Cricket’s Corner

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[cricket-reader]

Cricket-reader’s Masterlist

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You do not have permission to repost or translate my work on any other platforms (even with credit). I reserve the rights to all of my original characters.

Marvel

Avengers - General

Anthony “Tony” Stark

James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes

Loki Laufeyson

Matthew Murdock

Natasha Romanoff

Peter Parker

Steven Rogers

Criminal Minds

Spencer Reid

DC

Clark Kent

Grishaverse

Kaz Brekker

Wylan Van Eck/Hendriks

Inej Ghafa

Jesper Fahey

[cricket-reader]

I read “Catch Me, I’m Falling” and omg, when he says “How can I fix it”— my heart melted

Please forgive me if I’m reading too much into it, but I just wanted to say thank you for writing this. While I don’t have PMDD, I have other disorder(s) that result in similar breakdowns and thought patterns.

I know it won’t change anything, but I am so sorry that you have to go through this. I truly hope that your doctor doesn’t say you’re exaggerating, but I know the truth is that many women have to experience that, and that’s such fucking bullshit.

I hope you have people who can be your Bucky. Sending all my love, and I’m glad you’re still here ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you so much, anon! You are so sweet.

I haven’t brought it up to my doctor (I’m in the process of looking for a new one because the one I had sped through my checkups like he was trying to get it over with in record time). I’ve heard the horror stories, though, and honestly I didn’t even want to try with that doctor.

Sending my love to you, lovely. I hope you too have someone like Bucky that supports you.

[cricket-reader]

catch me, i'm falling (before it's too late)

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: When you are around the team, you move as if you're bracing for impact, shoulders hunched and eyes distant. You disappear into yourself like someone bracing for a storm they've survived time and time again, every instinct turned inward, conserving what little warmth you have left. It happens every month, like clockwork. As if your brain were hardwired to self-destruct at the same time every month. He tells himself it's not his place. What right does he have to barge into your life demanding answers? Because he could easily delude himself into thinking it's nothing. The others haven't noticed—but then again, none of them look the way he does.

Warnings: depression, mentioned self-harm, female!reader (not described and no y/n), reader has PMDD

word count: 5,292

A/N: prompt fill for day 4 of @juneofdoom | "I won't leave you." | Blankets (isn't it ironic that my pmdd caused me to post this super late? Anyways, enjoy!)

{Read on A03}

Bucky notices the pattern long before he ever names it.

At first, it's the little things. Things he wouldn't notice if his soul wasn't tied to yours. Infinitesimal, but by no means something he could justly brush off once the pattern solidified.

It started with cancelled training sessions. And how could he fail to notice the way you continuously dodged the common floor as if it were set ablaze? You'd show up late to dinner when everyone had already finished, and some nights you wouldn't show at all.

On their own, they don't quite set up the alarms. Everybody has off days; everyone needs to take time for themselves—he'd know that better than anyone. But this is different.

When you are around the team, you move as if you're bracing for impact, shoulders hunched and eyes distant. You disappear into yourself like someone bracing for a storm they've survived time and time again, every instinct turned inward, conserving what little warmth you have left.

It happens every month, like clockwork. As if your brain were hardwired to self-destruct at the same time every month.

He tells himself it's not his place. What right does he have to barge into your life demanding answers? Because he could easily delude himself into thinking it's nothing. The others haven't noticed—but then again, none of them look the way he does.

He respects you, and he respects your privacy. If you want to talk, you will, and until then, he'll be right within reach. If you'd want help, you'd ask for it.

But you never do.

And he's never seen it this bad before.

He watches you slip out of common rooms, excuses clipped and practised. Watches you emerge from the bathroom with red-rimmed eyes and drenched sleeves, jaw tight and eyes ready to burst past the dam you’ve built up. He hears the way your voice wobbles when someone asks you how you’re doing. The way you excuse yourself with hardly a word as Walker makes an ill-timed joke, voice teetering on the edge of a full-on meltdown.

You are the furthest thing from okay.

And maybe, selfishly, part of him hates that you don’t come to him. Because he would be there in a heartbeat. Because he’s already there, standing on the fringes. Sniper eyes trained on your body language as if it were a mission imperative. He always makes himself available when he notices the pattern reemerge. Hell, half the nights he spends camped out on the common room couch in case you wander up like a ghost in search of soothing. The other half he spends with an ear to his bedroom door in case you emerge from your cavern.

He cares. Too much. Has for a while now.

So when you don't come out for supper, when the food has been packed away, and the lights turned off, and everyone has retired to their rooms, Bucky has decided he's had enough of waiting for you to come to him.

Bucky knocks at your door, soft and unobtrusive.

No answer.

He knocks again, a little firmer this time. "It's Bucky."

His hearing picks up the muffled sob that escapes your lips. Something ugly and violent twists hard in his chest.

He opens the door slowly, just enough to peek inside. The overhead lights are out; the only lighting is that of the city that never sleeps peeking through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the strung-up fairy lights he had helped you set up around the room. His eyes immediately land on the figure curled up underneath a mound of blankets. You’re shaking in an effort to stay silent; ugly sniffles and breaths of held sobs cut through the silence.

Any thought of waiting until you're ready dies right then and there.

“Hey,” he murmurs, not wanting to break the quiet of the room as he steps inside. “Hey, sweetheart.”

He can see the way you flinch at his words, hands coming up to furiously scrub the tears from your face.

“Sorry,” you can barely form the words over the sobs that beg to be released. “Sorry, just… could you maybe come back later? Right now’s not… not a good time.”

Bucky frowns. He shuts the door behind him to show you he’s not going anywhere. “Do you really want me to go?”

You sniffle, turning away from him and curling your legs up to your chest. “I want to be alone.”

“You’ve been alone all day.” Bucky leans against the door, arms crossed. He wants, no, needs to get to the bottom of this. Whatever has you feeling this way. He needs to bleed the life out of your suffering. To smother it and make sure it never haunts you again. Because you should never feel like this, never feel like you have to hide in the dark and cry yourself dry. "Ava made your favourite. Did you forget?"

He watches your shoulders tense, breath hitching violently. "Not hungry."

Guilt laces your tone, no doubt because you're aware she made it especially for you. Bucky frowns, hesitating in the cavernous space between your bed and the door. He feels as if he's walked into a minefield, one step away from destroying everything the two of you have built over the months you've come to know each other. But he won't walk away, not when you're muffling sobs into a blanket and refusing to eat.

"Wanna talk?" Bucky cringes as soon as the words leave his mouth. He sounds just like Steve when they had been on the run. He couldn't even count the number of times he had heard some iteration of that phrase from him. He meant the best, Bucky knows it with all his heart, but sometimes he just wanted to throttle Steve.

"I said you should leave," you snap, defences raising before immediately crumbling down; your foundations are so weak you can’t build any emotion that doesn’t come crashing back down. “Sorry… I don’t… just go, please.”

He watches you curl into yourself. Equal parts mortified and disgusted with yourself. Your emotions rise like the tide, pulling back too far, leaving everything exposed and aching in its wake.

“It’s okay,” he reassures you, pushing off of the door to come closer. “You’re obviously hurting right now. My ego can take it.”

"That's not-" you scoff, brows twisting up into the most, were it not for the tears in your eyes, adorably bewildered expression- "I'm not good company right now."

Bucky shrugs it off. "Who said I was looking for good company? Maybe I just wanted your company."

"I can't… I'm not going to… You shouldn't be here."

"Everyone has bad days," he isn't quite able to hide the affection in his voice when he says your name.

"It's not that… Well, it is but… You don’t understand, Bucky. I… I don’t even… I can’t explain why… I’m just-” your voice cracks- “I’m just broken, I guess.”

The words hang between you both, heavy like lead. He's never heard you this vulnerable. He wasn't expecting answers, not tonight. But what really gets to him is the finality in your voice. Your tone tries to leave no room for argument. As if you're stating fact rather than self-depreciation. And just looking at you in this moment tells him that you believe your poisoned-laced words without a shred of doubt.

Bucky’s throat tightens.

He ventures to sit on the bed beside you, careful not to get too close. “You’re not broken.” His voice is firm, leaving no room for argument.

The laugh that follows makes his stomach churn. It’s bitter like coffee that’s been brewed far too hot for far too long. Sharp like his best pair of knives. Filled with enough self-hatred to make a grown man weep. It's such a contrast to the laugh you usually share when someone tells a joke or when Walker does something stupid; the kind of laugh that Bucky's certain could light up the universe.

Bucky didn't think he would hear a laugh from you that he'd never want to hear again.

“You only think that because you only know the parts of me I let you see.”

“Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to know more.” Bucky hopes through the darkness you can’t see the way the tips of his ears flush. “If you’d let me, I’d love to get to know all of you.”

“You can’t–you can’t say that, Bucky. You don’t even know-”

“So tell me.”

You pause, blinking up at him, tears still shining on your waterline. “You’re going to run,” you challenge.

“What about me makes you think I’ll run, huh? There ain’t nothing you could do that would scare me. Do you know who I am? Who I was?”

“That’s different,” you dismiss him, fingers curling tight around the blanket; your last line of defence against his relentless pursuit.

“How?”

“Because. It’s… It can’t be explained. I… I can’t explain it; the doctors don’t care to explain it. There’s… there’s nothing anyone can do.”

The word doctors sends a chill through his body. He knew there was something wrong, but… if it was bad enough to have to reach out to doctors…

“What… what exactly is happening?” Bucky furrows his brows. Were you ill? Were you in pain? Why didn’t you tell anyone?

You bury your face in your hands, mumbling something that’s unintelligible against your skin. Bucky tries to be patient, but when forced to reckon with the fact that you could very well be suffering an affliction that could bring about your end faster than he could have ever predicted, he can only stay quiet for so long.

“Please, Sweetheart, talk to me.” He reaches up to take your hands from your face. Cradling them in his own, as if they were porcelain, he tries to meet your water-stained eyes. “I want to help you, but I can’t very well do that if ya keep everything to yourself.”

Tears begin to spill over your waterline, falling down your face in a sight that’s sure to haunt his nightmares to come. “I feel insane, Bucky. He tells me that it’s not a big deal, that—that I’m just being dramatic, but I… it feels like someone has… has ripped my heart like right out of my chest. And… and I was fine yesterday! That’s, I think, the worst part of it all. It’s—I fucking hate it! I can’t stop crying over the stupidest shit and—and I can’t think straight, and everything feels so… so pointless.”

A brick lodges in Bucky’s throat, rendering him speechless. He’s helpless, watching you fall apart right in front of his eyes. The first question on his lips is, Who? Who would dare make you feel as if your feelings weren’t real, as if your pain wasn’t real. But it gets trapped on his tongue, just like all the other pathetic excuses for comfort his brain brings forth.

You look away from him then, hands leaving his more cold and empty than he’s ever felt before. eyes find the textured blanket tangled on your lap. You trace the pattern with your finger. He almost brings his newly freed hands to wipe away the waterfall cascading down your face or to maybe bring your hands back into his. In the end, he just sits there, frozen and wondering how the hell he’s supposed to fix this.

“I just keep thinking,” you murmur, fingernail scratching one of the lines on your blanket, “that it wouldn’t matter if I just… wasn’t here anymore. That everyone would be better off if I just…”

You don’t need to finish the sentence.

Because he sees it.

The way he’d knock on your door after a too-long patch of radio silence. The way he’d call out the pet name he’d affectionately appointed you with. The way his heart would sink straight down to hell when he saw you lying on the ground. The way he’d clutch you to his body, every part of you so, so cold. He’d scream your name; he’d hold you to his chest and pray to a god he stopped believing in since the War. He’d cry and cry and cry, staining your clothes with his grief until someone tore him away from your lifeless body.

He wonders how many times that had come close to being a reality. How many times you had curled up in your bed thinking that was the only escape as he sat waiting for you. How many times you had to stitch yourself back together when there were people who loved you just steps away. How many times it had almost been the last.

“We wouldn’t,” he says, voice catching on the last syllable. Because even the thought of a world without your light was too much to bear. “Be better off, that is.”

A heavy silence settles over the two of you. Even the air feels thick and heavy; maybe that’s just because he’s having a hard time breathing around the ugly truth. To know that all of these months you have been drowning in your own mind with no help, to know that he did nothing to help pull you out of the depths of your despair, it cuts like a knife. He thought he was doing the right thing, thought his intrusion would be unwanted, and it would be better if he waited. He left you to suffer on your own.

And the worst part of it all is that he knows if the roles were reversed, you wouldn’t have hesitated. The proof is there from lingering memories of sitting together on the couch or in the training room, and in some rare cases his own room. The way you sat with him in silence. You knew exactly what he needed without even having to ask. You didn’t turn the TV on, you didn’t try to coax answers out of him, you just sat there with him, doing nothing but being a steady presence by his side. All this time, he was so scared to be pushed away that he never even bothered to try.

You probably felt the same that first night you had found him staring at the black screen of the television, his mind a thousand yards away. But regardless of the possibility that he wouldn’t be accepting of your company, you sat down with him anyway, the sleeves of your sweatshirt hanging over your hands as you cupped your favourite mug and cradled it to your chest. Bucky had hardly known you then, and you him. But you were still there, unabashed in your conviction to not leave him alone despite having only just joined the team.

“I almost relapsed.” The words are so quiet, he almost could’ve sworn he made them up. But when he looks at your face, he sees the way your face pinches, disgust warring with your features.

Bucky swallows around the brick lodged in his throat. “Relapsed?”

You tuck your head further down, shrinking in on yourself as if that would make you invisible. Shame heats your face as you open and close your mouth, trying to bring the words out into the open. “I used to um… I used to… god this is… so hard to say out loud.”

Bucky gives you the time you need. He doesn’t try to fill in the blanks, to try and voice what you so desperately need to get out in the open himself. His hand finds its way back to yours, the one that’s begun to dig into the flesh of your thigh through your thin pyjama pants.

You take a breath. “I used to hurt myself. I try not to anymore, but… it’s hard.”

Bucky’s stomach swirls. He’s seen the scars, of course he has. But they all looked so faded. Like a distant memory. Something that was to be left in the past to stay. He wonders if you would have taken metal to your skin once more if he hadn’t barged into your downward spiral. Wonders if he was just a few minutes later, if he would’ve opened your door to see glinting metal and bloody wrists.

Bucky reaches for you then. He pulls you into his arms before you can even think to retreat. It’s only for half a second that you stiffen, poised to push him away, but you don’t. No, you collapse into him under the weight of everything you’ve shared and everything you haven’t. Your bones melt to putty as he holds you to his chest, his flesh hand rubbing your back in an attempt to soothe you. And then, you begin to cry. You sob so hard, it steals the breath from your lungs, leaving you gasping for air as you fist the material of his faded Henley. He continues to comfort you the best he knows how, ignoring how his eyes are beginning to shine as well. His heart continues to crack open as you tremble in his arms, shaking apart like a flower being tossed around in a hurricane.

“I don’t… Why does it get this bad?” Bucky asks when your sobs have subsided. “How can I fix it?”

You shake your head against his chest, hands still clenched around his shirt as if terrified that he’d let you go. As if he ever wanted to let you go now that he knows just how close he came to losing you. “There’s nothing that can fix it, Bucky. I told you… I’m broken.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Even after I’ve soaked your shirt with snot and tears?”

Bucky huffs. “Even still.” He pauses. “I noticed that it only gets really bad at the same time every month. Why is that? Did something happen around that time, or… I don’t know-”

“You noticed?” You pull away from him then, your red-rimmed eyes wide as they stare up at his face.

“Hard not to-” Bucky backtracks when he sees your face crumble- “I’ve uh, I notice things that most people don’t—been trained to actually. I don’t think the others have noticed—not as much as me at least.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He watches you sniffle, your hands coming up to wipe away the remaining moisture clinging to your skin. And he wishes that he could prevent this from happening again. Wishes to banish the dark cloud from your mind before it even begins. Because you don’t deserve whatever’s making you feel so down.

“Would there be a way to prevent it from getting this bad?” Bucky asks. “No matter how much I wish you would, you don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want, but is there anything I can do?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you… It’s just…” You trail off, face heating under his scrutiny. “It’s… I don’t want you to think… Well, my doctor… he, he thinks I’m just… exaggerating.”

Resentment courses through Bucky for a man he doesn’t even know. How could anyone take such serious words, such serious circumstances lightly? Even if you were exaggerating, which you’re not, doesn’t he have a duty, as a doctor, to help? Because even if someone were exaggerating about their mental health, there’s clearly an underlying issue.

“That’s bullshit,” Bucky finds himself spitting out with a vitriol he didn’t know he was capable of.

“You—I haven’t even said what it is yet!” Your protest falls on deaf ears.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Bucky,” you sigh, burying your face in your hands. You mumble something into your palms, the words lost to his ears.

“What was that?”

“It’s because I’m on my period.” Your voice is laced with shame, face twisted as if you’re preparing for him to storm out, expecting him to belittle you or agree with your idiotic doctor.

Bucky won’t say he understands it. Because he doesn’t. Not by a long shot. A woman’s monthly was not something widely discussed when he was growing up. In fact, it was something to be hidden, something to be ashamed of as far as he knew. He had grown up with a mother and sisters, so he knows that they exist, but that’s about it.

“Your… period… causes this?” Bucky questions. Did all women have to go through this monthly? How would he not have noticed his mother or sisters falling into such a depression?

He immediately regrets how he formed the question, wishing he could shove the words back down his throat, but it’s too late. You’re already retreating into yourself, pulling your body further from his, eyes growing glassy. “I know. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t—it’s-”

“It’s not stupid.” Bucky reaches for your hands, attempting to anchor you to him so you don’t drift away. “I just… I didn’t know that it could cause… this.”

“It’s not really something that’s been studied… or well documented. My doctor says I’m just being dramatic, and I am. It’s not like… It’s not like I really have a reason to feel… like this. I just… whenever it happens it feels like the world is ending, like everything is pointless and-” You cut yourself off with a shake of your head.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “You didn’t ask for any of this shit-”

“Yes, I did. Don’t you remember me tellin’ you that I want to know what’s going on?”

“Well, yes, but… but it’s not like something you could fix. The same damn thing is going to happen next month and the month after that. I know the pattern, but I can never stop it. You might as well just give up whilst you’re ahead.”

Bucky doesn’t even attempt to hide how affronted he is by your suggestion. How could he ever leave you when he now knows the depths of your suffering? No matter how inexplicable, no matter how inevitable, he would stand by you to the end of the earth if it meant you didn’t have to fight this alone.

You notice him about to open his mouth to protest, so you quickly jump in before he can get a word in. “I can handle this. I’ve been doing this long enough to-”

“You shouldn’t deprive yourself of comfort.” His voice shakes just slightly, but it’s enough that even he knows you don’t miss it.

“I wanted to wait,” he admits quietly, his thumb rubbing up and down your hand. “Thought you’d come to me when you were ready–or even one of the others. But watching you tear apart at the seams every month and pretend you’re fine?” He exhales shakily. “I just can’t do it anymore.”

The way you look up at him steals the breath straight out of his lungs. It’s as if, instead of admitting that he had common human decency, he had admitted to hanging all the stars in the galaxy just for you. Unable to bear your gaze, he brings you into his arms.

You cling to him like he’s the only solid thing left on this earth. He holds onto you as if he had lost you. Simultaneously trying to forget that he almost had.

“I’ve wanted to take care of you for a long time,” he adds, almost too soft to hear. “Didn’t want to overstep. Didn’t think it was my place.”

The confession slips out before either of you are ready for it, but he doesn’t take it back. How could he when the words ring true?

You, so tired from carrying this weight for all these years, collapse under his words. You cry into his chest until your body gives out, until the thoughts quiet enough to breathe around them. Bucky stays with you through it all—through the apologies, the shaking, the whispered self-loathing. And though it pains him greatly to witness this, to hear of the awful things you have to say about yourself, he would go through this a hundred times just to make sure you never had to go through this ever again.

He only leaves your side once, and that’s to get food for your body that hasn’t eaten in far too long. And he praises you, even if the only thing you can get down is a piece of lightly buttered toast.

Later, when the tower is dark and still, he lies beside you without question. One arm wraps around your waist, firm and protective, his chin resting against your head.

You fall asleep like that, face pressed into his chest, tear tracks drying on your skin.

—

Morning comes softly.

It seeps in slowly, pale light edging around the curtains like it’s unsure whether it’s welcome. The tower is unusually still—no clatter from the kitchen, no voices echoing down the hall. Just the soft steady sound of your breathing against Bucky’s chest. 

He wakes before you do, as he always does. 

For a few seconds, instincts kick in. He assesses the room, notes exits, catalogues sounds. Then awareness settles, and he remembers where he is. Who he’s holding. 

His breath hitches in his chest as he looks down. You’re curled into him, one arm draped across his torso, fingers slack with sleep. Your face is relaxed in a way he doesn’t get to see often, tension finally eased out of the lines around your mouth. There are faint tear tracks still visible on your cheeks, just enough to remind him of how hard the night was. 

How hard you were on yourself. 

His chest tightens. 

Bucky doesn’t move. Doesn’t even breathe deeper. He’s terrified that if he shifts, you’ll wake up and the fragile peace will shatter, that you’ll pull away, embarrassed, apologising for taking up space you were never a burden in. 

So he stays still and lets himself look. 

He traces the quiet details instead: the way your lashes rest against your skin, the slight hitch in your breath every few seconds, the warmth of you pressed against him like your body decided, without even asking permission, that he was safe. 

That thought nearly undoes him. 

You trusted him. Even when you couldn’t trust yourself. 

He wonders how many mornings you’ve woken up alone after enduring a night of your own personal hell. How many times you’ve cried yourself empty and then dragged yourself through the next day as if nothing had happened. The idea sits heavy in his chest, sharp and aching. 

His thumb lifts, almost without his permission, brushing gently beneath your eye where tears had dried. As if he could wipe them away like he wanted to the night before. The touch is feather light, reverent. You don’t flinch away from it. No, you lean into it, like some part of you recognises comfort even in your sleep. 

Bucky swallows hard. 

This is what no one ever told him. How the way wanting someone sneaks up on a person in quiet moments like this. Not loud or desperate, passion that ignites like a supernova only to collapse into a black hole of nothingness. No, this is steady; it’s soft, and deep, and so, so real.

You shift a few minutes later, blinking awake slowly. Confusion flickers across your face as you take in the room, the light, the fact that you’re wrapped around him like vines on a wall. 

He sees the instant your awareness hits. 

“Oh,” you murmur, voice rough with sleep.

He waits. Doesn’t rush you or loosen his hold. 

Your first instinct is shame—he can see it flicker across your expression like a reflex. You pull back just slightly, enough to fully look at him. 

“You really didn’t have to stay.” Bucky hates the tone your voice takes on when you believe yourself to be an imposition. As if taking care of you was that much of a burden. As if you didn’t deserve it. 

There’s no joking in his reply. Not after the night you just had. Not after watching you fall apart in his arms. Because after learning what you had almost done to yourself, well, he doesn’t want to hide anymore. And if his feelings are unrequited, he’ll make sure you have someone else to take care of you, so that you won’t be in the awkward position of dealing with him any more than necessary. All he wants is for you to know just how deeply you are loved. To know just how much you matter.  “I wanted to.”

You study him as if trying to find a hidden meaning behind those simple words. Your throat works around the words that follow: “Thank you… For staying. I know I was a fucking mess last night.”

Bucky’s jaw tightens, not with anger, but with something akin to grief. 

“You’re allowed to fall apart in front of people that want to care for you. You don’t always have to pretend like you’re alright. Not around me.”

Something in you softens at his words, tears caught in your waterline. “I thought I got really good at hiding it.”

“You are good at hiding it. I just pay too much attention to you.” 

“Why? Why me?” The question is raw, laced with the same amount of vulnerability you had shown him last night. 

Bucky takes a slow breath. He doesn’t want to rush this, doesn’t want to hoist upon you his feelings whilst you’re dealing with so much already. But he also doesn’t want to hide behind half-truths anymore. Doesn’t want to give you some empty excuse that leaves you regretting showing him you at your lowest.

“Because I care,” he says. “And I have for a long while.”

Your eyes widen slightly, searching his face. He doesn’t look away no matter how much this display of vulnerability makes him want to. 

“I didn’t–don’t want to complicate things,” he continues softly. “Don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, or that I’m trying to make this all about me. Because it’s not, god fucking knows it’s not.”

You blink, tears threatening to fall once again, but these are not laced with the poison of pain. They’re filled with something softer, warmer. 

“But I’d rather sit through a hundred nights of you crying than let you spend one more night alone. Because you’re not alone, okay? I care about you so much more than you’ll ever know. I… I’d rather be with you than anywhere else. Because when I’m with you… I feel whole again. It’s probably not healthy, but you make me feel like a person again. And if I can grant you even the smallest bit of the comfort and kindness you’ve shown me… well, damn straight I’ll sit with you through hell.”

Silence settles between you, and for a second, Bucky worries he’s said too much, worries he’s given too much away all at once, worries that his ma was right, somethin’ about him and his big ol’ bleeding heart being too much for the world. But then you lean your head against his chest, sniffling as you bring your arms around him. 

“I don’t know what I’m ready for,” you confess, wounds still weeping, “but I really don’t want to hide from you anymore.”

A small, careful smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he returns your embrace. “That’s all I want. We can go as slow as you need. Figure this out together.”

“This won’t magically fix me,” you warn him, fingers tracing patterns on his back. 

“I never thought it would,” he assures you. “I’ll be here to hold you together.”

And as the morning light grows stronger around you, you realise something; it rings astonishingly true:

You made it through the night.

And this time, you didn’t have to do it alone.

Divider credit: @/dividers-are-us

Taglist: @harleycao @hallecarey1 @filmsbyblair

[miamorsoyyo]

as someone who struggles with pmdd, this was so good 🫶

[cricket-reader]

Thank you! Sending all my love and support to you. 💕💕💕

[cricket-reader]

catch me, i'm falling (before it's too late)

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: When you are around the team, you move as if you're bracing for impact, shoulders hunched and eyes distant. You disappear into yourself like someone bracing for a storm they've survived time and time again, every instinct turned inward, conserving what little warmth you have left. It happens every month, like clockwork. As if your brain were hardwired to self-destruct at the same time every month. He tells himself it's not his place. What right does he have to barge into your life demanding answers? Because he could easily delude himself into thinking it's nothing. The others haven't noticed—but then again, none of them look the way he does.

Warnings: depression, mentioned self-harm, female!reader (not described and no y/n), reader has PMDD

word count: 5,292

A/N: prompt fill for day 4 of @juneofdoom | "I won't leave you." | Blankets (isn't it ironic that my pmdd caused me to post this super late? Anyways, enjoy!)

{Read on A03}

Bucky notices the pattern long before he ever names it.

At first, it's the little things. Things he wouldn't notice if his soul wasn't tied to yours. Infinitesimal, but by no means something he could justly brush off once the pattern solidified.

It started with cancelled training sessions. And how could he fail to notice the way you continuously dodged the common floor as if it were set ablaze? You'd show up late to dinner when everyone had already finished, and some nights you wouldn't show at all.

On their own, they don't quite set up the alarms. Everybody has off days; everyone needs to take time for themselves—he'd know that better than anyone. But this is different.

When you are around the team, you move as if you're bracing for impact, shoulders hunched and eyes distant. You disappear into yourself like someone bracing for a storm they've survived time and time again, every instinct turned inward, conserving what little warmth you have left.

It happens every month, like clockwork. As if your brain were hardwired to self-destruct at the same time every month.

He tells himself it's not his place. What right does he have to barge into your life demanding answers? Because he could easily delude himself into thinking it's nothing. The others haven't noticed—but then again, none of them look the way he does.

He respects you, and he respects your privacy. If you want to talk, you will, and until then, he'll be right within reach. If you'd want help, you'd ask for it.

But you never do.

And he's never seen it this bad before.

He watches you slip out of common rooms, excuses clipped and practised. Watches you emerge from the bathroom with red-rimmed eyes and drenched sleeves, jaw tight and eyes ready to burst past the dam you’ve built up. He hears the way your voice wobbles when someone asks you how you’re doing. The way you excuse yourself with hardly a word as Walker makes an ill-timed joke, voice teetering on the edge of a full-on meltdown.

You are the furthest thing from okay.

And maybe, selfishly, part of him hates that you don’t come to him. Because he would be there in a heartbeat. Because he’s already there, standing on the fringes. Sniper eyes trained on your body language as if it were a mission imperative. He always makes himself available when he notices the pattern reemerge. Hell, half the nights he spends camped out on the common room couch in case you wander up like a ghost in search of soothing. The other half he spends with an ear to his bedroom door in case you emerge from your cavern.

He cares. Too much. Has for a while now.

So when you don't come out for supper, when the food has been packed away, and the lights turned off, and everyone has retired to their rooms, Bucky has decided he's had enough of waiting for you to come to him.

Bucky knocks at your door, soft and unobtrusive.

No answer.

He knocks again, a little firmer this time. "It's Bucky."

His hearing picks up the muffled sob that escapes your lips. Something ugly and violent twists hard in his chest.

He opens the door slowly, just enough to peek inside. The overhead lights are out; the only lighting is that of the city that never sleeps peeking through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the strung-up fairy lights he had helped you set up around the room. His eyes immediately land on the figure curled up underneath a mound of blankets. You’re shaking in an effort to stay silent; ugly sniffles and breaths of held sobs cut through the silence.

Any thought of waiting until you're ready dies right then and there.

“Hey,” he murmurs, not wanting to break the quiet of the room as he steps inside. “Hey, sweetheart.”

He can see the way you flinch at his words, hands coming up to furiously scrub the tears from your face.

“Sorry,” you can barely form the words over the sobs that beg to be released. “Sorry, just… could you maybe come back later? Right now’s not… not a good time.”

Bucky frowns. He shuts the door behind him to show you he’s not going anywhere. “Do you really want me to go?”

You sniffle, turning away from him and curling your legs up to your chest. “I want to be alone.”

“You’ve been alone all day.” Bucky leans against the door, arms crossed. He wants, no, needs to get to the bottom of this. Whatever has you feeling this way. He needs to bleed the life out of your suffering. To smother it and make sure it never haunts you again. Because you should never feel like this, never feel like you have to hide in the dark and cry yourself dry. "Ava made your favourite. Did you forget?"

He watches your shoulders tense, breath hitching violently. "Not hungry."

Guilt laces your tone, no doubt because you're aware she made it especially for you. Bucky frowns, hesitating in the cavernous space between your bed and the door. He feels as if he's walked into a minefield, one step away from destroying everything the two of you have built over the months you've come to know each other. But he won't walk away, not when you're muffling sobs into a blanket and refusing to eat.

"Wanna talk?" Bucky cringes as soon as the words leave his mouth. He sounds just like Steve when they had been on the run. He couldn't even count the number of times he had heard some iteration of that phrase from him. He meant the best, Bucky knows it with all his heart, but sometimes he just wanted to throttle Steve.

"I said you should leave," you snap, defences raising before immediately crumbling down; your foundations are so weak you can’t build any emotion that doesn’t come crashing back down. “Sorry… I don’t… just go, please.”

He watches you curl into yourself. Equal parts mortified and disgusted with yourself. Your emotions rise like the tide, pulling back too far, leaving everything exposed and aching in its wake.

“It’s okay,” he reassures you, pushing off of the door to come closer. “You’re obviously hurting right now. My ego can take it.”

"That's not-" you scoff, brows twisting up into the most, were it not for the tears in your eyes, adorably bewildered expression- "I'm not good company right now."

Bucky shrugs it off. "Who said I was looking for good company? Maybe I just wanted your company."

"I can't… I'm not going to… You shouldn't be here."

"Everyone has bad days," he isn't quite able to hide the affection in his voice when he says your name.

"It's not that… Well, it is but… You don’t understand, Bucky. I… I don’t even… I can’t explain why… I’m just-” your voice cracks- “I’m just broken, I guess.”

The words hang between you both, heavy like lead. He's never heard you this vulnerable. He wasn't expecting answers, not tonight. But what really gets to him is the finality in your voice. Your tone tries to leave no room for argument. As if you're stating fact rather than self-depreciation. And just looking at you in this moment tells him that you believe your poisoned-laced words without a shred of doubt.

Bucky’s throat tightens.

He ventures to sit on the bed beside you, careful not to get too close. “You’re not broken.” His voice is firm, leaving no room for argument.

The laugh that follows makes his stomach churn. It’s bitter like coffee that’s been brewed far too hot for far too long. Sharp like his best pair of knives. Filled with enough self-hatred to make a grown man weep. It's such a contrast to the laugh you usually share when someone tells a joke or when Walker does something stupid; the kind of laugh that Bucky's certain could light up the universe.

Bucky didn't think he would hear a laugh from you that he'd never want to hear again.

“You only think that because you only know the parts of me I let you see.”

“Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to know more.” Bucky hopes through the darkness you can’t see the way the tips of his ears flush. “If you’d let me, I’d love to get to know all of you.”

“You can’t–you can’t say that, Bucky. You don’t even know-”

“So tell me.”

You pause, blinking up at him, tears still shining on your waterline. “You’re going to run,” you challenge.

“What about me makes you think I’ll run, huh? There ain’t nothing you could do that would scare me. Do you know who I am? Who I was?”

“That’s different,” you dismiss him, fingers curling tight around the blanket; your last line of defence against his relentless pursuit.

“How?”

“Because. It’s… It can’t be explained. I… I can’t explain it; the doctors don’t care to explain it. There’s… there’s nothing anyone can do.”

The word doctors sends a chill through his body. He knew there was something wrong, but… if it was bad enough to have to reach out to doctors…

“What… what exactly is happening?” Bucky furrows his brows. Were you ill? Were you in pain? Why didn’t you tell anyone?

You bury your face in your hands, mumbling something that’s unintelligible against your skin. Bucky tries to be patient, but when forced to reckon with the fact that you could very well be suffering an affliction that could bring about your end faster than he could have ever predicted, he can only stay quiet for so long.

“Please, Sweetheart, talk to me.” He reaches up to take your hands from your face. Cradling them in his own, as if they were porcelain, he tries to meet your water-stained eyes. “I want to help you, but I can’t very well do that if ya keep everything to yourself.”

Tears begin to spill over your waterline, falling down your face in a sight that’s sure to haunt his nightmares to come. “I feel insane, Bucky. He tells me that it’s not a big deal, that—that I’m just being dramatic, but I… it feels like someone has… has ripped my heart like right out of my chest. And… and I was fine yesterday! That’s, I think, the worst part of it all. It’s—I fucking hate it! I can’t stop crying over the stupidest shit and—and I can’t think straight, and everything feels so… so pointless.”

A brick lodges in Bucky’s throat, rendering him speechless. He’s helpless, watching you fall apart right in front of his eyes. The first question on his lips is, Who? Who would dare make you feel as if your feelings weren’t real, as if your pain wasn’t real. But it gets trapped on his tongue, just like all the other pathetic excuses for comfort his brain brings forth.

You look away from him then, hands leaving his more cold and empty than he’s ever felt before. eyes find the textured blanket tangled on your lap. You trace the pattern with your finger. He almost brings his newly freed hands to wipe away the waterfall cascading down your face or to maybe bring your hands back into his. In the end, he just sits there, frozen and wondering how the hell he’s supposed to fix this.

“I just keep thinking,” you murmur, fingernail scratching one of the lines on your blanket, “that it wouldn’t matter if I just… wasn’t here anymore. That everyone would be better off if I just…”

You don’t need to finish the sentence.

Because he sees it.

The way he’d knock on your door after a too-long patch of radio silence. The way he’d call out the pet name he’d affectionately appointed you with. The way his heart would sink straight down to hell when he saw you lying on the ground. The way he’d clutch you to his body, every part of you so, so cold. He’d scream your name; he’d hold you to his chest and pray to a god he stopped believing in since the War. He’d cry and cry and cry, staining your clothes with his grief until someone tore him away from your lifeless body.

He wonders how many times that had come close to being a reality. How many times you had curled up in your bed thinking that was the only escape as he sat waiting for you. How many times you had to stitch yourself back together when there were people who loved you just steps away. How many times it had almost been the last.

“We wouldn’t,” he says, voice catching on the last syllable. Because even the thought of a world without your light was too much to bear. “Be better off, that is.”

A heavy silence settles over the two of you. Even the air feels thick and heavy; maybe that’s just because he’s having a hard time breathing around the ugly truth. To know that all of these months you have been drowning in your own mind with no help, to know that he did nothing to help pull you out of the depths of your despair, it cuts like a knife. He thought he was doing the right thing, thought his intrusion would be unwanted, and it would be better if he waited. He left you to suffer on your own.

And the worst part of it all is that he knows if the roles were reversed, you wouldn’t have hesitated. The proof is there from lingering memories of sitting together on the couch or in the training room, and in some rare cases his own room. The way you sat with him in silence. You knew exactly what he needed without even having to ask. You didn’t turn the TV on, you didn’t try to coax answers out of him, you just sat there with him, doing nothing but being a steady presence by his side. All this time, he was so scared to be pushed away that he never even bothered to try.

You probably felt the same that first night you had found him staring at the black screen of the television, his mind a thousand yards away. But regardless of the possibility that he wouldn’t be accepting of your company, you sat down with him anyway, the sleeves of your sweatshirt hanging over your hands as you cupped your favourite mug and cradled it to your chest. Bucky had hardly known you then, and you him. But you were still there, unabashed in your conviction to not leave him alone despite having only just joined the team.

“I almost relapsed.” The words are so quiet, he almost could’ve sworn he made them up. But when he looks at your face, he sees the way your face pinches, disgust warring with your features.

Bucky swallows around the brick lodged in his throat. “Relapsed?”

You tuck your head further down, shrinking in on yourself as if that would make you invisible. Shame heats your face as you open and close your mouth, trying to bring the words out into the open. “I used to um… I used to… god this is… so hard to say out loud.”

Bucky gives you the time you need. He doesn’t try to fill in the blanks, to try and voice what you so desperately need to get out in the open himself. His hand finds its way back to yours, the one that’s begun to dig into the flesh of your thigh through your thin pyjama pants.

You take a breath. “I used to hurt myself. I try not to anymore, but… it’s hard.”

Bucky’s stomach swirls. He’s seen the scars, of course he has. But they all looked so faded. Like a distant memory. Something that was to be left in the past to stay. He wonders if you would have taken metal to your skin once more if he hadn’t barged into your downward spiral. Wonders if he was just a few minutes later, if he would’ve opened your door to see glinting metal and bloody wrists.

Bucky reaches for you then. He pulls you into his arms before you can even think to retreat. It’s only for half a second that you stiffen, poised to push him away, but you don’t. No, you collapse into him under the weight of everything you’ve shared and everything you haven’t. Your bones melt to putty as he holds you to his chest, his flesh hand rubbing your back in an attempt to soothe you. And then, you begin to cry. You sob so hard, it steals the breath from your lungs, leaving you gasping for air as you fist the material of his faded Henley. He continues to comfort you the best he knows how, ignoring how his eyes are beginning to shine as well. His heart continues to crack open as you tremble in his arms, shaking apart like a flower being tossed around in a hurricane.

“I don’t… Why does it get this bad?” Bucky asks when your sobs have subsided. “How can I fix it?”

You shake your head against his chest, hands still clenched around his shirt as if terrified that he’d let you go. As if he ever wanted to let you go now that he knows just how close he came to losing you. “There’s nothing that can fix it, Bucky. I told you… I’m broken.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Even after I’ve soaked your shirt with snot and tears?”

Bucky huffs. “Even still.” He pauses. “I noticed that it only gets really bad at the same time every month. Why is that? Did something happen around that time, or… I don’t know-”

“You noticed?” You pull away from him then, your red-rimmed eyes wide as they stare up at his face.

“Hard not to-” Bucky backtracks when he sees your face crumble- “I’ve uh, I notice things that most people don’t—been trained to actually. I don’t think the others have noticed—not as much as me at least.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He watches you sniffle, your hands coming up to wipe away the remaining moisture clinging to your skin. And he wishes that he could prevent this from happening again. Wishes to banish the dark cloud from your mind before it even begins. Because you don’t deserve whatever’s making you feel so down.

“Would there be a way to prevent it from getting this bad?” Bucky asks. “No matter how much I wish you would, you don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want, but is there anything I can do?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you… It’s just…” You trail off, face heating under his scrutiny. “It’s… I don’t want you to think… Well, my doctor… he, he thinks I’m just… exaggerating.”

Resentment courses through Bucky for a man he doesn’t even know. How could anyone take such serious words, such serious circumstances lightly? Even if you were exaggerating, which you’re not, doesn’t he have a duty, as a doctor, to help? Because even if someone were exaggerating about their mental health, there’s clearly an underlying issue.

“That’s bullshit,” Bucky finds himself spitting out with a vitriol he didn’t know he was capable of.

“You—I haven’t even said what it is yet!” Your protest falls on deaf ears.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Bucky,” you sigh, burying your face in your hands. You mumble something into your palms, the words lost to his ears.

“What was that?”

“It’s because I’m on my period.” Your voice is laced with shame, face twisted as if you’re preparing for him to storm out, expecting him to belittle you or agree with your idiotic doctor.

Bucky won’t say he understands it. Because he doesn’t. Not by a long shot. A woman’s monthly was not something widely discussed when he was growing up. In fact, it was something to be hidden, something to be ashamed of as far as he knew. He had grown up with a mother and sisters, so he knows that they exist, but that’s about it.

“Your… period… causes this?” Bucky questions. Did all women have to go through this monthly? How would he not have noticed his mother or sisters falling into such a depression?

He immediately regrets how he formed the question, wishing he could shove the words back down his throat, but it’s too late. You’re already retreating into yourself, pulling your body further from his, eyes growing glassy. “I know. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t—it’s-”

“It’s not stupid.” Bucky reaches for your hands, attempting to anchor you to him so you don’t drift away. “I just… I didn’t know that it could cause… this.”

“It’s not really something that’s been studied… or well documented. My doctor says I’m just being dramatic, and I am. It’s not like… It’s not like I really have a reason to feel… like this. I just… whenever it happens it feels like the world is ending, like everything is pointless and-” You cut yourself off with a shake of your head.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “You didn’t ask for any of this shit-”

“Yes, I did. Don’t you remember me tellin’ you that I want to know what’s going on?”

“Well, yes, but… but it’s not like something you could fix. The same damn thing is going to happen next month and the month after that. I know the pattern, but I can never stop it. You might as well just give up whilst you’re ahead.”

Bucky doesn’t even attempt to hide how affronted he is by your suggestion. How could he ever leave you when he now knows the depths of your suffering? No matter how inexplicable, no matter how inevitable, he would stand by you to the end of the earth if it meant you didn’t have to fight this alone.

You notice him about to open his mouth to protest, so you quickly jump in before he can get a word in. “I can handle this. I’ve been doing this long enough to-”

“You shouldn’t deprive yourself of comfort.” His voice shakes just slightly, but it’s enough that even he knows you don’t miss it.

“I wanted to wait,” he admits quietly, his thumb rubbing up and down your hand. “Thought you’d come to me when you were ready–or even one of the others. But watching you tear apart at the seams every month and pretend you’re fine?” He exhales shakily. “I just can’t do it anymore.”

The way you look up at him steals the breath straight out of his lungs. It’s as if, instead of admitting that he had common human decency, he had admitted to hanging all the stars in the galaxy just for you. Unable to bear your gaze, he brings you into his arms.

You cling to him like he’s the only solid thing left on this earth. He holds onto you as if he had lost you. Simultaneously trying to forget that he almost had.

“I’ve wanted to take care of you for a long time,” he adds, almost too soft to hear. “Didn’t want to overstep. Didn’t think it was my place.”

The confession slips out before either of you are ready for it, but he doesn’t take it back. How could he when the words ring true?

You, so tired from carrying this weight for all these years, collapse under his words. You cry into his chest until your body gives out, until the thoughts quiet enough to breathe around them. Bucky stays with you through it all—through the apologies, the shaking, the whispered self-loathing. And though it pains him greatly to witness this, to hear of the awful things you have to say about yourself, he would go through this a hundred times just to make sure you never had to go through this ever again.

He only leaves your side once, and that’s to get food for your body that hasn’t eaten in far too long. And he praises you, even if the only thing you can get down is a piece of lightly buttered toast.

Later, when the tower is dark and still, he lies beside you without question. One arm wraps around your waist, firm and protective, his chin resting against your head.

You fall asleep like that, face pressed into his chest, tear tracks drying on your skin.

—

Morning comes softly.

It seeps in slowly, pale light edging around the curtains like it’s unsure whether it’s welcome. The tower is unusually still—no clatter from the kitchen, no voices echoing down the hall. Just the soft steady sound of your breathing against Bucky’s chest. 

He wakes before you do, as he always does. 

For a few seconds, instincts kick in. He assesses the room, notes exits, catalogues sounds. Then awareness settles, and he remembers where he is. Who he’s holding. 

His breath hitches in his chest as he looks down. You’re curled into him, one arm draped across his torso, fingers slack with sleep. Your face is relaxed in a way he doesn’t get to see often, tension finally eased out of the lines around your mouth. There are faint tear tracks still visible on your cheeks, just enough to remind him of how hard the night was. 

How hard you were on yourself. 

His chest tightens. 

Bucky doesn’t move. Doesn’t even breathe deeper. He’s terrified that if he shifts, you’ll wake up and the fragile peace will shatter, that you’ll pull away, embarrassed, apologising for taking up space you were never a burden in. 

So he stays still and lets himself look. 

He traces the quiet details instead: the way your lashes rest against your skin, the slight hitch in your breath every few seconds, the warmth of you pressed against him like your body decided, without even asking permission, that he was safe. 

That thought nearly undoes him. 

You trusted him. Even when you couldn’t trust yourself. 

He wonders how many mornings you’ve woken up alone after enduring a night of your own personal hell. How many times you’ve cried yourself empty and then dragged yourself through the next day as if nothing had happened. The idea sits heavy in his chest, sharp and aching. 

His thumb lifts, almost without his permission, brushing gently beneath your eye where tears had dried. As if he could wipe them away like he wanted to the night before. The touch is feather light, reverent. You don’t flinch away from it. No, you lean into it, like some part of you recognises comfort even in your sleep. 

Bucky swallows hard. 

This is what no one ever told him. How the way wanting someone sneaks up on a person in quiet moments like this. Not loud or desperate, passion that ignites like a supernova only to collapse into a black hole of nothingness. No, this is steady; it’s soft, and deep, and so, so real.

You shift a few minutes later, blinking awake slowly. Confusion flickers across your face as you take in the room, the light, the fact that you’re wrapped around him like vines on a wall. 

He sees the instant your awareness hits. 

“Oh,” you murmur, voice rough with sleep.

He waits. Doesn’t rush you or loosen his hold. 

Your first instinct is shame—he can see it flicker across your expression like a reflex. You pull back just slightly, enough to fully look at him. 

“You really didn’t have to stay.” Bucky hates the tone your voice takes on when you believe yourself to be an imposition. As if taking care of you was that much of a burden. As if you didn’t deserve it. 

There’s no joking in his reply. Not after the night you just had. Not after watching you fall apart in his arms. Because after learning what you had almost done to yourself, well, he doesn’t want to hide anymore. And if his feelings are unrequited, he’ll make sure you have someone else to take care of you, so that you won’t be in the awkward position of dealing with him any more than necessary. All he wants is for you to know just how deeply you are loved. To know just how much you matter.  “I wanted to.”

You study him as if trying to find a hidden meaning behind those simple words. Your throat works around the words that follow: “Thank you… For staying. I know I was a fucking mess last night.”

Bucky’s jaw tightens, not with anger, but with something akin to grief. 

“You’re allowed to fall apart in front of people that want to care for you. You don’t always have to pretend like you’re alright. Not around me.”

Something in you softens at his words, tears caught in your waterline. “I thought I got really good at hiding it.”

“You are good at hiding it. I just pay too much attention to you.” 

“Why? Why me?” The question is raw, laced with the same amount of vulnerability you had shown him last night. 

Bucky takes a slow breath. He doesn’t want to rush this, doesn’t want to hoist upon you his feelings whilst you’re dealing with so much already. But he also doesn’t want to hide behind half-truths anymore. Doesn’t want to give you some empty excuse that leaves you regretting showing him you at your lowest.

“Because I care,” he says. “And I have for a long while.”

Your eyes widen slightly, searching his face. He doesn’t look away no matter how much this display of vulnerability makes him want to. 

“I didn’t–don’t want to complicate things,” he continues softly. “Don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, or that I’m trying to make this all about me. Because it’s not, god fucking knows it’s not.”

You blink, tears threatening to fall once again, but these are not laced with the poison of pain. They’re filled with something softer, warmer. 

“But I’d rather sit through a hundred nights of you crying than let you spend one more night alone. Because you’re not alone, okay? I care about you so much more than you’ll ever know. I… I’d rather be with you than anywhere else. Because when I’m with you… I feel whole again. It’s probably not healthy, but you make me feel like a person again. And if I can grant you even the smallest bit of the comfort and kindness you’ve shown me… well, damn straight I’ll sit with you through hell.”

Silence settles between you, and for a second, Bucky worries he’s said too much, worries he’s given too much away all at once, worries that his ma was right, somethin’ about him and his big ol’ bleeding heart being too much for the world. But then you lean your head against his chest, sniffling as you bring your arms around him. 

“I don’t know what I’m ready for,” you confess, wounds still weeping, “but I really don’t want to hide from you anymore.”

A small, careful smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he returns your embrace. “That’s all I want. We can go as slow as you need. Figure this out together.”

“This won’t magically fix me,” you warn him, fingers tracing patterns on his back. 

“I never thought it would,” he assures you. “I’ll be here to hold you together.”

And as the morning light grows stronger around you, you realise something; it rings astonishingly true:

You made it through the night.

And this time, you didn’t have to do it alone.

Divider credit: @/dividers-are-us

Taglist: @harleycao @hallecarey1 @filmsbyblair

[cricket-reader]

play me a melody of death and decay

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: Wylan doesn't know how much longer he can take it. With upcoming rent looming on the horizon, he can't afford to eat. And with the rate he's earning money, he'll be out on the street by the end of next week.

Warnings: starvation, mugging, grief, violence

word count: 1,391

A/N: prompt fill for day 2 of @juneofdoom | Dying Alone

{Read on A03}

Black dots danced across the sheet music.

Wylan blinked hard. The notes swam for a moment before settling back into place until the next whole note sent them blurring together again. Not that he truly needed them. He'd played this piece often enough that his fingers knew where to go before he even read the sheet. It was more of a comfort than anything. A soft place to land. He didn't have much of those these days.

Once, playing had been effortless. His arms could hold the lightweight of the wood for hours without protest. Once, he could lose himself in the music, forget the world beyond it. He couldn't afford that now.

The melody faltered.

Wylan drew a breath, trying to play off his silence as part of the piece. His chest ached. His stomach clenched so sharply, he nearly lost his grip on his flute. The next sound from his instrument wavered, a thin, unpleasant whine that made a few passersby wrinkle their noses.

A portly woman with a child on her hip dropped a coin in his case anyway.

There had been a time when he enjoyed playing the most difficult pieces. Loved the feeling when he finally got it right. He loved the feeling of playing until his lungs ran out of air.

Now, his lungs burned before he got even halfway through one song.

People continued to stream past him in steady waves. Merchants. Sailors. Wealthy tourists looking for entertainment before they disappeared into Ketterdam's clubs and gambling halls. Some slowed long enough to listen. Most didn't.

A few tossed coins.

Most didn't.

By the end of the song, there were only four people watching him. The air travelling from his lungs waned, a discordant whine echoing through the street as he fought to keep the high D note steady. The gathered crowd drifted away without a second glance.

Humiliation crawled up his neck.

He was better than that. His ma once had told him that he deserved to perform in front of royalty.

The pounding behind his eyes had become relentless. It felt as if someone had driven a wedge into his skull and was slowly forcing it deeper.

Carefully, he lowered his flute and scanned the day's earnings. He knew without counting that it wasn't enough.

His stomach sank.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten a proper meal. Two days? Three? Days blurred together out on the streets of the Barrel. Hunger had a way of warping time.

With numb fingers, Wylan packed away his music and slid the flute back into its case. Moisture still clung to the inside of the instrument, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He'd clean it later. If he made it home.

The thought nearly made him laugh.

Home.

Nothing more than a room with a leaking roof and a creaking bed with a mattress hard enough to be stone. With walls so thin he could hear every argument, every… other activity. It hardly deserved the title. But it was better than being out on the streets.

He was running out of the money his father had sent with him. And no matter how much he saved from skipping meals, it would never be enough to cover another week. He didn't want to think about that, though.

He pushed himself upright.

The world lurched.

For one terrifying moment, the street began to tilt beneath his feet. His vision narrowed into a tunnel of grey and black. He staggered sideways and slammed shoulder-first into a brick wall. It sent a shock through his shoulder well enough to keep him leaning against it even after his vision cleared.

The direct route home cut through several narrow alleyways. Stupid on a good day. Dangerous on a bad one.

Today, however, Wylan wasn't certain he'd be able to survive the longer walk.

He shoved himself off the wall, flute tight in hand. The Barrel blurred around him. Crumbling brick, overflowing gutters, sights he'd quickly grown used to.

Food, as always, occupied every corner of his thoughts. Fresh bread. Honey cakes. The sugared pastries his mother used to sneak him before dinner when his father wasn't looking. The memory was vivid enough to send a sharp ache through his heart.

Caught unawares, reminiscing on times he would never get back, Wylan lost the ground beneath him. He landed on his hands and knees, the stone eating into his flesh.

“What have we got here?” A loud voice disrupted the alleyway.

Wylan gritted his teeth. Keeping his head down, he muttered, “I don’t have anything. Leave me alone.”

“What’s in the case?”

A foot connected with his ribs. Wylan fell to his side, choking on his breath. His lithe fingers snatched the case from the ground, clutching it to his chest. He would not let them take it. “Nothing of value.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” the older boy sneered. “Whaddya think, Petyr?”

“Come on, kid, just give it up. It’s two against one, and you don’t stand no chance against us.”

Wylan’s eyes darted to the edges of the alleyway, but no one was there. Even if someone were, Wylan would doubt they’d bother to help him. That wasn't how things were done in Ketterdam. Every man and child for himself. “Take my money,” Wylan pleaded. “Just not this, don’t… you can have all my money.”

The two older boys shared a glance. The taller of the two spoke up, “How abouts we just take both of ‘em?”

“No!”

“You ain’t really in the position to be bargaining, now are you?”

The other boy, Petyr, lunged for him. Wylan curled around his flute. The last thing he had. The only material possession he owned that mattered. The one thing that reminded him of sunnier days. When he and his Ma would play: her on the piano, him on the flute.

He was just starting out. His grasp on the fingering was fragile, his notes never resonated in the way they should have, but she still applauded him—she still made a grand show of how he was meant to play for kings and queens. Sorry, Ma, I don’t think I’ll ever live long enough to see the dream through.

He blocked out most of the beating—went to that faraway place where his Ma is waiting on the piano stool for him to join her; the place he’d go whenever his father tried to beat literature into him. It wasn't really all that different. Except instead of gushing blood on the finest carpet imported from Shu Han, red painted the bleak cobblestone. And the fear that these boys wouldn’t stop before it had gone too far. For all the terrible things Jan Van Eck was, he was no murderer; he liked his hands clean. That didn’t, as he recently found out, mean he couldn’t get someone else to do it for him, though.

As his thoughts turned down that road, the vision of his mother faded until nothing was left but the dark streets of Ketterdam. The boys had left him at some point. Only the weight of his flute case was enough to dispel the panic of losing so much time.

As Wylan uncurled from his position, his entire body ignited with flames of agony. The spot where his head had rested on the pavement was damp, and not even he could convince himself it was something other than blood. Groaning, Wylan remained on the ground. He was going to die alone. No one to remember him; no one to care about him. He would be just another victim of the streets of the Barrel. Forgotten and unimportant as every other sorry sob who thought they could survive out here.

As he ran his fingers over the etchings in the wooden case, he hoped that it would go to someone who would appreciate it. He hoped that they could make good use of it, hoped that they, perhaps, could perform for royalty. That his mother’s dream would live on through someone else.

The last thing Wylan remembered before succumbing to the ever-present darkness was a voice. It was raspy; as if the man who spoke the words hadn’t had a glass of water in a decade.

“How pathetic,” the mysterious man said, and Wylan couldn’t help but agree.

divider credit: @/dividers-are-us

[maraudersandskz]

Omg I love this so much

[cricket-reader]

Thank you so much, lovely! 💕💕

[cricket-reader]

Wylan Van Eck/Hendriks Masterlist

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You do not have permission to repost or translate my work on any other platforms (even with credit). I reserve the rights to all of my original characters.

Legend:

💔 - Angst 💕 - Fluff ❤️‍🔥 - Smut ✨ - Favourites

play me a song of death and decay 💔✨

Wylan doesn't know how much longer he can take it. With upcoming rent looming on the horizon, he can't afford to eat. And with the rate he's earning money, he'll be out on the street by the end of next week. (June of Doom day 2)

[cricket-reader]

Kaz Brekker Masterlist

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You do not have permission to repost or translate my work on any other platforms (even with credit). I reserve the rights to all of my original characters.

Legend:

💔 - Angst 💕 - Fluff ❤️‍🔥 - Smut ✨ - Favourites

Storm on the Horizon 💔

Kaz gets ambushed in an alleyway. (June of Doom day 1)

[cricket-reader]

play me a melody of death and decay

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: Wylan doesn't know how much longer he can take it. With upcoming rent looming on the horizon, he can't afford to eat. And with the rate he's earning money, he'll be out on the street by the end of next week.

Warnings: starvation, mugging, grief, violence

word count: 1,391

A/N: prompt fill for day 2 of @juneofdoom | Dying Alone

{Read on A03}

Black dots danced across the sheet music.

Wylan blinked hard. The notes swam for a moment before settling back into place until the next whole note sent them blurring together again. Not that he truly needed them. He'd played this piece often enough that his fingers knew where to go before he even read the sheet. It was more of a comfort than anything. A soft place to land. He didn't have much of those these days.

Once, playing had been effortless. His arms could hold the lightweight of the wood for hours without protest. Once, he could lose himself in the music, forget the world beyond it. He couldn't afford that now.

The melody faltered.

Wylan drew a breath, trying to play off his silence as part of the piece. His chest ached. His stomach clenched so sharply, he nearly lost his grip on his flute. The next sound from his instrument wavered, a thin, unpleasant whine that made a few passersby wrinkle their noses.

A portly woman with a child on her hip dropped a coin in his case anyway.

There had been a time when he enjoyed playing the most difficult pieces. Loved the feeling when he finally got it right. He loved the feeling of playing until his lungs ran out of air.

Now, his lungs burned before he got even halfway through one song.

People continued to stream past him in steady waves. Merchants. Sailors. Wealthy tourists looking for entertainment before they disappeared into Ketterdam's clubs and gambling halls. Some slowed long enough to listen. Most didn't.

A few tossed coins.

Most didn't.

By the end of the song, there were only four people watching him. The air travelling from his lungs waned, a discordant whine echoing through the street as he fought to keep the high D note steady. The gathered crowd drifted away without a second glance.

Humiliation crawled up his neck.

He was better than that. His ma once had told him that he deserved to perform in front of royalty.

The pounding behind his eyes had become relentless. It felt as if someone had driven a wedge into his skull and was slowly forcing it deeper.

Carefully, he lowered his flute and scanned the day's earnings. He knew without counting that it wasn't enough.

His stomach sank.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten a proper meal. Two days? Three? Days blurred together out on the streets of the Barrel. Hunger had a way of warping time.

With numb fingers, Wylan packed away his music and slid the flute back into its case. Moisture still clung to the inside of the instrument, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He'd clean it later. If he made it home.

The thought nearly made him laugh.

Home.

Nothing more than a room with a leaking roof and a creaking bed with a mattress hard enough to be stone. With walls so thin he could hear every argument, every… other activity. It hardly deserved the title. But it was better than being out on the streets.

He was running out of the money his father had sent with him. And no matter how much he saved from skipping meals, it would never be enough to cover another week. He didn't want to think about that, though.

He pushed himself upright.

The world lurched.

For one terrifying moment, the street began to tilt beneath his feet. His vision narrowed into a tunnel of grey and black. He staggered sideways and slammed shoulder-first into a brick wall. It sent a shock through his shoulder well enough to keep him leaning against it even after his vision cleared.

The direct route home cut through several narrow alleyways. Stupid on a good day. Dangerous on a bad one.

Today, however, Wylan wasn't certain he'd be able to survive the longer walk.

He shoved himself off the wall, flute tight in hand. The Barrel blurred around him. Crumbling brick, overflowing gutters, sights he'd quickly grown used to.

Food, as always, occupied every corner of his thoughts. Fresh bread. Honey cakes. The sugared pastries his mother used to sneak him before dinner when his father wasn't looking. The memory was vivid enough to send a sharp ache through his heart.

Caught unawares, reminiscing on times he would never get back, Wylan lost the ground beneath him. He landed on his hands and knees, the stone eating into his flesh.

“What have we got here?” A loud voice disrupted the alleyway.

Wylan gritted his teeth. Keeping his head down, he muttered, “I don’t have anything. Leave me alone.”

“What’s in the case?”

A foot connected with his ribs. Wylan fell to his side, choking on his breath. His lithe fingers snatched the case from the ground, clutching it to his chest. He would not let them take it. “Nothing of value.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” the older boy sneered. “Whaddya think, Petyr?”

“Come on, kid, just give it up. It’s two against one, and you don’t stand no chance against us.”

Wylan’s eyes darted to the edges of the alleyway, but no one was there. Even if someone were, Wylan would doubt they’d bother to help him. That wasn't how things were done in Ketterdam. Every man and child for himself. “Take my money,” Wylan pleaded. “Just not this, don’t… you can have all my money.”

The two older boys shared a glance. The taller of the two spoke up, “How abouts we just take both of ‘em?”

“No!”

“You ain’t really in the position to be bargaining, now are you?”

The other boy, Petyr, lunged for him. Wylan curled around his flute. The last thing he had. The only material possession he owned that mattered. The one thing that reminded him of sunnier days. When he and his Ma would play: her on the piano, him on the flute.

He was just starting out. His grasp on the fingering was fragile, his notes never resonated in the way they should have, but she still applauded him—she still made a grand show of how he was meant to play for kings and queens. Sorry, Ma, I don’t think I’ll ever live long enough to see the dream through.

He blocked out most of the beating—went to that faraway place where his Ma is waiting on the piano stool for him to join her; the place he’d go whenever his father tried to beat literature into him. It wasn't really all that different. Except instead of gushing blood on the finest carpet imported from Shu Han, red painted the bleak cobblestone. And the fear that these boys wouldn’t stop before it had gone too far. For all the terrible things Jan Van Eck was, he was no murderer; he liked his hands clean. That didn’t, as he recently found out, mean he couldn’t get someone else to do it for him, though.

As his thoughts turned down that road, the vision of his mother faded until nothing was left but the dark streets of Ketterdam. The boys had left him at some point. Only the weight of his flute case was enough to dispel the panic of losing so much time.

As Wylan uncurled from his position, his entire body ignited with flames of agony. The spot where his head had rested on the pavement was damp, and not even he could convince himself it was something other than blood. Groaning, Wylan remained on the ground. He was going to die alone. No one to remember him; no one to care about him. He would be just another victim of the streets of the Barrel. Forgotten and unimportant as every other sorry sob who thought they could survive out here.

As he ran his fingers over the etchings in the wooden case, he hoped that it would go to someone who would appreciate it. He hoped that they could make good use of it, hoped that they, perhaps, could perform for royalty. That his mother’s dream would live on through someone else.

The last thing Wylan remembered before succumbing to the ever-present darkness was a voice. It was raspy; as if the man who spoke the words hadn’t had a glass of water in a decade.

“How pathetic,” the mysterious man said, and Wylan couldn’t help but agree.

divider credit: @/dividers-are-us

[cricket-reader]

Storm on the Horizon

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: Kaz gets ambushed in an alleyway.

Warnings: descriptive violence, vague mention of sexual trafficking

word count: 2,491

A/N: prompt fill for day 1 of @juneofdoom | "Stay down." | Unfair Fight

{Read on A03}

A storm is on the horizon.

Kaz feels it in his leg before he sees it in the sky.

The rest of it has been building since his Wraith had been taken on the shores of Vellgeluk.

Those that pass him on the street are eager to avoid him. Eyes skitter over him, lingering on the crow-headed cane they’ve been taught to fear. He couldn’t care less. No, his mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only.

Revenge.

And he finds himself at home in her arms. Revenge has been as much a mother to him as anything else. She raised Kaz Brekker from the shores of Ketterdam. She taught him everything he knows. She gave him purpose.

He turns down an alleyway. His cane echoes in the space, louder than usual. Every step feels like a negotiation that he’s losing. The grip on his cane tightens. Kaz Brekker does not lose negotiations. Even so, the pull in his leg after a particularly rough stretch of cobblestone sends a flare of resistance that gives him pause. Ever since the Ice Court, his knee has been punishing him tenfold.

Something shifts in the corner of his vision. He immediately flicks his eyes to the parapet, already accounting for a second set of eyes that isn’t there. His teeth press together briefly, the muscle in his cheek tightening. Inej isn't here. When his eyes return to the road ahead, he finds the source of the movement.

Leaning hard against his cane, Kaz stares directly into the eyes of a man made of pure muscle. The absence he had felt increases tenfold. To his credit, the man meets his glare head-on. Though it could stem from the fact that it looks like there is no brain residing inside his thick skull.

Kaz feels the air behind him shift. He throws his cane up, snatching it at the opposite end before sending the crow’s beak into the head of the man behind him. His victim cries out as his blood sprays the weathered yellow building to his left. The second man approaches him, not much more than a twig of a thing, scraggly limbs exposed by the yellow-and-green plaid vest he wears. The ugly thing leaves his tattoo plain for anyone with eyes to see.

Dime Lions.

Every semblance of composure carefully threaded through his body snaps.

Flames combust inside of him. Days of pent-up rage finally, finally break the surface. He smiles. The maniacal look on his face makes Twig falter. Kaz doesn’t hesitate to hook his cane under his leg, sweeping the man off of his feet, his head hitting the cobblestone and painting it red. The man he had first made eye contact with barrels straight into him. Kaz staggers, the weight sending him scrambling.

He juts his elbow into the man’s stomach, the head of his cane sweeping up to meet with the man’s big head. The instant the meaty arms release from around his body, Kaz shuffles away. He isn’t fast enough, and finds himself playing a game of tug-of-war with his cane. With all of his strength, Kaz attempts to wrench it from the large hands holding it hostage. The man holds steady.

A well-aimed punch to the ribs sends Kaz staggering back, the grip on his cane releasing. He coughs, air evading him as he rights himself. His eyes flicker between the men surrounding him. The head of his own cane slams straight into his back. He buckles forward.

“Come on, crip, give it up already,” one of them shouts, laughter breaking up his words. “Ain’t got your Wraith to protect you now.”

His chest heaves. Anger surges in him, hot and ugly, twisting his insides into something unrecognisable. “I don’t need her to fight my battles.”

His eyes settle on the man holding his cane hostage. The man smirks. “From where I’m standing, it sure looks like ya do.”

Idiots. The lot of them. But he won’t take their need for incessant blabber for granted. There are six, no, seven of them now; whilst Twig is still unconscious on the ground, probably for good, the other guy who had received a beak to the jaw staggers up to join the others circling him.

While Muscles is busy looking at the others for approval of his joke, Kaz lunges for his cane. He manages to snatch it from his hand and hit him over the head. It draws blood and anger, but it isn’t nearly enough to take him down. His bad leg flares as he jolts out of reach, angry hands making a grab at him. He doesn’t let it show on his face.

He blocks the next strike with the cane, redirecting another with his shoulder. Something in his ribs answers his movements, sharply enough to steal the breath from his lungs. The world narrows.

Three moving in. Two circling. Two more hanging back, waiting to see how this will all play out.

Kaz moves before they’re able to get the drop on him again. The end of his cane makes a home for itself in the chest of the man in front of him; the man scrambles back, hands reaching for the indent the cane made in his sternum. Dodging the fist coming for his face, Kaz grabs it in his hands, twisting the skinny wrist until he can hear it snap. His crow-headed cane finishes the job for him, meeting the man’s head with all the strength he can muster.

He doesn’t notice the kick coming for his leg until it’s too late.

His knee buckles under the weight of it, sending him careening towards the ground. He tries to get his cane underneath him, but he is too slow. Blood floods into his mouth as he bites down hard on his lip. He will not give them the satisfaction of making him scream.

His knees hit the uneven cobblestone, but he doesn’t have time to let the pain sink in. Kaz Brekker goes on his knees for no one. But before he can push himself up, a boot meets his back. The cane slips from under him.

Loathe as he is to do it, he lets go of his crutch, catching himself before he can eat a mouthful of stone. Another boot, from the side, wastes no time in becoming acquainted with his bruised ribs.

Copper floods his mouth. He coughs, red speckles painting the alleyway. He can hear the buzz of laughter from above, teases and taunts blurring together as the pain overtakes him. Someone presses their foot down on his back, heavy. Kaz’s arms strain under the weight of it all. It doesn’t take long for his arms to fail him. The boot moves from his back to his head, shoving his face into the stone. Jagged pebbles claw into his skin. He clenches his jaw at the show of humiliation.

“Stay down,” the man above him orders. He sounds as if he’s already won.

Everyone loves to underestimate a cripple.

Kaz scans what he can of the men surrounding him. If Inej and Jesper were here, they’d pinpoint his expression for what it was: his scheming face.

Just as the man towering over him lets up on his face, he rolls, grabbing the man’s leg and yanking him down with him. His cane sits just out of reach. He makes do with his fists. One punch against the cobblestone is enough to take him out, his head caving in on the jagged, broken piece of cobblestone. The others around him cry outrage as he evades their hands. He grabs his cane, which the others had been too stupid to leave within his reach.

As soon as the familiar weight is in his hands again, he comes alive. Adrenaline helping with the rest, he staggers to his feet. His leg strains, but he can barely feel it against the bitter rage boiling up inside of him. No one, and he means no one, gets the drop on Kaz Brekker, and if so, they certainly do not get away with it.

His ribs scream in agony as he swings the cane at one of his knife-wielding attackers. It catches on his neck, reducing him into a sorry sack of wheezing and gasping. He grabs the dagger as it makes its descent through open air and wastes no time in throwing it straight at Muscles. Without looking to see if it hit the mark, Kaz stumbles over to his next victim. This one, Kaz notes with a hint of satisfaction, has fear in his eyes. As he should.

The man scrambles to attack, his weight leaning to his left as he gears up for a blow. Kaz deftly sidesteps the fist before bringing his own fist to the sucker’s sorry face. Blood spurts from his nose as he staggers back. Kaz sweeps the cane behind his legs, sending him onto his ass.

An arm closes around his throat from behind. His cane is sent clattering to the floor with a sturdy kick. He watches the coward on his ass trip over himself to get back up and run out of the alley, taking one of his even more pathetic friends with him. Muscles comes lumbering over to Kaz, knife protruding from his chest. His breaths are clipped, face paling as the blood seeps out of his wound. “You dirty bastard,” the man scowls at him, his voice little more than a grumble.

Kaz chokes over his response. “What’d you… expect?”

The man snarls at him, getting right up in his face. Spittle flies in Kaz’s face as the man says, “I’m glad I’ll be the one to put your sorry ass in an early grave.”

“Don’t be so sure about yourself.”

Kaz reaches up, tearing the knife from its place in his chest. The man grabs at his chest, gasping for breath. Blood comes down in waves now, unhindered by the metal that had staunched the worst of the bleeding. He doesn’t give either of the men enough time to think before he plunges the knife into the side of the man holding him. Sure enough, the grip around his neck loosens, giving Kaz ample time to twist around and slash his neck like a pig marked for the slaughter.

He hears Muscles scream of rage from behind him. He waits, watching the shimmering glass sign of Orin’s Glass Shop. At the last second, Kaz dodges out of the way. His leg buckles against the full force of his weight, but he stands steady. Fire licks up through the muscles of his leg, overused and aching for rest. He hasn’t the time.

Muscles catches his foot on the uneven terrain, his large body crashing to the floor.

Through the silence of the night, a steady stream of snivelling whimpers crawls out of the pathetic man’s mouth. Kaz hobbles over to his cane, grinding his teeth as he bends over to pick it up. Muscles claws at the cobblestone, dragging his large body over the stones and smearing them with his blood.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

The cane echoes through the alleyway as Dirtyhands stalks his prey.

The cane thuds against his shoulder, tipping his body over, so he lies on his back. Muscle’s face is a mess of snot and tears, entirely red as he heaves out a sob.

Kaz sneers down at the snivelling man as he pleads for mercy. “Please, please, it was Pekka. Please, I didn’t want to do it. He made me! Please don’t-”

“I’m not known for my mercy,” Kaz says, his voice even despite the agony tormenting his every move. Kaz bends down then. The man blocks his face with his arms, crying out. It’s only after Kaz rises, not touching a hair on his body, that the man peeks out from behind his hands. His eyes widen when they settle on the hunk of loose cobblestone weighing heavily in the black-gloved-clad hands of the Bastard of the Barrel.

“Please! Please! I’ll do anything! I’ll-”

Kaz stomps his good leg down on the man's left arm. He relishes in the scream echoing through the alleyway. Relishes in the fact that no one will come running to protect this man. Not when they know who he’s up against. It’s almost enough to make the excruciating pain in his leg worth it. The man’s other arm instinctively goes to cradle the broken limb. Kaz wastes no time in crushing that one too.

“Please!” The man cries. “No more! I'll get you anything you want. There's—there's a shipment, you can have first pick."

"What shipment?"

"Heard' bout your whore." The man gasps as Kaz puts more pressure on his broken arm. "I'll getcha a new one, young and pure—not stretched out like—"

Kaz cuts him off with a kick to the head.

"Please! Let me go. Haven’t- Haven’t you done enough-”

“No,” Kaz says, examining the rock in his hand with the cool air of someone testing its worth. He lowers down to the man’s level. “You deserve everything I give you and more.”

Kaz delights in the way the man’s eyes widen as he raises the rock.

He brings it down without a second’s hesitation.

The man jerks underneath him, a sharp, broken wail forcing its way out of his mouth. The stone in his hands gleams crimson under the faint lighting from the streetlamp. Resistance meets him as he brings it up once more. The resistance doesn’t come from the weight of his brutality; no, it stems from his own arm, the strain already settling in his shoulder, his ribs, his leg.

It doesn’t matter.

He’s had this festering anger building and building with no release. Kaz won’t stop when the man takes his final breath; he’ll stop when it makes a point.

He brings it down again.

And again.

Every strike is a measured hit, enough to brutalise him beyond recognition. The only thing that shall be left of this Dime Lion rat will be the tattoo connecting him there.

Once the ugly, too-large face is nothing more than crimson and bits of flesh and bone, he stops.

The stone hangs in his grip for a moment longer than necessary. His chest heaves air back into his chest. A drop of something falls on his face, dripping down to his chin. And another. Soon the heavens unleash their tears at the display of brutality before them.

He lets the rain soak into his coat, into his hair, and his gloves. He watches as it pelts the dead body in front of him. His mind wavers. He loses time.

When he finally drops the stone from his hand, it lands with a dull, unremarkable sound against the sin-stained street.

Kaz pushes himself upright, slower now that he can afford the time. His cane takes the brunt of his weight. He doesn’t spare a glance back.

divider credit: @/dividers-are-us

[cricket-reader]

Carving Skin Until My Bones Are Showing

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: You'd thought that everything was fine, until one overheard conversation shattered the illusion, your rose-tinted glasses fading to black. The words cut deeper than anything you've ever heard, and suddenly, you're re-evaluating everything: your relationship, your body, your worth. Now, the man you love with everything you have exists peacefully beside you, as if nothing's changed, while you slowly unravel in silence. You're left wondering if he's already halfway out the door, and you're just the last to know.

Warnings: disordered eating, fainting, body image issues, insecure!reader, misunderstandings, female reader (no y/n)

word count: 4,059

A/N: it's a few days late cause i kept procrastinating on making the banner, whoops | prompt fill for day 30 of @juneofdoom | "This is it isn't it" | Doubt | Crying

{Read on A03} | what i'm listening to

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Sam.”

Bucky’s voice carries across the room and into the hallway, voice laced with mild exasperation. Sam, sitting across from him with an unimpressed look on his face, takes a sip of his coffee. You smile at the sight of Sam, his presence a welcome, if not completely unexpected, surprise at the start of your morning. He must have gotten home early from the mission he was on.

“She’s just so clingy,” Bucky says. “She literally won’t leave me alone. It’s almost annoying at this point.”

You freeze in the doorway, smile slipping off your face in an instant. His words tear through your heart, leaving a hollow ache in their wake.

“That just means she really likes you,” Sam says, shrugging his shoulders.

Bucky huffs, rubbing a hand down his face. “You don’t understand, man. It’s bad, like really bad. I can barely get any of my shit done with her begging for my attention twenty-four seven. I just need some damn space to breathe sometimes.”

You didn’t think you were that bad. Sure, you really liked to drag him away from his work for cuddles—but that was only because you thought he needed the breaks. You know that he used to run himself dry, never letting himself rest until he practically passed out from exhaustion. You didn’t want that cycle to continue. It wasn’t like you forced him to do anything. He could always say no to you. In fact, he has said no to you a few times before—when the work was too important to shove aside for later. All those times he allowed himself to be pulled away, reluctant as he was—how many of those times had he been covertly annoyed with your insistence? How many times did he wish you would just leave him alone?

Your stomach twisted, guilt looming over you. He struggled socially, ran on a limited battery when it came to social interactions—why did you think it would be any different with you? Why did you think you were special? Of course, Bucky is sick of you. When’s the last time that Bucky had some time to himself without you bombarding him with affection and small talk?

“She’s spoiled, that’s what she is,” Bucky grunts, shaking his head. Tears burn at the corners of your eyes. Spoiled? Is that what he really thinks of you? How could he say such a thing? And to Sam, nonetheless. “She eats way too damn much. She’s been gaining so much weight recently; it’s honestly a problem. She ain’t gonna lose it any time soon either with how fucking lazy she is.”

Sam snorts. “Sounds like someone needs to go on a diet.”

“Tell me about it,” Bucky huffs before taking a sip of coffee.

A wave of mortification crashes over you, tears gathering in your eyes. Heart pounding, you take a shaky step back, determined to run back to your room before either of them catches you eavesdropping.

You race back to your shared room, tears blurring the hallway beyond recognition. Once in the safety of your room, you sink down to the floor, back pressed heavy against the door. Your breath comes in shallow, uneven gasps as you press a hand over your mouth—as if that alone could muffle the sobs wracking your body. The betrayal is sharp, sinking its claws into your chest and twisting deep inside of you. How could they say those things about you? How could Bucky say those things about you?

You weren’t that clingy, were you? You just liked being close to him, liked the warmth of his presence, the way he always made you feel safe. And sure, maybe you indulged a little too much lately, but had it really made that much of a difference? Have you clung so much that Bucky has started to resent you for it?

The words replay in your head, each repetition hitting harder, sinking deeper. He sounded so frustrated—so tired of you. Like he was already pulling away, one step from slipping through your fingers completely.

And could you even blame him?

You’ve seen the women he works alongside, the kind of people who seem like they belong in the world. Strong, confident, beautiful. Not needy. Not desperate. Not… you. Maybe he was just now realising what you had known all along—that you weren’t enough. That you never had been.

A fresh wave of tears burns your eyes, but you swallow hard, forcing them back down. You wouldn’t let this be the end.

You could fix this.

You could give him space—stop clinging, stop being so needy. You could take up less room, be less of a burden. And if you skipped a few meals, if you pushed yourself harder, maybe you could be someone he actually wanted again. Someone he’d be proud to love, instead of someone he merely put up with.

You just had to be better.

You would be better.

When you emerged from the bedroom for the second time that day, you made sure to make your arrival audible lest you walk in on them still talking about you and your shortcomings. Whilst you couldn’t stomach any breakfast, you needed your caffeine fix. Bucky greeted you with a wide, beautiful smile and a kiss on the forehead.

It almost made you sick—the way he was able to talk about you like you were the dirt underneath his shoe, only to turn around and play the role of your sweet lover. How could he act like everything was okay when he clearly held resentment against you? It almost makes you wonder how long he’d put up with you for the sake of maintaining this relationship—how long since he’d noticed your defects and realised that he deserved better. You almost feel selfish for keeping him tied to you. Now that the secret is out, there’s no point in dancing around the subject. And yet… here you are. In a kitchen you share with a man who doesn’t love you like he used to, and the man he entrusted with his troubles over you.

Just a little longer, you pleaded. You just need a chance to prove your worth. Bucky won’t have to worry about your overbearing clinginess. He won’t have to be embarrassed to be dating someone of your stature. Bucky deserves the best after everything that he’s been through; you were determined to be that for him in whatever way it took.

You startle out of your thoughts from the movement at your feet. A white ball of fluff looks up at you, meowing incessantly. You reach down to scritch between Alpine’s ears. “Hey, sweetheart,” you coo at her, abandoning your quest for coffee in lieu of holding your baby girl. At least Alpine appreciated your affliction for affection.

You don’t miss the look that passes between Bucky and Sam.

Stomach churning, you suddenly don’t feel the desire to make your coffee anymore. In fact, you don’t even want to be in this room anymore. “I’m going to go over to Nat’s,” you say, hoping that Nat isn’t too busy today.

Bucky’s brow furrows. “Weren’t we going to see that movie today?”

Shoot. You had completely forgotten about that. “We can go later, Nat wanted me to come over right away in the morning.”

“Let me make you your coffee before you go.”

“That’s okay, I’m stopping to get some for Nat and me,” you say, dismissal clear in your tone. It would have made you feel bad to act this way before—before his cruel words effectively tore your heart and spirit to shreds. You gave your baby Alpine a kiss on the top of her head, promising her that you’d be back soon before seeing her back on the ground. You grabbed your purse and sped out of the door without even saying goodbye to the two men.

You spent the majority of the day with Natasha, dread curling around your insides every time you thought about going back home, back to Bucky.

You had promised him that you’d be back to see the movie; however, so, too soon for your liking, you say goodbye to Nat and walk back to your apartment.

There’s a vase of your favourite flowers sitting on the counter when you enter. You frown at the sight, not sure why he would bother when he’s obviously upset with you.

You walk into the living space to see Alpine curled up on Bucky’s lap, his work laptop abandoned on the coffee table. Bucky greets you with a smile, setting a protesting Alpine aside to stand up and give you a welcome home kiss.

“What time were you thinking of for the movie?” He asks, arms resting around your waist.

Frustration begins to creep into your chest. If he had a problem with your clinginess, why is he initiating contact? That’s not fair. How are you supposed to leave him alone when he does stuff like this? “Doesn’t matter to me,” you shrug, not able to meet his eyes.

“There’s a showing in an hour, how does that sound? We can go get dinner afterwards.”

“Sounds great,” you replied.

The movie would have been great if you hadn’t sat there stewing in your own anxiety the entire film. Afterwards, Bucky took you to your favourite restaurant where you ordered a salad with the dressing on the side. Bucky’s brows furrowed at your unusual choice, but he didn’t say anything. The dinner was stilted and awkward, both of you running out of things to talk about sooner than usual.

For the next few weeks, you successfully distanced yourself from your boyfriend. You ignored the way your heart ached every time you saw Bucky alone on the couch, wishing you could go over and snuggle up to his warmth. You learned to ignore the hunger pangs, the way your stomach felt like it was eating itself. Your head split open with the force of the headaches pounding against your skull, vision swimming every time you stood up too quickly.

It’s fine, you told yourself. Who really needed breakfast anyway? Why eat lunch when you could have a few snacks? Bucky was right, you really did eat too much. You could survive on one meal a day, snacks thrown in when your hunger got the best of you, or your hands began to shake too much. You were getting better for him, though, so it didn’t matter. You were eating less, clinging less—just like Bucky had wanted; so why wasn’t he happy yet?

The bed felt colder than usual.

You used to sleep tangled up in Bucky’s arms, leeching off of Bucky’s furnace of a body. You used to tuck your perpetually cold feet against his legs, laughing off his grumbling about how your toes felt like icicles.

Now, you curl up at the farthest edge of the mattress, not willing to accidentally touch him when he clearly wants to be left alone.

You used to look forward to getting home from work, ready to melt into your supersoldier’s arms at the end of a long, tiring day.

Now, you’re filled with dread, wondering if this time will finally be the last.

You used to love the shared dinners at the worn table you had found at a thrift store long ago. Bucky and you would take turns choosing what meal to prepare—you had been on a mission to introduce him to the world of flavour the 21st century had to offer; he always used to say the best part of the ordeal was watching your expectant face as he tried the first bite.

Now your stomach twisted at the mere thought of eating in front of him. His words echoed through your brain with each bite you took—it was enough to make you sick.

Bucky had grown short and snappy with everyone (except you) lately; Natasha had complained ad nauseum about your grumpy boyfriend the last few times you’d hung out. You couldn’t help but think that all of those weeks of your overbearing clinginess were finally catching up to him, as if talking to Sam had opened the floodgates. He has finally realised what his problem was: you.

You really were too late to fix this. No amount of distance could fix what damage had been done. Bucky had a foot out the door for a long time now, and you had been too oblivious to notice.

It was a typical Tuesday when Bucky sent you a text that shattered any hope of repairing your relationship.

>>>Hey, after work, can you come straight home?

>>>We really need to talk.

The cursor blinked steadily even as your hand shook. Tears quickly blurred the damning texts beyond recognition—not that you’d ever forget those words; the words that signified the end of the best thing to happen to you.

After crying in the bathroom for the entirety of your lunch break, you passed through the rest of the day in a haze. Your coworkers knew something was wrong, of course, they did, but you didn’t offer up any explanation.

You felt something press against your throat as you slid the key into the lock, suffocating you with every step you took towards him. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable any further. You wouldn’t continue to drag Bucky down.

The vase of flowers was still sitting on the counter—he’d been buying you a new batch every time they started to wilt. Was he cheating on you? Was that why he was getting you flowers so much more often? The thought was something you’d have previously thought inconceivable, but now you weren’t so sure.

Breaking you from your thoughts, Bucky called out your name from the living room. You forced your gaze away from the flowers and to the living room.

Bucky was sitting on the sofa, hands clasped in between his knees and head hanging low. Your stomach swirled at the sight. This was it, wasn’t it? He was going to cut his losses—cut you from his life.

You crossed your arms, tucking your hands out of sight to hide the way they trembled. You waited for him to say something, not willing to be the person to instigate the conversation.

“Could you sit down?” Bucky asks, sounding so small as he gestures to the armchair. You walk over to the chair, despite wanting to stay as close to the exit as possible—ready to run away as soon as his words cut through you like a knife.

Bucky sighs deeply, his hands running over his face. You almost reach out for him, wanting to comfort him, wanting to kiss those lines away from his forehead. Stopping yourself, you remind yourself that it’s not your place, not anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while now.

“This isn’t working anymore, doll,” Bucky says, not even able to look at you. You saw it coming a mile away, and yet it doesn’t take away the anguish those words bring you.

You know you should say something, but words seem to escape you as soon as you open your mouth. Instead, a hot ball of grief and shame lodges in your throat. Tears spring to your eyes, despite telling yourself that you would not let him see you cry over this. It’s for the best, you try to tell yourself. You were but a stepping stone to Bucky’s recovery. You should be grateful that a man like him even offered you a second glance. Despite the way things ended, you know that you’ll look back on all the memories you made together and smile. Because, for once in your life, you knew what it was like to be loved so wholly. You knew what it was like to have a man who cared so deeply, loved so openly, and gave you enough devotion to last a lifetime.

“Yeah,” you agree with him for the sake of things. You hope he won’t look too deeply into your unshed tears, the way your voice wobbled and the way your body trembled. “I… I should go.”

“Doll-”

You cut him off before he can get another word in. “No, just… let me-”

Standing up to run away from this awful conversation, you feel the world sway around you. Black fades in at the edges of your vision as you stumble forward. You think you hear Bucky calling out your name under the sharp ringing in your ears. Clenching your eyes shut, you brace yourself for the hardwood floor.

—

“Doll?”

You groan as something prods your side. Just five more minutes, you think, burying your face into the warmth surrounding you.

“Sweetheart, please!”

Is that Bucky? Why does he sound so worried?

Blinking up at your boyfriend, you find that you’re both in the living room. Bucky’s clenching onto your body like a lifeline. “What’s wrong, Bucky?”

He stares blankly at you for a few seconds. “Doll… you just passed out.”

“Oh,” you eloquently respond.

The fog covering your brain begins to lift bit by bit. You were both sitting down… Bucky was… he was breaking up with you.

Jolting, you scramble out of Bucky’s arms, pushing him away, away, away.

“I’m sorry,” you say, covering your heated face in shame. “I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

“Don’t be sorry, honey.” He scoots closer to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” you say, despite knowing full well that ever since you started skipping meals, you’ve been prone to blacking out if you stand up too fast.

Bucky frowns at you, eyebrows furrowed. “I feel like you aren’t telling the truth right now.”

“It doesn’t matter, Bucky.”

“Like hell it doesn’t matter! You just fainted. If I hadn’t been there to catch you, you’d have cut your head open on the side of the table. Tell me what’s going on!” Never before had you heard Bucky sound so worried.

“Why do you care so much?”

“Why do I–Why do I care?” Bucky scoffs in disbelief. “You did not just ask me that.”

“You’re finally breaking up with me, you don’t have to pretend to care about me anymore,” you shoot back, venom lacing your words as you extricate yourself from under his arm.

“Breaking… I wasn’t going to break up with you,” Bucky says as if the idea alone was unimaginable.

“Bullshit! I know that you’ve been wanting to break up with me for weeks—months even!”

“Where the hell would you get an idea like that from?”

“I heard you talking to Sam last month. You told him that I was clingy and lazy and fat.”

Bucky looks positively bewildered at your words. “I would never say any of that crap!”

“But you did.” You cross your arms, daring him to continue lying to you.

“Why the hell would I ever say that? I sure as hell don’t think any of that-”

“Oh, give it up, Barnes. Who else would you have been talking about? Who else is such a spoiled, lazy, clingy, fat-”

“Oh my god,” Bucky interrupts you. “Are you talking about that time I was complaining about Alpine?”

Your heart stops in your chest. “What?”

“I was telling Sam about how annoying it was trying to work from home. She’d always sit on my damn laptop and yowl in my face until I payed attention to her.” Bucky shakes his head—his bemusement is quick to fade, however. “You seriously thought that I was talking about you?”

Sniffling back tears, you nodded your head.

“Oh, Jesus, doll. Why didn’t you say something?” Bucky wraps his arms around you. “Hell, if I ever said something like that, I’d expect at least a slap to the face.”

“But I was too clingy, always cuddling you and giving you kisses-”

“Is that why you haven’t so much as touched me the last few weeks?”

“I thought you wanted me to stop,”

Bucky squeezes you tighter. “Never. I’d never want you to stop. Doll, I thought you were mad at me. I kept buying you flowers and making your favourite dinners to try and get you to forgive me. But you didn’t even give them a second glance, and half the time you’d already eaten or you’d just push the food around on your plate.”

You melt into his embrace, his reassurances a balm over the lingering anxiety of being too much for him. “I was just trying to make you like me again.”

“Doll,” Bucky pulls away from you, sounding completely gutted. “You should never change yourself to make someone like you more. I love how clingy you are—I missed you so damn much.”

“What about…” No, you can’t ask that—you don’t want to hear his answer. “Never mind.”

And Bucky, damn him, doesn’t let it go. “What about what?”

“It’s nothing,” you say, pulling away from him.

“Doll, please don’t shut me out,” Bucky pleads, using those sad eyes that always make you fold.

“It’s just… You never… Do you have a problem with what I look like?”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “Of course, not. Doll, you are so damn beautiful-”

“But I could be thinner. Lots of other girls are prettier and skinnier,” you interrupt him. You freeze at the way his face hardens.

“I love you just the way you are, sweetheart. You don’t have to change a god damn thing about you. You want to know who drives me crazy? You. You want to know who I want to spend the rest of my life looking at? You. When I fell in love with you, I fell in love with all of you. It’s always going to be you. I don’t want no one else, got it?”

“I…” You stumble over your words, tears burning in your waterline. “I started skipping meals again. That’s why I passed out.”

Bucky’s face turns ashen. “You… you stopped eating because of me?”

“I didn’t completely stop eating! I had snacks and dinner most days. It’s not that big-”

“So help me god if you were about to say that it’s not that big of a deal,” Bucky interrupts you, voice sharp. “You need to eat, doll. This beautiful body cannot live without food.”

“I just thought… I thought if I started skipping meals and working out more, I’d look more like Nat or Sharon or-”

“If I wanted someone that looked like them, I’d ask them out. You wanna know why I asked you out? It’s because I thought you were hot. It’s because you’re as gorgeous on the outside as you are on the inside. I don’t want you to look like Nat, I don’t want you to look like Sharon. I want you to look like you.”

Bucky says it with such conviction, you can’t help but allow the tears to fall down your face. “You really mean that?”

“Of course, babydoll. You’re it for me. Don’t want no one else.” Bucky pulls you back into his arms, nuzzling his face into the junction between your neck and shoulder. “Call off of work tomorrow.”

“What? I can’t-” You screech as he lifts you into his arms. Clinging to him like a koala as he makes his way to your bedroom, you protest every step of the way.

“Hush,” he says, laying you down on the bed. “I have been deprived of your cuddles for too damn long. We’re gonna order whatever you want, and snuggle all night long. Then tomorrow, I’m going to make you a giant breakfast and we can go on a picnic for lunch.”

“I don’t ever want my best girl doubting my love for her again, got it?” Bucky asks, leaning over you.

You huff at his antics, rolling your eyes. He pinches your side, only the hint of a grin belying his angered expression. “Got it?” Bucky asks again.

“Yes! Okay, I got it!”

“I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you know just how loved you are,” he says as a promise before leaning in and kissing your lips.

That night, as you snuggle into his warmth, you endeavour to never let a misunderstanding like this tear you apart again.

Taglist: @hallecarey1 @harleycao @filmsbyblair

[idkbeautiful]

I can't 😭 This is so good.

[cricket-reader]

Thank you so much, lovely! 💕💕

[cricket-reader]

Happy New Year, everyone! 🥳

Along with sharing my own AO3 wrapped, I wanted to thank you all for your support this year! I am so grateful for everyone who interacted with my works, especially for the lovely comments that always make me smile.

Here’s to a great 2026!

[cricket-reader]

I compiled a list of all my Winter/Christmas fics for those of you wanting some holiday-ish related marvel shenanigans!

🎄 = Holiday/Christmas

❄️ = Winter/Snow

✨ = My Favourites!

Make the Yuletide Gay 🎄✨

Not-So-Secret Santa 🎄

Christmastime 🎄✨

Coldest Winter 🎄

Coffee Run 🎄✨

Your Warmth ❄️✨

Mutual Agreement ❄️

Christmas Cookies 🎄

Silent Night 🎄✨

Holiday Spirit 🎄

Find the collection on A03 here!

Enjoy and happy holidays! Love you all 💕💕

[cricket-reader]

Happy holidays, everyone! Here’s my wintertime/holiday master post so that you all can enjoy the holiday season with your favourites. I included my newest fic, Coffee Run in the lineup.

Hope you like it 💕💕

[cricket-reader]

Coffee Run

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

summary: Bucky Barnes is sent out for coffee in the middle of December with a list of orders that make no sense and a growing hatred of the cold that winter brings to New York. The cafe is a warm, quaint little escape from the hustle and bustle of the big city. He doesn't expect that warmth to linger after he steps back into the cold, following him all the way back to the tower. He especially doesn't expect to volunteer to come back, much less to start looking forward to it because of a certain barista with a warm smile and a voice coated in honey.

word count: 4,128

warnings: female reader (no y/n), reader described to have frizzy hair, mutual pining, Christmas fluff

A/N: Happy holidays, lovelies!

{Read on A03}

There are two things that make Bucky Barnes unbearably grumpy.

Okay, that’s a lie. There are many things that make the super soldier grumpy. But if he had to choose his top two at the moment, it would definitely include the snow that seems to be never-ending. The way the cold permeates through his clothes, the way it envelops him in its icy embrace, even in the comfort of the tower. He knows that in reality, he runs hot. The serum in his veins makes sure that his body temperature is above average at all times, able to withstand what would debilitate any normal human being. Despite this, despite his very biology, Bucky always feels cold. His stupid therapist would tell him it’s nothing more than psychosomatic symptoms from his time in cryofreeze. But that doesn’t make the chill he feels on even the hottest summer day any less real.

The second thing, Bucky thinks, looking down at a list littered with five different handwritings sprawled across a paper much too small for its contents, would be his team’s coffee orders. He doesn’t know what got a hold of him when he offered to do a coffee run for the people he’s come to call his teammates. Perhaps it was energy pent up from being trapped within the same tower for weeks with no missions and snowfall so heavy, you’d’ve thought the heavens were unleashing everything they had all at once. Perhaps it was the way Yelena would make the off-hand comment about some small local cafe she’d been wanting to try out. Perhaps it was because Alexei was about to go on an hour-long rant about his victories as the Red Guardian to anyone who would listen (it was usually him; Bucky always got stuck on the other end of the exuberant man’s far-fetched tales).

Whatever it was that propelled him to volunteer was immediately returned with regret as soon as each member of the team began writing paragraphs. Their coffee orders looked like essays, each one with a list far too long for just a simple coffee. He’d never even heard of half of the stuff they had scribbled down. He furrows his brows, wondering if they hadn’t just written a bunch of gibberish down so he’d make a fool of himself. Oat milk — milk can come from oats? And what the hell is cold foam, and why would someone put it in their coffee?

He braces himself as his gloved hand reaches for the handle to an unassuming little shop tucked into a corner of the madness that is New York. Warmth envelops him as soon as he opens the door. Gentle yellow lights bathe him with their glow – so unlike most stores and restaurants with their headache-inducing white lights and modern furnishings that were impersonal, almost as cold as the weather. He stood stock-still in the doorway for just a second too long. The smell of coffee beans roasting hit him full force, sounds following soon thereafter; the bustle of the baristas and the whir of a blender as a small crowd waited for their caffeine fix of the day.

He wasn’t expecting such a small place to be so busy, and with every step closer to the counter, the note gets more and more distressed. He runs through the list over and over in his head, determined not to make a fool of himself. It’s only when the line cuts down, when only two people stand between him and glorious caffeine, that his heart gets caught in his throat.

Because he sees you.

You with your wide, inviting (could he say adorable?) smile, you with your endless kindness as the elderly lady squinting up at the chalkboard asks you what the difference between a mocha and a latte is, you with your furrowed brows as you count out the change to give back to her.

He is halfway tempted to shove the distressed paper deep into his pocket, to never see the light of day again. To play it safe and order a black coffee. Because the list that he has? It's way too long. Behind him is a line of customers waiting for their turn. Who is he to hold you guys up with the most absurd requests? Who is he to be the one to wipe that perfect little smile off your face?

He nearly ducks out of the line, determined to walk back to the tower and make the damn coffee himself. That is, at least, before your bright smile is aimed at him, your honeyed voice directed towards him.

“Welcome to Honey and Sugar, what can I get for you today?”

He finds himself being drawn to the counter, your voice a siren song. His thumb rubs absently along the paper, debating whether or not to be the thing that ruins your day. Before he’s able to stuff it into his pocket, your eyes dart down to the list. “Coffee run for your coworkers?” you ask, still smiling up at him as if he deserved it.

“Uh, yeah, something like that,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his neck as he placed the paper on the counter.

Your eyebrows raised a little as your gorgeous eyes skimmed over the list. He expects your smile to sour, expects your honeyed voice to turn into something acrid, but instead, all you give him is a teasing comment as you begin the tedious process of entering every order into the system.

“Anything else?” You ask before giving him the total.

“Uh… I’ll just have a black coffee,” he finishes lamely. You smirk at him as you type it into the system.

“Not into all the bells and whistles?”

“I just… uh, like to stick with what I know, I guess,” Bucky says, sounding the most sheepish he has in, like the history of the universe. How embarrassing can he be? Get it together, he tells himself.

“Well, I guess someone had to make my job a little easier today,” you said with a wink.

He is still calming his heartbeat as he waits off to the side for you and your coworkers to finish the orders. He curses himself for his stupid, childish crush. He hasn’t felt this way for a girl in so long, and why? Just cause she smiled at him so sweetly and made a joke? Pathetic.

He picks up the order and brings it back to the tower, grumbling to his teammates as he berates them for their complicated orders.

“Hey,” Ava pauses his grumbling as she lifts her coffee. “Why didn’t I get a smiley face on my cup, too?”

The other Thunderbolts are quick to examine their cups, each one bereft of a cute little smile. A blush rises to Bucky’s face as he looks at his cup, smiling up at him.

“Damn, Barnes, didn’t think you still had it in you,” Walker teases, licking all the caramel and chocolate-covered whipped cream off the top of his drink

“Shut up,” Bucky grumbles with no actual heat to his words. He stalks away from the group before his grumpy facade falls into that of a lovesick boy. How could he stay grumpy with the knowledge that you had taken the time out of your day to make him smile? That you had cared enough to spend even a second of your time on him in a way that wasn’t necessary at all.

It was enough to warm his soul just enough to fight off the constant chill that ached within his body. And, though it was just a simple black coffee, he couldn’t help but think it was the best damn thing he’d ever tasted.

It’s not quite blizzard territory when Bucky goes out again for a Thunderbolts coffee run.

They’d just gotten back from a mission not five hours ago, and Bucky was crawling out of his skin to come see you. It was a mission with too many close calls, too many civilian casualties to be called a success, and more injuries than he would have preferred to have to write up. But not even his bum leg and the deep gash in his side were going to stop him from making the trek to the quiet corner of New York that he had only just found a few weeks ago.

When asked, he would say that he couldn’t hold off on going because a blizzard was scheduled to come within the hour. What he wouldn’t admit was that even the possibility of being able to see you, because he couldn’t be sure you were even scheduled today, would mend him together better than any of the world’s greatest doctors Valentina had at her disposal.

His stomach twisted into knots when he saw the line that was practically out the door. There was barely enough room to breathe, let alone walk inside the small cafe. And whilst he loved the small size of it last time — the cosy atmosphere was calming compared to the hustle and bustle of the city — now the shop was almost suffocating. But just as he was about to turn tail and hobble back to the tower, he saw your face amongst the swarm of people. He frowned as he stepped into line. It moved like molasses, but he was in no rush. Not like the other people who were tapping their feet, mutterings of “this is ridiculous” and “why’s it taking so damn long” filter through the cacophony of the small cafe.

He takes the time to examine the decorations now sprawled around the room. It’s almost like Christmas itself had barfed all over the little coffee shop with all the garlands and ornaments and glitter scattered around. He wonders if you had any part in the festivities. If you and your coworkers had stayed late to spread holiday cheer in the form of decorations. He wonders if you guys had put on Christmas music to sing and dance along to. A stray thought floats through his brain like a lonesome tumbleweed: what if next year you’d join him with the Thunderbolts, dancing around with Bob and Yelena as you sang along to overplayed music. He wonders if you have a good singing voice, or if you’d join them along with their off-tune renditions of beloved classics.

When he gets close enough to get a glimpse of your face, he could tell from a mile away that your smile is poorly stitched on, one loose thread holding it together from it all unravelling. One of the customers is yelling over the sounds of a blender, saying you got her order wrong and demanding a refund. You’re a mess of frizzy hair, trembling hands, and dark under eyes.

When he finally reaches the counter, you smile at him, something real, but slightly manic, as if you’re one bad comment away from shattering like porcelain. He looks down at the mile-long list of the Thunderbolt’s demands — somehow, they were each able to come up with new concoctions that are as complicated as the last list. He curses them and their inability to order anything reasonable.

“Got another crazy list for me?” you ask. Somehow your tone isn’t laced with exasperation or annoyance. Despite the chaos surrounding you, you’re still able to make him feel as if he’s not a burden to you.

“Honestly, if you’re too busy, I can just skip these assholes’ orders.”

“And leave you to get fed to the wolves?” There’s a sparkle in your eyes that somehow hasn’t been extinguished despite all of the awful people you’ve dealt with in just the time that he’s been here. “I couldn’t fall asleep with that on my conscience. Hand it over.”

And he doesn’t stand a chance against your insistence. No matter how horrible he feels, holding you and your coworkers up with your teammates’ ridiculous orders. You punch them in as fast as you can (not fast enough for the jackass behind him who yells at you to hurry it up).

Bucky isn’t subtle in the way he pulls off one of his gloves, flexing gold and black as if gearing up for a fight. He turns back and levels a glare he usually reserves for terrorist Nazis. It serves well to deter the man from making another comment, his skin going ghostly white at the sight of the former Winter Soldier glaring at him as if he were his next target.

“Want another black coffee with sugar?” you ask Bucky before ringing up the total, completely oblivious to the little stand off with your focus on the tablet. For a second, Bucky is taken aback that you allowed his coffee order to take up even an iota of space in your brain. Sure, it’s not the extravagant iced white mocha topped with extra edible glitter and rainbow sprinkles and cold foam with three and a half pumps of raspberry, and two pumps of white chocolate with light ice that Yelena had ordered, but the fact that you remembered him and his order amongst all the other people that flooded in and out, day in and day out despite him only visiting once prior… well…

“No, that’s alright. You already have enough on your plate.”

You chuckle at him. “I promise a simple black coffee won’t be the thing that sends me hurtling off the edge.”

“Only if you’re sure…” Bucky says. Because, whilst your presence has done wonders for his soul, coffee always makes things better, warm comforts like that are always able to ease the ache in his soul.

This time, his coffee cup has a cute little heart drawn near the top of the festive cup they now serve their drinks with, being close enough to the Christmas season to start with the festivities. And when his teammates make fun of him for the barista’s obvious favouritism, Bucky just mutters some excuse about being the only one who has to go get the damn orders; his excuse is so flimsy that not even he himself believes it.

It’s Christmas Eve, and the Thunderbolts have just finished baking enough sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and fudge to put Santa and all his elves into a sugar coma. Christmas music has been playing on repeat throughout the common floor, with Yelena threatening to severely maim anyone who turns it off. It’s the most fun Bucky’s had on Christmas Eve in a while, but even all the shenanigans going on around him can’t keep his mind off of that cute little barista he had fallen over himself despite only ever seeing her two times.

“I’m going to pick up coffee,” Bucky declares as soon as arguments devolve around him over which holiday classic they’re going to watch first.

Yelena frowns at him. “No, everyone stays here. You’ll miss the movie!”

“I’m sure that by the time I get back, you’ll have finally decided which one to watch, so I won’t be missin’ much of anything. What absurd combinations do you guys want?”

“I’m good,” Bob calls out as he takes the last batch of the gingerbread men out of the oven. “Had enough coffee this morning.”

“Yeah, I think we’ve all drunk our weight in caffeine for the day. Why don’t you just stay here?”

“Yeah, no point in going out if we don’t want any.”

“Well… I’m going out anyways. Just wanted to see if you guys wanted anything.”

Ava squints her eyes at Bucky from her place, perched on the back of the sofa. “We don’t even want coffee, and you could make your depressing coffee here. You just want an excuse to see your girlfriend!”

Bucky splutters, all eyes on him now. “I don’t have a… it’s not… we’re not-”

John rolls his eyes. “This is honestly pathetic, man. Just go see your girl.”

“If it’s not too much trouble, I’ll take one of their hot cocoas, though!” Bob chipped in. “Extra whipped cream, extra edible glitter, a candy cane, and extra cocoa.”

Bucky rolls his eyes as more people join in, each order getting more ridiculous. “Alright, alright, just write it down. I’m never going to remember any of that bullshit.”

Ridiculous list in hand, Bucky takes off for the coffee shop he had been avoiding going to too often for the risk of seeming like a creep. He really hopes you’re there, even if it’s Christmas Eve, and he doesn’t think anybody should have to work around the holidays. When he steps in, it’s nearly empty. A few college students sit around a round table working on their laptops, surrounded by textbooks, and a woman in a suit is on a hushed call as she types away at her own laptop. You and one of your coworkers are behind the counter, wiping up the counters and putting away ingredients. You see him first, your entire face lighting up at the mere sight of him. As if he were something worth getting excited about.

“Hope I’m not too late,” he says, noting that they close in less than twenty minutes. He hates being that guy, and if it’s too much trouble, he’ll leave. He didn’t realise you guys were closing early, though it does make sense.

“You’re just in time,” you chirp, tapping away at the tablet. “What concoctions did your coworkers come up with this time?”

He sees the glare your coworker levels his way, and winces. “Y’know what. I’ll just skip the craziness. They’ve had enough caffeine as it is, and lord knows they don’t need all the sugar with all the goodies we made.”

You glance back at your coworker, whatever expression is on your face succeeds in making him turn back to scrubbing at a particularly stubborn stain. “Don’t worry about Ajax, they honestly just hate the holidays, and want to get out of the Christmas-infested cafe.”

“Right.” Bucky pulls out the list for you. “Um… thanks for this. And just the usual for me if it’s not too much trouble.”

You smile at him as you finish typing in his order. “Anything else?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. “No.”

“It’ll be up in a second then!” He has to be imagining the way you slightly deflate at his silence.

Bucky walks over to the pickup counter, mentally berating himself for not furthering your conversation. He watches as you and Ajax whip up the orders. They talk to you so easily, so effortlessly, bumping your shoulders with a teasing smile. It makes him yearn for a time when he could talk to anyone without tripping over his words, without the uncomfortable silences that always manage to deter even the most stubborn of people. He misses the easy way he could flirt with dames, misses being able to give his touch so casually, misses being whole.

Maybe it’s for the best that he didn't say anything to you. He probably would have tripped over some outdated pick-up line, or fumbled trying to invite you back to the tower for a movie night (it’s way too soon to be bringing you there, good god, if he wants even a chance with you, he’ll have to keep you far from his team). He might’ve tried to do both in the same breath until his sentence was a jumbled-up mess of nonsense.

You would’ve smiled at him. Maybe with pity, maybe not. Because that’s who you are. You would’ve politely turned him down, tried not to make things awkward even if you were completely disgusted with his attempt, even if you’d take it back to your coworker or friends to say, “you’ll never guess what happened to me today.”

His name being called out disrupts his thoughts. Your mouth always manages to form his name into something beautiful. He’s unworthy of being referenced with such reverence, but he soaks it up, selfish as he is.

“Thanks for this,” he says, apparently unable to do anything but skip like a scratched record.

“No problem, James.” You smile at him as he picks up his order.

He scans the orders, each perfectly made as usual. Except… Well, he doesn’t see his coffee. You have your back turned to him now, putting away the several types of milk that you had to pull out for his order, and he feels bad. It’s almost closing time, and you guys just want to go home to celebrate the holiday with your family (okay, Ajax probably wants to bunker down until Christmas is over, but his point still stands).

“Everything alright?” you ask because, of course, you noticed that he paused.

“It’s nothing, um, have a Merry Christmas.” Bucky says. He was kind of hoping to see what you’d draw on his cup this time, hoping that you’d maybe take the time, even though you were tired and wanted to go home for Christmas, just to show that you cared. And isn’t that pathetic that he has to look for it in some poor underpaid barista who probably had to fend off creeps like him all the time.

“Wait! You should try yours before you take off.”

He turns back to you, his brows furrowed. “Um… you forgot it, but it’s okay! I can make my own-”

“Oh, no! Sorry, I should’ve mentioned. I thought… well, I changed up your order a bit — don’t worry, I didn’t charge you extra. Just thought you should have something a bit different for once.”

“Oh,” he mutters as he sets it back on the pickup counter. He watches you select one of the cups. You hand it to him, your face alight with cautious hope as he accepts it. He tries not to let his apprehension show on his face. Because whilst he appreciates the thought, if it’s anything like the sugar-monstrosities that his team orders, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stomach it. He hates the way the sweetness clings to his tongue and refuses to let go, so cloyingly artificial it makes him sick.

He doesn’t have to drink the whole thing, he tells himself. He can just take a sip, tell you he likes it, and then pawn it off to one of his teammates. The last thing he wants to do is make you feel bad for messing up his coffee.

“If you don’t like it, I can just make your usual,” you say, still sensing his hesitation despite his best efforts to hide it.

“I’m sure it’ll be good,” he smiles at you. “I trust your judgement.” He just doesn’t trust that anything behind that counter is anything other than artificial sweetness that he still hasn’t gotten used to the way everyone who came from this century has. Anything sweet back in his time was a rare treat; coffee used to always taste burnt and watery, with no sugar or cream to cover it up.

He blows on the coffee before bringing it to his lips for a taste. In an instant, flavours of cinnamon and honey and vanilla invade his senses — not the cloyingly sweet taste of syrups, but the actual thing. He can taste the coffee underneath it, the hint of sugar that doesn’t stick to his tongue like sap. None of the flavours is fighting over the other; each is somehow perfectly balanced.

He can’t stop himself from taking another sip, the trepidation immediately gone from his body. “It’s really good,” he offers to combat the worry line that appeared on your face from his silence. “Really good.”

Your entire body relaxes, as if those words held the weight of the world, as if his liking of the drink would make or break your day, as if it were something worthy of suspense, of a breath held. “Glad to hear it,” you say, the smile on your face somehow even brighter than normal, lighting up even your eyes.

He looks down at the cup, where the paper receipt hangs from it, ingredients written out in rushed shorthand. It’s then that he notices the adorable little reindeer you had scribbled at the top, a little speech bubble next to it containing the words “Happy Holidays!”

His heart warms, knowing, no doubt, that this little doodle cost you more time than usual.

“Happy Holidays,” Bucky says, before you’re able to turn to your coworker who’s waiting impatiently for you to finish up. “And thanks… for this… again.”

You smile at him, a little less bright than before, tinged with something he doesn’t quite understand.

It’s only when he gets back to the tower that he realises you had written a number near the bottom of the cup, a few hearts surrounding it. His heart skips a beat knowing it’s your number. You gave him your number.

Holiday banner made by the lovely @/chateaubarnes!

Taglist: @harleycao @hallecarey1 @filmsbyblair

[cricket-reader]

Carving Skin Until My Bones Are Showing

Masterlist | A03 | Wattpad | Recommendations | Inbox | Taglist

Summary: You'd thought that everything was fine, until one overheard conversation shattered the illusion, your rose-tinted glasses fading to black. The words cut deeper than anything you've ever heard, and suddenly, you're re-evaluating everything: your relationship, your body, your worth. Now, the man you love with everything you have exists peacefully beside you, as if nothing's changed, while you slowly unravel in silence. You're left wondering if he's already halfway out the door, and you're just the last to know.

Warnings: disordered eating, fainting, body image issues, insecure!reader, misunderstandings, female reader (no y/n)

word count: 4,059

A/N: it's a few days late cause i kept procrastinating on making the banner, whoops | prompt fill for day 30 of @juneofdoom | "This is it isn't it" | Doubt | Crying

{Read on A03} | what i'm listening to

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Sam.”

Bucky’s voice carries across the room and into the hallway, voice laced with mild exasperation. Sam, sitting across from him with an unimpressed look on his face, takes a sip of his coffee. You smile at the sight of Sam, his presence a welcome, if not completely unexpected, surprise at the start of your morning. He must have gotten home early from the mission he was on.

“She’s just so clingy,” Bucky says. “She literally won’t leave me alone. It’s almost annoying at this point.”

You freeze in the doorway, smile slipping off your face in an instant. His words tear through your heart, leaving a hollow ache in their wake.

“That just means she really likes you,” Sam says, shrugging his shoulders.

Bucky huffs, rubbing a hand down his face. “You don’t understand, man. It’s bad, like really bad. I can barely get any of my shit done with her begging for my attention twenty-four seven. I just need some damn space to breathe sometimes.”

You didn’t think you were that bad. Sure, you really liked to drag him away from his work for cuddles—but that was only because you thought he needed the breaks. You know that he used to run himself dry, never letting himself rest until he practically passed out from exhaustion. You didn’t want that cycle to continue. It wasn’t like you forced him to do anything. He could always say no to you. In fact, he has said no to you a few times before—when the work was too important to shove aside for later. All those times he allowed himself to be pulled away, reluctant as he was—how many of those times had he been covertly annoyed with your insistence? How many times did he wish you would just leave him alone?

Your stomach twisted, guilt looming over you. He struggled socially, ran on a limited battery when it came to social interactions—why did you think it would be any different with you? Why did you think you were special? Of course, Bucky is sick of you. When’s the last time that Bucky had some time to himself without you bombarding him with affection and small talk?

“She’s spoiled, that’s what she is,” Bucky grunts, shaking his head. Tears burn at the corners of your eyes. Spoiled? Is that what he really thinks of you? How could he say such a thing? And to Sam, nonetheless. “She eats way too damn much. She’s been gaining so much weight recently; it’s honestly a problem. She ain’t gonna lose it any time soon either with how fucking lazy she is.”

Sam snorts. “Sounds like someone needs to go on a diet.”

“Tell me about it,” Bucky huffs before taking a sip of coffee.

A wave of mortification crashes over you, tears gathering in your eyes. Heart pounding, you take a shaky step back, determined to run back to your room before either of them catches you eavesdropping.

You race back to your shared room, tears blurring the hallway beyond recognition. Once in the safety of your room, you sink down to the floor, back pressed heavy against the door. Your breath comes in shallow, uneven gasps as you press a hand over your mouth—as if that alone could muffle the sobs wracking your body. The betrayal is sharp, sinking its claws into your chest and twisting deep inside of you. How could they say those things about you? How could Bucky say those things about you?

You weren’t that clingy, were you? You just liked being close to him, liked the warmth of his presence, the way he always made you feel safe. And sure, maybe you indulged a little too much lately, but had it really made that much of a difference? Have you clung so much that Bucky has started to resent you for it?

The words replay in your head, each repetition hitting harder, sinking deeper. He sounded so frustrated—so tired of you. Like he was already pulling away, one step from slipping through your fingers completely.

And could you even blame him?

You’ve seen the women he works alongside, the kind of people who seem like they belong in the world. Strong, confident, beautiful. Not needy. Not desperate. Not… you. Maybe he was just now realising what you had known all along—that you weren’t enough. That you never had been.

A fresh wave of tears burns your eyes, but you swallow hard, forcing them back down. You wouldn’t let this be the end.

You could fix this.

You could give him space—stop clinging, stop being so needy. You could take up less room, be less of a burden. And if you skipped a few meals, if you pushed yourself harder, maybe you could be someone he actually wanted again. Someone he’d be proud to love, instead of someone he merely put up with.

You just had to be better.

You would be better.

When you emerged from the bedroom for the second time that day, you made sure to make your arrival audible lest you walk in on them still talking about you and your shortcomings. Whilst you couldn’t stomach any breakfast, you needed your caffeine fix. Bucky greeted you with a wide, beautiful smile and a kiss on the forehead.

It almost made you sick—the way he was able to talk about you like you were the dirt underneath his shoe, only to turn around and play the role of your sweet lover. How could he act like everything was okay when he clearly held resentment against you? It almost makes you wonder how long he’d put up with you for the sake of maintaining this relationship—how long since he’d noticed your defects and realised that he deserved better. You almost feel selfish for keeping him tied to you. Now that the secret is out, there’s no point in dancing around the subject. And yet… here you are. In a kitchen you share with a man who doesn’t love you like he used to, and the man he entrusted with his troubles over you.

Just a little longer, you pleaded. You just need a chance to prove your worth. Bucky won’t have to worry about your overbearing clinginess. He won’t have to be embarrassed to be dating someone of your stature. Bucky deserves the best after everything that he’s been through; you were determined to be that for him in whatever way it took.

You startle out of your thoughts from the movement at your feet. A white ball of fluff looks up at you, meowing incessantly. You reach down to scritch between Alpine’s ears. “Hey, sweetheart,” you coo at her, abandoning your quest for coffee in lieu of holding your baby girl. At least Alpine appreciated your affliction for affection.

You don’t miss the look that passes between Bucky and Sam.

Stomach churning, you suddenly don’t feel the desire to make your coffee anymore. In fact, you don’t even want to be in this room anymore. “I’m going to go over to Nat’s,” you say, hoping that Nat isn’t too busy today.

Bucky’s brow furrows. “Weren’t we going to see that movie today?”

Shoot. You had completely forgotten about that. “We can go later, Nat wanted me to come over right away in the morning.”

“Let me make you your coffee before you go.”

“That’s okay, I’m stopping to get some for Nat and me,” you say, dismissal clear in your tone. It would have made you feel bad to act this way before—before his cruel words effectively tore your heart and spirit to shreds. You gave your baby Alpine a kiss on the top of her head, promising her that you’d be back soon before seeing her back on the ground. You grabbed your purse and sped out of the door without even saying goodbye to the two men.

You spent the majority of the day with Natasha, dread curling around your insides every time you thought about going back home, back to Bucky.

You had promised him that you’d be back to see the movie; however, so, too soon for your liking, you say goodbye to Nat and walk back to your apartment.

There’s a vase of your favourite flowers sitting on the counter when you enter. You frown at the sight, not sure why he would bother when he’s obviously upset with you.

You walk into the living space to see Alpine curled up on Bucky’s lap, his work laptop abandoned on the coffee table. Bucky greets you with a smile, setting a protesting Alpine aside to stand up and give you a welcome home kiss.

“What time were you thinking of for the movie?” He asks, arms resting around your waist.

Frustration begins to creep into your chest. If he had a problem with your clinginess, why is he initiating contact? That’s not fair. How are you supposed to leave him alone when he does stuff like this? “Doesn’t matter to me,” you shrug, not able to meet his eyes.

“There’s a showing in an hour, how does that sound? We can go get dinner afterwards.”

“Sounds great,” you replied.

The movie would have been great if you hadn’t sat there stewing in your own anxiety the entire film. Afterwards, Bucky took you to your favourite restaurant where you ordered a salad with the dressing on the side. Bucky’s brows furrowed at your unusual choice, but he didn’t say anything. The dinner was stilted and awkward, both of you running out of things to talk about sooner than usual.

For the next few weeks, you successfully distanced yourself from your boyfriend. You ignored the way your heart ached every time you saw Bucky alone on the couch, wishing you could go over and snuggle up to his warmth. You learned to ignore the hunger pangs, the way your stomach felt like it was eating itself. Your head split open with the force of the headaches pounding against your skull, vision swimming every time you stood up too quickly.

It’s fine, you told yourself. Who really needed breakfast anyway? Why eat lunch when you could have a few snacks? Bucky was right, you really did eat too much. You could survive on one meal a day, snacks thrown in when your hunger got the best of you, or your hands began to shake too much. You were getting better for him, though, so it didn’t matter. You were eating less, clinging less—just like Bucky had wanted; so why wasn’t he happy yet?

The bed felt colder than usual.

You used to sleep tangled up in Bucky’s arms, leeching off of Bucky’s furnace of a body. You used to tuck your perpetually cold feet against his legs, laughing off his grumbling about how your toes felt like icicles.

Now, you curl up at the farthest edge of the mattress, not willing to accidentally touch him when he clearly wants to be left alone.

You used to look forward to getting home from work, ready to melt into your supersoldier’s arms at the end of a long, tiring day.

Now, you’re filled with dread, wondering if this time will finally be the last.

You used to love the shared dinners at the worn table you had found at a thrift store long ago. Bucky and you would take turns choosing what meal to prepare—you had been on a mission to introduce him to the world of flavour the 21st century had to offer; he always used to say the best part of the ordeal was watching your expectant face as he tried the first bite.

Now your stomach twisted at the mere thought of eating in front of him. His words echoed through your brain with each bite you took—it was enough to make you sick.

Bucky had grown short and snappy with everyone (except you) lately; Natasha had complained ad nauseum about your grumpy boyfriend the last few times you’d hung out. You couldn’t help but think that all of those weeks of your overbearing clinginess were finally catching up to him, as if talking to Sam had opened the floodgates. He has finally realised what his problem was: you.

You really were too late to fix this. No amount of distance could fix what damage had been done. Bucky had a foot out the door for a long time now, and you had been too oblivious to notice.

It was a typical Tuesday when Bucky sent you a text that shattered any hope of repairing your relationship.

>>>Hey, after work, can you come straight home?

>>>We really need to talk.

The cursor blinked steadily even as your hand shook. Tears quickly blurred the damning texts beyond recognition—not that you’d ever forget those words; the words that signified the end of the best thing to happen to you.

After crying in the bathroom for the entirety of your lunch break, you passed through the rest of the day in a haze. Your coworkers knew something was wrong, of course, they did, but you didn’t offer up any explanation.

You felt something press against your throat as you slid the key into the lock, suffocating you with every step you took towards him. There was no point in prolonging the inevitable any further. You wouldn’t continue to drag Bucky down.

The vase of flowers was still sitting on the counter—he’d been buying you a new batch every time they started to wilt. Was he cheating on you? Was that why he was getting you flowers so much more often? The thought was something you’d have previously thought inconceivable, but now you weren’t so sure.

Breaking you from your thoughts, Bucky called out your name from the living room. You forced your gaze away from the flowers and to the living room.

Bucky was sitting on the sofa, hands clasped in between his knees and head hanging low. Your stomach swirled at the sight. This was it, wasn’t it? He was going to cut his losses—cut you from his life.

You crossed your arms, tucking your hands out of sight to hide the way they trembled. You waited for him to say something, not willing to be the person to instigate the conversation.

“Could you sit down?” Bucky asks, sounding so small as he gestures to the armchair. You walk over to the chair, despite wanting to stay as close to the exit as possible—ready to run away as soon as his words cut through you like a knife.

Bucky sighs deeply, his hands running over his face. You almost reach out for him, wanting to comfort him, wanting to kiss those lines away from his forehead. Stopping yourself, you remind yourself that it’s not your place, not anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while now.

“This isn’t working anymore, doll,” Bucky says, not even able to look at you. You saw it coming a mile away, and yet it doesn’t take away the anguish those words bring you.

You know you should say something, but words seem to escape you as soon as you open your mouth. Instead, a hot ball of grief and shame lodges in your throat. Tears spring to your eyes, despite telling yourself that you would not let him see you cry over this. It’s for the best, you try to tell yourself. You were but a stepping stone to Bucky’s recovery. You should be grateful that a man like him even offered you a second glance. Despite the way things ended, you know that you’ll look back on all the memories you made together and smile. Because, for once in your life, you knew what it was like to be loved so wholly. You knew what it was like to have a man who cared so deeply, loved so openly, and gave you enough devotion to last a lifetime.

“Yeah,” you agree with him for the sake of things. You hope he won’t look too deeply into your unshed tears, the way your voice wobbled and the way your body trembled. “I… I should go.”

“Doll-”

You cut him off before he can get another word in. “No, just… let me-”

Standing up to run away from this awful conversation, you feel the world sway around you. Black fades in at the edges of your vision as you stumble forward. You think you hear Bucky calling out your name under the sharp ringing in your ears. Clenching your eyes shut, you brace yourself for the hardwood floor.

—

“Doll?”

You groan as something prods your side. Just five more minutes, you think, burying your face into the warmth surrounding you.

“Sweetheart, please!”

Is that Bucky? Why does he sound so worried?

Blinking up at your boyfriend, you find that you’re both in the living room. Bucky’s clenching onto your body like a lifeline. “What’s wrong, Bucky?”

He stares blankly at you for a few seconds. “Doll… you just passed out.”

“Oh,” you eloquently respond.

The fog covering your brain begins to lift bit by bit. You were both sitting down… Bucky was… he was breaking up with you.

Jolting, you scramble out of Bucky’s arms, pushing him away, away, away.

“I’m sorry,” you say, covering your heated face in shame. “I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

“Don’t be sorry, honey.” He scoots closer to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” you say, despite knowing full well that ever since you started skipping meals, you’ve been prone to blacking out if you stand up too fast.

Bucky frowns at you, eyebrows furrowed. “I feel like you aren’t telling the truth right now.”

“It doesn’t matter, Bucky.”

“Like hell it doesn’t matter! You just fainted. If I hadn’t been there to catch you, you’d have cut your head open on the side of the table. Tell me what’s going on!” Never before had you heard Bucky sound so worried.

“Why do you care so much?”

“Why do I–Why do I care?” Bucky scoffs in disbelief. “You did not just ask me that.”

“You’re finally breaking up with me, you don’t have to pretend to care about me anymore,” you shoot back, venom lacing your words as you extricate yourself from under his arm.

“Breaking… I wasn’t going to break up with you,” Bucky says as if the idea alone was unimaginable.

“Bullshit! I know that you’ve been wanting to break up with me for weeks—months even!”

“Where the hell would you get an idea like that from?”

“I heard you talking to Sam last month. You told him that I was clingy and lazy and fat.”

Bucky looks positively bewildered at your words. “I would never say any of that crap!”

“But you did.” You cross your arms, daring him to continue lying to you.

“Why the hell would I ever say that? I sure as hell don’t think any of that-”

“Oh, give it up, Barnes. Who else would you have been talking about? Who else is such a spoiled, lazy, clingy, fat-”

“Oh my god,” Bucky interrupts you. “Are you talking about that time I was complaining about Alpine?”

Your heart stops in your chest. “What?”

“I was telling Sam about how annoying it was trying to work from home. She’d always sit on my damn laptop and yowl in my face until I payed attention to her.” Bucky shakes his head—his bemusement is quick to fade, however. “You seriously thought that I was talking about you?”

Sniffling back tears, you nodded your head.

“Oh, Jesus, doll. Why didn’t you say something?” Bucky wraps his arms around you. “Hell, if I ever said something like that, I’d expect at least a slap to the face.”

“But I was too clingy, always cuddling you and giving you kisses-”

“Is that why you haven’t so much as touched me the last few weeks?”

“I thought you wanted me to stop,”

Bucky squeezes you tighter. “Never. I’d never want you to stop. Doll, I thought you were mad at me. I kept buying you flowers and making your favourite dinners to try and get you to forgive me. But you didn’t even give them a second glance, and half the time you’d already eaten or you’d just push the food around on your plate.”

You melt into his embrace, his reassurances a balm over the lingering anxiety of being too much for him. “I was just trying to make you like me again.”

“Doll,” Bucky pulls away from you, sounding completely gutted. “You should never change yourself to make someone like you more. I love how clingy you are—I missed you so damn much.”

“What about…” No, you can’t ask that—you don’t want to hear his answer. “Never mind.”

And Bucky, damn him, doesn’t let it go. “What about what?”

“It’s nothing,” you say, pulling away from him.

“Doll, please don’t shut me out,” Bucky pleads, using those sad eyes that always make you fold.

“It’s just… You never… Do you have a problem with what I look like?”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “Of course, not. Doll, you are so damn beautiful-”

“But I could be thinner. Lots of other girls are prettier and skinnier,” you interrupt him. You freeze at the way his face hardens.

“I love you just the way you are, sweetheart. You don’t have to change a god damn thing about you. You want to know who drives me crazy? You. You want to know who I want to spend the rest of my life looking at? You. When I fell in love with you, I fell in love with all of you. It’s always going to be you. I don’t want no one else, got it?”

“I…” You stumble over your words, tears burning in your waterline. “I started skipping meals again. That’s why I passed out.”

Bucky’s face turns ashen. “You… you stopped eating because of me?”

“I didn’t completely stop eating! I had snacks and dinner most days. It’s not that big-”

“So help me god if you were about to say that it’s not that big of a deal,” Bucky interrupts you, voice sharp. “You need to eat, doll. This beautiful body cannot live without food.”

“I just thought… I thought if I started skipping meals and working out more, I’d look more like Nat or Sharon or-”

“If I wanted someone that looked like them, I’d ask them out. You wanna know why I asked you out? It’s because I thought you were hot. It’s because you’re as gorgeous on the outside as you are on the inside. I don’t want you to look like Nat, I don’t want you to look like Sharon. I want you to look like you.”

Bucky says it with such conviction, you can’t help but allow the tears to fall down your face. “You really mean that?”

“Of course, babydoll. You’re it for me. Don’t want no one else.” Bucky pulls you back into his arms, nuzzling his face into the junction between your neck and shoulder. “Call off of work tomorrow.”

“What? I can’t-” You screech as he lifts you into his arms. Clinging to him like a koala as he makes his way to your bedroom, you protest every step of the way.

“Hush,” he says, laying you down on the bed. “I have been deprived of your cuddles for too damn long. We’re gonna order whatever you want, and snuggle all night long. Then tomorrow, I’m going to make you a giant breakfast and we can go on a picnic for lunch.”

“I don’t ever want my best girl doubting my love for her again, got it?” Bucky asks, leaning over you.

You huff at his antics, rolling your eyes. He pinches your side, only the hint of a grin belying his angered expression. “Got it?” Bucky asks again.

“Yes! Okay, I got it!”

“I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you know just how loved you are,” he says as a promise before leaning in and kissing your lips.

That night, as you snuggle into his warmth, you endeavour to never let a misunderstanding like this tear you apart again.

Taglist: @hallecarey1 @harleycao @filmsbyblair

[ezraispunk-deactivated20260128]

this is so well written 🥹🫂

[cricket-reader]

Thank you so much, Lovely!!! I’m super glad that you liked it 💕💕💕

[cricket-reader]

AO3 Wrapped 2

For those who want a deeper dive into 2025:

instructions:

go to filters

under more options, select “date updated”

choose from 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31

hit “sort and filter” button

now that you’re left with all the fics of 2025, you’ll be able to see your most common by looking at the dropdown menu “include” for each category

Feel free to send questions my way and I’ll do my best to answer 💕💕

Part 1

[cricket-reader]

To answer @sinclairmaxwellao3‘s question (easiest way is to show you):

Go to your profile and select “Works”

Lower down, there will be a button that says “Filters”; click on that!

From there it’ll have drop down lists with each category and the number of fics you wrote with it

The highlighted “date updated” is where you’ll put in the dates

For example:

This year, my most used tag was “Angst” coming in with 14 of my works including it

Thank you for the question, I hope this more in-depth explanation helped 💕💕💕

[cricket-reader]

AO3 Wrapped 2

For those who want a deeper dive into 2025:

instructions:

go to filters

under more options, select “date updated”

choose from 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31

hit “sort and filter” button

now that you’re left with all the fics of 2025, you’ll be able to see your most common by looking at the dropdown menu “include” for each category

Feel free to send questions my way and I’ll do my best to answer 💕💕

Part 1

[cricket-reader]

Hello lovelies!! I hope you all are having a wonderful day!! I thought I’d share something I’ve been working on.

These are templates in different colours for writers of AO3 to use if they wish as we’re wrapping up 2025. Feel free to save and share with your friends!! Also feel free to ask questions if you’re not sure about something and I’ll do my best to help you out!

Instructions:

go to ao3 dashboard

select “statistics”

click on “2025”

Please note, this is not supposed to be a competition between us writers. It’s only to see how far you’ve come this year and to have something to look back on! Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have as high of stats as someone else; you should be proud of yourself for anything that you have done. You did great this year, and I can’t wait to see what next year brings! 🥰

I based this off of a pic I saw on google, credit for the original idea goes to @spicedrobot

Part 2