⋆｡°✩ every move you make… chia, 8teen, they/them, latina, film student :)
minors dni :) bucky barnes is the owner of my heart but i promise i will write for other fandoms … inbox and requests are open! check out my rules below before requesting :)
⋆｡°✩ every step you take… links!
i. about me, ii. rules, iii. masterlist, iv. other blogs, v. buy me a coffee!, vi. tags + what they mean :)
inspired by the song 500 miles by peter, paul and mary :)
author’s note: follows the rocky relationship between bucky and reader throughout TWS, CW, TFATWS, and Thunderbolts*. some light angst, nothing too bad to begin with :D this was refreshing to write after a long long long LONG writer’s block TvT i couldn’t seem to get a scene from my favorite deactivated blog off my mind (rip mournthebird to those who remember), so this chapter is inspired loosely on my best memories of the winter soldier fics.
mcu placement: this chapter takes place after the events of TWS!
synopsis: after a brief meeting with the super soldier, you can’t seem to escape him. he barges into your apartment with…blood? who is this man? and why won’t he go away?
warnings: language, no use of y/n, not proofread :) i will have adult themes in the next couple chapters, so minors dni!
masterlist here :)
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if you miss the train im on…
you didn’t consider yourself squeamish, or faint of heart. given the opportunity, you were pretty okay at first aid. not spectacular, but you were good enough to the point where you would easily clean and dress your wounds. you hadn’t treated any large wounds, so when the bloodied soldier barged through your front door, you grew nervous.
it’s not that you didn’t know who he was, you were given a brief rundown from local news reports. and, it’s not like you hadn’t met before. you bumped into him when walking to your bodega, a couple days ago.
you briskly paced the dark streets of the city. the area you lived in wasn’t too huge in your opinion, but it was populated enough to the point that grocery prices were ridiculous. you recited your order in your head, mentally adding the tax to the final amount to estimate if you were on budget. you entered the bodega, and instantly noticed the dark figure looming in the corner. he looked…wet. odd, it hadn’t rained in a couple of days, but you didn’t think of it. your brain was hardwired to ignore strange people, after all- you were a new york native. strange people are a dime a dozen. but there was something about him…never mind that, you thought. you waited in line at the deli section, and gave your order at the counter. after paying and gathering your things you turned for the exit, but noticed that the strange figure was still there.
“ignore him, nena.” the guy behind the counter said. you realized you had become a regular here, after hearing the nickname come out of the owner’s mouth. the owner, a man named luis, offered a warm smile. he’d always make sure that you got extra bacon on your sandwiches, and slipped a couple candies with your orders every now and then.
“he’s been in here for a couple of hours, just staring at chives.” chives, the bodega cat, was staring right back at the large man. you said your goodbyes to him, then made your way to the canned food aisle. your mind was racing. should you get him some water? some food? is he homeless, or just…strange? you figured you could get your one good deed of the day out of the way by helping him.
you grabbed a water bottle, a two pack of instant ramen, and a fork. you checked the items out, and, with a somewhat firm hand, tapped the man on the shoulder. he didn’t move, but his eyes shifted instantly to yours, with…fear? you cleared your throat.
“here. luis wants you to leave, you’re freaking chives out.”
the man stared at the bag in your hand, then at you. you motioned for him to grab it, and after a brief pause, he did. he winced at the weight being transferred to his hand, but you didn’t think anything of it. you noticed he hid his left hand, which made you curious. you scanned his face. his eyes were piercing blue, with a sense of grief. heavy, heavy grief. he had small scars scattered throughout his face, trailing to his neck. and on his neck…was dried blood? who was this guy?
~~~
this memory played almost like a broken record in your mind, as the same man who you helped was now standing in your apartment. with shaky hands, you grabbed your phone, hoping to dial 911.
“what are you doing here?” you’ve rarely feared a home intrusion, as you thought you lived in a relatively safe neighborhood. you didn’t think he would hurt you, but you know he could. you reached for your pepper spray.
“speak.” you demanded, “or get out of my home.”
“Спасибо.” he gravely muttered, barely above a whisper.
“i’m sorry?”
“thank you.” he repeated, a little louder than last time, but too loud for him. he flinched at the sound of his voice, almost as if he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to speak. you blinked once, then twice. oh, you thought. for the food.
“right, yeah. don’t sweat it.” you released a humorless chuckle.
“help?” he whispered again. this plea sounded less like a demand, and more like a cry. that word sounded strange on his tongue, as if it was his first time saying it. you let your guard down. he wasn’t on drugs, you saw. maybe he just needs a meal. you sighed and nodded, putting your phone and pepper spray down. if anything happened, you could always yell. lord knew that the wall you shared with your neighbors was incredibly thin, which was frequently shown by the late night arguments they had.
noting your nod, he pulled out a chair and quickly sat down. despite towering in your small apartment, he moved with grace, a kind of grace that only occurs after rigorous training. he aimed to take up as little space as possible, which was a little difficult seeing as how he was a good 6’3.
you made your way over to him, and noted that the bleeding you saw a couple days ago was a bit worse. you scanned his clothes. they were difficult to remove without the help of someone else. how odd. you made your way to him.
“are you hurt?” he nodded once, a small janky movement.
“may i…?” you reached over to his shirt collar. you inspected the buttons. he didn’t nod this time, but closed his eyes. you took that as a yes. he stayed incredibly still, almost statuesque. the second your hands grazed his neck, you gasped. he was ice cold. it made sense, he had been outside this whole time, but you didn’t know the human body could reach this low of a temperature.
you began the tedious task of unbuttoning his jacket. after a couple minutes (that seemed like hours), you unfastened it fully. the light was dim, but you could make out a…metal arm? your heartbeat quickened. you cleared your throat.
“i’m going to get a first aid kit, and turn on a lamp. you should remove your jacket. i’ll, err…be right back.” you made your way to your bathroom, turning on a lamp in the living room in the process. your heart and mind were racing. what were you doing? you always thought you were level headed, but this was crazy. you grabbed cotton, bandaids, and rubbing alcohol. fuck, how severe were his wounds? you reached for the gauze, needle, and thread. you released a quick breath. fuck, you thought. fuck, fuck, fuck. just get it over with.
upon your return, you grasped the situation. his jacket and undershirt were scattered haphazardly on the floor, and your stomach dropped at the sight of his chest. scars, both new and old, decorated him, almost in a pattern to accentuate his muscles. it seemed purposeful, almost as if someone was branding him. your eyes trailed to his right arm. it was dislocated. your face went pale. you might have gotten in over your head. you placed the spoils of your trip on the small kitchen table, organizing them in an way that made sense to you.
“okay.” you said. “okay, um.” you were talking just to talk. he seemed like a man of little words, which made you anxious.
“okay.” you repeated again. you mentally kicked yourself for the repetition. you hoped that- wait, you didn’t catch his name. you hoped that he didn’t regret coming to you for help. you sucked in a breath through your teeth and grabbed the rubbing alcohol. you decided to narrate what you were doing, so he didn’t feel scared. you mentioned that it might sting, but there was no reaction. there was no emotion in his face, and it seemed like he was disassociating. there were gashes here and there, but nothing a quick stitch couldn’t fix. you cleaned what you could, and mentally took note of what you couldn’t. after what seemed like an eternity, the open wounds didn’t look too bad. you mentally congratulated yourself. however, you had to face the big bad- the dislocated shoulder. you remember how to relocate it- a memory based off an old high school injury. you don’t remember how you dislocated it, but you remember that it was the first time you drank. to ease the pain, of course. why else would your lips touch the liquid courage?
you reached in your cupboard for a clean dishrag and an almost empty bottle of whiskey. you soaked the rag with the remaining liquid in the bottle, and the smell of liquor filled the apartment. you almost lamented the waste of the whiskey, but you were too focused on what was going on behind you. you wrung the rag until it was just damp, and not sopping wet.
“could you open your mouth?” you asked, as you turned around. almost mechanically, he opened his mouth without hesitation. was he used to following orders? you instructed him to bite down on the rag. you weren’t sure why you soaked it in whiskey, but you saw it in a movie ages ago, so you assumed that was commonplace. you tenderly grasped his wrist and elbow, and maneuvered his arm so his hand would be touching his back, and his elbow would be near his face. you took a quick breath.
“i’m going to relocate your shoulder. typically, i would ask you to lay down, but i don’t…think that’s the best idea.” you hesitated a bit when speaking. you exhaled.
“i’m going to push on the count of three, okay? you’re going to hear a pop, but don’t be alarmed. bite down on the rag if you need to.” he almost nodded, but it seemed his mind was elsewhere.
you took a deep breath.
“one, two…” you steadied yourself. “three.” in one quick motion, you moved his arm in a way that pushed his elbow down, and you heard a loud “pop”, indicating that the shoulder was relocated. you heard a small hiss come from his mouth. you promptly let go of his arm, letting him feel his shoulder. he stretched, and your eyes lingered on his back muscles. you cleared your throat once more, and took a step back.
“all good.” you said in a quiet voice. this felt fairly intimate, but you didn’t even know his name. did he know yours?
“are you hungry?” you asked, making your way to the chair across from his. he shook his head, but as if on cue, his stomach started grumbling. despite having a huge muscular body, he seemed…emaciated. you weren’t sure if he was able to eat.
“i made some tomato soup this morning, it should still be good.” you said. he didn’t protest, so you bee-lined to the fridge. you grabbed the container, and emptied it in a pot. as it was heating, you leaned on the counter.
“my name is ____”, you offered. his stare was intense. he wouldn’t stop looking at you-not in a way a hungry dog stares at food, but in the way a deer stares at a hunter. what kind of life must’ve he lived?
~~~
after the first night, he stayed another. then another, and another, until he seemed a permanent visitor. he hardly spoke, or moved. he stayed in the corner of your living room, looking at you with vigilant eyes. at least he could prevent another home intrusion, you thought. his meals consisted of soups, purées, and puddings. you were nervous to introduce solid foods, but you always left out some slices of bread to see if he’ll bite, both figuratively and literally. you chuckled to yourself at times, it felt as if you were feeding a newborn. you had taught him how to take a shower, something so foreign to him. you rarely inquired about his past life, and he rarely asked for anything. it seemed like the perfect exchange. you never brought people over, and he never made a mess. this cohabitation of your apartment seemed like an ideal situation for you both.
you learned that his name was james barnes, not from him, though. on the news, after shield was disbanded, the files of the winter soldier were released. you didn’t really stay up to date with what the avengers were doing, but you were wondering if this man- err, james, had anything to do with them.
sometimes, he’d mutter a sentence. about the weather, about your couch, about you. “the sky is blue”, “it’s cold out”, “your couch is warm”, “you have ____ eyes”. you’d always reply with a “yes”. it never was more than that, but the more weeks he stayed with you, the more it seemed that he was exiting his shell. you offered your guest room for him to stay in, but he never strayed from his corner. the living room was his territory, which you obliged. it was the warmest room in the harsh winter cold from outside, so you were content that he was at least in a comfortable area.
he’d never refer to you by name. occasionally, when frustrated, he’d speak in russian, but it seemed like an inner monologue than anything directed at you. you wondered if this was a permanent fixture in your life. you weren’t against it.
you’d watch movies with him. well, you’d watch movies, and he would be in the vicinity. he always observed you, which was something that freaked you out at first, but you got used to it. in your periphery, you could catch him smile. it was an odd sight, you weren’t used to his melancholy features softening.
sometimes, he’d disappear- often at night. he would be gone for days at a time, and even a whole week once. he’d return with new bruises, new cuts, new bloodied items of clothing. you never scolded him, for fear of him running away and getting into more harm, but you did ask him to not bring trouble under your roof. he nodded. he never let you touch his metal arm, which was okay by you.
you will know that i am gone…
one night, after disappearing for what seemed to be the millionth time, he came back bloodier than ever before. you gasped.
“james, is that yours?” he didn’t answer. the typical cycle began. he sat down, took his shirt off, and awaited your hands on him. his shirt was dripping drops of blood onto your floor. you sighed.
“james.”
“please.” he answered.
“james, you can’t keep doing this. what if i’m not able to clean you up anymore? what then?”
“_____”. he spoke your name, something he never did. he reached for your hand with his right one, which prompted you to suck in a breath. gently, he got a better hold of your wrist, and moved your hand over his fresh injury. he tilted his head, locking eyes with you. despite living with him for several months, you could never get used to his stormy eyes.
“i’m hurt.” he plead, with a voice that was so quiet you almost had to lean in to hear him. “help me.” you were used to his short sentences, but these seemed more vulnerable than the rest. “they’re looking for me.” he added.
“who?” you asked, in a quiet tone. your heart was racing with the closeness to him.
“i don’t know his name.”
“s…steve?” you remembered on the news, a tall, strong, blond man giving a speech about…something. the title “winter soldier” was repeated fairly often, but you had turned off the tv before james could see.
“s-teve.” he mirrored, sounding out the name. his eyebrows furrowed for a second. “steve.” he repeated.
“steve is looking for me.” he spoke with uncertainty.
“do you want him to find you?” you asked, giving in and letting this conversation occur. you noted that he was still grabbing onto your wrist. this was the most he had ever let you touch him, and you didn’t want it to end. however, you freed yourself from his grasp- which elicited a small frown on his face, a face you didn’t see- and started to clean his injuries up. you had left the first aid kit in the kitchen due to how frequent these nights occurred, so it didn’t take you long to grab the things you needed for this routined interaction.
“i don’t know.” he responded. “i want to be left alone. i don’t want trouble.”
“trouble always finds you.” you teased slightly, while soaking the cotton in rubbing alcohol. “this might sting.” you spoke your memorized line.
“it won’t.” he repeated his memorized line.
“i know.” you smiled slightly. you knew it would, and that he was lying, but he was good at putting up a front.
“i’m not…trouble.” he started. “i just…”
“have bad luck?” you offered. he huffed a humorless laugh. you picked up your needle and thread. you scanned his forearm, and started to work. your suture work had gotten incredibly better from when you started.
“you’ll get harmed if i stay here.” he spoke with certainty.
“i don’t see anywhere else you can stay.”
“you don’t want trouble.”
“i don’t want you to be harmed.” you finished stitching up his gash on his forearm, and set your tools down. you were now face to face with him; in equal standing. “who is going to take care of you?”
“i don’t need a caretaker.” he replied, a little bluntly. you tried to hide the hurt in your face.
“you don’t need one.” you repeated, “but i’m here. let me stay. you should…stay.” your face flushed, and your heartbeat raced a bit. how odd, why did you feel this way? you cleared your throat. “stay.”
“i can’t. you know i can’t.” his eyebrows furrowed once more, and he broke eye contact with you. it was his turn to clear his throat. “steve…might know who i am, who i was.”
“you can’t go to him. they’ll hurt you.”
“i don’t know.” it was a hefty risk. you weren’t sure what his angle was, and you were sure that he didn’t either. did he want to get caught by them? did he want to meet steve alone? either way, you knew his days in your care were numbered. you knew eventually he would leave, but you didn’t think it would happen so soon. you’d imagined some grandiose goodbye, or a silent exit. you weren’t sure what you imagined, but it was certainly different from this. was there a small pit of disappointment in your stomach? you weren’t sure, you just knew that you had to have him stay.
“james…” you began.
“bucky.” he interrupted.
“bucky?”
“that’s what he called me.”
“he?”
“steve. that’s what he called me. i think that’s my name.” he looked distant, staring off into the ground. he had flashes of forgetting who he was, who you were, who steve was; but he seemed so sure this time.
“do you want me to call you that?”
“try it.”
“bucky.” you said quietly, reaching over for his hand. he flinched slightly, but didn’t move away.
“again.” he closed his eyes. his chest felt heavy. some bits and pieces of old memories started appearing in his brain, but they all seemed unfamiliar; as if you were showing an incomplete roll of film at the cinema.
“bucky.” your thumb ran through his knuckles, scattered with old bruises and scars.
“again.” his breath was shaky, his lip trembled slightly. there was a lump in his throat, and he felt anxious. he always knew that “james” didn’t feel right, and he was a bit nervous that “bucky” wouldn’t either. how would he exist without a name that was his?
“bucky.” you smiled a bit, wondering if this brought him some semblance of closure. he didn’t ask for you to say it again, but he did open his eyes. though a little watery, his piercing gaze still gave you goosebumps.
“is that your name?”
“i have to go.” he whispered, almost confirming your question.
“where will you go, bucky?” he opened his mouth, then closed it. promptly, he opened it again.
“i’ll find out.” he stood up. after a brief moment of packing (not much was needed to be packed), he was ready for his departure. you had written down your phone number (both your cell and the phone line of your ancient apartment), not knowing if he would call. you were sure he wouldn’t. after packing three days worth of of food, and prepping his backpack full of toiletries, you had nothing left to stall him with. he sensed that you were buying time to say goodbye, so he made sure to take as much time as possible when doing anything. eventually, you both realized that this was it.
“i don’t…know what to say.” you began, with a slight chuckle.
“me neither.” he replied, with the hint of a small smile.
“goodbye, bucky.” you extended your hand out. you knew that you were both past formalities, but you weren’t sure if you could hug him; if he’d let you, if you’d let yourself, if he’d want to. you wanted to. you weren’t sure why, it’s not like you knew him all that much. he carefully extended his hand as well, embracing yours. it wasn’t until you felt the cold metal that you realized you were shaking his left hand.
“i’m sorry, i didn’t realize-“
“goodbye, ______”. he offered a small…almost smile- at least you thought it was a smile- and squeezed your hand with his.
you can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles…
a couple years had passed before you thought of him again. of course, you felt the emptiness in your apartment, but there was no use in mulling over the past. it felt strange to move the first aid kit back to the bathroom. it felt strange to not be greeted by a quiet figure in your living room. it felt strange to not eat soup all the time. it felt strange to not have him in your presence, constantly there, rarely speaking, rarely moving, but always observing.
you pushed these thoughts to the back of your mind.
you decided to get a pet. something with the same temperament as him.
you decided to get a cat.
it wasn’t difficult to find a cat like him. there was an old siamese at the shelter with the bluest eyes you’d ever seen, second only to… you decided to get him. it was good to have some company around the home.
~~~
sometimes, an unknown number would ring your cell. you’d always pick up, hoping that it was him. you weren’t sure what you would say if it was him. “hey, i missed you! by the way, we are still total strangers”. you were sure that when the moment came, however, you would find the words.
one night, when watching some old cartoon, the phone rang.
your apartment building was old enough to have a phone line, which you rarely shared the number to, so when it rang, you knew it was him.
it felt cruel, knowing that the universe could tease you with something so simple as a phone call.
you’d pick up, almost always after the first ring.
“hello?” you’d ask. you’d never get a reply, just the rhythmic breathing of the other person on the line. you’d wait a minute or two before inquiring, “bucky?” every single time you said his name, he’d hang up, which confirmed your thoughts that it was him.
Hello, @blythesarchives / @mournthebird deactivated, and I lost my marbles trying to look for the fic called Apricot Toast. So, I compiled the stuff I could find in case anyone else has been missing these.
Summary: You’re bleeding out alone in the snow and your brain does the only mercy it has left: runs every version of Bucky Barnes you’ve ever known in hopes that the real one makes it in time.
Author’s Note: hi friends <3 i fell down that whole “pov: you’re dying in the snow” rabbit hole that was floating around online a while back and my brain said oh bet?? cue me listening to no surprises by radiohead on repeat and accidentally writing this beast. lmao i’m so sorry and also absolutely not sorry. this is also not proofread :'(
Snow had a way of erasing the world. It fell between breath and bone, layered over footprints, swallowed distance until the tree line blurred and the hills became one pale unbroken thought.
You watched it drift through the crosshairs of your vision, lashes spidered with frost, every flake a soft impact on the heat that poured from your side. The sky had been iron when you went in and now it was the purest white, a ceiling with no seam.
Your radio had died somewhere between the second perimeter and the drop to your back. You knew because the last thing you heard was static chewing through Bucky’s voice, a cut-off syllable that might have been your name.
Your hand pressed into the wound on your side. It gaped with a slow-warm intelligence, a second mouth opening and closing around your palm. Your breath steamed in uneven ropes as you struggled to blink.
In an unsettlingly clean way, you understood that if you closed your eyes you would not open them again, so you fixed them on the sky and let the snow find you, let it rest on your cheekbones where your skin still knew how to be skin.
The treetops were black wires against the white sky. A rook cawed once and then the forest went back to listening. You had always thought the snow would be silent if it came to this, a pillowed quiet, a gentle drift into nothing, but it was not.
It crackled where it landed on your jacket, hissed where it touched blood. You could hear the far low groan of ice shifting in the ravine. Your breath whistled at the edges, a thin reed instrument you could not quite control. Somewhere to your right, your rifle lay half-submerged like a sleeping animal. The scope glass had frosted over. The magazine was still heavy. Useless now.
You tried the comm again because that is what you would do. Thumb found the push-to-talk and held it, out of habit if not hope. The headset answered with the same blunt silence, the same small stutter of static that might have been wind crawling along the antenna.
You pictured the little red light on your vest, the one that had stopped blinking. You pictured the map in your head, the way Bucky had tracked it with a gloved finger over the hood of the truck, the way he had tapped the switchback that led to the outbuilding and said he would keep to your flank.
He always did that. Quiet promises. No showy heroics. Just the fact of him at your side when things went bad.
It had gone bad at the bend, where the cut barrels ringed the slope, where the snow hid the old razor wire and the men inside the outbuilding were faster than they looked. You heard the shots the way you might hear bees. You had not felt the first hit at all, only a sudden looseness in your knees, the ground reaching up, the smack of your shoulder on ice that felt like a door closing.
The second hit had been a flower opening under your ribs. There was maybe a third, but you couldn't remember. After that there had been movement and then there had not. Someone had shouted. You had returned fire and the fire had not mattered because the world had already tilted toward this.
He would be coming.
You believed that because it was true every other time.
Bucky Barnes did not leave people behind. He did not leave you behind.
He could move through a fight like a shadow that knew exactly what needed to be done. He could put his body where the bullets wanted to be. He had a way of speaking into your comm when you were about to do something reckless, a low note that slid under panic and clicked into place.
You could hear it then like you always did, the memory of his tone more than the words. Steady. Breathe. Two more steps. On your six. He never told you to be careful. He never told you to wait. He met you where you were and made all of this survivable.
The cold creeped into the wound on your side like unwelcome fingers. You felt it as a clarity first, as a kind of antiseptic truth. Then you stopped feeling the edges of it at all. Your fingers had gone rigid where they cupped your side.
You meant to dig in harder and there was no difference. You meant to curl your knees and they were heavy stone ovals under the snow. You had a thought about how you might look from above, the black of your suit like spilled ink, the red staining out around you like a map you had not intended to draw.
You did not like that thought, so you watched the snow again and let it occupy you.
Footfalls would sound, you told yourself once more.
He made no noise when he wanted to, but for you he would call out first. Bucky had learned that after the first time a year back in Russian tunnels when you put a round into the wall an inch from his head.
He had laughed later, head tipped back, teeth bright and quick in the dim light, but his voice had gentled when he came up on you after that. He would say your call sign before he said anything else. He would say it like a question with an answer built in.
You heard it now the way you wanted to hear it. The syllables hit the frozen minutes and shattered, nonexistent.
You couldn’t turn your head, so you turned your eyes. The world rimmed in salt-white. The wind barely moved and yet every flake fell as if purposeful, one after another. You counted them as if counting could keep you awake. You ran out of numbers and began again, and the counting became a hum that anchored you to the moment of your breath and the moment after that.
Your tongue had the taste of iron. Your throat felt lined with glass. You swallowed and the glass complained. You tried to cough and even that was too much. The cough lived inside your chest without moving the air.
On the edge of hearing, like a trick the brain plays when it catalogs what it misses, a radio chirped. You froze inside the body that could not move. The chirp became a crackle. The crackle opened like a curtain to a voice that was there and not there, a sound shaped like him.
You did not know if it was memory or mercy. You knew what he would say if it was real. You waited for the habit of him to arrive.
You had met Bucky Barnes in winter, which felt like a private joke you had never admitted out loud. He was winter the way a river is winter. Cold only to the touch. Underneath, the force of him moved dark and certain.
He wore layers like armor and then shed them like a man shrugging out of a story he did not want anymore. He stood with his weight balanced as if ready to break into motion with a breath and he could be still for longer than anyone else.
The first time he had handed you a thermos after a long, dead stakeout, his mouth had moved around the shape of a smile that pretended it was not one. That motion lived in your head even now, precise as a photograph. You let it play behind your eyes to distract yourself from the creeping quiet at your extremities.
Another minute slid past with the round edges that minutes have when they are running out. The treetops shifted. Somewhere distant, an engine coughed and went silent. You could not tell if that was the truck or a memory of a truck you had slept in once, shoulder to shoulder in the back while frost filmed the windows and the only warmth was breath and shared curses.
Bucky had said you snored. You had said he slept with his eyes open sometimes and it creeped you out. You had wanted to touch his knuckles where his flesh hand rested on his thigh. You had not. You were very responsible about some things.
Now you wanted a miracle and all you had was snow.
You wanted a hand to move the hair out of your face because it had stuck there, stiff with melted snow and blood, because it tickled in the way you could not reach. You wanted Bucky to cut through the tree line with that clean, predatory economy of his, to drop to his knees beside you and say your name like you had not wrecked him for weeks with an almost-confession you did not know you had made.
You wanted his breath in your ear as he told you to hold on, and you wanted to because he would say it.
But you did not have that.
You had the memory of his palm spanning your shoulder when he pushed you down behind a barrier two missions ago. You had the sound of his boots on concrete, always closer than you expected. You had the little ordinary things he did that felt like a prayer. He fixed the strap on your holster without comment. He handed you his spare knife when yours went skidding. He stood in the door while you fell asleep and then left to watch the hallway whenever the two of you were stuck in a safehouse.
He never made it feel like a favor. It was just that he was there.
You thought about how he would be angry at himself for not being faster, how he would scuff the snow with the heel of his boot while he gathered you up, how he would look at your face first and then at his hands to check for what he had missed.
He would allow himself that one loss of composure, that tiny tic of self-cruelty, and then force it down because there was work to do. He did not yell when it mattered. He moved. He made use of whatever he had.
He had you. And that had always surprised you more than it should have.
You let your eyes slide to the right as far as they would, just enough to catch the slope where the path cut through. You imagined the curve of his body as he dropped into a run. You imagined the precision of the vibranium arm, the way the plates caught light and gave it back in sharp pieces.
You had once watched him at a bench under a bad flickering bulb, oiling the joints with the concentration of a man tending a garden. You had wanted to ask what it felt like. He had looked up at you as if he had heard the question anyway. He had said it felt like a hand. He had said it felt like the rest of him. You believed him.
Snow settled in the hollow of your throat. It itched like a memory you could not place. You wanted to laugh because it was so stupid, to be bothered by that while the center of you opened into the cold.
Your breath clouded and thinned. You tried to flex your fingers and the signal did not travel. You tried to say his name and the sound stuck to your teeth. The wind shifted and brought you the faintest scent of gunpowder and sap. The outbuilding door slammed somewhere behind the drift and the sound was very small from here, like a door closing in another house in another life.
You knew you should keep fighting. You knew the list of things to do, the order in which to do them. You had given that brief yourself like a bedtime story before ops. Breathe. Pressure. Elevation. Communicate. Stay awake. Count. Catalog your surroundings. Find a landmark and fix on it. Feed yourself tasks so the panic has no room to move in.
You had been good at it because you were stubborn and because you wanted to keep coming back to the people who made the fight make sense. You wanted to keep coming back to him and the unspoken thing that sat between you like a live wire taped neat and tucked out of sight.
He had said your coat looked ridiculous that morning. He had said it in a way that meant he liked it. You had rolled your eyes and said his needed patching and he had allowed the insult because you were the one who did the patching. He had watched your hands move the needle through the fabric with a stillness that felt like being seen.
If you closed your eyes now you could see that exact thread shining between your fingers. If you closed your eyes now…
No. Your eyes stayed open. They burned. They watered. The world doubled at the edges and then sharpened again like a lens trying to find you. You focused on the nearest branch where a clot of snow thickened and slid in slow motion, fell without a sound, punctured the layer beside your ear. You tried again to drag breath past the weight in your chest and the breath went in like a reluctant guest.
When he looked at your headset later he would press it to his ear as if that could pull your voice back through. You saw that so clearly it might as well have been happening beside you. He would check the wiring, not because he did not know but because his hands needed a job.
He would track the blood you had left against the white and it would lead him here. He would call for you then, low and sure like he could will it into an answer. He would kneel and the snow would creak and the world would tilt back toward the side where you lived.
You wanted that. You had never wanted anything the way you wanted that.
The wind picked up. A veil of snow dusted across your face and your eyes blinked clean on reflex. It was getting darker in a way that had nothing to do with time. The clouds had thickened into a single sheet and the line of the hill melted into it.
You thought for a split second that you heard his boots. You thought for another that you saw a shadow detach from the trees and start down the path. You held yourself ready for the relief that would follow, for the way your body would answer that presence by remembering itself.
It was only the wind playing with the shape of the trees. It was only the little mean tricks the cold does as it settles into you.
You told yourself a story anyway, because that had always been how you kept the worst edges from cutting too clean. You told yourself he was close enough to hear your heartbeat. You told yourself he was swearing in that quiet way of his, the syllables clipped, the heat under them banked.
You told yourself he had the med kit out and the tourniquet ready. You told yourself his breath clouded the air above you and you turned your face into it because it was warm. You told yourself you would give him hell for taking so long and he would give it back, eyes crinkled at the corners, mouth a line he could not stop from lifting.
Your story could not move your blood. It could not knit flesh. It could only hold you in place while the world kept snowing.
Pain flared once, brilliant as a flare against fog, and then folded into itself and left a ringing quiet. You breathed into that quiet and felt something in you unspool, a slow ribbon, warm where it left.
If he had been here, you would have leaned into his chest while he got the bleeding under control. You would have let the lines of him hold the lines of you together. You would have listened to the steady drum of his heart like a metronome you could set yourself to. He would have said your name then. Not your call sign. Your name. He would have said it like a fact, like an anchor thrown into deep water that hits bottom and holds.
You thought you saw a figure again and you let yourself believe it this time without interrogating it. The snow had a way of making lies tender. You watched the shape come closer in the long patience of someone who had run out of choices and found, to your small surprise, that there was no fear in you at all. Just the strange, clean relief of not needing to move.
If it was him, he would kneel. If it was not, you would not have to know.
If he was coming.
You took another breath because breath was a thing you could still do. The snow touched your lips like hands would. Your vision narrowed its aperture. For a heartbeat the world clicked into focus with such precision it hurt. Every needle on the firs was an individual thing. Every flake was a star with a private trajectory. Every memory of how he looked at you slotted into place behind your eyes like rounds into a magazine.
You felt the heat of your blood where it pooled under your palm. You felt the stiffness of the fabric where it froze at the edges. You felt the small ceiling of sky press down and you pressed back by staying.
The figure did not resolve. The comm did not spark to life. The snow kept falling because that is what it does. You tasted iron. Your tongue was heavy. Your throat had learned silence and did not want to unlearn it.
You thought of the way he held the world together when he could. You thought of how he would hate this. You thought of his hands, one flesh, one forged, both equally careful when they touched what mattered.
You let those thoughts sit with you in the snow like companions. You let them be enough to keep your eyes open one minute more. Then another. You let them be the warmth you did not have, the promise the moment did not offer, the echo of a voice that had so often been the last thing between you and the dark.
Hold on, you heard, whether from memory or mercy you did not know. Hold on.
You did, the way you always had, with your teeth even when your hands had nothing left in them, with your attention fixed like a blade on the next small thing you could ask your body to do.
Breathe. Watch the snow. Wait for the sound of him. Refuse the easy closing.
The snow on your lashes blinked, and when your eyes opened, it was dust floating in the gym's fluorescent light.
You were still on your back, but the sky had become a ceiling, low and stained and hummed through with old wiring. The cold pressing into your spine softened into the thin ache of concrete that had stored years of footsteps. Your breath no longer streamed white; it fogged in front of your face in little bursts that smelled like recycled air and metal.
Somewhere nearby, a door slammed, the sound familiar in a way the crack of gunfire had never been.
You knew this room. You knew this version of the world like the inside of your own mouth. The compound. Early days. Before anyone trusted you with anything that mattered; before you believed them when they did.
You watched the dust drift between you and the light overhead and realized you were not lying on snow anymore but on the mat inside the gym, chest heaving, lungs burning from the last set.
"You good?"
Bucky’s voice came from just beyond your line of sight, lazy as if he already knew the answer and didn't trust it.
You turned your head and there he was, sitting with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, forearms resting across them. Hair damp at the temples, a darker ring on the collar of his shirt where sweat had soaked through. Dog tags winked once when he shifted, catching the light like a tiny, private snowfall.
"Pretty sure I'm dying," you had rasped, and the way your voice sounded then layered perfectly over the way it sounded now, raw and edged with something you hadn't named yet.
He huffed, that almost-laugh he did when something amused him but he refused to give it the satisfaction of a real reaction. The corner of his mouth tilted. His eyes dragged over you, fast and brief, like a scan for damage first and always.
"If you were dying, you wouldn't be whining about it," he said. "You'd be quiet. Terrifies me, remember?"
You remembered. You remembered the way he'd said it once after a mission, when you came back bleeding and making jokes, and his shoulders dropped like someone had cut a wire. Quiet, for him, meant missing. Meant gone. Meant tombstones with names that never should have had dates carved underneath.
He preferred noise. Preferred the way you swore when you took a hit, the way you grumbled when he pushed you too hard, the way you argued about tactics with hands moving in sharp little arcs.
You hadn't understood how much that meant, back then. You only knew the look in his eyes now, in this hallway, as he watched you fight for breath after another training session you insisted on taking too far. The look that said he was cataloging you into the part of his brain where things he couldn't lose got stored.
"You should've let me stop two rounds ago," you said, still trying to drag air into lungs that didn't want to expand.
"You said don't go easy on you," he reminded you, shrugging one shoulder. "You wanna take it back, now's the time."
"Not in front of a witness." You gestured weakly at the doorway to the gym, where the heavy bag still swung on its chain. "Gotta maintain my image."
He snorted, finally, a real sound. It scraped warm along your spine, an internal reflex you didn't have a name for yet. His metal hand flexed once against his knee, the plates catching the light in that soft ripple that fascinated you no matter how many times you saw it.
"Your image," he said slowly, "is the person that doesn't back down when a guy like me tells them to call it for the day."
Guy like me. You heard it the way he meant it, heavy with every history he still wore like old scars under his shirt, the ones no serum could smooth out. You pushed yourself up on your elbows, hands shaking, and looked at him full-on, your vision still rimmed in spots.
"A guy like you is the reason I'm not dead already," you said. "So if I wanna keep up, I can't tap out every time my muscles cry about it."
He watched you while you said it. Didn't look away. That was new; for months he had skated around full eye contact like it would reveal something he hadn't agreed to show. Now his gaze stayed on you, steady, thoughtful.
The blue of his eyes was darker here than it looked under the harsh lights of the briefing rooms. Closer, you could see every line at their corners, the little tightness that settled in when he was thinking too much.
"You keep talking about being dead," he said quietly. "Kinda makes me wanna wrap you in bubble wrap and lock you in a closet."
"Kinky," you had shot back, on instinct more than intention.
Silence, then, followed by a slow blink and a breath that might have been a laugh if he'd let it. He shook his head at you, hair falling into his eyes for half a heartbeat before he smoothed it back with his flesh hand.
"You're impossible," he said. "Get up. Hydrate. Before I end up explaining to Steve why you passed out in the hallway."
You remembered the way his hand had hovered for a moment before it caught your forearm to help you to your feet. The warm hand first, a firm grip, fingers bracketing bone. The metal one resting loose on his knee, deliberately not touching. As if he had made some kind of private rule about where each belonged when it came to you.
You let him haul you up, your legs wobbling, shoulder bumping his chest when you overshot your center of gravity. For one heartbeat you were pressed up nearly against him, every breath you took syncing with his, your cheek inches from his sternum. You remembered the way his heart had felt like a steady drum against your skin, even through layers.
He smelled like soap that had nothing to do with who he was and everything to do with who he was trying to be now. Coffee and gun oil ghosted under it. Something citrus, faint.
"Careful," he had murmured, reflexive, hand tightening on your arm.
"That's your job," you'd said, and then the hallway, the gym, the dust all shifted as if the whole compound inhaled and exhaled at once.
The air changed temperature. The fluorescent buzz smoothed itself into the softer hum of an old refrigerator. The light over your head yellowed, warm and uneven. Your back didn't ache from concrete anymore but from the unforgiving springs of a cheap mattress. The smell of metal and sweat thinned into the smell of rain hitting pavement outside a cracked window, exhaust and wet asphalt and cheap takeout.
You blinked, and you were on your side in a safe house bed, blanket tangled around your legs, shirt twisted, heart doing something reckless in your chest. The room was small, all peeling paint and mismatched furniture, but it felt too big with just the two of you in it.
The storm outside smeared shadows across the ceiling. A leak tapped somewhere in the corner. The warmth in the air was borrowed from an ancient space heater rattling in the corner.
Bucky was sitting on the edge of the bed, back to you. His metal arm reflected faintly in the gloom, the delicate seams between plates tracing their own geometry. He was rolling his neck like it hurt, head tipped back just enough to show the strong line of his throat.
You shouldn't have been awake. You should have been sleeping off the mission, letting the adrenaline seep out of your muscles. But he had been too quiet when you came in, too neat with his movements, and your body had learned to wake up when quiet wrapped itself this tight around him.
"You're thinking loud," you said, voice soft in the thick, late hour. The words arrived in this room and in the snow at the same time, as if they had never left your tongue.
He half-turned, enough for you to see the line of his jaw, the way his mouth pulled when he tried to decide whether to deny it. He didn't. He just shrugged one shoulder, the muscles there jumping, the metal arm resting on his thigh like an animal at ease.
"Can't sleep," he said simply.
"Nightmare?"
You watched the way his hand—flesh this time—tightened on his knee. The flicker at the corner of his eye. He didn't answer and that was answer enough. Your chest ached in that familiar way it did when you thought about all the nights he had lived through that had no decent ending.
"C'mere," you said, like you were offering him a glass of water instead of the mess of your own heart.
He hesitated exactly long enough for you to know this wasn't simple. And you knew it wasn’t.
Finally, he shifted, the mattress dipping under his weight as he turned toward you. The room was too small to pretend this was casual; when he lay down on top of the blanket, it was with a care that bordered on reverent.
He shoved his boots off, like he was taking at least one step toward comfort but refusing the rest. The metal arm stayed angled away from you at first, braced against the headboard, like a part of him was holding himself up off you even while the rest sank down.
You rolled onto your back to make room. The old bed squeaked. Your shoulder brushed his. The contact felt like it should have set off alarms. You stared up at the cracked plaster above you, tracing the faint water stains with your eyes.
"You know," you said, after the silence nested too comfortably in the room, "you are allowed to sleep. The world keeps spinning without you supervising it."
"Does it?" His voice was quieter here than it was on the field, as if the walls might tell on him. "Pretty sure every time I let my guard down, something goes sideways."
"The heater's the only thing going sideways tonight," you replied. "And if it explodes, at least we'll go in our sleep. Real mercy kill."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a frustrated exhale; with him, they were almost the same. You could feel the vibration of it through the mattress, through the few inches between you.
His gaze flicked over to you in the dark, catching just enough of your features to make them real: the curve of your cheek, the line of your mouth, the way you stared stubbornly at the ceiling as if refusing to look at him too much might save you from something.
"You got a real cheerful streak, you know that?" he murmured.
"I work with what I have." You let your hand rest near his on the blanket, not touching but close enough that the heat of him gathered in your palm. "You wanna talk about it?"
The storm outside filled the pause. Rain hit the window like thrown gravel. Somewhere far off, a car rolled through water, the sound dopplering away. He breathed in, slow and precise, like a man approaching a minefield.
"Same old," he said. "Faces I don't remember. Things I did. Things I didn't do."
"And me?" you asked, before you could tell your tongue to mind its business. "Do I show up in there yet?"
You had meant it as a joke. Light, deflecting. You had not expected the way it landed between you with weight.
His head turned, full-on now, eyes finding yours in the half-light. There was something like surprise in them and something like resignation, like he'd been waiting for you to ask and had hoped you wouldn't.
"No," he said simply. Then, after a beat, "You show up after."
"After?"
"Yeah." He let his gaze drop to the line of your shoulder, your throat, the rise and fall of your chest. "After I wake up. After I remember where I am. You're there. You sound annoyed. Tellin' me I'm hogging the covers or snoring or…something." He swallowed. "It's not like the dreams. It's quieter. Easier to breathe."
You could have said a dozen things. Any of them might have broken the fragile, careful balance of the moment. So you picked the least dangerous one and hoped it was enough.
"For the record," you said, voice softer than you meant it to be, "you absolutely snore."
"I'm a professional," you replied. "I observe. I report. I'm very thorough."
His fingers moved then, just a fraction. The metal ones, where his arm had been anchored to the headboard. They flexed like they wanted to close around something. Maybe around your hand. Maybe around his own throat.
You shifted your hand the smallest distance, letting the back of your fingers brush the cool plates where his wrist rested near your head. The contact was brief, accidental on the surface. It lit up a whole system in you that had nothing to do with nerves or blood and everything to do with the careful way he drew in his next breath.
"Gonna put that in the report too?" he asked, but his voice had gone lower, roughened at the edges.
"Only the important parts," you said. "Bucky Barnes: snores, hogs blankets, represses emotions, has decent hair."
He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling now, real and reluctant. He let the metal hand turn under yours so your fingers could rest in the thinner seam between plates, the place where warmth leaked through from the machinery underneath. You felt that warmth travel up your arm, lodging somewhere inconvenient behind your ribs.
"Decent?" he repeated. "That's the best you got?"
"Don't push your luck," you murmured.
The room held onto that, tucking it into its corners, into the creak of the bed, into the whisper of rain on glass. You had laid there, side by side, not touching more than that point of contact, and felt the entire axis of your life tilt by degrees you couldn't measure.
Outside, someone in the world was dying, someone was being born, someone was making coffee, someone was stealing a car. Inside that little room, the biggest thing happening was two people lying very still, pretending breathing wasn't a confession.
The bed beneath you now, in the snow that had become the gym that had become this safe house, gave one long, low groan, and you blinked again.
The warmth of his arm under your fingers cooled, the hum of the heater faded into the distant, steady roar of engines. The rain against the window turned into the shudder of metal walls under heavy wind. The mattress pitched, and you were strapped into a seat instead, shoulder harness biting into your chest. The air tasted like high altitude, thin and filtered, tinged with jet fuel and sweat and something like anticipation.
You looked up at the interior of the quinjet around you, all matte black surfaces and exposed wiring, the faint blue glow of instruments painting everyone in cold light. Across the aisle, Bucky sat with his forearms braced on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor between his boots. Gloves on this time. Strap secured. Weapon at his feet. The set of his shoulders said he was thinking too much. Again.
"You look like you're about to bolt," you said over the engine noise, because you had never really learned how to leave him alone when he folded into himself like that.
He lifted his head, eyes dragging up to meet yours, and the motion happened here in the jet and out there in the snow where you imagined it, where you waited. The duality of it made your lungs stutter. He frowned at you, familiar and fond.
"Remind me which one of us jumped out of a plane without a parachute once?" he called back, mouth quirking.
"Peer pressure," you shouted. "Terrible influence in my life."
"You volunteered," he said. "I remember."
"You asked," you shot back. "There's a difference."
He gave you that look then, the one he reserved specifically for you, where exasperation and something softer wrestled to a draw. His gaze flicked over you quickly, checking gear, checking weapons, checking the line of your mouth like it could tell him if you were lying about being okay.
"You don't gotta prove anything," he said, the words bending around the roar of the engines but still reaching you clearly. "Not to me."
"Maybe I'm not doing it for you," you said, but it came out gentler than you intended. "Maybe I like jumping out of planes."
"You're a menace," he muttered, but there was a hint of pride threaded through it. "You stick to the plan this time, yeah?"
"I always stick to the plan."
He arched a brow.
"Most of the plan," you corrected. "Some of the plan."
His eyes closed briefly, like he was making a wish he didn't believe in. When he opened them again, they were steady, all business, that sharp, clear soldier-killer-operative gaze that saw everything and revealed nothing. Except—when it landed on you, there was that fraction of a degree softer, that fractional tilt of world where you fit.
"Just…" he said, pausing, the word hanging between you. His hand lifted, then dropped, as if he'd thought about reaching for you and changed his mind at the last second. "Come back."
It wasn't an order. It wasn't even a request. It was more like a fact he was trying to negotiate with the universe directly. You felt something in your chest catch on it, like cloth snagged on a nail.
Before the feeling could settle, he added, "I am not writing a report on this mission if you die halfway through. That's paperwork I don't need."
"You too, Barnes," you replied, trying to keep it light.
He shook his head, lips twitching. Then, quietly, not quite over the noise but close enough that your brain filled in the missing pieces, he added, "Not planning on going anywhere."
The jet bucked slightly, turbulence or a shift in altitude. You remembered the lurch in your stomach, the way your fingers curled around the strap of your harness. You remembered thinking, let him be right. Let him be right this time.
The engines roared louder. The jet blurred. The straps bit a little deeper into your shoulder, then loosened like someone had cut them. The black interior faded to gray, then to white. The air thinned and sharpened. The metal floor under your boots dissolved into snow again.
You blinked back into your own body, the one lying on the slope, blood soaking into cold earth. The flash of his face in the quinjet flickered like a film frame over the blank sky. For a second you saw both at once: him across from you under humming lights, and the emptiness above you now where his silhouette should be.
The snow brushed your cheek. Your breath hitched, shallow, then steadied again in its fragile rhythm. Your mind, stubborn thing, refused to stay in the present for long. It reached for him again and found him somewhere else, somewhere softer.
The compound kitchen this time. Late enough that the overheads were dimmed. The fridge hummed louder than seemed reasonable. The world had shrunk down to the island countertop, the half-empty mug in front of you, and the way he leaned against the opposite edge like he owned the space without meaning to.
He wore a t-shirt that had seen better days, a line of text you couldn't quite make out in the low light, and sweatpants that told you he'd likely been asleep before a nightmare yanked him out of it. His hair was a riot, sticking out in directions that made him look younger, almost, if you ignored the tired etched into the corners of his mouth.
You had been raiding the cabinets for something with sugar in it, bare feet cold on the tile. The mission was over, debriefs done. Your formal mask was off. You were holding a spoon in one hand and a jar of Nutella in the other like they were standard-issue equipment.
"You know they make actual food here," he'd said from the doorway, surprising you but not really. He had a way of appearing wherever you were like the universe had assigned him the job of shadowing you.
"This is actual food," you answered, dipping the spoon. "It's got nuts. And…ella."
"That's not how that works." He pushed off the doorframe and came closer, eyes narrowing at your haul. "You plan on sleeping ever again, or you just gonna ride that sugar high 'til you pass out?"
"Bold of you to assume I sleep now," you said. "Besides, you drink coffee like it's a religion. At least my terrible coping mechanism tastes like chocolate."
He made a face like he wanted to argue and couldn't quite find a foothold. After a second, he extended a hand, palm up, expectant.
"What?" you asked.
"Gimme the spoon," he said.
"Get your own."
"I'm not stickin' my fingers in there like an animal," he replied. "Now share before I tell Sam you got caught double-dipping in the communal snacks."
"Coward," you muttered, but you handed over the spoon anyway, heart doing that stupid flip it did when he took something from you like it was the most natural action in the world. His fingers brushed yours in the exchange, warm and callused. He didn't seem to notice. You absolutely did.
He took a scoop and made a face like he wanted it to be terrible and it foolishly, traitorously, wasn't. The spoon clicked against his teeth. He handed it back with a little nod.
"Okay," he admitted. "Could be worse."
"High praise," you said. "I'll take that glowing review to my grave."
The word lodged in the air between you in this kitchen the way it was lodging in your throat in the snow now. Grave. You had meant it as nothing, throwaway hyperbole. A joke. As you always did. You hadn't known how literal it would feel later when cold seeped into your bones.
He set the jar down on the counter, closer to you than to himself. His metal hand rested on the edge, the fingers leaving tiny crescents in the laminate where the pressure concentrated. You watched his knuckles turn faintly white in the flesh hand.
"Don't talk like that," he said, quietly enough that the fridge almost drowned it out.
"Like what?" You took another scoop, feigning ignorance.
"Like your grave's a funny punchline all the time," he said. His eyes were on the spoon, not on your face. "Like you're not…" He exhaled, searching for the word. "Like you're not important."
Something inside you stilled. You leaned your hip against the counter, letting the spoon hover halfway to your mouth.
"Bucky," you said, because his name felt like a hand wrapped around your wrist, steadying. "I'm not—"
"I know what it looks like out there," he cut in, finally meeting your gaze. "I know how quick it can go bad. I know you think if you joke about it all the time, it won't get to you. But it gets to me."
The honesty in it landed like a blow. You swallowed, the taste of chocolate turning faintly metallic at the edges. The kitchen seemed too small to hold all the implications of that sentence.
"It gets to you," you repeated, because you needed to be sure you heard him right.
He nodded, once. Barely. "Yeah."
"Because…?" you prompted, the word gentle as you could make it.
He made a small, frustrated noise, like the problem wasn't what he felt but the fact of being asked to name it. His fingers tapped once on the counter, a little staccato rhythm. Finally, he shook his head and settled on the simplest version, the one that carried the least risk but still told the truth.
"Because I don't want anything else on my conscience," he said quickly. "And that includes you."
It wasn't the whole truth. You heard the missing pieces in the space between syllables. But it was enough to send a flush creeping up your neck, enough to make your chest feel like it had grown too small for your ribs.
"Well," you said softly, the jokes falling away one by one until only sincerity remained, raw and exposed, "for what it's worth, I don't particularly wanna end up dead either. So." You lifted the spoon in a mock toast. "I'll do my best not to traumatize you and ruin dessert for everyone."
He snorted again, but his eyes softened. You watched the tension in his jaw loosen by fractions. He reached over and, without comment, took the spoon back from you, scooping one last bit before setting it deliberately in the sink.
"Alright, that's enough," he said. "You'll be bouncing off the walls."
"Jealous?" you asked. "You could join me in the sugar high, stay up all night. We could make a whole thing of it."
He shook his head at you, fond and exasperated. "Go to bed," he said. "We move early."
"You bossing me around again?"
"Somebody has to," he replied, already turning toward the door. Then he paused, glanced back over his shoulder. "And hey," he added, tone lighter, almost tentative. "Try to get some actual sleep, okay? Just because you're up doesn't mean you gotta…think the whole time."
You stared at him, caught off guard by the care in the suggestion. "You too," you said, because it felt like something you owed him. "No brooding in the dark. Doctor's orders."
"You're not a doctor," he said, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
"Field medic," you shot back. "Close enough."
"Goodnight," he said, and it sounded heavier than the word should, like it was doing more work than just ending the conversation.
He left the kitchen smelling like sugar and something fragile. The overhead light buzzed once and then steadied. You had stood there a moment longer, hand wrapped around the jar like an anchor, feeling the shape of his concern settle over your shoulders like a jacket you weren't sure you had earned.
Now, in the snow, with your blood seeping out into the earth and your body growing too heavy to own, that jacket felt like the only thing keeping your mind from sliding off the edge. Every memory of him layered over the last—gym, safe house, quinjet, kitchen—until they formed a continuous film, running frame by frame behind your eyes.
You felt the shove of his hand between your shoulder blades when he pushed you behind cover. You heard the crack in his voice the one time he said your name like a plea instead of a warning. You saw the way his face had changed the first time you came back from a mission you were supposed to be too far away from, how shock melted into relief so intense it nearly knocked him to his knees.
All of it lived inside you now, playing on a loop as the present thinned around the edges.
You didn't want to die.
The snow kept falling. The sky kept being indifferent. But in your head, you were still in all those rooms with him, still laughing, still arguing, still pressing fingers to scars and pretending you weren't memorizing their map. You were still hearing his voice cut through static, through nightmare, through the heavy, dragging exhaustion of a life you hadn't expected to survive this long.
You realized, with a strange, quiet clarity, that if this was the last thing your brain chose to circle around—the shape of him in doorways, the weight of his gaze, the way his hand felt when he chose to touch you and when he chose not to—it wasn't the worst road to go out on.
You took another breath, thin and rattling and precious. The white above you blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again. Suddenly it was dark. You must've closed your eyes. Somewhere in the overlapping layers of your life, he was still sitting on the edge of your bed, still arguing with you in the quinjet, still stealing your spoon or mug in the kitchen. Somewhere he was still saying your name like a promise, even if he never meant you to hear what sat under it.
The corridor of memories snapped like someone cutting film.
All of it tore away in one sharp, white-hot jerk, and you were back in your body like slamming into a wall. Cold vaulted up your spine. The snow on your face was real again, not dust or rain or flickering fluorescence. Your lungs forgot how to work for a second, then clawed for air that burned going in.
Sound arrived in pieces.
First, the muffled crush of boots in snow somewhere above you. Then the ragged, too-fast drag of someone breathing hard, closer than your own, overlapping it. A voice, too low and blurred to make out at first, like the comm when it had started dying—static wrapped around syllables, desperation chopped into fragments.
Then, all at once, the volume snapped up. The world caught.
“—no, no, no—”
The words landed right above you, sharp and terrified and half-swallowed, and if you hadn’t known better you would have thought they belonged to someone else.
The weight in your side changed. Something pressed harder against the wound, firm enough to drag a rough sound out of your throat. It hurt in a way that felt almost bright, almost clarifying. Your eyes flew open on reflex.
Sky. Still white, still falling. But there was a shape cutting into it now, leaning over you, blocking some of the snowfall. A shadow with a familiar outline. Broad shoulders in dark gear, hair half-plastered to a sharp, pale face framed in the blurred halo of his breath.
Bucky.
You stared up at him through lashes crusted in frost and whatever your brain had left of coherence tried to reorder itself around the reality of him actually being here. He wasn’t a memory version this time. He wasn’t lit by kitchen fluorescents or quinjet LEDs. He was right there, real, close enough that flakes were catching in his hair and melting on his skin.
His eyes found yours like they’d been looking for that exact thing and nothing else.
“Hey,” he said, too loud, too rough, like the word scraped its way out of his chest. “Hey. Look at me. Stay with me, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. The nickname cracked something in you that pain hadn’t touched. He didn’t toss that one around easy. It slipped in the spaces when he was tired, when his guard thinned. Hearing it here, now, felt like your name and something more, stuffed into one, pressed into your ribs.
You tried to say his name and your tongue—or maybe your whole mouth, your whole fucking face—didn’t get the message. It came out in a broken exhale, more air than sound. You weren’t even sure it made it past your teeth.
His gaze dropped to your mouth for half a heartbeat like he was checking, like he was reading the shape of what you’d tried to say.
“Yeah,” he breathed, quieter, like you’d managed it anyway. “It’s me. I’m here. I got you.”
His hands moved at your side, all business, the familiar, efficient brutality of field triage. The pressure on your wound redoubled, making the edges of your vision bloom black and crowd in. You felt the firm, unyielding plates of the metal hand digging in over your own useless fingers, the warm clamp of his flesh one above it, like he was trying to compress not just skin and muscle and ruptured vessels but the entire situation down into something he could actually handle.
You made a sound. You didn’t mean to. It wasn’t a word, just a hoarse, wet choke that twisted up and out of your throat. The cold had lined you on the inside; every breath felt like you were inhaling razor wire.
“I know,” he said immediately, the words snapping down over your noise like a shield. “I know, I know. Hurts like hell. That’s good. Means you’re still with me.”
You focused on his mouth because his eyes were too much—too full, too bright, too terrified. You could see the line of concentration there, the way his lips flattened when he was doing a dozen calculations at once. Distance to extraction. Time to bleed out. Temperature. Your weight. His own stamina. Probability curves. You knew that brain. You’d watched it grind through worse.
He shifted his weight and your world rocked with him. The snow beneath you squelched, a wet sound that had nothing to do with melt. He peeled your hand away from your side—somehow, at some point, your fingers had gone numb enough that they didn’t even try to resist—and replaced it with a balled-up compress from the kit. Pressure. Constant. Unrelenting.
“Lost you on comms,” he said, hands working while his mouth did. “Went dead right as you hit the bend. Static, then nothing. You know what that does to a man with my track record?” His voice cracked once, just a fracture in the middle of a sentence that he pretended wasn’t there. “Drove me fuckin’ crazy trying to pick a signal outta snow and concrete.”
His movements were fast but controlled. Tourniquet pulled tight above the wound. Seal slapped over an entry you couldn’t see. Somewhere, he’d ripped your jacket open; you didn’t remember when. The cold had burrowed into every exposed inch of you, but where his hands were, it was just heat, just pressure, just the fierce, stubborn insistence of him refusing to let anything leak out that he hadn’t given permission to.
“Thought—” He cut himself off, jaw locking. You saw the muscle jump there, the tendons stand out. He swallowed hard and tried again. “Fuck. You weren’t where you were supposed to be. Trail was half-covered. You bled all over my damn map, sweetheart.”
There it was again. A soft name in a place it didn’t belong, said like he didn’t have time to filter anything. You latched onto it the way your body tried to latch onto oxygen.
You could hear other noises now, too. Distant, on the periphery. Voices over his shoulder—Sam, maybe, or whoever else had made it to the treeline with him. Footsteps crunching, the whine of a quinjet engine ramping up in the far-blue distance. Someone on comms yelling coordinates. But all of it sounded like it was happening underwater. He was the only thing in crisp focus.
Your lips moved again. It felt like dragging them through wet cement. You were trying for something simple. Two words. You came. It was a stupid thing to say, redundant and childish, but it was the only thought that had enough weight to make it to your mouth. You had pictured him not making it over and over in the snow. The fact of him kneeling here, cursing under his breath and leaving dents in the earth with his knees, felt like it needed acknowledging.
It came out a fragile stutter of consonants and air. “Y—you… c—”
His head dipped, forehead nearly touching yours as he leaned in, like he could catch the sound before it froze.
“What?” he said, and the word was gentler than anything had any right to be out here. “Say it again. I got you. I’m right here, I can hear you.”
You tried. You dragged breath in past the thick, heavy thing sitting on your chest and shaped it as best you could. “You… came.”
It barely existed. Not even a whisper, more like the ghost of one.
But he heard it.
Of course he did. This was the man who could pick out the click of a safety in a firefight. Who heard the difference between your footsteps and anyone else’s in the hallway. His eyes flared, a flash of something raw that made your pulse jump weakly in your throat.
“Yeah,” he said, voice going rough again in a whole new way. “Yeah, of course I came.” He let out a shaky, humorless huff. “Took you long enough to notice, layin’ here making snow angels in your own damn blood.”
You blinked up at him, slow and stupid, and for half a second his mouth actually curved. The expression was a mess: relief trying to be a joke, fear trying not to be a sob, anger at himself coated in that familiar exasperation he used to keep from unraveling.
“Had to make, you know,” you rasped, every syllable sandpaper. “Dramatic… entrance.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Almost made a dramatic exit, too. Overachiever.”
He slid his hand under your head, lifting it just enough to wedge something rolled—his jacket? your pack?—beneath it to keep you from sinking deeper into the cold. His fingers were warm against the back of your neck. Calluses pressed into skin. You felt the precise care in the way he moved you, every angle measured so he didn’t jostle the hole in your side any more than he had to.
“Stay with me, okay?” he said, and the steadiness in his tone did not match the frantic glitter in his eyes. “I know you’re tired. I know. But you don’t get to tap out on me now. We’re not done arguing about proper nutrition or whatever dumb thing you’re gonna pick next.”
You wanted to tell him you’d absolutely fight him about nutrition, about sleep, about whose turn it was to wash the damn mugs in the kitchen. You wanted to point out that if he’d wanted you to rest, maybe he shouldn’t have made breathing around his presence so difficult. Instead, all that came out was a small, wrecked noise that could have been a laugh in a better world.
“S’rry,” you breathed, though you weren’t sure what for. For bleeding on the snow. For dropping comms. For scaring him. For not being stronger. For all of it and none of it.
His face hardened, not at you but at the word.
“No,” he said, sharp and immediate. “No ‘sorry.’ You hear me?” He shook his head once, snow scattering from his hair onto your cheeks. “You got nothing to apologize for. I should’ve been closer. I should’ve—”
He cut off again, like he’d hit a wall inside his own head.
Should’ve. You knew the rest of that sentence without hearing it. Should’ve checked the bend myself. Should’ve stood in front of you instead of trusting the angle. Should’ve known the comms were about to die because everything that could go wrong tended to when he had something to lose.
You wanted to tell him to shut up. That it wasn’t his fault. That you never listened to perfect plans anyway. That if he’d been any closer, maybe the bullet would’ve gone into him instead, and that was a timeline you refused with a kind of exhausted certainty that surprised you.
Your lips tried to shape his name again, but your throat rebelled. Your lungs were working so hard on the simple inhale-exhale loop that adding consonants seemed rude.
He saw the effort and leaned in like he could carry some of it for you.
“I know,” he said, soft. “I know what you’re tryna say. Save your breath for yelling at me later, okay?”
The metal hand kept pressure on the wound with relentless, uncomplaining force. The other was everywhere at once—checking your pulse at your throat, brushing wet hair away from your face, adjusting the angle of the bandage, reaching back to gesture furiously at whoever was behind him.
“Med evac, now!” he snapped, hand coming quickly to his comms, without looking away from you. “I don’t care if you gotta land that bird on one engine, Wilson, you get it down here.”
“We're landing, as fast as we can” Sam’s voice crackled through faintly, far and tinny to your ears but apparently in his. “You just keep them breathing.”
“Working on it,” Bucky muttered, more to himself than the comm, his hand moving back to you.
You felt his thumb drag once along your jaw, an absent, grounding touch like he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. There was a smear of red across his knuckles now, not all of it yours; he moved like he’d already gone through dozens of other people to get to you.
“Eyes on me,” he said. “Don’t look at the sky. Don’t look at the snow. That’s my job. Yours is just…” He hesitated, searching. “…just stay here.”
“I… am… here,” you mumbled, every word a separate, clumsy attempt. The syllables frayed at the edges, but you got them out.
“That’s right,” he said quickly, like he was rewarding a kid for doing something hard. “That’s it. That’s my girl.”
The phrase detonated quietly between you. He seemed to hear it a second after he said it, because his mouth pressed into a thin line—and for half a breath his eyes flicked away, like he needed to look at anything else.
My girl. You would have replayed it a thousand times in your head if you’d had the spare oxygen. As it was, all you could do was let the resonance of it hum through the spaces pain hadn’t filled yet.
You swallowed, the action slow and foreign. It felt like the first time you’d tried to use your voice after a bad smoke inhalation mission—everything scraped, everything resisted. “Thought…” you managed, vowels dragging. “You… didn’t… like… paperwork.”
He blinked, thrown. “What?”
“Reports,” you slurred, vaguely proud of yourself for getting the word mostly intact. “If I… didn’t… come back… you’d… have… to…”
“You are not, not dying because I hate forms,” he said, incredulous, and for the first time since he’d appeared, something like real, rough amusement flickered through his panic. “Jesus. Only you would try to guilt-trip me from a bullet hole.”
“Tactic,” you whispered. Your chest hurt from this much talking, but you couldn’t make yourself stop. It felt important to crowd the air with anything but silence. “Weapon… of choice.”
“Yeah, well, it’s working,” he said. His hand slid from your throat to your cheek, thumb pressing lightly at your cheekbone as if to keep your eyes open by sheer force. “Don’t you dare check out on me, you hear? I’m not done givin’ you shit for this. You went off alone, comms dead, no backup on the blind side—”
“Backup…” you wheezed before thinking. “S’pposed… to be… you.”
He flinched like you’d hit him. Just a tiny jerk, barely there, the kind someone who didn’t know him would’ve missed. You felt it in the way his fingers tensed.
“It was,” he said, voice dropping low and rough, like gravel under tires. “It is. I’m here now. I’m sorry.”
You might have reminded him of his own rule about apologies. You might have told him you didn’t blame him. Instead, your body chose that moment to curl in on itself, a cough tearing up from somewhere deep. It felt like your lungs turned inside out. Pain stabbed through your side like a hot, clean blade, and for a second everything white-ed out, the world narrowing to a rushing in your ears.
You would have rolled if you could move. He stopped you before the impulse even finished firing.
“Whoa, hey, easy—easy,” he said, bracing you with one hand splayed against your sternum, the metal still clamped at your side. “You gotta breathe gentle, sweetheart. Little sips. In and out. Don’t fight it. Atta girl.”
His voice did something to the panic clawing at your chest. It cut through the animal urge to thrash, to escape the burn, and threaded command through the chaos instead. You clung to it. In. Out. The breaths were shallow, ragged, but they happened. Your vision stuttered, then steadied enough to find his face again.
“There you go,” he murmured, relief bleeding into the words. “There you are.”
You saw it then, in the tiny lines around his eyes, in the way his mouth kept trying to settle and couldn’t: he was terrified. Not the kind of fear that froze. The kind that sharpened everything until it cut him from the inside.
“Couldn’t—” You swallowed, tasted blood. Your eyes pricked. “Couldn’t… hear you.”
“At the bend?” he asked, knowing exactly what you meant. “Yeah. I know. Comms fried. Whole channel went dead. I was callin’ you for twelve full minutes, felt like two goddamn years.” His jaw clenched. “By the time I got eyes on this slope—”
He glanced down at the trail you’d left, the carved red path in the snow. You watched his throat work like he had to physically swallow something.
“—I thought I was too late,” he finished, quietly. “Thought I was gonna be diggin’ you out, not patching you up.”
“Almost,” you croaked, because honesty had never really left you a choice. “I… thought… you weren’t…”
“I know what you thought,” he said, and there was a rawness in his tone you’d only heard a handful of times. The night he’d told you about the first time he woke up in HYDRA hands. The time he’d confessed, in a roundabout way, how many names he woke up with on his tongue.
He leaned in closer, until his nose almost brushed your temple. You could feel the heat of his breath on your ear, the trembling in it he was trying so hard to hide.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, quieter. “For that. For that feeling. For every second you lay here thinking you were alone. You weren’t. I swear to you, you weren’t. I was coming. I was… I’m here now.”
Your vision blurred—not from blood loss this time, but from something hot that had no business existing in this cold. You blinked hard, lashes sticking.
“Didn’t… want…” You had to stop, breathe, gather what little strength you had left. “Didn’t want… you… to see.... if I...”
His head drew back a fraction so he could see your face. His brows pulled together.
“See what?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“Like this,” you whispered. It sounded pathetic out loud, but there it was. “You’ve… seen enough.”
The words hung between you, heavy with all the images you knew lived behind his eyes. War. Blood. The bodies he’d made and the ones he’d failed to save. You weren’t arrogant enough to think you’d be some special exception to that catalog. Still, the idea of your shape joining that crowd in his head made something in you rebel.
His expression shifted, something fierce and almost offended tearing through the shock.
“Hey,” he said sharply, fingers tightening just enough on your jaw that you had to look at him. “You don’t get to decide what I can handle. You hear me? You don’t get to take choices away from me ‘cause you’re trying to protect me.”
You would’ve laughed if you had the breath for it. “Hypocrite,” you rasped.
He barked out a strangled sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a choked sob. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah, I know. But I mean it. You think I want my last image of you to be a fuckin’ radio going quiet? An empty patch of snow? No chance.”
His thumb stroked once along the hinge of your jaw, almost reverent. He looked at you like he was trying to memorize every line, every fleck of color in your eyes, every shape your mouth made—even while those eyes fluttered and that mouth barely moved.
“If this is what I get,” he said, voice low and rough, “if this is the moment I gotta hold on to if everything goes sideways, then I’m gonna be here for all of it. You don’t get to protect me from that. That’s not how this works.”
The if in that sentence sat in your chest like a stone. He’d said if, not when. He believed in some version where you walked away from this. You wanted that too. You wanted it so badly it felt like a second wound under the first.
“Bucky,” you whispered, and this time your mouth cooperated, got all the letters out.
His eyes shut for a second, just one. When they opened, they were bright in a way that had nothing to do with the snow.
“There you go,” he said, like you’d done something heroic by managing two syllables. “That’s me. I’m here. Look—” He shifted his grip, lifting your hand with his, guiding your fingers clumsily to press over the back of his metal knuckles where they pressed into your side. “You feel that? That’s me. Not going anywhere.”
The metal was warm, almost hot, from the constant work. Under your numb fingertips, the faint whir of servos thrummed, steady as a heartbeat. You latched onto it, on the pressure of his hand and the solidity of his arm, as if the contact alone could tether you.
“You’re… gonna be okay,” he said, like he could bully the universe into compliance. “We’re gonna get you on the jet, we’re gonna get you to a med bay with actual walls and not these goddamn trees, and then I’m gonna sit in the corner and glower at every doctor that comes near you until they’re too scared to discharge you before I say so.”
“Gonna… scare… them,” you breathed, a ghost of a smile twitching at your mouth.
“Good,” he said promptly. “They should be scared. You’re my favorite pain in the ass. I’m not lettin’ anyone half-ass your care.”
Favorite. The word slid in under your ribs. It fit with my girl in a way that made your chest throb for reasons that had nothing to do with trauma.
Somewhere behind him, closer now, you heard the heavy thump of the quinjet’s ramp hitting snow. Voices rose, clearer. Sam calling his position. Someone else—maybe a med tech—barking orders. The world expanded slightly, the edges of your focus dragging outward to include more than just Bucky’s face.
He didn’t look away.
“Okay,” he said, more to himself than you. “Okay, they’re here. We’re gonna move you now. It’s gonna suck. You’re allowed to hate me for it. You can yell at me later. Right now, you go limp, you hear? Don’t fight it. Let us do the work.”
“Bossy,” you muttered, the word slurring.
“Yeah,” he said. “Somebody’s gotta be. You’re terrible at following suggestions.”
Hands slid under you—Bucky’s, solid and sure, and another pair you couldn’t place. Maybe Sam’s. Maybe the medic’s. The moment your body lifted off the ground, pain screamed through you in an electric wave so intense your vision went fully white. You didn’t even realize you’d cried out until you felt your throat rasping.
“I know, I know,” Bucky’s voice cut through, right at your ear. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Breathe. I’ve got you.”
Your head lolled against something firm and warm. You realized it was his chest when the rhythm of his heartbeat crashed into your ear—fast but steady, a pounding drum against your skull. The world tilted as they carried you, the snow-sky trade flipping: white above, then sideways, then replaced by the dark maw of the quinjet’s cargo bay.
“Watch the IV line—no, we don’t have one yet, goddammit—just get them in and shut the door!” someone yelled.
The ramp clanged under booted feet. The air changed, the outside cold trading places with the metallic warmth inside. The thrum of the engines deepened, vibrating through the floor, up through Bucky’s legs, into your bones.
He didn’t put you down right away. Even when they reached the stretcher, he lowered you onto it like he was afraid you’d shatter. His hands never fully left you—palm on your shoulder while the medic worked, fingers brushing your wrist when they inserted a line, the metal still hovering near your side as if he’d punch anyone who got the tourniquet wrong.
“BP’s in the toilet,” a voice said somewhere to your left. “They need volume now. Who did this dressing?”
“I did,” Bucky snapped.
“It’s solid,” the medic said immediately, no challenge in it. “Good work. Let’s build on it. Hey—” A face swam into your peripheral. “Stay with me, alright? Can you squeeze my hand?”
You tried. Your fingers twitched weakly. The medic smiled like you’d just done a backflip.
“There we go. Keep that up. What’s their name?” they asked, presumably to Bucky.
He answered without hesitation, your name landing heavy in the air. Hearing it like that, in his voice, made you ache. Made you want to live out of sheer spite, just to hear it like that again without blood in your throat.
“Okay, Y/N,” the medic said. “I’m putting something in your line that’s gonna feel really warm. That’s normal. Gonna help your blood remember what it’s supposed to be doing. You’re doing great.”
Warmth spread up your arm, alien and strange, different from the dull, dead cold of the snow. This was sharper, focused, purposeful. It raced to your chest and blooming there, chasing some of the heavy fog back from the edges.
Bucky hovered at your head, his body between you and the rest of the world. He was a wall you’d never been more grateful for. He kept one hand braced on the stretcher as the jet shifted, like he didn’t trust the laws of physics to handle it alone.
“You still with me?” he asked, leaning into your line of sight again. His face was closer now than it had been on the ground, every freckle, every scar, every crease up for inspection. “C’mon. Gimme somethin’. Blink if you’re planning on ignoring my orders for another few years.”
You blinked. It took effort. Felt like pushing against a heavy door. But you did it. Once. Twice.
His mouth kicked up in a breathless, disbelieving grin that looked like it hurt him to make.
“That’s my girl,” he said again, softer. “God, you’re stubborn.”
“You… like…” you tried, the words slurring beyond recognition even to your own ears.
“Yeah,” he said, not even bothering to pretend he didn’t understand. His eyes didn’t leave yours. “I do.”
You didn’t know which part of that he was answering. Your weird half-formed accusation. Your blink. Your existence. It didn’t matter. The warmth of it threaded with the medicine in your veins, tangling until you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
The medic rattled off numbers. Someone said something about ETA to the facility. The engines roared, then steadied as the jet leveled out. The pressure in your side settled into a brutal, throbbing ache rather than an active, tearing burn. Each breath hurt, but it was less like drowning now and more like treading water with bricks tied to your ankles.
“You’re doing good,” Bucky murmured. “Proud of you.”
You almost rolled your eyes at him. Proud of you, like you’d done anything but lie here and bleed. But you could hear what he meant under it: thank you for not dying. Thank you for still being here where I can see you. Thank you for not adding another ghost to the pile.
“Can’t… get rid… of me…” you forced out, the words thin but there.
The edges of the world dimmed again, but it was different this time. Less like slipping away into cold and more like someone gently turning the lights down. Your body had reached its limit. You could feel it in the way your limbs refused every command, in the heavy pull at the back of your eyes.
Sleep, your bones whispered. Just for a second. Just to stop holding everything together so hard.
You must have let some of that show, because Bucky leaned closer, his forehead almost touching yours.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice had gone soft and dangerous, the way it did when he meant every word. “Listen to me. You wanna close your eyes, you can. You earned that. But you remember—this isn’t you checking out. This is you letting us carry some of this for a while. You get to rest because we’re not lettin’ go. You understand?”
You stared at him, at the lines of his face, at the snow still melting in his hair, and thought, wildly, that if this was the last thing you saw, it wouldn’t be the worst. But something stubborn and mean in you, something that had survived things it shouldn’t have long before you’d ever met him, reared up at the idea.
“‘Kay,” you breathed, because it hurt to argue even in your own head. “But… you’ll… be… there.”
It wasn’t a question. It felt like one anyway, hanging between you.
His eyes went glassy at the edges. He nodded once, like swearing an oath.
“Yeah,” he said. “You wake up, I’ll be the one you’re pissed at for letting the nurses poke you. I promise.”
You held his gaze for one more beat. Two. You watched his mouth press into a line that was half determination, half fear. You felt his thumb stroke along your cheekbone again, slow and almost absent, like he couldn’t stop touching you now that he’d started.
Then, finally, you let your eyes slip closed.
You woke up to the sound of something insisting you were alive.
A steady, thin beeping cut through the dark first, clinical and patient. It met the dull throb in your chest and the heavy ache in your side and negotiated with them, beat for beat. Light came next, too bright even behind your eyelids, pressing red against them like someone had laid the sun on your face. Your mouth tasted like cotton and metal and the ghost of plastic. Your throat ached deep, as if something had been there that didn’t belong and had been yanked out in a hurry.
For a second, you didn’t move. Couldn’t, really. Your limbs felt wrong—too heavy, too far away—as if someone had put your bones in the wrong gravity. Even trying to tell your fingers to twitch was like shouting down a long, empty hallway.
You cataloged what you could without opening your eyes. The air was warm and dry, smelling faintly of antiseptic, recycled ventilation, and the weird, overboiled tang of hospital food you hoped wasn’t for you. Sheets brushed your forearms, stiff and too clean.
Something tugged at the inside of your elbow—IV line, taped down. A cuff squeezed your bicep in steady pulses. There was weight across your midsection, not crushing but firm: heavy bandage, maybe a brace. Something cold and foreign sat against your ribs on one side, the ache around it deep and pulsing. Chest tube, your training supplied, clinical and calm. Good. Bad. Both.
You were in a med bay. Facility, probably—one of the ones with real walls and humming machines and doctors who glared at Avengers like they were walking malpractice suits.
You were not in the snow. You were not staring up at a white sky and waiting to find out if the last thing you saw would be nothing.
The beeping ticked on, counting heartbeats you had been very close to not having.
You pried your eyes open. Slowly. The world came in a messy blur—light overhead, pale ceiling. Peripheral shapes of monitors and hanging bags. The room swam once, then steadied. Your vision sharpened in increments until you could track lines and edges again.
To your right, in a hard plastic chair shoved as close to the bed as physically allowed, was Bucky.
He looked wrong in med bay lighting. Too human and too haunted at the same time. The overhead fluorescents bleached the color from him, highlighting every shadow under his eyes, every line carved into his forehead.
His hair was a wreck, pushed back in a way that spoke of frustrated fingers and zero regard for mirrors. Stubble darkened his jaw. He was slouched forward, elbows on his knees, metal hand braced around his own wrist like he needed the grip to stay anchored.
His eyes were closed. For half a second, you thought he was asleep. The idea of Bucky Barnes letting his guard down enough to actually sleep in a chair next to you made your chest lurch. Then you saw the way his thumb kept tracing the line of your wrist where your hand lay in his, skin to skin, as if he needed the movement.
Not asleep.
Your throat tried to clear itself and immediately regretted it. The cough you meant to be quiet scraped up like broken glass. You choked on it. Every muscle between your neck and hip spasmed in miserable protest. Pain flared white-hot along your side, radiating out from the bandaged hole like someone had poured acid into your nerve endings. Your lungs seized, then dragged in air too fast, too shallow. The monitor at your head sped up, a frantic little staccato.
Bucky’s eyes snapped open instantly.
“Hey—hey, whoa,” he said, already on his feet, the chair skidding back with a harsh squeak. “Easy.”
He was at your side before you’d even finished the first broken inhale. His hand left your wrist only long enough to hit the bed control, raising the head a fraction so you weren’t flat. The movement made your side scream again. You winced, teeth grinding together, fingers clawing at the sheet.
“Buck,” you rasped. Or tried to. It came out like someone dragging a shovel over gravel.
His gaze dragged up to your face. When your eyes met, a whole storm passed through his expression in about half a second—shock, relief, anger, something so raw and bright it almost hurt more than your side.
“Yeah,” he said, voice gone rough, like he’d been yelling or not talking at all for too long. “Yeah, it’s me.”
He put his flesh hand around the back of your neck, not lifting you, just steadying, thumb careful against the tender tendons there. The contact grounded you in a way the machines couldn’t. Your pulse thudded under his fingers, frantic but real.
“Slow,” he added, softer, eyes never leaving yours. “Breathe slow. They gave you some fun stuff. Your lungs are gonna feel all kinds of weird about it.”
You tried to listen. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Each breath dragged over the sore spot in your chest where the tube sat, but it settled, inch by inch, into something more manageable. The monitor agreed, its panicked blip easing back into a steadier rhythm.
“Where…?” you managed, glancing around, though moving your head even that much made black spots flirt at the edges of your vision.
“Med facility,” he said. “Off-grid. Good docs. Good equipment. Terrible coffee.” He hesitated a beat. “You’re okay.”
The word hung there. Okay felt like a stretch. You felt like you’d been run over by a truck, stripped for parts, then stapled back together. Your side burned in a deep, wet way that said serious internal damage, not just a flesh wound. The bandage pulled uncomfortably with every breath. Your chest ached in time with the IV pump.
But you were not dead.
You blinked, trying to fit that fact into your skull. Your brain snagged on another question instead.
“How… bad?” you whispered.
His jaw flexed. You watched him decide between lying and not. The lines around his eyes tightened. He hesitated for a moment, dragging the chair back with his free hand and sitting back down.
“Bad,” he said finally, because he respected you too much to sugarcoat. “Bullets went in shallow, but it hit all the wrong shit—ricocheted, tore through part of your liver, nicked your lung. Lots of blood. You gave the surgeons a real workout.”
You swallowed. Your mouth felt like sand. “And I…?” You had meant to ask something flippant—did I win? do I at least get a lollipop?—because that was how you handled this stuff. The effort of forming the words stripped the humor out of them.
“You made it,” he said. No joke in his tone. Just flat, stubborn certainty. “They had to transfuse you, patch you up from the inside out, shove a tube in your chest to help you breathe. They were talking about percentages for a while. I didn’t like their math.”
You pictured him, pacing like a caged animal outside an OR door, counting every second with his teeth. It did something ugly to your heart.
“How long…?” you asked.
He glanced at the cheap wall clock in the corner like it had offended him personally. “You’ve been out, off and on, for…about four days. Longer if you count the part where you were half-conscious in the snow and arguing with me.”
The fact that he was measuring time in arguments almost made you smile. Almost. Everything in your face hurt when you tried.
“Sorry,” you said automatically, because the idea of him stuck in this room that long, with nothing to do but watch monitors and think, made guilt crawl under your skin.
His eyes snapped back to yours, sharp. “What did I say about that?”
You frowned, brain moving slow through the fog.
“No ‘sorry,’” he reminded you, voice softening but not backing off. “You did your job. Didn’t exactly throw yourself in front of a bullet for fun.” He paused. “At least I hope not, ‘cause that would really ruin the ‘you’re not expendable’ speech I’ve been rehearsing.”
You huffed a tiny sound that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t felt like your ribs were full of knives. “You… rehearsed… a speech?”
He shifted his weight, suddenly looking almost…sheepish. It didn’t sit naturally on him, like the chair under him. “Yeah, well. Had some time on my hands.”
You let that sink in: Bucky Barnes, former brainwashed assassin, current pain-in-your-ass, sitting in a too-small med bay chair for days, crafting a lecture about your value. Because of course he did.
“You… didn’t have to…” you started.
“Yeah,” he cut in, “I did.”
The firmness in his tone made your breath stutter. His hand at your neck tightened fractionally, thumb resting in the hollow under your skull.
“You remember,” he went on, staring at you like he could pin your attention in place, “all those times you joked about not making it? About your grave? About going out in some blaze of glory?”
Heat flushed under your skin, embarrassed and defensive all at once. “That’s…just how I cope, Buck.”
“I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know about coping mechanisms.” His mouth twisted. “But seeing you lying in the snow after following a trail of your blood, looking at you half-frozen and half-gone, hearing you wheeze about how I ‘came’ like you were surprised I showed up? That wasn’t coping. That was…”
He broke off, eyes closing for a second. When he opened them again, they were too bright.
“That was you actually thinking I might not get there,” he finished, quieter. “That I might not come. And that? That’s not a joke I can live with.”
You stared at him, throat thick. You remembered it all too vividly: the snow, the silence, the distance between where you were and where he might have been. The way your brain had quietly considered the possibility that he wouldn’t make it in time, and how you’d tried to make peace with that by replaying him in your head.
“I didn’t…” you started, then stopped. Honesty tasted like antiseptic and fear. “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
He let out a humorless scoff. “Newsflash: I’ve seen worse.”
“That’s exactly the point,” you said, voice scraping but gaining a little strength. “You’ve seen too much. Done too much. I didn’t want to be another—” You gestured weakly, the IV tugging. “Another body on the ground somewhere in your head.”
His jaw clenched. You watched the tendons jump.
“You’re not,” he said, firmly. “You’re not a body on the ground. You’re—”
He cut himself off again, looking abruptly away, like the words had gotten too close to something he hadn’t decided whether to say. His metal hand flexed at his side, fingers curling and uncurling with a faint whir.
“You’re loud,” he muttered instead, after a second. “Annoying. Stubborn. You steal my coffee. You hide my knives as a ‘trust exercise.’ You call me on my bullshit. That’s what you are in my head. Not…this.”
“Loud,” you repeated, trying to keep your mouth from shaking. “I almost died and that’s the best you can do?”
He shot you a look, exasperated and fond and utterly, painfully familiar. “Don’t start,” he said. “I’ve been nice to you for like seventy-two hours straight. I’m exhausted.”
You would’ve rolled your eyes if they weren’t already fighting to stay open. “This is you…being nice?”
“This is me not putting you in a medically induced coma myself so I can yell at you without anyone interrupting,” he said dryly. Then the humor drained, leaving something softer behind. “This is me telling you I’m glad you’re still here to piss me off.”
Silence settled between you for a moment, thick and humming. The monitors filled it with a steady, background reassurance: you’re here, you’re here, you’re here.
“You stayed,” you said, because it felt necessary to name it. “The whole time.”
He shrugged, as if he were answering a question about the weather. “Yeah.”
“You could have…slept. Showered.” You sniffed faintly. “You smell like jet fuel and bad coffee.”
“Romantic,” he murmured. “Look, they came in and poked you, and cut on you, and yelled about blood loss. You coded once.”
You blinked. “I…what?”
“For about eight seconds,” he said, voice going flat in that way it did when he forced his emotions into a box. “Heart stopped. They shocked you. You came back.” He inhaled slowly. “I did not feel like going to take a nap after that.”
Eight seconds. A tiny rip in time. Long enough for him to stand in a doorway and watch your monitor flatline. Long enough for every bad thing that had ever happened to him to line up behind that moment and wait its turn.
You swallowed hard. “Bucky…”
He shook his head once, like he could physically dislodge whatever memory you were about to apologize for.
“Doc says you’re past the worst of it,” he said. “Liver’s patched. Lung’s reinflated. They’ll pull the tube in a day or two if your numbers behave. You’re gonna hurt like hell for a while. You’re gonna hate physical therapy. You’re probably gonna try to skip half your meds and pretend you’re fine.”
“That sounds…accurate,” you admitted.
“And I,” he continued, “am going to be here, making your life miserable, making sure you do none of that.”
“You gonna…hover?” you asked, the word weaker and more hopeful than you meant it to be.
He huffed, eyes flicking heavenward like he was asking for patience. “I’m gonna make sure you don’t pull your stitches trying to prove something,” he said. “If that qualifies as hovering, then yeah.”
You let your gaze roam over him properly now, taking in the details you’d missed in the initial foggy panic of waking. The dark crescents under his eyes. The dried smear of something on his sleeve that looked like blood but might not be yours. His shoulders were hunched in that way that told you he’d been braced for bad news, arms crossed so tight over his chest earlier he might have left bruises on his own ribs.
He looked like something a storm had chewed up and spit out. And still, he was here.
“You look like shit,” you said, because that’s what you did when things edged too close to unbearable.
His mouth actually curled. “You always this charming after almost dying?”
“You always this…clingy after saving someone?”
“Only the ones who make fun of their own funerals,” he said. “Gotta keep an eye on you. Can’t trust you not to try and skip out on your own wake.”
A memory flickered: the kitchen, the jar of Nutella, the way his face had gone hard when you joked about taking what he said to the grave.
“Guess I’m not as funny as I thought,” you murmured.
He exhales through his nose, slow. “You’re funny,” he said. “You kill me sometimes. But maybe ease up on the death jokes for a bit, yeah? They hit different when I’ve watched you bleed out.”
You swallowed around the sudden lump in your throat. “Too soon?”
His gaze softened, the edges of his eyes crinkling in a way that always made you feel like the air had thickened. “Way too soon,” he said. “Gimme, like, ten years. Then you can start with the graveyard material again.”
You tried to laugh, then winced as the movement tugged your side. He caught the wince like it was his own.
“Okay,” you said, breathless. “No more…grave jokes. At least for a while.” You paused. “Maybe… just favorite patient jokes?”
He blinked, something flickering in his expression that wasn’t just relief. “You’re not my patient,” he said, almost automatically.
You raised a brow, or tried to. “I'm not?”
He looked at you for a long moment. Then his shoulders dropped a fraction, as if some invisible weight had shifted. His metal fingers flexed against the bed rail, a tell you’d learned to read like a paragraph.
“You’re more than that,” he said quietly.
The words slipped out too honest, too bare. He didn’t look away this time. He let them sit there between you, like a live wire.
Your pulse monitor ticked up a notch. You felt it. You were sure he heard it.
“Bucky…” you started again, for what felt like the hundredth time, and this time you didn’t know what you were apologizing for or trying to say. You only knew that the room felt too small for everything pressed into your ribs.
He beat you to it.
“Thought I was gonna lose you,” he said, the words coming out low and fast, like if he didn’t get them out now, he never would. “Out there. On that hill. In here. Eight seconds on a flatline feels a lot like every other time I watched somebody die. And I—I can’t—”
His voice cracked, just once, violently. He sucked in a breath like it hurt.
“I can’t go through that with you and pretend you’re just another teammate,” he finished hoarsely.
Your heart did something painful and grateful at the same time. “Good,” you whispered. “Hate to be…generic.”
He let out a strangled laugh that sounded a little like he might cry. “You’re the least generic person I’ve ever met,” he said. “You drive me up the wall. You scare the hell out of me. You make me…want things. For myself. That I thought I was done wanting.”
You stared at him, words gone.
“When I couldn’t reach you on comms,” he went on quietly, eyes fixed on the line of your shoulder now, like looking directly at your face might be too much, “all I could think about was every stupid joke you’ve ever made about not making it. About going out. About it not being a big deal. And I was—I was furious. At you. At me. At every bastard who ever made you think that maybe you were…not worth staying for.”
Your throat tightened. “Bucky—”
He looked up then, finally, and the intensity in his gaze pinned you to the bed more effectively than any strap.
“I would miss you,” he said. No hesitation. No deflection. “I do. When you’re gone for an hour on a run, I feel it. When you’re not in the kitchen at 2 a.m. raiding the cabinet, I notice. When you’re not bitching about my music or falling asleep on the couch with a book on your face, the whole place feels…wrong.”
The monitor tattled on you, speeding up again. He didn’t flinch.
“You’re in my day even when you’re not there,” he said. “So don’t you ever think for one second that I wouldn’t move heaven, hell, and every goddamn city left on this earth to get to you.”
You blinked hard, the world blurring in that way that had nothing to do with drugs.
“I only joked like that,” you managed, voice small, “because…if I said it serious, it would sound pathetic. Needy. Like I wanted…more than I should.”
His expression shifted—something pained and tender all at once.
“You’re allowed to want more,” he said. “Especially from me.”
That last part hung there, thick as smoke.
“You…want more?” you asked, because apparently you’d almost died and your brain had decided to stop filtering anything.
He let out a breath that sounded like surrender. “Maybe,” he said. “Yeah.”
He raked his flesh hand through his hair, like he was bracing for impact.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said. “Didn’t go out and decide, ‘hey, let’s catch feelings for the one person on this team who actually has standards.’ It just…kept happening. Every time you rolled your eyes at me. Every time you patched me up without making it a big deal. Every time you made some awful joke about us going out in a blaze of glory but still checked my six before your own.”
He shook his head slightly.
“I kept telling myself it was just…combat attachment,” he said. “Buddy cop bullshit. Shared trauma. Whatever label made it easier. But the second you went quiet out there, it wasn’t tactical. It wasn’t about losing an asset. It was—”
He swallowed. The word stuck. He pushed it out anyway.
“It was personal,” he finished.
You lay there, heart pounding unhelpfully fast, trying to process the fact that Bucky Barnes was confessing he cared about you more than made sense, in a tone that suggested he’d been fighting it every step of the way.
“Funny,” you whispered, “that you think I have standards.”
His mouth twitched. “You do,” he said. “They’re just weird.”
A breathless laugh escaped you. It hurt. You didn’t care.
“You know,” you said, “I kept…joking about dying because…honestly, I thought that’s how it’d be. Quick. Messy. No warning. That nobody would…care enough for it to really…matter after the fact.”
His fingers tightened on your neck again, gently but firm enough to yank you back from that cliff.
“Wrong,” he said, simply. “On all counts.”
You believed him. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was the fact that you’d seen the look on his face in the snow, the way his hands had moved over your wound with a desperation he hadn’t allowed into his voice. Maybe it was the way he was standing here now, like the only thing keeping him upright was the fact that you were.
“Bucky,” you said, letting his name hold everything you couldn’t fit into sentences yet. “I…didn’t plan on this either, you know.”
“On what?” he asked, voice cautious.
“You,” you said, because there was no point dancing around it anymore. “Getting under my skin. Making it…hard to breathe, and not just because I have bullet holes in my side.”
A soft, disbelieving breath of laughter escaped him.
“You’re really gonna make jokes in the middle of this?” he asked.
“That’s how you know it’s me,” you murmured.
He nodded, eyes damp at the corners. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that tracks.”
You wet your lips, gathering what scraps of courage you had left. “I didn’t want to…say anything,” you admitted, “because I figured…if you didn’t feel the same, I could just…keep joking about dying and never have to deal with it.”
He winced, like he’d been physically hit.
“That,” he said, “is the worst plan I’ve ever heard you have. And you’ve had some terrible ones.”
“Hey,” you croaked. “I survived. Mostly.”
“Yeah,” he said. “In spite of your best efforts.”
You let your head sink a little deeper into the pillow, exhaustion pulling at your edges. The IV pump clicked. The monitors hummed. Somewhere outside the door, a cart rattled by, tires squeaking. The world felt weirdly distant, like you were wrapped in glass. The only thing that felt real was the way his thumb kept moving in slow circles against your skin, like he needed that contact as much as you did.
“So what now?” you asked softly. “We…pretend this didn’t happen? Go back to making morbid jokes and hiding in safe house kitchens?”
He took a breath, slow and deliberate, like he was bracing to step onto a minefield.
“No,” he said.
The word settled in your chest like a warm weight.
“I can’t go back to pretending I don’t…” He trailed off, searching for the right phrasing, as if every word was a potential trap. “That I don’t care this much. That you’re just another mission file. That I’d be fine if you didn’t come back one day. I’ve done enough pretending in my life.”
“Me too,” you admitted.
His gaze softened, something like pride flickering in it.
“So we don’t pretend,” he said. “We…figure it out. Slowly. Carefully. When you’re not on enough meds to take down an elephant.”
You snorted, the sound dissolving into a wince. “Are you…asking me out…or scheduling a…feelings debrief?”
He shook his head, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. “Little of both, maybe,” he said. “I’m sayin’…when you’re cleared, when you’re not held together by staples and sheer spite, I’d like to take you somewhere that isn’t a safehouse or a warzone. Get coffee that isn’t from a shitty machine. Maybe sit in a park like normal people and argue about something stupid.”
“Sounds dangerous,” you whispered.
“Yeah,” he said, eyes crinkling. “Terrifying. I’ll bring backup.”
“Sam?” you asked.
“Hell no,” he said. “He’d never let me hear the end of it.”
You smiled, small and wobbly. “I’d like that,” you said, and the simplicity of the words nearly undid you.
His shoulders loosened, just a fraction. You saw the tension bleed out of him like air from a too-tight balloon.
“Okay,” he said, like the decision had been a battle and he was finally letting himself believe he’d won. “Okay.”
The room seemed to breathe with you then. Everything felt a little less sharp, a little less precarious. The pain was still there, deep and insistent, but it had context now. It had a shape that wasn’t just fear.
“You know,” you murmured, because your brain refused to stop offering up mortifying honesty, “if this had gone the other way…you would’ve been the last thing I thought about.”
His face went very still.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I could see it on the hill. You were looking right through me like you were seeing everything all at once. I figured at least some of that was my charming face.”
“Always,” you whispered. “Annoying to the end.”
He huffed, but there was no bite in it. Only relief.
“Do me a favor?” he asked.
“Depends,” you said.
“Next time you wanna test-drive dying,” he said, voice dipped in dry sarcasm to hide the shake under it, “don’t.”
You nodded, or tried to. “I’ll…put in a formal request,” you said. “File it with…whoever’s in charge of…mortality.”
“I got connections,” he said. “Guy with a hammer owes me a favor. I’ll see what I can do.”
You snorted again, exhausted and weirdly light.
“Can I…sleep again now?” you asked, suddenly bone-deep tired. The drugs and the adrenaline crash and the conversation had wrung you out. Your eyelids felt like they had weights sewn into them.
He studied you for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, you can sleep.”
“You’ll still…be here?”
He didn’t even pretend to consider the alternative. “Yeah,” he said. “Right here. When you wake up, when you start trying to sign yourself out against medical advice, when you worry about the scars—I’ll be here for all of it.”
“That’s…a lot of Bucky,” you mumbled, already drifting.
“Well, get used to it,” he said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
You smiled, eyes finally sliding shut. The darkness that rose this time was softer, edged in steady beeping and the low hum of the med bay. Somewhere in the middle of it, his thumb kept tracing that slow, grounding circle at the base of your skull.
Right before you slipped under, you heard him say it, voice barely above a whisper, like he was talking to himself.
“I love you,” he murmured. “So don’t pull that shit again.”
If you’d been any more awake, you might have grabbed his wrist, forced him to repeat it, teased him until he turned red. As it was, the words sank into you like morphine, warm and heavy and strangely clean.
You drifted, pulled under before you could shape even a half-formed answer. Maybe that was for the best. It gave you something to wake up to. Something real, not imagined in the snow.
no more taglists! tumblr’s @ limit said no 💔 follow @cheekybarnesupdates + turn on notifs for all fic drops!
chia, they/them, 8teen, infp, cancer ♋️ new york based!
im currently in my junior year of college (okay film major :3) , so even though im an #academic weapon, i still have time to write these little fics for you guys <3 im fluent in spanish and english, and i love my moots so much <33
likes: cats, pinterest, spotify, sebastian stan, journaling, matt maltese, clairo, friends to lovers, doing my nails, bucky barnes
dislikes: mean people, maga, zionists, harmonicas lol, horror movies :( im such a scaredy cat
please do not interact if you are zionist, transphobic, homophobic, pro-ai, or maga. everything is political in this environment- especially when it comes to writing, so i want to keep this corner of the internet as a way for people to distract themselves. i will promptly block those who are hateful on my notes, as i want to keep a cool and positive space.
not everyone is going to have the same headcanons for the same characters- and not everyone is going to agree on what is “in character” for a certain character. i ask that you please remain mature when critiquing others and myself if there is a characterization you don’t like or agree with.
this is an 18+ blog. i will be writing about dark and nsfw themes, and i am not responsible for your media consumption. i will occasionally check and purge those who interact with me and are an ageless or underage blog. it is a tedious process, so i ask that you don’t interact with me to make things easier for everyone.
rules for requesting :)
i write SFW and NSFW!
requests on my inbox are open, but i can’t promise i will always get to it. please be kind when requesting, as i am only one person. please be as vague or as detailed as possible! i thrive off of information, so don’t be afraid to write it :) if you feel compelled to do so, you can buy a coffee to prioritize your request (as that will make it a commission; see my kofi). please do not take it personal if by any chance i don’t see your request, or ignore it. please see below to what i do and don’t write.
don’t: scat, non-con (con non-con is a gray area), piss play, vomit play, incest, stepcest, underage relations, daddy/mommy kinks, cheating (i am open to being persuaded, so give it your best shot if you want that fic LOL), real people or oc’s, male!reader (im sorry guys </3 i just want to be able to give you the best i possibly can and i know i would not do the male!readers justice)
do: fluff, smut, angst, dead dove, honestly everything is okay by me lolol
i usually write fem!readers, but i try my best to write genderneutral!readers!! i will write for woc specific readers, as i love to read and write for my beautiful women of color <33 (latinas for bucky)
i HATEEE y/n l/n and i will do anything to not write that, but if it shows up on my fics shhhh don’t mention it 😇
characters i write for!
mcu: bucky barnes, joaquin torres, bob reynolds, steve rogers
honest to god i cannot think of of any other characters, so just request your little heart out and ill do my best to make your wishes come true <3
1.1k! no x reader, these are just post endgame headcanons i have.
one shots
- one hand, one heart ☾☼, ✮
510 wc! cardiophilia inspired one shot, and how bucky feels about his and yours heartbeat.
- everyone adores you, at least i do. ☾☼ (currently rewriting)
3.9k! after the blip, you meet bucky at a bar, and the rest is history. drunk confessions, quiet moments, sleepy mornings. friends to lovers, based on the song “everyone adores you, at least i do (quiet)” by matt maltese. post-blip!bucky
- a soldier’s wishing star ☾☼
4.6k! x oc (the one exception to the rule lol), enhanced!oc x bucky, with heavy angst.
series
- the three times you tried, and the one time it worked (pt. 1) (pt. 2) (pt. 3) ☾☼ (currently rewriting)
5.3k! “three times, you had gotten pregnant. three times, you held the stick up carefully, as to not shatter the illusion, and showed him. three times, he held you as socks racked your body. one time, though, it was different.” pregnant!reader deals with the heartbreak and journey of miscarriages and pregnancy. pre-thunderbolts!bucky
-500 miles (pt. 1) ☾☼ (in progress!)
full word count tba. post-TWS!bucky x civilian!reader. based on the song “500 miles” by peter, paul and mary. hurt, some comfort.
Thinking about domestic Bucky who naturally wakes up really early and then lies in bed (because he sleeps in a bed now) for the next three hours, just watching you sleep and listening to the way you breathe, because this is hands down the best moment of his day.
Domestic Bucky who damn near had a physical battle with the new machine you guys got just so he could bring you coffee, so you could lay in bed for a few minutes more.
Domestic Bucky who oddly enjoys cleaning, specifically wiping down surfaces because the motion soothes him. He also loves mopping for this same reason. Not that you’re complaining.
Domestic Bucky who replaces the flowers on the kitchen island every Monday, because they ‘decide the vibe for the week’ not that he really knows what that means, he just enjoys your smile when you see them.
Domestic Bucky who never fails to touch you - wether it’s a hand on your knee when you’re sitting on the couch together, his hand in your back pocket when you’re on a walk, his arms around your waist while you’re standing doing whatever you’re doing - honourable mention: he likes to carry you as much as he can, just because he knows you like it, even if its from kitchen to living room, or couch to bed.
Domestic Bucky who’s shoulders physically sag in relief every time he comes home from literally wherever because he can smell your presence and hear your heartbeat and he knows he’s safe.
Domestic Bucky who prides himself in knowing how to cook. After his totally great, not traumatic at all past it took him a while to find joy in food, but once he did? oh man, he’s like a magician with a decked out spice rack. It’s his favourite pastime. Not to mention the reward he gets from the way you physically moan at the taste of whatever he’s cooked.
On a similar note, he for some reason really struggles to bake. Bucky doesn’t know what the problem is because he swears he uses the scales and follows the recipe and the oven works just fine, but it always ends up just tasting slightly … off. On an unrelated note, Domestic Bucky has made best friends with everyone who works in the bakery a couple blocks away. They all greet him by name.
Domestic Bucky who adores movies, fantasy is preferred but he wouldn’t turn down a rom-com (sometimes you think he secretly prefers them). You could honestly swear that every time there's a cute date in a romcom he makes a mental note of it, and takes you on the same date a few days later, blushing when you point out the similarities between date and movie.
Domestic Bucky who draws you baths, and lights you candles, and brings wine & chocolates to you while you’re in said bath when you have a bad day because you’re not staying sad, not on his watch. Honourable mention for the fact he’ll get in with you, but only if you ask.
Domestic Bucky who is happy, who (after who knows how many years of guilt) accepts that he can have peace, who looks over at you every single morning when he wakes up, and every single night before he falls asleep, and thanks God that he didn’t end everything when it got too loud.
Summary: Bucky Barnes gave up on marriage a long time ago. But then, somewhere deep in a storm-soaked safe house, he pulls a bullet from your leg and accidentally proposes in the process.
MCU Timeline Placement: Post TFATWS
Master List: Find my other stuff here!
Warnings: blood loss, injury, bullet wound, field medicine, pain, mild medical trauma, emotional vulnerability, war references, ptsd mentions, marriage talk, soft angst, accidental proposal
Word Count: 3.9k
Author’s Note: i am once again asking bucky barnes to know peace (he will not). anyway i cleaned my kitchen at 1am and now i’m emotionally compromised about fictional men again. if you need me i’ll be lying facedown on the floor, thinking about laundry and commitment.
The idea of marriage had died sometime in the ice.
Not all at once. Not dramatically, like a final gasp of a man slipping into the Atlantic with a ring still in his coat pocket. No, it had been slower than that. Eaten away in inches. First by frostbite. Then by fire. Then by the sound of screaming that wasn’t his own but came from his own mouth anyway.
It used to mean something to him. Marriage. A porch swing. Warm soup. A house with windows that didn’t rattle in the wind. The kind of thing you promised a girl in church shoes, hands clasped over the Sunday paper.
James Buchanan Barnes had once thought he’d get that life. That he’d earn it. If he fought hard enough, if he came home in one piece, if he smiled the right way when he walked her back to her door.
Then war had cracked the world open like a rotten egg, and everything inside had spilled black.
There were no porches where Hydra took him. No rings. Just cold steel and code phrases. Needles and electrodes. Years swallowed by fog. And when he remembered again, when he started to remember, he couldn’t even picture a wedding band without wondering how deep it would slice if it caught against bone.
So no, marriage hadn’t crossed his mind in years.
Not until you.
Not even with you, not in the usual sense. You hadn’t crawled into his life and started naming curtains or pointing out flower arrangements like a threat. You’d just…stayed. Through the Accords. Through the fallout. Through Wakanda and the long, sterile quiet of the recovery halls. You never flinched when he woke up screaming. You never tiptoed around the word past like it might set off a bomb.
You were there during the repairs. The recalibrations. You’d worked with Shuri on something far above his understanding, fingers stained with grease and ink, hair always pinned messily away from your eyes. You’d curse under your breath in three different languages. You argued with Ayo. You laughed loudly.
By the time he was sent back into the field—once he had left the mountains, left the quiet—he expected the connection to die out. Most things did. The world had taught him that. You could try to keep something alive outside the place it was born, but roots snapped when you pulled too hard.
And it had. He had left you. Not by choice, not really. One blink and he was gone. Another blink, and you’d aged five years without him.
But then he saw you again. In D.C. In New York. Even in Louisiana. Out of nowhere, standing in a pair of sunglasses too big for your face, grinning like it hadn’t been years for you.
“Miss me, Barnes?”
And damn him, he had.
You’d joined the mission against the Flag Smashers. Temporarily, at first. That’s what you both said. Just this op. Just this briefing. Just this one joint task force run with Sam.
And then it wasn’t temporary anymore. And then there was a room in the same safe house that you’d claimed. A bunk on the same floor. Your stuff beside his. And his toothbrush in your travel kit, and he had no idea how or when that had happened.
There were no conversations. No declarations. Just a slow merging.
He liked your laugh. The dry, cut-glass one you used when Joaquin said something stupid. The low, real one that came out when you let your guard down, when the weight on your shoulders slipped just enough to let joy through.
You liked to touch him. Not in the way that made him flinch. In the way that made the back of his neck burn. A casual hand on his spine when passing behind him. Fingers brushing his sleeve. A nudge with your elbow when he got too serious. You were constant.
You grounded him.
And he didn’t know how to name that. He wasn’t good at words anymore. Hadn’t been in decades. But he knew how it felt when you were hurt. When you bled. When someone touched you too rough during an extraction and he saw red before he even registered why.
He had never said “I love you.” Not outright. Neither had you.
But there were nights you fell asleep on his chest, breathing slow against the metal plates, and he’d whisper it in your hair like a secret. Like a curse.
Because he did love you.
And it terrified him.
Not because he thought you’d leave, though that was always a part of it.
But because he didn’t believe in the future. Not really. Hydra had broken that part of him, rewired him to think in terms of seconds, triggers, threats. Even now, after all this time, after all this healing, the idea of forever felt…dangerous. Unrealistic. Like planning for spring in the middle of a war zone.
But the truth was: he wanted to grow old with you.
He didn’t say it. But he wanted it.
The thought came loudest during quiet missions. When your hand found his under the table. When you scolded Sam like a sitcom wife. When you kissed him before leaving in a rush and forgot your ID badge, and he chased after you just to hear you laugh when he caught up.
That was what marriage looked like to him now.
Not churches or tuxedos. Not parties or speeches. Just this. Just you.
It was raining now. Somewhere deep in the woods outside of Vienna, a safe house blinked on like a dying star. One generator. One flickering lamp. One bullet in your leg, and his hands slick with blood that wasn’t his.
You hissed as he dug the tweezers in.
“I told you,” he said, voice low, steady even as his gut churned, “you were too exposed on the ridge. You shouldn’t have gone up alone.”
You shot him a look. “Wasn’t alone. You were covering me.”
“I was supposed to be covering you,” he muttered, breath tight. “Didn’t exactly do a great job, did I?”
You didn’t answer.
He hated this part. The way the pain made your voice tighten, the way you bit your lip hard enough to bleed rather than make a sound. It reminded him too much of everything he couldn’t fix. Of every mission where he hadn’t been fast enough. Every loss that had turned to ash in his mouth.
You were trembling now, sweat slicking your brow. The bullet was lodged deep. He could feel it with the tip of the tweezers, but it wouldn’t come clean.
His jaw clenched.
“Bucky.”
“Almost got it.”
“Bucky.”
He angled the tweezers just slightly, catching the edge of the casing with a surgeon’s precision, eyes fixed on the wound like it was the only thing keeping him tethered. You were trying to steady him. He knew that. Heard it in your voice. But he couldn’t afford to believe you were okay. Not yet. Not until the metal was out and you were still breathing.
“James.”
He looked up at that. Your eyes were glassy, lips pale. And yet, somehow, you smiled.
“You smile too much when you’re in pain,” he muttered, tweezers angled again.
“Maybe you just give me a lot to smile about.”
“Yeah?” His voice came quieter, almost bitter. “Like what?”
“Like this charming bedside manner,” you rasped. “And your tendency to monologue when
you’re worried.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.”
The bullet shifted. Your body jerked, a hoarse cry caught in your throat.
“Shit—sorry,” he said instantly, his free hand anchoring you at the hip. His palm was warm. Steady. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” you breathed.
And then, silence.
Heavy. Close. Pressed between bodies that had seen too many battlefields, too many exits. The only sound was the storm outside, ticking against the roof like bones, and your ragged, uneven breath.
He bent closer, eyes narrowed on the wound.
“You need to hold still,” he said softly. “If I nick your femoral, it’s over.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. It’s deep. If I miss this—”
“You won’t.”
“I might.”
“You won’t.”
Another silence.
He couldn’t look at you. Not now. Not with the bullet half-extracted and your skin flushed with shock and fever and trust. Trust he hadn’t earned. Trust that felt too close to faith.
And he was always bad at faith.
He adjusted the angle of the tweezers again, fingers tight with precision, breath shallow. If he moved just a millimeter too far to the left, he'd sever an artery. Too far right, and he'd leave metal behind. His mind kept listing the options like a file folder: all the ways he could fail you. All the ways he could lose you.
“Keep talkin’ to me,” he said roughly, not looking at you. “You pass out, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“What, no pressure or anything,” you slurred, but he caught the strain in it. The thin layer of humor barely stretched over real pain.
The tweezers hit resistance. He felt it in his bones.
“You’re doing good,” he muttered. “You’re—fuck. Just hang on. Almost there.”
“Bucky.”
“I said keep talking.”
You let out a ragged breath. “You want a story or a monologue?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
Your voice wavered. “One time I saw Sam fall off a boat trying to impress a group of kids with his balance—”
“Not funny enough.”
“He hit his head.”
“That’s better.”
Silence ticked between your words. His grip steadied. He’d have to go in again. Just a little deeper.
You winced as the metal tip shifted.
“Fuck,” you whispered. “You know, I thought this would be the day we got pizza. Not playing Operation.”
“We’ll still get pizza,” he muttered.
“Oh yeah? You cooking?”
“I’m not cooking. I’m buying.”
You didn’t reply. And when he glanced up, your eyes were fluttering, breath shallower.
“Hey,” he barked. “C’mon. Eyes open.”
“M’tired.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
You laughed faintly again, breathe hitching, and it cracked something in him.
“Do me a favor?” You asked.
He hummed.
“If I lose consciousness…don’t let someone else try to patch me up.”
“Not a chance.”
“And if I die…”
“You’re not gonna die.”
“If I did. Hypothetically.”
His jaw ticked.
“If you did,” he said slowly, “then I’d kill whoever touched you. Then myself, probably.”
You let out a hoarse huff. “Jesus. That’s grim.”
“It’s honest.”
And it was.
Because he would. That was the part that terrified him. He would level cities for you. Not because it was right. Not because he’d made a vow. But because he couldn’t breathe without you anymore and he didn’t know when that had happened.
He leaned in. Flashlight shifting under his elbow. Blood soaked the makeshift cloth beneath you. The bullet was lodged against something slick and resistant. He knew the second he twisted, you’d scream.
He swallowed. Adjusted his grip.
“If this fucks up, it’s gonna hurt like hell,” he muttered. “So you need to stay with me, alright?”
You made a noise. Not quite a word. Not quite a yes.
He couldn’t stop now.
“Just keep talkin’, sweetheart. Anything. Tell me what kind of pizza we’re getting. Tell me a lie. Tell me where you see yourself in five years—”
“I’m bleeding out on a rotting cot in the woods, Buck,” you rasped. “Not interviewing for my dream job.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t wanna hear it.”
You blinked slow. “You first, then.”
He didn’t think. Couldn’t. The panic had tunneled too deep. He started speaking before he meant to.
“Five years from now,” voice low, working the metal free inch by inch, “we’re retired. You hate the house I picked but only complain about the goddamn mugs. You make fun of me for how I fold laundry. You still steal all the blankets. And some poor bastard down the road asks what it’s like being married to the grumpiest man alive and you tell them I’ve always been soft on you.”
His fingers adjusted instinctively, and there it was, the clean edge of the casing caught between the tips. A perfect hold. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. Just braced himself, every nerve wound tight as wire.
He cleared his throat. “Got it. On three.”
You didn’t speak.
“Three.”
He yanked.
A scream ripped from your throat, half-swallowed into his shoulder as you surged forward, clutching at his arm. Blood poured hot and fast, but the bullet clinked into the basin beside the cot.
He dropped the tweezers. Hands went to pressure. To cloth. To you.
“You’re okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay. Just keep breathing.”
You nodded faintly, head lolling back against the pillow.
He didn’t realize how close his face was to yours until the storm flash lit up the room—and he saw the way your eyes were fixed on him.
“Did you mean that?”
He blinked.
“What?”
Your lashes were heavy, lips pale, but there was no mistaking the way your gaze held him now. Steady. Anchored. Like you’d come back to yourself just enough to feel it. The weight of what he’d said, the shape it had taken, the shape it could still take if either of you were stupid enough to say it again.
“You said we’d be married,” you whispered.
His jaw ticked. “You were going into shock.”
“I wasn’t hearing things.”
“You were half-conscious.”
“And you still said it.”
He exhaled through his nose, sharp and shallow, dragging the blood-soaked cloth tighter around your thigh with more care than force. His hands didn’t match the way his mouth tensed.
“It was nothing. Just words.”
You didn’t believe that. He could see you didn’t. And that was worse. You weren’t teasing. You weren’t cornering him. You were just looking at him. Like maybe you’d known this was in him before he did. Like maybe you’d been waiting for it to slip out.
And god, he wanted to run.
Not because he didn’t mean it. But because he did. Too much. Too fast. In ways he couldn’t survive.
He pressed the cloth harder against your leg, then grabbed another strip of cloth from the field kit, wrapping it tight, methodical, just above the wound. Tourniquet style. Not too high and not too tight, just enough to slow the bleed.
His hands moved on instinct, the muscle memory of field medicine kicking in even as his mind spun. He checked your pulse. Inner thigh. Faint, but steady. He exhaled. Forced himself not to shake.
“I wouldn’t mind,” you said softly, “being a Mrs. Barnes one day.”
He stilled.
For a second, you thought maybe he didn’t hear you right. Or maybe he’d frozen, like his mind shorted out and hadn’t rebooted yet.
His heart flipped. Fucked off entirely, probably.
You shifted slightly, voice smaller. “But only if you keep folding laundry the wrong way. And keep picking ugly mugs.”
His laugh cracked at the edges. Like old bark. Like something split down the middle.
“You hate those mugs.”
“Yeah,” you murmured. “But you love them. And I love you.”
His breath caught. Chest tight. No armor. No dodge. No shield left between the two of you now.
“You’re not allowed to say that,” he said hoarsely. “Not when you’re this fucked up.”
“I’m lucid enough,” you whispered. “Don’t make me take it back.”
He didn’t.
He looked at your hand, still curled near his arm. Blood beneath your nails. Pulse stuttering in your wrist.
“I don’t even have a ring,” he said before he could stop himself.
You laughed. Soft. Breathless. Real.
“That’s okay. You’ve got gauze.”
He swallowed.
“I’d want to do it right,” he said, more to the floor than to you.
You reached up, brushed your knuckles against his cheek. Just barely there.
“Right now,” you whispered, “you just pulled a bullet out of my leg and said you’d kill the world for me. I think that counts.”
He leaned into your touch. Just for a second. Just long enough to let the part of him that still believed in things like vows and porches and soft lives feel it.
“Mrs. Barnes,” he murmured, testing it, letting the sound break in his mouth. “You sure about that?”
Your lips barely moved. “Why don’t you ask me?”
His head lifted just slightly, eyes catching yours through the stormlight. And it hit him like a second shot to the chest—cleaner than the first, but just as deep.
Why don’t you ask me?
So simple. So fucking impossible.
Because it was too big. Because it wasn’t a joke anymore. Because the second he said the words, really said them, he couldn’t take them back. Not like all the other things he’d lost to time. Not like the names they’d stripped from him or the missions they’d made him forget. This one, he’d remember.
He looked down at your leg, at the blood still leaking through cloth. His hands had steadied. His breathing hadn’t.
Why don’t you ask me?
Because what if you said yes just because you were scared. Because you thought you were dying. Because he looked like a man who needed saving and you were always the type to offer your hands even when yours were already shaking.
He looked at you, chest tight, and thought you don’t know what you’re saying. Not really. Not now. Not like this.
But then your thumb moved. Just once. Across the hinge of his jaw. And the quiet in your eyes told him yes, you did know. You always had.
He dropped his gaze, voice rough. “It’s just…”
He let it sit there. Let it ache.
“It’s not supposed to be this way,” he murmured, eyes flicking to the bloodied gauze still pressed to your leg. “I was supposed to have flowers. A ring. I was supposed to have something better for you than a leaking roof and a med kit that expired in 2015.”
His throat worked. His jaw locked.
He should’ve said it right then. Should’ve just spoken.
But instead—
“I didn’t think I was allowed to want this,” he said, voice low, uneven. “Not after everything I did. Not after everything that was done to me.”
You didn’t interrupt.
He swallowed. Continued.
“I used to think if I ever got out, I’d live quiet. Alone. Keep to myself. Go somewhere cold. Make peace with the fact that I’d never get to be anyone real again.”
His hand twitched where it held yours.
“And then you showed up. Like some pain-in-the-ass fever dream with too many opinions and terrible taste in music. You just—you didn’t leave. You stayed. You made fun of my shirts. You memorized my nightmares. You never once flinched at what I used to be.”
He looked up, then. Just barely. Just enough to meet your gaze.
“You made me want things again.”
You blinked. He could see the tears gathering now, not falling yet, just clinging to the edges like dew. Shaking. Waiting.
He shifted, exhaled through his nose, then slowly reached toward the chain tucked under his shirt. The tags clicked quietly against one another as he drew them out—worn, scraped, edges dulled. He hesitated. Thumb running along the groove of his name.
Barnes, James B.
Property of the U.S. Army.
And below that werenumbers. Codes. The echo of orders that used to own him.
They were the only thing he’d ever been given back when he’d stopped being a person. They were the last thing that made him his.
He huffed a breath. Shaky. Wet around the edges.
“And I don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you. I think maybe it was the first time you told Sam to shut up without looking up from your lunch when you knew it was a bad day. Or maybe it was the time you stayed up with me for four hours just so I could get ten minutes of sleep without a nightmare.”
His mouth quirked, not a smile, just a break in the grief.
“I’d want to give you more than this. Not a safehouse or some half-muttered promise with your blood on my hands. I’d want to give you everything.”
He looked at you now. Really looked.
“But I can’t.”
Your breath hitched. “Bucky—”
“All I’ve got is this.”
His voice was rough, worn down to its bones. He lifted the tags where they rested, cold and inert against his chest, like they hadn't once hung heavy with every name he’d buried, every order he’d followed. He hadn’t taken them off in years. Not since Wakanda. Not since they rewired the storm in his head and called it healing. Not since he’d started remembering how to breathe without a trigger warning stitched into his ribs.
But now?
Now he held them in his palm like they were something fragile. Like they might mean more in yours.
“I know it’s not a ring,” he muttered. “I just... I didn’t want to wait.”
His heart was punching up into his throat, each beat louder than the last. He wasn’t sure when he’d started shaking. Just that it was everywhere—under his skin, in his voice, in the ghost of a life he’d never thought he’d want back until you gave it shape.
He didn’t look away. Couldn’t. You were still bleeding. Still half-broken in his arms. But you were there. And alive. And looking at him like maybe he wasn’t a ruin of a man. Like maybe, even now, there was something left in him worth holding onto.
So he asked.
“Will you marry me?”
It didn’t sound the way it had in his head. It wasn’t confident. Wasn’t clean. It cracked at the center, frayed at the edges, barely held together by the breath it rode in on. Wrecked and unguarded and true in the way only something broken and rebuilt could be.
But it was his. And it was real.
You didn’t answer at first. Just stared at him—wide-eyed, wrecked, like the question had hollowed you out from the inside. And maybe it had. Maybe this was a bad time. Maybe he was a goddamn idiot for doing it now, here, with blood on his hands and guilt in his lungs and everything still burning in the corners of the room.
But then you nodded. Once. Then again. And again.
“Yes.” A whisper. Broken glass and salt. You swallowed hard, voice splitting again as you said it louder. “Yes. Of course I will.”
The sob hit him sideways. He didn’t mean to. Didn’t plan it. It just caught in his throat and stayed there, and suddenly your hands were on his face, and he was leaning in, and—
He kissed you.
It was desperate. Salty. A little off-center. His lip caught on yours, and your nose bumped his, and neither of you could breathe right but it didn’t matter. It was messy and clumsy and wet with tears and still somehow perfect.
His hand cradled the back of your head like he thought you might slip away, like if he didn’t hold on, the whole world might tilt again. And yours fisted into his jacket like you’d forgotten how to let go.
You were both shaking.
You pulled apart only because you had to. Because the world hadn’t stopped spinning even if it felt like it had. And then, quiet again, he moved.
He brought the tags forward.
Didn’t rush.
Didn’t speak.
He waited until you nodded, slow, sure, already teary again, and only then did he lift the chain and slide it over your head. Careful. Reverent. Like it mattered.
The tags settled on your chest, clinking softly as they touched your skin. They were cold. Real. Still streaked faintly with red.
But they were yours now.
His breath caught again, sharper this time. Not because it hurt. But because it didn’t. Because maybe this was what hope felt like when it didn’t come with a body count.
He pressed his forehead to yours and closed his eyes.
Mine, he thought. Not the government’s. Not the ghost’s. Not the weapon’s.
Yours.
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my friend is at the brink of homelessness, and it would mean a lot to me and him if you would help, even a little goes a long way. if you can’t donate, please please please reblog!!
Hello, my family and I are close to being evicted to homeless and our savings together … Angel Nallely needs your support for Help a Family
author’s note: i had the pleasure of writing this for a friend’s oc! a bit of lore, her name is stella, and she was born out of a dying child’s wish. upon completion, her existence is threatened, as the universe sees no reason for her to stay. should she stay for her lover, or go through with her duty? spicy conflict 😛 if you have any questions, feel free to comment, and im sure she’ll answer any questions you might have! i had so much fun writing this, especially with my ex texting me, as that was a main motivator 🥰 without further ado, enjoy! (ps, italicized passages are flashbacks :) )
just for you, @vevanine <3
===========
it had been five years since he lost her; five years since his whole world ended, while the outside one moved on; five years since all that remained from her memory was a small wooden token. as he sat on his balcony, his thumb ran over the familiar grainy grooves of his star, a wishing star left by the one he loved. it was selfish, really- the way he resented the fact she sacrificed herself. his star. his wishing star.
when she died, or, rather, her body died, she exploded into a burst of light, a flash of small stars appearing everywhere. the explosion burned those who were close to her body. stars scratched his skin, branding imprints onto it; a faint reminder of the fact that she was real, she existed. her last breaths were spent explaining that to bring her back, the avengers needed to wish on their respective star, and she would appear. everyone took a vow to not use their star until absolutely necessary, due to the fact that it was a single use wish. it had been like that for years; steve was gone, tony was gone, nat was gone, thor was off planet, and everyone who had ever fought alongside her moved on- except him. it seems as if the world was wiped clean of her memory, as if all that she had given was small enough to be shrugged off. he resented that. he resented the world, the stars, the fact that she had to die.
he never failed to talk to her, though. every night, before going to sleep- that is, if he was able to get some- he would walk outside. regardless of the weather, he would sit out on his balcony, look up at the sky, and just speak. sometimes it was long paragraphs, other times it was a heavy sigh. he closed his eyes, opened his heart, and spoke.
———
on a calm and quiet evening, stella and bucky were stargazing. she knew the constellations like the back of her hand, and although he didn’t know much of what she was talking about, he always listened. on this particular evening, she seemed troubled. her sentences were short, her breath was long and calculated. as she laid next to him, she held his hand and ran her thumb across his knuckles. his hands were calloused, which upset her so. she could visualize the amount of pain needed to cause such hardened hands, and even if he never spoke of it, she knew a part of him still felt the wounds as if they were fresh. trying to get her mind out of dark thoughts, she asked him a question, interrupting the comfortable silence between them.
“do you ever think that the stars could listen?”
he took a minute to ponder her rather juvenile question.
“in what way?” he played along. she sensed he was teasing her, so she pinched his side.
“i’m being serious. do you think they look at us and, i don’t know…do something?” he paused.
“like…as if we’re their toys in a little sandbox?”
“yes.” he took a beat. he didn’t think it was all predetermined by a higher being, or rather, beings, but he did like to think there was someone up there.
“i’m sure they can listen. i don’t know if they choose to intervene, though.”
“hmm.” she hummed in response. she seemed to accept his answer, which eased him.
“if i ever become a star, i’d make sure to always listen to you.”
“doll, if you were a star, i think you would be too busy being light years away.”
“ha ha, bucky barnes.” she giggled, and leaned her head on his shoulder. it seemed like a memorized routine, a natural, comfortable one. many morning were spent gazing into each others eyes, many breakfasts spent over some silly conversation topic. though he was a man out of time, and she was, well, outside of time, it seemed only natural that it was meant to be. he held on to her smooth hands, baby soft compared to his rough hands. it calmed him to realize she didn’t experience what he has, and he felt like it was his duty to keep it that way.
suddenly, she sat up. her hand rushed to her forehead, and she winced. worried, he sat up and cradled her head.
“stardust, are you alright?” the nickname never failed to bring a smile to her face, a little pun about her origin.
“yes, i-“ she winced again. she curled up closer to his chest, as if to anchor herself from unknown pain. her hands were turning cold, seemingly out of nowhere. alarmed, he shook her from her trance. her eyes snapped back to focus on him, her eyebrows knitted in worry.
“talk to me.” he sounded scared, his usual reserved tone thrown out the window.
“it was…the council.” the council of all that was, all that had been, and all that will be. the council that put her there, the very same council that wants her out.
“no, stella. please, did you tell them no?” she wistfully smiled at him, knowing exactly what he was referring to. their time together had a limit, and that limit was approaching fast.
“my dear sargent, let’s not focus on what lies ahead.” small tears pricked at her eyes, and he tenderly wiped them away, careful not to mess with her makeup. he noticed the strap of her dress was falling, so he tentatively curled his fingers around it and fixed it for her. she hummed, a little surprised at the intimacy of his actions, and grabbed his hand. she placed a gentle kiss on it, leaving a small star impression, which glowed for a moment or two, then disappeared.
“i love it when you do that.” he smiled, his soft voice giving her butterflies.
“i don’t know what you mean.” she teased back, peppering more kisses on his hands.
———
he lost track of time. he didn’t often fall asleep outside, let alone when it’s cold. however, on this particular night, he just couldn’t bear anything. he stared at his little wooden star, his small reminder that he lost the love oh his life. angrily, he gripped the star with white knuckles, hoping to do something. break it? he wasn’t sure, all he knew is that whatever he was doing, it was working to alíviate the resentment. after he exhausted himself due to his anger, he sat down on his balcony and sighed. he leaned on his knees, blocking himself to the sights and sounds of his city.
“please…” he whispered to anybody who would listen. the star in his hand started glowing, eagerly listening to his words.
“please. i miss you.”
the star dissolved into little particles, similar to sand. he watched it slip through his hands, both metal and flesh, and watched as the only remnant of her existent fell through the rails of the fire escape. he blinked a couple times, incredulous of the fact that he just lost her, again. he waited for something to happen, he knew how much the universe loved its theatrics, but nothing happened. the sky didn’t light up, the ground didn’t shake, the stars didn’t speak. instead, he felt as if they were laughing at him.
———
after completing her glorious purpose, she grew ill, extremely ill; the kind of illness you can’t simply come back from. her body rejected food, rejected sleep, rejected the ability to stay alive. he spent every waking hour by her side, telling her about some new mission steve was embarking on, or some new recipe vision was attempting to create. he spoke and spoke about anything and everything, hoping the small increments of his life would increase hers.
in nature, the death of a star is called a supernova. supernovas are massive explosions that can outshine an entire galaxy, releasing a massive of energy and elements to space. his star, his beautiful stella, was dying in front of him- and there was nothing he could do about it.
the day came in which he realized she would not see another. she smiled to him, accepting her fate. she called upon to those who could attend, and explained what would happen after her parting. she advised them to leave her to die alone, for risk of harming them when she would pass on. of course, they didn’t oblige, which she was grateful for. it felt like time stood still when she was taking her last breaths, a smile gracing her tired features.
“ill be seeing you.” she said, a recall to one of their favorite songs.
suddenly, her body began to glow as she started to dissipate, her skin burning those who touched her. small stars started to shoot out, fizzing out on impact with the sterile, cold air. they hurt like crazy when touched, but he didn’t dare move from her side. the small stars cut his skin, leaving scars in their wake. he didn’t budge.
eventually, it all stopped. her bed was left empty, the imprint of her body still heavy on the sheets. all was gone, except for seven wooden stars and a note. the note read instructions on how to use the wishing stars, emphasizing that they were single use. he felt robbed.
“ill be seeing you, doll.”
———
frustrated, he walked inside his apartment. he shook his head, attempting to remove the foul memory of her death away. hot angry tears fell down his cheeks, but he didn’t care to supress them. he grabbed his coat, a pack of cigarettes, his house keys, and started walking out of his home, but not before giving a kiss goodbye to alpine, and telling her to guard the house. he walked and walked, reaching a small park a couple blocks away. he didn’t care to stop, but he knew he couldn’t walk too far from his home. with a heavy sigh, he sat on a bench. it was completely dark, aside from one dim lamp softly lighting the trees next to him. the small shadows cast on by the leaves left him focused on the pattern on the ground. he had stopped crying, but the pit in his stomach stayed. as if it had been ingrained into his muscle memory, he took out a cigarette and lit it. a small puff of smoke surrounded him, and he closed his eyes, lost in the trance of his poison of choice. he sucked in a breath, being mindful of the weight of the cigarette in his hand. he scanned his fingers, noting how the small scars of the stars left by her death were fading. he was gearing up to take another drag, when a small voice interrupted his train of thoughts.
“i never liked when you did that.” it was her voice, this he knew. however, as he frantically looked around, he couldn’t see her. bucky didn’t get hallucinations, but it felt that there was no other explanation for this.
“what’s it to you? you know it has no effect.” he softly spoke, scared to scare away the auditory illusion.
———
on a lazy afternoon, sometime in spring, she brought up the elephant in the room again. they were on his couch, her head leaning on his shoulder as they “watched” some random black and white movie. in reality, she was thinking very deeply about the near future, and he was thinking about her. he always thought about her, the way she felt under his touch, the way her eyes were so entrancing, the way her melodious voice could make anything sound interesting. he flippantly palmed a cigarette from the nearby table, and felt her stir as she heard the sparks from the lighter. she rarely hid her emotions, and this time was no different. her face turned into a soft frown, her delicate features turning slightly disappointed at his actions.
“i don’t like when you do that.” she spoke as he took a drag of his cigarette. of course, he thought she was talking about his smoking habits. she was, yes- but there was something else on her mind.
“star face, you know it has no effect on me.” he spoke as if his words were dancing out of his mouth, his face with a teasing expression. she rolled her eyes, but didn’t smile. his flirtatious attitude simmered, and he treaded carefully.
“stella?” there was a tension in the air. they both knew they weren’t talking about the cigarette.
“no.” she replied, firmly. he scoffed, and starting speaking.
“you promised we wouldn’t talk about it, so forgive me for thinking you were just talking about this-“ he started while motioning to the cigarette in hand, his tone trailing the thin line between frustration and betrayal.
“you have no right to judge me when you know- you know, what i have to do.”
“what if you don’t have to? what if-“
“you know there’s no other way. it’s my-“
“don’t you dare say duty. don’t say that word.” they spoke over one another, the pent up frustration over months of staying silent about this conversation suddenly bursting through their words.
“but it is.”
“there it is. you can’t force yourself to go through with this, you know. your life matters too.”
“more than everyone else’s?” he groaned as those words left her mouth. he knew there was no right way to answer that question.
“and what if i said yes? would that be so bad?”
“bucky, i can’t. it’s my duty, my obligation-“ she spoke with determination, but she knew that this decision would hurt both of them.
“am i selfish for wanting you to stay?” she clenched her jaw as he admitted his vulnerability.
“you’re not. i just…” she paused. she took a deep breath, recollecting herself.
“you and steve would say something to each other, correct?” he pressed his lips together, knowing what she was going to say next.
“i’ll be with you till the end of the line. right?” she continued as he stayed silent. he closed his eyes. he can’t hold it against her, it’s her whole reason of being alive. her ultimate sacrifice would mean the survival for everyone, including him.
“bucky, what if this-“
“don’t.” he interrupted quietly. he held her face, leaning his forehead against hers.
“please.” he begged, resigned.
“what if this is it? what if this is the end of the line?” she whispered, a small but noticeable quiver in her voice.
“you have no right to leave me, star.” there was no venom in his words, just defeat.
“you have no right to hinder my mission, soldier.” she smiled softly at him, their salty tears mixing together and staining her shirt, the damp material clinging to her skin.
“you’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” he scoffed, a smile encroaching his face as well. he ran his fingers through her hair, and ran his thumb across her cheek as she leaned into his touch.
“you never fail to remind me.”
———
his tired eyes scanned his surroundings once again, trying to make her figure out of the darkness. he put out the cigarette butt with the palm of his metal hand, the hiss of the hot filter meeting the cold metal surrounding the space.
“doll, you said you’d always listen to me.”
“darling, i have been.”
he leaned his head back to the metal frame of the bench. with his eyes closed and his brows furrowed, he gently parted his lips. he exhaled a sigh, shaking his head slightly.
“you’re not real.” he managed to whisper.
“excuse me?”
“i said…” he started, opening his eyes and standing up.
“you’re not-“ he locked eyes with her. she was standing there, she was actually, genuinely, 100% there.
“real.” he added the last part in a hushed tone, his breath hitched as he took her sight in.
———
nights were spent in close proximity, usually with her curled up on top of him. without fail, he would caress her hair until she fell asleep, which never took too long. one summer night in particular was different.
he was humming to some lost melody of his past, and she was tracing the metal plates of his arm.
“darling?” she interrupted the comfortable silence. her voice was like honey to him, and his heart melted at her delicate tone.
“yes, my dear?” he let her get comfortable as she sat up, letting her hands guide his to her waist as she sat on his lap.
“when were you planning on telling me?” he blinked once, then twice. he tilted his head slightly, his parted lips showing that he was thinking over what she said.
“im sorry?”
“i was cleaning your desk today, and there was a box tucked away- terribly, might i add- in a corner.” he chuckled sheepishly at her dig of his hiding habits.
“did you…open it?” she shook her head.
“you know what’s in it.” he added, in a matter of factly tone.
“i do.”
“you weren’t supposed to see it, doll.”
“i know.” she smiled, pushing the strands of hair away from his face, his pink tinted cheeks growing warmer by the second.
“i didn’t want to scare you off…” he trailed as his eyes darted to the side.
“you wouldn’t. how long…how long have you known?”
“known?”
“that you were- um, ready.” he noticed a twing of nervousness in her voice.
“a month. or, maybe more. ive had the ring for a while.” he admitted, gaining enough courage to meet her eyes.
“right.”
“you?”
she took a moment to answer.
“a while.” she breathlessly chuckled as he took her hand, tracing her lines, her scars, and her palm.
“why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered sweetly, placing a kiss on her hand.
“i was waiting for you to catch up.”
“right.” he chuckled as well. of course she wouldn’t make her sentiments known, she always left little clues as to what was on her mind. occasionally, it seemed as if she spoke in riddles, and he spent hours trying to piece her puzzle together.
“what now?” he locked eyes with her and asked. her cheeks were also tinted with a red hue, but she looked like she was glowing. everything about her was effervescent: her smile, her eyes, her hair. even in days where she was tired and clothed in old t-shirts, he still felt butterflies in his stomach when she would look his way.
“i think…and this is just a hunch-“ she giggled as he rolled his eyes. “i think you have to ask now.”
he took her sight in. his brain couldn’t possibly understand that someone loves him, like genuinely cares and appreciates him the way he always hoped for.
“stella…”
“yes?”
“is this real?”
———
he was frozen. the love of his life was in front of him, flesh and blood, star matter and star dust, and he was there, standing like an idiot. his breath quickened, and he dared not move, in case his hallucinations grew strong enough to become visual. she tentatively took a step forward, careful not to scare him off.
“bucky, i-“
she was cut off by him engulfing her in an overwhelming hug. sobs struck his body, and his legs gave up. he kneeled in front of her, not caring that he might be hugging her too hard.
“i didn’t- i thought- stella? i thought i would never see you again.” he managed to say through broken cries.
she hugged him back. of course, she hugged him back. five years she spent looking after him, looking after the sobs that filled the night, listening to his wants, his pains, his joys. she would respond, but he couldn’t listen to her voice. she would hold him, but he couldn’t feel her touch. occasionally, she would sing to him, songs of memories long ago. she was there, and he could touch her. she was there, and he could hear her. she was there, and he could breathe her in.
“i told you, sarg. i’d-“ she attempted to speak, but her own cries muffled her voice against his neck. “i said i’d be seeing you.”
———
bucky never wanted children. he felt that there were enough super soldiers in the world, and he didn’t want to risk adding to that population with his offspring. however, he couldn’t lie that there was a small feeling in the back of his mind when seeing fathers with their kids. he couldn’t brush off the daydream when looking at small baby clothes at a store, or seeing a mom pushing a stroller at the park. he never voiced his thoughts out loud, thinking that this topic was too…much. it wasn’t until him and stella were in bed one night that he brought up the notion.
“would you ever want-“
“kids?” she interrupted him, reading his face like a book.
“how did you know?”
“i may not be able to read your mind, bucky, but i can see the way you look at babies.” he hummed. maybe he wasn’t as good at hiding his emotions as he thought.
“well?”
“im unsure if i can have them.” she admitted. despite how serious the topic was, they seemed to be very casual in conversation.
“because…you’re a-“
“star.” she finished his sentence with him. despite her very human look, touch, and feel, she was very much not one. she chuckled a bit at the absurdity of how that sounded.
“i’m sure that i can get…you know, but i don’t know if i can…you know. carry it to term, or whatever.” she motioned as she spoke, her hands hovering over her stomach.
“i see.” he added. there was that, nothing else to add. he mentally shut that file and shoved it deep in his mind.
“do you resent that?” she asked, with a very neutral face. because of who they were, their conversations never danced around feelings, and they spoke very forward. he was grateful for this, because it seemed that they couldn’t take things the wrong way.
“pardon?”
“do you resent the fact that i can’t get…you know?” she blinked, her head tilted to her side. he noticed her eyebrows were furrowed ever so slightly.
“no, i don’t. and i mean, even if you could, i’m not sure the fetus could withstand the super soldier DNA.” he thought methodically. their terminology felt very clinical, but it seemed only appropriate.
“true, i didn’t even think of that.”
“so you have thought about it?”
“well, of course. it seemed like the natural next step.”
“mmm.” he hummed in acknowledgement. his hands naturally fell to the crook of her neck, where some strands of hair laid. he gently moved them, and started massaging that sweet spot close to her throat, noting how delicate she felt.
“if we could have them, though, i would love to have named one cass, or cassie.”
“after the constellation?”
“you know me so well.” she giggled, as he continued massaging her shoulder. she hummed in content, orienting herself close to him.
“i haven’t even thought of names, really.”
“just about having them?”
“yeah. i’m sure i would’ve just named one of them after steve.”
“one of them? how many were you thinking of having?” she chuckled, feeling grateful that this conversation was lighthearted, despite the deep sadness of not being able to have little ones.
“don’t judge?” he asked in a small voice, a smile overtaking his face as well.
“never.”
“maybe seven.”
“good lord-“ she exclaimed, smiling as he laughed gently.
“or six, you know. can’t have them getting lonely. plus if they got bullied in school, they have backup.”
“and you would know a lot about that.”
“yes, actually.” his face turned serious, which in turn, made her laugh harder. “if you thought steve needed backup, shit, i needed backup! you think it’s easy protecting some wimpy kid?”
“oh, my.” she grinned at him, taking his sight in. he was a gentle man, and a gentler lover.
“but since we can’t have them, at least we won’t have to worry about them getting beat up.”
“true.” she added, noting how there was some sadness behind his eyes.
“so…” he trailed off.
“we can get a cat.” she stated softly, taking his hand off of her shoulder and holding it. his eyes lit up.
“a cat?”
“sure! you mentioned you had a couple growing up, we can get one. or two, or-“
“seven.” he finished, chuckling with her.
“maybe just one.” she smiled, closing the space between them with a tender kiss.
———
she sat next to him on the bench. she hadn’t aged a single day, and her locks of hair fell perfectly on her shoulders, as if she was a painting of who she used to be.
“your hair is long.” she spoke, a sad smile appearing as she ran her fingers through his hair. he hadn’t been keeping up with his appearance, and he knew he looked a bit rough. however, he knew that she liked his hair long, so for years, he kept it that way.
“it is. yours isn’t.” he replied, star struck with the fact he could talk to her and have her respond in real time, in real life, in front of him.
“and i see you’ve kept the beard. you look so grown up.” she chuckled slightly, running a finger across his jaw, feeling the prickly hair tickle her.
“doll, how…how?” he interrupted her small talk.
“i don’t know. i’m just, here.” she stared wistfully at him.
“are you real?” he stared at her incredulous. there was a chance that he actually went completely off the rails, and his hallucinations grew stronger. she smiled softly.
“oh, my sargent.” she exclaimed softly, embracing him once more.
“i don’t know how long i have left.” his heart sank as she spoke.
“wait, you’re leaving again?”
“i don’t…i don’t know. i just got here, and-“
“i thought you could stay.” he added, defeatedly. she took a deep breath.
“just for tonight.” she smiled mournfully, meeting the eyes of her lover.
“and when i wake?”
———
bucky couldn’t sleep most nights. wether it be for the nightmares, or the fact that he thought that if he fell asleep and woke up, everything he had ever loved would be gone, and he would have lost 100 more years. as he stirred, she woke up.
“buck? are you alright?” sheepishly, he nodded, a bit embarrassed that he caused her to wake up.
“yeah, i just-“ he was interrupted by her wiping away a tear.
“you’re crying.”
“oh. i guess, i was. i’m sorry.” he said softly, his eyebrows furrowing. he didn’t realize he was crying, and he cleared his throat.
“nonsense. maybe it was a bad dream.”
“maybe.”
“you have a lot of bad dreams.” she wasn’t asking, merely stating. her bluntness humored him a bit, and he smiled.
“i do.”
“if you have one, i’ll make sure to wake you.”
“right. thank you, sweets.” she nodded and placed a small kiss on his cheek.
“and…” he started.
“and?” she repeated.
“and when i wake?”
———
“and when you wake, i’ll be here.” she smiled fondly, taking his hand, and placing it on her chest.
