currently re-watching the entire Marvel cinematic universe and all I’m saying is people better start writing 2019 era marvel fics again and they better be on my desk in 2 to 3 business days
Like yes, I grew up in Hydra
yes I got injured and now Bruce is patching me up in the lab
yes Bucky just moved into the tower and he’s shy and has a crush on me
Bucky thinks you're too young for him, despite the fact that he's already half in love with you.
The first time James Buchanan Barnes looks at you too long, he nearly walks into a glass door.
Sam laughs so hard he wheezes.
“Man, that is embarrassing,” Sam Wilson says around his grin.
Bucky scowls at him, rubbing his shoulder where it clipped the frame. “Shut up.”
Sam’s eyes slide toward you across the compound gym.
You’re sitting cross-legged on the mat with Alpine sprawled in your lap, completely unaware of the catastrophe you’ve apparently caused. One of the recruits is talking your ear off while you nod politely, scratching behind the cat’s ears.
“You got it bad,” Sam says.
“I do not.”
“You walked into a door.”
“Poor design.”
Sam snorts. “Sure.”
Bucky ignores him. Mostly because there’s nothing he can say without sounding defensive.
Or worse.
Truthful.
Because the problem is this:
You’re too young.
Not immature. Not reckless. Not incapable.
Just young.
Young in the way sunlight is young. Like fresh starts and futures and people who still buy furniture instead of inheriting ghosts.
And Bucky—
Bucky is over a hundred years old with blood on his hands that will never come clean.
So no.
Absolutely not.
Not happening.
Unfortunately, his heart seems to have missed the memo.
You join the Avengers in the least dramatic way possible.
No alien invasions.
No secret prophecies.
No world-ending catastrophe.
You’re simply very, very good at your job.
You’re a trauma medic attached to a relief organization the Avengers occasionally partner with, and after patching up three agents, one diplomat, and Sam Wilson himself during a mission in Madripoor, Fury offers you a permanent position.
You say no.
Twice.
The third time, Pepper Potts calls personally.
By the fourth offer, you finally cave.
Which is how you end up living in the compound three floors beneath a supersoldier who actively avoids you.
At first, you assume he just doesn’t like people.
Natasha informs you otherwise.
“Oh, he likes people,” Natasha Romanoff says dryly over breakfast. “Just not many.”
You glance toward the empty seat Bucky abandoned the second you walked into the kitchen.
“…Did I offend him somehow?”
Natasha actually chokes on her coffee.
Across from her, Sam suddenly becomes deeply fascinated by his cereal.
“What?” you ask.
“Nothing,” Natasha says immediately.
“Absolutely nothing,” Sam agrees.
You narrow your eyes.
Neither elaborates.
You begin noticing things after that.
Little things.
Bucky always leaves the room when you enter it—but somehow your favorite tea always appears stocked in the kitchen.
You mention once that the compound hallways are freezing, and two days later there’s a thick knit blanket folded neatly outside your door with no note attached.
You complain about a stubborn cabinet hinge in your apartment.
The next morning it’s fixed.
No one admits responsibility.
But when you thank Bucky casually over dinner just to test a theory, he nearly inhales his drink.
“…Wasn’t me.”
You smile slowly.
“Okay.”
He stares at you like you’re dangerous.
Which is ridiculous.
You’re wearing bunny slippers.
The age gap becomes obvious one night during a movie marathon.
You, Sam, Peter, and Bucky are sprawled across the common room while some absurd eighties action movie plays on the screen.
Peter groans dramatically. “This CGI is awful.”
“It looked good at the time,” you argue.
Bucky turns his head.
“At the time?”
You freeze.
Sam bursts into laughter so violently he almost falls off the couch.
“Oh my God,” he gasps. “She thinks the eighties are ancient history.”
“They are ancient history,” you defend.
Bucky stares at you with something between horror and disbelief.
“You were born after the eighties?”
“…Yes?”
“The nineties?” he asks weakly.
“Yes.”
Peter pipes up helpfully. “She was born in 1998.”
Bucky looks like someone shot him.
You blink. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Sam says gleefully. “He is not.”
Bucky stands abruptly.
“I’m going for a walk.”
Sam loses it completely.
After that, Bucky avoids you harder.
Which would almost be impressive if he weren’t terrible at hiding the fact that he cares about you.
He watches you constantly.
Not in a creepy way.
In a protective way.
Like he’s making sure you’re breathing.
You catch it in fragments.
His eyes tracking you during missions.
His body subtly positioning between you and danger.
The way he relaxes when you laugh.
The way he goes still when someone touches you for too long.
You start understanding the truth before anyone says it aloud.
Bucky Barnes is in love with you.
And for some insane reason—
You’re falling for him too.
It happens slowly.
Then all at once.
You fall for his quietness first.
Most people assume silence means emptiness.
Bucky’s silence is full.
Heavy with observation. Care. Thoughtfulness.
He notices everything.
The exact way you take your coffee.
The songs you hum absentmindedly.
Which nightmares leave you restless.
You realize he starts leaving the compound gym earlier on mornings after you wake from bad dreams.
Like he’s trying to make breakfast before you get there.
Like feeding people is the only comfort he knows how to offer.
And God.
When he smiles?
Rare. Small. Crooked.
It feels precious.
Like discovering something hidden beneath ice.
The problem is that Bucky refuses to let anything happen between you.
The closer you get, the more distance he forces between you afterward.
You’ll spend hours talking on the roof at night—sharing stories and terrible coffee and quiet laughter—and then he’ll avoid you for three straight days.
It hurts more than you expect.
Because you know he feels it too.
One night, after a mission in Prague, you finally corner him.
He’s sitting alone in the hangar cleaning his weapons when you walk in.
“Did I do something wrong?”
His hands stop moving instantly.
“No.”
“Then why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not.”
You fold your arms.
He sighs.
“You shouldn’t be down here.”
“Bucky—”
“You should be out with people your own age.”
The words hit like cold water.
You stare at him.
“…What?”
He doesn’t look at you.
“You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
“And?”
“And I’m not…” He swallows hard. “I’m not someone you build a future with.”
Anger sparks sharp and immediate.
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
His jaw tightens.
“You think this is a joke?”
“I think you’re scared.”
That gets his attention.
Steel-blue eyes snap to yours.
“You don’t know what I am.”
“I know exactly what you are,” you fire back. “You’re kind. You’re loyal. You’re infuriatingly self-sacrificing. You bring me tea when I’m stressed and pretend you didn’t. You stay outside the medbay when I work late because you think I don’t notice.”
His expression fractures slightly.
“You deserve someone better.”
“No,” you say softly. “I deserve to choose.”
Silence stretches between you.
Raw.
Fragile.
Bucky looks wrecked by it.
By you.
“You don’t understand,” he whispers. “I remember too much.”
Your anger fades instantly.
Slowly, carefully, you walk toward him.
He goes perfectly still.
“I know,” you say gently.
“You’re twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-eight.”
“That’s not helping.”
Despite everything, you laugh quietly.
His eyes close briefly like the sound physically affects him.
“You’re gonna wake up one day,” he says roughly, “and realize you wasted your life on an old man with too many ghosts.”
You crouch in front of him.
“James.”
He looks at you helplessly.
“You are not hard to love.”
Something inside him breaks.
You see it happen in real time.
Like a wall finally cracking after decades under pressure.
His metal hand flexes once.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to believe you.”
Your heart aches.
So you do the only thing that feels right.
You take his hand.
Both of them.
Flesh and metal.
Equally.
“I mean it.”
Bucky stares at your joined hands like he’s never seen anything so devastating.
Then he pulls away.
Not harshly.
Worse.
Carefully.
Like it costs him everything.
“I can’t.”
And he leaves.
You cry exactly once about it.
Natasha finds you sitting on the kitchen counter at two in the morning eating dry cereal from the box.
“You look terrible,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She takes the cereal from you.
“…He said no?”
You nod miserably.
Natasha sighs the sigh of someone deeply exhausted by male stupidity.
“He loves you.”
“I know.”
“Unfortunately, he’s also an idiot.”
A startled laugh escapes you.
Natasha bumps your shoulder lightly.
“Give him time.”
Time, unfortunately, turns out to involve disaster.
Because of course it does.
This is the Avengers.
Nothing emotionally significant can happen without explosions.
The mission in Bucharest goes sideways fast.
An arms deal.
Bad intel.
Too many hostiles.
You’re there strictly as medical support, tucked safely in the quinjet several blocks away.
At least, that’s the plan.
Then the building collapses.
Your comms erupt with shouting.
“Medic down—”
“—need extraction—”
“Where’s Barnes?”
Dust fills the air.
You’re dragged from the wreckage half-conscious with blood running down your temple and your left leg trapped beneath concrete.
And then Bucky arrives.
You’ve seen the Winter Soldier before.
Cold.
Efficient.
Terrifying.
But this?
This is different.
This is rage.
Pure, horrifying rage.
He tears through debris with his metal arm like the rubble personally offended him.
Someone tries to stop him.
That person immediately regrets it.
“BUCKY—” Sam shouts.
Bucky ignores everyone.
His eyes find you.
And you swear the entire world stills.
“Hey,” you whisper weakly.
He drops to his knees beside you.
Hands shaking.
Actually shaking.
“Don’t move,” he says, voice rough with panic.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
Your attempt at humor nearly destroys him.
You can see it.
Blood loss makes everything hazy, but one thing becomes crystal clear:
Bucky loves you so much it terrifies him.
He lifts the concrete slab like it weighs nothing.
The second you’re free, he gathers you against his chest.
Protective.
Desperate.
Your face presses against tactical gear and leather and the frantic pounding of his heart.
“You’re okay,” he mutters, like he’s trying to convince himself. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
His forehead rests briefly against your hair.
For one tiny moment, the world disappears.
No missions.
No history.
No fear.
Just him.
Just you.
Then your pain catches up.
You hiss sharply.
Bucky immediately pulls back. “Medbay. Now.”
The quinjet ride is chaos.
You fade in and out while Bruce works on your leg.
Bucky never leaves your side.
Not once.
At some point you wake to find him sitting beside your cot, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like he’s praying.
“You stayed,” you murmur.
His head snaps up instantly.
“Yeah.”
“You hate medbays.”
“I hate hospitals.”
“Still counts.”
A faint huff of laughter leaves him.
Relief flickers across his face just hearing you joke again.
You watch him quietly.
Disheveled hair.
Blood on his gloves.
Exhaustion carved into every line of his body.
And underneath it all—
Love.
So much love.
“Bucky.”
His eyes meet yours.
“Come here.”
He hesitates.
Then obeys.
You shift carefully, making room for him beside the cot.
“Doll—”
“Please.”
That word wrecks him every time.
He sits carefully beside you.
You lean into him immediately.
No hesitation.
His entire body locks up.
Then slowly—
Slowly—
He wraps an arm around you.
Like holding you is both instinct and privilege.
You rest your head against his shoulder.
“I meant what I said before,” you whisper.
Silence.
Then quietly:
“I know.”
“You still think you’re too old for me?”
A long pause.
“…Yeah.”
You snort softly.
He looks offended.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” You tilt your head back to look at him. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’re using age because it’s easier than admitting you’re scared someone might actually love you enough to stay.”
Bucky goes still.
Dead still.
The truth lands hard.
You see it.
And because apparently you enjoy emotional violence, you add gently:
“I think everyone leaves you eventually, and you’re trying to leave first.”
His breathing catches.
For a second you think he might walk away again.
Instead, he whispers:
“You make me want things.”
Your chest tightens painfully.
“What kind of things?”
“A home.” His voice is barely audible. “A future. Somethin’ normal.” He swallows hard. “Kids, maybe.”
Your eyes sting unexpectedly.
Bucky looks horrified he admitted that aloud.
“You’d be a good dad,” you say softly.
He laughs once.
Broken.
“No, sweetheart. I wouldn’t.”
“You already are.”
His brows pull together.
You smile faintly. “You take care of everyone. Especially the people you love.”
The word hangs there.
Love.
He doesn’t deny it this time.
Instead, he reaches up carefully and brushes hair away from your face.
His fingertips linger against your cheek.
Warm flesh hand.
Not the metal one.
Like he still thinks the other might hurt you.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispers.
Your heart pounds.
“Why would I do that?”
His eyes darken with emotion so intense it almost hurts to look at.
Then finally—
Finally—
He kisses you.
Soft at first.
Tentative.
Like he’s waiting for the world to punish him for wanting this.
But the second you kiss him back, everything changes.
His hand slides behind your neck.
He kisses like a man starved.
Like he’s been holding himself back for months and doesn’t know how to do it anymore.
It’s not frantic.
It’s worse.
Careful.
Reverent.
Every brush of his mouth says something he doesn’t know how to speak aloud.
You pull back breathless.
Bucky’s forehead drops against yours.
“I’m in so much trouble,” he mutters.
You laugh softly.
“Because you kissed me?”
“Because I’m never gonna stop wanting to do it again.”
Dating Bucky Barnes is surprisingly domestic.
You expect intensity.
Drama.
Brooding declarations in the rain.
Instead, you get:
Quiet mornings.
His hand at the small of your back.
Shared coffee.
Movie nights where he falls asleep with his head in your lap despite insisting supersoldiers “don’t nap.”
You get Alpine deciding you’re her favorite human.
You get Bucky standing in the kitchen at midnight making grilled cheese while listening to you ramble about terrible reality television.
You get a man who loves fiercely but carefully.
Like your happiness is something precious he’s been entrusted with.
The age gap still bothers him sometimes.
Usually in small ways.
Pop culture references.
Technology.
The occasional existential crisis when you tease him about being born before penicillin.
“You are never saying that sentence again,” he informs you gravely.
You grin. “You were literally alive during swing dancing.”
“So were old people in the nineties.”
“You are old people in the nineties.”
He glares.
Then kisses you to shut you up.
Which honestly feels like a win.
The real turning point comes six months later.
It’s after a mission.
A bad one.
You wake in the middle of the night to find Bucky sitting on the edge of the bed staring at nothing.
Nightmare.
You recognize the signs now.
Without speaking, you move closer and press against his back.
His shoulders tense briefly.
Then sag.
“You okay?” you whisper.
“No.”
Honest.
Always honest with you now.
You wrap your arms around his waist.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Long silence.
Then quietly:
“I saw you die.”
Your chest aches.
“In the dream?”
He nods once.
You press a kiss between his shoulder blades.
“I’m still here.”
“For now.”
The fear in his voice destroys you.
You turn him gently until he faces you.
“You know what’s really unfair?” you murmur.
“What?”
“You think loving you is a burden.”
His eyes flicker downward.
“But loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Emotion crashes across his face so openly it startles you.
You touch his jaw softly.
“I’m not going anywhere, James.”
And for the first time—
He believes you.
You can actually see it happen.
The shift.
The surrender.
His walls finally lowering completely.
Bucky pulls you into his lap and buries his face against your neck.
Holding you so tightly it feels instinctive.
Necessary.
“I love you,” he says roughly.
Not tentative.
Not fearful.
Certain.
“I love you too.”
He kisses you afterward like he finally understands he’s allowed to.
A year later, Sam finds Bucky in the compound kitchen staring at a jewelry website with naked panic.
Sam nearly drops his smoothie.
“Oh, this is serious.”
Bucky slams the laptop shut.
“Get out.”
Sam grins slowly. “You’re proposing.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re absolutely proposing.”
Bucky scowls.
Sam’s expression softens unexpectedly.
“You happy?”
Bucky glances toward the hallway where your laughter echoes faintly from another room.
His entire face changes.
Softens in a way that would probably terrify his enemies.
“Yeah,” he admits quietly. “Yeah, I am.”
He proposes on the roof.
No audience.
No elaborate setup.
Just the city lights below and cold evening air curling around both of you.
You’re rambling about something completely ridiculous when he interrupts suddenly:
“I wanna spend the rest of my life loving you.”
You blink.
“…What?”
Bucky looks nervous.
Actually nervous.
More nervous than when facing down armed mercenaries.
“I had this whole speech planned,” he mutters, frustrated. “Was supposed to be better than this.”
Your heart starts pounding.
He drops to one knee anyway.
“I know I’m older than you.”
You snort through sudden tears. “Slightly.”
“Brat.”
You grin shakily.
Bucky takes your hand carefully.
Reverently.
“But every good thing I have now started with you.” His voice roughens. “You made me believe I could still have a life after everything.”
Tears spill down your cheeks immediately.
“So yeah,” he says softly. “Marry me?”
You don’t even let him finish reaching for the ring box before you’re kissing him.
Bucky laughs against your mouth for the first time since you’ve known him.
Pure happiness.
Unrestrained.
“Yes?” he asks breathlessly.
“Yes.”
Again.
“Yes.”
He slides the ring onto your finger with shaking hands.
Then pulls you into his arms like he never intends to let go again.
Older Mentor!Leon Kennedy x DSO Agent!Reader Slowburn 🪻🌻🥀
❌18+ MDNI❌
Summary: You are in the deepest pits of the hell that is the friendzone. He's your co-worker, your mentor, 13 years older, and, to top it all off, you met when you were a teenager. Nothing could ever change the fact that Leon Kennedy saw you as a kid—not even your one-sided feelings you've had for him for nearly a decade... Or so it seems.
CW: Leon is 38 and reader is 25. They've met when she was 16, so do with that what you will. I obviously do not condone any of what happens in my fiction to be imitated IRL by anyone, but just to make it clear as a heads up: Leon has never felt any romantic attraction to reader while she was a minor (or even many years after that).
Note: Angst, fluff, and eventual smut. This is a slowburn and we're gonna make them work for it y'all. Also this is very RE core when it comes to stereotypical sci-fi action horror.
[“Grandpa?” Leon scoffs in mock offense as he takes the weapon, reloading it with a nonchalant precision that only comes with fifteen or so odd years of experience.
“Well, you insist on still calling me ‘kid,’ so, I shall retaliate. Just so you can feel how annoying it gets.”
“Yeah, except I’m not a grandpa. You, on the other hand, are a kid,” he smirks—way too smug—and then proceeds to walk past you...]
"Roost, Raven One here. I’m at the specified location. Come in.”
“...”
“Roost, this is Raven One. Over.”
“...”
“Roost? …Shit.”
The radio clicks when you turn it off, useless now that you’ve concluded there was truly no signal.
‘No wonder she couldn't reach him’, you think to yourself, readjusting your shoulder harness one more time before continuing to advance through the dark hallways of the underground facility. Some kind of abandoned military base from the time of God knows which war—your brain is too fried to try and figure it out.
It’s been a long day. Your cat woke you up way too early to feed him, you burned your toast for breakfast, missed your metro stop, and then proceeded to have the longest most tedious day of filing reports and answering emails. That was the life of a DSO agent outside of trauma-inducing missions: even more trauma in the form of clunky keyboards and multicolored paper clips.
But right before you were ready to call it a day and finally head home to enjoy some takeout and pass out on the couch, dear old Hunnigan came in with an emergency request—well, more like an order—telling you you need to join your favorite person in the world on his tedious mission after he’d gone MIA.
Leon S. Kennedy.
The one person you’re sure you’d sacrifice just about anything for just to keep around. Your DSO partner, your colleague, your mentor, your friend.
Hunnigan was breaking protocol—Leon wasn't gone for nearly long enough to deploy another agent to get him, and if he was, a team would be sent out rather than a lone person. But she had a hunch that things went to shit, and when Hunnigan has a hunch, you listen.
Especially when it’s about him. You don't take risks when it comes to him.
When you later arrived at the location of the last ping of his whereabouts, geared up with weapons you’re not cleared to take out, you were surprised to find two familiar faces who were coincidentally deployed to the same facility by a different group: the BSAA.
“Jill? Is that you?” you had asked confused when light caught the silhouette of Jill Valentine surrounded by still-warm bodies of fallen guards, blood staining her clothes. You would've been scared shitless if you didn't know and trust her already.
Jill’s eyes widened in surprise as she called out your name, “did Leon manage to call you?”
“No, but Hunnigan said he’s gone MIA and sent me to his last ping. I’m not exactly here on official terms… What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
“Well, look who joined the party,” a voice rang out behind Jill as Chris Redfield came in through a metal door.
“Chris? I take it you two are on a mission? What happened to Leon? Where is he?” you fired up questions as you already started to feel worry settle in your veins.
“He was supposed to go after Adams—the one responsible for this clusterfuck of BOW hell—while we were supposed to take out the incubating tanks. But that was hours ago and he’s made no contact since. Signal seems to be jammed around here,” Chris replied grimly, all traces of humor gone from his tone.
“We couldn't get through to reach the lab yet with all the bullshit we’ve encountered in this place, but destroying those tanks is still the priority if we don't want things to get even worse,” Jill added with an almost apologetic tone before placing a comforting hand on your shoulder, “hey… I’m sure he’s fine, he won't be taken down that easy. But since you're here to find him, just promise you won't do anything too reckless. And find us as soon as you can, I’m begging.”
Your jaw clenched in determination as you nodded, “I’ll meet you as soon as I’m able to locate him. You stay safe too.”
“Start with the west wing through that hallway. We haven't cleared that area yet and I’d guess that's where you’d find him,” Chris gestured to the corridor on your left, and that is all you needed to hear before you left them to go on your search.
You recall Chris's directions and Jill's reassurances as you keep the grip on your gun steady. Walking with quick, measured, steps you try to keep yourself from being detected by roaming guards. Lucky for you they are few and far between, probably thanks to the two agents giving them a hard time and keeping them busy.
You search through the west wing, going through door after door, and ,after subduing a standing guard near a set of double doors silently, you find what looks like prison cells.
Ah. Typical.
As you shine your flashlight through each cell, heart racing from adrenaline, you find yourself hoping—praying—that if you do find him here, he’s somehow still okay.
And the universe delivers, because when the LED’s beam reveals a familiar silhouette in the far end cell, you hear yourself let out a sigh of relief at the sight of him, all limbs attached, and breathing. Bound, gagged, and unconscious on the floor, but breathing.
You direct the light’s direction upwards to see the hinges more clearly and notice bulky rusted door pins. It’s a wonder he’s being kept in such an old place, it means all you have to do is jam away those pins and get the door to unhinge, you’ll just have to use some brutal force and hope no one’s nearby to hear it.
With your trusted knife and more than a little elbow grease, you manage to complete the task, but not without scraping your arm on the rusty door in the process. You’ll have to get a tetanus shot. Again.
The ruckus of the metal gate being pushed and prodded somehow did not wake Leon who’s still unconscious when you come to crouch beside him, removing the cloth gagging him. Your heart aches at the sight of the bruises on his cheeks, and even more so when you lift his eyelids to find pinpoint pupils, a sign of opioid sedation.
You don't waste anymore time. You take out the naloxone from the small medical pouch stripped to your hip, and you hastily bring it to his left nostril and press the plunger, releasing the mist into his airways. “Come on, Leon…” you plead.
A second later, his body jerks when he takes in a sharp gasp, eyes flying open as he’s jolted back into consciousness.
Gently grabbing his head to steady him, you speak softly to his confused state, “hey, hey, it’s me. You’re okay. I’m here.”
It takes him a minute before your words and his surroundings register, blinking rapidly as his breathing evens out.
“What the hell are you doing here, kid?” he asks in a gruff tone as he sits up with a grunt.
You sigh. Because of course that's the first thing he asks.
“I’m here to save your ass, you know, like the capable agent and colleague I am?” you huff before circling around him to cut off the restraints on his wrists.
“You’re not supposed to be here. Did Ingrid send you?”
“Yes, because you’ve been MIA for hours, and clearly she was right to send me. You were overdosing."
Leon tsks stubbornly, “Chris and Jill are here, they would've gotten me out eventually. You didn't have to come.”
You stand up with another huff after freeing him and cross your arms as you look down at him with an exasperated look, “you know a thank you would be nice.”
“It’s not that I’m not grateful, it's that I know you probably broke protocol to get here and put yourself in danger. But fine. Thanks, kiddo.”
You purse your lips and look away, feeling the familiar frustration rising whenever he insists on treating you like some kind of fragile, clueless child. You hate that he still sees you the same as he did nine years ago when you first met. You were sixteen, a powerless teenager—a kid—and he has continued treating you like one nearly a decade later.
Noticing your scowling expression, Leon softens his tone when he extends a hand with a warm smile, “help me up?”
Rolling your eyes, you take his gloved hand in yours and pull him up to a standing position. However, you both quickly realize that may have been too soon post overdose reversal when he stumbles into you and your back hits the wall with his weight pressing on your body.
“Shit… Are you okay?” you ask worried, trying to deliberately ignore the way your heart skips a beat at the proximity, your hands reflexively moving to his biceps to help support him.
Leon’s breath tickles your neck before he pulls back enough to look down at you, one hand on the wall, the other on your shoulder, “yeah, sorry, just need a minute.”
You’re unable to maintain eye contact, feeling like your heart might stop, or you might do something stupid like look down at his lips and lean in for a kiss—
Get it together.
Leon catches your fleeting gaze, a ghost of an amused smile on his face when he squeezes your shoulder, “I am okay,” he murmurs reassuringly.
“I know."
Your answer is curt, even if you do relax a little bit at his reassurance. You know why he is reassuring you. He thinks you're nervous because you're worried for him—which you are—but you're mostly nervous because you've been in love with him since the day he saved you.
There isn't a day that passes by when you don't remember it. That afternoon, when you came home from high school, expecting to find your depressed dad lounging on the couch with a drink like he always did, everything changed when you instead heard groaning noises coming from the upper floor.
You had walked up the stairs with careful footsteps, calling out to your father with a shaky voice and your mind running a thousand miles a minute trying to figure out what the noise was. Nothing would have prepared you to find his standing corpse in the corner.
Unbeknownst to you, your father had turned into a cannibalistic monster after he didn't take the medication that kept his transformation at bay for the previous six years. Since he kept you in the dark about his military work and what he’d endured in Penamstan, you had no idea you’d ever come home to this one day.
It happened so fast, but you remember every second. One moment he was standing there, all gurgling noises and rotting flesh, and the next he lunged after you as soon as you called out a weak ‘dad?’
You never ran as fast as you did that day, your untrained legs carrying you through the house and back down the stairs, tripping on the last step with a thud but quickly scrambling back up for the front door and yanking it open.
He had been right on your tail, way too fast for something that’s supposed to be dead. You recall how your life flashed before your eyes—literally—when he grabbed the back of your hoodie as you got out on the front porch, pulling you for what you could have only guessed would be a generous bite to your neck.
That’s when a bullet whizzed past your head and hit him right between the eyes, sending your zombified father sprawling on the floor—actually dead this time.
And then, you looked up and your eyes met his.
Leon.
It was spring 2006, Leon was investigating the ex Mad Dogs unit members after deducing Jason was about to execute a bioterrorist attack. He thought questioning them would give him more information about Jason and his infection with a possibly mutated T-Virus.
Leon had quickly come to find out all the men of the defunct unit were dead by suicide, except for Jason and your father. So when he came to your home that day to talk to the latter, he came prepared to deal with the worst.
Unfortunately, his intuition proved to be right when just as he parked his car by the driveway and stepped out, a screaming girl came running out into the front yard with an infected closing in her.
Leon’s limbs moved on pure muscle memory when he withdrew his gun and shot the zombie right in the head, and then watched with a tense jaw as its blood splattered on the pavement, brains spilling on the floor.
That was the first time he felt grateful to having lost his parents as a kid. Because as harrowing as hearing the gunshots of the men that took their lives that night through the thin walls of his bedroom was, he’d still prefer that to having them turn into zombies who try to eat him, and then watch as they get put down like rabid dogs.
When you had fallen to your knees in sheer shock and horror, Leon did not hesitate to crouch by your side to tell you ‘you’re gonna be okay’. He couldn't help offering some kind of reassurance, even if he was aware of how hollow the words sounded to a girl who’d just lost her father in the most gruesome of ways possible.
But you believed him as you met his ice blues, his eyes so full of care you had no choice but to cling to his every word, and continued to do so ever since.
Another squeeze to your shoulder brings you back to the present moment, still leaning on the wall with him leaning on you.
“Don’t tell me I’m too heavy for you,” he quirks an eyebrow with a playful smile.
“Damn right, you’re too freaking heavy,” you respond in a grumble, poking his side—still not meeting his eyes.
“That means I need to train your ass some more, then. We can't have you slacking off, rookie,” he flicks your forehead with the hand that was on the wall.
You immediately scoff and shove him—carefully—off you, “I’m not a rookie anymore!”
Leon chuckles, swaying lightly before he finally regains a steady balance on his feet, “you’ll always be a rookie to me.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that clear enough,” you grumble under your breath before handing him a spare handgun, “come on, grandpa, we need to find Jill and Chris.”
“Grandpa?” Leon scoffs in mock offense as he takes the weapon, reloading it with a nonchalant precision that only comes with fifteen or so odd years of experience.
“Well, you insist on still calling me ‘kid,’ so, I shall retaliate. Just so you can feel how annoying it gets.”
“Yeah, except I’m not a grandpa. You, on the other hand, are a kid,” he smirks—way too smug—and then proceeds to walk past you, gun held firmly as he prepares to lead the way.
word count: 4.5k
based on this ask. dedicated to my love @starfly-nicole.
disclaimer: depictions of weapons, violence, alcohol, injuries, pain, insecurity, death (no occurrences).
a/n: I took this as an opportunity to mess around with some stylistic choices! I hope you all enjoy. I highly recommend listening to cigarettes after sex as you read.
~~~
it was quiet.
when Bucky wrapped his arm around your waist to keep you upright, unable to walk on your own, he did it without a word. he did not respond when you thanked him; there was no need for you to thank him.
he would always help you, no questions asked.
as he helped you walk through the darkness, each step evoking a pained wince from you, he became more and more worried. more aware of how much pain you were in, no matter how you tried to hide it. more concerned for your wellbeing, for how the injury you’d sustained to your leg was more likely to become infected the longer you went without tending to it.
“what is it?” you had asked him quietly when he quit walking. you tilted your head in his direction to gauge his expression, and found that his brow was furrowed as he looked down at your leg in contemplation.
“we’ve got a long ways to go,” he muttered, still pondering.
your voices were nothing but whispers amongst the loud chirping of crickets, all while you were surrounded by shrubbery that appeared simply as shadows all around you, barely illuminated by the moonlight.
“I’m alright,” you tried to reassure him, attempting to shift your weight as you stood in place. your arm that was wrapped around his shoulder held on tighter as you did so. once again, your face betrayed your attempt at downplaying the situation as the pain worsened with the movement.
“c’mere,” he told you, reaching his free arm out in your direction and stepping closer, if at all possible with his vibranium arm already clinging to you where he held your waist. “we’ll get back quicker if you let me carry you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Bucky,” you told him, and then his eyes met yours.
the world was so dimly lit, what little light there was floating through the air and landing perfectly on his face. you took in the sight of his chiseled jaw, his soft nose, and noted the way his expression seemingly mirrored that of a puppy. his eyes pled with you, pupils dilated larger than you had ever seen them thanks to the surrounding darkness.
you softly exhaled at the beautiful sight of him, the pain in your leg dissipating for a fraction of a second as a million impossible scenarios danced through your mind.
you watched his face crack, a hint of a smirk appearing as he told you, “you’re kind of slowing us down here. you know that, right?”
your eyes fell down your leg, and you let out a small laugh of your own. “suppose I am,” you acknowledged, although still hesitant to expect him to do you such a kindness.
it would be no skin off his back, easy as pie for a man with such inhuman strength. he was right. you were slowing the both of you down. you should let him carry you, return the both of you to safety quicker.
you knew what would happen the moment he lifted you into his arms. your mind would grow dizzy as you inhaled the scent of him near to you, every inch of your body growing hyperaware if you were to be pressed so closely to him. his hands would hold you tightly against his chest, and your head would threaten to rest against his shoulder in your exhaustion.
every sense in your body would be so overrun with him, you would forget how to breathe.
except you were tired to your very core. you could use the break.
“okay,” you whispered back to him, and he bent down, his flesh arm wrapping around the back of your knees and hoisting you off the ground. your free hand instantly moved to his shoulder, steadying yourself as your body recovered from its surprise at the change.
you kept your eyes down, maintaining your gaze on your injury. Bucky had wrapped his belt around your upper thigh above the wound and knotted his jacket around the cut to halt the bleeding.
you were more than lucky the knife had not hit your femoral artery.
you wondered what you would have done if you had bled out in front of him. would you have admitted to him how much you loved him as your last words, your last chance to get it off your chest? would you have held the words inside, taking them with you to the grave so as to not burden him with them?
the former would give you closure. one final confession as you slowly grew colder and fell asleep for good.
the latter would be kinder to him. keeping those feelings forever hidden so he would not have to carry them around with him, on top of the guilt he would harbor from knowing he could not save you.
you would surely cry softly but try to smile at him, assuring him that everything would be okay. that none of it was his fault. you would go to sleep, dreaming that his arms were wrapped around you because he loved you, not because you would never wake up again.
lucky for you, you had not bled out, and you were not in that situation. you were in pain, but you would live.
you longed to look up at his face as he navigated you along the path you had originally come that you could no longer remember. you kept your eyes down, looking at your wound as exhaustion set in. your head began to nod off every few minutes, the discomfort in your neck disturbing you every time.
you felt his arm adjust to bring his hand to the side of your head, gently pressing your cheek to his shoulder.
“rest,” he whispered to you. “I’ve got you.”
you began to respond, but all he heard was a soft murmur as sleep took you.
~~~
the next time your eyes opened, you found yourself laying on an awfully soft mattress. the safe house, you assumed.
you could not help but whine as the pain in your leg flared, and your hand immediately went to rub at it, still half-asleep.
“hang on,” you heard a voice call out to you. Bucky’s voice.
you forced your eyes open, looking out the window and recognizing that it was still dark out. you peered down at your leg to see it in the same state you had last left it in. little to no time had passed, you determined.
“I’m here,” he said, frantically running back into the room with an assortment of items to tend to your wound.
you did everything in your power to stop the tears from flowing down your cheeks as the pain grew worse as you woke.
“you’re okay,” he whispered to you as he sat down on the bed next to you. he took in the sight of your pained expression, the way you bit down on your lip as it trembled. your hands interlocked so tightly behind your head as you tried to hold it together. worse, the way you cried so quietly.
quiet. few sounds filled the air, the noise of crickets chirping away outside much more muted now. every movement he made resulted in an emanating shuffling noise that was amplified by the overwhelming silence in his ears.
your attempts at hiding your pain made his heart wilt.
“I need to get a better look,” he told you, placing his hand gently on your knee below the site of the injury.
you began nodding repeatedly, giving him silent permission to go ahead with what he was asking.
you wished that this was not the position you were in, that his deft fingers unbuttoning your pants were moving with the intention of something more tender than what was happening.
but that was not what was happening here.
as he carefully unwrapped the belt from above the wound and began to tug your jeans down your legs, you could not help but feel exposed. you wanted him to want to see you in this context, not to be doing it out of necessity.
necessity.
need.
not want.
one of your hands moved to the hem of your shirt, trying to tug it down as far as possible to cover yourself, as though that would somehow alleviate the embarrassment racing through your whole body.
as though it would make you feel less exposed and less saddened by the reality you were living.
he tried to ignore how he once again felt his heart sink at the sight of you trying to cover yourself, reminding him of the situation at hand. you were trusting him to care for your injury, to help you in your vulnerable state. you most certainly had not given him permission to stare as the skin of your thighs was bared to him, and you most certainly would not approve of how his face warmed at the brief glimpse of you before him in your panties.
you were hurt, and his lovesick mind was distracted. longing. wishing.
he took a deep breath and reached for the bottle of tequila he had found buried in a cabinet, uncapping it and reaching it in your direction.
“here. drink,” he told you, to which you responded by firmly grasping the bottle and immediately downing a few large sips. in any other case, he would scold you. in that instant, though, he was almost tempted to tell you to keep going if it meant your pain would lessen.
when you handed the bottle back to him, he told you, “I’m sorry,” and began to pour the liquid over your wound.
you screamed out, your hand letting go of where it held your shirt in place and punching the wall at the mortifying sensation.
“I know, I’m sorry,” he said, wiping the wound clean with a spare towel and beginning to wrap your leg tightly.
“fuck, fuck, Bucky,” you whined as the pressure stirred the pain further.
he moved as quickly as possible, trying his best to clean you up as best he could until he could get you to safety and to a real doctor. he saw the way your hand was grabbing at the wall, the way you could not help the tears that fell.
“I’m here, I’m here,” he repeated, kicking everything else off the bed and laying by your side. he reached to brush your tears from your face, every one of your sobs cutting deep in his soul.
it should have been him in your place. you should not have been the one suffering.
you could not help yourself, could not stop yourself from turning to face him and wrapping your arms around him as the worst of the pain ran its course. he whispered softly in your ear and pulled you closer with a hand on your lower back, careful to ensure he did not disturb your leg.
even though the pain was all-consuming, you tried to let yourself enjoy this moment with Bucky. let yourself memorize what it felt like to have his body so close to yours, the feel of his warm breath on your ear as he gently soothed you with soft words.
unbeknownst to you, he did the same. even though the guilt ate at him, feeling like he was taking advantage of the fact that you were in pain and trusting him, he could not help but be glad that he was the one who was here for you.
it broke him that he could not do more for you. that you were in so much pain, and all he could do was hold you close.
he hoped that it might somehow help you, even though it most certainly did not hold the same significance to you that it did for him.
unbeknownst to him, it did.
as your body settled, he began to pull away from you.
“wait,” you protested, your voice hoarse from crying.
“I’ll come back, okay?” he assured you softly, looking at your face as you stared down at his chest, avoiding meeting his gaze. “promise.”
you let him go, your hands feeling stiff as they released their tight grip on his shirt. you watched him stand from the bed, collect the various items from the floor, and step out of the room.
the pain radiated through your leg and into your hip, your entire body aching. you tried to adjust, but every movement you made only managed to make it worse. the room was muggy, stifling hot, and yet you wanted nothing more than for Bucky to come back and hold you close.
as you reached to yank your jeans from your knees, he finally returned. “let me do that,” he protested, noticing the wince on your face as you bent down, trying to tug at the fabric.
you felt stupid, useless as he helped you remove your now-ruined pants. you laid back, embarrassed with yourself, and laid an arm over your eyes to try and mentally escape the humiliating situation you were in.
you felt safe with Bucky. you felt comfortable letting him see you in this state. except you hated how isolated it made you feel, being tended to by a man who saw you as nothing more than a colleague and a friend.
once again, the room was overtaken by silence.
you sat there, rubbing your temples as you sniffled, all out of tears. you turned away from him as he carefully folded the bloodied jeans and sat them at the foot of the bed, curling in on yourself and facing the wall.
you were hiding.
he watched as you faced away from him, shutting him out. he got the hint that you wanted him to leave you alone; he did not want to do that.
he did not want to walk away just yet. he did not want to leave you by yourself, did not want to walk away just to stay up all night worrying about you and use it as an excuse to come check up on you every fifteen minutes.
no, that was not going to happen.
you expected to hear the sound of him shuffling out of the room, maybe the sound of his voice bidding you a good night.
instead, you felt the weight shift on the bed beside you as he sat next to you once more. you turned your head behind you to see him there, rubbing at the speckles of dirt on his vibranium arm. he spoke up after a moment.
“did you let him stab you on purpose?”
what the hell? what on earth was he talking about, on purpose? you know better than that.
“absolutely not, Bucky! why would you even ask me that?”
he knew you were in pain, but he could not stand the sight of you turning away from him, of you shutting him out. he would sooner pick a fight with you than walk away without a word if it meant you might let him back in, just as you had done when you let him hold you.
he finally looked up from his hands to meet your eyeline, noticing the way your eyes were now angry.
that was all he had wanted from you, a reaction. anything to get you to look at him again. his jaw stuttered then, realizing his mistake.
“that’s– that’s not what I meant,” he said, trying to backtrack. he dug himself into a hole, shit, all because he could not handle the fact that maybe you were not in the mood to talk to him.
he did not care. he needed, nay, craved to hear your voice. whether to ensure you were okay, or for his own selfish reasons, it did not matter.
“then what did you mean?” you asked him, your tone of voice clearly reflecting your exasperation with him.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, reluctantly looking away from your eyes. “you scared the hell out of me, you know that?”
you took a beat to consider his words.
he continued, “you’re not… a few inches to the side, and it could have killed you.”
you knew that. of course you did. hearing him say it out loud, however, made it feel more real. the way he formulated the words so softly made it sound as though your death would be the end of his life, too.
how you wished he felt that way about you.
“I’m alive, Bucky,” you assured him. “I’m fine.”
“you haven’t even seen a doctor yet,” he protested, to which you scoffed.
“well, you’re a pretty good nurse, don’t you think?” you laughed.
you were the one near the brink of death, and yet, you were the one trying to wipe the frown off his face. his pouty little face… as much as it endeared you, and it made you want to kiss him more than anything, it hurt a part of your soul, the part that only ever wanted him to be happy.
the joke did not fall on deaf ears, and his adorable pouty face turned into a small smile.
“did the best I could,” he told you, and he finally looked back to your face. “you’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” you promised him. your leg still hurt like a bitch, but the small amount of alcohol in your system helped.
his concern for you made your heart warm, your stomach filling with butterflies that had no place making you feel so giddy in that moment.
you did not want him to leave. you could ask him to lay down with you, to hold you again, the way he did earlier. to wrap you in his strong arms, to treat you with nothing but tender, loving care and make you feel like you were special to him.
you could. you were hurt, and you did have the excuse. in the morning, you could pretend that the alcohol inhibited your judgement, that you were not thinking straight.
this was your chance to let yourself ask for something you may never get to have ever again.
“Bucky?” you whispered.
“yeah, doll?”
you wished he would not call you that. you wished it did not fall so naturally from his lips, as though he could get used to calling you by the pet name. you wished he meant it.
“I don’t want to be alone.”
with that, he saw his opportunity. to hold you close to his heart, to breathe you in.
maybe it would be enough to pretend that you were his, just for one night. more likely, however, it would make his longing heart hurt worse when he had to part from you come morning time.
knowing how much it would only hurt later did not matter. he could not say no to himself, could not say no to you.
he would never deny you anything. not you. ever.
so as he laid down behind you, resting a tentative arm around your waist, he let himself savor it. he tried not to think about what it would be like to shed his own clothes just to feel your skin against his.
his head felt fuzzy in a way he had not felt in so long, an enjoyable dizziness that he did not want to fight, did not want to walk away from.
“get some sleep,” he whispered to you, resisting the urge to bury his face in your hair. “you need it.”
what he did not know was that you intended on staying up as long as you could to simply exist in this moment with him. how you were willing to suffer through the pain just to revel in the feeling of him wrapped around you.
you both fell asleep sooner than you intended to.
~~~
waking up the next morning was a blessing and a curse.
your whole body was sweating from head to toe, with Bucky’s body heat seeping into your bones and boiling you from the inside out. the pain in your leg was searing, and as you felt heat bubbling at the site of your wound, you were concerned it was already infected. that you were done for, that you were going to go into septic shock and die–
no. it was not warm from infection. Bucky’s flesh hand somehow made its way to your thigh, resting atop the wrapping on the wound. he was a fucking human furnace.
it felt so deeply intimate, to have him close as he was. your deluded mind immediately went to places it should not have, telling you this was some unconscious sign, that it meant something more…
it was not, and it never would be.
“Bucky,” you whispered, beginning to shift, “wake up.”
as you continued to move in bed, he finally began to stir.
he did not even bat an eye when he woke up so close to you. “don’t,” he whispered, wrapping himself around you even further.
he is half asleep, you told yourself. this reaction is only human nature.
then his hand on your leg accidentally tightened its grip, and you sharply inhaled in pain with the irritation to your injury.
“fuck,” you winced, bringing a hand to your mouth, biting down on your knuckles to try and tamp down your response to the sudden increase in pain.
he jolted back in the same instant, realizing what just happened, startling awake.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean–”
“no, it’s fine,” you whimpered out, everything about your voice and your body language betraying your words.
“oh, baby–”
“don’t,” you screamed back at him, clutching at your leg. every part of you was overwhelmed and overstimulated; your feelings for him calling you ‘baby’ were the very last thing you needed to be worried about in that moment.
he went quiet behind you, unsure of how to respond. your shrill reprimand reminded him of his place, reminded him of reality: you did not love him, and he had no right to call you that.
you should not love him. he had just hurt you, regardless of the fact that it was unintentional. he was supposed to be taking care of you, doing everything in his power to help you feel better, and he still managed to hurt you.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to you, barely loud enough for your ears to pick up. “I’m sorry.”
the moment was gone, over. the facade was shattered, and it was all his own fault.
“I never should’ve let this happen,” he continued, louder this time.
“it’s not your fault,” you told him, forcing yourself to sit up even as your body told you not to. “what happened to asking me if I did this on purpose?” you said, trying to lighten the mood with a joke. of course, in the tense air between the two of you, it fell flat.
you glanced down at where he was still laying there.
“it is my fault. I should’ve protected you,” he said. his hand began to reach out to you, but it faltered. the last time he touched you, all he did was cause you agonizing pain, and he could not stand to do it again. “and… I just hurt you.”
you should not let him touch you, he thought, as you reached your hands to hold his where it hesitated mid-air. you should not trust him with your safety, he argued to himself, as your hands pressed his flesh back to the site of your wound.
“you didn’t mean to, Bucky,” you whispered to him. “and it’s not your job to protect me.”
he immediately scoffed in response. “of course it’s my job to protect you,” he said, as though the meaning of his words held little weight. as though the thought of him keeping you safe did not light up every nerve ending in your body.
“why do you say that?” you whispered to him.
he took a moment to consider his response, glancing down at where you pressed his hand to your thigh. he was still tensed up, hesitant to let down his guard, worried he would hurt you once more.
“it’s just the truth,” he acknowledged, letting his hand settle.
you sat there for a few moments, his thumb rubbing back and forth over the line where the covering on your wound connected with your skin.
“Bucky?”
“yeah, baby?” he said, his eyes quickly panning back to yours, only to drop away again at the realization that he unconsciously let the term slip once again. “shit, sorry. I know I shouldn’t– I know you don’t like that,” he continued, his voice growing quieter and his thumb stilling on your skin.
“it’s not that I don’t,” you responded instinctively, trying to wipe that sad look off his face. you could not stand the idea that you were the reason he was upset, that you had made him sad in some way. “it just… it puts ideas in my head.”
“what do you mean?” he mumbled, gazing back up at you once more. he still looked so broken.
it almost hurt more than your leg did to see that look on his face.
“it’s a pet name, Bucky. it has implications.”
“implications?”
“oh, come on. don’t play stupid,” you pled with him, laying back down. your hand still rested over his on your leg.
you were so close to him once more. he laid on his side, facing you, while you stared up at the ceiling.
“I know the implications,” he assured you.
that sounded awfully close to a confession to your deluded mind.
“then why do you still call me that? baby? doll? why?” you questioned, your resolve becoming shaky.
“because I can’t stop myself,” he whispered to you. “because I mean it.”
he knew that saying such things to you, in that moment, was wrong. you deserved so much better than him, a broken man who was only capable of inflicting pain on you and everyone around him. he knew you were in a vulnerable position, relying on him due to your injury, and springing this on you at this point in time was inconsiderate of him.
when he looked at you up close, watching the way your lips moved as they formulated your words, the way your eyes were so responsive when he spoke to you, he was enthralled. as the pet names spilled out without a second thought, he was too entranced to try and lie his way out of it.
before you could turn to look at him where his head laid next to yours on the pillow, he sat up and gently hovered his face above yours. he looked back and forth between your eyes, trying to read the responses that manifested so naturally in your gaze. “but if you want me to stop,” he swallowed, “I’ll stop. and I’ll leave you alone for good.”
you shook your head against the pillow. “no. don’t.”
he pulled his hand away from your leg to bring it to your cheek, looking over your face.
“implications and all?” he questioned.
“implications and all,” you said as a smile crossed your face, and you began to laugh softly.
he leaned down, pressing his lips to yours as you both softly smiled.
all that was left then was the two of you, together in that moment, savoring one another in the quiet.
~~~
likes, comments, and reblogs mean the world to me 🤍 hope you enjoyed!
ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ › 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.
ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ › roommate!bucky x female reader
ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ › roommates trope, post tfatws, sticky note communication, friends to lovers, roommates to lovers, slow burn, domestic fluff, many many hot dog mentions, anxiety, work stress/burnout, author has mini geek speak moments, anthropology reader, emotional intimacy, quiet romance, self-doubt, mild emotional hurt/comfort, sticky note love language, reader insecurity, loneliness, not beta read we die like men.
ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ › 11.3k
ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ › and they were roommates.... oh my god they were roommates
The number sits in his phone for three days before he uses it.
Three days of bad apartments and worse brokers. Places with paper-thin walls and windows that looked directly into brick. Places that smelled like mildew and old cigarettes. Places so expensive they made his jaw lock before the realtor even finished speaking.
He tells himself he's only looking because he has to. Not because he misses hearing another person in the next room. Not because going back to the apartment in Brooklyn every night feels too much like walking into a museum exhibit dedicated to a man he doesn't know how to be anymore.
Louisiana had almost made sense for a second.
He can still picture the dock at sunset, the water catching orange light, the sound of Sam's nephews shouting somewhere down the road. He can still hear Sam leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, pretending not to look too concerned.
“You could stay here for a while,” Sam had said.
“No.”
“You don't even gotta stay with me. The VA's offering assistance out here now. They can help you get your own place.”
“No.”
Sam had looked at him for a long second then, the kind of look people get right before they decide whether or not to push.
“You know, accepting help doesn't mean you're weak.”
Bucky had laughed once under his breath, sharp and humorless. “Not taking charity.”
“It ain't charity.”
“Feels like it.”
Sam had sighed through his nose, digging through a kitchen drawer before pulling out a scrap of paper with a number scribbled across it.
“I know somebody in New York. Friend of mine has a spare room.”
Bucky remembers immediately opening his mouth to refuse, Sam had beaten him to it.
“You won't be coddled or given the sugar treatment,” he said. “You'll pay rent, keep your mess clean, same as anywhere else. I bet you'll like it too.”
That had been the only reason Bucky took the number at all.
Now, three days later, he stares at it again from the edge of a too-small hotel bed in Queens. The room hums around him. Old air conditioner rattling in the window. Pipes knocking somewhere in the walls. The smell of industrial detergent trapped in the sheets.
He types the message before he can talk himself out of it.
Sam Wilson gave me your number. He said you had a room for rent.
The response comes less than ten minutes later, not much text, no small talk. Just a picture. The room is simple. Bigger than he expected. A bed frame without a mattress, a dresser by the wall, a window overlooking the street below. Hardwood floors. Clean lines. Nothing flashy.
Underneath the picture is the address and rent amount. Reasonable, more than reasonable, honestly.
Then another message.
He told me you'd message. If you're interested, you can come look at it tomorrow. I work late tonight.
What would probably seem forward to others Bucky sees as efficient, Sam's recommendation is starting to make sense now. The building is in Brooklyn, far enough from the center of everything to be quiet but not isolated. The brick outside is old, the kind that has survived decades without anybody bothering to make it prettier.
There is a sticky note taped to the front door when he gets there.
Spare key is under the plant. Let yourself in.
He stares at the note for a second longer than he needs to. Something about it feels strangely normal. The kind of thing people do when they trust that the world isn't always waiting to hurt them.
The apartment is quiet when he steps inside, his shoes echoing off the walls. It's not empty per say, just still.
There are a pair of sneakers and loafers by the door lined up neatly on a tray. A light jacket tossed over the back of the couch, s mug sitting in the sink, a blanket folded over the armrest like somebody had smoothed it down before rushing out the door.
The place is nice. Not too fancy, not overly cluttered. There are soft colors everywhere. Cream walls. Warm wood floors. A kitchen with magnets on the fridge and a bowl of fruit on the counter. It feels lived in in small ways, like somebody exists here just hardly.
The bedroom at the end of the hall is bigger than he expected. Master bedroom with a bathroom attached, an amenity he hadn't lived with in too many years to count. Enough room for his duffel bags and the few boxes he still carries from place to place without unpacking.
But it isn't the room that makes him stop.
It's the hallway.
Bookshelves run from floor to ceiling along both sides of it, turning the narrow stretch between the living room and bedrooms into something else entirely. There are hundreds of books. Maybe more. Old hardcovers with cracked spines. Paperbacks with folded corners. New glossy editions wedged beside books that look older than he is.
His eyes catch on familiar titles. The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Hobbit. A worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye sits crooked on a shelf near the middle. Some of the older books have faded cloth covers, titles nearly rubbed away with time. He reaches out before he can stop himself, fingertips brushing the spine of one that looks like it has been opened a hundred times.
It reassures him in a way he can't explain. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, he can picture himself somewhere without immediately wanting to leave.
He pulls his phone out.
Nice place. I'll take it if it's still up for offer.
The reply comes before he even reaches the kitchen.
It's all yours. Lease is on the kitchen counter. Bring your stuff in whenever. I won't be back until late again.
He looks over at the stack of papers sitting beside the fruit bowl. A little strange and fast, maybe. But he isn't complaining. The lease is simple. Month to month, rent due on the first. No smoking inside, clean up after yourself. No coffee grounds down the drain.
That last one almost makes him smile.
He signs his name at the bottom then he goes back downstairs to start bringing his things in. Which, after a century of life, turns out to be less than he thought it'd be. It only takes him three days to move in.
Three days of hauling boxes up narrow stairs and carrying duffel bags that feel heavier than they should. Three days of unpacking only half of his things because there isn't much point in settling too deeply into anywhere anymore.
He never sees you once.
The first night, he hears the front door unlock sometime after midnight, quiet footsteps, the soft rustle of a jacket being hung up. Cabinet doors opening and closing in the kitchen. He stands frozen in the doorway of his room for a second, listening.
Then he hears the bathroom door shut down the hall and waits for some awkward introduction that never comes. By the time he wakes up the next morning, you're gone again.
There is a sticky note on the fridge.
Working late all week. Feel free to use anything in the kitchen except the leftover Chinese food. Learned that lesson already.
He pulls the note off the fridge after reading it, folding it once before sticking it in the pocket of his sweatshirt without really knowing why.
The second note comes two days later, left beside the coffee maker.
Heading upstate for work tomorrow. Back Friday night.
Then another on the kitchen counter.
If the sink in the kitchen makes that awful screeching noise again, jiggle the cold water handle.
It's strange, living with someone he has never met.
You exist in pieces to him. A mug left drying by the sink, a pair of shoes by the door one night and gone again by morning, a blanket folded on the couch in a different way than he remembers leaving it.
The faint smell of shampoo lingering in the hallway bathroom after he knows you've been home.
Sometimes he catches the sound of you moving around at night. The creak of floorboards in the hall. The soft thud of something being set on the kitchen counter. Once, half asleep, he hears quiet music drifting from somewhere in the apartment before it disappears again.
You are becoming something blurry around the edges, more presence than person, a ghost.
Not that he's one to complain. The arrangement works and for the first few weeks, he mostly keeps to his room anyway. He gets used to the attached bathroom. The way the pipes knock whenever somebody runs hot water. The patch of afternoon sun that lands across the floor by the window around three o'clock every day.
He unpacks slowly. One shirt at a time, one book at a time. He leaves most of his things in boxes because it feels safer that way. Temporary. Like if he has to leave suddenly, he can.
He still goes out most nights, he doesn't cook much.
The kitchen feels too personal somehow, like crossing into territory that belongs more to you than him. So he eats at diners, cheap takeout places, little delis with too-bright lights and menus that haven't changed in twenty years.
Eventually he starts stopping at the same hot dog stand three blocks from the apartment. The guy who runs it is older. Loud, talks too much, calls everyone sweetheart regardless of age or gender. The first time Bucky goes there, the guy takes one look at him and says, “You look like you need two hot dogs and a nap.”
By the third visit, he doesn't even have to order.
“Mustard, onions, no kraut,” the guy says, already reaching for the buns. “And a Coke.”
“You're getting too comfortable,” Bucky tells him.
“You keep showing up, that's on you.”
He reminds Bucky of Sam if Sam were louder and somehow even more annoying.
The guy asks questions constantly.
You got a girl? No. Job? Sort of. Why do you always look like somebody just kicked your dog?
Bucky never answers half of them, still, he keeps coming back. Mostly because the hot dogs are decent. Partly because it is nice, sometimes, to have somebody expect you to show up somewhere.
Back at the apartment, another sticky note waits for him on the kitchen counter.
Sorry for basically haunting the place. Work has been insane lately.
He stares at it for a second, then longer than that. A ghost with good handwriting, at least now he knows you know it too.
The first time he sees you, it feels a little like walking into the wrong apartment.
He comes back later than usual, the city already washed in blue evening light, a paper tray from the hot dog stand balanced in one hand and a soda in the other. The apartment door sticks a little when he pushes it open.
He hears your voice before he sees you. It's soft, firm yet an edge of exhaustion to it.
“You can tell them whatever you want, but I'm not driving six hours for a meeting that could've been an email.”
He stops just inside the doorway.
You're standing by the living room windows with your back to him, one arm folded across your middle, phone tucked between your ear and shoulder.
For a second, he just stares. Because he had almost forgotten, not completely, but enough. Enough that your existence had turned into sticky notes and moving shadows in the hallway. Coffee mugs in the sink. A coat that appeared on the hook by the door and disappeared again before morning.
He had built you into something abstract in his head.
Not a real person.
Certainly not a woman.
Not because Sam had said otherwise. Sam hadn't said much at all.
Just because there had been nothing obvious about you in the apartment. No perfume bottles cluttering the bathroom counter. No makeup bags. No floral blankets or pastel throw pillows or whatever other lazy stereotypes his brain had apparently reached for without him realizing it.
The place is sparse, practical. Books and soft lighting and a single plant by the window that looks one missed watering away from death. He mentally scolds himself for the assumptions.
You don't turn around right away, you're still talking and Bucky begins to wonder if he should walk out. Keep to the ghostly sticky notes and mugs in the sink.
“Yeah, well, that's not my problem,” you say into the phone, quieter now. “I sent everything over already.”
Then your eyes flick toward the entryway. Toward him.
You freeze.
It happens so quickly he almost misses it. The slight widening of your eyes. The way your mouth parts for a second before you catch yourself. It's clear you hadn't expected to see him either.
“Hold on,” you murmur into the phone.
For a second, neither of you says anything.
You are not what he expected either. You're standing barefoot on the hardwood floor with your heels kicked off next to you, hair a little messy like you've been running your hands through it all day and a suitskirt that's been smoothed down one too many times.
There are tired shadows under your eyes that make you look… real. Not like the blurry version of you he'd made up from scraps. He realizes, distantly, that this is probably the first time you've really seen him too. Not just the sound of boots in the hallway or the evidence of him in the sink.
The metal arm. The size of him. The way he takes up space without meaning to.
You recover first.
“Sorry,” you say, pulling the phone away from your mouth. “I didn't know you were coming home.”
“Yeah.”Brilliant move.
You blink at him once, then glance down at the hot dog tray in his hand. “Hope that's not dinner.”
He looks down too. “It was the plan.”
You huff a laugh through your nose, small and tired. “You eat like a divorced dad.”
He doesn't know why that almost makes him smile. Into the phone, you say, “I have to call you back,” before hanging up without waiting for an answer.
The apartment goes quiet, not awkward exactly. Well it's a little awkward but it's more unfamiliar than anything. Up close, he notices things he couldn't piece together from the notes. You look younger than he expected. Softer too, somehow. Not fragile, just... warm around the edges, like somebody people trust without thinking about it.
“Sorry about that,” you say, gesturing vaguely with your phone. “Work call, you know. I, uh... didn't expect it to go like this.”
There's something awkward in the air still, that strange lingering feeling of two people trying to fit reality over the outline they'd already made of each other.
“Don't worry about it.”
You shift your phone into one hand and hold the other out toward him.
“I don't think we've actually been properly introduced.” You say, offering your name. He looks down at your hand for a second before taking it carefully.
“No. I don't think we have.” His hand slips from yours after only a moment. “I'm Bucky.”
“I know. I suppose that's mainly my fault.” You give him a small apologetic smile. “I'm sorry. My job is very… time demanding and that won't really be changing anytime soon. But I'm glad to meet you, Bucky.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Good to meet you too.”
Silence settles between you again, not uncomfortable, just unsure. Then both of you speak at once.
“So what do you do?”
“How are you liking the place?”
You stop. He stops.
“Sorry,” he says, motioning for you to go first.
“I was just asking how you're liking the place.” Your arms fold loosely over yourself again. “Have you settled in well?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nods once. “Place is great. Thank you.”
And it is.
He likes the quiet. The neighborhood. The bookshelves. The fact that the apartment feels like somewhere a person could stay for a while without being swallowed by it.
You smile a little at his answer. “Good.”
More silence, then you clear your throat slightly.
“And you? Were gonna say...?”
“Oh.” He glances down for a second like he'd forgotten his own question. “I was just wondering what you do... that's so...” He makes a vague motion with one hand. “Time demanding.”
“Oh. Right.” You shift your weight against the windowsill. “I work in the anthropology division at the American Museum of Natural History.”
He blinks once. “Wow.”
You laugh softly at the look on his face.
“That sounds awesome.”
“It used to be,” you say with a wry little smile. “Now it's mostly a thousand phone calls and endless trips upstate to deal with the collections.”
He leans back slightly against the doorframe.
“If you work down there, why live in Brooklyn?” he asks. “Nasty commute.”
You glance around the apartment like you haven't looked at it properly in a while.
“I got this place before I got that job,” you say. “And I liked it.” Then, quieter, “Still like it.”
Your eyes move briefly toward the hallway. Toward the bookshelves, the kitchen, the little corners of the apartment that feel soft even when no one's in them.
“That's actually why I wanted a roommate,” you admit. “I love this place, and I want it to be loved, but...” You shrug one shoulder. “I just don't have the time to do that.”
Something in his chest shifts a little at that, because he understands. More than he wants to. What it feels like to care about something and still not know how to be present for it.
“Well,” he says, voice quieter now, “I'll... I'll do my best.”
You smile then, not the tired, polite kind you've been giving him all evening. Something warmer. Something that catches him off guard a little, like maybe you believe him.
“I'm sorry I've basically been living here like some weird cryptid,” you say. “Work's been insane.”
“You leave good notes.”
The second the words leave his mouth, he wants them back.
Your eyebrows lift. “That's maybe the weirdest compliment I've ever gotten.”
You open your mouth, like you're about to say something else, then your phone rings. The sound cuts through the room sharply. You look down at the screen and make a face.
“Sorry,” you say, already answering it. “I have to take this.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
You offer him one last apologetic smile before turning and disappearing down the hallway toward your bedroom.
A second later he hears your door close softly, then your voice again through the wall. Professional, calm and little tired. He stands in the entryway for another minute after that, hot dog gone cold in his hand. The apartment feels different now, smaller somehow. Not because there is less space. Just because now, finally, you are real.
The apartment feels different after he meets you.
Not immediately and nothing dramatic.
You still leave before sunrise some mornings, slipping out with your bag over your shoulder and your hair still damp from the shower. You still come home long after dark, moving quietly through the apartment like you're trying not to wake someone even when he isn't asleep.
But now there is shape to your absence. Before, the apartment had just been quiet, now it feels empty. Bucky notices things he shouldn't. Whether your shoes are by the door, whether the light under your bedroom door is on.
The difference between the sound of the upstairs neighbors moving furniture and the sound of you dropping your keys onto the kitchen counter.
He lingers in the kitchen longer now too. Sometimes with coffee growing cold in his hands while he leans against the counter pretending not to listen for the front door. Sometimes he catches himself glancing toward the hallway whenever the building creaks.
You still leave notes. One waits for him on the fridge Tuesday morning, tucked beneath a magnet shaped like a pear.
Upstate again. Back Thursday night. There's soup in the fridge if it hasn't gone bad.
He stares at it for a second, then longer than that. Before he can overthink it, he grabs a pen from the junk drawer and flips the note over.
Soup is still alive. I think.
He leaves it on the counter and immediately regrets it. Wondering if it's too weird, or too familiar. But when he gets back from a walk later that night, the note is gone.
Thursday comes, then Thursday night. He is standing in the kitchen making coffee he doesn't need when he hears the front door unlock. You walk in looking exhausted. Hair messy, tote bag slipping off your shoulder, coat half falling down your arms.
You stop when you see him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Your eyes land on the counter and you laugh. It's quiet, tired around the edges, but real.
“Soup still alive?” you ask.
“Barely.”
You drop your bag onto a chair.
“Well.” You glance toward the fridge. “Soup can't technically expire if you're brave enough.”
Bucky blinks, you smile a little wider and something warm settles low in his chest.
After that, the notes become something else. Not just reminders but conversations. You leave one on the coffee maker.
Radiator makes weird banging noises around midnight. Ignore it unless it sounds haunted.
He leaves one by the fruit bowl the next morning.
Upstairs neighbors were fighting at 2 a.m. Pretty sure someone threw a lamp.
Another day:
Please water the plant by the window before it starts holding a grudge.
He forgets. Two days later, there is another note waiting beside the drooping leaves.
You had one job.
Bucky snorts to himself, then digs out a pen.
Sorry. It does kinda look like one bad day away from death.
You leave back:
So do I.
He folds that note into the pocket of his jacket and carries it around for three days. Slowly, without either of you meaning for it to happen, the notes stop being practical.
One afternoon he comes home to find one waiting by the sink.
New coffee filters are under the sink. Also, if you ate my leftover pad thai I forgive you because it was probably bad anyway.
He smiles before he can stop himself, then writes back underneath it.
Didn't eat it. Thought about it though.
The next morning there is another note sitting beside the coffee pot.
I appreciate your honesty in this difficult time.
And just like that, the apartment doesn't feel quite so empty anymore.
As great as everything else is, Bucky gets tired of hot dogs eventually.
Not completely. He still goes to the stand a few times a week, still listens to the guy behind the cart talk too loud and ask too many questions, but after a while the thought of another hot dog starts to make him feel vaguely ill.
So one night he cooks, nothing complicated. Just pasta.
Too much of it, because he has never quite figured out how to cook for one person and because some part of him has started thinking in twos without permission.
The apartment smells different afterward, warmer. Like garlic and tomato sauce and something softer underneath it.
He leaves you a bowl in the fridge with a note stuck to the top.
Made too much. There's pasta in the fridge if you want it.
You don't come home until after midnight. He's already in bed when he hears the faint sounds of you moving around in the kitchen.
The fridge opening, a plate clinking against the counter. Silence. Then the microwave.
The next morning, he wakes up to a note sitting beside the coffee maker.
This is the first non-takeout meal I've had in two weeks. Marry me?
He stares at it for an embarrassing amount of time. Long enough that his coffee goes cold. Long enough that he folds the note once, then again, before sliding it into the drawer beside his bed with the others.
After that, you start seeing each other more. Not on purpose exactly. Just in the little spaces between everything else. Six in the morning in the kitchen while the city outside is still gray and quiet.
You standing in one of his sweatshirts that got mixed up in the laundry over leggings, blinking sleepily into your coffee cup while he leans against the counter waiting for toast to pop up.
Passing each other in the hallway at night. Your shoulder brushing his as you move around each other in the narrow space between the dining room and kitchen.
Once, on a rainy Thursday, you both end up home at the same time. You sit on opposite ends of the couch, you with your laptop balanced on your knees, him with a book open in his lap.
The television hums quietly in the background, something neither of you is actually watching. At some point, without looking up from your screen, you stretch your legs out until your socked feet bump lightly against his thigh.
You don't move them away. Neither does he and slowly, you become easier around each other. You stop apologizing every time you leave dishes in the sink. He stops retreating to his room the second he hears you come home.
One night he brings back burgers and fries from a diner down the street.
You appear in the kitchen halfway through, hair damp from the shower, looking at his takeout bag like it personally offended you that he didn't ask if you wanted anything.
“Rude,” you say.
“You weren't home yet.”
“You could've texted.”
He tears the bag open and slides the fries toward you. You grin immediately and steal three before he even sits down.
“You're lucky you're cute,” he mutters.
You freeze for half a second, then keep eating like you didn't hear him. He fixes the sink handle one weekend after it starts making that awful screeching noise every time you turn it.
You come home to find him under the sink with a wrench in one hand and his sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing it.”
You lean in the doorway watching him for a second. “You know, normal people usually just call maintenance.”
“Normal people don't have metal arms.”
That makes you laugh. “Fair point.”
Then one evening he comes home and finds you asleep on the couch. The apartment is dark except for the lamp in the corner, there are papers everywhere. Open folders spread across the coffee table. A legal pad on the floor. Your laptop still glowing beside you, your glasses sit crooked on your face, one hand is still wrapped loosely around a pen.
You look exhausted. Like you've simply run out of steam halfway through existing. He stands there for a second longer than he means to, then quietly sets his keys down.
He grabs the blanket folded over the arm of the couch and drapes it carefully over you.
You stir a little, brows furrowing, but you don't wake up. His hand lingers for half a second near your shoulder before he pulls it back. Then he turns off the kitchen light and disappears down the hallway.
The next morning, the blanket is folded neatly over the back of the couch again. And beside the coffee maker, there is a note.
Thanks for the blanket.
Below it, in smaller handwriting:
That was very disgustingly nice of you.
A few nights later, Bucky wakes up thirsty. The apartment is dark except for the light over the stove.
He can hear pages turning before he even reaches the kitchen.
You're sitting at the table in one of your giant sweatshirts, laptop open, papers spread out around you in messy little stacks. There are sticky notes stuck to the edge of your screen, a half-drunk cup of coffee by your elbow, and your glasses are slipping down your nose again.
You don't notice him at first. Your mouth is moving slightly while you read through something under your breath.
He leans against the doorway. “Do you ever sleep?”
You jump a little in your seat, then you look up at him and huff out a tired laugh.
“Sometimes.”
“You sure?”
“Not particularly.”
He moves farther into the kitchen, grabbing a glass from the cabinet. “You know it's two in the morning, right?”
You glance down at your laptop clock. “Oh.”
“You didn't know?”
“I thought it was maybe midnight.”
He shakes his head a little as he fills his glass. “What are you even doing?”
You look down at the folders spread around you and for a second, you seem like you're deciding whether or not to tell him. Then you let out a breath.
“I'm… up for a promotion.”
Bucky looks over at you. “What kind?”
“A curator position.”
He leans back against the counter. “At the museum?”
You nod.
“In the anthropology division.” Your fingers start absently straightening the edge of one of your papers. “If I got it, I'd oversee acquisitions, exhibits, research trips. Most of the collections work too.”
As you talk, something about you changes, your shoulders loosen and your face softens. There is something brighter in your voice than he's heard before. You look almost younger like this, less tired, more like the version of you that exists underneath all the stress and late nights and rushed mornings.
“That sounds...” He shakes his head once. “That sounds awesome.”
“It would be.” You smile a little, staring down at your notes. “I mean, it would be everything.”
You glance around at the papers spread across the table. “I've wanted it for years.”
Then, just as quickly, you pull back from it. You shrug one shoulder like it doesn't matter as much as it clearly does.
“But it's probably unrealistic anyway.”
Bucky frowns. “Why?”
You laugh softly to yourself.
“Because you don't just get the job to be a curator at the American Museum of Natural History,” you say. “It's something holy that gets bestowed upon you with the anointed oil they gave Queen Elizabeth II.”
That gets a surprised laugh out of him. You smile faintly, but it doesn't quite reach your eyes.
“It's just wishful thinking,” you say quietly. “Then you die trying.”
He hates how fast you do that. How quickly you take something you want and turn it into something impossible before anyone else can.
He sets his glass down on the counter. “That sounds like exactly the kind of job you'd be good at.”
You look up at him, really look at him. Like you're waiting for the joke, but there isn't one.
“You know that, right?” he says. “The way you talk about it.”
Your expression shifts a little, because most people do not usually say things to you that plainly. You look down at your hands.
“I don't know,” you say after a second.
“Yeah, you do.”
The kitchen goes quiet, the radiator knocks somewhere in the wall. You sit there with your hands wrapped around your coffee cup, staring at him like he has said something far more important than he meant to.
Then you smile. “Thanks, Buck.”
And for some reason, it feels like being handed something fragile.
A few days later, Bucky finds himself standing in the hallway again.
It happens more often now. He'll be on his way to the kitchen or coming back from the shower and suddenly stop in front of the bookshelves like he forgot where he was going.
The shelves are uneven in places.
Some rows are organized by author, others by size or color or absolutely no logic at all. There are books stacked sideways on top of other books, faded bookmarks sticking out between pages, cracked spines and bent corners and little slips of paper tucked into random places.
It feels lived in, it feels like you.
He stands there for a minute, eyes tracing over the titles. Then he grabs a sticky note from the kitchen and presses it onto the edge of one of the shelves.
You actually read all of these?
He forgets about it after that. Until later that night when he gets home and notices something tucked into the spine of a book halfway down the shelf.
He pulls it free.
Used to. A lot. Some are mine, some were my dad's, some I found secondhand. I used to collect old editions too before work swallowed my entire personality.
He reads it twice. Then, without really meaning to, he starts paying closer attention. Not just to the titles, to the books themselves.
There are old clothbound covers with gold lettering worn thin at the edges. Tiny notes scribbled in pencil in the margins. Bookstore stamps from places all over the city. One copy of a novel has a dried flower pressed between the pages.
Some of them are old enough that even he remembers when they were new. One night he pauses in front of a shelf near the living room and pulls out a familiar green book.
The cover is faded, the spine is worn soft from use. He turns it over in his hands, then glances down at the copyright page. 1942. He stares for a second, then reaches for another sticky note.
You have a 1942 copy of The Hobbit.
The response is waiting for him when he wakes up the next morning, tucked beneath his coffee mug.
I know. Found it in a shop upstate for twenty dollars because the owner didn't know what he had. Second greatest moment of my life.
He smiles despite himself, and there is another note beneath it.
You can read whatever you want, by the way. And if there are books you like, you can add them.
He stands there in the kitchen holding that note a little longer than he should. Because nobody has said something like that to him in a very long time. To make yourself at home, that there's room for you here. It's such a small thing, just books, just shelves.
But it feels like more than that. That night he pulls one of the older novels from the shelf and reads half of it sitting on the couch while rain taps softly against the windows.
A few days later, when he finishes it, he leaves it on the coffee table. When he comes back from a walk the next morning, there is a sticky note tucked inside the front cover.
Well?
He snorts quietly to himself and grabs a pen.
Liked it. Ending was more depressing than I remember.
The next day:
That's because you have bad taste and no appreciation for tragedy.
He leaves another book out after that, then another. And you start leaving notes inside all of them. Little questions in the margins. Favorite character? Did you cry? Be honest, did you skip the boring parts? And without really realizing it, the shelves stop feeling like just yours.
They start feeling like something the two of you are building together.
One evening Bucky comes back from a walk and stops in the hallway without meaning to. Something looks different. It takes him a second to realize what it is. Wedged between two thick hardcovers near the end of the second shelf is one of his books, old and worn.
A history book about the forties that he'd unpacked weeks ago and left sitting on the edge of the end table next to the couch because he never knew where to put it. Now it's there between the others like it has always belonged.
Like you made room for it without asking. He reaches out and pulls it from the shelf. Inside the front cover, there's a sticky note with your handwriting:
Thought this looked lonely.
Something in his chest aches a little. Because it's such a small thing, nobody has made space for him somewhere in a very long time, but it shifts something inside of him. Something warm and soft blooming beneath his ribs as he slides the book back onto the shelf.
After that, you start spending more actual time together. Not just in passing, not just in notes and hallway conversations. Real time. He brings home takeout and the two of you end up sitting cross-legged on the living room floor because neither of you feels like cleaning off the coffee table.
You steal pieces of chicken off his plate. He lets you. You start walking to get coffee together on mornings you're both free, slow and sleepy and still half wrapped in hoodies.
Sometimes you don't talk much, sometimes you talk about everything. The museum. His nightmares. Books. Childhoods. Things that happened too long ago and things that happened yesterday.
One afternoon he comes back from the hot dog stand carrying two paper trays instead of one. You're in the kitchen when he gets home.
“You got me one?”
“You looked tired.”
You smile at him in a way that feels dangerous.
The hot dog guy notices eventually.
“Where's the pretty museum girl?” he asks one day while handing Bucky his usual order.
Bucky frowns. “Who?”
“The roommate you said you have.” The guy grins. “I wanna meet her.”
“No. Not happening.”
The guy laughs. “Oh, so that's what we're doing now.”
Bucky grabs the food and leaves before he can say anything else. You notice his mood immediately when he gets back.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Mm.”
You take the hot dog from his hand. “You have a very specific face when you're annoyed, you know.”
He mutters something under his breath that makes you smile. That night the two of you are sitting on the floor in front of the couch, books spread around you, some old movie playing in the background.
Bucky glances over at the shelf. “You said finding that copy of The Hobbit was the second greatest moment of your life.”
You look up from your book. “Yeah.”
“So what was the first?”
You smile immediately.
“There was this used bookstore in Queens,” you say. “I was seventeen. They had this old locked case near the register and inside was the first book from a vintage set of The Canterbury Tales.”
He watches your face change as you talk.
“The cover was all cracked leather and gold leaf and completely falling apart. It was beautiful.”
You tuck your legs up closer to yourself.
“I used all the money I had to buy it.”
“And then?”
“And then I spent the next ten years trying to find the rest.” You laugh softly. “That was kind of it. That was the start of the whole problem.”
“You found all of them?”
“Almost.” You shake your head. “Never found the last one.”
There's something quietly sad in the way you say it. Like it's less about the book and more about what it meant to give up looking. Bucky watches the way your face slowly changes, something in the edge of your eyes shifting until you're looking at the floor. It hurts, and it makes him think that he would do anything to see you smile.
In a weak attempt he pushes the last of his fries to you, claiming they're too salty for him. You both know they're not but the small quirk of the corner of your mouth makes it worth it. The rest of the night passes in between condiements and bubbled laughter at the QVC channel, listening in to the televised conversations like they're the next hit reality show.
After a few days Bucky notices the calendar in the kitchen. Not because he is looking for anything in particular. Just because he is waiting for the coffee to finish brewing and his eyes drift to the wall.
The square for next Thursday is crowded with your handwriting.
Your own birthday is written last. Small enough that it almost disappears between everything else. Something about that sits badly in his chest. Because of course it does. Because even on your birthday, you have managed to make yourself the least important thing on the list.
He knows immediately you're going to forget it.
And you do. The morning of, you're rushing around the apartment before sunrise with one shoe on and your phone wedged between your ear and shoulder.
“I already sent the file,” you say into the phone, trying to shove your arm through the sleeve of your coat. “No, I know, but if they wanted changes they should've said that yesterday—”
Your bag slips off your shoulder and your keys hit the floor making you curse under your breath. Bucky is standing in the kitchen holding a mug of coffee when he says it.
“Happy birthday.”
You stop and blink at him.
“Oh,” you say after a second. “Right.”
You laugh softly, but it sounds tired. “I completely forgot.”
Then the person on the phone says your name and you hurry out the door with a quick apology before he can say anything else. It bothers him more than it should because birthdays are supposed to mean something. Yours especially.
So after you leave, he decides to do something about it. He remembers the bakery on the corner had a strawberry shortcake in the display case. Just something small, nothing flashy, whipped cream and strawberries layered across the top.
It reminds him of you somehow. Soft-looking and sweet to the core. He buys candles too. Then he spends the rest of the afternoon searching for the perfect gift. It takes him a few blocks of wandering around to think of what to get, but when it hits him he knew he found his mission.
He spends hours going from used bookstore to used bookstore. By the sixth one, he's almost ready to give up. Then, in a dusty little shop that smells like old paper and mildew, he finds it. Old leather cover, gold embossing faded at the edges a slight water stain on the back. Perfect.
That night, the apartment is dark except for the kitchen light. Bucky stands awkwardly by the counter with the cake in front of him, candles lit, the wrapped gift sitting beside it.
He has no idea what he's doing. But there's no going back now.
The front door opens a little after ten. You walk in looking exhausted, shoulders slumped, shoes dragging. Your hair falling out of whatever messy attempt you made to keep it back this morning. You stop dead when you see him. Then the cake lit with candles, the small box beside it.
Bucky shrugs one shoulder like he suddenly regrets all of it.
“You forgot your birthday,” he says.
You stare at him for a second too long. Nobody has done something like this for you in a very long time. Maybe ever. You don't look like you know what to do with being cared for.
“Bucky...” is all you manage.
He gets flustered immediately.
“It's not a big deal,” he says quickly, motioning vaguely toward the cake. “I just...” He looks down for a second. “Figured somebody should celebrate you.”
The look on your face almost undoes him. You set your bag down slowly and walk over.
“You got me a cake?”
“Yeah.”
“With candles?”
He glances at the little crooked row of them.
“That's usually how birthdays work.”
You laugh then. A little watery around the edges. You walk farther into the kitchen like you're afraid if you move too quickly the whole thing will disappear.
The candles flicker softly between you.
“You didn't have to do this,” you say quietly.
“I know.”
“But you did anyway. Why?”
He doesn't know what to say to that. So he just shrugs again.
You look down at the cake then back up at him.
“Okay,” you say softly. “Then I guess I should make a wish.”
You lean down and hover there for just a moment, the golden glow of the flames casting a light across your face that highlights features he doesn't think he's ever seen. A small beauty mark tucked under your eyebrow, a slight jagged silver scar down the bridge of your nose. He'll never not see them now, a gift of his own he thinks. You close your eyes and hum quietly to yourself before letting out a short breath to blow out the candles.
The apartment goes dark for a second after the smoke curls up into the air. He flicks the stove light on, then Bucky reaches for the wrapped book beside him and holds it out awkwardly.
“And this is... also a thing.”
You blink. “You got me a present?”
“You don't have to sound so surprised.”
You take it from him carefully, with a growing smirk on your face. The paper crinkles softly beneath your fingers as you unwrap it. Then you go still. Completely still. He watches your eyes move over the cover. The old leather, the faded gold lettering.
Your fingers hover over it like you're afraid touching it too hard will make it disappear.
“The last one,” you whisper. Your voice sounds a little broken around the edges. “The last volume of The Canterbury Tales.”
Bucky shifts awkwardly on his feet as you look up at him. Your face is fallen with a joy he's never seen, as if he just hung the moon and painted the stars.
You shake your head in disbelief. “Where did you even—”
“Just found it.” He shrugs.
“Bucky.”
“Took a couple bookstores. Made a deal with the owner once I found it, he was an old history buff on WW2 so…” he admits.
You look up at him then. And there is something in your face he has never seen directed at him before. Something soft, something overwhelming as a clear line starts to well at your eyes. You clutch the book to your chest like you don't know what else to do with it.
"Thank you, Bucky," you whisper, shaky lip tucked betwen your teeth.
A warm silence blooms between you two and Bucky is stuck under your stare, watching the soft dialtion of your pupils. Entranced by them he didn't even notice you had gotten so close, not until he felt the gentle brush of your lips against his cheek.
Words have never failed him like now, stuck and jumbled in the back of his throat only to come out like a garbled hum.
“What'd you wish for?” Bucky asks abrutly as he starts pulling the candles out one by one.
You smile a little, wiping quickly beneath one eye.
“Can't tell you,” you say. “State secrets now.”
He snorts quietly and grabs two spoons from the drawer. You end up on the couch sharing the cake straight from the container, knees brushing every so often in the small space between you. The television is on, though neither of you is paying attention to it. You eat strawberries off the top first and work your way down and Bucky follows suit.
You stay on the couch long after the cake is gone.
The empty container sits forgotten on the coffee table, two spoons abandoned beside it. The book never leaves your lap. At some point, you curl your legs up beneath you and start telling him about the first time you found one of the volumes. How you were seventeen and awkward and had spent an hour pretending to browse because you were too nervous to ask the owner to unlock the glass case.
Bucky laughs.
“So you've always been weird about books.”
“That's rich coming from a hundred-year-old man who still reads history books for fun.”
“Those are different.”
“They're really not.”
You grin when you say it. That soft, sleepy grin he thinks he could spend years chasing. Eventually the conversation drifts. To old bookstores, to the hot dog guy, to Sam, then to terrible movies. You insist he has never properly experienced bad cinema until he has seen Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
He insists there is no way it can be as ridiculous as you are making it sound. Twenty minutes in, he realizes you were underselling it. By the middle of the movie, you're both laughing. Not polite little laughs either, real ones. The kind that make your stomach hurt and your eyes water and force you to pause because neither of you can hear the dialogue over the sound of the other person losing it.
He can't remember the last time he laughed like this.
By the time the movie is ending, your head is tipped against the back of the couch and your eyes are half closed.
He notices you fighting sleep before you do.
“You're falling asleep.”
“No, I'm not.” You yawn immediately after saying it.
He smiles. “You absolutely are.”
You make a soft noise of protest, but it doesn't have much conviction behind it.And a few minutes later, when he glances over again, you're out completely. Your head has tipped against his shoulder at some point, one hand still loosely wrapped around the book in your lap.
For a second, he just sits there. Listening to the sound of your breathing, the soft hum of the television, the city outside the windows. Then he carefully takes the book from your hands and sets it on the coffee table. He slips one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back.
You stir a little when he lifts you, brows furrowing for a second before you settle again against him.
“Buck?” you mumble sleepily.
“I got you.”
You make another quiet sound and let your head fall against his chest as he carries you down the hallway and into your room. The bedside lamp is still on, there are clothes draped over the chair in the corner and papers stacked haphazardly on your desk, everything is so utterly you.
He sets you down carefully on the bed and pulls the blankets up around you. You don't wake up, not really, you just shift a little beneath the covers and settle. He brushes a piece of hair back from your face and his hand lingers there for a second longer than it should.
Something overcomes him and he leans down, and presses a kiss to your forehead.
“Happy birthday,” he whispers.
As he walked out of you room he saw the book on the table, with a gentle hand he picked it up, brushing a thumb over the pages as he walks down the hall. The rest of the set is on the second highest shelf, lined up together. He slides in the last edition, eyeing the aligned spines with a ghost of a smile before walking off to his room.
The call comes on a Tuesday.
Bucky knows because you walk into the apartment looking vaguely shell-shocked, still clutching your phone in one hand.
You don't even make it all the way into the kitchen before blurting it out. “I got an interview.”
He looks up from where he's sitting at the table. “What?”
“For the curator position.” You blink at him like you still don't believe it yourself. “Next week.”
For a second, all he sees is the excitement on your face. Bright and hopeful, then it disappears almost as quickly as it came.
“Oh,” you say quietly. “Oh no.”
The spiral starts immediately after that. By the end of the week, the apartment is covered in notes. Practice questions taped to the bathroom mirror, flashcards on the kitchen counter, museum reports spread across the couch cushions.
You pace while talking to yourself, you stop sleeping, you definitely stop eating properly. The night before the interview, Bucky finds you sitting cross-legged on the living room floor in sweatpants and one of his old shirts, papers spread around you in uneven piles.
Your glasses are slipping down your nose and your hair is a mess. You look like you're about ten minutes away from a complete breakdown.
“You okay?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
“No,” you say immediately.
He sits down across from you. “What's wrong?”
You stare down at the papers in your lap. “What if I embarrass myself?”
“You won't.”
“What if they ask me something I don't know?”
“You'll know it.”
“What if I freeze?”
“You won't.”
You glare at him a little. “You don't know that.”
He leans back against the couch.
“I know you.”
That quiets you for a second.
Only for a second. Then you start rambling after that. About the anthropology wing. About acquisitions. About field research and exhibit planning and the exact kind of curator you would want to be if anyone ever actually gave you the chance. You talk about preserving history, about wanting people to care. About how every object in the museum used to belong to someone. How every piece of history was once just somebody's normal day.
Bucky listens every time. He listens while you talk yourself into circles. Listens while you explain all the reasons you think you aren't good enough for this.
“I didn't go to the right schools,” you say finally. “I don't know the right people. Everyone else interviewing for this is probably smarter than me and more qualified and—”
“They're gonna be lucky if they get you.”
You stop and the apartment goes quiet around you, scattered notes and pages from your journal fluttering in the air current. Bucky looks at you from across the floor, expression calm like he hasn't just said something that cracked you open right down the middle.
“You mean that?” you ask softly.
“Yeah.” He doesn't even hesitate. “I do.”
You stare at him for a second. Then you move before you can think too hard about it. You lean across the space between you and kiss him. It's quick and impulsive, your hand catches against his shoulder and your mouth brushes his once, soft and startled.
Then you freeze.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, pulling back immediately. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—”
Bucky cuts you off by kissing you again, this time slower. Deliberate. His hand comes up to cup your face and suddenly the whole world narrows down to the warmth of his mouth and the way he is holding you like you're something precious.
You melt into it, your hand tangles in the front of his shirt and a soft hum slipping past your lips against his as his thumb brushes softly along your cheek.
When you finally pull apart, both of you look a little stunned. Like neither of you knows what to do with the fact that this has been here all along.
“Okay,” you say softly.
“Okay,” he echoes.
After that, the air between you changes, not in some huge dramatic way. Just softer. He starts brushing his hand against your back when he passes you in the kitchen. You lean against his shoulder on the couch without thinking about it. He kisses your forehead when you leave for work. You steal his hoodies and stop pretending they're yours.
Sometimes you fall asleep together on the couch with the television still on and your legs tangled beneath the blanket. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Bucky realizes he's stopped thinking of the apartment as somewhere he lives.
Now it just feels like home.
Bucky tries to wake up before you the morning of the interview.
He fails.
By the time he walks into the kitchen, you're already there in nice clothes, standing in front of the coffee maker with your arms crossed and that thousand-yard stare people get right before something important. You look beautiful, terrified and a little bit sick. Your hair is done. Your makeup is subtle. There is a necklace at your throat he thinks he's seen maybe twice before.
You don't notice him at first. You're staring at the coffee pot like if you look away it'll stop working.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
You blink. “No.”
He smiles a little. “You're gonna do great.”
You snort quietly and reach for your mug. “You legally have to say that because you live with me.”
“No,” he says. “I have to say it because it's true.”
That makes you look down for a second as you take a sip of coffee.
“Still feels like I'm gonna throw up.”
“You'll throw up after,” he says. “Like a professional.”
That earns him a small laugh. By the time you're ready to leave, you're standing by the front door shoving things into your bag with shaky hands.
“Keys,” you mutter to yourself. “Wallet. Phone. Museum badge—”
“Hey.”
You look up. Bucky steps closer and reaches for the necklace at your throat.
“It's crooked.”
“Oh.”
His fingers brush softly against your skin as he straightens it and your breath catches a little. So does his. For a second, neither of you says anything. Then he leans down and kisses you. It's quick and soft but it leaves your cheeks warm when he pulls away.
“You got this,” he says.
You nod once then you're gone.
The whole day, Bucky is restless. He tells himself he isn't waiting for you but he definitely is. He tries reading, and ends up readin gthe same page three times. He almost goes to the hot dog stand twice. He paces around the apartment, reorganizes the fridge for no reason, checks the clock so many times it starts to feel personal.
By the time the front door finally opens that night, he looks up so fast it nearly gives him away. You walk in looking different immediately. Not upset exactly, just strange and quiet. Very quiet. Like your thoughts are somewhere else entirely.
He assumes that means you got it. That you're in shock, that you're already halfway out the door toward whatever comes next.
“Hey,” he says carefully from the couch. “How'd it go?”
You stop in the doorway. You still have your bag over your shoulder, coat still on. You look at him for a second before letting out a slow breath.
“I didn't get it.”
The words land strangely between you, it makes Bucky sits up a little straighter.
“Oh.”
You laugh softly, but there isn't much humor in it. “Yeah. They said they wanted to move in a different direction.”
He doesn't know what to say to that. Because he knows how badly you wanted it, knows how much time and sleep and pieces of yourself you've poured into this thing.
But then you shrug one shoulder.
“But...” You look down for a second. “They gave me a raise.”
He blinks, surpised. “Okay.”
“And they're opening a new assistant position to ‘lessen my workload.’”
That takes him a second to process.
“So...” He leans forward a little. “You still got something?”
“I guess.” You look exhausted more than anything. “I don't know if I'm supposed to be happy or devastated.”
Bucky nods slowly.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I get that.”
Because he does. Because sometimes life gives you something almost-good and you don't know what to do with that. He watches you for another second, then he stands.
“Come on.”
You look up. “What?”
“Let's go get hot dogs.”
You stare at him for a second. Then, finally, you smile.
“Okay.”
The hot dog guy takes one look at the two of you and immediately points his tongs in your direction.
“Uh oh,” he says. “This feels emotional.”
You laugh for the first time all day. Real laughter. Bucky feels something unclench in his chest at the sound of it.
“Don't encourage him,” he mutters.
“Too late,” the guy says. “I like her.”
Bucky rolls his eyes and you smile into your sleeve. He pays before you can argue about it, and when you open your mouth to protest, he just gives you a look.
“You had a bad day.”
“So?”
“So let me buy you a hot dog.”
You don't fight him after that.
On the walk back, you stop for ice cream too. Now you're both carrying melting cones down the sidewalk, the city quieter around you than usual. Streetlights glow gold against the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, somebody is playing music with their windows open.
It feels a little like being kids. Or maybe just people who don't know exactly where their lives are going yet. It warms your chest either way. You walk beside him in comfortable silence for a while.
“Hey, Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“You ever hear that whole ‘rejection is just redirection' thing?”
He glances over at you. “...No?”
You laugh softly under your breath. “It's just this thing people say.”
“Okay.” He nods once.
“But that's not what I was getting at.”
He waits as you look down at your ice cream for a second before looking back up at him.
“You know on my birthday you told me to make a wish?”
“Yeah?”
Your smile is smaller now.
"I think it just came true.”
He frowns a little. “You… wished to get passed up on the promotion?”
“No,” you say with a breath of laughter. “No.”
You look at him then, really look at him.
“I wished...” Your voice goes quiet. “That I could spend more time with you.”
Everything in him goes still.
The city. The sidewalk, the half-melted ice cream in his hand. All of it. For a second, neither of you moves. Then Bucky smiles, small at first then bigger.
He ducks his head, shaking it a little.
“State secrets, huh?” he teases softly.
You blush immediately. “Shut up.”
But you're smiling too. You slip your arm through his as you keep walking and Bucky thinks maybe this is what happiness feels like. Small and warm and a little sticky from melted ice cream.
A week later, you come home before sunset.
Bucky is in the kitchen making coffee when he hears the front door open.
“You're home early,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. You lean against the doorway with your bag still hanging off one shoulder.
“I know. Weird, right?”
He smiles a little. “You get fired?”
“Not yet.” You step farther into the kitchen. “I actually have tomorrow afternoon off.”
“Wow.”
“I know,” you say again. “I'm trying not to be overwhelmed by all the free time.”
He laughs quietly and you watch him for a second, seemingly contemplating.
“Do you wanna come by the museum?”
He looks up. “The museum?”
“Yeah.” You shrug one shoulder, suddenly looking a little shy about it. “I could show you around. My favorite exhibits and stuff.”
He tries to act casual. “Sure.”
But secretly, he's thrilled. Because this is your world. He's seen pieces of it before in papers spread across the table and half-finished stories told at two in the morning, but this is different. This is you handing him something important.
The next afternoon, he meets you outside the American Museum of Natural History.
You're waiting near the steps in your work clothes with your ID badge around your neck. You look different now, more awake than he has seen you in weeks, more comfortable.
Like this place fits around you in a way most things don't.
You smile the second you spot him.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
You take him inside to see the old fossils first. You tell him which dinosaur skeletons kids always lose their minds over and which exhibits people walk right past even though they're some of the coolest things in the building.
You talk with your hands when you're excited.
You move quickly from one thing to the next, almost tripping over your own thoughts because there is so much you want to show him.
“And this one,” you say, pointing toward an old display case, “people never pay attention to, but it's one of my favorites.”
Inside are old tools and worn pieces of pottery. Tiny, simple things. You tell him where they came from, who used them, how old they are. Every exhibit comes with a story.
Bucky spends half the time looking at the displays and the other half looking at you. Because you light up here. Your voice gets faster, your smile gets bigger, you stop apologizing for caring too much. It's the happiest he has ever seen you.
At one point, you take him into the giant blue whale room. The enormous whale hangs suspended overhead, casting soft shadows across the floor below. You tilt your head back to look up at it.
“Every museum employee has a designated crying-under-the-whale moment at least once,” you say.
Bucky looks over at you. “Yours probably happened after a meeting.”
You scoff. “No. Mine happened because somebody mislabeled a Bronze Age artifact.”
He laughs harder than he should an you grin.
“I'm serious. It was humiliating.”
“You cried over a label?”
“I care deeply about accuracy.”
“You're insane.”
“Maybe,” you say, smiling up at the whale. “But I'm right.”
He shakes his head, still laughing quietly, standing there beneath the whale with you smiling beside him, he thinks he has never seen anything more beautiful. Eventually, you take him into the Milky Way exhibit.
The room is dark and cool, lit only by thousands of projected stars stretching across the ceiling and walls. Soft bands of white and blue curve overhead, and everything echoes slightly. Your footsteps, his breathing, the sound of the door shutting quietly behind you.
You lead him to one of the benches in the center of the room and sit together. For a while, neither of you says anything. The quiet feels different here. Not empty but peaceful. Bucky leans back and looks up at the stars overhead.
They're beautiful.
But not as beautiful as the look on your face when you stare up at them.
“I used to come here when I first got the job,” you say softly.
He looks over at you, your eyes stay fixed on the ceiling.
“I'd get so stressed and overwhelmed and convinced I wasn't cut out for it.” You smile faintly to yourself. “So I'd come sit in here.”
You lean back a little farther against the bench.
“It helped me remember how small I am.” A pause. “How insignificant everything is.”
You glance over at him. He looks down at his hands for a second before looking back up.
“You're probably the most important thing...” He swallows a little. “To me.”
The room goes quiet again. You blush immediately and turn your face back toward the stars and Bucky does too. For a second. Then he looks back at you, the way the light from the projections catches in your eyes and across your face. It softens every edge of you.
You turn toward him slightly, feeling the gaze from him.
“It's pretty, huh?”
He smiles.
“Yeah...”
But he isn't looking at the stars, you realize after a second, and the mood shifts. Like all the air between you changes. He leans in first this time, a soft breath fans across your face before you meet him halfway. The kiss is slow and gentle, the kind that feels like something settling into place. Your hand finds his without thinking about it, his thumb brushes softly across your knuckles.
When he pulls back, you're both smiling a little and he looks up at the stars again, then back at you.
“What are you gonna do now?”
You blink. “With what?”
“No promotion on the horizon. New assistant to keep you free. What's the future have in hold now?”
You let out a quiet breath, thinking.
“You know,” you say, “I have no idea.”
You lean your head against his shoulder. “For as long as I've been doing this, all I've ever wanted was that job.”
He tilts his head lightly against yours. “What do you want now?”
You look up at him and smile softly.
“You.” Then, after a second, "and a hot dog.”
He laughs and the sound echoes quietly through the stars, you both lean into each other, and suddenly the future doesn't feel so frightening. Because whatever it looks like now, you'll be in it together.
pairing: avengers!bucky barnes x shield agent!reader
summary: when you're injured on a mission in sokovia, bucky barnes comes to help—and you share a soft moment together.
warnings: fluff and angst, hurt/comfort, mention of blood/injury, bucky barnes kills a man, protective bucky barnes
word count: 2k
a/n: day 30 of my 30 day writing trope challenge was "who did this to you," which i've technically written before (though for august walker) but i was excited for it all the same! i knew i wanted to write for bucky and had a couple ideas but ended up running with this one. not much here other than some hurt/comfort fluff, but i hope y'all enjoy!
-
Your scream pierced the night sky. Despite your best efforts to fend him off, your opponent’s knife had sliced a deep gash in the outside of your thigh. Though you managed to land a fist against his temple, sending him flying into a tree, your leg collapsed and you fell to the snow-covered ground.
You’d barely had time to check the cut and make sure it didn’t hit anything serious when a crashing sound from the woods beyond the clearing caught your attention. Bucky Barnes, in his full Winter Soldier getup, strapped with more weapons than a small army, raced into the clearing and caught sight of you on the ground. His blue eyes flared with fear and rage, a combination you’d never seen on the man before.
Bucky crunched through the snow, his black combat boots eating up ground faster than any normal human, but you noticed he’d lost some of his inhuman stealth, making more noise than you’d expect of the Winter Soldier. It was like he was being careless in his need to get to you. When he reached you, he dropped to the ground and began examining your wound. It occurred to you that you should be afraid to have the Winter Soldier so close, but you couldn’t find it in your heart to fear Bucky even after only knowing him a few weeks.
For a little under two months, you’d been assigned to the SHIELD team that acted as support for the Avengers. You’d moved into Avengers Tower, per your orders, even though you’d had a perfectly good apartment in Brooklyn. Maria Hill had told you Tony Stark insisted anyone working with the Avengers had to live in the tower in case they needed to leave at a moment’s notice.
One night shortly after you’d moved in, you’d been complaining about leaving your apartment behind to Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton in the kitchen when Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes had walked in. When they’d heard you lived in Brooklyn, it launched a long conversation about whether certain staples of the borough were still there. Steve had done most of the talking, with Bucky only saying one or two words at a time. But when you’d taken them on a tour of modern Brooklyn, Bucky had opened up a little more, pointing out all the places he’d saved Steve from getting his ass kicked when they were growing up.
After that, you and Bucky had fallen into a tentative friendship, both preferring the quiet of the Avengers Tower library to the raucous team-building nights Tony insisted on. Sometimes Steve would join you, sketching or reading while you and Bucky would lay tangled up on the overstuffed couches and read. Once or twice, Bucky asked you for book recommendations and then you’d discussed them when he’d finished reading. He enjoyed fantasy over contemporary fiction, and you were more than happy to share some of your favorites with him.
Even still, your friendship with Bucky was new and you were still trying to learn how to read him, especially since the most you heard him talk was about books. In the field, you’d found he shut down even more, like he would default to his Winter Soldier programming and go nonverbal. You’d only been on two other missions with him, but after both, it had taken hours before he spoke. Which was why it shocked you to hear him say anything in that snow-covered clearing.
“Who did this to you,” he demanded in a gravelly rasp, the black half-mask he wore over the lower half of his face making it sound more menacing than you knew he intended. The way he’d said it left no room for argument, so you pointed to the Hydra agent that was beginning to rouse from where you’d dropped him.
Bucky quickly unzipped his black leather jacket and tore off a strip from the white t-shirt he wore beneath it, tying the fabric around your leg to staunch the bleeding. You bit your lip to keep from crying out, but Bucky noticed the way your body jerked from the pain and his hands gentled as he tied off the ends of the makeshift bandage.
When he was done, Bucky stood, just as the Hydra agent was getting his feet underneath him. With his metal fist, Bucky punched the man in the face and you could hear the crunch of his nose breaking in the silent woods. The Hydra agent flew back and glanced off a tree, falling limply into the snow.
You were pretty sure he was unconscious but that didn’t seem to be good enough for Bucky, who kept stalking toward the enemy. His other hand unclipped a gun from the holster on his thigh, uncaring that the man wasn’t awake to fight back. Bucky stood over the unconscious man and fired two shots into the Hydra agent’s head, then re-holstered his gun.
When Bucky turned back to you, his face was a mask of coldness, but he picked you up with gentle hands. He cradled you carefully in his arms as he took off through the woods, faster than you ever would’ve thought possible. As you passed through the trees in the Sokovian countryside, you heard the sounds of fighting, but they were behind you and grew increasingly distant the more Bucky’s strong legs carried you away.
Finally, you reached the Quinjet and Bucky carried you inside, setting you down on one of the seats and kneeling in front of you. When he saw that you’d already bled through the strip of cotton he’d tied around your leg, Bucky made a small sound you couldn’t decipher. Then he stripped out of his leather protective jacket entirely and tugged his t-shirt over his head.
You were left with a shirtless Winter Soldier—the first time you’d ever seen him shirtless—and you were too stunned to do anything but sit there and stare. Bucky’s chest looked chiseled from granite, even as his skin shone with a light sheen of sweat. If you’d been any less dumbfounded by the sight of Bucky’s bare chest, you may have reached for him and tried to trace the curve of his pecs and shoulders with your fingertips.
As it was, Bucky tying his full t-shirt around your leg to bandage your wound brought you back to the present. The sharp sting of pain shot up and down your spine and you cried out, unable to stop yourself when you hadn’t been prepared for it.
“Sorry,” Bucky muttered, his voice clearer. It was only then that you noticed he’d taken off his mask, dumping it on the floor of the Quinjet next to his jacket. You watched as he deliberately gentled his hands while he looped the t-shirt around your leg again and tied it off. “That should hold until we get back to the tower,” he said, standing up.
You knew you should say something, like thank you, but your mouth hung open as you stared straight at Bucky’s abs. The most you managed to do was trail your gaze up his torso, taking in the wide expanse of his pale chest and the way his muscles shifted beneath his skin as he breathed in and out. You knew you should stop staring, but you couldn’t seem to manage it.
“Sorry,” Bucky mumbled. That finally distracted you from the sight in front of you as you looked up at him with a confused frown. “I know it’s not a pretty sight,” he continued, reaching up and using his hand to shield where his vibranium arm was fused to his body.
Your stomach flipped with a sickening feeling at his vulnerability and the thought you’d made him feel insecure. Before you could stop yourself, you reached for his arm and tugged it away, grateful he let you.
Bucky was right, it wasn’t necessarily pretty, mainly because Hydra had done a miserable job when they attached the prosthetic arm. But your first and foremost thought was to worry about whether it hurt him. You traced a finger so gently along the scarred skin next to the prosthetic you weren’t sure he could feel it, but Bucky’s big body shuddered slightly so you knew he could.
“Does it hurt?” you asked in a soft voice, eyes flicking up to Bucky’s blue gaze, unsure if that was okay to ask.
Bucky’s intense eyes met yours and he shook his head. His mouth was set into a grim line, but he didn’t pull away or try to stop you.
You breathed a small sigh of relief at his answer, your fingers shifting to the cool metal of his prosthetic arm and down the length of it. When your fingers reached his vibranium hand, you turned it over gently, so you could draw a circle on his palm. You looked up at him. “Can you feel that?” you asked, your voice less tentative.
Bucky shook his head again but his face contorted in a perplexed expression. “I can’t feel it, but I know how it should feel,” he explained slowly, picking out his words carefully.
You hummed in understanding and nodded. Ducking your head, you dropped a kiss to Bucky’s metal palm before you looked back up at him. “Thank you for coming for me,” you said with a soft smile.
Kneeling down again, Bucky cupped your face in his warm hand and gave you a serious look. “Don’t thank me for taking care of you,” he said, his voice low and somber. “I wish I’d gotten there before you were hurt.”
You offered him a wry smile, glancing down to his stubbled chin, unable to hold his serious gaze for too long. “Peril of the job, I guess,” you tried to joke, glancing back up at his intense blue eyes.
Bucky grunted in acknowledgement, but his mouth pulled down in a frown that was almost comical. You had to hold yourself back from giggling, then worried the blood loss was getting to you. Tiredly, you leaned back in the Quinjet seat, still holding Bucky’s metal hand in your lap.
Gently, Bucky slipped his hand from your grip and stood. Gathering you up in his arms, he turned and sat down on the jet’s seat, holding you firmly on his lap. You were positioned sideways across his legs, and you leaned your head against his shoulder, his warm skin feeling nice against your cold cheek.
“When you’re healed, I want you to train with me,” Bucky murmured, adjusting you on his lap, pulling you closer to his chest. “If I can’t always be with you, I want to know you can take care of yourself.” His strong arms were heavy around your waist but you enjoyed their weight.
“My SHIELD training not good enough for you?” you teased in a sleepy voice, snuggling closer to him, your hands resting on his chest. You felt so safe and secure in Bucky’s lap with his arms around you, you couldn’t help but start to succumb to the exhaustion you felt.
Bucky grumbled, the sound rumbling through his chest where you were pressed against him. For a long moment, he didn’t answer and you thought he simply wouldn’t, but then he spoke. “I just want you safe.”
“Okay, Buck,” you murmured as warmth bloomed in your chest and you hid a smile against his neck. With your face buried against him, you let the scent of his skin—something fresh mixed with pine—calm you. He ran a soothing hand up and down your spine, settling you further. You were nearly asleep when you continued speaking, knowing he’d be able to hear your whispered words. “Want you safe, too.”
Bucky squeezed you lightly in his arms, then went back to holding you close and running his hands over your back and legs like he couldn’t stop touching you—couldn’t stop making sure you were safe. Eventually, you dozed off, content to let the Winter Soldier take care of you. You knew you were more than safe in Bucky’s arms.
Paring: Avenger! Bucky Barnes x Avenger! Fem! Reader (Grumpy x Sunshine)
Summary: A recon mission gone awry leads to Bucky having to protect his sunshine. As the snowstorm gets worse, he becomes her shelter from the storm, showing a tenderness that he rarely allows others to see.
Word Count: Roughly 1.8k
Warnings: Hurt/comfort, fluff, injury-related pain, bruising, cold exposure, mild language (like two curse words)
Author’s Note: It was snowing, and I got ✨inspired✨
This felt a little choppy because I combined two drabbles, but I think it works :)
Navigation
What should have been a quick recon in the mountains became more complicated when a snowstorm hit faster and harder than previously anticipated. You could barely keep up with Bucky as he pushed ahead, his sharp eyes scanning the nearby. The cold penetrated through your layers; gnawing at your bones and intensifying the ache of your bruises, but you forced yourself to keep moving.
"Can you handle a few more yards?" he asked, his voice low, and despite the chaos, was comforting. "Map says there’s a hostel a quarter of a mile away."
"I’m fine," you mumbled. You knew your words were merely a weak attempt to reassure both yourself and him.
Bucky turned his head toward you, his gaze softening.
"Don’t do that," he replied. "Stop pretending you’re fine when you’re so clearly not."
The harsh wind bit at your face, and you tried to keep up with him, you couldn't hide the way your teeth chattered.
"You need to stop," Bucky said, voice sharp and authoritative. "You’re shaking like a leaf. Let me help you."
Before you could argue, he moved without hesitation, shedding his jacket in one smooth motion and draping it over your shoulders.
"Come here," Bucky said. "No arguments. You’re freezing, and I won’t let it get worse."
You tried to protest as you stammered, "I-I’m fine. Really, Bucky, I’m fine."
But Bucky wasn’t having it.
His glared down and you and you looked away.
"No, you’re not," he said again, this time softer. "You’re going to listen to me now, okay?"
He didn’t wait for a response. He wrapped his arms around you, guiding your arms around his neck and lifting you without much effort. You buried your face in the crook of his neck as you gave up on protesting. His body heat radiated through his sweater and the warm jacket he wrapped you in helped in instantly melting away the cold that had settled into your bones.
Bucky’s chest rose and fell under you, steady and reassuring, grounding you as the world around you spun with snow, harsh winds making it difficult to see. He held you close, his grip never wavering as if to say he wasn’t letting go, not for anything.
"You listen to me," he said said softly. "If anything happens to you out here, I’m going to be fucking pissed. Understand?"
"Noted," you said softly, your voice muffled by his neck. You tightened your grip on him, clinging to him as your life depended on it because, in a way, it did. Not that you’d ever complain.
You could feel his steady heartbeat, the way his breath slowed as he focused on getting you both to safety. His steps were purposeful, unhurried, but determined as he carried you toward the small hostel.
When you finally reached the building, Bucky didn’t waste a second. Without a word, he guided you inside and he gently set you down on a chair. The warmth of the room feeling like a stark contrast to the biting cold that had gripped you just moments before. Pun intended.
"You stay here," he commanded, his voice brooking no argument. "I’ll get us a room and call the team."
You nodded.
As he moved to make arrangements, you wrapped yourself tightly in his jacket, the faint scent of him still lingering on the fabric.
You winced from the pain in your side, but you manged to stay still. You looked out the window, watching as the storm raged on.
When Bucky returned, he didn’t waste any time sitting next to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and pulling you into his side.
"Better?" he asked.
You leaned into him, letting the comfort of his presence envelop you.
"Yeah," you said softly. "Much better. Thanks, Bucky."
"You don’t have to thank me," he muttered, his voice low, almost intimate. "I’m just doing what’s right. Keeping you safe."
You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to melt into the warmth of his embrace. "I know," you whispered, your voice quiet but filled with gratitude. "And I’m glad you’re here."
Bucky’s fingers brushed through your hair, his protective grip never faltering. "And I’m not going anywhere," he murmured.
A moment later, he scooped you up effortlessly, carrying you to the room he booked and dumping you on the bed. The sudden motion made you giggle as you kicked off your boots.
Bucky turned up the heat, and as the warmth began to fill the room, you settled onto the covers.
"What did the team say?" you asked quietly.
"They’ll try to make it tonight," he replied. "But I told them we can wait until the morning."
You raised an eyebrow, puzzled. "Why?"
"Because I’m keeping you safe tonight," he murmured, quickly adding, "And Sam snores. I can hear him from two rooms down the hall. I’m in no rush to go home, sunshine."
You laughed softly, your eyes brightening. "You’re unbelievable, Bucky."
Bucky grinned, his usual grumpy expression softened. "Yeah, but you’re stuck with me."
"Seriously though," he said, his voice suddenly quieter, "I’m not letting anything happen to you. Not on my watch."
"I know," you whispered, your voice soft but filled with sincerity. "And I trust you."
His eyes softened, just for a moment, before he cleared his throat and pulled away slightly, pretending to be unaffected by the vulnerability in the air.
“Hey,” he muttered, his voice hushed and rough with concern. He paused for a moment as if considering whether to push or back off. He couldn’t ever quite figure out how to balance his protective nature. But when it came to you, he couldn’t help himself. “You sure you’re okay?”
You forced a smile, shifting a little more, trying to get comfortable, but the throbbing in your side was relentless. The last thing you wanted was for him to notice. He already had enough on his shoulders; you wouldn’t let him add your worries to his pile.
“I’m fine,” you whispered. Lie.
"Bullshit," he grumbled, his voice laced with frustration, the one that surfaced when he cared too much and couldn’t fix things fast enough. "What’s the matter?"
Bucky stared at you, his eyes narrowing.
God, that stare.
It was like he could read every inch of your soul, and you couldn’t breathe under the weight of it.
“Talk to me.”
You shifted uncomfortably, your side flaring up in protest. You winced, sucking in a sharp breath, hoping he didn’t notice, but of course, he did.
He always noticed when it came to his sunshine.
"My side. Just a little pain," you admitted, the bruise hidden under the layers of clothing you still wore.
Bucky’s face softened, his worry evident. Without a word, he stood up, reaching for the small medical kit in his bag.
"Lift your shirt," he said, his voice low but commanding.
"I'm fine-" You mumbled.
But Bucky wasn’t one to back down. He crouched in front of you, his large hands already moving to your waist, his fingers brushing the fabric of your shirt with a touch that was far too tender for someone like him.
“Lift.” The word was soft, but there was a dangerous edge to it, a warning wrapped in affection. The way he said it made it clear that this was happening.
You frowned and you raised the hem of your shirt, exposing the tender spot on your side where the impact from earlier had left its mark. "Shh, sunshine." He whispers soothingly. "You're okay, promise."
Bucky’s hands were gentle as he inspected the injury, his fingers brushing lightly over your skin, and his touch was careful but sure. There was something tender about the way he looked at you as if you were the most precious thing in the world to him. It made you lightheaded.
“Doesn’t look too bad,” he muttered, though you could hear the underlying concern in his tone. “But we’re still gonna clean it up, yeah?”
His brow furrowed, and for a moment, his expression softened into something that hurt to look at.
Like you meant something to him.
The second his fingers brushed over your side, just lightly grazing the bruise, you couldn’t help it. A whimper escaped, and your body tensed. You hated it. Hated being weak.
“Shh.” His voice was soothing. “You’re doing so good.”
You tried to move, to escape the pressure, but Bucky’s hand was already on your abdomen, holding you gently but firmly in place. His fingers splayed out over your skin, not forceful, but steady.
“Sorry,” you muttered, your voice strained as another wave of pain hit and you squirmed.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Bucky murmured, his grip tightening just a little, his other hand reaching for the antiseptic wipe. "Just breathe for me, okay?"
Something about his voice, soft yet commanding, made the tension in your body ease just enough for you to inhale deeply, to steady yourself.
“You’re tough, sunshine,” Bucky murmured, his eyes softening even more as he cleaned the bruise. "You’ll be alright."
But his voice held a gentleness that made your heartache. As he worked, cleaning the wound, his touch was slow, deliberate. The sting from the wipe was sharp, but his hands on your skin were grounding, like he was pulling the pain out of you with every careful movement.
Every time you whimpered, every time the pain made itself known, he soothed you with gentle words,“I know, sunshine, I got you,” “It’s okay, you’re okay.”
He cleaned the wound with slow, careful movements. The cool, sterile wipe stung a little, but his gentle touch was soothing, making the discomfort easier to bear.
“I got you.” His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. A calm anchor. “Just breathe, sunshine.”
And you did.
When he finally finished, he leaned back and reached for a bandage. He pressed the bandage against your side like he was trying to heal something deeper than the bruise, something you couldn’t name.
“Good as new.” His voice was softer now. “You’re tough, sunshine. You’ll be alright.”
You smiled faintly, your fingers brushing the edge of the bandage. “Thanks, Bucky.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He grumbled, but there was no bite to it. His gruffness was a comfort, like a wall of security you could lean against when everything else felt shaky.
“Just-” His eyes softened as he looked at you, the rare tenderness that always made your chest tighten. “Get some sleep, alright?”
You nodded, curling up under the covers.
“Goodnight,” you whispered, your voice small and soft as you nestled against him.
Bucky’s hand gently brushed through your hair, his fingers pausing to stroke your scalp in a way that made you feel like the most important thing in the world.
“Goodnight, милая девочка.” Sweet girl.
His words were quiet, a soft reassurance in the night. You let out a sigh, the ache in your side fading as the warmth of his body enveloped you, and slowly, you drifted into a peaceful sleep.
Bucky stayed awake for a while, keeping watch, making sure you were alright. But as the night drew on, he pressed a tender kiss to your forehead, making sure you were okay before falling asleep himself.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed!
Summary: Your boss was an ass—you knew it, the office knew it, the entire country knew it. Working for Senator Brown was never easy, but you had managed it for the better part of three years and didn’t want to see your career go up in flames. Unfortunately for you, Bucky was slowly falling in love with you, and Congressman Barnes didn’t think managing it was enough.
Word count: 9k
Warnings: Injury (kinda), hospitals, angst, an abusive boss, protective Bucky!!
a/n: Ahh a Bucky fic that's not an AU (that's also one million words)! Idk how the government works tbh so sorry if things are a little inaccurate there lol. This takes place right before Thunderbolts! Thank you for reading, I love you!! ❤️❤️
Masterlist
~~
“Congressman Barnes,” you greeted, a slight nod of your head the only acknowledgement you could afford. Senator Brown was only a moment away from screaming at you again, and you could only take so much screaming in one day.
Bucky, unfortunately, did not care about being screamed at by Senator Brown. He took your upper arm in a light grip and shot you a confused smile. “What, you avoiding me? Can’t be seen in the halls talking to me?”
A fairer assessment of Bucky’s interruption was that he didn’t know of the wrath Senator Brown could incite upon you. Sure, Bucky knew that Brown was a hardass, and by association, his executive assistant would have to put up with it, but he had no way of knowing just how terrible the man was.
When you met Bucky a few weeks ago, you had been alone in a hotel lobby. The heels accompanying your freshly pressed pantsuit had been killing you, and you needed a moment for your feet to breathe. Bucky, apparently, also needed a moment away from the conference, and you had gotten to talking when he plopped into the overstuffed armchair beside you.
He knew you worked for Senator Brown. You knew he was a Congressman, obviously. You also knew his background and the complexities that came with it. Many people in the political space turned up their noses at him, something you had a similar experience with as you were “only an assistant.” The two of you had joked about it, eventually making your way to the hotel bar and laughing over the amount of hidden toupees currently residing in the ballroom.
In the weeks that followed, you had texted with him, met for coffee twice because he was “in the area”, and had maybe even considered the fact that you were friends with Congressman Barnes. Friends were invaluable to have in D.C., but they were also something to be wary of. Bucky didn’t feel the type to be wary of.
As you stood halfway frozen in the hallway, his comment began to make sense. He was calling back to your initial hotel conversation, making a joke about biases and stuck-up politicians, but this was not the time. Not that he could have known.
Senator Brown barked out your name when he noticed you were no longer beside him, surely trying to get you to jot down some thought banging around in his head. You whipped your head to the side, almost missing the affronted expression on Bucky’s face as he registered the tone that your name was spoken in, and shook your arm from his hold.
“Sorry, Congressman,” you murmured, turning on your heel and making quick strides in Brown’s direction. “I apologize. What can I do for you, Senator?”
Your boss barely hid a scoff. “You can start by being where I need you to be. And write this down—I do not believe that the House takes the proper—”
You scrambled to take out your phone and open the notes app. A rookie mistake; you usually had it open the second his meetings ended, but you had been distracted. By Bucky.
Your heels hurriedly clicking against polished marble, you took a fleeting glance over your shoulder. Bucky remained there, his brow furrowed and his arms crossed over his chest, metal from his hand glinting against the gentle fluorescence of the hall.
Three days later, he brought it up.
You thought you’d found a private spot to scarf down your lunch in your allotted fifteen-minute break, but with a sandwich only half finished and your mouth full, the call of your name reminded you that there is never any privacy for you at this job. The sound of Bucky’s voice softened the blow a bit.
“He always treat you like that?” Bucky asked, swinging his leg over the bench on the other side of the table. He watched as you tried to chew quickly, some of the hardness he’d sat down with melting from his expression.
You covered your mouth with your hand and swallowed hard. “What?” you finally got out, reaching for your water bottle.
Bucky raised a brow. “Brown. Does he always yell at you?”
After a few sips and swallows, you gave up on being able to finish your lunch. You had to plan out your meals very meticulously to finish, and Bucky had already taken up 30 precious seconds.
“Oh,” you began. You swiped a hand through the air. “It’s fine. He just gets a little intense sometimes. It’s just his personality.”
“You’ve been working for him for three years.”
“Right.”
“The guy should treat you better. He could only keep assistants for a few weeks at a time before you.”
“How do you know that?”
Bucky slid your food towards you. “Eat. You looked like you were in a hurry when I got here.”
You eyed him for a moment. With his hair tucked behind his ears, you could see the tenseness of his jaw and the shadow of his beard dusting above his collar. It was no secret that Bucky was alarmingly handsome in a sea of 60-year-old politicians, but you had never gotten the opportunity to see it at work. You were always too busy, and Bucky’s office was three floors down.
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you back,” you said, reaching for the fruit in your bag. “I meant to. I’ve just been working late since the meeting on Monday.”
“It’s alright.” A pause as you continued to eat your food. You had maybe four minutes left. “How late?”
“Oh, um, I’ve been going home around 10. It’s such a pain in the ass to get a taxi at that time, you wouldn’t believe. Uber isn’t much better, and I definitely can’t walk home in these things,” you joked, motioning to the bandaids strapped behind your heels. “It’s not so bad, though. After about a month of late nights, Brown will go on a “vacation,” and I’ll have a few weeks to reign in the chaos during normal business hours.”
You were giggling as you spoke, adding air quotes and sarcasm to try to alleviate the irritated look Bucky was sporting. After a few weeks of being around him, you understood that Bucky was quieter than you, but his silence right now was pressing. Your jokes weren’t getting him to talk, so you switched gears.
Popping a grape in your mouth, you asked, “What are you doing up here, anyway?”
Bucky let out a breath and tapped his hand on the table. “Honestly? I came to check on you.”
“To check on me?”
“After Monday, I wanted to make sure—”
Your phone started going off, the “Senator Brown” contact making your blood run cold. You brought your watch up and let out a gasp that made Bucky jump.
“What?” he rushed, standing from the table as you started to pack your things in a panic. He went to help you, but after two brushes of his hands, he realized he was only in the way.
“My break was over two minutes ago. I have to go right now.”
“Two minutes? What—y/n, that isn’t—”
He was here to check on you. Right. That was really sweet.
Your brain tried to catch up with your panic as you reached over and squeezed his arm gratefully. “I’m really fine, Bucky. It was nice to see you. We should get coffee again.” You were sliding through the double doors and back into the building as you called, “I’ll text you. I promise this time.”
And you did. In the seven minutes of free time you got around 9 pm, you sent him a quick follow-up text. The bubble went right below his text from two days ago, and you felt a small pinch of guilt for not answering him until now.
You: Free Saturday morning?
He answered you almost instantly.
Bucky: Depends. Are you still at work right now?
You frowned at your phone.
You: If I am does that mean you won’t get coffee with me?
Bucky: So you are
You: …maybe
And then, your seven minutes of silence were up. When Brown’s footsteps could be heard by the door, you tucked your phone into your desk and went to work on the stack of papers he assigned you. He so graciously let you know that he was going home now, and you could leave once you were finished.
That was perfect.
It took you an hour and a half, but when you sorted the final paper and checked his schedule for tomorrow for the last time, a sense of relief flooded you. You didn’t even care that it would take another 30 minutes for an Uber to arrive. All you could think about was your shower and your bed and taking these shoes off your feet.
You gathered your belongings and swiped your phone from the desk, clicking to the rideshare app and somewhat dreading the small talk to come. It would be extremely convenient to have a car, but that wasn’t something in the cards for you. Your tiny apartment had barely any parking, and everything else was within walking distance.
As you continued to ponder the pros and cons of taking the bus home, a honk from the curb made you jump. You lowered your phone and squinted into the distance of the now barren road.
“Someone order an Uber?”
Disbelief was your first emotion, and then shock and then confusion. “Buck—Congressman Barnes?” you asked, correcting yourself when the memory of the building at your back resurfaced.
“You’re not getting in my car if you’re calling me that,” Bucky replied, leaning down to peer out the passenger-side window.
“What are you doing here?” you asked him for the second time today.
“I told you, I’m driving for Uber. You called for one?”
A disbelieving laugh fell from your lips. You shook your phone by your face and leaned down towards the window. “Haven’t even ordered it yet. I’m not supposed to get in the car unless they can put in the code verifying my identity.”
“Give me a code, then. Here,” he passed you his phone, the background illuminating a small white cat. “Wait, sorry, I have to unlock it.”
Your next laugh was more of a scoff as he reached through the window to take it back. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”
Bucky paused, looking you up and down for a moment before his jaw ticked to the side in a smile. “I’m taking you home. You live close, it won’t take very long.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking. Now, hurry up and get in. I’ve been in the fire lane for 20 minutes and parking enforcement hates me here.”
You went to argue again, but Bucky only raised a brow and unlocked the doors.
Sliding in the car was somewhat of a mess with your bag and your jacket and the file you had meant to finish at home almost suffocating you. Bucky tried to help, grabbing items and waiting for you to buckle in before placing them by your feet. You were flustered from the transition, trying to adjust your skirt and seatbelt as Bucky reached forward to tuck a strand of hair stuck in your lip gloss behind your ear.
You turned to look at him instantly, but the man only gave you a closed-lip smile and shifted the gear of his car, pulling away from the building of your nightmares. You blinked back towards the dashboard, needing a few more seconds to settle yourself.
“I really didn’t mean to make you feel guilty,” you stressed to Bucky after he flipped the radio on, low music trickling in. “When I told you about staying late, I mean.”
Bucky tsked, knocking his head to the side to shoot you a lingering glance. “You didn’t, alright? This is my own problem. I just didn’t feel comfortable with you trying to find a way home so late.”
“I’ve been doing it for a while and I haven’t died yet,” you attempted to joke.
Not the best joke, it seemed, with Bucky’s fist clutching the steering wheel a hair tighter, the sound of leather meeting your ears. He shook his head. “Where’s Brown? He doesn’t let you take work home?”
“Oh, he does sometimes,” you chipperly replied, trying to sound awake and get Bucky un-pissed off. “He just checks my timesheets when we work overtime, so I have to make sure I stay late enough so that he won’t say anything. I still have this to take care of once I get home.”
You tapped the manila file in your lap and looked over to Bucky as he drove. He was wearing jeans and a pullover crewneck, his hair tied back and casual, and even though you’d seen him outside of work before, he looked different this way. Something about the night and him driving you home made him look different.
Bucky didn’t make a comment about your work or the system you had to avoid criticism from the Senator. Silence lapsed in the car, you lightly drumming your fingers on your thigh as the D.C. night swept past along the car windows.
“I would like to get coffee Saturday,” Bucky finally said. “If the offer still stands.”
“Of course it stands.”
You only briefly caught the half-smile that lit up his face before the light of the streets was lost to a tunnel.
~~
Coffee was relaxed and enjoyable, as it always was with Bucky. He asked a few more questions about your work, a topic he had previously not touched on. He wanted to know about your coworkers, if the interns ever helped you, how much time you got off, and in turn, you asked him about being a Congressman and if he actually enjoyed it.
Both answers left the other person less than satisfied.
“What about you?” Bucky asked, tilting his cup up. “Why have you been an executive assistant for so long?”
You hummed. “I don’t know, really. My dad was in politics, and he would only really accept my work if I was, too. He’s… not around now, but I feel like I have to stay. I’m good at it.”
“I believe it. Could be good at a lot of things, though.”
You shot him a mock glare. “Trying to get rid of me, Congressman?”
Bucky leaned forward, placing a hand on the small table that only separated you a few inches. He answered you earnestly, but a small amount of humor lightened his eyes, made him look less serious. “Now, why would I want to do that?”
Your lips parted to quip something back, but then he was raising his hand again, the heat of his skin lingering at the corner of your mouth. He swiped his thumb there, and you were frozen, a replica of when he brushed your hair back a few nights ago, but the car had been a distraction then. You had been flustered and trying to sort out your belongings, so you didn’t think about it for longer than a few seconds.
“Whipped cream,” he explained, holding you in his gaze for a moment longer than you should have been. Even as the barista from behind the counter was now standing at your table and speaking.
“Hi! Would the two of you like to try our new coffee cake? Free samples since it’s new.”
Bucky was the first to look away, tearing his eyes from yours to smile politely at the barista. You shook from your stupor and quickly reached for a napkin, brushing it against your lips even though nothing remained.
You felt fuzzy, confused. But also nothing was confusing and you were reminded, again, how attractive the Congressman was. How attractive and how definitely off-limits he was.
It would be so taboo for Bucky to be dating an assistant.
“What about you, ma’am?” You blinked several times and looked up to read the small ‘coffee cake’ sign lying next to the treats, the barista’s blinding smile expecting and very retail.
“I’m allergic to cinnamon, but thank you.”
“Allergic to cinnamon?” Bucky asked as the barista left.
“Yeah, anaphylaxis and everything. I carry an epipen with me, but I’ve only had to use it once when I was 10. Did you know that some bakeries add cinnamon to buttercream birthday cakes?” you chuckled, reorienting yourself to the present. “Are you allergic to anything? Or, I guess you probably aren’t. Isn’t that a serum thing?”
“Not allergic to anything, but if I had been, it would’ve been wiped out by the serum. We didn’t really have a lot of food variety in the 30s. Could have been allergic to shellfish—didn’t try that until after.”
You had to pause the cup at your lips. “Oh my god, I forgot you’re like 100 years old.”
Bucky’s expression morphed into an offended wince. “Alright, I wouldn’t say that. I haven’t exactly lived 100 years.”
“I was just thinking the other day how you don’t exactly fit in with the rest of Congress, but you so do! Maybe even on the young side,” you teased.
“Oh yeah?” Bucky egged on, nodding with his brows raised. “You were thinking about me?”
You knocked your head back in a laugh, holding your stomach with your forearm. “How did I forget this?”
“You know what? I’m not driving you home anymore.”
With lingering giggles, you righted yourself in your chair, a smile still clear in your voice. Contrasting his words, Bucky’s smile was just as wide as yours, a slight redness to his cheeks making him look softer. You brought a hand to cover his arm on the table.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Bucky. You aren’t old. I take it back.”
“Yeah, you better,” he taunted, though his arm flipped over and he gave your wrist a soft squeeze as he said it.
~~
Bucky wouldn’t stop touching you.
You didn’t know if he was doing it consciously or if this was something he commonly did with his friends, but he was going to get you in trouble.
Outside of work, it was fine—distracting and disorienting, but fine. A brush of his hand helping you into the car, fixing your bag on your shoulder, a hand on your back when you left the coffee shop; over the past few weeks, it had all begun to feel commonplace.
It could have been frequency that made you more aware of this habit of his, because Bucky had begun picking you up every time you worked late and planned coffee or lunch or even a walk at least once a weekend. So, maybe this was his norm and you were just around him more often—something you enjoyed, but also something that made feelings more difficult.
Because, again, Congressman Barnes could not be dating an assistant. His credibility among the rest of Congress was already being questioned almost daily, and he did not need the court of public opinion breathing down his neck on top of that. It was a fortunate truth that while the internal part of his job was tricky, most of the public favored him.
So, as much as your chest hurt and your stomach flipped whenever you were around him, you settled for friendship. A touchy friendship.
At work, things felt heightened in the worst way possible.
You couldn’t even understand why he was coming to the top floor so often, seemingly lingering there so he could scare the crap out of you when you’d turn a corner. And then it would be a smile and another hand at your back when he was passing you—a hand that was not necessary. Or he would find you at the tail-end of your lunch break and move your hair away from your eyes, distracting you to the point of no return.
It was the worst because you were getting distracted, and when you were distracted, you got yelled at.
Bucky had seen you get yelled at a few times now, each seemingly worse than the last. He kept quiet about it, but you could tell it bothered him. He almost stepped in once—when Brown was irate at the coffee you’d gotten him and chucked it at the wall, you saw Bucky step forward from down the hall. He stopped at the slight shake of your head.
You were used to the Senator throwing things, and as long as it wasn’t in your direction, it was no harm done. At least, that’s what you thought.
“You should go to human resources,” Bucky commented one Sunday, the two of you sitting along a lake by the Capitol building.
You almost snorted. “Right. And what do you think old Mrs. Martha is going to be able to do for me? Brown has been in office for over a decade. If anything, that would just get me fired.”
Bucky shook his head, expression taut. “There’s gotta be something else then. You don’t deserve all of that.”
“If we’re talking about not deserving torment, I think I’m the least of our worries here, Sergeant,” you noted, knocking your shoulder against his in an attempted lightness.
But when you turned to look at him, Bucky was already facing you. “I’m serious, y/n. He’s throwing things at you. I’ve stayed out of it because you told me to, but after today—”
“Bucky, hey,” you calmed. “I know it seems crazy, but I know how to deal with it. I know he won’t actually do anything.”
“Right now, maybe.”
You sighed, searching his eyes and trying to discern when this became such an intense conversation. Trying to figure out when the two of you had discussions like this and not just lax coffee hangouts. Against your better judgment, you placed a hand over his thigh and relented.
“Okay, fine. I’ll work on it, but I’ll be the one working on it, okay? It definitely can’t be you—he would freak out if a representative started ordering him around. Even if you could totally knock him out.”
Bucky shook his head in disbelief, a smile begrudgingly sneaking onto his face. “I can’t believe you’re joking about this.”
“You can definitely believe that.”
“Yeah, I can.” And then you were tugged against his starched, ironed suit, his metal arm holding you close to his chest.
You gasped a little at the initial contact, your heart hammering against your ribs as Bucky simply kept you there. This is dangerous, your brain reminded you, but it was also harmless, if you looked at it the right way.
“You know, I’m not going to die, Bucky. I’ve dealt with this for years.”
“Yeah, you keep joking about that,” he gruffly replied, the words a ghost against the top of your head. You hadn’t realized his lips were that close. “If we could keep the death jokes to a minimum, that would be great.”
You pulled back from him enough to look at his face. “Why? Afraid your only friend will bite it?”
“Hey, I have other friends.”
“I haven’t seen ‘em.”
“Shut up,” he groaned, tugging you back in. “You can meet them as proof. Next weekend.”
“Okay, sure, Bucky,” you sang out, tapping his chest. “But if we need to reschedule this meeting with your 'friends,’ I would understand.”
As Bucky went on to refute your insinuations in a grumpy tone, you tried to pretend that this felt like that—just a friendship.
~~
Approximately four days later, everything went to shit.
Senator Brown was on a tirade, screaming at everyone and everything in his path. When he got like this, the admin staff usually locked the doors to his office and the entire floor if they could, but today, they weren’t ready for how angry he was.
It was a bill, or a speech, or maybe even the press catching wind that he was cheating on his wife—it didn’t matter. He was pissed and you were going to have to answer for it.
You stood in his office with a clear view of the glass wall connecting to the hallway, hands behind your back and fighting off a wince with every curse and insult the Senator threw at you.
“I hired you to take care of this bullshit! Why the hell am I dealing with this when I’m supposed to have an entire staff? This is fucked!”
“You’re too worried about going home early, you can’t even assemble a reply to an email correctly! A fucking email!”
“I should’ve fired you weeks ago. When you started fucking off to wherever you take too long for your lunch break and stopped doing your job. I swear to god, this country has—”
You were only retaining about half of what he said, which was good, considering everything was an attack on you, and your work ethic, and then he even started going in on your clothes and your apartment. It must have been something really bad this time. After he was done yelling, you would check his texts and probably find a couple of mentions of divorce sprinkled in between messages with his lawyers.
Affairs and divorce were always messy for politicians.
“Of course, Senator. I will do better. I apologize,” you offered, unsure what you were apologizing for at the present. It wouldn’t matter; he would just start up again about another topic.
“Damn right you will or I’ll send you out on the streets. Do you know how hard it is to get a job in D.C when a Senator blacklists you?”
Did you ever.
When Bucky had asked you why you stayed, you left out that key bit of information. He was still newer to the field and didn’t need to know that Senator Brown held that over your head each time you even hinted at moving on.
You figured the screaming was almost over. Brown was in his 60s, so he would be getting tired. And it probably would have been over if he hadn’t checked his Apple Watch and read a text that got him fired up once more.
You greatly regretted setting that up for him.
You braced yourself for further yelling as his face began to turn red, but were alarmed as the Senator reached for the wooden pencil case on his desk and threw it. Pens flew, and you knew he wasn’t aiming for you, but the cup hit a vase on a high bookshelf to your right, which then toppled over and shook loose the framed art hanging above your head.
You should have moved, but you spotted Bucky in the hall, and he always distracted you.
The frame shot straight down, smacking you in the head and causing your knees to buckle in surprise. You fell to the ground, feeling dramatic and disoriented as the room silenced and your ears rang. You knew he wouldn’t apologize, but the continued quiet as you pushed yourself up and sat back on your haunches was almost deafening.
The glass door to the office swung open.
“What the hell?” A hand was on your elbow. A colder one felt around the top of your head. It was Bucky, obviously it was Bucky, but you were too afraid to look, keeping your gaze locked on Senator Brown. “Hey, you okay?”
The hand on your head moved down to your jaw, forcing your gaze to Bucky. He searched every inch of your face as you blinked at him, mind blank. “Um, I’m fine.”
Your brows furrowed, trying to connect the chain of events that led to this. You brought your hand up to replace where Bucky had placed his, the action seemingly spurring him into action.
“The hell is wrong with you, huh?” Bucky shouted, rising from the floor. “You think it makes you tough to throw things at her?”
Senator Brown had gone from furious to unsure, probably aware of the physical strength Bucky harbored. But, as was typical with politicians, he would not put anything before his pride. Brown righted his expression and pursed his lips.
“I wasn’t trying to hit her, Congressman. It was a simple accident. You weren’t even in the room to see it happen.”
Bucky narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t need to be. You’re screaming at her when you’re not throwing. What kinda grown man does that?”
“Bucky—” you cautioned, glued to the floor still.
The senator directed his attention towards you, brows raised accusingly. “Oh, so you’ve been gossiping about me, then?”
You shrank back, hand lingering where your head ached, but Bucky stepped in front of you, blocking you from Brown’s line of sight.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Bucky seethed, jutting a finger into Brown’s chest.
Brown’s head sharply turned. “That you are, Congressman. But it seems like my assistant here no longer wants her role, so this conversation is moot.”
“Wait, I—”
“Maybe if you spent time picking on someone your own size instead of acting like a coward—”
“Bucky, don’t—”
“A coward? A coward? Who’s the one who cannot speak for himself on the board? Tell me, Barnes, is that part of some unresolved trauma from some nondescript decade?”
“You shut your mouth before I—”
“Congressman Barnes,” you called, authority that didn’t belong to you heavy in your tone. You were two seconds away from losing your job and being blacklisted, neither of which you could handle. Bucky froze, his anger still held in his shoulders. “Thank you for your concern, as I’m sure you were just passing by when you saw what happened, but I can assure you that it was an accident and I am fine.”
Bucky looked over his shoulder with furrowed brows, but took a step back and dropped his hands by his sides when he caught your expression—still disheveled, but resolute in your decision. He needed to leave. You needed to save your career. You could… figure everything else out later. Probably.
You bit into your bottom lip until it hurt.
Bucky looked at the wall behind your head and then tracked his gaze to the forming lump on your crown. “But—”
“I am fine,” you repeated slowly. Having risen from the floor before calling his name, you walked to the door and held it open. “We’re very busy. Please excuse us.”
Bucky licked his lips as he looked to the floor, shaking his head in abject disbelief and following your direction. When he met the entryway, he tilted his head slightly, opening his mouth to say something, but thinking against it. His hand twitched at his side, and then he left, taking long, purposeful strides away from the office.
You took a deep breath, allowed yourself a moment as the door closed, and then you did something purposeful yourself. Even if it killed you to do so.
~~
Bucky’s POV
Bucky was losing his mind.
After leaving Brown’s office, he’d stormed into his own and promptly shut and locked the door. Tugging his tie away from his neck and prying the uncomfortable suit jacket from his shoulders, Bucky then began to pace. He was pissed. He was so beyond pissed.
It would have been so easy for him to knock that Senator out, and he would have deserved it. Bucky had had to watch for weeks as you were berated and screamed at, and then the line was crossed when he saw him throwing things. You hadn’t let him do anything, and then you hadn’t let him do anything again after you’d been hurt.
He watched you flinch and cover your face, and even that hadn’t been enough.
Bucky swiped a hand over his mouth.
When had you started to matter to him so much? That was a stupid question, and apparently, he was full of stupidity today.
He promised that he’d let you take care of it, and then he went in there and almost killed Senator Brown. A replay of you falling to the ground looped in his mind, and actually Bucky didn’t feel stupid at all. All he felt was rage.
“Shit,” he breathed out, knocking his head back and falling back into his office chair.
He’d messed up. He wasn’t sure exactly how, but he knew you were not happy with him. What did “taking care of it” even mean? And why were you so dead set on keeping that awful job? Bucky could think of at least a dozen other jobs in D.C. that would not involve you being verbally and physically abused.
Fuck, he wished he had more pull, but as a Congressman of only a few months, there was little he could do against a Senator. And he had a meeting in five minutes.
Bucky pulled his phone out and sent you a quick text about talking after work, let out the longest sigh of his life, and then readjusted his tie.
That had been three days ago.
You never texted him back. And you left the building far before he could give you a ride home. When he asked your coworkers, they said you were no longer working overtime and left during normal hours.
Fine. That was good, actually. Only, Bucky never saw you.
He frequented all of your normal spots, wandered up to the top floor, and even stopped by the coffeeshop two days in a row, and you were nowhere. Avoiding him, obviously, and while he understood (he didn’t), he mostly wanted to put eyes on you. To make sure you were okay.
Sure, you didn’t have a severe head injury, but it was more than that.
Bucky brought his turmoil to the barbecue Sam was holding that weekend. The one you were supposed to be at.
Nursing his fifth beer that wouldn’t do anything, Bucky leaned back against the fence of Sam’s yard and sulked. He’d talked to a few people when he got there, but sulking was on his agenda for the afternoon.
“What’s up with the stank face?” Sam asked, entering Bucky’s orbit of solitude and despair. “It’s gonna get stuck like that if you keep it up.”
“I don’t have a stank face,” Bucky argued.
“Right, right. Well, right now you have more of a pissed off face, but I guess I bring that out in you.” Sam paused and then smacked Bucky in the shoulder. “Come on, man. What’s going on, seriously? Does it have to do with that girl you were supposed to bring?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Oh, you don’t? Then it’s that.”
Bucky rolled his eyes, knocking back more of his beer as the sizzle of burgers juxtaposed with his somberness. “Alright, fine. It’s that. But it’s stupid. We weren’t even…”
“Dating?”
“Yeah. That.”
“You told me you went out for coffee and all that. That you would go on long walks at the lake and canoodle at work.”
“Are you going to take this seriously?” Bucky accused. “‘Cause if you’re not, I’m leaving right now. I’ll leave.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” Sam surrendered, raising his hands. “But really, Buck, that all sounds like dating. Tell me why she didn’t come.”
Bucky clenched his jaw and stared out at the merriment of the barbecue, remembering the scene more vividly than he would have liked. He tried to find an exact moment that would have led to you avoiding him, but he couldn’t pin it down. Maybe it was the entire thing?
“I think she’s mad at me. I kinda went off on her boss and she told me she wanted to take care of it.”
“What do you mean ‘went off’? And isn’t she working under a Senator?”
Bucky puffed out a breath. “Yeah, Senator Brown.” Sam let out a low whistle as Bucky continued. “He yells at her. Throws things. I felt like it crossed a line this week, so I guess I kinda stormed in. She threw me out and’s been avoiding me since. We had talked about it before and she said to stay out of it, but, Sam, the guy’s a dick.”
“And you really like her,” Sam added casually.
“And I really like her,” Bucky confirmed.
Sam paused to contemplate, though Bucky didn’t know what he could possibly offer that Bucky hadn’t already considered. He really, really liked you—more than he figured possible, especially with all of his attempts at dating since his pardon. But then you’d surprised him that night at the hotel, and he’d been hooked.
He hadn’t even had the chance to tell you.
“Well, two things,” Sam began, leaning on the fence next to Bucky. “Sounds like she knows what she’s doing, so you should have trusted her. But—” Sam cut out as Bucky opened his mouth “—it also sounds like Brown’s a major ass with a lot of power. You don’t know what he might have over her, slimy dude like that.”
“What, you mean like blackmail?”
“Maybe, who knows? You just gotta talk to her, man. Work it out.”
Sam clapped Bucky on the shoulder before wading back into the party in the yard. Bucky, feeling somewhat lighter but also still at peril, kicked off the fence and made his own attempts at being sociable.
“As soon as I can actually find her,” he grumbled to himself.
~~
The charity gala had been on your calendar for the past six months, and still, nothing could have prepared you for how much you didn’t want to attend.
You usually enjoyed events like this. You got to dress up and eat nice food, and Brown always got too drunk to remember that his assistant was even in the building. The first hour felt like work, and then the rest of the night was cosplaying as a rich politician.
That was not the case for this gala.
Ever since the ordeal with Bucky, Senator Brown had kept you on a tight leash. Whether that was due to how much he enjoyed intimidating you or his fear that you actually were telling people he was a mean, abusive boss, didn’t matter. All that mattered was that this gala was going to suck and there was nothing you could do about it.
You had apologized profusely, swore up and down that you didn’t know Congressman Barnes, and practically pledged your life to Brown in every way you knew how. You never left the office, never took a lunch break—you were pretty sure your eyes were permanently dry from how long you stared at a screen all day.
Making you attend this gala and not leave his side was another ploy to make you atone for your wrongdoings. Maybe the man knew how much you enjoyed these events and was taking advantage of that.
“Check this,” Senator Brown lazily ordered, draping his coat over your arms. “And meet me back in the dining room. You get to sit right next to me.”
You offered him a tight smile and felt the ache in your shoulders begin to fester. You were more uptight this week than ever, but that had nothing to do with Bucky Barnes. Nothing.
It was just this job and your future in D.C. hanging in the balance.
Obviously.
You meandered over to the coat check, taking longer than you needed to and dragging your feet along the way. Your phone was buzzing incessantly in your bag—most likely some PR fire you’d need to put out before more people realized Brown was cheating on his wife—and you had absolutely no inclination to drag it out.
“Just these two,” you offered, pressing the coats into the attendant's hands and taking the ticket in return.
“Actually, can you add this one to that ticket?”
As if this night couldn’t get any more uncomfortable.
You could feel his chest against your back even before you heard him. He shifted his arms out of his sleeves and placed a hand on your shoulder as he leaned towards the counter. Of course he smelled good. Why wouldn’t he?
You fought the urge to roll your eyes in repressed… something and spun on your heel.
He was just as close as you were expecting and also far too close for comfort. You knocked your head back to catch his gaze, trying to appear unamused and angry.
“Why would you do that?” you asked.
Bucky paused for a moment, searching the planes of your face for a beat too long before replying, “No reason to open another ticket. I’ll just leave when you leave.”
“You mean you’ll leave when Brown leaves, then?”
The muscle in his jaw jumped. “So, nothing's changed.”
This time, you did roll your eyes. You clutched the coat check number in your hand and began to storm off, not in the headspace to have this conversation at this gala. Bucky, however, did not seem to mind.
The hand on your arm was soft but firm as you were tugged into a closet and subsequently shoved into a rack of hanging coats. It was too dim to see beyond your hands out in front of you, but Bucky solved that predicament as he entered your space.
“Did you seriously just throw me into a closet?” you whisper-yelled, all too aware of the staff only feet away.
“I had no choice,” he replied with the same urgency. “You were stomping off. And I didn’t throw you in here.”
“I was not stomping off,” you scoffed.
“You were.”
“Was not!”
“I could hear your heels. You were stomping.”
You groaned, pushing into his chest to try and create distance that wasn’t available. Your back only hit the wall.
“Fine. What do you want?”
Bucky froze for a moment. “I… I didn’t actually think you’d stay in here. Or let me talk, if I’m being honest.
Your jaw fell open, an incredulous laugh slipping out. You’d almost forgotten how endearing he was in just about everything he did. Even as he stood in front of you in a full, three-piece suit, smushing you against a closet wall because he had dragged you in there with no plan, a part of your chest warmed.
Your phone vibrated in your bag, and that warmth turned to ice.
“I don’t have time for this,” you determined, wiggling your way towards the door.
“Wait, hold on. I do have something to say, wait,” Bucky pleaded, metal hand—more gentle than you were sure it was ever used for—encircling your wrist. He tugged you back even closer this time, your face inches from his. “I wanted to say sorry. And… and I want to get it.”
“Get it?” you parroted, trying extremely hard to ignore the dropping feeling in your gut as he stared into your eyes.
“I want to get why you stay. Why you let him treat you like that. I want to know so I can… feel okay backing off.”
All you could get out was, “Why?”
Bucky’s next words were spoken as he stared down at your lips. “I think you know why.”
Breaths began to fail you, each exhale more ragged than the last. You had been expecting this, in a way, and that was why you always made excuses. He couldn’t be with you because he was a Congressman. You were only an assistant. You couldn’t date him because you were too busy. He wouldn’t want to date you, anyway. Senator Brown would never be okay with it.
All of those excuses evaporated within the shared space of the closet, and then you got scared. So, you blurted out what he wanted.
“He won’t let me quit. He won’t let me work anywhere else.”
Bucky blinked, a fog clearing from his heated gaze. His head jutted back an inch, and the hand that had somehow found a home on your jaw paused its ascent into your hair. “Won’t let you?”
“I’d be blacklisted.”
“He can’t do that.”
“He can.”
Bucky opened his mouth to speak again as the air in the closet became breathable and light peeked in from the cracking door. You sprang back from the Congressman, pushing his hand away from your cheek and slamming your back into the wall. It didn’t help much; the fifteen-year-old with the shawl in her hand was already making her own assumptions as you rushed past her and left Bucky to his own devices in the closet.
Amazing.
Just amazing.
You debated moving states, or countries, or entire career paths as you hurried into the dining room of the gala. Not only had you taken too long at the coat check, but you knew you looked completely flushed and out of it. You prayed that Brown was already drinking and wouldn’t catch on.
Thankfully, your prayers were answered.
While he was not happy to see you, his raised brow and side-eye deadly as you sat down, he didn’t say anything. And that was how dinner went—quiet and uncomfortable for you, but otherwise par for the course for Senator Brown.
Bucky was staring at you from across the table. The room was backlit by dull candles and expensive chandeliers, and you could feel his gaze on the side of your face like an unprecedented heat. He often flickered that gaze to Brown, but it would harden, become angry.
There was nothing he could do. There was nothing anyone could do.
You either stuck it out with Brown or tossed your political science degree in the trash can on your way out.
When dinner passed and dessert was served, you eyed the lemon tart mocking you from your plate. Dessert, when your life felt so out of control and confusing, couldn’t hurt, you figured, so you picked up your fork and ignored the knots taking up space in your stomach.
“Yours looks better.” Senator Brown picked up the lip of your plate and slid his in its place. “Here.”
“But—”
“Oh, don’t complain about it. Who complains about chocolate cake?” he peeved, snickering to the men on the other side of the table. He then went on a drunken rant about “good help” and the “youth of today” as you looked down at the cake in front of you.
Was D.C. even worth it?
Bucky was staring at you again. He wasn’t directly across from you, a few centerpieces blocking your view, but you could feel it. To avoid him—and your feelings—you ate the cake. Brown and the men sarcastically cheered as you did, alcohol clear in the air at this point, and you took another bite to get them to find some other novelty.
You took three bites before it started to sink in.
You vaguely registered that Bucky had pushed out from the table, a clink of silverware preceding the motion. It was too late for him, however, because as your own fork clattered down, you could no longer breathe.
Your tongue felt ten times too big in your mouth and your throat was glued shut, air tunneling through any openings it could find. You pushed out from the table and stood. The extra space didn’t do anything. You clawed at your throat until your legs became unsteady and failed from the lack of oxygen.
The table was extremely long, so at some point, you thought you heard Bucky dive over the dinner party rather than continue his trek around to your side. Other sounds filtered past the panic clogging your ears.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know!”
“Is she allergic to something? It’s an allergic reaction!”
“Brown, what is she allergic to?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, do something!”
As you were grappling for your purse, a choked whine fell from your lips. It had been kicked somewhere, pushed out of your grasp, and no one at this damn gala was helping you. Several older women had gone to their knees with worried expressions at your eye line, but they weren’t doing anything.
“Move.”
Your head was beginning to spin, and your thoughts were blurring, but you heard Bucky. He came to your side much faster than it felt, moving things around that your blurred vision couldn’t catch. And then, pain. And then relief.
Your gasping breaths were supported by gentle hands on your face, thumbs brushing along your cheekbones. You grappled at Bucky’s wrists and tried to parse out panic from physical symptoms, but there was so much commotion in the room and your head was still so fuzzy.
“You’re okay,” Bucky assured you, voice almost too low to catch. Someone was on the phone with 911 in the back. “You can breathe with me. Come on. Don’t—hey—don’t look at them. Look at me.”
Your chin was pushed forward, and then your forehead connected with his. Ringing persisted in your ears. Your hands were beginning to shake from the epi, your jaw following close behind.
“I got you, okay?”
“F-f-feels—”
“I know,” he hushed. When your breath was somewhat steadier, he tucked your head beneath his chin and began barking out orders. He asked for an ETA on the ambulance, for your jacket, for ten other things you couldn’t register. And then, “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”
The chaos of the room went silent. Within your shaking hands clutched in Bucky’s suit jacket, your fingers spasmed out of fear.
“Excuse me?” Brown scoffed. You were honestly surprised he was still in the room.
“What, throwing things at her wasn’t enough? Had to try and kill her?”
“B-bucky—”
“Throwing things at her?” you heard from across the room. “Brown, what is Barnes talking about?”
“I have no idea,” Brown spat out. He jutted his hand out towards you on the floor. “He never knows what he’s talking about. We’ve established that.”
“Right,” Bucky deadpanned, pulling you closer to his chest as you gasped for breath. “So what do you call this?”
“An accident, obviously.”
Bucky let out a puff of air through his nose, shaking his head in disbelief. Silence blanketed the room once more, and it was clear that he had given up. His hands were glued to the back of your head and your back, and he didn’t have the time or the drive in him to care about Brown right now.
“I saw you switch the plates.” The quiet voice came from across the table, the young blonde’s face registering in your memory as you peeked out from beyond Bucky’s chest. “She had a card with it, too. It said there was an allergy accommodation.”
Low murmurs fell over the room. Brown, much to your surprise, looked at a loss for words, his expression betrayed as he stared at the woman across the room. It clicked then, where you knew her from. She was on the front cover of every article you were pressured to get taken down, and the contact photo for the main caller in Brown’s phone.
“What? No,” Brown refuted, a nervous chuckle escaping him. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, either. She’s barely even a secretary. She’s—”
The eyes around the room made his words trail off. “Barely even a secretary” was certainly a degrading title for his mistress, and everyone in the room knew it. If you were to look at your phone, you’d have seen that the newest story of their relationship had been blowing up all night. You guessed she was fed up with him denying it.
Sirens sounded beyond the doors of the ballroom, breaking up the tension at the wide table. Brown used it as his getaway, throwing his napkin down and muttering something about insolence or idiots or something of the sort. You couldn’t really hear anything over Bucky’s low whisper in your ear, followed by his lips against the side of your head.
~~
After being monitored in the emergency room for approximately six hours, the night shift staff sent you off with a horde of medication to take for the next month and, of course, a new epipen. You trudged out past the waiting room, prepared to wait in the parking lot for an Uber, when a certain man sitting in a chair far too small for him caught your eye.
He was half asleep, his face held in his metal hand as he nodded off and woke up just as quickly. His suit looked stiff and uncomfortable as he twisted his wrists, dragging the sleeves up to his elbows. He’d discarded the jacket somewhere, probably lost to the world now. And then he spotted you, your dress awkwardly draped over your body in your haphazard attempt to re-dress, your hair completely out of place, and your hands filled with paper bags of medication.
He shot out of the chair, holding everything in your hands in one of his, and assessed you himself. His gaze roved the mess you’d become. He should have made a joke about it, maybe teased you for almost dying, but instead, he ran a hand over your head and dragged you against his chest.
“Scared the shit out of me,” he murmured into your hair. He pressed another kiss there, reminding you that the first one hadn’t been your imagination.
“You didn’t have to stay,” you said, clutching his button-up in your hands.
“‘Course I did.” He leaned you back, hand still woven at the base of your hair, not caring that he was in the middle of the ER waiting room. “You okay?”
It only took you a moment to make a decision.
You pressed up, kissing him even though you were in the ER waiting room. Even though you both looked like a mess and you’d almost died and you had no idea if you still had a job. You kissed him and it startled him, the paper bag of medications crunching in his hand, but he kissed you back without hesitation.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss—not like the breathless, wanting kisses you would share late, share tomorrow—but it was confirming something. Bucky held you and had his lips firmly against yours, his brows furrowed in a way you couldn’t see, and he confirmed everything you’d suspected.
You figured you wouldn’t need to work if your boyfriend were a Congressman.
But, as you would soon find out, Senator Brown didn’t have very much time left as a Senator, anyway.
im such a tropey loser lmao. i need more x reader fics that are enemies to lovers with hurt comfort and the guy saying "who did this to you?" and caring for the reader. i may also need a psychoanalysis
pairing: bucky barnes x reader | 8k | jurassic park au
warnings: red zone horror, dinosaur attacks, blood/injury, death, weapon violence, panic, unethical experimentation, military-funded projects
summary: the park’s biggest nightmares live behind doors the guests will never see. when the red zone breaches, you and bucky barnes—internal security, lethal and unshakeable—fight your way out with a small group of survivors and the truth snapping at your heels.
author's note: chat, i was shaking in my boots writing this! i would rather die than be put in this situation; HOWEVER, if i had a broody, no nonsense bucky with my i think i could manage?!? pls don't sue me if you get nightmares from this🫣🦖🦕
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The tourist side of the island smells like sunscreen and money.
The air is salt-bright and warm, thick with the perfume of hibiscus hedges planted to look accidental. The visitor center runs on curated awe—polished concrete floors, gift shop plushies, the looping video that promises you “a once-in-a-lifetime experience” in seven languages. The dinosaurs here are safe enough to put on a brochure.
Even when something goes wrong, it’s the kind of wrong you can spin.
A goat goes missing and the kids squeal like it’s a show. A fence flickers and the tour guide cracks a joke about “ancient predators and modern technology.” A staff member breaks their wrist on a service ladder and you patch them up in the clinic while they tell you, laughing too loudly, that they’re fine, totally fine, couldn’t happen on a better island.
You nod. You smile. You keep your voice soothing.
Because the other side of the island doesn’t smell like money.
It smells like bleach and electricity. Like wet concrete. Like the metallic bite of blood that never fully leaves your hands no matter how much you scrub.
The other side of the island doesn’t get brochures.
It gets classification stamps.
You’re not supposed to call it the other side. You’re not supposed to say the words classified wing out loud. Officially, it’s a “restricted research corridor,” a cluster of facilities “supporting veterinary excellence and specimen health.”
Unofficially, it’s the Red Zone.
And you are the medic stationed there.
Not because you’re naïve enough to think you can save the island, but because you’ve always been foolish enough to think you can save people.
Your badge doesn’t have your name on it. It has a number. Your access key doesn’t open the visitor center. It opens doors that don’t exist on any map.
Doors like the one in front of you now: matte black, no window, a single camera lens sunk into the wall like an unblinking eye.
The lock gives a quiet click when you press your thumb to it. The door swings inward with a hydraulic hush.
Inside, the corridor lights are too bright. White, clinical. Designed to make everything visible, even the things you’d rather not see.
You push your cart forward—trauma kit, suture pack, field dressings, IV fluids, portable defib—because you’ve learned the Red Zone doesn’t wait for you to be ready. The air is colder here, regulated. The hum of generators is a constant under everything, like the island’s heartbeat, steady and oblivious.
At the end of the hall stands Bucky Barnes.
He doesn’t lean. He doesn’t slouch. He doesn’t waste energy pretending to be casual.
He’s in black tactical gear that makes him look like a shadow that learned how to hold a gun. No park logo, no cheerful patch. His hair is pulled back, just long enough to brush his collar. The security badge on his vest has been stripped down to a bar code. Even his presence feels classified.
He watches you approach like he’s tracking the threat level of the air around you.
The first time you met him, you’d thought, stupidly, Oh. That’s what a weapon looks like when you let it walk around as a man.
The second time, you’d realized the worse truth:
He’s not pretending to be anything.
“Morning,” you say, because you refuse to let the island turn you into a whisper.
His eyes flick to your hands. To your cart. To the stethoscope looped at your neck. Then back to your face.
“Doc,” he answers, voice like gravel pressed into velvet. It’s not a nickname, not really. It’s a role. A classification.
Bucky is the head of internal security for this section, but “security” on the Red Zone side is a polite word. You know what he actually is. You’ve seen the way other staff go quiet when he walks past. You’ve heard the clipped radio codes. You’ve watched him escort men in military fatigues through doors you’re not allowed to look at.
There are rumors. There are always rumors. Some say he’s former special forces. Some say he’s the reason this wing hasn’t collapsed under its own sins. Some say he was sent here because he knows how to keep mouths shut.
The only rumor you trust is the one you can feel when he looks at you:
He’s been ordered to keep you quiet too.
“Any injuries overnight?” you ask, because you’ll keep doing your job even if it kills you.
“None you need to know about,” he says automatically.
You give him a look.
His jaw flexes, like he’s swallowing down an answer that tastes wrong. “One tech got clawed. Superficial. Bandaged it. Told him to come see you.”
“You bandaged it.”
“I know where to put gauze.”
“That’s not the same as knowing what infection looks like.” You move past him, cart wheels clicking softly. “Where is he?”
“In quarantine bay three.”
“Of course he is.”
Bucky falls into step beside you, silent as a threat. You can feel the weight of him, the constant readiness. It does something to your nerves, makes your skin too aware of itself. He’s always like this here—tight, contained, lethal.
On the tourist side, security wears khaki and smiles. Here, security wears darkness and doesn’t.
You glance up at him. “Did you sleep?”
His eyes don’t leave the corridor ahead. “Sleep’s a luxury.”
“You’re going to get someone killed if you run yourself into the ground.”
His mouth twitches, not quite a smile. “This place already got people killed.”
He isn’t wrong.
You pass a frosted glass window that looks into a lab. Inside, scientists in white coats move around a table with the reverence of priests. On a screen behind them is a rotating model of a creature’s skull. It’s wrong in a way you can’t articulate—too many ridges, too many teeth, eye sockets angled predatory and too forward.
You don’t stop walking.
The Red Zone teaches you to keep moving.
At quarantine bay three, the air smells like antiseptic and fear. The tech sits on a cot with his shirt torn at the shoulder, a bandage wrapped tight around his upper arm. His face is pale.
When he sees you, relief loosens his shoulders. When he sees Bucky behind you, it tightens again.
“Let me see,” you say gently.
He holds his arm out with a tremor. You peel back the bandage carefully. Three parallel gashes run along his bicep, shallow but angry. The skin around them is red.
“Did you clean this?” you ask.
“Yeah,” he says too fast. “Barnes—he—he poured something on it.”
“Alcohol,” Bucky says flatly.
You look up. “The drinking kind or the sterilizing kind?”
You hum, not convinced. You start flushing the wounds properly. “What happened?”
The tech swallows. “We were moving the specimen to containment—project—” His eyes dart to Bucky.
“Don’t,” Bucky says, low.
The tech clamps his mouth shut.
You pause, saline dripping from your gloved fingers. “Bucky.”
He doesn’t flinch at his name, but something in him goes still, like a blade held in place.
“It’s okay,” you say quietly. “If it’s a biohazard risk, I need to know.”
His stare is hard. “You don’t.”
You hold his gaze anyway. “You can’t order bacteria not to spread.”
For a long moment, the only sound is the hum of the vents.
Then Bucky exhales through his nose, sharp. “Talons.”
“That narrows it down to half the nightmares in this place.”
“Not the park ones.”
You don’t let your face change. “I figured.”
You finish cleaning, apply antibiotic ointment, dress the wounds properly. “You’re on prophylactic antibiotics,” you tell the tech. “And you’re off shift. No exceptions.”
He nods so hard it’s almost desperate.
When you step back, Bucky’s hand clamps on the tech’s uninjured shoulder with a finality.
“You heard her.”
The tech scrambles up like he’s been granted a pardon. He practically runs out.
As soon as he’s gone, you turn on Bucky. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what.”
“Keeping everyone in the dark,” you say. “They’re terrified. They’re hurt. They deserve to know what they’re dealing with.”
Bucky’s expression doesn’t soften. “They deserve to live.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is here.”
You step closer without meaning to. The air between you feels… charged. Like standing too close to a fence that could spark.
“I know you think you’re protecting us,” you say, keeping your voice low. “But you’re also protecting them. Whoever funded this. Whoever signed off on it. Whoever decided ‘failed genetic projects’ were a reasonable expense.”
His eyes sharpen. “Watch it.”
You lift your chin. “Or what?”
The question hangs there for a beat too llong.
Bucky’s gaze drags down your face, slow, assessing. You know he’s cataloguing the vulnerability: you’re in scrubs, you don’t have a weapon, your job is literally to bleed for other people. You can’t win a fight with him.
And yet, you’re the one who makes him pause.
His voice drops. “Or you become a problem.”
You should be scared of that.
Instead, something tight in your chest pulls into a dangerous kind of curiosity. “Am I a problem?”
The corner of his mouth twitches again, a shadow of something human. “You ask too many questions.”
“Someone has to.”
He looks at you for a long moment. The fluorescent light catches in his eyes, makes them look cold. But you’ve seen him in the infirmary at two in the morning, when he brought in a guard with a shattered knee and waited outside the door like a penitent. You’ve watched him hand you a protein bar when you forgot to eat. You’ve heard him murmur “thank you” so quietly you almost thought you imagined it.
You know he’s not just a weapon.
You also know he could choose to be.
The alarms start as a low pulse.
At first, you think it’s one of the routine drills. The Red Zone runs drills like religion. Everything here is contingency. Everything here is if.
But then the lights flicker once—just a stutter—and the hum of the generators dips like the island’s heart skipped.
Bucky’s head snaps up, attention cutting toward the ceiling speakers.
The pulse becomes a wail.
A voice crackles through the intercom, strained, too fast. “Containment breach—repeat, containment breach—Red Zone perimeter compromised—”
The next words come out garbled, swallowed by static and the sudden rise of screaming voices in the corridor.
You freeze for half a second, the way your body tries to decide whether this is real.
Bucky doesn’t.
He moves like the alarm is a starter pistol. His hand yanks a radio from his vest. “Barnes, report.”
The reply is chaos. “—fence down—project Cerberus out—God, it’s in—”
A wet crunch. A scream cut off.
Static.
Your mouth goes dry.
Bucky’s eyes flick to you, sharp. “Get your bag.”
“I have—”
“Not that.” He grabs your cart and shoves it toward the wall hard enough the wheels squeal. “Field kit. Now.”
You don’t argue. You’ve learned Bucky’s commands are born from a math you don’t have time to do.
You snatch your go-bag from the hook, fingers shaking only once you’ve got it slung over your shoulder. “What is Cerberus?”
Bucky’s jaw tightens. “Not a dinosaur.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s worse,” he says, and there’s something ugly in his voice, something like disgust.
The lights flicker again. This time, they don’t come back at full strength. The corridor dims into a strobing, sickly half-light.
Somewhere down the hall, metal shrieks. A door slams open.
Footsteps pound closer—running, frantic, too many.
A scientist bursts around the corner, lab coat torn, face smeared with blood that isn’t all his. He sees Bucky and you and lunges like he’s drowning.
“They’re out,” he gasps. “The prototypes—they—”
Behind him, something moves.
It’s fast—too fast for something that size. A shadow under the flashing emergency lights, a blur of muscle and slick skin. It hits the scientist from behind with a force that folds him like paper.
His scream doesn’t finish.
You stumble back, hand flying to your mouth.
Bucky is already in motion. He pulls you behind him with one brutal tug, his body a shield. His other hand brings his rifle up—where it came from, you don’t know, it’s like it just exists when he needs it.
The creature lifts its head.
For a second, the strobing light catches it fully.
It looks like something a child would draw if you asked them to make a dinosaur scarier.
Long, raptor-like, but the proportions are wrong—forelimbs too thick, joints angled in ways that suggest something else was stitched into the DNA. Its skin is dark and wet-looking, almost amphibious, with patches of scale that glitter oily. Its jaw splits wider than it should, rows of teeth layered like needles. And its eyes—
Its eyes catch the light and reflect back, pale and wrong, like a cat’s.
It turns its head slightly, tasting the air.
Then its gaze locks on you.
Your blood goes ice.
Bucky’s finger tightens on the trigger.
The rifle cracks—three sharp shots that echo down the hall. The creature jerks as rounds hit its shoulder, its flank, its neck.
It doesn’t go down.
It shrieks—a sound that isn’t just animal, that vibrates with something engineered and furious—and launches.
Bucky shoves you hard to the side.
The creature slams into him instead, claws scraping armor, teeth snapping inches from his face. He braces, boots skidding on the slick floor, and then he does something you’ve never seen a park guard do in your life.
He uses his body like a weapon.
He pivots, using the creature’s momentum, and drives it into the wall. Metal buckles. The creature thrashes, tail whipping, knocking a wall-mounted monitor loose. Sparks rain.
Bucky grunts, muscles corded, and jams the barrel of his rifle under the creature’s jaw. He fires point blank.
Blood sprays—hot and dark. The creature convulses.
Still, it tries to bite.
Bucky doesn’t hesitate. He drops the rifle, grabs a combat knife, and drives it up, under the jawline, into the soft tissue where bone meets nerve.
The creature shudders once, twice.
Then goes limp.
Silence crashes in after the struggle, broken only by the alarm’s relentless wail and the crackle of sparking wires.
You stand frozen, chest heaving.
Bucky wipes his blade on the creature’s hide like it disgusts him. He snatches his rifle back up and turns to you.
“Move,” he orders.
Your legs don’t cooperate immediately. Your brain is still stuck on the image of teeth. On the scientist’s scream cutting off. On the way that thing looked at you like you were prey.
Bucky’s hand clamps around your wrist—firm, not gentle, but grounding—and drags you forward.
“Bucky,” you manage, voice thin. “What the hell was that?”
He doesn’t slow. “A failure.”
“That doesn’t—”
He hauls you around a corner just as something slams into the wall behind you. The impact shudders through the floor.
Bucky shoves you into a recessed doorway. He leans out, rifle ready, scanning.
The corridor is chaos now—people screaming, running, some bleeding, some clutching radios that only spit static. A security guard stumbles past with a torn thigh, leaving a smear of blood.
You surge forward instinctively. “Hey—”
Bucky catches your shoulder, stops you. “You can’t help if you’re dead.”
“I’m a medic.”
“And I’m telling you he’s not leaving this corridor alive if you step out.” His voice is low, savage with certainty. “Stay.”
Something about the way he says it makes your skin prickle. Not just fear—something else. Something darkly magnetic.
Because he isn’t bluffing.
Bucky moves out into the hall like he owns it. Like chaos is just another environment he knows how to breathe in.
You hate that a part of you watches him and thinks, God.
He grabs the bleeding guard by the vest, drags him into the doorway with you. “Doc.”
You drop to your knees automatically. The guard’s thigh is shredded, muscle exposed. Bite marks. Not clean. Ragged.
You pull your kit open with shaking hands. “Tourniquet,” you snap.
Bucky’s hands are already there, pulling a strap from his gear. He cinches it high and tight with brutal efficiency.
The guard whimpers.
“Hold still,” Bucky says, not unkind, just absolute.
You pack the wound, press gauze hard until the bleeding slows. Your hands are slick with blood. Your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it in your throat.
“What bit you?” you ask the guard.
He sobs, eyes wide. “It—it was—like a raptor but—wrong.”
You glance up at Bucky.
His eyes are fixed down the corridor. “Told you.”
A new voice crackles over a radio nearby, clearer this time, panicked. “Barnes! We’ve got survivors at the substation—four, maybe five—can’t reach the helipad, perimeter fence is down—”
Bucky snatches his own radio. “Where’s the breach?”
“Red Zone enclosure six—then it spread—power grid’s unstable—God, Barnes, it’s a bloodbath—”
Bucky’s jaw clenches. “How many out?”
A pause. A swallow you can hear through the speaker. “We—don’t know.”
Bucky’s eyes flick to you. “We’re going.”
Your stomach drops. “We?”
He doesn’t even blink. “You’re the only medic on this side.”
“There are others—”
“Not anymore,” he says, and the flatness of it is worse than if he’d screamed.
You swallow hard, forcing your hands to keep working. The guard grips your wrist weakly, desperate.
“I need to get him to the clinic,” you say.
Bucky looks down at the guard, then back at you. “Can he walk?”
The guard shakes his head, tears spilling.
Bucky doesn’t hesitate. He crouches, grabs the guard under the arms, and hauls him up like he weighs nothing. “Then he rides.”
He throws the guard over his shoulder. The guard cries out.
“Sorry,” Bucky says, not sounding sorry at all. Then to you: “Stay on my six. Don’t lag. Don’t run ahead. If I say down, you go down.”
Your mouth feels full of cotton. “Bucky—”
He meets your gaze, and for a heartbeat the strobing red light makes him look like something out of a nightmare too—blood spattered across his jaw, eyes hard, posture coiled.
“You wanna live,” he says quietly, “you listen to me.”
It’s not a threat.
It’s a promise.
You nod once.
Bucky moves.
You follow.
The substation is a concrete blockhouse half-swallowed by jungle, fenced off from tourists by signage that says AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in cheerful font, like that’s enough to keep curiosity away.
Today, the signs are pointless. The fence is bent. The gate hangs open.
Inside, the air smells like ozone and wet earth. The generator hum has a jagged edge to it, like it’s struggling. Somewhere deeper in the jungle, something roars—low, huge, too close.
Bucky dumps the injured guard onto a bench inside the substation and barks at a tech with a bleeding forehead, “Watch him.”
The tech nods frantically.
In the corner, four people huddle together: two scientists, a young intern with mascara streaked down her cheeks, and a security runner with his arm in a makeshift sling.
They look at Bucky like he’s either salvation or doom.
Then they see you.
Hope flares, fragile.
“Thank God,” one of the scientists whispers. “We thought—”
Bucky cuts him off. “We’re leaving.”
“Leaving where?” the intern chokes out. “The helipad’s—”
“Compromised,” Bucky says. “We go through service tunnel nine. It connects to the old water treatment route. That gets us to the east ridge. Extraction will meet there.”
The security runner’s face goes gray. “Tunnel nine goes through—”
Bucky’s eyes flash. “Yeah.”
The runner swallows. “The… other enclosures.”
The scientists exchange looks, terror sharpening. “We can’t go through the Red Zone,” one says. “That’s—those are—”
“Classified,” Bucky finishes for him, voice cold. “You should’ve thought about that before you took the funding.”
The scientist flinches like he’s been slapped.
You look between them, mind racing. “Bucky, tunnel nine—if it goes through the Red Zone—”
“It’s the only route not flooded with tourists and not on fire,” he says. “We take it or we die here.”
A distant crash shudders through the jungle—trees snapping. The sound is so big your bones vibrate with it.
The intern whimpers.
Bucky shoulders his rifle. “Move.”
No one argues after that.
You tighten your grip on your go-bag strap as you step out into the open.
The jungle is different when you’re not behind glass.
On the tourist tours, the forest is a backdrop. Controlled. Curated. But out here, it’s a wall of green that breathes. Humidity clings to your skin instantly. Bugs whine in your ears. The ground is slick mud and rotting leaves, eager to swallow your boots.
Bucky moves ahead, silent, scanning. His posture is predatory—head tilted slightly like he’s listening to frequencies you can’t hear. Every few steps, he lifts his hand to signal stop, go, crouch, like he’s choreographing survival.
You keep the group tight behind you. You check on the runner’s sling, on the intern’s breathing, on the scientist whose hands won’t stop shaking.
You tell yourself you can do this.
You tell yourself you’re trained.
Then you see the first body.
A guard lies half in the mud, throat torn out. His radio crackles weakly beside him, soaked. His eyes are open, staring at nothing.
The intern gasps, hand over her mouth.
One of the scientists makes a strangled sound.
You swallow bile.
Bucky doesn’t even slow. He steps over the body like he’s stepping over a log.
You want to hate him for that.
Instead, you understand.
If you stop, you die.
The service tunnel entrance is a concrete mouth in a hillside, framed by overgrown vines. The keypad beside it blinks, lights stuttering.
Bucky swears under his breath and yanks a tool from his belt. He pries the panel open with practiced speed, fingers moving like he’s done this a hundred times.
“Thought you said you didn’t know where to put gauze,” you mutter, trying to keep your voice from shaking.
His mouth twitches faintly. “I didn’t say I was just security.”
The keypad sparks once, then goes dark.
Bucky curses again, then slams his metal hand against the lock.
The metal door shudders.
Again.
The hinges groan.
With a final, brutal shove, the lock gives. The door swings inward.
The tunnel yawns dark and damp, a stale breath rolling out.
Bucky flicks on a flashlight attached to his rifle. The beam cuts through the darkness, catching on wet concrete and old signage that reads MAINTENANCE ACCESS — AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.
The intern whispers, “I don’t—like—”
Bucky turns his head slightly. “You wanna stay out here?”
Another roar rolls through the jungle—closer now. The sound is massive, like the island itself is angry.
The intern shakes her head violently.
“Then move,” Bucky says.
You go in.
The tunnel is colder, the air heavy with mildew. Water drips from the ceiling. Your flashlight beam trembles slightly, betraying your nerves.
Bucky takes point. You’re right behind him. The survivors trail in a line.
You walk for what feels like forever, the tunnel swallowing sound, making every footstep echo.
Then the wall signage changes.
The cheerful maintenance warnings vanish. In their place: black-and-white placards with red stamps.
RED ZONE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.BIOHAZARD.PROJECT ACCESS—CLASSIFIED.
Your skin prickles.
One of the scientists whispers, “This is—this is wrong.”
“You think?” you whisper back, more bitter than you mean to.
Bucky slows at a junction. Two paths: one marked WATER TREATMENT, the other marked simply RZ-9.
He pauses, listening.
In the silence, you hear it: a faint clicking sound, rapid, almost insect-like.
Bucky’s hand lifts—stop.
Everyone freezes.
The clicking grows louder.
Then, from somewhere in the darkness ahead, something scuttles across the tunnel ceiling.
Your flashlight catches a glimpse—pale flesh, too many limbs, a tail like a whip.
The intern makes a tiny, terrified noise.
The clicking stops.
A breath.
Then a sound like claws scraping concrete.
Bucky’s rifle swings up. “Down,” he snaps.
You drop instinctively. The others scramble.
Something drops from the ceiling.
It lands with a wet slap and a hiss.
Your light catches it fully and your brain stutters.
It’s small—dog-sized—but it’s wrong in a way that makes your stomach lurch. It has the sleek body of a raptor, but its limbs are longer, almost spider-like, jointed in too many places. Its head is narrow, eyes huge and glossy, mouth packed with needle teeth.
And on its back—your light glints off something metallic.
Harness.
Armor plating.
The scientist beside you whispers, horrified, “They put… gear on them.”
The creature’s head snaps toward the sound.
Bucky fires.
The shot booms in the tunnel, deafening. The creature jerks, but the armor plate deflects enough that it doesn’t drop. It shrieks and launches—
Not at Bucky.
At you.
Your breath stops.
Bucky moves faster than thought. He slams into it mid-leap, driving it into the wall. The creature thrashes, claws scrabbling, teeth snapping.
Bucky grabs its neck with his metal hand and twists.
You hear bone crack.
The creature goes limp.
Bucky throws it to the floor like trash.
The survivors stare, stunned.
You stare too, pulse pounding, because for a split second that thing was going to tear you open and Bucky didn’t even hesitate.
He didn’t even think.
He just… saved you.
You push up onto your knees, breathing hard. “Thank you.”
Bucky doesn’t look at you. “Keep moving.”
But his shoulder brushes yours as he steps past, just barely, and the contact feels like a promise you’re not ready to name.
Tunnel nine spits you out into a corridor that doesn’t belong to the park.
The walls are reinforced steel, stained with old scratches. The lighting is dim, red emergency strips that make everything look like it’s bleeding.
There are doors on either side, heavy, numbered with stenciled codes: RZ-6, RZ-7, RZ-8.
A smell hangs in the air—chemical, sour, like something rotting under bleach.
The intern starts crying silently.
You want to comfort her, but you don’t have time.
Bucky stops at a viewing window set into one of the doors. The glass is thick, layered, scratched from the inside.
He angles his flashlight through it.
You shouldn’t look.
You do anyway.
Inside, the enclosure is huge, lit dimly by UV lamps. The ground is torn up. Blood smears the concrete.
And in the corner, curled like a nightmare trying to make itself small, is something that looks like a raptor… until it lifts its head.
Its mouth opens.
Rows of teeth—too many—unfurl like a flower of knives.
A second set of jaws slides forward from inside the first.
The intern chokes on a sob.
The scientist whispers, “That’s—impossible.”
Bucky’s voice is a quiet blade. “It’s funded.”
You step back from the window, heart pounding. “Bucky… what are these.”
He doesn’t answer right away. His gaze stays on the enclosure, as if he’s watching for movement. “Military wanted assets,” he says finally. “Park wanted profit. Scientists wanted to play God.”
“And you?” you ask, too sharply. “What do you want?”
His eyes flick to you. In the red light, they look almost black.
“I want to keep people alive,” he says. “Even when they don’t deserve it.”
Something about that lands heavy in your chest.
You’re about to speak when a sound echoes down the corridor.
A deep, dragging thud.
Slow. Heavy.
Like something big moving with purpose.
Bucky’s body goes rigid. He lifts his hand—stop.
The survivors freeze behind you, trembling.
The thud grows louder.
Then you hear it: a wet, rasping breath, like something breathing through fluid.
Bucky’s flashlight beam steadies on the corridor ahead.
At the far end, where the hall widens into a junction, something steps into view.
At first, your brain tries to categorize it. T. rex. Big. Bipedal. Head heavy.
Then it tilts its skull and you see the details that don’t belong.
Its skin isn’t scaled like the park rex. It’s textured, almost armored, with patches of bony plating that catch the red light. Its forelimbs are longer than they should be, ending in claws that look built for gripping, not just tearing. Along its spine, ridges rise like blades.
And its eyes—
They aren’t animal.
They’re too aware.
It lowers its head, nostrils flaring.
Smelling.
Finding.
The security runner whispers, “Oh my God.”
The creature’s head snaps toward the sound.
It roars.
The sound slams into you like a physical force. The corridor vibrates. Dust sifts from the ceiling. The intern screams.
Bucky’s voice cuts through. “RUN.”
You run.
The corridor becomes a tunnel of panic, red light strobes, footsteps pounding. Your lungs burn instantly. The survivors stumble, sobbing, clinging to each other.
Behind you, the thuds accelerate.
Fast.
Too fast for something that big.
Bucky moves beside you, herding, shoving a scientist forward when he trips, grabbing the intern by the collar to keep her from falling.
“Left!” he barks at a junction.
You veer left without thinking, into a narrower hallway.
A door ahead reads RZ-9 — EMERGENCY EXIT.
Bucky slams his shoulder into it.
Locked.
He curses, then drives his metal hand into the control panel.
Sparks explode. The lock clicks.
He yanks the door open.
“IN!” he shouts.
You shove the survivors through into a stairwell. Concrete steps spiral down. The air is colder here, damp.
Bucky is last in. He slams the door shut, throws a heavy bar across it.
Then the impact hits.
The entire door buckles inward as the creature slams into it from the other side. The metal groans. The bar shudders.
The survivors scream.
Bucky braces his shoulder against the door, muscles straining.
“Down,” he snarls at you. “Get them down!”
You don’t argue. You herd the survivors down the stairs, heart hammering, hands gripping the rail slick with condensation.
Above, the door shrieks under assault.
Bucky’s boots thunder on the steps as he follows, still calm in a way that feels impossible.
“How long will that hold?” you gasp.
He doesn’t look back. “Not long.”
“Then what—”
He stops mid-stairwell, grabs a red metal box on the wall, rips it open.
Inside: emergency explosives.
Your blood turns to ice. “Bucky—”
“Keep moving,” he snaps.
He plants charges with swift efficiency, like this is familiar. Like he’s done this in places that weren’t supposed to exist on maps either.
The door above bends inward again with a horrific scream of metal.
Bucky slams the box shut, grabs your wrist, hauls you down the last stretch of stairs.
At the bottom, the stairwell opens into a service corridor that smells like old water and rust. Pipes run along the ceiling. A sign points toward WATER TREATMENT ROUTE.
You sprint.
Behind you, Bucky’s voice is sharp. “Go!”
Then he shoves you forward, turns, and runs back up a few steps.
You spin, panic slicing through you. “BUCKY!”
He doesn’t look at you. He just lifts a hand—move.
The door above finally gives with a scream. The creature’s roar floods the stairwell.
Bucky hits the trigger.
The explosion is deafening, a concussive blast that punches air into your lungs. The stairwell shakes violently. Dust and debris rain down.
The roar cuts off abruptly, smothered.
For a heartbeat, there’s silence.
Then Bucky comes flying down the stairs, coughing, soot streaking his face, eyes wild.
He grabs your arm and runs, dragging you with him.
You don’t realize you’re crying until your vision blurs.
The water treatment route is a labyrinth of pipes, open channels, and concrete walkways slick with algae. The sound of rushing water echoes off the walls, constant, masking smaller noises.
It should feel safer.
It doesn’t.
Because safety on this island is an illusion.
You push the survivors onto a catwalk, forcing them to keep moving. The intern is sobbing openly now, breaths hiccupping. One scientist has gone eerily quiet, eyes glassy.
The security runner staggers, pale.
You stop long enough to check him. His sling is soaked through.
“Let me see,” you say.
He flinches. “We can’t stop.”
“If you bleed out, you slow us down more.” You don’t soften the truth. The Red Zone doesn’t reward tenderness. “Sit.”
He sits, trembling. You unwrap the makeshift sling. The wound underneath is ugly—deep gouges, muscle torn.
Bucky crouches beside you, rifle still up, scanning the shadows.
“You have anything for pain?” the runner whispers.
You nod, digging in your kit. “This will sting.”
You clean the wound quickly, inject local anesthetic as best you can. Your hands are steady because you’ve trained them to be. Your heart is still racing, but your fingers don’t betray you.
Bucky watches you work, head tilted slightly. “You’re shaking,” he says softly.
You blink. “No, I’m not.”
He reaches out with his flesh hand—careful, controlled—and cups your elbow. His thumb presses lightly against your skin.
You realize then that the shaking isn’t in your hands.
It’s in your arm.
It’s in your body, adrenaline finally crashing into your muscles.
You swallow hard. “I’m fine.”
His eyes meet yours. The red emergency light from the corridor above is gone now, replaced by the dim industrial glow of the treatment plant. In this light, his face looks… human. Tired. Smeared with soot and blood.
“I’ve seen ‘fine,’” he murmurs. “This ain’t it.”
The intimacy of it—his touch, his attention—hits you like a shock. Your throat tightens.
You want to say something sharp to cover the softness. You want to say something stupid like don’t. Like you don’t get to look at me like that after what I just saw you do.
Instead, you whisper, “You’re hurt.”
His jaw flexes. “Doesn’t matter.”
“You told me I can’t help if I’m dead,” you say, voice trembling with something that isn’t just fear. “Same goes for you.”
For a moment, he looks like he might argue.
Then he glances down at his own arm.
There’s blood soaking through his sleeve.
Your stomach drops. “Bucky.”
“It’s not mine,” he says automatically.
You stare.
He sighs, exasperated, and peels back the sleeve.
A deep gash runs along his forearm—fresh, angry, bleeding slowly. You don’t know when it happened. You don’t know how you didn’t see it.
Because you were watching him like he was invincible.
You swallow hard and reach for gauze. “Sit.”
He hesitates.
You lift your eyes to him, steady. “That’s an order, Barnes.”
Something flickers in his expression—amusement, maybe, or respect.
He sits.
You clean the gash, your fingers gentle despite everything. The skin around it is warm. Real. You patch him with practiced care, wrap the bandage tight.
Bucky watches your hands the entire time, like he’s memorizing the way you touch him when you’re not afraid.
When you finish, you glance up—and realize how close his face is.
Close enough that you can see the faint line of scars near his jaw. Close enough that you can feel his breath.
Your pulse kicks.
His gaze drops to your mouth for half a second.
Something hot and dangerous curls in your belly—an awful thought, born in terror and adrenaline:
I should be scared of you too.
You should be.
Because you just watched him kill like it was breathing.
And yet… he’s letting you bandage him like you’re something precious.
You pull back sharply, clearing your throat. “We need to move.”
His eyes hold yours for a beat longer. Then he nods once, as if locking something away. “Yeah.”
You stand, turn to the survivors. “We’re going to the east ridge. Stay close. Don’t wander. If you hear anything, you don’t scream—you get down and you cover your head. Understood?”
They nod, terrified.
Bucky rises behind you like a shadow.
You move.
The east ridge is where the island drops away into cliffs, jagged rock cutting into violent sea. The wind is sharp up here, smelling of salt and storm. Gray clouds churn overhead, heavy with rain.
You emerge from the service access into open air and for a second your lungs feel like they might actually work again.
Then you see the state of the ridge.
The fence line is shredded. Metal posts bent like straw. A security jeep lies overturned, its windshield spiderwebbed with cracks.
Bodies.
Not many, but enough.
The intern sobs again, collapsing to her knees.
You swallow hard, forcing yourself to keep moving. You scan the ridge for the extraction point—an open pad marked with faded paint, a place where helicopters can land.
It’s empty.
Your heart drops.
Bucky raises his radio. “East ridge. We’re here.”
Static answers.
He tries again. “Extraction, respond.”
Nothing.
The wind howls.
The survivors look at him like he’s about to tell them they’re doomed.
Bucky’s jaw tightens. He lowers the radio slowly, eyes scanning the horizon.
Rain begins to fall, cold drops that slick your hair to your forehead.
You step closer. “Bucky—”
He turns to you, and something in his face is hard and grim and angry—not at you, but at the island, at the people who built this, at the fact that the math of survival is never fair.
“They’re not coming,” the scientist whispers, voice broken.
Bucky’s eyes narrow. “Not yet.”
A sound cuts through the wind.
Not a roar this time.
A clicking.
Rapid. Coordinated.
Your stomach twists.
Bucky’s head tilts slightly. He listens.
Then he swears, low. “Get down.”
You don’t hesitate. You shove the survivors behind the overturned jeep, dropping with them. Mud soaks your knees.
Bucky moves away from cover, stepping into the open like he’s offering himself up.
“Bucky!” you hiss, horrified.
He doesn’t look back. His rifle lifts, steady, aimed toward the treeline.
The clicking grows louder.
Then shapes move in the brush.
Not one.
Several.
You see them in flashes through rain and branches—sleek bodies, too-long limbs, reflective eyes. Smaller than the Cerberus thing, faster, coordinated.
Pack.
The intern makes a small, terrified sound.
One of the creatures snaps its head toward it.
Bucky fires.
A creature drops, twitching. Another darts forward, too fast. Bucky pivots, firing again, rounds cracking through the air.
The pack fans out, circling.
They’re smart.
Your breath comes in sharp gasps. Your hands dig into mud, useless, because you don’t have a gun. You have gauze and saline and stubbornness.
Bucky keeps firing, moving, never letting them flank him fully. His body is fluid, lethal. He looks like violence given purpose.
One creature lunges at his left.
He swings the rifle, strikes it mid-air. The stock cracks against its skull. It yelps and scrambles back.
Another lunges at his right, jaws snapping—
Bucky’s metal hand shoots out, catches it by the throat mid-leap.
He slams it into the ground hard enough mud splatters.
It thrashes, claws scraping his armor. He holds it down like it’s nothing, then drives his knife into its skull.
The pack hesitates.
In that hesitation, you see it: the way they look at him.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like they know what he is.
Like he’s something engineered too.
A chill crawls up your spine.
The pack shifts again, clicking, searching for weakness.
One breaks from the group and darts toward the jeep—toward you.
Your body moves before your brain does. You snatch a metal tool from the mud near the jeep—some broken piece of fence—and swing as the creature lunges.
The metal bar connects with its snout. The impact jars your arms to the bone.
The creature shrieks, snapping at you again.
You stumble back, heart in your throat.
It lunges—
And Bucky is there.
He moves like a bullet, slamming into it, knocking it away from you. His hand grabs your collar, yanks you behind him, shielding you again.
His voice is a snarl. “I said down.”
“I was down,” you choke, shaking. “It came at us.”
His eyes flick over you quickly, assessing injuries. Rain streaks down his face. His gaze is fierce, almost furious, but not at you.
At the idea of you being hurt.
“Stay behind me,” he says, voice lower now, deadly calm.
You nod, breath hitching.
Bucky turns back to the pack.
“Come on,” he mutters, like he’s talking to monsters the way someone might talk to a storm. “Let’s do this.”
He advances.
The pack retreats a step, then surges together, a coordinated rush.
Bucky fires until the magazine clicks empty.
Then he throws the rifle aside and draws a second weapon—a pistol you didn’t see, because of course he has one. He fires again, precise.
Creatures drop, twitching.
But there are still too many.
One lunges. Bucky ducks. Another snaps at his shoulder; it catches fabric, tears. He grunts, twists, drives his elbow into its jaw.
The third lunges low—
You see it a heartbeat before it happens.
You shout, “Bucky!”
He pivots too late. The creature’s claws rake across his side, tearing.
Blood blooms dark against black gear.
Your stomach drops.
Bucky’s face doesn’t change. He grabs the creature with his metal hand and rips it away from him like tearing weeds. He throws it into the cliffside rocks. It hits with a sick crunch.
The pack falters again, clicking frantic now, uncertain.
Then a new sound cuts through everything.
Rotor blades.
A helicopter crests the ridge, lights cutting through rain.
Relief hits so hard your knees go weak.
The pack hears it too. They scatter into the trees, vanishing like nightmares fleeing dawn.
The helicopter lowers, wind whipping rain and mud.
A voice blasts through a loudspeaker. “MOVE TO EXTRACTION!”
You grab the intern, hauling her up. You pull the scientists to their feet, shove them toward the landing zone.
Bucky staggers slightly.
You see it and your chest tightens. “Bucky!”
He tries to wave you off. “Go.”
“No,” you snap, grabbing his arm. “You’re bleeding.”
His jaw clenches. “I can walk.”
“Then walk with me.”
For a second, his gaze locks on yours, intense enough to feel like a touch.
Then he nods once.
You half-drag him toward the helicopter, the wind roaring, rain stinging your face. The survivors scramble aboard.
A soldier reaches for you. “Move, now!”
You push Bucky forward. He climbs in, grimacing.
You start to climb after him—
Then something moves at the edge of the treeline.
A shape, bigger than the pack.
Watching.
Waiting.
Your blood turns cold again.
Bucky’s head snaps up, following your gaze.
For a heartbeat, you see something in his eyes—recognition, dread.
“Cerberus,” he breathes.
The creature doesn’t charge.
It just stands there, half-hidden by rain and leaves, eyes reflecting pale.
Like it’s memorizing you.
Bucky’s hand clamps around your wrist, yanking you into the helicopter. “Now.”
You stumble inside. The soldier slams the door.
The helicopter lifts, rising fast, wind screaming.
Through the window, you see the Red Zone recede—the shredded fence, the bent metal, the jungle swallowing secrets whole.
And you see Cerberus still watching, unmoving, as if it knows the island will never really let you leave.
Inside the helicopter, everything is loud and shaking and wet.
The survivors huddle together, sobbing, staring at their hands like they can’t believe they’re still attached. The intern keeps whispering “oh my God” like a prayer.
You drop to your knees beside Bucky.
He’s slumped against the wall, one hand braced on the floor, the other pressed to his side. Blood seeps between his fingers.
“Let me see,” you say, voice trembling.
“It’s fine,” he grits out.
“You don’t get to say that.” You pry his hand away gently.
The gash on his side is deep—claw marks, torn skin. Not fatal, but bad.
You grab gauze, press hard.
Bucky hisses, body tightening.
“Sorry,” you whisper automatically.
His eyes flick to you—sharp, then softer. “Don’t apologize for doing your job.”
“You’re bleeding because you did yours,” you shoot back, and your throat tightens unexpectedly. “Because you—because you keep—”
Because you keep putting yourself between me and teeth.
You swallow it down, focus on the wound.
You clean it as best you can in a shaking helicopter, stitch when you can, bandage tight.
Bucky watches you the entire time.
Not like before, in the corridor—cold, assessing.
Now, his gaze is something else.
Something heavy.
When you finish, you sit back on your heels, hands trembling. Blood streaks your gloves. Your stomach churns with delayed horror.
Bucky’s hand reaches out—slow, deliberate.
He touches your wrist, thumb brushing the pulse there like he’s checking that you’re real.
“You’re hurt?” he asks, voice low.
You blink, surprised. “No.”
His eyes narrow, like he doesn’t believe you. His gaze drags over you—your face, your arms, your knees, cataloguing. “You sure.”
“Yes,” you breathe.
His hand stays on your wrist anyway, warm and steady.
You look at him, really look, and the adrenaline crash makes your emotions feel sharp-edged and raw.
“You’re terrifying,” you whisper before you can stop yourself.
Bucky’s brow furrows slightly. “Yeah?”
You swallow. “The way you—out there—how you moved—how you—” Your voice breaks, not from fear, but from something too big to fit in your chest. “I watched you kill like it was nothing.”
His gaze doesn’t flinch. “It wasn’t nothing.”
“It looked like nothing.”
His jaw tightens. He looks past you, toward the helicopter door, toward the island fading behind storm clouds. “I was trained to make it look like nothing.”
A beat.
Then he looks back at you.
And in his eyes is the thing that undoes you—not violence, not coldness, but a kind of brutal honesty.
“I am scary,” he says quietly. “You should be careful around me.”
Your breath catches.
Because he’s giving you an out.
Because he’s warning you.
Because he’s letting you decide.
And all you can think is:
I should be scared of you too.
But you aren’t.
Not in the way you should be.
You shake your head slowly, rainwater dripping from your lashes. “You weren’t scary when you—” You swallow. “When you checked me. When you… looked at me like I mattered.”
Bucky’s hand tightens on your wrist, just slightly.
“You matter,” he says, like it’s a fact. Like it’s been a fact this whole time.
Your chest aches. “Why.”
His eyes flicker—something like pain, something like longing.
“Because you’re the only one in that place who still acts like people are people,” he says, voice rough. “Not assets. Not projects. Not… collateral.”
The helicopter shakes with turbulence. The intern sobs again. The world is loud.
But here, in this pocket of space, it’s just you and him and the steady press of his thumb against your pulse.
You whisper, “What happens now?”
His gaze holds yours. “Now we tell the truth.”
You almost laugh—soft, broken. “They’ll bury it.”
“Then we dig,” he says, and there’s something fierce and certain in him that isn’t just soldier. It’s survivor. It’s rebellion.
You stare at him, rain and blood and adrenaline mixing into something dizzying.
“Bucky,” you whisper, barely a sound.
His eyes drop to your mouth again. Slower this time. Not like a man scanning for threats.
Like a man who wants something and doesn’t know if he’s allowed.
He leans a fraction closer.
Not enough to kiss you.
Enough to make you feel the heat of him, the gravity.
“I’m not gentle,” he murmurs. “Not really.”
You swallow, heartbeat loud in your ears. “You were with me.”
His breath shudders out, almost a laugh, almost a curse. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “With you, I can be.”
The helicopter climbs into cloud cover, the island vanishing completely behind gray.
You don’t kiss him—not with survivors sobbing beside you, not with blood on your gloves, not with the taste of fear still sharp on your tongue.
But you let his hand stay on your wrist.
You let the promise sit there between you, unspoken and electric.
Because you can feel it, sure as the beat under his thumb:
Whatever was unleashed on that island didn’t just break containment.
It broke the world you thought you lived in.
And Bucky Barnes—terrifying, lethal, impossible—just chose you as the one thing he refuses to let it take.
Outside, thunder rolls.
Inside, his thumb keeps counting your pulse like it’s the only truth left.
And for the first time since the alarms started, you believe you might actually survive what comes next.
so i have bad short term memory and it sucks when reading multiple fics cuz ill go from one incomplete fic to another cuz i want more to read as i wait for updates and by the time the next chapter rolls around, my brain has clouded over and is mixing up the memories of the different fics. this makes me need to skim through the last chapter before the newest to remind myself what's happening.
Synopsis: You had no idea that being hired as the personal assistant to the most powerful executive, Leon Kennedy, would pull you into a world this intense. What starts as a job quickly blurs into something far more personal, forcing you to question where professionalism ends, and whether it’s worth the risk.
Tags: CEO!Leon, alternative universe, boss x employee, workplace relationship, close proximity, elevator, mutual pining, slow burn, power imbalance.
Warnings: a job
Words: 16k~
The lobby feels too polished to belong to real people. Everything gleams, glass, chrome, marble, reflecting movement in softened fragments as if even the building itself has decided nothing abrupt should happen here. You pause just inside the entrance, adjusting your bag on your shoulder, smoothing a hand over the front of your blazer more out of habit than necessity. This is it. First day. Biggest bank in the city, maybe the country, and you’ve somehow landed at the very top of it. You take a breath, square your shoulders, and walk toward reception.
The woman behind the desk looks up when you give your name. Her eyes flick down, then up again, slow and deliberate, taking in your outfit, your posture, the folder tucked under your arm. It isn’t overtly rude. There’s even a polite smile attached to it. But there’s something else underneath, something measured and quietly assessing. When you add, “I’m here for Mr Kennedy. I’m his new personal assistant,” the look shifts, just slightly. Not surprise. Not quite skepticism. Something closer to recognition, like she’s seen this before.
“I see,” she says, tone smooth. She types something into her computer, then gestures toward the elevators. “Top floor.”
There’s a beat where it feels like she might say something else. A warning, maybe. Advice. Instead, she just smiles again, the same polite curve of her lips that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You thank her anyway and turn toward the elevators, trying not to read into it more than you should.
The ride up is quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you aware of every small movement, every shift of fabric as you adjust your sleeves again, tugging them into place. Your reflection looks back at you from the mirrored walls, composed but not quite settled. You glance down at your portfolio, flipping it open with your thumb, scanning the pages you’ve already memorised. Previous clients, project management experience, glowing references. It’s solid. More than solid. You know you’re good at what you do.
It just doesn’t feel like enough here.
The numbers climb steadily. Each floor feels like a step further away from anything familiar. By the time the doors open, you’ve already closed the portfolio again, tucking it back under your arm as if that might make you look more certain.
The top floor is quieter than the rest of the building. Fewer people. Less movement. The kind of controlled environment where everything feels intentional. You step out, taking in the layout briefly before heading toward the nearest desk. The woman seated behind it glances up as you approach, her glasses slipping slightly down her nose as she studies you.
“Yes?”
“I’m here for Mr Kennedy. I’m his new-”
“I know who you are,” she says, not unkindly, just efficient. Her gaze lingers for a second, not unlike the receptionist downstairs, then she nods toward the double doors behind her. “Mr Kennedy will see you now.”
There’s no small talk. No attempt to ease you in. Just a direct line from arrival to confrontation.
You nod, offering a quick smile that she doesn’t return, and walk toward the doors. Your hand pauses briefly on the handle, just long enough for you to steady yourself, then you push them open and step inside.
He doesn’t look up.
For a moment, you wonder if he’s even aware you’ve entered, but that feels unlikely. The room is too still, too controlled for anything to go unnoticed. He’s seated behind a wide desk, papers arranged in precise stacks, a laptop open in front of him. His focus is absolute, attention fixed on whatever he’s reading, pen moving occasionally in short, deliberate strokes.
You step further into the room and wait.
Five seconds. Ten.
You don’t interrupt. You don’t introduce yourself. If this is a test, you’re not going to fail it by speaking too soon.
Fifteen seconds. Twenty.
Your awareness sharpens, every small detail registering, the faint hum of the air conditioning, the way the light falls across the desk, the exact angle of his posture as he leans slightly forward, entirely absorbed in his work.
Thirty seconds pass before he looks up.
The movement is unhurried. Controlled. His gaze lands on you with a precision that feels almost physical, sweeping over you from head to toe in a single, assessing glance. It isn’t leering. It isn’t inappropriate. It’s clinical. Like he’s evaluating something and has already decided what it’s worth before confirming it.
He’s sharper up close than you expected. Not just in appearance, though that’s undeniable, the tailored suit, the clean lines of it, the kind of presence that doesn’t need to announce itself, but in the way he holds himself. There’s a stillness to him that feels intentional, like every movement has been pared down to only what’s necessary. His eyes are tired in a way that suggests it isn’t from lack of sleep but from something more constant, something ingrained.
“You’re the new assistant,” he says.
Not a question.
“Yes,” you reply, keeping your tone steady, offering a small, polite smile that he doesn’t acknowledge.
He sets his pen down, leaning back just slightly, enough to create space without losing any of the control he seems to carry naturally. “Sit.”
You do.
He doesn’t waste time. There’s no introduction, no attempt at conversation that isn’t directly tied to the role you’re here to fill. A phone is placed in front of you first, then a laptop, each set down with the same precise motion. “These are yours. They are not optional. You are expected to be reachable at all times during working hours.”
You nod once. “Of course.”
“Your desk is outside this office,” he continues. “You will manage my schedule, my communications, and any additional tasks as required. If something is unclear, you clarify it. If something is wrong, you fix it.”
No softness in it. No room for interpretation.
“The hours will be long,” he adds, voice even, detached. “You will be compensated accordingly.”
There’s a pause, brief but noticeable, like he’s waiting for something. A reaction, maybe. Hesitation.
Instead, you smile. “That’s alright. I like staying busy. Keeps things interesting.”
It slips out easily, the kind of light, optimistic response that has carried you through every other role you’ve had. For a second, you almost expect it to land the same way here.
It doesn’t.
“I would like to remind you, Miss ____,” he says, tone unchanged, “that you are my third assistant in five months.”
The words settle between you without emphasis, but they don’t need it. There’s no threat in them. No raised voice. Just a statement of fact that carries more weight than anything louder would.
You hold his gaze, the smile still there, though smaller now, more controlled. “Then I’ll do my best to improve that statistic.”
There’s a beat where nothing moves. His expression doesn’t change, not in any obvious way. If there’s a reaction, it’s too subtle to catch, buried under the same composure he’s maintained since you walked in.
“See that you do,” he says.
That’s it. No encouragement. No dismissal. Just an expectation placed where you can’t ignore it.
You nod, gathering the phone and laptop, standing when it’s clear the meeting is over. He’s already looking back down at his work by the time you reach the door, your presence dismissed as efficiently as it was acknowledged.
Outside, the air feels different. Not lighter. Just less concentrated. You move to your desk, setting your things down, taking a moment to orient yourself before the day properly begins.
You feel it then, the weight of what you’ve stepped into. Not overwhelming, not enough to shake you, but present. He’s not difficult in the way you expected. Controlled in a way that leaves no room for anything unnecessary.
You straighten slightly, pushing that thought aside as you power on the laptop, already preparing yourself for what comes next.
The first few days blur into something relentless. The work doesn’t come in waves; it arrives as a steady stream that never quite slows, each task folding into the next before you’ve fully finished the last. Paperwork stacks on your desk faster than you can clear it, documents that need reviewing, revising, sending, resending. Emails come in at a pace that demands immediate triage, each one flagged, prioritised, redirected. You don’t get the luxury of easing into it. You either keep up, or you fall behind.
The phones don’t help. Your work phone vibrates almost constantly, sharp bursts against the surface of your desk that pull your attention away from whatever you’re focused on. The desk phone joins in, ringing at intervals that never quite line up, forcing you to juggle both at once while still tracking everything else. And then there’s the intercom. Always the intercom. It never knocks. It never waits. A short buzz, your name, and then instructions delivered in the same clipped, efficient tone every time. No greeting. No filler. Just what needs to be done and when.
“Reschedule the eleven.”
“Cancel this afternoon’s meeting.”
“I need you to review this document.”
You stop expecting context. You learn to fill it in yourself.
The calendar becomes its own kind of battlefield. Meetings overlap, priorities shift without warning, entire blocks of time collapse into each other and have to be rebuilt on the fly. You move things, adjust things, call people back, apologise without apologising, all while keeping his schedule intact in a way that feels less like organisation and more like constant correction. Double bookings become puzzles you solve in real time, rearranging everything around a single fixed point; you.
He doesn’t comment when you get it right. You’re starting to understand that he won’t.
The car rides are quieter. The first time you step into the back seat beside him, the door closing with a soft, final sound, you expect something, conversation, instruction, acknowledgment of your presence beyond the work itself. Instead, there’s nothing. The windows are tinted, cutting the city off into a muted blur, movement reduced to shadows and passing light. He sits beside you, posture unchanged from the office, attention on his phone or the tablet in his hand. You sit the same way, back straight, hands folded loosely in your lap when you’re not checking something, the silence stretching without invitation.
You try once, early on. A simple comment about traffic, something neutral, something easy to respond to.
He doesn’t look up. “Focus on the afternoon schedule,” he says, not unkindly, just firm.
You don’t try again.
Meetings are another adjustment. You’re present in all of them, seated slightly behind or beside him, laptop open, notes ready, documents organised before they’re needed. You don’t speak unless you’re addressed directly. Not by him, not by anyone else in the room. You become part of the background, an extension of his workflow rather than a participant in it. When he does look to you, it’s brief, purposeful.
“Availability next week.”
“Send that through.”
You answer quickly, clearly, and then you disappear again into the edges of the room. Invisible, but necessary.
It’s a strange position to hold. To be both overlooked and relied on at the same time.
His behaviour doesn’t change. Cold isn’t the right word, it suggests something emotional, something reactive. This is more precise than that. Controlled. Efficient. He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t show frustration in any obvious way. He just expects. And when something doesn’t meet that expectation, it comes back to you corrected without commentary, the adjustments made in a way that assumes you’ll understand them without explanation.
There’s no praise. No acknowledgment beyond the absence of correction.
You adjust anyway.
Somehow, you manage to keep your personality intact through it. It surprises you a little. You’d expected the environment to wear it down, to force you into something sharper, more guarded. Instead, you find small ways to hold onto it, brief smiles at people in the hallway, light comments when the moment allows for it, a tone that stays warmer than his without crossing into unprofessional. It’s a balance you’re learning in real time.
The kitchen becomes one of the few places where the pressure eases, even if only slightly. It’s quieter, tucked away from the main flow of the office, the kind of space where people allow themselves to relax for a few minutes before stepping back into the controlled environment outside. You step into it mid-morning, more out of necessity than anything else, your focus still half on the emails waiting for you at your desk.
The coffee is not good. You knew that already, but you make it anyway, watching as the machine produces something that looks right but smells slightly off. You take a sip, wince faintly, and lean back against the counter.
“How’s the new job?”
You glance over. Another admin staff member, someone you’ve seen around but haven’t properly spoken to yet, steps in, grabbing a mug from the cupboard.
“Fine,” you say, offering a small smile.
She raises an eyebrow, like she doesn’t quite believe that. “Fine,” she repeats. “That’s it?”
You shrug lightly. “It’s busy.”
“He’s kind of scary, isn’t he?” she says, lowering her voice slightly, leaning in just enough to suggest this is something shared rather than stated outright.
You let out a small laugh, more reflex than anything. “He is a great boss,” you say, careful with your wording, even as you feel the need to soften it. “He puts a lot of hours in.”
She studies you for a second, then nods slowly, like she’s deciding whether to accept that or not. “You know he isn’t married, right?”
You blink, caught off guard by the shift in topic. It hadn’t crossed your mind. Between the constant work, the structure of his days, the complete absence of anything personal in the way he operates, it simply hadn’t come up.
“Oh,” you say. “Is that so?”
She leans in a little closer, the tone shifting into something unmistakably conspiratorial. “Yeah. No wife. No kids. Nothing.”
You nod, filing that away without really knowing what to do with it. It feels like information you shouldn’t have, even if it’s harmless.
“And he’s like-” she pauses, searching for the right phrasing, then grins, “really hot, right?”
You snort before you can stop yourself, the sound sharper than you intended. It pulls you out of the rhythm of the morning in a way that feels almost inappropriate. “I guess,” you say, a little more flustered than you’d like to admit, shaking your head. “He is kind of handsome.”
It feels ridiculous as soon as you say it. Like you’ve stepped into something you shouldn’t have. You both laugh, the moment light, almost normal.
Then the sound of footsteps cuts through it.
You turn your head instinctively, the movement immediate, and your stomach drops.
Leon Kennedy stands in the doorway.
For a second, your brain doesn’t catch up. This isn’t where he should be. Not here, not in the kitchen, not in a space that’s this casual, this exposed. He doesn’t belong in this part of the office.
He steps in anyway.
The atmosphere shifts instantly. The easy warmth of the conversation collapses into something tighter, more controlled. Your coworker straightens, stepping back slightly, her earlier tone gone completely.
He doesn’t look at either of you immediately. Moves past with the same measured precision he carries everywhere else, reaching for a mug like this is something he does all the time. It isn’t.
Your face feels warm. You’re suddenly very aware of everything you just said.
He heard you. He had to have.
He fills the mug, the sound of the machine louder now in the silence, then turns slightly, his gaze landing on you with the same calm, unreadable focus as always.
“____,” he says, your name precise, uninflected. “I need those files reviewed before the end of the day.”
“Yes,” you say quickly, the word coming out a little tighter than you intended. “Right away.”
You don’t meet his eyes again. Your attention drops to your shoes, to anything that isn’t him, as you set your cup down and move toward the door. The moment stretches just long enough to feel like it might break, then you’re past him, back into the hallway, the cooler air doing nothing to settle the flush in your face.
You don’t look back.
There’s too much work waiting for you anyway.
The day starts early and never really lets up. By the time you sit down at your desk, there are already three changes waiting in your inbox, two marked urgent, one flagged directly from him. You work through them quickly, adjusting schedules, confirming availability, replying where needed, your attention splitting across screens and devices in a way that feels automatic now. The rhythm is familiar, constant, demanding, manageable as long as you stay ahead of it.
You almost do.
The interruptions don’t stop. Your work phone vibrates in sharp bursts against the desk, your office line rings just as often, and the intercom cuts through both with its usual precision. It never knocks. Never waits. It just expects.
“Move the eleven.”
“Push that draft to legal.”
“Cancel the afternoon meeting. Something else has come up.”
You handle it all without hesitation. Calendar shifts, calls made, apologies delivered smoothly, solutions found before problems fully form. It works.
Somewhere in the middle of it, your personal phone lights up. A reminder. Dinner tonight. Something you agreed to weeks ago, before your time stopped being your own. You glance at it briefly, just enough to feel the pull of it, normal, easy, yours.
The intercom buzzes.
“Change of schedule,” he says. “Dinner meeting tonight. Seven.”
Of course.
You don’t hesitate. “Understood.”
You send the text under your desk. Can’t make it. Work thing. Rain check? The replies come in quickly. Mock outrage, light teasing, promises to reschedule, but you don’t linger on them. You can’t. You flip your phone over and get back to work.
By the time evening rolls in, you’ve been moving non-stop for hours. The meeting itself is controlled, sharp, exactly what you expect. You sit just behind him, notes organised, tracking every shift in conversation, every figure mentioned, every implication that isn’t said outright. At one point, the client references a revised projection, something newer than what you’d been sent earlier that afternoon, and you feel it immediately, that small disconnect. You check your notes again. Nothing. No updated document. No revision in your inbox. Just the original file Leon forwarded to you with a single line: Prepare summary.
You adjust anyway. You always do.
You build the summary based on what’s said in the room, aligning it as closely as possible with the numbers you were given earlier. It’s not perfect, but it’s cohesive. It works.
You send it through when you’re back at the office.
It comes back quickly.
This is wrong.
No explanation. Just that.
Your jaw tightens slightly as you open the document again, scanning for the issue. It takes a second, but when you find it, your stomach drops, not because you made a mistake, but because you didn’t.
The figures are different.
Not slightly. Not rounding errors or formatting issues. Entire projections shifted, percentages adjusted, timelines altered, margins tightened in a way that changes the entire tone of the summary. You scroll back to the original file he sent you earlier. The numbers don’t match.
He sent you the wrong document.
You check the meeting notes again, replay the conversation in your head. The client had been referencing the updated version, the one you were never given. You’d built your summary off outdated information because that’s what you had. Because that’s what he sent you.
And now: This is wrong.
The frustration hits sharp and immediate, cutting through the exhaustion you’ve been carrying all day. It’s not just the mistake. It’s everything around it. The hours. The constant pressure. The expectation that you get everything right without being given what you need to do it. You’ve adjusted to it, worked around it, filled in gaps that shouldn’t have been yours to fill.
You fix it anyway. Pull the updated numbers from the fragments you remember, cross-reference what you can from the meeting, rebuild the section properly. It takes time. Time you shouldn’t have to spend. Time you already don’t have.
The intercom buzzes.
Your name.
Of course.
You stand, tablet in hand, and walk into his office without hesitation. He’s behind his desk, posture unchanged, attention already on you before you fully step inside.
“You saw the issue,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It’s been corrected.”
A pause.
“It shouldn’t have needed correcting.”
That’s it.
Flat. Controlled. Final.
And something in you snaps.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a clean break in the restraint you’ve been holding onto for weeks.
You hold his gaze.
“Maybe if you actually gave me the right information,” you say, voice steady, precise, sharpened just enough to make it land exactly where it should, “that wouldn’t have happened.”
The silence is immediate.
Outside, through the glass, movement stops. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. You don’t need to look to know people are listening.
Inside, nothing shifts.
Leon doesn’t react the way you expect.
No irritation. No raised voice. No immediate correction.
He just looks at you.
A long, unbroken look that feels heavier than anything he’s given you before. Not dismissive. Not clinical.
Focused.
There’s something there this time, something clearer than before. Not anger.
Interest.
It flickers behind his eyes, brief but unmistakable, like you’ve just done something he didn’t anticipate, and did it well.
“Is that all?” he says.
The tone is unchanged. It could be any other moment, any other instruction.
“Yes,” you reply.
Another beat.
You don’t wait. You turn and walk out, pace even, posture steady, not giving anything else away. The outer office is too quiet, the attention too obvious even when people pretend otherwise. You reach your desk, grab your bag, and head straight for the elevators.
The doors close.
You stare at your reflection in the mirrored wall, the adrenaline hitting all at once now that you’re alone. Your heart is beating faster than it should. Your hands are steady.
You replay it. The words. The tone. You didn’t soften it. You didn’t apologise.
Three assistants in five months.
You exhale slowly.
You’re fired.
Not now. Not like this. Tomorrow. Clean. Efficient. Final.
“Fuck you, Leon Kennedy”, you whispered to yourself, walking out of the building.
The next morning feels sharper than usual. You arrive on time, earlier than you need to, settling into your desk with a quiet kind of resolve that sits somewhere between preparation and acceptance. If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen today. Clean. Efficient. The way everything here works.
Your inbox is already full.
You pause for half a second, fingers hovering over the keyboard, then open it anyway.
No termination notice. No meeting request from HR. No carefully worded message about “next steps.” Just work. More of it than usual flagged, prioritised, layered in a way that immediately demands your attention. You scan through the first few items, then the next, your focus narrowing as the content settles in.
These aren’t routine.
The documents are heavier, more detailed, tied to ongoing deals rather than surface-level scheduling or coordination. Draft agreements. Internal projections. Communication chains that require context you haven’t been formally given, but can follow anyway. It’s not less work. It’s more. And more importantly, it’s different.
You straighten slightly in your chair.
The intercom buzzes.
You don’t hesitate this time. “Yes?”
“Come in.”
His office looks the same. He looks the same. Composed, controlled, already working before you’ve fully stepped inside. There’s no pause for tension, no acknowledgment of what happened yesterday. He doesn’t mention it. Doesn’t even look up immediately.
“Close the door.”
You do.
He slides a file across the desk toward you, precise, deliberate. “You’ll handle this.”
You pick it up, scanning the first page quickly. It’s not something you’ve dealt with before. Not directly. The kind of task that requires more than coordination, analysis, discretion, independent judgement.
You look up.
He’s watching you now.
Not waiting for you to speak. Just watching.
“I’ll need access to the full correspondence thread,” you say, tone steady, professional. “And the updated projections from yesterday’s meeting.”
A beat.
Then, a single nod. “You’ll have them.”
That’s it. No explanation. No acknowledgment of the shift.
You nod once in return. “Understood.”
When you step back out into the outer office, the air feels different. You sit down, open the file again, and start working through it piece by piece. It takes more concentration than your usual tasks, more attention to detail, but you settle into it quickly. The pressure is still there. It just feels directed now.
The morning passes faster than you expect.
You’re halfway through cross-referencing a set of figures when you hear footsteps approach. Measured. Familiar. You don’t look up immediately. You don’t need to.
He stops beside your desk.
“I have double checked the document I have sent to you,” he says.
There’s the faintest lift of his brow. Subtle. Controlled.
It takes you a second to process it.
It’s not quite a joke. Not in any conventional sense. There’s no change in tone, no shift in expression. But it’s there. Intentional. A reference. Acknowledgment without saying the words.
You glance up at him.
“Good,” you reply, just as evenly. “That should help.”
Another beat.
Something flickers at the edge of his expression not quite amusement, but close enough that you notice it. A smirk
He moves on without another word, continuing down the hallway like nothing happened.
The car ride over is quieter than most, but not empty. The city moves past in blurred streaks beyond the tinted windows, softened into something distant and irrelevant, like it exists on a different timeline to the one you’re in. You sit beside him in the back seat, tablet open on your lap, running through the meeting notes again even though you already know them. You always do this, check, recheck, tighten what doesn’t need tightening. It gives your hands something to do.
Leon doesn’t look at you when he speaks.
“This is a high-profile client,” he says, tone even, like he’s stating a fact you should already understand. “We want this to go well.”
You glance up briefly, then nod once. “Understood.”
It’s not new information. You knew that the moment the meeting landed in your calendar, flagged, reshuffled, given priority over everything else. Still, there’s something about the way he says it, measured, deliberate, that sharpens your focus just a little more.
He doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t need to. The expectation sits clearly between you.
The car slows, then stops smoothly outside another glass-fronted building, just as polished as your own, just as controlled. The driver steps out to open the door, but Leon is already moving, stepping out with the same unhurried precision he carries everywhere. You follow a second later, adjusting your grip on your folder as you fall into step beside him.
Inside, the building feels different but familiar in structure, clean lines, quiet conversations, people moving with purpose. You check in, confirm the meeting room, handle the small logistical details without needing direction, and then you’re moving toward the elevators.
They’re already busy.
People cluster in front of them, waiting, conversations overlapping in low, contained tones. When the doors open, the space fills quickly, bodies shifting inward, everyone making room without quite acknowledging each other. You step in with them, adjusting your position instinctively, angling yourself just enough to avoid contact while still holding your ground.
The doors start to close.
A hand stops them.
Leon steps in behind you.
The space tightens immediately. There’s nowhere to move now, nowhere to shift without making it obvious. You keep your posture steady, shoulders back, gaze forward, professional in a way that feels almost automatic at this point.
He’s right behind you.
Not touching. Not quite. But close enough that you feel it anyway, the presence of him, solid and unyielding, the faint shift of air when he settles into place. Someone brushes past your side as the elevator lurches upward, but it’s him you’re aware of. The space, or lack of it, between you.
Your fingers tighten slightly around your tablet.
“This is nothing,” you tell yourself, focusing on the numbers lighting up above the door, tracking each floor as it passes.
It should be nothing.
His arm lifts slightly at one point, bracing against the wall just above your shoulder as the elevator slows again, and for a second you’re caught between him and the polished metal, not trapped, not quite, but aware in a way that feels sharper than it should. You don’t move. Neither does he. There’s no adjustment for comfort, no unnecessary shift to create space that doesn’t exist.
His breathing is steady behind you. Controlled. Measured.
You don’t turn your head, but you can feel the angle of his attention, the quiet awareness that mirrors your own. It passes quickly. Or maybe it just feels like it should.
The doors open.
Air returns. Space expands. You step forward immediately, out of it, the moment dissolving as quickly as it formed, but it lingers anyway, settling somewhere under your skin.
The meeting itself runs smoothly, at first. You take your usual position slightly behind and to the side of Leon, laptop open, notes aligned, every document already pulled up in the order you anticipate they’ll be needed. The room is all glass and polished wood, the kind of place designed to reflect control back at the people sitting in it. You register faces quickly, titles even quicker, mapping who matters, who speaks first, who waits. Leon doesn’t rush into anything. He lets the room settle around him, lets the other side open with their projections, their expectations, their carefully rehearsed confidence.
You track everything. Numbers, phrasing, pauses. When figures are mentioned, you’re already pulling them up. When timelines are questioned, you have the corresponding documents ready before Leon even needs to ask. It’s seamless in a way that feels almost invisible, the kind of efficiency that only works when no one notices it happening.
You only speak when necessary. When Leon glances back at you for confirmation, you give it, clear, concise. When someone across the table directs a question your way about availability or scheduling, you answer without hesitation, then fall back into silence just as quickly. You exist at the edge of the conversation, but you’re holding half of it together.
It’s routine. Until it isn’t.
The shift is small at first. A slight change in tone from one of the executives across the table. He’s the kind of man who fills space even when he’s sitting still, expensive suit, practiced ease, the sort of confidence that leans just a little too far into assumption. He watches you when you speak the second time, longer than necessary, eyes narrowing slightly like he’s reassessing something.
You don’t react. You keep your focus on the screen, fingers still moving, notes still updating.
The conversation continues. Terms are discussed. Adjustments proposed. There’s a moment where Leon asks for a specific figure and you pass it to him without looking up, already knowing what he needs. He takes it without comment, integrates it into his response like it was always part of the plan.
It should stay there. Professional. Controlled.
The executive leans back slightly in his chair, fingers tapping once against the table before he speaks again, tone lighter now, almost conversational.
“I trust your assistant has everything under control this time,” he says, glancing at you briefly before returning his attention to Leon. “We wouldn’t want any oversights.”
It lands softly. Polite enough that no one immediately calls it out. But there’s something underneath it, something deliberate in the way he doesn’t quite address you directly, like you’re not worth the full attention.
You feel it. Of course you do.
But you don’t react. You’ve learned not to. You keep your posture steady, your expression neutral, your attention on the screen like it didn’t land at all. You don’t need to defend yourself here. Not like this.
Leon doesn’t give you the chance to decide.
“If you have an issue with my assistant,” he says, voice quiet, even, cutting cleanly through the room without raising even slightly, “you bring it to me. Otherwise, don’t waste my time.”
The shift is immediate.
The room stills in a way that’s almost physical, like the air itself has tightened. Conversations don’t stop entirely, but they pause, just for a second, enough for the weight of what he said to settle properly.
There’s no anger in his tone. No visible irritation. That would be easier to dismiss. This is something else entirely, controlled, deliberate, absolute. The kind of authority that doesn’t need to repeat itself.
The executive’s expression flickers. Just slightly. A recalibration. His posture adjusts, the ease slipping just enough to reveal something sharper underneath. He nods once, the movement tighter than before.
“Of course,” he says. “No offence intended.”
Leon doesn’t respond to that. Doesn’t acknowledge it. He simply continues, picking up the thread of the conversation exactly where it left off, as if nothing happened.
But something did.
The rest of the meeting moves forward, but the tone has shifted. Subtly, but unmistakably. The executive is more measured now, his comments cleaner, his attention more focused. The balance of the room has tilted, just enough that it’s noticeable if you’re paying attention.
By the time it ends, everything is back on track, agreements outlined, next steps confirmed, hands shaken in that firm, practiced way that signals professionalism even when something underneath it has changed. You gather your things, closing your laptop, organising your notes with the same efficiency you’ve maintained throughout.
The car ride is quieter than before. Not uncomfortable, just still. The city moves past outside, blurred by the tinted windows, the same as it always does, but you’re more aware of the space inside the car now. Of him sitting beside you, of the way he doesn’t fill silence unnecessarily.
You sit the same way you always do, posture straight, hands resting lightly in your lap, but your thoughts are still on the meeting.
You didn’t need him to step in. You could have handled it.
“I can handle myself,” you say.
It comes out calm. Not defensive. Just factual.
He turns his head slightly, his attention settling on you without urgency.
“I know,” he says.
It should be enough.
It isn’t.
You let out a small breath, your gaze flicking briefly toward the window before returning forward. “Do you realise you just lost a client?”
There’s a short pause, just enough to register the question.
“I don’t care,” he says, “That guy was being an asshole to you.”
You glance at him then, just briefly, trying to read something in his expression, but it’s the same as always. Controlled. Unreadable. He looks forward again a second later, attention already elsewhere.
The rest of the ride passes without either of you saying anything else.
The call comes just as you're starting to unwind.
You've barely been home an hour. Your bag is somewhere near the door where you dropped it without caring, your blazer draped over the back of a chair with none of the usual consideration you give to things that cost money to dry-clean. The rest followed quickly, heels by the sofa, work trousers exchanged for something soft, something you never wear where anyone can see you. An old university hoodie. Leggings. Socks that don't match because you'd stopped caring about that particular detail somewhere around the second month of this job.
You are standing in your kitchen in mismatched socks, watching something uninspiring rotate slowly in the microwave, when the work phone starts vibrating against the counter.
You look at it.
Leon.
You pick it up on the second buzz.
"There's been a leak." His voice is exactly the same as it is at nine in the morning, controlled, economical, each word placed where it needs to be and nowhere else. No preamble. No apology for the hour.
That's all it takes.
The microwave beeps. You ignore it. Your mind is already moving, assembling the shape of the problem from those four words, internal, sensitive, moving fast, containment window closing, and you're reaching for your bag before he's even finished the outline.
"I'm on my way," you say.
You don't change. There isn't time.
The city is different at this hour. The aggressive daytime energy settling into something more ambient, more honest. You move through it efficiently, your mind already in the office, already pulling at threads.
The lobby is reduced to a skeleton of itself. Low lighting, one security desk, your footsteps louder than they should be across the marble. The elevator arrives immediately, which only happens after hours, and you ride it to the top in silence, watching the numbers climb.
The fortieth floor is nearly empty.
Most of the lights are off. The open-plan desks sit dark and unoccupied, monitors sleeping, the usual ambient noise of the place, keyboards, phones, low voices, completely absent. Just the clean hum of the building doing what buildings do when the people inside them have gone home.
His office light is on.
You don't knock. In three months you have never knocked, because by the time you reach his door you have always been expected, and tonight is no different. You push it open and he's at the desk, already working, jacket gone, sleeves pushed to his forearms, his tie loosened to a degree that on anyone else would read as barely notable.
On him it reads like a significant concession.
He doesn't look up immediately. "What do we have."
"Internal document." You set your bag down, pull out your laptop, your voice already in work mode. "Preliminary projections for Q3. It's circulating out of context, someone in compliance thinks it went through a personal account."
His jaw tightens. Not anger. Calculation. You know the difference now.
"Containment?"
"PR's been looped in. Their draft is soft. It needs to be harder."
"Then we fix it."
"Already started."
He looks up then. And it's not the usual look, the quick, functional glance that clocks your presence and moves on. This one lands differently. Takes a second. His gaze moves from your face down, briefly, just once, registering the hoodie, the complete absence of anything resembling work attire, the socks, probably, before coming back up with the neutrality of a man who has decided not to make it a thing.
He doesn't look away.
"I've never seen you like this," he says.
It isn't a criticism. It isn't anything, just an observation, delivered with the same straightforward precision he gives everything. But there's something underneath it, something in the way his gaze had made that unhurried trip and come back to your face and stayed there, that makes the words land differently than a neutral statement should.
Heat climbs the back of your neck anyway.
"I didn't have time to change," you say, and you're aware of how you sound, slightly defensive, slightly flustered, neither of which are things you particularly want to be in front of this man at eleven o'clock on a weeknight in your university hoodie. "I came straight from home, I would have but you said it was urgent so I just… I'm sorry, I know it's not-"
"No."
You stop.
He says it simply, without particular emphasis, but it cuts cleanly through the rambling in the way his voice tends to cut through things.
"It looks good on you," he says.
"Right," you say.
Your voice comes out remarkably even. You're proud of that.
You pull up a chair and get to work.
Time stops behaving normally after that.
It always does when the work is urgent enough. The hours compress into a series of immediate problems, each one demanding your full attention before it dissolves and the next takes its place. Emails drafted, rewritten, stripped back. Phone calls made and concluded. The PR statement reconstructed from the soft, hedging thing it had started as into something clean and precise and deliberately unremarkable, the kind of language designed not to draw further attention by the very fact of its steadiness.
You work in tandem. There's less friction in it now than there was in the beginning, less of that slight resistance that comes from two people not yet calibrated to each other. Somewhere in the last few months the calibration happened without you particularly noticing, you anticipate what he needs before he asks for it, and when he does ask, the requests have gotten shorter, because he no longer has to explain the context.
You both already have it.
By midnight the urgency has ebbed. Not resolved, not fully, but stabilised enough that the immediate crisis has a shape now, contained rather than spreading. The work slows. The silences between tasks get longer.
At some point, food appeared on the corner of the desk. A paper bag, handles twisted, bearing the logo of the Thai place two blocks over that you'd mentioned in passing approximately six weeks ago when he had asked, because he asked, sometimes, in the way that people asked who were gathering logistical information rather than making conversation, what was within walking distance worth knowing about. You hadn't thought he'd retained it.
You pull the bag toward you without comment, start unpacking. He reaches over without looking, takes one of the containers, opens it. No commentary from either of you about the fact that someone ordered for two, that the order was correct, that this is objectively a small and somewhat significant thing.
You eat in a silence that is not uncomfortable.
He's different like this. You've thought it before, on late calls, in cars, in brief unguarded moments that close over again almost before they're fully open, but tonight it's clearer. Without an audience the performance of it drops. Not the competence, not the precision, those are just who he is. But the particular quality of control he maintains in rooms with other people, the authority projected rather than simply held, that's quieter now. He's just working. Just a person in a room, solving a problem.
It's dangerously easier to be around.
"Do you ever stop?" you ask, after a stretch of quiet that has gotten comfortable enough to speak into.
He doesn't look up. "Stop what."
"Working." You gesture loosely at the desk, the screens, the general atmosphere of sustained professional output at midnight. "Like, in general. As a concept."
A pause.
"Do you?" he says.
"Sometimes," you say. "I like having a life."
Another pause. He turns a page. "Sounds inefficient."
You laugh, a real one, quiet, surprised out of you, and shake your head. "You should try it. Genuinely."
He doesn't answer right away. His attention stays on the document in front of him, but something shifts, just slightly, in the set of his shoulders.
"People are unreliable," he says. Tone even. Flat, the way it gets when something is being stated rather than shared. "Work isn't."
It's not an explanation. It's not intended to be one. But it's more than he normally gives, and you're aware of that, and you let it sit for a moment before you answer.
"That sounds miserable," you say, and you mean it without cruelty.
"It's accurate."
You look at him. He doesn't look back, but he knows you're looking, you've learned to tell. "Someone prove you wrong at some point?"
The pause this time is different. Longer. Something tightens beneath the surface of him, just briefly, the way it does when a question lands closer than expected.
"Something like that," he says.
That's all.
You nod, and look back at your screen, and don't push. That's the thing about him you've learned gradually, without meaning to, he offers things at the edge of his own comfort, small and oblique, and if you reach for them too quickly he closes over and you lose the moment entirely. So you've started leaving them where he puts them. Letting them exist without being examined.
It seems to be working.
You end up at the same document.
It happens practically, the final version of the PR statement, both of you reviewing it simultaneously, heads angled toward the same screen. You don't register the proximity until it's already there: your shoulder an inch from his arm, close enough that you can see the faint reflection of the screen in his eyes. His sleeves are still rolled. He smells like the kind of cologne that's simple and expensive in the way that simple, expensive things tend to be.
You are being extremely professional about all of this.
"That line," he says, low, indicating near the middle of the page with one finger. "Change significant concern to notable development. Concern implies reaction. We're not reacting."
"We're responding," you say, already typing.
"Correct."
The correction runs three words and takes approximately four seconds and he says, quietly, without looking away from the screen, "Good."
You have received his approval before. Concise and functional, that works, send it, this is correct, but it has never landed quite like this, at this hour, in this specific proximity, with the particular quietness of a building that has mostly gone to sleep around you.
You look up to ask about the closing line.
He's already looking at you.
Not the assessing look. Not the professional one. Something else, briefly present, that you don't have a name for and don't try to find one for either, because the moment you name it you'll have to do something with it and right now it's easier, so much easier, to let it exist as just a quality of the light, a trick of the late hour, the ordinary disorientation of working past midnight with someone.
"The closing line is fine," he says.
"I was going to ask about the closing line."
"I know."
You hold for exactly one second too long. Then you look back at the screen. "Right."
He straightens. Steps back. The distance returns between you, natural as breathing, and with it the familiar shape of things.
You finish what's left. Tie the loose ends, confirm the statement is queued, close the windows down one by one. The crisis is as contained as it can be tonight. It'll hold till morning.
You gather your things slower than you normally would, the exhaustion arriving now that the urgency has cleared, filling in the space behind it. He's already moving toward the door, jacket retrieved from the back of his chair, a quality of efficiency in it that makes you aware of how little the late hour costs him.
It costs him something. You can see that now, if you look. The tiredness he keeps too tightly held to call tiredness.
The elevator is quiet on the way down.
Not the same quiet as before. Not the kind that's neutral and unremarkable. The kind that has something in it, an awareness, a slightly altered weight, that neither of you is going to be the first to name.
The doors open.
You cross the lobby. The night security guard nods. The door doesn't move when you reach it, and you realise a half-beat later that he's behind you, one hand on the handle, holding it open with the unhurried ease of someone who simply noticed it needed doing.
You step through.
"Thank you."
He nods once.
Outside the air is cooler than you expected, the city at this hour doing its own quiet thing all around you. You adjust the strap of your bag, and you're aware, walking away, of the particular feeling of an evening that has shifted something without declaring what.
You don't examine it on the walk home.
You examine it later, in the dark, in your flat, in the specific silence of a question you haven't asked yourself out loud yet. The answer doesn't come.
The next time it happens, it isn’t a crisis, it’s scheduled, structured, and meant to go exactly to plan. You’ve had it in your calendar for days, flagged, prioritised, built around with the same precision you’ve learned to apply to everything that involves him. It took longer than it should have to secure the reservation, a careful sequence of calls and confirmations to get a table at a place that doesn’t usually make room for last-minute requests. You don’t mention that part when you confirm it to him earlier in the week. He simply nods once, like it was inevitable.
By the time evening arrives, you’ve shifted back into something more formal again, the ease of your flat replaced with structure, posture straightening as you step into the lobby and find him already waiting. He looks exactly the way he always does in public, sharp suit, controlled presence, nothing out of place, but there’s a moment, brief and unguarded, where his eyes flick over you as you approach. Not clinical this time. Not entirely. Something quieter sits underneath it, gone almost as quickly as it appears.
“Ready?” he asks.
You nod once. “Always.”
The car ride is quiet, but not empty. You run through the key points, the client’s expectations, the direction the conversation is likely to take, and he listens, adding a correction here, a clarification there, his tone steady but less clipped than it would have been a few weeks ago. There’s a rhythm to it now, something that feels less like instruction and more like alignment.
The restaurant is exactly what you expected, dim lighting, low conversation, polished surfaces that reflect everything back just slightly softened. You step inside together, the host greeting you with practiced ease. You give the name, already reaching for the confirmation in your email out of habit.
The host disappears briefly.
Returns.
“I’m very sorry,” he says, the apology already prepared. “Your party has cancelled.”
You blink once, the words taking a second to land. “Cancelled?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
Of course they did.
You glance at Leon, already expecting the shift, leave, reschedule, move on. Efficient. Controlled.
He doesn’t react. Not outwardly. His expression doesn’t change, but there’s a flicker of something in his eyes, brief and unreadable, before it settles again.
“Your table is still available,” the host adds carefully. “If you’d like to keep it.”
There’s a short pause.
“We’ll take it,” Leon says.
You look at him, just slightly, not enough to be obvious. He doesn’t return it. Just gestures for you to follow as the host leads you through the restaurant.
You sit across from each other, menus placed in front of you, water poured with quiet efficiency. It should feel like a misstep, like something slightly off balance, but it doesn’t. Not really.
You glance down at the menu, then back up at him, a small smile pulling at your mouth. “I guess it did take me two weeks to get a reservation for you in this restaurant.”
His gaze lifts, settling on you properly this time. There’s a faint shift in his expression, something almost amused.
“Then it would be inefficient not to use it.”
You huff a quiet laugh. “Exactly.”
His gaze lifts to yours, steady, intent in a way that feels different from the office. “I’d hate to waste your effort.”
“Oh?” you say lightly. “Not the reservation?”
“That too,” he replies, but there’s something deliberate in the way he says it.
You hold his gaze for a second longer than necessary before looking back at the menu. “Good answer.”
The waiter returns, you order, and when the conversation resumes, it doesn’t quite return to what it was before.
“So,” you say, resting your chin lightly on your hand, “do you always stay when plans fall through, or is this a rare moment of spontaneity?”
He leans back slightly in his chair, studying you. “Do I seem spontaneous to you?”
“Not even a little.”
“Then you have your answer.” He looks at you again, holding it for a second longer than necessary. “Don’t read into it.”
You tilt your head slightly. “I will anyway.”
That earns you something, small, controlled, but there. Not quite a smile, but close enough that you catch it.
The first drink goes down easily. The second follows with less thought than you’d usually allow. It softens the edges of the evening, loosens something in the way you both sit across from each other. You talk more than you normally would in his presence, small things, light things, the warmth in your tone coming through without you checking it every second.
He doesn’t shut it down. He listens. Responds.
Still brief, still measured, but there’s less distance in it now, less of that deliberate wall he usually keeps in place. At one point you say something, half teasing, half observational, and he exhales through his nose in a way that’s just slightly off his usual rhythm.
You notice immediately. “You almost laughed.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t,” he repeats, but there’s a fraction of hesitation now that wasn’t there before.
You grin, leaning back slightly. “I’m counting it.”
He doesn’t argue again, just takes another sip of his drink, but his gaze lingers on you a second longer than it should before he looks away. It’s subtle. You wouldn’t notice if you weren’t already paying attention.
“You’re not as bad as everyone says, you know,” you add, the words coming easier now, softened slightly by the warmth of the evening.
“High praise,” he says, dry as ever.
“I’m serious,” you insist, a quiet laugh slipping through. “They make you sound terrifying. Like people avoid eye contact in the hallway and pray you don’t say their name.”
“They should,” he replies without missing a beat.
You smile, shaking your head. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“It’s efficient,” he says, setting his glass down with a quiet clink. “People work faster when they’re nervous.”
“Or they make more mistakes,” you counter lightly. “Hard to think clearly when you’re convinced your boss is about to end your career over a calendar clash.”
He glances at you then, something sharper flickering briefly behind his eyes. “You weren’t convinced of that?”
“Oh, I was,” you admit easily. “Elevator ride and everything. Very dramatic internal monologue.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
“I’m stubborn,” you say with a small shrug. “And I like proving people wrong.”
“Is that what this is?” he asks, tilting his head slightly, studying you in a way that feels more curious than critical now. “You proving me wrong?”
“Partly,” you admit. “The rest is just me doing my job.”
“That’s not all you’re doing.”
The comment is quiet, but it lands differently. You pause for a second, searching his expression, but he’s already taken another sip of his drink like he didn’t just say something that felt pointed.
“You still haven’t convinced me you’re terrifying,” you say after a beat, lighter again, though your tone has softened.
“I haven’t tried,” he replies.
“Really?” You raise an eyebrow. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“That wasn’t me trying,” he says, and there’s the faintest edge of something almost amused in it now. “That was me being efficient.”
You laugh softly, leaning back slightly in your chair. “That’s concerning.”
“It should be.”
You study him for a moment, head tilting just slightly, your expression thoughtful rather than challenging. “I don’t think so.”
There’s a pause.
His gaze settles on you again, slower this time, like he’s not just assessing anymore. Like he’s actually considering what you said.
“No?” he asks.
You shake your head lightly. “No. I think you’re very good at acting like you are.”
That earns you a reaction, not immediate, not obvious, but there. A small shift in his posture, the slightest narrowing of his eyes like you’ve landed closer to something real than he expected.
“And what exactly am I acting like?” he asks.
“Unapproachable,” you say simply. “Cold. Like you don’t have time for anything that isn’t work.”
“And you think that’s not true?”
“I think it’s convenient,” you reply, holding his gaze. “For you.”
Another pause.
This one stretches just a fraction longer.
He doesn’t look away.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” he says finally, but there’s less resistance in it now, less certainty.
You smile faintly. “I work for you. It’s kind of part of the job.”
“Is it?”
“Mm,” you hum. “Reading between the lines. Figuring out what you’re not saying.”
“And you think you’ve figured me out?”
You take a slow sip of your drink, buying yourself a second, then meet his gaze again. “Not completely.”
“Good,” he says, and there’s something quieter in his tone now, something that doesn’t quite match the words. “I’d be disappointed if you had.”
You huff a soft laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Frequently, I imagine.”
“Only by people who don’t last,” he says, but the edge of it is softer than it should be.
You tilt your head again, studying him like you’re trying to decide something. “I think people just don’t stay long enough to understand you.”
“And you do?” he asks, a slight lift of his brow.
“Not yet,” you admit. “But I’m getting there.”
Something shifts in his expression again. Subtle. Controlled. But unmistakable if you’re looking for it.
“I don’t make that easy,” he says.
“I know.”
“Then why try?”
You don’t answer immediately. You could give him something light, something easy to deflect with. Instead, you shrug slightly, the movement small, honest. “Because I think it’s worth it.”
The words settle between you.
He goes still for just a second.
Then he leans back slightly, exhaling quietly through his nose, like you’ve just said something he wasn’t entirely prepared for.
“That’s a dangerous assumption,” he says.
You smile, softer now. “I’ve made worse.”
His gaze lingers on you again, longer this time, like he’s trying to decide whether to challenge that or let it stand.
He lets it stand.
“Careful,” he says instead, voice quieter now, almost undercut with something that sounds like a warning but doesn’t quite feel like one. “You might be right.”
The restaurant empties slowly around you without either of you noticing.
That's the thing you register first when you finally look up from the conversation, the tables around you have thinned, the low hum of the room quieter than it was an hour ago, the staff moving with the particular patience of people waiting for the last guests to decide they're done. The couple two tables over have gone. The larger group near the window that had been loud in an expensive, self-congratulatory way have settled their bill and filtered out. Even the ambient music feels quieter, turned down by some imperceptible degree, the restaurant gently, politely suggesting that the evening has reached its natural end.
Outside, the air is cool and immediate in the way evening air always is after the warmth of a restaurant, like stepping from one world into another. The city is doing its late Friday thing, taxis threading through traffic, the low spill of light from restaurants and bars still open further down the street, the kind of noise that isn't loud but is constant, the city just breathing. You stop on the pavement and breathe it in, and feel the wine warm in your chest, and the edges of everything are softened just enough that the city looks like something you want to stand still and look at for a minute.
Leon stops beside you.
Not a step ahead, the way he usually positions himself when you're moving somewhere with purpose. Not half-turned toward the next thing, already calculating the route. Beside you. Still. Like he's doing the same thing you are, standing in the evening and just letting it be an evening.
"The car's-" you start, reaching for your phone, the instinct to be useful arriving even now, even here. You find the notification you're looking for and then immediately lose the thread of what it said.
"Two minutes," Leon says.
"Right." You lock the screen. "Two minutes."
You're both quiet for a moment. Somewhere between the table and the door you'd been laughing about something, you're reconstructing it now, the shape of it assembling slowly, something about the host, the particular way he'd arranged his expression when Leon had looked at him directly while you were thanking him on the way out. A very specific kind of expression. The kind that meant someone was trying to appear professionally neutral while internally questioning their career choices. You'd done an impression on the pavement, just briefly, not cruel but accurate, and Leon had -
You glance at him.
He's still slightly loose around the edges. Not drunk, you don't think this man is capable of drunk, not in any visible way, you think he'd simply decide not to be and his body would comply out of sheer professional obligation. But something in the controlled precision of him has settled. Like a tension that he carries so constantly he's forgotten it's there has, over the course of the evening, quietly released. He's looking down the street, jaw relaxed, hands in his coat pockets, and the streetlight falls across the side of his face and he looks like a person. Just a person standing on a pavement at the end of an evening, with nowhere pressing to be.
You find this version of him extraordinarily dangerous and file that thought away for later.
"You actually laughed in there," you say, picking the thread back up. "Twice."
He doesn't look at you. "Once."
"Leon. Twice."
"The second one wasn't -"
"It was laughter," you say, with the calm certainty of someone delivering a verdict. "Audible. With sound and everything."
"It was an exhale."
"An exhale," you repeat.
"Yes."
"With your mouth open."
He turns his head to look at you then, and you were ready for the expression, the flat, controlled, I'm not having this conversation look, but that's not what's there. What's there is something completely unguarded, a flicker of genuine exasperation lit up underneath with something much warmer, something with no business being this visible, this readable. He looks almost caught out. Like you've gotten somewhere he didn't entirely plan to let you.
You laugh. Actually laugh, the sound coming out louder than you mean it to in the relative quiet of the street, and you don't bother reining it in.
And then he does it again.
A real one. Short, low, surprised out of him, the laugh of a person who forgot, briefly, to manage themselves, and it sounds slightly rusty, like something that hasn't been used at its full capacity in a while, which somehow makes it better.
"There," you say immediately, pointing at him, delighted. "Sound. And I'm fairly certain I saw teeth."
"You didn't -"
"Top row. Briefly. But present."
"You are -" he starts.
"Correct," you say pleasantly.
He shakes his head, and the smile, the real one, the one that changes his whole face into something warmer and younger and far less manageable, lingers longer than it usually would. He looks back down the street, and it stays. You watch it in your peripheral vision and feel something in your chest move in a way that has nothing to do with the wine and everything to do with the particular, inconvenient fact of him.
The laughter settles the way good laughter does. You stand side by side on the pavement in the quiet that follows, and it's a different quality of quiet to the ones you've shared before. Not the car silence, purposeful and contained. Not the office silence, functional and bounded. Something looser than that. Something that doesn't need anything from either of you.
The city moves around you, indifferent and continuous.
Your arm is close to his. Not touching, there's still a narrow inch of space between you, but close in the way proximity gets when guards have come down and no one has consciously put them back up yet. You're aware of it without looking at it directly, the way you're aware of the warmth still sitting in your chest, the way you're aware that the evening has become something neither of you planned for and neither of you seems to be in a hurry to end.
"It's been a while," he says.
His voice is quieter than usual. Not directed at the street anymore.
You glance up at him. "Since?"
He doesn't answer right away. He's looking at something in the middle distance, somewhere down the street where the lights blur slightly, and you recognise the quality of his silence, the kind that means he's deciding whether to say the thing he's already thinking. Whether the thing is worth the saying. Whether, tonight, the answer to that question might be different to what it usually is.
"Since an evening felt like that," he says.
You don't say anything. You've learned, over months of this, when not to.
The traffic moves. Someone somewhere down the block is laughing at something, the sound carrying briefly before the city swallows it.
"Easy," he adds, after a moment. Quiet. Like the word costs something small but he's decided to spend it anyway.
You look at him properly then, turning slightly, and he turns his head at the same time, and the distance between you is closer than you realised, or maybe you've just become more aware of it in a way that makes it feel different. His gaze settles on your face with a quality of attention that stopped being clinical a long time ago and hasn't found its way back. It moves, just slightly, eyes, expression, the particular unhurried way he takes things in when he isn't performing anything for anyone, and something in his expression has opened, just fractionally, in a way you recognise because you've been watching for it for months without letting yourself admit that's what you were doing.
"You do that," he says, and his voice has dropped just slightly, not deliberate, just a natural product of the hour and the quiet and the particular stillness of the space between you. "Make things easy."
You open your mouth, something light was right there, something warm and deflecting and safe, the instinct is so practiced by now it was already forming -
He speaks first.
"You're beautiful."
Just that.
No preamble. No careful construction. No qualifier tucked in before or after to soften it or make it manageable. Said the way he says things when he's decided they're true and has run out of reasons to keep them to himself, straightforward, almost matter-of-fact, like it's a piece of information he's been holding for a while that has simply, tonight, found its way out.
The street keeps going. A taxi passes, close enough that you feel the displaced air. Somewhere further down the block a door opens and closes, spilling music briefly into the night before it's gone again. The city does not pause. It does not acknowledge that something just shifted on this particular pavement outside this particular restaurant on this particular Tuesday.
You look at him.
He's looking back at you with that steadiness he carries everywhere, but there's something underneath it now that you've never seen quite this clearly before. Something open. He's not performing composure. He's just standing there, coat collar turned up against the cold, looking at you like he meant it, because he did.
He doesn't take it back.
Doesn't glance away and smooth the moment over with something professional. Doesn't reach for the distance he usually keeps between himself and anything that isn't work. Just holds your gaze, steady and unhurried, and waits.
Your voice, when it finally comes, is quieter than you meant it to be. Just his name. "Leon."
"I know," he says.
And that's the part that gets you.
Not the words themselves, though those have settled somewhere in your chest where they're going to be very difficult to dislodge. It's the I know after them. The quiet acknowledgment of everything they mean, everything they open, everything they make true that was already true and now can't be unfiled. He knows what he said. He knows what it costs. He said it anyway.
You look at him for a long moment in the amber light of the street, the city moving around you like a current around two fixed points, and you feel something you've been carefully not naming for weeks become suddenly, undeniably named.
The car pulls up to the kerb.
You both stand there for one more second before he steps forward and opens the door for you. Not the driver. Him. The same easy, unannounced way he'd done it the night of the crisis, like it's simply something that needed doing and he was closest.
You get in.
He follows. The door closes. The city seals itself off beyond the tinted windows, softened into shadow and passing light, the familiar shape of it reduced to something distant and irrelevant.
Inside is quiet.
Not the working quiet of the car rides before, the purposeful silence with phones and tablets and schedules, the kind of quiet that has a function. This one is different. Warmer. Full of something that neither of you is going to name out loud tonight, because tonight it doesn't need naming. Tonight, it just needs to exist, which it does, easily, in the space between you.
You sit the way you always sit. Back straight, hands resting in your lap. Posture that has become automatic by now, the shape of professionalism so ingrained it persists even here, even now, even after you're beautiful said quietly on a Tuesday pavement in the amber light.
The difference is that you're not maintaining the posture to be professional anymore.
You're maintaining it because if you let it go you're not entirely sure what happens next, and the wine and the evening and the look on his face have made you less certain of yourself than you usually allow.
You look forward. He looks forward. The car moves through the city, the route splitting into yours and his somewhere ahead, the logistics of the evening reasserting themselves quietly in the background.
His arm is an inch from yours on the seat between you.
Neither of you moves.
You watch the lights of the city go past outside, blurred and amber through the glass, and you carry the warmth of the evening inside you like something you don't want to put down just yet, his laugh on the pavement, real and slightly rusty. The way easy had cost him something small and he'd spent it. The steadiness of his gaze when he didn't take it back.
I know.
You exhale slowly, quietly, and feel the specific, terrifying warmth of something that is no longer avoidable.
The car slows. Your street.
You gather your bag, and your coat, and the remnants of your composure, and you turn to say goodnight the way you always do, brief, professional, clean.
He's already looking at you.
"Goodnight," you say.
Something in his expression shifts, just slightly, at the edges. "Goodnight," he says.
Nothing else. No addition. No qualifier.
But the way he says it, like it's not entirely finished, like it's the end of this evening and not the end of something larger that has only just begun. It makes you feel it all the way to the door of your building, up the stairs, into the quiet of your flat.
You set your bag down.
You stand in the dark for a moment, coat still on, the city a low hum outside the window.
And you let yourself think it. Fully. Without deflecting, without filing it away, without reaching for something lighter or easier or safer to hold instead.
You're beautiful.
You sit down on the sofa in your coat. You're not going to sleep for a while.
Monday arrives the way Mondays always do. Early, indifferent, already full before you've had time to prepare for it. You get in earlier than usual, which is something you've started doing without acknowledging why, the habit forming quietly over the past few weeks. Coffee on your desk, laptop open, the morning's first round of emails already sorted by the time most people are stepping out of the elevator.
You feel good, actually. Just enough that Monday morning had a different quality to it. A quiet anticipation that you hadn't let yourself name but could feel at the edges of everything, a warmth sitting underneath the routine of coffee and emails and the familiar shape of the day starting.
You're halfway through your second email when the intercom buzzes.
You reach for it automatically. "Good morning -"
"The Rhodes file." His voice is exactly what it always is. Clipped. Precise. Each word placed and nothing else. "I need the revised figures before nine."
You pause for just a fraction of a second.
"Of course," you say. "I'll have it to you in twenty minutes."
The intercom clicks off. You sit with that for a moment. Then you open the Rhodes file and get to work.
It's nothing, you tell yourself.
It's a busy morning. He's focused. This is what focused looks like on him, you know that, you've known it for months, the clipped efficiency that isn't coldness so much as the absence of anything that isn't necessary. You've sat across from that version of him in meetings, in cars, in his office at midnight, and you know how to read it.
You send the Rhodes file at eight fifty-three and go back to your emails.
By mid-morning you've handled four intercom calls, two of which were corrections delivered without context, one of which was a reschedule that collapsed half your carefully arranged afternoon calendar, and one that was simply your name followed by a request for a document you already had waiting because you'd anticipated it an hour earlier. You deliver it. He takes it. The door closes.
No acknowledgment. No pause. Nothing.
You go back to your desk.
He's busy, you think. It's a busy week. This is what busy looks like.
You are very good at explaining things away.
By Tuesday you've started to notice the shape of it. Not loudly. Not in any way that announces itself. It's in the texture of small things. The quality of the silence when you enter his office, the angle of his attention when you speak and the way conversations that two weeks ago had developed a certain ease now end a beat earlier than they should, clipped off cleanly.
He doesn't look at you the way he looked at you on the pavement. He barely looks at you at all.
Wednesday the intercom buzzes four times before ten. Each one the same. Clipped, functional, stripped back to its barest components, a task, a deadline, an expectation. No filler. No deviation. You complete each request without hesitation, without variation. You are excellent at your job and you do it excellently, and somewhere underneath the professional surface of that you are quietly, steadily, trying to work out what happened.
The dinner. The restaurant. Two weeks and a reservation and a conversation that went places neither of you had planned for it to go. You make things easy. Standing on the pavement in the cool evening air. The laugh, real, unguarded, slightly rusty, the most human you'd ever seen him. You're beautiful. The car ride home and the inch of space between your arms on the seat and the weight of something present and undeniable sitting in the quiet between you.
And then this.
You stare at the intercom for a second after it clicks off.
Then you pick up the document he requested and go back to work.
By Thursday you've stopped expecting anything different and that's almost worse. You feel it in the small things, which is where you've always felt everything with him. You sit at your desk that afternoon and look at your screen and think, with a clarity that arrives quietly and stays: he regrets it.
It's not a dramatic conclusion. It doesn't announce itself. It simply settles in with the weight of something that has been assembling for days and has now finished assembling and is just sitting there, complete, waiting to be acknowledged.
Friday afternoon is when it solidifies into something you can't reason away.
You've been in his office twice already today, both times brief, both times businesslike to a degree that leaves no room for anything else. You've done everything right. Anticipated what he needed before he asked. Delivered it cleanly. Answered questions directly, concisely, professionally. Given him the version of you that exists purely in relation to the work, because that version is safe and familiar and apparently the only one that's welcome now.
You're at your desk, coat already on, running five minutes past the point where you'd normally have left, finishing a thread of emails that needs closing before the weekend. The office has emptied out around you, the floor down to its end-of-week skeleton, a few lights on, low hum of the building, the particular quiet of a place winding down.
The intercom buzzes. You stare at it for a second. Then you lean over and press the button. "Yes?"
"Before you leave." His voice, exactly as it's been all week. Clipped. Even. A task incoming.
"Of course," you say.
You take your coat off. Hang it back over your chair. Pick up your tablet and walk to his office and open the door with the same professional composure you've maintained all week, the same composure you intend to maintain until you are on the other side of the revolving door downstairs and can do whatever you need to do with the quiet, persistent ache that has been sitting in your chest since Monday morning.
He's at his desk. Jacket still on, late in the day, which is unusual. Papers in front of him, pen in hand, his attention lifting to you as you enter.
You stand just inside the door.
"The Wrenwood correspondence," he says. "Check the draft I've forwarded. Make sure the tone is right before it goes out Monday."
That's it.
No preamble. No acknowledgment of the week, of the distance, of the particular quality of the last five days. No flicker of anything behind the professionalism that might suggest he's aware of any of it.
You look at him for just a moment. Just one.
"I'll review it over the weekend," you say.
He nods once. Looks back down at his papers.
You turn to leave.
And underneath the professionalism, underneath the composure you've held perfectly all week without letting it slip once, something quiet and honest moves through you.
You were wrong, you tell yourself, hand on the door. You read it wrong. You built something out of an evening that was just an evening, out of words that were just words. He's your boss. This is your job. That's all this is. That's all it was.
You believe most of that.
The part you don't believe you fold up very small and put somewhere you don't intend to look at.
"Have a good weekend," you say, without turning back.
He doesn't reply.
You close the door.
Outside in the cooler air of the empty office, you stand for a second, hand still resting on the door handle, not thinking anything in particular. Just existing for a moment in the space between one thing and whatever comes next.
Then you take your coat from the back of your chair, pick up your bag, and walk to the elevator without looking back. The doors close.
Your reflection looks back at you from the mirrored wall, composed and steady, the same as it always is. The numbers count down. You look fine.
The weekend passes the way weekends do when your mind has already decided it isn't going to rest.
You go through the motions of it , the Saturday errands, the coffee with a friend you'd been cancelling on for weeks, the long walk you took on Sunday afternoon more out of restlessness than any desire for fresh air. You smile at the right moments and answer questions and laugh at things that are funny and from the outside it probably looks like a normal weekend belonging to a normal person who is perfectly fine.
Underneath that, you are assembling something.
Not dramatically. Not with tears or catastrophising or the kind of spiralling that demands witnesses. Just quietly, over the course of two days, the way you tend to handle things that matter, turning it over, looking at it from different angles, setting it down and coming back to it, until the shape of it becomes clear enough that you can't argue with it anymore.
The shape of it is this: you cannot go back in there and pretend.
Sunday night finds you at your kitchen table with your laptop open and a cup of tea that has gone cold without you touching it.
The resignation letter takes less time than you expect.
That's the part that sits uncomfortably, how easily it comes. A page, maybe a little less. Professional, measured, appropriate. You thank him for the opportunity. You cite personal reasons, which is vague enough to be unarguable. You offer two weeks notice, standard, the kind of clean exit that doesn't create problems for anyone.
You read it back twice.
It's good. It's exactly right. It sounds like someone who has made a calm, considered decision for entirely reasonable and professional reasons.
You press print before you can talk yourself out of it.
The printer hums. The page emerges. You pick it up, read it one more time in hard copy, and then fold it into thirds and slide it into an envelope and set it on top of your bag.
You sit with it for a while after that.
Not reconsidering. Just sitting with it the way you sit with things that are already decided, letting the weight of the decision exist without trying to change it. It's the right thing. You know it's the right thing. The alternative is going back in there indefinitely, managing the gap between what you'd thought was real and what actually is, feeling that specific shame every time his eyes move past you with professional indifference, every time the intercom buzzes and his voice arrives clipped and impersonal and you remember standing on a pavement thinking I think it's worth it.
It isn't sustainable. You know yourself well enough to know that.
You pick up your cold tea, take it to the sink, and go to bed.
You don't sleep particularly well, but you didn't expect to.
Monday morning is grey and certain.
You dress with the particular care of someone who needs their armour on properly. Everything pressed, everything right. The blazer you'd worn on your first day, which you haven't thought about in months but reached for this morning without quite knowing why. Some instinct about endings and beginnings and the way certain things ask to be marked.
You look at yourself in the mirror.
You're fine, you tell yourself.
You believe it, mostly.
The envelope goes into your bag. You leave earlier than usual, moving through the morning city with a quiet focus that has nothing underneath it now, no warmth, no anticipation, just the clean straight line of a decision already made.
The lobby is exactly as it always is. Polished, gleaming, the world softened in its own reflection. You cross it without pausing. The elevator arrives immediately. You ride it to the top in the mirrored quiet, watching the numbers climb, and you don't think about the first time you did this, you don't think about the portfolio under your arm and the composure that wasn't quite settled and the entire unknown weight of what was waiting at the top.
You think: I'm good at this job.
You think: I'll be good at the next one.
The doors open.
The top floor is its usual early-morning self, the quiet before the day properly starts, a few people at desks, the low hum of the building. You walk to your desk. Set your bag down. Take out the envelope and hold it for a second, just briefly, and then you set it on the desk in front of you.
You don't sit down.
There's no point delaying it. That's not who you are, you don't build things up, you don't circle, you don't let difficult things sit longer than they need to. You do them and then they're done. It's one of the better things about yourself, you think, one of the ones you've always been quietly grateful for.
You pick up the envelope.
You walk to his office door.
You knock. Something you've never done, you have genuinely never knocked, in months of walking into that office you have always been expected and always known it and gone straight in, and the knock feels like its own kind of punctuation. A small, deliberate signal. This is different. This is the last time.
"Come in."
You push the door open.
He's at his desk, exactly where he always is, exactly how he always looks, composed, controlled, already working, the morning already fully his. He glances up when you enter, the brief functional look, and then something shifts in it slightly as he takes in your expression. Nothing obvious. Just a fractional change, there and gone.
You cross the room.
You set the envelope on his desk.
You step back.
"My resignation," you say. Your voice is steady. You're proud of that, quietly, in the part of you that notices things. "Two weeks notice, as per my contract. I've outlined everything in the letter."
Silence.
He looks at the envelope.
He doesn't pick it up.
A second passes. Then another. The silence in the room has a quality to it you don't entirely recognise, heavier than the usual kind, weighted in a way that presses against the composure you've arrived here wearing.
You keep your eyes just above his eyeline. Not quite meeting it. You've learned that his gaze has a way of getting into things you haven't given it permission to get into, and today you can't afford that.
"I want to be professional about this," you add, because the silence is stretching and you need somewhere to put your voice.
"What?" he says.
The confusion in it catches you off guard. You'd expected the composure, the controlled nod, the clean efficient acceptance of a situation being resolved. Not that. Not his eyes doing that, blinking, just once, like the words haven't landed in the right order.
"I'll make sure the handover is thorough," you continue, because you started this and you're going to finish it, that's who you are, you finish things. "Whoever comes next will have everything they need. The calendar system, the contacts, the filing structure, I'll document all of it. It won't take long to -"
"What are you doing?"
His voice is different. Not clipped. Not controlled. Almost breathless. Like the words came out ahead of the composure that usually accompanies everything he says.
You keep going.
Because if you stop you won't start again.
"I should have -" you begin, and there it is, the thing sitting in your throat that you hadn't planned for, the thing that arrived somewhere in the walk across this room and hasn't left. You push past it. "I want to say it was a good experience. Genuinely. I learned a lot and I -"
"Don't."
Quiet. Immediate. Like a reflex.
You stop.
The room is very still. You make the mistake of looking at him.
He's already looking at you. Not the professional look, not the clipped, functional assessment that you catalogued in the first weeks and learned to read like a language. The other one. The one from the pavement outside the restaurant, amber light and cool air and the city going past like it had somewhere better to be. The one from the dinner, across the table, when he'd said I know and meant something wider than the words. The one you'd spent a week convincing yourself you'd imagined.
You hadn't imagined it.
It's right there. Open, and direct, and more than you're equipped to handle in this particular moment when you came in here with an envelope and a decision and the clean straight line of something already finished.
Your chest does something complicated and unhelpful.
"Sit down," he says.
"I'd rather -"
"Please."
You turn toward the door.
It's not a decision exactly, more like your body making a choice before your mind catches up, the animal instinct of something that has been holding itself together very carefully suddenly understanding that it cannot hold if you stay in this room one more minute. You take one step and then another and the door is right there and you reach for it -
His hand closes around your wrist.
Gentle. That's the thing that stops you more than the contact itself, the gentleness of it. Leon Kennedy, who moves through the world with precision and efficiency and the complete absence of anything unnecessary, holding your wrist like it's something he's afraid of breaking.
"Please talk to me."
You stop walking. You don't turn around.
His hand moves, both of them now, finding the sides of your arms, turning you with a care so deliberate it almost undoes you on the spot. With his hands, because apparently this is a man who has run out of ways to ask with anything else.
You shake your head.
You're looking at the middle of his chest because it's the only safe place and even that isn't particularly safe right now.
"____."
Your name. Not the way it sounds through the intercom, not the brisk professional syllables of it. The other way. The way it had sounded on the pavement. Like it means something specific in his mouth.
"I can't," you say. Your voice comes out quieter than you intended. "I can't do this, Leon. I came in here to - I have a letter, it's right there, it's done, I just need you to let me -"
"I'm not letting you resign."
"That's not -" you shake your head again, something tightening in your throat. "That's not your decision."
"No," he agrees. "It isn't."
His hands are still on your arms. You're still not looking at his face.
"Then let me go," you say.
He doesn't.
"Look at me," he says instead.
"Leon."
"Please." Again. That word, in that register, that keeps arriving like something he's had to learn to say, like it costs him every single time. "Just look at me."
You look up.
And whatever you were going to say next dissolves completely, because his face, this controlled, composed, unreachable face that you have been trying to read for months, is doing something you have never seen it do. Something unguarded in a way that goes all the way down, no layer of professionalism underneath it to catch on. He looks, for the first time since you've known him, like someone who is afraid.
Not of you. For you. For this. For the envelope on his desk and the coat you're still wearing and the door you were about to walk through.
"I've been avoiding you," he says.
The honesty of it, just that plainly stated, without preamble or qualification, hits you somewhere undefended.
"I know," you say, and your voice comes out smaller than you want it to.
"Not because I wanted to." His jaw tightens slightly, the way it does when he's working through something, when he's finding the shape of words for something that doesn't usually get words. "Because I didn't know what to do with it."
You wait.
"The dinner," he says. "The things I said."
"You don't have to explain -"
"I do." Not harsh. Just certain. "I need you to let me explain."
You close your mouth.
He exhales slowly. His hands are still on your arms, anchoring. You're not sure which of you he's anchoring, you or himself.
"I meant it," he says. "Everything I said. I meant all of it."
The thing in your chest that you'd spent a week dismantling very carefully reassembles itself in approximately four seconds.
"Then why?"
"Because I woke up Monday morning," he says, "and I understood exactly what I'd done. What I'd said. And I looked at it and I -" he stops. The pause is brief, but it's real, the kind that comes from a person choosing their words with genuine care rather than efficiency. "I've done this before. Got it wrong before. And it cost -" another pause, shorter. "I wasn't going to do that to you."
You stare at him.
"So you just went cold," you say slowly. "You thought you were protecting me."
Something in his expression confirms it without him saying a word.
"Leon." You breathe out through your nose, something between disbelief and a feeling you can't name. "I was about to quit."
"I know." His voice drops. "I know. I saw you come in this morning and I knew, before you even crossed the room, what you were holding." Something moves behind his eyes. "I've spent the last week telling myself it was better this way. That you'd be fine. That you didn't -" he stops again. "And then you walked in here and I couldn't."
"Couldn't what?"
"Let you believe that what happened didn't matter to me."
The room is very quiet.
Outside his office, through the glass, the floor is starting to fill with the ordinary noise of morning. Phones, keyboards, low voices, the unremarkable machinery of the day beginning. In here there is just this, his hands on your arms and his face open in a way you've never seen it and the envelope on the desk and everything that has been sitting between you for weeks, finally taking up the space it was always going to take up eventually.
"I'm not easy to be around," he says. It's not self-pity. It's just factual, delivered with the same directness he gives everything. "I know that. I know what it costs people. I know what it costs -" something tightens in his voice, just briefly. "I've spent a long time making sure nothing outside work gets close enough to go wrong."
"That sounds lonely," you say softly.
"It's been fine."
"That's not the same thing."
He looks at you. A long, steady look.
"No," he says. "It isn't."
The space between you has narrowed without either of you deciding to narrow it. His hands have shifted slightly on your arms, less anchoring now. Present. His thumb moves once, a small unconscious motion against your sleeve, and you don't think he knows he's doing it.
"That evening," he says, quieter now, "was the first time in a long time that something felt -" he searches for it, and you watch him search, watch the usually effortless precision of him work harder than usual for the right word. "Worth it," he says finally.
Your breath catches.
He'd used your word. Knowingly, deliberately, his gaze steady on yours in a way that makes it absolutely clear he knows exactly what he's doing.
"You said that to me," he says. "At dinner. I think it's worth it. And I thought -" the corner of his mouth moves, barely, a ghost of the thing on the pavement, the one that had teeth and sound and had been slightly rusty. "I thought you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about."
"And now?" you say.
He looks at you for a moment.
Then one of his hands moves from your arm, slowly, and his fingers brush your jaw, just barely, just the edge of it, the most careful thing you've ever felt. Tilting your face up the fraction it doesn't need to be tilted because you're already looking at him, have been looking at him, are going to keep looking at him.
"Now," he says, very quietly, "I think you might have been the only one who did."
And then he closes the distance.
It's careful, the way he does everything, deliberate, unhurried, certain without being forceful. His mouth against yours is a question asked in the specific language of a man who doesn't ask questions lightly, who has considered this one from every angle and arrived at it as the only answer that makes sense.
You answer it.
Your hand finds the lapel of his jacket, not pulling, just holding, and the envelope on the desk behind you ceases to exist, and the morning noise filters in from outside like something from another world entirely.
He pulls back after a moment, just enough. His forehead drops to yours, a gesture so unguarded, so unlike every version of him you've catalogued, that it makes your chest ache quietly.
"Don't resign," he says.
You let out a breath that's almost a laugh. "You can't just kiss me and then make employment decisions."
"I'm not." His voice is still low, still close. "I'm asking."
You lean back just enough to look at him properly. His hands are at your waist now, light, like he's still not entirely sure he's allowed, like he's waiting for you to tell him he's wrong.
You look at his face, open, careful, still faintly afraid in that way you've never seen before and suspect very few people ever have.
And you close the distance.
His breath catches and then his hand comes up to your jaw, slow and careful, the way he does everything when it matters, tilting your face up the fraction it doesn't need to be tilted because you're already there, you're already looking at him, you have been looking at him for a long time now.
His mouth meets yours.
It's careful at first. Of course it is. This is Leon, measured, deliberate, a man who does not do anything without first being certain, and the certainty is right there in the way he kisses you, like he's thought about this, like he's been thinking about this, like he's finally just decided to stop thinking about it and do it instead. Quiet and unhurried and so focused it makes everything else in the room go distant, the Monday morning bleeding out at the edges until there's just this, just here, just his hand at your jaw and yours at his lapel and the particular stillness of something finally arriving after a very long journey.
Then something shifts.
His other hand finds your waist and draws you in, just slightly, just enough, and the carefulness of it deepens into something warmer, something that has been waiting underneath the control for longer than either of you has been willing to admit. You feel it in the way his fingers press gently at your waist like he's making sure you're real. In the way your hand has moved from his lapel to his chest without you deciding to move it. In the way neither of you is in any hurry for this to end.
He pulls back after a long moment.
Not far. His forehead drops to yours, resting there, and the gesture is so unguarded, so completely unlike every composed and controlled version of him you've catalogued over months, that it knocks something loose in your chest quietly and completely.
His eyes are closed.
Just for a second. Just long enough for you to see it, the specific expression of a person who has been carrying something heavy for a very long time and has just, finally, been allowed to set it down.
You stay like that for a moment. Foreheads together, the room quiet around you, the morning doing its ordinary thing just outside the glass like the world hasn't just tilted very slightly on its axis.
Then you lean back just enough to look at him properly.
"I'm still mad at you," you say. "For this week."
"I know."
"That was genuinely awful."
"I know."
"You went full robot. It was like the first week all over again but somehow worse."
Something pulls at the corner of his mouth. "I know."
"You're going to have to do significantly better than that."
"I intend to," he says, and the simplicity of it, the complete absence of deflection in it, makes everything around you both dissolve.
"We have work to do," he says eventually, quietly, not moving.
holy crap this was literally amazing and not even remotely what i expected goin in. pure poetry. i need more and more it's just so good. leavin me breathless over here. the build up and the tension. how the things that went unspoken often said more than what was spoken. just perfection.
#when i wake up#well i know i’m gonna read#i’m gonna read the shit i read just yesterday #when i wake up#well i know i’m gonna read#i’m gonna read the shit i read just yesterday
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