Bucky was good with cars. He was a fucking hotshot racer, okay, he was good with cars… but he was good at driving them, mostly. He knew a little, enough to keep the Challenger going, but he’d never had her in a downpour like this.
“What do you want?!” he shouted desperately at the engine.
The Challenger did not respond.
“Fuck!”
The rain was still pounding in his ears, and so was his heartbeat, and everything was wet, yet somehow still warm, how was it so warm? Bucky could feel every droplet of water sliding down the back of his neck, and the Challenger was getting soaked, and now he’d popped the hood and the rain was falling in and he probably shouldn’t have done that but what the fuck else was he supposed to do? He was clearly stranded in the middle of nowhere with a shitheap of a car that wouldn’t work and he would never make it to Houston in time and then Stark would kick him off the team and he wouldn’t be allowed to race for the Infinity Cup and all his hopes and dreams were shattered and on the ground and being washed away with the rain--
“Hey, are you alright there?”
Bucky turned around. Somehow, there was a truck pulled up behind him. The lights were still on, silhouetting whomever his saviour was in a foggy glow, but he could see the shape of a man, holding up a hand as if peering at him through the rain.
“Yes! I mean, no. No! We broke down. I broke down,” said Bucky, gesturing towards the car.
The man walked closer. “Beautiful car. Dodge Challenger?”
“Yes,” Bucky said, bewildered. This was not a man. This was an angel. An angel sent from heaven to rescue him and the Challenger. God was on his side, after all.
And then the man stepped into the light of Bucky’s torch, and holy fucking shit. Jesus. Oh God.
Because he wasn’t an angel at all, he was very much a man, a human man, with dark skin and bright eyes and huge arms and a t-shirt that was in the process of getting so soaked that Bucky felt he ought to avert his eyes.
“Seems like it’s your lucky day, then,” the man said. “You want a ride?”
“A - a what?”
“She’s not gonna start. Too wet. Gotta check the parts. We might have to change them.”
sam/bucky | canon divergence/mr. and mrs. smith au | rated t | 14.8k words
Rescued from a HYDRA base by the Avengers, a rehabilitated Bucky runs covert missions for Nick Fury by night and is one half of a cheerful, cat-owning couple in an exclusive DC apartment building by day.
When he gets called out on a mission to protect an important asset, the second-to-last thing he expects to see is a baby. The actual last thing he expects to see is his ostensibly-civilian husband Sam, wielding his own secret agent badge and ready to run point with Bucky on this new mission.
Now they just have to hole up in a house in the suburbs, take care of an adorable baby, and try not to collapse under the weight of everything they haven't said over the course of their marriage. Easy.
Sam is a retired pilot because he lost Riley, he now works on building/designing the jaegers and weapon add ons. He refuses to get back into drift, he actually refuses unlike the mc in the movie. Bucky’s known for struggling to work fluidly with other pilots, and even though hes the best in the program, he still doesnt have a certain partner pilot. Bucky as usual likes to goad Sam, and Maybe Sam Likes it
Bucky first meets Sam when he learned how to work the technology that allows him to use the left side of a jaeger even though he’s missing an arm. Sam designed it without even having met Bucky, and its like a second skin. Bucky feels touched by this act of kindness that allows him to continue doing what he loves. (I think he usually co-pilots with Nat, but isn’t a perfect match with her. I DO WHAT I WANT.)
The struggle with compatibility for Bucky is that his waking memories are completely trauma blocked, but when in drift he experiences them and the R.A.B.I.T. Is hard to avoid. Nat, shares some of his traumatic experiences so therefore shares some of his memories, that’s why they work the best together. Bucky can and has successfully piloted a jaeger with Nat. But it’s never ideal
Warnings: Mild Violence. Maybe I'll add more in the future.
Summary: A knight from another century crashes -literally- into a florist’s life and turns her world upside down.
Word Count: 4.2k
note: This is a silly time-travel story written purely for entertainment and to get out of my author's block. I won't be diving into complex timeline theories here. Let's not overthink the logistics and just enjoy the ride(?)
The tournament grounds were quieter now.
The crowd that had packed the stands since dawn -merchants, nobility, smallfolk who'd bartered half a week's wages for a decent vantage point- had dissolved into the taverns and banquet halls of the city, chasing warm ale and the joy of retelling someone else's violence over a good meal.
The field itself was a ruin of churned mud and discarded favor ribbons, the occasional lost boot. Someone's gauntlet, bended and forgotten near a fence post. The detritus of spectacle.
Sir James Buchanan Barnes walked through it like a man who wanted very much to be somewhere else.
He was limping. A gift from the third bout, when Sir Aldric Thornwall had gotten a lucky angle with his shield and introduced it firmly to Bucky's ribs.
The impact had knocked the air from his lungs with an audible crack that he'd felt more than heard. He'd finished the match anyway. He'd finished all of them. He'd placed second, which in any reasonable accounting of the day should have felt like something.
It didn't feel like much of anything.
Just the persistent throb beneath his ribs with every breath. Just the weight of mail he hadn't bothered to shed yet, still bearing the afternoon's sweat and dust.
The banquet, he thought, scowling.
Lord Castellan Morrow had made it clear, through three separate messengers, that his presence was expected at the celebration feast. That the competitors were guests of honor. That it would reflect poorly on a man of his standing to absent himself.
Bucky's standing, such as it was, had survived worse reflections.
So he just kept walking.
The city proper closed around him as he left the tournament grounds. Cobblestones replacing mud, the noise changing from open-air echo to the compressed warmth of torchlit streets.
Wintermouth at night had a specific smell: woodsmoke and river damp. He knew these streets well enough to navigate them half-asleep, which was approximately his current condition.
A pair of knights from the eastern circuit fell into step beside him for a while, their breath wine-sweet and celebratory, clapping him on the shoulder with the camaraderie of men who hadn't taken a shield to the ribs. He felt the impact reverberate down through the bruise, sharp enough that his vision whited at the edges.
"Hell of a final bout, Barnes."
"Could've taken him," the other offered generously. "Aldric fights dirty."
"Aldric fights to win," he said, which was the only response that was both true and didn't require him to have feelings about it. His voice came out rough, abraded by thirst and the dust he'd swallowed every time he'd hit the ground.
They took the hint, or something close enough to it, and peeled off toward the sound of music spilling from an open tavern door, lute strings and off-key singing and the particular roar of men determined to enjoy themselves.
The next interruption came two streets later, in the form of two scarcely clothed women leaning against the warm stone of a bakehouse wall, still radiating the day's stored heat.
Their exposed skin gleamed amber in the torchlight, deliberate and inviting. They tracked him with the experience of people who had learned to read a man's evening prospects at a glance.
"Sir Knight," one called, with a smile that had worked on better men than him. Her voice was honey-slow, practiced. "Shame to spend a victory night alone."
"First runner-up," he said, without stopping. The mail clinked with each step, a sound he'd long stopped hearing.
"Close enough."
It wasn't, but he didn't have the energy to explain the difference. He kept walking.
The maester caught him at the corner of Chandler's Row. Plump, earnest, clutching a satchel of medicines with both hands as it might escape. His robes were too clean, his face unlined. Fresh from the Citadel, probably. Still believed healing mattered more than politics.
"Sir Barnes." He was slightly out of breath, which suggested he'd been following for a while, trying to work up the nerve to address him. "Lord Castellan Morrow sends his regards and requests that you allow me to examine your injuries before the feast-"
"I'm not going to the feast."
A pause. The maester's throat worked. "He anticipated you might say that. He asked me to convey that your attendance is-"
"How's your handwriting?" Bucky interrupted.
The man blinked. "My- adequate, ser. Why?"
"Good." Bucky stopped walking, turned just enough to face him properly. Watched the maester straighten reflexively under the attention. "Here's what happened: you found me three streets back, examined me thoroughly despite my objections, and determined I've got at least two cracked ribs and a possible concussion. You ordered me to bed with strict instructions not to drink, feast, or make any sudden movements for the next three days."
He held the maester's wide-eyed stare. "Your professional opinion is that my attendance at tonight's festivities would be, and I'm quoting you here, 'medically inadvisable and potentially dangerous to Sir Barnes's recovery.'"
The maester's mouth opened. Closed. His gaze flickered down to Bucky's left side, where he'd been favoring it, where the mail sat wrong.
"You..." The man's voice was uncertain. "You do likely have cracked ribs, ser."
"There you go. Not even a lie." Bucky's smile was brief and sharp. "You write that up for your Lord, attach your seal to it, and you've done your duty. He gets his excuse in writing, you get to have actually helped someone today, and I get to go home. Everyone wins."
He could see the man working through it, the truth of the injury versus the falseness of the examination, the political cover versus the medical accuracy.
"I... suppose that would be acceptable," the maester said slowly. Then, with a hint of spine Bucky hadn't expected: "But you should let me examine you properly. Cracked ribs can shift, puncture-"
"I've had worse."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is, ser."
Despite everything -the ache and the exhaustion- Bucky felt something in his chest. Not quite a laugh, but close enough.
"Tomorrow," he offered, and meant it more than he'd meant most things today. "You can poke at me all you want tomorrow."
The maester nodded, satisfied or at least willing to accept the compromise. "I'll have the letter sent within the hour."
"Appreciated."
----
His lodgings were modest by deliberate choice. A single room above a cooper's workshop on the quieter end of the merchant quarter, rented by the week during tournament season. No servants' quarters. No one to report his comings and goings to anyone who might have opinions about them.
This had its advantages.
He catalogued the disadvantages the moment he stepped inside and faced the cold hearth, his breath still misting in the chill air.
Right.
He set the heavy tournament satchel down with a dull thump, rolled his left shoulder experimentally -the socket grinding in a way that spoke of old breaks poorly healed- and decided that feeling was overrated.
The fire wasn't going to light itself. The armor wasn't going to unlace itself. The evening was shaping up to be a prolonged exercise in doing everything the hard way, which was, at this point, so consistent as to be almost comforting.
Almost.
He got the fire started on the third attempt. The tinder was damp, -because of course it was- and then stood in its growing warmth and began the specific misery of removing plate armor without assistance.
The tabard first, then the gorget, useful as it was, he hated the damn thing; removing it felt like relief. Then the pauldrons, working the straps with fingers that were more cooperative on the right side than the left.
The scarring along his left forearm pulled when he reached a certain angle, the old tissue going taut. It always did. He'd stopped noticing it the way you stopped noticing a crack in a familiar wall; it was simply part of the room now.
The breastplate hit the floor with a sound like an argument ending, the impact reverberating through the floorboards.
There.
What remained was a man in a sweat-dampened gambeson with a bruised ribcage, a mild headache, and absolutely no interest in examining either. The padded underarmor clung to him, cold now that the mail was gone, the fabric stiff with salt and exertion.
He took off the gambeson and dragged the wooden chest from his satchel, the one the tournament steward had pressed into his hands with excessive ceremony, and set it beside the fire. The brass fittings caught the light, over-polished. Performative.
The lock was simple. Inside: coin, as expected. A satisfying weight of silver stacked in neat columns, some gold beneath. He'd need it. The estate his father had left him was four walls and a burned-out shell, courtesy of the same people who took him hostage and left their mark on his arm.
Rebuilding wasn't cheap. Timber, thatch, labor, it all required the kind of funds you didn't earn through valor or skill, just the slow accumulation of tournament prizes and some service contracts.
Glory didn't buy roofing.
He picked up a brooch set with garnets -gaudy, impractical, the kind of thing you pinned to a cloak if you wanted to be robbed- and looked at it for a moment. The stones were decent quality, at least. It would fetch a reasonable price from the right jeweler.
He set it aside with the others. A necklace of amber. A pair of silver clasps. All destined for the same fate: the jeweler's scale, melted down or pried out and reset for someone who actually wanted them.
He had no use for adornments. He wasn’t fond of them, as most of the nobility, and also, he had no one to give them to.
The war had seen to that.
He reached back into the chest, fingers brushing past velvet pouches, and found something else.
A ring. Silver, heavier than it looked. He drew it out into the firelight and turned it between his fingers. The stone was a ruby, deep red, cut into the shape of a star.
He stared at it.
Red stars on grey and black.
His colors.
He turned it slowly, watching firelight slide across the facets. The star was crude, the points uneven, the kind of work you got from a jeweler with more ambition than skill. It was, objectively, the ugliest ring he had ever seen. Garish. The sort of thing a merchant's son wore to his first banquet, desperate to prove he belonged.
Bucky, who wore his father's signet ring only on scarce occasions because selling it felt wrong, even if the man was never a paragon of paternal love, felt the particular pull of a terrible idea.
Just to see if it fits.
It was small for his right hand, so he tried the left, mostly out of stubbornness… and it slid on. The fit was perfect. Uncannily so, as though it had been sized for exactly this finger, accounting for the slight deviation where the bone had set wrong.
The ruby flared.
Not like firelight reflecting, but light from within, red and sharp and pointed, like something had woken up inside the stone and found him looking.
The ring burned. Seared against his skin, hot enough that he felt it in his teeth, a bright line of pain circling his finger.
What-
He grabbed for it with his right hand, trying to twist it off, but his fingers passed through something that wasn't air and wasn't quite resistance.
The room tilted.
No. The room disappeared.
The fire went first, snuffed like a candle, leaving no smoke, no ember-glow. Then the chest, the coins. The ceiling with its water-stained beams. The floor beneath his feet.
All of it went, between one breath and the next, and what replaced it was falling.
His stomach lurched, and the burning in his finger became the only solid thing in a world that had stopped being solid.
He tried to breathe and couldn't find air.
The darkness swallowed him whole and the last thing he registered, distant, wrong, was the smell of plants and humidity.
Then nothing.
----
She stood on the sidewalk in front of The Sweet Briar with her hand buried to the wrist in her purse, fingers closing around lipstick, a crumpled handkerchief, what felt like a receipt that she really ought to throw away, and absolutely nothing key-shaped.
The morning was grey and cool for early spring, the kind of damp that sank into your coat and stayed there. The street was quiet, too early yet for the lunch crowd, the shops on either side still dark. A truck rumbled past, leaving the smell of diesel and wet pavement in its wake.
Just when she thought she might have actually forgotten the keys -left them on the kitchen counter next to the bread box, maybe, or in yesterday's coat pocket- her fingers finally closed around the key ring at the very bottom of the purse, underneath everything else, because of course they were.
The lock stuck.
She jiggled it once, patiently, the same way she had jiggled this exact lock approximately four hundred times and had not yet called the locksmith, because she only ever remembered the lock was broken when she was standing directly in front of it, key in hand, and by the time she got inside she'd forgotten again.
The metal resisted, then gave with a sound like a small complaint. She pushed inside.
The front of the shop was an obstacle course.
Mr. Thomson from the supply house had delivered very late yesterday afternoon, because apparently a union picket line two blocks east had backed up half the city's delivery routes. By closing time, she didn’t have the energy to do anything about the results: buckets of early flowers stacked three deep against the counter, their blooms still tight-furled and smelling faintly of earth.
Two flats of fern she hadn't priced yet, the fronds already drooping from a day out of soil. A box of wire and ribbon spools that had no business being in the middle of the floor but was there anyway, and somewhere underneath all of it, allegedly, the new ceramic pots she'd ordered in February and assumed were lost.
She picked her way through it with careful steps, her heels clicking against the wood floor, and made it to the back without incident.
The stockroom was small and currently in a state that she chose to call organized chaos and not a problem she had to solve today.
More deliveries back here too: boxes stacked along the left wall, the worktable barely visible under brown paper wrapping and tissue. The air smelled like potting soil and the green, living scent of the spider plants hanging near the window, their runners brushing the top of a stack of terra cotta. She reached up and pulled the cord on the single overhead bulb.
The light swung once, twice, and settled.
She saw the legs first.
Long legs, stretched across the floor between a toppled flat of begonias and the base of the shelving unit, attached to a man who was very much present and very much not conscious, sprawled at an angle that suggested he had not chosen to be on the floor so much as arrived there.
Her breath stopped.
For one crystalline second, her brain refused to process what she was seeing -legs, boots, a body where no body should be- and then her heart kicked hard against her chest.
There was a man. In her stockroom. On the floor.
He'd taken out a good portion of the new stock on his way down. The begonias were scattered, soil spilled across the floorboards in dark trails. A ceramic pot in sage green -the one she'd specifically ordered and waited two months for- was in three neat pieces beside his left arm. The pothos she'd been propagating had been knocked from its perch; the vines lay crushed beneath his shoulder.
She stood very still for a moment, one hand still on the light cord, the other pressed flat against her chest where her heart was trying to break through.
He wasn't moving.
His chest was -she watched for a second, barely breathing herself- yes, his chest was moving. Shallow, but steady.
So. Not dead.
She still hadn't decided if that was good or bad.
Her gaze darted to the back door: still closed, the bolt still thrown from the inside. The window was latched. No broken glass. No signs of forced entry.
So how-?
Her hand moved without conscious thought, reaching back toward the worktable, fingers closing around the wooden handle of a trowel. Not much of a weapon, but the edge was solid steel, the point designed for breaking hard soil. It would do.
She took a step closer, the trowel held low at her side, ready to strike.
His clothing was strange. The shirt was wrong, off-white and loose, the kind of fabric that looked hand-woven, rough in a way she couldn’t describe. The collar was laced instead of buttoned, the ties loose and askew.
The trousers were the same, tucked into boots that had absolutely no business existing in 1955: tall, dark leather, worn in the way that took years and hard use, not a factory.
Over all of it, a belt of heavy leather, studded and wide. And attached to it, running down each thigh -she tilted her head slightly- what appeared to be straps, buckled and reinforced, holding padded cushioned sheaths flat against his legs.
Like something out of a medieval fair, except those fairs didn't come through this city, and even if they did, the participants didn't break into a flower shop in full costume and collapse on the begonias.
She took another step closer, careful to avoid the broken ceramic.
His face was-
Well.
A face that had seen better days was her first thought, and her second was that even roughed up as he was, it was a remarkable face to have stumbled into her stockroom.
Strong jaw, straight nose, the kind of bone structure you saw in magazine advertisements for razors or cologne, the ones that made you look twice even when you weren't in the market.
A bruise was already darkening along his left cheekbone, deep purple spreading toward his temple. There was a cut above his brow that had bled and dried, the blood a rust-brown line trailing toward his hairline.
The beard was a few days past deliberate.
And the hair -she paused on that- dark brown, long enough to brush his shoulders, pushed back from his face and thoroughly disordered, tangled with mud and sweat.
It was long for a man. Longer than any man she'd seen outside of a history book or painting.
She straightened up slowly, the trowel still in her hand.
Alright, she thought, forcing her breathing to steady. Think.
Option one: he was a vagrant who'd somehow gotten through a locked door -the damn lock, God help her- and passed out on her stock.
Possible. Unlikely, given the boots alone probably cost more than her monthly rent, but possible.
Option two: he was a veteran. There were men, she knew -the whole city knew, even if nobody said it plainly- who hadn't come back from the war quite right in the head.
Shell-shock, they'd called it in the first war. Combat fatigue now, as if giving it a softer name made it easier to carry.
Except that didn't explain the kind of clothes.
Option three: he'd gotten blind drunk somewhere in the vicinity, wandered in through a door she knew she'd locked, and the outfit was theatrical. A costume. There was a theatre district six blocks south. Strange things happened near the theatre districts. Actors were weird.
Except that the door had been locked. And bolted.
She looked down at him again.
At the slow rise and fall of his chest. At the ring on his left hand, silver with a red stone that caught the light strangely, still faintly warm-looking even in the dim stockroom.
At the begonias, crushed beyond saving.
The telephone was on the opposite wall. She edged past him, keeping the trowel between them out of some vague instinct that felt less vague with every step. Her heel caught on a scatter of soil, and she steadied herself against the doorframe, not taking her eyes off him.
He still wasn't moving.
She picked up the receiver with her free hand, the trowel still raised in the other, and dialed zero, the rotary clicking back into place.
The line hummed and returned a busy signal.
Dammit.
She clicked the hook and tried again, her gaze locked on the sprawled figure.
Busy. Again. It was a challenge to get to an operator these last few weeks. It was the third time this month she needed to make a call, and the lines were occupied.
She leaned her hip against the wall and tried a fourth time, watching him over her shoulder out of an abundance of caution that was starting to feel less abundant and more barely sufficient.
Okay. If she could just get through to the operator, get a squad car over here -or an ambulance, depending on what exactly was wrong with him- she could have this sorted before her first customer arrived at nine. It was a reasonable plan. It was perfectly reasonable-
The fifth attempt produced a busy signal and also, from somewhere behind her, a sound. The distinct scrape of ceramic against concrete, and then a longer drag, like weight shifting.
Her breath caught.
She turned around slowly, the receiver still pressed to her ear, the busy signal droning against her brain.
He was sitting up, propped on one hand with the other braced against the shelving unit, head bowed forward like it weighed too much to lift. The dark hair fell across his face in tangled strands. His shoulders rose and fell with breaths that looked like they hurt.
She didn't move. Her fingers tightened around the trowel handle until the wood bit into her palm.
For a moment he just sat there, motionless except for the breathing. Then his head lifted slowly, and he blinked at the stockroom with the heavy, confused expression of a man whose surroundings were not what he'd been expecting.
His gaze tracked left: shelves, boxes, the window with its spider plants. Right: more shelves, the worktable, the spilled soil.
Then his eyes found her.
A nice pair of steel blue eyes.
That was the completely irrelevant thing her brain produced, and she hated that it did, because those steel blue eyes were currently fixed on her with a frown that was more baffled than threatening, but he was large.
She could see that now, even sitting down he had the kind of shoulders that spoke of labor or violence or both- and he was between her and the back door, and she did not know him, and she was alone, and-
Her mind didn't finish the thought. She crossed the distance between them in three steps, raised the spade, and swung.
She didn't account for his reflexes.
One moment she was bringing the flat of the blade down toward his head, and the next, her wrist was caught mid-arc in a grip like iron, the world tilted sideways, and she was on her back on the stockroom floor with approximately two hundred twenty pounds of confused stranger pinning her there.
The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Her shoulders hit concrete, her head just barely missing the leg of the worktable. The trowel clattered away, skittering across the floor into the scattered soil.
He'd moved fast. Too fast for someone who'd been unconscious thirty seconds ago. Too fast for someone who'd struggled to sit up.
His hand was still locked around her wrist, holding it flat against the floor above her head. His other forearm was braced beside her shoulder. His knee was between hers, his weight distributed in a way that kept her pinned without crushing her, like this was something he'd done before. Many times before, in fact.
When she pulled at her wrist -once, testing, her breath coming in sharp gasps- he simply held it, not tightening, not letting go, like the question of her leaving hadn't seriously occurred to him as a variable.
Her heart was hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat, behind her eyes. She could smell him: leather and sweat and something else, something like smoke and metal and old wool.
She could count his eyelashes.
The blue eyes she'd noticed before were a lot more striking at this distance, and a lot less groggy. Whatever fog had been in them when he'd first sat up had burned off fast into something sharp and assessing.
He was looking at her the way she imagined soldiers looked at enemies in the dark. His chest rose and fell against hers with each breath. She could feel the heat of him through her blouse, through his strange linen shirt.
Get off get off get off-
She opened her mouth to scream, to say something, to demand he let her go-
And then he lowered his face toward hers by one deliberate inch, eyes narrowing and demanded, low and very even:
Summary: When Sam and Bucky start sleeping together, it’s to Bucky’s sheer amazement that Sam can’t get enough of him but Bucky can't get enough of him either.
Excerpt:
Bucky was never the reckless kind when it came to loving. In the past, and yes by past he means the 1940s, he couldn’t be careless with relationships. Those times were different, women were proper in ways he didn’t want to mess with in fear of losing his chance altogether. The wildest he’d done was felt up a dame in the movie theater or fool around in a car — but they never even went all the way.
Bucky wonders now if perhaps no one has ever been that into him or maybe he’s never been that into anyone either. He wanted to touch a dame for the sake of touching one. He wanted to round the bases to brag about how far he’d gone. But he’d never actually met someone he couldn’t keep his hands off of.
He’d expect this to happen least of all with Sam. Because even in front of the cameras and the press, Sam Wilson is the most cool, collected guy you’ll ever see. Even around his family or in front of strangers. Anywhere you find Sam, he’s civil and calm. He always knows what to say. It honestly made Bucky nervous to speak around the man when they first met. And the times Bucky has sputtered unintelligibly in front of him, Sam merely chuckles with a smooth grin and pats him on the back as if Bucky’s attempt at a coherent sentence was a decent one.
So for Sam to not only want Bucky but like this — at any time, any place? Bucky has no idea what the fuck to do with himself when encountering this new, feral side of Sam.
Warning: Early HYDRA experimentation implied, Memory loss/forced suppression/Identity erasure, Emotional distress, Self-harm/Physical injury wound mentioned - Hand gash, imprisonment, Loss of bodily autonomy, Dehumanization, HYDRA captivity, Dark themes..
Summary: In a HYDRA cell, Bucky clings to splintering shards of memory like dwindling fuel.
Words Count: 1k
Prompt: Entry for Round 2 of @writer-in-a-cryofreeze
“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel.” ― Haruki Murakami, After Dark
I went with the angle of what happens when the fuel goes, when memories are taken..
A/N: This one.. hurt.. I set aside an afternoon to ruin myself and I think what’s worse is knowing how much darker I could of taken it but kept it here.. I remember crying doing this. This is one of the few 1st person things I’ve ever done. It explores a moment I’ve wanted to look at for a while and I will come back here in time.. but yeah.. this one.. hurt..
There’s not time now.
Just the same strip of light bleeding under the door, the same wet-cold air crawling up my spine, the same ache where the new arm sits like a parasite; heavy, wrong, bolted to me. Wires burrowed in.
My shoulder throbs in a slow, stupid rhythm. I hold the metal close sometimes, not for comfort..
There’s no comfort...
But the pain is something I can map.
Tracing healing scars...
Pain is honest. Pain stays where it belongs.
The rest of me… doesn’t.
It’s being taken..
I can feel it..
Feel the missing parts as if someone has scooped them out with a spoon. The edges itch.
I can feel it in my hair, no matter how hard I pull on my scalp I can feel it like worms.. bugs…digging my head..
Eating away..
I claw until my skin burns, trying to press down on the splitting pressure inside my skull.
Maybe I can hold myself together.
Idiot
“Remember...”
There’s faces that comes to me sometimes.
People I’m supposed to know. Who matter..
But I don’t know them..
Sometimes I remember names.
Can taste them on my tongue.
Steve. Rebecca…
“3255…”
A thought, the inside of my ribs like a fist. An arm slung across shoulders. A laugh. Jerk
I can’t hold onto them
Try harder and the fog turns into static.
Static becomes noise.
“3255… please…. 38”
Noise becomes rage.
My nails are broken. There’s dried blood under the beds of them where I’ve been digging for something that isn’t there. Clawing at skin.
My skin is dirty. Wet
Hunger is a constant animal gnawing at my gut, but it’s not the worst of it.
The chair
That fucking chair
It’s stealing me
Swapping me with another man.
No.. not someone else
Swapping me with nothing.
A ghost something you can’t even see.
I can fight a person.
“32557..7..7”
How do you fight an emptiness?
I remember the wrong things now…
Remember the first time I woke up with the arm, I tried to slam it into the concrete until my shoulder screamed and my teeth rattled. I tried to rip it off with my other hand, fingers slipping on cold metal.
So much blood.
The taste of my own bile.
Hate this metal
I remember the chair.
The chair is not a memory I can lose.
They made sure of that.
Words in a language I don’t understand.
I understand the pain anyway.
I’m always shaking. Always wet with sweat I don’t have the strength to wipe away.
Somewhere outside, a door slams. Footsteps. A man clears his throat.
My heart tries to climb out of my body.
Not yet.
Please. Not yet.
The light under the door doesn’t change.
I pace the cell until my bare feet raw.
The metal arm swings too heavy at my side…I have to clutch it to my chest like a shield.
I don’t know why I keep doing that.
Maybe because it’s attached and everything else is slipping.
“3255…3255”
Where does it all go?
I press the heel of my palm into my eye until bright stars bloom.
The fuel is running out. The fight…
I can feel it.
Every time they take me to the chair, something goes..
I know I’m missing pieces..
I keep trying but it hurts to try some days..
“325… 38…38.. please.. it’s in there… I know it is..I’m in there”
I punch the concrete until the skin splits across my knuckles and my fingers swell.
But the pain is sharp and clean, for a moment it’s the only thing in my mind.
“Please remember.”
Then the emptiness surges back in, so does the panic.
If you stop trying they win
I press my forehead against the wall and sob without sound.
I’m so tired
The tears are hot. My throat won’t open for the noise. They taught me that early.
Names are dangerous.
Names are how you belong to something.
Belonging is how you remember you’re human.
I’m a person
I’m still a person
I slide down the wall, metal arm clanging against the floor.
Across from me, on the far wall, there are stains. Old ones. New ones. Dirt and blood and something darker that never fully washes away.
I’ve stared at that wall so long I could trace the cracks blind.
There’s something there I didn’t notice before.
Maybe I noticed it a hundred times and forgot.
A word.
Painted, smeared, written wet and red. The letters are crooked, desperate. The last line drags down written by a weak hand.
It’s fresh enough to shine.
It shouldn’t be.
No one gives me anything to write with.
I crawl closer, dragging the metal arm with me, the weight of it scraping across the floor.
The word stares back.
Bucky.
The room tilts.
I read it again.
Bucky.
The letters mean nothing.
My chest hurts, tight pressure. I press my forehead to the wall beneath the word, smearing my face into cold concrete.
I want to scream. Nothing comes.
My whole body shakes. I want to claw the letters off the wall, to swallow them. I want to be whatever that word is supposed to be.
But my mind is a room they keep emptying.
The fuel is gone.
The grief, the panic, the sheer, sick exhaustion….
I slide down the wall like my bones have decided they’re done holding me up.
My hand comes up to my face without permission.
The tears sting.
Gash open on my palm.
Wide. Ragged.
The blood on the wall…mine?
Why can’t I remember?
But my mind is a room they keep emptying,
I’m so tired.
The metal arm drags heavier across my lap, as if it’s growing weight on purpose, as if it knows I don’t have enough left to carry it. My shoulder burns. My whole body feels hollowed out, split open, scraped clean.
I stop fighting and lie down on the floor, cheek to cold concrete,
Or, at least, how Tony had vaguely described it. Peter’s new apartment felt like how he imagined the cave felt like. Tony rarely spoke of his time being kidnapped, but when he did it was clinical. Taking tech apart to get access to more materials. Calculating the risk of escape versus the likelihood of rescue. practicing compliant neutral faces for the people keeping him. Trying his best not to go crazy, in the same room all day.
Tony spoke about the cave in short details and as if it were a mission that happened long ago and went well. But Peter can *hear* the tension, Peter can sense the hesitation, the panic that Tony still feels thinking about it.
The cave has taken on a life of its own in Peter’s imagination, and now it solidifies into Peter’s new apartment.
Where scattered pieces of tech lay shredded, discarded once Peter found a component he needed. Where a picture frame lay face down now, face up this morning, face down last night, back and forth as Peter wavers between accepting this life and trying to get back his old one. Where Peter stared into the mirror shaving, practicing a happy carefree voice and wondering if his face always looked so strange while doing it.
The apartment feels like the cave, now.
But it’s not. It can’t be. Because the cave is where Tony became a hero. The cave is where Tony’s story starts.
And Peter….
Peter sits in his own personal cave, trying to think of a suit to build that can break him out of his own story to start a new one.
But you can’t start over. you can’t go back. The slate is wiped clean in the world’s eyes and Peter still can’t see this as a beginning. He has no family, no friends, only a hope for the world and none for himself.
The apartment feels like the cave, only Peter feels like Yinsen.
Please read the warnings before reading any FF. Most of them are +18 and Of course Bucky~
<part14 ...
May 2026
tiny moves by @nonotwithoutu | +18 | one of the guys on bucky's team has been going on about his wife's pregnancy, and after a particularly long mission apart from you, he's been having some thoughts. it turns out he's not the only one.
in the red dark by @sergeantxrogers | His eyes trapped yours in their vice-like grip as he stared up at you, fingers brushing against the hem of your jeans, and you swallowed heavily. You felt the rush of alcohol in your head fizzle out into smoke and embers as you sobered up quicker than you ever have in your life.
by @aquaticmercy
Waffles and Ice Cream | fluff | Neither you and Bucky were ready for your son’s first day of school.
Emergency Contact | After dating for six months, Bucky is now your emergency contact. Yelena, your best friend, finds out the hard way.
by @blowingbarnes
Teacher's Pet | +18 | series | Professor Barnes is the absolute worst type of professor. He doesn’t know how to teach, he wants you to already know all the answers. And you… poor you, living for academic validation.
Passenger Princess | +18 | Lee Bodecker x reader | First date with Lee after so so much tension and he’s not nearly as stealthy as he wishes he was. You don’t mind it though.
fluff moment by @smorgaswhored | fluff | fluffy sugar daddy bucky moment.
by @buckybarnes82
Tech gone wrong. | fluff | A mission going wrong leads to you getting minorly injured. You and Bucky both stay in a safe house together, and when the thought of looming feelings comes to the forefront, do you both finally admit how you feel?
Valentine’s | fluff | Valentine’s Day was always one of those “holidays” you didn’t care much for, until you met Bucky.
by @buckyscaptain
SKINNY JEANS | you never got the whole fighting in skinny jeans thing, so as team movie night turns into just the two of you, you decide to bring it up.
I'M YOUR SWEETHEART? | having your appendix removed has you waking up wondering what's real and what's not, your boyfriend included.
by @witchywithwhiskey
something brutal and beautiful | +18 | when your car breaks down on the way to your parents' cabin, Bucky Barnes comes to your rescue. you end up staying in the unfamiliar alpha's cabin longer than you expected, with his far-too-enticing scent driving your omega wild. then, the atmosphere in the cabin shifts suddenly and the tension that's been building finally snaps.
safe and sound | comf | you're alone at your parents' summer cottage with your dad's best friend bucky barnes when a thunderstorm strikes in the middle of the night and the childhood fear that has followed you into adulthood rears its head—so all you can do is ask bucky if you can sleep with him.
safe and sound part 2 | +18 | you've fallen asleep in the arms of your dad's best friend bucky barnes, but when the thunderstorm that found you in his bed wakes you, things between you and bucky turn from comforting cuddling into something more.
on the clock | +18 | feeling unfulfilled by your job, you sign up to become a member of the Pleasure Portal network, which allows you to have sex with monsters around the world for money. then, when you connect with an anonymous monster on a boring summer day at the office, it leads to an afternoon delight—and something more.
knocked up by the mafia enforcers on halloween night | +18 | stucky x reader | tired of your boring, lonely life as a mafia princess, you go out on halloween looking for a little fun, and end up running into two of your father's most feared enforcers. you expect them to ruin your night, but maybe they're exactly who you need to make your life more meaningful.
careful what you beg for | +18 | one night, you go to sleep naked, which turns out to be an unintended invitation for an incubus—one he can't resist.
by @vunblr
Brown Sugar and Gunmetal | +18 | comf | Who would have thought that an inconspicuous vent in a bakery alley would be what brought them together: the omega who never felt right with any alpha, and the asset who wasn't supposed to want at all.
A Star Without a Sky | +18 | A wounded Sheriff Barnes seeks shelter in a young widow’s home, and finds himself wrapped in a warmth he no longer believes he deserves, and longing for something he thought long buried.
the grooms best by @apricotsflavors | Your brothers wedding is coming up, as much as you are exited, you dread the whole rehearsals scheme of it. To make matters worse your brother has named Bucky Barnes as his best man; meaning you’ll have to face him after all these years. The same Bucky Barnes you had a one night stand years back, that stupid teenage summer romance, before he ghosted you to go to college.
it's been a long, long time by @buckytakethewheel | series | Sergeant Bucky Barnes from the 107th gets injured a lot. And when he does, there's only one pair of hands he allows near him.
Redamancy by @renxzs | Maybe it was a bit naive to think moving in with your best friend and long-time crush, Bucky Barnes, was going to be some smooth road that led to an admittance of mutual feelings for one another and a happily-ever-after ending, wrapped up nicely in a bow. Naive indeed; especially when you have to consider the fact that Bucky is the biggest womanizer you know.
JAMES? by @you-have-a-metal-arm | : When you call Bucky “James”—a name no one else dares to use—he reveals to a stunned Steve and Sam.
pull out? yeah right? by @slutdier | mickey henry x fem!reader | +18 | On a risky midnight balcony in Athens, you let Mickey Henry fuck you against the railing despite your nervous protests, only for him to promise he’ll pull out and then deliberately fill you with two hot loads while groaning “sorry, felt too good.”
eleven o'clock sin | lee bodecker x fem!reader | +18 | A late-night donut delivery turns into something far sweeter and filthier, than Sheriff Bodecker ever expected from the town’s purest little angel.
Stitches by @woncheolisms | You’re just a clueless new medical student. You’re not equipped to deal with charming, witty, handsome doctors. Especially not ones with pretty blue eyes that make you weak in the knees.
spilled wine by @sunmoonandeddie | You’re nothing more than a servant who happens to warm the bed of the king. At least, that’s what you thought you were.
by @buckysdecaflove
Ficception. | +18 | Writing fanfictions sounds fun until your muse is aware of what you're writing about him.
Bucky's sweetheart. | +18 | After Bucky gets injured on a mission, your secret gets exposed.
Happy Mistake by @sunlightdances | Being assigned roommates with modern!Bucky. He's a giant and looks like he's a bully, but he's actually so shy and soft.
dust to dust by @autumnsghosts | When you come back from the blip in the graveyard having just been at your grandmother’s funeral, the cemetery seems like the safest place to be. Cleaning old gravestones had certainly never been a dream of yours, but now you find yourself there most days, scraping dirt and moss and algae from stones of people long dead and most likely long forgotten. It also doesn't hurt that a certain blue-eyed super soldier visits the cemetery weekly, placing flowers over two plots.
Too Hot, An Arm Cold by @t-lostinworlds | Cuddles from Bucky Barnes was probably one of the greatest things ever. But it was difficult to prove that point true in the middle of a heatwave while the apartment air conditioner was broken. Good thing he has a cold metal arm.
by @fckmebarnes
two bad bitches at the same damn time | +18 | stucky x reader
put on a show | +18
alabaster walls by @unificsation | +18 | avengers x reader | teamwork makes the dream home work. call america’s best to remodel your home: lay down pipes, screw your drawers, paint your walls—anything you need.
spoiled milk by @perdidosbucky-yyo | +18 | Every Tuesday morning the housewives of Waiting Willow Lane eagerly wait for the handsome milkman. Pearls around their neck, red lips and a tight apron to accentuate their waist, at 5AM ready to bat their eyelashes at Bucky, not you though, but what happens when you smell another woman's perfume on your husband's shirt?
you all along by @juniebjonesin | +18 | being best friends since childhood with rebecca barnes meant a life full of adventure with only one hard rule: don’t ever flirt with her brother. but that rule doesnt make room for an anonymous pen pal or a love that happens anyway.
Borrowed Fairy Tales by @ilovolderman | You take a last-minute princess job at Morgan Stark’s birthday party expecting easy money and screaming children. You do not expect a grumpy Beast ruining your life with soft looks.
by @venigrantrogers
making a bracelet for roommate | +18
doctor! doctor! anything-please! | +18 | Bucky hated seeing you like this, tired, anxious, always on the edge of breaking. He'd do anything to help you feel good.
delirium by @flowersforbucky | +18 | stranded in the middle of the alaskan wilderness with no means of communication after being exposed to a foreign drug, you're reluctant to accept help from the one person who has a shot at saving you.
by @dearwalker
Supersoldiers in Paris | +18 | Bucky x Reader x John | Retrieving vials from an abandoned Red Room facility gets you infected with sex pollen. You may have to make a stop in Paris with John and Bucky before you can get back home.
Would you still love me if I was a worm? | +18 | A stupid little question turns into a makeout session. Your teammates hate to see it, except for one.
by @societyfolklore
Double Take | On your first major production, all you want to do is prove you belong. One simple task; deliver Bucky Barnes’ harness, check his notes, and get him to the rigging bay… should be easy enough….right?
Dexterity | When Bucky Barnes develops a Rubix Cube/ speedcubing obsession, you discover that watching his focused hands at work is far more distracting than it has any right to be.
by @metal-armed-muse
A TORTURE CALLED LOVE | +18 | You and Bucky have history. History of hating each other. One messy fuck in a bathroom later, you’re both scrambling to pretend it didn’t change anything. What better way to save one’s heart than by breaking the other first?
neighbour | +18 | congressman Barnes is your neighbour.
first aid | +18 | What starts as first aid gets dirty fast.
Uniform Inspection. by @w1nter-fairy | +18 | Bucky had been trying to adapt himself to modern world getting a new job at the Fire Department. He only meant to stop by before his shift, but things escalated quickly after you saw him in his uniform.
needed me by @godmadeaterribleerror | +18 | you can't stand bucky barnes. despite all your attempts to get rid of him, he's always somewhere in your orbit. you say you hate it. hate him. but you're also a very good liar.
His Name Was Never Just Bucky by @marvelstoriesepic | +18 | Falling for a mysterious man has been exhilarating, until you discover his biggest secret and realize you’ve been loving the most dangerous man in the city. But can you run from a monster in his own home when his eyes and ears are everywhere?
This is Her Favorite Song by @steelpaperboats | steve kamp x reader | +18 | It comes as a surprise to absolutely no one, yourself included, that Steve gets off on being a doctor. You know this; you have seen it time and time again through his well-established 'profession.' And given you aim to please, you pose the question, "Can I be your patient?"
In The Dead Of Night by @mickimoo1409 | stucky x reader | +18 | After spending so much time researching Steve and Bucky, they begin to visit you in your dreams, but are they really dreams at all?
wouldn't it be nice to live together? by @rh1nestcned
doesn’t trust by @sunskisser
by @imnotjustreadingg-volume-two
I just wanna feel you | +18 | I’d like something like reader and bucky wedding day where they’re both anxious and nervous and they called each other because they wanna went but then things gets heated and spicy during the phone call
Current boyfriend | You apply your cream and primer and then right when you take the concealer, the door of your studio opens. Your boyfriend Bucky Barnes enters.
dating by @shadyfestivalperfection
mission shipwatch by @ellebarnesx | The New Avengers start a full-on investigation when you and Bucky look a little too comfortable in your ''fake'' relationship.
Courage by @buckysknifecollection | After a busy month of avenging, you and Bucky finally make it to Tony’s Halloween festivities and there’s a Haunted House you just cannot miss, no matter how much of a scaredy cat you are.
gasoline by @iamthatonefangirl | +18 | despite everything in your past, despite the circumstances under which you got together and the circumstances that have dictated the majority of your relationship until now, being with James is fun.
Payment in Blood by @buckybarneslittledoll | +18 | In which your brother owes the bratva money and the pakhan decides to take you as a payment.
DRUNK NEIGHBOR by @idontexistrightnow | +18 | Bucky has had certain needs but he didn't think getting drunk would highten the need to act upon on those needs.
Love Stands Guard by @navybrat817 | During a fun and relaxing afternoon, Bucky overhears someone making fun of your body. He doesn’t take too kindly to that.
rush week by @flushedmilk | bucky barnes is the last person a cheerleader should fall for. unfortunately for you, he seems to disagree.
perfect by @smorgaswhored | +18 | imagine bucky’s got a girlfriend
pud that down! by @danysdaughter | +18 | you suggest taking a break from your deeply attached boyfriend. he reacts poorly and things somehow get worse from there.
Laundry Day by @starling-in-the-sky | On Tuesday nights, you and Bucky do laundry together.
AO3
Omega Retreat by Shamrock_Queen | +18 | As an unmarked and lonely omega you find a flyer for a service called The Omega Retreat. You are paired with a compatible alpha to spend your heat or just a week at a luxurious cabin at a forest resort. Amenities and Utilities included. Enjoy the beautiful scenery, fresh air, as well as the company of an alpha of your choosing. What could possibly go wrong?
Summary: When Sam and Bucky start sleeping together, it’s to Bucky’s sheer amazement that Sam can’t get enough of him but Bucky can't get enough of him either.
Excerpt:
Bucky was never the reckless kind when it came to loving. In the past, and yes by past he means the 1940s, he couldn’t be careless with relationships. Those times were different, women were proper in ways he didn’t want to mess with in fear of losing his chance altogether. The wildest he’d done was felt up a dame in the movie theater or fool around in a car — but they never even went all the way.
Bucky wonders now if perhaps no one has ever been that into him or maybe he’s never been that into anyone either. He wanted to touch a dame for the sake of touching one. He wanted to round the bases to brag about how far he’d gone. But he’d never actually met someone he couldn’t keep his hands off of.
He’d expect this to happen least of all with Sam. Because even in front of the cameras and the press, Sam Wilson is the most cool, collected guy you’ll ever see. Even around his family or in front of strangers. Anywhere you find Sam, he’s civil and calm. He always knows what to say. It honestly made Bucky nervous to speak around the man when they first met. And the times Bucky has sputtered unintelligibly in front of him, Sam merely chuckles with a smooth grin and pats him on the back as if Bucky’s attempt at a coherent sentence was a decent one.
So for Sam to not only want Bucky but like this — at any time, any place? Bucky has no idea what the fuck to do with himself when encountering this new, feral side of Sam.
Tony: I bought you every single piece of your outfit down to the pocket square. Why on Earth are you wearing pink socks to a black tie event?
Peter: Cuz it was the closest thing to white I had?
Tony: I gave you BLACK SOCKS. I thought it was ridiculous to buy you socks because surely you could at least manage that on your own, but Pepper insisted. What on Earth could you have done to them??
Peter: They were realllly nice socks. Like best I've ever had, and y'know kicking butt isn't the kindest to the ol' dogs, so I kept them on when I had to suit up
Tony: Still not following.
Peter: It was fine until Jack O'Lantern decided to hit me with an itching powder attack. If anyone's a menace it's that guy!
Tony: So you wash the socks. What's the problem here
Peter: I did do that! And then I dried them and they turned into little baby socks...
Tony: High heat on natural fibers, kid? I thought you were a scientist
Peter: Well I needed them to dry fast. I kinda just cranked it all the way up
Tony: Why didn't you just use another pair of black socks?
Peter: I don't own any
Tony: You don't—whatever, I don't have time to get into that. Why didn't you buy some then?
Peter: I didn't bring my wallet tonight because Pepper said it would mess with the lines of my suit
Tony: Peter when was this...
Peter: During the speeches
Tony: Whose speech? I just got off stage
Peter: Yep! You talked for the duration of a delicate wash spin cycle, a very quick dry, and a web-sling back here
Tony:
Peter: By the way Jack O'Lantern tried to attack the event. He's webbed to the lamppost outside waiting for the cops
Tony: In all honesty I'm just surprised you managed to show up at all. Just don't let anyone take pictures of your ankles tonight
Summary: As it turns out, you can’t outrun a monster in his own home. You can, however, learn to question whether he was ever a monster at all.
Word Count: 17.7k
Warnings: real big emotions and confrontations; secrecy in a relationship; lots of panic/anxiety/fear/insecurities; weapons (guns, knife); minor injury (cut); references to criminal activity and violence; Bucky is possessive and protective and in love; emotional manipulation (perceived/debated)
Author’s Note: Here we are my lovelies, the second part to His Name Was Never Just Bucky. Honestly, I’m so relieved it’s finally done and I can return to other projects. This took me so incredibly long, but it’s rewarding to have it completed and I’m so proud I didn’t end up abandoning it like so many other things before. I truly hope you enjoy where I took the story ♡
Masterlist | part one
This was probably the worst decision you have ever made.
But, hell, now you officially jumped without a parachute, the ledge is gone, the air is passing by quickly, and your only hope is that you’ll somehow learn how to fly on the way down and you’ll be able to land on your feet.
The hallway outside has lost its symmetry, as you have lost your sanity, and now nothing seems to make sense anymore. Everything seems longer and crueler, your panic stretching the hallways into a long, suffocating throat. Each of your hectic footsteps makes you feel too exposed in this big mansion, they seem to echo your exact coordinates throughout the floors. Every hallway hears you, the walls themselves are turning their heads.
You take the first turn on instinct, then another, and another, trying to remember the route, trying to retrace the thread that brought you here, but your terror and all that bottled-up panic smashes sequence, steals direction, leaves you with nothing but speed because you know that if you stop, you’re done.
Your feel your heart everywhere. In your throat, in your ears, behind your eyes, beating against your teeth.
You blow past a side table where a cluster of pale lilies sits, blooming so aggressively, looking so wrong and even ugly in the corner of your eye, you have to take another turn.
You’re no longer thinking, you’re just running.
Your chest is a hollow chamber and all you hear is your own pants when you pass a maid who startles and calls something you don’t catch. You pass a window tall as a church promise and for one insane second consider throwing yourself through it.
Somewhere behind you, from the office, you hear a loud crash. His voice follows. His voice. It sounds so much more blood-curdling now.
He’s calling your name. Loud and baffled and then sharper. He doesn’t sound angry yet, but definitely alarmed in a way that makes every warning bell inside you turn rabid. Because there is something uniquely petrifying about hearing alarm in the voice of a man like him. It means you have disrupted the script. It means he does not understand. It means he is coming.
You run harder, every nerve in your body overflowing with adrenaline.
But, as expected, the house doesn’t simply spit you out. Corridors feed into corridors, archways into alcoves, burnished halls into rooms you have never seen, and every choice you make seems to slide you deeper into the belly of the place instead of toward freedom.
With a ragged and desperate breath, you shove through one swinging door expecting another passage, and stumble instead into a kitchen vast enough to feed a wedding. There is all this gleaming steel and those butcher-block islands and hanging copper, bright under the lights in a way that feels grotesque after the dim severity of the office.
It is wrong, all wrong, too open and yet somehow still a trap, because there is no front hall here, no visible exit, only counters and cabinets and startled staff, and you realize with a sick plunge of your stomach, that you have run yourself into a dead end dressed as luxury.
This is bad, this is so bad.
You stop abruptly, spinning around helplessly. The breath tears in and out of you like it is trying to escape without the rest of your body. The halls behind you are full of pounding footsteps, and you know it’s just one single set, but you also know it’s him.
He’s advancing and you can’t keep escaping.
A woman near the far counter goes still with a mixing bowl in her hands. Another man freezes by the sink with his hands in water. No one speaks. No one moves. The whole room seems to hold itself in suspension around your panic, everyone watching without watching, and then from somewhere behind you in the corridor comes Bucky’s voice sounds again, practically yelling your name—no confusion left now, only alertness, apprehension; and it punches you in the gut. It rings through you, through the kitchen, through the bright metal and tile and silence, and you know it has all been for nothing.
But before there is anything you can do, before the ground can open a portal for you to fall through, Bucky appears in the kitchen doorway, looking like an avalanche with a name. A big name. A dangerous name. A name that will be the end of you.
He doesn’t look raging in the obvious way, but he’s lost a bit of control. And for the man that he is, you don’t know how to survive it. And this intensity with which he came thundering after you is so extremely frightening because it looks expensive on him, tailored to fit, like one of his suits, like one of his watches, like all the impeccable and dangerous things he wears so naturally you once mistook them for elegance instead of that blaring warning sign they actually are.
Why just have you been so stupid, my god.
He’s totally got you wrapped around his finger—and dick, as embarrassing and daunting as it is—or you would have maybe been able to open your eyes for a second, you idiot.
But now they are open, wide, wide open, and you see him. You see him as the man he is. But maybe it’s a little too late now.
He stops the moment he sees you pressed half-backward against the dark island, sees the way your hands have come up slightly as if your body has decided on defense without consulting you, sees the wet shine gathering in your eyes, the terror you are no longer managing to powder over, and something happens to his face that is so brief and so devastating, but all you can do is stare at him so you see that clean strike of realization.
He doesn’t look confused anymore, and it makes him even more menacing.
He knows. He knows that you know. And he probably knows what he’s going to do to you now but you don’t know if you want to know that.
The air seems to cinch around you, seems to wrap itself around your throat, and squeezes. You can’t breathe. You don’t try to.
Bucky—James, your mind insists now with a sick recoil, James Buchanan Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, biggest crime boss in the city—does not look away from you when he tilts his face to the staff. That, more than anything, makes your blood run strange. His attention stays fixed on you with a steadiness so absolute it feels like a physical thing, a hand at the back of your neck, while his voice turns toward everyone else in the room and comes out low and unquestionable. “Everyone out.”
His command is dropped into the kitchen and nobody argues. The immediate obedience of his people makes you visibly shudder.
A woman near the stove sets down a towel with trembling fingers. The man by the sink lowers his eyes and moves. Another staff member glances at you once with a quick look that seems almost guilty, almost pitying, and you feel the pulse of it pounding all around you, everywhere inside you.
Nobody looks at you too long, nobody does anything besides leaving the fucking room. They won’t meet your fear and they won’t step between it and the source. Nobody here belongs to themselves enough to choose you over him. But it’s clear that they don’t. They’re his people for a reason. Nobody here will be on your side, whatever happens.
A door swings. The kitchen empties in a matter of seconds, everyone slipping out with the furtive speed of people evacuating a room where something dangerous has just unsheathed itself. They leave with the scene in their eyes. They leave you with him. And the silence after the last one goes is so sudden it roars.
You take another step back and only feel the unhelpfully solid press of marble against your spine. There is nowhere else to go unless you want to climb onto the counter like a cornered animal, and for one hysterical beat of a second, the idea does not even seem ridiculous.
You keep your eyes on him because looking away feels somehow more chilling, but your gaze is frantic within that line of sight, darting to the side entrance, to the swinging service door, to the corridor beyond him, to windows that suddenly seem decorative rather than useful, to every possible seam in the room where escape might be hiding in miniature.
There is none. The whole kitchen gleams at you with pitiless order that’s just full of steel and stone and copper, knives in their block and pots all around.
He notices you looking, but you can’t care; all you have to care about is the distance between you and him, the distance between you and anything that might become escape if panic suddenly grew wings.
Could you run past him? Maybe, if he were anyone else. Maybe, if this were some ordinary man with ordinary reflexes and an ordinary body and an ordinary life.
But he is none of those things. You’re in this damn situation because he’s none of those things.
He fills the doorway without even trying. He stands there in the collectedness of his dark clothes and encroaching presence, looking at you as if he can hear your thoughts tripping over each other and your fear has turned you transparent.
His shadow has finally caught up to his skin and you now realize how dark it is.
Even if you got around him, where would you go? The front hall might as well be on another continent. Every corridor in this house has already left you stranded. There is no map in your mind now, only panic. No way out.
The knowledge gathers in your chest until it hurts. Behind your eyes, heat stings. Your throat tightens around a lump and only something choked leaves your lips.
And Bucky sees all of it. You keep trying to shrink back from him because his very outline has now become a threat, and it doesn’t make your situation better, but he already knows, so you don’t have to pretend anymore.
And his face alters. It’s as if the floor has given way under him. As if he had stepped expecting hard tiles and found air.
He does not advance. That should help. It does not. He stays where he is, one hand dropping slowly from the doorframe to his side, as if he understands that any sudden movement from him might send you straight through the nearest pane of glass.
There is a fervor to him now that feels different from the one you knew in bed, at dinner, in the soft-lit luxury of his attention. It has made you feel protected, loved, worshipped.
But there is no feeling of that anymore, none of that, because now it’s stripped of adornment, revealed as what it perhaps always was beneath all that heat and gentleness. It’s focus. Pure and frightening focus.
His eyes are on you in that unwavering, devastating way of his, but the expression in them is nothing easy. There is something dark in there, something grim and braced, something that knows a door has just slammed shut and is already calculating what can still be salvaged from the wreckage.
His mouth is set. His jaw is hard enough to cast shadows. He looks, absurdly, heartbreakingly, like a man who has been struck and is refusing to touch the bruise. But he stands, and he’s still so tall, much taller than you thought he could become, and he is not the man you thought you knew.
He stands there with his hands visible, shoulders squared but not aggressive, and the intensity in him is bridled.
His stare does not feel like a threat in the crude sense, but it’s so full of attention, too much attention, because total attention from a man like him is its own species of fear.
“Sweetheart.”
His voice has changed. It is calm but only in pretense. It is soft, technically, but not the way it was before. Before, his softness had warmth in it, a hand held out in the dark.
But this is lower. Straighter. It has gone cool around the edges. It’s not vicious or unkind in any sense, but your body clocks it instantly. It’s almost formal in its restraint, as though he’s speaking across the lip of something that’s close to breaking and he’s trying not to widen the crack.
And that nickname makes you want to let the tears fall. Whatever he tries to achieve by calling you that, it doesn’t work. It’s just torture how familiar he tries to make it sound.
His gaze falls in fast snaps over your face, your posture, your trembling hands. “This looks bad,” he concedes roughly. His throat works once before he continues. “I know it does. But it isn’t what you think it is.”
The words land in you and do nothing. They just sink. Sit there.
He studies your face, sees he has not reached you at all. “What did you see, baby? What has you—” He breaks off with a crack, shakes his head slowly, and lets out a shuddering breath, eyes still on you. “Tell me what you saw.”
What answer could you possibly give him?
That you are looking at his mouth and thinking of all the times it softened around your name, and your own mind keeps turning traitor and overlaying that tenderness with headlines, with whispers, with ravening rumor?
That the same voice which once coaxed and soothed now sounds capable of making rooms empty and men obey and whole situations forgotten? That the current version of his voice is a masterclass in control and it terrifies you to no end?
That his hands are hanging open at his sides, looking so damn human and ordinary, as though they’ve never done anything wrong?
Which is a lie, you now know, a lie that runs deep and leaves you scarred, because all you can think is that these bare hands are the same hands you’ve had under your chin, lifting your face to his, tucking hair behind your ear, buttoning you up against the cold, and you’ve had them gripping you tight in the dark, moving inside you until you couldn't breathe, wrecking you in the best way possible.
These hands were your favorite things.
But looking at them now, you picture what they are doing when you aren’t around. Doing the dirty work, the ugly work, the unspeakable work, hidden back in the blacked-out corners of a life he kept under lock and key.
Your throat feels too dry to talk and you stay quiet, letting the stillness in the room ripen, letting your lack of words and the fear in your eyes speak for themselves.
A hard, hollow tension knots his face, makes his jaw grind, and look as solid as a piece of rock. His hands ball into fists and when your eyes snap to them immediately, your body already flinching, he flexes them, but it seems forced. There is an almost brute rigidity to his throat, a silent scream of dread choked down only barely.
“What do you know?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
The question is gentle in shape and brutal in substance. It makes your stomach turn. Because it sounds like a test. It sounds like inventory. It sounds like the kind of thing a ruthless man would ask before deciding what to do with the damage.
You let your fingers grip the edge of the counter. You can’t answer him. All you can do is try to breathe. All you can do is stare at the exit behind him, and his body standing between it.
He draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “Look at me, Y/n. Please.”
You didn’t know some part of you would still obey, but you notice too late. Maybe it’s better this way. Your eyes lift fully to his.
And you can actually see the way he has lost his grip. It’s right there in his eyes. If you were to describe it you’d say it looks distraught. As if he’s lost, his entire biography that’s been neatly written on paper now ripped away and he can’t find the next line.
Judging by the way you act and look at him, he knows you know something, he just doesn't know what, and the mystery is eating him alive. Just for one disorienting second he doesn’t look that much like this untouchable figure from all those disturbing rumors, but rather like a simple man who knows that if he tries to force his way out of this, he’s just confirming your worst fears about him.
“My name,” he starts with a little hesitance. The gravelly low timbre of his voice makes you shudder, “is James Buchanan Barnes.”
Something in your face gives you away.
You feel it the moment it happens. Some tiny involuntary flinch. Some helpless widening.
Because something crosses his expression, his throat bobs hard enough to show that everything inside him is suddenly in pieces.
He sees that the name is not new to you. He sees that you are already standing several steps ahead of where he hoped this conversation was.
He goes very still.
“You knew that already,” he acknowledges, and it almost hurts how he tries to sound calm about it all.
Your mouth is dry. Your whole body feels like a struck match. You let out a pitiful small breath.
He takes one careful step forward, and it’s not really a step, not even truly an advance, but you recoil so sharply, you ram your whole body against the wall of marble behind you. Your back stings, but your eyes sting more.
His face changes with your reaction, something like pain flashing through the severe framework of him before he reins it back in.
“How?” he asks, and he’s no longer trying for calm. He ducks his head, pleading eyes on you, and he speaks with a wounded quiet. “Sweetheart, how did you find out?”
Your throat works around the answer. “Your tags.” It comes out so faint it is almost nothing, just a shaking breath that accidentally caught a few letters on the way out.
For a second he shuts his eyes. For just one cut of time.
His head tips back the slightest amount, and he deflates. A breath of air leaves him in a hitching, rattling shudder, like he’s finally run out of things to hold onto.
He looks back at you and seems briefly at a loss. James Buchanan Barnes, man of closed doors and fixed outcomes, with no ready sentence in his hands.
It is strange and unnerving and it makes you talk more, bracing for him to yell and threaten and turn cold.
“And,” you whisper, voice wobbling and blundering around in your mouth, “there was a gun.“
You want to explain, want to urge that you didn’t mean to find it, didn’t mean to come across anything at all. You want him to know you would like to dump your eyes in a container of white paint so your vision is a blank canvas and you can color it with other pictures, but it’s too late, and your words already seem to break across him, differently.
He does not move at first. He almost flinches, but catches it halfway, as if his body forgot for a moment to be disciplined.
His eyes stay on you, and all that’s in there are things you’ve never seen in him before. Or in anyone, really. It is a stricken grief, resulting from the way every new piece of your fear is arriving inside him one by one and finding purchase.
He looks at you like he can see the exact route your mind took from one discovery to the next, and hates every mile of it.
“Baby, I—” he croaks, having to pause. Instead, he starts toward you again, even slower this time, palms open a little, perhaps meaning only to soothe, perhaps meaning only to be nearer, but simply more trepidation triggers in you before thought can intervene. “Please listen to me—”
Your gaze snags on the knife block.
The sleek black handles. The bright clean suggestion of defense. It’s without thought that you run to grab one.
It is graceless and frantic and you don’t brandish it like someone brave in a film. You don’t know how to do this well enough for that and you don’t have the nerve to think about it.
Your hand shakes around the handle almost immediately, and you pull it close to your chest, because fighting this vile man would be ludicrous considering who he is and who you are, knife or not, but you use it to protect yourself with the mere fact of holding something sharp. Hopeful that this thing will keep your horror from spilling out of your body altogether.
The blade catches the light and makes it meaner. You hate that you have done this. You hate more that you had to.
Bucky stops dead.
The whole room seems to stop with him.
His eyes go first to the knife, then back to your face, and what crosses his expression then is so nakedly agonizing it is difficult to bear.
Because he sees that you are not trying to threaten him, unlike how someone in danger might.
You are not foolish enough to think a kitchen knife turns you into his equal. You are holding it because your body needs one small fiction to survive on—the fiction that you are not entirely empty-handed in a room with a man who could ruin you if he chose to. The fiction that you still belong, in some tiny harrowed way, to yourself.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice cracks clean through the middle of the word.
You have never heard that happen to him before. Never heard his composure split like badly fired glass.
His stare stays locked on yours, but now there is no distance in it, no coolness, no stranger’s cadence. Just a visceral, human ache. “Hey,” he says again, softer, but it sounds so incredibly heavy. It’s the way you’d talk to someone who’s just woken up from a nightmare and doesn't know where they are yet. “I’m— I’m not going to hurt you.”
Your grip tightens. The knife trembles visibly. “Don’t come closer.”
He stops breathing for half a beat and nods slowly.
“Okay.” The word is a single rasp. “I won’t.” He swallows. You see the muscle move hard in his throat. “I won’t come any closer.”
You cannot stop shaking, no matter how hard you try, because a man with his power shouldn’t see you be so obviously afraid, but there is nothing you can do.
“Please believe me, sweetheart, when I say that I never intended to hurt you,” he swears, and there is no command in him now, none of that cold-sounding authority from a moment ago when he emptied the room with few syllables.
This is worse, in its own way. This undone version of him, this man trying to hold himself very still because the sight of you recoiling has clearly perturbed something structural inside him. “I have a thousand sins on my head, and it’s no use to claim otherwise now,” he speaks with a vulnerability in his tone that washes past you. “I’ve done a lot of things I can’t take back, but hurting you was never on the table. Okay? It was never even a possibility. You were supposed to be the only thing I didn’t ruin,” he ends with a lacerated wince.
You stare at him and have no idea how you can understand anything at all.
The knife handle bites into your palm. Your chest rises and falls too fast. The kitchen is suddenly too loud with all that humming of the refrigerator, the lights, the distant bloodstream of the mansion; and in the center of it all he stands facing you with that wrecked look in his eyes, as if your fear is not merely inconvenient to him but unbearable, and he’d rather be struck than watched this way by you.
And in a world that wasn't currently collapsing, maybe you’d actually care, maybe you’d actually notice how he would take a bullet to the chest just to stop you from flinching, but all you can think is that you are standing in the house of James Buchanan Barnes, with a knife against your own ribs as much as against him, and the man looking at you like heartbreak has found him at last is still the same man the city says should never be underestimated.
It’s so silent all of a sudden that the kitchen seems to be held in a trance. It feels as if there is a vacuum pressing against the walls and now the molecules of the room are terrified to touch the mess of what’s happening.
The last bit of help you could have possibly still leaned on due to your desperation has vanished, echoes of footsteps now pull back into the depths of this mansion.
The overheads feel hostile, throwing down a flat glare that skims over the stainless steel and floorboards with an inert eye.
And centered in that manufactured peace is him.
James Buchanan Barnes.
The name has already erupted once inside your chest, but it keeps echoing, reverberating through your bones in smaller aftershocks. It feels strange to attach it to the man standing in front of you, when his hands have mapped every part of you—right to the most intimate ones—you’ve come to recognize his voice even in half-sleep and his laugh once wound through the cage of your ribs, vibrating against the bone until you couldn't tell its rhythm from your own heartbeat.
It feels like a wronged ownership. It feels like a glitch, an error in the logic of the world, but who are you to find a way out of it. Surrounded by him, in a mansion that is now suddenly as big as the world itself.
But you see it now. And god, it’s so painfully clear. So agonizingly obvious.
You were delusional, you know that. It’s what hurts so terribly bad. You know exactly how this looks to anyone else. After all, this all started with you dating a guy for over a month and not even knowing his actual, legal name. But when you’re used to being nobody, a little bit of hyper-focused attention feels like a drug. He looked at you as if you were the only person in the room, and you would get this tight, anxious knot in your throat, thinking don’t ruin this. Asking for a last name or a background check felt like a quick way to feel high-maintenance, and you didn’t want to give him a reason to feel uncomfortable and walk away.
It was a habit born of pure insecurity, being so grateful for the crumbs of love that you don’t dare ask who’s baking the bread. He must have picked up on that on day one. He must have realized right away that as long as he kept making you feel special, you’d keep your mouth shut and let him stay hidden.
He used your loneliness, your blind spots. You were so desperately hoping to be seen, that you fell for the most obvious trap. And it’s your own fault, really. But it still makes you feel completely hollow, like someone scooped the air right out of your lungs with a cold spoon.
Now you have to live with the shame of that mistake.
Your jaw aches from clenching it, trying to swallow down the urge to throw up right there on the kitchen floor.
His presence alone seems to pull at the corners of the ceiling, dragging it down to squash you like a grape. He anchors the room to his foundation, consumes it with all he has, and tracks you with a pinpoint focus that has you shivering and sweating, because his gaze is treating the harsh thudding of your pulse as more vital than the massive, blood-stained kingdom currently cooling its heels on the other side of the door.
The roar in your ears turns outwards, seemingly engulfing the whole room with your panicked pulse. Your vision narrows down until the room stops spinning, and for the first time, you actually feel the air in the kitchen
And in the quiet, your awareness gives you the alarm that there is still something jarringly chilling resting just above your heart. It takes you a moment to realize it’s something physical. There is a weight there that now suddenly feels so deeply misplaced.
Your hand moves on its own, your fingers lifting toward your throat to find the source of that cold, sinister pressure.
The tips of your fingers brush pearls.
And for a moment, you stay frozen there, grazing the smooth curve of one luminous bead where the necklace drapes across your throat.
It once made you smile, had your shoulders drop in ease when you made contact with this present of Bucky. But it no longer feels like a present at all, it feels like a bribe, a hook, a trap because its ultimate purpose surely wasn’t meant as a gift but rather to restrict your freedom and keep you bound to him.
This necklace, these shiny pearls, they aren’t about you. Honestly, you don’t think anything is about you. It never was. It’s just a reflection of what he wants you to be, confining you in his version of your identity.
He manipulated you and stole you and wanted to make you believe you’re the luckiest damn girl in the world.
And you had been. But now you’re just the stupidest.
And you keep on being, because your mind just continues jumping back to the evening he gave it to you, how it felt so soft and intimate, something chosen carefully and fastened around your neck with that glint of pride that lived in Bucky’s eyes. And you want to cry and break down at the way he stood there in front of you so awkwardly with the luxurious velvet box in his hand like it was something far more serious than jewelry. The way his voice had gone rough when he said he saw them and thought of you.
And now, sitting against your collarbone all cold, these are no longer gems, but tiny hooks sinking deeper into your skin, reminding you with every little sting, that you walked into this prison willingly.
You let James Buchanan Barnes clasp it around your neck. The man whose name crawls across newspapers like a stain. The man whose stories carry blood and conspiracies and savagery in their wake.
Somehow you manage to close your fingers around the strand despite of their shakiness.
Across the kitchen, Bucky’s gaze drops to your hand the moment it moves.
The necklace feels impossibly smooth beneath your touch, each pearl round and shining like a row of innocent little moons.
A gift.
From a man you didn’t know.
Or maybe a man you knew too well, just not in the way the world did.
Your throat feels hot suddenly and you know it's the cursed pearls burning holes there, pressing into your pulse with every overwhelmed beat of your heart.
You cannot stand it.
Your fingers curl harder.
Bucky's gaze snaps up to your face, then quickly back to your hands, and then he goes still. But still in the way of an animal that sensed the crack of a branch in the forest. Every line of him tightens in subtle increments, his shoulders locking, his breathing halting so abruptly you see the pause ruffle through his chest.
He knows what your heart doesn’t yet.
His attention sharpens and his eyes grow wide. It almost seems like he’s about to move toward you.
“Hey—” he starts softly, though the word is unfinished, frail, fearing the direction your thoughts are taking.
But your brain is no longer interested in choosing to make decisions carefully.
The necklace feels oppressive, every inch of it tied to a truth you did not have when he first placed it there, and so you can’t think or react any differently.
Your hand jerks in one swift motion just as Bucky releases a desperate choking sound.
The strand snaps free from your neck with a sharp little noise, like a thread breaking under too much strain, and now the pearls explode outward from your hand and scatter across the kitchen floor like a sudden spill of tiny white stars. They strike the tile with a bright, haphazard clatter that echoes far too loudly in the empty room.
tik—tik—tik—tik—
Some bounce high, ricocheting against cabinet legs. Others roll wildly across the floor, spinning in spasmodic circles before coming to a stop beneath stainless steel counters and chair legs.
The sound fills the kitchen in poignant, crystalline bursts.
A rain of little impacts.
A beautiful mess.
For a second you don’t even breathe.
You just stare at them—those small, perfect pearls—rolling farther and farther away from each other, punctuating the heartbreak in the air.
Across from you, Bucky doesn’t move. Something is breaking across his face. His breath leaves him in a soft, stunned exhale, and all he can do is stare with his eyes unguarded. It startles you.
He takes a step back. Not a deliberate one. More like his body forgot the floor was there. His boot slides half a pace behind him as though the sound of those pearls hitting the tile physically pushed him away from you.
His mouth parts.
For a moment he looks like he cannot quite process what he just witnessed.
His eyes—those confident, storm-colored eyes that usually hold such controlled intensity—have widened in a way you have never seen before. It doesn’t seem to look like anger, or anything like it.
It looks like hurt. Pure, unhidden hurt.
His gaze falls to the floor, tracking the scattered pearls skittering across the kitchen tiles, watching them roll away from where you stand with that look in his eyes that says he never wished to see them destroyed.
Then his eyes return to you. Slowly. And the expression there is devastating.
Because it is not rage.
It is not even disappointment.
It is heartbreak so unexpected and unfiltered it seems to hollow his chest from the inside.
His jaw tightens as if he tries to speak, but no words come immediately. The muscles along his throat move with a hard swallow, his chest rising and falling once in a slow, unsteady breath.
You realize then that he is looking at your bare throat.
The place where the necklace used to rest, and he stares at the place with sullen eyes.
Then his eyes lift again, meeting yours, and they are still wide, still aching.
For the first time since you’ve known him, Bucky Barnes looks like a man who has just watched something precious fall apart in his hands and realized too late that he cannot gather the pieces fast enough to put it back together.
And in the bright, echoing kitchen, the last pearl finishes rolling.
Tick.
Then silence returns, and your dread turns harrowing and now Bucky doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands, which is such a small, irrational thing to notice in the middle of your terror and yet your mind notices it anyway, because this is a man who has always seemed like a structure that was built out of conviction, who has been a straight line for you to follow in your world of scribbles, a man who enters every room as though the room had the good sense to expect him, and now he stands before you with your fear pointed at him in the shape of a kitchen knife and looks, inarguably, like he has been shoved off-script and dropped into the crack that formed in his foundation and now he is walled in by the very bricks he laid.
His eyes stay on your face, then the knife, then your face again, careful, heartbroken, alert in that frighteningly intense way of his, and you feel yourself shiver as he is tracking every tremor in your fingers, every drag of your breath, every microscopic shift in your balance in case you bolt again or collapse or cut yourself by accident on the trembling edge of your own panic.
“What you think you know about me,” he starts, and his voice is lower now, roughened at the seams, “what you’ve heard… what people say, it isn’t the whole truth. It isn’t even most of it.”
You barely hear the words. They hit the air and fall uselessly to the floor. Because what else would a man like him say, standing in a cathedral-sized kitchen in a house full of people who obey him before he finishes speaking, after you found the gun and the tags and the name that can turn a city’s rumor mill rabid by itself?
No matter what he says, no matter that he looks so unbelievably shattered—the shape of him is wrong now. That is what your body keeps insisting on. Wrong in the doorway, wrong under these lights, wrong with that caution and that gentleness still trying to live in his face as if it is genuine. You cannot make him fit into one meaning anymore. He is split down the middle in your mind—tender and terrible, gentle and catastrophic—and the fracture is making noise inside you.
He takes a breath, slow, as if he is trying not to startle you even with the sound of his lungs working. “I know how this looks.”
A cough breaks in your throat, or maybe it's a huff or a wet laugh, or whatever, but it hurts coming up and out of your throat. Your hand shakes so badly the knife glints in nervous little flashes. “You used me.”
The sentence leaves you wheezy and small and much too true-feeling inside your own head. But they are out, and you take a whimpering breath, and two tears fall. They don’t arrive elegantly, and they sure as hell don’t spill subtly. They feel hot and you feel humiliated and betrayed, so deeply betrayed, and you hate that they are coming in front of him, giving him the satisfaction because your body is not able to choose a fight, to give you steel and armor and an exit and a miracle. All it can provide you with is dread and tears, and a terribly shaking kitchen knife in your unpractical hands. Your whole body has become an argument against calm and there is nothing you can do.
His face changes so sharply it is almost like watching a flame twist drastically in wind.
“No,” he gets out quickly, and his voice trips over itself. It is denial stripped to the bone. Pure and cruel because he’s genuinely the greatest actor on earth. “No,” he chokes out again, softer and somehow more desperate. “No, no, I— It's not— I never—” He swallows, the line of his throat moving hard. He looks like he is about to walk barefoot through broken glass without letting you see the blood. “You matter to me. You— God, shit, that doesn’t even come close to—”
“Stop,” you whimper while a fresh tear slips down. You shake your head because the words feel obscene now, feel almost insulting in their tenderness, like someone laying roses on a crime scene.
“I’m not pretending.”
“Stop.”
His jaw flexes. He looks toward the ceiling for half a second, and it seems like he is trying to gather language before it deserts him entirely, and when his gaze comes back to you there is something naked in it, something grim and pleading and painfully real. He seems to grope for something that keeps him standing.
“I wanted to tell you,” he despairs, voice scratchy. “I was going to.”
You stare at him through your blurred vision. Every instinct in you rejects the sentence on impact. It sounds nonsensical. The knife quivers against your chest with each breath you are somehow able to take, but they are shuddering.
“When?” you choke out. “After what? After I was stupid enough? After I—”
“No.” He takes a step before remembering himself and stopping immediately, hands opening at his sides. “No. When it was safe.”
The word safe almost makes you laugh, except there is nothing funny left in you.
He hears how deranged it sounds in this room, and grief moves across his face in one dark, swift shadow. “Listen to me,” he presses, and his voice cracks, stripped of that expensive control he wears so well. “I know this life is ugly from the outside. I know what my name sounds like to people. I know what kind of stories get told. I knew if I handed you all of it too soon, all at once, you’d run before you ever had the chance to know what was real.”
Your tears keep coming and you don’t have it in you to wipe them away. You fear your heart won’t ever be able to unclench again after this day. If you even make it out of here. “So you thought you’d just let me” —fall in love first— “into your life the way you did?”
He closes his eyes, and you know the sentence hit exactly where it meant to. When he looks at you again there is nothing smooth or seamless about him, and you have never seen him this way. Because you have never really known him. He is no longer buttoned-up and bulletproof. He honestly looks about ready to be hit in the heart one final, fatal time. “I thought I would give you time,” he supplicates quietly, voice husky. “I thought I would let you know me before the rest of it ruined everything.” The breath that follows his words sounds full of sorrow and a deeply seated regret. “Which it seems like it has.”
Yes, it has. Yes, he ruined it. But would you have felt any other way if you found out another way? In another setting, maybe while you were tangled in the sheets together, or while he was holding your hands? You don’t know because it didn’t happen that way and you found out the way you did and now the world is upside down and all wrong-angled, and your mind is spinning in a room with no corners, completely unanchored by a lie you never saw coming, or maybe you have, because a guy like him couldn’t ever want a girl like you, and perhaps first and foremost you’re just mad at yourself.
Your throat has gone tight with crying, with fear, with the dizzying effort of keeping your body upright when your whole nervous system is trying to flee in eight directions at once. He sees you struggling and looks halfway to moving again, then stops himself so hard the restraint shows all over him.
“I’m a patient man,” he keeps going, and you just want to run past him, out of this hell. You don’t hear how there is no pride in his voice, no menace, just a worn sort of honesty, as if this is the one truth he can still offer without it breaking on impact. “I would have waited. As long as I needed to. I was waiting for the right moment, for when you felt safe with me, for when I knew you wouldn’t hear my name and only hear every lie this city tells itself at night.” His voice lowers further. “For when you loved me enough to at least stay in the room while I explained.”
You blink at him as if he has said something in a language your body no longer speaks.
And then, because this nightmare apparently still has room to worsen, he says, very softly, “Because I love you.”
All you can do is stare at this stranger, and it feels like you are looking at him through a broken window.
It is not the first time he has said it, not at all, and you had loved how he had no shame in telling you, how he pressed those very words into your skin night after night, even this early into your relationship.
Gosh, you had cherished it, fallen deeper for him because of it, and now you know it's all been part of his manipulation. So what else should it be now. But at the same time—why should he still be saying it? How can he still say that? How can he say that now, after all of this, after you know who he is, after the room has filled with the bomb of revelation? What kind of man says I love you while being the very thing you are trying to escape from?
You don’t understand him. You have no clue about who this man is and it is making your hands sweat around the handle. You don’t understand how his eyes can look this shattered, how his voice can sound this human, how his face can hold this much pain and still belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
The knife is still trembling against your chest. Your arm aches from holding it so tightly. The tears keep slipping down no matter how furiously you blink. He stands there with grief in his eyes and power in every line of his body, and both things are true at once, and both things are hurting worse because no single version of him will stay still long enough to be hated cleanly.
“I was going to ease you into it,” he explains achingly, as if confession has broken loose now and cannot be coaxed back in. “Slowly. Over time. I was going to tell you what I could, when I could, and let you decide what to do with it piece by piece. I was never going to throw you into the deep end and watch you drown in it.” His throat works. “Y/n, I’m so fucking sorry you had to find out like this.”
But you are not really listening anymore. Or rather, you hear every word and none of them settle. They clatter against your panic and bounce off immediately only to land in a repressed corner of your mind.
Because maybe he means them. Maybe that is the tragedy of it. Maybe he means every single inconceivable word. But meaning them does not open the door. Meaning them does not make this house less of a trap or his name less of a threat or your pulse any less palpitating in your throat. Meaning them does not undo the gun, the tags, the scathingly smooth way everyone in this place disappears when he tells them to. Meaning them does not turn James Buchanan Barnes back into only Bucky, back into the man whose shirt you wanted to pull on because it smelled like him.
All you need now is a way out.
You don’t want justice, or answers, or even the damn truth. You just want a way out of this. You want to get the hell away from him and everything that smells and looks like him. And the room starts reorganizing itself around that instinct. The service door behind him. The hallway to the left. The distance to the far counter. Whether he is standing on the balls of his feet or flat. Whether the island might slow him for a second. Whether dropping the knife would help or harm you. Whether there is any point at all in planning when this is his house, his kingdom, his maze, and you are just a girl crying in the center of it with shaking hands and nowhere good to go.
He sees your eyes move and something in his face folds inward with understanding, with woe, with the excruciating knowledge that while he is pouring his heart out in rough little pieces, all you are doing is looking for exits. He looks completely emptied out, as if his ribs had been pried open and the only soft part of him had been torn away.
“Baby—” And now he just sounds pleading. But he doesn’t get the chance to keep on going with his drama.
The kitchen ignites with noise before you even understand what you are hearing. There was just you with your messy breathing and Bucky standing a few feet away with that awfully gutted look on his face and then the door slams open so hard the plaster cracks and the sound ricochets against your nervous system.
A crowd of men comes flooding through the opening, like a breach in a dam, so fast and threatening and all of them primed for dirtier work than anyone should ever have to do. The floor shudders under their hard slam of boots. Nobody hesitates and nobody asks questions. They all just move on some sick instinct, weapons out and raised in the space of a single heartbeat.
And now all of them are pointed at you.
The sound that hitches in your throat is not at all dignified or brave. You wish you could stare at the end of your life with at least a small sense of bravery, but it doesn’t seem like it. Every weapon these uniformed men hold is fixed on your ribs, your throat, your eyes, and the paring knife you are gripping feels pathetic. It is a useless piece of household metal against a wall of black iron, against men who don’t care that you are small and fearful.
Even so, your knuckles go numb around the handle from how hard you are gripping it. Your fingers lock up, your skin flashing from freezing cold to scorching hot while your heart thrashes against your ribs.
You think, irrationally, that this is how it happens then. There is no big speech, no lightning strike from the sky. It is just going to happen here on the linoleum, next to a bowl of apples on the counter, and a row of clean water glasses that are catching the light of the kitchen while strangers decide to put bullets in you.
Bucky pivots.
It happens so quickly it feels supernatural, like a weather change, like the room altering under the weight of him. He steps in front of you without quite blocking you, but enough that every single man in that doorway seems to remember all at once who exactly they have just disobeyed.
His expression does not merely harden; it shears. Whatever softness had remained in his face a moment ago is gone so completely it is frightening, scraped away until all that remains is authority in its most lethal form.
You feel fused to the counter behind you. You wish you would be.
He fixes his stare on his men and his eyes become glacial, pale and freezing, incandescent with a fury that somehow feels far more menacing than an outburst. He speaks, and the volume is so low that the room has to go completely breathless to catch it.
“Guns down.”
The response isn’t fast enough. No one moves quickly enough. One of the guards hesitates—just a fraction, just long enough to die for it in any other circumstance—and Bucky’s gaze lands on him so heavily, it’s as if he is deciding where to leave the body.
“I said,” he repeats, and his voice comes out with a rough friction, stripped of any emotion except the promise to do harm, “if any one of you ever points a weapon at my girl again, I’ll put you in the ground myself and make sure nobody bothers digging you back up. Do you understand me?”
His words are deadly. It doesn’t even sound like he’s acting at all, he just sounds absolutely lethal. He talks as though he has already buried people before and wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.
Around you, the momentum of the raid falters. The guards look genuinely unnerved, expressions switching so quickly between shame, panic, and obedience in ugly little flashes. Guns lower and now point toward the floorboards. A muted apology gets muttered into the silence and some of them take a step back. But it is too late, far too late, because the last thread inside you has already snapped, and your body no longer cares about reason.
You run.
There is no time for anything else; you simply hurl yourself at the nearest gap in the room, toward the delusive hope of open space, of slipping between bodies, of somehow becoming smoke, becoming speed, becoming anything but this cornered and shaking thing inside your own skin.
You aim for the narrow corridor between Bucky and the island counter, convinced by sheer panic that if you can just get past him this once, just this once, the house might cleft and let you go. Your shoulder twists, your breath catches, your feet slip against tile and then catch again, and the world blurs into motion and noise and the blood-bright animal need to escape.
But Bucky is faster.
His arms hook around your waist in one brutal, seamless movement, and it yanks you backward before you’ve even made it past his shoulder. Suddenly you are no longer running, your feet lose the air, leaving you floating for half a heartbeat, before you are driven hard into the breadth and heat of his chest.
The cry you let out this time actually tears your throat. You thrash on instinct, your body fighting him with the full deranged force of your mind freaking out, and somewhere in that struggle your hand jerks.
The knife you have been using as a means of senseless protection, hits resistance. It slides cleanly, sinking into skin and it makes you gasp sharply, your lungs suddenly jamming. It’s not your skin.
The blade has opened a shallow red line across his forearm.
And that’s gotta be it. You’re now totally and completely fucked.
The knife drops from your hand and clatters to the floor.
For one aghast second you stare at the bead of red welling against his skin, bright as a neon sign, and horror crashes through you so adamantly it almost eclipses your fear.
But Bucky does not let go. He does not even flinch properly or draw back his arms. His wounded arm stiffens only enough to keep you from pitching forward, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, not pinning now so much as containing, as if he is trying to physically keep something from breaking apart right there in his grip.
He seemingly is completely blind to his own bleeding skin, as if the knife you were holding was never a danger to his life and only a threat to yours. Even with his blood on the floorboards, his only instinct is to pull you deeper into his chest.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he calls, and the transformation in his voice makes your head spin, because the man who just threatened death into a roomful of armed soldiers is gone again, folded away, leaving only this hoarse, pleading tenderness that feels almost more agonizing. His mouth is at your temple, right at your hairline, his breath gasping against your skin. “Baby, baby, stop. Please—please, don’t do this, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
You fight him anyway because your body refuses to do anything else. Your hands shove uselessly at his chest, your shoulders wrench, your whole body convulses with the effort of getting free. But he is built like a locked gate, and every single push only burns through the last of your energy. Tears pour hot and shamefully down your face. Your lungs burn. The room swims at the edges. Somewhere nearby, boots shuffle, and Bucky snarls over your head without releasing you.
“Out.”
It is one word, but every person in the kitchen obeys it instantly. You hear the kitchen staff backing away, hear the door open and shut, feel the room empty until there is no one left but you and him and the sound of your own sobbing.
Bucky’s hold eases just a fraction, softening the pressure so you can actually draw in air even if inhaling right now feels like swallowing water. He presses his cheek against your hair for one heavy second, and when he speaks again his voice is breaking in places you have never heard it break before.
“Listen to me,” he murmurs, each word roughened by strain, by remorse, by something that sounds so heartbreakingly sincere you almost hate him for it. “Hear me out, sweetheart, please. I got you. I got you. Nobody’s gonna touch you, nobody’s gonna lay a hand on you. I won’t! I would never. You hear me? You’re safe.”
Safe.
The word is a total deformity. It is so grotesque in this moment you could probably laugh, except it comes out as a broken cry instead.
You feel the way his body tenses around the sound, how it seems to travel straight through him with his heart as the target. He bows his head, his lips brushing your temple by accident or desperation, you cannot tell which.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and now there is nothing controlled left in him, no command, no careful poise, only a man fraying in real time. “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry. I wanted you to know, doll, I did, just—not like this. Fuck, not like this. You mean everything to me. You gotta believe that. You are everything.”
You shake your head against his chest, small and uncoordinated, feeling spent. You do not know whether you are denying him, begging him, or simply coming apart. His shirt is damp beneath your face now, whether from your tears or the sweat chilled over your skin or the blood from his arm, whatever it is, it feels symbolic somehow—one more blurred line in a night made of them.
“I wasn’t gonna let anybody hurt you,” he whispers, and even that seems to drag through his throat, hitting the walls of it. “Nobody would ever be able to hurt you. Especially me, my love, especially me! I swear to God.” His forehead grinds into yours until you can taste the heat of his skin. “I’m still the same guy who kissed you this morning. I don't care if I’m a monster to the rest of the world, but not to you, sweetheart, please not to you. I would never—god, I would cut my own hands off before I ever used them to hurt you. You have to believe me, darling, please!”
But your body no longer knows the language of swearing, or soothing, or reason. Your muscles don’t translate his pleading into safety. Your body only knows that he is stronger than you, and that the arms holding you are the same arms that can dismantle a life without raising his pulse. The palm mapped so carefully across the curve of your head is the exact same hand that commands a firing squad, directs the local precincts, and seals fates with a slight tilt of his chin.
Every touch from him now delivers a repulsive duality—a rescue that feels like an arrest, a stroke that resembles a chokehold, an overwhelming affection that wears the exact outline of a cell.
You can feel how easy this is for him, how negligible his effort is in keeping you contained even while he tries his best to appear harmless. That insulting fact finally starves out the last bit of resistance left in your veins. Your nervous system runs out of fuel, leaving your body to go completely toothless against his chest, without actually surrendering or any returning trust. Your body is simply done.
Your fingers drop their useless leverage against his chest, your joints go limp and your knees refuse to carry your weight anymore.
You sag in his hold all at once. The sobs keep coming, but weaker now, thinning out, scraping instead of breaking. Bucky feels the change immediately. His grip loosens just enough to become support instead of restraint, his palm rubbing between your shoulder blades in one of those soothing motions you used to love so much and it makes your chest ache with a fresh wave of grief.
“That’s it,” he coos, though his voice sounds completely mangled by the words. “That’s it, honey. I know. I know.”
You don’t know what he means by that. You’re not sure he does either. Perhaps he simply recognizes that your stamina has bottomed out, that even the sharpest panic has its boundaries, and that the rush of survival instincts always burns hot and fast, leaving behind this full-body collapse.
He holds your dead weight upright anyway. He keeps murmuring into your hair but it doesn’t glue your broken pieces back together or erase the reality of what he is, what this fortress hides, and what you stumbled into. His sliced arm stays locked around your waist. You can feel the sticky warmth of his blood soaking through your clothes. It is startlingly human, and it should probably make him look less like a monster, the simple fact that he can bleed. But it makes every detail about your situation so real and dreadful.
When your body finally ceases its rebellion entirely, it isn't an act of submission. It is pure depletion.
And Bucky, keeping you pinned against the wall of his chest, seems to grasp that exhaustion better than anyone else could. His lungs expand and contract in uneven hitching motions. He drops his chin heavily onto the crown of your head. He closes you in not like a conqueror taking a prize but like a man trying, too late, to keep a catastrophe from widening under his hands.
Beyond the kitchen threshold, the entire estate drops into a dead, listening sort of silence, as if the plaster and timber have cocked an ear to the room.
He keeps holding you as if you are something he has no right to touch anymore and still cannot seem to make himself release, and it’s crazy that even like this, even with your body rigid from all the things you have learned too quickly and too late, he is still somehow heartbreakingly careful, his hand spread wide and warm between your shoulder blades, his hold immovable but never bruising, his mouth close to your temple as though he cannot bear to put distance between you if distance means losing you for good.
It is all just so utterly confusing because this is not entirely what you had expected would happen.
“The way you looked at me,” he continues, and his voice comes out rough as gravel dragged through water, ruined by restraint, by panic, by the sheer effort of trying not to frighten you further with the depth of what is in him. He does not sound like the man in the hallway, not like the man who commands rooms into silence with a glance, not like the man whose name can make other people blanch and step backward and say yes, sir, with their pulse all up in their throats. He sounds flayed open. He sounds like the sight of your fear has gone into him like shrapnel and lodged somewhere vital. “The way you looked at me in there—” He stops, breathes in shallowly, like he has run straight into a blade and is trying not to lean on it harder. “Christ. I’ve taken bullets that didn’t hit like that. To have you look at me like I’m something you need to survive.”
Your face is turned into his chest, your tears soaking through the expensive dark fabric of his shirt, and still your whole body is listening against your will, because his voice is all around you now, low and urgent and splintering in places that make something cold move through you.
His hand slides back up the back of your head, not forcing, only cradling, his fingers threading carefully into your hair as though the gesture itself aches. When he speaks again, there is something almost disbelieving in him, some stunned grief that does not seem feigned, cannot possibly be feigned for this long without becoming madness.
“If I could do it over, I would do every goddamn thing different,” he breathes brokenhearted. “Every part of it. I would tell you sooner. I’d tell you cleaner. Shit, I should’ve just told you. I should’ve given it to you straight before it got this messy and before you had to figure it out by yourself and piece me together out of all the worst parts with nobody there to shield you. I would have died before I let it happen like this. I swear.” He swallows hard enough that you feel it where your cheek presses near his sternum.
The kitchen is too bright and everything is stinging so harshly with those clean counters, the severe gleam of copper pans above the island, the neat little arrangement of knives in their block where one slot is now empty, the overhead lights turning everything brutally visible.
There is nowhere for your agony to hide. It shivers right out in the open, lives in the tightness of your lungs and the salt on your mouth, and the fact that every soft word from him only makes the unreality of this more baffling. Because he sounds sincere. He sounds devastated. He sounds like a man speaking over the body of something precious he helped kill.
He says all of this like he’s offering you his throat, while all around you the evidence of his power still glints and twinkles from every glazed surface, every distant footstep, every forced silence in a house built to keep his secrets and carry out his will.
He is talking with all the gentleness he has. He is nearly breaking with it. And still, inside you, fear sits and it pants and it is unconvinced, because love does not make a cage less locked simply because the hands closing it are shaking.
You make a small sound then—not a word, not even close, just some thin and wrecked little fracture of breath—and he tightens around you reflexively, then instantly checks himself, as if terrified you will read force into even that involuntary movement.
His next words come faster, crowding each other, not panicked exactly but pressed by urgency, by the sense that you are slipping through his hands even while he is still physically holding you.
“I know what I am.” He breaks off again, and this time you feel the tremor that runs through him. “I know what kind of man I’ve been, what people say about me, what they’re right about. I know exactly what it looks like from where you’re standing.” His voice goes raw. “But, darling, I never meant for you to be afraid of me. This was never supposed to happen.”
The words enter you but you just don’t know where to store them. There is something so naked in the way he says them that your mind keeps tripping over it, keeps trying and failing to fit it beside the other truth—the guns, the guards, the coldness in his authority, the name that belongs in whispers, the empire standing tall all around you in all its obedience. Or maybe it’s just loyalty. Respect? What even is it?
It’s hard to acknowledge that he still sounds like himself. James or Bucky, the man who kissed sleep into your skin and tucked blankets around your legs and pressed absent-minded kisses to your shoulder while reading beside you in bed still exists inside this other, larger, more terrible man. He has not vanished cleanly enough to make your fear simple. You give a small whimper.
“I was selfish,” he rasps, and now the confession lands without defense. “That’s the truth. I was selfish as hell. Because I wanted you anyway. I wanted you even knowing I should’ve stayed away from you. I know I should’ve left you out of all this. A girl like you deserves something clean and safe, and I’m neither of those things. I knew that. Fuck, I knew that. And it’s been killing me. I let myself have you and it’s been so fucking selfish.”
His breath hitches around the last word, and the grief in it is so unexpectedly torturous it almost makes you nauseous. His forehead lowers for a second against your hair, and he scarily looks so weary, suddenly too full of feeling to carry it elegantly.
“Because you are...” He exhales a broken laugh with no amusement in it whatsoever. “Christ, sweetheart, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You couldn’t ever imagine what you walking into my life did to it.”
Your eyes squeeze shut and fresh tears slip out anyway. Somewhere inside you, some tired and furious part wants to scream at him for speaking like this now, for laying tenderness over terror as if one can cancel the other out, as if love—even if it is love, even if it is real and not just another instrument in his alluring hands—can unmake what you know. But before you can push any of that into sound, he keeps going, quieter, the words drawn so close to your skin they seem less spoken than confessed into it.
“If you want to go,” he states, and there is a pause before it, the kind that tells you the sentence is costing him blood, “I’ll let you go.”
Your breath snags. You don’t trust it nor believe it instantly, but even imagining the words coming out of him feels like a tectonic event, a mountain bowing. He does not release you yet, but his body changes with the promise, some iron set inside him going rigid with the effort of saying it and meaning it.
“I will,” he says, with more force now, as if he knows you don’t believe him and cannot bear that either. “If that’s what you want, I will. I’m not gonna keep you somewhere you don’t wanna be. I’m not gonna turn into that for you. But, baby—” and here his voice gives way altogether, drops into something so human and stripped down it hardly seems to belong to the same man who froze a room full of armed guards with one look, “—I am begging you not to make that choice before you hear me. I am begging you. Stay this one night, give me one chance to explain it all to you, to answer every possible question you could have. One chance to do this right, even if I already did it all wrong.”
Begging. The word would sound absurd from almost any other man. From him, it sounds cataclysmic. His hand shakes at the back of your head before steadying, his chest rises too sharply under your cheek, and he continues speaking as if silence might kill him.
“I love you too much to let this be the end of it if there’s anything I can do to stop it,” he croaks. “Too much to let you walk out of here thinking none of it was real. It was real. Every second of it was real. Me wanting you, loving you, worrying about you, making room for you in my life in ways I never made room for anybody—none of that was a lie. The only lie was thinking I could hold both worlds apart long enough to protect you from what I am. That was the lie. That was my arrogance. My mistake.”
The mansion remains hushed in that eerie, cathedral-like way that comes after a disturbance, as if everyone occupying this huge mansion is pretending not to hear the aftershocks.
But here in the kitchen, everything feels narrowed to his voice and your breathing and the blood drying on his forearm and the fact that he is speaking to you like a man on his knees, even if he is still standing, even if his arms are still around you, even if his kind of desperation does not know how to unclench fully.
There is a daunting sincerity in him now, not because it is soft but because it is not. Because it is fierce. Because even his tenderness carries the shape of obsession, of decision, of something chosen with his whole irreversible heart.
What can you possible answer here. What can you possibly think.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.” He sounds so full of conviction. Technically, the words are quiet, but there is a hard core somewhere in his tone, and it glows fiercely. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again. To prove this to you. To earn back one inch of your trust. I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t care what you ask for, I don’t care what I have to lay down at your feet. I’ll do it. I will.” He takes a beat and the next words are so low you almost miss them. “I know I don’t deserve another chance and you have all the best reasons to run, but I’m asking for it anyway, Y/n.“
At that, finally, he leans back just enough to look at you. It’s not much, but the hand at the back of your head can guide your face up with painful gentleness, giving you every opening to pull away if you need to, though you are too wrung out now to do much except tremble.
His eyes find yours and stay there, and the sight of his face nearly brings you to your knees all over again. There is no coldness in him. No cruelty. No mockery. Only a kind of bereft intensity, a ravaged devotion, and beneath it the severe understanding that he is seeing himself reflected in your fear and cannot survive the image.
The whole fact of how broken he sounds starts to mess with your head. It cracks the armor of your panic, if only just a little bit. You’re trying to hate him. Because, honestly, you want to. You want the fear to be this insurmountable wall between you, but his voice keeps crumbling pieces of it.
The worst part is that you can’t just flick a switch and stop loving the guy you were tangled up with this morning. You fell for him so fast, so completely, because his version of happy felt like the safest place on earth. But with all those shocking revelations, that same love feels like a trapdoor that just dropped you into a cellar, and you are so angry at your own heart for still wanting him to hold you.
Underneath the exhaustion, there is a nauseating doubt starting to rot everything you remember about the last few weeks, and you really don’t need your mind going that far, but it does. You start wondering if you ever actually loved him, or if you were just hooked on the way he looked at you.
He treated you like you were the only important thing in the world, and you just hung off that affection, soaking up the protective way he took care of you. Even though he’s standing here right now, bleeding and hollowed out, swearing that every single touch was real, how can you ever be sure? Every memory you have is suddenly poisoned by the thought that it was just a beautifully built illusion, and the whole thing makes you feel completely seasick.
It’s just too much to handle all at once. Your brain is trying to hold two completely different men in the same space—the gentle guy who tucked the blankets around your feet in the dark, and the boss who froze a kitchen full of killers with one word. They are both real. They are both right here in front of you, and the fact that he isn't a cartoon villain makes it a hundred times worse.
If he were just a monster, you could run. But he’s a monster who tells you he loves you with this gut-wrenching, unyielding honesty, and looking at his ruined face, all your willpower just turns to mush.
“I should have asked more questions,” you whisper, and still, your voice breaks, the words tumbling out of you like loose gravel. You aren’t trying to be eloquent anymore, you are just trying to get the noise out of your head before it chokes you. “From the start, I— When you wouldn’t tell me things. I— I don't know, I was scared, I guess.”
Your fingers tighten into the expensive wool of his lapels just to keep your knees from giving out. Letting this mob boss know about your fears is probably a bad idea. But your life consists of you making bad decisions and so your mouth keeps opening. “I think I just liked the way you were to me too much to risk messing it up.”
The words drag themselves out of you like they do not want to be born, like each one has to force its way through the knot in your throat and the salt on your tongue and the simple, mind-numbing fact that nothing in you knows where to place anything anymore—not him, not yourself, not the last weeks, not the hands that held you so tenderly and the empire those same hands command with a flick of the wrist.
Bucky’s gaze is piercing as he looks down at you, listening with his breath visibly held.
“But I— I still don’t understand. I think.“ Your voice comes thin at first, scraped nearly transparent by crying, but it sharpens on pain the way a blade sharpens on a whetstone. “I just— I saw this gun, and—,” you blur out, the memory making your heart do that awful stutter against your ribs again while Bucky nearly flinches. His eyes go wide, pupils shrinking until they look like two dark pinpricks. “It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. I was just— you told me to grab a shirt of yours but I couldn’t reach up your wardrobe and so I was just going to go grab the shirt you've been wearing, but your jacket was there and then it just fell out. And I— I completely lost my mind because I realized I didn’t actually know anything about you, and I’ve been so stupid, and I’m really not good at this. I'm not good at talking things out or figuring out the right things to say. It’s just— this is so much to take in.”
Bucky´s chest hitches, a rough, dry stutter or air that sounds like he just took a fist to the solar plexus. His face looks almost unrecognizable with the pain plastered on it. You feel his hands tremble against you and he slowly takes them away, putting himself at a small distance to perhaps give you some space. His palms stay open, as do his eyes. He looks entirely unhinged by the clumsiness of his own life seeping into yours.
How could anyone understand how a man can kiss your forehead like a saint and still have blood and fear braided into his name. It’s so hard to understand how someone can look at you the way he is looking at you now—like you are both miracle and mortal wound—and still have lied, still have omitted, still have arranged the world around you so skillfully that you walked through it unknowing, barefoot and bright-hearted, straight into the center of his hidden life.
You do not understand what parts were real and what parts were merely curated, and worst of all, there is a terrible little splinter of you that already suspects the answer is not clean enough to save you. That some unbearable amount of it was real.
Your mouth trembles and you know that he can see it.
“You lied to me,” you sob, and although you mean for it to, it doesn’t sound like a weapon you’re throwing at him. It just sounds sad. “You made it so easy. I didn’t even think about it. I just— I just woke up every day and trusted the way you looked at me. And the whole time, I didn’t even know you.”
You look down at his chest so you can stop having to meet those devastatingly sunken eyes. “You let me fall in love with you not knowing who you were.” Your sentence has a shape now, the grief in you finally managing to find a spine. But you still can’t make your words sound all that accusing. Because you got yourself into this situation. You’re supposed to be furious at yourself first.
You haven’t used the word love before. You just dropped it, being the first time it cleared your teeth and the timing of it feels completely disastrous.
And Bucky suddenly undergoes a drastic freeze, as if his nervous system has been struck by lightning. He seems to tip back just a tiny bit but stays in your orbit. He stares down at you, his mouth parted, his chest stalling on an intake of air that he forgets to let back out.
The fact that you love him—and that you are saying it right now, while covered with dread and shivering nearly against his chest—seems to completely break his brain.
There is a dark heat flooding his face, his jaw tight enough to snap a tooth. He looks agonizingly vulnerable like this, the dangerous mob boss utterly gutted by four letters. His fingers twitch where they are now hovering near your neck, desperately wanting to bury themselves in your hair and pull you back into his skin, but he forces his hands down to his sides, his knuckles trembling against his tailored trousers.
“You…,” he starts, eyes burning with a starved intensity that makes the air in the kitchen feel boiling hot. He swallows loudly, taking a moment, staring out into some space behind you, and switching focus back to you. “Don’t call yourself stupid,” he goes on, voice dropping into a rasp that shakes with the failure of his own arrogance. “None of what you told me and none of what you felt makes you stupid.”
His face leans closer to yours and somehow you only shrink back a tiny bit, not really at all. You can feel the wavering rhythm of his breath against your lips. He looks thoroughly undone by his own greed, stuck in the realization that he won the only thing he ever wanted, right at the exact moment he stopped being the man who holds you in the dark and turned into the reason you’re afraid of the dark.
“The love was real,” he sounds so convinced. His face is breaking, but his voice is not. He knows what he is saying. “Every single second of it was real. I am the one who ruined it. But what I feel, and what we have, that isn’t a lie. I swear to you on my life, it was never a lie.” His eyes close briefly, and it looks like he is losing his footing somewhere internal. “I know how it feels from where you’re standing. But I wasn’t playing some game with you. I wasn’t trying to—” He drags a hand over his face, and for an instant he looks older than you have ever seen him, not in years but in burden, in wear. “I wanted more time. That was my sin in it. I wanted time. I wanted to tell you in a way that didn’t make you look at me like this.”
Like this.
The phrase feels unkind. Because yes—there it is again, the damn nucleus of the whole thing. The way your eyes have changed on him. The way he has noticed every flicker of fear in you as if each one were a cut and he keeps taking your terror not as an insult to his pride but as an injury to something much more private and much more vulnerable. And that, more than any fake excuse could have, is so hard to process. 
Because men who only know cruelty do not usually grieve like this over being feared by the woman they supposedly love. Men who are only monstrous do not usually look half-unmade by it.
You don’t want that thought, you honestly don’t, but it does arrive.
Because he has not hurt you. He hasn’t done a single thing to hurt you, and that makes him so much more complicated at the exact moment you most need him to stay simple.
He has had a thousand opportunities by now to become the thing you are bracing against. In the hallway. In the office. In the kitchen. When you ran. When you fought. When you took the knife. When you cut him. At every turn, there has been room for rage, for punishment, for the kind of retaliatory violence your frightened mind keeps expecting from a man like him, and instead he has done nothing but hold himself on a brutal leash, speak softly, plead, bleed, look at you as if your fear is the one thing in this world he has no defenses against.
And it makes you weaker.
Because fear is easier when it is clean. Outrage is easier when there are no counterweights. But now your thoughts begin to buckle under the strain of contradiction, and you feel yourself growing tired in some deeper way, not merely from running or crying or panic, but from the effort of sustaining one total version of him against the evidence of another.
The story you are trying to tell yourself—that he is simply bad, simply dangerous, simply false—keeps snagging on the memory of his hands shaking when he begged, on the way he threw his men out for aiming guns at you, on the heartache in his face now, open and unarmored and miserable with not knowing how to reach you.
None of it erases anything, how could it this fast, but still it matters, and still some fatal hope flares.
Your lungs are burning. You become dimly aware that your body is leaning, not exactly by choice, but because exhaustion is making choices for you now. The kitchen feels too bright and too far away at the same time. Your fingers feel chilled, your knees unreliable, your heart still overworked from all that horror. Even your anger is beginning to lose its clean edges, dissolving into something wetter and more helpless.
“I don’t know what to do,” you admit, and there is no strength in it at all.
The sentence is barely more than breath, but it changes him instantly, makes his misery seem softer, as if your confusion pains him almost as much as your fear did. His gaze searches your face carefully, greedily, looking for any sign that you have not vanished completely from him.
“You don’t have to know right now,” he comforts, and this time his voice is gentler still, worn down to the most tender parts of his body. “You don’t have to decide anything this second. I know I dropped all of this on you in the worst possible way. I know you’re overwhelmed.”
Overwhelmed. The word is so pitifully insufficient you want to cry some more, but the sound catches and turns to another shivery exhale instead.
Overwhelmed is a rainstorm. A bad day. A missed train. This is seismic. This is having the floor beneath your life cleave open and discovering it was built over a fault line all along.
Still, you know what he means.
Because beneath all the fear, and the betrayal and the urgent need to flee, there is now also this leaden, disorienting fatigue, this collapse of certainty.
You cannot keep all your alarms ringing at once forever. The body is not made for it. At some point even terror begins to sag under its own weight, and in that sagging comes the most dangerous thing of all. Maybe not trust or forgiveness yet, but confusion. A human confusion. The realization that if he truly meant to destroy you, perhaps he would have done it already. That if cruelty were the point, he has passed up too many easy chances. That whatever else he is—and God, he is still intimidating, still hidden, still a man with too much power and too many locked rooms in his life—his feelings for you do not look counterfeit. They look catastrophic. They look real enough to have ruined him too.
He had every opportunity to end this argument with force, not even making his hands dirty in a physical sense. But he didn’t, and that roughened sincerity that seems so deeply wounded keeps gnawing at all the things you thought you found out about this man, the stereotype you made him out to be. It makes a guilty stone drop into your belly and land with damaging intentions.
And you do not know what to do with all this honesty and realness, when real arrives dressed as the very thing you were trying to escape.
But you have to acknowledge that your lack of strength is not the only reason why you have stopped fighting him, stopped trying to get away.
Bucky seems to read some fragment of this in your face, because he does not press harder. He does not crowd you with arguments. He simply stays where he is, close enough for warmth, far enough now that his care has space to breathe. His injured arm hangs at his side, blood drying in a dark seam along his skin, ignored. His other hand lifts as if to touch your cheek, then stops halfway and falls again when he sees the flicker in your eyes. That tiny restraint breaks something in you all over again.
“I know I lied by not telling you,” he says quietly. “I know that. I’m not asking you to call it something prettier. I’m just telling you it wasn’t because you meant nothing. It was because you meant too goddamn much, and I was trying to find a way to bring you closer without making you run.”
The honesty of it is so ugly, so naked, so free of self-congratulation that it feels like he just threw a wet sandbag right at your chest, knocking every scrap of air straight out of your lungs. It’s not an excuse, not quite. More like the shape of the selfishness itself, held out in his own hands for you to look at. He wanted you. He kept you. He delayed the truth because he was afraid the truth would cost him the one bright thing he had allowed himself to love. There is no innocence in that. But there is something crushingly human.
Your eyes burn again and your grip on your own certainty loosens another inch.
You hate that, too, because, damnit, it would be easier to stand here shaking and loathing him if he would just become less tender and less heartbreakingly earnest in his regret. But he stays persistently, ruinously genuine, and all at once you feel not only afraid, not only betrayed, but emptied out by the effort of trying to hold every contradiction at once. He is a bad man. He may also love you. He lied. He is also hurting. He hid things from you. He is also standing here looking like your fear is flaying him alive. None of these truths cancels the others. They just crowd together until your thoughts feel waterlogged, too swollen to separate.
So all that is left is the simplest truth again.
You really are overwhelmed.
You are so overwhelmed that language itself seems too heavy to lift.
Your breathing has started to slowly settle in increments, like a storm reluctantly retreating from a coastline it battered too long. It feels like there are bruises left behind in your lungs, but it no longer aches with each inhale.
Your fear has ebbed enough to make you think again, to make you see again, to make you look at him not as the single monstrous shape your panic tried to build, but as the complicated, human contradiction standing in front of you now.
His shoulders are still too tight, drawn up, and perhaps trying to seem smaller. He keeps his hands visible and loose at his sides to perhaps avoid startling you. The cut along his forearm has darkened into a narrow seam of red, drying in flaking lines against his skin and remaining completely ignored by the man attached to it.
His focus hasn’t left your face. And in that focus, there is not an ounce of triumph. Rather, the opposite. There is only pain. Such a grave torment that lives in the corners of his mouth, the prominent crease between his brows, in the cautious way he keeps tracking your movements as though you still might shove him away and try bolting for the door again.
You swallow and feel the ballast of everything press back down on your chest.
“I—” you start, timidly, using every last scrap of your bravery. You don’t meet his eyes, staring at the floor beside him. “I’ve seen them.” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, small but a little bit more poised now, like glass that hasn’t shattered but still remembers the impact. “I've seen the news, and the headlines. All the stories about you.”
The words suspend themselves in the space between you.
Bucky takes a moment to answer. His gaze drifts downward, just briefly, as if the floor might offer him something easier to look at than the defenselessness sitting in your eyes. The vulnerable questions there. When he exhales it is long and tired, and it sounds like all the versions of himself he has spent years outrunning are catching up to him anyway.
“Yeah,” he mutters out breathily. But a little flat. There is no denial in it or some sort of excuse. He drags a hand across the back of his neck, his jaw flexing slightly before he speaks again. “I figured you probably had.” He takes a shivering breath, his whole chest lifting. “They’re not all lies.”
You hold your breath, but don’t step back, don’t let fear take its seat at the forefront of your mind again.
He lifts his eyes back to yours then, and the seriousness in them deepens, intensifying into something resolute.
“I’m not gonna stand here and tell you I’m a good man,” he says. The words come slowly, and his eyes are searching yours while he talks. He is placing them carefully like he’s building something honest out of wreckage. “I’m not.”
Your heart stumbles in your chest, but you still keep your feet grounded and meet his eyes.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things most people wouldn’t forgive if they knew the full story.” His voice lowers slightly. His eyes are full of sorrow. Despite the things he’s saying he unexpectedly doesn’t look threatening at all and it makes something startle abruptly in your chest. “And yeah, I’ll probably keep doing some of those things.” He doesn’t force anything into his tone that maybe should be there. He´s not saying those things with pride or arrogance or even threat. He has just accepted the callous contours that make his life the way it is. “But not for the reasons people think.”
His eyes soften then, slightly. And it makes you realize that they’ve actually been soft all along.
“I do what I do because there are people in this world who deserve protection. People who don’t have the power to protect themselves.” His gaze holds yours a little more firmly now. “And sometimes the only way to keep those people safe is to be the guy willing to do the ugly work.”
Your throat tightens.
“I’d do just about anything to protect you, Y/n. Even if it’s me you want protection from.”
The kitchen feels very still.
You don’t know what to say to that. You’re not even sure there is something to say. The statement isn’t a justification so much as a window, and looking through it leaves you with more thoughts to sort through and you’ve already gone through so many. But you hear him. You really do.
And he seems to notice that you’re listening now—maybe not agreeing, not forgiving, but truly listening, hearing him out—and some small measure of relief loosens the tension in his shoulders.
He doesn’t move a single muscle, standing before you like a brick wall, his legs pinned wide on the kitchen tiles, his frame perfectly still except for the anxious heave of his chest. His arms are hanging at his side, and shit, your gaze just has to focus on that bloody trail on his forearm. Because right, you’ve cut James Buchanan Barnes through his expensive suit enough to make him bleed. The redness runs from his wrist to his knuckles and you see some dots on the floor. The fabric of his suit is soaking it up, turning a dark wet black around the tear.
He still doesn’t glance down at it. He’s still so entirely anchored to your face, his broad shoulders squared as if he’s trying to shield you from the very room he owns. The survival instinct that had you clawing at the air drops away and now there is a sudden freezing emptiness in your head. And in that blank space, something takes place.
You look at the knife on the linoleum, then at the wet red tracking down his arm, and your stomach completely plummets through the ground. The panic you felt earlier didn’t protect you, it turned you clumsy and ignorant.
“Oh, no,” you choke out, gaze fixed on his arm, your words hacking up from your chest miserably. “Bucky, I— Your arm, I— I didn’t mean— This is my fault, I swear I didn’t mean to—”
“Hey,” he cuts in, his voice lowering into a rough, immediate hush that clips the words right out of your mouth. “Hey, no, sweetheart. No.” He steps back into your space and his huge palms come up, traveling slowly until they map themselves carefully across your jawline.
His fingers are trembling and the pressure is incredibly light. His skin is warm, smelling of that same familiar soap from upstairs, and his thumbs softly brush the wet tear tracks off your cheekbones, forcing you to look straight into his eyes. He doesn’t even spare a glance at his forearm.
“You don’t ever apologize to me for that,” he whispers hoarsely, his chest hitching against yours as he tries to get his breathing normal. There is so much regret in his voice, it is too much for your heart to handle. “You were scared out of your mind and I did that to you. That?” He tilts his arm toward you, indicating that he is talking about the cut. “That is nothing, sweetheart. Nothing.” The corner of his mouth lifts faintly, but the expression is gentler and definitely much more somber than humorous. “I’ve taken hits that should’ve put me in the ground, and none of them touched me.”
You shake your head in his palms. “But, I—”
“Doll,” he shushes, his arms keeping your chin locked, but not firm at all. His gaze is drilling into yours and it feels like he’s bleeding more from the inside and not the outside. “That little scratch hurts a hell of a lot less than watching you run from me.”
Your hands slowly stop trying to find leverage against his chest. The heat of his palms against your jaw feels like a grounding force, something so familiar but also completely new. It’s not entirely unpleasant in its newness.
You look up into his eyes, seeing the complete lack of the monster he just unleashed on his guards, and you can’t help but feel a little unmoored.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” you admit breathily, your voice cracking as your forehead drops forward to rest against his tie.
Bucky lets out a long, ragged exhale, his chin resting against the top of your head as his arms wrap around your shoulders, pulling you into a hold that feels firm but unforced.
“You don’t have to figure it out right now, darling,” he eases, his words spoken with a splintered scrape into your hair. “You don’t have to decide anything today, or tomorrow, or next week. Take all the time you need. Turn it over in your head. Think about everything you saw, everything I am. And whatever you choose to do—if you want to pack your bags, and disappear, if you never want to see my face again—I will let you go. I will make sure you are safe, and I will support whatever choice you make. I swear it.”
He pulls back just an inch, his thumbs gently guiding your face up again so he can look straight into your eyes. There is something desperately begging in his stare, but he keeps his posture completely still, refusing to pressure you.
“But please.“ His knuckles tremble slightly against your cheek. “Just stay the night. Don't run out now while this is all still so new. Stay until morning. As soon as the sun’s up, the car is yours,” he promises sorrowfully, his thumbs catching the last of the dampness on your cheek. “If you want to leave, you leave. You can walk out of here and never look back, and I won’t follow you. I won’t look for you. If that’s what it takes to make you feel safe, I’ll let you go.”
He stops, his jaw clamping tight for a second, a sharp, jumbled hitch in his ribs breaking his breathing.
“But god, I hope you don't,” he shoves the words past the tightness in his throat, his eyes wide and burning into yours so achingly. “I will spend every single day of my life doing whatever it takes to fix this. I’ll earn back an inch of your trust at a time. I’ll show you the rest of me—the real parts—if you just give me the chance to try. I want you to love me again. I want that more than anything.”
He hitches his weight just a fraction closer, his large hands still framing your jaw with agonizingly slow caution.
“But just stay this single night,” he pleads with a strain in his voice, his forehead dropping down to rest lightly against yours. “Just stay until morning. Let me get you out of this kitchen, and you can just sleep. That’s all. Just tonight.”
You stare at the dark red crusting on his wool cuff, then look into that heavy, broken-down look in his eyes. Trying to picture next week or even tomorrow feels like watching a knotted ball of wire and not finding out where to start untying it.
But right now, your muscles are just running on empty, completely flattened and powerless from feeling all that panic. You let out one long shudder of air, asking your awareness for any reasons why you should still try to get the hell away from this guy, and come up with nothing yet. It’s all too fresh to truly give this some thought and right now all you want to do is curl up in those silky sheets and sleep it all off.
You give him a small nod. “Okay. Okay, Bucky, I’ll stay the night.”
Bucky’s shoulders drop with a massive, rattling relief. He doesn't say anything else, he just tucks your head back under his chin, his big arms closing around you to carry your weight out of the quiet kitchen, leaving the knife and the blood behind on the floorboards.
You don’t know what comes when the sun is up. You don’t know what loving a man like him means. You don’t know if the life he lives can ever exist beside the life you thought you wanted.
You don’t know if trust can grow again from the cracked ground beneath your feet, and considering your decision making skills, you shouldn’t let your heart handle things anymore.
But, frighteningly and also not all that much surprisingly after all, when you imagine leaving now—truly leaving, turning your back on him and walking out of this mansion forever—the image doesn’t bring relief.
It brings something bleak.
Because for all the discoveries of tonight and all that fear, all that shock, and the trust that has been abruptly broken, there is a bullheaded part of you that understands something you can’t yet put into words for him to hear.
You could run from this house.
You could run from his name.
But you are not sure you could run from him.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple”
- Oscar Wilde
A/n: Looking at the word count now, I honestly probably could’ve turned this into a mini series but because this whole thing is essentially one long scene, splitting it up even more just didn’t feel right to me. So I guess I just have to admit that this became an unexpectedly long two-parter lmao.
As always, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this continuation, if it gave you hope, or even if you expected something different to happen. I always enjoy hearing your interpretations and feelings after reading ♡
I also wanted to gently address something else. I’ve received a few critical comments regarding certain reactions, choices, and dynamics in the story, and I truly hope this second part helped answer some questions or at least offered a little more perspective. If it didn’t, that’s completely okay too.
What I want you to know, I genuinely do appreciate helpful criticism, especially when it comes to my writing itself, because I’m always trying to improve and become better at what I do. Constructive feedback that gives me something to work with is always welcome and appreciated. But if something in the story simply wasn’t for you, or you personally disliked a choice I made, then sometimes it’s okay to just move on from it instead of tearing it apart. And if you do choose to criticize something, I just ask that you do it kindly. We’re still a community here, and there’s no reason to be harsh or blunt. Talk to me like a human being.
I put a lot of time, emotion, and effort into these stories, not to be told this makes no sense or this is weird without any real conversation behind it. Sometimes I don’t think through every single detail deeply because at the end of the day, this is still fiction born from messy little ideas in my head, written for comfort, entertainment, and emotion—not perfection!
Still, thank you to everyone who continues to boost me and my work and helped me stay motivated to finish this part ♡
And if you enjoyed my work, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi ♡
Summary : Bucky Barnes broke Moscow Continental rules. Why the hell did he think it was a good idea to come to you?
Pairing : Excommunicado! Bucky Barnes x Continental Manager! reader (she/her) | John Wick AU
Warnings/tags : exes to lovers, forbidden romance, sex and sexual themes are described (not too graphic), blood/injury, gun violence, reader is Ruska Roma and considered John Wick a brother (he’s only mentioned), grief/mourning, angst, medical scenes, injury during intimacy, canon-typical violence. (Let me know if I missed anything!)
Word count : 11.8k
Note : I don’t believe you have to have watched John Wick to understand this, but of course there are spoilers for the franchise. I picture TFATWS Bucky in this, probably because Derek Kolstad wrote episode 4. I recommend listing to 505 by Arctic Monkeys to this. Enjoy!
The Madripoor Continental hotel rose above the skyline like a monument to civility beneath the High Table.
Your hotel was made of marble, dark glass, and brass fixtures polished to a mirror shine. You had orchids in century-old black ceramic vases. Fresh towels folded in perfect triangles. A concierge desk so serene it could’ve been mistaken for a chapel altar, if not for the fact that most of the people who approached it had killed someone in the last forty-eight hours.
No one raised their voice in your lobby, no one drew a weapon.
No one spilled blood on Continental grounds unless they wanted to be declared excommunicado, of course. Those were the rules. That’s what made you different from the animals.
The city glittered beneath the pale wash of dawn, all wet neon and mirrored towers, the streets still slick from the night’s rain. From the upper floors, the Lowtown alleys looked pretty if you didn't know what moved through them after dark. If you did not know how easily money changed hands there. How quickly a body disappeared. How many men in clean linen suits had started the night laughing over drinks and ended it folded neatly into car trunks.
It was six-fifteen in the morning. You were already dressed.
No one ever saw the manager of the Madripoor Continental looking hurried. Your hair was already pinned back, blazer pressed, and lipstick perfectly clean. You checked the mirror once and made sure there was nothing human enough in your expression to be mistaken for weakness.
You picked up the phone and dialed the 505 number. The line only clicked once.
“Good morning, Talia,” you said. “Prepare the staff for briefing, please.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Then you went downstairs.
The lobby was almost immaculate, perfumed with orchids, sandalwood, and gun oil. Your night staff had done well. There were no bloodstains in the grout. No broken glass beneath the lounge chairs. No bullet casings tucked beneath velvet curtains by some careless little amateur with more ego than discipline.
The bodies dumped in your back lot had been removed by sunrise. While a pain to your staff, it was technically outside your hotel, so it was fine.
Still, you noticed the imperfections. The marble near the centerpiece table was two days late for a polish. The vase nearest the wall had been shifted four inches to the left. Someone had been rushed. Not sloppy, but rushed.
You paused beside the vase.
The junior concierge at the desk froze.
“Have Housekeeping redo this section before nine,” you said, then looked at a trail of blood to the elevator. “And call a doctor for Mr. Keo. No one is bleeding to death in my hotel.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
You continued walking.
The morning briefing took place in the staff room below the main kitchens, behind a steel door disguised as a wine cellar wall. You took your seat at the head of the table and opened the leather folder in front of you. Inside were reports from the night before. Names, arrivals, departures, debts, a missing bellman who disappeared outside work hours, and one dead guest off property. Three requests for private dining from people who should not be in the same country, let alone the same hotel, all of which you planned to reject.
You read in silence.
Then, you saw an official notice:
James Buchanan Barnes killed his marker on Moscow Continental grounds. The High Table declares him excommunicado. Bounty: $17 million.
By the time you looked up, all you said was, “Be on high alert.”
You watched it pass from face to face as your staff adjusted themselves. They knew what this would entail: Security would double rotations, housekeeping would check vents, adjoining walls, hidden panels, laundry shafts, kitchens would inspect all incoming deliveries twice, valet would log every vehicle by chassis number, not just registration, and the front desk would let you know of every guest checking in, whether they were only staying for one night or three.
“Any guest arriving from Russia is to wait in the east reception room,” you continued. “No exceptions. No direct access to the elevators. No private stairwell keys. No unscheduled service calls above the twentieth floor.”
Your head of security, Talia, looked at her tablet. “And if they object?”
“They may object outside.”
You closed the folder.
“We have received confirmation of instability in Moscow,” you said. “Until the situation clarifies, assume everyone is a person of interest.”
You stood.
“Double the roof watch. Triple the canal-side cameras. No personal calls on shift. No staff exits alone. If a guest dies on the doorstep, remove them before breakfast service.” You glanced toward Disposal. “Properly this time.”
One of the men bowed his head.
You left them with that.
By eight, the hotel had fully awakened.
A woman in a pearl-grey suit checked in under a name that had belonged to a dead French countess. A pair of twins from Singapore requested separate rooms on separate floors and then tipped the bellman extra to tell each other nothing. A Brazilian with bandaged fingers asked whether the hotel still stocked Cachaça.
At ten, you denied a request for sanctuary from a man who was trying to escape his marker.
At eleven, you approved a private negotiation between two contract brokers and had the walls swept for explosives before allowing the tea service in.
At noon, you sent a handwritten apology to a guest whose sheets had bloodstains from the previous occupant.
At one, you had lunch in your office while reading a list of fresh bounties.
The office was quiet, high above the lobby, with dark wood shelves and a wall of glass overlooking the harbour. Ships moved slowly through the water beyond the city, their decks bright with sun, their cargo likely legal on paper and unforgivable in practice.
Your assistant placed a silver tray on the desk. “Anything else, ma’am?”
You turned a page. “Find out who booked the blue suite under the Cairo account.”
Your assistant made a note.
You took one bite of lunch, decided you hated it, and kept reading.
By mid-afternoon, a pianist had started playing Bach in the lounge.
After that, you spent an hour with Accounts reviewing coin movement through the lower vault. Madripoor attracted a particular kind of wealth: untraceable money. You approved three conversions, denied four, and marked one for investigation after noticing a pattern.
After that came Medical.
The doctor on rotation reported two treated stab wounds, one poisoning, and a guest who insisted the bullet in his shoulder was sentimental and should be returned to him after extraction.
“Was it?” you asked.
The doctor blinked. “Sentimental?”
“Clean.” You corrected.
“Yes.”
“Return it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
By five, you had changed your shoes.
By six, you had fired a kitchen porter for accepting an illegal envelope from a guest.
You had him escorted out through the west entrance with one month’s severance, a black mark on his file, and the very clear understanding that if he ever crossed the threshold again, it would be as cargo.
By seven-thirty, a contract killer you recognised from your stay in the Jakarta Continental two months ago stepped through the front doors with three men behind him who looked as though they had followed him in for the sole purpose of finishing what they had started outside.
“Madam Manager,” one of them said.
You didn’t look at him first.
You stopped in front of the men behind him, eyes drifting over the tension in their shoulders, the hands hovering too close to their coats. “Are we in a disagreement, gentlemen?”
“We were,” one of them said.
“How lovely,” you said. “And may I remind you of the rules of the Continental before anyone makes a career-ending decision?” you said, voice still pleasant, “or would one of you prefer to be excommunicado before dinner?”
For one long second, nobody moved.
Then, one by one, the men lowered their guns.
You smiled faintly. “Good choice.”
Only then did your gaze return to the man. It dropped to the dark stain spreading beneath his cuff.
“Though you are bleeding,” you said. “I hope that happened outside.”
His smile tightened. “Of course.”
By nine, you stood in the private observation room behind the bar and watched the hotel breathe.
Everything was functioning.
At ten-thirty, you made your final rounds.
The kitchens first. Then the lower corridors, where staff moved in pairs as instructed. Then the armoury, where every house weapon was sealed, catalogued, and monitored.
Near midnight, you returned to the lobby.
The concierge straightened. “All quiet, ma’am.”
You looked around and gave him a look.
He corrected himself immediately. “All contained, ma’am.”
“Better.”
You signed the night ledger at the front desk, approved two wake-up calls, denied a request for a helicopter before sunrise, and reminded Security that no guest was to be granted access to the roof without your direct authorization.
Then, finally, you took the private lift up.
The ascent was silent, your reflection staring back at you from the mirrored doors. The lift opened into the private corridor outside your quarters.
Unlike the rest of the hotel, this floor didn’t perform for strangers. It was quieter, darker, lined with old wood and soft lamps. Your staff never came here unless summoned. Your guests did not know the floor existed.
You unlocked your door and stepped inside.
The room was dark except for the thin silver spill of moonlight through the balcony windows. You closed the door behind you with a click.
For one moment, you simply stood there, listening to a slow breath that wasn’t yours.
You set your keys in the porcelain dish, removed your gloves finger by finger, and looked toward the shadows near the balcony.
“I know you’re in here, James.”
For a moment, the room did not answer you.
Madripoor glittered beyond the balcony glass, pink and blue and poisonous, reflected in the dark windows of your sitting room.
Then the shadow by the balcony shifted and Bucky fucking Barnes stepped into the moonlight.
He looked worse than you had expected.
You hated that that was what irritated you. Not the intrusion, not the breach of your private room. Not the fact that a damned man had somehow climbed into the manager’s quarters of the Madripoor Continental without triggering a single alarm.
Blood soaked into the left side of his shirt, dark and spreading, hidden badly beneath a torn grey jacket. There was more at his temple, drying in his hairline. His lower lip was split, and there was a tear on his sleeve near his metal arm. “Hi,” he said.
Your stare flattened. “What are you up to now?”
His mouth twitched into an almost-smile, and that annoyed you, too.
“You changed the locks,” he said, almost relieved that you did.
“You bypassed them.”
“Eventually.”
You walked across the room slowly, not because you were afraid of him, but because every step gave you time to decide which version of yourself would reach him first. The manager or the old you, who used to wake up next to him. The you who used to stand behind him in the kitchen while he made toast for breakfast. The you who used to climb on his lap after a long day as he peppered kisses on your collarbone, both metal and human hands cheekily sliding under your shirt.
Your train of thought halted when blood dripped from his sleeve. Your eyes followed it to the floor.
“Sorry,” he said, huffing the smallest laugh, then winced.
You stopped a few feet away from him, close enough to smell rain, gunpowder, and copper on his coat.
“Why are you here?” You asked.
He looked at you, but not in the way guests looked at you. Not the way assassins did, searching for weakness or leverage. Bucky looked at you as if he remembered the old version of you.
“Because I missed you,” he said simply.
Your heart did a stupid, treacherous little twist beneath your ribs, but you let none of it show.
“Try again,” you said, folding your arms.
He laughed like it hurt. His head tipped back against the wall for a second, eyes closing.
“You always do that,” he murmured.
“What? Make you tell the truth?”
“No,” His eyes opened again, still blue in the most inconvenient way. “Assume the worst in people.”
“Well,” you sighed, taking your blazer off and putting it on an armchair, “You are excommunicado as of twenty hours ago.”
Twenty hours as prey. Twenty hours with every door in the underworld shutting in his face. Twenty hours for news to spread through the old lines and black markets and coded ledgers. Twenty hours for men with debts and grudges and ambitious sons to begin sharpening their knives and counting their bullets.
And he had come here, to you.
“You shouldn’t have crossed my threshold,” you said.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have entered this hotel.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t be standing in my private quarters, bleeding on my floor after I spent the entire day warning my staff to watch for exactly this kind of stupidity.”
His mouth curved up again, faint and guilty. “Missed your voice too, sweets.”
“James.”
He froze then.
There it was, finally. A man who knew when a line had appeared.
You stepped closer. “I should turn you in.”
His face changed, but only slightly. Anyone else would have missed the tiny tightening around the eyes and small shift in his throat.
“You know what happens to this hotel if I don’t?” You continued.
His eyes held yours as he nodded. “Yes.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Your voice was low now. “This is not sentiment. This is not a favour between old lovers. This is the Continental and I am Management now.”
“I know what it is,” he winced.
“You know the rules,” you scolded, “That’s not the same thing as knowing the cost.”
His eyes dropped for half a second.
You understood better than most what excommunicado really meant.
The closest thing you had ever had to a brother after being raised by the Ruska Roma together had spent the final years of his life beneath that sentence. He had killed more men than most people could name. He had survived what should have ended him a dozen times over.
But survival was not the same as escape.
In the end, like nearly everyone the Table marked excommunicado, he died.
Yes, John Wick died on his own terms, but he had died nonetheless.
Bucky knew that.
He had to know what it had done to you— the grief, the rage, the way it had hollowed you out when the only person you had ever truly considered family died. He had seen the aftermath, heard the rants.
In fact, that’s why you and him didn’t quite work out. Not because you stopped loving him, but because loving anyone after that felt like standing beside another grave before it had even been dug.
And now here he was, wearing the same sentence. Walking toward the same fate.
“If I shelter you,” you breathed in, “the High Table won’t send a polite letter. They won’t issue a warning and wait for my response. They’ll strip this hotel of consecration. They freeze every account tied to my name.”
He looked down and you thought, good.
Let him understand that this wasn’t just the two of you in a dark room pretending the rules could be kept outside.
“And it won’t stop with me. My staff will pay for it. The concierge who didn’t see you. The guard whose camera feed failed. The housekeeper who was supposed to be by the service door downstairs. The cook who sent up my dinner. Anyone who can be made into an example will be made into one.”
You could see it now, the part of him that understood collateral. That understood orders from the top. That understood exactly what institutions did when they wanted obedience restored.
“You think I’m protecting myself?” you asked. “I am protecting hundreds of people who live because I keep this place neutral. I am protecting a structure that prevents every animal in Madripoor from tearing one another apart in my lobby. I am protecting rules that only work because consequences are absolute.”
“I didn’t come to make you choose,” he said.
You laughed once. “You climbed into my bedroom excommunicado. What exactly did you think that was?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “I thought—”
He stopped when a helicopter passed over the harbour, its light briefly sliding across the balcony doors.
“I thought I could see you before I disappeared,” he said.
Oh.
Oh, Bucky.
For a second, all the frustration inside you dissipated.
It didn’t go away. It was still there, hiding beneath your ribs, because he had no right to come here like this. No right to drag a death sentence through your balcony doors. No right to stand in your private quarters bleeding on your floor.
But the words pulled back a version of you that hadn’t had the chance to resurface in years.
So now, as you looked at him, studying the blood spreading through his shirt, the rain in his hair, and all you could feel was fondness.
You exhaled and stepped closer.
He watched you come near, as if he knew one wrong move might make you remember the alarm under the side table. His eyes followed your hands first. Then your face. Then the floor between you, where a drop of blood had fallen dark against one of your rugs.
You could see that the wound was worse up close.
“Sit,” you said.
His brow twitched. “I’m okay.”
“You are bleeding through wool and onto eighteenth-century floors.”
He looked down, as if noticing the blood for the first time.
“Wouldn’t want to damage the floors,” he murmured.
“No,” you said, taking his arm. “You wouldn’t. They’re older than some dynasties and significantly less replaceable than your pride.”
He let you guide him to the sofa, and that alone told you enough.
Bucky doesn’t let people guide him unless he needs it. He lowered himself down, metal hand gripping the armrest, human one hovering uselessly near his side as if he could keep his blood inside by will alone.
You knelt in front of him before you had time to reconsider the intimacy of it.
“You keep saying that like it helps.”
“It used to.”
“No,” you said, pointing to the sofa. “It used to work because I liked you.”
The medical kit was hidden behind the locked lower panel side cabinet. Technically, it wasn’t in the official hotel kit. Technically, it didn't even appear on Continental inventory. This one belonged to you.
You set it on the table beside him and opened it.
“Can’t call the doctors,” you said. “So, unfortunately, all you have is me.”
“Unfortunately?” He chuckled.
When you looked up, his human hand had already lifted. He was reaching the way he used to when you were angry and he was trying to see whether the anger had a door in it.
His fingers brushed your cheek, as he cradled you there, feeling the warmth of your skin as if it was the last living hearth in the world.
You should’ve moved away. You didn’t.
His palm settled against your face, gentle despite the blood on him. It was such an absurdly tender touch for the situation that for once, you struggled to find your voice.
His thumb moved once near your cheekbone. “You’re all I ever wanted,” he whispered.
Your throat tightened.
You turned your face just enough that his hand slipped away. “Don’t say things like that when you’re actively bleeding.”
His mouth curved up, barely. “Fair.”
“It’s manipulative,” you said, though you knew it was an unfair assessment.
He shook his head. “Wasn’t trying to be.”
That was the problem. You knew.
You cut through the ruined fabric of his shirt with medical shears. The scissors slid through wet fabric, exposing the wound beneath: an ugly bullet tear along his side, deep enough to need work, bloody enough to explain the gray cast beneath his skin. Good news, though, it wasn’t immediately fatal.
You pressed gauze to it as he hissed through his teeth.
“Still okay?” you asked.
His eyes closed. “Less okay.”
“Wonderful,” you chimed through gritted teeth, “really has entered the room.”
His breath almost became a laugh, but the movement hurt him.
The closeness you felt now was unbearable in the most practical way. You had touched him before. Of course you had. But this was different.
This was not a safehouse with bad lighting. This was not the aftermath of a job. This was your hotel, which was supposed to refuse service to him.
And yet, your hands were still on him.
You cleaned the wound in silence for a while.
Bucky let you work. He didn’t fidget or argue. He didn’t even perform toughness beyond the occasional shallow breath and the faint clench of his teeth. He just sat there and trusted you.
When the bleeding slowed enough for stitches, you threaded the needle.
“So,” you said, because silence had become too dangerous. “Why did you kill the person who bears your marker?”
His eyes opened.
For a second, you thought he might deflect. He had always been good at that, in his own blunt way.
This time, he looked too tired to bother.
“He wanted me to kill a kid to get to an enemy.”
Bucky looked toward the balcony windows, his face reflected faintly in the dark glass. For a moment, with the city lights bleeding over his features, he looked like a ghost of himself as the needle went through skin.
“How old?”
“Twelve.”
Twelve.
You had heard worse things in your office before breakfast. You were not naive. Your world didn’t protect children simply because they were children. You once had a similar fate, being trafficked into this life.
Still.
Twelve.
You looked back down at the wound because his face would have made you feel too much.
You pulled the thread through. Bucky’s hand flexed against his thigh, metal fingers opening and closing once.
“He said if I wouldn’t honor the marker, they’d just kill me and get someone else to do it. Said maybe they’d take longer.”
Your eyes closed briefly.
Of course that was what had happened. Of course Bucky Barnes had stood in a place where rules were supposed to be sacred and refused to do a job he had to do. Of course he had decided, in that self-destructive way of his, that the life of a child weighed more than his own future.
Of course he had damned himself for it.
“Always so noble,” you said under your breath.
He looked at you. “Wasn’t noble.”
“No?”
“No.” His voice was rough. “I was angry.”
You glanced up at him, nodding once and continuing the stitch.
“That, I believe.”
His mouth twitched faintly.
Silence settled for a while after that, but it was far from empty. It was crowded with all the things neither of you had said yet. With old arguments, old grief, old rooms. Your back against his chest in the back of a car at four in the morning. His teeth biting the lobe of your ear. His hand around yours under a table.
You tied off one stitch and started another.
“You should have gone to New York,” you said finally. “Winston, maybe. Even The Bowery, if you’re desperate. They have… experience with the situation.”
Bucky gave a breath that might have read as amusement if he had more blood to spare.
“The Bowery King would kill me for half the bounty,” he said, “he never liked me.”
“Hmm, because you’re very likable, Buck,” you shrugged, sarcastic. “And Winston?”
This time, he took longer to answer. When he did, his voice was quieter. “Winston would tell me to come to you.”
Your hands froze again.
The bastard was probably right.
Winston, with his polished shoes, would have known exactly where to send a man like him. Not because it was safe. Not because it was wise. Because Winston understood human weakness better than most. He would know there was one door in Madripoor that might open for Bucky, even if the woman behind it hated herself for turning the lock.
You resumed stitching with more care than you wanted him to notice.
After the last one went in, you covered the wound with gauze and taped it down, smoothing the edges with your fingertips. Your hand lingered half a second too long at his side, resting over the bandage, feeling the warmth of him beneath it.
Bucky’s breath shifted.
Your eyes rose.
You realised now, that he had come here because he believed you might save him. Or because he believed you would kill him kindly. You were not sure which was more unbearable.
You pulled your hand away.
You gathered the ruined gauze and bloodied scissors, needing something to do with your hands before they betrayed you. At the sink, you peeled off your gloves and washed them beneath cold water. Spirals of red ribboned down porcelain, thinning and thinning until the drain swallowed it.
Behind you, the sofa creaked softly as he shifted.
“Are you gonna turn me in?” he asked.
For a moment, you didn’t answer.
You dried your hands slowly, folded the towel once, and set it down beside the sink. Then you stopped by the bar cart near the window. The bottle was already open from some night you had poured a glass and forgotten to drink it. Red wine, dark as his blood.
You took a glass from the shelf, watching the glass fill halfway and wondered, briefly, how many disasters in your life had begun with beautiful men bleeding in beautiful rooms.
You lifted the glass, turned back toward him, and finally met his eyes.
He looked pale on your sofa.
You took one sip, “I haven’t decided yet.”
—
You spent the next hour making sure he wasn’t dying anymore.
Every five minutes, you checked his temperature. His pulse and pupils. You checked his bandage and stitches. You made sure he was breathing, looking out for any sign of fever or shock.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You were shot and are currently committing several violations of High Table rules by breathing on my sofa.”
His mouth twitched. “Oh yeah?”
“At least four.”
“Name them.”
“You brought business to two hotels now. You killed the person who holds your marker. You bypassed my security.” You pressed the thermometer under his tongue with more force than necessary. “And you are annoying me.”
His eyes warmed above it.
You hated that look. Yet, you’d missed it too.
The clean shirt you had given him hung open because you kept needing to inspect the bandage. That was your excuse, anyway. It was a good excuse. Practical and professional, but ruined by the fact that every time your fingers brushed his ribs, his breathing changed.
You knew him, so you knew the difference between pain and restraint. Knew the exact line of his veins when he wanted to touch you and was trying very hard to be respectful about it.
He was doing it now and that almost made you smile.
He knew you too well, too.
Every time you pressed the back of your hand to his forehead, his eyes softened. Every time you checked the dressing, his breath caught for reasons that were not entirely medical. Every time you scowled at him, he looked a little less like a doomed man and a little more like the one who used to make you forget the world you lived in.
It was unfair, really, that he could still sit there with a death sentence and make your chest ache with a half-smile.
You took the thermometer from his mouth and checked the reading.
“No fever.”
“See?” He said. “I’m not septic.”
“Not yet.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I’m not here to comfort you.”
“No?” His eyes flicked over your face. “Could’ve fooled me.”
You looked at him with half a scowl. He huffed a laugh, then winced.
Your hand shot to his shoulder, steadying him. “Don’t laugh.”
His skin was warm beneath your fingers. His metal hand rested on his thigh, but his human one was relaxed against the cushion, close enough to your hip that if he moved an inch, he would touch you.
You pulled your hand back and turned abruptly to the bar cart.
The bottle of red still sat open near the crystal glasses, and you poured yourself another glass.
“Can I have some?” Bucky tilted his head.
You turned with the glass halfway to your mouth. “You’re injured.”
“It was just a graze.”
“James.”
“What? This might be my last day alive,” he said, almost a huff, “just trying to enjoy the small things.”
You threw him a bottle of spring water. Mind you, it cost more than most beers. “Enjoy this.”
He caught it with his metal arm, not at all caught off guard. “Feels punitive.” Still, he twisted off the cap and drank half of it anyway.
“It is.”
He chuckled, and it almost reminded you of your Bucky as you remembered him to be, if you allowed yourself the indulgence. The man who used to steal bites off your plate and pretend he hadn’t. The man who knew where you hid spare knives. The man who once spent three hours bleeding in a Prague bathtub while you threatened to drown him if he passed out.
“You used to share,” he said.
“You used to knock.”
“I used to have a key.”
You took a sip of your wine again, and this time his eyes moved to your mouth. “You lost that privilege a long time ago.”
“I lost a lot of things.”
Oh, this is where we were going now?
Not Moscow or the bounty curling around his name like smoke under a locked door. No, he wanted to take you somewhere older.
You could feel it in the air, in the way your fingers tightened around the stem of your wine glass. Whatever had lived between you had never died properly. It hadn’t been buried or burned. It had simply been locked in a room you both stopped visiting.
And now he was bleeding on your sofa, holding the key in his teeth.
You set the glass down. “You didn’t lose me,” you said before you could stop yourself. “I left.”
Bucky looked at you, and the faintest flicker of pain moved behind his eyes.
“I…” He breathed out, eyes dropping for a second. “I’m sorry anyway.”
Your hands clenched, then opened, then clenched again, like your body could not decide whether it wanted to let go or hold on. “No,” you said. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I am.”
“Don’t.”
You came closer before you could think better of it, before you could stay safely across the room. You sat on the coffee table in front of him, close enough that your knees almost touched his. Close enough to see the dampness at his hairline and the way exhaustion had hollowed him out and left only honesty behind.
“I’m sorry I let you push me away,” he said.
His voice was quiet, but it landed hard.
You looked away immediately, as if refusing his eyes could save you from him. “You didn’t let me do anything.”
“I did.” His hand moved over yours carefully.
You could have pulled away. You should have. Instead, you sat there with your heartbeat hammering beneath your ribs while his worn and calloused human fingers covered your own.
“I told myself you needed space,” he said. “I told myself if I loved you, I’d let you grieve however you had to.”
“You were right.”
“No.” The word was almost nothing but a breath and a break. “I was scared I’d make it worse,” he admitted. “You were grieving, and I knew what it looked like when someone kept reaching after you’d already gone under. So I stopped reaching.”
Your throat tightened so sharply it hurt. “James.”
His thumb moved once over your knuckles, so endearingly gentle. “But I should’ve tried harder.”
“No.”
“But I should’ve.” His voice cracked. “I should’ve knocked on every door you shut. I should’ve called until you screamed at me. I should’ve let you resent me for staying, because at least then you wouldn’t have been on your own.”
You choked on your own breath, and the wine had nothing to do with the flush on your cheeks.
“I’m sorry I let you be alone after John died,” he said finally.
Fuck.
Your face didn’t collapse. You didn’t sob, even when the room started blurring at the edges, and your lungs tightened like sorrow had reached up through the years and closed a fist around them.
“I made myself alone,” you said, but the words came out thin.
“And what did I do?” Bucky’s hand tightened over yours. “Fucking nothing.”
You hated him for saying it as he saw it. His eyes stayed on your face, tired and blue and unbearable.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Stop.”
“I’m sorry for tonight.”
“Stop.”
“I’m sorry I’m making you choose between the High Table and me.”
“James.”
“I’m sorry I still want you to choose me.”
“Please—”
“I’m sorry I brought this to your door. I’m sorry—”
You moved before he could finish.
Before he could make a martyr of himself in your living room. Before he could say sorry one more time and carve it straight into your bones. Before those blue eyes could make you forgive him for bleeding, for leaving, for coming back, for still being the one person who knew exactly how to break you.
You took his face in both hands and kissed him.
For only one second, Bucky went completely still beneath you.
Then he kissed you back.
His mouth opened against yours with a broken sound, his hand lifting to your waist and stopping there, trembling, like even now he was afraid of wanting too much. You felt the heat of him under your palms, the scrape of stubble against your fingers, the split in his lip brushing yours when he tilted his head and deepened it.
It was supposed to be a simple gesture to stop him from talking. But then his tongue touched your lips, slow and desperate, and your whole body remembered who he was.
You pulled back abruptly. “Fuck— I can’t.”
Bucky followed you, his mouth chasing yours on instinct. He hadn’t meant to do it, and couldn’t stop himself in time. His eyes opened when you moved back, lips parted, breathing unsteady.
“No?” he asked, voice hoarse.
You swallowed hard. “You know we can’t.”
“Why?” The question came out raw.
You looked at him, at the blood under the bandage and the exhaustion dragging him down. “Because you’re hurt,” you said.
“I know.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not as much now.”
“Bucky,” you sighed, though you didn’t often use his nickname. “You lost blood and came here thinking you were going to die.” Your voice tightened. “I’m not taking advantage of you because you’re terrified and half-conscious and saying things you might not say if you weren’t—”
“I’d say them.”
Bucky’s eyes held yours, clearer now.
You looked away as he leaned forward a little, then stopped when it pulled at his wound. His jaw twitched, but his eyes never left you.
“I know what I’m asking for,” he said.
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“You’re not thinking clearly.”
“Sweetheart.” His voice broke on it. “I haven’t thought about anything clearly since I walked in here and saw you.”
That didn’t help. It made everything worse.
You dragged a hand over your mouth. “That’s exactly my point.”
“No.” Bucky shifted carefully, one hand braced near his wound, the other open on the cushion next to him. “I’m not asking because I’m hurt. I’m not asking because I’m scared.”
“You are scared.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “I’m fucking terrified.”
You shook your head, but he kept going.
“But I wanted you before tonight,” he said. “I wanted you when you left. I wanted you every day I was stupid enough to stay gone. Fuck, sweets, trust me when I sat it isn’t the bullet talking.”
Your heartbeat hammered beneath your skin.
He looked down at your mouth again, and the hunger there was almost enough to make your knees weaken. Then he dragged his eyes back to your eyes with visible effort.
“If you don’t want this, say it,” he said. “Say you don’t want me, and I’ll stop asking.”
You said nothing, because that was the one lie you could not force out.
His voice only dropped lower. “Please.”
Your throat tightened. “James.”
“Please kiss me again.”
You closed your eyes.
The sound of him begging you should have felt like victory. Instead, it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff with a burning forest on the other side.
Fuck. Fuck!
You sighed, bridging the space between you slowly this time, his knees bracketed yours. His breath changed, but he didn’t touch you.
You lifted a hand to his jaw and his lashes dipped.
“Like this?” you whispered before kissing him softly.
You simply pressed your mouth to his. You were gentle enough to test the waters, slow enough to feel the shudder that went through him.
Bucky exhaled against your lips. “Mmhmm.”
You kissed him again, a little deeper, your thumb brushing over his cheekbone while his metal finally rose to your thighs. “Like this?”
His fingers tightened.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, like that.”
You tilted his face and kissed him properly, mouth opening over his, tongue sliding against his lower lip.
Bucky made a low sound in his chest.
You pulled back half an inch. “Like that?”
His eyes opened, blown dark. “Fuck,” he rasped.
You kissed him again, harder this time, and felt his restraint fracture beneath your hands.
“Yeah,” he breathed against your mouth.
You nipped lightly at his lip, and his human hand flexed at your waist.
“Fuck…” he gasped, “yeah... like that.”
That was all it took.
The words left him rough and ruined, and then his hand was on your waist, tugging you forward before either of you could pretend restraint was still an option. You made one weak, useless attempt to resist, palm flattening against his shoulder as if you were going to push him back, as if your whole body had not leaned toward him the second he asked. “James—”
He pulled you into his lap anyway, kissed you through it.
Your little sound of protest dissolved against his mouth, because his hands were already firm at your hips, holding you there like he had spent years imagining this. Your knees landed on either side of his thighs, your skirt riding up, expensive fabric bunching around your hips.
You pulled back just enough to glare at him.
“You’re hurt.”
“I know.”
“Bucky—“
He only looked at you, mouth swollen, eyes dark, face pale with blood loss and want. “I’m gonna fucking die,” he sighed desperately.
You froze, processing
His grip on your hip tightened desperately
“Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But they’re coming.” His eyes fell to your mouth again like looking at your eyes hurt him. “I came here thinking I’d never touch you again. I came here ready to leave with one look at you if that was all you’d give me.”
Your throat closed.
He swallowed, and his hand slid higher along your spine, trembling once beneath your blouse.
“Don’t make me be good right now,” he whispered. “Not with you. Not tonight.”
“Bucky…”
His lips brushed yours. “Let me,” he breathed. “Let me, please.”
Fuck.
You kissed him again, and whatever restraint remained between you went under.
Bucky’s mouth opened against yours, and the kiss turned hot enough to feel almost violent. Your hands slid into his hair, tugging once, and he groaned so low you felt it through your chest. His fingers found the buttons of your blouse, rough at first, impatient, then suddenly slower when skin appeared beneath the cloth.
One button.
Then another.
The backs of his knuckles brushed newly exposed skin, and his breath changed. Reverent and greedy all at once, like he remembered what the swell of your breast felt like and what the heartbeat underneath sounded like.
His mouth left yours, dragging down your throat.
You tipped your head back before you could stop yourself.
“You still wear the same perfume,” he murmured against your skin. “I thought about it in Berlin once.” His mouth moved along the side of your neck. “Smelled it on someone in a hotel lobby and almost turned around like an idiot.”
Your eyes burned.
No.
No, he wasn’t allowed to make you cry. Not when his hand was on your skin. Not when you were straddling him. Not when every assassin in the world would be looking for him before sunrise.
You tugged his hair, forcing his face back up to yours. “Don’t make this sad.”
His smile was devastating. “Too late.”
His mouth found the bare skin above your lace bra, stubble scraping, teeth grazing just hard enough to make your hips jerk.
Bucky hissed and met you halfway.
“You are going to tear your stitches,” you sighed through gritted teeth.
“Then stitch me up again.”
“Jesus—”
He kissed the word out of your mouth.
You meant to stay in control, but then his hand slid beneath your skirt, palm against the outside of your thigh, and your body betrayed every sensible thought you had ever had. His fingers traced upward slowly, almost teasing, the touch teasing enough to be maddening.
You rolled your hips once without meaning to.
Bucky groaned into your mouth.
“Fuck,” he breathed, forehead dropping to yours. “Don’t do that unless you mean it.”
You stared at him, breath uneven.
He looked wrecked.
“If I’m gonna help you,” you whispered, “might as well make it worth it, huh?”
You could’ve sworn Bucky’s blue eyes sparkled at that.
“Atta girl,” he said as his fingers reached the edge of your underwear.
Even now, he looked up at you, waiting.
“Touch me,” you whispered.
His eyes darkened as he slid his fingers against you.
Your breath caught hard enough to hurt.
Bucky’s eyes dropped between you, then lifted back to your face. He had forgotten exactly how good it felt to have you falling apart over him.
“God,” he breathed against your mouth. “You’re so wet.”
“Proud of yourself, hm?”
As he hummed his response, you bit his lower lip.
He cursed, and this time, you deemed it to be too loud.
Your hand flew over his mouth to stop anymore from coming out.
You stared down at him, breathing hard, his eyes wild above your hand. “Are you insane?” you hissed. “If any of my staff hears you, we are both fucked.”
Beneath your palm, he smiled.
You leaned closer. “Not a sound.”
He nodded once before his fingers moved again.
You almost hated him for how well he still knew you. For the pressure, the pace. Your hips rocked into his hand despite yourself, and Bucky’s eyes went half-lidded, like the sight alone was doing damage.
You kept your hand over his mouth until his breathing started to turn rough beneath it, until his lashes fluttered, until he kissed the center of your palm filthy
“Stop being smug,” you whispered.
His reply came muffled, but you knew exactly what it was.
No.
His hand worked you harder, and your forehead dropped to his. The pleasure built deep made worse by the danger of sleeping with a condemned man.
Bucky’s hips jerked up. You felt him hard beneath you, straining, and bit back your own sound.
You pulled your hand from his mouth only long enough to kiss him again, swallowing the next sound before it could leave him. His metal thumb rose to your lower lip when you broke apart, brushing there with an almost unbearable tenderness.
“I’ll tell you if it hurts too much,” he rasped.
“Will you?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I’ll try.”
You stared at him.
Then you laughed once, breathless and furious, reaching between you and unbuckled his belt.
Bucky’s head fell back against the sofa. The sound of the buckle hitting the couch seemed absurdly loud in the silence.
“Bed,” you whispered.
He opened his eyes, looked toward the bedroom, then back at you.
“Too far.”
“It’s right there.”
“Too far.”
You would have laughed if you had not wanted him so badly it hurt.
There was nothing elegant about the rest of it.
Your underwear was shoved aside rather than removed. His trousers were opened only enough. Your hands braced on his shoulders as you rose over him, both of you breathing too hard, as you sank down onto him.
Oh.
Bucky’s forehead dropped to your chest.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck, sweetheart.”
Your fingers dug into his shoulders as you felt the stretch. His hands gripped your hips, holding on while your body took him inch by inch and remembered every terrible, perfect thing about him.
Suddenly, he jerked beneath you, then hissed through his teeth, one hand flying near his side.
You froze. “No.”
“I’m okay.”
“No, Buck—”
“I’m okay,” he repeated, softer now. “Just…give me a second.”
You held still, chest rising and falling, forehead pressed to his hair. His arms slid around you, careful of the wound, and for one strange, unbearable moment, there was no movement at all.
His mouth brushed your sternum.
You looked down and saw red blooming faintly at the edge of the bandage.
“Fuck, you’re bleeding.”
“Little bit.”
“James.”
“Sweetheart.” His voice was gravel against your skin. “If I die tonight, it is not going to be because you rode me too hard on a sofa.”
You hated that you moved before you answered, testing with a slow roll of your hips.
Bucky’s eyes shut.
“Yes,” you whispered.
You moved up and down carefully at first, one hand pressed near his uninjured shoulder, the other buried in his hair. His hands guided your hips, metal cool and human hand hot, helping you find the rhythm that made your thighs tremble and his breath come apart.
The sofa creaked beneath you.
Below, the hotel stayed silent, but Bucky did not.
A groan slipped out of him. You had no choice but to clamp your hand over his mouth again.
His eyes snapped open.
“Do you want them to find their manager like this?” you whispered, breath ragged. “Skirt up, blouse open, fucking a man with a bounty on his head on her sofa?”
Bucky’s eyes rolled back for half a second as his hips jerked up, making you bite back your own moan.
His hand tightened on your hip in apology. You leaned down, keeping your palm over his mouth.
If getting caught didn’t mean death, if your staff coming through that door wouldn’t end in blood, you had the awful feeling his answer would have been yes. But even now, he would always put your safety first.
You picked up the pace.
His fingers found you again between your bodies, and the first touch nearly shattered your rhythm. Pleasure punched through you, and you had to bite your lip to keep from making a sound of your own.
Bucky watched you like he was dying already. Like the whole world could come through the door with guns and he would still be looking at your face.
Your hand slipped from his mouth to clutch at his hair when the pleasure reached too high. He seized the chance to kiss you, swallowing your gasp as you came apart over him.
“That’s it,” he breathed against your lips, barely audible. “I’ve got you.”
His own control fractured seconds later. His grip tightened and you had to kiss him hard to muffle the rough sound that left him when he came. His hips pressed up once, twice, then stopped beneath you, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.
You stayed in his lap, forehead against his, fingers still tangled in his hair.
Then you kissed along his face.
His cheek, his jawline, the cut near his temple.
“Don’t mistake this for mercy,” you said, breathless. You caught his chin, tilting him back to you. “If I were merciful,” you murmured, mouth brushing his skin, “I’d shoot you myself so you wouldn’t suffer under the hands of worse men.”
Bucky’s hands settled at your waist. “Then what is it?”
You kissed the corner of his mouth.
“Stupidity,” you said, though you didn’t mean it. “Clearly.”
For a moment, he only looked at you, far too knowing of your bluff.
He pulled you back down and kissed you again. “Keep saying it until you believe it, sweetheart.”
—
For a while, neither of you moved.
The room returned slowly, piece by piece, from the low gold of the lamps, the expensive ruin of clothes, the glass walls reflecting the city back at you in smears of neon pink and blue. Madripoor burned beyond the windows, while the Continental breathed beneath your feet like some great animal pretending it had not felt one of its own rules break.
Bucky stayed beneath you, forehead dropped against your shoulder, one hand loose at your waist, the other careful near his ribs. His breathing had begun to even out, though there was a tremor under it now. Adrenaline had started fading, and pain had started returning.
Then you caught sight of yourself in the dark window: Hair undone, top hanging open, your lipstick ruined. And there, just above the line of your collar, darkening against your skin…
A fucking mark. A stupid little love bite.
You went still.
Bucky lifted his head as if he had felt the change in your breathing. His eyes followed yours to the reflection, then to your throat, guilt flickering across his face immediately. “Let me explain.”
You turned your head slowly.
“I was aiming lower.”
Unbelievable.
A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. Quiet, disbelieving, frayed around the edges. It was the sort of laugh that came too close to tears.
You touched two fingers to the mark.
Management under the High Table, branded like a reckless girl in the back of a getaway car.
Your staff had eyes, and every assassin in the building had been trained to notice any slight difference in your appearance, and now Bucky Barnes had left this, visible on your skin.
You wanted to be furious. You were, a little.
Mostly, you were just surprised by how badly you didn’t mind.
Bucky watched your face like he expected the blow to come and would accept it. Instead, you climbed off him carefully, your body still unsteady, and the movement earned a sharp hiss from both of you. His hand went straight to his side.
You peeled the bandage off, chasing the damage of what you both have done.
Not torn. Thank fuck.
Pulled and irritated, yes. You saw a thin line of fresh blood where the stitches had strained, but nothing open enough to justify any kind of terror.
You cleaned the skin anyway.
Bucky’s hand hovered near yours once, then settled on the cushion instead.
The new bandage went on clean, and you had put a waterproof layer on this time. Your fingers smoothed the tape over his ribs, and he looked down with an expression that made you want to kiss him again and scream at him in equal measure.
You did neither.
You stood, gathering the gauze and gloves.
When you were done, you helped him stand.
He could do it on his own, but only barely. One hand was braced on the back of the sofa, shoulders rigid until the worst of the dizziness passed. You stayed close enough that if his knees went, you could catch him.
You guided him into the shower.
Under the spray, with the glass fogging around you and water swirling toward the drain, practicality went out the window. He stood on his own, one hand against the tile, head bowed slightly beneath the water. You washed blood from his temple and rinsed dried sweat from his neck. You cleaned a scratch near his chin with your thumb while he watched you through wet lashes, saying nothing.
He looked different like this. It was as if he had been stripped of the dirty coat, the guns, the blood-soaked wool, he became painfully human.
You washed the night from him as best you could, careful around the bandage, careful with the places pain had made sensitive. He let you.
By the time you got him to bed, the lights had dimmed.
You gave him water, antibiotics, painkillers, and tucked him in underneath fresh linen. He took everything without protest, which frightened you more than his blood had. Bucky argumentative meant Bucky alive. Bucky silent meant exhaustion had finally dragged him under.
He looked wrong in your bed.
You changed into a robe with your back turned to him, tying the belt tightly at your waist. In the mirror, the mark on your throat had deepened.
You touched it once, then you switched off the lamps and slid into bed beside him.
You curled into him slowly at first, then all at once, tucking yourself against the uninjured side of his chest. His arm came down around you. Your hand settled over his heart, feeling the beat beneath your palm like you needed proof.
His body curled around yours as much as the wound allowed, protective even half-conscious, and you let yourself sink into him. You listened to the rhythm of his heart. You counted each breath until the panic in your chest began to loosen.
“You need rest,” you murmured. “You have to get up early.”
His arm tightened faintly around you. “Got a plan for me, huh?”
You stared into the dark and tried to choose your next words carefully.
“I can’t change your fate.” The words hurt as they left your lips. “But I can get you a head start.”
He didn’t answer for a long time. His hand only moved once over your back, as if to say, thank you.
For choosing me.
For sacrificing the rules.
For putting yourself in the line of fire for me.
Eventually, his breathing deepened. Sleep took him reluctantly, one guarded inch at a time.
—
Bucky woke at four forty-six in the morning, and for a second he was at peace.
He felt your head tucked near his shoulder, your hand resting over his chest like you had fallen asleep making sure his heart kept going. Madripoor glowed through the half-drawn curtains in thin ribbons of neon, feverish gold leaking across the ceiling.
Then his side pulled tight with pain, and the world came back.
Right. The whole world was hunting him. The whole world but you.
Bucky lay still and looked at you.
You hadn’t slept well; he knew that even before you opened your eyes. There was a faint tension in your brow and the corner of your mouth, like some part of you had remained awake even while your body had finally surrendered.
He should have regretted coming here more. He put you in danger.
But grief and love made selfish creatures of people, and there was a terrible part of him that looked at the mark and felt comfort. Proof, maybe, that even if only for a few hours, he had been here.
He moved carefully, every shift measured around the wound at his side, and lifted his hand to your cheek.
You stirred, but didn’t wake completely.
He kissed you, but it was barely a kiss. It was more of his mouth against yours in the dark, careful enough to be mistaken for a dream.
Your eyes opened, finding his in the blue dark, unfocused at first.
“James,” you whispered, voice rough with sleep.
He closed his eyes for half a second. “I’m here.”
The ghost of a smile almost reached you. It pulled at the edge of your mouth and disappeared before it could become anything tangible. Then your hand slid to his side, practical even half-awake, fingers finding the edge of the bandage beneath the sheets. You checked him by touch first, then by sight, shifting up on one elbow and pulling the cover down just enough to inspect the gauze.
Bucky watched your face instead of the wound.
You released a breath when you saw that it hadn't bled through.
“You need antibiotics,” you murmured.
“I took them last night.”
“And you will take them again,” You insisted, eyes lifting to his.
Even in bed, even with your hair loose and half asleep, you could give him a stern look that made him shut his mouth.
You reached for the bedside table, shook two pills into your palm, and poured water from the carafe.You handed the glass to him, and he swallowed the pills under your watchful stare. Only then did you press the back of your hand to his forehead.
No fever. Good.
You sat beside him in the dim room with your hand still near his heart, and for a few minutes neither of you said anything at all, thinking about what you had while he slept. Thank god he had stayed asleep throughout all of it.
Out there were maps you hadn’t yet shown him. The cameras you had already disabled. The passage hidden in the back rooms of the hotel.
And then, sometime in the night, his bounty had risen to twenty million dollars.
Twenty million wasn’t just money. Everyone would wake up and see the number and become hungry. Dockworkers, concierges, brokers, doctors, tailors, priests, beggars, old friends, old enemies would suddenly remember how much a life could be worth if you stopped thinking of it as a person.
Then your eyes flicked to the phone on the bedside table. Bucky was looking at it. He saw the notification.
“You know.”
He didn’t pretend not to understand. “Yeah.”
You looked down at your hand where it rested against him. Your fingers curled slightly, catching in the fabric of the sheet.
“Twenty million,” you said.
He nodded.
“That kind of money makes people inventive,” you continued, and though your voice stayed quiet, something beneath it trembled. “It makes stupid men brave. It makes loyal men practical. It makes neutral men suddenly remember they have debts to settle.”
“I know.”
You shook your head. “You keep saying that.”
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.”
For a moment, you looked at him like you wanted to slap him. Not because he deserved it, though maybe he did. Because frustration was easier than being afraid, and you had always preferred weapons you knew how to hold.
“You could say you’ll come back,” you whispered, words leaving you before you could stop them.
Bucky saw the regret dawn on your face. You shut down so quickly it was almost violent. “I…,” you started. “Forget I said that.”
“I want to,” he said, making himself small.
You looked away. “Then say it.”
For one selfish second, he almost did.
He almost gave you the lie. He almost told you he would survive the bounty, survive the High Table, survive every knife and bullet and hungry bastard between Madripoor and whatever country came next.
But twenty million dollars was in the way.
And you deserved more than a pretty lie from a doomed man.
“I can’t,” he said.
Your face didn’t break, but he could see a thin fracture beneath the surface. He hated himself for being the reason why.
“I hate you for being honest,” you said, but your voice was smaller now. Bucky reached for your hand. He only offered, and after a second you let him take it. “I want the lie.”
His throat burned. “I know.”
“I would know it was a lie, James, and I would still want it.”
He lifted your hand and pressed his mouth to your knuckles. He felt the tremor you tried to hide.
“I want there to be a version of this where I walk out and make it,” he said. “But I’m hurt. I’m tired. I have no protection, no doctor, no sanctioned routes, no allies who can admit to knowing me. The last thing I want is for them to find out you helped me.”
Your hand pulled free from his only so you could cup his face. “Don’t talk like you're already dead.”
He leaned into your touch before he could stop himself. It was humiliating, how badly he needed it.
“I’m trying not to,” he said.
“Try harder.”
He almost smiled. You kissed his cheek once before climbing out of bed.
After that, the room became a swirl.
You got dressed first, with black trousers to hide the grip marks forming on your thighs, white blouse with a high collar, and a matching blazer.The mark on your throat disappeared beneath the fabric. Your hair went up and your lipstick went on. Piece by piece, you put on a mask that the High Table had given you, and Bucky watched it happen with an ache in his chest he had no name for.
He got dressed slower than you. The clothes you had left for him were dark, plain, and unmemorable.
By 5:38, there was no evidence the night had happened.
The blood was gone from the sofa. The ruined towels had vanished. The wine glass had been removed. His old clothes were no longer in sight. Every surface looked untouched, nothing had given anyone a reason to suspect treason.
When Bucky was finished getting ready, he saw maps covering the surface: service corridors, laundry shafts, maintenance passages, camera blind spots, staff rotations, dock surveillance. You had turned the whole city upside down and found him the least fatal route through it.
“At 6:13, the private lift camera enters a maintenance loop for four minutes,” you said.
Bucky looked at the route you weren't pointing to. “You want me to take the lift?”
“No. I want anyone auditing the system later to think someone did.” Your finger moved across the map with brisk precision. “The loop is bait. You will take the passage behind the wardrobe three levels down. Left at the old laundry shaft. Don’t use the first service door. Kitchen staff will be moving through until six-thirty, and I cannot guarantee discretion.”
He listened, memorizing every word, though part of him wanted to stop you.
“The second door opens into dry storage,” you continued. “Camera blackout begins at 6:21 and lasts seven minutes, but assume you have four. If you’re not through by 6:25, retreat into the laundry shaft and wait for the next staff turnover. Don’t improvise unless someone has already seen your face.”
“And that?” he pointed, jumping ahead while cataloging everything.
“Dock Seven.” You slid another page toward him. “It has the least surveillance after 6:40. Not none. The west crane camera will be down for maintenance from 6:38. The warehouse camera facing Pier C turns east from 6:43 to 6:51. That is the best window you’re going to get.”
You pushed a passport across the table. “You’re Daniel Grant, Canadian. He’s boring, and keep him boring.”
He looked down at the unfamiliar face close enough to his own to pass if no one looked twice.
“After the dock?” he asked.
Your eyebrows furrowed, only slightly.
“After the dock, I can’t help you.”
There it was, the truth, the limit to your power. After the dock, there were no more cameras you could blind. No more corridors under your control. No more staff you could redirect. After the dock, he became a number again.
You picked up the black phone. “This gives you one call. Burn it after. It won't reach me directly. It will pass through three of my staff first. If you use it, say only what matters.”
“I’m not dragging you further into this.”
“You already have.”
The words weren’t meant to be cruel, but it sounded like it. His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Your eyes sharpened. “Don’t apologize for needing me and then deny me the right to decide what I do with that.”
He stared at you, looking down. “I’m not worth your life.”
Fuck off, Barnes, you wanted to say. But instead, “Don’t say that to me.”
“It’s true.”
You looked down at the maps for a moment. When you spoke again, your voice had changed. “When John died, Winston wanted to tell me what he was worth. What his name meant. What his death meant. The High Table, the contracts, the bodies, the legend. Everyone had a number, a title, a story.” Your hand curled against the edge of the table. “It was all useless. He was my brother— that was the only measure that mattered.” You looked up at him then, eyes sunken in a way that terrified him. “So don’t stand in my room and tell me what you are worth as if love has ever cared about market value.”
For one second, he almost said it.
The room was already evidence of it. Maybe naming it would make it less likely to disappear. But if he said it now, with the passage waiting and every sniper on his head, he would be leaving it behind like a body for you to bury.
You saw him swallow it.
“Coward,” you whispered.
Not like an insult, but rather heartbreak.
Bucky nodded once. “Yeah.”
You reached into the inside pocket of your blazer and took out a small leather ledger. You set it on the table.
“I’m going to settle every marker and debt I have.”
What?
“You’ll make yourself vulnerable,” he furrowed his eyebrows.
“I know.” Your voice was steady because you forced it to be. “I’ll close what I can. Pay what I owe. Call in what I’m owed. I’ll prepare a letter nominating Talia for hotel management. I will make myself as free as I can be.”
He forced himself to turn to you, to figure out what was running in that pretty little head of yours. “For what?”
“For the possibility that this is not the last time I see you.”
Oh.
You stepped closer.
“If there is a way, if you find it, if you can come back as something other than a dead man walking, then come back to me.” You swallowed, but your voice held. “And I will go with you.”
He looked at you and saw what the future could be.
You, far from Madripoor. You, far from gold coins and ledgers written in blood. You, in his kitchen with morning light on your face. You, scowling over bad coffee he made. You, looking at him across a room as if he had finally made it home. You, getting out and living the life your brother once had before the world took that away from him.
It was so beautiful he almost hated you for giving it to him.
But his status sat between you and that future.
He could feel the hunters already moving, the calls already being made. The underworld waking up to his name and doing the arithmetic. Most people didn't survive numbers like that for long.
He couldn’t promise anything.
He wanted to. God fucking knows, he wanted to. He wanted to take your face in his hands and swear he would come back if he had to crawl through half the world with broken bones. He wanted to tell you to pack a bag, to wait for him, to believe that he would survive the week.
But you were offering him your life. He wouldn’t repay that with false hope.
“Okay,” he said.
That was what finally undid you.
You stepped into him and pressed both hands flat against his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt as if you could hold him in the room by force.
“You are not dead while I am touching you,” you said. “You are not dead until I am forced to hear otherwise, and even then I may refuse to believe it out of spite.”
A broken laugh dragged out of him.
“So go,” you whispered. “Go be difficult to kill. Go make every greedy little bastard who looks at that twenty million regret getting out of bed.”
His forehead lowered to yours.
His hand rose to your cheek, and you leaned into it before he had even touched you.
He kissed you.
Softly at first, then harder, because the alternative felt too much like goodbye. Your hands fisted in his shirt.
When you pulled back, your mouth still brushed his.
“I love—”
Your hand covered his mouth. Your eyes were shining now, broken and beautiful in the most unbearable way.
“Not now,” you whispered.
His breath warmed as he nodded, pressing a kiss into your palm.
Then he nodded.
You opened the panel behind the wardrobe yourself.
Cold air breathed out of the hidden passage, smelling like damp stone, old water, and dust disturbed for the first time in years. The darkness beyond it was narrow and void, a vein running through the Continental. Somewhere below, staff would move through corridors you had already arranged for him to avoid. The entire hotel, for a handful of minutes, would turn its eyes away because you had asked it to.
You handed him the bag.
For one final moment, he looked at you and your ledger still open on the table behind you. Your whole life was already beginning to come apart because he had come to you bleeding and you had loved him too much to turn him in.
He wanted to promise something, anything, so badly.
But chances were, he was going to fucking die.
So he only looked at you, and you understood.
“Be seeing you,” you said.
From anyone else, it would have been a threat, a warning, a death sentence tied to a century-old tradition.
From you, it sounded like the smallest sliver of hope.
Bucky held your eyes for one more second, then nodded once before stepping into the passage.
The panel slid shut without a sound, leaving you alone in the spotless room, pretending nothing ever happened.
You walked up to your desk, picked up the phone, and dialed 505.
The line clicked.
“Good morning, Talia,” you said normally, because you were fine. You had to be. “Prepare the staff for briefing, please.”
Summary: Who would have thought that an inconspicuous vent in a bakery alley would be what brought them together: the omega who never felt right with any alpha, and the asset who wasn't supposed to want at all.
Word Count: 11k
Previous Chapter - Masterlist
She wakes to weight and warmth.
His arm is still pressing around her waist, face still against her throat. The purr has faded to silence sometime during the night, but his breathing is deep and even. Peaceful in a way she suspects is rare for him.
She doesn't want to move, to disturb him.
But the sound of the traffic is entering through the window, the need to pee is not something she can ignore, and she can smell him, smoke, cheap soap, and the underlying scent of alpha that's been masked by everything else.
He needs a proper shower. Real soap. Clean clothes.
The thought of clothes makes her glance down at his naked form, tangled with her body in the sheets. She'd gotten him out of the tactical gear yesterday, but that's all he had. No change of clothes. No personal belongings. Just weapons, the suit, and… trauma.
One problem at a time.
She shifts carefully, trying to ease out from under him without waking him, but his arm tightens immediately around her.
"Alpha," she whispers. "I just need to get up for a minute."
His eyes open with instant alertness, like he goes from sleep to fully conscious in a heartbeat, and she can see the question in those pale blue eyes, even though he doesn't ask it.
Where are you going?
"Bathroom," she says softly. "I really need to go."
His arm loosens, and she slips out of bed. She can feel his eyes tracking her across the room, watchful, waiting for her to come back.
She does her business quickly, washes her hands, and when she comes back out, he's sitting up in bed. Back straight. Hands on his thighs. Watching the bathroom door like he's been waiting for her to reappear.
"Hey," she says softly, crossing back to the bed. "You okay?"
A stiff nod as an answer.
She sits on the edge of the mattress, close enough that her knee brushes his thigh. "I was thinking... you should take a shower. A real one. Get all that smoke and-" She gestures vaguely at him. "Everything else off."
He doesn't respond. Just looks at her with those unreadable pale eyes.
She tries again. "Would you like to-"
The tension in his shoulders increases fractionally, and she stops mid-sentence.
Right.
She remembers yesterday. The way he asked her to tell him what to do. The way he followed every instruction without question, like having someone make decisions for him, was a relief instead of an imposition.
She changes her approach.
"Alpha," she says, her voice firmer now. Not harsh, but directive. "I need you to take a shower. I need to smell you, not all this other stuff covering your scent. It would make me feel better."
The change is immediate.
His shoulders drop, and the tension bleeds out of his body. He nods, certain this time, because she's not asking him to choose. She's telling him what she needs, and he can do that. He can be useful to her.
"Good," she says, standing. "Come on."
He rises from the bed immediately and follows her to the bathroom.
She pulls back the curtain and turns on the shower, adjusting the temperature until the water runs hot. Steam starts to fill the small space almost immediately, and she steps back, gesturing to the shower. "Get in."
He walks with no self-consciousness, no modesty, and steps over the edge of the tub and under the spray.
And then he goes very, very still.
His eyes close, and his brow furrows like he’s trying to decipher what he feels. Then, his head tips back slightly, water streaming over his face, his hair, his shoulders.
She watches, fascinated, as his hands come up slowly -almost reverently- and push his hair back from his face, as his shoulders drop another inch, as he just stands there, unmoving, letting the hot water pour over him.
How long has it been since he had this?
The question disturbs her. Because this isn't just relief of removing filth. This is something else. Something that speaks to deprivation so complete that hot water feels like a luxury.
She swallows past the tightness in her throat and watches him for another moment, then makes a decision. She can't reach him properly from outside, and she's going to get soaked anyway trying to wash his hair.
"Scoot over," she says, pulling her shirt over her head.
He shifts immediately, making room, his eyes tracking her movements as she strips down to nothing and steps into the tub behind him.
The space is small, and the heat of the water mixing with the heat of his body makes the air thick and humid. She has to press close to reach around him, her chest against his back, and she feels him tense for just a second before relaxing into her touch.
"I'm going to wash your back first," she tells him, reaching for the soap. "Then your hair."
He nods, still facing the spray, and she works the soap into a lather between her hands before pressing them to his shoulders.
The scars feel different under the water. Softer somehow, but no less present. She traces them without meaning to, following the lines across his shoulder blades, down his spine, mapping the damage while she cleans away days of sweat and smoke and whatever else he's been through.
He's so still under her hands, waiting patiently for her to finish.
When his back is clean, she reaches for the shampoo.
"Okay, I need you to bend down for me," she says. "I can't reach your head."
He complies immediately, turning around and bending at the waist, his back to the showerhead now, water sliding down his face and neck.
"Close your eyes," she instructs quickly. "The water's going to run into them with the products, and it'll sting."
His eyes slide shut obediently, and she works the shampoo into his hair, massaging his scalp with her fingers. The water runs dark at first, carrying away dirt and product and god knows what else, but gradually it clears. She rinses thoroughly, then repeats with conditioner, working it through the tangled strands until they feel smooth under her fingers.
"Okay, you can straighten up now."
He does it slowly, water still streaming down his face, and just stands there, waiting.
She lathers it between her hands and places them on his chest. Her palms slide across his sternum, over his pecs, following the contours of muscle and scar tissue. The water runs between them, making everything slick, and she works methodically, cleaning away the last traces of smoke and sweat.
Her hands move lower, over his ribs, across his stomach. He doesn't move, doesn't react, just keeps standing there, letting her work.
When she reaches his hips, she soaps her hands again and continues downward, sliding them clinically between his thighs, washing with the same care she's given the rest of him.
That's when she notices it.
His balls are heavy. Drawn up tight against his body, swollen in a way that speaks to biological need not fully satisfied. A remnant of the rut, probably, or maybe just the proximity to her, naked and touching him in such an intimate way.
But he's not hard.
Not responding the way you'd expect an alpha to respond to his omega's hands on his body like this. And that tells her everything she needs to know about how deeply whatever they did to him runs.
She swallows the surge of anger -not at him, but at whoever made him like this- and keeps washing gently, giving him no reason to feel self-conscious about his body's lack of response.
"Does this feel okay?" she asks softly, as she works. "What I'm doing?"
"Yes."
The answer is immediate. Certain.
At least that's something.
She rinses her hands and reaches for more soap, working it over his thighs, his calves, finishing the job, and the whole time he just stands there. Letting her. Trusting her.
When she's done with his legs, she straightens, looking up at him.
"The other day," she says carefully, keeping her voice soft. "I asked you about your name."
His entire body goes rigid.
She can see the conflict playing out across his face. Confusion. Fear. The urge to answer warring with something else. Something that won't let him.
"Is it because you don't feel safe with me?" she presses gently. "Or because you don't have one? Or... you don't remember?"
His jaw works. She can see him struggling, can smell the spike of distress in his scent.
"Soldat," he finally says, and the word sounds forced. Automatic.
"Okay," she says softly. "But that's not really a name, is it? That's what you were. Not who you are."
He lifts his gaze to look at her fully now, and the look in his eyes is… lost. Confused. Like he genuinely doesn't understand the difference between those two things.
Like he's never had to understand the difference.
"Don't..." His brow furrows, and she can see him reaching for something that isn't there. "Don't remember," he says finally, and the frustration in his voice is palpable. "There was... something. But it's-"
He makes a gesture at his head with his flesh hand. Scattered. Fragmented. Gone.
Her chest tightens.
"Okay," she says, reaching up to cup his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones. "That's okay. Maybe it'll come back. Or maybe it won't. Either way, you're still my alpha."
He leans into her touch, eyes closing briefly, and nods.
"Yeah," he echoes, barely a whisper.
She pulls him down into a gentle kiss -just a press of lips, nothing demanding- and feels him relax into it.
"Come on," she says, pulling back. "Let's get you dried off."
She reaches past him to turn off the water, then grabs a towel from the rack. "Dry yourself," she instructs, pressing it into his hands. "I'll be right back."
He takes the towel and starts patting himself down while she wraps herself in another towel and steps out of the tub.
His boxers are still on the floor where they'd left them yesterday, stiff and stained. She picks them up with two fingers, grimacing slightly, and takes them to the sink.
The water runs cold as she works soap into the fabric, scrubbing at the stains. Then, she rinses them thoroughly, wringing out as much water as she can.
She's still wringing them when she senses him behind her.
She glances up at the mirror and sees him standing, towel wrapped around his waist, watching her with those pale, unreadable eyes.
"Almost done," she says, giving the boxers one final squeeze before turning to face him. "I'm going to put these on the radiator. They shouldn't take too long to dry."
She moves, acutely aware of his gaze following her as she crosses to the radiator against the far wall. The metal is warm under her fingers as she drapes the damp fabric across it, smoothing it out so it'll dry evenly.
And that's when she remembers the other issue that needed to be approached. She turns to face him, wrapping her arms around herself. "I need to go out for a bit," she says.
"No."
The word is immediate.
"Alpha, it's to get you clothes," she explains, keeping her voice gentle. "There's a discount store just around the corner. I'll be quick, I promise. Twenty minutes, tops-"
"No."
He takes a step toward her, and something in his posture shifts. His shoulders broaden, his back straightens, and suddenly the space between them feels charged.
Another step.
She backs up instinctively until her shoulders hit the wall, and then he's right there, towering over her. His arms come up, forearms bracing against the wall on either side of her head, caging her in.
Not touching or hurting her. But unmistakably alpha in a way he hasn't been since he came back yesterday.
His head lowers, nose finding the curve of her neck, and she feels him inhale deeply. Scenting her. His lips brush against her scent gland, then the edge of his teeth, a gentle scrape that makes her breath catch.
"No," he says again, the word rumbling against her throat.
Her heart is hammering. Not from fear but from the sudden intensity of his presence, the way he's using his body to communicate what his words can't.
Don't leave. Don't go. Stay.
"Alpha," she says softly, her hands coming up to rest on his chest. She can feel his heart beating just as fast as hers. "I'm not leaving you. I'm just going to the store. I'll come right back."
His teeth scrape her gland again, more insistent this time, and a low sound rumbles in his chest. Not quite a growl. Something between that and a whine.
Mine. Stay. Don't go.
"Alpha," she says again, trying to keep her voice calm and reasonable even though her pulse is racing. "Listen to me. Nothing's going to happen to you while I'm gone. You'll be safe here. And nothing's going to happen to me either. It's just around the corner. Twenty minutes."
The sound in his chest intensifies. His face presses harder against her throat, and she can feel the tension in his body radiating in waves. "I know you don't want me to go. I understand. But I'll come right back. I promise-"
"No."
Still that same flat refusal. Immovable.
She can feel her patience starting to fray. This isn't working. Reasoning isn't working. He's too deep in whatever instinct is driving him to listen to logic. So she takes a breath, hating what she's about to do, but not seeing another option.
"You asked me to tell you what to do," she says, and her voice comes out firmer now. "So I'm telling you. I need you to let me get dressed and go buy you clothes."
He goes very still against her.
Then his head turns slightly, just enough that she can see his eyes. They're narrowed, fixed on her with a force that makes her stomach flip.
He doesn't like this. Doesn't like being ordered. But he's caught between what his instincts are screaming at him to do and what she's telling him to do.
She presses on, gentler now but still firm. "It's not acceptable for you to be naked. I mean, you can be naked if you want, that's fine. But you can't not have clothes. It's not warm enough for that, and if you need to go somewhere, you can't just walk around with your ass out."
That seems to penetrate his mind.
His eyes shift, some of the feral focus fading, replaced by the beginning of understanding. He pulls back slightly, just an inch, and she can see him processing. Trying to reconcile the conflicting drives.
She reaches up slowly and takes his flesh hand in both of hers, squeezing gently.
"Everything's going to be okay," she says softly. "I'm going to go to the store, I'm going to buy you some clothes, and I'm going to come right back. Fast. I promise."
His jaw works. She can see the internal struggle playing out across his face.
Then, slowly, his arms leave the wall, and he takes a step back, giving her space, but his hand tightens around hers. Not letting go. Not yet.
"Twenty minutes," she says, squeezing his hand again. "Okay?"
A long pause.
Then, finally, a single nod.
Stiff. Reluctant. But a nod.
----
Seventeen minutes.
The numbers on the laptop screen. 10:47 AM. She left at 10:30. Said twenty minutes. That means she should be back at 10:50.
Three minutes left.
Soldat sits on the edge of the bed, towel still wrapped around its waist, and watches the clock change to 10:48.
Its chest feels wrong. Tight. Like something is constricting around its lungs, making each breath require conscious effort.
She's coming back.
She said she would.
Twenty minutes.
But what if she doesn't?
The thought surfaces unbidden, and Soldat's hands clench into fists on its thighs. Metal fingers whir softly with the pressure.
What if she sees something out there that makes her realize what it is? What it's done? What if someone tells her about the Asset, about HYDRA, about the people it has killed?
What if she just... decides not to come back?
It wouldn't blame her.
10:49.
One minute.
Its breathing is getting faster. Shallow. The tightness in its chest is spreading, crawling up its throat, making its vision tunnel slightly at the edges.
She has to come back.
She has to.
Because without her, it doesn't know what it's supposed to do. Doesn't know where it's supposed to go. Doesn't know who it's supposed to be.
The handlers are gone. HYDRA is gone. Everything it was built for is rubble by the Potomac.
She's all it has left.
The only anchor point in a life of obeying, violence, and emptiness. The only person who's ever touched it without flinching. The only voice that's ever asked instead of ordered-
Except she did order. Told it to let her go.
And it complied.
Because that's what it does. It obeys. That's all it knows how to do.
But what if obeying was wrong this time? What if letting her leave means she doesn't come back, and it's sitting here alone in an empty apartment with no purpose and no-
10:51
The lock clicks.
Its head snaps toward the door, every muscle tense, its hand moving to grab a weapon that is not on him.
The handle turns, the door opens.
And she steps through, with a big plastic shopping bag in hand.
The relief is so overwhelming it's almost painful. The tightness in its chest releases all at once, and it has to grip the edge of the mattress to keep itself from lurching across the room toward her.
She came back.
She's here.
"Hey," she says, slightly breathless, closing the door behind her. "Sorry, the line was longer than I thought. But I got-"
She stops mid-sentence because Soldat is moving now, crossing the space between them in three long strides.
It doesn't know what it's doing. Just knows it needs to be closer, needs to confirm she's real and solid and not some hallucination its fractured mind conjured up.
Its arms wrap around her before it can stop itself, pulling her against its chest. The shopping bag crinkles between them, but it doesn't care. Just buries its face in her hair and breathes.
Brown sugar, yeast, and omega.
Real. Here. Safe.
"Alpha?" Her voice is muffled against its chest, surprised but not afraid. "Everything alright?"
It doesn't know how to answer that.
Doesn't know if "alright" is something it's capable of being. Just tightens its grip fractionally and tries to remember how to breathe.
She pulls back slightly in its grip, not trying to escape but making space to look up at it.
"I'm back," she says softly, one hand coming up to rest on its chest. "See? Just a few minutes."
It nods, still not trusting its voice.
She smiles, small and reassuring, then shifts the shopping bag between them. "Come on, let me show you what I got."
Its arms loosen reluctantly, letting her step back, and she moves to the bed, upending the bag onto the mattress. Fabric spills out. Gray, black, and dark blue. Soft-looking materials that don't resemble tactical gear at all.
"Okay," she says, organizing the pile. "I got you socks, boxers, a couple of long-sleeve shirts, and sweatpants. I didn't want to risk jeans because I wasn't totally sure about your size, and these will stretch more anyway."
It stares at the pile.
Normal clothes. The kind normal people wear. The kind it hasn't worn since… the thought fractures before it completes. It doesn't remember wearing anything except uniforms. Combat gear. Things designed for function, not comfort.
"And these," she continues, pulling out a pair of slide sandals. Cheap rubber things. "Just so you have something for your feet. I'll get you actual shoes when I can, but this is a start."
She looks up at it, expectantly. Waiting for some kind of response.
It doesn't know what to give her. Its gaze drops to the clothes again. They look soft. Warm. Like something a person would wear, not an asset.
"Try them on," she says gently. "See if they fit."
It reaches for the boxers first, then the sweatpants. The fabric is... strange. Fleece-lined, warm against its skin, nothing like the rough pants it's used to. The waistband has a drawstring. It tugs it tighter and ties it.
Then the shirt. Long sleeves, black, soft cotton that smells like store packaging and nothing else. It pulls it over its head, and the fabric feels like something foreign against his skin.
Not precisely uncomfortable, but different. It stands there, dressed like a normal person, and doesn't know what to do with its hands. Then, something white catches its eye on the floor. A piece of paper that must have fallen from the bag.
It bends down, picks it up.
The receipt.
Its eyes scan the numbers automatically. Line items. Prices. Total at the bottom.
$47.83.
The number feels like a dead weight.
It knows what things cost and the value of money. Has always had to know. Forty-seven dollars for clothes that don't deserve. Money that she probably doesn't have much of, given the size of this apartment.
The guilt is immediate and visceral.
She shouldn't have to spend money on it. Shouldn't have to take care of it. Shouldn't have to do any of this because it showed up uninvited and broke her life apart. Alphas don’t do that; alphas provide and fix, take care of their mate-
"Do they fit okay?"
Her voice pulls it back. It looks up from the receipt, and she's watching it with those warm eyes, head tilted slightly.
It nods.
"Good." She smiles. "You look-" She pauses, something shifting in her expression. "Good, alpha. Like an average person."
The words shouldn't hit as hard as they do.
Like a person.
Not an asset. Not a weapon. Not the Soldat.
Its throat feels tight. It looks back down at the receipt still clutched in its metal hand.
"Too much," it manages, voice rough. The words feel clumsy in its mouth, but it forces them out anyway. "Cost too much."
Her brow furrows. "What?"
It holds up the receipt. "The money. You... spent."
Her gaze fixes on him with something that looks almost like pain.
"Alpha," she says softly, crossing to it. Her hands come up to frame its face, thumbs brushing its cheekbones. "Don't. Don't do that. It's not too much. It's clothes. You need clothes."
It wants to argue. Wants to explain that it's not worth forty-seven dollars, not worth her time or money or care. She doesn’t know what it is, what it has done. That she should have screamed and fought him instead of letting it touch her.
But the words won't come.
Just the guilt, mixing with the relief that she came back, and the confusion of wearing soft civilian clothes that smell like nothing except fabric and detergent.
"You're worth it," she says, like she can read its thoughts. "Okay? You're worth it."
It doesn't believe her. But doesn’t have the heart to tell her.
----
She lets her hands drop from his face, giving him space to process, and turns her attention to her empty stomach.
"I don't know about you," she says, "but I'm starving. It's too late for breakfast, so we should probably just do lunch." She then moves toward the small kitchen area, opening the freezer. "I have some vareniki in here. They have ricotta inside."
When she glances back at him, his head is tilted slightly, brow furrowed. Like he's trying to grab onto something just out of reach.
"They're a kind of pasta," she explains, pulling out the package. "I buy them from this lady who makes them at home to order. They're really good."
He doesn't respond, just stands there looking lost.
She waits a beat, then realizes he's not going to tell her if he wants them or not. Can't tell her, maybe. The choice is too much, too open-ended.
"I think you'll like them," she says, deciding for him. "I'm going to make them with butter and some grated cheese. Okay?"
A nod. Small. Certain now that she's told him what's happening.
She fills a pot with water and sets it on the stove, turning the burner to high. While she waits for it to boil, she gathers the butter from the fridge and the cheese grater from the drawer.
She can feel his eyes on her.
When she turns, he's still standing exactly where she left him. Not at attention, but close. Back straight. Hands at his sides. Like he's waiting for orders.
"You can sit down," she offers, nodding toward the small table.
He moves immediately, pulling out a chair and sitting. But even seated, she can tell he is not relaxed or comfortable. Just... compliant.
She turns back to the stove, checking the water. Not boiling yet.
She glances over her shoulder again.
He's watching her. Not staring, exactly, but his gaze is fixed on what she's doing. Tracking her movements as she grates the cheese, watches the water, and adds salt.
There's something almost... analytical about it. Like he's cataloging every action, filing it away. Or maybe he just doesn't know what else to do.
"You okay over there?" she asks softly.
"Yes."
The answer is immediate. Automatic.
She's not sure she believes him, but she also doesn't know what else to ask.
The water finally boils, and she drops the vareniki in, stirring gently to keep them from sticking. They'll need about five minutes.
She turns to lean against the counter, facing him properly now.
He's still watching. Those pale blue eyes fixed on her with a focus that should probably make her uncomfortable, but doesn't.
"You can come closer if you want, alpha," she says. "I told you about sitting because I thought you would want to."
He stands immediately -too quickly- and crosses to her.
But he doesn't stop at a comfortable distance. He comes right up to her, close enough that she can feel his body heat, and just... stands there.
Watching.
She tilts her head up to look at him. "You want to see what I'm doing?"
A nod.
"Okay." She turns back to the stove, and he shifts with her, positioning himself slightly behind and to the side. Close enough that his arm brushes hers.
She stirs the vareniki, watching them bob in the boiling water. "They're almost done. They float when they're ready."
He doesn't say anything. Just watches. His presence is solid and warm beside her, and she can smell him now: clean, finally, underneath the faint scent of alpha that makes her inner omega content.
The pasta floats to the surface, and she fishes it out with a slotted spoon, draining it before transferring it to a serving plate with melted butter. He's still right there, watching every movement like this is the most fascinating thing he's ever seen.
Maybe it is.
The thought makes her chest ache.
"Go sit down," she says gently, nodding toward the table.
He moves immediately, pulling out a chair and settling into it with that same stiff posture.
She carries the serving plate to the table, setting it on a folded dish towel to protect the wood. Then she gets two regular plates and forks, setting one in front of him.
She serves him a generous portion. He's a big man, and she has no idea how much he eats. The vareniki gleam with butter as she arranges them on his plate, then sprinkles a generous amount of grated cheese over the top.
Then she serves herself and sits down across from him.
For a moment, they just... look at each other.
He's dressed. Clean. Fed. Safe.
Hers.
And she has absolutely no idea what she's doing.
"Go ahead," she says softly, picking up her fork. "Try it."
He picks up his fork and spears some food, bringing it to his mouth.
She watches him chew, his expression for any sign of reaction.
Nothing. Just methodical chewing. Swallowing.
Then he takes another bite. And another. Not desperate, but consistent. Like eating is just another task to complete.
"Do you like it?" she finally asks.
He pauses mid-bite, looks at her, then down at his plate. Like he's trying to determine if he's supposed to like it.
----
"Yes," he says finally.
It's the truth, as far as it can tell. The food is... good. Warm. The cheese is salty, the butter rich, the pasta soft in a way that's completely different from field rations or the nutrient paste they sometimes fed it through a tube to save time during mission prep.
It doesn't remember the last time it ate something that wasn't designed purely for function. Something that had flavor beyond the metallic tang of whatever vitamins they pumped into its system.
It likes this.
But the words to express that don't come. No one has ever asked for its approval on anything, least of all something as mundane as food. Its preferences have never mattered. Its sustenance was just another logistical concern, handled efficiently and without consideration for comfort.
She nods and returns to her own plate, and it watches her take a bite, chew, swallow.
There's something in her expression. A flicker of something that might be disappointment, though it's not entirely sure it's reading her correctly.
Did it insult her?
The thought sends a spike of anxiety through it. She spent food reserves, and not even normal ones, but the kind she had to order specially, to cook for it. And all it could give her was a flat "yes".
It needs to fix this.
It picks up its fork and takes another bite. Faster this time. Then another.
The problem is that it's already full.
Its stomach has spent decades being fed the bare minimum to function. Caloric intake calculated to maintain muscle mass and operational capacity, nothing more. The portions have always been small, controlled, and its body adapted.
Three vareniki in, and it can feel the pressure in its abdomen. Uncomfortable and unfamiliar. But she cooked this. She made it for it, and not finishing would be… what? Ungrateful? Disrespectful? A waste of the money she spent on ingredients?
It can't do that to her.
It forces another bite down. Chews mechanically. Swallows past the growing discomfort. Then another, and keep going.
Even though its stomach is protesting. Even though each bite is getting harder to swallow. Even though every instinct that isn't about pleasing her is screaming to stop.
It's halfway through the plate when her voice cuts through its thoughts.
"Alpha."
Its head snaps up, fork frozen halfway to its mouth.
"I'm sorry," she says, and there's genuine apology in her voice. "I should have made more. I'm watching you eat, and I'm thinking you're going to still be hungry."
If she only knew.
It shakes its head immediately.
"Are you sure?" she presses with concern. "Because I can make something else if-"
"Da." The word slips out before it can stop it, but it corrects itself quickly. "Yes. I’m sure."
She studies it for a moment, like she's trying to determine if it's telling the truth, then nods slowly.
"Okay," she says. "But if you get hungry later, tell me. We have more food."
It nods, relieved. She's not going to make it keep eating. Not going to force more food on it. She's just... accepting its answer.
She returns to her own plate, and it oblige his body to keep swallowing. Once it finishes the plate, it isn’t sure what it is supposed to do now.
Wait for her to finish? Clear the table? Stand at attention?
The uncertainty must show on its face because she glances up.
"You can relax," she says gently. "You don't have to just sit there. If you want to get up, you can."
Permission again.
It doesn't move. Not because it doesn't want to, but because it doesn't know where to go or what to do.
So it stays. Hands in its lap now, fork set down. Watching her finish her meal.
----
She finishes her plate and stands, gathering the dishes. "I'll wash these real quick, and then we can watch something. Or just cuddle on the couch if you want. You look tired."
It nods because it doesn't know what else to do.
She moves to the sink, running the water, and it sits there listening to the domestic sounds of dishes clinking, water running, her humming softly under her breath.
Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
And then its stomach clenches.
Hard.
The discomfort it had been ignoring suddenly becomes impossible to ignore anymore. A sharp, twisting sensation that makes its breath catch.
It stands abruptly, and the chair scrapes against the floor.
Bathroom. It needs to get to the bathroom.
It moves quickly, but not quickly enough.
Halfway across the small space, its stomach rebels violently. It doubles over, and everything comes up splattering across the floor in a grotesque puddle.
No.
No.
It hears her footsteps, hears the sharp intake of breath, and the shame is immediate and devastating.
"Oh, hey- it's okay-"
She's there in a second, the mop bucket from beside the sink suddenly in front of it, and it grips the edges as another wave hits it.
More comes up. Its body convulsing, emptying itself while she holds the bucket steady.
The thoughts spiral:
Unacceptable. Weak.
It made a mess on her floor. Ruined the clean space she maintains. There's also vomit on the new clothes -it can feel the wet warmth on its shirt- clothes she spent money on, clothes it doesn't deserve, and now they're ruined too.
Pathetic. Can't even eat a normal meal without failing.
She made food. Went to the effort of cooking, of feeding it like it's worth the care, and it couldn't even keep it down. Couldn't perform this one simple biological function without making a spectacle of itself.
Seventy years as Hydra’s fist, and it can't even-
"Alpha, breathe," her voice cuts through the spiral. Soft. Steady. "Just breathe. It's okay."
It's not okay.
Nothing about this is okay.
Another heave, but nothing comes up this time. Just painful dry retching that makes its eyes water and its throat burn.
"That's it," she murmurs, one hand on its back now, rubbing slow circles. "Get it all out. Don't fight it."
It wants to pull away. Wants to hide. Wants to be anywhere but here, hunched over a bucket while she watches it fall apart over something as stupid as food. But it can't move. Can only grip the bucket and try to breathe through the shame that's threatening to drown it.
Another dry heave shakes its body, but nothing else comes up.
She keeps her hand on its back, steady and warm, and her voice stays calm. "Okay. I think you're done. Just breathe for me."
It tries. Shaky inhales that burn its raw throat. The bucket is still clutched in its hands like a lifeline.
"Let me take that," she says gently, tugging at the bucket.
It releases it reluctantly, and she sets it aside, out of the immediate splash zone.
Her eyes scan the floor, the mess, then back to it. There's no disgust in her expression or anger. Just concern.
"Are you okay?" she asks. "Does your stomach still hurt?"
It can't answer. Can't form words past the shame clogging its throat.
She frowns slightly, biting her lip. "Maybe the filling was off? Or..." Her hand comes up to touch its forehead, checking for fever. "Are you getting sick? Do you feel feverish?"
It shakes its head. No fever. Just failure.
"Okay," she says, clearly trying to figure this out. "Could be a bug. Or maybe the cheese didn't agree with you."
She doesn't know.
Doesn't realize it forced itself to keep eating. Doesn't understand that its stomach has been starved down to nothing for decades and can't handle normal portions anymore.
She's trying to find an explanation that makes sense -bad food, illness, anything- because the truth wouldn't occur to her.
That it's just broken.
"Come on," she says, helping it straighten up. "Let's get you cleaned up first, then I'll deal with the floor."
It looks down at itself. The new shirt has vomit splattered across the front. Dark wet stains that reek of bile and failure.
The shame intensifies.
"Alpha," she says softly, catching its gaze. "Stop. I can see you spiraling. It's just a shirt. It'll wash."
It's not just a shirt. It's the evidence of how completely useless it is. How it can't even be trusted with basic things like eating without fucking it up.
She guides it toward the bathroom, her hand gentle on its elbow. "Let's get this off you and rinse your mouth out."
It follows because it doesn't know what else to do.
In the bathroom, she helps it pull the soiled shirt over its head. The movement makes its stomach clench again, but there's nothing left to come up. She tosses the shirt in the sink and turns on the tap, rinsing it quickly before wringing it out.
"Here," she says, handing it a cup of water. "Rinse and spit. Your mouth has to taste awful."
It does. The water is cool, soothing against the burn in its throat. It rinses and spits into the sink, then rinses again.
"Better?" she asks.
A small nod.
She's watching it carefully, and it can see the wheels turning in her head. Trying to figure out what's wrong, why this happened.
She's not going to figure it out unless it tells her.
And it doesn't know how to tell her that it's fundamentally broken. That decades of abuse have left it unable to function in even the most basic ways.
"Go sit on the couch," she says gently. "I'm going to clean up the floor, and then I'll bring you some ginger ale or something, okay? Something gentle for your stomach."
It wants to argue. Wants to clean up its own mess, but she's already guiding it out of the bathroom, her hand firm but kind on its back.
"Go," she insists. "Sit down. Let me handle this."
So it does.
Because she told it to.
And obeying is all it knows how to do.
----
She works quickly, mechanically. Paper towels first to get the worst of it, then the mop with disinfectant.
Her mind is racing. She ate the same thing he did, but her stomach feels fine. No nausea. No cramping. Nothing.
So it's not food poisoning. Is he sick? Coming down with something?
But he doesn’t seem to have a fever. His skin was cool when she touched his forehead, maybe even a little cold.
So what is it?
She scrubs harder at the floor, frustration mixing with concern. She needs to fix this. Needs to figure out what's wrong so she can help him, but she doesn't have enough information.
And he's not going to tell her. Not because he's being difficult, but because he probably doesn't even know himself what's wrong.
Or worse, he knows and doesn't think he's allowed to say.
The thought makes her chest tight again.
She finishes with the floor, dumps the dirty water in the toilet, rinses the mop and bucket, and washes her hands thoroughly. Then she goes to her purse on the counter.
There's a small tin of mints in the side pocket. Cherry flavored. She pops one out and grabs a clean dish towel from the drawer.
When she enters the living area, he's exactly where she left him. Sitting on the couch. Shirtless. Back straight. Hands on his thighs.
Waiting.
His eyes track her as she approaches, and she can see it immediately, the distress. The smell of shame radiates off him in waves, even though his expression is carefully blank.
"Here," she says softly, holding out the mint. "For your mouth."
He takes it without question, placing it on his tongue.
She sits down next to him, close enough that their thighs touch, and drapes the dish towel across his bare chest.
"Just in case," she explains. "If you feel sick again."
He nods stiffly.
She shifts, tucking herself against his side, her head resting on his shoulder. One arm wraps around his waist, and she can feel how tense he is.
Like he's bracing for something.
"Alpha," she murmurs. "It's okay. You just got sick. It happens."
He doesn't respond.
She cuddles more against him and starts to purr.
Low and steady, the sound rumbling in her chest. It's instinctive, her omega nature trying to soothe her distressed alpha, trying to calm whatever storm is raging inside him.
She feels him go even more rigid for a moment, like he doesn't know what to do with the comfort she's offering.
Then, slowly, incrementally, he starts to relax.
His shoulder drops slightly. His breathing evens out. The tension in his frame bleeds away by degrees. But the distress doesn't fully leave. She can still smell it on him, acrid and sharp underneath his natural scent.
This isn't just about getting sick. She knows that instinctively, even if she doesn't understand why. This is... something else. Something significant enough to send him spiraling.
She keeps purring, keeps holding him, and wishes desperately that he could just tell her what's wrong.
But he can't. Or won't. Or doesn't know how.
So she does the only thing she can: stays close and purrs and hopes it's enough.
His arm comes up slowly, carefully, and wraps around her shoulders. Holding her against him like she's the only thing keeping him tethered.
"I've got you," she whispers against his chest. "Whatever it is, I've got you."
She feels him nod. Just barely.
And his grip on her tightens.
----
They stay like that for a while. She's not sure how long, but long enough that the mint has dissolved completely in his mouth. Long enough that his breathing has returned to something approaching normal.
He seems okay physically. No more nausea, no signs of fever or illness. Just that lingering tension that hasn't fully released, like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She understands now, in a way she didn't before, just how broken he is. How careful she's going to have to be. How slowly she'll need to move.
Their relationship didn't start with a conversation. It started with scents through a bakery vent. With biology and instinct, and something neither of them could control or explain.
Maybe that's where she needs to go back to. Not words, he doesn't have those, or can't access them, or doesn't trust them. But touch. Scent. The things that bypass language entirely.
Her hand slides up from his waist, tracing along his side. Up higher, to where the metal meets flesh. The scar tissue is thick, raised, and angry, even if it seems this was inflicted long ago.
She traces it gently, following the line where the metal bolted into living tissue.
"Does this hurt?" she asks softly.
"No."
His voice is rough but certain.
She nods and shifts, rising up slightly on the couch. Her lips press against the scarred tissue, feather-light. A kiss to the damage someone else inflicted.
His breath hitches.
It's subtle -just a small catch in his breathing- but she feels it. Feels the way his body goes very still under her mouth, like he's trying to process a sensation he doesn't have reference for.
She does it again, and this time, his exhale shakes.
And his scent shifts.
It's not dramatic, but it's there. The edge of distress that's been clinging to him since he got sick starts to fade, replaced by something warmer. Deeper.
Alpha.
Not the stressed, broken alpha smell. The real thing underneath. Leather and gunmetal and that bass note that makes her inner omega drool.
She keeps going. More kisses, tender and purposeful, mapping the border of his trauma with her mouth. Working her way across his shoulder, and with each press of her lips, his breathing gets a little heavier. A little less controlled.
The angle is awkward -she's twisted sideways on the couch, half-kneeling to reach him properly- so she shifts, swinging one leg over his thighs, settling into his lap so she can reach his shoulder, his neck, without straining.
The position puts them chest to chest, and she can feel it immediately, the way his breathing stutters when her weight settles fully on his thighs.
His hands come to her waist automatically. Steadying her. Holding her.
She presses kisses up the side of his neck now, following the line of his throat, and his pulse is racing under her lips now; she can feel it, fast and hard and alive. And his scent is getting stronger now, filling her lungs with every breath.
Her body responds before her mind catches up.
Warmth low in her belly. A flutter of arousal building between her legs. The beginning of slick, just a hint of wetness that has nothing to do with conscious thought.
She tries to ignore it. This isn't about sex. This is about comfort, about showing him that touch can be gentle, that-
A sound rumbles out of him.
Low. Subvocal. Vibrating against her lips where they're pressed to his throat, and she can feel it in her chest too, where they're pressed together.
He's purring.
The realization makes her still for half a second, and then she's moving again, drawn by instinct. Her mouth finds his scent gland, and she opens her lips against it.
Just a gentle press at first. Testing.
His whole body shudders beneath her.
Not a small tremor. A full-body shake that she feels everywhere they're touching, and the purr stutters, breaking into something rougher. More desperate.
His metal hand slides up from her waist to cup the back of her head. Not forcing, but holding her there. Like he needs this contact, needs her mouth on his gland more than he needs to breathe.
She seals her lips over it and sucks.
Gently. Carefully.
The reaction is immediate and devastating.
His scent explodes.
It floods her system -thick and overwhelming- hitting the back of her throat, her lungs, soaking into her skin. Leather and gunmetal and musk, and underneath it all, something that's just him, raw and unfiltered and so intense she feels dizzy with it.
Her vision blurs at the edges.
The hand on the back of her head tightens, metal fingers fisting carefully through her hair, and she can feel him trembling. Actually trembling, like he's coming apart under her mouth.
"Omega," he rasps, and his voice is wrecked. Barely recognizable.
The word sends a bolt of heat straight between her legs.
She's slick now. Properly slick. Can feel it coating her inner thighs, soaking through her underwear. Her body responding to his scent, to his need, to the broken way he's naming her like she's the only thing in the world that can fix him.
And maybe she is.
Her own breathing is getting ragged now. Her heart is pounding. The hand not holding his shoulder slides down to his chest, and she can feel his heart racing under her palm, matching hers beat for beat.
She sucks harder at his gland, and he makes a sound, broken and needy and so fucking desperate it makes her inner omega keen with the need to soothe, to provide, to give.
His hips shift beneath her. Just slightly. An involuntary rock upward, and that's when she feels it, his thick cock pressing against her through the thin fabric of his sweatpants, hardening with every second her mouth stays on his gland.
The friction sends a spark of pleasure through her, and she can't help the small roll of her hips in response. Seeking more of that pressure, more of that contact.
He groans against her hair, and the purr has morphed into something else now. Something between a purr and a growl, possessive and needy all at once, and it vibrates through both their chests where they're pressed together.
----
The kiss deepens, and the chaotic thoughts that have been spiraling since it threw upstart to fade, pushed aside by something stronger.
Instinct.
Alpha instinct that knows what to do even when its conscious mind doesn't. That knows how to touch her, how to hold her, how to make her feel good. This, at least, it can do.
This, it didn't fail at.
Her hips shift in its lap, grinding down, and the friction sends a bolt of heat straight through it. Its cock is fully hard now. Its hands slide down to her waist, gripping, and it can feel the softness of her through the thin fabric of her shirt. Warm. Yielding.
Omega. Mine.
She pulls back from the kiss just enough to catch her breath, her lips swollen and wet, and the sight makes its chest constrict.
"Alpha," she breathes, and the word is laced with need.
It can give her this.
Can make her feel good. Can use its body for something other than violence and destruction. Can be worthy of the care she's given it.
Its mouth finds her throat, licking over her scent gland, and she gasps. Her fingers tangle in its hair, pulling, and it growls softly against her skin.
The sound is possessive. Territorial. Pure alpha.
And she responds to it. Her hips rolling down harder, seeking friction, seeking it.
"Please," she whimpers, and that word -that desperate plea- flips every remaining switch in its brain from think to act.
Its hands slide under her shirt, palms against bare skin. She's so warm, so soft, and it can feel her pulse racing under its touch. It drags the fabric up and she helps, lifting her arms so it can pull the shirt over her head.
The shirt hits the floor, and it just stops and stares.
Its gaze drops to her breasts, and something primal and hungry coils in its gut.
Pretty. Perfect.
The thoughts are simple, base-level. No complex analysis, just pure aesthetic appreciation mixed with possessive satisfaction.
Mine. All mine.
Its metal hand comes up slowly, cupping one breast, and she shivers at the cool touch of the plates. The flesh hand mirrors it on the other side, warmer, and it just holds her for a moment. Learning the weight, the softness.
Then its thumbs brush over her nipples, watching them harden under the touch, and she makes a small sound that goes straight to its cock.
It wants its mouth there. Wants to taste.
It leans forward, closing the distance, and seals its lips around one nipple. Her hand flies to the back of its head, holding it there, and it sucks at the bud.
Her reaction is perfect. Back arching more, pushing her breast further into its mouth, a breathy moan escaping her throat.
It switches to the other side. Licking, sucking, feeling her nipple harden against its tongue, and her hips are moving restlessly in its lap now, grinding down shamelessly against its cock in a rhythm that's making it hard to think.
Need her. Need to be inside her.
It lifts her suddenly -hands gripping her ass, standing from the couch with her legs wrapped around its waist- and crosses to the bed in three strides.
The bed where it knotted her days ago. Where it learned what it felt like to be something other than it was. It lays her down carefully -always careful, because it could hurt her so easily- and follows her down, covering her body with its own.
She's reaching for it immediately, pulling it down into another kiss, and this one is hungrier. More desperate.
Its hands map her body with growing confidence. Over her sides, down to the waistband of her joggers. It hooks its fingers in the fabric and strips her swiftly -joggers and underwear gone in seconds- and then she's bare beneath it, legs falling open in invitation.
The scent of her arousal hits it like a drug. Sweet and thick and unmistakably omega.
Its mouth trails down her body -throat, collarbone, between her breasts- following instinct more than conscious thought. It pauses there, unable to resist, taking one nipple back into its mouth while its hand palms the other breast.
She whimpers, her hips lifting off the bed, seeking friction.
Lower.
It kisses down her stomach. Her hips.
And then between her thighs. It doesn't hesitate. Just buries its face between her legs and tastes.
Her reaction is immediate. Back arching off the bed, hand flying to its hair, a broken sound escaping her throat.
Good.
She feels good.
This is what alphas do. This is its purpose.
The thoughts are simple. Clear. No room for shame or failure or worthlessness.
Just its tongue on her clit, her taste flooding its mouth, her thighs shaking on either side of its head, and the sounds she's making that tell it it's doing this right.
For once in its miserable existence, it's doing something right.
And it's not going to stop until she falls apart.
Its tongue drags through her folds slowly, and her taste floods its system. Salt and sweet and omega, the slick coating its tongue, sliding down its throat.
She wants this. Wants it.
Its mouth seals around her clit and gives it a firm suck, and her hips buck up off the mattress. The hand in its hair tightens, pulling, and it growls against her, a deep, possessive sound that vibrates through her core.
She cries out, thighs trembling, and more slick floods out. It can smell it, thick and heavy in the air, mixing with its own scent until the entire room reeks of them.
Alpha and omega. Mated. Mine.
It pulls back just enough to look at her. Chest heaving, eyes glazed with need. It wants to remember this, wants to keep it when everything else is fractured and scattered.
Its fingers slide through her wetness, feeling how ready she is. How open. Her body yielding for it, welcoming it.
This isn't blind instinct anymore. It knows now. Learned her body those first frantic days: what makes her gasp, what makes her whimper, what makes her come apart completely.
And it plans to use every bit of that knowledge.
Because right now, making her feel good is the only thing it's certain of. The only thing it hasn't failed at.
Two fingers slide inside her, and she keens. Her back arches, head thrown back, and the scent of her arousal intensifies.
It watches her face as it curls its fingers, finding that spot inside that makes her whole body jolt. There. It strokes deliberately, and her thighs start to shake.
"Alpha-" Her voice is wrecked. Desperate. "Please-"
Begging.
Its omega is begging for it.
It is drunk with primal satisfaction.
Its mouth returns to her clit, tongue circling while its fingers work inside her. The dual sensation makes her cry out, hips rolling desperately against its face.
It can feel her tightening around its fingers. Getting close. Her slick is coating its hand now, running down its wrist, and the scent is so thick it's almost overwhelming.
Perfect.
She's perfect.
It sucks harder on her clit, fingers stroking faster, and her entire body goes rigid.
Then she shatters.
The sound she makes is broken and beautiful. Her walls clamp down on its fingers, pulsing, and fresh slick floods out as she comes.
It doesn't stop. Keeps licking, keeps stroking, drawing out her orgasm until she's trembling and oversensitive and trying to push its head away with shaking hands.
Only then does it pull back.
Its face is wet. Its hand is soaked. And its cock is so hard it hurts, straining against the sweatpants.
She's still panting, still trembling, but her eyes are on it now. Watching as it rises up on its knees between her spread thighs.
"Alpha," she breathes.
Its hands go to the waistband of the sweatpants. It shoves them down just enough to free its cock, and the relief of pressure is immediate.
It's leaking already. Has been since it first tasted her. The head is flushed and wet, and it wraps its flesh hand around the base, positioning itself. The head of its cock slides through her folds, coating itself in her slick, and they both groan at the contact.
Then it pushes inside.
Slow. Controlled. Watching her face for any sign of discomfort.
And then it realizes: this is the first time.
The first time it's taken her like this. Face to face. Looking at her while it pushes inside.
Those frantic days were different. Needed to mount her from behind, needed to claim and breed and lose itself in pure instinct. Couldn't think, couldn't see, could only feel.
But this is different.
It can see her face now. Can watch the way her mouth falls open as it sinks deeper. Can see her eyes flutter closed, then open again to meet its gaze. Can watch her head tip back slightly, throat exposed, as she tries to take all of it.
And it likes this.
Likes seeing the pleasure written across her face. Likes watching the exact moment when it bottoms out and her breath catches. Likes the way her hands come up to grip its shoulders, nails digging in slightly.
"Alpha," she breathes, and her voice is already wrecked.
It pulls back slowly, almost all the way out, just to watch her expression change. The loss registers on her face, a little furrow between her brows, her hips shifting up like she's trying to follow.
Then it pushes back in. Steady. Deep.
Her mouth opens in a gasp, and her head falls back against the pillow.
This. This is what it wants to remember. Not just the feeling -though fuck, the feeling is incredible, tight heat and slick and home- but the visual. Her face. The way she looks when it's inside her.
It does it again. Slow withdrawal, watching her react. Watching her body arch slightly, seeking. Then the slow push back in, filling her completely, and the way her eyes roll back slightly when it hits deep.
Its gaze drops lower. Watches where they're joined -its cock disappearing into her, slick coating the shaft- then up to her breasts.
They move with each thrust. Gentle sway, nipples still hard and wet from its mouth, and it can't look away.
Beautiful.
It wants to touch, but its hands are occupied -one braced beside her head, the other gripping her hip- so it just watches. Mesmerized by the movement, by the visual proof of what it's doing to her.
Making her body react. Making her shake and gasp and take its cock.
"Look at me," it rasps, and it's surprised by its own voice. The command in it.
Her eyes snap open, locking onto its.
And it moves.
Still slow. Still controlled. But purposeful now, each thrust measured and deliberate. Angling to hit that spot inside that makes her gasp.
But it's not enough. Not deep enough. It needs-
Its metal hand releases her hip and slides down, hooking behind her knee. It pushes her leg up and out, bending it toward her chest, opening her wider.
The angle change is immediate and devastating.
It sinks deeper -so much deeper- and she cries out, back arching off the bed.
"Fuck! Alpha-"
Yes. This.
It does it again, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in at this new angle, and the sound she makes is perfect. Broken and desperate and so full of pleasure it makes something fierce and possessive burn in its chest.
Its gaze drops again, watching its cock slide into her at this angle, watching her body stretch to take it, watching the way her breasts bounce with each harder thrust now that it's found the right position.
The visual is almost too much. Her leg pushed up, held in place by its metal hand, opening her completely. Her hands gripping the sheets, knuckles white.
Taking everything it's giving her.
Mine.
The thought is absolute. Possessive. This omega, spread open beneath it, taking its cock, making those perfect sounds… all mine.
It hooks her ankle over its shoulder, and its hand slides between them, finding her clit.
The reaction is immediate.
She clenches around it, walls fluttering, and her whole body tenses.
"Alpha-fuck-I can't-I'm-"
It circles her clit in time with its thrusts, watching her face the entire time. Watching her pleasure build. Watching her breasts move with each impact of its hips against hers. Watching her get closer and closer to the edge.
Its thumb presses down on her clit, and that's all it takes.
She breaks.
Clenching down hard, her back arching off the bed, a broken cry escaping her throat. It can feel the rhythmic pulse of her orgasm, feel the fresh gush of slick, and it feels so fucking good-
Its own control fractures.
The measured thrusts become harder, faster. It grips her hip and the back of her thigh, holding her in place while it drives into her, chasing its own release while she's still coming, still squeezing around it.
When it comes, it's with its eyes locked on her face, watching her watch it fall apart. Its hips jerk forward, driving deep, and it barely manages to keep its arms locked so it doesn't collapse its full weight onto her.
The pleasure rolls through in waves, each one making its cock pulse inside her, and it can't look away from her face. Can't stop watching the way she's looking at it, eyes heavy-lidded, satisfied, something soft in her expression that it doesn't have words for.
Its hips give a few more shallow thrusts, riding out the aftershocks, and then it stills. Panting. Overwhelmed.
It starts to shift, pulling back, preparing to roll to the side, and her arms immediately wrap around its neck.
"No," she says, breathless but firm. "Stay."
It freezes, uncertain. Its weight is resting on her. Not all of it, its forearms are still taking most of the load, but still. It's heavy.
Her legs lift, wrapping higher around its waist, and the message is crystal clear:
Don't move. Stay exactly where you are.
"Please," she adds, softer now. "Just... stay like this for a minute."
It doesn't understand why she'd want this. Why she'd want its weight pinning her down, its softening cock still buried inside her, its sweat-damp skin pressed against hers.
But she asked.
So it stays.
Carefully, it lets more of its weight settle onto her and she makes a small, satisfied sound. Her hands slide from its neck into its hair, fingers combing through the damp strands.
"Better," she whispers. Then- "You okay?" she asks quietly.
It nods. Then, because that feels insufficient: "Yes."
Her thumb brushes across its cheekbone. The touch is gentle, reverent, almost.
"You did so good," she murmurs. "Made me feel so good."
Good.
Its throat feels tight. It doesn't know what to say, how to respond, so it just... stays as it is, letting her hold it. Letting her touch its face, stroke its hair, murmur soft praise that it doesn't know how to accept but desperately needs.
The chaos in its head is quiet now. Not gone, probably never fully gone, but... manageable.
HYDRA is gone. The handlers are gone. The structure that told it when to move, when to eat, when to breathe… all of it, gone.
And somehow, that's more terrifying than any mission it was ever sent on.
"Alpha," she whispers after a while, when his breathing has fully settled. "I'm glad you came back home."
Home.
The word lands strangely. Foreign. It tries to process it and can't quite make it fit.
Not base. Not safehouse. Not operational location.
Home implies... permanence. Belonging. Things it doesn't know how to conceptualize beyond the pull of the bond that says mine, stay, protect.
Her fingers card through its hair, gentle and soothing.
"We're going to have to talk eventually," she says. "Really talk. I need to understand you, and you need to understand me.
It nods against her shoulder because she's right.
The bond is real, undeniable, biological, absolute. But she's also a person, with thoughts and history and a life it knows nothing about. And it is... what?
Not a person. Not really.
Except-
The scene surfaces suddenly in his mind. Sharp. Unwelcome.
The man on the bridge.
Who said a name like it should mean something. Like the Asset was someone worth calling by name. The memory -if it even is a memory and not a construct of his fried brain- is fragmentary. Unreliable. Could be nothing.
But it knows what she said is true.
Eventually, she's going to need more. Need answers it doesn't have. Need it to be something it doesn't know how to be.
And it's terrified of what could happen when it can't give her that-
"Alpha?" Her voice cuts through the spiral, soft and concerned. "Where did you go?"
It shakes its head against her shoulder.
She doesn't push. Just holds it tighter, one hand rubbing slow circles on its back. Careful, always careful, lets itself sink into the warmth of her body, the rhythm of her breathing, the beat of her heart on her throat.
The future is uncertain, terrifying. Full of questions it doesn't have answers to.
It doesn't have commands anymore.
Just her hands in its hair. Her voice saying stay. And the pull of the bond that bypasses every fractured synapse in its brain.
If you are the author of any of these and would like me to remove an entry or tag please lmk!
Please heed any warnings on the fics themselves, you are responsible for your own media consumption. Stay safe and take care!
This is (not) fine by @artficlly (NSFW)
Author's summary: Personal assistant rules: don't crush on Bucky Barnes. Definitely don't misinterpret a flower purchase and spiral into silent heartbreak, and absolutely never *ever* get stuck alone with him in an elevator.
His girls by @/artficlly
Author's summary: Alpine barely tolerates anyone but Bucky, so when she curls up in your lap without a second thought, the team is left reeling especially when it leads to the not-so-subtle revelation that you and Bucky have been sneaking around for months.
My heart went oops! by @myladybelle
Author's summary: You think you’re friends who occasionally kiss, but Bucky thinks the two of you have been exclusively dating for a while now. it only takes one post-mission debrief for the whole team to realise someone’s missed a memo.
Heart First, Sanity Later by @orellazalonia
Author's summary: You, a dangerously chaotic genius with the common sense of a soggy spoon, somehow captures the heart of Bucky Barnes. Despite the constant emotional whiplash, raccoon-related injuries, and deeply cursed inventions, Bucky finds himself falling hard... somewhere between a Capri Sun intervention robot and a vent related rescue.
Temple by @aquaticmercy
Author's Summary: Bucky Barnes is struggling to say 'I love you', so he says other things to make sure you know he cares.
Promise without ceremony by @cheekybarnes
Author's summary: Bucky Barnes gave up on marriage a long time ago. But then, somewhere deep in a storm-soaked safe house, he pulls a bullet from your leg and accidentally proposes in the process.
Bucky Barnes and back scratches by @heldbybarnes
Request: bucky barnes are back scratches? I know it's vague but I also know how amazing you are!
Sticky Confessions by @juniebjonesin
Author's summary: bucky moves into your spare room expecting nothing more than four walls and a place to sleep. instead, he finds floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, sticky note conversations, late-night takeout, and a girl who always puts herself last.
Creamy or Crunchy by @marvelstoriesepic
Author's summary: Bucky joins you grocery shopping to everyone's surprise.
The Pull of Gravity by @jamesbuckybarnesandnoble
Author's summary: Bucky and you get paired on missions and it's like knowing you were always meant to be, but he's shy and emotionally complex.
Sound Check by @/cheekybarnes
Author's summary: Bucky’s never been one for live music or crowded bars—but the first time he hears you sing, he’s ruined for anything else.
Whose Cat Is It Anyway? by @saltyjoy
Author's summary: For the longest time, you thought the cat roaming the tower wasn’t owned by anybody. Then you eventually realize that the “Tower Cat” does, in fact, have a name, and is owned by none other than Bucky Barnes himself, the one team member you aren’t exactly best friends with. After Bucky finds out that Alpine has become fond of you, he starts giving you odd looks and passive-aggressive comments. This leads you to the conclusion that he is jealous of you for taking his cat. However, as time goes on, you come to the realization that it might be the other way around.
The Domestic Clause by @vunblr
Author's summary: Bucky agrees to a discreet cleaning service to tend to his apartment while he’s away. He never expected the care of someone he’d never met to become the gentlest part of his daily life.
Sparks fly by @/mcrdvcks
Author's summary: You were Bucky's neighbor while he was a congressman and staying in New York. When Valentina announces them as the New Avengers, Bucky and the team go with him to pack up his apartment. But then you show up, calling him "James."
Stupidly Lovesick by @/saltyjoy
Author's summary: You want Bucky to be happy, even if that means it breaks your heart every time you see him with Natasha. With the aid of Steve, you two devise a series of plans in order to get them together. What you fail to realize is that Bucky and Natasha are simultaneously devising a series of plans to get you and Steve together, even if it pains Bucky.
"I'm not an easy person to love" by @firingstars
Request: Congratulations on reaching a thousand! Can I request: ♡ “i am not an easy person to love.” “i think i’ve got the hang of it.”
Incoming by @54nboo [multipart]
Author's summary: after two years of you talking into his ear, bucky meets the face behind the voice on the comms after a tricky mission.
Day After Tomorrow by @buckyarchives
Author's summary: enhanced hearing is both a blessing and a curse. eavesdropping, loud music, footsteps and when your sweet neighbor has been coughing her pretty head off all day.
Proof of return by @/cheekybarnes
Author's summary: You die and come back—every time. But when a mission pushes your limits and you don’t return right away, Bucky’s worst fear threatens to finally be true.
Five times he almost did by @/cheekybarnes
Author's summary: Five times Bucky didn't say 'I love you'—and one time he did.
He was chaos, he was revelry by @/mcrdvcks
Author's summary: Bucky tells you to go out and have a day at the mall and get whatever you want. When you only buy a $20 Squishmallow, he has to intervene.
Two sugars by @/mcrdvcks
Author's summary: As the Avengers team medic it's your job to take care of everyone. So why does Bucky feel like he gets special treatment? Surely a medic wouldn't know the exact way he likes his tea.
I hate it here by @/mcrdvcks
Author's summary: You meet Bucky at therapy where Dr. Raynor shares a small office with Dr. Cole. You two slowly connect over mystery books and coffee outings. Until one day you don't show up.
Not even a little by @intrepidacious
Author's summary: The problem of living with Bucky is that he makes it impossible not to fall in love with him. Even though you could list several hundred reasons why it’s a bad idea. And you have.
Right where you left me by @redemptive-truth
Author's summary: After accidentally slipping through a portal into an alternate Earth, she discovers that this world’s version of herself is dead—and that version of herself had an unexpected, mysterious bond with Bucky Barnes
