Summary: As it turns out, you can’t outrun a monster in his own home. You can, however, learn to question whether he was ever a monster at all.
Word Count: 17.7k
Warnings: real big emotions and confrontations; secrecy in a relationship; lots of panic/anxiety/fear/insecurities; weapons (guns, knife); minor injury (cut); references to criminal activity and violence; Bucky is possessive and protective and in love; emotional manipulation (perceived/debated)
Author’s Note: Here we are my lovelies, the second part to His Name Was Never Just Bucky. Honestly, I’m so relieved it’s finally done and I can return to other projects. This took me so incredibly long, but it’s rewarding to have it completed and I’m so proud I didn’t end up abandoning it like so many other things before. I truly hope you enjoy where I took the story ♡
Masterlist | part one
This was probably the worst decision you have ever made.
But, hell, now you officially jumped without a parachute, the ledge is gone, the air is passing by quickly, and your only hope is that you’ll somehow learn how to fly on the way down and you’ll be able to land on your feet.
The hallway outside has lost its symmetry, as you have lost your sanity, and now nothing seems to make sense anymore. Everything seems longer and crueler, your panic stretching the hallways into a long, suffocating throat. Each of your hectic footsteps makes you feel too exposed in this big mansion, they seem to echo your exact coordinates throughout the floors. Every hallway hears you, the walls themselves are turning their heads.
You take the first turn on instinct, then another, and another, trying to remember the route, trying to retrace the thread that brought you here, but your terror and all that bottled-up panic smashes sequence, steals direction, leaves you with nothing but speed because you know that if you stop, you’re done.
Your feel your heart everywhere. In your throat, in your ears, behind your eyes, beating against your teeth.
You blow past a side table where a cluster of pale lilies sits, blooming so aggressively, looking so wrong and even ugly in the corner of your eye, you have to take another turn.
You’re no longer thinking, you’re just running.
Your chest is a hollow chamber and all you hear is your own pants when you pass a maid who startles and calls something you don’t catch. You pass a window tall as a church promise and for one insane second consider throwing yourself through it.
Somewhere behind you, from the office, you hear a loud crash. His voice follows. His voice. It sounds so much more blood-curdling now.
He’s calling your name. Loud and baffled and then sharper. He doesn’t sound angry yet, but definitely alarmed in a way that makes every warning bell inside you turn rabid. Because there is something uniquely petrifying about hearing alarm in the voice of a man like him. It means you have disrupted the script. It means he does not understand. It means he is coming.
You run harder, every nerve in your body overflowing with adrenaline.
But, as expected, the house doesn’t simply spit you out. Corridors feed into corridors, archways into alcoves, burnished halls into rooms you have never seen, and every choice you make seems to slide you deeper into the belly of the place instead of toward freedom.
With a ragged and desperate breath, you shove through one swinging door expecting another passage, and stumble instead into a kitchen vast enough to feed a wedding. There is all this gleaming steel and those butcher-block islands and hanging copper, bright under the lights in a way that feels grotesque after the dim severity of the office.
It is wrong, all wrong, too open and yet somehow still a trap, because there is no front hall here, no visible exit, only counters and cabinets and startled staff, and you realize with a sick plunge of your stomach, that you have run yourself into a dead end dressed as luxury.
This is bad, this is so bad.
You stop abruptly, spinning around helplessly. The breath tears in and out of you like it is trying to escape without the rest of your body. The halls behind you are full of pounding footsteps, and you know it’s just one single set, but you also know it’s him.
He’s advancing and you can’t keep escaping.
A woman near the far counter goes still with a mixing bowl in her hands. Another man freezes by the sink with his hands in water. No one speaks. No one moves. The whole room seems to hold itself in suspension around your panic, everyone watching without watching, and then from somewhere behind you in the corridor comes Bucky’s voice sounds again, practically yelling your name—no confusion left now, only alertness, apprehension; and it punches you in the gut. It rings through you, through the kitchen, through the bright metal and tile and silence, and you know it has all been for nothing.
But before there is anything you can do, before the ground can open a portal for you to fall through, Bucky appears in the kitchen doorway, looking like an avalanche with a name. A big name. A dangerous name. A name that will be the end of you.
He doesn’t look raging in the obvious way, but he’s lost a bit of control. And for the man that he is, you don’t know how to survive it. And this intensity with which he came thundering after you is so extremely frightening because it looks expensive on him, tailored to fit, like one of his suits, like one of his watches, like all the impeccable and dangerous things he wears so naturally you once mistook them for elegance instead of that blaring warning sign they actually are.
Why just have you been so stupid, my god.
He’s totally got you wrapped around his finger—and dick, as embarrassing and daunting as it is—or you would have maybe been able to open your eyes for a second, you idiot.
But now they are open, wide, wide open, and you see him. You see him as the man he is. But maybe it’s a little too late now.
He stops the moment he sees you pressed half-backward against the dark island, sees the way your hands have come up slightly as if your body has decided on defense without consulting you, sees the wet shine gathering in your eyes, the terror you are no longer managing to powder over, and something happens to his face that is so brief and so devastating, but all you can do is stare at him so you see that clean strike of realization.
He doesn’t look confused anymore, and it makes him even more menacing.
He knows. He knows that you know. And he probably knows what he’s going to do to you now but you don’t know if you want to know that.
The air seems to cinch around you, seems to wrap itself around your throat, and squeezes. You can’t breathe. You don’t try to.
Bucky—James, your mind insists now with a sick recoil, James Buchanan Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, biggest crime boss in the city—does not look away from you when he tilts his face to the staff. That, more than anything, makes your blood run strange. His attention stays fixed on you with a steadiness so absolute it feels like a physical thing, a hand at the back of your neck, while his voice turns toward everyone else in the room and comes out low and unquestionable. “Everyone out.”
His command is dropped into the kitchen and nobody argues. The immediate obedience of his people makes you visibly shudder.
A woman near the stove sets down a towel with trembling fingers. The man by the sink lowers his eyes and moves. Another staff member glances at you once with a quick look that seems almost guilty, almost pitying, and you feel the pulse of it pounding all around you, everywhere inside you.
Nobody looks at you too long, nobody does anything besides leaving the fucking room. They won’t meet your fear and they won’t step between it and the source. Nobody here belongs to themselves enough to choose you over him. But it’s clear that they don’t. They’re his people for a reason. Nobody here will be on your side, whatever happens.
A door swings. The kitchen empties in a matter of seconds, everyone slipping out with the furtive speed of people evacuating a room where something dangerous has just unsheathed itself. They leave with the scene in their eyes. They leave you with him. And the silence after the last one goes is so sudden it roars.
You take another step back and only feel the unhelpfully solid press of marble against your spine. There is nowhere else to go unless you want to climb onto the counter like a cornered animal, and for one hysterical beat of a second, the idea does not even seem ridiculous.
You keep your eyes on him because looking away feels somehow more chilling, but your gaze is frantic within that line of sight, darting to the side entrance, to the swinging service door, to the corridor beyond him, to windows that suddenly seem decorative rather than useful, to every possible seam in the room where escape might be hiding in miniature.
There is none. The whole kitchen gleams at you with pitiless order that’s just full of steel and stone and copper, knives in their block and pots all around.
He notices you looking, but you can’t care; all you have to care about is the distance between you and him, the distance between you and anything that might become escape if panic suddenly grew wings.
Could you run past him? Maybe, if he were anyone else. Maybe, if this were some ordinary man with ordinary reflexes and an ordinary body and an ordinary life.
But he is none of those things. You’re in this damn situation because he’s none of those things.
He fills the doorway without even trying. He stands there in the collectedness of his dark clothes and encroaching presence, looking at you as if he can hear your thoughts tripping over each other and your fear has turned you transparent.
His shadow has finally caught up to his skin and you now realize how dark it is.
Even if you got around him, where would you go? The front hall might as well be on another continent. Every corridor in this house has already left you stranded. There is no map in your mind now, only panic. No way out.
The knowledge gathers in your chest until it hurts. Behind your eyes, heat stings. Your throat tightens around a lump and only something choked leaves your lips.
And Bucky sees all of it. You keep trying to shrink back from him because his very outline has now become a threat, and it doesn’t make your situation better, but he already knows, so you don’t have to pretend anymore.
And his face alters. It’s as if the floor has given way under him. As if he had stepped expecting hard tiles and found air.
He does not advance. That should help. It does not. He stays where he is, one hand dropping slowly from the doorframe to his side, as if he understands that any sudden movement from him might send you straight through the nearest pane of glass.
There is a fervor to him now that feels different from the one you knew in bed, at dinner, in the soft-lit luxury of his attention. It has made you feel protected, loved, worshipped.
But there is no feeling of that anymore, none of that, because now it’s stripped of adornment, revealed as what it perhaps always was beneath all that heat and gentleness. It’s focus. Pure and frightening focus.
His eyes are on you in that unwavering, devastating way of his, but the expression in them is nothing easy. There is something dark in there, something grim and braced, something that knows a door has just slammed shut and is already calculating what can still be salvaged from the wreckage.
His mouth is set. His jaw is hard enough to cast shadows. He looks, absurdly, heartbreakingly, like a man who has been struck and is refusing to touch the bruise. But he stands, and he’s still so tall, much taller than you thought he could become, and he is not the man you thought you knew.
He stands there with his hands visible, shoulders squared but not aggressive, and the intensity in him is bridled.
His stare does not feel like a threat in the crude sense, but it’s so full of attention, too much attention, because total attention from a man like him is its own species of fear.
“Sweetheart.”
His voice has changed. It is calm but only in pretense. It is soft, technically, but not the way it was before. Before, his softness had warmth in it, a hand held out in the dark.
But this is lower. Straighter. It has gone cool around the edges. It’s not vicious or unkind in any sense, but your body clocks it instantly. It’s almost formal in its restraint, as though he’s speaking across the lip of something that’s close to breaking and he’s trying not to widen the crack.
And that nickname makes you want to let the tears fall. Whatever he tries to achieve by calling you that, it doesn’t work. It’s just torture how familiar he tries to make it sound.
His gaze falls in fast snaps over your face, your posture, your trembling hands. “This looks bad,” he concedes roughly. His throat works once before he continues. “I know it does. But it isn’t what you think it is.”
The words land in you and do nothing. They just sink. Sit there.
He studies your face, sees he has not reached you at all. “What did you see, baby? What has you—” He breaks off with a crack, shakes his head slowly, and lets out a shuddering breath, eyes still on you. “Tell me what you saw.”
What answer could you possibly give him?
That you are looking at his mouth and thinking of all the times it softened around your name, and your own mind keeps turning traitor and overlaying that tenderness with headlines, with whispers, with ravening rumor?
That the same voice which once coaxed and soothed now sounds capable of making rooms empty and men obey and whole situations forgotten? That the current version of his voice is a masterclass in control and it terrifies you to no end?
That his hands are hanging open at his sides, looking so damn human and ordinary, as though they’ve never done anything wrong?
Which is a lie, you now know, a lie that runs deep and leaves you scarred, because all you can think is that these bare hands are the same hands you’ve had under your chin, lifting your face to his, tucking hair behind your ear, buttoning you up against the cold, and you’ve had them gripping you tight in the dark, moving inside you until you couldn't breathe, wrecking you in the best way possible.
These hands were your favorite things.
But looking at them now, you picture what they are doing when you aren’t around. Doing the dirty work, the ugly work, the unspeakable work, hidden back in the blacked-out corners of a life he kept under lock and key.
Your throat feels too dry to talk and you stay quiet, letting the stillness in the room ripen, letting your lack of words and the fear in your eyes speak for themselves.
A hard, hollow tension knots his face, makes his jaw grind, and look as solid as a piece of rock. His hands ball into fists and when your eyes snap to them immediately, your body already flinching, he flexes them, but it seems forced. There is an almost brute rigidity to his throat, a silent scream of dread choked down only barely.
“What do you know?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
The question is gentle in shape and brutal in substance. It makes your stomach turn. Because it sounds like a test. It sounds like inventory. It sounds like the kind of thing a ruthless man would ask before deciding what to do with the damage.
You let your fingers grip the edge of the counter. You can’t answer him. All you can do is try to breathe. All you can do is stare at the exit behind him, and his body standing between it.
He draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “Look at me, Y/n. Please.”
You didn’t know some part of you would still obey, but you notice too late. Maybe it’s better this way. Your eyes lift fully to his.
And you can actually see the way he has lost his grip. It’s right there in his eyes. If you were to describe it you’d say it looks distraught. As if he’s lost, his entire biography that’s been neatly written on paper now ripped away and he can’t find the next line.
Judging by the way you act and look at him, he knows you know something, he just doesn't know what, and the mystery is eating him alive. Just for one disorienting second he doesn’t look that much like this untouchable figure from all those disturbing rumors, but rather like a simple man who knows that if he tries to force his way out of this, he’s just confirming your worst fears about him.
“My name,” he starts with a little hesitance. The gravelly low timbre of his voice makes you shudder, “is James Buchanan Barnes.”
Something in your face gives you away.
You feel it the moment it happens. Some tiny involuntary flinch. Some helpless widening.
Because something crosses his expression, his throat bobs hard enough to show that everything inside him is suddenly in pieces.
He sees that the name is not new to you. He sees that you are already standing several steps ahead of where he hoped this conversation was.
He goes very still.
“You knew that already,” he acknowledges, and it almost hurts how he tries to sound calm about it all.
Your mouth is dry. Your whole body feels like a struck match. You let out a pitiful small breath.
He takes one careful step forward, and it’s not really a step, not even truly an advance, but you recoil so sharply, you ram your whole body against the wall of marble behind you. Your back stings, but your eyes sting more.
His face changes with your reaction, something like pain flashing through the severe framework of him before he reins it back in.
“How?” he asks, and he’s no longer trying for calm. He ducks his head, pleading eyes on you, and he speaks with a wounded quiet. “Sweetheart, how did you find out?”
Your throat works around the answer. “Your tags.” It comes out so faint it is almost nothing, just a shaking breath that accidentally caught a few letters on the way out.
For a second he shuts his eyes. For just one cut of time.
His head tips back the slightest amount, and he deflates. A breath of air leaves him in a hitching, rattling shudder, like he’s finally run out of things to hold onto.
He looks back at you and seems briefly at a loss. James Buchanan Barnes, man of closed doors and fixed outcomes, with no ready sentence in his hands.
It is strange and unnerving and it makes you talk more, bracing for him to yell and threaten and turn cold.
“And,” you whisper, voice wobbling and blundering around in your mouth, “there was a gun.“
You want to explain, want to urge that you didn’t mean to find it, didn’t mean to come across anything at all. You want him to know you would like to dump your eyes in a container of white paint so your vision is a blank canvas and you can color it with other pictures, but it’s too late, and your words already seem to break across him, differently.
He does not move at first. He almost flinches, but catches it halfway, as if his body forgot for a moment to be disciplined.
His eyes stay on you, and all that’s in there are things you’ve never seen in him before. Or in anyone, really. It is a stricken grief, resulting from the way every new piece of your fear is arriving inside him one by one and finding purchase.
He looks at you like he can see the exact route your mind took from one discovery to the next, and hates every mile of it.
“Baby, I—” he croaks, having to pause. Instead, he starts toward you again, even slower this time, palms open a little, perhaps meaning only to soothe, perhaps meaning only to be nearer, but simply more trepidation triggers in you before thought can intervene. “Please listen to me—”
Your gaze snags on the knife block.
The sleek black handles. The bright clean suggestion of defense. It’s without thought that you run to grab one.
It is graceless and frantic and you don’t brandish it like someone brave in a film. You don’t know how to do this well enough for that and you don’t have the nerve to think about it.
Your hand shakes around the handle almost immediately, and you pull it close to your chest, because fighting this vile man would be ludicrous considering who he is and who you are, knife or not, but you use it to protect yourself with the mere fact of holding something sharp. Hopeful that this thing will keep your horror from spilling out of your body altogether.
The blade catches the light and makes it meaner. You hate that you have done this. You hate more that you had to.
Bucky stops dead.
The whole room seems to stop with him.
His eyes go first to the knife, then back to your face, and what crosses his expression then is so nakedly agonizing it is difficult to bear.
Because he sees that you are not trying to threaten him, unlike how someone in danger might.
You are not foolish enough to think a kitchen knife turns you into his equal. You are holding it because your body needs one small fiction to survive on—the fiction that you are not entirely empty-handed in a room with a man who could ruin you if he chose to. The fiction that you still belong, in some tiny harrowed way, to yourself.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice cracks clean through the middle of the word.
You have never heard that happen to him before. Never heard his composure split like badly fired glass.
His stare stays locked on yours, but now there is no distance in it, no coolness, no stranger’s cadence. Just a visceral, human ache. “Hey,” he says again, softer, but it sounds so incredibly heavy. It’s the way you’d talk to someone who’s just woken up from a nightmare and doesn't know where they are yet. “I’m— I’m not going to hurt you.”
Your grip tightens. The knife trembles visibly. “Don’t come closer.”
He stops breathing for half a beat and nods slowly.
“Okay.” The word is a single rasp. “I won’t.” He swallows. You see the muscle move hard in his throat. “I won’t come any closer.”
You cannot stop shaking, no matter how hard you try, because a man with his power shouldn’t see you be so obviously afraid, but there is nothing you can do.
“Please believe me, sweetheart, when I say that I never intended to hurt you,” he swears, and there is no command in him now, none of that cold-sounding authority from a moment ago when he emptied the room with few syllables.
This is worse, in its own way. This undone version of him, this man trying to hold himself very still because the sight of you recoiling has clearly perturbed something structural inside him. “I have a thousand sins on my head, and it’s no use to claim otherwise now,” he speaks with a vulnerability in his tone that washes past you. “I’ve done a lot of things I can’t take back, but hurting you was never on the table. Okay? It was never even a possibility. You were supposed to be the only thing I didn’t ruin,” he ends with a lacerated wince.
You stare at him and have no idea how you can understand anything at all.
The knife handle bites into your palm. Your chest rises and falls too fast. The kitchen is suddenly too loud with all that humming of the refrigerator, the lights, the distant bloodstream of the mansion; and in the center of it all he stands facing you with that wrecked look in his eyes, as if your fear is not merely inconvenient to him but unbearable, and he’d rather be struck than watched this way by you.
And in a world that wasn't currently collapsing, maybe you’d actually care, maybe you’d actually notice how he would take a bullet to the chest just to stop you from flinching, but all you can think is that you are standing in the house of James Buchanan Barnes, with a knife against your own ribs as much as against him, and the man looking at you like heartbreak has found him at last is still the same man the city says should never be underestimated.
It’s so silent all of a sudden that the kitchen seems to be held in a trance. It feels as if there is a vacuum pressing against the walls and now the molecules of the room are terrified to touch the mess of what’s happening.
The last bit of help you could have possibly still leaned on due to your desperation has vanished, echoes of footsteps now pull back into the depths of this mansion.
The overheads feel hostile, throwing down a flat glare that skims over the stainless steel and floorboards with an inert eye.
And centered in that manufactured peace is him.
James Buchanan Barnes.
The name has already erupted once inside your chest, but it keeps echoing, reverberating through your bones in smaller aftershocks. It feels strange to attach it to the man standing in front of you, when his hands have mapped every part of you—right to the most intimate ones—you’ve come to recognize his voice even in half-sleep and his laugh once wound through the cage of your ribs, vibrating against the bone until you couldn't tell its rhythm from your own heartbeat.
It feels like a wronged ownership. It feels like a glitch, an error in the logic of the world, but who are you to find a way out of it. Surrounded by him, in a mansion that is now suddenly as big as the world itself.
But you see it now. And god, it’s so painfully clear. So agonizingly obvious.
You were delusional, you know that. It’s what hurts so terribly bad. You know exactly how this looks to anyone else. After all, this all started with you dating a guy for over a month and not even knowing his actual, legal name. But when you’re used to being nobody, a little bit of hyper-focused attention feels like a drug. He looked at you as if you were the only person in the room, and you would get this tight, anxious knot in your throat, thinking don’t ruin this. Asking for a last name or a background check felt like a quick way to feel high-maintenance, and you didn’t want to give him a reason to feel uncomfortable and walk away.
It was a habit born of pure insecurity, being so grateful for the crumbs of love that you don’t dare ask who’s baking the bread. He must have picked up on that on day one. He must have realized right away that as long as he kept making you feel special, you’d keep your mouth shut and let him stay hidden.
He used your loneliness, your blind spots. You were so desperately hoping to be seen, that you fell for the most obvious trap. And it’s your own fault, really. But it still makes you feel completely hollow, like someone scooped the air right out of your lungs with a cold spoon.
Now you have to live with the shame of that mistake.
Your jaw aches from clenching it, trying to swallow down the urge to throw up right there on the kitchen floor.
His presence alone seems to pull at the corners of the ceiling, dragging it down to squash you like a grape. He anchors the room to his foundation, consumes it with all he has, and tracks you with a pinpoint focus that has you shivering and sweating, because his gaze is treating the harsh thudding of your pulse as more vital than the massive, blood-stained kingdom currently cooling its heels on the other side of the door.
The roar in your ears turns outwards, seemingly engulfing the whole room with your panicked pulse. Your vision narrows down until the room stops spinning, and for the first time, you actually feel the air in the kitchen
And in the quiet, your awareness gives you the alarm that there is still something jarringly chilling resting just above your heart. It takes you a moment to realize it’s something physical. There is a weight there that now suddenly feels so deeply misplaced.
Your hand moves on its own, your fingers lifting toward your throat to find the source of that cold, sinister pressure.
The tips of your fingers brush pearls.
And for a moment, you stay frozen there, grazing the smooth curve of one luminous bead where the necklace drapes across your throat.
It once made you smile, had your shoulders drop in ease when you made contact with this present of Bucky. But it no longer feels like a present at all, it feels like a bribe, a hook, a trap because its ultimate purpose surely wasn’t meant as a gift but rather to restrict your freedom and keep you bound to him.
This necklace, these shiny pearls, they aren’t about you. Honestly, you don’t think anything is about you. It never was. It’s just a reflection of what he wants you to be, confining you in his version of your identity.
He manipulated you and stole you and wanted to make you believe you’re the luckiest damn girl in the world.
And you had been. But now you’re just the stupidest.
And you keep on being, because your mind just continues jumping back to the evening he gave it to you, how it felt so soft and intimate, something chosen carefully and fastened around your neck with that glint of pride that lived in Bucky’s eyes. And you want to cry and break down at the way he stood there in front of you so awkwardly with the luxurious velvet box in his hand like it was something far more serious than jewelry. The way his voice had gone rough when he said he saw them and thought of you.
And now, sitting against your collarbone all cold, these are no longer gems, but tiny hooks sinking deeper into your skin, reminding you with every little sting, that you walked into this prison willingly.
You let James Buchanan Barnes clasp it around your neck. The man whose name crawls across newspapers like a stain. The man whose stories carry blood and conspiracies and savagery in their wake.
Somehow you manage to close your fingers around the strand despite of their shakiness.
Across the kitchen, Bucky’s gaze drops to your hand the moment it moves.
The necklace feels impossibly smooth beneath your touch, each pearl round and shining like a row of innocent little moons.
A gift.
From a man you didn’t know.
Or maybe a man you knew too well, just not in the way the world did.
Your throat feels hot suddenly and you know it's the cursed pearls burning holes there, pressing into your pulse with every overwhelmed beat of your heart.
You cannot stand it.
Your fingers curl harder.
Bucky's gaze snaps up to your face, then quickly back to your hands, and then he goes still. But still in the way of an animal that sensed the crack of a branch in the forest. Every line of him tightens in subtle increments, his shoulders locking, his breathing halting so abruptly you see the pause ruffle through his chest.
He knows what your heart doesn’t yet.
His attention sharpens and his eyes grow wide. It almost seems like he’s about to move toward you.
“Hey—” he starts softly, though the word is unfinished, frail, fearing the direction your thoughts are taking.
But your brain is no longer interested in choosing to make decisions carefully.
The necklace feels oppressive, every inch of it tied to a truth you did not have when he first placed it there, and so you can’t think or react any differently.
Your hand jerks in one swift motion just as Bucky releases a desperate choking sound.
The strand snaps free from your neck with a sharp little noise, like a thread breaking under too much strain, and now the pearls explode outward from your hand and scatter across the kitchen floor like a sudden spill of tiny white stars. They strike the tile with a bright, haphazard clatter that echoes far too loudly in the empty room.
tik—tik—tik—tik—
Some bounce high, ricocheting against cabinet legs. Others roll wildly across the floor, spinning in spasmodic circles before coming to a stop beneath stainless steel counters and chair legs.
The sound fills the kitchen in poignant, crystalline bursts.
A rain of little impacts.
A beautiful mess.
For a second you don’t even breathe.
You just stare at them—those small, perfect pearls—rolling farther and farther away from each other, punctuating the heartbreak in the air.
Across from you, Bucky doesn’t move. Something is breaking across his face. His breath leaves him in a soft, stunned exhale, and all he can do is stare with his eyes unguarded. It startles you.
He takes a step back. Not a deliberate one. More like his body forgot the floor was there. His boot slides half a pace behind him as though the sound of those pearls hitting the tile physically pushed him away from you.
His mouth parts.
For a moment he looks like he cannot quite process what he just witnessed.
His eyes—those confident, storm-colored eyes that usually hold such controlled intensity—have widened in a way you have never seen before. It doesn’t seem to look like anger, or anything like it.
It looks like hurt. Pure, unhidden hurt.
His gaze falls to the floor, tracking the scattered pearls skittering across the kitchen tiles, watching them roll away from where you stand with that look in his eyes that says he never wished to see them destroyed.
Then his eyes return to you. Slowly. And the expression there is devastating.
Because it is not rage.
It is not even disappointment.
It is heartbreak so unexpected and unfiltered it seems to hollow his chest from the inside.
His jaw tightens as if he tries to speak, but no words come immediately. The muscles along his throat move with a hard swallow, his chest rising and falling once in a slow, unsteady breath.
You realize then that he is looking at your bare throat.
The place where the necklace used to rest, and he stares at the place with sullen eyes.
Then his eyes lift again, meeting yours, and they are still wide, still aching.
For the first time since you’ve known him, Bucky Barnes looks like a man who has just watched something precious fall apart in his hands and realized too late that he cannot gather the pieces fast enough to put it back together.
And in the bright, echoing kitchen, the last pearl finishes rolling.
Tick.
Then silence returns, and your dread turns harrowing and now Bucky doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands, which is such a small, irrational thing to notice in the middle of your terror and yet your mind notices it anyway, because this is a man who has always seemed like a structure that was built out of conviction, who has been a straight line for you to follow in your world of scribbles, a man who enters every room as though the room had the good sense to expect him, and now he stands before you with your fear pointed at him in the shape of a kitchen knife and looks, inarguably, like he has been shoved off-script and dropped into the crack that formed in his foundation and now he is walled in by the very bricks he laid.
His eyes stay on your face, then the knife, then your face again, careful, heartbroken, alert in that frighteningly intense way of his, and you feel yourself shiver as he is tracking every tremor in your fingers, every drag of your breath, every microscopic shift in your balance in case you bolt again or collapse or cut yourself by accident on the trembling edge of your own panic.
“What you think you know about me,” he starts, and his voice is lower now, roughened at the seams, “what you’ve heard… what people say, it isn’t the whole truth. It isn’t even most of it.”
You barely hear the words. They hit the air and fall uselessly to the floor. Because what else would a man like him say, standing in a cathedral-sized kitchen in a house full of people who obey him before he finishes speaking, after you found the gun and the tags and the name that can turn a city’s rumor mill rabid by itself?
No matter what he says, no matter that he looks so unbelievably shattered—the shape of him is wrong now. That is what your body keeps insisting on. Wrong in the doorway, wrong under these lights, wrong with that caution and that gentleness still trying to live in his face as if it is genuine. You cannot make him fit into one meaning anymore. He is split down the middle in your mind—tender and terrible, gentle and catastrophic—and the fracture is making noise inside you.
He takes a breath, slow, as if he is trying not to startle you even with the sound of his lungs working. “I know how this looks.”
A cough breaks in your throat, or maybe it's a huff or a wet laugh, or whatever, but it hurts coming up and out of your throat. Your hand shakes so badly the knife glints in nervous little flashes. “You used me.”
The sentence leaves you wheezy and small and much too true-feeling inside your own head. But they are out, and you take a whimpering breath, and two tears fall. They don’t arrive elegantly, and they sure as hell don’t spill subtly. They feel hot and you feel humiliated and betrayed, so deeply betrayed, and you hate that they are coming in front of him, giving him the satisfaction because your body is not able to choose a fight, to give you steel and armor and an exit and a miracle. All it can provide you with is dread and tears, and a terribly shaking kitchen knife in your unpractical hands. Your whole body has become an argument against calm and there is nothing you can do.
His face changes so sharply it is almost like watching a flame twist drastically in wind.
“No,” he gets out quickly, and his voice trips over itself. It is denial stripped to the bone. Pure and cruel because he’s genuinely the greatest actor on earth. “No,” he chokes out again, softer and somehow more desperate. “No, no, I— It's not— I never—” He swallows, the line of his throat moving hard. He looks like he is about to walk barefoot through broken glass without letting you see the blood. “You matter to me. You— God, shit, that doesn’t even come close to—”
“Stop,” you whimper while a fresh tear slips down. You shake your head because the words feel obscene now, feel almost insulting in their tenderness, like someone laying roses on a crime scene.
“I’m not pretending.”
“Stop.”
His jaw flexes. He looks toward the ceiling for half a second, and it seems like he is trying to gather language before it deserts him entirely, and when his gaze comes back to you there is something naked in it, something grim and pleading and painfully real. He seems to grope for something that keeps him standing.
“I wanted to tell you,” he despairs, voice scratchy. “I was going to.”
You stare at him through your blurred vision. Every instinct in you rejects the sentence on impact. It sounds nonsensical. The knife quivers against your chest with each breath you are somehow able to take, but they are shuddering.
“When?” you choke out. “After what? After I was stupid enough? After I—”
“No.” He takes a step before remembering himself and stopping immediately, hands opening at his sides. “No. When it was safe.”
The word safe almost makes you laugh, except there is nothing funny left in you.
He hears how deranged it sounds in this room, and grief moves across his face in one dark, swift shadow. “Listen to me,” he presses, and his voice cracks, stripped of that expensive control he wears so well. “I know this life is ugly from the outside. I know what my name sounds like to people. I know what kind of stories get told. I knew if I handed you all of it too soon, all at once, you’d run before you ever had the chance to know what was real.”
Your tears keep coming and you don’t have it in you to wipe them away. You fear your heart won’t ever be able to unclench again after this day. If you even make it out of here. “So you thought you’d just let me” —fall in love first— “into your life the way you did?”
He closes his eyes, and you know the sentence hit exactly where it meant to. When he looks at you again there is nothing smooth or seamless about him, and you have never seen him this way. Because you have never really known him. He is no longer buttoned-up and bulletproof. He honestly looks about ready to be hit in the heart one final, fatal time. “I thought I would give you time,” he supplicates quietly, voice husky. “I thought I would let you know me before the rest of it ruined everything.” The breath that follows his words sounds full of sorrow and a deeply seated regret. “Which it seems like it has.”
Yes, it has. Yes, he ruined it. But would you have felt any other way if you found out another way? In another setting, maybe while you were tangled in the sheets together, or while he was holding your hands? You don’t know because it didn’t happen that way and you found out the way you did and now the world is upside down and all wrong-angled, and your mind is spinning in a room with no corners, completely unanchored by a lie you never saw coming, or maybe you have, because a guy like him couldn’t ever want a girl like you, and perhaps first and foremost you’re just mad at yourself.
Your throat has gone tight with crying, with fear, with the dizzying effort of keeping your body upright when your whole nervous system is trying to flee in eight directions at once. He sees you struggling and looks halfway to moving again, then stops himself so hard the restraint shows all over him.
“I’m a patient man,” he keeps going, and you just want to run past him, out of this hell. You don’t hear how there is no pride in his voice, no menace, just a worn sort of honesty, as if this is the one truth he can still offer without it breaking on impact. “I would have waited. As long as I needed to. I was waiting for the right moment, for when you felt safe with me, for when I knew you wouldn’t hear my name and only hear every lie this city tells itself at night.” His voice lowers further. “For when you loved me enough to at least stay in the room while I explained.”
You blink at him as if he has said something in a language your body no longer speaks.
And then, because this nightmare apparently still has room to worsen, he says, very softly, “Because I love you.”
All you can do is stare at this stranger, and it feels like you are looking at him through a broken window.
It is not the first time he has said it, not at all, and you had loved how he had no shame in telling you, how he pressed those very words into your skin night after night, even this early into your relationship.
Gosh, you had cherished it, fallen deeper for him because of it, and now you know it's all been part of his manipulation. So what else should it be now. But at the same time—why should he still be saying it? How can he still say that? How can he say that now, after all of this, after you know who he is, after the room has filled with the bomb of revelation? What kind of man says I love you while being the very thing you are trying to escape from?
You don’t understand him. You have no clue about who this man is and it is making your hands sweat around the handle. You don’t understand how his eyes can look this shattered, how his voice can sound this human, how his face can hold this much pain and still belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
The knife is still trembling against your chest. Your arm aches from holding it so tightly. The tears keep slipping down no matter how furiously you blink. He stands there with grief in his eyes and power in every line of his body, and both things are true at once, and both things are hurting worse because no single version of him will stay still long enough to be hated cleanly.
“I was going to ease you into it,” he explains achingly, as if confession has broken loose now and cannot be coaxed back in. “Slowly. Over time. I was going to tell you what I could, when I could, and let you decide what to do with it piece by piece. I was never going to throw you into the deep end and watch you drown in it.” His throat works. “Y/n, I’m so fucking sorry you had to find out like this.”
But you are not really listening anymore. Or rather, you hear every word and none of them settle. They clatter against your panic and bounce off immediately only to land in a repressed corner of your mind.
Because maybe he means them. Maybe that is the tragedy of it. Maybe he means every single inconceivable word. But meaning them does not open the door. Meaning them does not make this house less of a trap or his name less of a threat or your pulse any less palpitating in your throat. Meaning them does not undo the gun, the tags, the scathingly smooth way everyone in this place disappears when he tells them to. Meaning them does not turn James Buchanan Barnes back into only Bucky, back into the man whose shirt you wanted to pull on because it smelled like him.
All you need now is a way out.
You don’t want justice, or answers, or even the damn truth. You just want a way out of this. You want to get the hell away from him and everything that smells and looks like him. And the room starts reorganizing itself around that instinct. The service door behind him. The hallway to the left. The distance to the far counter. Whether he is standing on the balls of his feet or flat. Whether the island might slow him for a second. Whether dropping the knife would help or harm you. Whether there is any point at all in planning when this is his house, his kingdom, his maze, and you are just a girl crying in the center of it with shaking hands and nowhere good to go.
He sees your eyes move and something in his face folds inward with understanding, with woe, with the excruciating knowledge that while he is pouring his heart out in rough little pieces, all you are doing is looking for exits. He looks completely emptied out, as if his ribs had been pried open and the only soft part of him had been torn away.
“Baby—” And now he just sounds pleading. But he doesn’t get the chance to keep on going with his drama.
The kitchen ignites with noise before you even understand what you are hearing. There was just you with your messy breathing and Bucky standing a few feet away with that awfully gutted look on his face and then the door slams open so hard the plaster cracks and the sound ricochets against your nervous system.
A crowd of men comes flooding through the opening, like a breach in a dam, so fast and threatening and all of them primed for dirtier work than anyone should ever have to do. The floor shudders under their hard slam of boots. Nobody hesitates and nobody asks questions. They all just move on some sick instinct, weapons out and raised in the space of a single heartbeat.
And now all of them are pointed at you.
The sound that hitches in your throat is not at all dignified or brave. You wish you could stare at the end of your life with at least a small sense of bravery, but it doesn’t seem like it. Every weapon these uniformed men hold is fixed on your ribs, your throat, your eyes, and the paring knife you are gripping feels pathetic. It is a useless piece of household metal against a wall of black iron, against men who don’t care that you are small and fearful.
Even so, your knuckles go numb around the handle from how hard you are gripping it. Your fingers lock up, your skin flashing from freezing cold to scorching hot while your heart thrashes against your ribs.
You think, irrationally, that this is how it happens then. There is no big speech, no lightning strike from the sky. It is just going to happen here on the linoleum, next to a bowl of apples on the counter, and a row of clean water glasses that are catching the light of the kitchen while strangers decide to put bullets in you.
Bucky pivots.
It happens so quickly it feels supernatural, like a weather change, like the room altering under the weight of him. He steps in front of you without quite blocking you, but enough that every single man in that doorway seems to remember all at once who exactly they have just disobeyed.
His expression does not merely harden; it shears. Whatever softness had remained in his face a moment ago is gone so completely it is frightening, scraped away until all that remains is authority in its most lethal form.
You feel fused to the counter behind you. You wish you would be.
He fixes his stare on his men and his eyes become glacial, pale and freezing, incandescent with a fury that somehow feels far more menacing than an outburst. He speaks, and the volume is so low that the room has to go completely breathless to catch it.
“Guns down.”
The response isn’t fast enough. No one moves quickly enough. One of the guards hesitates—just a fraction, just long enough to die for it in any other circumstance—and Bucky’s gaze lands on him so heavily, it’s as if he is deciding where to leave the body.
“I said,” he repeats, and his voice comes out with a rough friction, stripped of any emotion except the promise to do harm, “if any one of you ever points a weapon at my girl again, I’ll put you in the ground myself and make sure nobody bothers digging you back up. Do you understand me?”
His words are deadly. It doesn’t even sound like he’s acting at all, he just sounds absolutely lethal. He talks as though he has already buried people before and wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.
Around you, the momentum of the raid falters. The guards look genuinely unnerved, expressions switching so quickly between shame, panic, and obedience in ugly little flashes. Guns lower and now point toward the floorboards. A muted apology gets muttered into the silence and some of them take a step back. But it is too late, far too late, because the last thread inside you has already snapped, and your body no longer cares about reason.
You run.
There is no time for anything else; you simply hurl yourself at the nearest gap in the room, toward the delusive hope of open space, of slipping between bodies, of somehow becoming smoke, becoming speed, becoming anything but this cornered and shaking thing inside your own skin.
You aim for the narrow corridor between Bucky and the island counter, convinced by sheer panic that if you can just get past him this once, just this once, the house might cleft and let you go. Your shoulder twists, your breath catches, your feet slip against tile and then catch again, and the world blurs into motion and noise and the blood-bright animal need to escape.
But Bucky is faster.
His arms hook around your waist in one brutal, seamless movement, and it yanks you backward before you’ve even made it past his shoulder. Suddenly you are no longer running, your feet lose the air, leaving you floating for half a heartbeat, before you are driven hard into the breadth and heat of his chest.
The cry you let out this time actually tears your throat. You thrash on instinct, your body fighting him with the full deranged force of your mind freaking out, and somewhere in that struggle your hand jerks.
The knife you have been using as a means of senseless protection, hits resistance. It slides cleanly, sinking into skin and it makes you gasp sharply, your lungs suddenly jamming. It’s not your skin.
The blade has opened a shallow red line across his forearm.
And that’s gotta be it. You’re now totally and completely fucked.
The knife drops from your hand and clatters to the floor.
For one aghast second you stare at the bead of red welling against his skin, bright as a neon sign, and horror crashes through you so adamantly it almost eclipses your fear.
But Bucky does not let go. He does not even flinch properly or draw back his arms. His wounded arm stiffens only enough to keep you from pitching forward, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, not pinning now so much as containing, as if he is trying to physically keep something from breaking apart right there in his grip.
He seemingly is completely blind to his own bleeding skin, as if the knife you were holding was never a danger to his life and only a threat to yours. Even with his blood on the floorboards, his only instinct is to pull you deeper into his chest.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he calls, and the transformation in his voice makes your head spin, because the man who just threatened death into a roomful of armed soldiers is gone again, folded away, leaving only this hoarse, pleading tenderness that feels almost more agonizing. His mouth is at your temple, right at your hairline, his breath gasping against your skin. “Baby, baby, stop. Please—please, don’t do this, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
You fight him anyway because your body refuses to do anything else. Your hands shove uselessly at his chest, your shoulders wrench, your whole body convulses with the effort of getting free. But he is built like a locked gate, and every single push only burns through the last of your energy. Tears pour hot and shamefully down your face. Your lungs burn. The room swims at the edges. Somewhere nearby, boots shuffle, and Bucky snarls over your head without releasing you.
“Out.”
It is one word, but every person in the kitchen obeys it instantly. You hear the kitchen staff backing away, hear the door open and shut, feel the room empty until there is no one left but you and him and the sound of your own sobbing.
Bucky’s hold eases just a fraction, softening the pressure so you can actually draw in air even if inhaling right now feels like swallowing water. He presses his cheek against your hair for one heavy second, and when he speaks again his voice is breaking in places you have never heard it break before.
“Listen to me,” he murmurs, each word roughened by strain, by remorse, by something that sounds so heartbreakingly sincere you almost hate him for it. “Hear me out, sweetheart, please. I got you. I got you. Nobody’s gonna touch you, nobody’s gonna lay a hand on you. I won’t! I would never. You hear me? You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word is a total deformity. It is so grotesque in this moment you could probably laugh, except it comes out as a broken cry instead.
You feel the way his body tenses around the sound, how it seems to travel straight through him with his heart as the target. He bows his head, his lips brushing your temple by accident or desperation, you cannot tell which.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and now there is nothing controlled left in him, no command, no careful poise, only a man fraying in real time. “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry. I wanted you to know, doll, I did, just—not like this. Fuck, not like this. You mean everything to me. You gotta believe that. You are everything.”
You shake your head against his chest, small and uncoordinated, feeling spent. You do not know whether you are denying him, begging him, or simply coming apart. His shirt is damp beneath your face now, whether from your tears or the sweat chilled over your skin or the blood from his arm, whatever it is, it feels symbolic somehow—one more blurred line in a night made of them.
“I wasn’t gonna let anybody hurt you,” he whispers, and even that seems to drag through his throat, hitting the walls of it. “Nobody would ever be able to hurt you. Especially me, my love, especially me! I swear to God.” His forehead grinds into yours until you can taste the heat of his skin. “I’m still the same guy who kissed you this morning. I don't care if I’m a monster to the rest of the world, but not to you, sweetheart, please not to you. I would never—god, I would cut my own hands off before I ever used them to hurt you. You have to believe me, darling, please!”
But your body no longer knows the language of swearing, or soothing, or reason. Your muscles don’t translate his pleading into safety. Your body only knows that he is stronger than you, and that the arms holding you are the same arms that can dismantle a life without raising his pulse. The palm mapped so carefully across the curve of your head is the exact same hand that commands a firing squad, directs the local precincts, and seals fates with a slight tilt of his chin.
Every touch from him now delivers a repulsive duality—a rescue that feels like an arrest, a stroke that resembles a chokehold, an overwhelming affection that wears the exact outline of a cell.
You can feel how easy this is for him, how negligible his effort is in keeping you contained even while he tries his best to appear harmless. That insulting fact finally starves out the last bit of resistance left in your veins. Your nervous system runs out of fuel, leaving your body to go completely toothless against his chest, without actually surrendering or any returning trust. Your body is simply done.
Your fingers drop their useless leverage against his chest, your joints go limp and your knees refuse to carry your weight anymore.
You sag in his hold all at once. The sobs keep coming, but weaker now, thinning out, scraping instead of breaking. Bucky feels the change immediately. His grip loosens just enough to become support instead of restraint, his palm rubbing between your shoulder blades in one of those soothing motions you used to love so much and it makes your chest ache with a fresh wave of grief.
“That’s it,” he coos, though his voice sounds completely mangled by the words. “That’s it, honey. I know. I know.”
You don’t know what he means by that. You’re not sure he does either. Perhaps he simply recognizes that your stamina has bottomed out, that even the sharpest panic has its boundaries, and that the rush of survival instincts always burns hot and fast, leaving behind this full-body collapse.
He holds your dead weight upright anyway. He keeps murmuring into your hair but it doesn’t glue your broken pieces back together or erase the reality of what he is, what this fortress hides, and what you stumbled into. His sliced arm stays locked around your waist. You can feel the sticky warmth of his blood soaking through your clothes. It is startlingly human, and it should probably make him look less like a monster, the simple fact that he can bleed. But it makes every detail about your situation so real and dreadful.
When your body finally ceases its rebellion entirely, it isn't an act of submission. It is pure depletion.
And Bucky, keeping you pinned against the wall of his chest, seems to grasp that exhaustion better than anyone else could. His lungs expand and contract in uneven hitching motions. He drops his chin heavily onto the crown of your head. He closes you in not like a conqueror taking a prize but like a man trying, too late, to keep a catastrophe from widening under his hands.
Beyond the kitchen threshold, the entire estate drops into a dead, listening sort of silence, as if the plaster and timber have cocked an ear to the room.
He keeps holding you as if you are something he has no right to touch anymore and still cannot seem to make himself release, and it’s crazy that even like this, even with your body rigid from all the things you have learned too quickly and too late, he is still somehow heartbreakingly careful, his hand spread wide and warm between your shoulder blades, his hold immovable but never bruising, his mouth close to your temple as though he cannot bear to put distance between you if distance means losing you for good.
It is all just so utterly confusing because this is not entirely what you had expected would happen.
“The way you looked at me,” he continues, and his voice comes out rough as gravel dragged through water, ruined by restraint, by panic, by the sheer effort of trying not to frighten you further with the depth of what is in him. He does not sound like the man in the hallway, not like the man who commands rooms into silence with a glance, not like the man whose name can make other people blanch and step backward and say yes, sir, with their pulse all up in their throats. He sounds flayed open. He sounds like the sight of your fear has gone into him like shrapnel and lodged somewhere vital. “The way you looked at me in there—” He stops, breathes in shallowly, like he has run straight into a blade and is trying not to lean on it harder. “Christ. I’ve taken bullets that didn’t hit like that. To have you look at me like I’m something you need to survive.”
Your face is turned into his chest, your tears soaking through the expensive dark fabric of his shirt, and still your whole body is listening against your will, because his voice is all around you now, low and urgent and splintering in places that make something cold move through you.
His hand slides back up the back of your head, not forcing, only cradling, his fingers threading carefully into your hair as though the gesture itself aches. When he speaks again, there is something almost disbelieving in him, some stunned grief that does not seem feigned, cannot possibly be feigned for this long without becoming madness.
“If I could do it over, I would do every goddamn thing different,” he breathes brokenhearted. “Every part of it. I would tell you sooner. I’d tell you cleaner. Shit, I should’ve just told you. I should’ve given it to you straight before it got this messy and before you had to figure it out by yourself and piece me together out of all the worst parts with nobody there to shield you. I would have died before I let it happen like this. I swear.” He swallows hard enough that you feel it where your cheek presses near his sternum.
The kitchen is too bright and everything is stinging so harshly with those clean counters, the severe gleam of copper pans above the island, the neat little arrangement of knives in their block where one slot is now empty, the overhead lights turning everything brutally visible.
There is nowhere for your agony to hide. It shivers right out in the open, lives in the tightness of your lungs and the salt on your mouth, and the fact that every soft word from him only makes the unreality of this more baffling. Because he sounds sincere. He sounds devastated. He sounds like a man speaking over the body of something precious he helped kill.
He says all of this like he’s offering you his throat, while all around you the evidence of his power still glints and twinkles from every glazed surface, every distant footstep, every forced silence in a house built to keep his secrets and carry out his will.
He is talking with all the gentleness he has. He is nearly breaking with it. And still, inside you, fear sits and it pants and it is unconvinced, because love does not make a cage less locked simply because the hands closing it are shaking.
You make a small sound then—not a word, not even close, just some thin and wrecked little fracture of breath—and he tightens around you reflexively, then instantly checks himself, as if terrified you will read force into even that involuntary movement.
His next words come faster, crowding each other, not panicked exactly but pressed by urgency, by the sense that you are slipping through his hands even while he is still physically holding you.
“I know what I am.” He breaks off again, and this time you feel the tremor that runs through him. “I know what kind of man I’ve been, what people say about me, what they’re right about. I know exactly what it looks like from where you’re standing.” His voice goes raw. “But, darling, I never meant for you to be afraid of me. This was never supposed to happen.”
The words enter you but you just don’t know where to store them. There is something so naked in the way he says them that your mind keeps tripping over it, keeps trying and failing to fit it beside the other truth—the guns, the guards, the coldness in his authority, the name that belongs in whispers, the empire standing tall all around you in all its obedience. Or maybe it’s just loyalty. Respect? What even is it?
It’s hard to acknowledge that he still sounds like himself. James or Bucky, the man who kissed sleep into your skin and tucked blankets around your legs and pressed absent-minded kisses to your shoulder while reading beside you in bed still exists inside this other, larger, more terrible man. He has not vanished cleanly enough to make your fear simple. You give a small whimper.
“I was selfish,” he rasps, and now the confession lands without defense. “That’s the truth. I was selfish as hell. Because I wanted you anyway. I wanted you even knowing I should’ve stayed away from you. I know I should’ve left you out of all this. A girl like you deserves something clean and safe, and I’m neither of those things. I knew that. Fuck, I knew that. And it’s been killing me. I let myself have you and it’s been so fucking selfish.”
His breath hitches around the last word, and the grief in it is so unexpectedly torturous it almost makes you nauseous. His forehead lowers for a second against your hair, and he scarily looks so weary, suddenly too full of feeling to carry it elegantly.
“Because you are...” He exhales a broken laugh with no amusement in it whatsoever. “Christ, sweetheart, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You couldn’t ever imagine what you walking into my life did to it.”
Your eyes squeeze shut and fresh tears slip out anyway. Somewhere inside you, some tired and furious part wants to scream at him for speaking like this now, for laying tenderness over terror as if one can cancel the other out, as if love—even if it is love, even if it is real and not just another instrument in his alluring hands—can unmake what you know. But before you can push any of that into sound, he keeps going, quieter, the words drawn so close to your skin they seem less spoken than confessed into it.
“If you want to go,” he states, and there is a pause before it, the kind that tells you the sentence is costing him blood, “I’ll let you go.”
Your breath snags. You don’t trust it nor believe it instantly, but even imagining the words coming out of him feels like a tectonic event, a mountain bowing. He does not release you yet, but his body changes with the promise, some iron set inside him going rigid with the effort of saying it and meaning it.
“I will,” he says, with more force now, as if he knows you don’t believe him and cannot bear that either. “If that’s what you want, I will. I’m not gonna keep you somewhere you don’t wanna be. I’m not gonna turn into that for you. But, baby—” and here his voice gives way altogether, drops into something so human and stripped down it hardly seems to belong to the same man who froze a room full of armed guards with one look, “—I am begging you not to make that choice before you hear me. I am begging you. Stay this one night, give me one chance to explain it all to you, to answer every possible question you could have. One chance to do this right, even if I already did it all wrong.”
Begging. The word would sound absurd from almost any other man. From him, it sounds cataclysmic. His hand shakes at the back of your head before steadying, his chest rises too sharply under your cheek, and he continues speaking as if silence might kill him.
“I love you too much to let this be the end of it if there’s anything I can do to stop it,” he croaks. “Too much to let you walk out of here thinking none of it was real. It was real. Every second of it was real. Me wanting you, loving you, worrying about you, making room for you in my life in ways I never made room for anybody—none of that was a lie. The only lie was thinking I could hold both worlds apart long enough to protect you from what I am. That was the lie. That was my arrogance. My mistake.”
The mansion remains hushed in that eerie, cathedral-like way that comes after a disturbance, as if everyone occupying this huge mansion is pretending not to hear the aftershocks.
But here in the kitchen, everything feels narrowed to his voice and your breathing and the blood drying on his forearm and the fact that he is speaking to you like a man on his knees, even if he is still standing, even if his arms are still around you, even if his kind of desperation does not know how to unclench fully.
There is a daunting sincerity in him now, not because it is soft but because it is not. Because it is fierce. Because even his tenderness carries the shape of obsession, of decision, of something chosen with his whole irreversible heart.
What can you possible answer here. What can you possibly think.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.” He sounds so full of conviction. Technically, the words are quiet, but there is a hard core somewhere in his tone, and it glows fiercely. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again. To prove this to you. To earn back one inch of your trust. I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t care what you ask for, I don’t care what I have to lay down at your feet. I’ll do it. I will.” He takes a beat and the next words are so low you almost miss them. “I know I don’t deserve another chance and you have all the best reasons to run, but I’m asking for it anyway, Y/n.“
At that, finally, he leans back just enough to look at you. It’s not much, but the hand at the back of your head can guide your face up with painful gentleness, giving you every opening to pull away if you need to, though you are too wrung out now to do much except tremble.
His eyes find yours and stay there, and the sight of his face nearly brings you to your knees all over again. There is no coldness in him. No cruelty. No mockery. Only a kind of bereft intensity, a ravaged devotion, and beneath it the severe understanding that he is seeing himself reflected in your fear and cannot survive the image.
The whole fact of how broken he sounds starts to mess with your head. It cracks the armor of your panic, if only just a little bit. You’re trying to hate him. Because, honestly, you want to. You want the fear to be this insurmountable wall between you, but his voice keeps crumbling pieces of it.
The worst part is that you can’t just flick a switch and stop loving the guy you were tangled up with this morning. You fell for him so fast, so completely, because his version of happy felt like the safest place on earth. But with all those shocking revelations, that same love feels like a trapdoor that just dropped you into a cellar, and you are so angry at your own heart for still wanting him to hold you.
Underneath the exhaustion, there is a nauseating doubt starting to rot everything you remember about the last few weeks, and you really don’t need your mind going that far, but it does. You start wondering if you ever actually loved him, or if you were just hooked on the way he looked at you.
He treated you like you were the only important thing in the world, and you just hung off that affection, soaking up the protective way he took care of you. Even though he’s standing here right now, bleeding and hollowed out, swearing that every single touch was real, how can you ever be sure? Every memory you have is suddenly poisoned by the thought that it was just a beautifully built illusion, and the whole thing makes you feel completely seasick.
It’s just too much to handle all at once. Your brain is trying to hold two completely different men in the same space—the gentle guy who tucked the blankets around your feet in the dark, and the boss who froze a kitchen full of killers with one word. They are both real. They are both right here in front of you, and the fact that he isn't a cartoon villain makes it a hundred times worse.
If he were just a monster, you could run. But he’s a monster who tells you he loves you with this gut-wrenching, unyielding honesty, and looking at his ruined face, all your willpower just turns to mush.
“I should have asked more questions,” you whisper, and still, your voice breaks, the words tumbling out of you like loose gravel. You aren’t trying to be eloquent anymore, you are just trying to get the noise out of your head before it chokes you. “From the start, I— When you wouldn’t tell me things. I— I don't know, I was scared, I guess.”
Your fingers tighten into the expensive wool of his lapels just to keep your knees from giving out. Letting this mob boss know about your fears is probably a bad idea. But your life consists of you making bad decisions and so your mouth keeps opening. “I think I just liked the way you were to me too much to risk messing it up.”
The words drag themselves out of you like they do not want to be born, like each one has to force its way through the knot in your throat and the salt on your tongue and the simple, mind-numbing fact that nothing in you knows where to place anything anymore—not him, not yourself, not the last weeks, not the hands that held you so tenderly and the empire those same hands command with a flick of the wrist.
Bucky’s gaze is piercing as he looks down at you, listening with his breath visibly held.
“But I— I still don’t understand. I think.“ Your voice comes thin at first, scraped nearly transparent by crying, but it sharpens on pain the way a blade sharpens on a whetstone. “I just— I saw this gun, and—,” you blur out, the memory making your heart do that awful stutter against your ribs again while Bucky nearly flinches. His eyes go wide, pupils shrinking until they look like two dark pinpricks. “It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. I was just— you told me to grab a shirt of yours but I couldn’t reach up your wardrobe and so I was just going to go grab the shirt you've been wearing, but your jacket was there and then it just fell out. And I— I completely lost my mind because I realized I didn’t actually know anything about you, and I’ve been so stupid, and I’m really not good at this. I'm not good at talking things out or figuring out the right things to say. It’s just— this is so much to take in.”
Bucky´s chest hitches, a rough, dry stutter or air that sounds like he just took a fist to the solar plexus. His face looks almost unrecognizable with the pain plastered on it. You feel his hands tremble against you and he slowly takes them away, putting himself at a small distance to perhaps give you some space. His palms stay open, as do his eyes. He looks entirely unhinged by the clumsiness of his own life seeping into yours.
How could anyone understand how a man can kiss your forehead like a saint and still have blood and fear braided into his name. It’s so hard to understand how someone can look at you the way he is looking at you now—like you are both miracle and mortal wound—and still have lied, still have omitted, still have arranged the world around you so skillfully that you walked through it unknowing, barefoot and bright-hearted, straight into the center of his hidden life.
You do not understand what parts were real and what parts were merely curated, and worst of all, there is a terrible little splinter of you that already suspects the answer is not clean enough to save you. That some unbearable amount of it was real.
Your mouth trembles and you know that he can see it.
“You lied to me,” you sob, and although you mean for it to, it doesn’t sound like a weapon you’re throwing at him. It just sounds sad. “You made it so easy. I didn’t even think about it. I just— I just woke up every day and trusted the way you looked at me. And the whole time, I didn’t even know you.”
You look down at his chest so you can stop having to meet those devastatingly sunken eyes. “You let me fall in love with you not knowing who you were.” Your sentence has a shape now, the grief in you finally managing to find a spine. But you still can’t make your words sound all that accusing. Because you got yourself into this situation. You’re supposed to be furious at yourself first.
You haven’t used the word love before. You just dropped it, being the first time it cleared your teeth and the timing of it feels completely disastrous.
And Bucky suddenly undergoes a drastic freeze, as if his nervous system has been struck by lightning. He seems to tip back just a tiny bit but stays in your orbit. He stares down at you, his mouth parted, his chest stalling on an intake of air that he forgets to let back out.
The fact that you love him—and that you are saying it right now, while covered with dread and shivering nearly against his chest—seems to completely break his brain.
There is a dark heat flooding his face, his jaw tight enough to snap a tooth. He looks agonizingly vulnerable like this, the dangerous mob boss utterly gutted by four letters. His fingers twitch where they are now hovering near your neck, desperately wanting to bury themselves in your hair and pull you back into his skin, but he forces his hands down to his sides, his knuckles trembling against his tailored trousers.
“You…,” he starts, eyes burning with a starved intensity that makes the air in the kitchen feel boiling hot. He swallows loudly, taking a moment, staring out into some space behind you, and switching focus back to you. “Don’t call yourself stupid,” he goes on, voice dropping into a rasp that shakes with the failure of his own arrogance. “None of what you told me and none of what you felt makes you stupid.”
His face leans closer to yours and somehow you only shrink back a tiny bit, not really at all. You can feel the wavering rhythm of his breath against your lips. He looks thoroughly undone by his own greed, stuck in the realization that he won the only thing he ever wanted, right at the exact moment he stopped being the man who holds you in the dark and turned into the reason you’re afraid of the dark.
“The love was real,” he sounds so convinced. His face is breaking, but his voice is not. He knows what he is saying. “Every single second of it was real. I am the one who ruined it. But what I feel, and what we have, that isn’t a lie. I swear to you on my life, it was never a lie.” His eyes close briefly, and it looks like he is losing his footing somewhere internal. “I know how it feels from where you’re standing. But I wasn’t playing some game with you. I wasn’t trying to—” He drags a hand over his face, and for an instant he looks older than you have ever seen him, not in years but in burden, in wear. “I wanted more time. That was my sin in it. I wanted time. I wanted to tell you in a way that didn’t make you look at me like this.”
Like this.
The phrase feels unkind. Because yes—there it is again, the damn nucleus of the whole thing. The way your eyes have changed on him. The way he has noticed every flicker of fear in you as if each one were a cut and he keeps taking your terror not as an insult to his pride but as an injury to something much more private and much more vulnerable. And that, more than any fake excuse could have, is so hard to process. 
Because men who only know cruelty do not usually grieve like this over being feared by the woman they supposedly love. Men who are only monstrous do not usually look half-unmade by it.
You don’t want that thought, you honestly don’t, but it does arrive.
Because he has not hurt you. He hasn’t done a single thing to hurt you, and that makes him so much more complicated at the exact moment you most need him to stay simple.
He has had a thousand opportunities by now to become the thing you are bracing against. In the hallway. In the office. In the kitchen. When you ran. When you fought. When you took the knife. When you cut him. At every turn, there has been room for rage, for punishment, for the kind of retaliatory violence your frightened mind keeps expecting from a man like him, and instead he has done nothing but hold himself on a brutal leash, speak softly, plead, bleed, look at you as if your fear is the one thing in this world he has no defenses against.
And it makes you weaker.
Because fear is easier when it is clean. Outrage is easier when there are no counterweights. But now your thoughts begin to buckle under the strain of contradiction, and you feel yourself growing tired in some deeper way, not merely from running or crying or panic, but from the effort of sustaining one total version of him against the evidence of another.
The story you are trying to tell yourself—that he is simply bad, simply dangerous, simply false—keeps snagging on the memory of his hands shaking when he begged, on the way he threw his men out for aiming guns at you, on the heartache in his face now, open and unarmored and miserable with not knowing how to reach you.
None of it erases anything, how could it this fast, but still it matters, and still some fatal hope flares.
Your lungs are burning. You become dimly aware that your body is leaning, not exactly by choice, but because exhaustion is making choices for you now. The kitchen feels too bright and too far away at the same time. Your fingers feel chilled, your knees unreliable, your heart still overworked from all that horror. Even your anger is beginning to lose its clean edges, dissolving into something wetter and more helpless.
“I don’t know what to do,” you admit, and there is no strength in it at all.
The sentence is barely more than breath, but it changes him instantly, makes his misery seem softer, as if your confusion pains him almost as much as your fear did. His gaze searches your face carefully, greedily, looking for any sign that you have not vanished completely from him.
“You don’t have to know right now,” he comforts, and this time his voice is gentler still, worn down to the most tender parts of his body. “You don’t have to decide anything this second. I know I dropped all of this on you in the worst possible way. I know you’re overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed. The word is so pitifully insufficient you want to cry some more, but the sound catches and turns to another shivery exhale instead.
Overwhelmed is a rainstorm. A bad day. A missed train. This is seismic. This is having the floor beneath your life cleave open and discovering it was built over a fault line all along.
Still, you know what he means.
Because beneath all the fear, and the betrayal and the urgent need to flee, there is now also this leaden, disorienting fatigue, this collapse of certainty.
You cannot keep all your alarms ringing at once forever. The body is not made for it. At some point even terror begins to sag under its own weight, and in that sagging comes the most dangerous thing of all. Maybe not trust or forgiveness yet, but confusion. A human confusion. The realization that if he truly meant to destroy you, perhaps he would have done it already. That if cruelty were the point, he has passed up too many easy chances. That whatever else he is—and God, he is still intimidating, still hidden, still a man with too much power and too many locked rooms in his life—his feelings for you do not look counterfeit. They look catastrophic. They look real enough to have ruined him too.
He had every opportunity to end this argument with force, not even making his hands dirty in a physical sense. But he didn’t, and that roughened sincerity that seems so deeply wounded keeps gnawing at all the things you thought you found out about this man, the stereotype you made him out to be. It makes a guilty stone drop into your belly and land with damaging intentions.
And you do not know what to do with all this honesty and realness, when real arrives dressed as the very thing you were trying to escape.
But you have to acknowledge that your lack of strength is not the only reason why you have stopped fighting him, stopped trying to get away.
Bucky seems to read some fragment of this in your face, because he does not press harder. He does not crowd you with arguments. He simply stays where he is, close enough for warmth, far enough now that his care has space to breathe. His injured arm hangs at his side, blood drying in a dark seam along his skin, ignored. His other hand lifts as if to touch your cheek, then stops halfway and falls again when he sees the flicker in your eyes. That tiny restraint breaks something in you all over again.
“I know I lied by not telling you,” he says quietly. “I know that. I’m not asking you to call it something prettier. I’m just telling you it wasn’t because you meant nothing. It was because you meant too goddamn much, and I was trying to find a way to bring you closer without making you run.”
The honesty of it is so ugly, so naked, so free of self-congratulation that it feels like he just threw a wet sandbag right at your chest, knocking every scrap of air straight out of your lungs. It’s not an excuse, not quite. More like the shape of the selfishness itself, held out in his own hands for you to look at. He wanted you. He kept you. He delayed the truth because he was afraid the truth would cost him the one bright thing he had allowed himself to love. There is no innocence in that. But there is something crushingly human.
Your eyes burn again and your grip on your own certainty loosens another inch.
You hate that, too, because, damnit, it would be easier to stand here shaking and loathing him if he would just become less tender and less heartbreakingly earnest in his regret. But he stays persistently, ruinously genuine, and all at once you feel not only afraid, not only betrayed, but emptied out by the effort of trying to hold every contradiction at once. He is a bad man. He may also love you. He lied. He is also hurting. He hid things from you. He is also standing here looking like your fear is flaying him alive. None of these truths cancels the others. They just crowd together until your thoughts feel waterlogged, too swollen to separate.
So all that is left is the simplest truth again.
You really are overwhelmed.
You are so overwhelmed that language itself seems too heavy to lift.
Your breathing has started to slowly settle in increments, like a storm reluctantly retreating from a coastline it battered too long. It feels like there are bruises left behind in your lungs, but it no longer aches with each inhale.
Your fear has ebbed enough to make you think again, to make you see again, to make you look at him not as the single monstrous shape your panic tried to build, but as the complicated, human contradiction standing in front of you now.
His shoulders are still too tight, drawn up, and perhaps trying to seem smaller. He keeps his hands visible and loose at his sides to perhaps avoid startling you. The cut along his forearm has darkened into a narrow seam of red, drying in flaking lines against his skin and remaining completely ignored by the man attached to it.
His focus hasn’t left your face. And in that focus, there is not an ounce of triumph. Rather, the opposite. There is only pain. Such a grave torment that lives in the corners of his mouth, the prominent crease between his brows, in the cautious way he keeps tracking your movements as though you still might shove him away and try bolting for the door again.
You swallow and feel the ballast of everything press back down on your chest.
“I—” you start, timidly, using every last scrap of your bravery. You don’t meet his eyes, staring at the floor beside him. “I’ve seen them.” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, small but a little bit more poised now, like glass that hasn’t shattered but still remembers the impact. “I've seen the news, and the headlines. All the stories about you.”
The words suspend themselves in the space between you.
Bucky takes a moment to answer. His gaze drifts downward, just briefly, as if the floor might offer him something easier to look at than the defenselessness sitting in your eyes. The vulnerable questions there. When he exhales it is long and tired, and it sounds like all the versions of himself he has spent years outrunning are catching up to him anyway.
“Yeah,” he mutters out breathily. But a little flat. There is no denial in it or some sort of excuse. He drags a hand across the back of his neck, his jaw flexing slightly before he speaks again. “I figured you probably had.” He takes a shivering breath, his whole chest lifting. “They’re not all lies.”
You hold your breath, but don’t step back, don’t let fear take its seat at the forefront of your mind again.
He lifts his eyes back to yours then, and the seriousness in them deepens, intensifying into something resolute.
“I’m not gonna stand here and tell you I’m a good man,” he says. The words come slowly, and his eyes are searching yours while he talks. He is placing them carefully like he’s building something honest out of wreckage. “I’m not.”
Your heart stumbles in your chest, but you still keep your feet grounded and meet his eyes.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things most people wouldn’t forgive if they knew the full story.” His voice lowers slightly. His eyes are full of sorrow. Despite the things he’s saying he unexpectedly doesn’t look threatening at all and it makes something startle abruptly in your chest. “And yeah, I’ll probably keep doing some of those things.” He doesn’t force anything into his tone that maybe should be there. He´s not saying those things with pride or arrogance or even threat. He has just accepted the callous contours that make his life the way it is. “But not for the reasons people think.”
His eyes soften then, slightly. And it makes you realize that they’ve actually been soft all along.
“I do what I do because there are people in this world who deserve protection. People who don’t have the power to protect themselves.” His gaze holds yours a little more firmly now. “And sometimes the only way to keep those people safe is to be the guy willing to do the ugly work.”
Your throat tightens.
“I’d do just about anything to protect you, Y/n. Even if it’s me you want protection from.”
The kitchen feels very still.
You don’t know what to say to that. You’re not even sure there is something to say. The statement isn’t a justification so much as a window, and looking through it leaves you with more thoughts to sort through and you’ve already gone through so many. But you hear him. You really do.
And he seems to notice that you’re listening now—maybe not agreeing, not forgiving, but truly listening, hearing him out—and some small measure of relief loosens the tension in his shoulders.
He doesn’t move a single muscle, standing before you like a brick wall, his legs pinned wide on the kitchen tiles, his frame perfectly still except for the anxious heave of his chest. His arms are hanging at his side, and shit, your gaze just has to focus on that bloody trail on his forearm. Because right, you’ve cut James Buchanan Barnes through his expensive suit enough to make him bleed. The redness runs from his wrist to his knuckles and you see some dots on the floor. The fabric of his suit is soaking it up, turning a dark wet black around the tear.
He still doesn’t glance down at it. He’s still so entirely anchored to your face, his broad shoulders squared as if he’s trying to shield you from the very room he owns. The survival instinct that had you clawing at the air drops away and now there is a sudden freezing emptiness in your head. And in that blank space, something takes place.
You look at the knife on the linoleum, then at the wet red tracking down his arm, and your stomach completely plummets through the ground. The panic you felt earlier didn’t protect you, it turned you clumsy and ignorant.
“Oh, no,” you choke out, gaze fixed on his arm, your words hacking up from your chest miserably. “Bucky, I— Your arm, I— I didn’t mean— This is my fault, I swear I didn’t mean to—”
“Hey,” he cuts in, his voice lowering into a rough, immediate hush that clips the words right out of your mouth. “Hey, no, sweetheart. No.” He steps back into your space and his huge palms come up, traveling slowly until they map themselves carefully across your jawline.
His fingers are trembling and the pressure is incredibly light. His skin is warm, smelling of that same familiar soap from upstairs, and his thumbs softly brush the wet tear tracks off your cheekbones, forcing you to look straight into his eyes. He doesn’t even spare a glance at his forearm.
“You don’t ever apologize to me for that,” he whispers hoarsely, his chest hitching against yours as he tries to get his breathing normal. There is so much regret in his voice, it is too much for your heart to handle. “You were scared out of your mind and I did that to you. That?” He tilts his arm toward you, indicating that he is talking about the cut. “That is nothing, sweetheart. Nothing.” The corner of his mouth lifts faintly, but the expression is gentler and definitely much more somber than humorous. “I’ve taken hits that should’ve put me in the ground, and none of them touched me.”
You shake your head in his palms. “But, I—”
“Doll,” he shushes, his arms keeping your chin locked, but not firm at all. His gaze is drilling into yours and it feels like he’s bleeding more from the inside and not the outside. “That little scratch hurts a hell of a lot less than watching you run from me.”
Your hands slowly stop trying to find leverage against his chest. The heat of his palms against your jaw feels like a grounding force, something so familiar but also completely new. It’s not entirely unpleasant in its newness.
You look up into his eyes, seeing the complete lack of the monster he just unleashed on his guards, and you can’t help but feel a little unmoored.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” you admit breathily, your voice cracking as your forehead drops forward to rest against his tie.
Bucky lets out a long, ragged exhale, his chin resting against the top of your head as his arms wrap around your shoulders, pulling you into a hold that feels firm but unforced.
“You don’t have to figure it out right now, darling,” he eases, his words spoken with a splintered scrape into your hair. “You don’t have to decide anything today, or tomorrow, or next week. Take all the time you need. Turn it over in your head. Think about everything you saw, everything I am. And whatever you choose to do—if you want to pack your bags, and disappear, if you never want to see my face again—I will let you go. I will make sure you are safe, and I will support whatever choice you make. I swear it.”
He pulls back just an inch, his thumbs gently guiding your face up again so he can look straight into your eyes. There is something desperately begging in his stare, but he keeps his posture completely still, refusing to pressure you.
“But please.“ His knuckles tremble slightly against your cheek. “Just stay the night. Don't run out now while this is all still so new. Stay until morning. As soon as the sun’s up, the car is yours,” he promises sorrowfully, his thumbs catching the last of the dampness on your cheek. “If you want to leave, you leave. You can walk out of here and never look back, and I won’t follow you. I won’t look for you. If that’s what it takes to make you feel safe, I’ll let you go.”
He stops, his jaw clamping tight for a second, a sharp, jumbled hitch in his ribs breaking his breathing.
“But god, I hope you don't,” he shoves the words past the tightness in his throat, his eyes wide and burning into yours so achingly. “I will spend every single day of my life doing whatever it takes to fix this. I’ll earn back an inch of your trust at a time. I’ll show you the rest of me—the real parts—if you just give me the chance to try. I want you to love me again. I want that more than anything.”
He hitches his weight just a fraction closer, his large hands still framing your jaw with agonizingly slow caution.
“But just stay this single night,” he pleads with a strain in his voice, his forehead dropping down to rest lightly against yours. “Just stay until morning. Let me get you out of this kitchen, and you can just sleep. That’s all. Just tonight.”
You stare at the dark red crusting on his wool cuff, then look into that heavy, broken-down look in his eyes. Trying to picture next week or even tomorrow feels like watching a knotted ball of wire and not finding out where to start untying it.
But right now, your muscles are just running on empty, completely flattened and powerless from feeling all that panic. You let out one long shudder of air, asking your awareness for any reasons why you should still try to get the hell away from this guy, and come up with nothing yet. It’s all too fresh to truly give this some thought and right now all you want to do is curl up in those silky sheets and sleep it all off.
You give him a small nod. “Okay. Okay, Bucky, I’ll stay the night.”
Bucky’s shoulders drop with a massive, rattling relief. He doesn't say anything else, he just tucks your head back under his chin, his big arms closing around you to carry your weight out of the quiet kitchen, leaving the knife and the blood behind on the floorboards.
You don’t know what comes when the sun is up. You don’t know what loving a man like him means. You don’t know if the life he lives can ever exist beside the life you thought you wanted.
You don’t know if trust can grow again from the cracked ground beneath your feet, and considering your decision making skills, you shouldn’t let your heart handle things anymore.
But, frighteningly and also not all that much surprisingly after all, when you imagine leaving now—truly leaving, turning your back on him and walking out of this mansion forever—the image doesn’t bring relief.
It brings something bleak.
Because for all the discoveries of tonight and all that fear, all that shock, and the trust that has been abruptly broken, there is a bullheaded part of you that understands something you can’t yet put into words for him to hear.
You could run from this house.
You could run from his name.
But you are not sure you could run from him.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”
- Oscar Wilde
A/n: Looking at the word count now, I honestly probably could’ve turned this into a mini series but because this whole thing is essentially one long scene, splitting it up even more just didn’t feel right to me. So I guess I just have to admit that this became an unexpectedly long two-parter lmao.
As always, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this continuation, if it gave you hope, or even if you expected something different to happen. I always enjoy hearing your interpretations and feelings after reading ♡
I also wanted to gently address something else. I’ve received a few critical comments regarding certain reactions, choices, and dynamics in the story, and I truly hope this second part helped answer some questions or at least offered a little more perspective. If it didn’t, that’s completely okay too.
What I want you to know, I genuinely do appreciate helpful criticism, especially when it comes to my writing itself, because I’m always trying to improve and become better at what I do. Constructive feedback that gives me something to work with is always welcome and appreciated. But if something in the story simply wasn’t for you, or you personally disliked a choice I made, then sometimes it’s okay to just move on from it instead of tearing it apart. And if you do choose to criticize something, I just ask that you do it kindly. We’re still a community here, and there’s no reason to be harsh or blunt. Talk to me like a human being.
I put a lot of time, emotion, and effort into these stories, not to be told this makes no sense or this is weird without any real conversation behind it. Sometimes I don’t think through every single detail deeply because at the end of the day, this is still fiction born from messy little ideas in my head, written for comfort, entertainment, and emotion—not perfection!
Still, thank you to everyone who continues to boost me and my work and helped me stay motivated to finish this part ♡
And if you enjoyed my work, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi ♡
Pairing: Frontiersman!Bucky Barnes x Female Reader
Tags: Western AU. Shotgun Wedding. Strangers to Lovers. Slight Angst. Comfort. Domestic Fluff. Slow Burn. Smut.
Warnings: Reader has Heterochromia. Loss of Virginity. Period-Typical Gender Roles and Expectations.
Summary: She came to White Creek for a teaching position that didn't exist. He needed a wife but never expected to find one like this.
Word Count: 9k
note: And the story comes to an end, at least for now. Thank you so much for walking with me through this journey🧡
Previous Chapter - Masterlist
She heard him dust his boots heavily on the porch, then the door opened, and he stepped inside, bringing the cold air and the smell of pine and sweat with him. His eyes found her immediately, still standing by the stove where she'd been keeping the stew warm.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
She felt her face heat under his gaze, and her hands tightened on the wooden spoon she was holding.
"You're home," she managed, and immediately felt foolish. Of course he was home. She could see him standing right there.
But his expression softened slightly, and he set down his lunch pail by the door.
"I am," The words came out rough. Like he'd been working hard. Or thinking hard. Or both.
He shrugged out of his coat, hung it on the peg, and crossed the small space between them in a few strides.
She tensed with anticipation, expecting him to reach for her, to pull her close the way he had last night. But he stopped just in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to look at him, and his hand came up to cup her face instead.
Gentle. Almost careful.
"Feelin’ alright?" he asked quietly.
The question caught her off guard. She'd expected... well, she wasn't sure what she'd expected. But not that.
"I'm fine," she said honestly.
His thumb brushed across her cheekbone, and something flickered in his eyes. Guilt, maybe. Or concern.
"Any discomfort?"
She shook her head.
He studied her face for another moment, like he was checking for signs she might be lying to spare his feelings. Then he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead -brief, almost chaste- before stepping back.
"Smells good," he said, nodding toward the stove. "What is it?"
"Stew," she answered still processing the gentleness of that kiss. "It's been ready for a while. I was just keeping it warm."
"Sounds good." He moved past her toward the washbasin, rolling up his sleeves. "I'm starvin’."
She turned back to the stove, ladling stew into bowls, and tried to ignore the way her heart was still racing.
It was so stupid that the fact that he was careful and gentle with her still affected her, but she was still getting used to it. To matter. To have a voice. To like and dislike things and be checked on. To be cherished.
“Do you want to wash after you are done?” she heard herself ask without thinking.
He paused, his hands stilling in the basin where he'd been splashing water on his face. Then he straightened, reaching for the towel she kept hanging nearby, and turned to look at her.
"After dinner?" he repeated, like he was making sure he'd heard her right.
She nodded, focusing very hard on ladling the stew into the second bowl. "I could heat water for the tub. If you'd like."
There was a pause, just long enough that she glanced up to see if something was wrong.
He was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read. Something between surprised and... pleased, maybe.
"Yeah," he said finally, his voice a little rougher. "That'd be good."
She nodded and carried the bowls to the table, setting them down with hands that were steadier than she felt.
Offering to heat his bathwater wasn't scandalous. It was a perfectly normal thing for a wife to do for her husband after a long day of work.
Except they both knew what had happened the last time she'd helped him bathe.
When she'd washed his back with careful hands. When he'd been sitting in the tub and she'd been close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin. When the air between them had been charged with something unspoken and inevitable.
And now -after last night- there was nothing unspoken left.
She sat down across from him at the table, smoothing her skirt unnecessarily, and picked up her spoon.
He did the same, taking a bite of the stew and making a low sound of approval.
"This is good," he said. "Real good."
"Thank you."
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighted with awareness. Of each other. Of what had happened. Of what would happen again.
Eventually, he cleared his throat.
"Had a hell of a time concentratin' today," he said, not quite meeting her eyes.
She looked up. "Oh?"
"Yeah." He took another bite, chewed, swallowed. "Miller nearly had to pull me out of the way of a fallin' log. And Davidson caught me splittin' the same piece of wood three times without realizin' it."
Her eyebrows rose. "That doesn't sound like you."
"It ain't." He finally looked at her then, and there was something in his gaze that made her stomach flip. "Kept thinkin' about last night."
Heat flooded her face instantly.
"About you," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "About comin' home to you."
She didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know if she was supposed to say anything.
But he didn't seem to expect a response. Just went back to his stew, though she could see the tension in his shoulders. The way his jaw worked as he chewed.
Like he was holding himself back from saying -or doing- something more.
They finished the meal in that same charged silence, and when he pushed his bowl away, she stood to clear the table.
His hand slowly caught her wrist as she reached for his bowl.
She looked at him, her pulse jumping.
"I meant what I said," he said quietly. "About givin' you time. Few days, at least."
She swallowed. "I know."
"But… that ain't mean I don't wanna touch you." His thumb brushed across the inside of her wrist, a slow movement that made her skin tingle. "If that's alright."
She thought about the way he'd looked at her when he came home. The careful way he'd touched her face. The kiss to her forehead that had been almost reverent.
She thought about the fact that she'd spent the entire day thinking about him too. About last night. About the future.
"It's alright," she said quietly.
His expression changed -something dark and satisfied crossing his face- and he released her wrist.
"Go on then," he said. "Heat the water. I'll clear the table."
"You just got home," she said, already moving toward the stove to check the water she'd kept simmering. " I'll handle it."
"If I help, you can get started sooner," he countered, already standing and reaching for his bowl. "And honestly, the idea of a bath sounds real good right now."
She couldn't argue with that logic.
They worked in tandem, her hauling the tub from its spot in the corner while he carried the first pot of hot water, both of them moving anticipating each other's movements.
By the time the tub was half-full, she'd settled onto the chair nearby the fire, waiting as he added the last pot of cold water to temper the heat.
He straightened, testing the temperature with his hand, then started unbuttoning his shirt.
She didn't look away.
There'd been a time when they'd given each other privacy for this. When she would've turned the chair to face the wall, or busied herself with some task on the other side of the room.
But that time had passed.
Now she watched as he shrugged out of his shirt, the firelight playing across his shoulders, highlighting the old scars she'd traced with her fingers more times than she could count. And the new ones, faint red lines down his back where her nails had raked him last night.
He glanced at her over his shoulder, catching her staring, and the corner of his mouth quirked up.
"Ain't fair, you know," he said, reaching for his belt. "You gettin' to look while I can't."
"I'm not the one getting in the bath," she deadpaned.
"True." He unfastened his belt, pushed his trousers down, and stepped out of them. Then his drawers followed, and he was bare, crossing the short distance to the tub without a hint of self-consciousness.
She'd seen him naked before. Many times, especially over the past two months. But there was something different about watching him now, in the firelight, knowing what it felt like to have that body covering hers. Inside hers.
He stepped into the tub with a low groan of relief, sinking down into the water until it lapped at his chest.
"Christ, that's good," he muttered, his head falling back against the rim.
She stood, collecting his discarded clothes and adding them to the basket near the door, very aware of his eyes tracking her movements.
When she turned back, he was watching her with an expression that made her stomach flip.
"You gonna help me?" he asked.
She raised an eyebrow. "Help you?"
"Yeah." He shifted in the tub, settling deeper. "I'm real tired. And last time you helped -when I had that cut on my hand- it was..." He paused, and she could see he was fighting a smile. "Real helpful."
She crossed her arms, trying to hide a smile. "You seem perfectly capable of washing yourself."
"Do I?" His voice had dropped lower, rougher. "Because I'm rememberin' how good it felt when you did it. Your hands in my hair. On my back."
Heat crept up her neck at the memory. At the intimacy of it, of touching him like that, tending to him.
"That was different," she said. "You were actually injured."
"I'm injured now," he said, deadpan. "Emotionally. From workin' all day thinkin' about my wife and not bein' able to do anythin' about it."
Despite herself, she felt her lips twitch.
"That's not a real injury."
"Feels real to me." He held her gaze, and the playfulness faded slightly, replaced by something more serious. More intent. "Come here."
It wasn't quite a command. More like an invitation. A request.
She crossed to the tub without hesitation and knelt beside it. His eyes tracked her movements, and when she reached for the soap, his hand caught her wrist.
Gently. Like he'd done at the dinner table.
"I promised I'd give you time," he said quietly. "And I meant it. But I want to touch you. Want you to touch me. That alright?"
She looked at him, at the heat in his eyes, at the tension in his jaw, at the way he was holding himself still despite clearly wanting more.
He was asking. Checking. Making sure she was comfortable.
Just like he had last night.
"It's alright," she said quietly.
His grip on her wrist loosened, and he released her with what looked like effort.
"Good." he said, his voice rough.
----
She worked the soap between her hands until it lathered, then pressed her palms to his back. He made a low sound -half groan, half sigh- and let his head fall forward, giving her access.
She started at his shoulders, working the soap across the muscles, feeling the tension there start to ease under her touch. Then down his spine, she let her thumbs press on either side, the way she'd discovered he liked weeks ago and felt him exhale slowly, deeply.
Her hands knew this body now. Knew the old scars, the puckered one on his left shoulder blade, the long raised line that ran from shoulder to spine. Knew the new marks too, the faint red scratches she'd left last night, already fading but still visible in the firelight.
Evidence of what they'd done. What they'd become to each other.
"Lean forward," she said quietly.
He did, bracing his forearms on his knees, and she reached for the cup sitting beside the tub.
She poured water over his head slowly, watching it darken his hair from brown to almost black, watching it run in rivulets down his neck and shoulders. Then she set the cup aside and worked the soap through the wet strands.
Her fingers found his scalp, and she began to massage in slow, deliberate circles.
The sound he made was involuntary. Deep and rough and so unguarded that it sent a flutter through her stomach.
"That's..." He trailed off, seeming to lose the words.
"Good?" she offered, her fingers still working, applying gentle pressure as she moved across his scalp.
"Yeah." His voice had gone thick. "Real good."
She took her time with it. Working the soap through every strand, her nails scraping lightly against his scalp in a way that made his breathing deepen. She'd done this once before when he'd injured his hand, but that had been different. An assistance.
This was something else.
When she was satisfied, she rinsed his hair carefully, filling the cup again and again, pouring the water slowly so the soap wouldn't run into his eyes. Making sure to get every bit of lather out, combing through the strands with her fingers.
She set the cup aside and sat back slightly, her hands stilling.
He started to reach for the soap, but she picked it up first.
His hand stilled in mid-air, suspended between them.
"I can-" he started, his voice careful.
"I know you can," she said simply.
She dampened and worked more soap in her hands until they had a lot of lather, and waited.
For a moment, he just looked at her. She could see him processing what she was offering. What she was saying without words.
That she wasn't finished. That she wanted to keep touching him.
Then, slowly, like he was afraid sudden movement might break whatever spell this was, he settled back against the tub. His arms came to rest along the rim, palms up, open.
Giving her access.
She brought the cloth to his chest, and his breathing changed immediately, deeper, more controlled, as she began to work the soap across his skin.
She started at his collarbone, tracing the hard line of it from shoulder to shoulder. Then down, over his chest, feeling the solid muscle beneath. She could feel his heartbeat under her hand, strong and steady but faster than normal.
He was affected by this. By her touch.
She moved her hand in slow, careful circles. Across to his left side, feeling his ribs expand and contract with each breath. Then back to center and across to the right. Thorough. Methodical.
But not impersonal.
She was hyperaware of every point of contact. Of the way his skin felt warm and slick from the water. The way his muscles tensed slightly when she touched certain spots. Of the way he was watching her through half-lidded eyes, his jaw tight.
His eyes had closed at some point, but she could see his hands gripping the edge of the tub, knuckles pale. He was holding himself very still. Letting her work. Not reaching for her even though she could see he wanted to.
She moved lower.
Over his stomach, feeling the muscle shift under her touch. Her hand traced the line where his torso met his hips, where the hair grew thicker, and she felt him tense.
His eyes opened.
She met his gaze -steady, deliberate- and brought her hand beneath the water.
Down, over his hip. Along his thigh.
And then, because there was no reason not to, because this was part of washing him, just like everything else, she brought it between his legs.
His breath caught audibly when her fingers made contact.
She worked carefully, the same way she'd washed the rest of him. Trying to be practical about it, though there was nothing clinical about the way her own heart was racing now. About the way her face felt warm despite the cool air in the cabin.
She felt him harden under her touch, the change immediate and undeniable, but kept her movements steady. Thorough. Washing him the way he'd need to be washed, trying not to think about the fact that she was touching him there.
When she shifted slightly to reach more thoroughly, his hips shifted forward involuntarily, a sharp, sudden movement that made the water slosh slightly in the tub.
Chasing the contact.
He caught himself immediately, forced his hips back down, and she heard him exhale through clenched teeth.
"Can't help it, sweetheart," he said, his voice wrecked. Strained. "You touch me like that, I-"
He cut himself off, gripping the tub harder, his whole body gone rigid with the effort of not moving. Of not reaching for her. Of not asking for more than she was offering.
"I know," she said quietly, and meant it.
She could see what this was doing to him. Could see it written in every line of his body, the tension, the restraint, the way he was barely holding himself together.
But he wasn't asking her to stop, or to do more. He was just letting her touch him, letting her explore. Letting her learn him at her own pace.
She finished washing him, moving the cloth down his thighs, along his calves, even taking each foot in turn and working the soap carefully between his toes.
When she was done, she rinsed her hands and rested it in her thighs, very aware that her sleeves were damp from the water. That her face was heated. That her breathing wasn't entirely steady.
And he was sitting there in the cooling water, his eyes on her, his chest rising and falling with breaths that were deeper than they should be.
Then he exhaled slowly and opened his eyes fully.
"Thank you," he said.
She nodded, not trusting her own voice, and stood.
"I'll get you a towel," she managed.
She crossed to the chest where they kept the linens, taking perhaps a moment longer than necessary to find one. Using the time to steady herself. To slow her breathing.
Behind her, she heard him shift in the water. Heard the quiet splash and the sound of water streaming off his body as he stood.
When she turned back, towel in hand, he was standing in the tub, water sluicing off his skin in rivulets that caught the firelight.
She could see all of him.
His broad shoulders. His chest. His stomach. The dark hair that trailed down from his navel. His thighs, thick with muscle.
And between them, the evidence of exactly how much her touch had affected him.
Still hard. Still wanting.
She felt her face heat again, felt that now-familiar flutter low in her belly, but she didn't look away, didn't drop her gaze or pretend she hadn't seen.
Just held out the towel.
He stepped out of the tub carefully, water dripping onto the floor, and reached for it.
But instead of taking the towel immediately, his hand caught hers.
Gently. The way he'd done at the dinner table earlier.
He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Slowly. His lips were warm and soft against her skin.
His eyes held hers the entire time.
"You're gonna be the death of me," he said quietly, his voice still rough with want. With restraint. "You know that?"
She didn't know what to say to that.
Didn't know if there was anything she could say that would adequately express what she was feeling, the strange mix of power and vulnerability, of curiosity and nervousness, of wanting to touch him more and being afraid of what might happen if she did.
So she just stood there, her hand still caught in his, her heart pounding.
Then he released her and took the towel, wrapping it around his waist with movements that were just slightly less controlled than usual and walked to the bed.
"Come here," he said quietly.
She complied, and he reached for her hand, pulling her down to sit beside him. For a moment, they just sat there. Close but not touching beyond where his hand still held hers.
Then he brought their joined hands to his lap and traced his thumb across her knuckles.
"You didn't have to do that," he said quietly. "Wash me like that."
"I know."
"But you did anyway."
She nodded.
"Why?"
The question was gentle, curious. Not demanding. She considered it for a moment, then chose to be honest.
"Because I wanted to," she said finally. Simply. “Wanted to help you, and… wanted to touch you.”
His thumb stilled on her hand.
"You wanted to," he repeated, like he was testing the words.
"Yes."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You tell me, sweetheart. Am I pushin' too hard? Askin' for too much?"
She looked at him, at the genuine concern in his eyes, the way he was watching her like her answer actually mattered, and felt something warm settle in her chest.
"No," she said firmly. "You're not."
"You'd tell me if I was?"
"I would."
He studied her face for another moment, then nodded, seeming satisfied.
"Good," he said. "Because the last thing I want is for you to feel like you have to... like any of this is somethin' you're doin' out of duty."
"It's not," she said quietly. "I promise."
He swallowed, and she watched his throat work with the motion. Then he shifted slightly on the bed, his thighs separating just enough that the towel around his waist loosened, falling open slightly.
The evidence of his arousal was impossible to miss.
His hand tightened on hers for a moment, then released.
"Then," he said, his voice rough. "Would you be willin' to... help me with my situation?"
Her eyes flicked down, then back to his face.
She'd done this before. Multiple times, actually, in the weeks leading up to last night. He'd touched her, and both had discovered what she liked, what made her gasp and arch into his hand. And she'd explored him in return, learned the weight of him in her palm, the rhythm he preferred, the signs that told her he was close.
It had been part of learning each other. Part of him making sure she was comfortable with intimacy before they took that final step.
But somehow this time felt different. Maybe because now she knew what it felt like to have him inside her. Knew what he sounded like when he lost control completely.
"Alright," she said quietly.
His eyes darkened, and she saw relief and want on them.
She moved to stand between his knees, and he reached for the towel, pulling it away completely and tossing it aside. Then his hands came to rest lightly on her hips.
"You don't have to," he said, even though she'd already agreed. "If you're too tired, or if-"
"Bucky," she interrupted gently. "I said alright."
He exhaled slowly, and his grip on her hips tightened slightly.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, okay."
She started to reach for him, but the angle was awkward; she'd have to bend forward, lean down, and her back would start protesting within minutes.
He seemed to realize it at the same time she did.
"Here," he said, releasing her hips. "Get the stool. You'll be more comfortable."
She retrieved the small wooden stool they kept by a corner and positioned it between his knees. When she sat, his hands settled on her thighs this time, palms warm even through her skirts.
She wrapped her hand around him, and he made a sound -low and rough- that sent heat pooling down her belly.
"Christ," he muttered, his head falling back slightly. "Your hand’s so warm..."
She knew what he liked. Had learned it over the course of multiple evenings spent exploring each other, his patient instructions guiding her until she understood the pressure he needed, the rhythm that worked.
So she started the way she always did, slow and firm, her hand moving from base to tip and back again in long, steady strokes.
His hips shifted forward slightly, following the movement, and his hands tightened on her thighs.
"That's good," he said, his voice strained. "That's real good, sweetheart."
She kept the rhythm steady, watching his face. Watching the way his jaw clenched, the way his breathing went ragged, the way his eyes drifted closed.
His hands slid higher on her thighs, gripping through her skirts like he needed something to hold onto.
"Tighter," he said after a moment. "Can you- yeah, like that."
She adjusted her grip, and he groaned.
"Faster?"
"Not yet," he said, his voice tight. "Want it to last."
So she kept the pace slow. Deliberate. Let him feel every stroke.
One of his hands left her thigh and came up to cup her face, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone in a gesture that was tender despite the explicit nature of what she was doing to him.
"You're so good to me," he said quietly, his eyes opening to meet hers. "So damn good."
She felt her face heat at the words, at the sincerity in them.
His hand slid from her face down to her neck, then lower, curving around her waist. His other hand stayed on her thigh, grounding, possessive in a way that made her stomach flutter.
"Okay," he said after another minute, his breathing harsher now. "Okay, faster now."
She increased the pace, her wrist working in the rhythm she knew he needed, and felt him tense beneath her touch.
"God, yes," he muttered. "Just like that, sweet girl. Don't stop."
His hips started moving in small thrusts, matching her rhythm, and she could feel him getting closer. Could see it in the way his whole body tensed, in the way his fingers dug into her waist, in the way his breathing had turned ragged and uneven.
"Darlin’," he said, his voice breaking slightly. "I'm gonna-”
He was trying to warn her. Trying to give her time to move her hand and let him take over, grab the towel, to do whatever she needed to do.
But she didn't pull away.
Just kept moving her hand, moving, steady and sure, the way he needed.
"It's alright," she said quietly.
His eyes locked on hers, and something in his expression shifted. Went dark, intense and full of want.
"Fuck," he breathed, and then his whole body went rigid.
She felt him pulse in her hand, felt the warmth spill over her fingers as he spent, his hips jerking forward with each wave. He made a sound -low and broken- and his hand came up to cover hers, holding her in place while he rode it out.
When it was over, he slumped forward slightly, his forehead pressing against her shoulder, his breathing ragged against her neck.
They stayed like that for a moment, her hand still wrapped around him, his face buried in the curve of her neck, both of them catching their breath.
Then he lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes still dark but softer now.
"Sorry," he said, his voice rough. "Should've grabbed the towel, I just-"
"It's fine," she said.
He reached for the towel anyway, gently taking her hand and cleaning it carefully. When he was done, he cupped her face in both hands and kissed her. Slow and deep and grateful.
When he pulled back, he was looking at her with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"You should get into your nightgown," he said finally. "Get comfortable."
She nodded and stood, retrieving her nightgown from beneath her pillow where she'd tucked it that morning. She crossed to the corner near the dresser where a small peg rack hung on the wall, beginning to unbutton her dress.
----
Behind her, she heard him move, the creak of the bed as he stood, his footsteps crossing to the water bucket. The sound of him drinking deeply, then setting the dipper back with a soft clatter.
Then she heard him chewing biscuits.
She rolled her eyes. They'd just eaten. The man had put away two full bowls of stew and half a loaf of bread less than an hour ago.
More drinking. Another swallow. Then silence.
She'd worked her dress off and draped it over the peg, then the petticoat, the corset. Her fingers moved to the ties of her drawers when she heard his footsteps again.
But they weren't heading back to the bed.
They were coming toward her.
She stilled, her hands on the waistband of her drawers, and then she felt him behind her. Close. Not touching yet, but close enough that she could feel his body heat.
His hands settled on her bare skin, one at the small of her back, the other at her shoulder blade, and began to stroke her naked skin in slow strokes. She shivered despite the warmth of the cabin.
"Wanna touch you now," he said quietly, his voice rough and low near her ear. "Is that alright?"
She almost chuckled. So that's why he'd told her to change.
She finished pushing her drawers down her hips and stepped out of them, straightening fully. His hands were still on her back, waiting for her answer.
"More than alright," she said.
She heard the shift in his breathing. Felt one hand slide around to her hip, holding her in place.
"Yeah?" His other hand moved up to her shoulder, his thumb stroking along her collarbone. "You sure?"
She hesitated, feeling heat creep up her neck. Then, because he'd been honest with her earlier about being distracted at work, she made herself say it.
"You're not the only one who spent today thinking about last night, Bucky," she admitted quietly. "I was... distracted too."
His hand on her hip tightened, and she felt him step closer. Close enough that his chest was nearly pressed against her back.
"That right?" he said, and she could hear the satisfaction in his voice.
She nodded.
His hand slid from her hip upward, gliding over her side, until it cupped her breast. His palm was warm and calloused against her soft skin, and when his thumb found her nipple and began circling the areola in slow, deliberate strokes, she couldn't quite suppress the small sound that escaped her lips.
"What were you thinkin' about?" he asked, his mouth close to her ear now. "Specifically."
His thumb continued its maddening circles, not quite touching where she was starting to want him to touch, just tracing around and around until she felt her nipple tighten in response.
She swallowed, trying to find words while his hands were on her like this.
"About..." She paused, her breath catching when his thumb finally brushed directly over the peaked bud. "About how it felt. What you did."
"What I did," he repeated, his voice a low rumble against her back. His thumb rolled over her nipple again, more deliberately this time, and his other hand slid from her shoulder down to join the first, cupping her other breast. "Gonna need you to be more specific than that, sweetheart."
Both hands now, both thumbs working in tandem, and she had to brace one hand against the wall to steady herself.
"When you..." She took a shaky breath. "When you touched me. Before. And during."
"Durin’," he said, and there was something almost predatory in his tone now. Pleased. "You mean when I was inside you?"
"Yes," she managed.
His hands stilled for a moment, and then he turned her around to face him.
She found herself looking up at him, at the heat in his eyes, at the focus written across every line of his face.
"And what exactly were you thinkin' about that?" he asked, one hand coming up to cup her face while the other settled at her waist. "That… you wanted me to do it again?"
The directness of the question should have embarrassed her. Would have embarrassed her, even just yesterday.
But there was something about the way he was looking at her. The way his thumb was stroking along her cheekbone. The way he was asking instead of assuming.
"Eventually," she said honestly. "When... when it doesn't hurt anymore."
Something flickered in his expression, that guilt again, brief but unmistakable.
"It's gonna be a lot better next time," he said quietly.
"I know."
"When we do it again," he continued, his hand sliding from her waist to the small of her back, pulling her closer, "it's gonna feel good. Real good. I'm gonna make sure of it."
She believed him. Because he'd already shown her what good felt like, with his hands, with his mouth, with the patient way he'd learned what made her gasp and arch into his touch.
"But right now," he said, his voice dropping lower, "I just wanna make you feel good. Can I do that?"
"Yes," she said.
His mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Good," he said. "Now come here."
He guided her backward toward the bed, and she went willingly, her heart already racing in anticipation of what came next.
He stood in front of her for a moment, just looking. His eyes traced over her, bare and exposed in the firelight, and she fought the urge to cover herself.
She'd been naked in front of him many times before. But it still made her feel vulnerable in a way she couldn't quite explain.
"Lie back," he said quietly.
She did, scooting further onto the bed and settling against the pillows. He followed, moving onto the bed with her, bracing himself on one arm beside her while his other hand came to rest on her stomach.
"You're tense," he observed, his palm warm against her skin.
"I'm not-"
"You are." His hand moved in a slow circle, soothing. "Relax, sweetheart. I'm just gonna make you feel good. That's all."
She took a breath and tried to let the tension ease out of her shoulders.
His hand moved from her stomach upward, sliding over her side, until it cupped her breast. The touch was gentle at first, exploratory, almost.
"I didn't pay enough attention to these last night," he said, almost to himself. His thumb brushed across her nipple, and she felt it tighten in response. "Was too focused on gettin' inside you."
His hand shifted, and he cupped her other breast, giving it the same careful attention, testing its weight.
"But I got time now," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "And I'm gonna take it."
He lowered his head, and she felt his breath ghost across her skin a moment before his mouth closed over her nipple. The sensation made her gasp, wet heat and gentle suction that sent a jolt of feeling straight between her thighs.
His tongue slowly circled the peaked bud, and then he sucked again, harder this time, and her hands flew to his shoulders without conscious thought.
"Bucky-"
He hummed against her skin, and his hand came up to tend to her other breast while his mouth stayed busy.
His fingers found her nipple and pressed firmly under it, making her arch slightly into the touch. Then he pulled gently, tugging just enough that the sensation rode the line between pleasure and something more intense.
She whined -helpless and uncontrolled- and felt him smile against her breast. He switched sides then, his mouth moving to the breast his hand had been tending while his fingers took over where his mouth had been.
The pattern repeated, his tongue circling and flicking, his lips suckling, his teeth grazing so lightly she barely felt it. And his hand, always his hand, pressing and tugging and coaxing her body to respond.
She could feel herself getting restless beneath him. Could feel heat building low in her belly, her thighs shifting against each other, seeking friction that wasn't there.
"Easy," he murmured against her skin. "Not rushin' this."
His mouth stayed on her breast, working her nipple with single-minded focus until it was hard and sensitive and slick from his attention. Then he moved to the other side again, giving it the same thorough treatment until both peaks were tight and aching and she was breathing harder than she meant to.
When he finally pulled back, she looked down to find him watching her with dark, intent eyes. Her breasts felt hot from his attention, her nipples darker and visibly wet, and she felt heat flood her face at the sight.
"Look at you," he said quietly, his hand coming up to cup one breast again, his thumb brushing over the sensitized peak and making her shiver. "So responsive. My wife."
He leaned down and pressed one more kiss to each nipple -soft, almost reverent- and then his hand began to move lower.
Down her stomach. Over her hip. Along her inner thigh.
"Now," he said, his voice rough with want, "let me take care of the rest of you."
His hand moved higher on her thigh, and she felt her legs part without him having to ask.
"That's it," he murmured, his palm warm against her inner thigh. "Just like that, sweetheart."
But then his other hand joined the first, and he pressed gently, urging her to open wider, spread more. She expected him to lower his head. To put his mouth on her the way he'd done before, the way that had made her forget her own name.
But he didn't.
Instead, he just... looked.
His thumbs traced along her soft curls, and then he gently parted her. Spreading her open. Exposing her completely to his gaze.
She felt her whole body tense with something that went beyond nervousness into outright mortification. It was one thing to let him touch her. To let him use his mouth on her. She'd gotten used to that over the past weeks, had learned to relax into the pleasure of it.
But this was different.
This was him looking at the most intimate part of her body with the focus he usually reserved for checking a piece of wood for flaws.
"Bucky," she managed, her voice thin. "What are you-"
She tried to close her legs, instinct taking over, but his hands stayed firm on her thighs.
"Wanna look at my wife proper," he said quietly, his eyes still fixed between her legs. "Wanna see if… if you're hurt. From last night."
The admission made her relax a little. He was just checking on her, making sure he hadn't done more damage than he'd realized.
"What's bothering me is inside," she said quietly. "I don't think you can see it."
He looked up at her then, and she saw something flicker across his face. Maybe the realization that he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for.
"Right," he said after a moment. "Yeah, that makes sense."
He seemed almost sheepish about it, and despite her discomfort, she felt a small flicker of affection.
Then his thumbs moved again, stroking gently along either side of her entrance.
"I'm not gonna use my fingers today," he said, lowering his head. "Just want to make you feel good. That alright?"
"Yes," she managed.
And then his mouth was on her.
The first touch of his tongue made her gasp, a broad, flat stroke that started low and dragged upward with deliberate slowness.
He did it again. And again. Long, slow licks that covered every inch of her, and made her remember with what made her twitch, what made her breathing hitch, what made her hands fly to his hair without meaning to.
His tongue circled her entrance gently, and she tensed slightly at the sensation.
He must have felt it, because he moved away immediately. Shifted his focus higher, to the small bundle of nerves that made her fall apart when he paid it the right kind of attention.
He settled there now, his tongue working in slow, deliberate circles while his hands held her thighs open. Keeping her spread for him. Keeping her exactly where he wanted her.
"Bucky," she breathed, and she felt him hum against her in response.
His hands moved from her thighs to her hips, holding her down. Not rough, but firm, keeping her still while he worked.
His tongue flicked faster now, more focused, and she felt that familiar tension start to build low in her belly. The sensation coiled tighter and tighter with each pass of his tongue.
She was dimly aware that her fingers had tightened in his hair. That she was making sounds she couldn't quite control. And he just kept going. Patiently. Thoroughly.
Like he had all the time in the world and was determined to use every second of it, making her feel good.
She gasped hard when he started to suck gently, his lips closing around that sensitive spot and creating pressure that made her vision blur, her hips grinding shamelessly against his mouth.
"Let go, sweetheart. I got you." He murmured against her skin.
His tongue returned to its work -circling, flicking, pressing- and she felt the tension reach a breaking point.
And then it snapped.
The pleasure hit her in waves, rolling through her body in pulses that made her arch off the bed despite his hands holding her hips. Made her cry out -his name, maybe, or just an incoherent sound- while he kept his mouth on her, working her through it with gentle, steady strokes.
When the waves finally subsided, she collapsed back against the pillows, boneless and breathing hard. He pressed one last soft kiss to her entrance, then another to her inner thigh, before pulling back.
She looked down to find him watching her with an expression of deep satisfaction.
"Good?" he asked, his voice rough.
She could only nod, still trying to catch her breath.
He moved up the bed, settling beside her and pulling her against his chest. His hand stroked lazily up and down her back while her breathing slowly returned to normal.
"You did good," he murmured into her hair. "Real good for me."
She made a sound that might have been agreement or just exhaustion, and felt him chuckle quietly. They lay like that for a while, the cabin quiet except for the crackling fire and their breathing.
Eventually, he stirred.
"Should get you into that nightgown," he said. "Before you fall asleep like this and wake up freezing."
She made a noise of protest, but he was already moving, retrieving the nightgown from where it had fallen to the floor and helping her sit up enough to pull it over her head.
Once she was covered, he settled back down beside her, pulling the blankets up over both of them and tucking her against his side. She felt his fingers trace idle patterns on her shoulder, his breathing deep and even. The warmth of his body, the weight of the quilts, the dying fire, it all started to pull her toward sleep.
She was just beginning to drift when his voice rumbled quietly through his chest.
.
"Been thinkin'," he murmured against her hair. "Tomorrow's Sunday. We could head into town if you want."
She stirred slightly, her hand settling on his chest. "Oh. Is the reverend coming?"
He let out a quiet laugh.
"He ain’t. That's exactly why we're goin'."
She lifted her head enough to swat his arm lightly. He didn't even flinch, just kept that amused expression on his face.
"The boys at camp were sayin' that with winter comin' on, a lot of the commercial traffic's gonna die off," he explained. "So the shopkeepers and folks in town decided to open on Sundays for the next few weeks. Give the logging crews and the miners from up the mountain a chance to stock up on what they need before things get real bad."
"That's very convenient," she said.
"It is," he agreed. "They're clearly doin' it to make money, not charity, but it works out for us."
She was quiet for a moment, then asked, "Is there something you need?"
"Few things," he said. "Root cellar could be fuller."
She tensed slightly against him, and he felt it immediately.
"Ain’t your fault," he said before she could apologize. "You came from the city. You got no idea what winter's like out here. How much we need to have stored up."
His hand stroked along her back, soothing.
"Plus," he added, "I've been eatin' more since you got here. Means we're goin' through supplies faster."
She relaxed slightly at that, settling back against him.
"So, provisions," he continued. "Anything that'll keep. And..." He paused. "You're gonna need warmer clothes."
"I have-"
"Not warm enough," he interrupted gently. "What you brought from back East ain't gonna cut it when it really starts snowin'. We're gonna be inside most of the time, sure, but there'll be moments we need to go out. Tendin' to the horse, clearin' snow, fetchin' firewood. And even inside..." He pulled her a little closer. "There's gonna be times when the fire alone ain't enough. You're gonna need layers. Real warm ones."
She was quiet for a moment, processing that.
"I feel silly. Didn't realize it would be that cold," she said finally.
"It gets real cold," he confirmed. "We'll keep the fire goin' day and night, but the cabin’s living space ain’t precisely small. Heat doesn't reach everywhere equally."
He felt her shiver slightly at the thought, and he tightened his arm around her.
"We'll manage," he said. "Just need to be prepared. That's all."
"Alright," she said quietly. "Then we'll go to town tomorrow."
"Also," he added, and she could hear the smile in his voice, "wanna show you off a little before we get snowed in."
She snorted against his chest. "Show me off?"
"It's true," he said, unrepentant. His hand slid from her back down to her hip, then lower, giving her rear a gentle squeeze through the nightgown. "We haven't been able to go into town together much. Just that first time, and Thanksgiving. Want folks to see us together proper."
"Oh, Bucky…"
"Want 'em to see you on my arm," he continued, his tone softening slightly. "Want 'em to see that you're mine and I'm yours."
She felt giddy at the quiet possessiveness in his voice. The pride.
"And," he added, "thought I might take you for a drink at the saloon. If you're amenable."
She lifted her head to look at him, one eyebrow raised. "Are you planning to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?"
His eyes gleamed in the low firelight, and his mouth curved into something wicked.
"Hm, are you concerned?" he asked, his voice dropping lower. "Or are you askin' me to?"
She felt heat flood through her body, -embarrassment and something else entirely- and she buried her face back in his chest.
"That's not- I didn't mean-"
She could feel him laughing, the vibrations rumbling through his chest beneath her cheek.
"If that's what you want," he said, clearly enjoying himself, "I'll let you drink all you want. That way you can tell me again how handsome I am and how you can't stop lookin' at me."
She made a strangled sound and covered her face with her hands, even though he couldn't see her anyway with her face pressed against his chest.
"Oh my god," she mumbled into her palms.
His laughter softened, and she felt his hand come up to gently pull her hands away from her face.
"Hey," he said, his voice losing that teasing edge. "Look at me."
She lifted her head reluctantly, expecting to see him still grinning at her expense.
But his expression had changed. Still warm, but serious now.
"I was glad to hear that, darling," he said quietly. "Real glad. It’s nice to know it ain’t only me who's smitten with you. That you feel somethin' for me too."
"You made it easy," she maintained his gaze. "To care about you. You are patient with me. Kind. You never made me feel like I was a burden or an obligation, even though that's exactly what I was at first."
His hand cupped her face more fully. "You were never a burden."
"I was," she insisted. "I showed up unannounced, caused a scandal, forced you into a marriage you didn't want-"
He huffed.
“I put a sign, woman. I was pretty much interested in gettin’ married”
“But we didn’t get to court properly, you didn’t know where you were getting into-”
“I think things turned out pretty well.” he interrupted gently, his thumb stroking along her jaw.
She huffed. "You can't possibly have known that when you agreed to marry me. I could have been awful. Lazy, or mean, or-"
"You ain't."
"But you didn't know that."
“No," he said finally. "I didn't know. But I had a feelin'."
She waited, feeling the warmth of his palm on her skin, grounding her.
"When you were standin' there in that room," he continued, his voice low and thoughtful, "lookin' terrified and tryin' so hard not to show it... and then you looked at me with those eyes of yours and said yes anyway." He paused, his thumb brushing the apple of her cheek. "I thought, this woman's got courage and sense. And I liked that."
She felt something flutter in her chest, but forced herself to speak.
"That's not much to base a marriage on," she mumbled.
"Maybe not," he agreed. "But then you didn't flinch when I was sick. Didn't complain when you had to live in a place that ain't nowhere near what you deserved.” His hand pressed against her heart. "And every day, you gave me more reasons. The way you hum when you're concentratin'. Mendin' my shirts even though you hate sewin'. How you look at me like..." He trailed off, and she saw something flicker in his expression, raw and unguarded.
"Like what?" she whispered.
His jaw worked for a moment, and she could see him gathering courage for whatever he was about to say.
"Like I'm worth somethin'," he said finally, his voice rough. "Like I'm more than just a logger with a cabin and a horse. Like you see me.”
She pushed herself up slightly, needing him to see her face, to understand that she meant every word.
"You are worth something," she said firmly, her hand coming up to rest against his chest. "You're worth everything, Bucky. You're the most attentive, kindest man I've ever known. You're honest, and hardworking, and you-" Her voice caught slightly. "You made me feel safe when I had nowhere to go. You made me feel wanted when my whole life I'd been treated like a burden."
His expression had gone very still, his eyes locked on hers.
"You took care of me when you were sick yourself," she continued, her thumb stroking over his heart. "You taught me things without making me feel stupid for not knowing them. You listen to me. You make me laugh. You-"
"And good lookin'?" he interjected, and she could see the corner of his mouth twitching even as his eyes remained suspiciously bright.
She huffed out a breath that was half laugh, half sob, and swatted his chest lightly.
"Yes, damn you," she said, "And ridiculously handsome. Unfairly so. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
His grin was crooked and devastating. "Just checkin’."
But then his hand came up to cradle her face, his thumb catching the tear that had slipped down her cheek, and his expression turned serious again.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "For seein' all that. For sayin' it."
She leaned into his touch. "It's the truth."
"I gambled followin' my gut," he said quietly, his eyes holding her gaze. "And every single day since, you've proven me right. You're everythin' I didn't know I needed, darlin’. And-" He paused, and she saw his throat work. "And I'm in love with you."
She couldn't speak for a moment, couldn't do anything but stare at him as the words hugged her, warm and solid and real.
And then it hit her, not like something new, but like something she'd known all along and only now had a name for. The way her heart lifted when she heard his footsteps on the porch. The way she'd started thinking of this cabin as home not because of the place, but because he was in it. The way even now, with her body still tender and her heart wide open and vulnerable, she felt safe.
"I love you too," she replied, and her voice came out steadier than she expected, considering her emotion. "I think- I think I have for a while now.”
His eyes searched hers for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across his face, the kind that made her stomach flip.
"Do you, now?" he murmured, his voice dropping lower.
She nodded, unable to look away from him.
He kissed her then, slow and deep and thorough, his hand still pressed over her heart like he could feel it beating just for him. When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing a little harder.
He shifted slightly, just enough to tilt his head, and she felt him smile against her temple before he pressed a kiss there, soft and lingering. Then another at her cheekbone. Her jaw. Like he was mapping her with his mouth, taking his time, savoring.
She closed her eyes and just felt it -felt him- until her breathing evened out and matched his.
"So," he said after a moment, his voice warm with contentment. "Tomorrow. Town, supplies, that drink at the saloon, and whatever else you want."
"Just… being together sounds perfect," she said softly.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, his arms coming around her securely.
The fire had burned down to embers, and outside, she could hear the wind moving through the pines and the distant call of an owl. But inside, wrapped in Bucky's warmth with his heartbeat steady beneath her ear, everything felt exactly as it should be.
She let her eyes drift closed, a smile on her lips, and let herself fall into sleep knowing that tomorrow -and every day after- she'd wake up exactly where she belonged.
Pairing: Frontiersman!Bucky Barnes x Female Reader
Tags: Western AU. Shotgun Wedding. Strangers to Lovers. Slight Angst. Comfort. Domestic Fluff. Slow Burn. Smut.
Warnings: Reader has Heterochromia. Loss of Virginity. Period-Typical Gender Roles and Expectations.
Summary: She came to White Creek for a teaching position that didn't exist. He needed a wife but never expected to find one like this.
Word Count: 6k
Previous Chapter - Masterlist
He crossed the distance between them in two strides, his hands coming up to frame her face as he kissed her. Deep and thorough and claiming, like he had all the time in the world and intended to use it.
His tongue slid against hers, tasting her, and she felt her body respond despite the nervousness. Felt herself lean into him, her hands coming up to grip his shoulders.
This was happening.
He guided her backward until her legs hit the edge of the mattress, and he broke the kiss just long enough to murmur against her lips, "Lie down."
She did, sinking back onto the quilt, and the coolness of the fabric against her overheated skin made her shiver.
Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could hear it.
He stood there for a moment, just looking at her, and she saw his throat work as he swallowed. Then he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his drawers and pushed them down.
She'd seen him before. Had touched him, learned what made him groan and shudder and come undone in her hand.
But this was different.
This was knowing what came next.
He was hard. Fully hard. And she felt a flutter of something between nerves and anticipation as her eyes traced his length.
He climbed onto the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, and settled between her legs. His hands pushed her thighs wider -gently, but with clear intent- and then his weight was braced on one forearm beside her head.
Close. So close she could see the firelight reflected in his eyes, could count his eyelashes if she wanted to.
Could feel the heat of his… manhood, against her inner thigh.
"If you feel discomfort," he said, his voice low and serious, "you tell me. Don't keep it to yourself."
She hesitated.
Her mother's voice echoed in her head, the brief, cold explanation. It will hurt, but don't make a fuss. Men don't like fussing.
He must have seen something in her face, because his expression changed.
"You understand?" he said, firmer now. Almost a command. "You feel somethin’ wrong, you tell me."
She managed to nod.
"Say it."
Her throat felt tight. "If I need you to stop, I'll tell you."
Something in his expression eased, and he leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. Then her mouth, softer this time.
"Good girl," he murmured against her lips. "Now breathe, sweetheart."
His hand slid down her body, between her breasts, over her stomach, lower still. His fingers found her, sliding through the wetness there, and she gasped at the sudden contact.
"Still wet for me," he said quietly, almost to himself. "That's good. That's gonna help."
He circled that bundle of nerves between her legs with his thumb -just a few slow passes- and she felt her hips shift involuntarily, her body already conditioned to respond to that touch.
Then his finger slid inside her.
Just one. Familiar. Something her body knew. He worked it slowly, curling and stroking, and she felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease. Then he added a second finger, stretching her slightly, and she tensed again.
"Relax," he murmured, his mouth moving to her neck, pressing kisses along the column of her throat. "Just gettin’ you ready. Ain’t wanna hurt you more than necessary."
His fingers moved inside her, slow and deliberate, while his thumb stayed on the nub above her entrance. The dual sensation made her breathing quicken, made heat start to pool low in her belly despite her nerves.
After a moment, when her breathing had evened out slightly, when she'd stopped tensing every time his fingers moved, he withdrew them.
His free hand moved between them, and she felt him wrap it around himself.
She couldn't see from this angle, but she felt it when he dragged the head of his member through her folds. Slow. Deliberate. Coating himself in her wetness.
The blunt pressure against her entrance made her tense all over again.
"Look at me," he said quietly.
She did. Met his eyes. Saw the hunger there, but also something else. Care. Intent. Focus.
"Now you're gonna be my wife proper," he said, his voice rough but steady.
She nodded, her throat too tight for words.
This was it. The final step. The consummation that would make their marriage real in every sense.
"Breathe," he reminded her.
She tried. Drew in a shaky breath. Let it out.
Then he started to push in.
Slowly. So slowly.
And…
It burned.
Not pleasurably. Not the building heat she was used to from his fingers, his mouth.
Just a sharp, foreign pressure that felt wrong. Too much. Too big.
Her body wanted to reject it, to tense up and push him out. Her hands flew to his shoulders, her nails digging in instinctively.
He stopped immediately. Didn't push further. Just held still, barely inside her, giving her time to adjust.
"Bucky-" Her voice came out thin.
"I know, sweet girl," he said quietly, his forehead resting against hers. "I know it hurts."
She could feel him trembling slightly with the effort of holding still. Could feel the tension in his shoulders under her hands.
"We can stop," he continued, his voice strained. "But if we try again tomorrow, or next week, it'll hurt just the same. Has to happen at some point."
She knew that. Had known that.
Had known this was coming since the moment she'd said "I do" in the church two months ago.
She nodded, trying to breathe through the burn.
"You're doin’ so good," he murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. Then her cheek. Then the corner of her mouth. "So good for me. Just breathe. This is gonna hurt," he added quietly, his forehead against hers again. "Just for a second. But if I go slow here, it'll hurt longer. You understand?"
“Y-yes”
"Breathe in," he said.
She did.
"Now out."
And as she exhaled, he pushed through in one firm thrust.
The pain was sharp and immediate. A tearing, burning sensation that made her cry out. Her nails raked down his shoulders, leaving marks she'd feel guilty about later, but right now all she could process was the sudden, overwhelming hurt.
He didn't pull back. Didn't stop.
Just stayed buried deep inside her, holding completely still as her body seized around him.
"It's done, sweetheart," he said quietly, his voice strained but steady. "Worst part's over.
She couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
Just lay there beneath him, trying to process the sharp, tearing pain that was already starting to fade, but in its wake was a deep, burning ache. And the overwhelming sensation of being filled. Stretched.
Her body struggled to accommodate something it had never held before.
"I know," he murmured, and she realized tears had leaked from the corners of her eyes when he kissed them. "I promise it's gonna feel good later. Just needs time."
She nodded, the movement jerky, not trusting her voice.
He stayed perfectly still above her, buried deep inside her, his muscles tense with the effort of not moving, giving her body time to adjust.
"That's my girl," he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers. "Just like that. You're doin’ so good."
Slowly- so slowly- the sharp edge of pain started to dull.
She became aware of other things. The weight of his body above her. The heat of his skin against hers. The way his breath came harsh and uneven against her neck.
The way he was trembling with the effort of holding still for her.
"Bucky," she whispered.
"Yeah?" His voice was rough.
"I'm... I'm okay."
It wasn't entirely true. But she could breathe now. Could think past the initial shock. Could feel something beyond just the pain.
His hand slid to cradle her head. "You sure?"
She nodded.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay. Just... tell me if it gets worse. Promise me."
"I promise."
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then her temple, slow and sweet and careful.
After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a minute or two, she felt him shift slightly above her.
His breathing had gone ragged. Harsh. She could feel the tension in his entire body, the way his muscles were locked with the effort of staying still.
He'd been so patient. So careful.
"I need to-" he started, his voice rough and strained. "I'm gonna move now."
She nodded, bracing herself, her hands tightening on his shoulders.
"Tell me if it's too much," he said. Then, quieter, almost like a plea, "But I need to move, sweetheart. I can't- I need-"
"It's okay," she managed, her voice thin. "I know."
He pressed his forehead against the side of her throat, exhaled shakily, and then pulled back.
Slowly. Just an inch, maybe two.
The drag of him against her inner walls made her wince. It wasn't the sharp pain of before, but a dull, burning ache that made her want to tense up even though she knew that would make it worse.
He pushed back in -slow, controlled- and she felt her nails dig into his shoulders.
"Shh," he murmured. "You're alright. Just breathe."
He set a cadence. Slow, careful thrusts that were clearly meant to let her adjust rather than chase his own pleasure.
But she could see the strain in his face. The tightness in his jaw. The way a muscle jumped in his neck with each measured movement.
He was holding back. For her.
"That's it," he said quietly, his voice still controlled but rougher now. "That's good. You're doin’ so good for me."
The praise settled somewhere warm in her chest, even as her body struggled to accommodate him.
He kept moving. Slow. Steady. His hips rolled in a careful rhythm that was clearly taking every ounce of his self-control to maintain. And gradually -so gradually she almost didn't notice- the sharp edge of pain started to dull further.
Still uncomfortable. Still a stretch that made her acutely aware of every inch of him. But it was bearable. Her body was learning, adjusting.
His hand slid up her side -a slow, deliberate caress- and cupped her breast.
The touch made her gasp, not from pain but from surprise.
His thumb brushed over her nipple, and sensation sparked through her body, familiar and welcome after the unfamiliar burning below.
"There," he murmured, his voice dropping lower. "Focus on that."
He did it again, rolling her nipple between his thumb and finger while his hips kept that slow, steady rhythm.
And she felt it, a flash of something that wasn't pain. Wasn't discomfort.
Something warm. Almost pleasant.
"Good girl," he said, and there was satisfaction in his voice now.
His rhythm stuttered slightly. Just a fraction. Like his control had slipped for a moment before he caught it.
She felt him thrust a little harder -once- and then he seemed to force himself back to that careful, measured pace.
But his breathing was getting harsher. His movements less smooth.
"So tight," he muttered, almost to himself. "Christ, you're so tight around me."
The words sent an unexpected flutter through her belly.
He'd never talked like this before, during the times they'd touched each other in the dark.
Was this... was this part of it? Part of what happened?
"Takin’ me so well," he continued, his voice rough and low. "My sweet girl. My wife."
My wife.
The possessiveness in his tone made something clench deep inside her. Made her hyperaware of exactly what was happening, that he was inside her, claiming his right as a husband, making her his in the most fundamental way possible.
His hand tightened on her breast, and his rhythm faltered again.
She felt him drive in harder this time -deeper- and a sound escaped her lips. Not quite pain, not quite pleasure. Something between.
"Sorry," he gritted out. "Tryin’ to- tryin’ to go slow- "
But his control was fraying. She could feel it. Could see it in the way his jaw clenched, the way his eyes had gone dark and unfocused.
"You feel so-" He thrust again, harder still, and groaned. "So good."
His hand left her breast and slid down between them.
She felt his thumb find that sensitive bundle of nerves he'd learned so well over the past two months and press down in a slow circle.
The sensation cut through the discomfort like light through fog.
She gasped, her hips jerking involuntarily, and heard him make a rough sound of approval.
"That's it," he said, his thumb moving in deliberate circles while his hips kept moving. "Feel that? Feel how good it can be?"
And she could. Beneath the ache, beneath the burning stretch, there was pleasure building.
"Gonna make you feel good," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "Gonna make my wife feel good while I- while I-"
His rhythm was breaking down. Getting faster. Less controlled.
His thumb worked her clit with more pressure, and she felt her body respond despite everything. Felt heat pooling, felt that familiar tightening that meant she was getting close to-
"Mine," he said roughly, and thrust harder. "You're my wife. Mine to- to fill-"
The words should have scandalized her. Should have made her gasp.
Instead, they sent a spike of heat straight between her thighs.
"Bucky-" His name came out breathy.
"Say it," he demanded, his voice harsh now, his hips snapping forward with less and less restraint. "Say you're mine. Made to fit me."
She felt herself clench again at the words, flustered and aroused in equal measure. He was losing it. She could feel it in the way his movements had gone erratic, the way his whole body had gone taut.
"Gonna put a baby in you," he muttered, his voice wrecked.
His thumb pressed hard against her clit, and she cried out as pleasure spiked through her. Not an orgasm, not quite, but close enough that her body clenched around him.
And that was it.
His control shattered completely.
"Fuck-" The word tore out of him -rough, desperate- and he drove into her hard. Once. Twice. Three times.
No more careful restraint. No more measured thrusts.
Just need. Raw and overwhelming.
She felt him swell inside her, and then he was coming with a low, broken groan, his hips jerking as he spilled deep inside her in a hot rush.
He collapsed slightly, catching himself on his forearms so he didn't crush her, his breathing ragged and harsh against her neck.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Just lay there, connected, both trying to catch their breath.
She could feel his heart pounding against her chest, or maybe that was her own heart, she couldn't tell anymore. With his weight on top, she could feel the heat of his body, the way he was still buried inside her.
Still part of her.
After a moment, he shifted slightly, bracing more of his weight on his forearms, and lifted his head to look at her.
His pupils were blown wide, dark, and unfocused. His cheeks were flushed, color high across his cheekbones in a way she'd never seen before. His hair was disheveled from her hands, and his breathing was still ragged.
He looked... undone.
"You alright?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
His hand came up to brush her hair back from her face, his touch gentle despite the roughness of his breathing.
"Did so good," he murmured. "So good for me, sweetheart."
She felt him start to soften inside her, and when he finally did withdraw, he did it slowly. Carefully. The slide made her wince.
He settled back on his knees between her spread thighs, and she felt the immediate loss of his body heat. The cool air hit her sweat-dampened skin, raising goosebumps.
But then she felt something else. Something warm and wet sliding between her thighs.
His spend leaking out of her, she realized with a jolt of mortification. Her legs started to close instinctively, wanting to hide, but his hands caught her knees and held them apart.
Gently. Firmly.
Her hands flew to cover her face as heat flooded her cheeks.
She felt exposed. Obscene. She needed to-
"Not yet," he said, his voice still rough but with an edge of something else now.
Satisfaction, maybe.
She kept her hands over her face, unable to look at him. Unable to face whatever expression he was wearing while he looked at… at that.
"Sweetheart," he said, and there was amusement in his voice now. "Look at me."
She shook her head, her face burning.
"No?" She heard the smile in his voice. "Shy now? After everythin’ we just did?"
"Bucky, please-" Her voice came out muffled behind her hands.
"Please what?" His thumbs traced small circles on the inside of her knees. "You're givin’ me such a view right now. Hate to waste it."
"Bucky!" She wanted to die. Wanted to sink through the mattress and disappear.
She heard him chuckle- low and warm- and then felt the bed shift as he moved.
A moment later, she heard his footsteps crossing the cabin -the soft thud of bare feet on wooden floor- then the sound of water being poured.
She finally lowered her hands from her face, just enough to peek through her fingers.
He was at the washbasin, his back to her, still completely naked.
The firelight played across the muscles of his shoulders, the breadth of his back, highlighting old scars she'd traced with her fingers countless times. And there, standing out in faint red lines against his skin, were the marks her nails had left.
She heard the wet sound of fabric being wrung out and realized he was dampening a cloth.
Then he turned back toward the bed, and she immediately tried to sit up, close her legs, but he was there before she could move, one hand settling on her knee.
Keeping her open.
Keeping her exposed.
"Stay," he said simply.
"I can- I should-" She could do this herself. Should do this herself. It wasn't proper-
But he shook his head, already settling back between her thighs with the damp cloth in hand.
"Let me," he said, and there was something in his voice that made it not quite a request.
She lay back against the pillow, her whole body burning with embarrassment as he began to clean her.
The cloth was warm against her oversensitized skin. His touch was gentle as he wiped away the evidence of what they'd done.
His spend. Her blood.
The proof of her virginity, now gone.
It should have been mortifying.
It was mortifying.
But his touch was so matter-of-fact, so unashamed, that some of her embarrassment began to fade into something else.
Intimacy, maybe. The kind that came from letting someone tend to you like this. From being vulnerable and having that vulnerability treated with care.
When the cloth passed over a particularly tender spot, she winced involuntarily.
He paused immediately, his eyes flicking up to her face.
"Hurt?"
"A little," she admitted, her voice small.
His expression softened, and he gentled his touch even more, barely any pressure at all as he finished cleaning her.
When he was done, he set the cloth aside and looked at her, his hand still resting warm on her thigh.
"I'll leave you be for a few days," he said quietly. "Let you heal up."
She felt a confusing mix of relief and something else. Disappointment, maybe? Which was absurd, given that the idea of doing that again right now made her want to wince.
"And next time," he continued, his thumb tracing a small circle on her thigh, "it ain’t gonna hurt like that. I promise."
She searched his face, looking for certainty she wasn't sure he could have.
"How do you know?"
His mouth quirked slightly. "Can't say from personal experience," he admitted. "But that's what I've heard. First time's the worst. Gets easier after."
----
He watched her process that information, saw the way her eyes searched his face like she was looking for certainty he didn't have to give.
He'd tried to be careful. Had gone slower than his body had wanted, had prepared her as best he knew how.
But he'd still hurt her.
Had heard her cry out. Had felt her nails rake down his back. Had seen tears slip from the corners of her eyes.
And he'd kept going anyway, because he had to. That's what men did, what husbands did.
But he felt guilty anyway.
"Get under the covers," he said, standing from the bed. "You'll get cold."
She nodded and shifted, wincing slightly as she moved, and he felt that guilt twist tighter.
He turned away before she could see it on his face and crossed to the washbasin, dampening the cloth again, wringing it, and began wiping his thighs, his cock.
There was blood on him. Not much, but enough.
Proof that she'd been untouched until tonight. That he'd been the first. The only.
And, beneath the guilt and the concern about having hurt her… he couldn't help the satisfaction that came with it.
No one before him. No one else would ever know her this way.
He rinsed the cloth, wrung it out, and hung it to dry. Then he crossed back to the bed.
She'd already burrowed under the quilts, turned on her side, facing away from him. He could see the curve of her shoulder, the way her hair spilled across the pillow.
He climbed in beside her, and the mattress dipped under his weight.
Immediately, he felt her start to shift, beginning to turn toward him out of politeness, probably.
"Hey," he said quietly, his hand settling on her hip to still her. "You more comfortable like this?"
She paused. "Yes," she admitted after a moment, her voice soft.
"Then stay." He shifted closer, fitting himself against her back, his arm coming around her waist. "This is how we'll sleep."
She didn't protest. Just let him pull her in, let him curl around her like he could shield her from everything beyond these four walls.
He pressed his face into her hair, breathing her in, then brushed his nose against the curve of her neck.
"Good night, sweet girl," he murmured against her skin.
Then, quieter, like a benediction:
"My wife."
----
She sat at the table with her second cup of coffee, the cabin quiet now that Bucky had left for work, letting the warmth seep into her palms as she stared at the table's wooden surface.
Heat flooded her face as the memory hit her with startling clarity, sitting on this exact spot, Bucky kneeling between her thighs, his mouth on her while she gripped the edge and tried not to fall apart.
We eat here, she'd said.
And I'm about to, he'd replied.
She set her cup down with a slightly unsteady hand, her face still burning.
It wasn't as if she'd been so sheltered that she didn't know people had relations outside of bedrooms. There were stories, whispered scandals about couples caught in barns, in carriages, behind locked parlor doors.
But the kitchen table. Where they ate breakfast every morning.
That hadn't been something she'd imagined.
She wondered if this sort of thing happened in proper households, or maybe Bucky was just... different. A little blasphemous, perhaps.
Though even as the thought crossed her mind, she couldn't quite bring herself to be scandalized by it. Because if she was being honest with herself, truly honest, she couldn't deny that she'd do it again.
All of it.
She took another sip of coffee, trying to focus on the mundane tasks that awaited her today. Laundry. Mending. The usual chores.
But her mind kept circling back.
She'd fulfilled her obligation as a wife. Finally. Properly.
And it had been... nothing like what her mother had described: He'll get on top of you and put his... thing inside you. You stay on your back, let him do, and it will be over quickly.
But last night hadn't been quick. Hadn't been something she'd simply endured while staring at the ceiling.
And Bucky-
Her face heated again, this time for an entirely different reason.
Bucky, who was always so direct with her but respectful, had said things when he was inside her, when he was close to finishing.
Mine to fill.
Gonna spend inside you.
She pressed her hands to her cheeks, feeling the heat of her skin.
Those words, crude and explicit and nothing like what a husband should say to his wife, shouldn't have affected her the way they had.
Shouldn't affect her now, sitting alone at the kitchen table hours later.
But they did.
She couldn't stop thinking about it. About his weight pressing her into the mattress. The heat of his skin against hers. The way his voice had gone rough and raw when he'd lost control.
And beneath the embarrassment, beneath the shock of hearing such words from her husband's mouth, there was something else.
Curiosity.
He'd said it wouldn't hurt like that again. That it would get easier.
She knew how good his fingers felt inside her. The stretch, the curl, the way he could find spots that made her see stars. And last night, even through the pain, she'd felt the difference. The fullness. The way he filled her completely in a way his fingers never could.
If it didn't hurt next time, if her body didn't seize up in pain the way it had…
It would feel better.
So much better.
Her face burned hotter.
She set her cup down and stood abruptly, needing to move. Needing to do something with her hands before her thoughts spiraled any further.
Laundry. She had laundry to do.
And she absolutely, resolutely, was not going to think about her husband anymore this morning.
At least, she was going to try.
----
The axe bit into the wood with a satisfying thunk, and Bucky pulled it free, reset his stance, and swung again.
Thunk.
Again.
Thunk.
The rhythm should have been automatic by now, muscle memory built over two years of doing this exact thing, six days a week, dawn to dusk. Except today, his mind wasn't on the work.
It was back in the cabin. On last night.
He swung again, and the blade landed slightly off-center. Not enough to matter, but enough that Miller, working near him, glanced up.
"You alright over there, Barnes?"
"Fine," Bucky said, resetting his grip.
Miller raised an eyebrow but didn't push it. Just went back to stripping bark with his drawknife, the scraping filling the silence between axe blows.
Bucky tried to focus, to think about the angle of the cut, the grain of the wood, whether this section would split clean or need wedging. But his brain had other ideas.
He kept seeing her face.
The way she'd looked up at him when he'd first pushed inside her, eyes wide and startled, like her body hadn't been ready for the reality of it, even though she'd known it was coming.
The way her hands had flown to his shoulders, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks he could still feel under his shirt.
The sound she'd made, small and pained and trying so damn hard not to make a fuss about it.
He'd hated that sound. Hated that he'd caused it, even though there was no way around it. No secret trick that would've made it painless. First times hurt. That's just how it was.
But knowing that didn't make it easier to hear her cry out. Didn't make it easier to feel her tense up around him like her body was trying to reject what he was doing.
Thunk.
The axe sank deep, and he had to wrench it free with more force than necessary.
Miller looked up again. "You sure you're alright?"
"Yeah," Bucky said, not meeting his eyes. "Just didn't sleep much."
It wasn't a lie.
He'd lain awake for a long time after, listening to her breathing even out into sleep, wondering if she was sore. If he'd been too rough at the end when his control had finally snapped, and he'd lost himself in her completely.
He shook his head sharply and focused on the log in front of him. Work. He needed to focus on the work.
----
Except he couldn't.
Because underneath the guilt and the worry that he'd hurt her more than necessary, there was something else.
She was his now. Fully. Completely. No ambiguity left. No waiting, no careful restraint. He'd claimed her the way a husband was meant to claim his wife, and she'd lain beneath him and taken what he gave her, even when it hurt.
Even when he'd lost control at the end and said things he probably shouldn't have said.
Mine to fill.
Gonna spend inside you.
Gonna put a baby in you.
His hands tightened on the axe handle. Christ, he'd said that last part out loud. He remembered it now, clear as day.
Remembered the words tearing out of him when he'd been too far gone to think, too close to finishing to care about propriety or what she might think.
And instead of showing surprise or scruples, she just clenched around him -tight and hot and perfect- and he'd buried himself deep and spent inside her like he'd been wanting to do for two months.
The memory alone made his body start to react in a way that was absolutely not appropriate for the middle of a workday. He shifted his stance, adjusting himself discreetly in his pants, and focused very hard on the next swing.
Thunk.
"Barnes."
He looked up. Davidson was standing a few feet away, hands on his hips, looking at him with a mix of amusement and exasperation.
"You just split that log three times," the man said. "It's done. Move on to the next one."
Bucky looked down. Sure enough, the log in front of him was already split clean through, the two halves lying on either side of the chopping block. He had no memory of finishing it.
"Right," he muttered, stepping back.
Davidson's mouth twitched. "Rough night?"
"Somethin’ like that."
"Uh-huh." Davidson's grin widened. "Well, try to keep your head attached today, yeah? Don't need you losing a foot because you're too busy daydreaming."
Bucky shot him a look, but there was no real heat in it, because he wasn't wrong. He was distracted. Badly.
And it wasn't just the memories of last night.
For two years, he'd come home to an empty cabin. Cold. Silent. Nothing waiting for him except whatever scraps he could throw together for dinner and a bed that was too big for one person.
Now? Now he came home to her. To the smell of something cooking when he walked through the door at the end of the day. To a bed that was warm because she was in it.
To a wife who let him touch her. Who responded when he kissed her. Who'd let him inside her body last night and would -God willing- let him do it again. And again. And again. Because that's what marriage was. That's what husbands and wives did.
The thought sent another wave of heat to his groin, and he had to stop and take a breath before he embarrassed himself in front of the entire crew.
He moved to the next log, setting up the cut, trying to get his head back in the game.
But his mind was already racing ahead.
Tonight, when he got home, she'd be there. She'd probably have dinner ready. Would move around the cabin in that way she did now, like she belonged there, because she did.
And after dinner...
He'd told her he'd leave her alone for a few days, give her time to heal. And he would.
He wasn't some rutting animal who couldn't control himself. But Christ, the idea of waiting even a few days felt impossible now that he'd had her once.
His jaw clenched.
Three days. Maybe four-
"Barnes!"
Miller's voice cut through his thoughts, sharp and urgent. Bucky's head snapped up just in time to realize his next swing was aimed wrong, too close to his own leg, the blade already descending. He jerked back instinctively, and the axe bit into the chopping block inches from where his boot had been.
Miller was staring at him, eyes wide. "Jesus. You trying to chop your foot off?"
"No," Bucky said, his heart pounding. "Just... wasn't payin’ attention."
"Oh really." Miller shook his head. "What the hell's got into you today?"
Bucky bent to reset the log, avoiding Miller's eyes.
He couldn't exactly say, I can't stop thinking about my wife. About being inside her. About doing it again.
That wasn't the kind of thing a decent man shared with his coworkers. Even if it was the truth.
"Just tired," he said instead.
Miller snorted. "Yeah. I bet you are."
----
By lunch, he had nearly taken his own thumb off with a slipped blade, tripped over a root he should've seen coming, and earned himself a lecture from the foreman about keeping his head in the game.
He sat on a stump during the break, eating the lunch she'd packed for him, and tried to get his thoughts in order.
This was ridiculous. He was a grown man. He'd had women before. This shouldn't be affecting him like some green kid who'd just gotten his first taste.
But it was different with her, because she wasn't just some woman. And he'd spent two months wanting her, two months holding himself back, two months being careful and patient and waiting for the right time.
And now that he'd finally had her... now he wanted her again.
Wanted to come home tonight and pull her into his arms and kiss her until she made those little sounds in the back of her throat.
Wanted to get her out of that dress and feel her skin against his.
Wanted to be inside her again. To make her feel what he'd started to show her last night, that it could be good for her too.
Wanted to hear her gasp his name the way she did when his mouth was on her.
Wanted to feel her clench around him because she was close, not because she was hurting.
Wanted-
"Barnes, you gonna eat that or just stare at it?"
He blinked. Davidson was standing in front of him, grinning.
"You've been holding that same piece of pie for five minutes without taking a bite," the man said. "Either eat it or put it down before you drop it."
Bucky looked down at his hand. Sure enough, he'd been holding a piece of pie halfway to his mouth, completely frozen.
"Christ," he muttered, shoving it into his mouth. Davidson laughed and walked away, shaking his head.
----
The rest of the day dragged.
Every swing of the axe felt like it took twice as long as usual. Every log felt heavier. Every minute stretched out like an hour.
He kept catching himself glancing at the sky, trying to gauge how much daylight was left, trying to calculate how much longer until he could go home. Until he could see her again.
It was pathetic. He knew it was pathetic, but he couldn't help it.
By the time the foreman finally called it for the day, Bucky was already moving, grabbing his coat, his lunch pail, heading for the trail before anyone else had even started packing up.
"Someone's in a hurry," Miller called after him, laughing.
Bucky didn't respond. Just kept walking. Because yeah, he was in a hurry.
He had a wife waiting at home.
And he'd been thinking about her all damn day.
Next Chapter
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Pairing: Footballer!Bucky Barnes x pop star!reader
Synopsis: Can a man fall in love in a stadium of thousands? When star Soldiers player Bucky Barnes attends your record-breaking pop concert held on his home grounds, he thinks anything is possible with you singing your heart out. All he has to do is prove it to you.
Note: Bucky Barnes x f!reader meets the whirlwind tale of Taylor Swift x Travis Kelce, by an Australian who has never watched an NFL game in her life
Presale tickets now available …
00 Preseason
01 Begin Again
1.1 First Down
02 Eligible Receiver
03 A Good Fall
#AreYouReadyForIt for author’s clowning
Tay x Trav timeline
Fake texts / DMs - Faker 2 app
Fake Instagram / Twitter posts
Inspiration heavily borrowed from Taylor’s songs The Alchemy, So High School, Honey, and Wood
Pairing: Frontiersman!Bucky Barnes x Female Reader
Tags: Western AU. Shotgun Wedding. Strangers to Lovers. Slight Angst. Comfort. Domestic Fluff. Slow Burn. Smut.
Warnings: Reader has Heterochromia. Loss of Virginity. Period-Typical Gender Roles and Expectations.
Summary: She came to White Creek for a teaching position that didn't exist. He needed a wife but never expected to find one like this.
Word Count: 7.7k
Previous Chapter - Masterlist
He guided her toward the cleared space where couples were beginning to form lines: two rows facing each other, men on one side, women on the other.
"It's simple," he said as they walked, his hand still at her back. "The caller shouts the figures, you follow along. Everyone's facin’ their partner most of the time, so keep your eyes on me."
"Figures?" she repeated.
"Moves. Dosido, allemande, swing… You ain’t need to worry about the names. Just watch what everyone else does and follow my lead when we're together."
They reached the lines, and he positioned her across from him in the women's row. The space between them was maybe six feet, close enough that she could see the way his eyes tracked her, the slight curve of his mouth.
Around them, other couples were settling into place. She recognized Nell and Tom a few positions down, Sarah and her husband closer to the front. Even some of the older couples had joined, Carl and Agnes Hayes among them.
A man with a fiddle stood near the corner. Someone else, one of the loggers she didn't know by name, called out, "Everyone ready?"
A chorus of affirmatives rose from the group.
"Alright then," the caller said, raising his voice to carry over the chatter. "We'll start with an easy one for the newcomers. 'Petronella'. Everyone knows it?"
Most people nodded or called out agreement. She stayed quiet, her heart beating faster.
The fiddle started, a lively, bouncing tune that made her want to tap her foot even before anyone moved.
"Forward and back!" the caller shouted.
The lines surged toward each other, then retreated. She followed a half-beat late, watching the women around her.
"Forward and back again!"
This time she moved with them, stepping forward until she was close enough to see the amusement in Bucky's eyes, then back again.
"Dosido your partner!"
She hesitated -what the hell was a dosido?- but Bucky was already moving toward her. He circled around her right side, his shoulder passing close to hers, then around her back. She turned instinctively, following the motion, and ended up facing him again from the same spot.
"Good," he said, just loud enough for her to hear over the music.
"Right-hand star!" the caller shouted.
The couples moved into groups of four, her and Bucky with the pair beside them. Everyone extended their right hands to the center, forming a star shape, and began walking in a circle.
She focused on keeping her footing, on not stepping on anyone's skirts or boots, on trying to anticipate what came next.
The figures kept coming: swing your partner, promenade, ladies chain. She stumbled more than once, turned the wrong direction during an allemande, and completely missed a move she didn't catch the name of.
But Bucky was always there. Guiding her with a hand at her waist, a look, a subtle gesture. And when she got it wrong, he just grinned and pulled her back into position.
Around them, people were laughing. Not at her, she realized, but just... enjoying themselves. The music, the movement, the chaos of so many bodies trying to stay in sync.
And she was laughing too.
Eventually, the caller shouted, "Swing your neighbor!"
Before she could process what that meant, Tom Johnson was there, catching her hand and spinning her in a quick circle. She caught a glimpse of Nell being spun by the man on her other side, laughing at something he'd said.
And then she was back in line, slightly breathless, and Tom was grinning at her before returning to his own partner.
The music kept going, relentless and cheerful.
"Down the line!"
The top couple -the pair at the head of the formation- joined hands and skipped down between the two rows while everyone else clapped. When they reached the bottom, they formed an arch with their arms, and the next couple ducked under and repeated the pattern.
She watched, trying to memorize the sequence, and realized with growing certainty that eventually, it would be her and Bucky's turn.
"Progression!" the caller shouted.
The lines changed. She moved up one position, and suddenly the couple she was facing wasn't Bucky anymore; it was a man she didn't know, one of the other loggers, with a weathered face and a friendly gap-toothed smile.
Her stomach dropped.
It was irrational. She knew it was irrational.
"Forward and back!"
She moved automatically, but her eyes searched for Bucky. Found him one position down, now facing a woman she recognized from the food tables. Younger, maybe her age, with dark hair and a bright smile.
He caught her gaze for a brief second and gave her a small nod.
You're fine. Keep going.
She forced herself to look away, to focus on her own partner.
"Dosido your partner!"
She circled the stranger, keeping her expression neutral, trying not to think about how different it felt to move around someone who wasn't Bucky.
The man was polite. His hands, when they touched hers during the star, were dry and work-roughened, impersonal. He smelled like tobacco and woodsmoke.
Not Bucky.
The figures continued, right hand star, left hand star, swing your partner.
When the stranger's hand settled at her waist for the swing, it felt all wrong. Too light. Too careful. As if she were made of glass instead of flesh and bone.
The stranger spun her competently, released her right on time, and she ended up back in her spot in line.
She counted the steps in her head, willing the progression to come faster.
Around her, people were laughing, enjoying themselves. The music played on, relentless and cheerful.
She didn't look down the line. Didn't want to see Bucky's hands on that woman's waist, even in something as innocent as contradance.
One more figure, she told herself. Maybe two.
"Dosido your corner!"
She circled the woman beside her -Sarah, she realized- and Sarah gave her a quick, sympathetic smile. Did it show on her face? How much she wanted to be back across from her own husband?
"Progression!"
The lines shifted again, and she was back across from Bucky.
His eyes found hers instantly, and something in his expression, maybe the flatness of his stare, suggested he hadn't enjoyed the last progression any more than she had.
"Miss me?" he asked, just loud enough for her to hear as they stepped forward and back.
"Terribly," she said, and she meant it more than he probably realized.
His expression changed, something possessive and serious flickered across his face before smoothing into a grin. But she'd seen it. That flash of... what? Satisfaction? Relief?
"Good," he said, and there was an edge to his voice that made her stomach flip.
"Swing your partner!"
He caught her around the waist and spun her, and the difference was immediate.
Faster than the stranger had moved her. Closer. Close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through all the layers of fabric between them. His hand at her waist was firm and sure, pulling her into the turn with confidence that made her head spin.
She laughed as the room blurred around them.
This. This was right.
His hand, and the way he moved her, like he knew exactly how her body would respond. When they stopped, she was dizzy. Not from the spinning… or not just from the spinning.
She wanted to say something, but the music was already moving into the next figure, and the caller's voice rose above the noise.
"Down the line!"
Bucky squeezed her hand once before they separated to let the top couple skip through.
But she felt that squeeze all the way through the rest of the dance.
----
The contradance ran several more rounds until the fiddle player finally lowered his instrument with a flourish as the last notes faded. The room erupted in applause and laughter, people fanning themselves, reaching for water, catching their breath.
She was breathing hard, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead despite the cold outside. Her face felt warm. From the exertion, from the punch still in her system, from the way Bucky had been looking at her every time they'd come back together in the line.
"Well done," he said, appearing at her elbow with a cup of water. "For someone who ain't know what a dosido was an hour ago."
She took the water gratefully, drinking half of it in one go. "I stepped on at least three people's feet."
"Maybe four," he corrected, grinning. "But who's countin’?"
She swatted his arm lightly, and he caught her hand, holding it for just a moment longer than necessary before letting go.
She felt that small touch like a spark.
Around them, people were milling about, some heading outside for air, others clustering near the drink table. The fiddle player was conferring with someone about the next set.
Then a voice rose from near the front of the room. Clear, refined, and just a touch condescending.
"Perhaps we might try something a bit more... refined? A waltz, maybe?"
She turned to see the mayor's wife standing with the banker's wife, both of them looking perfectly composed despite the heat of the room. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in their fine dresses.
There was a beat of silence.
Then someone -one of the loggers- let out a low whistle. "Ooh, fancy."
Laughter rippled through the crowd, but it wasn't mean-spirited. More like amusement at the incongruity of it, waltzing in a frontier town hall after contradance.
"I think that's a fine idea," Agnes Hayes said, her tone diplomatic but with a hint of mischief. "If the fiddle player knows one."
The fiddle player shrugged. "I know a few."
"Well then," Carl Hayes said, offering his arm to Agnes with exaggerated formality. "Shall we, my dear?"
More laughter. But people were starting to pair off, couples moving back toward the cleared space. The atmosphere had changed, less raucous, more curious. Like they were all in on the joke but willing to play along.
Bucky turned to her. "You know how to waltz?"
"I do," she said. "Do you?"
"Enough to get by." He held out his hand. "Come on."
She took it, and he led her back onto the floor.
The space felt different now. More intimate, even with all the other couples gathering around them.
The fiddle started a slower, lilting melody.
Bucky's hand pressed at her waist, and she placed hers on his shoulder. Their other hands joined, held at a proper height.
Appropriate. Exactly the way she'd been taught.
But it didn't feel proper.
Not when it was him.
"Ready?" he asked quietly.
She nodded, and then they were moving.
It was completely different from the contradance.
No shouted instructions. No changing partners every few bars. No chaos of bodies moving in patterns around them.
Just the two of them, turning in slow circles, her skirts brushing against his legs with each step. She'd forgotten what this felt like. The waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three, the rhythm so ingrained she didn't have to think about it.
But she'd never done it like this.
Back home, the few times she'd danced at all with instructors, they had kept her at arm's length. Maintained the proper distance. Looked over her shoulder or past her, never quite meeting her gaze.
Because looking at her meant seeing her eyes. Meant acknowledging the girl with the devil's mark.
But Bucky was looking right at her.
His hand at her waist was warm and solid. Not tentative or careful like the lessons. Not performatively correct like the rare partner who'd been obligated to dance with her.
The room moved around them. Other couples turning, the fiddle playing, voices low, and occasional laughter.
But it all felt distant. Muffled, like there was a bubble around just the two of them.
"You've done this a lot?" she asked quietly.
"Once or twice." His hand at her waist pressed slightly more firmly, guiding her through a turn. "You're good at this."
"I had lessons," she admitted. "My parents thought it was important."
"For findin’ a husband?" There was no judgment in his voice, just curiosity.
She felt something twist in her chest.
"For being... acceptable. Refined." She met his eyes, saw him watching her carefully. "They thought if I could dance well enough, carry myself properly, be accomplished in all the right ways, maybe someone would overlook... the rest."
She didn't need to specify what "the rest" was.
"Not that it mattered much in the end," she added, trying to keep her voice light.
His expression changed, a shadow passing over his face. His hand tightened almost imperceptibly at her waist.
"Their loss," he said, and there was an edge to his voice.
Like she was something worth having. Worth wanting.
"Hey," he said quietly, and she realized she'd missed a step.
She forced herself to focus. One-two-three. Follow his lead. Don't think about-
"You alright?" he asked.
"Yes," she managed. "Just... thank you. For saying that."
"It's true," he said simply. "Anyone who couldn't see that you were worth knowin’ was a damn fool."
She blinked hard, once, and concentrated very carefully on the next turn.
Around them, other couples were dancing. Some with skill, others fumbling through the steps. Carl and Agnes were surprisingly graceful. Tom and Nell were arguing quietly about whose fault it was that they kept going off-count, but both were smiling.
And somewhere in the crowd, she caught a glimpse of Mary Collins watching them with a certain assessment that made her want to stand up straighter. Made her hyperaware of every imperfection, the way her hair was probably coming loose from its pins, the fact that her dress, while nice, was nothing compared to what some of the wealthier women wore.
Her shoulders tensed.
"Don't," Bucky said quietly.
She looked up at him. "Don't what?"
"Worry about what she thinks."
His thumb brushed against her waist. Just once, barely perceptible through all the layers of fabric and boning. But she felt it. Felt the deliberate pressure of it, the casual possessiveness.
"You're doin’ fine," he continued, his voice low enough that only she could hear.
"I wasn't-"
"You were." He turned them smoothly, and she had to focus to keep the count, to not stumble when her heart had just kicked up for reasons that had nothing to do with the dance. "And for the record, you look better in that dress than she does in hers. Even with the torture device underneath."
A surprised laugh escaped her before she could stop it. "Bucky."
"What? It's true." His eyes held hers, steady and warm. "You think I ain’t noticed you could barely breathe at lunch?"
"It's not that bad."
"It's ridiculous," he said flatly. "But you look beautiful anyway."
Beautiful.
He'd said it out loud, where anyone could hear.
Her foot faltered -just barely- and she felt herself lose the rhythm.
His hand at her waist tightened, pulling her back into the count without missing a beat.
One-two-three. One-two-three.
She forced herself to keep moving, to keep her feet following the pattern even though her mind had gone completely blank.
When was the last time someone had called her that? Had anyone ever called her that?
Her mother had called her ‘handsome’ once. A diplomatic word. A word that meant ‘presentable enough.’
Her brother had never commented on her appearance at all, except to remind her to keep her hair neat, her posture straight, her expression neutral. "Don't draw attention," he'd said.
And the men back home -the few who'd been forced into her company at social gatherings- had looked everywhere but at her face.
But Bucky was looking.
And he'd called her beautiful.
"Thank you," she managed.
The music swelled, and he turned them again, the movement bringing her marginally closer. Still proper, still acceptable by any standard.
But it felt intimate anyway.
"You're welcome," he said, his voice low, meant only for her.
Then, after a pause, quieter still: "Though if I'm bein’ honest, watchin’ you dance with others earlier made me want to end the whole damn thing."
Her eyes snapped to his.
He was watching her with a mix of amusement and frustration and something darker.
"Jealous?" she asked, testing the word.
His jaw worked for a moment, like he was deciding whether to admit it.
"Concerned," he said finally. Then, with a slight grimace, "And yeah. Maybe a little jealous."
The admission chased away the last remnants of nervousness about being here, about being watched, about what people thought.
"It's just contradance," she said, but she was smiling now. "Everyone dances with everyone."
"I know that." His hand flexed slightly at her waist. "Didn't make it easier to watch."
She wanted to say something. What, she wasn't sure. Something about how wrong it had felt to dance with anyone else. How she'd counted every second until the progression brought her back to him.
But the words stuck in her throat.
The music began to wind down, and when it ended, they stood there for a moment, still holding each other, neither quite ready to let go.
His hand was still at her waist. Hers still on his shoulder.
She could feel his breath, see the rise and fall of his chest, and the way he was looking at her.
Then someone started clapping, and the spell broke.
He stepped back, releasing her waist but keeping hold of her hand as they moved off the floor with the other couples.
But his thumb traced a small circle against her palm before he let go.
"Ready to head home?" he asked quietly.
She glanced around the room, at the people still laughing and talking, at the fiddle player tuning up for another set, at the warmth and noise and life of it all.
Then she looked back at him.
"Yes," she said. "I'm ready."
----
They made their way toward the door, weaving through clusters of people still talking, laughing, showing no signs of slowing down. The fiddle had started up again -another contradance by the sound of it- and she could hear the caller's voice rising over the music.
Near the food tables, she spotted Nell and Sarah gathering their empty dishes. They didn’t waltz, it seemed.
"We're heading out," she said, catching Nell's attention.
"Already?" Nell glanced toward the dance floor, then back at her with a knowing look. "Party's still going."
"Bucky has work tomorrow," she said. "He could use the extra rest."
Nell's eyebrow rose slightly, but she didn't push. "Of course."
"Actually," Sarah said, "we were just saying we should all meet up in town sometime. Make a day of it, errands and such."
"That sounds lovely," she said, genuinely pleased at the idea. "When were you thinking?"
"Maybe Thursday?" Nell suggested. "We could do our shopping, then grab something at the ‘hotel’ dining room. They've got decent coffee."
"Thursday works," she agreed. "I'll be there."
"Good." Nell squeezed her arm briefly. "It was nice having you here today. Really."
"Thank you," she said. "For everything."
Nell just smiled, and the meaning was clear: don't mention it.
They said their goodbyes, collected their now-empty crate and clothes from where they'd left them, and headed outside.
The afternoon air was cold, the sun already low on the horizon. Late November meant the days were short, and they'd be racing the sunset to get home before full dark.
She pulled her winter cloak around herself while Bucky shrugged into his coat.
The street was quieter now than it'd been at midday, most people still inside the hall. A few men stood outside the saloon, smoking and talking in low voices.
Bucky helped her up onto the wagon seat, his hand steady at her elbow even though she didn't really need the assistance. Her legs were tired from dancing, but she was steady enough.
He swung up beside her and gathered the reins, clicking his tongue to get the horse moving.
----
The sun was low, maybe two hours of good light left. They'd make it home before full dark if they kept a decent pace. No reason to rush…
Except he wanted to.
Had wanted to since the moment she'd pinned that brooch to her dress this morning and smiled at him like he'd given her something precious instead of a piece of cheap white copper from a camp peddler.
Maybe since before that. Since she'd stood in their cabin in nothing but her chemise and asked him to lace up that damned corset, and he'd had to keep his hands steady and impersonal when all he'd wanted was to do something else.
Two months. He'd waited two months.
He could wait another hour.
The road stretched ahead, familiar and rutted. He kept his attention on it, on the horse, on anything other than the woman sitting beside him.
She was quiet. Watching the landscape, her hands folded in her lap. The brooch caught the late afternoon light every time she shifted.
He'd been watching her all day. Couldn't seem to help it.
Watching her navigate the food tables with the other women, her shoulders straight and her chin up, even though he knew she'd been nervous. Watching her laugh with Nell Johnson and Sarah Calhoun like she'd known them for years instead of hours. Watching her move through the contradance, stumbling sometimes but trying, always trying.
Watching her dance with Tom Johnson during that partner swap, and feeling something ugly and possessive in his gut.
She was his wife. His.
And some rational part of his brain knew that was the whole point of contradance: everyone danced with everyone, it didn't mean anything.
But the irrational part, the part that had spent two months sleeping next to her and touching her and learning what made her gasp and arch against him, that part had wanted to walk across the floor and pull her back to his side of the line where she belonged.
He'd managed not to.
And then the waltz.
He'd danced before, enough to know the steps, enough to not embarrass himself. But he'd never danced with her. Had never had to reconcile the woman in his arms in public with the woman who came apart under his hands in private.
The way she'd looked up at him when he'd called her beautiful…
He shifted on the seat, adjusting his grip on the reins.
Focus. Road. Horse. Home.
Behind the seat, the wool blanket was folded where he'd stashed it that morning. The temperature had dropped since they'd left town, and it would only get colder as the sun set.
He glanced at her. She'd pulled her cloak tighter, but her hands were hidden under the fabric. Cold, probably.
"Hold these a second," he said, passing her the reins.
She took them without question, and he twisted around to grab the blanket. Shook it out and put it over both their laps, securing it around her legs.
His hand lingered on her thigh.
He told himself it was to make sure the blanket was firm. That the weight of his palm pressing through her skirt and petticoat was purely practical.
He let his hand rest there for a moment before he took the reins back and focused on the road again.
But he'd felt her reaction. The way she'd gone very still. The slight hitch in her breathing.
He didn't examine why he'd done it. Didn't want to admit, that every time she looked at him today with those mismatched eyes, it got a little harder to remember why he was waiting.
The wagon hit a rut, jostling them both.
She winced, her hand going to her side.
He glanced at her. "You alright?"
"Fine," she said. "Just this damned corset."
Damned corset was right.
He'd watched her struggle with it all day. The way she'd shifted in her seat during lunch, trying to find a position that didn't dig the boning into her more than necessary. The way she'd taken shallow breaths during the waltz, the tight lacing restricting her.
"That thing's coming off the second we get home," he said.
It was a practical statement. She'd been uncomfortable all day, and he'd get her out of it as soon as they were through the door. Help her unlace, let her breathe properly again.
That was all he meant.
But then, in a voice carefully neutral, she murmured, "I thought you were tired."
He turned to look at her and blinked.
Her expression was composed. Almost innocent. But her eyes…
She knew exactly what she was saying, knew exactly what she was implying.
And she wasn't drunk. He'd made sure of that back at the hall, which meant this wasn't the punch talking, this was her.
That something in him that had been held carefully in check all this time finally snapped.
"I ain’t tired."
He saw her swallow. Saw the way her fingers tightened slightly in the folds of her skirt under the blanket.
"Oh," she said, and it came out breathier than she probably meant.
He turned his attention back to the road, but his hands were tight on the reins.
The cabin was still twenty minutes away. Maybe less if he pushed the horse a bit.
Twenty minutes.
He could manage that.
----
The cabin came into view as the last light faded from the sky.
Bucky brought the wagon to a stop near the door, setting the brake before climbing down. He moved around to her side and offered his hand.
She took it, letting him help her down. Her legs were stiff from sitting, and she was acutely aware of how quiet everything was out here compared to the noise and warmth of the town hall.
Just the two of them now.
No music. No voices. No crowd to buffer the tension that had been building between them since they'd left town.
"I'll get the horse settled," he said, his voice low. "Get the fire goin’."
She nodded, not trusting her voice, and headed for the door.
Inside, the cabin was cold and dark. They'd put out the fire before leaving that morning, and now the chill was everywhere.
She moved by memory more than sight, finding the tinderbox on the mantle and kneeling by the hearth. Her hands were steady as she arranged the kindling and struck the flint.
Steady hands. That was good. That was important.
Even if the rest of her felt like it was vibrating with nervousness.
The spark caught. A small flame, then growing, casting light across the room.
She added larger pieces of wood, watching the fire build, feeling the first hints of warmth beginning to push back the cold.
I thought you were tired.
I ain’t tired.
The words replayed in her mind, his voice rough and certain in a way that had made her stomach drop and heat pool low in her belly all at once.
She'd started this. On the wagon. With that comment about the corset, maybe earlier in the hall. And now-
Behind her, she heard the door open and close. Bucky's footsteps, slow and deliberate, crossed the floor.
She didn't turn around.
Just stayed there, kneeling by the fire, watching the flames, very aware that her heart was beating faster than it should. That her palms were damp despite the cold. That every nerve in her body seemed to be standing at attention, waiting.
The warmth she felt on her back wasn't from the fire. Then, his hand was on her shoulder.
The touch was light, almost gentle. But she felt the weight of intent behind it.
"Stand up," he said quietly.
She rose slowly, brushing her hands against her skirt, and turned to face him.
The firelight cast shadows across his face, highlighting the sharp line of his stubbled jaw, the way his gaze held hers.
Not like he'd looked at her during the waltz, warm and admiring.
This was different, darker. Hungrier.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. She could hear her own breathing. Could hear his.
Then his hands came up to the clasp of her cloak.
His fingers worked the fastening, and she realized her hands were hanging uselessly at her sides. Should she be helping? Doing something?
But before she could move, he pushed the heavy fabric off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor behind her with a soft whump.
One layer gone.
His eyes tracked down her body -taking in the dress, the brooch still pinned at her collar, the way the firelight played across the dark fabric- before coming back to her face.
"Turn around," he said, his voice rough, and she complied slowly.
She felt him step closer still, close enough that when he exhaled, she felt it against the back of her neck.
Then his hands came around her from behind, reaching for the front of her bodice.
She stood very still.
The brooch came first. His fingers found the clasp, worked it open with surprising gentleness. She heard it, the soft sound of metal on wood as he set it on the shelf above the fireplace. Then his fingers returned to the top button, and she felt him work it free carefully.
Then the next button.
And the next.
He moved down her bodice slowly, each button releasing with a soft pop of fabric. She could feel his fingers brushing against her chest through the dress with each one, could feel the way his breath warmed the exposed skin at the back of her neck.
The dress began to loosen, falling open down the front.
She wanted to say something. Do something. But her voice had abandoned her, and all she could do was stand there and feel.
Feel his hands, his proximity. The way her body was already responding to nothing more than his fingers working buttons.
When he reached the last one at her waist, his hands went to her shoulders, and he pushed the dress down her arms in one smooth motion.
The fabric slid away, catching briefly at her elbows before falling past her wrists. It pooled at her waist where the skirt was still fastened, leaving her upper body in nothing but the corset and her chemise beneath it.
The cool air hit her bare arms, raising goosebumps.
Or maybe that was just him.
His hands moved to the ties at her waist, and she felt the skirt loosen, felt its weight slide down her hips, and then the whole thing was falling to the floor in a heap of dark fabric around her feet.
She stepped out of it instinctively, and he kicked it aside without ceremony.
Now she was standing in her corset, chemise, petticoat, and stockings.
Still mostly covered.
But it felt like being naked.
His hands came to rest on her waist, and she felt his thumbs press against the boning through the fabric.
"This thing," he said, his voice low and rough near her ear, "has been drivin’ me mad all day."
She didn't know what to say to that.
Then his hands moved to the laces at her back.
They loosened with swift, deliberate tugs, so different from the careful tightening she'd asked him to do that morning. Each pull released more pressure, let her body expand a little more, let air flow a little easier.
She felt the exact moment the corset went from "tight" to "loose."
Felt herself able to draw a full breath for the first time since dawn.
The relief was immediate and overwhelming.
"Better?" he asked, his voice close to her ear, his hands still working the laces.
"Yes," she managed.
The laces went slack, and his hands slid to her waist, and he pulled the corset away from her body entirely.
She heard it hit the floor somewhere behind them.
Now there was just the thin cotton of her chemise between his hands and her skin.
Just one layer.
She could feel the heat of his palms through it. Could feel the way his fingers spread across her sides, spanning her waist.
"All day," he said quietly, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, "I've been watchin’ you in that thing."
His hands tightened slightly.
"Watchin’ you barely able to breathe. Watchin’ you try to hide how uncomfortable you were." His thumbs traced upward along her sides, a slow, deliberate path. "Watchin’ other men lookin’ at you."
Oh.
"And all I could think about," he continued, his voice dropping lower, rougher, "was getting you home and gettin’ you out of it."
His hands slid higher, brushing the underside of her breasts through the chemise.
"Gettin’ you under me."
Heat flooded through her, sharp and overwhelming and so intense she felt dizzy with it.
Her hands came up instinctively, gripping his forearms where they crossed in front of her. Needing something to hold onto. Needing to ground herself.
She felt the muscle shift beneath her fingers. Felt the strength in him, barely leashed.
"Bucky-" Her voice came out thin.
She tried to turn in his arms -wanted to see his face, needed to- but he held her still, keeping her facing away from him.
"Not yet," he murmured against her ear. "I'm not done."
His hands left her sides, and she heard the rustle of fabric behind her.
Then she felt his fingers at the ties of her petticoat.
The knot came free easily, and the weight of the fabric loosened around her hips. He pushed it down, letting it fall to pool around her feet.
She stepped out of it, and he kicked that aside too.
Now she was down to her chemise, drawers, and stockings.
His hands came back to her waist, but this time they didn't stop there.
They slid upward, slowly, deliberately.
Her pulse was pounding now. In her throat. In her wrists. Between her legs.
His hands cupped her breasts through the chemise, and a sound escaped her lips. Small, involuntary.
Evidence that she was still breathing. Still present. Still capable of response.
"You know what you did to me today?" he asked, his voice rough against her ear.
She couldn't answer. Couldn't form words.
His thumbs brushed over her nipples, and they hardened instantly against the fabric, sensitive and aching.
"Tellin’ me I look good," he continued, his hands working her slowly, deliberately. "Askin’ if I'm uncomfortable with the unexpected."
Another brush of his thumbs, circling, more deliberate this time, and she felt her knees go weak.
"Dancin’ with me like that." His mouth moved to her neck, pressing a kiss just below her ear that made her shiver. "Lookin’ at me like you wanted me to drag you out of there and take you home right then."
Had she looked at him like that?
Yes, she had.
"And then," his voice dropped even lower, "you went and taunted me on the way back."
I thought you were tired.
She'd known what she was doing when she said it. Had seen his reaction. Had felt the change in the air between them.
Had wanted it.
"I told you," he said, his mouth moving along the curve of her neck, his hands still working her breasts with maddening slowness, "that if you kept sayin’ things like that, I'd stop bein’ patient."
He turned her then -finally- spinning her to face him with his hands on her shoulders.
The firelight caught in his eyes, and what she saw there made her stomach drop and heat spike through her all at once.
Want. Raw and undisguised, and so intense it was almost frightening.
"I'm done bein’ patient," he said quietly.
Then he kissed her.
Nothing like they'd shared in the dark over the past two months. The slow and deep ones where he'd let her set the pace, let her pull back when she needed to.
This was different.
This was him unleashing everything he'd been holding back.
His hand came up to cup the back of her head, probably dislodging what few pins had survived the dancing, and he angled her where he wanted her.
His mouth moved against hers with a hunger that made her knees genuinely weak. His tongue slid past her lips, tasting her, claiming her, and she felt the full force of two months of restraint finally breaking.
She grabbed onto his shoulders -partly for balance, partly because she needed something solid to hold onto- and felt the muscle shift beneath his shirt.
He was still fully dressed.
Coat, shirt, suspenders, trousers, boots.
Every layer intact.
While she stood there in nothing but her chemise and drawers.
The disparity should have made her self-conscious. Should have made her want to cover herself, to hide.
Instead, it made her feel... like he couldn't wait long enough to undress himself. Like getting his hands on her was more important than anything else.
He assaulted her with deep, demanding kisses that left no room for thought. Just sensation. Just the slide of his tongue against hers, the press of his body, the way his hand tightened in her hair when she made a small sound against his mouth.
She felt him move, felt his other hand slide to her hip, and then he was walking her backward.
She went willingly, blindly, trusting him to guide her even though she had no idea where they were going.
Her rear hit something solid.
The kitchen table.
His hands went to her waist, and then he lifted her and set her on the surface.
The height brought them closer to level, and he stepped between her legs without breaking the kiss, his hands resting on her thighs.
The chemise rode up slightly. She could feel the rough fabric of his trousers against the inside of her knees, could feel how close he was, how little separated them now.
He finally pulled back, but only far enough to drag his mouth down her jaw, her neck, the hollow of her throat.
She tilted her head back, giving him access, and tried to catch her breath.
Failed.
"Bucky-" His name came out ragged.
"Still too many damn clothes," he muttered against her skin, his hands finding the hem of her chemise and pulling it up.
She lifted her arms automatically, and the thin cotton slid up her body, and he tossed it aside without looking.
The cool air hit her bare skin, and suddenly she was acutely, overwhelmingly aware that she was sitting on their kitchen table.
Topless.
In nothing but her drawers and stockings.
His hands came up to cup her breasts, palms warm, slightly rough, achingly gentle despite the hunger in his eyes.
Her hands fell to grip the edge of the table, needing something to hold onto.
His thumbs brushed over her nipples, and the sensation shot straight through her. They were sensitive. Had been sensitive since he'd touched them through the chemise, but now with nothing between his hands and her skin, it was almost overwhelming.
She made a sound -small, desperate- and his eyes flicked up to her face.
"That's it," he said quietly. "I wanna hear you."
Then his head dipped, and his mouth closed over one nipple.
The heat, the wet slide of his tongue, the firm suckles, made her back arch involuntarily. Her hand flew to his hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands.
He'd done this before. Many times over the past two months. Had learned exactly how she liked to be touched, how much pressure to use, what made her gasp, and what made her squirm.
But it felt different now.
More urgent. Less restrained.
Like he'd finally stopped measuring every touch. Stopped holding himself back.
His mouth worked her deliberately, while his hand cupped her other breast. Then he switched, giving the same attention to the other side, and she felt her head fall back, felt her eyes close.
Felt herself stop thinking entirely.
His mouth moved lower.
When he reached her stomach, she felt a flash of self-consciousness cut through the haze of sensation.
Her belly wasn’t perfect.
But he didn't seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn't care.
Just kept kissing his way down, his hands sliding to her thighs, spreading them wider.
Wait.
Wait.
"Bucky," she managed, her voice shaky. "We- we eat here."
He lifted his head just enough to look at her. The heat in his eyes made her clench between her legs.
"Yeah," he said, his voice rough and dark and full of promise. "And I'm about to."
Before she could process that, his hands were hooking into the waistband of her drawers.
"Lift up," he said.
She did, automatically, and he pulled the fabric down and off, taking her stockings with them in one motion. And then she was completely bare.
Sitting on their kitchen table.
It wasn’t the first time he'd done this, not even close. But always before it had been in bed, almost in the dark or the early morning light. Horizontal.
This was different.
She was exposed. The firelight played across every inch of her skin, and she could see everything: his hands on her thighs, his shoulders between her legs, the intent in his eyes as he looked up at her.
"Bucky, this is-"
"Relax," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh. "Let me."
One hand stayed on her thigh, warm and grounding. The other moved upward, and she felt his thumb brush through the soft curls between her legs. A slow, deliberate touch. Not quite where she ached for it, but close enough to make her tense.
He did it again, then his thumb pressed lower, parting her, opening her to his gaze. She made a sound -half protest, half something else entirely- but he was already leaning in, and any coherent thought became impossible.
The angle was different like this. Better. He didn't have to hunch or strain the way he did in bed. Could kneel there comfortably, with better access to every part of her.
And he was taking full advantage of it.
His tongue worked against her deliberately, finding all the places he'd learned over the time together. The spots that made her gasp. Made her hips try to shift closer even though there was nowhere closer to go.
"Stay still," he murmured against her, and she felt the vibration of his voice as much as heard it.
She tried. She really did.
But then his fingers joined his mouth -one sliding inside her, then another- and she couldn't help the way her body arched. Couldn't help the way her hand flew to his hair, gripping tight.
"Easy," he said, his voice rough with satisfaction. "Need you ready for me."
The words cut through the haze.
Ready for me.
Not just for this. Not just his mouth and hands.
Something more.
His fingers moved inside her in a slow, maddening rhythm, curling, stroking, finding spots that made her whole body tighten. His mouth stayed focused on that bundle of nerves that made her see stars.
She was already close. Could feel the pressure building, that familiar tightening low in her belly.
But he pulled back.
Not completely. Just enough to look up at her, his eyes dark and intent, his mouth wet.
"This time," he said, his fingers still moving inside her in that slow, devastating way, "I'm not stoppin’ here."
Her brain struggled to process the words through the haze of sensation.
Not stopping here.
"You understand?" he asked, curling his fingers inside her in a way that made her whole body jolt.
She understood. She'd known, really. Since the wagon. Since he'd said I'm not tired in that rough, certain voice.
This was it.
Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears.
"Say you understand," he repeated, and there was something almost gentle in his voice despite the hunger in his eyes.
Like he needed to hear her say it. Needed to know she knew what was happening.
That she wanted this.
"I-" Her voice came out thin. She swallowed and tried again. "Yes. I understand."
Something changed in his expression. Relief, maybe. Or satisfaction.
"Good," he murmured.
Then his mouth was back on her, lips closing around her sensitive bud, tongue working deliberately while his fingers moved deeper, faster inside her.
She tried to hold still as he'd told her. Tried to keep quiet even though sounds kept escaping her, small gasps and broken moans that she couldn't suppress.
Her thighs were shaking. Her whole body tensed, balanced on the edge of something overwhelming.
"Let go," he said against her.
As if she had a choice.
As if she could do anything else.
One last suckle and it hit her like a wave, sudden and complete and so intense she forgot where she was. Forgot everything except the sensation crashing through her, the way her body clenched around his fingers, the sound that tore from her throat.
He worked her through it, his mouth gentling but not stopping until the aftershocks faded and she was left trembling, boneless, utterly undone.
Then he pulled back, pressing a kiss on her mound before rising to his feet.
She was still trying to remember how to breathe when his hands came to her waist.
"Come on," he said quietly, helping her down from the table.
Her legs were unsteady -actually unsteady, not just weak-kneed- and she had to grip his arms for balance.
He held her steady, patiently, waiting until she found her footing.
Then his hand slid down to take hers, and he turned toward the bed.
"Go on," he said, his voice low and rough. "I'll be right there."
She went, crossing the short distance on shaky legs, hyperaware of her nakedness. Of the cool air on her skin.
Behind her, she heard the thud of his boots hitting the floor.
One. Then the other.
The sound of his coat hitting the floor. The slide of suspenders being pushed off his shoulders.
The rustle of fabric as he pulled his shirt over his head.
She reached the bed and turned around, unable to help herself. Needing to see.
He was down to just his trousers now, the firelight playing across his bare chest, his shoulders, his stomach.
All that "more" of him she'd complimented that morning.
And the way he was looking at her made her forget everything except the fact that she wanted this.
Wanted him.
Next Chapter
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the Chanel No. 1 lip and cheek balm in the shades red camellia and berry boost were mixed and used to create this beautiful colour of blush on Margot Robbie in the Wuthering Heights movie
Summary: Bucky's attempt at cooking your favorite meal in his apartment leads to an important and heartfelt conversation.
Word Count: Over 4.1k
Warnings: Established relationship, flashback, a bit of grumpy and sunshine, kissing, fluff, slight feels, humor, mention of HYDRA and Bucky's backstory, Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?)
A/N: HUGE thanks to @salty-tang for creating the Dear My Darling Reader Writing Event. This is for my darling @tw1sters who LOVES TFATWS look for Bucky. Prompt: kissing in the kitchen while something burns on the stove. I hope you enjoy because I adored writing this! ❤️ Beta read by the wonderful @mumbles411, but any and all mistakes are my own. Dividers by the talented @saradika-graphics. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!
The sun had already set by the time you got to Bucky’s apartment. After a long work day and a couple of errands, you were looking forward to dinner and snuggling with your boyfriend on the couch. You expected the familiar scent of old books and his cologne to envelop you when you unlocked the door with the spare key, but a rich combination of herbs and spices greeted you instead. A smile spread across your face when you inhaled deeper, an extra layer of warmth surrounding you.
It felt wonderfully domestic.
“Honey, I’m home!” you called out.
“In the kitchen,” Bucky called back.
You slipped your shoes off and set your overnight bag down, another smile creeping up when you spotted the colorful bowl for Bucky’s keys on the entryway table. You bought it for him at a flea market a couple of weeks ago, and he’d turned it in his hands like it was going to bite him. He wasn’t the type to have a lot of trinkets or splashes of color around his place, but you thought the small bowl was just the right touch of brightness.
“It’s okay if you don’t like it, Bucky,” you told him. “It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“You got this because you thought of me, so I like it,” he replied, carefully setting it on the table. “There. I’ll use it for the keys.”
And it was still right where he left it.
You followed the delicious aroma to the kitchen, light spilling into the hallway. Music played softly from the old radio, something your boyfriend liked to listen to some days to unwind. You stopped in the doorway and your heart skipped a beat when you spotted him.
It always did that when you saw Bucky Barnes.
He stood in front of the stove, his shoulders tense as he checked the sheet of paper on the counter. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, a look that should’ve been illegal, and his short strands of hair stuck up like he had been pulling at them. His brows furrowed when he picked up one of the jars of spices and muttered something you couldn’t quite catch, the other hand gently stirring something around in the pan.
You almost wished you took a picture since the sight of him was breathtaking.
“A pinch? What the hell kind of unit of measure is that?” he mumbled.
You covered your mouth to smother your giggle. He compared his personality to a grumpy, sometimes sarcastic, old man, often mumbling things under his breath and glaring at more people than smiling. You thought it was endearing. And after everything he had been through, he earned the right to be a little grouchy.
His usual stoic expression softened when he looked your way. “Hey,” he said, his voice low and warm in a way he never used with anyone else.
“How was work?”
“Boring. I didn’t get to use any of my knives today,” he said, making you giggle again. “You?”
“Also boring.” You crossed the room and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Smells delicious.”
He slipped an arm around you before you could pull away. He didn’t like most people touching him without good reason and consent. It was a different story with you. He often reached for your hand or put his arm around you first. You had come to expect kisses to your forehead and temple when you cuddled or went out together.
Grumpy or not, he was very affectionate with you.
And that level of vulnerability meant something.
“It’s your favorite. At least, it’s supposed to be,” he said, glaring at the pan when the oil popped. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”
Warmth spread from your head to your toes. “It’s a very nice thing for you to do,” you said, your fingers grazing the light stubble on his chin and cheek. “Thank you.”
He leaned into your touch, the corners of his steel eyes crinkling. “Not as nice as you were that first day. When you didn’t even know me.”
It started raining just before you walked into the coffee shop, a few droplets dampening your top. You were only half awake when you got in line, stifling a yawn as you took your phone out and read through a couple of work emails. The drink would be a nice little pick-me-up to help you get through the day.
You wondered if the person behind you needed one, too.
You smiled at the cashier once you were at the register and put in your order. “I’d like to pay for the person behind me,” you added.
It was a simple gesture and maybe one that they could pay forward if they wished.
You expected to find someone scrolling through their phone when you turned around, only to find yourself staring into the bluest eyes you’d ever seen.
You had to remind yourself to breathe when you stared at the handsome man who kept a respectable distance. His worn leather jacket had a few drops of rain on the shoulders, his posture hunched over like he was trying to make himself smaller. You gave him a bright smile while he gave you a look of confusion in return.
To say you were instantly smitten was an understatement.
“You… want to pay for my drink?” he asked skeptically.
“Yeah,” you said easily.
He tilted his head and assessed you, trying to decide if you were joking or not. “You don’t have to do that,” he said quietly.
You smiled and shrugged. “I know, but I want to.”
He hesitated before he stepped forward and gave the cashier his order. “I can pay you back,” he offered, a gloved hand reaching into his pocket.
You held up a hand to stop him. “No, no. It’s on me,” you said, paying for both of you.
He stepped aside with you, the leather creaking as he flexed his fingers. “Thanks,” he whispered.
“No thanks necessary,” you said, the rain coming down harder outside.
He cleared his throat as you waited for your drinks, getting your attention. “You sure I can’t pay you back?”
“I’m sure,” you assured him, your heart racing as you looked at him. “But you’re welcome to join me.”
He blinked hard, his jaw ticking. “You… want me to join you?”
It wasn’t like you to invite a complete stranger to sit with you, but there was something different about him.
Special.
“Yeah, but only if you want to,” you said, smiling softly as you took your drink. “No worries if you don’t.”
He stared at you, waiting for the catch, and slowly nodded after consideration. “Okay.”
Your smile widened and you moved toward a small table by the window, rain streaking along the glass. He didn’t sit right away, his grip so tight on his drink that it almost spilled. For a split second, you thought he’d change his mind, until the chair scraped along the floor.
“I’m Bucky,” he said after a beat, eying you warily.
“It’s nice to meet you, Bucky,” you said, his shoulders relaxing when you offered your name in return.
It wasn’t an instant back and forth. In fact, he spent the next few minutes observing you with a careful eye instead of chatting. You didn’t mind. The silence was oddly comfortable.
But things shifted when a new song came on, making him frown.
“This music makes my coffee taste terrible,” he muttered loud enough for you to hear.
You burst out laughing and Bucky’s gaze flicked up from his drink, his eyes wide. You didn’t mean to laugh so loudly. He didn’t expect to be the source of such a happy sound.
“It’s the kind of music where they should pay us to listen,” you teased.
“Exactly,” he said, sitting back in his seat. “You get it.”
The conversation flowed easily after that.
You told him about the new pieces of art you got to brighten up your walls since you couldn’t paint them. He suggested a local bookstore when you mentioned looking for a new book to read and insisted that the feel of a real book was much better than an electronic device. And you found yourself laughing again at his dry humor.
It was the best morning you could remember in ages, but sadly, it had to end.
“I should go,” you said when you noticed the time, the rain finally slowing outside.
“Oh. Yeah.” He looked disappointed, but nodded. “Thanks again for the drink and… letting me sit with you.”
“Thanks for joining me.” You adjusted your bag on your shoulder, your smile soft. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“Maybe.” He tapped a finger against the table and you held your breath. “I come here most mornings.”
“Tomorrow?” you asked hopefully.
He smiled at you for the first time and your heart felt full. “I’ll be here.”
“I knew there was something about you,” you said, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. “I can’t believe that was almost a year ago.”
Almost a year of mornings in the coffee shop that quickly turned into dinner dates and late-night phone calls. Nearly three hundred and sixty-five days of gentle whispers and tender kisses. Almost twelve months of anxiety when he went away for missions and relief when he made it home safely.
You wouldn’t trade a single moment for anything.
“Almost a year,” he said in awe. “Only took three coffee dates to ask you out, and four months to tell you I love you.”
It wasn’t some grand declaration. It didn’t happen before or after a mission. Just an ordinary afternoon, you two reading on the couch and sunlight spilling in through the window. Your hand moved lazily through the ray and gold dust motes.
You caught him staring at you with an unreadable expression, so you made a silly face to make him laugh.
“I love you,” he blurted out.
And he promptly bolted from his spot before you could even call out that you loved him, too.
Your wonderful man.
“Best almost-year ever,” you said honestly.
His gaze went soft. “And all because you bought me a drink.”
“Don’t forget you gave me a chance by sitting with me that morning,” you pointed out.
“How could I not? You were this… beautiful ray of sunshine,” he said.
“So, I was bright and cheerful?”
“You radiated warmth,” he whispered, a tic in his cheek before he looked away. “Still do.”
Your fingers grazed his chin again, gently guiding him back to you so you could press your foreheads together. Just like his affection, you valued his words and feelings because they weren’t easy for him to give. They came from somewhere unguarded, a place he hadn’t been allowed to live in for a very long time.
He not only lowered his walls for you, he trusted you with the key.
“Hey,” you whispered, your nose brushing his. “Have I told you today that I love you?”
His hand tightened on your waist. “You did this morning.” A small smile tugged at his lips. “Said it before I even opened my eyes.”
You had snuggled against him and whispered into the air that you loved him, wanting it to be the first thing he heard when he woke up.
“And I’ll say it again before I fall asleep,” you promised, assuming that you would be sleeping there.
Bucky always made sure there was an extra blanket at the foot of the bed in case you got cold and his body heat wasn’t enough. He always slept closest to the door, too, whether he was on the bed or floor. He explained once that if anyone was ever stupid enough to break in and managed to get to the bedroom that he had to be between you and the intruder. Your comfort and safety mattered more in his eyes than his own.
His breath fanned your lips. “Don’t stop,” he whispered, your heart clenching. “Don’t ever stop saying it, please.”
You kissed him instead of answering with words.
It was slow at first, the kind of kiss that felt like the beginning of a promise. He sighed against your mouth, deepening it without rushing. A hand slid to your lower back, pulling you close until there was no space between your bodies. Your hearts raced together in a familiar rhythm only the two of you would ever know.
Your kiss told Bucky you loved him, and he kissed you back like he still couldn’t believe he was allowed to love you.
“I love you, Bucky.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
He went in for another kiss as the pan crackled, but neither of you pulled away. You were too wrapped up in each other. But the crackling quickly turned to a sharp sizzle, something faintly bitter mixing with the pleasant aroma.
You broke the kiss with a breathless laugh. “Is it burning?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled, turning the heat down. He mumbled a few more colorful words as he moved the pan off the burner, his shoulders slumping. “So much for cooking your favorite meal.”
You caught the disappointment hidden under his gruff tone immediately. “It still looks great,” you promised, rubbing his back and lightly waving your hand to get rid of the small amount of smoke. “It’ll taste great, too.”
“It was supposed to be perfect,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at the pan as he grabbed the large spoon and stirred. “Not barely salvageable.”
“That’s more than barely salvageable. I’ll eat every bite,” you argued lightly, resting your head briefly on his shoulder. “Sorry my kissable lips distracted you.”
He put a lot of work into it, and, technically, it was your fault for not letting him be.
Though, he had distracted you more than once with his extremely talented mouth.
He huffed out a quiet laugh. “You aren’t just a ray of sunshine. You’re a menace.”
“You are the menace, and you know you love me.”
He glanced at you, something so tender in his stare that you felt your throat tighten. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”
He snuck in a quick kiss before he reached for the plates. He carefully played the food, his jaw clenched in mild frustration. As if glaring at it would will it back to perfection.
“You know, I’d probably get better at this if I did it more,” he commented, not quite looking at you.
“You are cooking more, and you’re doing well.”
Bucky had a fast metabolism and had to eat a lot, which meant lots of meals most days. He also went through a phase where he experimented with food to figure out what he liked and disliked since HYDRA had deprived him of eating what he wished. Cooking gave him a sense of control in ways, even if he didn’t always agree with measurements for recipes.
“Yeah, but…” He hesitated and added more to his plate. “I want to cook for you. Regularly.”
You grabbed a couple of glasses, your head tilting. “You’re doing that, too.”
He fixed you with a stare. “And then you go back to your apartment.”
Your mouth fell open. “I…”
You hadn’t brought it up, but your heart felt heavier every time you went back to your place. It didn’t feel like home to you anymore because he wasn’t there with you. You had a few things at his apartment, but it was still his at the end of the day. You couldn’t just move yourself in or assume that he always wanted you around.
You took a step toward him. “But what?”
“I know you don’t go back every night. I know that.” He sighed and set the pan in the sink to rinse it. “And I know you have a toothbrush here, clothes in the drawer, and creamer in the fridge, but…”
“But we’re coming up on a year. Well, almost.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And I hate that you always have to bring an overnight bag when you come by.”
“I don’t always have an overnight bag.”
He exhaled through his nose. “I’m not doing this right,” he muttered, opening a drawer and pulling out a small box.
You gasped. It was too big for a ring box, but it was still significant. You could feel it.
“Bucky, what-”
“It’s a lousy, almost anniversary gift,” he cut in, placing the box in your hands.
You looked at him curiously before you lifted the lid, your breath catching. Inside was a small sun-shaped keychain with two keys attached. You recognized one instantly since it matched the spare key you used to get into the apartment. But the other…
“Your own apartment key instead of the spare and a mailbox key. Because I don’t want you just visiting anymore,” he explained, his voice steady despite the tension in his shoulders. “I want you here. No overnight bags. No going back and forth. I want your shoes by the door next to mine and your books on the shelf with mine and you giggling when I don’t measure the spices properly.”
A tear and a laugh slipped free before you could stop it.
“I want to come home to you and fall asleep and wake up beside you every day.” He brushed his knuckles along your cheek and wiped away the tear. “Because my home isn’t a home without you here.”
Your eyes watered again. Bucky wasn’t showering you with pretty words just because. They came from the very depth of his being.
“So, you’re asking me-”
“To move in with me?” He smiled that same smile he gave you the day you met. “Yeah, sweetheart. I am.”
Your heart swelled and you thought it would burst from your chest. You picked up the keychain, the kitchen light casting a glow over the sun. It radiated warmth just like Bucky said you did. It was beautiful. Perfect.
“You’re allowed to paint the walls. And I even cleared another drawer for you and half the closet to make room,” he added quickly, rubbing the back of his neck and mistaking your silence for possible rejection. “Fuck. I knew I should’ve done something bigger than dinner. Flowers. Chocolate.”
“Bucky,” you breathed, setting everything on the counter and cupping his cheeks before he could spiral any further. “Hey. Look at me.”
He did so like he was bracing himself for impact.
You nodded to the box. “This is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”
His brows pinched. “It’s just a keychain and a ruined meal.”
“It isn’t. Not at all,” you assured him, your thumbs brushing along his stubble until his jaw relaxed. “It’s you asking me to build something with you.”
His throat bobbed when he swallowed.
“I don’t want flowers or chocolate, and I don’t want to keep going back to my apartment alone. I want you. I want us to build our home together,” you continued, stepping closer so he could feel the warmth of your body. “And I love you. I love you so much that I’d live in a cardboard box with you if that was what you really wanted.”
“I’m not letting you live in a cardboard box,” he said with a small growl.
You giggled, your lips brushing against his. “Good because I’d rather live here.”
His hands went to your waist, grounding himself as he took a breath. “So, that’s a yes?”
“It’s a yes,” you answered.
Like when he asked you out, it was the easiest “yes” ever.
The relief was so visible on his face that your eyes burned again. He pulled you closer like you’d disappear if he let you go and you melted into his the second his lips met yours. He poured his whole heart into the kiss and your fire matched his.
“You sure?” he asked quietly. “I come with baggage.”
You didn’t flinch or pull away.
You had witnessed some of the nightmares and sat with him in the dark when his hands trembled and his breathing picked up. You watched him fight for healing the way he fought for everything else, stubbornly and relentlessly. There were therapy appointments, hard conversations, good and bad days.
He might have been a super soldier in body, but he was simply human in his heart and mind.
And most humans needed help sometimes.
“I have baggage, too. We can unpack it together,” you told him gently. “And what better way to do that than living together?”
His eyes searched yours, trying to find any trace of doubt. There was none there. He wouldn’t have to walk through life or his own shadows alone again. Not while he had you.
“I love you more than you’ll ever know,” he whispered.
“I love you more,” you whispered back.
“Not possible. I love you more,” he argued just because he could.
“I think you love me because you tolerate me,” you teased. “Most people annoy you.”
“Yeah, they do.” He huffed and failed to hide his smile. “Speaking of tolerance, I noticed you stole my red henley recently.”
“Stole?” You feigned offense. “You gave me that.”
You couldn’t help that you liked it, especially when the smell of his cologne lingered in the fabric.
“I surrendered that under duress before a mission.”
“You wore it around the apartment while you got ready to go, sprayed it with your cologne when you took it off, and carefully draped it over me before saying I could keep it as long as I want,” you reminded him.
He paused. “That was a strategic move I made when I thought you were halfway asleep.”
You raised an eyebrow. “I was wide awake and you know it.”
The slightly confused look on his face was adorable. “...I’m not getting that henley back, am I?”
“No. It’s mine for forever now.” You giggled softly. “But thank you for tolerating me enough to give that to me.”
“I don’t tolerate you,” he said, his expression shifting to tenderness. “I choose you. Every single day.”
You hugged him and buried your face in his neck, his arms tightening around you. No one else got to see this side of him. It was a privilege to be loved by him. To be chosen by him.
“I choose you, too,” you said against his skin. “Always.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
You lifted your head just enough to look at him. “Guess it’s a good thing I found that bowl for the keys.”
A small laugh came out with a nod. “It was almost like you knew I’d ask you to move in,” he murmured. Maybe you did have a feeling deep down. “Can’t wait to see what else you fill our home with.”
Our home.
The words warmly settled in your chest.
“But let’s talk about that some more while we eat,” he added, brushing a kiss against your forehead. “Can’t have you starving during your first official night here.”
You smiled and helped Bucky take the plates to the table. He pulled your chair out for you, a habit he’d never grow out of. You brushed your fingers along his before he sat beside you, his thigh warm against yours.
“Bet you’re thinking about colors already,” he said when he caught you studying the walls, trying to sound grumpy and failing.
“Maybe,” you teased, nudging his shoulder. “Nothing too crazy. Something… warm.”
Like the keychain he got you.
“Figures,” he said fondly.
“And you really cleared out half the closet?” you asked.
“You need room, but I’m almost afraid to ask how many pairs of shoes you really own.”
“I don’t own that many,” you said innocently, trying not to laugh when he grumbled. “Let’s eat.”
He nodded to your plate. “Ladies first.”
You watched him out of the corner of your eye as you took a bite of your food. He didn’t exhale until you let out a pleased sound. “It’s perfect,” you assured him, the flavors settling on your tongue. “Perfect almost anniversary gift and meal.”
That was all he needed to dig in, a small and proud smile on his face.
You looked at him, your heart full. Almost a year ago he stood hunched over in a coffee shop line, uncertain if he deserved a small act of kindness. He let you in anyway. He wanted you in his life.
He chose you.
You reached over and laced your fingers with his. “To our first real night together in our home.”
He squeezed your hand. “Home,” he echoed, your heart fluttering. “Yeah. It sounds right.”
A bit of behind the scenes of the writing process, this was the third idea I had for this prompt (I have docs with 1.1k in one and 3.8k in another). And guess what? Third time is the charm because I LOVE how this turned out. I hope you lovelies love it, too! Please come and talk to me about it if you wish.
summary: you find yourself in a precarious situation financially, one that requires lying and risking the silver spoon you've grown up on. your father's oldest friend, joel, finds you in a compromising position but quickly becomes an unexpected solution to all your problems. 9.8k words.
warnings: 18+ MDNI, sugar daddy worthy age gap (reader is 21, joel is 54), inherent power dynamic imbalance from a sugar daddy arrangement, reader has shit parents and comes from money, one (1) jerk off session, playing it a little fast and loose with pov, slow burn!
a/n: well, here she is. i actually started this over a year ago but sent it to the back burner for ages, so it feels like such a long time coming! i hope you enjoy, these two are going on a journey together and i really hope you stick along for the ride. so, so excited for it! i'm attempting a slower burn with eventual smut this time around. it’s not the focus from the get go but instead some chemistry, banter, and confusing pining are taking center stage for a bit before they get freak nasty.
You stare down at your phone, scowling at the message on screen as the van jostles you on a turn, pulling into a new neighborhood. Your coworkers, Alicia and Gladys chat in the front seats while you sulk in the back. You don’t mean to be so off putting, but you’re reflecting on how you ended up here, staring at a text from your father inquiring about your day at the firm. Guilt squeezes your insides at the fabrication you’ve concocted, the way you couldn’t be further from the false narrative you’ve given to your parents, and with hardly anything to show for it yet.
“Wait…” you mutter, your eyes focusing and scanning along the perfectly manicured street of gorgeous brownstones rising up, all crammed together. You know that despite the small, more humble outsides of these homes, the insides are immaculate, thousands of square feet renovated to perfection. “I know this street.”
Alicia turns from the passenger seat, raising her eyebrows at you. “This richie rich neighborhood? Who do you know here?”
You feel your cheeks warm up, too embarrassed to admit to them that your own parents’ luxury apartment is on a street not too dissimilar to this. In fact, you don’t even need this job in the slightest, but have been desperate to make your own money under the radar, away from your parents’ obsessive peering into every aspect of your life. Every day that has passed since you hatched your little plan that had felt like some kind of genius at the beginning has only proven how futile it was to jump into it so hastily.
“I… swear I’ve been here before…” you mutter, mostly thinking out loud to yourself, eyes staring out the window as you wrack your brain.
When Gladys pulls into a drive, dipping below the house into a garage that opens for the van, your stomach tightens. It’s all too familiar, but you can’t quite place your finger on it. You haven’t been here for a few years, at the least.
“W-who’s our client today?” you ask urgently, tightening your hands into fists.
Gladys glances at her work tablet, filled with the itinerary for the entire week. “Mr. Miller, hon,” she replies before peering back down at the screen, confirming it. “Joel.”
You can tell you must look as shocked as you feel, eyes flashing with fear and going a little wider and your face dropping instantly.
“I-I know him,” you manage to stutter out. “Well, he knows my parents. Like, really well.”
Joel could not, under any circumstances, see you like this. What a disaster that would be - your rich daddy’s rich friend getting a house cleaning from said friend’s daughter. One who is supposed to be off interning somewhere. Instead, you’re plotting to live by scraping by, collecting money for what you hope could be an escape from this life, their life.
Your parents are both insistent on you taking over the family business - some corporate bullshit you have no interest in - so you’d sated them by claiming you were off gaining experience in between classes with some interning hours at a firm. You’re lucky that a friend of yours from college actually does work there, hoping if it came down to it, they could vouch for you. If the truth got out, you know the possibility that you would be cut off is high. It’s the kind of massive fallout you’re not sure you’re prepared to deal with yet.
The lies you’ve had to concoct and the harsh reality of cramming your schedule full between class and this job - scrubbing floors, endless vacuuming and wiping surfaces, your body aching after each and every day of work - was starting to get to you, but you had to persevere.
“They’re hardly ever even home when we come anyways, especially this Mr. Miller,” Alicia suggests at your panic, and you swallow and nod. Gladys agrees with her, then they shoot each other a concerned, confused look. They’ve been a team for a while, but you’ve only just met them a few weeks ago, assigned to train with them. Both of them are older momma bear types, having clung to your young ass like glue, vowing to teach you all the ropes and take good care of you, which you’d appreciated. You’d been lucky enough to have gotten a job with this particular company, having no experience in the field, or nay field for that matter. The client base they worked with was high end, their homes millions of dollars, the service only known to the more wealthy side of Manhattan.
“Y-yeah, you’re right. It’s totally fine.” You’re not sure if you’re trying harder to convince yourself or Gladys and Alicia, the two women staring you down with their brows wrinkled in worry.
It’s the last cleaning of the day, and all you need to do is get through it. It has to be fine, it just has to - you need the money. Desperately. You push out a small smile, moving to exit the van. “Let’s do this,” you add on a little more encouragingly after the two of them look less than convinced.
“There she is,” Gladys teases, giving your shoulder a gentle squeeze as you all start to unload all your supplies. You’re let in by a middle aged woman with dark hair in a sleek bob answering the garage door with a polite smile. His house manager or assistant, you realize. Men like Joel Miller had assistants, you remind yourself, to help take care of everything - the house, grocery lists for the week, light cooking, or even his schedule. She likely did it all.
You take in Joel’s home with wandering eyes, recalling now that you’d come here for dinner before - a family outing that your parents had dragged you to, the details of the place coming back to you as you all move further inside. It feels strange to be here without his permission, without your parents knowing where you are right now. Your chest is tight at the thought, but once you three get to work, you feel your anxiety dissipate as you get lost in the monotony of it - the drone of the vacuum, the mindless scrubbing of sparkling surfaces, the fresh lemon scent as you clean the bathrooms. Joel’s house isn’t all that dirty to begin with, an easy job compared to some of them you’d seen since you started.
You’re feeling downright pleasant by the time you’re finishing up, a job well done filling you with satisfaction as you wipe a thin layer of sweat off your forehead. You’re heading back to the main living room, hoping to link back up with Gladys and Alicia when you spot him.
He’s walking down the hallway with purpose, eyes glued down on his phone, dark framed reading glasses shielding his eyes from you further. His black suit hugs his body like it was meant for him, and you suppose it likely was tailored to his exact measurements, right to the very centimeter. You stop dead in your tracks, head whipping from side to side, looking for an out, a door you can rush into, but you’re trapped, the nearest one at least several paces behind you. When Joel glances up, he’s silent, stopping as he’s close to crashing into you and giving you a range of emotions rushing across his features - quizzical brows turning into full on confusion as he just stares.
Your name finally leaves his lips, almost incredulously. “Now what’re you doin’ here?” He takes in your outfit with his dark eyes - the branded tee shirt, your working slacks, and plain black work shoes - possibly one of the least flattering ensembles you could be wearing. “What is all this?”
“Not sure what you mean, Mr. Miller,” you spit out in a panic, keeping your voice professional, a high, sweet lilt as you hold your smile.
“C’mon now,” Joel urges, his brows coming together further in concern. He steps towards you with his voice lowered, but you step back a little almost instinctively, keeping your distance. Like you can run from this, from this mess you’ve suddenly made of your life. You break a little, lips faltering as your smile starts to fall. Tears prick behind your eyes, embarrassment from being caught creeping its way up from your chest.
“Please don’t tell my parents…” you mumble, darting your gaze away from his intense stare.
Joel pauses for a moment, adjusting the glasses up on his nose before deciding to take them off completely, tucking them into his jacket pocket.
“I don’t even know what I’d be tellin’ them, if I’m honest here,” he admits, rubbing a hand along his lips and chin, studying you. It’s starting to practically burn your skin, the way he stares, a man of confidence and command looking at you this way. Not something you were completely unaccustomed to, your father having plenty of business partners and associates with the same demeanor. But Joel felt different, like he was genuinely concerned for you.
“There you are,” Gladys huffs out, turning the corner behind Joel, her mouth forming a small "oh” when she sees who you’ve run into.
“Mr. Miller, great to see you, sir,” she chirps immediately, giving him her professional grin, one you’ve seen plenty of times already in the few weeks you’ve worked with her.
Joel, not forgetting his manners, smiles back at her and greets her, turning his body to let Gladys into the conversation. Alicia follows close behind, and you’re starting to burn up with embarrassment at this clusterfuck of a gathering you’ve found yourself in now.
“Everythin’ looks great, ladies. Why don’t you two head on out and I’ll steal her for just a bit,” Joel says, charming and smooth, his accent thick. “Think my office needs some special attention.”
Alicia and Gladys shoot each other a glance, then you, then Joel, seeming to try to piece everything together. Your cheeks couldn't possibly be any hotter, white hot and spreading up to your ears, knowing that this looks bad. Like Joel is about to take you into his office and do unspeakable things to you. The classic maid trope, or whatever.
“It’s okay,” you mouth quietly to the both of them, giving them an encouraging smile even though you feel shaky, like your stomach is bottoming out.
“She’s an old family friend in need of some catching up. In fact, I’ll drive her home after. Don’t y’all worry about it, I know you’ve got places to be,” Joel adds to sweeten the deal. The two ladies exchange another look, but then turn back to Joel, their faces slightly strained but professional.
“Of course, Mr. Miller. We’ll see you for the next service, then,” Alicia says a bit robotically. They both nod curtly and then bow out, not before peeking one last look at where you stand like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar.
“This way,” Joel says, turning back to face you with a steely expression, brushing past you to lead you towards where you already know he’s going - his office. You hadn’t been in there today - Gladys had tackled the office, so it’s all new territory to you as you pass the threshold, taking in the modern but cozy decor. It’s mostly black and dark wood furniture, dark gray chairs but contrasted with airy white walls, a high ceiling, and colorful art, making the room feel spacious despite the dark features.
Joel sighs softly, shutting the door behind him, even though nobody else is here, no reason to need the privacy. It serves to make you even more nervous, and you lick your quickly drying lips, standing near the doorway with your hands folded in front of you.
“Look, Mr. Miller -” you start, wanting to explain yourself. Joel moves closer, sending you backing up into the room, cutting off your train of thought as his large, imposing form closes in on you.
“You gonna tell me what’s really goin’ on here?”
“W-what do you mean?” you ask innocently, knowing there are a myriad of very reasonable reasons for Joel to be questioning you right now. You’re not sure what charade you’re even trying to hold up at this point, it’s only pure panic. Another step closer, and another step backwards for you, he continues until the backs of your thighs hit the desk and you stop, surprised as you glance back at it behind you.
“Don’t play coy. Imagine my surprise when I see my one of my oldest buddies' daughters, knowing he takes care of his family, here cleanin’ my floors and toilets. Now don’t you think that’d strike me as odd?” His head cocks, and he looks at you seriously, brows raised. You can’t quite tell if he’s getting any satisfaction out of this, or if he actually seems angry.
“Mr. Miller, I - I can explain, okay?” you start nervously, and Joel waves a hand impatiently, as if to say go on then. “They, my parents, I mean, they want me to be in the family business, and I…” You sigh. “Don’t know what I want, but it’s not that.”
Joel stares at you for a long, quiet moment, flashing eyes studying your face, trying to read if you’re being truthful.
“And what’s this have to do with cleanin’ my house?” he asks curtly.
“I… well, it doesn’t. I mean, it does. I just need to make my own money. If I don’t follow in his footsteps, I think they’ll… cut me off,” you reply, deciding to try to be as blunt as he is. Your voice falters on those last words, the reality of it painful, twisting in your gut. What kind of parent cuts their child off for something so frivolous, so selfish?
Joel looks amused suddenly, cocking his head a little further, and you can tell he definitely doesn’t believe you. He’s so close, so in your personal space, you’re finding it hard to breathe. “So you’re sayin’ your daddy ain’t takin’ care of you?”
You bite the inside of your lip and give him a small nod. The thing about your dad was if you acquiesced, if you followed exactly the plan he’d laid out for you, you’d have been riding high, walking on easy street for the rest of your life. And if not, well, he’d always made it perfectly clear he didn’t deal with traitors, because what was the point of having children if they couldn’t take over your business for you? Sure, it was tempting to take the easy route, but maybe you’d gotten tired of it all, found your rebellious streak a little later in life than most people.
“Yes…” you say out loud, unable to believe you were sharing this with Joel of all people - someone more likely than anyone to feed this information straight back to your father. It’s not like you knew him well, despite him being one of your dad’s closest and oldest friends, one of his closest business partners and confidants. You’d spent a decent amount of time in the same room as Joel, but you only knew the surface level, just the polite, agreeable conversations you were expected to have. It typically was some kind of public function, or the holiday party at your parents’ place every year, maybe a dinner party sprinkled in here and there, but you’d certainly never been quite this close to Joel Miller. Or alone.
His face falls at the sincerity in your voice, seeming to feel the gravity of it weighing down on him. “Now what d’you mean, cut you off? Like, full on, ‘n everything?” He steps back a little, giving you some space, his brows scrunched together in concern and arms crossing over his chest.
“Er, with all due respect, Mr. Miller, I don’t think I should be talking to you about it all.” You slump back a little, pushing yourself off of where you lean back on his desk, glancing past him to look around his office. It’s tidy, bookshelves lining the far wall full of perfectly placed, perfectly organized books on all kinds of things - some practical and business related, some seeming more like guilty pleasures of fiction and nonfiction of various genres, but mostly mystery, it seems.
“Y’made it my business when you stepped into my house today though, didn’t you?” he quips back, but you detect a hint of teasing there, feeling it start to disarm you.
“C’mon, sit,” Joel says, seeming to soften when he notices you stuttering to reply, gesturing to one of the chairs that sits near the large bay window in the room, a matching one set up across from it. “This’ll be… confidential.” He smiles, trying to convince you, and you don’t know if you believe him, but the twinkle in his eye almost makes you want to. You decide to sit, smoothing your scratchy work slacks, crossing one leg over the other, feeling like you look as stiff as you feel.
Joel, on the other hand, looks relaxed as he sits back, legs spread wide, his large palms settling onto his thick thighs, fingers spread over them.
“I… don’t believe you,” you finally tell him. “What’s to stop you from telling my dad everything I say right now, or even that I was here in the first place?” you ask before feeling your heart sink a little at the likely prospect of it. Your life as you know it could be over, starting from scratch with one phone call from Joel.
Joel chuckles, the corner of one side of his mouth twitching upwards as he eyes you. “Look, I get it, I wouldn’t trust me either,” he replies, his hands lifting off of his legs to be thrown in the air before he fists his upturned palms and settles them on the arms of the chair. “I wanna hear you out, though. Your dad, he ain’t uh, without his faults, I know that.”
You try to hide your surprise, keeping your brows from twitching inward, your face showing the intrigue you feel. You breathe out, slow and steady. “My dad isn’t interested in anything but me being the next, well, him. And if I’m not interested in that, then I don’t think he’s interested in having me as his kid.”
Joel goes stone-like at your bare confession - so honest - and he seems to soak in the words quietly with serious consideration. “An’ where do they think you are right now, hm?” he finally questions, steady eyes on your anxious ones.
“An internship.” Your cheeks heat a little as you face your lie and how stupid it sounds when you say it out loud.
Joel chuckles again, this time looking a bit impressed by you. He shoots a handsome, devilish smirk your way and you avert his gaze. “Yeah? And they’re buyin’ it?”
You let out a small laugh of your own, releasing some tension, and shrug. “Seems like it.”
“Why… this? Why the, uh, cleaning?”
“Turns out the job market is pretty shit when you have no skills, no experience, and are trying to do things under the radar - y’know, name recognition around all the big places, and all of that.” Being spoiled for your entire life, never worrying about wanting anything, needing anything, had predictably led to you never having needed a job, even now into your early twenties. The only things you’d learned were with your dad, the days he’d dragged you up in his high rise to shadow him and start preparing you for the future. Your future, as directed by good ol’ dad.
Joel nods softly a few times, running a hand across his face. “Got it. An’ what exactly do you want to be doin’ if it ain’t workin’ for your daddy, fast trackin’ to CEO?”
“I…” you stutter, your eyes falling. That was the problem, wasn’t it? You hadn’t had the mindset, the freedom to wonder for so long, not realizing that you did have a choice in what you did with your life, that you could try to find a path you at least tolerated more than what your dad was going to have you do. You’d seen too much - the pressure, the stress, the kind of person it had made him into, and you wanted no part of that lifestyle.
“I don’t know yet, honestly,” you admit, embarrassed that you’d started this whole plan without an end goal, all built on a frustrated whim you had one day. “Maybe something in education? Maybe fashion, interior design? Something more creative, I think. Or I could even be a lawyer, help people out, or something.”
“Thas’ quite a laundry list, sweetheart,” Joel says, and your heart thuds at the pet name. You hate it, hate how it makes him sound condescending even if he isn’t meaning to, like you aren’t smart enough to figure this out for yourself.
“I know, I know,” you acquiesce. It was all a pipe dream, you knew that deep down. “I just needed to get away from it. I hate business school - it just feels like a load of shit, honestly, Mr. Miller. I don’t want to become like my dad.”
“An’ what’s that, hm? What’s becomin’ like your dad?”
You shake your head. “I-I’m not answering that. It’s your friend, and clearly you see some merit in him to stay close all these years. I… don’t want to ruin that for him, too.” The thought makes you sad. Your dad is already about to lose his only child if he finds you out, and you don’t want to bring losing Mr. Miller into it, too. While it was by your dad’s own choices and shortcomings that he’d lose you, you still find your heart squeezing a little for him at the thought.
“Fair enough,” he says with a small smile, rubbing his hands together before putting them back on the armrests, gripping it. He pushes himself up, standing and walking over to his desk, opening one of the top drawers and pulling something out. You can’t see from this angle, and fight the urge to get up and go see what has so suddenly grabbed his attention.
“How much?” he asks, grabbing a pen from a tiny box on the desk - a pen that likely costs more than what you’re making from this one job today.
Your lips part, mouth hanging open slightly. “What?” you ask, shaking your head.
“How much do you make in a week? Here at this job? I’ll pay you five times just f’you to quit it.”
“Mr. Miller… n-no,” you spit out, hopping up from the chair in a hurry. You rush towards the desk, your non-slip work shoes clunking along the hardwood until you reach the plush rug that surrounds his desk. “No,” you say a little more firmly, planting your hands on the desk, standing opposite of him.
“And why not?” He smirks now, like he’s somehow having fun here, and it irritates you. That would only make one of you having a nice time, because you are certainly fully out of your depth here.
“B-because! It’s ridiculous, that’s why. I don’t need handouts,” you say indignantly, now moving both of your hands to your hips, standing taller.
“Sounds like you might,” he half-teases, looking down at where he’s pulled out his checkbook onto the desk. His face falls suddenly and he rubs the back of his neck. “Jus’… I don’t like hearin’ what I’m hearin’. Could never imagine cuttin’ off Sarah, and if that’s true what you say about your dad, well, I…” he glances up to you with a more serious look in his eyes - pity.
Like your father, Mr. Miller also only has one daughter, Sarah, who as far as you’ve heard is well and thriving. Doing some kind of work in animal rescue, you think. You two had never been close given the over ten year age gap between you two - Joel had Sarah relatively young, and as long as you’ve known them, her mother hasn’t been fully in the picture. You’d always noticed how much Joel cared about her, how good of a father he was, remembering the pangs of jealousy you’d get as a kid when you saw how engaged he was with Sarah.
“You’re a good dad, that’s why,” you murmur in reply, eyes casting downwards.
“I try t’be, I suppose,” he says, sounding more bashful. “C’mon, jus’ name it, sweetheart. No harm done, it’ll be our secret.”
“Wh- what am I even supposed to do? If you give me the money? What do I…” You swallow hard. “Owe? What do you get out of this?”
Joel’s energy turns a little lighter, his smirk returning. “Let’s just say I enjoy helping you. I want to. Nothin’ owed, except coming by same time next week for your next check. We can talk more then, give y’some time to think.”
Think? About what? You almost scoff, but reign it in at the last second, fighting your eyes from rolling on top of it. “Mr. Miller, this is…”
“Ridiculous? Is it, really?”
Oh, he’s good, so convincing when he wants to be. Suave and calculated yet warm at the same time. You understand how he got to be so successful, how so many people likely fall at their feet to just be a part of the air he breathes, the aura he fills a space with. He’s a giant, knowing how to command a room, take up just enough space, yet feel so relatable at the same time.
“I’d feel too guilty…” you say quietly, your shoulders sagging in defeat.
“More guilty than doing this job, droppin’ out of school behind your parents back?”
Your skin is burning up, your brain at war with itself. He’s too insistent, there has to be some angle here that you’re missing, some reason he’d be so kind to you. Leverage - blackmail, maybe - to your father, to be able to hold it over your head to get what he wants at some point.
“Hey, c’mon. I’m serious, sweetheart. Just the check, nothin’ more,” Joel says more urgently, seeing the way you’re starting to waver.
“How can I trust you?” you finally spit out, and Joel leans back in his office chair, just watching where you stand. “I’m sorry, it’s all very nice and everything, but no. I c-can’t. I shouldn’t. I need to do this for myself.”
You turn to leave, and you hear the creak of Joel’s chair as he sits forward, watching you throw the office door open and move with purpose, rushing to get yourself out of this situation as fast as possible. You feel the spell lift immediately now that you’re out of reach, whipping past his fine furnishings and art as you move through the hallway back to the foyer. You hear Joel, hot on your tail, his energy a little more frantic than he’s been as he follows you.
“At least let me drive you home,” he finally offers as he rushes to catch up. You keep moving, shaking your head.
“N-no, I’ll just get a ride or something. Call my driver,” you throw at him over your shoulder, and his hand on your wrist stops you in your path just as the front door is in sight. You fully turn your head to face him now, and his eyes look soft, like he does care.
“Offer’ll stay on the table, okay?” Joel says and you just let your lips part, meeting his gaze for a moment. It’s intense, the standoff between the two of you, his eyes searching for weakness, for any crack that indicates you’ll give in. You offer him a succinct nod, slipping out of his grip and not looking back as you step out into the bright sunlight of the evening, shielding your eyes before pulling out your phone to call Karl, the man who has been your personal driver for years. Your father hired him, but he’s been nothing but loyal to you - you know Karl has kept every secret of where you’ve been, overheard phone calls, arguments with your father. He never says a word, never spreads the information - he’s paid well, and that extra cash pays for his silence.
In the back of the car, your phone buzzes in your lap while you stare contemplatively out the window. You ignore it, letting your eyes glaze over as you watch the houses pass you by on the way out of Joel’s neighborhood and back towards downtown.
What if this was your chance? Your only option to really get out from underneath your parents? It could be a huge cushion, much more than you’d make doing what you’re doing now. At this rate, it would take ages to get enough to push you through school, where you’d already have to start from scratch, leave Columbia and start an entirely new curriculum, most likely. Find a much cheaper school, then take care of housing, bills, everything on top of it that you’d never been prepared to have to worry about in your life, always promised the comforts of your parents money. You knew you were lucky, going around with your life spoon fed to you, but you wanted to feel something, the part of you that was excited about anything having died off completely when you realized the spoon had been fed to you through a cage. Live this way or we starve you, cut you off.
You sigh, dropping your head into your hand where it rests along the window of the car. The noise of Manhattan traffic goes in one ear and out the other, fading into oblivion as you realize you may have made a mistake by leaving so soon, not hearing Joel out.
Did you have a choice?
Your phone buzzes again, a reminder of the message from your father you’d ignored and you tear your eyes off the passing landscape to peer down at your lap. Your face falls, brows pushing together when you see it’s an unknown number texting you.
Unknown: If you change your mind, let me know. - JM
How the hell? You stare down at the message, eyes scanning rapidly over the screen in disbelief. You scoff quietly, but find your lips turning into a smile before you can stop it, unconsciously putting your fingers over your them as if Karl seeing you grin like this could give it all away.
You: How did you get this number?
Joel: I think you underestimate how persistent I can be.
You: Does it hurt your ego to take no for an answer? Is that what this is?
You eagerly lick your lips, smile growing as you find yourself so quick to banter with him. It’s always so much easier over text, you think to yourself, to be a little more bold, a little more careless. Joel had a warm, welcoming energy, but it doesn’t mean you’re immune to the way he charms, the way he seems to be a man who gets what he wants more often than not.
Joel: I think it’ll hurt you more than it does me sweetheart.
You: I’m thinking about it, okay?
Joel: Think away.
You tuck your phone away, flipping it over on your lap so you can’t see the screen anymore, drumming your fingers along the back of the case as you feel a surge of frustration wash over you. If Joel’s offer is genuine, if he really expects nothing in return, you’d be a complete fool to pass it up, right? Who passes up free money? You knew you were screwed either way, really - the job you had right now wasn’t getting you anywhere near achieving your dreams. You needed more, you needed support. Financially first of all, but if you were honest, someone like Joel with some life experience to help you figure out your next steps couldn’t hurt.
Fuck.
You wince and flip your phone back over, unlocking it to where the messages still sit on your screen, taunting you. Your fingers go flying before you can stop yourself, your heart starting to pick up in pace.
You: You’re serious? I wouldn’t owe you anything? Have to pay you back someday?
Joel: Serious as can be.
You: $800 a week. Without tips from lovely clients like you.
Joel is quiet on the other end for a while, slower than his usual response thus far, and your throat gets a little tight. You swear, if he was backing out now, or worse, sending screenshots of your conversation to your father, you were going to have it out with Joel Miller. And it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Instead, a few moments later, a text comes through, a photo. That same checkbook, the background the sleek black surface of his desk, with the top check filled out for four thousand dollars. Signed and everything, with the memo line reading ‘knew you’d make the right choice’. Your hand shakes a little, all of this feeling wrong suddenly now that it's gone this far.
Joel: 9am tomorrow.
Joel sits back, satisfied as he smirks at his phone. The check lays in front of him, taunting him, his energy buzzing and satisfied picturing your pretty hands taking it from him tomorrow. He sighs heavily, a hand creeping up his thigh to where he’s started to bulge through his black dress slacks.
“Fuck…” he murmurs quietly to himself as he palms it, his hard and wanting cock desperate for any relief. It would be wrong, should be wrong, if you’re the one involved in all of this. But he can’t care when he pictures your lips smiling with the check in hand, you depositing the money and buying yourself something pretty with it, taking care of bills, getting a nice meal. You spin in a new dress or top, showing it off to him, bought with that chunk of change he’d so willingly given to you. Just the tiniest of dents in his finances, so much more where that came from if you’d let him. He’s hardly realized it, the way his hand had undone his belt and zipper while he got lost in the fantasy, hard cock in his fist as he pictures it over and over. He tries to make it not you, not his friend's daughter as he immerses himself in the scenes, but he’d be remiss if he tried to deny that you’re a gorgeous young woman, that you’d look so good doing everything he’s picturing.
“Fuck, oh god…” Joel whimpers while his hand moves along his cock, slickened from the bit of precum leaking out the tip and the saliva he’d haphazardly spit down there when he started. He stares at the check, your hands on it over and over, your pretty lips and smile and the way he could give you more and more and more until you wanted for nothing. He grunts, hips stuttering forward as he fucks his fist quickly and finds himself coming faster than usual, his release taking him by surprise with a loud moan.
“Christ,” Joel murmurs as he breathes heavily, quickly cleaning himself up with a tissue before rushing to the powder room connected to his office, washing his hands of it all. He stares at himself in the mirror, such a bastard for what he’s doing, all the secrecy inlaid in his plan.
Your father… one of his oldest friends, and this is what he’s doing with that friendship? That empire of business savvy they built together? Years of trust, of advising one another, throwing it all away for a little gratification on his end? No, he knows this is about more than just him, this could really help you if what you said about your father was true. He knows your dad isn’t an easy man to live with - he’s got a short temper and is stubborn as hell, a black and white thinker if there ever was one. If he truly was saying he’d cut you off, then well, Joel was starting to think he’d believe that.
And he wants to be the one to ease that burden for you.
You fuss with your appearance yet another time, anxiety pooling in your gut as you inspect your hair and complexion, searching for anything amiss. It’s not like Joel hadn’t seen you a complete mess yesterday, your bland outfit so far from what you were used to wearing, your appearance an afterthought as you went into work at an early hour.
But last night, as you tossed and turned, anticipating meeting back up with Joel today, you’d wondered what he expected out of you. Someone pretty to look at, someone deserving of the money? Would you get there and find Joel completely different, taunting the check in your face unless you decided to get on your knees and suck his cock? Let him get a quick fuck in for the money? There was no way he was that charitable, just willing to drop four grand because you’d given him your daddy issues sob story yesterday.
So what was the catch?
There always was one - men with money didn’t just give it away for free unless it was to charity, wanting to look good. And you surely weren’t a charity case by any means. Sex for money seemed like the next logical option to your tired, frazzled brain as you laid awake in the dark. You didn’t know if he presented it like that, would you go along with it? Would you, this far in already, bring yourself to your knees for him?
Joel Miller is certainly handsome, nobody could deny that, but you’d never thought of him in that way, not really. Maybe noticing his broad, muscled shoulders stretching across his suits when you’d seen him, his cocky, warm smile that seemed to melt hearts everywhere he went. He’d always seemed kind, more amiable than your parents’ insufferable network of friends, which you’d taken notice of and respected Joel for over the years. But you’d never thought of yourself with someone older like him, despite seeing those young dates being toted on wealthy, older men’s arms to all kinds of charity events and parties over the years. Would you want that? To be seen like that?
You feel your skin tingle as the thought comes to you again this morning while you get dressed. Joel Miller in a lavish, designer suit, tailored perfectly to his body, you next to him in an equally gorgeous gown that he paid for, your hand slipped between his body and his thick bicep as he glides into a room full of people with you. And he’s proud of how good you look on his arm, how he can show the world just what he’s bought, what he’s paid for. Your head shakes violently as if to jolt the thought far away from you.
“No…” you whisper to yourself. It wouldn’t get that far, you wouldn’t let it. Maybe you’d just take the one check and run, tell Joel you couldn’t be what he was looking for. But that’s when you realize you don’t even know what it is that he may want to get out of this, the curiosity eating at you.
That bastard. Such an enigma he’d painted himself as yesterday when he’d so cooly offered you the money like it was no bother, like he’d expected nothing back. There was always something, always a trade - if you learned anything from your father, it was that.
You can't shake that incessant thought, walking up the steps of Joel’s brownstone, hesitantly knocking on his door and swallowing down the lump in your throat. The assistant you’d met yesterday opens it with a polite smile, beaming at you.
“Welcome. Mr. Miller will be right out,” she says, guiding you to a plush daybed off to the side. You just nod, a little dumbfounded as you step back into his grand foyer. It’s a lavish room with tall ceilings, a skylight at the top pouring extra light in along with the floor to ceiling frosted windows on either side of the front door. Joel’s dress shoes click along the floor, the sound bouncing off the walls as you stiffen and then freeze where you sit. You see him come into view, the top button of his pale blue dress shirt unbuttoned, navy slacks adorning the bottom of his look. He looks a little frazzled himself, like he’d tossed and turned just as much as you had last night. You hadn’t considered the possibility that Joel could have reservations about this now, too, since he’d been the one so eager to offer it up yesterday.
“Thanks, Clara,” Joel says kindly, giving her a nod before Clara skirts along the edge of the room, dismissing herself at Joel’s signal. You watch her go, confidently striding away before you skim your eyes up to Joel’s face, trying not to look too guilty.
“Back this way,” he says, holding out a hand in the direction of his office as if you weren’t here only yesterday. You stand, meeting him, and he quickly takes you in, noticing your complete change in style from yesterday - dressed much more like the businesswoman he knows you loath with a pencil skirt on. He tries not to laugh at the irony as you follow him back, taking that same path you’d just been on yesterday, a strange sense of deja vu washing over you.
You’re silent, just trying to breathe, to remember to stand your ground, not do anything you don’t absolutely want to do. You haven’t signed a contract, you aren’t bound to this, you two are just… talking. Joel smirks as he eyes you, clearly trying to walk in with confidence, but he knows this look - you’re apprehensive about the arrangement, you have questions. They always have questions.
He curves around his desk, pulling out his highback office chair and sinks into it, you doing the same in one of the sleek armchairs in front of his desk. It feels too much like a professional meeting, and your skin prickles with discomfort at how formal this all seems now. His fingers scratch along the checkbook on the desk, and you salivate as you keep widened eyes on it, knowing the number written on there, the promise of more of it to come. Your way out.
“So…” Joel says cooly, letting his hands link together and pulling them behind his head as he leans back a bit, the picture of relaxation. “Let’s talk.”
Is this some kind of sugar daddy situation, or what?
Joel laughs, a genuine smile across his face at your blunt question as he sits across from you.
“Well, in a lot of ways, I ‘spose it is,” he answers casually and honestly. You don’t understand how he can maintain this cool facade, this relaxed attitude given the circumstances. You’d think something so awkward and uncomfortable could get anyone frazzled, but then again, you take it this isn’t Joel’s first go-around with this type of offer. He goes on. “I’ll try to be blunt for both our sakes. We’re busy people. I want to… go beyond jus’ the checks. I’d pay for your lifestyle - school, car, whatever you want. Treat you, too. Give you money for all the things your pretty little heart desires, see you enjoyin’ it.”
That was not what you’d expected him to say. You stare wordlessly, stunned, expecting him to go on, to tell you now what you have to do to earn all of it. He remains quiet though, finally looking the tiniest bit sheepish as the both of you size each other up.
“…And you get?” you finally ask, your face screwed up in confusion as you shrug, throwing your hands up.
Joel smirks again, and you notice the dimple on the side of his face that he seems to prefer tilting his mouth upwards. “I get exactly that. What I said. You enjoyin’ it.”
Your mouth hangs open slightly, eyes narrowing in his direction. You give a tiny shake of your head. “No… there has to be something. One day you’ll turn it around on me, blackmail me or something.”
Joel laughs again, and you’re starting to get irritated at how blasé he seems about all of this. Your foot starts to tap anxiously on the rug underneath your feet, arms crossing over your chest. You try to remain unimpressed as you stare him down, but he’s not budging in the slightest, remaining cool as ever.
“You really think that’s the kind of guy I am, do you now?” he asks with amusement.
You scoff, pinching the inside of your lip between your teeth. “How should I know? You offer me a bunch of money and we hardly know each other, Mr. Miller.”
“First off, Joel, please, unless you’re into that, I ‘spose.” He gives you a suave smirk and your lips part a little, cheeks heating almost immediately at his words and their insinuation before you check yourself, turning back to the conversation. You’re determined not to let his charm get in the way of you walking out of here with your future secured.
“Okay, then, Joel. I just… you don’t want something from me in return? It’s not that I’m not grateful, I just can’t understand.” You tut and glance around the room for a moment to collect your thoughts. “I mean you get it, right? People with money always want something out of it. I’ve seen it my entire life.”
Joel gives you an understanding look. “I do, I get it, sweetheart. If you want me to want somethin’ out of it…” he trails off, pondering for a moment. “If that’d make you feel better about takin’ the money, then why don’t y’come spend some time with me. Let me take you out, or jus’ come by for a nice dinner, me ‘n you. Get to know each other a little, keep an old man company, hm?”
You roll your eyes with a breathy chuckle pushing out of you, feeling yourself relaxing the tiniest bit at his appeal. “Really trying to play the sympathy card calling yourself old, I see,” you say, quirking a teasing brow. You grow more serious with your next words, worrying that you’re signing yourself up for something you aren’t sure you want or even understand. “But uh, I… could do that… if that’s all you want.”
Joel’s gears are turning, and you see a flash of recognition across his face as it falls a little. He leans forward, propping his forearms on the desk, his brows knit tight and eyes narrowed while they watch you. “D’you think I expect you to sleep with me?”
You nearly choke on nothing, just the air that you’re now fighting to gasp in as you clear your throat. Your cheeks burn like something fierce, that notion you’d been so worried about as you tossed and turned last night now sounding so obscenely ridiculous when Joel says it out loud.
“I - I thought maybe that was how this sort of arrangement worked, l-like an unspoken expectation or something. But if you’re saying no -“
“I’m saying no.” Joel is hard with the words, concise, and his gaze ices over. He was kidding himself if he thought he wasn’t even remotely attracted to you, but he was already putting himself in a precarious enough spot with the secrecy of giving you this money behind your father’s back, let alone deciding to bring something as complicated as sex into it.
You didn’t need to know that just the thought of handing you this check made him start to get hard inside his slacks. You didn’t need to know that this wasn’t the first arrangement of this kind for him, the only difference being that most of them involved a relationship of some type, or at least something physical once and a while. There had been times it was just about the money, and sometimes that was enough to satisfy him without the women having to fall into his bed, too. He’d hated that he fell into such a cliche - wealthy older man toting around a younger, gorgeous woman on his arm - but he’d come to accept it by now that this was who he was, trying to come to terms with the shame of it.
“Right… right, good,” you confirm, trying to sound equally as sure. What was that you were feeling? Disappointment? Relief? All you could sense for certain was the way your stomach tightened with nerves as you delved into this conversation with Joel.
“We got enough on our plate without all that, don’t you think?” he asks, a very roundabout way of putting it, you think. Maybe he’s too afraid to hurt your feelings or directly tell you that he’s not interested in sleeping with you, even if that’s what he’d normally do in a situation like this. Joel Miller was nothing if not direct, though, you’d noticed in the last two days. You aren’t even sure why you’re thinking this way - it’s not like you’d really shown much interest in Joel, never thinking of him as accessible in that way. It never went past him being an extended part of your family, one of your father’s inner circle. So if he didn’t want to have sex with you, fine, your ego could take the hit.
“Jus’ the money, helpin’ out a family friend who needs it,” Joel adds, seeing the way you’re a bit lost in thought. You bring yourself back, meeting Joel’s eyes, noticing the rich color of them in the early daylight streaming into his office. They’re so warm despite the chilly facade he can put on.
You nod, giving him a small smile. “Yeah, when you put it like that… I mean we go way back, right? You’re practically family.” You cringe at the words, kind of hating the implication when you’re half flirting with the man and then proceeding to call him your family. “Uh, well, you know what I mean…”
Joel chuckles again, and you return it a bit nervously. “I do, sweetheart. Known your daddy a long time, so I’m trying to be, as dumb as it sounds, respectful.”
Fuck my father, your mind churns out in a flash, not daring to mutter it under your breath. Fuck him for putting you in this position, pushing you to this point where you’ve ended up in Joel Miller’s office, about to become his latest sugar baby because your dad can’t figure out how to love his only child apart from what it could bring to his business.
“Yeah…” you say, putting on a grin that you fear may have started to turn a little diabolical. “Respectful.” You’d be lying to yourself if you thought that this wasn’t starting to entice you more, the idea of such a big screw you to your father.
“So let’s talk terms…” Joel starts more pragmatically, picking up that same pen from the little box on his desk, tapping it on the hard surface a few times before he holds it over a blank page on an open black leather bound notebook. “I like t’start at five hundred for allowance. See how it goes. Then up to two thousand. An’ that’s just for you, and you alone. Your bills will come to me. Your apartment, tuition, your car, anything that’s a bill, I don’t want to see a cent of that allowance come out for it. Is that clear?”
Your mouth is slowly opening to gape at him, eyes tracking across his face as you try to follow what he’s saying, thinking it must be a joke. “S-sorry, but two thousand dollars? A… month?” you ask incredulously. That already sounds like too much to be going from Joel’s pocket to yours if he’s also taking care of your bills.
Joel goes completely smug, lips pressed tightly into a smirk. “You’re cute,” he deadpans. “Per week, sweetheart.”
You almost gasp, shaking your head. “I- no, I just need money for school, to make sure I can do any major I want in school, I don’t n-“
“Shh,” Joel interrupts you. “You came here lookin’ for my help, and this is how I like to do things. You deserve to have fun, not just pay for classes and have no extra money f’yourself.”
“I have plent-“ you start, referring to the extensive funds you have access to thanks to your parents. Funds that you do realize could be ripped out from underneath you at any time, you realize all over again with a quick jolt of fear.
“Enough,” Joel snips, raising a hand, palm facing you for further effect. “If what you tell me is true, I think your daddy ain’t gonna be too keen to pay for all your favorite things you’re used to gettin’ when he learns the truth, is he?”
You look down, ashamed. Were you really that shallow? Is that how you’d been raised to be? Joel sees through your facade right to your designer bag and clothes, all the expensive things you’d gotten accustomed to. But he doesn’t judge you for it - he understands it and he’s a part of that world, whether he likes it or not.
“No…” you murmur in defeat.
“And I’d like to keep seeing you in pretty things: nice clothes, shoes, gettin’ yourself pampered. So, two thousand dollars per week once you earn it.” He grins, setting the pen down and folding his hands together on his desk. You stay quiet, letting him go on, your heart steadily thrumming in your chest louder and louder with every word he says.
“Weekly allowance is, of course, a suggestion. If you need somethin’ more, you ask me. And otherwise, I’ll set your bills, tuition, all of it, to be paid by me.”
“I mean, weekly allowances?” you sputter out, “This is a sugar daddy thing.”
Joel doesn’t waver, he just smiles a little at you, completely unfazed. “We can call it whatever you want, but I see you want it too. I’m gonna be straight w’you here - I want to do this. I like you. I think you’ve got spunk and deserve to carve out a place for yourself in this world. Doin’ something you want, not half heartedly runnin’ your dad’s company someday. So… Do you still want this?” he asks, picking up the check, holding it out towards you. “Don’t think you’d be here if you didn’t.”
Joel’s face is kind, like he’s listening, attentive, acting like he doesn’t have a plethora of meetings or things on his plate today, which you know he must. He’s content to hear you, if you have something to say. You feel your whole body sitting tense and rigid in his chair, your mind spinning. It’s all becoming too much, this idea you had to get out on your own seems to be poked with more holes every day you’ve been trying to work and save up. You don’t really have much of a concept of money, once again thanks to your parents who never thought to put in the effort of teaching you. Why bother when there’s so much of it to go around?
“I- I know… what I’m doing now, the house cleaning, isn’t going to cut it long term. Especially if my parents find out I’ve been bullshitting them before I can save up enough for school and stuff… I just don’t k-“ you clear your throat, holding back the way your voice wants to crack as you fight tears springing to your eyes. “I feel so out of my depth,” you sigh. “I have so much to learn about real life and it’s been so… overwhelming.”
You breathe out a shaky breath, feeling your chest loosen a bit - you’d been holding this all in, doing it on your own for weeks now, not even able to trust your friends with the information even if just to vent about it because everyone in your world always has an angle. It’s exhausting.
Joel hears your words and stands up, going the few paces around his desk to stand next to you. He lays a hand on your shoulder, and you look up from where you sit, seeing him through slightly watery eyes, but you refuse to cry and break down in front of Joel. It would be too embarrassing to recover from. But you’d be damned if you didn’t feel like you were about to snap in half, holding in your tears for weeks now as you navigated this foolish path you’d set yourself on.
He gives your shoulder a squeeze before moving to sit down next to you, turning the identical chair to face you more, settling himself down and crossing one ankle over his knee. He leans towards you, and you do the same, angling your body in the chair to face him. His gaze is so steady and clear, giving you that full sense of his presence once again.
“Y’know…” he starts, scratching a hand through his beard. “I think you’ve got more potential than you’re givin’ yourself credit for.”
You snort, a tiny scoffing sound. “Oh yeah?” you spit out sarcastically, “That I have no experience, no references, nothing to show for all the time I wasted doing what my dad wanted? Except for a last name and a family that people recognize.”
Joel tuts and bites the inside of his lip. “You’re smart and so young with all this potential. You know this kinda talk ain’t gonna get you anywhere. Neither is feelin’ sorry for yourself. All you can do is use the opportunities you’re given, like this one landing in your lap from me today. Right?”
“Y-yeah, I mean, I guess you’re right. This just feels… kind of wrong.”
“Well we ain’t a couple of saints for doing this behind your daddy’s back, that’s for sure.”
You find yourself chuckling softly amidst the seriousness of the situation weighing on your chest. You honestly don’t have a clue how your father would react if he found out about this - he’s unpredictable and stubborn, and you’ve seen his vindictive side more than a handful of times. It makes your stomach clench a little at the thought of him unleashing any of that in your direction. You strengthen your resolve, unwilling to let your father stop you from exploring new horizons any longer. It was your life to live, and it was about time you did what you wanted.
“A-alright,” you tell Joel, sighing out a calming breath and sitting up straighter. “Alright, I’m in, then. What’s next?”
AH thank you! 💖 joel really is just a simple man here, can we blame him? i can't wait to hear your thoughts on what's next for them. they're way way too much fun to write, i'm obsessed!
Summary: For you, an aerospace engineering professor at the university, life consisted of elegant equations and the sterile silence of a laboratory. That was until Joel Miller arrived—shaking the building to its foundations with the roar of a construction site and a cloud of cedar dust under the scorching Austin sun.
- or -
A Contractor Joel Miller x Professor Reader Modern AU
Pairing: Contractor!Joel Miller/Professor!reader
Warnings: Slow Burn, Modern Setting, No Outbreak, Contractor Joel Miller, Professor Reader, Blue Collar x White Collar, Age Gap, Reader Has Gray Hair, Curvy Reader, Austin TX, Touch Starved Joel Miller, Strangers to Lovers, He Falls First, Unresolved Sexual Tension, First Date, Past Child Death, Miscarriage, Trauma Bonding, Smut, First Time, Rough Sex, Unprotected Sex, Cunnilingus, Overstimulation, Fingering, Praise Kink, Pet Names, Catharsis, Aftercare, Domestic fluff, Competence Kink, Protectiveness, They are obsessed with each other actually
Word Count: 5.3k | Find it also on ao3 | teaser
Chapter Four: Structural Integrity
Structural Integrity (n):
1. (Engineering) The ability of an item—either a structural component or a structure consisting of many components—to hold together under a load, including its own weight, without breaking or deforming excessively.
2. (Personal) The realization that you no longer have to carry the weight alone.
Sunlight hit you like a physical slap.
It wasn't the gentle, romantic morning glow of a movie, filtering through sheer curtains to wake a sleeping princess. It was the harsh, unfiltered Texas sun streaming through the blinds you hadn't bothered to close last night, cutting right across your eyes with the subtlety of a laser beam.
You groaned, trying to shift, but you were pinned. The velvet sofa, which was perfectly comfortable for sitting with a glass of wine, was decidedly not designed for two grown adults to sleep on—especially not when one of them was built like an industrial refrigerator and possessed the gravitational pull of a black hole.
Joel was a heavy, sprawling weight on top of you. One of his muscular legs was thrown over yours, effectively stapling you to the cushions. His arm was draped across your chest like a seatbelt, his hand resting possessively over your heart. His face was buried in the crook of your neck, his beard scratching your skin, and his breath—slow, deep, and rhythmic—was puffing warm against your collarbone.
You blinked, trying to unglue your eyes. You looked at the digital clock on the microwave in the kitchen, visible over Joel’s wide shoulders.
7:36 AM.
Your heart stopped. Your department meeting was at 8:30. Your lecture—the one you absolutely could not be late for because the Dean would be observing—was at 9:00.
"Joel," you rasped, shoving his heavy shoulder. It was like shoving a boulder. "Joel. Wake up."
He grunted. He tightened his grip, pulling you closer into the suffocating, delicious warmth of his naked body. "Five more minutes," he mumbled into your skin, his voice a gravelly rumble that vibrated through your chest wall. "Sun’s not up."
"The sun is up, Joel! It’s staring me in the face." You wiggled, trying to extract yourself from under his thigh. "It's almost eight. We slept through the alarm. We slept through everything."
That woke him up. The contractor clock in his brain rebooted instantly.
His head snapped up. He looked wild—hair sticking up in every direction, eyes squinting against the glare, beard mashed on one side. He looked disoriented for exactly one second before the numbers on the microwave registered.
"Seven thirty-six?" he swore, the words rough. "Shit. The crew's been on site for an hour. Martinez is gonna be blowin' up my phone."
The next fifteen minutes were a blur of chaotic, naked panic.
You scrambled off the couch, hissing as your feet hit the cool floor. You were sore—a delicious, aching soreness in your thighs and core that reminded you exactly why you hadn't made it to the bedroom last night. It was a deep, thrumming ache located at the very apex of your thighs, a mix of muscle fatigue and the physical aftermath of Joel’s intensity. He hadn't just been gentle; he had been a force of nature, and your body was currently paying the toll for hosting that wild storm.
As you tried to steady yourself, your mind involuntarily cataloged the mechanics of it: the sheer displacement of your insides caused by his size, the friction of skin against skin for hours, and the way he had pinned your hips down, using his weight as an anchor. You tried to shake those naughty, intrusive memories from your mind, but it was hard to ignore the evidence when the living room was a literal wreckage of discarded clothes—your shimmering dress on the floor, his heavy flannel shirt crumpled near the door.
"My bra," you muttered, scanning the floor, hopping on one foot as you tried to pull on clean panties you grabbed from the laundry basket. "Where is my bra?"
Joel stood up, glorious and unashamed in the morning light, stretching his back with a series of loud cracks. He looked like a Greek statue that had been to war and then rolled around on a velvet couch for eight hours. Scars, muscle, and hair.
He reached under the coffee table and tossed your bra at you. "Under the magazine rack," he supplied helpfully, voice still thick with sleep.
He found his boxers near the door. He hopped around, trying to pull his jeans on without falling over, moving toward the kitchen to find his shirt.
"I gotta drop you off," he said, zipping his jeans with a sharp, decisive sound.
"I can drive myself," you started, your voice sounding confident and defiant.
Then, he paused. His hands went still against the fabric of his shirt as his gaze swept over you from head to toe. The frustration on his face vanished, replaced by a heavy, primal silence. To him, you were glowing—looking less like a tired professor and more like a goddess reclaimed, touched by a lover. By him.
He tracked the soft curves still flushed from his touch, the faint blooming bruises where his hands had anchored you, and the way your untamed curls framed a face that looked utterly ethereal. In the harsh morning light, you looked like a real woman. Like his woman. The weight of that realization hit him all over again, making his throat tight.
"No!" he snapped suddenly, the overwhelming urge to protect you—to shield you—starting to crawl under his skin.
"I don't think you'll be able to drive with those wobbly legs, sweetheart," he continued, finally getting the buttons aligned. He leaned against the doorframe, watching your shaky progress with a slow, proud smirk. "You're walkin' like a newborn calf."
"Joel!" you shrieked, your face flushing a brilliant shade of crimson. In a fit of mock-outrage, you scooped up the nearest piece of clothing—which happened to be your lace panties from last night—and threw them at him.
He caught them with a lightning-fast reflex, the delicate fabric disappearing into the palm of his massive, calloused hand. He didn't even blink; he just stuffed them into his pocket like a trophy, his eyes twinkling with a dangerous kind of amusement. But as the fabric settled against him, the playfulness in his eyes darkened into something heavier. He cleared his throat, forcing himself to look away and break the spell.
"Do you have a toothbrush?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave, rougher than before as he tried to shake off the intensity of the moment. "I need to scrub my teeth with somethin' or I'm gonna kill someone with my breath."
You rolled your eyes, yanked open the bathroom drawer, and fished out a spare packaged toothbrush. "Catch," you warned, tossing it through the air.
He snatched it out of the air with one hand. "Thanks. Now get dressed. Don't want you being late for your fluid dynamics lecture. Though I think we covered the dynamics part pretty well last night."
You turned away, gathering your things in a frantic scramble and limping toward your closet. Every step was a fresh reminder of the damage he’d done—the deep, rhythmic ache in your thighs making you hiss under your breath as you reached for a crisp white button-down and a charcoal skirt.
"I have a reputation to uphold, Joel!" you called out over your shoulder, struggling to pull on your tights while balancing on one unsteady leg. "I can't exactly tell the Dean I'm late because a contractor decided to dismantle my entire nervous system."
You heard the sound of plastic tearing, followed by aggressive brushing from the bathroom. "Dismantle? No, sweetheart," he called out, his voice muffled by foam. "I was just checking the structural integrity. You passed the stress test."
After finishing up, you joined him at the door. He paused, his hand resting on the doorknob, and looked at you.
Despite the rush, despite the fact that his foreman had probably left five voicemails, he stopped. He reached out, hooked a finger under your chin, and tilted your face up. He scanned your face, checking for regret, checking for hesitation. He found neither.
He kissed you. It wasn't a quick peck. It was deep, claiming, and tasted of cinnamon toothpaste and urgency.
"Mornin', Professor." he smirked against your lips.
"Go," you pushed him, flushed and breathless. "Move, Miller."
You fumbled with the lock, your fingers clumsy, before finally securing the apartment door. Stepping into the quiet, carpeted hallway felt jarring after the chaotic intensity inside.
You tried to stride purposefully toward the elevator, attempting to channel your inner "Professor of Engineering," but your body immediately betrayed you. Your hips felt loose, disjointed, like a marionette whose strings had been cut and retied by a drunk puppeteer. Every step sent a fresh, warm jolt of awareness through your core, a physical echo of exactly how wide he had stretched you.
Joel noticed. Of course he did.
He didn't say a word; he just reached out and easily unhooked your heavy leather laptop bag from your shoulder, slinging it over his own massive shoulder as if it contained feathers instead of a computer and three textbooks. It looked comically small against his bulk.
His free hand settled on the small of your back—a warm, heavy brand that burned right through your silk blouse. He shortened his long, confident strides to match your slightly uneven ones, guiding you down the long corridor with a silent, smug protectiveness.
"You're doing great, Bambi," he whispered near your ear, the vibration of his voice making your knees even weaker. "Just put one foot in front of the other."
"I hate you," you muttered without heat, focusing on the carpet pattern to keep your balance.
"Liar."
He steered you around the corner, toward the stairs. And just as you passed Apartment 4B, the door creaked open.
It was Mrs. Flynn.
She was the building’s unofficial grandmother—a sweet, 70-something widow who baked snickerdoodles for the mailman and whose hearing aid was, unfortunately, brand new and terrifyingly effective.
She stepped out, holding a small bag of trash, and stopped dead when she saw you. Her eyes went wide behind her bifocals. She looked at you, then up—way up—at the massive, bearded man looming beside you, and then back at you.
"Oh! Good morning, dear," Mrs. Flynn chirped, though her voice was an octave higher than usual. She looked visibly flustered, her gaze darting between Joel’s broad chest and your slightly disheveled bun.
"Good morning, Mrs. Flynn," you replied, your voice tight. You felt the heat creeping up your neck, hot and prickly. Please don't say it. Please don't say it.
"Last night..." she started, clutching her trash bag a little tighter. "There were some... very concerning sounds coming from your living room wall. It sounded like someone was throwing heavy furniture against the drywall. Or like... like a set of industrial springs were being snapped in half."
You wanted the floor to open up and swallow you whole. Those "springs" were definitely the death rattle of your velvet sofa. Every time Joel had driven into you, that poor piece of furniture had screamed for mercy.
"Um... Yes," you stammered, your cheeks burning with the intensity of a thousand suns. "I was... watching a movie. An action movie. Die Hard. I turned the volume up way too high. Sorry about that."
Mrs. Flynn squinted suspiciously. Her gaze dropped to your neck, landing directly on the bright red, undeniable beard burn that your concealer hadn't quite covered.
"Ah, I see," she said slowly. "An action movie. It must have been... very vivid. The lead actor seems to be quite talented. He certainly left a lasting impression on you."
You were about to pass out from sheer mortification when Joel chuckled beside you.
There was absolutely zero shame in him. In fact, he looked like a cat that had just eaten the canary and the cream. He flashed his signature, crooked grin and gave the old lady a respectful nod.
"Apologies, ma'am," he said, his voice a low, smooth rumble that seemed to vibrate in the hallway. "We were just conducting a structural integrity test on the Professor's furniture."
Mrs. Flynn blinked. "Structural... what?"
"The sofa springs," Joel lied effortlessly, slipping into his contractor persona. "Checking for tension fatigue and load-bearing capacity. It was a... very rigorous stress test. Had to measure the durability under dynamic oscillation."
He turned to you, his eyes dancing with a devilish, predatory light. He slid a heavy arm around your waist, pulling you flush against his side.
"But you've got sturdy materials, Professor. It passed the test," he said, lowering his voice just enough to sound intimate, but loud enough for Mrs. Flynn to hear every word. "Although... I think a follow-up inspection might be necessary tonight. Just to be safe."
You let out a strangled noise and practically dragged Joel toward the stairs by his bicep, leaving Mrs. Flynn standing there, staring at the empty hallway with her mouth slightly open.
By the time you got into his truck, Joel was roaring with laughter.
"A structural integrity test?!" you shrieked, smacking his rock-hard shoulder as he started the engine. "Are you out of your mind? She bakes cookies for the orphanage, Joel!"
"Hey," he grinned, backing out of the parking spot with one hand on the wheel, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "I didn't lie. That couch took a beating. I'm honestly surprised it's still standing."
The drive to campus was a masterclass in aggressive driving.
Joel navigated the Austin morning traffic like he was driving a tank into battle. He took shortcuts through alleys you didn't know existed, muttering curses at Prius drivers and leaning on the horn with the casual familiarity of a man who lived in his truck.
He pulled up to the curb of the Engineering building at 8:26 AM.
He put the truck in park. The engine idled, a low, powerful growl beneath you.
You reached for the door handle.
"Wait," he said.
You turned.
He leaned across the center console. He buried his face in your neck again, inhaling deeply, his nose dragging along the sensitive cord of muscle there.
"You smell good," he growled. "Vanilla. And me."
He pulled back, looking satisfied. A possessive glint shone in his hazel eyes.
He looked down at his own shirt. He lifted his collar and sniffed.
He smelled like you. Your perfume, your skin, the distinct, musky scent of the activities on the couch.
"You need to go home and shower," you pointed out, adjusting your bag strap. "You smell like... sex, Joel."
Joel grinned—a sharp, arrogant expression that made him look ten years younger.
"Nope," he said, popping the truck back in gear. "I'm goin' straight to the site. Let the boys smell it. Let 'em know the boss had a better night than they did."
You laughed, swatting his arm. "You are impossible. Unprofessional."
"I'm the boss. I set the profession." He looked at you, his expression sobering slightly. "I'll pick you up at five. Don't leave without me. And if that Sterling guy comes near you, text me."
"I can handle Sterling."
"I know. But I like handlin' him better."
You watched him drive away, the black truck roaring down the street, leaving you standing on the sidewalk with shaking legs, a lingering soreness, and a heart that felt too big for your chest.
The days that followed fell into a rhythm.
It wasn't a slow, tentative rhythm. It was a fast, intense, consuming beat.
You were drowning in the end-of-semester rush—grading finals, finalizing your grant proposal, dealing with departmental politics. He was drowning in the deadline on the renovation, dealing with inspectors and supply chain issues.
But you found spaces in the cracks. The separation only made the connection tighter.
The texts became your lifeline.
Tuesday, 10:42 AM
Joel: Drink water. It's 98 degrees out.
You: I'm in a climate-controlled fluid dynamics lab, Joel. It’s 68 degrees in here. You're the one on the roof.
Joel: Don't argue with the safety officer. Drink.
Wednesday, 1:17PM
You: I am going to kill the Dean. He wants to cut the budget for the wind tunnel project because "football needs new jerseys."
Joel: Point him out to me. I'll drop a hammer near him. Accidentally.
You: Please don't. (But maybe just a small hammer).
Joel: Wrench. Got it.
Thursday, 9:33 PM
Joel: I'm outside. Brought tacos. Torchy's. The trashy kind you like with the queso.
You: I'm in my pajamas grading papers. I look like a swamp witch. I haven't washed my hair in two days.
Joel: Open the door. I like swamp witches.
He didn't stay the night every night—he was trying to be respectful of your space, and he had a 5:00 AM wake-up call—but he was there. He was a constant orbit around your life.
He fixed your leaky bathroom faucet while you were in the shower, simply walking in with a wrench, fixing it, kissing your wet shoulder, and leaving.
He replaced the windshield wiper fluid in your car because he noticed it was low.
He started leaving things at your apartment: a heavy phone charger plugged in by the bed, a spare flannel shirt draped over your chair, a toothbrush in the holder next to yours.
It was domestic.
It was terrifyingly easy.
And then, the big day arrived.
The Grant Presentation.
This was the culmination of two years of research. You were presenting your paper on "Boundary Layer Control in High-Speed Airfoils" to the University Board and a panel of visiting aerospace executives from major defense contractors. This presentation determined your funding for the next three years. It was the key to your tenure track.
You stood at the podium in the main auditorium. The room was cold, freezing actually, lit by the harsh spotlight on the stage. The rest of the hall was dim.
The audience was a sea of gray suits, spectacles, and skeptical frowns.
Your heart was hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. You smoothed your hands over your pencil skirt. You took a sip of water, your hand shaking just enough to make the ice clink.
"Good morning," you began, your voice trembling slightly before finding its footing. "If we look at the drag coefficient relative to the surface tension..."
You scanned the room as you spoke.
Dean Higgins looked bored, scrolling on his phone.
Dr. Sterling (the creep from the bar) looked smug, arms crossed, waiting for you to stumble so he could swoop in with a helpful correction.
The visiting executives looked at their watches.
Panic clawed at your throat. You felt small. You felt like an imposter.
Then, you looked to the very back of the auditorium.
The double doors at the rear were propped open slightly.
Standing in the shadows, leaning against the back wall, was him.
He shouldn't have been there. He had a massive concrete pour scheduled for today—he had complained about it all week.
But there he was.
He was wearing his work clothes—dusty Red Wing boots, jeans stained with grease, a black t-shirt that clung to his chest. He held his yellow hard hat in his hands, turning it slowly by the brim. He looked completely out of place in the pristine, academic hall. He looked like a rough charcoal sketch in a gallery of fine oil paintings.
But he was watching you.
His gaze was intense, unwavering. He wasn't looking at your slides. He clearly didn't understand a word about laminar flow or Reynolds numbers.
He was looking at you.
His face was filled with a quiet, fierce pride. He wasn't bored. He wasn't judging. He was standing guard.
He caught your eye across the room.
He nodded once. A microscopic motion of his chin.
I got you. You're the smartest person here. Tell 'em.
Your breathing steadied. The room stopped spinning. The panic evaporated.
If Joel Miller—a man who faced life-or-death situations with a shrug, a man who could hold up the weight of a collapsing roof—thought you could do this, then you could do this.
You straightened your spine. You clicked the next slide with authority.
"As you can see from the data," you said, your voice projecting clear and strong, commanding the room, "the structural integrity holds under extreme pressure, surpassing current industry standards by fifteen percent."
You nailed it.
You spoke for forty-five minutes. You fielded questions without hesitation. You shut down a snide comment from Sterling about "theoretical applications" with a crisp, mathematical rebuttal that made the executives chuckle and nod in approval.
When you finished, the applause was polite but genuine. You saw the executives leaning in to talk to each other. You had won.
The aftermath was the usual academic schmoozing.
You were in the lobby outside the auditorium, holding a glass of cheap, warm white wine, surrounded by three other professors and a wealthy donor named Mr. Vance.
"Fascinating work, truly," Vance said, swirling his drink. "Although I wonder about the scalability of the material costs. Titanium alloys are pricey."
"We've actually run a cost-benefit analysis," you explained, smiling your 'professional smile' that made your cheeks hurt. "If you look at the long-term fuel savings over a ten-year operational lifecycle..."
You felt him before you saw him.
The air pressure shifted. The polite, sterile bubble of the conversation was punctured by a heavy, masculine gravity.
Joel walked up to your circle.
He had dusted himself off as best he could, but he still looked like exactly what he was: a man who built things with his hands. He towered over the physics professors. His shoulders were twice as broad as Mr. Vance’s. His presence was so jarring that the conversation died instantly.
Mr. Vance looked him up and down, confused, his nose wrinkling slightly at the scent of sawdust. "Can we help you, sir? Maintenance requests go to the basement level."
You opened your mouth to correct him, anger flaring hot in your chest, but Joel beat you to it.
He didn't look at the donor. He looked at you.
He stepped right up to your side, invading your personal space in a way that claimed you instantly. He slipped his arm around your waist—heavy, warm, and solid. His hand rested on the curve of your hip, his thumb rubbing a slow, possessive circle against the fabric of your blouse.
"I ain't maintenance," Joel rumbled. His voice dropped to that deep, cavernous pitch that always made your knees weak, contrasting sharply with the nasal tones of the academics.
He looked at the donor, then at Sterling, who was lurking nearby like a vulture. He leveled them with a flat, hazel stare that dared them to speak.
"Joel," you said, breathless, leaning into his touch instinctively. "I didn't know you were coming. The concrete pour..."
"Wrapped it early," he said, his eyes softening only when he looked down at you. "Pushed the crew. Wouldn't miss it. You did good up there. Real good."
"You understood it?" you teased softly, ignoring the stunned silence around you.
"Not a word," he admitted with a smirk that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "But you sounded like the boss. And you shut that guy down cold." He glared briefly at Sterling. "I liked that part."
Mr. Vance cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable with the display of raw affection and the intrusion of blue-collar reality into his ivory tower. "And... you are?"
Joel turned his gaze back to the group. He didn't remove his hand from your waist. If anything, he tightened his grip, pulling you flush against his side so there was no daylight between you.
"I'm Joel," he stated flatly. "I'm with her."
There was a silence. The academics processed this. The brilliant, elegant aerospace professor and the rugged, scarred contractor. It didn't make sense on paper. It disrupted their data.
But looking at the way he held you—like you were the only structural support that mattered in a collapsing world—it made perfect sense.
"Oh," Vance said, blinking. "I see. Well. Lucky man."
"Yeah," Joel said, his eyes dark and serious. "I am."
He looked down at you, ignoring them completely now.
"You done here?" he asked quietly. "Or do you need to talk more about... air?"
"I'm done," you said, handing your empty glass to a passing waiter without looking. "Get me out of here."
"Let's go."
He nodded once to the group—a dismissal, not a goodbye—and guided you toward the exit, his hand never leaving the small of your back, shielding you from the room.
You walked to the parking lot in the late afternoon sun. The adrenaline of the presentation was fading, leaving you exhausted but buzzing with a high frequency.
"You really came," you said as you reached his truck. The sight of it—dirty, dented, familiar—was better than any luxury car in the lot.
"I told you I would." He unlocked the door. "I keep my word."
"Where are we going? My place? I think I have leftover wine."
Joel paused. He opened the passenger door, but he didn't help you in immediately. He stood there, one hand on the doorframe, looking at you.
He looked nervous.
It was a rare look for Joel Miller. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, his thumb hooking into his belt loop.
"I was thinkin'..." he started, looking over your head at the horizon, avoiding direct eye contact. "We could go to my place."
Your heart skipped a beat.
You had never been to his house.
He was guarded about his space. You knew he lived in the hills, you knew he had built a lot of it himself, but he had never invited you. It was his sanctuary, the place where he kept his ghosts. Inviting you there was bigger than sex. It was an admission.
"Your place?" you repeated softly.
"Yeah," he grunted, shifting his weight. "I mean... if you want. It ain't fancy. But I got steaks. I got a grill. It's quiet. No deans. No students."
He looked at you then, vulnerable and hopeful beneath the stoic exterior.
"I want you to see it," he admitted softly. "I want you to see where I live."
You reached out and took his hand, squeezing the rough fingers.
"Take me home, Joel."
Joel lived in the hills west of Austin, where the land started to roll and the scrub oak turned into real trees. The drive was beautiful, the sun dipping low and turning the Texas sky a bruised purple and orange.
He pulled into a gravel driveway that crunched satisfyingly under the tires.
His house wasn't a mansion, but it was striking. It was a restored Craftsman, low and wide, with a deep wrap-around porch and exposed cedar beams. It looked exactly like something Joel Miller would build—sturdy, grounded, unpretentious, and built to last a hundred years.
"It's a fixer-upper," he muttered as he killed the engine. "Been workin' on it for five years. Still got some trim to finish in the hallway. And the landscaping is... minimal."
"It's beautiful, Joel."
He led you up the porch steps. He unlocked the heavy oak front door.
"After you."
You stepped inside.
The house smelled like him—cedar, leather, coffee, and just a hint of old sawdust.
It was clean. Surprisingly clean. The floors were polished hardwood that gleamed in the twilight. The furniture was heavy leather, dark and worn but expensive. There was a stone fireplace that looked like it could roast a whole hog.
But it was empty.
There were no pictures on the walls. No knick-knacks. No throw pillows. No clutter. It was a house lived in by a man who didn't want to leave a mark, or who was afraid to make it too comfortable in case the universe decided to take it away. It felt like a very nice hotel room, or a waiting room for a life that hadn't started yet.
"Kitchen's this way," he said, tossing his keys in a wooden bowl. The sound echoed slightly.
You followed him. The kitchen was the heart of the house—a massive butcher-block island, professional-grade appliances, and a window that looked out over the hill country.
He opened the fridge and pulled out two beers. He cracked one and handed it to you.
"Welcome to the fortress," he toasted, clinking his bottle against yours.
"It's not a fortress," you said, looking around, sliding your hand over the smooth granite counter. "It's a home. It just... needs some life in it."
Joel took a long sip of his beer. He leaned his hip against the counter, crossing his ankles. He watched you looking at his space. He looked like he was waiting for you to criticize it, or run away from the solitude of it.
"That's why I brought you," he said.
You froze. You turned to look at him.
He put his beer down on the counter. He walked over to you.
He stood in front of you in his quiet, empty kitchen, the sunset painting stripes of orange light across the floor.
"It's too quiet in here," he whispered, reaching out to tuck a loose curl behind your ear. His fingers lingered on your neck. "It's been quiet for a decade. I liked the quiet. I thought the quiet was safe."
He ran his hands down your arms, linking his fingers with yours, holding your hands between his chest and yours.
"But now... I hate it," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "I come home, and it echoes. I want noise, darlin'. I want your messy papers on my table. I want your shoes kicked off in the hallway. I want your shampoo in my shower."
He paused, searching your eyes.
"I want you here."
"Are you asking me to move in?" you laughed nervously, though your heart was soaring. "Joel, we haven't even had our first fight yet."
"I don't care," he said intensely. "We'll fight. I'm stubborn as a mule. You're bossy. We'll yell. I'll probably sleep on the couch."
"That couch looks more comfortable than mine," you noted.
"It is," he grinned briefly, before getting serious again. "But I want to fight with you here. I want to make up with you here. I don't want to drive you home anymore. I hate drivin' away from you."
He pulled you closer, wrapping his arms around your waist, resting his chin on top of your head. He held you like you were the anchor keeping him from drifting away.
"I'm claiming you," he rumbled into your hair. "I told those suits at the school, and I'm tellin' you. I'm all in. No more walls. No more hiding."
You buried your face in his chest, inhaling the scent of his work shirt and the soap he used. You listened to the steady, strong beat of his heart. It was the best sound you had ever heard.
"I'm all in too, Joel."
He held you there for a long time as the sun went down, filling the empty spaces of the house with the warmth of two people who had finally found a place to land.
"Hungry?" he asked eventually, pressing a kiss to your temple.
"Starving. You promised me a steak."
"Good." He released you, swatting your hip gently. "Go sit on the porch. Watch the fireflies. I'm firin' up the grill. I make the best ribeye in Texas, and I don't accept criticism on that."
"That's a bold claim, Miller."
He smirked, grabbing a set of tongs and heading for the back door.
"I back up my claims. You should know that by now."
You watched him walk out onto the porch, the screen door slamming behind him—a homely sound. You looked around the kitchen—at the empty counters, the silent walls.
You smiled. You put your beer down on the island.
You reached into your bag. You pulled out the purple large claw clip you used for your hair.
You placed it on the counter, right next to his keys.
A small thing. A splash of color on the dark wood. A first mark.
With you, life had officially arrived at the his lonely residence.
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