing deliciously against him.
and his eyes never left yours the entire time, sticking on you like honey.
“james—! oh my god-“
he grinned, “y’like that?”
“mmh—that was kinda sexy.” you exclaimed, feigning seriousness despite your tone containing anything but that.
“kinda?” bucky asked incredulously, as if you had just said the most offensive thing he has ever heard in his entire life. “it was super sexy.”
you rubbed your cunt against his stiff cock, eliciting a soft moan from you. “whatever you say, handsome.”
his hot mouth came into contact with your warm skin, sucking and licking your neck down to your collarbone as you continued to gently rock your hips. you whined and involuntarily arched your back like a cat when he thumbed your clit, still sensitive from the treatment it got earlier. you could tell bucky was enjoying the effect he had on you, how reactive—volatile you were in his arms—already drooling and melting in his grasp.
the heat of it all was starting to make its presence known on your entire body, savoring the feeling of skin clashing against skin as both of you desperately clawed to get closer to the other—closer than you two already are. his fingers sent shockwaves up and down your spine like a chill that’s growing more and more addictive by the minute—the soreness of your muscles from the previous rounds just adding another delicious lick of flavor to your impossibly increasing arousal.
the head of his cock prodded at your entrance while his hands gripped firmly at your hips, guiding himself into where you needed him the most. bucky had to bite down a moan at the sensation of your slick coating his bulbous tip—head almost going groggy at the feeling. he had to will himself to push his cock inside before he could fall apart any further.
despite it only being a few solid minutes after your previous round, you could still feel the stretch of his girth invading your cunt. causing you to hiss and clutch at his shoulders—leaving moon-shaped indents on his shoulders in its wake. your warm heat welcomed him once more as you let out a sigh of relief when he bottomed out, and bucky knew better than to immediately pummel into you like a rabbit in heat—though he already prepped you just moments prior, you needed to adjust to the size of him. all he could do for the moment was drape loving kisses into your neck and rub gentle circles on your hips as he waited for you to give him the signal.
you let your shoulders relax one last time when you felt the burning sensation fade out into a dull taut before nodding, "you can move now, please fucking move."
"whatever my baby wants."
you could've rolled your eyes at what he just said with a teasing smirk if only you weren't already rolling them into the back of your head. bucky already started a punishing pace, fucking up into you with vigor that matched the previous rounds beforehand, as if he didn't lose any energy at all while it drained most of yours.
your fingers were almost merged onto his shoulders while you held onto them for dear life, them being the only thing effectively tethering you to earth and keeping your grounded. bucky let out a hum of approval as a string of whines and cries flooded his ears, keeping his thrusts at a steady, delicious pace. he swore he could write a ten-paged essay in one night detailing how much he loved to listen every sound you make without missing a beat, it was definitely harboring a close second spot at his top five favorite sounds to listen to of all time, with number one, of course, being the sound of getting an ace.
slowly but surely, the familiar fuzziness in your abdomen began to pool at the area. you pushed your hips down to mirror his pace in both desperation and pure carnal need, hopelessly chasing the release you tightly craved. the obscene sounds of your pussy squelching nearly drove bucky insane, and before you yourself even knew it, a wave of pleasure washed over you as you gushed all over him—catching you off guard while you writhed in his arms.
"hnggh— buckyy-" you ended with a pitch embarrassingly higher than usual.
bucky could only coo at you, "i know, angel." he whispered delicately, a stark contrast to his continuous thrusting, "y'feel so good, 'm so proud of you, y'know that?"
in what you like to think—though most likely not the case, but you like to tease—another bravado in displaying his capability of manhandling you like you were nothing, you were quickly laid onto your back in ease. coming into contact with the bed like the thing was your second home.
after a brief pause that gave you a short window of rest that wasn't nearly enough to catch your breath, bucky slammed into you like he means it, with his whole body and soul, knocking the wind out of you. “o-oh—! fuck! wait—” your toes curled into itself with how much pleasure was running up and down your body, it felt too much to handle, honestly. your body was going off on its own accord and wanted to run away from bucky’s grasp—but at the same time you craved the feeling more than anything.
you pawed at his chest, fingers torn between pushing him away or pulling him further into you—your brain couldn’t decide. tears were building up in the corners of your eyes, and your throat was beginning to get scratchy with all the screaming. your legs felt nonexistent at this point, and your cunt was greedily sucking him in taking more than what you can handle as another breathy whine tore through the air, the fabric of bucky’s sheets stuck to your skin like glue, sweat simmering on top of your skin mixing in with his.
bucky took a hold of your hand at his chest and drew it closer to his lips. his nose diving into the flesh of your palm as he pressed kisses on it.
“none of that, baby.” his eyes bore into yours, “you’re—mmm fuuuuck—y-you’re doing so well. you can hold on a little more for me.”
if it weren’t for how good he was fucking into your pussy, you would’ve laughed at him practically whining and salivating with how good your cunt felt. but the only thing registering in your mind was the white, hot relentless pressure building in your stomach.
your breathing stuttered into another wanton moan, heart practically lurching out of your chest as another rakish heat ebbed in the pit of your stomach—your thighs curled into his waist in a desperate attempt to alleviate the debauched feeling bucky was drilling into your cunt. it was downright greedy with how eager your creamy walls were sucking him in, but bucky was nothing short of a giver—equally keen on giving you whatever you craved the most, it was in his nature, after all.
the tip of his dick by now was no stranger to your cervix, each plow sent waves of bliss down from the edge of your toes up to the top of your skull—your closing shut in a feeble effort to last longer. bucky slumped nearer towards you, hand still engulfing yours as his chest fell into you, his own breathing ragged and trembling. his quiet whispers of affirmation threaded through soft panting, grounding you while every nerve and vein in your body rattled with pleasure.
“take it all, angel, it’s all yours.” like clockwork, his hand cupped your belly, “feel that, doll? it’s me, you feel me aaalll the way inside don’t you?”
he repeatedly hit on that spot inside of you that made your vision go white, the knot in the pit of your stomach now growing unbearable for you to hold off. "j-james—" another pornographic moan slurring past your lips cut you off, "'m so close- please— please don't stop ohfuck—"
his lips came into contact with yours, swallowing down the pleas and tear-stricken moans you pitilessly let out. "that's it. cum for me baby, give me another one."
he inclined forward to give your forehead a loving kiss before leaning back to give you a particularly harsh thrust, causing you to squeal and grip at the sheets. bucky watched your face contort and twist in pleasure with hooded lids as he tugged at one of your nipples, a groan reverberating in his throat as he rolled his hips.
for the second time, your release came crashing down on you like a landslide, your knuckles were turning white with how hard you were clutching at his bedsheets. you might as well have torn them at this point. you could feel him quicken his pace as you came around him—your thighs locked up at the sudden speed while you cried into the air, mouth seemingly no longer connected to your mind when you swore you thought you said his name, but your lips only formed an 'o' in a silent moan.
in the midst of his thrusts, you could feel bucky begin to collapse, his hips were now evidently shaking while he continued to ram into you. he was close, and you could feel it.
"i-i'm—" bucky no longer tried to hide the whimpers and moans he was unabashedly letting out as he felt his high come closer by the second, his fingers digging deeper into your bruising hips while he continued his unrelenting pace—his own hips sputtering through his erratic fucking of your poor, overstimulated pussy. "i'm—i'm gonna cum, baby. 'm gonna cum f'you."
his own groans and the sound of skin slapping against skin drowned out your tired wailing, every blood vessel in your body crackling like fireworks. you felt his body grow stiff as he let out a guttural groan when he came, the warmth of his cum invading your senses, coating your velvety walls in his seed and making you feel warm and tingly—with some of it gushing out and running down your ass and into the wet messy sheets below you, now equally as soaked as you once were—or technically, still are.
the palm of his hand braced against the space beside your head, gently lowering himself down to lay beside you. not wanting to crash on top of you and perhaps crush you with his weight, your chests heaved in exhaustion as your heart rattled louder in your ribcage.
through your tiredness, you stared at the ceiling above you before your lips quivered open to speak. "my body's for sure feeling all of this tomorrow."
bucky sheepishly laughed, hands reaching out somewhere towards the floor in search of the clothes he brought earlier which you were supposed to wear. but clearly, things didn't go as planned.
"that's a problem for future you. for now, you shall rest."
he gently hovered the shirt over your head with such tenderness you yourself felt like you were glass, before urging you back towards the bed to give you the rest your body desperately needed. his muscular hands shielded around you like a warm blanket, offering you that comfort you could definitely get used to.
given how rough of a pounding you went through, you were about to slip off into slumber—contently in bucky's arms—when you heard his voice through the thick haze of dreamland.
“um—so- you know, i was wondering-“
“spit it out, james.”
“okay— um- wow did i turn the ac off by mistake—?”
rolling your eyes, you pinched the flesh of his shoulders in mock irritation. “james.”
“okay, okay. i was wondering if y-you’d…”
a part of you already knew what he was going to ask—it’s been lingering your mind ever since the first time the two of you went to the cafe to run through drafts of your story that somewhat turned into talking about anything and everything until the sun sets—the thought of how different things would be if you went on a date instead of calling it a meet-up between classmates. “i don’t know if you’re edging me on purpose but i will edge you if don’t say it right now.”
“if you’d…play a game or two on valorant with me tonight?”
bucky watched you let out a small chuckle before your lips blended into a warm smile, eyes traced with nothing else but fondness. the loser who you’ve once again found yourself laying in his arms has now impossibly and irreversibly got you wrapped around his finger—has now somehow managed to worm his grimy way into your heart, and you wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
“as if i’d ever say no to that.”
tags :P : @prettyliittleviolets @daddysbitchybaby @luvyoupxmimi @eah-marvel-trolls @superbassbuck @kaseynsfws @emmyrietveld0 @kileyking @ri6ht6ack @alto-banshee14 @sexcworm @lanadelreybbgg SOO SORRY IF I FORGET ANYONE I'M LITERALLY SO BAD AT TAGGING
@ chipotleburritobowl – 2025 , do not plagarize or i will cry fat hot tears , you are responsible for your own media consumption twin. read responsibly and thanks for stopping by!
OMG I LITERALLY JUST CAME TO TUMBLR FOR THIS I DIDN’T EXPECTED TO BE BLESSED TONIGHT
overtime , bucky barnes x reader
summary. hell yeah more fucking with loser!bucky
content. loser!bucky x fem!reader, mdni (+18), bucky is a certified FREAK i’m telling u, dom!bucky, face-off sex position, missionary, praise kink, unprotected sex (wrap ur willy pls), giggly sex, big d!ck bucky, pet names (baby, angel), porn with little to no plot, lmk if i missed anything! not proofread no sir
word count. 3.8k
from lia. literally just the summary. ending this mini-series with filthy smut. don't know how it took me a month to shit out only almost 4k words but oh well
part two masterpost
“it never really crossed my mind that you and white wolf were the same person.” you traced along bucky’s surprisingly toned back, his breath was warm against the flesh connecting your neck to your shoulder. he was comfortably flat on top of you like a weighted blanket, pretty much covering your entire body.
“it makes me feel kinda stupid, now that i think about it.” you heaved, breath still stuttering and your chest pulsing up and down like your life depended on it—and you could say that it really did.
“i could say the same.” bucky mumbled, hands gripping your bruised hips gently. “it was right in front of me, too. but at least—now that i know the cute girl from valorant and the pretty girl from class are the same person, that saved me from the massive monumental headache of feelings i’m not sure i’ll ever be ready to process.” he continued, “i actually have no idea what i’d do if that happened, thank god the world decided to go easy on me.”
an airy chuckle breathed from your lips, chest now suddenly quickening at the image of you, laying naked in james—bucky’s bed, talking about feelings. “though now i kinda feel guilty emily had to be on the receiving end of all my whining.”
your eyes pressed closed for a second before sighing, “guess we’re the same font of stupid, after all.” the words slewed out of your mouth tiredly, you pressed your head closer to bucky as if he wasn’t already hiding between where your neck meets shoulder—his nose snuggly hiding in said space.
“can’t believe i felt...stupid for liking you. like i just made the biggest mistake ever that i'll probably regret for the rest of my college life and—and then it turns out, you and “bucky” are the same fucking person! i hate you.”
“that’s not fair.” he mumbled into you, “you don’t actually, right?”
laughing, you circled his back once more. “no. no, i don’t, james.”
“did you actually never thought about me and white wolf being the same person?”
“you sounded different, i swear!” you rebutted, voice laced with defensiveness. “in real life, you sound like a major loser—like—no offense-“
“none taken.”
“-and then in game, you…you sound so- so—“
bucky already knew what you were about to say with how red your cheeks were slowly becoming—it was gently stretching towards your ears, too. and he knew better than to tease you for it, he wanted to relish at the sight of you blushing in his arms. instead, he opted to egg you on.
“so…?” he trailed, his tone silently egging you to go on.
for a split second, you sucked in a breath—hesitant and slightly embarrassed. you contemplated whether or not you should tell james just how much you liked his voice, but you were already pouring out your feelings—and you’ve already fucked, him finding out you took a huge liking to his voice isn’t that big of a deal. you exhaled through your nose before pushing out the words that were dangling on the tip of your tongue.
“sexy.” you deadpanned—cheeks blushing red as you took another deep breath in, “there, i said it. your voice sounded hot. i half expected for you to sound like a twink and-and then you go sounding like that.”
“oh.” bucky shifted a tiny bit to prop himself up on his elbows, wanting to take a good look at your pretty face. “for real?”
“yeah, i—i- um…” you mumbled, suddenly going shy underneath his gaze. you racked your brain for a new topic to change the subject, not wanting to admit how much of a sucker you were for his voice right now. “your mic sounded crisp to boot, too. it was dead giveaway that you were either a streamer, or a no life valorant player who spends too much money on improving their specs.” you teased, that earned you a deep hearty laugh from him as he stuck his nose back into your neck. “but you’re already one of the two.”
a pregnant pause draped over the both of you. it wasn’t uncomfortable—it was far from that. you were relishing the feeling of finally being able to embrace and bask in each other’s arms, without holding anything back or cutting yourself off from saying words that you were too afraid to say in risk of your friendship.
“i knew from the moment i saw you, from walking into that classroom,” bucky started, “i’d have the biggest, fattest crush on you. still do.”
your eyebrows shot in surprise, slightly taken aback—because who wouldn’t be? “what? no way!”
“way. call it fate, but you were genuinely the first person my eyes landed on when i walked in.”
“really? i was judging you first thing.”
“wow.”
shrugging, you pinched the flesh of his shoulder with a teasing smile. “god forbid a girl have an opinion.”
the rain pounded harder on the window as you laughed your asses off, the light coming from his monitor being the only thing illuminating the dim room bucky’s room that no longer smelled of dirty laundry and left over energy drinks, it now smelled of sex. sweaty, filthy sex.
“did i uh—go too rough?” he shyly whispered into the crook of your neck, hands snaking through your limbs to wrap his arms around you tighter—pulling you impossibly closer as if you two weren’t already attached to each other’s stomachs. he breathed in the smell of your skin, before peppering kisses on the marks he littered all over your throat down to your shoulder.
“no, you’re good. you were really good.”
bucky’s heart pounded louder at your words. he would never have thought that the pretty girl from his class was also the pretty girl he met online—and he got the opportunity to absolutely rail you within an inch or your life just earlier.
his lips quirked into a smile, “do you want me to get you anything? water? a towel? oh wait—i’ll just get those anyway-“
you held onto his arm before he could fully sit up from his bed, “nooo…don’t leave me.” you tugged at his forearms, wrapping your tired limbs around his neck to bring him back down closer to you to cling onto him.
“but you’re still kind of wet from the rain!" bucky reasoned, muttering your name exasperatedly as if you were a small child, "and you’ve got my cum all over your thighs- oh god. you smell like me.” he leaned down to look at your thighs, eyes slightly wide.
you let your hold on him loosen to allow him a better access, savoring the feeling of bucky’s fingers gently prying your sensitive thighs open. a small hum reverberated from your chest as your very sore legs spread wide for him—revealing your sopping cunt still drooling with his seed.
the auburn haired boy felt his heart rate rise impossibly high, “oh—oh shit.”
he watched your cunt squelch around nothing, pushing out his cum and onto his damp bedsheets. bucky felt his cock slowly start to spring up into action again just from watching your legs quiver in his grasp. bucky could’ve whimpered at the sight.
he turned his head to the side in deep thought. on one hand, he wanted to give you time to rest and recuperate and dry you off of all the rain water and sweat that lingered your body, but on the other hand, he wanted to fuck you on top of his lap. and guess which one was weighing heavier in his head?
“okay…i won’t leave you.”
bucky was borderline singing the words with that familiar tone he always used when he’s trying to hide what he truly wants to say. and he’s never been good at hiding.
you eyed him, eyes squinting in suspicion, “…what’s with the tone…?”
“…what tone?” he murmured, pecking you on the tip of your nose before quickly retreating back into the crook of your neck.
“…that tone.” you muttered in between giggles, hand coming up to run your fingers through his auburn locks. “you’re—you’re thinking of something. scheming even.”
just as the words left your lips, you felt him shift his body against yours, his bare figure molding in to fit your touch. and that’s when you felt it, something prodding against you—poking at your flesh. it was his cock, his hardening cock, to be precise—resting on the inside of your thigh. awake and active and ready for another round.
you stopped dead in your tracks, hand stilling in his hair. “…”
“…?”
“…james.”
you tugged at his head slightly, forcing him to look up and reveal his features—he was giving you what looks like the best pouty face he could give you. and you hate to admit it, but it’s working.
“you can’t be serious.”
“i—i can’t help it! you know we can’t help it!”
“are you seriously-“
“cut me some slack! your-your pussy’s fucking—dripping with my cum.” you watched bucky’s eyes drift from yours where he held eye contact down towards your lips, his pupils slowly dilating into something mischievous, teasing even. “that gets me going.”
“you’re such a fucking freak, holy shit.” you shook your head, “and your response to seeing cum overflow out of me is to shove more inside?”
“exactly.”
you leaned in close, lips barely brushing over his, “you’re unbelievable.” you murmured before finally closing the distance.
his hands roamed up and down your spine, gently caressing the area before settling on your hips. his rough hands squeezing the flesh whilst your lips sloppily moved against his. bucky let out a low groan when he felt you lift your hips up closer towards his abdomen, his cock now full on hard and flush against his stomach.
you were just about to pull him deeper into the kiss before his hands suddenly slid between the bedsheets and the skin of your ass to grip the thick muscle, swiftly hauling you upwards while simultaneously going up on his knees.
in one swift motion, you were now suddenly straddling him. it all happened so fast you barely had enough time to register the fact that bucky’s cock was sandwiched between you and his belly, your clit rubbing deliciously against him.
and his eyes never left yours the entire time, sticking on you like honey.
“james—! oh my god-“
he grinned, “y’like that?”
“mmh—that was kinda sexy.” you exclaimed, feigning seriousness despite your tone containing anything but that.
“kinda?” bucky asked incredulously, as if you had just said the most offensive thing he has ever heard in his entire life. “it was super sexy.”
you rubbed your cunt against his stiff cock, eliciting a soft moan from you. “whatever you say, handsome.”
his hot mouth came into contact with your warm skin, sucking and licking your neck down to your collarbone as you continued to gently rock your hips. you whined and involuntarily arched your back like a cat when he thumbed your clit, still sensitive from the treatment it got earlier. you could tell bucky was enjoying the effect he had on you, how reactive—volatile you were in his arms—already drooling and melting in his grasp.
the heat of it all was starting to make its presence known on your entire body, savoring the feeling of skin clashing against skin as both of you desperately clawed to get closer to the other—closer than you two already are. his fingers sent shockwaves up and down your spine like a chill that’s growing more and more addictive by the minute—the soreness of your muscles from the previous rounds just adding another delicious lick of flavor to your impossibly increasing arousal.
the head of his cock prodded at your entrance while his hands gripped firmly at your hips, guiding himself into where you needed him the most. bucky had to bite down a moan at the sensation of your slick coating his bulbous tip—head almost going groggy at the feeling. he had to will himself to push his cock inside before he could fall apart any further.
despite it only being a few solid minutes after your previous round, you could still feel the stretch of his girth invading your cunt. causing you to hiss and clutch at his shoulders—leaving moon-shaped indents on his shoulders in its wake. your warm heat welcomed him once more as you let out a sigh of relief when he bottomed out, and bucky knew better than to immediately pummel into you like a rabbit in heat—though he already prepped you just moments prior, you needed to adjust to the size of him. all he could do for the moment was drape loving kisses into your neck and rub gentle circles on your hips as he waited for you to give him the signal.
you let your shoulders relax one last time when you felt the burning sensation fade out into a dull taut before nodding, "you can move now, please fucking move."
"whatever my baby wants."
you could've rolled your eyes at what he just said with a teasing smirk if only you weren't already rolling them into the back of your head. bucky already started a punishing pace, fucking up into you with vigor that matched the previous rounds beforehand, as if he didn't lose any energy at all while it drained most of yours.
your fingers were almost merged onto his shoulders while you held onto them for dear life, them being the only thing effectively tethering you to earth and keeping your grounded. bucky let out a hum of approval as a string of whines and cries flooded his ears, keeping his thrusts at a steady, delicious pace. he swore he could write a ten-paged essay in one night detailing how much he loved to listen every sound you make without missing a beat, it was definitely harboring a close second spot at his top five favorite sounds to listen to of all time, with number one, of course, being the sound of getting an ace.
slowly but surely, the familiar fuzziness in your abdomen began to pool at the area. you pushed your hips down to mirror his pace in both desperation and pure carnal need, hopelessly chasing the release you tightly craved. the obscene sounds of your pussy squelching nearly drove bucky insane, and before you yourself even knew it, a wave of pleasure washed over you as you gushed all over him—catching you off guard while you writhed in his arms.
"hnggh— buckyy-" you ended with a pitch embarrassingly higher than usual.
bucky could only coo at you, "i know, angel." he whispered delicately, a stark contrast to his continuous thrusting, "y'feel so good, 'm so proud of you, y'know that?"
in what you like to think—though most likely not the case, but you like to tease—another bravado in displaying his capability of manhandling you like you were nothing, you were quickly laid onto your back in ease. coming into contact with the bed like the thing was your second home.
after a brief pause that gave you a short window of rest that wasn't nearly enough to catch your breath, bucky slammed into you like he means it, with his whole body and soul, knocking the wind out of you. “o-oh—! fuck! wait—” your toes curled into itself with how much pleasure was running up and down your body, it felt too much to handle, honestly. your body was going off on its own accord and wanted to run away from bucky’s grasp—but at the same time you craved the feeling more than anything.
you pawed at his chest, fingers torn between pushing him away or pulling him further into you—your brain couldn’t decide. tears were building up in the corners of your eyes, and your throat was beginning to get scratchy with all the screaming. your legs felt nonexistent at this point, and your cunt was greedily sucking him in taking more than what you can handle as another breathy whine tore through the air, the fabric of bucky’s sheets stuck to your skin like glue, sweat simmering on top of your skin mixing in with his.
bucky took a hold of your hand at his chest and drew it closer to his lips. his nose diving into the flesh of your palm as he pressed kisses on it.
“none of that, baby.” his eyes bore into yours, “you’re—mmm fuuuuck—y-you’re doing so well. you can hold on a little more for me.”
if it weren’t for how good he was fucking into your pussy, you would’ve laughed at him practically whining and salivating with how good your cunt felt. but the only thing registering in your mind was the white, hot relentless pressure building in your stomach.
your breathing stuttered into another wanton moan, heart practically lurching out of your chest as another rakish heat ebbed in the pit of your stomach—your thighs curled into his waist in a desperate attempt to alleviate the debauched feeling bucky was drilling into your cunt. it was downright greedy with how eager your creamy walls were sucking him in, but bucky was nothing short of a giver—equally keen on giving you whatever you craved the most, it was in his nature, after all.
the tip of his dick by now was no stranger to your cervix, each plow sent waves of bliss down from the edge of your toes up to the top of your skull—your closing shut in a feeble effort to last longer. bucky slumped nearer towards you, hand still engulfing yours as his chest fell into you, his own breathing ragged and trembling. his quiet whispers of affirmation threaded through soft panting, grounding you while every nerve and vein in your body rattled with pleasure.
“take it all, angel, it’s all yours.” like clockwork, his hand cupped your belly, “feel that, doll? it’s me, you feel me aaalll the way inside don’t you?”
he repeatedly hit on that spot inside of you that made your vision go white, the knot in the pit of your stomach now growing unbearable for you to hold off. "j-james—" another pornographic moan slurring past your lips cut you off, "'m so close- please— please don't stop ohfuck—"
his lips came into contact with yours, swallowing down the pleas and tear-stricken moans you pitilessly let out. "that's it. cum for me baby, give me another one."
he inclined forward to give your forehead a loving kiss before leaning back to give you a particularly harsh thrust, causing you to squeal and grip at the sheets. bucky watched your face contort and twist in pleasure with hooded lids as he tugged at one of your nipples, a groan reverberating in his throat as he rolled his hips.
for the second time, your release came crashing down on you like a landslide, your knuckles were turning white with how hard you were clutching at his bedsheets. you might as well have torn them at this point. you could feel him quicken his pace as you came around him—your thighs locked up at the sudden speed while you cried into the air, mouth seemingly no longer connected to your mind when you swore you thought you said his name, but your lips only formed an 'o' in a silent moan.
in the midst of his thrusts, you could feel bucky begin to collapse, his hips were now evidently shaking while he continued to ram into you. he was close, and you could feel it.
"i-i'm—" bucky no longer tried to hide the whimpers and moans he was unabashedly letting out as he felt his high come closer by the second, his fingers digging deeper into your bruising hips while he continued his unrelenting pace—his own hips sputtering through his erratic fucking of your poor, overstimulated pussy. "i'm—i'm gonna cum, baby. 'm gonna cum f'you."
his own groans and the sound of skin slapping against skin drowned out your tired wailing, every blood vessel in your body crackling like fireworks. you felt his body grow stiff as he let out a guttural groan when he came, the warmth of his cum invading your senses, coating your velvety walls in his seed and making you feel warm and tingly—with some of it gushing out and running down your ass and into the wet messy sheets below you, now equally as soaked as you once were—or technically, still are.
the palm of his hand braced against the space beside your head, gently lowering himself down to lay beside you. not wanting to crash on top of you and perhaps crush you with his weight, your chests heaved in exhaustion as your heart rattled louder in your ribcage.
through your tiredness, you stared at the ceiling above you before your lips quivered open to speak. "my body's for sure feeling all of this tomorrow."
bucky sheepishly laughed, hands reaching out somewhere towards the floor in search of the clothes he brought earlier which you were supposed to wear. but clearly, things didn't go as planned.
"that's a problem for future you. for now, you shall rest."
he gently hovered the shirt over your head with such tenderness you yourself felt like you were glass, before urging you back towards the bed to give you the rest your body desperately needed. his muscular hands shielded around you like a warm blanket, offering you that comfort you could definitely get used to.
given how rough of a pounding you went through, you were about to slip off into slumber—contently in bucky's arms—when you heard his voice through the thick haze of dreamland.
“um—so- you know, i was wondering-“
“spit it out, james.”
“okay— um- wow did i turn the ac off by mistake—?”
rolling your eyes, you pinched the flesh of his shoulders in mock irritation. “james.”
“okay, okay. i was wondering if y-you’d…”
a part of you already knew what he was going to ask—it’s been lingering your mind ever since the first time the two of you went to the cafe to run through drafts of your story that somewhat turned into talking about anything and everything until the sun sets—the thought of how different things would be if you went on a date instead of calling it a meet-up between classmates. “i don’t know if you’re edging me on purpose but i will edge you if don’t say it right now.”
“if you’d…play a game or two on valorant with me tonight?”
bucky watched you let out a small chuckle before your lips blended into a warm smile, eyes traced with nothing else but fondness. the loser who you’ve once again found yourself laying in his arms has now impossibly and irreversibly got you wrapped around his finger—has now somehow managed to worm his grimy way into your heart, and you wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
“as if i’d ever say no to that.”
tags :P : @prettyliittleviolets @daddysbitchybaby @luvyoupxmimi @eah-marvel-trolls @superbassbuck @kaseynsfws @emmyrietveld0 @kileyking @ri6ht6ack @alto-banshee14 @sexcworm @lanadelreybbgg SOO SORRY IF I FORGET ANYONE I'M LITERALLY SO BAD AT TAGGING
@ chipotleburritobowl – 2025 , do not plagarize or i will cry fat hot tears , you are responsible for your own media consumption twin. read responsibly and thanks for stopping by!
teddy bear <3
rot
Yelena: People say "go big or go home" as if going home were a bad thing.
Yelena: Hell yeah I wanna go home.
Yelena: I'm gonna take a nap when I get there.
Tell Me I’m Your National Anthem
Bucky Barnes x Campaign Manager! Reader
Summary: Bucky wasn’t sure when this campaign stopped being about winning, and starting being about spending time with you.
Word Count: 15K
Authors Note: first fic in almost five years!! I’m back from retirement. Anyway, yes I know Bucky’s hair was long in thunderbolts but I don’t care!
Warnings: cursing, inaccuracies about American politics (it’s been along time since I was in a social studies class okay?), gratuitous use of italics, yearning, Alpine, mention of St*ve, and light violence, no use of y/n
You’ve always liked a challenge.
As a kid, if the teacher said to write six paragraphs, you’d push yourself to ten. In college, you had interned all four summers, double majored in Political Science and Marketing. Worked full time and still graduated with honors. You even made time to go to like three parties.
Nothing changed when you got into politics.
You took the first job you could get your hands on out of college, and have been running since.
Unfortunately you’ve been running with some of the most infamous assholes Washington has ever seen.
You had a talent for fixing campaigns, tweaking strategies, and saving reputations. This unique skillset was perfectly suited to saving the careers of politicians with questionable tweets, and more often than not, bright red, southern roots.
It wasn’t the “making the world a better place” politics you had dreamed of, you still hoped that a few of the assholes who had hired might find it in themselves to make a few good decisions while in office.
That was until you started working for Bucky.
James Buchanan Barnes -former Avenger or something- was running for Congress and had asking your help.
Or more accurately, his Campaign manager was begging for it. An old friend, who was lucky enough to work with all of the good, kind people, you wished would hire you. All the people your candidates kept beating. You’d never had someone beg you to take their job before. So you agreed, part curiousity and part hope that maybe for once you’d get to see the side of politics you used to believe in.
You didn’t get your hopes up though. Preparing for the cycle to begin again. Another politician with skeletons in need of closets. Nothing you hadn’t seen before, and nothing you weren’t equipped to handle.
Oh how happy you were to be wrong.
Other than having no media training, Bucky Barnes was a good man. All of his baggage had already been aired out for the entire nation to see. It was a much welcome change. You’d always been paid to hide secrets, not use them.
However, this meant the Nation already had an opinion of him. Bucky’s reputation ranged from admired hero to public enemy number one. Nevermind the small subset of Winter Soldier fanatics who studied his every move and then dissected it all online.
You had spent a solid six hours just combing through forums to try and understand whether they loved or hated him. You finally gave up after finding one entirely dedicated to different versions of his prosthetic arm.
The only information this research did reveal was that people really, really like photos of him from his time in the service. The government’s Captain America archives made them easy to find.
Just like that your newest strategy was born. You didn’t like to lean so heavily on the veteran angle, but this felt like special circumstances. One of the first fundraising efforts you lead, was simply a release of t-shirts with him in his army fatigues on it. It sold out in twelve minutes.
Unfortunately, sepia stained Polaroids can only do so much heavy lifting.
While there’s no gentle way to tell someone ‘you’re perfect, now change everything’ Bucky took it well. Not enthusiastically, but he was open, which is all you could ask for. He didn’t grumble once when you sent him to an eight hour “media-training boot camp.”
He didn’t even argue when you picked him up afterwards and drove him to a Barber.
All things that further cemented his status as your favorite client.
Watching his hair fall to the floor broke a little piece of your heart. Alas, the short hair had tested better in focus groups, so off it came. It made more sense message wise too, helping consolidate the image of the 40’s soldier and this modern counterpart. Removing as many similarities to the Winter Soldier as you could afford.
“Can you take a little more off the back?” You ask. It’s easily your third interruption and you can almost hear the Barber roll his eyes.
“That okay?” You ask, the question directed at Bucky this time.
Favoritism aside, you were still deeply uncomfortable around each other. At least that’s how it felt. It had only been three weeks, but he was a quiet type. You were used to working with braggadocios, they always told you where you stood.
Bucky liked to watch. Usually giving you one word answers, if that. His stare is what made you uneasy, the weight of his attention was enough to make you falter. Not knowing what it meant was enough to make you second guess, you need to know what it means. Which means you need to know him. Then there was the handsomeness factor.
Today was exposure therapy. You’d worked with plenty of attractive clients before, none that made you fight a blush from eye contact. But that’s okay.
You’ve always liked a challenge.
“It’s just hair.” He replies, voice even and unemotional.
For a second you’re afraid the conversation will end as quickly as it started. You’re about to escape into your phone when Bucky finally makes eye contact with you in the mirror. You’re sitting against the wall behind him, close enough to watch, far away enough that you don’t have to smell his stupid fucking delicious cologne.
Professional distance.
“Besides. You’re holding my reputation in your hands. Whatever you want.” He smiles, as much as Bucky knows how to smile.
Whatever you want. That’s tempting, and three of your favorite words. Especially when coming from a man.
Stop. Professional.
“So if I suggested frosted tips?” You say, raising your eyebrows.
He huffs, it’s the closest thing you’ve gotten to a laugh.
The barber is nearly done, the effect the cut has on Bucky’s face already dramatic. He looks, young. Or at least the age he would’ve been if it wasn’t for all of- everything.
It’s still a little wet, you can see the ends curling as the barber combs through them and lifts them up to trim. You wonder if he left it long, if someone taught him how to take care of it, would it curl?
You do your best to ignore the stray drop of water that glides down the back of his neck, ghosting over his (now) perfect hairline.
The chair spins around to face you. The barber standing behind it with a satisfied smile, holding the comb triumphantly and letting out a little “Ta da!”
Bucky raises a eyebrow, and you’re startled when you realize- He’s waiting for your approval.
Your stomach burns with satisfaction. You like that a little too much too.
You nod, standing and walking over Bucky, and subsequently the barber. You smile, then hold out your hand.
“You mind?” You ask, though your tone makes it clear it’s not a question.
The barber grunts, giving you the comb and walking with a huff into the back of the shop, leaving you and Bucky alone.
You had called ahead, made sure they’d have the building cleared so you’d be the only ones inside during Bucky’s appointment. Too many variables and prying eyes otherwise.
Wordlessly, you begin to cut. There’s not much to trim, but the barber had left a few stray hairs, and his sides were uneven, which would’ve driven you crazy. It was a short cut, a little left on the top, specifically the front. Enough to let it sit naturally, but also long enough he could style with a smidge of a gel. Versatile, easy to manage for Bucky’s sake.
Then you look down at Bucky, realizing you had neglected to turn him back around, and find him already studying you. Suddenly feeling sheepish, you take a step back, spinning him around to get his opinion.
“You fixed the sides.” He says. You wait for noted but it doesn’t come. You realize that’s probably the closest you’d get to a compliment.
You reach over, putting the comb back and grabbing a small bit of gel. You rub it between your hands and before you can overthink it, run your hands through his hair. Giving the front a little bit of quaffing.
Almost satisfied, you put your hands down on the back of his chair. “You still trust me?”
Bucky lifts a hand to his beard, it’s scruffy, and while you don’t mind that (not even a little). It’s not exactly the look you’re going for.
“You can do it yourself, if you want?” You offer, very aware that this may count as over stepping.
He shakes his head, dropping his hand back into his lap. “I trust you.”
You reach over, grabbing a razor from the station and attaching the four millimeter guard. “The beard has tested well, specifically with your female constituents.” Fancy excuse for it would make you sad to shave it all off. “We don’t want to lose it all, just polish it a little.”
Bucky hums, lifting his chin to give you a better angle as you finally switch the it on. The way it shakes to life in your hand once again reminds you of all the faith he has in you. All of his eggs, super glued into your basket.
The buzzing goes quickly. Bucky is inhumanly still. While it normally unsettles you, you can’t help but be grateful. Especially given the next step.
You shut off the buzzer, and reach into the barbicide glass to grab the straight edge razor.
Thankfully in the time it takes you to finish prepping the razor, Bucky has grabbed the oil from the counter and applied it himself.
You give him a moment to settle back into the chair, and wait for him to give the ‘go ahead’ nod.
Taking a deep breath to steel your nerves, you start on the top of his beard, tightening the edges just under his cheek bone until the form a sharp, smooth line.
“Are you normally this…” Bucky trails off, freezing as you get close to his nose, and subsequently his lips in all their blush pink glory (Not that you’re paying any attention to them).
“Hands on?” You offer, pulling back and cleaning the razor. It gives Bucky a chance to release the breath he was holding. He nods.
You hum. “Not, normally this literally. But yes.” You shape the other side as you speak, triple checking that they’re even. “I don’t normally have this much creative control though.”
“Does that make me a pushover?” He asks. Another borderline smile dancing on his face.
You use a finger to tilt his chin up, making sure to avoid eye contact as you do so. “Makes you the smartest client I’ve ever had.”
“Sweet talking won’t get you frosted tips.”
“Was worth a shot.”
You’re pleased to find that the more you talk, the easier it gets. However, the weight of your current position, isn’t lost on you. His attempts at breezy conversation isn’t enough distract you from the fact that his neck is ramrod straight. He’s hardly even breathing.
He must see you noticed his tension, “Haven’t let someone else shave me since before I was shipped out.” He explains, interrupting your study of his breathing patterns. “The first time.”
Shit. He really does trusts you.
It’s almost too much, overwhelming. This man who has been dragged through hell, is sitting here and letting you use a Sweeney Todd style razor on his neck.
You’re not sure what to say, how to acknowledge the hefty implications in his words. Trusting you with his career is one thing, this is his way of saying he trusts you with his life. You hum, your next swipe with the razor extra gentle.
You fall back into a comfortable silence as you finish. Drawing sharp lines to his neck until the edge of his beard is snug against his jaw. A neck beard is an enemy of the state as far as you’re concerned.
“All done.” You say, turning around and moving out of Bucky’s way so he can finally see his reflection. “A number two guard on your razor will keep it around this length.“ You offer while compulsively cleaning up the Barber’s station. You’re sure he’s watching you from the doorway of whatever room he disappeared into. But the only eyes you can feel on you are Bucky’s. “If you like it, that is.”
You finally turn back around to face him. You don’t know if he likes it, but it’s safe to say it’s exactly what you were going for. He looks cleaner, more professional, more like a politician.
But still Bucky.
All he does is hum in response, and your stomach drops to the floor.
He hates it. He hate it’s, he’s going to fire you, and then you’ll be back to helping assholes hide hush money and-
“You do good work.”
Deciding to become, or deciding to try and become a politician was something Bucky had yet to wrap his brain around.
His resume wasn’t that of your typical bureaucrat. No political science degree or volunteer work. Sure there was his time in the service, but last he’d checked the military had changed quite a bit since World War II. He had more experience in fighting U.S. forces than actually serving in them these days.
He knew better than to admit it out loud, but the choice to run for congress, was one he made a whim.
Part had been born out of desperation to leave Brooklyn. Another part was his desire to be useful. To make a good change for once, and do it in a way that didn’t involve voilence.
Bucky just wishes he’d done a little more research.
If someone had warned him about all of the paperwork and bullshit and he had to do just to run, (never mind the pile that would be waiting on the other side if he won), he may have reconsidered.
Bucky hated to admit it, but he didn’t start trying to win until you joined the team
Full of vigor and good intentions, you actually managed to make Bucky want to win this stupid thing. Your infectious energy (and the fact that you were completely overqualified) instilled a newfound confidence in his entire team. Everyone started doubling down on their efforts.
For fucks sake he even let you shave him.
Before he knew it, Bucky was only behind by five points instead of thirty.
Now he found himself in a pickle. Physically he was knee deep in mockups of lawn signs, poll numbers, and focus group answers. Mentally all he could think about was you.
You were talking, making expressive hand gestures as you tried (in vain) to explain what the statistics in front of him meant.
Bucky was too busy thinking about your fingernails to focus.
They’d changed overnight, from a soft pink to a bright eye-catching red. He wasn’t even sure when you would have had the time, you were with him at the campaign office until well after eight last night and you had beaten him there this morning.
“Bucky, do you understand what I’m saying?” You finally broke through, tone half exasperation and half exhaustion.
Luckily, his lack of experience saved him once again. As it so often did when he was too busy watching you, to actually listen. “You know I suck at the numbers stuff.”
Why red? Is red your favorite color? No, he’s pretty sure that green is your favorite, you wear it at-least once a week and your water-bottle has a single green sticker on it.
You gave him a small smile, “I think you could win Bucky.”
Why red? He remembered girls back in Brooklyn who would paint their nails red, talking about how they’d paint their lips to match. Subtle ways to get a boy to thinking about kissing them. He knows it’s none of his business, but he can’t help the ache in his gut when the thought of it being for a date crosses his mind.
Wait what did you just say?
“I could win?”
“A few strategic events, some well timed social media posts and I think you’ve got it in the bag.” You confirm with a smile, it’s one he hasn’t seen before. Confident, almost smug. You’re good at your job and you know it.
“Holy shit.” Is about all Bucky can manage right now.
You finally sit. “I think it might time to find an apartment.”
He groaned. He had hated apartment hunting in New York. Too many people, not enough leases and he doesn’t exactly have a credit score.
“Can’t have a future congressman living in a hotel.” You say, clicking your tongue for emphasis. “Don’t worry I have a friend who can set you up.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth, feeling slack jawed.
“But, we’re still falling short in a few key demographics.” You explain, “We need to get you back to Brooklyn for a few days.”
He nods, sitting straighter and actually trying to read one of the papers in front of him, “Millennials?” He asks, pointing to a particularly sad pie chart. “I thought they liked me?”
“There’s a rumor on TikTok you killed Kennedy, true or not it’s been gaining some traction and it’s causing some of their trust to falter.”
Bucky opens his mouth to tell you they’re not totally off base, but before he can you lift your hand and pinch your fingers together in a shushing motion.
Why are they red?
“Less I know, the better.” You say.
Fair enough.
“We’re also falling short on the older, male, right leaning side of the fence.” You explain, shuffling to bring forward a poll dated from a week prior. “Their wives love you, which means they don’t think you’re a man’s man.”
“How do we fix both of those in just a few days.” He asks, trying to ignore the way your manicured fingers tap against the laminate desk. He’s beginning to think it might be intentional on your end.
“That’s why you hired me.” You smile, “Just have your bags ready for Friday morning and make sure you pack a pair of jeans.”
He nods, knowing better than to ask you to explain when you’re in business mode like this. He hasn’t known you long, but there’s something about seeing you in your element that makes you shine a little brighter.
“I could win?” He finally doubles back, still not sure it’s entirely he believes it. Still not sure he wants it to. Still wondering why are your nails are red.
“Bucky, You have me on your side. You’re going to win.”
You had a friend at a local pet rescue in the city, and to say he owed you a favor would be an understatement. Getting them to let Bucky host an event was easy.
Getting Bucky to agree was even easier.
As always, your instincts had been right on the money, and it was a perfect match. Animals are an easy win with Millennials, if you only you could have gotten him a puppy interview.
The event was a huge success anyway, truly a publicists wet dream. The people loved him, and after only being there for an hour, a majority of the available cats had already been adopted.
Never mind the visuals, since arriving Bucky hadn’t gone five minutes without a cat in his arms.
“Had one back in the day, used to kill the rats in our building and sleep at my feet.” He had explained as he casually picked up a black little soot ball in his right hand, while the left deftly scooped up a little grey tabby. Each cat a limp noodle in his arms.
His big, strong, straining through the sleeves of his button up arms.
It’s not your fault, you’re pretty sure theres some kind of law about men being allowed to look this good while holding a baby- dog, cat, or human.
You change your train of thought, getting ready to go find the intern with the good camera and ask them to snap some candids of Bucky with the animals. When a voice stops you.
“Hey stranger.”
Jack.
Your ‘friend’ or more accurately, ex-boyfriend/shelter contact. You had hoped he wouldn’t bother coming, so you wouldn’t have to bother having this conversation.
“Jack! How are you?” You smile, turning around to face him, which sadly meant turning your back to Bucky (just as he was picking up a little scrawny, white kitten). Your people-pleaser smile in full effect as you bring him into a half-hearted hug.
He squeezes you back with a lot more enthusiasm than the interaction warrants. “It’s so good to see you!” He says, dragging out the ‘so’ for emphasis. “You’re a big shot now. Working with an Avenger and everything.”
You fight the grimace, you’d already been well established when you met Jack, he was just completely politically uneducated and didn’t believe in watching the news because ‘If something is that important, I’ll hear about.’
He also didn’t know the difference between Senate and the House of Representatives.
In hindsight it’s a miracle your relationship lasted as long as it did.
“Thank you again for letting us borrow some of these cuties.”
“No big deal, it’s a great chance to get some of the animals adopted.” He nods in Bucky’s direction. “Seems like he might be taking one home.”
You turn around, finding Bucky holding the white kitten in the crook of his elbow, the little thing is stretched out with its arms straight above its head, belly up and fast asleep.
You resist the urge to groan, finding a pet friendly rental in DC is a fucking nightmare.
Then you watch as Bucky looks down to acknowledge the kitten, ever so delicately scratching under its chin with his free hand.
Worth it.
“Turns out he’s a cat person.” You say, turning back to Jack.
This time you really take the opportunity to study him, all the ways he’s changed. He’s shorter than you remember. He also started dyeing his hair black. It looks bad. He’s less imposing and handsome than your brain dreamt him up to be.
It’s hard to find anyone handsome when they’re in the same room as Bucky.
Jack still has the same eyes, vacant. Bright and engaging, not a whole lot happening behind them.
You hadn’t ended on bad terms per se. It was mostly a mutual break up, with each of your agreeing your lives were just too different. He wanted a golden retriever, Sunday night pasta dinners, and a house so loud he never has to hear himself think.
You need quiet.
“That cat hasn’t let a single person pick her up since she got to the rescue. I’m not letting him leave without her.” Jack says.
“I don’t think it’ll take much convincing.” You smile. “It’s good to see you Jack.”
“Yeah you too, you look good y’know.” He says
Oh you know.
“Thanks, you look happy.” You mean it. “I should get back to work though. Someone needs to make sure babies get their foreheads kissed.”
“Like I said, you’re a big shot.” He pulls you into another just a little too tight hug. “You think he’s gonna win?”
You give Bucky another look, this time surprised to find him watching you. You can quite read his expression, but you never can. The sleepy little kitten in his arm is pawing at his chest trying to get his attention.
“Yeah I do.”
With that you finally escape, grasping onto Bucky’s attention like it’s a lifeline. You use the few steps it takes to reach him to shoot off a quick text, make sure there was nothing on fire, and then you put your phone back into your pocket.
Looking up you give Bucky a smile. “You know they have dogs here too right?” You ask, tone light and facetious.
“Who was that guy.” Bucky asks, always straight to the point.
“My contact here.”
“He seemed awfully friendly.”
“Didn’t take you for a gossip Barnes.” You smile, stepping a little closer, bringing a hand up to pet the baby in his arms. “If you must know, we used to date.”
He hums. “Seems like he’s still interested.” The kitten stands on his forearm, leaning against his chest while it stretches. “If you are I mean.”
You would laugh if you weren’t so surprised. The conversation was beginning to tip toe on that line of unprofessional, you could hear the sirens beginning to wail inside your head. But Bucky is looking at you with all of his attention as he waits for your answer. It’s the same stare that always makes you melt, so you ignore the alarms.
You’re not stupid, you know what he’s really asking.
Are you interested? Single? Looking?
You’re just surprised he cares about the answer.
“I know he isn’t.” You answer, choosing your words carefully, “He has two little girls at home and a gorgeous wife who wants all the same things as him.” You finally leave the cat in his arms alone, resisting the urge to coo as it reaches for you with its paw. “I would’ve kept him waiting too long for all those things.”
It’s a more honest answer than you would normally give, but it’s Bucky. You feel safe with him holding the truth.
He nods, and you notice the slight twitch of his lips. Like he’s fighting a smile.
“I think I have to adopt this cat.” He says, sparring you any follow up questions. He guides the kitten up to his shoulder, where it quickly makes itself at home.
“I already had one of the interns start the paperwork.” You smile knowingly.
“How do you do that?” He asks.
“Do what?”
He holds the kitten up to his face, staring as if it might answer instead of you, “Know exactly what I’m thinking?”
Bucky knew you only acted in the best interests of the campaign. Each event carefully crafted to boost morale, or fix a statistic you didn’t liked
However, for the first time he wondered if maybe you had chosen this event, just because you wanted to go. Okay maybe it wasn’t the entire reason, he was sure you could back it up with a graph and something about polling numbers if he asked.
But after everything you’d done for the campaign, he was inclined to let you have the win. Besides, seeing you in a jersey and jean shorts wasn’t something he felt like he needed to be upset about.
Don’t forget the baseball cap, which it really brought home for him.
Honestly the only thing that really pissed him off about today, was the fact that the first baseball he got to watch in eighty fucking years was a Yankees game.
His Ma would be rolling in her grave, and he told you as much.
“What are you a Mets guy or something?” You ask barely tearing your eyes from the field to look at him.
“Mets?” He asks, tilting his head slightly. He hadn’t found much use for baseball since rejoining the world. Watching it on TV felt too static, but he didn’t have the heart to go to a real game alone either.
“Guess not.” You answer yourself.
“Dodgers were my team.” He explained.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this but they’re on the West Coast now.” You say with an over exaggerated grimace.
“Don’t get me started.”
“Didn’t realize you were such a fan.” It’s not a question, but the way your voice lilts up at the end sure makes it seem like one.
He doesn’t mind taking the bait.
“My Ma used to bring me and my sister down to Ebbet’s every Sunday. Could never afford tickets but there was a great park right out the stadium, we could hear everything.” He said, feeling himself start smiling just remembering it. “I’d lay on the grass, close my eyes, and pretend I was inside.”
“I hope you know, I’m picturing this all in black and white.” You cracked, if Bucky wasn’t so caught up the memory, he’d notice that your voice was dripping with fondness.
“Very funny.” He responds.
You nudge him with your shoulder. “Keep going.”
“Only got inside once, just me and Steve. We snuck in when we like fifteen. He was short enough to pass for a kid and I was fast enough to lose security after jumping the turnstile. Best game I ever saw.” He feels himself smiling while he pictures it, “Even though security kicked us out halfway through the fourth inning.”
“You got into a lot of trouble as a kid didn’t you?” You asked, turning yourself in your to face him. While at least as much as you can turn in a stadium seat.
“Steve did, I just felt guilty letting him get in trouble alone.”
“How selfless.” You joke.
“I’ve always been a man of the people.” Talking was so easy with you. Bucky couldn’t seem to stop himself lately.
“I’m sorry but hearing you refer to Captain America as Steve is never gonna stop being weird for me.” You say, taking another sip of your drink. A beer, which had surprised him. He had pegged you for spirits.
“Hearing you call Steve, Captain America is never gonna stop being a total mind fuck for me.”
“Since when do you curse so much Barnes.” You ask, tilting your head.
“Since I have to sit through a Yankees game, sober-“ He nudged you with his elbow, reaching over to tap the bottle in your cupholder, “-and since you’re too tipsy to yell at me about it.”
You shrug, apparently not finding much fault with his argument. “It’s not my fault you have a supernatural metabolism.” You take another sip, grinning at him as you do so. “I don’t get a lot opportunities to drink shitty beer and eat greasy food these days, gotta take advantage.” You finish.
“I’m not judging.” He defends.
“Everything has to be a bit of mind fuck for you though doesn’t it?” You ask. No malice, just curiosity.
“Who’s cursing now?” He deflects.
“No seriously. I mean, it can’t be easy, and yet here you are, still trying to make the world a better place.” You say. For the first time ever, Bucky thinks you might just feel sorry for him. Not because of his past, but because of his decision to go into politics. Which is fitting for you.
“Sure, it’s hard.” He admits, “Ebbet’s is a bunch of apartments, people don’t go dancing anymore, the Dodgers play for LA, a hot dog costs a month’s rent-“ He pauses, taking a deep breath, “-and Steve is gone.” No matter how many times he says it, it still tastes bitter. You’re right, his entire world had been turned upside down, twice.
“Trying to be good is the only thing I still know how to do.” He finishes. His words hang between you for a moment, and he’s worried he’s said too much.
“People do still go dancing.” You finally respond.
“They don’t dance the way they used to though. I don’t think I could keep up now.” He says.
“It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it.” You smile, “I’ll have to take you when this is all over.”
Bucky is too busy reading into that last sentence to try and respond to it.
A few minutes of quiet pass between you. You shake your head, taking another swig before speaking. “You don’t give yourself enough credit Bucky.” You say, finally leaving it at that.
Bucky is grateful, he wasn’t sure how he had veered so far off course. Somehow he’d managed to ruin a conversation that he swears could have been considered flirting.
Don’t get him started on how flirting as changed.
You’ve bumped his shoulder and laughed at enough of his jokes that the old Bucky would’ve asked you out by now. But he didn’t know if either of those things meant what they used to back then. He was pretty sure they did.
He was also pretty sure you’d had at least three beers. You’re the closest to relaxed he’d ever seen you. Laughing freely, not worried about optics, or the political implications of Bucky being seen eating cracker jacks. If he knows you as well as he thinks he’s starting too, you probably have some ‘no dating clients’ rule anyway. It wouldn’t be fair for him to make a move now, not when you could finally breathe.
Regardless of if you were flirting or not.
Besides you’re wearing jean shorts and it’s the first time he’s ever seen anything above your knee and staring at your thighs was the closest thing to drunk Bucky has felt in years. He isn’t of sound mind.
“You’re one of the most selfless men I’ve ever met,” You smile, and your hand reaches over to touch his that’s resting on top of his thigh. “And I’ve met a lot men.”
Bucky feels his brain get dangerously close to exploding.
Somehow, he still manages to find words. “It’s not all selfless.” He confesses. Turning the hand yours was resting on upwards and lacing his fingers through yours.
It’s as forward as his confidence can afford right now.
He squeezes your hand and then releases it. Bucky stands up and resists the urge to stretch his back because Jesus, these seats are uncomfortable. He gets ready to walk away, with the plan of shaking a few hands, and getting you a pretzel (for alcohol absorption purposes of course. It has nothing to do with an comment you made about craving one).
Before he leaves he bends over and whispers his last admission in your ear.
“I’m not trying to make the world a better place. I’m still trying to make him proud.”
8:00 A.M.
That’s when your flight leaves, which means it will board around 7:15 A.M.
So you should really be at the airport by 6 A.M. Your entire team has TSA Pre-check so it shouldn’t take too long but it’s better safe than sorry.
That means you have to leave the hotel by 5 A.M to get to JFK in time.
You need an hour to shower, and get ready so you look some version of human so you can hit the ground running when you land in DC. So wake up at 4 A.M.
You look down at your phone and sigh, 10:45 P.M. If you fell asleep right now you’d be lucky to get five hours of sleep.
Yet you can’t bring yourself to move.
Surely it had nothing to do with the man sitting across the table from you. Bucky raises his eyebrows, giving you that stupid, handsome, knowing look.
“Your brain is working.” He says, lifting his glass to his lips and taking a sip. This time you let yourself stare stare at them.
You had gotten back from the event a little over an hour ago. A charity gala for some businessman’s tax write off. It was a great opportunity for him to rub some elbows, smile and make small talk with all the right people. It was your last stop on his mini Brooklyn tour.
You had joined Bucky, acting as his -strictly professional- plus one. It was out of your normal scope of responsibilities, but Bucky had made a very convincing argument, something about how you were better with names, and faces, and how if you didn’t go he’d end up sulking in a corner all night.
It made the most sense for you to go. Keep Bucky company, feed him names and information. Maybe one quick dance.
It had nothing to do with the fact that saying no to him is quickly becoming impossible.
Definitely nothing to do with wanting to see him in a suit.
“I’m doing the math on when we need to get to the airport.” You tell him.
“Knew it.” He says, “Is that your way of saying we should call it a night?” He asks, but doesn’t move an inch.
He’s giving you an out.
You shake your head. “I’ve done more with less sleep.” You take a sip of your drink. You feel wide awake but you’re pretty sure it’s not from the alcohol. “What about you Barnes, need your beauty rest?”
Bucky smiles, he had shrugged his jacket off when you first sat down. At some point the first few buttons of his shirt had been undone. You’re not even sure when he took the tie off. “Bold of you to assume I ever sleep.”
You had worn a long black dress, formal enough to blend in without drawing attention away from Bucky. It also looked perfect on you, not that you were worried about that though.
You had drank, eaten, and made so much small talk you’d probably have a sore throat tomorrow. Yet when Bucky asked if you were up for a night cap, you once again found yourself struggling to get that two-letter word off your tongue.
You didn’t want say goodbye just yet, and there was something about having him all to yourself that you were starting to become addicted to. So you sat down at a table in the nearly empty hotel bar, and you couldn’t help but think about how you probably looked like a couple to the rest of the world.
“Can I admit something?” You ask, tilting your head.
Bucky nods. “Anything.”
“I didn’t think you stood a chance.”
Bucky almost chokes on his drink. “Jesus, that’s reassuring.” He scoffs.
“You had terrible optics, no political background, and everyone who I asked about you either hated you or was scared shitless of you.” You explain.
“I do have a bad history with politicians.” He cracks. “If I was so hopeless, why’d you take the job?”
Your walls are lowered enough that you give him the real answer. “Needed a change. Didn’t hurt that I thought you were cute.” You take another sip, you can’t tell if it’s the drink making your cheeks feel hot or him.
Bucky hums, if he was going to say anything else you don’t give him the chance.
“Bucky you’re my unicorn.” You sigh, cue another embarrassed sip, “You’re a good man, willing to take feedback, and running for the right reasons.”
You let your words sit there in the silence, biting your lip to force yourself to stop talking. Christ you’re nervous, you’re never nervous, why is he making you so nervous?
“The other guys must’ve been real assholes.” He says, and you know it’s the closest you’ll get to him accepting the compliment.
“This is the first time in ten years I want the person I’m working for to actually win. I want you to win Bucky.”
You wouldn’t normally risk being this open with a politician, but you were beginning to feel like that word fits him less and less.
Or maybe it was the forced professionalism that’s ill suited.
“If I didn’t know better I’d think you hate your job sweetheart.”
You’re already rolling your eyes when you hear it.
Sweetheart.
Your heart stutters, your fingers twitch, your face feels even hotter.
“Love the job, hate the people.” You manage to choke out, finally downing the rest of your glass in an attempt to collect yourself. Buy yourself a little time before you have to talk again. “I get the chance to help make the world better, by making sure the right people are in charge of it. But at the same time I’m the reason Whitmore ever got in office.”
Bucky’s eyes widen.
“Whitmore? I fucking hate that guy.”
You nod, grimacing.
Preston Clay Whitmore IV. You worked for him back when he was running for Senate in Texas, and using all of his Daddy’s money to do it.
“It was my first job, I was his communications consultant. God I hated him.” You shake your head, “But I was fresh out of college, green and broke.”
“A deadly combination.” He offers.
“He thought he was the next Kennedy, and he talked like it. Every single interview, debate, and ad sounded like Preston thought he was gods gift to humanity.” You can still hear his catchy little stupid theme song now.
Whitmore’s a comin’ to Whip DC into shape!
“How’d you turn it around?” He asks, a smile playing at those gorgeous lips.
Okay maybe you are a little buzzed.
“I made him drop the Roman numerals to start.”
You weren’t super enthusiastic about him, and you certainly weren’t thrilled about being in the South. Yet Preston’s father knew all the right people, you knew getting him into office would mean a career. A great one.
You don’t mean to bore Bucky with all of the details of Preston’s campaign, of his miraculous win, and how he ended up being elected the youngest Senator in Texas’ history. But the way he listens, the way he asks you questions. You almost think he enjoyed it.
Suddenly he’s telling you about how he recently got his hands on a tape of one of Steve’s old USO shows, and how he wishes he could hold it over his head.
You’re telling him about how you worked two jobs in high school in order to save up for college.
Then he’s promising to take you to Wakanda someday, once things have settled down some, how it’s nothing like how you picture it.
“I’ve got a few friends from when I lived there.”
You swear your jaw almost hits the floor, “You lived there?”
“Yeah for a few years,” he laughs, “They helped straighten my brain out, made it possible for me to almost be like a real person.”
He smiles, finally polishing off his drink.
“Why do you drink if it doesn’t affect you?” You ask.
He shrugs, the glass still in his hand. “I still like the taste of a good drink, that’s why I didn’t bother with beer or any of the crap being served at the game the other day.” He puts the cup back on the table.
“I think it still has a placebo effect on me too a little bit. Even though I can’t metabolize it, I still feel like it smooths the edges.”
You nod, understanding.
You can’t help but finally look at your phone again.
1:45 A.M. Shit.
You look back up and meet Bucky’s knowing gaze.
“We should go to bed, shouldn’t we?” He asks, this time he shrugs his jacket back on.
“Afraid so.” You answer, voice softer than you expected. “You have to go back to your apartment or can you get a room here?”
He shakes his head, “I got a few things I wanna pack up, plus I have to get Alpine ready.”
You smile, brightening at the mention of your new favorite feline. “You decided on a name!” He nods, his smile just as wide.
“Can I walk you up to your room?” He asks, finally standing.
God you almost forgot just how tall he is.
“You don’t have do that Bucky I’m all the way on the 8th floor.” You stand too, at some point you had kicked your heels off and you can’t be bothered to force them back on, instead leaning down to pick them up in one hand.
“Humor me. Please?” He gives you the eyes, ones you can only describe as begging. The ones he uses whenever his not getting his way, “It’d make me feel less guilty for keeping you up so late.” He takes the shoes out of your hand as he speaks, completely dwarfing them in his grasp.
“I guess it is the least you can do.” You joke, starting to walk towards the elevator.
The ride up is spent in silence, but not the awkward kind, like the day at the barbershop. It’s softer, warmer, like the air between you is humming.
Your room is all the way at the end of the hallway, and if you were in tune enough with your body to remember just had badly your feet hurt, you’d probably complain about it.
But right now, with Bucky so close so you can’t bring yourself to worry about a blister.
However, it was only a matter of time before you got to your door. While digging the hotel key out of your purse, you turn around to face Bucky.
“Thank you again, for tonight. And for walking me up to my room.” You nod toward the door, still not moving to open it.
When had he gotten so close? Less than a foot was between you now.
Bucky smiles, looking down at the floor, then back up to you. “Least I could do after you saved me from a night of getting people’s names wrong.”
You laugh, “Seriously, I had a really good time tonight Bucky.”
You feel yourself leaning into him, it’s not entirely conscious. The smell of his cologne is drowning out the voices screaming: Back up! Move away! Too close! Danger! Danger! Danger!
But he’s leaning in too. With him, it feels the opposite of scary.
“Me too.” He says, his voice is so soft now, and you know this proximity isn’t lost on him.
You feel yourself move before you can actually think about it, your heels lifting up from the ground, your hands rising and settling on his broad shoulders.
And then you kiss his cheek.
As you pull away, it’s like you’re stuck in slow motion. A slow sink down while your hands drift from his shoulders to his pecs.
Your eyes are shut, too afraid to open them and see his reaction when-
Bucky leans down and presses his head against yours, forehead to forehead. His chest brushing against yours as you each breathe, or in your case, try to. His eyes are closed too. His brows scrunched like when he’s thinking really hard about something.
Your body feels like a live wire when he’s this close. All rational thoughts are completely overwhelmed with the desire, no- the need to kiss him.
You angle your head, tilting your chin and just like that- contact.
He only takes a few seconds to respond.
He’s softer than you imagined, catching your top lip between his and treating it with such care and the whole moment feels so much more, gentle, than you had expected it to.
Not that you had been thinking about it or anything.
He pulls away, but you’re quick to grab one of his a lapels, ensuring he can’t go far. You do your best to read him, before either of you can open your mouths and ruin this.
You can’t decide if he wants to kiss you again or apologize. You’re not sure which you want either.
“I don’t do this.” You say, sounding a lot more breathless than you intended. “Kiss clients, I mean.”
“I know.” He says.
“We really shouldn’t do this.” You add, not sounding even a little confident.
“I know.” He says.
“I have a rule about it.” You try, sounding even weaker.
“I figured.” He says.
But Bucky has made up his mind, with his free hand (which had at some point made its way to your hip), he slowly guides you until your back is flat against the door to your room.
Your hands are still frozen, clutching his jacket. Your knuckles almost white with tension. Your noses are almost touching.
“Just one more.” He says, closing his eyes and pressing his lips back to yours.
Distantly you hear him drop your heels, and feel his hand come up to cradle the side of your face.
He’s not as gentle this time, the force behind his kiss is greater. It’s more confident, hungrier. You can’t help but melt into it, hands climbing until they find a home behind his neck.
You’re hungrier this time too.
You feel your body filling with want and need. The urge to bite and claw him, then kiss and stitch him back together. If you were anyone else you could let it consume you. Part of you wonders if he would let it consume him. The way he’s kissing you, it’s like he already has.
When you break for air, you’re suddenly aware of just how tightly he’s pressed himself against you. How delicious warm, firm, and broad he is.
He drops his head against your shoulder, pressing it into the crook of your neck. You feel him release a long, deep sigh against your neck as if he already knows what you’re thinking.
You allow yourself to run your hands through his hair, just once. Working up the strength to get the words out.
Bucky presses one last soft kiss to your neck and then detaches himself from you.
Wordlessly, he picks up your heels, fixes the strap that had fallen off of your shoulder, and manages to grab your long discarded key card.
He fixes you with a look, one that you hadn’t seen before. It’s reverent, deep, and knocks any words you had out of your mouth.
“After?” Is all he asks.
But you know what he’s asking. “After.” You answer, a firm nod to accompany it.
You don’t need to say more than that, as if the kiss had also created your own short hand.
He smiles, and leans forward to unlock your room. Propping the door open with one hand, he waits until you’ve stepped inside it to hand you your heels, and your key card. As if he can’t resist, he also presses one last chaste kiss to your forehead.
“See you in a few hours sweetheart.” Finally he turns around and he leave.
You stand in the door way dumbfounded until you hear the elevator ding, and then you finally close it.
Your typically nighttime routine takes twice the time it should, with frequently interruptions of muttering “what the fuck was I thinking?” and deep reflective pauses to try and remember what his lips looked like when they were well kissed.
When you finally fall onto the bed, the last thing you see is the digital clock blinking at you, or more accurately taunting you.
2:30 A.M.
“Shit.”
Bucky is Dragging.
He didn’t make it back to his apartment until after three, the walk took him twice as long as it should have because he was too busy thinking about you.
What else is new?
However, this time, his thoughts were clouded with memories, instead of hypotheticals. He remembered how you felt beneath his hands. How you tasted. How you smiled against his lips. How you wanted it as badly as he did.
By the time he’s packed, and the cat is finally stowed away in her travel carrier (a mesh backpack one of the interns had picked up) it’s time for him to head to the airport.
Safe to say the lack of sleep isn’t helping his clarity.
He’s trying his best to listen to what the flight crew is saying, Something something cat, something something landing, something something drink service.
He’s too busy ogling you. And too tired to try and hide it. You were sitting across from him, nose deep in a packet someone had handed to you while boarding.
Normally Bucky would try to sleep on this flight, after all he had kindergarteners to read too once he got to DC. Or something, he honestly wasn’t even sure what he’s rushing back for. All that matters is that he should be sleeping, but he can’t because he doesn’t know what you’re thinking.
Since sitting down you’d been able to spare him a glance, and a tight smile, but that was it.
Maybe you had changed your mind? Sure, your agreement last night wasn’t super fleshed out, but he thought the implication was clear.
After, meaning after the campaign.
He just needed to make sure. God it made him feel like a little boy, even just to admit it to himself.
He clears his throat, and waits for you to finally meet his eyes. “You get any sleep last night?” He asks, if the way your eyes droop are any indication the answer is no.
You shake your head, “About an hour, if I’m lucky.” You tell him, but you smile again, this time it looks more like your own. “You?”
He shakes his head, “Too much to think about.”
You hum, and he knows you’re acutely aware of the staff surrounding you in the plane. Each one is either napping or too engrossed in their own tasks, but still too risky.
“You’re in the home stretch now, little more than two weeks to go.” You say. Placing the files you had been pouring over to the side. “It’s a lot to think about.”
Despite the mention of the rapidly approaching election, Bucky can’t help but relax as you talk. “I was thinking about after.” He says. It’s as on the nose as he can get.
Your smile widens. “You need sleep to get to after, Bucky.”
“Too nervous.” He shoots back.
You shake your head, stretching your legs out in front of you, until the toe of your shoe touches Bucky’s.
“No reason to be nervous. It will still be there.”
That was all he needed to hear.
“It’s worth waiting for.” He says. It didn’t quite make sense in the conversation you’re having out loud. But in the real conversation, the one being had under a layer of professionalism, he’s saying:
You’re worth waiting for.
Based on the way you duck your head, embarrassed. He knows you heard the second one.
“Before you try to sleep, there is something else we should talk about.”
And just like that, you’ve slipped back into the professional. Your voice changes in a way Bucky can’t quite define, but he’s been spending enough time with you that he can hear the difference.
“We’re going to up your security, we have three more guards who will be joining your rotation when we land.”
It catches Bucky totally out of left field. “Wait, what?” He asks.
You nod, “I know it sounds dramatic,” you try to appease him, as if you can already hear the argument on his tongue. “But there have been three credible threats made against you in the past forty-eight hours.”
Bucky shakes his head, “Is it really neces-“
“Yes.” You cut him off, “I don’t care that you’re built like a tank Bucky.” He can’t help the smile that crosses his face at that, “I’m not taking any chances.”
“Yes Ma’am.” He relents, and he feels the shit-eating grinning that’s still plastered across his face. “Any thing else?”
You smile, pleased. “The social media team has drafted a post about Alpine- just stating you’ve adopted her and laying on the cuteness factor. Permission to post?”
“Yea that’s fine.” His eyes dart to the seat next to him, where the little creature is curled in a ball. It’d only been a few days, but it was nice to have a cat again. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
You nod, pulling out your tablet and he hears your (now French) nails tap at the screen.
Were they like that last night? He was pretty distracted, but he surprised he didn’t notice. The novelty of getting to touch you had turned just about everything but the memory of your lips to mush.
“You’re going straight from the airport to Howard Stark Elementary. The plan is for you to tell a few jokes, color a few pages, and read them a Doctor Seuss book or something.” You explain, “It’s grandparents day so there will be other people your age.” Bucky would have believed you if it weren’t for the way you started smiling at the end of the sentence.
It was more of smirk actually. Like you thought you were hilarious.
Even when it was at his expense he was inclined to agree. He doesn’t let it show though, keeping stoic until you break.
“Kidding.” You promise. “Then it’s off to a luncheon with a few of the other candidates. You should be done by three, and then you’re free to nap.”
“Thank god.”
“You mind if I put a suit fitting in your calendar for this week?” You sound like you’re asking, but Bucky knows it’s really just your way of telling him it’s happening. “You should have a new suit ready for election night.”
You make a good point. He had plenty of suits, but he wouldn’t mind having something a new for the big day. “Only if you help me pick it out.” He offers, playing right into your charade of his control.
“Of course.” You agree, standing up and your arms above your head. It causes your blouse to ride up just enough to make his fingers twitch. Then you- as casually as possible- look around.
You must be satisfied by what you see, because when you walk next to Bucky’s seat and lean down so you’re next to his ear. He feels your warm breath hit his skin, and the smell of your perfume has the hair on his neck standing up. He almost doesn’t hear what your whisper.
“As if I’d miss the chance to see you in a suit.”
Then you’re gone, turning around and making your way up to the bathroom as if you didn’t just send him into a tail spin.
Maybe flirting hasn’t changed that much.
You were honest on the plane.
Hell would freeze over before you miss a chance to see Bucky in a suit. Especially after the other night.
But it wasn’t just your new obsession driving this shopping trip.
He was going to win. You wanted him to look devastatingly handsome when he did.
You could feel it now, it was completely in his grasp. You were used to quick results, but this had been unlike anything you’d ever seen before. You’d never seen a candidate jump this far into the lead after only two months.
The numbers looked great. You felt confident saying that despite your very unprofessional bias.
Speaking of-
You’d been back in DC for a week and still hadn’t been alone since. You hadn’t even had a chance to talk about it since the plane.
Did that even count?
Sure, you’d stared at eachother about it, and smiled about it, and brushed eachothers hands about it, but no words had been spoken.
Inside this shop was the closet you’d gotten to privacy. Just you, Bucky, and the old man measuring his inseam.
Much to your surprise, the tailor, Eddie, was Bucky’s pick.
Even more surprisingly, the two of them hadn’t shut up since you walked in the door. You had sat down on one of the chairs in front of the mirrors while Eddie began the fitting. Trying your best to figure out who the hell replaced Bucky with this middle school girl.
“So,” you ask, after a lull in their conversation finally presents itself. “How did you two meet?”
Eddie perks up, as if he just remembered you were there. “We live in the same old folks home.” He tells you, just as Bucky is saying “Neighbors.”
If you had a water you would have done a spit take.
“I’m sorry the same, what?” You ask, lifting a finger in Bucky’s direction as you add “just Eddie.”
Eddie smiles, completely oblivious, as most old men are. “We live in the same apartment complex. Lincoln Estates.” He confirms, too busy measuring to notice your smirk. “Boss man over here just moved into the penthouse.”
“Bucky you told me you moved, but you never said where!”
“On purpose.” He says, voice flat.
Before you can comment, Eddie continues. “Yeah it took some convincing to get the HOA on board, but he technically meets the age requirement. Plus I told them having a congressman in our building might actually get the city to do something about the messed up sidewalk.”
It’s like Bucky can see the jokes forming in your head, “It’s an active adult complex!” He defends, jostling so much that Eddie has to pull him back into place.
“Mhm.” You hum, biting your lips to keep from laughing. “It’s a beautiful building, its by the hospital right?” You ask.
Eddie nods, “Yeah, it’s great! We also have a physical therapist who works out of the building. Plus, there’s a proposal to add a pickle ball court on the roof.”
You nearly choke. “That’s amazing!” You add, completely overdoing your enthusiasm.
Bucky melts in front of you, his face a brighter shade of pink with each passing comment.
Eddie taps Bucky’s shoulder, “Almost done, just gotta run to the back for a few minutes.” It’s innocent enough, but Eddie winks as he says it.
As soon as he’s gone Bucky speaks, “They were pet friendly.”
You don’t ease up, “Were you not gonna tell me?”
“That was the plan.”
“So you were just going to let me figure it out when I saw shuffleboard in the lobby?”
“Why are you in my lobby?” He fires back.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“There’s no shuffleboard in the lobby.” He laments,“Honestly, the apartment itself is normal.”
“Are there handle bars in your shower?” You ask.
Bucky sighs, it’s obvious he will not be winning this round, “They’re very convient.”
You stand up, walking over to a display of ties. You run your fingers over the different fabrics, stopping when your fingers land on a baby blue one. “Bucky do you know how much of your appeal as a candidate relies on the fact that you’re not an old man?”
“I thought my appeal was being an Avenger.”
“Avenger adjacent.” You add, part of your job is to keep him humble afterall. “Yes, that’s a lot of it too, but so is your physical age. If we take out the popsicle years, you’re about to become one the youngest senators on the floor.”
“Popsicle years?” He asks, making that stupid, cute questioning face he always gives you.
You give him a quick, but apologetic look, realizing how that sounded, “Seriously Bucky, just try to keep a low profile in the building for a bit. Last thing we need is someone’s Nana spreading gossip about you.”
He winces and you fix him with a stern, ‘What does that mean?’ look.
You grab the blue tie and walk over to Bucky. “I promised to bring Captain America to the next Barbecue.” He admits.
You’re standing in-front of Bucky now, so close your toes almost touch. Wordlessly, you bring the tie up and around his neck, tucking it under his collar. “You like it there?”
He nods, “I do.” You can feel the weight of his eyes as you begin to tie his tie. You try you best to focus on the steps, but the way he’s staring makes it hard not to mess up. “They play music I actually know, and treat me like I’m just a regular guy.”
You smile. “Then that’s all that matters.”
He smiles back. Clearing his throat as you finally pull the knot tight. You let your hands linger this time, the way they had wanted too that day in the barbershop. You rest your palms against his chest, finally lifting your chin to meet his eyes.
“Still pissed you didn’t tell me though.” You tease.
“Promise not to do it again.” He says. His tone isn’t quite as airy as yours.
Just as you’re about to back up, his hands find your hips. The short distance between you feels so charged, trying to come up with any words feels impossible.
You have a rule and you already broke it once. You’re not trying to get in the habit of breaking it again, not when you’re so close to the finish line. But you can smell his cologne, feel his breath, and it all makes you dizzy.
You should say something. Tell him you shouldn’t, tell him it’s not a good idea, tell him Eddie will be back any second.
“Hi.” You whisper.
Fuck that is not what you were gonna say.
“Hi.” He smiles back, pulling you just a little closer. He looks down at the tie, “Blue?”
“Matches your eyes.” You try and make it sound like the most obvious thing in the world, a futile attempt attempt to break the tension. You realized it had the opposite effect of when you feel his grip tighten.
“Bucky.” You warn, but still not dropping your hands.
He ignores it. “What if I fire you?” He asks
You laugh. Unable to help it, you lean forward and rest your forehead against his chest. “Don’t tempt me.” You exhale.
He leans down and presses a kiss to the top of your head. “One week, then you’re taking me dancing.” He says. You tilt your head up towards him, l body all but melted against him at this point and you give in. Leaning up onto your toes you’re just about to press your lips to his when-
“All right Buddy you are all set!” Eddie’s voice booms as he walks back into the room. You and Bucky jump apart like guilty teenagers.
Bucky recovers quicker than you do. “That’s great Eddie, what do I owe you?”
You pick up your bag, and do your best to try and fight the heat in your cheeks. “It’s my treat.” You insist, reaching into your purse to grab your card.
“No way.” Bucky fights back, his wallet is already opened on the counter.
“I’m the one who insisted you get a new suit Bucky.“ you fight back.
“It’s my treat.” Eddie says. “Consider it your house warming present.”
You can tell Bucky is stunned, “You sure it’s not a bribe to get that sidewalk fixed?” He jokes.
“Next one is free if you pull off that miracle.” Eddie smiles, and then not so gently adds, “Now get out of my shop and go flirt somewhere else.”
You laugh, embarrassed. “Thank you Eddie.” You look over at Bucky. “You do good work.”
“I know.” He winks.
The sun beats down on you as you step outside. Eager to get to air conditioning, you walk ahead of Bucky, joking about how he was going to sweat through his new suit.
He’s about fifteen feet behind you, halfway through a comment about how he won’t miss New York winters (as if DC is that much warmer) when you hear the car come to life. Your hand is a foot from the door when the world erupts.
There’s a sudden breeze, then a flash of heat. You feel yourself fly through the air, before you back crashes into something hard and jagged. Then you hear the blast, the reverberation of it shaking the ground you landed on.
Your body starts to catch up, the rest of the world coming back into focus. Your leg is throbbing and you can feel yourself coughing, but you can’t hear a thing over the ringing in your ears.
You look around, trying to find Bucky, but everything is covered in a blanket of smoke. Distantly, you register the car. The entire frame is on fire and either it flew across the street, or you did.
Then it all goes black.
It was like the entire thing had happened in slow motion.
One second you were laughing, smiling at him like you couldn’t imagine being anywhere else- the next thing he knew you were rumpled against a brick wall, covered in dust, blood, and your leg bent beneath you in a that definitely wasn’t natural.
Bucky was far enough away that he only had a few bumps and scrapes. He didn’t even need stitches.
You weren’t so lucky, and you didn’t even have serum on your side.
Every single Doctor who came to check on you marveled at the fact that you had managed to get away with just a few broken ribs, a punctured lung, a concussion, and a fractured leg.
Nothing absolutely this felt lucky to him. He spent three hours waiting for you come out of surgery. It felt like you had been seriously hurt, and it was his fault.
If he had gotten to the car first. If he hadn’t sent the extra security home early. If he had taken a separate car instead of making some lame excuse about saving gas just to be closer to you. This wouldn’t have happened.
Bucky has never needed help with coming up with new and inventive ways to feel guilty and he had plenty of time to do so while he waited for you to wake up.
As an act of contrition he forces himself to just watch. Watch you breathe, watch your fingers twitch, watch your monitors and try in vain to decipher them.
No pacing, no yelling, no tracking down the men who set it all up. None of the things he’d have done if it wasn’t for the fact that he could hear your voice in his head telling him not to.
Telling hum how violence doesn’t suit him, doesn’t match the Bucky he’s become. A man he’s trying very hard to be right now.
You also keeps telling him to call his therapist, but that’s not happening.
Somewhere around hour two he had taken off the tie, it was dirty, dusty, and speckled in your blood from when he lifted you out of the rubble. Now he just kept wrapping and unwrapping it in his hands, anxiety radiating off of him in a way he hasn’t felt in years.
It’s doesn’t matter how many people tell him you’re going to be fine. Their words don’t change how small you look in the hospital bed, how cold your hands feel when he tries to hold them. The bruise from where you hit your head looks brighter every time Bucky can bring himself to look at it, dark purple staining your forehead.
He’s exhausted. A few hours of sleep would do him a world of good, but he can’t sleep until he sees the whites of your eyes.
Bucky has always hated hospitals. He hated them back in when he’d go visit Steve as a kid. He hated them in the war, when they were just tents help to other by rope and a bandaid. He hated them in Wakanda, when he was getting his bearings, relearning how to be human.
He hated them most, when he was a visitor. Being patient comes with a certain degree of acceptance. There’s a surrender that comes with being a patient too, being able to let someone else make all the hard decisions for him.
As a visitor there is no comfort. He sits in the world’s most uncomfortable chair, and waits. He waits for doctors to come with news, he waits for you to need anything. Waits to to feel useful. The rest of the waiting is just a reminder of how no matter what he believes, what he trains for, or what he does, he has no control.
Looking at you here, connected to tubes is a reminder of why he has can never let his guard down. He knew better than to get close, he certainly knew better than to start whatever this thing between the two of you was. He’s already convinced himself that he’s going to get as much distance from you as possible as soon as-
You wake up, or more accurately you groan into consciousness.
Your eyes crack open, lips parting like you’re trying to speak. At your side your hand lifts, stretching as much as it can towards him.
Bucky grabs your hand, holding it between both of his. “Hey sleepyhead.” He whispers.
You hum, craning your head with a wince towards the untouched glass of water on your table. Bucky grabs it wordlessly and brings the straw to your lips, “Small sips.” He encourages. You nod, closing your eyes as you drink.
When you finally pull away, you fix him with a worried look, as if he’s the one laying in the hospital bed.
“You look,” You clear your throat, “-like shit.” You voice is hoarse. He knows how smoke inhalation feels, like swallowing around glass. That’s without having been intubated.
Bucky is sure his relief is palpable, his entire body unclenches. “Then you probably shouldn’t look in the mirror sweetheart.” He says, presenting you the cup for another sip. This time you take the cup from his hands. “You got one hell of a shiner on your forehead.”
You lift a hand to your temple, recoiling when you make contact. “I’ll get bangs.” You say, not giving it another thought. Dropping your hand back to your side, you take a deep breath, or you try too, but a wince interrupts it. “It was really bad wasn’t it?” You ask.
Bucky doesn’t want to be the one to tell you. He doesn’t want to say that you’ll be in a boot for at least three months. That you’ll be out of work for two. Doesn’t want to tell you that if you had been six inches closer to that car you’d be dead.
“What happened?” You whisper.
Of course you don’t remember, you were ten feet into a brick wall, how could you? Never-mind the concussion to the mix.
“Car bomb.” He explains, “Turns out you were right about needing the extra security.”
“Add it to the list.” You smirk at that, lips cracked from dehydration. You look down, noticing the bump of the bandages around your leg. You bring a hand to your ribs, gently feeling at the wrap there as-well. “Shit.” You whisper.
He nods. “Was worse than really bad.” One of his hands crept up to cradle your hand, two fingers pressed firmly to your pulse. He needs to feel anchored to this moment, to the reality that you’re okay.
He’s fixed his gaze on the blankets covering you, when all of sudden you start to cry.
Your chest heaves with silent sobs and a few scattered tears run down your cheeks. Then you let out a pathetic whimper than Bucky can’t for the life of him understand.
“Hey, hey it’s okay.” He tries to soothe, moving so he’s sitting on the edge of your bed next to your legs. He brings a hand up to cradle your face, sweeping away the tears with his thumb.
You nuzzle into his palm, resting the entire weight of your head against it while you mumble something.
“Honey I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, buts it’s okay. You’re okay now, everything is fine. You’re only gonna be in a boot for three months! The rest will heal on its own with some rest.” He explains, smoothing your hair as he speaks.
“I almost died.” You explain, slower this time. “And now I’m gonna have bangs when you win!” You add, sounding even more wrecked.
Already thinking about work. You’re still you. Under the scratchy voice and bruised skin, you still have all of your priorities out of order. You still have your sparkle. Something Bucky had spent the last several hours afraid you’d lost.
“It’s gonna be okay.” He promises, “We have a week until the election, no need to pull out the scissors just yet.” He reminds you.
“Six days.” You bite back. The ghost of a smile on your face as you calm down. You nod towards the nurses chart on the wall, “It’s tomorrow, only six days left.” You explain.
“My apologies.” He jokes. Dropping his palm from your face back to your hand.
“You’ve been here all night haven’t you?” You ask, eyes looking him over, taking in his disheveled state. Bucky nods, fighting a yawn as you say it. You give him a real smile this time, all of your warmth directed squarely at him. “Better not be blaming yourself Barnes.”
God, you know him better than he gives you credit for. “That’s because it is my fault.” He admits, suddenly finding great interest in the floor.”
“No.” You say, voice firm.
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t-“ He stops, choking on the words.
“Did you put the bomb in the car Bucky?” You ask. Tone sharp and unyielding. He instantly recognizes it, having heard you use with anyone who tries to challenge you. He’s never heard anyone succeed.
“No.” He answers, still unable to look at you. “But that doesn’t change-“
“Bucky.” You interrupt, “Look at me.” He listens, as always. “This is not your fault.”
He wants to fight with you, to yell that is, to give you a hundred different reasons why you should run in the opposite direction.
“I got hurt, because someone wanted to hurt you.” Knife - twisted. “Both of those things can be true, without it being your fault. Okay?”
He nods, “Okay.” He says.
“It’s my pity party, don’t make it about you.”
He almost laughs at that, there’s something about you that makes wallowing so much harder. Besides, you’re you’re giving him that smile, how could he.
So he chooses to believe you, at least until the voices start up again.
“I talked to your boss.” He says.
“Oh?” You ask.
“Some wannabe congressman.” He elaborates.
“Oh!” You giggle, catching on. “How’d it go? He’s a real hardass.”
“He was tough,” he plays along, “But I managed to convince him to give you PTO for the next four months.”
“Wow.” You pretend to be surprised, “That’s very generous considering my contract is up in a week.”
“Mmm, he said something about that too.” You widen your eyes, “Said he had big plans for you.”
You nod, smiling wide. “I can’t wait to hear them.” The second half of your sentence is lost to a yawn.
Bucky feels lighter as he watches you snuggle into the blankets. It’s hard to resist the urge to crawl in next you, but he’s been fighting those kinds of thoughts since Brooklyn. He hasn’t earned the right to that domesticity- yet.
“You should go home. Sleep, feed your cat. Maybe go crazy and take a shower.”
He nods, already picturing the stink eye he’d get from Alpine when he got home. He still wasn’t used to having a roommate. “A shower is probably a good idea.” He says, standing up.
“Thank you,” you say, and Bucky looks at you quizzically. “For staying,” you explain, “I was so worried about you, waking up and seeing your face was-“ You stop, and he watches you search for the right word. “Everything.”
He leans over, kissing the crown of your head, something thats quickly become a habit. “No where else I would have been.” He answers. “Call me later?” He ask.
You nod, “I promise.”
This was arguably worst than being in an explosion.
Okay maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but never in your career had you been forced to watch your victory from the comfort of your deeply uncomfortable couch. If this injury has taught you anything, it’s that you really need to invest in better furniture. It’s amazing the things you learn when you actually spend time in your home.
You also didn’t have any food in the house, which is why you were still waiting on your third DoorDash of the day. No pity party was complete without a snack.
Back to the torture at hand.
On your screen, in gorgeous technicolor you watched in real time as it was revealed that the voters chose Bucky as New York’s newest Congressmen.
He had given a wonderful speech, short, succinct and powerful, like him. You had proofed it so of course it was perfect. Then as the crowd applauded you watched as the team you had spent the last several weeks of your life managing, celebrated without you.
Blue confetti rained down, getting tangled in his hair, and blurring with his gorgeous blue tie (you had a replacement delivered to him after seeing how ruined it was at the hospital). Sure they had all been calling and texting you throughout the night, you knew they missed you. Almost all of them had already sent you a congratulatory text
Almost all.
The entire day, the one person you didn’t hear from was the person you wanted to talk to the most.
Bucky was avoiding you.
At least you think he is, he wasn’t answering your calls or texts. You knew first hand how chaotic election days were, add to that how Bucky often forgot his phone even existed. A week ago you would’ve written it off as nerves clouding his mind. Two months ago you’d have forgiven it as him having other people to celebrate with.
That was before three things happened:
1. He kissed you so well, you forgot you’d ever been kissed by anyone else.
2. He spent all night at the hospital, waiting for you to wake up.
3. He spent all week texting, FaceTiming, and calling you non-stop. Partly because you were working remotely to get the campaign across the finish line. Partly because ‘he needed to hear your voice again.’
‘Needed too’ until this morning.
He was all vague promises of a plan and sending you cute photos of Alpine, until today.
Maybe this was his plan, ruin you for all other men, and then ghost. You were pretty sure he doesn’t even know what ghosting is, but it’s happened to enough times that you’re skeptical.
To top it all off, you can’t event drink. Your special cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics ruling it out completely. It was a sad predicament, just you, the dry bowl of cereal you had for dinner, and the eleven o’clock news.
It had been almost forty-fives minutes since the results were annouced, and still no word from Bucky. After triple checking your ringer is on, you shut the TV off. It was almost time for your next dose of Tylenol, hopefully it would give you the extra push towards sleep.
Knock knock knock.
For a moment you panic, no one knocks on your door. You don’t know your neighbors, and then you remember.
DoorDash!
Sacrificing grace for speed, you hobble over to the door. You weren’t used to maneuvering with the boot, still cringing everytime time it scraped against the floor.
You opened the door without thinking, looking down expecting to see a brown bag of greasy comfort. Instead you see black dress shoes.
Ones you instantly recognize, you bought them after all.
Your eyes work their way up slowly, clocking the brown bag clutched in his hands. Then the rest of the way to his handsome face.
“Shouldn’t you be at a party somewhere Bucky?” You ask.
He gives you that smile, the one that makes your stomach flip. “Yeah I should be.” He says, and despite how pissed you were five minutes ago, you let him in.
In all your time together you had never felt scared of Bucky. Nervous? Sure, but never scared. Except for right now. Staring at him in your apartment, watching him put the bag of food on down, you were scared. Not of the man, but of your very big, heart pounding in your chest feelings for him. Scared because you had let yourself fall, hard. You had let yourself plan and dream and fall asleep every night thinking about how you would grab him and kiss him the second they announced he won.
Then he ignored you all day. Had he finally realized your organization was annoying? That having a plan A, B, C and D wasn’t called being prepared and was actually called being crazy.
He was watching you too now, and despite your fear, it was like your body came to life under his gaze. A week without seeing him in person made being this close feel electric. Then Bucky broke your gaze and it was like all the sparks died.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I wanted to do this in person.” He explains, coming closer.
A sense of doom creeps up your neck as you watch him approach. You’re stuck in the entryway, as if the boot on your leg has become a cement block and your body can’t be bothered to try and move it.
This is it, you think he’s here to tell me, whatever this almost was, is over.
“You’re fired.” He says, his voice is monotone but his face is wearing an expression you can only describe as a satisfied grin. It feels a little tone deaf given the circumstances.
You open your mouth, hoping to find a biting comeback, or even a sour ‘congratulations’ would work, anything to show him you are not on the same wavelength when lips find yours.
Bucky kisses you, and it’s so obvious he had been holding out on you in Brooklyn. He’s cradling your face in between his palms, but this time he’s not holding you like he’s afraid you’ll disappear. It’s not the desperate hunger and grabby hands from New York
This time it’s all softness. It doesn’t take long for you to melt, hands finding his neck and making a home there. You both relax into the kiss, all of the stress, the tension, and blurred lines finally lifted. All that’s left are two people.
You kiss Bucky in until your lungs feels like they will explode. Pulling away Bucky follows you, trying to chase your lips- briefly succeeding, before finally settling for resting his forehead against yours.
You catch your breath, lungs weak, leg going numb from standing on it for so long. lips smiling so wide you’re afraid your face might split in half. Delirium.
“You skipped your party to fire me?” You ask. Tone light, giggles interrupting each word.
Bucky nods and his hands travel to your waist, where they plant themselves firmly. He lifts you and brings you that last foot forward so your chest is pressed to his.. “Knew exactly how I wanted to celebrate.” He explains, lips brushing yours as he says it.
You want to ask him more questions, does he have to leave? can he stay forever? what does this mean? was the food still hot when he brought it in?
Instead you kiss him again. When you break away this time it’s because your lips are numb.
“I know today was crazy, and I should have called you back, I wanted to so badly. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to handle hearing your voice without coming here.”
It sounds a bit dramatic, but he says it so earnestly, you don’t question it. “That’s a good reason.” You whisper, “If you had come here and kissed me like that I wouldn’t have let you leave.”
Bucky tried to kiss you again, but it’s sloppy, both of you smiling too much into the kiss. “You gonna keep me?” He asks.
You nod, shoving the suit jacket down off of his shoulders you can you rest your hands there. Feel all of the strength and power there. Bucky is pliant under your touch, letting it fall to floor with a soft thump. “Yeah, Brooklyn’s gonna need to find someone else.” You answer, “Besides you ruined my job, how am I ever supposed to work with someone else now that I’ve had you.”
Bucky kisses you again, one hand snaking up under your shirt to ghost over your ribs.
“Had an idea for that.” Bucky says he pulling away, but still not detaching. You tilt your head, silently asking him to go on. “Gonna need to adjust my team, now that I’ll be sticking around in DC. There’s one job I need to fill.” He said explains, “You’d be around me constantly, telling me what to do and what not to do.” You smile.
“I do have some recent experience with that type of work.” You offer, “Need me to email you my resume?” You ask, bringing one hand up to scratch your nails down the back of his neck. You watch gleefully as he shivers beneath your touch.
He shakes his head, “You’re overqualified.”
“What is it?” You ask.
“Chief of Staff.”
If it wasn’t for the boot (and the concussion) you’d jump on him. Spend every day with him, and actually do good?
“I accept!” You answer, pressing your chest against his, afraid the ball of light forming inside of it will explode if you don’t glue yourself to him.
After months of calculated touches, and fighting your instincts, the freedom to hold him is addictive.
“Thank god.” He whispers and kisses your forehead, neither of you have stopped smiling. “There’s one other job though.” He says. “It would mean sneaking around, and flying under the radar.”
“Sounds dangerous.” You say.
“Mhmm, it is. Comes with the risk of spending even more time with me, maybe forever.”
“Don’t think that’s long enough.” You respond, distantly wondering who is this sappy, boy-crazy girl and what has she done with you?
Bucky squeezes you again, as if he’s making sure you’re still real. “I’ve got a lot of shit to unpack, you sure you wanna take all that on?”
You nod fervently, “I can handle it Barnes.”
He presses one more kiss to your lips. “I know better than to doubt you.”
Author’s Note: Thank you so much for reading! I have no expectations posting this, I just started writing and couldn’t stop! I love these two so much. Anyway, I hope it didn’t suck, love you say it back
Masterlist!
HOLY MACARONI THIS WAS SO GOOD IT GOT ME YEARNING THE WHOLE TIME
